Obama graces 70 people who each paid $38,500 with a whopping 10 minutes of his time before he bolts to another fundraiser.
Via SFGate:
For those 99 percenters without $38,500 for a ticket to President Obama’s Pacific Heights fundraiser Thursday, here’s what you missed: About 10 minutes of actual, live Obama speaking-to-the-group time.
That’s according to this missive just filed by pool reporter Amie Parnes, from The Hill — the lone journalist permitted in the room. (That we know of.) She was reporting from the fundraiser Thursday night at the swank Pac Heights home of novelist Robert Mailer Anderson and Nicola Miner, daughter of Oracle co-founder Robert Miner.
“Al Green had just finished singing “Let’s Stay Together” as pool was ushered in. About 70 guests were gathered around 2 very long rectangular tables, dressed in a burnt-orange color with matching roses. POTUS was introduced at 7:30 and spoke for a little more than 10 minutes.”
Ten minutes. Or $3,850 per minute of Obamaspeak. Surely he hung around to work the room after his, ahem, “speech.” Not to be too snarky — because we know how sensitive some in politically high places can be about snark — but the audience didn’t even get to hear the President sing.
No, Obama declined to reprise his “Let’s Stay Together” riff with The Reverend Al himself!
So instead, the audience got a stump speech. From the lightning quick, shorthand stenography of the pool report:
“We’ve gone through the toughest economy. . . since the great depression,” he said, adding “Things are still tough.”He said many people feel like “Their concept of the American dream feels like it’s slipping away from them.
“But, he added, “Three years from when I took office, America’s moving on the right track.” The economy is starting “to heal,” he said. He talked about how his administration has a larger purpose of rebuilding an economy that has a “firmer foundation.”
He talked about his efforts in health care law reform, education reform, ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, ending the war in Iraq, The success of GM and what POTUS calls “fair play.” Catering to some techies in the crowd he said the administration has put highest priority on technology and innovation.”
We’ve been busy these last 3 years,” he said.”I’m here to report to you that all that work that you did in 2008, it paid off.”
POTUS said “Change remains possible,” with persistence and hard work. “We’re gonna have to feel as determined . . . as we were in 2008.”He also quipped that it’s “not as new, it’s not as trendy, to be part of the Obama campaign” in 2012
And that was it.