The Blair House is tradidionally used by the President-Elect in the lead up to the inauguration and the Obamas has asked to be moved into the Blair House earlier so their two young children could start at their new school on the first day of the new term but have since been booked into the Presidential Suite at the Hay-Adams Hotel.

Comments from various blogs have not been complimentary:

"What would possess Howard to not at least publicly offer up his stay at Blair House to Obama. Then Obama could graciously say no thank you. By keeping his reservation and being silent Howard showed himself to be not that bright of a person and one can understand how he would pal around with george in an illegal war or two.
It would not be above george to threaten Howard with not giving him the medal if he didn't stay at Blair House and it would not be below Howard to respond to the threat in the way that he did, sort of like a cowering dog. The Aussies must really be proud of their guy. Any body got a shoe." - Conrad C. Elledge

"George couldn't make this idiot stay at the hay-adams?" - Joe"no doubt Howard is receiving the honor for driving his country's currency into the abyss." - Urbuhlship

"Ah...the administration that live and died by the belief that loyalty trumped competence, clarity and every other imaginable factor-hands out a last few favors to the brown nose gang of three.
With the former prime minister of Australia getting the nod to stay in the Blair House-instead of making way for the incoming President.
How fitting. G'day-as they say-down under." - Don Duval

"Handing out medals by the dozens to his supporters is about the only thing this president seems capable of actually doing. What is the cost to the U.S. taxpayers to bring these guys to Washington so ding-dong in chief can hang a goofy medal around their necks, or pin them on their jackets, or whatever one does with them? At least the national medal budget will likely be significantly reduced after January 20th." - Bill

Almost everyone in the country is now buying and selling in foreign currency, rendering the Zimbabwe dollar almost worthless on the domestic market.

Even bank queues that characterized the daily lives of people last year are disappearing, as more people turn to using either the South African rand or U.S. dollars.

The MDC MP for Mbare Piniel Denga told us villagers in Murehwa were selling maize cobs, tomatoes and their livestock in U.S. dollars. The MP was in the area on Sunday were he bought a small dish of five mangoes for US$1. He said three tomatoes cost US$1, and five fresh maize cobs also cost US$1.

'During the festive season I was in Chivhu where people were buying beer and other drinks in foreign currency. I must admit that the use of our local currency is fast dwindling and you hardly see anyone using it anymore. For instance if you use a kombi from Glen View to the city it now costs US$1 as well, so everything has been dollarised,' Denga said.

The Mbare legislator said Zimbabweans had been forced to abandon the local currency for the simple reason that the maximum money you are allowed to withdraw can only buy one small onion.

'Go to any bank now and you hardly see anyone inside. You see few people here and there but otherwise the days of the Zimbabwe dollar are nearing their end. This is not a secret, even the government knows that people have empowered themselves and abandoned their useless dollar. We are headed for interesting times,' the MP quipped.

It costs US$20,000 to buy a foreign currency licence, which legally allows businesses to trade in forex. But with the virtually total collapse of the economy most small business can barely generate enough income to pay their staff at the end of each month. The Reserve Bank's policies, courtesy of Gideon Gono, have created a nightmare for most of these small companies and for the majority of the population who have little access to forex.

With everything now being imported companies have to pay for their inputs in forex, but if they can't afford a forex licence they legally can't sell in foreign currency. So Gono's forex police do the rounds of the shops, impounding 'illegal' foreign currency from these shops. In other words state sponsored theft.

The dollarisation has extended to school tuition with private schools setting fees in US dollars, putting education out of reach of most.

Chisipite High School in Harare is charging US$1,200 per term, and was asking pupils to bring fuel coupons worth US$300 with them on their first day of the term as a deposit.

Roxer Academy primary in Harare is charging US$800 a term, while in Bulawayo the Masiyephambili Primary School is requiring a fee of US$650.

This almost guarantees that when schools open next week they will be virtually empty. Families will be unable to send their kids to school and teachers will have no money for transport.

5.30pm: at Ramattan media office. Shelling has noticeably increased in the city in the last hours. Rumours increase that the Israeli Occupation Force will begin the land incursion tonight. We hear that a mosque in Beit Lahia has been attacked during the prayer time just past, resulting in 50 injured and maybe 10 dead. We decide to head immediately to Jabalia's Red Crescent Ambulance Operations Centre, which is a walk from F's house which the family has left.

6pm: When we arrive, there is an air of chaos and anxiety, as the ambulance workers have just finished dealing with the mosque injuries which included children. Explosions are constant and nearby. We understand that these are now coming from tanks shelling the area from the other side of the border, a new development.

7pm: Some semblance of calm has returned to the Centre but not the surroundings. A magnesium rocket (we understand this is designed to set things on fire) lands in the field beside the Centre. The explosions continue through the whole night without pause, rocking the building. We can see many people leaving the area on foot. We hear a water tank is destroyed.

7.30: Ambulances called out. We are unable to pass a huge crater in the road into which a car has already nosedived. Taking the long way round, we collect a man in traditional dress, in his 60s, from what seems to be his family farm. He is bleeding from the face and very frightened. On the way to Karmel Adwan hospital a particularly close explosion rocks the van. I mustn't have jumped enough, beacuse the driver mimes "did you hear that?" to me. I am beginning to realise Palestinians are fond of rhetorical questions, such as "how do you find Gaza at the moment?

8pm: We collect a man in his 30s from a family house in a main street. He is continually bleeding from the face near his eye and also has wounds to his hand and upper and lower legs. He has made makeshift bandages for himself. We take him to Al Awda hospital. On the way back we pick up a woman and her daughter who are in danger having gone to collect water.

8.20: Bread and tea at the Centre. Ambulances called out.

8.40: Medic worries "we are taking too long; ten minutes." However at our dangerous and darkened destination no-one arrives in response to the ambulance loudspeaker, the electricity lines are down, and smoke fills the air. The ambulances retreat, describing it as a no-go area. Immediately beside it, a peasant family of about 10 emerge from the smoke, looking bewildered. Some of the children are crying, everyone is holding tight to each other's hands. One woman is pregnant. The medics shout at them to leave the area, then decide to evacuate them in the ambulances. We drop them in the nearest town, to go god knows where.

8.55: we hear the Israeli army has crossed the border - in Rafah, in Gaza centre near Bureij camp, and here in Jabalia. We hear Israel has told the Red Cross (the communication medium) that people must evacuate to a distance of 1km in this area. I glimpse a teapot and tea but we are called out again.

9.10: We collect a young woman and an older. I am not sure what the issue is, although the younger woman appears pregnant. We deliver them to Al Awda hospital where we are given tea. H, one of the medics, tells me about his 3 children and his wife, who is very worried about him.

9.30: Back to the Centre for short period of quiet (except for the noise.) Our driver has decided he likes me because my beret reminds him of Che Guevara. He is driving with his arm in plaster.

10pm: Ambulances called out. A family of about 12 was round the fire outside their house, having no other way to cook or get warm. They were hit by a rocket and all are injured. Many ambulances converge at Karmel Adwan to transfer them to Al Shifa in Gaza city which has more resources. The wounded are pushed into one after the other. We have a young man, perhaps a teenager, whose breathing is being done for him by a medic with a handheld pump. I can't help but wonder if one of the 29 ventilators is free right now. But our driver says afterwards that he probably won't survive the night.

10.55: We leave Al Shifa to head back to the Jabalia Centre. There is coffee. Mo makes a coffee sandwich, which is just weird. There is a pause in the calls. Hassan asks me about my book, "Nature Cure"; I explain it is about an ecologist's route out of depression. "People get depressed in the West?" he asks in surprise. Understanding how implausible that must sound right now, I say that many people get caught up in a life that mainly holds work and buying stuff, and without some sort of meaning - religion, or the dream of your land being free, or something like that, people can get very lost.

"Actually Israel is trying to force us into a meaningless life like this," he says. "Like, sometimes I feel that all that really matters to me right now is a kilo of gas. I built a stove for my family and I feel like I did something amazing." The discussion becomes animated as all the medics join in, but it's in Arabic. We have a quiet stretch - again, despite the noise.

1am: This is a call to a woman in labour. V has a similar call. What a night to give birth. The stress is bringing on labour early for many women. Hassan says he should have documents for her to hand in at Al Awda, but they've not been allowed through from the West Bank for some time.

At this point I lose track of the time for a while and also get a couple of hours sleep. When I wake I find that A has come back from a grim call. The ambulances were called to the Beit Lahia Salatin area, outside the Mu'a'ia School to assist the Atar family. However the IOF forced them to turn back by dropping a bomb in front of the ambulances and shooting in front of them, so they were not able to access the wounded.

However, as they turned back, a donkey cart pulled in front of A's ambulance. On it were an older man and woman, probably the parents of the three teenage boys on the cart. One of the teenagers was attempting to shield the other two with a blanket. One of these two had a serious head wound and his eye was detached. The other had an open chest wound, and his arm was partially detached. Despite this he was conscious and shouting. A could see his lungs, one appeared punctured, and the clearly disturbed mother was patting his wounds. Back at the Jabalia Centre, A quietly described how he had assisted the medics to lift this boy off the donkey cart, and in doing so, found his hand inside the boy's body.

6am: My ambulance goes to three women, waiting in the dark street. They are young and quietly weeping. One carries a boy of about 4 years old wrapped in a blanket. His head flops back and his eyes are half open. I find myself hoping maybe he has just fainted from fright. Eventually I understand, perhaps from the weight of grief on their faces, that he is dead. We deliver them to the hospital.

6.30: several of the ambulances leave again to try again to reach the Atar family. Mine only gets a short way before rubble bursts the tire. This appears to happen nightly. While the medics try to fix it, we see a rocket strike very close to the Ambulance Centre. By the time we get back from getting spare tires, we have been told not to return to the Centre as the shooting is now right near it.

8.15: We return to evacuate the Centre as the army is now very close. People on the streets are running away. We move our base to someone's shop in a Jabalia main street. No more tea kettle or generator.

9.30: 3 ambulances attempt to reach wounded. We wait to have access co-ordinated with Israel by the Red Cross. Israel refuses.

9.45: Israel broadcasts the message all over the Gaza strip: "for your own safety, leave your homes immediately and head towards the city centre." Many people have been on the streets this past night, carrying children and bundles, and now the number increases. But there are also many people simply waiting at home, without any belief in a safe place. A rocket hits near us while the ambulances are all off. The injured man is pushed into a car, which rushes off.

10.50: We collect an old women from a farming area. She is very distressed and has a bullet wound to her upper shoulder. The medic inserts a cannula into her arm despite the bumpy road.

11.30: We go straight from the hospital to another call. As with many of our calls, locals line the way, pointing the ambulance to the correct turn. A house has just been bombed. Neighbours are frantically dragging out the wounded and the medics cram four people into our ambulance, which is meant for one. (I took some footage of this which may be available via www.palsolidarity.org later).

The stretcher place is taken by the dead body, covered in dust, of a man in his 30s. His abdomen is ruptured and damaged organs visible. His legs look as if they no longer contain bones and are twisted implausibly. One foot detaches as he is put in the ambulance. Another man, maybe older, looks to have internal injuries and might also have had injured legs, but the chaos is such that I can't clearly identify his injuries, neither can I with the man in his sixties, who is shoved into the remaining space. He is in shock, sweat covering his grey face. I helplessly stroke his cheek, wondering if he is about to stop breathing. Halfway through the journey, his eyes focus slightly. I hope not enough to realise he is crushed against a corpse. The injured boy of about 3 is held in the front seat by his father.

At Karmel Adwan hospital, a wail of grief goes up from all waiting there at this scene of disaster. They haul out the living, and we are left with the dead man. We move the ambulance away from the delivery area. Our medic strokes the man's face. "Actually, he was my friend." he tells me. "His name was Bilal Rabell." We are told that since last night 47 people are dead, 12 of them children, and more than 130 injured. These numbers are increasing as more people are found and as more die from their injuries.

3.55pm Just after I posted the above, E heard that one of the medics of the Jabalia team - Arafat - was shot and killed.

4.55pm Unconfirmed report another medic has been killed in Al Sheikh Ejleen.

On the up side, with Democrats one or two votes away from the 60 they need to stop Republican filibusters in the Senate, moderate Republicans will be heavily courted during close votes. But the down side is what happens during the next election. If a moderate Republican votes against the Democrats, they will be viewed as obstructionist by the voters and might get voted out by an increasingly democratic constituency. But if they stick with the Republicans, they face being defeated by conservative Republicans during the primary.

Thus we have the ironic situation where two consecutive election routs for the Republicans, instead of driving them toward more popular positions, has made moderates (like former Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon or Chris Shays, the formerly last remaining Republican congressman from New England) easy targets for defeat. Republican Senator Susan Collins puts it bluntly:

I would hope that the more conservative members of our caucus would take a look at these election results. It's difficult to make the argument that our candidates lost because they were not conservative enough.

But ironically, the Republican party is swinging more conservative, despite the fact that this will likely lead to more defeat.

Take the case of Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a well respected moderate Republican who is up for reelection in 2010. Pennsylvania is a state where the electorate is becoming increasingly Democratic and the unions are gaining power. The last time a pro-labor bill came up in the Senate, Specter was the only Republican who voted to bring the bill up for a vote. If he votes to end a filibuster on a future labor bill, he will hand his expected primary challenger, Pat Toomey, a powerful weapon.

Because Pennsylvania holds closed primaries, only Republicans, who are becoming more conservative, can vote during the primary. This make it harder for moderates like Specter to win Republican primaries. But since the country as a whole is swinging liberal, these more conservative Republican candidates will have a harder time in the general election.

The last presidential election made things even more difficult for the Republicans, since the drawn out Democratic primary caused many moderates to switch their registration from Republican to Democratic, in order to vote in the primary. Many of these moderates won't bother to switch back, making it even harder for moderate Republicans.

Personally, given the problem moderate Republicans will have getting reelected, and the attention that Republican Senators will get during close votes, I wouldn't be surprised if a few moderate Republicans decide that they are better off switching sides. And this will continue the vicious cycle, pushing Republicans into becoming an even more fringe party.

Political Irony is a blog for Humor and Hypocrisy from the World of Politics

The Israelis are a gifted and resourceful people who fully deserve the right to live in peace, but who seem intent on squandering every chance to allow that to happen. It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that this conflict serves the political and economic purposes of Israel so well that they have every interest in maintaining it. While there is fighting they can continue to build illegal settlements. While there is fighting they continue to receive huge quantities of military aid from the United States. And while there is fighting they can avoid looking candidly at themselves and the ruthlessness into which they are descending.

Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly...and, surprise, surprise - they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment?

Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now 'under attack' you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an accommodation.

And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland.

Suzman, who was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, fought a long and lonely battle in the South African parliament against government repression of the country's black majority and the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela Foundation chief executive Achmat Dangor said Suzman was a "great patriot and a fearless fighter against apartheid."

Suzman's daughter, Frances Jowell, said that Suzman died peacefully at her Johannesburg home. Jowell told the South African Press Association that there would be a private funeral this weekend and a public memorial service in February.

For 13 years, Suzman was the sole opposition lawmaker in South Africa's parliament, raising her voice time after time against the introduction of racist legislation by the National Party government.

After her retirement from parliament in 1989, she remained active in shaping South African society and was on the Independent Electoral Commission that oversaw the country's first multiracial elections in 1994.

She was at Mandela's side when he signed the new constitution in 1996 as South Africa's first black president. A year later, Mandela awarded her a special gold medal in honor of her contributions.

"It is a courage born of the yearning for freedom; of hatred of oppression, injustice and inequity whether the victim be oneself or another; a fortitude that draws its strength from the conviction that no person can be free while others are unfree," Mandela said at the time.

Suzman had first visited Mandela in prison on Robben Island in 1967, when she heard his grievances about prison conditions.

"It was an odd and wonderful sight to see this courageous woman peering into our cells and strolling around our courtyard. She was the first and only woman ever to grace our cells," Mandela later recalled.

"Mrs. Suzman was one of the few, if not the only, member of Parliament who took an interest in the plight of political prisoners," he said.

Suzman was born in the mining town of Germiston, east of Johannesburg, to Lithuanian-Jewish parents who had fled anti-Semitism. Her childhood was the charmed one of most whites - tennis, swimming lessons and private schooling.

When Suzman got to university, she began to speak out against the conditions under which black people were forced to live, especially the dreaded pass system that restricted their movement. Her greatest achievement was helping to ensure that the pass laws were abolished.

In 1953, she was elected to parliament for General Jan Smuts' United Party. A few years later, she helped formed the liberal democratic Progressive Party, a later reincarnation of which is still the official opposition. A snap election in 1961 devastated the party, leaving Suzman on her own until 1974. She kept her seat until her retirement in 1989.

"I had a wonderful opportunity to use the parliamentary stage to bring the world's attention to what was going on," she said in an Associated Press interview on her 90th birthday in November 2007.

Suzman's relationship with former President P.W. Botha, one of the most ruthless enforcers of apartheid laws, was one of mutual loathing. She described him as "an obnoxious bully" and said that if he were female, "he would arrive in Parliament on a broomstick," according to the Helen Suzman Foundation Web site.

Botha once referred to her as "a vicious little cat" - Suzman didn't mind as she adored animals and was surrounded by them at her home.

Suzman was bestowed with 27 honorary doctorates, including ones from Oxford, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and Cambridge universities. She was made Dame of the British Empire in 1989 - a rare honor for a foreigner.

In addition to many other titles, she said she was especially proud of being declared "Enemy of the State" by Zimbabwe's autocratic President Robert Mugabe in 2001.

At her 90th birthday, she spoke openly about her disillusionment with the lack of progress in addressing crime, unemployment and poverty in South Africa but praised the post-apartheid government for economic policy achievements,

"Masses of black people are very disappointed with lack of delivery of housing, water and sanitation," she told the AP.

Suzman prided herself for reading four newspapers every morning and championing causes close to her heart - including the decriminalization of marijuana.

"The great thing about my life is that is has never been boring - long, interesting, maddening at times but never boring," she said.