This month there are two versions of the Carnival of the Godless, both at Greta Christina’s Blog. There is a Dirty Version, and a Clean Version. The same fabulous articles are featured in both, but the Dirty Version features vintage pulp fiction cover artwork. Enjoy!
Radfringe graciously allowed me to reprint this here:
It’s looking more and more like the repubs will be going with McCain. Speculation is high that McCain’s sidekick will be Huckabee.
Huckabee would bring in the fundies who are reluctant about voting for McCain. And you can bet with the huckster for a sidekick - there will be a lot of rhetoric about family values.
in the past, the family values blather is something the dems have failed to effectively counteract
the repubs have wrapped it up in a warm fuzzy blanket, it sounds good, looks good - but beyond that their actions speak differently.
Kerry mentioned it once or twice back in 2004 that I know of and Clinton touched on it briefly in one speech I saw on C-Span
and I keep bringing it up over and over again
IT’S NOT FAMILY VALUES - IT’S VALUING FAMILIES
I’ve even sent a few e-mails off to the campaigns - explaining what I mean by this, but I fear they were just put in some round file. If you work on Clinton or Obama’s campaign and have some contacts up the ‘food chain’, and agree with this perhaps you would pass it along.
here’s the premise:
reframe it as “VALUING FAMILIES”
show how the family value rhetoric is just that - rhetoric period. that for all the family value talk, nothing the repubs have done show any concern for the health of families, and tend to destroy families by favoring corporations and other big wigs. that all the blather about family values are just empty words. Words do not put food on the table, nor give people jobs, nor do they provide healthcare or education.- the way to value families is to have a healthCARE system that puts people before profits. A healthCARE system which ensures the medications needed are available, affordable and safe
- the way to value families is to enact legislation that protects families from predatory lending practices and other financial schemes which puts their jobs and welfare at risk
- the way to value families is to have an education system which educates
- the way to value families is to have an emergency management system that is able to respond quickly and effectively. to help families in the most dire time of need (think katrina and the recent tornado outbreak)
- the way to value families is to have a veterans system which helps the the troops returning from war.
- the way to value families is to have a social security system the helps families with with their senior members
- the way to value families is to have a forward looking environmental policy to provide clean air, clean water, safe food for the current and future generation
- the way to value families is to encourage job creation here at home and not reward companies who ship jobs overseas.
- the way to value families is to have a foreign policy which focuses on peace and prosperity, not on war and destruction.
- the way to value families is to have a domestic policy that embraces all families.
- the way to value families is to have a policy that is open to science and research, not one that discourages or rewrites findings.
- the way to value families is to have a justice system based on justice not partisan politics.
- the way to value families is to respect and follow the Constitution of the United States - not by looking for loopholes or weasling around it through the use of executive priviledge or signing statements.
AMERICA VALUES FAMILIES
(too numerous to list, but after each of these points - list the legislation the repubs have defeated)
Hosted at Mind on Fire, featuring moi, among many others. Be sure to stop by and peruse the entries.
And I’m there! 
Be sure to check it out. And don’t miss Greta Christina’s excellent contribution, All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Porn–Or Not.
I’ve been featured in the current Carnival of Struggling and Bumbling Newbies, which is up at SuccessPart2.com.
I invite you to stop by and check it out.
This was posted by Sapphocrat on Lavender Newswire
An Obama Supporter Illustrates Why Obama Supporters Scare Us. A Lot. Really.
A post on a mydd.com blog was re-posted on another message board (which, because I genuinely like the board admin and don’t want to embarrass him any more than he’s already been by the mere presence of said post, shall remain nameless), under the subject line:
“This is what the Obama ‘movement’ is all about…”
Here’s the original post:
THE BAM”… PASS IT ON AT THE NEXT OBAMA RALLY!
Having caught “Obama fever” like so many others rallying in support of Barack, I experienced something at a Barack Obama Rally on Thursday, January 10 at the College of Charleston here in Charleston, South Carolina, which I felt was both inspirational and spontaneous!
As Barack worked the line following the close of his speech, there was a surge of people moving forward hoping to get close enough to shake Barack’s hand. Since I was standing about 20 feet back from center stage in the crowd, I felt the crowd down front tighten as many of us stood on our toes, stretched our bodies forward while reaching out to Barack. I noticed that a six foot tall guy who was standing in front of me had stretched far enough above the crowd and shook hands with Barack. As the guy drew back his hand I asked him, “You shook his hand didn’t you?” Happily the guy said “Yes.” I then said, “give me some of that” and the guy shook my hand with the same hand he had just clasped with Barack’s. A woman friend of mine who was standing next to me saw me shake hands with the guy. I turned to her and said “He [the guy] just shook hands with Barack,” to which she responded…”Hey, give it up.” We then shook hands. She then turned to the person next to her and shook hands. This chain of hand shakes went on for about five or six more persons.
I did not know the tall guy in front of me; he is white, I am black. But at the moment we shook hands, I felt some solidarity with this stranger, consummated by a handshake and signifying some unspoken agreement presumably about Barack Obama and his core message of UNITY!
I call this hand-shake scenario the “BAM” because, descriptively, it takes a bit of Obama’s name and it’s the sound of a collision, of People Coming Together!
My reaction:
If that’s “what the Obama ‘movement’ is all about” — the blind frenzy of a mob clamoring to touch the hem of his garment — then the Obama camp is scaring the absolute crap out of me.
What next? Obama raises the dead? Where does the line start to worship a fragment of The One’s sandal?
“Give me some of that”? Jesus Christ, people, GET A GRIP! Obama is NOT GOD!
“You don’t get it! Why do you hate hope? Why do you hate change? Let Obama change your life…!
Holy crap. Ho. Lee. Crap.
Oh, yes, I “get it” — which is precisely why it scares me. The writer sounds like every “est” convert I ever knew in the 1970s. And I remember People’s Temple, and Heaven’s Gate, and Waco, much too well not to be shaken to the bone by this blind madness over Obama.
This is beyond 1960s-era teenyboppers spending a precious five dollars on a one-inch square of bedsheet that one of the Beatles supposedly slept on. This is the guy in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert wearing a vial containing the holy relic of an ABBA turd. Neither Anni-Frid nor Agnetha — nor Obama — is the Second Coming of Christ!
To the writer, and especially to the rest of the adoring throngs blinded into a froth:
How do you expect the rest of us “non-believers” to take you — or your candidate — even half-seriously when all you can offer is this kind of cult worship I thought died out with the 1970s?
And people think Kucinich is nuts for admitting to seeing a UFO? This craziness dwarfs any UFO talk — by light years.
And: Do you have any clue whatsoever as to the fodder you’re providing far-right sites that exist solely for the opportunity to point out how wacko Democrats are? Do you even care how embarrassing posts like that are? I don’t know if such lunacy makes me more ashamed to be associated with the message board to which the message was cross-posted, or with the entire party.
Thank God I’m as dissociated from Obama and his apostles as I ever can be!
I have to agree. I don’t get the whole Obama phenomenon. But then being an atheist perhaps I have a special immunity to whatever it is people are falling prey to. And for that I am thankful.
