Late Merry Christmas!

I didn't have a chance before, but here's hoping that all of you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday season. God Bless!

Huckabee Soaring/Romney's Chances Fading, More Iowa

Everyone's been talking about how Huckabee has come from nowhere to compete for Iowa, but now he is pulling away by a wide margin according to a recent Newsweek poll. According to this poll Huckabee has pulled ahead by 22 points with 39% of the vote. Romney is downward at 17% and Thompson is at 10%. Giuliani, Paul, and McCain are other candidates still getting high single digits. This is the third staight poll to show Huckabee ahead, and any other poll showing Romney ahead is within the margin of error. At this point, Romney's chances are getting darker and darker as his only hope was in winning Iowa. On top of that, his large lead in New Hampshire is steadily falling also.

In the same poll that shows Huckabee ahead by 22%, also shows Obama storming ahead to a lead of six points. Obama is at 35%, Clinton is at 29%, with Edwards hanging around with 18% of the vote. I don't know if it is enough to win the entire primary, but this is the fourth poll out of five to give Obama the edge. The last two have him above the margin of error also.

Hard to believe, but a month ago Clinton and Romney seemed to have things wrapped up in Iowa.

Now, I'm Almost Convinced, Murtha Sees Progress

For month's the jury has been out on how well the 'surge' is actually working. After last month's reports on troop deaths and Iraq Security/Civilian deaths, I am starting to feel more and more confident that this thing is actually working. American troop deaths fell to 37 deaths in November, 1 lower than last month and the lowest since March of 2006. As far Iraqi deaths are concerned, it fell again to 560 deaths down more than a 100 of last month that was also a low over the last 2- plus years. I'm nearly convinced that the surge is working, but until violence is proven to be sustained and we are seriously stable enough to consider troop withdraws, I'm not entirely convinced.

On another note, the progress has been so significant that even John Murtha acknowledged that the surge is working. Murtha just returned from a Thanksgiving visit to Iraq and stated that he was most encouraged by the progress of a once out of control area of the Anbar province.

Who knows, times have been hard, but things might be starting to turn around.