MICHAEL WALSH: With Kavanaugh Smear, Democrats Use Americans’ Innate Good Will Against Them.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Imagine If This Happened at the Emmys Tonight… “Imagine if the assembled stars did something dramatically different throughout the night.”

A female winner used her podium time to blast Hollywood for ignoring the Dr. Kermit Gosnell tragedy while promoting the Oct. 12 release of “Gosnell.” “Thank you, Nick Searcy, for bringing this horror story to the big screen so more Gosnell monsters can be brought to justice!”

A best actor honoree chided the media and Democrats alike for supporting a last-minute attack on Kavanaugh, saying it smacked of the very worst instincts in our body politic. “The people in this room wouldn’t like it if Republicans tried this tactic with a Democratic nominee…”

The presenters got serious for a moment, saying free speech must be defended for those who lean to the right. “It’s time for all the snowflakes out there to melt away.”

Much more at the link.

SENATOR GRASSLEY: Feinstein’s Office Not Cooperating With Scheduling Follow-Up Calls With Kavanaugh and Accuser.

It’s almost as though Feinstein is stretching out the accusation game as long as she can before the whole thing collapses.

BRUCE BAWER: On Election Day, the Swedes Disappoint.

UGH: Lawnmower Parents: A New Low in Parenting Philosophies. “Some parents must want their kids living with them for the rest of their life.”

My wife and I are still a few years away from this — our oldest is only 12 — but I have to believe the most rewarding part of parenting is seeing your kids make it on their own in the real world. How else can you know you’ve done a good job of it?

DAVID SOLWAY: Silicon Valley’s Futile Search for Utopia Via the ‘Perfect Algorithm.’ “The tech is new; the lure of false prophets is ancient.”

Sooth.

SKYNET SMILES: Coming to an Aircraft Carrier Near You: Robot Sailors.

IMPRESSIVE. MOST IMPRESSIVE. SpaceX block 5 reusability results better than expected which could mean costs could eventually drop in half.

How are you going to compete with somebody who has stopped building the rockets which are already cheaper than yours (because they’re reusable) and is plowing the profits into developing the next generation of even bigger reusable rockets?

#METOO: Army Wants 120mm Mortar Systems That Can Fire Out to 12 Miles.

TONI AIRAKSINEN: Lawsuit Claims Military Draft ‘Discriminates Against Men.’ “Calling men heroes if they sacrifice their life is a bribe.”

End it don’t mend it.

SALON: Norm Macdonald has a show. But when hasn’t he? That’s the problem.

Macdonald hasn’t been in our faces, per se. Sure, he’s enjoyed a recent stint as one of the rotating Colonel Sanders on those KFC commercials, worked as a golf commentator, and we can occasionally catch his “Weekend Update” segments when they pop up on repeats of classic “Saturday Night Live” episodes. He’s also the voice of Pigeon on “Mike Tyson Mysteries.” He’s managed to stick around, but not in an overt way.

But what I’m saying is, the world has always been ruled by some version of Norm Macdonald. That’s why so many people love him.

Ladies, you know what I’m talking about. Chances are some jovial galumph that resembles Macdonald has been a part of your life at some point. You may have met him at college. He could be a work colleague. He’s that guy who holds the door open for you and buys you lunch sometimes and apologizes for his good pal Bill when Bill drunkenly pinches your boob at after-work gatherings.

Because he knows Bill, see? He can vouch for Bill, who didn’t mean anything by it. Bill’s just joking around, old school. It’s not worth making a scene by pressing assault charges against Bill. Don’t get so worked up!

Maybe your Macdonald has been known to drop a joke that diminishes people in a punchline — he’s one-sixteenth Irish, he can do that! — but is otherwise OK to be around and anyway, he’s from the Great White North where nobody means to be offensive.

This fictionalized Macdonald sounds like a well-meaning, imperfect guy with a good sense of humor — and we can’t have that.

No worries, however. It won’t be long before the last laugh has been wrung out of comedy.

“DESPITE”: California’s poverty rate is still the highest in the nation, despite state efforts.

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook to Start Fact-Checking Photos, Videos. “The social-media company will use technology and human reviewers to help flag false content.”

The company said Thursday it will use technology and human reviewers to try to staunch what it called in a statement “misinformation in these new visual formats.” Previously, the company’s efforts had been focused on rooting out false articles and links.

“The same false claim can appear as an article headline, as text over a photo or as audio in the background of a video,” Facebook product manager Tessa Lyons said in the statement. “In order to fight misinformation, we have to be able to fact-check it across all of these different content types.”

Facebook is one of the outlets Bill Whittle uses for the Right Angle video commentary segments we tape each week. I suspect our traffic there is about to take a big hit — provided they don’t dump us completely.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Florence Approaches, Creepy Porn Lawyer and Much, Much More. “Hurricane Florence has started to make landfall and ABC News reports it is about 200 miles wide. As of last night, 180,000 homes have no power and it’s expected to get worse. Water levels are rising and also expected to get worse. I told you all to get out but some have chosen to stick around. Now those holdouts need to be rescued.”

Part of being prepared is being prepared to bug out.

FLASHBACK: When disaster strikes, FEMA turns to Waffle House.

The 24-hour restaurant chain prides itself on serving its customers at all hours of the day, seven days a week. And FEMA caught on to this. They discovered that if a Waffle House was closed after a storm, then that meant things were really bad.

“It just doesn’t happen where Waffle House is normally shut down,” said Philip Strouse, FEMA’s private sector liaison for the Southeast.

Strouse said Waffle Houses are able to bounce back relatively quickly after a natural disaster, and have a good sense of what their statuses are in a community.

“They’re the canary in the coalmine, if you will,” Strouse said.

Here’s to hoping Florence doesn’t force any Waffle Houses to close.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s hyperinflation fuels misery for poor but enriches elite through currency exchanges.

Skyrocketing prices have ruined Venezuela’s economy with many people unable to afford even basic necessities — unless you are part of tight circle of politically connected elites with access to a government-controlled currency exchange that one financial expert in Miami summed up as a “perpetual money machine for insider criminals.”

The exchange offers bolivar-for-dollar rates insulated from the country’s hyperinflation, a currency system that the socialist government of the late President Hugo Chávez first set up to stabilize the economy and lower the prices of essential goods like food and medicine for the poor.

In the 15 years since, financial experts and U.S. prosecutors say the government exchange has also turned into a tool to empower Venezuelan leaders and enrich already wealthy business insiders. They’ve siphoned billions out of national coffers by exploiting exchange rates rigged to make astronomical profits in currency transactions that are inaccessible to a population struggling with widespread food shortages and runaway prices.

Why, it’s almost as though socialism were nothing more than a scam to trick the people into thinking they could get something for nothing, when actually it enriches the politically well-connected elite at their expense.

WELL, GOOD: Poland says it will block any EU sanctions against Hungary.

“Every country has its sovereign right to make internal reforms it deems appropriate,” Poland’s foreign ministry said in a statement late on Wednesday.

“Actions aimed against member states serve only deepening divides in the EU, increasing citizens’ current lack of confidence to European institutions.”

The European Parliament voted on Wednesday to sanction Hungary for neglecting norms on democracy, civil rights and corruption in a first bid to launch the punitive process of the EU treaty’s Article 7.

This Reuters reports hews to the EU party line, so for a better backgrounder, check out Spengler’s latest — Chutzpah in Strasbourg — if you missed it yesterday.

PROCUREMENT BLUES: Navy’s Revamped Stealth Destroyer Looks Less Stealthy As It Leaves San Diego For Trials.

It’s even worse than the headline promises:

After much fanfare among the mainstream press, the truth about the [Zumwalt’s] watered-down design, tiny fleet size, useless deck guns, and the implications of these factors, among others, became much more clear. As we reported two years ago, in yet another cost-cutting move, the Navy decided to forego the ship’s very stealth concept—which is the major reason the ships look the way they do, cost as much as they do, and have certain design tradeoffs for doing so—and bolt on communications systems and some sensors in a very unstealthy manner. These corner-cutting measures even included the addition of a rickety looking mast above the ship’s deckhouse. Now we are getting our first glimpses of this disappointing configuration.

There are EHF and UHF satellite communications systems (ball like structures) tacked onto either side of the ship’s deckhouse. Atop it, towards the forward edge of the deckhouse are two Tactical Common Data Link communications systems. Between them is the new mast, and no it isn’t a temporary structure. To the rear of the ship, above the hangar, we see the cupolas for the 30mm Bushmaster cannons. These were also downgraded from the far more capable 57mm guns as another late-in-the-game cost-saving move.

So it’s less stealthy and less well-armed than promised, years late, and costs more than anything afloat short of a Nimitz– or Ford-class aircraft carrier.

What a mess.

POLITICO: McConnell screws Dems ahead of election with October session. “The majority leader wants to deprive Democrats up for reelection the chance to campaign.”

If the parties were reversed, do you even have to ask if this is how Politico would frame the story?

RICK MORAN: Ex-Obama Aide Says US Should ‘Get Behind’ Plan for ‘Peaceful Ethnic Cleansing’ in Balkans. “A proposed land swap between Serbia and Kosovo would raise the specter of ethnic violence.”

This is a depressing observation rather than an enthusiastic endorsement, but one of humanity’s dirty little secrets is that ethnic resettling tends to work.

CHANGE: House Bans Killing Dogs and Cats for Human Consumption. “Another resolution passed by lawmakers calls on all nations to outlaw the dog and cat meat trade and to enforce existing laws against the trade.”

SHEESH: California Democrats to Prohibit the Sale of Gasoline-Powered Internal Combustion Vehicles by 2035.

Plus, a ban on existing gas-powered vehicles by 2050.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Does Snapchat video show police chief with an open beer in his vehicle?

SHE’S BLUFFING: Dianne Feinstein sends cryptic Kavanaugh letter to DOJ.

And Ashe Schow tweets: “These two paragraphs from @theintercept make it seem like whatever Feinstein has is a big ol nothing burger, but the existence of this letter will allow speculation to run wild – which will become the narrative.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Remember when Harry Reid floated the idea that Mitt Romney didn’t pay any taxes? That worked, this is unlikely to.

SURPRISING NO ONE: Sen. King to vote ‘no’ on Kavanaugh.

I’ll just mention again that Antonin Scalia was voted in 98-0.