Some of you may have been wondering whether this was even going to happen this year, but here we are, happy to welcome you once again to our year-end begging season (where I shamelessly ask you to send me your hard-earned money to support this site and keep the lights on for the upcoming year).

The reason I held off launching this pledge drive until now is that I was feeling incredibly embarrassed and ashamed of myself because an entire year had gone by (once again) without the website being updated and rebuilt. So our big news: this is now underway! Woo hoo!

Somehow I just couldn't bring myself to ask for more money without finally making good on this long-standing promise, which is why I held off on this announcement until today. Last year, I had actually picked out a web developer and started the process, but he quickly left for foreign shores and "ghosted" me, so it wound up not going anywhere (and leaving me awfully frustrated).

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Donald Trump's "Day One" in office is now less than two weeks away. He promised American voters a lot of action on his first day, but in the past few weeks he seems inordinately focused on some rather odd (one might say: "downright bizarre") goals. He has become a big fan of expanding America in what can only be called imperialistic fashion -- adding Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal to the American map. Today he floated a new idea, this one not a land-grab but instead of a sort of water-grab: he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America," for no particular reason (other than to annoy Mexico, one assumes).

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By the time I finish writing this and post it, Donald Trump may have begun speaking to an adoring crowd in Pennsylvania. He is holding a rally there (the first one he's held in quite a while) that will be a de facto kickoff to the Republicans' midterm campaign strategy. Since the party can't run on anything that directly contradicts Trump's positions (because he has such an ideological stranglehold on Republicans), no doubt plenty of GOP politicians will be watching this rally for clues as to what will be acceptable for them to focus on in next year's campaign.

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It's that time of year again! Time to review the past 12 months and hand out awards to those who have earned them.

It's been an eventful year, of course, so many of these categories will have multiple possible winners. Listed below are the categories for the first installment, which will run this Friday. We'll open the nominations up for the second part next week.

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America heads into this year's holiday season with a cheerful discussion of whether or not we've committed war crimes. Just another random week in the Donald Trump era, folks! Sorry for being snide, but it's hard to juxtapose the whole "peace on Earth" holiday sentiment with the revelations coming from Washington this week.

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This article should really be seen as a continuation to yesterday's article, since all it does is add some specifics to the generalized observations I made yesterday. Because both sides in Congress have made some tangible moves in the debate over extending the Obamacare subsidies (which are set to expire on the first of the year). Senate Democrats have presented their plan, which will get a guaranteed floor vote next week, while a centrist group in the House (with enough Republicans to pass a bill if all Democrats supported it) has come up with their own plan. Meanwhile, Republicans in both the House and the Senate are still dithering about what party-line plan they might put forward. So let's run these down, one by one.

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December is going to be a busy month in the political world. The due date to release the Epstein files falls on the 19th. New official figures -- the first in months -- on the economy (jobs and inflation) will be released two weeks from now. But the biggest story all month is going to be whether Congress is going to extend the Obamacare subsidies or not. Right now, it's not looking especially good, but things can change quickly.

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Today, all eyes in the political world are turning to Tennessee. There's a special election for an open House seat happening today, and it could send shockwaves through Washington no matter who wins the race. If the Democratic candidate wins, it is going to boost Democratic hopes of a "blue wave" election in next year's midterms in a big way, while simultaneously causing deep fear within the Republican Party. If the Republican wins with a small margin of victory, the same thing is going to happen (but in a more subdued way). The only way the election results aren't going to cause a shockwave is if the GOP candidate scores a sweeping victory with at least a double-digit margin.

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The United States of America is once again committing war crimes. In fact, the recent revelation in the Washington Post that there were two survivors of one of the military's missile attacks on small boats, and that a second missile was launched specifically to kill the survivors, was literally a textbook example of a war crime. The entire operation -- killing people who are in international waters who are not at war with the U.S. -- is probably a war crime as well, but with this particular example there is absolutely no doubt. But I for one am not going to hold my breath waiting for any of the people involved to be held to any sort of account for their actions.

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