Thanks for the compliment. :]
I watched alot of it on Tuesday and on and off tonight (Thursday) and I've watched more FOX News in the last four days than I have in my whole life. I watched most of it on c-span, but I liked switching between FOX and MSNBC to hear the blatantly partisan difference.
For me, overall, it was a very inspirational convention. It was very well designed to that end. There were quite a few great speeches and they were well spaced for maximum effect.
The highlights for me were Barak Obama (the American dream), Teresa Heinz-Kerry (the World view), Wesley Clark (diplomacy backed my military) and John Kerry (reporting for duty).
They kept panning to the croud, though, reminding me of why I'm not a Democrat.
I'm glad that Kerry made strong statements about the war on terror and how he will wage it differently. I like the respected abroad rhetoric. I would like the word trust to have been mentioned more, but hey, I screw that up alot, too. The veterens benefits and the families taking up collections for the armoured plating got me pretty fired up.
Alot of the domestic stuff, though, made me smirk. Affordable health care... ok, thanks for nothin'. Cutting middle class taxes... I'll believe it when I see it.
He made fair focus on new technologies and the research and development of these technologies, but he barely mentioned education.
I got what I was looking for, though. I was looking for him to say that he will not be a pussy, that he will buck the UN if he must, but the main goal is to earn trust and cooperation in the war on terror.
I think that his zingers against Bush were mostly bullshit (other than the veterans benefits zinger which I fully applauded). Throughout the convention, speakers were implying if not stating that he lied to get us to invade Iraq. That pissed me off. I guess that they were speakng to the Democratic base, but up here in the thumb we were listening and getting irritated.
I'm torn about the way they kept beefing up his service. I do think that it matters a great deal that he's seen combat, but I think they over sold it. I guess it works with the soundbyte media of today, though.
It was interesting to watch some of the speeches for previous years, both Democrat and Republican on c-span2. A common thread since 1980 (Reagan) was the idea of making our country less dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Will we ever hold our leaders to that?
