"Going Rogue" - Outtake Cover Pictures

John Keatley was the photographer who took this picture for Sarah Palin's new book, "Going Rogue."

Now, here's some of the pictures that didn't make the cut:





The Photographer's story:

"This photoshoot only happened three weeks ago, so this is all still very new and exciting for me. After much planning and scheduling, I put together a crew and flew up to Alaska for six days to photograph the former governor. It was supposed to rain the entire week we were there, but we ended up getting blue skies and puffy white clouds the entire time. After a few days of scouting and prepping, I shot for three days straight. The last day we went to Hatcher Pass which holds a lot of meaning for Sarah. I had already scheduled the pass a few different times, and I knew exactly where we were going to shoot. Every last detail was in place. After shooting at the base of the pass near the river, we caravaned up to the top of the pass where we were planning to shoot the final location. Half way up, I noticed the beautiful light that was sweeping across the valley, and the clouds that were developing on the horizon. I told the driver to stop, we had to change our plans. This last minute change ended up being the final setup we would do with Sarah, and it also ended up being the cover image."

Hmmmm, three days of shooting. That must means there's a lot more pictures lying around somewhere.... Share, share, please share!

If Obama Can Apologize for America, I Can Apologize for Norway

I woke up this morning to a gem: Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

What do I have to say about that?

What does Hillary Clinton have to say about it? (Jump to 1:23)

(Wiping tear away from eye). Ahem. Okay, moving on....

While some, like Polish President Lech Walesa, say it's far too early in Obama's Presidency to give him such an award (ya think?), others applaud the President's attempts to cooperate with other nations and encourage nuclear disarmament. Others (like me) are saying, "Ummm, maybe we should wait and see if those attempts actually work? Whaddya say?"

The Norwegian Nobel Committee is responsible. If you haven't figured it out by now, I have a Nordic heritage. Half Norwegian, to be exact (and yes, I love Ole and Lena jokes). I'm afraid I simply must apologize for the land of my ancestors. We have many things going for us: hats with horns, lefse, coffee cups that say "Uffda" on them, and a philosophy of life that demands that you "sit long and talk much" while drinking from your "Uffda" cup. Unfortunately, every nation has its quacks, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee appears to be one of ours.

So, for today anyway, I think I'll lean more toward my Irish side.


(Chuckle) Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize...now that's just funny.

A man stumbles up to the only other patron in the bar and asks if he could buy him a drink.

"Why, of course," comes the reply.

The first man asks, "So, where are you from?"

"I'm from Norway," says the second man.

"You don't say! I'm from Norway too. Let's have another round to Norway." Curious, the first man then asks, "Where in Norway are you from?"

"Bergen," says the second man.

"I don't believe it," replies the first man. "I'm from Bergen too. Let's have another drink to Bergen." And they do. Curious again, the first man asks, "Where in Bergen did you live?"

"On a boat, at the fishing docks," says the second man.

"This is unbelievable! I lived in a boat at the fishing docks too!" said the first man.

About that time one of the regulars came in and sat down at the bar. "What's been going on?" he asks the bartender.

"Nothing much," says the bartender. "Ole and his brother Sven are drunk again."

Welcome Home, Arctic Wolves - UPDATE

The Palin household is happy tonight, along with hundreds of other Alaskan families. Alaska's Stryker Brigade, known as the Arctic Wolves, came home Thursday safe and sound.





KTUU has the story and more video. I'll get the video here or on YouTube sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning.

Unfortunately, the Palin-haters will say that this was just a Palin photo-op, like this dude:

Tanyalaska: Her "honored" presence only took from the respect and honor that should've been given 100% to the families of the fallen soldiers. The fact that she sat next to them and received flowers like them and was addressed in every speech like them was not o kay with me.

Here's a couple testimonies from people who were there:

EngineerWife: I was at the redeployment ceremony today and Sarah Palin's presence didn't detract from the reason we were there. Our fallen soldiers were honored, our returning soldiers were thanked, along with the families. Everyone there was honored. The military is very big on something called "respect," and out of respect for the position that she held, her name was mentioned. Briefly...very briefly. And she was mentioned and given a rose way after any other person received theirs. If Col Thompson chose to mention her, that was his option. And by the way, she was considered the senior mother of the brigade. She is a mother of one of the soldiers being thanked, I am a wife of one of those soldiers as well, and I welcomed her presence. As I would any other wife, mother, father, or child.

Tankerwife84: I was at today's event to remember our fallen Soldier and welcome my husband and all other's home! No one knew Sarah was going to be there and she was as classy as ever. She is a true hero for our Country by letting her son serve in the Military.

Militaryfamily: Welcome back, Strykers! I was at the ceremony, and it was a beautiful tribute, especially to those who made the ultimate sacrifice. While Sarah Palin was recognized in the welcome remarks, there was no fanfare for her. She was there to welcome home her son and his fellow soldiers. Some people did stop her and ask to have their photos taken with her, and she was very gracious and accomodating. Her son just returned from a year of war, where he was defending the freedoms we take for granted. One of those freedoms is the freedom of speech that many of you use in this anonymous forum in order to make such ugly comments about his mother. Don't pretend, on one hand, to support the troops, while on the other hand running down their families. They deserve far better than that.

UPDATE: Later date for the vids on YouTube. You can just go to KTUU and see 'em anyway.

The No-Character Kid Runs to Playgirl

Totally, dude. I got no standards, and I'm lovin' it!

From the AP:

Posing nude for Playgirl is next for the 19-year-old father of Sarah Palin's grandchild. Johnston's attorney, Rex Butler, said Wednesday that a formal agreement has not been reached with the online magazine but adds it's a "foregone conclusion" that it will happen....To get ready for his close-up, Johnston is training three hours a day, six days a week at an Anchorage gym with a local body builder..."

Well, I think that about says it all. Bye, bye, Levi. I'm sure your pathetic face will pop up continually from now on, but nobody cares, except for maybe a few hormonal teenage girls. Yeah, you might not want to go back down that road again. Just sayin'.

Bristol embraced her responsibilities and grew up. The No-Character Kid went back to kindergarten.

Bill Passes to Reinstate Payments to the Alaska Territorial Guard

ATG veteran.

I reported previously on how the Obama administration was trying to cut off payments to Native veterans in Alaska who guarded the then-territory of Alaska during WWII. Well, thanks to the efforts of Alaska senators Murkowski and Begich, a bill passed the Senate that would reinstate those payments:

A military spending bill passed the U.S. Senate Tuesday with a provision intact that would pay the pensions of about two dozen elderly members of the World War II-era Alaska Territorial Guard.....The federal fix proposed by Begich and Murkowski allows the former Guard members to count their service in the Alaska Territorial Guard as part of active military duty, and it reinstates the pension payments.

This is far from over, of course. The bill still has to become law, but it's a start.

Time Magazine Wonders How Palin Wrote So Fast

A new article in Time Magazine is impressed with and confounded by Sarah Palin's speedy typing fingers. The implication, of course, is that Palin couldn't possibly have written most of it herself:

With a few weeks to go until the book hits shelves on Nov. 17, the biggest shocker so far is the sheer speed with which she wrote it. The former Alaska governor penned the 400-page tome in just four months, (See my Point #4 below to debunk this falsity) finishing well before the planned spring release date. So how the heck did she do it?

Palin's publisher says the answer is simple: hard work. "When she resigned as governor, she had a lot more time and was able to really devote herself full-time to writing the book," says Tina Andreadis, a spokesperson for HarperCollins. "That's really all that there is."

Well, there's also this: Palin had help. Editorial sidekicks are par for the course in political memoirs, though ghostwriters say many pols are heavily involved in the writing process. Palin's assist came from Lynn Vincent, a writer for the Christian news magazine WORLD, who has also co-authored several other books."

Time goes on to say that they have no idea how much of a hand Lynn Vincent had in writing the book, but the author of the article then goes on to just assume that Vincent pretty much wrote it herself.

I don't deny that Lynn had some hand in the process. She wouldn't have been called in if she wasn't going to play a role. For one thing, Sarah had never written a book before. She didn't know all of the details of the publishing industry and such; someone had to help her out with that. Also, book-writing is a little different than writing an article or a speech; it has its own art. I don't know what role Lynn played exactly, and it's not wrong for Lynn to play a role, but this article implies that Lynn pretty much wrote the entire thing herself. The book was essentially ghostwritten:

Palin, with her colorful family, devoted following and knack for inciting controversy at every turn, is a ghostwriter's dream....It also helps to have a subject who knows what message she wants to get across. Palin was apparently clear from the start about her book's mission: "It will be nice through an unfiltered forum to get to speak truthfully about who we are and what we stand for and what Alaska is all about....."

But having a clear message is no guarantee of speed, especially if it's a policy-heavy, labor-intensive one....Says ghostwriter Bill Harlow. "If it's more personality-driven, I think it's probably easier to finish in a shorter period of time." (Implication: The book is total fluff.)

The last potential time-sink is steeping the ghostwriter in the author's voice well enough that he or she can channel it convincingly. Palin's singular rhetorical style is a boon on that score as well. (Implication: Even if the book sounds like Palin wrote it, she didn't. That's just the ghostwriter sounding like Palin.)

In the end, how quickly the book gets finished depends largely on the ghostwriter's drive to grind it out.... Once the ghostwriter has finished writing, the task of rushing a book into print falls to the publisher. (Here's what the publisher had to say about Palin's involvement in the process.)

So, how did Palin write the book so fast? I have a few theories of my own:

1. She's got a lot to say and a lot of time now to say it.

2. She did graduate with a journalism degree. I think she can type pretty fast when it's warranted. She, in fact, mentioned her degree: The governor said she wants to do a lot of the writing herself, and that it will be her story and her words. "It will be nice to put my journalism degree to work on this and get to tell my story."

3. When the book deal was first announced, a good portion of the content was already written. It is a memoir, after all: Palin said she's kept journals throughout much of her life that she will use for the book. "My journaling really ramped up when I found out that I was pregnant with Trig and then Track was going off to war and I found out Bristol was pregnant," Palin said. "When we had those episodes in our lives come to the surface, it was very therapeutic for me."

4. While the book deal was announced in May, it's obvious that it was going on behind the scenes for months before that. An interview outside of the Governor's mansion in January showed Palin dismissing the $11 million dollar price tag, but not the idea of a book itself. She said that she would tell people when anything became solid (the deal was finalized). So Palin had more time than Time gives her credit for.

5. Palin went dark for many months and basically worked on the book non-stop to crank it out this fast. Good thing too. I get to read it sooner. :-)

We all knew this was coming. We knew that if the book was a success the theme would be that Palin didn't write it herself. And if it was horrible, she of course wrote every word. So very, very predictable. Pathetic, really.

"The Hammer" Likes Sarah Palin

Tom Delay says that Sarah Palin is qualified to be President of the United States:



His reasons aren't the most convincing or earth-shattering, but I thought it was cool, nonetheless.

LOTUS - Oil, Debt, and the Falling Dollar

The Laptop of the United States

The 'Cuda's on a roll today. A second Facebook post:

The British newspaper The Independent reported today that Gulf oil producers were negotiating with Russia, China, Japan and France to replace the dollar in pricing oil with a basket of currencies.[1]

According to the Wall Street Journal, Arab oil officials have denied the story, but even the possibility of such a talk weakens the dollar and renews fears about its continued viability as an international reserve currency.[2] In fact, today a United Nations official called for a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar and end our “privilege” to run up huge deficits.[3] We can see the effect of this in the price of gold, which hit a record high today in response to fears about the weakened dollar.[4]

All of this is a result of our out-of-control debt. This is why we need to rein in spending, and this is also why we need energy independence. A weakened dollar means higher commodity prices. This will make it more difficult to pay our bills – including the bill to import oil.

In his book Architects of Ruin, Peter Schweizer points out that the Obama administration is focusing primarily on “green energy," while ignoring our need to develop our domestic conventional energy resources.[5] We’re ignoring the looming crisis caused by our dependence on foreign oil. Because we’re dependent on foreign nations for our oil, we’re also at their mercy if they decide to dump the dollar as their trade currency. We can’t allow ourselves to be so vulnerable to the whims of foreign nations. That’s why we must develop our own domestic supplies of oil and gas.

Though the chant of “Drill, baby, drill” was much derided, it expressed the need to confront this issue head-on before it reaches a crisis point.

Bottom line: let’s stop digging ourselves into debt and start drilling for energy independence.

- Sarah Palin

*Note: Schweizer’s book is a real eye-opener. The sections on ACORN are quite informative.

[1] See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html

[2] See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125484066563367821.html

[3] See http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.e272eaa74dccc30f21c6ff7638b0f37b.461&show_article=1

[4] See http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091006/ts_afp/commoditiesgoldmetalsprice_20091006144514

[5] See http://www.peterschweizer.com/

Here's Peter Schweizer's book on Amazon.

Hmm. And here I thought Palin couldn't read a book, let alone write one. Whaddya know.

LOTUS - Palin on Afghanistan

Palin's new Facebook note (click on LOTUS icon on the right) calls Obama out on Afghanistan:

For two years as a candidate, Senator Obama called for more resources for the war in Afghanistan and warned about the consequences of failure. As President, he announced a comprehensive new counterinsurgency strategy and handpicked the right general to execute it. Now General McChrystal is asking for additional troops to implement the strategy announced by President Obama in March. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers in harm's way in Afghanistan right now. We owe it to all those brave Americans serving in uniform to give them the tools they need to complete their mission.

We can win in Afghanistan by helping the Afghans build a stable representative state able to defend itself. And we must do what it takes to prevail. The stakes are very high. The 9/11 attacks were planned in Afghanistan, and if we are not successful there, al Qaeda will once again find a safe haven, the Taliban will impose its cruelty on the Afghan people, and Pakistan will be less stable.

Our allies and our adversaries are watching to see if we have the staying power to protect our interests in Afghanistan. I recently joined a group of Americans in urging President Obama to devote the resources necessary in Afghanistan and pledged to support him if he made the right decision. Now is not the time for cold feet, second thoughts, or indecision -- it is the time to act as commander-in-chief and approve the troops so clearly needed in Afghanistan.

- Sarah Palin

Ouch.

I honestly don't understand the President dragging his feet on this. Can you imagine being a soldier over there? You're fighting for your life, and your Commander in Chief is telling you that he's not sure he'll give you what you need, but you're staying there no matter what; pulling out is not an option. Talk about a morale killer.

They've got a rough gig over there, and they're putting their lives on the line so that we won't have to. Kids who were fresh out of high school mowing their parents lawns a few months ago are now dodging bullets so that I can sit here all comfortable and blog about it. God bless our troops, and God protect them. And hopefully Obama will make the right decision on this, because American lives are on the line.

Video - Palin's Father and Brother Stump for Tarkanian

Chuck Heath, Sarah Palin's father, and Chuck Jr., Sarah's older brother, are in Nevada stumping for Danny Tarkanian, the man challenging Harry Reid for his Senate seat. They took the time for a quick street video interview on Saturday here.

Chuck Heath talked about this trip before on Eddie Burke's radio show here. "I'll stump for anyone to get rid of Harry Reid."

You Smell That? It's Called Fear.

The Party Boys just can't help themselves. More Palin-bashing here. All of this talk about Palin not being able to cut it will not discourage her. Don't ever tell Sarah Palin she can't do something; she'll work her tail off to prove you wrong and then turn around and rub your face in it. She seems to thrive on underdog status. You're just putting her right in the middle of her element.

Why are the Party Boys doing this? Fear. She is the biggest threat, not only to the liberal agenda, but to their power. She has the ability to eclipse them. Her presence makes them unnecessary, if not irrelevant. The most telling statement from John Weaver: McCain's closest political adviser for much of the past decade, said that he was nearly certain that the former governor would never be the Republican nominee and added that, if she was, "it would surely mean a political apocalypse is upon us."

Amen, Amen. Preach it, brother, preach it! If she succeeds, it will mean the end of their little power circle. That's why they despise her: she's a threat.

The No-Character Kid

Okay, I really am trying to cut Levi Johnston a break. I'm really trying to understand. He's not helping:



"Now Levi does it with protection."

I understand falling in love with the spotlight and trying to make something out of yourself, but you could try to have a modicum of decency in the process.

Final Word to the Party Boys

Okay, here's my last word to Lindsay Graham, Steve Schmidt, and all the other Party Boys:

You all claim that Sarah Palin won't be the nominee, and if she is, she'll be a disaster. A disaster how? What's the worst that could happen? We lose? Hello! We just lost. The GOP couldn't be more irrelevant right now. The very people spouting about how Palin is a disaster, are disasters themselves. If you're not going to be a conservative, just be a Democrat. If there's no difference, what's the difference? What have we got to lose?

History Repeats Itself

Surprise, surprise, Mike Murphy is dissing Palin now. Many have speculated about Palin possibly forming a third party, or running as an Independent. I don't know. It's possible, but the reason I doubt it is that the same thing happened (she was rejected by the Republican Party) in Alaska when she ran for Governor. The Alaska GOP and those who traditionally backed Republican candidates fought her tooth and nail. She's never had a very loving relationship with the power structure of those in her party. The party boys out slamming her is nothing new.

As for a third party or an independent run, the party structure is already there, why not use it and just ignore the hype from the elite idiots? The day after she won the race for Governor, the Bob and Mark Show in Alaska (the DJ's are friends of the Palins) talked about how the Republicans did everything they could to keep Palin from getting elected. Here's the clip (they talk about ANWR for a couple minutes and then turn to Palin):



It's possible that she'll cut ties with the Republican Party, but it's more likely that she'd be a RINO, Republican In Name Only, only the conservative kind.

Awwwwww.....

Todd Palin has resigned from his job on the North Slope, at least for now. Sidenote: I hate how the AP puts all the garbage they can find in the article. All they had to do was say, "Todd resigned." (Sigh) Anyway, I just thought the pic on the article was cute.

Which led me to thinking about other cute pics:

And that's all. Just some fluffy bunny stuff for a Sunday.