[links] Link salad goes to the infusion center yet again

Literary Consolation Prizes — Heh.

Statins Tied To Reduced Cancer Deaths — Interesting. And yes, I am on statins. (Via danjite.)

Pachyderm Promenade: 1905 — I love this photo of elephants at Coney Island.

Bulgarian archaeologists find golden treasures in ancient Thracian tomb — Tiara, snake-head bracelets and gold buttons among artefacts from Getae burial site near northern village of Sveshtari. I used to live in Bulgaria.

Totally Bizarre Experimental Video Explores Slit Scanning — (Via David Goldman.)

India will shed few tears over the end of UK aid — For India, fairer trade agreements and an end to patronising soft power are more important than dribbles of aid from Britain. And so ends another vestige of colonialism?

Climate change is making your coffee more expensive — Man, that liberal conspiracy is everywhere.

What Can Obama Do About Climate Change? — The President faces a divided Congress, but has some powerful tools to limit carbon emissions. The existence of climate change never should have been an issue, except for the "anything to piss off the liberals" ethos of conservatives intersecting with their shameful but powerful reflexive anti-science instincts. (Thanks to decades of boosting evolution denial as a troll for the Ignorant-American vote.) What we should have been arguing about all along is solutions and approaches, not choose-your-own-facts reality distortions.

Why the white evangelical religious right can no longer presume to claim moral superiority — Not that they ever had any moral superiority in the first place, except in the impoverished prisons of their own minds.

Self-Congratulation Will Get Conservatives Nowhere — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison on one of the more stunning examples of conservative lack of self-awareness that I've seen in a while.

The Real Real America — [O]ne big thing that just happened was that the real America trumped the “real America”. And it’s also the election that lets us ask, finally, “Who cares what’s the matter with Kansas?”

More Election Thoughts — I can understand voting against this president, but as I watched the speech I thought, This is the man that millions of people are libeling as unamerican, a socialist, an outsider. This good, thoroughly American man. Voting against him is fine; pretending he's a radical unamerican outsider is false and vicious. Welcome to conservative America, where pretense is truth and reality is sneeringly dismissed as having a liberal bias. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Kay Bailey Hutchison says GOP is “tainted” by candidates saying “very stupid things” — Ah, Republican Senator Hutchison is one of my favorite long time political crooks. Years ago, her Texas corruption trial was ended by a bizarre judicial ruling that could only be explained by a political fix or rank incompetence from the bench, as it was certainly independent of any precedent or rule of law. The fix paid off handsomely for her, as Senator Hutchison went on with a long career.

Ted Nugent said he’d be dead or in jail if Obama won: So, what’s it gonna be? — (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

Father investigated after voting for son — Hey, look. Actual, in person voter fraud. By a Republican! Yep, definitely need those voter ID laws to cage those likely Democratic voters.

What Obama's Re-election Means — Terry Gross and Norm Ornstein. Full transcript here. (Thanks to Marta Murvosh.)

Election leaves Republicans at a loss for answers — I'm pretty certain the GOP won't learn anything constructive (or good for the future of the country) from this. Not when they have Hurricane Sandy to blame. Note that the numbers pace Nate Silver, don't substantiate that theory at all. But we all know what conservatives think of Nate Silver, so it's not like they're going to start listening to him, or the data in general, now.

Karl Rove: Obama Succeeded ‘By Suppressing The Vote’ — A rather bizarre assertion from one of the standard bearers of the party that explicitly staked its electoral fortunes on wide scale voter suppression through voter ID laws and limiting early voting. Project much, Karl? I think he's still pissed that Husted's Ohio voting fix didn't pay off for Romney.

Voter Suppression Backfires — Ta-Nehisi Coates on the very public, wholesale voter suppression efforts of the GOP. You, the ones Karl Rove is now projecting on Democrats.

Adviser: Romney "shellshocked" by loss — One disadvantage of resigning from the reality-based community is that reality can really surprise you. My personal theory, however, is that the GOP really thought they had the fix in for Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida, with the voter ID laws and the early voting restrictions. Regardless of the actual votes, there would be enough problems with voting machines and ballots to either jimmy the tally or provide the foundation for Bush v. Gore type lawsuits. In Pennsylvania, the Republican leadership said as much, that the new voter ID law would bring home the state for Romney. Obama winning by large enough margins to overwhelm their cheating simply wasn't an option in their view. If you think I'm completely full of it on this notion, consider Karl Rove's reaction to the FOX News call for Ohio. That's the reaction of a man who was completely confident of a different outcome.

?otD: Can you hear the drip, drip, drip of my IV?

---

11/9/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (2,800 new words on "Rock of Ages")
Body movement: 0.5 hour stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.0 hours (fitful)
Weight: 225.0
Currently reading: Mirrordance by Lois McMaster Bujold