This morning brings the remarkable news that Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has gone to work as a part time consultant for the huge JP Morgan investment bank, at a salary estimated at a million dollars a year. 

In her victory speech last night, Hillary Clinton probably nailed the underlying reason for her remarkable comeback in New Hampshire. In the last three days, Clinton had changed her pattern, spending far more time taking questions and comments and less time delivering the same old stump speech.  

Late in December 2007, The Associated Press reporter Salah Nasrawi wrote a story about a Bin Laden audiotape that had just been released.  

The soothsayers have slaughtered the ox and are examining the gloppy entrails for signs: Rising unemployment, a falling dollar, weak consumer spending, the credit crisis, a swooning stock market.

Could there be something wrong here?

Could we actually be approaching a, god forbid, recession? To which the only sane response is: Who cares?

An incident in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday involving US warships & small, high-speed Iranian craft has served to heighten tensions in the Gulf on the eve of bushit’s departure for his first extended trip to the Middle East.  

 

In Washington on Friday protesters will be marching to the Supreme Court to call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay.  Capital cities across the world will be hosting similar events as orange clad protesters show their disapproval.  The day is the sixth anniversary of the arrival of the first of theUS' War On Terror prisoners at Guantanamo.

In Australia it's a bit more personal.  We've been imprisoning the only convict of this combination of concentration camp and kangaroo court.

In Hicks home town of Adelaide the gathering will occur at 3pm on the steps of Parliament House.  I'll see you there.

from Buzzflash ….. 

We received a memo from Liberty "Falwell" University on November 30th, signed by Jonathan Falwell, son of the recently deceased Jerry - and now overseer of the vast Liberty University/Moral Majority corporate empire. 

President Bush's senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.  

The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government, several senior administration officials said.  

Putin doesn't have a soul: Clinton 

Democratic White House hopeful Hillary Clinton joked that Russian President Vladimir Putin, as an ex-KGB agent, had no soul, in the latest swipe at Russia from the 2008 campaign trail. 

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses.

They have repeatedly violated the Constitution.

They have transgressed national and international law.

They have lied to the American people time after time.

Who needs a Ministry of Truth when we have an "independent media" that seems perfectly willing to tell us that we've always been at war with East Asia? 

I'm referring to the perfect fluidity, depending on the storyline, with which the legitimacy, or lack thereof, of the "Iraqi government" is acknowledged.  

 

2007 was an incredibly frustrating year for opponents of the seemingly endless "War on Terror," and all that it is used to justify. 

Democratic control of Congress had little impact on U.S. foreign policy and progressive lawmakers made little progress towards ending the disastrous occupation of Iraq.  

 

"Every year begins with the renewal of hope.

My hope for 2008 is for everyone to think of others; show compassion and kindness and, no matter what, always try your best."

morris dilemma

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is now fighting for its life after a shattering defeat last night in Iowa at the hands of the black senator from Illinois, Barrack Obama.

Also on life support is the candidacy of the Mormon Mitt Romney, trounced in Iowa's Republican caucuses by Mike Huckabee, the folksy and decidedly Christian former governor of Arkansas.