No Jody, you're not. You have a heart of gold from what I can tell and any criticism I have of your thought processes seem confrontational not because I derive pleasure from twisting the knife but because I sense your life is enriched by being challenged.

Republican/Democrat has nothing to do with it. Being intellectually honest and diligent does. It's my beef with Tom and nothing upsets me more than others dismissing his dishonesty, manipulation, and absolute inability to compromise because he can speak eloquently and politely. I might add that his dark side gets hidden when he speaks to women. You haven't been on the receiving end of his subtle and derisive slurs when you've disagreed with him on an issue.

I have no problem with you finding a connection with Sarah Palin on a personal level. We all enjoyed our first look, that little Midwestern twang, a new pretty face, a diverse family, the projected image of a populist, reformer governor.

However, this wasn't an election for PTA. The stakes were as high as they've ever been in our lives and there was little time to find out who this person was that would be a 72 year old cancer survivor's heartbeat away from the most powerful person on Earth. It was incumbent upon every one of us to suspend partisanship and become Sarah Palin scholars. It was a duty of our citizenship.

Many of us did that. We got input from all sides of the political spectrum and it became almost immediately clear that this person was not only clearly unqualified for political office of this magnitude but that she also had some serious ethical flaws that should forever disqualify her from consideration. The information people dug up had that ringing consistency to it could easily have been invalidated by Palin herself but in every opportunity she was given, she only reinforced the negative memes.

Jody, I'm not going to mince words on this. If you still believe this woman to be a viable national leader, you didn't do your homework on this one and, if you did you went at it with severe prejudices brought on by who knows what inner demons you possess. Your own inner compassion and goodness should be throwing up huge red flags at having someone dumped on you like she was, this weather girl talking point factory designed to play on either your feminist side in search of female empowerment or your own fundamentalist philosophy guided by religious wedge issues.

If you're going to be a Republican, be a good one. Demand better leaders than this crap that's being fed to you by the purveyors of the "base". They represent a scary and authoritarian portion of your party that, if further empowered could destroy much of what you hold dear.

Sorry if I upset you. It's my goal in the remaining years of my life to upset a lot of people and challenge them to stop with the complacency. We've been touchy-feely for too long now and it nearly brought down our country. It could still happen if people go back to this attitude that the Sarah Palins and George Bush's of the world, the folks that we could drink a beer or skin a moose with, are more than just quirky neighbors but people that somehow are able to lead the world through its trials and troubles through the anti-intellectual lens of simplistic black and white choices.

Art