QUESTION ASKED: Is Feminism to Blame for Obesity Epidemic?

FLASHBACK: Weaponized Science.

WE MAY NEVER KNOW: Family of Ohio State Terror Jihadist ‘Mystified’ Over What Drove Him to Attack.

HEH: ISIS Condemns Kathy Griffin For Cultural Appropriation.

BRIDGET JOHNSON: 3 States Launch Climate Alliance to Abide by Terms of Paris Accord.

TWITCHY: ‘So MUCH butthurt!’ Spicer parody’s climate change tweet causes most hilarious Lefty meltdown YET.

VIRGINIA GOVERNOR TERRY MCAULIFFE: Trump Withdrawing from Paris Accord ‘One of the Dumbest Decisions I’ve Ever Heard’. “I think the motive is he’s trying to protect the oil barons in this country.”

McAuliffe should really update his objects of Two Minutes Hate for the 21st Century.

HMM: Poland finds other body parts in coffin of president killed in 2010 crash.

The April 2010 crash near the western Russian city of Smolensk – the worst such disaster for Poland since World War Two – has left Polish society deeply divided over the cause despite the previous, centrist government’s conclusion from its own investigation that pilot error was at fault.

Poland’s current government under the Law and Justice (PiS) party, led by Lech Kaczynski’s twin brother Jaroslaw, took direct control of the prosecutors office and moved to re-examine the Smolensk crash after coming to power in late 2015, saying the previous investigation was not conducted properly.

Deputy Prosecutor General Marek Pasionek told reporters that in 12 of 24 coffins reopened since last year, bodies had been swapped in two, one contained half the body of another person while nine other caskets held scattered remains of other victims.

He said the coffin of Archbishop Miron Chodakowski contained only the upper half of his body while the lower half belonged to late General Tadeusz Ploski.

In the coffin of General Bronislaw Kwiatkowski there were 14 body parts belonging to seven other people, Pasionek said, adding that post-mortems would be finished by April next year.

In Moscow, the Kremlin and Russia’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to calls and emails asking for comment.

“Today we know that there was no diligence in (the post mortems conducted in Russia). There was nonchalance in the best case, and ill-will in the worst case,” Magdalena Merta, the widow of Tomasz Merta, a senior culture ministry official who died in the crash, told the Polish state agency PAP.

Developing…

THIS IS CNN: CNN Panel Explodes When Anthony Weiner Is Simply Mentioned.

Maybe there’s a good reason — other than well-deserved disgust — that the Left doesn’t want to talk about Weiner.

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

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.

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.

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

I hope the movie is better than the reviews.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

LOS ANGELES TIMES EXPLAINER: What would California’s proposed single-payer healthcare system mean for me?

The framing — in an ostensibly “straight” news explainer — is telling:

Whether you’re insured through an employer, through Covered California or on public programs such as Medi-Cal, as long as you’ve established California residency — regardless of legal immigration status — you would be enrolled in a single plan, which the bill’s backers call the “Healthy California” plan. That would eliminate the need for employer-provided plans and other commercial options.

Michael Lighty, policy director for the California Nurses Assn., put it bluntly: “You’ll never have to deal with an insurance company again.”

Benefits would be generous, including all inpatient and outpatient care, dental and vision care, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and prescription drugs. Patients would be able to see any healthcare provider of their choosing.

Older Californians on Medicare would also be wrapped into this plan. The plan envisions using all the existing federal dollars going toward Medicare and Medi-Cal beneficiaries in California in the state’s single-payer model.

But there’s a hitch: The federal government — a frequent punching bag for California Democrats at the moment — would need to grant a waiver to redirect that money.

“The question is: Will the Trump administration approve such a waiver?” Kominski said.

And:

“If you’re paying for health insurance right now through healthcare premiums and cost-sharing, you’d end up paying instead through taxes,” said Micah Weinberg, president of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. “There are some people who at the end of the day will end up paying more, others who will end up paying less.”

“Benefits would be generous.” “You’ll never have to deal with an insurance company again.” “There are some people who at the end of the day will end up paying more, others who will end up paying less.” There’s no real discussion of perverse incentives for illegal aliens and welfare cheats, the effect on the job market of a 15% payroll tax, or whether businesses could afford the proposed 2.3% tax on gross receipts.

So of course, the only real question is whether mean old President Trump would approve of such a wonderful program.

Californians are being thoroughly prepared to vote in single payer, and they just might do it.

RON RADOSH: The Fallout From Trump’s European Tour.

OREN CASS: The climate change agreement was designed as a feel-good, do-nothing program.

The giveaway for the Paris charade is the refusal to set baselines. If nations are to hold one another accountable for progress on greenhouse-gas emissions, surely they must agree on a starting point from which to progress. Yet the framework for Paris pointedly omitted this requirement. Countries could calculate their own baselines however they chose, or provide none at all. Now, per Chait, the pledges have themselves become baselines, and each country receives applause or condemnation in inverse proportion to its seriousness.

Even failing on one’s commitment is acceptable, so long as the right things get said. Carbon Market Watch reports that “despite all of the fanfare that went on at the time, it seems that there are currently only three European Union countries pursuing climate policies that put them in line with the agreements made at the Paris Climate Change Talks.” Angela Merkel said that she finds the G7’s discussion of climate change “very difficult,” but not because her nation’s emissions have risen the last two years. Her difficulty arises from those ugly Americans’ unwillingness to keep up appearances.

Later this week, we will be treated to the spectacle of “a statement backed by all 28 EU states, [in which] the European Union and China will commit to full implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement”—undoubtedly accompanied by lamentations that the United States has disrupted the charade by walking off stage. How the world misses President Obama’s enthusiasm for a debating society that delivers no substantive action, or even a useful framework for assessing results, only a forum for bashing America.

The Accord is working even better as a feel-good program, since Trump’s withdrawal has given its supporters even more reason for bashing America.