WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Solar-Powered California Warned to Unplug for August Eclipse.

State energy officials are warning residents to click off all lights they don’t need and unplug all electrical appliances when 62 percent of the sun disappears over Los Angeles during a partial solar eclipse that is expected that day.

Nobody is warning of blackouts. But then again, nobody knows what will happen.

“When the sun goes away, so does the energy that powers our renewable solar panels. If millions of Californians turn off appliances and power strips to unplug from the grid during the eclipse, we can let our hard-working sun take a break,” said Michael Picker, president of the California Public Utilities Commission.

Pre-modern societies trembled at unforeseeable eclipses, and in postmodern California it’s pretty much the same story.

THIS IS CNN: We asked strangers to pronounce covfefe.

SORE LOSER: Hillary Clinton Unloads on What Led to Her Election Defeat.

Speaking at Recode’s 2017 Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Clinton gave an unfiltered assessment of the 2016 campaign that ended with her unexpected loss to Donald Trump.

“I take responsibility for every decision I made, but that’s not why I lost,” she said. “I think it’s important we learn the real lessons of this last campaign.”

She lost, she told Recode’s Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, because of unfair media coverage, an “unprecedented” campaign waged against her by a foreign adversary, James Comey’s decision to re-open her email probe, criticism of her candidacy that she claimed bordered on misogyny, and a prevailing sentiment that she would be victorious, which hampered voter turnout.

If I’m reading this correctly, Clinton’s judgement was sound, but women-hating Russians at the FBI forced her to set up an unsecured email server and prevented her from campaigning in Wisconsin.

UPGRADES: Pratt & Whitney pitches souped up version of the F-35 engine.

“It’s very attractive to the JSF [joint strike fighter] program for several reasons,” Bromberg told journalists during a media day in West Palm Beach, Florida. “It’s very common, so we could drop this upgrade into any one of the three variants. It would be compliant with the partner requirements and go to foreign partner countries. It would be cost neutral, so the upgraded JSF motor with Growth Option 1.0 would be the same price as the existing motor.”

Pratt & Whitney recently completed performance tests of an early version of the system, called the fuel burn reduction demonstrator engine, which proved that the upgrade could improve thrust by up to 10 percent and reduce fuel consumption by up to 6 percent, he said.

American aerospace firms have a history of producing world-beating jet fighters — after the first engine upgrade.

OUI? NON? PEUT ÊTRE? Trump on Paris Climate Fate: ‘You’re Going to Find Out Very Soon’

THE OBAMA LEGACY: Russia escalates spy games after years of U.S. neglect.

In the throes of the 2016 campaign, the FBI found itself with an escalating problem: Russian diplomats, whose travel was supposed to be tracked by the State Department, were going missing.

The diplomats, widely assumed to be intelligence operatives, would eventually turn up in odd places, often in middle-of-nowhere USA. One was found on a beach, nowhere near where he was supposed to be. In one particularly bizarre case, relayed by a U.S. intelligence official, another turned up wandering around in the middle of the desert. Interestingly, both seemed to be lingering where underground fiber optics cables tend to run.

According to another U.S. intelligence official, “They find these guys driving around in circles in Kansas. It’s a pretty aggressive effort.”

It’s a trend that has led intelligence officials to conclude the Kremlin is waging a quiet effort to map the United States’ telecommunications infrastructure, perhaps preparing for an opportunity to disrupt it.

“Half the time they’re never confronted,” the official, who declined to be identified discussing intelligence matters, said of the incidents. “We assume they’re mapping our infrastructure.”

Obama thought he’d be the one to have more flexibility after his reelection, but the Kremlin knew better.

PAY-TO-PLAY: Business license required for teens to cut grass in Gardendale, Alabama.

Teenagers have been threatened by officials and other lawn services to show their city issued license before cutting a person’s lawn for extra summer cash.

Cutting grass is often one of the first jobs many have in the summer. But a business license in Gardendale costs $110. And for a job, just for a couple of months, that can be a bit extreme.

“I have never heard of a child cutting grass had to have a business license,” said Elton Campbell.
Campbell’s granddaughter cuts grass around the neighborhood.

“She charges one lady $20, and another lady $30, and another girl $40 besides what we pay her,” said Campbell.

For her, this was the perfect summer gig!

“Just helping out and raising money for admissions and trips,” said Alainna Parris.

But now, it’s becoming a hassle.

“One of the men that cuts several yards made a remark to one of our neighbors, ‘that if he saw her cutting grass again that he was going to call Gardendale because she didn’t have a business license,” said Campbell.

Tar, feathers.

(Hat tip, Michelle Rey.)

GOOD MORNING: Try Liz Sheld’s morning brief with your coffee.

BILKED: Taxpayers may have overpaid by more than $1 billion for Mylan’s EpiPen, senator reveals.

That amount is nearly three times the $465 million that EpiPen’s owner, the big drugmaker Mylan, last October said it agreed to pay the federal government to settle claims that it overcharged the government-run Medicaid system for the devices.

“The fact that the EpiPen overpayment is so much more than anyone discussed publicly should worry every taxpayer,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Grassley said he learned of the large disparity between Mylan’s settlement amount and the potential overpayment by taxpayers from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General after asking officials for an accounting of EpiPen overcharges.

Mylan for years classified EpiPen as a generic drug for the purposes of Medicaid’s drug rebate program, and as a result paid a lower rebate rate to Medicaid than did sellers of brand-name drugs. Officials have said that EpiPen, which is used to counteract a potentially fatal allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis, should have been treated as a brand-name product for Medicaid’s rebate program.

Medicaid is the joint federal-state program that provides health-care coverage to primarily low-income Americans.

Why are Democrat-run corporations such cesspits of greed and exploitation?

I’M NOT SURE HOW WISE THIS IS: GOP Launches Major Offensive Against Elizabeth Warren to Take Her Out Before 2020.

It might be smarter to concentrate on a young up-and-comer or two, assuming the Democrats have any left.

SO IT’S COME TO THIS: Portland GOP Chair Says They’re Considering Using a ‘Security Force’ to Protect Free Speech.

STUDY: Drinking tequila can lead to weight loss.

The science is settled.

USEFUL IDIOTS: Are Democrats and the Establishment Media Doing Russia’s Job by Creating Chaos?

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Rhode Island lawmakers will review a bill that would remove taxes on beer and malt beverages.

Rhode Islanders might want to contact their local Assemblycritter with their support on this one.

CINDER: The $459 replacement for your $20 cast iron skillet.

IF IT SPEAKS, TAX IT: Illinois Seeks 20 Percent ‘Privilege Tax’ on Financial Advice.

The Illinois General Assembly is dominated by Democrats who are about to get major earfuls from some of their major donors.

LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS: New York Times Kills ‘Public Editor’ Slot, Offers More Buyouts To Reduce Edit Ranks.

HEATHER MAC DONALD: The Left’s Unilateral Suicide Pact.

Since liberals and progressives will not allow a rethinking of open borders policy, perhaps they would support improved intelligence capacity so as to detect terror attacks in the planning stages? Nope. The Left still decries the modest expansions of surveillance power under the 2001 Patriot Act as the work of totalitarianism. Former New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly sought to gather publicly available information about dense Muslim neighborhoods in New York in order to monitor potential radicalization; his discontinued initiative is still denounced as anti-Muslim oppression. Internet companies protect encrypted communications from government access, to the applause of civil libertarians and the mainstream media. The National Security Agency’s mass data analysis, done by unconscious computer algorithms, is still being challenged in court.

What about using ordinary police powers to try to hinder terrorism? Islamic terrorists in Europe have moonlighted as crooks, engaging in drug dealing, robberies, vandalism, and theft. The U.S. should have zero tolerance for any criminal activity committed by aliens: break the criminal law and you’re out of here. Deporting alien criminals is both an anti-crime and an anti-terrorism strategy. Yet mayors and police chiefs in sanctuary jurisdictions across the country continue to release alien criminals back into the community from jail in defiance of requests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold the criminals briefly for removal proceedings. The New York Police Department defied every ICE detainer request it received in the first four months of 2017, instead releasing 179 alien criminals back into the streets, according to the New York Post.

So what does the progressive and liberal bloc offer? Treacly bromides, combined with fatalism about the necessity of adjusting to future attacks.

Read the whole thing.

HIGH CRIMES AND WHATEVERS: A majority of those who want Trump impeached agree there is no concrete reason to impeach him.

RETAIL BLUES: Michael Kors plans to shutter 100 to 125 stores.

Michael Kors said Wednesday it will close 100 to 125 full-price stores over the next two years. The company had 827 retail locations as of April 1.

The closures are intended to improve profitability, Michael Kors said. The retailer anticipates ongoing annual savings of $60 million as a result of this plan but will record a $125 million charge.

Michael Kors, among many of its peers in the retail space, has been hurt by lagging sales and dwindling foot traffic as more shoppers choose to ring up purchases online. Further, the retailer has had a difficult time marketing its products at full price.

That’s a sure sign that a designer has lost his cachet.

SKYNET SMILES: Robots Wielding Water Knives Are the Future of Farming.

YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW: Here’s What Federal Regulations Cost Your Family This Year.

JOHN STOSSEL: Noam Chomsky’s Venezuela Lesson.

Chomsky, whose anti-capitalist teachings have inspired millions of American college students, praised Chavez’s “sharp poverty reduction, probably the greatest in the Americas.” Chavez returned the compliment by holding up Chomsky’s book during a speech at the U.N., making it a best-seller.

Is Chomsky embarrassed by that today? “No,” he wrote me. He praised Chavez “in 2006. Here’s the situation as of two years later.” He linked to a 2008 article by a writer of Oliver Stone’s movie who said, “Venezuela has seen a remarkable reduction in poverty.”

I asked him, “Should you now say to the students who’ve learned from you, ‘Socialism, in practice, often wrecks people’s lives’?”

Chomsky replied, “I never described Chavez’s state capitalist government as ‘socialist’ or even hinted at such an absurdity. It was quite remote from socialism. Private capitalism remained … Capitalists were free to undermine the economy in all sorts of ways, like massive export of capital.”

It’s always wreckers and hoarders, and never the collectivists.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Media Mock Carolla, Prager for ‘No Safe Spaces’ Doc.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: Forget the Paris Accords.

The defenders of the Paris Accords are as dogmatic on the science as they are on the economics. To them, it is an axiomatic truth that carbon dioxide emissions pose a grave threat to the environment, even though the putative causal chain is filled with missing links. The current practice is to assume that every adverse climate event is somehow the result of the rather smallish increases in carbon dioxide levels over the past 65 years. In order to reach that result, however, it is necessary to exclude other explanations for the adverse events. An observed rise in sea level in Florida, for example, is more likely attributable to the draining of local aquifers than to increases in global temperature. Indeed, sea level rises have, if anything, slowed down in recent years, notwithstanding increases in carbon dioxide levels. In a similar vein, the rapid melting of ice on the western part of the Antarctic is more likely attributable to underground volcanic activity, particularly given that the overall ice levels in the Antarctic are up and not down. And highly variable adverse events are probably more closely associated with changes in water vapor patterns, the recent El Niño, active sunspots, aerosol levels, and a host of other factors, some of which are well known and others of which are only dimly understood.

The situation is even more complex if one looks to the long run. Climate variability has been a constant long before human beings inhabited this earth. Of course, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that can trap energy. But so is water vapor, and its levels are far harder to track because its amount and distribution are not constant across the earth’s surface. Most crucially, observed cyclical patterns of temperature change do not correlate with slow but steady increases in carbon dioxide. Recent work by climate scientists Richard Lindzen and others shows that during the so-called Holocene period (roughly covering the last 11,000 years), there was a negative correlation between temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations—strongly suggesting that carbon dioxide levels cannot be the main driver of temperature changes. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that recent climate models that have predicted sharp temperature increases have consistently run “hot,” so much so that observed increases are less than 50 percent of those predicted. As climate scientist Judith Curry points out, the uncertainties involved are large and the role of natural forces in driving temperature change are systematically underestimated.

The Paris Accord is statism masquerading as religion gussied up as science.