Lame Ms.

In a tense world of ever-growing threats, it's good to know that we can still count on unintentional comic relief from New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocarina-Quartets!

The far, far, far Left congresswoman is well known along with Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley for being part of a radical group called "The Squat" which meets, appropriately, in adjoining lady's room stalls.

But acting on her own, the once-and-future bartender recently hosted an online town hall meeting during which she was asked about New York City's sudden and dramatic rise in violent crimes...

"Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren't paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent," she replied in a sentence only intelligible to Joe Biden. "So they go out and they need to feed their child and they don't have money so...they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry."

Which would have been a perfectly good answer if Jean Valjean was in the midst of an extended murder spree or if the city was wracked by violent mobs of #BreadLoavesMatter agitators. But because neither of those is the case, it seems more likely that the congresswoman simply pulled the reply from her derriere in order to characterize violent criminals as innocent victims and responsible parents, while not mentioning New York City's defunding of its police force and the city's "catch and release" measures which put criminals back on the streets as quickly as possible.

Both of which policies, we're sure, the congresswoman considers to be the best things since sliced, albeit stolen, bread.

An Easy Commute

Last Friday was "a day which will live in infamy" for Leftists - who are likely unaware that the phrase has been used previously. In this case, it refers to President Trump's "Executive Grant of Clemency" commuting the sentence of former presidential advisor Roger Stone Jr - one of the higher profile prosecutorial victims of the Russian Collusion Hoax.

Those on the Left are fearful that if not kept in jail for life, the 67-year old Stone will embark on a wave of crime: setting buildings on fire, looting stores, strapping on a gun and claiming an entire urban neighborhood, toppling statues, defacing public monuments and, in his spare time, shooting dozens of black men, women, and children in Chicago.

Just kidding! The Left is actually totally cool with all of those things! What they're really afraid of is that Roger Stone will serve as a living reminder of their coup attempt and the corrupting of our nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

And speaking of political dysfunction...

"There was this guy called Cornhole who was fascinated by the golden hairs on my legs..."

Joe Biden has announced his own plan to "Make America Great Again But Not A Donald Trump Kind of Great," which boils down to this: "buy American."

By which we assume he means to buy any of the literally dozens of products still made in our country, as opposed to actually buying an American the way Ukranian energy company, Burisma Holdings, bought Joe Biden by funneling money to his son, Hunter.

Still Playing Hooky

Another cartoon sketch by my Dad

My "week off to relax and catch up on things" hasn't really played out that way. Life, in its puckish way, has served up a series of minor emergencies and distractions which have left me frazzled and even further behind than I was before!

For example, our refrigerator broke down (in Texas, in July) and so I had to scramble to get a new one without actually venturing out into the world of possible plague-carriers. I finally found a good one online that got delivered today, but I discovered it's a HUGE amount of work (Mrs J was already on the "injured reserve" list) to get all the crap out of one refrigerator and repack it into another before everything rots.

And amazingly, even though I didn't materially help the guys installing the new refrigerator, I still managed to need a weed whip to help make it happen (to uncover the water shutoff to the house), tore the skin off my knuckles (shutting off the water), then later pitched myself wildly and clumsily into the street, ripped my pants and knee open, and sprained a wrist. It's a long story, but the short version is this: I suck at taking time off.

But now I have ice for my well-earned drink.

On the plus side, ripped jeans are stylish - right?

See you in the comments section!

Stilton Waters Run Deep

I'm still doing the "staycation" thing this week, but didn't want anyone to show up here without getting something for their effort. And so, here is another old cartoon that my Dad did about 70 years ago.

Meanwhile, what little we've seen of the news still pretty much stinks. Want to talk about it? The comments section is open for business!

Staycation

Want a print-worthy copy of this picture? Download it at this link!

We're taking the week off (unless even MORE crap somehow hits the fan) to enjoy the creature comforts of home and catch up on a backlog of chores that has gotten a little out of control. Not that we're deserting you entirely as the world descends into madness - the comments section will be open as usual and we'll be participating there as much as possible.

All is fine - we're just way overdue to catch our breath!

ASKING A FAVOR...

Hopefully you all downloaded your free copy of "Johnny Optimism - Volume Two: Laughter is Debased Medicine" over the weekend. If so (or even if not), we'll again mention that any and all reviews on Amazon will be extremely helpful in making sure that the book turns up in search listings (ie, harder for Amazon to bury). Also, please keep reviews "politics free" because Johnny has problems enough already.

Incidentally, during the book giveaway it reached the impressive #2 position in "medical fiction," being topped only by some goony romance book which has nothing to do with medicine. And really, does the world even need another romance book?! There are millions of them...but only two Johnny Optimism books! This is the sort of injustice that drove Papa Hemingway to home dentistry.

4th of July - Land of the Free (Book)!

What better way to celebrate the 4th of July than with a red, white, and blue book that's free? To celebrate the release of Johnny Optimism's second mega-collection, I'm giving the Kindle version away absolutely free on Friday July 3, Saturday July 4, and Sunday July 5th.

Note: before ordering, be sure the price shows as free (and not just "Read for Free" with Kindle Unlimited)! Instead, you want to buy the book for $0.00.

You can read this immense treasury of humor on any computer, smartphone, or tablet - just download the appropriate free Kindle reading app from Amazon at this link. And reading on even a small device doesn't stink, because I fiddled around with the book's code to embed an "easy reading" mode: just turn your device sideways, tap on any page, and you'll suddenly see just one cartoon at a time at a size which won't make you go blind! Tap on the right to go to the next cartoon, or tap on the left to go backwards.

There's also a beautiful paperback edition available for just $5.99 with free Prime shipping. No respectable bathroom, coffee table, or doctor's waiting room should be without it! (And Volume One is still available too, at $5.99 for either the print or Kindle version)

A Special Favor: after downloading the book, I'd really appreciate any reviews you'd care to post on Amazon. Amazon promotes (or demotes) books based on their popularity and reviews, so it really makes a huge difference. And reviews can be short and sweet - just a sentence or two! But please don't mention politics in your reviews - Johnny's got enough problems already!

Please feel free to share this link to the free Kindle book with family, friends, on social media, or with whomever is in the hospital bed next to yours - but remember, this 4th of July freebie is only available Friday, Saturday, and Sunday!

Roberts Rules of Disorder

The Pro-Life movement suffered another setback on Monday, when Supreme Court Justice John Roberts sided with the court's liberal wing to strike down a Louisiana law that said abortions could only be performed by doctors who had admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.

The court's liberals, among whom we can certainly count Roberts at this point, found that the law could make it more difficult for a woman to exercise her Constitutional right to abortion (a right which we wish the court would circle with a yellow highlighter, because damned if we can find it in there). They also declared that there was "no medical benefit" for a woman getting quick hospital  treatment in case her hoo-haw was geysering blood and her own organs, rather than those of her child, were skittering across the floor.

Interestingly, an almost identical case had previously been decided by the court, and Roberts had voted that the law was just fine and shouldn't be overturned (although it still was).  Which is why it was surprising that he completely flip-flopped his vote this time, while saying that he still thought he was right the last time. He changed his vote only because precedent had already been set, and he didn't want to mess with precedent even if it means raping the Constitution a little.

Then again, rape is no big deal in a country that makes access to abortion easy by stripping away protections to make it safe.

And speaking of safe, we still aren't here in the United States of Confusion when it comes to coronavirus and  Covid-19...

"It's okay, folks - she's a patriot!"

We've about given up hope that our nation will really be able to get this virus under control, mostly because the simple measures needed to reduce transmission have been hopelessly bungled, distorted, lied about, and politicized.

So just let us vent for a moment and share some truisms which you're free to believe or not:

• We are not starting a second viral wave. We're still near the beginning of the first wave.
• People can be entirely asymptomatic and still spread the potentially deadly virus to others (and yes, Typhoid Mary felt fine for the years she spread her illness).
• Any mask is better than no mask.
• Wearing a mask will not make you sick or cause you to hyperventilate (although fear might, so calm the heck down).
• Individual virus particles are small enough to travel through masks. Virus particles wrapped in snot and saliva - which is to say MOST of them - can not.
• If virus particles DO enter your system, the fewer you get initially, the greater the likelihood that you'll have a less severe case (starting with a lower "load" gives your body more time to gear up for the fight).
• There are no really good remedies or treatments for Covid-19 yet, although some helpful meds are being looked at.
• Of those hospitalized for Covid-19 and eventually released, as many as 50% are still suffering symptoms - including severe symptoms like chronic "10 out of 10" pain and brain injuries - which may be permanent.
• "My mask protects you, your mask protects me." This is a fact. And the only one that can possibly restore a bit of normality to our daily lives.
• "Opening up" doesn't mean it's free-for-all time again. It means SOME business can occur again if (and only if) people take the important and logical measures of wearing masks and observing social distancing.
• There is no guarantee that an effective vaccine will be found.

And there's more, but the bottom line is: put politics aside and, for now, wear a mask whenever you're mingling with other people in public. Other countries are doing it and it works. We did it here during the Spanish Flu and it worked.

Besides, keeping up to date with good pandemic procedures may be even more useful in the near future...

Yes, those happy-go-lucky Chinese have announced that a new flu virus with "pandemic potential" has popped up and may soon be winging its way to our shores. Because while pigs can't fly, swine flu most certainly can.

This being a "new" virus, there is - again - no human immunity, and the virus has already jumped from porker to person in at least two cases.

Although if China is admitting two cases, God only knows how many people have really sprouted curly tails and are currently shnuffling amongst tree roots for truffels.

An Act of Wampum Destruction

According to a Washington think tank (and yes, we find that oxymoron hilarious), if Joe Biden is elected as our next president, Elizabeth "Many-HaHa" Warren will be his likely choice for Treasury Secretary with primary responsibility for financial and economic policy. Leaving Joe to concentrate on giving the country a sense of direction by growing moss on his north side.

Such an assignment would be popular with young voters who would have liked Warren to be the VP candidate owing to her solid dedication to socialism, mathemagic taxation plans and, most importantly, the chance that Kate McKinnon would again play her on Saturday Night Live.

But that's not going to happen since Joe has already announced that his VP candidate must be a "woman of color" who is fully qualified and ready, at a moment's notice, to take over the job of stroking Biden's blonde leg hairs when he's sitting poolside.

At the moment, the leading contender for the position is Kamala "I'm not saying Joe is a racist, but he's a racist" Harris who, we're assured by former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, has plenty of stroking experience.

But just how much damage could Warren do as Treasury Secretary? Plenty - as we pointed out last September:

Warren would introduce a concept she calls "accountable capitalism," which the Wall Street Journal succinctly summarizes as a plan which is "an assault on retiree wealth" which would "destroy savings built over a lifetime and sink the economy."

Think they're exaggerating? Warren wants every business in America worth $1 billion or more to be compelled to become a "federal corporation" in which 2/5 of the directors must be elected by the workers. And rather than primarily serving stockholders, these "federal" corporations would be ordered to serve "the workforce, the community, customers, the local and global environment, and contribute to the betterment of community and societal factors."

In other words, every large company in America will go belly up, taking retirement investments with them.

And there's plenty more where that came from, like Warren's multi-trillion dollar plan for "Medicare For All" which can be fully funded by taxing millionaires and billionaires "pennies" on their fortunes. All of which would, by law, have to be converted into pennies.

It's all a reminder that even if elected, Joe Biden will never be president. This vacuous, grinning shell of a man will merely be a trademark character used for branding purposes, like Uncle Ben or Aunt Jemima, while the real decisions and presidential policies will be handled by a cabal of the most extreme radicals the Left has to offer. 

FROM THE VAULT...

Cape Diem

Sometimes there's a man...we won't say a hero, 'cause what's a hero? But sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And with apologies to the Coen Brothers and "The Big Lebowski," at this time and place, it's Pessimism Man.

Granted, like all superheroes, he just does his thing and quickly departs - for which we can all be grateful. But he paid us a visit earlier today, which sort of derailed our train of thought for anything very useful.

See, the news was already just godawful no matter what direction you look in, but at least we felt fairly secure here at home. Then, over our morning coffee, we noticed that our quiet little residential street was teeming with speeding traffic. But why? It turns out that they were all detouring from our nearest major intersection, which had been closed off after an "incident."

Specifically, there was a car crash (which didn't look too major), and a helpful police officer arrived on the scene and went to check on the occupants of the cars. The driver of the first car jumped out and stabbed him. The officer fell back, and the driver then rushed to the other car and started stabbing its driver. Lacking a Rapid Response Social Worker on scene, the officer shot the offender - who died at the scene.

We don't know the race of any of the people involved, and it wouldn't make any difference to us anyway (though it might to mobs). It was a horrible event, and the police officer acted appropriately to save a life.

With this gloomy cloud hovering our head (and an unending parade of cars roaring past our home), we at least tried to come up with a topical cartoon or two, but couldn't conjure anything which wouldn't get our house burned down.

An especially dangerous proposition when you've stockpiled as many flammable bottles of Clan MacAccelerant as we have.

Statuary Rape 2020

On Monday evening, we watched the sad spectacle of radical human cockroaches swarming a statue of Andrew Jackson and attempting to topple it, just across the street from the White House. Police were eventually able to save the statue and push back the anarchists, but not before the monument had been damaged and vandalized.

There are two kinds of madness at work: that of the mob which wants to destroy anything and everything related to "history," and the madness of politicians who are doing nothing to restore law and order. Indeed, many of them are encouraging the chaos and destruction.

Remember a long time ago (or so it seems now) when all of this was allegedly about George Floyd and racial equality? Well that narrative, along with the principles Martin Luther King Jr fought and died for, has gone into the crapper.

What we're seeing is a radical push for anarchy and Marxism. What we're hearing is that only Black Lives Matter, except for the Black Lives lost to black-on-black crime and gunplay. In Chicago this past weekend, a black 3-year old boy was shot and killed. If his life mattered to the mobs, they would declare that Chicago can't continue to be a slaughterhouse for the innocent.

But they're too busy screaming "F*ck the police" to offer up actual support for black children in a war zone. And too busy toppling inanimate objects to confront actual killers, or challenge the political party which has really been guilty of systemic racism since its inception.

FROM THE VAULT...

A Tall Hat to Fill

In honor of Father's Day (when I'm writing this), I'd like to share several cartoons that my Dad drew many years ago. He constantly doodled cartoons just for the pleasure of it - any scrap of blank paper became his playground.

One character he returned to frequently was The Man in the Tall Hat. Why the man had a tall hat, or even who he was, never really came up. And why should it? A little absurdity does a body good.

The cartoons weren't laugh-out-loud funny, but instead were flights of gentle whimsy. A peek into my father's psyche, and his conception of the world as it should be rather than how it is.

Happy Father's Day, Pa - You are missed by many and you still make us smile.  -Stilton

BONUS: CHICK, PLEASE...

At a recent roundtable discussion of race, Chick-fil-A's CEO, Dan Cathy, showed that he believes actions are stronger than words. Unfortunately, the words in question were Cathy's declaration that to atone for racism, white people should literally start polishing the shoes of black people wherever they find them. Which won't be socially awkward at all, right?

To show he means business, Cathy then whipped out a shoeshine brush that he keeps in his pocket (this is called "eccentricity" when you're wealthy) and stooped to polish the sneakers of rapper Lecrae Moore - a black man who has been so oppressed by centuries of systemic racism that he currently has a net worth of only $3 million.

Humility is fine, but obsequious virtue-signaling is the opposite of humility. Moreover, Cathy's suggestion strikes us as a good way to get killed. Don't believe us? Pounce on the feet of the next black person you see, and hock up a loogie on their shoes. The odds that you'll finish giving a spit-shine are considerably lower than the likelihood you'll soon find yourself waddling to a hospital for an emergency shoebrush extraction.

Brand of Bothers

Cultural change is in the air. Or maybe it's just the lingering smoke from burned businesses - they smell pretty much the same.

In either case, corporate America is bending over backwards to show that it's woke and not racist. Which is why Quaker Oats has announced that they're getting rid of the Aunt Jemima brand of products. Not that Aunt Jemima herself will be out of work long...

And Aunt Jemima was only the first classic brand representative to fall. Because another familiar face will soon be missing from store shelves...

If you didn't read comic books, don't even try to understand this one.

Of course, we want to be helpful in a time of crisis, so we're offering to let the Uncle Ben's Rice folks use this different, more contemporary design we came up with a few years ago...

But lest anyone start thinking that problematic branding is limited only to products with black people's names on the label, we want to point out that products with white people's names on the label can be just as bad, if not even worse...