Greetings from Netroots: Big Dawg turns on the five-alarm charm

President Bill Clinton firing up the Netroots crowd in Pittsburgh last night; litbrit's camera stops wobbling just long enough to capture the excitement.

We had to sit through a seemingly interminable series of opening acts--some of whom were more compelling than others--but our patience was rewarded when President Clinton took the stage and, after apologizing for the gruffness of his voice and blaming it on the extensive airplane travel he'd been doing lately, delivered a wonderful address, covering everything from health care reform to gay rights to the possibility of a long-term progressive reign.

Of course, Yours Truly is not a very patient girl, and if you make me wait (and wait and wait) for things I've been looking forward to, I am going to be forced to amuse myself by doing things like making origami animals out of the Very Serious Political Pamphlets people leave on tables, surely intended for purposes other than being turned into origami animals; traipsing back and forth to the well-stocked bar for, er, refreshments (Sir C, Stephen, and Nick Beaudrot are Jack Daniels guys, Minstrel Boy did the mature thing and stuck with ginger ale, and I represented my home state by drinking Cuba Libres with extra lime); rummaging through the bag of "goodies" we'd been handed at registration (at this convention, "goodies" = one t-shirt, an assortment of buttons, a couple of booklets I haven't yet read so I can't tell you what they're about, and a packet of non-GMO corn chips. Really, Netroots organizers--whither Cheetos?); and eventually, having fully assimilated the aforementioned refreshments, offering up the odd Cogitamus-style riposte to lines that, let's face it, ranged from stating-the-bleeding-obvious ("Reforming health care policy has been a long process, but we can't give up now!") to downright stupid. To wit:

Penultimate (or was it the seventh-to-last?) Speaker: "Bipartisanship still matters; now is not the time to turn our backs on the opposition."

Litbrit (allegro con molto brio): "YES IT IS!"

Guess whose line got the louder cheers in our quadrant of the auditorium?

Also at Cogitamus.