Obama Celebrates Earth Day by Flying Across the Country

He's been on a fundraising blitz out west, racking up massive mileage and leaving the folks in Los Angeles idling in traffic. Today he flies across the country on your dime, but not before lecturing us.

President Obama said Friday that the United States can lead the world in tackling of climate change by investing in clean energy technology.

“The United States can be a leader in reducing the dangerous pollution that causes global warming and can propel these advances by investing in the clean energy technologies, markets, and practices that will empower us to win the future,” Obama, noting that climate change is a “major global environmental challenge,” said in an Earth Day proclamation.

Obama said addressing climate change “requires international leadership,” but he also stressed that greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced with action at the local level.

“Every American deserves the cleanest air, the safest water, and unpolluted land, and each person can take steps to protect those precious resources,” Obama said. “When we reduce environmental hazards, especially in our most overburdened and polluted cities and neighborhoods, we prioritize the health of our families, and move towards building the clean energy economy of the 21st century.”

Maybe instead of polluting the air jetting around to pick up money he should go via the choo-choo trains he loves so much.

Earth Day Founder Celebrates His Creation From Prison

Look at the bright side. He composted his dead girlfriend in an environmentally friendly fashion.

Ira Einhorn was on stage hosting the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. Seven years later, police raided his closet and found the "composted" body of his ex-girlfriend inside a trunk.

A self-proclaimed environmental activist, Einhorn made a name for himself among ecological groups during the 1960s and '70s by taking on the role of a tie-dye-wearing ecological guru and Philadelphia’s head hippie. With his long beard and gap-toothed smile, Einhorn — who nicknamed himself "Unicorn" because his German-Jewish last name translates to "one horn" —advocated flower power, peace and free love to his fellow students at the University of Pennsylvania. He also claimed to have helped found Earth Day.

But the charismatic spokesman who helped bring awareness to environmental issues and preached against the Vietnam War — and any violence — had a secret dark side. When his girlfriend of five years, Helen "Holly" Maddux, moved to New York and broke up with him, Einhorn threatened that he would throw her left-behind personal belongings onto the street if she didn't come back to pick them up.

And so on Sept. 9, 1977, Maddux went back to the apartment that she and Einhorn had shared in Philadelphia to collect her things, and was never seen again. When Philadelphia police questioned Einhorn about her mysterious disappearance several weeks later, he claimed that she had gone out to the neighborhood co-op to buy some tofu and sprouts and never returned.

It wasn't until 18 months later that investigators searched Einhorn's apartment after one of his neighbors complained that a reddish-brown, foul-smelling liquid was leaking from the ceiling directly below Einhorn's bedroom closet. Inside the closet, police found Maddux's beaten and partially mummified body stuffed into a trunk that had also been packed with Styrofoam, air fresheners and newspapers.

After his arrest, Einhorn jumped bail and spent decades evading authorities by hiding out in Ireland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and France. After 23 years, he was finally extradited to the United States from France and put on trial. Taking the stand in his own defense, Einhorn claimed that his ex-girlfriend had been killed by CIA agents who framed him for the crime because he knew too much about the agency's paranormal military research. He was convicted of murdering Maddux and is currently serving a life sentence.

Although Einhorn was only the master of ceremonies at the first Earth Day event, he maintains that Earth Day was his idea and that he's responsible for launching it. Understandably, Earth Day's organizers have distanced themselves from his name, citing Gaylord Nelson, an environmental activist and former Wisconsin governor and U.S. senator who died in 2005, as Earth Day's official founder and organizer.

Finally: Eco-Friendly Toys for Earth Day

Want to get a head start on indoctrinating your little skull full of mush? What better way than by having Junior learn to recreate the water cycle?

Part of The Young Scientists Club Magic School Bus Series, Going Green is an award-winning kit including components, plus exciting experiments and activities designed to teach kids about living green. Accompanied by the famous Ms. Frizzle, early learners discover how to recreate the water cycle, build a compost tube, shrink plastic, magically make packing peanuts disappear, decompose food with fungus, form pulp to create new paper, design recycled paper shapes, learn about the 3 R’s and more.

Ah, what fond memories I have of decomposing food with fungus back when I was a wee lad.

Tim Blair snarks:

One of those “3 R’s” ends in “etarded”. It’s a word you’ll learn when you take your handmade compost tube to school.

George Carlin Celebrates Earth Day

Heard Mark Levin playing this earlier. The late, great George Carlin rips the environmental wackos to shreds. Language warning, of course.

Enjoy.

President of Earth Celebrates Earth Day, Calls On Ted Kennedy to Stop Obstructing Nantucket Sound Wind Farms

President Obama today will set about exploiting Earth Day to shove more massive amounts of economy-crushing legislation down out throats.

President Bill Clinton marked Earth Day in 1994 by promising to "green" the White House from its landscaping to its copy machines. But President Barack Obama and his supporters pledged themselves to a far more ambitious goal on Tuesday—combating climate change all over the world.

On Capitol Hill, where Democrats command majorities in both houses of Congress, House Democrats began three full days of hearings on a massive energy and climate-change bill, inviting testimony from three Cabinet secretaries and more than a dozen captains of industry, labor and the environmental movement.

Obama, meantime, prepared to visit a wind turbine manufacturer in Iowa this week to champion his push to cap greenhouse gas emissions and boost renewable alternatives to fossil fuels.

Also, in a bold political masterstroke, Obama will also demand Saint Edward of Hyannis and his political cronies in Massachusetts to stop obstructing the Cape Wind Project.

"I realized after 78 Massachusetts lawmakers signed a petition and delivered it to my Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that those obstructing progress in the state of Massachusetts are my political benefactors," Obama said.

"As I've said before, the days of political cronyism are over and today I call on Senators Kennedy and Kerry to stop blocking progress and enter the 21st century. They are costing Massachusetts taxpayers millions with their own selfish interests and this has to stop."

Obama was immediately given a Profiles in Courage Award from the Kennedy Center for his brave stand against the Kennedys.

Honoring Earth Day

Come to think of it, this also pays homage to portly cult leader al-Gore and his devoted band of merry psychophants from the Religion of Environmentalism™.

High Comedy in Canada: Earth Day Festivities Forced Indoors Due to Blizzard

You'd think at some point these idiots would be embarrassed at how stupid they look.

Then again, they worship at the altar of the idiot in the photo seen snickering at their gullibility.

So much for global warming. Earth Day festivities went ahead despite the blast of frigid weather yesterday.

Vendors and presenters from various eco-friendly groups, including Bullfrog Power, CO2 Reduction Edmonton and the local solar energy society, crammed into a lone tent in Hawrelak Park after a blizzard forced them to abandon their original locations.

Organizers crammed over 40 groups in a space that would normally be occupied by half that number. Presenters' booths were initially planned to have been spread out between at least five tents, with far larger displays.

"We're normally here with a lineup of cyclists for our free bike repair service. No bikers came today. Big surprise," said Chris Field of Mountain Equipment Co-Op.

A handful of visitors still took the time to inquire about several solar-powered products on display at the M.E.C. booth and browsed several others before running off toward the lone heater in the tent to warm up.

Heh. The comedy doesn't end there.

"This isn't about celebrating just the parts of the Earth that we like, it's about celebrating all of it."

That's right, kid, keep your chin up. Another left hook is sure to follow.

Eco-Air representative Eric Gormley couldn't convince local kids lobbying city council for an anti-idling bylaw to brave the cold yesterday, but happily stepped up on their behalf, offering stickers and information about greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

"We're here to raise awareness of the problem, even though on a day like today you don't necessarily think of global warming," he said.

Just what we're aching for, more awareness of a problem that doesn't exist.

Lorne Gunter in the National Post has a few laughs.

I'll confess, I feel genuinely sorry for the organizers and exhibitors. A great deal of planning and investment goes into an event of this size. There is no way to recoup either the time or the money. (I don't care what that organic-food salesman told you, those chickpea patties will not keep in your freezer until next year to demonstrate at your low-carbon barbecue booth.)

You would think participants might actually be happy, though, that Earth Day was called on account of snow and not sweltering temperatures. At least now they can claim victory. They've broken the back of global warming so decisively that Edmonton is now 25 degrees below normal for this time of year. Their dire warnings during the last 10 Earth Days have been heeded and the planet pulled back from the edge of the precipice. Whew!

But I doubt there will be any celebrations. Indeed, one of the reasons "global warming" morphed into "climate change," beginning a couple of years ago, was so any weather extreme could be interpreted as an omen of impending doom.

Despite the claims of the likes of Al Gore and David Suzuki, the planet has not warned appreciably since 1998, itself the warmest or second-warmest year on record. Eight of the last 10 years have not been the hottest in history.

Indeed, if you use 1998 as the base year, the Earth has cooled in the last decade. Even if you use 2002 as Year Zero, there has been no discernable warming. We have entered a "temperature plateau" so far this decade. Even Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, grudgingly had to admit as much a couple of months ago.

We've reached a consensus: There is no global warming.

Update: The morons at the NY Times lament the fact the nonstop propaganda onslaught hasn't accomplished anything other than making people look stupid.

Global Obscenity

DESECRATION OF IWO JIMA: FOR TIME BY ARTHUR HOCHSTEIN, INCLUDING AN IWO JIMA PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE ROSENTHAL-AP

The 6,800 US service personnel (mostly Marines) killed during the Battle of Iwo Jima most certainly appreciate this sick rendition of their valiant efforts.