5 years ago.... yesterday

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Hey, it's not like we wanted to steal anyone else's thunder but it was July 31, 2007 when we kicked off this humble little blog. It was our intent to be primarily a sports blog* but the amnesty throw-down that summer and the brewing campaign for the 2008 presidential election radically altered that.

Below is the text of our first post**. Thanks to all who have read BwD, even if only on occasion and thanks especially to those who have contributed to the dialog by commenting on our posts.

Before I get into what the hell it is that I think I'm doing, let me say a few words about the title of this blog. Months back when ESPN got a slice of the NASCAR T.V. pie, ESPN/ABC named Brent Musberger as its studio host, the man who would guide the World Wide Leader through the uncharted waters of stock car racing. When questioned about his qualifications of being the network's point man in covering NASCAR, Musberger somewhat defensively responded that he has had a lot of contact and interaction already with fans of the sport and in fact, has had ".... beers with that demographic."

Something about that quote cracked me up. Was it the fact that he made it a point that he was gettin' likker'd-up with the rabble of red-staters? Was it the clinical condescension in referring to the people he was trying to get down with as merely a "demographic"? Probably both. I dunno - it was amusing and it appeared to encapsulate (I think) what I want to do. A lot of sports, a little culture and yeah, some politics.

Please bear with me as I figure out this whole blogging thing. Mostly, I'm going to struggle with the choice of content. For example, I've got a lot of friends who love me but hate my politics. If I decide to post about a controversial topic in that realm, do I put up a warning label at the top of my post? Do I start a separate blog: one for sports, one for politics and culture? I have no clue. A few things I do know: There will be no schedule, no regular posting times and hopefully no rhyme or reason to this but I do hope you will enjoy it and that is the bottom line.

A special thank you goes out to my little brother who has been nagging me for over a year now to do something like this. If nothing else, this demonstrates the sadistic bent in the family genes.

Take care.

* Which explains our long-time masthead figure, sports announcer, Brent Musberger.


** In which, spammers wasted no time in pouncing.

If it's Sunday, probably a good time for a Tim Tebow post

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Tim Tebow, Tebowing, Tim Tebow Tebowing, Tim Tebow, Tebowing, Tim Tebowing the Pittsburgh Steelers, Tim Tebow, Tebowing, Tim not-Tebowing the New England Patriots, Tim Tebow, Tebowing, Tim Tebowing and driving all the right people absolutely bonkers, Tim Tebow, Tebowing, Tim Tebowing and John Elway and John Fox have got quite a predicament on their hands, Tim Tebow, Tebowing, Tim Tebowing, Tim Tebow, Tebowing, Tim Tebow continuing to Tebowing.

* For those of you who have stumbled across this site because of a word search or a Google image search, welcome to Beers with Demo! We're huge sports fans but do not blog too much about it concentrating instead, and perhaps, unfortunately, on politics and culture here in America, California and our hometown of San Diego from a conservative/libertarian perspective.

If that sounds like your thing, please feel free to stop by again real soon. Thanks!


** Yes, absolutely shameless self-promotion.

Whither Beers with Demo?

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Folks, sometime Friday around noon, Google saw fit to delete the Beers with Demo blog site as well as disabling our Google account.

We have no idea why or how this happened. We can speculate but we don't want to descend too far into the fever swamps of conspiracy theories. We are indeed opinionated around here but it is also our belief we keep things civil and above board, snarking aside.

We want to thank everyone for their concern, particularly B-Daddy at The Liberator Today, KT of The Scratching Post and Sir Charles of Doo Doo Economics who took active parts in helping us figure out why we got shut down, how to get back online and/or recovering previous posts.

Needless to say, we will be looking into ways to back up our posts here at Beers with Demo.

We have a lot to get caught up on but it's good to be back online.

The 1st annual Beers with Demo meet'n'greet confab open thread

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As of this posting, we and Max are down at Pizza Port OB soaking up award-winning beer, great pizza and enjoyable fellowship.

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A pre-emptive hope that you can make it down there to hang out with us.

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Programming reminder

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Consider yourself forewarned: The first annual Beers with Demo meet'n'greet with Dean and Max will be going down this Saturday at the Pizza Port Ocean Beach locale from 2 to 5 in the afternoon.

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What to look for: great beer, really good pizza and at least one of the hosts sporting an L.A. Dodger ballcap and at least one of the other hosts sporting hair which will be aflame in reddish/orangeish hues and possibly a San Francisco Giants ballcap as well.

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Port OB is kid-friendly so bring the entire family down to relax with some outstanding food and drink before the crush of the holiday season is upon us.

See you all there!

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A special programming announcement

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We'll be in Vegas this weekend returning later on Monday but that's not the big announcement.

We let on a week or two ago but it's now official: Beers with Demo is sponsoring the first (annual?) BwD meet Dean and Max Extravaganza.

We figured it would be a cool way to get some people together, relax and generally have a good time. The details as follows:



When: Saturday, November 19


Where: Pizza Port OB (Ocean Beach) - the open layout will give us a chance to spread out a bit if need be and, uh, you'll only be drinking some of the finest beer on the planet. Port carries other great local and California craft beers besides their own medal-winning beers.


Time: We figured we would try to take advantage of whatever mid-afternoon lull there would be so how about from 2-5 PM? Oh, and bring the kids... but leave the dog at home.


OK, that's it for now. We'll be back live late Monday or Tuesday but we should hopefully have some stuff lined up over the weekend. And we're looking forward to hanging with you all on the 19th - sure hope you can make it.

Programming Alert

Well, well, well... looky there. Our 4,000 post and we have nothing really profound to say. Through this work week, posting will be spotty and inconsistent which is not really breaking any new ground except that we have an excuse in that we will be out on sea trials.

4,000th post: a call to mediocrity!

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Programming alert

Now, that was strange. Blogger, the service provided by Google which hosts Beers with Demo basically shut down Thursday afternoon, wiping out posts and preventing us from putting up new posts along the way until late on Friday. It's a free service so there's only so much bitching and whining we can do.

Anyway, we're back and we'll get caught up on some regular features such as MAXED OUT and Radio KBwD here in no time.

If you check in on a daily basis (or even if you don't), thanks for your patience).

Programming Alert

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OK. Our first live post since we returned from a long weekend get-away to Joshua Tree National Park with family and friends. Please allow us to get our sea legs back as the Tree is, thankfully, an information-age black hole and other than being able to dial in some of the NCAA tournament games on the radio (VCU?!) we have no idea what is going on in the world.

We'll be back later today with, hopefully, something pertinent and/or topical.

Some of the kinfolk screwing around at the Hall of Horrors at Joshua Tree.

* Not Joshua Tree, rather a water tank that once served a now-defunct set of Southern Pacific tracks in the Anza-Borrego Desert in a picture we took earlier this month. Those are the Laguna Mountains in the background.

Programming alert

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We'll be out at Joshua Tree for the weekend for one of our nephew's 21st birthday which means no more black-clad federales swooping down upon our campsite to issue general house-keeping citations among other things.

As it is then, you can expect light and scattered blogging for the rest of the weekend.

Ciao.

Programming Alert

Blogging may be light for the next day or two as we are struggling with our annual set-your-clock-by-it mid-March mother of all head colds.

Follower blog post of the day

Our somewhat daily opportunity to express our gratitude to the bloggers of the interwebs who have also humbled us by being followers of Beers with Demo as well.


But first, check out this photo from NOAA of the energy unleashed by the quake in Japan.

Tim at Left Coast Rebel owns and operates a tremendous conservative blog site but we're kind of thinking that his first love might just be natural disasters as he has a great round-up of videos from Japan and Hawai'i including this one of the explosion at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant that proves it was neither Barack Obama's nor George W. Bush's fault but rather those damn commies!




Karl Marx makes an appearance in the billowing plume just to the left of the center of the picture at 0:58.



Click and scroll at the link above for more great videos and near-Darwin award moments of intrepid(?)
folks capturing the tsunami tides.

Video clip of the day

Welcome to the People Magazine edition of Beers with Demo where we will dig deep into the psyche of America's pop culture landscape.

Today's subject: Dancing With The Stars!

Or more precisely, the reaction to Bristol Palin being an improbable finalist on the show.

Here's Joy Behar, Sandra Bernhard and two other chicks on "The Joy Behar Show" opining brilliantly on Ms. Palin's performance. Ostensibly, there are two comediennes on the set but as you will see there is not one funny, insightful, witty or humorous thing said by the lot. It's 3 minutes of hate that only picks up steam as these jackals try to one up each other.






Count this as a reason we do not want to see Sarah Palin run. People come absolutely unhinged with regard to anything related to Palin and this is proof that should she run, we won't get anywhere near discussing/debating the pressing issues of the time. She hasn't declared yet, it's not an election year and it's her daughter on television and this is what passes for civil discourse?

Then again, maybe we should just consider the source.

Debased pop culture commenting on frivolous pop culture.

We hope you have enjoyed today's People Magazine edition of Beers with Demo.


H/T: Hot Air

Quickies

A round up of articles, news items and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.



With the President's approval numbers in the tank, we see a surge in Obama is a Muslim and Obama's not a citizen polling data. Outlets like the WaPo and New York Times circle the wagons and connect the dots: Of course the President is not going to be popular in a nation full of wingnuts.



2005: The President betrayed the country.
2010: For the sake of national unity, we should treat the President with more respect.

Dan Riehl on Mark Halperin's appalling double standard.



Paint it Blue: Top ten highest taxed states.



Antonio Cromartie of the New York Jets breaks down the duties and responsibilities of fatherhood. Well, he was before he decided to give us a taste of his rather prodigious fathering talents instead.



Just glad this degenerate is no longer with the Chargers.



Secular Apostate explains how to make a billion dollars of profit.... gummint style.


Color us among those that are baffled by BYU (Mountain West conference) going independent in football and leaving all their other Olympic sports to the WAC (not an unsimilar arrangement to that of Notre Dame who is an indy in football while Big East in all other sports). Alas, even Notre Dame considered joining the Big 10 in football this past spring and BYU is no Notre Dame. Maybe there is a vast Mormon Nation out there of which we were previously unaware that will tune in every Saturday on BYU.tv to watch the Cougars.

Conference realignment a' go-go will take more uneven twists and turns in the near future and all which leads us to believe that a PAC-10/Mountain West merger is in the 3-5 year future. Lock it up.



Hard hat strike?: it's going to be awfully difficult to build that mosque if every one refuses to build it.


Joel Kotkin on California's war on itself:

What went so wrong? The answer lies in a change in the nature of progressive politics in California. During the second half of the twentieth century, the state shifted from an older progressivism, which emphasized infrastructure investment and business growth, to a newer version, which views the private sector much the way the Huns viewed a city—as something to be sacked and plundered. The result is two separate California realities: a lucrative one for the wealthy and for government workers, who are largely insulated from economic decline; and a grim one for the private-sector middle and working classes, who are fleeing the state.

Though he does more essay style writing that is a tad different than the staccato bursts coming from both Capt. Ed and Allah Pundit on a daily basis, we believe Doc Zero to be one of the most talented writers on the web. His thoughts on pessimism, the state of the union, an inevitable American decline and what it is we can learn from the resourcefulness and resiliency of our armed forces now that we can reflect upon the end of combat operations and troop withdrawal in Iraq:

Inevitable? Like hell. The heroes of Operation Iraqi Freedom heard that word a lot over the last few years, but they never paid much attention. They’re coming home to the early days of an amazing story about the resilience of liberty. I’m sure their Iraqi pen pals can’t wait to hear about it.

Programming Alert

We are going to be out of pocket for most, if not all of the weekend, so blogging will be light if not non-existent for a day or so. Please check back in, though, for anything we might've had pre-packaged.

Have a great weekend.

Programming Alert

We'll be out of pocket for the next couple of days, so posting may be of the scheduled, scarce and/or stale variety.

Hey, the weather is turning around here a bit in San Diego, is it not? Not that the rest of the country ever wants to hear a Diegan suggest that the weather ever has been something less than optimal. Fair enough, but those quakes keep persisting. A 5.7 on Monday night.

We'll be back live on Friday but check back in the meantime to see what we have pre-packaged.

Programming Alert

We'll be out of pocket for the next couple of days taking in as much of the Anza-Borrego desert east of San Diego before it gets too hot.

We didn't line up anyone to do any guest blogging so posting will be of the scheduled and scarce variety.

We'll catch up again on Sunday evening or Monday

Everyone enjoy their weekend and please be safe out there, OK?

Programming Alert

OK. Just trying some remote blogging with our new laptop at K and B Wine Cellars in Del Cerro this evening.
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Pizza Port Brewery just released their massively hopped Port Mongo which we are enjoying right now.

Will check back in later with an update, perhaps.

Programming Alert

Starting Monday morning we will be departing the family compound high on the plains of Colorado and will be out on the road again on our return leg to SoCal so we will be going with a combo of scheduled posts and guest-bloggers. We want to thank our guest-bloggers again for their outstanding contributions to BwD in our absence.

Special Announcement

So, what were we saying about the incestuous and inbred nature of this country’s power structure that has been at the very core of the mess in which we now reside?

I guess for me there are two interesting aspects of the story. The first is how thorny it's been for Treasury to bring in people to help fix the financial mess. They've had to grant waivers over various lobbying restrictions, and they've been at pains to find people with the expertise to fix the mess that we're in but who were not themselves part of the mess. That's a small applicant pool. Leaving aside the merits of the Cuomo investigation, it's likely to make that pool even smaller.

That from Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic on the resignation of the Car Czar, Steve Rattner.

So, in order to get as far outside that proverbial little box as humanly possible, Beers with Demo officially endorses Iowahawk as the new Car Czar.