Quote of the day: "That's the problem"

Pierce (scroll down to Part the Penultimate):

Don't these people ever talk to one another? That's the problem with a political movement populated almost entirely by paranoid lunatics. No message discipline.

Quote of the day: "Nonsense," "Nutty," "Whackadoodlrey," "Then the people have to think about it"

Pierce on Arizona desperately trying to turn itself into Little Casablanca:

Consider what has to happen for this nonsense to become law. Someone has to be nutty enough to propose it. Then, there have to be committee hearings. Then, there has to be a committee vote. Then, there has to be debate in both houses of the state legislature — except in Nebraska, which has a unicameral state legislature and, thus, 50 percent less whackadoodlery than the other 49 states. Then people have to think about it and vote for it.

You'll never think of the Brandeisian phrase "laboratories of democracy" the same way again.

When a marriage of convenience stops being convenient

I never expected much of Arlen Specter as a Democrat, although in fairness he hasn't been as quickly or deeply treacherous after switching parties as I expected him to be.

A strong primary challenger from within your adopted party does concentrate the mind wonderfully.

And yet . . . and yet . . . and yet. Here's a story that Specter, a.k.a. Don Altobello, a.k.a. the plumed cave warbler, probably wishes he hadn't served up:

For three decades, Specter prided himself on being a coalition builder, relishing a self-appointed role as a liaison striving to find the moderate solutions to liberal and conservative extremes.

Now as a Democrat, that role has vanished. For that reason alone, Specter has questioned his storied party switch.

"Well, I probably shouldn't say this," he said over lunch last month. "But I have thought from time to time that I might have helped the country more if I'd stayed a Republican."

Kinsley's Law of Gaffes: It's not a gaffe when a politician accidentally says something that isn't true; it's a gaffe when he accidentally says something that is true.

(Will Bunch reduces Specter's poor-me-ism to rubble in about a paragraph, calling it a fantastical rewrite of history on many levels--and he's probably just being nice because he has the bad luck to have Specter for his senator.)

The reality is, as a Democrat, Specter gets far fewer invitations to play Hamlet in front of the TV news camera, and far fewer presidential muffin baskets from the White House. Watching the Blue Dogs get all that face time in the media during the health care reform battle last year, while he sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring, it's not surprising he's been reconsidering his choices.

Romantic, if you know what I mean.

I don't know if you know that sort of feeling you get on these days round about the end of April and the beginning of May, when the sky's a light blue with cotton-wool clouds and there's a bit of breeze blowing from the west? Kind of uplifted feeling. Romantic, if you know what I mean. I'm not much of a ladies' man, but on this particular morning it seemed to me that what I really wanted was for some charming girl to buzz up and ask me to save her from assassins or something.

P. G. Wodehouse
"Jeeves in the Springtime"
The World of Jeeves

Five years ago in p3

April 6, 2005:

There is, of course, a prevent-graft-and-corruption angle to this, but the primary arguments are cost and participation. Publicly financed elections will limit the huge campaign advantage --through fundraising--that incumbents enjoy. It will also increase the pool of qualified people who might consider running, no longer limiting it just to people who can afford to take six months off to raise money. It will end the massive transfer of wealth to local TV stations, which is where much of the campaign money ends up going. And finally, just as a thought experiment, run your eye over the Portland cityscape and ask yourself how many expensive projects the City would not have undertaken if elected candidates weren't beholden to big donors.

And, of course, although public financing was implemented, to the best of my knowledge the world hasn't ended.

Quote of the day: "Appalling," "cover-up," "scandal"

From today's Frank Rich column in the NYTimes:

That no one at Lehman Brothers has yet been held liable for its Enronesque bookkeeping deceit is appalling. That we still haven’t seen the e-mail and documents that would illuminate A.I.G.’s machinations with Goldman and the rest of its counterparties amounts to a cover-up. That investigative journalists have consistently been way ahead of the authorities, the S.E.C. included, in uncovering Wall Street’s foul play is a scandal.

Sunday morning toons: Special "Volcanoes and Virgins" edition

There. That's a title that should boost traffic a little.

But Iceland's geothermal acting-out isn't the only thing that captured the imagination of political toonists around the world this week (although it did inspire this week's Best in Show). There was also Earth Day, the seemingly-endless corruption of Goldman Sachs--and did I mention that Arizona became Casablanca while you weren't looking? Let's go to Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for this week to get things started.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Pat Bagley, R. J. Matson (explanation of deep-sea cephalopod reference here), Bob Englehart, Jeff Parker, Jimmy Margulies, Henry Payne, Steve Breen , Brian Fairrington, Bill Schorr, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best in Show Award: John Trever.

p3 "Sometimes a Wand is Just a Wand" Award: Mike Lester.

p3 World Toon Review: Stephane Peray (Thailand), Teejerd Royaards (Netherlands), Patrick Chappatte, (Switzerland) and Pavel Constantin (Romania).


Ann Telnaes notes that northern Europeans aren't the only ones with an ash problem.


Mark Fiore presents an inspirational American story of winning and . . . well, you'll see.

(Update: Apple caved; Fiore won.)


Oh, Uncle Pennybags--say it isn't so! Frank Rich's Sunday NYTimes column on Goldman Sachs skulduggery today is accompanied by a wonderfully dark illustration from Barry Blitt.


This is exactly what they were warning you about! The truth must be told: Comic Book Resources reports that the most deep-seated fears of the anti-gay caucus in the GOP have come to pass.


DC's graphic novel brand, Vertigo is moving into crime fiction.


Don't forget: Stumptown Comic Fest is this weekend.


The Comics Curmudgeon spots a connection between Beetle Bailey and "Angels in America," and identifies a scene you're probably not likely to see in the upcoming live action/CGI "Marmaduke" movie--probably.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman explores the concept of TMI.


It's me again! You can decide whether this hits your funny bone--but the more steeped you are in classic movies, the better. If you only knew Cesar Romero as the Joker on the TV "Batman," for example, he may slip right by you here from the days when he played a heartthrob on the big screen. (For those of you with no interest in playing spot-the-stars, there's still the great conga music.) For some reason, the animated review featuring cameos by Hollywood stars was a popular gimmick in its day; I'll have another one next week from Disney. This week, it's "Hollywood Steps Out," directed by Tex Avery in 1941:

The cameo stars are identified here, although you're on your own with inside jokes like the joke about Bing Crosby's stable of neverwozzer race horses, or Greta Garbo's big feet.


Secret second animation: Suzanne at FireDogLake salutes a 1943 Woody Woodpecker classic.


p3 Bonus Toon: This week, Jesse Springer is all about side effects.




Remember to bookmark: Slate's political cartoon for the day and Time's cartoons of the week.

"Everything that makes elite political journalism in this country unworthy of the implicit trust placed in it by the First Amendment"

Charles Pierce on the man PBS has selected to "replace" Bill Moyers:

Oh, Lord. The Parson Meacham's tenure at Newsweek continues to veer woozily between What Would Jesus Print? and barely disguised appeals for the lunatic Right not to show up on his lawn. This week, he sends Evan Thomas, the only living collector of John McCloy memorabilia, in search of the transcendent political power that is Governor Rick Perry of Texas. Read the piece closely and you will see in it everything that makes elite political journalism in this country unworthy of the implicit trust placed in it by First Amendment. It has become plain in recent months that Perry is a politician beloved of people who should not be trusted to cut their own meat, count their own money, or go out in public without keepers. There should be no serious dispute about this, not with Thomas writing this:

"President Obama, (Perry) says, "is hellbent on taking America towards a socialist country." That kind of catchy talk plays well with a certain--and growing--segment of the American population. According to a new Rasmussen Reports poll, 24 percent of U.S. voters now say they consider themselves to be part of the tea-party movement (up from 16 percent a month ago). According to a Harris Interactive poll, two thirds of Republicans believe Obama is a socialist, while 57 percent believe he is a Muslim, and almost one in four suspect he's the Antichrist."

That is a clinical description of politics that has utterly lost its mind. It is precisely the same as a political movement that states as its goal the elimination of the role played in American politics by arachnid aliens from the planet Zontar. This is the case whether or not the insanity is popular or not. This is the case whether or not it is politically successful. And a politician like Perry who chooses to align himself with it is worthy of nothing but scorn and ridicule. He certainly doesn't need some Beltway bigfoot massaging his ego with talk about how "crafty" he is, or how he has such "good timing." (John Kerry was a flip-flopper, remember? Rick Perry has "good timing." OK, whatever.) The whole piece is one of those phony anthropological studies of the Real America. ( I mean, honestly, "Shuck Donnell, general manager of Coyote Lake Feedyard in Muleshoe, Texas"? How'd they decide to quote him? On the basis of his first name? His company's name? Or the name of his hometown? It sure as hell wasn't on the merits of what he said.) If Rick Perry's ideas triumph in this country, it is because this country's politics have gone moronic, perhaps beyond all recall. Of course, if you say that, people will get mad and show up on the Parson's lawn, and we can't have that.

Seriously, PBS subscribers: Is a free tote bag worth this?




[Note: The original link within Pierce's post appears broken; here's the article he's quoting from.]

"Right down to the shoes, right down to the clothes:" From the casebook of Brian Bilbray

Rep. Brian Bilbray (R - CA) says: You see, but you do not observe:

[A]ccording to Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), "trained professionals" can identify undocumented workers just by looking at their clothes.

Discussing Arizona's pending profiling bill on "Hardball," Chris Matthews challenged Bilbray to cite a "non-ethnic aspect" by which law enforcement agents could identify illegal immigrants. "They will look at the kind of dress you wear, there is different type of attire, there is different type of -- right down to the shoes, right down to the clothes," Bilbray replied.

Of course, law enforcement wouldn't detain people based solely on clothing, Bilbray said. They also know to look out for the ways in which illegal immigrants just act illegal.

"It's mostly behavior, just as the law enforcement people here in Washington, D.C. does it based on certain criminal activity," he told Matthews. "There is behavior things that professionals are trained in across the board, and this group shouldn't be exempt from those observations as much as anybody else [sic throughout]."

Indeed, the process is simplicity itself. For example:

"Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else."

Sherlock Holmes
"The Red-Headed League"

"Then, pray tell me what it is that you can infer from this hat?"

He picked it up and gazed at it in the peculiar introspective fashion which was characteristic of him. "It is perhaps less suggestive than it might have been," he remarked, "and yet there are a few inferences which are very distinct, and a few others which represent a strong balance of probability. That the man was highly intellectual is of course obvious on the face of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the last three years although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may also account for the fact that his wife has ceased to love him."

Sherlock Holmes
"The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle"

"You have come in by train this morning, I see."

"You know me then?"

"No, but I observe the second half of a return ticket in the palm of your left glove. You must have started early, and yet you had a good drive in a dog-cart, along heavy roads, before you reached the station."

Sherlock Holmes
"The Adventure of the Speckled Band"

He held it up and tapped on it with his long, thin forefinger, as a presser might who was lecturing on a bone.

"Pipes are occasionally of extraordinary interest," said he. "Nothing has more individuality, save perhaps watches and bootlaces. The indications here, however, are neither very marked nor very important. The owner is pbviously a muscular man, left-handed, with an excellent set of teeth, careless in his habits, and with no need to practise economy."

Sherlock Holmes
"The Yellow Face"

"I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson," said he. "When your round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a hansom. As I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty, I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify the hansom."

"Excellent!" I cried.

"Elementary," said he.

Sherlock Holmes
"The Crooked Man"

Saturday tunes: I heard somebody singing sweet and soulful

Listening to any Warren Zevon tune is an experience tinged with one part regret, one part useless irritation. He was a musician's musician. Don't just judge him by how much you liked his stuff--at least the stuff you knew--look at how many greats liked his stuff, even covering his stuff so that you maybe never realized it was his.

After he skipped going to a doctor for twenty years, it was his dentist who finally had to make him get his rough-breathing carcass to someone who could tell him he was staring down the barrel of congestive heart failure arising from undiagnosed (and spreading in the time it would have taken to write this) lung cancer.

And after 30 years of great music, he had to frickin' die to get a Grammy for The Wind.

Really. Don't it make you wanna rock and roll?

Reading: The dog that didn't bark in the night on health care

Bob Somerby notes the two questions that even pretty-good health care reporting invariably fails to ask:

Why is William Mann paid so little? Why does his health care cost so much?

Somerby's post is going on the Readings column in the sidebar.

Sunday morning toons: Special "Biting Wit and Extensive Research" edition

Big week: Tax day, Tea Party Day, America returns to the stars (sort of), a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and a nukes summit--and more. As always, let's kick things off with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for the week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Mike Keefe, Bob Englehart, John Darkow, David Fitzsimmons, Eric Allie, Jimmy Margulies, Henry Payne, Joe Heller, Jeff Stahler, Steve Breen, Bill Day, Ed Stein, Jeff Darcy, and Monte Wolverton,

p3 Legion of Merit: Larry Wright.

p3 Best of Show: Steve Sack.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (tie): Pat Bagley and Jeff Parker.

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


Ann Telnaes demonstrates the age-old principle: what goes up must come down,


Mark Fiore brings some pretty cool News in a Nutshell: The self-syndicated political cartoonist won a Pulitzer Prize. The award specifically cited "his biting wit, extensive research and ability to distill complex issues set a high standard for an emerging form of commentary."

On the other hand, if you're thinking of getting Fiore's toons on your iPhone, think again: Apple has determined that his work is "objectionable," and so you won't find NewsToons, his syndication app, at the App Store. (Be sure and get to the part about "bikini-level sexual content.")

Then again, maybe Apple is reconsidering.


Here's the Barry Blitt illustration for today's Frank Rich column in the NYTimes. Nice.


The K Chronicles is all over the "grassroots" conspiracy theory.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman looks at how far the US space program has come.


Rooty toot toot--right in the snoot! Last week we looked at UPA's classic version of "The Tell-Tale Heart." Here's another one of their best, the 1952 Academy Award-nominated "Rooty Toot Toot," directed by John Hubley. The toe-dancing lawyer cracks me up--and he has a single-shooter theory that would make even the Warren Commission blush:

(Recognize the lawyer's voice, by the way? Sounds to me like an uncredited Thurl Ravenscroft, though I can't find any record of it.)


Secret second animation: Suzanne at FireDogLake has one of the rare appearances of Wile E. Coyote without the Roadrunner. [Update: Except that it's not Wile E., it's Frank Wolf. My bad. See comments.]


p3 Bonus Toon: Oh, yes--Jesse Springer totally went there.




Remember to bookmark: Slate's political cartoon for the day and Time's cartoons of the week.

The 120-second thunderbolt

[Welcome, Mannionistas! Cucumber sandwiches and lemonade on the side table.]

This all began because of a post Lance Mannion wrote yesterday, with the shamelessly memorable title Dirty sexy naked poets. If it doesn't make you rethink Emily Dickinson, then a heart is the least of the functioning anatomical necessities with which you have apparently not been blessed.

Go read it and discover, among other things, what you could have been doing instead of breaking the spine on your school library's copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four at page 103.

Seriously. Go read it. I'll wait here.

Back? Good. Now here's the thing. Lance wrote:

An offhand remark by another poet, who was on the faculty at the time, in one of my classes my first or second week there, triggered something in my brain and suddenly I could do something I’d never been able to do, read a poem.

I had to know what the poet told him, so I dropped him a note and asked.

I confess I have always suffered the same affliction--a sort of colorblindness when it comes to poetry. In a file folder somewhere I have some poetry I once wrote in an attempt to impress a woman who was absolutely worth the effort, but even at the time I knew it was just prose with ragged right margins.

There's a story here: Many years ago, I was at a conference on rhetoric where the keynote speaker was Wayne Booth. A lot of his writing, particularly about irony but also his courteous but firm dismissal of E.D. Hirsch's "cultural literacy" cottage industry of the time, had left its mark on me during my intellectual Wonder Years. And I discovered Booth was quite impressive in person--the very model of a tall, bespectacled, baritone, tweed-and-suede professor. The man knew how to work a plenary session, let me tell you.

I had, in my young-pup arrogance, brought a paper to the conference that presumed to bite Booth around the ankles. He was pretty gracious about that (given how largely unbitten his ankles remained afterward, he could afford to be) and joined several of us at a bistro on the edge of campus later. The conversation came around to an article I'd recently read about RACTER (for "raconteur"), an early Eliza-like artificial intelligence program designed to write poetry and prose (some of its output was later collected and published as "The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed"). I mentioned that the attempts by RACTER's programmers to generate erotica with it were an acknowledged failure: Apparently it had written "The f------ c--- ate the parking meter" before anyone managed to lunge across the console and shut it off.

There was some laughter following that story, and when it died down I said that a Turing test using RACTER's poetry would probably leave me stumped: I doubted if I would be able to distinguish the program's output from the work of a decent human poet.

Booth shrugged and said, "I could teach you how to do that in two minutes."

Take a moment here to imagine that you're an average, 16-handicap golfer, and you've found yourself having a Heineken with Jack Nicklaus (it was the mid-1980s, remember), who casually mentions that in two minutes he could take 6 strokes off your game, or put 20 yards on your drive, permanently.

Or, over a martini, Frank Sinatra tells you that in two minutes he can show you how to phrase anything from the Great American Songbook like he does. You see where I'm heading.

So I sat there making Ralph Kramden waggly-jaw noises, but before I could take Booth up on his offer, the conversation moved away from poetry and artificial intelligence (and parking meters), and the chance was lost. I tried a couple of times to pull the conversation back, but it had been a one-time-only sort of moment. Almost 30 years later, I still bang my head on the table when I think about it.

So you can see why I hoped I might have a second chance here: What was the poet's offhand remark? Hence the note I dropped to Lance.

He sent a reply that recalled all he could dredge up, but the bottom line is that whatever she said that day was now the thing that emanated the ethereal golden glow from Marsellus Wallace's briefcase:

The poet who made the offhand remark was Jorie Graham and for the life of me I can't remember exactly what she said.

I won't say that my search for the two-minute explanation of how poetry works is doomed, but after 30 years it's not looking that great, either. I've read my John Ciardi, but I can't escape the idea that the 120-second thunderbolt is out there somewhere.

Saturday morning tunes: Better keep your head

This song is dedicated to, among others, the governors of Virginia and Mississippi.

And--although I always liked Lynyrd Skynyrd--bite me, guys. Neil was right, you were wrong.

The weekly p3 Oregon news limerick challenge

Bad news for followers of Calliope, the muse of poetry:

TJ of Loaded Orygun (who was for almost a year my ticket to broadcast immortality by reading my Oregon news limericks on the Carl + Christine Show on KPOJ each Monday morning) is moving on up to a new arrangement with them, and it looks like that particular weekly artistic contribution of mine to the larger political conversation could fall through the cracks.

At least for the moment. It ain't over until it's over.

If you liked the limerick challenge and want to bring it back to KPOJ--and I mean, how can you not? Hm? Really?--I can't see any reason not to let the good folks KPOJ know. Contact info for Carl, Christine, and producer Paul Pimentel is here. (Internet streaming and podcast listeners, as well as locals, are welcome to weigh in.)

And if you feel the need for talking points, we've got something short, sweet, and memorable that should do the trick:

Vox populi, vox dei. (You could also mention that April is National Poetry Month. Just remember to be nice. Nobody likes a poetry bully.)

And while we're waiting for the groundswell of popular opinion to wash over the KPOJ studios, here's this week's limerick. Fill in the blank with the missing word or phrase from Oregon news. The answer is in the Comments section, below.

Ready? Begin!

Greenhouse gas--we've got more than enough.
But the reason could make you feel gruff.
The main cause of our plight?
Seems George Carlin was right:
It's 'cause Portlanders have so much ____________.

Bonus limerick: On the subject of nominating a replacement for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Mad Kane has a request.

"The last big bank that isn't evil:" A brief timeline of the end of my career in banking

2003: When I left an even bigger bank to work for Washington Mutual, insider friends said to me, "Welcome to the last big bank that isn't evil."

2005: My division of WaMu ceased to exist; the resources were cannibalized to support WaMu's decision to go all-in on the sub-prime lending market.

2008: WaMu no longer existed.

2010: Today's Calculated Risk's overview of the Senate hearings on WaMu's failure, scheduled to begin tomorrow morning, prominently features the phrase "executives knowingly created 'a mortgage time bomb.'"

Also: "Regulators failed for years to properly supervise the giant savings and loan Washington Mutual"

And: "rewarding loan officers and processors based on how many mortgages they could churn out"

The bigger bank I left for WaMu in 2003 didn't get on the sub-prime bandwagon. It's still out there.

Sunday morning toons: Special "Why Will You Say That I Am Mad?" edition

Our theme today is that sometimes-fine line between (on one hand) being exceptionally principled, surprisingly stubborn, boldly innovative, or annoyingly eccentric and (on the other hand) having the cheese slip off your cracker, being out past where the buses run, not having elevator service to the top floor, or being downright evil.

For example: On this side of the line: Pursuing the next round of START agreements with Russia, or forking over hundreds of bucks for an iPad. On the far side of the line: White-washing a 250-year history of slavery in America, allowing the deaths of over two dozen miners for the sake of spite and corporate profits, and covering up the crimes of pedophile priests.

We begin, as we traditionally do, with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for this week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Daryl Cagle, Pat Bagley, Mike Keefe, Bob Englehart, Jimmy Margulies, Steve Sack, John Cole, Steve Breen, Bill Day, Bill Schorr, Steve Benson, Jim Day, and Monte Wolverton,

p3 Best of Show: Nate Beeler.

p3 Legion of Merit: Joe Heller.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Bob Gorrell and Jeff Darcy.

p3 World Toon Review: Tjeerd Royaards (The Netherlands), Cam Cardow (Canada), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Ingrid Rice (Canada), Dario Castillejos (Mexico), Pavel Constantin (Romania), Frederick Deligne (France), and Sergei Elkin (Russia).
.

Ann Telnaes (at her new, easier-to-use WaPo page!) muses on playground insults.


Mark Fiore presents one of his best: Hierarchy Complicitus. Listen closely.


Disturbing: A friend got me started reading the Preacher comics. I'm through four of the nine books. It's good, but man, is it messed up.


Looks like somebody owes someone an apology: At The K Chronicles, Keith Knight looks at the danger of above-the-law corporate entities.


NYTimes illustrator Barry Blitt nicely captures the moment in this week's Frank Rich column about (among other related moral failures of the last generation) Alan Greenspan's insistence that he--a man who, as chairman of the Fed from 1987 until 2006, could make the stock market go up or down 200 points simply by his choice of adverbs--bears no responsibility for the Wall Street meltdown that has left us where we are.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman puts a recent diplomatic achievement into some kind of perspective.


True--I'm nervous; very, very dreadfully nervous. But why will you say that I am mad? The work of the UPA studio in the late 1940s and 1950s isn't remembered today in any proportion to the quality of its work. It grew out of a consortium of animators--most of whom had track records with the big animation studios--who made training films during WWII and then industrial films after the war ended. They threw out the treacly visual realism of Disney and replaced it with a limited animation style that more resembled the visual style of post-war New Yorker cartoons. They also eschewed the gag-driven, ultraviolent style of Warner Bros. animation in favor of material that was more literary. (UPA attempted to get the rights to James Thurber's "Fables for Our Times," although in the end they produced only one.) Unfortunately, the UPA approach to limited animation, which was driven by a set of thought-out aesthetic innovations--as you watch the short below it may take a second viewing to realize how much they accomplish simply by moving the camera over a still drawing--was soon overrun by the Hanna-Barbera use of limited (constricted?) animation driven only by shrinking production budgets. UPA cartoons were beloved by critics but the studio struggled financially. Even UPA's owner, Columbia, seemed to have trouble getting UPA's cartoons. A typical example: The darkly beautiful 1953 short "The Tell-Tale Heart"--which is at the other end of the planet from, say, "Duck Amuck," a Chuck Jones/Daffy Duck classic released the same year. "Tell-Tale Heart" was directed by Ted Parmelee, narrated by James Mason, and co-written by Bill Scott (who would later write and co-executive produce "Rocky and Bullwinkle"). It was rated X (adults only) by the British Board of Film Censors, and nominated for an Academy Award, but lost to Disney's "Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Bloom." (I'm sure you all remember "Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Bloom," right?) "Tell-Tale Heart" was rarely seen outside of festivals for fifty years, until it was included as an extra on the DVD release of "Hellboy."

"The Tell-Tale Heart" was ranked #24 on the list of the 50 greatest cartoons ("Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Bloom" came in at #29. Nyah.)


p3 Bonus Toon: Are they mad? Jesse Springer marvels at the UO athletic program throwing money around like a drunken sailor:



Remember to bookmark: Slate's political cartoon for the day and Time's cartoons of the week.

Saturday morning tunes: The definitive rock 'n ' roll scream[TM]

Often imitated, never equaled.

The Townshend/Daltrey double-windmill at around the 4:30 mark is good. Entwhistle throughout is even better. And Moon--what can one say, except Not To Be Taken Away?

True friends stab you in the front

Several years ago, we looked with amusement at a minor rhetorical genre, the Fox News well-wishing press release of death.

Media Matters updates the literary canon.

It's snarkilicious!

The weekly p3 Oregon news limerick challenge

Our p3 watchword this week is "instant gratification."

Normally I hold back the answers to the weekly Oregon news limerick challenge until after TJ's read them on the Carl + Christine Show on AM620 KPOJ on Monday morning, but he won't be on tomorrow, so the answer is in the Comments section right now.

Fill in the blank with the word or phrase from this week's Oregon news. Ready? Begin!

Right-wing AGs filed suit in a swarm.
"Unconstitutional!" --so they all storm.
But hey, Rob McKenna--
Stick this on your antenna:
Oregon supports _______________.

Bonus limericks: The Emily Dickinson of political humor, Mad Kane, gets her licks in twice this week.

Sunday morning toons: Special "Technicolor hen-fruit" edition

This special report, just in time for Easter: Anti-semites around the globe have protested the Vatican's comparison of public outrage and disgust for the Catholic Church's decades-long protection of child-molesting priests to anti-semitism, claiming it's an insult to anti-semitism.

This and other news, beginning with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up this week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Nate Beeler, Bob Englehart, David Fitzsimmons, Jeff Stahler, Ed Stein, Steve Sack, Jerry Holbert, and Monte Wolverton,

p3 Best in Show: R. J. Matson.

p3 Certificate of Vacation Bible School Completion: Pat Bagley.

p3 Definitive Easter Toon Award: Jeff Parker.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (tie): John Darkow, Joe Heller, and Pat Bagley.

p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Tjeer Royaards (Netherlands), Alexander Zudin (Russia), and Cam Cardow (Canada).^*
*Brief explanation for Americans.


Ann Telnaes suggests why the broth is spoiled.


Legalize it? Not, says Mark Fiore, if it makes things tough for the stoner's best friend. (Link fixed.)


Most compelling reason to get an iPad? My contact with Apple amounts to having Quicktime and iTunes on my hard drive (despite several attempts to get rid of the latter), but for what it's worth this is the best reason I've seen so far.


Amazon. Hero. Icon. If you need much more explanation than that, may Hera help you.


It's why the phrase "wacky complications ensue" was invented: Hey, look: It's a sweet nebbish of a guy who has a big--a really big--dog. That's never been done before. You know that extra 10 seconds you used to spend on the comics page each morning? It's now 110 minutes of CGI-created talking animals. Although, I'm embarrassed to admit, I found the dance scene at the end of the trailer to be pretty funny. (Memo to William H. Macy: Either fire your agents or start listening to them, because . . . damn!)


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman says, so much for that hears-it-when-a-sparrow-drops stuff.


I'll deliver da Technicolor hen-fruit for ya! Warner Bros. director Robert McKimson loved big, fleshy, pushy characters. He liked to have them invade the space between themselves and the audience, lunging forward, swinging their arms and flapping their hands into the audience's face, like "Avatar" fern fronds 60 years later. He liked to place them forward in the frame to emphasize their bulk. (McKimson's Foghorn Leghorn, for all his mouthiness, was great fun in part because of the way they played off his physicality.) "Easter Yeggs" (1947) was McKinson's second crack at directing Bugs Bunny.

p3 Bonus Toon: When the going gets tough, Jesse Springer observes, the tough take their severance and get going.




Remember to bookmark:

Slate's political cartoon for the day.

And Time's cartoons of the week.

"A contagion of courage"

When Kissinger was playing Iago to President Nixon's Richard III, all the elements proper to a royal drama were present. But Kissinger wasn't simply the paragon of something past. He also used the modern techniques [of manipulating rational, bureaucratic structure] with a determined and narrow genius.

What isn't clear is whether he ever believed he would be serving the public interest. We don't know what went through his mind during his first months as President Nixon's National Security Council Advisor. Perhaps he underwent a sudden private revelation that he craved power and had the manipulative talents to gain it. Perhaps, in the adrenaline rush of that revelation, he forgot about the nature of public service.

John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards:
The Dictatorship of Reason in the West

With thanks to DL buddy Nick, without whose nudging I would have let the opportunity pass, last night I saw the "The Most Dangerous Man in America," the documentary on Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, at Cinema 21 in Portland, and listened to Ellsberg himself in a Q&A session with the audience afterward.

It was an amazing experience, if by "amazing" we mean: "likely to make you feel like you're wasting oxygen that better people than you could be putting to use right now."

Or: "likely to make you realize that even people who are really smart and have pretty clear values don't have all the answers and can't always make everything have a happy ending."

There's a story Ellsberg tells in the film (it's also in his 2003 book Secrets) about a meeting he had with Henry Kissinger not long before Richard Nixon took office. Kissinger would be Nixon's National Security Advisor, and Ellsberg at that time held a high-security clearance position in the State Department. Ellsberg explained to Kissinger the cycle of reactions he would experience as he gained access to highly classified government secrets. First, said Ellsberg, you feel elation: You're now privy to the most closely guarded secrets the government holds. Apart from the ego gratification of that, there's the content itself--the things you'll now know that you didn't, and couldn't, before.

That leads to the second stage: You'll feel foolish, embarrassed to realize how naïve you had been, how many things you had recently believed that you now know simply aren't so.

Finally, Ellsberg told Kissinger, you'll come to feel that the American people are the foolish ones, since they aren't in the know like you and your cohort. Inevitably, you'll feel contempt for the people you're supposed to be serving.

Ellsberg notes that Kissinger originally favored a quick diplomatic end to the Vietnam war--essentially giving the US a "decent interval" by which to save diplomatic face and get our troops out. But the thought of anything other than unambiguous victory in Vietnam (whatever that might be) was anathema to Nixon, and Kissinger (who would later famously remark that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac") was more interested in the power that came from manipulating the President than in preventing a wider war in Indochina.

You may remember the results.

In the Q & A session after the film, several audience members raised variations of the same question: Why do our leaders sacrifice thousands upon thousands of (others') lives pursuing treasury-breaking wars with no connection to our national interest--and why are we so helpless to stop it?

Ellsberg, a Marine officer in the early 1960s, noted that courage--the willingness to take risk when the stakes are extraordinarily high--is not all that unusual on the battlefield, but much rarer when those soldiers return to serve their country civilian life. He specifically and unflatteringly referred to Colin Powell as one of those who were unable to break free of the cult of the secret and the pursuit of insider power through palace intrigues.

In fact, he wasn't terribly charitable to any of the players on the national stage right now: Not White House advisors; not the Congress charged with constitutional responsibilities of oversight; not the news media which, except for a rare interval lasting from the publication of the Pentagon Papers by the NYTimes and over a dozen other papers in defiance of the Nixon administration's efforts to invoke prior restraint, to the investigation and coverage of Watergate, has always been much more comfortable with access journalism than adversarial journalism.

And not the American public who, said Ellsberg, "must have the courage to face responsibly what we're doing in the world."

It was a very mixed experience: Ellsberg seemed genuinely appreciative of the chance to talk with people about the issues he has given himself to for forty years. (There were two moments, one in the film and one during Ellsberg's remarks, when the local audience reacted warmly to praise for Oregon's Senator Wayne Morse.) His own determination to continue his own political activism was evident and inspiring. But it would be impossible to miss his distinct lack of optimism about the future. He voted for Obama, and assumed he would do so again--at a couple of points he referred to Obama's re-election in 2012 as if it were a fait accompli. And yet he expressed little hope that Obama would end the war in Afghanistan--indeed he predicted an escalation of US troop involvement. Although he added somewhat wistfully, almost as an afterthought, that it's still early in Obama's first term; perhaps there's time for him to change direction.

Ellsberg nurtures no great expectations for the anti-war movement in connection with Iraq and Afghanistan (and as audience members noted, there's no draft and no Vietnam-equivalent daily media coverage to provide the added push this time around), yet he considers it necessary work. The anti-war movement, he pointed out, finally prevailed in the case of the Vietnam war . . . but it took ten years.

We need, he said, "a contagion of courage." And that's where things were left hanging.

(Ellsberg will be present for Q & A sessions with the audience after both showings tonight, and the film will be at Cinema 21 through next week.)

Saturday morning tunes: "For those who died that Easter-tide"

On the subject of this woman, Brother Pierce nails it:

She was right. And she was right early, which is more important.

And besides--any excuse to hear the Chieftains. Enjoy.

No fooling: April Drinking Liberally meetings for OR and SW WA

Corvallis meets tonight! Here's the whole run-down for DL chapters in the area. (Click on their link to join their email list.)

Corvallis: Next meeting: Thursday, April 1st.
Meetings: First Thursday of each Month, 5pm - 7pm at Squirrels, 100 SW 2nd St.

Portland: Next meeting: Thursday, April 8th.
Meetings: Second and fourth Thursdays of the month, at the Lucky Lab Brew Hall at 19th and NW Quimby, Thursday at 7pm.

Vancouver: Next meeting: Tuesday, April 13th.
Meetings: Second and fourth Tuesdays, 7pm, at the Back Alley Bar and Grill, 6503 E. Mill Plain Blvd. (West of Andresen, in a strip mall 1/2 block west of Safeway on the south side of Mill Plain. It's deep in the lot.)

Portland Metro-West: Next meeting: Wednesday, April 14th.
Meetings: Second Wednesday of every month, 7:00pm at Ringo's, 12300 SW Broadway St, (just east of Hall Blvd).

St. Helens Next meeting: Wednesday, April 14th.
Meetings: Second Wednesday of each month, 6:30 pm.

Salem: Next meeting: April 15th.
Meetings: Third Thursday of each month, 7:00 pm, at Browns Towne Lounge, 189 Liberty St NE # 112 (Old Sportstop next to Read Opera House)

There are over 300 DL chapters around the country; to find the one near you--or to start one in your neighborhood--go here.)

And if you appreciate Living Liberally promoting progressive action through social interaction--including keeping the whole Drinking Liberally network up and running--consider sending them a little love via Tipping Liberally. Or check with your chapter host about becoming a regular pledge donor.

So wherever you are, join the Drinking Liberally gang for drinks and political conversation.

And remember: DL encourages everyone to drink, and vote, responsibly.

(Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)