Beer of the Week (Vol. CXXXIII)

Another edition of Beer of the Week sponsored as always by the sporty crew at Glen Lake Wine & Spirits who have the wine, whisky, and beer to make your big game Sunday most super whether your pulling for the Pats, the G-men, or are one of the millions tuning in for the sake of spectacle (and Madonna’s half time show).

We continue to focus on beers that are appropriate to the season even if this particular winter has been mostly unseasonal in these parts. Considering the foggy, damp days we’ve experienced this week, it seems like a perfect time for a Scotch Ale:

Scotch Ale is the name given to a strong ale believed to have originated in Edinburgh in the 18th century. Beers using the designation Scotch Ale are popular in the USA where most examples are brewed locally. Examples of Scotch Ale brewed in Scotland are exported to the USA, though may be available in Scotland under a different name. For example, Caledonian's Edinburgh Scotch Ale is sold from the cask in Scotland as Edinburgh Strong Ale or as Edinburgh Tattoo.

Strong Scotch Ale is also known as "Wee Heavy". Examples of beers brewed in the USA under the name Wee Heavy tend to be 7% abv and higher, while Scottish-brewed examples, such as Belhaven's Wee Heavy, can be found between 5.5% and 6.5% abv. On the other hand, Scottish brewed exceptions include Traquair House Ale which is brewed to a strength of 7.2% abv, and Traquair Jacobite Ale which is 8% abv. McEwan's Scotch Ale is also 8% abv.

As with other examples of strong Ales, such as Barley Wine, these beers tend toward sweetness and a full body, with a low hop flavour and aroma.

Historical hop levels are debated. Examples from the Caledonian brewery would have toffee notes from the caramelizing of the malt from the direct fired copper. This caramelizing of Caledonian's beers is popular in America and has led many American brewers to produce toffee sweet beers which they would label as a Scotch Ale.

This week’s beer is the first that we’ve featured from Dark Horse Brewery in Marshall, Michigan. Dark Horse seeks to lay claim to being the best brewery in the state, which is a bold boast to make considering the number of and quality of craft brewers who call Michigan home (Arcadia, Bell’s, Founder’s, New Holland, etc.). Our beer of the week is the equally bold and brash Scotty Karate Scotch Ale:

For those of you who don't know who "Scotty Karate" is... He is a local one man band who plays an amazing slurry of honky tonk influenced, punk country songs. His voice is amazing as well as his high energy shows. (Check him out @ www.scottykarate.com) So, we decided to make a beer and name it in his honor. This beer is a big, full bodied Scottish ale. It is 9.75% alc. but it is very smooth and balanced.

Retails for $8.99 for a four-pack of 12oz brown bottles. Label features a funky rendering of namesake one man band leader with purple and yellow color streaks. Based on the headgear that he’s sporting and the color scheme, this could be the official beer of the Vikings.

STYLE: Scotch Ale

ALCOHOL BY VOLUME: 9.75%

COLOR (0-2): Dark copper-brown. 2

AROMA (0-2): Caramel malt with hints of alcohol. 2

HEAD (0-2): Tan color, light volume, tiny bubbles, decent lacing. 2

TASTE (0-5): Strong malt flavors predominate with caramel, toffee, and bread. Sweet, but not overly so. Some tangy fruit as well with a bit of a hop bite at the finish. Heavy-bodied with a smooth thick mouthfeel. You can definitely taste the heat although it’s not overwhelming. It is a beer that you’ll want to sip and savor. 4

AFTERTASTE (0-2): Long lasting and rich. 2

OVERALL (0-6): This is a big beer with the robust flavors that you’re craving in the doldrums of winter. Yet it’s also surprisingly smooth. You’ll know that you’re drinking a beer with a ABV pushing double digits, but won’t be put off by the amped up alcohol content. This “wee heavy” comes in just right. 5

TOTAL SCORE (0-19): 17

Wake Up Call?

Peggy Noonan says that while Romney's gaffe this week was serious it was nothing compared to the blunder made by President Obama. She opinines that taking on the Catholic Church is A Battle the President Can't Win;

The church is split on many things. But do Catholics in the pews want the government telling their church to contravene its beliefs? A president affronting the leadership of the church, and blithely threatening its great institutions? No, they don't want that. They will unite against that.

The smallest part of this story is political. There are 77.7 million Catholics in the United States. In 2008 they made up 27% of the electorate, about 35 million people. Mr. Obama carried the Catholic vote, 54% to 45%. They helped him win.

They won't this year. And guess where a lot of Catholics live? In the battleground states.

There was no reason to pick this fight. It reflects political incompetence on a scale so great as to make Mitt Romney's gaffes a little bitty thing.

There was nothing for the president to gain, except, perhaps, the pleasure of making a great church bow to him.

Enjoy it while you can. You have awakened a sleeping giant.

I wish I shared Noonan's conviction of a mass Catholic awakening over this. I'm afraid that it still may not be enough to jolt many Catholics out of their blissfully ignorant slumber.

Not Adding Up

Facebook Tracks Ascent of Google:

Profit margins are very similar as well. Facebook's operating-profit margins have averaged 49% the past two years. Google averaged 48% in 2004 and 2005, a level it roughly maintained until last year.

Oil Company Earnings: Reality over Rhetoric:

Industry profit margins are cyclical too. But on average, between 2006 and 2010, the largest oil companies averaged a profit margin of around 6.5%.

Dems propose Reasonable Profits Board to regulate oil company profits:

Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a "Reasonable Profits Board" to control gas profits.

The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a "windfall profit tax" as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit.

Definition of reasonable by the Free Online Dictionary:

rea•son•a•ble (r z -n -b l) adj.

1. Capable of reasoning; rational: a reasonable person.

2. Governed by or being in accordance with reason or sound thinking: a reasonable solution to the problem.

3. Being within the bounds of common sense: arrive home at a reasonable hour.

4. Not excessive or extreme; fair: reasonable prices.

Board to Tears

There was an interesting piece in yesterday's WSJ on the lengths that airline travelers are going to in order to Avoid Luggage Check-In Fees (sub req):

Fights between passengers for overhead bin space are extremely rare, airlines say. But Catherine Jorgens feared mayhem was about to erupt on a Frontier Airlines flight where passengers did argue over jamming bags into already-full bins. "It was a madhouse of many people in many rows competing for sacred overhead-bin space,'' she said.

Going through security is no longer the worst part of the flying experience for Ms. Jorgens. "I think the boarding experience is the most unpleasant time for me,'' she said. Now she packs light and closes her eyes while others board, preferring not to look at the oversized bags being dragged onboard so she doesn't get upset.

"It is such a slow, tedious process,'' said Ms. Jorgens, a retiree living in Florida who travels regularly. "At what other time nowadays do you see such an endless line of people all bearing the same morose expression?''

You know, I think I would have to agree with that assessment. It used to be that light at the end of the arduous series of steps involved in air travel was when you reached the gate and were waiting to board the aircraft. Now, the battle for overhead space has introduced a new element of anxiety and stress. If you're one of those carrying luggage onboard that requires utilizing precious overhead space-as it seems more and more people are now since airlines started charging for checked luggage-you need to make sure you get on the plane before those bins are filled which they almost always are these days.

Priority boarding is one of the few perks of having elite status with an airline that really matters these days. Upgrades are getting harder and harder to come by, but being able to board the plane early at least guarantees that you’ll have open overhead bin space to stow your bag. But then you still have to sit there through the rest of the boarding process-which takes longer now that more people carry on-and listen to the inevitable wailing and gnashing of teeth when there’s no more room in the bins. It’s not exactly humanity at its finest and the misery is compounded when you have snarky flight attendants snapping at passengers who are just trying to find a place for their bag. Which has been the situation on pretty much every Delta flight I’ve been in the last few years. More bags stuffed into overhead bins also means that getting off the plane takes longer than it used. It gets ya comin' and goin'.

The worst part is that all of this pain and suffering which has been introduced into the boarding process has been inflicted because the airlines started charging to check luggage. Which is why it kills me when the flight attendants get all pissy about passengers carrying on bags. I want to scream, “It’s not their fault. It’s your company that created the problem. If you want to get mad at somebody, get mad at them and quit blaming the victim!”

I don’t have easy answers for how to fix this, but I know that there has to be a better way.

Never Too Late to Learn?

In what they admit may be the first in a long-running series, the WSJ editorial board tries to explain What Mitt Really Meant:

Mr. Romney's larger mistake is to think and speak in "class" terms. He touts his concern for the "middle class" all the time, as if he's trying to show that a rich guy can identify with average Americans. But this is a game that Democrats play better, and it leads Mr. Romney into cul-de-sacs like saying the poor are fine because they benefit from government, while the middle class don't. Mr. Obama will turn this into an argument for hooking the middle class on more government.

Mr. Romney's failures to communicate are common among businessmen and other normal people who have the right instincts but haven't spent their lives thinking about politics. He also recently ran into trouble when he said he liked firing people, when he was really talking about the discipline of market competition.

Still, his business now is politics, and as the Republican front-runner he has an obligation to explain how conservative principles and policies can address America's current problems. We'll be happy to translate for him in these columns, but it would be less politically painful if Mr. Romney sat down for a week-long tutorial with, say, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush and others who can help him avoid such obvious liberal traps.

You would think that after spending the last six years essentially doing almost nothing but running for president, Romney would be better prepared by now to avoid such pitfalls. The fact that he isn't should give Romney supporters pause. If Romney does indeed secure the GOP nomination as now seems likely, he would do well to spend a considerable amount of time with the gentlemen listed above to learn some rather basics tricks of the political trade.

Debt Bombing

Over the last year, some Democrats have taken to dousing Republicans in confetti. They call it “glitter bombing”. Mitt Romney was the latest “victim” of this puzzling trend right here in Minnesota.

Apparently, glitter bombers believe that undecided voters will see a Republican covered in glitter and say to themselves: “That Republican looks ridiculous covered in glitter; obviously I cannot vote for him.”

It seems doubtful that any such inner monologue has ever occurred, but that hasn’t stopped the assaults. Fortunately, we Republicans are above such inane tactics.

But if we weren’t above such things, we could certainly come up with a form of glitter bombing that at least made sense. The Bureau of Printing and engraving sells five pound bags of shredded currency. Dousing a spendthrift Democrat in this currency confetti or “debt bombing”, would actually be an understandable political statement. Or, it would be if our side wasn’t too classy for such behavior.



Yep, we’d be better than the Democrats at their own game, if we were willing to stoop to their level.

Church or State?

The following is an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal Op Ed on Religious Freedom by Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan :

Now we have learned that those loud and strong appeals were ignored. On Friday, the administration reaffirmed the mandate, and offered only a one-year delay in enforcement in some cases—as if we might suddenly be more willing to violate our consciences 12 months from now. As a result, all but a few employers will be forced to purchase coverage for contraception, abortion drugs and sterilization services even when they seriously object to them. All who share the cost of health plans that include such services will be forced to pay for them as well. Surely it violates freedom of religion to force religious ministries and citizens to buy health coverage to which they object as a matter of conscience and religious principle.

The rule forces insurance companies to provide these services without a co-pay, suggesting they are "free"—but it is naïve to believe that. There is no free lunch, and you can be sure there's no free abortion, sterilization or contraception. There will be a source of funding: you.

Coercing religious ministries and citizens to pay directly for actions that violate their teaching is an unprecedented incursion into freedom of conscience. Organizations fear that this unjust rule will force them to take one horn or the other of an unacceptable dilemma: Stop serving people of all faiths in their ministries—so that they will fall under the narrow exemption—or stop providing health-care coverage to their own employees.

The Catholic Church defends religious liberty, including freedom of conscience, for everyone. The Amish do not carry health insurance. The government respects their principles. Christian Scientists want to heal by prayer alone, and the new health-care reform law respects that. Quakers and others object to killing even in wartime, and the government respects that principle for conscientious objectors. By its decision, the Obama administration has failed to show the same respect for the consciences of Catholics and others who object to treating pregnancy as a disease.

This latest erosion of our first freedom should make all Americans pause. When the government tampers with a freedom so fundamental to the life of our nation, one shudders to think what lies ahead.

In the wake of the administration's modern day kulturkampf (why yes, I have been reading a biography of Bismarck) and the Church's unified (so far) response to it, one also shudders to think what lies ahead for groups such as Catholics for Obama. When it comes down to it, will they choose to support their Church or their president?

We Disengage, We Turn the Page

Jonah Goldberg asks What is Wrong With This Guy?:

Again, I’d happily vote for Romney over Obama. And I’d be fine with Romney crushing Obama with negative ads, if that was remotely possible. And there are plenty of things one could say to defend Romney on the merits of what he says here. But great politicians on the morning after a big win, don’t force their supporters to go around defending the candidate from the charge that he doesn’t care about the poor. They just don’t.

After eight years of cringing through the ups and downs and ideological inconsistencies of the Bush administration and the 2008 campaign trying to pretend that John McCain-a fundamentally good man-actually represented a conservative choice for America’s future, a lot of us are tired of having to put up with Republican politicians that we can’t wholeheartedly support or really believe in. So let me officially state that I am not going to go down that road with Mitt Romney.

I’ll leave that to the Hugh Hewitts, Ann Coulters, and Ramesh Ponnurus of the world. You’ve been selling us on Romney’s electability and telling us that he’s the only one who can beat President Obama in November. Fine. Now that it appears almost certain that your dreams of Romney at the top of the Republican ticket are going to come true, you’re going to have your chance. You get to be the ones who can explain away blunders like this morning’s. You get to keep telling people that RomneyCare is in no way related to ObamaCare. You get to describe for us how Romney’s tepid and uninspired economic plan is going to turn things around. You get to justify the fact that at a time when the American people are itching for a serious debate about the future paths the country could and should take, Romney has demonstrated neither the ability nor inclination to put forth a strong argument for a conservative vision as an alternative to President Obama’s.

The way things are looking now, we’re going to be in for a LONG campaign. And an even longer four years after that with President Obama in the White House.

Is it too early for the Ryan in 2016 speculation to begin?

Cabin Fever

Cabin ownership used to be more prevalent among the common people of Minnesota. Back in the 70s and 80s, while growing up in decidedly middle class environs, it wasn’t uncommon for our neighbors and friends to own a cabin and head up north every summer weekend. But something has happened over the past few decades to change this, probably some combination of increased demand for vacation homes eating up supply, increased property taxation on these properties. Plus the standards for the “cabin” have increased dramatically over the years. A cabin used to be nothing more than a ramshackle hut with a few rooms, questionable heating and suspect plumbing (and we loved it!). Now it’s assumed to be a McMansion on the lake with multiple guests rooms and built in bars and Jacuzzis and big screen plasma TVs. No doubt this has driven up the price as well.

For whatever the reason, those among the working class rarely speak of their cabins anymore. For all but the wealthy, they are not affordable. And with that goes much of the cherished Minnesota institution of going “up north”.

Well, maybe not for everyone.

One of the private amusements I’ve enjoyed with myself over the years (one of the many!) is reading the retirement announcements of teachers and education bureaucrats and other government employees, and noticing how often they mention retiring to their cabins. No, I didn’t have the foresight to compile statistics and clippings over the years to prove this, but trust me, it happens quite a bit, otherwise it wouldn’t be so funny to me every time I see it. And I’ve always taken it as another piece of evidence that perhaps we’re being a bit too generous in the compensation and retirement benefits for teachers, education bureaucrats, and other government employees. Should we really be subsidizing a lifestyle for our public servants that is unattainable for those they are serving? I report, you decide.

The latest from Washington County, the County Administrator is stepping down after serving the public for 37 years. His plans for retirements? From the Stillwater Gazette:

We have a family cabin in northwest Wisconsin that we haven't been able to spend enough time at.

Yes, yes, yes, maybe the cabin has been in their family for generations and didn’t cost him a cent. Or maybe his wife made all the real dough in the family through private sector endeavors and she popped for it. Or maybe he won the lottery some years back and splurged on a cabin.

Or, maybe, just maybe, my confirmation bias is right on the money, and that cabin has been paid for by the good graces of the Washington County taxpayers who’ll never have such a luxury in store for themselves.

Ah well, whatever the circumstances, it’s always nice to see a life of honest labor rewarded with some years of comfort and ease. We wish him the best, and we look forward to the tenure of our new Washington County Administrator, just now taking her position. The Oakdale-Lake Elmo Review has a profile, including this tidbit on her hobbies:

In her spare time, O'Rourke said she enjoys gardening and skiing. She and her husband of 30 years are also fulfilling their dream of building a cabin, O'Rourke said.

Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

Across the Great Divide

Charles Murray has a sobering new book out called “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.”



There was a review in today’s WSJ by W. Bradford Wilcox (sub req):

So much for the idea that the white working class remains the guardian of core American values like religious faith, hard work and marriage. Today the denizens of upscale communities like McLean, Va., New Canaan, Conn., and Palo Alto, Calif., according to Charles Murray in "Coming Apart," are now much more likely than their fellow citizens to embrace these core American values. In studying, as his subtitle has it, "the state of white America, 1960-2010," Mr. Murray turns on its head the conservative belief that bicoastal elites are dissolute and ordinary Americans are virtuous.

Focusing on whites to avoid conflating race with class, Mr. Murray contends instead that a large swath of white America—poor and working-class whites, who make up approximately 30% of the white population—is turning away from the core values that have sustained the American experiment. At the same time, the top 20% of the white population has quietly been recovering its cultural moorings after a flirtation with the counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s. Thus, argues Mr. Murray in his elegiac book, the greatest source of inequality in America now is not economic; it is cultural.

He is particularly concerned with the ways in which working-class whites are losing touch with what he calls the four "founding virtues"—industriousness, honesty (including abiding by the law), marriage and religion, all of which have played a vital role in the life of the republic.

The January 21st edition of the WSJ featured an excerpt from Murray’s book which detailed this divide in virtues and values. To clarify the gulf that has developed, Murray employs two fictional neighborhoods. Belmont (after an archetypal upper-middle-class suburb near Boston) and Fishtown (after a neighborhood in Philadelphia that has been home to the white working class since the Revolution).

Marriage: In 1960, extremely high proportions of whites in both Belmont and Fishtown were married—94% in Belmont and 84% in Fishtown. In the 1970s, those percentages declined about equally in both places. Then came the great divergence. In Belmont, marriage stabilized during the mid-1980s, standing at 83% in 2010. In Fishtown, however, marriage continued to slide; as of 2010, a minority (just 48%) were married. The gap in marriage between Belmont and Fishtown grew to 35 percentage points, from just 10.

Single parenthood: Another aspect of marriage—the percentage of children born to unmarried women—showed just as great a divergence. Though politicians and media eminences are too frightened to say so, nonmarital births are problematic. On just about any measure of development you can think of, children who are born to unmarried women fare worse than the children of divorce and far worse than children raised in intact families. This unwelcome reality persists even after controlling for the income and education of the parents.

In 1960, just 2% of all white births were nonmarital. When we first started recording the education level of mothers in 1970, 6% of births to white women with no more than a high-school education—women, that is, with a Fishtown education—were out of wedlock. By 2008, 44% were nonmarital. Among the college-educated women of Belmont, less than 6% of all births were out of wedlock as of 2008, up from 1% in 1970.

Industriousness: The norms for work and women were revolutionized after 1960, but the norm for men putatively has remained the same: Healthy men are supposed to work. In practice, though, that norm has eroded everywhere. In Fishtown, the change has been drastic. (To avoid conflating this phenomenon with the latest recession, I use data collected in March 2008 as the end point for the trends.)

The primary indicator of the erosion of industriousness in the working class is the increase of prime-age males with no more than a high school education who say they are not available for work—they are "out of the labor force." That percentage went from a low of 3% in 1968 to 12% in 2008. Twelve percent may not sound like much until you think about the men we're talking about: in the prime of their working lives, their 30s and 40s, when, according to hallowed American tradition, every American man is working or looking for work. Almost one out of eight now aren't. Meanwhile, not much has changed among males with college educations. Only 3% were out of the labor force in 2008.

There's also been a notable change in the rates of less-than-full-time work. Of the men in Fishtown who had jobs, 10% worked fewer than 40 hours a week in 1960, a figure that grew to 20% by 2008. In Belmont, the number rose from 9% in 1960 to 12% in 2008.

Crime: The surge in crime that began in the mid-1960s and continued through the 1980s left Belmont almost untouched and ravaged Fishtown. From 1960 to 1995, the violent crime rate in Fishtown more than sextupled while remaining nearly flat in Belmont. The reductions in crime since the mid-1990s that have benefited the nation as a whole have been smaller in Fishtown, leaving it today with a violent crime rate that is still 4.7 times the 1960 rate.

Religiosity: Whatever your personal religious views, you need to realize that about half of American philanthropy, volunteering and associational memberships is directly church-related, and that religious Americans also account for much more nonreligious social capital than their secular neighbors. In that context, it is worrisome for the culture that the U.S. as a whole has become markedly more secular since 1960, and especially worrisome that Fishtown has become much more secular than Belmont. It runs against the prevailing narrative of secular elites versus a working class still clinging to religion, but the evidence from the General Social Survey, the most widely used database on American attitudes and values, does not leave much room for argument.

For example, suppose we define "de facto secular" as someone who either professes no religion at all or who attends a worship service no more than once a year. For the early GSS surveys conducted from 1972 to 1976, 29% of Belmont and 38% of Fishtown fell into that category. Over the next three decades, secularization did indeed grow in Belmont, from 29% in the 1970s to 40% in the GSS surveys taken from 2006 to 2010. But it grew even more in Fishtown, from 38% to 59%.

The statistics are staggering and they defy most of the conventional examples and explanations of how America has become divided. It’s not something that you’ll politicians or pundits talking about, but it’s one of the greatest challenges facing the country in the years ahead. Murray assigns most of the blame for the divide on the expansion of the welfare state beginning with The Great Society and the increasing reluctance of those at the top end of the divide to pass any sort of judgment on those at the bottom. While the residents of Belmont know that it’s better to get married, to not have children out of wedlock, to invest in educating their children, and even to go the church, they’re no longer willing to say so and instead are all too ready to accept and approve the choices made by the working poor that they know are wrong. One of Murray’s prescriptions for closing this divide is for these folks to actually preach what they practice. As a conservative, he recognizes how difficult it is to transform cultural conditions and the limits of what can be accomplished.

David Brooks meanwhile has read Murray’s book and says that he’d be shocked if there was to be another book as important to come out this year. However, while Brooks agrees with Murray’s analysis of the extent of the problem, he offers alternative solutions. The Great Divorce:

The truth is, members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids.

Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.

I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program. We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement.

If we could jam the tribes together, we’d have a better elite and a better mass.

Words like “need,” “program,” “force,” and “jam” instinctively send shivers up my spine. While the problem that Murray describes is indeed real and quite serious, I’m not sure that Brooks’ National Service Program cure wouldn’t be worse. To give the government such powers to compel such “service” would open the doors to all sorts of potential abuse. I’d also question the effectiveness of “jamming the tribes together” for a couple of years in their late-teens early-twenties. By that time in life, a lot of the virtues and values that help ensure success have already been adopted or they have not. Would it really change their life trajectory if people from Fishtown spent a couple of years working alongside those from Belmont performing some sort of government service?

Perhaps. The one great example we have of this in American history was the military draft. While there were always those who were able to exempt themselves from serving in the armed forces, it did force people from different backgrounds to live and work together in a shared cultural setting. It seems hard to believe that the military is what Brooks or other proponents of “national service” today have in mind, but it’s the one such program that actually seems to have worked.