Brains: Mmmm, Beer.

[elfs]

Profile of a craft beer brewer

This is just a wonderful article about craft brewer Sam Calagione and his craft. If you're a geek, you'll recognize his passions. A conversation about Budweiser's new faux-microbrew, "American Ale," illustrates the point:

"Budweiser knows what they're doing," Selders said, goading Calagione. "What, you don't think it' s true?"

"I think they can make a technically correct beer. But I don't even want to try it."

"As a brewer, you're obligated to try it."

"To give you some context for why it's so distasteful to me," Calagione said. "At the same time that they're making this relatively hoppy wanna-be craft beer that exists only to confuse the consumer–so that they can be culture vultures–they are running ads that say that the darker a beer is the more impurities it has."

Ross on how Conservatism can get back into the game.

This problem is not a matter of conservatives needing to abandon their core convictions in order to win elections, as right-of-center reformers are often accused of doing. Rather, it's a matter of conservatives needing to apply their core convictions to questions like "how do we mitigate the worst effects of climate change?" and "how do we modernize our infrastructure?" and "how do we encourage excellence and competition within our public school bureaucracy?" instead of just letting liberals completely monopolize these debates, while the Right talks about porkbusting and not much else.

The problem as I see it with Ross's analysis is that, as the Economist showed yesterday, the "conservative" movement is not interested in applying core convinctions. That would require thinking.

Who's responsible for the mortgage meltdown? Atheists!

In a complete "You have got to be kidding me column," Daniel Henniger claims that the moral hazards that created the current economic meltdown would never have happened if we'd just let people feel comfortable saying "Merry Christmas."

No, seriously. That's his thesis.

World leaders refuse to shake George Bush's hand

Prostitute toe-sucker Dick Morris: "Will Obama govern from the left? He doesn't have to. George W. Bush has done all the heavy lifting for him."

Dick Morris (why the hell does anyone pay this man to write anything? He was so utterly, completely, wingnutly wrong about everything this past election: he mis-called many of the primary battles, he mis-called the general election, and he's basically been a gasbag.

So we can only hope that he's still wrong when he writes that Bush's "invitation" of the International Monetary Fund and the European College of Supervisors (man, that's an Orwellian name if ever there was one) to review American financial institutions and practices is the first step toward giving control of the Security and Exchange Commission to extranational interests.

A nation deals with other institutions (national or otherwise) either as co-markets with which it can engage in useful material exchanges, competitors or predators with which it must engage in defensive practices, and other categories which can be co-opted or convinced into alliances or other mutually beneficial activities. The EU may be acting as the third, but it is probably also the second. National integrity is pretty damned critical these days.

[Title explaination]

Karl Rove: The president must obey the rule of law

There are also plans to use the Obama campaign's email list to lobby for Mr. Obama's policies. The Chicago Tribune, reporting comments from Obama spokesman Steve Hildebrand, summed up the plan this way: the email list could be used "to challenge Democratic lawmakers if they don't hew to the Obama agenda."

Just one problem. It's illegal. There are statutory prohibitions on the White House from using tax dollars to directly lobby Congress by unleashing emails, calls and visits. That's up to outside groups to do.

Even giving the list to outside groups raises problems. Such strong-arming irritates allies, infuriates fence sitters, and enrages opponents in Congress. Lawmakers dislike grass-roots lobbying by those representing people in their states or districts.

So, is this a case of It's Okay If You're A Republican? After all, what was Fox News for the past eight years but a dissemination office for the talking points of the day, with regular calls to rally and write your congressman as needed?

Comments

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

Why do you read Douhat? He means well, kinda. But he's totally not concerned with intellectual consistancy or honesty. Scott Lemieux over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money did a bit today dismantling Ross' latest deepthink on abortion. It's not pretty.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

WRT the video: ouch! couldn't have happened to a nicer so and so, though.

As for the Rove thingy? The *campaign* organization can use it... or perhaps better, give it to the DNC... no?

Except that isn't what the video shows

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

Bush did all the usual glad-handing with these same politician earlier at the same event. Don't draw conclusions from one short video taken out of context by a talking head with an axe to grind.

And even if you don't buy that, it's self-evident in this video that Bush is simply not making eye contact or otherwise inviting attention. It isn't as if the guy was sticking out his hand and having it ignored.

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[fallenpegasus]

So there are no "thinking conservatives"?

...

[pieforeveryone.livejournal.com]

Wasn't the Economist referring to the movement, and not the people who identify themselves as part of said movement? I can think of quite a few social groups who wind up acting contrary to qualities that many members of said groups possess. This phenomenon seems to have something to do with the different ways humans tend to act when they think in terms of a group/tribe/family than they do when they think in terms of solitary entities.

...there's got to be a way to say this without being quite so wordy...

[elfs.livejournal.com]

No, as I said yesterday: the current conservative movement is not interested in its intellectual underpinnings. The most vocal wing currently trying to reconstruct the party is the soft socialist "value voter" wing, which runs almost entirely on instinct and without much thinking.

The people who've actually read Kirk and the people who've actually read Hayek will spend the next decade sitting in a bar somewhere, wondering what happened.

I like craft beers and all....

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

but a lot of that guy's brews sound gods-awful to me. Bleah. I guess I'm not that adventurous.