Aug 20
Thune ‘n’ Boone
By Denise Ross
It was part school lesson, part persuasion speech at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center Wednesday afternoon when Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens promoted his plan to save America from itself.
(Photos by David Larson)
T. Boone spent a good portion of his half-hour presentation at the dry-erase board writing down numbers to explain where our energy comes from and where our money goes. He even made a pie chart. More on that later.
If you haven’t heard or seen the commercials, this energy guru and billionaire is promoting a plan to convert America to a lot more of its domestic energy. (Click on link above.) He’s pressuring politicians, John McCain and Barack Obama chief among them, to sign on to his plan or come up with one of their own.
To that end, Sen. John Thune, R-SD, accompanied Pickens on Wednesday. As a member of the US Senate’s Gang of 10, Thune can legitimately claim that he has his own energy plan. (Unlike Pickens, the Gang still lacks its own website. I can see who will win the PR battle.)
Thune introduced Pickens, who at 80 still pines for his college basketball days and wondered aloud Wednesday how different that career might have been had he been blessed with Thune’s height.
Pickens met with McCain on Friday morning and Obama on Sunday morning, each for more than an hour, he told the standing room only Rapid City crowd. McCain told him he had succeded in making energy independence the No. 1 issue in the presidential campaign.
Pickens said he told Obama that his stump speech promise of converting 1 million cars off of gasoline is a drop in the bucket given America’s 200 million-plus cars on the road. Pickens wants to convert the nation’s truck fleet from diesel to natural gas. (More on that later.)
Since he launched his campaign on July 8, Pickens has been packing in crowds in middle America towns like Rapid City. Here was the seen in the civic center’s Rushmore Room shortly after 2 pm. Below, see the crowd that had assembled about 15 minutes before the 3 pm presentation.
Just before Pickens and Thune entered the room, they anounced they’d be bringing in extra chairs.
More posts on this topic coming soon.
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The Thune-Pickens connection suggests that Pickens plan may have more to do with making the current administration look less dreadful without his having to fund the swiftboaters immediately.
I was at first impressed with Pickens in that he seemed to be saying what our congress critters should have known since before the Iraq War.
It now appears with his political or partisan affiliation(s) that Pickens may be a tempest in a teapot dome.