God, the Cartoon Version

Back in the 1970s, I went to high school with Mike Harty at Mercy High School in St. Louis, a co-ed Catholic school. We hit it off immediately back then and we remain good friends today. One thing I enjoyed and admired about Mike is his ability to draw. After high school, as young adults, we periodically got together to draw cartoons. I threw a lot of bad ideas his way and he tried to make them funny. We tried to get them published by several newspapers and syndicates, but we weren't successful.

We've kept those cartoons and I recently pulled them out of mothballs. As I looked at them yesterday, I found that about half of them still seemed funny to me. Yesterday I called Mike and we agreed to risk yet more public rejection/humiliation by publishing some of these cartoons on my website, Dangerous Intersection as well as featuring some of them on FB. We'll publish these in six small batches, starting this this group on the topic of God. I smile as I look at these because Mike has always been religious and I have never been, yet we both enjoyed batting around these ideas. We hope you enjoy some of these too.

One of our two-panel Christmas Cards focused on the related topic of eschatology:

Here is a gallery of our other cartoons on the topic of God:

[More . . . ]

Continue ReadingGod, the Cartoon Version

New Study: United States no longer a Democracy

Is the U.S. government following the will of the People? The answer is no, according to a new study:

Asking "[w]ho really rules?" researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page argue that over the past few decades America's political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power. Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters.
[Cartoon by Jonik reprinted here with his permission] Jonik cartoon

Continue ReadingNew Study: United States no longer a Democracy