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.