Dahlia Lithwick discusses the Trump administration's current strategy on the vital issue of health care. She thinks the plan now is to promise to get the courts to completely repeal Obamacare and then Donald and his crew will come up with something much, much better. This prospect thrills his supporters and they won't even mind that he won't start working on that "something better" until after he wins and starts his second term.

Then the second part of the plan is to lose that repeal effort so they won't have to come up with that plan and Trump can instead blame the courts. Because he knows that he can't deliver what he's promising. In fact, a large part of his party would really, really like it if there were no government health plans at all.

I don't know why anyone falls for Trump's assurances that he can come up with a health plan that will be cheaper and better than the Affordable Care Act. If he could, it would be real simple: They draw it up, they release it, various health care experts endorse it…and even Democrats would get behind it. But it's like he's promising to open a zoo full of unicorns and dragons and yetis and sane Alex Jones followers and other non-existent creatures. He can't deliver so he needs an excuse why not.

Let's take a visit to the farm that grew the potatoes that were used to make the french fries I ate with my burger yesterday afternoon at a Five Guys.

Well, these are probably not the specific potatoes that were used since this video is from 2015. But you understand what I'm getting at…

• Today's potatoes are from K.W. Huskinson & Sons, Inc., Rexburg, ID.

I really like Joe Biden, the man who was Vice-President for eight years and I think that guy would make a great president. I'm not as fond of certain other Joe Bidens who predated him and if any of them were to become the Democratic nominee, it would be one of those guys that Republicans would run against…like the Joe Biden who made one verbal gaffe for each three paragraphs of a speech or the one who could have treated Anita Hill a lot better.

Assuming the Republican nominee is Trump — an assumption I still have a mild hunch is wrong — it would be bizarre to see folks who don't care about rape accusations and porn star payoffs by their guy saying that Biden's unwanted shoulder massages prove he's morally unfit to be President of the United States. Or that Biden's gaffes from the previous century matter, whereas the constant current stream from you-know-who are kind of adorable.

Still, I more or less agree with this opinion piece by Michelle Goldberg that the moment for Mr. Biden has passed. I really don't get why any man wouldn't have realized something long ago: While he might think the neck-nuzzling is harmless and while some of the women might take it as not-unwelcome affection, it only takes one or two who don't like it to create an unnecessary problem. It also creates photos that do not look as innocent as they probably are in some (most?) cases.

With hundreds of thousands of Democrats throwing their chapeaus in the ring these days, there must be one who shares Biden's political positions — and maybe is even more in step with the current dynamic of the party. Yes, he has the name recognition but there's plenty of time for someone else to become just as famous. I'm kinda feeling the same way about Bernie Sanders. I'd support either man if they got the nod because they'd both have that wonderful, highly-desirable quality of not being Donald Trump. But so would plenty of other possibilities.

Randy Rainbow is currently on a tour — he's in Des Moines on Thursday, Kansas City on Friday and St. Louis on Saturday. So when does he find the time to make videos like this? I'm honestly amazed because you don't knock something like this out in one evening…

I mentioned here the other day that with the passing of Ken Bald, the title of "World's Oldest Comic Artist" is up for grabs again and my guess was that the honor now belonged to Bob Fujitani.

That was a good guess. It was wrong but it was a good guess since almost all online sources say Fujitani was born in 1920 and the next likely contender, Al Jaffee, was born in 1921. Well, it turns out that almost all online sources about Mr. Fujitani are apparently wrong. Fujitani told an interviewer for Alter Ego that he was born October 15, 1921. Jaffee was born March 13, 1921.

So unless there's someone we haven't thought of…or unless one of those two men fibbed around his age, Al Jaffee is the World's Oldest Comic Artist. He's 212 days older than Bob Fujitani and still drawing for MAD, though I'm told he missed an upcoming issue. Anyone got someone older?

Here, from the current revival on My Fair Lady in New York, is the "Rain in Spain" number. It is said that lyrist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe would take days, weeks, even a month to perfect a song. Lerner especially took an extremely long time to do his end of the job. But inspiration hit them on this song it only took something like thirty minutes, culminating in a celebration quite like the one in the tune. It is a really spectacular stage number…

I haven't seen the new Tim Burton version of Dumbo and if I do, I doubt it will be in a theater. A darker, longer, live-action version of the original simply holds no appeal for me.

I find my tastes are generally in sync with Leonard Maltin and he didn't like it. Then again, he loved Stan & Ollie which I didn't like so maybe I should go see the new Dumbo…

Nah. I don't think so. Still, reading online reviews, I'm kinda amazed how much the people who liked it liked it and how much the people who hated it hated it. That intrigues me a little but not enough to get me to a Cineplex. End of Quick Comment.

My Aunt Dot (my father's sister) was a sweet, often confused lady. I was very fond of her but around the time I hit age thirteen, my mother told me something chilling that involved her sister-in-law.

My parents had saved up for and were about to embark on a two-week trip to Europe. I think it was the only time either of them went overseas in their adult lives and the only time my father crossed an ocean in his life. My mother had been to England once in her teen years before she met him.

It was not the most pleasant of trips. I don't remember specifically where they went but it sounded like one of those "If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium" expeditions that crammed way too many cities into way too few days…so way too much of the time was spent packing, unpacking, checking in, checking out, getting onto buses, getting off buses, etc. I think they had one day — and not even a full one — in Paris. They liked that city or at least thought they might if they'd been able to experience any of it.

I know they came back disappointed. My father also had a lot of problems with the food and there were unexpected expenses and they never did it again. After it was over, he remarked that for what they spent for one two-week trip to Europe, they could have gone on fifty of their three-day jaunts to Las Vegas where they never had anything but a great time. He said, "There, I always know what I'm eating, plus I can gamble and see Shecky Greene."

That was true. When you go to the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, you rarely see Shecky Greene. You could attend for months and not see anyone named Shecky.

That was the only time they left me alone for two whole weeks. After that, it was a lot of those three (occasionally, four) day Vegas expeditions. I looked forward to their trips because it meant I had the house to myself. After I started dating, I really looked forward to them being away because I could bring a girl friend over. I'd say to my folks, "Hey, you ought give that two weeks in Europe thing another try" but they never did.

Anyway, before they left that one time for Europe, my mother said, "We've asked Dot to check in on you in case anything happens."

I said, "Name me one thing that could happen that I couldn't handle and where she'd be of any use whatsoever."

My mother thought for a second and said, "Okay, you have a point. But we asked her because she'd feel insulted if we didn't." That, I was sorry to admit, made sense. What didn't was what my mother said next…

"I don't know if we ever told you this but we've left you to her in our will."

I gasped, like the wacky neighbor in a bad sitcom, "What?"

She said, "Well, if something happens to us, like if we were both killed, you need a legal guardian. You're thirteen. So we specified that Dot would adopt you or become your guardian or whatever it is that happens."

I said, "You left me to a woman who can't heat up a can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee spaghetti?" That was a true accusation. Years earlier, when I was too young to be left alone for a day, they'd parked me for an afternoon at Aunt Dot's. For that occasion and any such that might follow, she'd laid in a supply of the easiest food in the world to prepare — i.e., Chef Boy-Ar-Dee canned spaghetti.

In case you're unfamiliar with the procedure, I'll spell it out for you. You may wish to print this out, just in case…

You open the can. You empty its contents into a sauce pan. You heat the sauce pan on the stove for about four minutes. You turn off the stove, transfer the contents of the sauce pan into a bowl and serve with a side of fork.

Congratulations! You have just cooked spaghetti and are now eligible for a job in the kitchen of an Olive Garden near you.

I still don't know how she did it but Aunt Dot somehow managed to serve me Chef Boy-Ar-Dee spaghetti that was inedible. I think she'd studied the instructions on the can and somehow thought there was something in there about stirring in a full bottle of Lysol.

Reminding my mother of that legendary repast did not change the fact that Aunt Dot was poised to inherit me. "We have to designate someone," Mom said. "It's either her, your Uncle Nathan or someone on the East Coast." Maddeningly, she was right. My mother had a tendency to be that way: Maddeningly right.

So off they went for two weeks and I was fine alone. I could keep my own hours. I could fix food for myself. I could even heat up a perfectly-edible, Lysol-free can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee spaghetti. Then one of those days, instead of just phoning to make sure I was alive and hadn't sold the house, Aunt Dot said, "I'm coming over tomorrow night to fix you dinner."

I said about fifteen times, "That won't be necessary" but she said about sixteen times, "You must be starving for a real dinner." I wasn't but if I had been, that need would not have been sated by what she brought over the next evening. It was not a can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee canned spaghetti. It was — get ready to cue the horror movie music sting — a box of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Pizza Mix in a box.

(Okay, here's the horror movie music sting…)

I took one look at it, heard that music in my head and thought, "This is not going to end well." I don't claim to be able to see into the future but sometimes, you know. You just know.

Making the Chef's pizza was more complicated than making his spaghetti. Then again, just about everything was more complicated than making his spaghetti.

This is from distant memory so it may not be 100% accurate but as I recall, you had to mix hot water, the envelope of flour and the envelope of yeast mix and let the dough rise for a while. Then you took a cookie sheet and applied a thin coating of oil to its surface. Then you molded the dough into a ball and put it on the cookie sheet, then flattened it out into a thin, pizza-like circle. Aunt Dot made it almost to this step before things began going horribly, horribly wrong.

Try as she might, she could not get the dough into the proper shape and thickness. She did it over and over and over again, each time wadding the dough back up into a ball and starting anew. Of course, every time she rewadded, the dough was oilier and therefore harder to manipulate.

Some interesting shapes emerged. One looked like the letter "R." Another resembled Dabbs Greer. Yet another called to mind a Rorschach test image of two dogs having sex. At one point, some odd configuration emerged and she asked me, "Does that look like a pizza?" I said, "No, it looks like a pancreas." I had never seen a pancreas but I would have bet my entire comic book collection that what she'd made looked more like a pancreas than it did like a pizza.

Finally, she had something on the cookie sheet resembling the state of Florida and we decided that was as close to round as we were going to get. I pressed another cookie sheet down on it to make it properly thin and she poured on the sauce mix and sprinkled the cheese mix.

All this time, the oven had been preheating so it was ready to receive the "pizza." When she took it out, one-half was seriously overcooked and the other was seriously undercooked…and I detected the faint aroma of Lysol. We ate what we could of it and within the next week, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee changed his name to Chef Boyardee. I can't say how but I just know that Aunt Dot cost him his hyphens.

After the putative pizza was gone, one way or the other, Aunt Dot sat me down and gave me a speech I was to hear every time I was alone with her for years to come. "Mark," she said. "Everyone needs someone to confide in and I want you to know you can confide in me."

I was confused. "Confide what?"

"Problems you have, things that are going on in your head…the kind of private things you don't want to discuss with anyone…"

I was more confused. I didn't really have any problems — or at least none unrelated to my Aunt and a certain, soon-to-be unhyphenated chef. And if I did have private things I didn't want to discuss with anyone, wouldn't I not discuss them instead of discussing them with her?

But I would rather have hurt myself than Aunt Dot. You'll notice that I waited a good 34 years after she died to tell this tale in public. I said, "Uh, yeah, sure. Whenever I have something to confide in anyone, I'll confide it in you." That made her very happy. It did not escape me that she'd never had children and that I was about as close as she was ever going to get to that.

Every time I saw her after that, she'd get me alone and ask me if I had anything to confide. I honestly never did. I was the kind of kid who, if he had a problem, would solve it himself A.S.A.P. instead of running to someone else for help. And if I had had to run to someone else, I couldn't imagine her understanding the problem, let alone being able to contribute.

One time she asked me when I was around eighteen and at that moment, the big problem on my mind was this: I was going out that evening on my second date with a cute lady named Janey and I was pondering whether I should "happen" to have a condom or two along, just in case. If she got into a properly romantic mood, I could imagine her being really glad that I was prepared. I could also imagine her being really offended that I'd come to the date expecting to need one.

This is not the kind of problem you confide to your aunt unless your aunt is Dr. Ruth Westheimer. (As it turned out, I left a box of them in the trunk of my car, where it remained sadly untouched all evening. Just like Janey.)

I forget if it was my eighteenth or twenty-first birthday but at one of them, my mother said to me, "Congratulations! You no longer have to worry about being raised by Aunt Dot if you become an orphan!" That was almost as big a relief as getting a high draft number. But I still had to deal with Aunt Dot asking…practically begging me to confide in her.

I finally started making up phony problems and asking her advice. She was delighted even though, no matter how simple I made them, she never really came up with more of a solution than, "Well, you have to try harder" or "Well, you have to not let that bother you."

In 1980, she went into the hospital and it didn't look like she'd be leaving there alive. She went in on a Wednesday and because I was working on a TV show that was taping Thursday and Friday, I couldn't get over there until Saturday. I'd been told flowers were not allowed so I went to a store near me that sold silk flowers and I got her a small arrangement in a cute vase.

When I got to her room, she was asleep and the nurse suggested I let her stay that way. I left the flowers, went down to the cafeteria for a bite and returned an hour later. She was still asleep. I waited around a while, thinking up new bogus problems to "confide" to her but she was still dozing when I had to go. I told the nurse on duty to tell her that her nephew Mark was there and that the flowers were from me and I'd be back later.

That evening, I went back but she wasn't in her room. The same nurse told me she'd had an attack and had been rushed down to Intensive Care about an hour earlier. Then she added, "But she was awake for a while and when I told her the flowers were from her nephew Mark, she told me all about you. She said you were a very successful TV writer but she couldn't remember the name of a single show you worked on."

"Yeah, that's my Aunt Dot," I said.

The nurse said, "She said the two of you were very close and that you always confided in her when you had a problem."

I went to a pay phone and called my father to tell him Aunt Dot had been rushed to Intensive Care. He told me he'd just gotten the call that she had died there.

A few years later, I noticed in the newspaper that Ettore "Hector" Boiardi had passed away at the age of 87. Mr. Boiardi had changed the spelling of his name to become Chef Boyardee and the obit said that he was very proud that his canned foods had made it possible for anyone to prepare tasty Italian food in their own kitchen.

I don't believe in an Afterlife. At times, I have some trouble believing in this one. But it does please me to think of Chef Boiardi or Boyardee or even Boy-Ar-Dee entering the pearly gates. And there's St. Peter welcoming him, looking slightly ill with the faint aroma of Lysol on his breath saying, "Uh, Chef, there's a woman here I think you ought to meet…"

I may be away from this here page for a day or two. Some material may appear here thanks to the magic of auto-posting but live me may not be in evidence and I may not be responding to (or even getting around to reading) e-mails until the resolution of certain matters which would be of no interest to you. Every so often, you just get too busy to blog and this is one of those times.

Veteran comic artist Ken Bald passed away on St. Patrick's Day at the age of 98. The Guinness Book of World Records had certified him as the world's oldest comic artist and someone has already written to ask me who I think has inherited the title. My guess would be Bob Fujitani. If anyone has another thought, lemme know.

A very good overview of Ken Bald's long, glorious career can be found here. Basically, he started drawing comics in 1941 and retired in 1984, though he continued to do occasional jobs and commissions up until a year or two ago.

Much of his career was spent drawing newspaper strips, starting with Judd Saxon, subtitled "The Dramatic Story of a Young Man's Rise from Obscurity to Prominence and Power." It lasted six years and then Bald had better fortune with Dr. Kildare, spun off from the TV shows of the same name…and yes, I meant to type shows, plural. It started in 1962 depicting actor Richard Chamberlain and others from the popular NBC series. The TV program ended in 1966 after five seasons but the strip was popular enough to continue on and there were probably readers who never knew it was based on a TV series which, in turn, was based on a popular series of stories and books authored by the great pulp novelist, Frederick Faust, aka Max Brand.

In 1972, there was a new series on television — Young Dr. Kildare — and one day, presumably on orders from someone, Mr. Bald began drawing the characters in the Dr. Kildare strip to look like the actors on that series. On Sunday, Dr. Kildare looked like Richard Chamberlain and on Monday, he was Mark Jenkins, who starred in the new show. The new TV series only lasted a year and shortly after it was canceled, Bald reverted the main characters in his strip to their earlier appearances. The strip, which was written by Elliot Caplan, ended in 1984.

Bald was a very good artist and he must have been fast because in 1971, he also began doing a strip based on the Dark Shadows TV series. It only lasted a year.

Before his time in strips, he was busy in comic books, most notably a long run with Stan Lee for Timely (now Marvel) comics where he did Captain America, Millie the Model and practically everything else they published for about a five year period. He was prominent for years after that in comics for ACG (American Comics Group) and began to work extensively in advertising.

If he was ever unemployed in his life, it was only by choice…a very talented illustrator. The above link can tell you more about his life as can his Wikipedia page.

Below somewhere is an amazing photo that my pal Phil somehow managed to take — a scene at WonderCon not crowded with people. I'm guessing he got up at sunrise and then created some sort of diversion off-frame to lure the throngs out of this shot. Whenever I tried to machete my way through the area depicted in this photo the last few days, my way was constantly blocked by people in odd costumes plus ten times as many people trying to take photos of the people in odd costumes.

I love cosplayers but I think something about it makes a person — and anyone trying to photograph them — blindly unaware of when they're posing/shooting in a spot through which others have to pass. And if youre wearing a costume with a large weapon or other appendage, you have no awareness whatsoever of when your large weapon or appendage is swatting or poking others.

That said, some of the costumes this year were amazing — some for sheer beauty, some for sheer skill and others for clever and funny concepts. I liked the ladies — I saw more than one of them — brilliantly attired as the real Captain Marvel (i.e., the one who appears at the utterance of "Shazam!")

I am continuing to have a great time here and I'll write more about it when I get home. Right now, I'd like to salute a fine gent named Gary Miereanu who hosts almost as many panels at conventions as I do. Gary does his for Time-Warner and DC Comics and he does a good job of making them interesting and informative. Even more important to me though is that he gets them to start and stop on time. As a hoster of such events, I know that isn't always easy. It also isn't always a goal of those who run panels.

Sometimes, there's incompetence in play but often, it's a power thing: Someone thinks they're so important that they can keep their audiences waiting the way some rock groups do out of sheer contempt for their fans. And/or they think they can slop over into the time of the following panel and deliver some of their sales pitch to the folks arriving for that presentation.

Having done over 300 of these at various cons in various years, I have naturally encountered this at times. I once forgave Cookie Monster for running long (anecdote here) but have not been so forgiving of others.

Gary's adherence to schedules is impressive because I have dealt with folks who felt that if they were representing large companies as he does, the rules did not apply to them. There's a kind of person who loves to believe the rules don't apply to them because they feel so powerful and important when they break them.

I have also dealt with comic book creators with egos the size of the NATO Alliance. Some years back at a non-California con, I was to moderate a panel that followed a solo spot by a noted creator of comics.

Based on the last ten or so minutes of his scheduled stint on stage — which was all I caught — it was mostly talking about his own undisputed greatness. He then carried that theme well into the hour my panel was supposed to occupy. My panelists were standing by, waiting. Many people had swarmed into the room to hear us, not the guy on stage…but the guy on stage kept being reminded of just one more compliment he had to give himself.

A rather frantic room manager was giving him signals and flashing signs to wrap it up but still the World's Greatest Comic Book Creator, at least by his standards, went on and on. Perhaps he felt encouraged by the growing size of the audience before him. Finally, the room manager approached and whispered a polite reminder of the time. I was close enough to hear how polite it was and also to hear the whispered reply, which was along the lines of "I'll wrap it up when I'm good and ready. Now leave me the fuck alone."

He then stayed on stage long enough to prove to someone — maybe only himself — that he was not ending for any reason other than that he was done. Then he stayed in the room for a while, preventing our start by signing autographs which he could just as easily have signed in the hall outside.

When we finally were able to begin, we had thirty minutes instead of the advertised fifty since I was not about to do the same thing to the next panel that he did to us.

Contrast that to Ray Bradbury who, each of the many times I interviewed him on stage, would always say something to me like, "I'm counting on you to keep an eye on the clock so we don't cut into the next panel's time." That may have just been simple manners and playing by the rules…or it may have been because Ray Bradbury didn't have to prove how important he was. He had a whole shelf or two of books that did that for him.

Here's another number from the new Broadway version of My Fair Lady. This is Lauren Ambrose singing the heck outta "I Could Have Danced All Night." As is usual with these "cast album" videos, they shot the orchestra a few times and they shot the singers a few times. Then they edited it all together and synced it up to the final mix of the song so it looks like you're seeing them all doing it at the same time…

Yesterday at WonderCon, I ran into a friend who…well, I guess you'd call him a Trump Supporter but he deeply wishes, as do so many of you we wouldn't call Trump Supporters, that Donald J. Trump would disappear from the face of this planet.

My friend supports most (not all) of where the country is now heading and if Trump's the guy who's gonna get it there, okay. Still, he winces at the nastiness, admits Trump lies only slightly less often than he exhales and figures there are plenty of sleazy, illegal misdeeds in the man's past, including his recent past. He fears some of them will eventually drive the guy from office, if not to prison.

My friend and I do not debate Trump's unworthiness as Chief Exec. We talk about the proper role of government in our lives, how we should handle folks who are in this country sans proper paperwork, a woman's right (which he doesn't think she has) to control her body, what to do about guns…in other words, all the popular divisive issues. I'm not sure why we discuss these things.

In a casual, friendly discussion, he's no more likely to change my mind — or even say something about these issues that I haven't heard before — that I am to change his. Or his gender or height or anything. But our conversation did make me think of one thing about Trump I don't like and haven't written about here. It's how hard he makes it to not talk or even think about him.

I have so many thoughts that I'd rather have than the ones about that guy. There are so many good and constructive conversations that I could be having but they keep getting diverted or pre-empted by someone saying, "Did you see what Trump just tweeted?"

It's like someone rushes into the Oval Office and announces with an urgent panic in his voice, "Mr. President! Our secret monitoring of Mark Evanier's brain shows that he just had an idea!"

And Trump goes, "It isn't the one about the chocolate roller skates again, is it?"

To which the Aide replies, "No, it's worse. This one might make sense. It could even result in something very popular and successful!"

Trump looks puzzled. "Evanier? The guy who works with that immigrant on Groo the Wanderer? A good idea?"

The Aide pleads, "There's a first time for everyone. I don't think we can take the chance. He's mulling it over right now."

So Trump says, "All right. I have to go pass some reporters in five minutes to get to the golf course. I'll stop at their cameras just long enough to say something divisive and distracting. Is Evanier watching the news?"

"No," the Aide replies. "He's been cutting way back on that ever since your nineteenth explanation about how Mexico is going to pay for The Wall. You know, I never understood why you promised that. You didn't really have a plan to get them to cough up the money, did you?"

"Of course not. I was running for president and my supporters cheered it. Why should I need a plan? I'm thinking Explanation #20 will be that I meant Mexico was going to sponsor that game show with Chris Hardwick!" Then Trump adds, "Well, it doesn't matter if Evanier's watching the news. Some friend of his will call and ask him what he thinks about whatever stupid thing I go out and say. We'll get Evanier's mind off that so-called 'good idea' of his."

Okay, yes, I know: There's less than a one-in-three chance this actually goes on but I do keep having my thought process hijacked by what Trump did or said in the previous twenty minutes. I don't mind it now and then but I've lost so much of my ability to not have to talk about or even just think about it now.

I'll bet you have better things to put your mind to, as well. You'd have to, even if it's just about chocolate roller skates.

So I'm here in my room blogging away and preparing to go downstairs for another day of WonderConning. If you have no badge, don't bother coming here to Anaheim. Today and tomorrow are sold out, as we warned you here they would be. Today, I'm hosting the Quick Draw! at 4:30 and the Cartoon Voices panel at 5:30. I have an 11 AM biz-type meeting so I'll report back here later. If you're here and you see me, say howdy. I am rarely as busy as I sometimes appear.