Finally, there's something about President Obama that I like! And I mean, really like!

I did not know it until today, but according to this article, my favorite beer, Yuengling -- a great, 175-year-old beer from "America's oldest brewery" -- is also Barack Obama's favorite beer:

OTTAWA - President Barack Obama followed through on his hockey bet with Canada, sending beer to the prime minister.

Stephen Harper received the delivery of Molson Canadian on Friday. Canada won the men's gold-medal game on Sidney Crosby's overtime goal.

Harper and Obama had each wagered a case of beer on the outcome.

Obama tossed in an extra case of Yuengling for Harper, the president's brew of choice had he won the friendly wager.

Ambassador David Jacobson, Obama's top representative in Canada, delivered the beer. He also congratulated "the Canadian people on the games."

I had no idea that it was the president's favorite. It's a habit he must have picked up at Columbia, or more recently in DC, because Yuengling is not distributed in Hawaii where he grew up, nor in Massachusetts where he went to law school, nor in Illinois where he lived more recently.

Anyway, now that I know it's the president's favorite, I'd like to see some progress on getting it distributed. Here's the company's distribution map as of right now:

It would appear that this Yankee company has a "Southern Strategy," which seems odd for a brewery centered in Pennsylvania. Nothing north of New York, and not one location in the Midwest -- and this despite the fact that its most important fan (the most powerful man in the world) is from Illinois and went to law school in New England.

BTW, the beer has recently made an entry into the West Virginia market, where it is selling like hotcakes. And while Yuengling is only number two right now, it is poised to overtake Sam Adams as the largest American-owned brewery, despite the fact that Sam Adams is distributed everywhere. Here's what Sam Adams' founder Jim Koch says about its smaller competitor:

I think Yuengling has done a fantastic job with a strategy that a lot of people told them was crazy. They've been very successful taking their own path, which is competing with the mass domestic beers with a darker and more flavorful beer. They have a huge market share in eastern Pennsylvania. They may have market share there that is competitive with Budweiser, which is an extraordinary accomplishment. Even here in New England, we don't compete with Budweiser. They are 25 or 5O times our size, so we're still very small. But Yuengling has found a way to get an enormous volume by bringing the mass domestic drinkers into something that is a little more flavorful. I admire [Dick Yuengling's] refusal to listen to everybody who told him he was wrong. A lot of people told me I was wrong when I started. I know what it's like to have people tell you you're doing it the wrong way because it's unconventional.

Up until now, all I could do was join a Facebook group. But now that the beer has a powerful ally in the form of the White House, it's time to demand some real action.

Come on, Mr. President. The American beer market is in the tentacles of a huge foreign monopoly. What's going on is clearly restraint of trade! The mega-distributorships dominated by Bud and Miller take advantage of medieval laws which prevent beer from being moved about freely the way other products are. So now that you've nationalized health care, is it too much to ask you to use your power for a good purpose?

Philosophically speaking, if health care should be transportable, why not beer?