After driving more than 600 miles across Wyoming and much of Montana en route to a meeting at Glacier National Park next week, we arrived in Belgrade Montana (no rooms at the inns in Bozeman). I was greated by some vitriolic anti-liberal bumper stickers on a car in our hotel parking lot. One said, literally, “Democrats hope more troops die in Iraq.” I don’t necessarily agree with all democratic plans for troop withdrawal, but it’s hard to see how arguing to bring the troops home does anything except minimize troop fatalities. It is the Republican Party that wants more troops in Iraq, and wants them there longer. Another sticker complained about the failed war on poverty. Sadly, no war on poverty is being waged with the Republicans in power. The national poverty rate fell every year from 1993 to 2000, with a Democrat in the White House, and has increased every year since Bush took office. It is particularly galling when the opposition can only come up with slogans and trash talk that are totally inconsistent with reality, and then has the nerve to boastfully put them on bumper stickers.