What? You say you got hooked on Google Pac Man during the two days it was the logo on the main Google page and now you're going through withdrawal? Fear not. The Google folks have made it available as a permanent page.
Howard "Howie" Post, a mainstay of animation, comic books and strips since the mid-forties, passed away some time in the last week, reportedly due to Alzheimer's. Howie was born November 2, 1926 and while no one has ever pinned down exactly when he got into comics, his work was turning up in books from most of the major New York publishers by 1945. He mostly did funny animal comics, such as for DC's More Fun Comics, where he sometimes wrote for other artists but often drew his own wacky, energetic tales. He also worked in animation, at first as an in-betweener and animator for Famous Studios...later as a storyman and, still later, as the creative head of Paramount's cartoon studio in the early sixties.
His best known comic book work? Hard to say. He was a prolific writer (and sometimes writer-artist) for Harvey Comics, where he is often credited with creating Spooky, Little Hot Stuff and many other recurring characters. He wrote and sometimes drew hundreds of stories for Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly Ghost and other Harvey superstars.
Over at DC, he handled Doodles Duck, J. Rufus Lion, Bob Hope, Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, Jerry Lewis without Dean Martin and many others, including occasional forays into romance and adventure titles. His most famous DC endeavor was probably Anthro, a short-lived light adventure comic that he wrote and drew in the late sixties.
He worked for Marvel in two bursts, the first being a gaggle of (mostly) funny animal comics like The Monkey and the Bear from around 1953 to 1955, along with occasional contributions to their horror comics. In the eighties, he drew Strawberry Shortcake, Madballs, Wally the Wizard, Heathcliff and other features for their kids' line.
He worked for at least a dozen other publishers and also dabbled in syndication. His newspaper strip, The Dropouts, appeared in many newspapers from 1968 until 1982.
And this is really only the briefest summary of this prolific and wickedly-funny man. I had the pleasure of working with him briefly on the Richie Rich cartoon show for Hanna-Barbera and interviewing him on a couple of panels at comic conventions. He was very nice and very creative, and his work sure made a lot of folks happy.
Last night, I posted a message here from Barry Short, candidate of the Libertarian Party for a seat in the Utah House of Representatives. I accidentally typoed and gave his name as Barry Pearl, who's another fellow I know. I've corrected that and I thought by way of apology to Barry S., I'd link you to the website for his candidacy, in case you want to know more about him or are inclined to donate.
Short's site contains a link to this brief quiz...one of those "where do you fall on the political spectrum?" deals. This one was crafted by a Libertarian group so it's perhaps skewed to try and convince you that whatever else you think you may be, you're a Libertarian. It gave me a "personal" issues score of 90% and an "economic" issues score of 40% and placed me on the graph within the area marked Liberal but darn close to the dividing line into Libertarian. That feels about right to me but I don't particularly vouch for this test. I probably did not score high on their "economic" measure because I think "privatizing" Social Security is largely a scheme for Goldman Sachs to get their mitts on folks' retirement money. I also would not say (and would think it irresponsible to say) that government spending should be cut by 50% without knowing which 50% would get cut.
On the "personal" side, I guess I lost 10% because I answered "Maybe" to the question about not having a National I.D. card. In raw theory, I suppose I'm afraid that such a thing would abuse rights...but I'm more afraid of the labyrinth we now have of identifying everyone by their Drivers License, credit card numbers, date of birth and/or the last four digits of their Social Security number. Seems to me that carries all the risks of a National I.D. card and is a sloppier way to go about it. What I think I'd like to see is a voluntary National I.D. card — something you could sign up for if you wanted it. I assume Libertarians would have no problem with that. And if it turned out that businesses would insist on it or they wouldn't take your checks or make certain services available to you...well, that's the Free Market at work, right?
Bob Marshall on what caused that big (and getting bigger) oil spill. It all goes back to Ronald Reagan's idea that government should never stop private enterprise from maximizing profits, no matter what kind of damage results.
Just thought I should say, as someone who's actually running for office as a Libertarian, that you are absolutely correct about Rand Paul. Way too much of what he's saying (I am tempted to say, "blathering about") is the opposite of what I believe, and not at all representative of what's in the Libertarian platform as I read it. Without belaboring a whole lot of stuff you already know and have covered well, let me just say this: there's a reason Rand Paul is running as a Republican, and not as a Libertarian.
Here's how I describe my stands, and I think it's not too incorrect for the national party stands as well: Libertarians are the most truly conservative party, because we believe government should stay out of things that don't have anything to do with running government. We're also the most truly liberal party, because we believe government should stay out of things that don't have anything to do with running government. (Though I admit I'm a little bit loathe to use the terms "conservative" and "liberal" at all — they've both been reduced to meaningless pejoratives, with only a tiny minority actually knowing what they mean.)
Rand, as you very correctly point out, seems to have missed the second part of that description.
I have a certain respect for Libertarians who don't fudge the principles, applying the philosophy in a uniform manner. I don't think it can work...or will ever be really tried in this country. But I think there's at least an intellectual honesty to defining the role of government and then adhering to that definition, regardless of what it yields in terms of social change. I once heard someone define a true Libertarian as someone who is willing to live in a world where the government cannot stop his neighbors from doing an awful lot of things he doesn't like even though they don't harm him. I don't see that's true of Rand Paul...or his father, for that matter.
May 22, 2010
