do you live in California Tom? Every day you rant against the liberals it sounds more and more like you'd fit better into some survivalist outpost on the slopes of a Wyoming mountain range.

Just maybe it's because those raving leftist lunatics have created an Eden for you that fits your basic needs. Maybe you don't remember what spending time in Los Angeles was like just a few short decades ago. If we took family trips to Disneyland, as soon as you hit the valley, you'd have immediate respiratory distress from the oppressive brown cloud that hung over the land.

Interesting how "repressive" laws that limited your God-given right to have lead in gasoline so your 400 horsepower V8 wouldn't ping made such a difference. Was that government overreach? Boy do I remember the outcry back then. Had the whiners been right we'd be all waving Che Gueverra flags around and calling each other comrade. Maybe you conveniently forget what our litter problem looked like before those horrible environmentalists insisted that companies needed to create their containers so that they could be recycled.

Now I am ruffled by the fact that I can't responsibly add on a room to my home without inspectors being involved but at the same time I understand that when an earthquake or hurricane hits a city in the US it does a whole lot less damage and kills a ton less people than if the same tremor hits a third world country that has no standards. Guess who ends up paying for those disasters if no regs are in place?

Oh, and that survivalist compound that should be sounding very good to you right now? Within a few years it'll have a homeowner's association.

Art