Beer Of The Week (Vol XX)

This week's Beer of the Week is brought to you as always by the fine folks at Glen Lake Wine & Spirits, your friendly neighborhood beer store.

It seems that it's almost part of our nature as Americans to take the good things in life for granted. Rather than taking the time to ponder and appreciate the bounty that we have available at our fingertips, we're always looking for the next great thing. Our restless spirits drive us to seek out and discover new horizons, new opportunities, new pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. This American instinct for perpetually chasing the future has had its benefits. It's helped drive the imagination, innovation, and initiative that has made the United States the most prosperous and powerful country in history.

But it also comes at a price. By always looking forward we sometimes fail to enjoy what's right there in front of us. So it's good once in a while to pause in the pursuit of what might be and savor what is.

Such is the case with beer. I love finding and trying new beers. Liquor stores are my candy stores and I always get excited when I spot a new offering amongst the goodies. However, sometimes this quest for the latest and greatest in beers leads my to pass by others that I've enjoyed in the past. Yeah that's a good beer, but maybe this new one is even better. The old adage about the value of "a beer in hand..." is one that I've too often ignored.

Probably never more so than with Anchor Steam Beer. The other day I was surprised when I realized just how long it's been since I've had a Steam. When I first started enjoying craft beers oh those many years ago, Anchor Steam was one of the more widely available and reliable products out there (especially here in the Upper Midwest). If you were ever at a bar or restaurant and despairing as you heard or read their list of beer selections, the words "Anchor Steam" would always lift your flagging spirits. Say no more. I now know what I want.

But over the years as more and more craft beers became available and I explored more and more styles of beer, I kind of forget all about Anchor Steam. Like a loyal long-time friend, it was always there. I just found myself thinking of it less and less and over time ended up losing contact with it almost entirely.

Until last week, when I noticed it sitting patiently in the Glen Lake Wine and Spirits cooler waiting for a chance to renew our acquaintance.


The smooth brown bottle may just be the most aesthetically pleasing of any beer, both to the eye and the hand. The classic paper label has a vintage look and features a large anchor with hops and barley.

Beer Style: California Common / Steam

Alcohol by Volume: 4.9%

COLOR (0-2): Deep amber. 2

AROMA (0-2): Malt with hints of caramel. 2

HEAD (0-2): Very white and full. Good lacing. 2

TASTE (0-5): A very unique taste with flavors of malt, hops, and a little citrus. 3

AFTERTASTE (0-2): The finish was a bit sharp for my tastes. 1

OVERALL (0-6): When you haven't had an Anchor Steam for a while you forget just how solid this beer is. It's really unlike anything else out there and is a nice break from the beer routine. It's also a great compliment with a variety of food. Like most beer, while it's good in the bottle it's even better on tap. I can guarantee that it won't be nearly as long before my next Steam. 4

TOTAL SCORE (0-19): 14

UPDATE-- Paul e-mails to concur:

Anchor Steam is absolutely one of my favorite beers. Your comment about the solid taste in a bottle and on tap is spot on. However, if you're ever in San Francisco and can get it pulled from an old fashion beer engine while eating pasta with bay shrimp, that's something special. I imagine it's like having a Guinness in Ireland.

Fritz Maytag III saved Anchor Steam many years ago when the company was about to go out of business. His family also invented Maytag Blue Cheese, which is extremely high quality. Of course they are best known for founding the appliance corporation Maytag.

UPDATE II-- Chris chimes in:

I too am a big fan of Anchor Steam. Though unlike you, I never forgot her; and those ergonomic brown bottles are frequent, albeit brief, visitors to my fridge. I once had a Steam on tap at an Anchor-owned pub in the San Francisco airport and was stunned to find how different (better) it tasted via that delivery method. Proximity to the source, maybe?

That said, Anchor Liberty Ale (out of the bottle) makes Steam (out of the bottle) look like Grain Belt. Awesome.

Their Porter doesn't suck either.

You Gotta Have Something

Rep. Tim Walz, during his teleconference earlier this week, on the urgency to enact the Obama health care reforms:

"We cannot afford to do nothing," Walz repeatedly said.

Reminds me of a classic MASH episode. The hospital was catching artillery fire from unknown combatants and Frank Burns was running around shrieking: "We need to do something! Anything!"

Hawkeye Pierce interjected: "I agree with Frank, let's do anything."

Of course, if Hawkeye, as played by Alan Alda, were around today, he'd be all for Obama Care and probably fronting a group called Doctors for Taxpayer Funded Abortions for Lesbian Illegal Aliens NOW.

But way back then during the fake Korean War, he had a good point. Problems are not solved by doing "anything". In fact, they can be exacerbated by doing the wrong thing, especially when the solution is not well thought-out, rushed, or clouded by misdirection and hyperbolic fear mongering.

As Thomas Sowell notes:

Is [the current system] ideal? Of course not. But nothing is going to be ideal, whether the current medical care legislation passes or not. The relevant question is: Are the problems created by the current situation worse than the problems that will be created by the pending legislation? That question never seems to get asked, much less answered.

That is the question that salesmen for Obama Care, like Tim Walz, need to be asked. Then again, the teleconference where he was repeating his mantra "We can't afford to do nothing" included only pre-screened questions. Good luck getting to any issues he'd rather not talk about in that format.

The myth serving as the foundation for Waltz's tap dance is that Republicans want to do nothing regarding the problems with the current health care system. Anyone paying attention and being intellectually honest knows that is false. Rep. Eric Cantor in the House and Jim DeMint in the Senate, among others, have prominently outlined plans that would be the basis for a conservative approach to reform.

But the truth is conservatives have precisely zero ability to enact these reforms at the Federal level. Democrats have absolute control of the Executive and Legislative branches and for all their happy talk of bi-partisanship, they have shown no interest in compromising toward a more free market based reform package. And they don't have to. The voters gave them all the power they need and they don't have to share it.

The catch is, that also gives the Democrats exclusive responsibility for effectively solving the problems they encounter. That doesn't mean doing "anything" and that doesn't mean doing something that makes things worse and that doesn't mean whining about your impotent opposition standing in your way. The floor is yours Democrats and Tim Walz to do it right. Don't choke.

Riff Raff

Tonight, the long-anticipated RiffTrax LIVE: Plan 9 from Outer Space is showing at a theater near you. 7pm for those of us in the heartland. Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy of MST3K renown direct their withering satirical wit at one of the classic bad movies of all time. Granted, it's like shooting fish in a barrel for these sharp-tongued wags, but hearing them crack wise on such a soft target promises no end of belly guffawing.

I'll be attending said event with a few of my fellow Fraters (including Sisyphus, the newest member of the Fraters team whose arrival here was somewhat overshadowed by some limp-armed quarterback coming out of retirement) at the AMC Rosedale 14 theater in Roseville. We'll be waiting for our promised shout out from Mike Nelson and may react like spurned Packer fans if Mr. Nelson betrays our trust. Well, we'll be a little more sober.

SISYPHUS ADDS: I will be the one wearing the purple Favre jersey.

THE ELDER PROVIDES SOME BULLETIN BOARD MATERIAL Be a shame if anything was to happen to that purty purple Favre jersey of yours Sis'. A real shame.

Sieg Heil Jeeves!

E-mail book recommendation received from Amazon yesterday:

As someone who has purchased or rated Bertie Wooster Sees It Through (A Jeeves and Bertie Novel) by P. G. Wodehouse, you might like to know that With Hitler to the End: The Memoir of Hitler's Valet will be released on September 1, 2009.

So are the books linked because they both feature a valet? If you liked reading a light comedy with a fictional valet, you'll love the new book about the man who served one of history's evil monsters. Or was Bertie secretly a B.U.F. Blackshirt? He always seemed a little too carefree to be a Nazi to me.

Icy Incline

A couple of long-time readers of Fraters write to comment on where Obama Care might lead.

Tim leads off:

I have another nutty thought about what might happen if our government starts making healthcare decisions on our behalf. If you think it is time for me to check myself in, I trust that you would tell me so.

Under this health care program that Obama insists we just have to have, I would assume that the decision to give or not give a person needing a liver, kidney, or other organ transplant would come from some sort of government organ transplant approval board. Nothing really disturbs me too much about that because that sort of approval is needed today; a board of doctors routinely decide who is in the most dire consequences and would benefit most from an organ transplant.

But this is where I get a little creeped out by the thought of Obama care. I know this is a reach, but so was $5 gas.

Think about the supply of healthy donor organs. A fair number of organs come from people involved in accidents who had to be put on life support. Do we want the same organization that decides what regular health treatment will be extended to you also be the same organization that decides when you should come off of life support, and the same organization that decides where your organs will go?

Am I the only one that sees a conflict of interest here?

I know this is macabre, but when I saw "Coma" and "Logan's Run" in the theaters, I thought they were just movies, not docu-dramas.

Taken at face value in current circumstances, it's easy to write off Tim's concerns as paranoid. But, as has been stated often before, the problem is that once you turn over control of health care decisions to the government you open the door to a whole range of possibilities. Some may seem crazy to even consider their coming about today. But what about five years from now? Ten? Twenty?

The people writing the plans today may well have no desire to ever see some of the worst case scenarios come about, but their intentions today aren't going to mean much to someone making decisions about how to ration care twenty years from now. And as John Stossel notes, as much as proponents of government care don't like to use term, it is all about rationing:

This brings us back to end-of-life consultation. As the government's health care budget becomes strained, as it must -- and, as Obama admits, already is under Medicare -- the government will have to cut back on what it lets people have.

So it is not a leap to foresee government limiting health care, especially to people nearing the end of life. Medical "ethicists" have long lamented that too much money is spent futilely in the last several months of life. Are we supposed to believe that the social engineers haven't read their writings?

And given the premise that it's government's job to pay for our heath care, concluding that 80-year-olds should get no hip replacements makes sense. The problem is the premise: that taxpayers should pay. Once you accept that, bad things follow.

Bad things that would seem likely to get even worse in the future.

Amy writes to remind us that we don't have to look that far into the past to see that it might be a prologue for what that future holds:

If you think that the Politburo and the Compulsive Liar and Chief care one whit about us Kulaks, you're nuts. They will pass, covertly if they must, some sort of "culture of death" healthcare. It's in their nature.

I find it strange that there are those who are now worried about healthcare and "death panels" when it is their ass on the line (I know, I know, human nature). There were indications a few years ago that were in their face but they chose to ignore it and perhaps even cheered it on. You don't thinks so? I've got two words for ya': Terri Schiavo. Now what?

...let the crying begin.

I don't think it's time for tears quite yet. There's still time to stop the slide.

Black and Blue Division

One interesting aspect of the fallout from the Vikings fling with Favre is the divisions it has created among both Viking and Packer fans.

Among Viking fans there is a large delegation that seems to believe that with Favre clad in purple, the long awaited dream fantasy of a Vikings Super Bowl victory will finally come to fruition. They're busy buying Favre jerseys, putting money down in Vegas on the Vikes, and booking hotel rooms in Miami. I've labeled this group of Viking fans "NeoBretts" and estimate that they currently compromise about 80% of the Viking fan base. Their support however is contingent on Favre's and the Vikings success and once he starts throwing the ball to the guys in the wrong jerseys, I expect their numbers to dwindle precipitously.

The other group of Viking fans are cool-headed and rational enough to realize that while Favre once WAS a great quarterback, his best days are long behind him. Now, he's nothing more than a washed-up, egomaniacal prima donna whose brain is writing checks that his arm can no longer cash. Yes, he's still a gun-slinger, but one who's now much slower on the draw and less accurate with his shooting. Worst of all, he still carries with him some of the arrogance of youth that most men with his experience have learned is unfounded. The idea that he's going to calmly and carefully help quarterback the Vikings to the Super Bowl with deliberate style is absurd. Even if he wanted to take such a measured approach to the game, he couldn't. It's not in his nature. He's still Brett Favre and even if he manages to contain his urge to improvise for a good part of the season, you know that at some critical point in a key game he's going to try to do too much. When the Favre of old gambled, he usually won more than he lost. But expecting the Favre of late to pay off is a sucker's bet. I estimate that 20% of Vikings fan--the Realists--are not suckers today.

Meanwhile, there are also divisions among the Green and Gold faithful. I think that most Packer fans (60% or so) are actually happy that Favre is a Viking and were laughing in their beer yesterday. They recognize that he's a shell of the former quarterback who light up Lambeau Field and that his age and attitude will prove to be detrimental to Minnesota's hopes. The other 40% are still unable to let go of the Favre man-crush that they've had for years and still pine for him in their hearts. They're having a tough time coping with the idea of him playing for the Vikings and spent most of yesterday weeping in their beer. However, I would expect for most their sorrow will quickly turn to bitterness and anger at the perceived betrayal. Hell hath no fury like a Packer fan scorned. Assuming that Favre stays healthy until then, the November 1st Viking-Packer showdown in Lambeau should be one of the most anticipated games in the rivalry in years. With the all the mixed emotions, divided loyalties, and lost loves involved it almost could be aired on Lifetime.

The Award for Best Orchestration Goes to .....

Andy Driscoll of KFAI is a veteran broadcaster, public affairs specialist, award-
winning documentarian, and investigative journalist. (If you don't believe me,
just read his bio.) I think he's worthy of another award for this direct, first-hand
evidence of the orchestration and media manipulation associated with the
Obama health care plan protest rallies.

I got a call today from Representative McCollum's office in St. Paul.
Tomorrow the so-called tea party guys are supposed to show up at
11 AM tomorrow. And they're trying to get the media to come in and
put these guys on the hot seat.

That's a blockbuster. Government officials arranging for journalists to show up at rallies
to put citizens "on the hot seat" for exercising their First Amendment rights. Is
that legal for Congress people and their staffs to do?

Regardless, I can only imagine the convulsions of rage this would inspire among
local Demcrats (in and out of the media) if Michele Bachmann tried something like
this. She was mocked, scorned, and nearly run out office by these same people
for her far less inflammatory suggestion that perhaps the media should investigate
her fellow members of Congress.

Never fear, being an award-winning member of the media, I assume Mr. Driscoll
laughed at the notion that he would even consider obeying a government official's
request to participate in a coordinated effort to investigate her political opponents.

Well, there was some laughter involved. Unfortunately, it was laughing along with
these governnment officials instead of at their highly inappropriate suggestion.
Andy Driscoll, from the comment section of a MinnPost article by Doug Grow
about this rally:

I was present for this melee, and the growing hysteria that consumes
the worst of the teabaggers also set the mob in motion and led to an amazing
string of vitriolic anti-government claims of fascist takeover of our lives.

It was difficult not to laugh out loud at the outlandish claims-cum-
slogans that came rolling out of the angriest of them. Heath care was the front
issue for a much deeper set of complaints about "government takeover of our
lives." This betrayed a set of platitudes obviously spouted by conservative talk
radio and cable news. All attempts to extract reason from individual conversation
inevitably led to an insistence, among other thing, that not everyone in this
country deserves access to health care.

Doug Grow's outstanding coverage above barely touches the depth of disgust
and disingenuousness of this crowd's mental set.

Nice job, Doug. Enjoyed laughing together.

If an actual riot didn't break out at this rally, at least the media had their own
laugh riot, at the protestors' expense.

There is no mention of whether Doug Grow was called by Rep. McCollum's office
and tipped off to attend and put the protestors "on the hot seat." But his
reporting included this exchange (excerpts):

After the meeting, I approached an older woman who had made strong
statements in opposition to "government-run programs." (....)

"Could I have your name, please?" I asked.

"Who are you?" she said.

I re-introduced myself as a reporter from MinnPost.

"I'm not going to give you my name,'' she said. "It may end up on an
enemies list."

By design or not, hot seat applied Twin Cities media. Mission accomplished.

The Product Not The Pitch

William McGurn on the reaction to the rejection:

Right now the entire Beltway--including the West Wing--seems obsessed with finding out what went wrong with the administration's sales pitch. No one appears to think the problem might be substance. Or that the vague answers and vitriolic rhetoric we get from Democrats such as Mr. Reid convey a sense that the plans they favor will not hold up under public scrutiny.

This might be hard for most of the media and political class to grasp, but maybe, just maybe opposition to the Democratic health care reform plan isn't rooted in racism, right-wing radio, or uninformed rage. Rather--as was the case with the opposition to immigration reform--it's that most Americans have examined the issues, do understand what's being proposed, and are against it in principal because they just aren't buying that it would be good for them or for the country. Nah, couldn't be that simple, could it?

Dissing The 'Rupting

One of the things that has surprised me in the last couple of weeks was how quickly most of the media adopted the Democrats narrative that opponents of the health care reform bill were "disrupting" the town hall meetings. Check out the Wikipedia definition of what a town hall meeting is:

A town hall meeting is an informal public meeting derived from the traditional town meetings of New England. Similarly to those meetings, everybody in a community is invited to attend, voice their opinions, and hear the responses from public figures and elected officials, although attendees rarely vote on an issue. In today's heterogeneous communities with large populations, more often, town hall meetings are held so that people can influence elected officials in their decision making or to give them a chance to feel that their voices are being heard.

There are no specific rules or guidelines for holding a town hall meeting. If the turnout is large, and the objective is to give as many people as possible an opportunity to speak, the group can be broken down into smaller discussion groups. Participants all hear an opening presentation and then group-up to discuss an aspect of the presentation. Each group appoints someone to summarize their group's discussion.

So they are intended to be a forum for community members to show up voice their opinions. In recent years however, town hall meetings have degenerated into largely staged events where politicians carefully control the course of the meetings and messages coming out of them. The dog and pony shows that masqueraded as "town halls" during the 2008 campaign were a grotesque twist on the original intent and purpose of the meetings.

I always chuckled when candidates talked about all the suffering and misery they heard about at their health care town hall meetings. Really? Gee, you think maybe the people who bothered showed up might just not be representative of the community at large. Not many folks are going to come out to such an event to let you know that everything's just fine.

So now, the politicians (and media) are shocked when opponents of government health care actually are turning out to such events, challenging the politicians to answer their questions, and demanding that they get a chance to have their voice heard. Seems to me that's exactly what town hall meetings are really supposed to be all about.

As Michael Warren noted last week, Rude protests are an American tradition:

In any event, the Founding Fathers would likely be appalled by the notion that vigorous protests--yes, even those that are rude, obnoxious and interfere with the carefully orchestrated plans of government officials--is "un-American."

UPDATE: MoveOn.org e-mails to brag on their impact at town halls:

Our demand for real reform is getting through in communities nationwide, thanks in big part to MoveOn volunteers organizing events across the country. Check out the latest:

* At a debate in Dallas, Texas, the MoveOn Council brought over 120 people--far outnumbering right-wing protesters.

* MoveOn members around the country have been tenacious in getting through to key senators. In the last two weeks, members have had face-to-face conversations with senators in Indiana, North Dakota, Maine, and Nebraska.

* In Boulder, Colorado, pro-reform constituents packed a town hall with Rep. Jared Polis. The message they sent was positive, respectful, and crystal clear.

Our democracy is burning.

With A Whimper

A week after I officially stuck my fork in 'em, Aaron Gleeman--a man far more versed in the subject matter than I ever could hope to be--arrives at the same conclusion regarding the Twins:

Michael Cuddyer homered, Justin Morneau and Carlos Gomez each had two hits with an RBI, Scott Baker tossed eight innings of one-run ball, and Joe Nathan closed out a road victory over the Rangers on July 18 as the Twins moved to a season-high three games above .500 at 47-44. Since then they've gone 9-17 despite averaging nearly 5.5 runs per game, as the pitching staff has imploded to the tune of 6.5 runs per game while allowing double-digit runs eight times.

During those 26 games Joe Mauer hit nearly .400 with an OPS over 1.000, Morneau and Jason Kubel both provided a .900 OPS with plenty of power, Denard Span got on base at a .380 clip, and Orlando Cabrera hit safely in all but two games since coming over from the A's. Yet here we are in mid-August and the Twins are in the midst of an awful funk that has seen every starter except Baker get rocked on a nightly basis and the bullpen cough up nearly a run per inning when Nathan or Matt Guerrier aren't in.

Detroit and Chicago are mediocre enough that the Twins aren't completely out of the playoff picture yet, but at 56-61 and six games back in the AL Central it's tough to imagine this team making a serious run down the stretch. Sure, their remaining schedule is favorable, but the Twins just lost four of six home games to the fourth-place Indians and fifth-place Royals, and now travel to Texas for a four-game set against the Wild Card-leading Rangers.

The pathetic nature of the Twins most recent homestand should have removed any remaining doubt about where this team is going.

You Get What You Pay For

One of the few things that it seems that almost everyone can agree on in the health care debate is that as a country we spend far too much on health care both as an aggregate figure and as a percentage of GDP. But before we accept this as a given, this underlying assumption deserves to be examined more closely. Craig S. Karpel does just that in today's Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Obama has said that "the cost of health care has weighed down our economy." No one thinks the 20% of our GDP that's attributable to manufacturing is weighing down the economy, because it's intuitively clear that one person's expenditure on widgets is another person's income. But the same is true of the health-care industry. The $2.4 trillion Americans spend each year for health care doesn't go up in smoke. It's paid to other Americans.

Somehow the impression has been created that spending money on health care is somehow wasteful and that money could be better spent elsewhere. But why? Is spending money on schools, roads, housing, transportation, welfare, or consumer goods better than spending money on health care? Perhaps. But it's not automatically so and certainly that question is open for debate.

The basic material needs of human beings are food, clothing and shelter. The desire for food and clothing drove hunter-gatherer economies and, subsequently, agricultural economies, for millennia. The Industrial Revolution was driven by the desire for clothing. Thus Richard Arkwright's water frame, James Hargreaves's spinning jenny, Samuel Crompton's spinning mule, Eli Whitney's cotton gin and Elias Howe's sewing machine.

Though it hasn't been widely realized, the desire for shelter was a major driver of the U.S. economy during the second half of the 20th century and the first several years of the 21st. About one-third of the new jobs created during the latter period were directly or indirectly related to housing, as the stupendous ripple effect of the bursting housing bubble should make painfully obvious.

Once these material needs are substantially met, desire for health care--without which there can be no enjoyment of food, clothing or shelter--becomes a significant, perhaps a principal, driver of the economy.

As countries mature economically and grow richer it's natural to expect that they will spend more on health care. The question then becomes what is the "right" amount to spend? And who determines what that amount is, the market or the government (or some form of both as we currently have)?

No matter what one thinks of the state of the American health care system, it is impossible to deny that the US is a leader in innovation care and advances in medical technology and treatment. It is not a coincidence that while we spend the most on health care we also produce the most advancements and breakthroughs in health care.

We should carefully consider what the impact of attempts to limit that spending will have on our ability to continue to lead the world in medical advancements. And whether measuring the amount that we spend on health care--as an aggregate or percentage of GDP--is truly an indicator of whether the system works or not.

Everything Is Better In Threes

When I heard that the third and final installment in Robert Ferrigno's "Assassins" trilogy was going to be released in August, I couldn't wait to get my meaty paws on it. Now, I can say that my anticipation proved well-founded.



"Heart of the Assassin" arrived on my doorstep this past Monday and before I drifted off to Nod last night I had polished it off. You know you're reading a damn fine novel when you experience mixed emotions as you race to the conclusion. You want to keep reading to find out how it's going to end, but at the same time you don't want it to end. I tried to slow down and savor the experience as much as possible, but in the end the anticipation of what might come next was too hard to resist.

I was also "working" under a bit of a deadline since I knew that we'd be interviewing Robert Ferrigno on the NARN First Team show this Saturday. It takes something special to lure me back into the AM1280 The Patriot studio bunker these days and the chance to discuss Mr. Ferrigno's latest work with him definitely fits that criteria.

He'll join us tomorrow at noon. You can listen to The Northern Alliance Radio Network starting at 11AM Central, locally on AM1280 the Patriot. Streaming LIVE worldwide at their web site. You can also join the conversation at 651-289-4488.

If you haven't read the first two books in the trilogy yet, I'd encourage you to do so. Beginning with "Prayers of the Assassin":



My review here.

Followed by "Sins of the Assassin":



My review of the book here and our March 2008 interview with Robert Ferrigno on it here.

SP ADDS: We'll also be giving away a pair of free tickets to the Minnesota Symposium on Climate Change: How Politicized Science Endangers Prosperity. It's coming up on August 19 at the Earl Brown Center and sponsored by our friends at the Minnesota Free Market Institute. For details on the event, check ou their Web site.