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Combat Pregnancies

Ever since the furor over the possibility of being court-martialed for getting pregnant in a combat zone, not much has been said about the issue of military women causing problems in Iraq when they get sent home early after being knocked-up.

Part of the problem with discussing it is that to my knowledge, nobody has ever had any numbers to work with. Nobody seems to have a clue how many women have actually been sent home.

But, finally, yesterday Stars and Stripes published an article with a chart detailing the number of medical evacuations and the reasons for them:

These numbers cover the time between October 2001 to September 2009. There were a total of 52,283 medical evacuations from combat zones and only 248 of them were for “pregnancy and childbirth”.

In other words, of all the medical evacuations since 2001, only .474% of them were for pregnant women.

POINT 4. Less than half of one percent!

That is unbelievably small.

Yes, they said that not all pregnancies were considered medical evacuations so clearly there were more than 248. But still. Even if there were two or three times that, it’s STILL a miniscule number compared to the total number of medical evacuations. It’s not the epidemic some people would lead you to believe.

And it’s practically the least of your worries when it comes to soldiers being sent home early from a war zone.

Lady Gaga and her album cover fight

“My album covers are not sexual at all, which was an issue at my record label. I fought for months, and I cried at meetings. They didn’t think the photos were commercial enough…The last thing a young woman needs is another picture of a sexy pop star writhing in sand, covered in grease, touching herself.”

-Lady Gaga

Good for here, but wow. The record company is saying that in order for a female artist to be "commercial" she has to have "sexual" album covers.

“My album covers are not sexual at all, which was an issue at my record label. I fought for months, and I cried at meetings. They didn’t think the photos were commercial enough…The last thing a young ...

White males, the military, and a female’s opinion

I recently wrote a short post on my blog about the Naval Academy color guard incident in which a commander added/subtracted people in order to make it more diverse and representative of the student body. Essentially, I said that he wasn’t creating the appearance of diversity if in fact the stats (25% minority and 20% female) were true, he was merely SHOWING it. (BIG difference I think)

Then I changed the topic slightly and pointed out that "white male domination of everything" was over, because now that women and minorities were in the picture, white males have to share. So, where as in the past a white male might have gotten stuff simply by being white and male, now he ...

I recently wrote a short post on my blog about the Naval Academy color guard incident in which a commander added/subtracted people in order to make it more diverse and representative of the student body. Essentially, ...

Naval Academy Kerfuffle

Color guard thrown a curve – Officials tinker with group to make Naval Academy look diverse to World Series viewers.
If 20 percent of the Naval Academy students are female and 25 percent are minorities, then adding two people to a color guard isn’t making the Academy "look" diverse. It already IS diverse and they apparently wanted the color guard to reflect that. Should they make all color guards forever be all white males to avoid "discriminating" against white males?

And you know what white males? Your days of dominating every institution in the country are over. Some of you are won’t be able do things that you might have been able to do in the past because you ...

Color guard thrown a curve – Officials tinker with group to make Naval Academy look diverse to World Series viewers.
If 20 percent of the Naval Academy students are female and 25 percent are minorities, then ...

Can a Mother Lose Her Child Because She Doesn’t Speak English?

Impasse threatens statue to female vets

To artist Joe Mullins, recent history appears ready to repeat itself. Mullins was hired nearly 10 years ago to sculpt a statue to honor West Virginia’s female veterans. But a fight over the design all but derailed the project five years ago. Mullins now worries that a new attempt to complete the memorial is headed toward the same fate.

The Division of Culture and History has refused to fill its two seats on a new, 13-member committee assigned to assess the project and find it a permanent home. Mullins says that could leave the committee dominated by older veterans who dislike his statue, which was developed and approved by a different committee at the beginning of the decade. ...

On longing for intimacy

Carolyn Hax is the fantastic relationship advice columnist at the Washington Post. She was away this week, but when she’s gone she runs columns with advice or personal testimonies from readers. Today’s writer’s story made me feel so sad for her loss but so lucky at the same time to be alive during this time in history, and not the time she was raised in:

Carolyn Hax is the fantastic relationship advice columnist at the Washington Post. She was away this week, but when she’s gone she runs columns with advice or personal testimonies from readers. Today’s writer’s story made me feel ...

Study: New pay system unfair – First major payout shows discrepancies in age, race, gender

From the Marine Corps Times:
—————————————

“The performance-based pay system, called the National Security Personnel System or NSPS, was launched two years ago. The performance evaluations, raises and bonuses handed out in January were the first large-scale test of the new system, covering 102,000 employees at agencies, bases and commands across the Defense Department.”
“The first large-scale payout of new pay-for-performance raises and bonuses, completed in January, was riddled with inequalities, an analysis by Federal Times has shown.”

This caught my eye because they stated in the title that there were gender discrepancies, so I thought, “Here’s another example of women not getting paid as much as men!” But look what it said!

…And women received larger total payouts overall than did ...

From the Marine Corps Times:
—————————————

“The performance-based pay system, called the National Security Personnel System or NSPS, was launched two years ago. The performance evaluations, raises and bonuses handed out in January were the first large-scale ...

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