A WHUPASS TIME WAS HAD BY ALL

You either watched it, or you didn't.  Anyone who reads this journal probably watched the last night of the convention, and saw John Kerry report for duty.  You saw Wesley Clark and Max Cleland, and all the ex-servicemen from the VN days, all of whom were quite impressive.  The night before you saw John Shalivashkili give what was for me an amazing speech.  I reference these particular people because they are military, or ex-military - because they, like John Kerry, know the horrors of war, they know the mistakes of war, they know when war is itself a mistake.  And they believe in this man as the right choice for president.  You saw his wonderful family (though I must say I have to wonder:  where is his first wife?  From last night's video, etc., she appears never to have existed.) What a fine bunch of young people in both Edwards' and Kerry's families, blended and nuclear.  Gives me great hope.

So, you watched it or you didn't, and you have your own thoughts and opinions and there are a blue ton of them out there in blogs, journals, all over all of the media, etc.  I watched the whole evening from the Third Edition in Rehoboth Beach, with a lot of rowdy Democrats, and had a fabulous time.  It was so much more fun than just the two of us here in our living room yelling and whooping and scaring the animals.  We, all of us in that restaurant/bar, thought the speech was fantastic.  He hit every note he needed to hit, was strong on military might, and strong on every liberal issue that's gone missing for the past three and a half years.  We were all high as kites at the end of the evening, and I don't just mean those who had spent most of their time at the bar.  It was a Convention contact high, I yell and hollered all the way home.  Here are some pictures from the evening, just to give you the flavor:

Mesmerized party-goers watching Kerry.  My sweet partner is the cute woman in a black tank in the foreground.

Well folks, that's yours truly on the far left (always) in this picture of our tableful of women cheering for something Kerry said, I forget which thing. Although it may look as if I have two heads, that's actually our friend Chris who was standing behind me for much of the speech. 

SRO at the bar TV for Kerry's acceptance speech.  There was another, and much wider screened, TV in the restaurant itself.

Here we are again, G on the far left this time (yes, her too), me beside her. Fifty pounds lighter, and I still can't lose the double chin.  Ah well, I notice Hillary has one too.  New friends from DC beside us.

I was commenting in Tank Gurl's journal, at length, when I realized I was saying stuff I wanted to say here.  So, here are some thoughts I've been having as I watched this convention all week:     I watched the whole convention on c-span, so there were never any talking heads to get in the way.  I have to confess I even love just watching people on the convention floor during the breaks.  What a widescreen picture of America it is: every race, gender, size, shape, class, age, every strange thing a person could put on their head and body, every version of the American flag in every imaginable form, everyone dancing to the music to the best of their ability, people bored out of their skulls, people as alive as they have ever been - just....people.  Americans, us, our delegates, our surrogates. I love them.  I love this country.  I want to be able to continue to love it.  I don't want to have to move to Costa Rica. I want this adminstration to be over.  Please get out there and work your tails off, register voters, go door to door, work for the campaign.  Let's have the biggest whupass party yet - in November.