My Page: Matthew Frank
Barack Obama has chosen Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his running mate.
Biden, who has been a senator for more than 30 years, is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He brings to the ticket foreign policy and national security experience Obama lacks.
A campaign text message to supporters Saturday morning read: “Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3pm ET on http://www.BarackObama.com. Spread the word!”
But cable news networks broke the story before the campaign text messages and emails went out.
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the tolls of expensive gas
Highway Funding Concerns Loom Large in Montana, Other Rural States
Americans are driving less, especially in rural areas, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced last week. The resultant drop in gas consumption (and combustion) is good, no doubt, but not for the country's gas tax-fueled Highway Trust Fund, already facing a multibillion dollar shortfall.
Highway projects around the country could be left unfunded if Congress doesn't act -- and it may disproportionately affect large, rural states.
States like Montana.
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From The New West Blog
Defending Homes from Wildfire Costs Montana Millions
Defending homes from wildfires in Montana is costing the state millions extra, and it's only going to get worse as more residents settle in the wildland-urban interface, according to a new report by Bozeman-based Headwaters Economics.
"We're very confident our data supports (that) homes do, indeed, contribute to fire suppression costs," Patty Gude of Headwaters Economics told members of the Legislature's Fire Suppression Interim Committee, which met in Great Falls Wednesday.
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on the way to the DNC
Obama to be in Billings WednesdaySenator Barack Obama will visit Billings, Montana next Wednesday en route to Denver for the Democratic National Convention, the Montana Democratic Party announced today.
It will be the presidential hopeful's fifth visit to Montana -- a state with three electoral votes Obama is battling hard to win. The few polls conducted here indicate a slight advantage for Obama. (Bush won in 2004 with 59 percent of the vote.)
No details of Obama's visit have been made available. We'll keep you posted.
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James D. Kriley, a former dean of the University of Montana's School of Fine Arts and the former artistic director of the Montana Repertory Theatre, died Tuesday, his body found in Flathead Lake after a couple reported that a sailboat drifted up to their dock with no one on it.
UM President George Dennison issued a statement Tuesday informing the community of Kriley's death, the AP reports.
"He was really a force for the arts," Dennison said. "He was a campus citizen of the first order. ... It is a big loss for the university."
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Maps propped up in Missoula City Council chambers Tuesday showed three Montanas. The first was Montana in 1996. The few counties highlighted in red -- including Missoula County -- indicated where the average home price outpaced the average household income. The second, Montana in 2006, showed much more red, almost all of the western third of the state. The third map, projecting 2020, was entirely red, save three of Montana's most remote counties.
As Nancy Leifer of the Montana Board of Housing put it, the maps make one thing clear: "From Eureka to Ekalaka, from Sanders County to Sydney, from Shelby down to Red Lodge, (Montana communities) are struggling to house their people."
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From The New West Blog
Eastern Montanan to be Backstage with Obama at DNCA teacher from Eastern Montana, Barb Sackman, is among 10 supporters who will be joining presidential candidate Barack Obama backstage before he accepts the nomination at this month’s Democratic National Convention in Denver, the Billings Gazette reports.
[more]In applying for the opportunity, Sackman said she wrote a short essay about living in rural Montana and how rising fuel prices are making it hard for people to get by. She wrote that she hoped Obama’s plan for alternative biofuels would help her area’s struggling economy.
In Sackman’s community, “if agriculture doesn’t do well, we don’t do well.” Alternative biofuels would be a “great opportunity for our tiny county that has no other resources,” she said.
From The New West Blog
Montana Phrase “The Last Best Place” to be Protected
The phrase “The Last Best Place,” Montanans' favorite descriptor of their state, may soon be protected forever now that Senate and House committees have approved language in a Department of Commerce appropriations bill that forbids the department from registering or enforcing a trademark of the phrase, Jim Robbins of The New York Times reports.
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breaking news
Twelve Small Fires Contained Along Hwy 12 Near LoloTwelve small fires, ranging in size "from two feet to two acres," flared up along a 1.5-mile stretch of Highway 12 near Lolo Friday, apparently the result of a vehicle's mechanical failure, said Cindy Super, fire prevention coordinator for the DNRC, but they were quickly doused and Hwy 12 has reopened.
"They're basically just cleaning things up right now," said Super.
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From The New West Blog
Edra Blixseth Takes Over Yellowstone Club
Edra Blixseth has officially taken over 50 percent ownership of the elite Yellowstone Club from her estranged husband, billionaire timber baron Tim Blixseth, Forbes reports.
It's the result of a messy divorce settlement struck in early July that was delayed.
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