Bush Lied, The Planet Died wrote:

Tuttle's Almanac wrote:

'Radical religion,' Bush policies threaten security,
author contends Ex-GOP strategist draws nearly 1,000 at Bellarmine

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060426/NEWS01/60426002/1008/NEWS01

A dangerous brew of "radical religion," a short-sighted
oil policy and massive national debt threatens the
nation's security, political analyst Kevin Phillips
told a Louisville crowd last night.

Nearly 1,000 people gathered at Bellarmine University
to hear Phillips, a former Republican strategist who
accurately predicted four decades ago that the GOP
would gain power as populations shifted from traditional
Democratic strongholds to the Sun Belt.

But Phillips now laments the direction he said the party
and President Bush are taking.

He said the country has "overreached" by exercising
military power around the world and is threatened by
becoming the "world's leading debtor" and being
increasingly dependent on foreign oil.

Phillips said it is "farcical" for the Bush administration
to deny that the Iraq invasion had anything to do with oil.

"Can people picture ***** Cheney waking up in the morning saying,
`What are we going to do to democratize Iraq today?'" he asked.

But Phillips focused mostly on the growing role of
evangelical Christians in the Republican Party,
which he called the "first American religious party."

"The Republican Party shows in the polls as having a much,
much higher percentage of people who believe that ...
religion and politics should mix than people who are
in the middle politically," Phillips said.

This "has enormous crossover into policy in other areas,
whether it's foreign policy or U.S. ability to maintain
a world-dominating scientific policy," he said.

Phillips said it's important to have an educational system
that trains people who "believe in science as opposed to
creationism."

Phillips compared the United States to historical world powers
that went into decline, including ancient Rome and colonial
Spain, the Netherlands and Britain.

All of them, he said, went heavily into debt and were
enthralled with apocalyptic and aggressive religious movements.

Phillips said leaders of the religious right view Bush
as their standard-bearer. He cited anecdotes of
Bush comments - some of them disputed by the White House
- that the president thinks he's divinely guided.

Phillips said he worries how that might influence
Bush's view of a possible confrontation in the Middle East.

"You may get blood and craters and death and everything,
but after that you get the Second Coming and wonderful times,"
he said, but only for "saved Christians."

Phillips said the best that can be said about the
opposition Democrats is that they are "inert."

"These are not the sharpest tacks in the hardware store," he said.

Phillips' message resonated with many in the crowd.

"I'm a religious person, but I think radical religion
is very, very scary," said Louis Twyman of Louisville.
"I hope we don't form that American theocracy."

Louisville resident Vanessa Shepherd agreed.

"To me, church and state should be very separate,"
she said. "With this administration, I get a little
frightened that the two are being mixed."
_______________________________________

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Of course, security has NEVER been paramount (if anything, the
rightards are pissed that there haven't been more terror attacks to
rally the sheep around them)

There aren't enough religious bigots to get republicans elected. They
needed something more - an excuse to create deficits and debt so tax cuts
would sell, no matter how big the deficit and debt. They needed propaganda
to do this. Rush Limbaugh, Fox, the Wall Street Journal and Washington
Post editorial boards etc.

Anyone with a brain (which precludes almost every republican in the
country) knows we can't borrow ourselves into the illusion of prosperity
forever.

Since the Reagan tax cut just 25 years ago, we went from less than one
trillion of debt to over $8.3 trillion. Evangelicals didn't do that,
fiscal conservatives did.

While Evangelicals are truly evil people, so are fiscal conservatives.
There is no such thing as a tax cut. Tax cuts create deficits and deficits
are future taxes plus interest.

--
Pat
Impeach Bush
http://zzpat.bravehost.com/

Articles of Impeachment
Center for Constitutional Rights
http://zzpat.bravehost.com/april_2006/articles_of_impeachment.html