And so we come to the final Friday Talking Points of President Joe Biden's term in office.

It is perhaps appropriate that the funeral of Jimmy Carter happened in the midst of Biden winding down his final weeks. Because Joe Biden -- another one-term Democratic president like Jimmy -- will likely become more appreciated as time goes by, just as Carter was.

Joe Biden had a pretty spectacular first two years in office, in terms of getting legislation passed. Granted, he had a Democratic Congress to work with and the continuing crisis of a pandemic to spur the politicians to actually act. He used both to get a sweeping agenda passed which will have an impact for years to come. But he had to grapple with two corporate-friendly Democrats in the Senate who held him back from achieving an even-more-historic agenda. If the full "Build Back Better" plan had made it past Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, then Americans would doubtlessly feel a lot differently (and better) about government's role in their economic lives.

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Hearings are now underway in the Senate on Donald Trump's various nominees to fill out his administration, but so far it has all felt like it is leading to a very foregone conclusion. American politics has gotten so tribal that Republicans are now willing to overlook just about anything for one of their own, no matter how deeply disqualifying such things would have been in the past. Trump will quite likely get almost all his picks confirmed, no matter what disturbing things exist in their past.

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In an extraordinary confluence of events, America mourned one former president as his body lay in state in the United States Capitol, while another former (and soon-to-be-again) president was sentenced after being found guilty of 34 felonies by a jury. Jimmy Carter had become almost the personification of decency in his post-presidential life, while Donald Trump has always been the personification of something a lot more tawdry.

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Will TikTok be banned before Donald Trump even takes office? That is the question the Supreme Court will hear tomorrow. As things stand, a law will start to shut down TikTok in this country on the 19th, unless the company divests itself from ownership and control by the Chinese government. Which isn't very likely to happen in the next ten days. But the politics of the situation have been rather convoluted, so it's hard to predict what will happen or what the fallout will be in Washington.

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Two years ago, for Presidents' Day, I wrote the following article in celebration of Jimmy Carter. At the time, he had just entered a hospice to live out his remaining days. He lasted almost two more years, reaching the impressive benchmark of turning 100 years old -- the longest any U.S. president has ever lived, in fact. And as the nation pays its respects to Carter before his final journey home to Plains, Georgia, I thought it was worth running this again. I have no idea if any other American president will ever make it to the century mark, but Carter's real legacy was not just a mark on a calendar, but the mark he made after he left office. And I have serious doubts whether any other former president will ever even get close to matching the good that Jimmy Carter did in his post-presidential career. He truly set the gold standard in that regard. His compassion for his fellow human beings was an inspiration to all, and I will always be grateful for his example of all the good a politician can still do after they leave office.

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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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Donald Trump is a master at deflecting attention. Over and over again, he trots out some outrageous idea or catchphrase, and the media all goes chasing after it because they seemingly can't help themselves. Meanwhile, the things Trump is actually doing don't get much attention, which is the whole point of the exercise.

Case in point is Trump suddenly championing a twenty-first century American "Manifest Destiny," where he has set his sights on three pieces of real estate he'd like to add to the United States: Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. Spoiler alert: none of these are serious proposals. None will actually happen. And yet they are being treated seriously (or at least semi-seriously) by people who really should know better by now.

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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.

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It must be a slow news month. That's the obvious explanation. But then "obvious explanations" aren't exactly newsworthy, or maybe just not entertaining enough, perhaps. It's much more fun to present all kinds of wild theories, isn't it? Which, again, is the obvious explanation for why the mainstream media keeps (pun definitely intended) droning on and on.

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Everybody ready? Here is the first installment of our year-end awards, with our obligatory nod to The McLaughlin Group television show for coming up with these categories.

As always, it's a marathon. It's really, really long. Don't say you weren't warned! And since it is so long, that's all the introduction we're going to bother with.

Ready?... everyone buckle up... here we go....

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