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.

The search for the p3 epithet continues

A few weeks ago, I inventoried some of the best of the best in the international effort to find a new tag for GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump (other than "GOP presidential nominee," which gives me the oogies every time I type it.)

As I explained, I'd coined the phrase "slo-mo exploding citrus" for in-house use here at the blog, but with repetition I find it's just too clunky. "Short-fingered vulgarian" will always be a sentimental favorite, of course, and "Cheetos Jesus" is a damned fine piece of work, too.

And the to-the-point "Litigious Deadbeat" also deserves recognition. Same with "Homegrown Demogogue" – plus, it's sort of amusing to imagine Trump hearing that and thinking, "Hey, people think I'm a demigod!", except that such a misunderstanding is likely beyond the grasp of his peurile working vocabulary. (Even though.)

This morning I had made it no more than half-way through my daily online reading when I realized that I'd seen three different writers already who had each selected the word "unhinged" to describe Trump's performance at his – for want of a better term – press conference yesterday morning.

So maybe "unhinged" should be under consideration as le mot juste. The Unhinged Donald Trump? The Unhinged One?

Of course, the press conference's high-water mark, Trump calling on Putin use the good offices of the FSB in finding and leaking the emails from Hillary's term as Secretary of State, was walked back by Trump as "sarcasm" barely 24 hours later – which is a little odd; usually he would simply have denied that he said it. And that, in turn, has furthered the process of tying Vladimir Putin to Trump's ass like a tin can. (Last week Josh Marshall detailed Trump's financial dependence on Putin and Putin's friends. This week, George Will suggested that's the reason Trump won't release his tax records.)

It's a maxim here at p3 that, if everybody's interests all lay in the same direction anyway, you don't need a conspiracy. (Ockham may have said it first, but I said it better.) That's why I'm not including "The Manchurian Candidate" or its geographic variants in this list. Putin doesn't need to directly control Trump in order to realize the benefits of Trump's candidacy. He just has to recognize them. Similarly, Trump needn't be making a gift of the his policy positions to Putin – for example, his ideas about NATO are essentially unchanged from the days when the Soviet Union was presided over by Mikhail Gorbachev. No, I doubt that Trump is Raymond Shaw to Putin's Dr. Yen Lo. He's more like Chester to Putin's Spike.

But this does suggest another moniker for Trump, and one with a certain piquant historical resonance:

Useful Idiot.

The search continues.

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.

Sunday evening toons: Decisions, decisions

Do we focus this week's toon review on the continuing problem with guns in our violent country (in contrast, Nice had a truck problem; will the NRA say this proves everyone at the celebration should have had a truck too?), or do we turn our attention to the circus of D-list celebrities, political neverwozzers, and Trump family members who are filling the stage at the Republican National Convention this week – a scene with its own promise of violence?

At this point, are political cartoonists starting to stockpile shooting-death ideas, just trying to tread water in a world where they've needed three of them since Monday?

An interesting sidelight to both the police and civilian deaths in the last couple of weeks is that several of the civilians shot (or shooting) had carry or concealed carry permits. Apart from the fact that this didn't keep anyone safe (or change the score), police – who've never been fans of concealed carry for everyone – are starting to be more upfront about their opinion that the free-fire zone approach isn't making their jobs easier. It would be interesting to see a cage match between the NRA and the police unions – although I shudder to think how much worse things might have to get before that happens.

Oddly enough, beyond Jesse Springer having some Oregon-themed fun with it (below) there wasn't much in the way of Pokémon Go this week. Are cartoonists too cool for it? Or were they so busy shuffling down the sidewalk, head down over their phones, bumping into things, that there just wasn't time? (And may I say that the arguments about the health benefits of walking around playing Pokémon Go have to be just about the silliest thing I've ever heard.) Steve Breen's in the neighborhood though, with a good one about our (d)evolving idea of how to vacation. (Shorter version: No pix or it didn't happen!)

And while Jeff Danziger got wrong-footed by Trump's screwy VP selection process (if it deserves the term, since it appears that the decision wasn't so much "made" as it was "congealed"), it's a fabulous image so I'm including it.

And by the way, the Notorious RBG was right and she shouldn't have apologized. Jack Ohman (below), Ann Telnaes (below), and John Cole all address that this week, Ohman going for the outrage, and Telnaes and Cole going for the laugh. And I'm working on a piece to go up in the next day or two. But in the meantime, just so we're all clear: apology, wrong.

Oh, and one other thing: Because I held off last Sunday's toon review until Tuesday evening in the naïve belief that we might get a break in all the shooting, it threw off the timing for several regulars around here who publish weekly. They'll be back next week, now that I'm back on schedule. Promise.

Today's toons were selected late last night, mostly on impulse, then I asked my people if I really had to go with them, and they said yes I did, and I said I didn't want to, and they said too bad, so – fine! – here they are, 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 cartoon goodness.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Antonio Rodriguez, Ted Rall, Chip Bok, John Deering, Walt Handlesman, Steve Kelley, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Rob Rogers.

p3 Legion of Merit: Robert Ariail.

In a bit of a turn-around, this week Gary Varvel gives, rather than receives, the p3 "Mr. Congeniality" Award.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (tie): Jerry Holbert and Matt Weurker.

Ann Telnaes watches in glee as the Notorious RBG gives the vulgar one a trimmin'.

Keith Knight notes America's five-year economic boom, of sorts. Thanks, Obama.

Reuben Bolling wonders: What's wrong with this picture?

Carol Lay tells a beautiful story with an ending that's so her.

The Comic Curmudgeon stumbles on a notion in Hagar the Horrible that is deeply, deeply disturbing.

Comic Strip of the Day hits the Friday comics perfecta, though he just misses the trifecta. But for a good reason.

What a zany! What a knucklehead! What a dope! What a – yipe! A nation that spent the last week walking around staring at their iPhones looking for fictional creatures clearly needs to be reminded of the simpler pleasures, like burlesque and vaudeville. (Did you say Farmville? No! Shush!) "Stage Door Cartoon," directed in 1944 by Fritz Freleng from a story by Michael Maltese, with uncredited voice work by Portland's Own Mel Blanc (Bugs Bunny) and Arthur Q. Lewis (Elmer Fudd), and great musical direction (also uncredited) by Carl Stalling. Watch the expression on Bugs' face at the end of the piano gag. That was when animation was animation. Also watch for an early version of the character who would become Yosimite Sam. Watch "Stage Door Cartoon" at DailyMotion.

The Exalted Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman draws a dark comparison.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen points to the next public health crisis. But there may be a cure.

Matt Bors wonders exactly what book we're going by here.

Jesse Springer has some pocket monsters you may discover here in the Beaver State:

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.

The unforgiving minute: Succession dreams, and scarier things

A couple of days ago, in that last dream you sometimes have before the alarm goes off, I dreamed that Trump and Pence got elected. The residue of dismay from that dream was hard to shake off.

Then, this morning, presumably safe in the wakened world and browsing the news, it occurred to me that if those two got elected, and if Trump (now the Cheetos Jesus in Chief) were to leave the Oval Office suddenly vacant mid-term – whether by getting his hair caught up in the compressor fan of an Air Force One jet engine or succumbing to his signature inability to stay focused – it would be Pence who would succeed him as President of the United States. 

Then, as the shakes began to set in, I realized: Pence, perfectly awful as he is (and I chose that phrase with some care), would merely be first in line to replace him. Based on the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, signed into law by Harry Truman (who could not on his worst day have imagined things coming to this), should Pence slip and fall in the shower, he would be succeeded by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. 

Were Ryan to be killed in a freak weight-training accident, the next in line would be President Pro Tempore of the Senate Orrin Hatch.  

Should Hatch inadvertently impale himself on one of his collar stays, the next in line would be . . . whoever Trump had seen fit to select as his Secretary of State.

I came to about four hours later next to a dumpster twenty blocks from here. Two little kids were prodding me nervously with a stick.

Minute's up, thank heavens.

Ah, the Hoosier state, where Republicans fail upwards

(Updated below.)

 Wow. So it's going to be Pence.  Proud son of the state where I was born, although not the state I'm from.

Not sure why Trump would pick him, but it's his business. Maybe the Short-Fingered Vulgarian needed someone to put a happy face on bigotry, misogyny, and corporate fascism. I never thought that Gingrich had much of a chance -- Trump would never allow another ego that big on the same stage with him. And the same, probably, for Christie, with the added fact that Trump might be smart enough to know he could never turn his back on him.

Or maybe, as Trump himself said not long ago, he wants a Veep with executive and legislative experience (however dubious the outcome) running all the day-to-day business of the last superpower, while he . . . does whatever he'll do. maybe. Thinking up smart, big ideas that people will love. Continuing his twitter war with Elizabeth Warren, Whatever.

From Pence's side it's probably easier to explain: He can't go back the House, really; Evan Bayh just bigfooted the hell out of the Senate race; and after last year's Religious Freedom Restoration Act debacle, he's polling within the margin of error for re-election as governor in a very red state.  If he still wants to be a Name (for anything other than sending back a steak) in 2020, he needs to stay at least somewhat visible  (Does Pence want to run in 2020? Of course he does. Name me one GOP governor, congressional rep, or senator who didn't look at the 2016 primary and think, "Hey, maybe I've got a shot here.") Apparently being remembered as the Sarah Palin (or perhaps the Dan Quayle) of 2016 will do it, in his mind.

So he'll be scheduled for Wednesday night of the convention, after the Florida AG who ended her investigation of Trump U after she got a considerable contribution check from a Trump charity, followed by an astronaut, a golfer who Trump once fired on Celebrity Apprentice, and Newt Gingrich and Ted Cruz. I think I detect a theme here: I'll take Losers who Will Crawl on Their Bellies for Me for $200, Alec.  (I just can't figure out what the astronaut did wrong to get this gig.*)

Good luck with all that, Governor Pence.

*Update 7/21/2016: Eileen Collins, all is forgiven.

Quote of the day: Hearts and minds, greeting us as liberators, yada, yada, yada

“Today I feel so happy,” said Salim Hamid, 44. “It is like a wedding to me to see the person who destroyed my country being nervous because of being asked a lot of questions.”

Mr. Hamid said he wished he could throw a shoe at Mr. Blair — a grievous insult in the Arab world — just as an Iraqi journalist did to President George W. Bush when he visited Baghdad in 2008.

- Salid Hamid, Iraqi citizen and a man after my own heart, reflecting on the Chilcot Report forcing former British Prime Minister and Bush Administration lap poodle to take "full responsibility" for Britain's part in Bush's invasion of Iraq, which he adds he would do all over again if he were faced with the choice, so that's nice.

p3 Pro tip: Mr. Blair, never repeat the charge while denying the charge.

Tuesday afternoon (delayed from Sunday) toons: Always look on the bright side of life

I decided to hold on past my usual Saturday night deadline for this post just to see if the extra day or two could shift the needle past pearly-gates and Uncle-Sam-wept cartoons to handle last week's outburst of All-American Violence. The results were mixed.

I woke up early yesterday morning and couldn't get back to sleep. So, for the first time in ten or fifteen years, I listened to NPR's Morning Edition. I discovered to my slowly-increasing horror that (1) rightwing legacy admission Jonah Goldberg has, at some point during my long absence, become Cokie Robert's sidekick on her Monday morning salon, and (2) no matter how many black men were shot to death by cops, or how many cops were shot to death by black men in the US in the space of a few days . . . well, there's always a silver lining:

Yeah, it's always hard when the cloud is this dark to look for silver linings to it. But I think one of the things - one of the benefits, if that's the - not an inappropriate word - of these horrible shootings in Minnesota and in Louisiana, combined with this horrible event in Dallas, is that it forces a little humility on every side of this sort of culture war.

Yeah, that one's got it all: The discovery of an upside to violent death in our violent country; enforced humility, whatever that might be; and – my favorite – a "both-siderist" approach to the culture war.

I stopped listening at that point. Then a few minutes later I had second thoughts– perhaps I had judged too harshly – maybe that annoying couple of minutes after all those years might not be a fair sampling. So I tuned in again, and found Fox News face Mara Liasson interviewing Melania Trump to determine what kind of a first lady the latter would make. So apparently I wasn't too harsh, and I needn't tune back in for another ten or fifteen years.

(Side note to NPR: Give them all the jobs you want, but Pierce is right: They'll still hate you.)

Although with the benefit of hindsight and a big ol' wad of 2016-style cynicism, I suppose you could say Hillary Clinton supporters found a silver lining, since the horror of Dallas and St. Paul and Baton Rouge forced even her most implacable foes to divert their attention for a couple of days, knocking Benghazi, emails, and the FBI declining to bring charges against her off-screen.

Same thing happened with Great Britain's turmoil after Brexit, although Americans were never going to be that interested in it anyway because first, we don't understand what the EU does (much the same could be said for most English voters who weren't young or living in London); and second, we don't understand how their parliamentary system works (what kind of system produces a new leader in four weeks instead of four years?), and third, well, let's be frank – it's not the US, so who cares?

Roger Ailes got a break from the spectacle of more and more Fox News Blondes lining up for or against him regarding the sexual harrassment charges against him. (Ailes was producer of The Merv Griffin Show, one of the best musical/variety/talk shows of the 1960s. Today he runs Fox News. If it would assure that the latter never existed, would you give up the former? Discuss.)

And the hapless people whose job it is to explain why Donald Trump isn't a bigoted boor got a day or two off until He came roaring back to explain why a six-point star isn't a Star of David, no matter where he found it or how he used it. And the GOP convention organizers got a respite from explaining why Carrot Top declined a speaking slot.

So, in lieu of our traditional p3 Picks of the week, we're going to break it down into who had a good week, and who had a bad week. 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.

Bad week:

Jeff Danziger, Mike Luckovich, Clay Jones, Steve Kelley, and Brian McFadden.

Everybody else:

Jeff Danziger, Jim Morin, Matt Davies, Henry Payne, Joel Pett, Drew Sheneman, and Matt Weurker.

p3 Best of Show: Brian McFadden.

p3 "Pick Your Amendmen"t Prize: Dan Wasserman.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Bob Gorrell, Milt Priggee, and Ken Catalino..

Ann Telnaes captures a moment that many feared would never happen, and some true-believers might have trouble coping with now that it has.

Tom Tomorrow discovers the truth. Duck and cover.

Keith Knight struggles, as father, educator, and artist, to explain the naked lunch moment..

Reuben Bolling sez, forget about Trump University, and the Trump Institute! If you want to make money by the truckload, here is the course for you. (All Trump scams should be played for entertainment purposes only, not investment purposes.)

Red Meat's Bug-Eyed Earl wrestles with the problem of a niche readership.

Mike Peterson, pre-dawn proprieter of Comic Strip of the Day, is taking time out, so to speak, for surgery, and has placed his blog in the capable hands of a friend and colleague. He's being a lot more taciturn about the whole thing than I would be, but then he has a pretty good explanation for why that would be so. Mike mentioned this a week or two on Facebook, but Liking it seemed pretty ghoulish at the time, so instead, I dedicate this song to him along with wishes for a speedy recovery.

"Oh, won'tcha come and climb the mountain with me?" "I-Ski Love-Ski You-Ski," directed by Dave Fleischer in 1936, with uncredited voice work by Jack Mercer (Popeye), Gus Wickie (Bluto), and Mae Questel (The Slender One). Also uncredited, musical director Sammy Timberg (who, along with lyricist Bob Rothenberg), wrote the main theme song, "Won't You Come and Climb a Mountain With Me." By the way, the opening credits mention a patent-pending process used in the making of the cartoon; it's the stereoptic process in which different layers of background are painted on separate panes that move left-to-right as the characters cross the screen, creating a surprising sense of depth of field.

The Right-Sized Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman brings up an interesting question: When they came to arrest Anne Frank, why didn't she arrest them right back? Hmm? Eh? Trump's got your number there, hasn't he?

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen finds one aspect of the recent mass shootings and in-custody shootings that we can all get together about. Hint: For a lot of people, it slipped through the cracks of last week's stories, but it shouldn't have.

Matt Bors sympathizes: It's tough to be a really good guy when those wacky coincidences keep getting in the way. "I bet I've got the best coincidences you ever saw! People love my coincidences!"

Jesse Springer has his doubts about the proposed Oregon corporate tax hike known as IP 28 – which puts him on the same bus as just about everyone else in the state who likes the fact that we have the lowest corporate income tax rate in the nation.

Test your toon-captioning superpowers 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.

Quote of the day: And Kicking off George Bush's sorta sad week

(Updated below)

Rarely in the history of the United States has the nation been so ill-served as during the presidency of George W. Bush.

- That's the first sentence of the preface to Jean Edward Smith’s biography of George W. Bush. After this, one supposes, Smith really settles down to rendering a judgment on Bush's presidency. (Hat-tip to Thomas Mallon's review in The New Yorker.)

Smith's line is also being added to my collection of great opening sentences (non-fiction division).

Poor Dubya hasn't been having a very good week, has he? Smith's bio came out on Monday the 4th. Then, on Wednesday, the day Bush turned 70 – a day when more reflective people than Dubya (which is to say, almost anyone) might want to pause and consider how they've spent their time on this old world – the Chilcot Report dropped, providing a withering assessment of the British role in the Iraq War (pdf).

The Chilcot Report mainly takes the actions of the Blair government to task, leaving to the US the task of producing a similar official accounting of the mendacity, incompetence, and barefaced illegality by the Bush Administration before, during, and after the war. (Not gonna happen, I'm afraid.)

I should note that the Report has a pretty pedestrian first sentence: "We were appointed to consider the UK’s policy on Iraq from 2001 to 2009, and to identify lessons for the future." Less of a Jane Austen, as these things go, more of a Richard Nixon. So it wasn't placed in competition with other worthy opening lines. But you don't have to read far into the executive summary to get to the zingers – and they seem all the more harsh to my American ear by their understatedness.

(Update:  And here's the last sentence of Smith's biography. Serves me right for waiting until the book comes to my local library:

Whether George W. Bush was the worst president in American history will be long debated, but his decision to invade Iraq is easily the worst foreign policy decision ever made by an American president.”

The unforgiving minute: I'll believe it when he leaves Fox News for the QVC channel

So George Will has declared that the GOP "is not my party" because it's about to sanctify Trump's presumptive status as their presidential nominee. He's now technically an unaligned voter.

What does that mean? It simply means that, now that the primary season is over, he can create a nothing-but-symbolic distance between himself and his life-long party – at least until the November election is over, at which point he can quietly return to the fold. So what if he's probably not going to cast a vote for Trump, in an election where even the negatives-burdened Hillary Clinton stands fair to clean his clock in both the popular vote and the electoral college? (And Trump, who's called Will a "loser" anyway, won't care either way).

It is the emptiest of empty gestures. All it means is that Will's going to leave the top of his ballot blank and vote Republican the rest of the way down. Trust me: It's still his party.

Nice try, George, but Jen Sorenson has got your number.  And, albeit from a different direction, so does J. D. Crowe.

Minute's up.

This is an insult to rats

First Boris Johnson bailed off the crippled ship that is post-Brexit England, and now the most punch-worthy face in British government is right behind him:

Another British politician is stepping aside because of the vote to exit the European Union. This time it's Nigel Farage, one of the chief proponents of the Brexit vote, who is resigning as head of the U.K. Independence Party because the country is getting out of the European Union. His goal is achieved, he says.

Lauren Frayer reports from London for our Newscast desk that Farage says his work is done. "I've done my bit," he says, "I couldn't possibly achieve more than we managed to get in that referendum."

(More via Balloon Juice, here.)

Oh, what complete horseshit. This is an insult to rats because the rats never set fire to the ship themselves.

On the other hand, it does call to mind the many attempts to draw parallels between the Brexit people  -- with the bad faith, faulty math, and xenophobia that goaded them forward -- and Trump and his supporters on this side of the pond.  I never thought the numbers work for that scenario: The xenophobes over here don't outnumber the Others the way they do in GB, so there's less chance -- not zero, but certainly not enough -- of tipping an election into the lap of the slo-mo exploding citrus this fall.

What this suggests to me is the possibility -- although obviously not the certainty -- of Trump following the lead of Johnson and Farage, realizing that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. (It is not logical, but it is often so.)

If Trump does bail out, I'd expect him to justify it much like Farage did: He's accomplished everything he set out to do (of course he has! he always does!), so why waste his time actually being President of the United States -- which he could easily do, if he wanted, and he'd be so good at it you wouldn't believe it -- when it's so obviously a step down from being Himself?

Sunday morning toons: You know your party's nominating convention is radioactive

(Wowsers! Greetings to everyone from Mike's Blog Round Up who stopped by! And thanks to Batocchio for helping the snake swallow the elephant!  But to get back on track: You know your party's nominating convention is radioactive . . . )

. . . when Ted Nugent begs off attending because of – get this! – his "intensive concert touring schedule." As Chandler Bing would say, could there be a more obviously implausible excuse? I think "intensive concert touring schedule" should be the "I'm washing my hair on Saturday night" of the twenty-first century. It has that same level of a disdain that can't even be bothered to sound believable. (And by the way, Ted: Nineteen seventy-seven called, and wants its shirt back.) Clay Jones has a suggestion, below, to fill the awkward silence at the podium.

On only distantly-related matters: It took years, and a lot of taxpayer money, and many shamelessly prodded connections – remember the bait shop in Hot Springs? the blue dress? Sidney Blumenthal? – but the nothingburger of the Whitewater investigation, intended to deligitimize the election of a Democratic president, finally uncovered a little nugget of political gold when it eventually led to Bill Clinton being questioned under oath about his extramarital affairs. (This, in turn, finally provided the grounds the GOP thought would justify impeachment, and it did – followed by Clinton's acquittal, his rise in the polls, the GOP losing a zillion seats in Congress, and Newt Gingrich's resignation in humiliation.)

And so, a generation later, after years, and a lot of taxpayer money, and many shamelessly prodded connections – remember Hillary's concussion? Susan Rice on Face the Nation? Sidney Blumenthal?* – the nothingburger that has been the Benghazi inquisition, intended to deligitimize a Democratic presidential frontrunner, refuses to die, due most recently by the unforced error by Bill Clinton and Attorney General Lynch. But god love Rep. Trey Gowdy and his committee: They're still out there looking for that nugget of gold. Ask Matt Davies, below.

(And here's a heads-up to Gowdy: Keep your calendar for 2036 open: Not even twenty years after resigning his congressional seat in disgrace, Newt Gingrich is being mentioned as a short-lister for the job of running mate with the most disliked presidential candidate in his lifetime.)

__________________

*As far as I'm aware, this is the only known case of the use of Sidney Blumenthal to satisfy the Comedy Rule of Three.  I'm proud of this achievement.

Today's toons were selected by an elaborate vetting process including a 100-question form, and extensive review of tax records and public speeches and articles, 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: Adam Zyglis, Miguel Villalba, Signe Wilkinson, Steve Sack, Jeff Danziger, Matt Davies, John Deering, Clay Jones, Henry Payne, Matt Weurker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Jeff Danziger (although, as far as I know, neither he nor any other political cartoonist took me up on my generous offer).

p3 Legion of Merit: Tom Toles.

p3 Cross of Ghoul: Darrin Bell.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Paul Szep and Michael Ramirez.

p3 "Sorry, but that's what we Time Lords call 'A fixed point in time'" Memo of Consolation: Phil Hands.

Ann Telnaes considers Boris Johnson's handling of Britain's exit from the EU to be nothing to sneeze at.

Mark Fiore says that Hillary-haters among congressional Republicans (but I repeat myself) are trying to raise the Albania question – you know: Shifty. Untrustable.

Tom Tomorrow tunes in on the realistic, practical defender of occasional, regrettable mass morality incidents. Hundred-yard stare and all.

Keith Knight looks on in fear at the wrath of dog.

Reuben Bolling tells the story of the UK's blustery day.

Red Meat salutes that local electronics chain that's about more than just a battery club.

The Comic Curmudgeon yearns for "the days when a bird-man wearing saddle shoes and what appear to be purple leg warmers but no pants can have a frank, honest, and open discussion about his sex life in the newspaper." In context, it makes sense.

Comic Strip of the Day looks at the latest neverwozzer from the Benghazi inquisition and concludes, sadly, No, at long last, we have no sense of decency.

But the Black Knight 'as a fire-breathin' dragon! Incredibly, even after the Hunting Trilogy. "Rabbit of Seville," and "What's Opera, Doc?" it was a fairly minor piece, "Knighty Knight Bugs," directed in 1958 by Friz Freling, that finally won Bugs Bunny his one and only Oscar for Best Animated Short. And, as Wikipedia notes, "Knighty Knight Bugs" was to a considerable degree a retread of another face-off between Bugs and Yosemite Sam from 1954. Watch "Knighty Knight Bugs" at eBaum's World.

The Right-Sized Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman captures every kid's disappointment for this holiday weekend.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen documents the process of the worst man in the world trying – desperately trying – to have his come-to-Jesus moment.

Matt Bors looks at the threat posed by a ubiquitous concealed-carry device.

Test your toon-captioning superpowers 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.