Today's blog is my 100th with over 8,000 pageviews.  When I first created rabbitpunched, I had no idea I'd be around for so many entries.  Looking back at the early entries, I wrote a lot about cancer, death, and atheism.  Since then, I've wandered off into many byways.  Thanks to those of you who read the blog regularly and often send kind words via e-mail (almost everyone has given up on trying to post comments).  I hope those readers from around the world who drop in now and then find something to enjoy.  I can't tell anything about the audience except which countries are represented, and I have no idea how they find the blog.  I've lost what were for several months faithful readers in Russia; today, though, there are readers from Poland to Peru, from Indonesia to Israel. 

Between health and politics, I'm feeling much less anxious today.  The surgeon called, and we'll have a consultation next Friday, the 16th.  At the least the doctors at KU Med work for salaries, not fee-for-service, so Dr. Hozbeierlein's advice will be disinterested.  The appointment is scheduled for 10:30, which means I won't be exhausted by having had to get up early and there won't have been any tests.  No matter how attentive Mohamed and I are, there is information that on later reflection seems ambiguous.  When we talked with the Fellow last time about alternative chemo treatments, my understanding was that a clinical trial would involve Votrient + either a placebo or the trial drug.  But one of my readers interpreting what I described thought it meant stopping the Votrient and taking only the new drug (or the placebo).  So now I have something else to add to the list of questions for the doctors.  Although nothing has been decided about either surgery or chemo, I feel relieved at least to have the next two consultations scheduled.

And, of course, post-election we can breathe a huge sigh of relief--and more, celebrate some real happiness.  Results in Kansas weren't any surprise; from the national level to the statehouse, everything is controlled by ultra-conservatives.  There are no longer any checks on our right-wing governor.  There hasn't been an elected Democratic Senator since 1932, the longest streak of any state in the country.  I did manage to vote for three winning candidates--Obama and a couple of county officials.  Topeka re-elected two Democratic state senators, but my district re-elected the last moderate Republican, the only one who survived the intraparty purge in the primary.  For my state representative, I could have voted for Gandhi (diversity comes to Kansas) but his Republican affiliation ruled him out.

Tuesday evening, for me at least, lacked the tension of 2008.  Between Nate Silver and Chuck Todd's key county projections, it looked pretty early as if Obama was going to win.  There were wonderful Senate wins: Elizabeth Warren, Claire McCaskill, and Tammy Baldwin, to name three.  And Tammy Duckworth, after disgusting attacks from her Republican opponent, won a House seat.  The House, unfortunately, remains at least as conservative and intractable as it was before.  Sometimes I feel sorry for John Boehner--his copious tears running over and blurring his spray-tanned face until it's the same color as his nicotine-stained fingers, all the while Eric Cantor is waiting to push him out of the Speakership. 

And it was a landmark night for the LGBT community.  Voters in three states--Maine, Maryland, and Washington--approved same-sex marriage, and Minnesota voted down a ban on such marriages.  (Vikings punter Chris Kluwe, whom I follow on Twitter, was a tireless worker on behalf of the no vote.)  One can argue that civil rights shouldn't be a matter put to majority vote, but still, this was the first time that voters--not the courts or legislatures--approved same-sex marriage after a string of defeats at the polls.  Minnesota also said no to requiring voter IDs, and more states legalized the use of marijuana, including for recreational purposes. 

We flipped around to watch the election returns (skipping CNN because I can't look at Wolf Blitzer any more), including some time with Fox news--and this time it wasn't even masochistic.  For some reason, Fox called many states--Wisconsin first, followed by Virginia, Ohio, Nevada--for the Democrats long before the other networks did.  The discussion on Fox seemed almost dazed, though you could already see the battle within the Republican party that is sure to ensue.  On the one side were the die-hard conservatives, like Charles Krauthammer (other than Donald Trump, is there a more repulsive Republican than Krauthammer?) arguing for moving harder to the right; on the other were the pragmatists, i.e., those who chose demographics over ideology.  I was trying to think why so many middle-class voters, especially of course white men, voted against their own economic interests (Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?" analysis).  Since one of the "common sense" assumptions of American life is that we're all following the American dream (there's no "French dream" or "Canadian dream"; our obsession seems to be part of the more general assumption of American exceptionalism) and since one fact is that that dream seems to be slipping away from the middle class (and even less possible for the poor, who were virtually ignored during the campaign), the fear of losing that dream to the interests of increasing numbers of blacks and browns trumps (no pun intended) the unreality of the promise that the wealth of the supposed "job creators" will trickle down and keep the dream alive.

Factoid:  this is the first time since Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe that three consecutive President have been elected to serve two terms.  For those of us who began voting in the 60s, when it looked as if one-term Presidents would be the norm (Kennedy was assassinated, LBJ didn't run for a second full term, Nixon resigned, Ford and Carter were defeated for second terms), the landscape has changed.  But even though Congress had a historically low approval rating, there were very few changes Tuesday in the overall composition; there the status quo remained in place. 

And so ends blog #100.