Sunday Poll: How Do You Prefer To Drink Beer?

The beer industry has seen lots of changes in my lifetime, as a kid I thought beer was the canned Coors my dad drank at the end of the workday. As an adult I learned beer is also sold in other forms like bottles and draft. The beer options today are much more varied than they were when I turned 21 (1988). Craft beers have taken so much volume from big beer that big breweries have consolidated and began buying craft brewers. See 9 Craft Beers You Didn’t Know Weren’t Craft Beers.

In the news last week was discussion of Budweiser and the use of the famous Clydesdale horses in advertising:

The self-proclaimed King of Beers is more of an afterthought among young consumers at Jake’s and bars across the U.S.: Some 44% of 21- to 27-year-old drinkers today have never tried Budweiser, according to the brand’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev NV.

Young drinkers aren’t the reason Budweiser volumes have declined in the U.S. for 25 years, from its nearly 50-million-barrel peak in 1988 to 16 million barrels last year. Light beers like its sister, Bud Light, have chipped away at Bud’s share of the market for decades. Bud Light overtook it as the No. 1 selling beer in 2001, and Coors Light displaced it as No. 2 in 2011. (Wall Street Journal – Bud Crowded Out by Craft Beer Craze)

This got me to thinking about a poll on beer, but different than previous polls in 2009 & 2013. I used a poll I found online as the model for today’s poll question: How do you prefer to drink beer?

Various answers like plastic cup, can, bottle are listed. The poll is open until 8pm (Central) today, results will be posted Wednesday. The poll is at the top of the right sidebar.

— Steve Patterson

Sunday Poll: What Day Do You Think The Michael Brown Grand Jury Will Announce Their Decision?

On Wednesday I said there would be no more weekly polls, which is true. However, that afternoon, I decided to try a poll that’s open for just 12 hours: 8am-8pm, each Sunday.

Most likely you saw the news yesterday — no decision from the Grand Jury yet:

A steady rain dampened an already gloomy mood here Saturday afternoon as word spread that a grand jury looking into whether to indict police Officer Darren Wilson had yet to make a decision. (CNN)

The poll question for today is ‘What day do you think the Michael Brown Grand Jury will announce their decision?’  The poll options include today and every day though the end of the month. The answers will be in the same order for everyone — chronological. The poll closes in 12 hours — 8pm central.

The poll is located at the top of the right sidebar on the desktop layout, mobile users will need to switch to the desktop layout to see the poll in the sidebar.

— Steve Patterson

Weekly Polls To Become Sunday Polls

Revised 11/19/14 @ 1pm:

Starting this Sunday I’ll try a poll that will start at 8am and end 12 hours later, discussing the results the following Wednesday.

Original post below:

In February 2009 I introduced the weekly poll on this blog. It’s been a great 5+ year run but every poll the last few weeks has been overrun by a flood of new visitors voting, I’m tired of seeing them flip the natural results to match their agenda. I can’t think of a way to prevent this other than cease doing the weekly poll altogether. Here are the results from last week and this week (1 day):

Q: Should Missouri have a law like Oregon’s ‘Death with Dignity Act’?

1. No 201 [71.28%]
2. Yes 75 [26.6%]
3. Maybe 4 [1.42%]
4. Unsure/no opinion 2 [0.71%]

Q: Do you plan to shop on Thanksgiving Day?

1. Yes, online & in a store 100 [67.11%]
2. No 42 [28.19%]
3. I have to work 2 [1.34%]
4. Maybe 2 [1.34%]
5. Undecided 2 [1.34%]
6. Yes, in a store 1 [0.67%]
7. Yes, online 0 [0%]

The outcome of both are very different than those who voted in the first 8 hours. I might do a poll within a post, with it ending after 8-10 hours.

For the record I think Missouri needs a ‘Death with Dignity’ act to allow those who are terminally ill to end their lives before suffering. I also don’t think we should be out shopping in stores, if you do please be especially kind to those having to work on Thanksgiving.

I’ll now be posting 5 days a week, Monday-Friday. Maybe an occasional post on a Saturday or Sunday.

— Steve Patterson

Poll: Do You Plan To Shop On Thanksgiving Day?

Some retailers have announced they’ll be open Thanksgiving Day, while others proclaim they’ll be closed.

Kmart, J.C. Penney, Toys R Us and Walmart are all opening their doors on Thanksgiving this year, but that doesn’t mean everyone is asking workers to report for Black Friday duty a day early.

At least 13 large retailers have decided to remain closed on Thanksgiving. In various statements, the companies have cited the questionable benefits of opening on Thursday and the importance of preserving the holiday for employees and customers alike. (Huffington Post)

I’m curious if readers will be out shopping, at home shopping online, or not shopping at all. The poll is in the right sidebar (desktop layout).

— Steve Patterson

Voter ID Laws Supress Voters

A majority of those who voted in the poll last week foolishly think voter ID laws are about preventing fraud. The real motivation is to keep those who typically vote Democratic from voting:

A disabled woman in Travis County was turned away from voting because she couldn’t afford to pay her parking tickets. An IHOP dishwasher from Mercedes can’t afford the cost of getting a new birth certificate, which he would need to obtain the special photo ID card required for voting. A student at a historgically black college in Marshall, who registered some of her fellow students to vote, won’t be able to cast a ballot herself because her driver’s license isn’t from Texas and the state wouldn’t accept her student identification card. (Ginsburg Was Right: Texas’ Extreme Voter ID Law Is Stopping People From Voting)

A couple more examples from Wisconsin, via the ACLU:

Ruthelle Frank is a resident of Brokaw, Wisconsin, where she has served on the Village Board since 1996. She was born at her home in Brokaw in 1927. She is an eligible voter registered to vote in Wisconsin. She has no accepted form of photo ID under the photo ID law and lacks a certified copy of her birth certificate, which she needs to prove citizenship to the Wisconsin DMV. Though she has never had a birth certificate in her possession, the state Register of Deeds has a record of her birth and can produce a certified copy of her birth certificate, but at a cost. The record on file, however, has an incorrect spelling of her maiden name: Wedepohl, and is consequently an unacceptable form of identification. The process to correct the birth certificate is lengthy and costly, with some reports suggesting it might require $200 or more. She has voted in every election since 1948 and intends to vote in Wisconsin again next year.

Eddie Lee Holloway Jr.’s birth certificate says Eddie Junior Holloway and as a result he is no longer able to vote in the state of Wisconsin. DMV employees tell him that his birth certificate is an unacceptable form of ID because the name on it reads “Eddie Junior Holloway,” due to a decades-old clerical error. It doesn’t matter to the DMV that his father’s name — “Eddie Lee Holloway” — is printed on his birth certificate, and that Eddie has a Social Security Card and an expired Illinois photo ID both bearing the name “Eddie L Holloway Jr”. Eddie says, “I never miss voting” and has rarely missed a chance to cast a ballot since he was 18. He worked in Illinois for years as a cook at the airport and Claire’s Family Restaurant, and he cooked in nursing homes too. Years of heavy lifting and hard work left him severely disabled, unemployed, and homeless — in that order. He now lives with his mother in Milwaukee but cannot secure the disability benefits and medical attention he so badly needs due to a lack of photo ID.

You might think it’s no big deal if a handful of people are inconvenienced or turned away to cut down on the massive fraud that takes place. The reality is the reverse, thousands are turned away because of a few cases of fraud:

Election fraud happens. But ID laws are not aimed at the fraud you’ll actually hear about. Most current ID laws (Wisconsin is a rare exception) aren’t designed to stop fraud with absentee ballots (indeed, laws requiring ID at the polls push more people into the absentee system, where there are plenty of real dangers). Or vote buying. Or coercion. Or fake registration forms. Or voting from the wrong address. Or ballot box stuffing by officials in on the scam. In the 243-page document that Mississippi State Sen. Chris McDaniel filed on Monday with evidence of allegedly illegal votes in the Mississippi Republican primary, there were no allegations of the kind of fraud that ID can stop. (A comprehensive investigation of voter impersonation finds 31 credible incidents out of one billion ballots cast)

Also see Jim Crow Returns: Millions of minority voters threatened by electoral purge.

Here are the embarrassing poll results:

Q:  Photo ID Voter Laws…

1) Prevent voter fraud 132 [67.69%]
2) Disenfranchise voters 54 [27.69%]
3) Make no difference 7 [3.59%]
4) Unsure/no opinion 2 [1.03%]

 — Steve Patterson