We might be powerless.

The oil flowing out from the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico may be under such great pressure that we do not possess technology to stop the tragedy.  Chances are quite good we have no true sense of the dire nature of the situation.  The facts that have been ascertained, however, lead to a dark scenario.

We know that the blowout preventers did not work but we do not know why.  There are theories, though.  The Deepwater Horizon rig was floating on pontoons about 5000 feet above the floor of the Gulf.  When drillers struck an oil deposit, the bit was reported to be at about 18,000 feet, which is approximately three and a half miles beneath the platform.  Does science even know what kind of pressure can be encountered at that depth, under almost a mile of water and two and half miles of rock?

BP and Transocean, which owns the rig, has said there was a maximum working pressure of 20,000 PSI but the system was able to handle a kickback pressure from gasses of about 60,000 PSI.  The breakdown of the blowout preventers can be interpreted to mean the pressure coming up from the hole exceeded 60,000 PSI.  Generally, various mixtures of mud circulate up and down the drill pipe to act as lubricants and equalize pressures encountered at great depth, and this process was said to be working at the time of the accident.  Does this mean it’s possible, even likely, that the Deepwater Horizon encountered pressures current technology are not equipped to handle?

Although BP and Washington are trying very hard to convince the public that everything possible is being done to stem the flow of crude, there is seemingly little that might be accomplished.  5000 feet below the surface of the water with oil blasting out at tens of thousands of PSI, and wreckage from the giant rig scattered about, fixes are not easy to find.  The latest plan is for a special funnel to be placed over the spout, which will then force the flow into a pumping channel.  But how does a funnel get placed over the top of anything pushing at that kind of pressure?  Consider that story to be an unrealistic solution.

A well blowout in 1979 offers a bit of context; except the Deepwater Horizon horror show is already about to transcend what happened in the Bay of Campeche off the coast of Mexico.  The Ixtoc 1 rig blew and began to spew crude that flowed uninterrupted for nine months.  Before the well was capped, 3,000,000 barrels of crude had drifted north to Texas and the northern coast of Mexico.  The endangered Kemps-Ridley turtle, which nests along the border beaches, had to be airlifted to safety and has only begun in recent years to recover in population.

The Ixtoc disaster, however, is spit in the ocean compared to the potential damage of the British Petroleum apocalypse.  If estimates are correct and the current blowout is putting 200,000 gallons or 5000 barrels of crude per day into the waters of the Gulf.  Ixtoc’s blowout was not capped until two relief wells were drilled and completed at the end of those nine months, and regardless of optimistic scenarios from the federal government or BP, relieving the pressure on the current flow is probably the only way to stop the polluting release of oil. The only way to relieve that pressure is with additional wells. No one is going to honestly say how much time is needed to drill such wells but consider the scope of environmental damage we are confronting if it requires at least as long as Ixtoc?  Nine months of 5000 barrels of crude per day ought to turn the Gulf of Mexico into a lifeless spill pond and set toxins on currents that will carry them to deadly business around the globe. And there is no way to know with any certainty if nine months will be sufficient time for capping.

Nor are there guarantees relief wells are the fix. What do we do, in that case?  Humans cannot function at 5000 feet of ocean depth and the mitigation efforts currently are being handled by robotic remotes.  What is left to us as a solution other than an explosive device, which is often what is deployed during above ground blowouts.  Given the pressures reported and the amount of flow, we may need a bunker-buster nuke to be placed over the wellhead.  We can then begin to talk about the water pressures caused by burst at detonation and residual radiation.  Is that a better or worse situation?  Certainly, aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico is doomed unless there is a reclusive genius to step forward and save us from our great failure.

The attorney general of Texas, Greg Abbot, informed reporters that it appears Texas will escape harm.  Abbot’s visionary powers must exceed his legal skills since there is no way to know when and even if the well will ever be capped.  In fact, if there is no plug placed in the hole, it is not inconceivable that no part of the planet’s oceans will escape harm.  According to the non-profit, non-partisan, Air and Waste Management Association, a quart of crude oil will make 150,000 gallons of water toxic to aquatic life.  BP, which has been marketing itself as an energy company “beyond petroleum,” is setting loose upon the planet what is quickly turning into humankind’s worst environmental disaster.

Tone-deaf politicians, especially from Texas, are trying to manage public fears, which is exactly what the state’s former governor attempted in 1979.  Bill Clements, who was one of the founders of SEDCO and owned the Ixtoc platform, originally described concerns as “much ado about nothing.”  As oil moved toward the pristine beaches of the Padre Island National Seashore, his advice was to “pray for a hurricane.”  I confronted Clements on his lack of concern and he stuck his finger in my chest and told me the state was not hurt.  Thirty years later the tar balls still roll in with shifts of tide and wind and oil was everywhere on the beach for years.

Anyone who thinks this tragedy is not going to result in massive kills of marine life is either blind, ignorant, or in denial.  The one scenario that we all refuse to confront is the possibility that it is beyond our capabilities to stop this undersea blast of oil.  If that is the case, the flow continues until the pressure eases, which might be years.  How much ecological injury will that cause our planet?

Nobody knows.

There are many people hoping the GOP chooses Sarah Palin to run against President Obama and we can finally get a definitive answer to this nagging question of national self-immolation.  I do not believe we will be able to make that choice.  The electorate tends to dance with radicals and buy them drinks but generally lets them go home alone to have more scary dreams. Well, here is another frightening notion to all y’all from your friends down here in Texas: President Rick Perry.

Perry painted the state an even brighter red, in part, because his democratic opponent, former Houston Mayor Bill White, suffered from the heartbreak of ineffectuality.  Nothing he tried inspired and his strongest messages were, “I’m not Rick Perry,” and “Rick Perry has been governor long enough.”  Coyote-killer Rick, however, was taking credit for the state’s geography and climate, which have been essential to job and business growth.  Regardless of what the governor argues, no one is coming here as a result of his or his party’s policies.  Property taxes are the worst in the country and the schools that are funded with that money are overwhelmingly mediocre, which has led to a scandalous charter school program.  Roads are falling apart, state parks are suffering decaying infrastructure, our air is the dirtiest in the country, mass transit is resisted by leadership, and we are ranked 48th or 49th in every government consideration other than raising up unqualified presidential candidates.

Perry might be a little light in his Lucchese’s but he has shown a great facility for ignoring standards and even the law without enduring penalty.  On the same day his reelection filled the column inches and the web site of the Austin paper, there was also a report that the governor was refusing to release a copy of a $4.5 million contract with the state.  The money went to a startup technology company founded by one of Perry’s major donors.  The American Statesman filed a Freedom of Information request but Perry’s office said no and ignored the fact that those millions are tax dollars and the manner in which they are spent is subject to public disclosure.  How money is used and where it comes from makes the kid from Paint Rock a bit nervous, unless, of course, he is the beneficiary.  He has become inexplicably wealthy during his term while earning less than $200,000 annually.

Conversely, he has turned down hundreds of millions in education dollars from the federal government that would have provided improvements to Texas schools because he claimed there were “strings attached.”  There were: good grades.

The red run of Election Day does more good for Perry’s opaque ambition than it does Sarah Palin’s.  As he brags about having the best job in America, the governor begins a national tour for his slim book about being fed up with the feds.  Answers to softball questions will saturate the airwaves from friendly media over the next few weeks and there will be talk of his Texas mandate and it how it compares to the whopping win George W. Bush earned in his race against former Texas Land Commissioner Garry Mauro.  The pretext to begin circulating Perry’s name for a presidential run will be easily established and the Tea Partiers that he energized with his irresponsible talk of secession will slowly turn pragmatic and confront the question of who can win in 2012.

Palin may not have been the personality who sent those Tea Partiers to the polls but she loves them and they have affection for her.  That attraction, however, cannot be consummated because there will never be enough Tea Partiers to elect a president. A compromise is inevitable since the GOP cannot field an electable candidate without energizing the party’s Diaspora, which has tipped way right.  What’s a bad speller to do?  Palin will do well in several early primary states and if the GOP wants to have any chance against President Obama it will have to engineer a ticket.

No matter what either party suggests, American presidential politics is more about viscera than intellect and issues.  Uncertain voters tend to make decisions based upon charisma and aesthetics.  Few people trust political ads and when they are busy trying to pay down credit card debt or keep the mortgage banker at bay they do not have time to read party platforms or study issues on candidate web pages.  Party activists are the only people paying attention to campaigns until the last few weeks.  Which leads us back to Rick Perry.

The GOP is already spending time trying to find a prospect to get Sarah to act a bit more politically demure.  Their options are limited.  Haley Barbour, the well-wired governor of Mississippi (State motto: Thank god for Texas) has the round face and weary drawl of an old school southern pol.  As connected as he is to governors’ mansions and DC insiders, he would have a tough task against Obama if for no other reason than aesthetics.  Mitt Romney is arguably too polished and too Mormon.  Whether they will acknowledge it or not there are millions of Christians in the US that still view Mormonism as a cult and it hurts Romney’s chances.  (The John Kennedy and first Catholic president analogy is not relevant.) Jeb Bush will not be able to help himself and will pursue the White House because he wants to prove he is the “smart one” in his family but there are no more than two dozen voters that want to see another Bush or Clinton on a national ticket.  New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will likely enter the picture as an independent and burn enough money to make E-Bay’s big bucks Meg Whitman look fiscally prudent but he will not travel well in the south; except for Florida.

The compromise ticket will be Perry and Palin.  They will make a lovely camera-ready couple from the union’s two biggest states.  (The Hair Pair?) Team Tea Party has fondness for both of them and the mainstream party machine can convince donors that Sarah will never get her hands on the nuclear launch codes but that she is necessary to elect the ticket.  The only complication is Karl Rove’s role.  He is still ginning up cash and running a big fund-raising operation and he has offended Palin and the Tea Party.  Karl, who does not seem to be able to keep friends, led Perry’s campaign when he won his first statewide office in Texas but there has been an alienation of affection.  Rove supported Sen. Kay Hutchison in her race for governor against Perry in the Republican primary.  Karl will need to be taught to heel but that should not be a problem since he has proven in the past that victory and money are more important than any principle.

So, there you go, America; since you are too busy to get informed we will just turn this into American Idol or maybe Dancing with the Stars.  Nothing to read.  Just use your cell phone or your remote to vote.  Have fun!!!

And we will go ahead and start grooming you another goofball down here in Texas.

From the Dogon Tribal villages along the Great Bend of the Niger River, to the glassy towers and glamorous lives of the American Southwest, “In the Time of Man” is a story of people confronting both the history and the fate of humanity. A reporter and two scientists are determined to prove that another intelligence has been operating on planet Earth since the beginning of mankind’s evolution. Humans have received external help to make it into the new millenium and there are clues there is more intervention underway as a result of a failure to manage the world’s resources. Cattle are being mysteriously mutilated, people are growing inexplicably ill, and researchers trying to understand these phenomena are being threatened by a government that might just be facilitating a culling of the planet’s population. Telling the truth is dangerous and love and sex can be fatal. But who is responsible for the present plagues of our world and how can they be stopped? “In the Time of Man” explores the facts behind the theory that ancient aliens have guided humanity to its current station and that they are still engaged in determining our destiny. The essential question asked by this story is what will we know before we meet our fate? A Nobel Laureate, a decorated female TV news correspondent, and a renegade researcher all race to discover the truth and share it with the world before they are silenced, or no one will ever know what happened “In the Time of Man.”

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The most powerful individual in the United States may not be George W. Bush. It is probably Karl Rove, the President’s brilliant advisor. Who is this man and how did he acquire so much power? Having watched in awe for over fifteen years as they reported on the rise of Karl Rove, Moore and Slater expose the brutal and sometimes morally questionable, but invariably effective ways in which Karl Rove?and America’s political system—actually operate.

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In The Architect, James Moore and Wayne Slater, the bestselling authors of Bush’s Brain, return with an even more penetrating examination of Rove, his sweeping agenda, and the price he may have to pay for his audacity. Drawing on their decades-long study of Rove, they provide a rarely seen view of the politics of absolute power in Washington—how it is acquired, expanded, and turned to startling ends. Specifically, they unveil how Rove:

• Used lobbyist Jack Abramoff as a cat’s-paw to manage unruly legislators

• Energetically led the antigay marriage movement while protecting a family secret that made his stance bizarrely cynical

• Turned Christian churches into a gigantic vote delivery system, despite privately admitting to being a nonbeliever

• Repeatedly leaked information to harm political opponents, making him the man investigators most wanted to talk to when they began probing the Plame affair

• Was intimately involved in an international disinformation scheme to lead America to war

The Architect is an eye-opening and frequently shocking report on the maneuverings of a brilliant but morally ambiguous political strategist, and the first-ever in-depth look at a political operative striving to absolutely control the future—even if he risks losing everything.

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Justin Schott, a former CIA operative and now president of his own art recovery company has been asked by the government to investigate a rumor that a terrorist group is trying to steal an unknown collection of great masterpieces to finance a nuclear weapon. To complicate matters, a drug cartel is also reportedly trying to acquire the same collection. Dr. Colleen Pendleton, an expert in post Renaissance art joins Justin and together they tract the collection from Herman Goering’s war time horde of stolen art to modern day Germany. Along the way they end up battling ruthless men who will stop at nothing to achieve their aims. The chase spans four continents and six countries and has a surprise ending that will leave you wondering, could this actually happen?

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A news-breaking exposé of the Bush administration’s rush to war, from the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Bush’s Brain.

In this exclusive behind-the-scenes account, veteran journalist James Moore reveals how the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was a key goal of the Bush administration from the very beginning-and a critical component of the president’s reelection strategy. Drawing on high-level sources inside the administration and the military, Moore weaves together a multifaceted narrative that probes the political underpinnings of the administration’s push for an Iraq war, exposes efforts during the war (and after) to manipulate perceptions of U.S. military success, and contrasts it all to the ultimate price paid by soldiers duped into believing they were fighting for a just cause, not for political gain.

Moore takes us inside strategy meetings at the White House and the Pentagon, revealing the political calculus behind critical military decisions. He examines the administration’s unprecedented efforts to control an d withhold information, including in-depth discussions with Joseph C. Wilson, husband of Valerie Plame, the CIA operative allegedly exposed by Karl Rove. Moore also gives us an uncensored view of combat in Iraq, reporting opinions of a senior Air Force source and troops on the ground; he shows how the war’s first American casualty actually died, and reveals what really happened to Jessica Lynch’s unit.

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James Moore on The Ed Show.

John Lawrence remembers the porcelain birds shattering as the sheriff’s officer shoved him down on the couch. They had been a gift from his mother. An anonymous caller, who had told cops there was a screaming man with a gun in the building, had summoned the lawmen to Lawrence’s apartment. When the Harris County (Houston) deputies entered, they claimed to have seen two men having sex. In 1998, gay sex in Texas was against the law.

“I was totally dumbfounded,” Lawrence said later.

He and his partner, Tyron Garner, were arrested, handcuffed, and driven to jail in their underwear. They were charged with a Class C misdemeanor under the 1973 Texas Homosexual Conduct Law and spent the night in jail. Yes, in the late 60s and early 70s, during the era of free love when sex was a party favor and nobody paid any attention to what somebody might be doing with somebody else, Texans were busy passing a law making it illegal to have gay sex.

Which was kind of hard to enforce.

But Lawrence and Garner had been set up for arrest by a mutual friend, Robert Eubanks, who had helped them move furniture that day into Lawrence’ apartment. They had spent the evening drinking margaritas before they returned to Lawrence’ apartment and made plans for transporting the old furniture into Eubanks’ place the next morning. Garner and Eubanks ended up in an argument and Eubanks excused himself to get a soda in a fit of jealousy. Instead, he found a pay phone and described a frantic scene involving a gun in Lawrence’ apartment, which was not true. (Eubanks later spent 30 days in jail for making false claims to the police.)

Lawrence and Garner, however, decided to fight. They pled “no contest,” paid a $200 fine, and then began filing appeals. Texas appellate courts upheld their convictions but their legal team managed to get the case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. Eventually, the high court, by a vote of 6-3, overturned the Texas sodomy law, which it had previously upheld in 1986. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that gay men and lesbians were “entitled to respect for their private lives” and that the previous interpretation of the law “demeans the lives of homosexual persons.” The majority opinion also argued that the state “could not control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.” As of the court’s decision on June 26, 2003, gay sex became legal in Texas.

And that has kept Rick Perry very, very busy.

The problem with letting homosexuals have sex with each other is that it might turn into an emotional attachment and then if they fall in love they may want to marry. Two homosexuals united in marriage, as Rick Perry tells everyone, is a threat to the institution of heterosexual marriage. No one is quite certain how this might happen but there are some big Texas thinkers working on the connections. The state was one of only four that banned same-sex sodomy and tried to outlaw it for heterosexuals. Maybe acting like a homosexual during heterosexual intercourse leads to gay sodomy, which turns out to be nice and becomes love and then gay marriage? If that sounds illogical, then you’ve never lived in Texas where it is abundantly clear to conservatives that every time homosexuals hold hands another crack forms in the foundation of traditional marriage.

In its zealotry to stop anal sex, the Texas legislature overlooked bestiality, sex between (kind of) humans and animals. One of the state’s U.S. Senators, John Cornyn, who must not have been busy with the Wall Street bailout or Afghanistan, had a moment of sudden clarity when he realized the lack of a ban on bestiality combined with the possibility of gay marriage being legalized created scary scenarios. The Republican Cornyn had written a speech about the dangers of gay marriage, which he was to give to the conservative Heritage Foundation. Either he did not look at what his ghostwriter had penned or the senator had second thoughts but he dropped from spoken remarks a line that made it into the media. A copy of the speech had already been distributed and the Associated Press reported the unused text.

“It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right. Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of a man and a box turtle is on the same legal footing as a man and a wife.”

Imagine a world where human and box turtle hybrids get squished trying to cross the road. There is also the bitter divorce fight during property settlement of who gets to keep the aquarium and who gets custody of any hatchlings or recently laid eggs. In a culture where Hillbilly Handfishin’ thrives on cable TV, it is not hard to envision John Cornyn’s grim tomorrow fueled by box turtle sexual mania. The senator may have saved us from our latent shell fetishes.

But he didn’t help Rick Perry get any sleep at night.

The governor of Texas got active in the state’s legislature and almost exactly two years after the U.S. Supreme Court had overruled the ban on gay sex, Perry signed a measure that allowed voters to change the Texas constitution to permanently ban marriage by homosexuals. Perry was so pleased that lawmakers were putting the constitutional amendment in front of the public that he held a signing ceremony for the referendum. Nobody noticed, though, that there was no place on the document for the governor’s signature; it wasn’t required. The two-thirds majority of the legislature, which is needed for a constitutional amendment, meant the governor’s legal authorization was not necessary for the gay marriage ban to be included on that year’s November ballot.

But by god he was going to have a signing ceremony.

Ignoring a fundamental tenet of the U.S. Constitution about keeping church and state separate, Perry’s campaign office chose an evangelical school in Fort Worth to host the event. An email was sent out urging “Christian friends” to come to the Calvary Christian Academy. “We really need for you to help us turn out a very large crowd. We may also film part of this to be used later for TV.” This was the first time Rick Perry had signed any legislation at a religious institution; he had stepped over a border that disappeared behind him so far he can no longer even remember its relevance. The governor was going to a church on Sunday to formalize state law.

The New York Times quoted Rev. Robin Lovin, a Southern Methodist University professor and a Methodist minister, who said, “Signing a bill into law at a church is a pretty clear sign that the church is at the service of the state or the state is at the service of the church. Either way, we’ve crossed an important line that has a long history in both politics and theology.” The Perry campaign’s email didn’t even bother to pretend this was anything more than a Christians for Perry rally, though. “We want to completely fill this location with pro-family Christian friends who can celebrate with us.”

The ceremony was moved from the church sanctuary to the academy’s gymnasium in an attempt to appease critics. There were about 100 protestors on the street but more than a thousand adoring Perryites cheered the governor as he signed the constitutional amendment on gay marriage and a new law requiring women under 18 to get the consent of their parents before having an abortion. Previously, they had only needed to provide notice.

“We may be on the grounds of a Christian church,” Perry told his congregation. “But we all believe in standing up for the unborn.”

Rick Perry has been very good at protecting the unborn. It’s the living he can’t be bothered with. The poor. Elderly. Unhealthy. Uneducated. Unemployed. Gay. Lesbian. Teachers. Texas is last among all states in almost every possible category of social services and has reduced public help as the economy has worsened. But the governor’s been busy with more important issues. Nothing matters if he can’t keep homosexuals from getting married. Everything will fall apart when that happens.

When the Texas Republican Party met in 2010 to affirm Rick Perry as its candidate for governor, the policy platform indicated he had not gone far enough in his commitment to fight the rising scourge of legalized homosexual happiness. Outlawing gay marriage wasn’t enough; the Texas GOP wanted it criminalized. The platform called for “legislation to make it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple and for any civil official to perform a marriage ceremony for such.” Party members wanted to prevent the presentation of the homosexual “alternative lifestyle” in public education and stop family from being redefined to include gay couples. Perry had inspired them to also seek a ban on strip clubs and sexually oriented businesses as well as eliminating all pornography. They are an ambitious organization.

Being over-zealous in the public about gay marriage always prompts suspicions. There are enough examples of exposed hypocrites to support a separate book on the topic. During the administration of George W. Bush, Ken Mehlman, who was the Republican National Committee chairman for several years, was also a top political operative for the president’s campaigns. Mehlman led the strategy laid out by Karl Rove to oppose gay rights in order to increase conservative vote turnout for the GOP. He refused to answer questions about his sexual orientation but after leaving public life acknowledged that he was gay. Congressman Ed Schrock, a Republican from Virginia, was a sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment to constitutionally ban gay marriage and had complained about having to share showers in the military with gay men under the “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” policy. Schrock resigned from congress when he was recorded soliciting gay sex from a male escort agency in Washington. Republican U.S. Senator Larry Craig, who wanted to give states even more rights to prevent gay marriage and voted against including the term “sexual orientation” in a hate crimes bill, resigned after he was caught soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom. Chairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign in Florida, State Representative Bob Allen, offered an undercover cop $20 if he could perform fellatio on the officer. Allen had previously signed onto then Governor Jeb Bush’s Friend of the Court filing to stop adoptions of children by gay couples in Florida. A former national chairman of the Young Republicans, Glenn Murphy, Jr., was accused of two sexual acts where two different drunken young men awoke after passing out and found Murphy performing what is best described as mouth to penis resuscitation. There is also, of course, Ted Haggard, a Colorado minister who met regularly with President George W. Bush to offer spiritual guidance. Haggard preached that homosexuality was an abomination and he fought vociferously against gay rights, until a male escort and masseuse convinced the media he had been having sex and doing methamphetamine with Haggard for three years. Haggard finally admitted his sins.

Self-loathing homosexuals always seem to have the loudest voices in the anti-gay rights choir. Well, now, wait a minute. That doesn’t mean that anyone who is trying to stop same sex couples from getting married has unsettled sexual orientation questions of his or her own, does it? But the odds are probably higher that they’ve had a few dreams and urges they can’t figure out, which makes them very mad since they’ve been told for so long that’s naughty, naughty, naughty, and unnatural.

You see where this is going?

This is the point in the story where the editor of a big city newspaper or TV station gets all huffy and says, “We don’t report on gossip, whispers, and rumors.” As a policy for journalists, this is a good standard. An angry, ill-formed individual with revenge in mind and a lot of good contacts could destroy a person’s reputation just by spreading untruths. It happens in politics without the power of the media’s assistance. Karl Rove did it to John McCain in South Carolina in the 2000 presidential primary. He organized a whisper campaign that suggested McCain had spent so much time in solitary confinement in Vietnam that he was mentally unstable, and that he had a black child out of wedlock. Rove was also responsible for a rumor that spread through East Texas that the late Texas Governor Ann Richards was gay, which probably helped Bush defeat her in their election contest. Rumors can kill.

That’s why Rick Perry spoke publicly about his rumor problem.

In 2004, there was a story about Perry’s personal life circulating in the Texas capitol and there was no one in politics, government, or journalism that had not heard it in some version. The details were consistent, regardless of who was doing the retelling, and it began to almost transform from mythology to fact. The version of the yarn that most Austinites had heard involved Perry’s wife Anita coming home to the governor’s mansion and finding her husband in flagrante with another man. She supposedly ordered up a moving van the next day and was said to be returning to her hometown of Haskell to file divorce papers. Not a scintilla of proof of any of details, however, has ever been provided.

Instead of just being whispered about as gossip among political professionals, the story became a part of the public discourse. The governor woke up one morning to a small group of protestors outside the mansion. They were carrying signs that said, among other things, “It’s okay to be gay, guv,” and “Come out. We’ll support you.” Later that evening at a rally in Houston with former presidential candidate John Edwards, the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party tried to turn the Perry apocrypha into a political advantage. Charles Soechting was on stage killing time until Edwards arrived and he alluded to the unsubstantiated stories of Perry’s sexual orientation.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Soechting said. “I ask you to stay tuned. There’s a lot of things happening in Texas. For those of you that know, there’s a lot of stuff happening at the state capitol. And you’re going to be excited when you learn more and more about it. So I wish I could tell you more, but I think if you’ve got someone sitting next to you knows what’s going on, just get them to whisper it to you.”

A number of political websites, including the The Burnt Orange Report, popular among progressive Texas Democrats, had already written about Perry’s alleged personal problems. The story had, in fact, been dancing across the Internet for several weeks when Soechting let it fly to the Houston crowd. “How many of you all know? Raise your hands up. That’s right. They had a rally up there in support of the governor today. Some of his friends said, ‘Come out, Rick, and we’ll support you.’ Anyway, it’s a good time for us,” (Actually, it was not such a good time for John Edwards, whose personal life unraveled in subsequent years as he tried to help Democrats).

Gay jokes tend to attach to handsome well-dressed men in public life. Rick Perry has to understand how Tom Cruise feels when he watches Family Guy. The notion has dogged the Texas governor like a rabid coyote as he rose to political prominence. Part of it is his fault. During his campaign for Agriculture Commissioner he affected the pose of the Marlboro man on election posters, which drew equally on the iconography of the western cowboy myth and The Village People. He was also a cheerleader in college at Texas A and M University. Although A and M is a Tier One research institution and not a military academy, a large portion of the student body joins the Corps of Cadets and dresses up in sleek leather boots and form fitting uniforms. Rick Perry was captain of the Fighting Texas Aggie Yell Leaders when he was in college. How is it that tough and macho Texas has had two former cheerleaders (yell leader, whatever) as governors in the modern era? Bush cheered at Andover prep school.

A few Texas political reporters had called the governor’s office to ask if he wanted to comment on what everyone knew was being discussed in the public. The offer was politely declined but the more Rick Perry contemplated how his reputation was being harmed, the more difficult it became for him to remain quiet. His son Griffin had heard the rumors while attending Vanderbilt University and his daughter Sydney had been forced to confront them while at her high school in Austin. Eventually, the governor had a staffer call the Austin American-Statesman’s Pulitzer-winning reporter Ken Herman, who had been covering Texas politics since the late 70s and had been assigned to the White House during the George W. Bush administration.

The story Herman published made no substantive mention of the gay aspects of the story beyond quoting a protestor’s sign outside of the mansion. The reporter concentrated instead on the possibility of divorce from first lady Anita Perry. The governor told the newspaper that he thought he was the victim of an organized smear campaign by political opponents making use of the Internet to spread baseless information.

“It is a cancer on the political process that is deadly,” Perry said. “They [rumors] are not correct in any shape, form or fashion. These are irresponsible. They’re salacious. They’re hurtful to my family.”

Perry also avoided talking about the gay part of the attack on his reputation but he suggested it was clearly an organized effort to destroy him. “I don’t think a rumor can just get to critical mass by itself,” he said. “I think you have to have a well-thought-out, organized effort to disseminate that kind of information and keep it going day after day after day after day.” That’s not necessarily true, of course. All it really takes is cheap drinks at happy hour and the urge to gossip. Things can go viral on and off of the net.

Perry had already dealt with the allegations of a pending divorce during an appearance in San Antonio. A reporter for KSAT-TV caught up to him after a speech and asked the governor about the status of his marriage as the camera was recording.

“I also understand that there are rumors about your wife and whether there is talk of separation, talk of divorce. Do you have any comment on that?” the TV reporter asked.

Perry responded that the story was absolutely and totally false and when he left the room his press secretary jumped all over the reporter for asking an irresponsible question. The TV station never aired the exchange but the matter had become viable enough that the governor decided to contact the Austin newspaper, executing a tactic that probably made him the first politician in American electoral history to ask a reporter to interview him and write a story about how he is not gay. The governor did use the space in the newspaper article to accuse Democrat Soechting of crossing the line of “everything decent” by publicly repeating the rumor. Soechting told reporter Herman, “What crosses the line of everything decent is the utter hypocrisy of Rick Perry injecting his mean-spirited politics into everyone else’s personal life while insisting his own personal life is off-limits.”

In this instance, Perry is also a victim of a new process in journalism that has only manifested itself with the maturation of the Internet as an information source. Blogs, which tend to often be little more than websites where people express opinions and share gossip, are not held to normal standards of proof and corroboration. A blogger has a right to say whatever they want on their page just as a private individual can say what they choose in personal conversations. Web surfers, though, can discover the blog, and the information can be passed off as accurate. Bigger, more heavily trafficked websites can post the story and increase their number of visitors and, eventually, mainstream journalists decide they are freed to write about a specific rumor as a kind of cultural phenomenon. The target of the original unfounded piece of spurious information is then cornered into responding and the story is finally legitimized in a way that was never possible before the Internet.

Except Rick Perry did this one to himself by talking to the newspaper.

Tales of sexual indiscretion involving Rick Perry surfaced almost as soon as he showed up in the Texas legislature all shiny and pretty and new. If even one of them is true, no one has ever spoken convincingly in public about the experience. Nonetheless, as the Texas governor launched his presidential campaign the population of Austin increased with numerous national reporters chasing down former staffers and friends and possible lovers of Perry to break the story of his sexual profligacy. They may very well end up as annoyed by the dearth of information as the late Texas Governor Ann Richards, who grew tired of hearing people repeat Perryphernalia regarding both sexes.

“Oh come on, y’all,” she said. “He can’t be fuckin’ all the girls and all the boys.”

Robert Morrow disagrees. Morrow is an Austin libertarian trafficker of unsubstantiated allegations and he is convinced Rick Perry has special sexual capacities for men and women. He spent theearly months of the governor’s presidential campaign zapping out emails to journalists in the mainstream and beyond. He cites nameless sources he claims are strippers who are his friends and he insists have had sex and drugs with Rick Perry. No names are ever given, though. A three-time delegate to the Texas Republican Party State Convention, Morrow’s emails contain salacious, unproven allegations regarding Perry.

“Recently a local Austin reporter was telling me that they had heard about Rick Perry and the strippers in 2006,” he wrote in one of his more restrained dispatches. “But they never could nail it down. Well, consider it confirmed. Additionally, there are many people in Austin who are convinced that the man is a homosexual or has had gay affairs in the past. I have never met a man who has had sex with Rick Perry, but I have met women who have had direct dealings with Adulterer (sic) Rick Perry and his enabling entourage. Perry has most definitely been living a double life.”

The 47-year-old Morrow is not your standard crackpot. He is a millionaire Princeton graduate who also holds an MBA from the University of Texas. Nonetheless, he has been a guest on the radio show of Alex Jones, a man who sometimes appears to believe day and night are conspiracies cooked up by the sun and earth. Morrow, like Jones, appears to believe President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary had opponents murdered in Arkansas, George H. W. Bush was a cocaine smuggler, and in general, nobody is up to no good, especially Rick Perry, who Morrow says is sitting on a “slut fueled tank of nitroglycerin” that will destroy his image.

Morrow attracted a lot of national attention when he ran an ad in the Austin Chronicle, which asked in large black letters, “Have you ever had sex with Rick Perry?” He was hoping to make contact with “strippers, escorts, or “young hotties” and help them publicize their encounters with the Texas governor. Morrow’s ad was presented as an effort by an organization he founded and called CASH: The Committee Against Sexual Hypocrisy.”

The governor’s office finally decided it was unable to ignore Morrow and once again his staff reached out to Ken Herman of the Austin American Statesman. Perry chief of staff Ray Sullivan sent the reporter an email that Herman included in his story about Morrow.

“Morrow’s allegations are more false rumors, with a different story line,” Sullivan wrote. “The fact is that decades of intense media scrutiny, political opposition research and more than $100 million in attack ads have proven nothing other than Perry’s solid and stable family, financial and political life. Unfortunately, the current political environment and exponentially larger number of media/information outlets allow crackpot conspiracy theorists like Mr. Morrow to run amok in cyberspace and in some cases traditional media outlets.”

The Perry stories have been around almost as long as he has been in Austin. None has ever been confirmed and there have been some fairly capable Texas journalists examining the accusations for more than two decades. There is, of course, more at stake in a presidential election and the fight for power is boundlessly fierce. Perry’s presidential campaign told Politico it is prepared to address the sexual stories if they are used as a tactic. There should be little problem for Perry’s team to shout down an accuser since any such individual is not likely to be publicly associated with another candidate and will have limited resources to protect their own integrity. As John Edward’s life has ably demonstrated, however, it is not impossible to prove indiscretions by public figures. The only thing that’s readily verifiable in Texas, though, is that when it comes to screwing people with statutes, Rick Perry’s strong preference is for homosexuals.

But even that has had some unintended consequences.

The Texas governor and the author of the constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage in Texas had no idea there were people like Therese Bur and Sabrina Hill. They are a same sex couple living in poverty in a humble plywood structure built in the Chihuahuan Desert east of El Paso. When Warren Chisum, the wildly conservative Republican state legislator from Pampa in the Texas panhandle, drew up the amendment he was operating on a basic premise. Chisum and Perry believe that god doesn’t make mistakes and your gender is determined at birth. Transgender complications probably didn’t come up when Chisum and his staff began to draft language to keep homosexuals from getting married. But they ought to have given it some consideration if they truly wanted to stop the horrors of gay marriage. There’s a loophole in the law that has allowed little “cells” of legalized gay love to pop up around Texas.

Therese Bur and Sabrina Hill realized Rick Perry’s state was the perfect place for them to legitimize their marriage. Hill was born a hermaphrodite but her father wanted her to be male and had her vagina surgically closed. Even though she had genitalia of both sexes, Hill’s birth certificate identifies her as a male. She always felt like a woman, though, and during an ultrasound at age 28 discovered she had female internal organs. Sabrina had already realized, in spite of the fact that she was anatomically a man, that she was attracted to women. Sabrina met Therese and they fell in love. Sabrina’s male sex organs, however, continued to offend her and mock who she knew herself to be.

“I went to this guy in Mexico,” she told El Paso TV station KVIA. “He was called ‘the butcher.’ I just had him cut it off. I didn’t want to look at it any more.”

Sabrina and Therese had been together for more than 15 years and decided they wanted to be married. The reasons were more practical than spiritual and legal. When she served in the U.S. military, Sabrina was known as Virgil, the name given to her by her parents, and she wanted to get the health care she had earned from the Veterans’ Administration. Therese was sick and because they were poor she could not afford visits to the doctor. If they were married, Therese would be eligible for VA health care as Sabrina’s (Virgil’s) spouse.

But two people of the same sex can’t get married in Texas, can they?

“Well, it says ‘male’ on my original birth certificate,” Sabrina explained. “The birth certificate you were given when you were born is the only one that matters. Therefore, it shouldn’t be a problem. It doesn’t matter what my name is now or what someone’s done with their surgical wizardry. I’m a boy and she’s a girl and we can get married.”

And that probably disgusts Rick Perry and Warren Chisum, the West Texas lawmaker who wants to wipe out even the idea of gay marriage. (Chisum believes homosexuality is a “lifestyle choice,” like being a ski bum or joining a motorcycle gang). When he was drafting the amendment, Chisum undoubtedly would have never imagined a world in which a hermaphroditic person made surgically male might actually feel female and also be attracted to that gender. He also clearly overlooked the fact that a Texas appeals court had ruled that gender was determined at birth by nature and there were certain situations that would not be covered by his new law.

“You can’t have it both ways, and I know that’s what they’re trying to do,” Chisum told the Texas Tribune. “I can’t write the law for what everybody changes themselves to. That would be even more confusing. You’re either born a man or you’re born a woman and you can’t change that.”

He actually doesn’t know what they are trying to do because all they are trying to do is live their lives as enjoyably and comfortably as possible regardless of their gender, genetics, or economics. Sabrina and Therese wanted a little happiness and some health care, which is not always easy to get in Rick Perry’s Texas, especially if you are gay, lesbian, or transgender. Ultimately, Perry and Chisum discovered their belief that god doesn’t make mistakes, and that a person’s gender is an immutable act of nature at the time of birth, made it possible for a transgender female to marry her lesbian lover and get VA health care to live happily ever after under the Lone Star skies. Sabrina is a man on her birth certificate. Therese is a woman.

“Let me just tell you that that little short chubby half Mexican is the most beautiful woman in the world,” Sabrina said as she looked at her partner Therese. “And if god chooses to take her home before me, well, I’ll live with it and understand. But that’s it for me. There won’t be anyone else for me. I’ll wait until I can be with her again.”

Such horrifying sentiments surely must send shivers down the spines of Rick Perry and Warren Chisum. But there’s something else that should worry them to the edge of panic: They don’t realize yet what their anti-gay marriage paranoia has accomplished. The determination by the court that your true gender is the one that is on your birth certificate has had an unexpected economic bonus for the state that Rick Perry has not yet claimed.

Texas has turned into a marriage destination for post-op trannies.

If the Republican presidential nominating race wasn’t actually intended as a serious endeavor it could be mistaken for a comedy routine. As one more woman makes up another story about Herman Cain’s sexual proclivities, Rick Perry struggles to understand who is eligible to vote in the democracy he wants to lead. Mitt Romney changes positions as often as a light-hitting utility infielder; Michelle Bachman prompts questions about what is required to become a member of the House Intelligence Committee; Ron Paul makes enough sense to scare the electorate; Newt Gingrich has reached the fifth level of hypocrisy and thinks his contradictions are invisible or meaningless, while Jon Huntsman, who has been far too rational and informed to be riding in the GOP clown car, stands off to the side and wonders how he is not even qualified to be considered for the Iowa debate on December 10.

The departure of Mr. Cain, who is apparently being besieged by lying women who are puppets of Democratic operatives afraid he will win the White House, will not make things any simpler for GOP primary voters. Cain’s surge happened after Perry mentioned that he supported in state tuition for the children of undocumented workers. As Cain has been hammered by revelations involving his personal life, Gingrich has acquired enough support to lead the race, most of which likely came from Cain. Perry’s numbers did not tick back up and Romney’s stayed frozen in the high teens and low twenties. All of those voters who began dating other people when Perry faltered ended up also leaving Cain but still hadn’t forgiven Romney for being Romney or Perry for being a dumbass.

What do they do with Cain gone?

The Gingrich team wants everyone to believe he is now inevitable. But there are two forces in control of most of the GOP primary and they have issues with Newt. What will the values voters and evangelicals make of a man who has had mistresses and three marriages? The Tea Party certainly can’t be very excited about a candidate who has made millions advising participants in the scam that fueled Wall Street’s mortgage collapse, and even though he claims he’s never been a lobbyist and has only sold access to his inordinately large brain, Gingrich has made millions more getting his clients in front of members of congress. The Tea Party is not likely to favor his full resume’. Gingrich’s baggage fills up three boxcars on the campaign train, and one of them is for Tiffany jewelry containers.

Mitt Romney is probably one of the leading GOP candidates with an actual statistical chance of beating President Obama but he seemingly cannot win his party’s nomination. Romney is moderate enough to do well in the general election but not sufficiently right wing to win the primary. His problems, already deconstructed a million times, center around convincing GOP voters that just because he approved a state health care plan in Massachusetts doesn’t mean he wants one for the rest of the country, and just because he said he’d be stronger on gay rights than Teddy Kennedy when he ran against him for the U.S. Senate doesn’t mean he believes in gay marriage now, and just because he refused to sign the pledge to end federal funding to hospitals that provide abortions doesn’t mean he supports woman’s right to choose, and just because he said he thinks global warming is real doesn’t mean he thinks humans are the cause. Romney’s political cravenness approaches Senator John McCain’s, who pegged the needle when he called Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson “agents of intolerance” in one election and then ran to seek their endorsements the next time he chased after the presidency.

Romney’s other problem, of course, is his religion. He doesn’t talk about it; except for a speech he gave in Texas four years ago, which he hoped had put the matter to perpetual rest. But it hasn’t. Various surveys show that white, southern, Christian evangelicals will not vote for a Mormon because the overwhelming majority does not view the religion as part of Christendom. The hypocrisy in this position is both entertaining and harmful to Republican presidential aspirations; apparently Moses tablet(s) brought down from the mountain are more believable than the Angel Moroni’s golden tablets delivered to Joseph Smith. Regardless, no Republican will win the White House without successfully sweeping the south in the general election in 2012 and a Mormon candidate will apparently reduce enthusiasm and turnout among white, Christian voters. Mitt will stay stuck at about twenty percent regardless of how many GOP power brokers urge the voters to rally around his flag.

Which brings us to the wretched remainders.

Bachmann and Paul have undeniable electability issues, Rick Santorum is barely worth mentioning, and Jon Huntsman is too sane, considerate, well informed, capable on the issues, rational, analytical, thoughtful, and Mormon to have a chance within his chosen political party.

That leaves only the dumb one.

When the bright lights reveal more of Newt’s warts than voters want to see, there will be no place left for GOP voters to seek sanctuary. The unfaithful and undecideds will have to reconsider Rick Perry. The values voters will realize again that he is with them on gay marriage and Jesus and global warming and abortion and government health care. TP-ers will conclude he’s their best chance to show they have the power to destroy government. These voters don’t care that Perry is a bit of a dolt on issues; they love him because he thinks like they do and there is no one else on the GOP primary ballot who completely fits that description. Unfortunately, every time a reporter considers writing a comeback narrative for Perry, the Texas governor begins talking and prompts second thoughts about how convincing such an article might ever be for readers.

Republicans must be frustrated as hell. They are facing an incumbent president who most polls show is mortally wounded and yet the GOP cannot find an acceptable, unifying candidate with prospects of victory. The fact that Herman Cain and Rick Perry have survived this long is an indication of the desperation of Republicans. They ought not to worry, though. Sarah Palin has taken up residence in Arizona.

And word is that she is tanned, rested, and ready.