Due to circumstances beyond my control, there will be no column today. We got hit with a huge storm this weekend, and woke up with no power today. We finally got our power back late in the day, but too late to put together a coherent column, sorry. Another storm is on the way tomorrow, but it doesn't look anywhere near as bad, so here's hoping tomorrow's column will appear as usual. Again, apologies for the interruption of service, but without power it's tough to blog....

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

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.

Speaking of Congress and swampiness (swampitude?), the Republicans in the House of Representatives decided to make its first order of business gutting a congressional ethics office. This was such blatant swampery that they had to hastily back away from the plan the next day, after meeting at night in secret to come up with the brilliant plan. Not only were they loudly denounced by Democrats, Donald Trump even had to tweet his displeasure -- although, while the Democrats opposed the idea because it was a bad one, Trump was merely annoyed at the scheduling of trashing an ethics office, implying he'd be fine if they got around to it later on. This was misreported by most of the media, it almost goes without saying.

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Now that Republicans control all branches of the federal government, their base is going to expect them to make good on their promises. However, what we're already seeing is that political rhetoric that helps get you elected isn't the same thing as actual reality. It's going to be interesting to see GOP rhetoric collide with the hard, cold facts of reality in the next few months, and nowhere is this more true than on the issue of healthcare reform.

Republicans have already started to realize that their campaign rhetoric isn't reality, moving quickly from "repeal and replace" to "repeal and delay." There's a reason for this, and the reason is they can't agree among themselves what to replace Obamacare with -- because they are scared of seeing headlines such as: "Millions Will Lose Coverage Under GOP Plan," or, perhaps, "GOP Plan Will Blow $10 Trillion Hole In Budget."

Let's run down the core Republican rhetoric, and introduce some reality to the picture. Picture one of those period pieces on Masterpiece Theater: "Republican Rhetoric, may I introduce you to Mr. Reality? Mr. Reality, meet Rhetoric."

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Obama's Very Good Year

Obama's third, or "lame-duck" honeymoon continued strong in December, putting Obama at the highest point in public opinion polls that he's seen during his entire second term in office. In other words, he's stronger now than he was when sworn in for the second time, four years ago. Obama set four second-term records this month, hitting a job approval high in both daily and monthly average poll ratings, while also charting new daily and monthly lows in job disapproval. Obama had a great December, which was the capstone on the best year he's ever had during his entire presidency. Let's take a look at the penultimate chart of Obama's presidency:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

December, 2016

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From the shores of Gitchee Gumee comes, as always, the official banished words list of the year. Every year (since 1976) the Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan graces us with this list of overused and annoying phrases and the 2017 list is longer than ever. Without further ado, let's get right to this year's crop of banished words and phrases.

You, Sir

Focus

Bête Noir

Town Hall Meeting

Post-Truth

Guesstimate

831

Historic

Manicured

Echo Chamber

On Fleek

Bigly

Ghost

Dadbod

Listicle

"Get your dandruff up..."

Selfie Drone

Frankenfruit

Disruption

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First off: I am taking one final vacation day today, sorry. But never fear, original columns will return tomorrow, and it'll be a busy week. We've got the banished words to run down (although this year's list was rather underwhelming, we have to admit), the penultimate column in the Obama Poll Watch series, and then the first regular Friday Talking Points column in three weeks. So you've got all that to look forward to!

But today, I wanted to make a final plea for donations to the site. As you can see above, the needle has moved significantly in the past week or so, and we are within reach of achieving our goal for the 2016 Holiday Pledge Drive. Woo hoo! Thanks to everyone who has generously given already, and I promise I will catch up on the thank-you emails later tonight.

We are so close to reaching our goal that I thought it'd be worth one last entreaty to see if we can make it over the top. We've already reached the point where I can guarantee an ad-free experience for all of 2017, but we've got all the usual bills to pay for the rest of the year as well. It's certainly going to be an interesting year in politics -- no matter your outlook or viewpoint, I think everyone can agree on the word "interesting," whether you read it positively or read it as used in the fabled curse "may you live in interesting times."

So again, thanks to everyone for supporting independent punditry (and reality-based commentary), and if there's anyone out there who was thinking "maybe I'll donate, but it seems like they'll make their goal without me..." then I would ask them to reconsider. Perhaps your donation will be the one that pushes us over our goal -- wouldn't that be satisfying?

Here's hoping everyone had a happy new year and that everyone is fully buckled in for the wild ride that 2017 promises to be!

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!

We have to begin our second half with a big mea culpa for an inadvertent error in Part 1 of this column, last week. We mistakenly gave a humorous "Honorable Mention" award to George Washington University, for (as we put it) "considering the creation of the Antonin Scalia School Of Law (which would have given us a choice of acronyms to call it: 'ASSOL' or perhaps 'ASSLaw.'"

We were politely contacted (by tweet) by G.W.U. and informed of our mistake, for which we'd like to apologize. Instead, this amusing news item came from George Mason University. We have corrected this on our site in last week's column, and thank the G.W. media relations people for not being too snarky about our error.

OK, with the old business out of the way, let's get on with the final group of year-end awards, shall we?

   Destined For Political Stardom

Maybe the Democrats will decide to fight fire with fire, and start grooming their own celebrity candidates. If this turns out to be the case, it would certainly widen this field. Perhaps Destined For Political Stardom should go to someone like Mark Cuban (who is reported to be considering entering politics in a big way) or maybe Michael Moore?

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I'm really taking this week off as a vacation week, so I'd just like to take a short moment today to remember some of the fallen of 2016. I realize that on Friday there will be a category in the annual awards for "Sorry To See You Go," but I wanted to branch out from politics a bit (and the Friday column is already going to be monstrously long) and honor a few people from other fields who were lost in 2016 and who also had a personal impact on my life.

Of course, freshest in everyone's mind is Princess Leia Organa, known in this particular (and not so far, far away) galaxy as Carrie Fisher. Her feistiness on screen and her chemistry with the original cast of Star Wars was beyond measure. Her passing is untimely, although we all can at least look forward to seeing her one last time in the upcoming "Episode VIII," as the filming of her scenes is reportedly already done. She will be missed, as she returns to her indeterminate origins -- or, to put it another way, she will complete her journey from a shimmery image broadcast from R2D2 to joining her shimmery fellow fallen giants of The Force (Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, and Jedi Master Yoda).

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To all my regular readers -- here's hoping you're having a great holiday season!

I'm writing this today for a number of reasons: sharing my cool presents with you, asking your advice and wishes, and finally, because I just can't face politics the day after Christmas, sorry. In fact, this whole week could possibly have a few re-run columns, at least until Friday when we have our final installment of the year-end awards. And, because New Year's falls on the weekend, the annual "Banished Words" column will run a week from today, so there's that to look forward to.

OK, presents first. Here was the funniest present I got, although I opened it first and was not even close to being fully awake when I saw it:

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[Update: We made an inadvertent error in the original version of this column. We have now fixed the error -- it was George Mason University who toyed with the funny acronym for a Scalia law school, not George Washington University. Our apologies for the error.]

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).

This year, sad to say, we no longer have to do this dance. It's sad because The McLaughlin Group television show is no more. It was retired upon the John McLaughlin's death earlier this year, and we have missed the weekly political chatfest ever since. Pat Buchanan is an interesting guy to listen to, especially since in his own run at the presidency, he was a sort of proto-Trump. Clarence Page and Eleanor Clift are likewise missed on a weekly basis.

But no time of year highlights the absence more than now, because McLaughlin came up with a list of year-end award categories for all his panelists to spar over, which was always guaranteed to bring up some events from the past year that had almost totally been forgotten.

We always played along in our own year-end columns, offering up what our choices were for all the categories (and a few extra ones). This year, sadly, we do so not in homage but rather in memoriam. Rest in peace, John, while we attempt to at least partially fill the hole you've left.

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