Commander-in-Chief Obama shares stories with U.S. troops in Korea

The president spoke to about 1,500 American troops in South Korea, telling them at one point, "You guys make a pretty good photo op."

He also promised to increase military pay, which received more applause. Obama reassured South
Koreans that his country's commitment to their security would never waver. At one point he cited as evidence of that enduring commitment a soldier there, Skip Sharp, whose father fought in the Korean War during the Truman administration.

So, let's see, that puts us about 57 or 58 years into the 100 years that, during the 2008 presidential campaign, a campaigning Sen. John McCain was attacked so much for suggesting the U.S. troop commitment would last. Now, a President Obama says there is no end in sight.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Text of Pres. Obama's remarks to U.S. Troops at Osan Air Base, as provided by the White House

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, Osan!  (Applause.)  It is good to be here!  (Applause.) Thank you so much.
First of all, please give Staff Sergeant Randy Gray a big round of applause for the outstanding introduction.  (Applause.) I want to thank Randy for his service as one of the "Best Warriors" in the United States Army.  (Applause.)  Randy is a reminder that our noncommissioned officers are the strength of America's military.  So thanks to Randy and to all the NCOs.  (Applause.)

Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Glover, for the invocation.  And please give a big round of applause to Katherine Dennison for singing our National Anthem.  (Applause.)  To the 8th Army Band  -- where you guys at?  There they are, up there.  (Applause.)  You look fantastic.  To all the airmen and soldiers behind me -- you guys make a pretty good photo op.  (Laughter.)  We are grateful for your service. 

I want to thank your local leaders at Osan for welcoming me here today, including Brigadier General Michael Keltz and Colonel Tom "Big" Deale. (Applause.) Your great senior enlisted leaders, including Command Sergeant Major Robert Winzenried and Chief Master Sergeant Michael Williams.  (Applause.) 

We are joined by America's outstanding representatives here in the Republic of Korea: I want you guys to give it up for Ambassador Kathleen Stephens and General "Skip" Sharp. Give them a big round of applause.  (Applause.) 

This is a wonderful story that I just heard -- that the day Skip Sharp was born in....

Sarah Palin apologizes for leaving 100 books unsigned in Indiana

Based on the above video (found here), the scene in Noblesville, Ind., at the end of Sarah Palin's appearance looked more like a protest than a book signing.

Outside the Borders bookstore in Noblesville (wouldn't it be great if it was a Barnes & Noble in Noblesville?), dejected Sarah Palin fans shouted, "Sign our books! Sign our books!" as her personalized bus sputtered and prepared to drive away.

Some booed as they held fresh copies of "Going Rogue" without a wet signature from Palin. However, they were plenty wet from the rain they had been waiting in.

The estimated 100 or so disappointed fans were reportedly given signed pieces of paper, while some demanded refunds. But click here and take a look at the photo of how many fans there were during the signing.

Palin quickly addressed the disgruntled crowd in a Facebook post titled "Not enough hours in the day."

"We are working on a solution for those who were left behind," she wrote. A revisit?

-- Mark Milian

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Obama now pleading for money to fight Sarah Palin

Never shy about $eeking money, Democratic President Obama's Organizing for America is now using the threat of Republican Sarah Palin as an opportunity to acquire more.

It has just sent an e-mail out to its millions of supporters today pleading for urgent donations to fight the mother of five, now on her heavily-publicized, cross-country book promotion bus tour. She holds no political office currently; in fact, she's among America's unemployed, though doing quite well financially.

Perhaps you've heard a little something about Palin in recent days.

The former governor of Alaska has written a book called "Going Rogue" that details her experiences in last year's presidential campaign, her values and thoughts on various issues.

Some San Francisco bookstores are declining to sell the book. And no one really cares about her or the book, obviously (see photo above), because she only sold 300,000 copies the first day.

Some people (bipartisan) think (fear) she may become a candidate for the 2012 presidential election.

Since the Republican Party that chose her as its first female presidential ticket member last year has such a glaring national leadership vacuum these days, she's getting tons of publicity in her symbiotic hate-hate relationship with the media, which doesn't mind attracting crowds with her name either (see headline above).

Although the Democratic National Committee dismisses Palin as an ignorant non-factor, it's invested way more time and effort this week attacking Palin than selling Obama, who was on another overseas publicity trip of his own.

Attempting to use Palin as a lucrative opportunity, too, today's e-mail plaintively asks: "Please chip in $5 to help."

The committee says its goal is a half-mill in one week, chump change for the one-time senator's $750-million presidential campaign.

Today's electronic missive calls Palin "dangerous," blames (credits) her for the term "death panels," and says it needs the money to combat her lies (claims), which will be magnified in coming weeks by well-known complicit conservatives in the media.

The donation plea also warns ominously that "the rest of our opponents will likely parrot those attacks."

It says the money will be used for event organizing, advertising and funding calls to Congress in support of Obama's beleaguered healthcare legislation to counter "right-wing attack groups."

Naturally, Palin is also playing off of Palin's publicity. If you give $100 to her SARAHPac here by midday next Wednesday, she'll give you a free signed copy of "Going Rogue."

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Indianapolis Star via Associated Press (Long lines of Palin book-buyers stretch around the entire mall parking lot in Noblesville, Ind.); Getty Images.

'Going Rogue' by the numbers: Sarah Palin's missing index has been found!

We salute Slate and the New Republic, whose quick-thinking staffers decided to produce an index for Sarah Palin’s bestselling book, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”  Some had speculated that Palin decided not to put an index in the back of her book to thwart the traditional "Washington read," which involves standing in a bookstore searching the index of a newly published tome for your name or the names of friends, enemies and/or frenemies.
   After reading the independent indices, we conclude that authors and publishers must be careful what they stint on. An independent index, it turns out, is more than a simple alphabetical listing of content. It’s a powerful analytical tool, as you will see from our excerpts of both versions:

Baby shower at shooting range 76
Bridge to Nowhere 237
“Captive” of McCain campaign 261
Caribou lasagna 218
“Change,” on originating campaign slogan before Obama 114, 225
Clinton, Hillary, Palin’s non-accusations about whining of 287
Couric, Katie Lack of knowledge about energy issues 207, 273; Low self-esteem of 256; As “lowest rated news anchor in network television 270; Unfair editing of interview with 272-275, 279; Lack of national pride 279

Sarah Palin's 'Going Rogue': A powerful testament to a good woman's endurance in a mean world of politics

"Reviewing" Sarah Palin's new book is quite an assignment. There are a lot of pages. And not many pictures. But here goes:

Despite the involvement of a professional ghostwriter, Republican ex-Gov. Palin has penned one of the most powerful pieces of personal or political literature in a generation of American books. It's "Going Rogue: An American Life" (HarperCollins, $28.99).

Her behind-the-scenes memoir -- you may have noticed a photo of the cover above -- is flying off store shelves across the country even as you read this. (Now, see video below.)

It's a 413-page masterwork of personal and political insight that makes Dick Cheney's upcoming memoir look like a Golden Book. Based on the first 48 hours of....

... sales reports, HarperCollins has already ordered additional printings. And Palin is destined to become a millionaire. Again.

With her trademark down-to-earth tone and gee-gollys, Palin takes her readers inside a compelling personal quest from her loving family's upbringing through the....

Video shows Sen. Obama thought a military tribunal was fine for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

As The Ticket reported earlier today in this space, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder was on the Senate Judiciary Committee hot seat defending his decision to bring the alleged 9/11 terrorist masterminds onto U.S. soil for civilian trials instead of keeping them far away in Guantanamo Bay for a military tribunal.

Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, himself a former federal prosecutor, says he's amazed at Holder's simplicity claim and remains unconvinced that such a move, which could make New York City a target for potential new attack, makes any legal sense whatsoever.

Speaking of military tribunals, we went back into the video archives and found this C-SPAN tape below. Holder might want to watch it.

It contains his boss, Barack Obama, a brief member of that same Senate, in 2006 stating that a military tribunal was a perfectly fine way of handling such dangerous individuals as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Obama said the fight against terrorism was "an extraordinarily difficult war" where terrorists could plot undetected from within our own borders.

The freshman Illinois senator was defending a legislative amendment and pointed out that a military tribunal for Mohammed seemed just fine to him.

"The irony of the underlying bill as it's written is that someone like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is going to get basically a full military trial with all the bells and whistles. He's gonna have counsel. He's gonna be able to present evidence to rebut the government's case.... I think we will convict him. And I think justice will be carried out."

Obama, meanwhile, continued his journeys around Asia and told....

...inquiring reporters that he has never been closer to a strategic decision on what to do next about the deteriorating military situation in Afghanistan.

He also confirmed to Fox News' Major Garrett that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility would not, in fact, be closed by the end of next month as the new president had promised on his first day in office. The latest target is now sometime next year.

In late August the Democratic president received the recommendations of the commanding general in Afghanistan, involving the addition of more U.S. troops to the 68,000 already on the ground from Obama's first troop surge last March.

The general's recommendations reportedly also said that allies had about one year left to save the strategic situation there. Nearly a quarter of that year have passed in deliberations. As The Ticket reported here earlier today, an angry Obama has said that leaks of such contents are firing offenses.

Obama says it might be a few more weeks before he makes his final decision, but that when he did the American people would be clear about it and what his goals were.

As we reported here Tuesday, new polls indicate the American people have moved further along in their decision-making process about the war than the president. And their emerging decision appears to be that the eight-year conflict wasn't and isn't worth the cost.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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While Obama patiently ponders Afghan policy, impatient Americans are already deciding: poll

As the globe-trotting President Obama presumably ponders his military options in the eight-year war in Afghanistan that isn't going that well, some ominous new poll numbers just out this afternoon for him to include.

Although the freshman president maintains that he's still patiently considering the options presented to him in late August and other questions asked since, any decision and announcement have been postponed further until the end of his latest foreign junket.

Meanwhile, the American public is already impatiently indicating its crumbling support for the conflict, the casualties, the financial costs and the idea of boosting our troop commitment in that troubled land.

Fifty-two percent of the 1,001 adult Americans polled Nov. 12-15 now say the war there has not been worth the cost, down 13 points in the last 11 months.

That's not a good sign for a president heading into a likely decision to increase that commitment -- and facing crucial midterm elections next year.

According to the new ABC News/Washington Post Poll, only 44% now say the war has been worth it, the smallest support percentage in nearly three years. The poll has a margin of error of +/-3.5%.

Once, Obama's war policies were his strongest poll suit (63%). Now, only 45% approve of Obama's handling of Afghanistan; more (48%) don't. His war support among independents, a crucial ingredient in the Democrat's election victory 54 weeks ago, has slipped to 39%.

Support for additional commitments is particularly weak among young voters and women.

Obama, like President Bush before him in both Afghanistan and Iraq, has made a main argument that it's better to fight terrorism over there and deny terrorists safe training and staging havens than endure repeat 9/11 attacks on the homeland.

Ominously, for Obama, however, less than a quarter of Americans now buy that argument. Nearly two-thirds (64%) currently say the risk of terrorism at home is the same whether we continue to fight there or withdraw.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: EPA

Going berserk over 'Going Rogue;' Democrats' reaction to Sarah Palin book and publicity

Wow, for somebody who's supposed to be such a political joke, an Arctic ditz and eminently dismissable as a serious anything except maybe a stay-at-home hockey mom, Sarah Palin is sure drawing an awful lot of attention from Democrats and eager critics.

The launch of her "Going Rogue" interviews Monday on "Oprah," of her book today, of her on-air chat today with Rush Limbaugh at 10 a.m. Pacific and of her mid-America bus book tour Wednesday ignited a surprisingly large blizzard of derogatory Democrat dis-missives.

Every few minutes another note from Democratic National Committee operatives and others dropped into electronic mailboxes across the media-verse, helpfully passing on even the tiniest tidbit of negative news about Palin.

You know how sometimes a friend tells you how much he/she doesn't really care about....

What Sarah Palin had in common with that TV show 'The Prisoner'

A presidential campaign can be a disorienting thing, especially for a novice like Sarah Palin, who was plucked from the Alaska governor’s mansion and tossed onto the national stage with very little seasoning and preparation. The pressures on her were immense, as she recounts in "Going Rogue: An American Life.”

In fact, it occurred to us as we were reading the book today that in some ways, her version of the campaign can be likened to the great 1960s British TV show “The Prisoner” (which has just been remade for American TV).

In “The Prisoner,” a man called No. 6, played by Patrick Mcgoohan (photo above), is trapped in “The Village” and has no idea why he is there or where he is. Under constant surveillance, each time he tries to escape, he is subsumed by a giant white ball and returned to his cottage.

Palin recounts in her book that she didn’t understand the rules of the campaign but was expected to follow them. She was constantly told by high-level campaign staffers that someplace called “headquarters” was overruling her or issuing commands about what she could and could not do.

Headquarters’ wishes were relayed to her by McCain chief strategist Steve Schmidt and campaign spokeswoman Nicole Wallace.

“The Schmidt-Wallace tag team,” she writes, “would continually invoke the all-powerful ‘headquarters,’ a mysterious, faraway entity whose exact identity and location were never fully explained.

By the end of the campaign, my VP teammates and I would look at each other and say, ‘Who is headquarters?’” Toward the end of the campaign, Palin and her staff used air quotes when they uttered the h-word.

“I had visited the physical headquarters once in Washington, D.C., and met amazing volunteers working round the clock for the GOP ticket,” she writes. “But somehow I must never have met the tight inner circle of shot callers."

At one point, during preparation for her debate with Democratic VP nominee, Joe Biden, Schmidt and McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis sat her down. “Suddenly, I felt I like I was on thin ice.”

“Schmidt leveled his eyes at me. ‘We don’t have the money Obama does and the numbers don’t look good. We’ve got to change things up….So headquarters is flying in a nutritionist.”

Palin writes that she thought that was a splendid idea for Schmidt and his fellow staffers, whose “chain-smoking, junk-food-packing, recirculated-air-breathing habits were probably catching up to them.”

“No, it’s for you,” Schmidt told her. “You’ve got to get off the Atkins diet.” 

Only one problem: She wasn't on the Atkins diet, she writes.

“I’m a forty-four-year-old, healthy, athletic woman raising five kids and governing a large state, I thought as his words faded into a background buzz. Sir, I don’t really know you yet. But you’ve told me how to dress, what to say, who to talk to, a lot of people NOT to talk to, who my heroes are supposed to be, and we’re STILL losing. Now you’re going to tell me what to eat?

“I suppose if headquarters had flown in a nutritionist, I would’ve listened to what he or she had to say. But as with much of what headquarters said, it never happened.”

--Robin Abcarian

Related items:

Sarah Palin's book tour: What to watch for

Sarah Palin's steamy passage about hubby Todd

Sarah's new Twitter account

Video clips of Sarah Palin with Oprah

What's actually in Sarah Palin's book

Palin's roguish book tour schedule details

The secret Sarah Palin speeches we never heard

Sarah Palin breaks with GOP to endorse Conservative

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Oprah's Sarah Palin interview incites 'perky' reactions

Sarah Palin's rogue book tour made a pre-taped stop in Chicago today for the former Alaska governor's much-hyped appearance on "Oprah."

Palin dropped some doggone fascinating tidbits during the interview. She said she has no plans to run for president in 2012. Well, actually she said it's "not on my radar," which is Politician for "It might be over the horizon."

That might ease the worries of conspiracy theorists convinced that the adorable political celebrity could ring in the 2012 apocalypse. On second thought, no, it won't convince the "anti-" crowd of anything.

Oprah Winfrey, who supported her hometown senator, Barack Obama, in the election, questioned Palin about her unintentionally hilarious interviews with Katie Couric. Palin refused to refer to Couric by name, instead calling her "the perky one." Gosh!

Don't worry, plenty more to come after the book's official release tomorrow. There's a five-part Barbara Walters chat on ABC and a long radio conversation with Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern.

As entertaining as the Oprah chat was, we also like to watch the comments from fans and haters. Did Oprah go too easy on Palin? Some said, You betcha. But others admitted that Palin is starting to grow on them.

We grabbed some of the best we found on Twitter. Here they are (unedited):