Monday evening.

TWO PM

Okay, instead of the DC statehood thing, I went to the press tent, where after about twenty minutes waiting on line, we managed to get into the "temple precincts" where I found a wai fi hotspot and went around looking at the various suites. There are two floors here, the people inside the various rooms aren’t that friendly, excpet for the editor of the New York Observer, who let me use his plug to replenish my battery’s juice. The schedule for the convention itself today is housekeeping and speeches by presidents.

I lent a major paper my machine and they let me put in some more juice in it. The press tent is pretty large. It has two floors and pretty much every major news organization has a booth. The free food starts at three PM. It’s too late to go to the reception. Oh well, I’ll know what to do next time….

Three-Thirty PM

Right now I’m on the so-called "Boggers Boulevard, which is a bunch of chairs attached to electrical plugs. Unfortunately, the wai fi connection sucks and not everybody could get on. Error they say. The festivities officially begin with a children’s choir singing Woody Guthrie’s "This Land is Your Land," which doesn’t sound quite right when done by such a group. It sounds better by an old guy with a gravelly voice accompanying himself on a busted guitar. The floor begins to fill up less than half a dozen delegations are on the floor and someone is practicing gaveling in the convention, but it doesn’t seem to be actually doing anything worthwhile. The others on the blvd. are basically playing with their equipment and surfing the net. I’m going to try to find a better place to blog, there’s going to be someplace where I could get better reception.

The hall looks pretty much like one remembers from previous years, the podium is off to one side, there’s a giant TV screen in the back and a whole bunch of others behind the band and some other stuff I need a pair of binoculars to see. MTV’s cameraman photographed us for a bit and we had a conversation. The VIP press lounge is open, I think I’d better go get some grub.

A Quarter tow Six:

The big lounge is kind’a good. They had sausages and soda, and someone said beer was being served but I didn’t see any.

Six Thirty

Getting the wai fi working properly was impossible, so I went back to the Fleet center where I went to the press area neet the podium, and right now the CEO of the convention corporation is making a speech about how wonderful everything is. The Platform was passed without debate and so much for that long tradition: The platform fight. Those were brilliant battles over ideology. Now all there is is self-congratulation and the usual platitudes. The next guy is talking about education and how Kerry and Edwards know that affordable health care and educaion are good things and Bush and Cheney want everyone to be sick and ignorant.

The head of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the right of the Republican party’s mortal enemy, .speaks and is in fact terrible as a speaker. But she’s right in most of what she says, but that’s ‘cause I’m not Conservative. The delegates are here in full force and the seats are mostly full, although you can’t really be sure, because everyone’s waling around and only about half are sitting down.

The nice people at Verison just gave me a free ethernet cable. So I'm in the press center. Wai fi is like television forty years ago, you have to hunt everywhere for a good signel and then it goes away in a flash! Right now we're waiting for the four biggies to make their appearence, Gore, Carter and the two Clintons....they didn't invite me to the blogger breakfast this morning. So I didn't get to meet Howard Dean. Bummer. Some of the broadcast networks are starting their coverage of the convention so, the interested viewer will get a better view than I will to some extent.