Budweiser acknowledges failure of brand, changes name to 'America'

It was supposed to be a summer fling, but like Donald Trump's White House aspirations, it's going all the way to November.

According to AdAge, which has confirmed with company officials, 12 ounce cans and bottles of Budweiser—owned by a company based in Belgium—will now bear the brand name “America.” You can look for the change as of May 23, and expect it to last straight through summer, a.k.a. “the high beer season.” But it won’t end there! The new look will stretch onward through the election season, because why not make your rebranding as ridiculous as our presidential campaign has been.

The new tagline? “America is in your hands.”

Still not ready to drop your side-chickin' with that local craft brew, traitor?

The Washington Post notes the rebranding will be even more extensive, with Budweiser changing multiple facets of its can design for maximum patriotism:

[T]he word-heavy label would include, in all capital letters, the following: “Land of the Free,” “Home of the Brave” and “From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters this land was made for you and me.” Don’t worry—there’s more. It’s topped with a diamond containing “U.S.” and a smaller “United States of America” and that is topped with the lyrics from the first four bars of the “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

"You have this wave of patriotism that is going to go up and down throughout the summertime," Anheuser-Busch InBev U.S. Marketing Vice President Jorn Socquet told AdAge. "And we found with Budweiser such a beautiful angle to play on that sentiment."

Expect some "why do you hate America" challenges from those whose patriotism can't be expressed strongly enough on the bumpers of their pickup trucks, or in a tattoo across their lower back.

I clicked on all the links but didn't find any mention of "In God We Trust", so I'm guessing there's going to be some protests and boycotts from the Religious Right's Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers Caucus.

As for me, my boycott of all things Budweiser continues unabated and unbowed.

Green presidential candidates debate today

Ongoing as this posts.  And more revolution news below.

Watching the Hawks co-hosts Tyrel Ventura, Tabetha Wallace and Sean Stone will host two live third-party presidential debates: the Green Party on May 9 and Libertarian Party on May 12.

“In 2016 it’s time the illusion of choice offered by the Democrats, Republicans, and the Washington, DC power brokers must be challenged,” Ventura said. “Thankfully, there is a cable news channel in RT that has the courage to show US citizens and the rest of the world that there are more than just two brands of politics within the United States.”

Green Party candidates Jill Stein, Kent Mesplay and Sedinam Kinamo Christin Moyowasifza Curry will face off on Monday, while Libertarian Party candidates Darryl W. Perry, Austin Petersen and Marc Allan Feldman will debate next Thursday. Both debates will cover foreign policy, domestic issues, and electoral reform.

The debates will air on RT America from 4 pm to 6 pm Eastern time. You can also watch them on the RT America YouTube page.

“It is all but illegal to participate in US politics outside the twin titanic business parties. A majority of US citizens are disgusted with the status quo and want something new,” Mesplay said. “By nurturing real discussion and debate, RT America reveals an insistent international movement of polite dissent: the Green Party. Such visibility emboldens would-be voters who want a viable ‘third party’ in the United States.”

RT is “breaking the two-party stranglehold on debates and beginning the open discussion the American people are clamoring for,” Stein said in a statement.

She added that she’s excited for the Green Party debate, which she sees as “a step towards real democracy and an inspiration for the millions of Americans who are ready for a new politics that puts people, planet and peace over profit.”

America does indeed need four parties, particularly in 2016 with record-breaking distaste for Clinton and Trump.  Here's more thinking outside the two-party box.

YOU DECIDED to run a campaign independent of the two mainstream parties. Given all the excitement that Sanders has generated, many people who are very critical of Clinton are hoping it might be possible to reform the Democrats and turn them into a truly left-wing party. Even those who don't hold out much hope to reforming the Democrats will be pressured to vote for Clinton as the lesser evil in order to stop Trump. And you will, no doubt, be called a "spoiler." How do you respond to these arguments?

THERE HAS been a long and valiant effort for many decades to reform the Democratic Party. But the party has a built-in kill switch that it created in 1972 after George McGovern won the primaries as a peace candidate.

They changed the internal party system to insure that grassroots candidates would never be elected again. This included creating the superdelegates in order to empower the party insiders to call the shots. The superdelegates are about 30 percent of the total needed to win the nomination, so it's a very powerful firewall. Likewise with the the Super Tuesday primaries. So it's a doomed struggle, right from the outset, to try to reform the party.

You only have to look back to the era of the civil rights movement to learn this lesson. That movement was as powerful a movement as we have seen in modern history and, together with the labor movement, which was much more powerful than it is today, there was an attempt to organize what was called "realignment" inside the Democratic Party.

It did succeed in getting the conservative Southern Dixiecrats out of the Democratic Party, but that's as far as it got. It completely floundered on the effort to create a social-democratic party out of the Democrats. Why was that?

Specifically, it was the war in Vietnam that made it essential to be an imperialist or pro-war if you wanted to have the "credibility" to critique the Democratic Party. This basically shot that reform movement -- in the foot, you could say! Because at the end of the day, the Democratic Party is funded by war profiteers, predatory banks and fossil-fuel giants. So this is not where we are going to create that party of revolution. It is fundamentally a counterrevolutionary party.

About the spoiler effect, I'll say a few things. First of all, just to put it to rest. It's a myth that Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the presidential election in Florida in 2000. It was the U.S. Supreme Court that stopped the vote re-count, which Gore would have won had it continued.

But beyond that, the problem is that millions of Florida Democrats didn't come out to vote for Gore. Nader's votes in Florida were a tiny fraction of the Democrats who either voted for Bush or stayed home. Blaming Nader is a self-serving fear campaign that the Democrats use to silence their opposition.

Blaming Nader or other third-party candidates is a strategy to intimidate people into a politics of fear that tells you to vote against what you fear instead of voting for what you believe. But in fact, the politics of fear has delivered everything we were afraid of.

We can list all the reasons people are told to silence themselves and vote for a lesser evil candidate: we were afraid of jobs going overseas, the climate meltdown, expanding wars, the attack on our civil liberties and on immigrant rights, expansion of the prison state, etc. Look around. This is exactly what we've gotten -- much of it under a Democratic White House with two Democratic houses of Congress.

Take the Wall Street bailout. Obama did that with a majority of Democrats in both houses of Congress in 2009. That's when that all occurred. So the politics of fear delivers what we're afraid of. The lesser evil is not the solution. It merely paves the way to the greater evil. It ensures that the Democratic Party base gets demoralized and doesn't come out to vote. So the greater evil wins. We've seen this time and again.

-- All of this news about Stein has attracted the attention of David Brock's troll brigade, and they have swarmed.  As Clinton tacks harder right, picking up disaffected Republicans and their fat checks, we'll see more of this.

Fun.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance mourns the passing of a Houston Democratic titan, Carl Whitmarsh, as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff ponders career options for Ted Cruz.

SocraticGadfly takes a snarky look at possible Hillary Clinton Cabinet nominees.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos learned that Rick Perry is looking for a job. She thinks Ted Cruz should be looking too. In another line of work: A Tale of Two Texas Republican Losers.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is shocked to hear that a Texas cemetery refuses to serve Hispanics. Surely, they are happy Trump is the nominee of their party.

It was a disgraceful Cinco de Mayo for Drumpf, as he made a fool of himself with a taco bowl and a Hispander. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs hoped he used the coupon for free breakfast tacos on the 6th, because he certainly seemed drunk on the 5th.

As the Sanders campaign moves towards the Democratic convention in July, Neil at All People Have Value found a freedom-loving Texan supporting Bernie. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

In spite of all the polling that show Bernie Sanders defeating Trump handily while Hillary Clinton struggles against the Republican nominee, Ted at jobsanger believes just the opposite.

Texas Vox covered the Democracy Awakening protest and rally in Austin weekend before last.

Burnt Orange has their podcast up about the continuing saga of Uber and Lyft in Austin, and CultureMap asked if Houston was next.

And the Lewsville Texan Journal is expanding with the "help wanted" sign out for a journalist.

================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Jonathan Tilove at First Reading wonders whether Rick Perry's official portrait at the state capital will be wearing a Trump button.

Texas for Public Justice's Andrew Wheat, writing for the Observer, sees the big money dogs abandoning scandal-ridden AG Ken Paxton.

The Texas Tribune and Ballot Access News report on the independent candidate who won a plurality of the vote in the 120th Texas House special election to replace retiring Ruth Jones McClendon.

The Great God Pan Is Dead tells a NSFW story about art, obscenity, and the jailing of Rokudenashiko for making a kayak in the shape of a vagina.

Houston Tomorrow is looking for its next executive director.

Make West Texas Great Again documents (and complains about) the rise of the "suburbatarians" in rural parts of the state.

Andrea Grimes invites out-of-staters who cheer the idea of Texas seceding to come here and help us do the work needed to turn our state around.

Progress Texas rounds up the best "Ted Cruz drops out" reactions from Twitter. (WARNING: You will never be able to un-see the image at the top of this post. Click over at your own peril.)

Raise Your Hand Texas hopes you thanked a teacher last week.

And in a touching Equality Texas video for Mother's Day, a lifelong Texan shares her joys -- and fears -- of raising her transgender son.

Sunday Funnies

Good news for Hillbots

Not those crapholes who do the posting at Blue Nation Review... all of them.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has shifted 11 states on its election scorecard toward Democrats since Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

“This has been an exceedingly unpredictable year,” the analyst said. “Although we remain convinced that Hillary Clinton is very vulnerable and would probably lose to most other Republicans, Donald Trump's historic unpopularity with wide swaths of the electorate — women, millennials, independents and Latinos — make him the initial November underdog.”

Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin were all shifted from toss-up states to leaning Democratic. The “solid Republican” states Missouri and Indiana were downgraded to “likely Republican.” New Mexico is now solidly Democratic, and North Carolina is a toss-up after leaning Republican.The analyst also shifted Arizona and Georgia from likely Republican to leaning Republican.

Cook also moved one House race toward Democrats: Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which was considered solid for Republicans and is now classified as a toss-up race.

Maine’s 2nd District was the only reclassification that favored the GOP, going from solid Democrat to likely Democrat. The Report classifies congressional districts in Maine and Nebraska because they are the only two states that don’t award their Electoral College votes on a winner-take-all basis.

The shifts is good news for Clinton and down-ballot Democrats, who are increasingly seeking to tie their GOP opponents to Trump.

Take a look again at the Electoral College map that Politico posted earlier this week that showed Hillary as a prohibitive favorite already.

Now flip three of the states in yellow above that Cook lists -- CO, FL, VA-- to blue and you have Clinton with 298 EC votes, or 28 more than enough to win.  If NC is a true tossup and she collects OH by tapping Sen. Sherrod Brown as V-P, we're into LBJ landslide territory.  (There's a very good reason that Julián Castro's bubble is suddenly losing air, and FWIW Brown has pretty clearly said -- more clearly than people in his position usually say -- that he's not interested.)

I still think Clinton picks a Latino -- Tom Perez seems to me to have moved ahead of Castro just lately -- to seal the deal, especially in the wake of this past week's TacoBowlgate.

And as long as we're rumor-mongering running mates, Sen. Joni "Make 'Em Squeal" Ernst checks all the boxes for Drumpf: she's looney-tunes conservative, she has a vagina, and she brings swingy Iowa with her.  The Republican nominee is going to need all the help he can get, and she's the mostest in a general election that is (or should be) over before it begins.

Discounting the V-P prognostications above, only Vermont, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, and maybe North Carolina are up for grabs.  That's a lot of states where Americans who can't stand the Republican or Democratic nominees can vote for a Libertarian or a Green for president... without being guilted for doing so.

So the two-horse race is really over unless Hill screws it up pretty badly.  That could happen, but the chances of anything damaging coming out of the FBI investigation into the use of her private email server -- specifically to avoid FOI requests -- grow slimmer by the day. 

My feet are sound asleep; what about yours?

Feliz Seis de Mayo

-- Is it safe to say Mexico is having a yuuuuuge week?  From Houston Texans' tackle Duane Brown's #MexicanMeat to "I love the Hispanics", it was indeed a special Cinco.

-- Let's count the ways Drumpf fucked it up:

Should a presidential candidate really be hawking his name-brand taco bowl to constituents?

Should Trump really be saying “Hispanics” when Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday?

Should Trump even be trying to win over Mexican voters on Cinco de Mayo, an event that’s not celebrated in most of Mexico and serves primarily as a day for Americans to party and drink tequila?

Should Trump be celebrating Cinco de Mayo with a crispy taco salad -- a product invented in Texas?

Should he even be claiming Trump Tower Grill has the best taco bowls when Yelp gives the restaurant a mere 3.5 stars out of five? (Update: Also the Tower Grill does not even sell the taco bowls.)

Why is Trump eating that taco bowl next to a photo of his ex-wife Marla Maples?

Haven't we seen enough bad holiday tweets from #brands? This we assume is just the beginning from Trump. Lest we forget, one of his campaign promises is to end the War on Christmas.

It's going to be a riotous six months for comedians and snarky bloggers, but a seriously bad time for our nation and democracy generally.  So I'm kinda torn.

-- Did you hammer a few too many margaritas yesterday?  Taco Cabana has your coupon for hangover breakfast tacos that's only good this morning.  And hopefully you didn't consume any of the rot-gut at some of these fine Houston establishments.

-- Tony Buzbee, Rick Perry's lawyer, got his drink on a couple of months too early.  He'll be spending some of his Memorial Day weekend getting ready for his DWI trial.

More on Drumpf's racism and misogyny in the pipeline, but I need to go pick up some tacos.

Requiem for a jerk

Despite the booger-eating, the associations with the worst religious freaks he could wrangle, the unintentional physical trauma he has put his wife and children through, and even all the good things he has done for Democrats... I'm going to miss making fun of the big lug.

Maybe I'll drive past his house and throw eggs, pitch toilet paper up in the trees or something.

Ted Cruz is back home in Houston.

He and his wife Heidi visited and thanked loyal volunteers and campaign staff Wednesday evening at Armadillo Palace.

Close to a hundred people packed into the restaurant for the homecoming. Cruz mingled with the hometown crowd that was filled with many of the grassroots supporters that have been key to the rise of his political career.

"It's wonderful to be home," Cruz told KHOU 11 News as he was leaving the event.

Now he and his family are getting back to somewhat of a normal life. They didn't leave the restaurant with a driver or a motorcade, Heidi drove them home.

For the love of a Jesus Christ that she believes in and I don't, I hope she packs her bags and goes back to New York and Goldman Sachs before she has another nervous breakdown.

As for Ted, the Libs are beckoning.

Libertarians seeking their party’s presidential nomination say Sen. Ted Cruz should endorse them rather than Donald Trump, who rebranded the Texas Republican “Lyin’ Ted” before forcing him out of the GOP primary with a crushing victory in Indiana on Tuesday.

Cruz hasn’t said if he will endorse Trump, whose campaign trail attacks included retweeting an unflattering photo of the senator’s wife and repeating allegations that Cruz’s father was with Lee Harvey Oswald before President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

On Tuesday, Cruz called Trump a “pathological liar” and “utterly amoral.”

The vicious GOP primary, the Libertarians hope, will push Cruz to endorse them and deliver his socially conservative, Constitution-toting base, which they view as rational for a variety of policy reasons as well.

“Ted Cruz has always been brave and stood up to the establishment of his own party, even when it came to shutting down the government, so I wouldn’t put it past him,” says Austin Petersen, one of three candidates seeking the Libertarian nomination at a Florida convention this month.

“With Donald Trump winning, I might be the only pro-life, pro-Constitution candidate on the ballot,” Petersen says. “[Cruz has] always shown the courage to buck the leadership of his own party. It would be shocking, but I don’t think it would be out of character for him.”

New Mexico’s former Republican Gov. Gary Johnson also is seeking the Libertarian nomination, which he won in 2012 before collecting more than 1 million general election votes. Johnson is doubtful Cruz would endorse him but says it would be welcome.

“That would be huge, that could be the quantum leap we need, the attention we need,” says Johnson, who was supported by 11 percent of responsdents in a recent hypothetical match-up against Trump (at 34 percent) and Democrat Hillary Clinton (at 42 percent) from Monmouth University.

“There is an opportunity here,” he says.

Golden.  Then again, he could return to Senate and become a... something besides a pariah.

As Cruz returns to Washington, does he maintain his firebrand, anti-establishment approach — which has inspired his base support but rubbed many of his colleagues the wrong way? Or does he take a more collegial tack, seeking to build upon some of the mainstream GOP support he received in recent weeks?

Because right now, GOP consultant Bill Miller pointed out, Cruz is a “dead man walking in the Senate.”

Former House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, recently called Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh.” Former President George W. Bush reportedly said last year, “I just don’t like the guy.” And Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who ultimately endorsed Cruz, has joked about Cruz being shot on the Senate floor.

“If he chooses to run again, he would need to soften his approach,” said Denton County GOP chairwoman Dianne Edmondson.

A kinder, gentler Ted.  We can all dream, I suppose.  See Kuff for his take.