Is Nancy Pelosi now just openly trolling Trump? It certainly seems that way. At this point, Pelosi's refusal to send over the articles of impeachment to the Senate appears to be nothing short of a political stunt to keep the impeachment story raging over the holiday weeks at the end of the year, while causing Trump's head to explode (even more than normal, of course). By this measure, it is working out wonderfully well for Pelosi.

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Welcome back to the second and final installment of our year-end awards columns! If you missed last week's column, you should probably check that out, too.

As you can see from our updated thermometer, our fundraising drive is in much better shape this week, although we're still just short of our goal, so if you can chip in to keep the lights on, that'd be great. I promise -- thank-you notes will go out this weekend!

But enough of that, let's get straight to the awards, as these columns are already long enough as is.

   Destined For Political Stardom

I considered giving this award to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, but she won it last year and we already gave her Most Charismatic. Stacey Abrams was also a contender, for her response to the State Of The Union and her repeated mentions as a possible vice-presidential pick.

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Program Note: Here's hoping everyone had a happy Christmas and found what they wanted under the tree (or otherwise celebrated the winter solstice in their own chosen fashion). I'm busily working on tomorrow's column, the second installment of our year-end awards. So while I dig through innumerable 2019 stories and articles, I would invite everyone to sit back and enjoy a column I wrote ten years ago. In it, I uncover a worldwide conspiracy that each and every one of you has participated in at one point or another in your lives. Yes, you! You're a co-conspirator just like all the others....

The Biggest Conspiracy Of All
[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.

And almost every single one of us has participated in this gigantic hoax, in one form or another, at least once in our lives. For many, it happens like clockwork on a regular basis. And it seems to prove Hitler's point about the "Big Lie" -- if you repeat it often enough, sooner or later a certain segment of the populace will accept it as being true.

This vast conspiracy is not limited to even America, although it certainly has a red, white, and true-blue-American following. While not exactly world-wide, the conspiracy reaches about as far as any such enormous falsehood has ever reached on our globe, so that even peoples who don't buy into the conspiracy's underlying storyline still participate in the conspiracy with jolly abandon.

The conspiracy itself is insidious and highly discriminatory, since the targets of the falsehood are a tiny segment of the population who are vulnerable and impressionable. That's right -- an enormous majority of society has banded together to repeat this lie to a minority, and the deciding factor for who is "in" the conspiracy and who is lied to is based purely on physical characteristics -- a throwback to a darker era when society deemed it permissible for such blatant and overt discrimination. The rules of the conspiracy are plain and simple, and are so prevalent that when one who has not been let into the conspiracy meets a complete and utter stranger -- virtually anywhere in this country -- without any prompting or other instigation, they will almost without exception be lied to by this complete stranger (who would rather die of shame than admit the truth).

This conspiracy, looked at from a certain light, is no better than fratboy "hazing" rituals, since the members of the conspiracy -- every man and woman of them -- were themselves lied to for a period of time before being allowed to join in the ritual of misleading others who have not been so initiated. It's as if the entire country had an unspoken agreement to join in this monstrous prank on a small group of fellow citizens.

Those being lied to have a rational and logical choice in what to believe -- either almost everyone they know and even complete strangers that they meet and an agency of the federal government to boot are lying shamelessly and absolutely consistently to them; or, conversely, what everyone is telling them must be true. The scope and size of the conspiracy mean that applying Occam's Razor in the usual fashion will lead them to believe the lie, instead of uncovering the truth of the matter. In other words, the lesson taught is that almost nobody they've ever met in their entire lives can be fully trusted any more. This is why the conspiracy is such a negative one -- because it results in finally accepting the paranoid notion that everyone really has banded together to make a fool out of you. Which leads to disillusionment and loss of innocence. Stumbling out of the dark, in this particular instance, leads almost immediately to doubting all the stories told by the perpetrators of this myth.

This may, in the end, do some good. Because a healthy skepticism is almost a required trait to deal with the modern world. No facts or stories should be taken on faith in the person speaking such, as it is obvious that informed people should view people saying "It's true! Really!" with a seriously jaundiced eye from that point on. Which, as I said, is actually a good thing, in the end.

This conspiracy has a name. And it is no coincidence that this lie is alphabetically correspondent with Satan, since as I said the evil of divisively selecting one segment of the public -- on physical characteristics alone -- and then repeatedly lying to them is a horrendous practice which should, quite obviously, be denounced by all upstanding folks who wish to allow American society to grow out of this juvenile behavior and mature as a society.

Because that's really the key to the whole conspiracy -- a juvenile falsehood told by those who have no excuse for such childish behavior. No excuse whatsoever, since (almost by definition) none of the members of the conspiracy can defend their actions as childlike, rather than childish.

I realize I am fighting a headwind by exposing this insidious lie, and that merry members of the conspiracy are simply never going to change their behavior, since they are all convinced that lying to a physically-challenged minority is somehow for their own good.

Sigh.

Maybe they're right after all. It's so much easier just to believe the lie, and (by doing so) avoid tilting at this particular windmill. Screaming the truth in a crowd would not make me friends -- in fact it would likely put me in fear of turning such into a mob screaming for my blood.

It's so much easier to avoid all of that. And, after all, this conspiracy has been ongoing for hundreds of years, so I guess it does no real harm. So, count me in, and allow me to say without any hint of dishonesty or smirking irony:

"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Well, what with the midweek holiday and all, it's looking like we're only going to have one new column this week. I'll probably post a few re-run columns as well, just for everyone's amusement, but won't be writing a new one until this Friday, when we continue with our annual year-end awards.

Because we got some great suggestions when we first posted this, we thought today it'd be a good idea to solicit some more nominations for the second awards column. So here are the categories for Part 2, and as before if you don't want your login name used (to give credit), then please let me know that in the comments.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas and stays safe in their travels this week. Oh, and go Ravens! Heh. Just had to get that one in there....

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Welcome back once again to our year-end "McLaughlin Awards," named for the awards categories we lifted from the McLaughlin Report years ago. We've added a category here and there over time, but it's still the same basic list.

Before we get to all of our awards, we have to thank everyone (both online and off) for their suggestions and nominations. I always try to get as many of these as possible, to cover all the stuff I forgot about, and it always helps.

Before we begin, though, allow me one moment to make a pitch to join in this site's pledge drive. Our fundraising seems to have stalled somewhat, and we're a long way from our goal, so we'd like to ask everyone who enjoys this site (or even just these Friday columns) to dig deep and send a few bucks our way so we can keep the lights on in 2020 (and keep the site ad-free). Do I have to bring up the kittens? Because I will, if I have to! Heh.

Enough shameless begging, though, let's just get on with the show.

   Biggest Winner Of 2019

Um... the Baltimore Ravens? Heh.

We had a few entrants for Biggest Winner of the year, some rather generic ("Russia") and some very specific (the residents of Virginia, who will now enjoy Democratic rule in the governor's office and both houses of the legislature -- nominated by reader "italyrusty," I should mention).

We could have gone with Greta Thunberg, who was showered with prizes this year, most notably including Time magazine's "Person of the Year" (which drove Trump into an epic hissy fit over losing...). She is certainly deserving of every award she gets, that's for sure.

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Tonight we saw the sixth in the series of Democratic presidential debates, and my first and strongest impression is that I for one am glad the field is being narrowed. Seven on the stage was enough, in other words, for me.

Although we had three candidates who are polling way down in the single digits, there was much less desperation on display. Previously, all the candidates at the bottom of the polls all were striving for that big breakout moment, and it showed. This time around, there was a slight air of desperation about Amy Klobuchar, but none at all from either Tom Steyer or Andrew Yang. The lack of "I'm going to jump in and shout something out" which has been present from the less-popular candidates on stage was indeed welcome, because it left a lot more time for substantive discussions.

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Program Note:

Welcome to the second part of our look at how impeachment was seen by Alexander Hamilton, when he was arguing in the anonymous Federalist Papers for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Today, we have Federalist Paper Number 66, or "Objections to the Power of the Senate To Set as a Court for Impeachments Further Considered." It was published in the New York Packet newspaper in March of 1788.

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Program Note:

I'll be spending today and tomorrow in preparation for our year-end awards columns, so I thought I'd run a special historical look back for my readers by reprinting the two Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton on the subject of impeachment. Obviously, this is relevant to current events in Washington.

Both of these (today's and tomorrow's) were published in the New York Packet newspaper in March of 1788. As with all the Federalist Papers, they were published anonymously under the signature "PUBLIUS." The Federalist Papers were a series of arguments in favor of adopting the newly-written Constitution, and were countered by the lesser-known Anti-Federalist Papers, a series of arguments against adopting the new form of government being considered.

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It has only been two weeks since we last took a good look at the Democratic presidential field, but we've got another debate coming this week on Thursday night and we'll likely not be able to examine the horserace until the new year, so we thought it'd be worth a last look for 2019.

The field has gotten a wee bit smaller in the past two weeks, as Kamala Harris dropped out, leaving only (!) 15 Democrats still running. Michael Bloomberg has jumped into a solid fifth place, and Pete Buttigieg's poll bounce has faded a bit. So there have indeed been developments worth talking about.

Campaign News

The voters and the donors are having their say, and it is finally winnowing the debate stage. That's really the biggest campaign news in a nutshell.

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And so we come to the close of the most momentous week in Washington of the year. In one week's time, we've seen articles of impeachment move to the floor of the House of Representatives, an agreement between House Democrats and the White House to move forward on the U.S./Mexico/Canada Agreement, a truce declared in the budget battles (that had threatened to shut down the government once again), Democrats agreeing to the creation of the "Space Force" in exchange for paid family leave for federal workers, a tentative trade cease-fire declared with China, the Senate unanimously backing up the overwhelming vote in the House to declare the Armenian genocide for what it was, the release of an inspector general's report that totally debunked most of the conspiracy theories about the initiation of the counterintelligence operation at the edges of the 2016 Trump campaign, President Trump being forced to pay a $2 million fine for misuse of his own charitable foundation, and the House passing a landmark bill to fight the greed of drug companies by finally using the federal government's buying power to force lower prices on prescription medication. Again: all of these rather large things happened in a single week.

That's pretty productive, you've got to admit. Although the impeachment battle was the one issue which sucked up all the media oxygen, there were plenty of other things going on in Washington that didn't get anywhere near enough attention. Like Donald Trump having an epic hissy fit over not being named Time magazine's "person of the year." But we're getting ahead of ourselves....

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