Notes on the Democratic Convention:

Opening day in Boston for the democrats went exactly as planned.

Al Gore was the first major speaker, reminding the faithful they were robbed of the presidency in 2000, a fact that honest people no longer dispute. The rest do to cover the greatest political theft in American history. He was self-deprecating, humorous, and more restrained then he has been over the past year, during which he gave several incendiary speeches crucifying The Shrub and his criminal cabinet for their behavior over the Iraq war.

He was followed by former president Jimmy Carter, a man known more for his activities since leaving the White House than for his achievements while occupying it. 80 years old and still soft spoken, he squinted into the lights, smiled, and dropped the hammer on the president's foreign policy. Words like "extremism" slipped over his lips with ease in his gentle southern accent as he laid out the point by point indictment against the war in Iraq and its wider implications. He lauded Senator Kerry for his service in Vietnam, going as far as to say that when called, at least Kerry reported for duty.

The audience for Carter was fairly quiet, possibly due to the oddity of the "aw shucks," smiling Carter using such hard language in a speech.

He was later followed by Hillary Clinton, a woman much loved or hated in this country, and there is no in between. Many of the party faithful wish she would run for president and it may be possible that in the future she will. I'd put a hefty wager against it, given the experience she had the first time around. She spoke of 9/11, primarily, then whipped the hall into a frenzy introducing her husband, the former president, Bill Clinton.

Arguably the greatest political speaker of the modern age, Clinton's arrival on stage was greeted with both a standing ovation and a deafening roar. Understanding his role as the one to lay out the sharp policy differences between Kerry and Shrub, he cut the ovation short, and got on with his speech.

Half scripted, half extemporaneous (as most Clinton speeches are), the acknowledged leader of the current Democratic Party spoke easily of the goals of the Republicans and his own party. As always, he managed to make specific points of policy sound like everyday conversation, a skill no other politician possesses, and an eerie one to witness. He divided his speech into several parts, each one coming together around a repeated phrase, in the best tradition of an old time southern minister. He even made reference to his own lack of military service, and that of Shrub's, in order to highlight the extraordinary fact of Kerry's own service, that of a two time volunteer from a privileged background. The contrast could not be sharper.

Clinton closed his speech exhorting the crowd, and those watching on television, to send Kerry to the White House. For a man whose disastrous personal life became a matter of public untruthfulness, he has an awesome facility to speak it in public, in a manner no other politician in the post war era has demonstrated.

I'll be honest: I'm no fan of John Kerry. I will vote for him because the alternative is four more years of deepening American empire, based on fascist premises that sane people should reject. It is a sorry state of affairs when the motivation to vote for someone is actually a vote against another. Kerry was on the wrong side of this war until too late, and it will be the issue that nags him all the way through this campaign, as it should. I can only hope he exhibits more political courage in both the foreign and domestic spheres should he be elected president.

Moment Of Honesty Amidst The Hype:

Following a harrowing address by a Muslim woman who lost two members of her family on 9/11, a 16 year old kid got up with a violin and completely silenced the hall with a nuanced, mournful rendition of Amazing Grace.