Sunday morning toons: We were Nate Silvered into submission

Yes, it's true. Last week's p3 toon review predicted that “Tuesday's presidential election is probably now fated to go unresolved for weeks.” And I suppose it did, if by “weeks” we mean “about forty-five minutes.” So thanks to Nate Silver for teaching us that you should leave your vote-count predicting to a number-crunching sports junky, not to former speech writers, winless campaign managers, disgraced former political staffers, eternal primary losers, out-of-touch columnists, anyone currently or formerly employed by Fox News, or bloggers who use Sunday morning to round up the best in political cartooning for the week.

On to this week's toon-ography: The GOP has a new empty chair to talk to; the Dana Scully of economics recaptures Ted Kennedy's seat; the Dark Money Boys spent tens of millions on the 2012 election, and didn't even get a lousy T-shirt. Also too, Veterans Day makes it two national celebrations in one week that Mitt Romney has to sit out.

And, as you might have noticed already, there seems to be a lot of chair/seat themed humor this week. No idea what to make of that.

Anyway, today's toons were selected using a constantly-tweaked statistical model incorporating George Will's empathy with the average voter, Newt Gingrich's track record, Dick Morris's moral standards, and something the dolphins once told Peggy Noonan, from the week's pages at GoComics, McClatchyDC.com, Slate, Time, About.com, Daryl Cagle, and other fine sources.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Signe Wilkinson, Chan Lowe, John Deering, Walt Handlesman, Tom Toles, Nate Beeler, Randy Bish, J. D. Crowe, Jen Sorensen, Matt Weurker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Clay Bennett.

p3 Class Valedictorian Award: David Fitzsimmons.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (tie): Steve Sack and Lisa Benson.

p3 “Ah, If Only . . . “ Award: Steve Kelly.

p3 “Shrinking Habitat Awareness” Certificate: Pat Bagley.

p3 Badge for Mathematical Excellence: Nick Anderson. (Bonus points to anyone who gets the reference.)

p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Cam Cardow (Canada), Petar Pismestrovic (Austria), and Ingrid Rice (Canada),


Ann Telnaes stops in at the bar where “last call” does not make any of the regulars seem more attractive.


Mark Fiore warns of a threat to one of the greatest threats to our economic recovery!


Taiwan's Next Media Animation brings you the 2012 election you wish you'd gotten -- complete with giant lizards and Little Stevie Wonder!


Which one's the strange visitor from another planet with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, again? Superman meets Neil deGrasse Tyson. Nothing remains the same thereafter. (And, by the way, DC comics are now available for Kindle, Nook, and iStuff.)


Tom Tomorrow shows how to see what's really going on around you. They live!


Keith Knight shares a Halloween story.


Tom the Dancing Bug's favorite plutocrat, Hollingsworth Hound, has no problem.


Red Meat's Bug-eyed Earl shares a fond childhood memory.


The Comics Curmudgeon shares the greatest “Lockhorns” ever written.


If I were President: To salute the power of the gender gap up and down the ticket in this week's elections, p3 proudly re-shares “Olive Oyl for President,” directed in 1948 by Izzy Sparber, with voice work by Jack Mercer and Mae Qustel, and music by Winston Sharples. It's a tamer reworking of a much weirder 1932 Betty Boop toon on the same theme, and it includes an early cameo appearance by former cartoon B-lister Little Audrey (licking the giant ice cream cone). President Oyl's “special cabinet” included leading men (like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby) who were then under contract to Paramount, which owned Famous Studios, which controlled the animation rights to Popeye. See how that works? (And why, 64 years later, Disney now owns LucasFilms and you're going to get three more Star Wars films whether you want them or not?)

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

The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Jack Ohman (who is no longer an Oregonian but remains grandfathered in) looks at the Romney voter's post-election nightmare.

Matt Bors looks at the Big List of Disasters. It's not as funny as it might sound.

Jesse Springer takes us on safari to meet Oregon's latest threatened species:

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

Saturday morning tunes: Politics and poker -- shuffle up the cards and find the joker!

For all of you who are taking a breather from the wheelings and dealings of the 2012 campaign (or taking your bearings for 2014 and 2016), here's my favorite song from the 1961 Fiorello! the first Broadway musical about a New York City mayor -- and probably the last, unless someone out there is workshopping “Rudy!” (I foresee an Act II show-stopper: “A Noun, A Verb, and 9/11”).

Which seems unlikely. (And Peter Stuyvesant doesn't count,)

The role of Fiorello LaGuardia was originated by Tom Bosley (you knew him as Mr. Cunningham on “Happy Days”), with Howard Da Silva (you knew him as Ben Franklin in “1776”) as NYC Republican boss Ben Marino.

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

And if that's not enough, SFGate.com offers this playlist to summarize the 2012 elections in song.

Have at it.

Quote of the day: Changing the rhetorical paradigm

Occupy changed the national dialogue. Willard Romney's surreptitiously taped comments about "the 47 percent" would not have had the resonance they did had the Occupy movement not gotten the country talking about the 99 percent and the one percent. It created a new rhetorical paradigm that simply would not have been there had it not been originally shouted at the correct buildings. And it was that new paradigm that triumphed Tuesday night.

- Charles Pierce, tallying up the influence of Occupy on the Massachusetts Senate race, the Wisconsin Senate the Ohio Senate race, the Ohio Senate race, the Obama victory in Ohio, and the defeat of Romney -- all by “shouting at the right buildings.”

Quote of the day: “Appealing to Hispanics” and “Appealing to women”

I am hearing a great deal of talk about "appealing to Hispanics" and "appealing to women." But I am not hearing much about endorsing actual policies. What happened last night is not a matter of cosmetics. This is not false consciousness. This a real response to real policies. Mitt Romney actually endorsed Arizona's immigration policies. You can't fix this by flashing more pictures of brown people.

This is not a "branding problem." This is a "problem problem." Latino voters didn't go crazy. Latino voters went voter.

- Ta-Nehisi Coates on the inability of white male voters to elect Mitt Romney in 2012.

The morning after: Let the conservative “stab in the back” purging and bloodletting begin!

Because, as always, conservatism can't possibly fail on its own merits, because its ideas and candidates are unpopular; it can happen only because of betrayal from within.

The morning after

Via Petar Pismestrovic (Austria):

Reading: The Cynic and the President

While you're waiting for the polls to close (I'll be watching returns from my office beginning at 5pm PT), here's a taste of ”The Cynic and President Obama,” the follow-up to Charles Pierce's 2008 Esquire article “The Cynic and Senator Obama.”

The cynic doesn't believe that history is an arc, bending inexorably in any particular direction or another. An arc is a geometric figure tightly circumscribed by mathematical formulae. For the cynic, history is a river, wilder than most, with eddies and whirlpools and backwaters, and an original course to which it always seeks to return. What the cynic has learned over the past twelve years is the truth in Faulkner's observation that the past is never dead, it is not even past.

Nothing ever sinks in the river for good. Everything is thrown to the surface again. He believes that the river churns up the muck from the bottom and brings it to the surface. He believes we can get caught in backwaters so obscure that they no longer appear on modern maps. The cynic also believes that the river can run clear and fresh and soft. But not often. Most of the time, it seeks its original course, and occasionally, despite all the levees and dams and locks we apply to it in order to govern ourselves, it overwhelms them all and floods our pale attempts at civilizing ourselves. That, the cynic thinks, is what happened during the eight years prior to the election of the current president. Not even the sturdiest structures held fast when fear and reckless jingoism sent history back to its original course — which, in case anyone has forgotten, was not democracy. Four years earlier, the cynic wondered if the president was the man to count the cost, whether he could make the country see the wreckage for what the wreckage truly was--the abandonment of the protections of self-government and the flood tide of history that had washed the remnants of that protection away.

"The Cynic and President Obama" is going on the p3 Readings list. (Note that the links to recent readings in the sidebar will soon go away as part of the long-overdue p3 site redesign, but all readings -- going back to 2005 -- will always be available through the Readings link on the p3 List at right.)

Living well: Get it right!

Okay, for the record, you don't have to actually know that it was English poet and orator George Herbert (1593 - 1633) who first coined the phrase “Living well is the best revenge,” among other juicy one-liners. (In point of fact, until very recently, I believed it was first said by Oscar Wilde, and most regular readers know what a pedant I am about these things.)

For all I care, you can imagine it came from the Star Trek movies, just like “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!,” and “Only Nixon could go to China.” Honestly, I don't care that much.

But to pretend that you've never even heard the line before, and that Obama's remark, ”Voting is the best revenge,” is some kind of out-of-the-blue, deep-psych evidence of his incredibly well-suppressed black rage -- and not a Jeopardy!-level allusion to a well-known line (at least well-known since the seventeenth century to people who could read) about the best way to irritate the people who don't like you -- well, that just makes you look like a fool.

Or like someone who hates Obama so much, just for being Obama (as opposed to the many valid reasons for being irked at him), that they'll say anything in the attempt to make him look bad,  which amounts to the same thing.

Seriously, conservatives: If you're really conservative, complain about what he's done to the Fourth Amendment. Or complain about his Congress-circumventing drone wars.

But this -- this “revenge” thing? It just makes you look foolish, no matter how much it dog-whistles to the base. Stop it. Or keep it up. Your call.

Sunday afternoon toons: Shades of 2000

Shades of 2000: Tuesday's presidential election is probably now fated to go unresolved for weeks -- at least if the outcome depends on Ohio, where the Republican Secretary of State is doubling-down on resistance to a court order concerning how and whether provisional ballots will be counted, a move that's destined to make the count process hostage to a string of inevitible court appeals.

(And have I mentioned lately that one of Mitt Romney's main advisors is one of the original Brooks Brothers rioters, the thug who uttered the famous twelve words that stopped the 2000 Florida vote count?)

Of course, in some cases the Republicans, in true “smaller-government” fashion, have outsourced the hands-on work of vote suppression to independent contractor who simply throw completed voter registration forms in the dumpster for recycling. And you thought you'd never see Republicans go green. (Note that, by curbing voting at the registration level, they're also burnishing their “supply-siders” cred.)

All of which makes the elections office Clackamas County, Oregon, somewhat unusual by Republican standards, since rather than reducing opportunities for citizens (especially non-Republicans) to vote, a staffer has helpfully completed mail-in ballots on which some races were left blank by going back and marking the blanks for the Republican. Wasn't that thoughtful?

If this stuff was happening in any other country (of whose leader we didn't approve) (and preferably in the middle-east but not Israel), the Republicans would be the ones screaming to send in the Marines. Not to mention the fact that if these people were selling loose joints instead of stealing votes, they'd be serving three-to-five in one of our many fine private prisons right now.

Other topics this week: the Mouse who controls the Force, the many sides of Governor Christie, and life among the temporarily pro-FEMA. And p3 also proudly brings you a refresher course on the Electoral College . . . 'cause we're all probably gonna need it.

Today's toons will be presented to you free of charge, without presentation of state-issued photo ID, without the payment of any sort of poll tax, and without the need for you to pass any sort of literacy test (although you may find the latter skill useful below), from the week's pages at GoComics, McClatchyDC.com, Slate, Time, About.com, Daryl Cagle, and other fine sources.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Kevin Siers, Joel Pett, Mike Peters, Chris Weyant, Steve Sack, Clay Bennett, Daryl Cagle, Joe Heller, Jen Sorensen, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Nick Anderson.

p3 Legion of Merit: Gary Markstein.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium (tie): Steve Breen, Nate Beeler, Lee Judge, and Rob Tornoe.

p3 Failure to Green-Light Award: Jim Morin.

p3 Fowl-Weather Friend Award: Kevin Siers.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part 1): Jeff Stahler and Rick McKee.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part 2): John Cole and Joel Pett.

p3 Croix de Guerre, with Bloomers: Bill Day. (“She's French, you know.”)

p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Cameron Cardow (Canada), Rachel Gold (Austria), Martin Sutovec (Slovakia), and Ingrid Rice (Canada),


Ann Telnaes raises the possibility that Mitt Romney might be all wet.


Mark Fiore passes along this important message from EPSAS.


Taiwan's Next Media Animation proudly presents Star Wars VII: The Revenge of the Franchise. (And pay close attention: Han really did shoot first!)


Via Comic Riffs, check out the 21 feature-film animations nominated for the 2012 Academy Awards.


In which the blogger reveals his secret life-long ambition to be one of “The Usual Gang of Idiots:” Happy 60th Birthday, MAD Magazine!


Tom Tomorrow invites you to watch as Mittdrake gestures hypnotically. (And remember, they're called “illusions.” “Tricks” are something whores do for money.)


Keith Knight shares one thing he loves about this country.


Tom the Dancing Bug presents those amazing heroes out to do some good.


Red Meat presents The Old Cowboy, wonderin' if he's a mite touched. Naaah.


The Comics Curmudgeon also noticed -- and was disturbed by -- the very same thing I noticed and was disturbed by in today's Luann strip.


The most important college without a football team: The Electoral College episode of ABC's Schoolhouse Rock first aired in 2002, featuring the title song “I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College,” written by George R. Newall and Bob Dorough, and sung buy the inimitible Voice of Schoolhouse Rock, Jack Sheldon (with Dorough). Newall once reflected, with amusement and amazement: "More kids saw Schoolhouse Rock than ever watched Sesame Street […] and the big irony is that it was all done by a bunch of ad guys in their spare time."

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

The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block may soon be getting slightly less big, but not yet:

Jack Ohman announced on Facebook at 10:51am Monday that he was parting ways with the Oregonian, the latest in a steady drip-drip-drip of talent leaving the only state-wide daily Oregon has left. By the end of the week the week his fans got word he had landed safely at the Sacramento Bee. Here's his final toon for the O. (So far, I've heard no word of a replacement at the Oregonian for Ohman, but the smart money says he won't be replaced, probably because it would involve the O spending, you know, smart money.) Good luck at the Bee, Jack.

Matt Bors raises a question I've always wondered about, as well.

After two years of the Oregon House being split 30-30 between the two parties, Jesse Springer looks ahead to the likely tie-breaker this week:

How strong is the toon-captioning Force in you? Find out at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

What a lot of people are still getting wrong about the Romney “let Detroit go bankrupt” story

(And why it's worse than most people think. Updated at the bottom of the post.)

Mitt doesn't say he was “wrong on Detroit,” because he doesn't think he was. And the folks on my Facebook and Twitter feeds have been have a whooping old time with that.

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Letting Detroit go bankrupt! Detroit! The erstwhile symbol of American economic leadership (”What's good for GM is good for the world.”). Ground Zero of an American middle class that was once the envy of the world. The city where, in Mitt's childhood, his father was a merchant-prince.

And although that clip only catches a moment of it, he's been saying all along why he thought it was a good idea to let GM and Chrysler tank. In fact, in that clip, he said it twice. He's been as clear as a buttonhook in the well water about it for four years. It's one of his rare instances of non-self contradiction. But almost no one's really listening all the way through, because “Look! He wanted to let Detroit go bankrupt!” is the easier way to score points.

It's not that Romney's delusional (at least not any more so than usual). Or dishonest (at least not any more so than usual). It's just that no one's asked him precisely the right question in exactly the right way. And no one listens very closely to his answer. And most of the Democrats howling with glee about his bankruptcy “gaffe” don't appreciate how dangerous that oversight is.

Because what Romney wanted -- what he would have brought about had he been in the driver's seat -- was even worse. He wanted to see the auto companies go through bankruptcy and the resulting reorganization “to shed costs.” What “costs” are those?

Labor costs. Union contracts. Worker health care. Pensions. Step One of the Romney plan was to use bankruptcy to bust the unions connected with the automotive industry and break the fundamental promise embodied in their pension plans. And yes, as the governor took care to point out in the third presidential debate, some companies -- like Macy's and 7-Eleven -- do come through bankruptcy and survive. Others aren't so fortunate, though, especially if they have the bad luck to fall into the hands of chop shops like Bain Capital LLC. Romney's upset because, following the bankruptcy move, the Obama administration stepped in with bailout money which allowed the unions to keep a toe-hold in Detroit.

But, delightful as union-busting would no doubt to seem to the governor simply on its own merits, that's just Step One. Remember that part of the Obama administration's rationale for the bailout was that, even if the auto companies had gone through bankruptcy, no banks were then willing or able to step up with the money to help them rebuild. So even with court-enforced restructuring (and “shedding of costs”), where would the money come from?

I'm glad you asked. That's Step Two of the Romney plan. If the banks can't help and the federal government is prevented from helping, that just leaves the paper-manipulators (like Romney's own Bain Capital) to buy GM and Chrysler for pennies on the dollar, then strip 'em and flip em. In the third presidential debate, Romney denied his intention was to enable his vulture-capitalist cronies to gut GM and Chrysler, pay themselves off, and sell off the remaining assets. You've seen the short half-life of his stand on any issue. Do you believe him this time?

Laura Clawson at DailyKos Labor writes:

Romney may not have understood himself to be arguing for liquidation back in 2008. But it would have been the effect if his advice had carried the day. And to this day, regardless of how often and by whom the situation is explained to him, he cannot accept that he was wrong. His certainty that Mitt Romney, Businessman, is always right is too strong to allow for that possibility. And admitting he was wrong would drive home that if he had been president, the American auto industry would have gone under. Michigan and Ohio's economies would have been destroyed. A million jobs would have gone up in flames.

Yes, but that's a feature, not a bug. It's not that Romney wanted to save Detroit, but mistakenly advocated a plan that would inevitably have failed, and is now too vain to admit it. Romney never really wanted to save Detroit.^* Which is why he sees no point in backing down or changing his story.  The mistake is to think he's kidding.

^*(Update:) At least no more than he would presumably be interested in saving the East Coast this afternoon. As everyone is being reminded, and appropriately so, Romney's on record as saying that it would be "immoral" for the government to be involved in disaster relief, that this is more appropriately a state-level (or, ideally, a private-enterprise) function. Ironically, it's one of the rare moments in his political life where he's told the straight truth from the start and stuck to it without variation -- and no one seems to believe him.

The unforgiving minute: And a-one, and a-two, and . . .

Somewhere, at this moment, Dick Lugar must be shaking his head in amusement and dismay.

Poor Dick. He's so old and out of it he thought it was all about governing and leadership. Watching him try to go Teabag-to-Teabag against Mourdock last spring made me secretly thankful that Lawrence Welk died before he and his Champagne Music Makers had to try covering rap music.

Anyway, congratulations to Indiana, whose Senate candidate is currently leading the 2012 GOP Misogyny Open.

Minute's up.

Tough questions: A quick look back at the second presidential “town hall” “debate”

Last week I was going off on my issues with the (then-upcoming) second debate: The “town hall” format, combined with an audience stuffed with (and questioners restricted to) “undecideds” -- voters who've somehow made it to mid-October with not much information about the candidates and no decision about who they're voting for, meaning it's not much like any town I ever lived in -- seems like a waste of opportunity all around.

I wasn't able to tune in until the final question of the night and (although watching the whole thing later eased my concerns a little) that final question confirmed every bad feeling I'd had:

QUESTION: Hi, Governor. I think this is a tough question. To each of you. What do you believe is the biggest misperception that the American people have about you as a man and a candidate? Using specific examples, can you take this opportunity to debunk that misperception and set us straight?

You think it's a “tough question”? For two guys who've been campaigning for 2012 for at least four years, both prepped for a live debate that could help determine who'll be President of the United States in slightly under three months? You think they can't run out the clock on that one without managing to give us some blinding new insight into themselves and their candidacy? Seriously?

Does this no-doubt well-meaning voter (assuming he does vote next month) understand the difference between a presidential debate -- even a lame one -- and a game of “Truth or Dare” when the parents are gone?

Again: Ditch the “town hall” format.

Quote of the day: Ursula K. Le Guin on public libraries

From letters to the editor in last weekend's Sunday Oregonian (I know, I know -- but I absolutely have to have a newspaper of some kind to read with Sunday breakfast):

Thursday's article in The Oregonian ("Library seeks permanent 'yes' vote," Oct. 18) quotes the president of the libertarian Cascade Policy Institute, who says that libraries need "to have a conversation about who their clients are, how to do business, and about how to reduce costs by contracting out various functions." This language of profit-making misses the point.

A great library like ours is a huge operation, run by people with first-class management and business skills who know the people they serve and how to keep expenses to a minimum -- but it's not a business. It's a public service and a public trust. As a storehouse of information, knowledge and art, open to all, it serves the whole county community, and so it's rightly supported by the community.

The present ballot measure setting up a tax district is a long-overdue effort to take the onus of endlessly voting on levies off the citizens by giving the library a stable, adequate income.

A "no" vote will send us back to years of financial instability. A "yes" vote will keep the library doors open -- open to all, every day.

URSULA K. Le GUIN
Northwest Portland

Of course, the very next letter following Le Guin's at the site begins with this sentence: “I'm against all ballot measures that will raise property taxes.” So some people just have a better handle on the idea of “commonwealth” than others.

Meanwhile, if you haven't yet voted (I have), and you're registered to vote in Multnomah County (I'm not), support Measure 26-143.

Also, too, because I like using the word “Capra-esque”

I sat down last Saturday with my voters guide, my list of endorsements, yadda, yadda, yadda, to complete my ballot. Alas, I discovered that my pen was bleeding through the ballot form, spoiling the ballot, which is read by an optical scanner. There was plenty of time (November 1st) to get a replacement ballot (and I'm only a couple of miles from the WashCo Elections Office), but it was still a nuisance.

And of course today it was raining. Ah well. Some places in the world, people risk getting murdered for trying to vote. I only risked getting wet. Cowboy up, Bill.

So I finally got my ballot done and dropped off at the library. (Why at the library? Because although I like Oregon's vote-by-mail system, I still miss the Capra-esque experience of going to some public place where other people in my neighborhood are voting too.)

By the way, the folks at the Elections Office explained to me that a bleed-through on a ballot doesn't necessarily "spoil" it if the mark doesn't happen in the narrowly-defined areas where the optical scanner is expecting to find marks. (Still, don't try this at home, kids!)

Ballots have to be physically received at your county election office by 8pm on Election Day, Tuesday, November 6, 2012. (Postmarks don't count.) Here are the drop-off sites by county.

Quote of the day: On the continuation of foreign policy by other means

Trade is foreign policy. The environment is foreign policy. Energy policy is foreign policy. Human rights are foreign policy. Drought is foreign policy. Starvation is foreign policy. War is generally only foreign policy when one of those other things I mentioned get completely out of control. However, as I suspect we will see argued enthusiastically from both sides tonight, war, and not its historic causes, has come to define foreign policy.

- Charles Pierce on his steadily-diminishing expectations for a “foreign policy presidential debate” in 2012.

This goes out to Charlie.

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Will the Town Called Undecided have delivery pizza?

I've already offered my take on tonight's “town hall” presidential “debate” -- I think that it will be a sad joke, and that all future such events catering to “undecideds” should be done away with.

(The wry irony in the use of "catering to 'undecideds'" will reveal itself momentarily.)

Perhaps suspecting that p3's word is not holy writ anyway, many observers choose to remain optimistic about tonight's set-to (although the more introspective of them would describe the mindset with greater candor as goofy optimism), hoping that a silk purse of informed political choice can somehow come from the sow's ear of an evening devoted to the mental workings of low-information voters.

Here's a little more justification not to dial our expectations needlessly high:

Pizza Hut is rethinking its contest daring people to ask "Sausage or Pepperoni?" at the presidential debate Tuesday.

After the stunt triggered backlash last week, the company says it's moving the promotion online, where a contestant will be randomly selected to win free pizza for life.

The pizza delivery chain had offered the prize — a pie a week for 30 years or a check for $15,600 — to anyone who posed the question to either President Barack Obama or Republican candidate Mitt Romney during the live Town Hall-style debate.

But blogs and media outlets immediately took the pizza delivery chain to task for trying to capitalize on the election buzz by injecting itself into the process.

Pizza Hut spokesman Doug Terfehr said the majority of the feedback the company has seen has been very positive. He said that moving the contest online was a "natural progression of the campaign" after people got excited about the idea and "wished they could get in on it."

Of course they did. Although I've been known to partake of Pizza Hut pizza, the thought of 30 years of dining on their product comes straight out of Sartre. But that could just be me, again.

Perhaps America has dodged a bullet here, but it's still disturbing that -- whatever the reason they had for walking the idea back -- marketers at Pizza Hut (now a subsidiary of something with the Jetsonian name of Yum Brands Inc.) had the idea in the first place and were advancing with the plan. If anyone involved thought it was a debasement of the democratic process (as opposed to the first step in the “natural progression” of a product marketing campaign), the thought didn't seem to deter them much.

Someone somewhere had a picture of the “town hall” “debates” and infinite pizza as natural complements. That should tell us a lot.

Sunday morning toons: The smile versus the puppy-dog eyes

I still don't know why everyone's painting Biden with this “loose cannon”/”crazy uncle” paint, and still don't understand why Ryan is considered a “policy wonk”/”serious person.”

But I think all of America can agree that Jim Lehrer should have moderated his last debate.

In addition to the Veep debate, we've got Syria and lady parts -- all this, and rabbit stew! (You'll see.) So let's get cooking!

Today's toons were selected by an elaborate process involving blindfolds, darts, and root vegetables, from the week's pages at GoComics, McClatchyDC.com, Slate, Time, About.com, Daryl Cagle, and other fine sources.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Kevin Siers, Walt Handlesman, Clay Bennett, Nick Anderson, Adam Zyglis, Bob Englehart, Rob Tornoe, Matt Wuerker, Jen Sorenson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Jim Morin.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part I): Nick Anderson and Mike Luckovich.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part II): Pat Bagley and Glenn McCoy.

p3 Citation for Best Toon Obituary: Chip Bok.

p3 World Toon Review: Ingrid Rice (Canada), Petar Pismestrovic (Austria), Cam Cardow (Canada), and Osama Hajjaj (Jordan),


Ann Telnaes marks the arrival of International Girls' Day (Seriously? A day? Just one?) with an ugly truth.


Mark Fiore brings you “News In a Nutshell” -- revised.


Whether you watched the Veep debate or you didn't, Taiwan's Next Media Animation will make you feel like you didn't.


Tom Tomorrow presents the continuing adventures of Middleman, the superhero who fights for truth, justice, and Grand Bargains. This week's villain: The Plutocrat!


But on the up side, Keith Knight has a second li'l one on the way, so that's good news, right? Right?


Tom the Dancing Bug welcomes a new arrival to that place where the air is sweet.


Red Meat's Ted Johnson and Ted's wife explore the process of negotiation that keeps marriage afloat.


The Comics Curmudgeon notes that Judge Parker has taken a horrific turn. Also for some reason, devil dogs and the end of the universe seem to be recurring themes in other CC posts this week. Take whatever action seems appropriate.


The two greatest contributions of the 2012 election cycle to our national discourse: Newt Gingrich caused the resurrection of thrice, and Joe Biden reanimated malarkey. (For you youngsters, here's the story about the latter.)


”Live in a lamp, eh? Well, t'ings are tough all over, doc!” The Aladdin story gets the Bugs Bunny treatment in “A-Lad-In-His Lamp,” directed by Robert McKimson in 1948. You can always spot McKimson's Bugs Bunny: He's a little stouter of frame, you rarely see him in close-up, and he (and all the other characters) don't just move side-to-side in the frame, they make sweeping gestures that come straight toward the screen. The villain's name is Caliph Hassan Pheffer -- a play on hassenpfeffer, a German stew made with marinated rabbit (and which I can vouch for as delicious as long as you don't think too much about what's on the end of your fork). And while Portland's own Mel Blanc did the voices of Bugs and the Caliph, do you recognize the voice of the genie? It's a very funny early performance by Jim “Thurston Howell”/”Mister McGoo” Backus.

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The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Jack Ohman listens in on a political tracking poll.

Matt Bors features the animated adventures of lady parts fighting for gender justice: The Avenging Uterus!

Jesse Springer bags his own p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium for his hilarious take on the unforced error committed by Oregon's senior senator last winter:

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

A quantum of umbrage: A town called Undecided

It's time -- it's past time -- to dump the town hall debate format from the calender of presidential campaign events.

On the eve of last night's VP debate, Lynn Vavreck reported, on the NYTimes blog:

After last week’s debate, the share of undecided voters in the electorate held constant at slightly less than 3%. You may be wondering how that is possible, given the dramatic and perhaps unexpected performances by both candidates. The answer? More than half the previously undecided voters failed to tune in to the debate at all.

While only 21 percent of voters who have made up their minds skipped the debate, 54 percent of undecided voters did something else with their time. Coupled with their low level of general interest in news (44 percent never or hardly ever pay attention to the news, compared to 12 percent of decided voters who opt out of news), this means word of the candidates’ performances probably never reached them directly.

Now here's some good news: The next presidential debate, on Tuesday the 16th is the so-called “town meeting” format, although I can report with some relief that it doesn't much resemble any town I ever lived in. Because it's become a bit of undisputed political wisdom that the average “town” is packed with “undecideds,” so they will make up the live audience and they will offer the questions the candidates will respond to. It will be an event held for, driven by, and dumbed down to the level of the people who aren't even paying attention.

The Times was even less kind than I'm being:

[. . . ] voters who are undecided are less well equipped in a political environment. It is as if they don’t have the skills or vocabulary to navigate the political scene or to fully comprehend it. Because they are not that interested in politics and pay little attention to news, they have no structure in place to organize political information as it comes across the transom. Many are simply not sure who won the debate – they’re not saying it was a tie. They are reporting that they cannot make an evaluation of any kind.

Heaven help us. If you thought Jim Lehrer's questions in last week's presidential debates were a bowl of strained peas and carrots, wait until you hear the questions that the “undecideds” are going to uncork next Tuesday night. As a reminder, here's the first question thrown out to John Kerry in the 2004 Town Hall Debate:

Senator Kerry, after talking to several co-workers and family and friends, I asked the ones who said they were not voting for you, why. They said that you were too wishy-washy. Do you have a reply for them?

The “undecideds” are the quintessential low-information voters. Asking them to devise questions for the candidates for President of the United States is an extreme-sport version of asking replacement referees to officiate an NFL game.

The Town Hall debate format, featuring the “undecideds,” is a gimmick that does more harm than good -- and in a post-truth, post-Citizens United presidential campaign like this, that's no mean distinction.

It panders to the sensibilities of 3% of the electorate -- and from available evidence, they won't even be watching to know they're being pandered to.

Dump the town hall debates.

Quote of the day: Right

[I]f we're ever going to get out of the god-enfeebled fever swamp into which the radicalized Republican Party is pushing the nation, sooner or later, there has to be organized, relentless push back at the ballot boxes everywhere in every election, whether that turns out to be ultimately futile or not. (Of all the things about which Howard Dean was right, this is the most important.)

- Charlie Pierce on the distressing fact that Rep. Paul “All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell” Broun has no Democratic challenger to his re-election.

The unforgiving minute: A synoptic history of the separation of church and state (second revised edition for 2012)

(Corrected below, with apologies to Willard Romney, who apparently didn't go as far around the God-bothering bend this week as the Washington Post's Sally Quinn.)


A synoptic history of the Constitutional principle of the separation of church and state (updated again for 2012*):


James Madison, 1791: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Thomas Jefferson, 1802: The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment guarantees Americans a wall of separation between church and state.

John F. Kennedy, 1960: The separation of church and state is absolute. My church will not dictate my policy decisions.

Mitt Romney, 2008: The separation of church and state is relative. My church will dictate my policy decisions, but only to the extent that I will discriminate against the same people Christian conservatives would already be discriminating against anyway.

Bart Stupack, 2009: The separation of church and state is a fairy tale. My church will show up at the Capitol steps in a limo to dictate policy.

Rick Santorum, 2012: The separation of church and state is an abomination. "Earlier in my political career, I had the opportunity to read the speech [by JFK to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960], and I almost threw up."

Sally Quinn, 2012: The separation of church and state is impossible. “This is a religious country. Part of claiming your citizenship is claiming a belief in God, even if you are not Christian.” Agnostics, atheists, and other nonbelievers need not apply.

Minute's up.


*This timeline was originally published in shorter form in 2009, when I thought the process of theocratic overreach had probably already reached its furthest point in the US. Now it appears I may have stand ready for further revisions from time to time, as the exigencies of Republican electoral politics require it.