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.

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