When I saw this YouTube ad frontpaged last night on dKos, I decided it was a fitting update to this week's diary on Christian Exodus and South Carolina.
Seems like North Carolina has it's own hardcore Christian base that Dole is attempting to swing with this disgusting ad. REALITY CHECK: Dole's opponent Kay Hagan is NOT an atheist...but I sent her campaign $100 last night anyway. I hope you'll join me, soon. Today. Tomorrow, at the latest. Time is running out.
DONATE: KAY HAGAN FOR SENATE
YOUR SUNDAY ATHEIST #12
I had a terrifying nightmare.
It was one of those extremely detailed, true-to-life nightmares, which I have so rarely that I am always fooled by them.
In the terrible dream, I opened my front door, picked up the newspaper and beheld this front page headline:
McCain beats Obama in Electoral College 500 to 7
In the dream, my panicked reaction was that Obama had only won Washington, D.C.'s 3 electoral votes and some tiny state out west somewhere. But the numbers didn't add up, somehow. Had Bob Barr actually taken 31 electoral votes?
Yeah, I woke up screaming, and it took a few seconds for the sense of relief to flood through me as I realized it was Sunday, October 26, not Wednesday, November 5.
I was really shaken for at least an hour as the horror lingered. President John McCain would be bad enough, but I now had experienced on an emotional, visceral, truly gut-wrenching level, the possibility of Vice-President Sarah Palin.
I realized later it was probably viewing this political poster that had helped set off the nightmare:
I got the above image from the website FrighteningProspect.com, which I discovered only after seeing this poster plastered around my neighborhood.
Of course, in my shaky post-nightmare state, I immediately rushed to my computer to seek reassurance from dKos and fivethirtyeight.com, which is where I read Sean Quinn's piece on South Carolina.
from Nate Silver's Fivethirtyeight.com blog, this piece is by Sean Quinn:
What McCain Has Going For Him
South Carolina, home to McCain's infamous 2000 campaign momentum stopper, is a safe state for him this time. A huge number of Christian conservatives live here, and not many Catholic voters that tend to favor Democrats. "American" ancestry is big favorite here, and indeed John McCain's clear fundraising edge on Barack Obama is an anomaly. Low education rates and higher gun ownership rates weigh in McCain's favor, as does a better-than-median percentage of military veterans. South Carolina has outperformed the national Republican average by double digits for six consecutive presidential elections, and will do so again when John McCain collects its eight electoral votes.
This trenchant analysis of South Carolina's political makeup reminded me that it had been awhile since I had checked up on the status of CHRISTIAN EXODUS, an organization formed in 2003 with the stated purpose of urging "real" Christians to relocate in order to concentrate their political influence. After examining the available options, South Carolina was selected as the state most suitable as a destination for those committed to the exodus.
A quick google search turned up the CHRISTIAN EXODUS website, where weekly editorials are frontpaged with a selection of online newsletters and an audio series dedicated to "Godly Daughters" available for download.
This Wikipedia article was the second link that popped up, offering a summary of Christian Exodus goals and their first targeted city: Anderson, South Carolina.
Christian Exodus is a Christian secessionist group promoting a mass emigration of fundamentalist Christians to South Carolina with the goal of influencing politics in the state. It claims anywhere from 15 families to 1500 individual members.
A quick trip over to YouTube provided this brief video clip of Christian Exodus founder Cory Burnell. Here's a little less than four minutes of Cory talking about his dream:
Here is a more in-depth interview with Burnell on YouTube. Although embedding has been disabled, clicking the link will take you there. About 26 minutes long.
But according to other news floating around the blogosphere, Cory stepped down from his leadership role recently:
Christian Exodus leader stepping down
The Greenville News • August 1, 2008
(ANDERSON, SC) -- The leader of Christian Exodus says the group still hopes to create a Christian government in South Carolina, despite the decision by its founder to step down.
Keith Humphrey told the Anderson Independent-Mail the focus of the group is still to create an independent Christian nation.
Cory Burnell has stepped down as leader of the group that was supposed to move members to South Carolina to influence elections and possibly secede from the United States. Burnell said he chose South Carolina because of its location, economic prospects, Christian influence and conservative voting history.
Burnell had planned to move to Anderson, but he says a job offer with a Seneca company was withdrawn. He says the pressures of self-employment and family have kept him from being an effective leader.
The pressures of family, you say? If only someone else would take her cue from you, Cory, then John McCain might still have a shot. Or at least, I would sleep easier.
Here is s clip of Barack Obama addressing the issue of religion and politics in a speech from 2006:
It will be such a pleasure finally to have a Chief Executive who can think logically and articulate his thoughts clearly and reasonably. The Inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama cannot come too soon for me.
ATHEIST RESOURCES ONLINE
POSITIVE ATHEISM
YOism.ORG
We will feature new links here on the main diary page, but most of our accumulated links have moved over to our BLOGROLL on the right side of the page.
Links to PREVIOUS EDITIONS of YOUR SUNDAY ATHEIST:
Please check out these earlier editions of the series. The list is getting long, so only some of the previous diaries are linked here. However, clicking on diary #9 will give you a list of links for diaries #1 through #8.
#9: Speaking in Tongues Edition
A closer look at the Pentecostal practice of "speaking in tongues" (a.k.a. glossolalia), a practice which is current in the Assemblies of God churches, where Sarah Palin spent twenty years as a worshipper.
#5: Dalton Trumbo Edition
Looks at the new documentary on writer Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood blacklist.
#4: Child Abuse Edition
Discusses three award-winning documentaries exposing the abuse of children at the hands of preachers, evangelists, and Catholic priests.
As always, here is your Video reward for making it all the way through another diary. ENJOY!
The late, great BILL HICKS ranting about George H.W. Bush, Fundamentalist Christians, the Bible, dinosaur fossils, the Loch Ness monster, creationism, etc.
NEXT WEEK'S EDITION OF YOUR SUNDAY ATHEIST (number thirteen in our series) is the long awaited but still tentatively-titled LIE TO ME. We'll see if I can fully develop that theme between now and next Sunday. Meanwhile, use some of those handy dKos tools, like SEARCH or SUBSCRIBE, and keep up to date on this series as new diaries are published.
As a Godless American I gave Kay Hagan a $100 donation. Won't you please add your financial support TODAY?
DONATE: KAY HAGAN FOR SENATE