Are we better off? Hey! -- We killed Bin Laden! (Cheesy grin...)

Democrats, scrambling to find an answer to the question, "Are we better off now than 4 years ago?", have apparently decided to go with a bumper sticker and a grin and a George W. Bush military strategy accomplishment.

Do you think we deserve a second term?  We killed Bin Laden!

Republican Code -- Matthews and Co. have cracked it!

Chris Matthews, that fearless leader of MSNBC intelligence gathering and underground resistance, staunch protector against pasty white people, and wielder of epithets against Republican conventioneers, has managed to crack the racist code.

Yes, no longer can Republicans slyly and knowingly exchange glances when  they use words like...(cue Vader music)...."Chicago"...."Golf"..."Welfare"...Alas, our evil has been undone.

Please read Mark Steyn's great piece for further explanation.

Since Republican Racist Code (RRC) has been outed, it's time to come clean and reveal our full list of code.  Curse you Chris Matthews!  Here is your list of code and their hidden meanings:

1.  "Obama" -- Barack Obama is black.  Therefore when we say, "Obama", one thinks of a black man and therein lies the sinister use of the word.

2.  "Biden" -- This code makes one think of blacks in chains and conjures words like, "y'all".  Curse you, again, Chris Matthews!

3.  "Pelosi" -- This word simply means, "keep the black man down."  How its meaning is derived would require ten pages of detail!  Arrrrrgh...Curse you, Chris Matthews!

4.  "Yahoo" -- When we utter this word, we wink and smile and picture black people drowning.  And we particularly love how it also describes our great pleasure at that sight of it!  Yahoo!!

5.  "Romney" -- Romney means white guy who hates black guys.  Thus, we all say it and nod in agreement.

6.  "Election" -- Election makes people think that we are going to the polls soon to elect our president.  When people think of our president, they think of a black man.  Hence, "election" means black man.  Curse you, again, Chris Matthews!

7.  "Economy" -- our economy is bad.  Black people are bad.  So...there ya go.

8.  "Ryan" -- Paul Ryan is white.  He is conservative.  This code gives us inner-peace and strength.

9.  "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy" -- This makes us think of what Biden said about Obama and we can then incorporate three of our codes into one turn of phrase -- oh it was brilliant.

10.  "Chris Mathews" -- Pasty and white.  Two things we love so dearly.  

As a post-script, if you check out the link here which refers to Matthews shouting match with Republican conventioneers at the top of the page, you'll find that the word he chose to hurl at those in his path was not a very nice word at all -- it begins with "d" and ends with "bag".  We don't need a code to crack that insult to women do we?  Where are the women's groups??

Madd "Ow!" Disease -- Extreme Bias at MSNBC

The unbiased, "just the facts, ma'am" journalism at MSNBC continues to impress as Rachel Maddow's  interview with Scott Walker immediately following Paul Ryan's great speech shows in all its pristine neutrality.

Do Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz call out Walker on Ryan's auto bailout claims because they had marching orders to do so?  Nah...they're just stating the facts, ma'am.  Never mind that their facts are actually wrong and that Walker's are correct;

what's most important is that they are not biased and not walking in lock-step with a directive from their network to slam this guy!

Uh...errr...um...please ignore the tweet from MSNBC shown below...Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

msnbc

• ✔

@msnbc

Maddow, Schultz, call out Scott Walker on auto bailout:leanforward.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/… #msnbc2012

The Dog Is Alive

Stewdog is still alive and off leash. For some reason, and I can't seem to put my finger on it, I just have not been motivated to write anything about politics. I shall continue to bury my head, act locally to try to improve my neighborhood, and follow the Cardinals!

"Cousin Bill's Game of Chicken"

Here. Enjoy.

Getting medieval on their hindquarters

Professor Michael Drout begins a crusade to defend the proposition that the study of the medieval history and literature is -- gasp! -- at least as important as the study of more modern or "contemporary" history.

The posse is forming. Hee Haw!

Marilynne Robinson interview

Here's a fascinating interview with Marilynne Robinson in The Paris Review.

Robinson comments on religion as a way of orienting oneself toward the world and describes culture as the "skeleton" of meaning:

INTERVIEWER
Ames [the narrator of Gilead] believes that one of the benefits of religion is “it helps you concentrate. It gives you a good basic sense of what is being asked of you and also what you might as well ignore.” Is this something that your faith and religious practice has done for you?

ROBINSON
Religion is a framing mechanism. It is a language of orientation that presents itself as a series of questions. It talks about the arc of life and the quality of experience in ways that I’ve found fruitful to think about. Religion has been profoundly effective in enlarging human imagination and expression. It’s only very recently that you couldn’t see how the high arts are intimately connected to religion.

INTERVIEWER
Is this frame of religion something we’ve lost?

ROBINSON
There was a time when people felt as if structure in most forms were a constraint and they attacked it, which in a culture is like an autoimmune problem: the organism is not allowing itself the conditions of its own existence. We’re cultural creatures and meaning doesn’t simply generate itself out of thin air; it’s sustained by a cultural framework. It’s like deciding how much more interesting it would be if you had no skeleton: you could just slide under the door.

And when was the last time you heard a critically-acclaimed contemporary author speaking favorably about John Calvin?

Robinson is a Christian whose faith is not easily reduced to generalities. Calvin’s thought has had a strong influence on her, and she depicts him in her essays as a misunderstood humanist, likening his “secularizing tendencies” to the “celebrations of the human one finds in Emerson and Whitman.”

Her book of essays is called The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought.

Withywindle on Booker T. Washington and a counter-canon of great Black Americans

Withywindle's recent post responding to Eric Holder's canon of great Black Americans is a must-read:

And then Booker T. Washington. What to say? I object more to ignoring him, and his work for Black Americans; I’m not actually inclined to say Yay, Booker; Boo, DuBois. He shouldn’t be forgotten, but neither do I say that his is the one true path. Surely Washington and DuBois were the great complements, both necessary for the liberation of Black Americans?

But more than that: how can one look at Washington’s accommodations and not perceive the strength of character it took to make them? How can you look at the soft voice and think “Uncle Tom”, rather than recognize the iron will that made that voice soft? I am reminded of Gottfried Lessing’s Nathan the Wise - Nathan the Jew, an endlessly patient plaster saint of a man, whose endurance of Christian prejudice eventually redeems the Christian characters. Oh, joy, being effeminately virtuous for other people’s benefit – I’m told various Black Americans have tired of that role too. But there is a bit in the play worth focusing on:

"You found me at Darun – the child and you.
You did not know that Christians just before
Had murdered all the Jews that were in Gath –
Men, women, children; knew not that my wife
And sons, seven hopeful sons, were there among them,
And in my brother’s house, where they had fled
For safety, had to perish in the flames. ....
Three days and nights I’d lain
In dust and ashes before God, and wept
When you arrived. Wept? I had wrestled hard
At times with God; had stormed and raved; had cursed
Myself and all the world; had sworn a hate
Against the Christians, unappeasable. ....
Gradually my reason
Returned to me. She spoke with gentle voice:
'And yet God is: e’en this was God’s decree!
Up, then! and practise what you’ve long believed
To practise cannot be more difficult
Than to believe, if you but will. Rise up!'
I stood erect and cried to God: 'I will!'"

Nathan is not just a plaster saint, but a man who has known unappeasable hate, wrestled hard with God. Who can look at Washington’s life and think he was different? That his soft words were any less hard won than Nathan’s? My God, the man lived in a furnace all his life and burnt himself out for his people; and he is to be without honor in his own country? Not if I can help it.

Read the whole thing.

Sadly, this doesn't surprise me . . .

When "liberals" make "outsourcing" jokes about Bobby Jindal, or impersonate Indian customer service representatives, or make Slumdog Millionaire cracks about Bobby Jindal, it's not ugly racism, it's . . . it's . . . um, help me out here.