Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

There's a certain irony to it. On the eve in which the City of Dallas, in it's infinite [lack of] wisdom decided that it was so flush with money that driving tax dollars to the suburbs and closing businesses via a smoking ban (or saddling them with the cost of building a patio) was, you know, a great idea.....nearly a dozen wildfires range throughout North Texas leaving the city in an orange choking haze. Truth be told, that picture doesn't do it justice.

But hey, cheer up Dallas, when you wake up tomorrow morning the black phlegm you're hacking up won't be from someone else's cigarettes (you know, assuming it ever was)-instead it'll be some combination of wildfires, cement plants, and auto exhaust.

Feel healthier yet?

The End Of An ERa

Like that title? Brilliant, aren't I? What a play on words. That said, please indulge me....as I feel the need to write a little about the series finale of ER. Yes, that ER.

ER debuted in September of 1994, and just to put things in perspective that was just a few months after Kurt Cobain killed himself (which oddly enough, is 15 years today)....the show has been on for-freaking-ever. Part of the original NBC "must-see TV" lineup along with Seinfeld, it's a program for which I've got great fondness, as I watched it throughout my youth. It was intended to be a realistic medical drama (albeit, with a little soap opera style drama thrown in) which focused on the characters and not the medical cases (like, say, House) and I'd suggest that it delivered....a bold proclamation for a show that lasted 15 years....no?

What seperated ER from the pack though, was the way in which it was filmed. Filmed in a somewhat grainy form with a herky-jerky (yes that's a technical term) camera method that continually followed the action instead of existing with a focal point or three in the room. The camera was always moving, and the action always following with it-proving the point that an ER is a chaotic place-and making the cases (almost) as exciting as, say, the opening scene of 'Saving Private Ryan.' I said almost.

I watched ER live for the first half dozen or so seasons before hitting the meat of High School and then College, a time in my life in which I didn't watch that much TV, especially live TV. As such, I fell off the show's bandwagon always enjoying the odd episode I'd catch but not being up to date. That all changed though when I got a Tivo, and then totally changed when I graduated college and had 4mos unemployed to do nothing but drink beer, play video games, and watch TV (and good god, that was a good 4mos). You see, TNT ran ER re-runs twice a day and in chronological order, allowing an unemployed man with a Tivo little choice but to watch them.....all. And watch them all I did, to the point that I started at the pilot episode and caught alllllll the way up, and have since made it a point to record and watch every episode. And so on thursday, I finally watched the final episode of ER.....having watched every episode previous.

Ending a series is a difficult task. Seinfeld-a show I love-failed miserably at it. Most shows do, as tying up all the loose ends whilst simultaneously trying to give viewers their proverbial last hit off the crack pipe is a difficult thing. In much the same way we think three more Star Wars movies is a good idea, we as television consuming human beings never wants a program to end-no matter how tired it has become. ER had played through every concievable dramatic twist multiple times over the years, and likewise had churned through more characters than you can shake a stick at-a fact I was reminded of as I watched the ER series retrospective which aired previous to the final episode.

Dr. Ross, Dr. Greene, Nurse Hathaway, Dr. Carter, Dr. Benton, Dr. Lewis....that's how it started, more or less. By my count, we've had another 20+ doctors (30+ if you include nurses and staff) enter and exit the show in various ways since 1994. Don't believe me? Off the top of my head I've got Dr. Boulet, Dr. Weaver, Dr. Weaver, Jerry, Frank, Dr. Corday, Dr. Kovac, Lucy, Dr. Del Amico, Dr. Malucci, Dr. Chen, Nurse Lockhart, Dr. Pratt, Dr. Rasgotra, Dr. Gallant, Dr. Barnett, Nurse Taggart, Dr. Morris, Dr. Gates (Uncle Jessie), Dr. Brenner, Dr. Banfield and I'm pretty sure I'm missing a few, to say nothing of the ancillary characters (all four dozen of them).

What started as a medical drama that was apparently rejectd by multiple networks upon it's inception before being given a chance, morphed into a piece of TV cultural Americana, as more actors than you can shake a stick at have filled cameo roles on the show and the characters have gained a place in our TV hearts. Before TV would touch the AIDS/Civil War epidemics in Africa, ER was there with Dr. Carter doing two seasons of mission work with Doctors Without Borders. Likewise they had Dr. Benton's deaf child, Dr. Boulet's life with HIV, Dr. Romano's well known arm lost to a helicopter....I know this all sounds really crazy and soap opera-y......but it was good TV, and while sometimes preachy, it brought issues to the forefront that other programs didnt want to touch.

I was ready for it to end, really I was.....I think I'd made peace with it's incoming finale when Dr. Pratt died-the latest in a long list of characters I'd come around on only to see them meet their maker. But that doesn't mean the quality of the show was lost on me, and the cameos over the past season to sew up the loose ends did little but re-affirm for me the quality of the program. When the last episode faded to black, I felt as though my commitment to the program had been rewarded. I'm sad to see it go, but it was a great run.

And for the record, Dr. Greene was my favorite character.

Why I Keep Coming Back.

I'm not sure what my first memory is. When it comes to chronologically ordering events in my life, especially those of my early life, I'm fairly bad at it. Ask me how a local sports team did in 1996-or even 1986-and odds are I can tell you, but ask me what year I first kissed a girl....and well, I remember who and where, but I'd have to do some heavy mental math to figure out what year it was. It's just the way my brain is wired, for better or worse. That said, there may very well be earlier memories for me....but among my first memories was my mother taking me to a local rec center to meet a few members of the Texas Rangers. Somewhere at my Dad's house theres still both a framed picture of the 1988 Texas Rangers as well as a Tony the Tiger baseball (redeemed, no doubt, from many a bowl of Frosted Flakes), each with three signatures on it....those of Chad Kreuter, Scott Fletcher, and Jeff Kunkel.



Now obviously somewhere previous to that I was wired to love Rangers baseball (why else would I have wanted to go meet them? or have been so excited by it?), but I remember that picture and that signed baseball....and how they were my most precious possessions for many years of my life. I didn't care that Chad Kreuter, Scott Fletcher, and Jeff Kunkel were spares...they were baseball players, and Rangers at that, and thus worth of idol status to me. And buried next to that 1988 Texas Rangers team photograph, I'm sure sits a 1989 one....a picture I remember spending hours looking at as a child. For in my mind, that 1989 team was a magical one...it was the team that would shape so much of my youth, and who's players I can still recite like gospel.



John Barfield (his name had barf in it!), Kevin Brown, Charlie Hough, Jamie Moyer (still playing), Kenny Rogers (still playing), Bobby Witt, Nolan Ryan (like everyone else, my childhood hero), Jim Sundberg, Geno Petralli, Steve Buechele (boooooooooooo.....), Julio Franco, Rafael Palmeiro, Dean Palmer, Juan Gonzalez, Cecil Espy, Ruben Sierra, Pete Incaviglia, Sammy Sosa (who wouldnt actually be relevant for another decade), Harold Baines, Buddy Bell. Those are the names of my youth, and to this day those names take me back in time to my childhood.

And it is with those names and that childish glee, that I find myself with less than a week until baseball season starts getting giddy at the fact that its almost here. Nevermind that the Rangers have been good, well, never or that we all know that this will be just another in the lifelong series of disappointing seasons. They will be bad, and by May 1 I'm sure I will be frustrated, and yet every night there I'll be....tuned in to another lousy game in a lousy season of lousy Rangers baseball, it's the ultimate lifelong 5 car pileup on the freeway you just can't seem to take your eyes off of.

The spirits of those players and the childhood memories, every year about this time, they come flooding back. And I find myself sucked back in.

A Trip To Beaumont, TX.

It all started as a bit of a joke. A friend and I are sitting at beautiful Lucky Lou's in Denton, TX. six or nine months ago, as we had so many other nights. He had recently gotten his MBA from North Texas (hey, an MBA is an MBA, right?) and couldn't find a job outside of meager debt collection, which he'd been doing through graduate school. The job market just wasn't there, and he was rightfully frustrated by it. So we're sitting there, and the conversation goes a little something like this;

Friend: So I got a job offer finally, i mean it kind of sucks, but the
money's good...

Me: Oh? What is it?

F: It's for Conn's. Executive in training. Good money, thing
is...um...well, I'd have to move to Beaumont.....

Me: Where the fuck is Beaumont?

F: Outside Houston. It sucks, but I'd only have to do it for a year and
then I could move somewhere else.

M: That sucks man, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Just get a strippers n' blow fund started.

F: Huh?

M: Dude, you're going to be a well paid executive in Beaumont freaking Texas. What else are you going to spend your money on?

F: Point taken.

M: Tell you what, you get that started, and I'll drive down there and
visit, help you spend it.

And thus was the birth of the Strippers n' Blow jar [note: blow is just a euphemism for excess, there was no actual cocaine consumed]. Friend moved down to Beaumont in early December and has been there ever since saving money and only getting one weekend a month off. A few weeks ago he calls me, says he has a weekend off in March and the jar is getting full, and I should come down there. Meanwhile I'd just gotten a new car (who doesn't want to break in a new car with a road trip), so I decide what the hell-sure man, see you in a few weeks.

So friday afternoon I head down there. I'm expecting a 6-7 hour drive (truth is it was just 5 and some change), and honestly it was a fairly scenic drive. Bluebonnets everywhere, not a lot of traffic until Houston, it's really not a bad drive at all. Before I continue, let me make one small confession. I don't think I've been south of the Trinity River (i guess Arlington technically is, but you get the idea) since a river trip to Austin with my then girlfriend some 4-5 years ago. In fact, if you take Austin/San Antonio out of the equation, I'm not sure I've been south of the Trinity River since I was a child. My only memories were of obscene humidity and oppressive heat, and that combined with no actual reason to go south of the Trinity other than Austin (Shreveport is East, everything else worth going to is North), has kept me where I've been.

Truth is, Central and even Southeast Texas wasn't that bad. I mean sure, Houston is still an homage to strange smells, humidity, and urban sprawl of the highest order, but the changes in the geography from prairie to pseudo-hill country to forests to the coast is a pretty cool thing to see. Each town individually may be fairly forgettable, but as a composite there's something unique about rural Texas-sure the giant statue of Sam Houston is excessive, as is the World Capitol of Jerky, but part of me wishes I'd had a little more time and stopped in these small towns to absorb that rural Texas I've never really known. Sure they're a little over-religious for my tastes (there must've been dozens of pro-life billboards I saw during the trip) and ya, they might embrace the white trash ethos more than one would think healthy, but at the same time from the pseudo-cosmopolitan confines of Dallas it's almost like going to another country, it's a culture entirely foreign to me. I used to make occasional jaunt to Stephenville (damnit, I guess that's south of the Trinity too) with an ex-girlfriend to visit her family, and while that was an experience, many of the towns between Dallas and Houston make Stephenville look like a hotbed of culture.

Anyway, friday night I finally get down there...have a fairly skunky Dos Equis, and we head to this place called Madisons [side note, the name Madison seems to be a theme in SETEX, and I'm curious why that is] which had some awesome crab nachos (much better than they sound) and a Golden Tee machine before we headed over to the Vortex, the local Rockabilly/Punk Club. Cheap drinks, fairly cool scene (still can't figure out why they had a ping pong table though....), but a music venue you couldn't smoke in....something so absurdly foreign to me. It took me 45m to figure out why the place smelled like ass, until I lit a cigarette and was told I had to go outside...then it all made sense. And so from there to a pool hall, the lone bar in the city in which you could smoke. Capped the night off with whisky and 'Army of Darkness'. Good times.

Friend's couch sucks, i mean this thing was terrible, so I woke up slightly hungover, tired, and wanting waffles Saturday morning, so I loudly wake his ass up and we hit the IHOP before deciding to find a beach. There are three things I wanted out of this trip; a beach, seafood, and strippers. Beer is a given. We follow the not terribly informative signs until we finally end up in some place called High Island that has a beach. And by beach I mean sandy area with lots of rocks, shells, and jellyfish...but it had sand, and the water was nice enough. Had a few beers, managed to break my toe on a rock, and on the way back realize we'd both gotten way too much sun to muster the energy to head to Lake Charles and their casinos (I was jonesing for that damned Top Gun slot machine that's my bane), settling instead for a Hooters (where we were asked if we were gay....not that there's anything wrong with that....) with not one, but two pregnant Hooters girls, and then booting/rallying and watching 'Coming To America' whilst re-hydrating.

And then its back out, for a bar or two and then strip club. Let me just say this, the first place we drove by was a place called Tonga. It was a fabricated metal shed with a simple neon sign saying Tonga. That's it. It's a BYOB strip club, and from asking the townsfolk, its the worst place on earth. This would be a much better entry if I'd been but I must be honest, I said heeeeeelllllll no. So we went to the "upscale" one, the Gold Club. And I will admit, it really wasn't a bad place. Actually looked like a real club, good lucking women, bad '80s cock rock sound track, and while you had to go to a patio to smoke, I fought through it. I was really hoping to write about how terrible the strip clubs were in Beaumont, and had I gone to Tonga I probably could have, but the Gold Club....not so bad. We had a good time-boozed it up, cabbed it home, and had a nice Cracker Barrel breakfast before I started the long drive back to Big D. All in all, Beaumont's really not that bad a town. So that's my story.

But of course, thats not all. I decided to use twitter for this entire trip. As mentioned in this entry, I've been struggling for any actual use for the cultural phenomenon that has become, twitter (my username is /superfuzzbigmuf). And other than NFL news updates and local news updates, I've yet to really find one that the rest of teh intertubes can't give me. So I thought I'd twitter my trip. It probably adds nothing, but was worth a try, so in closing...here is my trip to Beaumont in snippets of 140 words or less. Cheers;

corsicana. turkey jerky and spree. and peed.3:56 PM
Mar 20th from mobile web

lost ticket signal. listening to the rentals.4:00 PM
Mar 20th from mobile web

kind of wish i was hungry so i could see if texas burger is any good.4:26 PM Mar 20th from mobile web

centerville, tx. how could i not stop at a place calling itself jerky
capital of the world?4:37 PM
Mar 20th from mobile web

honestly thought the prison in Huntsville would be larger.5:23 PM Mar 20th from mobile web

wow, black guy riding a horse next to highway outside New Waverly, TX5:33 PM Mar 20th from mobile web

why does Houston need warning signs about potential ice on bridges?6:22 PM Mar 20th from mobile web

wow, the trinity river actually looks like a river down here.7:22 PM Mar 20th from mobile web

theres something cool about listening to patsy cline driving through rural
texas.7:35 PM
Mar 20th from mobile web

in beaumont, first beer of many in hand.8:46 PM
Mar 20th from mobile web

crab meat nachos = awesome9:04 PM
Mar 20th from mobile web

better than ezra! why did i exclamate that?10:15
PM Mar 20th from mobile web

jameson and shiner at a rockabilly dive bar. good times.10:58
PM Mar 20th from mobile web

beaumont, tx: epicenter of cosmopolitan living?12:18
AM Mar 21st from mobile web

my name is ash, and i am a slave.2:26 AM
Mar 21st from mobile web

awake. not regretting army of darkness. want waffles.10:51
AM Mar 21st from mobile web

port of beaumont kind of reminds me of season 2 of the wire.12:44 PM Mar 21st from mobile web

riding dirty in Beaumont jamming to lisa loeb. now *thats* gay.1:09 PM Mar 21st from mobile web

mission accomplished. i have now peed in the gulf of mexico.3:59 PM Mar 21st from mobile web

had a 40z of Bud Ice on beach. Poured last of it to my dead homies. .4:15 PM Mar 21st from mobile web

there are not one, but two, pregnant hooters girls at the Beaumont Hooters.
Stay classy.5:39 PM
Mar 21st from mobile web

beaumont strip club? amazingly not that bad. saw much worse in arlington.12:08 AM Mar 22nd from mobile web

so ya, broke my toe earlier at the beach. i just havent been able to feel
it. nice and swollen now.2:06 AM
Mar 22nd from mobile web

isnt breaking any news here, but 'Stepbrothers' was pretty damn funny.4:02 AM Mar 22nd from mobile web

lol, walker texas lawyer billboard.2:07 PM
Mar 22nd from mobile web

Aaaaaaaaand, fin.

A Great Analogy

It seems that the discussion is continuing regarding the Stewart vs. Cramer feud from last week, a feud that began with Jon Stewart calling out Rick Santelli's rant (which not surprisingly, was championed by the far right) in which he called out home-owners for taking bad mortgages and neglects to blame the banks and brokers that provided the bad loans. As I'm sure you know by now, Cramer fights back and a feud broke out between the two men which culminated with Cramer coming on Stewart's "The Daily Show" last thursday, which if you haven't seen is available here unedited, which is important since the actual broadcast of the appearance was pretty heavily edited.

Now let me preface this by saying that I enjoy the work of both men. I find Jim Cramer to be quite entertaining on Mad Money, and I find that you don't need a degree from the London School of Economics to follow his logic, its an investment show for the every-man and I enjoy it. Likewise, I think Jon Stewart is simply brilliant and his comedic analysis of the day's news is strangely better than anything CNN, FNC, or even CNBC are pumping out in my humble opinion. I like the work of both men, and don't have a dog in this fight.

But it was quite obvious from the get-go that Stewart was going to win this battle, as Cramer looked oddly sheepish at times, and the pundits almost universally agree that the "victor" was Jon Stewart. And while this is all well and good, I think it overshadows the message of what Stewart was actually trying to get at, mainly that CNBC should feel some responsibility to actually investigate what has been going on and instead of cheerleading the boom market, maybe look for the signs that things are about to go south and warn people.

I think it's an interesting discussion. CNBC is a privately owned cable television network, so what is their obligation to the public? It can't be any more or less than that of Comedy Central, which brings us public services such as "A Roast To Larry The Cable Guy" and monthly airings of PCU. And while I believe that The Daily Show is in fact a public service, Comedy Central doesn't air it for that reason-they air it because it makes them money. Likewise for CNBC and 'Mad Money.' Now is it dishonest the way they position and advertise Mad Money? I think it is, but this reminds me of the Jon Stewart vs. Tucker Carlson blow up from 2004 in which Stewart criticizes the program 'Crossfire' for encouraging partisan hackery (true) and the media at large for throwing softball questions at politicians (also true) but when confronted with his doing the same hides behind the fact that he does a comedy show, which is true, but you can't question what CNN/FNC do when you do the same thing....its likewise disingenuous. While it may be a comedy show, Stewart and The Daily Show have emerged as an important part of the public sphere, as assinine as that sounds.

Which leads us to the analogy I led off with. I earlier heard Bob Sturm make the analogy that this is akin to the baseball writers neglecting to report that the players were doing steroids, despite how obvious it was to them, and then when it finally does come out turning around and blaming everyone but themselves. I think the analogy is dead on.

A writer is either employed by the club (especially here in the .com era) or relies heavily on the club or MLB at large to provide them access to the players, to the locker room, and to the ballpark. If a writer gets blackballed and can't get a player interview or worse-can't go to the games-then that writer will quickly find himself unemployed. Thus despite how obvious it was the writers, especially being in the clubhouse, that steroids were running rampant in baseball for the latter half of the '80s, the entirety of the '90s, and the first part of the '00s the writers remained mum until it became such a story that they didn't have to fear for their jobs (remember how Jose Canseco was ostracized for telling the truth?). Likewise with "the media" you've got writers/anchors/talking heads employed by huge conglomerates with their financial fingers in all sorts of pies, and those companies would most likely frown on someone reporting that this entire bull market was little but a house of cards. So until the shit hit the proverbial fan and the reporters had no choice but to report on it, everyone remained mum and cheerled the unprecedented economic boom which would surely never bust. And it is for this reason, that I find myself siding with Stewart.

I don't believe that CNBC has an "obligation" be the watchdog the Federal regulators failed so badly at being, but I do think people should walk away from this economic disaster and know that CNBC-and the media at large-played a very large role in turning a blind eye to the underbelly of the economic house of cards, and remember that. I love Jim Cramer, but if you're putting all your financial eggs in the basket of a guy that throws plastic toys at the screen, hits sound effects, and considers himself the president of "Cramerica" then perhaps you deserve what you're getting. Mad Money is a great starting point, no doubt, but its just that and should be followed with due diligence.

I refuse to believe that with the sheer number of "economic experts" in this country, from the cast of CNBC down to your broker, that no one saw this coming. People did and were refused a platform to get the message out (it wouldve most likely fallen on deaf ears anyway, to be fair), and those whom could have actually been heard (and taken seriously) just got too caught up in the boom market to address reality. It was inevitable, in retrospect, but that doesn't mean that we can't learn lessons from it-and actually try to remember them when the next bull market occurs.

Obama Addresses Congress, the Nation

So tonite we got our first chance to listen to President Obama address the nation as, well, President. Here are my thoughts;

1) Still refreshing to hear a President not stumble over his own words. I know this doesn't mean a lot to some of you, but to me it was glorious. No longer do I have to be embarassed.

2) It appears he has taken a cue from his critics and decided to be more positive towards the situation. Not overly so, he's still embracing the reality of the situation, but atleast putting a nicer spin on it. I'm not sure I like that-I really liked his blunt honesty approach, even if there is anecdotal evidence that it was weighing on investor confidence to not have him shouting roses and sunshine.

3) Nancy Pelosi was a thrashing tonite. Someone might want to tell her she's on camera.

4) I came out of it convinced that something needs to be done, but still not convinced that the "stimulus" package passed was the answer. I just don't believe it will do what he says, and that it was a Democratic version of looking out for their buddies. (see: Bush, George W.)

5) I get it, healthcare is a major drain. And I agree, but what are you going to do? I like that it's his next priority, but I really worry about what his solution will be.

6) Joe Lieberman just looked creepy.

7) Loved the faux applause and very grudging standing ovation for Ted Kennedy. It was just seething with disdain.

8) Education? I get fixing the economy, I get addressing healthcare (as the baby boomers are about to start retiring en masse), but education? Forget for a second how fucked it is, and forget that its more of a local issue than a national one. Education seems like a reach considering all the other bullshit.

9) Still loving the promise to halve the deficit by end of his first term. Likewised loved the proclamation that torture by the US is done.

10) Overall impression: he has a grasp on the magnamity if the situation, is willing to be honest and discuss it, and has a (admittedly vague) plan to tackle it. I'm not sure that I agree with him, I've got serious doubts, but it's atleast somewhat refreshing to have the President actually admit to the problems at hand and propose something.

The Woman With 14 Kids

As the news breaks today that the firm representing this woman, Nadya Suleman, the one in the news recently for giving birth to octuplets, is abandoning her as a client on account of the death threats both the client and the firm are recieving, I thought it a good time to write a little bit about this incendiary issue. Truth be told, I'm a little surprised its become incendiary as it has because normally people distance from saying anything remotely bad when it comes to babies. Then again, this story has so many angles it really shouldn't be surprising. In short, the story goes like this:

Single and unemployed mother of six children decides that she wants to have more children. She had used IVF to conceive of children in the past and decides to use it again (still can't figure out how an unemployed single mother of six can afford that, but I digress). In the past they'd implanted six embryos and the result was one child, this time the doctor implants eight embryos. Except this time all eight embryos turn into baby humans, and voila-9mos later this woman is now the proud parent of 14 children, still unemployed, and thus the cost of raising these children will be the responsibility of the State of California in addition to whatever money she can get from private or religious institutions. So this story is basically the perfect storm of controversy. And I thought it might be fun to go down each one of those avenues of controversy.

First and foremost, you have the IVF debate. Once an expensive and rarely used tool to help parents unable to conceive naturally to have children, it has since become fairly commonplace and well accepted by society. The problem though, is that it's fairly un-predictable and doctors continue to push the envelope by using "controversial methods" which increase the success rate, except that they sometimes increase the success rate into twins or, in this case, octuplets. Then you've got the unused embryos which are eventually destroyed (much to the chagrin of the anti-abortion folks). IVF is the poster-boy for how far are we, as a society, comfortable with science going, and with the debate of just because we can do something, does that mean we should? Adding another layer to that debate, in this case, is that this women would never be approved to adopt a child, but it's somehow perfectly acceptable for her to go see a doctor and have more children artificially implanted in her.

Then you've got the people upset because these children are now financially the responsibility of the State of California. The fact that this woman, who already has the state on the hook for six children, can then go out and have more not naturally-but artificially-and as soon as they leave the womb she now gets a bigger check from the state every month to feed, clothe, and house them and the state is also saddled with eight more children is has to educate (albeit poorly, most likely) from ages 6 to 18.

And finally, you've got the practical question of how does a single mother create a nurturing and loving environment in which to actually raise 14 children and give them any chance in hell?

Its a really tricky subject, one that not only stokes the flames of people's opinions on issues that are important to them, but also because is there any reasonable action that can be taken to prevent this in the future?

I've always found it odd that in this country where you need 16 permits to sell alcohol, a permit to drive a car, a permit to work on your house-basically a permit to do practically anything, there is absolutely no restrictions on having a child, or six, or sixteen. Of all the supposed freedoms and "unalienable rights" that American government is supposed to grant us, its odd to me that procreation is the lone one that remains unmolested. I mean it makes sense, no one likes the idea of the government telling what you can do with your body (i mean, except anti-abortion people), or telling you that you can't have children when your creator endowed you with the abiity to do so (except for in the cases that you can't, hence IVF). There would be riots in the streets if the government actually tried to restrict procreation, and as such, despite the sheer impracticality of allowing people to procreate at will, we continue to do so.

And not only do we allow it, the government actually subsidizes it. If you're poor (enough), the government will actually mail you a check, and that check gets bigger for every child you have. And while it's a tired cliche often employed by conservatives that this country is just packed with people exploiting the system and popping out babies to pay for their crack habit (there's no doubt its happening, but not nearly as systemically as the Limbaugh's of the world would like you to believe), the fact of the matter is the potential for doing so is there-and that time and time again the American people will side with the State because, after all, it's not these kids fault that their parent(s) is batshit insane/a piece of shit/an addict and thus its not "fair" to blame the kids for their parent(s) irresponsibility in bringing them into this world despite having no means by which to support themselves, let alone their children.

It's really a thorny issue. No one likes the spectre of the State regulating procreation (a la China), but at the same time it's really hard not to be appalled when something like this happens. No one wants to see these innocent children suffer on account of their parents, but how do you balance that with a system that encourages deadbeats to procreate so they can suck at the government teet? And I'm really not sure there is an answer besides what we do now, but I'll be damned if it isn't a really shitty answer.