Input: The real winner in the tied Portugal-US game is...
Though the Portugal-U.S. World Cup match ended in a tie on Sunday, there was at least one winner—Buffalo Wild Wings.

Its stock surged 5 percent following a new report detailing strong attendance at the chain during World Cup matches so far. (What's the stock doing now? Click here)

Strong World Cup viewership bodes well for the chain's same-store sales performance this quarter and next, according to a new Wunderlich Securities report.

The firm's channel checks revealed "standing-room-only attendance" for last night's game along with "long wait times (over an hour) for any tables for viewership in either the bar, dining room, or patio" at the restaurants' locations.
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It's about: One company's stock surged 5 percent following a new report detailing strong attendance at the chain during World Cup matches so far.


Input: Contrarian Common Sense
In politics, certain things are not supposed to happen: Liberals never reject a tax increase. Conservatives always favor the strongest anti-immigration leader. And big corporations can’t really buy an election because voters see through them.

They are not supposed to happen, that is, until they do. In Tuesday’s election, three voter choices showed that people will throw off the strait-jacket of conventional wisdom if properly persuaded. On a night when voters rejected extremism in its mostly far-right forms (the Mississippi “personhood” amendment, Ohio union-busting), they also defied the mold in a trio of actions out West.

First, the heat went out of Arizona. It’s been simmering for some time with the hateful back-and-forth on immigration, a polarization that prompted the Mormon Church to call for a return to sanity. In ousting Russell Pearce, the Republican president of the State Senate and the architect of the show-me-your-papers immigration law in 2010, voters in his conservative district listened to less strident voices, including influential Mormons.

Pearce was voted out of office – the first state legislator to be recalled in Arizona history – and replaced by another Republican, Jerry Lewis, who had compared the state to “1964 Alabama.” He promised to bring “a civil tone” back to the immigration discussion.

On one side were all the heavyweights behind one of the nation’s most draconian anti-immigration measures, a law now largely suspended by the courts. Governor Jan Brewer and the sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, stood with Pearce.

On the other side were Mormon moderates and an immigrant rights group that took an early stand against Pearce. Party lines were blurred. “The political jerseys came off,” said Petra Falcon, who led much of the effort against Pearce.

At the other end of the political spectrum, in Seattle, residents overwhelming turned down a tax increase that was billed as a boost for transit. The vote was another slap at Mayor Mike McGinn, a feckless social engineer who, on behalf of his dwindling constituency of bicycle riders, promoted an increase in the fee for renewing vehicle registrations.

The chances of Seattle voting down a tax increase are about the same as those of the Mariners winning a pennant. In fact, Seattle voters strongly favored another tax increase on Tuesday, on behalf of education. But the car tab measure was a bridge too far and would not have fixed many bridges, either. It was another of the mayor’s nutty schemes to turn the city into Amsterdam-with-hills, the idea being that every car owner would pay an additional $60 toward things like more bike lanes and the “planning” of future trolley lines.

The fact that new taxes for an ostensibly progressive cause can be rejected by a 60 to 40 margin in a city where Republicans have trouble getting 20 percent of the vote says more about voter fatigue with poorly-thought-out ideas than it does about shifting political loyalties.

The last lesson in unusual politics comes from Costco, longtime home of the $1.50 hot dog and gummy bears by the barrel. Using its newfound powers as a corporation-as-a-person granted them by the Supreme Court, Citizen Costco spent about $20 million on an initiative to persuade Washington voters to privatize the liquor business. No corporation, or individual, had ever spent so much money in the state on any voter measure.

Opponents hammered away at the spectacle of a big corporation buying an election – which is exactly what happened. Costco bought its 20-point majority with nonstop ads. How could this be? In last year’s race for governor of California, the Republican billionaire Meg Whitman spent $141 million of her own money trying to buy the state’s highest office and still lost. Voters were repulsed by big money, the pundits said.

But people can be bought, as Costco showed, if voters like the buyer. Costco is a home-grown Washington institution, known as the anti-Wal-Mart for its good wage-and-benefit packages. That $1.50 hot dog has not gone up in price since Costco gave birth to it circa 1985. Opponents from both parties conceded that Costco’s good reputation in the state played a major role in its victory.

Costco also learned from the defeat of a similar measure last year. It changed the language for this year’s ballot so that the state would get more net revenue, while still getting out of the liquor business. And the measure limited liquor sales to larger stores (like Costco!), preventing mini-marts from selling booze on the fly.

When those crates full of Jack Daniels start to appear in warehouses next June, a toast to defiance of political hard truths may be in order.
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It's about:
Liberals and conservatives defied conventional wisdom this week and did the right thing.