Obama up big in Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota, according to the latest Quinnipiac polls. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

Here’s the best, most pointed article I’ve read today on the current state of play in the financial crisis: Post columnist Steven Pearlstein’s piece on how it’s time for the Street titans to step up to the plate, not pretend they’re doing anyone any favors by ‘accepting’ injections of capital from the US Taxpayer.

Late Point Taken Update: A number of readers have written in to ask why I’m recommending this article when it contains such fulsome praise for Hank Paulson. Good point. What I was recommending was this more general statement about the stance now being taken by the leadership of the top banks and Wall Street firms. But just to be clear, I don’t subscribe to his take on Paulson being out in front and decisive over recent weeks. Paulson himself now seems to grasp that his original bailout proposal was fatally flawed. He’s consistently followed events. And he’s still overmatched, in terms of rising to the requirements of the crisis, by the UK’s Gordon Brown.

You can judge the magnitude of the smashing defeat Republicans believe they are approaching by the scale of lying and bogus charges of vote fraud. But organized lying from partisans should not surprise us. What does deserve censure is how readily mainstream media organizations, including CNN, are picking up these bogus stories and running with them. We’d like to start calling them out. So please send us examples when you see them.

GOP phone-jamming guru James Tobin indicted on two counts of making false statements to the FBI.

More soon.

It’s important not to get distracted by McCain’s phony nods to contrition since what he’s doing and saying on the campaign trail makes it clear he’s committed to all-sleaze, all-the-time until November 4th.

Look closely. That’s not a picture of an Obama billboard ad in front of a few cool cars. That’s a screen capture from the Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise. Advertisers can buy space on the billboards in the game. And the game publisher has confirmed to GigaOm.com that that’s an official Obama ad, placed by the campaign.

I always used to think former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO) was a respectable guy. So why is he prostituting himself for the McCain campaign phony ‘vote fraud’ scam. Just disgraceful.

Let’s be clear about what this is. These are random stories about fake vote registrations. The Drudges and Fox scoundrels of the world seem to think that if someone fills out a voter registration card for Mickey Mouse, that Mickey Mouse might show up and cast a vote they’re not entitled to cast. It doesn’t and there is zero evidence of any voter fraud or anything that would make voter fraud more likely. The level of lying, bad faith or at best ignorance of the people making these claims is really beyond imagining. This isn’t vote fraud. There’s no evidence of vote fraud. Nothing. This is an effort of a losing political party to a) lay the groundwork for challenging their defeat at the polls b) lay the groundwork to pass laws to make it harder for poor people and minorities to vote.

For more on this scam, see this earlier post.

It’s time again to remember the backstory of the US Attorney Firing scandal. The firings were one thing. But the story behind the firings, what led to them, is key to understanding the current ‘vote fraud’ scam being played by the Republicans and the media outlets that are going along with the scam.

Remember, the US Attorneys in question were all either Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. In every case, they were appointed by George W. Bush. In most of the cases their firing was tied to ‘vote fraud’ claims stemming from the 2004 election.

The pattern was very consistent. During the final weeks of the 2004 campaign Republican partisans started pressing claims of widespread voter fraud. In many, though not all cases, the examples they pointed to were not even allegations of voter fraud, but allegations of voter registration fraud: examples of people being registered more than once, non-existent people being registered, etc.

The Republicans making these claims argued that these problems with registration cards were opening the coming election up to widespread vote fraud. Logically, this makes no sense. And, more importantly, all evidence shows this has never happened, certainly not in any widespread sense. Every person who claims otherwise is either ignorant or speaking in bad faith.

Nonetheless, CNN and other national news outlets and especially local media outlets, either out of ignorance or bad faith, ran hard with these stories — just as CNN is doing now.

After the election, there was a lot of pressure from Republicans in states like Nevada, Washington, New Mexico, etc. (not surprisingly, all key swing states) to have local US Attorneys prosecute these cases. The word came down from Washington, DC, particularly the political office at the White House that this was a top priority. And the local US Attorneys launched into it.

But there was a problem. Most of these were ethical prosecutors. And when they looked into it there just wasn’t anything there. Most of the stories weren’t even true. And those that were, were obviously isolated and in most cases not done with malice. The number of people who could actually be prosecuted could be counted on one hand. Local Republicans got angry; Karl Rove got angry. And the US Attorneys got fired.

That’s the real story of the US Attorney firing scandal. And what we’re seeing today is textbook — exactly the same as what we saw in 2004 and 2006. It’s a scam. And the very recent history should be enough for news networks like CNN and others not to let themselves become complicit in this disgrace.

Jonah Goldberg: Obama’s being black is making it even harder for Republicans to smear him.

John McCain’s transition chief helped lobby for Saddam Hussein back in the 1990s.