WITH JOURNALISTS, IT’S ALWAYS WHATEVER SUPPORTS THE NARRATIVE, WHICH ALWAYS SUPPORTS THE DEMOCRATS: Don’t Let ‘Fire And Fury’ Normalize ‘Fake But Accurate.’

CHARLES GASPARINO: On the economy, Trump has been crazy like a fox.

The United States had one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world — so high that companies (and jobs) were fleeing to places like Ireland. That’s why it was perfectly sane to lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent as Trump just did, and presto: Corporations are announcing plans to hire more workers, and the economy, which was expected to slow after seven years of weak growth, is heating up. The markets are predicting that growth with their surge.

Likewise, regulations have been strangling businesses for years while making it difficult for banks to lend to consumers and small business. Trump went out and hired perfectly sane regulators who basically pulled the federal government’s boot off the neck of the business community.
…
An insane president would threaten a significant tax increase immediately upon taking office following a financial crisis, and then eventually impose one on individuals and small businesses still in recovery.

He’d impose job-crushing regulations on these same businesses as unemployment rose. He’d put a cumbersome mandate on businesses that upends the entire health care system just as the economy was finally turning a corner.

A really insane president would blow nearly $1 trillion on a stimulus plan with little planning and direction, wasting much of the money on boondoggles (see: Solyndra) and then laugh at the lack of “shovel ready” jobs created. He’d then try to spread his delusion to the masses, telling them to ignore historically low wage growth, anemic economic growth and the massive amount of people who dropped out of the work force because the stock market rallied, thanks in large part to the Fed printing money instead of his own fiscal policies.

Is Barack Obama crazy? No, but his post-2008 economic policies were.

I had been assured in 2009 by some very smart people that “business climate” was a myth and didn’t matter.

SHOT: Concerns mount as Venezuela closes in on petro, an oil-backed cryptocurrency.

A cryptocurrency backed by oil would be a big first. A cryptocurrency backed by a sovereign government would be even bigger.

But while Venezuela claims it is going to do both very soon with the petro, experts are doubtful the country has the capabilities or the characteristics to achieve its goal.

The petro will be dogged by a major question, “Is it redeemable, in other words, can you take physical delivery?” notes finance professor Stephen McKeon of the University of Oregon.

The strength of any currency backed by a commodity, regardless of whether it is physical or digital, is that holders must believe they can exchange it for the actual commodity. When the U.S. was on the gold standard, individuals could bring their dollars to a bank and exchange them for physical gold.

Presuming Venezuela can get the oil out of the ground — quite the presumption, these days — how would you like to take delivery of the physical product? Gold is useful because it its value is portable and divisible in exactly the ways that a barrel of oil is not.

CHASER: Venezuela 2017 annual inflation at 2,616 percent.

Opposition politicians, whose numbers are broadly in line with analysts’ estimates, on Monday put December’s inflation figure alone at 85 percent, well into hyperinflation territory for which the benchmark is usually 50 percent.

“Inflation in December alone is greater than accumulated inflation (over the whole year) for all of Latin America,” said lawmaker José Guerra.

Venezuelan authorities did not respond to a request for comment.

They were too busy dreaming that their DOA cryptocurrency would restore some purchasing power to the Maduro regime and its flunkies.

HANGOVER: Halliburton Says $400 Million Exposure To Venezuela Could Be Problematic.

Unexpectedly.

THE LEFTIES AT THE INTERCEPT ARE NOT AMUSED: Oprah Winfrey for President: Have We All Gone Bonkers?

I’m old enough to remember when liberals gave a damn about experience, qualifications, and judgement; when Democrats mocked the idea of Trump — a former reality TV star and property developer who struggled to tell the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah — running for the presidency.

On the campaign trail, former President Barack Obama blasted Trump as “uniquely unqualified,” lacking in “basic knowledge” and “woefully unprepared” to do the job of commander-in-chief. In stark contrast, he argued, there had “never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.”

Well, when you finish up with a lie like that, people may disbelieve the other stuff, too. And since — judging from the economy, unemployment, foreign relations, judges, regulation cuts, etc. — Trump is doing a much better job than the allegedly-credentialed Obama, people might want to take a flyer on another outsider.

YEAH, BUT IT REALLY DRAINS THE BATTERIES:  Scientists develop self-healing robot muscles.

NASA’S GROOVY PHOTOS:   Jupiter is the galactic lava lamp of your dreams.

HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLOSION, THE ARTS VERSION:  The Death of University Art Programs, Part 4: The Subsidized Sedition of Establishment Art Schools.

WEARING A BEARD DOESN’T MAKE YOU SOCIALIST:  The “Christian Left”?

INTERESTING:  Decorated Soldier Picks the Best, and Worst, War Movies .

OH MY PEOPLE! REPRISE:  Stir the Pot.

CLIMATE CHANGE! IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO?  Supposedly Climate Change Is The Real Reason For #IranProtests.

MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN:  Red meat is a window into the nation’s economic soul.

AFTER ALL THE KNEELING, I DOUBT ANYTHING CAN SAVE FOOTBALL, BUT THIS OFFERS HOPE FOR TREATMENT OF CONCUSSIONS:  Can a drug save football?

NEVER EVEN HEARD OF THIS:  This town encourages kids to smoke during Christian holiday.

GOOD GRIEF! NO WONDER MILLENNIALS ARE BUYING BERNIE’S BS:  Most Americans can’t answer these 4 basic money questions.

AS I’VE SAID:  The Left Is Nothing More Than A Temper-Tantrum-Throwing Child.

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TONIGHT’S OPEN THREAD: Discuss the Oprah Presidency, or whatever else you like.

AS A WISE COMMUNITY ORGANIZER ONCE SAID, GET IN THEIR FACES AND PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: James Damore Sues Google For Discriminating Against White Men.

SORRY, DOESN’T FIT THE #NARRATIVE: Teenage males experience sexual violence more than females, study shows.

#METOO: A TAINTED NBC DRAWS SCRUTINY WITH ITS ILL-ADVISED OPRAH WINFREY TWEET.

Media and political circles are excited Monday following a barnburner of a speech this weekend from Oprah Winfrey, the media mogul most responsible for amplifying anti-vaccination theories, mainstreaming self-help “spiritualism” and launching the careers of infamous quacks Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil.

President Trump has proven already that even carnival barkers can be elected President of the United States, so the 2020 presidential buzz coming off of Winfrey’s address Sunday evening at the 75th Golden Globes isn’t that insane.

NBC, however, stepped in it even before the noted media proprietor delivered her prepared remarks.

“Nothing but respect for OUR future president,” the network’s official Twitter account said in a since-deleted tweet that referred both to a joke told by Golden Globes host Seth Meyers and a separate pro-Trump tweet that went viral last year.

No reason to merely think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines when they’re tweeting out stuff like this:

As Kyle Smith writes in an article today titled, “Golden Globes Fiasco: Hypocrisy, Preening, No Self-Awareness:”

NBC, Oprah: The juxtaposition of those two brands is too perfect to pass without notice. If your memory stretches back even three months, you’ll recall that it was NBC that quashed a series of blockbuster scoops by its correspondent Ronan Farrow that, when he finally was forced to take them to The New Yorker, reported that Harvey Weinstein was a serial rapist. By coincidence, the president of NBC News, Noah Oppenheim, moonlights as a screenwriter who wrote Jackie — the kind of arty, Oscar-bait fare that Weinstein often produced and shepherded to Oscar glory (or at least Golden Globes semi-glory).

NBC’s late-night jokesters, Meyers included, were curiously slow to make jokes about Weinstein when the scandal initially broke October 5. Winfrey — whose kiss of Weinstein at a Globes-style awards show a couple of years ago went viral as she spoke, and who worked for Weinstein on his 2013 movie, Lee Daniels’s The Butler — appears also to have been used as starlet-bait by the reprehensible producer. Only via Hollyweird logic could she be cast as the anti-Weinstein or the anti-Trump: The world’s leading proponent of the concept “your truth,” a phrase she used again in her speech, is not the antidote to Trumpian deceit.

Of course, we’ve seen such rabid boosterism from NBC and the rest of the DNC-MSM  for a tyro presidential candidate before:

I assume the combination of NBC’s tweet, Oprah’s award speech, and the DNC’s tweet earlier on Sunday night praising nothing but women candidates was all more or less coordinated as part of her official kickoff, or at the least testing the waters, of her presidential bid. But as I said earlier today, it seems like a poor branding decision for Oprah to associate herself so closely with Hollywood’s Weinstein fiasco.

Speaking of which: “Juanita Broaddrick To Oprah: ‘Funny, I’ve Never Heard You Mention My Name.’”

Ouch.

I LIKE THE HEADLINE: Cancer Deaths Continue a Steep Decline. And it’s good that cancer deaths are declining, and that’s unlikely to be an artifact of data-gathering. But then there’s this: “Over the past decade, cancer incidence in men has dropped by about 2 percent a year, while it has remained the same in women. There are two reasons, researchers said. First, there has been a decline in male lung cancer because fewer men are smoking, and a decline in colorectal cancer because of men’s increasing use of colonoscopy. Second, from 2008 to 2013, prostate cancer diagnoses declined with the decreasing use of P.S.A. testing.” So fewer diagnoses because of less testing doesn’t sound like progress to me.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Here’s a novel idea: If you don’t like Jeff Sessions’ marijuana decision, change the law.

HEH: “Drive Fast, Freeze a Yankee!”