Life is like the bad job that never changes

A blog inspired by Beth's theme of late and as I said there sometimes I have to rejigger theology in my own head from time to time due to events. The late playwright Arthur Miller who as I recall was not known for being a religious person had this to say in his autobiography TimeBends: "Fuck you Death!" Probably for many of us we've come to accept death as natural and normal if not really a great thing, it's not and I think Miller tapped into something here basic to Christian thought without even knowing it and that is there is something fundamentally flawed with the Universe, in the original Christian understanding death did not enter the world until Man sinned and I covered alot of this ground already in my blog about why emotionally I can never be pro-choice (http://not-the-left.blogspot.com/2009/01/spiritual-view-on-pro-life-im-entitled.html) .

It's not an either/or situation, you can hold that God exists and yet Life is absurd and without meaning at the same time (although this is largely subjective since the happy and the unhappy cannot seem to relate to each other). The atheist "solution" besides ignoring Intelligent Design is too easy and doesn't address this central existential problem head on. Now whenever I've drifted towards this view people call you depressing, negative, pessimistic...relax, I'm merely stating a hard philosophical truth and do counsel people to get as much out of Life as you possibly can, you can and should enjoy Life to the max anyway but the answers religious folk give in such situations are too pat. So why do those of a spiritual bent continue to fool themselves insisting that God has plans for all of us which are too inscrutable for us to even figure out, always on some unknowing mystical plane? What about the 8 dead in the Taconic tragedy? I'd have thought a divine plan would not be so easy to foil.

The thought occured during my walk in Piermont this morning that maybe we're not meant to be here that long anyway and yet we cling to this life with all its absurdity and tragedy and yet maybe the good angels are whispering to us to just let it go. As soon as we're born we start to die, life's a bitch and then you die so why do we try to reconfigure a reality that isn't? Man sinned, we muffed it and can't seem to get back on track. Why are we here? Why were we born? I have no answer to that just know that it's not our true destination so if it's merely a sojourn does the duration really matter? IMO the real problem is secularism which teaches us to become too attached to this one life and meaning then becomes derived through materialistic means: career, house, money, sex etc. Final Thought - Your life here on Earth is very short, even the average lifespan of say 75 years is short when you stop to think about it so how the tragic affects us emotionally and spiritually is finite too and when the time comes when everyone looks back on this dot called Life, well as I said it really didn't make a whole lot of sense and we're in Heaven now so seen against the backdrop of Eternity its relevance is only temporary.

If it's Bubba it has to be bad

Now you'd think the safe return of those two American journalists being held prisoner by North Korea would be a happy event even if it did take Bill Clinton himself to go over there but listening to Hannity during my drive the other day and, must be manic-depressive politics or something but he seemed to be saying Clinton shouldn't have done that and what did we give them in return? Oh I don't know, maybe Bill got Kim Jong-Il a couple of strippers or a little ulterior motive action, maybe he just wants a little Asian favor in return (once you go Asian you never go Caucasian), how the hell do I know? Wonder if the families of Laura Ling and Euna Lee feel the same way as Hannity but somehow I doubt it.

Well since I brought up strippers funny story. Many years ago my friend and I were supposed to go to my brother's birthday party or party of some sort or some type of social occasion involving brother, brain cells dying on a daily basis so the details are fuzzy at best but long story short we didn't go. We wound up at our old haunt Barnes & Noble as we didn't feel the party was socially obligatory and when I talked to my mother later she scolded me, said we were supposed to go and that we were probably at some strip joint instead having a good time. No Mom we really are that boring.

In the East life is cheap, in the West life is expendable

In the East: "Here's a pack of cigarettes, fix my car."
In the West: "Sorry, that cancer drug's not covered."

Maybe the government should fix your car too. Kind of missed Obama's speech last night, didn't know it was even on as no other president has spoken to the nation so often but caught some snippets on PBS after it was all over. With ObamaCare it has become almost impossible to not see Obama as a socialist or having socialist tendencies or at the very least belonging to some variant subspecies of the socialist genus (let me consult my field guide here). He's so convinced his vision is correct, a charge often leveled against us conservatives, his is an almost messianic mission. His rhetorical device of always painting the opposition to whatever he believes in, nay knows to be true as obstructionists to Progress, I know what he's doing the slick SOB. Obama has often been compared to Ronald Reagan but he's the opposite of Reagan in almost every way. He's killing us softly.

Hot Topics

The 40th Anniversary of Man's First Steps on the Moon

I think we had it backwards. Any rational species would have cured Cancer first, maybe wiped out the Poverty, the Hunger, taken care of a couple other items and then hurtled off into Space. I'm not against space exploration but worry about our own little dot in the Cosmos first.

Walter Cronkite

I know he was a journalistic legend but I got nothing out of him. Very memorable and poignant, him announcing that President Kennedy just died was for me his most classic moment but the Most Trusted Man in America? Who comes up with this bullshit? I think it's because I was born with a bug up my ass but I just don't See Things the way most folks do. Barbara Walters, another one.

The Wendy Williams Show

This supposedly hot hot show has pushed my Channel 9 News past 10 o'clock well into 11 because I have to listen apparently to this happening chick prattle on endlessly about absolutely NOTHING. People in the audience ask for her advice, for example a 28-year old woman stands up to ask if there's anything wrong with her going out with a 23-year old and Wendy all hip says "do him" but I'm thinking what's so radical about a mere 5 year age difference? It's the type of show you find yourself watching about twenty minutes too long with the remote in your left hand and the Christian Brothers to your right and then it hits you like a revelation, why the hell am I watching this?

Sex Tapes

Supposedly there's now one of John Edwards with the lady not his wife but I don't wanna know. The last one was horrible though, Amy Fisher and her fat Italian ex-husband like she's giving him a blowjob and he's squatting there all hairy after he ate too much pasta. It's the kind of stuff if you were housesitting one night and you're all alone and someone left it on the coffee table on top of the gardening book and the TV Guide and there's really nothing at all on TV like Wendy Williams, some lame 2 & 1/2 Men syndicated repeat and some crime show on Ch. 2, you're like you're only gonna watch it for laughs. You ARE gonna pop it in for perusal, not at first, it's only a theoretical concept then, just an intellectual note that it exists and you're aware of it for keeping tabs on the culture but then your robotic arm puts it on the beckoning discholder and it will be rationalized as a comic evaluation to talk about some day around the water cooler should the topic ever present itself and you'll be the knowledgeable hipster but even porno pete is ashamed.
Obama

It's like the man has legislative OCD or something. He's like the person at work handing around a petition, "here here, quick sign this" and you don't even have a chance to read it. If he's doing this much in six months what's he gonna do in four years?? Maybe I'll just be like my cat and sleep it out.

The REAL purpose of Government

I've heard it said that the First purpose of Government, maybe the only legitimate purpose of Government is to keep us safe. It's not to pass health-care reform, God knows it's not to take over the auto industry, it has absolutely nothing to do with teaching kids about sex. It's not paying for abortions or funding some aspiring artist who may be controversial, it's not any of this and yet in their primary purpose the Government fails miserably. OK we've done a better job with terrorism since 9-11 but just the same the average citizen should be safe from violent crime in general ya think? So why is it the chief role of Government to keep us safe? so we can enjoy our God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that's why. I know I'm speaking as an old fart here, soapie and I be geezers with our walking sticks who aren't with the times but if the Government can't keep you safe on the street or in your home or at the airport or on vacation here or abroad WHAT THE HELL GOOD IS IT?!? OK good I now have government-run health care but I've just been shot, well whoop-dee-doo!! OK so just to review the real purpose of Government is what again?

Sarah Palin's resignation

This is hard for me. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced her intent to resign last Friday, July 4th eve and libraries were closed that day, the holiday of course and Sunday too due to summer hours. She did it on purpose but just wanted to say this was a slap in the face to every Alaskan voter who voted for her. They wanted HER to lead, HER to govern them, no one else and she obviously doesn't recognize this moral and political obligation on HER part. Either way you slice it it ain't good, somewhat fruity and nutty in the middle, slightly eccentric on the outer edges. It either makes her look suspicious (there was a menage a trois between her, SC Governor Mark Sanford and this Chapur babe down in Argentina) or weak (who knew DAVE had so much power?). Oh God it feels good to get this out ("I'll be out in a minute!").

Cancer detectives

We covered alot of ground in our phone conversation last night Beth and I and so I wanted to explore further a theme about cancer I brought up and it's this: just how old is cancer? when did it first appear on the scene? when exactly did people start dying from it? Even as a kid there is something about the cancer problem that has always struck me, something unusual, we act like it's an old disease, ancient in fact but is it? I've read alot in my life, reading lists we had in high school and then just for the pure enjoyment of it later on and I said I don't even remember cancer being a topic of conversation let alone people dying from it during the Middle Ages, in the colonial period, even during the Abe Lincoln era. Did Shakespeare ever remark "the Queen just died from cancer?" So we mulled this over and Beth said maybe cancer existed back then but people didn't know what it was but I lean more towards it didn't really exist until modern times and by modern times I mean at least the framework of the 1900's. I'm now looking at cancer historically, in the context of History. It's the timeline that interests me the most and as we all know that Nazi doctor Dr. Josef Mengele became infamous for conducting medical experiments on human subjects including dwarves but what kind of experiments were they exactly? specifically what was he looking to do and what kind of work was he really doing for the Hitler regime and why? Does cancer disproportionately affect people of certain races? Does cancer have something to do with the explosion of modern technology and were we all better off in the days when we lived a more natural life as Beth seems to feel?

You know one of the most beautiful things about blogging is you get to exercise total creative control over your work, I'm happy with it and if you don't like it just move on and so what I try to do here is to come up with an Original Thought or two every now and then. Just heard on the news this morning that Obama has appointed some type of Cyber Czar to monitor people's online habits so where are all the liberals on this one? Frightening! but at any rate they're more than welcome to read this.

I don't have all the answers, I only pose the questions. BTW my sitemeter crashed the other day, it's apparently broken like some odometer that goes back to zero so pay no attention. I'll be off tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday of course since that's the schedule of most public libraries in my area around this 4th of July weekend. Make it a safe one and enjoy and see you back on Monday.

Sentencing day for Bernie Madoff

Let it be said if I were speaking to the judge I'da said many of Madoff's victims were greedy and stupid themselves, after all how much money do you need to retire? (of course I would have needed heavy security to just go home). I'm living comfortably now, don't need much, I don't have millions to invest anyway (poor Steven Spielberg - boohoo!). So today Manhattan U.S. District Judge Denny Chin sentenced Madoff to the maximum meaning 150 years in prison and everyone cheered and got off but what else could he do? The sentence is an existential absurdity, murderers have gotten out in less time. Oh but it will be pointed out that Madoff's a murderer himself because three of his victims took their own lives but truth be told only weak people kill themselves. Everyone's acting like 150 years is a hell of a long time, does it apply to successive reincarnations? Getting back to MJ......

Just a screw or two that needs tightening (Phillips or flathead?)

I liked the original version better, that Republican Governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford couldn't take his job anymore and without telling anyone just hit the Appalachian Trail to clear his head for a few days, I mean anyone can relate. Turns out though he was getting his skin flute played by some Latin mama down in Argentina. Some poetic e-mails have surfaced, have to say not bad from a literary angle from the usual junk we've been accustomed to (fingertips, soul connection). Having an affair is kind of the norm these days, that and smoking a doobie in your yoot so if you haven't done either you're some kind of weirdo. As the song says so where do we go from here?

A campaign spot by Michael Bloomberg you'll never see

This arrogant man got the law changed in New York City so he could run for a third term as Mayor. Just saw on the news last night there have been 32 deaths here in NYC due to the H1N1 virus or Swine Flu. I'm tired of hearing "underlying causes", maybe liberalism is the underlying cause. Thirty-two deaths, that's unacceptable, we're not living in the age of Typhoid Mary after all. He's been running some ads by a state pro-abortion group touting his work on behalf of women's health. Abortion is never mentioned so you can forgive someone for mistaking it for a breast cancer spot. Bloomberg is one of those hardcore pro-aborts, beyond pro-abortion. He's the type that would do them himself if he could ("give me the f****n forceps!"). He called a reporter who questioned him on changing the term-limits law "a disgrace." He's always been just a touch mental, when he walks around he reminds me of that Yul Brynner robot in Westworld. Just glad I don't live in the City just a surrounding suburb safe from this RINO.

Why people are threatened by miracles (or the bias against miracles)

A miracle strongly implies a God, a God in turn we suspect has a moral code for us to follow, a moral code means we have to make a decision in the end for either Heaven or Hell, damnation or salvation. To someone who ain't livin' right they will go to the ends of the earth to disprove the most obvious miracles, he isn't into them and so to be into them means he would have to turn his life around. The next question becomes maybe miracles are more common than we realize but we'd rather not go there so we downplay them or rationalize them away so we can continue with the life we've been accustomed to. If Science can't explain it then that means we have to throw the porn away or the drugs or not get another abortion sometime down the road or be nice to our neighbor or give up our seat on the bus to some elderly woman with a limp. The atheist can't be bothered with Fatima even though it's the most fascinating subject because the implications are disturbing at least for him.

A pet peeve of mine -- Intelligent Design is NOT, I repeat not Creationism. All it says is there is a Prime Mover behind it all, a Creative Imagination but has nothing to do with the literal seven days of Creation as described in the Book of Genesis. I can only think this is a quite deliberation obfuscation among liberals and it's getting old. I DO believe a sublime force made the cosmos, I don't however believe in talking snakes. Get it right!!

Jimmy Carter still thinks he's president

Worked the late shift last night and got home and turned on the tube before going to bed. The Ch. 11 News told me of an assassination plot against Jimmy Carter in Gaza. "Carter has been in the region meeting with all sides of the conflict" Jim Watkins told me. STILL wants to broker that Mideast peace deal and not be remembered for long gas lines and inflation, some kind of syndrome going on here.

This constant and I mean constant push for gay marriage. Even former Republican Majority Leader of the NY State Senate Joseph Bruno has come out for it so it's really only a matter of Time before gay marriage becomes like abortion, people will be queasy about it but used to it. Come to think of it the Anus ain't causing the abortion problem.

DTV, more channels than ever but I'm still BORED OUT OF MY SKULL!!

Justice as a value

Elie Wiesel, after his visit with Obama to the Buchenwald concentration camp, had this to say: "I think he (Obama) has a sense of humor but I'm not so sure he has a sense of justice yet." Early concepts of justice could be understood to be inside or outside the bounds of the law. Hamlet is rife with the most primitive and elemental concepts of justice and only in later years could you say that in Western civilization to find justice solely within the law is the only way to go, that vigilante justice is immoral. This blog takes that position as it is Mr. Wiesel's position but his comment is very very interesting, somewhat enigmatic regarding President Obama. What does he mean? what was he trying to say? it's pregnant with Meaning.

How many times are we counseled to just look the other way re various injustices, to let it go, is it really worth pursuing? and such, to be careful etc. Stephen Pagones pursuing a civil case against the Rev. Al Sharpton over the Tawany Brawley hoax apparently destroyed his marriage. He was the Assistant in the District Attorney's office up there in Dutchess County NY who was falsely accused with others of raping the young black girl Tawana Brawley in Wappingers Falls and Sharpton, the lawyers Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason led the charge. Some would say why did he pursue it so many years after the fact? everyone knows it was a big-time hoax, it embarrassed Cosby and the case is so old, so yesterday but I agree with him. In many cases to not pursue Justice, to listen to the pragmatic counselers of indifference, well it might be unfair to call it a kind of liberalism but it ain't conservative. Justice is right up there with freedom and personal responsibility and lower taxes and smaller government in the conservative View of the Universe. Even on a much smaller scale justice is important. As I blogged the other day about the misfortune that my cat met last Sunday morning, basically her skull was crushed in and she was left in a puddle of her own blood on the side of the road, that is also an issue of justice on a personal scale and I'm sure there are legions who would disagree. Inside the parameters of the law yes, of course but when you're a true conservative whether the issue is big or small you don't question for a moment the value of justice, any other way tends towards liberalism.

There is also the civil and criminal case against a group of Yonkers firefighters coming up. Basically it is alleged that a few of them would dose some of their fellow firefighters with acid or LSD and in one particularly vicious case while their victim began to hallucinate they screamed obscenities at the top of their lungs in his ears. It is also charged that they have harassed some of their victims for having decided to pursue the case against them. There is also the alleged coverup of the bloodwork by the City. These incidents all go back ten years at least but there has been a culture of corruption in City government for quite some time or so it's been said. Now again I'm sure there are many many people who would say why pursue such a case? it happened so long ago, the chemicals have long since passed everyone's brains and it's so dangerous to go up against a group of alleged psychos, don't you watch the movies? Ah yes but this is NOT the conservative position, not the true one anyway, and to not pursue justice in certain cases sets a very bad precedent indeed, it's defining deviancy down to quote the famous phrase from the late NY Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Justice is also cathartic, it serves a basic emotional human need for closure. Justice is so many things to so many people but I am bothered about Elie Wiesel's observation, have we lost a sense of justice in our culture? That liberals seem overly concerned with the rights of criminals and these days terrorists, there's more than a grain of truth to that. Their concerns are not unimportant but I too get the sense that Obama would rather just talk it out with the bad guys rather than do the right thing. To be taken to task by a noted Nobel Peace Prize winner however politely worded, that's a hell of alot of blogworthy material right there!

Adam Lambert & Clay Aiken

USUALLY and I'm just sayin' when someone disses the other like Clay did recently and the other responded in kind it really means they have a secret crush on each other. Sounds like they like each other, do I see a teabag in their future?

David Carradine - Even if I were bored out of my skull which is most Sunday nights I wouldn't auto-erotically-asphyxiate myself. I'd sooner read the tube of Crest or bang the crumbs out of the toaster. BB take it away.

Any subjects not covered so far? I can't think of any.

Getting bogged down by false issues

In Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn NY there's a Holocaust Memorial honoring ALL the victims of the Hitler regime. New York City owns it and it's located at Emmons Avenue and Shore Boulevard so that's your summary. Assemblyman Dov Hikind has a problem though, well read on from Hikind: Jews Only - Holocaust-memorial flap by Edmund DeMarche and Leonard Greene in the June 8th issue of the New York Post:

"Hikind said even though 5 million people from other groups - including gays, the disabled and Jehovah's Witnesses - were killed along with 6 million Jewish people during the Holocaust, the memorial in Sheepshead Bay should be for Jews only.

'To include these other groups diminishes their memory,' said Hikind...These people are not in the same category as Jewish people with regards to the Holocaust,' Hikind said following a press conference at the memorial. 'It is so vastly different. You cannot compare political prisoners with Jewish victims'...

...'There's no doubt that most of the atrocities at the Holocaust were done upon Jewish people,' said Council Speaker Christine Quinn. 'But it goes against history and their memory to not commemorate all groups that were persecuted by the Nazis'...

...'The Holocaust memorial means you memorialize anyone who died in the Holocaust,' said Theresa Scavo, president of Community Board 15, who lobbied for the additional recognition. 'It doesn't matter what color or sexual orientation you were.' "

File this one under the need to have a problem. Even if we magically got rid of all our problems, issues and controversies tomorrow people would still make up more. So we have 5 million non-Jewish victims vs. 6 million Jewish victims, those are shattering numbers either way. The news will never be at a loss, there will always be news even if we have to make it up.

The vast right-wing corporate media conspiracy (or VRWCMC)

Watched Bill Moyer's Journal last night which sometimes I do on slow Friday evenings. I'm not out clubbing which shows my age but anyway if you can paint with a broad brush here IMO most of his guests tend to be liberal although they don't seem to like that word so let's go with not conservative. Many of them tend to be anti-military for lack of a better word with the occasional poet thrown in for a little culture action. E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post recently wrote a column which ties into the theme here and that is that Newt and Rush and Sean control the mainstream media, they give Bob Schieffer his talking points! Let them spell it out for you 'cause most of us are too dense and have suffered under the delusion all these years that the msm has a very pronounced liberal bias. The media, the corporate media as they call it actually tilts heavily to the Right......excuse me for a minute I'm laughing so hard my ribs hurt, I think I'm gonna die......Last I heard this argument it was Eric Alterman making it and he even wrote a book about it and so......oh God it hurts!! Now the names of Moyers' guests always elude me by next morning, I disagree with much of what they have to say but they are so damn interesting and speak well. They are so convinced of their parallel universe, of their own alternate reality To Explain Things that you can't hate them, you want to believe these folks they're so sincere but my computations come in differently than theirs. To hear Dionne and Moyers (or the guests who speak for him) tell it Obama's a moderate not living up to the conservative caricature of him, that frustrating bastardo! Hey guys it's early yet, that remains to be seen. You feel more than a little weird and confused after watching his show like how could you be so stupid all these years and not see The Bigger Picture?? come out of your brain fog dude and smell the fresh air and let Rush go hibernate in his cave. Newt and Sean and Rush, 'tis a right wing media machine all along, who knew?

The world's most controversial issue

Frankly I'm more than a little tired of this whole Israeli/Palestinian issue. It consumes so much time, energy and attention of each succeeding administration. Since I was a kid I didn't even follow politics but I knew the names -- Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat, Camp David. Give the Palestinians a homeland, their own state and be done with it. Maybe Obama should speak more to the point and say the issue doesn't concern us anymore, we're done, we're moving on -- Darfur, Tibet, Haiti. Wasn't Bibi PM once before? How is this possible? It'd be like Bill Clinton becoming president again. The Middle East, the Never-Ending Story.

The roots of violence

Here's what it is in a nutshell, moral relativism and it even applies to the man who shot abortionist George Tiller to death. As I said at Kris's Elephant blog when you condone the killing of even late-term unborn babies you set up yet another exception to Thou Shalt Not Kill and then someone might decide the next exception is YOU, it's moral relativism turned on itself. Man as a rational creature (don't laugh) cannot choose evil for evil's sake, it has to be rationalized first as a good and in the case of violence the person doing the violence feels he is enforcing a moral code. Enforcement of a moral code is at the roots of modern-day violence and the person doing the killing feels the moral code being enforced is about absolute Right and Wrong. When Boston lawyer Tom Capano killed his lover Anne Marie Fahey who wanted to break it off with him he killed her and is now awaiting the death sentence (see the bestseller And Never Let Her Go by Ann Rule). Here's how he can more than live with himself and bide his time in prison, he believes in his heart of hearts she deserved her fate, by spurning him she was violating some type of moral code, a kind of absolute and universal code of we should be together forever and in the case of true sociopaths like Capano and O.J. Simpson it's not enough to believe in this moral code which many of us may believe in too but here's the difference. Most of us might accept the moral code of don't break my heart or it's wrong to kill unborn babies but in the mind of the socio this moral code needs to be enforced, it's a kind of karmic necessity, a cosmic balancing of the Scales of Justice so no matter that Tiller's killer believed in the absolute moral code of it's wrong to take the life of the unborn, he acted like a relativist for acting this out. You can't go there, it is what it is and only God can judge Tiller. For me anyway this is not debateable and one of my cardinal rules is once you throw up something for debate over time it will become morally defensible, we don't debate the pros and cons of rape for instance. Kind of a disturbing beginning of the week all around.

Send complaints to...

OK so Beth has weighed in on the murder of abortionist George Tiller and yes technically she is correct but I also agree with Daniel who posted there he thought Tiller was an evil man. The real issue is this: not the rare act of violence by an anti-abortionist but why are the late-term abortions that Tiller specialized in even legally allowed in this country? Killing Tiller, besides being wrong also has the consequence of making somebody into a martyr who doesn't deserve to be. You had to be a psycho to do the work he did for thirty long years which also begs the question of what kind of late-term patients these women were who sought his services in earnest. That the man apparently was a regular churchgoer boggles the mind and it's one reason I'm not overly keen on eulogies, many times they don't do justice to the character of a man. That the mainstream pro-choice movement never saw the necessity of ostracizing him at the least speaks volumes of THEM and that includes Obama's new Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and so that's that.

A double whopper w/cheese has like over a thousand calories

What, you didn't know? Yeah in New York State a law was just passed that restaurants have to post the calories for each food item and I mentioned this to someone and she went "how stupid, that's Communism." Well not technically but I get her point. We've entered the realm of passing nonessential laws some time ago and each thing by itself is a small-scale evil as soapie would say but cumulatively they add up to something that ain't good for democracy. IF we keep passing law after law with no end in sight this noble experiment called America will expire a natural death, it may not be Communism but there's some kind of ism at work here. Trouble is who's gonna fight a small-scale evil as having to post calories if you're a restaurant owner? You can't afford not to comply, well most of us can't and so the next nanny-state law gets passed and you comply and on and on it goes...dunno but don't you think you have less personal freedom since Roe vs. Wade? kind of a paradox which really highlights that your personal privacy and freedom ain't the real focus and priority of liberals after all but when you figure it if you have to tell the consumer how many calories are in their thick shakes why shouldn't a pregnant woman be shown a sonogram? Libertarianism with which I disagree in parts is at least consistent. Liberals are often charged with anti-Americanism, not sure if this is fair but why do I get the distinct sense they're against McDonald's?