I'm speechless

I don't care who you voted for.

The night of Nov. 4 was as close to magical as anything I have witnessed in my 23 years of life.

I was one of those voters who was divided between the presidential candidates. After agonizing over my absentee ballot for weeks, I finally bubbled in the oval next to John McCain's name.

Last night, I found myself in the middle of Central Boulevard in downtown Orlando just as a victory gathering for President-Elect Barack Obama was ending. The thousands of people that had gathered got in their cars and trickled onto the sidewalk, but many didn't go home.

Central Boulevard became a mass of honking cars with Obama signs hanging out windows, and the sidewalks were lined with elated voters who looked like they still couldn't believe what had just happened.

Drivers stopped their cars to get out and dance in the street.

The president of the Florida Civil Rights Association ran up and down the street, dancing and laughing with anyone who was doing the same.

Hispanics cheered in Spanish, blacks danced on the roofs of their cars with rap music blaring, whites of all ages stopped to give high-fives and take pictures on cell phone cameras. Every color was represented, and I got a glimpse of what unity might look like if our next president does his job right.

Please, Mr. Obama, please live up to this celebration.

That's what they call perfect timing

The evening before millions will go to the polls and choose between the Republican and Democratic tickets, one half of the Republican ticket has been exonerated -- at least on one issue.

The Alaska Personnel Board contradicted the state Legislature in its just-completed report, stating Gov. Sarah Palin acted fully within the Alaska Executive Ethics Act in the situation now known as "troopergate."

When the Legislature previously ruled that she abused her office by allowing her husband and staff to push for the firing of a state trooper who just happened to be her sister's ex-husband, Palin-haters screamed "Aha!"

When I read the headline today, I thought perhaps this would change people's minds about Palin -- just a little. But when I read it out loud, the person nearest to me said, "I don't think anyone will even care."

People are certainly reluctant to change their negative opinions, but it was a good try anyway, Palin.

Wait, wait, don't tell me!

What is this country's obsession with polling?

The day before Election Day, every paper and Web site that even pretends to have anything to do with the news is showing maps of the U.S. divided into red and blue states and results from polls that, by the way, hardly ever match.

USA Today says Barack Obama has an 11-percentage-point lead on John McCain, a lead that they say is widening.

The Wall Street Journal puts Obama ahead by only 8 percentage points and says McCain is quickly catching up.

Call me ignorant, but if the polls are accurate, shouldn't they be consistent?

All of these efforts to predict the outcome are an enormous waste of time and resources. People are being paid to come up with these numbers, and chances are extremely good that the numbers will end up being completely wrong anyway.

No poll can accurately predict the intracies of the human mind and every human's tendency to change his mind multiple times. So all the polls are really doing is adding more confusion to the situation.

I don't know about everyone else, but I kind of want to be surprised. I hate when people ruin the ending.

Obama wins presidency ... according to Washington Post

It's two days before Election Day, but thanks to the Washington Post's ability to predict the future, we already know who our next president will be.

"Barack Obama and the Democrats hold a commanding position two days before Tuesday's election, with the senator from Illinois leading in states whose electoral votes total nearly 300 and with his party counting on significantly expanded majorities in the House and Senate.

John McCain is running in one of the worst environments ever for a Republican presidential nominee. The senator from Arizona has not been in front in any of the 159 national polls conducted over the past six weeks. His slender hopes for winning the White House now depend on picking up a major Democratic stronghold or fighting off Obama's raids on most of the five states President Bush won four years ago that now lean toward the Democrat. He also must hold onto six other states that Bush won in 2004 but are considered too close to call."

Not so fast, Post. If the past has taught us anything, it's that you can conduct all the polls and interviews you want and still find out you were way off when the results come through.

Race, unfortunately, still plays a factor in this race. Right now, it seems as though it's considered trendy to be an Obama supporter and racist not to be. But how many people are saying they're Obama supporters just to win public approval? Will those people who are driving the poll results toward Obama actually vote for him once they are alone in the voting booth with their ballots?

"Two factors cloud the final weekend projections. The first is how voters ultimately respond to the prospect of the first African American president in U.S. history, a force that could make the contest closer than it appears. The other, which pushes in the opposite direction, is whether Obama can expand the electorate to give him an additional cushion in battleground states."

And that's why this race is still too close to call -- unless you actually can predict the future.

Surgery in a developing country? Sign me up!

Forget the horror stories about back-alley appendectomies and missing kidneys.

We've always known that having surgery outside of the U.S. can be cheaper -- but better?

This is new to me.

The Los Angeles Times lets Andy Dijak tell his story of getting sophisticated knee surgery -- in Mexico.

When Dijak found out that the surgery would cost between $12,000 and $15,000 in a U.S. hospital, he started looking outside American borders. The best deal he found was in Monterrey, Mexico: $4,500, including the plane ticket.

He was picked up at the airport, recovered in a private room overlooking the Sierra Madre and got a copy of the operation on DVD.

"I got better care there than I would have in the United States, unless I were a
billionaire," he said.

The cost of American health care is driving people out of the country now.

Oh, Mr. President? You've got your work cut out for you.

Endangered food tastes better

The Los Angeles Times took a break from gloom and doom to make fun of two brothers.

Yep, just two regular brothers. Well, one is a marine scientist who saves sea life, and the other is a gourmet food critic who delights in eating sea life -- sometimes while it's still wiggling.

Leave it to the Times to find such a hilariously ironic and completely obscure juxtaposition and then write it in a way that makes you giggle, even as your property taxes go up.

Behold:

Mark Gold, the esteemed marine scientist and president of Heal the Bay, knew it was only a matter of time before his older brother, Jonathan Gold, the equally esteemed Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic, would pick up a set of chopsticks and commit the ultimate act of fraternal betrayal.

"From his perspective, if you've already eaten Jamaican goat penis, what's wrong with whale?" Mark asked.

Jonathan -- reached on his cellphone this week while eating puffer fish at Dae Bok in Koreatown -- first corrected his ever-tut-tutting brother:

"It was Vietnamese goat penis."

Look, he added, he doesn't promote eating whale. And it's not as if the whale was harpooned in Santa Monica Bay.

He happened to be in South Korea, coming out of a whale museum, when, perhaps ironically, he came upon a row of whale restaurants. A man whose curious palate once led him to eat a live prawn as it glared back at him, antennae spiraling in fear, he knew he had to try. In his words: "It was there."

And, he concluded, it was delectable.

This is only funny until Mark goes after Jonathan with a harpoon. But that hasn't happened yet, so feel free to laugh a little longer.