election night lunacy

And now . . . the envelope, please.

No, before that, we have sit through several hours of blathering and lunacy by the talking heads. My regular readers should know I have an extraordinarily low opinion of talking heads.

It is a few minutes after 8 p.m. Eastern time as I begin typing this, and CNN insists that Florida is one of the states whose polls just closed. Wrong. Except for a few counties in the Panhandle, which are on Central time, they closed at 7 p.m., the ballots are being fed through the computers, and ABC and other networks are carrying the early results.

Carl Rove, pontificating about politics in Florida, just told us that St. Petersburg is in Hillsborough County. Wrong. He must have been watching Rays baseball all summer. St. Petersburg is in Pinellas County. Tampa is in Hillsborough County. There are huge differences between the counties, politically. Pinellas has always been a Republican stronghold. Hillsborough County always seems like it should be the subject of a grand jury investigation.

Some of the networks are predicting outcomes in states based on exit polls. At least one network tells us righteously that they won't do that if the outcome appears close. Meanwhile, voters in the Pacific time zone have until 8 p.m., Pacific time, to go to the polls and vote. How are those predictions affecting those voters?

I think I'll pop open a Sam Adams beer (made in Massachussets, which this year is Obama country), get out the peanuts, and see what happens next. I may update this later in the evening as the frivolity unfolds.

UPDATE: After switching back and forth among the networks, I give CBS the "Hurl" Award. The visual appearance of CBS, with flashing graphics and a swirling background, is the one most likely to cause viewers to lose their dinner. I like ABC's appearance. I think I would like Fox's, but the local affiliate keeps hogging about 50 percent of the screen with an update of local races that dominates the bottom and right side of the picture.

Of all the graphics they can show us, give me the old map of the U.S. with the states color coded. Everything else requires the eye to move all around the screen and then the data changes before you get a chance to take it all in.

I'm hearing a discussion of the Pennsylvania results to the effect that Sarah Palin made a difference for John McCain, but a negative difference. She apparently didn't hurt him in the states he was expected to win but, in the "battleground" states, her initial attractiveness lasted maybe two weeks and then she lost it.

SECOND UPDATE: At almost the precise moment the polls closed in the Pacific time zone states, CNN projected Obama the winner. You folks out West could have just gone out for dinner, saving yourselves the trouble of voting. Meanwhile, the CBS web page was showing only 206 Electoral College votes for Obama, 64 short of the number needed to win. Ooops, it just changed. With 0 percent of the votes counted in California and Washington and 6 percent counted in Oregon, CBS is projecting all three states as Obama states.

FINAL UPDATE FOR THE NIGHT: No network has called Florida, which is still close. At 10:57 p.m., the state's web site is reporting the vote count as pro-Obama by a difference of 143,383 votes out of a total of 7,296,451 votes cast (not counting a few votes for 12, yes 12, third-party candidates). However, this year, it makes absolutely no difference which way Florida goes. There will be no disputed ballots worth the trouble of fighting for. I could have stayed away from the polls, gone out for a dinner, gone to a movie, and come home in time to see the outcome.

I was about to turn the TV off and hit the sack when I heard John McCain's concession speech. I believe his speech is the classiest speech I've heard from any politician. I wish his campaign had been run by the people who helped write that speech. If you missed it, you should find the full text of it and read it, and send it on to people you know who have been feeding you a continuous line of lies and baloney about Barack Obama all summer long.

p.s.: They just called Florida for Obama, but at this point, who cares?