Northern Democrats are 1-7 in eight presidential runs since FDR. Whether it's the senator from New York or the senator from Illinois, the Democrats will again go down this much travelled road less travelled. But there's reason to believe that one of these candidates has learned from the mistakes of his many loser-prone antecedents.

"I think there is an individual right to bear arms," Barack Obama noted in response to the Northern Illinois University murders. "[W]e make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people's lives.... Americans are a religious people," he chided fellow liberals two years back. He even has a kind word or two for the patron saint of conservatives, Ronald Reagan. Rhetorically, at least, Obama has thrown up the white flag on issues that inflame conservative voters and guarantee liberal defeats on a national level. He does not come across as the offensive culture warrior that his primary opponent comes across as. In November, this will win him votes and disarm opponents.

Judging from former Catholic University of America School of Law dean Douglas Kmiec's "Reaganites for Obama?" piece, Obama's conciliatory rather than confrontational approach has already disarmed some natural opponents. "Since I served at one time as Reagan's constitutional lawyer, it would be natural for me to fall in line behind John McCain," Kmiec writes. "Don't worry about his conservative lapses, says President Bush, the foremost expert on lapsed conservativism." But Kmiec worries. "John McCain will have many Catholics in the pews a little while longer, but more than a few of us are thinking of giving him up for Lent."

That Obama supports abortion and also, remarkably--given his professed support of the Second Amendment--votes for gun control won't much undermine the effect of the conciliatory words he chooses. He may not win the votes of many conservatives, but, and this is important, he will not win their venom, either. He will not inspire conservatives to rush to the polls, and rally round whatever Republican suit is nominated, the way Hillary Clinton would have. This should scare the conservatives who chose to believe Bush's conservative rhetoric while ignoring his liberal policies over the last seven years. As they know all too well, words trump actions in politics.

Taking little warning from that most famous of Who songs, "Won't Get Fooled Again", we elect candidates not based on who they are but who they say they are and who we want them to be.

But, if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck.....etc.

Bush quacked twice and we all hoped. But he disappointed like his Father and was in fact a Country Club Republican touting "Compassionate Conservatism". Which is a nice way of saying you’re a liberal Republican.

I think we’re pretty clear on what this current crop of pols stand for and none of it is good. It'll be like Russian roulette with three bullets in the gun come this fall.

As much as Obama continues to make the right speeches and throw bones to this group and that and makes sure he tells them what they want to hear, he's still just a one term do nothing junior Senator who is THE most liberal Democrat in Congress.

All of the feel good rhetoric goes away come 11/04/08.

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=anQlpEBuVhaU&refer=home

Total deal breaker.

Also, Obama is not the most liberal senator: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/31/625886.aspx

Your potential next President of the United States apparently favors revolutionaries like Che Guevara and honors the Cuban flag.....but he won't wear and American Flag pin.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/d-s-hube/2008/02/11/another-flag-issue-obama

And, oh yeah, am I glad that Michelle Obama has decided to expose herself as the new Mrs. Bill Clinton and start to open her mouth and show what a whiney, radical, leftist nut job she is.

Be vewy vewy careful......

(AP) Barack Obama, who's been scolding Hillary Rodham Clinton for not hastening the release of records from her time as first lady, says he can't step up and produce his own records from his days in the Illinois state Senate.

He says he hasn't got any.

"I don't have — I don't maintain — a file of eight years of work in the state Senate because I didn't have the resources available to maintain those kinds of records," he said at a recent campaign stop in Iowa. He said he wasn't sure where any cache of records might have gone, adding, "It could have been thrown out. I haven't been in the state Senate now for quite some time."

Doesn't matter because....'Together we can' and it's 'Change we can believe in'. Right?

And hope. Don't forget hope.

You know, as I was walking through the city to collect my unemployment check today, past soup lines, past the destitute jobless and homeless people, past the vacant store fronts, past people lined up pushing gasless cars into filling stations, I was thinking, where is the 'Hope'?

It's so bad out there, I observed a few people without cell phones and even more without ipods!