NOVEMBER 2022 IGNOMINIOUS ABUSRDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Ohio State Rep Bill Dean. According to Dean, there is “No great risk of dying from pregnancy.” People really need to stick to speaking about their expertise, and in some cases, not speak at all. Republicans across the country are speaking loudly and wrongly about reproductive health and, in at least one case, even body-shaming everyone who opposes the right wing’s ideas about bodily autonomy while doing so.

Dean doubled down on recent comments, calling rising U.S. maternal mortality rates a “myth” by blaming high maternal mortality on “lifestyle choices to do with abortions and weight.”

“I’m not a physician,” Dean began and should have stopped. “But,” he continued, “I would imagine, a lot of times, it’s the lifestyle of the lady that’s having the pregnancy,” he told the Dayton Daily News. “We also have the most obese people in the whole world. It’s just individual cases.”

The comments follow earlier ones in which Dean told the Dayton Daily News that “there’s no great risk of dying from pregnancy,” adding that ectopic pregnancy “doesn’t count.” Ectopic pregnancies, which account for about 2% of pregnancies, are the leading cause of maternal mortality during the first trimester. They occur when the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus. While Dean believes there’s no death risk associated with pregnancy, the reality is the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among wealthy nations.

What's worse is that 80% of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable. According to the CDC, these deaths are a result of high costs and limited access available to health care. Race plays a role in access to health care and disparities—Black people are three to four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts, and American Indian maternal mortality is also “disproportionately high” compared to their share of the population.

The stats are horrific, and the fact that a public official currently tasked with legislating the parameters of medical decisions is ignorant of them is even worse.

When asked by the Dayton Daily News about his stances on abortion last week, Dean defended them and said: “Pregnancy is a natural thing that women are made for. That’s the way God made them.”

He added: “The myth is that it is dangerous; it’s no more dangerous than living every day.”

Clearly, Dean has no idea what he’s talking about, I mean, he even admitted that he’s not a physician. So essentially, Dean believes that while there is no risk associated with pregnancy, the mortality rate of pregnant people is due to lifestyle choices and obesity.

While obesity does often impact health, there is no correlation between obesity and maternal mortality rates. Dean, who is no expert on the matter, is clearly making such claims to distract from the problem at hand and his lack of knowledge on the topic.

Dean also claimed that a majority of abortions are done for convenience, a claim his competitor, Democratic Ohio Statehouse candidate Jim Duffee, who is a doctor, pushed back against.

“Late trimester gestational abortions are almost never by convenience,” Duffee said. “They’re almost always related to life-threatening conditions for the mother or the baby, or severe chromosomal and genetic malformation that places mother and baby in danger.”

Would the general public approval of a woman’s right to choose, and understanding of health risks in pregnancy, turn the tide in Dean’s reelection bid against Duffie? Nah! Not in his red Ohio district. Duffie got swamped.

2. Elon Musk. The billionaire CEO posted a picture of his "bedside table" on Twitter in which he captioned the picture "My bedside table," which featured a series of unusual objects including two guns, four empty cans of caffeine-free diet Diet Coke, and a recreation of Emanuel Leutze's painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware River. The picture of Washington is attached to the case holding one of the guns. (What? No picture of Trump?)

He added an apology to the tweet, saying "There's no excuse for my lack of coasters." It is unclear if Musk actually took the picture himself, or if it is actually his bedside table.

Musk, who has frequently expressed support for the Second Amendment right to bear arms, most recently earlier this year after the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas — the deadliest elementary school shooting since Sandy Hook.

"I strongly believe that the right to bear arms is an important safeguard against potential tyranny of government. Historically, maintaining their power over the people is why those in power did not allow public ownership of guns," Musk told CNBC in an email.

Musk is also known for his love of Diet Coke. In a 2007 interview, he told Inc that at one point he consumed eight cans of Diet Coke and lots of coffee in a day to stay on top of his hectic schedule. Musk said his offices only have caffeine-free Diet Coke now.

On Saturday, Musk shared a series of slides on Twitter from a company talk he delivered about his vision for Twitter 2.0. The slides included graphs showing that sign-ups reached an average of two million per day, up 66% from a year ago. One of the slides also said that Twitter is recruiting, a no-brainer given his mass firing of Twitter employees.

Elon Musk has  now declared that he will begin reinstating the Twitter accounts of nearly all users previously banned from the social media site, including, as reported by Taylor Lorenz for The Washington Post, “users who had been banned for such offenses as violent threats, harassment and misinformation.” As Lorenz’s article explains, just how significant such a paradigm shift in Twitter’s permissible content will be is best illustrated by the reactions of the real, flesh-and-blood human beings who are most likely to be victimized by it.

“Apple and Google need to seriously start exploring booting Twitter off the app store,” said Alejandra Caraballo, clinical instructor at Harvard Law’s cyberlaw clinic.

What Musk is doing is existentially dangerous for various marginalized communities in the U.S. and abroad. It’s hard to imagine all the havoc it will cause. People who engaged in direct targeted harassment can come back and engage in doxing, targeted harassment, vicious bullying, calls for violence, celebration of violence. Unlimited dangers await.

And his bedside . . .  Well, mine sports a clock radio and some books.  I hadn't thought of posting a picture of it.  Too mainstream.  Maybe if I add an Uzi and a picture of Richard Nixon I'll be post-worthy.  .        

3. Georgia Sen. Candidate Herschel Walker. What would a month be without the latest Herschel Walker news? In addition to all the lies, idiotic claims, and demonstrations of total ignorance, now we learn he’s an unabashed carpetbagger.

Georgia authorities have been asked to investigate allegations that Walker broke the law by claiming a tax credit on his Texas home that was designed to benefit residents living in that state even though he is running for public office in Georgia.

Walker, locked in a tight runoff race against incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock, has claimed a homestead tax break on a property he listed as his primary residence for the past two years, prompting Ann Gregory Roberts, a private citizen, to lodge a complaint Sunday with the Attorney General's Office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, demanding an inquiry be launched.

Walker, a former Dallas Cowboys player, lived in Texas for more than two decades. He raised eyebrows when he registered to vote in Georgia in August 2021. He declared his candidacy a few days later. Despite registering to vote in Georgia, he claimed the homestead exemption on his four-bedroom home in Tarrant County, Texas, in 2021 and 2022. According to the Texas Tribune, Walker saved more than $1,200 on his $3 million property tax bill last year and is set to save more than $1,500 this year.

The accusations are just the latest in a long line of allegations that have dogged Walker's campaign. In addition to all his false claims and absurdities, he has been accused of paying for two abortions while campaigning on a strict anti-abortion platform. He's also been accused of domestic violence and lying about his education and ties to law enforcement.

Despite the allegations, prominent Republicans have flocked to Georgia to campaign alongside the football legend, including Sens. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has also pledged his support for the Trump selectee.

Calls to Walker's campaign for comment were predictably not returned.

4. Fox Contributor Lisa Booth. Booth ranted on Sunday that the United States isn't all that much better than China when it comes to taking away the freedoms of Americans who refuse to be vaccinated. Chinese citizens have been protesting as people continue to be quarantined at home, lacking food and medicine. The public has grown angry after the deaths of two children as a result of anti-virus controls restricting their parents from being able to get medical help.

In the United States, Americans can leave their home whether they have the vaccine or not and they're able to do whatever they want regardless of their vaccine status. Similarly, the U.S. has medical assistance that comes to one's home when they dial 9-1-1.

Still, Booth maintained that the U.S. and China are really the same, thanks to liberals.

"Nearly half of Democrats wanted to put people like me, who haven't had a vaccine, in a government camp," said Booth. She went on to complain that she couldn't even go out to dinner at restaurants if she wasn't vaccinated.

"You have Joe Biden, still, purging military heroes who don't want to get a vaccine," said Booth.

It's a miss-characterization of the idea that Biden is purging anti-vaccine people. The reality is that because soldiers are sent all over the world, they're required to have all vaccines from Malaria to Hep A and B, the flu vaccine each year, as well as specific immunization for the country to which they’re being deployed.

In the case of the military, it is a national security issue, if a virus spreads through an entire unit while overseas it means that the full unit is out of commission. Soldiers who are unwilling to adhere to military rules and the orders of their commanders are always free to leave. Following military leaders and orders, however, are key requirements of being in the military.

Vaccinations were a big strategy that helped Americans be safe in World War II. During the Spanish-American war, Civil War and World War I, the disease death rate compared to battle deaths was enough that it dramatically impacted the power of the American military.

"Before World War II, soldiers died more often of disease than of battle injuries. The ratio of disease-to-battle casualties was approximately 5-to-1 in the Spanish-American War and 2-to-1 in the Civil War. Improved sanitation reduced disease casualties in World War I, but it could not protect troops from the 1918 influenza pandemic. During the outbreak, flu accounted for roughly half of US military casualties in Europe."

If you believe in karma, take some satisfaction in the fact that in Republican counties, notable for the presence of anti-vaxxers, deaths from COVID-19 are six times higher than that of Democratic counties. Blood is on the hands of anti-vax pontificators.

5. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene took to her re-instated Twitter aimed an anti-LGBT slur at state Sen. Matthew Weiner just days after the Club Q mass shooting in Colorado Springs that killed five people and injured many more.

It started Sunday when Wiener tweeted, “The word ‘groomer’ is categorically an anti-LGBTQ hate word. It’s super homophobic/transphobic. It plays into the slander that LGBTQ people are pedophiles. It’s no different than calling someone a (gay slur). If you call someone groomer, you’re inciting violence against LGBTQ people.”

Greene used the Tweet to promote a bill she has drafted that would prevent transgender children from receiving gender-affirming treatment. “Pass my Protect Children’s Innocence Act to stop communist groomers like this from using state government power to take children away from their parents to allow a for-profit medical industry to chop off these confused children’s genitals before they are even old enough to vote,” Greene wrote.

Wiener, who has authored several pro-LGBTQ bills, including one that makes California a sanctuary for families seeking gender-affirming treatment for their children, is no stranger to getting hate tweets. He responded via Twitter Wednesday that Greene’s tweet was a “pretty deft blending of McCarthy red-baiting & gay-baiting.” “

For the record, her ‘Protect Children’s Innocence Act’ comes pretty damn close to banning trans people from existing. Oh & Kevin McCarthy is going to re-empower her,” Wiener wrote. Assemblyman Matt Haney, D-San Francisco, responded by coming to Wiener’s defense on Twitter, condemning Greene’s tweet.

“This kind of rhetoric, immediately after a mass shooting hate crime that killed 5 people simply because of who they are, is intended to lead to intimidation, fear and violence. We stand 100% with the LGBTQ community and we all need to be speaking loudly to confront hate,” Haney wrote.

______________________

And the November winner is:

Well Green is Green; par for her ignominious course, but for a lot of reasons I think Elon Musk deserves the November IGGY.  His bedside table says volumes about the man.  Accordingly, I’ve decided to confer this  month's IGGY on Elon Musk.