Ribbons

After last winter's visit with the family back at the farm (what I sometimes like to call "Walton's Mountain without the mountain"), I came home with four of my dad's WWII Army service ribbons. (No idea where the medals are, though they may have been donated with the rest of his dress uniform to the Indiana War Memorial museum).

The first three ribbons connect with well-known family history regarding his service years:

European/African/Middle Eastern Campaign:

Southwest Asia Service:

Asiatic/Pacific Command:

Regarding the fourth, we only have the Army's word:

Army Good Conduct:

Turns out George W. Bush learned something from the Sixties after all

Just not the particular lesson from the Sixties you might have been thinking of:

Oliver Stone’s new documentary South of the Border, which interviews several left-wing leaders of Latin American countries, has unearthed a startling new allegation from Argentina’s former president Néstor Kirchner. During his interview with Stone, Kirchner said he once discussed global economic problems with former President George W. Bush. The former Argentine president says that when he suggested a new Marshall Plan, referring to the WW II-era European reconstruction plan, Bush "got angry" and suggested that "the Marshall Plan is a crazy idea of the Democrats." Instead, Kirchner says, Bush suggested that "the best way to revitalize the economy is war"

There's a Memorial Day thought for you.

(Image via.)

Sunday morning toons: I'll toonify anything that moves!

(The title's our roundabout -- and work/family safe -- allusion to actor Dennis Hopper, Hollywood's most iconoclastic icon, whom we lost yesterday. He'll be missed, in toonland as on earth. [h/t to Anne for walking me through the tricky verb-selection process])

Now let's get down to business, which this week includes kinda-sorta doing something about BP's attack on the northern half of the Gulf of Mexico, kinda-sorta repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, kinda-sorta tightening Facebook's user privacy controls, kinda-sorta reaffirming 60 years of civil rights legislation, and kinda-sorta remembering America's sons and daughters who've served in uniform.

(Wow. "Getting down to business" doesn't carry as much punch as it used to, does it?)

Well anyway, we begin, as always, with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for the week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Mike Keefe, Jimmy Margulies, Steve Sack, Adam Zyglis, Milt Priggee, Jeff Stahler, Steve Breen, Ed Stein, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Award for the Definitive Memorial Day 2010 Toon: Brian Fairrington.

p3 Medal of Valor: R. J. Matson.

p3 Recycling Award: Jerry Holbert.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Daryl Cagle and Mike Lester.

What's Memorial Day about, again? Ask Nate Beeler, Pat Bagley, Joe Heller, Randy Bish, Vic Harville, and Clay Jones.


p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Tjeerd Royaards (Netherlands), Cam Cardow (Canada), and Ingrid Rice (Canada).


Ann Telnaes notes that there are holes, and then there are holes.


Mark Fiore gets a little Seuss-ical about the BP Gulf disaster. Some nice suggestions for ways to plug the hole, though.


Here's this week's Barry Blitt illustration, from tomorrow's Frank Rich column in the NYTimes.


Uhm -- You're on my chunk. This week, Tom Tomorrow demonstrates how the disasters no one could have predicted keep happening over and over.


Yes! The K Chronicles celebrates more of Life's Little Victories, #5221 through #5227.


The Comics Curmdgeon notes that, while you were busy elsewhere, Dick Tracy has gotten slightly weirder, which is no small achievement.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman casts an eye on an old problem in a new setting.


For Memorial Day -- The tall man in the high hat: There are three references contained in this 90-second Bugs Bunny ultra-short (directed by Bob Clampett, released in 1942) that many viewers today might not be used to: First, blackface/minstrel bits were still okay (especially if it was a Jolson reference). Second, Americans were once told explicitly by their government that they would have to pay for wars. Third, Americans once had savings. It was a different world.

Bugs, Elmer, and Porky sing "Any Bonds Today?", written by Irving Berlin some years before and repurposed here with new lyrics by Berlin. According to Wikipedia, the animated short was completed eight days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, but production on it began in late November 1941 -- before the US entered the war. What did Bugs Bunny know, and when did he know it?


p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer has -- let's call them "concerns" -- about the economy taking off while the state of Oregon looks at 9% budget cuts across the board for next year.



And remember to bookmark Slate's political cartoon for the day, and Time's cartoons of the week.

Saturday afternoon tunes: "Quiet Village"

Synchronicity:

My tiki-attuned friend Stephen posted on Facebook that yesterday was Hawaiian Shirt Day. So that's one. And WinAmp for some reason disappeared my copy of "The Best of Martin Denny" (along with several other CDs) off my hard drive, which blew a big twenty-track hole in my lounge music playlist, a problem I finally got around to remedying this morning. That's two.

And finally, I stumbled on this live performance of Denny's classic "Quiet Village." That settled it.

(Does the percussion/birdcall guy have a cool job, or what?)

"One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions." RIP Dennis Hopper

Dennis Hopper died a few hours ago. (As I write, the NYTimes and IMDB haven't gotten the news yet.)

He played pretty boys in his early days, but often pretty boys with something broken inside, like Billy Clanton in "Gunfight at O.K. Corral," or his too-seldom-seen turn as a self-loathing American Nazi Peter Vollmer, just ripe for the picking, on "The Twilight Zone." And then, just when you think you have a bead on him, up comes easy ridin' Billy, or the unnamed Vietnam photojournalist, or the aching-for-redemption Shooter, or -- heaven help us -- Frank Booth.

For a Hollywood icon, he reinvented himself pretty regularly. (And, although I must have known this at the time, his performances in "Hoosiers" and "Blue Velvet" were the same year, 1986. Where did he find places like that inside himself?)

When your own party starts a Facebook page demanding that you withdraw from the race immediately, things are out of hand

Call it "clueless opportunism," or "shameless self-promotion," or even "cynical mischief-making" if you want, but -- since he's campaigning for the IN-05 seat held by Rep. Dan "Shoot the Pumpkin" Burton -- you can't really blame this guy for noticing how near to the ground the bar had already been lowered:

The Hamilton County Democratic Women have released video of their heated meeting with Tim Crawford, Democratic candidate for the House in IN-05, who local Democrats see as an inept right-winger ruining their chance to take control of the seat. […]

In the videos, Crawford is visibly uncomfortable with direct questions about his policy positions. He calls himself a "student of life" to defend his lack of a college degree, and can't answer simple questions about how a bill becomes a law.

Since his reversal, local Democrats have started a Facebook group called "We Want Tim Crawford to Withdraw His Candidacy Now," pushing for him to bow out as he previously said he would.

But -- college dropout status aside -- it's hard to believe the guy made it through childhood without ever having seen this.

I mean, Crawford's evidently watched enough TV to know to go for the iconic Joe the Plumber/Man of the People shaved-head look; so surely he saw "Schoolhouse Rock!" at some point. His Facebook campaign page says he's 28, so the show wasn't cancelled until he was seventeen years old. (Some "student of life!")

(Be sure to read the comments at the TPM story, including the link to a local blog's convincing take on how the unknown Crawford was able to defeat the candidate with the state's Democratic infrastructure solidly behind him. It isn't pretty, and it should make every county Democratic organization look twice at their own GOTV plans for the fall.)

Quote of the day: Recalling past slights

Bob Somerby on the liberal commentariat's blind spot:

A new liberal world began to emerge in the aftermath of Iraq. Unfortunately, this new liberal world has largely agreed to pretend that history began in the year 2003, when its own eyes opened. Conservatives love to recall past slights from the media—including "slights” which are non-existent. On our side, we prefer to pretend that the deeply consequential press corps misconduct of the Clinton-Gore era simply never occurred.

MIND TRIP ARRANGER*

(Updated below.)

*Not an anagram fan? Tsk. Well, here it is in simple substitution code:

18.8.16..13.1.18.20.8.14..6.1.18.4.14.5.18...

Or classic ROT-13:

EVC ZNEGVA TNEQARE

And en clair:

RIP Martin Gardner

Before Will Shortz was accepting Doctorates in Enigmology, there was Martin Gardner, whose "Mathematical Games" back-page feature of Scientific American was, from 1956 to 1981, the reward for shouldering your way through articles on the production and decay of subatomic particles during the first 1/10³⁶ second after the Big Bang.

Gardner died last weekend at the age of 95. Or at least we think he did:

He was so prolific and wide-ranging in his interests that critics speculated that there just had to be more than one of him.

And more:

His mathematical writings intrigued a generation of mathematicians, but he never took a college math course. If it seemed the only thing this polymath could not do was play music on a saw, rest assured that he could, and quite well.

"Martin Gardner is one of the great intellects produced in this country in the 20th century," said Douglas Hofstadter, the cognitive scientist.

W. H. Auden, Arthur C. Clarke, Jacob Bronowski, Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan were admirers of Mr. Gardner. Vladimir Nabokov mentioned him in his novel "Ada' as "an invented philosopher." An asteroid is named for him.

Mr. Gardner responded that his life was not all that interesting, really. "It’s lived mainly inside my brain," he told The Charlotte Observer in 1993.

His was a clarifying intelligence: he said his talent was asking good questions and transmitting the answers clearly and crisply. In "Annotated Alice" (1960), Mr. Gardner literally rained on the parade of his hero, Lewis Carroll.

Carroll writes of a "golden afternoon" in the first line of "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland," a reference to an actual day rowing on the Thames. Mr. Gardner found that the day, July 4, 1862, was, in truth, "cool and rather wet."

Mr. Gardner’s questions were often mathematical. What is special about the number 8,549,176,320? As Mr. Gardner explained in "The Incredible Dr. Matrix" (1976), the number is the 10 natural integers arranged in English alphabetical order.

The title of a book he published in 2000 was calculated to tweak religious fundamentalists — "Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?" — suggesting that the first man and woman had had umbilical cords. This time he gave no answer.

"Gardner has an old-fashioned, almost 19th-century, Oliver Wendell Holmes kind of American mind — self-educated, opinionated, cranky and utterly unafraid of embarrassment," Adam Gopnik wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1999.

(By the way, given the subject's love of precision and economy in language, I feel compelled to note that in the use of "literally," above, the Times' obituary writer commits a literary howler. Mr. Gardner was a man of many talents, but even he could not have precipitated himself as water upon Mr. Carroll. Better simply to use the phrase "rained on his parade" as is, since it already means what it means.)

Update: Courtesy of rumkin.com:

(Hint.)

Republicans and property rights: One rule for lunch counters, another for rally music

As I've documented before (here and here), there are two consistent patterns when Republicans select pop music for campaigns and rallies:

(1) They tend to listen too much to the chorus and not enough to the verse.

(2) They mostly couldn't care less about the intellectual property rights of the music's owner.

Here's the latest example:

Song: The Talking Head's "Road to Nowhere" (1985)

GOP campaign wanting it: Florida governor Charlie Crist, for an attack ad against 2010 GOP primary rival Marco Rubio.

Lyric making it an unlikely choice for a GOP campaign: "They can tell you what to do / But they'll make a fool of you / And it's all right, baby it's all right . . . We're on a road to nowhere."

Other warning signs: [Talking Heads front man David] "Byrne's lawyer Lawrence Iser also represented [Jackson] Browne when the singer sued John McCain over his unauthorized use of 'Running on Empty.' (The suit that was eventually settled for an undisclosed sum.) In Browne's settlement, the Republican Party was ordered to 'respect and uphold the rights of artists and to obtain permissions and/or licenses for copyrighted works where appropriate.'"

Quote: "'I was pretty upset by that,' Byrne told Billboard. Even though Warner Bros has managed to get the campaign ad pulled, Byrne says that 'the damage had already been done by it being out there. People that I knew had seen [the ad] so it had gotten around. It's about copyright and about the fact that it does imply that I would have licensed it and endorsed him and whatever he stands for.' Byrne is suing for $1 million because it's the amount he's typically offered for use of his songs in commercials."

Did the GOP have permission to use it? No.

Used it anyway? Yes.

Sunday morning toons: In glorious 2D!

If you're graduating this month, there's good news and bad news.

Good: You can stop accumulating student loan debt.
Bad: Good luck finding a job with which you can pay back the debt you already have accumulated.

Good: BP might be hiring.
Bad: They're only hiring lawyers.

Good: Barring a Joe Lieberman-esque miracle, Arlen Specter won't be back in the Senate next year.
Bad: One more person competing in the job market.

Good: Rand Paul will be hiring people to follow him around and say, "Uhm, What Mr. Paul meant to say was . . . ."
Bad: He has at least a theoretical chance of becoming a U.S. Senator.

Good: Iran is playing fast and loose with nuclear nonproliferation agreements, so we may not live long enough for it to matter.
Bad: Iran is playing fast and loose with nuclear nonproliferation agreements, so we may not live long enough for it to matter.

We begin, as always, with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for this week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Mike Lester, Pat Bagley, Mike Keefe, John Darkow, Eric Allie, Steve Sack, Adam Zyglis, Larry Wright, Jeff Stahler, Rob Rogers, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Henry Payne.

p3 Legion of Honor: Bill Day.

p3 Palme d'Or: Joe Heller.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Cal Grondahl.

p3 Mystery Toon: Readers, do you get the point of this cartoon by Brian Fairrington? I haven't figured it out yet, although I like the design of it quite a bit. For a while I wasn't sure if the figures and objects were flying upward or plummeting downward, but the two figures fleeing on foot at the right suggest they're plummeting. But why? And what's the connection to Wal-Mart? And is that thing with "Wal-Mart" on the side of it a building or a gas pump? What am I missing here?

p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Tjeerd Royaards (Netherlands), Ingrid Rice (Canada), and Cam Cardow (Canada).


Ann Telnaes thinks the Tea Partiers slept through the good parts.


Mark Fiore says, "Nothing says like 'jihadi tough-guy' like attacking some dorky cartoonist."


Tom Tomorrow explores an alternate universe that differs from our own only in tiny imperceptible ways. See if you can spot the difference.


Here's Barry Blitt's illustration for this week's Frank Rich NYTimes column.on last Tuesday's "Randslide."


"Let's get married. I'm tired of being charming." RIP Bernard Schoenbaum:

Bernard Schoenbaum, who in hundreds of cartoons in The New Yorker needled the relatively affluent, the media-conscious, the irony-besotted and the socially competitive — in other words, the readers of The New Yorker — died on May 7 at his home in Whitestone, Queens. He was 89.

Schoenbaum was a master of the New Yorker style, in which the drawings were mere accessories to the punchline. It's telling that the NYTimes obit is able to summarize many of his best without showing them, but with no real sense of loss (although there are links to some of his best cartoons).


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman looks at Oregon's gubernatorial match-up. (Here's hoping that coverage of GOP candidate Dudley gets beyond "he's really tall" and "he can't hit a free throw to save his soul" before too much longer. Got that already -- thanks..)


2D or not 2D -- that is the question: Most people assume that popular music went to hell shortly after the period they listened to it most, often high school and college years. I'm that way about animation. I very rarely feature anything on the p3 Sunday Toon review that was made after the early 1950s -- not my high school or college years, thank you very much, but the point when rising production costs, advances in xerographic technology, and the emerging shift from theaters to television as the place where first-run animation appeared created a perfect storm that no amount of Pixar technology (bless their hearts) could completely undo. (Arguably you could pinpoint the moment at 1958, the year that WB musical director Carl Stalling retired.) So you can imagine that I greet this news with grave doubts:

Warner Bros. is bringing back the Looney Tunes in a big way this year.. starting out in theaters and then back to the Cartoon Network.

Looney Tunes began as a series of cartoon shorts that played in theaters before the main feature between 1930 and 1969, before becoming popular television favorites. Warner Bros. is returning to the tradition by releasing the first of three 3D shorts, "Coyote Falls" featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, which will play in front of their 3D family sequel Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, when it opens theatrically on July 30.

The first short will act as a lead-up to a new 26-episode half-hour series called The Looney Tunes Show, which will air on Cartoon Network this fall featuring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck as roommates with the other classic Looney Tunes cartoon characters as their neighbors.

Sigh.

I have a hard time believing that jumping on the 3D bandwagon is going to do much for the stable of classic Warner Bros toons. Computer animation can match the fluidity and richness of classic cel animation, but without developed characters, finely-honed timing, and rich musical scores, you're too often left with something that feels like a seven-minute TV advertisement. What's the point? (For example: why, except for the box office take, is the next Pixar "Shreck" movie being released in 3D?) Meanwhile, here's the genuine article: "Going! Going! Gosh!" from 1952, the third Coyote/Road Runner short, directed by Chuck Jones, in glorious 2D (no glasses required).

BTW: Does anyone know what the proper name is for the sound the Coyote makes as he shakes himself off right before the "I've already got a date" gag?


p3 Bonus Toon: Impressed with the 37% turnout in last week's Oregon primary? Jesse Springer wasn't either.



And remember to bookmark Slate's political cartoon for the day, and Time's cartoons of the week.

Saturday tunes: "People stop and stare; they don't bother me"

A petition is circulating online urging the BAFTA (the British Academy of Film & Television Arts) to bestow a posthumous award on the late Jeremy Brett for his long and distinguished career in British theater, film, and television.

American television audiences might know Brett best for his (definitive) portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, but many probably saw him first as the hapless Freddy Eynsford-Hill, whom today we would probably call a stalker -- albeit a stalker with a beautiful tenor voice -- in "My Fair Lady."

You can't buy this kind of bad publicity

(Updated below.)

There's really not much else on the left side of the internet dial today but Rand Paul. It's amazing. (This is technically my second post on him today, and I really don't even take the guy that seriously.)

Long-time p3 correspondent Doctor Beyond wondered in an email this morning how long it would be until the traditional news media (Huffington amusingly calls them the "legacy media") start doing their own investigative pieces on Rand (he's hardly a villager, after all, so he's fair game even though he's a conservative), rather than continuing to let oppo researchers, cable news, and the blogosphere do the heavy lifting.

That time may be coming:




Could be that Paul has begun to smell blood and realizes it's his own. (Not that Gregory is much of a threat; as wounds go, he's a hangnail.)

Or it could simply be that he's taking to heart an observation by Steve at No More Mr. Nice Blog:

Where is this heading? I think it's heading toward a new political world in which, once a candidate (or at least a right-wing candidate) gets a certain amount of traction, he/she won't even bother talking to reporters who aren't sympathizers. In other words, the Sarah Palin approach. Given the Internet, as well as the massive infrastructure of the right-wing print and broadcast media, why should any wingnut candidate with a sufficient following ever again give an interview to a journalist who's not a fan? Just spread your word exclusively through media your side controls -- that's how Palin does it (Berlusconi, too). The haters will come to you -- your Facebook posts, your tweets, your appearances on Hannity.

In the future, we may conclude that Sarah Palin was as much a Net-era campaign visionary as Barack Obama. Eventually, every politician, left, right, and center, may operate this way.

(Update: It almost goes without saying that the news of his MTP bailout has stirred up the blogosphere and twitterverse even more. @randpaul tweets are scrolling off the page like stock quotes.)

Quote of the day: This makes Oregon's weather today seem bearable

Charles Pierce (scroll down to Part The Ultimate) on Rand Paul:

Watching him try to outmaneuver Rachel Maddow the other night was like watching a hippo try to outrun the rain.

I made the mistake of drinking hot tea while I read that.

The RNC on Obama's "'rock star' aura"

From an RNC fundraising email currently making the rounds:

Like an annoying tune you can't get out of your head, Barack Obama keeps using his ''rock star'' aura to campaign for Democrat candidates...and they keep on losing. So much for star power and presidential ''coat tails.''

First in Virginia and New Jersey, then Massachusetts and now Pennsylvania just this week, Barack Obama's endorsement has led to election flop after flop.

Okay, I know it's just a Republican "ask," so it probably was never designed to survive close scrutiny on the merits. But two things:

First, Obama's "rock star" aura -- and the rest of him -- were nowhere to be seen in the run-up to Specter's loss in Pennsylvania this week. He and Biden dodged Specter like they owed him money. The presidential endorsement that killed Specter wasn't Obama's; it was Bush's.

Second, is the RNC counting on low-information donors to miss the fact that, although Obama's candidate in Pennsylvania lost, it didn't mean a Republican won -- since it was a Democratic primary? (Probably. In fact, Sestak has a better chance of defeating Toomey than Specter did -- which is why the Democrats were stuck with him in the first place.)

There. Just had to get that out of my system.

(H/t to Doctor Beyond)

From the Middle East to the Midwest, it's been a tough week for the virtue police

Good: Indiana:

Indiana Rep. Mark Souder, an eight-term Republican who promoted abstinence education, said Tuesday he'll resign from Congress after admitting an extramarital affair with a part-time staff member.

Souder won a bruising primary just two weeks ago, and the resignation effective Friday could hurt the GOP's chances of holding onto the Republican-leaning district in November in a year that many expect will favor the party.

Souder, an evangelical Christian who has championed family values and traditional marriage, apologized for his actions but provided no details during an emotional news conference at his Fort Wayne office.

"I am so ashamed to have hurt the ones I love," he said as he battled tears. "I am sorry to have let so many friends down, people who have worked so hard for me."

[…] Throughout his time in Congress, Souder made his evangelical Christianity a centerpiece of his public persona. He was known for his outspoken views on religion and his uncompromising conservative positions on social issues such as abortion.

He said after a 2008 hearing on abstinence-only education that the only fully reliable way young people can protect themselves from pregnancy and STDs is by "abstaining from sex until in a committed, faithful relationship."

Around the same time, he also recorded a video interview with a staff member in which he stressed the importance of abstinence education.

Better: Saudi Arabia:

It was a scene Saudi women’s rights activists have dreamt of for years.

When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn’t expecting much opposition.

But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping.

A member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Saudi religious police known locally as the Hai’a, asked the couple to confirm their identities and relationship to one another, as it is a crime in Saudi Arabia for unmarried men and women to mix.

For unknown reasons, the young man collapsed upon being questioned by the cop.

According to the Saudi daily Okaz, the woman then allegedly laid into the religious policeman, punching him repeatedly, and leaving him to be taken to the hospital with bruises across his body and face.

"To see resistance from a woman means a lot," Wajiha Al-Huwaidar, a Saudi women’s rights activist, told The Media Line news agency. "People are fed up with these religious police, and now they have to pay the price for the humiliation they put people through for years and years. This is just the beginning and there will be more resistance."

Drinking Liberally end-of-campaign party tonight at Ringo's in Beaverton

While you're making your election-night rounds tonight, don't forget to stop in at the election night party co-sponsored by the westside Drinking Liberally and Hutzler for Auditor, at Ringo's, 12300 SW Broadway (across from the Beaverton Bakery) in Beaverton.

We'll be following local returns via cable TV and the Internet, with nosh and lively discussion -- "even," says DL chapter host and Hutzler campaign manager Jason Hitzert, "a surprise or two." (And even I'm not sure what that means yet.)

Things will start up around 7pm, but you're welcome whenever you can drop by.

(And remember: Drinking Liberally encourages everyone to drink, vote -- and drive -- responsibly.)

The unforgiving minute: Specter of defeat?

Oh please, let it be so:

CBS chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer is now saying that he has it on good authority that the White House is privately bracing for Arlen Specter to lose tomorrow.

Two positives here:

1. The Senate can rid itself of one of its least-principled members (an arena where that's no piddling distinction).

2. The White House can get a sharp reminder to choose its friends more wisely.

Minute's up.

Sunday morning toons: Does the NRA know this is going on?

Here are five Zen riddles for your morning meditation:

What is the sound of three fingers pointing?

If three men run for prime minister and none of them wins, what happens next?

If we don't know what a Supreme Court nominee stands for, does it matter if we know who she sleeps with?

Which do Facebook users dislike more: Their rapidly deteriorating privacy protections, or Facebook's arrogant CEO?

Should friends let friends pack heat drunk?

Let's begin our quest for enlightment with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for this week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Daryl Cagle, R. J. Matson, John Darkow, Jimmy Margulies, Adam Zyglis, Joe Heller, Brian Fairrington, Jeff Darcy, Bill Schorr, Steve Benson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Steve Sack.

p3 "Tomb of the Unknown Wamoolian" Citation: Milt Priggee.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Bill Day, John Cole, Jack Ohman, and Larry Wright.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Ed Stein.

p3 "Those Who Forget History" Medallion: Rob Rogers.

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Ingrid Rice (Canada), and Tjeerd Royaards (Netherlands).


The irony is, of course, that someone who believes freedom of expression is sacred would probably never physically attack someone who desecrated free speech. Here's the Ann Telnaes take. (Story here).


If you believed in, let's say, an invisible nose, they'd lock you up. And yet, as Mark Fiore explains, if you believe in an invisible hand, you're a free-market economist!


Frank Frazetta art on sci-fi and fantasy book covers were as obligatory as Fabio pics on romance novels. Rest in peace.


No "Tomorrow" this time: Adieu to Little Orphan Annie And, courtesy of Roger Ebert, here's the Annotated Annie.


Toxic spills and Canadians: As Tom Tomorrow shows, it's a dangerous combination.


Remember when imagination was part of the point? The K Chronicles remembers.


What goes around: Here's Barry Blitt's illustration for this week's Frank Rich NYTimes column on the Rent-Boy Affair.


Deciding what's most objectionable: I can't blame the Comics Curmudgeon when he confesses that he scarcely knows where to start with this one. Note that the joke is anticipated, if not stolen from, here. (Not safe for barnyard.)


Climate change? Portland homeboy Jack Ohman's got yer climate change right here.


Does the NRA know this is going on? "Bugs Bunny Rides Again" (1947), directed by Fritz Freleng, is the second Bugs/Yosemite Sam match-ups and probably my favorite -- in part because most of the physical gags and musical puns found in their later shorts are previewed here. The gun jokes often didn't make it onto television uncut. (Censoring gunfight scenes in a bar? Does NRA know about this??) And the short was finished in 1947 but not released until summer of 1948 -- after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in January -- so in all later versions the otherwise-innocuous "Mahatma Gandhi" line early in the story was redubbed to "namby-pamby" (sounds odd, but you'll see).

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer makes the following pledge:

I will now make a solemn pledge that if 6'11" Chris Dudley-- former NBA player-- is chosen to be the Republican candidate, I will never draw his face. He will always appear in basketball gear, and always too tall to completely fit in the frame.

Here's a taste of what we can look forward to:




And remember to bookmark Slate's political cartoon for the day, and Time's cartoons of the week.

Saturday afternoon tunes: "I don't have hopes and dreams"

It all began when I saw Peter Weller in a striking episode of "Fringe" a few weeks ago -- as a tormented scientist who had placed high-tech implants everywhere under his skin. I found myself wondering: What draws him to films involving the theme of flesh and mechanical devices merging and interpenetrating? (The first two "Robocops," of course, and the totally-Cronenberg "Naked Lunch." Now -- appropriately enough -- "Fringe.")

And that, in turn, got me thinking about the hard-rocking neurosurgeon/particle physicist whose invention of the oscillating overthruster opened the breach between our world and the 8th dimension.

Which, in turn, got me thinking about this song, sung by Peter Weller to Ellen Barkin (at least until it was interrupted by a gunshot) in "Buckaroo Banzai:"

Fun facts: Weller's currently finishing his Ph.D. in art history (emphasis: Italian Renaissance) at UCLA. And Ellen Barkin decided, not unreasonably, that she had a better body than the body double hired to do some of her squishier scenes in "Buckaroo Banzai," so she did them herself.

Whether you're waiting or "Burn Notice" to return or not

Here's some potentially handy advice. Whether or not by accident, it's cast in classic Westen voice-over form, so regular p3 readers should be ready to put it to use immediately, if the need arises.

Jumping from a moving car is a last-ditch effort. Serious injury and death can occur from jumping from a moving vehicle. Exhaust all other possibilities before you decide to make the leap.

Follow the link for the step-by-step details (hint: tuck and roll, but also remember to allow for the door) as well as the crucial, liability-limiting disclaimer.

Quote of the day: Individuals and the state, prosperity and ruin

Pericles (c. 495 – 429 BC) (What? You were expecting Lewis Black?):

For I consider that a state which in its public capacity is successful confers more benefit on individuals than one which is prosperous as regards its particular citizens, while collectively it comes to ruin. For tho a man is individually prosperous, yet if his country is ruined, he none the less shares in its destruction; whereas, if he is unfortunate in a country that is fortunate, he has a much better hope of escaping his dangers.

Happy birthday, Edward Lear

It's been one hundred twenty-two years
Since he left for the heavenly spheres.
We've since stolen, quite outright,
His form quinquepartite
But the credit is all Mr. Lear's.

By the Great Dog of Liberalism! (An update/correction)

Last week in my run-down of area Drinking Liberally chapter meetings for May, I said that this week was DL Dogs Night Out, when Portland chapter members would be bringing their dogs, to meet out on the pet-friendly deck (at the Lucky Lab NW, 19th and Quimby).

Turns out that DL Dogs Night Out's going to be at the Thursday, May 27th, meeting, not tomorrow night.

If you now have to break this disappointing news to your psyched-up canine companion, I apologize.

The unforgiving minute: Submitted for your consideration

Sen. Joe Lieberman, a dealer in petulance and poison, who believes government should have the power to immediately remove the citizenship of anyone who he thinks is acting against the best interests of America.

What the Senator fails to realize: That story has already been done.

To be filed under "F" for "Fanatic," and "J" for "Justice."

Minute's up.

Quote of the day: What "anti-tax" actually means

Digby:

The anti-tax sentiment among middle and working class people actually means "stop giving my money to people I don't like" (and among the Peterson level deficit fetishists, it's "taxes are for the little people.")

Reading: "Welcome to the politics of the libertarian mob."

Several blogs and sites picked up "Tea Party Jacobins" from last week's NYRB, in which Mark Lilla investigates why American populism doesn't work like populisms anywhere else.

Short version: Populism elsewhere is in part a function of class solidarity, but Americans don't "do" class solidarity.

Many Americans, a vocal and varied segment of the public at large, have now convinced themselves that educated elites—politicians, bureaucrats, reporters, but also doctors, scientists, even schoolteachers—are controlling our lives. And they want them to stop. They say they are tired of being told what counts as news or what they should think about global warming; tired of being told what their children should be taught, how much of their paychecks they get to keep, whether to insure themselves, which medicines they can have, where they can build their homes, which guns they can buy, when they have to wear seatbelts and helmets, whether they can talk on the phone while driving, which foods they can eat, how much soda they can drink…the list is long. But it is not a list of political grievances in the conventional sense.

Historically, populist movements use the rhetoric of class solidarity to seize political power so that "the people" can exercise it for their common benefit. American populist rhetoric does something altogether different today. It fires up emotions by appealing to individual opinion, individual autonomy, and individual choice, all in the service of neutralizing, not using, political power. It gives voice to those who feel they are being bullied, but this voice has only one, Garbo-like thing to say: I want to be left alone.

A new strain of populism is metastasizing before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that have unsettled American society for half a century now. Anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither, it is estranged, aimless, and as juvenile as our new century. It appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that. This is the one threat that will bring Americans into the streets.

Welcome to the politics of the libertarian mob.

As I said, it's making the rounds on the web, and it should: It's a good read, and a provocative (if discouraging) analysis. I'm pointing to it here, partly in case you haven't seen or heard about it, and partly because I wanted this to get its place on the Readings list in the sidebar because this is probably an argument that's going to be worth revisiting down the road.

Lena

Lena Horne died yesterday at 92. A nightclub singer whose Hollywood career was just starting when she was blacklisted in the 1950s for her political convictions -- mainly her civil rights activism (and nothing seemed to say "communist sympathizer" more than caring about civil rights in those days) -- she returned to the clubs and the recording studio until somewhat-cooler heads prevailed in American politics.

From the Washington Post obit:

Ms. Horne, considered one of the most beautiful women in the world, came to the attention of Hollywood in 1942. She was the first black woman to sign a meaningful long-term contract with a major studio, a contract that said she would never have to play a maid.

"What people tend not to fully comprehend today is what Lena Horne did to transform the image of the African American woman in Hollywood," said Donald Bogle, a film historian.

"Movies are a powerful medium and always depicted African American women before Lena Horne as hefty, mammy-like maids who were ditzy and giggling," Bogle said. "Lena Horne becomes the first one the studios begin to look at differently. . . . Really just by being there, being composed and onscreen with her dignity intact paved the way for a new day" for black actresses.

He said Ms. Horne's influence was apparent within a few years of her leaving Hollywood, starting with actress Dorothy Dandridge's movie work in the 1950s. Later, Halle Berry, who won the 2001 best actress Oscar for "Monster's Ball," called Ms. Horne an inspiration.

She sang with Frank, Dino, Der Bingle, and many others, although younger fans could be forgiven for thinking her career was mainly about duets with Muppets.

Everyone else on the web will be playing one of her wonderful signature performances of "Stormy Weather" today, so here's something different: her 1965 performance of "Moon River:"

And here's a small measure of her triumph. Among the songs written by Tom Lehrer for the American version of the topical/satirical That Was The Week That Was in 1964-65 was "National Brotherhood Week," a sardonic celebration of the one week each year where everyone -- rich or poor, black or white, Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, or Jew -- was expected to get along . . . until the week was over and they could all go back to hating each other for the next 51 weeks. It included these lines:

Oh, the white folks hate the black folks
And the black folks hate the white folks
To hate all but the right folks
Is an old established rule
But during National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week
Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek-to-cheek^*

Today, you know who Lena Horne is, but I bet most of you have no idea who Sheriff Clark was, and that's as it should be.

(If you really want to know who Clark was, you can look him up at Wikipedia. He doesn't get a link.)

^*Turns out, the performance of "National Brotherhood Week" by Lehrer that's on YouTube is from 1967, and by that time Lena Horne was sufficiently mainstream that he'd re-written that last line with a more topical reference.

A Mother's Day reminder

In a world where the Greeting Card-Chocolate Industrial Complex has gone out of its way to set aside "special days," it's easy to lose track of the fact that the mother of all "days" was established for serious business:

Political activism seems a world removed from the hearts-and-flowers sentiments of Mother's Day. But if 19th Century poet and feminist Julia Ward Howe had had her way, the mothers of the world would not be spending the second Sunday in May being pampered and feted, but joining with other mothers in a global call for peace.

Howe was spurred to action in 1870 with the start of the Franco-Prussian War in Europe -- a conflict that lasted less than a year, but managed to inflict tremendous casualties in both the military and civilian populations, create both the modern German state and the French Republic, and start Europe down the path to the First World War, more than four decades later.

From her vantage point in Boston, Howe was appalled. The conflict struck her as "cruel and unnecessary...a return to barbarism." One day, she said, "[t]he question forced itself upon me, 'Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of human life which they alone bear and know the cost?' I had never thought of this before."

"The august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibilities now appeared to me in a new aspect, and I could think of no better way of expressing my sense of these than that of sending forth an appeal to womanhood throughout the world, which I then and there composed."

Among other things, her proclamation proposed: "As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel...In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient."

Sunday afternoon toons: Mother's Day edition

Let's get down to business, beginning with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for the week.

p3 Picks of the Week:

Mike Luckovich, R, J. Matson, Mike Keefe, John Darkow, David Fitzsimmons, Michael Ramirez, Bill Day, Ed Stein, Cal Grondahl, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best in Show: Daryl Cagle.

p3 Commendation for Classical Allusiveness: Steve Trever.

p3 Legion of Merit: Jerry Holbert.

p3 Award for Speaking Truth to Power: Milt Priggee.

Mother's Day Harmonic Toon Convergence, Part 1: David Fitzsimmons and Joe Heller.

Mother's Day Harmonic Toon Convergence, Part 2: Steve Nease and Mike Lester.

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Tjeerd Royaards (Netherlands), and Ingrid Rice (Canada).


Ann Telnaes raises a fundamental question: What is it about these people that makes them hate America so much?


Mark Fiore explores the problem of explaining lizard juice to little green men.


Animated Sci-Fi Romantic Comedy? Sort of. Comic Riffs has the details.


Barry Blitt provides this illustration to accompany Frank Rich's NYTimes piece today on how the mainstream media was too busy covering itself to cover the evacuation of Times Square.


Hey, Senator Franken -- work your own side of the street: Al Franken briefly sticks his toe in the water of the political toon biz. (I think my job here -- to the extent that we can call it that -- is safe for now.)


This Modern World asks: Why can't all businesses operate like Goldman Sachs?


You should have seen it coming: The saga of a stolen bike at the K Chronicles.


Portland homeboy and Sigma Delta Chi Award winner Jack Ohman says it's just an accounting glitch.


In celebration of Mother's Day, here's "Little Quacker" (1950), directed by Hanna and Barbera, and starring Tom and Jerry, with the first appearance (of 7) by Quacker the duckling:

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer looks at two of Oregon's biggest problems (although he hastens to point out that obesity is actually correlated positively with low food security -- i.e., hunger):





And remember to bookmark Slate's political cartoon for the day, and Time's cartoons of the week.

Sunday afternoon tunes: As God is my witness, I don't know why this song is stuck in my head

I don't mean to disparage the song; when Shel Silverstein writes it and Johnny Cash performs it, there can be no artistic cause for complaint. It's just that, when I can, I prefer to pick the songs myself that loop in my head, over and over. So I'm putting it here, partly for your enjoyment and partly in the hope that the voices inside my head can move on to other things on such a beautiful afternoon.

A friend of mine is convinced that, no matter what song you're stuck with, this song can drive it out. And probably he's right, but it's sort of like the rhyme about the old lady who swallowed the fly, then swallowed a spider to catch the fly: Now how do you get rid of that?

Saturday morning tunes: Freeways, cars, and trucks

My singing voice is so-so -- by itself it's on key but otherwise fairly nondescript. I'm usually at my best, such as it is, either when I'm harmonizing, or when I'm mimicking someone with a distinctive style, say, a Jeremy Brett or a Janis Joplin. Mainly, I have to rely on someone else's sense of phrasing if I'm going to get through it. But sometimes . . . every now and then . . . I find myself wondering where I'd be today if my voice were as soulfully, heroically ruined as Tom Waits' voice is:

Well, I suppose I'd be heading home in an old Caddy, counting on the first light of dawn to burn away whatever regrets were clinging to me like stale cigarette smoke.

At least that's my guess.

Quote of the day: By their white bucks shall ye know them

It's not just terrorists who give themselves away by their footwear.

I predict that you're unlikely to run into a more apt analogy today than this one by Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog:

[Tea Partiers will] vote GOP because the GOP will have distilled the most potent rhetorical tropes of the tea party movement and will be selling them back to the 'baggers, just like cynical record executives mining the safest aspects of early rock and roll and selling them back to the kids in Pat Boone's white bucks.

Pat Boone jokes aside, he's absolutely right: If there's one thing that the GOP knows how to do, it's push the right buttons to keep people they don't really care about on board until after the next election.

Twittered, not stirred

(Alternate title: "This never happened to the other fellow")

First the back story:

One of the coolest people to follow on Twitter is in fact Roger Ebert. He is really into a lot of surprising and interesting stuff. Case in point: Today he re-Tweeted something from a Twitter user with the handle @georgelazenby.

That brought me up short. Is the star of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" on Twitter? Quick Google check: Lazenby was born in 1939 and apparently still going out there. But this person's Twitter page gives no hint if it's that Lazenby (although he -- if it's really him -- is in turn following such figures as Oliver Sachs and Tom Waits -- if it's really them).

(In any case, it's well confirmed that @ebertchicago is definitely film critic Roger Ebert. So there's that certainty, at least.)

Anyway, in the process of looking at @georgelazenby's home Twitter page to see if he might be the genuine article, I came across this observation, which he sent out late last night:

The only guaranteed result of having an affair is to add yet another disapproving woman to you life.

So, what I'm saying is, that could be a guy who once played James Bond.

Drinking Liberally meetings in Oregon and SW Washington for May -- Plus a word from the progressive infrastructure

First, a word to the sponsors of progressive infrastructure -- that would be you:

Living Liberally -- the parent organization of DL -- has changed the landscape of modern politics by building progressive communities in 350 cities around the country (and around the world). They are a real-life counter to the tea party that will be sustainable over the long-term, rather than just a Fox News-generated flash in the pan.

But these are rough financial times, and LL is facing a budget shortfall over the next six months. This is a time that will include the primary and mid-term elections, Wall Street reform and climate change legislation - all crucial reasons to keep progressives united and connected. To operate at full capacity through the midterm elections, we only need 120 members of our community to come through with $50 each -- $6000 total to meet our shortfall.

LL is joining in this fundraising effort with a vital partner in the progressive netroots, Open Left. Open Left has been a progressive media powerhouse for the last three critical years in our movement. Just as Living Liberally has changed the landscape of modern politics by building a network of aggressive activists, Open Left has done so through efforts like getting every 2008 Senate Democratic challenger to come out in support of net neutrality.

With both organizations facing a budget shortfall in the upcoming year, we've partnered to ask that you support the effort to build a progressive counterpoint to the tea parties and Fox News.

Contribute now to support progressive infrastructure like Drinking Liberally and Open Left.


Now, here's the run-down for Drinking Liberally chapters in Oregon and SW Washington this month, starting with Corvallis, which meets tonight. (Click on the chapter's link to join their email list.)

Corvallis: Next meeting: Thursday, May 6th.
Meetings: First Thursday of each Month, 5pm - 7pm at Squirrels, 100 SW 2nd St.

Vancouver: Next meeting: Tuesday, May 11th.
Meetings: Second and fourth Tuesdays, 7pm, at the Back Alley Bar and Grill, 6503 E. Mill Plain Blvd. (West of Andresen, in a strip mall 1/2 block west of Safeway on the south side of Mill Plain. It's deep in the lot.)

Portland Metro-West: Next meeting: Wednesday, May 11th.
Meetings: Second Wednesday of every month, 7:00pm at Ringo's, 12300 SW Broadway St, (just east of Hall Blvd).

Portland: Next meeting: Thursday, May 13.
Meetings: Second and fourth Thursdays of the month, at the Lucky Lab Brew Hall at 19th and NW Quimby, Thursday at 7pm.
Special Event: Weather permitting, we'll be meeting at the outside tables -- bring your dog!

St. Helens Next meeting: Wednesday, May 11th.
Meetings: Second Wednesday of each month, 6:30 pm, at The Village Inn, 535 S. Columbia River Hwy (We have a room off the bar).

Salem: Next meeting: Thursday, May 20th.
Meetings: Third Thursday of each month, 7:00 pm, at Browns Towne Lounge, 189 Liberty St NE # 112 (Old Sportstop next to Read Opera House)

There are over 300 DL chapters around the country; to find the one near you--or to start one in your neighborhood--go here.)

And if you appreciate Living Liberally promoting progressive action through social interaction--including keeping the whole Drinking Liberally network up and running--consider sending them a little love via Tipping Liberally. Or check with your chapter host about becoming a regular pledge donor.

So wherever you are, join the Drinking Liberally gang for drinks and political conversation.

And remember: DL encourages everyone to drink, and vote, responsibly.

(Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)

Quote of the day: Remember when?

David Corn:

Remember during the George W. Bush administration when a former Clinton official appeared on "Hardball," stated that President Bush had allowed 9/11 to happen for political gain, and Chris Matthews nodded along in agreement? Of course, you don't. Because that never happened.

40 years and counting

Sites all over the web are posting videos of CSN&Y performing "Ohio" today, and rightly so.

But I need something more upbeat today.

Separated at Birth: Krugman joins the search

[Update: So does Mannion. See addendum below.]

There are those who search for the Grail. There are those who search for the lost Ark of the Covenant. Others pursue the Missing Link, the True Cross, the Comedy of Aristotle, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, moderate Republicans, or Yeti.

And my cousin Tom has this uncanny ability to look down and spot four-leaf clovers.

Here at p3, we proudly welcome Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman to the confraternity of seekers after that rarest of rarities: Public figures who, hitherto unlinked, are actually Separated at Birth.

Today, Krugman identifies the SAB link between someone who has mixed feelings about the Volcker Rule and someone who's a strict follower of the Rules of Acquisition.

We're proud to have him on the team.

Addendum: Lance Mannion found another SAB angle in this story. Both Lance's and Krugman's (Note to Lance -- update your resume: "Got mentioned in same sentence with Paul Krugman!") proffered SAB links share an important connection: Wallace Shawn (linked by LM) played The Grand Nagus Zek, leader of the Ferengi government, who was also an occasional collaborator with and political patron of Armin Shimerman's Quark (linked by PK) on "Star Trek: Deep Space 9." I don't know what it means, but it's got to mean something.

Doesn't it?

Sunday morning toons: Special "One-two-three-kick!" edition

Pick your preferred way to get slimed this week: The BP oil catastrophe, or the Goldman Sachs testimony.

Daryl Cagle's got 'em both, and more, in this week's toon round-up, so that's as good a place to start as any.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Mike Lester, Nate Beeler, R. J. Matson, Mike Keefe, Steve Sack, Larry Wright, Steve Breen, and Monte Wolverton.

Having just finished reading Michael Lewis' The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, I am pleased to give the p3 Best of Show award to Bob Englehart, Jimmy Margulies, Jeff Stein, and John Darkow .

So . . . it may not be mean enough to Hitler? This is an odd story: New Jersey cartoonist (and frequent p3 notable) Jimmy Margulies has the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on his case for this cartoon, showing Arizona as the toothbrush mustache on Adolph Hitler's face. Me, I think it's a slightly odd way to make the race-laws-and-identification-papers laws connection between Nazi Germany and the Grand Canyon State, but it's his cartoon and anyway I do like the overall design of it. The ADL's objection, however, is a little more obtuse: They're not complaining because it's unfair to Arizona; they're concerned because they think Arizona's new anti-immigration law is insufficiently evil to merit Hitler symbolism. Here's ADL's national director Abraham Foxman:

No matter how odious, bigoted, biased and unconstitutional Arizona's new law may be, let's be clear that there is no comparison between the situation facing immigrants, legal or illegal, in Arizona and what happened in the Holocaust.

Of course, the point of exaggerations like Margulies' is often to help prevent things from getting that far in the first place, but this point seems to have escaped Foxman, who seems -- ironically -- to be policing the use of Hitler imagery with a zeal normally only seen from Disney intellectual property attorneys going after unauthorized copies of "The Little Mermaid."

Margulies himself writes:

As a Jew of Eastern European descent, I am well aware of the unique horror of the Nazi era. It is all the more important that I, and others of good conscience who are able to reach an audience, do so in the face of abhorrent laws such as Arizona's,[…]

I do not think it diminishes the memory of the Holocaust to point out that the law in Arizona is uncomfortably reminiscent of Germany's in targeting one or more minorities. Before the concentration camps, there were smaller measures enacted which set the stage for greater acts.

And several helpful suggestions are offered in the comments section here.

And while we're on the subject of censorship by the high-minded, let's send out the p3 Legion of Honor and the p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Adam Zyglis.

p3 World Toon Review: Stephane Peray (Thailand), Tjeerd Royaards (Netherland), Ingrid Rice (Canada), Christo Komarnitski (Bulgaria), and Cam Cardow (Canada).


Ann Telnaes raises an awkward question. "Plink-plink!"


Mark Fiore salutes an American hero keeping us safe from people who look . . . Canadian.


Taking back America: Here's Barry Blitt's illustration from today's NYTimes column by Frank Rich, on Arizona's anti-immigration law.


A global corporate conspiracy and the two words they don't want you to know about: It's everything you feared, but The K Chronicles is on it.


She's French, you know: Portland homeboy Jack Ohman goes there.


It's three shuffle-steps on the beat, then a kick slightly before the fourth beat: Last week I promised a Disney animated short filled with cameos/caricatures of Hollywood stars similar to Warner's "Hollywood Steps Out." But I changed my mind. Instead, we're once again going to feature the conga (the style of Cuban dance music which became deservedly popular in America in the late 1930s, and which drove the soundtrack for "Hollywood Steps Out.") Here, from 1942, directed by Dave Fleisher, is "Kickin' the Conga Around." If you thought Dorothy Lamour was shaking her money-maker last week, wait until you see Popeye on the dance floor:

p3 Bonus Toon: When it comes to campaign cash, Jesse Springer says one candidate is head and shoulders above the rest:





Remember to bookmark: Slate's political cartoon for the day, and Time's cartoons of the week.

Saturday morning tunes: "Thinking about what a friend had said"

Torn between posting an original Neil Young performance, or the wonderful work of the Trio.

The Trio won this time.