Do Your Civic Duty: VOTE!

Americans went to the polls on Tuesday to choose the next president of the United States, deciding whether Senator Barack Obama or Senator John McCain was better suited to guide the nation through an economic crisis at home and two wars abroad.

In voting booths in every corner of the land, the people were collectively writing the ending to a political saga that has been unfolding for nearly two years, during a tumultuous, uncertain period of American history in which record numbers of people expressed concerns that the country was heading down the wrong track.

Voters began lining up before dawn at polling locations up and down the East Coast, in what election officials said was an unprecedented level of turnout.

Mr. Obama cast his ballot at an elementary school in Chicago shortly before 9 a.m. Eastern time, and his running mate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, followed suit soon afterward in Wilmington, Del.

And in tiny Dixville Notch, N.H., which casts its ballots just after midnight, Mr. Obama won 15 votes to Mr. McCain’s 6. President Bush won the vote there in 2004.

In Richmond, Va., the capital city of a battleground state, voters started lining up at 5 a.m., and by 6 a.m., lines were already an hour long. They stood in line through a steady drizzle, sipping coffee and reading newspapers, as election officials offered voting instructions.

Whoever wins on Tuesday — Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, or Mr. McCain, the Republican — the election will make history. If Mr. Obama is elected, he will become the nation’s first African-American president. And if Mr. McCain wins, his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, will be the first woman elected vice president.

Presidential elections are really 51 state-by-state elections (including the District of Columbia), and for Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain the day was all about trying to win enough of those states to get the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the presidency. To that end they spent the last days and hours of the campaign making their final pushes in closely contested states from Florida to Virginia to Colorado that could tip the balance in favor of either man.

Looming over the race was the unpopular Republican president, George W. Bush, whose approval ratings are hovering at record lows after starting a war in Iraq that many Americans concluded was a mistake, and presiding during an economic collapse this fall that left millions of people worrying about their mortgages and retirement savings.

Mr. Obama, 47, a first-term senator from Illinois, premised his candidacy on change, arguing that he would turn the page on President Bush’s policies and make the country respected again at home and abroad. Mr. McCain, 72, a son and grandson of admirals who served five and a half years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, ran as the most experienced candidate to be commander-in-chief, but also argued that he had long bucked his party and would bring change to Washington as well.

The two men offered starkly different proposals. Mr. Obama called for ending the war in Iraq over a period of about 16 months, and Mr. McCain for continuing it until victory was achieved. Mr. Obama wanted to roll back President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, and to cut taxes for the middle class; Mr. McCain wanted to extend the Bush tax cuts and cut taxes on businesses. Mr. Obama wanted to use government money to expand health insurance for the uninsured, and to require coverage for all children, while Mr. McCain wanted to give individuals tax credits to go toward buying their own insurance.

In some areas, both men promised a break from the Bush administration, even if they differed on the details: both agreed that global warming was real, and promised to take steps to reduce it; both pledged to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and both were outspoken in condemning torture after reports of waterboarding and other abuse of prisoners at the hands of American captors surfaced in recent years.

During the long, grueling campaign, Mr. Obama repeatedly claimed that Mr. McCain would effectively represent a third term for Mr. Bush. And while Mr. McCain has at times been a thorn in Mr. Bush’s side, as a presidential candidate he was proposing to continue enough of Mr. Bush’s policies, from tax cuts to the Iraq war, that the charge seemed to stick. Mr. McCain, for his part, painted Mr. Obama as unprepared, noting that only four years ago he was still a member of the Illinois State Senate, and trying to sow doubts about him by suggesting that he was still largely an unknown quantity.

For all the big issues, there were plenty of fleeting, insubstantial controversies as well. Mr. McCain mocked Mr. Obama as a substance-free celebrity, and Mr. Obama mocked Mr. McCain for being unable to remember how many homes he owned. At times the contest grew ugly, with Mr. McCain all but suggesting that Mr. Obama was a socialist for his tax-cut proposal, and Ms. Palin accusing Mr. Obama of “palling around with terrorists” for working sporadically with a former 1960s radical.

It was a presidential campaign that shattered all kinds of records, from the number of votes cast during the long, bitterly contested primary and caucus season to the huge amount of money raised and spent on the general election after Mr. Obama withdrew from his pledge to accept public financing of his campaign. And during a campaign season that lasted nearly two years, it sometimes seemed that the road to the White House had more twists and turns than Lombard Street in San Francisco.

Both Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain went through lean periods when they were considered long shots for their parties’ nomination, only to prevail in the end.

Mr. McCain had entered the race as the presumptive Republican frontrunner by virtue of having been the runner-up in 2000, and by the way he had raised his profile in the years since then by passing a campaign finance bill that bore his name, and appearing frequently on television, often as an independent voice, bucking his party.

But things soured for him in 2007. The Iraq war he had championed grew deeply unpopular, and at a time many were proposing scaling back the American presence there he was calling for adding more troops, leading many to question whether he could win over the independent voters who had always been central to his strategy. Then his support for overhauling the nation’s immigration laws provoked a vitriolic backlash among Republicans, whose support he needed to win the party’s nomination. After spending lavishly but falling short in fundraising, his campaign was nearly broke by the summer of 2007, and his candidacy was all but written off by the Washington establishment.

He scaled back, focused all his resources on winning the New Hampshire primary, and hoped for the best. Then things began to go his way. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who had invested heavily in Iowa and New Hampshire, was embarrassed and weakened when he lost the Iowa caucuses to Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor. Rudolph W. Giuliani, who led in many polls for much of the fall, began to fade as the voting neared, and adopted a risky strategy of holding back resources for the Florida Primary. Fred D. Thompson’s highly anticipated candidacy failed to generate much excitement when he belatedly entered the race.

It was against that backdrop that Mr. McCain was able to win the New Hampshire primary, beating a weakened Mr. Romney and putting himself on the road to the nomination after racking up wins in South Carolina and Florida and the many states that voted on Feb. 5.

Mr. Obama entered the race as a long shot at a time when many Democrats expected Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York or former Senator John Edwards to win the party’s nomination. But his campaign quickly inspired a core of committed young people, and his speeches became political events, drawing huge, transfixed crowds. At the same time he proved himself to be a prodigious fundraiser, making the party take him seriously, and cast himself as a change from politics of the Bush and Clinton years.

He was propelled forward by his victory in the Iowa caucuses, which took on an added significance by signaling to many Democrats that if an African-American could win an overwhelmingly white state like Iowa, he could win elsewhere. But Mrs. Clinton went on to beat him in New Hampshire, presaging a long battle to the nomination.

Mr. Obama was helped by two things. As a former community organizer, he placed an emphasis on organizing supporters in caucus states, many of which were overlooked by the Clinton campaign, but which won him delegates. And unlike the Republicans, who awarded their state delegates on the winner-take-all system, the Democratic rules awarded their delegates proportionally, meaning that Mr. Obama was able to pick up large numbers of delegates even in states he lost to Mrs. Clinton.

In the end, she fell short, and he became the Democratic presidential nominee.

Mr. Obama chose a more experienced hand, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, as his running mate, tapping someone with extensive foreign policy experience but a propensity for making the occasional gaffe. Mr. McCain picked Ms. Palin of Alaska, arguing that her willingness to buck her party elders there made her a perfect fit for him. The choice galvanized social conservatives who had long been wary of McCain, but turned off some independents who came to view her as unprepared.

If both Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain were chosen by the parties in large part because of their positions on the Iraq war — Mr. Obama for opposing it from the beginning, and Mr. McCain for supporting the surge strategy that was later credited with reducing violence there — the election quickly turned to pocketbook issues. Four-dollar-a-gallon gas prices over the summer provoked outrage, and the worsening economy reached crisis proportions this fall when the nation’s financial institutions teetered on the brink of collapse and required a huge government bailout.

And the family lives of the candidates did not pause for the campaign. One of Mr. McCain’s sons, Jimmy, a Marine, did a tour in Iraq, and both Ms. Palin and Mr. Biden bid farewell to their sons, who were going off to Iraq. Ms. Palin announced on the day the Republican National Convention began that her daughter Bristol, 17, was pregnant and engaged to be married. Mr. Biden’s mother-in-law died last month, and on Monday, the day before the election, Mr. Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who helped raise him during his teenage years, died in Hawaii.

A Onetime McCain Insider Is Now Offering Advice (Unwanted) From the Outside

When former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell endorsed Senator Barack Obama on Sunday, most Republicans stepped in line behind Senator John McCain, declaring that the endorsement would have little bearing on the course of the presidential contest.

With one notable exception.

“A real sledgehammer blow to an already staggering campaign,” declared Mike Murphy in a verdict that ricocheted across liberal blogs and helped torpedo any effort Mr. McCain made to minimize the event.

Mr. Murphy is not just another Republican consultant. He was the chief strategist for Mr. McCain when he ran for president in 2000, a longtime friend and an adviser who offered consultations as recently as last summer. He also has a tempestuous relationship with the current leaders of Mr. McCain’s campaign, who have revolted at even the hint that he might join them.

Now, with the contest in its final two weeks, Mr. Murphy has emerged as among the chief critics of the McCain campaign, offering advice and brickbats, one more obstacle for an already troubled campaign and a public manifestation of turmoil that has long marked the McCain world. At a moment when other former McCain advisers have been relatively silent, including John Weaver, Mr. Murphy has been extravagant in his criticisms and what Mr. McCain’s advisers describe as his second-guessing.

Indeed, Mr. Murphy on Wednesday seized on the disclosure that the Republican National Committee had paid about $150,000 for clothes and accessories for Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, and her family.

“This caper is gonna make for a long day at the office for the good folks at the RNC/McCain press operation,” he wrote on Swampland, the Time magazine blog, where he is a regular contributor, before offering some humorous advice on how they could fight back. (“William Ayers is a terrorist!” was pushback No. 4).

Mr. McCain has told associates that he has viewed Mr. Murphy’s criticisms of his campaign — its advertisements, his selection of Ms. Palin and Mr. McCain’s aggressive manner — as an act of betrayal, the actions of a former friend seeking attention and a network platform. Mr. McCain was described as particularly incensed that one of Mr. Murphy’s platforms was MSNBC, which Mr. McCain’s campaign has repeatedly treated as an enemy.

Mr. McCain has cut off all communications with Mr. Murphy, associates said. And McCain aides, including Steve Schmidt, a chief strategist who worked with Mr. Murphy on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign for governor of California, have stopped talking to him as well, ignoring telephone calls or e-mail messages, according to Republicans close to the campaign.

Mr. Murphy, in a brief e-mail comment, said that he was saying only what he believed, and that he still admired Mr. McCain.

“John McCain is a hero to me, but my job as a media analyst is to call it as I see it where campaign strategy is concerned,” Mr. Murphy wrote. “There’s no disloyalty in honesty.”

Still, at a time when Mr. McCain’s campaign advisers are already under an intense round of second-guessing, there is no shortage of Murphy associates who suggest that his criticisms, and those of other critics, have been vindicated.

“I’ve been one myself,” said Mr. Weaver, who speaks to Mr. Murphy from time to time. “In some cases, speaking for myself, it’s a way of trying to communicate over there what you believe they should be doing.”

Mr. Murphy has a long history of having battled with some of the top people in Mr. McCain’s world, notably Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager. Mr. McCain’s advisers said they pay little attention to Mr. Murphy. “Only Mike knows why he does what he does,” said Mark Salter, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain. Asked if he thought Mr. Murphy’s comments had an impact, Mr. Salter responded, “Not really.”

Whether he is right or not, Mr. Murphy has offered an informed criticism of how Mr. McCain has run his campaign, with an intriguing alternate-universe view of how things might have gone had they followed his advice. But Mr. McCain’s associates said Mr. Murphy’s running commentary was demoralizing and a distraction for Mr. McCain.

Mr. Murphy has a reputation in Republican circles for self-promotion; in 2000, he provided to The Washington Post unusual behind-the-scenes access that detailed — and some rivals suggested enhanced — his role as a chief strategist in the campaign.

Still, Mr. Murphy’s associates said he was saying on television what he would say were he in Mr. McCain’s campaign.

“When he does disagree with the campaign, it’s rooted in him wanting the best for the senator,” said Todd Harris, who worked with Mr. Murphy for Mr. McCain in 2000. “Obviously the guys on the campaign want the best for the senator as well, and there’s just a difference of opinion.”

And Mr. Murphy has told friends that he does not believe what he is doing has hurt Mr. McCain. “No one loves John McCain more than Mike Murphy,” said Alex Castellanos, a media consultant who is close to Mr. Murphy and advises Mr. McCain. “I don’t think he has any selfish interest at all.”

Still, other former members of the McCain world have taken a different approach. Mark McKinnon, who stepped as aside as senior adviser because, he told associates, he did not want to be part of a campaign tearing down Mr. Obama, has kept whatever criticism he has to himself. Mr. McKinnon declined a request for comment.

Mr. Murphy, on the other hand, shows no sign of slowing down. On Wednesday night, he posted an item on his blog that began: “In the category of more unsolicited advice they didn’t ask for, are tired of getting, and will certainly ignore. ...”

Alaska Inquiry Concludes Palin Abused Powers

Gov. Sarah Palin abused the powers of her office by pressuring subordinates to try to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired, an investigation by the Alaska Legislature has concluded. The inquiry found, however, that she was within her right to dismiss her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who was the trooper’s boss.

A 263-page report released Friday by lawmakers in Alaska found that Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, had herself exerted pressure to get Trooper Michael Wooten dismissed, as well as allowed her husband and subordinates to press for his firing, largely as a result of his temperament and past disciplinary problems.

“Such impermissible and repeated contacts,” the report states, “create conflicts of interests for subordinate employees who must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior’s displeasure and the possible consequences of that displeasure.” The report concludes that the action was a violation of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.

What now lies ahead is not fully known at this point. Ms. Palin could be censured by the Legislature, but that is unlikely.

Ms. Palin, who had been elected governor in 2006, was tapped as Senator John McCain’s running mate in late August, about a month after an inquiry was opened into her firing of Mr. Monegan. Her political ascendancy took what was essentially a state personnel matter and elevated it into a national issue, one that has been simmering in the background of an increasingly heated presidential race

In the report, the independent investigator, Stephen E. Branchflower, a former prosecutor in Anchorage, said that Ms. Palin wrongfully allowed her husband, Todd, to use state resources as part of the effort to have Trooper Wooten dismissed.

The report says she knowingly “permitted Todd Palin to use the governor’s office and the resources of the governor’s office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired.”

Further, it says, she “knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda.”

Three years ago, Trooper Wooten and the governor’s sister, Molly McCann, were locked in a harsh divorce and child-custody battle that further turned the Palin family against him. The couple divorced in January 2006.

As a result of several complaints against Trooper Wooten, he was suspended from the state police force for five days. However, Mr. Branchflower’s report found numerous instances in which Ms. Palin, her husband and her subordinates tried to press for harsher punishment, even though Mr. Monegan and others told them they had gone as far as the law and civil service rules would allow.

Ms. Palin has denied that anyone told Mr. Monegan to dismiss Trooper Wooten, or that the commissioner’s ouster had anything to do with the trooper, who remains on the force.

Mr. Monegan has said that he believes he lost his job because he would not bend to pressure to dismiss Trooper Wooten. On July 28, the Legislative Council, a bipartisan body of House and Senate members that can convene to make decisions when the Legislature is not in session, approved an independent investigation into whether the governor abused the powers of her office to pursue a personal vendetta.

Mr. Monegan said in an interview Friday night that he felt relieved.

“I feel that my beliefs and opinions that Wooten was a significant factor, if not the factor, in my termination have been validated,” Mr. Monegan said, adding, “I was resisting the governor from the very beginning on the Wooten matter to protect her from exactly what just happened to her here, being found to have acted inappropriately.”

The report was released after Alaska lawmakers emerged from a private session in Anchorage where they spent more than of six hours discussing the ethics report and what portions should be made public. The legislative council ended up voting unanimously to make part of the overall report public.

At a news conference Friday evening, a local McCain-Palin campaign spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton, said that Mr. Branchflower’s abuse of power finding was the result of an “overreach” by the investigator who went beyond “the intent of the original” inquiry.

Ms. Stapleton added that the governor “feels absolutely vindicated” because the report concluded that Ms. Palin was acting within her legal authority when she “reassigned” Mr. Monegan. On July 11, he was told by the governor’s acting chief of staff that Ms. Palin wanted him to head the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, and that she wanted to take the public safety agency in a new direction.

In an e-mail statement, Ms. Stapleton said the report showed that the investigation was a “partisan led inquiry run by Obama supporters and the Palins were completely justified in their concern regarding Trooper Wooten given his violent and rogue behavior.”

Minutes after the report was released, the Obama campaign sent an Associated Press article in an e-mail message to reporters, with the subject line, “Palin ‘unlawfully abused her authority.’ ” It contained no other comment.

A pre-emptive report on the investigation by the McCain-Palin campaign, released late Thursday, said that beginning in October 2007, the governor and members of her administration repeatedly clashed with Mr. Monegan over budgetary issues and the direction of his agency.

After months of “repeatedly ignoring the governor’s budget priorities, making public statements that directly challenged the governor’s policy agenda and taking numerous unilateral actions in conflict with the governor in support of his own policy agenda, his replacement in July 2008 should have come as no surprise,” that report said.

Mr. Branchflower based his finding of abuse of power on Alaska’s Executive Branch Ethics Act, which was established to “discourage executive branch employees from acting upon personal interest in the performance of their public responsibilities and to avoid conflicts of interest in the performance of duty,” the report says.

It says, however, that “Governor Palin’s firing of Commissioner Walt Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.” It cites the Alaska Constitution, which says “the governor may discharge department heads without cause.”

The report continues, “In light of this constitutional and statutory authority, it is clear that Governor Palin could fire Commissioner Walt Monegan at will, for almost any reason, or no reason at all.”

The report states that, while there is no doubt that Mr. Monegan’s “failure to fire Trooper Wooten was a substantial factor in his own firing,” the evidence suggests it was not the sole reason.

The report chastised Ms. Palin for declining to be interviewed.

Legislative leaders said that in cases like this, a violation of the ethics law would typically be resolved by the state Personnel Board. However, that chain of events is complicated by the fact that the panel is conducting an inquiry of its own. Ms. Palin has pledged to cooperate with that investigation.

Even as Ms. Palin drew large crowds as she campaigned across the United States, the issue was brewing in Alaska. But the campaign repeatedly shrugged off the accusations, stating that they were not serious and that she was not guilty of any wrongdoing.

Still, the accusations undermined the campaign’s portrayal of Ms. Palin as a “maverick” and an ethics reformer who has taken on special interests and fought for average residents.

The McCain campaign flew operatives into Alaska to wage a public relations campaign to discredit the investigation and to help mount legal challenges to it.

Taxpayers, Not Lenders, Would Bear Costs of McCain’s Mortgage Proposal

WASHINGTON — The homeowner assistance plan that Senator John McCain announced without detail in the presidential debate Tuesday night would allow millions of financially stretched Americans to refinance their mortgages with government help, but it would leave taxpayers to cover the losses, rather than the financial institutions that hold the original mortgages.

Mr. McCain said in the debate that the program would be expensive, and on Wednesday his chief economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, acknowledged that the liability would be borne directly by taxpayers.

Mr. McCain, who has made cutting government spending a centerpiece of his campaign, justified the costs on Tuesday night by saying that “until we stabilize home values in America, we’re never going to start turning around and creating jobs and fixing our economy.”

As Mr. Holtz-Eakin described it, the proposal would ensure that homeowners got direct and speedier help to stay in their residences before they faced foreclosure, so that Wall Street and financial institutions would not be the only direct beneficiaries of government aid. The new loans would be 30-year mortgages at fixed interest rates of just over 5 percent, he said. The McCain campaign did not make clear what level of financial strain an applicant would have to show to qualify for the program.

The campaign of Mr. McCain’s Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, who had previously signaled support for similar approaches, condemned the proposal Wednesday. It said in a statement, “The biggest beneficiaries of this plan will be the same financial institutions that got us into this mess, some of whom even committed fraud.”

Beyond the costs, the proposal could encounter a backlash from voters, especially those who have had to work hard and sacrifice to keep current on their mortgage payments and who might resent bailing out fellow homeowners who got themselves into financial trouble.

Mr. Holtz-Eakin suggested that “the taxpayers’ contribution” would be the price of getting the quickest possible relief to homeowners and arresting falling home values. Declining home values have led to rising defaults and foreclosures, which in turn have devalued trillions of dollars in housing-related assets for financial institutions and companies in the United States and abroad, threatening the businesses’ survival and fueling a credit freeze that endangers the global economy.

Though Mr. Holtz-Eakin spoke of the urgency for action, he said Mr. McCain did not propose the idea as part of the recent bailout negotiations between Congress and the White House. So it would not begin until after Mr. McCain, if elected, takes office in January and issues an executive order.

The White House and the Treasury Department declined to comment on the McCain proposal, saying they did not have enough information. But they said existing programs were helping homeowners to avert foreclosures.

Mr. Holtz-Eakin noted that about 10 million Americans had mortgages that exceeded their homes’ value. “Literally millions of people” could benefit, he said, adding, “The question is how many people pick up the phone.”

He said the process of applying for a replacement mortgage would be “very simple,” though clearly administering such a program would not be. Under the plan, homeowners could call a mortgage broker or lender to refinance their residences. If they passed a credit check, they would qualify for a Federal Housing Administration loan based on the reduced value of the homes, with lower principal and a lower interest rate.

The government would pay off the original loan, Mr. Holtz-Eakin said. That would take the bad debt off the books of the institutions that made the original loans, or in the case of loans that were sold and repackaged as mortgage-backed securities, it would prevent further deterioration of their value.

Assuming the homeowners ultimately paid off the new mortgages, the taxpayers’ liability would be the difference between those mortgages and the original, more costly mortgages, Mr. Holtz-Eakin said.

Mr. Holtz-Eakin corrected one detail from the brief outline that the campaign issued Tuesday night after the debate. That outline said the plan would cost roughly $300 billion, which, it said, could be drawn from the $700 billion provided in the financial rescue package that became law last week.

But Mr. Holtz-Eakin said the financing could come from “several pots of money”: the bailout money, the F.H.A.’s separate authority to refinance up to $300 billion in mortgages, or the mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the government now owns.

Love your way... you are Brilliant!

Alan Davidson is the author of the Free report

"Body Breakthroughs for Life Breakthroughs: How to Peak Your

Physical, Emotional, Mental, Moral, and Spiritual IQs for a

Sensational Life"

available at www.throughyourbody.com

Alan is also the author of Body Brilliance:

Mastering Your Five Vital Intelligences (IQs)

http://bodybrilliancebook.com/bbb_movie/

Watch the Body Brilliance Movie

www.ThroughYourBody.com

Lessons from the Spirit World. Why McCain and Obama should visit Lily Dale

Where do you go to get your vision corrected, your crystal ball polished? I figured August offered one last chance to check the instruments before the campaign homestretch. And in an election year haunted by all kinds of ghosts, I thought I'd check in with the people who talk to the dead all the time--just to get a different feel for the spirits that move us.

A hundred years ago, the New York Times described the Lily Dale Assembly, a gated compound in far western New York State, as "the most famous and aristocratic spiritualistic camp in America." Freethinking, forward-leaning, this was a place for prophets of all kinds. Susan B. Anthony visited half a dozen times; Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt came, and Harry Houdini and Mae West, and seekers from around the world looking to explore the continuity between life and what locals refer to as "so-called death."

A company town of old oaks and Victorian gingerbread, Lily Dale specializes in building bridges to the Beyond. You can't buy a house here unless you are a practicing spiritualist. But anyone can stay in the Maplewood Hotel, which might be the perfect place for political junkies to detox. There are no TVs, no phones in the rooms. A sign is posted in the lobby: NO READINGS, HEALINGS, CIRCLES OR SÉANCES IN THIS AREA, PLEASE. This is the place to come if you're sick of the mainstream mediums.

"There are no strangers here," residents will tell you, just friendly souls who missed you the first time around. Days are filled with classes and lectures exploring the far corners of the otherworldly: Spoon Bending, Mask Making (in the past seven elections, the candidate with the best-selling Halloween mask has won), Past-Life Regression, Alien Abduction Case Histories. I missed the Astrology Roundtable, which explored how the transit of Pluto into Capricorn--occurring once every 248 years--affects me, the nation and the world.

The Crystal Cove Gift Shop offers all kinds of relief from the campaign trail. There are handy guidebooks--like The Beginner's Guide for the Recently Deceased--and trays of polished stones. Ametrine, perfect for prospective running mates, "releases tension, improves compatibility" while jasper promotes "harmony and global awareness." Ron Nagy, a historian and researcher at the local museum, leads Wednesday-evening Ghostwalks to help people learn to spot the spirits around them. I asked him about the mood of the country. He thinks that "if Obama wins, people will be scared to death, because he doesn't have much experience."

But to that challenge, Lily Dale offers an answer, which essentially comes down to better communication. "We believe spirit is always available if called to help," explains Lelia Cutler, a medium who serves as president of the National Spiritualist Association of Churches. She'd advise politicians to recruit their role models as advisers. "Say you're going to have a vote in Congress on a key bill on Social Security; wouldn't you think Franklin Roosevelt would be interested in what happens? Wouldn't you think Eisenhower would come and help with decisions having to do with the war?" she says. And she's just warming up. "I'd think Lincoln would be very interested in how all this plays out. I think he'd want to bring the country together, as he did in the Civil War. It was gray and blue then. It's red and blue now."

To believers, this town is hallowed ground; to skeptics, it's an amusement park. But whatever you expect to find here, Lily Dale offers a chastening lesson. I chatted with Ron Ehmke at the Good Vibrations Café; he's here celebrating his 48th birthday. He considers himself an open-minded skeptic, and he thinks America's mood right now is "pretty apocalyptic." But he hasn't come here looking for comfort. He's "come to be challenged by things that defy rationality--kind of like this campaign has defied rationality."

When the medium finished Ehmke's reading, she offered a blanket disclaimer: Bear in mind, she told him, that all of this can change because you have free will. Ehmke thinks there's a lesson there. "What worries me most is when politicians talk about their sense of destiny. I don't think there's some great Book of Life that foretells all things, and people--especially politicians--who think there is one tend to want to write that book themselves."

When certified clairvoyants operate on the premise that, whatever they may foresee, anything can still happen, the rest of us in the prediction business might try to find a little humility. The injunction not to try to write the end of the story applies to us as well; this fateful passage can't be polled, can't be foretold. We'll just have to wait, until the answers come to us.

(Article originally by Times, September 1st, Nancy Gibbs)

Love your way... you are Brilliant!

Alan Davidson is the author of the Free report

"Body Breakthroughs for Life Breakthroughs: How to Peak Your

Physical, Emotional, Mental, Moral, and Spiritual IQs for a

Sensational Life"

available at www.throughyourbody.com

Alan is also the author of Body Brilliance:

Mastering Your Five Vital Intelligences (IQs)

http://bodybrilliancebook.com/bbb_movie/

Watch the Body Brilliance Movie

www.ThroughYourBody.com

Who You Callin’ a Maverick?

There’s that word again: maverick. In Thursday’s vice-presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican candidate, used it to describe herself and her running mate, Senator John McCain, no fewer than six times, at one point calling him “the consummate maverick.”

But to those who know the history of the word, applying it to Mr. McCain is a bit of a stretch — and to one Texas family in particular it is even a bit offensive.

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.

Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.

This Maverick’s son, Maury Jr., was a firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in Iraq.

Terrellita Maverick, sister of Maury Jr., is a member emeritus of the board of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.”

“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ”

“He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”

Love your way... you are Brilliant!

Alan Davidson is the author of the Free report

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available at www.throughyourbody.com

Alan is also the author of Body Brilliance:

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