Cowboy Confessional

An enduring and accurate accusation of the Bush administration is a reluctance to admit to mistakes. Bush and/or his operative eventually confess when it becomes painfully obvious that they screwed one or more pooches.

Obama is made from the same unsavory cloth. Two instances come immediately to mind.

Most recent was his now (in)famous punch line concerning putting lipstick on pigs. I have many years of experience in public speaking and recognize the common tactics used to communicate to and elicit responses from an audience. Obama’s use of well placed pauses before and after his punch line were employed to build anticipation of a memorable comment, and then to wait for the audience to get and respond to his reference.

The audience’s reaction shows they understood Obama’s veiled referral to Sarah Palin, McCain’s “lipstick pit-bull” running mate. The audience certainly was not amused by any novelty in the idea of pigs wearing lipstick — that line was in common circulation before I was born and is a staple of American business, engineering and politics. Everyone present had heard it before.

The problem is not so much that Obama did a dumb, dumb thing. We all do, and I for one have scars to prove many of my mistakes (and, no I cannot reveal the names of those mistakes but will leave it to say that I did have fun earning those particular scars). But Obama refused to admit he had made one. When flack flew after his remark, instead of confessing that his comment was unkind and unwarranted, Obama instead tried to bake the brouhaha as McCain pie.

“They seize on an innocent remark, try to take it out of context, throw up an outrageous ad, because they know that it’s catnip to the news media,”

It is George Bush all over again. Soon enough we’ll hear Obama tell Biden “You’re doing a heck of a job, Joey.”

The other instance Obama’s intellectual infidelity concerned some flags — and by “some” I mean several thousand — left behind as trash at the Democrat convention. It is impossible to mistake flags sharing rubbish bags with empty snack sacks, water bottles and ripped campaign signs. Stadium workers would not have bagged them as trash had they not been left as such. At very worst the Democrats National Committee made a bad assumption that their delegates possessed the modicum of patriotic pride required to take their flags home. After all with Flag Day, Memorial Day, and the 4th of July they could easily and effectively be reused. Worse perhaps is that the DNC had no plan for recovering and reusing these symbols of the Republic. One might think that the allegedly greener party would have such a recycling program in place. But the extravagant waste of money involved is more symbolic still.

When caught, Obama and his surrogates tried once again to dodge responsibility and make their lack of oversight a McCain issue. Karen Finney, the Democratic National Committee chief cretin claimed “John McCain … wrongfully took leftover bundles of our flags from the stadium to play out a cheap political stunt calling into question our patriotism.” As evidenced by photography, the DNC has an odd notion of how flags should be “bundled”. Also as evidenced by Ms. Finney, Obama’s party simply doesn’t give a damn.

Obama and the DNC’s desire to evade responsibility are too Bush-like for any man’s comfort. It is odd that the primary Obama campaign theme is that McCain is another Bush term when Obama himself shows the worst recurring trait of this administration.

Bookmark to:

I came across a quote by an economist named R. T. Naylor. I can’t vouch for anything Naylor has written though his book titles are entertaining (Wages Of Crime, Hot Money and the Politics of Debt and Patriots and Profiteers: On Economic Warfare).

The quote that caught my attention was “… never in history has there been a black market defeated from the supply side.” His claim is that it must be impossible to eliminate the supply of something if there is demand. I don’t know if “never” is an appropriate adverb, but I am incapable of finding evidence to the contrary.

Some examples:

• * Alcohol prohibition in the 1920’s generated a huge black market and vast criminal enterprises to supply the booze.
• * The drug wars of the 20th century generated a huge black market and vast criminal enterprises to supply the dope.
• * Gun control laws generated a huge black market and vast criminal enterprises to supply the firepower.
• * Controls on money influencing politics has generated a huge black market and vast commercial enterprises to supply the cash.

For policy wonks and other people with too much time to kill, this creates an important and rather libertarian conclusion: attempts to restrict supply will inevitably exacerbate the original problem. Sure, a few heads were ingesting new and exotic drugs in the 1960’s but every attempt to make drug use illegal stoked its mystique. Banning booze led Ma and Pa to become moonshiners while Lil Sis became a flapper in a speakeasy. Attempts to eliminate private firearm ownership have led to a more aggressive brand of street thug. And this election cycle is breaking all records for campaign cash from lobbyist.

Legislators and other disreputable sorts should head history, though they rarely do.

Bookmark to:

Anyone retaining respect for the United Nations will jettison their misguided sentiments next year.

But there is an option.

Come spring when even atheists catch a glimmer of God in the annual renewal of life, the U.N. will host an anti-racism conference. Like most Orwellian institutions, the name given saints disguises the monster beneath.

The head of the monster de jure is the chairman of the committee who hails from Libya. Unknown for its adherence to civil or human rights, yet well known for explicit links to bombing jumbo jets and an aggressive WMD program, suspicion of Libyan racial intolerance is understandable.

Since criminals are pack animals, hand-selected “friends of the chair” will include Iran and other ideological backwaters. The explicit aim of the conference leadership appears to again claim that Zionism is a form a racism and thus the only way to counter such is to be even more racist (repeat until dizzy and you will have as good of a grasp of mid-East politics as anyone). A European Union proposal to discuss “freedom of expression” as part of the conference was denied as being “political in nature.”

Odd. The U.N. is a political machine but with less class, honor and ability than all the others. Why not discuss political matters?

The anti-racism conference is an offshoot of the U.N.’s Human Rights Council which has little to do with rights and appears to be opposed to humans. An idealist recently proposed that the Council oppose female genital mutilation, a procedure performed in barbarous localities and whereby many enjoyable pieces of the feminine reproductive system (clitoris, labia) are removed with little warning and no anesthetic.

Egypt’s response was “We will not discuss issues related to Shariah law.”

The U.N. is hopelessly soiled. Since U.N. membership is open to all nations — regardless of what band of baboons run these countries — co-opting the organization to spread human abuse is a natural direction for the U.N. to go. Like welfare offices everywhere, the U.N. cannot discriminate between good and bad actors and in short order the evil, corrupt and lazy run the show.

Hence the un-UN (also warmly referred to as the Alternate U.N. or Liberty league). The proposal calls for free nations to form a new confederation with higher admission prices to keep out the riffraff. The gauntlet might include a list of civil and human rights and a track record of adherence (which means my friends in the U.K. and Mexico might have a tough time getting in given their bans on self defense tools).

This alternate United Nations would receive most of the cash currently dumped into United Nations Plaza. The lucre would be used to actively export freedom and counter balance anti-human initiative, instead of extravagant life styles for third world diplomats. It would also provide free nations a perpetual planning forum for promoting freedom universally.

And the weakened United Nations would remain as a year-round debating society and a good place to keep careful watch on the likes of Lybia and their pals.

Bookmark to:

Evidently San Francisco is populated entirely by children.

Adults appear to be in short supply given the paternalistic exuberance of the city’s Board of Supervisors. The sups suffer under the odd delusion that they have acquired the power to control the lives of adults and free commerce to boot. Routinely, the Board of Supervisors legislates against a slate of selected sin. Given that bad behavior is a cherished San Francisco Barbary Coast tradition, such protective overdrive is out of character with the city’s very vibe.

Like any weary parent, the self-appointed guardians on the Board of Supervisors have had enough. Frustrated by their failures to ban everything else from plastic bags, to handguns, to parking, the sups have reasserted their non-existent parental authority over their citywide crib. In a display of statism that would make Mao flinch, San Fran supervisors have banned the sale of tobacco in pharmacies.

Gang violence, public defecation and hypodermic litter are secondary concerns.

“When it comes to pharmacies, I feel that our children and our teenagers get a different message,” said Public Health Director Mitch Katz. By “children and teenagers” Katz means adults, the only class of citizens legally enabled to buy tobacco.

Ill content with a single euphemism, Katz noted that San Francisco Supervisors curtailed tobacco sales in pharmacies because drug stores were the “group where the case was the strongest.” More plainly stated, pharmacies are small enough in number, and their tobacco sales are such a tiny part of their total revenue that the city doesn’t expect the pharmacies to put up much of a fight. Costco, Wal-Mart and trade associations that represent mom-and-pop liquor stores would bring out the heavy litigation artillery, so the City Supervisors decided to pick on someone not their size.

This ban on the sales of a recreational drug (nicotine) seems oddly out of sync with San Francisco’s schizophrenic peccancy. The very mantra of The City has long been whatever consenting adults enjoy should be allowed, with the exception of voting Republican which remains a hanging offense. Indeed the San Francisco enables many vices including both the right and the subsidized facilitation of injecting recreational drugs that are a tiny bit more potent than a pack of Marlboros.

Pharmaceutical sales prohibition of shag and snuff are just the beginning. Katz himself foreshadowed this eventuality suggesting the ban could be broadened in the future. The pharmacy prohibition seeks to desensitize San Francisco citizens to submissiveness. America’s new nanny, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, has set his sights beyond San Francisco saying “Whatever we can do to make this country a smoke-free zone, we should do it.”

My friends and family back in tobacco-growing Virginia will decline to participate. Virginians refuse to ban guns so they are equipped to enforce their prerogative.

Complicit in denying adults the right to commit decelerated suicide is the American Lung Association of California. Their policy director opined “It changes the conversation from something where people of conscience act to one where a city says, ‘You know what, we support healthier lifestyles in our city’”

Her slogan clearly demarks the line of contention. On one side are the citizens of San Francisco — people of conscience who routinely demand to live their personal lives with little restriction — and the city government, hell-bent on keeping them from doing so.

Perhaps San Francisco’s true children are confined to the Board of Supervisors.

Bookmark to:

Dykes on bikes need to put their shirts back on.

The lead entry in every year’s San Francisco Pride Parade are the dykes — motorcycle riding lesbians, anyone of whom is more of a man than most men I know. A number of the DoBs ride topless. Now I’m not objecting to bare boobs — I’ve always liked those. I’m not offended by the fact that some of the shirtless DoBs have the type of physiques that should remain covered. Nor am I worried about the mammary road rash they might suffer if they had to lay down one of their hogs.

However, riding topless in the freezing June San Francisco weather will make a women’s nipples protrude further than a pair of #2 pencils, and could poke some-body’s eye out. See, it is a public safety issue.

Today was San Francisco’s 38th Pride Parade and clothing optional sexual expression fete with occasional fetishes fostered. Footage from past parades have been broadcast across the country, scaring millions of middle Americans out of their television comas. Nothing like footage of a young, buff and all-but-naked Latino thrusting his sequined g-string into your face to make a Kansas farmer believe the Apocalypse has arrived.

The changing name of the parade says something about the oddity that is an open-air asylum called San Francisco. Back in the 1970’s, the parade was the domain of homosexual males who came out of their closets and immediately filled those closets with evening gowns. In those comparatively quaint times, the parade was called “Gay Freedom Day” and later “Gay Pride Parade”. It was all about being male, gay, unashamed and undressed in public. In San Francisco, ass-less chaps count as “reasonably covered”.

This simply would not do! If San Franciscans believe in nothing else, they believe in tolerant inclusion of all peoples, lifestyles and beliefs … except for conservatives and Republicans who are lynched on sight. A parade devoted to only gay men was completely unacceptable said the gay women of the town. Lesbians insisted on being allowed in the parade, and given that they were bigger, stronger, and a damn sight meaner than the average effete fairy, the gays instantly acquiesced.

Propensity for rapid surrender is why generals don’t want gay men in the military.

So “Gay Pride” became “Gay and Lesbian Pride”. A couple of syllables longer, but you could still fit it on a bumper sticker, which the parade organizers did. These bumper stickers attracted the attention of the transgenders. With great pride they demand their inclusion rights as well, threatening to throw a collective hissy fit until men in dresses, women in work boots, various hermaphrodites and people part-way through surgical conversions were allowed in the parade.

I’ll admit, it is a little disconcerting when for the first time you see a person with bulging boobs and a bulge in their boxers.

Now the event was called the “Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Pride Parade”. Bumper stickers were out. Even the parade billboards were getting a little wordy. Television reporters could not recite the sexual orientation roll call with flubbing a line or laughing out loud. Undeterred, the parade continued each year despite it taking longer to say the name of the parade than the parade itself lasted. Say it loud, say it proud, we are out of time!

All the shouting from the accumulated boinking branches got the bisexuals to look up from whomever they were doing and ask why they were not in the parade.

(Just a brief aside: Not much in this world scares me, but the bisexuals do. I’m one of the most lustful libertines I know. Despite having a sex drive that would make a migrating salmon blush, I’m content having half of the human race as possible bed mates. The bis are not, which means they are actually hornier than I am, wanting to bang everyone they meet. This is truly frightening.)

Since the parade had already become a sexual orientation lexicon, adding yet another group was the simple part. Fitting them onto the marquee was something else. The common abbreviation for the “everything except heterosexuals” community — LGBT — cannot be pronounced in any known human language, and thus lacks marketing appeal. In an inspired move the parade committee abandoned cramming the entire carnal catalog into the press releases, and called it “Pride Parade”. Simple and not straight.

The event has been a “must see” for San Francisco Bay Area citizens and startled visitors. To say that some of pride parade’s participant are “colorful” is akin to saying thermonuclear warfare is noisy. Like legions of oppressed people before them, liberated gays allowed their emotional pendulum to swing far to the other extreme. They didn’t leave their closets, they exploded from them as if their leather harnesses had grown teeth and were chasing them out. The parade was a moment every year where gays were surrounded by people more or less like themselves and in a city where eccentric behavior is mandatory. Thus nothing, including clothing or discretion was necessary. “Pride” gave way to public predilection replete with feathered boas, burly boys in leather, and a growing mob of spectators encouraging ever more flamboyant behavior.

Shame really that the Pride Parade has peaked and is now heading downhill. Gayness now suffers from mainstreaming.

This year’s parade bordered on boring. Most of the parade’s color has been licked off thanks to mass acceptance. When the populace at large accepts you, there is little use in jumping about naked and demanding to be recognized. Gay marriage finally became legal in California, driving the first of the nail into Pride’s coffin. The parade route was littered with the newly wed and the children they had been creating all along. Raunchy and raucous has given way to matrimony and diaper changes. Pride has gone parental. If you never had a chance to see San Francisco at its most flaming flamboyant, well you’re too late. Those days are in decline.

Gay marriage has produced a new class of humor however. A large number of couples walked down the street carrying signs that read something like “Together 12 years, married for nine days.” My thought was “There you go ruining a perfectly good relationship by getting married.”

But my favorite were a lesbian couple who had not yet tied the knot (no, not in their bondage-and-discipline gear … the marital knot). They shyly carried a home-made sign reading “We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re registered at Macy’s!”

click here for more entertaining photography from Pride’08

Bookmark to: