Your Weeks Or So in Review, Annotated by Blue Pool Chunks...

Well, let’s see what the CArToonist dragged in.

First I have to go back a bit and see what I did last time, so as not to duplicate. OK. Did that. Let’s go.

I did this one after yet another catastrophic, unfunny Uncle Dribbles stand-up routine at the Should-Be-Canceled White Whores Correspondents Dinner. One time, I was at a comedy club in Columbus, Ohio, and I saw this poor man in a very Robin Williams outfit (you remember: the rainbow suspenders over the white long sleeve t-shirt)), and the wretch was bombing. He was trying to improvise and he just wasn’t capable of it.

“Hey! How about airline food?”

And then he wouldn’t say anything funny after the set-up.

After his set (?), he told the emcee, yeah, I gotta start writing my jokes down.

Yeah.

But 8647 doesn’t bother, either.

He just bombs. All the time. The only time he doesn’t chicken out is when he’s “weaving” (read: babbling) around some sort of comedy stylings of a fascist dictator.

Anyway.

Next.

This turned out pretty well, but something is off around the mouth and head shape on Sen. Joe McCarthy. Mea culpa. Looked fine on the monitor. Anyway, no one called me out (I always call myself out so you don’t have to), and it was a solid idea. I liked the color on McCarthy, the mentor to Roy Cohn, who was 4547/86’s mentor.

Thanks, Tail Gunner Joe, which was also a lie.

Here’s a California cartoon about our GOP nominee for governor, who is a terribly bright guy (Oxford) and was a top aide to Prime Minister David Cameron (a generally sensible person). He pretends that he’s a Trump Guy, but it’s laughable how bad he is at concealing his clear distaste for this idiot, who couldn’t get a job cleaning Cameron’s toilets at 10 Downing.

My charming acquaintance Mr. Steve Hilton, a quick-witted fellow who knows better than to spew stupidity, created his own hell. But it’s people like Hilton who are more complicit in ruining the country, because they know better. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a meathead, didn’t. Hilton et al are why we’re here.

If only Hilton could be harnessed for peaceful purposes. But he become an enabler instead of a leader.

This is what Trump does. He compels orthodoxy rather than diversity. If Hilton ran as a Main Street Republican, not tethered to the Big Lie of Trump and his moronic “base”, he might have an argument. A lot of things in California need repair and reform.

But he ain’t the guy in that environment, which forces otherwise formerly sensible people like Michigan GOP U.S. Senate nominee Rep. Mike Rogers, a former Intelligence Committee chair that Democrats respected, into being an election-denier.

Here’s another beauty: Trump denying objective reality by wanting “warning signs” at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Warning what? That Black people exist? That there’s a wide gender spectrum?

I drew this with a Uniball Micro, pretty quickly. I do this when I want to maybe relax a bit during the drawing, and not focus on the point of my brush or the ink load.

Both are key, repetitive factors when I draw. It’s nice sometimes not to obsess on line quality and just get the message out. I care about line quality as well, but at this scale, no one can really tell or appreciate that the brushstroke is exactly right.

Here’s our old buddy, the Reflecting Pool again. We editorial cartoonists have been slaving away on the algae and the blue chunks for months. This time, it’s U.S. Attorney and Raspy Fox Talking Head Jeanine Pirro, who is clearly very smart but also, like Steve Hilton, knows better and just wants attention and power.

Trump exploded when Pirro dropped the charges against the former Olympian who was arrested for vandalism. To her credit I guess, Pirro hauled in a legal papers box to the Oval, and started blasting Interior Secretary Doug Burghum to his face. Nice.

Burghum, you see, was telling Trump what he wanted to hear rather than the truth. The truth is never on Trump’s side.

In the drawing, I like to to do the silhouette once in awhile. It saves time, but also has the additional advantage of looking different, which I what I like to do with my work. If I’m not different, why read me?

I might have changed the PIRRO label somehow, but there it is. Should have done it as a silhouette. I panic a little on deadline. A little. I’ve done 13,000 of these things.

I loved doing this one, because I like this Edwin Starr song from my childhood. It runs through my head from time to time, and I decided the lyrics were a good script for what Trump is doing with his Excursion I Call It An Excursion Into Iran. While gas prices rise and fall, what with the Strait of Hormuz mostly closed, Trump and his buddies play the market. If you don’t think they are, why is Trump charging $100,000 a month to get an hour’s jump on his Truth (?) Social posts?

I love to just focus on caricatures sometimes. It’s fun for me, and less stressful than drawing big federal buildings, which I wrote about a few weeks ago as pretty demanding.

My only change in this one would be that I would have kept the WAR lettering uniform instead of going with a Times New Roman font in the second balloon.

OCD anyone?

Let’s check the locks and, um, do you smell gas?

I banged this one out in about an hour.

I love drawing RFK Jr., who looks like a ham with a yellow Chiclet smile. I should have moved the VAX LIES up the cylinder a bit, but for a simple cartoon, it worked fine. I didn’t need to throw a federal building into the background. I struggled in the rough with how to draw the kids. I finally erased the original drawing and started over, and that got me through.

A point about drawing ties. I am very attentive to this detail, knots and width, and RFK wears these odd too-narrow ties. He personally told me he had them narrowed to look like his dad’s and Uncle Jack’s cravat look. The trouble with that is that the tie silk is too thick, so he then looks like he’s wearing a tube. Buddy, they sell narrow ties now. Buy a few.

I woke up last Monday to Trump saying he’s giving an A Plus to his handling of the economy, when, in fact, he and his Rob-a-7-Eleven family have made billions on his racketeering. A simple drawing as well, but the message is the important thing here.

Have you noticed that mostly Trump now appears sitting at his Musk-child snot-smeared Resolute Desk, or in the Cabinet Room? Oh, and he’s surrounded by his enablers, who once in awhile will make odd expressions in reaction to whatever milk toast is dribbling out of his mouth.

He’s mostly awake. Right?

Finally, California is voting on a five percent surtax on billionaires, and Gov. Newsom and Putative Gov. Xavier Becerra are against it. Newsom has a complicated relationship with the three comma boys, and he’s had to surf Musk and Company for his entire career. Now that people are paying attention to the billionaires, he’s trying to surf the unsurfable.

I put my dear pal HD Palmer in as the Greek Chorus Character, for fun. I will do this once in awhile. It’s harmless fun for me and them. My wife appears from time to time as well.

Send me some money, and I’ll stick you in.

Kidding. Kinda.

Incidentally, my friend Gil Duran has written a blockbuster new book on the fascist Silicon Valley billionaires called The Nerd Reich. Buy it here. It’s a stunner and a must-read.

Speaking of books, I am preparing several new books for the fall and hope to tell you about them soon.

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Hey, YBs!: WHEW! OK, let’s face the day! Will go to yoga, then hit the drawing board later today. Have a great morning!—J.