Election day is tomorrow, so here’s my last gasping breath. Bush is mentally hobbled…and I’m putting it nicely.

… Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. “I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,” he began, “and I was telling the president of my many concerns” – concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. “‘Mr. President,’ I finally said, ‘How can you be so sure when you know you don’t know the facts?”’

Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator’s shoulder. “My instincts,” he said. “My instincts.”

Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. “I said, ‘Mr. President, your instincts aren’t good enough!”’ …

… Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress – mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.

“I don’t know why you’re talking about Sweden,” Bush said. “They’re the neutral one. They don’t have an army.”

Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: “Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They’re the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.” Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.

Bush held to his view. “No, no, it’s Sweden that has no army.”

The room went silent, until someone changed the subject. …

Okay, I don’t know if others here have had their moods lifted, or dashed as the case may be, by the latest polling news at Electoral-Vote.com.

Today, the man behind the site has finally outed himself as an American professor living in Amsterdam. Even better, Salon says he’s an open-source originator. Yay geeks!

Check out this animation from NASA on air traffic patterns and you start to believe we’re just swarms of bugs.

CNNfn this morning had a bit about converting one’s old cassette tapes over to MP3s. However, in order to view the bit, you have to subscribe to their video content, which I won’t. Don’t try to make me!

Does anyone know how to make this magical technological transfer? I can’t offer anything in return except my undying platonic love.