Let's be honest: America has a checkered history to say the least. Even the most steadfast, flag-waving patriot would have to admit that. We've had slavery, Tuskeegee experiments, the McCarthy era. That doesn't even count eight years of this, eight years of this, and over forty fucking years of this. If you want to know where America stands right now, I would do yourself a favor and watch Glenn Beck's this-would-be-a-funny-script-but-it's-not-it's-real-so-it-makes-me-shiver-and-sob interview with disgraced Democratic Representative Erick Massa. Don't fret; YouTube will hook you up. It will be the most wondrous, heart-wrenching, belief-in-humanity-negating 9.5 minutes of your life. Basically, a Democrat uses cancer and a Democratic conspiracy to cover up his gay fondling hi jinks while a Republican refutes his non-points by saying that he is the target of an EVEN BIGGER Democratic conspiracy, each proclaiming himself the more put-upon while covering ABSOLUTELY NOTHING related to politics or bettering our battered country. If that's not America in a nutshell right now, I don't know what is.
Also encapsulating America? Beer laws. Beer laws are unique in their representation of our country's history in that most of them are old, outdated, and still on the books. These laws are literal representations of where our collective heads were at decades ago. They are our history, albeit a short-sighted and ignorant portion of our history, which makes it all the more tragic that they still exist, let alone are being enforced. If you don't know, several states have laws that make it illegal to sell beer over a certain ABV. Or, as with the recent debacle in Philadelphia, some even have beer "registration" laws.
You see, in the state known as "Pennsylvania", the brilliant state government representing "Pennsylvania" decided that all beer had to be registered. So let's say I own a bar with 75 beers to choose from. I have to go to the state liquor board and register that I carry each of them. At this point, you should be scratching your head. Wait. It gets better.
Over the weekend, three UPSCALE alehouses in Philadelphia were raided by gun-wielding police who confiscated unregistered beer to the tune of several thousand dollars. Now, Pennsylvania has tons of beer. Go to central PA. A Yuengling on tap costs $1.75 ALWAYS. Kids don't even have to scrape together beer money the old-fashioned way (selling their "disabled" parents' Oxycontin). If you've got two dollars, you can drink in a bar.
Thankfully, states are starting to get the message. Sean from Fullsteam helped lead the charge in North Carolina to get their bullshit laws repealed, and now Iowa has gone and done away with theirs. It was all part of a huge and actually sort of interesting budget restructuring for the Iowa state government. The beer part of the bill was, according to lawmakers, "budget neutral". Budget neutral . . . in a budget restructuring bill. They just tacked it on! That is awesome.
I know I shit on a lot of places that aren't New York, but in between mad rows of corn, Iowa really has their stuff together. I mean, this is the place that launched Barack Obama into the national spotlight, legalized gay marriage, and now they're the latest to banish their outdated beer restrictions. I might be a leftist wealth-hater, but I love this country. I love it SO much that I'm going to move to Iowa, where the first black President can oversee me marrying some dude, and I can serve Old Rasputin or Midas Touch at my bangin' gay wedding reception in some goddamn peace. Now that's America.
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