San Francisco Booksellers Won't Carry Going Rogue

You know someone's packing some REALLY powerful intellect when every other post on their blog is a Jon Stewart video. Perhaps it's generational change, where we see a lazy kind of media-induced resistance to hard thinking and analytical reasoning, but it's out there, and not just among hardline netroots denizens. I'm tempted to try to place the willfully ignorant in a corner with those cohorts political scientists identify as post-engagement voters or actualized citizens who channel their political activity through increasingly creative and expressive action rather than the more historically hierarchical, yet socially affirming, mobilizations. But it's more likely that radical leftwing ideology -- with its inherent intolerance of differening opinions and hostility to the vigorous play of ideas -- is the real culprit.

In any case, my thinking here is being driven by the non-shocker of an article at the San Francisco Chronicle, "Bay Area Not Maverick Enough to Read Palin Book":

It might as well have cooties. Hardly anyone wants to touch the thing, or even get close to it.

The new autobiography by moose hunter and failed vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is harder to find in the Bay Area than a hockey mom. Some bookstores figure it's one of those grit-your-teeth First Amendment deals that principled booksellers must put up with from time to time.

But many nonchain bookstores won't handle it.

"Our customers are thinking people," said Nathan Embretson, a bookseller at Pendragon Books in Oakland. "They're not into reading drivel."

There's not a single copy on the shelf. Embretson said no one has asked for it except for one guy, who was kidding.

"He said he wanted to look at it but he also said he didn't really want to read it," Embretson said. "Anyway, he certainly didn't want to buy it. I think he regarded looking at it as a kind of punishment."

There are no copies of the book at Cover to Cover Booksellers in Noe Valley, either.

"Anything like that we wouldn't carry," said clerk Emily Stackhouse. "We're a small store and it would probably gross us all out. Some things you carry because of freedom of speech, but a book like that is just gross."

One customer did put in a special request for the book one evening but, perhaps thinking better in the light of day, failed to show up and actually pay money for it, Stackhouse said.

Sheryl Cotleur, the head buyer for Book Passage, which operates stores in Corte Madera and San Francisco, said the two stores have sold exactly two copies of the book. That works out to one copy per store. Cotleur said two other people have asked to look at the book but no one else has asked to buy it.

"Nobody around here is particularly interested in her politics or her opinions," she said. "There's a certain curiosity, sure. But I don't think that translates into what people are willing to pay money for."

Now this is not simply a generational thing. Mostly, it's a urban secular-collectivist thing. What's so fascinating, is that when people say they're uninterested in reading about Sarah Palin's life they're really saying that they're hostile to heartland American values, respect for nature, hard work, and individual initiative, and especially the notion of a life of personal responsibility rather than socialistic paternalism.

As I noted last night, reading Palin's book is taking me back to my own upbringing, and it's making me realize how all-American is the Sarah Palin experience -- and by extension, how historically-rejectionist are those who excoriate her as a backwoods yokel. Palin's family roots are actually in Southern California, and then Idaho. From there her father decided to pick up stakes for the lush wilderness of Alaska. I know if it would've been me and my family -- especially my uncle -- I would've taken right to the rugged life of hunting and fishing and cold nestled-in winters. In Southern California in the 1970s, I spent a lot of time engaged in outdoor activities (including cycling, motorcross, fourwheeling, and shooting). Indeed, most of the action sports popular today (skateboarding and snowboarding, etc.), were acitivities that were pioneered by some of my closest buddies at the time. There was an entreprenuerial work ethic about life, whether that be with extreme-sports, business professionalism, or working as a farm-hand at ranches out by Lake Elsinore.

When Sarah Palin writes of how her future husband Todd Palin earned all his own money as a fisherman and an oil-roughneck, enough to buy his own cars and trucks as a teenager, that's just the kind of inititative that'd be expected in my family when growing up. Perhaps identifying with that kind of lifestyle really is what separates radical leftists from people who are, basically, just really normal folks more so than "conservatives." As my good friend Lynn Mitchell noted last night:

Shooting a gun? Camping with bears? Hiking the wilderness? Those are so foreign to many folks ... but for me it was a freedom-loving childhood just as Donald describes growing up in California, and Sarah Palin describes growing up as part of the Alaskan experience.

And with that clearly comes a greater openness to different values and political ideas than you'll find among the haughty radical hypocrites of the contemporary youth cohort.

It's a shame, really. But folks do wise up with age, and I've been encouraged by how many traditional students I've worked with this semester. No doubt Barack Obama's going to be one term president, and in fact, he's acknowledged the likelihood of that outcome. See, "Obama Tells CNN – He May Not Run in 2012."

See also, Hot Air, "Surprise: Many San Francisco Booksellers Refusing to Carry Palin’s Book; Update: Palin Apologizes to Those Whose Books Weren’t Signed." Plus Memeorandum.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck Interview with Sean Hannity, November 19, 2009

I'm a big fan of Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and last night was no disappointment. From, "Elisabeth Hasselbeck Sounds Off on Mainstream Media's Treatment of Palin":

Gallup Poll, Grandaddy of Survey Organizations, Has Obama at 49 Percent Approval!

Gallup's always pretty respectable, which is why President Obama's 49 percent approval rating in the latest Gallup survey is very important.

David Paul Kuhn offers some analysis, "Obama Below 50 in Gallup, What it Means":

Barack Obama has fallen below 50 percent in the Gallup Poll, an expected but no less significant historical marker.

The public's view of this president ranks him in the lower third of modern American politics. He has fallen below the majority threshold at the fourth fastest rate, of the twelve presidents since World War II.

Obama was nearly number three. But he escaped Ronald Reagan's fall-point by about a week. That Reagan has been here as well, and languished below 50 for two years in his first term, illustrates that Obama's new reality is notable but not determinative.

Still, it is indeed bad news for Democrats that Obama stands at 49.

In legislative terms, a president is only as powerful as he is popular. The metric for that popularity is the public approval rating.

Below 50, the president can no longer claim the majority of the public is behind him. His political arsenal depletes. And Obama's political opposition has powerful, though nebulous, new ammunition.

Obama's new reality will immediately impact the health care debate, albeit intangibly and perhaps only slightly. The White House will find it more difficult to pressure Blue Dog moderate Democrats. It no longer can claim a definitive mandate.

Global Warming Hoax Breaks Wide Open as Hackers Target East Anglia Climate Research Unit!

It's explosive!

There's a big global warming scandal breaking out across the blogosphere. Earlier I saw Der Spiegel's, "Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out."

I actually didn't pay that much attention to it, since the left's global-warming-media-industrial-complex continues to peddle lies and environmental disinformation; and frankly, President Obama's visit to China killed the prospects for the Copenhagen climate change accord.

But the news this morning is absolutely devastating. It turns out that hackers have exposed a massive conspiracy seeking to hide the scientific consensus that global warming is bunk. See, "Climategate: The Final Nail in the Coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?" Read this whole entry, which posts the key e-mails. This one on the science community's campaign to drum out dissenters is just mind-boggling:

And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.

“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”

Also, at the conclusion of the piece:

The world is currently cooling; electorates are increasingly reluctant to support eco-policies leading to more oppressive regulation, higher taxes and higher utility bills; the tide is turning against Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. The so-called “sceptical” view is now also the majority view.

Plus, check out Hot Air as well, "Do Hacked E-Mails Show Global-Warming Fraud?" And, Michelle Malkin's title nails it, "The Global Warming Scandal of the Century." (And Michelle reminds us, "First things first: The alleged hackers need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.)

Australia's Andrew Bolt suggests the scandal "is one of the greatest in modern science."

More from the BBC, "Hackers Target Leading Climate Research Unit," and Memeorandum.

Also Blogging::

* The Air Vent, "It Keeps Going."

* Charlie Martin, "Hacker Releases Data Implicating CRU in Global Warming Fraud."

* Confederate Yankee, "Hacked Emails Show Climate Change Scientists Committing Fraud."

* Classical Values, "Climate Files Hacked."

*Don Surber, "Climategate."

* Gateway Pundit, "MAN-BEAR-PIG Is Dead!… Emails Prove Global Warming Junk Science Conspiracy."

* Invincible Armor, "Climate Change is a Hoax - What Else?"

* Hugh Hewitt, "'Climatologists Baffled By Global Warming Time-Out'."

* Jawa Report, "al-Gore's Global Warming Khinspiracy."

* Nice Deb, "Breaking!: Climate Research Unit Hacked; Hundreds of Compromising Files Found? UPDATED: Confirmation-Website Was Hacked

* Not Evil Just Wrong, "CRU Hacking Reveals Global Warming Alarmists True Nature."

* Power and Control, "Some Verification of Hadley CRU Files Hacked."

* QandO, "AGW’s Crumbling House of Cards."

* Riehl World View, "Climate Science Fraud Exposed?"

* Robert Stacy McCain, "Lies, Damned Lies, and 'Climate Change'."

* Shout First, Ask Questions Later, "Environmentalists Exposed as Liars."

* Sister Toldjah, "Global Warming Alarmists exposed?"

* Snooper Report, "What Have I Been Saying About Global Warming?"

* Stop the ACLU, "Leaked Emails Confirm Global Warming Is a Deliberate Hoax."

* Wizbang, "Global Warming Fraud."

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Plus Added Bonus Fail: Global Warming Fearmongers Denounce Critics of Global Warming Hoax:

* Climate Progress, "Here's What We Nnow So Far: CRU's E-Mmails Were Hacked, the 2000s Will Easily Be the Hottest Decade on Record, and the Planet Keeps Warming Thanks to Us!"

* [Added...] Real Climate, "The CRU Hack."

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If you'd like to be added to the roundup just drop your link in the comments, or send me an e-mail!

Protesters Seize Wheeler Hall at UC Berkeley (VIDEO) -- Plus, Police Close Roads to UC Santa Cruz as Campus Comes Under Seige!

From Oakland's KTVU TV, "Protesters Take Over Wheeler Hall On UC Berkeley Campus":

A group of approximately 40 students protesting the fee hikes approved by University of California Regents Thursday have reportedly taken over Wheeler Hall on the UC Berkeley campus Friday morning.

KTVU has received reports that a group of students are currently occupying the building. UC campus police have cordoned off the building with police tape as eight or nine additional squad cars arrived to address the situation.

Students could be seen hanging out of windows on upper floors at Wheeler Hall. There are reports that police have already used pepper spray in one confrontation with the students. Officers appear to be preparing to make arrests in an effort to regain control of the building.

The students are taking a stand against the fee hike approved by Regents Thursday that will push the cost of undergraduate education to more than $10,000 a year.

Click here for KTVU video report.

Plus, at San Jose Mercury News, "Police Close Roads Due to Protesting UC Santa Cruz Students."

RELATED: " ‘Mobilizing Conference’ for Public Schools Revives ’60s-Era Campus Radicalism."

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UPDATE: From Common Sense Political Thought, "Oh, the poor dears! Their tuition is too high, so they want poorer people to have to dig a little deeper to pay for their own privileged educations."

And here's more video, via the San Francisco Chronicle and Memeorandum:

Sarah Palin on O'Reilly Factor: Media Elite 'Fear Voice from Heartland of America'

Bill O'Reilly's rolling out his interview with Governor Sarah Palin over three nights. Viewers got about 20 minutes on Thursday night. More tonight and Monday:

I noticed a real sense of political growth and maturity in Sarah Palin's latest interview. She showed quite the humility in acknowleding her own mistakes, and she demonstrated a sharp loyalty to Senator John McCain, saying she hadn't a negative thing to say about him. At the second clip, Palin suggests that the elite media feared "a voice that was coming from the hearland of America." She was also combative about protecting her family from the outrageous lies and media slanders. Palin said he was like a "mama grizzly ... you're touching my cubs, you're touching my kids ... no, no, I'm gonna respond, I'm gonna set the record straight ..."

Plus, don't miss my comments on Going Rogue I shared yesterday.

Hat Tip: Freedom's Lighthouse.

RELATED: From Stop the ACLU, "Sarah Palin Sells 300,000 in Her First Day; Favorable Numbers Rising."

Rioting Breaks Out at UCLA 'Direct Action' Protest - Campus Resistance Front Decries 'Criminal Budgets' in Sacramento!

I predicted this week's campus unrest in my previous essay, "'Mobilizing Conference' for Public Schools Revives ’60s-Era Campus Radicalism."

The Los Angeles Times has two reports, "Students storm UCLA building to protest expected UC system fee increase, and "UC regents approve fee hike amid loud student protests." Also, from KABC-TV Los Angeles, "UC Fee Increases Approved Despite Protesters":

Students chanted and waved signs as they marched throughout the campus and onto Wilshire Boulevard and other streets, blocking traffic in the area. There were no immediate reports of any injuries.

One student was arrested earlier in the day and cited for allegedly obstructing a police officer.

"Even as first-years, we've already suffered the 9 percent increase, and it's just going to get worse and worse for us and for our friends back in high school," said Ayanna Moody, a UCLA student. "It's our only choice to come here and fight."

After the vote, the protests continued around campus.

"I can hardly afford school as it is so -- I'm on grants, loans -- and they want to raise it 32 percent more. It's unacceptable," said student Crystal Bureman.

Mark Yudof, president of the UC Board of Regents, noted that students who come from families earning less than $70,000 will pay no tuition whatsoever, thanks to financial aid programs.

"If you make less than $70,000 a year, you will not pay any fees. You not only won't pay the increase, you won't pay the base. And if you make between $70,000 and $120,000, we'll pay half of the increase in the initial year. So the access is still there," said Yudof ...

That's sounds "free" to me, at least for lower income students. That's no satisfaction to the revolutionaries, of course. Here's the "communique" from the UCLA Resistance:

On 19 November at approximately 12:30 students occupied Campbell Hall at UCLA. The time has come for us to make a statement and issue our demands. In response to this injunction we say: we will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, we will occupy. We have to learn not to tip toe through a space which ought by right to belong to everyone.

We are under no illusions. The UC Regents will vote the budget cuts and raise student fees. The profoundly undemocratic nature of their decision making process, and their indifference to the plight of those who struggle to afford an education or keep their jobs, can come as no surprise.

We know the crisis is systemic - and that it reaches beyond the Regents, beyond the criminal budget cuts in Sacremento, beyond the economic crisis, to the very foundations of our society. But we also know that the enormity of the problem is just as often an excuse for doing nothing.

We choose to fight back, to resist, where we find ourselves, the place where we live and work, our university.

Everything's "criminal" nowadays, like the "criminal" occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, remember?

More video from CNN:

Andrew Sullivan's Palin-Induced Psychosis

Michelle Malkin hammered Andrew Sullivan today with her piece, "It's Official: Atlantic Magazine Blogger Suffers Palin-Induced Psychosis."

And frankly, I'm not sure if "psychosis" is a strong enough term, even though it means to be completely out of touch with any semblance of reality. That's my impression of the guy after reading Sullivan's long screed attacking Sarah Palin with the most exceedingly fantastical demonizations I've ever read. And the kick of it is that Sullivan's even more clinically deranged than is to be expected, for the simply fact of not having found anything of real value with which to substantiate the allegations he's been making for over a year now. Just this passage gives you a hint of Sullivan's supremely unmatched hatred for Sarah Palin and of his fanatical repudiation of the essence of the all-American good that she epitomizes:

Well, as promised the Dish is back to normal. I'm not. "Going Rogue" is such a postmodern book that treating it as some kind of factual narrative to check (as I began to), or comparing its version of events with her previous versions of the same events (as I have), and comparing all those versions with what we know is empirical reality (so many lies, so little time) is just a dizzying task. The lies and truths and half-truths and the facts and non-facts are all blurred together in a pious puree of such ghastly prose that, in the end, the book can only really be read as a some kind of chapter in a cheap nineteenth century edition of "Lives of the Saints." But as autobiography.

It is a religious book, full of myths and parables. And yet it is also crafted politically, with every single "detail" of the narrative honed carefully for specific constituencies. It is also some kind of manifesto - but not in the usual sense of a collection of policy proposals. It is a manifesto for the imagined life of an imagined Sarah Palin as a leader for all those who identify with the image and background she relentlessly claims to represent.

In this, the book is emblematic of late degenerate Republicanism, which is based not on actual policies, but on slogans now so exhausted by over-use they retain no real meaning: free enterprise is great, God loves us all, America is fabulous, foreigners are suspect, we need to be tough, we can't dither, we must always cut taxes, government is bad, liberals are socialists, the media hates you, etc etc.

I tried to write a fair account of Palin's various stories of her incredible fifth pregnancy, labor and delivery and to reconcile all the various facts we know and the various versions of the story she has told. Just for the record and because we have aired the public record on this before. I honestly however cannot make total sense of them in a way that I'm completely convinced by and so simply do not feel comfortable making any judgment on them in any way at this point. That's fair to her, my readers, my colleagues, and the innocent private people caught up in this circus.

I thought there might be some new facts in here that would illuminate my confusion and dispel the whole thing.

Read the whole thing for more of this phantasmagorical rupture with normal experience.

I should add that I'm reading the book now, and I'm finding it as an extremely satisfying account of the everywoman's tale of American exceptionalism. That is, Sarah Palin is our 21st century Frederick Jackson Turner, who was the author of the seminal account of the American political culture, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." With Palin we have our modern-day political scribe of the frontier existence, the rugged pioneer of traditionalism who rejoices in the Alaskan harvest of the great remaining bounty of the nation's magnificent destiny.

This is what is so blindingly difficult for radical leftists to accept. For in Sarah Palin, we have the personification of the culture of expansion and power at the core of America's mission. We see it in Going Rogue's regaling of family hunting trips, and Sarah Palin's ethos of sustenance in faith in God. This strength is further congealed in the primacy of family at the center of all life's meaning. Palin's book is just simply an essential testament to the realism of contemporary conservatism, and to the enduring appeal of the classic American ideal.

And I can write all of this with the benefit of reading just portions of the very first chapter, which includes Palin's recitation of her squeamishness at holding warm moose eyes while out for a morning hunt with her father. This testament is also found in her retelling of the love of the outdoor life, and especially the cherishing of the long summers of the Alaskan experience, where her life has been lived in doubly exhuberance in the knowledge of the long -- and often hard -- winters that came to the land.

I'll have more on this, but I rest in my own supreme satisfaction that Palin's story is my story as well. It reminds me of my own experiences surfing the beaches of South Orange County, four-wheeling and shooting in the Southern California outback, and spending summers hiking the raw Sierra Nevadas with my frontiersman uncle, Doug Walton, a man who at 76 years-old remains a rugged entrepreneurial explorer and tour guide, and one of my all-time great role-models:

This is a central foundation of what means to be an American, something that Andrew Sullivan will never, ever grasp.

Added: Linked by SWAC Girl, "Sarah, Alaska, and Growing Up Free":

I, too, enjoyed growing up in the outdoors ... camping in Shenandoah National Park, swimming at Virginia Beach and North Carolina's Outer Banks, hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains, exploring the Northern Neck at my aunt's place on the rivah, and learning to shoot a rifle on the sprawling peanut farm of friends in eastern Virginia.

Shooting a gun? Camping with bears? Hiking the wilderness? Those are so foreign to many folks ... but for me it was a freedom-loving childhood just as Donald describes growing up in California, and Sarah Palin describes growing up as part of the Alaskan experience.

Why China Resists Currency Revaluation

From the Economist, "China's Currency: A Yuan-Sided Argument":

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, on his first visit to China this week, urged the government to allow its currency to rise. President Hu Jintao politely chose to ignore him. In recent weeks Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, have also called for a stronger yuan. But China will adjust its currency only when it sees fit, not in response to foreign pressure.

China allowed the yuan to rise by 21% against the dollar in the three years to July 2008, but since then it has more or less kept the rate fixed. As a result, the yuan’s trade-weighted value has been dragged down this year by the sickly dollar, while many other currencies have soared. Since March the Brazilian real and the South Korean won have gained 42% and 36% respectively against the yuan, seriously eroding those countries’ competitiveness.

Speculation about a change in China’s currency policy increased in the week before Mr Obama’s visit, after the People’s Bank of China tweaked the usual wording in its quarterly monetary-policy report. It dropped a phrase about keeping the yuan “basically stable” and added that foreign-exchange policy would take into account “international capital flows and changes in major currencies”. But exchange-rate policy is decided by the State Council, not the central bank. And many policymakers, notably in the Ministry of Commerce, do not favour a revaluation right now.

Indeed, Chinese officials have become bolder in standing up to America. “We don’t think that it’s good for the world economic recovery that you ask others to appreciate while you depreciate your own currency…It’s also unfair,” said a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce on November 16th. The previous day Liu Mingkang, China’s chief banking regulator, blasted America for its low interest rates and for the falling dollar, which, he suggested, might be encouraging a dollar carry trade and, in turn, global asset-price bubbles. He strangely ignored the fact that China’s own overly lax monetary policy, partly the result of its fixed exchange rate, risks fuelling bubbles in its domestic property and equity markets.

Foreigners argue that a stronger yuan would not only help reduce global imbalances, such as America’s trade deficit, but would also benefit China. It would help China regain control of its monetary policy. By pegging to the dollar, it is, in effect, importing America’s monetary policy, which is too loose for China’s fast-growing economy. A stronger yuan would also help rebalance China’s economy, making it less dependent on exports, putting future growth on a more sustainable path.

If a stronger exchange rate is in China’s own interest, why does it resist?

The answer at the link.

But compare to, C. Fred Bergsten, "The Dollar and the Deficits: How Washington Can Prevent the Next Crisis."

RELATED: Pejman Yousefzadeh, "Overestimating Chinese Power, and the State of Sino-American Relations."

So What's Behind the Left's Palin Smears? Lindsay Beyerstein's Got Your Answer!

You'll enjoy this PJTV segment with Dana Loesch, "Media Sharks Attack 'Cuda, So What's Behind the Palin Smears?"

It's a fairly short clip, and Dana's got the beat on the left's hypocrisy -- and she nails it in the introduction when she queries, "How do you solve the problem of sexist liberals."

After checking out the viddy, you'll be amazed how perfectly the discussion caputures the Female Conservative Derangement Syndrome found at Lindsay Beyerstein's post, "The Truth Hurts: Newsweek's Palin Cover." For example:

The bottom line is that Palin's a clown. She doesn't get a pass because her chosen clown persona is stereotypically feminine.

She caricatures herself. Day in and day out. Good for Newsweek for pointing and laughing.

The story is about why Sarah Palin is a problem for the GOP. The picture answers the question. She's a problem because she's a freak with no judgment who regularly makes a spectacle of herself. Obviously, she's a potential problem for America because she's an incompetent leader who supports terrible policies. But that's not Newsweek's question.

You know, you just can't be feminine AND governor of the largest state in the union at the same time!

Right on, Lindsay! Way to endorse female political empowerment!

And hey, great job stretching the bounds of journalistic propriety -- no conflict of interest for you! -- seeing that you're now a published Newsweek contributor!

Shoot, this is great! Not only has Newsweek long and totally abandoned any shred of journalist objectivity (to say nothing of integrity), they're now in the habit of contracting with neo-communist Firedoglake blog flunkies!

Man, things really are looking up for you, sweetie!

Sarah Palin's Book Tour

After having just attended a lecture and book signing with Michelle Malkin, I've been wondering if I'll have a similar opportunity with Sarah Palin. But the thing is, looking at the clip here, and thinking of my brief photo-op with Malkin, it's just a quick hello and thank you, for the most part (or, maybe she'll sign your jacket as well). Still, it'd be an honor to shake Governor Palin's hand and give her the blessings of success in the years ahead:

See also, "Sarah Palin Hits the (Book) Trail" (via Memeorandum). And in case you missed it, from The Blog Prof, "Hundreds Wait All Night in 30F Weather in MI to Meet Sarah Palin at Book Signing."

Actually, I'll Take Leighton Meester Over Levi Johnston Any Day...

I'm not linking, but Andrew Sullivan has posted a picture from Levi Johnston's Playgirl photo-shoot. It's an interesting selection, given that Sullivan's returning to regularly-scheduled blogging from his (super-hyped drama-queen) Sarah Palin hiatus. (And that's not to mention Sully's likely boy-crush on Levi.) Robert Stacy McCain's got a report, "Sullivan Promises to be 'Normal' Today" (with the concluding flourish, "DEPORT ANDREW SULLIVAN!").

Actually, I'd rather preoccupy my time with Leighton Meester, who's got her own genuinely-electrifying pictorial in GQ. But note that Huffington Post has a better photo-spread than GQ online. See, "Leighton Meester's GQ Shoot: Lingerie, Spreads Legs."

That shot above, a body-suit legs-wide-open offering, is pretty phenomenal.

Sarah Palin Interviewed on Fox News

I missed it. It's been a busy week with teaching and the Michelle Malkin event, and I actually starting reading Going Rogue last night. But Freedom's Lighthouse has posted Sarah Palin's interview with Sean Hannity from yesterday, "Gov. Sarah Palin Interview with Sean Hannity - Complete Video 11/18/09." Sean asks Governor Palin about her father's "moose eyeballs" in the first segment, and that's a portion of the first chapter of the Going Rogue that caught my attention as well:

I had planned, however, to catch Governor Palin's appearance tonight on the O'Reilly Factor. Here's here's a preview:

Jodie Evans is Barack Obama's Code Pink Liaison to Taliban Insurgents

Here's a vital exposé on how radical is the administration of President Barack Obama: From Kristinn Taylor and Andrea Shea King, at Big Government, "Jane Fonda: Obama Funder Jodie Evans Met With Taliban; Code Pink Gives Terrorists Direct Line to Obama":

Top Obama donor and fundraiser Jodie Evans met with the Taliban in Afghanistan on a recent trip there, according to a report by Jane Fonda of a discussion she had with Evans last month. The meeting with the Taliban took place just weeks before Evans was videotaped directly handing to President Barack Obama a package of information about her trip to Afghanistan at a high dollar fundraiser in San Francisco.

The Jane Fonda blog post is here, and I've saved a screencap below. Ms. Fonda writes that Jodie Evans "met with people ranging from the brother of President Karzai, Afghan members of Parliament, activists, to warlords and members of the Taliban":

Here's a screencap of Ms. Evan's meeting with the president on October 15th:

Also Blogging:

* Bare Naked Islam, "OBAMA’S NEWEST TALIBAN CZAR is Jodie Evans, Code Pinko Commie."

* JammieWearingFool, "Obama's Code Pink Pal Met With Taliban."

* Say Anything, "The Taliban Wing of the Democratic Party."

* Weasel Zippers, "Jane Fonda Gleefully Reports That Her Friend (Code Pink Co-Founder And Top Obama Fundraiser Jodie Evans) Met With The Taliban ..."

And Townall add this, "All the President's Fundraisers ...":

What does it say about the Obama administration's sympathies and priorities that Tea Partiers and Fox News reporters are considered wrong-doers -- but modern-day Tokyo Roses and enemy sympathizers like Jodie Evans are a welcome part of the team?

I'll say...

See also Jodie Evans' entry at Discover the Networks.

RELATED: "Code Pink's Jodie Evans: No 'Rethink' on Afghanistan - 'U.S. Troop Withdrawal Now' ... ANSWER Coalition Decries 'Criminal Occupation'."

Leftists Call Conservatives 'Cowards'

Sister Toldjah call it the "Democratic Theme of the Week."

This "cowardly" meme is coming from the Democratic Party mainstream, naturally, but Markos Moulitsas' essay is particularly loathesome, "Conservative Cowards."

But no worries. Sister Toldjah's got a devasting smackdown:

8 years after 9/11, these morons still apparently don’t get it. This has nothing to do with ‘cowering’ in the face of KSM. How dare the Attorney General of the US insinuate that the opposition to holding KSM’s trial in a civilian court has anything to do with being “cowardly”? The issue at hand is what sensitive information will be revealed in a US court of law, since KSM is being tried as a murderer in a civilian court, rather than as a suspected terrorist in a military court.

Supposedly – in spite of the fact that many other Gitmo terrorists will indeed be tried by a military court – the Obama administration wants this high-profile trial to be a “beacon” to other parts of the world, to show, in particular Muslim countries, how our justice system can be fair. But the underlying rationale for putting on this show trial, as I’ve already discussed here, is not to put KSM on trial and to provide justice to the 9-11 victims but instead to try the Bush administration and in the process reveal potentially damaging sensitve information about our intelligence collecting operations.

More at the link.

RELATED: From Hot Air, "Graham Grills Holder: Does Bin Laden Need to Be Given His Miranda Rights?" (Via Memeorandum.)

'Is There a Doctor in the House?'

My very good friend Megan Barth is now blogging at Red County. And her first post is a beauty, "Is there a Doctor in the House?":

Evidently not. But Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama would have you believe that doctors support the House’s passage of the 2000 page Healthcare bill. Purporting that the AMA supports the bill would have most of us believe that doctors are supporting the bill. However, the AMA only represents 17% of doctors nationwide. In fact, Barack Obama would have you believe that doctors perform unnecessary tonsillectomies and amputate limbs of diabetic patients to make a quick $50k in reimbursement dollars:

These statements made by President Obama were the tipping point for Dr. Joel Strom, Dentist and former President of the California State Dental Board and professor of Ethics at USC. He sought out his childhood friend, Dr. Reed Wilson, a cardiologist in Beverly Hills, and together, they decided to do something before something was about to be done to them, their practices, and their patients.

At first they thought about starting their own Southern California doctors organization, but the speed at which the legislation was being pushed through the House, they happened upon http://www.docs4patientcare.org/. (D4PC). They believed in the organization’s prescription for reform, and Dr. Strom made a cold call to the founder, Hal Scherz, and the Southern California Chapter of D4PC was born. .

In the last few weeks, Dr Strom and Dr. Wilson, cold called hospitals and doctors and found that many doctors had no idea, like many legislators, what the healthcare bill would do to medicine.

Here are some facts about the legislation ...

Better head over to Megan's post to get those facts! And she's got some cool video there as well!

(P.S. Megan and I became friends through the Orange County tea party movenment. She was a lead organizer for the "Orange County Tax Day Tea Party," and she's got a "Doctor and Patient Healthcare Rally" scheduled at the Westwood Federal Wilshire Building this Saturday, November 21. Check it out!)

Obama Sinking in Public Opinion

From the Quinnipiac poll, "Obama Approval Dips Below 50% For First Time" (via Memeorandum.):

President Barack Obama's job approval rating is 48 - 42 percent, the first time he has slipped below the 50 percent threshold nationally, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Support for the war in Afghanistan and approval of President Obama's handling of the war also is down in the last month, and Republican support for the war is more than twice as strong as Democratic support.

American voters say 48 - 41 percent that fighting the war in Afghanistan is the right thing to do, down from 52 - 37 percent in an October 7 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. Voters disapprove 49 - 38 percent of the President's handling of the war there, down from 42 - 40 percent approval in October.

Read the whole thing at the link.

Also, at RealClearPolitics, "Another Look at Obama's Job Approval."

RELATED: Wesley Pruden, "Obama Bows, the Nation Cringes."

Image Credit: Serr8d, "Bowgate: Barack Obama is Now defined on the World's Stage: WATERBOY."

Hypocrite-in-Chief: Obama Touts Wonders of 'Unfettered Criticism' in China While Stiffling Dissent at Home

I mentioned this as a theme of Michelle Malkin's event yesterday. From her syndicated column today, "Obama's Double-Talk on Political Dissent":

President Obama traveled all the way to China to praise the free flow of information. It’s the only safe place he could do so without getting heckled. With a straight face, Obama lauded political dissent and told Chinese students that he welcomed unfettered criticism in America. Fierce opposition, he said, made him “a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.” How do you say “You lie!” in Mandarin?

While the kowtower-in-chief’s press shop feeds paeans to free speech into Obama’s globe-trotting teleprompter, the White House is still waging war on vocal foes at home. Obama has lectured his critics in Washington stop talking and “get out of the way.” He has stacked his carefully-staged town halls with partisan stooges and campaign plants throughout the year. The president recently derided limited-government activists in the Tea Party movement with a vulgar sexual term used by left-wing cable hosts Anderson Cooper on CNN and the MSNBC smear merchants (just Google “teabagging” and you’ll see what they mean).

And there are now more muzzled watchdogs in the Obama administration than on the sidelines of the Westminster Kennel Club show.

The whole thing is at the link.

Sarah Palin: The Free Market Antidote to Obamunism

The Blog Prof has a great post up this morning, "Hundreds Wait All Night In 30F Weather In MI To Meet Sarah Palin At Book Signing."

But check out Matthew Continetti's piece this morning, at the Los Angeles Times, "Palin Unveils Her Latest Persona: Her Incarnation as Sarah the Celebrity Paves the Way for Sarah the Free Marketer":

Sarah Palin has a talent for reinvention. Since her first campaign in 1992, she's gone through a wardrobe full of political personas. Study her career and you count no less than five different identities: Sarah the culture warrior, Sarah the watchdog, Sarah the reformer, Sarah the veep and now, Sarah the celebrity.

Such flexibility has allowed Palin to adapt to changing political circumstances. And in a tumultuous political moment, Palin's pragmatism is an advantage.

In fact, we are already seeing the outlines of identity number six: Sarah the free marketer. This is the identity that will be crucial if Palin decides to run for president in 2012 ....

When Palin returned to Alaska after election day, she discovered that she couldn't return to her previous identity. She was still Sarah the veep. Without Democratic support, she had no chance of moving additional reforms through the Legislature. Palin's opponents in Alaska and in the Lower 48 filed a series of frivolous ethics complaints against her. Every time she left her state, the Democrats attacked and drove up her negative ratings. In response, Palin resigned from office.

Leaving the governorship paved the way for Sarah the celebrity. In this phase, Palin is the author of a bestselling memoir. On her book tour, which will take her to places such as Grand Rapids, Mich., and Roanoke, Va., fans and well-wishers are expected to turn out in droves to see her. She has granted major interviews to Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters. And she has built a Facebook following of close to a million people. For better or worse -- OK, worse -- she's even produced a satellite celebrity in Playgirl model and future ex-reality-TV star Levi Johnston.

As Sarah the celebrity, Palin can reintroduce herself to the American people on her own terms. In the process, she will make a lot of money. Yet celebrity isn't qualification enough for high office. Fame draws eyeballs, but it doesn't get you votes. If Palin wants to run for the presidency, she also needs to be sure that the public knows her principles.

That's where Sarah the free marketer enters the picture. Palin grasps that the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are attempting to renegotiate the American social contract. She understands that the Democrats want to increase the role that government plays in the economy and our daily lives.

Palin holds the opposite view. In her book, she talks a lot about fiscal responsibility. She recalls Ronald Reagan's approach to economic growth. In her Facebook messages to supporters, she opposes the Democratic healthcare and climate cap-and-trade bills. She favors reducing regulation and increasing competition.

Palin is reaching out to the anti-tax-and-spend "tea party" movement. She wants to integrate it into the broader GOP. In a recent special congressional election in upstate New York, she intervened and endorsed the pro-market third-party candidate, Doug Hoffman, over the liberal Republican, Dede Scozzafava.

These moves have put Palin on the cutting edge of American politics. She's comfortable as Sarah the free marketer. She's in the middle of the raucous fight over President Obama's sweeping domestic agenda. And to the delight of her fans and the dismay of her enemies, she's not going anywhere.

RELATED: Airhead Newsweek editor Jon Meacham's non-apology for this week's sexist disgrace of a cover story attacking Sarah Palin, "Official Statement on Newsweek's Sarah Palin Cover" (via Memeorandum).

BONUS POST: From Legal Insurrection, "Never Missing An Excuse To Attack Trig Palin."

President Bow-Down-A: 'We've Restored America's Standing'

Here's a little follow up to my earlier post, "Bowing Before Monarchs and Tyrants: Obama 'Restores' America's World Standing With His Head Down - UPDATE: REAGAN DIDN'T BOW!!."

It turns out that President Barack Bow-Down-A's confident that his effuse prostrations are having the desired effect. From CNN, "Obama: 'We've Restored America's Standing'" (via Memeorandum):

A little more than a year after his election, President Obama said his administration has laid the groundwork for success on global and domestic matters.

"I think that we've restored America's standing in the world, and that's confirmed by polls," he told CNN's Ed Henry in a wide-ranging interview this week during his trip to China.

"I think a recent one indicated that around the world, before my election, less than half the people -- maybe less than 40 percent of the people -- thought that you could count on America to do to the right thing. Now it's up to 75 percent."

The president said that makes it easier for world leaders to cooperate with the United States, noting Chinese and Russia involvement in nuclear talks with Iran.

Obama has visited 20 countries during his first year in office, more than any other U.S. president.

Actually, world leaders, for example, the mullahs in Iran (now playing the president like a Stradivarius), are taking the administration for a ride.

For reference, see Caroline Glick's more objective analysis:

Since Obama took office, he has been abandoning one US ally after another while seeking to curry favor with one US adversary after another. At every turn, America's allies - from Israel to Honduras, to Columbia, South Korea and Japan, to Poland and the Czech Republic - have reacted with disbelief and horror to his treachery. And at every turn, America's adversaries - from Iran to Venezuela to North Korea and Russia - have responded with derision and contempt to his seemingly obsessive attempts to appease them.

The horror Obama has instilled in America's friends and the contempt he has evoked from its enemies have not caused him to change course. The fact that his policies throughout the world have already failed to bring a change in the so-called international community's treatment of the US has not led him to reconsider those policies. As many Western Europeans have begun to openly acknowledge, the man they once likened to the messiah is nothing but a politician - and a weak, bungling one at that. Even Britain's Economist is laughing at him.

But Obama is unmoved by any of this, and as his speech at the UN General Assembly made clear, he is moving full speed ahead in his plans to subordinate US foreign policy to the UN.

So much for restoring that "standing in the world."

Stupid Socialists Prove Student Fee-Hike Protests Aren't Just About Student Fees

ABC News has the report on yestedays ANSWER protest at the CSU chancellor's office in Long Beach, "CSU Committee Proposes $900M Funding Request."

The protests were organized by the Long Beach ANSWER cadres, who I profiled in my earlier report, "'We Need to Take 'Em Down' - ANSWER/PSL: Stop the War at Home and Abroad!"

One of the things that you learn about the communists is that they don't really care about gay marriage or student fee hikes. They care about revolution and they'll glom on to anything even tangentially related if it helps with the program of overthrowing the capitalist oppressors.

So, it's no surprise that ANSWER organizers would be recruiting students to the barricades up at U.C. Berkeley, but Roman Zhuk's column at the Daily Californian illustrates perfectly not just the BIG LIE behind all the ANSWER activism, but the stupidty of the tools who sign up for the campaigns:

A UC Berkeley poli sci class ought to be a favorable arena for leftists to promote their views. But what transpired in one encapsulates how the movement against fee hikes, run by the far-left, is an exercise in organizing incompetence.

Two girls come into my class, invited by the professor to give a presentation. One of the girls wears a T-shirt reading "Socialist Organizer." Error No. 1: If you're trying to convince people to join you, you might not want to make such blatant sartorial attacks on the basis of the society they live in.

I thought I'd be alone in challenging the demonstrably wrong information they spewed. Instead, this happened to be a well-informed class where numerous other students jumped in to question their claims. What is their response? Start talking about everything but the issue at hand--the fee hikes. Mentioned were illegal immigrant students, prison policy, health care, the war and the market economy. By the end of the rant, it seemed as if there was not a single student who was not alienated in some way. Error No. 2.

Exasperated, our comrade says, in a condescending tone, something to the effect of "I know you guys are into making money and the stock market and stuff, but I believe education should be free." Because if you're not a greedy careerist, you must join her cause. Insulting your audience -- Error No. 3. Strikeout.

Compare this all to how the most left-wing candidate in living memory was elected to the White House in a relative landslide just a year ago -- a campaign marked by remarkable discipline and unity of message. Change. Hope. Obama. All Americans needed to know, and it worked. Thank goodness that was an aberration, rather than the left learning how to talk to people.

RELATED: "Mobilizing Conference’ for Public Schools Revives ’60s-Era Campus Radicalism."

Michelle Malkin Visits Orange County Conservatives!

Well, it turned out to be more than a "book signing" after all (as I noted this morning).

From the home of the "suburban warriors" of Orange County, the event was billed "An Afternoon with Michelle Malkin." The conservative columnist, author, and Fox News contributor spoke for about 20 minutes from the lectern. She then took questions for well over an hour. Questions and answers were followed immediately by a book signing, out in the main lobby (more on that below).

I arrived a little early, toting along my copy of Culture of Corruption (seen here with the tasty boxed lunch, provided by Plum's Café & Catering):

Before Michelle arrived, here's Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist, posing for pictures with Diane DeVore, the wife of U.S. Senate candidate Chuck DeVore:

Michelle listened graciously as she received a standing ovation from the audience (the crowd was pushing 1000 people, although I'm kicking myself now for not taking a picture of the group -- just really enjoying the moment of seeing Michelle and not worrying about "reporting"):

Michelle brought a copy of this week's Newsweek, which features Sarah Palin on the cover. Holding it up, she noted that while everyone's frothing over the sexist cover shot, the inside picture featuring Palin as a loose Catholic school girl was over-the-top.

In fact, she's got a post up on it tonight, "The More Offensive Newsweek Photo of Sarah Palin." The Palin cover is just one more example of the leftist media's double standard, Michelle argued, another case of "Female Conservative Derangement Syndrome."

The talk was pretty wide-ranging after that. Michelle suggested that what bothered her most about the Obama regime was its nexus between the corrupt Chicago machine and the hardline communists playing a central role in the administration. (Anita Dunn wasn't "thrown under the bus. She just switched seats.") What impressed me was Michelle's connection with the audience. Conservatives adore her, of course, and our crowd was no exception. But Michelle returned the affection. She argued that the tea party movement was taking the country back, and providing a real focal point of accountability for the Democrats. And it's the grassroots conservatives and bloggers who're the genuine source of real-time feedback on American politics -- and conservative bloggers are providing the primary source material to combat the leftist media.

Especially compelling was Michelle's discussion of the administration's fundamental threat to political freedom in the United States. Noting her experiences talking with immigrants to the country, Michelle pointed out how intensely Democrats are stiffling dissent, and that we're seeing the most fundamental shift to political authoritarianism and intolerance than any time in recent history. For Michelle, the immigrants' experience is a constant reminder of how fragile our liberties are. (Newcomers to America have lived the repression, and they'll tell you when we're getting a replay on the homefront.) Holding her hand up with fingers pressed together, Michelle said, "we're this close to losing all that's precious in America." It's conservatives -- "folks just like you here today" -- who're going to preserve the freedoms that we enjoy. "We can never take these rights for granted."

It was a great talk, with lots more good comments and responses during the audience question time. Michelle was very patient with all participants, and she was extremely respectful of one man who offered a long-winded theoretical dissent against the conservative discourse on Fort Hood (I stepped out for a moment to use the restroom, so I only caught the tail-end of the man's comments, and then Michelle's response). Michelle said that "moral equivalence" is one of her biggest problems with extreme political correctness in the press: "Mormons are not launching terrorist attacks. Jewish Americans are not launching terrorist attacks. We've had decades of jihadi terrorism, well before George W. Bush was in office. But we can't even speak out about Muslim violence..." I'm quoting from memory, but this is the basic gist of Michelle's comments. When she fiinished the audience applauded, then Michelle thanked everyone for letting the man have his say, even if we disagreed with his views. (Also of note: I'll have to confirm it, but Michelle had a personal bodyguard standing nearby the entire time she spoke. Either that, or the university proivided security up close and personal. The gentleman was wearing a bullet-proof vest, which he adjusted a couple of times. Again, I'll need to confirm, but I thought it was smart of Michelle to be prepared, but also a sad state of our politics when major personalities need constant protection in public.)

In any case, anyone who's a fan of Michelle's would be familiar with the basic themes of the day's events, but it was another experience altogether to attend the talk. And the book signing was a real high point. I introduced myself and Michelle was glad to pose for a photo:

I told Michelle that "I write the blog American Power." And then she wrote a keeper of a message on the inside:

I complimented Michelle for a great lecture, and said I'd be in touch.