I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening.

We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

-Sarah Palin’s speechwriter(s), in her acceptance speech last night at the RNC

Question: Is a small-town mayor anything like a state senator who represents nearly as many people in their district as you represent as governor of Alaska? Is it anything like a US Senator who represents more than 10 times as many people as inhabit the state of Alaska?

Our state budget is under control. We have a surplus.

If I may be so bold as to point out that Alaska, due to the fact that it has a tiny population (47th in the US) and a massive amount of money made off of oil, which directly affects the fact that the state’s Gross State Product (GSP) ranks about 5th in the US, the state has what is called the Alaska Permanent Fund. The Alaska Permanent Fund sets aside a portion of oil revenues to benefit the citizens of Alaska. It’s the reason that residents get a check back from the state every year.

When oil and gas prices went up dramatically, and filled up the state treasury, I sent a large share of that revenue back where it belonged - directly to the people of Alaska.

Actually, you didn’t, the Permanent Fund did. That’s what it’s there for. The Alaska Permanent Fund currently sits at about $40 billion and was initially set up in 1976. Oh, and it’s managed by an independent entity, not the governor’s office. Kinda hard not to have a surplus when you have $40,000,000,000 sitting in the bank from oil profits, isn’t it? Yet, somehow, Sarah Palin has requested over $750,000,000 in government subsidies since she was elected governor and managed to leave her position as small town mayor with that small town in a $22million debt, even after lobbying for and receiving $27million in federal subsidies. The town had a balanced budget when she arrived in office.

And there is much to like and admire about our opponent.

But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate.

Oh really? Senator Obama’s record in the US Senate can be found here. A few gems include; the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act, the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act and the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, just to name a few. By the way, that second one, the Coburn-Obama Transparency Act, is why you and I can now search through government spending records using www.USAspending.gov. Oh, and it also files in the face of stark reality when McCain and Co talk about Obama not working “across the aisle,” as they so often like to do. Especially since the first and second bills were co-sponsored by Dick Lugar and Tom Coburn, both Republican Senators.

What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet?

I always knew that sarcasm would get me far in this world. In your face, mom! Yeah, that’s about the most blasphemous thing a right-wing evangelical Christian (who happens to believe in creationism) could say about anyone, save, y’know, Moses. Or maybe, just maybe, Sarah Palin thinks that The Daily Show is real news:

BACK, STORM!!

There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you…in places where winning means survival and defeat means death…and that man is John McCain. In our day, politicians have readily share much lesser tales of adversity than the nightmare world which this man, and others equally brave, served and suffered for their country.

It’s a long way from the fear and pain and squalor of a six-by-four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office.

Really, John McCain was a P.O.W.? No shit? This is absolute first I’ve ever heard about it. Why doesn’t he bring that up whenever he’s questioned on, oh, anything? I mean, that’s a pretty big equalizer, right there. I can’t believe I hadn’t heard word one about it before now. I must have been living under a rock or something. He probably doesn’t want to break that excuse out too much, though, in case he ends up looking like he’s using his stay as a prisoner of war for crass political gain. That’d be awkward.

It’s not that I think that Sarah Palin’s prepared speech was divisive and dishonest, manipulative and misleading, it’s that I think that it was EXTREMELY DISVISIVE AND DISHONEST, MANIPULATIVE AND MISLEADING. Oh, and it was more than a bit insulting.

You can be proud of small town roots. That’s fine. Many of us from small towns are proud of where we came from, no matter where we ended up. Our formative years among a loving, caring, supportive community shaped us into the people that we have grown into, we can’t deny that. But what we’re talking about right now is the Presidency. People running for that office and the office directly underneath it shouldn’t try to come off as a cheerful Wal-mart employee, like Mrs. Palin. It’s pretty insulting, both to my intelligence and to my wife’s gender that Sarah Palin and her handlers seem to think that’s a good thing to accomplish. I don’t want someone that’s going to be part of the face of my country to com off as a “hockey mom” who “aww shucks” her way through meetings with foreign heads of state in our name.

Just being a regular gal, huntin’ and fishin’ and taking the kids to hockey practice isn’t enough to lead a country. But maybe they’re taking this tack because her record as an elected official isn’t so hot.

Just a thought.