Whoa!

I just finished watching the introduction by Senator McCain of his running mate, governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. And Jiminy Christmas, she is impressive! (She has an 80% approval rating among Alaskans.)

I had only heard of her vaguely before today, but she is a huge breath of fresh air -- and a powerful speaker and communicator. A married mother of five, her fifth baby was born last April as a Downs syndrome child. I remember reading lately about how she laughed off advice to abort the baby, etc. Their oldest son is headed to Iraq in the Army in September, then three girls from high school down to grammar school age, then the new baby boy. Husband looks like a nice guy -- former commercial fisherman, now a manager in the oil fields in Alaska. (He's popular in Alaska where he's known as the "First Dude.")

The irony is that this woman has more experience managing "government" than Barack Obama! And I have a feeling that she would like nothing better than to go nose to nose with Joe Biden when it comes time for the debates. She has been an ethical reformer in Alaska and told the feds "Thanks, but no thanks" when it came to a decision to build the infamous "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska that was part of the huge (bogus) Highway Bill a couple of years ago. She told them, "If we need a bridge built, we'll build it ourselves." She's in the process of returning billions of dollars of windfall oil taxes to the residents of Alaska. Very interesting woman.

The Republicans have scooped the Dems when it comes to "breaking the glass ceiling" in Washington. She came onstage in a business suit (skirt), not a pants-suit, ready to do business. She's everything the Women's Lib movement could ask for except she's not a liberal! And the Republicans found her! Amazing.

Well, this has suddenly become interesting. Maybe I'll look at her and McCain differently after we learn more about her, but for the moment, I'm impressed.

Best Friends

I copied this picture and caption from the Dec 06/Jan 07 issue of Backyard Poultry magazine:

Best Line of the Convention

From the observant pen of Peggy Noonan:

"By the way, the best line of the convention so far? Ted Strickland of Ohio, when he echoed the 1988 Democratic convention joke about George H.W. Bush, that he was born on third and thought he hit a triple. Strickland said of George W. Bush that he was born on third and then stole second. It didn't get much attention in any of the commentary, but it's all people were talking about in the bars of Denver that night."

Last New Book

This new book by David Jeremiah just arrived this morning so I'll put it up -- and that will be all the books for a while. This was a sermon series preached by Pastor Jeremiah recently and I was able to supplement the text with further research, etc. Very interesting since it had a lot to do with current events vis-a-vis a biblical premillennial view of past, present, and future events. (Again, a nice "thank you" from Dr. J in the "Acknowledgements" section.)

Another New Book

Due out on September 2 is this book by Mark Sanborn, a corporate trainer and leadership consultant. I worked with Mark on the manuscript of this book last fall.

New Book

Over the last year or two I've written more than 500 short devotional "readings" for Turning Point Ministries (David Jeremiah). The ministry has used them in a variety of ways (audio CD's to listen to in the car, etc. -- I even hear them while on hold when talking with folks by phone at their ministry office in California -- to me, more interesting than listening to music).

They took around 150 of them and put them into a new book, along with an accompanying Bible verse for each daily reading: 1 Minute a Day—Instant Inspirations for the Busy Life. While the book is published by Thomas Nelson, one of the biggest Christian publishers, I don't see it on Amazon, etc. I think Turning Point is using it only as a gift book for donors within their ministry.

Anyway, nice to see one's efforts being put to good use (as Turning Point does with everything I write for them). (Since I've been asked various forms of the "writing credit" question, credit is given on the copyright page: "Special thanks to William Kruidenier for assistance in writing 1 Minute a Day.")