Welcome back everyone to our regular weekly roundup! We've been on our usual year-end hiatus for the past few weeks, pre-empted by our year-end awards columns (Part 1 and Part 2). But now that Congress is slinking back to the swamps of Washington, it's time to start looking forward once again. And we promise, we are going to explain that rather cryptic title, after we dispense with an initial bit of idiocy.

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Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!

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Normally we open our annual awards column with an explanation of why John McLaughlin shouldn't sue us. It's become traditional, in fact, to skate the thin ice of "homage" and "satire" versus straight-up theft of intellectual property (which, of course, we'd never ever do... or, at least, admit).

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I have to say, I don't write about television all that often, and when I do it is normally to rip into a network or a host or some other form of complaint. As I did regularly, until NBC wised up and replaced David Gregory with Chuck Todd on Meet The Press (just to give one obvious example). But today, I write in praise of a late-night host.

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We've got a lot to cover today (including Obama's final press conference), so let's just dive right in and try to get through the rest of the week's news in lightning fashion.

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OK, that's a rather unusual title, but you'll have to wait until the talking points part of the program for us to address it. Call it "the lesson to be learned from the Carrier jobs and Donald Trump," or the silver lining that just might be an effective tool for Democrats in the near future. First, though, we've got to get through the news of the week and handing out our weekly awards.

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So, has everyone had their fill of turkey leftovers? Well, taking a quick look at Donald Trump's cabinet choices should suffice anyone who still craves some leftover turkeys, if you know what we mean.

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We have one prediction for Donald Trump's presidency that we haven't noticed elsewhere, so we thought it worth mentioning up front. Donald Trump will quite likely use the "bully pulpit" of the presidency better than anyone since the man who coined the term, Teddy Roosevelt. Well, Franklin Roosevelt certainly connected with the people, so maybe that's an unfair omission, but no matter who you put on the list of presidents who effectively used public opinion against Congress, Trump is very likely going to wind up pretty high on that list.

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Last week, we pre-empted our usual Talking Points format for a pre-election column. This week, we're going to do the same for a post-election column. The shock has not worn off, and it just feels too soon to return to analyzing Democratic politics. Democrats are in disarray right now, which is probably a good thing in the long run, at least if it leads to some major course corrections. But the wounds are still too raw for us to rub any further salt in them, so instead today we'd like to take a detour into history instead. If history bores you in general, we'd suggest you skip the rest of this column. For everyone else, let's take a look back today.

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However, regular readers of this column are going to have to wait yet another week for a standard Friday Talking Points offering. This week we are throwing out our format entirely, and instead providing an explanation of who we're voting for, followed by a call for reform in an effort to inject a possible silver lining to what promises to be a very contentious Election Day (no matter who wins). Yes, there will be optimism at the end of this column, specifically provided for people who are tired of the apocalyptic tone of the final pre-election week. So there's that to look forward to.

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