apple juice

so I thought I’d change my name on facebook to A.J. Hussein Colianni.

Many of my friends have done so in a show of solidarity with Barack Hussein Obama.

It seems many people in the Republican Party can’t bear the thought of having a president with a name that doesn’t sound “like everyone elses'”

well, it appears facebook isn’t going to let me…

first time i’ve been over to McCain’s website. Are they serious?

We are AWESOME! WE HAVE THE POWER OF 7 STARS. VOTE for MCCAIN!

If you say it WITH ALL BOLD LETTERS it is more true. Did you know that?

And really? beyond who’s doubt? the third-grade class she gave the “shout out” to? i bet they were impressed. me and most of America? Not so much. Only 42% said she was qualified to be president in the CNN poll following the debate. Is 42% “beyond any doubt”?

The New York Times fact-checkers just ran through Maverick McCain’s recent speech in Alburquerque. At least 15 lies. This is stuff he is repeating over and over again, hoping it magically turns true? Hoping that people won’t notice?

I guess being a Maverick means that the truth doesn’t really mean the truth. You can say whatever you want to say when you’re a straight-talkin maverick!

Remember, this is Rove’s followers running McCain’s campaign. This is the new Republican party.

“From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”

I’m just going to quote these latest posts verbatim from TPM. Get over there if you haven’t been reading.

Who They Are, What They’re About

So we have McCain today getting his crowd riled up asking who Barack Obama is and then apparently giving a wink and a nod when one member of the crowd screams out “terrorist.”

And later we have Sarah Palin with the same mob racket, getting members of the crowd to yell out “kill him“, though it’s not clear whether the call for murder was for Bill Ayers or Barack Obama. It didn’t seem to matter.

These are dangerous and sick people, McCain and Palin. Whatever it takes. Stop at nothing.

and

From McCain’s Pennsylvania Surrogates

Pennsylvania GOP calls Obama “a terrorist’s best friend.”

This is what we are dealing with here. People who will stop at nothing to be President. Time to wake up and smell the proverbial coffee. McCain is using the same people who smeared him in 2000 to smear Obama. This is politics at its absolute, cynical worst. And John McCain, the straight-talking maverick is leading the charge.

the most revealing of McCain’s flip-flops was his promise, made at the beginning of the year, that he would “raise the level of political dialogue in America.” McCain pledged he would “treat my opponents with respect and demand that they treat me with respect.”

Oh yeah?

Just finished reading the revealing and disturbing Make-Believe Maverick.

I hope we can stop the charade that John McCain is somehow a straight-talkin maverick.

Something tells me we won’t be able to.

The Vice-Presidential Debate

my standard line after these things is, “well, it doesn’t really matter what I thought”.

but two points struck me immediately during this debate. The first was the VP question. Palin gave a rambling answer saying that it was a good thing to expand the powers of the vice president’s office:

I’m thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president’s policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are.

The Senate’s role is to be supportive of the president’s policies?

Biden gave a direct and damning answer about the role of the VP, saying that Cheney has been the worst VP ever and that the role of the VP is clearly spelled out in the Constitution.

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history. The idea he doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that’s the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

I don’t think there are many people out there who think Dick Cheney has been a positive force for the country.

The second moment that really struck me was the moment when Biden choked up talking about the car crash that killed his wife and daughter and left his sons in the hospital.

Palin came back with her rote answer on John McCain being a maverick. I can’t do it justice here in text, but the insensitivity of her remarks following Biden’s very real moment was tremendous.