Great minds think alike. Per Pollowitz’s post below on Obama’s “Mission Accomplished” Detroit trip, this illustration ran with our lead article covering the president’s visit Friday morning on The Michigan View.com:

Complete coverage here.

Mail Online:

The Prince of Wales says he believes he has been placed on Earth as future King ‘for a purpose’ — to save the world.

Giving a fascinating insight into his view of his inherited wealth and influence, he said: ‘I can only somehow imagine that I find myself being born into this position for a purpose.

‘I don’t want my grandchildren or yours to come along and say to me, “Why the hell didn’t you come and do something about this? You knew what the problem was”. That is what motivates me.

‘I wanted to express something in the outer world that I feel inside… We seem to have lost that understanding of the whole of nature and the universe as a living entity.’

Prince Charles will save the earth, huh? Who does he think he is? Barack Obama?

And the world just got a little cooler for the former Veep:

After reopening a case against former Vice President Al Gore accusing him of sexually harassing a masseuse almost exactly one month ago, Portland, Oregon police officials have announced that they are ending the investigation against Gore due to lack of evidence on the part of the accuser, Molly Hagerty, who made national news when she accused Gore of assault in the National Enquirer.

According to CNN, the town’s district attorney announced yesterday that Hagerty’s statements were not evidence enough to keep the case open, as there was evidence Hagerty had engaged in friendly contact with Gore despite her claims of harassment and that she refused to provide medical records, as well as failing a polygraph and being known to have been paid by the National Enquirer for her story. Given the flimsy evidence, Gore has been cleared:

Detroit — President Obama touts his Detroit visit to tour the new, plug-in electric Chevy Volt as our “clean energy future.” Yet, a glimpse at the president’s travel schedule Friday makes it hard to swallow this green pablum. Here’s the White House “Daily Guidance and Press Schedule” for July 30, 2010 (My comments in italic):

9:30AM: THE PRESIDENT departs the White House en route Andrews Air Force Base. South Lawn.

(This via a large military chopper to Andrews just south of the D.C. beltway. About 15 minutes burning 1320 gallons of fuel, or about 6,270 pounds of carbon.)

9:45AM: THE PRESIDENT departs Andrews Air Force Base en route to Detroit, Michigan

(This via Air Force One, a Boeing 747. Fuel consumption: A gallon of jet fuel a minute. For an 80-minute flight to Detroit, that is 110,400 pounds of carbon burned. Or 220,800 for the round trip)

11:05AM: THE PRESIDENT arrives in Detroit, Michigan — Detroit Metro Wayne County Airport

(Where he climbs aboard “Cadillac One,” the biggest prez limo ever. Armored. Maybe 10 mpg. Or an armored SUV. Or he might take another chopper. Not specified. Not green either.)

11:50AM : THE PRESIDENT tours the Chrysler Auto Plant — Detroit, Michigan

(Where Chrysler makes its pride and joy, the new 2011 Chrysler Grand Cherokee. The gas-guzzling SUV America loves. The car responsible for 1,100 new UAW jobs to satisfy demand. Fuel mileage:19 mpg for the 4WD version.)

12:55PM: THE PRESIDENT tours the General Motors Auto Plant — Hamtramck, Michigan

(Finally, a clean-burning car! The electric Volt. Just plug it into Michigan’s coal-fired utility grid. Oops.)

3:10PM: THE PRESIDENT departs Detroit, Michigan en route Andrews Air Force Base

4:25PM:  THE PRESIDENT arrives at Andrews Air Force Base

4:40PM:  THE PRESIDENT arrives at the White House — South Lawn

(More planes, choppers & SUVs. Just your typical, six-figure carbon footprint commute to herald the new green economy).

Edward Niedermeyer, editor of the Web site The Truth About Cars, writes in today’s New York Times:

GENERAL MOTORS introduced America to the Chevrolet Volt at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show as a low-slung concept car that would someday be the future of motorized transportation. It would go 40 miles on battery power alone, promised G.M., after which it would create its own electricity with a gas engine. Three and a half years — and one government-assisted bankruptcy later –  G.M. is bringing a Volt to market that makes good on those two promises. The problem is, well, everything else.

For starters, G.M.’s vision turned into a car that costs $41,000 before relevant tax breaks … but after billions of dollars of government loans and grants for the Volt’s development and production. And instead of the sleek coupe of 2007, it looks suspiciously similar to a Toyota Prius. It also requires premium gasoline, seats only four people (the battery runs down the center of the car, preventing a rear bench) and has less head and leg room than the $17,000 Chevrolet Cruze, which is more or less the non-electric version of the Volt.

In short, the Volt appears to be exactly the kind of green-at-all-costs car that some opponents of the bailout feared the government might order G.M. to build. Unfortunately for this theory, G.M. was already committed to the Volt when it entered bankruptcy. And though President Obama’s task force reported in 2009 that the Volt “will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short term,” it didn’t cancel the project.

The rest here.

AP:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is going to the heart of the U.S. auto industry to push an important election-year claim: his administration’s unpopular auto industry bailout has turned into an economic good-news story.

With Americans facing a still-limping economy and potentially pivotal congressional elections in three months, the White House sees progress in the auto industry as a concrete area of improvement — and one with direct ties to the president’s own actions.

To highlight that progress, which presidential aides believe has received too little attention, Obama will stop at three auto plants over the next several days, visiting General Motors and Chrysler factories in Michigan on Friday and a Ford facility in Chicago next Wednesday. Hoping to ratchet up public notice further, the White House also had the administration’s top auto officials brief reporters Thursday.

Maybe he can borrow Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner for the trip?

Planet Gore readers well know that Europe’s “green economy” — and the subsidies underpinning this latest version of central planning — have all collapsed under their own weight (after compounding Europe’s economic crisis). Nonetheless, Barack Obama presses ever harder to impose the same calamity here.

A reminder came in today’s lead “Climate Wire” story, the abstract of which reads:

1. NATIONS: Europe slashes low-carbon energy subsidies as budgets shrink LONDON — What appears to be a bonfire of low-carbon energy subsidies has been lit in Europe as cash-strapped countries grapple with their empty coffers and start to cut back on what many see as over-generous support for industries from wind to solar that has created a green energy bubble. Spain, Germany, France, Italy and the Czech Republic have all announced subsidy cuts, and there are fears that the United Kingdom, making budget cuts across the board as it desperately seeks to reduce a deficit of over 160 billion pounds, will be tempted to go even further.

(A deficit of 160 billion pounds? How quaint.) A little further down, we see:

8. AUTOS: U.K. government cuts electric car subsidies by 80%

As our British friends evidence an acute case of buyer’s remorse on going green, what is our Congress preparing to do? Pass an “energy” bill throwing more taxpayer money at electric car interests, once again running the other way.

So, what ever happened to the tiresome idea of “look at what’s happening in Europe”?

Foreign Policy has a symposium of five experts who weigh in, while Stephen Stromberg in today’s Washington Post blames the Senate and President Obama.

David Hughes writes in the Telegraph: The Senate’s hounding of BP is nauseating

An excerpt:

It is against this rather encouraging background that we should view the shameless political show-boating of the US Senate in trying to haul BP’s departing chief executive Tony Hayward to Washington (along with former Justice Secretary Jack Straw and Scotland’s Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill) to interrogate them on whether BP lobbied for the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdulbaset al-Megrahi. Wisely, all three have told the Senate to take a running jump. There is something nauseating about this continued hounding of BP by American law-makers. They live in the most oil-dependent country on the planet yet seem obsessed with kicking the companies that have to do the dirty work of getting the black stuff into their gas-guzzlers.

Well, don’t let terrorists who kill Americans skip out of jail and our Senators won’t be so angry.

This has to pain the folks at Time:

President Obama has called the BP oil spill “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced,” and so has just about everyone else. Green groups are sounding alarms about the “Catastrophe Along the Gulf Coast,” while CBS, Fox and MSNBC slap “Disaster in the Gulf” chryons on all their spill-related news. Even BP fall guy Tony Hayward, after some early happy talk, admitted the spill was an “environmental catastrophe.” The obnoxious anti-environmentalist Rush Limbaugh has been a rare voice arguing that the spill — he calls it “the leak” — is anything less than an ecological calamity, scoffing at the avalanche of end-is-nigh eco-hype.

Well, Rush has a point. The Deepwater explosion was an awful tragedy for the 11 workers who died on the rig, and it’s no leak; it’s the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. It’s also inflicting serious economic and psychological damage on coastal communities that depend on tourism, fishing and drilling. But so far — while it’s important to acknowledge that the long-term potential danger is simply unknowable for an underwater event that took place just three months ago — it does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage. “The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared,” says geochemist Jacqueline Michel, a federal contractor who is coordinating shoreline assessments in Louisiana. (See pictures of the Gulf oil spill.)

Yes, the spill killed birds — but so far, less than 1% of the birds killed by the Exxon Valdez. Yes, we’ve heard horror stories about oiled dolphins — but, so far, wildlife response teams have collected only three visibly oiled carcasses of any mammals. Yes, the spill prompted harsh restrictions on fishing and shrimping, but so far, the region’s fish and shrimp have tested clean, and the restrictions are gradually being lifted. And, yes, scientists have warned that the oil could accelerate the destruction of Louisiana’s disintegrating coastal marshes — a real slow-motion ecological calamity — but, so far, shorelines assessment teams have only found about 350 acres of oiled marshes, when Louisiana was already losing about 15,000 acres of wetlands every year.