BUGS: Google Chrome extensions with 500,000 downloads found to be malicious. “Google removes four extensions that used infected computers in click fraud scheme.”

SMALL BUSINESSES ARE ALREADY INVESTING DUE TO TAX CUT: That’s the word from Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Linda McMahon, who, according to LifeZette’s Brenda Kirby, hears that message from entrepreneurs and small business owners all the time.

“Well, what they’re saying with the new tax reform package passed is that they are going to take the proceeds from any tax savings that they have and reinvest them in their business,” McMahon said during an interview Thursday on Laura Ingraham’s Talk Radio show. “So, you know, they complained about taxes. They wanted to see regulatory reform. And under President Trump, they are seeing both of those issues addressed. And they’re very enthusiastic about it.”

That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that McMahon wants “to see more loans because that means more businesses are taking advantage of this access to capital. And they’ll either use it to grow, or they’ll use it to start a new business, or they’ll use it to add an employee.” All true but wouldn’t it be better if those guarantees and loans came from the private sector rather than the taxpayers via SBA?

IT’S COME TO THIS. You’d have to be a prig to find Friends offensive. Claims that 1990s sitcom is racist, homophobic, transphobic and fatphobic show a desperation to see a flaw in anything:

Friends has arrived on Netflix and people who apparently never saw it before are going nuts over how offensive it is.

* * * * * * * *

For this show to be declared problematic then is itself problematic. . . There is a hunger today to find the flaw, to be the one who says “that thing you think is fine is not fine, and I am a better person than you for noticing it”. You aren’t. You’re a prig and bore. Yes, maybe there’s a mote in my eye. Some eyes have those. No need to gouge them out.

—Hugo Rifkind in the London Times, as spotted by Steve Hayward of Power Line, who adds, “Just wait till they get a load of All in the Family re-runs.”

PAYBACK’S A… YOU KNOW: Maybe Men Will Be Scared for a While. “But maybe to fear women is to begin seeing them as people.”

Not everyone is online all the time. This is why it was only several weeks after the “Shitty Media Men” list first appeared, and disappeared, and engendered a frenzy of coverage that my husband found himself discussing the list with an older colleague.

Well, she said (as he recounted the conversation to me). Women have been scared of men for a long time. Maybe men will be scared of women for a while now.

He recounted this as a calm statement of fact, which interested me; it seemed accurate, and it also seemed like a stark contrast to the way I’d seen similar assessments delivered elsewhere. In general, in the weeks following the Times’ and The New Yorker’s reports on Harvey Weinstein, the prospect of men being newly scared of women tended to loom as a sort of horrifying, unnatural worst-case scenario. What if men were now too scared to take meetings with women? Too scared to professionally mentor women? Too scared to be friendly? Too scared to flirt? The price of any misstep: a life “ruined” (although what, exactly, it meant to “ruin” a life tended to pass without scrutiny).

Implied in these scenarios was less a fear of women’s power than a fear of their irrationality, their suggestibility, and their failures of understanding. The subtext seemed to be: So are women just going to get upset about whatever now? Are they going to start reporting men for “misconduct” willy-nilly, ignoring all subtleties and good intentions in favor of freaking out?

So far there are plenty of indicators pointing to Yes.

RUN BY FORMER STUDENTS OF MINE: Award-winning Red Stag Fulfillment shoots for error-free shipping.. I toured their facility on Cyber Monday last year, and was amazed. (Bumped).

THE U.N.’S TRACK RECORD ON THIS STUFF — LIKE ITS TRACK RECORD GENERALLY — IS TERRIBLE: U.N. fails to stem rapes by peacekeepers in Africa, victims cry.

REAL NEWS ABOUT FAKE NEWS: President Trump Releases ‘Fake News Awards,’ GOP Website Crashes.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Will News Media Recall Schumer’s 2013 Vow to Not Shutdown Over Immigration?

ACE: Trump’s Basic Instincts About the Political War Are Essentially Right, and The Establishment’s Sense of It Is Essentially Wrong. “The right attempts political persuasion. The left, on the other hand, attempts social persuasion — basically seizing the commanding heights of culture-making institutions and then deciding that espousing some political claims (being pro-gay-marriage) increase social status and that espousing other political claims (being against gay marriage) decrease social status and, indeed, make one a social pariah, fit for ostracism, mass mockery, and internal exile. The left’s method works much better than the right’s.”

DAVID HARSANYI: Democrats Are Fooling Themselves About Tax Reform’s Unpopularity.

Yes, the tax bill is unpopular. Then again, I’m not sure you’ve noticed, everything Washington tries to do is unpopular. Nothing polls well. Not the president. Not congress. Not Democrats. Not legislation. Not even erstwhile popular-vote winning candidates. Certainly a bill being bombarded with hysterical end-of-world claims rarely debunked by the political media is not going to be popular. Republicans won’t pass anything if they wait around for it to be popular. But, funnily enough, they can be somewhat content knowing that voters will probably like it once they find out what’s in it.

Why do so many Americans believe that middle class is getting a tax hike? Because those they trust are constantly lying to them. Both in framing and content, the coverage of the tax cuts has been impressively dishonest. “One-Third of Middle Class Families Could End Up Paying More Under the GOP Tax Plan” writes CNN (They won’t). The Associated Press says, “BREAKING: House passes first rewrite of nation’s tax laws in three decades, providing steep tax cuts for businesses, the wealthy.” And so on.

Indeed. It’s one thing to be told (by Democrats) that you’ll pay substantially less for health insurance while keeping your plan and your doctor, only to find that you’re paying substantially more for health insurance while losing your plan and your doctor. It’s quite another thing to be told (again by Democrats) that you’ll pay more in taxes, only to find that your taxes have been cut — and maybe even a tax-cut financed $1,000 bonus coming your way.

TWITTER JUST ISN’T A HAPPY PLACE FOR SAMANTHA POWER, AS HER TWEETS KEEP BLOWING UP IN HER FACE LIKE THIS ONE DID:

But give the old girl credit, she keeps plugging away.

BEN SHAPIRO: Stop feministsplaining sex to men.

Take, for example, “Grace,” an anonymous woman who went on a rotten date with comedian Aziz Ansari. According to Grace, Ansari treated her abominably: He took her to dinner, gave her white wine instead of red, pushed her to come to his apartment and then engaged in a vigorous round of sexual activities to which she apparently consented. She eventually said no — and when she did, he stopped. Later, she suggested that Ansari hadn’t obeyed her “non-verbal cues” — nonverbal cues that reportedly included undressing and then voluntarily servicing Ansari.

In the aftermath, Grace felt used. So she texted Ansari, explaining to him that she felt terrible about the date. “I want to make sure you’re aware so maybe the next girl doesn’t have to cry on the ride home,” she said.

This is feministsplaining sex. Here’s the problem: The condescension isn’t earned. From Grace’s story, it seems she was less than clear in her nonverbal communications but she wanted Ansari to read her mind — and that when he didn’t, she therefore had leeway to lecture him about his sins and, more broadly, those of all men.

It’s not just Grace. Rachel Thompson of Mashable explained: “The responses to the woman’s story are peppered with the word ‘should.’ She should have said no … For many women, uttering an explicit ‘no’ is not as easy or straightforward as you might think.” Well, as it turns out, reading minds is not quite as easy or straightforward as feminists might think. It was feminists who boiled down sexual relations to the issue of consent. Traditionalists always argued that physical intimacy and emotional intimacy ought to be linked. But they were accused of removing female agency with such linkage and condemned for “mansplaining.”

How about this: no feministsplaining and no mansplaining when it comes to sex? How about we instead focus on communication between men and women?

Because that doesn’t present enough opportunities for emotional corruption and cultural graft.

JAMES LILEKS: Hey, let’s have a Screed today!

It’s the trifecta: a site I can’t stand, talking about an artist I don’t care about, written by an academic who knows you can’t get any accolades these days unless you sprinkle the words Whiteness and Privilege all over your par-baked pan of doughy prose.

tldr: a singer’s new album seems to suggest he’s going all Country-style on us, and we need to acknowledge the problems here.

So. It’s a BuzzFeed piece called “Justin Timberlake, John Mayer, And The Western Rehab For White Masculinity.” Apparently Timberlake did a video teaser for his new album, and it was set on his ranch. This is as problematic as you can imagine.

So, so problematic. So read the whole thing, already.

OH: After Declaring Self-Funding Is “Wrong,” Wisconsin Dem Gov Candidate Andy Gronik Self-Funds His Campaign.

NOTE TO JEFF FLAKE: No Amount of ‘Alternative Facts’ Will Make Donald Trump Akin to Joseph Stalin.

HAS TRUMP CHANGED HIS POSITION ON A BORDER WALL? NOT SO MUCH. Byron York: 7 times Trump said wall not needed on all 2,000 miles of border. “Trump said on many times and in many different settings that he was not proposing a wall along the entire 1,954-mile border. That he would say so again today is not new.” He repeatedly says that we have enough natural barriers that we don’t need more than 1,000 miles of actual wall.

He could pay for the wall — at Mexico’s expense — by taxing remittances sent home by Mexicans here. Surprised he hasn’t mentioned that.

SHOT: Navy to Deliver 2nd Stealthy Zumwalt-Class Destroyer in March.

CHASER: The Navy’s stealthy mega-destroyer still doesn’t have ammunition for its gun.

HANGOVER: No New Round Planned For Zumwalt Destroyer Gun System.

It’s a helluva warship that can’t be seen or heard.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Listen to the ‘Bad Feminists:’ They’re the ones who still believe women have power.

Was it only a year ago that Margaret Atwood was the avatar for feminist resistance? That’s when the TV adaptation of her “Handmaid’s Tale” was widely praised for being “unexpectedly timely” (and I poked gentle fun at the notion).

But oh, how time does fly these days. Suddenly Atwood is defending herself from the charge of being a “bad feminist” because she suggested that railroading the accused out of their jobs without any semblance of due process was not, in the end, apt to be a net social improvement.

There is something odd happening to feminism these days, a stark split between its older and its younger practitioners. Daphne Merkin hinted at it in her recent New York Times op-ed on women’s misgivings about the #MeToo movement. Caitlin Flanagan came right out and said it after the comic actor Aziz Ansari was the subject of a humiliating tell-all about a recent date: “Sexual mores in the West have changed so rapidly over the past 100 years that by the time you reach 50, intimate accounts of commonplace sexual events of the young seem like science fiction,” she writes. “You understand the vocabulary and the sentence structure, but all of the events take place in outer space. You’re just too old.”

I have now had dozens of conversations about #MeToo with women my age or older, all of which are some variant on “What the hey?” It’s not that we’re opposed to #MeToo; we are overjoyed to see slime like Harvey Weinstein flushed out of the woodwork, and the studio system. But we see sharp distinctions between Weinstein and guys who press aggressively — embarrassingly, adulterously — for sex. To women in their 20s, it seems that distinction is invisible, and the social punishments demanded for the latter are scarcely less than those meted out for forcible rape.

There’s something else we notice, something that seems deeply connected to these demands for justice: These women express a feeling of overwhelming powerlessness, even though they are not being threatened, either physically or economically. How has the most empowered generation of women in all of human history come to feel less control over their bodies than their grandmothers did?

You could write a pretty strong argument for restoring patriarchy, just by quoting millennial feminists talking about how weak and fragile women are.

HMM: Hillary Clinton confidant was interviewed by FBI in connection to the salacious dossier.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former journalist and a close friend of Clinton, was interviewed by the FBI in 2016 regarding the dossier that alleged Trump colluded with Russia, the sources stated. Department of Justice officials, however, declined to comment on Blumenthal or the dossier.

FBI officials declined to comment.

Blumenthal did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Blumenthal worked as a White House aide for Bill Clinton, and later worked with the Clinton Foundation after being denied a role by Obama Administration officials with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to reports. According to Politico he was being paid $10,000 a month by the Clinton Foundation.

The FBI has been leaking like a sieve with a hole in it; curious that we’re just finding out about this now.

RELATED: Clinton Corruption Update: It’s All One Scandal.

We’ve reached the scandularity.

IF ONLY CONGRESS COULD AGREE TO ZERO FUNDING FOR AGENCIES: One of the bizarre features of the CFPB’s unconstitutional structure is that the Bureau gets no funding from Congress. Instead, the Director simply writes to the Fed requesting funds, which the Fed has to grant up to a certain variable limit. Acting Director Mick Mulvaney has just put in his first such request – for $0.

Politico Pro reports:

In a letter to Fed chair Janet Yellen obtained by POLITICO, Mulvaney wrote that the bureau already has $177 million in the bank, enough to cover the $145 million the bureau has budgeted for its second quarter. Cordray had maintained a “reserve fund” in case of overruns or emergencies, but Mulvaney said he didn’t see any reason for it, since the Fed has always given the bureau the money it needs. Mulvaney, who is also Trump’s budget director, noted that instead of advancing the funds to the bureau, the Fed could return them to the Treasury and reduce the deficit.

“While this approximately $145 million may not make much of a dent in the deficit, the men and women at the Bureau are proud to do their part to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars,” Mulvaney wrote.

I can’t stop smiling.

ETA: More from the excellent Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner here.

A MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: Locals Sue UC-Berkeley for failing to intervene in violent riots.. “The lawsuit accuses campus police of ‘deliberate indifference to the plaintiffs’ safety,’ saying officers permitted ‘hordes of violent rioters to swarm the university campus in a violent rage.'”

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