#beermaking

[courtingwonder]

Guide To Beer & Beermaking --- Source: "The Book"

[williamsbrewinghomebrew]

Retail Home Brew Store Closures

The recent closures of brick & mortar locations of both #MoreBeer & #NorthernBrewer are a sign of our economic times unfortunately. We wish them luck in their future strategic decisions.

Margins are thin in the industry & with real estate at a premium, it does not make viable sense to maintain a "showroom" with all the overhead expenses: rent, utilities, employees, inventory, etc.

"Retails" focus should always be on the customer experience & convenience. Time is a premium now more than ever. It's a commodity valued & leveraging it thru online options while multi-tasking is key.

This is why we have #willcall for local pickups in our San Leandro, CA warehouse. It's why we have always been a brewing supply warehouse.

We have received quite a few calls & even some visitors to our location. Please do yourself a favor & take the time to look at our site & place an order online for #willcall pickup. It will be ready in 15 minutes guaranteed.

If you're not local & need brewing or distilling supplies, grains or parts, we ship orders out within the day of receiving it. (Orders received same day are shipped out before 4pm.)

As the "Grandfather" of home brewing, William's Brewing has always felt a broad spectrum of quality equipment, malts & supplies at reasonable prices back by excellent customer service is what home brewers want & need. We're here for you.

[stuffedeggplants]

This is how my friend took tractor driving as a linguistics major.

Ive changed my minor almost every semester since theres hyper specific classes (like welding) that you can only take at my U if you're the "target", but I just change my minor, take a few 100 level classes of that for fun one semester, and change again. I've had 5 minors, and I plan on having 4 more.

i think this dude is colleging better than anyone out there

[beardedmrbean]

Elise Stefanik’s viral line of questioning of an elite trio of university presidents last week over how to respond to calls for the genocide of Jews didn’t just spark bipartisan outrage and lead to a high-profile resignation. It settled a personal score the congresswoman had with her alma mater, which had all but disowned her in the wake of Jan. 6.

Back then, in 2021, the dean of Harvard University’s school of government said the New York congresswoman’s comments about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election had “no basis in evidence,” and the Harvard Institute of Politics removed Stefanik from its senior advisory committee. Stefanik at the time criticized what she described as “the ivory tower’s march toward a monoculture of like-minded, intolerant liberal views.”

Now, Stefanik’s high-profile turn assailing the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania is a real threat to those institutions. Penn president Liz Magill resigned in the wake of her testimony on Saturday, and Stefanik has made it clear she expects more: “One down. Two to go,” she posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.

More than achieving vindication, Stefanik opened a new front in the culture wars — all while scrambling the Democratic Party’s traditional coalition of well-educated voters and their institutions of higher education.

Mitch Daniels, the retired former president of Purdue University and a former Republican governor of Indiana, called it “higher ed’s Bud Light moment” — referring to the beermaker’s divisive ad campaign featuring a transgender influencer — “when people who hang out with only people who adhere to what has become prevailing and dominant ideologies on campuses and suddenly discover there’s a world of people out there who disagrees.”

Republicans, of course, have been the loudest voices defending Stefanik. Daniels, who has also testified before hostile lawmakers on behalf of his university, mocked that the administrators Stefanik questioned retained the white-shoe law firm WilmerHale to prepare.

“Were they unprepared?” Daniels said in an interview. “Yes, they were unprepared by a lifetime of being cloistered in an ideological bubble and groupthink.”

Speaking at an event Monday, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a graduate of Harvard Business School, told Bloomberg the contentious exchange on Capitol Hill marked a “cultural moment.” He added: “There is a tipping point, and we have to be clear on where that tipping point is. And extermination speech is clearly on the wrong side of that tipping point.”

But it is the movement against the university presidents from a chorus of Democrats that suggests a possible realignment of a traditional political alliance, one that could see bipartisan pushback against the elitism of the ivory tower.

“The president believes strongly that this is a moment to put your foot down and to ensure we have moral clarity,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said during a gaggle on Monday, as President Joe Biden headed to Pennsylvania for an unrelated event.

Josh Shapiro, the high-profile Jewish Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, called for Magill’s ouster.

Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a Massachusetts Democrat and an alum of both Harvard and MIT, said it’s “too soon to tell” whether the bipartisan backlash would become an issue in next year’s election. He attributed the larger cultural conflict to a “tension between individualism and identitarianism.”

“It’s fundamentally about hypocrisy,” said Auchincloss, whose great-grandparents fled the pogroms, emigrating to the U.S. around World War I. “And, at least for me, what I reacted to viscerally from the testimony was particularly Harvard, which has an abysmal track record on championing and incubating free and open speech — now, [they’re] into the First Amendment, when it’s about antisemitism? That was more striking to me.”

On the presidential campaign trail, the issue was finding new life.

“Finally, the veil has been lifted on the ugly underbelly of what’s going on in our culture, including in our universities and our educational institutions,” Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur who authored “Woke, Inc.,” the 2021 book that railed against social justice, told POLITICO.

Prior to last week’s hearing, many candidates, including Ramaswamy, had largely relegated talk of wokeness to the back burner after finding it did not resonate with primary voters.

But that has changed for now, and Ramaswamy welcomed the new discourse. He called on universities to rewrite their speech codes to include antisemitism and said university presidents should be fired not just for their testimony, but for failing to “actually embrace free speech and open expression, embrace the true purpose of seeking knowledge as opposed to indoctrination.”

At least for now, Stefanik’s criticism has wrenched open whole lines of attack in the campaign.

“I’m gratified that I think people have opened their minds on both sides to the arguments that I was making back then,” Ramaswamy said.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito sold shares of beer giant Anheuser-Busch InBev as conservatives were ditching the Bud Light brewer over its partnership with a transgender social media influencer.

On the same day that Alito sold Anheuser-Busch, he then bought the same amount of stock in Molson Coors, a company with a history of facing political boycotts of its own, the filing shows.

The transactions have bred fresh accusations that Alito, one of the high court’s six conservatives, is engaging in or aligning with partisan politics, despite a recently adopted code of conduct that directs the justices to “refrain from political activity.”

Alito sold between $1,000 and $15,000 of AB InBev’s stock on Aug. 14, 2023, according to a financial disclosure filing for the justice that was recently made visible through a federal judicial database.

The Supreme Court did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Alito’s transaction report or the timing of his stock activity.

At the time of Alito’s stock sale, Anheuser-Busch was still grappling with a monthslong campaign to boycott Bud Light after the company partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in an April 2023 social media campaign.

The partnership threw the world’s largest beermaker into the center of a broader fight over transgender rights and acceptance in the U.S. — and stoked a backlash from both conservatives and supporters of Mulvaney, who was reportedly stalked and targeted with death threats amid the controversy.

In May 2023, Modelo replaced Bud Light as the top-selling beer in the U.S. Data from around that time showed sales of Bud Light had dropped nearly 25% year over year.

AB InBev nevertheless reported better-than-expected profit in the second quarter of 2023, and as of May appears to have emerged from the boycott efforts virtually unscathed.

Alito’s switch to Coors is also noteworthy in light of the company’s history of facing boycotts from Mexican-Americans, Blacks and the LGBTQ community over workplace practices.

Alito’s investment activities came to light as the associate justice is facing a swell of criticism over a New York Times report that an upside-down U.S. flag — a symbol used by supporters of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” conspiracy — was flown at his home in the days after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Alito denied any involvement in inverting the flag. He told the Times that his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, “briefly” did so “in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”

But that statement has not quelled Alito’s critics, some of whom are now demanding he explain the timing of his sale of Anheuser-Busch.

“This sale, given the timing and much like an upside-down flag, can be construed as a political statement,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of the nonprofit judicial watchdog group Fix the Court, in an email to CNBC.

“I believe Supreme Court justices should refrain from making political statements — even oblique ones or even ones their wife or broker may have made on their property or in their brokerage accounts, respectively,” Roth said.

Roth noted that the beer companies in question have no pending business before the Supreme Court that he can think of.

But if Alito or his broker were truly reacting to the Bud Light boycott or the surrounding culture war, Roth said, then the stock sale “speaks more about the justice’s media intake and where that puts him on the political spectrum.”

“If the sale was in response to the Bud Light controversy last year, he might have an appearance-of-bias problem when it comes to future court cases related to trans rights,” Roth said.

The transaction notice was one of several that were posted to the Federal Judicial Financial Disclosure Reports database last week, and then removed without explanation. Roth said their disappearance was “possibly due to the newness of the system.” The reports had reemerged on the database as of late Monday morning.

The filings were first reported earlier Monday by the legal blog Law Dork.

The court is set to soon deliver a ruling on whether former President Donald Trump will gain presidential immunity from criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

The court, which bears a six-to-three conservative majority after Trump appointed three justices, is not expected to grant Trump’s sweeping immunity claim that a former president cannot be charged for any official acts they perform in office. But the justices in oral arguments in April seemed skeptical of parts of federal prosecutors’ case against Trump.

[worldfoodwine]

🍺💫 Imagine brewing beer over 4000 years ago!

The oldest beer recipe, dedicated to Ninkasi, the goddess of brewing, is a journey through time. This Wednesday, let's celebrate beer's rich history! 📜🍻

[jdpink]

The earliest attempts at crafting nonalcoholic beer in the United States date back to the days of the Volstead Act, when, under Prohibition, the legal alcohol content of any beverage was set at 0.5 percent. Facing certain financial ruin, inventive brewers at companies like Pabst and Anheuser-Busch developed a technique for making “near beer” that could meet this legal threshold. Their method involved fully brewing a standard beer—from mash to boiled wort to hops and fermentation—then boiling off the alcohol until the alcohol content was sufficiently reduced. A second option, developed later in the 20th century, involved reverse osmosis, essentially an elaborate filtering method via distillation that arrived at the same result: a beer at less than 0.5 percent alcohol content, “dealcoholized” from a fully realized base product.

And so it went for nearly a hundred years. Somehow, with all the immense sales growth and large-scale investment in craft beer across the late 20th and early 21st centuries, nonalcoholic beer remained staid—a drinking culture castaway relegated to an afterthought produced by only the largest beermakers.

How quickly the world changes. In 2012, a guy named Bill Shufelt was balancing a high-level career as a trader for a global asset management firm while training for an ultramarathon (as one does). He made the choice to go sober—“a life hack,” in the current parlance.

He linked up with an experienced brewer named John Walker, and together they tested and tinkered, brewing batch after batch in an attempt to create nonalcoholic beer from scratch—no boiling or osmosis or dealcoholization required. It took them years to get the recipe right, and its exact steps remain a closely guarded secret. But in 2018, Shufelt and Walker canned the first commercial shipment from their new nonalcoholic beer brand, dubbed Athletic Brewing Company—an aspirational bit of naming that speaks to the brand’s ongoing remit within the world of high-performance athletes.

Rarely in American consumer history are we given such a clear-cut case of a mono-brand industry disruption of measurable scale and influence. In less than five years, Athletic—no doubt aided by the fiduciary acumen and connections of its co-founder—has been able to raise $226 million and counting in venture capital.

Athletic is, according to Inc. magazine, the 26th fastest growing company in America—that’s any company, not just beer—with an eye-popping three-year revenue growth metric in the neighborhood of 13,000 percent.

https://punchdrink.com/articles/nonalcoholic-beer-golden-age/

[kawaiimunism]

statement directly from the union

BOOSTING APRIL 2024 Active boycott notice!!!

Source

[recentlyheardcom]

Knowing When to Invest in a Home Keg System

Writer Peter Waterman Revealed November 11, 2010 Phrase depend 526 Once you’re first beginning out as a novice homebrewer, keg methods are in all probability the furthest factor out of your thoughts so far as a future buy goes. The batches you’re brewing at the moment are nonetheless comparatively small and beermaking is more than likely an exercise you bask in solely sometimes. Nonetheless,…

[sanfranciscoblog]

Last year, parent company Sapporo decided to shut down the San Francisco steam beer maker Anchor Brewing Company. But that wasn't the end of it.

Craft beer could once again flow out of a beloved Potrero Hill brewery following months of dormancy now that the sale of Anchor Brewing Company’s assets appears imminent. San Francisco public-relations executive and Anchor spokesperson Sam Singer told The Examiner the company’s liquidator is reviewing bids from various interested parties. The winning bid is expected to be selected by the end of January, which would entail purchasing all or parts of the beermaker’s assets in the first quarter of this year.

Last year, parent company Sapporo decided to shut down the San Francisco steam beer maker Anchor Brewing Company. But that wasn't the end of it.

The Anchor workers' Union is among the bidders, which intends to run it as an employee-owned co-op.

[sutrala]

(FOX NEWS) -- The Teamsters union announced Saturday that its members overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike against Anheuser-Busch’s breweries in the U.S. if the union and beermaker are unable to reach an agreement on a new labor contract early next year. The union said...

[williamsbrewinghomebrew]

The RAPT Fermentation Chamber is the next Internet of Things (IOT) everyone needs. Prolific brewers, restaurants, bars, deli, cheese makers, etc. Commercial professionals to at home enthusiasts. Virtually any homemade product can be greatly improved with perfect temperature control.

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Game changer! Get it while one sale through 6/18. Free shipping lower 48 States & 60 Day Money Back! Nothing to hold you back.

[talkingpointsusa]

Matt Walsh VS a Can Of Beer: The Battle of The Century

Well, we started talking about two new right wing figures on the blog today so I figured in this time of change we should go back to our roots; and those roots involve talking about how dumb the stuff that Matt Walsh says is. On December 13th, Matt was was talking about the important issues that effect American's today. Stuff like healthcare, gun violence, the high cost of living and-

Oh for gods sake

Oh right, I forgot that this is Matt Walsh we are talking about. Instead we get Matt taking to the airwaves to declare that the right ending the boycott of Bud Light that was brought on by one Instagram post with a transwoman in it would be a massive mistake. A good part of this episode is basically Matt throwing a tantrum and the other part is Matt demonstrating a stunning lack of empathy towards well...pretty much everyone really. So, let's get into it shall we?

Transphobia Warning; Obviously, it's Matt Walsh.

01:46: "Well if you're on the Right than you know the phrase 'This is why we lose' has become something of a cliche these days. Anytime anyone on our side does anything we don't like we're bound to declare 'This is why we lose!' as if that person is now a symbol for America's cultural decline. And in many cases the this is why we lose charge can be off-base or at least overwrought and overstated, but not always. And so today we begin with an actual case of 'This is why we lose'."

Oh for crying out loud. I am getting really tired of this Bud Light boycott being portrayed as anything other than a gigantic temper tantrum.

To put it into perspective, this is over a single Instagram post with a transwoman. I don't see how this could possibly be framed as anything other than brazen bigotry. Even if it's framed with the usual nonsensical concerns about "trans-ing the kids" or whatever, Bud Light is a beer which is of course targeted at adults!

I'm not a fan of InBev just like how I'm not a fan of most major corporations, and there are valid criticisms of the company. But this isn't one of them.

02:25: "Now, we know that some notable figures on this side of the aisle were never on board with the boycott in the first place, famously Donald Trump Jr defended the beermaker from the very beginning saying that Bud Lite is on our side despite appearances and we shouldn't punish them for their brief foray into trans propaganda."

If one Instagram post is "trans propaganda", then the people pushing for that propaganda aren't trying at all!

Speaking of the people pushing for trans propaganda, who are they and what is "trans propaganda"? Is merely seeing a transwoman enough to turn hordes of men trans in Matt's bizarre word? Does he think that there is a shadowy cabal of trans people out to control the world? At the very least he wants his audience to think that.

He then plays a clip of UFC Dana White declaring that you should be drinking "gallons" of Bud Light. This isn't due to a change of heart on Dana's part, this is due to a deal he made with Bud Light that makes them the official beer of UFC. Not sure what people in this media-sphere were expecting, money's money. That's the free market for you!

He then plays a clip from Kid Rock saying that the boycott should end as well. Then Tim Pool defending it, I was thinking of covering that episode and maybe I will later. Not a Tim Pool fan, if the massive ass post I did on him where I called him a terrible journalist didn't tip you off, but if it means he will shut up about it and I don't have to address it the next time I talk about him I am all for it.

So what does Matt think about all of this?

08:59: "The Bud Light boycott is still on and let me explain why. Bud Light, the foreign owned brand, tried to push trans ideology. It spat in the face of it's own customers."

Seeing a trans person is trans ideology now apparently. Keep in mind, it's not like this was a national TV spot, this was one post and one Instagram story on Mulvaney's own account! Even if it was a TV spot, trans people don't have to hide out of the public eye. They exist and deserve recognition without people like Matt Walsh bullying and lashing out at them whenever they dare to remind us that they exist.

10:45: "If they gave 100 million dollars to some kind of detrans fund, that would be one thing! But why would giving 100 million dollars to Dana White, why would we consider that to be sufficient?"

Matt is conflating a marketing deal with an apology. It wasn't meant to be an apology or an olive branch, it was meant to be a marketing deal. I understand that Matt doesn't want transgender people to exist because he has this bizarre all-consuming hatred for them, but it's a little egotistical to just kneejerk assume that this major corporation is trying to specifically apologize to you and your group when they make a marketing deal.

11:13: "Dana White is not a victim of trans ideology. He's not affected by it."

First of all, giving trans people basic human rights isn't "trans ideology", it's basic human empathy.

Second of all, neither is Matt Walsh! He doesn't need to be a massive transphobe.

He could go out any time and try to meet a trans person, and not in a confrontational and aggressive way like he does in those godawful "[INSERT DAILY WIRE PERSONALITY HERE] DESTROY'S X PERSON WITH FACTS AND LOGIC" videos, and open his mind to the possibility that maybe just maybe trans people are just human beings who just want to get through life like he is. Maybe he'd be surprised at how much he has in common with them, or maybe he'd continue to lack basic empathy for them.

Matt Walsh is my most talked about person on the blog so far, I just keep going back to him, and there's a reason why. Matt Walsh embodies something that a lot of these other people try to hide and that is a pure disregard for empathy for your fellow human beings. He seems to live off of contempt for others, routinely using his show to declare that being more accepting towards transgender people will lead to civilization collapsing and trying to hide behind paper thin "logic" to justify his bigotry.

It must be really sad to live a life that full of hate and anger.

(I probably should have saved that rant for the conclusion but here we are. Onward ho!).

12:21: "Bud Light betrayed it's customers, it has not conceded defeat, it has not apologized at all, and so at this point the entire company is basically in shambles."

InBev stock actually going up. InBev is such a massive multinational company that this is not going to kill them, I guarantee you.

Also, how ironic is it that a guy who mocks safe spaces and calls leftists "snowflakes" (or cupcake in that tweet) is whining about a company "betraying" him because they dared to remind him that transgender people exist.

12:36: "What is their out? Well they would need to apologize for pushing transgenderism. They would need to apologize specifically and explicitly. They would need to grovel at our feet in humiliating fashion and disavow gender ideology entirely."

This statement is so cartoonishly megalomaniacal that I'm shocked Matt didn't do an evil laugh with lightning bolts in the background after he said it. Imagine if he switched the words "transgender" and "gender" for "black ideology" and you'll realize just how insanely bigoted this statement is.

On top of that, does Matt not realize how terrible that move would be financially for InBev? They'd be alienating the entire political left and most moderates. There would be protests and even larger boycotts, including in Europe which Matt so astutely pointed out earlier on is where the company is headquartered. That would probably kill the company, not appeasing Matt and his group of far-right bullies who are throwing a tantrum over an Instagram post.

13:23: "If we fall for it than we deserve to lose, we deserve everything that's coming."

What's coming? A more accepting society? The horror!

Man, this is a profoundly whiny episode of the Matt Walsh Show.

13:56: "So screw them, let them whither and die, let their brand destroy itself."

The entire topic of the episode is that even the right is backing away from the boycott. Soon everybody is going to have forgotten about this, even Matt will forget about this in favor of a new thing about trans people he can complain about that is more profitable and drives more engagement.

14:04: "What are we, feeling sorry for them? 'Oh but I feel so bad for that poor multinational foreign conglomerate'."

"And by the way, I feel so bad for the literal richest man on Earth. Why, oh why are all those cruel leftists being so mean to him?"

17:55: "The brand is lame now."

I don't think Bud Light has ever been particularly cool. Now, I'm a Canadian so I don't know how it is in the USA, but up here most people have viewed it as a pretty shitty beer for years.

19:25: "It has to be said. Bud Light sucks anyway. It's a bad product, it tastes like stale rainwater scooped out of a muddy puddle on the pavement."

For once Matt said something I agree with. Doesn't make this boycott any less immature and transphobic but yeah, Bud Light is shitty beer. I think everyone's lives would be improved if Matt dropped the transphobia and just converted this into a beer review show.

Matt then switches away from the Bud Light talk and goes on to the five headlines section of the show. His first segment is on the Satanic Temple display in the Iowa State Capitol. This was before it got decapitated so Matt obviously does not talk about that, he talks about it on the Friday show but I'm probably not going to cover it since it doesn't look interesting enough to warrant doing two Matt Walsh episodes in a row.

21:56: "So there was no attempt to turn them down or fight over this, they were just given exactly what they wanted."

While you might not necessarily agree with this, it is an example of freedom of religion being expressed. Matt even says earlier that they went through all the proper legal channels, so this is completely legal from the standpoint of freedom of religion being respected.

Also, the Satanic Temple doesn't actually worship Satan. They are an atheistic organization that aims to "highlight religious hypocrisy and encroachment on religious freedom."

Matt is basically proving their point by complaining about this and I find that deeply funny.

24:31: "You simply don't allow satanists to set up a satanic alter inside your state capitol."

They aren't actual Satanists, as I stated before.

I can see why Matt doesn't like these guys though. From their website;

"The Mission Of The Satanic Temple Is To Encourage Benevolence And Empathy, Reject Tyrannical Authority, Advocate Practical Common Sense, Oppose Injustice, And Undertake Noble Pursuits."

Empathy and rejection of tyrannical authority? The horror! Those kinds of things are the kinds of things that Matt Walsh does hate though.

24:48: 'Oh but we have a right to!' I don't care if you think that."

Religious rights for my group and nobody elses! I have yet to see an argument from Matt that counters the religious freedom this group has to do this.

25:33: "Obviously the founding fathers would have never tolerated this."

The founding fathers wouldn't have tolerated Muslims having a right to practice their religion. Does that mean we shouldn't let them practice their beliefs freely? No!

The founding fathers wouldn't have tolerated an unsegregated world. Does that mean we should go back to owning slaves and treating people of color as less than human? No!

If every single thing we do as a society is filtered through "Would the founding fathers tolerate this?" we would make zero progress as a society.

26:34: "They are worshipping Satan even though they don't consciously think they are."

So Matt is aware that the Satanic Temple is a satirical organization but doesn't care because these people are actually worshipping Satan without even knowing it...I guess?

Great stuff here.

27:46: "What is a right? Where do rights come from?"

This specific right would be the freedom of religion found in the The First Amendment. If Matt was at least trying to be a reasonable journalist instead of a theocratic fascist (yes, he actually claims he is that. Look at his Twitter) he would know that.

If they are legally considered to be a religious organization, which they are since they got the tax exemption as one in 2019, they have the right to practice their religion and set up legal religious displays.

Also, this argument can be turned around on these guys really fast. What is the second amendment? Who gave you the right to bare arms?

29:03: "So they would say that rights are human inventions, that they are arbitrary human constructs."

Rights aren't arbitrary human constructs. They are based on things like morals, empathy, freedoms, etc. Nobody is saying that they are just arbitrary because there are certain things that most humans can say are bad due to having empathy and generally decency.

29:31: "Well if that's the case, than you wouldn't be able to complain if Iowa had simply said 'No, you don't have the right to put that up here.' because if government decides your rights and then if the government decides you don't have that particular right, it's incoherent to insist you do because insisting that you do is to appeal to a power higher than the government."

Again, those rights are based on basic human morals and empathy for others.

The issue I am having is that if Matt was in the room with me he would probably ask "What is empathy?" and if you don't know, you don't have it.

There's not much else important in this segment. Just Matt calling his fans to arms and repeating the same crap I already addressed.

He then talks about the Kate Cox abortion case and Ann Coulter *GASP* siding with the left! For those unaware, a woman named Kate Cox sought out an abortion exception due to her unborn child having a medical condition that has a low rate of survival for the child and if she carried out the pregnancy, might risk her health and her ability to have more children. She left Texas for an abortion and it has sparked a debate about what should qualify as an exception in states that ban abortion. Read more about it here (From the CBC State Broadcaster no less!). Now, given how much of a paragon of empathy Matt Walsh has been in this episode and given his disgustin-er-controversial opinions on abortion, I'm sure this will be a balanced take. Right!?!

35:50: "Pro-lifers are never motivated by cruelty to mothers."

Even if pro-lifers aren't directly motivated by cruelty to mothers, the actions and legislation created by pro-lifers indirectly causes cruelty to mothers and this is the kind of story that proves it.

What if Matt's wife was pregnant with a child that had this condition? Would he force her to go through with a painful pregnancy that would threaten her health, destroy her fertility, and cause her grief when that child most-likely dies extremely young? Again, to side against Kate Cox in this situation demonstrates a stunning lack of empathy.

36:38: "There's not money to be made in being a pro-lifer."

Methinks the Walshy doth protest too much.

If you're like Matt Walsh and your job is basically regurgitating right-wing talking points, yeah there is money to be made in being a pro-lifer.

36:41: "The abortion industry is a billion dollar industry. And so it is always logical to say that at least a big part of their motivation is that they make a lot of money on this."

As is the case with all healthcare in the states, you have to pay to have an abortion. If we were to have a conversation about how obscenely expensive healthcare is in the United States, that's a conversation I am willing to have.

But if you think about this argument it's a pretty dumb thing to say. Let's say we replaced the word abortion with "dental", would that mean that going to the dentist if you have a toothache is something that should be banned? Of course not!

But I'm sure the argument would be that there's life on the line with abortion whilst a dental surgery doesn't have life on the line. Well what about Kate Cox's life? Does that not matter?

37:36: "The pro-life movement is motivated entirely by love for the mother and child."

If that were true, Matt would be supportive of Kate Cox getting an abortion exception and would be horrified that she didn't get one.

Kate would have had to undergo an extremely painful pregnancy that would put her health at risk if she had an abortion. The child would have a low likelihood of survival, the oldest a person has lived with that condition is 40 years old, and that was an extremely rare exception. It would have been both painful for the mother and the child.

If Matt was the loving and empathetic person he claims he is, he would be for that pregnancy being terminated.

38:06: "This condition, as mentioned in the article, is not always incompatible with life. Babies can live for days, months, years, even decades in some cases. Now that is rare, and the prospects of a long life are tragically small but not nonexistent, so if you abort a child with this condition you are killing him on the assumption that he's going to die anyway."

Firstly, this argument is completely taking away the pain and health conditions that going through with the pregnancy would have caused Kate. Continuing with that pregnancy would pose risks to her life and health.

Secondly, according to the articles I read on this case, Kate's doctors said there was an EXTREMELY slim chance of that child surviving. Even if it did survive for a couple of months, it's death would have caused massive amounts of completely unnecessary sorrow for the family of Kate and Kate herself. Plus, it would most likely cause the child unnecessary pain to be brought into the world and then die that quickly. Even if they do progress into the older stages of life, they would have a constant knowledge that they are at risk of dying extremely young.

To make this argument is to completely disregard the happiness and health of Kate Cox as well as mercy for the child, the thing that Matt claims he doesn't do.

38:41: "I mean, everyone is gonna die."

But not everyone has a condition that would make their chances of survival in birth slim at best and would jeopardize the life of their mother if birth is given to them.

This is such a gross oversimplification of the situation, the key word here being "gross".

39:16: "If you start justifying murder based on the fact that someone is gonna supposedly die anyway, you've opened up Pandora's Box and you've set a precedent that justifies really, any murder of anyone."

This argument runs on the faulty and inflammatory assumption that abortion is murder, which it is not. A fetus is something that has the potential to be a human and I believe personally that personhood begins at birth. This is also a defamatory and harmful statement to Kate Cox. After all, if abortion is murder Kate traveled out of state to murder her child. This is the kind of thing that leads to harassment.

Matt also still hasn't addressed the concerns that forcing Kate Cox to go through with the pregnancy would have caused to her health, almost as if he doesn't care about her and only cares about his movement.

41:10: "The only way to get around this really when it comes to this issue is by arguing that the child in the womb is not a human person, but he is."

Matt automatically gendering unborn children as "he", but we have more important issues to cover.

A child in the womb has no autonomy outside of their mother. In the first trimester, they are nothing but an embryo which has no thoughts and feelings at all. Even in the second trimester, a fetus could not survive without being attached to the womb.

It has the potential to become a person but that isn't the case when in the womb.

42:04: "Why would this be any necessarily be any different, like there are born infant children and toddlers who sadly and tragically and unfathomably are diagnosed with terminal illnesses that are probably gonna kill them pretty soon, that happens every day in this country, it's a terrible tragedy. And yet I'm going to assume, I'm gonna hope and pray, that most people in this country would not be in favor of euthanizing a two year old whose probably going to be dead in the next couple of years because of leukemia"

This is such an insane strawman argument that it should be taught as an example of the strawman fallacy. How on Earth are an unborn fetus with no autonomy and a living breathing child with autonomy even remotely comparable?!

Plus it's leaving out other factors and just basic facts about this case! For example, the fact that it is, say it with me, leaving out the complications that the pregnancy would cause for the mother. Plus a two year old who is going to die in a couple years from leukemia is a completely different thing than an unborn child who is still in the womb and has the potential to become a full fledged person.

Obviously I think euthanizing a child is a bad thing. Man, this episode isn't the worst episode from a journalistic standpoint but it may be from a purely moral one.

Next up Matt does his comments section segment, immediate skip, especially since I haven't watched or covered the episode he's talking about. Matt then decides to talk about "anti-white racism" on college campuses. This promises to be grim.

55:07: "If you replace Jews with white people than we do have the answer to those questions clear as day, that's because a few years ago at the University of Virginia a black student did exactly what I just described. She stood up and she told white people to get out of the student center and she said that because of their skin color that these whites were not allowed there."

This story happened at the University of Virginia and Matt is leaving out key details. This wasn't just a "student center" it was the campus diversity center, a space designed specifically for POC's. There is a normal student center on campus.

And what she was saying was a rather fair point. University of Virginia is a prominently white university so why shouldn't people of color have their own space that they can feel safe in? I get the sense that this woman felt that this space was becoming amalgamated into another space for whites to hang out on campus and felt the need to speak up. Could it have been handled better? Absolutely! Does that mean we should discount what she is saying? No!

It's not like she was rude about it either. Outside of that "Too many white people" remark which was a little blunt and poorly phrased, the overall quote was a pretty respectful explanation of her feelings on the matter. Quote;

"This is a space for people of colour, so just be really cognisant of the space you're taking up because it does make some of us [people of colour] uncomfortable when we see too many white people in here," (Source, BBC News)

So how does Matt characterize this?

56:02: "So somebody films that racist anti-white rant, nobody says anything, no one laughs at this racist or condemns her in any way, it's just silently filmed because everybody's too afraid to challenge this, the only reaction is applause as the white people make their exit."

That is by far in a way the politest "racist rant" I have heard in my life. She was simply trying to lay out the fact that she felt that white people were taking over the only space that POC's have to themselves in the university and why that makes her uncomfortable.

Also, the applause was extremely light. I'd say it sounded like it came from maybe one or two people.

56:21: "Now after this incident it goes without saying that there were no Congressional hearings, no administrators at UVA were forced to resign, nobody was even calling for that."

Because that would be an insanely overblown response. Even if you agree that this was a racist-rant, one student's bad behavior leading to Congressional hearings and administrators leaving would be an insane response.

56:34: "As upsetting as it may be, we shouldn't be surprised by that non-response because systemic anti-white racism on college campuses is open and blatant."

The numbers don't back this up at all. Since Fall 2010, Black student enrollment has declined from 3.04 million to 2.38 million, a 22% decrease (Source, PNPI).

In 2021 there were 571 hate crimes on college campuses, almost twice as many hate crimes as there are days in a year, and race was the main motivator (Source, National Center For Education Statistics).

So, provided they get in at all, students who are POC's are highly at risk of being victims of hate crimes according to the numbers.

56:57: "I vividly remember all the way back in 2007 when it was revealed that the University of Delaware was running a mandatory re-education program that forced 1000's of students living on campus to affirm that all whites are racist."

This was just diversity training, extremely poorly handled diversity training from what I've read about it (and most of the news on it is from super biased sources like conservative funded college free speech organization FIRE), but still diversity training.

It absolutely should have been handled better, but it wasn't a "re-education program". The university however did do some things that were worthy of criticism like bluntly asking students when they discovered their sexual identity, something which someone might want to keep private.

57:23: "They referred to these struggle sessions as 'treatment for white people.'"

They referred to the sessions as treatments yes, which is a very creepy name I must admit, however it wasn't specifically for white people. I couldn't find anything about them being only for white people in even FIRE's report.

Plus, these are two cherrypicked examples that Matt is blowing way out of proportion. If these are the best Matt has to prove that college campuses are racist against white people, this is weak as hell.

58:18: "And that's why the current burst of outrage over antisemitism on college campuses is more than a little bit conspicuous."

"People are talking about antisemitism, what about meeeee?"

Tying this back into the theme of empathy, this shows where Matt's empathy lies, himself. Matt seems completely unable to register that people different from him are also valid, just straight white males. Then again, what else can you expect from a guy who proudly boasts about being a theocratic fascist on Twitter?

Matt goes to talk more about how all college campuses are racist against whites and the episode finally ends.

Conclusion:

Well, this was the first time I got genuinely angry writing one of these posts so there's that. The overall whininess and sheer contempt for everyone that isn't a white Christian male like Matt was extremely blatant and it was painful to listen to.

Like I said before, it comes down to having empathy for people different than yourself. If Matt had that, he wouldn't be boycotting a company over one post that had a transwoman in it or arguing against a woman terminating an extremely painful pregnancy that could literally threaten her life if carried out. While most of the right-wing movement lacks this empathy, Matt Walsh doesn't even try to hide it.

Cheers and I'll see you in the next one.

[thewestern]

Chapter 3

More than a Brewer, Hank considered himself to be a Publican. About beer, he really only knew enough to be dangerous, were his words. It’s true he had been a homebrewer since before indoor plumbing. Or electric light, as he’d alternatively self-deprecate. That was how he and Russ first made friends. Back then homebrewing was still technically illegal at the federal level, dating all the way to the Volstead Act, which as you know was enacted to carry out the intent of the Eighteenth Amendment, that prohibited the production, distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages, much to the consternation of a great many thirsty Americans. The Twenty-First Amendment, which subsequently repealed Prohibition, spelled out provisions for the legalisation of home winemaking but left out any mention of home beermaking. (The Nineteenth and Twentieth Amendments granted a woman’s right to vote, and reduced the lame duck period by moving up the start date of Presidential, Vice Presidential and Congressional terms, respectively.) An omission made either mistakenly, or more likely out of ignorance to the fact that any citizen would desire to do a thing as foolish as brew their own beer. In any case, for a time they were Outlaw Hobbyists, as Russ used to josh. About the only useful thing that hillbilly ever did was legalize our hooch, by Hank’s measure of things. He was referring of course to our Thirty-Ninth President, James Earl Carter, Jr., whose pen stroke amended the land of the law to allow for the private individual making of beer in one’s own garage, kitchen or wherever else they so pleased for the purpose of personal consumption. Funny story actually, about how it was that came to be. Some homebrew club with entirely too much time on their hands had lobbied their Senator, this guy Alan Cranston of California (the Senator’s other enduring contribution to the culture-at-large was to unwittingly precipitate the breakup of the seventies rock band, The Eagles, which followed a bitter bought of onstage bickering between founding members Glen Frey and Don Felder that occurred at a fundraising concert benefiting the Cranston reelection campaign committee), and he got it earmarked onto a considerably broader-scoped, omnibus-type transportation bill. Something or other having to do with excise taxes on commercial trucks. God Bless America.

For a homebrewer though Hank wasn’t worth a hoot, and he’d have happily told you so. He couldn’t see how they were very compatible skill sets anyway — brewing five gallons on your gas cooktop versus fifteen hectoliters with intent to distribute. That being said, a lot of amateurs had gone pro in those days — the first and second waves of the Craft Beer Revolution, such as it was. Wasn’t just Russ and him. (There was gold in them ales.) Some still do today, although homebrewing isn’t the popular craze it was once, what with so much else to do. On the computer and elsewhere.

Anyways at least to Hank the beer was always a means to an end. Even if the ends didn’t always quite seem to meet. That was the money though, and he wasn’t in it for that either. Only a damned fool would set his mind to brewing beer if all he really wanted was to hit paydirt. Go buy yourself a portfolio of condos or office buildings off Larry or one of his cronies. Then do absolutely nothing. That’ll return on your investment a fair sight faster than busting your ass to sell warm, flat beer to the yuppies that live and work in those condos or office buildings. 

Hank made beer because he was an engineer and that’s what engineers are inclined to do. Make things. Things that solve problems. Now, one doesn’t just start making things out of thin air from scratch. No, how you get good at making things is by taking other things apart. These are practice problems. Just find something. Could be anything. A thingamajig or a doohickey. Doesn’t even need to be broken. Better that it works perfect. Bought right off the rack, no assembly required. Now disassemble it entirely and then put it back together again. Or if you can’t get back to what it was, turn it into something else. Just mess with it. From when he was but a small lad to the day he presumably died, Hank was always messing with stuff. Household appliances, classic cars, air-to-surface missiles, vintage arcade games. That was engineering. One would engineer. Things that solved problems for some, and in the process quite often created them for others, as it were. Problems like carbon emissions, forever wars, you spending too much time on your dumb phone and so on. As a guilt-rid Catholic, his specific problem was he didn’t like drinking alone. Sure he’d do it, in a pinch, but he’d prefer the alternative of company. Therefore he Engineered beer quite simply so that he’d have people around with which to drink it. (The way he had it figured, when someone offers you a drink, it’s considerably harder to refuse when the offerer personally made the refreshment in question over a period of several weeks, months, or even years, as was sometimes the case at the Newfy. An engineer the likes of Hank would do well to think along those lines. Non-linearly.) 

Therein laid the Duality of Hank. Reclusive though he could often be in work and play, he loved people. In particular all the other loners out there. His fellow weary travelers, as he referred to them explicitly. Folks who Hank knew damn well would all drift away from themselves and others in such manners that caused great pains to all parties. Not that anybody had a choice in the matter. Because the most you can do is the best you can. That was an old Irish proverb he professed to liking. And also the other thing about being Irish was knowing the world was going to break your heart. Everyone he ever hung around had heard him say that a time or two. On the other hand, being Irish and a defeatist as he understood meant using your noggin to get your own relief ... let the world do its own spinning. Go down the pub and lift a pint with some company, you miserable cunt, you. 

So then it stands to reason, even if Russell were cooking up protestant beer for the Grace of Her Majesty the Queen, he wanted the space itself to have the genuine atmosphere of a proper Irish alehouse. Now to be clear, insofar as there was an appreciable difference between an Irish Inn and its English counterpart, Hank was not aware. For him it usually came down to more of a feel thing anyway. The room was of sufficient size, yes, but never at the expense of its snugness. Low ceilings, you know. Likewise, the lighting was dim, but also warm. Absorbed by dark stained wood paneling, exposed brick interiors. There was even an honest-to-goodness fireplace on the far corner from the front door, one of the handful which remained within the city limits for a commercially-zoned property. (Phase I woodburning stoves or fireplaces were expressly prohibited from being sold, resold or installed within CIty City and County limits, but this one had been grandfathered in for all perpetuity. Try as they might, the bloodsuckers at the Department of Excises and Licenses couldn’t do a damned thing about it.) 

The bartop itself was bespoke, built basically at-cost by a carpenter buddy of Russ’s. Another of his eternally outstanding debts. Also pro-bono, that same pal had painstakingly hand-carved the tap handles in the unapologetically phallic likenesses of famous spacecraft — the X-15, the Apollo 11 Command Module, the Space Shuttle Discovery, even the Soyuz rocket. (Worthy fucking adversary, Hank would grant them that.) All the ones that didn’t infamously explode or disintegrate, killing everyone on board. Then above there on the wall Hank had meticulously plotted an X-Y plane of bric-a-brac from his Private Collection. Just souvenirs and various other junk he’d taken home from his worldly travels, mostly gone undeclared. A string of Chinese lanterns, a parallel string of Tibetan prayer flags from Everest base camp. Some Mexican sugar skulls, an African fertility mask. That sort of thing … It’s a Small World, After All. Colonizing the global kitsch, regulars had hung their own private mugs, personalized each with nickname tags (Hello My Name Is: Skinny Guinea, Tooka, Wooski, Squeaky, Blue, Chocolate George, That’s Mister Diamond To You, Fetchin’ Gretchen a.k.a Her Majesty the Mucus Queen, etc.), other assorted decals advertising local businesses (e.g. Fort Bliss BBQ, Chavez Chavez y Cheeseburger) or advocating outdoor recreational nudity (i.e. SKI NAKED), and sometimes glitter. Also, lest we forget, hung as a warning to those who wished him ill, Hank displayed his private collection of exotic weapons — the aforementioned thunder bow, a machete (a word he made a point of pronouncing ma•sheh•tay, rather than the more Americanized muh•sheh•teh, which always drove the Mick up a separate wall), a mace (not to be confused with Mace, the brand of pepper spray … a mace, the club with a spiked head, swung on a chain to penetrate enemy armour), some ninja throwing stars, a fucking katana and a six iron, inarguably the most deadly of all golf clubs. All this, decorative chaos, orbited about a taxidermied bison head they all called Bertha; recall that all inanimate objects of worthy size or significance around the brewery were personified as such, with human names. Hank claimed he stole the beast right off its mount in a trophy room. It was at a dude ranch type-a place, owned by some big swinging dick or other, around or about the mid-to-late-seventies. Only thing I ever stole in my life, he testified to, perjuriously. (Notably, he had stolen away with Mary Ellen Moffet’s heart.) It’s a small man who hunts big game, only for the sport of the thing, as Hank had told the Mick. 

As brewpubs and breweries proliferated in the decades-plural following the New Frontier’s opening, it became architecturally fashionable to maintain an open floorplan, wherein the barroom or dining area occupied the same contiguous space as the brewery or the kitchen itself. The Newfy bucked this trend before it even began, secluding its brewhouse from view by the paying customer. Hank couldn’t understand for the life of him this fascination for seeing your beer get brewed or your supper get cooked. As a food service professional, he preferred to maintain the suspension of disbelief. Or to keep the element of surprise. 

###

COMIN’ OUT. 

Kitty and Mick passed through the swinging saloon door threshold, from the brewery into the bar proper. The place was utterly fucking packed, as was to be expected. There amid the fray was a local news cameraman setting up a tripod. Hank for his part had instituted a strict No Photography in the Bar policy, and even if he wouldn’t be there to enforce it, the Mick still felt compelled to see what all the fuss was. Surely you needed a permit or at the very least permission to film on the premises of a private business. He flipped up the bridge and delicately sidestepped his way through the maze of jutting elbows and hips on his way to the back corner booth. There was Grace, situated in the very same seat where he’d seen her some hours ago, albeit currently making out with a separate romantic partner. And now in the cold light of day no less. The Mick recognized the owner of the mouth that was vacuum-sealed onto his assistant brewer’s to be the sales rep from Trouble Brewing Inc., although her name eluded him. Last spring she sold him a keg of their Murderhorn Chocolate Stout for their guest tap. TBI was the sort of heavy metal-themed brewery in town, although they’d steadfastly denied as much to the Mick. We don’t have a theme … we’re not a fucking Bar Mitzvah, man. Whatever, was what the Mick thought, with emphasis, when he made that apparent faux pas in the course of this transaction. O rly? Then how come the only music you play is thrash. And all the beers are called, like, Mineshaft Collapse to Hell Hefeweizen. What about that all the fucking walls are painted vanta fucking black. Not because you’re the heavy metal-themed brewery, right? Fucking who gives a shit anyways.

The beer wasn’t halfway fucking bad though. 

The news camera pointed almost directly at Grace and her companera, making this out to be an especially public display of affection. Even moreso after the news cameraman turned on the accompanying flood light, no doubt ruining, or at the very least altering the mood. Registering her disapproval with this development, as well the presence of others for the first time in some minutes, Grace looked up with an perturbed expression. 

Sheepishly now she acknowledged the Mick, perhaps embarrassed to be caught in this intimate moment at her place of business for the second time in as many business days. For his part, having spent his career working in, or at least adjacent to a bar, the Mick had seen worse from worse. So it’s not as if Grace was in any danger of offending her boss’s delicate sensibilities. On the contrary, he was equally if not more so embarrassed, and wanted only for this interaction to end. Hoping to head off a conversation, Mick waved a tepid hand in the sales girl’s direction. The sales girl, whose name was Margot, by the way, smiled politely in return, and then without saying a word re-placed her tongue directly back onto Grace’s. Margot’s dark lipstick and eyeshadow — another coincidence, to be sure — contrasted quite sharply against her fair complexion and shoulder-length platinum hair, but not at all in a clashing way. By contrast, in a manner that complemented her au natural aesthetic, Grace was close-cropped brunette. Closer cropped than the Mick even, and he wasn’t shaggy by any stretch. That he could tell, Grace didn’t typically wear makeup, but you can bet she was wearing some of Margot’s now. 

Here Zeke materialized out of the melee. The Mick could see that he was perspiring through his shirt and his undershirt. Zeke had been mistaken to think he’d got it made in the shade, now that he’d gotten out of the keg-washing business. Event coordination was proving to be no walk in the park. No one in the over-capacity crowd could get a beer — to pick up the slack behind the bar, Kitty had instinctively started pouring — and now here was the local news to broadcast his failure across the Metro Area. It was all he could do to catch his breath and keep from crying. Now Zeke saw the Mick and without a word he embraced him. 

Bewildered to be held so closely by a colleague, the Mick did not reciprocate in kind. No matter, because Zeke had love to spare and then some. And also sweat. The Mick could feel the hot damp permeating through the four-some layers that separated their dermises. Zeke was the taller of the two by a good five inches, and with the much wider base to match. He had all the physical tools to be a blue-chip assistant brewer, the Mick thought wistfully. (Except for maybe lateral agility, that on which the Mick was willing to compromise.) He looked and felt like a small child there in his arms, embarrassed to be hugged by his mother in front of his classmates. In this moment of stillness, it occurred to the Mick how Zeke never had the pleasure with Hank, having arrived to the New Frontier shortly after his permanent departure. Since Grace replaced Zeke, obviously neither had she, met Hank. So then could it be that the void left by his absence had affected them in ways unknown? Surely Hank would have been pleased to see his spiritual presence linger on to inspire such emotional warmth, as well as the exchange of bodily fluid. Had Russ somehow survived to meet Zeke and Grace, meanwhile, there at the Newfy with the Mick and Kitty, he would have broke his neck all over again, tripping over another in a long queue of bad punch lines: A Jew, a Mexican gal, a Lesbian and a big Black guy walk into a bar ... well, fuck all … and then what happens? 

Ah, who gives a hoot.

Reinvigorated by the kindness of his friend and mentor the Mick, Zeke resolved to make the best of a difficult situation and do whatever he could to help. For a start, he set to bussing the minefield of partway empty pint glasses, stacking them from waist to shoulder-high, balanced delicately between his pronated palm and the crook of his neck. 

 Look at him go, the Mick marveled. As confounding as he found their behavior to be at times, he felt a trickling of pride reflecting on his first two full-time hires as acting chief of Newfy, Inc. — Zeke and Grace. Granted, the former had to be completely reassigned into an entirely made-up position within a summer, and now the latter was establishing a troubling pattern of using what was ostensibly her workplace for casual hookups. But then nobody’s perfect. 

Distracted by these meditations, everso brief which they were, the Mick had managed to forget what he was doing completely, standing as he was shoulder-to-shoulder amidst his apparent peers. Scanning the faces, many of whom should have been instantly familiar, they remained somehow just beyond the pale reaches of his cognitive grasp, as if he was in a dream state that was still buffering. It should have helped that most of those gathered to pay their respects did so representing their respective breweries’ merch — hats, t-shirts, hoodies … often all three at once … as if they were race car drivers in the criminally fan-underappreciated station wagon series — as was customary for Feist Week. If in case they got lost, they could easily be identified and returned to from whence they came. Some adhered to an unspoken dress code of craft beer-formal; after all a great man was presumed to be dead. In so doing that they wore long pants and closed-toe shoes, or their good sandals at a minimum. 

Due credit to the boys in the bluegrass band, who dressed like they were attending a funeral, albeit one in a different century altogether. Bowler hats, pocket watches, all wool everything. The standup bassist wore sleeve garters. Where in the world did he buy those? They all four harmonized around an old-timey microphone. Not the one you’re thinking of, that looks like a cheese grater. (A chrome chode, if you please.) Even older than that. This was shaped circular, like the back of a fan boat kind of. The model they’d have used for the news bulletins, simulcast before the picture show. 

News on the march! Krauts invade Polaks!   

Ongoing still, their more than ten-minute jam on MD — dudes, let’s really explore the space on this one … for Hank — was medleyed with a sepia-toned, instrumental waltz. They played their rearrangement slowed way down, on the line to where it wouldn’t even have been considered bluegrass. Not in the traditional sense. Because then at a certain tempo it just goes back to being folk music. To the Mick it sounded akin to the theme song for that Civil War documentary he’d watched all fifteenish hours of consecutively, one weekend when Kitty was away on a different bachelorette party. 

Boy this was song was a fucking bummer, thought the Mick. Like what you would play on the deck of a sinking ship. Mercifully, they offered a musical reprieve, returning to terra firma — the well-trod land of the Grateful Dead — from where they launched into a spirited rendition of Shakedown Street. Yet another of Hank’s all-timers; he even claimed to have witnessed its debut performance, at an area outdoor amphitheater. The Mick called most all of his many unsubstantiated claims into question and here was no exception.

All of a sudden, as the band rounded the last pre-chorus a commotion sounded about the opposite end of the bar from the Mick, by the front door. Did a cold draft just blow in? 

Nay.

The Mayor was making his entrance. 

[shahananasrin-blog]

[ad_1] After Americans "spoke with their wallets" against Bud Light in response to the beermaker's partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, one advertising industry executive believes this is an example of why consumers are tired of politics being pushed on them by companies. Mosaic Advertising Owner Tim Cramer joined "Fox & Friends" to discuss how American consumers are done with politics and wokeness pushed by brands. "We're seeing one of the first casualties of the new economy, the "Bidenomics," diversity and equity and inclusion. We call them the deadheads, D-E-D, diversity equity, we drop off the inclusion, but we call them deadheads because everything that they touch, Trump says it best, I think … it turns to crap. And that's what we're seeing here." A sign disparaging Bud Light beer is seen along a country road on April 21, 2023 in Arco, Idaho. (Natalie Behring/Getty Images)Cramer said it cost Anheuser-Busch big when they incorporated woke politics into their advertising."It cost Anheuser-Busch, it cost InBev $27 billion in market cap and a $400 million loss in real revenue to realize that people just want to drink their beer without a debate. … And they do not want to have a message shoved down their throat."Cramer said Americans used their pocketbooks to send a clear message to brands and argued consumers are becoming increasingly frustrated by politics."The way that they can speak is if they can't go to the streets and rant and rave in the streets, then they'll do it with their pocketbook, They'll do with their wallet. And that's exactly what they've done here.""We've seen this coming for years. We stopped working with liberal woke companies starting back in 2009. And by 2014 we had in fact, on our website, started saying we only work with conservative brands because we saw where there was this was going, and we saw it as a loser back in 2009. I don't see how they get out of this," said Cramer. Bud Light sales have plummeted since a promotional partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney caused widespread backlash. (Instagram)Anheuser-Busch InBev recently announced that it laid off hundreds of workers.Brendan Whitworth, CEO of Anheuser-Busch, the world’s largest brewer, said the company did not make the decision to cut staff "lightly" but was prioritizing its "future long-term success," The Wall Street Journal reported."While we never take these decisions lightly, we want to ensure that our organization continues to be set for future long-term success," Anheuser-Busch said. "These corporate structure changes will enable our teams to focus on what we do best — brewing great beer for everyone."Whitworth clarified the layoffs included corporate and marketing roles at U.S. offices in St. Louis, New York and Los Angeles. It did not impact brewery and warehouse staff, the company said.Fox Business' Lawrence Richard contributed to this report. Elizabeth Heckman is a digital production assistant with Fox News. [ad_2]

[gulenguji]

DeSantis takes aim at Bud Light as state pensions crushed by company's decline: 'There's got to be penalties'

Republican presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state of Florida is launching an inquiry into Bud Light and InBev which, he said, could lead to a lawsuit. The Florida governor told “Jesse Watters Primetime” Thursday that businesses should be penalized for prioritizing “social agendas” over shareholders after Florida pension funds took huge losses due to the beermaker’s decline. BUD…