Blue Mass Group

well I have to say that the introductory video started out fantastic; hard to imagine a better into than michelle’s mom speaking her story.  I thought Obama cheesed it up and blew it with his ice cream story though.  Mom came back and jerked more tears, how much better was her mom than Barack ??  Holy molies what does this mean?

Missing tufts of hair from chemotherapy, voice cracking with emotion, minutes ago Ted Kennedy delivered a speech imbued with his indomitable spirit, unbowed and unbroken by his battle with cancer.

Kennedy appealed to a  belief in the unlimited potential of America, and saw that expansive potential in the person and candidacy of Barack Obama. He revived and updated his bittersweet adieu from 1980 —
“The dream will never die” — saying this year, “… The work begins anew, the hope rises again, and the dream lives on.” 

 His dearest issue — health care — took on a personal urgency in his speech tonight, as he held out the hope, the humane demand, for achieving health care for all. The fight against sickness is what makes us realize how precious life is. The crowd leaned in, as if yearning to hear every word twice, afraid to hear the last. Many — I mean many — were in tears. Many more were close. Ted Kennedy has seemed to so many as a dear friend — indeed as a fierce protector.

Thank you, Governor Patrick, for heading back to Massachusetts to be with the loved ones of Pfc. Paul Conlon tomorrow for the funeral of the young serviceman, recently killed while serving in Afghanistan.

Curious thing about the convention: It gathers more of the major Massachusetts Democrats in one place than just about any event in Massachusetts — including the Mass Dems convention. We ran into State Rep. and State Senate candidate Jamie Eldridge at the MA Dems breakfast this morning, and he was gracious enough to talk with us: I asked Jamie, You're 1,500 miles from your district. [I was wrong -- it's over 1,900.] What do you hope to get out of the convention this year? Jamie wants to bring back some of the excitement about Obama, a candidate who wants to end the war in Iraq, and who campaigns on economic justice and access to health care. He points out that activists are coming together here, and they're going to need to continue to pressure a President Obama on those issues. I asked Jamie, What's in it for us locally if Obama wins the presidency? Jamie expects more help from the federal government in paying for health care, commuter rail, education, and environmental protection. Jamie thinks there's a “direct connection” between these priorities being squeezed, and the $2 trillion war in Iraq. “That's one of the big reasons why I was [...]

I thought it would be fun to post quickie interviews of interesting people we run into here in Denver.  Here’s our first: Brianna Cayo Cotter, who happened to be sitting across from me inside the Big Tent.  She is with PowerVote.org, and blogs at ItsGettingHotInHere.org.  Enjoy.

As you can see, we do still have a Twitter feed posted on the right-hand sidebar.  However, we were experiencing technical difficulties with having three individuals feeds (one for each of us) in there.  So there is now one shared feed called “bluemassgroup” to which all of us are posting updates.  If you want to follow us on Twitter, that’s the best way to do it.

Today has been something of a comedy of errors, which I suppose is to be expected at an event like this — confusing emails about where to pick up the all-important credentials, and garbled cell-phone messages leading to the three of us standing around in a hotel lobby wondering why no one knew about the event we thought we were attending, which it turns out was in a different hotel (the critical difference is between “Crowne Plaza” and “Brown Palace”).  As a result, unfortunately, we missed Governor Patrick’s speech to an event about young voters sponsored by the Harvard Institute of Politics.  The Gov then hopped a plane back to Boston in order to be able to attend tomorrow’s funeral for Army PFC Paul E. Conlon, Jr.  If all goes well, he will be back in Denver in plenty of time for his speech tomorrow night from the Convention floor. Nonetheless, it’s very interesting to be here.  On our walk back from the Brown Palace hotel, we ran into what is apparently a moving protest.  We were told that they stake out a spot designed to disrupt downtown traffic as much as possible; the police arrive and move them along; [...]

Carol Thatcher, daughter of the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, reports that her mother has suffered from dementia for at least 7 years.

Carol Thatcher said the first sign of dementia appeared when her mother was about 75, when she confused the Falklands and Bosnian conflicts in a conversation over lunch.

“I nearly fell off my chair,” Carol Thatcher wrote, according to excerpts of the book which will be published next month. “Watching her struggle with her words and her memory, I couldn’t believe it. She was in her 75th year but I had always thought of her as ageless, timeless and 100 per cent cast-iron damage-proof.”

Greetings from Denver!  After a woefully-delayed flight from Boston that resulted in our getting quite a bit less sleep than was anticipated, we have finally gotten our act together.  We stopped by the tail-end of the MA delegation’s daily breakfast to chat with whoever would talk to us.  Fortunately for us, Lt. Gov. Tim Murray was on hand with a few minutes to spare, so we had the opportunity to ask him a few questions both about how the goings-on in Denver relate to our fair Commonwealth, and about the Patrick-Murray administration’s agenda for the next couple of years.  Video of the interview is below.

We are now comfortably ensconced in the Big Tent, a new media extravaganza that provides workspace and other necessities (beer, e.g.) for the duration of the convention.  Kudos to the excellent folks who have organized this thing, which is only a few blocks from the Pepsi Center and will be a very useful base of operations for us.

Here’s Lt. Gov. Murray.  We hope to have many more interviews as we go along.

Crossposted on DailyKos

It has been a surreal experience seeing John Kerry campaigning in Massachusetts to be re-elected to the United States Senate.  If you go to the Mass Dems for Kerry blog, you can check out video of him traveling around the state, meeting with voters, who are quite worried about the economy and fuel prices, and also really happy to see him.  I still get a twinge thinking how close Kerry got to the presidency, but during all his ups and downs since losing in 2004, he has worked harder than ever, perhaps even as a source of solace against his loss, as the junior Senator from Massachusetts.   This race has been largely a sleeper race since Sen-MA is considered a “safe seat”, with a 99% chance of John Kerry being re-elected according to Rasmussen.  Still, it was really nice to see that Al Gore had contributed to an ad, endorsing Kerry and his stellar record on the environment.