The silly season continues

View 733 Monday, July 16, 2012

We spent the weekend worrying about Sable, but actually since about 1100 Saturday night she has been fine. By Sunday morning she was eager to eat breakfast. I made the mistake of letting her know I was trying to give her a pill, and that didn’t work out too well, but if I throw her a treat and then a pill she joyfully catches them. And her other pills go in her food dish. She’s pretty well her old self. We presume it was the tomatoes, but the vet gave her some antibiotics which we have to continue until they run out. That’s another couple of days.

But all’s well here, and today we had a normal morning complete with our daily walk.

Some commentators say the political campaign will depend on each candidate blackguarding the other. The President seems to believe so. Most of his recent campaign consists of saying that Governor Romney has too much business experience all of the wrong kind, and various other such allegations. Mr. Romney hasn’t exactly responded in kind, but after the primary campaign it’s clear he knows how. I wouldn’t advise him to do that. He will be far better off if he continues to try to focus on just what has happened in the past three years, and asking if the country wants – or can even endure – more of that. And of course debating Obamacare.

My political management experience is from a far different time, but I would not think it wise to respond to negative attacks. In general they aren’t even worth mentioning. Mr. Romney has been in the public spotlight for a long time now, and there aren’t going to be bimbo eruptions, family scandals, or other such surprises. Those who take new charges seriously aren’t likely to vote for Mr. Romney anyway. The intellectual part of this campaign is likely over: it now comes down to the ground game. If all those who prefer Mr. Romney to Mr. Obama actually get to the polls, the result is likely to be a heavy Republican victory.

The negative campaign we can now expect will be designed to induce despair, weariness, ennui, and any emotion to discourage those who might otherwise get out at vote against the President. There will a a lot of that.

“There is not a man in the country can’t make a living for himself and his family. But he can’t make a living for them and his government too, the way the government is living. What government has got to do is live as cheap as the people.” Will Rogers

I had to go to the bank today. I had a check from Amazon for my German eBook sales. You’d think that it might be in Euros, but it was drawn on an English bank in pounds. It didn’t take long for the manager to figure out what to do. It wasn’t a great amount of money, but I have to say that it was for more than I got for my German sales of print books last year. Moreover it was for the first quarter of this year, which is astonishing. Most publishers pay royalties in summer current for the half a year ending last fall – indeed, I think I have not yet got the royalties for German print book sales from the first half of 2011 (they’d come through my agent), and here’s the eBook sales for first quarter of 2012.

Amazon is revolutionizing the publishing industry. They have made author backlists valuable again, and they are paying on time, not just after a credible threat of lawsuit. The publishing industry may never recover form an innovation like that.

I also had to go to the bank to get a bank officer to sign and stamp in the appropriate box a three-page form from the French government related to my taxes on anything I earn in France. This went to my agent. I suspect the result won’t be much – for some reason I don’t sell too well in France – but the complexity of the form was revealing. Considering that we are only looking at a few hundred dollars at most, this is an awful lot of paper work. Will Rogers comment comes to mind. But the trend seems to be for America to get more government like France. Ah well.