With only a couple of weeks to go before the election, and with Colin Powell having come out and endorsed the new messiah...I mean, er, Barack Obama...let's see where we are headed.

We appear to be headed for a Barack Obama victory, even though the polls are starting to tighten up, as the RealClearPolitics Electoral Map shows. It is also likely that we will see the Democrats make significant gains in the Senate, as shown in this analysis, which mirrors my own thinking on the subject.

Fareed Zakaria makes the case for Barack Obama, and Jonathan Alter says the country is heading leftward in general.

James Carroll says Obama has shown courage and wisdom in an age of fear.

On the other hand, Stanley Kurtz points out Obama's troubling associations with radicals, and Ralph Peters lists all the ways Obama could be worse than Carter in dealing with our foreign adversaries.

Perhaps it will all turn out differently. Perhaps John McCain, so often counted out, will get up from the mat once again and slug his way to victory. Since I honestly believe that an Obama presidency will be at least as disastrous as the Carter Administration, and probably much worse, I can only hope that the American people will show some sense and not give the Democrats control over the whole operation.