Sunday morning toons: Warren Buffett's Bleeding Hearts Club Band!

[Apologies to WB for misspelling his name in the original title; it's the curse of touch-typing.]


We'll get to WBBHCB below. Let's start with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for this week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Daryl Cagle, Mike Keefe, Bob Englehart, John Darkow, Eric Allie, Jimmy Margulies, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best in Show; Pat Bagley.

p3 Diva of Truth Award: John Trever.

p3 Certificate of Blunt Truth: David Fitzsimmons.

p3 Spin the Dial of Blame Award: Jerry Holbert.

p3 WWJD Award: Steve Sack.

p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Stephane Peray (Thialand), Cameron Cardow (Canada), and Ingrid Rice (Canada).


Ann Telnaes looks at the long run to Afghanistan. Seriously -- didn't anyone in the Obama administration read Kipling?


And so it came to pass, that democracy had run its course:: And Mark Fiore tells you what comes next.


Warren Buffett's Bleeding Hearts Billionaire Club Band: Been reading Doonesbury lately? You should. Click Next to catch up with the story so far.


You have no idea what a relief it is, to stop pretending to be ignorant doofuses: Tom Tomorrow wants you to know how simple it really is, once you give in.


The K Chronicles presents Random acts of cuteness. Be afraid. Be very afraid.


I've never seen a case as bad as yours: The smart move would be not to go there, but Red Meat isn’t that smart. Or the answer is something simpler.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman details the descent of species.

Hat-Tip to the Rhyzome for these next two: First: How do the Taiwanese explain the Tea Party to each other? Well, maybe something like this.

Second: What if the Nostromo had landed in the Hundred Acre Woods? It might be something like this. (Is it me, or does the Rhyzome need to get out a lot more?)

Get a couple of song birds today! "Taming the Cat," directed in 1948 by Connie Rasinski, is a fine example of the Heckle and Jeckle genre: The cat wants a new song bird to feast on; H & J show up, looking for a cozy spot for the winter; and wacky complications ensue. (This must be a Jimmy Durante week!)

p3 Bonus Toon: It's a pretty nasty irony: Oregon state employees bargained away raises 20 years ago in favor of theoretical bumps to their retirement accounts. Now that the background has gone down the memory hole (and Oregon's economy has been sent down after it), Jesse Springer wants to know why some Oregon state employees have such a sweet deal.

Remember to bookmark the daily political toon features at Slate's Slate, Time, and About.com.

Test your toon-captioning chops at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Saturday morning tunes: Music to read Raymond Chandler by

By one of those bits of synchronicity that would make any self-respecting bookie fling himself of the roof, yesterday afternoon I took a break to read some of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, the Philip Marlowe story considered by many to be the definitive American hard-boiled detective story, and the music that came up on my iPod-like device as I read was Dis the great 1976 (I think) jazz collaboration between saxophonist Jan Garbarek and guitarist Ralph Towner.

It occurred to me that the moody music and the story's ambience fit together perfectly. Here's a taste:

Vivian: Why did you have to go on?

Marlowe: Too many people told me to stop.

Oregon ♥s Banned Books!

Ah, September: Banned Book Month returns!

In previous years I've been able to do a better job of celebrating banned books.

This year I'm going to have to cut a few corners and make do with passing along, courtesy of the Oregon ACLU, some of the activities going on in the state this month to protect our right to read.

If you can make it to Portland on the 29th, don't miss the Uncensored Celebration!

And there are readings going on all over the state:

Eugene Banned Books Read-Out
Eugene Public Library
100 W 10th Avenue, Eugene
Saturday, September 25, noon - 2 p.m.
Co-hosted by Eugene Public Library and the Lane County Chapter of the ACLU of Oregon.


Ashland Banned Books Read-Out
Jackson County Library Services Ashland Branch
410 Siskyou Boulevard, Ashland
Saturday, September 25, 1 - 3 p.m.
Co-hosted by Jackson County Library Services Ashland Branch and the Southern Oregon Chapter of the ACLU of Oregon.


Springfield Banned Books Read-Out
Springfield Public Library
225 5th Street, Springfield
Saturday, September 25, 2 - 4 p.m.
Co-hosted by Springfield Public Library and the Lane County Chapter of the ACLU of Oregon.


Newport Banned Books Panel
Newport Public Library
35 NW Nye Street, Newport
Wednesday, September 29, 7 p.m.

For the sixth year in a row, the Newport Library has invited six speakers to read selections from books that have been challenged or banned. This year the speakers are:

* Ted Smith, Director of the Newport Public Library
* Niki Price, writer and editor of Oregon Coast Today
* Catherine Rickbone, Executive Director of Oregon Coast Council for the Arts
* Joaquin Varo, Certified Medical Assistant-Medical Translator with Centro de Ayuda
* Sharon Beardsley, English instructor at Oregon Coast Community College
* Carla Perry, Author, publisher, and founder of the Nye Beach Writer's Series and Writers' on the Edge

And here's the list of libraries where you can pick up a fabulous, free I Read Banned Books button! [PDF format]

While you're picking up your button, remember to thank your librarians (but keep your voice down). Even if you aren't in the mood to read a banned book today, you could if you wanted, and they're the reason.

Quote of the day: Critics' choice

Raymond Chandler, in his "Introduction" to Trouble is My Business (1950), on the process by which, in the 1920s and 30s, "the popular mystery story shed its refined good manners and went native" when it emigrated from the English drawing rooms of the Golden Age to the emerging American hard-boiled pulp genre:

A few unusual critics recognized this at the time, which is all one had any right to expect.

The average critic never recognizes an achievement when it happens. He explains it after it has become respectable.

It all depends on how you look at things

I remember a time when liberals and lefties were the ones with the reputation for looking at the glass as being half-full.

Has that changed since 1969? At a $30K per plate fundraise this week, Obama says it has:

Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get -- to see the glass as half empty. (Laughter.) If we get an historic health care bill passed -- oh, well, the public option wasn't there. If you get the financial reform bill passed -- then, well, I don't know about this particularly derivatives rule, I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with that. And gosh, we haven't yet brought about world peace and -- (laughter.) I thought that was going to happen quicker. (Laughter.) You know who you are. (Laughter.)

Tin-ear for political metaphor, or simply forgetting the origin of the connection between glasses of water and liberals? Probably the latter.

Glenn Greenwald provides a helpful list of some of the things that conspicuous that have become conspicuous by their absence from the glass these days. (Missing verb. Sorry.)

I guess it really does all depend on how you look at things.

Sunday morning toons: Why is this strange man laughing?

Ask Monte Wolverton, below.

Let's start off, as is traditional, with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for the week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Bob Englehart, Jeff Parker, John Darkow, David Fitzsimmons, Jimmy Margulies, Michael Ramirez, Steve Sack, Henry Payne, Larry Wright, Steve Breen, Bill Day, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best in Show: Ed Stein.

p3 Shiny Reflective Medal of Honor: R, J, Matson.

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


Ann Telnaes says, peel me a grape.


Mark Fiore asks: How did you spend your summer? Was it more fun than talking stuff like boring old wars and unemployment?


Tom Tomorrow brings us this Glox News Update: Which set of invisible, omniscient beings whose existence can never be proven does our current supreme leader truly believe in?


Keith Knight tours the Library of Congress toon collection.


Tom the Dancing Bug asks: If Stephen Hawkings didn’t exist . . . would it be necessary to invent him?


Red Meat celebrates the majesty of the food chain.


Hey, careful, man -- there's a beverage here! Dark Horse Comics brings us the ultimate comic that never was.


Wonder Woman used to say "Merciful Minerva!" but Comic Book Resources has gathered together the five greatest (silliest) exclamation on Superman covers. It goes back to the Silver Age, when DC spent a lot more time digging into his other-worldly background for story material. Didn't work for Doctor Who, didn't work for Remington Steele, didn't work for Superman. Clark's a Kansas boy through and through (although the 1940 Bud Collyer radio version placed his landing/adoption/childhood in Indiana).


But I don't think the original Spider-Man ever said "Walloping web-snappers!" Here's a summit of the comic book gods: Stan "The Man" Lee (creator of, among others, Spider Man) interviewing Bob Kane (creator of Batman).


This is just wrong: The Seattle artist who trigged the "Draw Muhammad" movement last spring has been forced to go into hiding with the help of the feds.


Just toon desserts: An amazingly misogynist cartoon gets remixed (or repaired) by Alas, A Blog, and Amanda at Pandagon liked it so much she turned it into a great contest. But the afraid-of-women dinks who wrote the original cartoon are unlikely to get it.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman offers a bizarre image of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.


Olive? Or Dorothy Lamour? That is the question. In one of those unwise moves that led to Poochie joining Itchy and Scratchy, Famous Studios tinkered around with a new sidekick/foil for Popeye during the 1940s: Shorty, voiced by omnipresent voice actor Arnold Stang. "The Marry Go Round," directed by Seymour Kneitel in 1943, is his second appearance and probably his best. (Dedicated to James the Elder, also a navy guy, who mentioned this week that he gets his Popeye fix from p3.)

(And speaking of legendary sidekick status, years later Arnold Stang played the comic relief foil -- as if that were at all needed -- for Arnold Schwarzenegger in the latter's first American film, the magnificently dreadful, the deliciously bad, the sublimely awful Hercules in New York. Odd to realize that, of the two, Stang was the one who didn't become governor of California. But the Shorty character, as you'll see, was drawn to look like Stang.)


p3 Bonus Toon: In his search for the world's greatest self-contradiction, Jesse Springer lingers over "wetless water" and "curveless wheel," finally arrving at this:


Remember to bookmark the daily political toon features at Slate's Slate, Time, and About.com.


Test your toon-captioning chops at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Saturday morning tunes: The days grow short when you reach September

Presented without comment.

The unforgiving minute

As I've argued for years, it was always unlikely in the extreme that whoever followed Bush the Younger into the Oval Office would be inclined to roll back the extraconstitutional powers that Ashcroft, Gonzales, Yoo, and the rest had ginned up for the president -- powers that would have made even John Adams nervous. Presidents, and the people around them, just don't do that. Maybe a few ornamental changes, but serious reversals? Nope.

Instead they look for ways to push the envelope farther.

Quote of the day: Obfuscating code

Glenn Greenwald on the real difference between Tea Party candidates and "mainstream" GOP candidates -- and, for that matter, many Democrats:

It's all perfectly fine to crave cultural and religious wars, to start actual wars, to despise marginalized minorities, to want to slash the safety net for an already vulnerable population, to adhere to extremist religious dogma, and to endorse lawlessness in the name of Security. You're just not supposed to say any of this -- at least not so bluntly, without obfuscating code.

This day in "Nixonland" history

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in (think sit-in, teach-in, be-in) was a deliberate attempt to harness insurgent new cultural energies for the mainstream. It featured a giant, hairy, falsetto-voiced folksinger named Tiny Tim, a deadpan comic Nazi, a nubile go-go dancer with psychedelic slogans painted on her torso, and more sexual innuendo than you could shake a stick at.

And on Monday, September 16, 1968, it featured Richard Milhous Nixon.

One of Laugh-In's writers was Nixon's old joke-man, Paul Keys. One of their running gags enlisted random celebrities to utter the innuendo-laden non sequitur "Sock it to me."

A hippie girl, drenched by water, answered a telephone call, supposedly from Governor Nelson Rockefeller: "Oh, no, I don't think we could get mr. Nixon to stand still for a 'Sock it to me.'"

The screen was filled with the famous ski-jump-nosed, fifty-five-year-old mug, intoning in cool self-mocking bafflement, "Sock it to me?!"

Paul Keys was sure to nab the tape after they got the take before Nixon's dubious aides got to it first. Their doubts disappeared after the show ran. Humphrey was supposed to be the live wire, the happy warrior, selling the politics of joy. Not going on Laugh-In himself was one of the things Humphrey lamented cost him the election.

Richard Perlstein: Nixonland:
The Rise of a President and
the Fracturing of America

Quote of the Day: Insinuation, half-truths, and dishonest reasoning

Bob Somerby:

You know times are bad when Maureen Dowd comes out against insinuation, half-truths and dishonest reasoning!

"It was a triangle, but not an equilateral one." More wit and wisdom from Lew Archer

Just finished The Moving Target, the first novel in the series by Ross Macdonald. Allow me to share:

The light-blue haze in the lower canyon was like a thin some from slowly burning money.

He gave her a hurt look. She was looking at Taggert, Taggert was looking nowhere in particular. It was a triangle, but not an equilateral one.

Seasons of sun and personal abuse had given him an angry red face and an air of great calm.

The operator was a frozen virgin who dreamed about men at night and hated them in the daytime.

"What's so hard in your coat pocket?" Miranda said distinctly.

"I'm wearing a gun."

"I like the sun."

"Do you really? I didn't think you'd go in for simple things like sun. You're the neon type, aren't you?

"If you say so."

Once or twice on a curve Miranda leaned against me, trembling. I didn't ask her whether she was cold or afraid. I didn't want to force her to make a choice.

A little man leaned toward me, peering into the fog with intent dead eyes. I caught him before he fell out. I'd been feeling death in my bones for twenty-four hours.

Betty Fraley looked at me blankly when I went back to the car. Meaning returned to her eyes like a snake coming out of its hole.

Bonus: Quite by lucky chance, I was finishing The Moving Target just as Lance Mannion was writing about quintessential 70s movie-making cliches. The connection is that his review includes Harper and The Drowning Pool, the two Paul Newman films made from the Lew Archer series. (Harper was, in fact, the film version of The Moving Target. I haven't gotten around to looking up why they changed the character's name from Archer to Harper. Macdonald said he named his character after Miles Archer -- who certainly didn't need the name by then anyway, since he was dead by the start of Chapter 2 of The Maltese Falcon.*)

*Oops. Spoiler alert.

Kevin McCarthy finally went to sleep

And that's when they get you. RIP.

Sunday morning toons: Where did those nine years go? Oh. Yeah.

Nine years later, the Second and Tenth Amendments are in pretty good shape, but the other eight have taken something of a beating (unless you count corporate free speech). Americans spent this month arguing about which religions it's okay to discriminate against and which religious texts it's okay to burn.

Have to say, I'm glad that the dilbert who wanted to organize a good old-fashioned Quran-burning (a nobody who would have remained a nobody had not the shocked, shocked media swarmed him like flies) finally backed off, but I'm not pleased that the argument that may have turned the tide was that he was endangering the troops -- the universal Bush-era argument for stifling every form of unwelcome speech. The argument that should have been used to squelch the guy -- but was, alas, too seldom heard during the whole mess -- is that America was invented to be the place where book-burnings don't happen. It always amazes me when the American media -- the greatest beneficiaries of the First Amendment -- have to be reminded how important it is.

Oh yeah. And we're still at war in Afghanistan.

What the hell. Let's move on, starting with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for the week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, R. J. Matson, Bob Englehart, David Fitzsimmons, Jimmy Margulies, Larry Wright, Bob Gorrell, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Daryl Cagle.

p3 Award of Exceptional Merit: John Darkow.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Eric Allie.

p3 "Paul Conrad Tribute" Tribute: Bill Schoor.

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


Ann Telnaes is back from vacation, and she brought a little First Amendment irony with her.


Mark Fiore points out that clever is overrated sometimes.


Here's Barry Blitt's for this week's Frank Rich NYTimes column urging Obama to get tough on the people pulling the GOP strings.


Two words you really don't want to see together: "leak" and "urologist." But the Comics Curmudgeon bravely goes there anyway.


Tom Tomorrow points out the seven words that always mean something dumb's going to follow.


The K Chronicles looks at evolving business strategies in the tourism and hospitality industries.


And speaking of business plans, Tom the Dancing Bug shows how to succeed at cartooning (among other things).


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman examines the anatomy of a burn-out.


I've reached the bottom! "The Anvil Chorus Girl, directed by Izzy Sparber in 1944, is one of the best of the war-time Popeye shorts. It's standard Popeye-and-Bluto-competing-for-Olive stuff, but it has a good share of sight gags and puns (starting with the title; and don't miss the sign on the tree in the opening shot). Olive gets some pretty funny bits of her own before the plot settles in.

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer follows the latest complications on the route to the long-awaited Dudley-Kitzhaber gubernatorial debates.

Remember to bookmark the daily political toon features at Slate's Slate, Time, and About.com.

Test your toon-captioning chops at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Saturday morning tunes: Picking up the pieces of my life without you on my mind

Here are the nine words that define New York City: "Hey. Yeah. Over here. That's right. I'm still standing."

This is dedicated to the city so hip they had to name it twice.

(H/t to Wes.)

Portland Screening Liberally and Laughing Liberally events coming up this month

Two big events coming up for those in the Portland area who are into liberal living (that's in addition to tonight's regular meeting of the Portland Drinking Liberally chapter, with folks from the Multnomah County Young Democrats joining us):


1. Laughing Liberally (Saturday, September 11th):

This Saturday night, September 11th, at 8pm, Lizz Winstead -- writer, satirist, creator of 'The Daily Show,' co-founder of Air America Radio -- is coming to the Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta, in Portland.

And Drinking Liberally members are invited to a special salon following her performance! Join Lizz in conversation about . . . well, about all kinds of things, including:

• The influence of The Daily Show on media, as well as how Americans receive and interpret their news these days.
• The power of comedy in influencing social change.
• The dearth of female writers and comedians in late night television.
• The wonderfulness of Portland.

Tickets are $25.

And while you're waiting for Saturday night to get here, check out clips from Lizz's hit Off-Broadway show Wake Up World: "The morning show that brings you half the news in twice the time!"


2. Screening Liberally (Sunday, September 19th):

"What's the Matter with Kansas?" is the 2009 documentary film by Laura Cohen and Joe Winston, based on Thomas Frank's 2004 book by the same name.

Named one of the ten best documentaries of 2009 by Roger Ebert, the film follows individual stories to reveal how the Sunflower State converted from a hotbed of leftwing populism in the mid-20th century to a bastion of hard-core conservatism by the beginning of the 21st century -- and what that means for progressive politics in America.

Join us at Ringo's Bar & Grill, 12300 SW Broadway (across from the Beaverton Bakery) at 7pm Sunday September 19th for a screening with plenty of time for discussion afterward. Admission is free!

Directions to Ringo's Bar & Grill from the Beaverton Transit Center MAX stop. (It's only a few blocks. Ringo's also has plenty of off-street parking.)





Thanks to the Washington County Democrats for making "What's the Matter with Kansas?" available!

And have you bought your copy of the ultimate guidebook for living liberally yet?

September Living Liberally calendar for Oregon and SW Washington

What can I say: Labor Day weekend snuck up on me -- I haven't even come to terms with the end of August yet. My bad.

So, since I'm too late to promote the first-Thursday-of-the-month meeting of the Corvallis chapter of Drinking Liberally at 5pm - 7pm at Squirrels, 100 SW 2nd St., which met on September 2nd, I'll try to get ahead of the curve by pointing out that their next meeting will be on Thursday October 7th.

And for the rest of us, still living in September, here's the run-down for Drinking Liberally chapters in Oregon and SW Washington this month. (Click on the chapter's link to join their email list.)

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

Portland Left Side (aka: Portland Metro West): Next meeting: Wednesday, September 8th.
Meetings: Second Wednesday of every month, 7:00pm at Ringo's, 12300 SW Broadway St, (just east of Hall Blvd).

Portland: Next meeting: Thursday, September 9th.
Meetings: Second and fourth Thursdays of the month, at the Lucky Lab Brew Hall at 19th and NW Quimby, Thursday at 7pm.

Salem: Next meeting: Thursday, September 16th.
Meetings: Third Thursday of the month at Browns Towne Lounge, 189 Liberty St NE # 112 (Old Sportstop next to Read Opera House)

(The St. Helens chapter is on summer hiatus.)

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 out 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.

Don't forget there's still time to purchase your copy of 538 Ways to Live, Work, and Play Like a Liberal.


(Cross posted at Loaded Orygun.)

Quote of the day: Capitulation

Digby:

There are as many reasons for capitulation to the Republicans are there are brands of catfood.

Bonus Digby QOTD:

This is also why people hate liberals --- they think Dana Milbank is one.

Sunday morning toons: Will blog for food!*

<sup>(Updated below.)

*</sup>(Alternate title: "Buddy, can you spare a blog post?")

So. This is where we are: We're celebrating Labor Day by having more Americans unemployed, under-employed, or hanging on by their nails than in living memory. US troops are finally leaving Iraq . . . for Afghanistan. Glenn Beck is alternating between delusions of godhood and delusions of Kinghood. Triple-Pulitzer winner and Nixon's enemies list member LA Times political cartoonist Paul Conrad died this week.

And in other news: Bedbugs!

We begin with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for the week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, R. J. Matson, Jeff Parker, John Darkow, David Fitzsimmons, Jimmy Margulies, Jeff Stahler, Rob Rogers, John Sherffius, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best in Show: Bill Day.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation From Another Medium: Pat Bagley.

p3 World Toon Review: Stephane Peray (Thailand), Ingrid Rice (Canada), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), and Pavel Constantin (Romania).


Ann Telnaes is on vacation (yes, cartooning counts as "labor") so the Post is running some of her greatest hits.


Mark Fiore sings: "A Mighty Fortress Is Our Beck."


Why is everyone in Mexico so pissed at cartoonist Daryl Cagle? The answer is here.


The Barry Blitt illustration for this week's Frank Rich NYTimes column reminds us that those who sleep through history class are doomed to . . . well you can figure the rest.


Red Meat's Ted has a close encounter.


Tom Tomorrow wonders if the news is trying to tell us something.


Meanwhile, at The K Chronicles, Keith meets a legend.


Tom the Dancing Bug bring us True Tales of False Romance. It ain't pretty.


Sic Transit Paul Conrad: Nixon and Reagan both hated his guts, which is a pretty good epitaph for anyone. He first made his mark as an editorial cartoonist a generation ago, before "take-no-prisoners" and "realism" got replaced by "zany" and "doodle-chic aesthetics" in Political Cartooning 101. From the LATimes obituary:

Mayors, governors and presidents cringed at the prospect of being on the business end of Conrad's searing pen, while many Southern Californians made him their first stop as they sifted through The Times, the newspaper that was his principal home for nearly 30 years.

While many other cartoonists angled for whimsy or the easy one-off, Conrad "specialized in hair shirts and jeremiads and harpoons to the heart," former Times Editor Shelby Coffey III once wrote. The cartoonist, loud and often profane in person, viewed himself as a champion of the common man and relished combat with those he saw as protectors of the rich and privileged.

His most prominent and enduring foils came in the person of two California politicians who rose to the presidency, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The scandal-plagued Nixon named Conrad to his "enemies list" -- a designation the cartoonist described as one of his greatest honors. Former Times Publisher Otis Chandler became accustomed to his breakfast being interrupted by either Reagan or wife Nancy, furious that the then-governor had been depicted, again, as dimwitted, mean-spirited or out of touch.

You can see more of Conrad's work here and here. (And just for fun, here's my favorite Conrad cartoon, entitled Congressional Bipartisanship -- a cartoon so rudely, angrily true that the Times wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. "Loud and profane," indeed!)

(Update: Digby has a nice appreciation of Conrad.)


Sometimes reality is overrated: What would Charlie Brown and Popeye look like if they were living, flesh-and-blood people? You'll find the answers . . . disturbing. (H/t to Wes.)


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman has the scoop.


Here's your girdle! Where's my snood? Our p3 Labor Day Shout-Out to everyone who will have to get back to work Tuesday morning is "Tick Tock Tuckered" (1944), an update of the 1937 Warners short "Porky's Badtime Story"-- moved from black and white to color, sometimes duplicating the almost shot-by-shot, like the Gus van Sant-ization of "Psycho." Bob Clampett directed both versions. This time around, Porky is teamed with Daffy Duck instead of Gabby Goat (who obviously never caught on, but can still sometimes be seen doing half-hour infomercials at 3am on extended basic cable). "Tuckered" puts them at work in a defense plant (there was a war on, you know). The sly double-entendre gag of the rainwater in the bed seems tame now, but was borderline risqué for a cartoon at the time.

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer notes that some independent political parties are filing a lawsuit in Oregon state court against a proposal by the Secretary of State to print three-letter abbreviations on the November ballot, instead of full party names, and wonders, Where might this lead? (Click to enlarge.)

Remember to bookmark the daily political toon features at Slate's Slate, Time, and About.com.

Test your toon-captioning skills at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Saturday morning toons: "Hiring man said, 'Son, if it was up to me . . . '"

Happy labor day weekend to everyone who labors.

"It was hard to take him seriously, but the gun helped." More wit and wisdom from Lew Archer

From The Underground Man (1971):

He gave me the tricky look of a half-smart man who had never learned the limits of his own intelligence.

She wasn't the sort of woman you confessed human weakness to.

"It was a shallow grave, ma'am. Girls can do about anything boys can do when they set their minds to it."

I could smell her sun-tan oil, and I felt as if everybody but me was paired off like the animals in the ark.

It was hard to take him seriously, but the gun helped.

His body moved heavily and dolefully, as if it was weighted down by a kind of despair which hadn't yet reached his consciousness.

Her grief still clung to her body like a perfume. She was one of those women whose feminine quality persisted through any kind of emotional weather.

The flesh of his face hung in folds like a bloodhound's dewlaps and made his smile a strange and complex thing.

"He went for women the way some men go deer-hunting -- pitting his skills, you know?"

She had a big friendly body which looked as if it didn't quite know what to do with itself, even after years of practice.

The night was running down like a transplanted heart.

The hot breath of vengeance was growing cold in my nostrils as I grew older.