This morning, I read the first 100 pages (about one-quarter) of Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue:  An American Life.  And despite the “narrative” that this book is whiny, with the former Alaska Governor portraying herself as a victim trying to settle scores, there is no trace of that in the book’s first two chapters.

Indeed, on a number of occasions, this charismatic woman acknowledges her own mistakes, particularly in her 2002 bid for the Republican nomination for Lietenant Governor of the Last Frontier where she fell short by just 2% of the votes cast.  Her style is a little breezy for my taste, but the book is very readable.  And like Barack Obama, she does use a lot of clichés.  She seems to talk more about common sense conservative principles than actually articulate those principles and show how they work in the real world.

But, there are times, when she does provide examples which illustrate the meaning of those principles. My favorite such example was when she explained why she stopped frequently a local café in Wasilla that she used to visit regularly when she first become mayor of that booming Alaskan metropolis:

I finally slowed down on that Friday-morning routine when I was pregnant with Piper.  Nearly every pregnant woman has something that can make her instantly ill, and the cigarette smoke inside the café kind of nauseated me.  Instead of supporting a much-talked-about citywide smoking ban at the time, though I just stopped going to that restaurant.  It eventually went smoke-free on its own, which is the way things like that should work.

No nanny-stater she.  Sarah Palin shows exactly how one should react if a business doesn’t cater to her particular needs.  Instead of running whining to the government, she takes action on her own.  She doesn’t go to the offending establishment and notes how it, without the heavy hand of the state, changes its smoking policies on its own.

Palin is right, that’s the way things like that should work.

If, in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election, you had asked me to put together a broad-based panel on reviving the right, I would surely have chosen to include David Frum.  Yeah, I know he had been strongly critical of John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, but, at the time, he seemed to have based his objections on rational arguments, notably her lack of experience on the national stage.

But, lately amidst the many good ideas he has offered for GOP rebuilding and strong arguments he has made against the policies of the Obama Administration, he has manifested a peculiar animus toward certain figures, not just Mrs. Palin, who have found an enthusiastic following among conservatives outside the intellectual enclaves in coastal (and near-coastal cities).

This week, he offered a rather strange comment about her appeal:

This is a woman who has got into a position of leadership by sending very powerful sexual signals. And we see that in the way that men like her much more than women do.

Dan Riehl (whose post alerted me to the comment) contends that “Frum is obviously reacting to Paln as a homosexual would.”  And while I do grant some gay men have strange reactions to strong and capable women, many of us appreciate such ladies. At the Log Cabin luncheon in St. Paul last summer, the gay men there were most enthusiastic about the GOP Vice-Presidential nominee.

Indeed, McCain’s choice of the then-Alaska Governor increased the esteem in which one of our readers, a gay man who supported Hillary for the Democratic nomination, held the Arizona Senator.

As to Frum’s contention that men like Palin more than women do, I suggest he take a look at footage of the lines to see that reformer on her book tour.  In Michigan, it appeared to be at least 60% female.  When Mark Steyn saw her campaign in New Hampshire “he was surrounded by moms with strollers.”

Frankly, I don’t see her sending out sexual signals.  When certain female celebrities do that, it turns me off.  Yet, if Palin gives off any particularly feminine signals, they’re more maternal or sororal than sexual.  And maybe that’s why women like her so much.  Most have warm feelings for their mother and sisters, but bristle a rival for the affection of their man. (more…)

Long before the 2008 presidential campaign, I found CBS News Anchor Tracy Flick Katie Couric annoying.   Like Reese Witherspoon‘s character in the 1999 flick Election, Couric comes across as smug and self-righteous.  It seems she believes that her prominence means she knows better than the rest of us.  That’s one reason I didn’t watch the entirety of her interview last fall with the then- Republican nominee for Vice President and, for a time, had taken an Obama-supporting friend’s word that Couric had asked Palin about her record in Alaska.

How wrong I was.

After hearing a bit of Bill O’Reilly’s interview with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, I decided to investigate this.  You see when they talked about Couric‘s interview with her, Palin offered

It seemed to me that she didn’t know anything about Alaska, about my job as governor, about my accomplishments as a mayor or a governor, my record.

So, I decided to review the transcripts and found that Couric didn’t ask a single question about Palin’s record in office.  You’d think that when a politicians suddenly vaults onto the national stage, the media would be interested what she had previously accomplished in state office.  But, Katie Couric showed no such interest.  No wonder some have defined her treatment of this reforming Governor with a record of bipartisanship as part of a pattern of media malpractice.

The malpractice may go deeper than Couric’s failure to ask Palin about her record.  Couric and her team at CBS may have edited out some of Palin’s more thoughtful answers to focus on her seemingly air-headed ones.  Ann Althouse observes than in her book,

Sarah Palin criticizes CBS for editing long interviews into the most damaging soundbites and making her look stupid and irritable. . . . There is a lot of material in the book making assertions about all sorts of trenchant comments Palin supposedly made. Palin says she was asked the same questions over and over in an effort to elicit a bad answer. She says that some of her answers were clipped after some simple beginning and before she delved into details that would have made her look smart and knowledgeable

That blogress offers what she calls “an easy solution” to see if this is so:  ”Release the unedited video.”  (Via Instapundit who adds that Palin “should have brought her own camera.“)

No wonder I find Couric so smug, so self-righteous.  She claims all she’s doing is reporting the news, but in reality she wants to make the news and shape our perceptions of political figures. (more…)

When a reader sent me an e-mail on how Sarah Palin’s ex-son-in-law-to-be was not made welcome at a swank Hollywood Party this weekend, I begin to feel sorry for the teenager:

Levi Johnston flew first class to LA for the party and calls himself “Ricky Hollywood,” but he was barely noticed by the dozens of actual Hollywood celebrities inside GQ’s “Men of the Year” party at Chateau Marmont Wednesday night.

His fifteen minutes of fame are running out.  His usefulness to those who promoted him is beginning to wane.

Were he older, I would have little sympathy for the guy.  But, because he’s so young and comes from a messed up family (thanks to the MSM’s Palin obsession, we know all about his mother’s drug problems), it’s no wonder he was subject to the blandishments of the media.  One wonders if some “journalist” helped promote his split from Palin’s daughter Bristol by making promises to the handsome young man of a career in Hollywood.

For certain figures in the media clearly delighting in promoting him so as they could better destroy their favorite villain in the post-George W. Bush era, the grandmother of his child.  He took their interest in destroying Palin as a real interest in him and giving a kid from rural Alaska a chance in the big city.

Levi Johnston to the media is like Jay Gatsby to the New York socialites who attended his swank parties, but missed his funeral.  They loved him for the entertainment he could provide, but didn’t care about him as a person.  So it will be with Levi–when he can no longer help them advance their agenda, they could care less about him as a person.

And given how young Levi and lacking strong guidance from his parents, he may well have assumed that the media interest in his story indicated that Hollywood folk were interested in his career.

While I’m up in San Francisco spending Thanksgiving with the most important person in the state, I’ll be organizing a brunch for our readers next Saturday, November 28.  Given that reader Leah will also be in the Bay Area and wants to see the Asian Art Museum (one of my two* favorite museums in SF), we’re looking for a brunch place near there for the gathering.  So, let me know if you have any recommendations where we might meet and eat.

And drop me a line if you’d like to join us.

*Legion of Honor is the other.

(LA Readers, make sure to make your calendars for our holiday party on December 6.)

Maybe those climatologists who had predicted ever-increasing temperatures wouldn’t be puzzled by the failure of global temperatures to keep rising had they not relied on doctored data.  When someone hacked into “a major global-warming advocacy center in the UK  [and had] the data published on line“, we learned that some scientists hid information which conflicted with their conclusions:

The director of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit confirmed that the e-mails are genuine — and Australian publication Investigate and the Australian Herald-Sun report that those e-mails expose a conspiracy to hide detrimental information from the public that argues against global warming

Wonder what the thinking man’s thinking man has to say about this fraud.

You can almost bet that global warming alarmists will focus on the hacking.  I do agree with Michelle on this one, “The alleged hackers need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”  But, that’s not the only issue here.

And this isn’t the only doctored data disclosed today.  We learn the price tag of the Reid Health Care Bill is higher than originally advertised:

Democrats put the price tag of the 2,074-page measure at $979 billion, higher than the $849 billion figure they had cited Wednesday as the cost of expanding coverage to 31 million who now lack insurance. Republicans calculated it at more like $1.5 trillion over a decade, and said even that was understated because Reid decided to delay implementation of some of the bill’s main features until 2014.

And at a mere $849 billion, the bill was supposed to have slashed the deficit by $127 billion over ten years.  But, now we’ve got a $130 billion increase in the program’s cost, and yet “Officially, the Congressional Budget Office said the measure would reduce deficits by $130 billion over the next decade with probable small reductions in the 10 years that follow”.  Something smells fishy here.  We see a huge spike in a bill’s cost and an increase in its savings.

No wonder many on the right are skeptical of the Democrats’ numbers.

With his “stimulus” boondoggle going bust and unemployment at its highest rate in a quarter-century, in California at its highest rate since Barbara Boxer was in Kindergarten, the president is at his wits end; he doesn’t know what to do.

So, he’s holding a jobs summit at the White House and going on a listening tour across the country.  Seems we elected a guy who, as Jim Geraghty put it, doesn’t have a Plan B:

Now he’s announcing a “jobs summit” at the WhiteHouse, and a “listening tour.” You’ve officially run out of good ideas when your plan to help people who can’t find jobs consists of listening to them tell you that they can’t find jobs.

If they had better ideas, the Obama administration would be trying those instead.

It’s a sign of his arrogance that he assumed the economy would react as he said it would if the “stimulus” became law.

Well, I have some ideas the could consider at that summit.  Figure out what they’re doing right in the Lone Star State.  Seems that’s where the jobs are.  Of the top ten cites on a list compiled by “BusinessWeek.com and Moody’s Economy.com to identify America’s 25 next recovering job markets,” four are in Texas.  Cities in Texas, Alabama and Georgia dominate the list.

Maybe he should talk to the Republican governors of those states.  And then he should talk to people like Carly Fiorina who have identified what needs to be done to create jobs:  go to the job creators–and ask those executives, entrepreneurs and innovators what the government can do to reduce the obstacles to their expansion.  ’Cause when such folks expand their operations, they create jobs.

The key thus is, to borrow a much overused phrase, to “grow the economy.”  Government never really does a particularly good job at that.  That’s why the President need listen to the entrepreneurs, the job creators.

So says meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel.  He is also one of Germany’s best-known climatologists.  The facts have begun to overtake the fiction (NBC’s shrill Green Week was undeterred, however).

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth’s average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

The planet’s temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. “At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.”

Now who was it that talked incessantly about “Inconvenient Truths”?   Hmmmm…

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

When I read last night that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid released his healthcare proposal, I was all but certain that no matter what was in the bill, California’s junior Senator, Ma’am Barbara Boxer, would vote for it, given how she marches in lockstep with her party.  But, now that various bloggers and congressional staffers have been reading the behemoth bill, we know it contains at least one provision which may make it difficult for her to support the legislation.

This provision could alienate one of the core constituencies of California Democrats, the aging men and women of Beverly Hills and LA’s Westside.  On this issue, she and another Bay Area Democrat might be willing to break ranks with her party.  Indeed, appearances suggest that §9017 might be troublesome for her.  ”Harry Reid and his Democratic band of friends want to impose a 5% excise tax on all elective cosmetic surgeries (those which are not needed to repair deformaties or injuries caused by an accident or disfiguring disease).”

It seems ol’ Harry has really put Ma’am in a bind, either vote her constituents’ interest or her party’s interest.

That said, I don’t think the meant to put Ma’am in a bind (though he has).  Given the talk of tension between Reid and the Speaker of the House, one wonders if the Nevada Democrat put that provision in specifically to spite Nancy.

Last night, when I heard Sean Hannity ask former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin what she would do to get the economy growing again, I hoped you would reply in the same manner as former HP CEO Carly Fiorina did when Greta van Susteren asked her a similar question.

In one minute (the segment runs from 0:54 to about 1:54), the California Republican Senatorial candidate identifies her priority (job creation), says what we need to do (go to the job creators) and provides a story which illustrates the problem which needs to be addressed (an innovator who found it easier to set up shop in Ukraine than in the Golden State).  In short, she is saying, we need to remove regulations which make it difficult for entrepreneurs to create jobs in California.

I would expect that in future television appearances she will detail the legislation she would support to streamline regulation.

With unemployment the big issue on people’s minds, Carly Fiorina is talking exactly how Republicans should be talking, reminding us that big government impedes job creation.  And she did it all in under a minute (considering that Greta was talking for part of that time).

I trust this video will show why I’m so bullish on Carly.  She has barely announced her candidacy for the Senate and she has demonstrated an ability to succinctly articulate conservative solution to our nation’s problems.  Let’s hope she can retain her poise and eloquence in less friendly exchanges.

Earlier today, while doing cardio to warm up for my workout, I watched the TV screen where the local CBS affiliate was constantly cutting to live footage of students (and associated 1960s leftovers) protesting a fee increase.  And their constant coverage got me wondering if the same station offered the same amount of coverage to the much larger tea party protests in April?

Or do only certain protests merit constant coverage?

Wondering about the Newsweek cover story of the former Governor of Alaska, David Harsanyi asks:

a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation recently found that 48 percent disapprove of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a woman busy writing policy that affects all of us. Does this not require a “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Nancy?” headline from the venerable magazine?

(Via Instapundit.) So, that got me wondering why doesn’t Newsweek run a cover story on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, picturing him in workout gear, asking about the problems this unpopular politician poses for the Democratic Party. After all, he has a “51 percent disapproval rating” in his home state. The most recent nation poll, shows 14% having a positive view of the Nevada Democratic, 26% having a negative view, with 19% having a very negative view.

Guess their absence of charisma prevents them from being featured on magazine covers.

UPDATE:  Jim Hoft writes, “FOX News released these numbers today on Sarah Palin’s aprroval rating. . . . It’s climbing:”

Despite being characterized by many as a divisive force in her party and the nation, Americans are much more likely to give Palin a positive rating (47 percent favorable) than another prominent female leader — Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (28 percent favorable). Moreover, about six in 10 Americans (61 percent) think Palin has been treated unfairly by the press, according to the latest Fox News poll.

So, Palin has a favorable ranking three times than of the Senate Democratic Leader. If she’s a problem for the GOP, ol’ Harry must really be a problem for the Democrats.

I wrote my recent post on Al Gore primarily to contest the characterization of this crusading environmentalist as a thinking man.  He may have reached his conclusions about the threat of global warming based upon sound science, but in leading a movement to impose strict government controls on carbon emissions, he conducts himself not as a rational man of ideas, but as an emotional man of convictions.

I don’t claim to be an expert on the science of global warming.  I do claim, however, to be aware of the debate within the scientific community on anthropogenic global warming and to what extent it can be mitigated by government action.  Indeed, in that post, I cited a piece by Richard S. Lindzen, a professor of Meteorology at MIT, who has long contested the notion of a scientific consensus on global warming.

Our critics, however, are quick to dismiss his work and the other atmospheric scientists who have views similar to his own so they can make the case that the science is settled.  Far from it.

That Gore, no environmental scientist he, would so readily dismiss the work of serious scientists like Lindzen confirms my point that he is not a thinking man.  This ready dismissal makes me wonder why so many of Gore’s followers are so insistent than the science is settled?  To be sure, in many many disciplines of the natural and social sciences, many issues have long been settled.  This is not one of them.

One would think that thinking men would be eager to engage those who, through the scientific process, have reached conclusions at odds with their own.  And, if they are thinking men, confident in their arguments, wouldn’t they welcome the chance to debate those who have reached such conclusions?  If the science behind those conflicting conclusions is so shoddy, it should be easy to debunk.

A task a thinking man would welcome.

In a post this morning, Jim Geraghty points out that Sarah Palin’s approval rating among independents is 41 while that of the president is 43 and the vice president 42.

And she doesn’t have the advantage of a fawning press corps.

It all sounded good when spouted out of the mouths of MSM babes (Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and the like) and other children of our time (Joe Biden): $787 Billion to “jumpstart” the economy, and create MILLIONS of jobs!

But just like nearly all of Obama’s principles and promises — this one falls flat in a major way.  3.2 Million Americans have LOST their jobs SINCE the Democrats’ Stimulus Package was enacted into law.

Now in a vain effort to promote all of these alleged jobs “SAVED”, the Obama Administrations PR effort has fallen flat on its face and reinforced the notion that the Federal Government is at best inept. (h/t - Instapundit)

The chairman of the Obama administration’s Recovery Board is telling lawmakers that he can’t certify jobs data posted at the Recovery.gov Web site — and doesn’t have access to a “master list” of stimulus recipients that have neglected to report data.

Earl Devaney, the chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, responded to questions posed by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., late yesterday to say the board can’t vouch for the numbers submitted by recipients of stimulus funding.

“Your letter specifically asks if I am able to certify that the number of jobs reported as created/saved on Recovery.gov is accurate and auditable. No, I am not able to make this certification,” Devaney wrote, in a letter provided to ABC News.

Even powerful Congressional Democrats have faced the obvious and the embarrassing.

However, the website [Recovery.gov] is troubled with inaccuracies, and these problems are undermining its credibility. Wisconsin Democrat Rep. Dave Obey agrees: “The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes.”

Given that stimulus award recipients are responsible for providing much of the information you see on Recovery.gov, it’s reasonable to expect some errors in the reporting process. Alas, some of the information seems to come out of thin air.

Here’s a novel idea, Congress.  Stop all Stimulus spending for 9 months beginning NOW.  Instead, institute an across the board payroll tax holiday (individuals & small businesses) for those same 9 months.  Let’s see how that idea does for job creation versus your Stimulus’ 9 month track record.  A more substantive tax cut in the 1980s led to 20 million jobs created and the greatest growth period since WWII.  And, Reagan’s tax cuts led to deficit spending that in the context of Obama’s debt – would look like a savings plan now in comparison.

I know, wishful thinking.  Washington doesn’t listen to We, The People anymore.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

One of these people has the moral authority…. the other is a political hack nominated by the President.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Democrats sure do like to hold big health care votes on Saturdays when most people are paying more attention to their families and devoting more time to recreation and relaxation than to politics.  According to the Washington Examiner, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin says a vote to move forward with Majority Leader Harry Reid’s just released 2,074-page health care bill “will be held on Saturday.”

He needs sixty votes in the Senate to open debate on a bill.  And a number of Democrats appear to be balking.

Reid’s bill was crafted behind closed doors, in those proverbial smoke-filled rooms of political lore, though with today’s Democrats, such rooms probably have more juice cocktails than smoke.  Nancy Pelosi’s behemoth bill had similar origins.

In signaling his pleasure with the bill and urging the Senate to move forward, the President is breaking a promise he made on the campaign trail:

When I’m elected president you’re going to see this health care legislation written in the open. It’s going to be on C-SPAN, and you’ll be able to see all the different people arguing to see whether they’re on your side or they’re on the side of the drug companies and the insurance companies and so on. But you’ll be able to see that process on C-SPAN.

We didn’t even know what was going to be in the bill until Reid “presented the bill to his caucus at a 5pm meeting” yesterday.  So much for transparency.

Just another example of how the “new kind of politics” that Obama promised is just the same old politics of years past, but with a bigger price tag.

Perhaps, it was reading stories about Robin Hood as a boy that I first came to admire Richard the Lionheart, King of England from 1189 until his death ten years later.  He was the noble ruler who, when returning from the Crusades, removed his usurping brother John from the throne and undid that pretender’s repressive measures, restoring law and order, furthering freedom and ushering in a Golden Age for England.

Only later, would I learn that that usurper would succeed Lionheart as King.  Of his decade on the throne, Richard was only in England a few months, perhaps spending the lowest percentage of his reign in Great Britain of any English monarch.  He may not even have spoken English.  (Wikipedia says he “spoke very little English“.)

Maybe had he spent more time in England, he could have made sure his edicts were enforced.  He had issued a writ allowing Jews to live free from state (and church) interference and even ordered the execution of Christians who persecuted and murdered Jews–quite an enlightened act for the Middle Ages.  He could not prevent the massacre at York in 1190, indeed many historians believe that his crusading zeal generated the religious fervor of those who perpetrated the crime.

All that said, sometimes, I wish I didn’t so love history so much; my knowledge sometimes detracts from my enjoyment of movies.  Whenever I watch the wonderful 1938 Adventures of Robin Hood, I want the wicked Prince John (another masterful Claude Rains performance) to get his just desserts, but I know that, in real life, John would succeed Richard, reigning for seventeen years.  Instead of remaining in England to preside over a new Golden Age after he ended John’s tyrannical rule, Richard was off to France to fight for his lands there.

And the irony of all this:  in many cases, it’s the historically inaccurate movies which sparked my interest in the history behind the legends.

It seems that many of Sarah Palin’s critics are pushing the narrative that the former Alaska Governor has used her book and is using her book tour to settle old scores.  They have bought into the Democratic talking point that the book in “political payback“.  A headline in the Washington Times (of all places!) echoed this talking point by saying Palin has been painting herself as a victim.

I’ll reserve judgment on how she portrays herself in the book until I read it (I received my copy from amazon only today).  I did catch this charismatic conservative last night on Hannity.  She didn’t seem vindictive at all; she did not act like a victim.  For example, when discussing the Newsweek cover which even Democrats are criticizing, she said, “But in the grand scheme of things, of course, things like that really don’t amount to a hill of beans”.

While she didn’t strike me as bitter, she didn’t strike me as presidential either.  Hannity asked her what she would do to get the economy going again and she offered a string of platitudes, saying we should go back to the policies of Ronald Reagan.  Now, that’s a fine sentiment to offer, her answer lacked specifics.  She could have, for example, suggested cutting the corporate tax rate, given that we currently have the second highest such rate of the industrial countries.  And talked about regulatory relief for small businesses.

Hannity tossed her a softball and she handled in a like manner.  If she wants to be president, she needs offer more specifics.  I suggest she take a cue from another up-and-coming female politician who has mastered the art of addressing the issues in a friendly TV interview:

So writes prominent Palin critic and libertarian blogress Megan McCardle.

McArdle begins her post reminding her readers that she really doesn’t like Sarah Palin, even takes issues with folks (like yours truly) who fault the media for being “just a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get” the former Alaska Governor.  But, this time, McArdle lays into the media, really wishing they “wouldn’t act like, well, a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get her“:

Then there’s the Associated Press, putting 11 reporters on the task of “fact checking” her book.  I put the words in quotes because the CJR notes that much of this herculean feat is not checking facts, but quibbling with interpretations or sentimental boilerplate about the hearts and minds of Alaskans.  But the deeper question is how come Palin’s book gets a team of fact checkers, when books by other politicians get the standard gloss?

Good question.

Seems the AP calls fact-checking what some people call literary criticism and others call spin.