Tuesday evening's toons: I'm not sure why we're even calling it a “debate” anymore

Welcome to a Very Special Post-Debate edition of p3's Sunday morning toon review.

So it's come to this: America is the Argument Clinic customer and last night we were shut up in a room with Mr. Vibrating. The host – it's silly at this point to use the term “moderator,” let alone “judge;” probably “ringmaster” is nearest the mark – has promised no penalty for making stuff up. (Unlike the establishment media, I have no problem pointing out that Trump is a liar; if I sometimes avoid the word, it's because actually lying is only one of the weapons in his arsenal: along with self-contradiction, there's subject-changing, free-form delusion, as well as the standard tools of the craft.) The Republican candidate has promised – by his extensive track record of mendacity and by his opposition even to the flimsy and inadequate practice of “fact-checking” – that he's going to be making stuff up. And now the head of the Commission on Presidential Debates has said that she believes it's good enough simply to have Candidate Clinton use her own response time to fact-check Trump. (Has this person watched even a minute of television in the last fifteen months?)

So if you were hoping for to see a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition last night, you should probably have looked elsewhere than the first round of presidential whatever.

Any political cartoonist who tried to capture last week the full magnitude and horror of what we were going to get last night would be laughed out of court, so cartoons prior to Monday night that dealt with the debates were forced to go for the evergreens, picturing Hillary surrounded by books, legal pads, pencils, etc., while Trump is admiring himself in the mirror, practicing insults, etc. Or fact-checking. Or the low bar. Among the best in this difficult catgegory: Clay Jones, Jack Ohman, Joel Pett, Gary Varvel,

Some of the more interesting work came from artists who were sketching in real time, including Ann Telnaes and Matt Davies.

 Although a few got out there quickly with images that seemed to reflect the (un)reality of the evening, including Clay Bennett, Jen Sorenson, Tom Toles,

Deadlines drove some cartoonists last night. R. J. Matson posted this on Facebook today, and admitted he wasn't quite satisfied with it:

”I drew this before the debate started last night to meet Roll Call's publication deadline for today's paper. It's not entirely off target, considering what transpired on stage and in spin rooms everywhere, but it could be sharper. Back to the drawing board today...”

(If I were going to quibble – and regular readers (all five of 'em) know that's so not me – I'd say cartoon's problem is not so much about sharpness as that Trump is shown clearing his much-lower bar, but a lot of post-debate commentary, focus groups, etc., suggest he didn't even manage that.)

One last thought on last night's debate (and the campaign in general): When Trump says not paying taxes “makes me smart,” when he brags about having made money off the Great Recession and insists that doing so is simply “called business,” when he muses on the equivalent of strategic bankruptcy for the federal government, when he says he'd tear up existing international treaties (the equivalent in his mind of business contracts?) – those are all morally sketchy but currently acceptable business tactics that have helped bring him whatever wealth he has. In a smarter world than ours, this would put to death forever the foolish idea that America is a business and should be run as a business by a CEO in Chief.

Meanwhile, it's still 2016 in America, so every cartoonist has many opportunities to sharpen his or her cartoons about police shooting black citizens. Since there are only so many ways you can depict police standing over a dead civilian or black parents having The Talk with their children, kudos to Mike Luckovich for finding in the particulars of the Terence Crutcher killing something on which to base some novel but admittedly ultragrim humor.

Today's toons were selected 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.

The regular p3 toon review will be back Sunday-ish.

Monday afternoon toons: “The end of labor is to gain leisure.”

Aristotle. Can't go wrong with Aristotle. Know what I'm saying?

Just a reminder: Oregon was the first state in the union to make Labor Day a state holiday, in 1887. (Take that, former Oregonian publisher N. Christian Anderson III! I haven't looked at the print Oregonian in a long while, but I imagine the strongest sign in the Big O that it's Labor Day will be the matress and car ads rather than the reporting on unions and Oregon's workers.)

And "taco truck on every corner" is a threat? Pal, you lost that argument over twenty years ago.

Gene Wilder's gone. Not much to be done about it, apparently, but crank out some Wonka-at-the-Pearly-Gates panels, which didn't make the cut today – not even the ones where he was in the steampunk glass elevator car.

If Colin Kaepernick had asked me for advice beforehand, I'd probably have said, "Lose the pig socks; it distracts from the central issue." But otherwise, I frankly can't find much to fault about his use of his First Amendment freedom to call attention to the increasing militarization of the police. He's been far more patient and on-message than I'd be – and he's doing it in the most jingoistic of the major professional sports leagues. Good on him.

Today's toons were selected 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, Joel Pett, SigneWilkinson, Steve Benson, Matt Weurker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Clay Jones.

p3 Legion of Merit: Gary Varvel.

Ann Telnaes worries that the only part we'll enjoy is whacking him with a big stick.

Mark Fiore wonders about a presidential campaign whose slogan amounts to saying, "How can things possibly get worse for you?"

Tom Tomorrow covers The Twilight Zone election.

Keith Knight Kaptures (see what I did there?) the reactions to the Great Sit-Down of the 2016 NFL season.

Reuben Bolling points you toward what you fear most: when instinct takes over a hominid from the Pliocene Eoch – in a Western-theme barbecue restaurant. Not pretty.

Carol Lay presents The Story Minute, in which Mr. Know-It-All finds Ms. Right. It's actually pretty charming.

You probably know where this week's Red Meat, featuring Bug-Eyed Earl, is headed, but I bet you won't be able to look away in time.

Comic Strip of the Day reviews the concept of "an old man's argument" and reminds us of the extraordinarily talented, but now silenced, singer – a favorite here at p3 - who liked smart guys who cared about things that matter. (Bonus challenge: In addition to name-checking Cat Stevens and Linda Ronstadt, CSotD also works in a nod to James Taylor, if you can find it.)

"The Champ's a bum!" "Rabbit Punch," directed by Chuck Jones in 1948 from a story co-written by heavyweights Tedd Pierce and Michael Maltese, pits Bugs in the boxing ring against Battling McGook, when the original challenger, Dyspeptic McBlaster, fails to go the distance. Uncredited: Billy Blechter (McGook). McGook would return as the The Crusher in a 1951 wrestling remake of "Rabbit Hugged," also directed by Jones. (We'll  probably feature that next week.) For those who need to know, the "1043" on the steam engine in Round 110 (you'll see) is the production number for that cartoon. The WB animators knew how to keep themselves amused. Watch "Rabbit Punch" at VideoMotion.

The Completely Dignified Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman wonders about takin' care of business all these years later..

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen mocks the U of Chicago president's eminently mock-worthy message to the incoming class of 2020.

Matt Bors discovers the mother lode of all further election coverage this cycle.

Jesse Springer still doesn't like any tax plans coming out of the legislature these days (this time it's a gross receipts tax, which obviously the Oregonian doesn't like either).

Test your toon-captioning powers 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: On the political-cultural significance of Reno

I'm probably the last to finally allude to the Johnny Cash lyric to describe Hillary Clinton's speech last week on Donald Trump's many shortcomings as a candidate, a leader of a party, and a human being, and anyway – strictly speaking – she didn't shoot him in Reno "just to watch him die."

I'm also one of those who put aside his initial disappointment that she didn't target the entire GOP apparatus that has been building Trump in its basement laboratory since the early 1980s. Partly that's because declining to go full slaughterhouse mode on them slightly ups the odds that those voters will stay home out of embarrassment, waste their vote on a third-party candidate, or (least likely) actually vote for Clinton – in each case driving up the margin of her increasingly-likely victory. Along the same lines, elected Republicans who appreciate that they were allowed to save some small amount of face (however undeserved) when Clinton declined to lump them into the same crazy-bowl as their candidate, might have at least some tiny motivation to do their damned jobs and work with her administration on some things at least, whereas history teaches us that they will have zero motivation to do so otherwise. (Pierce cites evidence this last is even more of a pipe dream than I'd guessed. Ah well.)

As fun as it is to imagine the Republican party collapsing like a wet taco – or the Whig Party – over the next four to eight years, I confess I wouldn't want to be the Democratic president trying to keep a lid on things while the Grand Old Party was going through its death throes at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. I imagine it would look a lot like the T-1000 falling into the vat of molten metal, flailing and shrieking and spasming through every guise it had ever taken on to do its evil work as it went down. Not something you'd want to be standing near as it happened. (And even if every congressional Republican resigned his or her seat tomorrow, the state-level incubators from which many of the worst of them first emerged will still be operating around the clock.)

And of course, the conspicuous silence of every top Republican (except for the Trump campaign itself, which unsurprisingly squealed like a stuck pig in 140 characters or less) after Clinton's take-down was eloquent.

They've got the slow drip of Clinton's e-mails and foundation, stories which continue to go nowhere at twice the speed of sound, but that's really it. Things could somehow turn around for the GOP in the next 71 days, but it would take a miracle (actually, it would take a disaster), so for now, sucks to be them.

Oddly enough, although Clinton's Reno speech came early enough in the week that political cartoonists had time to think it through, we didn't see a lot about it in this week's p3 toon review, although some harmless fun was had at the expense of Trump campaign handlers and surrogates. Perhaps this is evidence supporting the theory that the smartest thing for the Republican establishment to do, post-Reno, is to ignore it and deny the political press any fuel for the fire. 

In any case, people with life-threatening allergies got a blunt reminder this week of why public health shouldn't be traded on the stock exchange.

Today's toons were selected 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, Chan Lowe, Steve Benson, Jeff Danziger, Glenn McCoy, Steve Breen, Tim Eagan, Clay Jones, Matt Weurker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Walt Handlesman.

p3 Legion of Merit: Brian McFadden.

p3 Certificate of Achievement for Ignoring Away Trump Campaign's Billions in Free Media: Bob Gorrell.

Ann Telnaes has a simple request.

Mark Fiore invites us to celebrate some of America's Worst Ideas.

Tom Tomorrow charts election phenomena in 2016 – and beyond.

Keith Knight shares a golden oldie: Wondering what the heck is all this commotion?

Reuben Bolling's Super-Fun-Pak Comix features the return of a p3 favorite: Percival Dunwoody, Idiot Time Traveler from 1909. But it's Imaginary Friends & Their Imaginary Friends that really made me laugh. And then go, "hmm."

Carol Lay shares the truth about creativity and love. Happy ending? You tell me.

Red Meat probes the eternal optimism of Milkman Dan.

The Comic Curmudgeon is enjoying the current story arc in Spider-Man, but fails to appreciate Stan Lee and Larry Lieber's awesome shout-out to Dorothy Parker and her review of House on Pooh Corner in the second panel.

Comic Strip of the Day discusses scandals, knife fights, and things that were horrifying in 1971, finding time along the way to be provoked by the same Jen Sorenson toon I did (below).

"If that cat's been in that kitchen . . . !" And there you have most of the plot of "The Midnight Snack," directed by Joe Hanna and William Barbera (uncredited) in 1941, the second Tom and Jerry cartoon, although the first in which they're referred to by their now-familiar names. (In their first short, "Puss Gets the Boot," they're named, respectively, Jasper and Jinx.) I love the deep blues and shadows – like "Puss Gets the Boot," "The Midnight Snack" is set in a darkened house, lit mainly by refrigerator lights, radio dials, etc. And, of course, Tom still looks like a Russian Blue cat. The character of the black house maid, nearly always shown only from the shoulders down (sometimes knees down) was voiced by veteran radio/TV/film actor Lillian Randolph, who made a pretty successful alt-career playing black house maids and similar characters during that era. (She did the maid in several Tom and Jerry shorts between 1940 and 1952. The character's name, which I don't recall ever being used on-screen, is Mammy Two-Shoes. Consider yourself warned. For TV syndication, the voice of Mammy Two-Shoes was redubbed by other actors, notably June Foray – later to voice Rocky the Flying Squirrel and many others – as a white teenager. Sometimes Mammy's lower body was replaced with that of a typical teenaged bobby-soxer from the era and sometimes – inexplicably – not.) Watch "The Midnight Snack" at Vimeo.com.

The Transplendent Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman demonstrates the fundamentals of the pivot.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen has a strip today that reminds me of a store about three blocks from where I'm sitting right now, called Nature's Grocery. Despite the friendly green store name, most of its products are wrapped and packaged like they're expecting a drive-by shooting on the way to check-out. Do ramen noodles really need two layers of packaging?

Matt Bors outlines a perfectly understandable good-faith error.

Jesse Springer looks at another victim of Oregon's pattern of nickel and diming things that should be top priorities: the chronically underfunded and understaffed Oregon Department of Forestry.

Test your toon-captioning kung fu 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: Rumors of Trump campaign demise "somewhat exaggerated"

I know candidate Clinton has made some speeches last week, captured some news – but for the life of me, I can't recall what at the moment.

I mean, really, all she had to do was bat away a forged document casting doubt on her health, and then pour a cold drink and kick back to watch the Trump campaign crash into tree after tree while proclaiming the Vulgar Talking Yam to be king of the forest.

But it has been a week for rumors. Oh, it has indeed.

Trump made an unprecedented public apology a couple of days ago for . . . something. Many hailed this as the long-awaited "pivot" toward "the center," until someone finally noticed he never really said what he was apologizing for. So it was rumored to be a sign of the backstage maneuvering in his campaign. Anyway, it was quickly forgotten, partly because it was such an obvious one-off for the campaign and partly because--

The word then came out that Roger Ailes, in disgrace with fortune and women's eyes, was coming on board the campaign. This rumor was immediately denied by all parties, until it was confirmed about a day later.

Next, the former Breitbart bomb-thrower Steve Bannon joined as campaign director, although this was never actually denied so it never really got legs as a rumor. Ailes brought the misogyny, Bannon brought the white supremacy, and the two joined long time rat-fucker and Hillary hater Roger Stone, plus Trump himself. The total effect was something like an alt-right potluck, or perhaps the Republican campaign equivalent of "The Suicide Squad" (with roughly comparable reviews).

The addition of Bannon triggered rumors that Paul Manafort, erstwhile-campaign director and part-time empresario to oligarchs from the former Soviet empire, might be on his way out the door. Those rumors lasted until this morning, when evidence that Manafort might have been paid millions as an unregistered foreign agent appeared, eliminating the need to call the story a rumor. He promptly left the pot-luck, which is just as well because he brought potato salad and so did everyone else.

But now that Ailes and Bannon have solidified their positions, it has breathed new life into rumors from a few weeks ago that this has all been a long con on Trump's part, positioning him to launch his own cable vanity network – one imagines something between Oprah's OWN network and Rupert Murdoch's Fox News – spearheaded by two former right-wing media dons and aimed at the Trump base his campaign has brought into the light. I'm not very convinced about this; Occam's Razor suggests that the more likely explanation is simply stumblebum luck rather than fiendishly clever and patient plan.

Today's toons were selected 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, Khalid Cherradi, Clay Bennett, Terry Mosher, Matt Davies, Chan Lowe, Matt Weurker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Jeff Danziger.

p3 Legion of Merit: Clay Jones.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Jack Ohman and Glenn McCoy (and how often do those two turn up in the same breath?).

Ann Telnaes asks – and answers – the question how did we get here?

Mark Fiore drops the latest Trump campaign ad. Do not worry. Trust us.

Take my wife – please! Tom Tomorrow presents the Donald Trump Comedy Hour. (thump! thump!) Is this mike on? What is this – an audience or an oil painting?

Keith Knight has a fun fact: Think of it as our way of repaying everything Germany did for us in the 20th century.

Reuben Bolling brings us another installment of Billy Dare, Boy Adventurer, in the most meta- story you're going to read today.

Carol Lay presents a light bit of Hitchcockean fun, in which the third wedding invitation plays the part of the McGuffin.

The Comic Curmudgeon watches, first in horror at the darker practices of the Shoe-niverse, and then in disappointment as Beetle Bailey flubs one of the fundamental cartoon strip signifiers.

Comic Strip of the Day correctly identifies the real problem arising from the abusive, depressing factory farm run-off that is the typical news site's comment's section.

"Whoa, camel, whoa! Whoa!! WHOA!" To mark the occasion of Oregon's three days of temperatures circling the 100-degree mark this week, here's "Sahara Hare," directed in 1955 by Friz Freleng, from a story by Warren Foster (uncredited: Portland's own Mel Blanc as Bugs and Yosemite Sam, and musical director Milt Franklyn). Watch Sahara Hare at DailyMotion.

The Magnificent, Mighty Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman watches candidate Clinton execute.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen points out that the chickens are unable to come home to roost.

Matt Bors totally gets the latest iteration of Trump's immigration policy.

Jesse Springer seems to be settling into a pox-on-both-your-houses posture regarding the plan to raise corporate taxes on large and mostly out-of-state corporations (Oregon's corporate taxes are currently lowest in the nation).

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.

Sunday afternoon toons: Parsing the Vulgarian, and other low return-on-investment pastimes

(This week's guest p3 Toon Review Avatar.
Betty will be back next week.)

Okay, I stand by my Eeyore-style rant from a couple of days ago, at least in its main outline: The way things are going, whether Trump drops out of the race, or stays and loses, or – lord help us – stays and wins, we're headed for a political crisis at best, a constitutional crisis at worst.

But I'm beginning to feel differently about the incident that prompted it – Trump's possibly-throwaway line about a "Second Amendment" remedy to the problem of Hillary Clinton unilaterally placing rabid anti-gun Supreme Court justices on the bench.

Lower electric — lower electric bills, folks. Hillary wants to abolish — essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick…

(CROWD BOOING) If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don’t know. But — but I’ll tell you what. That will be a horrible day. If — if Hillary gets to put her judges — right now, we’re tied. You see what’s going on.

XXX you see what’s going on? We tied because Scalia – this was not suppose to happen. Justice Scalia was going to be around for ten more years at least and this is what happens. That was a horrible thing.

Now it's true that, earlier in the same speech, Trump could be read as coming close to equating the Second Amendment and the National Rifle Association –

Your Second Amendment, the National Rifle Association endorsed and they endorsed me early, a long time ago. And they’re great people, Wayne and Chris, they are great people.

– which would give some support to those Trump defenders saying that the "maybe there is" line simply meant that the NRA's clout might prevent a pro-gun control nomination from getting confirmed. And that reading, however self-interested, got buttressed soon after when the NRA announced a big media buy on Trump's behalf.

But really, such arguments are never going to get anywhere. There's no way to pin down what he was trying to say in the original speech. The plain fact is that Trump's public language skills are barely those of a sixth-grader, with a limited vocabulary plus grammar and syntax more stream-of-consciousness (trickle-of-consciousness?) than Kennedyesque. And when it comes time to figure out what he meant in a given case, we don't even have the option of appealing to authorial intent, since when Trump is challenged on something he said, he's apt either to deny what he said on-camera or in front of witnesses, or to dismiss it however implausibly as a joke.

Short version: When Trump says something, there's really no reliable way to say what he meant – not at the moment, and not later. As Charlie Pierce is wont to say: This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

Trump lit the fuse on this early enough in the week that nearly every cartoonist out there had time to take a whack at it.

Oh yeah – and US Olympic gold medals something-something breaking all historical records something-something historically-awful coverage something-something.

Today's toons were selected, however improbably, 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, Dan Wasserman, Jerry Holbert, Jim Morin, Matt Weurker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Darrin Bell.

p3 Legion of Merit: Jeff Danziger.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation From Another Medium: Clay Jones.

p3 "Humor Is Such A Subjective Thing" Award: Tim Eagan. (Source.)

Try as I might, I can't unsee Ann Telnaes's mashup of the week in Trump and the week in Rio.

Mark Fiore has an update for people who never made it farther than Rio or Trump's brain this week.

Tom Tomorrow presents Peter Thiel's Modest Proposal.

Keith Knight looks at the world back in Clint's day.

Reuben Bolling delivers the seventh in a series of government information brochures.

Carol Lay looks at those magic words: You must need something.

Red Meat's Old Cowboy takes the ride.

Comic Strip of the Day meditates on (among other things) the takeaway from the self-described "survivor's tale" Maus. Like many other readers, my introduction to graphic novels was through that book. (By coincidence, at the beginning of the summer I finally got around to reading – and thoroughly enjoying – Jeff Smith's Bone.)

Road runners can't read! A friend reposted this video of three bear cubs playing on a hammock on Facebook this morning. I told her it felt like discovering a lost Chuck Jones "Road Runner" cartoon: It's got nature. It's got a very simple concept. It's got perfect timing. It's got single-minded pursuit of a goal. It's got about a dozen increasingly-baroque variations on failure. No matter how many times they hit the ground, they're back up, apparently having learned nothing except to redouble their efforts. Then comes the final moment, when they think they've finally got it, but . . . In fact, all it needs is a caption, perhaps: "Bear (Hammockii Obsessivus)." In honor of those cubs and their wild ride, here's the very first Road Runner cartoon, "Fast and Furry-ous," directed by Jones in 1949 from a story by Michael Maltese. (Attentive readers may note that, in this premiere effort, Jones does briefly violate Rule #5 of the Road Runner / Coyote discipline to make the boomerang gag work. But it's about the only such instance I can recall. Sentence reduced to time served.) Watch "Fast and Furry-ous" at DailyMotion.

The Totally Classy Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman looks for the position of the next gunman.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen pays tribute to a chickenshit euphemism run amok.

Matt Bors has grave concerns about the next 85 days. Grave. Concerns.

Jesse Springer wonders if the fact that both timber trade groups and environmental organizations are filing lawsuits against the BLM's latest timber management plan for Western Oregon, means the two sides have finally found common ground and decides, on balance, no.

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.

Sunday morning toons: Trump hasn't gone "off-message" – that is the message

Inviting Russian Intelligence to hack Hillary's email? Gold Star families? Joking about always having wanted a Purple Heart? Having mothers and their crying babies ejected from events? Those, as avant garde filmmakers used to say, are not mistakes; those are choices. (The bit about his wife possibly having violated immigration law when she first began working in the US as a model – that feels like a well-timed oppo research dump. The rest is Pure Trump.)

It's like an old Scholastic's riddle: Trump is so easily baited that he can't keep his mouth shut (or his thumbs off of Twitter) for even a full day at a time, and yet ever since he mocked John McCain's years at the Hanoi Hilton last winter, it's become clear that there's nothing he can say that will finally be too much for his base. So is there a point where the irresistable force of his yuge mouth finally meets the immovable object of some (so far theoretical) "at long last, sir, have you no decency?" boundary? I really don't know anymore.

One thing's for certain: He won't withdraw his name from the GOP ticket just because the party elites want him to. That's the way to make certain that he will never, ever quit.

I still think that, if he actually does bail before the election, it will be because he's somehow sensed he's about to lose. It's hard to believe him thinking that about himself, but it's also hard to tell how much of his bragging he actually believes. Instead, I stand by my prediction from early July: He'd claim that, simply by getting the nomination, he's made his point and accomplished what he set out to do and so there's no need to bother with the formality of a general election. And in fact, taking on the duties of the President of the United States would be a step down from simply being his awesome, classy self. (He said as much when he floated to Kasich the idea that, as VP, he could run the country while Trump focused on "making America great again.")

Or perhaps, as some observers claim, his insistence this week that the election is being "rigged" against him is simply Trump's way of covering his bets by mainstreaming a story that will make his loss in the general everyone's fault but his, which is the Broadway and 42nd Street of his comfort zone.

Of course, even in the wildly unlikely event that Trump were to drop out of the race, who would the Republican National Committee select to take his place on the ticket? One of the two dozen also-rans from this spring's GOP primaries, whose clock Trump so thoroughly cleaned? Mitt Romney? Ted "Last Candidate Standing" Cruz? Someone untested (and hence, unvetted)?

Today's toons were selected by the 168 members of the Republican National committee 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*, Robart Ariail, Jeff Danziger, Brian McFadden, Joel Pett, Signe Wilkinson, Matt Weurker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Matt Davies.

p3 Legion of Merit: Steve Breen.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Steve Benson.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part 1): Robert Ariail and Darrin Bell.

p3 Certificte of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part 2): Kim Warp and Nate Beeler. (Honorable mention: Clay Bennett.)

______________

*This piece by Mike Luckovich is also awarded the coveted Driftglass Legacy Award.

Ann Telnaes watches in awe as the Republicans stand by their man. You know what they say: Give a party enough necktie, and . . .

Mark Fiore promises that no animals were harmed in the making of this video about Trump's sacrifices – although be warned: the phrase "cleavage doesn't grow on trees, you know" does appear.

Tom Tomorrow identifies a recurrent (and quite persuasive) theme at the DNC – and also brings the first of an unlikely Bill O'Reilly trifecta of appearances in this week's p3 toon review.

Keith Knight serves up the second of three Bill O'Reilly-themed pieces this week (Matt Bors, below, is the third). BO really is a jerk, and it's never amiss to be reminded of it.

Although I vowed I wasn't going to go down the "Manchurian Candidate" road, Reuben Bolling does end up pretty much the same place I was headed, and he manages to make the Useful Idiot even more idiotic, which is no small achievement.

Carol Lay gives new life to "happily ever after."

Red Meat's Bug-Eyed Earl greets the day.

Although I like the art on a particular Jim Morin piece this week – I think he gives great elephant – Comic Strip of the Day does a more thorough job than I would have of explaining why idn't make the particular cut here at p3 – although indirectly, of course, it did.

The Comic Curmudgeon brings up an interesting point: Ever since high school in the early 1960s, the output of Peter Parker's photojournalism "career" has consisted of selfies.

Vitaliky is Personaliky! I don't think I could find a better summary of "Vim, Vigor, and Vitaliky," directed in majestic monochrome by Dave Fleischer in 1936, than this log line from IMDB: "Popeye is running a women's gymnasium next door to Bluto's cabaret; seeing Popeye's greater success with women, he dresses in drag and challenges Popeye to various feats of strength," although that stops far short of capturing the essential weirdness of the piece. I thought it was weird when I was a kid, and I think so today. (Seven years later, Popeye got dressing-in-drag revenge on Bluto, in "Too Week to Work." If you're good, I'll dig it up for next week. Uncredited work by Jack Mercer (Popeye), Mae Questel (The Slender One), Gus Wickie (Bluto), and Sammy Timberg (musical director).

The Exalted Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman watches as one of our nation's highest awards is bestowed.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen has her moment of reckoning at the DNC.

Matt Bors celebrates a blessed birth.

Jesse Springer isn't in love with a corporate tax increase to protect Oregon's public retirement system.

Test your toon-captioning kung fu 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: Memorial binge-watching tributes, and other modern curiosities

If you didn't get farther than Hillary literally breaking a glass ceiling this week, you probably didn't make the cut. And the comparatively no-drama DNC convention probably made everyone's work a little harder: About the only conflict was generated by the Bernie Dead-Enders, and they're beginning to wear out their p3 welcome anyway.

No one – except for Tim Eagan, below – really seemed to have a good handle so far on the Trump-Putin connection as it's beginning to spill out into the daylight.

Today's toons were selected by the dreaded 13th Directorate of Moscow Center, 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, Darrin Bell, Tim Eagan, Signe Wilkinson, and Matt Weurker.

p3 Best of Show: Jeff Danziger.

p3 Legion of Merit: Joel Pett.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Marshall Ramsey and Mike Luckovich.

p3 Encryption Citation: Joe Heller. The inspiration for this one might have come quickly, but I bet that the actual execution must have taken a good deal more work than usual.

Ann Telnaes shares sketches from last week's Democratic National Convention.

Mark Fiore asks: When does a wild conspiracy theory stop being a wild conspiracy theory? When just enough evidence floats to the surface to make it sound like a plausible explanation. I'm not there yet, but it does suggest a theme for the general campaign: Trump 2016 – Keel Moose and Squirrel!

Tom Tomorrow re-caps the Republican National Convention, a key moment of which is Reince Priebus attack of melancolic nostalgia.

Keith Knight presents Biff, doing what you might have thought was impossible. Unless you're Bill O'Reilly.

Reuben Bolling brings us the latest edition of Super-Fun-Pak Comix, including the long-awaited (or, shortly anticipated, depending) adventures of Percival Dunwoody, Idiot Time Traveler from 1909.

Carol Lay reminds us: it's not all beer and skittles for gods, either.

Red Meat's Ted Johnson and Milkman Dan discover that American political discourse isn't broken after all.

Fans of the form lost two great talents last week: Richard Thompson, creator of Cul de Sac (he was 58), and Jack Davis, legendary Mad Magazine (and TV Guide cover, and lord knows what all else) artist (he was 91). Brian Fies served up a great two-part appreciation of Thompson at Comic Strip of the Day. And Mad honored its own, joining tributes by – oh hell, by two or three generations of artists who were influenced by his work: Just Google the keywords "jack davis tribute" and duck. One of the best birthday presents I ever got was the CD-ROM collection of every issue of Mad from 1952 to 1998. It's searchable, so I spent this week bingeing on Jack Davis features the way others were bingeing on "Stranger Things."

Charlie Redux: Last week the featured animation was "Little Orphan Airedale," the first WB short featuring Charlie Dog (note that, like Smokey Bear, he doesn't have a middle name), directed by Chuck Jones from a Tedd Pierce story in 1947. As I mentioned in passing, that was a reworking of " Porky's Pooch," directed in 1941 by Bob Clampett from a story by Warren Foster. Apart from the obvious differences (character names, Technicolor, etc.) the characters in Clampett's piece seem more like wind-up automatons next to the fully realized characters that Jones created six years later. About the only thing that carries over recognizably is Rover's (Charlie's) line: "You ain't got no dog, and I ain't got no master."

The Absolutely Fabulous Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman gets what we could hope to be the final word on the Bernie dead-enders. I tried to make a glass ceiling/glass wall joke out of this, but finally gave up.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen brings it home for something we've often said around here at p3: When it comes to risk assessment, Americans are the worst.

Matt Bors submits this item for your approval.

Jesse Springer predicts high times at the 2016 Oregon State Fair.

Test your toon-captioning super powers 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 evening toons: Cleveland – A performance in five parts, with intermission

The GOP nominating convention had five parts:

Part I-A: Statement of (Anti-)Thesis: A parade of D-Listers, scraped up at the last minute because Ted Nugent and Tim Tebow wouldn't make themselves available, launched an evening's worth of attacks on Hillary Clinton, while offering nothing in the way of positive policy ideas.

Part I-B: Diversion: The Melania Speech and the utterly inevitable tsunami of plagiarism jokes that followed. I have to say I felt a little sorry for the current Mrs. Trump – not a lot, but a little. True, she certainly knew what she was getting into when she signed on to be arm candy for a rich American jerk, but I imagine that even her iron-clad pre-nup didn't have a clause covering the reading a speech in her second language at a national political convention in a context where if there was one blunder she'd be gutted like a fish inside of half an hour on Twitter.

Part II-A: The Soprano Aria: Donald Trump Jr. stuns the crowd with his a capella rendition of "Tomorrow Belongs to Me."

Part II-B: The Trial: The Governor, advances charges that Hillary Clinton had trafficked with Lucifer, engaged in witchcraft, and committed marvelous and supernatural murder, and promises a hangin' if she'll not confess.

Part III: Betrayal from Within: Cruz Agonistes, in which our hero laments:

Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed
As of a person separate to God,
Designed for great exploits, if I must die
Betrayed, captived, and both my eyes put out,
Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze,
To grind in brazen fetters under task
With this heaven-gifted strength?

Part IV – I'm Ready for My Close-Up, Ms. Riefenstahl: With a lot of hand-waving and podium-pounding and lower-lip-protruding, Trump delivers a long, excedingly dark acceptance speech which, as Molly Ivins, of the p3 pantheon of gods, remarked in another context, probably sounded better in the original German.

Part V – Epilog: In which white supremacist and former Klan Grand Wizard David Duke announces that the nomination of Trump is an omen appearing strongly to favor his campaign for the United States Senate, and Hillary Clinton steers away from Trump-ish drama by selecting the most un-Elizabeth Warren-y figure imaginable for her running mate. Outraged fans of Senators Warren and Sanders contemplate whether this is indeed the final straw, apparently failing to appreciate that if Tim Kaine is indeed their worst fears realized, there's hardly a better place to keep him out of mischief than the Vice Presidency.

If you executed one of a zillion variations on the Melania-blithely-stealing-a-famous-quote theme, you almost certainly didn't make the cut this week. On the other hand, if you noticed that anything else was happening this week other than the Republican convention, you most likely got a second look.

Today's toons were selected following a shut-out of all other contenders by the Rules Committee 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, Clay Bennett, Jeff Danziger, Matt Davies, Jim Morin, Tom Toles, Gary Varvel, Matt Weurker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Matt Davies.

p3 Legion of Merit: Chan Lowe.

p3 Catching the Problem Everyone Else Missed Award: Joel Pett.

p3 "When They Outlaw Behavioral Therapists . . . " Certificate: Darrin Bell (although in defense of the otherwise-indefensible officer who fired the shot, and who shouldn't be allowed to have a toy truck, let alone a loaded gun, he did shoot the unarmed man in the leg, rather than in the belly; so, you know, there's that).

p3 "Perspective: Use It Or Lose It" Award: Steve Kelley.

Ann Telnaes captures the fiery oratory of Cruz on Night 3.

Mark Fiore tries to keep track of just what it is the short-fingered vulgarian wants to make America, anyway.

Tom Tomorrow demonstrates why there is no Donald Trump Drinking Game: Everyone would be dead of alcohol poisoning by late afternoon.

Keith Knight explains that frozen moment when everyone sees what's on the end of every fork – and it's you.

Reuben Bolling invites you to participate in Donald Trump's Augmented Reality.

Carol Lay examines post-hairstyle-change remorse. Hey, we've all been there.

Red Meat's Ted Johnson knows that any tactical response depends on advance planning.

The Comic Curmudgeon notes that the usually-adorbs Mutts took a dark turn this week.

Comic Strip of the Day not only explains why the donut wasn't powdered but produced a line I'm going to be duty-bound to repeat at some point: "a foggy smear of unplumbable probabilities where reality has no meaning."

Humans are suckers for dogs – all you gotta do is give them the "soulful eyes" routine! "Little Orphan Airedale," directed in 1947 by Chuck Jones from a story by Tedd Pierce (both uncredited, along with voice work by Portland's Own Mel Blanc and musical direction by Carl Stalling of the p3 pantheon of gods), is the very first appearance of Charlie Dog (like Smokey, he doesn't have a middle name). The essence of Charlie's character is his search for a master (usually, but not always, Porky Pig) and a comfortable home – a search he's no less optimistic about simply because he's so obnoxious that no one wants him. (The original version of the story was "Porky's Pooch," directed in 1941 by Bob Clampett and written by Warren Foster. We may check that out next week.) Charlie got a total of five appearances in Warner Bros short films. Watch "Little Orphan Airedale" on DailyMotion (warning: autoplay).

The Mighty Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman looks on the bright side, to the extent that there is one, of Trump's apocalyptic acceptance speech.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen traces the backlash from that guy living over his parents' garage all the way up to the man who will soon get a national security briefing from the CIA – generated an non-convention event this week.

Matt Bors zeros in on an important distinction.

Jesse Springer returns to a topic that was the blackberry seed in his wisdom tooth for quite awhile back in the day: The unsuccessful relationship between Oregon's health care exchange and Oracle the IT company that created its unsuccessful online registration management system. You'd think, with a name like Oracle, somebody would have seen this coming.

Test your mastery of the toon-captioning Force 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.