We all know it's time.  She's put up a brave - even terrifying - fight to secure the nomination, and now she has lost.

This passage from Bill Clinton's My Life, page 183, says what needs to happen now:

I was worried about how exhausted she was - she was thinner than I had ever seen her, so thin her lovely but large head seemed to be too big for her body. . . .

 Over the weekend I took her away for some rest and relaxation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  We had a great time together and I was beginning to think Hillary might actually join me in Arkansas when the inquiry was finished.

All that has changed is the context, Bill.  She is exhausted. Take her away to the infinite blending of sky, sand and sea, and point her once again toward a future different than the present where she can make a contribution in another role than the one she has pursued.

Living overseas as I do, even in a country as friendly to America as the United Kingdom, I'm sensitive to the damage done to America's reputation by the Bush administration.  

I saw the above sign this weekend for the first time, as I strolled an idyllic footpath by a canal in the English countryside.  It adorned the stern door of a narrowboat on the canal.

I googled it to see where it originated.  It is another wonderful example of the art of Banksy, fast beocming one of the most influential young artists in Europe.  

And guess what?  He doesn't like what he sees of America.  Look below for more of his art.  It is quite moving and unsettling at the same time.

Ha HA HAH!

Karma is a bitch, isn't it?  The jerk who enabled the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004 and was treasurer to the NRCC and many GOP House members has embezzled a chunk of their fighting funds!:

FBI Investigates Missing GOP Money
Hundreds of thousands of dollars are missing and presumed stolen from the chief fund-raising arm of House Republicans, according to party officials who described the findings of emergency internal audits.

The financial records of the group, the National Republican Congressional Committee, may also have been falsified for several years, Republican officials said. The campaign committees of several Republican lawmakers may also have been victims of a scam that is now under criminal investigation by the F.B.I.

The audits were ordered after the abrupt departure several weeks ago of Christopher J. Ward, who had been treasurer of the committee.

There isn't much to add.  Just smile!

The Blair project gains momentum

Financial Times: February 4 2008 19:20

Rumours grow ever stronger that Tony Blair might want to run Europe now that the ex-prime minister has stopped running the UK. The British press reports that Blair met former top aides at Davos last month to plot a pitch for the new job as a permanent president of the European Union. Up till now countries have taken turns in the chair but after the Lisbon treaty is ratified there will be one person at the top for a fixed term.

Yet opposition to a man many see as a warmonger and US stooge is already growing. European Tribune, a website run by the liberals behind the Daily Kos in the US, is starting a petition against his yet-to-be declared candidacy.

It was conceived at the weekend, and by Monday night the petition had been translated into nine languages and two website domains – including stopblair.eu – had been reserved.

"This was a spontaneous idea that caught on among readers," said Jerome Guillet, a Paris-based investment banker who prefers not to reveal his employer. (No, it is not Société Générale.)

Today's Financial Times front page article that Moody's foresees the USA losing its AAA rating instantly rang alarm bells.  For nearly a hundred years, the US Treasury has been the most creditworthy counterparty in the world, serving as the baseline against which all other credits are rated.  Losing its AAA status as a creditor would undermine all US credit markets, the US dollar as a reserve currency and the global economy more generally as heightened uncertainty shakes up all credit evaluations.

But I'm not really afraid of any of those things, because I think the Moody's report is a Bush administration ploy to attack Medicare and Social Security before Bush leaves office.  About the only way the stock market can be held up from collapse right now is if the massive cash flow from Social Security is diverted into equities and bonds.  They are going to go for it in 2008, and I fear that the corporatist Democrats in Congress will go along.

This Moody's report is just the first boulder from a trebuchet that will keep attacking the edifice of FDR's greatest legacy until a breach permits raping and looting in the Medicare and Social Security strongholds.

Two striking headlines this morning show that the US economic model is losing what shreds of credibility it might once have had:

Oil Min: Iran Has Halted Oil Transactions In Dollars

China central bank raises bank reserve ratio by 1 percentage point

And the very ironic headline from FT AlphaVillle yesterday:

Bush supsends capitalism, stocks soar!

If Bush administration laxity and lawlessness needed confirmation, the Bush (Goldman Sachs) bailout plan did the trick.  Despite accelerating inflation, the US Fed and Treasury are determined to undermine the dollar by cutting interest rates on one hand (screwing all those deluded enough to hold dollar reserves or save prudently) and re-writing contracts unilaterally on the other (with tax breaks and taxpayer liability to follow).  

Jeb Bush was one of 3 people managing the investments of the Florida State Board of Administration.  The SBA runs an investment pool of municipalities' cash and also the state's $170 billion pension fund. The SBA administrator appointed by Jeb is Coleman Stipanovich, brother of J.M. "Mac" Stipanovich who managed Jeb's campaign for governor and advises Katherine Harris.  

The SBA investment pool is now frozen after $10 billion was withdrawn, and what's left is financial toxic waste.  Hundreds of Florida cities, counties, school districts and fire departments are at risk of defaulting on salaries over a payroll weekend.  

No salaries means no Christmas for Florida's civil servants.  Thanks Jeb!

Below I go into the reasons to think that Jeb might have used the SBA to loot the municipalities and pensions of Florida on behalf of cronies for over $1.2 billion.  

And its spiral ever lower is accelerating.

From FT Alphaville:

We’ve posted this before - but as the ailing US currency drops through $1.47 against the euro and $2.10 against sterling, it merits a second (and updated) airing.

The chart comes from Sempra Metals, who make a couple of additional points:

   * The US dollar has now lost more than a third of its value (-35%) against a basket of major currencies since Feb 2002.
   * The decline is accelerating. The USD has shed 2.5% of its value in the last year, 3.5% in the last month, and 1.5% in the last week alone.

The impetus for this morning's fall was comments overnight indicating that China might further diversify its reserves away from the US dollar.

It didn't help that supermodel Gisele Bündchen now refuses to be paid in dollars!

Yes, it was Guy Fawkes Night.  This special holiday in Britain celebrates terrorism against the government and promotes the burning of Catholic effigies on bonfires.  

On November 5, 1605, an English Catholic named Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the House of Lords and King James I and all his family.  He was caught with kegs of gunpowder ready to light the fuse.  Having been betrayed by a confederate, Fawkes was arrested, tried and hung in 1606.  

Imagine that!  They gave a terrorist caught red-handed trying to murder the king a trial!

Okay, they also tortured Fawkes.  But by authorising the torture the King became hated as a tyrant and raised public sympathy for those tortured as martyrs.

Fawkes now ranks 30th on the list of 100 greatest Britons and is regarded as "the only man to ever enter Parliament with honorable intentions."

Americans would also burn Catholics on November 5th if it weren't for George Washington's passionate determination to foster religious tolerance in the young republic.

Iran has been gradually moving away from the dollar ever since sanctions were imposed.  It accelerated its efforts this year, informing its biggest clients that from September it would require payment in euro or yen.  As of today, 85 percent of Iran's oil is sold in currencies other than the US dollar.

Seyed Mohammad Khatibi, vice president of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), said at present 65 pct of oil sales are made in euros and 20 pct in yen.

"Only 15 pct of oil sales are made in dollars and we are progressively replacing this with more credible currencies," he added.

The value of the US dollar has fallen some 30-25 pct since 2004, he said, and "keeping capital in dollars means a significant fall in the value of our assets".

"We have therefore decided to replace the dollar with other currencies," he said.

The difficulty for the United States is that Mr Khatibi is acting in a completely sensible, rational manner - and others are likely to follow his lead.  

I just watched my last episode of CSI.  I sort of went off it about a year ago when I realised each episode was stoking fear.  Fear that if you have sex you'll be killed.  Fear that if you live in the suburbs you'll be killed.  Fear that if you enjoy swimming you'll be killed.  Fear.

Tonight I was afraid.  At the end when the suspect is confronted with having killed a former gang member he is told, "Under the Patriot Act this is your last hour of freedom.  What do you want to do?"  Cut to a scene of a little girl being reassured that she won't have to testify in court, that there is no need for a trial because the suspect will be sent away "for life for sedition".

Ah!  Happy ending!  They got the bad guys, right?  Wrong.  The bad guys got us.

Will the word 'holocaust' be used to describe the deaths of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of Iranians targeted for extermination by the Bush administration and the American military?  Perhaps.  

The term holocaust originally derived from the Greek word holókauston, meaning a "completely (holos) burnt (kaustos)" sacrificial offering to a god.

Strikes on 1,200 targets and post-attack foreseeable dislocations will kill millions of innocent men, women and children across Iran in a burnt offering to the American Christianist god.

Other parallels with last century's holocausts abound.  In particular, the Iranians have been the victims of an orchestrated campaign of hate-mongering propaganda in American media and intellectual circles as a prelude to justifying violence.

These Bible Action Figures have me wondering something I've wondered for a while.  Why wasn't Jesus a chick?  Even if you buy the whole Holy Ghost impregnation schtick and Virgin Mary stuff, you've got to wonder.  If Jesus only had one human parent - Mary - then he should have been female with identical DNA to Mary.  So why wasn't Jesus a chick?

And why were Joseph and Mary travelling alone to Bethlehem for the supposed census (which no Roman historical record supports)?  If they were descendants of David (and what a stupid way to hold a census) then so were their whole families too.  Anyone who has ever lived in the Middle East knows that nothing - but nothing - happens with less than 10 relatives around - certainly not a romantic road trip.  

You arrive at the Red Sea beach at 4 a.m. for the sunrise.  You spread your towel on deserted sands above the waterline.  I guaran-damn-tee you that within five minutes a station wagon with 14 relatives pulls up and unloads the family who spread their towels adjacent to yours.

We celebrate here today in Britain.  We celebrate constitutional accountability for government.

The Brown cabinet is dull, capable and accountable.  In response to the terrorist car bombs, Brown is urging caution, calm, tolerance and divestiture of executive power.

And we celebrate freedom as the Palestinian hard liners release Alan Johnston, a hostage for 114 days.

We celebrate unity, as Islam and Britons, one and the same, embrace peace and security.

Oh yeah.  We celebrate ridding ourselves of a troublesome colony.

Tomorrow we wave the flag.  Today let's look at the reality of how America is perceived.

The latest FT Harris Survey makes disturbing reading for those still delusional enough to think the USA's conduct in the world is promoting freedom and security and earning international gratitude and respect.

Europeans consistently regard the US as the biggest threat to world stability, a new poll reveals on Monday.

A survey carried out in June by Harris Research for the Financial Times shows that 32 per cent of respondents in five European countries regard the US as a bigger threat than any other state.

In the US itself, North Korea and Iran are seen as the biggest risks. However, the youngest US respondents share the Europeans’ view that theirs is the biggest threat, with 35 per cent of American 16- to 24-year-olds identifying it as the chief danger to stability.

Brer Putin done put a Iranian Tar-Baby in the road.  He gonna lay low and watch Brer Dubya punch his way into the quagmire.

The Tar-Baby
"‘Ef you don’t take off dat hat en tell me howdy, I’m gwine ter bus’ you wide open,’ sezee.

"Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

"Brer Rabbit keep on axin’ ’im, en de Tar-Baby, she keep on sayin’ nothin’, twel present’y Brer Rabbit draw back wid his fis’, he did, en blip he tuck ’er side er de head. Right dar’s whar he broke his merlasses jug. His fis’ stuck, en he can’t pull loose. De tar hilt ’im. But Tar-Baby, she stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

"‘Ef you don’t lemme loose, I’ll knock you agin,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, en wid dat he fotch ’er a wipe wid de udder han’, en dat stuck. Tar-Baby, she ain’y sayin’ nuthin’, en Brer Fox, he lay low.

Old CIA hands like Bush 41 and Robert Gates had a problem in the early 1980s.  Congress had outlawed CIA funded deathsquads, assassinations, false flag operations and other methods beloved of black ops specialists.  

What to do?  Go to your closest ally, Britain, whose like-minded leader, Thatcher, will help you set up an arrangement for plausible deniability.  Go to your favorite like-minded Saudi intelligence thug Prince Bandar to act as procurement agent and bagman for the terrorist cells, assassinations, deathsquads, false flag operations and coups you want engineered.

Wrap the project up as the Al-Yamamah contract to sell jet fighters from near-bankrupt UK defense company BAe (formerly British Aerospace) to Saudi Arabia with kickbacks to accounts of Bandar for spending on black ops worldwide.  Then give BAe lots of Pentagon contracts to fund the process.

Voila!  You can start funding Saddam, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, the Nicaraguan Contras and other pet projects with no fingerprints!

The BBC reports that Saudi Prince Bandar - known to Dubya as "Bandar Bush" - was the recipient of maybe $2 billion dollars in bribes payments from BAe, the UK's biggest arms manufacturer, under secret deals over more than a decade.

The Thatcher government agreed the kickbacks payments.  Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith halted a criminal probe in December 2006 for "national security".

The funds were paid to two Saudi embassy accounts with Riggs Bank (later busted for money laundering) used by Bandar for his own expenses and other mysterious purposes.  Presumably embassy accounts were free of official scrutiny, money laundering reports and taxation.

Note that Charles Powell, private secretary to Thatcher, negotiated the secret deals.  I wonder if Jonathan Powell, his brother who is chief of staff to Blair, might have helped cover them up.