Sunday afternoon toons: A Trump-heavy week. Alas.

(I haven't updated the list of epithets and sobriquets for Donald Trump lately, but midway through AMC's airing of all three "Back to the Future" films yesterday a new and especially apt one re-entered my head: "Alternate-Reality Biff Tannen." Story here.)

Yes, Trump claimed that Hillary started Obama Trutherism and that he himself put a stop to it. And yes, Trump speculated again about what would happen if Second Amendment types got an open shot at Hillary. Are you thinking that this one is finally The One? Silly you.

Also: Who really cares in 2016 about Colin Powell's opinion? About anything?

I suppose the only thing that's good about Trump putting thinly dog-whistled threats out there against Hillary this time is that it briefly diverted attention from Hillary's health, which briefly diverted attention from Hillary's foundation, which briefly diverted attention from Hillary's email accounts, which brifely diverted attention from Benghazi!!! Gosh, do you thik there's a pattern here?

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, The Nib, and other fine sources of toony goodness.

p3 Picks of the week: MikeBob Gorell, Drew Sheneman, SigneWilkinson, Steve Benson, Matt Weurker, Jeff Koterba, Pat Bagley, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Chan Lowe.

p3 Legion of Merit: Jeff Danziger.

Ann Telnaes wonders why, after a quarter-century in the game, things like this keep happening to Hillary. (For a possible answer, see Jen Sorenson's bit, below.)

Mark Fiore digs into Hillary's "deplorable" comment (which has been superseded by about five other things since she said it only days ago). He seems to think it was more of an unforced error on her part than I do.

Follow along in your guide books, everyone, as Tom Tomorrow teaches you to say "loser" in Russian!

Keith Knight imagines a better world.

But Reuben Bolling doesn't.

Carol Lay has another happy ending. Seriously. It ends happily.

Red Meat presents The Priest, contemplating the face of the divine.

Comic Strip of the Day manages to use both "priate" and "lapriscopically" in the same post. That alone makes it worth the click, in my judgment. The main story does raise an important question, though: Aren't libertarians the ones who hold property rights and contracts as sacred?

"Did you ever see a dream walking? Well, I did." "A Dream Walking," directed in 1934 by Dave Fleischer, cashes in on the popularity of the title song, which had been recorded the previous year by fellow Paramount star Bing Crosby. Uncredited: Seymour Kneitel (animation direction), Sammy Timberg (music direction), Billy Costello (Popeye), William Pinnell (Bluto), and Mae Questel (the (The Slender One).

The Unbelievably Great Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman is too nice to Wells Fargo.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen advances one explanation for why things like this keep happening to Hillary.

Matt Bors marks upon the intelligence of the contrarians!

Jesse Springer points out that the economic good times in Portland have gone off the rails for some.

Test your toon-captioning mojo 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 early afternoon toons: Lauer-ing the bar, monetizing the memory

The sad part is that, just as Trump will apparently never be able to blurt out something so toxic that he can't recover from it (assuming it doesn't increase his approval rating from the get-go), my guess is that Matt Lauer's terrible job as the overmatched host of the Commander in Chief forum last week will soon disappear down the memory hole. Using one third of his time with Clinton rehashing the asked-and-answered "questions" the emails? Ignoring the Dye-Blond Buffoon's lies, evasions, and inaccuracies? Pffft. Put Matt back on the Today show for a week and let him land that day's "get" – perhaps a collie who rescued a boy from a mine by running to town for the sheriff – and all will not only be forgiven, it'll be forgotten.

And, for the record, I'm with Brother Pierce: I object to calling it the "Commander In Chief Forum," because the country is slowly but surely coming to think that the Presidency has no other function, and that being CinC makes the president the boss of me. (Spoiler: Nope.) And, although Pierce doesn't mention this himself, I object to the symbolism of holding it on an aircraft carrier. Have we really forgotten the last time a big press draw like this was held on an aircraft carrier? A Facebook commenter said yeah, but what about veterans' issues, to which I should have replied (but didn't, alas) that Veterans' Affairs is a cabinet post (hence, part of the Executive branch), not a wartime responsibility of the CinC, and so we don't need the invocation of the latter role to expect presidential candidates to answer policy questions on the topic. If I really wanted gratuitous military symbolism, I'd be watching an NFL game right now. Unfortunately, I imagine the CinC Forum is here to stay as a part of the presidential election ritual.

Also, what's the big deal about athletes kneeling during the national anthem, rather than standing at attention with hand over heart? First amendment issues aside, we're once again confusing football and soccer uniforms with military uniforms, and the standards of behavior appropriate to each. Besides, kneeling is also a way to show respect, and even subservience – ask Zod.

And finally, our highest honors to to ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman for recognizing that we will never forget the meaning of today's anniversary until the last advertising account manager no longer remembers. As a parallel piece, Comic Strip of the Day looks back at what was not political cartooning's finest hour.

Today's toons were selected by an underqualified morning talk show host from the week's offerings at McClatchy DC, Cartoon Movement, Go Comics, Politico's Cartoon Gallery, Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons, About.com, The Nib, and other fine sources of cartoon goodness.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Jeff Danziger, John Deering, Lisa Benson, Tim Eagan, SigneWilkinson, Jeff Stahler, Matt Weurker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Matt Davies.

p3 Legion of Merit: Stuart Carlson.

p3 Medal of Mandatory Freedom (tie): Jim Morin and Brian McFadden.

Ann Telnaes is relieved: Trump does have a plan after all.

Mark Fiore presents Suzie Newsykins, whose only summer mistake was listening to grown-ups.

Tom Tomorrow has too nearly captured the essence of my Twitter feed.

Keith Knight asks an interesting question, but it's hard to tell which answers (if any) are made up.

Reuben Bolling wins the Saul Steinberg Prize.

Carol Lay returns to a theme she owns: the search for the perfect Other. Once again: happy ending or not?

Red Meat celebrates a generational rite of passage: summer camp.

The Comic Curmudgeon salutes Six Chicks for committing.

Sometimes it seems like Comic Strip of the Day and Sophie Yanow are about the only ones out there in the Tooniverse paying attention to Standing Rock. Although I suppose that may change if Amy Goodman is indeed arrested. To be clear, I'm a fan of both Goodman and the First Amendment, but I suppose I feel the same way about Standing Rock and the prospect of its white First Amendment martyr as I used to feel about the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethons for the Muscular Dystrophy Association: If a spectacle like this is what it takes to get some action on the problem, then so be it.

Read the label! As a shout-out to a friend, here's "Hopalong Casualty," directed in 1960 by Chuck Jones from his own story. I usually don't feature Warner Bros cartoons from beyond the mid-1950s because the production values got poorer and poorer (and you can see it happening here), but this is a gem, mainly because Jones is a master of timing and understood the logic of the Coyote and Road Runner (his own creations, after all) so well. Almost half of this toon is taken up with the "Acme Earthquake Pills" gag, which is one of the funniest bits in all of cartoondom. If you Google "acme earthquake pills" you'll find there are two or three clips of just that three-minute bit, but they're all ruined by the same well-meaning but thoroughly misguided overdubbing of music director Milt Franklyn's minimalist soft-tympani-roll driven build-up and use of bizarre sound effects – and silences, which always signaled something worse was to come – with someone's heavy-handed use of "creeepy music" that only occasionally syncs with the mood of the exact moment. (No links.) Enjoy Hopalong Casualty at Vimeo.

The Magnificent Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman observes that everyone in Casablanca has problems. Maybe theirs will work out.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen watches as the world reacts to the EpiPen scandal in the US.

Matt Bors hits it on the nose: This election though, am I right?

Jesse Springer looks on with concern at the latest symptom of Oregon's seemingly perpetual budget woes.

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

Sunday morning toons: On the political-cultural significance of Reno

I'm probably the last to finally allude to the Johnny Cash lyric to describe Hillary Clinton's speech last week on Donald Trump's many shortcomings as a candidate, a leader of a party, and a human being, and anyway – strictly speaking – she didn't shoot him in Reno "just to watch him die."

I'm also one of those who put aside his initial disappointment that she didn't target the entire GOP apparatus that has been building Trump in its basement laboratory since the early 1980s. Partly that's because declining to go full slaughterhouse mode on them slightly ups the odds that those voters will stay home out of embarrassment, waste their vote on a third-party candidate, or (least likely) actually vote for Clinton – in each case driving up the margin of her increasingly-likely victory. Along the same lines, elected Republicans who appreciate that they were allowed to save some small amount of face (however undeserved) when Clinton declined to lump them into the same crazy-bowl as their candidate, might have at least some tiny motivation to do their damned jobs and work with her administration on some things at least, whereas history teaches us that they will have zero motivation to do so otherwise. (Pierce cites evidence this last is even more of a pipe dream than I'd guessed. Ah well.)

As fun as it is to imagine the Republican party collapsing like a wet taco – or the Whig Party – over the next four to eight years, I confess I wouldn't want to be the Democratic president trying to keep a lid on things while the Grand Old Party was going through its death throes at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. I imagine it would look a lot like the T-1000 falling into the vat of molten metal, flailing and shrieking and spasming through every guise it had ever taken on to do its evil work as it went down. Not something you'd want to be standing near as it happened. (And even if every congressional Republican resigned his or her seat tomorrow, the state-level incubators from which many of the worst of them first emerged will still be operating around the clock.)

And of course, the conspicuous silence of every top Republican (except for the Trump campaign itself, which unsurprisingly squealed like a stuck pig in 140 characters or less) after Clinton's take-down was eloquent.

They've got the slow drip of Clinton's e-mails and foundation, stories which continue to go nowhere at twice the speed of sound, but that's really it. Things could somehow turn around for the GOP in the next 71 days, but it would take a miracle (actually, it would take a disaster), so for now, sucks to be them.

Oddly enough, although Clinton's Reno speech came early enough in the week that political cartoonists had time to think it through, we didn't see a lot about it in this week's p3 toon review, although some harmless fun was had at the expense of Trump campaign handlers and surrogates. Perhaps this is evidence supporting the theory that the smartest thing for the Republican establishment to do, post-Reno, is to ignore it and deny the political press any fuel for the fire. 

In any case, people with life-threatening allergies got a blunt reminder this week of why public health shouldn't be traded on the stock exchange.

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.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Chan Lowe, Steve Benson, Jeff Danziger, Glenn McCoy, Steve Breen, Tim Eagan, Clay Jones, Matt Weurker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Walt Handlesman.

p3 Legion of Merit: Brian McFadden.

p3 Certificate of Achievement for Ignoring Away Trump Campaign's Billions in Free Media: Bob Gorrell.

Ann Telnaes has a simple request.

Mark Fiore invites us to celebrate some of America's Worst Ideas.

Tom Tomorrow charts election phenomena in 2016 – and beyond.

Keith Knight shares a golden oldie: Wondering what the heck is all this commotion?

Reuben Bolling's Super-Fun-Pak Comix features the return of a p3 favorite: Percival Dunwoody, Idiot Time Traveler from 1909. But it's Imaginary Friends & Their Imaginary Friends that really made me laugh. And then go, "hmm."

Carol Lay shares the truth about creativity and love. Happy ending? You tell me.

Red Meat probes the eternal optimism of Milkman Dan.

The Comic Curmudgeon is enjoying the current story arc in Spider-Man, but fails to appreciate Stan Lee and Larry Lieber's awesome shout-out to Dorothy Parker and her review of House on Pooh Corner in the second panel.

Comic Strip of the Day discusses scandals, knife fights, and things that were horrifying in 1971, finding time along the way to be provoked by the same Jen Sorenson toon I did (below).

"If that cat's been in that kitchen . . . !" And there you have most of the plot of "The Midnight Snack," directed by Joe Hanna and William Barbera (uncredited) in 1941, the second Tom and Jerry cartoon, although the first in which they're referred to by their now-familiar names. (In their first short, "Puss Gets the Boot," they're named, respectively, Jasper and Jinx.) I love the deep blues and shadows – like "Puss Gets the Boot," "The Midnight Snack" is set in a darkened house, lit mainly by refrigerator lights, radio dials, etc. And, of course, Tom still looks like a Russian Blue cat. The character of the black house maid, nearly always shown only from the shoulders down (sometimes knees down) was voiced by veteran radio/TV/film actor Lillian Randolph, who made a pretty successful alt-career playing black house maids and similar characters during that era. (She did the maid in several Tom and Jerry shorts between 1940 and 1952. The character's name, which I don't recall ever being used on-screen, is Mammy Two-Shoes. Consider yourself warned. For TV syndication, the voice of Mammy Two-Shoes was redubbed by other actors, notably June Foray – later to voice Rocky the Flying Squirrel and many others – as a white teenager. Sometimes Mammy's lower body was replaced with that of a typical teenaged bobby-soxer from the era and sometimes – inexplicably – not.) Watch "The Midnight Snack" at Vimeo.com.

The Transplendent Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman demonstrates the fundamentals of the pivot.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen has a strip today that reminds me of a store about three blocks from where I'm sitting right now, called Nature's Grocery. Despite the friendly green store name, most of its products are wrapped and packaged like they're expecting a drive-by shooting on the way to check-out. Do ramen noodles really need two layers of packaging?

Matt Bors outlines a perfectly understandable good-faith error.

Jesse Springer looks at another victim of Oregon's pattern of nickel and diming things that should be top priorities: the chronically underfunded and understaffed Oregon Department of Forestry.

Test your toon-captioning kung fu 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 morning toons: Rumors of Trump campaign demise "somewhat exaggerated"

I know candidate Clinton has made some speeches last week, captured some news – but for the life of me, I can't recall what at the moment.

I mean, really, all she had to do was bat away a forged document casting doubt on her health, and then pour a cold drink and kick back to watch the Trump campaign crash into tree after tree while proclaiming the Vulgar Talking Yam to be king of the forest.

But it has been a week for rumors. Oh, it has indeed.

Trump made an unprecedented public apology a couple of days ago for . . . something. Many hailed this as the long-awaited "pivot" toward "the center," until someone finally noticed he never really said what he was apologizing for. So it was rumored to be a sign of the backstage maneuvering in his campaign. Anyway, it was quickly forgotten, partly because it was such an obvious one-off for the campaign and partly because--

The word then came out that Roger Ailes, in disgrace with fortune and women's eyes, was coming on board the campaign. This rumor was immediately denied by all parties, until it was confirmed about a day later.

Next, the former Breitbart bomb-thrower Steve Bannon joined as campaign director, although this was never actually denied so it never really got legs as a rumor. Ailes brought the misogyny, Bannon brought the white supremacy, and the two joined long time rat-fucker and Hillary hater Roger Stone, plus Trump himself. The total effect was something like an alt-right potluck, or perhaps the Republican campaign equivalent of "The Suicide Squad" (with roughly comparable reviews).

The addition of Bannon triggered rumors that Paul Manafort, erstwhile-campaign director and part-time empresario to oligarchs from the former Soviet empire, might be on his way out the door. Those rumors lasted until this morning, when evidence that Manafort might have been paid millions as an unregistered foreign agent appeared, eliminating the need to call the story a rumor. He promptly left the pot-luck, which is just as well because he brought potato salad and so did everyone else.

But now that Ailes and Bannon have solidified their positions, it has breathed new life into rumors from a few weeks ago that this has all been a long con on Trump's part, positioning him to launch his own cable vanity network – one imagines something between Oprah's OWN network and Rupert Murdoch's Fox News – spearheaded by two former right-wing media dons and aimed at the Trump base his campaign has brought into the light. I'm not very convinced about this; Occam's Razor suggests that the more likely explanation is simply stumblebum luck rather than fiendishly clever and patient plan.

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.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Khalid Cherradi, Clay Bennett, Terry Mosher, Matt Davies, Chan Lowe, Matt Weurker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Jeff Danziger.

p3 Legion of Merit: Clay Jones.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Jack Ohman and Glenn McCoy (and how often do those two turn up in the same breath?).

Ann Telnaes asks – and answers – the question how did we get here?

Mark Fiore drops the latest Trump campaign ad. Do not worry. Trust us.

Take my wife – please! Tom Tomorrow presents the Donald Trump Comedy Hour. (thump! thump!) Is this mike on? What is this – an audience or an oil painting?

Keith Knight has a fun fact: Think of it as our way of repaying everything Germany did for us in the 20th century.

Reuben Bolling brings us another installment of Billy Dare, Boy Adventurer, in the most meta- story you're going to read today.

Carol Lay presents a light bit of Hitchcockean fun, in which the third wedding invitation plays the part of the McGuffin.

The Comic Curmudgeon watches, first in horror at the darker practices of the Shoe-niverse, and then in disappointment as Beetle Bailey flubs one of the fundamental cartoon strip signifiers.

Comic Strip of the Day correctly identifies the real problem arising from the abusive, depressing factory farm run-off that is the typical news site's comment's section.

"Whoa, camel, whoa! Whoa!! WHOA!" To mark the occasion of Oregon's three days of temperatures circling the 100-degree mark this week, here's "Sahara Hare," directed in 1955 by Friz Freleng, from a story by Warren Foster (uncredited: Portland's own Mel Blanc as Bugs and Yosemite Sam, and musical director Milt Franklyn). Watch Sahara Hare at DailyMotion.

The Magnificent, Mighty Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman watches candidate Clinton execute.

Documented Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen points out that the chickens are unable to come home to roost.

Matt Bors totally gets the latest iteration of Trump's immigration policy.

Jesse Springer seems to be settling into a pox-on-both-your-houses posture regarding the plan to raise corporate taxes on large and mostly out-of-state corporations (Oregon's corporate taxes are currently lowest in the nation).

Test your toon-captioning mojo 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.

A quantum of umbrage: There is no line

People immediately jumped on Trump's shout-out to "the Second Amendment people" on Tuesday. DailyKos and Charlie Pierce were among the first out of the gate, but only by a whisker.

Both pieces took the same tack – and many more did the same over the next 24 hours:

This time he has finally crossed the line! This one is definitely, absolutely It. You thought it was bad when he did [insert your favorite list of Trump's insults, fabrications, demonstrations of ignorance, etc.]? Well, he's not going to skate through through this time.

Folks, I've got news for you. There is no line. Not any more.

I was going to respond yesterday, but I decided that Trump merely hinting that someone might want to assassinate Clinton is "dog bites man" territory. True, the dog's a little bigger than usual this time, but that's about the only difference. I waited, because the story is the reaction Trump's outburst gets – or doesn't get – from the sources of his political oxygen.

Maybe you could shut Trump down if top Republicans put an end to their mealy-mouthed "I wish he hadn't said that, but if you insist on knowing, I'm not withdrawing my support" bullshit. But that's not going to happen. The GOP at the national level only wants power; they don't want to have to actually work using it with a Democratic president, and it's been that way since 1992.

It might cramp Trump's style a little if the political media could resist showering him with more attention, but I honestly don't know how that could be accomplished at this point. Apart from the fundamental click-baityness of his campaign that makes him an ad-buyer's dream come true, there's the plain fact that, horrific as this sounds, he is the presidential nominee of one of the only two national political parties we allow ourselves to have. I see that some media outlets are slowly moving, like Tevye the Dairyman, to the realization that this time there may not be an "other hand" no matter how sweetly Both-Siderism calls to them. Can they do enough, and can they do it in time? I doubt it. (And, of course, any coverage that Trump doesn't like would stoke his narrative that the election was "rigged" against him.)

And the thought that his base might ever have second thoughts about him is preposterous – most Trump voters are still waiting for their first thought. The notion that their boy would put out a hit on the Hated Hillary would delight them – they're already at "jail the bitch," so "shoot the bitch" really isn't much more than a tap-in.

And really, what is the "line" we're talking about here except the accumulation of the unwritten rules such as that you don't "Willie Horton" your opponent? That you don't deny the legitimacy of an elected president simply because he (or she) is from the other party? That you don't invest millions in public and private money to disgrace or discredit him? That you don't call him a liar during the State of the Union address? That you don't conspire with foreign leaders just because you don't like the President's policies? That you don't shut down the government for temporary political advantage?

If that's what we mean by the line – and I think it is – the point is not that we have crossed it. The point is that, thanks to a generation of political nihilists who run one of our two national political parties, we really can't cross it because the line no longer exists.

I see one of two scenarios playing out over the next three months. Neither is good. One is that Trump, being bored with the game or secretly fearing he won't be able to spin his defeat as a victory, will continue to raise the stakes with things like yesterday's outburst, and probably making demands of the Commission on Presidential Debates that he knows they won't agree to, and then – claiming that he'd accomplished everything he set out to do anyway – he'd pull off the ticket. That would be a political crisis – it would expose the power vacuum at the top levels of the GOP, and it would make Clinton's victory certain but its meaning ambiguous at best.

The other scenario is that he stays in the race (more outbursts, more feuding with the CPD, etc. – that's just a given), then loses to Clinton, probably by a substantial electoral margin and perhaps a substantial popular margin too. At that point he holds a press conference to announce – based on evidence that is unconvincing, assuming it's even provided – that the election has been stolen. At that point it's not a political crisis any more; it's a constitutional one. I remember the 2000 end game far too well to place much trust in our institutional ability to navigate our way out of that one. (And I suspect it's already occurred to many #nevertrumpers that this would finally put them back on familiar territory: Doing their level best to hamstring a Clinton presidency. Good times.)

Maybe I'll feel better as November nears, and in any case I'm going to vote, but that's how it looks to me at the moment: There is no line, ladies and gentlemen. There's just more and more of the same until something blows up.

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.

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.

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.