Decius wrote:

City Councilman and mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (pop. 5,000), before serving less than two years as governor of Alaska. You gotta be kidding me!

McCain's decision to select a woman for VP is a transparent attempt to court some of Hillary's supporters, many of whom are not liberal, and being sore about their candidate's loss, are attracted to McCain as a perceived moderate. However, the VP may become the President, and Palin, having absolutely no foreign policy experience, is totally unqualified to be the President of the United States. This will be quickly apparent to everybody and it will blow up in McCain's face. It will destroy his candidacy, and unfortunately it will be a serious pock mark on Palin's here-to-fore admirable political career.

Obama and Biden are your new President and VP.

This election is over.

File me in the "protest vote for Barr" camp, although I do think the LP platform is viable.

I don't see this choice helping McCain at all. I am no fan of "windfall profits" taxes. This was one of my major sticking points with Obama, playing Robin Hood and giving US firms disincentive to invest here with his Emergency Economic Plan. Looks like Palin is doing the same thing already in Alaska:

Borrowing from this article on the LP blog:

In less than two years as governor, she managed a 6 percent increase in part of the state's budget, as well as being responsible for a windfall profit tax on oil companies—much like that proposed by Democrats and opposed by people like John McCain. And, according to CNN, "Alaska now has some of the highest resource taxes in the world."

This, of course, has disastrous consequences to development in the area. "BP Alaska, which runs Prudhoe Bay, said earlier this year that it had delayed the development in the western region of the North Slope as a result of the tax," the Seattle Times reported earlier this month. "ConocoPhillips cited the same reason for scrapping a $300 million refinery project."

Palin also was responsible for using $500 million in taxpayer money to help build a pipeline in Alaska, without the support of Alaskan oil companies. Without their support, CNN says many in the Alaskan government feel the pipeline will never be constructed, though the state will still be on the hook for half-a-billion dollars.

Is this Palin's "Pipeline to Nowhere"?

More detail about her oil tax in her own words:

There is no dissension -- 25 percent is the right number.

THERE WILL BE NO DISSENSION. :)

Progressiveness is the additional share we capture when oil prices and profits are high. I chose to set the progressiveness knob [i.e., the windfall profits tax] at a relatively low level in exchange for more security when prices are low. We accomplished this through a gross tax floor at our legacy fields. If the Legislature chooses to discard that floor, then the knob on progressiveness needs to be set higher — to make sure we capture a more equitable share when prices are high and profits extraordinary.

Here we go with the windfall profit crap again. How exactly does that work when you ENCOURAGE production when prices are low and DISCOURAGE production when prices are high?

McCain/Palin? No thanks.

And for anyone who thinks VP picks don't really matter, there have been 9 VP's that took over the reigns. It's not unreasonable to consider, "Could the VP do the job?" The answer with Palin should be pretty obvious.

RE: The election is basically over.