Law enforcement officials say the intense public interest and historic nature of the vote could lead to violent outbreaks if people are unhappy with the results, encounter problems casting their ballots or suspect voting irregularities. 
In the typhoon of commentary that's blown around the world a step behind the financial tsunami that's wrecking everything, two little words have been curiously absent: "fraud" and "swindle." But aren't they really at the core of what has happened? Wall Street took the whole world "for a ride" and now a handful of Wall Street's erstwhile princelings have shifted ceremoniously into US Government service to "fix" the problem with a "toolbox" containing a notional two trillion dollars. This strange exercise in financial kabuki theater will shut down sometime between the election and inauguration day, when the inaugurate finds himself president of the Economic Smoking Wreckage of the United States. What will happen?
There are numerous books that promise to help you "think like a genius", or like Einstein, or even - if Einstein isn't good enough - How To Think Like History's 10 Most Revolutionary Minds. But they're beset with problems. Some try to teach a "secret formula", even though following someone else's five-step system is surely antithetical to genius. Some confuse correlation with causation: Thomas Jefferson was an early riser, and he basically invented the US, so you should get up early, too! Others are plain odd. In How To Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Gelb recommends doing an "ambiguity dance" to express feelings about uncertainty. I can't imagine Leonardo doing an ambiguity dance. Though if he had done, maybe he'd have come up with a flying machine that actually worked, the loser.
"Genius" is a slippery word, anyway. The American neuroscientist Gregory Berns uses a different term as the title of his new book on thinking differently: Iconoclast. Looking at original thinking as "iconoclastic" - as disruptive of the usual ways we're conditioned to see the world - turns out to be much more useful. It may even help you think a bit more like Leonardo.
Berns' starting point is that the brain "is fundamentally a lazy piece of meat": it needs energy to operate, and has evolved to use it as efficiently as possible. So when it perceives the outside world, or imagines things, the average brain uses as many short cuts as it can - past experience, other people's opinions - to avoid the taxing effort of perceiving or imagining afresh. It's literally harder work to perceive what you're not expecting to perceive, which is why airport security screeners who watch thousands of harmless bags roll by will at times fail to notice even a very prominent gun.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/25/healthandwellbeing-original-thought
When you lose your illusions you see yourself and your own actions clearly. We need to see our present circumstances as they are and not as we want them to be. We have an opportunity to take back our country but that window of opportunity will close rapidly. We need to return to the form of government experienced by our Founders. We need to stop talking about freedom and set tasks that return control of government to the people at the most local level and change our economy from one that has us hemorrhaging jobs and money to one that keeps money local.
When people are remote from you they seem alien and therefore less human. This was true with all people. Those they do not know they are willing to abuse and manipulate.
Some Republicans believe John McCain should adopt a more positive approach to campaigning. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Today, I received my Sarah Palin inflatable love doll in the mail. I'd heard about the "
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