Bonzo Goes to Warsaw

From an article by David Ost over at direland we find out the new leaders of Poland, the twin Kaczynski brothers were child movie stars. Eisenhour warned us of the military/ industrial complex but between Reagan, the Terminator, Jesse Ventura, Fred Thomas and now these guys I'm more worried about the political/entertainment complex. Militant right-wing populists in the style of Juan Peron or Frances' Jean-Marie Le Pen, their Law and Justice Party represents the anti-gay,anti-semitic, anti-immigrant, pro morals reactionaries blustering around Europe. They would probably do well in the county I live in, come to think of it. With a nationalist slogan, Poland Above All (uber alles) and a promise of an increased welfare state ( to attract uneducated rural voters) from which they have already backed off, they set the stage for a re-invigorated fascism. Remember Solidarity? Apparently it wasn't to solid.

Good discussion on globalization over at phronesisaical. Ill get into it more later.

Why Do They Hate Us?

Why does anybody hate anybody? Bush believes they hate us for "our freedom", and certain fanatics have expressed that. Which "they" are we talking about, the ones who fly planes into our buildings, the ones who plant roadside bombs in Iraq, the ones who burn US flags and shout slogans? Which us do they hate, the leaders who make policy, the soldiers who enforce it, the innocents in the Twin Towers or the power and culture symbolized by those huge world finance buildings in the financial and cultural capital of the West?

Fanatics, Islamo-fascists, extremists, terrorists, zealots are just what they are, it is the appeal of their narrative, it's resonance with a disenfanchised or oppressed constituency that gives them power. Behind Timothy McViegh and his fertilizer bomb is an alienated group of ideologues who inhabit the fringe of American politics. Radical libertarian/ patriot/NRA/Christian Millenialist/Wise Use/Anti-Semite conspiracy types rally to themes of Waco and black UN helicopters. Violence can erupt at any moment.

This from a globalization site: "the groups and individuals gathered at the forum(Third Forum on Biological and Cultural Diversity held in Honduras) denounced, among other things, the IMPOSITION of a homogenous, consumer-oriented, and individualistic culture, as expressed through "free"trade agreements,and the INVASION of transnational companies. Lacking that religious element these people march in the street and go to conferences rather than blow up buildings but their concerns sound familiar. In terms of past injustice, or revenge motivated terror, I have often been amazed that America was never the victim of Vietnamese terrorists. Nobody likes imposition or invasion of any kind but our leaders and most people prefer a world where everything is black and white.

Flatness

I recall my reaction to watching Tom Friedman promoting his new book, The Earth is Flat, on Ben Wattenbergs show. As he is explaining in his inimitable, smarmy style how the concept came to him in "an epiphany" (a modern Joseph Smith) Im thinking what a slimy huckster. On an excellent new website put up by the International Forum on Globalization Dr.Vandana Shiva gives his epiphany a sound thrashing ending up with: "'Flatness' is a symptom of the absence of real freedom, fascism is flatness."Coincidentally, Friedmans neo-liberalist co-horts want to install a "flat-tax" in Iraq, their new playground for Washinton Consensus economic policies. It is flat wrong.

On the same site we find Randy Hayes ,the IFG exec.director writing "I know of no coherent alternatives gaining momentum. Capitalism is the ruling system", therefore we can only ask "can capitalism be radically improved, humanized and ecologized? ...We have to wrest control of global economic rule making away from the tiny ,powerful clique of WTO and transnational corporate executive powerbrokers "and " democratize the process." Well hell, if thats all there is to it we should be able to "git er done" by Superbowl Sunday. Sorry to sound flip but this to me is a total misunderstanding of the objective forces of global power structures and a perfect demonstation of the liberals inability to think dialectically. By this casual rejection of Marxism and revolutionary consciousness or even "socialism for the 20th century" as Chavez puts it, they relegate change to the world of conferences, marches, and think-tank punditry. If we are going to "wrest control" of something, lets make it the means of production and let's not delude ourselves into thinking those now in power will in any way be willing to simply surrender any part of it just because it is the "just" or even reasonable thing to do. History is a record of the force they are perfectly willing to use to hang on. Hegemony is the ability to disguise and soften this "extra- economic" force but if you were in Seattle or Miami for anti-FTAA demonstrations you got a sneak peak behind the curtain.

Shop Till You Drop

When everything is commodified. Karl Marx on markets:"It has left remaining no other nexus between man and man other than naked self-interst and callous cash payment." He never saw the nexus between woman and woman fighting over the sale rack at Pennys. ( your killin me!)Here is Edward Bellamy :"According to our ideas, buying and selling is essentially anti-social in all it's tendencies.It is an education in self-seeking at the expense of others, and no society whose citizens are trained in such a school can possibly rise above a very low grade of civilization."

I'll take exception to this point, or characterization of "low grade". I spent a short time as a purveyor of Morrocan leather goods ( my distant youth) and had the opportunity to learn the art of bargaining in the medinas of Fez and Tangiers and Marrakesh. This involved hours spent sitting on rugs in small open stalls smoking kief and drinking mint tea supplied by the mechants with whom I was dealing. According to custom, this process of exchange was at the heart of social relations and engendered respect as well as fair marketing in a civilized yet adversarial contest.We spent a great deal of time over small differences in price but got to know one another and arrived at something upon which we could agree. How different from buying a spatula at Wall Mart where the price is what the sticker says, the human contact is a possible glance from the checker and the whole process taking the least possible amount of time because time is now the most valuable "commodity" we own. You judge which is the "low grade "civilization.

Anyone familiar with my politics knows I am no fan of markets but we need an allocation process which returns this concept of human contact within exchange, where we are involved with the commodity, not as the commodity.

Couple more things, people arguing that a troop drawdown will enbolden the insurgency have to explain how we ever get out, short of some sort of mythical "total victory". At some eventual point the troops will be drawn down. Will it be some unannounced mass exodus in the middle of the night?

Mark Levine gives a great analysis of the strategy of chaos or what Wolfowitz, one of the masterminds behind The War ( we don't really have a name for it anymore) and now head of the World Bank ( isn't that reassuring) called the "arc of instability". The wonderful strategery here was to wreak "creative destruction" ( so far so good) then bring forth from the ashes a global model, like Phoenix rising. "Iraq could do for neo-liberalism in the Middle East what Chile did for it in Latin America." (oops) Ive written about capitalisms promotion of "weak states" and their tendency to devolve into failed ones.De-stabilization has historically been a prime directive from our State Department and goal of intelligence agencies. I leave with this quote from Debord : To this list of the triumphs of power we should add, however, one result which has proved negative; once the running of the state involves a permanent and massive shortage of historical knowledge, that state can no longer be led strategically."

Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me

Only the true political junkies ( and serial Nixon haters, such as myself) will remember this poignant and poetical moment.Tricky Dick, facing the crisis of his destroyed political career and legacy asks Henry Kissenger to kneel with him in the oval office for a moment of prayer. I'm picturing bewildered George Bush asking Rove to kneel with him today as they ask for divine guidance and just one more favor. Please. I just love history.

These letters to the editor show up in Trout Unlimited's magazine every so often: "I have always been a bit uncomfortable with some of the 'tree hugging' stances TU has taken on issues.I have been a conservationist and fisherman my whole life." Right away we know he's a conservative unable to reconcile his values with his ideology. He cannot be associated with the word "environmentalist' because those are wacky tree huggers who want to preserve things, conservationists are hook and bullet Teddy Roosevelt types strictly interested in what nature can do for them. He goes on: "The organizations apparent embrace of the Pew Center's findings on global warming is over the edge. There are a sizable number of us who believe the "global warming " issue is nothing more than a shakedown. It's proponents are charlatans whose motives are cynically financial as well as socialist." A typical brainwashed wing-nut who's cognitave dissonance does not allow him to see that it is IN FACT his own motives that are "financial". ( he believes regulations to restrict carbon will hurt his precious free market capitalist economy) He then threatens to cancel his subscription unless TU ceases it's "embrace of these leftists." I was a local chapter president for a while and had to deal with these same idiots. They worked for or were shareholders in or payed homage to the very corporate extractors that were poisoning the water or destroying the watershed which supported the fisheries they claimed to love but could never make that connection. Minds poisoned by right wing propoganda, they incoherently blamed the government or leftists for their inability to have their cake and eat it to. Socialists love trout. TU needs to forthrightly acknowledge the connection between unrestricted capitalist development and environmental degradation and tell these non-conserving "conservationists" not to let the door hit them in the ass on their way out.

While we are on the subject, we find out this morning the Christian Taliban has suceeded in scuttling Bush's Supreme court nominee, " demanding" one who's anti-choice position is intractable and clearly stated. But not an "activist judge"... Even Kurt Vonnegut couldn't make this stuff up. Perhaps Tom Robbins.

Dr. Bill

Bill Moyers writes eloquently about the value charity can have to a society. Addressing a group of wealthy philanthropists he points out the danger to our democracy caused by great disparities in wealth and while promoting ways to alleviate the danger, fails to carry the analyisis to the structural causes of such inequality. Liberals ,even great liberals like Moyers, know the danger of that abyss and prefer to walk the brink, trying to remedy symtoms but not touching the disease.

Meanwhile Mt. Representative Dennis Rehberg (R) is calling for a citizens militia to help patrol our nations porous northern border. Courting the camo crowd ( a vast constituency here) he proposes platoons of deputized good-old -boys as a first defense against those socialist, beer swilling Canuks. Old Denny recognizes threats to The Homeland when he sees them. If a guy was lucky he could get a moose tag for up there and fill the freezer while he's looking for terrorists, or Mexicans, or whatever.

I made it over to a beautiful Idaho river for a couple of glorious days of steelheading. I do not have the skills to describe the quality of the light as it crept down the steep mountain to the banks of the mist shrouded river. The steelhead manicotti last night was not bad either.

A right leaning Polish Catholic is the newest member of European politicians willing to sign the devils pact with that very brand of nationalistic traditionalism that helped pile up a mountain of corpses in the last,rather grisly century.

And lastly, goodbye Rosa Parks. While it is still a white-mans world there are deep rumblings from the Southern Hemisphere and you inspired more folks with your courage and dignity than you could ever know.

I Even Amaze Myself

Code Pink, effervescent activists that they are, have a great plan. Organize the masses to head for Havana on New Years in open defiance of the ridiculous travel ban imposed by this administration of No-Fun People. Drinking rum and dancing the night away in solidarity with our Cuban comrades sounded like such a great idea that I knew I had heard it before and lo, checking my blog archives I find my very own suggestion for a Great American Boat Lift back in May. I know, if only I were in charge of the entire planet...

While we are on the subject of the Bush Regime, what a flaming ball of shit. I don't want to get my hopes up to high but who could have guessed they could self-destruct in such grandoise fashion? Republicans might want to get rid of the Nixon Guide to Covert Governance. Dems neednt gloat to long, this is all cyclical.

I occasionally succumb to the urge for snarkiness ( such as here) and interject a comment or two over at neo-neocons group masturbation seminars. One such jerker sends me this little reply: "Better dead than red, boy" The "boy" part has a nice Deliverance-like touch to it. Thats the level of discourse in general, love it or leave it, my country right or wrong, marriage = one woman+ one man, etc.. They find pacifists almost as pathetic as commies.

Ill leave you with this, again, from Hobsbawm: "Both traditionalism and socialism concurred in detecting the empty moral space at the center of triumphant economic-and political-capitalist liberalism, as it destroyed all bonds between individuals except those based on Adam Smith's ' propensity to barter' and to pursue their personal satisfactions and interests." As a moral system.., a way of recognizing what and how much 'development' and 'progress' destroyed, the pre- or non-capitalist ideologies and value -systems were often superior to the beliefs that gunboats, merchants, missionaries and colonial administrators brought with them."

Angel of History

German Jewish Marxist Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) describing Paul Klees picture Angelus Novus : "His face is turned towards the past. Where we see a chain of events before us, he sees a single catastrohe which keeps piling wreckage upon ruin until they reach his feet. If only he could stay to wake the dead and to piece together the fragments of what has been broken! But a storm blows from the direction of Paradise, cathing his wings with such force that the Angel can no longer close them." The storm driving him into the future is what we call progress and while Benjamin died too soon it is merciful he did not see the second World War. We need to make some progress.

I was thinking about the Blues, if anyone still listens to the great Chicago players like Blind Willie Horton, Otis Spann, Big Mama Thorton . The delta players like Howlin Wolf and John Lee Hooker had more lasting power after B.B.King it's a dwindling genre.

Contra- dictions

Back to Missoula. I can just let go of the reins and my old horse knows the way. Joined an impressive crowd (job well done, organizers) to see a slide show with narration on the effects of US policy in Nicaragua, not a pretty picture as you might imagine. Unless of course you are one of those un-repentant Reagan worshippers who still feels that blowing the limbs off of young children was a price you were willing to pay to stop the Evil Empire. May he rot in Hell.

Wife Maybe, Dog Never

Bush has brought in the Texas supremes to defend poor, harried, Harriet. The Chief Justice assures us she has "common sense" ( code for : would make a good farmer) and that" he would trust her with his wife and with his life." Now imagine what unintelligent Texans would say. You couldnt make this stuff up.

Planetary motto for the last century: Kill Your Children. Head over to neo-neocon.blogspot to see conservative warriors lash out at the concept of pacifism, Spartans standing atop the mountain of corpses and feeling all tingly inside. Im a bit jealous of the crowd she can draw but frightened as well, it's like standing inside the Roman Coliseum.

Gov.Haley Barber is trying to console his Christian base that re-building the ex-floating casinos on land is a good thing. They are "the backbone" of the Gulfcoast economy and bring his state 360 million in tax revenue. Wellll.. since you put it like that...

David Sirota writes in a long article that the "left" is stricken by Partisan War Syndrome ( on which I agree) yet in the thousand word essay on ideological shortcomings and cowardice he never once mentions the word CAPITALISM. C'mon Comrade!
Thanks to John for the tech help, assuming this link works.

High Hopes

A couple more perp-walk prospects I somehow missed, Scooter Libby and Wyomings Favorite Son, Dick Cheney. Won't count my chickens just yet but it may be that all that prison building can be put to good use. Will the guys in the exercise yard really call him "Scooter"?

In the Cruise Missile/ Check Book dept. we have Zia Mian, a Pakistani physicist in an article for Foriegn Policy in Focus ( a good" tank") informing us that Pres. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a joint statement in July to the effect that the two leaders resolve to "transform the relationship between their countries and establish a global partnership to promote stability, democracy, prosperity and peace throuout the world." They also have some Florida realestate they would like to sell you. As a bulwarl against Chinese power and as an open market for cheap labor and resources and not -so- cheap-finance ,India will be recieving "help" with "command and control, early warning and missile defense." Major power or client state, you decide. Remember Wolfowitz and Cheney have made it clear that "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival."

Do You Speak English ?

Watching Christopher Hitchens mumble into his sweater something about Valerie Plame not being a CIA operative on Hardball this morning was both embarrassing and difficult to watch, not to mention understand. It's like listening to Kieth Richards. I know it's the Queens English but what the hell...

Followed by Condi's assurances that the result of the referendum didnt matter as much as the purple fingers and "process". Not a word from the Secretary about the trip to to all the "stans" (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, etc..) she just got back from to check on all that democratization supposedly going down out there. She laid out the long theme of Iraq being the front line on the War On Terror but seemed particularly unenthusiastic until she started in on some vague blather about Karirri and Syria and some sort of tough action. God help us. Followed by some "thinker" or perhaps "tanker" ( no,thats the SS CondiRice) from the American Enterprise Institute who showed Ben Wattenburg the huge tatoo of Ayn Rand he had on his torso. All in all an informative morning.

Perp-walk Party

If Rove goes down ,huge party at my house, everyone invited. Frist and Delay can share the cell next to Rove and Abrahmoff, in fact they can occupy a whole cell block if they throw in Ken Lay, David Safavian and my wish list favorite ,RNC chairman and former governor of Montana Marc (the Snake Racicot). Who am I forgetting?

Saw a documentary last night ( I might as well get an apartment in Missoula) on the deep divisions and distrust in the community of Kalispell Mt. over what are primarily economic issues but contain and imply social and cultural fractures as well. This volatile brew is stirred by a demagogic disk jockey with a flair for the spectacular. Environmental activists are labled "green nazis" or "commies" intrechangeably, demonstrating the high level of political knowledge and discourse. The moral of the film is we can't let communities devolve into violent bickering and mediators and conflict resolution experts are brought in to defuse the situation. As though dealing with third graders, they have to tell the citizens to put their politics aside and hold hands. Screw that, is my opinion, my politics are who I am and if these people can't debate without throwing rocks or burning green swaztikas they should go back to second grade.

Unfortunately, no one makes the connection between the effects of predatory capitalism and the demolished state of our democracy and civic process. The timber corporations came forty years ago to rape and pillage and reap huge profits leaving denuded landscapes.I have first hand knowledge because I worked as a logger during these times. They avoided these "external costs", such as environmental damage and a labor force trained for only one industry and headed for "new pastures" like South America or Asia. This is known as "creative destruction" and we need only look at the "rust belt" of the American heartland or the abandoned textile mills of the northeast and south for easy examples of this cut and run strategy to maintain shareholder profits. Because capitalism encourages "weak citizens", the anger of the citizens who have been chumped by this process cannot be channeled through democratic processes into solutions but instead explodes into violence and hate, directed not at the corporations but at fellow members of the working class. A terrible logic indeed.

Back to Missoula on Saturday for a conference on Economic Justice put on by the Human Rights Network. ( now you see why Im so smart) Actually it's a chance for me to do some organizing and I did meet some fellow travellers and some with potential. We learned about the huge disparities in wealth in this country and the social effects but the best we could come up with policy-wise was an initiative to raise the minimum wage by a buck to six fifteen. Bill Gates makes that each time he farts but for a single mom flipping burgers it could make a difference and it's an opportunity to agitate. Hopefully next time we talk about the disparities in wealth globally. Robin Blackburn in the the New Left Review (34) calls for a reexamination of the "share levy" proposed by the brilliant Swedish economist Rudolf Meidner, a tax on wealthy shareholders to create a "wage earners fund". Like the Tobin tax or socially responsible labor pension funds (William Greider),these proposals tinker with "grey capitalism" and I support them as means to an eventual socialist end.

Hands Off Latin America

In "Minimizing Mischief in Venezuela, Stabilizing the US Oil Supply " authors Steve Johnson and Ariel Cohen ( friends of Richard Perle's perhaps?) tell us that "Chavez derives popular support from fellow ideologues (troutsky) and a SMALL but committed segment of Venezuelas largely poor population". The Heritage Foundation website encourages the United States to "help direct" Venezuela back towards democracy.

Sometimes put thusly:"the maintenence and defence of an economically open international system conducive for capital penetration and circulation coupled with a concomitant global geo-strategy of containing forces inimical to capitalism."

Henry Luce said it like this: "to accept wholeheartedly our DUTY and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit."

So into Latin America stepped the World Bank with it's neo-liberal economic policies, the so -called Washington Consensus, and out went economic growth for the region. Since restrictions on international investment flows were abolished ( mostly in early 80s, IMF policy known as "structural adjustment") 178 billion of state owned industries were privatized ( this is what they are attempting in Iraq) , higher interest rates (19.5% in Brazil compared to 3.75% in US) and tighter fiscal policies were imposed ( decreased spending on social programs etc.) resulting in total failure. Under a mountain of World Bank debt the growth in GDP in Brazil has been just 3% for 2000-04 and this is leading to rejection of these neo-imperialist schemes and the rise of popular social movements in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador , Uruguay, Venezuela and hopefully Bolivia and Mexico. None of this , of course is in the mainstream news, especially not the US led war in Columbia. Learn more about it. They need our support.

Thanks to Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research for data.

Prescience

"Once the running of the state involves a permanent and massive shortage of historical knowledge, that state can no longer be led strategically." I cannot imagine a more apt description of the situation the US now finds itself in. If conservatives and especially these neo-cons are anything, it is anti-historians. By believing their own re-written version they have doomed themselves to repeating every single mistake. And doomed us to the fall out and blowback.

These charges of "crony capitalism" suggest it could possibly be some other way. Explain.

El Baradei and the AIEI won the Nobel. Why would the Bush administration have tried so hard to have him removed? Condi wanted that prize so bad, she was clearing a space on her mantel when old Arafat finally died, but no go. Today she is in Uzbekistan to try to clear up a little misunderstanding over a military base for US operations, some promised funding and some not so democratic behavior on the part of the new war-lord, er, I mean president there. And how about that "violet revolution" in neighboring Kyrgyzstan the neo-cons were crowing about? Remember how we were spreading democracy around the planet? With everybody being indicted and cronies being hired and fired and all it got lost in the news cycle. Or so it would seem.

Where else can we go on the anti-historical learning curve tour? I know, how about this budding democracy in Iraq, all the props are in place, a constitution hopefully written with quill pens just waiting to be voted upon, little ballots all printed up with a yea or a nay, little boxes to put the little ballots in. Old Tommy Jefferson would be proud, don't you think?

US War in Columbia

With the worlds attention focused on the US Crusade in the Middle East it is easy to forget it's Imperial reach extends way down into Latin America. Using both "extra economic "power (the bankrolling of the Columbian military and it's right -wing paramilitary proxies) and the strong arm of the World Bank and IMF, America attempts to fulfill it's hegemonic ambitions which include securing energy resources and stifling the growing workers and peasant social movements.

Lots can be learned this Wed. night (Oct.12) at 7 PM in the North Urey Underground lecture hall at the University of Montana here in Missoula. We are fortunate to have in our community activists willing to travel to these areas of conflict and witness first hand the conditions and learn the issues from the people directly affected by US involvement.

While the US uses "democratization" as an excuse to dominate the oil fields of Iraq it subversively does everything in it's power to crush the growing democratic movements to the South. While decrying tyrants and dictators it is unable to control, America has consistently installed and supported the most brutal regimes in Latin America under the rubric of "anti-communism". Im sure you know all this, it's in the papers and textbooks. NOT.

Solidarity

In my local organizational efforts and agitation I often find common cause with some intelligent and dedicated anarchists and syndicalists. Despite some theoretical issues and historical disputes it seems obvious to me we share this struggle and should be able to work through sectarian squabbles. What we have in common far outweighs the differences and our ability to work towards consensus on matters of structure or tactics, combined with patience and endurance, will help us replace capitalism with an economic system that better reflects the evolution of scientific thought in the last century. Wobblies,Communists, Social-Democrats, Maoists, whatever,if able to bury the dogmatic shrillness, have plenty to contribute to this exciting movement and the syntheseis will be stronger for their involvement in the process.

Hobsbawm on the movement of the thirties: ..."the most immediately dangerous (to the Right) of these DEMOCRATIC mass movements ,the socialist labour movements, were actually, both in theory and in practice, as passionately committed to the values of reason, SCIENCE, progress, education and individual freedom as anyone. The German Social Democratic Party's May Day medal showed Karl Marx on one side , the Statue of Liberty on the other . The challenge was to the ECONOMY, not to the constitutional government and civility."

Not that I advocate some utopian liberalism based on a metaphysical ideal but strategically it is wise to open many fronts in this embryonic moment of the struggle.

Inured to Death

In his book, Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm suggests that the human race may become more comfortable with slaughter through repeated exposure. He postulates that "Perhaps ten million dead (in WWI) hit those who had never expected such sacrifice more brutally than fifty four million (WWII) hit those who had already once experienced war as massacre." Tom Brokaw called it the "Greatest Generation" but if it takes a bloodbath like that to consecrate a generation with greatness I hope my generation accepts a more modest descriptive title. we are building up our own little mound of corpses but the twentieth century created an Everest.

Ticky Tacky

Anyone old enough to remember the clever little 70s song about houses in the suburbs? "and theyre all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same". In a previous post I whined about conformity in regards to new vehicles around here and I perhaps overstated when I said they were "all" white trucks. There are actually lots and lots of subaru outbacks as well. This is an overwhelmingly conservative, republican voting area therefore conservatives are conformists and Ill stand by that. Debord saw it as part of "the colonization of everyday life , the submission of human socialability to the deadly solicitations (the lifeless bright SAMENESS) of the market."

Fortunately there are a few renegades. Up at the trailhead parking lot sat an old Nissan whose bumpersticker read "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people". Next to it a car adorned with "NO more Years ,Impeach Bush and Honor our Dead, Demand the Truth". And then a Subaru, but a very old, pre-outback model with Remove the Dam, Restore the River. And there sat my very own well worn Ford Escort shouting out "Support the troops, bring them home, Save Clean Water, and Fire (Conrad) Burns." Therefore Progressives are hikers and Ill try to stand by that as well.