News Flasher

I'm taking a rapid fire (as opposed to a Wendy's fire) approach to the news today because of the last item in the cartoon above. Daughter Jarlsberg's dog, Ladybug, who currently resides at stately Jarlsberg Manor, has to be taken to the vet today because an anal gland has swollen painfully and the resulting butt bubble looks way too much like Jerry Nadler's face for us to ignore. And though she should be just fine, I worry anyway - because I currently like dogs more than I like people, and nothing in today's news has done anything to change that.

• FDA bans hydroxychloroquine - Medical data from around the world shows that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), when administered early and with a zinc supplement, is a highly effective treatment for Covid19. Plus, it's safe (millions of doses over decades of use) and cheaper than dirt. But now the FDA has withdrawn their emergency approval of the drug because, in their view, HCQ isn't effective and may be dangerous according to a completely fraudulent study which has already been withdrawn by the con artists who wrote it. So if I know the study was a fraud, why doesn't the FDA?

Clearly, it's because A) they hate Trump and B) they aren't going to get bribed for approving a cheap remedy when the "official" approved drug is Remdesivir at $1000 a dose. The FDA also tells doctors not to give HCQ together with Remdesivir because it may reduce Remdesivir's beneficial effects. Oh, really? Because Remdesivir has no effect whatsoever on reducing mortality and may, at best, reduce hospital stays for those who would have lived anyway by a few days.

The fix is in, and those who are getting their pockets lined or are operating out of political hatred should pay for the innocent lives they're happily sacrificing.

And as long as I'm pissed off about everything related to Covid19, I should mention that we'll never know how many protesters and rioters caught the illness in New York, because Bill de Blasio has ordered healthcare works not to ask if people who test positive were at the protests. Because politics will always be more important than pandemics or public health.

And one more thing (as Columbo used to say when approaching a door): one of the reasons there's so much confusion now about whether or not masks should be worn to help fight Covid19 is that Dr. Fauci now admits lying his ass off originally so medical professionals could grab what few masks were available. The truth: masks were always important and they're still important.

• Atlanta rioters burn Wendy's after new police shooting - (Truth in journalism: since creating the cartoon, I haven't been able to absolutely confirm that the business owner is black.)

I think everyone can pretty much agree that George Floyd's death under a police officer's knee deserves thorough investigation and, if warranted, tough criminal charges. But the police shooting of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta isn't even vaguely the same. Despite headlines like "Police Kill Black Man For Being Asleep at Wendy's" and media/political accusations that this was murder, the facts - and the video - don't support it.

The police officers treated Brooks with respect and a calm demeanor. When he was found to be legally intoxicated after a breathalyzer test, they asked him to put his hands behind his back to be handcuffed. That's when Brooks erupted into a furious fighting machine (he had a criminal history of violence, including violence against his own children), wrestling with and repeatedly punching the officers before grabbing one of their taser pistols and running. Here's what happened next...

All of this is absolutely clear in the video. Not shown here is that the cop who was fired upon then pitched to one side and fell against that red car as Brooks continue running. So what the second cop saw was that the man who had just violently attacked him had raised a weapon, there was a bang and a muzzle flash, and his partner staggered - perhaps injured. The second officer then shot and ended the situation before it could escalate farther.

(Update/Correction/Apologia: I got an important part of the sequence wrong in my summary above. It was not the second cop who shot Brooks, it was the one closest to him - who had just dodged the Taser shot. Sorry about the error!)

Here's a helpful tip to bad guys of every race, creed, and color: if you don't want to die, don't shoot anything at the police. And a tip for rioters: burning down a business that had nothing to do with the incident doesn't help your cause.

• Obama to join Biden for online fundraiser - I can only imagine that Barry is praising Allah for Covid19, because it means he won't ever have to actually share a stage with Joe Biden. Nor will Obama have to be wearing pants with a nice crease during the event. In fact, he may not wear pants at all - who's to know?

I don't really have anything clever to say about this "event." Obama still sucks, Biden is still the world's most prolific gaffe machine, and I sure as heck won't be watching.

• Seattle gives "CHOP" concrete barricades for their imaginary kingdom - Confirming that Seattle is now officially The Dumbest Place On Earth, city officials are giving the occupying protesters concrete barricades to replace the old wooden and plastic ones. While not specifically stated, I assume that this was done as a public safety measure, because protesters who fire AK-47s at police will be much less likely to get hurt if they can hide behind rebar-enforced concrete.

UPDATE: GLAND OF PLENTY

Ladybug is home and doing fine now that her anal gland, much like a Seattle protester, has been able to express itself. She'll be on antibiotics for a couple of weeks, then get rechecked.

But clearly she's feeling better already. Now that her backdoor Nadler face has been drained, she was finally able to scurry into the backyard and take a big, healthy Schiff.

A Bad Rap

In the newly formed principality of CHAZ (the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone), the only thing actively being produced is irony - and plenty of it. The leader (an admittedly hazy distinction) is a local rapper with an AK-47 and enough gold rings to pay for all of the commune's needs...if he was willing to give them up, which he's not. Apparently seizing his property for the people is still unacceptable.

CHAZ has erected border walls to keep out foreigners and demands voter-unfriendly (and likely racist) photo IDs at checkpoints. The local citizenry divides its time between demanding that all land be seized for communal farming, and begging for food that someone else has produced. To paraphrase Steve Martin in "The Jerk," land and freedom and autonomy are all they need. And food and ice and Gatorade. That's all! Land and freedom and autonomy and food and ice and Gatorade are all they need. And Cigarettes. And clothes. Land and freedom and autonomy and food and ice and Gatorade and cigarettes and clothes and shoes and solar chargers and pillows and flashlights and Tracfone minutes and folding chairs and body lotion. That's all! And disinfectant.

While we've previously suggested going Branch Davidian on these numbnuts, our better angels have spoken to us and we now realize that this situation should be handled non-violently. So rather than drag them out of CHAZ, we keep them in. As in permanently. And we cut off the flow of all of those items that they want for free but haven't earned.

Let them break up the streets and plant their crops. Let them turn dumpsters into dwellings. Let them defecate on the sidewalks and drink rainwater from the gutters. And let them see just how long one a**hole can hold on to his gold rings without help from the police.

The Garden of Eatin'

BONUS: UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT

Perhaps to clear up the confusion between "autonomous" and "erogenous," the Seattle squatters are changing the name of their encampment from CHAZ to CHOP (Capitol Hill Organized Protest).

But as long as the name is in play, we'd really like to suggest the Capitol Hill Union of Militant Protesters Zone. Because CHUMPZ has a nice ring to it.

Book 'Em

As Old Lodge Skins famously said in the film Little Big Man - "Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes it doesn't." Today was a "sometimes it doesn't" for us.

We tried mightily to come up with a worthwhile post and some pithy wit, but found our muse uncooperative. As muses are wont to be when the feces hits the fan.

People are losing their careers for not kneeling before the New Taliban, movies and television shows are being pulled from public view, Amazon and Google have announced plans to cut off certain forms of technological support for the police, a significant chunk of Seattle has been commandeered by armed radicals who are getting no pushback from hamstrung law enforcement agencies, the stock market plunged (after first enthusiastically running off a vertiginous cliff, stopping in mid-air, briefly turning into a cartoon "sucker," then plummeting), and people are waking up to the fact that the coronavirus didn't actually disappear just because there was a bigger story in the news. Yow!

And so we struggled to find something to say. Thinking about the way police officers are now being demonized, we thought about the children's books of our youth which always depicted the police in a positive light...

We looked for other old police-themed titles which might lend themselves to a comedic updating, but came up dry. Not that we weren't pleased to discover this classic...

But still thinking of old children's books as a good contrast between the innocence we once enjoyed and the current destruction of our culture, we thought about "Goodnight Moon," and thought maybe we could write a parody along the lines of "Goodnight freedom, capitalism, and western civilization."

Hmm. Not really good, but maybe if we diddled around with a cover for awhile, something would come to us (spoiler alert: it didn't)...

You can kill an impressive amount of time trying to find the right font, find burning buildings to put outside, and creating a broken window effect. And in the end...it was "meh," and we still didn't have any ideas. How in the heck could we even use this piece of art we'd labored over?

That's when Busty Ross helpfully said, "Send me in coach!" And it seemed like a good idea, because no matter how lame a blog post we make, people are wonderfully forgiving if Ms. Ross has paid a visit. Which is how today's cartoon came to be, and why the weekend has arrived for us in just the nick of time.