Thank God, we're off the writers' strike...

... and the duck's dysfunctional family values to wish a happy birthday to one of his heroes, a man with a wry sense of humor and a penchant for threatening violence when he feels insulted. As an aside, the wikipedia article on Buckley is full of odd bits of misplaced text, for example:

In 1973, Buckley served as a delegate to the United Nations. In 1981, Buckley informed President-elect (and personal friend) Ronald Reagan that he would decline any official position offered to him in Reagan's administration. Reagan jokingly replied that that was too bad, because he had wanted to make Buckley ambassador to (then Soviet-occupied) Afghanistan.

and my favorite:

Buckley participated in an ABC live and very heated debate with scientist Carl Sagan, following the airing of The Day After, a 1983 made-for-TV movie about the effects of nuclear war. Sagan argued against nuclear proliferation, while Buckley, a staunch anti-communist, promoted the concept of nuclear deterrence. During the debate, Sagan discussed the concept of nuclear winter and made his famous analogy, equating the arms race to "two sworn enemies standing waist-deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five." In 1991, Buckley received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George H. W. Bush.

Normally, I edit these kinds of howlers out of articles, but these are good enough to be left alone for a while. Maybe I'll fix up the article next week sometime.

And while I generally disagree with much of what Buckley writes, says and does, there are occasions on which we agree.

Be a glutton for punishment: Read the strip