In case you're not in Albuquerque today -- and to be honest, most of us aren't, which is what makes that place so special -- here's a taste of what Sen. John McCain interrupted his Tuesday night debate prep to say there, against the backdrop of a stock market that dipped further. His campaign had indicated that, in an economic environment unfavorable to the party occupying the White House (which would be McCain's GOP), it would try to change the subject. As these excerpts show, McCain definitely tried to do that:

"Rather than answer his critics, Sen. [Barack] Obama will try to distract you from noticing that he never answers the serious and legitimate questions he has been asked. But let me reply in the plainest terms I know. I don't need lessons about telling the truth to the American people. And were I ever to need any improvement in that regard, I probably wouldn't seek advice from a Chicago politician.

"My opponent's touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned. For a guy who's already authored two memoirs, he's not exactly an open book. It's as if somehow the usual rules don't apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Sen. Obama seems to think he is above all that.

"... All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government?  What does he plan for America?  In short: Who is the real Barack Obama?  But ask such questions and all you get in response is another barrage of angry insults.

"Our current economic crisis is a good case in point. What was ...

Political fund-raiser Norman Hsu used his connections to politicians--Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton were the main ones--to con people into investing in his pyramid scheme, the Securities and Exchange Commission charges in a complaint today.

In papers filed today in federal court in Los Angeles, the SEC said Hsu and one of his companies, Next Components, operated a $60 million Ponzi scheme. He used investors’ money to pay his “sales agents, make political campaign contributions, and support Hsu’s luxurious lifestyle,” the SEC said.

The suit seeks to force Hsu to repay money, although it’s not clear he has any money left.

Hsu bundled more than $1 million for an array of politicians, most of them Democrats, starting in 2004. He outdid himself in the Democratic primary, when he raised in excess of $800,000 for Sen. Clinton.

Clinton sought to limit the fall-out story by returning the money to donors solicited by Hsu.

Hsu’s scheme unraveled a year ago after Times reporter Chuck Neubauer and then-Times reporter Robin Fields disclosed that he was a fugitive from a fraud conviction in the early 1990s in suburban San Francisco. Hsu made a court appearance in 2007, posted $2 million bond, then fled again, by train. He was apprehended in Colorado after he made what had been described as a suicide attempt.

Linda Chatman Thomsen, SEC’s Division of Enforcement director, said Hsu used some investor money to make campaign donations, and “then used the veneer of respectability created by his political connections to persuade his investors that the investments he offered were legitimate.”

“This deception convinced investors to continue to invest with Hsu, even as he and his company allegedly siphoned away investor funds to pay for his own extravagant lifestyle and to finance a Ponzi scheme,” the SEC alleges.

Hsu is in custody awaiting trial on federal criminal fraud charges in New York.

--Dan Morain

Photo credit: Hand-out

So far, not so good in the latest offensive by the John McCain campaign against Barack Obama.

The latest Gallup overnight tracking poll shows little change in the race, with the Democratic presidential nominee leading his Republican counterpart by 8 percentage points. The next major opportunity for change would be Tuesday night's presidential debate in Nashville. This one is townhall-style.

Here's what Frank Newport of Gallup writes:

"Barack Obama leads John McCain among registered voters across the country by a 50% to 42% margin in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Oct. 3-5, the tenth straight day in which Obama has held a statistically significant lead.

"This 10-day stretch of a significant Obama lead is the longest since he became the presumptive nominee back in early June, and the longest for either candidate at any point in the campaign.

"Today's result includes interviewing conducted Friday through Sunday, after the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate between Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden, and after Friday's passage of a revised economic rescue plan to help alleviate the Wall Street financial crisis."

The results, which show neither candidate moving much, suggest that neither of these events had a significant effect on voter preferences and the race may have stabilized.

Our blogging buddy Frank James has more on this latest poll over here at the Swamp.

--Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credit: Getty Images

Barack Obama's campaign unveiled its latest attack ad this morning -- a 13-minute "documentary" on John McCain's ties to Charles Keating, the chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Assn. who was charged with fraud, racketeering and conspiracy in the savings-and-loan scandal of the late 1980s.

The ad was rolled out with the same kind of promotional fanfare that you'd expect for the latest indie flick.

Over the weekend, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe introduced a 30-second preview of the film ("Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis") in an e-mail to the campaign's extensive list of supporters. Plouffe urged recipients to forward the e-mail "to everyone you know" and to stay tuned for the premiere of the full spot.

It debuted at noon EDT (9 a.m. PDT) today on a website specifically created for it.

Production-wise, the spot shows what a campaign awash with money can accomplish these days; it's heads and shoulders above the average political ad (as well as being far more ambitious in length).

Clearly, it was in the works for a while -- and comes now as McCain's campaign over the weekend launched a new effort, assaulting Obama for his ties to Bill Ayers, a founder of the notorious Weather Underground radical group almost 40 years ago.

-- Kate Linthicum

Pennsylvania is to Barack Obama what Ohio is to John McCain -- a large, politically competitive state that he almost assuredly has to win to have any chance of moving into the White House.

For much of the general election campaign, Pennsylvania seemed completely in play  -- a worrisome situation for Obama and his strategists.

His loss there in April's Democratic presidential primary to Hillary Clinton spotlighted his difficulties with working-class white voters.

Throughout the summer, most polls gave Obama an edge over McCain in the state but placed the Republican well within striking range to grab its 21 electoral votes.

And McCain clearly thought he had a good shot at them -- since June, he's visited the Keystone State 17 times.

Over the next two weeks or so, however, it will be worth watching how often -- if at all -- McCain's itinerary takes him to Pennsylvania or whether, alternatively, his campaign starts to scale back its efforts there.

The reason -- two new surveys, one taken at the end of September, the other during the first few days of this month, showing....

You know how you watch these presidential and vice presidential debates on television, as a near record number of us did last Thursday with Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, and millions more will tomorrow night from Nashville with John McCain and Barack Obama?

And then afterward the networks switch to what seems to be a palpably proliferating panoply of pundits who tell us all instantly and precisely who won, who scored and lost points and what it all means for America's future? And they keep consulting open laptops for their perceptive notes and quotes?

And sometimes you wonder who appointed them and what makes them think they know more than you?

Well, maybe they don't. The brilliantly observant folks over at Gizmodo.com were watching CNN's political palaverers, including here on the nearest end the big legal expert Jeffrey Toobin. Here's a photo of the panel during coverage of last Thursday night's vice presidential debate:

But the clever Gizmodo.com folks didn't leave it there. They examined the photo more closely.

To see what they found, click on the "Read more" line below.

Here's the latest national electoral map published in The Ticket courtesy of Karl Rove & Co.

New state polls -- 39 in all -- conducted in the first three days of this month show the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden continuing to lead Republican John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and, indeed, over the weekend acquiring just enough hypothetical electoral votes to win the presidency.

For the first time since mid-July, Obama has more than the necessary 270 electoral votes (273) with the movement from the toss-up captegory into his column of Minnesota and New Hampshire.

So the totals (the state-poll methodology is explained on the jump) now are 273 for Obama-Biden and 163 for McCain-Palin with 102 electoral votes remaining in the toss-up category.

Rove's analysis notes that Obama leads in every state carried by John Kerry in 2004 plus the states of New Mexico, Iowa and Colorado.

But he adds that all these polls were conducted before the most-watched vice presidential debate in the nation's history, last Thursday. So they do not measure what effect, if any, that confrontation had on the race. State polls traditionally lag behind national ones, so the debate effect won't start showing up in them until later this week.

A chart showing the race's numerous up-and-down swings since July 1 can be viewed by clicking on the "Read more" line below. The methodology is also explained there.

--Andrew Malcolm

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So how did the moderator of Thursday's debate between vice presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden think it went?

"The understanding was that we were going to have a debate," Gwen Ifill told Tom Brokaw of NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday morning. But, she went on, it didn't exactly turn out that way.

"The moderator's job is to control their debate.  If they have decided, as Joe Biden decided, that he was going to debate John McCain, and [Palin] decided she was going to give a stump speech to the American people, there's very little a moderator can do other than say, 'No, no, no, listen, I asked a question.  Please, please answer.' "

In repeatedly switching topics from the question that was asked to one of her talking points, Palin "blew me off, I think is the technical term," Ifill told Brokaw, who will moderate Tuesday's debate between John McCain and Barack Obama.

Ifill's performance as moderator received mixed reviews, even from the same publication: On the same day that the Los Angeles Times' media writer, James Rainey, praised the host of PBS' "Washington Week" for showing "reason, fairness and class," she was blasted in a Times editorial as "singularly inarticulate."

But there's one aspect of the experience she appeared to really enjoy: "I got to say, being portrayed by Queen Latifah is not a bad thing," Ifill said of the 2002 Oscar nominee who portrayed her in the debate sketch on "Saturday Night Live."

-- Leslie Hoffecker

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By the time a presidential campaign season is over, the journalists who have been covering it will be awash in credentials -– meaning the plastic tags of various sizes that hang on lanyards around their necks.

Credentials allow entry to debates and rallies, onto campaign planes, buses and fundraisers. Conventions have their own special, and ridiculously numerous, credentials. They are larger than normal, and separate ones are handed out for every day of the four-day events.

Rarely are credentials fun to look at. But last week, at the vice presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, the national reporters traveling with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got a credential with a twist: The front was a crossword puzzle; the back was a list of clues. All were related to the evening’s event.

Among the clues: A four-letter word for “First Dude”? A three-letter word for “SNL lookalike Tina”?  An eight-letter word for “the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull”? A 16-letter phrase that is the title of a book by John McCain? A six-letter word meaning “to engage in a discussion involving opposing points”? A five-letter word meaning “name of terrorist Barack Obama pals around with”? Just kidding about that last one!

(Answers are: Todd, Fey, lipstick, “Faith of My Fathers” and debate.)

--Robin Abcarian

At her Carson, Calif. rally Saturday, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was introduced by Shelly Mandell, president of the National Organization for Women's Los Angeles chapter, who acknowledged that she was a lifelong Democrat.

“It is an honor to call her a sister,” said Mandell, who emphasized that she was there as a private citizen, not as a representative of NOW. “America, this is what a feminist looks like.” 

When she mentioned the D-word, Mandell got a chorus of boos.

Palin began her speech by mentioning that one can be progressive and conservative, then quoted, or slightly misquoted, a well-known Democratic woman.

“It’s like kind of providential yesterday what happened to me,” Palin said. “I am reading on my Starbucks mocha cup the quote of the day. You’ll never believe what the quote was! It was Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state and U.N. ambassador, and Madeleine has as her quote of the day for Starbucks — now she said it, I didn’t say it — ‘There is a place in hell reserved for women who don’t support other women.’ OK now, thank you so much for receiving that well, I didn’t know how that was gonna go over. And now California, let’s see what a comment like I just made, let’s see what it will be turned into . . . newspaper.”

Well, how about the blog instead of the newspaper?

Anyway, turns out, according to CBS News’ Scott Conroy, that Palin got the quote slightly wrong. Albright actually said, “There is a place in hell reserved for women who don’t help other women.”

So can Palin’s tweak be construed as changing the meaning of the quote?

Some certainly think so.

—Robin Abcarian

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Sarah Palin, after only a month on the national political stage, knew enough that when in the Denver area, it's always a good bet to give a shoutout (as is her wont anyway) to the beloved local football team. But did she take it a beat too far?

Palin headlined a luncheon fundraiser Saturday in Englewood, Colo., and among those introducing her was retired Denver Broncos safety John Lynch. The Times' Robin Abcarian also was there, and she reports that Lynch called himself a big fan of Palin's, described her as "a breath of fresh air” and said, "One thing we have in common … I am a soccer dad now.”

Palin, in turn, lauded Lynch and the Broncos, adding that her husband, Todd, was predicting a win by the team against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers today.

No doubt music to the ears for many in the key swing state of Colorado.

But perhaps a sour note for some on the west coast of the larger swing state of Florida.

[UPDATE: Todd Palin proved on-the-ball as a prognosticator -- playing at home, the Bromcos edged the Bucs, 16-13.]

-- Don Frederick

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For those who missed it: