Barbara Boxer: Lean, Mean & Green

I spent yesterday morning deep in the world of Silicon Valley cleantech in order to hear what Barbara Boxer, Chair of the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works had to say about green energy, Silicon Valley and the economy. The event began late, but it was interesting and Senator Boxer's candor was refreshing. (For hashtag lovers, I live tweeted it, but if you like details, please read on...)

White House Announces Council on Women and Girls

In a ceremony today at the White House, President Obama signed an executive order creating a Council on Women and Girls. Like the previous office in the Clinton administration, this council will operate out of the White House and have members of the Cabinet as participants.

The mission as outlined from the official statement on the Council is "to provide a coordinated federal response to the challenges confronted by women and girls." I like that the new commission attaches girls, a nod to the president's daughters and the next generation of women who will face new road blocks in the future. It shows a commitment to ongoing participation in the dialogue. As Kim Gandy, NOW President, noted, "the make-up of the White House Council is extraordinary," largely because of the president's commitment to appointing women to his Cabinet, de facto members of the Council.

Fem 2.0 Report and What it Means

Some of the MOMocrats are in Washington D.C. today for the Fem 2.0 conference. We've been speaking, blogging, and tweeting about the sessions. There are a wide range of topics being discussed, many of which can be seen on the Fem 2.0 site as well as on the Twitter stream (#fem2 hashtag). There's a lot of talk around women in media and how we're not represented enough, there are statistics about how mothers are paid less and fathers are paid more in the workplace, issues about how to define ourselves as women, feminists, mothers, professionals, activists, etc. and these are not easy questions to answer. However, we have some amazing people here presenting.

Email Our President: Yes, We Can.

As Sarah, fellow MOMocrat, pointed out, we've already gotten a glimpse into a specific change to our federal government: The website for the White House is alight with photos and information regarding our new executive, President (!!) Barack Obama, and his administration. 

Don't know about you, but I was moved to tears throughout yesterday; at one point, my three year old son, upon catching me wet-eyed for the umpteenth time, said, "Mom?  Are you gonna cry AGAIN??  Don't cry again, mom!  No more crying!  You should be happy!"  (I tried in vain every time to explain the body's urge to release overwhelming joy by means other than smiles wreathed on smiles, because our faces would break if that was all we could do, but he didn't buy it.)  (While I kind of do.  Because it really felt as if my face was on the verge of cracking wide open as I watched our new President, (!!) Barack Obama, give a speech that made the crowd of two million people standing in the blistering cold there in Washington dance and cry and shimmy, that made everyone around the world feel a sense of lightening, made us all meet the eye of the future with a bravery that -- we're in this together.  And my face wasn't up to the challenge, even if my spirit was, so I was grateful to be able to cry.  Yeah.  I'm a total girl.  Shut up.)

But getting back to the shiny, spankin'-new website devoted to our government's executive branch, I already have a favorite page:  the one where you can talk directly to our new President, (!!) Barack Obama.

(Okay, I'm also geeking over this jump-off page that itemizes all of the new administration's agenda, conveniently referred to as, uh, the Agenda.  Basically, the whole site is like a present.  Inauguration '09 really *was* Christmas yesterday.)

So, go.  Go talk directly to our current President, !!!!, because I have this crazy, gut feeling he's actually interested in hearing what we think.

Debbie takes out the bulk of her zany ideas on her personal blog, i obsess.  She also gives vent to her quasi-Pagan worship of timeworn-yet-beautiful things on her thrift blog, didyoubuythatnew.com.

New Whitehouse.gov is Live

At 12:01pm Eastern time, as promised, the whitehouse.gov domain flipped over and we received our first glimpse of what's to come over the next four years. Take a look!

Whitehouse.gov did actually receive a facelift near the end of the Bush administration; no longer was the blog neglected and the site flat. Although it had held videos and audio feeds for a while, finally it seemed like a website worthy of 2008. But when the switch was flipped to by the Obama administration, it took on a whole new look. Welcome to open source government and a new era of government engagement online.

Goals and features of the new site are outlined here by Macon Phillips, Director of New Media for the White House. Core themes: communication, transparency and participation. So far, the site contains largely static content, aside from the blog, but we look forward to the coming days and weeks where they launch new participatory initiatives.

Congratulations to tech President Barack Obama.

Cross posted from the Personal Democracy Forum and techPresident.com.

In DC for Inauguration? Join MOMocrats There!

For the Presidential Inauguration festivities, MOMocrats will be in Washington to observe and attend various events including the EMILY's List Luncheon, the Netroots Nation YES WE CAN party, the Inauguration Ceremony, and other inaugural balls and parties.  We would love for you to join us online and at the events.  Here's some of the information...

Rachel Maddow calls Sarah Palin a "liar" because she is one

This is Maddow gold, I tell you.

New iPhone Obama '08 Application

I couldn't have been more geeked to receive a tweet via text to my iPhone yesterday morning from 'BarackObama' announcing the launch of the campaign's official iPhone application, 'Obama '08'. Thanks to the Twitter-SMS combo, five minutes later, I had downloaded the app and begun using it. I was able to read the latest campaign press releases, connect directly to the latest TV ads, access issue statements, and find the MOMocrats' Silicon Valley VP debate watch party (which was, I might add, a huge success).

Cool gizmo, yes, but the iPhone app is also a serious tool. If I'm in a meeting and someone brings up Obama's plan on a particular topic, now instead of having to go to the web site and spend a significant amount of time waiting for pages to load while poking around to find the right statement, I can just go on my phone and read the appropriate plan. It takes under a second to load and then it's almost as quick to e-mail it out to others. Most notably, the application has a 'Call Friends' feature that splits contacts by area code and marks when they have been called from the app. Enter anyone into the iPhone contacts and they will become part of the application.

Take A Moment and Consider Why We're Doing This

I just want to take my hat off to all of the moms out there who are getting involved in this campaign - from all parties - because it has become clearer to me over the past year how important it is to be involved, and how challenging it is to juggle everything when the stakes are high. No one will be putting off the election deadline if our kids get sick. Nobody'll step in and fill our shoes if something goes wrong at home. The things we commit to do for what we see as the greater good for our country and the world we do mostly on our own time.

Obviously I have my own reasons (that I outlined yesterday at SVMoms in a letter to my daughter) about why I'm putting in so much time and energy, but for those of us with young children who have to get childcare to do political organizing, stay up late at night after our kids go to bed in order to blog about the campaign or work with others online, it's not easy work. And for the moms who take their children with them to political events, get them involved in the process, and bring them to the polls, that's wonderful of you.

Palin In Comparison: Sorry... Not A Maverick

I'm not usually one to be critical of women running for office or in public office, because I've seen the statistics, I know how much criticism women put up with, and I understand the barriers to running for office as a woman (through trainings like Emerge and EMILY's List). It pains me really to write this, but one of the things I learned in these trainings is that sometimes "going negative" is necessary when it's an effort to educate the public about information they should be aware of in order to make an informed decision about voting.  The purpose of this post is to inform people about the campaign strategies that are being attempted by the Republicans in this particular case.  That's it.  Disclaimer done.

First off, it's not like Sarah Palin is the first woman to be considered for VP or on a VP ticket.  She's not the first woman mayor or the first woman governor or the first woman to have five kids and serve in office (see: Nancy Pelosi).  Other people can call her an opportunist or an anti-feminist or a bad mother or whatever.  I don't feel like doing that because every situation is unique.  I do, however, feel like taking on this angle that she's somehow a 'maverick.'

Joe Trippi wrote an interesting piece yesterday that got the MOMocrats thinking about this strategy of McCain's and Trippi's probably right about this too.  He says the Republican "assault will be on what is now a strength of Barack Obama’s — his focus on changing a broken system in Washington," i.e. McCain will try to prove he and Palin are more ready to make change in our nation than Obama and Biden.  Somehow, McCain and Palin, whose records show that they vote well in line with Bush/Cheney are being painted as change candidates, when the real change is right in front of us with Barack Obama, whose platform is almost entirely about change.