Flyover Country

From Thomas Hawk:

It works like this: if you use Flickr, go to the sixth page of your photostream and pick the sixth picture there, then post it to your blog.

Far be it from me to not follow a meme:

The Minnesota Senatorial battle continues with a statewide recount. Nate Silver thinks Franken will win. Maybe. Or not. Who knows. Meanwhile, MPR has posted a collection of photos of challenged ballots, including my personal favorite, Lizard People:

So, it looks like Nader might have cost Obama the state of Missouri. Check it out:

• McCain: 1,445,812
• Obama: 1,442,810
• Nader: 17,813
• Barr: 11,386

h/t to Daily Kos for the link to this unbelievably good clone of Super Mario World.

“You know,” [Chuck Heath, Sarah Palin's father] said, “the kids lose underwear, and everything has to be accounted for.” (from Maureen Dowd)

You know, I bet Bristol just has the worst time remembering where she left her underwear. When is her wedding to Levi, again?

Newsweek had a number of reporters embedded in the McCain, Obama and Clinton campaigns for the past year, working on a multi-part inside story on what happened over the past year. Part 4 of 7 was posted this morning, and it’s well worth the time to read it. Here’s one of my favorite highlights from Part 4:

At the end of August, as Hurricane Gustav threatened the coast of Texas, the Obama campaign called the Red Cross to say it would be routing donations to it via the Red Cross home page. Get your servers ready—our guys can be pretty nuts, Team Obama said. Sure, sure, whatever, the Red Cross responded. We’ve been through 9/11, Katrina, we can handle it. The surge of Obama dollars crashed the Red Cross Web site in less than 15 minutes.

I bet my friend Neil a pint of beer that Obama would win Georgia. He accepted.

I bet my friend Dominic with 2:1 odds that Obama will lose Arizona. He accepted. It would be worth two pints of beer to me to see McCain so thoroughly defeated, especially if Shadegg goes down, too.

This made me tear up. I just read this over at DKos that Barack Obama’s grandmother’s vote will be counted under Hawaii state law.

Ms. Dunham’s absentee mail ballot was received and reviewed under the Hawaii standards for processing absentee mail ballots… She was alive at that time. Her ballot will be opened tomorrow, and it will be counted in the same way that all absentee voters would be treated under our law.

Obama 364 to McCain 174. Same as Karl Rove is predicting, perversely, except that I genuinely think that Georgia is going to flip, given the African-American turnout I’ve been reading about. Obama wins all of the Kerry states, plus CO, NM, FL, OH, GA and VA. Missouri will lose its bellwether status, although it’s going to be a nailbiter that may well end up in a recount (not that it’ll matter).

The networks will essentially call the election by 7:30PM PST, after Ohio and Virginia are called for Obama.

In related news, pundits are overwhelmingly predicting that I will stumble into work late on Wednesday, nursing a bad hangover.