The beer will be called Highlander. "There can only be one."

AB Inbev (Budweiser) are in merger talks with SABMiller (Miller, Coors). There's something wrong with this country when the 3 most successful competitors become the same company. Beer, cars, you name it. This can't be good.

From the BBC.

It's Like, Tax Free Weed Day in Colorado, Man...

An accounting error has resulted in the very first tax free day for recreational marijuana buyers in Colorado.

The bizarre tax holiday is due to what Gov. Hickenlooper called a fiscal glitch in the state constitution. Value buyers may note that the holiday should shave about $20 off the price of a mid-grade ounce of marijuana. There could be huge crowds and hoarders.

September 16, 2015 was picked because an end-of-year fiscal report is due to be certified the previous day. According to state figures, $700 million worth of legal cannabis was sold in Colorado in 2014. The tax tally was $76 million. Pot taxes were projected to raise $70 million in 2014. They actually raised $58 million, but because overall tax collections exceeded projections, Colorado must ask voters for permission to keep the money. To comply with the requirement that the taxes revert to zero, lawmakers settled on a short one-day tax waiver.

A regular 2.9% sales tax still applies, as do medical marijuana taxes and local pot taxes.

Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights—also called TABOR—requires the state to issue refunds to taxpayers if the state’s spending or revenue collections exceed the previous projections. To try to avoid the refund requirement, legislators introduced HB 15-1367, creating a ballot initiative to allow Colorado voters to approve of the state keeping the $58 million in marijuana revenue.

Regardless of whether the ballot initiative passes, Colorado did lower the sales tax on marijuana from 10% to 8% beginning in July 2017. The tax holiday is expected to cost about $100,000, plus $3.6 million for a one-day elimination of the 15% excise tax.

For all the hoopla over pot taxes, Colorado still collects more tax revenue from alcohol.

Read the full story at Forbes.

Does anyone remember Silicone Alley?

I miss reading her blog. She was a hoot. I saw this posted somewhere and it reminded me of one of her old bits. Craigslist of the Week:

Longmire Season 4

It's not that you come back, it's how you come back that matters. That's the tagline for Season 4 of the Netflix original series Longmire and it couldn't be more fitting. Pretty much everyone was shocked when A&E suddenly cancelled the series after being the network's most watched scripted show.

But as the old saying goes, you can't keep a good man down. Especially when Netflix is looking for good original shows. Boy, did they find it.

Robert Taylor, Katee Sackhoff and Lou Diamond Phillips return and so do the troubles for Absaroka County, Wyoming. That poor little county has to have the highest violent death rate per capita in the nation.

Beautifully shot, the rough Big Sky country is just as much a player as the actors.You may find yourself distracted from the story time to time by the beauty of the raw wilderness. At least I know I do.

There is good news/bad news to the new season. The bad news is there are only 10 episodes in Season 4. This is the 3rd time they've turned in a short season. Only 2013 had 13 episodes. The good news is they give you a full 10 episodes and then some. There are no commercials on Netflix and they knew that going into production, so the normal 48 minute episode runs closer to 58 minutes and a few are over an hour. They run more like short films than episodes of a TV show.

You definitely get your money's worth.

So if you like well written shows full of interesting characters that aren't set in a major metropolitan city, check out the Season 4 of Longmire on Netflix.

Another 1st for the USCG

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy (WAGB 20), based at Pier 36 in Seattle, has arrived in the North Pole -- becoming the first U.S. surface ship to make the trip unaccompanied.

Healy's crew and science party left Dutch Harbor, Alaska on August 9th and arrived at the North Pole on Saturday.

According to a Coast Guard press release, Healy is the country's newest high-latitude vessel. It's a 420-foot, 16,000-ton, 30,000-horsepower icebreaker. It's capable of breaking more than 10 feet of ice, but Healy’s continuous icebreaking capacity as 4.5 feet at three knots, compared to the 6-foot icebreaking capacity of the Polar Star and its inactive sister ship, the Polar Sea. (What does continuously breaking 6 feet of ice sound like? Think giant fingernails on the world's largest chalkboard.)

USCGC Healy made it to the upper region on September 5th. The fact that most of the polar area is melting rapidly due to global warming means that valuable resources such as oil and minerals are there for the taking.

The Coast Guard's only active heavy polar icebreaker, Polar Star, is almost 10 years over its intended 30-year service lifespan; its sister ship, Polar Sea, went inactive in 2011 after an engine failure. Healy, began service in 2000, but it is a "medium polar icebreaker" primarily suited to supporting scientific research, the report found.

"Russia, on the other hand, has 40 icebreakers and another 11 planned or under construction," the White House said. President Vladimir Putin has also stepped up his country’s military deployments and permanent infrastructure in the region over the last few years, even going so far as to restore abandoned Soviet-era bases and claim ownership of the North Pole. Early last month, Russia submitted its latest claims over a vast swath of the Arctic Ocean to the United Nations,

"The Coast Guard has been operating here off Alaska since the 1860s," Captain Jason Hamilton said. "Healy continues that proud tradition and we clearly demonstrated the capability to provide access to the furthest regions of the planet."

Combined reports from The Navy Times, Arctic Newswire, Christian Science Monitor and I4U

A long time favorite of the South40 passed away Sunday night. Martin Milner died of natural causes surrounded by family and friends. He was 83. Martin was most well known for his roles as Officer Pete Malloy in the hit NBC series Adam-12 and as the Corvette driving all around cool guy Tod Stiles in Route 66, but he did much more than that. From Disney to a smut peddling degenerate in original episodes of Dragnet.

He was the fresh faced kid in numerous war films like Sands of Iwo Jima, Halls of Montezuma, Fighting Coast Guard (no way I was leaving that one out), Battle Zone and of course the one I'll always remember him for, the Shore Patrol Lieutenant from Alabama in Mister Roberts.

His last on air performance was a 1997 episode of Diagnosis: Murder. 

Remember those "Buy Gold for hard times" ads?

So you took it in the shorts when the stock market took a correction and bottom dropped out of the gold market? Well, suck it up, cash in and take your losses, right? 

Not so fast there Auric!

From the AAS

Downtown Austin vault of precious metals turns up mostly empty

By the time auditors and lawyers got access to Bullion Direct’s 14th-floor offices six weeks ago, there were only a handful of gold and silver coins in an office safe. A second vault it had recently rented held only slightly more.

An estimated $30 million in cash, metal bullion and valuable coins, meanwhile, had vanished.

Bullion Direct hadn’t filed a tax return since 2010. What little has been unearthed suggests it was losing money almost from the day it opened its doors. Records also indicate McAllister paid himself hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual compensation.

Let's just say things didn't go well.

From our friends at Prevail and Ride:

My hotel in South Bend left me a card. pic.twitter.com/nsP2TAyimO

— Thujone Von Thujone (@PrevailandRide) September 4, 2015

Jade Helm! Jade Helm!

SAN ANGELO, Texas - A group of hunters were allegedly held at gunpoint by Goodfellow Air Force Base guards on the opening day of dove season.

Local authorities diffused the incident without complications.

The six dove hunters were roaming private farmland near Loop 306, adjacent to GAFB, on Tuesday afternoon when base security forces swarmed, said Greg Simons, owner of Wildlife Systems.

The guards had the hunters lay face down — spread-eagle — for nearly 30 minutes at gunpoint before the San Angelo Police Department arrived, said Simons, who was not on the property when the incident occurred.

"They kind of felt the brunt of being in a hornets nest out there," Simons said.

The hunters met with GAFB security Tuesday morning and game wardens later in the day, Simons said. Everything was fine until security returned around 4 p.m., he said.

Read the full story HERE.

James H. “Red” Duke, Jr., M.D. (1928-2015)

Dr. Red Duke died from natural causes last week at Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston. He was 86.

It's Officially Football Time!

One of the sure signs of Fall besides the mercury dropping below 100 is the annual College Football Preview from the world's greatest MS Paint artist with a love for his Texas Longhorns and a serious penis fixation.

Ladies and Gents, I give you the greatness of THujone.

I'm not joking about the penis fixation.

Speaking of things that made me laugh...

I got an email from MeTV:

Good News!!! Carol Burnett and Friends will start airing in your area on 8/31/16 at 10p central - thanks for your patience and tell your friends.

No more torture of having to watch promos for The Carol Burnett Show on 21.2 only to find The Twilight Zone in it's place. Seems there was contractual red tape with the previous rights holder in the DFW market preventing 21.2 from airing the classic variety show. That's all cleared up now and we, the viewers, are the winner.

Just because it made me laugh

My Baby's Gone

No more spreken ze deutsch around the South 40. My Mercedes is history.

Traded my C300 for a CTS. Pretty much a lateral move, vehicle wise. The Mercedes did have a few more bells and whistles, but from now on we're an All American outfit.

Deals on Wheels

Car shopping sucks. Especially when the car I drove an hour to look at isn't here.

Herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre's Johnny!

From Variety:

Johnny Carson Returns: Antenna TV to Air Full ‘Tonight Show’ Episodes

Just when it seemed the late-night landscape couldn’t get more competitive, here comes Johnny Carson.

Tribune Media’s Antenna TV, the multicast digital channel devoted to vintage television shows, will run full-length episodes of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” nightly at 11 p.m. ET/8 p.m. PT starting Jan. 1.

Antenna TV has struck a multi-year deal with Carson Entertainment Group to license hundreds of hours of the NBC late-night institution. Antenna will run episodes that aired from 1972 through the end of Carson’s 30-year reign in in 1992. Because NBC owns the rights to “The Tonight Show” moniker, Antenna TV’s episodes will be billed simply as “Johnny Carson.”

“This is not a clip show. This is full episodes of Johnny Carson, the man that everyone in late-night agrees was the greatest host of all time, airing in real time as he did back in the day,” Sean Compton, Tribune’s president of strategic programming and acquisitions, told Variety.

Antenna’s showcase will mark the first time Carson-era “Tonight Show” episodes have aired on a nightly basis since the host signed off in May 1992. Carson stayed out of the spotlight after his retirement until his death at age 79 on Jan. 23, 2005.

“The Tonight Show” ran in a 90-minute format from the start of Carson’s run in 1962 until 1980, when it was trimmed to an hour. Antenna will air hourlong episodes on weeknights and 90-minute installments on Saturday and Sunday at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT.

Read the full story at Variety.com

Personally, I can't wait! I just hope the shows aren't too dated for new viewers to understand the pop culture references. Johnny was all about current events.

From the "Fair and Balanced" Dept.

I said I wasn't wanting to slant the coverage on cop shootings and this certainly could have had a completely different outcome. But the Deputy showed restraint and common sense in his response.

Personally when the guy bailed out and did the finger gun routine I would have had a hard time scoring the shoot/don't shoot. Charging the officer after that was just a big ol' green neon sign.

I say the Deputy showed an admirable amount of restraint in using deadly force.

Hippity Huz, Hippity Huz; What in the hell is the matter with us?

And Another...

2 things real quick. First this is obviously a stolen bit from Liberally Lean that has been repurposed. All copyrights are clearly infringing.

Second, I really don't intend to turn this into a cop bashing forum or some sort of witch hunt, but this happened right after I posted yesterday and it makes me ragey.  Holy shee-it!

From CBS San Francisco:

A Rohnert Park policeman was captured on video pulling his gun on the man who was recording him on his cellphone in a residential neighborhood court.
The officer appears in a YouTube video approaching the man, identified in the YouTube caption as Don McComas, first in his patrol vehicle and after a couple minutes on foot after stepping out of the vehicle.
The unnamed officer is heard ordering the man to take his hand out of his pocket, and when the man refuses the officer pulls his gun out of his holster.
During the confrontation, McComas tells the officer, “Put your gun away!” and “you don’t touch me,” as he backs away from the officer.
When McComas asks what he has done wrong, the officer said “you take a picture of me, I take a picture of you.”
McComas also told the officer “you guys have done enough to my family.” When asked by the officer what was wrong, he responded, “Your station is corrupt,” to which the officer replies, “Are you some kind of a constitutionalist crazy guy, or something like that?”
On his Facebook page, McComas refers to “lies and distrust I’ve encountered from the Rohnert Park & Petaluma Police over the last 15 months is something I wouldn’t ever believe if I heard it from someone else.”
On the City of Rohnert Park Police & Fire Facebook page, a statement attributed to Mayor Amy Ahanotu and City Manager Darring Jenkins said the department would conduct an internal review of the confrontation.

Recording a Cop = Terrorism

As crazy as that sounds, it's exactly what a Senior Austin Police Officer thinks and wants other officers to follow. This is from almost a year ago, but I just ran across it following the recent arrest of 'Peaceful Streets' founder Antonio Buehler. It seems they are going forward with that.

An activist is a terrorist, at least according to Senior Police Officer Justin Berry of the Austin Police Dept. While the terms aren't mutually exclusive, a person can be one without being the other. In Berry's mind, they're both, and he feeds off the FBI's paranoia to reach his conclusion. 

It basically says that Berry has come across some information on a "national domestic extremism trend" that is echoed by local activist groups. He claims to have found "mirror warning signs" in "FBI intel." From there, his own report follows, naming such unlikely domestic extremists as CopBlock, CopWatch and Peaceful Streets. Also included are sovereign citizens groups and government accountability activists.

You can read the entire article including the ***Confidential Law Enforcement Only*** report over at TechDirt.com .