Obama is dishonest about most things, and always has been. But his dishonesty regarding the Surge is probably the most revolting aspect of his campaign.

This is what Obama says he said pre-Surge. "Now, I had no doubt -- and I said at the time, when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, if we place 30,000 more troops in there, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence."

This is what Obama ACTUALLY said pre-Surge. "I have to say that it is a chilling prospect, the notion that we would send tens of thousands of additional American young men and women to compound the tragic mistake that has already been made over the last four years."

At least he admits he opposed the Surge. Which is why he cannot now have the honesty to admit the Surge is working. Where would the Prophet's Judgment be then?

But the TRUTH IS --

The Surge Is Working. Progress is being made. Violence is down, political reconciliation is occurring at the local level and oil revenues are being equitably distributed.

The Surge Is Working. This is not some Right Wing talking point, it is the consensus of every neutral observer. AND, may I remind my fellow Americans, and especially my fellow Democrats, we should WANT the Surge to work. It's good for our country.

The Surge Is Working. Because remember, when we say "The Surge", we are not talking about some amorphous, ethereal policy like the Fair Tax, we are talking about the blood, sweat and tears of America's best, brightest and bravest.

The Surge Is Working because American Soldiers are making it work. Brian Baird had the honesty to admit that. Jack Murtha has the honesty to admit that.

Barack Obama is not honest enough to admit that. In fact, in his world, the Surge is not only NOT working, but what IS working is not because of American Soldiers, but because of Rahm Emanuel.

This is what Obama says post-Succesful Surge. "I would point out that much of that violence has been reduced because there was an agreement with tribes in Anbar province -- Sunni tribes -- who started to see, after the Democrats were elected in 2006, you know what, the Americans may be leaving soon, and we are going to be left very vulnerable to the Shi'as. We should start negotiating now. That's how you change behavior."

This is dishonest, disingenuous, and insulting to the American men and women in uniform. The Sunni tribes joined with us out of disgust with Al-Qaeda and the Insurgents. Finding dozens of decapitated bodies in your front yard every morning will do that. They are working with is, they are on our side, they are taking great risks alongside our Armed Forces and they deserve credit for their bravery, not some mocking ridicule from an unworthy pretender.

And "this is how you change behavior?" You threaten genocide and civil war? What kind of man is this? Is this really the judgment he trumpets as evidence of his worthiness to be President?

At some point, we as Democrats are going to have to confront the fact that the American Armed Forces are our friends, and that their success is not our defeat. Going out of our way to deny the progress they have made and to denigrate their efforts is going to backfire.

A couple months ago, a friend of mine named Allen Greka was killed in Iraq. He was Surged into Baghdad. Don't tell me he didn't succeed and don't tell me that his success really belongs to the Democratic Congress. It belongs to him, and his buddies and the rest of our Armed Forces, not to any politician or political party.

And if this is Obama's strategy for success, to deny every success, ignore every sacrifice and spin every victory as defeat so as to uphold the prescience, prophesy and potency of his judgment, he will not only lose the election, but the respect of anyone who believes at all in the ideal of America.

Over the last 10 days, we have seen Democrats at their worst.

Not because we are racist, or sexist.

Because we are ninnies. No better word. Absolute ninnies.
NEWSFLASH!!!

Obama is black. LOOK AT HIM!!! He's black. So why shouldn't he play the race card? Race is part of who he is, it's part of who he isn't, and there is political capital in white guilt. Fact. If playing the race card helps him win, he should play the goddamn race card.

NEWSFLASH!!!

Hillary is a woman. LOOK AT HER!!! Not that she's been in Playboy or anything where we could verify beyond dispute, but I'm 99% sure she's a woman. Gender is part of who she is, who she isn't, and there is political capital in suppressed male chauvinism. Fact. If playing the gender card helps her win, she should play the goddamn gender card.

Jesus Christ, can we grow up here? I am for Hillary. I am a man. Yes, I support Hillary because she is a woman, but I support this woman because she is Hillary. Either way, I can't deny it's one of things that appeals to me. The same way I can't deny that one of the reasons I raised money for Harold Ford Jr. is because he's black (he is also a graduate of U-M Law, my alma mater). The GOP played the race card against him. He should have played the damn thing back.

This is politics. Do what you need to do to win. Obama didn't have any problem leaking Hull's divorce papers or the Ryan's child custody dispute records. Obama destroyed the reputation of two men for political gain. You think he should suddenly stop at the river's edge of race? What the hell for? If he wasn't nobody'd give a damn about him.

How many people has Hillary slapped around? She kept JFK Jr. out the 2000 Senate race using God Knows What? You think she should suddenly play nice cause she's a woman? What the hell for? If she was a man, nobody'd give a damn about him.

THESE ARE POLITICIANS!!! Let them politic. Hillary's only goal is to win. Obama's only goal is to win.

And HOW doesn't matter.

John McCain once said that he wanted to be President in the best way, not the worst. Then he went back to the Senate, passed out 99 bottles of beer and they all laughed their asses off.

As people here know, I am for Hillary, can't stand Obama and don't like Edwards. That said, I am going to stand up for Edwards this morning.

What John Kerry is doing endorsing Obama proves again what we all figured out in 2004, and reinforces why people can't stand the guy. Kerry is a self-serving, self-righteous, petty little bastard with an inflated view of his own importance, who thinks he can step in and play kingmaker on Obama's behalf, when really, all he's doing is taking a petty shot at Edwards.

This is not like Gore/Lieberman. Gore had a legitimate reason to break with Lieberman, the war in Iraq. Kerry doesn't. He and Edwards voted the same, they think the same. This is just a petty dispute stemming from Kerry's refusal to accept that he was the single most awful nominee from either party in my lifetime who screwed up his only chance at the White House. In an effort to pass some of that blame onto Edwards, he endorses Obama.

And there is no reason to do it. Kerry doesn't have the cache to make Hillary people or undecideds stop and say, "Wow, Kerry endorsed Obama? Then Obama is my guy!" Obama has raised tons more money than Kerry has and probably has a bigger and better fundraising list. Endorsing Obama doesn't do anything for Obama, it doesn't do anything against Hillary, I think the overwhelming majority of Edwards people are sold on their guy on his merits, not Kerry's choosing him as VP four years ago. The only thing it does, in my mind, is make Kerry look like the jerk we all knew he was four years ago.

Personally, I don't think tomorrow is going to be as bad as most people think for Hillary. I think Obama will win, but not by as much as people think. I think a lot of independents who say they will vote for Obama will end up voting for McCain.

But regardless of what happens, Hillary should stay in. This "don't destroy your legacy or standing in the Senate" nonsense is crap. Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada do not a nomination make.

Hillary will have 2 weeks to make the case against Obama, and let's face it. It's a pretty damn good case.

Obama is --

A hypocrite who is against lobbyists, except the one's running his campaign.

A liar who denies said lobbyists are running his campaign.

A fraud, whose "lobbying reform" has as much teeth as a newborn baby.

A freak who voted to let said newborn die while the doctors John Edwards would later sue are forced to stand around and watch.

An anti-gun nut who voted to prevent law abiding Americans from defending themselves with a handgun against intruders in their homes and supports a prohibition on the manufacture and possession of handguns.

A coward, who has no problem voting present when the issue is controversial, or not voting at all, when the issue is vital to national security.

And Obama is not polling well among the elderly or working class white Americans, which will make a big proportion of the Feb 5th electorate.

People who support Obama are supporting the message, as meaningless, vacuous and empty as it is. The press has been criminally derelict in informing the American people about who he really is.

Give Hillary, and a guilt ridden press corps in love with a continuing horse race, time to introduce America to the normal, run of the mill, extremely liberal urban machine politician we know Obama to be, and then let's see what Americans think of the man.

And at the very least, if Obama is going to be the nominee, better Democrats vet the guy before the Republicans do.

Am I the only one who is surprised that Barack Obama actually finished Law School?

I mean, the way he talks now, I'd have figured he knew everything there was to know a third of the way in and would have demanded to be graduated after one year, lest the next two make him cynical about the legal profession.

For those of you contemplating the ludicrous notion that any Democrat will beat any Republican, or that Bush fatigue, Iraq, or any other nonsense will propel an inevitable Democratic Sweep, I want to introduce you to a new and darling creature.

The McCain Democrat.

Who is (s)he?

They are the people who swept John McCain to the Presidency in one of the great landslides of all time.

Over Barack Obama, of course.

Because, you see, Democrats, in their desire for change, forgot to ask themselves what exactly it was they were changing to? So swept up were they in the beautiful rhetoric of Senator Obama through January and February 5th, when he secured the nomination, they never bothered to ask the question, "what kind of changes does Senator Obama have in mind?"

Luckily, the Right Wing Attack Machine was ready for an answer on February 6th. And the answer was...

Liberal changes. Very, very Liberal changes.

How liberal?

So Liberal that the RNC and its friends reminded us that Senator Obama has a record of favoring criminals over cops and that he voted against a bill making it LEGAL to defend yourself with a handgun in your own home against an intruder.

So Liberal that Senator Obama voted against a bill that would require doctors to treat babies who survive abortion. Hell, this vote gave Obama his own Michael Dukakis moment during the first, and most influential Presidential debate, when normally genteel Jim Lehrer held up a picture of his newest grandson and asked Obama, "Senator. How could you vote to let this child die?"

And as Michael Dukakis did before him, Obama launched into an egghead, liberal, academic dissertation on the Constitutional definition of "person" and how his good friend Senator O'Malley just didn't understand the reasoning behind Roe V. Wade and the protections that he, Senator Obama, demanded to be able to support that bill.

Meanwhile, parents and grandparents all over America looked at the picture of Mr. Lehrer's grandson and thought to themselves, "Christ, that kid looks familiar".

Then there was the town hall debate, where Jim Ryerson of Huntington, West Virginia, told the harrowing tale of the night an oxycontin addicted meth freak with a machete broke into the family's home, and how he, Mr. Ryerson, had to shoot the sonofabitch, and even as awful as it was, he, Mr. Ryerson, just couldn't understand how Mr. Obama could want to deprive him of his 2nd Amendment rights when if he had been President, he, Mr. Ryerson, and his wife and 2 beautiful daughters, same age as Mr. Obama's kids, by the way, would all be dead.

After which Mr. Obama launched into a tale of his days as a community organizer, trying to stem the awful tide of drug addiction with clarion calls to hope, and change...

And when it came to jobs, Doug Mirabelli of Macomb County Michigan asked what Mr. Obama would do to keep the local plant from closing. And Mr. Obama asked Mr. Mirabelli to join him in a working majority that would change our unfair trade deals forever...

The plant closed the Friday before the election. And Mr. Mirabelli, a union worker, gun owner and proud church going Catholic, became one of a nationwide movement of working class Democrats now called "McCain Democrats", who, like the Reagan Democrats before them, found that their party had nominated someone who was so out of step with their true feelings, had found that their party had become so overrun with technocrat liberals hiding under the banner of "new ideas" that they found, in Senator McCain, a man they admired, respected, and who shared a very common vision of honor, and decency, and what American values are all about.

And they flocked to Mr. McCain in droves, all over America, making him the 44th President of the United States.

And Democrats throughout the country woke up the morning, telling themselves, "if I only knew then, what I know now..."

Before everybody falls in line behind the new conventional wisdom, it's important to stop and take a breath and remember something.

Iowa and New Hampshire are not representative of the base of the Democratic Party. They are not representative of the demographics a nominee Obama would need to be successful with to win the White House.

Obama runs well with educated, upper income Democrats who buy his nonsense about change and hope and all that crap. Simply put, he runs well with people who can afford to believe that insanity because they are not in danger of losing their jobs, their homes or their health care.

Before we anoint this annoying little bastard, let's see how he does in a state with a substantial white, working class demographic. Let's see how Obama runs in Macomb County, Michigan, home of the Reagan Democrats. Oh, wait. Obama led the cowardly retreat out of my home state. How fortunate for him.

The LA Times poll showed 13% of Democrats will not vote for Obama under any circumstances. That was 4% higher than anybody else, and according to their poll, that 13% was mostly white, working class Democrats. Some might attribute this to racism. I wouldn't. I think it is the same dynamic that afflicted Bradley, Kerrey, and other "hopemongers". People with honest concerns don't take chances. They can't afford to.

Hillary will survive til Feb 5th. Nevada, South Carolina and New Hampshire aren't all that important, although it will be interesting to see where Obama gets his votes in SC. If it's all african Americans and the Columbia and Charleston academic centers, that might tell us something.

But if Obama is going to be the nominee, he needs to connect with these voters. There are not enough independents to make up the deficit. If he can't carry a good number of white working class voters -- many of whom own guns, by the way, and are gonna be personally offended by his penchant for wanting to take them away and favor criminals over cops -- all the hope in the world won't save him.

Now, I am not saying he can't attract those voters. But my suspicion is, he won't. I think people who are afraid for their jobs and homes and health care are going to go with the candidate who has a proven record. I think they end up with Hillary.

If I am wrong, Obama will build a new Democratic Coalition that will sweep him to victory in November in decisive fashion. If I am not, America better get ready for the phrase "McCain Democrats" to enter into the political lexicon.

Dear Hillary,

Tonight, The Politics Of Hope won. The Audacity of Hope won. Change won.

Obama won. You lost. People don't seem to value experience, knowledge, a sane world view, a sense of foreign policy that won't get us all killed or a record of accomplishment that is unmatched in this field. What Iowa showed us is that Democrats want this empty, vacuous, meaningless notion of change.

Obama is the vessel of change. Change is Obama's message.

Fine.

May I humbly suggest that the time has come to kill the fucking messenger.

There is no reason to suggest that focusing on the universality of your health care plan versus the cowardice of Obama's will do anything. There is no reason to believe that experience will be any more potent among voters in New Hampshire than in Iowa.

Yes, your record of accomplishment and experience creating and fighting for jobs will help you here in Michigan. Except, because the DNC Chairman is a eunuch, a win in Michigan won't mean anything for her, Obama, or anyone else. South Carolina just became a much tougher nut to crack. Nevada is nonsensical no matter who wins.

But you let this man build some momentum, you may not be able to stop him. You can stop him now.

Edwards is irrelevant. It's You and Obama. And since we know that You can stand up to the Right Wing Attack Machine, I think we ought to see if Obama can stand up to you. I think you have more balls than he does. You certainly have more brains.

So let's call out Obama for what he is. A big city liberal who believes criminals have more rights to kill you in your own home than you have to protect yourself with a handgun. An extremist who wants doctors to stand around and watch while babies die. A lying hypocrite who entered into shady, quite possibly illegal real estate deals with an indicted, known associate of organized crime figures. A man who invented his own life story and wrote an autobiography that he admits is fiction. A man who belongs to a church with a separatist theology and may well favor reparations for slavery. A man with a wide reputation for womanizing and admitted drug use that may well have extended into his forties.

Why should You launch these attacks against Obama? Well, you shouldn't. Your 527's should, to give you a little deniability, even though we'll all know it's you.

You should because you're right. This is the fun part of the campaign. Anybody who's ever worked in oppo research on a campaign knows how much fun it is.

But most of all, you should do it because if you don't do it, the GOP will. I think his gun votes and the abortion thing kills him. I don't think he can win a single purple state with those votes. I know he can't win Michigan. Obama is so liberal, so disgusting in his absence of morality, people will question the kind of man Obama is. Unfortunately, they will be asking that question in October, when the GOP have destroyed him and Democrats are left to wonder what the hell we were thinking. As we did in 2004.

But nobody questions the kind of person, or politician, you are. If you were an actress, you'd be on House MD right now playing "Cutthroat Bitch".

So go and cut the fucker's throat. Gut him. Make him bleed. Sure, the commentators will say people don't like negative politics, they'll say you are consumed by personal ambition, and Obama will call you a hypocrite for saying you are engaging in the politics of personal destruction. So what? The reason people admire you is that they know you will do what it takes to win, whether it's health care for all, Universal Pre-K, getting us out of Iraq without destroying the Middle East and leaving a safe haven for Al-Qaeda, or yes, winning a presidential election. This is what we expect of you. Even those pansies backing Obama, they expect this from you.

So give it to them.

Give it to them because the people in my home state of Michigan need jobs, and you are the only one who can create them. Give it to them, because trade deals are killing the economy here and only you can fix them. Give it to them, because if you don't, there won't be anybody left to fight for us. Give it to them, because next January, only one of two people will be taking that oath of office, and America will be far better off with a President Clinton than we will with a President McCain.

So don't be afraid. Obama has made the same mistake every "agent of change" from McCarthy, to McGovern, to Bayh, to Hart, to Simon, to Kerrey, to Bradley, to Dean has made.

Obama thinks this is Woodstock. You know it's the OK Coral. Obama comes bearing flowers. You come bearing twin six shooters.

He's yours, Hillary. Take the shot.