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.

Programming alert

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Back at sea today on the USNS MEDGAR EVERS, so we will be taking a short blog-break. Hope to see you all again tomorrow.


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Blog posts that write themselves

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We'll freely admit we don't know the full context of what Clueless Joe is talking about here in a campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa but when you utter the words "Global Minimum Tax", you are going to get called on it.





Yawn. We suppose it's good applause track material depending upon your audience but "Global Minimum Tax" has slipped into a category along with "Kyoto Protocol" as items that don't have a chance in hell of ever being enacted here. At least, we think.

As it stands, it's responsible to remain vigilant against non-sense spewing forth from the likes of our hapless Veep. Besides, what's to be lost with encouraging the other side to use a "Global Minimum Tax" as a campaign platform plank? Always a big hit with the general electorate.

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Programming Alert

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Even more so than normally, blogging will be spotty, of questionable quality and most likely of the pre-scheduled heat'n' serve variety as we will be out of pocket the next couple of days and at sea aboard the good ship USNS MEDGAR EVERS (T-AKE 13) for sea trials.

We're hoping to be back live by Friday morning.

Ciao.

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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.

Got Tebow?

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Our blog-buddy Harrison over at Capitol Commentary gives his take on the Tim Tebow phenomena. He's not a big fan of Tebowing though he uses solid Scripturally-based logic to make his case.

In his post, he called us out specifically for our thoughts on the matter for which we obliged. The following is our edited-up comment:

We have zero issues with Tebow and his Tebowing. In reality, sports figures have been Tebowing and praising God in interviews for years now.

A confluence of circumstances have led to this: an overtly spiritual young man (who actually appears to walk the talk) and absolutely the most improbable, absurd, and fun! sports runs that we have ever witnessed. These week-after-week Indiana Jones-like cliff hangers defy all logic and conventional wisdom.

If Tebow remained buried at #4 on the depth chart, all this, of course, would be a non-issue. But head coach John Fox and general manager, John Elway bowed to popular pressure knowing that there was no way in hell heck that this Heisman Trophy winner with the atrocious mechanics and unconventional style would succeed in the NFL: Put him out there, watch him flail, bench him for good and get on with business. Well, well, well.

Early in the run, it was priceless to see Elway up in the luxury box gritting his teeth and grimacing as if to say, "Damn Dang, this kid is actually going to pull this thing out, again."

Our advise to opposing players (and for everyone else out there) who take issue with Tebow getting too Jesus-y: Keep him and his Bronco teammates out of the endzone in the last two minutes of the game and in overtime which appears to be the only time the Broncos score.

Full disclosure: We are Charger fans… but still can’t help but having our ever-lovin’ brains blown away by this guy’s performances every week.

P.S. Tebow was mic’ed up for last week’s game against the Bears. When he was praying during the game-winning field goal, he was essentially desiring to give glory to God win OR lose.

Now, this might not represent the most noble logic but another reason why we're just enjoying the heck out of this ride is, of course, because Tebow is cheezing off all the right people.

Here's liberal tool, Bill Press, illustrating perfectly, our point.





For those of you in Placentia, California, "S-T-F-U" translates to "Shut the f#@k up".

Just some more of that new civility we've been hearing so much about.

And for Press to become so exorcised and agitated over someone who merely plays professional football and is of absolutely zero consequence to Press's life, we won't have to waste a whole lot of time wondering who is the real disgrace and embarrassment here.

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.

Links of the day

B-Daddy has got a photo line-up of the 1%ers. You might just recognize a few of them.




He also participated in a virtual townhall phonecon with Susan Davis (D-San Diego). After reading his recounting of the event, we were wondering how it is that it is only waterboarding that is illegal.






KT loves the President's new idea (which really isn't all that new if you follow the comments at the link) of capping student loan payments at 10% of your income and thinks that if we apply that to other sectors of the economy we can really get the economy roaring.

From the comments:

Student "loans" are not loans at all. They are welfare payments to entice young people to eschew the workplace for a decade and to support tenured Professors of of Nitwittery and their feckless graduate students.

Secular Apostate breaks down the #Occupy Wall Street list of demands with some running commentary of his own.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

It’s their fault that women and minorities don’t major in mechanical engineering and investment banking, and choose Vagina Studies or Queer History instead.


They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

Which is why everybody is dead and arugula is so expensive at Whole Foods.


They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

It’s their fault we’re not all vegans. Set the chickens free so they can join us in solidarity!

Good stuff. Go to the link.

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 reminder

Hey, gang... just a quick update: The San Diego Local Order of Bloggers (the SLOBs) has an aggregator at, get this, the SLOBs. Thanks again, Sir Charles!

Get on over there and "like" us if you will, please. Several other "share" options are available as well.

Obviously, there is a lot going on right now even in these dog days of August so use the SLOBs as a source of info in getting up to speed on the libertarian/conservative perspective of life, culture and politics (and even some sports!) here in San Diego, California, the U.S. and the world at large.


Blogging may be a little light today as Max and I scout out some new breweries for a Hoffer's brewery bus tour, hopefully in September.


Pax.

Programming Alert

Great news! Our friend and fellow SLOB (San Diego Local Order of Bloggers... rolled in the right-hand column) Sir Charles of Doo Doo Economics has put together a SLOB blog aggregator. The SLOBs as the name suggests are San Diego area residents who are committed to free and open markets and limited, transparent and Constitutionally-bound governance. A delightful mish-mash of conservative-libertarian poltics can be found at any one of the SLOB sites.


Automatic Blogroll will move the most recent blog posts to the top and easy-to-use "share" functions will allow you to help us get out the word on any number of social media platforms.


We're pretty excited about this and we want to give Charles a huge shout-out and a thank you for undertaking this endeavor and for a job well-done.


We will update our blog roll accordingly to take advantage of this development.

Check it out here.

Link of the day

John over at Truth Before Dishonor is back up and running after some time off. Check out the new look over at his place - we think you will enjoy it.

Hey, looks like our friend Foxie from Head Noises has been doing some guest blogging for him as well.

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

We'd like to take this opportunity to welcome a new SLOB (San Diego Local Order of Bloggers) into the fold.

We had an opportunity to catch up with Ryan of Dueling Barstools yesterday at Stout Public House downtown where any alleged vetting process apparently consisted of a couple pints of Racer 5 and a shot of Jagermeister.

Ryan thought that SLOBs was a rather harsh moniker but we assured him that we were probably going easy on ourselves.

We had a near quorum, as W.C. showed up a little later.

Please be sure to check out a true patriot and a forceful advocate for personal freedom and liberty at the link provided. We'll get it 'rolled when we find the soonest convenient editing opportunity.

Follower blog post of the day

Our daily effort to keep up with the blogging of our followers and to spread around a little love.



Les Carpenter of Rational Nation USA just returned from Britain and found out we can learn an awful lot about American exceptionalism from a Brit.

My guess is that, if anything, Obama would verbalize his ideology using the same vocabulary that Eurocrats do. He would say he wants a fairer America, a more tolerant America, a less arrogant America, a more engaged America. When you prize away the cliché, what these phrases amount to are higher taxes, less patriotism, a bigger role for state bureaucracies, and a transfer of sovereignty to global institutions.

Read the entire very worthwhile post here.

Follower blog post of the day

Thus far, a mostly successful daily effort to showcase blog posts of our favorite people... our followers!

Remember how Obama's acolytes said that we couldn't trust the public to make their own decisions on health care? Guess they were right, but you can't trust the bureaucrats either. The obvious solution is to take away all consumer choice, eh comrade?

B-Daddy of The Liberator Today has some news on an unintended consequence of ObamaCare with respect to flexible spending accounts.

Read about it, here.

Link of the day (UPDATED)

We.... we don't even know what to make of this.

Seriously. Someone please talk us down off this ledge.

(UPDATE #1): Big Sis was on Capitol Hill today fielding questions regarding Project Gunrunner.





We're not sure what's worse: covering up by lying about having no knowledge of this project and her agents being used in it or actually not having any knowledge of this project?

The whistleblowers claim that ATF (Justice Department) coordinated with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) which falls under Homeland Security. One would think that sort of coorindation for something of this sort would require sign-offs pretty high up the food chain at the DHS.


We're in the very best of hands.

Follower blog post of the day

Our daily endeavor to throw some traffic and show our appreciation to the folks that follow us and blog as well.


KT of The Scratching Post on publicly-funded ventures and the inevitability of cannabalism:

(Yeah, we link to him quite often anyway, but when the guy book marks us with our own nickname (top billing in the Theocracy, no less!), (the) "Monastery of Miscellaneous Musings", he's gonna get some love.)

Not all of these stories are motivated by a desire to make sure the others get cut first, but you can be sure that some are. If I was an activist for the Head Start program and I worked at a newspaper or a TV studio, you can be sure that my ideological allies would be feeding me story leads to make their rivals at the public trough look bad. That's how it works in a society where income is dependent on politics. In addition to hiring lobbyists to influence legislators, you whisper in the news media's ear to get the voters to call their representatives.

Remember, gang, you will not remove money, lobbyists, nor incivility from politics until you remove power from politics by corresponding degrees.

Read the rest of the post, here.

Follower blog post of the day

In an attempt to throw some love our "followers'" way as well as to express our gratitude for their follower-ship, we're instituting a new daily feature to which we hope we can hold.

We believe "Scott" has been one of our longest-tenured followers and his Diplomacy is a weighty and well-written foreign policy blog.

Gangsterism, warlordism, shadowy transnational terrorist networks - these are the principal threats to American interests in the region and so the idea that America can go around the world simply arranging balancing coalitions in some grand eighteenth-century European style is just absurd. The new strategic environment calls for an altogether more nuanced and subtle diplomacy, a different blend of elements, and a different set of capabilities. Quite simple one would think, elementary even, and yet American realism seems institutionally incapable of grasping it.

For our innaugural feature, Scott tackles our competing foreign policy strategies in the Middle East, here. Do check it out.

Thanks, Scott.

And where a blogger rolls a NYT columnist by over two touchdowns

Please pardon this brief departure from my normal folderol, but every so often a member of the chattering class issues a nugget of stupidity so egregious that no amount of mockery will suffice. Particularly when the issuer of said stupidity holds a Nobel Prize.

Iowahawk has more of this Big 12 vs. Big 10 trouncing, here.