The growing conservative drumbeat for Romney to release years’ worth of tax returns:

We tracked down who produced the new “Firms” ad for the Obama campaign.

TPM Reader JB joins in on the discussion of the Obama ads:

I’ve been following all the (deserved) gushing about the new Obama campaign ad but wanted to point something out that is getting missed.

I’ve been teaching design and advertising over in the UK for a few years now after a decade in the industry on the client side … One thing I stress to my students is that focussing on learning the software is missing the point. And sadly design education (and industry) has become too much about the tools and not about the thinking. Hence all the investment in blue screen virtual reality, flashy graphics, and window-sized touch screens on news programmes instead of, you know, journalism.

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If you’ve been following my posts on the production values of the new Obama ads, you’ve seen the gushing from film pros about how good they are, next level type work, etc. But there’s been a separate thread of emails from folks familiar with the biz who are quick to point out that this kind of audio engineering used to be very complicated but that new, cheaper software makes it a lot easier and doesn’t require any “Hollywood ringers.” Even the guys who do video editing here at TPM are like, pfft, we could whip up effects like that, no problem.

Here’s an email along those lines from a reader who does post-production work in commercials: Read More

One of Romney’s arguments on releasing his tax returns — if it’s good enough for John Kerry, it’s good enough for me — is so self-defeating that it hardly even matters that he also gets the facts wrong. Hard to see how a John Kerry defense works for anyone, especially a GOP nominee from dreaded Massachusetts.

But now Romney is testing out a new Teresa Heinz Kerry defense, this morning on Fox: “You know, his wife, who has hundreds of millions of dollars, she never released her tax returns. Somehow, this wasn’t an issue.”

Republican governors twisted in knots arguing why Obama giving them more flexibility on welfare-to-work programs is a terrible thing.

Obama campaign tell us their new TV ads were produced by the same team they’ve been using all along. No Hollywood ringers, no change in personnel.

Another top director emails in about the new Obama ad — “Firms” — and points to another recent Obama ad that jumped out to him as having higher-than-usual production values. He wonders if Team Obama has recruited some ringers from Hollywood to up the game on the quality of ads to compensate for being outspent by Team Romney on quantity: Read More

Team Romney rolls out new attack ad featuring Obama singing.

Team Romney: Obama sings, too — also, Fast and Furious and other stuff!