What is wrong with this Sonia Sotomayor, that she is not sitting on a fat pile of cash like most upstanding citizens? Her financial disclosure forms suggest she’s got in the neighborhood of $100,000 socked away, which is not terribly impressive for a fancy judge who has had her fancy judging job for a while. MORE »

If you’re not a poor like 78 percent of Wonkette readers, then you might be interested in taking Chef Danielle Turner’s new food styling classes. For $100, you can learn how to arrange and garnish your food in such a way that will turn your PB&J or Lean Cuisines or whatever into works of art. MORE »

Garbage queen Sarah Palin outraged all of America with her extravagant purchases of royal garments during her short, embarrassing reign as a vice presidential candidate. OK to be fair Sarah Palin did not actually buy the clothes; that was the fault of the evil Republican National Committee, who wanted to make her look like a spendy fashion whore who delighted in wasting people’s campaign contributions on fancy designer suits she never wore while jabbering endlessly about old-fashioned American values. The point is, all these clothes are now sitting in trash bags at RNC headquarters in Washington, which is a National Shame. MORE »

MONEYLAND: “The new top three [richest U.S. counties] are now Loudon County, Virginia; Fairfax County, Virginia; and Howard County, Maryland. All three are suburbs or exurbs of Washington, D.C. In 2000, 14 of the 100 richest counties were in the Washington, D.C., area. In 2007, it was nine of the richest 20.” [Reason]

The Federal Reserve this afternoon is expected to cut the fed funds rate from 1% to .5%, a modern record. The government is printing more money than you can shake a stick at, all night, every night, to give to financial companies. This should be an incredibly sexy time to make LOANS. Overnight loans, car loans, Truck Nutz loans, who cares, loans loans loans, free money! The only problem is that we’ve developed a terrorist’s mindset in which the American economy, as a whole, has become the enemy. MORE »

The Dow Jones fell 679 points today, since it’s been a full six days since Paulson last introduced a new multi-hundred billion dollar loan or loan guarantee program, and everyone on Wall Street is a child: “The day’s news reminded investors, who last week were buying on a burst of optimism, that the economy is still in serious trouble. And at midday, Wall Street had confirmation of what everyone has suspected for months, that the nation is indeed in a recession.” They just wanted to be sure, for the 80th time, that the economy was indeed contracting, and then it was SELL SELL SELL. MORE »

Here is something weird, and thank you, First Read, for pointing this out recently: the press has already found out the identity of like half of the future Obama cabinet. And yet we have no idea who’s being vetted to fill one of the most important positions of all — Treasury Secretary. What is up with that HMMM? Will it be the kindly ancient giant Paul Volcker? The stouthearted Kansan Republican Sheila Bair? The repellent NAFTA whore Larry Summers? Nobody knows — or at least, nobody’s telling! Our prediction: Ron Paul, who will unleash a “money bomb” on the United States economy in February of 2009 and then sell us to the nation of Galt’s Gulch for 50 Ameros. [Washington Post]

Here’s a frightening math chart from the mathies at Calculated Risk putting that record 2.8% October retail sales decline in perspective. (As if a record drop in consumer spending needed more perspective!) Sales are down 8.8% on a year-over-year basis, which may just strike you as, “bah, some dumb number,” but this graph shows that that is what we call a “free fall.” MORE »

Let’s quickly recap the weird history of the Clintons and Barack Obama. Bill Clinton was the first black president, and then Hillary Clinton was going to be the second black president. Barack Obama came along and decided he should be the second/first black president, and Hillary Clinton spent millions and millions of dollars running against him. After she dropped out of the race, she campaigned tirelessly for the same person she had campaigned against, maybe sorta kinda hoping he would help with her campaign debt, but nope, Obama and his people aren’t helping at all. This is just a “mild annoyance” for her, that he won’t help her raise nearly $8 million she still owes to Mark Penn. MORE »

Money and numbers dorks are all excited this morning, speculating about who Barack Obama might select for the most thankless job in America. Will it be Larry Summers, again? Your editor would kind of like to see the very competent FDIC chairman and level-headed Kansan Sheila Bair get the post, but that’s mostly because Bair was so great on Charlie Rose that one time and Warren Buffett likes her. [Bloomberg]

Did you know that some Christian dingbat has dubbed today the “Day of Prayer for the World’s Economies?” Well here they are, at the Wall Street bull statue thing, praying to Jesus for money. The dingbat has explained, “We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the ‘Lion’s Market,’ or God’s control over the economic systems.” Don’t they know that God taking over the economic systems would be SOCIALISM from SPACE? Also: God will be very mad that they are worshiping a bronze idol here, since his second commandment PROHIBITS THAT, duh? Thank you Wonkette operative “Dan the Man” for the sexy photo. [CBN]
UPDATE: We have more terrifying photos of this idolatry, plus frightening video!