What Can Be Worse Than to Sell Your Soul and Find It Not Valuable Enough to Get Anything For It?

Many losing candidates became elder statesmen of their parties. What lessons will Romney have to teach his party? The art of crawling uselessly? How to contemn 47 percent of Americans less privileged and beautiful than his family? How to repudiate the past while damaging the future? It is said that he will write a book. Really? Does he want to relive a five-year-long experience of degradation? What can be worse than to sell your soul and find it not valuable enough to get anything for it?

Links for the Weekend

* Obama makes an unexpected post-election bid for the Canavan bump: NASA May Unveil New Manned Moon Missions Soon.

* Charlie Stross visits 2512.

* China Miéville offers a brief history of the recent filmic ideology of the necessity of walls against zombie hordes.

* ORCA shrugged. More here, here, here, here. This is still, essentially, poll denialism, but it’s fascinating that the Romney campaign put so much stock in a system whose basic assumptions they’d never bothered to test.

* MetaFilter tries to hash out America’s new marijuana laws. Mexico says legalization “changes the rules of the game.”

* This image posits that the juridical distinction between slave and free is isomorphic with today’s cartographies of parliamentary politics; it implies that today’s Northern liberals have inherited, and protect, the precious freedom(s) denied to so many in the antebellum world. It implies that the rupture of the Civil War was not much of a rupture—continuity is the name of the game here. It thus elides the discontinuous rupture of black political subjectivity: the image would have us believe that today’s political cartography retains the form adjudicated 162 years ago by the desires and compromises of (mostly) white men, all of whom in some fashion profited from the political and juridical de-subjectification of blacks throughout the Americas.

* Reddit gets ready for Puerto Rico by designing some 51-state flags.

* Is everyone on the autism spectrum?

* 68 Percent Of American Voters See Global Warming As A ‘Serious Problem.’ There’s a culture war and Democrats are winning. What The 2012 Election Would Have Looked Like Without Universal Suffrage. Colorado Establishment: Republicans must improve or die. I liked, and forgot to link, what Freddie said the other day:

It occurs to me: part of the problem with our political media and analysis is that they always define Republican victory in terms of political direction and Democratic victory in terms of extremity. That is, a Republican victory is seen as a repudiation of liberalism, while a Democratic victory is seen as a repudiation of extremism. One suggests a push towards the right is the mandate of an election; the other suggests a push towards the center is the mandate of an election. Just another way in which the media pursues a “heads conservatives win, tails liberals lose” narrative.

* But don’t get too excited: in times of Democratic strength their leaders just turn on them and enact the austerity measures the Republicans are too weak to enforce themselves. We saw it with Obama, and California’s about to see it with Jerry Brown.

* Senators lining up behind filibuster reform.

* Ohio seeks to just rig the vote in the face of the Republican demographic implosion. Let’s Kill the Electoral College So We Never Have to Pay Attention to Ohio and Florida Again.

* And the Supreme Court will review the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act. Prediction: pain… UPDATE: Supreme Court Appears Ready to Nuke the Voting Rights Act.

Thursday Night Links

* Why did small business owner and gamer dad Mike Hoye spend the last few weeks hand-tweaking the text in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker so that the main character was referred to as a girl instead of a boy? As he put it, “I’m not having my daughter growing up thinking girls don’t get to be the hero.”

* Romney Adviser: Not a Single Person on the Campaign Thought He Would Lose.

* What You Can Get for $228,646,000. I could have lost them basically everything for half that.

* Nate Silver explains that malapportionment in the Electoral College may actually be flowing the Democrats’ way in the near-term:

The problem for Republicans is that in states like these, and others like Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas, they are now winning by such large margins there that their vote is distributed inefficiently in terms of the Electoral College.

By contrast, a large number of electorally critical states – both traditional swing states like Iowa and Pennsylvania and newer ones like Colorado and Nevada – have been Democratic-leaning in the past two elections. If Democrats lose the election in a blowout, they would probably lose these states as well. But in a close election, they are favored in them.

* I really don’t understand why Rolling Jubilee is worth doing. Why would we give the banks free money for bad debt they’ve already written off?

* The pros and cons of a Casablanca sequel. Spoiler alert: there is no possible pro.

Election Links, One Last Time

Hippies Wander Into the Lions’ Den, Maul Lions. Our new, significantly less terrible Senate. Our new, only slightly less terrible House. Why Americans Actually Voted For A Democratic House. Let the Michelle Obama for Senate speculation begin. The Victory for Gay Marriage Was Bigger Than You Realized. High-Level Orc Assassination Rogue Wins Maine State Senate Seat, Humans Tremble At Might Of The Horde. Demographics as Destiny. What happened last night was a demographic time bomb that had been ticking and that blew up in GOP faces. Barack Obama and The Death Of Normal. The Mystery of Why Republicans Were So Sure They’d Win. Cheer Up, Republicans. Obama won Cubans (!) in Florida. Orson Scott Card flips out. NRO flips out. 51st state?

What You’re Feeling Is Relief

2008 felt like liberation; 2012 feels like relief.

In 2016, Republicans will have won only a single presidential election since 1992; they won’t have won as the out-party since 1980. Jonathan Chait’s 2012 or Never analysis (part 2!) remains for my money the most important takeaway from this election; the demographic coalition that has propelled the GOP since the 1960s has finally and permanently imploded. However the Republicans next manage to scrape together a winning coalition, it will necessarily look very different from the coalition that went down in flames tonight. And we should all be grateful for that.

Pre-Election Headlines

No One in America Should Have to Wait 7 Hours to Vote. Voter Suppression Enters the Home Stretch. America’s Voting System Is a Disgrace. Romney Struggles to Lock Down Virginia. Final Poll of Washington State Has Marijuana Legalization Initiative Winning 53-44. Come On, Feel the Buzz: Inside Politico. Did Hurricane Sandy Blow Romney Off Course? Memorializing the Rightwing Election Projections. One way or another, one side is definitely going to have egg on its face tomorrow…

Just One More Day of This Stuff Links

* My electoral map prediction from two weeks ago still looks pretty good to me, though (optimist to the last!) I feel less certain about Florida now than I did then, and it looks like I was too pessimistic about IN-SEN. If it’s good enough for InTrade…

* One thing is clear: Tuesday will be huge.

* A great democracy would have elections that don’t look like this. As I was ranting on Twitter the other day, there’s simply no worse crime in a democracy than elected officials compromising the integrity of elections.

* BREAKING: only white people count. It’s what the founders intended!

If President Barack Obama wins, he will be the popular choice of Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites. That’s what the polling has consistently shown in the final days of the campaign. It looks more likely than not that he will lose independents, and it’s possible he will get a lower percentage of white voters than George W. Bush got of Hispanic voters in 2000.

A broad mandate this is not.

* And, as usual, whoever wins, we lose.

Three More for Saturday Night

* Jacob Remes talks disaster capitalism at Salon.

* Drones and the end of human rights.

* The Long Con: Mail-order conservatism.

* UPDATE: Weird bonus link: New Jersey residents displaced by storm can vote by email. #seemslegit

Saturday Morning

* Nevertheless, these arguments are potentially more intellectually coherent than the ones that propose that the race is “too close to call.” It isn’t. If the state polls are right, then Mr. Obama will win the Electoral College. If you can’t acknowledge that after a day when Mr. Obama leads 19 out of 20 swing-state polls, then you should abandon the pretense that your goal is to inform rather than entertain the public. Obama has 431 ways to win; Romney has 76.

* “I Refuse to Cater to the Bullshit of Innocence”: a late Believer interview with Maurice Sendak.

* The Longform Guide to Climate Change.

* Kurt Vonnegut visits Biafra in 1979.

* Mark Hamil teases Star Wars: Episode IX, c. 1983.

* And Evan and China tear it up at the Memory Marathon.

A Room Full of Millionaires Believes That the True Political Advantage in This Country Belongs to Children of Mexican Immigrants

There is a real, airtight bubble in this election, but it’s not Obama’s. As a middle-aged white man, in fact, I’m breaching it. White people—white men in particular—are for Mitt Romney. White men are supporting Mitt Romney to the exclusion of logic or common sense, in defiance of normal Americans. Without this narrow, tribal appeal, Romney’s candidacy would simply not be viable. Most kinds of Americans see no reason to vote for him.

Why Do White People Think Mitt Romney Should Be President?

Thursday Night Links

* Sandy moves the needle: Michael Bloomberg Endorses Obama, Citing Climate Change As Main Reason.

* Without prior approval from his higher-ups, KHON2 morning show co-anchor Jai Cunningham, a victim of domestic violence himself, responds to the alleged murder of a friend at the hands of her husband by vowing to shave his head on the air every time a woman or child dies as a direct result of domestic abuse.

* Without Electricity, New Yorkers on Food Stamps Can’t Pay for Food. The Hideous Inequality Exposed by Hurricane Sandy. It Will Only Cost $7 Billion To Build A Storm Surge Barrier For New York. Photos Before and after Sandy. Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Arrested Protesting Keystone XL Pipeline: ‘I’m Here To Connect The Dots.’

* My expectation of control over my body is something that children do not have—from the second they wake up until the second they go to bed, children’s bodies are subject to the authorities around them. Of course David is pissed.

* David Graeber: This essay is not, however, primarily about bureaucracy—or even about the reasons for its neglect in anthropology and related disciplines. It is really about violence. What I would like to argue is that situations created by violence—particularly structural violence, by which I mean forms of pervasive social inequality that are ultimately backed up by the threat of physical harm—invariably tend to create the kinds of willful blindness we normally associate with bureaucratic procedures. To put it crudely: it is not so much that bureaucratic procedures are inherently stupid, or even that they tend to produce behavior that they themselves define as stupid, but rather, that are invariably ways of managing social situations that are already stupid because they are founded on structural violence.

* In the face of this situation — as much as it pains me to say this — you are failing. Your so-called “objectivity,” your bloodless impartiality, are nothing but a convenient excuse for what amounts to an inexcusable failure to tell the most urgent truth we’ve ever faced.

* Gurenica talks Lord of the Rings and This Is How You Lose Her with board-certified genius Junot Díaz.

* 7 polling models that predict an Obama victory. Obama’s Electoral College ‘Firewall’ Holding in Polls.

* Psychological research using the D&D Monster Manual.

* Another shoe drops at Penn State.

* Romney gets away with it.

* There was no one out when I was in high school, either. Class of 1998.

* The world’s last Nazi hunter.

Sandy Politics

* GOP Congressman Warns Of Hurricane Sandy Relief Aid Going Towards ‘Gucci Bags.’ Kudos on waiting almost a whole day before starting in with this bullshit. I saw a woman driving through the flooded streets of New York in a Cadillac! Your tax dollars at work!

* Chris Christie’s plays eleven-dimensional chess? #3 is hilarious—this is all just part of a desperate lifelong quest for Bruce Springsteen’s approval!—but I still think the real answer is that Christie knows New Jersey’s only real chance for federal relief is under an Obama administration (which is looking more and more inevitable, anyway). The 2016 thing might work in a novel, but the real Christie’s savvy enough to know he can’t win a GOP primary in either 2016 or 2020.

None of this is a criticism of Christie, by the way; I don’t think he’s a very good governor, but he’s doing a fine job on Sandy as far as I can tell.

* …the denial that disasters have anything to do with politics is in itself a denial of reality.

* “Three of the top 10 highest floods at the Battery since 1900 happened in the last two and a half years. If that’s not a wake-up call to take this seriously, I don’t know what is.”

* And just grab something: disaster relief, the Romney way...

Tuesday Night

* The combined effects of storm climatology change and a 1 m SLR may cause the present NYC 100-yr surge flooding to occur every 3–20 yr and the present 500-yr flooding to occur every 25–240 yr by the end of the century.

* As I looked at these pictures of the babies being evacuated, I had a depressing thought. What are the financial situations of these babies’ parents? Are they poor? Do they have insurance? Are they on Medicaid? Medicaid is a health program that pays for medical services for those who cannot afford them. It is jointly funded by the federal and state governments. In some ways, I’d be happy if you were learning this information for the first time right now; the reason being that you don’t have to rely on Medicaid. Regardless, I suspect that if you had some “Medicaid” in your pocket last night, you’d have gladly given it to these precious babies to ensure their health and safety. It’s a good thing. If one of those babies were poor, I don’t suspect you’d want to punish her because her dad got laid off from his manufacturing job or because leukemia killed her older brother and bankrupted her parents just in time for her birth. If you don’t like these examples, tough shit; they’re how people get poor in the United States of America in 2012. I don’t want you to like them.

* This is a climate emergency. It is a moment of crisis, which is also a point of leverage. What should happen is a collective call for an immediate crash course on the climate crisis. Repairs combined with a hardening of infrastructure, acceleration of the build-out and installation of clean energy systems that are robust (including feed-in tariffs), a shut down of all high carbon emitting sources of energy within the next ten years, and massive outlays for research. It should be branded and aggressively promoted by every environmentally aware politician, activist, celebrity, and business leader. This requires institutional backing from the environmental groups, and a willingness to prioritize policymaking in the face of emergencies over business as usual.

But don’t worry, if we blow it this time, we’ll get another chance. And another. And another.

* Yes, Hurricane Sandy is a good reason to worry about climate change. Why Democrats Are Right to Politicize Sandy.

* More on the Nate Silver Backlash. And more. BREAKING: All the major election models continue to agree Obama will win.

* In endorsement after endorsement, the basic argument is that President Obama hasn’t been able to persuade House or Senate Republicans to work with him. If Obama is reelected, it’s a safe bet that they’ll continue to refuse to work with him. So vote Romney!

* And from the always-look-on-the-bright-side department: How Disney Could Make Star Wars Episode VII Awesome. I don’t think a recast or Pixarification is really viable, so I think we’ve got to skip ahead to Star Wars: The Next Generation. #bargaining

Monday Night

* Sandy links: Did Climate Change Help Create ‘Frankenstorm’? “All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.” Nuclear Plants from Virginia to Vermont Could Be Impacted from Massive Hurricane Sandy. Coming as it is just a week before Election Day, Sandy makes the fact that climate change has been entirely ignored during this campaign seem all the more grotesque. “If There Was Ever a Wake-up Call, This Is It.” The Worst-Case Scenario For New York City Is Unimaginable. Crew abandons the HMS Bounty. Stop the Rising of the Oceans LOL.

* Sam Wang, in defense of nerds. Wang’s own model (simpler than Nate Silver’s, and perhaps more accurate based on its performance in 2004 and 2008) puts an Obama victory at over 90%.

* Why you should be paying attention to poll averages, in one chart.

* As someone on Twitter put it: Romney’s lied about everything so much, he had no idea the one thing you’re not allowed to lie about is a corporation.

* Let’s Pretend Bush v. Gore Was Constitutional.

* Luxury repo men.

* Aaron Bady vs. dads.

* Woman legally changes name to include 14 different Bond Girls.

Miss Pussy Galore Honey Rider Solitaire Plenty O’Toole May Day Xenia Onatopp Holly Goodhead Tiffany Case Kissy Suzuki Mary Goodnight Jinx Johnson Octopussy Domino Moneypenny.

The Last Political Endorsement You’ll Ever Need

Joss Whedon endorses Mitt Romney for all the reasons you’d expect. Meanwhile, David Brin wonders if the awfulness of the 2012 election answers the Fermi Paradox.