Those of you who know me, know I speak glowingly of the state of Montana, and specifically the college town of Missoula. My friend Keith, also a Missoula fan, have decided to spend four days here in Missoula. The town of Missoula is surrounded by mountains, one of them Mt. Sentinel, hard against the University of Montana, has the distinguished
M mounted on it's hillside.
The Missoula M
A half hour hike takes you to the M itself
The view from Mt. Sentinel
A man I met on my hike, and when I first met him he was only in his black bikini underwear. I love that freedom comes with age.
This evening, I attended a talk by political writer
David Sirota at the local bookstore, Fact & Fiction. He spoke about the election of 2008, about how elections are simply one in a series in a movement that start locally. He also talked about how important it is for the voters of Montana, especially since their votes for senator carry so much more weight than most of the voters in the United States. And he spoke about how the voters of Montana need to take action and put pressure on their senior US Senator, Max Baucus, who is chairman of the Finance Committee in the US Senate. In addition, he spoke about the power "the uprising" that is happening throughout the United States, how it is about Us vs. Them and how the epicenter is right here in Montana. How is is that Montana, which gave a mere 38% of its vote to John Kerry in 2004 can be in play for the Democratic party. It's not Obama, but a sense that the voters of Montana are feeling no longer a part of the conservative movement, that it has left them behind. Lastly, he reiterated the fact that the progressive/Democratic movement can't rely on the fact that occasionally the conductor of the conservative movement (Bush) is faulty, but that if it continues to rely of incompetency, it is only a temporary derailment of the continued conservative, issues based movement. The progressive/Democratic needs to work on its own movement.
Phew!
