The show ain't over until the pregnant lady sings

Well, it's been a week or two, and the American public, with their beagle-puppy attention span, can no longer remember the little tiff between Planned Parenthood and the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

(For those of you slipping into a CNN-induced haze, Karen Handel resigned as Senior Vice President for Public Policy of the Susan G Komen Foundation; she was widely accepted as being responsible for Komen deciding to defund Planned Parenthood.)

Being a Republican, Handel is, of course, wandering around trying to play the victim card, because martyrdom is the default strategy of the Right. Fortunately, the previously-mentioned attention span problem has pushed her deep into the sidelines where she belongs.

Her resignation letter included the following fascinating viewpoint.

We can all agree that this is a challenging and deeply unsettling situation for all involved in the fight against breast cancer. However, Komen’s decision to change its granting strategy and exit the controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood and its grants was fully vetted by every appropriate level within the organization. At the November Board meeting, the Board received a detailed review of the new model and related criteria. As you will recall, the Board specifically discussed various issues, including the need to protect our mission by ensuring we were not distracted or negatively affected by any other organization’s real or perceived challenges. No objections were made to moving forward.

I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it. I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen’s future and the women we serve. However, the decision to update our granting model was made before I joined Komen, and the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization. Neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology.

Just so you know, there are a bunch of huge lies in those two little paragraphs. Let's consider two of them.

"the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization"

Really? Has it, now?

Komen founder Nancy Brinker published Promise Me in 2010, a memoir about starting the Susan G. Komen Foundation because of a deathbed promise to her eponymous sister.

Consider this excerpt (from, remember, just two years ago):

In the book, she discusses how the Curves workout chain withdrew their support to Komen in 2004 due to Komen's grants to Planned Parenthood centers. Brinker is clear about why they refused to buckle to Curves' pressure:

"The grants in question supplied breast health counseling, screening, and treatment to rural women, poor women, Native American women, many women of color who were underserved--if served at all--in areas where Planned Parenthood facilities were often the only infrastructure available. Though it meant losing corporate money from Curves, we were not about to turn our backs on these women."

And despite Handel trying to claim that it was Foundation policy and she was just trying to enforce it, the people she worked with don't agree: it was entirely her doing, she came up with the excuse needed to defund, and she was the primary motivator pushing it through.

Now, despite her attempts to claim that she resigned in the face of a hostile "liberal media" (and, holy crap, do I wish that there was such a thing as a "liberal media"), considering the big picture, I'm personally willing to say that she didn't really resign, so much as she was forced out; at the very least, she put in her resignation before she would have been fired.

Why do I suggest this? (And let's be honest - I'm not "suggesting" it, I'm coming right out and saying it.) Because she wasn't very good at her job. She, in fact, failed badly, just a few months after being hired.

Remember, the job she was hired for was Senior Vice President for Public Policy.

Put aside your politics. Your personal feelings on "freedom of choice" vs. "abortion" don't make a bit of difference to the following argument. If anything, they get in the way. Suppress them for just a minute.

The evidence shows that she was the person pushing the policy to immediately stop funding Planned Parenthood. And that, by itself, is a blatantly stupid policy: when dealing with a group who hires as many lawyers as Planned Parenthood does, one truth should hold sway over every other consideration: if you publicly promise to give them money, you damned well follow through on that promise!

Lawyers love stuff like that. They can't even stand straight from the law-boner it gives them.

So, bad policy. From the Senior Vice President for Public Policy.

Second, and more important, "Senior Vice President for Public Policy" is an extremely fancy, extremely well-paid PR position. She's managing the public face of this charitable empire: the policies she sets up and advocates define how people see the Susan G. Komen Foundation. And when they end up looking like political hacks instead of public health advocates, somebody isn't doing their job.

Like, maybe, somebody in charge of Public Policy.

So, in the end, Ms Handel will probably get a book deal out of it, and a paying gig at Fox "News" whenever the subject of abortion comes up.

More importantly, what we have to do is keep an eye on the Susan G. Komen Foundation during the next round of grants. Because if they try to quietly stop giving grants to Planned Parenthood in the shadow of all this, that will tell us something about them, won't it?

Sex. Lies and Santorum

"He is imposing his values on the Christian church. He can categorize those values anyway he wants. I’m not going to,”

lied Republican candidate Rick Santorum to an assemblage of Tea Bag idiots immediately after having categorized President Obama's "values" and his "agenda"as being

“not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology,”

Yes, some phony ideal is on the agenda. A phony ideal involving liberty, Democracy and a constitution that never mentions God or gods or scriptures of any religion and declares that there shall be no religion in government. Science is a phony ideal to sanctimonious Santorum too because we all know that Senators Jesus, Mary and Joseph agree with the oil companies and that the president's job, as 'Rick' told the 'baggers, is to keep gas prices down (and the subsidies up, no doubt.)

No sir, all that Washington, Jefferson and Madison secular prattle is phony and if we're looking for full employment, a decent quality of life and personal liberty you must turn to The Christian Scriptures which forbid us to charge interest on a loan or obtain a divorce or marry whom we will or even to enjoy sex when it isn't only for making babies. Some churches I won't mention have interpreted it to demand a king chosen of God rather than an elected government, but don't bother Rick with that. It's already on his agenda.

So why is this sex-fearing, woman hating, half-witted fake theologian; this lame-brained Longinus and meretricious medievalist mewling about theology while pronouncing Ernulphian maledictions on what he pretends are President Obama's values, cursing them one by one? Because theological statements don't have to be true, you see; don't have to be supported by evidence and are easily and frequently used to do horrible things to people. Cognitively impaired, confused and historically ignorant "conservatives" seem pre-lubricated to receive ecclesiastical wisdom without discomfort and Faith invents facts as well as it rejects them to the despair of brother Ockham.

So Obama, who thinks a Harvard Law degree makes him as good as a white. Christian man, agrees with Justice Scalia that religious freedom does not legalize acts done in the name of religion and yet, conservatives still want to shove the notion that he's a radical, Liberal, Christian-hating Sodomite Commie up the national hoo-ha and true to form, the 'baggers assume the position and take it.

How can any curse suffice?

Virginia, the Rape Me State

Sic Semper Tyrannus is the motto of the State of Virginia, but as with any matters involving Republicans, a government is not a tyranny if it subjugates individual liberty to the prejudices and perverted morals of the Religious Right. I read over at The Impolitic that Virginia passed a law last week forcing any woman seeking a legal abortion to have an ultrasound examination. For those who don't know, this means that for a pregnancy in the first trimester, she must, by law, have a probe inserted into her vagina and maneuvered around by a technician until an ultrasound image satisfactory to the state is produced. As Libby points out, without that state mandate, this meets a general description of rape.

It doesn't take much to imagine the feelings, for example, of a 14 year old rape victim being violated a second time by the accursed state that murdered Lincoln and had no reservations about taking children from their mothers and selling them -- or raping those mothers for that matter. It's a state that talks a lot about Jesus and distrusts those who don't. It's a state wherein people tend to like Rick Santorum and others who have a lot to say about what consenting adults can do with what and with which and to whom -- and talk about Jesus and small government a lot.

Keep in mind, this is not an examination done for a medical reason. It's not done to protect the public from a disease or to protect the woman to whom it's being done. It's not something that one can opt out of. It's an act of intimidation and a deliberate act of humiliation. It was passed because of the religious objections of men who were elected to represent everyone, but instead represent preachers and priests -- and in a state that has just decided that a single cell has civil rights but a breathing female of child bearing age has not, can't we be excused for wondering whether these "conservatives" will either ban contraception soon or require some other humiliating procedure before allowing it?

Can't I be excused for seeing this insane drive to bring back the horrors of medieval Europe in high-tech form to a nation that was formed by repugnance for it as anything at all but Conservative?

Where is the outrage from actual conservatives? You know, those people who insist on a government too weak to do anything but leave us alone. I guess when those sentiments put them in a light that makes them seem too much like Liberals who designed a government that must leave us alone and respects the sanctity of our persons, our bodies, our homes and our rights, they scurry like roaches when the lights are switched on. They scurry because they're the same roaches who supported the horror of slavery, the obscenity of racism and are still at war with the rights of women and a government that protects them.

Conservatives, and this liberal, often decry the trend, falsely identified as Liberal, toward seeking safety by making the public helpless and dependent on authority, but it's in conservative strongholds like the secessionist states that we see just how much that obscene ecclesiastical tyranny has made the weakest and most vulnerable totally dependent upon the state in the most personal way. Small government my ass, it's the old Confederacy out of it's coffin like a putrefying zombie, its pockets filled with church money, corporate money, the money of tyrants staggering toward Washington to eat your freedom.

Noam on Rome.

Thoughtful, thought provoking, as usual.

Spreading Romney

Here's a fun little exercise.

Go to Google, enter "Romney" and go to the third entry, spreadingromney.com.

Click on it.

Looks like someone's about to get Santorum'd. You crazy kids and your internets!

Happy Valentine's Day (Sort of)

(I'm tired of politics. It's a temporary fatigue; I can't stay out of the fray for long, but today I'm taking a break.)

It's Valentine's Day, the holiday that divides the haves from the have-nots--those with Valentines and those without.  The haves get chocolate and roses; I've heard rumor that some even get precious stones. The have-nots get a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, which we buy for ourselves. However, there is an up side--we don't have to share it with anyone.

I've had a valentine or two but lately I've hit a dry spell; you might call it a drought.  However, I don't think that I'm alone.

I listen to a lot of music. Sarah, my dear friend of more than 30 years, just told me when we were on vacation a few years ago that I sang to myself a lot. I was totally unaware of this. She didn't say if it was annoying or not.  I'm digressing.

One thing that I've noticed is that there are far more sad love songs than happy love songs. Think about it, how many songs do you hear where man and woman meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after? My guess is that these sad love songs are written by and for the have-nots. Love gone wrong is far more interesting than happily ever after.

Of course, a lot of folks don't really listen to the lyrics of songs and don't realize that most love songs are about love gone wrong.  A perfect example is on of my favorite songs by The Police, Every Breath You Take. Released in 1983, it became a staple at weddings! Somehow people interpreted it as a love song in spite of its creepy lyrics. It's a song about a man so obsessed with a woman that he's stalking her. I watched an interview with Sting who expressed his dismay that so many fans still think it's a love song.  Don't believe it's really about a stalker? Watch this video that includes the lyrics. (You can turn off the auto player, just look to the right of the page, find the music player and click on the pause (ll) button.)


Recently heard a song on the radio, Grenade, by that adorable young man, Bruno Mars. It's an example of the most pathetic of love gone wrong songs--the begging song. Basically the message is "I'll do anything for you if only you will love me." I liked the melody from the start but when he got to the chorus, I was totally hooked as Bruno sings, "I'd catch a grenade for you." Is this love? No, but it's certainly madness and he's so adorably cute. I've been in love before but I would really have to give some thought as to whether I would catch a grenade for someone. I don't like things that blow up.


Stalking and unrequited love are big topics in love songs, but my personal favorites are the leaving songs. There's just nothing that gets to me like a "you don't love me any more song," especially when the former lover has found somebody new and the rejected party is bravely going on. There are so many of these songs that it's hard to pick just one, but I'm currently enamored of Adele's lovely voice and her song Someone Like You fits the bill.


The ultimate sad love song, the ones that really make me shed tears into my ice cream (French Vanilla) are those in which one partner with a martyr complex leaves the other, convinced that its the best thing to do for the sake of the other person. How stupid can you get? You don't toss put a perfectly good lover just because you may ruin his or her life someday, especially when it's Kevin Costner. The late Whitney Houston did the definitive cover of the best self-sacrificing song ever, I Will Always Love You (written by Dolly Parton).


I could go on and on, there are thousands upon thousands of songs about love gone wrong which means that although you may be among those who don't have a valentine, you are not alone.  We're actually in the popular group. I'll leave you with a poem that I wrote a few years ago when someone broke my heart. It was a big deal at the time but tonight I'm having trouble remembering his name.

There Is Nothing Original In Suffering For every poem about love fulfilled, there are written one hundred times one hundred of love forsaken. For every promise of love forever, Jove’s mirth fills the arch of heaven, for it is written that love’s perjuries conjure laughter. Abandoned lovers, swaddled in denial, believe aches of the heart to be a solitary pain, newly born to the betrayed. And so poets, knowing there is nothing original in the sufferings of the heart, write one hundred times one hundred of hearts mangled, blinding lovers to a knowledge much sharper than love broken-- that it has all been done and will be done again.     --Sheria Reid

Sex lives of the rich and hypocritical

You might think that a person's sex life should be their own business. On the other hand, if you're like me, you might also think that, since Rick Santorum believes that he has the right to shove the government straight up every woman's vagina, then his own "love" life would be open season. So, just for fun, let's look at some of those pesky things they call "facts."

Fact 1: Rick Santorum married the former Karen Garver in 1990, and they have seven children (eight, if you count pickled Baby Gabriel).

Fact 2: Ricky has publically stated that he is completely opposed to all forms of contraception, and that sex should only be for procreation.



(Sadly, the original publishers, CaffeinatedThoughts.com, an evangelical Christian website, got a little cranky that people were taking chunks of their interview and showing what Santorum actually said, usually in context. So they make the usual "copyright infringement" argument every time somebody extracts a bit of it. Ironically, since they hosted it on Youtube, they can't hide it away without losing access themselves. Drag forward to 17:55 for this bit.)

One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea ... Many in the Christian faith have said, "Well, that's okay ... contraception's okay."

It's not okay because it's a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They're supposed to be within marriage, for purposes that are, yes, conjugal ... but also procreative. That's the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that's not for purposes of procreation, that's not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can't you take other parts of that out?

And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it's simply pleasure. And that's certainly a part of it—and it's an important part of it, don't get me wrong—but there's a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.

As Ms Santorum is barely out of her 40s, there is no reason to assume that she's gone through menopause, although it's always possible. Adding these facts together, we have to assume that the Santorums did not mate like mad minxes during the nearly six years of her life that Karen has spent pregnant, or for the brief period of any hypothetical menopause which she might or might not have experienced.

Therefore, I think that it's safe to assume that either Rick Santorum is completely hypocritical on the subject of birth control (always possible), or he and his wife have had sex between eight and twelve times total. Approximately once every two years.

You could fantasize that they make it special: a glass of wine, maybe some candles, with her in her most fetching flannel nightgown and him in nothing but a sweater vest.

But I suspect that that the dark deed is most likely performed with a minimum of foreplay, with the lights out, missionary style. I picture Ricky pumping away grimly, trying to finish as quickly as possible, before either of them starts to enjoy it. And when the vile depravity comes to an end, they both roll over and quietly sob themselves to sleep.

Beyond Appearances: A Furry Film Retrospective

By (O)CT(O)PUS

This post is the first in a series of curated commentaries on film titled: Movies About Photography. I am not referring to documentary films that blur the distinction between photography and cinematography, nor am I speaking of movies that employ fetching compositions,  long dolly shots, special effects, or subtle qualities of light and shadow. If you are interested in great cinematography, I recommend:

Barry Lyndon (1975), a Stanley Kubrick film best known for painterly cinematography, often shot under natural candle light and reminiscent of the Northern Renaissance;

 The Third Man (1949).  A film noir classic, directed by Carol Reed and written by Graham Greene, this film is noted for extreme camera angles, tilted compositions, and long shadows that invoke a sense of menace and intrigue.

These aforementioned movies employ great cinematography but are not about photography. My focus here is not on visualizations that “throw nerves in patterns on a screen,” but on the drama itself, specifically the relationships and tensions between photographers and their subjects, as in these films:

Blowup (1966). Set in 1960s London, this Antonioni film is a study in ennui and disconnectedness against a tableaux of modern pop culture.  Other great films narrated from a photographer viewpoint include: Apocalypse Now (1979), Salvador (1986), The Killing Fields (1984), and Rear Window (1954).

For this post, I have chosen Fur (2006), subtitled “An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus,” directed by Steven Shainberg. As the subtitle suggests, “An Imaginary Portrait” is a pseudo-biography, a work of fiction drawn from the life of Diane Arbus but not necessarily a true biopic. Nevertheless, it is helpful to know a few details about her life and work to more fully appreciate the themes interwoven in this film.

Born Diane Nemerov on March 14, 1923, she is the daughter of David and Gertrude Nemerov of New York City, who were the proprietors of Russek’s, a Fifth Avenue retail store specializing in high fashion furs. Her older brother would later become the acclaimed poet, Howard Nemerov, winner of the Pulitzer prize for poetry and Poet Laureate of the United States.

In 1941 at age 18, Diane married Allan Arbus who learned photography during a stint in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Together, they started a commercial photography business called “Diane and Allan Arbus” with Diane serving as Art Director and Allan behind the camera. Their first bread-and-butter client was Russek’s, the retail store owned and operated by her parents. Over the years, their work appeared in such magazines as Glamour, Seventeen, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar.

Diane attended the New School for Social Research and studied photography under Berenice Abbott and Lisette Model, the latter having the most dominant influence on her style and technique. In 1956, she quit the commercial photography business to strike out on her own. Here are some of her most iconic images:

Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, NYC (1962).  This photo prompted Norman Mailer to say in 1971: "Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child."  A print of this photo sold at auction in 2005 for $408,000.

Teenage Couple on Hudson Street, NYC (1963).

Tattooed Man at a Carnival in Maryland (1970).

Identical Twins, Roselle Park NJ (1967).  In his film, The Shining, Stanley Kubrick frames an identical pose, mimicking this composition.  A print sold at auction in 2004. Price: $478,000.

A Family on their Lawn One Sunday in Westchester, NY (1968).  In 2008, a print sold at auction for $553,000.

Russian Midget Friends in a Living Room on 100th Street, NYC (1963)

A Jewish Giant at Home with his Parents in the Bronx, NY (1970), where the parents reverse roles and appear as dwarfs in stark contrast to their oversized son.  A print sold at auction in 2007.  Price: $421,000. 

A Very Young Baby, NYC (1968).  First appearing in Harper’s Bazaar, it is a portrait of Gloria Vanderbilt’s infant son, Anderson Cooper, now known as CNN’s ubiquitous news anchor.

Diane Arbus died on June 26, 1971, a suicide at age 48, thus joining the ranks of other brilliant, unconventional, and tragic artists such as Sylvia Plath and Janis Joplin. She is survived by two daughters, Doon (a writer) and Amy (a photographer).  What became of Allan, her former husband?

After their separation and divorce, he dissolved their commercial photography business and turned to acting - landing roles in such films as W.C. Fields and Me (1976) and the Omen trilogy. He is best known for television roles in M*A*S*H, Law & Order, LA Law, and Matlock, among others.

One ironic footnote: Allan’s acting career took off after landing the lead role in the cult film, Greaser's Palace, where the character played by Allan kills the character played by Robert Downey, Jr, who would later star in Fur.

Diane Arbus has been called the chronicler of:

“deviant and marginal people, of dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists, and circus performers, of people who appear ugly or surreal, the photographer of freaks.”

The critic Susan Sontag wrote of her work, “In photographing dwarfs, you don’t get majesty and beauty. You get dwarfs.” Later critics criticized Sontag for “shallowness” and raised important aesthetic and moral concerns, namely:

Do accidents of birth or circumstance of so-called “marginal people” render them unworthy as human beings … and therefore unworthy as subjects of art?

If we sentimentalize so-called freaks or present more sanitized images of them, would these portraits be considered honest?  Or would we be accused of misrepresentation, of falsifying the loneliness of spirit felt by social outcasts, thus robbing them of a fundamental truth - their authenticity and humanity?

Often, our greatest artists break with convention and break the rules to extend our vision, even when we don’t like what we see. Over time, the legacy of Diane Arbus has grown as later critics have offered these reassessments:

“An extraordinary ethical conviction” (Max Kozloff, 1967)

“Altered the terms of the art” (Hilton Kramer, 1972)

“Filled with life and energy” (Barbara O’Brien, 2004)

Acquaintances and former subjects of her photography have come forward with these anecdotes:

“I have it in my bedroom, I think it’s great.” (Anderson Cooper, 2005)

“She captured the loneliness of everyone … I think that's how she felt about herself. She hoped that by wallowing in that feeling, through photography, she could transcend herself" (Colin Wood, the former child with the toy hand grenade, reminiscing at age 50).

"That's their 401(k).” (Bob Wade, father of the Roselle Park Twins, who saved the original complementary print sent to the Wade family by Diane Arbus).

Initially, audiences were no more predisposed to the film than they were to the works of Diane Arbus. The film opened in 2006 to poor reviews:

A Visual Chronicler of Humanity's Underbelly, Draped in a Pelt of Perversity

(New York Times, Nov 10, 2006)

Produced on a budget of $16.8 million, the film grossed less than $3M at the box office. However, just as the stock of Diane Arbus, the artist, has risen in posterity on the Dow-Jones of critical acclaim, so too have retrospectives of Shainberg’s movie. This review says it best:

“Anyone can read a book about the real life Arbus; but how on earth is that enriching the cinematic medium? (…) This film takes us inside [her] world and gives us a beautifully told and imaginative back-story that blends elements of real-life fact with references to Gothic literature, fairy stories, history and the subjective power of the art itself. The creative spirit of this film is exactly in tune with Arbus's creative vision” (International Movie Database, 2008).

A few words on the title of the film:  Here are a series of richly layered literary allusions that play off multiple meanings of the word 'fur':

• Russek’s, the Fifth Avenue department store owned by Diane’s parents who retailed high fashion furs;
• Hypertrichosis, a condition that causes excessive body hair, also known as Werewolf Syndrome;
• The character, Lionel Sweeney (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) is a social outcast afflicted with hypertrichosis.
• An homage to Beauty and the Beast (1946), a classic film by the legendary poet, playwright, artist and filmmaker, Jean Cocteau. Here is a short trailer:

Although generations apart in style and mode of story telling, Beauty and the Beast and Fur are variations of a Cinderella story. The beautiful maiden is rescued, not by a handsome prince, but by an ugly beast whose ugliness is the catalyst of a spiritual journey. Winning the maiden’s love breaks the curse and transforms the beast into a handsome prince. The influence of Jean Cocteau on Steven Shainberg, as told through the imaginary portrait of Diane Arbus, is about:

Learning to see beyond appearances.

What would Diane Arbus say about the underbelly of humanity shunned by bourgeois society and the guardians of conformity, of those who appear ugly or surreal, who will remain unknown and unseen unless she photographed them?  Here is Diane Arbus in her own words:

"There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats."

As the beast in Jean Cocteau’s film says with simple humility:

“I have a good heart … but I am a monster.”

In the works of Jean Cocteau, Diane Arbus, and Steven Shainberg, every person is an iteration of humanity, and every life represents a longing for affirmation, validation, and connectedness. It is a timeless theme explored by generations of artists.  So what does the movie, Fur, tell us about the relationships and tensions between the artist and the subject? Here are a few closing thoughts on photography as an art form:

“We photograph not only what we know, but also what we don’t know"

(Lisette Model).

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know"

(Diane Arbus).

“The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer"

(author unknown).

What more can your humble (O)CT(O)PUS add? You’ll just have to rent these films and experience them for yourself.

Mars needs women

It's an odd fact that, for some male astronauts like former Space Station resident Mike Barratt, spending 6 months without gravity produces changes in vision that often are irreversible. He went up nearsighted and needing glasses for distance and came down eagle eyed and needing reading glasses. His condition seems permanent. The phenomenon is under serious study at NASA which is concerned that the possibility of a long trip to Mars might just carry the risk of blindness. Just why it happens and whether or not it can be prevented may be, according to CNN.com, the determining question as to "whether he or any other astronaut ever journeys into deep space or sets foot on other worlds."

Prolonged weightlessness causes papilledema -- a swelling of the optic nerve for about half the male astronauts, some of whom recover and others, like Barratt do not. Women seem to be immune. Of course another question that doesn't seem to be addressed here is why we don't just hire more female astronauts? Sometimes we obsess so much about a puzzling matter that we neglect to look at obvious alternatives.

(insert Jim Nabors reference here)

There is, if you look at the middle of these United States, right at the bottom, a godforsaken oozing sore of a state known as Texas. It is not a good place to live - it's a black hole of humanity and common sense, and it's where televangelists and crooked politicians go to die.

I was born there. And I would rather be castrated with a hammer than ever go back.

But I'm not going to run down the entire state; I don't have that kind of time right now. I'm just going to focus on one unique example of the kind of venal bundles of manure in a suit infesting the Texas legislative offices. He's a member of the US House of Representatives from East Texas, and his name is Louie Gohmert.

It is quite possible that he is the second stupidest Aggie in the history of Texas (tied with Rick Perry), but he is so much more than that. This man is a particularly special kind of crazy - put him in a room with Michele Bachmann and a bonobo on meth, and it's a tough call to say who will come out looking like the sane one.

He is (it almost goes without saying) a full-on birther: he, in fact, co-sponsored what came to be known as the "birther bill" (HR 1503), to "require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of President to include with the committee's statement of organization a copy of the candidate's birth certificate..."

At one point, he became enthralled with "terror babies." You've heard of "anchor babies," where a pregnant illegal immigrant waits until her water breaks, then dashes across the border just in time to spew out her spawn, who then, under the 14th Amendment, is a American citizen. (It is, of course, a myth.)

Well, that paranoid fantasy wasn't bad-ass enough for our boy Louie! No, sirree Bob! He began openly coughing up the idea that terrorists were impregnating women, sending them to the US to have their "anchor babies," flying them back to wherever they came from, and then waiting twenty to thirty years to send them back as glassy-eyed kamikaze assassins who could gain easy entry into ANYWHERE and destroy ANYTHING!!! We're DOOOOOOMMMED!!!!

He successfully proved that he has less evidence for this than a UFO buff has of real illegal aliens by going on Anderson Cooper 360 and ranting incoherently.


But don't go thinking that's the worst conspiracy Louie can come up with. See, apparently, Obamacare, combined with our minor assistance in the Libya conflict, will inevitably lead to Obama ending up with a private army that only HE controls!! (cue sinister music)

"But then when you find out we're being sent to Libya to use our treasure and American lives there, maybe there's intention to so deplete the military that we're going to need that presidential reserve officer commissioned corps and non-commissioned corps that the president can call up on a moment's notice involuntarily, according to the Obamacare bill!"

And, of course, being a good Texas lawmaker, Louie isn't afraid to ignore that whole "separation of church and state" thing. The realization that California's Proposition 8 was unconstitutional made him a little cranky.

Said Gohmert: "The court, as I understand it today, struck down a law that said marriage is between a man and a woman. It's interesting that there are some courts in America where the judges have become so wise in their own eyes that they know better than nature or nature's God."

Gohmert then brought up the Supreme Courtjustices in Iowa who were ousted last year after a vicious campaign by anti-gay activists over their support for marriage equality:

"Nature seemed to like the idea of an egg and a sperm coming together because of pro-creation. Apparently [the judges] thought the sperm had far better use some other way biologically, combining it with something else. But the voters of Iowa came back and said you know what, if you're not smart enough to figure out actual plumbing...then perhaps we need new judges, and that's what they did."

(Youtube pulled the video from the original link, so I substituted one from ThinkProgress, where they also point out that Proposition 8 had nothing to do with procreation, because it didn’t even mention whether same-sex couples could raise children.)

So, that's our boy Gohmert. Not the brightest of all possible lawmakers, but certainly one of the more entertaining. But I think that Louie outdid himself this week.

See, Gohmert sits on the House Natural Resources Committee (because presumably all the members with functioning brain cells want to avoid that one), and his biggest interest this week? Making sure that Alaskan caribou get laid. Of course, to do that (and this, ladies and gentlemen, is the genius of Louie Gohmert), he needs to make sure that we spend more money on the Alaskan Pipeline.

It seems that Gohmert is also something of an expert on animal husbandry. Here's his theory: The caribou very much enjoy the warmth the pipeline radiates. "So when they want to go on a date, they invite each other to head over to the pipeline," he informed his colleagues. It's apparently the equivalent of being wined and dined. And that has resulted in a tenfold caribou population boom, he concluded.

"So my real concern now ...if oil stops running through the pipeline...do we need a study to see how adversely the caribou would be affected if that warm oil ever quit flowing?" he asked.

Because god only knows how they mated before there was a pipeline in Alaska.

People of America, I give you... Louis Buller Gohmert, Jr. Humanitarian, father, and caribou fucker.