Thank you Doonesbury, for highlighting the idiotic things going on here in NC. Your one strip will do more good than 1,000 letters to the editor of my hometown rag, The Winston-Salem Journal.

As a teacher in NC, I thought today's Doonesbury was a devastingly accurate summation of the downhill slide of one of the most progressive southern states ever since Art Pope bought himself a legislature. I am four credits short of my master's degree, only to find the ignoramuses in the legislature have decided to devalue my profession by doing away with master's pay and tenure. Yet, no one is offering the help me pay my student loans, which were taken out in good faith.

I would like to thank you for today's cartoon depicting North Carolina as a politically backward state. If it keeps even one liberal from moving here, then it was well worth the effort.

Thanks for the NC expose in today's comic. I am disgusted and dismayed at the antics of the NC legislature, but what can we expect when the state is run by Art Pope, a pal of the Koch brothers. It is a shame that we have sunk so low that we are on the funny pages, but we deserve to be laughed at. Keep the satire coming, and perhaps it will make the voters think.

As a proud native of the great state of North Carolina, this past legislative session just about killed my soul. Your strip said everything I have been feeling -- anger, disgust and sadness about the restrictive laws that have been passed. Thank you, Garry!

I never read Doonesbury, but for some reason today's strip caught my eye. This is a great advertisement for North Carolina. It's easy to see the liberal slant (lies) saying NC is anti-woman, anti-minority, etc. I did not realize they were standing up to outside pressures. I plan on taking my family there soon to vacation, thanks to this comic strip.

Today's strip was devastatingly spot-on. It put me in mind of two lines in the last stanza of Bob Dylan's A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall :

And what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
And what'll you do now my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
I'll head for the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singin'
And it's a hard,  and it's a hard, and it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

(Here's Dylan singing it.)

I sent the following message to all my NC friends and family:

Don't know about you, but I'm ashamed at how NC has become a national disgrace, as evidenced by G.B.Trudeau's poking fun at us in today's Sunday comic section. Thanks to our new governor, who was supposedly a moderate but changed his stripes as soon as he was elected. Like all good comics/jokes, there is more than a grain of truth to what is being addressed. I'm proud to live in NC, but I'm ashamed of our backwards politics.

I'm going off(line) to bang my head against a wall for relief.

If NC's new motto is "No!" then SC's is "So?" State computer hacked and millions of people's personal info stolen: So? Women beat to death by their spouses: So? Millions of uninsured: So? The list goes on and on but Nikki and legislators say: "So?"

Please don't say that allowing citizens to carry firearms increases the danger to police. Look in Chicago, which has the strictest firearms laws in the country, and the highest homicide rate. I'm not saying that everyone should be allowed to carry, but law-abiding citizens are not making police departments' jobs harder.

That's an unfair assessment to those of us who lawfully own firearms in today's strip. If you don't like firearms, that's certainly your right. I served 22 years in the U.S. Navy so you could exercise that right, please allow me the courtesy of exercising my First and Second Amendment rights, too. I don't even want to get into the legal, moral, ethical issues of abortion, as that is just as flammable a topic. Thank you.

Today's strip perfectly addresses our problem in NC. As one arrested for secondary trespass, it was necessary to act to show my displeasure with our legislature and governor because I volunteer at an assistance agency.

Negative Ned has deftly explained how the N.C. legislature has put the "No" in NOrth Carolina. Maybe we should start referring to the state in print as "NOrth Carolina" or "No-rth Carolina." Your choice! (Which is apparently not something women in N.C. have.)

Your Sunday strip about Negative Ned and North Carolina seems a good example of what is wrong with the political dialogue in America. People with different opinions, all people from North Carolina as presented in your strip, are characterized as being stupid and without merit -- easily dismissed. I have never lived in North Carolina so it is nothing personal to me. However, your strip, as much of our political debate, is based on the "straw man" approach to dialogue. That is, exaggerate your opponent's position, making a weak straw man of it. Then, rather than discuss the real issues, knock the exaggerated, misrepresented, and weakened caricature apart and act as if you have dismantled your opponent's point of view.

I wish we could have an open discussion politically that acknowledges that people who disagree with us often have valid points of view that we should consider. The government would not be shut down now if Democrats and Republicans stopped acting like the characters in your strip -- opinionated, dismissive, and too cowardly to look behind the straw man for the real issues.

I realize you write a comic strip, and that comedy is often based on exaggeration. However, to be responsible, I think you have to step back and think what your approach would sound like if it was not people from North Carolina that you were knocking. What if they were gay, black, Muslim, Jewish or women? No group of people deserves to be ridiculed -- even in the comics.

Thank you for highlighting one of the most annoying and embarrassing things about our state, North Carolina. You succinctly hit the nail on the head, where our supposedly moderate governor did everything he said he would not do once he was elected to office. He changed his stripes -- or maybe he was planning to do that all along? Either way, it is why politicians are held in such low regard. I came here from Maryland, a pretty liberal/progressive state. I love my new home, but we have some major problems to address. Thanks for your wonderful comics, which are one of the highlights of my day.

Today's strip was, geographically and thematically, close to home. Thanks for pointing out what progressives in NC have suspected all along -- that our state has become a literal laughingstock. Pat McCrory must be so damn proud.

Oh, my! It will be interesting to see how many NC newspapers have the guts to carry today's strip!

Great Sunday piece with Negative Ned, but he must have a counterpart here in Texas because there are several of the exact same initiatives rolling through our state.

I just read today's strip, narrated by Negative Ned of North Carolina. Some years ago, I was standing in a Northwest Airlines administrative office and overheard two employees chatting. Employee #1: "Hey, did you see USAir's new ad campaign? Their slogan is 'USAir begins with You (U).' " Employee #2: "Ha! Our slogan should be 'Northwest begins with "No." ' "

I get it. Zonker is giving us the excuse for the entire government going on forced vacation. It isn't any sillier than the real reasons, or the reasons the Right is pretending to give. Would it were only a week, and that we could send them to kindergarten when we all got back to work, until they learned how to play with others.

Is the Bart Svigals who hires a fancy pants lawyer and evades his just desserts in Monday's 40 year Flashback related to the Barry Svigals who tries to pay to have his name read out in the mail silo? I think I've correctly gathered that the latter is an old pal of GBT, and am enjoying tracing the faint shadow of the author's personal life in his art.