Sunday, February 3, 2013

Sunday Observations 2.3

It being Super Bowl Sunday I want to start with a beer related thought. I often joke about signs of the apocalypse but I saw something this week that just might be the final sign. This week the Justice Department blocked Anheuser Busch, the makers of Budweiser, from a complete takeover of Grupo Modelo who just happens to make Corona. AB fully admits the takeover attempt is out of fear of good beer. "We must slow the volume trend of High End Segment and cannot let the industry transform," said an AB spokesman. In the last ten years the number of craft (read that good) beer brewers has quadrupled while over the past two years Budweiser sales have fallen over ten percent. The combined AB/Modelo would control over half the U.S. beer market hence the anti-trust suit by the DOJ which is enough to thwart the apocalypse for now. Or it should until the vegetable growers try and corner the lime market.

Here is an example of the fun side of twitter. I read this tweet a couple days ago, "Leaning over stretching, I panicked for a second b/c I suddenly couldn't move my head. And...I was standing on my hair." Sadly I fully understood how this could happen but it made me smile just to read it because hey I've been there.

There hasn't been any reason to mention Willard for some time now but I found out a couple things this week that have changed that. The first isn't surprising at all. You might remember that during hurricane Sandy Willie's campaign changed one of their events into a pseudo food drive for victims of the storm. I've been reading an ebook by BuzzFeed's Michael Hastings in which he says that before the event the campaign dropped $5,000 at a Dayton, Ohio Walmart to stock the rally's shelves with canned goods. You know, in case Romney supporters were cheap bastards who couldn't afford a can of beans.

The other thing about Willard really did surprise me and reminded me that I had once thought that if Willard had run as the Massachusetts Governor Romney, and not the right wing kowtowing nutjob Romney, he might have won. Thursday the Romney campaign filed its latest report with the Federal Election Commission. It seems that after the election, and with no announcement at all, they had donated $90,000 to the Red Cross for Sandy relief. I thought that I should give him credit for that after all the abuse I dished out over the last year. Than again I should also note that the campaign still has $4 million in the bank.

The Hastings eBook is called Panic 2012: The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama's Final Campaign and costs just $5 on Amazon. It's basically a 150 page BuzzFeed article about the campaign's last months which is funny and totally eye opening. It's worth reading and no I don't get a cut.

I don't normally share personal email but this one from a friend on Friday sums up the week so well. "Israel attacking Syria, terrorists attacking our embassy, China attacking the NY Times, Republicans attacking Hagel, all of England attacking the artist who painted Kate's portrait, people attacking commercials... I need a beer." I hope she got that beer and it wasn't a Budweiser.

Have I ever mentioned that I would totally like to go to China?