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I have a new reason to never go near a RadioShack store. This is in addition to the old and sufficient-in-itself reason that they rarely employ anyone who knows the first thing about electronics or radios or even shacks. I cannot recall the last time I asked a question in one of those places and got anything resembling a correct answer. I usually get back blank stares and I often have to explain the products to the salespeople. But there's this new reason, which is that I've realized how all-fired stupid I always wind up feeling after I go into one.

Last week, my mother needed something that would be most efficiently purchased at a RadioShack that was adjacent to a store I was patronizing anyway. The transaction would not involve any technical knowledge on the part of the staff so I thought it would be okay. Are you beginning to see the rumblings of my stupidity yet? Wait. You're about to view it in all its glory. I went in, found the item and was handing my Visa card to the guy when he asked, "Do you have a RadioShack discount card?" I said no. He asked if I wanted one. In Pavlovian response, I said yes. I have a zillion discount cards…too many to even carry in my wallet. I have a little case of them in my car and when I go somewhere, I take in the appropriate card. And note please that these are discount cards we're talking about here, not credit cards. I assumed what the RadioShack employee was offering me was a discount card because that is what he called it. More stupidity — on his part for saying it and mine for assuming this guy knew the difference.

Next thing I knew, he handed me a form to sign that began with words like, "I acknowledge that I have read and will abide by the terms of this agreement…" Showing a smidgen of common sense but not much more than that, I turned to the man and asked (a) what agreement? and (b) is this a credit card?

He told me they were all out of the agreement but, "It just says that you will make the payments."

I asked him, "Have you read this agreement?"

He said no, but that's what it says. I told him that I was not going to sign any document that said I'd read and would abide by the terms of an agreement that I hadn't seen, as summarized to me by someone who hadn't seen it either. Furthermore, I said, I did not want a credit card from them. "Okay," he said and he tore up the form he'd asked me to sign, whereupon I left with my purchase, feeling a bit stupid but not as stupid as I did about an hour ago. That's when my new Citibank RadioShack credit card arrived in the mail. I guess he used my Visa card somehow to get all the necessary information because they not only had my home address but my social security number and other personal info, as well.

I phoned the service number on the back of the card. After a very long wait on hold, a polite lady apologized profusely and told me she had just cancelled the account and that I could destroy the card. Fine…but I shouldn't have had to waste twenty minutes of my life to cancel a credit card I never wanted.

For some reason, I decided to waste a bit more and phoned the RadioShack in question. The manager apologized about eighteen times and said, "Yes, it is a credit card and the salesman should have made that clear to you before signing you up." I asked him about the agreements that people have to sign and he admitted that they'd been out of them for some time. People, he said, are still signing up for the cards even though they have to sign that they've read and will honor an agreement they haven't read. I guess you have to be pretty stupid to shop at a RadioShack. Not quite as stupid as you have to be to work in one…but close.

So there's this story about Walt Disney that is often told; that when he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Walt wore a little Goldwater button to the ceremony. He was supporting L.B.J.'s opponent and this was his way of tweaking the president or showing lack of support or something. Back in this post, I joined historian Michael Barrier in expressing skepticism that it happened. I think we're all correct to be skeptical about anecdotes that cast Walt Disney in a rude or negative light but this one seems to have actually occurred. In this essay, Barrier delves deep into the matter and decides that the reports are essentially true. It still seems like a childish and silly thing for Walt to have done but I guess he did that childish and silly thing.

P.S. The Snopes website, which is usually one-stop-shopping when it comes to knocking down urban legends and spurious Internet reports, doesn't believe the story. I'll bet they change the listing now that Barrier has come around.

Jamin Raskin explains why the G.O.P. plan to make California's electoral vote system "fairer" (i.e., helpful to their party) is a crock.

Fred Kaplan explains a lot of stuff I didn't know about the hierarchy of our military.

An imagined conversation…

ALBERTO GONZALES: George, it looks like this is it. I'm probably going to be indicted and even a lot of prominent Republicans in Congress are ready to call for my resignation or impeachment. I think I oughta quit.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Yeah, sure looks that way, Gonzy. So what do you think would be a good time?

GONZALES: I dunno. I was thinking I'd wait until Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are both in reruns for a couple weeks.

BUSH: Good idea. But what will you do? How will you earn a living?

GONZALES: Oh, don't worry about me. There's a lot of call out there for maniacally distorting the legal process to protect every stupid or crooked thing your boss does. In fact, I hear there's more money than ever to be made from lying in the public sector.

You probably won't want to watch this whole video clip now — it's 55 minutes — but I wanted to mention that the folks behind The Charlie Rose Show are putting whole episodes up on YouTube and Google Video for free viewing. This one is an hour with Stephen Sondheim and some of his collaborators but there are plenty of others, including conversations with Jon Stewart, Bette Midler, Jerry Lewis, Jay Leno, Jack Lemmon, Charles Schulz and many others. Here's the Sondheim show but like I said, you probably won't want to watch all of it now.

Several people have written me since last night to make the case for eliminating the "death tax" — and I have to admit that they lose me right away when they call it that. It's an Inheritance Tax or an Estate Tax. No one is taxed for dying. When you die, you will not pay one cent in tax. Calling it the "death tax" is a way to misrepresent it and load the emotional argument against it. It would be like if I were in Congress and I introduced a bill to exempt 6'3" Jewish cartoon writers from all taxes and called it The Stop Torturing Kittens Law or something like that. If the arguments against the Inheritance Tax are at all valid, they'll still be valid if you call it what it is.

As it happens, I don't believe they're valid. Almost everyone who wrote me in opposition claimed that the tax causes families to lose their farms. No, it doesn't. There have been very few documented cases of that…and even in those cases, the financial problems of those families were complex and troubled and mismanaged. Any form of taxation will cause hardship to someone, especially if they're foolish about handling money. There are folks who've won the lottery and wound up worse off than before because they didn't allow for paying normal income taxes on that income.

I believe the real premise behind the campaign against a Death/Estate/Inheritance Tax (whatever you call it) is as follows. Rich Uncle Charlie buys a home for three million dollars. By the time he dies and his also-wealthy nephew Sam inherits it, it's worth thirteen million. No one has ever paid any form of tax on the ten million of accrued value and Sam doesn't want it taxed like income or lottery winnings. So he and others in similar situations spread a couple of lies. One is that it's a "double-taxation;" that tax was paid on the wealth when it was earned and now the heirs are expected to pay taxes again on it. Not true. The other is that the government is stopping Uncle Charlie from leaving his wealth to Nephew Sam. No, it isn't. But if you suddenly make ten million bucks, you're going to pay some taxes on it. Why shouldn't Sam?

But of course, you can't get the public — especially the lower or middle class public — behind a move to make sure billionaires don't pay taxes on their inheritances, and can pass along accrued wealth without anyone paying taxes on it. So you tell poorer people that when they die, they won't be able to leave their homes to their kids, and how the taxes will wipe out the family farm, and stuff like that which never happens. And you call it the "Death Tax" because it sounds more inevitable in everyone's life that way.

If you'd like to know more about this form of taxation, read this page.

And just so we're clear on this: I am very much in favor of lowering taxes in this country. I think we spend way too much and we spend it in a lot of areas where I think the government should just butt out…or at least, spend a lot more wisely. But I also think we ought to lower taxes for everyone and not just for the wealthy…because one way or the other, lowering them just for the wealthy causes them to increase on the not-wealthy.

I think we also ought to lower taxes and cut spending as a unit…and I'm amazed how many people are so fervent about slashing taxes but don't give a rat's ass about slashing spending, like those things are unrelated. I rarely see anyone who strikes me as genuinely interested in the lowering of taxes. They all just seem to want theirs lowered…and if in order for them to keep getting the same level of services out of their government, it's necessary to raise them on someone else, that's just fine with them. Ultimately, we'll never really lower taxes, instead of just shifting the burden to those who have less clout and cleverness, until someone is willing to limit the role of government.

Tom Spurgeon conducted what he calls a "short interview" with David Glanzer, who's the Director of Marketing and Publication Relations for the Comic-Con International in San Diego. It answers a lot of questions and concerns people have about the con, and further nukes the rumor that the convention is shifting soon to another city or adding additional days.

A nice New York Times op-ed by Brent Staples about recognition — or lack, thereof — for Jack Kirby. And I'd say that even if Mr. Staples hadn't quoted me in it.

Let's go back to 1962 and the Broadway show, Little Me, which was one of those low-grade hits, winning some critical praise and one Tony Award. It lasted only 257 performances and among those involved in the production, there seems to be some disagreement as to whether it closed because the public stopped buying tickets or because its star, Sid Caesar, was tired of it. Caesar was pretty much the whole draw. He played seven different roles and, as one writer put it, "proved he could do anything on a stage except sing and dance."

The book was written by Neil Simon (his second Broadway show, following Come Blow Your Horn) and the songs were written by Carolyn Leigh and Cy Coleman, with Cy Feuer and Bob Fosse directing. Fosse also handled the choreography and in so doing, won the show's only Tony. The female lead was a character named Belle Poitrine who was played by Nancy Andrews in the present day and by Virginia Martin in flashbacks, and the plot followed her through her life with various husbands. In today's clip, I think the young man with the eyeshade is Mickey Deems, who had a very long career playing broad comedy parts in sitcoms and on stage. Here's ten and a half minutes of Little Me. I suspect this is from The Ed Sullivan Show but I don't know for sure.

I've long since scratched Rudy Giuliani off my list of Republicans I Could Imagine Myself Voting For…a list that until fairly recently also held the name of John McCain. There are many reasons Rudy's off but a biggie is that I don't think macho swagger and mentioning 9/11 in every other sentence is an excuse for not having a grasp on foreign policy.

If I'd needed another reason to cross Giuliani off, I got it this morning when I read…

Giuliani, who has strong national polling results but trails former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in New Hampshire, planned to "give the death tax the death penalty," his campaign said. What some politicians call the "death tax" involves the taxes on wealth passed on through inheritance.

I think the drive to reduce or eliminate Inheritance Taxes is one of the great crocks of Western Civilization, and a perfect example of wealthy folks figuring out how to transfer their fair share of the tax burden to others. Every so often, I'm going to link to this post which, in turn, links to two others that explain why this is not only a scam but a deliberate, calculated sham.

But I have to say that I was fascinated to read the following line in the news stories on Giuliani's statement…

The current rate is set at 45 percent through 2009. It would drop to zero in 2010 but jump to 55 percent in 2011.

Is that true? If so, make a note. 2010 would be a great time to murder that wealthy grandmother of yours.

When I was a kid and my parents took me to their favorite bookstore, I would always buy a book, usually a book of comic strips. Up until the time I had all of those then in print — I think there were four or so — it was the Peanuts books. That was when I started in on Pogo, which is not to say I fully understood Pogo at the time. The dialogue was inaccessible to my toddler mind and even when I could decode what I could decode, I wasn't sure what they were all yelling about. In a way, it was frustrating the way it's frustrating to watch certain TV shows with the sound off. You can tell something interesting is being said but it drives you up the ever-lovin' wall to be denied it.

That was how I felt about Walt Kelly's swampland comic strip up until the age when I started to "get it." I knew it was funny. The characters were so alive and expressive. You could tell just from their poses that wonderful things happened in their world. You could also tell that the guy drawing all them amusing pics was a man of great humor and wit. I never got to meet Walt Kelly but long before I met his daughter, I felt like I knew him. And of course, hearing her stories and being welcomed into that world, has only made me feel closer to this great Pogo cartoonist.

Walt Kelly would have been 94 years old today. For purely selfish reasons, just so I could have met him, I'm sorry he didn't make it. I'm also sorry for all of us because it would have been great to have another few decades of him and his wonderful creativity. Under Carolyn's watchful, protective eye, Fantagraphics Books will soon reprint the Pogo newspaper strips in full, and in the best presentation possible, and everyone who knows the material is very excited indeed about this.

To keep you Pogofied until then, we'll be posting more excerpts and goodies over at the Pogo Possum website. Pop over there later this weekend and celebrate Walt Kelly Day with a little Walt Kelly. It doesn't get any better than that.

I lied. I went to bed and only now am I posting the video link. It's from last week when CBS Sunday Morning did a nice memorial piece on Groucho and it includes interviews with Elliott Gould, David Steinberg, author Charlotte Chandler and a reporter who's seen Horse Feathers 28 times. There's also a nice bit with our friend Frank Ferrante, who does such an uncanny job of replicating The One, The Only on stage. If Frank is ever doing Groucho anywhere near you, run — preferably in a half-crouched posture and with your eyebrows going up and down — to see him. His touring schedule is on this page.

Some may be puzzled by the reference to Steinberg helping write the Broadway show Minnie's Boys since his name appears nowhere in its credits. I believe Mr. Steinberg was the first of several writers who tried to write a book for the show that would pass muster with (from all reports) an extremely-difficult-to-satisfy Groucho. I believe he gave up and none of his work made it into the finished product.

Well, my Internet connection got fixed and I was just sitting down to post something here when I got a call and had to go take my mother in to the emergency room at a nearby hospital. That's always good for at least six hours of not getting any work done. Her condition was not life-threatening and she's now back home and resting but she had something that needed fixing, it couldn't wait 'til Monday and there was nowhere else to take her. In fact, I couldn't help thinking that it was a lot easier to get a guy out to fix my cable modem than it was to get my mother in to see a doctor.

Every time I go to an emergency room, I come away with at least one observed story. This time, it involved a very lovely young lady of high school age and Asian extraction. She was dressed in a cheerleader outfit and had been wheeled in by a guy in matching (but for males) cheerleading garb. Sitting in the wheelchair, she somehow had to — and amazingly, managed to — keep an injured leg elevated at an impossible angle. It was actually perpendicular to the floor and if she'd pulled it back a few more degrees, she would have been seated with her leg behind her head.

She was being checked in and next to her, an elderly woman — I'm guessing at least eighty, maybe close to ninety — was being checked in for some ailment or other. While waiting for the triage lady to fill out some forms, the elderly lady turned to the cheerleader and said, "I was a cheerleader when I was your age."

The cheerleader didn't seem particularly interested but just to be sociable, she said, "Well, I hope your team won."

— to which the elderly woman replied, "I don't remember. I didn't even pay attention then. I hated sports. I just became a cheerleader because I wanted to be popular. That was all that mattered to me…being popular." Then she looked at the younger woman's leg still elevated in this astounding contortion and added, "You know, if I could have put my ankles behind my ears like that, I wouldn't have had to be a damn cheerleader."

True story. Anyway, I lost an evening and now I'm behind so there may not be a lot of posting here for the next few days. I'm going to post a video link, then go to bed. And when I wake up in the morning, I'll have some things to say about Walt Kelly Day. It's Walt Kelly Day, you know.

Still cutting in and out. It's kinda frightening how it slows up my entire life. Repair guy's due between 3:00 and 5:00 this afternoon, they say.