New Obama TV ad: McCain may not be Bush, but he sure votes with him a lot. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

Late Update: New McCain TV ad: I know Bush is bad, but I’m better.

The last page of a new mailer from the Virginia GOP appears to show a close-up of Barack Obama overlaid with the text:

AMERICA MUST LOOK EVIL IN THE EYE AND NEVER FLINCH

Late Update: With a reader’s help, we think we may have found the picture the state party started with, and it’s not an Obama photo but an Osama bin Laden photo. We’ll have both pics here side by side in a moment so you can compare.

Later Update: The two images:

We used photoshop to align the eyes here. The pupils match up almost exactly:

Just a few points to make here. I grapple with whether it’s paranoia at this stage to think that the GOP is conflating Obama and Osama visually — as they have so often conflated them textually and rhetorically. But look at the pic closely. You’ve got the turban and beard photoshopped out or otherwise obscured. The flared bulb of the nose is gone, leaving only the narrower bridge. And the photo appears darkened to match Obama’s complexion.

You be the judge. But in politics, as in advertising, images are rarely accidental.

Could it be? The final debate? Is it over? Is it really all over? John McCain’s performance in the third presidential debate brought 2008, the year in debates, to a fittingly bitter end …

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

It turns out Joe the “Plumber” is like the perfect McCain supporter. He says Social Security is a joke and he “hates” it.

David Brooks was a clinical study in tire swing recidivism last night on Charlie Rose:

Just a little innocent fun among Republicans.

We’ve confirmed another GOP robocall, this one going out in Virginia and telling recipients that Obama and Dems “aren’t who you think they are.”

The Obama camp condemns this call and the one we first reported on yesterday as “dishonorable and dishonest.”

Several readers have reported yet a third GOP robocall. We hope to have more on that for you shortly.

Here’s the latest GOP robocall that I mentioned below. Readers have been flooding us with emails about it this morning. It seems to be going out to all parts of the country and explicitly raises Bill Ayers: “You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers …”

So now we hear leaked word that the FBI is beginning an investigation into whether ACORN “helped foster voter registration fraud around the nation before the presidential election” and where there is “any evidence of a coordinated national scam.”

Let’s note a few points. DC Republicans have been aggressively lobbying the DOJ to open an investigation into ACORN in advance of the election. And leaking word of such an investigation (possibly starting the investigation at all) most likely violates DOJ guidelines about DOJ/FBI actions which can end up interfering with or manipulating an election.

But, remember, this is right out of the book of the Bush Justice Department’s efforts to assist in GOP voter suppression efforts in the 2004 and 2006 elections (part and parcel of the US Attorney firing story). This is the same scam US Attorney firing player Bradley Schlozman got in trouble for pulling with ACORN just before the 2006 election. And before he got canned, Gonzales helped revise and soften the departmental prohibition on DOJ announcements, thus making it easier to play these kinds of games.

This is a big deal. It may be their last gasp to use the DOJ to help mitigate the scale of Republican defeat on November 4th.

Most reporters were slow to catch on to the significance of the US Attorney Firings story. And though it eventually became a big scandal, it seems most of the reporters have now more or less forgotten the whole thing since we’re now seeing a replay of the offenses no more than two years later. And rather than calling the bad actors out, most of them are whooping and hollering and going along for the ride.

We’ve already discussed the fact that most of the US Attorney firings stemmed from particular US Attorney’s refusal to use the power of their office as an adjunct of the Republican party by mounting trumped up vote fraud investigations. In recent election cycles, Republicans have used the last several weeks before federal elections to whip up a storm of interest in phony charges of ‘vote fraud’ by groups like ACORN and others. And what one of the players in the scandal, Bradley Schlozman, got in trouble for was using his powers as a US Attorney to pull together a made to order investigation and subsequent indictments to add more credibility to Republican charges. That violates DOJ guidelines which are in place to prevent the party in power from using the DOJ to manipulate elections. And now we appear to be witnessing a replay of Schlozman’s scam, though perhaps on a much larger scale.

Keep your eyes out. The Bush crew at the DOJ may not want to leave without a fight.