An Emirates Airline plane landed at New York's John F....

An Emirates Airline plane landed at New York's John F. Kennedy International Aitport on October 29, 2010. The flight which originated in Yemen was reportedly escorted by US fighter jets as it reached US air space because it had a package from Yemen on board. Credit: Getty Images

Really, what could be scarier than this?

A rash of shootings at military buildings outside Washington. Suspicious packages from Yemen on cargo jets. A midterm election where anger isn't officially on the ballot but is leading in all the polls.

And all of it coming just before Halloween.

There's a tendency to read too much into temporal proximity. Sometimes, stuff just happens at random at once. It's hard to imagine that Middle East terror planners - or grudge-holding pot-shotters in Virginia - are overly focused on the trick-or-treat calendar. And there's nothing new about elections coming right after Halloween. That happens every year.

So what can we say - after "Boo!"

Here's something: These are very jumpy times we're living in. Nobody's happy with much of anything. The economy is still groaning. Terrorism is still a threat. We're in wars we can't easily get out of. And politicians who are supposed to be our leaders keep disappointing us over and over again.

Change is the only thing that keeps on winning. Most of us seem to hate whoever is in.

Since Democrats hold most of the power, now they will suffer most of the pain. But whatever the scale of their losses on Tuesday night, two things will almost certainly be true:

Divided government will mean more gridlock in Washington. And two years from now, everyone will be in the mood for change.


SCARY, SCARY

1. Nassau County's tough-time budget whacks. . .

2. A conservative gene, a moderate gene and an I-hate-'em-all gene to go with the newly discovered "liberal gene"

3. The growing idea that all our leaders will fail

4. New York State races that never quite were

5. All the packages that are never checked

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