Jason Abbruzzese calls John Oliver "America's social justice warrior" and discusses how Oliver's Last Week Tonight show is good at turning the spotlight on outrages that haven't yet gotten enough people outraged. Have I mentioned how much I love this program?

Because on a hot day, there's nothing like a nice, warm Diet 7-Up.

There are petitions out there to have Jon Stewart host one of the presidential debates, preferably a Republican one. As much as I admire Mr. Stewart and already miss him on the air, I don't think that's a good idea. The debate's supposed to be about the candidates and that one would wind up being primarily about Stewart. All the moderator is supposed to do is ask good questions and then jump in if anyone filibusters or goes over their time or anything.

I would love to see him have a back-and-forth dialogue with some of those candidates about the issues but that's not what a moderator's supposed to do…and can't with ninety-six people or however many they'll have on stage.

I also don't think Republican candidates should have the "out" they often employ when they can't answer basic questions or answer them poorly. They complain the questioner was asking things designed to make them look bad. If some of them bitched about Fox Newscasters doing that, what would they say about one of the nation's most prominent Liberals? He'd ask them if they were ready to start and they'd call it a "gotcha" question.

In China, when a driver hits a pedestrian in the street, what do they do? Why, they back up and run them over again to make sure the person they hit is killed, of course! At least, that's what this article says.

Here's a brief walkthrough of the Jack Kirby Art Exhibit out at Cal State Northridge. It was shot by Kevin Shaw at the opening reception last Saturday evening and along with the nifty drawings, you'll also see — among many, many others — Jack's daughter Lisa, Bruce Timm, Len Wein, Buzz Dixon, Paul Power, Steve Sherman and me. The exhibit is there through October 10 and if you want to go see it, you want to consult this page as to where and when you can do that. It is, as Jack was and still is, very impressive…

Here's the latest back-and-forth between myself and Cedric Hohnstadt (who, by the way, has a website full of fine drawings here). I don't believe I've ever met Cedric but over the years, he's sent me some of the most thoughtful and civil disagreements with things I've posted here. One of my natural prejudices against someone like Kim Davis who believes —

Hold on. I just got a call from a woman who said she's calling from the "Windows Technical Department with regard to my computer." I said to her, "No, you're not from the Windows Technical Department. You're a scam artist who wants my passwords and credit card numbers" and she hung up. Anyway, where was I?

Oh, right: As I was saying, Ms. Davis seems to believe she has God whispering in her ear so she could not possibly be wrong about any of this. There's no point even talking with people like that. I like talking with people who don't try to end discussions that way and I appreciate folks like Cedric. Here's his latest and my replies…

Thanks very much for taking time to respond to my email on your blog. I really appreciate your civility and you always make me think. Please take my comments in the friendliest and most respectful way possible.

First, you wrote, "You're not supposed to 'compromise' when people receive equal rights." This actually brings up an important question: Just where exactly do our rights come from? Are they bestowed upon us by human governments? If so, those same governments can take them away. Also, any such rights would be fluid and temporary, not transcendent and absolute. Or are our rights "endowed by our Creator" as the Declaration of Independence states? If so, then our rights have a clear religious aspect to them. How you answer that question will affect how you view the gay marriage issue.

I don't think our rights are bestowed on us by anyone. I think they come automatically from being human beings with brains and you become one of those whether you believe in a divine creator or not.

I once had a big argument with a fiercely-proselytizing evangelical-type who argued that if you don't believe in the Ten Commandments, you don't believe killing is wrong. My position is that you don't have to believe in any religion to know killing is wrong. Atheists know it just as much as those who swarm to church on Sundays.

It's kind of hard-wired into rational thinking at birth. We have common sense about lots of things that aren't taught to us by any authoritative power, be it government or religion. Did anyone have to teach you to fall in love at the right (or even the wrong) moments?

Second, you made an analogy to segregation in the civil rights era. I find it interesting that many of the same people who praised Martin Luther King Jr. for his civil disobedience (and rightly so), and who praised mayors and governors for issuing gay marriage licenses before they were legal, are now the same people who say to Kim Davis, "The law is the law." Personally I believe people should be slow to engage in civil disobedience, and be prepared to accept the consequences if they do (which Davis has done). I'm not 100% sure I agree with her stance, but I also think that many of her critics have forfeited the right to condemn her for not having a strict regard for the law.

I think there's quite a gap between Martin Luther King Jr. and Kim Davis. Dr. King was not a government employee demanding to remain in his job and collect a paycheck while not doing what his job required him to do. Ms. Davis is like someone who seeks conscientious objector status in the Army but still wants to be in the Army and be paid for being in the Army but to be allowed to pick and choose which orders she will and will not follow.

If you don't want to follow orders, you shouldn't be in the army. And if you don't want to enforce the rules of issuing marriage licenses, you shouldn't be in the job where you're supposed to issue marriage licenses.

If Ms. Davis wanted to lead marches and engage in the kind of civil disobedience Dr. King employed…well, I'd think she was advancing a bigoted, wrongheaded and futile cause but I wouldn't think she didn't have the right to do that. What she can't do is do it from her position of responsibility within the government and use that position to deny licenses to people she thinks should not have them.

It's interesting to note the number of prominent opponents of Gay Marriage who are not on her side over this — folks like Rod Dreher or Charles C.W. Cooke. I don't agree with those guys on very much — and not even about all aspects of this matter — but they and many other conservatives think it's wrong for a government official to do what she says God told her to do.

Back to Cedric once again…

Finally, you made a side comment about the Bible teaching that people should be executed for working on the Sabbath or not staying virgins until marriage. This is based on a common misconception. There are actually three types of laws in the Old Testament: Civil laws (i.e., capital punishment), religious laws, and moral laws. The civil and religious laws were intended only for the nation of Israel and only for a set period of time. It is only the moral laws that are applicable to all people everywhere. Bible critics mix these up all the time and it's a straw man.

Bible advocates mix them up all the time, too. That's my point. Way too many people in this world reach into that book, yank out a passage they can claim supports their position and then say, "See? That's the final word on the subject direct from God. It's settled!" Believe me. I've spent way too much of my life being lectured by people who believed that a position, however stupid, becomes inarguable once it's buttressed by some Bible quote that may or may not mean what they say it does. If your position makes sense, you ought to be able to explain why without that.

Opponents of abortion often cite Deuteronomy 30:19 as guidance as to when life begins. Others say that ain't what that passage is talking about. I don't even pretend to have an opinion on that. I just note that there is not total agreement on it; that most issues which are controversial when you don't involve the Bible are still controversial when you do. That's one reason why we don't base our laws in this country on this kind of thing. Another, of course, is that we have no national religion, a decision of our Founding Fathers that I believe is part of the genius of America.

Sorry for the long email. I'm not saying I 100% agree with how Davis has handled this (maybe she should have resigned?), but throwing people in jail for defending what has traditionally been the normal view of marriage feels like, well, like bullying. This liberal atheist says it better than I could. Even though we disagree, I really appreciate your friendly and respectful attitude. I've tried to reply in kind.

And I hope I have, as well. The atheist on that video has a point that there is some incivility directed at people who have not yet come to grips with or who still oppose Gay Marriage. Personally, I don't like any incivility but I don't think the scale has come close to balancing, given all the incivility that has been directed at gays being called evil and pedophiles and subhuman and so on. That's without even getting into actual harm done to them (murders, gay bashing, denial of civil rights, job discrimination, etc.) over the years — and it's not like all that has suddenly stopped or that past damages have been undone.

I have a great confidence that we are moving in the right direction in all this, however painful some of the steps may be. I believe we will see the day when people who once predicted equal rights for gays would doom mankind and end civilization as we know it will be saying, "What do you mean? I was never against gays getting married." But there will always be incivility associated with this, just as we still have incivility stemming from past incivility about racial issues that some might regard as settled. We can't always stop it among others. We can just try to cool things down and to not to contribute to the hostility. Thanks, Cedric.

The Souplantation chain (aka in some areas, Sweet Tomatoes) is serving their Classic Creamy Tomato Soup for the first two weeks of September. This, as longtime readers of this here blog are too aware, is my favorite soup but owing to a few disappointing visits earlier this year, Souplantations are no longer among my favorite places to dine. I'll probably get over to the one near me to see if they've improved and to have some of that fine soup but I go without the enthusiasm I've shown in the past for the chain. Hope to get them back on my faves list because I used to like 'em a lot.

Happy b'day (not to be confused with a bidet) to my friend since 1970, Scott Shaw!  Scott is not only a fine cartoonist but a fine person and I hope today he has a fine birthday and more of his fine recovery.  He's had some medical concerns lately but I visited him in the hospital recently and came away buoyed by his spirit and determination to heal.  I have no doubt he will and he'll be back Quick Drawing with us at conventions and doing all the things he does so well.  I look forward to all that happening sooner rather than later.

Cedric Hohnstadt, an artist whom I only know as one of my frequent correspondents who sends me thoughtful, polite e-mails sometimes disagreeing with me, has this to say…

About Kim Davis…This article mentions a few facts that most people are missing in this story. Mainly, that starting as far back as January (pre-Supreme Court decision) Davis made several unsuccessful attempts to find a compromise that would allow the gay marriage licenses to go through while at the same time not forcing her to sign her name to something she religously objects to. Ideas she tried to put through include:

• Changing the rules so that she would not have to personally sign each license.
• Setting up some sort of online application/approval process that would remove her as the middleman.
• Allowing the option for some marriage licenses to be funnelled through the governor's office instead of through her.

All of her requests were either rejected or ignored. Whether you agree with her or not, I think there is a case to be made that we should try to find reasonable compromises wherever possible that don't force employees to violate their conscience just to do their job.

What I've read in the last days of so about Ms. Davis leads me to believe of the various "scenarios" I gave as possibly motivating her, the one that is most probably correct is that she is utterly sincere, doesn't have an endgame in mind and is just trusting that if she holds tenaciously to her position, it will eventually work out for the better.

It's interesting that she tried to find a compromise here but it seems to me that the obvious solutions to this logjam are more like…

• Having Kim Davis do the job she was elected to do.
• Replacing Kim Davis with someone who will actually do the job she was elected to do.

Once upon a time, the "compromise" to blacks getting equal rights was to give them "separate but equal" water fountains and restrooms and such. You're not supposed to "compromise" when people receive equal rights. The correct way to treat Gay Marriages is to treat them exactly the same as Straight Marriages except that you're forgiven for being awkward with the pronouns.

Depending on which poll you believe, somewhere around 38% of Americans still don't like the whole idea of letting folks of the same sex marry. That probably means that around 38% of the clerks and government employees who process the paperwork on marriages disapprove of those unions…and it's surely way higher than 38% in some states. Somehow, Kim Davis is the only one who demanded that rules or procedures be changed to accommodate her personal sensibilities.

I read the article you cited and I thank you for the link. But the thing I don't think some people get is that while anyone is entitled to believe in the God of their choice and the interpretation of Him or Her and of His or Her teachings, we do not in this country make policies and laws based on that. This is why the lawyers who argued the case against Gay Marriage in the many courtrooms didn't even try offering "God doesn't approve" as an argument against letting two men or two women marry.

Ms. Davis says of her view on Gay Marriage, "This is real and this is true." She has every right to hold that viewpoint but not to insist that everyone else acknowledge that and act accordingly. Someone who believes that God blesses Gay Marriages has the same standing. So does someone who believes there is no God. The "War on Christianity" as defined by the Mike Huckabees of the world is a frustration that we don't treat all other faiths and non-faiths as bogus and make laws according to Mike Huckabee's interpretations of Scripture.

In a land where we have no official religion, this is how it works. (Another problem, of course, is that even people who believe The Bible is the ultimate authority do not agree on how much of it to take literally or on what certain passages mean. Does God really want anyone who works on the Sabbath to be put to death? Or women who are not virgins on their wedding nights?)

The other clerks and workers who handle forms pertaining to marriages do this the easier way. They don't see themselves as somehow participating and endorsing the marriages because they processed the paperwork. All of them have probably handled the papers covering marriages in which some pretty immoral, inhumane things happened between heterosexual partners.

Other clerks don't judge. They just clerk. Ms. Davis is sitting in a cell in Kentucky because she has created an unnecessary, unwinnable conflict for herself, deciding that God wanted her to take this stance. Are the clerks who are uncomfy with Gay Marriage but continue to process the forms in accordance with the law not hearing those same orders from God or are they not listening? Maybe He told them to just stamp the licenses and not worry their pretty little heads about it.

I love this little piece of video because I loved the guy in it — Howard Morris, a great character actor and one of those people I'm so glad I had in my life for a not-long-enough period. Howie died in 2005 and I often think of him as a wonderful, crazy honorary uncle or something. I don't expect you to watch all of this but maybe you'll watch enough to see some of what made him so very special both as a performer and as a person.

This is raw footage from a show Howie appeared on in 1985 called Tales in the Oral Tradition, which I gather was a Jewish-themed public service TV program. The tape is in four parts. Part One is an interview of Howie in which he talks a lot about his career. Somewhere in there, he speaks about his problems auditioning for people much younger than him — a bugaboo in his life that I wrote about here. It was a constant area of frustration for a man like him who was only really happy when he was performing.

Part Two is more interview. Apparently after they finished taping the conversation, someone decided it might not run long enough so Howie sat for additional questioning which could be edited into what they'd already done.

Parts Three and Four will give you some sense of what was so marvelous about Howie as an actor. He sits on a stool and tells one of the great Sholem Aleichem stories, in this case one about the wise men of Chelm. If you're not familiar with Sholem Aleichem, he was kind of the Jewish Mark Twain. And if you're not familiar with Chelm, it was a fabled city of fools written about in hundreds of tales.

As I continue my listing of the Twenty Greatest Cartoon Voice Actors of an earlier era, I will soon get to Howie. If you want to see the talent that made him truly great at doing voices for animation, watch Howie read a story. I think he was working here with two TelePrompters mounted on two cameras and while he's reading the copy, it's hard to catch him doing so.

I'm further thinking the copy was marked to tell him to move his gaze at certain moments from Camera 1 to Camera 2 or vice-versa because the director was cutting back and forth between them in real time. Watching him do this effortlessly — and he did not have a lot of experience reading a Prompter or working directly to camera — I'm impressed with how well he does it without harming the telling of the tale.

Part Three starts around 24 minutes into this video and that's his first take. Even better is his second take which is preceded by a brief conversation with his director. Put the little slider to 33:20 and watch a little of this if you can. That, folks, is how you tell a story…

The Twitter feed of the person who sits next to Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis in her office. Well, not really but scroll down to the bottom and read upward.

When I heard that Donald Trump had signed the Republican Nominee Loyalty Oath, my first thought was disappointment. I was so looking forward to him shattering the G.O.P. into tiny pieces if he ran as an Independent. But then I realized…

He's probably not going to do that anyway. Trump is only Trump when he can boast that he's the guy on top. He can't go three sentences on any subject without declaring himself a Winner and someone else as a Loser. He might be able to deliver an impressive showing as a third-party candidate but he sure wouldn't be a Winner.

I'm thinking that when the moment comes in his quest for the Republican nomination that he's finishing in second or third place consistently, he's going to need some semi-credible excuse for bailing on the race so he can get out and claim something like, "I had to tend to my businesses…and anyway, I got what I wanted. I proved to anyone with half a brain that I could have won."

And also, so what if he signed the pledge? It's not binding in any real way. All he has to do if he does want to renege on it is gin up some reason to charge that Reince Priebus and the Republican National Committee tried to screw him in some way. A lot of Trump's base would cheer him if he told the party to stick their pledge up their elephant ass and then he ran against them saying, "My first loyalty is to my supporters and to restoring America's greatness!"

So then I thought, "What did he get for signing?" Because Trump is a negotiator — a real relentless one, he always tells us. He's not going to do anything someone else wants unless he gets something in return.

Here's what I think he got: All those other guys — the Mike Huckabees and the Rand Pauls — are signing the same pledge which to him is a pledge to support nominee Donald Trump. Today on CNN, I saw Paul telling some reporter how unqualified Trump was and how he'd destroy both the Republican Party and the nation if he won.

But now Trump has solidified his position as a legit Republican candidate. Preibus came to him. The party hasn't said, "All the other candidates will support you if you modify some of your positions." Rand Paul has pledged to support Trump just as he is. They all have or will.

Oh sure, they could renege on the pledge just as he can but it'll be more difficult for them now that he's signed and agreed (for now) to play by their rules. I still don't think they'll have to renege because I don't think he'll be the nominee. He does, however, look more like a legitimate front-runner now that the party has kissed his heinie.

Imagine the next time Paul is telling interviews how unfit Trump is to be president and how he'd destroy the nation…and the interviewer asks, "Did you pledge to endorse him if he gets the nomination?" I'll bet Trump can field that question about supporting other candidates a lot better than any of them can about him.

• So Trump has pledged that if he's not the GOP nominee, he'll support whoever is…someone he's called a pathetic loser who can't win.

So we all know about this clerk in Kentucky who has now been jailed for refusing to do her job and issue marriage licenses. I think we all know she is not by her actions going to overturn any laws or establish the principle that a government employee can refuse to do a part of their job they feel is in conflict with their religion.

What I'm kind of curious about is what's on this woman's mind. As I write this, she's in a jail cell and she ain't gettin' out until she backs down on this position or quits or something. I keep seeing different scenarios here that are possible…

1. She actually thinks she's going to change some laws or policies or something. She's wrong but she actually thinks that.
2. She's the unwitting puppet of the lawyers advising her who see a chance to serve their political goals or financial ones and don't really have the best interests of their client in mind.
3. She's loving the attention, the fact that she's famous, the fact that so many people consider her a hero…and she hasn't figured out the endgame yet.
4. She thinks she has a future in right-wing media or politics and can use this publicity as a stepping stone to something she wants to do besides issue licenses all day.
5. She has no idea where she's going with this. She earnestly believes what she believes and is convinced that if she holds to those beliefs, it will somehow work out well for her in the end.

Any others? Those are the ones I came up with. I'm leaning to #3 at the moment but I think it could be any of them. And of course, we have Mike Huckabee out there claiming that people in this country are now being jailed for being Christian. I don't for a minute believe he thinks that; only that it may rile some people up to the point of supporting him.

Someone needs to quote a Jon Stewart line to these people: "You've confused a war on your religion with not always getting everything you want."

If there's anyone following this blog who doesn't know who Jack Kirby was, here's a little video that gives a nice overview of some (hardly all) of his career. The thing I like about it is that it was produced by Marvel for their web presence and it speaks of Jack the way a lot of us have long felt Marvel should speak about him and his contributions. Earlier folks at Marvel either didn't want to speak of him that way or were told they couldn't. It makes me quite happy that the company finally recognizes his contribution…