Saturday Night Live gets the debate right again.

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“The endless presidential campaign is about to enter its last lap, and with it will come a final fusillade of TV ads as both Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama seek to make closing arguments for why the country would be better off with them, and worse off with the other guy,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“If you live in a battleground state, brace yourself. Another couple hundred million dollars in ad spending is about to rain down on your living rooms in the last weeks of the campaign.”

New York Times: “Strategists affiliated with the Obama and Romney campaigns say they have access to information about the personal lives of voters at a scale never before imagined. And they are using that data to try to influence voting habits — in effect, to train voters to go to the polls through subtle cues, rewards and threats in a manner akin to the marketing efforts of credit card companies and big-box retailers.”

Here are the latest polls from the battleground states:

Arizona: Obama 44%, Romney 42% (Rocky Mountain Poll)

Ohio: Obama 51%, Romney 46% (Public Policy Polling)

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) told CNBC he would not endorse Mitt Romney for president, “arguing that neither he nor President Barack Obama would make necessary cuts to public spending that would avert a fiscal catastrophe.”

Said Paul: “I’ve been in this business a long time and believe me there is essentially no difference from one administration to another no matter what the platforms. The foreign policy stays the same, the monetary policy stays the same, there’s no proposal for any real cuts and both parties support it.”

Denver Post: “Police say someone fired a shot at an Obama campaign field office in Denver on Friday afternoon. No one was injured, though people were inside the office when the incident occurred.”

The Chicago Sun Times reports Rep. Jesse Jackson (D-IL) is being treated for bipolar disorder,
had a highly publicized extramarital relationship, has been repeatedly linked to disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and is now the target of a federal investigation into “suspicious activity” into his congressional finances.

Yet most think he’s going to be easily re-elected on November 6.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) “has raised a whopping $4.5 million in the last three months,” The Hill reports.

“The three-month total could prove to be the largest of any House member this cycle, topping that of fellow conservative Rep. Allen West (R-FL), who exceeded $4 million in his own quarter. Bachmann’s campaign did not say how much she has left in the bank, but it’s likely to be substantial.”

New York Times: “During Mr. Romney’s four-year term as governor of Massachusetts, he cumulatively spent more than a year — part or all of 417 days — out of the state, according to a review of his schedule and other records. More than 70 percent of that time was spent on personal or political trips unrelated to his job.”

“Mr. Romney, now the Republican presidential nominee, took lengthy vacations and weekend getaways. But much of his travel was to lay the groundwork for the presidential ambitions he would pursue in the 2008 election, two years after leaving office.”

Matt Taibbi: “I’ve never thought much of Joe Biden. But man, did he get it right in last night’s debate, and not just because he walloped sniveling little Paul Ryan on the facts. What he got absolutely right, despite what you might read this morning (many outlets are criticizing Biden’s dramatic excesses), was his tone. Biden did absolutely roll his eyes, snort, laugh derisively and throw his hands up in the air whenever Ryan trotted out his little beady-eyed BS-isms.”

“But he should have! He was absolutely right to be doing it. We all should be doing it. That includes all of us in the media, and not just paid obnoxious-opinion-merchants like me, but so-called ‘objective’ news reporters as well. We should all be rolling our eyes, and scoffing and saying, ‘Come back when you’re serious.'”

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds respondents think Joe Biden performed better than Paul Ryan in Thursday night’s vice presidential debate, 42% to 35%.

The Week: “There were no devastating gaffes in Thursday’s vice presidential debate. Still, both Biden and Ryan made potentially costly unforced errors.”

Mitt Romney continues to surge in both national and swing state polls and Nate Silver now gives him a 38.9% chance of winning the presidential election.

“The only really good news for Democrats is that Mr. Obama had built up a large enough cushion that he could withstand a lot of damage without becoming the underdog. The forecast model still has him clinging to narrow leads in Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin and Nevada, states that in some combination would give him 270 electoral votes.”

The Week: Is Romney taking over in the swing states?

Mitt Romney and his allies “are banking heavily on a high-risk, high-reward media strategy in the final weeks of the campaign, hoping that burying President Obama in ads will give them a crucial edge on Election Day,” the Washington Post reports.

“Ad purchases in the presidential race doubled or in some cases tripled last week in swing states such as Colorado, Florida, Iowa and Virginia, tracking data show. The surge is being driven by Romney and well-funded allies, who decided against running more ads earlier in the campaign in favor of a big bang at the end.”

Mitt Romney is preparing for his second debate with President Obama “but taking time to tell voters in Ohio that enthusiasm for him is surging both in this critical state and across the country,” the AP reports.

“Obama was hunkering down Saturday in Virginia to go over the game plan for the town-hall debate with Romney. But his weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday spoke of an industry that’s critical to Ohio, another battleground state and perhaps the most important to his Republican opponent’s White House hopes.”

They face off on Tuesday night.