$35.1 MILLION FOR INSTAPUNDIT? Let me just say that any offers in that range will be very seriously entertained. Very seriously. . . .

SEEING THE UNSEEN: A new essay from Bill Whittle.

DONALD SENSING says that he’s a single-issue voter: “There are a lot of serious issues facing this country, but compared to the Islamist threat, they are not close enough even to be seen as in second place.”

A LOOK AT WHAT’S GOING ON in the Chinese real estate markets, from Greg Stein.

MORE ON aging, longevity, and resveratrol.

WILLIAM BEUTLER looks at how much campaign bloggers are being paid.

My prediction — it’ll be a lot more in 2008.

A FIFTY-FIFTY SENATE? Actually, if that happens Cheney will break the tie. But if it’s anything like that, as Political Wire notes, “There would also be severe pressure on certain moderate senators to switch parties.”

Like those who have had their own party activists trying to beat them?

THE NATIONAL JOURNAL unveils a new blog, Tech Daily Dose.

ED DRISCOLL notices something odd in Newsweek.

RICHARD ARMITAGE CRITICIZES THE GOP for showing an angry face after 9/11. But check out the picture of Armitage.

I seem to remember hearing that Armitage reacted angrily to some Chinese journalists who were cheering the 9/11 attacks. He must have cooled his anger — on that subject at least — sometime between then and when he leaked the Plame information.

UPDATE: Less angry, but more deadly — compare these pictures. Armitage appears to be attempting the “Mirror Swan Palm,” but his form is less than ideal.

MORE ON VOTING PROBLEMS IN MEMPHIS: I like the Zombie cartoon, too.

It always seems to come back to zombies, doesn’t it? But I don’t remember anything about voting in the book.

OPENING ARGUMENT is a new web publication from the Yale Law School.

NEW DEVELOPMENT IN BRITAIN: We don’t like your charity, so we’ll close it.

Via Perry DeHavilland, who notes: “The destruction of civil society continues to gather speed.”

SAME OLD-FASHIONED QUALITY, BUT AT A SHINY NEW URL: Crescat Sententia is now at CrescatSententia.net. It used to be .org but, well, see the explanation.

EUROPE HAS ITS WORST BLACKOUT IN THREE DECADES: I blame Enron and the American culture of greed.

UPDATE: Reader Daniel Harrison emails:

Are you being sarcastic blaming Enron and the American culture of greed for Europe’s blackout? I hope so: because this has nothing to do with energy derivatives trading or for that matter the financial interests of anyone in the energy business. It actually has to do with inefficient German buraucracy which can’t keep it’s infrastructure in order – quite the opposite thing.

Er yes, I was being sarcastic. I was just recalling some comments after the New York blackout a couple of years ago. German blogger David Kaspar at Medienkritik revisits that history:

Remember when the lights went out in New York? The reaction at “Der Spiegel” was outrageous yet predictable. The outage was described as evidence that America was a faltering superpower with a third rate power grid.

The New York outage was simply further evidence for German media elites that America was in decline and Raubtier capitalism and privatization were all to blame. German media consumers were assured that such a massive failure could never happen in statist Europe.

In fact, the lights did go out just a few weeks later in Italy and Switzerland and Scandinavia, but the reaction in German media was neither sensationalist nor alarmist. There were no scandalous covers deriding the failures of the European economic model or way of life.

Now the lights have gone out again in Europe. This time Germany is in the midst of the outage. . . . But how could that be possible in the wonderful land of social-democratic Oz? How could a nation that has rejected brutal capitalism and amerikanische Verhaeltnisse suffer such an outage? Where are our beautiful windmills when we need them? It just isn’t fair. Oh yeah, by the way: Could Bush be to blame? Maybe this is CIA sabotage…

It’s Karl Rove’s October November Surprise!

RASMUSSEN: “On the day before Election Day, 45% of Americans approve of the way that George W. Bush is performing his role as President. This is the President’s highest approval rating in a little over a month.” Not exactly brilliant, but consistent with the trend that some people see. Of course, if it were over 50% it would mean a lot more.

UPDATE: On the other hand: “President Bush’s popularity has dipped to 35 percent, according to a new CNN poll, with 41 percent of likely voters saying their disapproval of his performance will affect their vote in Tuesday’s elections for control of Congress.” Who’s right? Who knows?

MORE: Thoughts on why the polls are often wrong, including this observation: “In short, we really don’t know what will happen tomorrow. The election will be decided by those who show up, and somewhere up to a third of those who claim they are going to vote–and always do!–won’t.”

HUGH HEWITT is warning Republicans against excessive optimism.

A HUGE ROUNDUP OF ELECTION PREDICTIONS from Andrew Roth.

TOM MAGUIRE ON THE FOLEY SCANDAL: “Ancient history now, apparently – it is the story that Times forgot.”

SO I MANAGED TO WATCH SEVERAL EPISODES of The Addams Family and F Troop on DVD over the weekend. Both shows held up better than I feared — I hadn’t watched them in decades. In particular, The Addams Family shows really good ensemble acting. One of my readers wrote that “The Addams Family was the *only* show I remember on TV when I was growing up in which there was much in the way of open display of affection between a married couple.” That’s pretty right, and although it’s subtle it’s much more grown-up than I had remembered, since when I was a kid I missed some of that stuff.

On F Troop, I noticed that Forrest Tucker seemed more realistic than the other characters in that not-at-all-realistic show, and on looking at his IMDB biography discovered that he had actually served in the U.S. Cavalry before he became an actor. He must have been one of the very last guys to appear in any kind of a western who could say that.

Anyway, I certainly enjoyed both shows a lot more than “The Celebrity Paranormal Project,” Mariel Hemingway notwithstanding.

UPDATE: Reader Jim Allan emails:

Just an odd thought when I read your post.

I went to Washington-Lee HS in the 50s and the person who was most responsible for Forrest Tucker’s success, his answer, was an English teacher and mentor by the name of Marie Mallot. She taught at W-L for about 30 years. I was fortunate to have her as a teacher. One afternoon a large man appeared in the classroom and Ms Mallot, Mother Mallot to us, absolutely broke down as Forrest Tucker gave her a big hug.

It was quite a moment. She actually would go to his house and see to it that he came to school.

I can imagine that he needed that treatment. It’s nice that he got it. A good English teacher can do a lot for you. Two of mine — Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Ferguson — certainly did, though they never showed up at my doorstep. But they might have, if it had been called for.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Christopher Fountain emails:

Had to laugh, Glenn. My father, who refused to permit a TV in the house until I was 10 (1963? 1964?) did occasionally watch bits of F Troop with us – he was in F Troop, Squadron A (NYC) cavalry unit in the years before WWII and seemed to get a kick from the antics on TV. Other than that, don’t remember him watching the damn machine, ever.

Your father was a wise man, Chris. I’m guessing he wouldn’t have made an exception for the celebrity paranormal show, either . . . .

HAROLD FORD: God is on my side.

JAMES Q. WILSON on the press at war:

But the war coverage does not reflect merely an interest in conflict. People who oppose the entire war on terror run much of the national press, and they go to great lengths to make waging it difficult. Thus the New York Times ran a front-page story about President Bush’s allowing, without court warrants, electronic monitoring of phone calls between overseas terrorists and people inside the U.S. On the heels of this, the Times reported that the FBI had been conducting a top-secret program to monitor radiation levels around U.S. Muslim sites, including mosques. And then both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times ran stories about America’s effort to monitor foreign banking transactions in order to frustrate terrorist plans. The revelation of this secret effort followed five years after the New York Times urged, in an editorial, that precisely such a program be started. . . .

This change in the media is not a transitory one that will give way to a return to the support of our military when it fights. Journalism, like so much scholarship, now dwells in a postmodern age in which truth is hard to find and statements merely serve someone’s interests.

The mainstream media’s adversarial stance, both here and abroad, means that whenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle not on some faraway bit of land but among the people who determine what we read and watch. We won the Second World War in Europe and Japan, but we lost in Vietnam and are in danger of losing in Iraq and Lebanon in the newspapers, magazines and television programs we enjoy.

Though judging by circulation and viewership figures, fewer people are enjoying them these days, which may point toward the prospect of change.

ED MORRISSEY sees the race tightening.

SLEEPWALKING INTO A GATHERING STORM? The Examiner says that’s what we’re doing.