Texas Progressives talk this and that

Lots to talk about on various issues, so let's dig in!

State

Texas Monthly discusses what all is behind all the recent American and Southwest flight cancellations. Job loss, pre-vax mandate, is a fair chunk of it. Southwest's workforce is down 10 percent pre-pandemic and American's is off 20 percent. BUT? The Monthly ignores United. Per what I've read elsewhere, Southwest, at least, seems to have a just-in-time crew scheduling software, like the just-in-time scheduling managers that have employees not wanting to go back to restaurants and retail stores.

Off the Kuff discussed the first two gubernatorial polls of the fall.

Not so fast on that one Beto-Abbott poll, the first of Kuff's two links. The Trib has another, discussed in that second link, showing Strangeabbott with a comfortable lead. It also shows a lot of people distrust Matt McConaughey. It also shows that, within Rethuglicans, Strange has little to fear from Don Huffines, Allen West or the two of them combined, even. West is, interestingly, ahead of Huffines, with nearly double his support. Guess the wingnut-squared types recognize Huffines as "all hat no cattle" on claiming to be an outsider. Kenny Boy Paxton has little to fear from Pee Bush, too. Pee is well ahead of other challengers in the AG race. On the Dem side, R.F. O'Rourke well outpaces none of the above; nunya leads the Lite Guv and AG races.

That said, Pee Bush also continues to face flack over Alamo issues. Not noted in that piece is that, in the light of a new book by Chris Tomlinson et al, Lite Gov Danny Goeb felt the need to name a special Alamo protection commission. Among its members is Bush's predecessor, pistol-packing Jerry Patterson.  

DosCentavos recaps the 2021 local election results.

The federal Department of Justice is suing Texas over its special session SB1, the one that lead Dems in the Texas Lege to temporarily flee, but doing nothing else. This might have a chance. The suit is targeted and selective, and focuses on how certain provisions in the bill would affect the elderly and disabled. They arguably affect minorities, too, but in a post-Holder world, that's a tough angle to win.

CD Hooks takes a look at the one state lege special election, and Virginia and New Jersey, on what they might portend for Texas next year.

Another Texas death penalty case is in the news.

About 100 people a year die in Texas jails. Many of these were preventable, often easily preventable. The Observer takes a look, a deep look, including at the lack of enforcement when problems are found.

The Railroad Commission doesn't even make a pretense of being ethical.

The now illegal-in-Texas (under arguably dubious grounds by DSHS) delta-8 is being replaced by delta-9. 

Margaret Spellings and Tim Kopra call for a Lone Star space plan.

The Bloggess talks about depression and smiling.

Therese Odell brings you the best food TV episodes that feature Houston cuisine.

Angela Wilkins explains the health care inequity problem. Lisa Gray writes about the AstroWorld tragedy.

National and world

Hillary Clinton apparently Russiagated herself. One of Christopher Steele's flunkies has been indicted by the FBI, and among Danchenko's contacts and sources was Charles Dolan Jr., an old Friend of Bill. He appears not to have any direct tie, though. Danchenko is the main problem, or co-main problem along with FBI sloppiness, per National Review. The second sloppiness is the likes of Steele relying on a guy like this.

Red states have started criminalizing and prosecuting miscarriages.

Take a deep dive on "separation payments" and Status Quo Joe's fuzzy-headedness on the issue, whether another sign of aging-related mental health issues, ConservaDem political scrambling, or a mix of both.

A Sinclair reporter, whether honestly or via a slip, spills the beans and admits, re the Virginia election, that critical race theory is NOT taught in schools there.

The truth about Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel Peace Prize winner far worse than Dear Leader Obama, and arguably the worst and most megalomaniac since Kissinger.

Zhang Zhan, a Chinese journalist who reported on the truth of Xi Jinping Thought's early response to COVID was convicted and imprisoned in December. She's now on a hunger strike and reportedly close to death, even with forced feedings.  

Latest estimates are that Brexit will cost the UK 4 percent of GNP.

 

No, I DON'T do binaries or twosiderism

In a recent fairly long blogpost I made about a post at M.L. Clark's "Another White Atheist in Columbia," among it, I said I thought she was engaging in twosiderism, not just on that particular post but in general, and that brought it to a head.

She then said (while accepting the critique about lengthiness) that she thought I WAS engaged in "binaries," as she called it.

Erm, no.

I pointed out to her that I had just called out Shem for seemingly doing twosiderism on abortion. (That's one reason I don't write much about it. I've moved beyond worries of family disapproval, but still don't think my sis is a self-hating woman. And, per the second part, and my vociferous rejection of twosiderism on this issue, I regularly whip out Nat Hentoff, though I'm not a pro-lifer, but in the muddy middle. The lies fly fast and furious on both of the two stereotyped sides on this issue. One presumable abortion-on-demand wingnut said that Hentoff et al are actually religious. Well, I'm taking care of seeing said person online again.)

And, at least six sides present themselves on this issue:
1. Religious prolifers
2. Religious prochoicers
3. Religious in the muddy middle
4. Secular prolifers
5. Secular prochoicers
6. Secular in the muddy middle

Outside of that, I've regularly called out twosiderism on Mueller/Russiagate and Assange. There's off the top of my head, four or five important sides on each of those issues.

And with this, decided I needed to do a post just on this issue, with new blog tag.

If she had dodged the lengthiness issue, that would have been the only thing I would have objected to more. The kumbaya and other similar stuff? If she'd defended that on style grounds, I would have been OK. Even the religious mindreading, I would have only halfway objected back if she objected.

But, the older I get, the more and more I consciously work to fight twosiderism in myself as well as call it out elsewhere.

I did quote old friend Idries Shah at the end, after all.

I'm also outside the two duopoly parties.

I've said that business issues of Big Ag companies who make GMOs need to be separated from science issues.

I've not rejected CRISPR for ag use while at the same time saying that we are probably pushing it too fast.

I take a lot of hell for it politically on things like calling out Tulsi Gabbard Kool-Aid drinkers from a non-twosider perspective, or saying that Hiroshima, and even Nagasaki, weren't uniquely evil and were the "least bad option," in both cases.

At this point, it's time to close with old friend Idries Shah:

And this one from Shah is good, too. I am working to apply it more and more to myself.

And I really mean that. The older I get, beyond "twosiderism," the more I know the world is not blacks and whites and the more I consciously work against that in myself as well as with others.

Now, it's true that we're not always perfect observers of ourselves. I accept that, too.

But, Ms. Clark is not a follower of my blog. She's never commented here. Having come across her via Shem, I've never seen her comment on one of my comments on his blog.

So, no, I'll reject from her at least the idea that I engage in binaries.

Unless, to go Borges or Gödel, Escher, Bach, I engage in the division of people into the binaries of ...

         Those who accept binaries and those who don't.

==

Actually, it's time to close with two others, one a site, one a person.

The Oracle at Delphi:  γνῶθι σεαυτόν, or in English, know thyself.

Shakespeare: To thine own self be true.

#WendyDavis discusses her abortion — political fallout vs #GregAbbott?

Wendy Davis speaks to supporters. Lisa Krantz/AP via Houston Chronnicle

Wendy Davis, in her new memoir, openly discusses an abortion she had for medical reasons:

Davis, in a copy of the book obtained by the Express-News, wrote that her unborn, already loved third daughter had an acute brain abnormality. She said doctors told her the syndrome would cause the baby to suffer and was likely incompatible with life. 

After getting several medical opinions and feeling the baby they had named Tate Elise “tremble violently, as if someone were applying an electric shock to her” in the womb, she said the decision was clear. “She was suffering,” Davis wrote.

She has discussed more  a previous termination of an ectopic pregnancy that would have threatened her own life, but talked little about this.

That said, on the political front, since officially announcing her run for governor last December, Davis has been pretty gun-shy to talk about issues of reproductive choice in general, even though it was a filibuster over a draconian new law — a law that would have prevented the abortion she had — that propelled her to the statewide limelight just over a year ago.

So, is she prepared to take the bit in the teeth more? Or, is she going to continue to think she can successfully chase after GOP-leaning suburban white women by continuing to soft-pedal this issue?

Given that she hadn't talked that much about this abortion before now, I don't see how she can continue to soft-pedal the issue. Greg Abbott's minions are going to double down on the "Abortion Barbie" slurs.

Yes, Abbott himself is playing it polite for public consumption:

"The unspeakable pain of losing a child is beyond tragic for any parent. As a father, I grieve for the Davis family and for the loss of life."

Call me back when the wingnuts go on the attack, to see if he disavows them.

And will those wingnuts try to claim she's not that religious, despite saying she baptized the ... fetus? dead baby? What do we call it? Again, those suburban GOP-leaning white women aren't going to be any more likely to vote for her today than they were yesterday.

As for "what do we call it"? I'm with Ted Rall on this, and have been ever since I read his take, which is in this blog post about the "Gordian knot" of the issue:

Abortion is murder. In my view women have — and ought to continue to have — the right to murder their unborn babies. Each abortion is a tragedy, some necessary and others not, and all of them are murder.

I can't say it any differently, although I might want to put it less bluntly. And, Wendy Davis couldn't either. 

And, Rall's bluntness shows how this is indeed a "Gordian knot," and why outsiders, especially pre-viability, have no business judging the women cutting the knot, nor any business restricting their ability to do so.

At the same time, as I've blogged before, if you believe in an invisible man upstairs, especially an omnipotent one whose allegedly an Intelligent Designer, then you have to believe this guy is also the Great Abortionist, because as many as 1/3 of human pregnancies abort, for genetic abnormalities and other severe medical reasons.

Therefore, wingnuts? If you accuse the modern world of "playing God" with abortion, you're exactly right.

The book goes on public sale on Tuesday. Stay tuned for more takes on it.

As a secularist, and one with a European-type semi-cynical take on life, I'm not on board with this from the book:

I’ve long believed in angels on earth, in a higher power, in moments when someone or something comes into your life out of the blue and saves you from the dangerous path you’re on.

Not me.

Because, elementary logic, Wendy Davis.

Why didn't that higher power prevent this fetus/baby from having the brain defects in the first place? Why didn't it prevent the ectopic pregnancy before that?

Science briefs - mitochondria and prions, climate change, more

So, mitochondria are implicated in prion formation, which then may have connections to the aging process. This sounds like news that's going to unfold for years to come, no pun intended.

A millennium of climate change ahead? That's what one new computer model says. Egads. A millennium of denialism, too?

One test to determine pre-conception more than 400 childhood diseases? Exciting, but, yes, with a huge psychological burden.

Polar bears would lose competition with grizz

As melting ice pushes them deeper onshore, and forces them into more of a grizzly-type diet, facial structure studies show they won't be as efficient at eating vegetable matter as grizz.

Of course, the story is missing one thing - the interbreedability of the two subspecies. (No, biologists haven't made that reclassification, but, they can interbreed, and their geographic isolation is being dimished, so, aren't they?

Abortion: It happens in the animal world too

And, "deliberately," to the degree you can attribute will to the pipefish, a relative of the sea horse. And, not for deformations, but purely for attractiveness reasons.

The researchers showed that a male pipefish will absorb some of his developing offspring — effectively eating some of his unborn young. This highlights a conflict of interest between the two sexes: the females surrender their eggs to the males in the hope that they will all be supported, but the males instead may support only a fraction of the brood. ...

The fact that male pipefish are selectively judging the fitness of their mate both before and after copulation is surprising because, in general, most animals judge the quality of their mates before sex or, in some species, after sex.

Verrrry interesting. Read the full article.

That said, per someone asking me on Facebook about the "tarted-up" headline, let me provide a lot more backstory to the issue.

Really, the headline isn't "tarted up."

First, as for the facts, and their relevance to humans? Much more often than most people know, and many might like to admit, a woman will, in the same way, absorb a fetus early in pregnancy. Or in the case of twins, especially identical ones, one fetus will actually absorb the other. This is how people can have multiple blood types and such. The technical term for the "absorbed fetus" in the adult survivor is a "teratoma." Fof a non-Wiki, real-world description of a teratoma, go here.

That said, in a more narrow scientific point of view, I believe "abortion," not miscarriage is the correct term.

And, using abortion but excluding "reabsorption," in humans, 25-35 percent of pregnancies are spontaneously aborted, usually 6-8 weeks in.

Reproduction is a lot more fallible of a process than many people know. Or might like to accept, if they did know.

Is it callous to use the word "abortion" in the header when "redistributing" this information to a general audience? That's not my intent, I can say that, at least. Is it meant to be "shocking" in the sense of "eye opening"? Yes.

It's meant to get people to realize that reproductive "oddities" and "fallibilities" are relatively "normal" throughout the animal world, just as homosexuality is. And that, then, for some people who don't want to look at that, ties directly to claims of "intelligent design."

For more on this issue, namely teratomas and other reproductive fallibilities vs. intelligent design, go here.

That said, on the issue of abortion myself, I am not at the left-hand edge of abortion rights. I believe the trimester system should be junked for a bimester one, with Medicaid funding required in the first bimester, but states' rights to regulate abortion as open in the second bimester as they are now in the third trimester, or maybe even a bit more so.

The Intelligent Designer at work in Greece (warning – graphic pic alert)

A 9-year-old girl in Athens went to a hospital with stomach pains. Doctors discovered she had an embryonic twin in her stomach:

Andreas Markou, head of the hospital’s pediatric department, said the embryo was a formed fetus with a head, hair and eyes, but no brain or umbilical cord.

Markou said cases where one of a set of twins absorbs the other in the womb occurs in one of 500,000 live births.

The usual questions abound, of course.

Here’s a sampling:

Picture via The Telegraph

• How could an Intelligent Designer botch this? And hundreds of similar births in the U.S. every year?
• Did the embryonic twin have a soul?
• Was this “soul-killing” to remove the embryonic twin? Let alone the 11-year-old Chinese girl’s much-larger embryonic twin pictured at right?
• Could the Grand Poobah of ID be so cruel, in the “problem of evil” crux, to let poor people go 11 years (or all their lives, not too many years before this), before having the option of surgery to remove an embryonic twin like the one shown?
• Would people who aren’t hardcore anti-choicers on reproductive rights soften their stances even more if this were presented as a counter-graphic example of the one-third or so of human conceptions that are “botched” in some way or another?
• Will IDers of an conservative Christian bent trot out “original sin” to try to explain away all of this? (And, yes, like Ken Ham, some Xns actually will attribute the cause of anything wrong in our world to original sin.)

Update, March 18, 2010: Abortion in the animal world provides an additional entree to this issue.

Beyond abortion in the animal world, both partially absorbed "Siamese" twins and an even more radical pregnancy development, a teratoma (when a second fetus is absorbed inside the first totally, and early in development) exist in the animal world, as do "mosaics" — when two fetuses "blend" to an even lower level. In humans, people who have different blood tests report them to have different blood types are an example.

Connected is the fact that about one-third of human pregnancies are spontaneously aborted — as noted by a Ph.D. biologist who is also a professed Christian, while still telling fundamentalists that under their worldview, god must be called "The Great Abortionist."

Soul ensoulment at conception has no scientific or medical basis

There’s a lot that a whole lot of pro-life people don’t know about human reproduction, from where I sit.

First, one-third of human conceptions are spontaneously aborted, usually due to major genetic or chromosomal abnormalities.

Often, a woman will think she’s missed a menstrual period, not yet recognizing she’s pregnant. Then, about two-three weeks later, she will have what appears to be a delayed period with much higher than normal bleeding.

No, it’s not; actually, she’s just had a spontaneous abortion.

And, that’s not all.

Neonatologists believe that many gestations actually begin as twins, whether one fertilized embryo quickly divides or two eggs get fertilized and implanted at the same time.

But, most births are singletons. What’s happening?

Darwinism (ooh, another nasty word to some) inside the womb.

If one fetus grows much slower than the other, it usually gets absorbed, or to be deliberately blunt, cannibalized by the other.

How do we know this?

Well, non-identical twins have different genetic makeups. We know of adults who, for example, have multiple blood types swimming inside their one bloodstream. Only one way that could have happened.

Other adults have cysts, that may turn cancerous or trigger autoimmune disorders, that have bits of bone or tissue from the “absorbed” twin.

Yes, this sounds unaesthetic, at least, and grotesque, at worst. That’s exactly the point.

To put it another way, for every two pair of “Precious Feet” we see on lapel pins, there’s one pair of terminally genetically damaged feet. Or, for every two pair of “Precious Feet” there’s probably at least three-four pair that have been “absorbed.”

That right there shows that the omnipotent deity of fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals isn’t so almighty after all.

A few sidebars here:

One — do NOT claim this is actually the result of “original sin.” You will thereby have ruled yourself entirely out of the bounds of rational, science-and-medicine based discourse on conception, pregnancy and abortion. Period.
(And, yes, like Ken Ham, some Xns actually will attribute the cause of anything wrong in our world to original sin.)
Two — neither the Tanakh nor the Christian New Testament use a Greek or Hebrew equivalent word, or even phrase, to “abortion.” The procedure, let alone a judgment upon it, simply isn’t mentioned.

Do NOT claim that the Mosaic Law comment about the fine a man is supposed to pay for assaulting a pregnant woman and causing a miscarriage has anything to do with abortion.

Three, this just shoots to hell, or Gitmo, the idea that “a soul is produced at conception.”

A. In the case of identical twins, then a second soul magically appears out of nowhere, unless you believe one soul magically split, too.

B. In the case of the “absorbed twin” embryos, one soul just got killed, by Religious Right logic; similarly, in the case of a spontaneous abortion, the mother just killed a soul. You gonna arrest a kid five minutes after birth for murdering his or her twin?

That said, I am open to some dialogue on this issue. Basically, on the politics of the issue, I favor converting our current trimester system on reproductive choice to a bimester system, while simultaneously federalizing freer reproductive choice in the first bimester and allowing states more latitude than they have now to install even more restrictive standards in the second bimester.

Speaking of "Mosaic Law," how do your birth conceptionsts address mosaics? Teratomas? Conjoined or regular "identical" twins? Ooops. And, yes, they all cause you problems.