When you've got John McCain, Phil Gramm and Barry White, it can't be all bad ...

A donor to Hillary Clinton's campaign says Barack Obama told her Hillary is under consideration for VP -- but Bill's presence makes things "complicated." That and other political news in today's Election Central Saturday Roundup.

Sad news this morning, as the former White House press secretary succumbs to cancer.

A run on California-based IndyMac makes it the largest American bank to fail in nearly a quarter of a century -- and second largest ever.

Late Update: TPM Reader JR express some skepticism:

It's a big story, no doubt. But the figure that it's the second largest ever is a bit misleading - it's not adjusted for inflation. The statistic is pretty much meaningless without that context.

I'd be curious to know if these comparisons are in fact based on inflation-adjusted numbers, or not, as JR suggests. So keep an eye out and let me know.

Maybe this is Newsweek merely coming back to the pack, but after showing a 15-point lead for Obama last month, the latest Newsweek poll shows a tight race: 44-41. This is hard to believe, but Obama has dropped 14 points among independents since the last poll.

Obama has a new radio ad going up -- in Virginia and Ohio, and possibly elsewhere -- hitting McCain over taxes, TPM Election Central has learned.

Former Rep. Melissa Hart (R-PA), who's running to get her seat back this year, concedes that China wasn't drilling offshore Florida in Cuban waters when she repeated the GOP's favorite myth of 2008 a few weeks ago -- but they may have started drilling since then!

The Treasury Department is telling us that media reports in Germany -- quoting Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt on Obama's possible Brandenburg Gate speech -- took his remarks out of context and out of time: He made his remarks last week before the Brandenburg Gate speech became a story and had nothing to do with the speech or Obama's planned trip to Germany.

The love that dare not speak its name ...

TPM Election Central has obtained the list of races the DCCC is planning on spending its $34 million fall TV ad buy on.

Obama reportedly raised $30 million in June.

Late Update: Not so fast, says the Obama camp, which initially refused to comment on the WSJ's $30 million report. Now it's saying the number is "way off the mark."

Here's the latest on Bush Administration efforts, as reported in the German media, to head off a huge Obama rally at the historic site in Berlin:

Indeed, Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt told the mass circulation tabloid Bild that "it would be nice if the German government would focus on strengthening its contacts to us rather than already beginning to look for our successors."

We have more at TPM Election Central.

Late Update: And more still.

Latest Update: The Treasury Department tells TPM Election Central that Kimmit's remarks were made last week and had nothing to do with the Brandenburg Gate or Obama's visit.

I'm John McCain and I do not approve this message from my top economic advisor!

Who's Obama vetting for Veep? A couple of early indicators reported today. That and the day's other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

For a few new projects we're going to be working on, we're looking for some good freelance researchers/writers. So if you're a freelancer or have a job that allows you to do some freelancing, and you've ever been interested in working with TPM, send us an email with the subject headline "TPM Research," with an introduction and resume.

To be clear, this not for a full-time job (though it could lead to one) and at the moment it's not for a specific project. But we'd like to have people's names on file to reach out to to help on particular stories.

I've been wondering about this for weeks -- especially since the May fundraising totals came out, which showed McCain and Obama roughly even for that month. Just how much money has Barack Obama been raising since the end of the primaries? After all, if he's going to bring in these astronomical sums everyone's talking about there aren't that many months left. He's got to start putting up some big, big monthly totals.

This piece in tomorrow's Post suggests that the strain of raising money to retire Clinton's debt and some continuing resistance from Clinton's donors (to give to Obama's campaign) has put the Obama machine under some pressure.

We don't know Obama's totals. And obviously having difficulties, if that's what's happening, has to be understood in the context of the massive totals they're planning on bringing in.

But one thing that has occurred to me recently is the very different tempo of small donor fundraising, or at least the sense of it I get watching from my vantage point. There are established networks for big dollar giving. It has a bit more of a command and control quality. But small dollar giving seems highly dependent on the intensity of the moment and the spikes of the campaign cycle. During the heat of the Obama-Clinton battle, giving money was one of the most direct ways supporters around the country could participate in the fight -- except when the campaign trundled into their states. And that applies to both campaigns since, by any standard other than up against Obama, Clinton's 2008 monthly numbers were astounding too.

All time is precious in a general election cycle. But in relative terms we're in a bit of a downtime now, a lull. People may support Obama every bit as much as they did in February. But my feel of the situation is that people are taking a bit of a breather. And that may not change until the conventions, which are still almost two months off.

Perhaps too, when you hear that Obama's going to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, that the sense of participation you get from sending in your $25 isn't quite as great.

I should make explicitly clear that I've made no real study of the small donor giving. These are more questions and impressions I have from my perch running TPM. But I wonder if this isn't a limitation of the small-donor model that has not been sufficiently appreciated.

Bob Schaffer, the Republican senate candidate in Colorado, helped broker a oil deal in Iraqi Kurdistan that the State Department said threatened the security of Iraq.

It's been a slow burn up until now but it seems like the McCain surrogates are finally starting to pick up steam in their efforts to brand Barack Obama as un-American. We take a closer look in today's episode of TPMtv ...

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

Did the Bush administration tell the Germans they shouldn't let Obama speak in front of the Brandenburg Gate? That's what the German press is reporting.