Georgian President Saakashvili denies hiring Washington lobbyists …

President Saakashvili has strongly denied that his administration was in any kind of “lobbying relations” with Randy Scheunemann, a foreign policy advisor of the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain.

He was asked about the matter at the BBC’s HARDtalk, when President Saakashvili was speaking about the huge support Georgia had in the United States.

“We’ve been getting huge support from the U.S. administration,” he said and added that this support was coming not only from President Bush and his administration, but also from the both presidential candidates in the United States.

When saying this, an anchor, Stephen Sackur, interrupted Saakashvili and asked him: “Nobody would deny it for one second, that you have fantastic PR in Washington and many supporters, some say that partly because you spend millions of dollars on lobbying and PR in Washington not least with Mr. McCain’s chief foreign policy advisor [Randy Scheunemann], he has received lot of money in his strategy organization [Orion Strategies] from your government; so you do have PR friends, but when it comes to practicalities what have the Americans have actually done for you to stop the Russians doing what they want on your territory?”

“You’ve just sounded like Mr. Putin right now,” Saakashvili responded with smile on his face. “What millions of dollars? What lobbyist?.. We do not have millions of money to spend for anything especially for lobbying.”

Needless to say, Saakashvili had McCain’s foreign policy Scheunemann on the payroll until quite recently. And he still retains Scheunemann’s firm.

(ed.note: Special thanks to TPM Reader AR for the tip.)

The McCain camp is muscling the local press covering Trooper-Gate in Alaska.

Wow, Time’s Michael Scherer might want to dial in on the Social Security policy debate a bit more thoroughly next time. Ouch. Not pretty. (He doesn’t seem to know any of the backstory about privatization, private accounts, personal accounts, etc. … Did I mention ‘ouch’?

Ouch … (from CNN) …

Sarah Palin likes to tell voters around the country about how she “put the government checkbook online” in Alaska. On Thursday, Palin suggested she would take that same proposal to Washington.

“We’re going to do a few new things also,” she said at a rally in Cedar Rapids. “For instance, as Alaska’s governor, I put the government’s checkbook online so that people can see where their money’s going. We’ll bring that kind of transparency, that responsibility, and accountability back. We’re going to bring that back to D.C.”

There’s just one problem with proposing to put the federal checkbook online – somebody’s already done it. His name is Barack Obama.

At TPMCafe Reed Hundt, former FCC chairman, takes us through a series of charts and graphs that show some of the most troubling trends in the American economy.

He writes: “At least when Bush came in, he was dealing with a huge surplus. He frittered it away. But McCain has nothing to fritter away.”

From the Post:

Putnam Investments has closed a $12.3 billion money-market fund to limit losses to its investors, the large mutual fund company said today. The highly unusual announcement is the latest sign that tremendous financial pressures are now threatening even some of the safest kinds of investments.

The Prime Money Market Fund was open only to institutional investors. Putnam said in a statement that its board decided to close the fund last night after receiving a large number of redemption requests. The company said it could honor those requests only by selling assets at a loss, reducing the value of the remaining shares.

Putnam said it decided instead to liquidate the fund and spread any losses evenly among all the investors. “We wanted to treat all shareholders equally,” said spokeswoman Laura McNamara. She said it was “premature” to discuss how much of a loss, if any, shareholders will incur.

Did Sarah Palin really take a pay cut as mayor, as she claims?

Former Sen. George “Macaca” Allen (R-VA) will be a featured speaker at a minority outreach rally Virginia Republicans have thrown together.