Ridiculous:

“That’s pretty sick,” said Norm Whipple, 59, of Los Angeles, offering a wry grin about the presidential prospects of Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, Republican Rudy Giuliani and unaffiliated New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “Someone has to keep an eye on those New Yorkers.”

As if Hillary Clinton counts as “a New Yorker.” And Michael Bloomberg’s not much closer to it than she is, born and raised as he was in Massachussetts.

“I think basically they are the same candidate,” said Bob House, a Republican from Des Moines, Iowa. “We all love New York. But when our options are New York, New York, New York, I think people want to see a different life experience.”

You want lifetime politicians to have differentiated life experiences? Good look with that, buddy, no matter where they live or were raised.

The article acknowledges near the end the widely disparate geographical backgrounds of the candidates. So what’s this about? Their place of residence, or their “life experience” of being fairly well off?

Angeles Perry, 65, feeding the slot machines in Las Vegas, saw more similarities than differences among the New York triumvirate.

“They have the money,” said the retiree from California’s Silicon Valley. “And they all have big egos.”

She’s right.

Billionaire Bloomberg spent more than $155 million for his two mayoral campaigns, and reports indicated he could drop $500 million on a presidential campaign — despite his repeated and coy refusals to announce a candidacy.

Giuliani and Clinton have millions of dollars on hand. None shrinks from the national spotlight, although it’s shone a little brighter on some than others.

As far as I know, Bloomberg is the only one of the three who’s independently wealthy. “Millions of dollars on hand” had to come from campaign donations, right? You know, like every other lifetime politician campaigning for high office.

What a dumb, misleading article. It took six AP writers to cover that, presumably to garner the uninformed quotes from different geographical areas. What a waste of their time. Did they get into journalism to shovel dirt on molehills?