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.
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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.

LITTLE CHIEF SPEAK WITH FORKED TONGUE: Senator Elizabeth Warren Sidesteps Questions About Oprah 2020 Presidential Run.

I can clear this up for everyone involved.

KISSING JESSICA STEIN HARVEY WEINSTEIN: Will This Photo Sink an Oprah Winfrey 2020 Candidacy Against Donald Trump?

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT? 2018 Golden Globes Review: Woke, Anti-Trump Lecturing.

YEAR IN REVIEW: 2017 Libertarian Films.

First and most importantly, Hollywood no longer has a lock on film content, because the film industry is rapidly being democratized by digital film production. Meanwhile theater chains no longer monopolize distribution, thanks to online streaming. Talented libertarian and conservative filmmakers — who in the past would have been sidelined by the progressive borg –now finance their own films and distribute them online or in DVD. It’s notable that a number of the 2017 libertarian films listed below were produced on shoe-string budgets and distributed mostly via Amazon streaming; these are just the kind of films that never would have seen daylight in the pre-digital world. There are hints that the new block chain technology will take this even further, and meanwhile the streaming service VidAngel, owned by libertarians, produced its first TV series.

Second, old Hollywood can no longer stake the slightest claim on moral superiority.

That’s an understatement.

WE GOT TREACHER: Is Trump Crazy, or Just a Jerk?

WELL, YES: Eliminating The Goldwater Rule Because Of Trump Will Damage The Mental Health Profession’s Credibility.

It can hardly be coincidence that President Trump’s election has sparked debates from certain members of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) about eliminating the Goldwater Rule. The rule was the consequence of a 1964 article in Fact magazine that published the results of a survey they’d given 12,356 psychiatrists asking whether Sen. Barry Goldwater was fit to be president.

The response was modest, but telling. Of the 2,417 respondents, 1,189, or less than half (49 percent), affirmed Goldwater was indeed unfit for office. The survey was part of an exposé on the senator entitled, “The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater.”

Goldwater later sued the magazine editor Ralph Ginzburg for libel, and was awarded $75,000. It seems what some psychiatrists deemed a necessary call, nay, an obligation to diagnosis from afar, turned out to be libelous. In 1973 the APA remedied this embarrassing display of amateurism by adding section 7.3 to their “Principles of Medical Ethics,” now known as the Goldwater Rule.
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A Google search (a lodestar for informational trends) lays out a timeline that shows almost to the day when substantive opposition to the rule started. A 2015 Vanity Fair article published shortly after Trump announced his candidacy showed where opponents were heading. Not unlike the Fact article a half century before, several therapists were interviewed about Trump’s mental fitness.

You’d think the psychiatric profession would be better attuned to its own self-destructive derangement syndrome, but no.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Seattle Sugar Tax Raises Soda Prices by 75 Percent.

Jon Gabriel:

Where will all the new revenue go? Seattle officials expect a $15 million boost in the first year. Since this was sold as a health initiative, $2 million of that will expand a city program that gives fruit and vegetable vouchers to low-income families. Of course, only $400,000 will go to actual vouchers; the other $1.6 million stays with the government for “administrative costs.”

Philadelphia, which enacted a similar tax last year, overestimated the expected revenue. Sales of carbonated soft drinks fell 55 percent inside the city, while sales rose 38 percent in the towns that surround it. It achieved neither the financial goals nor the health goals.

When the Seattle tax was first proposed, a “racial-equity analysis” found that diet beverages should be included since they are more popular among whites and the wealthy people. The politicians shot this down since they know which constituents donate to and vote for them.

Like most of these beverage taxes hitting blue cities, what is and is not included are counter-intuitive. All meal replacement drinks, powdered mixes, and most sugary coffee drinks — such as those found at local mega-company Starbucks — are exempt.

So, if you buy a bottled lemonade, you pay the tax. If you buy Kool-Aid and mix it with water at home, no tax. If you buy a Venti Brown Sugar Shortbread Latte at Starbucks, the tax doesn’t apply. If you get a Tall Brown Sugar Shortbread Frappuccino, which has less sugar, it does.

It’s cute that Seattle actually expects to collect all that revenue, instead of driving soda shoppers outside of city limits.

QUESTION ASKED: Could the Trump-Graham Bromance Mean That an Amnesty Deal Is Imminent?

NO. Streep on Oprah presidential bid: ‘She doesn’t have a choice.’

“IT DOESN’T LOOK GOOD”: Intel CEO In Jeopardy For Selling Stock After Learning Of “Staggering” Flaw.

The trade, which took place on Nov. 29, has been called “a highly unusual move” that risked attracting regulatory scrutiny, according to lawyers and analysts who spoke to the WSJ. The timing of Krzanich’s sale “is really odd,” said Dan O’Connor, a Ropes & Gray attorney specializing in securities law. “The timing, the size, the unusual nature compared to prior sales—that’s going to get this a lot of scrutiny.”

While the trade took place under an SEC rule that allows officers and directors to prearrange sales of specific numbers of shares at particular times, the experts note that the rule prohibits insiders from setting up such transactions while possessing undisclosed information that might affect the stock price.

Which is precisely what happened in this case.

For what it’s worth, a friend of mine who runs data centers for a living — and whose servers might be greatly impacted by the Intel flaw — told me yesterday he bought a few shares of rival chipmaker AMD last week.

RETAIL BLUES: JCPenney is going straight for the jugular of its embattled rival.

“We’re going after Sears and we’re going after market share that we think is going to be available not only now but as they continue to contract,” JCPenney CEO Marvin Ellison told Fortune’s Phil Wahba.

Sears has been closing hundreds of stores amid a years-long sales decline. The company said this week it was planning to close 103 Sears and Kmart stores by April, on top of the 63 store closures scheduled at the end of this month. Last year, the company closed nearly 400 stores.

Ellison said JCPenney is gearing up to swallow what remains of Sears’ business, and he suggested that Sears may eventually close all of its brick-and-mortar locations.

“When and if they decide to get out of the brick-and-mortar business we have a very clear understanding of where those locations are,” Ellison told Fortune. “We’re not going to be caught off guard.”

Sears did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

What’s left to say?

OH: Cleveland Billboards: ‘Abortion Is: Good Medicine, Gender Equality, Life-Saving, Sacred.’

REMINDER: China Hasn’t Won the Pacific (Unless You Think It Has).

In Australia, for instance, White is hardly alone in publicly questioning his nation’s continuing reliance on the U.S. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating has voiced similar ideas. And in the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has ostentatiously repositioned his country between Beijing and Washington on the thesis — exaggerated, no doubt, but nonetheless telling — that “America has lost” its strategic duel with China.

It would be foolish, then, for U.S. policymakers to simply dismiss the concerns that are emanating from Australia and other Asia-Pacific countries. But it would also be dangerous for U.S. and allied leaders to accept the thesis that China is destined to dominate the region and simply give up on countering Beijing’s ambitions.

China appears imposing today, but it is hardly 10 feet tall. As I discuss in my new book, “American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump,” Beijing is still no match for the U.S. in aggregate national power: Its military budget is still less than half that of the Pentagon’s, and its per capita gross domestic product remains roughly a quarter of America’s, even as its overall GDP approaches parity.

Moreover, China is almost certain to encounter serious economic and political difficulties in the coming years because of the rapidly approaching limits of its existing growth model and the inherent instability of authoritarian rule. It is a fantasy to believe, as U.S. observers sometimes have, that China will collapse or democratize before it is able to make a serious bid for geopolitical supremacy in the Asia-Pacific. But it is hardly preordained that China will be able to maintain, over a period of decades, the impressive trajectory needed to decisively overtake America as the region’s leading power.

In fact, the U.S. and its allies can make it enormously difficult for China to accomplish that objective.

Read the whole thing.

China’s rise, as a local power with territorial ambitions, should practically require its neighbors to gravitate towards the US, which is a far-off power with no territorial ambitions.

It would take a genuine and sustained effort to screw that up, but we did have eight years of Obama.

HMM: Mexico’s Trumpian populist could mean trouble for Donald Trump. “If the left-leaning nationalist wins Mexico’s presidency, it could boost tensions over immigration, trade and border security.”

I hate to have to break this to Politico, but I’m pretty sure those are all already longstanding tensions.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: THE BOOK, Hollywood Hypocrites, Miller v. Tapper and Much, Much More.

“THE BOOK” is the new “RUSSIA” and it seems both are a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

ALLIES ONCE MORE: Israeli PM backs Trump critique of Palestinian UN aid agency.

Netanyahu suggested UNRWA’s budget should be transferred to the more far-reaching United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, where it would be allocated to those truly in need.

“UNRWA is an organization that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem. It also perpetuates the right of return narrative in order to eliminate the state of Israel. Therefore UNRWA must become a thing of the past,” he said.

Netanyahu voiced a common Israeli criticism that UNRWA was created specifically for the Palestinians, while the UNHCR deals with the rest of the world’s refugees.

“This of course creates a situation where great-grandchildren of refugees who are not refugees are treated as such by UNRWA. And 70 more years will pass and they will have great-grandchildren, so this absurdity must be stopped,” he said.

Maybe something can change, now that the Sunni Arab states need Israeli cooperation against regional threats more than they need the Palestinian thorn in Israel’s side.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT? Good Fight to Explore Impeachment of President Trump by ‘Shameless’ Means.

CBS All Access’ The Good Fight will explore the process in which Democrats — smelling blood in the water after the midterm elections — might seek to impeach President Trump, and the firm of Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad is solicited to help in that endeavor.

Previewing the seventh episode of Season 2, which is tentatively titled “Shameless,” series co-creator Robert King said at the Television Critics Association winter press tour on Saturday, “We’re satirizing the Democratic [party] licking their chops at the possibility of turning the House over, and impeachment. They want to have their ducks in a row when they [potentially regain a majority] in November, so they’re auditioning a lot of law firms to see who would be best to prosecute in an impeachment.”
Enter Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad, which as an African-American firm offers the Democrats an interesting option. “It’s really a satire of Democrats wanting to impeach a sitting president in a way that would make them angry if it were Republicans going after Obama. A lot of it is, ‘If you wanted to execute the 25h Amendment, how would you do it?’”

If The West Wing’s President Bartlett was Hollywood’s fantasy version of President Clinton, then this is Hollywood’s fantasy version of President Trump.

But I wonder who will explain to the producers that invoking the 25th Amendment is not impeachment, nor does it require a Democratic majority in the House.

What a mess.

MICHAEL WALSH: Dear Al Franken: About that Forced Resignation…

APPLE IN THE ERA OF TIM COOK: Tim Cook Stumbles at His Specialty, Shipping Apple Products on Time.

As Apple Inc.’s longtime chief operating officer, Tim Cook was known for ensuring that new products hit the market on schedule.

With Mr. Cook as CEO, though, Apple’s new gadgets are consistently late, prompting questions among analysts and other close observers about whether the technology giant is losing some of its competitive edge.

Of the three major new products since Mr. Cook became chief executive in 2011, both AirPods earbuds in 2016 and last year’s HomePod speaker missed Apple’s publicly projected shipping dates. The Apple Watch, promised for early 2015, arrived late that April with lengthy wait times for delivery. Apple also was delayed in supplying the Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard, two critical accessories for its iPad Pro.

The delays have contributed to much longer waits between Apple announcing a product and shipping it: an average of 23 days for new and updated products over the past six years, compared with the 11-day average over the six years prior, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Apple public statements.

Longer lead times between announcement and product release have the potential to hurt Apple on multiple fronts. Delays give rivals time to react, something the company tried to prevent in the past by keeping lead times short, analysts and former Apple employees said. They can stoke customer disappointment and have cost Apple sales.

I’ve found the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Apple to be comically ignorant of how the company operates, but this story is a valid critique.

BUT THE NARRATIVE! Federal Investigators Couldn’t Illegally Buy Guns Through Legitimate Websites Despite 72 Attempts.

Between July 2015 and November 2017 investigators from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), following up on a congressional request, tried to make the illegal private gun purchases through a number of online forums and market places. They made 72 attempts over that time but couldn’t complete a single sale using legitimate sites.

In 29 attempts the gun sellers refused the sale after being asked to illegally ship the gun to the buyer. Twenty-seven sellers refused after being told the potential buyer was a felon, domestic abuser, or otherwise prohibited from buying a firearm. Eleven sellers attempted to scam the investigators after finding out they were prohibited from buying firearms with two successfully obtaining money from investigators but never sending the promised firearm. Another five attempts to illegally purchase firearms were ended when the investigators’ accounts were shut down due to suspicious activity.

“Tests performed on the Surface Web demonstrated that private sellers GAO contacted on gun forums and other classified ads were unwilling to sell a firearm to an individual who appeared to be prohibited from possessing a firearm,” Seto J. Bagdoyan and Wayne McElrath of the GAO’s Forensic Audits and Investigative Service section said in a report on the investigation released in November.

I’ve never met a firearms dealer who didn’t take his trade with deadly seriousness.

EVERGREEN HEADLINES: We’re still better off with Trump than Clinton.

Michael Goodwin:

One result is that reports of his imminent demise have been near-constant ever since he came down the Trump Tower escalator in June of 2015. Those predictions have been nonstop — and always wrong.

Of course, this time could be different. Or maybe the next time will. Or maybe not.

Meanwhile, his is turning out to be an enormously consequential presidency.

So much so that, despite my own frustration over his missteps, there has never been a day when I wished Hillary Clinton were president. Not one.

Indeed, as Trump’s accomplishments accumulate, the mere thought of Clinton in the White House, doubling down on Barack Obama’s failed policies, washes away any doubts that America made the right choice.

Left unsaid? Whatever Trump’s flaws, Clinton would have robbed the country blind.

CRUNCH TIME: White House Deadlocked on Saving Iran Nuclear Deal As Protests Rock Islamic Republic.

PRACTICAL? A practical guide to microchip implants.