Midday open thread

• One of the most Republican and wealthy parts of Dallas, Texas, is now Obama country.

  John McCain might be pretty confident about winning Texas, but it looks like he has lost the wealthiest part of Dallas — which is to say, the Park Cities. Texas Rep. Dan Branch commissioned a Baselice & Associates poll of his district the week after the Republican convention, and what he found was surprising. While McCain was enjoying a national "Palin bounce," District 108 wasn’t feeling the love. Branch’s poll found that 47 percent of voters planned to pull the lever for Obama, only 45 percent for McCain.

• They promoted the shit out of their wingnutty movie and gave it a huge release (1,639 screens), but alas, "American Carol" has bombed in its opening weekend. Conservatives still don't know how to be funny. _Reason's_ David Weigel has a theory why:

  Political comedy mocks authority. Conservative comedy in the Age of Bush venerates authority. The "heavies" that corrupt Malone and (temporarily) ruin the lives of his conservative extended family are powerless, silly activists. Malone simply gets slapped around a bit and decides the establishment was right. If you transported Zucker back to 1978 and pitched him Animal House, he’d direct Niedermeyer: Man of Iron.

• Ari Melber:

  When the McCain campaign announced this weekend that it would start attacking Sen. Barack Obama via guilt by association, peddling smears about people he barely knows, I thought the tack would lead to the Keating Five.  But I didn’t know it would happen this quickly.

  The Obama campaign swung into action immediately.  By the time the Sunday news shows were taping, Democratic surrogates were hitting McCain with opposition research on his associations with extremist, racist groups (Begala) and the Keating Five (Emanuel). Today, of course, camp Obama is pushing a new Keating Economics website, which begins streaming a documentary about McCain’s Keating problem at noon.

  Obama’s campaign has never pushed the Keating button before, so this attack carries an original punch–and is clearly salient given the current financial crisis. Because the scandal involved McCain’s actions in public service, it is more likely to arise during the remaining two debates.

  The Obama campaign was ready with the Keating Five stuff, waiting for the moment the McCain campaign started flinging Ayers and Wright around. This isn't your father's Democratic presidential campaign.

• So what are the 527s up to?

  Republican Leaning 527s outspend Democratic Leaning 527’s by more than 10X on Presidential Race. Democrats have a 3-1 advantage in the House.

  In the Senate, it's a 2-1 Republican advantage. So while our party committees crush their Republican counterparts in the money department, the outside money is keeping them in the game.

  One of Obama's big mistakes early in the cycle was killing the Democratic 527s. While the campaign has reversed itself on that, and while Democrats are trying to get new 527s off the ground, we're playing catch up.

• Swing State Project tallies up the independent expenditures in the House races. It's striking how little the NRCC has played this cycle. They have no money to do anything.
• FL-18: Hilarious! Republican incumbent Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has rushed out an ad cobbled together from 1980's-era footage. Why? Perhaps it has to do with her terrible new haircut?

  I wish I was kidding...

  Throw her an anvil by dropping a few bucks to her Democratic opponent, O2B candidate Annette Taddeo.

• Republicans at war with each other over their Florida strategy.
• Republicans always seem guilty of the things they accuse Democrats of doing. For example, the McCain campaign recently demanded the FEC investigate Obama's small dollar fundraising. Yet it looks like it's McCain with the actual donor problem.

  While the Republican Party is pushing the Federal Election Commission to investigate the possibility that Democrat Barack Obama collected excessive contributions, its own candidate is facing scrutiny on the same subject.

  The FEC sent a letter to Sen. John McCain's campaign treasurer Sept. 30 demanding the candidate turn over more information about "contributions that appear to exceed the limits."

  The letter is accompanied by a nine-page list showing scores of overages from McCain's August campaign finance report, including nearly $13,000 from Texas rancher Ray R. Barrett Jr.; $9,200 from an Iraqi security consultant, H. Carter Andress; and $5,000 from Joseph F. Davolio, an executive at a major national liquor, beer, and wine distributor.

  "Please inform the Commission of your corrective action immediately in writing and provide photocopies of any refund checks and/or letters reattributing or redesignating the contributions in question," the letter from the FEC's senior campaign finance analyst, Leah S. Palmer, says. "The acceptance of excessive contributions is a serious problem."

• AK-Sen: From the Stevens trial:

  Sen. Ted Stevens told wealthy businessman Bill Allen they needed to stick together and "really lay low" to beat an FBI investigation into their cozy relationship, according to audiotapes played Monday at the senator's corruption trial.

  "Screw them, if they prove we did something wrong," the senator says in one of a series of secretly recorded telephone calls in the fall of 2006. "In my heart, I don't think we did. ... I say, screw it."

  Stevens, unaware Allen already was cooperating with investigators, advises him, "We ought to really lay low right now." He also tells him to cut down on drinking, watch his health and await the outcome of the probe into more than $250,000 in renovations on the senator's cabin and other gifts provided by Allen's oil pipeline company, VECO Corp.

  "Let's stick this thing out together, OK?" Stevens says [...]

  "I think they're probably listening to this conversation right now," Stevens says in the recording.
  "We might have to pay a fine and spend a little time in jail," he continues. "I hope it doesn't come to that."

• Damn the Cubs suck. I felt better watching the Bears pound the Lions into the ground. Of course,