99 Bottles of Beer on the Blog - 2 Below Winter Ale

It's a beautiful, snowy night in Kansas City, and a fine time to pop open a winter ale. Tonight, it's 2 Below Winter Ale from the New Belgium Brewery.



Winter ales are a risky bunch. Too often, brewers dump the kitchen into the brewpot, and you wind up with orange peel, clove, cinnamon, molasses, cranberries and a host of other creative ingredients. There's nothing wrong with creative beers, but there's a reason that malt, hops, yeast and water are the quartet of quality quaffing. You just don't know what you're going to wind up with if you start tossing other stuff in.

New Belgium does the holidays right. Their 2 Below (there's a degree sign after the 2, but I don't know how to do that) Winter Ale is all crispness up front with a blast of piney hops, followed by a rich, toasty malt that tastes like browned biscuits. It tastes like a fuller version of their flagship Fat Tire Amber Ale, bolstered with a tremendous amount of hop flavor.

Hops in beer do two things - add bitterness and flavor. If you drink an American or India Pale Ale, you'll get the bitterness. With 2 Below, you get lots of the flavor, but only moderate bitterness. Usually, when you get this much hop flavor, you don't get to savor the malt.

I've had the classic holidays like Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale, Boulevard's Nutcracker Ale and Anchor's Christmas Ale, but the absolute best is 2 Below Winter Ale. It's flawless.

Sudden Sadness

Yesterday, I had the urge for carnitas tacos from Chile's on Troost, f/k/a Habaneros. As regular readers know, I was filled with joy when I met first visited this restaurant, and I have postulated that their tamales may be the best in the universe. But, yesterday, I wanted their carnitas tacos - double corn tortillas over-stuffed with sharply spiced beef, peppers and onions. Good eats.

I was so eager for the coming treat that the complete absence of cars in the parking lot meant nothing to me other than the joyful thought that I would not have to wait in line to place my order. It wasn't until I pulled on the unbudging door that the awful truth dawned to me - Chile's on Troost is no more.

Just in Time for Holiday Shopping

My inclusion on the Republican mailing list is a constant source of joy (thank you, JL!). Today, I received a solicitation for my genuine Official RNC Calendar.

My favorite month is October, where Bush is portrayed groping a black woman and one of his henchmen is scowling viciously at a little child. Sweet.


Just think, we will only have one more of these calendars before the worst president ever is removed from office (assuming he doesn't resign or get impeached before his term is up).

Saberhagen - Misguided Hypothetical Idealism

Brett Saberhagen is on the ballot for the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame for the first time. Everyone knows he stands no better chance of being picked than I do, but he has chosen this moment to announce that, if selected, he will not accept the honor because of his principles.

What triggers this noble sacrifice of an honor he was never going to get anyhow? Could it be that he, having broken into Major League Baseball in Kansas City, recognizes the outrageous and, now, irredeemable, slight to Buck O'Neil, and is choosing to use this tiny, tiny moment of hypthetical influence to chastise the powers-that-be at Cooperstown?

Hah.

No, he's saying he would decline the honor because Cooperstown has refused to admit a compulsive liar and gambler into the Hall of Fame. Pete Rose, not Buck O'Neil, is the person for whom Saberhagen is willing to lay down his chance at baseball immortality.

Isn't that special?

Somebody Please Tell the Terrorists the Election is Over

In the run-up to the recent elections, the Republicans and their corporate media friends tried to paint the ghastly violence in Iraq as some sort of pro-Democratic attempt by the terrorists to influence our elections. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, the UPI, and an endless stream of right-wing bloggers assured us that the insurgency was surging only because they had made a sophisticated calculation that explosions in Baghdad would make American voters turn to the Democrats.

The flaws in this "logic" were so numerous that they defied enumeration. Did they use focus groups to make sure that the voters wouldn't rally to the Republicans in the face of unrest abroad? What about the fact that the voters went Democratic for a host of other reasons, such as personal freedoms, responsible fiscal policies, and competent management?

Regardless, now that the election is over, would somebody please pass the word on to the insurgents that they can celebrate the Democratic victories, and ease up on the violence? Instead, they have continued to escalate the violence, and have now turned to burning each other alive.

Or maybe Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld (oops, cross him off the list) and the corporate media will start telling us that this is an early attempt to influence the 2008 elections.

Or maybe, just maybe, the horrible violence is the direct result of a war of aggression launched by an administration that utterly failed to plan the aftermath with a shred of competence. Yeah, I think that's a more logical explanation of what is going on over there today.

(Hat tip to Glenn Greenwald's powerful post from Friday for much of the thought and research behind this post.)

John Fogerty? Why?

Yesterday was a great day to watch a bunch of good football, capped off with a great Chiefs victory. I loved it.

But can anyone explain why loyal football fans were subjected to not just one, but TWO, horribly lame performances by a washed-up, not-a-has-been-because-he-never-really-was
John Fogerty?! Even the sparse crowds brought on to the field to stand in front of the stages were looking bored, and checking their watches.

Worse yet, we had to watch him and his family get flown on private jets and driven in limos (why wasn't that little girl in a car seat, or at least a seat belt???), just like he is still a real rock star.

Was Corey Hart busy?

Dueling Clipboards at Brookside Market

Yesterday afternoon, on the way home from work, I dropped by the Brookside Market to pick up a loaf of bread, unaware that the day before Thanksgiving is not the wisest time to attempt a brief shopping sortie. The crowds of festive people, though, make a target-rich environment for signature-seekers trying to complete their candidacy petitions.

On my way in, I got approached by Jim Glover (no website yet, Jim?). I've known him for years, and he is a decent, if unexciting, guy. I signed his petition, discussed name recognition (a positive for him), and thanked him for participating.

On the way out, I stopped to chat with him again, and, while I was chatting, none other than Mark Funkhouser showed up, bearing clipboards! I signed his petition, too (yes, you are allowed to sign more than one petition), with considerably more enthusiasm. Within moments of showing up, Funkhouser was surrounded by well-wishers and eager supporters. MPA graduates appeared out of nowhere, as well as neighborhood activists and concerned citizens.

It wasn't a debate, it wasn't a poll, and it certainly wasn't the primary. But, on the day before Thanksgiving, on the sidewalk outside of Brookside Market, there was a clear favorite. Mark Funkouser is on his way to a big job that starts on March 28.

Bring on the Funkhouser

Just in case there was any doubt, yes, I am on the Mark Funkhouser bandwagon, along with every other supporter of good government. He's smart, committed, hard-working and honest. And he knows more about the city's inner workings than anybody else in the world.

I like several of the other candidates, but none of them can hold a candle to Mark.

2005 Spam Emails

Checking the spam folder ranks way down on my list of priorities, so they tend to stack up. Right now, I have 2005 spam emails at my main email address, and a review of them brings a few thoughts to mind.

1. If Cana Petroleum really does go from $2.00 a share to around $10 a share within the next few weeks, I am going to feel pretty stupid for not paying attention to the emails that Jess Jacob and dozens of others have sent me. They say that opportunity only knocks once, but this investment opportunity has been pounding on my spam folder many, many times.

2. Why would I trust my health to a pharmacist selling "Vi@GrA"? If they can't even spell a six letter word correctly, what are the odds of them sending me the right pills?

3. Why are all these banks closing my accounts? And why do I have so many suspicious activity alerts from Ebay and Paypal? I keep on updating my accounts at the sites included in their emals . . .

4. The most clever spammers are the penis enlargement ones. Somehow, they get around my spam filter by making it look like they've all been forwarded from my wife's account.

Riding on I-70

I spent 4 hours on I-70 yesterday, driving to and from Jefferson City. Time alone in a car, listening to Slaid Cleave and similar country-tinged music through mid-Missouri, headed to a meeting full of people and issues from a prior life - it all provokes rumination on a stretch of road I've spent so many hours traveling on - I-70 between St. Louis and Kansas City.

I remember driving the first car we bought - a $200 1973 Dodge Dart Swinger Special with a bullet hole in the windshield - and stopping at Nickerson Farms in High Hill along the way to take pictures of our so-youthful selves on the hood.

I remember trips during law school days to come up and interview with firms for jobs. Driving in a new wool suit, white shirt, burgundy tie. I thought I knew what I wanted, and I thought I was driving toward it.

I remember swinging up to the Huston Tavern in Arrow Rock for a meal at the on the way back to St. Louis for my father's funeral, and I remember my sister being with us. This could be one of those tricks that memory plays, though, since I'm sure she was with her husband at the funeral. Regardless, I remember the sense of quiet spiritual nourishment from the delay and distraction before we continued on to face the rest of it.

Mostly, though, I remember a trip on the Fourth of July when Ali was a little girl. We drove back from St. Louis at night, and, as we drove through the plains east of Columbia, dozens of little towns on the horizon were setting off their fireworks displays. It was other-worldly, to see the blooms of light all around us - small from the distance, but more touching for their isolation. No up-close extravaganza will ever mean as much to me as seeing all those small displays of pride in America, shared with my little girl. It bordered on the unbelievable, and was a memory I will have forever, and she mentioned it not too long ago as one of her fond memories. Fireworks viewed from I-70 on a Fourth of July night years ago with my daughter - it's the sort of thing I never expected and didn't seek, but you never can tell what that stretch of highway will imprint on the rest of your life.

Republican Family-Planning Chief Doesn't Believe in Family-Planning

How do you get a job in this administration? Bush has shown that he tends to look at horse lawyers to run FEMA, cranky neo-cons to be Secretary of Defense, and scandal-plagued zealots for the Supreme Court. And the Republican Congress approved them all.

Now, he has hired someone actively hostile to the work he was hired to do. Eric Keroack, the new deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, will be in charge of spending $283 million in annual family-planning grants, opposes contraception! Why in the world would he oppose contraception? Because it is "demeaning to women"!

No, I'm not making that up.

What's more, he doesn't even want people to talk about contraception. The nonprofit he worked for does not distribute information promoting birth control at its pregnancy service centers.

Great hire! Heck of a job, Bushie.

Indoctrination

The Communist Manifesto in cartoons.

This is my first YouTube post - I'm not exactly on the leading edge in blogging, am I?

Appeasement Worked

One of the favorite rallying points of the supporters of Bush's optional war is the false claim that "appeasement never works." It sounds good, because appeasement sounds weak, and it's kind of fun to act like you are wise to the ways of the world. Unfortunately, smart people know that you're simply wrong when you make that absurd claim.

Does anyone remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? By any reasonable definition of appeasement, appeasement played the heroic role of saving me and the rest of my world.

Does anyone remember when bombs were going off all over Ireland and England? If appeasement hadn't stepped in, we might still be picking up pieces of Catholic and Protestant school children.

Going back a few more years, appeasement has prevented the US and Canada from shedding buckets of blood during several tense periods.

In fact, if you define appeasement broadly, just about every peace treaty and every stable border is due to the policy that never works.

Speaking of not working, I wonder what the supporters of the war were doing instead of working on their history lessons.

City Hall, Corruption and Municipal Court - Fairfield is the Posterboy - not the Problem

The KC Star is portraying a donation made by a lawyer to longshot mayoral candidate John Fairfield as almost a bribe. They point out that within hours of voting to restore a lawyer-dominated plea system, he was emailing staff to find out whether Coult DeVries, a local lawyer, had been generous to his campaign. The Star ignores the fact that, if he were selling his vote, Fairfield would have checked on the donation before he cast his vote.

The problem here is not the timing of an email. The real problem is that the plea system in Kansas City Municipal Court is set up not to serve the people of Kansas City, or to mete out justice, but to keep lawyers' lives simple and profitable.

There are good judges and good lawyers who do fine work down at Municipal Court. The plea system is not about that. The plea system is simply that anybody with a law license can take a client's speeding ticket down and get it amended to a lesser plea, so that insurance rates don't get raised. It doesn't require forensic skills or a well-argued closing - it just requires that the lawyer fill out the forms and follow the instructions.

Here's the kicker, though. You can't do it for yourself. You cannot represent yourself in Municipal Court and get a fair shake. Unless you pay a lawyer to do this for you, you cannot get the plea deal.

You can make decent money doing traffic tickets as a lawyer. There is a small group of lawyers who survive mostly on this kind of work - and a much larger group who use it to supplement the work they prefer. This isn't Atticus Finch type work, but it's easy and it keeps bread on the table.

When Galen Beaufort, a city attorney with real integrity, upset the system, the lawyers who do that kind of work reacted with predictable outrage. Melissa Howard, an insider who was (fortunately) recently rejected for a judgeship on the Municipal Court, tried to get Beaufort fired. All the lawyers who see traffic tickets as an easy-access gravy train howled - and the ones with a real financial stake in the status qho increased their donations to members of the City Council.

The final (so far) result of the saga is that the City Council got an earful and a walletful from their lawyer friends, and overrode Beaufort's decision. They didn't do so because the old system was fair - it wasn't. They didn't do so because the old system kept Kansas Citians safe - it didn't. They did so because the old system is a form of welfare for the lawyers who worked it - and those lawyers raised a stink.

I don't care when Fairfield sent his email - if it had come 6 months after his vote, or 6 months before, it couldn't make things any clearer. Some insider lawyers saw their easy money disappearing, and the City Council stepped in to make certain that you, a Kansas City taxpayer, cannot get the same deal in Muncipal Court that the lawyer friends of the council can.

A Soldier Looks at Tuesday

One of the right-wing blogs I visit on occasion went off the deep end after the election, and posted (approvingly) one of the most unhinged, horribly anti-American and just plain ugly posts from an anonymous alleged soldier about the fact that Americans went democratic on Tuesday.

After reading the ugly diatribe, I was curious about what a real, non-anonymous, patriotic soldier would have to say about Tuesday's results. I'm cutting and pasting most of his post (sue me for copyright violation, Jason!), because his writing deserves a broad and appreciative audience . . .

I'm sorry, but I haven't been able to stop smiling all day long. I'm in uniform, so I'm keeping it to myself, but I feel such an immense sense of pride, accomplishment, and relief all at once. Diana and I worked extremely hard over the past two years to make today a reality. That's not to say that this is our doing, just that we are among the vast numbers of progressives who put our entire hearts and souls into the belief that we could change things. I know that our contribution made a small difference in Missouri, and I couldn't be prouder. It has felt like Christmas morning all day long. I only wish I could be there to share it with Diana, my best friend and partner in crime, as well as all the great friends we've made in this journey over the past two years. I'm glad Diana can at least share this with them tonight. Thank you all for your friendship and hard work. Please raise an extra beer for me.

By the way..."Senator Claire McCaskill". How cool is that? There was an explosion here today, but it wasn't fireworks ... unfortunately. However, I am considering celebrating Afghan style (firing in the air), but even if I weren't kidding, I wouldn't do it b/c I have to account for these bullets.

Kidding aside, even if you're not happy with today's results, hopefully you can agree with me about one thing.

My state just elected its first woman Senator. The House of Representatives, for the first time in our history, is about to be lead by a woman. Today, I am especially proud to be an American fighting an enemy that would consider both of these developments an abomination.

But this was actually articulated better by a friend of mine after her promotion ceremony the other day. I asked her to send me the text of her remarks at the conclusion of the ceremony.

This is the part I wanted to share with you:

Serving here in Afghanistan fighting an enemy that would like nothing more than to keep me under a burka, to be seen and not heard, and to be deprived of any sort of education or social standing makes today's ceremony much more significant and reminds me of how lucky we truly are to be from countries that value all of their citizens regardless of gender.

I was very moved by that and I thought of it a lot today as I gleefully watched the returns.

If you don't visit Jason's blog regularly, you should.

Anybody Want to Learn to Homebrew?

I'll be brewing up 10 gallons of beer tomorrow morning, November 12, in the Brookside area. Drop me an email at dan@gonemild.com if you want to come over and see how it's done.

Complaining About the Election

You'd think that a democrat like me would be all sunshine and smiles about Tuesday's election, but I'm not. While the results were great, the process here in Kansas City was ridiculous, and I want to know what to do to get it fixed.

Here in Kansas City, we have gone from a relatively easy punch-card system to an awkward, slow, and (perhaps) ineffective optical scanner/SAT-style fill-in-the-ovals-with-a-stubby-pencil-without-an-eraser system. According to the poll worker, if you strayed even a tiny bit out of the line, or left even a tiny bit of the oval blank, your vote would not count, but the scanner would not let you know that your vote was rejected.

Why should Kansas City's electorate be restricted to those who excelled in first grade art class? Why, rather than pushing a button or flipping a switch or jabbing a stylus, are Kansas Citians now required to huddle over a paper ballot with a three-inch pencil? This is progress?

Who made this decision? Why? How do we get it fixed?

Funny Republican Incompetence - Don't Tell!

As I've mentioned before, some wag submitted one of my email addresses to the Republican National Committee, so I have been treated (subjected?) to regular emails from the likes of Ken Mehlman, Jim Talent and assorted Bushes. They've been mildly amusing and utterly unpersuasive, but I understand that I'm not their intended audience. They're targetting the true believers - the ones who think it's neat that W has their email address, and who can be counted upon to deliver votes to the ballot boxes.

The bungled handling of this list for the election was a classic. At 2:11 in the morning on election day, I received a helpful email from Michael DuHaime, the RNC Political Director, providing me with handy directions to my specific polling place.

I have to admit, that's a pretty impressive use of technology - except they got it wrong!! They told me my voting place was the Country Club Congregational Church, but it is actually a few miles away at St. Peter's! And, sure enough, when I went to the proper voting place, there was some confused woman there who was wondering if she would be able to cast a vote at St. Peter's, even though she normally votes at Country Club! Way to go, RNC!

For what it's worth, I received a final email at 2:03 this morning (long after all polls were closed) from W, exhorting me to "vote Republican and to ask all your family and friends to go to the polls. The stakes are too high for you to stay at home." Nice, George. The stakes were apparently too high for me to listen to the RNC's directions, too.

Please, dear readers, don't let the RNC know how badly it screwed up. It probably cost them a bunch of votes this time, and, really, it's only right that Republican voters be subjected to the sort of costly incompetence we've all been suffering through.

5 Things That Matter More Than Politics

Tomorrow is the big show. Candidates and their legions of volunteers - political junkies of all stripes - will violate comfort zones, theirs and others, outside of polling places, in a day of dramatic, last-ditch, desperate activity, followed by an evening of sharp-eyed, nervous news-watching. By the day after tomorrow, the winners will have won, the losers will have lost, and the pundits will pick at the corpse of all the hopes and fears that are played out on the grand stage of local and state politics.

I'll never be one of those cynics who say it doesn't matter - it does. Will Missouri serve as a research center to help come up with life-saving cures, alleviating pain and misery? Will the Bush administration be subjected to oversight in its bungling of the war? Will Congress continue to stack massive debt on the unborn, in the form of an uncontrolled budget deficit?

But, in the rush of argument and conflict, it's worthwhile to step back a pace or two and put things into perspective. There ARE things that matter more to our daily lives than the crush of politics, and some people are likely to forget that important fact for the next 24 hours.

1. Family: Even when they're an insane distance away - even when they're in a different part of the country becoming a fabulous person you never imagined - even (especially?) when they're next to you day by mundane precious day for decades, there's a history and a tie there like nothing else. Take a moment tomorrow and let them know they matter more to you than your Senate candidate. They know it, but they might be surprised to know you do.

2. Art: Be it poetry, a favorite painting, a guitar riff, or a novel, a work of art that really touches you is a far greater accomplishment than a push poll, a yard sign, or a whole campaign. A friend of mine bumped into Alan Wheat and his wife at the theater the day after his loss to John Ashcroft for the Senate, and that confirmed to me that the United States would be a better country if Wheat had won. A man who seeks solace in artistic expression is a far better man that one who covers statues with drapery.

3. Friends: I'm blessed with friends, and I appreciate them every day. Friends who hear that I have a problem and start helping before I even ask. Friends who make me laugh over mugs of beer on a Saturday afternoon until my ribs hurt. Friends who read this blog and share their opinions, in person or in comments. I like to think that I am a pretty good friend, but friendship is a debt that keeps on building. So many people are so important to me in so many ways. And some of them are even Republicans.

4. Kids: Little soccer players with shin guards, the baby with the big, round, bald head and a goofy smile I saw at lunch today, the vanloads of excited trick-or-treaters running through the neighborhood last week, the charming kids with disabilities I'll see tomorrow . . . Any one of them may change the world - actually, each of them has. Appeciate them, and let them know it if you get the chance. Smile back and make faces at babies.

5. Mystery: What makes you wonder? What fascinates you, and makes you want to know more? God? Physics? What it was like to be a soldier in the Civil War? Indian cooking? Far away lands? That sense of wonder is what makes you so interesting.
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Tomorrow will offer the opportunity to witness a whole lot of people losing perspective. The losers will feel like the United States has proven that its culture is going down the tubes. The winners will think a new day is dawning, and things will be much better soon. And they're both partially right. But really, they're just suffering from a loss of perspective.

And I'll probably be one of them. If I'm on the winning side, I'll roll with it. If I wind up on the losing side, though, I hope I stop moping and start thinking about the things that matter more. A whole lot more.

Jim Talent - Ineffective in the Senate

One of Jim Talent's big selling points is that, if elected, he will work to create a health care plan that "would help lower health insurance costs and reduce the number of uninsured Missourians. His plan would allow small business people to join together nationally to sponsor affordable health insurance plans for themselves and their workers."

My question is, if this is such a good idea, and Talent is working hard for his constituents, why in the hell is he bringing it up now? He's been in a Republican-controlled Senate, with a Republican-controlled House, under a Bush White House. NOW he's finally getting around to coming up with ideas to help Missourians?!?

Talent has been part of the rubber-stamp republican majority that only does what Bush tells them to do. It's too late to start acting like you have your own ideas, Senator Talent. Where were you when we needed you?

Claire McCaskill will begin working for us, instead of backroom Republican bosses, on the day she starts. If Talent had done that, maybe he wouldn't be dreaming up pie in the sky now. He's had his chance to be a Senator, and he failed.