"Nothing going on there" and other constitutional fictions

Comes now former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (and this week's winner of the p3 "Wait – He's Still Alive?" Award) Rudy Giuliani, displaying his legendary ability to bring his thumb down on the scales in the delicate balance of civil liberties against the never ending battle for law and order:

"There's no minister, there's no rabbi in this city — nor are there some imams — that object to having police officers in their congregation," he argued. "In fact, they want them there, they want them to learn the message. It's enlightening for them." "So if you've got nothing going on there but a beautiful religious service, why in His name would you not want to have police officers there?" he asked.

(h/t to Charlie Pierce)

 There are those – cynical SOBs, the lot of you! – who might suggest that remarks like this are meant to signal Rudy's availability for the Donald Trump Vice Presidential Beauty Pageant and Scholarship Competition, but I say not so! This is simply the sort of thing Rudy ordinarily says into the bathroom mirror as he flosses every morning. Trump's campaign is just a coincidence. Nevertheless, he has returned to that old law and order warhorse: If you've got nothing to hide . . .

Which is another reason this shifty line of argument would be a bad fit for the campaign of the slo-mo exploding citrus, whose list of decredentialed news organizations is beginning to read like a Who's Who of political journalism.

 I defer to the legal expertise of Mr. Spade from San Francisco:

Spade glanced his way, chuckled, and asked Bryan: "Anything I say will be used against me?"

The District Attorney smiled. "That always holds good." He took his glasses off, looked through them, and set them on his nose again. He looked through them at Spade and asked: "Who killed Thursby?"

Spade said: "I don't know."

Bryan rubbed his black eyeglass-ribbon between thumb and fingers and said knowingly: "Perhaps you don't, but you certainly could make an excellent guess."

"Maybe, but I wouldn't."

The District Attorney raised his eyebrows.

"I wouldn't," Spade repeated. He was serene. "My guess might be excellent, or it might be crummy, but Mrs. Spade didn't raise any children dippy enough to make guesses in front of a district attorney, an assistant district attorney, and a stenographer."

"Why shouldn't you, if you've got nothing to conceal?"

"Everybody," Spade responded mildly, "has something to conceal."

"And you have – ?"

"My guesses, for one thing."

Sunday morning toons: Welcome to 2016 – what could possibly go wrong?

You might have gotten in this week if you did a elderly 2015/infant 2016 toon, but it needed something special. (If you did one where the infant 2016 had a Trump comb-over, thanks for playing, see you next week.)

(And am I the only one out here wondering how a billionaire can't manage to have either a decent hairpiece or a decent haircut?)

You could get in the door with a new-year's-resolution cartoon, but again it needed to be more ingenious than straight-up resolving not to do something awful again – consider Jeff Stahler's and Rick McKee's contributions, below.

And I was predicting years ago that the professional pursuers of Bill Clinton's penis were only waiting for the next opportunity pick up in mid-sentence where they left off. I just didn't expect it to be the Short Fingered Vulgarian himself who would open the door. If you went anywhere near the trumped-up (see what I did there?) pseudo-debate about whose record of behavior toward women is sleazier – Trump's or Clinton's – you didn't even make the cutoff for bird-cage liner this week. (Hint: Clinton at least made an effort, years ago, to accept some small measure of responsibility for his behavior, while Trump is constitutionally incapable of such a move on any subject; and even on Clinton's worst, worst, worst day, he never speculated publicly about how hot Chelsea is and how much he'd like to hit on that.)

I was surprised that I found very few attempts to take on the acquittal of the police who gunned down Tamir Rice (one, in fact, and it wasn't really link-worthy), but a combination of deadlines and the mind-numbing frequency with which political cartoonists have to address these things now could easily explain that.

Oh, and one last thing: I'm no fan of Obama's attitude toward the Fourth Amendment, but for better or worse the US, and most other countries, spie on its allies as well as its enemies, which is how the NSA ended up listening in on Israeli prime minister Netanyahu suborning members of the US congress to sabotage Obama's Iraq treaty. If you turned in a cartoon about that bad old Obama "spying on congress" without admitting what congressional reps and their lobbyist handlers were doing on that phone line to begin with, you didn't make the cut.

Today's toons were selected by the most painstaking methods imaginable 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: Jeff Stahler, Tim Eagan, Matt Wuerker, Matt Davies, Rick McKee, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Darrin Bell.

p3 Legion of Merit: Jeff Danziger.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Dave Granlund and Joe Heller.

p3 Hanging Curve Award: Nick Anderson.

p3 Self-Juxtaposition Medal: Mike Luckovich and Mike Luckovich.

Ann Telnaes braces herself for the next celebrity trial.

Mark Fiore has a 2015 review that will leave you gasping.

Tom Tomorrow presents Part 2 of 2015 in Review. It's disturbingly Trump-intensive – like the year itself.

Keith Knight looks on as the tee-up to a classic Christmas song is ruined, possibly forever. Thanks, Irving Berlin!

Reuben Bolling returns us to a strange world that is not quite the opposite of our own – but is somewhat dissimilar in certain ways.

Red Meat's Ted Johnson and his son are about to cross into that place where you won't even care.

Comic Strip of the Day considers why zombie strips live forever, good strips only live a while if they even get picked up in the first place, and those news/aggregator websites you sometimes visit may have ads that are the web equivalent of radioactive snake vomit.

Oh, boy! I'm wich! I'm wich! Elmer Fudd has Bugs Bunny cornered when he learns he's set to inherit three million dollars – provided he doesn't bwast any more wabbits, ever, in "The Wabbit Who Came to Supper," directed by Friz Freleng in 1942. You can imagine how it goes. (Tom & Jerry had a very similar story, albeit with a different resolution, two years later over at MGM, which I'll probably dust off for you next week. Both cartoons quote the song "We're In the Money" from "Gold Diggers of 1933.") [Update: No they don't. My bad.] This was early on in both Bugs' and Elmer's film career, and you can tell that the animators and story writers haven't settled on the final look and feel (if there can be such a thing) for either character. Uncredited voice work by Arthur Q. Lewis (Elmer) and Portland's own Mel Blanc (Bugs and the telegram delivery guy). "Is that you, Myrt? How's every little thing?" was a recurring gag from the Fibber McGee and Molly radio program popular from 1935 to 1959.

The Big, And Getting Bigger Since We Welcomed Back The Departed, Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman notes the proper exceptions being made.

Could-be Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen streamlines your experience of the next twelve months.

Matt Bors recognizes that it all depends on what the meaning of "all" is.

Jesse Springer fortells the snowballing of a problem that it seems to me we've been warned about regularly since I first moved to Oregon.

Test your awakened 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.

Return of the p3 year-end metalist

The p3 metalist is back!

It's a somewhat trickier process than in years past, simply because the internet has been flooded with that scourge of social media content, the listicle – many of them "insane," most of them containing things "you won't believe" (why read it, I wonder?), and not a few of them slathered with adolescent contrarianism (e.g., over at cracked.com right this minute they're touting "5 Reasons Space Travel Is Going To Suck").

The p3 metalist elements – some traditional war horses, some one-of-a-kind – were chosen according to the criterion that each item should be useful, or if not useful then obviously an investment of time and trouble that is, of itself, still worthy of some kind of respect. Similarly, they should be authoritative, not arbitrarily glued together as clickbait by someone too lazy to really get a handle on a topic and write it up in an interesting way. For example, you may not find the first item –

1. Playboy ranks every episode of every Star Trek TV series – original, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, and the animated series – from worst to best.

– terribly useful, but you have to respect the author's willingness to take on the big tasks, in this case the individual rating of over six hundred episodes. So without further ado:

2. Project Censored's top 25 censored stories of 2014. Project Censored, the little engine that could, got its start 38 years ago down at Sonoma State University.

3. The Oregon Intellectual Freedom Clearinghouse 2014 list of formally challenged books in Oregon libraries. There are eleven items on the list, along with the reason for the challenge and the final disposition of the challenge. And it's always a delight to be reminded that the OIFC is maintained by the state of Oregon.

4. The Onion's AV Club lists the 20 worst films of 2014. A disturbing appearance on the list by Simon Pegg, as well as two (!) appearances each by John Cusack and Liam Neeson. Gentlemen, either listen to your agents or fire them.

5. The Rolling Stone's 40 most groundbreaking albums of all time. This one almost got bumped off the list for describing a Kanye West album as both "auto-tune heavy" and "emotionally naked" in the first entry. One or the other, please. But then it settles in a little more. Music lists tend to be a little like rating MAD Magazine – sometimes it doesn't amount to much more than noting that it was funniest in the days when you were reading it regularly. This one rises above that, I think.

6. Bill Moyers' list of underreported stories from 2014. These were chosen by "editors, journalists and friends of BillMoyers.com," as opposed to the academics – faculty and students – who assembled the Project Censored list, so the differences are interesting. And there are a number of them.

7. Ten classic German expressionist movies now available for free, via openculture.com. Because this is my metalist.

8. ThinkProgress' list of nine "travesties of justice that would be unbelievable if they weren't true." That clickbait title almost caused this item to get tossed off the list, but the content is worth going over, if only to see all of these American horror stories collected in one place.

9. Oregon AG Ellen Rosenblum's list of the 20 worst charities, based on the percentage of donations that go to administrative and fundraising costs, rather than going to the actual cause they claim to support. (Have we mentioned Portland's own Mercy Corps lately?)

10. iMediaEthics' list of the five most controversial cartoons of 2014. Somehow they missed this series of terrible decisions surrounding a piece by the Indy Star's Gary Varvel.

11. And finally, from Slate's Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern comes the 10 worst civil liberties violations of 2014. This was a tough year to be part of the Bill of Rights, unless you were the Second or Tenth Amendment, in which case you probably thought it was a pretty nice ride. But if you had anything to do with not establishing state religion, preventing unreasonable search and seizure, or guaranteeing due process, or contained the phrase "cruel and unusual," then not so much.

Happy birthday to the Bill of Rights

Two hundred twenty-three years after it was ratified, the Second and Tenth Amendments are all the rage. But the First Amendment has been twisted largely beyond recognition by the Roberts Court. A constitutional law professor took time out from campaigning for president in 2008 to hand an anvil to the Fourth Amendment. And the Eighth Amendment was publicly disgraced last week.

Still, it was a good idea. And in fairness, no one has tried to quarter troops in my house as far as I can remember.

Happy birthday to what's left of the Bill of Rights.

‘6079 Smith W.! Yes, YOU! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that.'

Well, this is interesting.

I was trying to find out what local cinemas would be showing Citizenfour, the documentary about NSA whistleblower-on-the-run Edward Snowden, so I plugged the film name and a ZIP Code into Google.

The first four hits were showtime pages for area theaters.

Take a look at the fifth one.

Title quote source, as if you didn't know.

Quote of the day: Give me Liberty or give me Vexation!

The president's big speech on the NSA today was an extended exercise in running in place. The one thing it was not was an ability to strike a "balance" between the current surveillance state and civil liberties "concerns." (You will note that the Bill of Rights is now apparently a Bill of Concerns.)

- Charlie Pierce, observing the sad state of our erstwhile Constitutional protections in the hands of an erstwhile Constitutional Law professor.

Sunday morning toons: Here's what we learned this week

(NOTE: Autoplay problem with the Porky video is fixed.)

So, this week, we learned that needing food stamps proves you don't deserve them, that the problems with healthcare.gov prove that we were better off with 40 million uninsured citizens with no reasonable chance of coverage, and that the NSA running amok proves that the Fourth Amendment didn't really mean what the founders originally intended.

Today's toons were drawn from the pages of McClatchy DC, Cartoon Movement, Go Comics, Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons, About.com, Politico's Cartoon Carousel, and other fine sources.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Jack Ohman, Joel Pett, Lee Judge, Jim Morin, Steve Benson, Tony Auth, Stuart Carlson, Tom Toles, Matt Davies, Bill Day, Chris Weyant, Mario Piperni, Matt Wuerker, Jen Sorenson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Jeff Staher.

p3 Legion of Extraordinary Merit: Jeff Danziger.

p3 Best of Breed Award: Joel Pett.

p3 Extremely Funny but Really Inside Baseball Award: Pat Bagley. (Explanation here.)

p3 World Toon Review: Kevin Kallaugher (England), Ingrid Rice (Canada), SvitalskiBros (Czech Republic), and Petar Pismestrovic (Austria).


You thought they were dead? Ann Telnaes says they're not. Happy Halloween.


Mark Fiore's Dog Boy and Mr. Dan celebrate states' rights – the right of the states to let the government come in and run things. Is socialism a pre-existing condition?


Taiwan's Next Media Animation provides a Lone Star State example of Nothstine's Law of Free Speech.


Tom Tomorrow has sexy Halloween costume ideas that will never go stale, apparently. Notice to patrons: No one will be seated after the harrowing Porn Moustache of Understanding scene!


Keith Knight lives the dream. (Video here. He looks exactly like he does in the strip. It's freaking uncanny!)


Tom the Dancing Bug celebrates synergy!


Red Meat's Ted Johnson keeps with the times by calling an emergency staff meeting.


The Cartoon Curmudgeon hits the trifecta: huffing, pride, and dying.


Comic Strip of the Day examines a glaring truth: we don't get it – and by “we,” I'm afraid he means “us.” Which is why, as friends know, I only wear navy, gray, and black, and wear socks of one color.


Anxious to carve a great empire out of the wilderness across the sea! Getting the jump on Thanksgiving, here's “Pilgrim Porky,” directed in 1940 by Bob Clampett, with story by Warren Foster, animation by Norman McCabe, and musical direction by the magnificent Carl Stalling, with uncredited voice work by Portland's own Mel Blanc (as just about everybody), Robert C. Bruce (as the narrator), and Thurl “Tony the Tiger” and “You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch” Ravenscroft handling the singing. Songs lifted for the soundtrack include Long, Long Ago, The Song of the Marines, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, Jeepers Creepers, Columbia Gem of the Ocean, Rock-a-Bye Baby, (Anyone know the song they sing as they set sail?) The cartoon is, alas, about as dated and comfortably racist as the holiday itself: The running joke – now outdated to say the least – with the black cook is a hat-tip to Jack Benny's valet Rochester on the popular radio show. The “Sitting Bull” joke – also unpleasantly dated and historically barbered – is based on a catch phrase from early radio: “Nobody home, I hope, I hope, I hope.” In magnificent monochrome 2-D!

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

The Big, But We're Hoping It'll Be Bigger, Oregon Toon Block:

Matt Bors applauds the exportation of American values to the Third World.

Jesse Springer has a news item:

150,000 Oregonians on individual insurance plans will lose their cover (becuase their current plans do not meet ACA standards). Unfortunately, they have to rely on the problem-plagued "Cover Oregon" to get the signed up with new insurance by the Dec. 15th deadline.

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

Saturday morning tunes: When will we ever learn?

On this date in 1950, at the height of the Red Scare, several musicians saw their careers ended or derailed after they were claimed to be suspected communist sympathizers.

But Hollywood actors, directors and screenwriters were not the only victims of the Cold War anti-Communist purges in the entertainment industry. Prominent figures in the music industry were also targeted, including Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Lena Horne, Pete Seeger and Artie Shaw, all of whom were named publicly as suspected Communist sympathizers on this day in 1950, in the infamous publication Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television. [...]

The evidence of Communist leanings offered in Red Channels included Lena Horne’s appearance on the letterhead of a South African famine relief program, Aaron Copland’s appearance on a panel at a 1949 Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace and Leonard Bernstein’s affiliation with the Committee to Re-Elect Benjamin J. Davis, a black, socialist New York City councilman.

In the end, Red Channels caused some of those named to be blacklisted—Pete Seeger, most famously—to fight publicly to prove their "loyalty" to the United States and still others to repudiate their political pasts and provide the HUAC [House Unamerican Activities Committee] with names of other suspected prominent leftists.

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

A little reminder of what the national security state, with the help of right-wing media, is capable of.

And, by the way, Pete Seeger turned 94 last month, still performs, and hasn't signed any corporate sponsorship or endorsement deals, nor has he joined the board of directors of any multinational corporations.

And he never named names.

Quote of the day: Conjuring words

How in the world do they convince themselves that they can assume this power and that we would be any better at handling it than the East Germans were? Because we insert the right democratic conjuring words into our statutes and then ignore them?

- Charlie Pierce, expressing some doubts that the secret FISA courts are (1) even remotely transparent or (b) a meaningful check on government spying rather than a captured pawn in that very process.

The unforgiving minute: “. . . but I play one on TV.”

Regarding the possibility (at the moment, the far-too-remote possibility) of popular backlash against the increased level of warrentless surveillance directed upon Americans, or anyone else who gets sucked up in the Great National Security Hoover, no less an authority on liberty, common defense, and domestic tranquility than Karl Rove recently spoke up with some impatience:

You cannot turn on a cop drama on television where there is not somebody who’s pinging somebody’s cell phone or taking a look at the phone calls made from some landline or telephone booth to help solve some crime on television.

Now, I know what you're going to say: Those examples are ridiculous. They prove nothing. Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brien weren't really government counterterrorism agents. Abby Sciuto and Tim McGee aren't really forensics specialists with mad hacker skillz working for NCIS.

Fair enough.

But on the other hand, Rove worked as chief of staff for a man who wasn't really elected President of the United States, and no one seems to care much about that niggling detail anymore.

So cut my man Karl some slack. He's been there.

Minute's up.

Quote of the day: I do not think that word means what you think it means

"The First Amendment right to speak is sacrosanct, but it has limits.”

- That's Senator – Senator, fer chrissake! – Lindsey Graham (R [Naturally] - SC [Of Course]) producing a Zen koan to teach us that no overreach of governmental power is really overreach if the United States can be said, in any sense, no matter how literal or metaphorical, to be at war with someone or something somewhere – as has been the case every single day without interruption at least since December 8, 1941.

If only the full brunt of the national security apparatus had been brought to bear in the War on Poverty.

(H/t to Pierce, who gets the final word.)

Sunday morning toons: Remember when there were ten amendments in the Bill of Rights?

Well, kiss that goodbye. Here's what barely made the news this week:

The NSA can gather information about who you call, when, and from where – but Congress made that legal years ago. (In fact, you're not even allowed to ask if they're doing it to you.)

Law enforcement can take a DNA swab from you without a warrant (and the Supreme Court says that's just fine).

And let's don't even get started about PRISM, which allegedly can access foreigners' user data from Microsoft, Google, AOL, and such places (although the government promises it won't be used on Americans and all these companies strenuously deny it anyway – including the message AOL sent to its eleven remaining users).

President Obama is turning out to be a constitutional scholar in much the same way that Jason Voorhees was an expert on safe teen summer camping.

Today's toons were selected – oh hell, it doesn't matter, the government already knows which cartoons I picked and why – from the week's pages at Cartoon Movement, GoComics, McClatchyDC.com, Time, About.com, Daryl Cagle, and other fine sources.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Jack Ohman, Joel Pett, Lee Judge, Jim Morin, Gary Varvel, Matt Wuerker, Jen Sorenson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Joel Pett.

p3 Legion of Honor: Eric Allie.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Nate Beeler.

p3 World Toon Review: Martin Sutovec (Slovakia), Terry Mosher (Canada), and Paolo Lombardi (Italy).


Ann Telnaesmakes you wonder about the difference between zero tolerance and intolerance. Be sure to watch it to the very, very end!


Mark Fiore asks a reasonable question: If we're going to treat corporations as people, why not treat people like corporations?


Taiwan's Next Media Animation has important news for linguists.


Tom Tomorrow worries: Is it time to have “that talk?”


Keith Knight begins recovering.


Tom the Dancing Bug shares a helpful message.


Red Meat's Bug-Eyed Earl shares an important structural engineering tip.


Dog pile on the rabbit! Okay, so Bugs Bunny didn't arrive here by rocket ship from a doomed planet. But “A Hare Grows in Manhattan,” directed by Fritz Freleng in 1947, tells the beginnings of the Oscar-winning rabbit's career. (Story by Michael Maltese and Tedd Pierce, musical direction by Carl Stalling, and voice work by Portland's own Mel Blanc as Bugs and voice legend Bea Benaderet as Lola Beverly.) The recurring musical theme is “She's the Daughter of Rosie O'Grady,” which Warner Bros. built a movie around three years later.

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

The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Matt Bors questions our forefathers' foresight.

Jesse Springer brings us the latest horror story: undead creature walking Oregon's fields by night (and day):

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

Sunday morning toons: Mother's Day with a side of irony

It's a nice way to say “Happy Mother's Day:” skyrocketing rates of sexual harassment in the US military, and electing Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford to Congress.

Other items getting their moment in the toon sun this morning include Benghazi! (the exclamation point, apparently, is now trademarked, like the one in Jeopardy!), Limbaugh getting crossways with his radio syndicator, and the horror – the horror! – that is Plan B available over the counter.


Today's toons were chosen with a mother's loving care from the week's pages at Cartoon Movement, GoComics, McClatchyDC.com, Time, About.com, Daryl Cagle, and other fine sources.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Jack Ohman, Jim Morin, Clay Bennett, Nick Anderson, Mike Keefe, Rob Tornoe, Matt Wuerker, Jen Sorenson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Legion of Extreme Merit: Bob Englehart. p3 Best of Show: Joel Pett.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Mike Luckovich and Gary Varvel.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Daryl Cagle.

p3 World Toon Review: Sofia Mamalinga (Greece), Ingrid Rice (Canada), and Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland).


One of the things that irritates me about time.com's cartoon page is that they never give credit to the cartoonists. If I already know the cartoonist, that's less of a problem, although it still seems to border on using the artists' work without proper credit (even if they're paying the syndication fees).. But when it's an artist I'm not familiar with, and the signature isn't easily decipherable, that's a problem. Although apparently time.com doesn't think it's their problem. So anyway, I really liked this toon – the originality, the draftsmanship, the whole package – and I hope someone can tell me who the artist is.


Ann Telnaes drops the baby bomb.


Mark Fiore unveils the killer app.


Taiwan's Next Media Animation tells the story of the former Constitutional Law Professor who's never really liked the Fourth Amendment very much.


Tom Tomorrow identifies one of the things that Americans are the absolute worst at.


Keith Knight reveals the hidden power of NPR.


Tom the Dancing Bug says, Don't call it a theological crisis; call it a reboot.


Red Meat's Bug-Eyed Earl embraces the new economy.


The Comics Curmudgeon examines one – actually two – of the industries that the internet has changed beyond recognition.


All praise and honor to Nietzsche Family Circus, which strips the caption from randomly selected images from deathless one-panel toon and pairs them with randomly selected quotations from Friedrich Nietzsche. The effect is magnificent – if this was what the strip was really like, I'd vote for the Oregonian to keep it!


Anyone who doesn't like spinach is my emeny! “Ax Me Another” (1935) was directed by Dave Fleischer, animated by Seymour Kneitel and Roland Crandall. (Uncredited: Musical director Sammy Timberg; and Billy Costello, William Pennell, and Mae Questel as, respectively, Popeye, Pierre Bluto, and Olive. Timberg also composed “I'm Popeye the Sailor Man,” “Strike Up the Band for Popeye the Sailor" (Popeye's “other” theme, heard in instrumental version as Popeye rows out to rescue Olive, and “I'll Do Anything That You'll Do,” which is probably a one-off for this film. I'd love to know who did the vocalized sound effects for the glue brush, the hand saw, the water splashing, the timber saws, etc.) And the theme accompanying the log-rolling battle is “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor." No explanation is offered for why Bluto isn't able to beat the crap out of Popeye following the final scene.

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

The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Matt Bors settles an age-old cosmological question. Turns out, it's multinational corporationss all the way down!

Jesse Springer detects the fundamental flaw in Oregon's gun control efforts:

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

Sunday morning toons: p3 proudly presents The NRA Fourteen!

May the First Amendment always win out over the Second.

Last week I passed along the news that over a third of the people in the Journalist category on the NRA's enemies list were political cartoonists. I didn't have the complete list then, but thanks to Josh Cavna at Comic Riffs I do now:

The NRA Fourteen:

Steve Benson, Tony Auth, Jim Borgman, Stuart Carlson, Mike Lane, Mike Luckovich, Jimmy Margulies, Jim Morin, Mike Peters, Kevin Siers, Ed Stein, Tom Toles, Garry Trudeau, and Don Wright.

And as Association of American Editorial Cartoonists president Matt Wuerker points out:

When Nixon drew up his ‘enemies’ list,’ it included just one cartoonist: Paul Conrad from the Los Angeles Times. I was lucky enough to know Conrad and I remember that he was far prouder of making Nixon's list than his three Pulitzer Prizes.

From one to fourteen in a generation. You could see this as evidence that the whole thing's turning into a free-for-all, or as proof that political cartoonists are even more a force to be reckoned with than they were a generation ago. I go with the latter.

p3's tribute to Paul Conrad is here, by the way. Also, I'm proud to note that p3 has featured all of the artists on the NRA's enemies list in the Sunday toon review except Jim Borgman, who took an early-retirement buyout while the Sunday toon review feature was still in the larval stage.

Also, hey NRA -- no women on your oddly-dated list of enemy cartoonists? What's that about? Figure they all carry cute little pearl-handled revolvers in their purses and think the NRA is just dreamy? Think again, boys.


Oh yes, and the President gave his fifth State of the Union address, which it took about five Republicans to rebut; the Pope gave his two weeks' notice, which may give him time to get the hell out of the Vatican before the second Prada shoe drops; and the meteors and shooting stars around the globe in the last couple of days probably have nothing to do with 2012 DA14 asteroid passing near Earth; and one of the three or four craziest people on the planet who isn't currently representing an Old Confederacy state in the US Congress was testing nuclear weapons this week; and it's official -- without the Fourth and Fifth Amendments we're down to eight in the Bill of Rights.

And oh, how we love Senator Elizabeth Warren.


Today's toons were selected by the same humorless people who complied the NRA's enemies list -- except that we got ones they didn't like, or didn't get, or both -- 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, Jack Ohman, JIm Morin, Nick Anderson, Adam Zyglis, Lisa Benson, Pat Bagley, R. J. Matson, Joe Heller, John Darkow, Mike Wuerker, Jen Sorenson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: John Cole.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Joel Pett and Kevin Siers.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Adam Zyglis.

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada).


Ann Telnaes scrapes off the scum.


Mark Fiore watches as Obama unleash his inner Richard Nixon.


Taiwan's Next Media Animation brings you the newest Burger King Challenge. Twenty-five years ago, it was “Where's the beef?” In 2012, it's What's the beef?


Tom Tomorrow celebrates the end of the Fifth Amendment, brought to you by the same man who finalized the end of the Fourth Amendment. Quite a resume-builder.


Keith Knight reflects on what's really worth beong afraid of.


Tom the Dancing Bug presents the (no-doubt relieving) News of the World.


Red Meat's Ted Johnson and Nick get nostalgic.


Who's the most remarkable extra-special kind of fellow?  All of the Popeye theatrical cartoons from Fleischer Studios were called one-reelers (about 7 minutes long) except for three: Popeye Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves, Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp (both of which borrowed from 1001 Arabian Nights), and Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor. Two-reelers all, and in Technicolor. The latter was directed by Dave Fleisher in 1936, with voice work by Jack Mercer, Mae Questel, and Gus Wickie, and music and lyrics by Sammy Timberg, Sammy Lerner, and Bob Rothberg, plus animation by Willard Bowsky, George Germanetti, Edward Nolan, Lillian Friedman, and the magnificently-named Orestes Calpini. Many of the scenes used modeled sets to create 3-D effects. Popeye meets Sinbad was nominated for a short-subject Oscar, but lost to Disney's forgettable Silly Symphony: The Country Cousin. .

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The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Matt Bors points out one way to reduce the size of government: Let the Exsecutive branch take over the juicier parts of the Judiciary and the Legislative. Seriously -- what could wrong?

Jesse Springer wishes happy skating to Governor Kitzhaber on the PERS reform he needs to make his budget plans work:

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

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.

Quote of the day: Pierce on conspicuous-by-its-absence at the Democratic 2012 platform

Remember the amendments that come between the Third and Fifth Amendments, and between the Fifth and Seventh Amendments?

The DNC apparently doesn't anymore:

[T]he platform is shamefully silent on the Bush-era national-security policies that the current administration has kept in place — or, more accurately, made a permanent part of the American government. They are not defended or justified. They are simply taken for granted and not mentioned at all. Nothing at all in there about preventive detention. No position taken on warrantless surveillance. (The 2008 platform went bananas on this subject.) There's some mush in there about how we no longer torture, which may or may not actually be true. It's early days yet, but it's hard to see anything more disgraceful coming out of this convention than the fact that the Democratic party has gone hopelessly AWOL on civil liberties.

More here. 

Sunday morning toons: Good news and bad news on the Supreme Court beat

[Updated below.]

While we're waiting until June to find out if the pro-corporate, just-say-no-to-Obama wing of the Supreme Court is going to throw the Affordable Care Act overboard in the middle of a presidential campaign, we can take comfort that this week they guaranteed anyone with a burned-out brake light a chance for a free rectal exam.

Albert Florence was forced to undress and submit to strip searches following his arrest on a warrant for an unpaid fine, though the fine actually had been paid. Even if the warrant had been valid, failure to pay a fine is not a crime in New Jersey.

But [Supreme Court Justice and political weathervane Anthony] Kennedy focused on the fact that Florence was held with other inmates in the general population. In concurring opinions, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito said the decision left open the possibility of an exception to the rule and might not apply to someone held apart from other inmates.

Anyone who is shocked that the Supreme Court has just given the state the right to strip search you for anything down to jaywalking hasn't been paying attention for at least six years.

Today's toons were selected by a 5-4 vote from the week's pages at Slate, Time, About.com, and Daryl Cagle:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Pat Bagley, Tom Toles, Joel Pett, Steve Sack, Matt Weurker, Daryl Cagle, Rob Tornoe, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Nick Anderson.

p3 Merit Badge for Granny Killing: Clay Bennett.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: John Darkow.

p3 “Happy Families are All Alike” Award: Jeff Danziger.

p3 World Toon Review: Heng (Singapore), Cam Cardow (Canada), and Ingrid Rice (Canada),


Ann Telnaes considers the difference between long drives and short putts.


Mark Fiore presents a GOP fairy tale -- as if that's a separate category.


Taiwan's Next Media Animation examines the modern example of the American Dream: Winning the lottery and stiffing your friends who chipped in. Remember when the American Dream was building a better mousetrap and then reinvesting your earnings in your company and your community?


So much for all those comics stashed in all those cardboard cartons in all those closets for the last four generations: The digital world will forever change how comics are created, marketed, sold, and saved.


Tom Tomorrow provides a helpful health care reform glossary. It's all so much simpler now.


Keith Knight has gotten Kickstart funding for his graphic novel project I Was A Teenage Michael Jackson Impersonator! Yes!


Bonus Keef: The best thing about getting hitched.


Tom the Dancing Bug presents the latest edition of Super-Fun-Pak Comics. Hulk no longer smash so much.


Red Meat's Bug-Eyed Earl considers the value of hindsight. Of course, I might have done the same thing, and I like cats.


No Tribble at all! Pigs is Pigs is the 1954 Academy Award-nominated Disney Film directed by Jack Kinney, with voice work by Bill Thompson. It's based on a 1905 short story by Ellis Parker Butler. Wikipedia gives its history a little more pizzazz, partly through unprovable connections and partly through a bit of post hoc reasoning (hat-tip to Ryan):

The story is credited by Robert A. Heinlein as possibly the origin of the flat cats in his novel The Rolling Stones, since he may have read it or heard it as a child, but due to the intervening time he could not be sure. The concept obviously had some currency because it also shows up in the famous Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles".

At this distance, although “Pigs is Pigs” is a fun little piece, it's only connection to the famous “Tribbles” episode may be that in each case a Scotsman gets to deliver the punchline. Enjoy.

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The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Jack Ohman presents the lament of the smooth operator.

Update: Jack Ohman's bold cartooning predictions (click to enlarge):

Not a moment too soon, Matt Bors presents a PSA for Zimmerman apologists.

Jesse Springer casts a doubtful eye on the Oregon schools' new Educational Achievement Compacts, supported by Governor Kitzhaber and zero extra funding:

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

The unforgiving minute: Detachment and devotion

Dedicated to state-sponsored executioners, torture experts, and assassins -- and their enthusiasts -- everywhere:

The questioners had that beautiful detachment and devotion to stern justice of men dealing in death without being in any danger of it.

Ernest Hemingway

A Farewell to Arms

Minute's up.

How far p3 has traveled in 5 years

From the p3 archives, December 18, 2005.

Context is everything.

Sunday morning toons: The TSA has added three new terms to our language

First there was"security theater."

Now there's "porno scanner" and "gate rape."

Could not be prouder. No sir.

As you might guess, inappropriate touching on the at the Delta concourse is this week's political toon chart-topper, but there's more, including the dim prospects of a START treaty win for the White House, the report of the Catfood Commission on Deficit Reduction and Social Security Elimination, the House GOP leadership planning to party like it's 1994 -- and there are turkeys all over the Beltway in Washington DC!

Here they are, in all their toony goodness: the highlights from the week's political cartoon pages at Slate, Time, About.com, and Daryl Cagle's political cartoon index at MSNBC.com:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Mike Lester, R. J. Maston, John Cole, Tom Toles, Glen McCoy, Nick Anderson, Steve Kelley, Clay Bennett, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Fourth Amendment Nostalgia Award: John Trevor.

p3 Two Artists With But a Single Metaphor Award: Rob Rogers and Jeff Darcy.

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Tjeerd Royaards (Netherlands), Michael Kountouris (Greece), and Ingrid Rice (Canada).


Ann Telnaes shows who may have gotten the ultimate government pat-down this week. Honk!


Mark Fiore gives us a peek at the hottest new game show.


Taiwan's Next Media animates the news, darkly. And this week they bring us the passenger backlash to the new TSA "safety" procedures. (This is Next Media's second appearance at p3 Sunday Morning Toons, by the way.)


Tom Tomorrow breaks the third wall of cartooning to explain the Catfood Commission on Deficit Reduction and Social Security Elimination's report.


The K Chronicles laments -- gently -- life's tiny tragedies.


It's an odd premise, but I like it: Several US political cartoonists, including p3 regulars Garry Trudeau and Mike Luckovich, recently toured US bases in Afghanistan with the USO. Good on 'em.


Here's this week's illustration by Barry Blitt, to accompany Frank Rich's NYTimes column on what Sarah Palin can see from her kitchen window these days.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman commends the open-mindedness of the Catfood Commission on Deficit Reduction and Social Security Elimination.


"I've got my whole life ahead of me -- love, travel, good books!" Certainly all things to be thankful for . . . if only Tom Turkey can convince Daffy Duck to help him prevent Pilgrim Porky from turning him (that is, Tom) into the entrée for Thanksgiving. You probably know where it goes from there. (Directed in 1949 by Arthur Davis.)

p3 Bonus Toon: And just in time for Thanksgiving, Jesse Springer notices that not every high ranking for Oregon is a good thing. (Click to enlarge.)

Match toon-captioning wits: at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)