Sarah Palin’s long sartorial nightmare is over, as the Federal Election Commission finally decided that the bazillions of dollars spent on her pacifiers, Italian couture jackets, and Victoria’s Secret lingerie were legal. Palin’s clothes did not constitute “personal use of campaign funds” because the funds in question came from the RNC instead of the McCain/Palin campaign. MORE »

If there’s one thing the Clintons have absolutely zero compunctions about, it’s raising money to fund their Presidential porn collections, nefarious parking-lot murder plots, and cynical seduction of “hard-working white Americans.” So it’s kind of amazing that Hillary Clinton isn’t just sending out her own goddamn fundraising letters and leaving our precious Barry and Joe out of her shameful shillery, but there you have it: Vice President-elect Joe Biden is issuing a fundraising appeal for the Secretary of State-to-be, who needs dollars to pay off the “hard-working individuals and small businesses” (read: Mark Penn and the Bilderberg Group) who helped her tour Florida and Michigan shouting about DISENFRANCHISEMENT long after she’d lost any realistic hope of winning the Democratic nomination. MORE »

Does Barack Obama have a “major league sports team owner” problem? It sure looks like it, because he has not raised nearly as much money from this crucial demographic as that other guy, John McCain. McCain has raised more than $3.2 million from major sports team owners and their families, while Barack Obama has raised only $615,000 — despite the fact that Obama is way better at basketball. Too bad Obama is too much of an elitist to relate to simple, working-class multimillionaire sports team owners. [Politico]

This is why John McCain will win the presidency: All of his exciting sex scandals happened 50 years ago, and since then he’s pretty much confined his misdoings to dull and complicated campaign finance/influence peddling bullshit that nobody cares about. We defy you to watch this very informative attack ad without falling asleep 15 times. How boring is this ad? So boring that in spite of the fact that it’s called “Tainted” we could only manufacture one tiny joke about Ralph Reed’s monstrous, world-devouring taint. Please Jesus let Vicki Iseman be knocked up with a little walnut-cheeked hellion so the DNC can make better ads. [YouTube]

We cannot give all campaign ads precious real estate on Wonkette. No, it’s not because there is too much other news to cover — in fact there is absolutely no news, at all, ever. It’s just because we have no idea these ads are coming out. Ha! Anyway we’ve taken the last four minutes to scan over John McCain’s YouTube page for any recent comical web ads. The digging effort has been, by most standards, a modest success. The video above is brand new from today and gets you pretty excited about jobs — no small task, indeed. Two others, after the jump. MORE »

Sure, Hillary Clinton’s campaign ended like $30 million in the red, but that doesn’t mean our intrepid girl candidate will have to start eating out of soup kitchens. Complicated campaign finance laws and a clever lawyer will somehow manage to spin Hillary’s stack of IOUs into mountains of cash, or at least food stamps, or free tickets to Regal Cinemas, or front-row seats to Mark Penn’s nude public flogging. [Politico]

For somebody who’s always accusing his opponents of being “out of touch” with the Working Man, John McCain sure does hang out with a lot of fat-cat plutocrats who don’t even have the decency to be American. On a recent visit to the tony U.K. — a nation populated entirely by decadent, incestuous polo players with “smart” accents and harelips — McCain attended a fundraising luncheon hosted by Lord Rothschild and Nathaniel Rothschild. The problem is, American candidates aren’t allowed to take campaign contributions from such fancy foreign nationals as the Rothschilds! But does “hosting” an event constitute a “contribution”? MORE »

So, remember how Bill Clinton left office in a flurry of pardons? And there were all kinds of allegations of family members taking money to ask for said pardons? Yeah, some scandals never die.

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San Francisco mayoral politics are bad. So bad, in fact, that actor and director Sean Penn once offered hunky-hipster attorney Matt Gonzalez $5 million to fund his war chest if he were to run as a Democrat against Mayor Gavin Newsom. MORE »

In a big huge graphic about how much money the campaigns have and how they’re spending it, the Times today gives us this little bit of David Brooksian brand identity-as-sociology. It turns out both campaigns spend a lot on really shitty coffee, but their choice of shitty coffee suppliers varies based on their party identification! The Times also tells us how much the campaigns are spending on pizza, but not where they’re getting it — but Republicans probably love Pizza Hut, while Democrats prefer the younger, hipper, equally terrible Papa John’s.

(Also, John McCain is out of money)

Where Campaign Money Goes [NYT]

* Hank Paulson carries the budget flag up to the hill, and by the end of the day is looking for an ATM to fully fund every program. [WP]
* President Bush has a sense of Morissettian irony over the Senate’s support of Gen. David Petraeus while opposing the surge. [WP]
* Luckily, Robert Gates has a back-up to the back-up plan. [LAT]
* Thanks to Walnuts, Ill Hill, and Barry Hussein the ‘08 election will likely cost over a billion dollars. [WP]
* MPAA uses actor from West Philadelphia to illustrate their blue-collar base. Patrick Leahy really liked The Queen. [NYT]
* Military wants civilian agencies to “step up” and “get ‘r done” in Iraq. [NYT]
* Which six states want to expand death penalty powers? Exactly the ones you think. [USAT]