In the midst of my yearly frenzy putting together the annual awards column, the "predictions for next year" part sometimes gets a little shortchanged. It's the last item on the "Part 2" list, therefore by the time I get to it I'm usually pretty loopy and have lost a certain amount of focus. But on the last week of 2025, my mind has been turning to thinking about what to expect next year again, so I thought I would just share some random thoughts I've been having, in no particular order.

Healthcare showdown 2.0

This could easily lead to "government shutdown 2.0" as well, since the budgetary ball was only punted until the end of January. During the first month of the new year, Congress will engage in a battle over what to do (if anything) about the premiums which have skyrocketed for tens of millions of Americans.

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OK, I will start with an apology, since I am still not quite up to writing new columns yet (maybe tomorrow!), so I decided just to punt today and re-run an old favorite.

I should mention that I am also happy to report that we are getting very close to our fundraising goal for the year, as donations arrived right around the holiday last week. Thanks to everyone who has donated so far! We are hoping we get those last few donations to put us over the top, and are profoundly grateful for the response so far.

In any case, here is a very early holiday column I wrote, which was written in a simpler time (way back when conspiracy theorists didn't actually run the U.S. government), but which has always been one of my favorites. Enjoy, and hope everyone's having a good year-end holiday season!

Originally published December 23, 2009

Speaking as someone who generally enjoys a good conspiracy theory just for the "creative writing" aspect alone, in all good conscience I simply must report this shocking news: I have uncovered a big, fat conspiracy that is no mere theory. We're either being lied to, or we're joining in the propagation of the lie ourselves, with merriment. In actual fact, it would not be hyperbole to call this the father of all conspiracies.

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When I wrote this (twelve years ago to the day), it was meant as satire. It was written as reductio ad absurdum -- something so ridiculous it could never actually be conceivable that anything like it could happen.

That's all the introduction it needs, really.

Originally published on December 23, 2013

Ho, Ho, Holy Cow -- Santa Gets Fighter Escort On U.S. Military Site (Reuters)

A U.S. military website showing Santa Claus delivering his presents while guarded by warplanes has some children's advocates worried.

In a twist to its tradition of tracking an animated version of Santa Claus' sleigh and reindeer as he flies around the globe on December 24, the military is adding the animated fighter plane escort to give a realistic feel to the popular feature, said a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

"We wanted to let folks know that, hey, this is a NORAD video, and we're the military and this is our mission," said the spokesman, Navy Captain Jeff Davis.

[Note: The above article is real. What follows, however, is not.]

We hereby interrupt our live coverage of Pope Francis leading Midnight Mass this Christmas Eve, because we've got some breaking news from the Pentagon. We apologize for pre-empting our traditional Christmas Eve programming, and promise we will continue our coverage after the newsbreak, on a slight time delay so our viewers won't miss a single minute of the Pope.

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Millions of Americans will be visiting family over the next few weeks, and we're all familiar with having to deal with an older relative who is prone to grumpiness over aspects of modern life that they don't approve of. "We didn't have that when I was a kid," your cranky grandpa will say, "So why do we need it now?" Other family members, being used to this sort of thing, will humor the old guy rather than launching into an explanation of modern life and why some things get better over time. It's easier just to let grumpy grandpa rant and rave, as you sit across from him at the holiday dinner table.

But there's one grumpy oldster we can't just ignore in this fashion, because he is President Cranky Grandpa and his ranting and raving actually has consequences. Thankfully though, his latest grumpiness is going to help Democrats make their case in next year's midterm elections.

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Welcome back to the second of our year-end awards columns! And if you missed it last Friday, go check out [Part 1] as well.

This article is mind-bendingly long enough, so we're not going to bother with any other introductory words at all. Instead, let's just get right to the awards, shall we?

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The Democratic National Committee's effort to analyze what went wrong in the 2024 election was always kind of a joke from the start. Soon after the effort was announced, it was revealed that it would not be looking into two crucial questions from 2024, namely Joe Biden's decision to run for re-election when he obviously was not up to the task, and what happened after he (finally) decided to end his campaign and Kamala Harris was anointed the official party candidate (without any primaries or any sort of selection process at all). Those are some pretty big things to decide to ignore, you've got to admit.

Even so, perhaps it would have contained some valuable information for the Democratic Party heading forwards. But D.N.C. Chair Ken Martin just announced that he was reversing his earlier promise to make the post-mortem report public, and that it would remain secret instead. This does not exactly signal confidence, to state the obvious.

But the biggest problem with the report, from all accounts, is even bigger than flat-out ignoring, you know, what actually went wrong in 2024. Because apparently the report also didn't even bother to examine what was wrong with the Democratic Party brand either. The information in the report was limited to small-ball analyses of the process of the election -- what advertising and get-out-the-vote money was spent, how it was spent, and how effective it was. This completely sidesteps the question of what policies the party stands for -- or should stand for, going forward.

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As I contemplate (for this Friday's year-end awards column) making predictions for the next year in politics, I have to wonder what will happen to Mike Johnson in 2026. Will he still be speaker of the House at this point next year? Or will the House Republicans have ousted him in favor of someone else?

Normally, this wouldn't even be a valid question, since leadership jobs in Congress are usually only up for reconsideration at the start of each new Congress -- which means the January following a congressional election. If these were normal times (and if the Republican Party were a normal political party), then Johnson's job would be considered safe until at least January of 2027. But of course these are not normal times.

The Republican Party has gone through a succession of House speakers over the past decade or so, and each speaker has either resigned in frustration with his own party or been kicked out by a "no confidence" vote. So it's not exactly idle speculation to consider whether one of these two possibilities might happen to Johnson in the upcoming year.

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This is the last legislative week scheduled for Congress in this calendar year. This means that if nothing gets done, the expanded Obamacare subsidies will indeed expire starting on New Year's Day -- which will negatively affect over 20 million Americans. In some cases, they will see their premiums double or even triple. As things stand, a last-minute solution to the problem does not seem at all likely.

Republicans are not showing much in the way of interest in striking any sort of deal or compromise with the Democrats. This lack of urgency means there will likely not be some frenzy of activity later this week that puts a bill on Donald Trump's desk before everyone goes home for vacation. So the subsidies will expire on schedule, as 20 million people go over the cliff.

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We're at the halfway point in awards season, with the first round done and the second still to go. So today I am asking once again for nominations for the second round of our year-end awards.

Cast your mind back over the whole year (which, since Trump was in charge, seemed like a much longer time period than that!) and nominate your own candidates for the following list of categories. There are a bunch of them, as always, so there should be a category that fits for most of the important people and events of the year.

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Welcome to our annual year-end awards! As always, we honor the memory of The McLaughlin Group show with our categories, and we want to thank the readers who responded to our calls for nominees for them all.

Also as always, it is long. Really, really, insanely long. You have been warned!

And also as always, we'll be back again next Friday for [Part 2].

That's really all we need as an introduction. I mean, it's long enough already! So buckle up boys and girls, here we go....

   Biggest Winner Of 2025

We're going to start off with a very cheerful award, because the Biggest Winner Of 2025 goes to none other than the Democratic Party. I had already picked this out, but I'm going to paste in a nomination sent by reader Kick, because it lists some good details:

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