Words of the Year 2017

WORDS OF THE YEAR FOR 1984
DRAT! That #$%! auto-correct won't let us type 2-0-1-7.
Every time we type the year normally, auto-correct changes it to 1984!

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SOLVE THE PUZZLE?
We'll post a new word from our inventory of "Words of the Year" every day throughout the month of December -- and we'll post the ultimate "WotY" at 12:00 noon EST on New Year's Eve!

Then we'll live tweet during the Word Prom on January 5th. What's the Word Prom? Click HERE.

December 31:

SAD.

Donald Trump has often used the word “Sad.” to punctuate his vitriolic tweets. However, we did not choose the word “Sad." as the Word of the Year to spotlight any of Trump’s nasty and venomous attacks. No, we chose “Sad." as the Word of the Year because 2017 has been an appallingly sad year.

Scroll down to review our list of “Words of the Year” for 2017. It is a sorrowful and miserable inventory of sad words and phrases. In modern times, our county has never been red, white and bluer. We are in an incredibly sad state of affairs.

There have been a few signs of hope though (shout out to Virginia, Alabama and others) so perhaps this blue, uncertain dismal buzz will be swept away by a different shade of blue next year – a wave from a Blue tsunami.

Good riddance to 2017, a miserable year of Trump (who actually referred to himself as "a great unifier"), the KKK, Nazis, violence and massacres, no action on bump stocks or gun control, midnight sweet-heart deals (written by lobbyists) to make the filthy rich filthier, the deliberate demise of healthcare for millions (including millions of children), sexual predation, alternative facts and attacks on a free press, indictments linked to collusion with an enemy government, recusals, perjury, lies, guilty pleas, the threat of nuclear conflicts, hurricanes (much of Puerto Rico is STILL without power), golf (LOTS of golf), and more. Sad.

Honorable Mention: AF

In 2018, “af” – an abbreviation for “as f—k” – was the most popular unit of measurement. For example: “Our country is sad af” or “Trump is in over his head af.”

It is synonymous with the dated phrase “to the nth degree.”

Honorable Mention: ULTRAVIOLET

Pantone named “Ultra Violet” as the Color of the Year for 2018. We wrote about it HERE. Could there be some connection to their choice and the fact that UltraViolet is the name of a movement that focuses on a range of issues, from reproductive rights and healthcare to economic security and racial justice? Perhaps this will help promote “Tsunami Blue” as the next Color of the Year.

December 30:

ME, TOO

“Me, Too," a social media campaign to denounce sexual assault and predation, swept through society in 2017 faster than a California wild fire -- impacting just about every walk of life, from the movie and music industries to academia, politics, and many other fields. It began in the wake of sexual harassment allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, and now the hashtag #metoo has trended in more than 85 countries.

Such a movement did not arise after Anita Hill spoke out against Clarence Thomas or after Bill Clinton’s indiscretions with an intern in the Oval Office. Nor did it take off after all the news about Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, or Bill O’Reilly – or even after Donald Trump’s confession about his sexual molestations against women was made public. However, after “news” broke about Harvey Weinstein, women had had enough. More and more people began speaking up about this alarming problem that has been swept under the carpet for far too long.

What do the men pictured below have in common?

A. They are sexual perverts and predators.
B. The used their power and status to prey on women.
C. They are creepy.
D. All of the above.

Honorable Mention: HOST

Oklahoma State Rep. Justin Humphrey submitted a bill in state to limit significantly a woman’s control over her own body – and referred to women as “hosts”: “I understand that they feel like that is their body,” he said of women. “I feel like it is a separate — what I call them is, is you’re a ‘host.’ And you know when you enter into a relationship you’re going to be that host and so, you know, if you pre-know that then take all precautions and don’t get pregnant.”

Pictured at the right: OK State Rep. Justin Humphrey, who believes women are merely "hosts" who need men's permission.

Honorable Mention: WOMEN

Prior to voting for the GOP's wealth-care bill for the super rich (disguised as tax reform), Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) announced that he was tired of people "spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies."

Wait just a darn minute, Chuck -- aren't "women" people too? Evidently not. To Grassley, "women" are just another commodity on his list of extravagances that people (i.e. men) squander their money on.

Honorable Mention: NON-ACCUSERS

Jane Porter, a spokeswoman for Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, defended the sexual predator by saying “there’s a group of non-accusers" who supported the pedophile.

(Even OJ Simpson had sense enough not to use the "but there are plenty of people I didn't murder" defense.)

December 29:

ON MANY SIDES

When Donald Trump insulted entire ethnic and religious groups, I did not think he could go any lower. Then he mocked the disabled, and I thought he could go no lower. Then he insulted Gold Star families and war heroes, and I thought he could go no lower. Then he stepped off an Access Hollywood bus and admitted he was a sexual predator, and I thought he could go no lower. Then came the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Trump refused to denounce the KKK and the Nazis because there were "fine people" there -- and he condemned hate "on many sides" in response to the terror and violence of White Nationalists.

How low can Trump go? At this time in his presidency, we cannot answer that question. We just don't know. Sad.

Donald Trump said that "there's blame on both sides" for the violence that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, August 12.

Pictured at the right: Some of the violent and maniacal hate-mongers in Charlottesville shortly after they sang, "This Little Light of Mine."

Honorable Mention: TIKI TORCH

Back in 1988 when George Bush accepted the presidential nomination, he compared volunteer organizations to a "brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky."

These days, the GOP's "thousand points of light" are lit by White Nationalists holding tiki torches. Sad.

Pictured below: The Trumps' Christmas card this year was beyond tasteless.

December 28:

ALTERNATIVE FACTS

Kallyanne Conway, the spokesmodel for the new QVC-Span to hawk Ivanka Trump products, set the stage early in the Trump administration when she told Chuck Todd on Meet The Press that Trump and his team wouldn’t lie – they would just offer “alternative facts.”

Todd responded, "Look, alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods."

Conway was unfazed. She just made a hardened smirk that I haven’t seen since Patty McCormack’s evil leers in The Bad Seed. I swear I even saw Conway’s head spin a full 360 degrees too.

Pictured at the right: Kellyanne Conway responds to Chuck Todd: "Chuck, we don't tell the truth. We tell alternative facts, and our base believes what we tell them. They don't want the truth." Sad.

Honorable Mention: TAX CUT AND JOBS ACT Talk about alternative facts! GOP senators and representatives sold their souls to their wealthy donors and passed a bill in the middle of the night that was written by lobbyists. The filthy rich got filthier and the swamp got swampier. Sad.

December 27:

FAKE NEWS

The article on “Fake News” in Wikipedia includes an illustration from 1894 by Frederick Burr Opper, a pioneer of American newspaper comic strips, and it includes the term “fake news.” That’s how long fake news has been around.

In the past, “fake news” was a type of yellow journalism/propaganda that consisted of “deliberate misinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media." Now it's spread online via social media.

To a degree, this characterization of "fake news" (i.e., yellow journalism or propaganda) is still true. For example, “pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory that emerged during the 2016 presidential election cycle, falsely claimed that the hacked emails of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, contained coded messages referring to a human trafficking and a child-sex ring connected to a pizza parlor in Washington, DC.

More often than not, though, the expression “fake news” was used throughout 2017 by Donald Trump and his administration to confuse his base about the actual truth that was being reported by reputable news organizations.

Trump said he loved “the poorly educated,” and he preys upon them. Sad.

Honorable Mention: NOTHINGBURGER

Used recently to describe and discredit true stories, “nothingburger” shows up in the Urban Dictionary as far back as 2006; however, according to SFGATE, the term was “first popularized in the early 1950s by a Hollywood gossip columnist named Louella Parsons to describe a person or idea that’s essentially a whole lot of, well, nothing.”

Of course, the biggest nothingburgers around were “Trump Steaks.” Trump Steaks failed to sell through The Sharper Image and QVC, and sales of the brand were discontinued after two months.

Honorable Mention: DANCING HOT DOG

The Dancing Hot Dog is the name of an animated anthropomorphic hot dog seen dancing via an augmented reality camera lens that originated on Snapchat in 2017 -- and the Dancing Hot Dog was everywhere last year!

Honorable Mention: BOTS

Bots are software applications that run automated tasks and scripts over the internet. More than half of the web traffic of Trump’s Twitter “followers," for example, is made up of bots.

Honorable Mention: WHATABOUTISM

Whataboutism is an attempt to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument. For example, when some argue that Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians, Trump's followers grumble, “but what about Hillary’s emails?”

December 26:

TAKE A KNEE

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was alone with his early protest of taking a knee during the national anthem, but he was later joined by other athletes from around the sports world.

Kaepernick began his protest during the preseason to show support for people of color who are being oppressed in the United States and to take a stand against police brutality.

Rather than take an actual leadership role in dealing with and addressing the issues, Donald Trump sought to change the focus of the protest.

Later, he even concocted a puerile scheme with Mike Pence for the VP to attend and then abruptly leave a football game after the anthem played (squandering hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money). Then, in a bit of histrionic melodrama, Pence tweeted a picture from the game – but it turned out to be an old picture from a game in 2014.

Fake news perpetrated by a couple of swindlers. Sad.

Honorable Mention: BONE SPUR

Bone spurs are bony projections that develop along the edges of bones. They are known to debilitate those who hope to avoid service in the armed forces and who have enough wealth to bribe a doctor for a medical deferment. The treatment for such a crippling disorder is golf. Hours and hours of golf.

Pictured at the right: Donald Trump's bone spur. THAT is what kept him out of Viet Nam.

Honorable Mention: HEEL

After a right-wing rally for racism and a massive counter-protest in Boston, President Trump tweeted a call for the American people to come together and "heel." His psycho-therapist said that Trump made the error because he is still haunted by his bone spur.

December 25:

RESIST / RESISTANCE

There are times when art imitates life, and then there are times when art predicts life. For example, "The Simpsons" predicted President Trump (and the next president, Lisa Simpson, had to clean up his mess), and "Star Wars" predicted the resistance.

In Star Wars, the Resistance was a military force founded by Leia Organa to combat the First Order. In real life, the Resistance is a societal force of just ordinary people committed to combat the America First Order and all the damage Trump is doing to our country (Have you seen his cabinet picks? His nominees for federal judges? His illegal bans and deleterious executive orders? Etc. Etc. Etc.)

Honorable Mentions: PERSIST / PERSISTENCE / PERSISTERHOOD

In February 2017, the United States Senate voted to silence Senator Elizabeth Warren's objections to confirmation of Senator Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General.

Senator Warren quoted a statement from 1986 by former Senator Ted Kennedy regarding Senator Sessions' nomination to federal court judge, "'He is, I believe, a disgrace to the Justice Department, and he should withdraw his nomination and resign his position.'" Senator Warren then continued by reading a letter that Coretta Scott King had written to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986.

The Senate then voted to silence her voice, and Mitch McConnell said, “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

“Nevertheless she persisted” became a rallying cry for feminists and other political activists.

JUST FYI: Hours after the Senate silenced Senator Warren, Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley returned to the Senate floor to pick up where Warren had left off, reading portions of the same letter – and no one objected. Hmmm…why could an old, white male do this without objection? As Sargent Schultz would say, “Verrrry interesting.”

Honorable Mention: #BADASSLANDS

Employees from more than a dozen U.S. government agencies have established a network of unofficial/rogue Twitter feeds in defiance of what they see as attempts by President Trump to muzzle research on climate change and other issues. One of the first signs of this was the hashtag #BadAssLands, the unofficial resistance team of U.S. National Park Service.

December 24:

REPEAL

Trump said that on Day 1 of his presidency he would repeal and replace Obamacare. As a matter of fact, he was going to provide even better healthcare for everyone at lower costs.

Well, of course, that didn't happen. Are you in the least bit surprised?

Later, it didn't happen with Round 1 of "Repeal and Replace" with Congress. It didn't happen with Round 2 of "Repeal and Repair." It didn't even happen with Round 3 of "Skinny Repeal."

At some point during the debacle, the dotard even said, "“Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated." Sad.

Ultimately, the GOP succeeded with "Repeal and Recoil" due to some hidden features in the GOP WealthCare bill disguised as Tax Reform. From this point forward, coverage will be known as "Trump Don't Care."

Honorable Mentions:

REPLACE
REPAIR
SKINNY REPEAL
WEATLTHCARE
DEATHCARE
ZOMBIE TRUMPCARE
TRUMPDON'TCARE

December 23:

COLLUSION

Every branch of the United States Intelligence Community concluded, with high confidence, that the Russian government engaged in electoral interference during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Of course, most people want to get to the bottom of this -- except for Donald Trump. I wonder why?

Trump calls it a "witch hunt."

In reality, it's a "which hunt": Which ones of Trump's administration and family colluded with the Russians? Which ones perjured themselves? Which ones obstructed justice? Sad.

Honorable Mentions: TREASON, #DRIPDRIPDRIP, GUILTY, and COMPLICIT

TREASON: Like the Lady Clairol ad asked (above right), "Did he...or didn't he?" To be honest, he did commit treason as early as July 2016 when he called on the Russian government to hack the DNC: “Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

#DRIPDRIPDRIP: Since all involved are conspiring to cover up the truth, the discovery of facts has been a slow and steady drip of information. Check the latest on Twitter HERE.

GUILTY: Isn't odd that Trump calls Russian election interference a "made up story" when Mueller's team has already gained several "guilty" pleas to related crimes? You'd think that a "law and order" president would want to get the bottom of all of this.

COMPLICIT: Dictionary.com's Word of the Year for 2017, complicit, saw a surge in searches after Ivanka Trump said, "I don't know what it means to be complicit." Yeah, right. And I bet she didn't know her company had pirated shoe designs when she stole ideas from footwear label Aquazzura.

For interesting and insightful commentary on Dictionary.com's WotY pick, click HERE: "This year, the Word of the Year zooms out, implicating millions of us. The word is 'complicit.' Two thousand seventeen is a year of reckoning." (By the way, name developer, corporate copywriter, and recovering journalist Nancy Friedman's pick for 2017's Word of the Year is "reckoning." Click HERE.)

December 22:

NET NEUTRALITY

Net Neutrality received an “Honorable Mention” in our inventory of “Words of the Year” for 2015. This year, it has earned its own spot on our register of 2017’s WotYs.

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. In February 2015, the FCC ruled in favor of net neutrality so that service providers would have to treat all data the same without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.

This month, though, the FCC voted to repeal net neutrality rules. The strongest defense of the repeal was mounted by Republican stalwarts in Congress – the same people who just delivered massive gifts to the top 1% with their tax scam. Sad.

December 21:

DOTARD

Donald Trump likes to brag about his high IQ, and it is high -- in the double digits. However, even his brother-from-another-mother, Kim Jong-un, had Donnie running to the dictionary when he called him a dotard: "I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire," said Kim.

Honorable Mention: SMART COOKIE What Donald Trump called Kim Jong-un.

Honorable Mention: MORON What Rex Tillerson called Donald Trump. To be exact, Tillerson called Trump a ... well, before the word moron, he used a spot-on modifier (that begins with the letter "f") that we can't print.

December 20:

NUCLEAR

Remember in the early 2000s when the only thing we had to worry about nuclear power was how George Bush 43 pronounced it (NUKE-you-ler)?

Now we have to worry about the fact that the bonehead with the nuclear football (i.e., launch codes) doesn't quite understand the implications of nuclear war. Sad.

These are the actual words of Donald Trump in 2017: "You know what uranium is, right? This thing called nuclear weapons, like lots of things are done with uranium, including some bad things….We're a very powerful nuclear country….I have been briefed. And I can tell you one thing about a briefing that we're allowed to say because anybody that ever read the most basic book can say it: Nuclear holocaust would be like no other."

Honorable Mentions: FIRE AND FURY and CALM BEFORE THE STORM

Empty rhetoric from Donald Trump's huffing and puffing about North Korea ~ and ~ actual planning on the part of the Democrats to win seats in Alabama and beyond.

December 19:

TRANSPARENT

The GOP is notorious for trying to re-write history. One of the more blatant attempts was when Rudy Giuliani proclaimed on “Good Morning America” that “we had no domestic attacks under Bush."

“Under those eight years before Obama came along, we didn’t have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States,” he said. “They all started when Clinton and Obama got into office.”

Um…9/11? Of all people, how could Rudy G “forget” about 9/11?

Another troublesome habit with the Right is when they either make up words/phrases (like “alternative facts” to replace “the truth”) or when they try to redefine words – like in the case of today’s word, “transparent.”

Throughout 2017, Trump, his family, and his admin team kept tossing around "transparent," "very transparent," and "fully transparent." However, in context, it's obvious that none of them knows what the word means. They kept using it as they deleted tweets, changed memories, testified behind closed doors and altered stories -- far from being transparent. Sad.

Back in July we wrote about the Trump team's transparency -- that is, their lack of transparency! Click HERE.

BREAKING: So that the CDC can be fully transparent, Trump is banning words. Info about that & a related poetry project is HERE.

Honorable Mention: FIRST HAND

In response to Hurricane Harvey, there were numerous gaffes on the part of Donald Trump: his initial visit to the area after the storm was in Texas, but not in Houston; he didn't meet with any of the victims; he wanted America to "heel"; he attempted to profit off the storm by selling "presidential caps"; and the White House had to back-pedal on his pledge to donate one million dollars. The weirdest blunder, though, was that he had witnessed the ravages of the storm "firsthand" – but he hadn’t! He watched the storm's progress on the TV from the comfort of Camp David!

Honorable Mention: RECLAIMING MY TIME

Another Trump/GOP strategy to avoid truth-telling is to sidestep questions. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin did just that when he testified before the House Financial Services Committee.

When the committee’s ranking Democrat, Maxine Waters, asked why his office had not responded to a letter from her regarding President Trump’s financial ties to Russia, Mnuchin tried to stall with platitudes and compliments, apparently attempting to run out the clock on her questioning.

“Reclaiming my time,” she repeated over and over in a matter-of-fact invocation of a House procedural rule that Shut. Him. Down.

December 18:

PERIOD!

There are two sure-fire ways* to tell when Donald Trump is lying:

1. He states false information, and he precedes or follows the falsehood with, “Believe me.”

2. One of his sycophants barks Trump’s misinformation and then punctuates the untruth with a loud and determined, “Period!”

This second method began on the day after Trump’s in-ugh-uration when Sean Spicer – in an over-sized big-boy suit – barked at the press and lied about in-ugh-uration crowd size. Sad.

*Some people say that there is a third way to tell when Trump is lying: it's when his lips are moving.

Above: Obama vs. Trump crowds. Below: During his in-ugh-uration parade, Trump passed many empty reviewing stands. Period.

Honorable mention: PUSSYHAT

Trump did set a record in the way of crowds, but it was on the day following his in-ugu-uration when millions of women (and men and children) marched in protest against him in Washington and around the globe. Period.

Many in the crowd wore pussyhats, a symbol of support and solidarity for women's rights and political resistance.

December 17:

LIE

In the pre-Trumpocene era of the Earth, most journalists and newspapers would give politicians a little leeway when it came to their promises, opinions, debates and disagreements. Everyone knew that politicians would tell tall tales and stretch the truth, but few if any actually called them out on their veracity.

From The Atlantic:  Questioning a sitting president’s truthfulness and actually using the words “lie,” “lied,” or “lying” has often been relegated to the opinion pages, editorials, or put in quotation marks: Let somebody else suggest the chief executive is lying about Yalta, or Cuba, or Vietnam, or trading arms for hostages, or “no new taxes,” or sexual relations with that woman, or weapons of mass destruction. This is the stuff of standard journalistic fairness.

No more. As of January 2017, newspapers now call Trump out directly about his lies.

Pictured below: As of January 2017, newspapers use the word "lie" to keep the public abreast of one of Trump's nasty habits -- lying.

Honorable Mention: CHYRON

Chyrons are captions superimposed on television news screens, and they are also being used now to call Trump and his staff out on their lies. Info HERE.

Honorable Mention: TRUMPOCENE

"A new epoch where climate change is just a big scary conspiracy." Info HERE.

December 16:

THREAD

No, we’re not talking about the group of filaments twisted together to create a textile fiber. Instead, we’re talking about the continuous line of reasoning/train of thought in a series of electronic messages usually following a single topic or in response to a single message.

For example, all one has to do to call attention to a particularly interesting series of comments or responses on Twitter is to quote the tweet and say “Thread.”

Below: Excerpts from a humorous thread with responses to Sean "Lumpy" Hannity's inane question about "fake news":

Honorable mention: TWEET DELETED

Caught in frequent lies, with absurd perspectives, and even with constant grammatical errors and misspelled words, Donald Trump deletes tweets like a molting bird to cover his all-too visible tracks.

Below: One entry from the "list of notable words of the year" for 2017 by Nancy Friedman (@Fritinancy on Twitter).

To see Donald Trump's deleted tweets, click HERE.

December 15:

GET THE POPCORN

The GET THE POPCORN Emoji

GET THE POPCORN GIFs

One of the hardest pills for Donald Trump to swallow is the fact that Obama’s biggest parting gift to him was a strong economy – especially after the failing economy Obama inherited after the Great Bush-Cheney Recession. The economy has continued on its strong path due to the conditions created by Obama.

Economists agree that little credit goes to Donald Trump – very liddle’ indeed. However, Trump and his administration have, in fact, helped one industry spectacularly: the popcorn industry.

“The Keystone Cop quality and character of this administration more than quadrupled the sale of popcorn this past year,” said Roberta Longhorn-Clutterham. “As a result, the American Board of Pop Corn Distributors named Trump their ‘Person of the Year,’ and Trump even came in for an interview and photo shoot.”

Pictured at the right: Donald Trump, the American Board of Pop Corn Distributors "Person of the Year."

Some of the major “Get the popcorn” moments of 2017 were the following:

Sally Yates gets a confirmed date for publicly testifying in Trump-Russia hearings: Get the popcorn!

Donald Trip, Jr., is set to testify in front of Senate panel: Get the popcorn!

Jared Kushner to testify in Trump-Russia scandal: Get the popcorn!

Fired FBI director James Comey is cleared to and plans to testify publicly in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding the reported confrontations he had with Donald Trump before his firing. Get the popcorn!

Jeff Sessions will testify in Trump-Russia scandal again. Will he tell the truth this time? Get the popcorn!

Pictured at the right: On a day when tensions between Senate Republicans and President Trump were running high, one senator prepped accordingly: Sen. Thom Tillis tweeted a photo of himself grabbing popcorn before the Senate GOP lunch with the president.

December 14:

RECUSAL

From Wikipedia: “Judicial disqualification, also referred to as recusal, is the act of abstaining from participation in an official action such as a legal proceeding due to a conflict of interest of the presiding court official or administrative officer.”

The word “recusal” dominated the headlines back in March when Confederate General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (pictured at the right) announced that he would recuse himself from any investigations into Trump’s campaign.

Later in the year, Trump ranted about Sessions’ decision.

“Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” barked Trump.

Trump’s remarks certainly suggested that he had hopes that Sessions would play a significant role in “managing” the Russian interference probe that he has long called a “witch hunt” – more than a bit ironic considering Trump’s claim of being the “law and order president.” Evidently, that designation is nothing more than a hollow and false façade.

Honorable Mentions: IMPEACHMENT, UNFIT, UNHINGED

Unstable emotional health. Regular volatile breakdowns. Explicit overtures to racists. Overt bigoted and chauvinistic bullying. Paranoia and acceptance of conspiracy theories. Blatant attempts to obstruct justice.

These are the issues that Trump’s staff and aides are worried about so it’s no wonder that “impeachment,” “unfit” and “unhinged” were articulated more and more often throughout 2017. Sad.

December 13:

DESPACITO

Move over “Macarena,” there’s a new top Spanish hit in town! “Despacito,” the song of the summer (if not the song of the year) for 2017, became the first song primarily in Spanish to top the Billboard Hot 100 since the “Macarena” dance craze in 1996.

Written by Luis Fonsi, Erika Ender, and Daddy Yankee, the smooth reggae-pop ballad quickly captured the public’s attention with its fusion of catchy Latin and urban rhythms. After a remix featuring Justin Bieber was released in April 2017, the song's chart performance soared to even greater heights.

If you haven’t heard the song, you can listen to it HERE.

Oddly enough, I first heard the song as an instrumental piece played by a quintet of stringed instruments in somebody’s living room. Listen HERE. (The group, JHMJams, delivers short casual pop and jazz covers on Instagram, @kkubota8.)

Above left: JHMJams covers "Despacito." Above right: Randy Rainbow croons "Desperate Cheeto."

Honorable Mention: DESPERATE CHEETO

Parody artist Randy Rainbow combined the popular tune "Despacito" with an artificially orange crunchy snack and produced and performed the hilarious hit, “Desperate Cheeto.” Listen HERE.

December 12:

BUMP STOCK (The Most Forgotten Word of 2017)

The honor for the Most Forgotten Word of 2017 goes to “bump stock,” a device that allows semi-automatic rifles to be fired continuously like a fully automatic weapon.

Most people didn’t know what a bump stock was until the mass murder in Las Vegas in October when 58 people were killed and nearly 500 were injured all within the span of about 10 minutes. The bump stock allowed the killer to turn his rifle into a weapon of mass destruction.

Shortly after the massacre, many in congress HINTED that they MIGHT be willing to consider a ban on the device – but all of that talk faded fast. Now they've moved on to the really important issues of our day -- making the filthy rich even richer and denying healthcare to millions. Sad.

In an article in the November issue of Good Housekeeping, many politicians stated what they were thankful for (we wrote about it HERE). What did Mitch McConnell say?

"I’m thankful that in America it’s always 'too soon' to talk about gun control," crowed McConnell. "And remember how people wanted congress to ban bump stocks? They’re so forgetful too. People won’t talk about bump stocks again until the next mass murder, and then that will be 'too soon.”'

Below left: Slide Fire began selling bump stocks again in early November. The massacre in Las Vegas was on October 1st. That "ban" (which really wasn't a ban) lasted a little over a month.

Below: Slide Fire, the top manufacturer of bump stocks, has "resumed sales of some of our most popular products" -- and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are as pleased as punch!

December 11:

FORE!

Here’s a trivia question for you: What word has been spoken most often by Trump since he has taken office?

Sad? Ban? Pocahontas? Covfefe? Repeal? Clinton? Tax? Ice Cream? Rocket Man? Fake?

Well, I suspect you already know the answer to the question since the word is listed above as our entry for December 11 in our annual countdown of Words of the Year. The word spoken by Trump most often since he has taken office is FORE!

The man has been on the golf course three times more often then he’s been in the Oval Office. Sad.

It. Is. Ridiculous.

Pictured above on the right: Trump wants to turn the National Mall into a private golf club. We wrote about it HERE.

Pictured at the left: Right on cue: Senator Graham must have known about our WotY selection for today, so he tweeted out how much fun it was to spend the day with the Golfer-in-Chief. Click the image to enlarge.

Trump is not a Commander-In-Chief. He's a Golfer-In-Chief. Plus, his countless trips to the links are just money making schemes for Trump properties -- and taxpayers are footing the bill!

“Trump and his family have really damaged their brands,” reported Kellyanne Conway, “so the president has no other choice but to spend millions of taxpayer dollars at Trump properties.”

Honorable Mention - PROBABLY

When Trump found out that he was not going to be Time’s Person of the Year, he put out a bogus tweet to proclaim that he was “probably” going to get the recipient of the honor – but that he turned it down because he didn’t have time for a photo shoot. Of course, it ended up that the women Trump molested took Time’s honor; however, Trump did receive a similar title from Golf Digest (pictured at the right).

Honorable Mention: ORB

When visiting the Middle East, Trump feigned interest in a luminous globe during an inauguration ceremony for the Global Center for Combatting Extremist Ideology in Ridyah, Saudi Arabia.

“I pretended it was a giant, glowing golf ball,” said Trump, “and I made a wish that I’d be Golf Digest’s 'Golfer of the Year.'”

We wrote about Trump and the mystery of the glowing orb HERE.

December 10:

PATH OF TOTALITY

2017 was a sad and pathetic year, and as it grew sadder and more pathetic, a brief but exciting event allowed for two minutes and forty seconds of respite from the sad and pathetic events.

Dubbed "The Great American Eclipse" by the media, a total solar eclipse on August 21 was visible across the entire contiguous United States as the path of totality crossed from coast to coast.

Honorable Mentions: Other Phenomena

CONE OF UNCERTAINTY: A graphic to show where the eye of a storm (or central point) could travel.

Below on the left: The cone of uncertainty for Hurricane Irma. Below on the right: The island of uncertainty: More than 60% of Puerto Rico is STILL WITHOUT POWER -- and it is uncertain when the two workers Trump sent to the island will get everything back to normal. Trump said he is desperately trying to reach the President of the US Virgin Islands to ask for additional help; however, he said that no one will accept his calls!

OVAL OF IMBECILITY: A bottomless abyss of moronic activity located in the heart of Washington, DC, the likes of which the world has never seen.

December 9:

AMONG

We believe that this is the first time a preposition has made the cut for our annual countdown of Words of the Year.

"Among" rose to the top of the word heap for a short while after it became evident that Trump was obstructing justice when he fired FBI Director James Comey. At the time, then Press Secretary Sean Spicer attempted to hide from the press, and he was found in the dark hiding in the bushes. Later, though, the White House issued a correction: Spicer was not IN the bushes. Instead, Spicer was AMONG the bushes.

Read all about it HERE.

We also covered Spicer's shenanigans with a post in our plog (poetry blog), HERE.

NOTE: We are now eleven months into the Trump presidency, and the White House has yet to issue its most important clarification: Are Nazis IN the Trump administration? Or are Nazis AMONG the Trump administration? Sad.

December 8:

COVFEFE (You knew it was coming sooner or later!)

Donald Trump would be the first to tell anyone that he uses the best words.

"I know words," he bragged once. "I have the best words."

Well, I suppose we can all agree that Trump does use words, and maybe he does know the best words. The problem is that he just doesn't use them. He often makes simple mistakes (he confuses "their" for "there" and "to" for "too"). He uses poor grammar. He is a terrible orator, and when he goes off script, his comments are awkward and unimpressive.

Occasionally, though, he does use a word that grabs the attention of the world. A bigly example of that came last May when he lamented his constant negative press covfefe.

"Covfefe" is an eponym derived from the name of 19th-century feminist Babette Covfefe. We wrote two posts about Ms. Covfefe and the word "covfefe" in our plog (poetry blog) HERE.

Time for a fact check (which Trump HATES): Does he really use the best words?

The truth of the matter is best summed up by Gold Star father Andrew Bacevich who said, "The president's inability to use the English language is really without precedent in American politics." Sad.

Below: The "official" in-ugh-uration poster was just "to" funny.

Below left: Babette Covfefe Below center and right: "An English Grammar," published in the late 1800s, which includes an entry about the word "covfefe." Click the images to enlarge.

Honorable mention: LIDDLE'

Does anyone know how Melania Trump's anti-cyber-bullying campaign is going? Hello? Anyone? Anyone? Is this mic on?

Alas, Melania's scam is just as hollow as any of her husband's empty promises, and it borders on sickening since her hubby is the Cyber-Bully-in-Chief.

In the tweet at the right, The Donald resorted to one of his best words, liddle, for one of his juvenile attacks. What was puzzling, though, was not the puerile misspelling but the odd placement of the apostrophe at the end of the word.

Usually, In contractions or partial words, the apostrophe takes the place of the missing letters. For example, one might refer to Donald Jr. as "Li'l Donny," and the apostrophe would be inserted in place of the missing letters. However, when Donny senior called Bob Corker "liddle," he added an errant apostrophe at the end of his slur.

Anyway, we selected liddle' for an honorable mention as one of our Words of the Year for 2017 not just because it's one of Trump's best words, but because it represents Trump's accomplishments in office so far. Liddle'. Very liddle'.

December 7:

SHEET CAKING

On Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey introduced “sheet caking” as a way to deal with Trump’s acceptance and support of such fine people as the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis.

“When you want to yell (counter-invective at the chinless turds who march through the streets with semi-automatic weapons), don’t yell it at the Klan, Colin,” she said. “Yell it into the cake.”

Of course, sheet caking is also a fitting response to the “let them eat cake” mentality of Trump and the GOP clan. With complete cooperation of lobbyists, the GOP crafted a sweet-heart tax deal for the super-rich. Orrin Hatch advocated cutting healthcare for children because they are “people who won't help themselves, won't lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything.” Senator Grassley said he was sick and tired of people spending “every darn penny” they earn on “booze or women or movies.” Interesting how he views women as a commodity like booze or movies – but not surprising since the GOP is nothing but a bunch of creepy old white men.

Pictured at the left: A Trump-brand White-Sheet Cake -- in its distinctive Trump-brand white-sheet cake box.

We wrote about sheet-caking in our plog (poetry blog) soon after some very fine people marched through the streets of Charlottesville with automatic weapons and tiki-torches. You can read our post HERE.

December 6:

HOLOCAUST CENTERS

When asked about Bashar al-Assad reportedly using sarin gas to attack Syrian citizens, Trump’s Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that even Hitler hadn’t stooped to Assad’s level during World War II: “We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II. Y’know, you had … someone who is despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to the, to the, to using chemical weapons.”

After Spicer was reminded that Hitler had, in fact, gassed people, Spicer responded, “he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing.... he brought them into the Holocaust centers.”

Holocaust Centers. Doesn’t that just sound delightful?

What is it about Trump and his clan – why are they always trying to prettify, civilize, and normalize Nazis? Sad.

Below: Vintage postcards from two of the Nazi's premiere Holocaust Centers. Click the images to enlarge.

December 5:

IMPENETRABLE CYBER SECURITY UNIT

It is laughable how Donald Trump has convinced his clan that he is the "law and order" president -- especially when he is actively involved with the obstruction of justice in the probe on Russia's meddling in the US election. It is also unbelievable how he fawns all over Putin and "believes" that Russia had nothing to do with it.

"(Putin) said he didn't meddle. He said he didn't meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times," Trump told reporters.

Then, in July, Donald Trump tweeted that he and his pal Vlad were going halvsies on “an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, and many other negative things, will be guarded.”

Wow.

Simply. Unbelievable.  And sad.

Below left: Shortly after meeting with Putin, Trump purchased a Putin-brand Impenetrable Cyber Security Unit. He had to return it after incredible outcry in the US that he was a moron!

Below right: Trump's home-boy Vlad Putin shows him how Russia's Impenetrable Cyber Security Unit proved that Russia was not involved with any meddling in the US election.

Honorable Mention: TOTALLY

Trump recently endorsed a pedophile for the US Senate.

"Let me just tell you," he said, "Roy Moore denies it. That's all I can say. He denies it. By the way, he totally denies it."

The man who was banned from a local shopping mall and who was warned to stay away from high school cheerleaders doesn't just deny everything, he totally denies it.

Oh. I get it. He TOTALLY denies it.

Pictured at the right: The Gadsden Mall in Gadsden, Alabama, is a "Roy Moore Free Zone."

December 4:

ROMPHIM (Fashion Fad of the Year)

In 2017, the male romper -- or RompHim -- was here, there, and everywhere!

In the spring 2017 catalog for "Ivanka Trump, the Best in Pirated Fashions," Ivanka Trump claimed that she invented the romphim and started the fad.

"Ms. Trump was the first to introduce the romphim," said catalog editor Клавдия Bezukladnikov, "and ever since they hit the market, our factories in China have been unable to keep up with the demand."

Ms. Bezukladnikov reported that Trump paid the child laborers in her factories one dollar per day for the production of 10 romphims per hour or 120 romphims per twelve-hour shift.

"If there's a single flaw in any one of them, the child is not paid," reported Ms. Bezukladnikov, "so these children learn fast or they go home penniless. The Trump organization will not pay these money-grubbers for shoddy work."

Below left and right: In the spring edition of "Ivnaka Trump, The Best in Pirated Fashions," Ivanka Trump laid claim to the fashion fad of 2017, the RompHim.

Below: Ivanka Trump brand fashions is on the cutting edge with other fashion fads, including prison garb, BFF prison cuff bracelets and other prison jewelry, and flame-retardant pants which promise "No more 'Liar, liar, pants on fire!'"

Honorable Mentions - Other Fads

FIDGET SPINNER, a toy that consists of a ball bearing in the center of a multi-lobed (typically two or three) flat structure made from metal or plastic designed to spin along its axis with little effort -- and when used, thought to curb unwanted habits. Pictured below on the left: A modern day fidget spinner. Pictured below on the right: A fidget spinner from colonial days.

KOMBUCHA, a variety of fermented, lightly effervescent sweetened black or green tea drinks commonly intended as functional beverages for their supposed health benefits. One entry in the Urban Dictionary said, "A fungus spawned in the pits of hell, and possessing a smell that would make the poopsmith vomit." #justsaying

December 3:

THE MOOCH (Name of the Year); BOWLING GREEN (Place of the Year); 1/10TH (Number of the Year)

For the “Three of December,” we have three entries in our countdown: the Name of the Year, the Place of the Year, and the Number of the year:

Our Name of the Year is THE MOOCH, the nickname for ousted White House Communications Director, Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci. Best known for his colorful language (see our entry dated December 2), the Mooch was also the inspiration for Poochie, the animated pooch “with attitude” on “The Simpsons.”

Our Place of the Year is BOWLING GREEN. Even though the Bowling Green Massacre is complete fiction cooked up by that kook Kellyanne Conway as part of her spin to prey upon the poorly educated, we have not done enough in this country to honor the victims of this terrible tragedy. Therefore, we have named Bowling Green as our Place of the Year. Home to this fantastic piece of fake news fabricated by the Queen of Alternative Facts herself, Bowling Green was placed on the Map of Alternative Reality as means to justify Trump’s ban on Muslims.

Our Number of the Year is 1/10TH, a fraction cited by so-called General Michael Flynn at a Trump campaign rally: "If I did one-tenth of what (Hillary Clinton) did, I'd be in jail." Although this number came from a statement by Flynn in 2016, 1/10th made our 2017 list because -- well, I suspect you know why it made our list. Lock him up, am I right?

Honorable Mentions - Names:

JIM: A very, very substantial guy who advises Trump...and believe me, Jim is NOT a fan of Paris!

AGENT ORANGE: The code name selected by the Secret Service for Donald Trump

WAYNE TRACKER: Mr. Tracker is very, very substantial friend of Rex Tillerson who would monitor Twitter for Tillerson so that he could downplay and deny climate change. Seems that Tracker even had an email account, but that’s mysteriously disappeared Tracker even deleted 30,000 emails at Tillerson’s request. Hmm.

PRESIDENT BANNON: His campaign slogan was “Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain." The deception worked! He ended up with enough Electoral College votes to take office in January 2017. His term didn’t last long, though, because it became evident that the White House was infested with roaches.

GOLFSQUATCH: Related to the Kwyjibo, Golfsquatch is a golfing North American ape with a comb over.

BERNIE BERNSTEIN: A reporter for the Washington Post investigating pedophiles in Alabama for Roy Moore.

FIONA: 600 pounds of chubby cuteness wrapped in a leathery body at the Cincinnati zoo.

JOE TRUDEAU: The shy, reclusive twin of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Honorable Mentions - Places:

NAMBIA: Nambia is an African country with an increasingly self-sufficient health-care system (although they recently withdrew from the International Covfefe Agreement).

HOLLYWEED: Californians voted to make recreational use of marijuana legal for those 21 and over. Therefore, they changed the name from Hollywood to Hollyweed.

NIGHTMAR-A-LAGO: Who knows what goes on at Mar-A-Lago? Evidently everyone. In the picture below, Trump discusses classified security secrets out in the open. Oh – but I hear they have good cake.

SAN ESCOBAR: The Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs reported to the UN Security Council that he had had meetings with officials from San Escobar “for the first time in the history of our diplomacy.”

Honorable Mentions - Numbers:

19: The US is no longer a world leader, so the G-20 reduced itself to the G-19

280: The new character limit for Twitter.

1%: The upper-crusters celebrating the GOP tax bill scam.

Honorable Mention: HIBERNATING BEARS (Animal of the Year)

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! The GOP has made it legal for all of us to kill hibernating bears! Guess who's getting a bear rug for Christmas this year? EVERYONE!!!

December 2:

COLORFUL LANGUAGE

Last year’s disgusting Filth-of-the-Year (click HERE and scroll down to the entry dated December 22) was uttered proudly by the Grabber-in-Chief. His toadies guffawed and dismissed his admission of sexual assault as mere “locker room talk.”

This year, the Obscenities-of-the-Year were uttered by the Grabber’s newly appointed White House Communications Director, Anthony "the Mooch" Scaramucci, and the hollow White House staffers laughed it all off as COLORFUL LANGUAGE (a.k.a. "Fifty Shades of Mooch").

Oddly enough, the amateurish Communications Director actually called a reporter himself and spewed his vulgarities out of frustration over the countless leaks from and the constant infighting within the West Wing (ironically, during the call, the Mooch himself leaked information and perpetuated the infighting). To be honest, the language was so offensive…er, so “colorful” (if obscenity has a color)…that we will not print what he said.

Days later, Scaramucci was fired. His tenure of six days, from his unofficial start date on July 25 through his departure on July 31, is the shortest in history for that position.

I s’pose we’ll just have to chalk this entire episode up to one of those incredibly rare occurrences when Trump didn’t surround himself with the best people. Sad.

Honorable Mention: TRUMP

The Oxford University Press declared “trump” to be Children’s Word of the Year this year – and in England, “trump” means “to pass gas loudly.” Information is HERE.

One example of the use of the word was this excerpt from a children’s story:

“Suddenly I did the loudest trump EVER! The whole restaurant gasped, as if it was a crime. ‘You trumped in front of the Queen,’ hissed the shark.”

Pictured at the right: A "Gassy Old Pachyderm" (GOP), on the cover of "Everybody Trumps, The Story of Farts"

December 1:

CARNAGE

Our countdown begins with "carnage," the grim and gloomy descriptor used by our Conspiracy-Theorist-in-Chief to define his view of America in the inaugural address crafted by President Bannon.

In front of the hundreds who had gathered on the National Mall for his in-ugh-uration, Trump grumbled and growled about squalor and poverty, crime and gangs, rust and decay.

Of course, one evening prior to the speech, Trump was video-taped entering an posh Manhattan club -- where the $100-per-plate dinner included assorted caviars, pressed octopus (with Kalamata olive and za’atar vinaigrette) Hokaido sea scallops and rabbit saddle (with North Country bacon) – and he shook hands with the ultra-wealthy promising to take care of them, the poor souls who have to exist amid the carnage. “We'll get your taxes down,” he assured them. “Don't worry about it.”

Sure enough, he and the GOP are now working on an incredibly inequitable tax plan to benefit the upper-crusters and burden the poor and middle. The plan includes deductions for private jets, so all the muck-a-mucks can fly to tropical islands to avoid the carnage. Looks like the rest of us will have to endure it all a little longer. Sad.

Below: Trump "dons" his make-up to address the carnage that is America on his in-ugh-uration day.

Honorable Mention: WALL OF MEAT

Another highlight of the Trump in-ugh-uration was the Wall of Meat, a performance art piece created by Bikers for Trump. Rumor has it that the group was protesting the closing of the Trump Steak Factory (which closed shortly after the nearby Finish Line Farm, a ranch for retired racehorses, went out of business).

Below left: Finish Line Farm, a final home for retired horses. Shortly after this farm closed for good, the Trump Steaks factory went out of business.

Below right: Trump Steaks -- the stakes are high!

Below left: Chris Cox, founder of Bikers for Trump. At Trump's in-ugh-uration, he and other bikers presented a piece of performance art called the "Wall of Meat," a protest about the closing of the Trump Steak Factory.

Below right: The GOP Bikers for Trump have created their own "Wall of Meat" around Trump!