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.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told the Hudson Union Society some weeks ago that Republican attacks on President Obama for everything from visiting Dover Air Force Base to opening the White House to local trick-or-treaters on Halloween are hurting the country.
When he was at Dover the other day, and went there to pay respect for soldiers, I heard a lot of people on the right say, "Aw, that's just a cheap photo-op." No, I think it was the commander-in-chief of our military paying respect to a dead soldier, and I'm grateful that he did that, and I was proud of him for doing that. And I think we all -- as Americans -- should give him credit for doing that.
Finally, recalling that liberals regularly reviled George W. Bush no matter what he did, Huckabee, a former pastor, pleaded for comity.
I hated it when people did that to George Bush. They couldn't even laugh at the man's jokes. They found something wrong with everything and if we do that to Barack Obama, then shame on us, shame on us. No wonder our country is so divided when that happens.
Huckabee made the comments while on book tour for "A Simple Christmas." Republican insiders, mindful of all the attention focused on former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue," are calling Huckabee's "the other book tour."
Much like the man who inspires it, the new George W. Bush Presidential Center will be a combination of Texas style and East Coast tradition. That’s the word on the renderings of the 225-square-foot, $250-million center.
The plans for the center, to be built at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, were released Wednesday and, in the words of Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, “carry no hint of the swagger, bravado or taste for confrontation that Bush was known for as president.” Among the Texas touches will be pecan wood paneling and, outside, wildflowers, bluebonnets and prairie.
Designed by New York’s Robert A.M. Stern, arguably the country’s leading historicist architect, the library is a handsome, contextual piece of architecture wrapped in Texas limestone (which may sound like a euphemism, like "Texas tea," but isn’t) and red brick. Though on its main facades it uses classical themes in a mostly abstract way, rather than literally, it is very much meant to complement SMU’s predominantly Georgian-style landmarks.
The light-filled building is both presidential and welcoming, includes elements that evoke both Texas and Washington, and will house the three components of the George W. Bush Presidential Center: an Archive, a Museum and a policy Institute.
We can’t help wondering if the center will include an exhibit on weapons of mass destruction. It could even be interactive -- visitors could wander the complex and never find the WMD. Just a thought.
A few minutes before Mitt Romney spoke to conservative donors at a dinner hosted by the Young America's Foundation conference in Santa Barbara this month, he made a surprise appearance before a roomful of student attendees who had been squeezed out of the dinner due to lack of space.
"Hey, everybody!" he said. "Ho! Ho!"
The 200 or so young conservatives cheered. "You are a good American!" one young man shouted.
For a few minutes, the former Massachusetts governor bantered with the crowd with the ease of a stand-up comedian. He fielded questions about the economy -- "It will get better" -- and the 2012 presidential election.
"Are you running?" someone asked.
Romney laughed. "I'm running up the stairs," he said.
Romney, who sought the Republican presidential nomination last year and lost to Arizona Sen. John McCain, is widely seen as a front runner in the race for the 2012 nomination. Although he hasn't announced his intentions, he spoke like a candidate at the conference, seeming eager to impress the deep-pocketed donors in attendance.
The Young America's Foundation aims to groom high school and college students to be future leaders by exposing them to the conservative philosophies that organizers say are missing from many classrooms. Last weekend's conference brought nearly 300 high school and college students to the Reagan Ranch Center, where the foundation is based, for a series of lectures.
A website tracking potential candidates for the 2012 presidential election reports that...
"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....
A whole half-hour on national radio with Sarah Palin on the air, millions of people listening in their cars and kitchens, and not one word about Lucky Johnston or whatever-his-name is. Nothing about the great RNC Clothes Caper. Nothing about whether the mother of five gave birth control instructions to her daughter.
So what was the point? And he calls himself a journalist.
Well, no he doesn't. But anyway, as The Ticket reported here Tuesday morning, El Rushbo did pursue numerous substantive policy areas with the former Republican governor who hits the road today on her book bus in Michigan and beyond, selling "Going Rogue." The book began flying off the shelves officially yesterday but has been unofficially available at some rogue places since late last week. (See video)
Nothing better than the gloomy, grey skies of Michigan in November. But Palin just had to....
...go there. Remember, the McCain brain trust, knowing it was losing well before election day last fall, was trying to target its more limited resources where they might actually work. And the numbers told them that Michigan was not one of those places. (Hmm, what if they'd picked Michigan native son Mitt Romney as VP?)
And Palin, being who she is and so naive and so inexperienced in the business of losing....
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.
So the conservative icon was determined not to follow the media herd. In a half-hour interview with the Republican Party's hottest commodity, Limbaugh did not ask Palin about her quarrels with John McCain's presidential campaign, her interview with CBS' Katie Couric, her clothes, her husband or her ambitions.
Instead, he offered her a platform for policy, a chance to burnish her credentials, to add gravitas to the resume.
On the green revolution: "A lot of snake-oil science. ... Somebody's making an awful lot of money" from the fear of global warming.
On healthcare: "There are lots of common-sense solutions before we get the federal government involved."
And, finally, on the "drill, baby, drill" chant that defined her appearance before the Republican National Convention last summer: "What is complicated about tapping into safe supplies" of oil?
Responding to Vice President Biden's recent comment that addressing environmental issues is more complicated then just drilling, Palin said, "It's not that complicated, it's political."
Well, I think what you saw there is -- and of course it's not just the Republican machine, it's the Democrat machine, too. You know, if you're not the anointed one within the machine, sometimes you have a much tougher row to hoe and that's what Hoffman faced. He was the underdog.
I think great timing for him, though, to stand strong on his conservative credentials and essentially come out of nowhere and prove that an American without that resume, without that machine backing can truly make a difference in an election like this.
RUSH: Well, now, you used the term, "If you're not the anointed one by the party machine, you're the underdog and you have a tough row to hoe." Based on things that I read, the Republican establishment would not anoint you to be a nominee of their party should you choose to go that way.
Palin, who upset the entrenched GOP establishment in Alaska to win the gubernatorial primary, chuckled.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has never made any bones, if you will, about her culinary preferences. She's a carnivore, a hunter and proud of both.
So it's not really a surprise that her book, "Going Rogue," published today, extols the virtues of eating meat.
"If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore," she wrote. "If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?”
But the former Republican vice presidential candidate did not stop there.
A vegetarian from Cleveland took issue with Palin. In a blog on the Examiner, Daelyn Fourtney wrote that Palin's remarks "will surely receive a chuckle and thumbs up from many avid hunters and steak house patrons. It is a sad statement on our society when we applaud those who refer to animals as the centerpiece of their dinner plate."
Now, Fourtney is reporting that she has received a lot of hostile e-mails from conservatives assuming her to be a left-wing pinko. A sampling of her inbox:
* “The liberal/socialist media elites are terrified of America's new Reagan and it's so much fun to see their PDS (Palin Derangement Syndrome) on display...including this Fortney writer.” –freeperjim
The Cleveland food writer -- in some quarters now known as the "Rogue Vegetarian" -- said her politics are separate from her eating habits.
"I have chosen to live a vegetarian lifestyle because I believe in the sanctity of life for all creatures," she said. "Assuming that one is left or right based on what they choose to eat is a dangerous road to travel."
Still, she said, she's not counting on a Christmas card from the Republican Party this year.
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: Sarah Palin with a caribou she shot in Alaska. Credit: Associated Press
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....
