Drinking Corner
Everyone is getting into the craft beer business. A client recently sent me this link to The Abbey Beverage Company. The Benedictine monks of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert (New Mexico) control 84 % of the Abbey Beverage Company through a separate corporation, St. Luke's Corporation.
It sounds pretty complex for bunch of monks, but hey, monks have done sophisticated and great things throughout history. And it sounds like they're kicking out some great beer:
Monks' Ale is a Belgian-style Abbey ale, a single, the type of beer the monks would drink on a daily basis. It is 5.1% alcohol by volume, 18 IBU, and has a starting gravity of 1052 or 13° Plato. It is made with a blend of three malts from the U.S., Canada and Belgium. We use only the finest European hops, including German Hallertau Hallertauer, Czech Saaz, and Styrian Goldings from Slovenia. Our yeast was originally from the brewery of the Belgian Trappist Abbaye de Notre-Dame d'Orval.
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Membership in “gangs,” has mushroomed in both suburbs and inner cities by 40% since 2009, according to the FBI's National Gang Threat Assessment. Known gangbangers now number 1.4 million.
The new trend this year, as sniffed out by John Robb at Global Guerrillas, is the “increasing presence of gang members in the military (primarily the Army) and the transfer of combat skills gained in Iraq/Afghanistan to the street.
“The FBI report states that 100 police jurisdictions have reported coming into contact with gang members with recent military experience.”
As usual, the FBI is late to the party. As far back as 2006, the Chicago Sun-Times found graffiti of the Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings and Vice Lords... on armored vehicles, concrete barricades and bathroom walls.
“The big worry about gangs in the U.S. military,” Mr. Robb writes, “is a repeat of what happened in Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed. When the Soviet Union collapsed economically, hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers with fresh combat experience in Afghanistan (and little to offer in terms of skills) were dumped onto the street and into the waiting arms of criminal organizations.”
“This process quickly turned Russian economics into a shooting sport. A place where wealth and firepower became synonymous.”
This is another wrinkle to the disturbing scenario we've painted in our most-recent forecast: a breakdown in civil order, gangs invading the suburbs where poverty is mushrooming. But this is what happens when the mother of all financial bubbles finally starts to pop.
Some Good Late Night
A judge has ordered Lindsay Lohan to work at the L.A. morgue. This way she can do community service and visit her career at the same time. Leno.
Yesterday on CNN, Joe Biden said he hasn't made up his mind about whether he'll run for president in 2016. Which raises the question: “Who was raising that question?” Fallon.
