welcome, and really have the pleasure first to introduce to you, managing director of greenstart, mitch lowe, to say a few words. mitch? [applause] >> all right. hello, thank you. welcome. it's an exciting day for greenstart. it's an exciting day for the companies that are in our program, and it's an exciting day for san francisco. we're super pumped to finally formally introduce greenstart to the world. so thank you for being here. thank you, mayor lee, for being here. we have mentors here. we have our interior designer, one of our interior designers, kimberly ryder, who put this space together in less than seven weeks, which is really astounding. thank you all. there's a lot of people here who have been super supportive and are here to help. we started greenstart because we believe that reducing the use of fossil fuels is the defining problem of our generation. and the answer is innovation. we need to innovate around expanding the use of clean energy. we need to innovate around energy efficiency and where does that innovation come from? over the last hundred years, especially in san franci

low bar like that, you know there's a problem. but where is chris christie? where is jeb bush? where's mitch daniels? these republicans that have money and name recognition. if obama is such a bad guy and easy to beat and he's a communist they've been calling him for years, you'd think all the good candidates would be jumping at this thing because it would be easy to unseat president obama. don't you find it interesting? i do. they've spent so much time hating this man, they haven't come up with a real solid candidate that has conviction of his or her principles. they're always waffling, aren't they? let's bring in "huffington post" political reporter sam stein and joan walsh. always a pleasure to have you with us. just -- where's all the beef so to speak? joan, why is it that there are so many, i guess you could say good republicans in the eyes of republicans that did not jump into this? here we are a week out and they still haven't decided no one can point their finger on who's going to be the winner in iowa or the winner of the nomination. what do you think? >> well, i just think you're right. thi

i sort of was hoping mitch daniels would run, the governor of indiana, because he also is that sort of person. just a good manager, lowob done. and, frankly, as i look around the country, i see a lot of mayors and governors who are just like that who they're not big ideological people, they just like to get the job done. i think rahm emanuel in chicago's doing a good job, mayorville rosa in los angeles, a whole series of officials doing good government. >> host: so how is the president doing? >> guest: you know, i think i'm a little disappointed that he didn't do simpson-bowles, i was a little disappointed in the way the debt has run up, and i don't blame him for running up the debt in the recession, but i think we needed an exit strategy to get out of it. i think he could have done a little more to promote growth, though i think given all the bad things it was going to be tough no matter who was president, no matter who did anything. it was going to be tough to promote growth. so i don't particularly blame him for that. i think he's conducted himself in pretty much an honest way. he's had very little corruption. i st