I wrote this before I saw Richard Fineberg's "Palin Papers". This just demonstrates the kind of information Alaskan's have and must share.--Sharon

Alaskans are now playing a new and important role on the national political scene. With Sarah Palin as the VP candidate, many of us are being tasked by our friends and family in the lower 48 with providing information on our governor.

If you are like most people here, you didn't give Palin a whole lot of thought aside from the oil tax, gas line or so called energy rebate. At least not a whole lot of thought before the day of McCain's announcement of his VP selection. (Again, if you were like me you were wondering if this was April 1st and do we get another shot at summer? This last summer was pretty damp, I'd like another one please.)

Alaskans are now playing a new and important role on the national political scene. With Sarah Palin as the VP candidate, many of us are being tasked by our friends and family in the lower 48 with providing information on our governor. If you are like most people here, you didn't give Palin a whole lot of thought aside from the oil tax, gas line or so called energy rebate. At least not a whole lot of thought before the day of McCain's announcement of his VP selection. (Again, if you were like me you were wondering if this was April 1st and do we get another shot at summer? This last summer was pretty damp, I'd like another one please.)

Shortly after that announcement, I began hearing from friends and family across the Lower 48. “So, what's the deal with your governor?” was the main theme. Since then I've tried to pull out the truth from the fiction and send information on with a request that they share it with others. The volume of garbage out there was pretty high but it wasn't too hard to find the good stuff, the facts. Well, since then my opinion of Palin has solidified (on the negative side) and I've given her way more thought than I'd like to so I won't belabor the issue too much here, just a few brief bullet points.

• Sarah Palin fired a librarian for stating a refusal to remove books from the library. The librarian was later reinstated. (Are librarians heroes or what!)
• Sarah Palin believes the Iraq war is a “task from God.” (You can find this on YouTube. It doesn't sound much like the Jesus I learned about as a child.)
• Sarah Palin hired a Washington lobbyist when she was mayor of Wasilla and got 27 million in earmarks. (What was that about being a “reformer?”)
• Sarah Pain SUPPORTED the “bridge to nowhere.” (She made her national debut by lying to the country, what's so “maverick” about that!)

Alaskans now have a great opportunity to have more of an effect on the presidential election than at any time in the past. We still have our late-closing polls due to the time zones and our 3 electoral votes. But we have both the opportunity and obligation to share what we in the “last frontier” know, Sarah Palin is a bad choice for Vice President and is not the woman that she is projecting to the American voters.

We Alaskans can make another huge contribution to our country by sending Mark Begich to the Senate and Ethan Berkowitz to the House. I'm pretty excited about these two capable politicians who will bring pride back into Alaskan politics after the indictments and investigations into 2/3rds of our current congressional delegation. This will also send an important message to the Republican party—We don't trust you anymore.

This will be an interesting election to say the least. Let's not get too distracted by all the misinformation out there and let's continue to fulfill our new and important role in passing the factual and relevant information on to the rest of the country. After all, it's not every election that we have so many eyes and ears pointing at Alaska and with that the opportunity to give the gift of knowledge. It almost makes me feel like a librarian!