Posing as a Bidder, Utah Student Disrupts Government Auction of 150,000 Acres of Wilderness for Oil & Gas Drilling --

... While many environmental groups launched campaigns to oppose the sale of the land, one student in Salt Lake City attempted to block the sale by disrupting the auction itself. Twenty-seven-year-old Tim DeChristopher posed as a potential bidder and bid hundreds of thousands of dollars on parcels of the land, driving up prices and winning some 22,000 acres for himself, without any intention of paying for them.

First, f*ck Tom Friedman and the T. Boone Pickens that he rode in on.

I had been planning on writing a similar post when I read and commented on Gob's post yesterday about alternative energy. Paul had a comment that I wanted to talk about because I think it frames the issue in a way that isn't helpful to understanding what is happening or what is going to happen. Namely, looking in political terms at energy and the new push by energy companies and their surrogates into alt.energy is just buying into their '$hell' game (so to speak).

The beat goes on.

The Oil Industry Calls on an Image Expert - WSJ.com : For two decades, industries facing image problems have turned for help to a Virginia-based market-research shop founded by President Reagan's former pollster, Richard Wirthlin. The company, formerly called Wirthlin Worldwide and now part of Harris Interactive Inc., has shaped multimillion-dollar campaigns for embattled products from plastics to bread to milk.
Now it's going to bat for Big Oil
In January, the oil industry will launch its first-ever major advertising campaign, scrambling to salvage a reputation suffering amid high gasoline prices and concern about fossil-fuel dependence. After this week's Democratic takeover of the House, the industry may face a more hostile political scene, threatened with stricter tax laws and with deeper resistance to the industry's desire to drill in new places.