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Read more about the article Review Roundup: 1/08

Review Roundup: 1/08

Last year I was invited to join Amazon Vine, the online behemoth’s slick new marketing program that enables publishers (and other companies) to provide free review copies of their books (and other products) for a group of Amazon-selected reviewers, pretty much ensuring a lot of independent user reviews for the participating products. The program lets reviewers select up to 2 products from a pretty varied list each month, and you cannot have more than 2 unreviewed products at any time, so while there’s no guarantees (or requirements) that the reviews will be positive, the setup ensures that the products are actually getting some buzz for the effort from “influential” users.

I’ve been casually reviewing things on Amazon since 2000, breaking into the top 5,000 a year or two ago — which is where I was when I got the invitation — and am currently ranked #3,872 for my 103 reviews and the 782 helpful votes they’ve received.

So far, I’ve reviewed four books through the Vine program — two very good and two not at all — all but one of which I chose primarily on the basis of the marketing copy and/or subject matter:

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips (2 stars)
“Sitcom approach ruins intriguing premise”

Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price (5 stars)
“Vibrant, compelling read”

Hundred in the Hand by Joseph M. Marshall III (4 stars)
“Excellent, despite a couple of missteps”

Franklin the Fly by R.O. Blechman (2 stars)
“Pretty pictures can’t save too slight story”

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Read more about the article If I Had to Vote Republican

If I Had to Vote Republican

Random thoughts on tonight’s Republican Debate (live-blogging):

The format of the debate, with Brian Williams and Tim Russert asking specific questions with little follow-up or interaction from the other candidates makes things a little stilted. [ETA: This got better as the night wore on.] I was surprised and glad to see Ron Paul on the stage as I’m pretty sure his picture wasn’t in the opening graphic. He’s the Republican’s Dennis Kucinich and his voice is needed in these forums if only for his strident anti-war stance.

9:30pm: 30 minutes in and based purely on their performances so far, I kind of like Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. There’s a clarity to their answers that’s noticeably missing from the others’, except arguably, for McCain, who I’d like a bit more if he weren’t so damn hawkish. Giuliani and Romney’s sourpusses are almost as off-putting as their tone and while Paul and Huckabee have some batshit-crazy stances on several issues, I don’t get the same images of “itchy trigger finger on the nuclear button” that I get from those two.

9:34pm: Russert asks, “Do you think the War in Iraq was worth it?” McCain basically says, “Hell, yeah!” though he equivocates quite a bit. Giuliani attacks Hillary Clinton’s flip-flopping on the war (rightly so) in giving his answer but ultimately says it was worth it. Paul says very straightfowardly, “It was a very bad idea and it wasn’t worth it.” Huckabee says that he supported the President, as did the Democrats, and that, effectively, it was worth it. Romney says yes, but says that it was mis-managed but the surge is working.

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Read more about the article Time Out!

Time Out!

Okay, once I start posting 2am rants about politics, it's clearly time to pause for a deep breath and talk about something else for awhile. ...  Spindle? Chugging along quite nicely. We hit 15,000 page views on Sunday and today's update concludes the "official" launch. Now I have to start working on February's content, including a new Notable New Yorker interview. Writing? Haven't written anything new in a few weeks (the random villanelle doesn't count) and have to put together at least one submission before the end of the month. Read "A Change in Direction" last night in the open mic. Reading? I'm juggling…

Continue ReadingTime Out!
Read more about the article Is Barack Obama Electable?

Is Barack Obama Electable?

This started out as a reply to a friend’s email who asked the question, and despite my wanting needing to come up for air from the political waters for a day or two to avoid an early repeat of 2004 where my frustrations got the better of me and my cynicism hit new lows, it evolved into this post…

It’s a fair question that we really won’t know the answer to until it’s actually an option, but I’d say Obama is as electable as Hillary Clinton, if not a bit more so.  She’s a known entity and there’s a pretty large group of people on both sides of the divide who simply won’t vote for her, no matter who her opponent is.

I’ve got one foot in that camp myself thanks to the way she and Bill have been campaigning lately.

She’s got several old sets of baggage she’s carrying around from the 90s — failed health care proposal; NAFTA; DOMA; “don’t ask, don’t tell”; her refusal to release her sealed records from the 90s until after the election — not to mention what’s perhaps the biggest set that’s been pretty much overlooked because she’s a Clinton: she’s a woman. There are as many people in this country who won’t vote for a black man as there are who won’t vote for a woman, and if there was a way to pull back the curtain and see what’s really happening out there, I think you’d find a lot of them [not ALL of them, and not even a majority] are supporting John Edwards right now as a way to hide that bias, perhaps even from themselves.

As for the Republican contenders, they’re dealing with a seriously fractured party that doesn’t appear ready to compromise just yet. The longer Thompson and Giuliani stay in the mix, and as long as Ron Paul continues to play the reasonably well-funded Sharpton/Kucinich role, the better the Democrats’ chances are in November… as long as they don’t tear each other apart like Bill Clinton seemed intent on encouraging over the past week.

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Continue ReadingIs Barack Obama Electable?
Read more about the article Gambling with God in Nevada

Gambling with God in Nevada

With the cynical lawsuit to stop casino workers from caucusing on the Strip tomorrow having been rightly dismissed, the LA Times has an interesting article entitled “Clinton plays gaming card against Obama“, pointing out her latest attempt to muddy the waters in what is looking more and more like a campaign against Barack Obama instead of the campaign for Hillary Clinton she was running most of last year when she was still the “presumptive nominee”:

The issue has come into focus primarily due to the Clinton campaign, which has distributed a document to local reporters, headlined, “Obama Blasted Gambling as Socially Destructive and Economically Irresponsible,” listing several of his past quotes.

Among them are a 2003 comment in the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, in which Obama argued that the “moral and social cost of gambling, particularly in low-income communities, could be devastating.”

In 2001, the Clinton memo states, Obama described himself as “generally skeptical” of gambling as an economic development tool and likened the expansion of slot machines to the state lottery, in which, he said, “you’ll have a whole bunch of people who can’t afford gambling their money away, yet they’re going to do it.”

As part of its efforts to publicize those statements, the Clinton campaign has secured the help of top industry players — several of whom participated in a campaign-sponsored conference call with the media last week designed to chastise Obama.

Southern California-based Latinopoliticsblog.com zeroes in on an interesting point that’s buried towards the end of the article:

The other ironic thing about this issue is that Hillary Clinton is a follower of the Social Principles of the Methodist Church, which calls on Christians to obstain [sic] from gambling. How does she reconcile her church’s beliefs with her heavy ties to the gambling industry? I would expect this sort of dilemma from Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani, but not Hillary Clinton. Why did she even need to go there with the religion?

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Read more about the article There’s Something (Wrong) About Hillary

There’s Something (Wrong) About Hillary

As recently as this past Saturday, while working the Obama visibility event in Union Square, I said to several people that I thought one of the best things about this election is that we have three viable Democratic candidates who have a legitimate shot at winning the Presidency in November. Barack Obama, obviously, is my first choice, with John Edwards a close second and Hillary Clinton a distant, but not totally unpalatable third. Not even 48 hours later, I see two viable candidates and one who is quickly becoming so toxic that not only can I see myself not voting for her in November, but dedicating my time and energy to working for the opposition, ideally Mayor Bloomberg’s inevitable campaign.

There was a brief moment early last week where I believed the combination of the historical import of a Clinton vs. Obama primary and the slam dunk seemingly awaiting the Democrats in November would override the petty politics-as-usual campaign tactics; that they would be able to engage on the issues and focus on their very different approaches to achieving their goals. I hoped there would be a very conscious decision by all three candidates to fight fair so as to ensure a healthy nominee we could all get behind in November.

Instead, I’m watching Hillary, Bill and company piss all over the process and claim that it’s just raining.

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Read more about the article The Problem With John McCain

The Problem With John McCain

I said elsewhere recently that I thought John McCain would be the least likely Republican candidate to make a Freudian slip and drop a racial epithet if running against Barack Obama. I’d forgotten about his reference to “gooks” during the 2000 presidential primaries, though. And then, during last night’s Republican debate on Fox — one of the most depressing things I’ve watched in years, BTW — he dropped this beauty and I realized exactly how important this year’s election is: 

“I’m not interested in trading with al-Qaeda. All they want to trade is burqas. I don’t want to travel with them. They like one-way tickets.”

Generally speaking, I had considered McCain the most palatable of the Republican field despite his aggressive stance on the war, but this kind of casually racist — and clearly pre-scripted — comment, presumably okay because it’s in reference to an enemy — his justification for the “gook” comment, too — brings to mind Stephen King’s Dead Zone, visions of his crazy ass starting World War III being even clearer than those I’ve had of Dubya. (Fred Thompson has a noticeably itchy trigger finger, too, and is looking more like a potential VP choice for McCain, which is scary as hell.)

I watched about 30 minutes of the debate before I couldn’t take it anymore and came away with a better understanding of the appeal of Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, who at least come off as sincere representatives of their respective platforms, even though the latter seems easily distracted from the point he’s making at any given moment. Paul was the recipient of some unwarranted contempt and derision from both the moderator, the insufferable Britt Hume, as well as several of his fellow candidates, and while he has no real shot at winning the nomination, with the impressive financial support he’s received, I can see him launching a 3rd party candidacy that siphons some votes from the Republicans and possibly even some of the ill-informed progressives who blindly backed Howard Dean in 2004.

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Continue ReadingThe Problem With John McCain

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