Monday, December 24, 2012

Did Giants Strategically Concuss Kyle Williams?


Benjamin Wallace-Wells
1/23/12
http://nymag.com/daily/sports/2012/01/did-giants-strategically-concuss-kyle-williams.html

Robalini's Note: This piece shows you just how bogus the outrage over Bountygate was.  In January, after the NY Giants won the NFC championship game, the Giants openly boasted about targeting Kyle Williams because of his history of concussions.  Did a single Giant or any of their coaching staff get punished for its flippant admissions?  Nope.  Could it be the Giants and Saints received different treatments because New York is the big media center of the East Coast and New Orleans isn't?  Yup...

The Giants' win over the 49ers in a magnificent throwback conference championship game at Candlestick Park yesterday turned on two fumbles by 49ers punt returner Kyle Williams, an obscure second-year player. That made Kyle Williams personally responsible for ten points in a game that ended 20-17. And the Giants, interviewed in the happy haze of the winning locker room, casually noted a provocative element of their game plan: They'd targeted Williams for extra violence because they knew he had suffered several concussions in the past, and they think it worked.

After the game, reporters crowded around the locker of Jacquian Williams, who'd forced the second fumble, hoping for an angle: Had the Giants noticed something about Kyle Williams's technique, some weakness in the 49ers punt-return scheme? "Nah," Williams said. "The thing is, we knew he had four concussions, so that was our biggest thing, was to take him outta the game."

Devin Thomas, the reserve wide receiver who recovered both of Kyle Williams's fumbles, was even more explicit. “He’s had a lot of concussions," Thomas told the Star-Ledger columnist Steve Politi. "We were just like, ‘We gotta put a hit on that guy.’ ... [Giants reserve safety Tyler] Sash did a great job hitting him early and he looked kind of dazed when he got up. I feel like that made a difference and he coughed it up.”

It certainly sounds like the Giants' special teams players were told about Williams's history of concussions, and that they went after him because of it. (That this has so far drawn no attention from beat reporters suggests that such planning is commonplace). It's impossible to know whether Thomas is right — if Williams in fact was concussed or woozy during the game — but he didn't look himself yesterday: There was the third-quarter punt that skimmed off his knee after he seemed to dawdle, unsure whether to pick it up or let it roll, and at least two punts that he fair-caught though he had plenty of room to run. Sports Illustrated's Ann Killion also noticed "a fumble on a reverse that he fell on, a strange sideways diving catch on another punt that could have been disaster." Williams played virtually the whole game at wide receiver and didn't register a single catch.

Part of the seduction of the NFL post-season is the crucial contributions that often come from anonymous players at the back-end of a roster, the backups and special-teamers and would-be David Tyrees whose contributions can turn a merely good season into a potentially historic one, or (in Kyle Williams's case) vice versa. Peter King took this as his theme in his influential Sports Illustrated column this morning, making the case that the Patriots and Giants will play for the Super Bowl because their end-of-the-roster players outplayed their counterparts on the Ravens and the 49ers. But it's worth being clear about how brutal the contributions of those players often are, particularly in the pinballing, collision-physics world of special teams. In the context of the current, horrifying concussion epidemic, it's one thing to argue, as many of the NFL's defenders do, that violence is endemic to the game. But it is startling to realize that concussions aren't just an injury but a strategic vulnerability. In the league's detail-obsessed environment, where coaches seek to leverage the tiniest advantages, a history of concussions doesn't only make you a red flag on your team doctor's list. It also makes you, in opposing film rooms, a target.

Goodell and why the bounty scandal backfired


Roger Goodell and why the bounty scandal backfired
The Saints bounty suspensions have been officially vacated thanks to Paul Tagliabue, and nine months later, the bounty scandal finally has a conclusion that makes sense.
Andrew Sharp on Dec 12, 2012
http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2012/12/12/3757574/roger-goodell-paul-tagliabue-saints-bounty-suspensions

Robalini's Note: This article is not only a deserved praise of the level-headed ruling by Paul Tagliabue (who hopefully will make the Hall of Fame soon) but indictment of how horribly Roger Goodell has handled both Bountygate and the entire player safety issue.  If player safety was really at the core of how Goodell was behaving, nobody (including myself) would have a problem with what he is doing.  Instead, Goodell is using "player safety" as a bogus mantra to arbitrarily punish players with fines and suspensions, and turning NFL games into Playstation scorefests in the process...

Never forget that Roger Goodell created the bounty scandal. We will probably reference this scandal for years in one way or another, and so let's be clear: none of this went public until an NFL press release on a Friday afternoon in March.

It ended Tuesday, when Paul Tagliabue gave us a disturbingly levelheaded ruling in the player appeals -- a ruling that loyally protects the NFL against possible defamation lawsuits from the players and pays respectful lipservice to Goodell's "findings" while dismissing every single one of his suspensions and their rationale. The insanity is finally over.

But while everyone points to the scoreboard and celebrates Goodell losing in his crusade against the Saints players, they're missing the best part. Roger Goodell didn't just lose, he lost a game he'd rigged from the beginning. With evidence he never had to share, a judiciary process he controlled, and a melodramtic PR campaign that was supposed to make this case easy.

In fairness, the Saints got caught breaking rules, then breaking them again, and not punishing them would've been just as reckless as what happened. Goodell had to do something to address it, lest a Real Sports segment or a grainy YouTube video explode onto the scene and make pro football look awful. But that's the thing: Somehow a scandal that was supposed to make the NFL look bad became an opportunity for Goodell to show the world how great his NFL is.

Instead of quietly hammering the Saints as an organization and Gregg Williams as a the bounty ringleader, Goodell went into scorched-earth grandstanding mode, emphasizing how disgusted and dismayed he was by the whole affair, then handing down historic punishments across the board. Goodell took this scandal and made it ten times bigger. What should've been Spygate Part Two became something closer to the Black Sox scandal, mostly because Goodell treated it that way.

This backfired SO HARD.

As Tagliabue explained in his ruling, "When an effort to change a culture rests heavily on prohibitions, and discipline and sanctions that are seen as selective, ad hoc or inconsistent, then people in all industries are prone to react negatively - - whether they be construction workers, police officers or football players." Goodell's attitude was so ridiculous that eventually everyone started asking more questions about the Commissioner than they did about bounties. The longer this wore on, the worse Goodell looked.

He deserves it, too. He used the Saints as a prop. With the NFL facing a thousand different lawsuits and concerns about player safety, Goodell decided to release the evidence in March, emphasizing his disgust in the initial league statement.

"The payments here are particularly troubling because they involved not just payments for 'performance,' but also for injuring opposing players. The bounty rule promotes two key elements of NFL football: player safety and competitive integrity.

"It is our responsibility to protect player safety and the integrity of our game, and this type of conduct will not be tolerated. We have made significant progress in changing the culture with respect to player safety and we are not going to relent. We have more work to do and we will do it."

If Goodell had stopped after somehow turning a press release about an organized head-hunting program into a player safety PSA, that would have been fine.

But then, suspending Sean Payton for an entire season AND publicly singling out four Saints players as villains who betrayed the integrity of the game ... that's where the "selective, inconsistent, ad hoc" punishments made the whole world do a double take.

When you look closer, the most scandalous aspect of this whole scandal was the idea that bounties are rare, or really any different than a defensive player's salary. For instance, the Giants defense planned to targeted Kyle Williams, a player with a history of concussions in the NFC Championship Game last year. Does it matter whether any of them made an extra $5,000 that day? The strategy worked. Williams fumbled twice in crucial moments, and each Giant made an extra $62,000 for making the Super Bowl--a much bigger payout that's alleged in any of the Saints evidence.

Once you start thinking hard about the morality "bounties", it's only a matter of time before you realize that football itself is a sport where breaking down the other team's best player is the goal on every play. The entire sport is a bounty system at its core, and once you get that far, the Commissioner asking you to blame the Saints players seems like the most dishonest man in football.

Look at the difference between Goodell and Tagliabue:

"I am profoundly troubled by the fact that players - including leaders among the defensive players - embraced this program so enthusiastically and participated with what appears to have been a deliberate lack of concern for the well-being of their fellow players. ... [T]hey must not let the quest for victory so cloud their judgment that they willingly and willfully target their opponents and engage in unsafe and prohibited conduct intended to injure players."

— Roger Goodell, NFL statement, March 21, 2012

"The undeniable fact is that over many years a pattern and practice of abuse of the rules seems to have developed - - a culture has evolved - - that has led to acceptance of pay-for-performance reward programs. ... Most important, no matter what the League rules and policies are or have been, if many teams in the League allow pay-for-performance programs to operate in the locker room, as seems to be the case, and, in the main, the League has tolerated this behavior without punishment of players, then many players may not have a clear understanding that such behavior is prohibited or where the lines are between permissible and impermissible conduct."

— Paul Tagliabue, Final Decision on players appeals, December 11, 2012

Goodell wanted to blame his players for what happened here, and in one paragraph Tagliabue perfectly explains why that is historically absurd.

There's a reason things happened the way they did, though. The Saints were framed as some grave villains because that allowed the NFL to play the hero. The bounty suspensions were always just an excuse to go on record saying that (1) The NFL has zero tolerance for rule breakers when it comes to player safety, and (2) Roger Goodell is personally disgusted by any player who would try to injure another football player.

Instead, this scandal gave football fans the loudest reminder yet that (1) even the most basic NFL rules about player safety are blurry and unenforceable in any logical or fair way, and (2) aside from PR pontificating, the NFL Commissioner doesn't actually care about the rights, reputation, or welfare of individual players.

So yes, if we remember anything about the bounty scandal, let's remember that Roger Goodell was the mastermind behind the entire disaster. And next time Roger Goodell tells Time Magazine, "I don't do things for public relations, I do things because they're the right thing to do," remember that he's not just a liar, but also a complete failure.


Forbes Writer: The U.S. Needs Fewer Jobs


Ken Fisher, Billionaire Forbes Writer, Attempts To Argue That The U.S. Needs Fewer Jobs
The Huffington Post  |  By Mark Gongloff
12/06/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/06/ken-fisher-forbes_n_2251630.html

For years Americans have pondered the mystery of how to create more jobs. Turns out we've been thinking about it all wrong: What we need are fewer jobs.

Billionaire investor and author Ken Fisher explains in Forbes -- the Christmas Eve issue, on newsstands soon! -- that "Job Growth Is Overrated."

"Believe it or not, I’m for fewer jobs, not more," he starts out.

OK, this is a good start: It is good to acknowledge right up front that readers might not quite believe that a sentient human being is somehow against more jobs.

But you expect that maybe Fisher is then going to do a bait-and-switch of some kind: He says he's against jobs, but what he really means is that he is for some other mind-blowing kind of employment that's not exactly a "job" as we commonly think of the term. Like being a financial advisor, say. Or maybe Fisher is sort of like a Situationist, somebody who believes the entire social construct of "work" is a sham that keeps people from ever truly enjoying life. Fine, sounds good.

But, no, what Fisher means is that he really, really can't stand jobs, or people who want them, or people who want to create them:

"Throughout 2012 we heard politicians and pundits of all stripes yammering endlessly on the need for job growth—that we don’t have enough jobs," he continues. "It’s pure rubbish."

Oooo...k?

Jobs, Fisher explains, are actually signs of weakness in the economy. Jobs mean we can't produce stuff without human beings lousing up the place, instead of nice, clean robots, which are not constantly pestering you for health care and maternity leave and breaks. The greater our economy's productivity, the less we need of such nuisances. Then we can all sip cocktails on the beach for the rest of our days. Sous les paves, la plage.

"In the long run we will all benefit," Fisher says, by nobody having any jobs any more, forever. He then goes on to extol the virtues of investing in a handful of companies he says will be top-notch at destroying jobs, including Anheuser-Busch InBev and Walmart.

The massive mistake Fisher is making is understandable: People often think that productivity and jobs are mutually exclusive. The government's official measure of productivity is calculated by dividing output by worker hour. If you can get more output with fewer worker hours, voila, productivity.

But history shows that higher productivity and more jobs typically go hand in hand, according to a paper a few years back by William Nordhaus of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Nordhaus looked at times in ye olde American history when productivity was rising and found, what do you know, jobs were rising then, too. When productivity is high, prices fall, which gives workers the ability to buy more stuff. Higher demand leads to more production and more jobs.

One notable exception was around the late 1990s, early 2000s, when computers were boosting American productivity like crazy, but China was taking all of our jobs. That experience maybe colors our thinking about productivity as a job-killer.

But China, at the very same time, was enjoying both rising productivity and more jobs.

More recently, China is no longer undercutting the rest of the world on labor costs quite as much as any more. And some of those jobs the U.S. lost to China might be coming back here. Exhibit A: Apple, which said on Thursday it is going to start making stuff in the U.S. again.

We don't have to live in Ken Fisher's zero-jobs world. Although we could all use more days at the beach.

Will "Zero Dark Thirty" Rehabilitate Torture?


Will the New Osama bin Laden Film "Zero Dark Thirty" Rehabilitate Torture?
Adam Serwer| Mon Dec. 10, 2012
http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2012/12/zero-dark-thirty-osama-bin-laden-torture

Director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal want their cinematic portrayal of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty, to be seen as more than just a movie. "What we were attempting is almost a journalistic approach to film," Bigelow told The New Yorker's Dexter Filkins. The film is a "hybrid of the filmic and the journalistic," writer Mark Boal told New York. Speaking to Matt Lauer on NBC's Today, Bigelow said, "I think the film doesn't have an agenda. I think it just shows the story as, you know, the story of the greatest manhunt in history. And that's part of that history." But the film, according to those who have seen it, shows torture as central to the discovery of bin Laden's location, and this departs from what is publicly known about the raid on Abbottabad. So is Bigelow rehabilitating torture?

According to the New York Daily News, the film, which opens next month, "includes graphic torture scenes, including depictions of waterboarding and sexual humiliation, used to obtain information from detainees which ultimately help pinpoint bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan." Bigelow is no fan of torture, but she says she had to stick with the facts: "I wish that it wasn't a part of history, but it is and was." Not accurate history.

Filkins' fawning piece on Bigelow — he writes that "she feels a little like what she imagines the men and women who chased bin Laden must feel: elated" — points out that the Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) explained that the original information that led to bin Laden didn't come from a CIA detainee. Feinstein's letter was unequivocal: "The suggestion that the operation was carried out based on information gained through the harsh treatment of CIA detainees is not only inaccurate, it trivializes the work of individuals across multiple U.S. agencies that led to UBL and the eventual operation." Nor was Feinstein the only one to say so; a letter from the then-CIA director Leon Panetta sent to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) echoed the same findings.

Defenders of Bush-era enhanced interrogation waged a fierce public relations campaign to rehabilitate torture in the aftermath of the bin Laden killing, in part to award Bush credit for the raid. But the facts kept getting in the way. Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA official responsible for the destruction of videos recording the (ineffectual) torture of detainee Abu Zubayda, went on 60 Minutes and was unable to rebut the fact that alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed lied when questioned about bin Laden's courier, despite being tortured. The CIA inspector general found that "you could not in good conscience reach a definitive conclusion about whether any specific technique was especially effective, or [whether] the enhanced techniques in the aggregate really worked." Republicans are currently attempting to block a Senate intelligence committee investigation of the efficacy of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Someone attempting to make a "journalistic" feature film on the hunt for Osama bin Laden could be expected to be aware of all this. When Filkins asked Boal about the portrayal of torture departing from the known facts, he replied, "It's a movie, not a documentary." Bigelow and Boal want their film to be seen as a contribution to the historical record, not as mere entertainment. So far they are winning over influential film critics. If you're thinking of giving them an award, Zero Dark Thirty is "history"; if you're a journalist asking a question about a factual error in the film, it's just a movie.

The critical acclaim Zero Dark Thirty is already receiving suggests that it may do what Karl Rove could not have done with all the money in the world: embed in the popular imagination the efficacy, even the necessity, of torture, despite available evidence to the contrary. Whatever the artistic merits of the film, that will be its moral legacy. That's quite an accomplishment, but not a journalistic one.

I ADOPTED A DOG IN ITS FINAL HOURS



I ADOPTED A DOG IN ITS FINAL HOURS ON "DEATH ROW," AND IT MIGHT BE THE BEST DECISION I'VE EVER MADE
When I decided to get a pup for my new pet-friendly apartment, little did I know I would be racing against the clock to save a sick doggie's life.
Mandy
Dec 3, 2012
http://www.xojane.com/relationships/i-adopted-a-dog-from-death-row

On Friday, I went to Jill Zarin's birthday party with my friend Sam Lansky, who had an in-depth conversation with me about what kind of animal I would get for my new apartment.

"I want a dog," I said, "but I'm not sure I can afford one. So I'm thinking I'll get a cat."

"Just be careful," he said. "Sometimes if you get a cat, you end up living alone forever."

"Jesus," I said, laughing. "That's so not true."

"Really?" he said. "Name one woman or gay who adopted a cat, and then ended up meeting a man after."

"Huh. I can't," I said.

"Exactly," he said. "If you get a cat, something happens where it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's just science."

"But -- what if I named the cat, 'Marry Me'?" I said.

"Well, that could work," he said.

I went home that night, and I thought of a friend who did in fact meet a great guy who has a cat, texted Sam to nah-nah-nah his "science" theory and then opened up my monthly budget. I've been saying I wanted a dog forever. When I was a kid, around 8, I actually had a scheme where I was going to dig up the carpet in my room, replace it with dirt and then surreptitiously adopt a dog without telling my parents. I never had the courage to do this, although I did have a habit of using my paper-route money to continually purchase cats and bring them home through my bedroom window. My parents let me keep them, until it reached the point of ridiculousness after Cat No. 4.

Now that I'm an adult, I realized that I could make my 8-year-old dreams come true. All I said when I was living in San Diego was how I couldn't wait to get a dog, as I slept with my father's guide dog almost every night. So I went through my monthly take-home-pay and figured out the cost of doggie day care, food, vet expenses and more, and while I can't exactly be a clotheshorse or be springing for $100-meals out as a dog owner, I realized that it was absolutely feasible. I was going to do it.

I posted on my Twitter and Facebook at 11 p.m., "I've come to an important decision. I'm going to adopt a dog. Now to figure out which kind." The suggestions came flooding in, but then my friend Dennis Burger added to the thread: "Mandy, if this is a move you're making soon -- like, now -- please consider this guy. He's going to be destroyed tomorrow if no one adopts him."

I'm a big believer in fate, synchronicity and no coincidences. I clicked on the dog's profile, which had been shared more than a thousand times from a Web site called Urgent Pets on Death Row, Inc., and indeed, the 18-month-old pit mix was going to be euthanized if no one adopted him. In the past this has happened as early as the morning at Animal Care & Control, and so with no time to lose, I put down the deposit to adopt him the next day, a few minutes before midnight.

When I headed out to the Brooklyn location the next morning on Saturday, the waiting room was overflowing with cats removed from homes who had elderly owners or from Hurricane Sandy, and I went to the front to make sure Samsung was indeed safe, and there hadn't been any kind of awful error where he was put to sleep regardless of my adoption hold. They assured me he was safe, but it was going to be a few hours.

I sat and waited and tried not to let my heart break from all of the sweet cats who so desperately wanted owners around me. (The dogs are kept in the back, away from the waiting room.) Please, if you are considering adopting an animal, go to a shelter. Save a life. These animals are so precious and loving. They deserve a life, and you can give it to them.

"We were all hoping you would come!" one volunteer said, pulling up Samsung's ID number and chart, and I filled out the adoption papers which asked me things like if the dog grew or got sick would I abandon him. No, no, no.

When Samsung was brought out by volunteer Elisa Lafont, she was beaming.

"This is a very special dog," she said. "I'm so glad you came."

Elisa comes out from Long Island to volunteer at the shelter and give the pets the attention and love they need, and she also helps to spread word of animals that are placed on "Death Row." The reason that Samsung was listed there was because, as often happens when dogs remain in a shelter, he contracted kennel cough, and because Animal Care & Control is limited in space, and accepts all animals, they cannot be a no-kill shelter. Samsung getting sick meant he was now on the "euth list," as much as everyone hated to put him there. Other than his cough, which can be cured with a course of antibiotics, he is a very healthy, happy, loving dog.

Elisa later told me, "Weird thing is I almost didn't go in Saturday. Because I was in a mood and wasn't sure. But then I saw Sam was on the list and knew I had to go in, in case I wouldn't ever see him again. So when I saw he was reserved when I woke up, I was relieved. I told him when I had him in our cuddle spot that 'I was doing my best to make sure he would make it out, that I was praying hard. To please hold on a little longer.'"

I could see just how special he was when Elisa brought him out.

"This is your new mommy," she said. "She saved your life, Samsung." Elisa gave him a special Snoopy collar to wear for the cab ride home.

He knows how to do "Paw," "Sit" and "Stay" and he licks you with appreciation. When the car service came to take us back to Manhattan, he curled up below the seat and patiently looked up at me. It was my very first night in my new studio, and my new dog would be spending it with me.

I lay out the food and water in some makeshift Tupperware, and then showed him that he was allowed to jump on the bed with me. I didn't intend to fall asleep at 8:30 p.m., but as he curled up next to me and put his paw on my hand, that's exactly what I did. My boots and jacket were still on, and the next morning we woke up at 6 a.m. Samsung nuzzled and licked me and stared up at me with his sweet soulful eyes.

"You're still a little sick, Samsung," I told him. "But you're going to get better. I'm not giving up on you."

He rested his head on my chest, and his heart beat next to mine.

Beast of the Month: November & December 2012


Here are the latest winners for Beast of the Month.  Monthly columns should return in 2013.

November 2012: Todd Akin
Why did the Republicans get their asses kicked in the 2012 election?  Sorry, Mitt Romney wasn't the real problem, the real problem was the GOP candidates just plain scared most Americans.  And nobody perfectly represented this scariness like Akins, who led off a "Rape Brigade" of rogues who just couldn't stop talking about rape in a stunningly offensive way.

December 2012: SuperPACs
For all the Democratic victories, the real winner of the 2012 election was still money and the corruptive influence of SuperPAcs on democracy.  And it seems that the negative influence of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling will only continue in the coming years.

Ventura Suspects a Conspiracy About His Show


Jesse Ventura Suspects a Conspiracy About His Show About Conspiracies
By James McGirk
His TruTV program brings in big ratings investigating time travel and lizard people. But when he starts questioning the government...
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/12/jesse-ventura-suspects-a-conspiracy-about-his-show-about-conspiracies/266361/

Most retired governors use their connections to assume quiet but well-paid positions in the private sector, or loud but well-paid positions as commentators on cable news networks. Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura lately, though, has been prowling obscure government facilities, confronting squirming civil servants, and demanding "the truth" while hosting a reality television show on truTV called Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura.

In the third season, the show has hit its stride. Two lackluster investigators have been replaced with Jesse Ventura's son Tyrel and Oliver Stone's son Sean. The chemistry is great. Tyrel is skinny and slightly awkward and dresses like Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep, standing in stark contrast from his ranting hulk of a father. Sean Stone is leather-clad and rebellious, assigned only the most dangerous missions. A third investigator, June Sarpong, is a British West African with a posh accent and an MBE (Member of the British Empire, a step below a knighthood). The subject matter will be familiar to anyone interested in conspiracies, but is presented with flair. White vans pull up and reveal contacts (who always seem to be old cronies of Ventura's). The team interviews mad colonels, mystics and time travelers. It moves along at a relentless pace with considerable charm.

It's entertaining stuff, and the ratings are blockbuster for cable. About 1.5 million people watch the premiere of each episode, and many more see the series in reruns. But for all its goofy appeal, Conspiracy Theory has occasionally seemed to strike on something real--and, as befits both his program's subject matter and his own personal history, Ventura now is convinced that someone is out to shut the program down.

The suspicions began in November 2010, when truTV aired a doozy of an episode, called "Police State." It was spliced with footage of World War II concentration camps and implied that FEMA could be about to institute martial law. The team explored a network of government centers that use data-mining software to comb through intelligence gathered by federal agencies, presumably to look for potential terror suspects. (It would work a bit like Google's keyword advertising: The software might flag someone whose emails to Pakistan mentioned crop-spraying, the precursors for Sarin gas, for example.) They interviewed a young Ron Paul supporter who was put on a government watch list for no apparent reason. Then the team infiltrated a storage facility containing hundreds of thousands of plastic grave liners. Next stop was a pair of mysterious government installations that looked like prisons but had playgrounds attached to them. Finally Ventura flew to Washington D.C. to confront the authors of a bill, H.R. 645 that authorized FEMA to designate military bases as "National Emergency Centers."

Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-PA6) refused to meet with Ventura, so Ventura confronted Rep. Steve Cohen, one of the bill's co-sponsors. Cohen floundered during the interview. He seemed unfamiliar with the bill and flustered by Ventura's thundering rebukes. After the telecast, he released an op-ed accusing Turner Broadcasting System of gross inaccuracy, condemned the references to the Holocaust, and compared the "dangerously stirred fears" to Timothy McVeigh's "consuming hatred and distrust of government... The show makes professional wrestling, where Ventura earned his fortune, look like an Olympic sport," Cohen said.

A typical episode gets rerun dozens of times, but "Police State" aired once and then never again. (It's circulating on YouTube, uploaded by users who say it's been "banned.") A representative of Turner Broadcasting System (which owns truTV) said that the "Prison State" episode did not repeat after the initial telecast because of scheduling considerations. Ventura thinks it's more than that. He likened it to MSNBC's cancellation of Donahue in 2003. (Phil Donahue insinuated that his anti-war stance was responsible for his firing. An NBC Executive told The New York Times that the show's cost and disappointing ratings were to blame.) He has taken issue with some last-minute scheduling changes that could hurt the show's ratings. And he points out that an episode he and his team filmed for this season, about whether the TSA's full-body scanners are carcinogenic, was shelved by network execs.

"It's clear they're doing everything they can to make it a failure so they don't have to renew it," Ventura said when he appeared on The Alex Jones Show's Infowars Nightly News on November 28. The "they" he refers to, as is typical with conspiracy theories, is vaguely defined. "Look at what the facts are," he said on a follow-up appearance last week. "The FEMA show was taken off, after airing only one time... and the TSA show, again... we completed the show and they chose not to air it. Somebody on their end made the decision. They've chosen not to air it. TruTV, the network did. Who influenced truTV to do that, I do not know."

That speculation has a friend in Alex Jones, an affable Texan with a devoted following who believes an elite cabal of globalists (mostly the scions of old British banking families) are using the Federal Reserve to take over the United States, reduce us all to toothless dependency, and will one day trigger a catastrophe that culls the population to a more manageable size. He is a frequent guest on Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura, particularly on episodes that concern the U.S. government and seem to point to a grander, more unified conspiracy theory. Ventura doesn't agree with his one-world government ideas, though says that "after doing the show, nothing seems beyond belief."

While the implication of sinister motives for cable-TV programming decisions may be far-fetched, Ventura's right, at least, that some genres of conspiracy investigations are safer, more attractive bets for a TV station than others. The most outlandish ones, like those featuring reptilians or time travel, are neatly and entertainingly debunked or discredited by Ventura's team. Theories that involve government malfeasance are a different breed entirely. Some haven't been so implausible. The fusion centers that skim our data are undeniably creepy. So too was the massive excavation uncovered in the Ozark Mountains during Season Three.

But the more specious government-related theories, like FEMA camps, present a dilemma. Cohen's reference to Timothy McVeigh may seem alarmist, but there's obviously danger involved in propagating extreme views of the government. Ventura, though, thinks the audience is smart enough to separate truth from speculation.

"People should take the show with a grain of salt," he says. "[The way it works] is that someone brings us the conspiracy, and if there's enough meat on the bone, we'll put our team on it, and if someone we interview tells us a lie we can only look into it."

That answer may not always be acceptable to, say, truTV's lawyers who are worried about the network being taken to court for slander. But Ventura's never gotten along all that well with authority. As a professional wrestler he sued his employer, Titan Sports, to retrieve royalties. When he retired he blamed blood clots in his lungs allegedly caused by his wartime exposure to Agent Orange. More recently he's sued the TSA and Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL sniper who accused Ventura of defaming the SEALs.

Yet for all his rabble rousing, Ventura seems sincere. He comes off as genuinely protective of his inner circle and personally afflicted by the canceled episodes. That accusations of censorship get more people talking about—and potentially watching the show—is just a coincidence. Or is it?


Stoner Cooking Christmas Eve 2012


A Holiday Search: The Best Eggnog You Can Buy
Elizabeth Gunnison
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/best-eggnog-brands-taste-test-14817569

You're either for nog or you're against it. There is no middle ground. It all comes down to how you feel about drinking your bourbon or rum in a pool of melted ice cream, because that's more or less what eggnog is: eggs, sugar, cream, nutmeg, and vanilla. It's an ice-cream base masquerading as a cocktail mixer.

It helps that nog has history on its side. It's a drink born in medieval England, made popular in early America, which now lives in our collective imagination as a symbol of a bygone time when men were men, women were women, and people could take down a concoction of hard alcohol, refined sugar, and animal fat without the hideous stamp of modern guilt.

The best eggnog is always that which you make from scratch, but if you're going to opt for a store-bought version, you would do well to choose carefully. All nogs are not created equal, as I recently discovered when I sampled eight popular brands. What follows is my appraisal of the field.

(Note that all of these eggnogs are sold in non-alcoholic form; you can do the spiking with a booze of your choosing at home.)

Scent: Most nogs didn't give off much of a bouquet, with the exception of Rice Dream's Rice Nog ($2), which smelled of new My Little Pony dolls.

Appearance: Generally speaking, the nogs were a neutral, inoffensive shade of off-white. Demerits go to Rice Nog, which looked like filthy water, and Lactaid Eggnog ($2.99), for its weirdly bright-yellow hue (perhaps over-compensation for a brand name that sounds more like a female nursing tool than a festive holiday beverage). Ronnybrook Eggnog ($4.79) was also a little unsettlingly yellow.

Texture: Most of the nogs suffered from being too thick, due to the fact that dairy companies crudely try to replicate the luscious texture of whipped eggs by doctoring their heavy cream with guar gum and carrageenan. This results in a slimy, Pepto Bismal consistency. Southern Comfort Eggnog ($3.99) set itself apart by recalling instead the grittiness of Mylanta. Points to Organic Valley ($4.99) for finding the proper level of thickness. The brand doesn't use guar gum, and the resulting nog is hefty without being mouth-coating.

Nutrition: Eggnog is irredeemable from a nutritional standpoint. Period. The pre-packaged stuff is mostly made from high-fructose corn syrup, dairy fat, and a bunch of unlovable additives. Rice Nog and Horizon Organic Eggnog ($4) were notably lighter in fat and calories than the others, if you keep track of such things. Let's all agree that there's a two-drink maximum on eggnog and inquire no further into the exact composition of the stuff.

Flavor: I found Southern Comfort, Lactaid, Ronnybrook, and Farmland Dairies ($2.49) to be middling nogs, tooth-achingly sweet, and with flavors in the vanilla pudding and butterscotch categories. Horizon Organic tasted of bubblegum; Holiday Eggnog ($2.49), the worst of the bunch, had a distinct turpentine finish. Rice Nog, as one might expect, wasn't a true nog so much as rice milk half-heartedly flavored with pie spices. The stand-out in the group was Organic Valley, which tasted of nutmeg and fresh cream, and wasn't nearly so sweet as the other brands. I suspect this is because the company skipped the corn syrup and instead used organic fair-trade cane sugar.

Winner: By a landslide, Organic Valley, for its pure nutmeg taste, moderate sweetness, clean texture, and an all-organic ingredient list that proved less horrifying than its competitors.

*

The Prez Obama Burger
Caroline Russock
JUN 25, 2010
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/06/prez-obama-burger-good-stuff-eatery-dc-spike-mendelsohn-recipe.html

The year that Spike Mendelsohn opened Good Stuff Eatery in D.C. just happened to coincide with a pretty exciting presidential election. Spike decided to hold his own race to the White House pitting the Obama burger against the McCain burger. The Obama burger ended up beating out the McCain burger four to one. Politics aside, I'm pretty sure the toppings were the ultimate deciding factors in this burger race.

McCain's burger was topped with Southwestern chipotle mayo, corn and roasted red pepper salsa, jack cheese, lettuce, and tomato—maybe delicious but a bit all over the place for my tastes, at least. The Prez Obama Burger was equally dressed up but with toppings that seemed a little more burger-friendly and down to earth—basically a bacon blue cheese burger with horseradish mayo and a sweet and sour red onion marmalade.

Obama's victory lead his namesake burger to a permanent spot on the Good Stuff menu, and with good reason. This burger is a keeper. The strong flavors of the blue cheese, horseradish, and onions work harmoniously. And the red onion marmalade and horseradish mayo are worth making on their own. Even if you find them a little much for a burger, they seem like they were made for a roast beef or toasted ham and cheese sandwich.

YIELD: 6

For the horseradish mayonnaise:
2 cups Homemade Basic Mayonnaise (recipe follows)
4 ounces prepared horseradish
1 tablespoon cayenne
11/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Sea salt

For the red onion marmalade:
2 red onions
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup sugar

For the burgers:
30 ounces ground sirloin
6 potato buns, cut in half
Canola oil
1 pound applewood smoked bacon
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 pound crumbled blue cheese
2 large eggs
4 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 cups grapeseed oil

To make the Horseradish Mayonnaise, add the basic mayonnaise, horseradish, cayenne, pepper, and salt to taste to a food processor or blender. Puree until smooth. The mayonnaise can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

To make the Red Onion Marmalade, slice both red onions 1/2 inch thick. Add the vinegar and sugar to a pot over medium heat. Bring to a simmer. Once the sugar is completely dissolved, add the onions. Cook, stirring constantly to prevent burning, until the onions are translucent and the liquid is reduced by half, about 5 minutes. Set aside to cool.

To make the patties, roll six 5-ounce sirloin balls and form each ball into a patty. Arrange on a tray, cover, and refrigerate.

Toast the buns and set aside.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and just add enough oil to cover the entire bottom. Line a plate with paper towels. When the oil begins to smoke, add the bacon and cook until crisp. Remove with a slotted spoon. Drain on the paper towels. Drain the fat from the pan but do not wipe clean.

Reduce the heat to medium and place the patties into the skillet. Season the patties with salt and pepper and cook for 3 minutes. Flip, and cook on the other side for 1 minute more. Distribute the crumbled blue cheese equally among the patties and continue to cook 2 minutes more for medium-rare doneness. Cover with a lid for the last 30 seconds to melt the cheese.

Homemade Basic Mayonnaise
- makes about 2 cups -

Add the eggs, mustard, vinegar, and salt to a food processor or blender. Process for 30 seconds in the food processor, or for 10 seconds in the blender. With the motor running, drizzle in the oil slowly at first, then add in a thin, steady stream until all the oil is added and the mixture is smooth. Stop the motor and taste. If the sauce is too thick, thin it with a little hot water. If too thin, process a little longer. The mayonnaise can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

*

The Only Cheeseburger Recipe You'll Ever Need
It's juicy, rich, and perfectly seasoned — chef Gabrielle Hamilton shares the only burger recipe you'll ever need.
Gabrielle Hamilton
http://www.housebeautiful.com/kitchens/recipes/gabrielle-hamilton-cheeseburger-recipe-0612

The only problem with putting a good burger on your restaurant's menu is that you suddenly become a burger joint, and if you have any inflated ideas of yourself as a chef, this can mess with them. As you hunch over the counter in your chef's whites — with your apron neatly tied, your side towel folded just so, your tasting spoons glinting in front of you — and you fill your 30th ramekin of ketchup, you think, "Hmm. This is not exactly what I had pictured for myself." But the home cook will not suffer this existential setback for the few occasions in a year when you make yourself a burger, and this one is a genuine knockout. The addition of lamb to the not-too-lean chuck gives the burger a discernible gamey richness and helps deepen the flavor of ground beef, which on its own can be slightly tinny and mineral-tasting from the iron — especially true of grass-fed beef. The parsley-shallot butter takes the "joint" right out of this burger and puts it in the restaurant league.

Serves 4

2 cloves garlic
¾ cups peeled and roughly chopped shallots
2 cups picked, clean parsley leaves
3½ teaspoons coarse kosher salt (do not use fine iodized salt)
1 pound unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes, at room temperature
1 pound excellent-quality ground chuck
½ pound excellent-quality ground lamb
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 ounces sharp white cheddar (sliced into 4 slices)
Thomas' Original sandwich-size English muffins

In a food processor, chop the garlic and shallots finely. Add parsley leaves and 1½ teaspoons salt, and also process to fine. Add butter and process to smooth and emerald-green.

Run your hands under very cold water for a minute — this will keep the meat from getting gummy — then gently combine the two meats. Divide the meat into four equal portions (six ounces each), then gently form into patties that are 1¼ inches thick and three inches in diameter. Season each patty all over — top, bottom, and the circumference — with ½ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon black pepper. Touch the patties as tenderly and as little as possible — the more you manhandle and compact the meat, the tougher it becomes.

Heat a cast-iron skillet on low heat for two minutes, then increase the heat to medium-high, add 1 tablespoon oil, and place patties in pan. Cover with a splatter screen, if you own one, to minimize the mess on your stove top. Cook for seven minutes on one side, flip, and cook for five more minutes. Do not turn, touch, press down on, or otherwise molest the burgers while they are cooking. Place cheese on top and either place in a hot oven or under the broiler until the cheese is just melted but not liquefied.

Split four of the English muffins by deeply pricking them along the horizontal seam with the tines of a dinner fork. Toast well and generously smear both the tops and the bottoms with the room-temperature parsley-shallot butter, "wall to wall" as we say at Prune, so that every bite will be seasoned and not just the center ones. (The remaining butter can be refrigerated for up to a week or frozen for up to six weeks — it is delicious on everything from toast to steak.) Place the burgers on the bottoms and close with the buttered English muffin lids.

*

Stuffed Meatballs With Spaghetti
http://www.villabertolli.com/recipes/detail/11894/1/family-favorite

2 slices bacon
3/4 lb. ground pork
3/4 lb. ground veal
1/2 small yellow onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup plain dry bread crumbs
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
4 ounces Parmesan cheese, cut into 16 cubes
2 Tbsp. Bertolli® Classico™ Olive Oil
1 jar Bertolli® Vidalia Onion with Roasted Garlic Sauce
8 ounces spaghetti, cooked and drained

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cook bacon in 10-inch skillet. Let cool, then cut into 16 even pieces; set aside.

Combine pork, veal, onion, basil, parsley, egg, bread crumbs, garlic, salt and pepper in medium bowl; shape into 16 meatballs. Split each meatball in half, then put cheese and bacon in center; seal. Arrange meatballs in 11 x 13-inch baking dish, then drizzle with Olive Oil. Bake 20 minutes.

Heat Sauce in 2-quart saucepan over low heat, then add meatballs and cook 10 minutes or until meatballs are done. Serve over hot spaghetti and garnish, if desired, with grated Parmesan cheese and additional parsley.

RECIPE SERVES: 4
PREP TIME 20 Minutes
COOK TIME 25 Minutes

Amount Per Serving
Calories 870
Calories From Fat 390
% Daliy Value*
Total Fat 43 Grams
Saturated Fat 15 Grams
Trans Fat 0 Grams
Cholesterol 190 Milligrams
Sodium 1920 Milligrams
Total Carbohydrate 69 Grams
Dietary Fiber 4 Grams
Sugars 21 Grams
Protein 52 Grams
Vitamin A 50 Percent
Vitamin C 70 Percent
Calcium 45 Percent
Iron 40 Percent

*

Rhonda's Spaghetti with Fried Eggs and Pangritata for One
http://www.food52.com/recipes/2577_rhondas_spaghetti_with_fried_eggs_and_pangritata_for_one

Serves one

Pangritata
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup fresh or stale coarse breadcrumbs
2 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary leaves
zest from half a lemon

Heat 2 T olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.

Add the breadcrumbs and sauté until golden and crispy, about 4 to 5 minutes.

Add the rosemary, immediately remove from heat and allow to cool.

Mix in lemon zest and set aside.

Spaghetti and Eggs
4 ounces spaghetti
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons chopped Italian parsley
1 teaspoon small capers, drained
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1/4 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese

Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil and cook pasta to al dente according to directions on box. (I usually undercook the pasta by about a minute.)

Wipe out the skillet from the pangritata, add 1 T olive oil and 1 T butter and melt together over medium heat.

Add the garlic and immediately break the eggs into the skillet.

If need be, lower the heat a bit. You want the garlic to cook without burning and the egg whites to set, but the yolks to remain runny.

Drain the pasta well, reserving ½ c of the cooking liquid.

Add pasta back to the pot, pour over the eggs and all the fat from the skillet, add the parsley and capers and toss well, breaking up the eggs as you do. If you prefer a wetter dish, you can add in some of the reserved cooking liquid.

Plate the pasta and eggs, season well with freshly ground black pepper, sprinkle with the grated cheese and then top with the pangritata.

Pour yourself a glass of wine and enjoy!

*

Kung Pao Popeye
J. Kenji López-Alt
OCT 20, 2011
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/kung-pao-popeye-kung-pao-tsos-chicken-made-with-popeyes-chicken-nuggets-recipe.html

Note: For best results, use Popeye's chicken nuggets or popcorn shrimp. Other brands will work if necessary.

YIELD: 4
TOTAL TIME: 10 minutes
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT: wok

1/4 cup low-sodium chicken stock
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine (or dry sherry, in unavailable)
1 tablespoon Chinese black vinegar (Chinkiang vinegar)
1 tablespoon Sichuan fermented chili-bean paste
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 long hot green pepper, sliced thinly on the bias
2 small leeks, white and light green parts only sliced into 1/4-inch segments
1 large stalk of celery, sliced on the bias into 1/4-inch slices
2 cloves minced garlic (about 2 teaspoons)
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
12 hot Chinese whole dry chili peppers
1/2 cup roasted peanuts
18 to 24 Popeye's Chicken Nuggets or 3 orders Popeye's Popcorn Shrimp
2 tablespoons toasted and ground Sichuan peppercorns

Combine stock, soy sauce, wine, vinegar, chili-bean paste, sugar, and cornstarch in a small bowl and whisk with a fork until combined and homogeneous.

Heat oil in a large wok over high heat until smoking. Add peppers, leeks, and celery and stir fry, letting them sit long enough to get slightly charred on once side before tossing and flipping. Cook until tender but still bright green, about 1 1/2 minutes tota. Add garlic, ginger, chilis, and peanuts. Stir fry, tossing regularly until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Add chicken or shrimp and reserved sauce and stir fry until sauce is thick and glossy and all the food is nicely coated. Add half of Sichuan peppercorns and toss to combine. Transfer to a hot plate, sprinkle with remaining Sichuan peppercorn, and serve immediately.

*

Bacon Brownies
by Mr. B.
http://bacontoday.com/bacon-brownies

Bacon and brownie lovers unite! Yes, you’re seeing it correctly. Bacon has decided to mate with the chocolate brownie and the offspring is so adorably delicious, you’ll have the words “Nom Nom Nom” running through your head. It’s the ultimate confection for stoners and bacon lovers alike. And if you want to buy your own bacon brownie, Bacon Freak, just launched this bad boy. The best part is it doesn’t matter where you live. Bacon Freak isn’t one of those new bakeries that you only read about in the news and find yourself saying, “Why isn’t this awesome place located near me? I want a bacon brownie!”

Bacon Freak is an online store you can go to for all your bacon loving needs. And they have the Bacon Brownie for you to order online! Think of it as a long distance pizza. No need to wish. Just “click, click” and you can have a bacon brownie right in your lustful hands.

If you’re the proactive type, you can always make your own. Here’s how!

First you need bacon. Use as many strips as you would like. This recipe has 4 strips. You may as well cook all the bacon because even if you don’t use all the strips in your brownies, you’ll still want to snack on them while making this delicatessen.

Next, you need to get the brownie mix. Use your favorite. Be fancy and get the Turtle Brownie mix. This mix comes with a bag of caramel to pour on top of your mix. Delish!

Next up, eggs and vegetable oil.

Okay, time to get down to it.

1) Pre-heat your oven to 350°F.

2) Grease a 13”x9” baking pan. (8” and 9” square pans will also work just fine.)

3) Heat up a frying pan. Pre-cook some bacon for about 3 minutes per side. Not too much – you don’t want to totally fry it, you just want to get it a little past raw. Raw is bad for taste as well as for your intestinal tract. The bacon should just be starting to brown and might be a little crispy.

4) When the bacon is ready, set it aside on a plate lined with paper towels to help drain some of the grease.

5) Following the directions on the box, combine the brownie mix, vegetable oil, water and eggs.

6) When the batter is ready, pour slightly less than half of it into the pan.

7) Now add the bacon. You can go as big or as small as you would like. That’s the great thing about bacon – there’s no wrong amount unless you don’t have enough!

8) Now add the rest of the brownie batter on top of the bacon. Be sure to cover it all up.

9) A little tasty caramel to finish it off.

10) It’s ready for the oven, so take another look at the box and bake it for however long it says. Betty Crocker suggested 27 minutes, but these were done in just 22.

11) Let the brownies cool for a few minutes, then dig in! Yep, it’s good isn’t it?

Bacon Brownies are a definite must in the bacon and dessert world. You can’t call yourself a bacon lover until you’ve tasted these.

Life is good. Bacon is better.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Robalini's Week 16 NFL Picks


Here's my results for Week 15
W-L-T record: 5-4
Season record: 62-60

Atlanta Falcons (-3 1/2) over Detroit Lions

A lot of people still aren't sold on the Falcons, but I'm convinced they're a serious Super Bowl contender.

Baltimore Ravens (+2 1/2) over New York Giants

Whatever misgivings I have on the Ravens is nothing compared to that for the Giants.

Minnesota Vikings (+7 1/2) over Houston Texans

The Vikings, fueled by likely MVP Adrian Peterson, should stay within a TD of the Texans.

Cleveland Browns (+13) over Denver Broncos

The Browns have a bad record but have at least been competitive, and despite continuing their winning streak, Peyton Manning has looked off the last couple weeks.  The Broncos should win, but by thirteen?  I don't think so.

Chicago Bears (-5 1/2) over Arizona Cardinals

The Bears haven't been looking very good lately, but playing the Cardinals should straighten that out.

San Diego Chargers (+2 1/2) over New York Jets

The Jets are finally making the change at QB they should've long ago.  Too little, too late.

All bets are placed at Station Casinos:

http://www.stationcasinos.com

To check Las Vegas odds, The Konformist recommends VegasInsider.com:

http://www.vegasinsider.com

Sunday, December 16, 2012

1% Wall Street sales tax solution


1% Wall Street sales tax solution to stablize US federal budget
Webster G. Tarpley
Tue Dec 4, 2012
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/12/04/276170/wall-street-tax-solution-to-us-budget/

In the midst of the current haggling over the US federal budget, the main fact is being ignored: the fiscal shortfall of the US government over decades is largely due to Wall Street’s rigging of the tax code so that the main money center banks pay little or nothing in the way of taxes.

Like the haughty nobility in France before the Revolution of 1789, the Wall Street banks are practically exempt from taxation, and the burden of paying for the government is shifted to the middle class. Anybody who is serious about reducing the power of Wall Street bankers in US politics must now mobilize to educate public opinion about the situation and its main remedy - the 1% Wall Street Sales Tax.

Wall Street banks are corporations, and US corporations are supposed to pay a federal corporate income tax of 35% on their profits.

Over recent decades, government revenue from the federal corporate income tax has been in sharp decline, as more and more companies learn the secrets of tax loopholes, offshore tax shelters, and other accounting tricks. Some of the most adept in dodging tax payments are the leading Wall Street institutions.

Some statistics on Wall Street’s amazing ability to evade taxation come from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and from Citizens for Tax Justice, a think tank supported by organized labor.

It turns out that Goldman Sachs, the classic zombie bank, paid just 1.1% tax on its total profits in 2008. This scandalous situation did not prevent Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s boss, from appearing on CBS television to demand draconian cuts in the meager entitlement payments received by the poor, the sick, and the old.

Goldman paid 1%, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo paid nothing.

Citigroup made out even better, paying 0% taxes on $4 billion in profits. In 2011, Bank of America also managed to pay 0% on 4.4 billion of its profits. Another leading bank which managed to avoid the federal corporate income tax altogether is Wells Fargo, which succeeded in paying nothing to the US Treasury in 2008, 2009, and 2010 (See Pat Garofalo, “30 Major Corporations Paid No Income Taxes in the Last Three Years, While Making $160 billion,” Think Progress, November 3, 2011).

Another spectacular example of Wall Street’s tax dodges is General Electric, which long ago ceased being an industrial corporation and became a hedge fund in drag, built around its financial arm, GE Capital.

GE racked up worldwide profits of $14.2 billion in 2010, but managed to avoid the federal corporate income tax completely. Instead, GE accountants were able to secure a $3.2 billion refund from the US Treasury. This happened even though GE was laying off 21,000 US workers and closing 20 US factories over the years 2007-2009.

And these results were typical of GE’s performance over the most recent decade: GE paid a 2.3% tax rate on profits during 2002-2011, and succeeded in paying zero federal corporate income tax in 2002, 2008, 2009, and 2010 (See Citizens for Tax Justice and Jake Tapper, “General Electric Paid No Federal Taxes in 2010,” ABC News, March 25, 2011).

The scandal is made even greater because GE boss Jeffrey Immelt was serving as Obama’s business liaison in his capacity as Chairman of the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Rapacious predators like Immelt apparently believe that good corporate citizenship starts with evading all taxes.

Wall Street pays no tax on its transactions

But these scandals, though outrageous, barely beginning to scratch the surface of the insane world of US tax law. US states collect sales taxes usually ranging from 6% to 12% on transactions involving merchandise, sometimes including even groceries. But when the Wall Street banks, hedge funds, and brokerage houses sell their stocks, bonds, derivatives, debt instruments, etc., they pay no sales tax whatsoever.

This outdated approach goes back to when the stock and bond markets were considered capital markets. But today, in the era of high frequency trading and flash trading in which one computer can carry out a million trades per second using algorithms, we are obviously dealing with a high-tech gambling casino that poses grave dangers to the public.

In short, the greatest single flow of untaxed money is the stocks, bonds, and derivatives which cross the exchanges in New York and Chicago, as well as the over-the-counter derivatives which are contracted behind the scenes. If sacrifices are required, this is obviously the place to start.

The obvious way to stabilize the US federal budget is to levy a sales tax on these financial market transactions. A sales tax will be paid immediately on every trade, without regard for the yearly profits and losses reported by smart accountants, making it much harder to cheat.

The US federal government collected a financial transaction tax of between 0.04% (0.0004) and 0.1% (0.001) between 1914 and 1966. Even today, the US government still collects the Section 31 fee, a microscopic tax of 0.0034% on stock transactions, which in 1998 produced $1.8 billion and financed the operations of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The State of New York currently has a small financial transaction tax on the books, but since the late 1970s the proceeds (estimated at about $25 billion per year) have been remitted to the bankers in response to their blackmail threats to move their operations out of state. In any case, there is no serious constitutional challenge to the legality of a Wall Street sales tax.

The AFL-CIO, European Trade Union Confederation, the International Metal Workers Federation (including the UAW), National Nurses United, and other labor organizations all support some version of the Wall Street Sales Tax, but usually at a very low rate, and without a clear demand that the proceeds be used to maintain and expand the in-country social safety net. There is a proposal for a Global Tobin Tax, and for a Robin Hood Tax - not a clever name. The G-20 has discussed a financial transaction tax, and the European Union is slowly implementing a tiny financial transaction tax.

The average American, who pays sales tax every day, often demands that Wall Street pay exactly the same sales tax (6% to 12%) on its transactions as the general public pays on purchases. This is an important political fact, which ought to encourage lawmakers to substantially increase the narrow scope and miniscule transaction tax rates contained in their proposals, especially in view of the inevitable resistance by reactionary princes of privilege.

The goal should be a 1% across-the-board Wall Street Sales Tax, paid by the seller, on stocks, bonds, and the notional value of derivatives. It also makes sense for the federal government to share half of the proceeds with the states, in order to support the key role of state and local governments in preserving the essentials of modern civilization.

While flash trading and high frequency trading have driven stock transactions up to unprecedented levels, the real mother lode of transactions is to be found in the area of derivatives. Futures, options, and indices and their various combinations are traded on public exchanges and can be easily tracked.

Over-the-counter derivatives, which take the form of private contracts between counterparties, are still a matter of guesswork because of the failure of the Dodd-Frank law to force the reporting of these trades.

The best remedy might be to specify in legislation that any over-the-counter derivatives contracts which have not paid the 1% Wall Street Sales Tax cannot be enforced in court, meaning that the losing counterparty would always be able to renege if the tax has not been paid.

World derivatives must currently be in excess of two quadrillion dollars in notional value. As these derivatives are bought and sold, some estimates put the resulting turnover in the range of six to seven quadrillion dollars. This suggests that revenues on the order of tens of trillions of dollars would be available from a 1% Wall Street Sales Tax.

At the same time, it should be clear that the presence of such a tax would cause many derivatives transactions and many high frequency trading operations to cease. Even so, we can be confident that a 1% levy can provide several trillion dollars in new tax revenue.

By contrast, competing proposals for a wealth tax may face prolonged constitutional challenges. They will require police state methods to carry out a census of taxable assets. In return for this effort, a 1% wealth tax cannot hope to exceed several hundred billion dollars of yearly revenue -- not the many trillions which the Wall Street sales tax can deliver.

A wealth tax does nothing to discourage speculation nor foster real production. Finally, a wealth tax provides an easy way for reactionary forces to pose as the defenders of the middle class, as seen through the eagerness of Bill O’Reilly of Fox News to invite wealth tax advocates on his show. The justifiable concern about the exorbitant size of certain family fortunes can be met by better enforcement of the Estate Tax.

In order to avoid an excessive burden on families and individuals who are buying and selling stocks to finance college education, retirement, or medical emergencies, it will be wise to establish a $1 million per person exclusion; only if securities trading goes over this threshold will the Wall Street Sales Tax be paid.

A society which taxes the sales of industrial manufacturing and agricultural products, but which establishes a tax exemption for speculation, derivatives, and financial services has tilted the playing field in favor of a parasitical casino economy of the type which has historically led to widespread immiseration and recurring financial panics.

The Wall Street Sales Tax will tend to reduce the social evil of speculation, while ending the tax subsidy to financial gambling at the expense of tangible, physical production. It will enhance the possibilities for rational investment choices. In the current season of debate about tax policy, the 1% Wall Street Sales Tax is the idea whose time has come.

Stoner Cooking 12-16-12



In-N-Out's Double-Double, Animal Style
J. Kenji López-Alt
JUL 23, 2010
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/07/in-n-outs-double-double-animal-style-burger-recipe.html

YIELD:
two 1/4-pound burgers

1/2 pound fresh beef chuck with plenty of fat, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 teaspoons vegetable oil, divided
1 large onion, finely chopped (about 1 1/2 cups)
Kosher salt
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon ketchup
2 teaspoons sweet pickle relish
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon distilled white vinegar
2 soft Hamburger buns, preferably Arnold brand
Freshly ground black pepper
8 dill pickles chips
2 quarter-inch-thick slices ripe tomato
2 leaves fresh iceberg lettuce, white core section removed, torn to bun-sized pieces
1/4 cup yellow mustard
4 slices deli-cut American Cheese

If using a meat grinder: Place feed shaft, blade, and 1/4-inch die of meat grinder in freezer until well-chilled. Meanwhile, place meat chunks on rimmed baking sheet, leaving space between each piece and place in freezer for 10 minutes until meat is firm.

Combine meat in large bowl and toss to combine. Grind meat and refrigerate immediately until ready for use. Handle as gently as possible. Proceed with step three below.

If using a food processor: Place bowl and blade of food processor in freezer until well-chilled. Meanwhile, place meat chunks on rimmed baking sheet, leaving space between each piece, and place in freezer for 10 minutes until meat is firm, but not frozen.

Combine meat in large bowl and toss to combine. Working in two batches, place meat cubes in food processor and pulse until medium-fine grind is achieved, about 8 to 10 one-second pulses, scraping down processor bowl as necessary. Refrigerate ground meat immediately until ready for use. Handle as gently as possible.

Preheat the oven or toaster oven to 400 degrees while you cook the onions: Heat 1 teaspoon oil in a 10-inch non-stick skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add onions and 1/2 teaspoon salt to skillet. Reduce heat to medium low, and cook, tossing and stirring occasionally until onions are well browned, about 15 minutes. Once onions begin to sizzle heavily and appear dry, add 1 tablespoon water to skillet and stir. Continue cooking until water evaporates and onions start sizzling again. Repeat process, adding 1 tablespoon of water with each iteration until onions are meltingly soft and dark brown, about 3 times total. Transfer to a small bowl and set aside.

Make the sauce: Combine mayonnaise, ketchup, relish, sugar, and vinegar in small bowl. Stir to combine.

Place closed buns in preheated oven for 2 minutes until slightly darkened and crisped. Heat 1/2 teaspoon oil in 12-inch non-stick skillet or griddle over medium-high heat until shimmering. Open buns and add face-down to skillet. Toast until dark brown around the edges, about 1 minute total.

Form ground beef into four 2-ounce patties, using damp hands to press each into a patty about 3/16ths of an inch thick and 4 inches wide. Season generously with salt and pepper. Add remaining 1/2 teaspoon oil to pan, swirl to coat, and heat over medium-high heat until lightly smoking. Add burger patties and cook without moving until well browned and crusty on first side, about 2 1/2 minutes. While they are cooking, spread 1 tablespoon mustard on raw side of each patty with a spoon. Meanwhile, top each bottom bun with up half of spread, 4 slices pickles, 1 slice tomato, and lettuce. Flip patties with a thin spatula so mustard side is down and continue to cook for 1 minute. Top each patty with a slice of cheese. Divide onion mixture evenly between two patties. Place the other two patties directly on top of the onions, sandwiching them between the beef. Transfer patty stacks to bottom bun. Top with top bun, and serve immediately.

*

The Frankford Taco at Pizza Brain, Philadelphia
NOV 5, 2012
http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/11/daily-slice-the-frankford-taco-at-pizza-brain.html

You might have heard about the "Philly Taco"—a cheesesteak wrapped in a slice of Lorenzo's pizza—back in 2007, although I've never seen or even met anyone who actually ate one. Pizza Brain, the World's First / Largest Pizza Museum and restaurant that opened last month here in Philadelphia, is kicking it up a notch with the "Frankford Avenue Taco" ($5) that consists of a slice of cheese pizza topped with a big scoop of pizza-flavored ice cream from the restaurant's conjoined Little Baby's Ice Cream counter.

Sound awful? That's what I thought too. Although I've tried both things separately, and the Pizza is great— even though they call it "gas deck oven American pizzeria style" it's more a hybrid between that and neo-neopolitan, delicious, medium-thin (but still floppy) crust with some char on the bottom, terrific crushed tomato sauce and fresh, locally sourced toppings.

And the pizza ice cream? Think tomato-garlic ice cream with flecks of basil, and strangely addictive. One of those things where you laugh out loud at the first taste but then eat the whole thing.

So how does it work? Buy your slice at Pizza Brain and let them know what you're doing. Walk over to the ice cream counter while your slice is heating up and they present you with a scoop in a cup. Dump it on top of the slice and good luck. The easiest way to eat it is to roll it up, but I suggest being outside because the ice cream starts to melt immediately.

And guess what—it's AWESOME! Sort of like ice cream with waffles but you know, more pizza-ish. A plain slice topped with pizza ice cream is the "classic," but you're free to do whatever you want. Brisket and Horseradish topped "Bob Shieldsmoose" slice topped with Earl Grey-Sriracha ice cream? French onion soup pizza wrapped around bourbon-vanilla? Why the hell not.

Pizza Brain
2313 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (map)
215-291-2965 ; pizzabrain.org

About the author: Hawk Krall is a Philadelphia-based illustrator who has a serious thing for hot dogs. Dig his dog drawings? Many of the illustrations he has created for Hot Dog of the Week are available for sale: hawkkrall.net/prints/.

*

McDonald's Testing Three New Quarter Pounders
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012
http://www.brandeating.com/2012/11/news-mcdonalds-testing-new-quarter-pounders.html

McDonald's is testing three new versions of the Quarter Pounder with Cheese as a possible replacement to the Angus Third Pounders. The three flavors are Habanero Ranch, Deluxe, and Bacon and Cheese.

One of my readers, Chipster22, reported that they are being offering in Ohio and that Angus Third Pounders are off the menu at his McDonald's, at least for the time being. His is the same market where McDonald's was trying out 1/4 lb Angus burgers earlier this year.

Additionally, a press release this morning stated that the burgers are also being tested in Sacramento, Stockton, and Modesto area in northern California.

The Quarter Pounder Habanero Ranch differs the most from McDonald's current offerings and features a quarter pound beef patty with white cheddar cheese, hickory-smoked bacon, leaf lettuce, tomato, and habanero ranch sauce.

The Quarter Pounder Deluxe is similar to an Angus Deluxe and features a quarter pound beef patty with American cheese, leaf lettuce, tomato, red onion, crinkle-cut pickles, mayo, and mustard.

Finally, the Quarter Pounder Bacon and Cheese is like the Deluxe version except with the addition of bacon, the subtraction of lettuce and tomato, and with ketchup instead of mayo.

*

Captain Morgan Black Toddy
For a crew of 20

25 oz. Captain Morgan® Black Spiced Rum
12 oz. fresh lemon juice
9 oz. honey
64 oz. hot water
24 piece(s) clove(s)
2 oz. orange(s)

In a large pot, combine Captain Morgan® Black Spiced Rum, lemon juice and hot water. Slowly add the honey, stirring to combine. Pierce the oranges with the cloves and float the studded oranges in the mixture. Ladle the toddy into mugs to serve.

*

Delicious Deviled Eggs
http://www.mccormick.com/Recipes/Appetizers-Snacks/Delicious-Deviled-Eggs.aspx?cmpid=2012-fb-spice-12-03-hl

From holiday parties to warm weather barbeques and potluck suppers, these classic deviled eggs will spice up any occasion.

Makes 6 (2 halves) servings.
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Refrigerate: 1 hour
6 hard-cooked eggs, peeled
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon McCormick® Mustard, Ground
1/2 teaspoon McCormick® Parsley Flakes
1/4 teaspoon seasoned salt
McCormick® Paprika

1. Slice eggs in half lengthwise. Remove yolks; place in small bowl. Mash yolks with fork or potato masher.

2. Stir in mayonnaise, mustard, parsley and seasoned salt until smooth and creamy. Spoon or pipe yolk mixture into egg white halves. Sprinkle with paprika.

3. Refrigerate 1 hour or until ready to serve.

To hard cook eggs:  Gently place eggs in single layer in medium saucepan. Add enough cold water to cover eggs with 1 inch of water. Bring just to boil on medium-high heat. Remove from heat. Cover and let stand about 15 minutes for large eggs. (Adjust time up or down by 3 minutes for each size larger or smaller.) After 15 minutes, pour off the hot water and rapidly cool eggs by running them under cold water (or place in ice water) until completely cooled.  Refrigerate and use within a week.

Calories: 136
Fat: 12 g
Carbohydrates: 1 g
Cholesterol: 216 mg
Sodium: 172 mg
Fiber: 0 g
Protein: 6 g

*

Kretschmer Cheddar Crackers
http://kretschmer.com/midweek-crackers

Bet you never thought about making your own crackers. But when you look at the long, undecipherable list of ingredients on some packages of store-bought crackers, you might think again.

We’ve come up with an easy version you can make—even on a weeknight—that your family will love to snack on. They have just five ingredients and are packed with Kretschmer wheat germ, olive oil (a monounsaturated fat) and just a bit of cheese.

3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup Kretschmer Original Toasted Wheat Germ
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus 1/8 teaspoon for sprinkling on top of crackers
1/4 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
3 tablespoons olive oil, plus 1/2 teaspoon for brushing on top
1/4 cup cold water

Preheat oven to 400° F.

In medium bowl, mix together flour, wheat germ, 1/2 teaspoon salt and cheese.  Stir in 3 tablespoons olive oil and water. Form dough into ball.

Roll dough on parchment paper into a 12 x 14-inch rectangle—crackers should be very thin. Using a pizza cutter or a knife, score the crackers into 2 x 2-inch squares or desired shapes. Brush with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.

Place parchment with rolled out dough on large cookie sheet and bake for 14 to 16 minutes or until golden brown but not burned, turning the pan halfway through baking. (Note: If some of your crackers are thinner than others, remove them earlier from the baking sheet, placing them on cooling rack, and continue baking the rest until they are lightly browned.)
Cool all crackers completely. Store leftovers in sealed container or bag.

Makes about 42 2 x 2-inch crackers

*

Linguine with White Clam Sauce
Recipe courtesy of Lidia Celebrates America
http://www.pbs.org/food/recipes/linguine-with-white-clam-sauce-2

"This is the quintessential Italian pasta dish especially in Naples and Rome, the ingredients are three, the clams are the smaller ones vongole verace and they are always cooked in their shells, once they open the sauce is done. Here in the States linguine with clam sauce is made with chopped clams, and I guess this adjustment makes sense especially since here in the US the clams can be quite large from little necks (small to medium) to top necks (large) to chowders (very large), chopping them makes sense. Although today ever more one finds smaller cockles on the market and if you find them, by all means, use them."
--Lidia Bastianich

Course: Entree
Cuisine: American, Italian
Theme: Seafood

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
6 garlic cloves, sliced
4 anchovies, sliced
36 littleneck clams, scrubbed
¼ teaspoon peperoncino
¼ teaspoon dry oregano
1 pound linguine
¾ cup chopped fresh Italian parsley

Bring a large pot of water to boil for pasta. In a large straight-sided skillet, heat 4 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat. Add sliced garlic and cook until sizzling, about 1 to 2 minutes. Add anchovies and stir until the anchovies break up and dissolve into the oil, about 2 minutes.

Add the clams to the skillet, along with the peperoncino and oregano. Ladle in about 2 cups pasta water. Bring to a simmer and cover until clams open, about 5 to 7 minutes. As the clams open, remove to a bowl. Meanwhile, add linguine to pasta water.

When all the clams are out, increase heat to high and add ½ cup of the parsley. Cook until reduced by half. Meanwhile, shuck the clams.

When the linguine is al dente and the sauce is reduced, add the pasta directly to the sauce and drizzle with remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil. Cook and toss until the pasta is coated with the sauce. Add shucked clams and remaining 2 tablespoons chopped parsley, Cook a minute more to blend the flavors and serve.

Tips/Techniques

Linguine with red clam sauce is almost never found in Italy, but is a big seller in Italian American restaurants here in the United States. So when you go to Italy, eat it as they do with white clam sauce and never ever ask for cheese to put on your linguine with white clam sauce.

*

Brian's Chicken Parmesan
Brian Cohen, Overland Meat & Seafood Market, Lake Tahoe, California
https://www.cafetecumseh.com/Recipe.aspx?recipe=brians-chicken-parmesan&type=Entrees

Chicken Parmesan is a classic Italian dish that’s surprisingly easy to make at home. This recipe calls for just a few simple ingredients that you may already have on hand—a homemade meal is just minutes away.

1 pound Smart Chicken thin slice breasts or boneless skinless breasts*
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 1/2 cups Panko bread crumbs
2 eggs
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil
Marinara sauce, as needed
Parmesan cheese, as needed
Fresh basil, for garnish

* Smart Chicken thin slice breasts work really well for this dish, but if you can’t get thin slice breasts, you can have your butcher run them once through the tenderizer. You can also pound them out at home. Place each chicken breast between two sheets of plastic wrap. Using a meat mallet, preferably with teeth, gently pound the top side of the chicken until breast starts to spread out. (Be careful not to split the meat.) Turn the chicken breast over and repeat until breast has about doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Lightly salt and pepper both sides of the chicken breasts.

Using 2 bowls, add panko crumbs to the first, and 2 eggs (beaten) to the second. Press the chicken into the bowl of panko and coat both sides. Then dip the chicken into the beaten egg to coat both sides, then back into the panko and coat again. Place chicken into a hot oiled skillet and brown lightly on both sides 1 to 2 minutes a side. Transfer chicken to a glass baking dish. Top chicken with marinara sauce and parmesan cheese and bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Garnish with fresh basil.

Pairing: A light to medium-bodied red wine, like a merlot or pinot noir goes well with this dish

*

Peas, Ham, and Creamy Noodles
http://www.kevinandamanda.com/recipes/dinner/peas-ham-and-creamy-noodles.html

2 tablespoons butter
2 cups onion, diced
8 ounces egg noodles
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup half and half
1 pound cooked ham, diced
1 cup frozen peas
1 tablespoon lemon juice
salt and pepper

1. Melt the butter in a 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Cook onions until golden brown, about 5 mins.

2. Add broth, half-and-half, and noodles to skillet and bring to a boil. Add diced ham, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, covered, until noodles are tender, about 8-10 minutes.

3. If your cream sauce is not thick enough, stir together 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and 3 tablespoons of cold water. Pour into skillet. Season with plenty of salt and pepper, then stir to combine. Sauce should thicken immediately. Add peas and lemon juice to skillet and cook until heated through, about 2 minutes. Serve and enjoy!

Makes 4 servings. Nutritional Information for this recipe can be found at CalorieCount.com.

*

Delicious 7-Up Pound Cake

1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, softened
3 cups granulated sugar
5 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon extract
3/4 cup 7 Up

Preheat the oven to 325.

Grease and lightly flour a 10 inch tube pan. Set it aside.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the flour and the lemon and vanilla extracts. Beat well. Gently fold in the 7 Up, 1/4 cup at a time. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 1 1/4 hours OR until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. DO NOT OVERCOOK!! Transfer the cake from the oven to a wire rack. Let it cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Unmold the cake onto a wire rack to cool completely. Transfer to a serving platter.

BON APPETITE :)

*

Rum Truffle Cheesecake
http://www.nlrockrecipes.com/2012/12/rum-truffle-cheesecake.html

Well, now, wouldn't this make a terrific Christmas dinner dessert? This cheesecake is so good it should be a controlled substance. A creamy vanilla cheesecake with a chocolate cookie crumb crust gets topped by a generous amount of rum truffle ganache and then adorned with more luscious rum truffles on top for a gorgeously inviting looking cheesecake. How could that not be absolutely delicious?

A word about baking a cheesecake in a bain marie before starting the recipe. A bain marie is simply a water bath that buffers the direct heat from the sides and bottom of the baking pan to more evenly bake the cheesecake from the sides to the center.

I bake my cheesecakes in a 9 inch springform pan that has the bottom and sides wrapped in multiple layers of wide heavy duty aluminum foil which forms a sort of boat that the cheesecake pan sits in. The roll of aluminum foil that I use is about 16 inches wide. I use at least 4 layers of foil to make sure that no water leaks in and ruins the crust of my cheesecake. The aluminum foil wrapped pan is then placed inside a larger baking pan; I use a 12 inch cake pan. Boiling water is then poured into the larger pan filling it from 1/2 to 2/3 of the way to the top.

I find it best to pour the boiling water into the pan after it is placed on the rack in the oven as you are less likely to splash water onto the cheesecake or inside the aluminum foil. I reuse the aluminum foil for several future cheesecakes, adding a couple of layers to it each time just to be safe.

Cookie Crumb Crust

In a small bowl, combine:

1 & 1/3 cups chocolate cookie crumbs
3 tbsp sugar
1/3 cup melted butter

Press into the bottom of a lightly greased or parchment lined 9 inch spring form pan. (Grease bottom only!) Parchment paper is ideal here because it makes it very easy to release the cheesecake from the bottom of the pan.

Cheesecake

Cream together:

3 eight ounce packages ounces cream cheese
1 cup sugar

Add, one at a time

3 eggs

beating well after each addition. Add

3 tsp vanilla extract

Finally blend in

1 cup whipping cream

Pour over the prepared base and bake in a bain marie at 300 degrees F for 55 minutes to an hour. The cheesecake does not have to brown at all in order to be fully baked; the surface of the cheesecake should lose any shine when the cake is properly baked. It can still be slightly wobbly just at the center at this point.

Remove the cake from the oven and run a sharp knife completely around the edge of the pan. This will allow for the cheesecake to shrink as it cools and hopefully not crack (but who cares if it does? I am never bothered by a crack or two in the surface) Allow the cheesecake to cool thoroughly on a wire rack at room temperature. (NOT in the fridge). Refrigerate after fully cooled.

Rum Truffles and Ganache
The rum truffle ganache and the rum truffles are made from the same recipe.

1 2/3 cups whipping cream
18 ounces of dark chocolate ( I use one with a minimum 50% cocoa solids)
1/4 cup butter cut in small pieces
3 tbsp honey
1/3 cup dark rum

Chop chocolate in small pieces and place in a heat proof bowl aong with the butter. Heat the whipping cream gently over low heat just to the point that it starts to boil. Pour the hot whipped cream over the chocolate and butter and let stand for 5 to 10 minutes before stirring it with a wooden spoon until smooth them stir in the honey and rum. Divide the mixture in half and chill one half in the fridge until set.

Roll the chilled mixture into balls and then roll the balls in good quality cocoa, cookie crumbs or chopped toasted nuts.

Reheat the other half of the truffle mixture in a double boiler just until it has melted, then pour it over the top of the cheesecake and garnish with the rolled truffles.

*

Eggnog Ice Cream
Max Falkowitz
DEC 7, 2012
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/12/eggnog-ice-cream-recipe.html

A direct frozen version of our favorite holiday drink, spiked with just enough bourbon to keep it interesting.

Note: The amount of bourbon listed here will impart a noticeable but balanced boozy flavor to the ice cream, though the intensity of the flavor will increase the next day. You can reduce the alcohol to none if you prefer, or increase it by a tablespoon, without doing any textural damage to the ice cream. Brandy, Scotch, and rum are also worthy substitutions for bourbon, depending on your tastes.

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

Every recipe we publish is tested, tasted, and Serious Eats-approved by our staff. Never miss a recipe again by following @SeriousRecipes on Twitter!

YIELD: makes 1 quart
ACTIVE TIME:
1 hour
TOTAL TIME:
1 hour, plus an overnight chill
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT:
ice cream maker

9 egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups cream
1 cup milk
3/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup bourbon

In a heavy medium saucepan, whisk egg yolks and sugar together until well combined. Slowly whisk in cream, then milk. Cook, whisking frequently, over medium heat, until a custard forms on the back of a spoon and a finger swiped across the back leaves a clean line.

Remove from heat and stir in nutmeg, salt, and bourbon. Pour through a strainer into an airtight container and chill overnight.

The next day, churn according to manufacturer's instructions. Return to airtight container and chill in freezer for at least three hours before serving.