Okay, John. To be fair, I watched her speech. At least, I caught the last 30 minutes of it. I’m still not impressed. There were some cheap shot insults. The failure of the Bush administration was not addressed. McCain’s record of 90% voting with Bush was not addressed and the empty claim that he went his own way was made. Her affilliation to fossil fuels was reiterated. McCain is a war hero, but what’s that got to do with her? So, she used her veto power to rein in spending in Alaska. Is that it? How, again, is she qualified to fall into the presidency in the not unlikely event that McCain’s health doesn’t hold out?!

To me, the most striking thing about republicans these days is that they make false claims that only fly by the least sophisticated people. But we here at piggington are more sophisticated, aren’t we? We grasp here that deficit spending coupled with debasing the currency is a form of tax. Let’s say I’m Bush. I borrow and spend while claiming I’m lowering taxes. I appoint Helicopter Ben to the Fed. You, the tax payer, suffer a loss in purchase power. In a sneaky way, I took your purchase power away and spent it in Iraq. But I didn’t tax you, at least not directly. But I did through the borrow/inflation shell game.

Her criticism that Obama wants to tax and spend falls flat when you look at what Bush has done. Bush has been the biggest taxer and spender in American history, and we who are not duped by his shell game recognize that is part of why the economy is in so much trouble. Again, 90% of the time McCain said “go right on ahead, Mr. Bush”. Neither candidate stands for smaller government. At least Obama wants to spend it at home instead of Iraq for the next 100 years.

Bottom line, she is still a puzzlingly poor choice for VP.