Things to do in Denver when you’re a Democrat? Or to do in South Dakota when you’re a political junkie?

Try to catch Tom Daschle’s speech, sometime today (Wednesday).

The official schedule gives us only a clue as to when that might take place. VP pick Sen. Joe Biden is, of course, the “headline prime-time speaker.” Former President Bill Clinton is first on the list of featured speakers.

And Daschle is listed third behind Biden and Clinton, which leads the Hoghouse to believe Daschle is likely to speak shortly before Clinton.

The theme of the day is “Securing America’s Future,” and I’ll predict that Daschle will focus on his ideas on how to fix the health care system. Any other guesses?

Meanwhile, with the VP frenzy over, talk of a future Obama cabinet is starting to bubble up on the Internets. As we’ve all heard before, Daschle gets slated as chief of staff, for example in this LA Times blog, which says this:

… which explained for us why there was very little VP buzz surrounding the South Dakotan — he’s holding out for a job with REAL clout.

And, the Hoghouse would note, REAL headaches and REAL long hours. I’m still not sold that is how he would want to spend his time, but maybe he’s ready for the grind again.

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South Dakota’s junior senator has held his own on the various media lists speculating about McCain’s pending VP pick.

But apparently he hasn’t fared as well within the McCain campaign, as he’s told the AP that he was not vetted.

Thune, an early McCain supporter who has been a mouthpiece for the campaign, said he has not given the campaign any personal documents used to vet prospective running mates.

AND …

“I would say I’m out of the running,” Thune said.

While Tom Daschle was on hardly anybody’s list but mine, it was reported last week in the frenzy around Obama’s VP pick (Joe Biden, as we all know now) that Daschle was one of a handful of potential VPs vetted by the Obama campaign.

Close but no cigar for both of South Dakota’s contenders.

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Not now, of course, but someday - maybe. So says Time in its current Hotshots: Democrats to Watch piece which names South Dakota’s lone congresswoman as one of five rising star Dems.

Though moderate in her politics and reserved in person, she can roar on the stump. Her fiery speeches have made her popular at party events across the West and led to speculation that she might one day run for President.

Time credits Stephanie Herseth Sandlin’s political heritage - a gov grandpa, secretary of state grandma and longtime state lawmaker dad - along with a bit of mentoring from Tom Daschle for her success so far.

SHS is joined on the list by Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania, Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Artur Davis of Alabama - all fellow House members - plus San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Of the 5, SHS is the only one mentioned as a future president.

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At 80, T. Boone Pickens is pushing the US to develop its domestic energy in various forms for one reason - the bottom line. The USA is now sending $700 billion out of our country every year, and if we don’t change our energy habits that number will only grow, he told a Rapid City crowd Wednesday.

                                  (Photos by David Larson)

Judging from his aptitude at the dry erase board, Pickens might have missed a calling as a classroom teacher.

Because of the end of cheap oil and, as he says in his TV commercials, “the largest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind,” the US cannot continue importing 70% or more of its oil and expect to remain a wealthy nation.

It’s not sustainable. If we don’t get it fixed, we won’t have to worry about health care or education or any of the rest of it. We won’t have enough money to take care of anything.

And we’re not just sending all that money out of our country, we’re sending it to a lot of countries that want to do us harm, he said. We are literally funding hostilities against ourselves.

We’re paying for both sides of the war. The reason it happened is because of cheap oil. We act like we’re producing all the oil we’re using.

A burgeoning supply of domestic natural gas is “a way to get ourselves out of a trap,” Pickens said. He also said that he is “suspicious” that oil prices spiked after the US had become thoroughly dependent on that form of energy.  

His plan really is sorta simple: Use the natural gas that’s now supplying 22 percent of the nation’s electricity needs, convert that to vehicle fuel and replace it on the electricity front with wind power.

Wind is a huge asset that’s been unharvested because of cheap oil.  … Natural gas is half the price of diesel and is 70% cleaner. It’s abundant, and it’s ours. It’s almost unbelievable that we haven’t used that resource.

For more details, visit the Pickens Plan website.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the numbers he used to underscore his point that our country needs to - and is able to - change now.

• Under his plan, we could keep $300 billion of that $700B in this country right away, creating jobs and boosting our economy.
• The world produces 85 million barrels of oil a day - what he called maximum capacity.
• The US consumes 21 million of those barrels, 25% of the world supply. We have 4% of the world’s population.
• Worldwide demand for oil next year is projected at 87 million barrels per day.
• The US produces 5 million barrels of oil a day and 2 million barrels of natural gas, which, Pickens said, “is as good as oil.”
• Biofuels production generates another 2 million barrels, which Pickens said he believes is maxed out. (I question that given the continued expansion and devlopment in that industry.)
• Because of our country’s meager oil production level, the US does not need more refineries, Pickens said. (He must not be pals with the Hyperion Texans.) Also, other countries are planning refineries that could handle much more capacity and would likely render any new US refinery moot.
• Pickens said he declined a recent request from the White House that he build a refinery because he believed he soon would not be able to get the oil needed to run it, and the White House declined to guarantee he could dip into the strategic reserve. (Next phone call to Mr. Huddleston?)
• Natural gas production in the US is poised to explode with the discovery of several underground reservoirs within the past decade across the southeastern US and due to improved technology that allows the extraction of natural gas from shale.
• Saudi Arabia and Russia each produce 9 million barrels of oil per day. “We are importing more than they’re exporting,” Pickens said, noting that friendships with a few key nations won’t guarantee an oil supply for the US.
• Around the globe, 8 million vehicles run on natural gas; 142,000 of those are in the US.
• General Motors produces 19 varieties of natural gas-powered vehicles - none in the US.
• The bus systems in Beijing and Los Angeles already run on natural gas, and the trucks that serve the Port of Los Angeles are now being converted to natural gas.
• Russia and Iran have plans to convert domestic vehicles to natural gas and continue selling their oil abroad.
• Pickens has invested $58 million of his own funds to promote his plan. He has no partners.

That’s plenty for now. I’ll be back soon with some thoughts and analysis on Pickens’ presentation.

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It wasn’t just John Thune on hand at the T. Boone Pickens presentation in Rapid City Wednesday afternoon. I recognized a few local leaders and politicians, too.

But first, there were these two guys in their matching T-shirts.

The front of the shirts said, “The one thing Obama and McCain have in common.” The part of the back that you can’t see in this photo gives the web address for Black Hills Energy Solutions. (While there’s lots of information about energy conservation and alternative energy, their site doesn’t make it entirely clear what they do.)

Meanwhile, there’s Dem about town Bill Walsh, right, in his signature cowboy hat talking to state Sen. Tom Katus, D-Rapid City, and my old colleague Kevin Woster.

Others who were there but not photographed include scamp about town and infrequent Hoghouse Blog contributor Don Frankenfeld, former state Rep. John Teupel, R-Spearfish, Dem legislative candidate from Rapid City Dennis Finch and Dave Snyder, exec director emeritus of the Homestake underground science lab.

I didn’t recognize these folks in the crowd, but in his story on the event Woster quotes Wall Drug President Ted Hustead and Rosebud tribal councilman Robert Moore.

More on the nuts and bolts of Pickens’ presentation coming in the morning. (Read some of it in Woster’s story.)

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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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Before I get to some of the details from Monday’s field hearing in Rapid City, let’s ponder something that none of use could have imagined back in 2002 — that a Sen. John Thune and a Sen. Tim Johnson would sit side-by-side working on an issue together. That’s what happened at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology in Rapid City.

(Photos by Denise)

Forgive my poor photo editing, but I did not get a photo in which they both looked good, so I cropped 2 shots. Mr. Hoghouse, my staff photographer, had to report to his paying job on Monday so I was on my own.

As you can read from the background panel, the field hearing was about “transforming forest waste to biofuels,” which does seem like a common sense thing to do. I did not attend the entire hearing, but while I was there I heard no objections to the idea.

It means literally transforming those slash piles of branches that populate the Black Hills National Forest and turning them into ethanol we can power our vehicles on. What could be wrong with that? Somebody powerful objected to it when Congress passed an energy bill because provisions to include forest waste - slash, wood chips, saw dust - in the renewable fuels standard got stripped from the bill in that mysterious Capitol Hill triangle where laws get written but nobody knows who did it or how.

When Democratic state Sen. Tom Katus asked Thune which “forces in the dark of night” removed the provision from the energy bill, Thune put the blame at the feet of “House leadership,” then named House Speaker Nancy Pelosi specifically. Interesting. Thune also called the whole thing “very regrettable,”  but he said it with an edge that made it sound more like, “pitifully embarrassing.”

On the upside, Thune said a commercailly viable cellulosic ethanol industry would spell lots of economic development for the Black Hills. “I don’t think that’s very far away,” he said. “That is the next generation of biofuels that will bet us away from this food vs. fuel debate.” He then called that particular debate “a whole lot of misinformation.”

The hearing was held in the crackerbarrel room and drew a respectable crowd, though not the standing room only crowd that shows up when state lawmakers are there during the legislative session.

Back to those slash piles, there are about 5,000 of them in the forest at any given time, the senators were told. The Forest Service are working to quantify exactly how much cellulosic ethanol that would produce. There is, Thune said, 105 gallons of cellulosic ethanol per ton of biomass.

Find a rundown of more numbers below, plus a list of other political figures at the hearing.

BHNF chief Craig Bobzien, left, and Tom Troxel of the Black Hills Forest Resource Association, testified Monday.

Some of the numbers below were gleaned from the testimony.

• 200 railroad cars, each full of 100 tons of forest waste, leave the Black Hills each month headed for a plant in Washington state.
• About 2,000 tons of forest waste would be “readily retreivable” from the BHNF under the current forest management plan.
• Using forest waste to create cellulosic ethanol could create as many as 40,000 jobs across the country; a whole lot of those could be in the Black Hills.
• There could be between 207,000 and 1.2 million tons of forest waste coming out of the Black Hills - public and private land - should a cellulosic ethanol industry ramp up here.

Also in the crowd Monday were, pictured below, Johnson campaign manager Steve Jarding and Johnson’s wife, Barb.

Others whom I did not photograph include state Reps. Jeff Haverly and Ed McLaughlin and state Sen. Dennis Schmidt, all Republicans; Democratic state House candidate Jeff Nelsen and Lois Facer, wife to Dem House candidate Eric Abrahamson.

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We all will know within a few days who Barack Obama will choose as his running mate. It could be South Dakota’s own Tom Daschle, even though he gets little mention in the constant speculation about who’s in the running. No matter. This from Politico:

Obama and his inner circle have held his intentions tightly, while a wider circle of aides in Chicago has been kept far enough out of the loop.

George McGovern called Obama’s pending VP pick ”the most closely held secret I’ve encountered in all my years in politics” Monday on SD Public Radio, adding that he has no idea who will emerge the much-anticipated choice.  

And one pundit I heard over the weekend put it this way: The people who know aren’t talking; and the people who are talking don’t know.

Here are a few clues about Daschle’s status on this front.

Recently, Daschle has relied on the question-dodging stand-by that he “doesn’t expect” to be picked. On Sunday, he got more definitive with ABC’s George Stephanopolous.

When asked if Obama has called to offer him the VP spot, Daschle quickly answered, “He hasn’t. No.” And when asked if Obama will offer him the slot this week, Daschle told George, “Well, he won’t.”

Then last week The Hill reported Daschle saying he’s out of the loop on Obama’s VP deliberations and that he “hasn’t weighed in on it”:

Former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said Tuesday that he doesn’t expect to be asked to be Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) running mate and has no idea whom Obama will pick.

Daschle told The Hill, adding that he’s “tried to keep at an honest length” from Obama’s closely held deliberations about a vice presidential candidate.

So, if Daschle’s not engaged in the discussions, how can he be so sure he won’t get that phone call? Beyond that, if he is sure he won’t get that phone call, why wouldn’t he be involved in sifting through the job candidates? He’s been closely involved in a lot lesser campaign decisions over the past year-plus, and he knows many of the VP hopefuls well - well enough to raise those crucial red flags before they become a target for the pointy horns of the opposition.

I contend that Daschle’s out-of-the-loop status means he’s in the VP mix. He’s got more foreign policy heft than Evan Bayh, nevermind Tim Kaine, and he’s much more disciplined and on-message - and capable of not stealing the limelight - than Joe Biden.  

Just sayin’.

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Check your local listings for the Sunday talk shows. South Dakota’s own Tom Daschle will be a guest on ABC’s This Week with George Snuffalupagus.

Daschle will appear with GOP VP hopeful Mitt Romney and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. That’s a powerhouse line-up, but it looks like they’ve all got powerhouse line-ups this weekend. This Week might be the only show that Conde Rice is skipping.

While we’re waiting for the news to happen, see if you can spot the typo from the ABC News website as it appeared mid-day Saturday.

The headliners talk to George about the Russia-George conflict and election ‘08.

I really do wish that George could stay out of trouble.

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South Dakota’s Sen. John Thune would seem to bear little resemblance to Wyoming’s former Congressman Dick Cheney, but the Democratic National Committee now lists Thune at the top of its The Next Cheney website - where it draws direct comparisons between Thune and W but not Cheney.

A fundraising letter paid for by the Thune campaign repeatedly connected George W. Bush to Thune, and emphasized the similarities between the two.

AND …

According to a vote analysis conducted by Congressional Quarterly in 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2007 John Thune supported President Bush’s position on legislation 84 percent of the time.

Anyway, this splash of Fellini in the ongoing drama that is the 2008 presidential campaign lines up 8 potential McCain VP picks, casting each one as “the next Cheney” one assumes in that one of the eight is likely to fill the same slot on the ticket as Cheney has. It’s part of the push of the message that a McCain presidency would be 4 more years of Bush.

Given Thune’s reticence to openly contradict the Bush administration, even when they’ve had their boot held firmly down on his neck, it’s difficult to imagine a VP Thune running the kind of operation Cheney has.

Meanwhile, here’s some of what SD Dem Party Chairman Jack Billion told reporters in a conference call Tuesday:

After working with John Thune, we know first-hand he’s the wrong choice for America’s future.

We would see more of the same illogical economic and budgetary decisions which have drained our country’s economic strength. We would see tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans while our nation is at war.

Billion criticized Thune for not taking McCain to task over his opposition to federal ethanol policy and his opposition to the version of the GI Bill that passed.

Our state’s economy would go back on the slow track if McCain is president and John Thune is there to let him off the hook.

Besides the website, the DNC has issued a longer, more detailed “fact sheet” on its list of Thune’s political misdeeds. Oddly, defending the Lewis & Clark water project earmark is among them.

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