ON TWITTER, THE GOP PUNDITS ARE STILL POKING AT EACH OTHER. MEANWHILE, THIS: At the local Tea Party meeting. For ~70 dead people, these zombies are kinda spun up.

Enough wound-licking. If you don’t like losing, get back to it. Establish the ground game for 2014, 2016. And take over your state, local party apparatus. At the national level, meanwhile, more Lee Atwater, less Karl Rove.

UPDATE: A reader asks “Why all the Karl Rove hate?” It’s not hate. But Rove is a technician. Atwater was more of a political warrior. I think that’s more the spirit that’s needed now.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: Wedding Portrait Taken 88 Years Later.

GREG GUTFELD: Letter To A College Freshman, From Mom & Dad.

SEX, MONEY, and the BBC’s shame.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: White House Petition: Force Universities To Offer Graduates Full Refunds On Degrees.

WHY DO PEOPLE SAY INFLATION IS WORSE THAN THE GOVERNMENT SAYS IT IS?

There are a couple of hypotheses that could be advanced to explain results like this. One is that the conspiracy crowd is correct, and the official statistics are rigged and vastly understate true inflation. But that wouldn’t get us anywhere near an understanding of why survey responses about inflation would be systematically different across men and women, higher- and low- income individuals, and just about any other demographic cuts we might make.

A second possibility it is that individuals’ responses reflect price changes in their own personal market basket, which may differ from that of the average urban wage earner whose habits are reflected in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). That might explain why any demographic sub group could arrive at different inflation perceptions, but it doesn’t explain why respondents as a whole systematically overstate inflation relative to the CPI.

I think the most likely explanation is that the survey respondents are expressing a much different concern than whether they believe food, gas, autos, banking services, or whatever are increasing or are likely to increase faster than the official statistics indicate. My guess is that they are telling us that they are concerned that their real — or inflation-adjusted — incomes are not rising fast enough to comfortably sustain their desired spending.

How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?

WHY DID AL QAEDA Target Ambassador Stevens?

UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!

BABALU BLOG: Actual Cuban-American Vote Result: Romney 58% -Obama 42%.

OKAY, NOW I KNOW THINGS ARE GOING TO HELL: Beer after work at the bar: a U.S. tradition is getting stale. “Over the past few decades, it has become much less acceptable in the business community to have a drink during lunch or tip a few after work with colleagues.”

Funny, back during the hard-drinking Mad Men days we stood astride the global economy like a Colossus. Now, with all this health-lifestyle stuff, well . . . things aren’t so good. Coincidence? I think not.

#WARONWOMEN: FEMA Rape Reference: ‘No Doesn’t Always Mean No.’

JOE MALCHOW EMAILS ABOUT THIS NEW MILITARY JOB SITE: RallyPoint.com.

HOW TO KNOW WHICH POWER DRILL YOU NEED. Er, all of ’em? I’ve been very happy with my Bosch, though it doesn’t get especially hard use. But it’s always good when I need it.

And when I blogged about this a while back, reader Scott Littler wrote to praise his Bosch 12V impact driver.

GREENS WILL FAINT: IEA: US Energy Production to Beat Saudi by 2017. But, actually, this may be the only solution to our fiscal mess.

PRAGER UNIVERSITY: Walter Williams on Free Market Morality.

SARAH HOYT: Don’t Cry For Me, Concerned Fans.

RICH HAILEY: The Uncivil War: A Nation Divided by the Search for Compromise.

THEODORE DALRYMPLE: Should Doctors Lie To Their Patients About Their Survival Chances?

KATRINA ON THE HUDSON: Two weeks and no electricity: Brooklyn citizens feel abandoned after Hurricane Sandy.

BUMMER: Malaria Vaccine Candidate Gives Disappointing Results. “Three shots of the vaccine, known as RTS, S or Mosquirix and produced by GlaxoSmithKline, gave babies fewer than 12 weeks old 31 percent protection against detectable malaria and 37 percent protection against severe malaria, according to an announcement by the company at a vaccines conference in Cape Town.”

INTERESTING, IF IT PANS OUT: Significant Relationship Between Mortality and Telomere Length Discovered. “In their prospective study of 100,000 multi-ethnic individuals whose average age was 63 years, the researchers determined that an association between telomere length and mortality existed and persisted even after the data were adjusted for such demographic and behavioral factors as education, smoking and alcohol consumption.” Stay tuned.

THE BENEFITS OF marrying later in life.

But watch this video for the risks.

CHARLIE MARTIN REPORTS ON HIS WEIGHT-LOSS PROGRAM: 13 Weeks: Week One — Endorphins Are Our Friends.

He’s basically following the Gary Taubes approach, with a dash of Mark Rippetoe.

RON RADOSH: It’s The Culture, Stupid.

SIMON JESTER IS BACK.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Parents fail in bid to harvest brain-dead teen’s sperm. As usual, the input of a “bioethicist” is lame.