Sunday, September 30, 2007

Christian, Compassionate Conservatism at Work

New Rule: Stop Saying Iraq is Another Vietnam, it's Another Enron

Bill Maher for President???

New Rule: Stop Saying Iraq is Another Vietnam, it's Another Enron

Posted September 27, 2007 | 02:07 PM (EST)
New Rule, Real Time with Bill Maher, Breaking Politics News

Iraq is Enron, and President Bush is Ken Lay. He's fighting a war with phony accounting tricks. The Bush administration fudged the numbers to get us into Iraq, and cooked the books to keep us there. "The surge" is simply another in a long series of inflated stock quotes. This past weekend Marcel Marceau passed away at age 84. Doctors say he went quietly. Thus proving that evil thrives when good men stay silent. And just like with Enron, the good men and women who are blowing the whistle on Iraq contractor fraud are being vilified, fired, demoted, and those are the lucky ones.

Last Friday morning the Senate Democratic Policy Committee held a hearing entitled "The Mistreatment of Iraq Contracting Whistleblowers," just in time to make the Friday news dump. According to the committee more than $10 billion dollars in Iraq reconstruction and military support contracts is unaccounted for. In other words, for every six dollars spent in Iraq one dollar is in question. And folks, it's a war-zone, you're dealing with a culture known for its haggling skills, so you've got factor in a little skimming, but this is ridiculous. If you stole that much money from the Mafia you'd be dead.

Vicente Fox may have called President Bush a "windshield cowboy," but Bush has certainly turned Iraq into a wild, wild, west. And here's another one from the War in Iraq's this-is going-to-make-you-vomit file. Some Iraq contract whistleblowers have been vilified and fired, others have been detained by the US military and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques.

Donald Vance, a Navy veteran, was working for an Iraqi-owned outfit called the Shield Group Security Company. Vance said he witnessed Shield Group selling guns, land mines, and rocket-launchers to Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry workers. Vance described Shield Groups as "a Wal-Mart for guns." Vance reported this to the FBI, and instead of a pat on the back, he got 97 days at Camp Cropper, a military prison outside of Baghdad. In fact, Saddam's Hussein's old crib. Vance was placed in solitary confinement, subjected to head-banging music blaring from dawn to dusk, and interrogators screaming the same questions over and over again in his face.

Also testifying at the hearing along with Vance was Barry Godfrey, a former KBR employee (KBR+Halliburton=Cheney) who claimed that he was fired after complaining to his supervisors about fraudulent overcharges.

Also testifying was Bunnatine Greenhouse. Greenhouse is the former highest-ranking civilian contracting official at the Army Corps of Engineers, so I'll dispense with the "Greenhouse having gas" joke. But Greenhouse was removed from her position when she tried to crack down on "casual and clubby contracting practices" at the Army Corps of Engineers.

Also testifying was Robert Isakson who was a co-plaintiff in a "qui tam" lawsuit (a whistleblower lawsuit) against Custer Battles. No, "qui tam" is not that stuff that Chinese people do in the park, it's shorthand for the Latin Phrase "qui tam pro domino quam pro seipso," which dates back to 13th century England, and means, "He who is as much for the King as for himself." Today, a "qui tam" lawsuit is one brought under the False Claims Act by a private plaintiff on behalf of the Federal or State Government. Isakson won the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud against Custer Battles. However, the verdict was overturned by the judge, who ruled that because the CPA was not part of the US government, the "qui tam" statute did not apply.

Meanwhile the Bush administration has not litigated a single case against a contractor alleged to have defrauded the US Government in Iraq. Apparently, like terrorism, this isn't a law enforcement issue either.

It's 2002 Deja-vu: Impeach before they destroy the world

When it Comes to Neocons, Never Say 'Toldja So' Enough: Neocons, in Delusional Last Ditch Effort to Avoid Legacy of 'Total Failure', Seek to Justify War with Iran

Impeach before they destroy the world
Telegraph-UK, September 30th, 2007

American diplomats have been ordered to compile a dossier detailing Iran's violations of international law that some fear could be used to justify military strikes against the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.

Members of the US secretariat in the United Nations were asked earlier this month to begin "searching for things that Iran has done wrong", The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

Some US diplomats believe the exercise — reminiscent of attempts by vice-president Dick Cheney and the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld to build the case against Saddam Hussein before the Iraq war — will boost calls for military action by neo-conservatives inside and outside the administration.

One diplomat revealed the plans for an Iran dossier to Steven Clemons, a fellow with the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank, who has previously revealed attempts by Mr Cheney's allies to pressurise President George W Bush into war.

He said: "There are people more beholden to the Cheney side who have people searching for things that Iran has done wrong — making the case. They've been given instructions to build a dossier. They've been scouring around for stuff over the last couple of weeks." He recently exposed how a member of Mr Cheney's office used private meetings with neo-conservatives at the American Enterprise think- tank to reveal the vice-president's frustration that Mr Bush had authorised a diplomatic strategy against Iran by his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

Last week, Newsweek magazine went further, claiming that David Wurmser, until last month Mr Cheney's Middle East adviser, had told fellow neo-conservatives that Mr Cheney had considered asking Israel to launch limited missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz. The intention, it was said, would be to provoke a reaction from Teheran that would help justify wider US air strikes.

Mr Wurmser, an analyst in the Pentagon unit that tried to link Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks, denied the claims, saying, "That conspiracy is unrecognisable to anything I have ever seen or heard or done." But he refused to discuss Mr Cheney's views.

Opponents of military action were further alarmed last week when it emerged that Norman Podhoretz, one of the godfathers of neo-conservatism, used a 45-minute meeting with Mr Bush at the White House to lobby for the bombing of Iran's nuclear plants.

Mr Podhoretz disclosed that, when he said Mr Bush was just "giving futility its chance" by pursuing diplomacy, the president and his former aide Karl Rove had burst out laughing. "It struck me," Mr Podhoretz added, "that if they really believed that there was a chance for these negotiations and sanctions to work, they would not have laughed. They would have got their backs up and said, 'No, no, it's not futile, there's a very good chance'." He said he believed "Bush is going to hit" Iran before his presidency ends.

Mr Podhoretz is highly influential. His son-in-law is Elliott Abrams, Mr Bush's deputy national security adviser, who is regarded by US officials as a key advocate of bombing Iran. He was found guilty of withholding evidence from Congress over the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.

Concern is also growing in the CIA and the Pentagon that the White House exaggerated intelligence used to justify an Israeli air raid on a suspected nuclear facility in Syria earlier this month, which some neo-conservatives hope is a precursor to war with Iran.

Bruce Reidel, a former CIA Middle East desk officer, said the neo-conservatives realised their influence would wane rapidly when Mr Bush left office in just over 15 months. "Whatever crazy idea they have to try to transform the Middle East, they have to push now. The real hardline neo-conservatives are getting desperate that the door of history is about to close on them with an epitaph of total failure."

Friday, September 21, 2007

Keith Olberman is Edward R. Murrow reincarnated.

And thank God for it!

The guy should run for president. In a battle of wits he could easily take on and emerge without a scratch against Bill O'Reilly, President Bush (no competition, really!), Hillary Clinton, Dick Cheney....c'mon, virtually every member of Congress. Read on:

Olbermann: Bush's Attack on MoveOn ... 'Hypocrisy so Vast'
Countdown, September 20th, 2007

So the President, behaving a little bit more than usual, like we would all interrupt him while he was watching his favorite cartoons on the DVR, stepped before the press conference microphone and after side-stepping most of the substantive issues like the Israeli raid on Syria, in condescending and infuriating fashion, produced a big political finish that indicates, certainly, that if it wasn’t already – the annual Republican witch-hunting season is underway.

“I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. Military.”

“And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad.

“And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like Moveon.org or more afraid of irritating them, than they are of irritating the United States military.”

“That was a sorry deal.”

First off, it’s “Democrat-ic” party.

You keep pretending you’re not a politician, so stop using words your party made up. Show a little respect.

Secondly, you could say this seriously after the advertising/mugging of Senator Max Cleland? After the swift-boating of John Kerry?

But most importantly, making that the last question?

So that there was no chance at a follow-up?

So nobody could point out, as Chris Matthews so incisively did, a week ago tonight, that you were the one who inappropriately interjected General Petraeus into the political dialogue of this nation in the first place!

Deliberately, premeditatedly, and virtually without precedent, you shanghaied a military man as your personal spokesman and now you’re complaining about the outcome, and then running away from the microphone?

Eleven months ago the President’s own party, the Republican National Committee, introduced this very different kind of advertisement, just nineteen days before the mid-term elections.

Bin Laden.

Al-Zawahiri’s rumored quote of six years ago about having bought “suitcase bombs.”

All set against a ticking clock, and finally a blinding explosion and the dire announcement:

“These are the stakes - vote, November 7th.”

That one was ok, Mr. Bush?

Terrorizing your own people in hopes of getting them to vote for your own party has never brought as much as a public comment from you?

The Republican Hamstringing of Captain Max Cleland and lying about Lieutenant John Kerry met with your approval?

But a shot at General Petraeus, about whom you conveniently ignore it, was you who reduced him from four-star hero to a political hack, merits this pissy juvenile blast at the Democrats on national television?

Your hypocrisy is so vast that if we could somehow use it to fill the ranks in Iraq you could realize your dream and keep us fighting there until the year 3000.

The line between the military and the civilian government is not to be crossed.

When Douglas MacArthur attempted to make policy for the United States in Korea half a century ago, President Truman moved quickly to fire him, even though Truman knew it meant his own political suicide, and the deification of a General who history suggests had begun to lose his mind.

When George McClellan tried to make policy for the Union in the Civil War, President Lincoln finally fired his chief General, even though he knew McClellan could galvanize political opposition which he did when McClellan ran as Lincoln’s presidential opponent in 1864, nearly defeating our greatest president.

Even when the conduit flowed the other way and Senator Joseph McCarthy tried to smear the Army because it wouldn’t defer the service of one of McCarthy’s staff aides, the entire civilian and Defense Department structures, after four years of fearful servitude, rose up against McCarthy and said “enough” and buried him.

The list is not endless but it is instructive.

Air Force General LeMay—who broke with Kennedy over the Cuban Missile Crisis and was retired.

Army General Edwin Anderson Walker—who started passing out John Birch Society leaflets to his soldiers.

Marine General Smedley Butler—who revealed to Congress the makings of a plot to remove FDR as President and for merely being approached by the plotters, was phased out of the military hierarchy.

These careers were ended because the line between the military and the civilian is not to be crossed!

Mr. Bush, you had no right to order General Petraeus to become your front man.

And he obviously should have refused that order and resigned rather than ruin his military career.

The upshot is and contrary it is, to the MoveOn advertisement he betrayed himself more than he did us.

But there has been in his actions a sort of reflexive courage, some twisted vision of duty at a time of crisis. That the man doesn’t understand that serving officers cannot double as serving political ops, is not so much his fault as it is your good, exploitable, fortune.

But Mr. Bush, you have hidden behind the General’s skirts, and today you have hidden behind the skirts of ‘the planted last question’ at a news conference, to indicate once again that your presidency has been about the tilted playing field, about no rules for your party in terms of character assassination and changing the fabric of our nation, and no right for your opponents or critics to as much as respond.

That is not only un-American but it is dictatorial.

And in pimping General David Petraeus and in the violation of everything this country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have tried to blur the gleaming radioactive demarcation between the military and the political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military, and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it.

You did it again today and you need to know how history will judge the line you just crossed.

It is a line thankfully only the first of a series that makes the military political, and the political, military.

It is a line which history shows is always the first one crossed when a democratic government in some other country has started down the long, slippery, suicidal slope towards a Military Junta.

Get back behind that line, Mr. Bush, before some of your supporters mistake your dangerous transgression, for a call to further politicize our military.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Gang Signs: Abortion, Evolution, Homosexuality

by bernardpliers

Thu Sep 06, 2007 at 01:49:23 PM PDT

Why is it that abortion, evolution, and homosexuality
form a block of issues for the GOP base? I will cut to
the chase - these are not religious issues, these are
issues of tribal identity.

We know that the people who worry the most about these
issues seem to have little real regard for children,
little interest in science, and they like to get
freaky at least as much as anyone else. And despite
their self proclaimed religious motivations, surveys
show their knowledge of religion is surprisingly poor.

On these issues, they can not be swayed by rational
persuasion, religious debate, or even the naked
hypocrisy of their leaders. Despite the shaky
foundation of their belief system, their resistance is
surprisingly powerful. These issues move Americans to
violence but barely register in other other countries.

Meanwhile, European Islamists get upset over things
that seem comical to us, like, well, comics for
instance.

Why do these issues move people to violence, while
they barely register to the rest of us? Why do kids
shoot each other hand signals they flash on the
street? These are gang signs, this is how people
establish their group identity and declare their
willingness to use violence against anyone that
threatens their turf or the unity of their group.

The issues don't really matter, because tribes and
gangs are all about territory, turf, controlling
resources, and bringing overwhelming intimidation
against people who flash the wrong signs, the wrong
tattoo, or the wrong circumcision.

Even though this is supposedly all about religion, do
these people understand the details of their churches'
doctrine in the way that church doctrine has
preoccupied most religions? No, they are not defining
their religious identity by their churches rules, they
are defining their belief by how they treat others.
And if they go to another town, they don't have to
worry about finding another church that teaches the
same doctrines, they just have to find people that
share their tribal identity based on
Abortion/Evolution/Homosexuality.

Interestingly enough, this is how Christianity got
started. It wasn't about volumes of scripture to
memorize or a complicated set of new rules,it was
about how they treated others. Jesus told people to be
reserved and to treat their neighbors as they would
treat themselves, not to go peeping in their windows
and looking for reasons to persecute them.

Early Christians struggled to be inclusive and bring
in people from other tribes who literally were from
other tribes in an epoch where tribe and clan mattered
above everything else. Being inclusive was the only
way to grow. Christ's followers were also bound
together by the persecution they faced at the hands of
the Romans and others.

Tribalism in the modern era still depends on its sense
of persecution and isolation. Because Christians are
the majority, Dominionists must create an enemy to
unite them. And so they take an approach opposite to
Christ's inclusiveness, peeking through windows and
looking for minorities to persecute. The Anti
Abortion/Evolution/Homosexuality tribe goes to absurd
lengths to prove that it is a persecuted and isolated
group that must struggle to protect the safety of its
members in a hostile world.

In the absence of real enemies, a tribe will readily
create imaginary enemies to unite them, and without
concrete evidence of persecution, the tribe must often
create an enemy with supernatural powers. The Puritans
of Salem united in ritual violence against witches,
the boys in Lord of The Flies formed fierce tribes
against the imaginary Beast, the Nazis fought their
imaginary all powerful Jewish Conspiracy, and the Anti
Abortion/Evolution/Homosexuality tribe are fighting
the Homosexual Agenda, the Secular Humanists, the
Liberal Media, and the Dirty Hippies who never grew
old. It is this battle that gives the tribe its identity.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

The answer to why they hate us

By Marie Cocco -
Published Thursday, September 13, 2007

It's all about us. This is why the theatrical masterpiece of Gen. David Petraeus' testimony to Congress coincided with the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

President Bush always has cast the American invasion and occupation of Iraq as part of the larger war on terror, a logical and supposedly unavoidable step to prevent the next attack -- or inexplicably, avenge the last. The falsity of the claimed connection was long ago exposed, but it resurfaces like an ugly, bloated corpse.

What if the hearings had been held in connection with another anniversary -- say, that of the 2006 bombing that shattered the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a spectacular provocation that intensified, possibly beyond hope, the sectarianism that tears at Iraq?


"This is as 9/11 in the United States," Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite politician and one of Iraq's two vice presidents, said at the time.

Perhaps we would then ask what Iraqis think of the American military "surge," ostensibly conducted on their behalf. If we did, we would find that they think it is a failure.

Six in 10 Iraqis say security in Iraq overall has worsened since the surge began. That is their grim assessment, according to an extensive national poll conducted jointly by ABC News, the BBC and NHK, a Japanese broadcaster.

The survey cannot be said to contain any data from which even the most facile manipulator could make a colorful collection of upbeat charts.

The proportion of Iraqis who rate their local security positively -- 43 percent -- is unchanged since March. When asked to assess the surge overall, Iraqis are particularly negative: More than two-thirds of them say the stepped-up U.S. military presence has worsened security, worsened the country's political dialogue and worsened the pace of reconstruction and economic development.

In Anbar province -- held up for the exemplary way in which Americans have suddenly struck tactical security alliances with Sunnis who formerly were our sworn enemies -- the outlook is still decidedly glum. Thirty-eight percent of those in Anbar province rated security positively -- none had six months ago. Still, nearly half of those in the province identified security as the biggest problem in their lives, and factional fighting in Anbar, the poll analysts said, was reported as being up.

A worsening of attitudes in Baghdad, also a focal point of the surge, is apparent. Sixty-eight percent of Baghdad respondents called local security "very bad," a proportion that is up since March.

Resentment against Americans is undiminished, and has reached such levels that 57 percent of Iraqis say that violence against U.S. forces is acceptable, up six points from when the survey was last conducted in March. In February 2004, only 17 percent of Iraqis said they condoned violence against the Americans in their midst.

Fear, pessimism and resentment grip the country. Why should it be otherwise?

Iraqis do not sense that this war was ever about them. They cannot reconcile their lives of deprivation and destruction with American television reports of administration officials claiming that things are beginning to go much better, thank you.

Could there be a more blatant display of indifference to their suffering?

For the implacable Bush administration and for the impatient Congress, a single force drives all discussion about Iraq. It has not much to do with Iraqis. Their concerns are the future of the U.S. military, of U.S. prestige, of U.S. access to oil, of broader U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East.

Add to the mix the political imperatives that inspire all of them -- Bush's intent to hand over the messy endgame to the next president; lawmakers' determination to find a path to re-election that guides them safely through this quagmire -- and you have a myopia that is bereft of morality.

Americans always have believed themselves to be exceptional, set apart from the rest of the world in both triumph and sacrifice. The instinct intensified after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that have defined our contemporary politics. It is as though history began, or ended, on that day.

The next time that banal question -- why do they hate us? -- is asked, it would be worth reading this poll of Iraqis, if only to get a glimpse of the answer.

About the writer:
Marie Cocco's e-mail address is mariecocco@washpost.com. Distributed by the Washington Post Writers Group.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Just How Gay is the GOP?

Just How Gay Is The GOP?
Sen. Larry 'Wide Stance' Craig, just another in a long daisy chain of happy homoevidence
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, September 7, 2007

Here is the sticky, irresistible question, hovering like some sort of perky rainbow-colored cloud over anyone who reads the news or pays attention to the scandals or the nifty bathroom hand signals or the various semen stains covering the pages of the Official GOP Handbook like some sort of wretched, skanky Kandinsky painting:

Really, just how many closeted, self-hating, violently repressed "I-am-not-gay" totally gay hypocrites are there in the Republican Party? Or for that matter, in your average born-again Christian megachurch? Or in the U.S. military? Or in (your morally righteous group's name here)? Ten percent of them? Fifty? A hundred and four?

Because baby, it just keeps popping up, scandal after scandal, homophobic lawmaker after anti-gay preacher after gay marriage attacker after hooker-loving "family values" adulterer, Bob Allen to Ted Haggard to Jim West to Glenn Murphy Jr. to David "Diaperman" Vitter, so many examples of a militant loudmouthed Christian Republican suddenly caught with his pants down around his boyfriend's ankles that, after so many headlines, the notion that these cases might be rare or exceptional simply vanishes and you are left only with the undeniable fact that, oh my God, the American right is simply teeming with so much murky, pressure-cooked homoeroticism it might as well be a Young Republicans kegger at Mark Foley's pink Miami Beach condo.

Not exactly a revelation, I admit. As you already know and as any D.C. therapist or male prostitute or honest historian will happily remind you, this is the way it's always been; incidents like Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's toe-tapping in the tearoom merely reinforce the great Rule of Conservative Hypocrisy -- the louder and more self-righteous the indignation over a given "moral" issue, the more sure you can be that the screamer in question is simply oozing with repressed fantasy/lust regarding that very issue -- and what's more, is very likely acting on it, right now, in a fetish dungeon, brothel or bathroom stall near you.
Same as it ever was? Absolutely.

Maybe this, then, is the more interesting question: How far back does it go? How deep can you trace it? To the very roots of humanity itself? Indeed, you need no microscope, no copy of "The Agony and the Ecstasy" to see the ocean of homoerotic sexual repression surrounding the very foundations of the conservative fundamentalist worldview, or the church itself, hearkening back to all those early, nasty popes (secretly married, secret adulterers, secret flocks of nubile boys at their disposal).

You need no "Da Vinci Code" to tell you of the religious right's eternal repression of the feminine divine, its deep fear of sex, its eternal fascination with the supple flesh of young males. Hell, show me a vociferous anti-sex fundamentalist of any religious or political bent -- be he Muslim, Christian, Jew, Mormon, Republican or other -- and I'll show you a slideshow of his secret nighttime fantasies so kinky and dark it would make Jenna Jameson shudder. And not in a good way.

In this light, Larry Craig is merely carrying on a proud, rather disgusting tradition among the morally rigid and the sexually turgid. He is but one in a long, long line of dangerous, duplicitous cretins who stab madly at the world and work like fervent demons to demean others because they cannot stand their own repulsive reflection in the mirror.

It's as if all the pedophilic priests and all the gay evangelists and the hooker-loving, cocaine-snorting family values GOP crusaders really want us to know that there exists no bastion of stiff, sanctimonious "moral" values that is not, at its core, corrupt and messy and wrongheaded as the Taliban at a nudist colony.

Not our military, a massively warped organization apparently far more terrified of gays than of dropping its entrance barrier so dangerously low it makes good soldiers nervous, not the seminary with the pitter-patter of young men's feet from bunk to bunk after light's out, not the megachurches with their deep, eternal, fetishistic fascination with all things anal and perverted and hookeriffic and yummy.

And for the record, no, liberals and Dems are far from immune to this timeless rule (though the self-hating hypocrisy part is largely muted, by default). It's equally true for any hardcore PETA activist or Earth Firster. The more intolerant you become and the more fixed your ideas of how it's all supposed to work, the more likely the universe will simply laugh, and smack you upside the head, and secretly take your picture licking your new leather boots or applauding the bombing of Afghanistan or eating that endangered baby seal burger. In your Hummer. With a rifle. On top of Bill O'Reilly. (Shudder.)

But one vital aspect of this otherwise rather typical gay-Republican scandal must be repeated, merely for the record: Truly, no one would give much of a damn that Craig's as gay as a three-dollar bill and probably has been for oh, about 40 years now -- in fact, it might have even been applauded, had he come out with anything resembling dignity or honesty -- were the man not a raging, deceitful, duplicitous fraud, one who's intentionally and maliciously damaged lives, restricted sexual progress and, with his fellow homophobes in Congress, taken a rusty, serrated knife the very fabric of human love. Oh yes he has.

After all, this is the same sniveling Larry Craig who snickered that Bill Clinton was a "bad, nasty, naughty boy" during Lewinskygate, the same Craig who helped to enact the military's brutal, failed "don't ask, don't tell" policy (which, as Slate's William Saletan points out, is a complete and degrading sham -- if you don't tell, they make you tell), the same senator who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act and against adding sexual orientation to the list of punishable hate crimes.

In fact, Craig's classic case of GOP hypocrisy, of the chasm between his homophobic public persona and his homosexual personal lusts is simply so blatant, so undeniably grotesque, he becomes a bizarre case study, a cultural curio, a deeply fascinating -- albeit largely nauseating -- archetype, full of obvious but still mandatory lessons for us all.

But let us look, just for now, at the biggest one of all. This particular lesson comes straight from the universe itself. It flows and ebbs and floods over all of time, it reeks of blood and sex and huge explosions of exotic flowers, tells tales of history and warped leaders and sexual mayhem going back millennia. In other words, this lesson, as they say, has seen it all.
It goes something like this:

Dear eternally baffled, terminally horny humans: You can only poison your own soul for so long. You can only lie to yourself, your wife, your children, the nation, your own miserable and intolerant genitalia before the backlash, the recoil, the nasty acid reflux comes right back up to bite your ass in the cold, cold bathroom stall of life. Do you understand? Do you not yet see?

Do not, at the peril of your very spirit, at the risk of all that is beautiful and good and fluid and sexual and wet and sticky and right, hold so tightly, so violently to your narrow views of sex and love and human behavior that, when you are caught naked and shivering and salivating on your bed of nails doing exactly the thing your beliefs profess to hate, that your very soul explodes, the flowers wilt, the gods laugh and you are handed a tiny yellow ticket guaranteeing your return in the next life as a small, black, cancerous lesion on the underbelly of a hyena. OK?

Thus endeth the lesson.

Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing.
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