The failure of the bailout bill and the ensuing stock plummet on Wall Street means the normal daily flow of stories related to John McCain’s fundraising and lobbying connections has slowed a bit. But there were a couple items we’d like to point out:

Not long after criticizing Barack Obama for doing a Hollywood fundraiser with Barbra Streisand, McCain is doing the same thing (well, minus Babs). Of note: Attendees who shell out $2,500 get… a lapel pin.

Also, Barack Obama may have tapped into an unintentional (but profitable) benefit of his plan to invest in green technology: Bloomberg notes that his plans have won the attention of “cleantech” venture capitalists who aren’t known for political activism. But they’ve latched onto Obama, and some of them have bundled over $500,000 in contributions for the Democratic nominee. Of course, it should come as no surprise that “Tech leaders will expect a return on their investment should Obama win on Nov. 4.”

The latest chapter in the story of Freddie Mac and John McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, came out this weekend, from Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Holly Bailey: The McCain camp claims that Davis separated from his firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006. Yet the McCain campaign started paying the firm $20,000 a month when Davis came on board, suggesting the ties hadn’t been severed at all.

This weekend, The New York Times published a lengthy report by Jo Becker and Don Van Natta Jr. on McCain’s ties to the gambling industry, especially Indian gambling. It touches on McCain’s investigation into now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff, saying that “McCain and a circle of allies — lobbyists, lawyers and senior strategists — also seized on the case for its opportunities,” including the chance at some revenge on the people who helped sink McCain’s 2000 bid for the GOP nomination.

Finally, the AP’s Brett J. Blackledge reports that McCain’s VP pick, Sarah Palin, looks into the favors and special treatment Palin received as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska – the latest in a series of reports that run against her reformer image. The list includes everything from winning a zoning exemption to help her sell her house to allowing a friend to speak before the city council… so he could ask for advertising business for his radio station.

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Even as bailout negotiations dominate the news, it looks like some reporters are still examining John McCain’s VP pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, with a microscope. Today, The Washington Post’s James Grimaldi and Robert O’Harrow Jr. report that Palin has accepted $25,367 in gifts as governor, despite making such practices a key part of her ethics reform agenda.

Of note: “About a quarter of the entities bestowing gifts on the governor are represented by one of Alaska’s most influential mining lobbyists who said in an interview that she was not involved in the tributes.”

Also covering Palin, The New York Times’ Michael Luo notes her disappearance from the campaign trail – turns out the campaign needs her more to draw people to McCain rallies.

In charting McCain’s “suspended campaign,” NPR notes that McCain saying he’s abandoning fundraising isn’t a meaningful gesture – the campaign itself is required to rely on $84 million in public financing. But the RNC can raise money, and hasn’t indicated it’s going to stop doing so.

And even then, it appears top campaign officials are still hob-nobbing with donors. National Journal’s Peter Stone notes that campaign manager Rick Davis did just that in meeting with “a dozen top Nw York-based fundraisers” after McCain announced the suspension. (The AP has more on how the suspension is more of a slight slow-down.)

And speaking of Davis – who, we learned this week, was helping his firm pull in money from Freddie Mac as recently as last month, and who appears to still be listed as an official at the firm, despite claiming to have severed all ties – there are now questions being raised about payments the McCain campaign made to Davis’ firm, after they claim Davis no longer worked there. Then what’s that money going toward?

Finally, the Wall Street Journal reports more bad news for, well, Wall Street: Since becoming “the campaign season’s favorite political piñata,” all those contributions they made to Barack Obama and McCain are looking like yet another bad investment.

John McCain may have suspended his campaign, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped the flow of stories about his money and his ties to lobbyists, especially one day after the New York Times/AP/Newsweek revelation that campaign manager Rick Davis’ firm took in money as recently as last month from scandal-plagued mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

The Los Angeles Times’ Stephen Braun writes that McCain’s image as a reformer has taken a hit due to Davis’ Freddie Mac ties.

Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, one of the reporters to break the Davis/Freddie story, explores the McCain campaign’s contention that Davis never profited from the arrangement and had severed all ties with his old firm, Davis Manafort. But, Isikoff reports, “Davis was still listed as one of only two corporate officers and directors of the firm” as of April of this year.

AP’s Pete Yost describes Freddie Mac’s relationship with Davis as “access insurance.” Yost also goes on to note that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae both had an extensive bipartisan lobbying operation that ensured any reforms were “buried under a cascade of dollars that went to both Democrats and Republicans.” (This point is echoed by a Wall Street Journal blog post that goes into the complicated web of Fannie and Freddie’s influence.)

In other news, The Washington Times’ Jim McElhatton notes that while McCain declared a war on earmarks this campaign, some of his top congressional bundlers appear to be big fans of them. And an LA Times blog post notes the highlights of a New England Journal of Medicine article on “the millions of dollars making their way to the campaign coffers of both parties and both presidential candidates.”

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Dominating the headlines this morning is a New York Times report about McCain campaign manager and lobbyist Rick Davis’ ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. No, this is not a repeat. While the Times’ original reporting had Davis on the mortgage giants’ payroll until 2005, the new report finds that, after that arrangement ended, Davis’ firm received $15,000 a month from Freddie Mac until last month – when a federal takeover brought its lobbying to an end.

While the money went to Davis’ firm, it was really all about Davis himself, and his closeness to John McCain: “No one at Davis & Manafort other than Mr. Davis was involved in efforts on Freddie Mac’s behalf, the people familiar with the arrangement said.”

As recently as Sunday, McCain had claimed Davis’ connection to Freddie Mac ended years ago.

Davis isn’t the only one of McCain’s Lobbyists under the microscope. The Chicago Tribune’s Andrew Zajac has been taking an exhaustive look at Charlie Black’s ties to a Russian think tank with ties to Vladimir Putin – here’s his latest report.

A key line in Zajac’s piece quietly attacks the McCain camp’s assertion that since Black, Davis and company are former lobbyists, there’s nothing wrong with their influential campaign positions: “It beggars belief that his retirement marks a departure from the Washington influence business for Black, since he retains other business interests at the juncture of the private sector and the federal government and he remains a prince of the capital’s permanent government.

Meanwhile, the New York Times’ Michael Luo looks at the work of bundlers who once backed Hillary Clinton and their efforts to do the same for Barack Obama, even as some of those donors are feeling the impact of the recent market meltdown.

Hot on the heels of a new Obama ad on McCain’s support of insurance companies headquartered in Bermuda, the Wall Street Journal’s T.W. Farnam notes the financial support those firms have given McCain: “A few months after Sen. McCain’s visit there, top insurance executives held a fund-raiser on the island that netted an estimated $50,000. Since then, Sen. McCain has raised an additional $70,000 from employees of Bermudan insurers. Sen. Obama, in contrast, has gotten $12,500 in total from employees of those companies.”

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Barack Obama’s ad hitting John McCain for owning 13 cars – three of them foreign-made – is getting a lot of press in Michigan and elsewhere today.

But some Campaign Money Watch research – picked up by The Huffington Post – shows an even deeper connection between McCain and foreign auto makers: his lobbyist aides have made $2.4 million in lobbying fees helping them enact their agenda in Washington.

The story has all the details, but David Donnelly sums it up nicely: “When John McCain tells Michigan voters that their jobs aren’t coming back, he’s apparently speaking with inside information. He is receiving fundraising help and advice from a half dozen lobbyists who have also made millions working for foreign car manufacturers.”

John McCain’s extensive ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to provide fodder for the media today. Bloomberg’s Jonathan D. Salant reports today that the head of McCain’s presidential transition team, William Timmons, is founder and former chairman of a firm that lobbied for Freddie Mac as recently as this month, when the mortgage giants’ lobbying operations were shut down in a government takeover. The firm took in $260,000 this year.

McCain’s biggest fundraising draw – VP pick Sarah Palin – is skipping the fundraising circuit for awhile to focus on her upcoming debate with Joe Biden, along with traveling with McCain and boosting attendance at his events, according to Politico’s Jonathan Martin.

Speaking of the fundraising circuit, the Wall Street Journal’s Nick Timiraos reports on the “delicate balancing act” Barack Obama faces as he criticizes Wall Street’s excesses while also, due to his decision to forego public financing, having to spend his evenings soliciting donations from wealthy Democrats.

Those of you with a head for statistics will appreciate an analysis by MSNBC’s Bill Dedman of presidential fundraising in battleground counties – Obama leads the way in most of them.

Finally, Newsweek’s Andrew Romano looks at McCain’s “boomerang problem” – when his accusations about Obama’s ties to lobbyists (among other things) backfire.

This morning The New York Times plays what might be the trump card in the debate over which candidate, John McCain or Barack Obama, is more tied to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: McCain campaign manager Rick Davis’ firm was paid $30,000 a month for five years (2000-05) by the mortgage giants “to defend them against stricter regulations,” the paper’s David D. Kirkpatrick and Charles Duhgg report.

Among the highlights: Democrats and Republicans both say Davis’ value was based on his “closeness to Senator McCain and the possibility that Senator McCain was going to run for president again,” according to a former Fannie Mae spokesman. Yet he also said Davis “didn’t really do anything.”

The L.A. Times’ Dan Morain reports on the details of Obama and McCain’s August fundraising. Worthy of note: Of Obama’s $66 million raised, $22 million was in small contributions. While that’s a decent percentage, it’s way down from what we saw during the heat of the primaries – a fact that underscores big money’s continuing importance to both parties. (The Chicago Tribune has more details about Obama’s fundraising obligations.)

The Wall Street bundlers for both John McCain and Barack Obama are suddenly in the media spotlight as the markets continue their wild ride this week. At least three outlets – The Boston Globe, The Chicago Sun-Times and The Tribune Co. – latched onto news yesterday from the Center for Responsive Politics (also our source for money in politics data) detailing both candidates’ reliance on Wall Street bundlers.

The summary: McCain’s 69 Wall Street bundlers have raised $11..4 million, making the industry his top source of bundled cash. The names include people associated with (in)famous firms like Merrill Lynch (including CEO John Thain), Lehman Brothers, and the former Bear Stearns.

Obama’s list includes executive of Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. CRP had a harder time coming up with figures for Obama because apparently the Democrat is less forthcoming about his bundlers’ occupations and employers.

Not surprisingly, The Wall Street Journal has taken a keen interest in the candidates’ connections to the banking, investment and financial services industries. Today Elizabeth Williamson reports on how both McCain and Obama advisors have been reaching out to lobbyists for guidance on their proposals to help find a way out of the current upheaval.

Meanwhile, John McCain’s most surefire fundraiser – VP pick Sarah Palin – canceled a round of California fundraisers scheduled for next week in order to meet-and-greet with foreign dignitaries at the United Nations. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci writes that “Palin’s pullout raises speculation that the GOP ticket, which has insisted it will compete here, may be reassessing its presence in the Golden State.” That said, we have a feeling the state’s status as an ATM for the GOP is still on solid ground.

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While the world waits to see how the American markets will respond today to the financial upheaval that’s dominated the news, Mother Jones has taken a look at the Wall Street lobbyists that are connected with John McCain’s campaign – all 83 of them.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at “hob-nobbing” fundraisers held by both McCain and Barack Obama – McCain in Miami and Obama in Beverly Hills. While both campaigns claim such events don’t sell “access” because they only provide fleeting moments with the candidate, some of them go well beyond a “grip and grin” and offer rounds of golf – 4 hours of “non-access.”

Of course, big-money donors live in places other than trendy Miami and glitzy Beverly Hills, as McCain’s VP pick, Sarah Palin, found out while making a fundraising swing through Ohio, raising more than she spent during her entire 2006 gubernatorial campaign.

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