Tag Archives: Susan Rice

non-state of the union, semi liveblog

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You know you’ve spent too much time doing nothing but write when you show up at a party of sorts – the Philadelphia Drinking Liberally, featuring cool folk like Duncan and Jeremy and Roxanne – and end up fading into the background. You know you’re hanging out with bloggers when you realize its been way too long since you posted, so you might as well liveblog a presidential speech.

I wake up to find that my publisher was just like those purple lines of joy we saw dancing at the bottom of the speech. I just posted her love letter here: go click on it, if only for the Jimmy Stewart film clip. Then read below, for my somewhat-snarky-almost-grateful musings.

The group that was clustered at the bar is now all crowding into this conference/semi-banquet room, which was also cold until filled with bodies.

Frankly, it’s been a relief to hear someone reasonable at each press conference- but as I write this I hear that Obama is going to announce *here* that he’s not going to withdraw troops from Iraq as he’d promised. Ouch.

Keith and Rachel trying to figure things out as they go. We’ll see what we think by what’s actually said.

Lots of brass in the  house. Young men in dress uniforms and Purple Hearts, shyly greeting Jane Harman et al.

Jill Biden (god, she *is beautiful)  shaking one of their hands. Someone serving with Beau?

Kirsten Gillibeand looking incredibly short. Rache calling her “Senator from the Lollipop Guild.”

The Cabinet files through: Hilda Solis –  confirmed today! – grinning in the crowd. She and Susan Rice also in the short crowd 😉

This room erupts in applause when Ginzburg shows up – looking pretty healthy, surprisingly.

I personally love the Baltimore-born Italian San Francisco girl at the head of the room, gently clapping as her Prez shakes hands along the way.

To have the Supreme Court clapping for you: I can’t imagine how  that must feel.

Ohhhhh FUCK those lines, like in the debate. NOOOOOOOOOOES!

Peanut gallery (the bloggers): “si se puede!” when he says “We will rebuild.”

Professor Obama: “It is only by understanding how we got to this moment..”

For too many years we ignored crises in:

energy, healthcare

global economy

more debt than ever before

short-term over long-term

‘surplus became an oppty to transfer wealth to the wealthy,” thank you.

Pelosi looking tired/worried now

“begins with jobs,” gets applause. applauds stimpak, are Reeps applauding?

Kerry grins a little much, as if he’d been drinking. McCain absolutely has.

“A proven and effective Inspector General.” That guy, who looks like he’s just been told his wife is pregnant again?

9:20 update: Lecture re “if we don’t get lending restarted”

new lending fund – auto loans, student loans, etc

Won’t help speculators, will help others struggling w/declining home values……

When we learn a major bank has serious problems,we hold accountable, fix them. Is he talking receivership w.o talking recerivership?

Joe Lieberman sucks on a sour lemon.

“..private jet. Those days are over.” easy applaue line.

McCain voters happier than Obama voters? (from the lines….)

My job is to solve the problem. Thats what this is about. Not helping banks but helping people.  Trickle-down theory of bank fixes.

What exactly i this reform u speak of? I know, I know, this is a night for big concepts…..

Eric Cantor’s forced smile: what he been smoking?

Civil war railroads, public high schools, GI Bill – big government you can believe in?

Govt catalyzed private enterprise. Three areas: energy, healthcare, education.

Energy: Van Jones approach? Camera goes to Steven Chu when Obama mentions how much further along China is on this stuff.

Double supply of renewable energy, research, power lines. – clean energy! market-based cap on pollution..

re-tooled auto industry. “the nation that invented the auto cannot walk away from it.” how???

healthcare: The real issue here. Can’t afford to put healthcare reform on hold. Applauds S-CHIP. Now on to electronic health records, etc. Curing cancer. Where’s the word universal health care?

“quality healthcare for every American” = universal? Mandate, as Ezra says Obama finally accepts?

“Will not wait another week.” Better mean it.

Education: more charter schools. at least one yr of higher ed for every American. (Now? On top of what we have, or?)

by 2020 America will once again have highest proportion of college graduates in the world

If you’re volunteering or serving your country, we’ll make sure u get thry college

Hatch-Kennedy National Service Act?

“No substitute for a parent.” Lindsey Graham playing with his hair obviously needed one.

“The deficit e inherited” gets applause, but what now?

$2 trillion in savings over the next decade. Payments to large agribusiness, no-bid contracts in Iraq, cold war weapons systems we don’t use. Ending  tax breaks for corps that ship jobs overseas.

McConnell and Hoyer lean in as if they’re buds.

When he talks abt including both wars in the budget, both line go up and up.

The men in uniform, many with gray hair and tons of medeals, lean forward as people applaud. Then they applaud, too.

Obama does a coin pose.

expanded health care for vets.

Closing of Gitmo, “swift and certain justice.” But what of Bagram? Still, no-torture pledge is worth something.

Closing phrases. diplomacy, envoys, forge alliances, incl G-20 on trade etc.

Now the poster children: Leonard Abess, bank prez who gave  his bonus to employees, Greensberg, KS (new green town post-tornado), and Ty’Sheoma Bethea, girl from SC school who wrote to Congress. She smiles when he quotes her saying “We are not quitters.” This feels like that pre-election movie from October. Camera on Sully Sullenberger.

“We must show them we are equal to the task before us. ” Knows everyone loves this country and wants it to succeed. (really?)

“This was the time.” Reminiscent of South Carolina speech. Totally jazzed and relaxed at the same time.

now time to make the long, wearying trek back to  Nofeast Philly…..

The XX factor in Obama’s transition

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On my way to New York today, where I plan on seeing Jeffrey Renard Allen give a reading in my old ‘hood and cover tomorrow’s hearing for the Iraq vets that make up the Hempstead 15. But to wrap up the election thread for this week, here’s the news blog I wrote for WVFC, since I really do think that the presence of women in Obama’s team has the capacity to be quietly transformational. (For video for all of the women below, you have to click on my original post.)

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It’s been eight years since we has such a new slate of advisors to look at, and ponder what their role will be in the changes afoot. The women below come from a range of backgrounds, from corporate boardrooms (several on the Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women) to California classrooms and governor’s mansions.) It would be foolish to make generalizations about a government with so many representatives of The New Menopause in key positions.

But we can dream — that our concerns will certainly not be left behind, and that midlife’s particular mix of idealism, sense of humor, deep worry, and renewed energy can both add power to the new policies being developed and ensure that they’re grounded by real-world, physical realities.

More details later, but here’s an initial honor roll, with as much video as felt appropriate:

At the helm: One of the transition team’s three co-chairs is Chicago attorney Valerie Jarrett, 51, CEO of The Habitat Company (seen above(.  A Newsweek profile in May noted: “Jarrett got her start working for Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor. Her grandfather ran the Chicago Housing Authority in the 1940s. Obama has long turned to her for advice. When he wanted to run for the U.S. Senate, he first had to convince Michelle and Jarrett that it was a good idea. He’s been seeking her counsel ever since.”

Show him the money:  Speaking of the governor’s mansion, Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm, 49, (above with First Lady Michelle Obama) is a core member of  the newly-announced team of economic advisers. Granholm joins not just Warren Buffet but
Laura D’Andrea Tyson, dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley and former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors;  Anne Mulcahy, 57, Chairman and CEO, Xerox;
and Hyatt exec Penny Pritzker. 49.

    In the boardroom:

    Granholm, who was mentioned as a dark-horse vice-presidential candidate, is also on the transition team’s Advisory Board, which also includes Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, 51,  who was profiled by Newsmix in July as a veep prospect; Susan Rice (above), 43, Brookings Institution fellow and former assistant secretary of state for African Affairs; and former EPA chair Carol Browner (below), the longest-serving administrator in the
    history of the agency, staying through both terms of the Clinton
    presidency.

    The long arms of the law: Women helping power the transition’s legal team include  general counsel (and Harvard Law school classmate) Cassandra Butts, former senior vice president for domestic policy at the Center for American
    Progress and senior adviser to Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.);  Lisa Brown, the Executive Director of the American Constitution Society, and Melody Barnes, 43, of the Center for American Progress as co-directors of agency review; and Clinton adviser Christine A. Varney, 52, as counsel for personnel.

    That different voice: Get used to another face next to the familiar Obama spokespersons Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod:  Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, 40-year-old Stephanie Cutter (seen above dueling with Chris Matthews during the campaign). During the Clinton Administration, Cutter worked as deputy communications director in both the White House and U.S. EPA.

    We at WVFC now know we have to get busy deciding who on this list we should try to interview and profile. We’d welcome readers’ comments — both about who we should talk to, and what questions you want to ask them when we do!

    — Chris L.