Apologies for the light blogging of late; I've been busy. This week's cartoon arose from last week's news that the Senate has voted (mostly along party lines) once again not to raise the minimum wage above $5.15 an hour, where it has been stuck since 1997, thus illustrating the massive hypocrisy of Bush's "ownership society" -- that fun-sounding euphemism for paying for that liver transplant out of your own savings. I don't have time to go into a lengthy discussion of the minimum wage here, except to say that market fundamentalists often ignore the social costs of poverty -- lack of health care, crime -- that cannot be quantified from a pure economic perspective, and which cost us all in the end.

The "strip mall nomenclature" panel was inspired by an actual strip mall I spotted along the highway in the outskirts of Washington, DC sprawl in northern Virginia. I believe it was actually called "Village Center." I assure you, it was anything but. There's also the new style of mall-building, to make them seem like fake, mini-towns. Hey, it's the best sense of community we can hope for! On a side note, wouldn't it be cool if Dress Barns were real barns with dresses scattered among bales of hay, and maybe some friendly, nuzzling piglets? I would totally shop there.