In the Before-Times, back when Donald Trump was merely a minor television celebrity, anyone in politics or the media who openly espoused a theory that the Pentagon had for years been running a "psychological operation" (or "psy-op," which sounds so much cooler) to boost the fortunes of the most popular singer alive, and furthermore that because she and a star football player were now an item that the National Football League had (obviously!) conspired to advance his team to the Super Bowl (where the fix was already in for them to win) -- all so that the singer could then announce her endorsement of the sitting president -- would have been laughed off the national stage forthwith. The idea would have been considered no more than a product of the fever dreams of a conspiracy-spreading lunatic. The ravings of a nutter. Complete whackjobbery. "Tinfoil hats" would have been mentioned derisively, as America collectively guffawed at their craziness.

That was the Before-Times, though. Nowadays this insanity has gone mainstream... well, if you define "mainstream" as "prominent in the rightwing media echo chamber," that is. But what I have to wonder is whether the rightwing commentators and politicians and the MAGA world in general are truly going to go to war with the "Swifties." Because that seems to me to be a losing strategy.

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House Republicans moved a big step closer to one of their goals today, as they voted on articles of impeachment for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Two articles of impeachment passed the relevant House committee on a party-line vote, and the full House could vote on the matter within days. This will fulfill a longstanding desire of the House Republicans to impeach somebody (anybody!) in Joe Biden's administration, and can be seen as a trial run for their real goal of impeaching Biden himself. This is all a purely political exercise, but that's certainly not going to stop them. The Republicans simply have no grounds for impeaching either one, but why let a little thing called the U.S. Constitution get in the way of their fun?

The Constitution sets a pretty high bar for impeachment. A federal officer must be shown to have committed: "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Neither Mayorkas nor Biden has committed anything even remotely fitting that description. Republicans haven't even bothered to accuse Mayorkas with any such thing, they are going to impeach him instead for the high crime of not acting as if he were in a Republican administration. Which is not at all what the Founders intended, of course.

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Can the Republican House get anything at all done? That is a rather open question, seeing as how so far they haven't done much -- this has been the least productive Congress in at least the last half-century, maybe even more. And they've already unceremoniously booted out one speaker (which was unprecedented in American history) and they could easily decide to do so again. Which is why the next couple of weeks could be instructive.

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There is an interesting idea making the rounds in the political punditry world of late, and I have to say it is an intriguing one. Nikki Haley has a very slim chance of chalking up any wins in Republican primaries, either before or on Super Tuesday, so sooner or later she's going to have to bow to the inevitable and drop out of the GOP race. This will leave Trump as the Republican nominee, but what if this isn't the end of the campaign trail for Haley? Instead of disappearing, what would happen if Haley then ran as the No Labels candidate?

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A staggering amount of Republican hypocrisy is now on full display in Washington. Pretty much ever since Joe Biden took office, Republicans have been screaming: "Border crisis! It's a crisis! This crisis needs immediate action!" This has been reinforced in an enormous way by the rightwing media echo chamber, who features the "Border Crisis!" storyline on a nightly basis for its audience. Scary images of border-crossers are shown, the word "invasion" is tossed about willy-nilly, and the fearmongering of immigrants is paramount.

This week, a deal seemed to be nearing completion on some new border policies, worked out between Senate Democrats and Republicans. This deal may be unveiled next week (but then they've said that before so we'll have to see if one does actually emerge). The deal is part of a package that also contains military aid for both Ukraine and Israel. The Biden administration has been pushing hard to get this done, and is reportedly going to have to accept stipulations in the border deal that will be (to put it mildly) unpalatable to some Democrats. In simplistic political terms, the military aid will be a win for Biden while the border portion of the bill will be a win for Republicans. This is especially true because it would be the first border compromise which will not even address the problem of the "Dreamers." That's another political blow for Democrats.

In reality, however, the fact that a border deal could even be reached would be a big political plus for Biden -- even with the provisions that some Democrats are going to howl about. It would tend to defuse the issue a bit, heading into the general election campaign. Biden could (rightfully) claim that he supported the bipartisan deal in the spirit of "getting something done," which fits into his whole political persona very nicely. The deal would also have to be given some time to see if it is working, which would damp down all the "Border crisis!" hyperventilating from the right.

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The mainstream media has had eight years to figure out how to cover Donald Trump. But quite obviously they still haven't really figured out the best way to do so. They ping-pong back and forth between largely ignoring him or giving him a huge (and free and unchecked) megaphone to use. This conundrum is upon us once again in a big way, since at this point Trump has to be seen as the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

In 2015 and 2016, the media lavished all kinds of free airtime on Trump. They covered all his rallies live. Trump, after all, was entertaining -- and nobody really thought he had a chance of winning. So it was all just in fun: "Hey, look at the crazy guy the Republicans nominated to take on Hillary Clinton!" The late-night comedians had a field day. It was all just so laughable to even consider the notion that he could win.

Nobody's laughing now, of course. Giving Trump all that free media attention did not tear him down, instead it boosted him. He rode that wave right into the White House, in fact. It wasn't the only reason Trump won (there were plenty of others, to be sure) but it certainly helped him out.

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Few people will actually celebrate it, but today is the 40th birthday of the modern world. Because on this day, back in 1984, Apple Computers began selling the first Macintosh model. And thus 1984 was not like Nineteen Eighty-Four.

That's what the ad promised, at any rate. The television ad that introduced the Mac only ran nationally once (during the Super Bowl, no less), but it's still one of the most memorable ads of all time (which it should be, seeing as how it was directed by none other than Ridley Scott). This all seems entirely appropriate for the revolutionary product it was promoting. In the timeline of technological advancement in average people's lives, there was "before Mac," and then there was "after Mac" -- which is the world we all live in today. And it all started forty years ago.

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As I sit here watching the New Hampshire primary election results roll in, there don't seem to be any huge surprises developing yet -- most of the votes aren't in yet, so I suppose there's still time... but the chances are the headlines are soon going to be reading something along the lines of: "It's Over Almost Before It Began," as both Donald Trump and Joe Biden wrap up their respective nominations.

[Editorial note: Just after the last polling place closed, the news organizations called the race for Donald Trump, as was expected. Right after the write-in ballots on the Democratic side began to be counted, that race was called for Joe Biden -- again, as expected.]

Which would be historic, in a way. After all, it's still January. That is insanely early for a presidential nomination race to essentially be over for both sides. It may in fact be unprecedented in modern times.

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As usual, the first presidential primary in the country will take place in New Hampshire tomorrow night. But this won't be your garden-variety Granite State primary, on either side of the aisle. For Republicans, their choices have already dwindled to only two, while on the Democratic side the frontrunner isn't even on the ballot. Neither one of those things is normal.

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President Joe Biden got some excellent news today: the "vibecession" seems to be over. For those unfamiliar with this neologism, the term was coined by an educator a while back to explain the disconnect between the economic reality (measured by all the economic indicators) and how people actually felt about the economy. The economy has been doing amazingly well in recovering from the COVID pandemic slump, while at the same time public perception has remained a lot gloomier.

There are reasons for this disconnect. First, we thought the pandemic itself was over several times -- but each time another variant attacked and made things worse. So there's a "once bitten, twice shy" residual feeling from those experiences in unfulfilled optimism. Then inflation spiked, and when the Fed brought it back down, interest rates spiked. So there's always been at least one economic indicator out of whack with the rest of the good economic news. The news media fed the disconnect as well (as they always do) by highlighting the bad news (in apocalyptic terms, at times) while ignoring or downplaying the good news. So while the economic numbers stayed strong, the "vibe" out there was that we were actually in a recession -- even though it wasn't true. Hence the "vibecession."

But today, there was some excellent news on this front. Because finally the vibe has begun to shift, in rather dramatic fashion:

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