Politics don't play out in market  Finally, the election is
almost here. And all of the ads, phone calls and noise will stop
— at least until the next campaign cranks up, which will be way
too soon.  Hopefully, too, the media stock market jockeys who
intone various states of Armageddon or euphoria, depending on
who wins, will also stop flooding the media with their assorted
crystal-ball ramblings, at least for a little while.  I last
wrote about the election frenzy in early March, as primary
season was heating up. At that point, it was still Obama versus
a Republican field. Now it's Obama versus Romney, and the
situation has been complicated by the rapidly approaching fiscal
cliff.  There are a lot of statistics about how the markets have
performed during various presidencies. For example, from 1901
through 2008, the Dow Jones industrials index rose by an average
of 7.2 percent a year during Democratic administrations, versus
just 3.7 percent a year during Republican administrations.  Some
say that's because