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Posts by Melissa McEwan
Obama Honors Women in Combat
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on October 14, 2008 at 5:54 AM.
In July of this year, a grim threshold was passed: 100 female service members had died in Iraq. Sixty-one of those deaths were hostile; i.e. "occurring during combat or enemy attacks," despite the fact that women are still not officially allowed to serve in combat positions. It's one of the "women's issues" that doesn't get much attention, but for the thousands of women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the families of those women, it's no small thing -- not just being officially prohibited from serving "on the front lines," but the reality that many of them already are serving "on the front lines" in two wars where the front lines can be wherever the next suicide bomber decides they'll be.
So this is pretty significant:
Mr. Obama would consider officially opening combat positions to women. Mr. McCain would not.It's not a promise to allow women to serve equally, but the recognition that women are already in serving in combat is a big step in the right direction.
"Women are already serving in combat [in Iraq and Afghanistan] and the current policy should be updated to reflect realities on the ground," said Wendy Morigi, Mr. Obama's national security spokeswoman. "Barack Obama would consult with military commanders to review the constraints that remain."
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
McCain's Not-So-Respectful Comment
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on October 13, 2008 at 10:20 AM.
John "Respectful Campaign" McCain serves up a little "respect" for Barack Obama:
Republican John McCain vowed Sunday to "whip" Democratic rival Barack Obama's "you-know-what" when the two presidential candidates meet Wednesday in their final televised debate.I'm sure he did.
…McCain said he and running mate Sarah Palin would continue campaigning hard in the three weeks left before Election Day, in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado. The two planned a joint appearance Monday in Virginia, a Republican stronghold turned battleground this time.
"We're going to spend a lot of time and after I whip his you-know-what in this debate, we're going to be going out 24/7," McCain said.
…Still, McCain promised to run a "respectful" campaign in the weeks to come.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
McCain's Buddy Brokaw's Unfair Debate Performance
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on October 8, 2008 at 8:01 AM.
So, I went into last night's debate knowing that John McCain and Tom Brokaw are personal friends--Brokaw has celebrated McCain's birthday with him and served as his personal advocate at NBC News--but giving Brokaw the benefit of the doubt that he wouldn't let his bias show.
Well, that was silly of me.
Brokaw laughed openly at McCain's various attempts at humor, and it appeared on at least two occasions that McCain was gesturing to Brokaw behind Obama's back as he spoke--neither of which would have bothered me nearly as much if his demonstrable preference wasn't made manifest in a glaring disparity between his graciousness toward each candidate.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Hey Media! Palin Rape-Kit Story Has Not Been Debunked
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on October 7, 2008 at 3:03 PM.
Boehlert debunks the claim that the Palin rape-kit story has been debunked. It has not.
Writing for The Huffington Post's Off The Bus, and crossposting at Daily Kos, [20-year-old blogger and junior at George Washington University, Jacob Alperin-Sheriff] posted by far the most specific and factual analysis of the rape-kit story in terms of Palin's role as mayor and the final say she had over the budget.Both Boehlert's and Alperin-Sheriff's pieces are worth a read.
Combing through Wasilla's budgetary documents, which are posted online, Alperin-Sheriff showed that Palin had clearly signed off on a fiscal-year budget that reduced by three-quarters the amount of money the town set aside annually for rape-kit costs and that the rape-kit reduction was spelled out before the fiscal-year 2000 budget was approved by Mayor Sarah Palin on April 26, 1999.
Preview for Tonight: Palin and Biden Talk Church and State
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on October 2, 2008 at 12:48 PM.
Katie Couric: Thomas Jefferson wrote about the First Amendment, building a wall of separation between church and state. Why do you think that's so important?
Sarah Palin: His intention in expressing that was so that government did not mandate a religion on the people. And Thomas Jefferson also said never underestimate the wisdom of the people. And the wisdom of the people, I think, in this issue is that people have the right and the ability and the desire to express their own religious views, be it on a very personal level, which is where I choose to express my faith, or in a more public forum. And the wisdom of the people, thankfully, engrained in the foundation of our country is so extremely important. And Thomas Jefferson wanted to protect that.
Biden: The best way to look at it is look at every state where that wall's not built. Look at every country in the world where religion is able to impact on the governance. Almost every one of those countries, there's real turmoil. Look, the founders were pretty smart. They had gone through, you know, several hundred years of wars—religious wars. They were in the midst of religious wars in Europe. And they figured it out: The best way to do this is keep the government out of religion. They took religion out of government, but they didn't mean religion couldn't be in a public place, in the public square.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
A List of McCain's Nastiest Moments
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on October 2, 2008 at 2:41 AM.
Earlier today, a commenter asked if John McCain is "truly as nasty and belligerent as he appears to be." Is he really that bad--or is it just one of those partisan memes that develops about an opponent? I'm guessing he isn't the only Shaker with that question, and, since detailing McCain's long list of objectionable qualities has been what one might call a specialty of mine since the inception of this blog back in '04, I figured I'd put together a little collection of Punk McNasty's Greatest Hits to answer that question and for handy-dandy reference.
• Accusing the Democrats of being sore losers and obstructionists motivated by partisan "bitterness" just because they had the temerity to not treat Condoleezza Rice's confirmation as Secretary of State as "a foregone conclusion."
• Accusing Vietnam veteran and Congressman Jack Murtha of being "too emotional" to be rational about the war.
• Sending then-freshman Senator Barack Obama what Matt Stoller called "remarkable" and one of "the single most bitter, nasty letters I have ever seen from any Senator."
• Threatening to leave an appearance before the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department because members of the audience challenged his statements on immigration, organized labor, and the war. He also questioned their work ethic and skills, telling them "You can't do it, my friends," when some accepted his hypothetical job offer of $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Tina Fey As Sarah Palin: Katie Couric SNL Skit
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on September 29, 2008 at 9:02 AM.
Tina Fey's impersonation of Palin is just amazingly spot-on. Amy Poehler's of Katie Couric, not so much. But, hey -- they can't all be winners.
What do you think readers? Thumbs up or thumbs down?
Al Gore Had a Plan to Avoid this Economic Crisis 8 Years Ago
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on September 26, 2008 at 1:56 PM.
In the middle of the night last night, I awoke from a dream about Al Gore. It wasn't really a dream in the traditional sense, so much as it was a memory. I was recalling, from somewhere deep in my subconscious, one of his debates against Bush in 2000, during which Gore was talking about how he was going to take the budgetary surplus created during the Clinton presidency and put it in a lockbox to protect our social safety net.
And Bush was sneering at him.
When I woke up, I remembered how Al Gore was viciously mocked for his "lockbox" campaign theme, everywhere from SNL skits to mainstream debate coverage: "He must have used the word 'lockbox' about 20 times." Even after he'd lost, the media harangued him about his lockbox: "Well, maybe the beard should go into the lockbox!"
Al Gore's lockbox was routinely treated like the butt of a joke. Silly, nerdy, wonky Al Gore with his dorky lockbox!
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Bailout Agreement Tentatively Reached
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on September 25, 2008 at 12:45 PM.
And I'm getting that slightly nauseated feeling I get every time I hear the phrase "bipartisan consensus."
Warned that time was running short to bolster the distressed economy, congressional Republicans and Democrats reported agreement in principle Thursday on a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, and said they would present it to the Bush administration in hopes of a vote within days.Zoinks. That just can't be good.
Emerging from a two-hour negotiating session, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said, "We are very confident that we can act expeditiously."
"I now expect that we will indeed have a plan that can pass the House, pass the Senate (and) be signed by the president," said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah.
Nothing Else Matters if We Don't Have Fair Elections
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on September 24, 2008 at 11:51 AM.
A month ago, Spudsy issued a reminder about the importance of ensuring that the upcoming election is fair. Today, I read this:
With 41 days to go before the presidential election, election officials and political operatives in [heavily populated Palm Beach County, Florida] — famous for overvotes, undervotes, butterfly ballots and hanging chads — are worried about a repeat performance of the chaos that clouded the outcome of the 2000 presidential race.A month out from "a razor-close election" in Palm Beach County, the outcome is still being held up by court battles over the voting.
…"We have seen problems in Palm Beach County already in the primary," said Ben Wilcox, executive director of Common Cause Florida, a watchdog group. "I think potentially we could have major problems in Florida again."
It's not like they didn't try to fix things after the electoral meltdown that sent the 2000 election all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
The punch cards are gone. Security cameras monitor all activity in every county election office. Random spot-checks review each ballot in 2 percent of all precincts.
But the "improved" system may not be much better than the old one.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Still More Troopergate and Palin's Apathy to Sex Crimes
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on September 22, 2008 at 9:23 AM.
As you may recall, the Alaska Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, who was fired by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin after declining to re-open an old investigation against State Trooper Mike Wooten, who was at the time immersed in a bitter divorce and custody battle with Palin's sister Molly McCann, was also the chief proponent and champion of "an ambitious, multi-million-dollar initiative to seriously tackle sex crimes in the state," which was shelved just before he was fired.
You also may recall that the McCain campaign, in order to refute the assertion that Palin fired Monegan because of Troopergate, argued that she had instead fired him because he made an unapproved trip to Washington on his own to try to secure funds for the initiative. As I wrote last Tuesday, that argument necessarily meant that "Palin is shockingly indifferent to rape and domestic violence in her own state and contemptuous of the people who don't share her indifference -- and, weirdly, the McCain campaign appears to believe that's somehow more palatable than Palin having simply fired Monegan for insubordination because she wasn't getting what she wanted from a public servant on her personal family matter. That's quite an amazing calculation."
Well, get this:
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Biden on Palin's Tax Retort: 'Give Me a Break'
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on September 19, 2008 at 11:42 AM.
So, after Joe Biden said, awesomely, that paying taxes is patriotic, Sarah Palin retorted, mendaciously, that raising taxes is "about killing jobs and hurting small businesses and making things worse."
Katie Couric then asked Biden about that during an interview, and he shot back:
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Karl Rove Says McCain Has Gone too Far
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on September 15, 2008 at 9:31 AM.
"McCain has gone in some of his ads -- similarly gone one step too far, and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the '100 percent truth' test. ...They ought to -- there ought to be an adult who says, 'Do we really need to go that far in this ad'?" -- Karl Rove.
When Karl fuckin' Rove says you've gone too far, you have lost. the. plot.
Obama campaign spokesperson Tommy Vietor makes that point very well in a released statement: "In case anyone was still wondering whether John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest campaign in history, today Karl Rove -- the man who held the previous record -- said McCain's ads have gone too far." Snap!
Under Palin, Wasilla Charged Rape Victims for Sexual Assault Exams
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on September 9, 2008 at 11:34 AM.
While Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, the police department was charging rape victims for their own rape kits:
While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.
Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon does not agree with the new legislation, saying the law will require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of the forensic exams.
"In the past weve charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible. I just dont want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer," Fannon said.
Implicit in Fannon's comment is either a belief that most women who report rape are liars, or a genuine apathy that women are raped—because the taxpayers who suffer the "burden" of paying for rape kits have a vested interest in ensuring their community is free of rapists. Only someone who thinks rapes don't really happen, or doesn't care, would ignore the value to every taxpayer of an investment in convicting rapists.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
McCain's Speech: Worst Acceptance Speech in Almost 30 Years?
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on September 5, 2008 at 9:22 AM.
So, I pretty much hated John McCain's speech.
It was boring as all fuck, not just because McCain is a miserable orator who never manages to hit any kind of compelling rhythm, but because it was the same damn speech I've heard at every GOP convention for my entire life injected with a shot of POW, the potency of which had been thoroughly undermined by every other convention speaker having taken possession of McCain's history during their speeches. Even the video package introducing McCain talked about his being a POW. There's a not-particularly-fine line between marketing relevant and evocative personal experience and Tragedy Branding. This convention sailed over that line into farce.
It gives me no joy to say that. And it doesn't change one iota the fact that McCain's service was intrinsically brave and honorable. I'm just really mystified by the decision to use something as intimate and distressing as the details of imprisonment and torture as the primary selling point of a candidate. Which is not to suggest McCain shouldn't have talked about it himself—but doling it out to everyone else to discuss onstage on his behalf had the twofold effect of diluting its effectiveness and disconnecting McCain from his own highly personal experience.
It certainly wasn't a good design for people tuned in to lots of the convention, at minimum.
I won't pick apart much of the actual content, because, quite frankly, it's too dry and dull to require it. There are two passages I wanted to mention, though.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
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