Just a few quick notes here, as I'm too working on a major site overhaul as a way to keep busy and avoid my normal bout of holiday blues.

-- Did anybody else notice that President Bush, who spent the campaign saying "we are safer" after the invasion of Iraq said just the other day that "we will be" safer? That's an interesting shift in verb tense.

-- Did anybody else see Thomas Friedman's column on when America would know it was time to get out of Iraq? For the record, Friedman is not my favorite columnist, but he's one I highly respect because, hey, I might disagree with him, but he's very smart, he works hard and he believes what he says. It's a boring world if we all think the same way.

Anyway, Friedman's column, couple Sundays ago, was simple. The GIs on the front lines will know when it's time to go, and when they lose faith, it's time to bring them home. That column really resonated with me after seeing GIs ask Don Rumsfeld tougher questions than the Washington press corps. I suspect the time for an exit, under the Friedman Doctrine, is rapidly approaching.

The time for an exit under the Marshall Doctrine, by the way, was yesterday. What a stupid, expensive mistake that was doomed from the start. I read something recently, a quote from some great writer whose name I do not remember, and he was talking about World War I. "The cause of an unnecessary war is ignorance at home." I couldn't agree more.

-- For those who want to keep track of the Religious Rightists who control America nowadays, may I suggest "The Rapture Index." For those who want to keep track of people who poke fun at people's religion, may I suggest www.jesusdressup.com. For those who believe these religious things are a major distraction from the real issues of the day, may I suggest Franklin Foer's book "How Soccer Explains The World." I sure liked that book a lot better than my current night table tome, Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons."

-- And finally, since regular readers know my propensity to bash Fox News, er, Al-Jazeera, I have to say for the record that if you had asked me during the peak of my journalism career, at the heights of my insights and connections, if you had told me at that time that I could create the TV news show of my dreams, it would look at lot like Shepard Smith's 7p-8p (Eastern) report. Minus the "you decide" and the jingoism, of course. ("There's a war on terror going on. Stay awake, stay aware and stay with Fox.")

Smith's report is a little on the tabloid side, but a lot of what gets written off as tabloid in the U.S. is, to me as a writer, quite snappy. Secondly, every time someone gets scewered in a tape of their own words on the Daily Show, I both smile and cringe. That's the stuff that used to get me into trouble when I was trying to get it into the mainstream press. Like Garrison Keillor once said about why he got out of journalism: "They were cutting out the things of which I was most proud."

Happy holidays to those who enjoy these times and peaceful quiet to those who don't.

-30-

The sweeping sound bite right now is that if you are on the Left, and you are thinking about someone on the Right, if that person on the Right believes in God, then the person on the Left thinks the person on the Right is an idiot.

Such talk is a staple on the Radio Right and a common theme for Bill O'Reilly. There's direct, viewable evidence, too, including former Sen. Alan Simpson going off on Bill Maher for speaking with an implied sneer of dismissive stupidity when discussing the Christian Right. Maher was polite, apologetic and seemed genuinely stunned by Simpson's intensity.

If Maher and others of his ilk want lessons on how to cut through all this, I have a simple prescription -- meet my ex-wife.

By unfortunate circumstance, I hold a PhD in aggressive psychological defense mechanisms, and the current themes in the Republican stay-on-message machine eerily match my ex.

Here's the way it went.

-- It's not what I say, it's how I'm saying it.

-- It's not what we're fighting over, it's about the way I'm fighting.

-- I did not know what was expected, but I will know that I didn't do it.

-- And I can always expect a spirited reaction to a charge I never leveled.

These factors can happen in sequence or in combination, so the mental juggling works out it two ways ("manifests" in psychobabble):

-- Unusual levels of personal intensity to make everyone else walk on eggshells.

-- A level of discussion pushed two or three levels down and away from where it should be.

I hear these maneuvers all the time from the Republican talking heads on TV. Deflect the idea. It's not what you're talking about, it's the way you're talking about me.

The net result of this in the media sense ("manifestation" in psychobabble) is magnificent for Republicans. They get to promote a sweeping social agenda while asserting it's unfair to call them on it.

Now to folks on the Left, the whole notion seems kind of odd. There's millions of Jews running around but nobody ever worried that the Jews were going to force the U.S. to eat kosher. Why exactly have these people declared a culture war? What exactly are they so defensive about?

***

As I write this tonight, the Iraqi city of Fallujah is under assault by the U.S.-led occupation army. Now suppose for just a moment that a few days into this battle, when the maximum number of attackers are engaged, a nuclear explosion goes off in Fallujah. Enormous loss of life.

On one hand, folks would say it's an army blundering into a trap on the military history scale of some of the Romans generals who went up against Hannibal.

On the other hand, people would call it proof of weapons of mass destruction.

They'd be talking about the same facts, just seeing them in opposite ways.

So when it comes to liberals trying to discuss with folks the state of the Hard Right nowadays, I suggest that you first start with finding agreement on the facts at hand. At that point, proceed to finding shared values. Then, and only then, move on to the real issue.

Walk on eggshells. Start two polite layers away from what you really want to talk about.

Just like living my ex.

***

So let's get around the niceties and get to the nub of the national divide. I'd like to take credit for this term, but I just read it in Franklin Foer's fabulous book "How Soccer Explains The World."

The term is "exceptionalism." And it's explained this way.

There are a large number of Americans who believe their country is exceptional, in a charitable sense, in a power-for-good sense, and even in a blessed by God sense.

There's an especially large category who see America as an especially potent mix of democracy, Christianity and free enterprise, and see those factors as why the USA wound up far ahead of other countries blessed with similar natural resources (Brazil being a good example).

It's not too far-fetched to say that blue staters see Americans as part of the human race and that lots, though not all, of red-staters see Americans as some kind of a master race. It's a sort of fascism without the fascists, a vision of America as a super power for good. You hear this a lot from red staters; how America is unappreciated. Why are the Iraqis shooting at us? We're trying to do them a favor.

Easy to see why large parts of the world doesn't understand Americans.

We barely even understand ourselves.

****

Final point. I'm a firm believer that a lot of political interaction can be reduced to things you learn baby sitting. And if you have a child who is used to being treated as something special, that child will get petulant when he's reduced to just one of many.

Sounds a lot like the current crop of Right Wing talking heads. Exceptionalism meeting the rest of the world.

Except, of course, that instead of talking world views, Bill O'Reilly will be agitated that I just called Republicans a bunch of petulant children.

Damn, those Lefties just can't stop.

-30-

This morning's CNN lead, the MSNBC lead, a top headline everyplace I've looked -- huge job growth in October, 337,000 new jobs, "a sign the economy is improving."

Oh really? Then why did the unemployment rate rise from 5.4 percent to 5.5 percent?

This is the second time this year the number of new jobs has grabbed the headline on a month when unemployment went up. No wonder Bush won re-election when this kind of distorted view dominates. How is it positive when the new jobs don't even replace the ones that have been lost?

For the record, the latest report includes 21,000 retail jobs in advance of the holiday season, which means they will be gone in January, and mentions the 71,000 construction jobs were boosted by Florida hurricanes, which, of course, qualifies as a sustainable business model only if you boost global warming as a way to create jobs.

The biggest nitpick of all, of course, is that in the last couple years the new jobs have paid, on average, about $10,000 less per year than the old jobs.

But, hey, who cares about a lonely blogger who happens to pay attention? "The economy is improving," the media says, and it must be true. Fifty-nine million people sure voted like it is.

-30-

Since the winners get to write history, and since the losers get to be written off as mere whiners, I'd like to congratulate the 59 million people who voted to return George Bush to office.

The exit polls showed those people:

-- Felt Bush was the better man to handle the war on terrorism. Interesting conclusion considering ports are still insecure, borders are still porous, and the 2004 no-bid reconstruction contracts for Iraq are larger than the 2004 budget for the FBI, the primary line of domestic defense.

-- Felt Bush was right in toppling Saddam Hussein. Interesting conclusion, considering the Israelis had the option to wipe out Arafat for years, and they held off because they could not accurately predict if things would be better or worse with Arafat gone.

-- Felt Bush was the better man for keeping taxes low as a way to boost the economy and create jobs. Interesting conclusion considering the U.S. is looking at $400 billion yearly deficits for the duration of the Bush second term, and considering how manufacturing jobs just continue to vanish.

Thing is, even if I don't understand those conclusions, I can discuss them. They are policy issues.

But here's my question. If 21 percent of all voters say their top issue is "moral values," what exactly am I supposed to do with that? What is negotiable, debatable, policy-enactable about "moral values?" In fact, can you even tell me what "moral values" is supposed to mean?

The exit polls suggest these "moral values" are the ones traditionally associated with mainstream Christian churches. Now I'll sidestep the question for a moment as to why gay marriage is wrong because it's against Biblical principles, but the Biblical dictate of stoning adulterers is ignored.

What I need to do here is focus on one moral value that is honored in every religion and every culture -- telling the truth.

The Bush Administration certainly hasn't told the truth on Iraq, or told the truth on who outed the CIA agent as an act of petty political revenge. Neither party is telling the truth about the looming deficit crisis or Social Security meltdown.

The logical conclusion here is if truth is not a moral value, then maybe this "moral values" term is a smokescreen for something else. Maybe something political. Maybe something like your entire way of life is threatened. There's bare titties on the Super Bowl. There's cussing on the radio. And look at them homos getting married.

I suspect that most of the 25 million Christian conservatives who voted for Bush, including millions of rural, blue collar types, got their sense of right or wrong while slitting their own economic wrists. I doubt they even noticed. The big currents in this country are not red and blue states or black and white people, but the rich against the poor. It's not God's will that the factory that sustained your small Midwestern city is closing down, it's politics, tax law and economic policies.

Final point: Those red counties in Ohio that saved the Bush presidency? I grew up there, working in those fields and small businesses. I'm writing from Virginia, but make no mistake, they are my home. And jobwise, they are a disaster. I'm living proof of it, another Sun Belt migrant who moved in search of a job.

When it comes to that part of flyover country, I know how these people live, how they think, how they feel, and I can tell you for a fact that are not ideological people but practical people. They would love to have a plain spoken politician offering practical answers to their problems, not empty promises and impossible claims. But if all you have to offer is political blather, those folks are going to tune you out and turn to what's important to them. And that's values.

If Democrats wish to return to power, there's a simple place to start.

Have something to say.

-30-

One week before the election, a one-hand memo on the deep divisions facing the United States of America.

• President Bush turned an attack into a war and the sheeple of the U.S. let him get away with it.

A war brings rationing, tax hikes or war bond drives, a draft, and any number of shared sacrifices. If this terror thing were a real war, and not a politically savvy, media-ready assertion, Congress would not have sat in session for the fewest number of days since 1948, and it would not have taken 96 days (and counting) to implement the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission. Congress is proof that it's business as usual in Washington, with $145 billion in tax breaks to corporations and a pay raise for themselves. Republicans can't have it both ways, but they sure do try -- Bush saying over and over America is safer, Cheney saying over and over that the wolves are at the door. The entire Bush Administration policy is utterly nonsensical, as if in World War II, after Pearl Harbor, America had decided the proper response was to invade Australia and turn it into a domino of democracy in the Pacific.

• The Democrats face extinction as a serious political party.

If the Howard Dean / Joe Trippi theory does not come true -- that the election will be won by millions of new voters turning up at the polls -- the red-state, blue-state map will raise a serious question as to the future viability of a Democratic coalition that dates back 70 years. The Gingrich vision -- social conservatives and government tax haters -- will have been so dominant, Democrats will resemble the Progressives and Bob LaFollette, a group of people that history passed by. For millions of Americans, traditional Christian values are as important as the economy, health care or the war in Iraq when it comes to choosing a president. Maybe someday one of these people can explain to me why gay marriage is wrong, you know, because it's in the Bible, but nobody stones adulterers to death anymore. Seems to me that's in the same book, too. So is the rule that you can kill your kids if they curse you. Try that as a legal defense sometime.

• The Republican tax cut mantra is a fraud and the mainstream media has totally missed the class warfare being waged by the rich against the poor.

As someone who spent 16 years in the mainstream news business, I can tell you there's nothing more difficult to get into print than the word "lie." Numbers do not lie, but their interpretations are opinions, not facts, and the ticking time bomb of the deficit just keeps growing. Ronald Reagan called a trillion dollar debt unthinkable -- and the debt is now seven times higher than "unthinkable" in less than 25 years. I'm old enough to remember when Republicans were good with money; now they want to bankrupt the government as a way to eliminate all the programs, for financial reasons, that they could never get the votes to eliminate honestly. There's no other explanation for the GOP's total capitulation on the deficit since the GOP-led government shutdown during the Clinton administration. In 10 years, the GOP mantra on the deficit has gone from it's so important we'll shut down the government before we borrow another dime, to the deficit doesn't matter because it's paid for via future growth. Makes as much sense as Vegans for America holding their 10th anniversary party at a steak house.

• Hope is not a plan.

Any president who ignores military history when going to war is likely going to lose that war. The Israelis, the Army War College -- even the French, for God's sake -- told George W. Bush that it was only a matter of time before a supposedly liberating Army would be seen as an occupying Army. Polls in Iraq show more people blame America for their problems than the insurgents. President Bush's notion that U.S. troops would be met like the liberators of Paris shows a complete lack of understanding of the facts at hand. The Iraqi middle class was pretty much wiped out by U.N. sanctions, and those people didn't blame the U.N., they blamed the U.S. for pushing the sanctions. History is going to be kind to Secretary of State Colin Powell, for his opposition to this disastrous mess, and Dubya is going to end up like Shakespeare's Henry V. Let's once and for all kill the canard that the U.S. cannot immediately withdraw from Iraq without a civil war. Memo to Washington: 90 attacks a day is a civil war. It's too late to worry about winning. The U.S. has already lost.

• The planet is an issue.

Why are human beings the only species on the planet without full employment?

Folks, the impact of man on the environment will be the issue of the 21st century. Too bad that given the current state of U.S. public affairs, politicians will get around to it in the 22nd.

-30-

At times like these, Mr. Marshall likes to quote Graham Greene. "The world is not black and white. It's grey and grey."