...kind of like taking a frog to a snake den...we have some very serious items to report on, but we're going to lead with a single picture story that says it all about kicking back in a very un-PC way, courtesy of David Kilkenny from...County Mayo of course...

"Uh, Dave, I'd really rather not go in there."

..."Cantored" ('kan-turd)...to be knocked off your high perch for being too arrogant, too obnoxious, too rude, too cozy with fat cats, and too dismissive of those who brought you to the dance, i.e., the voters...Washington, long the city of acronyms, has sprung a new word thanks to the ignominious demise of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Two-faced Republican-VA) who lost badly to the fortuitously named David Brat (we cannot possibly improve on that name!), an unknown economics professor at a little-known college in southern Virginia...Tea Party types and other conservatives are tying to spin a narrative that Cantor's defeat is a blow to the Republican establishment and a big victory for right-wing ideologues and bigots opposed to any immigration reform...but as my favorite football announcer Chris Schenkle used to say, "hold the phone"...Cantor's defeat is primarily a fundamental lesson of the arrogance of those in power, ignoring constituents, and swimming in perks while rubbing shoulders and sharing shrimp with special interests, in other words, why Washington politicians are hated by most of the free world...Cantor's coziness with the hedge fund glitteratie cost him badly but most of all his dismissive treatment of constituents and his opponent led to his defeat...but the Tea Party could be in for some unpleasant surprises of their own, because Brat is more of a political unknown than they think...as The Daily Beast's Candida Moss has written, among other oddities he's a Catholic espousing Protestant triumphalism...not to mention that even if Brat is to the right of Cantor on most issues, he will have no clout whatsoever as the newest member of a 535-member club of real brats, unlike Cantor whose powerful position was hugely influential in policy fights...at the least, it will make it even harder for the Republicans to control their own party...so enjoy the Brat victory, Tea Party, but you may have gotten more than you wished for...

Before

After

...But don't they know he lost his Congressional seat?...in what must be the stupidest faux news headline of the year (so far), the New York Times has set a new low for utterly irrelevant, made-up, so-called "news" stories...on June 13, the venerable old, once-great, newspaper actually ran a story titled "For Cantor, Loss of Leadership Role Means Far Fewer Perks"...um, knock-knock, hello, Times...Cantor is not just resigning his position as House Majority Leader August 1 -- he's been kicked out of Congress...why did you waste paper, internet space, and our time on this bit of senseless trivia?...

...the end of the world as we know it (NOT!)...on the other hand, NY Times columnist Gail Collins wrote a delightful reality-check on April 22, tallying up various apocalypse scenarios that various wackos have confidently declared over the past several years...they include such doozies as the paranoia hype over Y2K and all the millennium end-of-the-world scenarios, Harold ("Dead Man") Camping's insistence that the final Judgment Day was going to be May 21, 2011, the Mayan calendar end-of-days nonsense in 2012, not to mention money-grubbing televangelists like John ("Show me the money") Hagee, who is hawking his doomsday book Four Blood Moons: Something Is About to Change...something should change all right - people should wake up and stop swallowing the drivel fed them by nutcases and shysters...because one truth my Catholic upbringing impressed on me is that no one knows when the world will end and anyone who claims to know is full of bull...but if I had to guess about how it will end, I tend toward Tennyson's prediction that it will end not with a bang but a whimper...'till then, as said in Ecclesiastes, let us "eat, drink, and be merry"... 

or if you prefer

...actually, we'd rather not be there...speaking of Utah (state motto: "industry" (honest))...that great state of the Mormon "religion", the Sundance Film Festival, polygamists, great ski resorts, and wild-and-crazy guys like Sen. Orin ("Anita Hill is still guilty") Hatch is prominent in the news lately for such stalwart American family value headlines as "Utah woman accused in 6 babies' deaths appears in court" and "US Marshall Fatally Shoots Defendant in Utah Courtroom...meanwhile the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (whew, that's a mouthful so let's just call them Mormons), which was founded to legitimize multiple mistresses for its lecherous founder Joseph Smith (today this guy would be in jail for life, back then they just murdered him), has thrown out of the club (they call it "excommunicated") Kate Kelly for "apostasy"...Kate's crime (besides being an unmarried woman) is that she founded the "Ordain Women Movement" (no explanation needed)...the Mormons monkety-monks are now going after John Dehlin, a straight married man who has a website which advocates (horrors!!) for fair treatment for gay Mormons... this all should do wonders for that "Bring Back Mitt Romney" movement (yes, there really is such a thing)...

...Grimm news (cont'd)...our February 21 edition of Pete's Brew reported on the unstatesmanlike behavior of Congressman Michael Grimm (Neanderthal-Staten Island), who threatened to throw a reporter off "this [blankety-blank] balcony" for daring to ask about Grimm's sleazy financial dealings...we are pleased to report that Congresscrook Grimm has surrendered to the FBI to face a battery of charges including tax evasion related to a restaurant business he owns...we shudder to think about what creep the voters of Staten Island will send to Congress to replace Grimm, whose predecessor Vito Fossella resigned after it emerged that he had a "secret family" in Virginia in addition to his public family in New York...

...it's just a lifestyle, people...our favorite moron politician, Texas Gov'nah Rick ("Scary") Perry is at it again...the most recent words of Longhorn wisdom to emerge from Perry's mouth are that being gay is sort of like being an alcoholic...let's listen to Rick speaking to the Commonwealth Club of California on June 11: "whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that. I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way"...but we're encouraged - for Texans, this qualifies as progressive thinking ("or not")...good thing Rick doesn't live in Utah, he could be prosecuted for being too tolerant...

Perry: "I am not a drunk"

"and I pray for the strength not to choose the homosexual lifestyle
...or follow the homosexual agenda...unless they're for guns"

Well it's the FOURTH OF JULY in America, and as we say here in "the most important city in the most important country in the most important world in the most important universe in the most important"....well, you get the drift anyway, "Have a Capital Fourth"...with one of the newer all-American beers, brewed by none other than that most American of beach dudes, Jimmy Buffett...Landshark Lager...trust me on this folks, it's really good!!

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY

- the Brewmeister -