Sunday morning toons: Witches are so last week (or next week, whichever)

There were three big stories last week, although they almost Bigfooted one another: 

Joe Biden officially dropped out of a presidential race he was never in; Paul Ryan, apparently having learned nothing from the demise of John Boehner, tentatively agreed to step into the latter's becrapped shoes as Speaker, placing him for the moment the closest in the line of Presidential succession he'll ever, ever be; and Hillary Clinton got a better boost from eleven hours of swatting away questions from Rep. Trey Gowdy's band of yahoos than her campaign strategists could have won for her in the next eleven months.

And you can tell which cartoons were worked up before Thursday's Benghazi! hearings: they're the ones with the witch-burned-at-the-stake theme. (Too many of them for Harmonic Toon Convergence recognition; we'd have run out of certificates.) Any toons released after the hearings tended toward contempt for Gowdy's pointless hearings or celebration of Clinton's mixture of bemusement and contempt for the committee's clueless bumbling. Jack Ohman and Jeff Danziger are pretty much the alpha and omega of this trend today. What a difference a day makes! (And if your only point is that anything Hillary says is a lie, you didn't make the cut today.)

Today's toons were selected based on leaks to Maureen Dowd and day-before predictions by Bill Kristol, from the week's offerings at McClatchy DC, Cartoon Movement, Go Comics, Politico's Cartoon Gallery, Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons, About.com, and other fine sources of toony goodness.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Jeff Danziger, Jim Morin, Signe Wilkinson, Pat Bagley, Matt Wuerker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Clay Bennett.

p3 Legion of Merit: Drew Sheneman.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (tie): Matt Wuerker and Tom Toles.

p3 World Toon Review: Paresh Nath (India), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), and Ingrid Rice (Canada).

Ann Telnaes' live sketches from last Thursday's Bengazi! hearings pretty much capture the tone. (Bonus points if you find the one where she captures Hillary's Chuck Jones-y moment. Check out the daydreaming Ralph Phillips, at right and below.)

Mark Fiore reminds us: drones aren’t the policy, assassination is the policy. Also, you should read The Intercept.

Tom Tomorrow paraphrases an old saying. Also, you should be reading The Intercept.

Keith Knight imagines a best-case scenario (free market edition).

Reuben Bolling brings us a story of the unsocial media, from Chagrin Falls OH, which is a real town.

Red Meat's Ted Johnson and his son discuss what Mad Magazine's Dave Berg might call the lighter side of family traditions. Or he might not.

The Comic Strip Curmudgeon feels actively angry about Chaplain Stainglass’s flippant answer.

Come to Comic Strip of the Day for the Benghazi! roundup, stay for the moment of Zen.

"I shall return!" And he did: "From A to Z-Z-Z-Z", directed in 1953 by Chuck Jones from a story by Michael Maltese, was the first of five appearances by young Ralph Phillips. Voice work (all uncredited): Portland's Own Mel Blanc (Numbers, Indians, Sailors, and Shark), Dick Beals (Ralph Phillips), Bea Benaderet (Teacher), Norman Nesbitt (Captain and Sailors), and Marian Richman (simply listed on IMDB as "Various Voices.") Watch "From A to Z-Z-Z-Z" at Gogocartoon.

The Modestly-Sized Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman goes medieval on the Benghazi! committee.

Hypothetically Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen uses the word "funnies" ironically.

Matt Bors notices that something happened north of the border.

Jesse Springer imagines where the State of Oregon will end up if cities and counties feel free to ignore gun laws that they decide might "infringe on the Second Amendment."

Test your toon captioning midichlorians at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.) And you can browse The New Yorker's cartoon gallery here.

The p3 Sunday Comics Read-Along: Pearls Before Swine, Doonesbury, Rhymes with Orange, Zits, Adam @ Home, Mutts, Over the Hedge, Get Fuzzy, Prince Valiant, Blondie, Bizarro, Mother Goose & Grimm, Rose is Rose, Luann, Hagar the Horrible, Pickles, Rubes, Grand Avenue, Freshly Squeezed, The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee, and Jumble.

Sunday morning toons: Nuh-uh, no he din't.

Well, yes he totally did. Obama did by executive order what the Congress was poised to do until they realized it might mean actually making Obama look like he was president or something. And so that makes him an impeachable dictator. Like Ronald Reagan. Or Bush 41. Boy is he in trouble now.

There are other topics this week, but Obama made his move early enough in the week that a lot of editorial cartoonists had time to pile on. Cartoonists with howling elephants need not apply. Same with cartoonists who don't understand what executive orders are or how they work, or who would attack Obama for rescuing a puppy from a burning building because, you know, it's Obama.

Also, as one blogger (can't retrieve who it was now, but when I find the link I'll do the right thing) put it, about a dozen women came forward over the years with stories that Cosby drugged and raped them, but it didn't become a thing until a male stand-up comic went off on it. Good for him, but that's not exactly the point; the point is, how messed up is that?

And, apparently, also a thing: Charles Manson got married. Uhm, okay. Because, you know, gay marriage is the real threat to the institution. 

Today's toons were selected by royal edict from the week's offerings at McClatchy DC, Cartoon Movement, Go Comics, Politico's Cartoon Gallery, Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons, About.com, The Nib, and other fine sources of cartoon goodness.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Steve Benson, Jeff Stahler, Signe Wilkinson, Clay Jones, Chan Lowe, Drew Sheneman, Joe Heller, Dave Fitzsimmons, Jeff Koterba, Bruce Plante, Matt Wuerker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Medal of Honor: Signe Wilkinson.

p3 History-Eraser Button Medal: Stuart Carlson.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part 1): Matt Davies and Chris Britt.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part 2): Jimmy Margulies and Clay Bennett.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (tie): Jeff Danziger and Mike Luckovich.

p3 Certificate of Recognition for Doing What He Can to Keep About 50 Hookers Employed for a Couple of Years: Michael Ramirez.

p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Luojie (China), and Marian Kamensky (Austria).

IndyStar cartoonist Gary Varvel took a thumping this week, but I haven't made up my mind: Is the original toon racist (as opposed to thoughtless)? And, if it is, does the tweak fix anything? This feels like a poor decision aimed at compensating for a poor decision.

Ann Telnaes presents an image that will make you want to poke your eyeballs out with red-hot skewers. Good luck.

And speaking of hookers whose jobs depended on the Keystone XL pipeline getting approved by Congress, Mark Fiore pays tribute to the soon-to-be-former-Senator-from-Louisiana.

Tom Tomorrow draws the chalk outline around chivalry. Probably not a moment too soon.

Keith Knight finds the upside. Great, if terrifying, fifth panel, too.

Tom the Dancing Bug presents the completely, utterly, and unbelievably sad adventures of Bob.

Red Meat's Milkman Dan has a standing rule.

The Comic Strip Curmudgeon presents what I consider to be a genuinely disturbing Heathcliff panel. Historical context doesn't help.

Comic Strip of the Day goes off on "Don't confuse me with the facts!"

You're lucky a sailor ain't never allowed to hit a cap'n on his ship! This is the 1936 Popeye cartoon that inspired this New Yorker cartoon. No, not really, of course. Still, "Bridge Ahoy!", a two-spinach-can story directed by Dave Fleischer with animation by Seymour Kneitel and Roland Crandall, does have its moments, most of which end up being a good argument against privatizing infrastructure (although how Popeye's bridge gets paid for is anybody's guess). It also features the signature Olive Oyl line: "You keep your hands to yourself – that's what you are!" Uncredited: musical direction by Sammy Timberg, voice work by Jack Mercer (Popeye), Lou Fleischer (J. Wellington Wimpy), Gus Wickie (Bluto, plus the title song), and Mae Questel (the Slender One).

The Big, And Getting Bigger Since We Completely Threw Out The Rulebook and Welcomed Back The Departed, Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman worries about the whackjobs scaling the fence.

Theoretically, Likely Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen looks at life in the bubble. It's not as easy as you might think. Also, JS is one of the reasons I like to link to artists on DailyKos, because you get to read her talking about her thinking about her work.

Matt Bors is thankful. Also, he wins the Best Third Panel Award this week. A two-fer!

Jesse Springer has a toon that even some Duck fans may not get.  That's hometown team humor for you. (Hint to outlanders: It involves doing 80 in a 55 zone. Is that even illegal anymore?)

Test your toon captioning mojo at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.) And you can browse The New Yorker's cartoon gallery here.

The p3 Sunday Comics Read-Along: Pearls Before Swine, Doonesbury, Rhymes with Orange, Zits, Adam @ Home, Mutts, Over the Hedge, Get Fuzzy, Prince Valiant, Blondie, Bizarro, Mother Goose & Grimm, Rose is Rose, Luann, Hagar the Horrible, Pickles, Rubes, Grand Avenue, Freshly Squeezed, The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee, and Jumble.

A quantum of umbrage: Where that morning-after taste in your mouth came from today

A pictogram featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders floated up to the top of my Facebook feed more than once in the three or four days leading up to the election yesterday. It shows Sanders earnestly telling a characteristically fascinated Bill Moyers: "Election Day should be a holiday so that everyone has the opportunity to vote."

Well, yes and no. Then again, mostly no. Actually, completely no.

Sure, it's a great idea, in a sort of Superman-Fights-Mighty-Mouse otherworldly way. Congress has the power to declare a day a federal holiday (giving a paid day off for all federal employees). But apart from the fact that this is an expensive thing to do because there are so many federal workers (and you know how Republicans feel about government spending), it gives a paid day off to federal workers (and, by extension and tradition, the rest of us), who the majority in both houses of Congress as currently constituted believe deserve no such thing. (Or have you forgotten how long Arizona held out against recognizing Martin Luther King Day?)

And of course, anything that might make it easier for just any old citizen to actually vote would go directly against the Republican party's avowed electoral strategy.

And there's another problem: Here in Oregon, we have had state-wide voting by mail since 1998. Nothing could be easier: A few weeks before the election, Oregon voters get Voter Guides on all the candidates and measures on the ballot. Then they get their ballot. They have until 8pm election day to return them, by mail or drop-off. Both Oregon Republicans and Democrats say they favor the system. (And, despite the warnings of convicted racketeer and initiative-system-gamer Bill Sizemore, voting by mail hasn't led to noticeable increase vote fraud, which was hovering around zero to begin with.)

So: How did it go as of the night before Election Day?

Out of the 2.2 million registered voters in Oregon, 48.80 percent, or 1,068,889, have returned ballots so far.

During the last midterm general election, in November 2010, turnout statewide reached 70.9 percent.

So, while Oregonians didn't get a paid day off to vote, they had about three weeks to mark the forms, seal and sign the envelope, and either mail it or drop it off at a county collection site, all at their convenience, and yet a substantially smaller number of them did so this time around, compared to the last midterm election.

I don't think convenience is really the issue here.

Nor do I think that, despite several decades of being told by right-wingers that government can't fix our problems (at best) or (at worst) that government is the problem, in the immortal words of Saint Reagan the Dotard, most voters really believe that's true. Some do, and perhaps they'll get what they expect, perhaps at about the point when they retire and find that Wall Street has gambled away their retirement just like they said they would. But most, I think, don't. Even though they've been handed every opportunity to be cynical about the process and every excuse to let the franchise slide.

Look at the progressive tilt to the pattern of measures that passed or failed around the country yesterday: Recreational marijuana (and with it, the undermining of the war on [some groups of people who use some kinds of] drugs) initiatives passed, minimum wage initiatives passed, personhood initiatives failed, top-two primaries failed. Those passed (or failed) because people saw a chance to make the political process work for them, and they took it. Then look at the collection of anti-science, anti-women/anti-black or brown/anti-voting rights/anti-regulation/anti-immigrant/anti-regulation/anti-Obama whackjobs that got elected to Congress.

The reason for the discrepancy? We live in a post-Citizens United America, where obscene amounts of untraceable money supported (and covered for) candidates that the Kock Brothers and their ilk favored, while comparatively little dark money was spent at the statewide initiative level. Monsanto and their corporate kin could be counted on to carry their own weight there.

Election Day as a national holiday, even if it could be made to happen, will accomplish little or nothing. Getting unlimited and unaccountable corporate money out of our elections will be as nearly impossible, but of the two, it's the one worth going to the mattresses over. The other one's just window dressing. 

Reading: Notes on the banality of "tyranny"

Charlie Pierce plants one deep in the bleachers this morning, reviewing the care and circumspection with which the signers of the Declaration of Independence thought through their use of the word "tyrant" to describe the obviously-tyrannical George III – and comparing that with yesterday's morally feckless, intellectually sloppy, and politically expedient party-line vote by House Republicans to sue President Obama for alleged offenses against the Constitution, offenses which, if true, ought to require them as a matter of law and conscience (!) to begin impeachment hearings by tiffin tomorrow.

I haven't yet located the full text of the resolution authorizing the House GOP's Impeachment Lite lawsuit, but we can safely assume that, when I do, the words "we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" will be nowhere in evidence.

Pierce's essay, "Words Matter," is going in the p3 Readings list.

Impeachment? Paste this in your hat

For the next time someone tells you that all this "impeachment" talk is really a reverse-psych instigated by the Obama White House, cynically trying to wrong-foot the gullible but innocent Republicans in and out of Congress for political and fund-raising gain (but I repeat myself).

You probably knew some or most of this, but here it is, all in one place. Follow David Weigel's links at the site:

On Tuesday, after the conference meeting, Speaker John Boehner told reporters that “impeachment” was “a scam started by the Democrats at the White House.”

It wasn’t. If impeachment is a scam, it was started on the right, early in the Obama presidency. Some of its early adherents believed in it; some thought they were merely responding to the passions of constituents; some, obviously, wanted to raise money. At the start of this summer, the conservative book-publishing industry churned out two new tomes about why Republicans needed to start an impeachment conversation, to stop pretending that it was crazy to accuse the president of high crimes and realize that it was consistent with the rest of the party’s arguments. Republicans mostly refused to listen.

Then, on July 8 of this year, came Sarah Palin. Her PAC (this is important—see above, re: fundraising) placed an op-ed at Breitbart.com, announcing that the time had come for the I-word. For inexplicable reasons, Palin can still shift a news cycle; in a lucky synchronicity, the Senate campaign of Iowa Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley chose July 8 to release a tape of his opponent calling for impeachment.

Nothing will stop a movement quite like the other party noticing it. “Should Obama be impeached?” had been a slam-dunk kook-spotting question for years.

Like the House GOP's Impeachment Lite lawsuit against Obama, officially launched today, the only cause for delay was the tedious business of deciding what he would be found guilty of.

Fun fact: Former Georgia Republican Congressman Bob Barr, who was starting the paperwork calling for Bill Clinton's impeachment in 1997, making him first out of the gate by months, hoped to stage a political comeback this year – perhaps sensing that the time was right for someone with his impeach-for-whatever-reason street cred – but he got his ass whupped in the GOP primary by Tea Party candidate Barry Loudermilk. Sorry, Mr. Barr; but there'll be no resting on your laurels. The new GOP slogan is Who have you impeached for us lately?


Weigel's Salon article about the frantic efforts by Republican leadership to distance themselves from all the talk – but not the underlying intent – of Tea-Party fueled impeachment fantasies, is going on the p3 Readings list.

"The hosts will have only a few months of discomfort and inconvenience, though of course their careers must be set aside for a time."

As a salute to the five men on the Supreme Court who decided this week that corporations (which are persons) could make unilateral decisions to interfere with their female employees' access to insurance-covered contraception, at least partly on the mistaken grounds that all contraceptives work by aborting the tiny little blastocysts (which are also persons) inside those female employees (who, as it turns out, are apparently not really persons themselves), p3 proudly reminds our readers of this excerpt from Sheri Tepper's great science fiction adventure satire The Fresco.

Have fun.

Quote of the day: Metaphysics

We now are confronted with an existential question—to wit, is it possible for an empty suit to file an empty suit?

- Charles Pierce, meditating on the deeper questions raised by politically impotent House Speaker Boehner threatening to file a frivolous suit against – but not impeach – the President for doing legal things that the Speaker finds politically disagreeable. Although Boehner's not yet prepared to say which things he plans to file suit over. Oh no. Not yet. In fact, probably not until after Congress gets back from vacation which starts next week, because, you know, priorities. But whatever it turns out to be, by god, that's what he'll sue him for!

In what, we sincerely hope, will not have to become a p3 Christmas tradition:

Via Charlie Pierce, We are Two Nations: A Christmas Serial.

Part One.

Part Two.

Part Three.

“An unprecedented campaign to contain leaks and to control media coverage of government operations”

Via Bill Moyers:

Today the Committee to Protect Journalists unveiled a detailed, sober assessment of press freedom in the United States during President Obama’s tenure. The report concluded that far from fulfilling his campaign promise to improve transparency, the president has instead presided over an unprecedented campaign to contain leaks and to control media coverage of government operations.

The fact that the CPJ issued the report at all underscores how hostile official policy has been to journalists. While the CPJ has reported on press freedoms in countries around the world since the early 1980s, this is its first investigation focused on the United States. Leonard Downie Jr., former executive editor of The Washington Post, wrote the report, with input from several dozen Washington journalists, media advocates and former government officials.

And more:

Downie told The Nation he was most surprised by the unanimity of those reporters about the ways the administration has made their jobs more difficult. The level of specificity the many journalists were able to provide convinced him that the problems were pervasive and exceptional. “The Obama administration’s aggressive war on leaks and its determined efforts to control information that the news media needs to hold the government accountable for its actions are without equal since the Nixon administration,” he said at a press conference this morning.

Fortunately, major news sources – like, for example, the Washington Post – learned their lesson after Watergate. (The lesson: Never, ever do another Watergate story.)

Many of the administration’s moves towards transparency followed unauthorized disclosures of secret activities and appear not to have been made voluntarily at all. For example, the White House recently declassified many documents pertaining to the FISA court that approves the NSA’s request for spying authority and Obama has expressed support for tightening privacy protections and for the addition of a special advocate to argue in the public interest at FISA hearings. But, the CPJ report argues, “the Obama administration… should have been more open and accountable for the NSA’s surveillance activities in the first place. It seems highly unlikely that this new transparency would have begun without Snowden’s disclosures.”

Obama, the former constitutional law professor, increasingly reminds me of the congressional staffers who go to work for the lobbying shops, now that they know all the points where the system can be bent to someone's advantage. (The only difference being that the staffers helped write the vulnerable points into law in the first place.)

Quote of the day: Tip of the iceberg?

This can’t be emphasized enough. A lot of Tea Party types in Congress are driven by hatred, anger, prejudice, and fear, but on top of that a great many of them are also really, really, really dumb. […]

Basically, they are people who if they’d been members of the crew would have dealt with the water gushing in through the hole the iceberg ripped in hull of the Titanic by opening a hole on the other side of the ship to let the water out.

- Lance Mannion, surveying the wreckage of the Tea Party's aborted efforts to end the Affordable Care Act, keep the federal government shut down, and default on federal debt payments.

Have to be honest: I didn't think the House Republicans would cave so suddenly, that they would take so little in exchange for caving, or – if it came to that – that they would ever again utter John Boehner's name without spitting on the sidewalk.

Nevertheless, I worry about what will happen when they next reach the can they just kicked down the road.

The unforgiving minute: That moment when you realize how screwed we are

Today was a beautiful, clear day, low 60s, not quite t-shirt weather anymore but not crisp enough to count as football weather. I was walking down the street, just drinking it all in, and then suddenly I realized:

Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, this guy is second in line to the presidency of the United States.

In another era, for a different leader, it would have been a stunning rebuke. For John Boehner, it was just another embarrassing stumble in a speakership studded with them.

House Republican leaders canceled a planned Tuesday night vote on a Boehner-backed proposal to resolve the debt and budget crises hanging over the U.S., but the dramatic news was met with shrugs and snorts. Facing a critical test, having brought the nation to the brink of default, the nation’s top Republican failed to rustle up the votes once again—and the humiliation took nobody by surprise.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the curb with my head between my knees and an EMT was telling me to keep breathing slowly.

Minute's up.

Quote of the day: Department of the Unpleasantly Apt

The true hell of it, though, is that you could see this coming down through the years, all the way from Ronald Reagan's First Inaugural Address in which government "was" the problem, through Bill Clinton's ameliorative nonsense about the era of big government being "over," through the attempts to make a charlatan like Newt Gingrich into a scholar and an ambitious hack like Paul Ryan into a budget genius, and through all the endless attempts to find "common ground" and a "Third Way." Ultimately, as we all wrapped ourselves in good intentions, a prion disease was eating away at the country's higher functions. One of the ways you can acquire a prion disease is to eat right out of its skull the brains of an infected monkey. We are now seeing the country reeling and jabbering from the effects of the prion disease, but it was during the time of Reagan that the country ate the monkey brains.

- Charlie Pierce, employing an ugly extended metaphor to characterize the ugly extended sabotaging of our system of government by elected Republicans, and its abetment by a two-handed national press corps.

A quantum of umbrage: The only smart thing Newt Gingrich ever said

Updated -- you'll see.

I haven't been able to track down the specifics -- Yes! As of May 2014 I have been! -- but I vividly remember a story Newt Gingrich told back before he became a disgraced former Speaker of the House (which was, in turn, before he began making a comfortable living as the Harold Stassen of modern Republican presidential politics and an inexplicable green room legacy). It was the one smart thing I ever remember him saying.

He told about driving along the Autobahn in Germany like a bat out of hell, and reflecting on the reduced speed limit that his own country had not long before placed on federal highways (in the name of fuel efficiency, or fewer deaths, or some other reason he didn't see any point to). If the German government imposed a 55 mph speed limit on the Autobahn, he reflected, the Germans would all begin driving 55 mph, and would vote that government out at the next election, whereupon they would all go back to driving like bats out of hell. Americans, faced with the same problem, complained about the speed limits, continued to drive 90 mph on federal highways, and re-elected their same representatives anyway.

All of which brings us to this (emphasis added):

With a potential government shutdown now looming, Americans find it unacceptable for either a president or members of Congress to threaten a government shutdown in order to achieve their goals, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll.

Eighty percent of Americans say threatening a government shutdown during budget debates is not an acceptable way to negotiate; only 16 percent think it is.

While partisan divides may exist on a number of issues, majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents all agree that threatening a shutdown of the government is not the way to negotiate.

Now you probably remember that it was Gingrich forcing two government shutdowns in the mid-1990s in the belief it would harm Bill Clinton, and the attendant political backlash, that cost Newt his speakership. So there's that.

And yet Gingrich's Law will no doubt apply in the present case: Although every member of the House will be up for re-election next year (including every single break-the-government Obama-contrarian Tea Partier), and one-third of the members of the Senate (including too few of the worst of the worst like Cruz and Lee, but a big slice of their colleagues who enable them), would anyone bet actual money that there will be a noticeable electoral price to pay for their narcissistic, nihilistic antics?

There are never German voters around when you need them.


(Hat-tip to C&L.)

Saturday morning spoken-word tunes: Ain't no pardon in the ghetto

Thirty-nine years ago today, the House Judiciary Committee approved the first of three articles of impeachment directed at Richard Nixon, asserting that Nixon

acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Now, let's see. How did that turn out? Oh yeah:

If your browser won't display the embedded version, click here. 

(And, by the way, as Pierce points out, impeaching Nixon for Watergate was like busting Al Capone for income tax evasion.)

A quantum of umbrage: What's important to Greg Walden

(Updated below.)

Greg Walden (R OR-5) has his priorities:

Sixteen months before those elections, some Republicans cite no need to offer an alternative. "I don't think it's a matter of what we put on the floor right now," said Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, who heads the party's campaign committee. He added that what is important is "trying to delay Obamacare."

Hey, residents of Oregon's 5th District – 129,000 of whom (16.8%, above the national average) didn't have health insurance in 2011 – here's the kind of thing Greg Walden wants to protect you from:

This fact sheet summarizes new data on the significant benefits of the health care reform law in Rep. Schrader’s district. It also provides the first picture of the impacts of the law in districts redrawn or newly created following the 2010 Census. As a result of the law:

- 8,000 young adults in the district now have health insurance through their parents’ plan.

- More than 9,600 seniors in the district received prescription drug discounts worth $11.2 million, an average discount of $520 per person in 2011, $570 in 2012, and $880 thus far in 2013.

- 133,000 seniors in the district are now eligible for Medicare preventive services without paying any co-pays, coinsurance, or deductible.

- 209,000 individuals in the district – including 46,000 children and 87,000 women – now have health insurance that covers preventive services without any co-pays, coinsurance, or deductible.

- 227,000 individuals in the district are saving money due to ACA provisions that prevent insurance companies from spending more than 20% of their premiums on profits and administrative overhead. Because of these protections, over 4,800 consumers in the district received approximately $1.5 million in insurance company rebates in 2012 and 2011-an average rebate of $206 per family in 2012 and $368 per family in 2011.

- Up to 45,000 children in the district with preexisting health conditions can no longer be denied coverage by health insurers.

- 244,000 individuals in the district now have insurance that cannot place lifetime limits on their coverage and will not face annual limits on coverage starting in 2014.

- 114,000 individuals in the district who lack health insurance will have access to quality, affordable coverage without fear of discrimination or higher rates because of a preexisting health condition. In addition, the 45,000 individuals who currently purchase private health insurance on the individual or small group market will have access to more secure, higher quality coverage and many will be eligible for financial assistance.

H/t to Pierce, who points out that the GOP plan for health care is to have no plan.

(Update: Of course Walden, who merely wants to delay Obamacare indefinitely -- or until the Republicans control both branches of Congress and the White House, when they can quietly kill it --  has nothing on Utah's Sen. Mike Lee, who's prepared to shut the government down entirely at the first opportunity rather than let Obamacare continue to function as, you know, the law of the land, which it is. But Lee's from Utah. We expect better from Oregonian elected officials.)

Perhaps they're trying to ease our sense of loss and separation

The Oregonian, the only state-wide daily we have here, recently announced they're cutting back to three issues per week delivery for their subscribers. The remaining three days will be available in slimmed-down form at the newsstand, and subscribers will also get a Saturday edition “as a bonus” – I like that touch.

The limited delivery comes on the heels of recent business maneuvering strongly suggesting that a three-day-a-week publishing schedule may not be far off.

I condole with the dedicated workers at the O who've managed to survive all the rounds of downsizing they've already faced. But editorials like this help me realize that the loss is a double-edged thing:

To those who accuse the Republican Party of inflexibility on social issues such as abortion, its leaders can always point to their ability to reach around and slap a "kick me" sign on their own backs. That will be the effect of Tuesday's vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on legislation that would bar most abortions after 20 weeks.

The bill passed the lower chamber easily, enjoying the support of six Democrats and all but six Republicans. But that's where its legislative journey, at least, will end. It's expected to go nowhere in the Senate, and the outcome would be the same if it did. The president would veto it.

The ban's symbolic and political journey will continue, however, both in ways House Republicans intend (many of their constituents support the proposal, even if it's hopeless) and ways they surely do not. Those who stand to gain politically by potshotting Republicans, absurdly, as misogynists engaged in a "war on women" have now added another projectile to a pile that includes former Missouri Rep. Todd Akin's notorious "legitimate rape" blunder.

Let's start with the low-hanging fruit: Rep. Akin's “blunder” was only a blunder in the Kinsleyan-gaffe sense: He came out publicly and said something foolish and uninformed that he fully believed – and still fully believes – to be true. He didn't “misspeak;” he didn't get “taken out of context.” He just holds some wildly-incorrect ideas about science and biology – ideas shared by many of his party caucus – and happened to mention them.

The “war on women” is not actually a war, of course, but only in the sense that the United States doesn't declare wars anymore except for marketing and branding purposes. Trust me on this: If the “war on drugs” had done even half as much damage to the use and trafficking of illegal drugs in America in the last forty years as the “war on women” has done to the rights of women in America to control their own body and health decisions during roughly the same time, there'd be a lot more former Justice and State Department officials with their very own Presidential Medal of Freedom.

And finally you gotta love this characterization: “Those who stand to gain politically by potshotting Republicans, absurdly, as misogynists engaged in a 'war on women.'” That's how the O's editorial board refers to the people who oppose the march to roll back women's rights in health care, in the economy, in the justice system, and so on. People who've actually noticed what the Republican party, both in Congress and in the states, have made no effort to hide. What they clearly and proudly and without significant dissent and at every opportunity put in their party platforms, promise to their base, and bring to a vote. It makes no sense to call Tuesday's anti-abortion vote in the House “symbolic.” They passed that bill because it's what they devoutly want. Maybe the Republicans knew that their abortion ban would not become the law of the land (or maybe not; their hold on reality can be about as rock-steady as Birnham Wood). But surely the O's editors understand how much they would like it to become law, and there's nothing remotely “absurd” – or caricaturish, to use another term from later in the editorial – to take them at their word on the subject.

The O's editors worry that the anti-choice extremists currently running the Republican party will harm the chances of "moderates" who decline to distance themselves from them  – which is sort of an odd interpretation of "moderate." On the other hand, if you're one of the ones calling the extremists on it  – in effect, pointing out what they make no secret of anyway – you're taking absurd political potshots for partisan advantage.

The caricature isn't the portrayal of the House Republicans as anti-choice extremists. It's the editors' own attempt to paint Republican Party, as it now stands, as a group of reasonable moderates (a Silent Majority?) who would sincerely like to do good, if only . . . .  Hell, I can't even finish that sentence without getting the giggles. You want absurd? There's your absurd.

If this is what we would be giving up if the Oregonian went to three days a week, I can feel some of the sting going away already.

Turtles in modern conservative history: A very special edition of Separated at Birth

In the beginning, there was Burt the Turtle, who brought the Cold War into the grade school classroom, convincing a generation of American children that horrible death could come raining out of the sky at any instant of the day or night, but that those old flimsy wooden school desks were adequate protection against a fireball hotter than the surface of the sun and a shock wave moving faster than the speed of sound.

Then there was Phil Gramm, who as a notional Democrat from Texas helped push through Ronald Reagan's first Laffer Curve/Trickle-Down/Starve-the-Beast budget – increasing the military budget, slashing social programs, cutting taxes, hoping for the best – whereupon his fellow Democrats threw him off the House Budget Committee, whereupon he resigned his seat, switched to the Republican Party, ran for and won his old seat in a special election, and spent the rest of his career in the House and later the Senate pushing tax cuts and banking deregulation.

And finally, there's Mitch McConnell, Republican Senator who denies he ever supported reasonable gun control measures in the early 1990s, announced in 2009 that he was dedicated to making Barack Obama a one-term president, and has currently been dragged so far to the right by his fear of getting primaried by a Tea Partier that his only accomplishment as Senate Minority Leader – except for pantsing Harry Reid time and again on procedural reform – has been making sure that the Senate has accomplished nothing, lest Obama somehow get credit for anything, ever.

p3 readers, we proudly present the return of Separated at Birth with a three-fer: Terrapene ornata conservatatum, the American conservative box turtle.

Acknowledgment of the works of Rick Perlstein.

The unforgiving minute: Raining justice upon America's enemies from First Class

Now it can be told:

Congress didn't restore the sequestered funds for the FAA just so that Senators and Representatives wouldn't have to hang around in airports with the hoople when they're flying to their next fundraiser. It was all about preventing the next Benghazi!^TM

Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the GOP's Benghazi Oversight Committee, has a new theory:

They began being attacked, and were attacked for more than seven hours and we're to believe that no response could even be started that could have helped them seven hours later? Quite frankly, you can take off from Washington, DC on a commercial flight and practically be in Benghazi by the end of seven hours.

Minute's up.

A quantum of umbrage: Qualifications

[Updated below.]

As I read the list of reasons that many people are dismayed that Mark Sanford got elected to the US House of Representatives from North Carolina after leaving the governor's job in disgrace a couple of years ago, the list of objections usually looks something like this:

[...] Mark Sanford, a man who cheated on his wife, tried to cover his actions with an absurd story about hiking the Appalachian Trail, and trespassed on his ex-wife’s property [...]

Krugman's point is politically valid: For many, the philandering itself is the most important charge, since it gives Democrats a reason to stick a thumb in the eye of social conservatives who still support the wayward Sanford.

But I still like to think the most important objection is the dog that hasn't seemed to bark in the night. It's not that Sanford cheated on his wife – barely more than a ticketable offense in national-level politics, especially Republican politics – but that, as governor, he disappeared for six days and not even the State Law Enforcement Division, presumably charged with his protection, knew where the hell he was, and certainly had no idea that he was in another country. In a country that flips its lid over national security issues, this should have triggered a good old tar-and-feathering.

And of course, had it been a Democratic governor, we'd have been treated to endless theories that he was on a secret mission to help Hugo Chavez overthrow the US with an army of socialist South American Islamic jihadists. But since it was a Republican, we all learned a new word in Spanish – inamorata-- and moved along. IOKIYAR.

But still. Slipping out of the country for a week, as chief executive of the state, without telling anyone, strikes me as reason enough not to trust him with a burnt-out match, let alone public office.

But on that matter, I have to admit Krugman's right:

Maybe, just maybe, you can make a case for choosing the right person for governor, regardless of party. But when you’re sending someone to Congress, all that matters is the R or D after that person’s name. It seems that conservative voters understand that; liberals and moderates should, too.

Update: This has been making the rounds on Facebook today:

The unforgiving minute: Oh please, oh please, oh please!

Can we be this lucky?

But despite that presidential fade-out and close call back home, [Minnesota Republican Representative, conservative whackjob (but I repeat myself -ed.) and political Gaffe-O-Matic Michele] Bachmann is again being mentioned as a candidate for higher office -- this time as a potential challenger to first-term Democratic Sen. Al Franken in 2014.

As Charlie Pierce tastefully frames it:

Surely, I don't have to explain all of the eight million reasons why this race would set the political Orgasmatron at about a 12, do I?