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Very frustrated. The toilet seems to be ok, it gets a good swirl going, and it swirls, and swirls, but then it just kind of stops swirling and doesn't flush. What should I do?

If you have a plunger try plunging it.

sounds like it's partially plugged. Like something got caught, but not entirely.

Try dumping a pail of water in it(be careful no to overflow it). You will have to dump it in quickly. If it flushes ok that way the holes under the upper edge of the toilet may be partially plugged. The water has to go in fairly quickly to build a sufficient head to flush the toilet. If it goes in too slow it just runs down the trap without building a head. This is more common where you have a lot of iron or other minerals in your water. Sometimes the holes can be cleaned out and if not the toilet will most likely need to be replaced.  

I can tell there is a partial blockage in the bottom hole in the toilet but I can not remove it. It went back into the hole. How do I remove it?

Helped fix a toilet that was sort of doing the same thing, had a plastic lid off of makeup stuck in the trap, lid was about the size of a lid off the old cassette cases, had to drain the toilet, remove it from the flange then make a wire hook to hook the lid and pull it out. Not sure if this is the problem but sometimes things get flushed by accident and figuring it out means removing the toilet.

How would I do that?

Sounds to me like there could be a plugged/frozen roof vent. If this is the case, it can't get the air it needs to flush. Maybe something worth checking into before calling someone.

It sounds like you need a toilet snake to feed down through the trap. You might be able to rent one at Home Depot. That will indicate if the blockage is in the toilet itself or further down the line.  

In this mild weather, a frozen vent is highly unlikely. Bad venting does affect draining but then your sinks and other things would drain slow as well.

The toilet is held down by two bolts, these bolts are covered by plastic cups on either side of the toilet around the base. Pop the caps off and then remove the nuts that hold the toilet down. Be sure to shut off the delivery line before starting and unhook it from the resivoir, the resivoir usually won't completely drain by flushing so there will be water left in it. There is a gasket between the toilet and flange and sometimes it takes quite a pull to separate the toilet from the flange, be sure to get a new gasket, usually they are a wax ring and wreck when removing toilet. Maybe just overkill by me but I usually replace the bolts if they don't look perfect.

I took 1 cup of vinegar and a bit of baking soda and left it sitting in the toilet over night and in the morning dumped a pail of warm water down the toilet quick enough to get a flush and then used the plunger like crazy for about 2 min and it cleared it out and flushes like new. Hope you figure it out

CoryTory said "How would I do that? "

Call Ashley with Clog Hog, if there is a blockage, he can help! 204 721 2862

happen at work. We tried all the things named above, ended up getting 2 plumbers in because the first one didn't fix it. What our problem was, apparently the tank had been replaced at one time in the past and the tank wasn't big enough for the bowl so wasn't supplying enough water. We just replaced the entire toilet and haven't had a single problem since.