Texas, Dear Bountiful Spheres of Meaty Goodness and Tentacles of Semolina, What Have You Done?

So, I was reading Shiv’s blog post about the NHS and abortion coverage for residents of Northern Ireland when I ran across a Guardian article while trying to get my facts straight before commenting.

While you already have the important bits from the title of this post, permit me to quote directly from the article:

…the maternal mortality rate in the United States increased between 2000 and 2014, even while the rest of the world succeeded in reducing its rate. Excluding California, where maternal mortality declined, and Texas, where it surged, the estimated number of maternal deaths per 100,000 births rose to 23.8 in 2014 from 18.8 in 2000 – or about 27%.

But the report singled out Texas for special concern, saying the doubling of mortality rates in a two-year period was hard to explain “in the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval”.

From 2000 to the end of 2010, Texas’s estimated maternal mortality rate hovered between 17.7 and 18.6 per 100,000 births. But after 2010, that rate had leaped to 33 deaths per 100,000, and in 2014 it was 35.8. Between 2010 and 2014, more than 600 women died for reasons related to their pregnancies.

No other state saw a comparable increase.

You have that right: the USA is the only urbanized country in the word where the national maternal death rate is increasing to any statistically significant degree. Moreover, in almost all urbanized countries, the maternal death rate actually fell a statistically significant degree. But Texas, dear, sweet, Texas: you are a state with resources exceeding many of those measured nations, and your maternal death rate shot up so fast that experts were left with no explanation other than a previously undetected war, natural disaster, or economic upheaval.

Molly Ivins would tell you herself to flush your health policies into the Gulf of Mexico (after extensive detoxifying treatment, of course), but she’s not here, so I have to do it.

Texas: Your health policies suck. Your legislative actions and inactions suck. Your religious rationalizations for medical malpractice suck. And, well, I’m having a hard time coming up with any reason not to say that as a state your entire corporate entity sucks.

Fuckit.

Texas, you suck.

The Lamentations of the Women

While PZ focuses on Roger Ailes’ death and the resignation of a truly partisan hypocrite (but I repeat myself), Jason Chaffetz, I have been reading about the end of another career.

The Daily Beast is reporting that

Representative Robert Fisher, the Republican who was recently unmasked as the creator and chief moderator of The Red Pill, one of the internet’s most notorious forums for misogyny, resigned on Wednesday [H/T WHTM]

To be clear: he wasn’t resigning from The Red Pill, he was resigning from his position as a state Representative in the New Hampshire House.

[Read more…]

Newsweek Shocked – Shocked! To Find Racism Happening In Dress Codes

I nearly laughed myself silly over this recent piece at Newsweek.com:

Two black female students attending a charter school in Massachusetts were recently kicked off their sports teams and prohibited from attending a prom because they wore their hair in braids. The Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden, about 9 miles from Boston, enforces a strict dress code preventing students from wearing their hair in any unnatural way, which includes braids.

Twin students Maya and Deanna Cook, African-American sophomores, told local news outlets they were first told to take their braids out two weeks ago by school officials. The girls’ adoptive mother, Colleen Cook, told Boston’s 25 News that she received a call from the school informing her that students weren’t allowed to wear “anything artificial or unnatural in their hair.”

“We told them there’s nothing wrong with their hair the way it is. Their hair is beautiful, there’s no correcting that needs to be done,” Colleen Cook said, adding that the hair policy seems to target only students of color, who wear their hair in braids or extensions reflecting their African-American culture.

[Read more…]

No means “don’t stop” … if you’re a Republican Senator in NC

This story, of course, deals with highly upsetting content, continue as you will.

In 1979 the NC state supreme court handed down a ruling that made it non-criminal to continue to act as if one had someone else’s sexual consent after that consent had been withdrawn. Worse? It did not matter if the rapist acted violently: if an encounter began with sexual consent, criminal law in NC would treat rape as consensual sex until whenever a rapist decided to stop raping. Prosecution would have to wait for the rapist to begin a separate, uniquely distinguishable act of sexual contact against a person without consent.

It was, in short, the Blue Balls theory of automatism. She was asking for it, writ in legalese alongside the ever popular, He’s a good guy, he just couldn’t help it.

[Read more…]

Artiles Resigns

Frank Artiles Speaks in a Florida Legislative Venue

Florida state senator Frank Artiles, thuggish jerk-wad and Republican, proved himself morally unfit to represent the the people of that state. I, personally, wouldn’t be surprised if he had proven himself to be unfit long before recent events. But not living anywhere near Florida, I don’t follow their intrastate politics. (For those not in the know, Artiles suddenly received a spate of negative press this week after he called other state senators “niggers,” “bitch,” and “girl” in addition to the more generic “fucking assholes” which, while impolitic, doesn’t rely on sexism or racism for its impact.)

[Read more…]

What a Witch Hunt Looks Like

We were talking about witch hunts in the comments to my recent post on lynching and the use of the language of lynching. I said that it’s important that witch hunts threaten more than one’s reputation and that witch hunters use evidence or tests that are not logically connected to the supposed conclusion of witchcraft (among other criteria). To illustrate what we’re actually talking about, I thought we should not stay abstract about witch hunts any more than we were abstract about lynching: and if you haven’t read that post, it’s not abstract at all. That post cannot be more disturbing because of All The Racism, and this one is potentially less disturbing only because of the lack of pictures.

That said, in a world that includes witch hunting, it is important to discuss it honestly, to understand what a witch hunt actually does, what witch hunters actually do. It is every bit as important to understand witch hunting as it is to understand lynching. So, if you’re ready, I give you two short illustrations of witch hunting from the perspective of a victim and from the perspective of a perpetrator.

[Read more…]

Anti-Trans Texas: What They Didn’t Learn From North Carolina

Yet more anti-trans bathroom bills are now considered reasonable bets to become law, this time in Texas. Gov Greg Abbott has made a public declaration of support for (further) weaponizing bathrooms through state legislation. Two bills that had this potential have been kicking around Austin’s statehouse for the last few weeks, but the public support has not gone unnoticed.

[Read more…]

Hold My Beer: United Airlines, Part Duh

We’re all familiar with the fact that United repeatedly sells more tickets for their flights than they have room for passengers. They hope that among a hundred or more passengers, at least a couple will miss a connecting flight, get sick, or otherwise fail to make the gate. Lots of times this is true and the money United gives out to compensate travelers for voluntarily bumping themselves to a later flight is less than the money United takes in by selling the same seat twice. Occasionally, however, the fact that United sold the same seat to two or more different people creates an awkward problem for them. No volunteers? Well, for failing to aid United in committing fraud by selling a product that does not, in fact, exist, you can be dragged off the plane by police officers, beaten, and seriously injured.

Yep. That’s bad.

[Read more…]