WILL COLLIER: “So I turned forty today. Apparently I’m supposed to be depressed.”

Actually, I find the phrase “life begins at 40” is surprisingly true. My own life, at least, has been happier and more satisfying since 40 than it was before.

WHETHER YOU’RE PREPARING FOR A CAMPING TRIP, OR SOCIETAL COLLAPSE, half-price sports and outdoor equipment may be a good thing.

LAW PROFESSOR JOBS getting harder to come by. Tennessee has avoided a hiring freeze this year — we’re hiring two — but many other law schools haven’t. My guess is that next year will be worse.

LOOKING AT MY ARCHIVES FROM 2004, I realize that I took a week off in late October (I wasn’t teaching that semester) and went scuba diving in Cozumel. For a week I didn’t think of anything involving politics, and — except for an emergency-decompression stop brought about by an equipment failure, which sounds more exciting than it actually was — it was entirely stress free. At the moment, I’m wishing I could have done that again. If I’m still blogging in 2012, I’m making a week off in October a priority!

PAYING DOCTORS NOT TO TREAT PATIENTS? Yes, but it’s not from evil profit-seeking HMOs in America, but Britain’s National Health Service:

Dozens of incentive schemes have been uncovered which allow GPs to profit by slashing the number of patients they refer for hospital care. Under one scheme, GPs stand to gain £59 for every patient not referred to hospital, if they cut an average referral rate by between two and eight per cent. Torbay care trust in Devon will pay up to £15,000 to the average-sized GP practice if it hits a swathe of targets, including reducing hospital referrals. . . .

A leading surgeon said that patients’ cancers had already gone undiagnosed after they were denied specialist care under two such “referral management” schemes. . . .

He said: “I recently encountered two cases in which patients referred to physiotherapists later turned out to have a malignant tumour. If they had been sent to a consultant the outcome may have been very different.

It’s not just the for-profit sector that can sacrifice patient welfare for money. It’s just that when the government does it, they don’t get the same kind of criticism.

IN WHICH I AGREE WITH GLENN GREENWALD: Skip past the pro-forma GOP-bashing and you can’t really argue with this point about the Cindy McCain/New York Times story, and a whole lot of other stories this year and in recent years: “But it seems rather obvious that there are now basically no journalistic standards left for determining when a political figure’s private life (or even that of their spouse) is ‘relevant’ — apparently, it’s all relevant now, down to the last tawdry detail. In partiuclar, adultery (without regard to whether the spouse consents) is, without any further consideration, a legitimate topic to report. That inevitably has to lead to an even further erosion (if that’s possible) of our political class, a further narrowing of the people willing to enter politics. And the vast disparity between the media resources and attention devoted to sleazy gossip like this versus actual investigation of true government corruption and crime seems to be growing by the day, such that behavior like this will further decay our already quite decadent journalistic class as well.”

Greenwald and I disagree about many things, but there’s not much room to argue where the poor state of the political and journalistic classes (and the increasing lack of differentiation between them) is concerned.

UPDATE: Various readers think Greenwald is just trying to set the tone advantageously ahead of a looming Democratic sex scandal. Well, that’s uncharitable, but we’ll see.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rob Port comments.

A TEE-TOTALER? Professor Bainbridge finds a reason to dislike Joe Biden.

A MIND SWIMMING WITH SWORDS: An interview with videogame artist Ben Boos.

NOW THAT OBAMA SEEMS TO HAVE IT WON, the press rediscovers a conscience. Here’s a transcript excerpt from Howard Kurtz’s Reliable Sources today, via email from CNN:

On media coverage of money raised during the campaign

KURTZ: Mark Halperin, we learned this morning that Barack Obama in the month of September raised $150 million, the early estimates had been about $100 million. They always kind of leak a lower figure so they can exceed it.

If a Republican had not taken public financing and had raised all that money, and the Democrat was struggling financially, wouldn’t we see a lot of stories about one candidate essentially trying to buy the election?

HALPERIN: We would. We’d also see a lot of stories about his going back on his word saying that he would accept the public money and would reach out to Senator McCain to try to work out a deal. So I think this is a case of a clear, unambiguous double standard, and any reporter who doesn’t ask themselves, why is that, why would it be different if it’s a Republican? I think is doing themselves and our profession and our democracy a disservice.

There’s been a lot of that kind of disservice.

UPDATE: Reader Eli Israel emails:

To my mind, the phrase “seems to have it won,” gives Obama too much credit. What I see is a campaign with a poor poker face trying to execute a huge bluff, and counting on their friends in the media to corroborate it. It’s an attempt to suppress GOP turnout, and it remains to be seen who’s buying it. Don’t help the Obama campaign take this. If they are to win, they need to earn it.

Well, yes. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to skip voting just because of what’s on TV. And reader Donald Gately writes:

Don’t buy it for a second. I’ve been around for enough election cycles to see this played out exactly the same way many times.

After being in the tank for the Democratic candidate through the whole cycle, they start to pretend to feel bad about letting their built-in biases run amok, and say that they owe it to the American people to do better. But that is only in the hopes of getting the suckers to take their criticism (or, if the winner is the Democrat, lack thereof) seriously. Honestly, I don’t think they are going to be able to hit the reset button this time if their preferred candidate wins. It was easier for Republicans (and center/right folks who voted that way in 2000 and 2004) to let it slide a little in those years, because winning the election made it that much sweeter. If the press drags Obama across the finish line, there will be no forgiving or forgetting. It was way too blatant this year, largely thanks to the blogosphere.

Yes, I thought they were in the tank in 2004, but this has been a whole different order of flacking. Partly I think it’s because they actually like Obama, or at least the idea of Obama, while Kerry was just a not particularly well-liked means of getting rid of Bush. I think they also feel that as the big media lose viewers and circulation, this may be their last chance to swing an election, and so there’s no point saving their credibility for future engagements.

MORE: Another reader emails:

Glenn:

It’s the exact opposite of ‘buying’ the White House, and it’s far worse. It’s “selling” the White House, mortgaging it to a crazy quilt of private greed and power-grabbing. Obama is accumulating a long list of undisclosed debts to interest groups and indivduals, that he is supposed to pay off with government money and regulatory manipulation once in power. These debts are concealed from the public, and for good reason — the public’s benefit is not the purpose of these future reckonings. McCain has foresworn going into the White House with a secret agenda — Obama may win BECAUSE he has such a secret agenda. If McCain’s campaign does not make this point in ads on the TV channels hosting Obama’s half-hour pre-election special, before and after that half-hour, it’s another reason he deserves to lose. That the mainstream media declines to point this out on their own air time is — well, to be expected.

Glenn, please don’t use my name, only (if you can) identify me as a major news media employee whose company is facing major budget cuts, who doesn’t want to give grounds for being one item on the budget cut list.

That description is apt, as it’s somebody I know. It’s a climate of fear in the media, apparently.

THE HARTFORD COURANT ON CHRIS DODD AND THE COUNTRYWIDE SCANDAL:

Sen. Christopher Dodd sounded like Dr. Seuss without the depth last week. “It is what it is,” declared Dodd, mistaking Hartford for Whoville, when he told The Courant’s Rick Green that he had no plans to release documents from his $800,000 in sweetheart mortgages from subprime titan Countrywide Financial.

“There is nothing to the story and I’m just not going to keep on repeating it,” pronounced Dodd, as he morphed into Yertle the Turtle. “‘You hush up your mouth!’ howled the mighty King Yertle. ‘You’ve no right to talk to the world’s highest turtle.'”

Dodd will serve the state green eggs and ham before he’ll honor his pledges to release the documents from deals that will save him tens of thousands of dollars over the terms of the loans. Nonsensical answers, however, won’t smother persistent, serious questions about Dodd’s abuse of his office.

Dodd has answered almost no questions about the details of his 2003 mortgages. The senator cast an unflattering light on himself when he couldn’t settle on a credible response in June to the simple question of whether he knew he was getting special mortgage deals as a “Friend of Angelo.” That’s the privileged category of borrowers that Countrywide co-founder Angelo Mozilo made sure received cut-rate loans with hefty traditional fees waived. . . . In the history of this epic, Dodd has guaranteed himself a permanent spot in the pantheon of the privileged oblivious.

He’s basically gotten a pass from the national media, but the Courant has at least paid attention to this story.

RUBEN NAVARRETTE: The Democratic Party’s Drubbing of Joe the Plumber.

MORE MEDIA RETRENCHMENT:

The Boston Globe is consolidating its daily paper into four sections as part of a redesign that will launch Friday, Oct. 24. The paper will no longer publish a free-standing business section — it will be folded into the a newly named “Metro” section — except on Sundays.

The Globe, which has seen its revenue and circulation plummet in recent years, says it will save about 24 pages per week in printing costs.

Of course, by giving readers less, they probably won’t reverse the plummeting circulation trend. I continue to think that newspapers, and other media, might help their situations by producing a better product, with more useful and interesting news and less half-baked opinion, but that strategy doesn’t seem to be as popular with management as trimming page-counts and the like.

UPDATE: Reader Bob Schneider writes: “The pleasure some (not necessarily you) have at watching newspapers decline is unseemly. You know as well as anyone that it’s hard to do good reporting, and although the liberal bias of many cannot be excused, for the majority of stories it’s a nonissue. Liberal and conservative alike will miss the great dailies. ” Well, yes — and I certainly don’t look forward to newspapers’ demise, and would rather they just did a better job, as noted above — but when you go out of your way to make enemies, which the press has done, those enemies will tend to celebrate your decline.

TEST-DRIVING DIALING the new Google Android phone.

UNFAIR DOCTRINE is a new blog focusing on political efforts to suppress free speech.

Related item here.

DUNCAN CURRIE: What would the McCain and Obama tax plans mean for the capital stock, economic growth, and effective marginal rates?

SUCH CONFIDENCE: Pelosi: 100% Barack’s Gonna Win. Well, if Nancy Pelosi says so, it must be true.

KNOXVILLE’S BOOMING DOWNTOWN REAL ESTATE MARKET IS SLOWING, and the problem seems to be a mixture of financing and difficulty selling homes in the ‘burbs. Looking around the neighborhoods, my sense is that a lot of people remain unrealistic in their pricing, thinking that by expecting “only” four percent appreciation over the past few years they’re pricing low. In fact, the Knoxville market has never really appreciated faster than that. If I were selling my house, I’d probably price it at 2005 levels or even below. And I notice that people who do cut the price seem to sell a lot faster.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS on government and the stock market.

VIDEO OF YOUR VOTE? Not in Kentucky. “Kentucky secretary of state Trey Grayson says a national YouTube project with PBS encouraging voters to video themselves in action on Election Day would be illegal in the Bluegrass State.”

A COMING social singularity?

JOHN STEELE GORDON: Speculators, Politicians, and Financial Disasters.

Many people, especially liberal politicians, have blamed the disaster on the deregulation of the last 30 years. But they do so in order to avoid the blame’s falling where it should—squarely on their own shoulders. For the same politicians now loudly proclaiming that deregulation caused the problem are the ones who fought tooth and nail to prevent increased regulation of Fannie and Freddie—the source of so much political money, their mother’s milk.

Does this answer my question about why Lehman’s collapse is being investigated more intensively than Fannie and Freddie’s?

A BUNCH OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN EMAILING ME about Allen West for Congress in Florida. Should I be paying more attention to him?

GOOD QUESTION: What Is the IRS’s Authority For Expanding Bailout Tax Breaks?

Plus, Sam Donaldson calls it socialism.

IN THE MAIL: Tom Tomorrow’s The Future’s So Bright I Can’t Bear to Look. A lot of us feel that way about now, Tom . . . .

WHAT’S MISSING THIS ELECTION CYCLE: “I have not seen the establishment pundits writing/commenting on the joys of divided government. You know, like in 1996 when they suggested that the country would benefit if Democrat Clinton balanced the Republican congress.” Well, silly, there’s no Republican congress to balance this time!