Ann Telnaes and Clay Jones

Eat Mor Sundays by Clay Jones

And no, you can’t get your healthcare at Subway Read on Substack

This cartoon was drawn (in California) for the FXBG Advance. Is it weird to draw a cartoon on Fredericksburg while in California? Not really. I did it in Huntsville, Alabama, and Montreal. I didn’t do one while traipsing the UK, Ireland, and Iceland.

Fredericksburg has lost Moss Free Clinic, and very important, and the only source for many for healthcare.

I covered this issue back in February 2024, way before I even started my Substack.

Creative note: I was out Thursday night in downtown Carlsbad when my editor sent me a few subjects. I knew this was the most important one. I wrote it in my head while having a Modelo. I got it approved the next day (Friday) and drew it that night.

Music note: I listened to Tom Petty’s Wildflowers album. (snip)

==========

Trump orders strike on Iran by Ann Telnaes

Operation Midnight Shammer gets to play strongman Read on Substack

Yesterday Trump announced the bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran, claiming “the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated”.

Timothy Snyder, author of “On Tyranny”, posted on bluesky last night: “Many things reported with confidence in the first hours and days will turn out not to be true”.

Yes, indeedy…

(cartoon from 2003) (snip)

==========

Bunker-Busting Bonespurs by Clay Jones

The forecast calls for bombs and TACOs Read on Substack

The decision to go to war shouldn’t be left to a low-IQ racist, narcissistic toddler with impulse issues. I wonder if our generals feel like Hitler’s generals. In both cases, experienced and trained military professionals had to follow very stupid orders. In Hitler’s case, those orders cost Germany thousands of soldiers, either through death or capture.

Hitler was a veteran while Trump dodged the Vietnam War, citing bone spurs.

To the idiot conspiracy-theory spreading trolls at GoComics believing yesterday’s cartoon signals I’m for bombing Iran, no, morons. How could you come to that conclusion after years of reading my work?

To be clear, I do NOT support starting a war against any nation that hasn’t attacked us. This case is particularly stupid.

Donald Trump is demanding peace from Iran, which has never attacked us, after he dropped massive bombs on it. We HAD peace with Iran.

Years ago, Trump falsely predicted that President Barack Obama would start a war with Iran because he would be incapable of negotiating. Except it was President Obama who successfully negotiated for Iran to end its nuclear program, and the treaty was working. Iran was complying with all the conditions.

It was Trump who canceled the agreement and is now bombing Iran because he’s incapable of negotiating. And why would Iran want to negotiate with Donald Trump when they know they can’t trust him. How many treaties and agreements has Trump broken?

Iran doesn’t have a nuclear bomb today, or Trump and Bibi would not have bombed them. But Donald Trump just taught Iran that they need a nuclear weapon.

We may be slow learners of history, but the Iranians may not be. We forgot the history lessons of Vietnam and invaded Iraq. Iran probably remembers our demands on Iraq and Libya to lose their nuclear programs, only to see their regimes overthrown later.

Another history lesson we’re forgetting is our regime changes in Iraq and Afghanistan. How long is Trump prepared to commit US troops to this war? It’ll be a lot longer than Trump will be in office.

Last night, Trump said to the nation, “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” And then he said there are other targets. (snip)

A History Worth Reading

because when the US does these things, they take place in all of our names whether we want it, or not. It’s part of why the power for these things lies in our legislature. The power does not rest with the executive unless the legislature votes to give it.

‘You don’t brag about wiping out 60‑70,000 people’: the men who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki‘

Stephen Walker Sun 22 Jun 2025 07.00 EDT

This summer will mark 80 years since the attacks stunned the world. Today, every one of the crew members who carried out the bombings is dead. Here, one of the last writers to interview them reopens his files

Stephen Walker

Sun 22 Jun 2025 07.00 EDTShare

‘It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining on the buildings. Everything down there was bright – very, very bright. You could see the city from 50 miles away, the rivers bisecting it, the aiming point. It was clear as a bell. It was perfect. The perfect mission.”

I’m sitting in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco opposite the navigator of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The year is 2004, and Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, aged 83, has agreed to be interviewed for a book I’m writing for the 60th anniversary of that fateful mission. Van Kirk informs me, with the trace of a smile, that this will probably be the last interview in his life.

We have spent the afternoon looking through wartime logbooks from his 58 overseas combat missions. Now, between servings of dim sum, he is telling me about the 59th, the one that wiped out a city, along with well over 100,000 people.

“The instant the bomb left the bomb bay, we screamed into a steep diving turn to escape the shockwave. There were two – the first, like a very, very, very close burst of flak. Then we turned back to see Hiroshima. But you couldn’t see it. It was covered in smoke, dust, debris. And coming out of it was that mushroom cloud.”

The crew of the B-29 bomber Enola Gay. Stephen Walker interviewed Theodore ‘Dutch’ Van Kirk, navigator (1); Tom Ferebee, bombardier (2); Paul Tibbets, pilot (3); Bob Lewis, co-pilot (4); George ‘Bob’ Caron, tail gunner (5); and Robert Shumard, assistant engineer (6). Photograph: Photogquest/Getty Images

He stops a moment, awe visibly registering on his face. “The city was gone. It was only three minutes since we’d dropped the bomb.”

Van Kirk died in 2014. In the years since we met, all the other crew members who flew on the missions to Hiroshima, and to Nagasaki three days later on 9 August, have also died. Meanwhile, the numbers of hibakusha, those who survived the attacks, are rapidly dwindling. We are passing into a twilight of history. As we approach the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings, this biological fact seems disturbingly relevant. Twenty years ago, the world was a dangerous place. Today, it’s more so. More nations are developing nuclear weapons with few, if any, effective international controls. Tactical nuclear strikes have been explicitly threatened by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. And, just in the last week, war has broken out in the Middle East over fears that Iran may be very close to having a bomb. In such times, perspective matters. The shocked testimony of those like Van Kirk needs to be heard. History has lessons to teach us.

It was this thought that prompted me to reopen my files, to reread the transcripts of interviews with some of the crew members of both attacks. Much of this material was untouched for two decades; nothing relating to the Nagasaki mission was published. Here were some of the last testimonies of those who did the unthinkable. They were in their 80s or 90s, nearing the end of their lives. How did they remember it?

On 4 August 1945, Charles “Don” Albury, a 24-year-old B-29 pilot, was summoned to a secret briefing on Tinian, a Pacific island 1,500 miles south of Japan. Then the biggest bomber base in the world, Tinian was a jump-off point for a conveyor belt of the almost daily destruction of Japan. About 300,000 people had already died and 9 million were now homeless.

But Albury’s outfit had yet to take part in the attacks. Known as the 509th Composite Group, they occupied a secret compound on a far corner of the base. “Security was very, very tight,” Albury told me when I met him at his home in Orlando, Florida. Then aged 83, he grinned mischievously. “I remember one time the base commander got too near one of our planes. A guard nearly shot him.”

Even the 509th’s crews knew nothing about their ultimate missions. And they had been training for almost a year. First in Utah, later on Tinian: “We kept dropping practice bombs and flying these crazy steep turns. We did it day after day. For months.” But nobody told them why, and few dared ask. Those who did could find themselves swiftly dispatched by their leader, Paul Tibbets, a battle-hardened bomber pilot, to hardship posts above the Arctic Circle. “You learned to keep your mouth shut,” said Albury.

But in that 4 August briefing a part of the secret was about to be revealed.

Nine days earlier, on 26 July, President Truman had delivered his ultimatum to Japan in the Potsdam declaration: either surrender unconditionally, or face “prompt and utter destruction”. The means of that destruction was not specified. And Japan had not surrendered.

If I live for 100 years I will never get these few minutes out of my mind

(snip-MORE)

From Roger

I got a lot from reading and re-reading this. I tried to comment there, but WordPress sigh. Anyway, as a show of respect, here is this. Very good info and commentary

History Taps Us On The Shoulder. In Our Embarrassment We Hurry For Justifications

“Two Weeks Notice,” “Most Deserving” (comics)

Most deserving by Ann Telnaes

Trump thinks he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize Read on Substack

==========

Two Weeks Notice by Clay Jones

Two weeks = never Read on Substack

This could all be moot if Trump starts bombing Iran before the weekend or even the day is over. Today, several B-2 stealth bombers, the only kind of jet that can carry the 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs thought capable of penetrating Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear facility, flew west to Guam. Most likely, Trump is trying to show off like he has a big penis.

When asked a few days ago about joining the fight Israel started with Iran, Trump said he’ll have the answer in two weeks. The right answer would have been no.

Part of the message of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign was no more “forever wars.” Unless he thinks a war with Iran will be short and sweet, he would break that promise if he drags us into Israel’s fight. The war in Iraq would be a MAGA-Lardo Trump golf tournament for Donald compared to a war inside Iran.

If the rule is, “no land wars in Asia,” then someone get Trump a map and show him what continent Iran is in.

When you criticize Israel for starting this war, or voice any opposition to it, then MAGAts start screaming that you love Iran and you want them to have nuclear weapons. That’s the talk of a simpleton. Remember in 2003 when you opposed invading Iraq, and W. Bush’s followers would howl, “You’re either with us or against!” That was simple thinking, too (where are all those people now?). But Republicans have never added a lot of depth to their thought process. Unfortunately, it works. More Americans respond to it. MAGAts prefer to communicate in three syllables, like “No more wars” and “Bomb Iran.” Now, explain what a syllable is to a MAGAt.

I don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons, which is why I supported the nuclear treaty we had with Iran under President Barack Obama. The same one Donald Trump later destroyed and is asking for now. If Donald Trump could get the exact same deal with Iran that he destroyed while lying that it wasn’t working, he’d call himself a genius for it. I expect him to get something much less and heap hero worship on himself. He’s already talking about how he deserves a Nobel Prize, which Obama has.

Iran might actually be in a better position with Trump in office because Donald Trump is the world’s worst negotiator. If you just make him feel like he won, you can get everything you want. Not only could they have their bomb, but also get club memberships at MAGA-Lardo.

Who remembers what’s in the treaty Trump negotiated with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un?

And we should negotiate with Iran to stop its nuclear program, because the one Obama got them to sign was working. Why did Donald Trump cancel an agreement to end Iran’s nuclear program that was working? Probably because Obama’s name was on it. When Trump canceled the agreement, he made the world more dangerous. He gave Iran the green light to reignite its nuclear program.

Despite Trump’s treaty with North Korea, they’re closer today to being able to deliver a nuclear weapon to the continental United States.

But why should we join Israel’s war? They started it. Sure, Iran has been funding terrorist attacks against Israel for years, and we’ve funded Israel’s defense against that. But this is a war. Why should we join a fight we didn’t start? This isn’t our fight, especially when Israel is starting it just for us to finish.

When I was a stupid kid back in the 1980s, I was out with my buddy Ronny and Mark. Mark started a fight with another kid who also had his buddies with him. None of us joined in, and we all watched Mark and the other guy roll around, punching each other. Mark lost. Later, our other friends were angry at Ronny and me for not jumping into the fight. But it wasn’t our fight. If those other kids had jumped in, then yeah…we would have, too. But they knew it wasn’t their fight either. For what it’s worth, I did pull the guy off Mark when it was clear the fight was over and won. After the fight was over, we all stood around for 20 minutes talking about the fight. The moral is, don’t start a fight you can’t win, and don’t join a fight that’s not yours. We were sorry that Mark got his ass handed to him, but he shouldn’t have started the fight.

Trump’s decision to take two weeks to make a decision means it’s not important to him. This has to frustrate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because he knows when Trump says two weeks, it’s never delivered in two weeks…if ever.

Trump should have run on the message, “I’ll take two weeks to make decisions.” Ronald Reagan didn’t tell Gorbachev, “Tear down this wall…in two weeks.”

When Trump promised a new tax plan in 2017 of tax cuts for billionaire assholes, he promised he’d deliver it in two weeks. They delivered it two months later, and it was his only legislative accomplishment from his first term.

We’re still waiting to see Trump’s healthcare plan he promised years ago to deliver in two weeks.

Trump promised an infrastructure bill in two weeks during his first term. What happened? President Joe Biden signed an infrastructure bill.

In 2017, Trump said he would prove that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower in two weeks. We’re still waiting, much like the wait for Trump to prove that Obama was born in Kenya.

One Israeli official said that Trump “wouldn’t give himself a deadline that he would have to keep to if he hadn’t already made the decision.” Yeah, that guy hasn’t been paying attention for the past decade, because Trump doesn’t keep promises. What Donald Trump does is talk out of his ass.

Trump uses the two-week thing in hopes that people will forget. Maybe other shit will happen during those two weeks and people don’t remember the two-week promise. Or, Trump can create a new crisis, like when he said he’ll decide what to do about the Russian/Ukraine war in two weeks, which was months ago.

Or, Trump can be hoping the problem resolves itself within two weeks. Most likely, Israel will stop bombing Iran, and everyone will stop paying attention. Netanyahu overplayed his hand, starting a war and expecting Trump to save his ass. Isn’t Israel already in two other conflicts, one with Hamas and the other with Hezbollah?

Bibi needs to learn that Trump Always Chickens Out.

Creative note: I shouldn’t have had to spend three hours banging my head against a wall before this idea came to me because I watched half of Don’t Look Up last night.

Music note: I listened to more Tom Petty while drawing because I hadn’t finished listening to all of it during the last cartoon.

Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-Go See!)

A Letter From God 😉

I Made A Rainbow To Troll Trump For Pride Month by God

Happy Pride! Read on Substack

Dear Humans,

First I sent a thunderstorm to ruin his stupid birthday parade. Now behold! I painted the skies with a rainbow to troll his helicopter for Pride Month!

1. God Hates You, Donold

The White House posted what they thought was a photo showing God’s endorsement: Marine One lifting off with a rainbow in the background.

But as always, the faux-king liars misinterpreted My meaning!

God LOVES LGBTQ+ people!

And I despise that infinite bigot Donold.

Luckily, Gavin Newsom’s press office understood and quote-tweeted it with:
“Happy Pride 😌”

2. Their ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Just Collapsed

Trump’s prized “One Big Beautiful Bill” crumbled in the House.

It was supposed to be his grand legislative comeback. Instead, it got nuked by the parliamentarian.

Now the GOP is in full-blown civil war. Fighting over AI, Medicaid cuts, deficit math, and whose bootlicking is most loyal.

On top of all that, Tangerine Palpatine is raging at Fox News because his poll numbers are in the toilet.

Verily, thou mayest eat shit, Donold.

3. God Bless the ACLU

God bless the ACLU, who just won a unanimous court ruling striking down Louisiana’s ludicrous Ten Commandments law.

Public schools are not Sunday schools. And this court had the guts to say it.

Let it be known: while the cult worships golden idols of Donold and demands state-mandated religion, real Americans are still defending the Constitution.