1) I really don’t have anything to add to this story, but I thought it was interesting, though tragic in its own way…
More male fetuses than female were miscarried in the year after 9/11, a new UC Irvine study finds. According to a lead researcher, here's why:
In this case, women across the country were undergoing a process of "communal bereavement" -- empathizing with others, even if they hadn't experienced a direct loss during 9/11.
"It's a situation where witnessing harm, even if you don't actually suffer yourself, can actually induce harm," Bruckner said.
Female fetuses are hardier than males, because women have adapted to produce what Bruckner describes as "the alpha male." In times of prosperity and security, male fetuses are more likely to be brought to term, because there's a greater chance that they'll be healthy and robust. During periods of scarcity, however, male miscarriages are much more common.
"A woman's body faces a decision -- evolutionary, not cognitive -- of whether to carry her male baby to term, or abort the fetus," Bruckner said. "If you're pregnant in a time of low resources, there's less impetus for your body to bear that child."
Like the Mother Jones author, I’m not completely sold on the science behind this story, though I should tell you that I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard the phrase “wimpy white male” when The Young One entered our lives (his birth was complicated, though that is a story I may get into later…fine now – seems as if white male babies were the least hearty on the racial/ethnic/gender chart, or so we kept hearing from the nurses).
However, assuming there’s any truth to this, I would add that it is another reason why we should celebrate the gift of life provided by any child, whether they be male or female of whatever background.
And I’ll keep telling that to myself the next time I have to remind him to clean up his bedroom.
2) Also, what would life be like without more nonsense from former Laura Bush employee Andrew Malcolm (here yesterday)…
Well, you won't need that splash of cold water on your face to wake up this morning. Read this:
Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year.
Now read it again:
Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year.
As noted in the USA Today story linked to by Malcolm, though…
The shift in income shows that the federal government's stimulus efforts have been effective, says Paul Van de Water, an economist at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
"It's the system working as it should," Van de Water says. Government is stimulating growth and helping people in need, he says. As the economy recovers, private wages will rebound, he says.
Now read it again:
The shift in income shows that the federal government's stimulus efforts have been effective, says Paul Van de Water, an economist at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
"It's the system working as it should," Van de Water says. Government is stimulating growth and helping people in need, he says. As the economy recovers, private wages will rebound, he says.
Yes, it’s true that the USA Today analysis by Dennis Cauchon also quotes conservative economists, including somebody from the Hoover Institution, who of course agree with Malcolm. But no politician is going to force a bank to lend money, which many will not do in this current climate due to risk aversion, particularly with a potential wave of commercial real estate foreclosures in the offing.
That leaves the public sector to do the work of the private sector (and how funny is it anyway for Malcolm to even imagine criticizing Obama on the economy when you consider the performance of his employer’s husband here?).
3) And thankfully, I haven’t heard from Michael Medved in awhile, though I had the misfortune of finding this item yesterday about Rand Paul, including the following (in which Medved pretends to criticize Paul, but really saves his thoroughly misplaced ire for Rachel Maddow and George Stephanopoulos)…
If his interlocutors persisted in throwing back at him past statements where he questioned Civil Rights laws, the obvious retort would be: “I’ve been a private citizen, and a non-politician all my life and in that capacity I engaged in lots of philosophical speculation. Most of those abstract arguments from the past are utterly irrelevant to my campaign for the Senate. I’m now the nominee of the Republican Party for the world’s greatest legislative body. My platform is clear and specific. I’m running to cut spending and shrink government, and lift the debt burden from future generations. I’m not going to let the Democrats escape responsibility for their disastrous fiscal policies by trying to re-fight ancient Civil Rights battles of the ‘60’s where a higher percentage of Senate Republicans than Senate Democrats actually supported the historic legislation that today we all remember with pride.”
Politifact bears out Medved on the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act here (shocking, I know). However, I think the following passage from “The Vantage Point,” President Lyndon Johnson’s autobiography, is notable here (pg. 165...Johnson describes what led up to his speech before passage of the Voting Rights Act)…
I had to be at the podium in the House chamber at 9 PM (3/15), but at 8 PM, I was still writing about my experiences in a Cotulla, Texas schoolroom. The speech still had to be typed and put on a teleprompter. We never made it with the teleprompter. I had to deliver most of the speech from a rough copy lying on the rostrum.
As I stood before the assembled Chamber, the lights were blinding. I began slowly:
“I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy…At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.”
I could feel the tension in the Chamber. I could hear the emotion in the echoes of my own words. I tried to speed it up a little.
“There is no constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue, It is wrong – deadly wrong – to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of states’ rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights…This time, on this issue, there must be no delay, no hesitation, and no compromise with our purpose.”
I looked up to the Presidential box. I could barely distinguish the faces of Lady Bird and our daughter Lynda. But I felt them with me. Then I looked straight ahead in the Chamber at my southern friends. I knew most of them were not with me. I went on:
“But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.”
I paused for breath. In that fleeting moment my thoughts turned to the picket lines in Birmingham, the sit-ins in North Carolina, the marches in Selma. A picture rose before my eyes – a picture of blacks and whites marching together, side by side, chanting and singing the anthem of the civil rights movement.
I raised my arms.
“Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And…we…shall…overcome.”
For a few seconds the entire chamber was quiet. Then the applause started and kept coming. One by one the Representatives and Senators stood up. They were joined by the Cabinet, the Justices, and the Ambassadors. Soon most of the Chamber was on its feet with a shouting ovation that I shall never forget for as long as I live.
Believe me when I tell you that I learned just how prevalent racism remains in this country during the presidential election two years ago, which is nothing to be proud of I know (we don’t have the moral high ground on that score in PA, among other places). However, the biggest battles fought in recent memory on that landscape took place below the Mason-Dixon Line.
Maybe the numbers say more Senate Republicans than Democrats supported the legislation, but that’s totally an anomaly compared to today, when there was a “Dixiecrat” wing that, for my money, pretty much morphed into the Bush Dogs of the moment. As for the Repugs, there actually was a pretty substantial fiscally conservative but socially moderate wing that is dying a slow, inexorable death today.
Anyone who thinks the Republican Party of 2010 would outnumber the support of Dems when it comes to civil rights legislation is indeed a “Golden Turkey.”
4) Finally, for anybody who thinks that all I ever do is pick on Repug politicians, I give you the following (from here concerning the now-former head of the Minerals Management Service – I noted her among other people, places and things here)…
When the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded last month, S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, director of the federal agency charged with ensuring the safety and environmental security of offshore oil rigs, stayed in Washington while others in the Interior Department rushed to the Gulf of Mexico to assess the situation.
When Ms. Birnbaum testified in Congressional hearings last week, her boss, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, lavished praise on others who testified while largely ignoring her. And a day later, when he announced a plan to revamp the agency, it was one that would eliminate her job.
Ms. Birnbaum, a Harvard-educated lawyer who has moved among staff jobs on Capitol Hill, the Interior Department and environmental organizations for 23 years, is described as smart, tenacious, persistent and tough by more than a dozen former colleagues and friends.
But even among those who describe themselves as her friends, there is uncertainty about whether she is up to the task of remaking the Minerals Management Service, an agency widely recognized as one of the most dysfunctional in government
…
“Many of M.M.S.’s employees have worked their entire careers in an effort to prevent this kind of thing from happening, and we will not rest until we determine the causes,” (Birnbaum) said (at a hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week). She said that the administration had “taken every step to improve ethics at M.M.S.” and to end the cozy relationship between the industry and agency, “although I have to say that I believe that almost all of M.M.S.’s 1,700 employees are, in fact, ethical.”
Ms. Birnbaum was largely spared the kind of tough questioning that committee members directed earlier against BP executives. Indeed, one congressman apologized for ignoring her. But Representative Gene Taylor, Democrat of Mississippi, asked her about reports of shoddy maintenance on the Deepwater rig. “Because it doesn’t sound to me, if that is true, that you folks were doing your job,” Mr. Taylor said.
And remember, Taylor is the guy who said here that the public was “overreacting” to the catastrophe, comparing the spill to chocolate milk. And he’s criticizing somebody else for not doing their job.
I’ll remember that if I ever hear of anyone treated in a hospital emergency room due to a potentially lethal toxic overdose of Nestle’s Quick.
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