Not for nothing, but I was looking at a map of the Confederate States of America and, it bears a striking resemblance to McCain’s electoral map.

By my count, McCain got about 50 electoral votes from places not associated with the Confederacy.

Correlation does not equal causation, but the Republican Party is currently the party of the South. Arizona likely would have gone for Obama if McCain was not from there. The interests of the Mountain West are not well aligned with the interests of the South. Unless the GOP retools pretty quickly, I would expect Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas as being ripe for Democratic incursion. On the other hand, if the GOP puts the sensibilities of the Mountain West in the forefront of its platforms, I suspect it will bounce back quickly.

The Democrats are looking to make gains in the U.S. Senate. Going into the election, Democrats controlled the chamber 51 to 49 (if you include Joe Lieberman).

The Democrats didn’t lose any seats. They gained seats in
Colorado – Mark Udall over Bob Schaffer
New Hampshire – Jeanne Shaheen over John Sununu
North Carolina – Kay Hagan over Elizabeth Dole
New Mexico – Tom Udall (cousin of Mark) over Steve Pearce
Virginia – Mark Warner

Still up in the air:
Minnesota – Al Franken and Norm Coleman
Alaska – Mark Begich and Ted Stevens
Oregon – Jeff Merkley and Gordon Smith
Georgia – Jim Martin and Saxby Chambliss

Based on nothing in particular, I figure the Democrats will pick up Alaska and Oregon, resulting in a 58 – 42 chamber (counting Joe Lieberman.) Republicans will still be able to filibuster, but only if every last one of them resists the pressure to vote for cloture.

I was going to update my House race spreadsheet to see where we stood in the Indiana House races. Initial reports were that the Democrats were going to retain control, but I hadn’t seen any hard numbers. Brian Howey suggests that it looks good for Republicans to take control of the Indiana House, pending decisions in a couple of cliff hangers.

The Indiana Secretary of State’s website is worthless at the moment — for example, it doesn’t reflect any votes from Tippecanoe County. It looked like Randy Truitt (R) and John Polles (D) were in a close race to replace Joe Micon (D). Last I saw, Polles led by 130 votes, and I’m not sure what’s left to count — maybe 400 provisional ballots. But there was another report mentioning additional votes from Warren County that may have Truitt up by some. Don Lehe (R) looks to have defeated a second challenge by Myron Sutton (D) to keep his job.

Republicans have narrowly kept control of the Attorney General’s office and that of the state superintendent of public instruction with Greg Zoeller and Tony Bennett winning office, respectively. I have been told that Mr. Zoeller is a fine candidate and will likely do a solid job. I think Indiana missed a real opportunity by not electing Richard Wood to the superintendent office, but those are the breaks.

Things are looking pretty good for Obama nationally. Daniels will remain governor. Buyer will keep IN-04. Something odd is going on in Wayne County which hasn’t reported any results. I haven’t seen full numbers for the AG race or the Superintendent for Public Instruction yet. It’s very tight for Obama and McCain on the state level. Feel free to report from where you are.

Secretary of State results here.

Update Seriously, what the hell is going on in Wayne County? 0% reporting. At this rate, Indiana’s electoral votes are going to depend on Richmond. That’s insane.

It’s election day. If you’re registered and haven’t already done so, go vote. Take a state or federal picture identification that has not expired. Wait 30 years. Tell your kids about today. As always, a quote from Starship Troopers and/or Neal Patrick Harris is in order. Here’s a two-fer:

NPH: We’ve got one of their brains now. Pretty soon we’ll know how they think, and then we’ll know how to beat them. One day it’ll be over, and everyone will forget that this was the moment. This is when it turned. And it wasn’t the mighty Fleet, it wasn’t any fancy new weapon, it was a cap trooper named Zim who captured a brain.

There is reason to hope that today is the day we start getting the country back on the right track. Maybe we’ll reject the talk tough, hope for the best foreign policy of the neocons. Maybe we’ll reject the religion-on-the-sleeve, not-in-the-heart moral grandstanding of the social conservatives. Maybe we’ll reject the unregulated, debt ballooning, economy wrecking crony capitalism of the money conservatives. Instead, maybe we’ll speak softly and keep the big stick in reserve rather than waving it about. Maybe our morality will encompass the well-being of those living in the period between birth and brain death. And maybe we’ll recognize that our economic engine depends on a stable, prosperous middle class. Maybe.

So, go vote.

Oh, here’s a bit of election day inspiration from Walt Whitman, swiped from BarbinMD:

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,

‘Twould not be you, Niagara – nor you, ye limitless prairies – nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite – nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon’s white cones – nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes – nor Mississippi’s stream:

This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name – the still small voice vibrating -America’s choosing day…

Blue Indiana has a good post on State Representative Jackie Walorski, a particularly objectionable candidate from the Elkhart area who is spouting Palin-esque “real America” crap. Walorski is from a reliably Republican district so she probably isn’t at risk for losing her job for this sort of nonsense, but hopefully her constituents will let her know, one way or another, that she isn’t doing them any favors with this kind of hateful rhetoric that denigrates the patriotism of fellow Americans simply because they don’t share your policy views.

The heart and soul of our country isn’t marching to Obama’s drum..we are hard working, middle class Americans who believe in God, Guns and Country and aren’t impressed with the American Idol type of hype that has flooded the air.
. . .
We’re proud, hard working Americans and this is OUR country.

You know what? Go to hell. Obama supporters are proud, hard working Americans as well, and if Ms. Walorski chooses not to recognize that, she’s a big part of what’s troubling this country at the moment — people so tied up in rooting for “their team,” that they aren’t interested in acknowledging the legitimacy (if not necessarily the superiority) of competing points of view.

Yesterday, I went to a friend’s wedding. It was unique in that it had a double ceremony, one Christian and one Hindu. They both had a common theme, of course, the tying together of two people into one unit. But the accretion of religious elements around that common core was very different for each religion. One had a lot of Jesus and the other had a lot of Ganesh and other gods with whom I am unfamiliar.

To me, non-religious fellow that I am, both sets of religious add ons seemed remarkably arbitrary – all the more so since I had the opportunity to see two sets of them side-by-side in the same day. Obviously the Christian ceremony was more familiar, but no less arbitrary, from my view. I have to say that the Hindu ceremony has much cooler production values – the colorful attire most of all.

The core of both ceremonies was “do you two want to be together and act as a common unit?” and “are the families cool with that?” It makes me wonder about the first time in any religion where a priest sidled up to the people who wanted to get married or their parents and said, “You know, it doesn’t really count unless a priest is involved in this process, and we talk about God (or gods) for awhile during the ceremony.” There is nothing intrinsically religious about the joining of couples. Seeing both rituals together makes it apparent that God (or gods) were something of an afterthought to the process.

Good food, though. And watching the mix of cultures – two groups of people practicing wildly different religions happily sharing a day watching one of their own marry a person from the other group without much more resistance than saying “hey, this is kind of different” – makes me feel like we’ve come a long way in certain respects. Though, I wonder what that says about the power of religion. I’m not sure you can be devout and watch such entirely different religions in practice without it occurring to you, “hey, at least one of these has to be wrong.” Not really my battle to fight, I guess.

This is even farther afield than the Halloween post, but what the heck, it’s Saturday morning. I mentioned this elsewhere and got a few “I’m not alone!” responses, so I figured I’d throw it up here. Here it is:

I hate “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein. It’s a horrible children’s story with no redeeming features so far as I can see. It’s about a boy who takes and takes and takes with no thought about the effect his self-centered greed has on the giver, and it’s about a tree that kills itself giving to the ungrateful little puke. Neither character in the tale is acting in an admirable fashion. The tree comes closest, I suppose, with its generosity, but giving to death in the hopes that it will make someone love you isn’t healthy either.

I know you all come here for the children’s book reviews. Next time, I’ll give “The Little Red Hen” what for.

The Evansville Courier Press has an opinion encouraging voters to eliminate the township assessor position. The General Assembly already eliminated the smaller township assessors but put the position up to a vote for those townships with a large number of properties. If the township assessor is eliminated, those duties shift to the county assessor.

I don’t have strong opinions on the township assessor position, but I’d like to sound a note of caution as to the Courier Press’s rationale. They point out that consolidating the duties has the benefit of more uniformity and fewer costs related to more levels of government. These are probably accurate, but there are competing considerations in a democracy involving proximity to one’s elected officials and the desirability of limiting the power of any one government official.

Now, I’m not saying that the township assessor position is necessarily the place to draw the line, but democracy is messy and inefficient. Mussolini, the saying goes, made the trains run on time. Dictatorships are probably cheaper and more uniform than a patchwork of democratic institutions all jealously guarding their turf and vying against one another.