Extremes lock horns in US polls

Eight days to go. Eight days until US citizens vote for the next de facto leader of the Western World, the most powerful person on the planet, the person with the codes to America's nuclear warheads.

- Jennie Ridyard

The choice is stark:

There's the man born with a silver spoon in his mouth who has six major bankruptcies to his name - most recently in 2009 - while numerous other failed companies carried his sign-off too, from vodka to tourism, mortgages to space shuttles.

There's the criminal with 34 felony convictions, and multiple lawsuits and investigations, both past and ongoing.

There's the wannabe dictator who openly admires strongmen and authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban and Kim Jong-un, and who complained because "his" generals wouldn't shoot protesters at his command.