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I've got it! There are two major corporate mergers dominating the business pages. One of them has significant St. Louis impact. What if we just re-work the players, and everyone can win!

My Fellow St.Louisans, I'm proud to announce my plan for keeping Anheuser-Busch American-Owned: Micro-Busch!

Microsoft's Ray Ozzie and Steve Ballmer have got a hard-drive on for acquisition to beat back Google. If Microsoft acquired A-B instead of pursuing Yahoo!, the newly formed powerhouse would be a force to reckon with. I've already got some new product for them to move. How does "XBUD 360" hit you? Or "Microsoft Office Dry?"

Instead of all those confusing labels for different levels of features in software, Microsoft gains a family of brands with well-known definitions in the public mind. It works a little like this:

• "Vista Ultimate" becomes "Windows Michelob" (Pay more just for the name)
  
• "Vista Home Premium" becomes "Windows Budweiser" (The flagship brand)
  
• "Vista Business" becomes "Windows Busch" (The Working Man's OS!)
  
• "Vista Home Standard becomes "Windows Natural Light" (Sure it will get you there, but you will regret it later)

See? All the package confusion that has plagued Microsoft products gets erased by the association with brands any red-blooded American can identify and instantly rank at a glance.

Plus, if you drink too much Budweiser, you are already used to re-booting anyhow.  (See what I did there?)

As for our Belgian friends, InBev and Yahoo! make a perfect match. Yahoo Personals can be re-branded "The Hoe Garden" for instance. And, they can use Yahoo's iconic exclamation point, and create "Stella!" All they need is to license the rights to "Streetcar Named Desire" to use in their marketing campaign.  Actually, J-Ray tells me that InBev already uses an exclamation point in their corporate logo, but it is pretty lame (makes it look like "!nBev").  So now it makes even more sense!

A-B stays American, and St. Louis gets a nice little bump in the tech sector. Hey, part of being mayor is being a facilitator. I don't ask for much for my idea of bringing these very natural merger partners together. All I ask is to be in the test program for the XBUD 360. That would make a nice addition to the Slayground.