The American beer drinking public is in a tizzy.  A Brazilian-Belgian company, InBev has made a bid to purchase Budweiser.  InBev has basically offered an 11% premium on the current stock price of $62 and change as of Friday's close.

The fine people at Budweiser have rejected the proposal.

The Commissioner owns stock in Budweiser.  The Commissioner actually reads the fancy color glossy year-end report the people at Budweiser deliver to their shareholders every year.  The Commissioner has not decided how he will vote his 1 trillionth of an interest in Budweiser when this matters comes to a shareholder vote. 

There are some questions I need answered by the InBev people though, before I vote.  If you take over the company, are you still going to offer the free tours of the Budweiser factory in St. Louis, and more importantly, are you still going to offer FREE BEER at the end of the tour?  As the tour currently works, and if you ever go to St. Louis, do yourself a favor and take the tour, you go through the plant, and at the end, you are put into a huge hospitality area.  While there, you are given beer.  Big cups of beer. As much beer as you want (they state you are only allowed 2 glasses, but they are REALLY liberal with how they count to two).  The counting is like 1, 1 and 1/4, 1 and a 1/3, and 2/5ths.....Are the people at InBev going to keep this wonderful, farsighted, thirst quenching policy?

Also, what about Grant's Farm?   Also in St. Louis.  Grant's Farm is the Busch homeplace.  Again, it is open for free tours.  You get on a little tram, you look at all the animals they have, which the kids love.  At the end of the tour, you get dumped off next to the baby goat pen. You buy a bottle of milk for the baby goats.  You give the milk to the kids (pun so totally and completely intended), and you head off for the Clydesdale barn.   Why on earth would you head off to the horse barn, when there is goat feeding going on?  Well my friends, this isn't any old Clydesdale barn.  This my friends is a Clydesdale barn with the World's Greatest Surprise.  FREE BEER.  Yes, why the kids are drinking/serving up milk, you are drinking down, ice-cold, fresh from the factory, hopsian infused, malt beverage.  My few trips to Grant's Farm are always universally known as "good days". 

So, are the InBev people going to continue this fine tradition, of entertaining the children with wonderful animals, while entertaining the adults with free BEER?  Until InBev answers these questions, preferably in a nice color glossy packet that I can read in the laboratory, all this hostile takeover talk needs to stop.