“How India’s Gig Economy Is Trapping its Workers in the Cycle of Poverty,” by Thomas Manuel and Satwick Gade is an examination of the semi-quasi-self-employment of women making bidis, the little leaf-wrapped cigarettes popular in India.It’s worth a read in itself, but I probably enjoyed it more because it seems like such a direct line […]

Jimmy Margulies comments on the timing of John McCain’s surgery, which neatly saved Obamacare, as well as saving the GOP from another faceplant.My initial reaction to the announcement was that it was a put-up, that McCain purposefully scheduled the procedure to stall the vote, but I’ve since seen some analysis that indicates it was not […]

We’ll start the week with a bunch of apolitical comics that simply made me laff, starting with Zits, which has had Jeremy volunteering at the zoo this summer, a brilliant way to come up with a whole new bunch of dumb gags like this. That’s “dumb gags” in the best possible sense, of course.I’m not sure […]

Shannon Wheeler starts us off today with Too Much Coffee Man and a cartoon vague enough to tickle the imagination and blatant enough to stir a little depressed passion, if such a thing exists.That is, I’m not sure he’s talking about voting for Donald Trump in an act of system defiance, but, then again, maybe […]

David Horsey leads off today, and I hate to go to the same cartoonists so often, not for my own creative purposes but because, well, I hope you’re giving them some clicks and support and we’ll get back to that in a minute.But let me frame this as a Juxtaposition …… by bringing in Pat […]

Darrin Bell’s familiar metaphor suggests solving the current situation is more difficult that we thought.Or not.But it doesn’t make it any easier.The notion that, by slowly turning up the heat, you can boil a frog without it trying to escape isn’t true, but it’s a useful concept, particularly if you add a little Orwell to […]

Start with a snippet from a thoughtful piece by Sara Lautman and Esther Werdiger at Lennyletter about seeing a tattoo that was more thought-provoking than the recipient probably intended, or, at least, it provoked thoughts she hadn’t been trying to. The comic takes its name from the tat: “Property of Francisco” and there you have the […]

There are several cartoons floating around about “the smoking gun” of Don Jr and his meeting with someone who unexpectedly turned out to be an agent of the Russian government, though he was told only that she was an agent of the Russian government. She denies it. He denied it for awhile. Now he only […]

Mr. Fitz is moving from a middle-school to K-12 setting over the summer, which will give real-world teacher David Finkle a wider range of topics. At the moment, Mr. Fitz has been assigned to help students with their college essays and sad hilarity ensues.Finkle regularly rips bad teaching from the inside, while also offering teachers […]

Dutch cartoonist Bart Van Leeuwen sets the tone with this portrait of the G-20 leaders — or, as that out-of-focus backdrop says, the “G19.25” — a more devastating comment because of his semi-realistic style.He’s certainly not the first nor only cartoonist to portray Trump as a petulant, willful baby, but this could not be a […]

Rhymes With Orange introduces the concept of the bumpersticker asterisk, which we need more of.It also plays on puppy-buyers’ regret, which is well-established and which we need less of.Faulkner wrote that “you don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.”He was talking about Mississippi and family but he might […]

Some very good news from Cartoon Movement, a major resource for those who want an international view of things: The site has been awarded funding from the Google Digital News Initiative and, while Tjeerd Royaards doesn’t specify the details of the grant itself, he outlines some solid improvements to the site that it will permit.I […]

Clay Jones posted this cartoon in December, reacting to Donald Trump’s appearance on a Time Magazine cover as “Man of the Year.” In his commentary, he noted that the designation is for the person who most impacted the news, not for the person who has most improved the world, such that, while many wonderful people have […]

David Horsey leads today with a provocative cartoon, using “provocative” in its best sense: He accompanies it with a thoughtful essay on how we teach, and understand, our history that will, at worst, provoke you to think and, at best, provoke actual conversations on the topic.And I particularly like that he echoes a peeve of […]

I’m kind of stumbling downstairs into the detritus from last night’s party and trying to recollect what happened and put off cleaning up the mess.There’ve been a lot of cartoons about fireworks lately, but I like today’s Frazz best, though I’m applying it to dogs rather than to people.For some reason, this was the Year […]