In reviewing the year 2007 in magazines, Washington Post writer Peter Carlson found the year was dull, boring, and in no way memorable. But he did find it amazing that magazines would do power-sniffing surveys and completely exclude President Bush from the power lists:

In 2007, GQ published "The 50 Most Powerful People in D.C." -- a list that actually included 56 powerful people in D.C. but did not include George W. Bush, the president of the United States. Time magazine published "The Time 100," a list of "the World's Most Influential People." It included Raul Castro, Michael J. Fox and Kate Moss but it also did not include President Bush. It also didn't include Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, whom Time later named its "Person of the Year."

Does any of that make any sense?

Over the course of the past decade or so, leftist malcontents have set their ideological sites against Christmas no doubt as the holiday points to the birth of the Savior Jesus Christ who can often help or motivate the individual to work through many of their own problems without an over reliance on government aide and because many of the celebrations if not taken to extremes provide the individual with a sense of well being that undermines liberalism’s basic assumption that things are so miserable that the only hope of fixing them is handing control over to a state imbued with almost God-like powers.

Initially, many of these challenges and objections were couched in terms of the canard of the Separation of Church and State and all that other pluralistic mumbo jumbo about not offending other cultures even though the rest of us have the other cultures jammed down our throats the rest of the year to the point where if anyone objects to allowing hordes of radical Muslims or swarms of illegal aliens to settle here without question now you the one likely to be labeled a troublemaker or a threat to national security.

The World Entertainment News Network seems to have an unusual notion as to what transpired during World War II. In a story about actor Will Smith's supposed positive remarks about Adolf Hitler, WENN offers the following:

Hitler's totalitarian leadership as Fuhrer during 1934 until his eventual suicide in 1945 resulted in the persecution of an estimated six million Jews in the Holocaust, and his invasion of Poland in 1939 led to the start of the Second World War.

Actually Hitler's totalitarian leadership as Fuhrer resulted in the murder of an estimated six million Jews in the Holocaust. But why get technical about accurate terminology, eh? Unbelievable.

Meanwhile, in case you're wondering about Smith's comments, Eugene Volokh says "give him a break":

Honest, I'm not looking for trouble. Just hanging out on Christmas afternoon, watching the Heat vs. the Cavs on ABC, when a State Farm Insurance commercial comes on. Funny stuff. A guy on a treadmill gets so distracted by a shapely young woman on a hamstring machine that he slips and falls off.

Then a trim man, identified by a screen graphic as Dr. Ian Smith, comes by to help him to his feet, and says:

Go on, laugh. But it's not easy getting back in shape. That's why we created the 50-Million Pound Challenge. It's a new way to help our community get healthier together. Get started at 50-Million Pounds dot com.

View video here.

Hillary Clinton has no right to complain that her friends and flatterers in the media are rough on her. But when Clintons hit rough passages on the road to victory, this is what Clintons do: complain. That’s too meek. They whine.

But she obviously feels wronged by the news media when her polls begin to slip and she looks at her Barack Obama’s worshipful press clips. In fairy-tale terms, Obama is Snow White, and Hillary is the vain and wicked queen peering into the mirror and demanding to know "who is the fairest of them all?"

This isn't something you see every day, even on Christmas: an article at a liberal website castigating the left for being so anti-theistic.

Yet, there it was at the Huffington Post on Christmas Eve, "Why are Liberals so Afraid of Baby Jesus?"

Those familiar with author John Ridley are aware that he very often calls things the way he sees them, even when his views go counter to left-wing dogma.

His Christmas Eve post was certainly no exception (emphasis added throughout):

How quiet is it Chez Finkelstein on Christmas morning? Quiet enough that I actually resorted to my HBO on Demand re-run channel and decided to check out a two-minute Def Comedy short. I wasn't looking for trouble, let alone grist for the NB mill. But here's what turned up. A comedian named Patrice O'Neal. And these were the very first words out of his mouth:

View video here.

Never has so few words been so wrong until the the Christmas Day Chicago Sun-Times Daily Rant came along. Not only does it unreasonably call the mean, pre-ghosted version of the Scrooge character a "traditional, conservative Republican" but it then goes on to swerve to the opposite -- and equally wrong -- conclusion that the post-ghostie Scrooge is a "bleeding-heart liberal." In truth BOTH claims are quite wide of the mark in analogy. In fact, not only did the Sun-times miss a true reading of the characters, they got them juxtaposed!

Here is the short, and woefully wrong Christmas Day Daily Rant:

I can't understand why people are so in love with Charles Dickens' story ''A Christmas Carol.''

Let me see if I understand the story right: Scrooge starts out as a traditional, conservative Republican, and because of the interference of three, uh, ghosts, he ends up a bleeding-heart liberal. Why is this such a good thing?

I wanted to take a moment to wish all at NewsBusters a very Merry Christmas.

With that in mind, what does this marvelous day mean to you and your family? Has it changed as you've grown older?

When Charlie Brown asked his friends such questions, Linus wonderfully offered the following (video available here):

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point this Christmas day: More than 8 out of 10 Americans identify with a Christian faith...

About 82% of Americans in 2007 told Gallup interviewers that they identified with a Christian religion. That includes 51% who said they were Protestant, 5% who were "other Christian," 23% Roman Catholic, and 3% who named another Christian faith, including 2% Mormon.

Because 11% said they had no religious identity at all, and another 2% didn't answer, these results suggest that well more than 9 out of 10 Americans who identify with a religion are Christian in one way or the other.

My ears perked up as soon as I heard that Michelle Kosinski would be reporting from the Amazon on this morning's Today. Might we be treated to another shot of the comely correspondent in a canoe?

Alas, no.

But that doesn't mean the segment was without its diversions. It told the tale of a Brazilian environmentalist in Manaus, on the edge of the Amazon. Ann Curry, long back from her Green Week exploits at the South Pole, introduced the story.

View video here.

Merry Christmas to all our NB community!

Politico is having some snarky fun, running a "populist pop quiz" challenging readers to guess whether it was John Edwards or Mike Huckabee who made the variety of class-warfare claims listed. You'll find a sampling of four of the questions below, but I'd encourage people to take the entire eight-question quiz and report back your scores. A cyber-statue of Karl Marx to the winner!

1. “No young person is more equal than another person because he has a higher IQ, or a higher net worth, or because he lives in a nicer home, or his clothes have a label of a designer that the other guy doesn’t have. That’s not what gives us equality.”

2. “There is unfortunately some disconnect between people who have never struggled and those for whom everyday life is a struggle.”

Well, here is a sad commentary on the fellow travelers over at Internet mega-corp, Google. Their Christmas graphic eschews that evil "Ch_ _ stmas" word giving us a bow and candy cane, instead. Apparently, Google doesn't want to cause any outrage by using the words "Merry Christmas."

Yet, the communists over at China Daily's on line news/propaganda site doesn't seem to have the slightest problem wishing us all a Merry Christmas as the graphic at the top of their mainpage shows!

What a sad commentary when even our Godless, communist enemies can say "Merry Christmas" but an ostensibly western, capitalist company won't do the same!

Huckabee Suggests Opponents Commit Suicide

http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=p-2Sb7dFsvM

Huckabees latest diarrhea of mouth is a real winner. Suggesting your opponents take a warm bath with razor blades. Is Huckabee playing identity politics with the mentally ill?

Does your mouth just hang open after watching this or what?