The Week in Cartoons, Annotated by Pam Bondi

Bring your own alligator and allegations...

It was a dark and stormy week in America, punctuated by silliness and stupidity. Mostly stupidity. Oh, I forgot craven behavior. In short, the now-new normalish.

For the record, I am trying to write this without reading glasses. Been there? Sure you have. So I will peer through the mists of my cataract and give this my usual yeoman effort.

Let’s see what I cranked out for Smerconish last Monday.

You will note, going forward in this space, that the week was pretty much all Epstein and/or Bondi all the time. For that, I apologize. That brings us to a point here in the cartoon gallery: you roll with the headlines in this business, and the headlines were almost all Epsteinbondi.

This cartoon shows our darling AG chewing it all over. A quick drawing in some ways, but it forced me to actually think about what a chewed file folder would look like (this is what I do for you). Originally I was going to have her cheeks bulging, but then I thought it might not be that clear. I decided to have most of the folder our of her mouth instead.

Kind of interesting how she looks like Ivanka from the nose up.

I am sure that she’s better than Matt Gaetz (no active underage girl accusations against her for starters , but the night is young), but she’s still the most dangerous Trump appointee.

She actually believes his rambling BS and actively implements whatever drool he spits out. Scary, yes, but at least we don’t have to wonder what she’s really up to.

What’s next?

(Need to go find some new reading glasses. Srsly.)

I drew this on the same day as the above effort, if I recall.

I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me earlier, honestly. The wordplay on Bond was just sitting there right on her desk, and I missed it. Fool me once. Anyway, this cartoon is somewhat similar to the above approach, so I had to shift the perspective a bit, if only for my own graphic sanity.

Folks, I am really struggling here without the glasses. Pardon me whilst I find my vision.

OK. I went home and got functioning reading glasses. Kind of. They’re only 1.5s. Now where were we?

Oh, yes. More Bondi. She’s no Gaetz, but, in a way, she’s worse. She’s semi-qualified in the sense that she had served as an AG in a larger state, but her back pocket relationship with Trump as his handmaiden is more than troubling.

I’m deeply troubled. You know. Like Susan Collins. I might even be deeply concerned.

So troubled and concerned.

More Bondi!

Jack, how can their be even more Pam Bondi, you might ask?

Well, you know I work for the San Francisco Chronicle, which is in the circulation area of Alcatraz Island, now a $65 million in-the-black government operation. San Franciscans from Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi on down see this desire to make Alcatraz a new Supermax as a complete joke. There was the news that Bondi and former Teeny State Gov. and Interior Secretary Douglas Who? Burghum took a li’l Coast Guard launch ride out to the island to assess it for possible use as a Donald Trump Fever Dream.

Look. Let’s keep it real.

The late Attorney Gen. Robert F. Kennedy (the non-insane one) closed it in 1963 because it’s falling apart. If you’ve even been there, you would know that it’s completely trashed, period. They would have to level it, get the chunks off the island, and build a completely new facility to the tune of a few billion dollars. No biggie, right? Like a movie.

Oh, and throw the shark costs to guard the island that Trump wants. Have you priced out a shark recently? Neither have I.

Let’s do the Tiburon math.

According to the Internetz Tubez, shark is running $29/pound. The typical Great White Shark weighs about 2,000 lbs.. My handy dandy electric thinking brain of the future is telling me that’s $58,000 per shark. You’d probably want 1,000 sharks offshore, just to be on the safe side, so that’s $58,000,000 million for the sharks alone.

My guess is that Trump wants to rebuild Alcatraz solely to incarcerate Pelosi alone.

What else did I draw? Don’t tell me it’s more Bondi or Epstein.

Bingo.

But at least Pam isn’t it in yet. But we still have more space here.

This was my illustration for my Chronicle column on same.

I got a call from American Journalism Hero Pete Wevurski on Thursday noting that a previous communication about when to turn in my art was 7:00 PM. But, as it turns out, it was actually 4:00 PM.

Consulting my watch, I saw that it was 3:09 PM.

I gasped a little, then got this idea. I turned it in at 3:39 PM.

That’s the job, people.

FINALLY, A CARTOON THAT ISN’T ABOUT BONDI!

Oops. No. She was mentioned.

This was about the proposed new 77 Beale tower in San Francisco, which would be the tallest building on the west coast.

Acute observers of this space may note that I also love a good panda joke, as well as a good burning Tesla joke. I managed to work them in. Lurie refers to the new SF mayor, Dan Lurie, who said he was going to add 1,500 homeless shelter beds upon taking office.

Ahem. Sigh.

Please note he’s now at 73% approval, anyway. Oh, well. Fine.

There cannot possibly be another Bondi gag in this scrambled egg mess of a week, right?

Wrong, You Betcha! Breath.

I neglected to mention that there is also, um, a sanitation issue with Alcatraz.

One wants to be careful about how one draw liquid effluent, so I relied on my close personal friend, the Splatter Tool. Also: rebar.

This week, my solemn pledge to you is no more Bondi material, unless, of course, there is a reason to draw Bondi material.

I’m not proud.

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Hey, YBs! : Good morning. I’ll be doing my Smerconish cartoon next, followed by chewing on a Chronicle column and other delicacies like editorial cartoons. Now I can’t see the italics button, nor can I figure out precisely why my cursor won’t highlight my copy. I hate stuff like this. Will advise. —J.