Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

I’ve often said that CBS truly blew it with Bob Schieffer. He was the natural replacement for Walter Cronkite but CBS sorely wanted Dan Rather. So Cronkite was encouraged to retire early and CBS chose Rather, sacrificing Roger Mudd in the process. The real Walter In Waiting who went to the same stylistic school of journalism was Bob Schieffer. But Schieffer was, above all, a good company man and he continued...

In a recent piece about how the GOP seems to be bent on blowing off the Latino vote, Shaun Mullen sees the Latino answer to the GOP as being “¡Muéranse!” or drop dead. I believe that the GOP begets — deserves — such a reaction because the GOP has, for years, been telling Latinos exactly the same. According to the New York Times, seven Republican presidential candidates are telling Latinos...

I have pointedly refrained from commenting on the OWS protests now transpiring worldwide, prior to this date. The Antisemitic  ”Antisemitism” smear from the RNC last week There is a good reason for this: generally when I write about a topic, I like to know something about it. I like to THINK about it. The early reports and coverage presented us with a wealth of information, but a paucity of knowledge. Now,...

Motormouth Limbaugh Meets the Machine Gun Preacher by Michael Winship If you blinked, you might have missed a recent movie called Machine Gun Preacher. The film hasn’t burned up the box office and the title may have kept you away from your local picture palace in the mistaken belief that it was some kind of exploitation flick or the latest Quentin Tarantino exercise in post-modernism and ironic bloodbaths....

Texas has been toying with the idea of issuing a so-called “vanity” license plate that contains the Confederate battle flag. A vote on this controversial issue could come as soon as next month. A previous vote on this issue this past April ended in a 4-4 tie. “The plate has been proposed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an ancestral history group involved in previous dust-ups over displays of the...

At least a dozen demons answer to the name Anonymous. At one time these demons had names, but they’ve lurked so long under the cloak of anonymity that their names have simply been forgotten. They abide in just about every corner of the blogosphere. Mean spirited comments attached to meaningless user names. Wickedness with a handle. Sin with a disembodied avatar. In the internet age we know more than...

It ran only once 47 years ago, but a one-minute effort for LBJ’s 1964 reelection campaign was still being parsed this week at a college symposium as “the most negative political ad in American history.” During the network airing of a Hollywood biblical epic back then, amid cheery product pitches, suddenly there was the image of a little girl pulling petals from a daisy and counting erratically, to be replaced...

I honestly don’t see what the media hype swirling around this Herman Cain ad is all about. It features a boring blurb by Chief of Staff Mark Block that is unlikely to make one voter who doesn’t want to already support Herman Cain decide to support Herman Cain. And monitoring the cable and broadcast talkers yesterday on XM radio (A MUST if you travel extensively by car as I am doing the next 9 months)...

Anti is a revolutionary prefix. When joined with the right name, system, or organization, it can change the course of a nation. Anti topples entrenched regimes and tyrannical dictatorships. Anti unites diverse factions under a shared purpose; a purpose often rooted in anger and frustration. Anti is seldom a solution for the future. Instead, it is a judgement on the past. Anti might not know how to solve...

A few months ago, I commented on a piece by Pulitzer Prize winner Leonard Pitts at the Miami Herald calling birthers “morons,” ”jackasses,” “imbeciles,” “idiots,” “doofuses” and “pinheads.” He also called the birther movement “not just claptrap, but profoundly racist claptrap.” I said, “While I agree with Pitts on the claptrap,...

My most recent article in Harvard’s Nieman Lab explores why Occupy Wall Street is perfect for web journalism. I interviewed editors from the New York Observer, The Atlantic, and Reason to determine how hungry news consumers are for OWS content. Bob Cohn, the online editor for The Atlantic, told me that 10 percent of the publication’s top 100 posts for the month of October concern Occupy Wall Street —...

Second prize in the GOP presidential contest is a lucrative stint as a commentator for Fox News, and the Pizza Man has a lock on that, which makes it surprising that Karl Rove is the first to count him out as the nominee. Holding up a list of Cain flip-flops and walkbacks, his future colleague decrees that it “has created an image of him as not being up to this task. That’s really deadly.” But in...

I don’t remember anymore when I first started to seriously lament and write about the dearth of recognition received by our heroes whom we sent into harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan and who “gave it all,” including, at times, their lives. With the award of several Medals of Honor, President Obama has started to more justly recognize the many instances of ”conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity...

WASHINGTON — It’s one of the strangest things in our politics: The only “big” ideas Republicans and conservatives seem to offer these days revolve around novel and sometimes bizarre ways of cutting taxes on rich people. Given all the attention that Herman Cain’s nonsensical and regressive 9-9-9 tax plan has received, the Republican debates should have as their soundtrack that...

Eric Cantor is a rising Washington star, as JFK was when he published his 1955 best seller about political fortitude. But sadly Cantor doesn’t have a stylish collaborator like Ted Sorensen, and his turgid essay on American success was scheduled for more turbulent times, producing a chapter to qualify for “Profiles in Caution.” At the Wharton School of Business yesterday, the House Majority Leader was to...

I am told that in my “Cain’s ‘Simple’ 9-0-9 Plan Variation and ‘Opportunity Zones‘” I was a little tough on Mr. Cain. So to balance things out, let me review an article that comes — somewhat — to the defense of Mr. Cain and his x-x-x Plan. It is from an unlikely source, TIME’s Fareed Zakaria. Starting with the premise that “Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” plan...

News from Libya provokes reactions as weird as the man himself: “CBS: Qaddafi. ABC: Gadhafi. NBC: Khaddafy,” tweets a White House correspondent. A satellite radio reporter adds: “Gadhafi is dead–someone reach into his wallet and look at his driver’s license so we finally know how to spell his last name!” Along with death jokes, a tyrant’s last minutes are on prime-time in a cellphone...

Cain’s Half-Baked Candidacy by Peter Funt Barack Obama has a permanent place in history as the man who proved Americans would elect, and likely re-elect, a black president. Whatever else historians conclude about Obama, the racial breakthrough is certain to grow in significance over time. Herman Cain’s legacy, although lesser, will also be noteworthy because he has morphed into the nation’s...

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

As we all knew he would, and after weeks of stubbornly and condescendingly defending it, Mr. 9-9-9 is now changing that “simple,” magic combination. After finally admitting that his plan to impose a flat 9 percent income tax on low-income Americans would in fact result in a tax increase for those Americans, Cain has now modified his “simple” plan to a 9-0-9 plan for those below or at poverty level. ...

As I was getting ready to brag about our President’s national security and foreign policy accomplishments in the wake of Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi’s ouster and death, USA TODAY beat me to it. So let me take the easy way out and just summarize what they have to say today about how “Obama builds on national security record.” The article starts with what President Obama said in December 2009, when he...

After eight and a half deeply tragic years highlighted by the deaths of nearly 4,800 U.S. and coalition forces, at least 100,000 Iraqis and millions of people displaced, the Iraq war finally is over. President Obama, on a military and foreign policy roll, announced yesterday a complete drawn-down of U.S. troops at year’s end after he failed to reach agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki...

The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration has decided to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of the year after failing to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government. The agreement would have left several thousand troops there for special operations and training. President Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki spoke Friday morning to cement that agreement in a scheduled...

I just witnessed the official premiere of Saving Aimee at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theater. First breath requires I honor the spectacular radiance of Saving Aimee’s lead, Carolee Carmello. Her portrayal of Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson is best categorized as anointed. It would be inappropriate to avoid religious imagery in relaying her gloriously captivating performance. Carmello anchors Saving...