First my U.S. Senator got elected President. Then he picked my Congressman to be his chief of staff. Now my state senator has gotten elected president of the Illinois Senate.

Cool.

Missouri goes to McCain by 3,600 votes of 2.9 millions cast, ending the 2008 Presidential election and Missouri's streak of picking the winner.

So, final tally, Obama 365, McCain 173. And that's the ball game. FYI: The electors transmit their ballots on December 15th, and then Vice President Cheney preside when the Senate counts them January 8th.

I must say, the new terminal at RDU looks great. I hardly believed I was in North Carolina. And the last time I was here, it was a red state. Now it's blue. Tempus fugit.

Actually, I'm kind of sad I'm not staying longer. My host couldn't stay tonight (the S.O. is unewell) so I'm on my own until a 9:00 meeting tomorrow morning, about which more later, and after which I'm back on a plane to do work related to the trip for, like, ten days. Everything from this trip is due on December 1st.

I could like Durham for a while, I think. But I won't leave Chicago until the revolution comes, absent a tremendous bribe.

Sorry I'm being cryptic. When things settle down, I'll fill in the details.

Salon has a sublime ode to the "I can haz cheezburger" crowd:

By now, even the most casual observers of the Internet are aware that lolcats have become a certifiable Internet phenomenon. Their flagship site, Icanhascheezburger.com, is one of Web 2.0's big success stories -- on track to top a billion page views this year -- and its content is entirely user-generated. Readers upload over 5,000 homegrown submissions every day, of which six or eight are posted on the site. And in October, the lolcats got their very own coffee table book, "I Can Has Cheezburger," published by Gotham Books.

What makes lolcats different from the cat porn of the past -- the motivational posters of the '70s and '80s featuring furry kittens hanging from tree limbs, covered in toilet paper or in some other kind of adorable predicament -- is that lolcats aren't trying to be cute. In the cat-based imagery of ages past, cats retain their iconic traits: curiosity, skittishness, the tendency to curl up in a ball and just lie there. Even the YouTube cats of today perform characteristically catlike actions, repeatedly flushing toilets, dragging their paws along piano keys or getting flung off the ends of treadmills.

Lolcats are different in that the characters they portray -- and yes, they are portraying characters -- don't represent cats at all. They're a completely different kind of beast, mischievous (if incompetent) rascals, scheming for cheeseburgers and stopping at nothing to get them.

Take the lolcat that started it all, created by a Hawaiian blogger named Eric Nakagawa, who posted it in January 2007. The image features a cat with a crazed look of pure animal hunger, its eyes maniacal with desire, asking, "I can has cheezburger?" Underneath is the comment: "The Internet's piece de resistance, the website's raison d'etre."

This ur-lolcat created such a sensation that Nakagawa turned it into a blog, spawning not only the eponymous Web site but also a whole mythology. The cheezburger has become the Philosopher's Stone of the lolcats mythos -- the most prized, cherished and elusive object in their universe. It is for this reason that, when a tiny kitten being sniffed by a Great Dane 20 times its size needs a quick escape, it says, "I iz not cheezburger, kthxbai." It is for this reason that when a user finds a photo of a cat sitting by the window with its paws in its lap, the caption reads, "I iz waitin for cheezburger man. Does you have a money?"

The Web is now spawning a wave of next-generation lolcats sites that take the lolcats concept and run with it. There's lolpresident, loldogs, and even lolhan, a site devoted to Lindsay Lohan that includes such classics as "I layded you an egg but I'z hidin it."

On that note, I turn in to see y'all in the morning.

MSNBC reports that convicted felon and Alaska Republican Ted Stevens has lost his Senate seat to never-indicted Mark Begich:

Stevens' ouster on his 85th birthday marks an abrupt realignment in Alaska politics and will alter the power structure in the Senate, where he has served since the days of the Johnson administration while holding seats on some of the most influential committees in Congress.

Tuesday's tally of just over 24,000 absentee and other ballots gave Begich 146,286, or 47.56 percent, to 143,912, or 46.76 percent, for Stevens.

This brings the Democratic majority to 57, or 58 if you include Bernie Sanders who, I think, voted with us about 102% of the time in the last Congress. (Should we count Maine Republican Susan Collins as well and call it 59? And how about that Franken-Coleman battle in Minnesota? Hmmm....)

The other of "there were two" is the contest in Georgia, which we'll find out about in two weeks.

In unrelated news, Talking Points Memo reported today that Senate Democrats expelled Joe Lieberman (R-CT) from their pilates class. Yuk yuk yuk.

Last Thursday, The Daily Parker turned three.

Actually, yesterday, the dog turned 2 years, 5 months; but the blog is three years old.

And in honor of this august day in November, I hit "Post" three times before correcting all the typos.

Kos reports the Democrats in the Senate have some trouble understanding that Lieberman isn't one of us:

When Senate Democrats meet Tuesday to decide Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-Conn.) fate, leaders are expected to propose that he keep his gavel at the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee but lose his Environment and Public Works subcommittee chairmanship.

Senate Democratic sources cautioned that the proposal is intended to serve as a starting point for the discussion over whether Lieberman should be punished for his aggressive criticism of President-elect Barack Obama’s candidacy, as well as his endorsement of Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Says Kos: "If this is the 'starting point,' and given the Senate Democrats' history of capitulations, expect Lieberman to come out of that meeting as majority leader."

Says I: he might be an improvement over the current one, if the report is accurate.

Burlington, Vt., is America's healthiest city:

Vermont's largest city is tops among U.S. metropolitan areas by having the largest proportion of people — 92 percent — who say they are in good or great health.

It's also among the best in exercise and among the lowest in obesity, diabetes and other measures of ill health, according to a recent report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Contrast with Huntington, W.Va.:

The obese mayor of America's fattest and unhealthiest city says health is not a big local issue.

"It doesn't come up," said David Felinton, 5-foot-9 and 233 pounds, as he walked toward City Hall one recent morning. "We've got a lot of economic challenges here in Huntington. That's usually the focus."

Nearly half the adults in Huntington's five-county metropolitan area are obese—an astounding percentage, far bigger than the national average in a country with a well-known weight problem.

In unrelated news, Obama won Vermont 68%-30%, and McCain won West Virginia 57%-43%.

Sam Zell is fast-tracking the Cubs sale from Tribune:

Mr. Zell expects to select a finalist from the five remaining bidding groups and submit the deal for Major League Baseball's approval sometime in December, a person familiar with the sale says.

He is fast-tracking the sale — despite a credit crunch that seemed to put his year-end deadline in doubt — as pressure mounts to raise as much as $1 billion to chip away at the mountain of debt from his 2007 buyout of Tribune. With cash flow plummeting from weak advertising sales at Tribune's newspapers, selling half the team probably wouldn't raise the cash he needs. He has other assets to unload, but it would be difficult to do so quickly in a tough credit market.

...

The five bidders believed to still be in the game include Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban; Chicago bond salesman Thomas Ricketts; Chicago real estate mogul Hersh Klaff; New York investor Marc Utay, and Houston businessman Jim Crane. ...

Difficulty unloading the Cubs for top dollar would spell trouble for Tribune. When Mr. Zell engineered his $8-billion buyout last December, he agreed to keep Tribune's debt to less than nine times cash flow. But as the economy slowed and ad sales dropped this year, cash flow sank, down 45% last quarter, Mr. Courtney estimates. That forced Mr. Zell to accelerate his debt repayments and to sell Newsday this year for $650 million to pay off loans.

The one good spot in all this: at least the Cubs never got spanked 37-3 by cheeseheads. Sheesh. Why can't we sell the Bears instead?

Chicago almost universally loves that one of our own will be president. It turns out, only some of us predicted certain inconveniences:

The dramatic increase in security around Barack Obama since the election has made a sizable impact in the Loop, where the president-elect is running his transition office at the Kluczynski Federal Building, straining an already-stretched Chicago police force and city budget.

The police coverage is around-the-clock, with about 25 officers, essentially one from each district, assigned on two watches, and 10 officers and a sergeant assigned to a third watch, said FOP President Mark Donahue. The union has been told the detail is temporary, only until the incoming administration heads to Washington on Jan. 20.

Some involved in the complex security efforts said they understand city leaders have grown concerned about the potential cost of the extra manpower. [Chicago Mayor Richard] Daley has proposed laying off almost 1,000 city workers and raising taxes and fees to close a $469 million budget shortfall, which he has described as the worse fiscal situation in his 19 years in office. Now the city will have to foot the security bill, at least upfront, and hope it will be reimbursed.

My sister got her pilot certificate just to get me to shut up about jumping out of planes ("why jump from a perfectly-landable airplane?"). And if you think I love my dog, well, she outdoes me there, too. The combination means she has two dogs who each have their own airplane ear protectors. I can't imagine Parker in a Cessna, but I think he'd be at least as cute as this:

Effective Sunday, Illinois has a plum political vacancy. Let the games begin!

The choice of who will fill the remaining two years of Mr. Obama’s term now goes to Gov. Rod Blagojevich. ... Among those interested in the seat are U.S. Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr., Jan Schakowsky and Luis Gutierrez, all Chicago-area Democrats; state Veterans Affairs Director Tammy Duckworth, and retiring Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr.

Now, for those outside Illinois, you have to understand that Illinois politics can get, shall I say, colorful. The people named above (with the exceptions of Schakowsky and Duckworth) are right now starting a lobbying war in Springfield the likes of which we haven't seen in decades. Part of the problem: Gov. Blagojevich has been on a political death-watch for close to a year, as a corruption investigation and an inability to play nicely with others (notably Mike Madigan, the Illinois House speaker) have reduced him to near-irrelevance.

He's once again relevant for a few days, and with his own political future doubtful, we're all wondering what capricious and arbitrary decision he'll make.

Maybe he'll surprise us and appoint Schakowsky, who's the most competent in the bunch. Duckworth I'm betting will go off to Washington as Secretary of Veterans Affairs; Jones and Jackson are at times profound and at others, clowns; and there's some speculation he may appoint either himself or Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to forestall a primary election in 2010 he's sure to lose against her.

He'd better act fast. With up to 10 new senators taking their seats on January 3rd, and so much Senate inside baseball depending on seniority, not to mention that Obama's resignation means we're down a Democrat in a tight lame-duck session, every day counts.

Update: Chicago Public Radio's Ben Calhoun has a good analysis. Plus, we should always remember Blago's Daily Show fiasco from 2006, if only for context.

Ed Kilgore at TPM Cafe has a good analysis:

If today's conservatives succeed in convincing each other to embrace a more forthright message assaulting entitlements, progressive taxation, public education, regulation of corporations and Wall Street, just to cite a few domestic policy examples, they are almost certainly cruising for more electoral bruising.

...[C]onservatives today have almost completely internalized their own rhetoric about Obama's "radicalism," "socialism," "anti-Americanism," and so forth. If you have read or listened to movement conservative pundits recently, it's hard to avoid the impression that they truly think this temperate man pursuing Clinton-style centrist policies is determined to enact "socialized medicine," create vast new "welfare" programs, legalize infanticide, surrender to terrorists, and use the power of the state to censor or perhaps even jail his opponents.

Just minutes under 68 days until Obama takes office. And I'll be there—possibly so will Parker—along with 1.2 million of my best friends.

Mark Begich, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Alaska against convicted felon Ted Stevens, leads by three votes:

The elections division still has over 10,000 ballots left to count today and thousands more through next week, but the latest numbers show Mark Begich leading Sen. Ted Stevens 125,019 to 125,016.

The new numbers, reflecting nearly 43,000 absentee ballots counted today, are from all over the state. Election night, Ted Stevens led the Democratic Begich by about 3,000 votes.

Alaska's House seat is also too close to call. Someone should send Ted an email about it...