Spoiler alert: Sam Wang is not going to eat a bug. He is not going to eat a really big bug either. But this article is still good reading: [link]

Can someone link me to the porn numbers?

Prop 30 was at 50% at the NPR live map when last I glanced. FWIW.

not sure what you need ita, but if it is CA propositions, here is a good tally:

[link]

Back from walking around cairns . RELIEF.

Back from walking around cairns . RELIEF.

How's Cairns? I've never visited FNQ myself. See any taipans?

bt,

you might be right about the Republicans needing to adopt a new strategy, but I am not sure they will. My twitter feed told me that Repubs have lost the popular vote in the last 5 out of 6 elections. That's amazeballs.

but if it is CA propositions, here is a good tally:

It isn't a proposition. It has a letter instead of a number. I should just get up off my ass--make more fizzy citrus. and get ready for be, after having grabbed tmailing instructions with the deets.

you might be right about the Republicans needing to adopt a new strategy, but I am not sure they will. My twitter feed told me that Repubs have lost the popular vote in the last 5 out of 6 elections. That's amazeballs.

This is true. It was true of the Democrats after 1988 too, after which they of course managed to move to the centre. They nominated the moderate and southern Bill Clinton, changed party platform, nominated candidates they thought would win rather than those most closely aligned with the party platform. All that stuff.

Which certainly lends credence to your belief the Republicans won't easily follow the same path. It required a great deal of planning, and perhaps more importantly, it involved the party leadership taking decisions away from the rank and file, e.g. by the inclusion of superdelegates in the primary process. (Continues today, of course, noting for instance the nomination of the pro-life Joe Donnelly.)

The Republican leadership, I'm sure, would like very much to be able to do that, noting just what the Tea Party has cost them over the last four years. But the fact that the Tea Party is an organised force will make it harder to sideline them. (I would add also because the Repubs have been alienating moderates and imposing purity tests on themselves, further radicalising their followers. The GOP of 2012 is distinctly more extreme than the Democrats of the 1980s.)

I don't think it's impossible though. Nate Silver found, in one study, that the longer a party is out of power, the more moderate their Presidential candidate tends to be. It would fit that trend for the Tea Party to fade in importance and the GOP to become more forgiving of heresies in the name of electability. And the establishment does have power within the party. They actually got the candidate they wanted this time around; just at the cost of making him sign onto the full raft of unelectable positions.

However, let's throw in one last roadblock. The Republican old guard, who knows how to win elections, that's one thing. But their rising stars, like Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal (and yes, Paul Ryan) are to all appearances true believers. If the GOP did decide to change direction, who could they anoint as standard-bearer next time around?

Personally, I'm good with that. They can double down (again), and they'll lose, and it'll be more like 2008 than 2012. Next time around the economy will be well into the recovery, the Affordable Care Act will be in full swing (and I rather suspect the reality will be rather more popular than the idea), the new Democratic candidate (and they'll likely have some decent options) won't have the baggage that Obama carried into this election. Shifting demographics won't be any more favourable. I'm reasonably confident that Obama's second term won't contain any disasters on the scale of the global financial crisis. (Government debt, however, will probably still be quite hefty - Obama's proposals aren't sufficient to address it - and there's the risk of inflation and even a new asset bubble developing.) I doubt 2016 will be any better terrain for hard-line conservatives than 2012 was.

Changing course will get easier over time, as the purists get weaker and the desire to win gets stronger. But you may well be right in the here and now.

Simon Pegg’s tweet: [link]

Seriously, I would love to see the Republican Party go to the Huntsmans of this world.

I'd like this, too. I'm an independent who had voted Dem all her adult life because the Rep options have just been getting increasingly crazy and vile. it would be nice to have to think about it.