Sunday morning toons: Republicans dominate the news-cycle this week

(Updated below.)

Although it's almost certainly not in the way their media strategy people -- uhm, they do have media strategy people, right? I mean, I get it that, with all that money, they have media people, but do they have media strategy people? -- might have hoped.

Gawker did a massive document dump, made up of years and years of the complex tax information Mitt Romney most likely didn't want made public. Expect the crowd-sourced analysis to trickle out, drip by drip, well past the end of the RNC convention next week.

And speaking of the RNC convention: Hurricane Isaac may well disrupt the first day or two of the festivities, forcing superannuated Christian Yoda-wannabe Pat Roberts to explain why it's not God's will when it happens to Republicans.^*

And, of course, we discovered that US Rep. (and GOP Senate candidate) Todd Akin (R-Dingbat) knows less about what he might call “the birds and the bees” than the average five-year-old, despite having co-sponsored (with GOP VP presumptive Paul Ryan) the infamous HR 3, which drew preposterous (and legally unenforceable) distinctions between rape and forcible rape.

^*Update: Pat, you sneaky rascal, you got this one past me. Didn't see it coming. Well played, sir.

Today's toons are real toons, not to be confused with things that Todd Akin believes are claiming to be toons just to get government benefits, from among the week's pages at McClatchyDC.com, Slate, Time, About.com, and Daryl Cagle, and elsewhere:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Kevin Siers, Lee Judge, Rick McKee, Bill Day, Mike Thompson, Walt Handlesman, Matt Wuerker, Eric Allie, John Cole, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Chad Lowe.

p3 Legion of Merit: Lee Judge.

p3 Legion of Merit: Rob Tornoe.

p3 Award for Best Reversal of a Tired Old Meme: Clay Bennett.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Jack Ohman, Steve Sack, Jim Morin and John Deering.

p3 World Toon Review: Ingrid Rice (Canada), Rachel Gold (Austria), Victor Ndula (Kenya), and Christo Komarnitski (Bulgaria),


Ann Telnaes reminds us just just how far the GOP has come since 2008.


Mark Fiore pays tribute to the U.S. House committee that keeps us moving forward. There be dragons!


Taiwan's Next Media Animation reveals, among other things, the first rule of Delaware's Toddler Fight Club.


A cartoon so magnificent it could even survive being animated by Hal Broadax: Last Wednesday marked the 132nd anniversary of the birth of George Harriman, creator of Krazy Kat. How good was Krazy Kat? So good that e. e. cummings wrote the introduction to the strip's first collected release in book-form.


Transitions, Part I: Matt Groening is finally winding down Life in Hell. Given that “The Simpsons” brought Groening more money than God, it's amazing to realize that he syndicated “LiH” himself for 32 years.


Transitions, Part II: Fans of Richard Thompson's daily strip Cul de Sac marked with sadness the ending of the strip -- although by no means that of the author -- as he devotes his energy to handling his battle with Parkinsons disease.


Tom Tomorrow investigates Paul Ryan's slightly translucent friend.


Mike Wallace surely has to account in the afterlife for the idea of his son Chris's lame-ass career in the family business. Same with Tim Russell. And someday George H. W. Bush will likely have to do much the same. But Keith Knight points out the worst example imaginable of the Descent of Species.


Tom the Dancing Bug reports: It's the shortest summer on record! Or maybe it only feels that way. Whatever.


Red Meat's Ted Johnson and Mister Wally discuss the tricky business of marriage. Nobody make any sudden moves!


And I only cleaned my dress in a gallon of gasoline! Fans of J. Wellington Wimpy will enjoy his co-star turn with Popeye in “The House Builder-Upper,” directed by Dave Fleisher in 1938, with animation by Seymour Kneitel and Abner Matthews. Olive Oyl manaages to burn her house down, so the volunteer fire department -- that would be Popeye and Wimpy -- build her a new one. (Yes, Mitt Romney, they built it for her!)  Lots of classic physical comedy in the Laurel and Hardy tradition, and a great (uncredited) Sammy Timberg score featuring “We'll Build Your House.” No Bluto this time, though (I'm pretty sure they were between voice actors for him at the time).

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The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Jack Ohman points out the essential component that MAX trains lack.

Matt Bors raises an interesting point: It really isn't news that Missouri Representative and Senate candidate Todd Akin believes that most rape victims aren't really victims of rape; hell, he and Paul Ryan tried to codify that idea into federal law last year. What's astonishing is that Akin has made it this far in life -- he's married, after all -- with a five-year-old's understanding of what he might delicately refer to as ”The Birds and the Bees.”

Jesse Springer has a little treat for those who think things are already bad enough in Oregon:

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