From NBC's Domenico Montanaro
For your New Year's Day entertainment, here's a video montage look back at some of the memorable political moments of the decade that was, from 2000 to 2009.

Here's the full video.

A brief clip is below.

We'd love your thoughts. Happy New Year.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Special thanks to Ali Weinberg.

Edited by: Domenico Montanaro and Ed Eaves.

From NBC's Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro
We ranked the top 10 political stories of the decade for a video below. Let us know your thoughts. Here's the full video.

A brief clip is below:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Special Thanks to Ali Weinberg.

Edited by Domenico Montanaro and Wayne Dennis.

From NBC's Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro
Today, we take a look at what we consider to be the most memorable political lines/statements/quotes of the decade, which shaped or cemented perceptions, were repeated endlessly, and impacted American politics. Agree? Disagree? What are your thoughts?

1. "I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it." Without a doubt, this John Kerry line was perhaps the most memorable one of the entire 2004 presidential election, and the Bush-Cheney team used it portray Kerry as a waffling, indecisive opponent. Kerry said it in March 2004, and he was referring to his vote AGAINST an $87 billion supplemental for Iraq, but FOR another one that would have required a repeal of the Bush tax cuts to pay for it.

2. "The fundamentals of our economy are strong." If "$87 billion" helped defeat John Kerry, then this line -- which John McCain said after the news of the Lehman Brothers collapse -- perhaps was the final nail in the coffin for McCain in the 2008 presidential contest. After McCain uttered those words, the Obama campaign quickly pounced, immediately cutting a TV ad.

3. Bush's "Bring 'em on" and "Dead or alive" (tie). No two phrases greater captured the "Cowboy Diplomacy" of the Bush presidency. In his waning days as president, Bush said he regretted saying them.

4. "I can see Russia from my house." This line wasn't delivered by Sarah Palin or any other politician during the 2008 presidential election. Instead, it came from comedian (and Palin look-alike) Tina Fey, who on "Saturday Night Live" made fun of a Palin comment about Alaska's proximity to Russia. "[Russians are] our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska," Palin told ABC in Sept. 2008. Fey's impressions of Palin on "SNL" cemented a perception that Palin wasn't a serious, qualified VP candidate.

5. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." This line -- after Hurricane Katrina -- by George W. Bush to embattled FEMA head Michael Brown underscored to critics how poorly the Bush administration (in words and deeds) responded to the hurricane and its aftermath.

6. "Go F%&@ yourself." Dick Cheney reportedly uttered this obscenity to Democratic Sen. Pat Leahy on Capitol Hill after Leahy and Cheney argued about the former vice president's ties to Halliburton.

7. "So it's not surprising then that they get bitter; they cling to guns or religion..." Republicans and the Clinton campaign pounced on these words that Obama said at an April 2008 fundraiser in San Francisco, in explaining why he was losing to Hillary Clinton in states with large rural populations like Ohio and Pennsylvania. It was a line that dogged Obama throughout the rest of the presidential election. Fortunately for Obama, these words weren't caught on videotape, thus minimizing the political damage.

8. Rumsfeld's "known unknowns" and "Army you have" (tie). After not finding WMD, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld waxed philosophical with his "known unknowns" soliloquy: "There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns -- that is to say that there are things we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know. So when we do the best we can, and we pull all this information together, and that's basically what we see, as the situation. That is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns. And it sounds like a riddle. It isn't a riddle. It is a very serious and important matter." And Rumsfeld was criticized for saying, "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

9. "You lie!" In an unprecedented outburst at a formal presidential address to Congress, GOP Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted this remark to President Obama during his Sept. 2009 speech to Congress on health care. Wilson's line came after Obama noted that illegal aliens wouldn't benefit from the health-care reform legislation Congress was drafting. Independent fact-checkers noted that Wilson was the one who wasn't telling the truth here, not Obama.

10. "Rudy Giuliani, there are only three things he mentions in a sentence -- a noun, verb, and 9/11." There were many memorable lines during the '08 primary debates, but this line -- from Joe Biden -- takes the cake, in our opinion.

Honorable mention: Obama's "You're likable enough, Hillary"… Bill Clinton's "fairy tale"… Hillary Clinton's answer on drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants… Bush's "Axis of evil"… Bush's "Need some wood?"

From NBC's Domenico Montanaro and Mark Murray
Today's Top 10 list looks at what we consider the wackiest/most entertaining/most memorable news conferences of the decade.

1. McGreevey's 'My truth is I am a gay American': Nothing came more out of left field than McGreevey's announcement that not only was he resigning from office, but that the married-with-kids governor was having an affair with a man. His wife stood by his side for this announcement, but they later divorced.

2. Rod Blagojevich: In three separate news conferences, the disgraced former Illinois governor gave us quotes from Rudyard Kipling, Tennyson, Ulysses, and even the Golden Rule in professing his innocence. He vowed, "I am not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing. … I will fight. I will fight. I will fight until I take my last breath. I have done nothing wrong." He gave us Roland Burris -- with Congressman (and former Black Panther) Bobby Rush taking to the stage with an impromptu defense of Blago and Burris. And if that wasn't enough, there were even crying babies and a man in a wheeelchair on the day the Illinois House voted to impeach him. You can't make this stuff up.

3. Mark Sanford admitting his affair: Was he hiking the Appalachian Trail? Uh, no. This was the epitome of a rambling news conference -- you weren't quite sure what he was going to say next.

4. Larry Craig... 'I am not gay': What else can you say about Larry Craig's straight-faced defiant Idaho news conference? He gave us this line: "I did nothing wrong ... I am not gay, I never have been gay." Instead of resigning, he said, his biggest mistake was not getting a lawyer initially. And he claimed to be "viciously harassed" by the local newspaper. 

5. Donald Rumsfeld -- pick it: From going to war with the Army you have, to known unknowns, to going off on Jim Miklaszewski on Oct. 26, 2006 on the Iraqi security situation, a Rumsfeld news conference was quite the sight to behold.

6. The Bush shoe-thrower: Bush showed why he's one of the best athletes we've had as president. In Iraq, Bush dodged -- not questions -- but shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi "journalist."

7. Palin's resignation: Aside from the rambling and verbal ambling, the news of her resignation -- despite having a year and a half left on her term as Alaska governor -- came out of nowhere. It was just another chapter in the unconventional book of Palin.

8. Harry Whittington: Don't remember his name? That was the guy who Dick Cheney shot in the face! Incredibly, Whittington practically apologized for being shot in the face: "My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week." Wow.

9. Obama and Skip Gates: During a news conference dedicated almost exclusively to health care, President Obama took a question at the very end about the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates. Obama's answer -- that the police acted "stupidly" -- became THE news for days, rather than health care. It was an undisciplined moment for a normally disciplined president and White House.

10. David Vitter and wife: Instead of bowing out like many others embroiled in sex scandals before him -- wife by his side -- Vitter instead was defiant and came out swinging. Vitter, implicated in the DC Madam scandal, accused "political enemies" of spreading "falsehoods" and said he wouldn't take "endless questions." He didn't take any -- and instead talked about water and highway policy! His wife shot back at the press, calling for privacy.

Honorable mentions: The Chamber of Commerce news conference hoax; Sarah Palin flanked by all-male governors at the 2008 Republican Governors Association.

From NBC's Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro
Today we look at what we consider the decade's Top 10 political speeches. What are your thoughts? (By the way, it's worth noting that five of the speeches on this list -- and five of the top six -- called for unity or coming together in some way. Yet here we are at the end of the decade, and the rancor is worse than ever...)

1. Obama's race speech in Philly (2008): Barack Obama has delivered many notable speeches -- in fact, we could even run a Top 10 Obama speeches -- but this was his defining address, showing the ability to tackle a controversial topic and take it to another level. It took Jeremiah Wright head on, and it arguably saved his presidential campaign.

2. Bush after 9/11 (2001): Here's something that even George W. Bush's supporters and detractors can agree on: This speech was his finest hour.

3. Al Gore's concession (2000): It brought an end to the 2000 presidential election -- and called for unity and graciousness.

4. Obama's keynote at the 2004 Dem convention (2004): It was the first time that the nation met Barack Obama. It also was the time in our memory that the keynote speaker actually overshadowed the rest of a party's political convention. That is until No. 8 below...

5. Bush's "Mushroom Cloud" (2002)/State of the Union-"Axis of Evil" (2002)/Colin Powell on WMD to U.N. (2003) (tie): We put these three together because they encapsulate the Bush administration's selling of the Iraq war. Putting Colin Powell's reputation and credibility on the line to sell evidence for WMD is certainly a marker in history.

6. Palin's convention speech (2008): Who can forget the "Hockey Mom with Lipstick" who bulled her way onto the national scene at that Republican National Convention? And what a scene it was in Minnesota. That speech launched a political star and -- overnight -- put John McCain ahead in the polls. But that euphoria only lasted a few weeks.

7. Hillary Clinton's concession (2008): Democrats, your long primary nightmare was finally over after this speech. Indeed, Clinton's concession brought an end to the year-and-a-half knockdown, drag-out primary between Clinton and Barack Obama -- the likes of which we'll probably never see again.

8. Zell Miller's keynote (2004): My goodness, where do we begin? Here's what Miller, then a Democrat, said about John Kerry: "This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?" He also said: "Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending." But our favorite moment is what happened after the speech -- Zell challenging MSNBC's Chris Matthews to a duel. Really.

9. The Dean Scream speech: Without a doubt, it's our favorite political sound bite from the 2004 election. Question: Had it not dominated the airwaves after the Iowa caucuses, would Dean have gone on to win the New Hampshire primary? (By the way, one of us was in the Iowa ballroom that night, and no one there actually heard the scream because the ballroom was so loud. Only the microphone that drowned out the background noise picked it up.)

10. Hugo Chavez at U.N.; Khaddafi at U.N.; Ahmadinejad at U.N., then Columbia (tie): We learned in this decade that speeches by dictators at the U.N. (or in New York) never fail to entertain. Bush as the Devil, hour-long ramblings from scribbled notes in a pocket notebook and no gay people in Iran make these a dictator Top 10 special. 

Honorable mentions (lots of Obama): Obama's inaugural, Obama's Cairo, Obama's Nobel speech, Obama's health-care address to Congress, Ted Kennedy's address at the 2008 Democratic convention.

From NBC's Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro
Yesterday, we listed our Top 10 political downfalls of the decade. Today, in the Christmas spirit, we look at the risers -- today's prominent politicians (many with bright futures), who we didn't know at the beginning of the decade. This was a harder list to come up with than our downfall one. Below are our thoughts. What are yours?

1. Barack Obama: Need we say more?

2. Sarah Palin: You could make an argument that she deserves to be on our downfall list instead -- given her resignation earlier this year -- but going from the mayor of Wasilla, to Alaska governor, then to the GOP's vice presidential nominee in 2008 is a quite a rise. Not to mention, she has quite the influence with activist conservatives, and did we mention she's now a millionaire? No matter if Palin never runs for the presidency, she is the nation's biggest political celebrity, other than Obama of course.

3. Bobby Jindal: Yes, he had a bad response to Obama's State of the Union, but the Rhodes Scholar is just 38 years old. Chalk it up as a MINOR setback for his national ambitions. He has a reputation for being a good executive, has lots of money in the bank, and represents something that's currently lacking in the Republican Party -- diversity.

4. Chuck Schumer: While he first got elected in the '90s (1998), there's probably no Democrat with more skins on the wall. How many total Senate seats did he help Democrats pick up as head of the DSCC again? (The answer is 14.) There's no doubt about it: He's the rising star of the Senate. And chew on this... If Harry Reid loses his re-election, and Dems hold their majority, Schumer vs. Durbin would be an interesting race for majority leader, no?

5. Marco Rubio: Some might say he's too high on this list -- and he still has a difficult primary to win -- but Rubio has instantly turned into a conservative star in his Senate fight against Charlie Crist. Conservatives see him as the GOP version of Barack Obama. But first, he's got to beat Crist, which won't be easy...

6. John Thune: He was a little-known South Dakota congressman at the beginning of the decade. He ran against Sen. Tim Johnson (D) and lost -- barely. Then he ran again and beat Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle. And now he is one of the Republican Party's biggest (and most telegenic) stars. Will he run for president in 2012?

7. Eric Cantor: No current Republican congressman has risen so far, so fast. Elected just nine years ago, Cantor now serves as the No. 2 figure in the House leadership. He is just 46.

8. Tim Kaine: Kaine began the decade as a little-known mayor of Richmond and as then lieutenant governor. But his 2005 gubernatorial victory in Virginia ended up serving as a model for future Democratic campaigns in 2006 to 2008. And that win -- as well as his three-plus years as governor -- catapulted him as VP finalist last year. He's now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. What's next?

9. Bob McDonnell: As was the case with Kaine's gubernatorial victory in Virginia in 2005, Republican Bob McDonnell -- who won this year's VA Gov contest -- has become an instant star in his party. And assuming he enjoys success as governor, McDonnell will be an automatic VP possibility (or higher?), given that Virginia is a must-win presidential battleground state for Republicans.

10. Brian Schweitzer: He started the decade narrowly losing a Senate race against GOP incumbent Conrad Burns. He then became governor of Montana in 2004. Will the bolo-tie-wearing governor run for president in 2016? He's 54.

Honorable Mentions: Paul Ryan, Jon Huntsman, Claire McCaskill, Mark Warner, Jim Webb.

From NBC's Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro
Over the next two weeks, we'll be publishing various political "Top 10" lists for the past decade (2000-2009). Today we start with the Top 10 statewide races. What did we get right and wrong? What are your thoughts?

1. California Recall (2003): It's likely we'll never see something like this again -- the recall of incumbent Gov. Gray Davis (D), a motley crew of candidates vying to replace him (including various California politicians, Larry Flynt, a porn actress, Gary Coleman, Arianna Huffington), and the election of action-hero actor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) as governor.

2. Connecticut Senate (2006): The Lieberman-Lamont primary continues to reverberate in Democratic politics (see the Senate health-care bill debate). Backed by anti-war liberal groups upset with Lieberman's support for the Iraq war, Lamont upset Lieberman in the primary. Undeterred, Lieberman took the extraordinary step of running anyway in the general election -- as an independent. And thanks to the Republican candidate getting just 10%, Lieberman won. Can he do it again in 2012?

3. New York Senate (2000): While the race didn't end up being close, the fact that you had a sitting first lady (Hillary Clinton) running for this seat, as well as -- at one time -- the popular mayor of New York City (Rudy Giuliani), definitely qualifies this as a top-10 race.

4. Illinois Senate (2004): This race wasn't close, either. But it featured Barack Obama winning a very crowded (and competitive) Democratic primary; the GOP nominee Jack Ryan withdrawing after a sex-club revelation; former football coach Mike Ditka flirting with entering the race; and the eventual entry of Marylander Alan Keyes (R). The outcome of the race, of course, set the stage for Obama's presidential victory four years later.

5. South Dakota Senate (2004): It wasn't as close as the Johnson-Thune contest two years earlier, but this race resulted in the ouster of a sitting majority leader, Democrat Tom Daschle. It also turned the winner, John Thune, into an instant GOP star (and possible 2012 presidential contender).

6. Virginia Senate (2006): Had Jim Webb (D) not defeated incumbent Sen. George Allen (R) in this contest, Democrats wouldn't have won back control of the Senate. The race also ended Allen's presidential hopes, and it immortalized this word in the political lexicon: "Macaca." And THAT has revolutionized the use of technology in covering campaigns. YouTube became a household name in politics after this...

7. Georgia Senate (2002): This Senate race -- between incumbent Sen. Max Cleland (D) and challenger Saxby Chambliss (R) -- became the quintessential post-9/11 battle over national security. Chambliss' inflammatory TV ad linking Cleland to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, as well as Cleland's loss, set the stage for the 2004 presidential election.

8. Minnesota Senate (2002): Minnesota has had its share of great races (Jesse Ventura's election in '98, Wellstone-Coleman in '02, Coleman-Franken in '08), but this 2002 race makes our list -- and 2008 does not -- simply because you couldn't have had last year's amazingly close (and amazingly long) race without Coleman's '02 victory that came after Paul Wellstone's tragic plane crash.

9. Missouri Senate (2000): This race also saw a tragedy: the death of Gov. Mel Carnahan, who was running against incumbent Sen. John Ashcroft. In the end, even though he had passed away, Carnahan beat Ashcroft. And Carnahan's wife, Jean, filled the Senate seat.

10. Rhode Island Senate (2006): Much like the Lieberman-Lamont primary the same year, this contest featured a fairly popular incumbent (Lincoln Chafee, a Republican with a family political legacy) receiving a tough primary (from conservative Steve Laffey). Unlike in Connecticut, Chafee won the primary, but it wounded him in the general election -- leading to Sheldon Whitehouse's (D) victory. In a way, this race helped plant the seed for the emboldened conservative/Tea Party movement we see today. Question: If Laffey had NOT challenged Chafee, would Democrats have won back the Senate?

Honorable mentions: Minnesota Senate 2008 (the recount lasted 238 days!), New Hampshire Senate 2002, South Dakota Senate 2002, Missouri Senate 2006.