How many shares of CNN does Pickens own?

Recently, CNN has taken great pains to put T. Boone Pickens in front of our eyeballs. For example, here Lou Dobbs puckers up an plants wet, sloppy smooch after wet, sloppy smooch on T. Boone's well-tailored posterior. (A billionaire is not so plebeian as to have an ass.)

Hint: This spate of publicity ain't because he's purty. So it must be the billionaire thing.

The news hook is grafted on like a primitive prosthesis over the embarrassing stub of his walking out on the $1,000,000 faux pledge in defense of his Swift Boat Liars. The hook is that T. Boone has a plan for reducing our foreign oil dependency. Of course, it's mostly warmed over Democratic positions, though Lou Dobbs conveniently forgets that.

When T. Boone says, "We have not had a plan in 40 years, Lou," what he means is that we have not had an approved Republican plan. Now, like many wealthies before him, he wants to take credit for the ideas of others, in this case Jimmy Carter, who did have a plan 30 years ago before oil men (no doubt including T. Boone) shouted him down.

"What I want to do is to fold in the great resource we have in the central part of this country, which is wind," says T. Boone. I'm sure readers are thoroughly capable of inserting their own jokes about windy rhetoric, Texas blow jobs, and breaking wind. Have at it in comments.

Update (7/22): Yet another story from CNN. At least this one mentions the Bushist connections, and its headline IDs him as a Swift Boat "backer".