Amazon Pulls All McMillan Books Over E-Book Price Disagreement

Amazon Pulls Macmillan Books Over E-Book Price Disagreement -NYTimes.com:

To make a long story short, Amazon decided to play hardball with McMillan in negotiations over e-book pricing, so you now cannot buy from them ANY books, e- or otherwise, which are published by McMillan or its imprints. Those imprints include my publisher, St. Martin's Minotaur.

So...

Powell's Books

Park Road Books

Murder By the Book

Barnes & Noble

Seattle Mystery Bookshop

Quote of the Day

From the New Yorker profile of writer Neil Gaiman:

If he had not been a writer, he says, he would have wanted to design religions. “I’d have a little shop, and people would phone up or come into the shop and they’d say, ‘I’d like a religion,’ ” he said. “And I’d say, ‘Cool, O.K. Where do you stand on guilt, and how do you want to fund it? And would you like sort of a belief in the universe as a huge beneficent organ? Or would you like something more complex?’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, we’d like God to be really big on guilt.’ And I’d say, ‘O.K., how does Wednesday sound to you as a sacred day?’ ”

You gotta love this guy.

For The Flashman Fans

Flashman's Retreat provides a daily meditation from the pen of Brigadier General Harry Paget Flashman, VC, KCB, KCIE, (aka Flash Harry), George McDonald Fraser's beloved anti-hero. A typical selection:

I know these beauties, you see, and it don’t matter whether they’re queens or commoners, when they start to play the cool, mocking grande dame it’s a sure sign that they’re wondering what kind of mount you’ll make.

And:

I told him I had ambitions, too – to live as I please, love as I please and never grow old. He didn’t think much of that , I fancy; he told me I was frivolous, and would be disappointed. Only the strong, he said, could afford ambitions. So I told him I had a much better motto than that…“Courage – and shuffle the cards”.

No Principles Whatsoever

Talking Points Memo

...every Senate Republican today voted against reestablishing "pay-as-you-go" budgeting rules that mandate that any new spending must be paid for. The rule passed on a 60-40 party line vote.

So when Senate republicans talk about being worried about the deficit, they don't really mean it.

...And I Feel Fine

I'm blogging today over at Murderati about e-books, cavemen, and why the sky is not falling. Y'all come!

Why We Fight

South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer Compares Poor to 'Stray Animals' - Sphere News

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed," he told an audience in the town of Fountain Inn on Friday. "You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that."

You want to know why I'm so hard on Republicans? It's shit like this. Comparing poor people to stray animals who shouldn't be fed, lest they breed.

These people are vicious, thuggish assholes, and they want to rule the country again.

Jesus, is every SC politician out of his damn mind?

A Fine Tribute

There's an online wake of sorts going on for Robert B. Parker over at The Rap Sheet. It's as fine a set of tributes from as fine a set of writers as you're likely to find, notwithstanding the presence of Yours Truly.

Do drop by and add your own reminiscences.

To the Congressional Democrats: MAN UP!

Latest Newspaper Column:

After Republican Scott Brown's recent win in Massachusetts over Democrat Martha Coakley for the Senate seat held by Teddy Kennedy for 47 years, the liberal Village Voice ran a headline: "Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate."

The Voice is not, it should be noted, mathematically challenged. It's merely engaging in a little dig at the way the congressional Democrats seem to have reacted to the news. In fact, Senate Democratic leaders circulated a set of talking points after Brown's victory that contained the eye-popping sentence: "It is mathematically impossible for Democrats to pass legislation on our own."

Say what? I'm no math whiz, but last time I checked, 59-41 was still a majority. And majorities can get stuff done if they're willing to use their votes. As numerous pundits have pointed out, even at their high-water mark, the Republicans never had the presidency, 59 votes in the Senate and 59 percent of the House.

And not once do I recall them circulating a flier that claimed they couldn't get anything done and begging the Democrats for votes. Heck, in the 1998 midterm, they lost seats in the House and pressed ahead with impeaching the president anyway, despite polls telling them how unpopular the move was among the electorate.

The problem, of course, is the Senate, whose archaic rules allow not just a minority but a single senator to hold things up indefinitely, not only through the filibuster, but through a variety of other arcane rules.

One of these is the "hold," like the one South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint put on President Obama's nominee for the head of the Transportation Safety Administration. DeMint, who's been one of the most terror-stricken of the panic-mongers in the wake of the Christmas Undiebomber, would still apparently rather see the TSA go leaderless than take the risk they might unionize.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempted attack, DeMint said in trying to justify his obstructionism, "is a perfect example of why the Obama administration should not unionize the TSA."

Get that? If the TSA unionizes, it won't be able to stop terrorist attacks. We're so dedicated to this principle, we're going to render the TSA leaderless. The fact that there was an attempted terrorist attack during this leaderless period just proves our point, even though the TSA was not, at the time of the attempt, unionized. And we let people like this have effective veto power over the majority.

Of course, it doesn't have to be that way. The Democrats could grow a spine and start calling bluffs. If Holy Joe Lieberman threatened to filibuster a health-care bill, despite the fact that he'd gotten changes he'd previously demanded, they could say, "Fine, Joe. Knock yourself out. We'll give your Homeland Security chairmanship to someone else while you run your mouth."

Then, while he's reading the phone book on the Senate floor, they could run ads 24/7 with Joe's mug up on the screen and a voice-over saying, "This is the guy who wants you to lose your health insurance if you get sick. This is the guy who wants you to be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions. Call him now."

Or, in the alternative, they could vote to change the rules. But that would require the aforementioned spine.

Back when I first started writing this column, in the days before the GOP started screaming "traitor" at everyone who didn't think George W. Bush was the greatest thing since sliced bread and drove me into the Democratic Party, I was proud to call myself an independent (you can look it up).

Back in those days, I was fond of quoting Jay Leno: "Every time I think I'm going to join the Republicans, they do something greedy; every time I think of becoming a Democrat, they do something stupid." To this I would add, "Or they wimp out."

You're not going to win seats, or even keep them, by allowing the other side to make you look weak. Quit worrying about what Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh's going to call you. They're going to hate you no matter what you do.

C'mon, guys, man up!