Will Tuesday’s results signal a realignment in American politics? “A big Obama win,” The Boston Globe reports, “could be read as a mandate for just the kind of liberalism” conservatives like David Brooks fear…And it could signal a much longer-term political realignment.” Having a black president would also “force a reconsideration of almost all assumptions about race relations in America.” But don’t expect any seismic changes on November 5: The election’s impact on America will take time to be felt, the Globe reports.

Santa’s elves aren’t even elves, and they certainly don’t live at the north pole. They’re Chinese migrant workers employed in the Dickensian toy factories of Dongguan, and this year they’re out of work, according to the Telegraph. Usually fall and summer are the biggest months for toy factories, but this year fully half of the region’s toy exporters – about 3,900 companies, went bust. Rising production and transport costs squeezed China’s manufacturers even before the global financial meltdown dealt the final blow. The country’s unemployment rate is four percent out of a workforce 800 million strong, although experts think the rate has been underestimated, considering that 150 million people are migrant workers. Whatever Christmas cheer there might have been, has been replaced by workers’ anger. Seven thousand employees of Smart Union protested for back wages outside its factory, until the local government stepped in and paid them with 2.1 million pounds of public money. Hundreds of workers have demonstrated outside the city government’s office, and there have been other sit-ins and protests across the region. The only real winners are area children, who could scavenge from the piles of toys that Smart Union abandoned in its warehouse.

Hendrik Hertzberg met Jeffrey Hart in 1980 when they debated at Rockland Community College as proxies for their bosses, President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, respectively. Now Hertzberg writes for The New Yorker and they’re on the same side, as Hart came out as an Obamacon in The Daily Beast. Hart supports Obama for behaving like a conservative by opposing wars that a lack clear rationale. “He’s opposed to dumb conservatives. Substituting ‘liberals’ for ‘conservatives,’” Hertzberg writes, “I concur.”

Three years ago, Isabelle Dinoire took some sleeping pills. When she woke up there was blood on the ground, the Telegraph writes. She went to light a cigarette, and discovered her nose, mouth and chin were missing, ripped off by her dog in her sleep. Transplant surgeon Jean-Michel Dubernard said, “Once I had seen Isabelle’s disfigured face, no more needed to be said. I was convinced something had to be done for this patient.” He transplanted parts of a donor’s face onto hers. Dinoire regained feeling in her face, but three years later, the French mother of two said of her face, referring to the dead donor, “It’s not hers, it’s not mine, it’s somebody else’s.” Dinoire is still not completely used to the new face, although, “It's part of me. I have the feeling of looking at something beautiful, I accept looking at myself now, but it was wasn't easy at the beginning.” Doctors at the Royal Free Hospital in London will consider the psychological ramifications of face transplants, such as those Dinoire experienced, now that the British ethics board has given them permission to perform the world’s first full-face transplant.

Curt Roosevelt is Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s grandson, and has come out with a new book, Too Close to the Sun, discussing his famous childhood and the way it screwed him up, the London Times writes. After his parents’ divorce, Franklin and Eleanor became Curt’s de facto parents. While FDR was a warm grandpa who read Curt the funnies in bed, Eleanor took him to welfare projects for destitute children. Curt said that he and his sister “had a marvelous life, but it was a life in which no one ever said that I had to do anything. This is devastating for a child.” His cosseted existence made him end up with “an unrealistic view of what I was; I became addicted to the dream world, to a neurotic degree.” Curt thinks there’s hope for Obama’s daughters if he wins the presidency – he called Barack and Michelle “much more sensible parents than mine were.”

In a political environment in which we know everything from Obama’s penchant for nicotine to McCain’s behavior with his first wife, how can anyone still be undecided? asks John Cloud of Time. After all, Cloud writes, “I have hooked up with people I know less about.” Apparently, 63 percent of this year’s undecided voters are women who tend to be older, less educated, and poorer than the general population. Translation: These ladies don’t have a lot of time to follow politics. Although undecideds say they will weigh the pros and cons of each candidate before voting, it’s actually fairly easy to predict voting behavior—by and large, people pick what they like and justify it later. On the other hand, people forced to choose between death by hanging and death by fire will put off the choice as long as possible, suggesting that some undecided voters don’t have much faith in either candidate.

It’s got gold taps, a mini-operating theater, a helicopter landing pad and a secret escape passageway, the Telegraph reports.  Although modest compared to the mega-yachts favored by today’s super-rich, at 270 feet, the Ocean Breeze may fetch up to 20 million pounds.  Currently, the yacht is moored off the coast of southern France, where courts have resolved an ownership dispute in favor of Iraq. The Iraqi government hopes for a sale in the next few weeks.

How gullible do we want our next vice president? When Sarah Palin answered a prank call from a Canadian comedy duo, The Masked Avengers, who, posing as Nicolas Sarkozy, asked her (albeit in French) whether they could go hunting baby seals from a helicopter together, her reply was: “We could have a lot of fun together as we’re getting work done. We could kill two birds with one stone that way.” And she revealed her political ambitions. Would you like to be president? the phony Sarko asked. “Maybe in eight years,” she replied. The Palin campaign mustered a dignified—and humorous response. “Governor Palin was mildly amused to learn that she had joined the ranks of heads of state, including President Sarkozy, and other celebrities in being targeted by these pranksters,” said spokeswoman Tracy Schmitt. “C’est la vie.”

Reports from a Pakistani security official say al-Qaida spinmeister Abu Jihad al-Masri, who had a $1 million reward for his death or capture, has been killed in a US missile attack that came across the border from Afghanistan. “The strike was aimed at a vehicle carrying Abu Jihad and two others,” AFP reports. According to the US State Department’s Rewards for Justice website, he had been “in charge of Al-Qaeda media and propaganda. He may also be the chief of external operations for Al-Qaeda.” Neither the State Department nor the Pakistani government has confirmed the report, or who would get the bounty if indeed the Egyptian Masri has been eliminated.

From the Independent: Every year in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, goat breeders converge to enter their animals in a beauty pageant. “The Najdi goat is a pure national product like nothing else in the world,” said Sheik Faisal al-Saadoun, the breeder who organized the show. “They are different in terms of beauty, shape, and how eye-catching they are.” The silky animals have a distinctive nose bridge and are named after the Najd region of Saudi Arabia. Most goats in the competition shared an ancestor named Burgan, a goat worth millions of riyals who was not displayed lest someone set the evil eye on him. One of Burgan’s sons, valued at 450,000 riyals, won the competition.

In a last-ditch attempt to besmirch Obama, Robert Fox, a California businessman and brother-in-law of Chris Cannon, a Republican congressman from Utah, asked an Oxford University teacher to prove that Weatherman Bill Ayers was the real author of Obama’s two volumes of memoirs. Dr. Peter Millican, a philosophy academic at Hertford College, Oxford, was approached to apply his computer software program, which detects when works are by the same author by comparing favorite words and phrases, to Obama’s autobiography and match them to Ayers’ account of his own life. “He was entirely upfront about this. He offered me $10,000 and sent me electronic versions of the text from both books,” Millican told the London Sunday Times. Millican’s verdict? “Very implausible.”

It’s been sold out for days. Chicago is throwing the world’s biggest party to celebrate an Obama victory in Grant Park, where the president-elect will acknowledge the verdict of the voters. With every ticket long gone and going for silly prices on eBay, a spontaneous spillover party is being arranged with an uninvited guest list expected to reach more than a million. The local authorities cannot disguise their unease at so many people converging on the city center, though the Secret Service remains calm. “We do this for a living,” said spokesman Ed Donovan. It is expected to be a cold, cold night, which might encourage some to bring a flask of something. Hot chocolate, apparently, is allowed; booze is banned. What happened to the Champagne?

“My heart was in my mouth. I was almost exploding. I don’t know how I kept my cool.  It was the toughest race of my life,” Lewis Hamilton, 23, said, according to the Telegraph. His doubly historic victory – he is Formula One’s first black champion in addition to its youngest – was a last-minute upset that robbed Felipe Massa, his closest competitor, of the dream. Rain late in the Grand Prix bumped Hamilton to sixth, after he stopped to change to dry tires. He needed fifth to win the championship.  Massa had come in first, and as his fans began to celebrate premature victory, Timo Glock, the fifth place contender, struggled up the last hill before the finish line, and Hamilton overtook him to win the world championship over Massa by a single point. To his credit, Massa took the loss gracefully. “Hamilton did a great job all year,” he said, “He is a worthy champion.”

The fundraising race may be largely over, but the technology race is on, and so far, Obama’s winning by a landslide. A Facebook application allows users to donate their status messages to a particular campaign, and there’s even a slot to write in your candidate or just urge people to vote. As of this posting, 1 day and 9 hours before Election Day according to the application’s countdown clock, 73 percent of participating users will change their message to “is reminding everyone to vote for Barack Obama,” at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday morning, while a scant 11 percent will use their status to promote McCain, with “just get out the vote!” trailing at 9 percent.

The Toledo Blade reports that an Obama rally today at the Columbus statehouse drew 60,000 people, who crowded onto the lawn and spilled into the streets. Obama called McCain’s Saturday Night Live appearance “funny,” but in the next breath used Cheney’s endorsement of McCain to link the Republican contender to the Bush administration. “Dick Cheney came out, and he hit the campaign trail. He said, and I quote, that he is ‘delighted’ to support John McCain. You’ve never seen Dick Cheney delighted before, but he is. That’s kind of hard to picture,” Obama said. “I would like to congratulate Senator McCain on this endorsement, because he really earned it.” In response to the crowd’s reaction to his mention of Cheney, Obama said, “You don’t need to boo, you just need to vote.” Early polls near the site were only scheduled to be open until 5 p.m., but Ohio Governor Ted Strickland told the crowd that he wanted so many people to show up that “at midnight tonight and at 2 a.m., tomorrow morning people will still be in line registering their votes for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.”

Not to be outdone by Obama’s 30-minute ad for himself, the writers at Saturday Night Live had the real McCain and Tina Fey’s Palin take over QVC for a stretch. Between peddling his message, he ran down the clock on bargains in “Fine gold” (geddit?) gold bracelets and “pork” knives. If the polls haven’t changed by Tuesday, he said he would adopt “the Sad Grandpa” persona and appeal to the fairness of the American people. “That’s where I get on TV and go, ‘C’mon, Obama is going to have plenty of chances to be president,’” he said. “It’s my turn! Vote for me!”

In his roundup of November’s first batch of polls, Nate Silver notes they have tightened but that McCain is still far outside the 3-point margin he needs to change the race. Should he close that window, the election will come down to five states: Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Nevada. (Such a narrowing would likely hand McCain states like North Carolina and Florida.) If we grant that Obama will win Colorado, where he leads big in early voting, Obama will need to win Pennsylvania, Ohio, or Virginia and Nevada to surpass 270 electoral votes. Included in Silver’s calculations is the precious insight that, at this point, Obama is more likely to win Arizona than McCain is Pennsylvania.

What would Election Day be without a bunch of more-or-less baseless prognostications? The Washington Post assembles an elite panel of pundits, including Arianna Huffington, Chris Matthews, Nate Silver, and Bill Maher to predict Tuesday’s results. Just two of the 14 experts believe McCain will win on Tuesday, and both of them—Ed Morrissey of HotAir and Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard—are true GOP believers. Half, meanwhile, think Obama will win North Carolina, and all 14 agree that the Democrats will fall short of 60 Senate seats.

The greatest debate of the age, whether the free market should stay free or whether federal government has a part to play in the health of the economy, took a sudden turn with the credit crunch and subsequent meltdown of the banks. One who can hardly conceal his glee is James K. Galbraith, son of the Keynesian guru J.K. Galbraith, who helped implement Franklin Roosevelt’s big government spending program, the New Deal. Alan Greenspan’s part in the system’s downfall? “I think Greenspan bears a high, high degree of responsibility for what has happened,” he told Deborah Solomon. Paulson? “He wasn’t adequately prepared.” And the failure of his fellow economists to predict the impending disaster? “It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession.”

Without Karl Rove to whisper in his ear, the president seems to have missed an important chance to shoo John McCain into the White House. According to anti-death penalty and human rights campaigner Clive Stafford Smith, writing in The New York Post, had Bush chosen to put Khalid Sheik Muhammad, self-confessed kingpin of the September 11 attacks, before a military tribunal, the election would be playing against the background of a terrorist trial that would have driven voters into the hands of McCain. But it was not to be. Instead, “The Bush Administration marched to the beat of its own bizarre drummer, from one misjudgment to the next,” writes Smith.