I understand the deadline for first week sales ends Saturday at Midnight. So if you've been thinking about buying Heavy Lifting, today and tomorrow would be good days to do so. It's still $17.11 on Amazon -- almost 40 percent off the cover price! -- and I don't know how long it will stay at that price. On Kindle, it' s just $15.49. Jennifer Harper at the Washington Times writes: Let's hear a hearty huzzah for "Heavy Lifting: Grow Up, Get a Job, Raise a Family, and Other Manly Advice," by National Review columnist Jim Geraghty and Cam Edwards, columnist and radio host for the National Rifle Association. "What has happened to men in America? Once upon a time, men in their twenties looked forward to settling down and having children. Today, most young men seem infected by a widespread Peter Pan syndrome," the astute authors observe. "Unwilling to give up the freedom to sleep late, play video games, dress like a slob, and play the field, today's men wallow in an extended adolescence, ostensibly unaware that they're setting themselves up for a depressing, lonely existence," they note. For those of you who have already ordered or purchased Heavy Lifting, Cam and I thank you. 'Reporters Thought He Was National Because He Was Part of a National Family' The second-best book out this fall is Peggy Noonan's soon-to-be-released new collection of columns, The Time of Our Lives. This morning she writes what a lot of us have been thinking, that it's just about over for Jeb Bush, and the primary reason is what quite a few folks thought at the beginning of this process: He is a man fundamentally at odds with the mood and thinking of his party at this moment: It's widely believed among high Jeb supporters that Mr. Trump—"The Gong Show," as they call him—has kept Mr. Bush from rising. But Mr. Trump isn't the problem, he was the revealer of the problem: Jeb just isn't very good at this. He's not good at the merry aggression of national politics. He never had an obvious broad base within the party. He seemed to understand the challenge of his name in the abstract but not have a plan to deal with it. It was said of Scott Walker that the great question was whether he had the heft and ability to go national. The same should have been asked of Jeb. He had never been a national candidate, only a governor. Reporters thought he was national because he was part of a national family. He was playing from an old playbook -- he means to show people his heart, hopes to run joyously. But it's 2015, we're in crisis; they don't care about your heart and joy, they care about your brains, guts and toughness. The expectations he faced were unrealistically high. He was painted as the front-runner. Reporters thought with his record, and a brother and father as president, he must be the front-runner, the kind of guy the GOP would fall in line for. But there's no falling in line this year. He spent his first months staking out his position not as a creative, original chief executive of a major state -- which he was -- but as a pol raising shock-and-awe money and giving listless, unfocused interviews in which he slouched and shrugged. There was a sense he was waiting to be appreciated. I speak of his candidacy in the past tense, which is rude though I don't mean it rudely. It's just hard to see how this can work. By hard I mean, for me, impossible. A Side of Paul Ryan You Probably Haven't Seen Before You probably already know our new Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. What you don't know about is his work with heroin addicts. "You meet a lot of people who play the part," says Jubal Garcia, pastor and program director at Outcry in the Barrio, a faith-based Christian outreach organization that ministers to and provides rehabilitation services for people struggling with addiction. "Like, ah, okay, photo-op, let's go get this picture. He was – no. Paul was just genuine, man. You could feel his compassion for people. You could he really genuinely cares about people. It's not just a job for him. It's a passion for him." The guy who liberals depicted throwing granny off the cliff . . . goes into drug-treatment centers, touches the scars from the "track marks" of heroin addicts, and prays with and for them. 
Robert L. Woodson, founder and president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, concludes, "the comment [from my team] I get about Paul is, 'I trust him.'" Unhinged NR Columnist Continues to Be Unhinged There's nothing quite like asking good right-thinking and Right-thinking people to buy your book… the same week you're calling out the Republican front-runner for a lie. On Twitter, I'm being called a dishonest, emotional anti-Ben-Carson maniac. Fine, call me crazy, but when somebody says, on national television, with the whole country watching, "I didn't have an involvement with them," I take that as an assertion that he didn't have an involvement with them, not, "They paid me to tape a PBS special talking up their glyconutrient products." When somebody says, "It is absolutely absurd to say that I had any kind of a relationship with them," I take that to mean they didn't have any kind of a relationship with them, not, "Oh, and I appeared in a company video, declaring that 'The wonderful thing about a company like Mannatech is that they recognize that when God made us, He gave us the right fuel.'" 
Calling me a Rubio shill does not change the contradiction between what Carson said on the debate stage and the actual facts. I'm glad that after four speeches, an appearance in a company video, and the PBS special, Carson realized he didn't like what the company wanted him to say and insisted upon limiting his comments. I'm skeptical that working with Mannatech alone is reason to discount Carson as a potential president. But when you insist you have had no relationship or interaction, and you dismiss the claim that you have as "propaganda," it raises real questions about trust. ADDENDA: I'm scheduled to appear on CNN in the 2 p.m. hour today. Probably talking the debate and its fallout. | 
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