Full text of President-Elect Barack Obama’s weekly radio address for Nov. 29, 2008:

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Good morning.
Nearly 150 years ago, in one of the darkest years of our nation’s history, President Abraham Lincoln set aside the last Thursday in November as a day of Thanksgiving. America was split by Civil War. But Lincoln said in his first Thanksgiving decree that difficult times made it even more appropriate for our blessings to be – and I quote – “gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.”
This week, the American people came together with families and friends to carry on this distinctly American tradition. We gave thanks for loved ones and for our lasting pride in our communities and our country. We took comfort in good memories while looking forward to the promise of change.
But this Thanksgiving also takes place at a time of great trial for our people.
Across the country, there were empty seats at the table, as brave Americans continue to serve in harm’s way from the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq. We honor and give thanks for their sacrifice, and stand by the families who endure their absence with such dignity and resolve.
At home, we face an economic crisis of historic proportions. More and more Americans are worried about losing a job or making their mortgage payment. Workers are wondering if next month’s paycheck will pay next month’s bills. Retirees are watching their savings disappear, and students are struggling with the cost of tuition.
It’s going to take bold and immediate action to confront this crisis. That’s why I’m committed to forging a new beginning from the moment I take office as President of the United States. Earlier this week, I announced my economic team. This talented and dedicated group is already hard at work crafting an Economic Recovery Plan that will create or save 2.5 million new jobs, while making the investments we need to fuel long-term economic growth and stability.
But this Thanksgiving, we are reminded that the renewal of our economy won’t come from policies and plans alone – it will take the hard work, innovation, service, and strength of the American people.
I have seen this strength firsthand over many months – in workers who are ready to power new industries, and farmers and scientists who can tap new sources of energy; in teachers who stay late after school, and parents who put in that extra hour reading to their kids; in young Americans enlisting in a time of war, seniors who volunteer their time, and service programs that bring hope to the hopeless.
It is a testament to our national character that so many Americans took time out this Thanksgiving to help feed the hungry and care for the needy. On Wednesday, I visited a food bank at Saint Columbanus Parish in Chicago. There – as in so many communities across America – folks pitched in time and resources to give a lift to their neighbors in need. It is this spirit that binds us together as one American family – the belief that we rise and fall as one people; that we want that American Dream not just for ourselves, but for each other.
That’s the spirit we must summon as we make a new beginning for our nation. Times are tough. There are difficult months ahead. But we can renew our nation the same way that we have in the many years since Lincoln’s first Thanksgiving: by coming together to overcome adversity; by reaching for – and working for – new horizons of opportunity for all Americans.
So this weekend – with one heart, and one voice, the American people can give thanks that a new and brighter day is yet to come.

Obama brings the expat experience to the White House

John Quincy Adams lived in France, and young Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited Europe often enough to master French and German, but Barack Obama is the first modern American president to have spent some of his formative years outside the United States. It is a trait he shares with several appointees to the new administration: White House advisor Valerie Jarrett was a child in Tehran and London, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was raised in east Africa, India, Thailand, China and Japan as the son of a Ford Foundation executive, and National Security Advisor James L. Jones was raised in Paris. (Also, Bill Richardson, tipped as Secretary of Commerce, grew up in Mexico City.)

This is more than a trivial coincidence. So-called “Third Culture Kids” -- and the adults they become – share certain emotional and psychological traits that may exert great influence in the new administration. According to a body of sociological literature devoted to children who spend a portion of their developmental years outside their “passport country,” the classic profile of a “TCK” is someone with a global perspective who is socially adaptable and intellectually flexible. He or she is quick to think outside the box and can appreciate and reconcile different points of view. Beyond whatever diversity in background or appearance a TCK may bring to the party, there is a diversity of thought as well.
“Third Culture Kids” share certain emotional and psychological traits that may exert great influence in the new administration.
But TCKs can also feel rootless and detached. The great challenge for maturing Third Culture Kids is to forge a sense of personal and cultural identity from the various environments to which they been exposed. Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams of My Father, could serve as a textbook in the TCK syllabus, a classic search for self-definition, described in living color. Obama’s colleagues on the Harvard Law Review were among the first to note both his exceptional skill at mediating among competing arguments and the aloofness that made his own views hard to discern. That cool manner of seeming “above it all” is also a classic feature of the Third Culture Kid.
The TCKs’ identity struggles can be painful and difficult. The literature documents addictive behaviors, troubled marriages and fitful careers. But meeting this challenge can become a TCK’s greatest strength. Learning to take the positive pieces from a variety of experiences and create a strong sense of “This is who I am, no matter where I am” gives a steadiness when the world around is in flux or chaos -- which helps explain “no-drama Obama.”
Among those of us who study Third Culture Kids (almost always because we are TCKs), it has been both gratifying and frustrating to watch “one of us” run for the White House. We began obsessively pointing out to each other the telltale signifiers of the TCK that so often went unremarked in the mainstream press.

“I laughed when I heard a commentator call Barack exotic and elitist,” says Lois Bushong, an American who grew up in Costa Rica and now works a therapist for internationally mobile families. “How exotic or elitist can it be to go home to visit your grandmother, even if she lives in Hawaii? She’s still your grandma. This TV guy seemed to forget that the world many see ‘exotic’ is simply home for TCKs.”

But we also despaired when his opponents denigrated the importance of Obama’s childhood in Indonesia and Hawaii. “How can they say his international childhood doesn’t count when it comes to foreign affairs?” sputtered my friend and colleague, Paulette Bethel. “That’s just crazy. Barack’s been negotiating between cultural worlds since the day of his birth. No one will have to teach him this skill. It’s already second nature to him!”
Bethel feels vindicated by the collection of strong personalities that Obama has invited into the new administration. “He’s lived with so many differences around him in his lifetime, they don’t threaten him anymore,” she says.
In 1984, Dr. Ted Ward, then a sociologist at Michigan State University, called TCKs “the prototype citizens of the future,” anticipating a time when a childhood lived in various cultures would be the norm rather than the exception. It seems that time is now.
And the characteristics derived from an expat childhood may be well suited to the challenges facing the new administration. The economic crisis, for one, demonstrates how interdependent world cultures have become, and its solution will undoubtedly require the unconventional thinking that comes more easily to a Third Culture Kid. Even though Tim Geithner is not an economist by training, he apparently demonstrated such a keen problem-solving skills in the financial arena that the stock market jumped 500 points on the news of his appointment. Returning to Japan as an adult and speaking the language he learned as a child have given him an unusually deep understanding of the global economy.
As TCKs, we have had the joy, and the challenge, of being raised in many places and cultures. Now we get to see whether the values of the TCK can be a force for good on the world stage.

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To be or not to be.

This is very interesting in a spacial way: The guy on the left - you really don't have to know his name - doesn't know anything of Obama. Next you know what his thoughts are: He doesn't know if he is a muslim member of Al Qaeda and all the other things we - the reading community - all know about Obama, but he knows that Barack Obama is totally wrong on economics, because he is the problem and nothing else. Without Barack Obama the economy would have been very well in the USA and of course he had some help to invoke the economic disaster and those guys you will see in the next government. The Clinton administration has prepared the disaster, despite 24 millions new jobs and a balanced budget. Clinton made Bush43 and the Republican House's majority powerless and as soon as Obama proclaimed his candidacy, soon after the Democrats renewed their majority in the House, the bomb under the economy was ignited and the economy collapsed, just as the twin towers. Completely Al Qaeda style.

Of course this is only the beginning. After 20 January 2009 the USA will be a fundamentalist muslim state and all white people and colored christians will be killed immediately. Pointer's question is: what are you talking about? You live in a different world and you aspect to be very soon very happy in heaven with all your loved ones. So, what is the problem?

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Minority Advocates Watching Obama

President-Elect Tries to Balance Racial Diversity, Gender, Ideology as He Picks Team
Washington Post by Michael D. Shear

Barack Obama's friend and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett likens the effort of piecing together a Cabinet for the president-elect to assembling a puzzle. The co-chair of his transition, John D. Podesta, promised that his team will "keep our eye on the ball" as it attempts to balance racial diversity, gender and ideology in building a White House operation and stocking the Cabinet.
The president-elect has already signaled that he will make a number of historic appointments. Obama is poised to nominate the first black attorney general and one of the nation's highest-profile women as its chief diplomat. A Hispanic governor is the leading candidate to become commerce secretary.
But as Jarrett recognized early, every appointment he makes to the 15-member Cabinet reduces by one the opportunities he has to make sure another group is represented. It is a zero-sum game that leaves presidents with little wiggle room.
"There are huge expectations on him because he's the first black president, the first civil rights lawyer, the first president with an Arab middle name," said Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP.
"In other words," Jealous said, Obama is "the first president to have been the victim of multiple forms of discrimination and the first to have made fighting discrimination a part of his career."
The NAACP and other groups are watching Obama's appointments closely, an example of the scrutiny under which the new president is already operating. Jealous said his group wants Obama to appoint leaders at the departments of Justice, Labor, Education and Health and Human Services who will actively enforce the nation's civil rights laws.
"Many of the names that we have heard floated for deputy attorney general for civil rights and the Department of Education make us feel good that he's taking his responsibility seriously to restore the federal government's role in enforcing civil rights," Jealous said this week. "So far, so good."
But most of Obama's Cabinet picks are still up in the air, leaving interest groups and activists crossing their fingers.
Obama is said to be considering former representatives David E. Bonior (D-Mich.) and Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) and at least one prominent Hispanic, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, for labor secretary. The education secretary's job could go to either New York public schools chancellor Joel Klein or Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond. Former senator Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) is slated to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
Women's groups are hoping to build on the progress that Obama has already appeared to make, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) the all-but-certain secretary of state and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano the nominee for secretary of homeland security.
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D), an early Obama supporter, is being considered for agriculture. Tammy Duckworth, the Iraq war veteran who lost both legs in that conflict, could be the next secretary of veterans affairs. Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm (D) might end up as the secretary of energy. And several women are potential choices to head up the Environmental Protection Agency.
"Groups that are concerned with racial and gender diversity are certainly wise to keep the pressure on," said Paul C. Light, a professor of public policy at New York University. But he said questions of diversity among Obama's closest confidants should go beyond those characteristics to include their worldview, their educational background, their work history and their ideological allegiances.
On those scores, it is less clear that Obama is building a diverse team. The individuals who are known are experienced politicians who would be familiar to anyone studying administrations of the past. None represents the kind of radical break from the government as usual that some of Obama's supporters expected.
"This is not a team of rivals as much as it is a team of experienced Washington insiders," Light said.
Obama addressed that concern directly at a news conference on Wednesday, defending his decision to tap establishment figures -- especially for his economic team -- by saying that the members of his Cabinet need experience to tackle the big problems facing the nation.
He said people looking for change from his administration should not focus too closely on his Cabinet choices.
"Understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost: It comes from me," he told reporters. "That's my job, to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure that my team is implementing it."
The diversity of that team will be judged first by the composition of his Cabinet and the five sub-Cabinet jobs that are often considered on par: EPA administrator, U.S. trade representative, budget director, chief of staff and drug policy administrator.
Hispanics are hoping to see representation beyond New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), who is the leading candidate to become commerce secretary. In addition to Labor, Villaraigosa is thought to be in the running to lead the department of Housing and Urban Development. Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) is a leading candidate to be secretary of the interior.
But Obama will ultimately be judged by the broader swath of appointments he makes, including his White House staff, the senior-level staff around the secretaries and the other political appointees who fill the agencies.
Already, Obama has made appointments that have been well received by groups that are pushing for diversity. This week, he appointed Cecilia Muñoz as the White House director of intergovernmental affairs. Muñoz is a senior vice president at the National Council of La Raza.
"If you look at the people in the White House, you have a good cross section," said Martha Joynt Kumar, a professor at Towson University who studies White House personnel.
Kumar said she thinks Obama's supporters are likely to be somewhat more forgiving about diversity since he has broken a historic barrier by being black himself. "He meets part of that just by his election," she said.

Pardon Gate, Mukasey Gate and Delusion Gate

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Thanksgiving?

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Obama acting increasingly presidential

Not 'a minute to waste' in addressing economic woes, the president-elect says.
By Peter Grier, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington - At a time when millions of worried Americans are looking to Washington for economic and political leadership, President-elect Obama appears to be acting more presidential and less "-elect" by the day.
As he unveiled his team of economic advisers Monday, Mr. Obama emphasized that action to try to stimulate the economy is coming. While he remained deferential to the current administration, he said he wanted to hit the ground running and in general conveyed an air of imminent control over ongoing US financial-rescue efforts.
Obama seems to recognize the obvious: The state of the US economy – indeed, the world economy – is so fragile that repair efforts will dominate his initial years in office. His success or failure could well end up defining his entire White House term.
"That work starts today. The truth is, we don't have a minute to waste," said Obama at his economic personnel announcement.
The US has only one president at a time. Obama does not yet have his hands on any of the US government's levers of power. But given the evident efficiency so far of his transition efforts, and the fact that the next Congress will be firmly in Democratic control, it is reasonable for him to emphasize his own policy proposals to fill a perceived power vacuum in the nation's capital, says Stephen Hess, a Brookings Institution scholar and author of "What Do We Do Now?," a just-published book on presidential transitions.
"The promise of him getting a very fast start is very real," says Mr. Hess.
As he rolled out his new team for the cameras, Obama emphasized one aspect of each one's résumé, perhaps as an attempt to portray them as complementary parts of a whole.
As expected, President-elect Obama announced that he has picked New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner as his nominee to be the next Secretary of the Treasury.
While Mr. Geithner is a veteran of financial crises, Obama talked of Geithner's international experience, pointing out that the New York Fed president lived in Africa as a child and has lived and worked throughout Asia.
"The reality is that the economic crisis we face is no longer just an American crisis, it is a global crisis, and we will need to reach out to countries around the world to craft a global response," said Obama.
Next, Obama talked about Larry Summers, who will coordinate administration economic efforts from within the White House, as someone who has long talked about income inequality and the problems of the middle class.
Obama said that efforts to bolster the middle class will be the "core" of his economic policies.
Christina Romer, who will be chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, is both an economist and an economic historian, said Obama. Ms. Romer, currently a top official at the National Bureau of Economic Research, in particular has studied how the US recovered from the Depression, said Obama.
Obama also announced that Melody Barnes will serve as director of his White House Domestic Policy Council and that he will talk about further nominations and prospective efforts to control federal spending at a follow-up announcement on Nov. 25.
Overall, the President-elect's theme was urgency.
He said he would "honor the commitments made by the current administration," signaling that he will not attempt to modify or undo Bush administration bailouts already proposed or completed.
He declined to specify how large a stimulus package he would request from Congress. But he did indicate that in general it would be, well, large. "It's going to be costly," he said.
Obama sounded sympathetic to the problems of the auto industry, saying "We've got to make sure that it is there and that the workers and suppliers and the businesses that rely on the auto industry stay in business."
At the same time, he said that he was "surprised" that the US automakers did not have a "better-thought-out proposal" when they arrived in Washington earlier this month to beg for a bailout.
"The auto industry needs to present us with some clarity about the dollar figures they are talking about," said Obama.
Overall, the president-elect expressed confidence that the US could weather the current crisis.
"We've done it before," he said.

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Clinton Camp Fabricated Initial Obama Offer

In the New York Review of Books, Elizabeth Drew sheds some more light on the behind-the-scenes wrangling between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the Secretary of State post:
Obama's meetings with Hillary Clinton and John McCain about playing important roles in his presidency indicated his imagination and his shrewdness, although sources close to Obama say he did not offer her the job of secretary of state when they met. He had said during the campaign that he wanted various views in his government, and in turning to his own former competitors, Obama was at the same time magnanimous and seeking to keep them close. Both were in a position to cause him difficulty in the Senate--Clinton, in particular, had kept her constituency intact (through HillPAC) and was planning her own Senate agenda, including her own health care program, no matter what Obama proposed. But Clinton lacks the seniority, and therefore a committee position from which to get her proposals taken up by the Senate. (She tried to get a special subcommittee appointed, but Edward M. Kennedy, who has his own health care plan and is chairman of the committee with jurisdiction over the issue, blocked her, offering her later a role concerning health insurance.) McCain had indicated that he wanted to help Obama in the Senate, and by taking him up on it, Obama has both flattered and coopted him.

Mrs. Clinton's and her closest advisers' turning a suggestion by the President-elect that she might, among other things, head the State Department into an "offer" and reports that she was agonizing over whether to accept it, did not please officials in Chicago, some of whom hoped that issues over disclosure of Bill Clinton's post-presidential record might block the appointment. But the former president's camp blocked that by promising to cooperate with requests for information and to accept limits on his activities, including clearance of speaking engagements abroad. Statements by the Hilary camp on November 21 saying that "she's ready" for the position but then backtracking, saying that some matters were "under discussion," typified the whole mess, the only snag thus far in an otherwise unusually smooth transition involving impressive choices--an object lesson to Obama (which he had reason to know already) that getting involved with the Clintons is rarely uncomplicated.
Read more about Clinton's potential Secretary of State position here.
Elizabeth Drew writes:

Obama understood the point—which eludes some presidential candidates—that running is about governing, that there should be a seamless connection between the two. The best way to judge presidential candidates—aside from whether one basically agrees with their values—is to try to envision them governing. Will they inspire people to follow them? What kind of people do they have around them? How do they run their campaign? The wise candidate, the one who sees long, will run the campaign as a preparation for the presidency. In Obama's case, from what we have been able to observe up to this point, there will be a straight line from his campaigning to his governing. At their convention, Republicans mocked Obama for having been a community organizer (apparently thinking this was some sort of airy-fairy occupation, not real work); they were defeated by the community organizer—and they will discover that the country is being governed by one. Obama's understanding that change comes from building a popular mandate from the ground up made his the best-organized campaign, the most methodical in marshaling support, attracting volunteers, and establishing field offices in the various states. It ran rings around both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

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How Dems Can Keep the Party Going

Much of the sweeping victories enjoyed by the Democratic Party this November have been credited to three major catalysts: Barack Obama, for his campaign and fundraising efforts; the campaign committees, for their influential fifty-state-strategy; and President Bush, for producing the most opposition-friendly political climate since Richard Nixon.
These post-election acknowledgments ignore one crucial factor. In the past two years the progressive movement has built an infrastructure that, while still in its relatively nascent stages, can be tremendously influential.
Groups like Progressive Accountability, CAP Action Fund, National Security Network, Women's Voices Women's Vote, Brave New Films and others (many of them unions), went largely unheralded during the election cycle. But behind the scenes, they put in place a system that churned up opposition research, helped influence the media, charted out the electoral landscape, and was often seamless in delivering a message. In short, they beat the GOP at its own game.
And yet, weeks after their work is finished, there is uncertainty about what's next.
The Obama team has the resources to maintain its strategic advantages. The DNC is committed to continuing the 50-state-strategy even after Howard Dean's departure. But Democratic officials are still exploring ways to ensure that an infrastructure that took more than a decade to assemble remains intact.
"The Democratic Party now has, for the first time in a generation, superior infrastructure and really good research," Paul Begala, a famed strategist who often worked with these groups, told me a few weeks ago. "As a Democrat I want the party to continue to do that. And I feel very confident that they will. If you believe, as I do, that politics is about ideas, how you argue and channel those ideas matters most. It is more important than knocking on doors, because once you knock on a door and someone answers what do you tell them?"
The benefits of a stable infrastructure -- which includes outside groups, shared data, coordinated communications, and systems that harness young talent -- are painfully clear. Beyond keeping voters active, it can give the party tremendous leverage over both lawmakers and the press. A veteran of the Clinton years recalled how each day during that administration, Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson "were echoing the RNC's talking points and we were beaten to the punch."
"We didn't have a capacity to get out there on a moment's notice," he added. "We didn't have our 'own' media."
Obama does, to a large extent, have that capacity. His email list and website reach millions of people -- many of whom are as devoted to him as to any political philosophy. But even his campaign used ideologically aligned groups as an occasional crutch. And a source close to the president-elect says he is sincerely interested in keeping that infrastructure in place.
"The Obama team is committed to sustaining this outside advocacy effort," this strategist told me.
The first question facing Democrats is how to centralize this portion of the party without a galvanizing election. Howard Dean, the departing Democratic National Committee chair, has an answer.
"Do it through here," he said of the DNC in an interview last week. "I'd like to consider this becoming a grassroots organization, not just to win elections but to win programs, to get programs passed... to push out a president's message and go door-to-door for health care reform, and for climate change."
"Campaigns are not for education," he added. "They are for winning. Afterwards, governing is for education. And there is enormous potential among the grassroots community for educating by reaching out to people."
Dean may be pushing against prevailing wisdom, which suggests that elections are about learning. But in many regards he is right. An example of when infrastructure proved remarkably effective as an "education" tool is the debate over privatizing Social Security in 2005 -- when progressive groups of all colors (labor, veterans, women's issues, etc...) punched holes in Bush's proposals with a largely coherent message. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the immigration debate, in which a lack of cohesion allowed GOP groups to derail any moderate or progressive reform proposal.
But a centralizing force for the Democratic infrastructure is only helpful if there is enough money to build it. During the presidential campaign, Obama could not legally coordinate with outside groups. But he successfully convinced the Democratic financiers to channel their money to him and few else. The draining of the swamp forced many organizations to scale back their election season ambitions.
Now, without the prevailing need to get a Democrat in the White House and with a debilitating economic crisis stifling the most politically philanthropic, there may not be enough loot to keep these outside organizations operating.
"Every group on the left and probably every group on the right will have to face the problem that we just whipped out a trillion of stock assets among the wealthy donors of the right and left. And it is quiet possible that many progressive donors will think, oh, well, our job is done," said Bob Borosage, co-director of Campaign for America's Future, in a recent phone interview.
And yet, Borosage himself adds the caveat: having been in the political wilderness for so long, the progressive id now dictates that nothing should be taken for granted. There is, he says, an understanding that all the gains made in the last few years could be lost just as quickly. A fallout and consolidation may be likely -- the White House, for starters, will hire away many of the best staffers from these outside groups. But it shouldn't be debilitating.
Sure enough, in a diary written for the Huffington Post days after the election, Gara LaMarche, a major Democratic donor, sounded the call to arms when it came to bolstering the party's infrastructure.
LaMarche wrote: "To govern effectively and promote his agenda on economic security, energy, expanded health coverage, education, the restoration of civil liberties and other matters, Obama will need to keep his army mobilized. Doing this is as important as drafting legislation and picking cabinet secretaries."

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Who is the Decider?

President-elect Barack Obama is assembling a deeply experienced team of top economic advisers whose key members firmly believe that limited government spending combined with free markets can create lasting prosperity.
But those advisers will take over at a moment that Obama says requires just the opposite: New financial regulations and generally unthinkable levels of deficit spending are in the offing as the new administration prepares to battle the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression.
"Right now, our economy is trapped in a vicious cycle. The turmoil on Wall Street means a new round of belt-tightening for families and businesses on Main Street, and as folks produce less and consume less, that just deepens the problems in our financial markets," Obama said in introducing his economic team at a news conference yesterday. "These extraordinary stresses on our financial system require extraordinary policy responses."
To fashion the government's response, Obama has turned to people who have been associated with more market-oriented approaches. Timothy F. Geithner, 47, Obama's choice for Treasury secretary, is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and has been a key player in negotiations aimed at saving some of the nation's largest financial institutions.
Lawrence H. Summers, whom Obama tapped to direct his National Economic Council, served eight years in the Clinton administration, including a year and a half as Treasury secretary. He has argued that the economic boom enjoyed during much of Clinton's presidency was largely a consequence of shrinking federal deficits.
Both Summers and Geithner are proteges of Robert E. Rubin, Summers's predecessor as Treasury secretary and current Citigroup director and counselor, whose views in favor of free trade, deregulation and reduced deficits have come to define the economic approach of the Clinton years.
Christina D. Romer, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley who is an expert on tax policy and the nation's recovery from the Depression, has been selected to lead Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. "She has the principal required characteristic of a CEA chair: the ability to clearly explain unpleasant and somewhat complex truths about the world to powerful people without making them mad," said Bradford DeLong, another Berkeley economist.
"These are great choices," said Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist for ChannelCapitalResearch.com, an investment research firm. "Right now, economics is the key thing. He is looking for experienced technocrats, despite the fact that some come from the right or the left."
Obama plans to ask his team to implement a huge stimulus plan -- estimates run as high as $700 billion over the next two years -- that would include money to rebuild crumbling bridges, roads and mass transit systems and jump-start a "green" economy by investing in alternative energy. Obama has said those initiatives are intended not just to carry the nation through the economic downturn but also to lay the foundation for a period of growth.
Obama says the infusion is needed to create or preserve 2.5 million jobs in an economy that this year shed about half that number, causing the nation's unemployment rate to spike to its highest level in 14 years. In the past, such heavy government spending on top of already-record budget deficits would raise strong objections, probably from the key members of Obama's economic team. But in the current climate, Obama's approach has been widely embraced.
"The world has evolved, and so has this group of folks," said Larry Mishel, president of the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute. "Issues of where people were eight to 10 years ago, that is just history. I'll tell you why: Right now, no one is talking about accelerating globalization. Everybody is talking about national health care. Nobody is talking about balancing the budget. Everybody is talking about rebuilding the labor movement. A higher minimum wage, all sorts of things that were problematic from an earlier period, are just not there anymore."
Some liberal economists wonder privately whether the past policy preferences of Obama's top economic advisers could prove problematic. But others say Obama's choices reflect his confidence in his ability to set the direction he wants them to pursue.

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Adrift With Two Captains

By Eugene Robinson
Having two presidents is starting to feel like having no president, and that's the situation we'll face until Inauguration Day. Heaven help us.
Having two presidents is starting to feel like having no president, and that's the situation we'll face until Inauguration Day. Heaven help us.
President Bush spent the weekend in Lima, Peru, at a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, conferring with Pacific Rim leaders who had no reason to pay attention to anything he said. Bush did, however, cut a dashing figure in a traditional Peruvian poncho. Yesterday morning, minus the poncho, he was back home lending his imprimatur to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's latest diving catch to save the global economy from utter ruin -- this time, the massive bailout of Citigroup.
A couple of hours later, the other president, Barack Obama, presented his new, high-powered economic team. Obama made a point of saying that the prospective officials -- led by Timothy Geithner, his pick to head Treasury -- would start working immediately. Obama also made clear that there's very little they can do except monitor the situation, study possible solutions and develop a plan to be enacted after Jan. 20. We can't afford another month or more of drift, Obama said. But I'm afraid that's just what we're going to get.
The problem, and it's becoming serious, is that no one is prepared to orchestrate a comprehensive program to stabilize the financial system, put a floor under housing prices and keep the economy from sinking into a long, punishing recession.
Bush could and should do it -- he is still president, and preventing economic collapse is part of the job description. But he won't. It's ironic that after being so aggressive and proactive in other areas, the Decider is so indecisive and passive about the economy. He has limited his role to signing off on whatever Paulson says is necessary -- most recently, $20 billion in cash and $306 billion in guarantees for Citigroup, a move that Bush apparently approved during his flight home from Peru.
In part, Bush's inaction stems from ideology. If the free market is always right, it ought to correct itself and get back on course. All the government really needs to do is take care of a few emergencies such as Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, IndyMac, AIG, Wachovia, Citigroup . . . and, of course, whatever comes next. Not the auto companies, however: In Bush-world, the firms that created the toxic mortgage-backed securities that threaten to bring down the global financial system are somehow morally superior to the companies that created the Mustang, the Malibu and the minivan.
I don't think ideology explains it all, though. Even if he wanted to make a real run at righting the economy, at this point Bush has neither the energy nor the credibility to make it happen. Frankly, he comes off as less a lame duck than a cooked goose.
That leaves the other president, who has plenty of energy and credibility -- but no authority. Bush said he called Obama to inform him of the Citigroup bailout, but informing isn't the same as consulting. Obama said his new economic team will be monitoring the situation and giving him daily reports on where things stand. He could save them the trouble and just watch CNBC or Bloomberg all day.
Obama said he believes a huge economic stimulus is needed "right away." But he knows that won't happen -- it's unlikely that anything big enough could get through the outgoing Congress, and, in any event, a big stimulus is not something that Bush is willing to support. Obama said that "we cannot hesitate and we cannot delay," but he knows full well that hesitation and delay are all but inevitable. And he knows full well that by the time he gets the power to shape events, the economic situation might be much worse than it is now.
James Baker, the former secretary of state and current Republican eminence grise, made an amazing suggestion on "Meet the Press" Sunday -- that Bush and Obama develop and announce a joint economic rescue program. It was a stunning acknowledgment of how weak the Bush presidency has become and how dangerous it would be to spend the next two months meandering from crisis to crisis.
But that's the road we're on. When I get frustrated with Paulson's zigzags and reversals, with his overnight decisions to buy huge companies or write hundred-billion-dollar checks, I remind myself that he doesn't really have a president to work for. The poor man may stumble here and there, but he's dancing as fast as he can.

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Will the auto industry become left out?

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Rachel Maddow: The Big Build

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Does Obama Really Plan To Govern from the Center-Right?

Robert Creamer
Posted November 24, 2008
Should progressives beware? Has Barack Obama suckered them into supporting a President who will really govern from the "center-right"? The short answer is no.

Since November 4th there has been growing protestation from right wing intellectuals that America is really a "center-right" nation and that Obama's victory does not indicate that the electorate has rejected the "center-right" value frame that has defined American politics for the last thirty years.

This line of argument has now extended to the contention that while Obama may have won the nomination and election with the strong support from the left of the Democratic Party, he really intends to govern from the "center-right." Even the New York Times ran a front page analysis last Saturday concluding that Obama's recent cabinet choices, "suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party, surrounding himself with pragmatists rather than ideologues."

Both of these arguments are complete baloney.

* Right wing pundits can comfort themselves with the fantasy that America is a "center-right" nation but it just ain't so. In fact, all of the polls show that the November election represented a complete repudiation of right wing Bush-Cheney top-down economics and their Neo-Con foreign policy. Over 80% of voters indicated they wanted fundamental change. The polling shows massive majorities in favor of policies that would guarantee health care for all. It shows overwhelming support for policies that give tax relief to middle income Americans and increase taxes on the wealthy. Polls show complete rejection of Neo-Con notions about "preemptive" war and unilateralism. And Americans strongly favor bold government action to stimulate the economy - not the failed laissez faire economics that have lead to the current economic meltdown.

* The fact is that normal people have supported policies like health care for all and bottom up economics for decades. They've known for years that economic policies that have lowered their incomes and siphoned off all of our growth to the top 2% were not in their interest. Now the market collapse, potential bankruptcy of the country's biggest firms, and obvious failure of Neo-Con foreign policy have finally forced even the country's punditry and intellectual opinion leadership to wake up and smell the coffee.

* Not only have "center-right" policies proven themselves a complete failure, their intellectual and moral basis has collapsed. How many more bail outs does someone need before he stops believing that the unfettered "free market" will always lead the "private sector" (meaning those who control giant corporations and Wall Street Bankers) to act in the public interest. How many times can corporate CEO's emerge from their private jets with tin cups in Washington before people begin to question the "center-right's" claim that the private sector is inherently more efficient that the public sector. Let's face it, it's getting pretty tough to justify why Wall Street's "masters of the universe" deserve to be paid hundreds of millions of dollars while middle class incomes tank; or why a CEO should make more money before lunch on the first day of the year than his minimum wage worker makes all year long.

* Obama ran a campaign that clearly and unequivocally described priorities that will turn American in a fundamentally progressive direction. His cabinet picks indicate that he will surround himself with people who have experience and can competently manage the government. They also indicate his absolute commitment to unifying the country to make change. But they do not in any way diminish the fact that America is demanding -- and Obama intends to enact -- a sweeping progressive program the likes of which we have not seen since the New Deal.

* Political consultant, activist and author Mike Lux will publish a book early next year that surveys the history of progressive change in American history. He concludes that progressive changes happen in big batches. Change doesn't happen incrementally. I think of it as the "Drain-O" theory of history. At key points in history the pressure for democratizing, progressive change overwhelms the forces of the status quo. Then, as the pipes are suddenly cleaned out, massive numbers of progressive changes can finally flow. America is about to experience one of those periods. How much we can accomplish, and how long this period lasts will depend on many factors that we don't yet know -- and one that we do. It will depend heavily on our success in continuing to mobilize the millions of Americans who elected Barack Obama into a movement to enact his program.

* Finally, writers and pundits who focus on Obama's Cabinet picks to show he will govern from the "center right" need to have a look at history. Like Obama, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln all installed people in their cabinets who they believed to be effective managers who could deliver. They all had their share of outsiders and progressives, but many were old Washington hands. Yet all of these Presidents faced historic challenges that demanded and enabled them to make fundamental change. And all of them were guided by progressive values that were sharply different from those of Bush, Cheney, and Delay. Obama shares and articulates those values more than any political leader since Robert Kennedy died forty years ago.

Barack Obama will not govern from the "center right", but he will govern from the "center". That's not because he is "moving to the center". It's because the center of American politics has changed. It has moved where the American people are. It once again resides in the traditional progressive center that has defined America's promise since Thomas Jefferson penned its founding document over 200 years ago.

A new kind of politics?

To succeed at modern diplomacy, it helps to take the long view. As word trickled out that President-elect Barack Obama was considering Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, Clinton was on the phone with the President of Pakistan. Asif Ali Zardari was calling with a long-overdue thank-you. Back in 1998, when Zardari's late wife Benazir Bhutto was powerless and out of favor with the United States, the then First Lady had received her at the White House, over the objections of both the State Department and the National Security Council. Bhutto eventually regained her influence, and before her assassination last December, became an important U.S. ally. But she had never forgotten that act of graciousness, Zardari told Clinton on Nov. 14. "To be treated with such respect was very important."
As he wrapped up his second week as President-elect, it was clear that Obama was taking the long view in both diplomacy and politics. How else to explain the fact that he had all but offered the most prestigious job in his Cabinet to a woman whose foreign policy experience he once dismissed as consisting of having tea with ambassadors? Or that Clinton might accept an offer from a man whose national-security credentials, she once said, began and ended with "a speech he made in 2002"? Nowhere did Obama and Clinton attack each other more brutally last spring than on the question of who was best equipped to handle international relations in a dangerous world. That they could be on the brink of becoming partners in that endeavor is the most remarkable evidence yet that Obama is serious about his declared intention to follow another Illinois President's model in assembling a "team of rivals" to run his government, in what could be a sharp contrast with the past 40 years of American Presidents. "I've been spending a lot of time reading Lincoln," Obama told Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes. "There is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was President, that I just find very helpful."
And a shrewdness as well. The surprising proffer to Clinton came the same week that Obama sat down with John McCain in Chicago and helped engineer a commutation for Senator Joe Lieberman, who had backed McCain in the election and faced possibly being stripped of his committee chairmanship. The general amnesty campaign, part of a promise to change the way Washington works, impressed some longtime partisans. "It's brilliant," says a senior Republican Party official. "My hat is totally off to the guy." Viewed more cynically, bringing Clinton into the tent could co-opt a potential adversary in 2012 and put a leash on her globetrotting husband, who has a propensity for foreign policy freelancing. Which raises a question: Would this move, if it happens, be just the first manifestation of that new kind of politics that Obama was promising in his presidential campaign? Or proof that he understands the oldest kind all too well?

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Obama's Cabinet taking shape

CNN's John King, along with his panel, discuss Obama's possible choices for his Cabinet.

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Barack Obama outlines job-creation plan.

President-elect Barack Obama offered an outline of his economic recovery plan Saturday, and jobs were the top priority. American workers will rebuild the nation's roads and bridges, modernize its schools and create more sources of alternative energy, Obama said in the weekly Democratic address, posted on his Web site.

"The plan will mean 2.5 million more jobs" by 2011, Obama said. His Web site clarified that the plan would "save or create" that many jobs.
"These aren't just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis," he said. "These are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long."

Details of the plan are still being worked out by his economic team, Obama said, but he hopes to implement the plan shortly after taking office January 20.
He referred to figures out this week showing that new home purchases in October were the lowest in 50 years and that 540,000 new unemployment claims had been filed, the most in 16 years.

"We must do more to put people back to work and get our economy moving again," he said. More than a million jobs have been lost this year, he said, and "if we don't act swiftly and boldly, most experts now believe that we could lose millions of jobs next year."

The plan will be aimed at jump-starting job creation, Obama said, and laying the foundation for a stronger economy.

"We'll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges; modernizing schools that are failing our children; and building wind farms and solar panels, fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technology that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years head," he said.

He noted that he will need support from both Democrats and Republicans to pass such a plan and said he welcomes suggestions from both sides of the aisle.

"But what is not negotiable is the need for immediate action," he said. "Right now, there are millions of mothers and fathers who are lying awake at night wondering if next week's paycheck will cover next month's bills.
"There are Americans showing up to work in the morning, only to have cleared out their desks by the afternoon. Retirees are watching their life savings disappear, and students are seeing their college dreams deferred. These Americans need help, and they need it now."
Throughout history, Americans have been able to rise above their divisions to work together, he said.
"That is the chance our new beginning now offers us, and that is the challenge we must rise to in the days to come," Obama said. "It is time to act. As the next president of the United States, I will."

More Bad News for the Republicans

Photo: House Minority Leader John Boehner. Inset, top left: Rep. Eric Cantor. Bottom: Rep. Mike Pence.

Wall Street is not the only place where stocks are falling. The stock of the Republican party has gone from "bad to worse" in the last month according to a Gallup poll conducted Nov. 13-16. Sixty-one percent of those surveyed had an unfavorable view of the GOP, the highest since Gallup began taking this measure in 1992, while 34 percent had a favorable view. The public's view of Democrats remained about the same as before the election with a 55 percent to 39 percent favorable to unfavorable ratio.
Gallup also asked Republicans what direction they think the party should take in the wake of this year's elections. Fifty-nine percent wanted the party to go in a more conservative direction, 28 percent favored staying the same and 12 percent wanted the party to become less conservative. For an interesting Capitol Hill view of this, check out Salon's article today, The GOP's Problem? It's Not Right-Wing Enough:
To most observers, the elections two weeks ago sent a pretty clear signal: The nation was sick of George W. Bush, sick of his party, sick of conservatism as a governing philosophy. Don't tell that to House Republicans, though.
On Capitol Hill Wednesday, the House GOP (its ranks reduced by at least 20 seats for the second campaign cycle in a row, and possibly more depending on the outcome of some disputed races) elected a slate of leaders drawn from the most ideologically conservative bloc in their ranks, the Republican Study Committee. As expected, Minority Leader John Boehner, who has cultivated friends among just about every faction there is in the caucus, held on to his job as head of a shrinking party, holding off a challenge by Dan Lungren of California, who claimed he'd bring the party even more to the right than under Boehner's watch. But conservatives managed to push two other leaders out, freeing space for RSC members Eric Cantor of Virginia and Mike Pence of Indiana to move up in the ranks to the two positions right behind Boehner (who isn't exactly a moderate himself). Before the day was over, Cantor had already updated his title on his Web site to Republican whip, though the whip's office site still featured the departed Roy Blunt, a holdover from the days of Tom DeLay's reign whom the party's hardcore right wing didn't trust as much.
(Democrats have their own leadership battle coming Thursday, as California's Henry Waxman tries to unseat Michigan's John Dingell as head of the House Energy Committee. Waxman won a preliminary vote Wednesday among the generally liberal Democratic Steering Committee, but still has to win a majority of the conference.)
Glad to still be in charge, Boehner issued an optimistic statement after the private meeting where he was reelected. He sent a clear signal to the GOP base that he understands frustrations on the right. "The months ahead will present Republicans with an unprecedented opportunity to renew our drive for smaller, more accountable government and offer positive solutions to the challenges facing the American people," he said in a statement.
Translated out of Congress-ese, that means the House GOP is getting back to basics. (Think 1994.) The conservatives who dominate what's left of the GOP caucus -- mostly from the South or the West -- think the real reason Republicans have been losing the last few years is because the party wasn't conservative enough. "There's a strong consensus that Republicans need to start acting like the people whom we say we are," one senior Republican aide who is not involved in leadership said. "We've too often given people the ability to discern that maybe we're not the people who we claim to be ... If you go to the voting booth with the choice of a Democrat and someone who's acting like a Democrat but claiming to be a Republican, you'd go with the Democrat."

Saxby Chambliss Grabs Camera When Asked About Lawsuit

The pressures of the runoff election and the continuing questions about his ties to a large, scandal-scarred sugar company seem to be getting to Sen. Saxby Chambliss.
Asked by a reporter whether a lawsuit involving deaths at an Imperial Sugar plant -- a lawsuit in which Chambliss claims he has senatorial immunity from testifying -- were making his chances at reelection harder, the Georgia Republican responded by knocking away a nearby camera.
The video, put out by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is another chapter in a bizarre but brewing saga that could very well affect the outcome of the Senate race.

In February 2008, an explosion at the Imperial Sugar Factory in Savannah, caused largely by combustible dust particles, killed 14 workers and injured 40. The whistleblower who brought the issue to light came before Capitol Hill to testify on the matter. Chambliss sat in on the hearing, though he was not part of the Senate Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety. He was accused by his opponents of verbally harassing the whistleblower. Moreover, Chambliss continued to oppose a new combustible dust standard at the plant even after the explosion. Finally, when families of the victims filed a lawsuit, the Senator refused to give evidence or testimony, citing Senatorial immunity, which doesn't actually exist.

Imperial Sugar, which has funneled a moderate amount of donations into Chambliss' coffers, has defended the Senator's conduct as appropriate.

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Obama not endorsed by Al Qaeda

Al Qaeda's number 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released his first message since the election. As the AP reported he

used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, describing the president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites.

Zawahiri also challenged Obama's policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan saying

Be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them

The press is reporting this as Al Qaeda's first direct challenge to Obama. But what does it actually say about Al Qaeda? More than anything it demonstrates that Al Qaeda is genuinely concerned about an Obama presidency and views it as a strategic threat to its existence.
First and foremost, Al Qaeda is an organization that thrives on propaganda. It paints the United States as an evil empire that oppresses its own minorities and has little regard for the rest of the world. Al Qaeda uses these types of narratives to raise funds and recruit. The Bush administration played right into this trap. Its "with us or against us" mentality and invasion of Iraq damaged America's image around the world and reinforced Al Qaeda's narrative.
But Al Qaeda's narrative is now under siege and it's clearly uncertain about how to react. The election of the first African American President, one with a Muslim father, flies in the face of this narrative. It shows America as an open and tolerant society - not the oppressive empire Al Qaeda would like to portray. In fact, the overwhelmingly positive international reaction to Obama's election is proof of the the threat Al Qaeda faces. As a 29 year old at a Bangkok Starbucks explained,

What an inspiration. He is the first truly global US president the world has ever had. He had an Asian childhood, African parentage and has a Middle Eastern name. He is a truly global president.

Thus, it's not surprising that Zawahiri has resorted to calling Obama a "house negro" to try and paint him as just another American President. But this is clearly more a defensive and weak message than effective propaganda that might actually work.
Moreover, Zawahiri's message about Afghanistan and Pakistan portrays a certain level of nervousness over an administration that is actually going to go after the real terrorist haven on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Al Qaeda viewed the invasion of Iraq as a positive creating a recruiting and training ground for terrorists. As a 2006 National Intelligence Estimate explained:

The Iraq conflict has become the "cause celebre" for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.

Now, the U.S. is once again focused on the area of the world that the Intelligence Community agrees represents the most the direct threat to the homeland. It is the area of the world, which was the source of the 9/11 attacks and has been the source of just about every other major plot against a Western target over the past few years. This should raise some serious concerns for Al Qaeda's central leadership - especially since most of them are in fact believed to be hiding in the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands.
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Just the Facts

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Obama Victory Brings Racist Rats Out of the Woodwork

Alternet
A disturbing wave of post-election hate crimes across the country shows that the cancer of American racism is far from cured.
Barack Obama's election as America's first black president has unleashed a wave of hate crimes across the nation, according to police and monitoring organizations.
Far from heralding a new age of tolerance, Obama's victory in the November 4th election has highlighted the stubborn racism that lingers within some elements of American society as opponents pour their frustration into vandalism, harassment, threats and even physical attacks.
Cross burnings, black figures hung from nooses, and schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama" are just some of the incidents that have been documented by police from California to Maine.
There have been "hundreds" of cases since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.
The phenomenon appears to be at its most intense in the Southern states, where opposition to Obama is at its highest and where reports of hate crimes were emerging even before the election. Incidents involving adults, college students and even schoolchildren have dampened the early post-election glow of racial progress and harmony, with some African American residents reporting an atmosphere of fear and inter-community tension.
In North Carolina, four students at the state university admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: "Let's shoot that (N-word) in the head." Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.
Marsha L. Houston, a University of Alabama professor, said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.
Second and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.
Meanwhile in Snellville, Georgia, Denene Millner, an African-American, said a boy on the school bus told her nine-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human faeces outside the front door, Millner said.
She described her emotions as a combination of anger and fear.
"I can't say that every white person in Snellville is evil and anti-Obama and willing to desecrate my property because one or two idiots did it," Millner said. "But it definitely makes you look a little different at the people who you live with, and makes you wonder what they're capable of and what they're really thinking."
But the incidents have not been restricted to areas of high anti-Obama sentiment. Even states and cities which leaned heavily towards the Democrat have seen their share.
In New York, a black teenager said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted "Obama," while in the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."
In the northeastern state of Maine, customers at a general store in Standish were placing $1 bets on when the president-elect would be killed. A sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," it said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."
Black figures were hung by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported, while crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, New Jersey, and Apolacan Township, Pennsylvania. In Massachussetts, a nearly-finished church belonging to a black congregation was burned to the ground just hours after Obama's victory was declared.
Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.
Potok, who is white, said he believes there is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them."
Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.
"If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama's) church being deported," he said.
Change in whatever form does not come easy, and a black president is "the most profound change in the field of race this country has experienced since the Civil War," said William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. "It's shaking the foundations on which the country has existed for centuries."
"Someone once said racism is like cancer," Ferris said. "It's never totally wiped out -- it's in remission."
The day after the vote, Barbara Tyler, a black high school student in Marietta, Georgia, said she heard hateful comments about Obama from white students, and that teachers cut off discussion about his victory.
Tyler spoke at a press conference by the Georgia chapter of the civil rights body NAACP which discussed complaints from across the state about hostility and resentment. Another student, from a Covington middle school, said he was suspended for wearing an Obama shirt to school on November 5th after the principal told students not to wear political paraphernalia.
The student's mother, Eshe Riviears, said the principal told her: "Whether you like it or not, we're in the South, and there are a lot of people who are not happy with this decision."
Sociologists said African-Americans suffering attacks and intimidation were essentially proxies for the frustrated emotions of some whites.
"The principle is very simple," said BJ Gallagher, a sociologist and co-author of the diversity book A Peacock in the Land of Penguins. "If I can't hurt the person I'm angry at, then I'll vent my anger on a substitute, i.e., someone of the same race."
"We saw the same thing happen after the 9/11 attacks, as a wave of anti-Muslim violence swept the country. We saw it happen after the Rodney King verdict, when Los Angeles blacks erupted in rage at the injustice perpetrated by 'the white man.'
"It's as stupid and ineffectual as kicking your dog when you've had a bad day at the office," Gallagher said. "But it happens a lot."

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Keep talking Sarah

Some videos you just have to see to believe. On Thursday, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin appeared in Wasilla in order to pardon a local turkey in anticipation of Thanksgiving. This proved to be a slightly absurd but ultimately unremarkable event. But what came next was positively surreal. After the pardon Palin proceeded to do an interview with a local TV station while the turkeys were being SLAUGHTERED in the background!! Seemingly oblivious to the gruesomeness going on over her shoulder, she carries on talking for over three minutes. Watch the video below to see for yourself. Be warned, it's kind of gruesome.

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World Leaders Don't Shake Bush's Hand At G20 Summit

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Bill Clinton campaigning at his best

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The final proof that all Americans are crazy: Sex in the White House

Obamas Expected to have Sex in White House, Insiders Say
By Billy Kimball
In what is sure to be a controversial move, President-Elect Barack Obama has indicated to his inner circle of advisors that he and his wife may have sex in the White House sometime during the four years of his first term in office.
"He's not saying they definitely will have sex," said an Obama confidante who declined to be named, "But he's not ruling it out. He's also not ruling out having sex more than once."
Although Mr. Obama himself is a regarded as something of a sex symbol, there has been surprisingly little speculation and rumor about the incoming First Couple's romantic life. Longtime observers and friends regard both Mr. and Mrs. Obama as somewhat emotionally chilly. "From what I understand, it's a bit like the Vulcan mating ritual, the Pon Far," said outgoing Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean. "Barack will feel a seasonal urge that he knows rationally and logically that he is powerless to control. He will inform Michelle and she will attempt to satisfy the urge. Their schedulers work out the precise details."
Although it was common for American presidents to have marital sex in the White House throughout the 19th Century, the practice has become increasingly rare in modern times. The last president believed to have frequent intercourse in the White House was Calvin Coolidge whose relationship with his wife, Grace, became intensely passionate following the death of their younger son from an infected blister.
The two Chief Executives most often associated with Presidential sex in recent years, Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, did not have the sex they are famous for with their First Ladies. Jimmy Carter, a former president known for a tendency to overshare wrote in his memoir, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President, that he and his wife Rosalynn had intercourse once a year on New Year's Eve "for five minutes with the lights off" during his presidency. Mrs. Carter disputed her husband's account in her own memoir, First Lady from Plains.
With four large bedrooms, the First Family's private apartment on the second floor of the White House is designed to accommodate whatever marital configuration the President and First Lady happen to prefer, according to Rear Admiral Stephen Rochon, the Chief Usher of the Executive Mansion. "The President's bedroom and the First Lady's bedroom can be as close together or as far apart as they want," Adm. Rochon said, adding that, as with many couples, sleeping arrangements are usually decided based on who snores. As for the possibility that the Obamas might share a bedroom, Adm. Rochon said he "could not see any reason for that."

The Secret Service has already begun preparing for the possibility that the President's tight schedule might be interrupted on occasion by a brief sexual interlude. The code phrase to indicate that the President (code name "Renegade") and First Lady (code name "Renaissance") are having sex will be "discussing the Bosnian problem" as in "Renegade can't be disturbed right now. He and Renaissance are discussing the Bosnian problem." In the event that President and Mrs. Obama are, in fact, discussing the Bosnian problem and not having sex, Secret Service agents have been instructed to say that they are "reviewing the Bosnian situation." A spokesman for the Bosnian government could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Obama preferences with regard to birth control are not mentioned in either of his books, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams of my Father, though Michelle Obama has said on several occasions that she does not plan to have any more children.
Although Mr. Obama drew scant support form the Religious Right during his campaign, Fundamentalist Christians would have no objection to the president having post-marital sex in the White House according to Focus on the Family's James Dobson. "Intimate relations in the context of a different-sex marriage is just not something we have a problem with, despite what the liberal media would have you believe," he said.

The news that President Obama may soon be having sex in the White House was greeted by his supporters with decidedly mixed emotions. "I'm a little glad and a little sad," said Danielle Garcia-Robinson, a college student and Obama volunteer from Madison, Wisconsin. "I'm glad if he's happy and feeling pleasure but deep down a little part of me will always wish he were having sex with me," Ms. Garcia-Robinson said. Her boyfriend, David Nagel, echoed her sentiment. "That's how I feel, too," he said.

New Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security

CNN is reporting Wednesday night that Obama has chosen Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano to become secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
President-elect Barack Obama's top choice for secretary of homeland security is Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, multiple Democratic sources close to the transition told CNN on condition of anonymity.
One source said he believed the final decision depends on the vetting of the Democratic governor, much like the selection of Eric Holder for attorney general.
Politico has more details on the Napolitano pick:
Napolitano (na-pawl-i-TAW-noh) brings law-and-order experience from her stint as the Grand Canyon State's first female attorney general. One of the nation's most prominent female elected officials, she made frequent appearances on behalf of Barack Obama during the campaign. She was re-elected to a second four-year term in 2006.
Transition insiders have long expected she would be offered a Cabinet slot, although she had also been mentioned for other posts, including attorney general.

Wikipedia:
Janet Napolitano (born November 29, 1957) is the current governor of the U.S. state of Arizona, and a member of the Democratic Party, originally elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. She is Arizona's third female governor, and the first woman to win re-election. In November 2005, Time magazine named her one of the five best governors in the U.S.[1] She served as the Chair of the National Governors Association in 2006-2007.[2] In February 2006, Napolitano was named by The White House Project as one of "8 in '08", a group of eight female politicians who could possibly run and/or be elected president in 2008.[3] On November 5th, 2008, Napolitano was named to the advisory board of the Obama-Biden Transition Project.[4] She is widely considered as a potential member of Obama's cabinet as Homeland Security Secretary.[5]

Reuters via CNN reported on November 19, 2008, quoting 'multiple' unnamed sources, that Napolitano is Barack Obama's top choice for Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. More about Janet Napolitano

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Ninja Bear

Let Detroit Go Bankrupt

By Mitt Romney
IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.
I love cars, American cars. I was born in Detroit, the son of an auto chief executive. In 1954, my dad, George Romney, was tapped to run American Motors when its president suddenly died. The company itself was on life support — banks were threatening to deal it a death blow. The stock collapsed. I watched Dad work to turn the company around — and years later at business school, they were still talking about it. From the lessons of that turnaround, and from my own experiences, I have several prescriptions for Detroit’s automakers.
First, their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers.
That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota’s Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product — it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.
Second, management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries — from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations.
The new management must work with labor leaders to see that the enmity between labor and management comes to an end. This division is a holdover from the early years of the last century, when unions brought workers job security and better wages and benefits. But as Walter Reuther, the former head of the United Automobile Workers, said to my father, “Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a dead-end street.”
You don’t have to look far for industries with unions that went down that road. Companies in the 21st century cannot perpetuate the destructive labor relations of the 20th. This will mean a new direction for the U.A.W., profit sharing or stock grants to all employees and a change in Big Three management culture.
The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms — all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat.
Investments must be made for the future. No more focus on quarterly earnings or the kind of short-term stock appreciation that means quick riches for executives with options. Manage with an eye on cash flow, balance sheets and long-term appreciation. Invest in truly competitive products and innovative technologies — especially fuel-saving designs — that may not arrive for years. Starving research and development is like eating the seed corn.
Just as important to the future of American carmakers is the sales force. When sales are down, you don’t want to lose the only people who can get them to grow. So don’t fire the best dealers, and don’t crush them with new financial or performance demands they can’t meet.

It is not wrong to ask for government help, but the automakers should come up with a win-win proposition. I believe the federal government should invest substantially more in basic research — on new energy sources, fuel-economy technology, materials science and the like — that will ultimately benefit the automotive industry, along with many others. I believe Washington should raise energy research spending to $20 billion a year, from the $4 billion that is spent today. The research could be done at universities, at research labs and even through public-private collaboration. The federal government should also rectify the imbedded tax penalties that favor foreign carmakers.
But don’t ask Washington to give shareholders and bondholders a free pass — they bet on management and they lost.
The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk.
In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.

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James Kotecki

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Obama Is Killing the GOP With Kindness

Now that Barack Obama and John McCain met on Monday, it's looking increasingly as though McCain will be offered a position by Obama. Where will Obama's team of rivals idea end? Will Dick Cheney be offered a post as well?

Maybe Hillary Clinton and McCain won't serve in the Obama administration, after all. Bill Clinton's manifold business activities, if that's the right term, may render it too complicated for Hillary to pass muster. And whether she really wants the post remains an open question.

But it's clear that Obama is taking a radically different approach to the presidency than George W. Bush. Where Bush sought to polarize, Obama is taking the opposite approach. He wants to embrace the opposition in order to create his own kind of stealth presidency. Instead of trying to crush an already enfeebled Republican opposition, Obama is seeking to further weaken it by depriving it of an enemy -- himself. Democrats who worry that Obama is selling out to the opposition may have it backwards. His ingenious approach could end up marginalizing the GOP for decades. Tapping Cheney might be going one step too far, but could a post for the Decider himself be far behind?

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Iraqi Premier Defends Security Accord

BAGHDAD — For the first time since his government approved a three-year security agreement with the United States, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki publicly defended the pact in a televised address on Tuesday night, reassuring Iraqis that representatives from all sects had been involved in the negotiating process and that the agreement was the best option available for Iraq.
The 12-minute speech came six days before Parliament is scheduled to vote on the agreement, which governs the presence of American troops in Iraq for the next three years.
In a separate action on Tuesday, the Iraqi cabinet announced that it had set a firm date, Jan. 31, for elections in all provinces except the three that make up Kurdistan and the province of Tamim, which includes the ethnically charged city of Kirkuk.
In his address, Mr. Maliki acknowledged that the negotiations were difficult, but said there were few alternatives to the current pact. “I’d like to say candidly we have our own assessments, but at the same time this is a strong beginning to get back the full sovereignty of Iraq in three years,” he said.
He described the contents of the agreement in broad terms and said, “no detainees anymore, no detention centers anymore, or American prisons for Iraqis, no searches or raids of buildings or houses, until there is an Iraqi judicial warrant and it is fully coordinated with the Iraqi government.”
Mr. Maliki also attacked opponents of the pact for suggesting over the past few days that the bargaining had gone on in secret, apparently a response to politicians who said they were surprised by the contents of the agreement.
“I feel sad that the opponents or even those who agreed with the pact released statements that are far away from reality,” he said.
In a culture deeply imbued with conspiracy, Mr. Maliki repeatedly vowed that there were no secret side agreements to the pact, the text of which was published in local newspapers on Tuesday.
Supporters of the agreement, including most Shiite and Kurdish legislators, are in a delicate position. While they say that they have the majority needed to succeed in Parliament, a simple mathematical victory is not enough; all acknowledge the need for widespread support.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq, who has advocated national unity consistently since the 2003 invasion, reiterated his insistence that the agreement draw support across sectarian lines.
“Any agreement that doesn’t win national consensus,” the statement read, “will not be acceptable and will be a reason for more suffering for Iraqis.” Shiite lawmakers said that the ayatollah told them on Saturday that he found the final draft of the pact satisfactory, if not ideal, but that his condition of national consent must be met.
Addressing these concerns, Mr. Maliki argued that “the consensus vote in the cabinet on the withdrawal of the forces represents a unified voice.”
The main opposition is coming from followers of the anti-American Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, who has rejected any agreement with the Americans in principle, and many Sunni politicians, who, while they are open to supporting the deal, are wary of the Shiite-led Iraqi government.
Though Sunni lawmakers are aware that Parliament has no ability to make changes to the agreement, they are seeking certain guarantees before giving their approval. These guarantees, they said, could appear in an appendix to the pact or as supplementary legislation.
Sunni lawmakers spent the day drawing up a list of demands that they intended to hand over to the Americans and the Iraqi government. Some of the demands are specific, like amnesty for the majority of the 16,000 Sunni detainees in the custody of the Americans. Others are more general, like the concern that Sunni groups will be unfairly singled out as targets by the Iraqi and American security forces.
Sunni lawmakers said they had been meeting with Americans, including the ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, to air their concerns, but added that the Americans had only listened and not responded in any specific way. The Sunnis said that they did want some sort of framework in place after Dec. 31, the expiration date for the United Nations resolution currently governing coalition forces. But they said there could be alternatives to this pact, including an extension of the resolution.
However, a senior American official in Baghdad said that the Iraqi government had “formally and categorically rejected” an extension of the resolution.
“We want to reach a solution,” Alaa Maki, a senior leader in a Sunni party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, said in an interview at his office on Tuesday. “We don’t want to just put obstacles in front of Iraqi progress. But we want things to be put in the right way, so that we build on the right foundation.
“We regard this as the most important issue from 2003 until now,” he added, “because it will put the Iraqi future on paper.”