ERIK SOFGE on Internet Voting. Sorry, but I still favor paper ballots. . . .

UPDATE: More reports of voting-machine problems from Brad Friedman. Paper ballots!

POLITICS: An Oprah flip-flop? “I guess technically she hasn’t gone back on her word. She’s not using her show as a platform for Obama… she’s just building him a new one!”

RADLEY BALKO IS ROOTING FOR DEFEAT: “Nothing short of defeat will put the GOP back on its limited government track.”

People said that in 2006, too. . .

THINKING OF ATTENDING THE SINGULARITY SUMMIT THIS WEEKEND? InstaPundit readers get a discount. I wish that I could be there!

DOUBLE STANDARD? “So, let’s get this straight. If women play the field, they are liberated. If men do the same, they are pigs with no self-respect.”

I have to say, though, that I kind of like the word “himbo.”

VIA DRUDGE, THE WAGES OF LOST CREDIBILITY:

ELECTION REJECTION: NETWORK NEWS SLUMPS; VIEWERSHIP FADES

As the shouting from the trail and the frantic spinning from the anchor desks intensify, the audience is voting with their remotes.

All 3 evening news shows experienced audience drops year-to-year for the week of Oct. 13-19, 2008.

CBSNEWS w/ Couric shed a half a million viewers, falling from 6.4 million to 5.9 million; ABCNEWS dropped from 8.1 million to 7.6 million; NBCNEWS slumped from 8.2 million to 7.8 million.

The “frantic spinning from the anchor desks” is the key part, I think. Turn off a big chunk of your audience and you lose a big chunk of your audience.

GETTING AHEAD OF THE STORY: Stolen Elections—as American as Apple Pie. Old spin: Fraud is a myth! New spin: What’s wrong with fraud? As I’ve said before, if the NRA were registering Mickey Mouse to vote, the press would be a lot more upset about it than it is about ACORN.

LOOKING FOR PATTERICO? I can see his site fine, but a lot of people can’t. He emails: “The domain company gave me bad information, and thereby caused the problem people are experiencing. The domain name is still mine and the issue is being resolved, but it’s taking time.”

UPDATE: Until the problem’s fixed, this address should work.

RUDY GIULIANI IS DOING “SOFT ON CRIME” ROBOCALLS ABOUT OBAMA: Doug Berman isn’t impressed, but also wonders what took so long.

MORE ON GEOENGINEERING TO COOL THE EARTH. I’m all for research on this topic, but I’d be pretty slow to implement anything.

BETTER HEALTH with BioBeer! “A group of college students at Rice University are taking their favorite pastime and turning it into a research project. Their passion? Beer. Their project? Inventing a brew that contains resveratrol, a chemical present in wine that lowers the risk of heart disease and cancer.” Bring it on!

ENABLING A “FLEETING SENSE OF SELF-SATISFACTION” at the Smugopedia.

KATIE GRANJU: “I just today demonstrated my confidence in old school American capitalism by opening up a new 401K account with my new employer!” This flood of fresh capital should ensure a market rebound.

MORE EFFICIENT SOLAR CELLS with computational nanotechnology.

WHO’S HIDING NOW? “It might be surprising to some to learn that Sarah Palin is now talking to her national press corps more often than Joe Biden. While the once silent Palin has taken questions from reporters that travel with her three times in the last week, Biden has not offered the same type of access to reporters who cover his every move on the campaign trail in almost two months.”

Plus this: “Biden has also not taken questions from voters in a town hall style setting since Sept. 10 in Nashua, New Hampshire, when he told a supporter that Hillary Clinton might have been a better pick for vice president.”

UPDATE: ABC NEWS: “Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., today again avoided mentioning his guarantee that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., would be tested by an international crisis within his first six months in office, focusing instead on criticizing Sen. John McCain.” It sounds like the press is getting a bit testy about the cocooning here. . . .

NOBODY TELL JOHN SCALZI: “Beautiful Bacon Apple Pie.” With bacon!

A TAX TIPPING POINT? “What happens when the voter in the exact middle of the earnings spectrum receives more in benefits from Washington than he pays in taxes? Economists Allan Meltzer and Scott Richard posed this question 27 years ago. We may soon enough know the answer.”

MICHAEL MOYNIHAN: “I note that only one person has been shot by racist hooligans for wearing pro-Obama gear—and it was in the city Boris Johnson governs, not in the hillbilly USA.”

ANDREA MITCHELL busted on a Biden coverup. “Mitchell says, ‘I think we played the whole thing.’ But as Breitbart.tv documented on Tuesday, the clip that Mitchell used was not from the Seattle event, but rather much milder comments made in San Francisco. MSNBC has even labeled the incorrect audio as being from the Seattle event.” (Bumped).

UPDATE: At the L.A. Times, another coverup.

QUESTIONS OVER “street money” in Philadelphia.

A HISTORIC MANHATTAN PROJECT LANDMARK will be demolished.

REPORTS OF A HIT-AND-RUN INCIDENT INVOLVING JOE BIDEN’S BROTHER. Greg Pollowitz comments: “There’s the obvious parallel of Joe Biden’s own heartbreaking family tragedy that makes this story newsworthy, but there’s also the fact that Frank Biden is out on the campaign trail for brother Joe from time to time. And it’s not as though the driving records of VP candidates’ family members are exactly off-limits to the media.”

I predict a new level of media sensitivity, now that it’s Biden instead of Palin.

HACK: CONFESSIONS OF A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN REPORTER.

BIG DONORS, SMALL DONORS, and a boy named Hsu.

HMM: AP presidential poll: All even in the homestretch. “The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain’s ‘Joe the plumber’ analogy struck a chord.” Can you trust this poll? I dunno. This shows a big Obama lead. Can you trust any of them?

UPDATE: Michael Barone: “Can we trust the polls this year? That’s a question many people have been asking as we approach the end of this long, long presidential campaign. As a recovering pollster and continuing poll consumer, my answer is yes — with qualifications.” Okay, but which ones can we trust?

ANOTHER UPDATE: The IBD/TIPP tracking poll has tightened. “McCain has picked up 3 points in the West and with independents, married women and those with some college. He’s also gaining momentum in the suburbs, where he’s gone from dead even a week ago to a 20-point lead. Obama padded gains in urban areas and with lower-class households, but he slipped 4 points with parents.”

MORE: Obama is tied in the AP poll but way ahead in the Fox News poll. Go figure.