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I admit that I am often wrong when it comes to assessing the political climate in this country. For instance, I earnestly believed that George W. Bush didn’t stand a chance in the 2000 election. In fact, during the summer of that year, as I casually watched the coverage of the presidential campaign, I recall telling friends that Bush’s constant gaffes and apparent ignorance would be transparent to voters, and he’d be soundly rejected. Sadly, I was wrong.

Then, in 2004, when I was a very active supporter of John Kerry, I genuinely believed that voters would see through the deception, fear-mongering and myriad abuses of power, and soundly reject Bush and Cheney. Again, I was wrong.

Naturally, Republicans will be using the the most unscrupulous tactics imaginable during the 2008 campaign, but whomever is selected to be that party’s candidate will be facing serious hurdles, and not simply because they don’t have the assorted devils like Karl Rove working for them. No, it’s because the Bush Administration is now in a phase of governance I like to call “Blaze of Glory”.

The Blaze of Glory is a mindset whereby, in the absence of a practical strategy for success in any endeavor from work to video games, one opts for the most spectacular–and, ultimately, destructive–course of action. The concept first became clear to me one July night in 2000, while playing a game called Driver with friends. The object of the game is to be a getaway driver in one of several important missions, outrunning law-enforcement, and safely completing the task at hand. Inevetably, however, the game becomes so difficult, that winning is clearly no longer possible, and the best a player can hope for is to do as much damage as possible, and go out in a “blaze of glory”.

It seems to me that the Bush Administration is in this Blaze of Glory phase now. They no longer even care what people think about them. Expose their lying, torturing, law-breaking. They don’t care. They’re just going to keep on doing what they want, right until it’s game over. It’s frankly amazing that they’ve been able to get as far as they have. (Comic Patton Oswalt had a hilarious bit on Fresh Air this week comparing Bush and Cheney to Bo and Luke Duke.)

The only difference between the fiery conclusions in Driver and the actions of the Bush Administration, is that the Bush Administration isn’t just driving solo; they are the collective face of the Republican party. To continue the metaphor, it’s as though they are running their mission in a van that other people are counting on being able to use, but they’re going to blow it up anyway.

According to this NPR report, there is a worldwide wine surplus, and in Europe, angry vintners are destroying bottles of low-quality wine, presumably to defend their own brands. 

You know where else there is too much wine?  Television.  I am sick of travel programs spending so much time talking about wine.  In any given episode about a European country, the hosts of these programs will often dedicate a third of their air-time to yapping about wine.  They’ll ignore important museums, neglect to provide any meaningful historical context, mention significant attractions only in passing or dismiss the fine arts altogether.  But God forbid they don’t bore me with endless talk about wine.

Talk about wine all you want on the Food Network; give it its own channel for all I care.  But when you’re trotting the globe for a travel program, do me a favor and spend a little less time talking about booze and spend a little more time telling me how much hotels cost, how the public transportation is, and in what part of town I ought to stay.

Since it was raining all day yesterday, and there was little else we could do, we watched the complete Back to the Future trilogy in HD. I had been wanting to see the first one again for some time, since it’d been years. Parts II and III were just a bonus. Actually, Part II isn’t that great. It is pretty weak for the first 40 minutes or so before hitting its stride in the second half. Part III was better than I remembered, but it seems like the filmmakers decided at the end to just be as absurd as possible, and made a flying train.

Still and all, Part I is a fantastic movie, with everything coming together exactly as it should.  It’s good watchin’.