LOSING CANDIDATE for US President

LOSING CANDIDATE for US President, John McCain is offering you - yes, you! - the chance to finish your Christmas shopping with a tech bargain, courtesy of his failed political campaign.

McCain's campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia is flogging off the leftover kit that it bought with the millions of dollars in taxpayers dosh that funded his bid for the Presidency. We can't help but wonder if the cash should go back to the taxpayers, rather than to the McCain camp, but will leave others better versed in the intricacies of American campaign finance to debate that one.

Regardless, an email sent out by McCain operative Andrew Freeman to campaign staff and volunteers pitched the clearance sale as the chance to "Own a piece of history".

Blackberries, desktops and laptops are all on the chopping block, and the campaign will even accept credit cards.

Want a Blackberry 8700? 30 bucks will do the trick. A 4-gang power strip? That can be yours for just a dollar. A dollar will also get you a pound-weight of ethernet cables, should you so require.

Unfortunately, not everything on offer is a bargain. At $570, there are better machines available new than a second-hand Dell Latitude D820, unless you can pick one up with some campaign data left intact, in which case we suspect it would be worth a pretty penny.
The irony, of course, is that John McCain himself is a famed luddite, once telling reporters that he was internet "illiterate". Although McCain freely admitted that he had "Never felt the particular need to email", it seems that hawking email devices to staffers is now a crucial part of his campaign debt retirement strategy. Or just retirement strategy