At work today I caught some of the "Palin has no experience" flak from my co-workers, and I was genuinely surprised that they grew testy when I suggested Palin has at least as much experience as Obama.

Palin rose to the governorship of Alaska while raising four kids and working a real job running a small business. She chaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for two years before winning the governorship, and she helped take down several corrupt officials from her own party. And now she's held the job of governor of Alaska for two years, accomplishing a number of important things, especially including energy policy reforms and making it easier and cheaper to get oil down to the lower 48 from Alaska.

Barack Obama's public life has consisted of fairly unimpressive terms in the Illinois legislature, plus a largely-absentee career as a a U.S. Senator while he's run for president the last two years. He decided to run for president after just five months in the U.S. Senate. Aside from a brief period working for a law firm, he doesn't appear to have ever held a real job.

While Sarah Palin's job was working her butt off raising four kids, helping to run a commercial fishing business and serving as mayor of her town, Barack Obama was something called a "community organizer".

I don't mind that some people think Barack Obama has the experience to be president. I don't even mind that some of them - despite the evidence - think he's more experienced than Sarah Palin. However, it does annoy me that some think questions about Obama's qualifications are unfair when to me his background seems vaporous prior to his arrival in the U.S. Senate in 2005. Worse, the job of U.S. Senator is something he apparently found uninteresting, because he almost immediately set out running for president.

Sarah Palin won the position of Governor of Alaska and she has spent the last two years doing the job and doing it well.