THE RETURN OF KING DOLLAR? Dollar rallies off a 3-year low in sudden reversal after Trump says it will get ‘stronger and stronger.’

And why not? Even the XFL is making a comeback.

HAVE THEY CHECKED UNDER MADURO’S OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS? Half of Venezuelan economy has disappeared.

This year will mark the third consecutive year of double-digit contractions in Venezuela’s gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity. The nation’s GDP declined 16 percent in 2016, 14 percent last year and it’s projected to fall 15 percent this year, according to the IMF.

Venezuela is deep into an economic, political and humanitarian crisis, largely inflicted by the government’s own policies, economists say. Food and medical shortages are widespread. People are scavenging for food in dumpsters. Citizens are fleeing by the thousands. The currency, the bolivar, is nearly worthless. The government has defaulted on its debt. World leaders are calling President Nicolas Maduro a dictator.

The political turmoil is not expected to get better. Maduro’s administration said this week it will hold presidential elections this spring. Maduro has already excluded opposition leaders from participating in the election. It’s unclear if anyone is actually allowed to run against him. Meanwhile, the economy shows no signs of recovery.

This is just the socialist state withering away so that the fruits of full communism can be enjoyed by the survivors, if any.

HEH: The fix was in. The 2016 election was rigged — and Donald Trump won anyway.

We all know — thanks to former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile — that Hillary rigged the Democrat presidential primary against Bernie Sanders. That was a precursor of what was to come.

Does it shock anyone that someone brazen enough to rig a presidential primary would also try to rig the general election?

Don’t look now, but Donald J. Trump may be the first person in world history to win an election rigged against him. Hillary — with the backing of Barack Obama and the leadership of the FBI and Department of Justice — fixed the general election so Trump couldn’t win. And Trump — this relentless bull in a china shop — won anyway.

No wonder Hillary was so confident in the days leading up to Election Day. No wonder she was so shocked and distraught on election night. Keep in mind the point of fixing the election. It wasn’t just about Hillary winning. It was about covering up her crimes.

It’s all coming down upon this cabal of criminals like a ton of boulders. Hillary, Obama, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, John Podesta, Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice, Huma Abedin and leaders of the FBI and DOJ — they’re all looking at possible prison terms as this massive, brazen scandal and conspiracy unravels.

It’s an entertaining piece, but things almost always look as though the Clintons or their cronies are about to do the perp walk.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: President Oprah? She Says Nope, Brah.

STEPHEN KRUISER EXPLAINS why he day drinks. “Today I held a little protest for free menstrual protects…And I say menstrual not feminine because menstruation should not be gendered. Some men get periods.”

NO. If You’re a Purist About Scotch Whisky, You Might Find This Hard to Swallow.

The making of Scotch whisky has long followed a precise formula enshrined in law and precedent. Scotch must be distilled in Scotland from water and malted barley and aged in the country at least three years in oak casks. It should come out at least 40% alcohol by volume.

Now Diageo PLC, the world’s single biggest producer, wants to water down some of those rules, part of its attempt to arrest Scotch’s declining market share. Last year, it formed a secret task force to explore ways to change some industry rules about how Scotch must be made.

One idea was to finish aging Scotch in old tequila barrels instead of the sherry, cognac or port casks traditionally used. Another was to create a “Scotch whisky infusion,” a new category of flavored or low-alcohol blends sold under existing Scotch brands.

Diageo’s efforts to win over the Scotch Whisky Association, which lays down rules for distilling the spirit—at least on its tequila-barrel idea—are already on the rocks.

“There is not a single chance of a change of the rules,” says Gavin Hewitt, a former British diplomat and onetime chief executive of the SWA. “Whoever is saying that is talking through a complete hole in their head.”

Well, good. While it might goose sales in the short term, brand dilution in pursuit of marketshare is a huge mistake in the longterm.

I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: U.S. Upgrades Its Biggest Non-Nuclear Bomb.

A fourth upgrade to the Boeing Co. bomb, the GBU-57, has been completed and the existing inventory is being retrofitted, Captain Emily Grabowski, an Air Force spokeswoman, said in an email. The modification “has improved the performance against hard and deeply buried targets,” she said.

Bombs known as bunker-busters have been in the Air Force’s arsenal for years for potential attacks against buried targets. The GBU-57, which is six times bigger than the 5,000-pound bomb the Air Force has had for years, could be used if the U.S. decided to hit underground nuclear or missile facilities in North Korea, as tensions persist over Kim Jong Un’s growing nuclear arsenal.

Three B-2 bombers were deployed to Guam this month in what the Air Force said was a planned rotation. Grabowski declined to say whether the GBU-57 also been sent to the Pacific region.

Bigger, please.

THIS IS PRETTY MUCH THE 21ST CENTURY I’VE COME TO EXPECT: Fake Celebrity Porn Is Taking Over The Internet And No One Is Safe.

VIERDE AMENDEMENT: Dutch Police To Seize Clothing, Jewelry From ‘Youths’ Who Can’t Explain How They Got It. “We’re going to undress them on the street.”

Once again, the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.

IF IT MOOS, TAX IT: Enviros Push Meat Tax.

Excise taxes on beef, pork, and chicken could be the next big thing in a state and local tax environment that’s already comfortable with “sin tax” regimes aimed at cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, and gambling and is adapting quickly to special levies on sugar-sweetened beverages, greenhouse gases, and marijuana.

While there are no current legislative proposals imposing state or local surcharges on meat, a growing number of public health, environmental, and animal rights advocates are bullish on tax schemes addressing the mounting social costs of meat production and consumption.

Fine, but only in exchange for an even larger tax on foods masquerading at meat.

WINNING: Campbell Soup to close Toronto plant, move production to U.S.

Smart economics trumps dreamy good looks, apparently.

WELL, YES: The Russia ‘Fake News’ Scare Is All About Chilling Speech.

David Harsanyi:

If you genuinely believe that Donald Trump’s distasteful tweets are attacks on the foundations of free expression, how can you not be alarmed by a pair of powerful elected officials demanding social media companies hand over information about their users? What would they say if the president had sent a letter to Google insisting they give the executive branch an “in-depth forensic examination” of his political opponent’s searches?

As it turns out, reports today say that Twitter’s internal analysis found that it was mostly Americans, not creepy Slavic mind-control robots, who were behind the hashtags. Not that it really matters, anyway. If a group of Americans have a legitimate issue to rally around, how are they supposed to control what outsiders do? It’s not as if #ReleaseTheMemo was a secret or illegal. Republican politicians were openly using it.

Yet, if Feinstein and Schiff had their way, Twitter and Facebook would have moved to quash the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag for what turned out to be apparently solely partisan reasons. Sounds like a power that can be abused. Even if the two had been genuinely troubled by Russian hashtags — yes, suspend your disbelief — the source of fake news is not always easily discernible. Sometimes it comes to you from an anonymous Russian bot, and sometimes it’s retweeted by a prominent journalist.

Democrats have manufactured panic over amateurish Russian propaganda to not only claim that Vlad Putin was “meddling” in the election, but also to argue that interference had the power to turn the election to Trump. With this risible idea in hand, they have created paranoia about social media interactions and rationalized infringements on expression.

It’s always about rationalizing infringements on what the proles are allowed to read, say, or do.

UM… Pope Francis Blames ‘Fake News’ for Adam and Eve’s Sin in the Garden of Eden.

EVERYBODY’S GOT NICE PAY RAISES BUT ME: WaPo Staffers Fighting for Better Wages Told to Sit Down, Shut Up, and Be Grateful for Jeff Bezos.

PRIVACY: Germany threatens curbs on Facebook’s data use.

Andreas Mundt, head of Germany’s main antitrust agency, the Federal Cartel Office, said Facebook could be banned from collecting and processing third-party user data as one possible outcome of an investigation that in December concluded the US technology group was abusing its dominant market position.

“We are blazing a trail in this case,” Mr Mundt said in an interview. “We are looking very closely at the connection between data and market dominance, data and market power, and the possible abuse of data collection.”

The German probe goes to the heart of the way Facebook makes money from the personal data of its 2bn users and reflects growing disquiet in Europe about the influence of the big US technology groups.

Probably the only way to maintain even a modicum of privacy with Facebook is to avoid their mobile apps altogether, and visit their website in browser in a virtual machine where you do absolutely zero other activity.

OH, THAT BIASED MEDIA: Media dub drop in tourism that began under Obama ‘Trump slump.’

The United States is seeing a decline in tourism, though media outlets blaming President Donald Trump are ignoring that the drop preceded his presidency.

Travel to the United States increased between 2010 and 2015, but began declining in 2015. The trend continued in 2017, and now media outlets are branding the steady decline as the “Trump slump.”

Shameless.

SO IT MIGHT COME TO THIS: California lawmakers considering fines and jail time for waiters handing out drinking straws without customers asking.

I’M SO OLD I CAN REMEMBER WHEN PAYING HIGHER TAXES WAS PATRIOTIC: Pelosi Tries to Extend $137,000 Tax Break for Two of Her Multi-Million-Dollar Homes.

SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP: President Trump predicts ‘tremendous increase’ in UK-US trade.

He also said the US and UK were “joined at the hip” on military matters, while Mrs May said they stood “shoulder to shoulder” in facing shared threats.

In a series of warm exchanges in Davos, Switzerland, President Trump also told the UK PM: “We love your country.”

He also rejected “false rumours” of differences, saying that the two leaders “like each other a lot”.

It seems like only a day or two ago that David Frum claimed we had a President who was “smashing apart America’s alliance structures.”

Unlike some US presidents I could name, whose administration referred to one of our allies as a “chickenshit” and a “coward,” ungraciously dismissed Great Britain fairly regularly, stripped planned missile defenses from our NATO allies in vain pursuit of Putin’s friendship — all before taking Iran’s mullahs into his warm embrace.

I seem to recall Obama promising an “Asia pivot” to strengthen our position there, but failing to deliver. Trump however might actually be achieving it by improving military relations with Japan and even Vietnam.

And it was Obama who poisoned relations with Egypt, and whose strategic spinelessness over Syria that made Russia a power player in the region for the first time in decades.

But Trump is the one upsetting our alliance structure because reasons.

CHANGE: U.S. aircraft carrier to visit Vietnam in post-war first.

The proposed visit is set for March at the central port of Danang, Vietnam’s defence ministry said in a statement. Such a visit by a U.S. aircraft carrier could bring the most U.S. forces to Vietnam since the conflict ended in 1975.

Mattis cheered the planned port visit during talks with Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam.

“Thank you for the increasing partnership, with our aircraft carrier coming into Danang here in March,” Mattis said.

Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed the carrier visit was discussed by Mattis and Defence Minister Ngo Xuan Lich, and Vietnam’s defence ministry was seeking final approvals from national leaders.

“We expect it will be approved,” Davis said.

The arrival of a U.S. aircraft carrier in Vietnam will be welcomed by an emerging network of countries that are nervously eyeing China’s military rise, particularly its assertive stance and island-building activities in the South China Sea.

As I wrote earlier today, if Beijing doesn’t like these developments, well, tough — they have no one to blame but themselves.

RICK MORAN: DoJ to Play Hardball with Sanctuary Cities.

THE DARK NIGHT OF FASCISM IS ALWAYS DESCENDING IN THE UNITED STATES AND YET LANDS ONLY IN… THE WORLD OF HIP-HOP? Singer-Songwriter Erykah Badu Says She ‘Saw Something Good’ In Adolf Hitler.

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE: Over 600 Malicious Crypto Apps in Official Stores.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Text Message Recovery, DACA Deal, FISA Fight and Much, Much More. “Just to make sure you are keeping track of all the absurdities surrounding this investigation, McCabe’s wife took almost $700,000 for a failed political campaign in Virginia from Clinton chum and VA governor Terry McAuliffe, WHILE McAuliffe was under investigation by the feds for accepting campaign donations from shifty sources.”

MOPPING UP IS A DANGEROUS CHORE: Islamic State desert bases still a headache for Iraq.

With police being targeted in their homes near Ramadi, and with the Islamic State (IS) still in possession of bases in the vast Iraqi desert, counterattacks on forces across the border in Syria are of growing concern to the Iraqis.

Security sources deployed to the area told Al-Monitor that with the recent military campaign launched by Turkey in northern Syria against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), there is a risk that the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), dominated by the YPG, might withdraw from their positions in nearby eastern Syria to assist their fellow Kurds to the north. Such a development could make it easier for remaining IS forces in Syria to slip across the border and cause trouble.

Despite a Dec. 7 Russian declaration that IS had been defeated in Syria, some villages and areas in the east near the Iraqi border remain under the extremist group’s control.

More airstrikes like last weekend’s body blow would be nice.