Sunday morning toons: A quickie

I'm cutting SMT a little short this week. In a nutshell: Debt ceiling, joblessness, famine. Now let's cut to the chase.

Today's selections have been lovingly hand-selected from the week's political cartoon pages at Slate, Time, Mario Piperni, About.com, and Daryl Cagle:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich,Nate Beeler, R.J. Matson, Jeff parker, David Fitzsimmons, Steve Breen, Jimmy Margulies, Jeff Danziger, Ben Sergent, Adam Zyglis, Clay Bennett, Joel Pett, and Monte Wolverton.


p3 Legion of Extreme Honor: Mike Keefe.

p3 Croix de Guerre, with sippy mug: Clay Bennett. 

p3 World Toon Review: Dale Cummings (Canada), and Cam Cardow (Canada).


Ann Telnaes notices a funny thing about the debt ceiling countdown clock.


Mark Fiore's Dogboy and Mr. Dan discuss whose fault it is (and you know what “it” means!).


Taiwan's Next Media Animation presents an almost David Lynchian take on Boehner, Obama, the Tea Party, and the debt ceiling. It's incredible.


Tom Tomorrow notices the one thing that might immunize the FOX News operation from the Murdoch scandal in the UK.


The K Chronicles pays tribute to The 27 Club: even if you could get in, you don't wanna.


Red Meat's Bug-eyed Earl knows the sting of that one uncovered detail.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman wins the p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium.


Guest animation A few weeks ago, we featured “Two's A Crowd,” the first Warner Bros cartoon featuring Claude the cat. This toon, “Terrier Stricken” was released nine years later, in 1952. You can see the evolution: Claude no longer simply wants to be left alone by the puppy; he wants to stir up trouble. And the structure of the storyline is like the Road Runner cartoons, also directed by Chuck Jones: It's one joke, repeated with unlimited variations, but always with the same outcome. In “Two's A Crowd,” I noted all the songs from the Warner Bros musical catalog that musical director Carl Stalling borrowed from for punning effect; this time notice how he can score original music to perfectly match the action on screen.

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No p3 Bonus Toon this week: Jesse Springer remains on vacation. Meanwhile, you can browse his archives.


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

Saturday morning tunes: Some trails are happy ones, others are blue

This goes out in memory of my brother-in-law Bob, who was a major Roy Rogers fan (How major? The last time he and Ann visited the west coast, they visited me before they went to the Roy Rogers Museum, when it was still in Victorville CA, and I considered myself special.). Dale Evans Rogers is ordinarily credited with writing “Happy Trails,” although there's a story behind that.

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Happy trails.

Quote of the day: Electability

Remember -- it hasn't been that long -- when people began saying that Ronald Reagan, despite his elevation to sainthood by the current Republican party, nevertheless probably couldn't even get the GOP nomination now?

Now comes Paul Waldman at TPM to make a fairly convincing case that it's been taken it to the next level:

The George W. Bush of 2000 probably couldn't get the nomination of today's Republican Party.

Waldman continues:

All his talk of how he had worked with Democrats in the Texas Legislature and how he wanted to end Washington's partisan rancor would have gotten him branded a squish who couldn't be trusted. You can argue that Bush fooled the country into thinking he was more moderate than he actually was (I'd agree). But after a few months on the trail, nobody is going to think Rick Perry is a uniter. And that's why he has a pretty good shot of being the Republican nominee.

There's something to think about: Bush trashed our economy on behalf of the wealthy and the corporations, lied his way into war with Iraq, took every opportunity to hobble the government's ability to enforce regulations or pursue justice, and polarized the nation to an extent beyond anything in living memory via Karl Rove's "fifty-percent-plus-one" political strategy.

But, only twelve years later, can it be that he's probably not toxic enough to get nominated by his own party?

Sunday morning toons: Transitions

It is a time of transitions:

Gone but not forgotten: Portland's own Mel Blanc (via the Mel Blanc Project).

Closed for good: Borders bookstores.

Kissed goodbye: Middle-class jobs.

Sailed off into the sunset: NASA.

Splitsville: Clark and Lois.

Circling the drain: The Murdoch empire.

Today's selections have been hand-picked with excruciating care from the week's political cartoon pages at Slate, Time, Mario Piperni, About.com, and Daryl Cagle:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Bob Englehart, Michael Ramirez, John Cole, Steve Sack, Walt Handlesman, Clay Bennett, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Larry Wright.

p3 Legion of Honor: Mike Keefe.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence to Nate Beeler, Gary Markstein, and R.J. Matson.

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), Manny Francisco (Phillipines), Pavel Constantin (Romania), and Ingrid Rice (Canada).


Ann Telnaes pays tribute to the most powerful man in America (apparently).


Mark Fiore brings relief, 2011-style. It's one of his best!


Taiwan's Next Media Animation covers one of the newest entrants to the ranks of the American unemployed: Tiger Woods' caddy.


Tom Tomorrow brings us the return of Middle Man and his amazing Who-Could-Have-Foreseen-Vision.


Keith Knight notes an astonishing statistic.


It's so obvious when Tom the Dancing Bug explains it: White, suburban, and in a closet.


Comic Riffs Counts down the top Rupert Murdoch scandal toons.


Red Meat's Ted Johnson and Mrs. Johnson explore the mysteries of communication.


Tough summer for Superman: It's time for another reboot/retcon. First they start dinking around with the classic lines of his uniform, replacing it with "Kryptonian battle armor" (seriously), and now they're wiping out his marriage to Lois (she's dating around now) as well as his adoptive parents, the Kents.


The Comic Curmudgeon, who is incredibly sharp-eyed, makes a disturbing discovery about the secret life of Lois Flagson (of "Hi and Lois"). Who's going to tell Hi?


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman is keeping tabs on the Fall of the House of Murdoch.


The Phantom Tollbooth, in 1970, was the second time Chuck Jones animated the work of children's author Norton Juster. (The first, "A Dot and a Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics," was featured on p3 Sunday Morning Toons last week.) "Phantom Tollbooth" was, and perhaps with good reason, the last animated project to come out of MGM studios. It's filled with Juster's love of middle-brow puns and slapstick. In addition to Jones's now-recognizable character designs (the original book illustrations were by Jules Pfeiffer), it's filled with voices you'll recognize: Butch "Eddie Munster" Patrick, June Foray, Hans Conried, Thurl Ravenscroft, Daws Butler, Les Tremayne ("Star Trek" buffs will know him), and Mel Blanc. This is the trailer for the movie; the full feature is available here:

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No p3 Bonus Toon this week; Jesse Springer's still on vacation. But you can browse his gallery.


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

Saturday morning tunes: If some of my homes had been more like that car . . .

From the woefully underappreciated "Hearts and Bones" album, and here performed in concert with Art Garfunkel, this is Paul Simon's "Cars Are Cars."

I play it in tribute to my old Honda -- a friend helped me make the ultimate car mix tape (the rule: only songs that mentioned car parts; lots of Springsteen, Beach Boys, and Chuck Berry, but also Gary Neuman and the Playmates) -- and when the car was stolen, the tape was too.

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Sunday morning toons: Presented in awesome 1-D!

Today's selections have been carefully hand-selected from the week's political cartoon pages at Slate, Time, Mario Piperni, About.com, and Daryl Cagle:


p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Pat Bagley, RJ Matson, Mike Keefe, Jimmy Margulies, Martin "Shooty" Sutovec, Clay Jones, John Cole, Signe Wilkinson, Stuart Carlson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Legion of Honor: Clay Bennett.

p3 Best of Show: Monte Wolverton.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Nate Beeler.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: and John Darkow and Cameron Cardow.

Seriatim terminus! , Dave Fitzsimmons, Cameron Cardow, Jeff Stahler, and Jeff Koterba.

p3 World Toon Review: Ingrid Rice (Canada), Jianping Fan (China), Bill Leak (Australia), and Christo Komarnitski (Bulgaria).


Ann Telnaes salutes the House GOP's spending priorities.


Mark Fiore says it's time for courage from our leadership.


Taiwan's Next Media Animation explains the American Debt Ceiling Crisis.


Tom Tomorrow takes us to an alien world whose problems bear no resemblance to our own whatsoever.


At The K Chronicles Keith has his mind officially blown.


Tom the Dancing Bug salutes the priorities of a certain crusading Supreme Court justice.


How did your favorite TV animation fare in the Emmy nominations? Comic Riffs has the story.


Red Meat reveals how Milkman Dan spent his vacation.


The Comic Curmudgeon spots (so to speak) a comic strip first in "Ballard Street" -- keep scrolling; it's down there.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman has a dream.


She's not good enough for you! She lacks depth! Here's a little oddball I'd almost forgotten about: "A Dot and a Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics," directed by Chuck Jones in 1965 during his MGM stint. It's based on the 1963 book by the same name, authored by Norton Juster. The point of the story is that, if you want a relationship to work, you have to be willing to bend a little. You'll see. "Dot and Line" was the winner of the 1965 Oscar for best animated short.

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No p3 Bonus Toon this week; Jesse Springer is off. He encourages you to browse the archives.


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

Saturday morning tunes: Chopin's Prelude in E Minor, Op. 28 No. 4

I learned this one in college in the hope that it would make me seem a little deeper. All it ended up doing is making me realize how much longer Chopin's hand-span was than mine.

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Separated at birth: A field guide to weasels of North America

Via The Atlantic's James Fallows (or, more accurately, one of his readers) comes this observation about sneaky little two-faced twerps.

Quote of the day: Old tricks/New tricks

Maureen Dowd squandered more prime op-ed real estate at the NYTimes today discussing what Hitler thought about dogs (seriously), even taking time to note that "an Airedale terrier named Rolf was considered one of the leading German intellectuals of the time."

To which Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler, clearly at the end of his own tether with MoDo, responds:

An Airedale was considered a leading intellectual? In this country, a columnist who’s a visible crackpot was once given a Pulitzer prize!

Woof!

The Dowd barks; the caravan moves on.

Minute's up.

The unforgiving minute: The "idea man's" greatest contribution to our national discourse

I have never found the claims of Newt Gingrich's supposedly high-wattage intellect to be all that convincing.

But this Think Progress headline reminded me of one contribution he's made to our world of letters:

Thrice-Married Gingrich Won’t Sign FAMiLY LEADER’s Fidelity Pledge Unless Changes Are Made

Gingrich has almost single-handedly revived the lovely old world "thrice," which since 1978 has been teetering on the brink of lexicological extinction thanks to Lionel Ritchie and the Commodores.

Thanks, Newt.

Minute's up.

Sunday morning toons: It takes two to Twitter a town hall

Maybe, but it doesn't take 140 characters to ask the important question: via Steve Breen.

Today's selections have been diligently hand-picked by Georgia parolees from the week's political cartoon pages at Slate, Time, Mario Piperni, About.com, and Daryl Cagle:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Mike Keefe, Jeff Parker, Jeff Parker, Jerry Holbert, Drew Sheneman, Nick Anderson, Clay Jones, Stuart Carlson, Walt Handlesman, and Monte Wolverton.


p3 Best in Show: Pat Bagley.

p3 Best Adaptation from Another Medium: RJ Matson.

p3 Legion of Merit, with boings: Steve Sack.

And did we mention? Rupert Murdoch runs a corrupt global operation. Here's Jack Ohman, Paul Szep, and Martin Rowson.

p3 World Toon Review: Ingrid Rice (Canada), Michael Kountouris (Greece), Cam Cardow (Canada), and Victor Ndula (Kenya).


Ann Telnaes presents John McCain in McCain Hears a Who.


Mark Fiore takes us to the land of trickle-down tales and tax-cut fairies. If you pay them enough, maybe they'll be happy enough to give you a job!


Taiwan's Next Media Animation offers their ineffable retelling of the Murdoch/News of the World scandal. How does the blimp figure in again?


Tom Tomorrow presents tomorrow's history of today. Try to stifle your laughter, please. (And good luck with the organ harvesters!)


The K Chronicles presents: Child of LA, Child of San Francosco.


Tom the Dancing Bug reprises the Super-Fun-Pack Comix, and whether you agree or not, Guy Walks Into a Bar is the funniest thing this week. (Also, congrats to TtDB for its Harvey Award nomination!)


Comic Riffs salutes the forthcoming project Womanthology, a collection of the work of over 140 (whoa!) women in the cartoon industry.


Red Meat's Bug-eyed Earl goes for the cheap laugh.


The Comic Curmudgeon is too kind to this Jumble from last week; it's actually a rip-off of a Joey Tribbiani joke from 1994.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman looks at budget cuts.


Well, blow me down! I can't believe I've never included this on p3 Sunday Toons, but apparently it's slipped through the cracks. The first screen appearance of Popeye was actually spun out in a 1933 Betty Boop cartoon, directed Dave Fleischer. (Betty's appearance is limited to her hula act. Hard to understand why the Hays Commission had any problem with her.)

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p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer thinks he smells something about the UO Ducks following last year's National Championship.

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

Saturday (barely) morning tunes: The lights are much brighter there

A friend invited me to one the comedy clubs downtown (Ding! Ding! Ding!) tonight, so here's a song about that.

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"Downtown" hit #1 on the American charts in early 1965, making Petula Clark the first woman to top the charts in the rock and roll era, and the second to do so ever. "Downtown" was eventually bumped from #1 by -- ready? -- the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling."

Footnote: The song has been covered several times, most notably by Dolly Parton (who, as she'd be the first to admit, "Dolly-ized" it), but also by The Osmonds, Marianne Faithful, the B-52s, and Alvin and the Chipmunks, and it was the basis of one of Allan Sherman's better parody songs.

Meanwhile, if anyone's interested, I'll be looking for the rhythms of the gentle bossa nova.

An old spy in a hurry

(The Ann/Connie discussion, below, got updated a little.)

If The Lord of the Rings was the trilogy that left its mark on my teenage years, it was what came to be called "The Karla Trilogy" -- John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, followed by The Honorable Schoolboy and Smiley's People -- that had a comparable effect on my twenties.

So I'm delighted to see that Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy -- as Lance Mannion correctly observes, cognoscenti are content to abbreviate it as "Tinker,Tailor" -- is coming to the screen this fall, chock full of interesting casting choices:

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Anyone who's seen the BBC productions of Tinker, Tailor and Smiley's People knows why many loyalists are unprepared to accept anyone but Alec Guinness in the role of George Smiley, although Gary Oldman will be the fourth actor to play Smiley (the fifth, if we count this, which I don't).

But I trust Oldman. And while I'm not sure what to expect from Peter Straughan, who wrote the screenplay, I'm willing to keep an open mind there

What has me a little worried concerns two lynchpin characters, neither of whom appears in the trailer (which isn't that surprising), and neither of whom is played by anyone I recognize (which probably isn't either, really): Ann Smiley and Connie Sachs. They're two of the three women in a story about a mostly-male world, and their parts of the story are about the only bits where we get to see Smiley as anything beyond what he is to his colleagues in British intelligence: shy, a little gloomy, and ultimately unreadable. They're symbols of the personal and professional betrayal surrounding Smiley: Ann is the wife who once assured Smiley that, if she could ever be faithful to just one man, it would surely be Smiley -- but who humiliated him with countless infidelities she made no attempt to hide. Connie is the legendary intelligence researcher who was forced into retirement for the sin of having been right all along about a Russian mole at the highest ranks of British intelligence. Smiley's fits of self-loathing make far less sense without the context of these two relationships.

And that's what the book is -- the detailed evocation of an alien world, and the exploration of the complex character of George Smiley. A whodunnit it's not: When the Gerald the mole is finally exposed, even those characters present realize that they probably knew who it was all along.  If the story is repurposed as a mystery spy thriller for the movie, then Ann and Connie may well get the gate (especially compared to, say, Roy Bland, who's mainly a cipher included to pad out the list of suspects to be eliminated -- "there are three of them, plus Alleline"). If, on the other hand, the mole hunt is the movie's rationale for a detailed study of character and group, as it is the book's, then you have to have Ann and Connie.

And talk about owning a part (although, oddly enough, neither character is listed in IMDB for the BBC Tinker, Tailor or Smiley's People): Siân Phillips, who made a career out of portraying beautiful, regal women with a very dark side, always seemed perfect as Ann -- "the last illusion of an illusionless man." And Beryl Reid's portrayal of banished researcher Connie Sachs -- arthritic and gin-soaked, going dotty in exile, bitterly nursing the old faces and stories locked forever in her photographic memory -- is indelible, the more so because it totters between the bitterly funny and the horrific. Both women went toe-to-toe with Guinness in every scene they got; for both of them, their scenes are show-stoppers.

So I've got my fingers crossed. Meanwhile, here's a taste:

In the scullery Smiley had once more checked his thoroughfare, shoved some deck-chairs aside, and pinned a string to the mangle to guide him because he saw badly in the dark. The string led to the open kitchen door, and the kitchen led to the drawing-room and dining-room both; it had the two doors side by side. The kitchen was a long room, actually an annexe to the house before the glass scullery was added. He had thought of using the dining room but it was too risky, and besides from the dining-room he couldn't signal to Guilllam. So he waited in the scullery, feeling absurd in his stocking feet, polishing his spectacles because the heat of his face kept misting them. It was much colder in the scullery. The drawing-room was close and overheated but the scullery had these outside walls, and this glass and this concrete floor beneath the matting, which made his feet feel wet. The mole arrives first, he thought; the mole plays host: that is protocol part of the pretence that Polyakov is Gerald's agent.

A London taxi is a flying bomb.

The comparison rose in him slowly, from deep in his unconscious memory. The clatter as it barges into the crescent, the metric tick-tick as the bass notes die. The cut-off: where has it stopped, which house -- when all of us on the street are waiting in the dark, crouching under tables or clutching at pieces of string -- which house? Ten the slam of the door, the explosive anti-climax: if you can hear it, it's not for you.

He heard the tread of one pair of feet on the gravel, brisk and vigorous. They stopped. It's the wrong door, Smiley thought absurdly; go away. He had the gun in his hand; he had dropped the catch. Still he listened, heard nothing. You're suspicious, Gerald, he thought. You're an old mole, you can sniff there's something wrong. Millie, he thought; Millie has taken away the milk bottles, put up a warning, headed him off. Millie's spoilt the kill. Then he heard the latch turn, one turn, two; it's a Banham lock, he remembered -- my God, we must keep Banham's in business. Of course: the mole had been patting his pockets, looking for his key. A nervous man would have it in his hand already, would have been clutching it, cosseting it in his pocket all the way in the taxi; but not the mole. The mole might be worried but he was not nervous. At the same moment the latch turned, the bell chimed -- housekeepers' taste again: high tone, low tone, high tone. That will mean it's one of us, Millie had said; one of the boys, her boys, Connie's boys, Karla's boys. The front door opened, someone stepped into the house, he heard the shuffle of the mat, he hard the door close, he heard the light switches snap and saw a pale line appear under the kitchen door. He put the hun in his pocket and wiped the palm of his hand on his jacket, then took it out again and in the same moment he heard send flying bomb, a second taxi pulling up, and footsteps fast. Polyakov didn't just have the key reedy, he had taxi money ready, too: do Russians tip, he wondered, or is tipping undemocratic? Again the bell rang, the front door opened and closed, and smiley heard the double chink as two milk bottles were put on the hall table in the interest of good order and sound tradecraft.

Lord save me, thought Smiley in horror as he stared at the old icebox beside him; it never crossed my mind: suppose he had wanted to put them back in the fridge?

The strip of light under the kitchen door grew suddenly brighter as the drawing-room lights were switched on. An extraordinary silence descended over the house. Holding the string, Smiley edged forward over the icy floor. Then he heard voices. At first they were indistinct. They must still be at the ar end of the room, he thought. Or perhaps they always begin in a low tone. Now Polyakov came nearer. He was at the trolley, pouring drinks.

"What is our cover story in case we are disturbed?" he asked in good English.

"Lovely voice," Smiley remembered; "mellow like yours. I often used to play the tapes twice, just to listen to him speaking." Connie, you should hear him now.

From the further end of the room, still, a muffled murmur answered each question. Smiley could make nothing of it. "Where shall we regroup?" What is our fallback?" "Have you anything on you that you would prefer me to be carrying during our talk, bearing in mind I have diplomatic immunity?"

It must be catechism, Smiley thought; part of Karla's school routine.

"Is the switch down? Will you please check? Thank you. What will you drink?"

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

by John le Carré'

And the answer to that question, as most Smileyphiles know, marks the end of one story and the beginning of another.

Censoring "1776:" Cool, cool, considerate men

Remember when "politically correct" meant it was approved by the radical left?

Those days are gone -- they've been gone for a long time. For longer than a lot of people realize, "politically correct" has come to mean "not offensive to the Old Confederacy-based GOP and its electoral 'Southern Strategy:'"

In the musical "1776," the song "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men" depicts Revolutionary War era conservatives as power-hungry wheedlers focused on maintaining wealth. So it's not surprising that then-President Richard Nixon, who saw the show at a special White House performance in 1970, wasn't a big fan of the number.

What is surprising is that according to Jack L. Warner, the film's producer and a friend of the president, Nixon pressured him to cut the song from the 1972 film version of the show--which Warner did. Warner also wanted the original negative of the song shredded, but the film's editor secretly kept it intact.

Here are the lyrics:

Dickinson:

Oh say do you see what I see?

Congress sitting here in sweet serenity

I could cheer; the reason's clear

For the first time in a year Adams isn't here

And look, the sun is in the sky

A breeze is blowing by, and there's not a single fly

I sing hosanna, hosanna

Hosanna, hosanna

And it's cool

Come ye cool cool conservative men

The likes of which may never be seen again

We have land, cash in hand

Self-command, future planned

Fortune flies, society survives

In neatly ordered lives with well-endowered wives

We sing hosanna, hosanna

To our breeding and our banner

We are cool

Come ye cool cool considerate set

We'll dance together to the same minuet

To the right, ever to the right

Never to the left, forever to the right

May our creed be never to exceed

Regulated speed, no matter what the need

We sing hosanna, hosanna

Enblazoned on our banner

Is keep cool

What we do we do rationally

We never ever go off half-cocked, not we

Why begin till we know that we can win

And if we cannot win why bother to begin?

Rutledge:

We say this game's not of our choosing

Why should we risk losing?

All:

We are cool

To the right, ever to the right

Never to the left, forever to the right

We have gold, a market that will hold

Tradition that is old, a reluctance to be bold.

Dickinson:

I sing hosanna, hosanna

In a sane and lucid manner

We are cool

All:

Come ye cool cool considerate men

The likes of which may never be seen again

With our land, cash in hand

Self-command, future planned

And we'll hold to our gold

Tradition that is old, reluctant to be bold.

We say this game's not of our choosing

Why should we risk losing?

We cool, cool, cool

Cool, cool, cool

Cool cool men

Here's the footage you couldn't be trusted to see:

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Hat tip to Doctor Beyond.

Reminder to Tea Party members: The US Constitution is the other one.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the
thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock

Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll

Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott

Sunday morning toons: Place on ground, light fuse, run away!

p3 celebrates Independence Day and all its uniquely-American customs, beginning with toons by Mike Keefe, David Fitzsimmons, and Larry Wright.

Today's selections have been lovingly hand-selected from the week's political cartoon pages at Slate, Time, Mario Piperni, About.com, and Daryl Cagle:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Jimmy Margulies, Jerry Holbert, Steve Sack, Adam Zyglis, Jim Morin, Drew Sheneman, John Deering, RJ Matson, Clay Bennett, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Jeff Parker.

p3 Legion of Merit, with tea leaf clusters: Henry Payne.

p3 World Toon Review: Luojie (China), Cam Cardow (Canada), Pavel Constantin (Romania), and Ingrid Rice (Canada).


Ann Telnaes watches the GOP taking its medicine. Or not.


Mark Fiore celebrates America's most basic value.


Taiwan's Next Media Animation gives this one a headline that says it all: Pregnant terrapins cause delays at JFK Airport.


Tom Tomorrow presents Libya made sensible (featuring Chuckles the Sensible Woodchuck!).


The K Chronicles reflects on a missed opportunity to cash in.


Tom the Dancing Bug unveils a new caped (or at least robed) super-hero, avenging the unoppressed.


Comic Riffs' Michael Cavna marks the passing of United Media, the syndication outfit that once was the home of classic^* strips like Peanuts and Dilbert.

^*Possibly a euphemism for over-the-hill.


At Red Meat, Ted Johnson recognizes the pull of gravity.


The Comic Curmudgeon bravely faces the Freudian hellscape of Camp Swampy.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman notes the latest regeme-stablizing troop deployment.


Sighted cat, sank same! Sunday Morning Toons featured "The Yankee Doodle Mouse" (1943) a couple of years ago, but the image of a cellar full of open crates of fireworks is so right for Independence Day weekend that I had to bring it back. "Yankee Doodle Mouse" was the first of seven MGM Tom and Jerry cartoons to receive an Oscar for best animated short.

(Note to Facebook friends: If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click View Original Post, below, to see the video.)

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer has this to say about the problem of low participation in women's high school sports in Oregon:

Match toon-captioning wits at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Saturday morning tunes: Dub

Until King Tubby got in the game, the sound engineer was just some guy sitting at a mixing board. He made it a virtuoso instrument:

Tubby began working as a disc cutter for producer Duke Reid in 1968. Reid, one of the major figures in early Jamaican music alongside rival Clement 'Coxsone' Dodd, ran Treasure Isle studios, one of Jamaica's first independent production houses, and was a key producer of ska, rocksteady and eventually reggae recordings. Asked to produce instrumental versions of songs for sound system MCs or toasters, Tubby initially worked to remove the vocal tracks with the sliders on Reid's mixing desk, but soon discovered that the various instrumental tracks could be accentuated, reworked and emphasised through the settings on the mixer and primitive early effects units. In time, Tubby (and others) began to create wholly new pieces of music by shifting the emphasis in the instrumentals, adding sounds and removing others and adding various special effects, like echoes, reverb and phase effects. Partly due to the incredible popularity of these early remixes, 1971 saw Tubby's soundsystem consolidate its position as one of the most popular in Kingston and so he decided to open a studio of his own.

If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click View Original Post to see the video.

We at p3 strongly recommend that you turn this up loud and crank up the bass.