Morality is not determined by the church you attend nor the faith you embrace. It is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey
For those who don't know, after berating that CNN reporter the other day and calling them "fake news," Trump did indeed call on the guy from Breitbart.
I have said before that nobody understands Donald Trump quite as well as Garry Trudeau, who also predicted 30 years ago that he would run for president, but this is starting to feel like an episode of the "Twilight Zone."
But then again who better to get inside the mind of Donald Trump than a cartoonist for the funny papers?
This might be the most accurate description of Donald Trump that I have ever read.
I heard somebody else describe Trump as a comic book villain come to life, and I thought that was pretty spot on as well.
The problem of course is that we have to deal with this idiot in the real world, and cannot simply close up a book or fold up our newspapers and ignore him.
Somebody sent this Bloom County cartoon from 1981 to me the other day, and said they had stumbled upon it and were amused by the fact that it mentioned an Immoral Minority.
Well coincidentally this was one of my favorite strips back then as well.
However I forgot about this particular strip until I saw it again.
I have said many times in the past that the inspiration for the name of this blog was always in response to Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, and that's true.
That being said it is also possible that this cartoon stuck in my subconscious for twenty three years and in 2004 when I started IM, there it was.
Well I can only hope to have the same positive impact on all of you, that Bloom County had on me way back when I was a fresh faced 21 year old kid.
I think I have already shared with you all a dozen times or more how much I love Doonesbury, and what a huge part it played in my political point of view.
However I have to admit that as of late I have stopped reading the strips and I am glad to see they are just as pointedly humorous as always.
Really need to catch up on my comic strip reading. Does anybody know if Dagwood and Blondie are still together?
Garry Trudeau is a master at demonstrating how certain points of view are completely without merit, while also making the strip very entertaining and informative.
I have a huge Doonesbury collection in my house, and used to read the strip religiously.
I really need to get back to reading it more often.
This is probably as good of a time as any to report that I am unable to sign up for the ACA due to my somewhat complicated financial situation.
Though I make more, my actual taxable income is below the poverty limit.
I was sent to Medicaid where I learned that I do not qualify, though I would have if Sean Parnell had accepted the ACA Medicaid expansion. But he's an asshole so he didn't.
I could simply buy insurance the old fashioned way, except that I really cannot swing the $700.00 to $900.00 payments I would have to pony up without the help of Obamacare. Not to mention the rather sizable deductibles these plans have.
So essentially I am screwed unless Parnell has a change of heart (Fat chance!) or Americans get fed up and demand the single payer option.
Or I could continue eating right, getting lots of exercise, and hoping for the best until 65 when Medicare kicks in. I was already doing those things of course, but I really had my heart set on getting insurance for the first time in my life.
On the plus side apparently I can file for the hardship clause on my tax returns and won't have to pay a penalty. Yay, me.
On New Year’s Eve of 1995, Bill Watterson published the 3,150th and last Calvin and Hobbes strip. Since then, we’ve seen a host of good-to-very-bad takes on the comic: cartoons, apps, bizarre live-action reboots—even a search engine.
Now there’s a documentary, Dear Mr. Watterson, which explores the impact the boy and his anthropomorphic tiger had on both readers and Watterson’s colleagues. The film began as a pet project for director Joel Allen Schroeder, who started interviewing fans of the strip in 2007; his Kickstarter project, created in 2009, then raised more than twice his initial $12,000 goal. The movie’s been picked up by a distributor, and the first trailer has just hit the Web.
Calvin and Hobbes was initially viewed as too literate for kids and too fantastical for adults, but instead the strip’s subtle riffs on loneliness, friendship, and adolescence bridged the gap between the two. It’s unclear if Dear Mr. Watterson will delve into Watterson’s complex artistic ambitions or stick with praise for his obvious achievements. Either way, it’s probably a must-see for diehards. It’s scheduled to arrive in theaters Nov. 15.
I am not sure if I have already shared this or not, but I am a huge comic strip fan. And I mean HUGE!
This is only a portion of my collection.
It started with Charles Schultz's Peanuts of course, and I always made sure to
check the box by at least two pocket books every time the Scholastic
book pamphlets were handed out in my elementary school.
From there my interest spread to B.C, The Wizard of Id, Hagar the Horrible, and the irascible Andy Capp. (Also my father's favorite.)
Before I left for college in Hawaii, as a young adult, I bought to paperbacks by G.B. Trudeau to read on the long flight from Anchorage. By the time I landed I was a HUGE fan of Doonesbury and made it my mission to purchase every single pocketbook that the bookstores carried.
I actually never stopped discovering new strips and buying their anthologies. Even into my middle age.
I currently have Dilbert, Foxtrot, Zits, Herman, Bloom County, and of course Calvin and Hobbes in my collection.
As much as I loved other comic strips Calvin and Hobbes quickly replaced them as my favorite, and in my opinion it remains in a category all by itself.
The strip seemed, if I might put my atheism aside for a moment, magical.
And it did not hurt that I connected with Calvin on a very fundamental level. There were many times as a child that I too spent huge blocks of time taking up residence in my fantasy world, where animals could talk, ghosts haunted every dark corner, and my wishes could come true if ONLY I could be the well behaved little boy that my mother so wanted me to become.
I am looking forward to this documentary, perhaps for no other reason then to see so many people paying homage to a man that I believe is a true genius. A man who remembered to never let the little boy inside grow up, and then brought him out of his subconscious for all of us to enjoy.
I literally could have chosen any C&H strip to close out this post and it would have been awesome, so I chose the one below randomly.
