Cartoons: what are they good for?

Seems to me you can look at editorial cartoons several ways: they give a humorous take on current evens; they reveal corruption; they attempt to assuage/salt wounds felt due to recent events; they double-down on our outrage at current events; [add you own reason for liking cartoons here].

If you're unhappy with the current state of the U.S. Congress, this one's for you.

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David Fitzsimmons, The Week

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Can Fox News be represented as a hen house? Maybe. I'm reminded of The Musicman's

Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little,
Cheep cheep cheep, talk a lot, pick a little more (LyricsMode)

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Tom Toles, The Week

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Big Pharma is always a good target, especially since it's so greedy.

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Milt Priggee, The Week

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And Smokey the Bear brings us the message of the day.

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Dan Wasserman, The Week

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--Marge

Cartoons: US riots you rarely hear about and other news

After wading through uncounted, but numerous, digs at Trump and Hillary, I was about to bag posting today when I came across the cartoon below. It refers to a riot in Milwaukee. A little research yielded a truly interesting piece by Milwaukee resident and medieval historian, Andrew Larsen. Take a look: The Milwaukee Riots. He starts with the observation that "Riots seem shocking to modern Americans, but college students riot with almost predictable regularity in this country."

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Michael Ramirez, The Week

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What would a mention of the news be nowadays without reference to the Trump-Hillary polls? While typing this a devilish idea occurred to me: what if they were a couple? Then a second one sprang up: what if we smooshed the parties together and declared Hillary president, Donald vice president and were done with the whole sordid business? Then we could move on...or maybe not. At any rate here are the latest polls courtesy of RealClearPolitics.

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Bob Gorrell, The Week

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Now, for an upbeat note, here's Walt Handelsman's take on the emergency response to flooding in Louisiana. Obama has taken flack for seeming uninterested, so here's what his Live Updates page reports.

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Walt Handelsman, The Week

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-- Marge

Cartoons: traveling penalty

Donald or Hillary, Hillary or Donald, Donald or Hillary, Hillary or Donald, it just goes on and on.

Instead of siding with one or the other, I offer a cartoon that's probably true for both.

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Mike Luckovich, The Week

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In this cartoon the mosquitoes show the most wisdom.

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Walt Handelsman, The Week

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If you were traveling on Delta Airlines this week, you have my sympathies.  Reuters predicts that more airline outages will be seen...and lived through.

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Pat Bagley, The Week

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-- Marge

Cartoons: Zika, academic testing, and Trump (again)

The 2016 Summer Olympics start today with the lighting of the cauldron by someone not Pelé. Here's cartoonist Nate Beeler's take on the event.

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Nate Beeler, The Week

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And school starts soon. Cartoonist Marshall Ramsey calls it "testing." Former venture capitalist and education philanthropist Ted Dintersmith and Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (whew!) Tony Wagner co-wrote an article about academic testing and what it does not accomplish: Opinion: America desperately needs to redefine ‘college and career ready'. Is it old-fashioned or misguided to wonder what happened to learning for the sake of learning?

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Marshall Ramsey, The Week

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Then there's Trump...again. This time he's insulted the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq. Trump claims to have sacrificed as much as the Khan family did; the twitter-verse weighed-in.

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David Horsey, The Week

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Meanwhile, Paul Ryan, Republican Speaker of the House, responds.

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Mike Luckovich, The Week

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-- Marge