Win, lose, or draw? Your thoughts on tonight's presidential debates...

Am I the only one watching? Oh well. I shall keep you all up to date on the sound bites.

On Friday afternoon, CNN's liberal contributor Roland Martin suggested that most people who are pro-life seem "hateful" as he was describing Mike Huckabee's need to reach out to non-evangelical voters. During an appearance on CNN Newsroom at about 1:47 p.m. with anchor Kyra Phillips, Martin contended that Huckabee needs to pursue a strategy similar to that of President Bush in 2000: "Sure, [Huckabee is] a staunch pro-life person, but he isn't perceived as being hateful as other people who are pro-life." (Transcript follows)

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of Martin's comments from the Friday January 4 CNN Newsroom:

This issue has been discussed before here on NB, but I wanted to get some fresh answers.

I have been voting for many years, but in this election I may refuse to vote in the general election if any of the RINO's get the nod at the convention. Unless you have never heard my reason why, here's a brief. The RINO's in the GOP have nearly gutted a once proud political party and I refuse to give them my vote. This is not a matter of me abandoning the party, because the party has already abandoned me.

So here's my assignment to you. Give me your best argument as to why I should vote for a RINO if they get the nod. I have heard all I can stand about "if you don't vote for one of these guys then Hillary will win the WH", so please leave this one alone.

In case you are wondering.... Fred is my 1st choice, Duncan my 2nd, and there is no 3rd.

He's threatening to name names on Monday. 

If he does, I can promise you this that he'll surely regret it. 

A few points:

- He will always have the high ground on this issue, because by federal law, his surgical record is private. . .unless he chooses to release it.  And I don't see that happening.  So whatever happened is completely one-sided to begin with.  I'd like to hear the full story.

- If the surgery was botched, what then is the permanant damage?  He's obviously alive.  He's even planning on continuing his career.  Is he permanently disabled now or something?  And if he is, why has he chosen to capitalize on it? 

- If this is going to be the subject of a future malpractice suit, why is he sensationalizing it (from his recovery bed, no less)?

- Bizarrely enough, the GE president comment echoed alot of libs feelings on healthcare.  Maybe this is just Glenn's discharge painkillers talking.

The returns are in for car company sales, both for December and all of 2007 (first figure is December, second is for full year; sources are here, here, and here):

- GM: -4.4%, -6.0%
- Toyota: -1.7%, +3.1%
- Ford: -9%, -11.8%
- Chrysler: +2%, -3.1%
- Nissan: -2.4%, +4.8%
- Honda: flat, +2.8%

Toyota is listed second for a reason that would have been almost unthinkable three years ago (bolds are mine):

Ford Motor Co., in the midst of a restructuring, fell to No. 3 in U.S. auto sales last year, as Toyota Motor Corp. posted its 12th straight year of record U.S. sales and moved up to second place behind General Motors Corp.

Even though Ford held on to pickup leadership with its F-Series -- the nation's best-selling vehicle nameplate for 26 years and the best-selling truck for 31 years -- the company's Ford brand is no longer the nation's best-selling make (Note: Chevrolet now is -- Ed.).

On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd disclosed that the media was poised to take a third-place McCain finish there and use it to catapult him to victory in New Hampshire. McCain actually finished fourth in Iowa, but on Good Morning America today we saw a perfect example of the phenomenon Todd predicted.

ABC declared that McCain is "surging," "rising in the polls," may have "the most momentum," used "The Mac Is Back" as its screen graphic, and portrayed Mitt Romney in a highly unflattering light. There was only one small problem with ABC's depiction of a McCain surge: the latest poll numbers from the organization that nailed the Iowa results . . . reveal that McCain slipped in the polls overnight and lost ground to Mitt Romney.

View video here.

OK, this one really does serve as a perfect example of the MSM's covering for Hillary's shifty behavior. As I tell you this tale, imagine for yourself how the MSM would treat such a story if the same should have been perpetrated by a Republican candidate. It's the story of a fake "coincidence" at one of Hillary's Iowa appearances, one that was so painfully obvious by its complete manufacturing that it amazes any sane person that team Hillary was seriously trying to claim that the incident was a true occurrence and not a fake, manufactured campaign "happening."

It seems that Hillary was "coincidentally" asked by a "spontaneous" supporter if she were a Christian at her appearance in Donnellson, Iowa on the 23rd. This "coincidence" was right after our friendly Baptist Minister, Mike Huckabee, so famously rallied the religious folk to his side at the GOP Iowa caucus.

Amazing how the "religious" question so "coincidentally" came up, eh?

Want some old fashioned black helicopter, conspiracy goofiness? Check out the frenzied work of HufPoster Joseph Palmero who imagines that if Obama becomes president members of Blackwater security services or Haliburton would somehow decide to assassinate him. After reading his wild-eyed musings, one wonders if the foam from his mouth short circuited his keyboard as he wrote?

In an effort to equate Obama's rather empty rhetoric and lack of a substantive record to what Palmero imagines his lefty pals will imagine is "greatness," Palmero tries to work in some equating of the junior Senator from Illinois with Robert F. Kennedy's campaign for the Dem nomination for president in 1968. Saying that Obama "struck similar chords" as Kennedy, Palmero waxes poetic about how it "took forty years" to see another Kennedyesque candidate.

But there was another, more sinister aspect of the Kennedy run that Palmero wanted to exploit with his piece. That aspect is the promise of a Kennedy panacea that was cut so short by an assassin's bullet. Absurdly, Palmero seems to expect the same to happen to Barack Hussein Obama.

Update (Jan. 7 | 14:30): This was mentioned earlier in the comments thread. You can see Maher's offensive comments beginning about 1:35 into the video posted on YouTube here.

Appearing on the Friday "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," comedian Bill Maher took repeated swipes at the Republican Party and conservatives as idiotic, bigoted, homophobic, you know, all the usual epithets.

Although his material was registering mostly nervous laughter from the audience, Maher plunged further into his assault on traditional values, attacking Christians, particularly Catholics, by insisting that one has to be "schizophrenic" to go about life normally for six days a week only to, on the seventh go to church and believe that when drinking communion wine one is drinking "the blood of a 2,000-year old space god."