Well, it looks as though the cons have won the beer war. Bully for them. Anheuser-Busch, the company that makes Budweiser products, put a picture of a trans person on their label for a contest. The director of marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid, said she was trying to attract younger beer drinkers to the brand. Conservatives – already afraid of, well, everything, really – became even MORE afraid and decided that touching the can might make them gay so there was only one choice: shoot the beer! Hey, it’s perfectly logical. A photo of a trans person might make you gay so, instead, get your great, big penis extender out and share it with a friend, right?

Beau: “Wow, Buck, big strong rod you got there!”
Buck: “Yeah, thanks, Beau. I’m pretty proud of it. I’ve been playing with it for awhile now.”
Beau: “It shows. Can I have a turn?”
Buck: “You want to make it shoot?”
Beau: “I do. I really do. Can I…touch it?”
Buck: “Oh, man, I’d really love for it to be in your hands for awhile.”
Beau: “It feels so hard!”
Buck: “Blue steel, baby!”
Beau: “I am SO gonna shoot that can!
Buck: “Do it! Do it now! Make it explode all over everything!”

See? Nothing gay there.

Anyway, Anheuser-Busch has backed down. The good Ms. Heinerscheid has “taken a leave of absence” and an underling is now in her position. A statement was released saying Anheuser-Busch is really only about bringing people together over a beer. The offending cans will be eliminated and the company will go with an American flag picture for awhile and wait to see if the rednecks come back.

I’ll tell you this: It was a bold move on Ms. Heinerscheid’s part, if a bit tone-deaf. Budweiser has been the beer of rednecks for as long as I can remember. Bud advertises at NASCAR, fercrissakes. This is NOT a beer for thinking people. Her attempt to expand the beer’s consumer base was laudable but one cannot slap such a group in the face with one of their very worst, most terrifying fears (“Arghh! People not like me are allowed to live!”) and hope to get away with it…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, I guess the debt-ceiling battle looms. The problem with having so many ideologically-faithful but stupid people running the House of Representatives is that they really may not understand the implications of carrying out their threat to not pay US debts. You see, over time, I’ve really come to believe these guys – no matter how stupid the threats. They WILL carry them out regardless of consequences, just to make some misguided point, and it won’t be until AFTER the damage occurs that it begins to dawn on them they they may have overdone it.

There is a LOT of language about who should do what and why. (It takes more words to lie.) They’ll suggest all kinds of things, none of which are the problem and none of which will solve the problem, instead of just doing the things that WOULD solve the problem; specifically, raise taxes on the highest incomes and slash the Pentagon’s budget. We won’t do that, though, because the people with the highest incomes own and operate the people who would have to raise the taxes (thanks, Citizens United) and cutting the Pentagon’s bloated budget would be immediately decried as “weak.”

You see, from time to time, the cons trot out one of their favorite catch-phrases, “fraud, waste, and abuse.” These days, the Pentagon is the very embodiment of fraud, waste, and abuse. They’ve simply “lost” trillions of dollars and they have not and can not pass an audit. But, no. Military spending, wasteful as it is, is spread out carefully among the fifty states so no one will touch it, lest they hurt people in their own districts. Accordingly in conservative world, THAT fraud, waste, and abuse is a-okay! Instead, we get to listen to politicians prattle on about their concerns and attempts to work around the problem they refuse to solve. (As a bonus, they get to inflict a lot of pain on the most vulnerable members of our once-great nation and cons love nothing more than that, so it’s a win-win!)

We have a bunch of those kinds of solvable but “unsolvable” problems in this once-great nation. For instance, you could pretty much solve the homeless problem in a year or two if the powers that be would simply reverse their oh-so-destructive 2011 decision to allow pooled money investors to buy single family homes and require them to divest. We’re not going to do that, though, because so many people are making so much money from the carnage. But I digress…

There’s going to be a lot of posturing and bickering, especially among the cons, themselves. The thing that bothers me the most is that these guys have been trying to destabilize American democracy for over 40 years now and this debt ceiling thing has become the perfect weapon to do it. Sure, destabilizing countries rarely leads to good outcomes but cons believe what they prefer to believe and can’t be bothered with facts, evidence, or reality.

I’ll tell you this: It’s all just noise for now but we’re getting closer to an actual default. These guys are holding a gun to their own heads and they really are just crazy enough to shoot…