Obama campaigns on a platform of Change and he gave us Joe Biden (a Washington insider)

So leave it to McCain to give us someone we have to google.

Obama just got worked – it is the GOP ticket with diversity, experience and change.

The polls prove it, too

Sarah Palin:

Gov. Sarah Palin: A Biography
Anchorage Daily News

By Tom Kizzia

Sarah Palin was a hockey mom, small-town mayor and rising young Republican star in Alaska in 2003 when she ran afoul of her party’s establishment over ethics reform and was cast into the political wilderness.

But she came charging back as an ethics crusader to win the governor’s office in 2006 (including a landslide primary victory over the incumbent Republican governor) and has remained one of the most popular local politicians in America even as she continued to take on such powerful figures as the oil companies and the leaders of her own state party.

Palin, 44, has been the Joan of Arc of Alaska politics, charging into battle against long odds on such big local issues as oil taxes and construction of a natural gas pipeline only to see her opposition crumble. Days after her 2006 primary victory, an FBI investigation into political corruption involving the oil industry and Republican legislators burst into view with surprise raids of legislative offices. As criminal indictments and convictions followed, Palin’s outsider status helped her maintain consistently sky-high approval ratings.

She was born in Idaho and came to Alaska when she was 3 months old. She grew up in the town of Wasilla, a now-sprawling small town an hour north of Anchorage, where her father, Chuck Heath, was a teacher and coach. One of her most formative experiences, she has said, was helping to lead her high school basketball team to the 1982 state championship. Palin played point guard and got the nickname from her teammates of Sarah Barracuda.

Palin went on to study journalism and political science in college, graduating form the University of Idaho in 1987. Along the way she competed in the Miss Alaska contest after being chosen Miss Wasilla 1984. In the Wasilla contest, she played the flute and won the title of Miss Congeniality.

She grew up hunting with her father, whose living room wall is densely populated with trophies and antlers. Her favorite meal, she said during her gubernatorial race, is moose meat stew after a day of snowmachining.

She eloped in 1988 with her high school sweetheart, Todd Palin, who expands the family biography considerably. He is a commercial fisherman, an oil field worker, a member of the United Steelworkers and an Alaska Native. Todd’s grandmother grew up in a traditional Yup’ik Eskimo house in Bristol Bay and accompanied Sarah in her race for governor as she sought support from Alaska Native voters. Sarah Palin has joined her family fishing a commercial setnet site on the Nushagak River in Bristol Bay every summer.

Todd Palin has worked 20 years on Alaska’s North Slope for BP, where he has continued to work as a production operator. He is also a four-time winner of the Iron Dog snowmachine race from Anchorage to Nome and back along the Iditarod Trail. After Sarah was elected governor, Todd has remained in the background as “first dude,” an expression his wife sometimes uses.

Sarah Palin made her way into local politics on the City Council in 1992 and then ran for mayor as an agent of change.

Palin finished a strong second in the 2002 primary for lieutenant governor and was being groomed by the party for higher office when she ran afoul of state Republican Party chairman Randy Ruederich. They both had seats on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, appointed by Gov. Frank Murkowski, the Republican she would later depose. She accused Ruederich of political chicanery and eventually resigned in frustration…..

She later took on Murkowski’s attorney general in a conflict-of-interest scandal that forced his resignation. And when state Sen. Ben Stevens, the son of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, was caught making a dismissive remark about the Wasilla area, Palin appeared in a rebuttal ad wearing a “Valley Trash” T-shirt.

In 2006, she knocked off Murkowski and then Democratic former Gov. Tony Knowles in a campaign that drew on grassroots support, relying on neighbors and friends for staff rather than veterans of big-time campaigns.

She had strong support from social conservatives and often speaks of her religious faith. The Palins have five children, including their first-born, Track, who enlisted in the Army on Sept. 11, 2007. Track Palin is 18 and stationed at Fort Wainwright with the Stryker Brigade. His mother said he is preparing for a deployment to Iraq. They also have three daughters: Bristol, Willow and Piper.

The newest member of the family, a son, Trig, was born four months ago after a pregnancy that Palin managed to keep secret for seven months. Trig was born with Down syndrome, which the Palins had discovered through testing.

The ongoing corruption scandal in the Legislature over influence of the former oil field services company Veco helped Palin force change in the Juneau state capitol. That scandal has spread to include Alaska’s two longtime powers in Congress, Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young. Palin has kept distance between herself and those Republican icons and backed ethics reform measures that passed the Legislature.