The day has finally dawned. The US Presidential Election.

Oh me, oh my.

My stomach is in knots, I have a caffeine induced headache, and I'm prowling the flat virtually glued to the internet for any news.

(Thank god the computer is now working. It was out of action for a day or two, much to our horror. I was flabbergasted - and slightly perturbed - to realize how much we rely on it).

I even wheeled out the goggle box, hoping CTV might oblige me with an update or two, but they are resolutely sticking to their regular day time dreck of talk shows and soaps. I never thought there would come a time when I vehemently wished for cable. What blasphemy.

As for American politics, I've never had more than a glancing interest. I mean, I like to know what's going on, but this election is different. I feel - like millions of others world-wide - that I have a personal investment. I've always maintained that it's not fair that only Americans get to vote for the president, since whom they choose as their helmsman has incontrovertible repercussions for the rest of us.

It's been galling (not to mention sinister) watching the American media and hence, the American public, swallow whole the lies promulgated by George W Bush and his administration.

And despite the best efforts of artists such as Eminem, Michael Moore and the French film maker William Kabal (his excellent documentary The World According to Bush is a must see), to expose the unseemly underbelly of Bush's corrupt cabal, polls have consistently placed Bush and Kerry neck and neck.

How can Bush still be in this race?

This is the question that millions the world over - those outside of America's borders - have been asking again and again.

It is a perplexing and disturbing mystery to most of us. I doubt there has been any other president in American history who has been quite so thoroughly despised by the global community

And it is not just the fact that he acted unilaterally to invade Iraq and begin a war based on half truths and flagrant lies. His arrogance, his insular foreign policy, his wilful ignorance of environmental issues, his lawlessness in making a "pre-emptive strike", has terrifying ramifications for us all. Far from making the world a safer place, his actions have caused a serious and troubling destabilization. And where once most of the world regarded the United States as the good guys, many now view it - with at the very least - deep mistrust, or at the worst, unmitigated loathing

Bush created this.

Yet to suggest to some Americans that other nations might have a vested interest in their elections is all too often construed as an attack on their constitution, or worse, as outright hogwash. (British newspaper The Guardian came under fire recently for just such an exercise).