The scandal in Washington is not what's illegal, it's what's legal.
To wit:
The scandal isn't that GE paid no corporate US taxes in 2010 on over $14 billion in revenue; it's that our tax code is so completely corrupted (with the help of GE lobbyists) that it's not only legal for GE to do this, they can claim. straight-faced, that it's a breach of their fiduciary duty to their stockholders if they don't.
The scandal isn't that Tea Party candidates (and those members cowed by the Tea Party) campaigned on jobs but, once elected, ignored jobs and targeted their ideological betes noires: women's reproductive freedom and health, unions, Planned Parenthood, AARP, NPR, health care reform, and (apparently) the continuing operation of the federal government; it's that there is no price to be paid, legally or politically, for doing so.
The scandal isn't that presidents can now take us to war, in the name of oil-dependent humanitarianism, without so much as a peep from under the covers from Congress; it's that no one even seems surprised any longer by this, let alone alarmed by the implications of our form of government.
Today's selections have been sold to an overseas subsidiary and then leased back to p3, making it an expense rather than a capital investment and therefore amortizable and taxed at the lower rate, from the week's political cartoon pages at Slate, Time, Mario Piperni, About.com, and Daryl Cagle -- and other sources:
p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Adam Zyglis, Rob Rogers, Clay Jones, Clay Bennett, John Sherffius, Bob Englehart, Steve Sack, Signe Wilkinson, and Monte Wolverton.
p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Clay Jones (Does anyone under the age of 40 know who Statler and Waldorf are?).
p3 World Toon Review: Lougie (China), Cam Cardow (Canada), and Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland).
Ann Telnaes notes the newest star in the GOP firmament -- and he's already got his own day on the calendar! (BTW, AT's animations are working again, but there don't seem to be permalinks to individual animations. Sigh. Also, savor the irony: Telnaes' animations are now preceded by rotating ads for, among others, Clean Coal [sic], and Goldman-Sachs.)
Mark Fiore inserts the whoopee cushion of truth under the seat of the big chair of reality. (Wow -- I originally typed "whoopie" and my spell-checker immediately corrected it to "whoopee." Why would it need to know that?)
Taiwan's Next Media Animation has a special Multi-Platform Entertainment Industry Two-fer this week! (And you thought they were just about politics and college sports?).
Tom Tomorrow is movin' on up, to a dee-luxe multi-platform orange blog presence in the sky. (Why is "multi-platform" turning up so much today, I wonder?) This Modern World joins The K Chronicles and Tom the Dancing Bug in the ex-Salon diaspora (p3 has been proudly linking to the latter two ever since Salon didn't renew them a couple of years ago; same with Red Meat after Willamette Week stopped carrying it -- even though, inexplicably, WW kept Free Will Astrology.)
The K Chronicles raises the difficult question of our age: Did I win or lose?
Tom the Dancing Bug brings us the inevitable, final shoe to drop in US's dreadful and also inexplicable budgetary problems. It feels so wrong, yet it seems so . . . unavoidable.
The creator of Dilbert took his (hardly surprising) shot at women recently; now Sylvia replies.
Via Comic Riffs, the fansite 3eanuts gives you those lovable, macrocephalic tots as you've always wanted to see them -- treading water in a sea of existential despair -- and simply by noticing the should-have-been-obvious.
Dark Horse Comics pays tribute to the cover art of Frank Frazetta.
At Red Meat, Bug-Eyed Earl is having trouble sleeping. Hope this helps.
The Comic Curmudgeon discovers the one thing that even canine behemoth Marmaduke is afraid of. (Hint: It probably involves alligator skin!)
Portland homeboy Jack Ohman reviews the president's options.
Disney's "Fantasia" meets Disney's "The Three Little Pigs:" That's pretty much the long and short of it in this 1943 Oscar-nominated mash-up by Warner Bros. director Friz Freleng and musical director Carl Stalling retelling the story of the Three Little Pigs to the music of Brahams' "Hungarian Dances." Note the image the Wolf in the introduction is a straight-up visual steal from Leopold Stokowski on the podium at the beginning of "Fantasia."
(Note to Facebook friends: If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click View Original Post to see the video.)
p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer is back, and he's got issues (click image to enlarge):
News Item: The Oregon Legislature begins debate on a proposed two-year budget that remains almost exactly the same ($14.8 billion) as the previous biennium. Cuts in schools and services will total roughly $3.5 billion -- the amount the state would have needed to increase the budget in order to maintain the same level of services after factoring in increases in health care costs, step raises, inflation and population growth over the two-year period.
Test your toon-captioning powers at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)
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