It’s an interesting juncture in the contest for the Republican nomination for president. With a pause in the quite rigorous schedule of debates we’ve seen thus far (the next one isn’t until December 10th) and with the spirit of Thanksgiving and Christmas taking the focus off of profane political doings, there’s a sense out there that things won’t change much until the turn of the New Year. So, the supposition is that we have on the whole a contest between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, where Newt Gingrich is the latest anti-Mitt incarnation, but the one blessed most when it comes to timing.

If things actually don’t change until the New Year that leaves us with the Iowa caucuses occurring on January 3rd. The New Hampshire primary is January 10th, followed by South Carolina on the 21st and Florida on the 31st. That might just do it, if one candidate is clearly ascendant.

However, I dispute the idea that we’re really down immutably to Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. I think it’s far too early to conclude that. In particular, I think that if Newt stumbles badly, Rick Perry may well rise again as the anti-Romney. He has superior finances and organization as compared to Gingrich, and he is not accustomed to losing elections. While I believe it would be a big mistake for him to go after Newt with any negative advertising, I think he is well-positioned to give Romney a very difficult time, and all of that may rebound to his favor if Newt weakens for his own reasons.

Ron Paul is also likely, I think, to do well in Iowa. While I don’t think he has a chance of winning the nomination (in part because no one thinks he could win the general election) his success could affect the dynamics of the race in ways that are difficult to predict (although the most obvious guess is that it would help Romney). [Read more →]

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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

If you happen to be shopping online, today or any other day, there’s a simple way in which you can provide some kind support to this website. If you visit Amazon.com or Buy.com via any of the links on this site (including the ones here below) then for any purchase you make during that same visit a small but welcome commission will be paid to THE CINCH REVIEW, at no additional cost to you.

…….

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From section: Shorts by The Cinch Review

Details have been released on a huge collection of cover versions of Bob Dylan songs, featuring about 80 different artists, which is coming out next year as both a tribute to Bob Dylan and a benefit for Amnesty International. It’s called Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan (and the album cover features Bob Dylan as Doctor Who). Most of the tracks are brand new recordings; an exception is the single track by Bob Dylan himself, which is his original recording of “Chimes of Freedom” from 1964.

I knew something along these lines was coming out, but when I saw the scope of it and the track list, my first reaction was: Isn’t this kind of excessive? Four CDs worth? Some of it will be good, no doubt, but some of it will be pretty painful too. Well, I guess it’s too late to stop them now. Might as well face it: we live in an age of huge excess. Something like this wouldn’t even have been dreamed of in the ’60s or ’70s, because it would have required something like 8 or 10 LPs. Now it’s just some space on an iPod, for most listeners. Ten tracks; eighty tracks; two hundred tracks: what difference does it make? People will just listen to the ones they care to hear anyway. [Read more →]

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From section: Dylanosophy by Sean Curnyn

To all in the U.S., or observing while on foreign shores, a very happy Thanksgiving Day.

These all look to you,
to give them their food in due season.

(Psalm 104:27-30 ESV)

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From section: Shorts by Sean Curnyn

No sense beating around the bush: The focus for most was on Newt Gingrich last night, since his emergence as the current most-credible-anti-Mitt-Romney, or even, in some polls, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. My view is that he did very well, and was especially wise to stick to his style of not taking shots at the other GOP candidates.

The controversy coming out of this debate appears to center around Gingrich’s comments on immigration. Like everyone else, he’s in favor of controlling the border. After that, he favors a calibrated way of dealing with illegal immigrants who are already here, based on their length of time here and depth of ties. From the transcript:

If you’re here — if you’ve come here recently, you have no ties to this country, you ought to go home, period. If you’ve been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grandkids, you’ve been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don’t think we’re going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out.

The [Krieble] Foundation has a very good red card program that says you get to be legal, but you don’t get a pass to citizenship. And so there’s a way to ultimately end up with a country where there’s no more illegality, but you haven’t automatically given amnesty to anyone.

Later, as part of his response to Michele Bachmann’s fairly predictable attack insinuating that Gingrich wanted to give amnesty to all 11 million illegals, he also said this: [Read more →]

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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

Yesterday, after watching it myself, I said that the GOP “Thanksgiving Family Forum” from Iowa had been by far the most adult debate of this election season, and strongly recommended watching it.

I continue to recommend that (and the video is embedded at right, with the actual discussion beginning about the 37 minute mark). It is a highly admirable, intelligent and mature conversation about the nexus of faith, politics, morality and the U.S. Constitution, and stands as a superb tribute to the organizers, to the moderator Frank Luntz and to the candidates who participated. It is revelatory on a far deeper level than any other debate you are likely to see in this (or possibly any other) election cycle.

But since we are in the middle of a horse race, and an important one, I will offer a couple of comments on who I think benefited most from the event. [Read more →]

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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

Having watched it as it aired today online beginning at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, it is not difficult to make the following call: The GOP “Thanksgiving Family Forum” from Iowa, moderated by Frank Luntz, was far and away the most adult, civilized and intelligent debate of this election season so far. And, indeed, it was the most mature discussion of its kind of any election season that yours truly has had either the good or bad luck to live through. [Read more →]

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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

During Bob Dylan’s current tour of Europe (which finishes up on the 21st in London) Mark Knopfler has been the opening act, along with his band. Knopfler has also made a habit of sitting in on guitar during Bob Dylan’s set for the first three or four numbers. It being a Bob Dylan set, those numbers vary significantly from gig to gig. So, for people attending or those collecting the recordings, it’s really quite a neat treat: you get to hear a broad range of Dylan songs with that distinctive Mark Knopfler guitar texture added in. It’s different. Knopfler and Dylan go way back, of-course, to 1979′s Slow Train Coming, which featured Mark on guitar, and 1983′s Infidels, which was also co-produced by him and could well be said to sound like a quasi-Dire-Straits album. Mark Knopfler’s own style of singing has I think rightly been described as Dylanesque, but on Infidels it almost sounds like Dylan is imitating Mark imitating him, if you know what I mean. (And it works, too.)

Anyhow, the clip from YouTube embedded below is of Bob Dylan performing his sweet old song “To Ramona,” in Stockholm, with Mark Knopfler noodling along nicely. And indeed, it is a nice thing that they’ve had the chance to work together again like this.

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From section: Dylanosophy by Sean Curnyn

The 80-voice Melbourne Mass Gospel Choir will perform many of the gospel-era songs of Bob Dylan in concerts scheduled for this weekend, in Carlton (a suburb of Melbourne), Australia. Full story in the Melbourne Leader.

The leader of the choir is quoted as saying, among other things, that “They are powerful social critiques and the lyrics are now 30 years old but are as contemporary as anything you could imagine.” I usually cringe when hearing people talk about Dylan as a writer of “social critiques” and such-like, but when applied to his gospel-era songs, it strangely makes more a lot more sense than usual. I think it could definitely be argued that they are his protestiest songs ever.

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From section: Dylanosophy by Sean Curnyn

This morning’s much anticipated and ballyhooed “Occupy Wall Street” march in the financial district, and attempt to shut down the New York Stock Exchange, attracted anywhere from a few hundred to somewhere between one and two thousand participants, according to the media.

In this city of New York, you can gather a crowd like that if you stand on the corner giving away free samples of some new protein bar. I mean, really. Considering the non-stop publicity and promotion of this event taking place (for free) in all outlets of the mainstream media, the level of participation is nothing short of dismal. This is not the 99%. It is more like the 0.000001%. In addition, as is well known, many of those in the hardcore membership of this OWS “movement” in New York are in fact from out of town. Take them away and you have a complete non-event. It’s a non-event anyway: the whole escapade of the past two months has been created by and remains dependent upon the wildly disproportionate attention of the media, in pursuit of a political narrative that suits their own preferences. (And we must not forget who in the political world supported it from the beginning.) [Read more →]

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From section: Commentary, New York interest, News by Sean Curnyn