Today is the fifth anniversary of the attempted violent insurrection at the United States Capitol. We all watched it play out on live television, as a riotous mob attacked police officers who were doing their duty defending the building and the members of Congress inside it. We saw it all with our own eyes, both on that sad day and afterwards, as more video footage was released. It is obvious what the video footage shows. All you have to do is watch it to understand exactly what happened that day.

Donald Trump, however, has an alternate version of history. And now that he's president again, his delusional fantasy has become the official U.S. history of the event. The White House today posted a new webpage detailing Trump's version of the day, which bears little resemblance to the truth of what happened (which, once again, we all saw with our own eyes).

The word "Orwellian" gets tossed around in political analysis, sometimes with justification and sometimes without. But it's hard to call such a rewrite of history anything but Orwellian. Trump is attempting to toss the reality down the "memory hole" of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. His version of the "Ministry of Truth" has already been running rampant over many historical truths in American history, dictating to museums and the National Park Service what can and cannot be said about our shared history. The evils of slavery, for instance, are being tossed down the memory hole as well. And that's just one prominent example.

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Donald Trump is not being subtle about why he decided to launch a military attack against Venezuela and spirit away their country's leader, Nicolás Maduro. Instead of Trump's previous attempts to cloak his naked power grab with some sort of justification, he now just flat-out admits "it's about the oil." Venezuela has a lot of oil in the ground -- more than any other country on the planet, in fact. Trump wants it for the U.S. So he's going to force them to allow American companies to go in and take it, one way or another.

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As always, we like to start out the new year in amusing fashion, as we salute the tireless pedants way up north at the Lake Superior State University who, each year, determine which words and phrases have been so overused and are so annoying that they deserve banishment from the vernacular.

We see from their helpful website that this is actually the 50th anniversary of this list being published, and perhaps because of this momentous occasion, they have provided a bonus list this year, of "Repeat Offenders: Words That Refused to Stay Banished."

Since it is a big year for them, we thought we'd give proper credit, from their press release:

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In the midst of my yearly frenzy putting together the annual awards column, the "predictions for next year" part sometimes gets a little shortchanged. It's the last item on the "Part 2" list, therefore by the time I get to it I'm usually pretty loopy and have lost a certain amount of focus. But on the last week of 2025, my mind has been turning to thinking about what to expect next year again, so I thought I would just share some random thoughts I've been having, in no particular order.

Healthcare showdown 2.0

This could easily lead to "government shutdown 2.0" as well, since the budgetary ball was only punted until the end of January. During the first month of the new year, Congress will engage in a battle over what to do (if anything) about the premiums which have skyrocketed for tens of millions of Americans.

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OK, I will start with an apology, since I am still not quite up to writing new columns yet (maybe tomorrow!), so I decided just to punt today and re-run an old favorite.

I should mention that I am also happy to report that we are getting very close to our fundraising goal for the year, as donations arrived right around the holiday last week. Thanks to everyone who has donated so far! We are hoping we get those last few donations to put us over the top, and are profoundly grateful for the response so far.

In any case, here is a very early holiday column I wrote, which was written in a simpler time (way back when conspiracy theorists didn't actually run the U.S. government), but which has always been one of my favorites. Enjoy, and hope everyone's having a good year-end holiday season!

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.

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When I wrote this (twelve years ago to the day), it was meant as satire. It was written as reductio ad absurdum -- something so ridiculous it could never actually be conceivable that anything like it could happen.

That's all the introduction it needs, really.

Originally published on December 23, 2013

Ho, Ho, Holy Cow -- Santa Gets Fighter Escort On U.S. Military Site (Reuters)

A U.S. military website showing Santa Claus delivering his presents while guarded by warplanes has some children's advocates worried.

In a twist to its tradition of tracking an animated version of Santa Claus' sleigh and reindeer as he flies around the globe on December 24, the military is adding the animated fighter plane escort to give a realistic feel to the popular feature, said a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

"We wanted to let folks know that, hey, this is a NORAD video, and we're the military and this is our mission," said the spokesman, Navy Captain Jeff Davis.

[Note: The above article is real. What follows, however, is not.]

We hereby interrupt our live coverage of Pope Francis leading Midnight Mass this Christmas Eve, because we've got some breaking news from the Pentagon. We apologize for pre-empting our traditional Christmas Eve programming, and promise we will continue our coverage after the newsbreak, on a slight time delay so our viewers won't miss a single minute of the Pope.

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Millions of Americans will be visiting family over the next few weeks, and we're all familiar with having to deal with an older relative who is prone to grumpiness over aspects of modern life that they don't approve of. "We didn't have that when I was a kid," your cranky grandpa will say, "So why do we need it now?" Other family members, being used to this sort of thing, will humor the old guy rather than launching into an explanation of modern life and why some things get better over time. It's easier just to let grumpy grandpa rant and rave, as you sit across from him at the holiday dinner table.

But there's one grumpy oldster we can't just ignore in this fashion, because he is President Cranky Grandpa and his ranting and raving actually has consequences. Thankfully though, his latest grumpiness is going to help Democrats make their case in next year's midterm elections.

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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.

This article is mind-bendingly long enough, so we're not going to bother with any other introductory words at all. Instead, let's just get right to the awards, shall we?

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The Democratic National Committee's effort to analyze what went wrong in the 2024 election was always kind of a joke from the start. Soon after the effort was announced, it was revealed that it would not be looking into two crucial questions from 2024, namely Joe Biden's decision to run for re-election when he obviously was not up to the task, and what happened after he (finally) decided to end his campaign and Kamala Harris was anointed the official party candidate (without any primaries or any sort of selection process at all). Those are some pretty big things to decide to ignore, you've got to admit.

Even so, perhaps it would have contained some valuable information for the Democratic Party heading forwards. But D.N.C. Chair Ken Martin just announced that he was reversing his earlier promise to make the post-mortem report public, and that it would remain secret instead. This does not exactly signal confidence, to state the obvious.

But the biggest problem with the report, from all accounts, is even bigger than flat-out ignoring, you know, what actually went wrong in 2024. Because apparently the report also didn't even bother to examine what was wrong with the Democratic Party brand either. The information in the report was limited to small-ball analyses of the process of the election -- what advertising and get-out-the-vote money was spent, how it was spent, and how effective it was. This completely sidesteps the question of what policies the party stands for -- or should stand for, going forward.

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As I contemplate (for this Friday's year-end awards column) making predictions for the next year in politics, I have to wonder what will happen to Mike Johnson in 2026. Will he still be speaker of the House at this point next year? Or will the House Republicans have ousted him in favor of someone else?

Normally, this wouldn't even be a valid question, since leadership jobs in Congress are usually only up for reconsideration at the start of each new Congress -- which means the January following a congressional election. If these were normal times (and if the Republican Party were a normal political party), then Johnson's job would be considered safe until at least January of 2027. But of course these are not normal times.

The Republican Party has gone through a succession of House speakers over the past decade or so, and each speaker has either resigned in frustration with his own party or been kicked out by a "no confidence" vote. So it's not exactly idle speculation to consider whether one of these two possibilities might happen to Johnson in the upcoming year.

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