{"id":4527,"date":"2008-07-24T13:34:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-24T13:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=4527"},"modified":"2017-11-10T15:22:45","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T21:22:45","slug":"thats-just-sad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/24\/thats-just-sad\/","title":{"rendered":"That&#8217;s Just Sad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <i>St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/i> uses the AB-InBev merger as a springboard to launch a series of &#8220;damaging&#8221; fatuous questions at John McCain, whose wife owns an AB distributorship.<\/p>\n<p>The head of the Washington Bureau &#8220;asks&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nJohn McCain&#8217;s Straight Talk Express is far less talkative when it comes to beer.<\/p>\n<p>McCain&#8217;s campaign is unwilling to directly address questions flowing from InBev&#8217;s purchase of Anheuser-Busch Cos. in light of his wife, Cindy&#8217;s, ownership of a large Anheuser-Busch distributorship in Arizona, Hensley and Co.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 For more than 20 years as a legislator, McCain has abstained from taking positions or voting on measures related to alcohol. As president, would he act on beer-related legislation \u2014 or continue to abstain, in effect casting a veto?<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 InBev does business in Cuba, designated by the United States as a state sponsor of terrorism. As a candidate, McCain has been tough on the Cuban government. Will his wife now sell the products of a company that does business in Cuba \u2014 or even expand her business to include InBev&#8217;s other products?<\/p>\n<p>McCain&#8217;s campaign is unusually tight-lipped on those questions, and wouldn&#8217;t say whether the candidate&#8217;s wife plans to separate herself from Hensley.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The paper&#8217;s really making an effort here to springboard from a rather touchstone local issue into casting aspersions onto McCain&#8217;s ethics.  Particularly creative is trying to cast his recusing himself from voting on things that would benefit him through his wife&#8217;s company and complaining about how a parent company would do business in Cuba.  We&#8217;re really stretching here.<\/p>\n<p>I mean, for crying out loud, Barack Obama <a href=\"http:\/\/usnews.rankingsandreviews.com\/cars-trucks\/daily-news\/080304-120185\/\" target=\"_blank\">drives a Chrysler 300<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cubatrade.org\/nonus.html\" target=\"_blank\">DaimlerChrysler does business in Cuba<\/a>.  Shouldn&#8217;t Barack have rented a Ford?  And what about his publisher&#8217;s parent company, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/business\/2308415.stm\" target=\"_blank\">guilty of using Nazi slave labor at one point<\/a>?  Will Barack abstain from signing legislation in favor of slavery or Nazis?<\/p>\n<p>I mean, I&#8217;m just a crackpot backwater blog making sarcastic remarks about Obama here, but the story and the leading questions in the paper is from a &#8220;credible&#8221; periodical with a (declining) metropolitan audience.<\/p>\n<p>Forget this story, <i>Post-Dispatch<\/i>.  If you need to try to gig McCain based on a narrative of local concern, investigate why he&#8217;s tight-lipped about trading for a good middle reliever for the Cardinals.  Sure, it&#8217;s not his job, but you can still blame him for with a couple of bullet points.<\/p>\n<p>(Full disclosure: I am actually a citizen columnist for a sort of sister publication of the <i>Post-Dispatch<\/i>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The St. Louis Post-Dispatch uses the AB-InBev merger as a springboard to launch a series of &#8220;damaging&#8221; fatuous questions at John McCain, whose wife owns an AB distributorship. The head of the Washington Bureau &#8220;asks&#8221;: John McCain&#8217;s Straight Talk Express is far less talkative when it comes to beer. McCain&#8217;s campaign is unwilling to directly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4527"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17449,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4527\/revisions\/17449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}