Watch out James Patterson, Stephen King and Dan Brown. Sarah Palin has you beat — at least this week.

All that experience on the campaign trail has served Palin well. The 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, who is popular among many U.S. conservatives, has excelled in the first week of her multi-state, campaign-style media tour to promote her new book which was released on Nov. 17.

The former Alaskan governor’s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life” topped the charts in its first week of publication.  Nielsen Bookscan said the new author eclipsed best-sellers Patterson and King whose books also debuted that week.

In a comparison of other first week book sales by current or past presidents or vice presidential candidates, Palin came in second only to former President Bill Clinton who sold about 606,000 copies of his memoir ”My Life” in its debut week.  The former Republican vice presidential candidate’s sales at 469,000 were just above Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “Living History”.

The figures don’t include numbers from big box stores Wal-Mart, Sam’s, BJs or libraries.

Fans have told of driving for hours to wait in long, snaking lines at Palin’s book-signings which are reminiscent of last year’s campaign stops.

Palin’s sales were far above those of President Barack Obama, for his 2007 best-seller “Audacity of Hope”, which garnered him so much success as he launched his run for the presidency.

Palin, who stirred controversy with her new book even before it landed on the shelves, complained in her memoir that she was “all bottled up” last year by advisers to her running mate, the Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

After the book was published, McCain strongly defended the top advisers from his 2008 campaign who were sharply criticized by Palin in “Going Rogue.”

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Photo credits:  Reuters/Larry Downing (Palin’s book on sale at a book store) ; Reuters/Rebecca Cook (Palin signs books in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Nov. 18)

Like one of those grizzly bears way up yonder in Alaska, Sarah Palin was in hibernation for months while she wrote her book. And now that the book is out, she’s become unplugged.

The conservative firebrand, who says she was all “bottled up” by the John McCain staff on the campaign trail last year, is chock full of opinions and letting lose on all manner of subjects.

Let’s go over several of them.

The shootings at Fort Hood were “an act of terrorism” and authorities missed “massive warning flags” about the alleged shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, she said.

“And I think it was quite unfortunate that, to me, it was a fear of being politically incorrect, to not — I’m going to use the word — profile this guy, profile in the sense of finding out what his radical beliefs were,” she told Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity.

Over at ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” Barbara Walters asked Palin what she would do about 10.2 percent unemployment if she were president.

“I’d start cutting taxes and allowing our small businesses to keep more of what they’re earning, more of what they’re producing, more of what they own and earn so that they can start reinvesting in their businesses and expand and hire more people,” Palin said.

President Barack Obama’s healthcare and energy plans are “back-assward ways of trying to fix the economy,” she said.

Turning to foreign policy, Palin disagreed with Obama’s pressure on Israel to halt the expansion of Jewish settlements.

“I disagree with the Obama administration on that. I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon,” she told Barbara Walters.

“Because that population of Israel is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead and I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand,” she said.

What about Obama’s lengthy quest for an Afghanistan strategy? Go ahead and send more troops, she said.

“It frustrates me and frightens me, and many Americans, that President Obama is dithering around with the decision in Afghanistan,” she said.

Hannity, on his radio show, asked Palin about the 2010 congressional elections, in which Republicans hope to rebound from 2006 and 2008 losses and cut into Democratic majorities in the U.S. Congress.

“There’s going to be a huge shift,” she said. “2010 is going to be an earthquake politically across our country because people are just as you are suggesting not putting a lot of hope in this Congress,” she said.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Rebecca Cook (Palin autographs copies of her book “Going Rogue: An American Life” in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Nov. 18; Palin’s book tour bus)

The Senate has spoken — for the moment. But it’s definitely not in one voice.

Senator Harry Reid, the leader of Democrats, last night unveiled a healthcare bill cobbled from two Senate versions. 

At 2,074 pages, it is longer than the 1,990-page House bill. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office put the plan’s 10-year cost at $849 billion, which is below President Barack Obama’s $900 billion goal and the House bill which came in at more than $1 trillion.

So apparently when it comes to legislation, more pages mean lower cost.

Republicans are gearing up for a fight including possible delay tactics such as forcing the whole bill to be read out loud on the Senate floor. “It’s going to be a holy war,” Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah, tells the Los Angeles Times.

Offerings from morning TV shows: NBC’s Andrea Mitchell is following Sarah Palin’s book tour and reported from Fort Wayne, Indiana, in front of a long line of people waiting for the former Alaska governor turned former Republican vice presidential candidate turned current author.

NBC’s “Today” show also had Twilight’s Robert Pattinson ahead of the movie release of “New Moon” — this is one of those if you have to ask (as I did) moments… One woman in the crowd outside the NBC studio was excitedly showing Pattinson a doll and telling him it was of him — that’s real star power.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in October), Reuters/Fred Prouser (Pattinson at Los Angeles premiere)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Sarah Palin’s new memoir, “Going Rogue,” already has been strongly criticized by John McCain’s aides for her account as a vice presidential candidate on the ticket with him in their unsuccessful 2008 race for the White House.

Now, add Alaskan experts who were involved in the case over the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster saying her account over her role in the litigation is distorted for a number of reasons.

In the book, Palin claims to have helped the fishermen, Alaska Natives and other individuals suing Exxon over spill damages prevail in their legal case.

“It took years for Alaska to achieve victory. As governor, I directed our attorney general to write an amicus brief in the case, and, thanks to Alaska’s able attorneys arguing in front of the highest court in the land, in 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the people,” she writes in her book. “Finally, Alaskans could recover some of their losses.”

But Palin’s claims of victory for the plaintiffs and of playing a role in achieving that victory are highly distorted, said the chief attorney for the approximately 32,000 plaintiffs that sued Exxon over damages from the worst oil-tanker spill in U.S. waters.

“That is the most cockamamie bullshit,” said Dave Oesting of Anchorage, lead plaintiff attorney in the private litigants’ civil case against Exxon and its successor, Exxon Mobil Corp. “She didn’t have a damn thing to do with it, and she didn’t know what it was about.”

While the Supreme Court in its June 25, 2008 decision did uphold the right of the plaintiffs to receive some punitive damages, it slashed the award dramatically. The Supreme Court ordered that punitive damages be no more than $507.5 million, down from the $2.5 billion ordered by a U.S. appeals court and the jury’s original verdict of $5 billion.

While the plaintiffs did manage to salvage some punitive damages, the result was hardly a win, said Riki Ott, a scientist, environmental activist and longtime commercial fisherman from the Prince William Sound town of Cordova.

“It’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace to the legal system. It’s a disgrace to intellectual honesty to call 10 cents on the dollar a win for Alaskans,” said Ott, who has written a book about the spill and the failure of the justice system to address it.

At the time of the Supreme Court ruling, even Palin described it as a bitter disappointment to Alaskans rather than a victory. In an interview with Reuters, she said the state will tighten its oversight of the oil industry in response. “Exxon will know that we’re very disappointed in this ruling,” she said then.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Mike Blake (workers clean up from the Exxon spill.)

The flap over Sarah Palin’s photo on the cover of Newsweek magazine is turning into a fray…

To use the words of TV detective Monk, “here’s what happened…”

Newsweek put Palin on the cover ahead of the release of her book “Going Rogue.”

Usually magazine covers before a big book launch are prized, but the former Republican vice presidential candidate didn’t quite see it that way.

Palin criticized Newsweek for using the photo of her in athletic gear which was taken for an interview with a running magazine, and wrote on her Facebook page: “The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now.”

Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham responded with a statement of his own on the magazine’s Web site: “We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do,” he said. “We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard.”

Now Runner’s World has decided to join in and put an Editor’s Note on its Web site saying the Newsweek cover photo of Palin was shot exclusively for the August issue of the running magazine and those photos are “still under a one-year embargo.”

So we called Newsweek and spokesman Frank De Maria said: “We purchased the photo from an agency and we were not aware of any issues with it.”

A year since the election, Palin still manages to stir controversy — and this wasn’t even about her book…

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi (man holding guitar with Palin written on it in July)

President Barack Obama admits he has crossed the grey line.

In the well-worn tradition of those who entered the White House before him, the president’s hair has greyed. And it’s only his first year in office.

Perhaps not exactly the change he was hoping for.

“My hair has gotten a lot greyer because I was at the age where my hair was going to start getting grey. Having said all that, you know this has been an extraordinary year,” Obama said in an interview with NBC.

The economy, healthcare, Afghanistan war are all on his mind — “I would be lying if I said that those aren’t weighted questions that I carry around on my shoulders every day.”

As for questions about whether he is losing weight under the stress of the office, Obama says his weight is about the same.

“My weight fluctuates about five pounds - it has for the last 30 years, it’s unchanging, I still wear the same stuff when I got married 17 years ago,” the president told NBC.

(Perhaps it may be time to update the wardrobe?)

But after the initial splash of Obama’s round of TV interviews, the president still couldn’t command the obvious excitement on some of the morning TV shows that Sarah Palin’s book tour was about to begin.

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell was out near Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she talked about how some people had camped OVERNIGHT so they could get a wrist band so they could meet Palin.

ABC showed more of Barbara Walters interview with Palin.

And Hillary Clinton has landed in Afghanistan. It’s her first visit to the country as Secretary of State.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama in Shanghai this week), Reuters/Mike Segar (Obama when presidential candidate with former President Bill Clinton in September 2008)

At the start of  Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue,” before the words begin, there’s a map: “The View from the Top of the World.”

It shows Alaska closer to the center of the top of the world than Washington, D.C. — deliberate perhaps?

Then wandering through the book, the quotes at the start of each chapter caught our eye.

There’s the famous words from college football coach Lou Holtz: “I don’t believe that God put us on earth to be ordinary.”

Greek philosopher Aristotle: “Criticism is something we can avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, being nothing.”

That is followed by chapters that feature wise words from basketball coach John Wooden, Christian pastor Charles Swindoll, humor columnist Dave Barry and American author Mark Twain.

The lead in for Chapter 6 is a quote from Palin’s father, Chuck Heath Sr.: “Sarah’s not retreating; she’s reloading!”

What do these quotes say about Palin?

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Photo credit: Reuters/Mike Segar (Rodin sculpture “The Thinker” outside Philosophy Department of Columbia University)

Veteran Reuters political correspondent Steve Holland is reading Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue: An American Life” and sharing his thoughts on Twitter. He’s well-qualified as a reader — he broke the news of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy on the eve of the Republican National Convention.

Follow Steve on Twitter

• Sarah Palin says presidency “not on my radar screen”
• Palin stirs controversy ahead of book release
• Hillary Clinton is open to coffee with Sarah Palin

She’s everywhere.

We can think of no other losing vice presidential candidate who has captured so much media coverage a year AFTER losing the bid for the White House.

The Palin phenomenon perseveres (this week anyway).

The Washington Post has TWO columnists writing about her today — Eugene Robinson’s “Our Evita,” and Richard Cohen “Time for some Palintology.”

The front page of the Post showcases a quote from Sarah Palin’s book “Going Rogue” which is out in bookstores today: “I always remind people from outside our state that there’s plenty of room for all Alaska’s animals — right next to the mashed potatoes.”

The New York Times op-ed page carries a column from Michael Carey of the Anchorage Daily News in which he flips the viewpoint to why Alaskans are fascinated by Palin — “how a woman who takes pride in calling herself a homemaker from Wasilla brought celebrity culture to the Last Frontier.”

She’s been interviewed by Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters. CNN’s Larry King had a whole discussion about Palin last night. And David Letterman has been having fun on his late-night show by coming up with things that are more fun than reading Palin’s memoir  (number 61 - getting run over by a lawnmower).

She’s on the cover of Newsweek magazine, but she objected to its use of a photograph of her in shorts that was originally taken for a sports magazine. “The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist, and oh-so-expected by now,” Palin writes on her Facebook page.

Can a talk show be too far off?

“I’d probably rather write than talk,” Palin tells Walters in an interview segment shown on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Her response to offers of reality TV shows: “Absolutely not. I would never. No I would not ever want to put my kids through such a thing. Shoot, our life has become kind of a reality show.”

Why do you think Palin is still able to grab this amount of attention?

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Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Palin’s book on display in a bookstore)

The 2012 presidential campaign is not on her radar screen, says 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  But she didn’t exactly shut the door on the the possibility of making a run for the White House during her first interview to promote her book, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

Palin told TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey that right now it’s all about the 2010 elections.

“I’m concentrating on 2010 and making sure that we have issues to tackle,” Palin said in the interview taped last week and broadcast Monday. “I don’t know what I’m going to be doing in 2012. (Running for president is) not on my radar screen right now.”

The former Alaska governor keeps the theme going in an interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters that begins airing Tuesday (ABC excerpts released on Monday).

Asked whether she wants to be president: “That certainly isn’t on my radar screen right now,” Palin tells Walters. “[But] when you consider some of the ordinary turning into extraordinary events that have happened in my life, I am not one to predict what will happen in a few years.”

“My ambition if you will, my desire, is to help our country in whatever role that may be, and I cannot predict what that will be, what doors would be open in the year 2012,” she said.

Palin is popular among many U.S. conservatives and her 12-state campaign-style tour to promote the book has political insiders, once again, speculating about whether she will launch a bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll — released on the eve of her book release — found that 60 percent of those polled said Palin was not qualified to serve as president and 52 percent viewed her in unfavorable terms. Among Republicans, however, her positive rating was 76 percent.

In a email sent by her political action committee, SarahPAC, Palin says she’s going to work with like-minded conservatives to help candidates, regardless of party, “who will stand up for our nation.”

The message ends with a post-postscript: “P.P.S. Any level of support is welcome! Our Commonsense Conservative cause needs you. As a special offer, on behalf of SarahPAC, we will send you a signed copy of Going Rogue for any donation of $100 or more.”

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Photo credit:Reuters/Nathaniel Wilder (Palin in Fairbanks, July 26, 2009) Reuters/KTUU-TV (Palin announcing intent to resign as governor)