HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? Even More OPEC Confusion: Unclear Who Cuts First, If Anyone, As Production Hits New Record High.

SO IT MIGHT NOT BE THE BATTERY AS SUCH? Did Processor Cause Samsung Note 7 Blowup? “Problems with the phone appeared to have arisen from tweaks to the processor to speed up the rate at which the phone could be charged.” Thanks to reader Chan Eddy for the tip.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY — ONLY WITHOUT THE GOOD: Over at VodkaPundit, it’s time again for Wargaming the Electoral College.

WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS: A 900 HP Winnebago.

NFL RATINGS KEEP FALLING — WHY?

In a leaked internal memo, the NFL blames much of the ratings hit on the presidential race, different matchups, and points to the historic ratings highs of recent years. Moreover, it claims that its own “data” shows that player protests are not a factor, that fans aren’t tuning out because the league is relaxing its notorious restrictions on player self-expression so long as those players are social justice warriors.

While it’s difficult to explain the behavior of millions of people by reference to any single cause, I’m dubious of the NFL’s attempt to rule out player protests as offering any explanation for the ratings drop. The NFL isn’t the NBA. Its fan base isn’t as clustered in progressive urban centers but is far more equitably distributed across the country. Thus, it plays a doubly dangerous game by embracing the social justice left. It stands to alienate more fans than it attracts, and it’s in bed with a cultural force that ultimately despises the league itself. Social justice warriors hope to destroy football. They don’t want what’s best for the league or the sport. Instead, they want to use it until they kill it.

Some of us would argue they already have.

Related: Singer Takes Knee While Performing National Anthem at Sacramento Kings NBA Game. “Bay Area performer Leah Tysse…said that her act was a protest against police treatment toward African Americans.”

MICHELLE MALKIN: Obama Lied. My Third Health Plan Just Died.

Like an estimated 22 million other Americans, I am a self-employed small-business owner who buys health insurance for my family directly on the individual market (as opposed to group insurance through a company or third party). Our most recent plan features a $6,000 deductible with a $1,000 monthly premium. It’s nosebleed expensive, but provides us access to specialists not curtailed by bureaucratic gatekeepers. This has been important for us because several members of my family have required specialized care for chronic illnesses.

Once again, however, I’ll soon be talking about our plan in the past tense. Choices for families like mine have evaporated in the era of Obamacare. In Colorado, UnitedHealthCare and Humana will cease selling individual plans next year. Rocky Mountain Health Plans is pulling out of the individual market in all but one county. Nearly 100,000 of my fellow Coloradans will be forced to find new insurance alternatives as open enrollment approaches on Nov. 1, according to the Denver Business Journal. As Anthem abandons PPOs, the cost of remaining individual market plans will soar an average of 20 percent.

That means it’s working.

WHEN RELIGIONS COLLIDE: Clinton campaign spokeswoman takes shots at Catholics, evangelicals in leaked email exchange.

Related: “To repeat, the head of Clinton’s campaign has been organizing to fracture a major religion. Clinton claims to be for all Americans… what if Podesta had created organizations to foment ‘Revolution’ among the American Muslim community? Would that be worthy of dismissal?… how much of his plans to fracture Catholics did Podesta share with Hillary as a campaign strategy? Does she agree with his strategy now?”

Thou shalt have no other gods before Progressivism.

THIS HEADLINE IS MISLEADING: Today’s Nukes Are Thousands of Times More Powerful Than WWII A-Bombs. The comparison is to the Soviet Tsar Bomba, a one-off from over half a century ago that is much closer in time to the Hiroshima bomb than to “today’s” nukes, most of which are smaller than the 1.2 Megaton B83.

I’LL HAVE WHATEVER ELEANOR CLIFT IS SMOKING: Donald Trump Attacks Help Hillary Clinton Forge Truce in Her Long War With the Media.

IT’S ON: Clinton Opens 9-Point Lead in Ohio as Early Voting Starts.

Early voting, electronic voting, and voting-by-mail all ought to be anathema to a healthy republic.

Hawaiian Airlines Under Investigation For Weighing Passengers.

Fox News reports that the men say in their complaint that they were assigned to different seats on their flight out of Honolulu.

A Hawaiian Airlines spokeswoman said that the flight was part of a survey period in which the airline weighed all passengers traveling traveling between Hawaii and the American Samoan capital of Pago Pago. She said that the airline has not implemented a general policy of weighing passengers.

Spokeswoman Alison Croyle said that the airline has conducted similar surveys on other routes, and all were conducted in accordance with FAA protocols. She said that seat assignments were changed to assure the proper weight distribution in the airplane.

If the Department of Transportation discovers a civil right to keep a plane’s load unbalanced, we might all be safer driving or taking a boat.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Hey, Athletes: Don’t Feel Guilty About Sex Before the Game: Italian researchers say sexual activity may even enhance sports performance. Well, Italians.

AS ALWAYS, SOONER OR LATER, REAL LIFE IMITATES THE EARLIER, FUNNIER SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE:

Emily Litella: What’s all this fuss I’ve been hearing about the 1976 presidential erection? Now, I know they erected a monument for Mr. Lincoln and President Washington, but that’s because they’re DEAD! Hopefully, the 1976 President won’t be DEAD! So he won’t NEED an erection! If Americans are going to spend money to erect anything, why don’t we tear down those nasty slums and erect luxury high rises for poor people and senior citizens! Not for presidents who can afford to pay for their OWN erections!

Chevy Chase: Miss Litella —

Emily Litella: I can’t believe the way things are turning out in this country — what?

Chevy Chase: I’m sorry. That’s election. The editorial was about the presidential election, not the presidential erection. Election.

Emily Litella: Oh, that’s very different.

—Weekend Update, from the April 17th, 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by President Ford’s press secretary, Ron Nessen. As one of the writers later admitted, the entire staff knew that “The President’s watching. Let’s make him cringe and squirm,” by crafting one of the series’ raunchiest episodes, particularly those segments that Nessen didn’t appear in.

Flash-forward to today: CNN Sitting On ‘Obama ERECTION’ Video … Since 2008? Debra Heine asks at PJM:

A newly emerged video from the 2008 presidential campaign appears to show that the current president of the United States might be even lewder than Donald Trump.

And Trump only talked about being lewd. Looks like Obama actually did it.

Further, liberal media bias is at the center of this controversy, too.

NBC sat on the video of Trump and Billy Bush until such a time that it could aid a Democratic opponent of Trump — NBC refused to release the video when it could have helped Republican Ted Cruz.

Well, this new video — of Senator Obama, running for president in 2008, apparently flaunting his ERECTION in front of a plane full of FEMALE reporters — was shot by a CNN camera.

CNN has kept this video private all these years — a video that might have changed U.S. history to favor Republicans.

Click over for video of the err, whole package.

CNN-created the Orwellian Wright-Free Zone memory hole in service to Obama that year as well. Besides the L.A. Times’ still-buried tape of Obama with the PLO-championing Rashid Khalidi, I wonder what else will eventually surface now that it can no longer do our semi-retired president any harm at the ballot box?

ROGER SIMON ON SOVIET-STYLE BUREAUCRACIES AND OFFICIAL FAVORITES LISTS, THEN AND NOW: WikiLeaks Exposes Workings of an American ‘Nomenklatura.‘

Reminder: Terry Gilliam now views Brazil as a how-to guide for growing the bureaucracy.

BEGUN THE DRONE WARS HAVE: ISIS targeting foreign troops with explosives-laden drones.

A video belonging to an al Qaeda offshoot, Jund al-Aqsa, purportedly shows a drone landing on Syrian military barracks. In another video, small explosives purportedly dropped by the Iran-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah target the Sunni militant group Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front.

In the first reported instance of Western forces being targeted with a drone, the French government confirmed Wednesday that two of the country’s special operations troops were injured by an ISIS drone rigged with explosives in northern Iraq, where they were operating alongside Kurdish Peshmerga. Two of the Peshmerga fighters were killed in the attack.

A U.S. military official, who spoke anonymously because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the U.S. military is aware of the development. Commanders have warned troops to take cover if they see what they might have once dismissed as a surveillance drone, he said.

The “jayvee” keeps finding new ways to score.

SO THE INSTA-DAUGHTER TAKES QUERCETIN TWICE A DAY, not once a day like I do. I switched to her brand and started doing the same, and the results seem to be an improvement over what I was getting before with once a day, which were already very good. Maybe I’ll make it through the year without a sinus infection!

REAL, LIVE DOCTORS OUTPERFORM DIAGNOSIS APPS. But the apps will continue to improve, at a faster rate than the doctors, most likely.

IT’S COME TO THIS: McDonald’s is Cutting Back on Ronald McDonald Appearances as ‘Creepy Clown’ Sightings Grow.

UPDATE: Regarding Ed’s post below, there’s no reason for alarm or to mock people for dunking McD fries in their milkshakes. Since McDonald’s removed the beef tallow from their fryers, you’ve got to do something to add some flavor back to the fries.

YIKES! BILL CLINTON ‘SHOWS TRUE COLORS’ AND IT’S NOT PRETTY; SEE FOR YOURSELF: “Just two snapshots of his remarks say it all.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: I’m a Doctor. If I Drop Food on the Kitchen Floor, I Still Eat It.

NOW THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS PROMISED: What radiation-resistant space fungus can do for drug discovery.

These fungi are radiation resistant. Thirty years ago, they survived when a routine test led to an explosion that blasted radioactive material throughout northern Ukraine. By sending these fungi to the International Space Station, Kasthuri Venkateswaran, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, and Clay Wang, a professor at the USC School of Pharmacy, have tried to push them to adapt again.

The day the capsule landed, Venkateswaran and Wang made the hour-long drive to Long Beach, Calif., to pick up the samples, loading the cylindrical tubes of fungi into coolers. Back in the lab, Venkateswaran and Wang have spent the past month studying how the trip changed the fungi. Their goal is to use these impressively resilient organisms to point the way to drugs that could impart similar resilience to humans, such as those getting cancer treatment.

Faster, please.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: Major GOP Donors Are Asking Trump for Their Money Back.

IT’S 2016, MAN. THE ELECTION WILL PROBABLY BE DECIDED BY SPACE ALIENS AND CREEPY CLOWNS: Scott Brown says Donald Trump could still pull off victory.

THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: McDonald’s advises customers to dunk their fries in milkshake.

Steve warned you that the hamburger chain, currently helmed by a British CEO who vowed a year and a half ago to transform McDonald’s into a “modern, progressive burger company” was doomed.

CASS SUNSTEIN: Five Books To Change Liberals’ Minds. “If you think that Barack Obama has been a terrific president (as I do) and that Hillary Clinton would be an excellent successor (as I also do), then you might want to consider the following books, to help you to understand why so many of your fellow citizens disagree with you.”

I like that he leads with James Scott’s Seeing Like A State, a book that I recommended President Obama read back in 2008, but that I’m pretty sure he never opened.