Really.

First, the Natalie Thing. Now look, I do not presume that she’s servicing the president. Honestly, I don’t think she is, even if I’m joking around. Hero worship only goes so far. Certainly stranger things have happened even in the Oval Office.

Sexually I mean.

The notion that a 35 year old woman would consent to that sort of thing with a man 45 years older isn’t preposterous. Just unlikely. I do think she’s profoundly mentally ill. I’d rather have her be coherent and take care of him sexually. It’s a punishment of its own kind.

I do believe the JD Vance sofa story, though. What’s odd is JD Vance looks like the kind of person who would indeed take a divan on a romantic dinner date with low candlelight.

“Your ottoman looks so hot tonight.”

“It’s a little number I picked up at the IKEA Swedish meatball refrigerator. “

“Your accent pillows are so…overstuffed”,

“I love it at Levitz. Then I met the love seat from Macy’s”.

I’ll stop.

Oh the ballroom. OK, someone please tell me if the new East Wing Ballroom is some sort of creepy national security bunker to ride out a revolution or another monument to 8647’s supernova ego.

Yes and yes.

The Orangufaketan held up some drawings of this 100,000 square foot crime against America. Looks like a Bruce McCall National Lampoon painting of the HMS Tyrannic. You can now see that he cares about two things :

A. Making money

B. Getting his megalomania satisfied.

That’s it— no more.

I don’t understand why his slave master staff doesn’t seem to realize that any opportunity they use to have him speak publicly is now always a catastrophic shitshow. He doesn’t sound high or drunk.

He sounds brain damaged. When will they tell us about the weird microstroke he had?

He tells an aircraft carrier crew that they should stay much longer in an overflowing shit bucket without food.

Mr. Friend of Defense (War).

He destroys the relationship with our largest trading partner for what? His delusional territorial land grab?

He undermines a 70-year alliance with South Korea, our critical Asian defense partner, to please his bloated I-smoke-in-a-nursery-because-I-can pal, Kim Jong Un. My dad almost got killed over there because of Kim’s grandfather. And, by extension, the author of You Betcha!

He sells insider trading information for $100,000 per month

Hello, GOP Congress! Those are impeachable offenses by my read of the constitution.

He destroyed the Rose Garden, now called “The Slab”, but not in front of him, of course.

The monster ghoul continues to insist his name appear on a memorial to an assassinated president. He brings Natalie to a dignified transfer.

It’s all in the open. In Missoula. In Sacramento. In Thief River Falls. In Omaha. In Dayton. In Plattsburgh. In Pittsburgh. In Mobile and Miami and Manteca.

It just isn’t apparent to the guys under the dome at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Oh yeah —his creepshow chain-migrating, anchor-baby mama immigration fraudster can’t-quite-figure-out-her- Epstein -role Eva Braun-Imelda Marcosish wife finally made a public appearance after 34 days.

Imagine Jackie or Betty doing that.

Finally, this sad vain man’s impersonation of hair. I’m still puzzling over this. I can’t decide whether he had a particularly good Herr day, where some actual professional did it instead of the Purple Bruise Hands cretin—an Appalling President in every way, or it’s extensions.

Even his MAGA dumfux see him now as the grifter burglar he is.

I don’t what the next words after “appalling” would be to describe the oafish ham-handed piss-odorous pedo-adjacent adjudicated rapist currently in the Oval Office.

Oh.

I just listed them.

Hey, YBs!: Have a non-appalling day!—J.

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Hey, YBs!: Traveling today. I’ll catch up tomorrow with something or the other. Have a great Saturday!—J.

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Hey, YBs! : That’ll be it for you folks for the day. Now I have to do a freelance rough. Sigh. Anyway, catch you tomorrow. Hope you have a fun evening. —J.

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Hey, YBs! : Hope you’re having a good day. Mine is TBD. At leas the cartoon is done. —J.

Hey, YBs! : I know, right? Have a good night! —J.

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Hey, YBs! : Here’s one of two coming at you rightcheer ratnow. Have a great evening. —J.

By Jack Ohman,

Contributing Columnist

Aug 13, 2026

Artificial intelligence is easy. Comedy is hard. Just ask state Sen. Scott Wiener.

Artificial intelligence is easy. Comedy is hard. Just ask state Sen. Scott Wiener.

Wiener is locked in a tightening race with Supervisor Connie Chan to succeed San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and the contest is shaping up to be the no-room-for-error, marquee U.S. House race in California.

So it’s something of a head-scratcher that the Wiener campaign decided to set up a website called ConnieChan.ai that featured a chatbot Chan imitator.

If you asked the chatbot about Chan’s positions on issues, it spat back answers that seemed designed to get a laugh.

“I’m Connie, the world’s first AI trained to say ‘no’ to anything you ask … Bring me an idea and I’ll explain why it can’t, shouldn’t, and won’t happen.”

Like I said, comedy is hard. Take it from a political cartoonist.

Predictably, the Chan campaign exploded, decrying the chatbot as “racist” and “sexist.” Critics included Pelosi, who has endorsed Chan and whose daughter Christine happens to be running to succeed Wiener in the state Senate.

In an open letter posted on X (now that’s funny, using Elon Musk’s social media platform to complain about AI), Pelosi and eight other Democratic female lawmakers, including Rep. Zoe Lofgren of San Jose, blasted the use of the chatbot.

“Women have spent generations fighting to have our own voices heard in the halls of power,” the statement read, adding, “We should not have to fight against artificial intelligence putting words in our mouths.”

Fair points.

Another irony here is that Wiener is the author of Senate Bill 1047, AI regulation legislation that Gov. Gavin Newsom finally signed last year — after sending it back to the Senate for tightening — so his potential Big Tech 2028 presidential campaign funders weren’t singled out.

To be sure, politics is not without its share of free cartoon ideas.

In his initial defense, Wiener correctly pointed out that some Chan supporters with time on their hands peppered ConnieChan.ai with leading questions, and the chatbot refused to play along, indicating some modicum of intelligence.

“It is particularly ironic that Speaker Emerita Pelosi is expressing concern about AI, when Speaker Emerita Pelosi played a key role, aligned with Big Tech, in killing my landmark AI safety bill, Senate Bill 1047, a bill that was broadly supported by pro-AI regulation advocates, labor unions, national security experts, biosecurity experts, and many progressive leaders,” Wiener said in his own statement.

So much for the eerie quiet that had typified the relationship between Wiener and Pelosi and left so many political observers speculating about bad blood.

But still, why did Wiener, who has taken the lead in trying to rein in AI companies, resort to using the technology to attack Chan? Wiener spox Joe Arellano said the ChanBot was an attempt to tap into the “AI craze overtaking the city.”

How’s that for a punchline?

One wonders what that writer’s room sounded like when someone brought up the ChanBot idea. Was there no one in attendance who deigned to push back? To point out that Wiener’s brand as a champion of AI regulation might take a hit from this silliness? And how could no one on his team have seen that this would come back to bite the senator?

Instead, mistakes were made, accusations were thrown, the campaign quickly pulled the site and the San Francisco billboards advertising it, and Wiener apologized.

“My campaign created ConnieChan.ai as a parody to draw attention to my opponent’s record of delay and obstruction around housing, public transit, and other critical needs,” Wiener said in a statement.

Wiener, of course, isn’t the only one using AI in politics. President Donald Trump is famous for posting all sorts of crazy AI slop featuring him in heroic poses, mostly involving him having impressive pectoral and abdominal muscles — now that’s comedy gold.

In the California governor race, GOP nominee Steve Hilton posted an AI animation ad featuring a likeness of his Democratic opponent, Xavier Becerra, as Nero and a would-be Gavin Newsom as, um, another Nero, mocking poor Californians who can’t afford gasoline. Hilton is portrayed as a heroic, rugged, much-taller-than-he-is gladiator fighting the dictators while sweating. His British accent is pretty faint; he almost sounds like he’s from Fresno.

Hilton neglects to mention his favorite dictator at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and the role his misguided war in Iran has had on gas prices.

Wiener’s foray into the use of AI should tell him that SB1047 might find the addition of a ban on AI technology in political ads not only good for him, but good for California voters sincerely trying to inform themselves in this increasingly atomized information environment.

We’re all petrified of AI, and we should be. Wiener’s bill was a good first step in mitigating the more pernicious effects.

But ConnieChan.ai ain’t funny, and neither is AI slop-infused political advertising.

While it’s clear that there were relevant points raised on the site, there are lots of other ways to communicate Chan’s NIMBYism.

Maybe Wiener should try drawing a political cartoon.

Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist who also writes at https://substack.com/@jackohman

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Hey, YBs! : I’ll be covering this marquee congressional race going forward. It’s going to be fascinating. Anyway, more today! Practice safe living.—J.

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Hey, YBs! : Very hectic today. Scanner went out. But I’m back. I think. I miss the composing room. I’ll post my Chronicle column in the morning. Anyway, here you go, and have a great evening! —J.

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Hey, YBs! : Here I am, again. Column for the Chronicle soon (it’s done), and one on Abraham Lincoln, believe it or not. Hope you had a productive day! —J.

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Hey, YBs! : Hope all is well. Gonna take a breather here. Catch you later! —J.

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.

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Hey, YBs! : Hope all is well. Off to whatever else I have to do today. We have lists. Anyway, lots more fun content shortly! —J.

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Hey, YBs! : You may be familiar with the 5% billionaire tax set for California’s fall ballot. Alert observers will see a buddy of mine in this drawing. First one to identify him will earn special bonus points for something or the other. Anyway, more content en route, and have a great afternoon! —J.

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Hey, YBs! : A fun moment, to be sure. I guess I could have worn a tie, after all. I guess I wanted to shock the Washington power structure (didn’t work). Anyway, enjoy whilst I work on another post. The opening JFK impression wasn’t unprompted. My dear friend Rob Rogers mentioned this uncanny (?) ability of mine in his very kind introduction.—J.

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Hey, YBs!: Gotta go think about San Francisco now. Channeling Tony Bennett. Anyway, more writing to come shortly. Have a great day! —J.

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Hey, YBs! : OK, taking the night off! Have a great evening! —J.

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Hey, YBs! : Hectic day today. Will do one more on your fave, RFK Jr.. Anyway, hang in there, people! Have a great evening! —J.

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Hey, YBs! : Off to the next thing! —J.