I tried an Argentinian Malbec last night and didn't like it. It was just too full-bodied and heavy-tasting for a table wine. After having a couple sips i looked at the label and unsurprisingly the alcolhol content was 14.5%. For my taste, table wines that are 14% or more in alcohol content just don't taste good. The flavors seem overpowering and wear out the palate.

This seems to be a fairly common problem with wines from hot climates in the U.S., S. America and Australia. Another great way for winemakers to produce palate-killing wine is to use an excessive percentage of new oak barrels. Over-oaked wines seem to be popular, even with some high-end brands, but they don't appeal to me at all. Needless to say those wines that combine high alcohol content with lots of new oak are monstrosities if you ask me.

Having said all this, i have no problem with dessert wines such as ports that have 18% alcohol or more, because they're meant to be consumed in small sips and small quantities, and not as complements to a meal.

... and nothing signified? Two of my nephews saw the new James Bond movie the other day, separately. The younger one, a high school freshman, came home first and emphatically gave it two thumbs down, saying it was stupid and just a series of scenes of things being blown up. His older brother, a high school junior, came home a half hour later. Having gotten the first review, i asked him if the movie was really terrible. I was surprised (but shouldn't have been) when he said no, it was really good.

Obviously, adolescent males are the target audience for this movie and, seemingly, for 2/3 of the stuff that Hollywood puts out every year. It's also obvious i think that all these "action" movies have a nihilistic aesthetic, and that it takes no thought, ingenuity or talent to produce them. To me they seem like the proverbial one-note samba. Having seen one or two of them, i don't see the point of watching any additional ones. More accurately, having to sit through another one would feel like an unpleasant, complete waste of time. Obviously, the part of my brain that's supposed to respond favorably to repeated exposure to these stimuli is out of order. And unfortunately, the younger nephew's brain seems to be similarly dysfunctional.

I had to endure listening to the national anthem the other day (as if it wasn't bad enough that the football game turned out to be terrible) and it occurred to me that it's time to replace it. Of course, the tune is bad, but now it seems that the lyrics (like the Geneva Conventions) are quaint and obsolete. Especially the last line about this being the "home of the brave."

It should be abundantly clear by now that the republicans (as well as some Dems.) think that this is no time for bravery, this is the time for cowardice. They've been telling us for decades that the world's a terrifying place and that there are all sorts of "evildoers" who pose "existential threats" to the populace. I'm sure that i'll forget some, but this is a partial list (in no particular order) of those we should fear:

Communists
Socialists
Liberals
Labor Unions
Intellectuals
Environmentalists
Black people
Mexicans
Muslims
Arabs
The United Nations
Atheists
Secular Humanists
Gays
Lesbians
Bisexuals
Transexuals
Iranians
N. Koreans
Hamas
the Castro brothers
Putin
Hugo Chavez
Al Sadr
Bin Laden, al Qaida and the Taliban (but only when an election is imminent)

Of course, this list is incomplete- i'm sure that i've made some glaring omissions. But just considering the above menaces to our way of life, it's abundantly clear that we can no longer afford the luxuries of privacy, free speech, habeas corpus, due process, the presumption of innocence, etc. And by all means let's recognize that bravery is only for Americans in the military- it has no place in the civilian population. When things get tough in the "homeland" our job is to get out there and resume shopping.

The Peter Sellers movie Being There seemed absurd when it came out. The idea that someone incapable of a coherent thought could have a chance of becoming the U.S. president seemed so unrealistic to me as to make the movie ridiculous rather than satirical. It turns out that the movie was incredibly prescient, which just goes to show how much i know. Since it came out, we've had ronald reagan, danforth quayle, george w. bush, and now (drum roll)... sarah palin, someone who makes "Chauncey Gardiner" appear thoughtful by comparison. Things just keep getting curiouser and curiouser.

Apparently, almost all the free-market-loving republicans agree that there are at least 4 (and probably counting) financial institutions that are "too big to fail". Did they just figure that out this month? Did they forget about all the savings & loan outfits that had to be bailed out because their collapse would have "destroyed the economy"? If they know that the government is obliged to bail out these businesses, why don't they insist that the government do everything possible to hedge its bets to prevent these sorts of failures? Why don't they insist that no corporation doing business in the U.S. be allowed to become so big that it can't be allowed to fail? Why play the capitalist version of Russian Roulette with these businesses?

In American politics, bigger ain't better. Money equates almost directly to political power. Allowing concentration of economic/political power in small numbers of businesses and individuals is antithetical to government of the people, by the people, or for the people.

If you've ever been to a wine-tasting, it should be blatantly obvious that the theory of intelligent design is absurd. No sane intelligent designer would equip human beings with only two hands. It's utterly impossible to carry a catalog of the wines, a wine glass, a plate of appetizers, a fork, and a napkin with just two hands. Human beings should have a minimum of 4 hands for this type of function. And a really intelligent design probably would require 6- to build in some redundancy, to handle emergencies and to let you write notes while carrying everything.

If you're within driving distance of Detroit, enjoy jazz but never have attended the Labor Day weekend jazz festival downtown, you should do yourself a favor and check it out. It's a totally free 3-day outdoor festival with several stages and more than a few world-renowned musicians. The website for info about the festival is detroitjazzfest.com. The crowds are always friendly, parking isn't too bad, and the site right on the riverfront is quite nice. Detroit does lots of things wrong, but the jazz festival is a civic gem year in and year out.

Anyone who thinks that Ayn Rand is a crap writer can't be all bad.

... (and the world) when your nation's been run by fascists for 6 years. If you've been baffled by the failure of the Dems. to stand up to the cheney/bush regime on countless critical issues (the continuing occupation of Iraq, warrantless wiretapping, torture, etc. etc.) in the past year and a half, be baffled no longer. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid explained it in very simple terms that anyone can understand:

"The 'fights that await our return won't be easy,' Reid said Friday. 'We'll fight if we must, but we'd much rather dance.'

The Constitution's been shredded, the economy's been devastated, the military/spying/corporate complex is running amok, the environment is on the verge of disaster. But the Dem. leaders of the Congress still prefer to dance with fascists rather than try to fight them.

In the past week or so mike huckabee and hillary clinton decided to engage in the most outrageous, disgusting, dangerous, inexcusable political rhetoric that i can remember in modern U.S. history. As i assume everyone who's paying any attention knows, each of them made grotesque references to someone threatening Barack Obama with a gun or assassinating him. It's impossible to know whether their efforts were co-ordinated in any way or whether they spoke independently of each other. It's equally impossible to believe that either of these two experienced pols could have made such statements without being aware that their comments would endanger Obama's life even more than it already was.

I have no idea whether huckabee's made other such statements in the past, but in the past few months hillary has made a number of references to the assassinations of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. By explicitly citing RFK's assassination as one of her reasons for thinking that she might still become the Democratic nominee, hillary now has stooped to an unbelievably new low in her campaign. Huckabee of course was a candidate for the repub. presidential nomination and is also a psuedo-christian minister who, like hillary, seems willing to do anything to prevent Obama from becoming President of the U.S.A. Hillary, her husband and her surrogates have engaged in all sorts of ugly race-baiting in this campaign, and she's made numerous idiotic statements indicating that war-mongering john mccain is preferable to Obama when it comes to U.S. national security. These sorts of comments were contemptible and low-class, and showed that Hillary was perfectly willing to engage in the politics we expect from the likes of cheney, bush, rove, mccain and most other repubs. The assassination talk, however, went far beyond all the previous misconduct.

American history is replete with horrible assassinations of presidents and charismatic leaders, as well as numerous attempts that failed. Obviously, Lincoln's assassination had a profound impact on the nation. More recently, JFK's killing resulted in Lyndon Johnson becoming president and causing horrible damage and divisions in the country by miring us in a brutal unwinnable war in Vietnam. The murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy stilled the voices of the most brilliant, charismatic liberal leaders in the U.S. since Franklin Roosevelt. It would be most naive to think that huckabee and hillary are unaware that Obama is a similar type of charismatic figure, and also one who speaks constantly of making significant, much-needed changes to the current right-wing policies of the U.S. government.

If anyone doubts the malignant intent of the comments of huckabee and hillary, you only need to look at the callous "apologies" that each offered afterwards. Neither one ackowledged that his/her comment was outrageous, morbid and profoundly disturbing, neither one expressed any regret for the anxiety they must have caused Obama and his loved ones, and each assured us that they didn't mean to offend anyone. There are thousands and thousands of people in the U.S. who are severely deranged, and there are tens of millions of firearms in this country. The words uttered by huckabee and hillary easily could "inspire" some maniac(s); they serve to create an atmosphere where the idea of assassination gets into the general consciousness of the public. I don't believe that either one of them spoke without being well aware of the danger.