Life-long Republican MT Rancher Switches Parties (NBC News)

[ochazuke]

A story on tonight's NBC evening news is about the Shrubco energy bill proposal to open up the front range in Montana to gas exploration.

Environmentalists, ranchers, and hunters are uniting to fight it.

The focus of the story was a rancher whose ancestors homesteaded his ranch generations ago. He voted Repulican all his life until this. Now, he's going Democratic. He said that "if we need gas so bad that we have to tear up every last bit of land maybe it's time to find a new source of energy."

A heartwarming piece.

[opihimoimoi]

1. until we find that source, perhaps CONSERVATION THRU EFFICENCY

[DODI]

2. Nah.

[david_vincent]

7. How UnAmerican!

As if we should be bothered making an effort to not waste energy? That's not the spirit that built this country, mac.
<sarcasm>

[QuidditchFan]

3. Most excellent...

I really think that the Democrats are onto something if they can characterize the Republican party as:

1. The party of big oil.
2. The part of big pharmaceutical.

They will score some major points.

This election is there for the taking.

[Wetzelbill]

4. Amen to that

As a Montanan myself, soon to be moving back I am vastly concerned with the energy issue. They might open up some drilling near the edge of the Blackfeet reservation where I am from, by Glacier National Park, which is one of the most gorgeous places on earth. It will effect farm and ranch land too. Yuk, it is awful.

[wryter2000]

5. Yup, yup, yup

And the party of big deficits so that those industries can make billions in profits.

[pinto]

6. gas exploration as security, logging as wildfire prevention,

corporate subsidies as health care reform, war for profit and pre-emption as policy.....

I feel for the guy.

This administration is intent on rolling back 40+ years of social progress and spending us into generational deficits to Americanize the world....

Get a grip. The poor guy is a passing thought in this administration.

[ret5hd]

8. If i am not mistaken...

the kind of gas wells drilled in that part of the country are
coal-bed methane gas wells. they destroy the environment for miles around because of huge amounts of saline water discharged into streams.

[xchrom]

9. every little bit helps

this is good news -- where there is one, there's more.

[annxburns]

10. I want to see our candidate ....

... in as many "green" ads as possible. Bush's record is absolutely abysmal. I want attack ad after attack ad. I want our candidate is some field somewhere talking about protecting our great American heritage. This is something that moderate republicans care a lot about and we could really carve the shrub up.

[ochazuke]

11. The Environment as a Wedge Issue

Even in Utah -- possibly the most Republican state in the country -- polls show that an overwhelming majority support protection for their own red rock wilderness areas.

If people find out what Shrubco Energy has in store for us, it would shock them. But there are no media to do that!

[Kolesar]

12. I thought Utahans were outraged of Clinton's National Monument protections

That was the headlines and that was what a (rude and stupid) Utahan told me when I was backpacking in the Grand Canyon.

*I call him stupid because he was a trail runner who got stranded in the Grand Canyon. He was 60 years old and tried to go rim-to-rim-to-rim in one day. He bonked at the 37 mile point and had to crash in my tent.

I call him rude because he was dissing the president I voted for.