The Sarah Palin autobiography “Going Rogue: An American Life” is officially out today, 54 weeks after she and John McCain came out on the short end of the stick in the 2008 presidential race. The release is of note here, of course, since Palin will bring her book signing tour to Sioux City on Dec. 6, after kicking off the tour tomorrow in Michigan. So, with the release, The Journal this morning fronts a top of the page piece relating details from Palin’s appearance on the Oprah Winfrey talk show, inside is a book review by Associated Press writer Mark Kennedy (he’s not dazzled) and the opinion page has a Palin-themed column by Richard Cohen of the Washington Post.

If you want to check out some other Palin pieces, click away. First, we have an article from The Hill, in which McCain disputes a Palin claim that his campaign stuck her with a $50,000 bill in vetting her as a possible candidate. McCain said the bill is Palin’s for  legal work related to allegations that Palin made improper use of her influence as Alaska’s governor to press for the dismissal of a state trooper. Beyond that, McCain says he hopes Palin sells a ton of “Going Rogue” books, for which she received a $5 million advance.

Or click here for Palin’s take on Levi Johnston, the father of her granddaughter,  pursuing porn by appearing in Playgirl magazine. I’m much more interested in an academic review of Palin’s distinctive speech patterns, from the “you betcha”-style lingo and dropping of g’s off “ing” words — something the Alaska academics noted weren’t her style of speaking until she launched into the national sphere with the vice presidential nomination.

Lastly, a Politico piece recapping the Oprah appearance, including Palin remaining noncommittal on any 2012 presidential plans and dishing on her October 2008 interview with CBS news anchor Katie Couric. “I was annoyed by her badgering,” Palin says.

We in Siouxland, coincidentally, will have had the chance to see both Couric and Palin in our midst in a two-month period, which is weird when you think about the odds of that. Couric accepted an award at the University of South Dakota campus on Oct. 8, where Journal reporter Michele Linck recounted her impressions of the Palin interview. Couric said she essentially tried to ask casual questions about the issues of the day and what shaped Palin’s worldview. Palin struggled to answer what she reads to form her stances on issues, and the interview was widely seen as a down moment for the candidate.

Between her book and the Oprah appearance, Palin has no problem sharing her view of the Couric interview. Wouldn’t it be nice to have split the time/distance difference of the Oct. 8 appearance in Vermillion by Couric and the Dec. 6 appearance in Sioux City by Palin with a joint meeting of the two women to talk things out on Nov. 7 in Elk Point, S.D.?

We’re in a heightened period of interest regarding 2008 Republican presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose book “Going Rogue: An American Life” will be released Tuesday. Palin also has taped an appearance on Oprah Winfrey that will air Monday, and on Wednesday from Michigan  she launches a book tour that will land in Sioux City on Dec. 6.

The Journal and other papers today ran an Associated Press piece that came after AP obtained a copy of the 413-page book. The piece summarizes that former Alaska Gov.  Palin felt “bottled up” by John McCain for President advisers and she is critical about the “badgering” interview by CBS anchor Katie Couric that many saw as a media debacle for Palin.

It seems Palin is taking exception with the AP reportage midday today. Politico is reporting that Palin says the Associated Press and other media have misreported “Going Rogue” content.  Palin’s broadside is pretty strong, saying “as is expected, the AP and a number of subsequent media outlets are erroneously reporting the contents of the book (emphasis mine).” That sort of blame-the-media plays well for some, while others see it as carping.

It will be interesting to see what specifics Palin lays out as to where AP is erroneous. For now, Palin is asking Americans to read the book come Tuesday and form their own opinions. And don’t forget, if you want to get a “Going Rogue” copy autographed, the wristbands for the line at Barnes & Noble Bookseller here in the city will be handed out beginning at 7 a.m. 23 days from now.

I’ve just wrapped a second-day piece on the announcement that 2008 Republican Party vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will bring her “Going Rogue” booksigning tour to Sioux City. It will be her only Iowa appearance, so many Siouxlanders are pumped to see Palin. I spoke with Barnes & Noble community relations manager Elisha Karr, who said she heard from up the chain that Palin specifically asked to come to Sioux City. Seems she’d been buoyed by a crowd of 4,500 people at West High School here in the last few days before the 2008 election. I was there, Palin was definitely embraced by the crowd that day.

Karr said her understanding is that Palin will be heading a bus tour that day. Since she also has an appearance in Sioux Falls, S.D., 80 miles north, four hours after the Sioux City event starts, Karr said it would be hard for Palin to piggyback another non-booksigning event.

A call this afternoon to Woodbury County Republican Party Chairman Brian Rosener of Bronson revealed he’s requested an appearance by Palin on the trip. But he didn’t sound hopeful, citing that many Republican organizations are hitting Palin, “one of the most sought-after speakers in the U.S.”, with appearance requests.

Lastly, from a handout Karr gave me, here are the particulars to know at this point if you want to see Palin at B&N:
– Wristbands will be handed out on a first-come, first-serve basis beginning at 7 a.m. Dec. 6. You must be present to get a wristband.
– You must present your Barnes & Noble receipt for “Going Rogue” in order to get a wristband.
– Maximum of two copies of “Going Rogue” per person will be signed.
– No posed photos with Palin.
– No personalization of signings of the books, Palin will be providing only an autograph.

The Sarah Palin autobiography recapping her journey from basketball player to Alaska governor to 2008 vice presidential candidate drops next week. Palin kicks off her “Going Rogue: An American Life” book tour in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Nov. 18, and she has one Iowa stop slated — right here in Sioux City.

It’s an amazing get for the Barnes & Noble store at Southern Hills Malls, as Palin will be signing her book at 1 p.m. that day. She’ll then head north for another stop up Interstate 29 in Sioux Falls.

Many conservatives in the Republican Party want Palin to plow ahead with a 2012 presidential bid. Palin will undoubtedly get a positive response with her Sioux City stop. Of course, progressives might also want to sneak in the two-letters-swapped nonflattering  book produced by The Nation: “Going Rouge.”

ADDED 3:10 p.m.: How could I forget this piece of context — Palin has been in Sioux City once previously, when in October 2008 she spoke to an overflow crowd at West High School just days before the election.

Just had a chance to look at a piece from yesterday in Columbia Journalism Review. You know that 24/7 coverage from the national press on the New York Congressional District 23 race? The political press has to cover something, I guess, but the CJR offers food for thought below on what assessments we can make from the off-year election results:

On Tuesday, November 3, voters around the country will go to the polls to elect officials in a variety of races. These campaigns, known as the “off-year elections” because of the absence of regularly scheduled federal contests, are mostly obscure. But a few of them—the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and (especially) Virginia, and the House race in New York’s Twenty-third Congressional District—have been endowed with broader significance; the outcomes there will be analyzed and interpreted as symbols of the national political mood and tests of “the Obama agenda.” For reasons John Sides lays out briefly here, these analyses will be mostly meaningless. The sample is too small, the factors that drive election outcomes are too complex, local conditions are too variable, and our knowledge about voters’ motivations is too limited to draw any real conclusions.

It shouldn’t be too surprising that the political press is eager to assign meaning here where none may be warranted. But what’s aggravating about this situation is that reporters will frequently acknowledge the limitations of what these off-year elections tell us about national politics—and then happily speculate about their meaning nonetheless.

When we get missives from the press office of the Terry Branstad for Governor campaign (yes, still technically in ‘exploratory’ status), they’ll be the product of an area native. Ida Grove’s Tim Albrecht this morning has been announced as Branstad’s communications team director, and he’s on the job this very day.

Albrecht, 32, has had a hand in a lot of Republican political campaigns after leaving the University of Northern Iowa. He was part of the Steve Forbes presidential campaign, worked for Steve Sukup when he ran for governor in 2002, then served for four years as spokesman for Iowa House Speaker Chris Rants of Sioux City.

Rants was a very early supporter of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the 2008 presidential race way back in late 2006, and Albrecht became press secretary for Romney’s campaign in Iowa. I figured at some point, Albrecht would come on board with Rants in his 2010 gubernatorial campaign. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Many of you know Albrecht about a year ago launched a popular Web site, TheBeanWalker, which is a right-of-center news aggregator, a sort of Iowa-ized Drudge Report. Albrecht announced the site will continue with a new publisher. He also is leaving behind his job as communications director for American Future Fund, the group that in 2009 brought to the state a batch of high-profile GOP people with supposed designs on the 2012 presidency, including U.S. Sen. John Ensign to speak here in Sioux City.

We have definitive word that 2008 Republican Party vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin won’t be coming to Iowa on Nov. 21, so the Family Policy Council Action event will be less splashy than organizers hoped. Just now after noon, IFPC spokesman Bryan English has released that Palin confirmed she can’t make the event, given a busy schedule for her “Going Rogue” book tour. The book will be released in November, and Palin has been heavily booked to promote it.

From English: “We extended our invitation knowing she would be in the middle of her book tour and the chances of her being able to accept any invitations were extremely slim. She has asked if she could speak at a future mutually agreeable date. She will not accept any fees for her appearance.”

The IFPC, in announcing earlier this week they were trying to land the former Alaska Governor, launched a fundraising effort. Reports were that it would take $100K to land Palin, and some affiliated with other Iowa right-of-center groups in a Politico piece were dismissive about paying to get a high-profile Republican to speak in the state.

The IFPC event will be held on the same day Iowa Democrats will have Vice President Joe Biden speaking in Des Moines. We may see Palin speaking for an Iowa Family Policy Center event at some later date.

Just got out of matinee showing of “Capitalism: A Love Story,” which arrived in Sioux City yesterday. We knew going in the latest film from Michael Moore was no love story, but his dissection showing the flaws of capitalism. There were about 20 people at the film, and I didn’t hear anyone shout out in opposition to the points Moore was making. There were many chortles at assorted barbs (many at the expense of President George W. Bush), and as a twentysomething told me afterwards, “I don’t think many conservatives go to Michael Moore films.”

That said, the film delivers major criticism of the U.S. Department of Treasury, and the men who headed it during the both the Democratic Clinton and Republican Bush years. Moore goes hard after the revolving door from Wall Street financial firms to the treasury department, as well as the financial markets deregulation that allowed mortgage-backed derivatives (U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa gets a one-second cameo pronouncing the word “derivative”) to flourish and undermine the economy, taking the financial sector to the brink of collapse in fall 2008.

A fiscal conservative might find themselves nodding with Moore when he lambasts TARP, or the fall 2008 financial sector $760 billion $700 billion bailout. To Moore, it was a case of the financial sector undertaking shady activity for years through pushing subprime mortgages, then begging for a taxpayer bailout when the whole thing collapsed. Moore reminds us that the U.S. House defeated the first bailout, then financial sector titans reportedly kept after Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and Democratic leadership capitulated and pushed the second bailout package to enactment.

Ohio Congressman Marcy Kaptur gets major air time questioning the need for the bailout, as does a federal regulator who helped investigate the savings and loan collapse a quarter century ago. That guy makes the case that the financial sector gets what it wants from the political system, to the detriment of rank-and-file Americans. Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd is shown as getting mortgages on favorable terms.

One of the film viewers told me the film was strongest when Moore focused on the human stories of people being foreclosed and removed from houses.  I thought Moore was short on specifics in those — for instance, he never shared how many payments the people missed before eviction. And the final portion got gimmicky, when he rented an armored car, drove to Wall Street to try to enter places like AIG to get taxpayer money back, before stringing yellow “crime scene” tape around the buildings.

Moore ends the film by saying he’s tired of the rich-get-richer on Wall Street via a flawed capitalistic system. He asks for the viewers to push for change through the democratic system, since while the top 1 percent of Americans have wealth equal to the bottom 95 percent of the population, each person still has one vote.

State Rep. Chris Rants of Sioux City isn’t shy about taking control of political openings, and that apparently is true in some personal interactions too. Rants is still smiling tonight, the day after Tim Albrecht, his good friend and former spokesman when Rants was the Iowa House Speaker, was married to another Republican spokesperson. Albrecht now works for American Future Fund and maintains the popular TheBeanWalker.com Web site. He’s also the husband of Josie Klingaman, who handles communications for the Iowa House Republican leadership.

Rants said he had been after Ida Grove native Albrecht to ask out Klingaman when she worked for State Rep. Doug Struyk. Albrecht apparently dawdled, because Rants said he didn’t nag, but “encouraged repeatedly” Albrecht to get with it. He said not all political spouses can “stand the 24/7″ nature of politics, but he knew the two political animals would do well together.

“For me, those guys are like the perfect couple,” Rants said.

Rants said the two finally dated by the time of the 2006 campaign cycle (which, not to rain on the new married couple’s honeymoon, didn’t go too well for Republicans).  “I guess if your relationship can survive a stressful campaign, it can survive anything,” Rants offered.

Rants handled the blessing at the dinner, then sat in the second row in the wedding, watching the emotional “Timmy” try not to break down on his big day. Rants said it was a fun day with the typical bride and groom side of guests, plus then a mass of “politicos,” legislators and the like. He said no one checked voter registration at the door, so it was possible a Democrat was even in attendance — though no doubt as a friend of the couple’s parents.

Congrats to the couple. It’s no wonder Albrecht’s Twitter account has been dormant this weekend.

When Republican governor candidate Christian Fong holds his Sioux City meeting tonight, it will be open to the public but closed to the press. I’m not sure how the press isn’t part of the public, but we complied and so I did a personal interview here in the office a bit ago with Fong. It was nice meeting him in person after reading much about him, the guy is well-spoken and he’s the first gubernatorial candidate I’ve interviewed who does triathlon races.

Fong related he’s spoken to crowds ranging from four to 65 people in his 17-stop Meet The Candidate tour that ends tonight. He said in Spencer early this afternoon the crowd was about 20, who wanted primarily to hear about how he’d balance the budget.

I asked Fong why the events are closed  to media and when he’d hold campaign events open to the press.  “Eventually, we open it up. I’m not anti-media. We just want to make sure people speak freely,” Fong said.

He provided an example, when he spoke to an Iowa superintendent who spoke openly about school finances in their private conversation.

“He looked both ways and admitted that, ‘yeah, we spend too much on administrative costs.’ A superintendent could never have said that in a fully open meeting. It’s that sort of dialogue that I need to hear and want to encourage,” Fong said.