JJC:   John McCain just gave a long-winded, detailed speech at a Vestas factory... in Oregon today. Vestas makes windmills... Let me tell you, if you think McCain will wind, just stick to the bet on oil - not wind - as a presidential play... although wind - the cheapest form of renewable energy - should still be a great business...

And, remember, this is the year of natural gas... I'm predicting that 2009 will be the year of wind...

And that's why I'm recommending Owens Corning (OC)... a stealth green play that's got both a wind angle, and a green building angle... as in helping buildings conserve energy... something that must stay on our radar screen with oil up to $120... and seemingly, inexplicably heading to $150, which has been my new price target...

You may know OC as the Pink Panther, its trademark... In fact, though, Pink Panther as a hallmark for insulation, is only part of the animation, because OC is multi-faceted...

Besides insulation, the Toledo-based OC makes shingles and asphalt... Most important, it makes glass fiber composites... Now this company's largest business is 33% of revenues, and its most international, getting 61% from the rest of the world. This is the key business...

The glass fiber composites business takes glass fibers, and combines them with other materials, to make strong, durable, light and flexible material, that's intended to replace steel, wood, concrete, aluminum... and other stuff that's just not as strong as this... This is the business that makes the composite fabric for wind energy... where the CEO told us, on last week's conference call... I want you to go listen to it, before you go buy... The wind energy market, where we have a very, very strong market position... both in our fabrics business, as well as our glass making business... has been a real star on a year-to-date basis, and we think it is a real star going forward...

Ladies and gentleman, you have no idea how important that the tensile strength of this company's products are to the new wind turbines... Do you know that these wind turbines have wingspans as big as Boeing 747s... You see, they're not just like little Dutch Boy windmills...

That weight... requires materials that have unique, Herculean strength and only OC has the solution!...

Do you know that the Department of Energy just came out today... and said that wind power could provide 20% of our power by 2030... Hey, that's not that peak power... that's baseline power... They're saying that there's $43 billion that's going to be invested in wind.

When you think of wind, I need you to think OC... OC will be getting a ton of money from that. Think of OC as kind of like railcar maker, Trinity Industries Inc. (TRN)... which was also a stealth play on wind, and which blew away the numbers, when it reported shortly after I recommended it, thanks to the wind business...

Picture this company not as it is with just this guy (the Pink Panther), okay... I want you to picture it as it could be, because I firmly believe that the $150 million in glass fiber that they sold to the wind market in 2007 - 10% of their sales for that division - is going to get a whole lot bigger...

The OC expects the wind business to grow at a 16% clip year-over-year for the next decade. The whole global composites market, more generally, is estimated to be about $56 billion, and demand for these composites should be growing at about 5% per year... And, ever since OC pants-ed Sanco Ban, by buying the reinforcements and composites business from them, it's been the largest company in this space.

You know... again... "new tech" right?... What about the rest of the company?...

The glass fiber insulation business... green. Insulation saves 48% of the energy in homes, 30% in commercial buildings. You probably don't know this, but it's buildings, not cars, that are responsible for most of our energy use - about 40% - and it's really profligate energy, when you think about it, because we have a simple OC solution...

Now, the weakness of OC - 40% of its sales - still come from new U.S. housing... Still, that business has stayed profitable... Isn't that amazing? The roofing business, on the other hand, isn't. But this company is trying to change from a cyclical building stock, to a global, "new technology" company, through its composites business. I think it's going to succeed.

Now, I would be worried more about the housing component at OC, if it hadn't just reported its second good quarter in a row last week, beating earnings per share by 5 cents. The company's operating income only declined by $5 million, despite all this, okay... The stock is supposedly extremely levered to U.S. construction. They see that. The residence construction? They're getting out... well, they're making it minimal, by doing so many other things...

OC beat, because it's no longer just a residential company. Its composites business grew sales by - get this - 82%... Operating profits by 156%... The entire company is now roughly 43% rest of the world... It used to be 12% in 2006. Can you imagine that? That's rapid adaptation... They saw this coming, ladies and gentleman... they saw this housing debacle coming. This stock is a win, even with housing in the dumps. If housing bottoms, man, I think it goes right through the roof shingles...