Cowboy Confessional

After 144 years you would think it odd for a black man to be publicly roped and whipped in America.

Unless it is downtown San Francisco and the one wielding the whips is a lanky blonde in a leather body suit, wearing little else aside from a maniacal grin.

San Francisco is a city where fetishes are topics of discussion at PTA meetings and where even the nuns are kinky (and the pseudo nuns are odder than the authentic variety). It is a town where you are likely to meet your neighbors at a sex club. When common debauchery is nearly communal, the truly twisted are not far beneath the surface and occasionally escape.

Such is San Francisco’s annual Folsom Street Faire, an event where the interesting and somewhat scary people come to exhibit themselves and their hardware. The Faire attracts whips and chain, BDSM and all manner of leather clad folk from around the globe, as well as a stack of innocent watchers who want only to sneak a toe into the wild side.

The rest of the attendees are happily disturbed.

Which brings us back to the whipee – a well built man (in all manner of speaking) who was roped in a spread-eagle hang, under a sign for an online fetish pornographer and before a mixed audience of the similarly situated and the utterly stunned. With each stroke of her nine tails, short whip or jolt from a miniature cattle prod, he thanked her for inflicting injury (she did stop once to get an alcohol swab for his welted rump).

The scene was almost Romanesque. With a one-handed shocking device, she jolted his back, arms, chest and then headed south to his naked nether regions. She asked the crowd which part of his genital and surrounding territories she should electrocute next. Each audience member shouted their request in an orgy of borderline blood lust. I’m sure the Coliseum saw more action than the Folsom showcases, but maybe not by much.

Shameless is our city, and more so the people who tour these event in the nude. I’m no prude and a good looking and equally naked woman always grabs my attention. Sadly most of the public nudists at the Folsom Fair are exactly he kind of people you want to keep clothed, with the majority being pale, old, fat white men. Seriously, either keep your clothing on or drop a few pounds and shave your back.

And women thought saving their legs was tricky.

In the mix are the committed and the comical. The former are those who have made their particular peccadillo an utter lifestyle. Swarms of identically clad men stand in the intersections watching for soul mates and bedmates to gravitationally attract. Women both tied to Saint Andrew’s crosses and switching the bound, the latter stopping only long enough to ponder the selection of straps with which to whip the former. Men looking particularly breathless in their corsets, women looking particularly excited about chains, and the straights looking particularly perplexed.

They contrasted sharply with the wannabes – those who may some day be devotees but for now sport dime store dog collars. As with musicians, you could tell the experienced from the amateurs by the quality of their gear. The fellow who strode mightily toward the entrance in a leather vest thinner than a politician’s promise was obviously a newcomer. The more mellow man had a think harness, double knitted chains, accessorized nipple clamps and a crotch pocket that appear to have been custom molded to his member.

And then there were the drive-by tourists who collided with one another while rubbernecking the entrance line.

Every city has an essence and San Francisco’s is merely unabashed. Local constabulary willingly allow anything (aside from smoking in public) that doesn’t result in non-consensual violence. What other Americans do in private and feel guilty about in public, San Franciscans do on street corners to exorcize their exhibitionism. The lunatics are running the asylum … and are doing a pretty good job of it.

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Nancy Pelosi represents San Francisco – the small subsegment thereof still in psilocybin rehab overdoes from their last Grateful Dead concert.

During her weekly press parade Nancy showed an expression other than perpetual surprise, her mug permanently frozen in that latter state once she discovered that proposed health insurance legislation would not cover Botox. In response to a question concerning popular backlash against Uncle Sugar meddling further in the insurance industry, Nancy had a flashback to the San Francisco of the 1970s, managing to mentally connect intense debate over insurance with a homicidal ex-cop named Dan White.

“I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw … I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco. This kind of rhetoric is just, is really frightening and it created a climate in which we, violence took place.”

Nancy should visit nearby Oakland if she wants the pure picture of violence. More Oaktown residents are killed off each day over nothing in particular than were done by all Dixicrats combined.

The reason Pelosi does not represent San Francisco is that, by and large, San Francisco’s population is sane. Goofy, perhaps, Colorful, no doubt. Outside of mainstream America, demonstrably. Yet The City’s average non-Tenderloin resident has the ability to compartmentalize drug-addled-post-Viet-Nam San Francisco from recent, animated town hall meetings. Or maybe Pelosi was reacting to the harsh words of her cohort Representative Pete Stark’s who last week commented to a constituent “I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn’t be worth wasting the urine.”

San Franciscans love raucous debate. This town is like a never ending Monty Python sketch where we collectively demand an argument. Being such a feisty bunch, we know from personal experience that humans can voice an opinion passionately and with enough volume to drown out Blue Angel fly-overs or Chris Daly tirades, and still not come to blows. Despite several months of town hall meetings, tea parties and televised tantrums, no bloodshed has come to pass (well, there was a MoveOn.org supporter who bit the finger off an old man down in Ventura County, but we’ll assume his dose of psilocybin had not yet worn off).

Yet Pelosi frets. She assumes language is a reliable leading indicator of action. This may be true when an overweight Powel Street pan handlers can’t think up anything more original than “I haven’t eaten all week” and wonders why his paper cup remains empty.

Yes, other left of Mao activist have recently started to play the race card in a connotative slur campaign to quell dissent, using white guilt as a noose. That didn’t work. Rhetorical pitch remains high and American behavior remains amazing shy of slugfests. Odds are more bloody noses will erupt in SoMo bars tonight over bad juke box selections than in an entire summer of health insurance debate.

Therein is the disconnect between Pelosi and San Franciscans having second thoughts about electing her. They are sane enough to understand that this is an important debate, but a debate nonetheless. Nancy sees it as looming warfare. The extra residents in her mental attic have convinced her of things that are not while the balance of The City knows better.

Best take your meds Nancy … and I don’t mean the Botox.

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Damn oceans.

If you had not noticed, this joint called Earth is a soggy place. Water covers about 71% of the surface and plunges nearly seven miles down, a depth slightly deeper and colder than Al Gore’s soul. If you stood every existing human side by side they would not cover a fraction of Lake Maracaibo, which is still a quarter of Al Gores growing girth.

Which may well explain why the planet is cooling and my green friends are in dithers.

Not that local San Francisco greenies need much motivation to fret, which is seemingly their very purpose in life. Aside from smoking vast quantities of medical marijuana, what has them most perplexed is that during the current decade our planet has cooled off a might. This contradicts United Nations climatologists and other enfeebled persons, and thus conflicts my green leaning associates.

Have a tofu burger. You’ll feel better.

Their confusion is understandable. After all, with China now the top producer of raw atmospheric pollution, with America not reducing its carbon footprint, and with India playing industrial catch-up, Al Gore’s canard clearly states that we should be roasting in our own juices. For the planet to cool while mankind is releasing more carbon than ever in our industrial history defies the theory.

Which means the theory might just be hokum.

But recent global cooling begs a couple of questions, namely why in Hell is it getting colder and who is going to pay my heating bill? Some scientists think the answer to the first question is that oceans are to blame. Maybe I can hit Gore up for the latter. After all he could produce enough hot air to thaw Rahm Emanuel’s heart.

Much of the problem with global warming theory is the inappropriate grafting of recent thermometer readings onto long term, proxy derived temperature estimates, and projecting just the new data into the future. Such bad methodology should be embarrassing to alleged scientists, but in pursuit of government grants even scientists can be dastardly. Most government generated schemes for dealing with the now inverted “global climate crisis” involve taxing somebody and giving the money to somebody else (i.e., theft). With trillions of dollars riding on such legislation, tossing a few quid to unethical or incapable academics is a good way to create public demand for the plan.

Which would work if it wasn’t for those damn oceans.

Some bright folk at Kiel University decided to see if all that water had any recurring effects (click the chart for a bigger one). After all, Mother Nature is a cyclic bitch. Most everything in nature moves in circles, cycles and recycling programs. Nothing nature does is linear with the possible exception of entropy, and I have my doubts about that. Mojib Latif decided to overlay oceanographic temperature data with United Nations scientific effluvium and see how agreeable the two were, discovering that they weren’t. Using a little sign wave logic, they show that the planet appears to be in the early phase of a nominal cooling cycle. Yes, my friend in Alaska – it will get much colder up there in the next 30 years.

Buy an extra parka.

This all makes intuitive sense, which is why United Nations scientists don’t get it. The industrial revolution began at about the same time the Little Ice Age ended. Depending on who answers the question, the Little Ice Age lasted between 200 and 600 years, bringing global temperatures well below average. The long term rise in temperatures from the mid 1800’s appears to be a recovery from excessive global cooling, slowed by those ornery oceans having to go through their cyclic variations.

There are a couple of grand takeaways from this analysis. First and foremost is the understanding that humans are a puny lot and our total effect on the climate doesn’t add up to that of a large lake. Equally important to understand is that if the trend cited by the oceanographers is correct, the worst we will endure this century is a 1/2oC rise in temperature, which might produce enough sweat to moisten Hillary’s dusty labia.

Foremost is shows that United Nations computer projections are buncombe and yet another reason for civilized countries to defund that intellectual brothel.

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I’m worried. The leader of the free world apparently flunked economics 101.

In a show of political desperation before a rare joint session of an even more desperate Congress, Obama glued together several months of rhetoric and even less meaningful details into a façade of a plan for rearranging American health insurance. Despite recurring failures to pass legislation, the Pol from Palatine insisted that within the body he addressed there was “agreement on 80% of what needs to be done” (while half of the assembled legislators sat on their hands throughout).

That 80% in agreement are all Democrats. The missing 20% are the Blue Dogs Democrats.

Obama deftly demonstrated that economics was not in his Harvard law school curriculum. Be he did show that he knows how to read political tea. Polls show that the economy is the top concern of Americans. Barack broached his bombast yammering about the same, then artfully parlayed his opening gambit into health insurance reform, noting that “we have to curb health care costs to save the Federal budget.”

There’s a two-fer for you; a transient moment of honesty that proceeds flagrant deceit. Obama would make a fortune in the used car biz.

Yes, Medicare is slatted to go fiscally belly-up in a few years, which speaks poorly about government’s ability to supervise health insurance. It surprises only Barack that the public is increasing doubting him when he proposes that the same body that created and is sending Medicare into the seventh ring of financial Hell should intervene further into the health insurance business. Obama admitted his ‘plan’ would collectively set us back about a trillion clams, claiming it would not cost “a single dime” while also boasting that his design would be deficit neutral.

In simpler language, he promised the impossible. In the medical trade this is called ‘snake oil’.

Here is an example of Obama’s lack of understanding of microeconomics or other reality. Barack backs burdening insurance companies with a myriad of new restrictions while telling us that we will not have to change our coverage. It is a given that your coverage will change when your rates rise to utter non-affordability. To wit (a commodity Obama lacks) he wants your insurance company to:

* Insure you even if you have pre-existing conditions (rates to rise as insurance companies costs rise)

* Eliminate caps on coverage (rates will balloon)

* Limit your out-of-pocket expenses (rates will skyrocket)

* Require coverage for routine procedures (more services means higher premiums)

* Offset Medicare shortages by charging insurance companies a fee for certain policies (rates will rise to cover all new fees+)

In other words, he will remove controls on expenses and knows that insurance companies will not raise premiums to cover the extra expenses. After all, he heard it directly from the Easter Bunny.

Ill content with intimidating only insurers, he threatened young people. Saying that the bankrupt Medicare system was a legacy “passed down from one generation to the next,” he put on notice current college graduates – who can’t yet find a shovel-ready job – announcing that they would pay for $32 trillion of projected red Medicare ink.

Right after they pay off their student loans.

Most interesting in all of Obama’s oration was that he never once addressed the causes of higher health insurance costs, not did he propose anything that cured premium pumping. For example, he mentioned tort reform – halting lottery litigation – but evaded the issue by proffering non-specific government experiments. In other words “we’ll work on finding another scheme right after you buy this one!”

There are approximately 800,000 doctors in the U.S. and their malpractice insurance starts at about $80,000 a year (premiums get much higher depending on the quack’s specialty). Assuming half of current premiums are litigation inflation, there is $32 billion in waste that could be instantly recovered if the trail lawyer’s didn’t have a lien on the Democrat party and Obama’s soul, which is actually quite handy since trial lawyers don’t have souls of their own. That is about $121 per currently insured person in America, or about what I pay a month for coverage. Not a lot of dough but a good place to start.

But let’s make a conservative assumption that unnecessary CYA medical tests double that, and would largely be eliminated by eliminating ambulance chasing (and by proxy eliminate John Edwards). We are now up to $242 per person, or nearly a grand per household, and it didn’t take one nickel of tax money, require a single government or force anybody to do anything against their will. You know, that whole American freedom thing.

Obama’s lack of understanding about economics is eclipsed by his ignorance in civics. He supports forcing you to buy insurance even it you do not want it (and patently fibbing that taxpayers are obligated to pick-up the cost of uninsured medical care) comparing that obligation to getting auto insurance. But you don’t need auto insurance if you don’t drive or if you pilot your ride on your own property. It is only when you as an individual venture onto publicly owned roads that you are required to be covered. Obama demands that you buy health insurance even if you are not indigent. His analogy lacks an analog.

There is much more of his canards to pick apart, but the game is too easy. His assertions are apocryphal, his schemes shaky and his governmental arrogance audacious. He is rapidly burying himself and his party …

Made I should stop. Wouldn’t want him to see his mistakes too soon.

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It is Labor Day in San Francisco, which means it is again time for cowgirls gone wild.

Few parts of San Francisco are wilder than the Mission District. Mission mavens are ‘colorful’ in the same sense that parrots and flamingos are and Liberace was. Mission residents are not considered properly dresses unless their tattoos are visible (ladies) and at least one silver facial piecing is in place (men, trannies and hermaphrodites). Unskewered and uncolored clods like me are voyeuristic rubes and barely tolerated.

As you can imagine, the Mission is littered with funky dive bars of variable reputation, safety and sanitary status. A star among these swill houses is the El Rio, a joint that is happy in its marginally controlled sanity. Aside from having a just-above-grimy local bar appeal, the El sports a large outdoor patio where the live music happens.

On Labor Day the cowgirls own the joint, and if you don’t like country music, they might rectally insert a boot into you (which in the Mission passes as sexual recreation and a polite gesture).

Cowgirl Palooza is the event’s name and normally no testicles are allowed to front a band (Four Year Bender is playing this year, which I will not complain about but which is somewhat out of kilter). Kitty Rose, Starlene and other regulars are scheduled.

Most interesting in the mix is, of course, Mighty Slim Pickins. This collection of diesel dykes always sucks the air out the audience. An equal mixture of serious rockabilly with somewhat sinister showwomanship and the unmistakable San Francisco in-your-face queerdom always makes for an interesting set.

Cowgirl Palooza is, in one way, an essence of San Francisco. People from across America land here for very different reasons and stay for mainly for one. Since there is a little of everything in San Francisco, there is always a place for each cluster to commune. It should surprise nobody that countrified bull lesbians formed a band, and have near-constant stage time and appreciative audiences, including straight ex-cowboys.

Oh, and the reason all the assorted people stay in San Francisco is our secret.

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