Written by: Beck

Clinton's intro music? "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow." What do you know, I still hate that song.

Bill's first point? Bringing up the 2000 recount. I hadn't anticipated that being such a major talking point. The "every point counts" theme cuts both ways folks.

OH GOD. HE JUST COMPARED JOHN KERRY TO JOHN ADAMS AND JOHN KENNEDY. Sorry, I just puked a little in my mouth. Gotta go get a drink.

Update: Billy wants to live in a world where we can, "Celebrate our religious, our ethnic, our racial, our tribal differences." It has something to do with "our humanity," but the logic fails me. Mostly I wanted to point out that Bill Clinton is talking about "tribal" differences. Does this guy even live on the same planet that I do, let alone in the same country?

Update: Evidently Republicans believe in concentrating wealth and power in the hands of... sorry, I lost track. Just fill in politically correct words at random.

Update: Clinton's making the most direct attacks on the Bush administration, though he's maintained the DNC embargo on actual use of the words "George" and "Bush." I guess since Clinton's currently the most popular Democrat alive, they want to use him as the attack dog, as he's the most able to get away with it.

"When I was in office, you might recall, occasionally, the Republicans were kind of mean to me."

Clinton as victim in chief apologizes for being rich & receiving a tax cut.

Update: It's official. Tax cuts are bad. One should be ashamed of being robbed less.

Clinton took a dig at the expiring assault weapon ban. "We're taking police officers off the street and putting assault rifles back on them." There's some brown stuff coming out of Clinton's ears, but I'm not quite sure what it is.

Update: I really want someone to fact check Clinton's ass on these deficit numbers he's tossing around now. $5 trillion projected deficit? I call bull shit. Those sound like numbers/estimates left over from the bottom of the post-9/11 bust.

Random thought: Both of the Clintons are doing a significantly good job that it somewhat puts the lie to the thought that they want to sink Kerry's campaign so that Hillary can run for president in 2008.

Update: Some advice: watch the coverage on PBS. There are fewer random annoying audience applause shots and the sound & image quality seems to be better. Plus, the between-speech commentary is much better.

Now Clinton has the crowd repeating his hook-lines along with him. Hell of a speech. Not that he's exactly facing a hostile crowd, but he does have them eating out of the palm of his hand. That, and he's been rambling about Vietnam for about five minutes. All of a sudden, it would seem the Dems are huge fans of the Vietnam war. I wish they could make up their minds. I don't guess they were ever too happy that a Democrat started the Vietnam war, another escalated it, but a Republican ended it.

OK, PBS's feed dropped in the middle of Clinton speaking. Maybe it's not quite the best channel to watch. That's publicly funded, well, anything, for you.

Update: Clinton's one hat tip to religion: "Remember what the scriptures say, 'Be not afraid.'" I mean, come on, if you're going to quote scripture, at least pick something more than a three word phrase which could be applied to virtually any situation.

Clinton's talking about the Civil War now and how Americans chose to fight to "form a more perfect union." He fails to mention that it was a Republican president who ended slavery.

The boat captain metaphors are getting old. And Clinton just saluted the crowd. I'm glad this thing is (presumably) almost over, as I'm not sure I have the intestinal fortitude to handle much more.

Update: David Brooks, the conservative commentator for PBS, has nothing substantively bad to say about Clinton's speech. The consensus: he looked younger and sharper than he has since 1992. Another good point: Clinton delivered the "prosecutorial" speech normally associated with the Vice President's speech. Edwards is such the nice-guy, however, that they've handed off the responsibility to Clinton.