TOXIC: Al Franken Backpedals, Disinvites Kathy Griffin From Book Event.

FRANCE AND GERMANY ARMOR UP: Credit political climate change in eastern Europe. The French planned to buy modern Griffon armored personnel carriers before Trump became president. As this update points out, it’s linked to their Leclerc main battle tank modernization program.

As this second update notes, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spurred the German Leopard 2 revival. But Germany had let is tank fleet shrink from 2,000 to 225. The revival is minimal — only 104 Leopard 2A7Vs will be reactivated. That’s a start, but in my opinion Germany needs at least 500 Leopard 2A7Vs. The update discusses the improved Leopard 2’s impressive capabilities.

Yes, a Leopard 3 may be developed, but it’s still in the discussion stage. It could be a Franco-German project.

RELATED: U.S. Apache helicopter flies over watch for a Danish Leopard 2.

THIS ‘ROBOT PRIEST’ HERALDS CHRISTIANITY’S DEATH IN EUROPE:

As part of an exhibition to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, a church in Wittenberg, Germany, has unveiled what it calls a “robot priest,” a machine that emits lights from its outstretched hands and dispenses blessings in five languages. The robot, called BlessU-2, will spout out whatever blessing a parishioner selects from a touchpad screen on its chest. The boxy, metallic thing looks like something from a 1950s sci-fi film, and moves like one, too. A video of BlessU-2 in action shows it slowly raise its arms over its head, gears whirring, before it blurts out a pre-recorded blessing in German.

That’s not at all creepy. Just ask THX-1138:

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Why Is Amazon Building Brick-and-mortar Bookstores?

There has already been some garment-rending from writers about the lack of literary sophistication on display at Amazon’s stores, and it’s a valid criticism. The Amazon Store is not like browsing your local indie bookstore, or even a Barnes & Noble. The “History” section didn’t have some standards like Battle Cry of Freedom or The Penguin History of the World, but it did have Bill O’Reilly’s Legends and Lies: The Patriots (4.6 stars!). And the store’s decision to display titles face out means it only carries about 3,000 titles, far less than it could if it displayed books more like a traditional bookstore with the same amount of space.

Still, my fellow browsers seemed to like the store. Carol Laskin, an attorney from Cherry Hill, was killing time before seeing A Doll’s House, Part 2. “This is fun,” she said. “I’m seeing books I wouldn’t normally see. When you buy a book on Amazon’s website, you see more book recommendations, and you’re like, ‘I’ve read these already.’”

But it wasn’t until I went to check the price on a book — you have to either use the Amazon shopping app on your phone to take a picture of the book cover, or bring it to one of the many scanning machines — that the store actually started to make sense. The app and the scanner will show you two prices: one for Prime members and one for non-Prime members. For The Devil’s Chessboard, this meant a discount of nearly 50 percent — $10.70 for Prime members, and $20.81 for schmucks without a Prime membership.

Amazon is selling books people actually want to buy, along with an inducement to join the company’s $99-a-year Prime program. If customers take the bait, the brick-and-mortar stores wouldn’t need to show a profit to become valuable assets to the company.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot: “[Kathy Griffin] never imagined that it could be misinterpreted as a threat of violence … that was never what she intended,” lawyer says.

—CBS, today. (Link safe; goes to Twitchy.)

Chaser: FLASHBACK: Kathy Griffin Blames Sarah Palin For AZ Shooting.

—The Federalist, Wednesday.

Hangover: Crybully Kathy Griffin Tries to Become a Victim of Her Sick Photo Shoot.

—Megan Fox, PJ Media.com, today.

UPDATE: When I linked to the announcement of Griffin’s press conference last night, I was tempted to add that you know you’re too toxic a lefty celebrity when Gloria Allred won’t serve as your attorney. But as Ace of Spades writes today, Lisa Bloom, Griffin’s attorney, is Allred’s daughter, thus making this 14:59 moment complete. And as he notes, Griffin “complains that the rule is ‘Criticize the president, lose your job,’ without acknowledging for a single second that this is the exact rule the left imposed for 8 years under f***ing Obama. Elizabeth Lauten, hounded by the Washington Post out of a job when she remarked on Facebook that Obama’s daughter shouldn’t chew gum at public appearances, wants to know where this ‘don’t get people fired for criticism of the president’ rule was four years ago.”

In addition to Lauten, as Ben Shapiro tweets, “Obama and Co. got a rodeo clown fired, and he was funnier than [Griffin] was.”

And I love Griffin saying that Trump “broke me.” Does that make Trump Bane or Batman?

More: “‘I would never want to hurt anyone,’ says a weeping Kathy Griffin, who has spent her entire career saying horrendous things about people,” John Podhoretz tweets.

IMPORTANT NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Don’t Put Ground Wasp Nest On Your Vagina.

RENT-SEEKERS GOTTA SEEK RENTS: German carmakers fear losing competitive edge after U.S. Paris exit.

“The regrettable announcement by the USA makes it inevitable that Europe must facilitate a cost efficient and economically feasible climate policy to remain internationally competitive,” Matthias Wissmann, president of the German auto industry lobby group VDA, said in a statement on Friday.

“The preservation of our competitive position is the precondition for successful climate protection. This correlation is often underestimated,” Wissmann said, adding that the decision by the Unites States was disappointing.

The VDA said electricity and energy prices are already higher in Germany than in the United States, putting Germany at a disadvantage.

Now we know what the Paris Accords were really about — hampering U.S. industries to make Europe’s more competitive.

OVER AND OVER AGAIN, HUGE DECISIONS IN MEDICINE SEEM TO BE BASED ON THIS SORT OF “SCIENCE:” How a short letter in a prestigious journal contributed to the opioid crisis. “Over the following decades, the letter was invoked by doctors, academics, pharmaceutical companies and others as evidence that few users would develop addictions and that liberal prescription was justified. Of course, the analysis proved nothing of the sort, nor did it set out to. . . . Nearly 500 articles neglected to note that the letter concerned only hospitalized patients whose treatments were overseen by medical staff, rather than people prescribed take-home painkillers for, say, arthritis or minor injuries, the researchers found. A majority of the articles also cited the letter as evidence that addiction was rare in patients who took opioids. Other articles ‘grossly misrepresented’ the letter’s findings, Leung and her team wrote.”

CHRISTIAN TOTO: 7 Slobbering Feminist ‘Wonder Woman’ Movie Review Quotes.

I hope the movie is better than the reviews.

AT AMAZON, save on Men’s Outdoor and Athletic Socks.

MICHAEL GRAHAM: Lot of hot air over climate decision.

When the two volatile topics came together during President Trump’s Rose Garden announcement yesterday I fully expected at least one reporter to spontaneously combust like a “Spinal Tap” drummer. Instead I got hours of over-heated handwringing (posing as journalism) on Trump dumping the Paris Agreement, with virtually no light shed on the details of the accords themselves: What did they require? How much did they cost? And — presumably most important of all — would the Paris deal stop the warming?

So, while it won’t inspire eye-catching headlines like “Trump To Planet: Drop Dead” (Huffington Post) or “Trump Bailing On Paris Agreement A Middle Finger To The World” (CNN), please indulge me while I offer a few facts.

First, the Paris Agreement isn’t a treaty and it would require America to do absolutely nothing. Treaties must be passed through the Senate (unless they involve Iran, apparently) and President Obama never sent it. In addition, there are no enforcement mechanisms to punish nations that don’t abide by it. Trump could mandate that every public-school student ride to class in a coal-fired school bus, and there would be no real-world consequences.

Or as the always level-headed Chris Hayes of MSNBC tweeted yesterday: “THE AGREEMENT QUITE LITERALLY IMPOSES NOTHING!!!”

So why all the fuss about withdrawing from it?

Here’s why:

Live by the pen and phone, die by the pen and phone.

IT’LL WAKE YOU UP, IF IT DOESN’T KILL YOU: Coffee Laced With Viagra.

WHO YOU GONNA SUE? North Korea’s Latest Tablet Computer Has a Catchy Name: iPad.

CHIK-FIL-A HARDEST HIT: Largest bass caught in Texas lake using McDonald’s chicken McNugget.

F— YOU, PAY ME: Single payer means Goodfellas government for California.

SO YOU CAN READ MY REVIEW FOR JUDICATURE OF RANDY BARNETT’S NEW BOOK, Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People online right here. (PDF link).

COMPETITION: The Future of Walmart Looks Like It Will Include Making Life Hell for Hated Rival Amazon.

Good. For me anyway, Amazon Prime’s two-day delivery has been getting slower and more prone to error for over a year now — they could use a wakeup call from Bentonville.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Donald Trump: Our Claudius.

From what we can tell, the more Rome prospered under Claudius, the more the imperial court grew to despise him—as if his odd mannerisms and the even odder way he came to power could not be squared with the able administration of a far-flung empire over the 13 years of his reign.

In the end, Claudius was likely murdered by dynastic rivals and relatives who thought that a young, glib, handsome, intellectual, and artistic Nero would be a pleasant relief from the awkwardness, bluntness, and weirdness of Claudius. What followed was the triumph of artists, intellectuals, stylish aristocrats, obsequious dynastic insiders, and flatterers—many of them eventually to be consumed by the reign of terror they so eagerly helped to usher in.

Artists, intellectuals, and aristocrats should be kept far from power.

KIMBERLY STRASSEL: Reporters only want to talk about Russia, instead of what Team Trump is getting done.

Here’s what actually happened this week, the “news” that holds real consequences for real Americans:

• Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed an order to begin reopening Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve to oil and gas exploration, reversing the Obama administration’s ideologically driven 2013 shutdown. The order even aims at opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to production—a move that is decades overdue. This could not only buck up the listless Alaskan economy but cement the U.S. as an oil and gas powerhouse.

• In related news, the Dakota Access Pipeline finally went live.

• The Fish and Wildlife Service took steps that may stop the Obama administration’s last-minute endangered-species listing for the Texas Hornshell, a freshwater mussel. That listing, based on outdated science, threatens significant harm to the Texas economy and was done over the protest of state officials and local industry.

• Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross surprisingly said that he was open to completing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, a far-reaching trade agreement being negotiated with the European Union.

• Sen. John Thune, the upper chamber’s third-ranking Republican, said his caucus had moved beyond meetings and on to “drafting” the base language of an ObamaCare replacement. The No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn, vowed the Senate would “absolutely” have a bill by “the end of July at the latest.”

To be fair, since Strassel filed her column, reporters also want to talk about how Trump just doomed the planet to having weather.

JIM CARREY: Cowardly comedian.

WELL, GOOD: Google plans to clean up the web with Chrome ad blocker next year.

The warning is meant to let websites assess their ads and strip any particularly disruptive ones from their pages. That’s because Chrome’s ad blocker won’t block all ads from the web. Instead, it’ll only block ads on pages that are determined to have too many annoying or intrusive advertisements, like videos that autoplay with sound or interstitials that take up the entire screen.

Sridhar Ramaswamy, the executive in charge of Google’s ads, writes in a blog post that even ads “owned or served by Google” will be blocked on pages that don’t meet Chrome’s guidelines.

Instead of an ad “blocker,” Google is referring to the feature as an ad “filter,” according to The Wall Street Journal, since it will still allow ads to be displayed on pages that meet the right requirements. The blocker will work on both desktop and mobile.

The next big step will be building in an easy-to-use, customizable javascript blocker.

FASTER, PLEASE: Paris: Trump Blocks First of Obama’s “Three Authoritarianisms,” Roger Simon writes.

DRAINING THE SWAMP: VA Official Who Allowed Unsterile Instruments Lands ‘High-Ranking’ Job.

HMM: UK PM May’s lead over Labour shrinks to 5 points.