The New Ellroy is Coming, 9/22

Dear Booksellers,

In all its mellifluous and macho-maimed magnificence: my new novel, Blood's A Rover.

Knopf will drop this atom bomb of a book on you September 22. Your job is to groove it and grok its groin-grabbing gravity between now and then. From that point on: you handsell it to the book-buying public; I appear at your store and drive legions of my fans and your customers nuts; we all make out and give publishing a cash-cascading and profit-pronging boost in a bum marketplace!!!

Dig it!!!!!

The novel covers 1968-1972. It's a baaaaaad-ass historical romance -- huge in scope, deep in its exploration of the era, filled with my trademark craaaaazy shit, and suffused with a heightened sense of belief and the corollaries of political conversation and revolution. Oh, yeah -- this is a book for these times!

You've got Howard "Dracula" Hughes, Gay Edgar Hoover, and Tricky Dick Nixon. You've got the mob's evil eyes scoping the Dominican Republic. You've got voodoo in Haiti, a vicisiou armored-car heist, and the Feds out to deep-sixi the black militant movement. More than anything else, you've got three obsessed right-wing toadies grapping with the horror of their misdeeds - and seeking redemption in the peron of my greatest female character: The Red Goddess Joan.

Read this book.

Grab its greatness.

Find me on Facebook and let me know what you think (post on my wall!)

Yours truly,

James Ellroy

(h/t: Sarah Weinman)

Ya think?

A checker at the local grocery store was just speculating that Cheech and Chong may, may, have been stoned while making the movie Up in Smoke. He doesn't know for sure, but you gotta think maybe they were.

Frame Talk is Frivolous, Frame Talk is Fun

The Politico has really nice dish - or mebbe it's navel-gazing tripe - about the official BHO semiotics of the Frst Hndrd Days.

ps - No, I have not abandoned the for(u)m of weblogs ("blogs"), I'm just caught in a move-in bind.

pps - And how about unconditional endorsee - and example of all that is righteous in the 20-something blog-wonk matrix - Ezra Klein getting hired by the MotherfuckingWashington MotherfuckingPost?!?

Bigger by the second

Over at NW Republican wingnut Coyote is having a fun time with numbers. In a post titled "An Obama rock concert?" - reference to the 75,000 people that turned out in Portland to see Obama The Decemberists - he posts picture of roughly 5,000 people in Lansing to see Joe "the Plumber" Plumber. No one said math was Coyote's strong suit.

Better, in the same post, he estimates that the crowd in Salem was 2,000. Now, one expects that a wingnut website is going to double the size of the crowd that actually shows up. Just as the cops automatically double the number of beers Coyote estimates he drank when they pull him over. Maybe he realized that in a state of 3.7 million, pulling in 2,000 people is not so impressive. What is that 5/ten-thousandths of a percent? I'm going to be honest with you, I'm not used to dealing with numbers that small, so I may be off, correct me. Or maybe Coyote remembers that Obama drew 10,000 people in Eugene - twice - so he updated his post and his number to reflect that some people were estimating there were 3,000 people there. Seconds later it was 3,200, but you know the libural media, right?

Six hours later, Coyote had that number up to 4,000. I am imagining that by this afternoon 8,000 people will have been at the Capitol yesterday loudly protesting the policies of the Bush Obama administration and calling for an end to the War tax cuts for the wealthy an increase to the capital gains tax an end to government as we know it.

Really when was the last time liberals were able to draw such a crowd? Huh? Huh? Oh yeah, that Obama rock concert.

Lex and George Will in a tree

I see that George Will has come out strong and insanely against people wearing jeans. If memory serves, and believe me it does, George is also on record opposed to men wearing shorts. I believe this makes two - count 'em TWO! - fashion policies shared by George Will and our own Lex Dexter. If Will ever comes out against men wearing sandals, then Lex will have found his soul mate.

Oh, I know that Lex is going to protest that he is not against jeans, but rather than he can't find any to fit is scrawny ass, to which I retort that none of his other pants fit him either, so I'm not sure why jeans wouldn't make the cut.

Tea Party Placards

The following slogans and screeds appeared in placard form during my ethnographic travels into le Right yesterday:

• My President Would Be Legal
• President Obama, Show Us Your Birth Certificate
• Revivetherevolution.com
• Suicide By Stimulus
• Stop Borrowing/Start Budget-Cutting
• Terminate Expanding Authority
• Taxation Erodes American (dream)
• Heil Hope
• Billions for the Bankers/Debts for the People
• Stop Raiding Our Piggy Bank
• Let Capitalism Work
• Less Government = Freedom
• Flat Tax 10%! Make It Do!
  
• Somalia Pirates = US Congress
• FairTax.org
• Comrade Obama
  
• Wake Up America, Before Your Liberty is Gone
• The Problem with Socialism is Eventually You Run Out of Other People's Money
• Democracy is Slowly Being Eroded
  
• We Hate Porky Little Amendments
  
• No Nanny State: Leave Us Home in Our Sovereign State of Jefferson
  
• More Common Sense/Less $ and Cents
• Obama: the Next Chavez
• No Taxation Without Representation
• My Tax Dollars Go To Illegal Aliens
  
• Punish Success/Reward Failure: What's Up With That?
  
• Taking Everyone's Assets
• NO to Socialism
• Tired, Enraged American
  
• Free Markets Not Freeloaders!
  
• If You're Not Outraged/You're Not Paying Taxes
  
• Freedom Is Not Just Another Word
• Abortion Kills Children
  
• Our Government Stole My Paycheck
  
• Separation of Powers, Buckos: Big God/Small Government
• Expensive Health Care: Michelle Obama made $350k for sitting on her a$$
• Obama, You of All People Should Know that Pork Defiles
• Ron Paul for President

What, you need a chaser? This knocked 'em dead in Medford.

Exactly

When a right-wing blog posts a commentary with the headline "The American Gorbachev" can expectations be so high that they are impossible to realize? No.

This piece is less of a critique and more of a comparison of two leaders of two big countries. Again, this comparison is not entirely accurate and/or scientific. I mean you can compare Bush to Brezhnev using the same template. Both invaded Afghanistan and stayed home more than they traveled. There was even a theory that the reason Brezhnev stayed home and Gorbachev traveled so much is because Brezhnev was fed from the outlet and Gorbachev worked on batteries. So, in this light, the real purpose of this comparison is more in the line of Plutarch’s ‘Parallel Lives’ of let’s say,“Alexander the king, and of Caesar, by whom Pompey was destroyed.”

Oh, and, in conclusion:

If Obama is the post American captain destined to bring our spaceship down from the position of superpower to “a normal UN sanctioned operational mode” let’s hope for a smoother landing and a sharp difference from Gorbachev who neglected the fact that one can make a nuclear submarine feel like a raw boat for only as long as it is facing an iceberg.

Fuck the police and the New York Yankees

H/t: LGM

The NYCLU is on the case.

Campeau-Laurion, the director of Web productions for a media company, attended the Aug. 26 Yankees-Red Sox game with a friend, who had a ticket package for 11 games at Yankee Stadium during the 2008 season. Campeau-Laurion had attended several of these games with his friend.

Campeau-Laurion quietly watched the game, ate a bag of peanuts and drank two beers. He decided to use the restroom at the start of the seventh-inning stretch – a period when fans often choose to use the restroom. He got up and made his way down the aisle as “God Bless America” began playing. A police officer blocked his path and indicated that he could not leave during the song. Campeau-Laurion explained that he needed to use the restroom and was not concerned about “God Bless America.” Then he attempted to walk past the officer.

Before Campeau-Laurion could take a step, the police officer grabbed his right arm and twisted it behind his back. A second officer twisted Campeau-Laurion’s left arm behind his back, and the two officers then marched him down several ramps to the stadium’s exit with his arms pinned behind his back. The officers refused to ease their grip, even though Campeau-Laurion was not resisting them.

The encounter ended with one of the officers telling Campeau-Laurion to leave the country if he didn’t like it.

What makes this worse - much, much, much worse - is that this is, apparently, the official policy of the NY Yankees.

The Yankees began playing “God Bless America” during games following 9/11, as did all Major League Baseball teams. Unlike most teams, the Yankees also instituted a policy of seeking to prevent fans from moving during the playing of the song. It did so to promote patriotism amongst those attending Yankees games.

They are evil. And so are their fans.

A moral dilema

Is it wrong that I just spent a decent amount of time wondering which would upset me more - the death of one of my cats or the breaking of my favorite hammer?

Is it wronger that I still don't know. I mean cats are cats, but the perfect pipe is something special.

Health care, statistics, and vadge

In my last newsletter I gave you some statistics. I did not do this to attempt to set a hard base line, rather to point out the fact there is no “silver bullet” solution to our current health care situation. A few years ago a person testifying before a committee said “statistics are like a bikini, what they reveal is enticing but what they conceal is critical”. One should view any numbers under deliberation from such a perspective, as they often don’t tell the whole story.

-- Jeff Kruse, OR-1 (R)

TGIF

Listen To Her Heart 1978 Tom Petty


If this isn't working for you, you can watch it here.

You know, I don't get the Petty hate out there. Maybe if you're only knowledge of him was Full Moon Fever, which is middling rock over-played to the point of annoyance, then maybe. Then again, it could be just me. It could be that you needed to be a ten-year-old Solid and watching MTV in 1982 and have "Refugee" be the most interesting thing you had seen on the box. Although how you could deny "You think you're gonna take her away, with your money and your cocaine" is beyond me. Give Tom three minutes, you got nothing better to do on a Friday.

Isn't Jolie French?

I know all of you have been getting excited about the possibility of an Atlas Shrugged movie coming out soon. I mean it doesn't have a writer, or director or anything, but with just about everyone going Galt and attending tea parties and whatnot, you just know it is going to happen soon.

Our good friends over at Big Hollywood, perhaps America's best website for wingnut discussion of popular culture, are already speculating on who should be cast in the lead roles, especially that of Dagny Taggart. She is not only the heart of the book, but she has been the main source of wingnut masturbation fantasies since 1952. As such, it is crucial that the actress be hotter than the proverbial baker's oven. But does she also have to be ideologically pure? The answer, at least from the comments I read, is no. Actually, the answer seems to be that one Angelina Jolie, who is hotter than the proverbial baker's oven, would be so awesome there is some effort to rehabilitate her.

Actually Ms Jolie is a pretty good choice for the role. She is nowhere near as far left as her fellow actors, gave a fairly good interview in '08 about McCain and the good he might bring (apostasy!) and from what we've gathered is a serious woman that the world takes seriously- she supposedly holds her own quite well in cabinet level meetings and knows more than her UN counterparts about Darfur and whatnot.

Scrolling through the comments, I see no objections to her on the grounds that she is twice divorced, a home wrecker, and/or living in sin with children. My how the wingnut opinion of single mothers has changed over the last year.

Anyway, the biggest fear, of course, would be that "Hollywood" would destroy the story because they don't "get it." This has been my biggest fear for some years. It also serves as a ready-made excuse for the all-too-predictable failure of the movie at the box office. I mean, we all know that Americans are dying to see a movie in which the richer/betters in our society laugh as civilization disintegrates. Especially if the last half-hour of the movie features a twenty-five minute radio address from a character who has only briefly appeared in the film up to that point. Can you imagine the cuts to all of our heroes listening intently to their radios while John Galt explains to the word that they will all die unless they cede complete control of the world to him and his chosen few? Riveting film going to be sure. America is ready, but Hollywood couldn't handle it.

Of course, it has been suggested that the book would work better as a seven-part miniseries a la John Adams, which is, of courser, even more true. Then, Galt's speech could take up a whole episode and we wouldn't have to cut any of the brilliance. That way we could spend an hour watching scenes of bridges collapsing and roving bands of marauders killing each other and rich people packing for the big get away all while listening to a disembodied voice tell us that all of that was a result of taxes. Obama would never let it happen.

Anyway, you buy the tickets, I'll buy the popcorn, and we'll laugh and laugh and laugh.

Always nice to find an offer like this in your inbox

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Twilley/Seymour Sunday Horn

Robert Kuttner: Obama's Banking Rescue: O for Opaque
Obama Officials Think Krugman Is Naive: Newsweek's Evan Thomas
Frank Schaeffer: The Krugman/Limbaugh Nightmare: President Obama Might Succeed

Well, the story of my wk is pretty much a) Dwight Twilley doing 'Looking for the Magic' and b) my rapidly-deflating faith in the Obama administration's ability to get us outta this mucky political economy-y quagmire. You?

Oxdown Gazette » Shorter Elizabeth Warren: Timothy Geithner, WTF?
We're Still Getting Screwed: Geithner Plan Will Make the Rich Richer! | Dean Baker
Dean Baker, "Unemployment Jumps to 8.5 Percent, Economy Sheds 663,000 Jobs"
Bankruptcy Would Be Tinkering Around the Edges of Detroit's Problems

No, seriously...I think we're very effed here.

Benjamin Dangl and Michael Fox, "Beyond Elections in the Americas: An Interview with Michael Fox"
Reid to liberals: Back off - Manu Raju - POLITICO.com
Van Hollen asks liberal groups to lay off - Alex Isenstadt - POLITICO.com

Better look elsewhere for some inspiration, because there's nothing about Evan Bayh that's ever going to get you too hot/heavy. At the same time, it's apparently very important that all we 'liberals' remember that anything that upsets Harry Reid's re-election plans is terrorism, indeed.

Salute Your Shorts: Godard, Truffaut and A Story of Water :: Paste
L'arrivée d' Sylvia Kristel
Badiou-101-for-the-rcpusa
On The Idea Of Communism: Badiou On Politics, Economy And The State « Kasama
The US maoists are reading Badiou, eh?

We electrified the guitar

If you haven't, do.

TGIF

Wouldn't mind taking this song out for a beer and seeing what happens, if you know what I'm saying.

The invisible hand of whatever

I doubt that anyone who reads this blog is a big fan of the "Market." Or at least the notion that the Market makes everything better. Still, on a micro level, supply and demand work pretty well. At least for determining what an item is worth. Let's say I "own" a house and I want to sell it. I put it out for bid, and people looking to buy a house tell me what they'd be willing to pay for it. Whatever the highest bid comes in at is what my house is worth at that moment. I've simplified, hopefully not to the point of uselessness.

There are times, of course, when a value needs to be put on my house without the mechanics of the market involved, say for tax purposes. In order to determine the value here, a neutral party, most often from the government, estimates what my house might be worth these days and taxes me accordingly. Now, you could easily argue - and people on the right especially often do - that the government is not neutral, because they have an incentive of over-value my house in order to collect more taxes. We all know that if there is one thing the government loves, it is collecting taxes.

Now the last person who should be relied on to fairly value my house is me, right? Especially in any meaningful way. For tax purposes, I am going to value my house at $4. If I want to borrow money based on the value of my house, then its worth at least $400,000. Right? We all know this.

So someone, anyone, please for God's sake explain the new mark-to-market rules to me. How in the fuck can it make sense to let banks, not the market, not the government, but banks themselves declare what their mortgage holdings are worth? Am I understanding right that banks are saying, jeebus, no one on the market wants to buy our house for anything more than pennies. And then they say, jeebus the government is saying our house is only worth pennies. But the banks want their house to be worth more. They need to their house to be worth more so that no one thinks they're poor and have no assests, so they are going to be allowed to say that their house is worth whatever they think it is worth? And then borrow money based on that value?

This seems like perhaps the dumbest idea ever. And I don't want to go too far down this road, because I am not a trained economist in any way, but isn't this solution (again) designed to get banks lending money to each other? So if one bank tells another bank that it has holdings worth, say, ten million bars of gold-pressed latinum, it can borrow from the other bank one hundred million bars of gold-pressed latinum. And in turn that bank can borrow even more latinum from the first bank! Yeh! Because what we have here is a liquidity crisis, not an exploision of a debt-based housing bubble, a lack of middle-class jobs, stagnant wages, an over-supply of housing (in some areas), individual debt such that it makes semse to lend money to nobody. Those are problems we don't have. Nope, all we have is a crisis of confidence. If banks are not forced (BY THE GOVERMENT!!!!!) to tell people what their actual assests are worth, but are, rather, allowed to make up whatever they want, then we will all be able to see that Bank of America and CitiGroup actually have lots and lots of money and we can all quit worrying and start borrowing and buying each others houses at wildly inflated prices again.

Seriously, someone tell me where I have gone wrong, because I am starting to sound like someone who raves about these things. I feel like I am one step away from advocating a return to the gold standard here and this not a place I want to be.

This is not going to end well

In times past there was a prevailing wisdom that the violence stemming from the drug war equated to just one drug dealer killing another and after they finished killing each other off, things would go back to being peaceful and all would be well— this theory is no longer valid.

Ah, "Moderates"

Looks like we lost Feinstein on EFCA as well. Dig this:

"I think in this economy that what has to happen is that the unions and management get together and try to see if they can work out something," Feinstein said.

Yes, because after management has managed to fuck this economy nine ways 'til Sunday, we need to make sure that they stay in charge of this thing. Wouldn't want to go nuts and make it easier for the workers to have a voice, would we? I mean, I am sure the anti-EFCA forces will be perfectly willing to make some compromises that are good for everyone. And why do I deeply suspect that the compromises will be something along the lines of "stiffer penalties for management when they break the law balanced by stiffer penalties for unions." In other words, more of this crap where we pretend like there is a level playing field and both sides need to work to make nice-nice. Fuck that noise.

Wait a tick

I am trying hard not to think about the fact that it appears that Obama just killed the unionized American car industry, or at least let it die. Trying very hard. I must say, however, that it is disheartening to read this:

President Obama announced Monday that struggling automotive giants General Motors and Chrysler will be given a "limited" period of time to "restructure in a way that would justify an investment of additional taxpayer dollars."

at the same time that I know that the government is spending $970 billion to buy up worthless mortgages in the hope that one day, maybe thirty years from now, they might be worth something (and then we can auction them off for pennies on the dollar!).

The US autoworker is about to take a giant kick in the metaphorical balls. What makes me cry is that, while I just read a whole lot about how bad Joe Finance has it because he might lose his million dollar bonus at AIG, I imagine I am about to read a whole lot about how Joe Autoworker had it coming because he wanted health care after he retired. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I'd also like to note for the record, before we get too far down the fuck road that Obama defended the AIG bonuses because there were in a legal contract, and here he is saying that UAW must again "restructure" its contract in order for the industry to get more bailout money.

Of course, when one looks across the aisle, what do we see? Fuck stick and Lex hero Senator Bob Corker. Here is a guy who looks at a situation where the auto industry is coming to the government begging for money to stay afloat and the government says, sure we'll give you the money, as long as you make some changes to your business (especially if you can figure out a way to fuck your workers, because worker fucking is fun for everyone) and this asshat sees the heavy boot of communism come crashing down on American capital.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee and member of the Senate Banking Committee, said this is a "major power grab" by the Obama administration.

"This is a marked departure from the past, truly breathtaking, and should send a chill through all Americans who believe in free enterprise. I worry that in one fell swoop we've lost our moral high ground throughout the global community as it relates to chastising other countries that use strong arm tactics to invade on private property rights," he said in a statement.

God bless the people of Tennessee, but do they really look at the situation with the US auto industry, and one imagines the firing of Rick Wagoner, and see a totalitarian government interfering with the fine, fine businessmen at GM? How can they vote for this guy?

Lord the hate feels good, now I know how Vader felt.

But back to the sadness. Is there anyone who reads this blog thinking Obama is doing well? Are we still cutting him slack? Anyone ready to cut the line? I'm getting very, very close and having a harder and harder time believing that it would have been all that much worse under McCain. Especially when I read shit like this.

Goddammit, I so wanted to have something to believe in.