WHERE DOES IT END? Several women accuse tech pundit Robert Scoble of sexual assault, harassment.

“I know that apologies are not enough and that they don’t erase the wrongs of the past or the present,” he continued. “The only thing I can do to really make a difference now is to prove, through my future behavior, and my willingness to listen, learn and change, that I want to become part of the solution going forward.”

The revelations come months after many top Silicon Valley luminaries, including Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital and Dave McClure of 500 Startups, among others, were named as abusers by The New York Times. As is the case in many industries that have been dominated by men for decades, inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment often goes underreported and unpunished.

Scoble’s apology did not name any specific actions or victims. The Californian, who did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment on Saturday evening, began his Silicon Valley career as a blogger nearly two decades ago.

Is the sense of entitlement just as bad in Silicon Valley as it is in New York and Hollywood?

ELECTRIC: Tesla strikes a deal to open a factory in Shanghai, WSJ sources say.

JAMES STAVRIDIS: Here’s How to Pull Turkey Back From the Brink.

WELL, YES: ‘Victimhood narrative’ taught in schools fuels anxiety in young women, academic claims.

SINGLE PAYER, SINGLE DECIDER: UK Catholic Doctors struggle “to combine professional work with personal conviction” on abortion.

SO I GUESS NO HARD FEELINGS FROM ROGER GOODELL OVER CAUSING JANET JACKSON’S WARDROBE MALFUNCTION? Nipplegate II: If kneeling NFL players won’t get you to boycott the Super Bowl, this certainly will: Justin Timberlake.

As one Twitter user asks, “Why is Justin Timberlake being invited to perform again when Janet Jackson is banned for life for something that was entirely his fault?”

BLUFF AND BLUSTER: No Signs Harvey Weinstein Is Taking on the NRA Despite Statement After Sexual Assault Scandal.

The nation’s leading gun-control groups told the Washington Free Beacon on Friday that Harvey Weinstein has not given any money to them despite his promise to channel his anger at himself for sexually abusing numerous women into a fight against the National Rifle Association (NRA).

“We can confirm that he is not an active donor and has not communicated or reached out to us,” James Tyll, a spokesperson for the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told the Free Beacon.

Everytown for Gun Safety went a step further saying Weinsten never donated to it, and it would not accept his money if he tried to now. “No, we have not received any contributions from Harvey Weinstein,” Kate Folmer, a spokesperson for the group, told the Free Beacon. “And while we do not usually answer hypothetical questions, no we wouldn’t accept them.”

Weinstein’s threat was probably little more than a way to test the waters, to see if he could buy his way back into the entertainment industry’s good graces.

WELL, GOOD: Trump Says ‘No Change’ to 401(k) Plans Under Forthcoming Tax Proposal.

“There will be NO change to your 401(k),” the president wrote on Twitter. “This has always been a great and popular middle class tax break that works, and it stays!”

Mr. Trump’s comments point to a challenge Republicans face as they race to write and pass a tax plan: They have ambitious targets for rate cuts and a self-imposed $1.5 trillion limit on the size of the tax cut over the decade.

Those guidelines press them to look for large tax breaks they can limit or repeal and to seek budgetary maneuvers that shift the timing of tax revenue into the period measured by congressional scorekeepers. The proposal to cap 401(k) contributions at as little as $2,400 a year and push additional savings into so-called Roth-style accounts where posttax dollars go in and money comes out tax-free in retirement was a combination of both. Much of the revenue it generated would have come from accelerating tax collections from the future into the near term.

Today’s revenue schemes don’t matter in the long term, because Washington will never collect enough in revenue to pay for the entitlement explosion. We can fiddle around the tax margins all we like, but until Congress tackles our spending addiction, it won’t amount to much.

TWO MEN WHO AREN’T DNC OPERATIVES WITH PUNCHLINES: Norm MacDonald and  Doug Stanhope, Two Comedians Rejecting PC.

YOU HAD ONE JOB: Venezuela’s deteriorating oil quality riles major refiners.

Venezuela’s state-run oil firm, PDVSA, is increasingly delivering poor quality crude oil to major refiners in the United States, India and China, causing repeated complaints, canceled orders and demands for discounts, according to internal PDVSA documents and interviews with a dozen oil executives, workers, traders and inspectors.

The disputes involve cargoes soiled with high levels of water, salt or metals that can cause problems for refineries, according to the sources and internal PDVSA trade documents seen by Reuters.

The quality issues stem from shortages of chemicals and equipment to properly treat and store the oil, resulting in shutdowns and slowdowns at PDVSA production facilities, along with hurried transporting to avoid late deliveries, the sources said.

Wreckers and hoarders to blame, I’m sure.

(Hat tip, longtime Instapundit reader Arkuy the Great.)

ANN ALTHOUSE ON SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND “LOOKS PRIVILEGE.”

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: From Supreme Court down, ‘Front Row Kids’ and values dominate judiciary.

BLACK SUNDAY: Several NFL Stadiums Half Full or Worse.

WHY ARE LEFTY ORGANIZATIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF SEXUAL PREDATION? The Left-Wing Heroes Who Treat Women Like Garbage.

HAIR TRIGGER: US Preparing to Put Nuclear Bombers Back on 24-Hour Alert

BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. — The U.S. Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status not seen since the Cold War ended in 1991.

That means the long-dormant concrete pads at the ends of this base’s 11,000-foot runway — dubbed the “Christmas tree” for their angular markings — could once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and set to take off at a moment’s notice.

“This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, said in an interview during his six-day tour of Barksdale and other U.S. Air Force bases that support the nuclear mission. “I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.”

Goldfein and other senior defense officials stressed that the alert order had not been given, but that preparations were under way in anticipation that it might come.

If Moscow wants to behave as though it’s still 1983, they shouldn’t be surprised when we react accordingly.

CHANGE: A New Start for Austria? Austria’s next Prime Minister Sebastian Kurz has managed to do what Germany’s Angela Merkel couldn’t.

The October 15 parliamentary elections in Austria have produced a remarkable outcome. After 15 years the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) returned to number one with 31.6 percent of the vote (62 seats). The Social Democrats came in second, with some 27 percent (52 seats), just barely outpolling the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPÖ), which won 26 percent (51 seats). Meanwhile, the Green Party electorate followed the advice of their socialist friends, voting for the Social Democrats instead in order to block an ÖVP-Freedom Party coalition. They failed in that goal and in the process committed political suicide: The Green Party will not be represented in the Austrian Parliament—only a tiny green splinter group that broke ranks with the party leadership just before the elections. And the business oriented “Neos” once again achieved more than the 4 percent minimum required for entering Parliament.

That, in a nutshell, is what happened according to the votes and the numbers. But what really happened beyond the numbers, and what will happen next?

After a very dirty campaign, for which the Social Democrats bear the main responsibility, the young and charismatic leader of the ÖVP, Sebastian Kurz, prevailed. He is the clear winner of the elections, in particular if one remembers that some two years ago his party polled less than 20 percent of the vote. According to Austrian tradition, Kurz will receive the mandate from the Federal President to form a new government, and it is fairly obvious what he will do with that mandate. After the rows during the election campaign, and in view of the stalemate within the previous government formed by the two parties, there will be no new “Great Coalition” with the Social Democrats, but instead most likely an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition. . . .

Like Merkel, Kurz realized that the main concern of his fellow citizens was immigration: Austria had accepted some 90,000 immigrants in 2015, more than 1 percent of its population. For the United States this would amount proportionally to some four million immigrants in a single year. In Germany the “socialdemocratization” of the CDU/CSU under Merkel, which could not be reversed enough or fast enough before the election, left space that the right-wing AfD eagerly filled. Kurz managed to position his middle-of-the-road party farther to the right (and did it more quickly), appealing to many of the voters that the party had lost to the FPÖ in the past. That difference in right-leaning flexibility explains the ÖVP’s success in Austria (as well as that of Mark Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy [VVD] in the Netherlands back in mid-March) compared to the CDU’s poorer showing in Germany.

Also, the trend is his friend. See, e.g., the Czech Republic. In fact, it’s interesting to see that the move against the mush EU conventional wisdom seems to be flourishing in former Hapsburg areas. See also Hungary.

RED TAPE HOLDS THE NATION TOGETHER: Wayne Crews on what needs to happen to make the President’s Federal Regulatory Budget actually work. Perhaps surprisingly, there is bipartisan support for reform, but it never seems to happen.

If it doesn’t, this number will continue to chew up our lives: in 2015,

9.778 billion hours was required to complete the federal paperwork requirements from 22 executive departments and six independent agencies that have been historically subject to survey.

That’s 4.7 million people working nominally in the private sector but actually just filling out Federal forms. As Wayne points out, that’s also almost 14,000 human lifetimes, each year.

BREAKING NEWS FROM 1979: Woody Allen’s new movie has adult-teen sex scene.

Looking back at Allen’s Manhattan, John Podhoretz wrote a few years ago that “It is inconceivable that such a movie could be made today, in which a middle-aged man commits statutory rape–and is considered a moral exemplar to boot. And yet there was not a peep in 1979.”

Evidently, Allen took Podhoretz’s words as a challenge.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Eugene Volokh corrects the “statutory rape” bit.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Mueller Now Investigating Democratic Lobbyist Tony Podesta.

The probe of Podesta and his Democratic-leaning lobbying firm grew out of Mueller’s inquiry into the finances of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, according to the sources. As special counsel, Mueller has been tasked with investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Manafort had organized a public relations campaign for a non-profit called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU). Podesta’s company was one of many firms that worked on the campaign, which promoted Ukraine’s image in the West.

The sources said the investigation into Podesta and his company began as more of a fact-finding mission about the ECMU and Manafort’s role in the campaign, but has now morphed into a criminal inquiry into whether the firm violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, known as FARA.

Tony Podesta is brother to Clinton hand John Podesta, whose email was reportedly phished by Russian hackers last year.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Having fled Cuba, campus speaker warns Democrat Party hijacked by ‘socialist, communist movement.’

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases, updated hourly.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Digital Deals.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: From Supreme Court down, ‘Front Row Kids’ and values dominate judiciary.

EXPANSIVE IDEOLOGY: China’s Xi Jinping Promises Aggressive Communism: ‘A Military Is Built to Fight.’

Washington’s finances are in terrible shape for a crisis — any kind of crisis, whether it’s financial, economic, or military.

BEWARE OF “MALE FEMINISTS:” Male feminist writer fired by GQ Magazine after woman accuses him of sexual assault.