I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic and different.'
* If you grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, It is a quintessential American story.

As opposed to eating Poi and Monkfish?


* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* If you name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a mainstream patriotic American.

Don't understand this one at all. Naming conventions by parents are their own business, and this comparison is illogical.


* If you graduate from Harvard law School, you are unstable.
* If you attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

Graduation from law school has nothing to do with societal "stability." I know a lot of lawyers who don't have the common sense of a squirrel and live in a dream world.


* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor,  spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of  13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, Â 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

First of all, "co-sponsorship" of legislation is just adding your name as a pre-vote to something someone else worked to research, prepare, and submit. It's just saying "me, too" to another's work product. Time as a US Senator only means something if you actually show up for work, rather than spend most of that time out interviewing for another job.

Being an elected official with decision authority (as opposed to being just another vote) over people, money and policies requires leadership and management skill. While Alaska has a small population, it is the largest state geographically - 2 1/2 times larger than Texas - and comprising one-fifth of the entire size of the USA. The number of people may mean a lot to some, but being Governor over one-fifth of the USA geographically is no small accomplishment.


* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and then left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a good Christian.

Being a Christian is to be forgiving as well as forgiven. Narrow-mindedness is never "good."


* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teenage daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.

Since the government has gotten involved in "sex education" including birth control, there have been almost 45,000,000 abortions in the US and the teen birth rate has exploded. If that isn't evidence that government involvement hasn't worked, what is? Surely, "educated" persons can do basic math, review the numbers, and see that an education system which during the same time has led the charge downward in SAT scores during the same time frame has been equally unsuccessful in making kids smarter sexually? That's like saying we want the CEOs of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to write the economic bail-out legislation and be in charge of its oversight as well!


* If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America 's.
* If you're husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', Â with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

Being a Harvard Graduate (especially an attorney!) has no bearing on spousehood or motherhood. Neither does having a unique nickname or never attending a college have any bearing either. Urbanites rarely understand the "frontier" lifestyle and ridicule it because they could not surive too long in such an environment. That ridicule has demonstrated urban bigotry in its highest. Also, apparently few such bigots have ever visited the Alaskan Independence Party's website to understand what it is, its objectives and platform - they may be surprised on how the AIP has been misjudged by ignorance about it.

In all, what should (at least to me) be more important is technical competency in the skills required of an executive and the background knowledge to make these skills effective. Yet, it seems these criteria are less important to some who are more impressed with titilating snickers and better-than-thou bigotry.

May God save us from ourselves.....