Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 915

The Senate Has a Plan to Stop the Shutdown (or Not)

An emerging bipartisan deal from the Senate is beginning to look like the most promising plan to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, narrowly avoiding fiscal catastrophe in the process, if lawmakers can get their ducks in a row on time. 

Update, 1:09 p.m. The Collins deal is officially dead. The focus is now on Senate majority leader Harry Reid and minority leader Mitch McConnell, who began negotiating Saturday morning. Reid isn't confident they can work out a deal. If they do, it's basically the House Republicans' biggest fear. And they have to pass the bill, too. So, uh:

Senate Dems reject Collins plan, Senate GOP reject Reid plan, House GOP ducking for cover and Obama is where ever he is. The Aristocrats!

— john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) October 12, 2013

Original The deal must be written, approved and signed into law by Thursday, when the U.S. will apparently hit its spending limit. House Speaker John Boehner told Republicans in a meeting Saturday morning that talks with the White House have fallen apart. As the deadline looms, with every other deal broken and rejected by one side or the other, the best chance the government has to get itself out of this mess is a bipartisan Senate plan. Per The New York Times: 

Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, were drafting a plan to extend the borrowing limit through the end of January and include a stopgap spending measure that would reopen the government through the end of March. Government agencies would have flexibility on how to handle existing across-the-board spending cuts.

Their plan also would call for a delay or an easing of a tax on medical devices and an immediate bipartisan conference for the House and the Senate to begin negotiations over a budget, with the expectation of an agreement by mid-January.

Politico reports the delay would last for two years, "while paying for the lost revenue by altering the way that pensions are calculated." Nothing is final, though, Politico warns: "The Collins-Manchin draft is not final and is expected to undergo significant revisions in the coming days, sources said."

But there is some division brewing in the Republican party. Or, at least, even more division than before. "Senate Republicans need to stand strong and fight," majority leader Eric Cantor told Republicans Saturday morning, taking a not-so-subtle shot at Sen. Ted Cruz, who is polling terribly by every measure, and his friends. This is both a good and bad idea as it looks like the Senate will once again save the House from the mess it created: 

One conservative House #GOP member tells me, "The Senate has got us by the (popular expression) don't see what we can do now."

— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) October 12, 2013

This has all the makings of the Fiscal Cliff deal for the House #GOP. Senate Rs cut a deal, it gets +70 votes. House Rs forced to pass it

— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) October 12, 2013

seems to go like this: crap on Senate Rs as squishes if they pursue collins' plan so you don't own it but pray like hell your guys back it

— john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) October 12, 2013

the problem with that of course is what if your people start to believe the "Senate Rs are RINOs" line and DON'T accept the Collins plan?

— john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) October 12, 2013

also, the "the Senate has to stand strong" line is not going over well with the Senate Republicans

— john r stanton (@dcbigjohn) October 12, 2013

So that's where it stands. The Senate will likely bail out the House once again, from a mess orchestrated and built by the House. So it goes. But at least the fight to repeal Obamacare is finally, officially dead forever. 

Now they just have to avoid the cliff. 

       

At Comic Con, Justifying the 'Oldboy' Remake

At Friday's panel for Spike Lee's latest, Oldboy, screenwriter Mark Protosevich was on the defense. Facing a room full of fans of Park Chan-Wook's original—a quick, applause-based survey of the audience revealed that most (or at least a loud contingent) was familiar with the 2003 cult favorite—Protosevich reiterated to the crowd just why the film was being made in the first place. 

"I know that there are people out there who feel sort of this fundamental resistance to the idea a remake," he said. "I would just advocate give us a shot." 

Though the Q&A session seemed to indicate that audience members feared that the US interpretation of the revenge story about a man mysteriously imprisoned for 15 years would not be as dark or as violent as the Korean film, the clip shown would seem perfect for dissuading those concerns. The footage, at one point, showed Josh Brolin's Joe Doucett (Oh Dae-su in the original) taking out men with a hammer and then torturing Samuel L. Jackson's character by cutting chunks out of his neck with an X-ACTO knife. 

But early in the Q&A one fan asked whether the film would be as psychologically dark as the original. In his answer Protosevich explained: "I know there are people out there who are skeptical about our version or were and I think the expectation was is that we were going to wimp out or try to make it more palatable to an audience. Everybody involved was very determined to do this as darkly and as intensely our point of view would be that as it was in the original." 

As the Q&A progressed other questioners basically alluded to the same point: what's your point? People asked about the challenges of making such a famous movie, about what kind of stamp the American version is going to put on the story, about just how much of a remake this is going to be. (Someone also asked if they could have the toenail that actress Pom Klementieff had revealed earlier in the panel that she lost during training. It's best to just ignore that question though.) 

At one point, Protosevich said that he and Lee talked about "cover versions" of songs in approaching the film. He also though repeated that he knows people are going to be stubborn about this. "If you have this belief that it never should have done, I can’t convince you otherwise, all I can say is, I think we approach this from a standpoint of let’s take this and use these wonderful elements that affected us, but then try to make it in some ways your own personal story, to bring elements of it that strike stronger thematic chords in me, in Spike, in the actors." 

The film isn't due to be released until the end of November, so fans will have to wait to see if Protosevich's defense is justified. 

 

       

There's Dissent in the Ranks of the Truckers Shutting Down America

[image error]Not all trucker protesters like Truckers Ride for the Constitution group, or the woman who's become the face of it, Zeeda Andrews. "She pretty much has destroyed things," said Chris Hemmer, who told The Atlantic Wire that his group originally pitched the idea for the protest. Hemmer, of the National Gun Association and the Truckers To Shut Down America Facebook page, said that Andrews, the main media contact for Truckers Ride for the Constitution (formerly also known as Truckers to Shut Down America), is "out there," and not doing the movement any favors. A 18-wheeled movement that was meant to protest fuel prices has been turned into one protesting President Obama, the government shutdown, and a number of conspiracy theories.

Hemmer said he's been a truck driver for more than 20 years, and originally intended for the protest to last one day, this Friday. In his version of the protest, truckers would have agreed to not spend any money and not made deliveries, to protest against corporate America and rising gas prices. His goal was never to send thousands of truckers to shut down America, he told The Atlantic Wire, and Hemmer echoed concern that the truck protest might block emergency vehicles from saving lives. This version of the protest, however, was lost when Andrews "hijacked" the movement. We also reached out to Canadian truckers to shut down, but they deferred to the Ride for the Constitution faction. "We do not speak for T2SDA we are merely state pages supporting the shutdown," replied a representative of the page.

[image error]This is yet one more sign of dissent in the ranks of the Trucker protest movement. Earlier this week, Truckers Ride for the Constitution chastised Earl Conlon for telling The Washington Post that the protest was a "hoax" meant to rile up the media. "URGENT: Earl Conlon has advised NOT to misrepresent himself as a spokesperson for this peaceful event," an administrator posted on the Ride for the Constitution Facebook page, though Conlon is associated with the movement and has been in charge of logistics. But maybe Conlon just didn't want people getting their hopes too high, since only 30 truckers showed up.

(Truckers photo by Nick Ianneli/@NickWTOP.)

       

Pearl Jam Will Be the Soundtrack to the World Series

Pearl Jam has been tapped to soundtrack this month's World Series, thanks to a partnership with Fox Sports that includes the entirety of the group's still-forthcoming tenth studio album, Lightning Bolt. Their punishment for this decidedly un-punk transgression, we imagine, will be to endure increasingly frequent baseball puns replacing the word "batter" with "Vedder." 

Here, let's try one on for size: "Swiiiing, Vedder, Vadder, swiiing, Vedder."

Anyway. Billboard reports that the deal includes 46 of the Seattle group's songs—skipping over Riot Act, their 2002 downer of a politico manifesto—and will continue to feature the band's music on Fox Sports in November. 

Maybe a Fox partnership seems like a betrayal from the staunchly anti-corporate act of the 1990s that once largely avoided touring in the U.S. for four years in protest of Ticketmaster. But let's be real: Pearl Jam's no longer making records like No Code or swearing off of music videos; if 2009's decent-enough Backspacer taught us anything, it's that the angsty, seething Pearl Jam you remember from high school has long since been replaced by a more comfortable, happier stadium rock outfit. As the band's manager told Billboard, "There was a period of time when we didn't license much music." But, in this instance, the band simply loves baseball:

The band played St. Louis during the 2010 leg of its Backspacer tour, where Vedder gave [Fox Sports announcer Joe] Buck an onstage shout-out and hung out with him for a couple of hours after the show.

"We literally just talked about baseball," Buck says. "It was the greatest thrill of my life. You'll hear certain guys say they're a Yankee fan or an NFL fan, and maybe they know some stuff but they're not die-hards. This guy's just a legit, die-hard baseball fan, and I've never had a more relaxed, normal conversation in that kind of atmosphere."

Your adolescent grunge heroes have become lame dads. Deal with it.

       

Lonegan Aide Says Cory Booker DM'd a Stripper Like 'a Gay Guy'

[image error]The Atlantic Wire was deeply disappointed with BuzzFeed's blockbuster report about the time Cory Booker sent direct messages to a stripper on Twitter, because while there were a whole lot of nipples in the article, there weren't any truly incriminating DMs. An aide to Booker's opponent, Steve Lonegan, was also disappointed, but for a different reason: he thinks Booker's DMs were "like what a gay guy would say." Booker and Longean are running for Senate in New Jersey, and Booker, the Democrat, is leading polls by 12 percentage points. But his Republican opponent has gained among independent voters recently, and Lonegan's aide attributes that to Booker's "odd" behavior, including those DMs (pictured at right).

Rick Shaftan, a senior strategist for Lonegan, explained his Twitter theory to Talking Points Memo's Hunter Walker. Walker seems to have a particular talent for getting campaign staffers to reveal their true, weird, potty-mouthed selves, as he also got Anthony Weiner's press secretary to explain, in detail, all the ways in which she thought a former Weiner intern was a "slutbag." Shaftan explains how a true hetero Senate candidate would tweet at a stripper:

"It was just weird. I mean, to me, you know, hey, if he said, 'Hey, you got really hot breasts man, I'd love to suck on them.' Then like, yeah, cool. But like, he didn't say that...

It was like kind of like, I don't know, it was like what a gay guy would say to a stripper. It's the way he was talking to her. It's just like like there was no sexual interest at all. I don't know. To me, if I was single and you know like some stripper was tweeting me, I might take advantage of the perks of the office, you know?"

Well Rick, that's why you are not the candidate for higher office. You are the guy in the background, or the back room, who is supposed to keep his mouth shut.

Read the rest of the fascinating interview at Talking Points Memo.

       

Ellen DeGeneres Is Determined to Make Sophia Grace a Star

Today in show business news: Ellen DeGeneres wants to make two little girls into superstars, Fox wants more Dads even though nobody else does, and the BBC has a fancy new miniseries in the works.

British YouTube sensations Sophia Grace Brownlee and Rosie McClelland, little British girls who sing saucy covers of pop songs, have put Ellen DeGeneres under some kind of spell and now she really wants to make them famous. She's had them on her show and now she wants to give them their own show. She's worked up a deal with NBC to put the girls on their own damn sitcom, a comedy about the girls being involved in some kind of royal intrigue. The British are choosing a new princess or something and the girls decide to help the right one get the crown. It sounds awfully Disney Channel for primetime, but hey, that worked for NBC once before, didn't it? (Well, depends on your definition of "worked.") The real question here, though, is why? What does Ellen see in these little girls? What strange power do they have over her? Sophia Grace was supposed to be in the Into the Woods movie before she was replaced, so did she learn some kind of magic during her prep work? Who knows what the explanation is, but Ellen is in the tank for these tiny things. Let's see how far she can take them. [Deadline]

Dear god why. Fox has ordered six more scripts of its terrible show Dads, even though it is critically reviled and nobody watches it. (Well, OK, it does all right on DVR.) So what is going on here? It's almost as if the show is produced by a very powerful guy who Fox doesn't want to jeopardize its relationship with. Almost! But that can't be it. They're probably being blackmailed by Peter Riegart, Martin Mull standing behind him holding a baseball bat, acting as his enforcer. That's probably it. Can't be anything else. [Entertainment Weekly]

Oh my, look at this fancy thing. Kenneth Lonergan, the revered playwright and screenwriter behind fare as varied as This Is Our Youth, Margaret, and Gangs of New York, has been tapped by the BBC to write a miniseries adaptation of Howards End. The last person to adapt the E.M. Forster novel won an Oscar. So this ought to be good. Very polished and refined and pedigreed and all that. And when it comes to America, on PBS most likely, we'll all watch and nod and say "Oh it's really quite good, isn't it?" all the while desperately wanting to switch over to The Good Wife, bored to tears as we are. It's a grand Masterpiece tradition! [Deadline]

Jay Baruchel has joined the cast of Cameron Crowe's new movie, which already features Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Danny McBride and Alec Baldwin. That is quite a cast. What is everyone thinking? I mean, did they see his last two movies? Have any of these people seen Elizabethtown, most importantly? And this movie has Emma Stone playing an Air Force pilot and involves missiles and mystical forces and a talking computer. Honestly, what is anyone thinking? Does no one have agents? Does no one read? Does no one watch movies? I just don't get it. I really don't. [The Hollywood Reporter]

The new FX series Fargo, sorta based on the movie, has added to its cast. And what additions! Fresh off of Breaking Bad and on his way to Better Call Saul, Bob Odenkirk will make a pitstop in Minnesota/North Dakota, as will Kate Walsh, Oliver Platt, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Glenn Howerton. They join the already cast Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, and Colin Hanks. This is a good group of people! What must newcomer Allison Tolman, who is cast in the kinda-sorta Marge Gunderson role, think about all of this? How exciting. This is all very exciting. This better be very good. [Entertainment Weekly]

       

Ted Cruz Thinks Ted Cruz Is Polling Just Fine

According to Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz isn't doing bad in the polls — the polls are skewed. An NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday shows that the GOP currently has a 24 percent approval rating. Ted Cruz specifically has a 14 percent approval rating. But as the Texas senator told NBC News' Kasie Hunt on Friday, those numbers aren't accurate: "If you seek out liberal Obama supporters and ask them their views, they're going to tell you they're liberal Obama supporters. That's not reflective of where this country is."

Cruz refuses to believe that the poll is representative, because about 20 percent of the respondents are government workers. Mike O'Brien explains that according to pollsters, that percentage is normal. "Government workers" encompasses everyone from military members to teachers (Cruz took "government workers" to mean "people working for the president"). Even so, Cruz alleges that the poll was heavily weighted with Democrats. Hunt points out that the poll was conducted by two campaign pollsters, one Republican and one Democrat. 

Before the NBC/ Journal poll came out, Cruz went ahead and paid a GOP polling firm to conduct a poll for him. Cruz's poll shows that Republicans aren't faring well in the shutdown, necessarily, but they're doing better than they did in the 1995 shutdown. According to the Washington Examiner, "By a margin of 46 percent to 39 percent, voters blamed Republicans for the shutdown over 'Obama and Democrats.' Another 15 percent are undecided about who to blame." Cruz's poll did not ask respondents whether they approved of him, specifically. The Texas senator presented his findings to congressional Republicans at a closed-door luncheon on Wednesday. 

Cruz's suggestion that the polls need to be un-skewed is awfully reminiscent of Mitt Romney's beliefs ahead of the 2012 election. That did not seem to work out for Romney.

Cruz does have some good news, however. He told Hunt he wants to provide "relief to the millions of Americans who are hurting." Not from the shutdown, though. Those Americans are hurting because of Obamacare. 

You can view Hunt's interview with Cruz below. 

 

       

The Two Scenarios That Would Have Improved the Obamacare Launch

After two weeks of examining the flaws in the Obamacare exchange roll-out, there are two scenarios that could have saved everyone a whole lot of trouble. One, the federal site could have allowed users to browse the exchanges before registering. Or two, more states could have been more committed to making the Affordable Care Act successful and built their own exchanges. 

If users could browse Healthcare.gov before registering

The Wall Street Journal offers the most definitive look yet at why Healthcare.gov doesn't quite work. The anonymous faulty private contractor software component acknowledged early this [image error]week was Oracle Identity Manager, designed by Oracle Corp. When users submit their data into the system, it is transferred to Quality Software Services, which subcontracted Oracle to design the faulty component. Oracle released a statement saying their software is working, but sources ("other people") told the Journal that "the other systems are not interfacing consistently with the Oracle software," which is preventing people from registering.

Originally, the plan was to allow users to browse for insurance before registering, but that tool was delayed and the site launched without it. That was maybe a bad idea. From the Journal: 

The decision to move ahead without that feature proved crucial because, before users can begin shopping for coverage, they must cross a busy digital junction in which data are swapped among separate computer systems built or run by contractors including CGI Group Inc. the healthcare.gov developer; Quality Software Services Inc., a UnitedHealth Group Inc. and credit-checker Experian. If any part of the web of systems fails to work properly, it could lead to a traffic jam blocking most users from the marketplace.

Officials identified the Oracle issue on October 2, but it hasn't been resolved yet. But that bottleneck wouldn't be happening (or wouldn't be as bad) if users could browse first. As some experts pointed out, when you have a complicated series of systems exchanging information with each other, you want to leave that for the end of the registration process, not the beginning. One explanation offered by an HHS spokesperson is that the agency wanted users to see their subsidy eligibility before they browsed the prices, requiring them to register. That's a fair point (people might be scared off by high pre-subsidy rates) but if user can't get to through the registration process, it doesn't matter. At some point on Thursday healthcare.gov introduced a very basic window shopping tool, but unlike some state-run exchanges it doesn't tell you what your co-pays, deductibles or subsidies will be. For that information you still have to register.

If only more states built their own exchanges

[image error]Of course, some states have had a much easier time enrolling their uninsured in healthcare. That's not because they're lucky, or the the coding gods smiled down on their enrollment sites and said, "Go forth, and be glitch free." It's because those states actually made a good faith effort to make enrollment in Obamacare as simple as possible. The roll-out hasn't been perfect, but most of the glitches have been fixed.

Let's compare California and Florida. Both have millions of uninsured residents (7.1 million uninsured in California and 3.5 million uninsured in Florida). But while California is as blue as a state can be, Florida has a Republican governor and a Republican legislature.

Here's how The New York Times describes California's preparation for the launch:

There are radio and television commercials galore, along with Twitter and Facebook posts and scores of highway billboards. There are armies of outreach workers who speak Spanish, Tagalog, Cambodian, Mandarin and Cantonese, all flocking to county fairs, farmers markets, street festivals and back-to-school nights across the state. There are even dinner parties in Latino neighborhoods designed to reach one family at a time.

And here's how The New York Times describes Florida's, er, non-preparation: 

First the State Legislature roundly rejected the law, refusing to create a state insurance exchange and punting it to the federal government to run the new insurance market. It also rejected $51 billion in federal funds that was available over 10 years to expand Medicaid coverage for the state’s poor. As the day neared for consumers to enroll in insurance plans, state officials announced that so-called navigators — a group assigned to help people sign up — would be barred from state health offices just like all other outside groups.

Of the 16 states that have state-run exchanges, or plan to run their own exchanges in the coming years, only Idaho, Nevada and New Mexico have Republican governors, and only Idaho and Kentucky voted for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. Basically, with the exception of Idaho, all the states with state-run exchanges are very blue. Meanwhile, the 26 states that declined to expand the Medicaid program are mostly Republican controlled. That's not to say that the Obama administration isn't at fault for the flaws with Healthcare.gov — the site was not where it needed to be on October 1. But states like California, which run their own exchanges and actively sought to educate their residents about the program, are having an easier time. Put another way, the exchanges are working in states that want them to work. 

       

Please, Laugh at B.J. Novak

A Masshole who threatens a planetarium scientist to find out the secret of the universe and a woman who is intent on sleeping with the happily married motivational speaker Tony Robbins — these are just some of the characters in B.J. Novak's upcoming book, One More Thing​. And we're sorta jealous we didn't think of them first. 

Novak was on hand at Comic Con (he's starring in the next Spiderman movie) to read from his book of short stories, which comes comes out on February 4. Novak's panel has been the funniest one that I've been to at New York Comic Con so far. Here's a snippet (excuse the poor audio) of one of his short stories, about a woman's whose life goal is to copulate with a reluctant Tony Robbins, a Robbins who is more turned on by motivating her to achieve her life goal than he is by her:

The two stories Novak told are the kind funny that makes writers jealous of his humor, pace and wit if they, like you, weren't busy laughing. What's curious is that Novak's collection of stories, is the lovechild of what happens when you put fiction writing and stand-up comedy and lock them in a room. "I'll read stories ... then see how they play," Novak said, explaining his process. "I write first, then perform, then edit," he added. 

He told the panel that the audience more or less is an editor. If he sees a lull in their eyes he cuts and pares down the passage that induced the interest coma. If they laugh, he fleshes that part out more. This reactive, living kind of fiction is a concept that most writers never bother to try and might be downright too scared to attempt. But if Novak's writing is the result of this process, more writers should try it.  "I immediately wanted to test whatever I did," Novak said, referring to how comedy writing and the process of writing for The Office affected his short stories.

"That's the first time I've written without a pen in my hand," he told the audience on Thursday. He didn't need one. 

       

The ATF Says It's Not Censoring Fast and Furious Whistleblower

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) now denies that it's censoring John Dodson, the agent at the center of the "gunwalking" controversy known as Operation Fast and Furious, just days after receiving a complaint from the American Civil Liberties Union for doing pretty much that. 

Dodson, widely celebrated by conservatives as a whistleblower in the case, had sought an outside work application to publish a book manuscript, The Unarmed Truth: My Fight to Blow the Whistle and Expose Fast and Furious. The ATF roundly rejected his request, arguing that the account "would have a negative impact on morale." It was Dodson who went public with claims that the ATF purposefully funneled guns to Mexican drug cartels as a means of tracking them. A significant conservative controversy that never really picked up steam in the mainstream media, the agent's allegations led to Attorney General Eric Holder being held in contempt of Congress in 2012.

Now, basing its case on a subtle distinction, the ATF says its block is not an attempt at censorship but simply a routine denial of an outside employment request — which, the spokesperson reminds us, "can be denied for any reason." Here's the ATF special agent Tim Graden's reasoning, via a statement to Townhall:

ATF has not denied the publishing of a manuscript or an individual’s 1st Amendment rights. We have denied an employee’s outside employment which can be denied for any reason by a supervisor. While his supervisor stated morale and interagency issues for the denial, the fact remains no agent may profit financially from information gained through his federal employment while still an employee. This is not about 1st Amendment rights this is about a current employee trying to profit financially from knowledge he has gained while currently employed as a special agent.

As we've previously explained, the distinction at play here is that the ATF can legally block Dodson from receiving compensation from any non-government source — but not necessarily from sharing his story. But as Graden alludes, the ATF's letter of denial tells a different story: that Dodson's request "would have a negative impact on morale" and "would have a detrimental effect on our relationships with DEA and FBI." Plus, Dodson claims the ATF never bothered asking if he was planning to receive compensation from the book in the first place.

Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley, meanwhile — who together penned a foreword for the book — have written to the ATF with their own concerns: they want more information. Via Politico: 

Issa and Grassley asked ATF to provide more information about Dodson’s case by 5 p.m. on Oct 22, asking for all cases since the beginning of 2009 when an employee asked to publish a manuscript, all documents related to Dodson’s request, all requests for outside employment since the beginning of 2012 and current employees who are engaging in approved outside employment.

The Republicans are also calling it "disconcerting" that the ATF is seemingly blocking Dodson because his book "might be uncomfortable and embarrassing to some within your organization." Their investment in the book comes as little surprise: it was Issa who accused the Department of Justice of being in on the operation before it was public, despite emails from Attorney General Holder suggesting that wasn't the case. (Issa also tried to claim the ATF's operation was a plot to toughen gun laws.) 

But Dodson's role as a whistleblower still remains fraught: Fortune cast serious doubt on his claims with a 2012 investigation that concluded the ATF never intentionally let drug cartels get ahold of its guns. By Katherine Eban's report, it was only John Dodson who let the guns be sold to cartels — and he did so in violation of his supervisor's instructions. 

Dodson has already sued Fortune's publisher, Time Inc., for libel. If he gets his way with the manuscript, readers will have access to his side of the story in January, when Simon & Schuster intends to publish the book.