I, citizen journalist, Doctor of Political Nuance, and Chief Deputy of Keeping It Real, have broken down the presidential contenders in the following hard hitting analysis for the People.

Bill Richardson
My favorite moment in this campaign season occurred when Richardson -- while attending a discussion hosted by the Human Rights Campaign along with every other Democrat up for nomination – told Melissa Etheridge and the Human Rights Campaign inadvertently that he believed being gay was a choice -- to Melissa Etheridge…. That could only happen to Bill Richardson. Will likely drop out after New Hampshire and surrender his manhood to Hillary Clinton and his firstborn to Mark Penn.

Chris Dodd
Or “Gray-haired democrat who is not Joe Biden” Son of late Senator Thomas J. Dodd, and Chair of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, the man has been a Senator for along as I’ve been alive. This is a guy who would be winning the race if the Democrats truly wanted “experience”, but I don’t under-estimate the power of name recognition either. Out after New Hampshire.

Joe Biden

Johnny Dollar over at Olbermann Watch compiled a list of the orange-tinted “Countdown” host's Top Ten Lies of 2007 (h/t Conservathink).

Between doctoring quotes, misrepresenting TV ratings, obsessing over Michelle Malkin's ethnicity and crushing on Bill O'Reilly, the TV host who self-anointed himself as Edward R. Murrow's heir let loose with some tall tales.

While lie number one is my favorite (go read it), some of 2007's lying lowlights include Keith claiming Rosie O'Donnell never compared US troops to terrorists, stating Fox News' Roger Ailes is running Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign or just lying about O'Reilly and News. Here's a little sample (bold mine):

#5 - ... But our #5 entry shows Keith "Man on Fan" Olbermann at his most desperate. So eager was he to protect a possible NBC hire (Rosie O'Donnell) he doctored her words (sound familiar?) to claim she never compared US troops to terrorists.

The liberal blogosphere has given conservatives a late Christmas present in the form of some truly delicious squabbling over whether or not Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is being too harsh in his criticisms of past and present Democrat presidential candidates.

Those looking for halftime entertainment much finer than the Michigan marching band performing "Springtime for Hitler" are highly encouraged to check out a diary posted at Daily Kos Tuesday entitled "More Unnecessary Attacks on Obama, This Time from Markos" (emphasis added throughout):

In my last diary, I discussed some of the unreasonable attacks on Barack Obama that came from Jerome Armstrong over at MyDD. Unfortunately, it seems that Markos has decided to take up the banner of irrational behavior and attack Obama.

Stick with this, sports fans...you won't be disappointed:

On Tuesday's Fox and Friends, Democratic strategist and FNC contributor Bob Beckel found amusing Hillary Clinton's contention that her trip to Bosnia in 1996, which Clinton has been accused of exaggerating as a dangerous mission despite the presence of daughter Chelsea and comedian Sinbad on the plane as she mentioned the need for a "corkscrew" landing and running on the tarmac in case of sniper attack, was evidence of her foreign policy experience. Clinton's comments, which were a response to Barack Obama's charges that her foreign policy experience consisted only of talking and "having tea" with foreign dignitaries, evoked an amused and cynical reaction from the liberal Beckel: "I don't know what that gives you in terms of foreign policy experience except a bad case of heartburn. I probably would have thought of something else besides that. I wonder what Sinbad did during that landing. I wonder if she hid behind him or not. Dangerous that would probably be." (Transcript follows)

From all of us to all of you, Happy New Year!

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking points: What are your predictions for the new year with regard to the war, the upcoming primaries, the elections, the economy, and the second year of the 110th Congress?

Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) admires a snowman made in her honor during a campaign stop at Muscatine West Middle School in Muscatine, Iowa December 31, 2007.

In what looks like an editorial authored by one of the more extreme members of the Democratic Underground, the New York Times ended the year with a rabid leftwing rant that among other things accused American soldiers of war crimes on a large scale:

In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

It looks like a wayward hippie from Haight-Ashbury circa 1967 found himself a time machine and came forward to 2008 and barricaded himself in the editorial room of the Chicago Sun-Times today. To celebrate this magical feat, the Sun-Times has gathered together all their best thinkers and, guided by their time leaping hippie, they've decided to advocate a little tonic for the New Year: Have more sex in 2008. But, man, let's not bring us all down with talk of marriage, commitment, and morality, shall we? No, cast off that morality talk. Have sex because it "makes you younger."

How vapid, eh?

The new year is beginning with some very serious shots being fired across the bow of the manmade global warming myth and at alarmists using it to advance their deplorable agendas.

Moments after Investor's Business Daily presaged that "2008 just might be the year the so-called scientific consensus that man is causing the Earth to warm begins to crack," the New York Times of all entities published a rather shocking piece pointing fingers at folks like Nobel Laureate Al Gore for being part of a group of "activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels."

This from the New York Times?

Hold on tightly to your seats, folks, for the shocks in this piece came early and often (emphasis added throughout):

The PC guy finally wins one! No, we're not cheering for political correctness here. I'm talking about those ads for Macintosh computers where the cool Mac guy always gets the better of the frumpy PC fellow.

When two college political leaders out in Iowa appeared on the Good Morning America screen today, I immediately suspected a set-up. I couldn't help but think that ABC had intentionally staged the political equivalent of the Mac ads, with the Dem as the Apple dude and the Republican cast as PC guy.

In the screencap, that's Atul Nakhasi, head of the U. of Iowa Dems, on the left and Greg Baker, Chairman of the U. of Iowa Republicans, on the right. Now, Nakhasi acquitted himself perfectly well, but as the segment unfolded it soon became clear that Baker was the star of this show.

View the video here, and enjoy Baker's good-humor and easy articulation.

It simply does not matter how many times Hillary Clinton gets tea and sugar cubes from Cynthia McFadden on ABC, or supportive see-her-website publicity from CNN’s Candy Crowley, or how many reporters are cued to ask her what makes her tear up – someone’s still going to claim improbably that Hillary is despised and savaged by the media. On CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday, all the sugary reports were ignored as Washington Post reporter-slash-columnist Dana Milbank proclaimed "The press will savage her no matter what, pretty much...they really have their knives out for her."

Here's the CNN transcript on the matter:

On Monday's "The Early Show," CBS anchor Harry Smith charged that the leading Republican presidential candidates are "mudslinging," contending that their campaigns have "turned nasty," but then suggested that Democrats are "playing nice." While the ABC and NBC morning shows portrayed candidates in both parties as "going negative," CBS's Smith hinted that Democrats were "playing nice" even after CBS correspondents had just referred to Obama as "attacking" other Democrats, and to John Edwards as portraying "corporate powers and Washington lobbyists" as "enemies of ordinary people." (Transcript follows)

Smith teased Monday's "The Early Show": "Pick me: It's a dead heat in the Iowa polls as Democrats fall into a virtual tie, and Republican leaders sling more mud."

On Monday's "NBC Nightly News," correspondent Mike Taibbi oddly suggested that Barack Obama could be considered an "independent" or centrist politician as he included the liberal Senator as one of several politicians with an "independent streak" with whom New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been associated. Taibbi: "Bloomberg was a long-time Democrat, turned Republican mayor, turned Independent, who has kept company with others with an independent streak, from Senators Joe Lieberman and Barack Obama to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger." Such a juxtaposition seems especially out of place in light of National Journal's 2006 vote ratings which found that Obama had a more liberal voting record than all but nine of his Senate colleagues. (Transcript follows)