T. Boone Pickens, Unrepentant Character Assassin
T. Boone Pickens has been in the news a lot lately pushing his so-called "Pickens Plan" which seeks to reduce America's reliance on foreign energy imports. Some aspects of the proposal are laudatory and actually quite brilliant, and some aspects are just downright stupid. But this post isn't about the merits of the idea; it's about what Pickens has to say when asked to reflect back on his role in bankrolling the insipid swift boat smear campaign against John Kerry. On this front, the billionaire oilman reveals his true, slimy colors. In this 60 Minutes profile, the cameras follow Pickens to the 2008 Democratic National Convention and capture his visibly uncomfortable encounter with the man he spent $3 million destroying.
"You spent $3 million funding an advertising campaign that, in some people’s mind, was representative of dirty politics, smear politics, character assassination, all of that. At this stage, do you have any regrets?" Rose asks.
"None," Pickens says.
Asked if he'd do it over again tomorrow, Pickens says, "What I knew then, I know that same thing now. And nothing has changed my mind."
Ted Stevens has been found guilty on all counts.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
Thank you!
This what American politics is all about and leads me to this
Ralph Nader quote...
"If Americans continue to vote for the lesser of two evils and not the candidate of choice, they will continue to be ignored and excluded."
Noam Chomsky states that the Dem and Rep parties are two heads of the same corporate party, with the only difference being that the Dems toss the public a bone once in awhile to shut them up.
And the people who actually followed Nader's advice handed the election to George Bush in 2000, causing the American people to be ignored more than they ever thought possible. Nader's argument actually makes sense in a country with more than two political parties. But in a country that has evolved into a state of binary-fascism, the only thing you CAN do is vote for the lesser of two evils.
But Nader had little to nothing to do with Gore losing the election.
1st off the math aint there.
And 2nd you are assuming that a vote for Nader would have been vote for Gore. Which is an assumption, that to me reeks of contempt and patronizing.
Gore was the one who lost the election, how could any moderately competent politician allow a moron like Bush to get so close in the general vote?
The Dems need to own to their own fuckups. I submit you Reid and Pelosi as a proof, and I am sad to report that these two individuals sort of validate the statements by Nader and Chomsky. The Dems using an old guy like Nader as a scape goat is something that drove me to become an independent. It is pathetic...
that if Gore had carried his own state, we wouldn't be having this back-and-forth.
Nader is generally and pragmatically correct on so many issues (and yes, off-base on others), no thinking person can deny his contribution. I regret my decision to vote for the lesser of two evils this time around, but voters have clearly dismissed Nader, and this time I believe a vote for Nader would have been a wasted vote. We can't afford that.
I'm proud of my vote for Nader/LaDuke, two extremely compassionate people. Gore, in his eight years as VP didn't do jack sh*t. He was practically a non event.
T Boone is a smarmy man. To say he has no regrets about what he did just makes him smarmier. Seems the repubs attract smarm.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
I too thought some of his ideas for using capitalism to help the planet were kind of clever. That whole Tom Friedman thing about Green Capitalism might just save us all if the Oiligarchs (spelling intentional) became Sun Kings and Wind Mavens.
But when he refused to refute or apologize for one of the most hideous slime campaigns in our long and troubled history, I immediately thought, well F**K HIM, then. I hope SOMEONE ELSE gets rich from Environmentally Sound Energy just as I hope Pickens will one day realize how loathesome his actions were and are.
Paul.
Fuck this guy. The worst of what America offers is in people like him.
Can I assume Pickens never served?
When the oil boom in Oklahoma ended in the late 1930s, Pickens' family moved to Amarillo, Texas. Pickens never served in the military but instead attended Texas A&M on a basketball scholarship but lost the scholarship and transferred to Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University), where he majored in Geology and joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He graduated from Oklahoma A&M with a degree in geology in 1951. Following his graduation, Pickens was employed by Phillips Petroleum. He worked for Phillips until 1954. In 1956, following his period as a wildcatter, he founded the company that would later become Mesa Petroleum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._Boone_Pickens
Pickens turned 17 in May, 1945. Draft and enlistment age was lowered to 17 during WWII. WWII ended in August 1945, leaving him four months to decide not to join up. Presumably the lottery draft didn't get him either.
I presume both Texas A&M and Oklahoma A&M, like most universities at the time, had a compulsory ROTC program, and the selective service act of 1948 made all men eligable for the draft between the ages of 18 and 26. Pickens was 22 when the Korean war broke out, and I think it was still going on when he graduated in 1951. I presume, therefore, that he also found some way to weasel out of the Korean war.
I guess he had other priorities, like making money, and NOT getting his ass shot off by a Japanese or North Korean?
This guy is a rabid opportunist. He went after Kerry becuase Bush was willing to let the energy companies rape Americans. Now that the dems are about to take over, here he is trying to kiss ass so he can be on the inside again.
Pickens has a legitimate message on energy, but zero honor as a person...just like Reid.
but to a knowledgeable scientist or engineer most of his plan is just hot air. T Nose Pickens is still pretty much the same asshole he always was.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
He's not your "pal" you jack ass.
Since when should we believe the greasy wheedling machinations of a stinkin' rich Republican Oil man?If Boone is "doing it for the Country" then I'm Conway Twitty.Yes there are some things about the Pickens Plan worth consideration,but over all it fails the test.Why spend billions on a plan that itself will need to be replaced costing further billions of dollars?
"To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And,
at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between,
plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing."
This is truth, to me. "
-Jack Handy
guilty on ALL counts.
He should rot in jail.
Sorry POP, I missed your post.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
That's okay, I can't hear it or read it often enough.
David Schuster is telling about the breaking up of a gang of skinheads who were planning to assassinate Senator Obama. Thank goodness they found out about it.
To me, Pickens is just another rich opportunist. Yeah, he may have some good ideas, but that doesn't change the type of preson that he is.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
Sorry but John Kerry is a pussy. I saw this on 60 Minutes. He shook Pickins' hand? He should have decked him. Or at a very minimum turned away. My low opinion of Kerry as not a fighter definitely has gotten lower.
Harry Reid should learn that the public will judge him on who his enemies are, as well as who his friends are.
We need Democrats that stand up against our country's enemies, not ones that embrace them. T. Boone Pickens is an enemy of America. We can do better than Harry Reid.
Pelosi and Reid must go. Neither are worth the time it takes to type their names.
Pelosi and her refusal to live up to her promise to serve the constitution and Reid with his Give em hell Harry bullshit. Both are a joke and neither serve America nor us.
...I agree.
I'm pretty sure both Pelosi and Reid are going to be shit-canned after this election. All the NEW Democrats that had to actually FIGHT their way into Congress are not going to honor the tepid response to Bush's attempts to turn the U.S.A. into a fascist dictatorship of those two career politicians. Hillary Clinton gets Reid's job, and Rahm Emanuel gets Pelosi's job. That would be my guess.
I've always been bothered by Kerry's failure to respond vigorously to those notorious ads. All the indignation has come from people like us. In fact, that was typical of Kerry's entire run for president. We were put through the ringer, but Kerry always seemed unruffled, oblivious. Is it a rich privileged-guy thing? Is it a Skull and Bones thing? Is it a big out-of-touch doofus thing? When he didn't respond to a protester at a Kerry speech being tazed by sadistic security guards, that was the last straw. Let him fight his own battles. And Pickens ought to be shunned.
It's a wimp thing, Kerry doesn't have the balls to defend himself until it's too late.
Is it the 21st century yet?
...if both Kerry and Gore were threatened with harm to their families if they resisted the faked outcomes to their repsective presidential races. I don't know how else to account for the way that BOTH OF THEM rolled over and have stayed rolled over ever since.
If I had to make a bet on it, I'd say they were threatened by the same powers that took down the WTC.
My read on the Pickens Plan that he is someone who realized that this country will move away from oil and on to other ways to produce energy. His main concern is that, what ever the means that we produce energy, he wants it to be controlled and be hugely profitable for the small group of people. He sees the possibility that energy production could be come mostly local with a shared cost and profit spread to large groups of people.
I am with some others that say "put aside the old" and support Picken's energy plan. The plan is a step forward and is good for the country. As offensive as the Swiftboating Efforts was/were, leave it in the past with the Republicans when they are defeated on election day.
We need the solution of all this buying of oil and the cost in lives and $$$ dollars more than we need any retribution for political stabbing 4 years ago.
Pickens makes me gag a little in my mouth. I don't care if he has a 'plan'. He's a big jerk off.
T. Boone certainly has the PR hacks going full time planting stories about his "plan" in the media ("60 Minutes," et al). Too bad it's as full of nothing as his Swift Boat stories were. True, it's a great plan if you're T. Boone but for everybody else, not so much.
To paraphrase WWII Japanese soldiers, to hell with Babe Ruth and to hell with T. Boone Pickens. There's a cell waiting for him after the revolution.
Fuck T. Boone Pickens and Democrat Harry Reid for considering him a friend. Wake the fuck up and oppose enemies of Democracy.
T. Boone Pickens obviously has no conscience. It's a little hard to listen to his "plan" when he used his wealth to smear a war hero and give us four years for W bankrupt our nation.
Anyone responsible for those blatant lie...having clearly cost Kerry and the Democratic Party the White House and doomed this country to four more years of this cancerous administration qualifies as a total pathetic excuse of a human being.
Worthless sack of shit!!
The Wind Farms Pickens is building are a good idea, but I’m not convinced Pickens’ motives are all that altruistic. In some locations Wind Farms are very profitable for the small energy consortiums that build them. I’ve calculated the return-on-investment to be less than 1 year for some of these turbines. That’s a lot of money – if you can get them built.
I think his marketing campaign is an effort to build up public support so that HE can be the guy making that money.
Besides that - the guy is slime.
he's crazy. and that's exactly what it takes. he and the rest of the republican party are welcome to one another.
Pickens suggested that eminent domain be used to claim land for wind farms and solar installations and transmission lines... We could start with his big ol' 40,000 acre ranch in the Texas panhandle.
Pickens is an ass. Where has he been with his wind technology or alternative energy focus the last 30 years. Pickens is an opportunist and he is all about the money. This man does not care about the environment or how many people who have been murdered due to our need to access oil in the middle east. This is what Pickens cares about $$$$$$$
"I don't think sooo!"
My one vote couldn't have done what this guy did.
Only campaign finance reform can put an end to this bullshit.
One human, one vote.
E Pleb Neesta
GODISNOWHERE
Add making divorce illegal to the "protect marriage act" and see how much support it gets.
Even if we took him at his word, do we really want to do what is necassary to get natural gas out of the ground? Those shale deposits and other formations that hold natural gas have to release the gas. This is done by use of fracturing compounds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fractu...
Here is an excerp from an article that brough fracking to my attention
"Cathy Behr says she won't forget the smell that nearly killed her. An emergency-room nurse in Durango, Colo.'s Mercy Regional Medical Center, Behr was working the April 17 day shift when Clinton Marshall arrived complaining of nausea and headaches. An employee at an energy-services company, Weatherford International, Marshall, according to Behr, said that he was caught in a "fracturing-fluid" spill. [Fracturing chemicals are routinely used on oil and gas wells where they are pumped deep into the ground to crack rock seams and increase production.] The chemical stench coming off Marshall's boots was buckling, says Behr. Mercy officials took no chances. They evacuated and locked down the ER, and its staff was instructed to don protective masks and gowns. But by the time those precautions were enacted, Behr had been nursing Marshall for 10 minutes--unprotected. "I honestly thought the response was a little overkill, but good practice," says Behr, 54, a 20-year veteran at Mercy.
A few days later, Behr's skin turned yellow. She began vomiting and retaining fluid. Her husband rushed her to Mercy where Behr was admitted to the ICU with a swollen liver, erratic blood counts and lungs filling with fluid. "I couldn't breath," she recalls. "I was drowning from the inside out." The diagnosis: chemical poisoning. The makers of the suspected chemical, Weatherford, tell NEWSWEEK that they aren't sure if their brand of fracking fluid can be blamed for her illness.
Throughout the Rocky Mountain states, Behr's run-in with fracturing fluid is getting a lot of attention and exacerbating already frayed nerves. After nearly eight years of some of the most intense oil and gas development ever recorded in the American West, concerns over the environmental and health impacts are bubbling over. On Tuesday, Colorado's top oil and gas regulatory authority—the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC)—endorsed a sweeping set of rules that environmentalists call long overdue; industry warns of dire economic impacts."
This stuff is DEADLY and they want to pump it willy nilly into the ground all over America. Why hasn't the Media even mentioned hydrolic fracturing?
The hypocrisy of the right never ceases to amaze me. For people who espouse traditional "Values," they sure know how to get donw and dirty as well as anyone. How Pickens can look Kerry in the eye is beyond me. Then again, he's loaded, so he can do anything he wants, right?
i think pickens is an ahole for what he did to kerry. what exactly does he "know" that is so terrible?
Here's how I would handle this. Assuming obama gets in, he appoints Kerry to oversee a special commission on energy. If pickens wants to approach the congress on this issue, he has to go through Kerry. Let's see what he does then.
let's see him kiss kerry's ass
Harry Reid and any other Democratic sycophants kissing up to Boone just demonstrate that they are not fit for leadership. It's like McCain hugging George W. Bush and hiring Rove's henchmen after Bush and Rove defamed McCain's family. There are some limits in life and if T. Boone defames one of your own you do not embrace him. He is slime. He never served a day and had the nerve to question the bravery of someone who was close enough to the enemy to get three purple hearts, meanwhile supporting a first class chickenhawk from Texas. Pathetic.
The only reason this slimy cock roach is for alternative fuels, is because he has figured out a way to screw everybody else and make his useless old ass even richer.
Rush Limbaugh is what a smart person thinks a stupid bigot sounds like.
T. Bone has a great idea on eliminating our oil dependence, but his politics are extremely nasty. Kerry was the gentleman, and Bone was a typical republican.
geezer pickens is a typical republican: create an idea that looks good on the surface but is really only used to make money. we don't need to use natural gas for vehicles, that's total BULLSHIT. the only thing good about his plan is stopping the importation of oil and everyone already knows we need to do that. any asshole who spreads lies once will do it again and cannot be trusted.
is to be believed on his projected natural gas reserves in the contiguous U.S., it seems to me an excellent interim solution to our carbon dioxide emissions problem, especially as it concerns the trucking industry. I don't care who gets rich off of it. I just want it done like yesterday.
Pickens' "plan" has nothing to do with anything except to try to redeem himself after he drowned in his own slime. I say we take his good ideas and leave him behind. What's he going to do? Sue for plagiarism? Screw him.
he wants money again to destroy dems.
that's why there are no pacs like his now. they all lost in the stock market. they cant afford it. when this gets going he'll get money again to use against dems.
Asked if he'd do it over again tomorrow, Pickens says, "What I knew then, I know that same thing now. And nothing has changed my mind."
===============
Asked if he'd do it over again tomorrow, Pickens says, "Either I'm lying to your face, or I'm a goddamn ignoramus. Either way, one of us is just plain stupid."
we cant trust the guy. he apparently lost 2B in the stock market and is now trying to switch from oil to wind, then what? he'll use his money again to destroy democratic candidates?
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