Pickens & Palin

That One- I managed to catch portions of Senator Obama’s stump speech yesterday at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis. I was once again pleasantly surprised to hear Obama stress the correlation between renewables and job creation. Regarding investment in clean energy sources Obama said “I will invest $15 billion a year in renewable sources of energy to create 5 million new green jobs over the next decade -- jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced . . . jobs that will help us end our dependence on oil from Middle East dictators." His campaign in the current economic crisis sees the reality in energy technology and how this will guide all of our futures.

Picken Palin- Didn’t know if anyone caught the fact that “energy expert” Sarah Palin and Boone Pickens had a sit down in Dallas last week. The very disturbing thing is now Pickens is endorsing Palin as a real deal energy expert. According to Picken’s blog posting last Friday:
Met with Sarah Palin the day after her debate with Joe Biden. She came to our Dallas offices with her husband, Todd, to talk about energy and the Pickens Plan ...
Governor Palin comes from an energy state, and I'll tell you, she gets this energy situation. We talked about it like two oil and gas professionals.
When we sat down in our conference room, we talked about the debate and then, because I knew she was short on time, we got right into the business at hand -- energy, and the danger of continuing to import 70% of our oil requirements.

We spent some time talking about ANWR -- the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We didn't agree on how much oil is up there, but I told her I was all for drilling. You know what I say about this: I'm for anything American.

Her husband Todd sat in on the meeting. You know that he's a steelworker in the oil fields during the Alaskan summers, so he understands a good bit of this, too. He was interested in the concept of filling your vehicle in your garage overnight using the same gas line that goes to your kitchen range and hot water heater.

Governor Palin wanted to understand the idea that the federal government should lead the way in moving to vehicles fueled by natural gas. We also talked about how to make the biggest impact quickly: Moving over-the-road trucks away from diesel and onto natural gas. I told her that if we had one million trucks running on natural gas, we could cut our imports of foreign diesel by 40%.

These candidates travel with a big entourage of advance people, staff, press, and Secret Service, and after nearly an hour one of them came into the conference room to tell her they needed to get going. But Gov. Palin took the time to take a group photo with Todd and me sitting in front of my staff, which was very thoughtful of her.

I don't know who is going to win this election, but I do know whichever team wins they'll know about the Pickens Plan.

 Boone

I was totally suspicious of this guy’s motives, but now with him elevating Palin and basically degrading his knowledge of dirty fossil fuels to Palin’s level, seemingly Pickens is just another horny, doddering old man.


Hybrid Taxis Bad?- Auto manufacturers are running like mad away from certifying their hybrid models as safe for commercial taxi usage. Concerns like, when buckled in passengers may sustain major injury due to the divider between front and back cabin and whether these dividers impede the side air bags from deploying properly. The NYC TLC( Taxi & Limousine Commission) continues to list models without manufacturer certification like the Prius, Camry and Highlander. Somewhat disturbing news for us eco-friendly New Yorkers.