Observations lead to clarity

Some random observations between Obama and team "McPalin." Let me see if I have this straight:

• (Obama) If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by a single parent and grandparents, you're "exotic, different."

• (Palin) If you grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, then that is a quintessential American story.

• (Obama) If your name is Barack then you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

• (Palin) If you name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a common-sense maverick.

• (Obama) If you graduate from Columbia University with a degree in international relations and later Harvard Law School at the top of your class, then you are an unstable elitist.

• (Palin and McCain) If you attend 5 different colleges in 6 years (Palin), or you finish ranked 894 of 899 at the Naval Academy (McCain), then you're well grounded and make average Joe and Sally six-pack say, "Hey, he/she's one of us, I want to drink a beer with him/her!"

• (Obama) 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.

• (Palin) If your total resume is: local sports girl, beauty queen and Ms. Congeniality, 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 and a heartbeat away from inheriting the most powerful position from a 72-year-old cancer survivor.

• (Obama) 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.

• (McCain) If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress (as McCain has admittedly done), and left your disfigured wife and married the millionaire heiress the next month, you're a Christian with unwavering morals and integrity.

• (Obama) If you teach children about sexual predators, you are irresponsible and eroding the fiber of society.

• (Palin) If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

• (Obama) If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer 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 do not represent America's.

• (Palin) If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DUI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that hates America and advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable and patriotic.

OK, much clearer now. Now I understand how Bush was elected.

Please, for the sake of both this country and the world, WAKE UP AMERICA!

Vincent DePaine

Lindenhurst