Posted while sober

August 8, 2005 7:06 AM

"Gimme the beer money back,"says South Carolina's GOP, after corporate largesse from brewer Anheuser Busch is accidently sent to and cashed by the state's Democratic organization, which were out to happy hour at press time.
posted by Rothko (48 comments total)

And Anheuser Busch gives to the GOP because Dems don't drink beer?

Dems don't drink watery beer?
posted by surplus at 7:23 AM on August 8, 2005

Was it made out to Cash? WTF?
posted by dobbs at 7:25 AM on August 8, 2005

Dems don't drink crappy beer.
posted by Dr_Johnson at 7:27 AM on August 8, 2005

Sounds like the GOP guys are whining. Why dont they just hit up AB for another check. If a donor wants their money back it goes back to the donor, not to another party that the donor might have wanted to send it to. In fact if they dont sent it back to the donor they are likely setting themselves up for another lawsuit.
posted by MrLint at 7:28 AM on August 8, 2005

Why not let the GOP cash the check Anheuser Busch no doubt sent to the Democrats and call it good?
posted by three blind mice at 7:33 AM on August 8, 2005

This could be good for AB, if they send a check to the GOP, too. That way no matter who wins, they're not disenfranchised.
posted by jonmc at 7:36 AM on August 8, 2005

Democrats say they have sent a refund check back to Anheuser-Busch.

"Nobody should expect us to write a check to the Republican Party," said Lachlan McIntosh, the Democratic Party's executive director.

Odd to see a story about SC politics via a link to a Tallahassee (Florida) paper. Couldn't find anything in The State, my hometown paper (capital city of Columbia); did find an interesting story about Repubs, Dems and funding in the Greenville paper's web site, though.
posted by alumshubby at 7:38 AM on August 8, 2005

Anheuser Busch: Real Men of Genius (tm)
posted by clevershark at 7:40 AM on August 8, 2005

Given the cross(sic) over between the religious right in SC and their never questioning support all things GOP I'm surprised more people in the state (my old home) aren't raising eyebrows that the righteous "God's Own Party" are dirtying themselves with big-booze money.
posted by wfrgms at 7:46 AM on August 8, 2005

More anecdotally than anything else: I was surprised at finding Baptists in, say, Dallas who didn't drink on religious grounds, but the ones I knew in, say, Columbia don't have a problem with beer. (Saw the same thing w/ tobacco, too.) SC is a little schizoid about this kind of lifestyle stuff. Local-option blue laws still prohibit Sunday beer, wine and liquor sales in Columbia, for instance, although after 1:30 pm or something like that, you can get a drink with a meal in a restaurant. There isn't a 100% overlap between fundies and Repubs in SC, although it's a preponderance. it doesn't surprise me in the least that a major beer manufacturer contributes to the predominant state political party. (I'd be somewhat more surprised if, say, ABB contributes to the Utah Repub Party, given a high proportion of teetotaling Mormons there.)
posted by alumshubby at 7:57 AM on August 8, 2005

A derail, but while we are on the tangent of SC and alcohol... does anyone know if bars in SC still have to mix drinks from those miniature airplane bottles?
posted by three blind mice at 8:03 AM on August 8, 2005

Road Triiiiiiiiiip!!
posted by planetkyoto at 8:05 AM on August 8, 2005

This is classic, funny and incredibly stupid on all sides. Kind of like the guy who cashes the check with the big "VOID" written across it just to see if he can and he does.

I think the Democrats should recycle the "beer" and return it to the GOP as piss.
posted by fenriq at 8:33 AM on August 8, 2005

Why can't they just wahoo a six pack like the rest of us?
posted by fungible at 8:39 AM on August 8, 2005

I guess by oppositional defacto default I'd be a Dem, but I don't drink Anheuser Busch because they make disgusting shite that occasionally looks somewhat like beer.

And I really do like beer, so that's all the more reason to never touch the toxic-waste outflow Anheuser Busch calls beer.
posted by loquacious at 8:46 AM on August 8, 2005

Anheuser Busch products are great for those days when you don't feel like drinking a real beer.
posted by clevershark at 8:50 AM on August 8, 2005

*throws empty Bud longneck at clevershark's commie head*

Nah, they're there for when you've got 5 bucks and want to get sozzled quickly. Schlitz and malt liquors will do the job, too. Taste in a luxury you worry about on payday.
posted by jonmc at 8:53 AM on August 8, 2005

Last time I was there a six pack of Pabst costs $3.99 at the Drop In Store (scroll down) in Greenville, SC. That's cheaper than any Bud product and is at least twice as tasty. There is truly no excuse for drinking Bud.
posted by wfrgms at 9:00 AM on August 8, 2005

More reason for me not to drink domestic.
posted by j-urb at 9:01 AM on August 8, 2005

Thanks, alumshubby, for that article about the SC Dems. Sounds like the state party execs are really floundering down there:

Where the GOP received individual donations of $184,772, Democrats got $61,470 and nearly a third of that came from separate $10,000 contributions from Erwin and Greenville lawyer Tom Ervin, who is now a Republican candidate for the vacant House District 24 seat.

Because of a reliance on high-dollar donors, Erwin said, "We're looking at some different fund-raising techniques to help us reach some different people. You constantly need to shake things up in fund raising."

Yeesh. Where has that guy been for the last two years?
posted by mediareport at 9:14 AM on August 8, 2005

In NYC, PBR is for hipster posuers and sells in bars for $3 bucks a can. I am not kidding. But Bud is easier to find in bottles than Schlitz, or Old Milwaukee, and I prefer drinking out of glass.
posted by jonmc at 9:16 AM on August 8, 2005

Yes, threeblind mice, they do. Completely silly, isn't it?
posted by Mamapotomus at 9:19 AM on August 8, 2005

PBR is for hipster posuers and sells in bars for $3 bucks a can

Come on, Jon, that's just ridiculous. I don't know where you're buying your PBF, but at lakeside lounge it's a dollar a can. At Hank's Saloon in Brooklyn I believe it is also a dollar a can. And I think the people who are drinking it is dependent upon the bar you go to. If you go to a hipster doubchebag bar, there are going to be hipster douchebags drinking everything. If you go to a regular person bar, there will be regular people, like myself, drinking PBR (after happy hour is over and I don't want to pay 5 dollars for Yuengling..don't get me started on why I have to pay fucking import prices for a beer made on the East Coast).
posted by spicynuts at 9:29 AM on August 8, 2005

In Manhattan at 7B on 7th & B they were selling it for $3 a pop. The regular bars I go to don't even sell it. They stick to Bud, Brooklyn Lager etc. The really cheap stuff is for home use. And Schlitz is better than PBR.
posted by jonmc at 9:49 AM on August 8, 2005

Well, first 7B is one bar. Two, 7B is a hipster hang out. If you don't believe me, follow the crowd to Piano's afterwards. Three, they have (or did about 6 months ago) Schlitz on tap at Spring Lounge as well as Schaefer, so if you need a fix, you can head there. Although there you have to fight through hipsters and hamptons trash both, which is a little annoying.
posted by spicynuts at 10:03 AM on August 8, 2005

I just go to Antarctica, the Tile Bar and Manitobas where they know me enough to give me freebies. But I do more drinking in Queens these days, where most bars haven't discovered hipsters yet.
posted by jonmc at 10:06 AM on August 8, 2005

threeblindmice, I was just in SC this weekend...they've voted out minibottles but haven't actually made the switch yet. Here's a story about it.
posted by alumshubby at 10:07 AM on August 8, 2005

Thanks Mamapotomus and alumshubby.

Trolley dolly minibottles. In a bar. Crazy stuff. Glad to hear they are on the way out.
posted by three blind mice at 10:39 AM on August 8, 2005

And Schlitz is better than PBR.

I'd say it's a close for the bottom jonmc.
posted by three blind mice at 10:41 AM on August 8, 2005

Re: Jonmc's beer choices: He's right. Schlitz beer has the most bang for the buck of any beer. In a grocery store, it's twice as cheap as pabst. It's usually $3.59 / sixer (cans tho), and it's totally drinkable. And about twice as good as pabst or bud.
posted by zpousman at 10:49 AM on August 8, 2005

I've seen PBR for $4 in the high-priced suburban KC area. Of course this is at what I term "douche-bag" coffee bar. I got a Maker's Mark there once and after giving me a generous helping of ice managed to fill the remaining glass 3/4 of the way through. I asked him to fill it to the top to which he replied, "I don't like having to deal with people drunk." Right... I was relieved when I heard a frat took it over one night and trashed it when they got served severly over-priced and under-filled drinks. So to tie this into the actual link: large corporations make mailining mistakes? Gasp!
posted by geoff. at 10:51 AM on August 8, 2005

it's a close RACE for the bottom.

*pours another glass of scotch*
posted by three blind mice at 10:58 AM on August 8, 2005

Yeesh. Where has that guy been for the last two years?

note on SC Dems money woes: SC requires political parties to pay for the expense of their own presidential preference primaries, which turns out to be something like $10 per voter in SC, or $1 million the SC Dems had to pay that the SC Repubs didn't in 2004. this perennially cripples the SC Dems as there are about 9 Repubs to every Dem in SC.

when the Dems first debate was held in Columbia in 2003, it was a big extortion fest to stick the candidates with challenges to see who would fork over the most money to subsidize the SC primary expense. more than one candidate offered to underwrite the whole thing. then cooler heads prevailed and the wisdom of not involving candidates in the funding process was seen. to come to that wisdom, though, some big donors stepped to the bar to provide relief. it took yet another round of debates later in 2004 to pull together enough faithful in one spot to come up with the cash.

many state parties were schooled in the wisdom of small donor power by candidate campaigns in 2004. but it is expensive to make the infrastructure investments to make it happen, so it is happening kind of slowly and piecemeal as state parties a) become more tech savvy, and b) come up with the streams of sustained funding that it takes to run those kind of operations. they're getting bootstrapped, as it were.

(yep, there were mini-bottles there during a visit i made in June. the bars weren't looking forward to the transition because of all their investment in both mini-bottle stock and the special shelving used to accommodate them. mini-bottles were also an easy way to charge $15 for a drink if it contained more than one kind of liquor.)
posted by 3.2.3 at 11:10 AM on August 8, 2005

Tags:
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Oh my, you are clever snarking in the tags!
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 11:24 AM on August 8, 2005

I see nothing but chaos for the switch from minibottles to free pour. You pretty much have to send your bartenders to bartender school. It'll also be a problem retrofitting the bars there... they are all designed to house the little bottles - there won't be any room right away for the big guns.

There are several schools of thought on the debate. One, is the idea of a "stiff" drink... in that everywhere else in the free world if you're a regular and/or tip well then the bartenders will tend to take care of you - pouring your drinks stronger if you want them that way. In SC, bartender favoritism doesn't exist because the minibottles are a set amount.

The other realization is that minibottles are 1.5oz where as a typical free pour shot is 1oz. As it is now if you walk into a bar in SC and order a shot of Dewars you get an extra half an oz. regardless of how you tip etc.

I've never heard a satisfying explanation for why SC has/had minibottles. Lots of restaurant/bar people like them because it makes keeping up with inventory easy - you just count your minibottles at the end of the night. This helps discover any discrepancies and cut loss.

One argument I always heard was that minibottles were some how tied into the anti-DUI or anti-drinking establishment in the state because they provided a method for the legal system to track individual consumption. It's one thing to say you had only three drinks at your trial - it's another thing for the prosecutor to say that you downed 4.5 oz. of 130 proof rot gut and then run the blood alcohol math to show that you were drunk at the time of the crime.

Personally I'll miss seeing the little bottles when I go back to SC to visit.

Oh and as for the pabst/hipster thing. I've been drinking pabst for years and it pains me greatly to see smug douchebags drinking it. Not only does it cheapen the beer it also drives up the cost for the rest of us. I guess those bastards can gentrify anything if they try hard enough.
posted by wfrgms at 12:11 PM on August 8, 2005

Oh my, you are clever snarking in the tags!

sounds like sour grapes, coming from someone whose contribution to the site is almost exclusively constituted by polluting the threads with snarky single-sentence comments.
posted by spiderwire at 1:09 PM on August 8, 2005

I think the best question in this whole situation is: why in hell did the Dem's bank accept a check made out to the GOP and not co-endorsed by the GOP?

Do these things not matter anymore?

(There's also that little matter of it being common decency to make a basic effort to return things that are given to you in error, especially when the rightful recepient is easily found, but I wouldn't want to ask too much of anyone.)
posted by Dreama at 1:09 PM on August 8, 2005

I've never heard a satisfying explanation for why SC has/had minibottles.

It's an unsastisfactory set of circumstances that the SC Legislature imposed on drinking South Carolinians as a solution to an even more unsatisfying set of circumstances. Prior to the advent of the minibottle in the early '70s, I remember Mom complaining to Dad about how, when they went dressed up to a company-sponsored New Year's Eve party, they had to take their own booze along, covered in a brown paper bag, because state liquor laws required that it be done that way I was in grade school then and I don't recall the specifics of the brown-bag law.

Plenty of people were less than thrilled with minibottles, but as noted above, you got a nice stiff drink for your money. My MIL, who moved down to Columbia after retiring in Pittsburgh, figured that overall it was cheaper compared to drinking where she came from.
posted by alumshubby at 1:29 PM on August 8, 2005

WFR.... Not saying the mom and pops can or will install them, but I know some casinos that have auto-pour things for full size bottles. Basically either a cap that only holds 1 oz. of liquor, and a auto-closing "inner cap" which won't let you pour out any more until the outer cap is emptied, and an electronic one which I measures out the liquor somehow, and sends the type of booze and the amount poured to a database.... Me and a bartender were bitching about the electronic one. He was looking for another gig, as once people saw that his pour was e-regulated, they didn't feel the need to tip. And his hands were tied as far as buy backs and stiff pours, especially with the computer keeping track of exactly how much he was pouring in relation to what's in the till. Fuckin' cheap ass casinos.

Oh... and spicynuts... PBR has become a hipster swill. When it first popped up on the scene a few years ago, it WAS the cheap drink of choice... usually .75 or $1.00 per can... Somehow, I have no idea, it became the "cool" thing to do, and a crapload of places jacked it up to $3.00-$3.50 (still cheaper than a non-Happy hour Stella, which is $5.00)

I prefer dive bars, and I've seen the whole "Common People" thing become more and more trendy... "Oh look, dahling... we're slumming tonight... how frightully charming!!!!" That is, until the first fight or loud argument breaks out, and they're sent running for the nearest cab back uptown.
posted by Debaser626 at 2:59 PM on August 8, 2005

Tags:
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Oh my, you are clever snarking in the tags!

Steve, jonmc knows I'm just poking fun.

Heh.
posted by Rothko at 3:27 PM on August 8, 2005

Steve, jonmc knows I'm just poking fun.

*shoots Rothko and Steve*

what a senseless waste of human life. and bullets.

(steve, rothko's right. I happen to know you have a sense of humor. show it and maybe the shit you take will be more good natured. I'm just saying)
posted by jonmc at 3:32 PM on August 8, 2005

Dreama, most checks are never even looked at by a human bank employee any more. I've made a check out for a certain amount and had it cashed for $600 less, just because that particular number 6 looked like a 0 to the computer. Of course the correct amount was written out clearly right there, but there's nobody to look at the written-out numbers any more. There's also nobody looking at endorsements or signatures.
posted by lackutrol at 3:35 PM on August 8, 2005

"Nah, they're there for when you've got 5 bucks and want to get sozzled quickly."

Now, I'm surprised at you, jonmc! You know the real questions to that answer are:

"What is Thunderbird?"
"What is Ripple?"
"What is a fifth of Popov Vodka and a 2-liter of Shop-Rite Lemon Soda?"

Now, that's for gettin sozzled quickly on 5 bucks. Beer's too filling to get you drunk quickly. (Outside of Northern New Jersey, substitute your local grocery store for "Shop-Rite.")

Now stop wasting bullets and go buy a six of Gritty's Summer Ale.
posted by zoogleplex at 5:07 PM on August 8, 2005

many state parties were schooled in the wisdom of small donor power by candidate campaigns in 2004. but it is expensive to make the infrastructure investments to make it happen

Thanks, 3.2.3.
posted by mediareport at 5:14 PM on August 8, 2005

zoogle, brothaman, I've done the Boone's Farm/T-Bird/Wild Irish Rose/Cisco thing, but I'm a beer guy, ultimately. And no fortified wine can hold a candle to Grand , the Lithuanian 9% ABV brew that's sold around here for 99cents/pint and a half bottle. Or two forties of OE.
posted by jonmc at 5:15 PM on August 8, 2005

I'd like to say a few words about beer in cans. Nothing beats it for summer, I'd say. Something about the taste of metal when it's humid. or the dimpling of the can when you squeeze it. or the sloshy lightness of it when it's empty. you always want to throw it in a bush or something. when the heat beats me down i can only drink cans.
posted by Hobbacocka at 5:18 PM on August 8, 2005

Hey, that's pretty rockin jonmc. I got some crazy brew from Belgium for my birthday that's some outrageous alcohol content, but haven't opened it up yet. Ceramic bottle with one of those wire/cork things on it.

Oh and Hobba? You don't get to come to my summer parties, Hobba.

Cans... *shudder*
posted by zoogleplex at 5:31 PM on August 8, 2005

Thanks, 3.2.3.

Mediareport, a few minutes after I posted I got an email about this:

http://www.ncdp.org/houseparty

it's happening, bit by bit. some folks like joe erwin are slow on the uptake. but they are getting the message and making the effort.

minibottles are 1.5oz

they're 2 oz each on airlines. are there different sizes of mini-bottles?
posted by 3.2.3 at 2:40 PM on August 10, 2005