Today, the Obama Transition Team announced two new insider appointments.
Long-time friend and confidante Valerie Jarrett has been named Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison.
Also, Phil Schiliro has been named Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs
President-elect Barack Obama said, "These individuals will be essential members of our team as we work to bring Republicans and Democrats together to strengthen our struggling economy and make Washington work for all Americans. I have the utmost confidence that their broad and diverse experience will serve my administration and the American people well in the challenging months."
The Weekly Democratic Address is normally broadcast on radio. It will continue to be, but President-Elect Obama is also doing it as a video on YouTube and elsewhere...call it presidential vlogging.
The most exciting part: President-elect Obama plans to publish these weekly updates through the Transition and then on from the White House. Just think...every week, we'll get a personal address from the president, directly to us, the American people, without that nasty thing the Republicans like to call "the filter of the mainstream media."
In this week's address, Obama addresses the current economic crisis.
Remarks of President-elect Barack Obama
November 15, 2008
Today, the leaders of the G-20 countries -- a group that includes the world's largest economies -- are gathering in Washington to seek solutions to the ongoing turmoil in our financial markets. I'm glad President Bush has initiated this process -- because our global economic crisis requires a coordinated global response.
And yet, as we act in concert with other nations, we must also act immediately here at home to address America's own economic crisis. This week, amid continued volatility in our markets, we learned that unemployment insurance claims rose to their highest levels since September 11, 2001. We've lost jobs for ten straight months -- nearly 1.2 million jobs this year, many of them in our struggling auto industry. And millions of our fellow citizens lie awake each night wondering how they're going to pay their bills, stay in their homes, and save for retirement.
Make no mistake: this is the greatest economic challenge of our time. And while the road ahead will be long, and the work will be hard, I know that we can steer ourselves out of this crisis -- because here in America we always rise to the moment, no matter how hard. And I am more hopeful than ever before that America will rise once again.
But we must act right now. Next week, Congress will meet to address the spreading impact of the economic crisis. I urge them to pass at least a down-payment on a rescue plan that will create jobs, relieve the squeeze on families, and help get the economy growing again. In particular, we cannot afford to delay providing help for the more than one million Americans who will have exhausted their unemployment insurance by the end of this year. If Congress does not pass an immediate plan that gives the economy the boost it needs, I will make it my first order of business as President.
Even as we dig ourselves out of this recession, we must also recognize that out of this economic crisis comes an opportunity to create new jobs, strengthen our middle class, and keep our economy competitive in the 21st century.
That starts with the kinds of long-term investments that we've neglected for too long. That means putting two million Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, and schools. It means investing $150 billion to build an American green energy economy that will create five million new jobs, while freeing our nation from the tyranny of foreign oil, and saving our planet for our children. It means making health care affordable for anyone who has it, accessible for anyone who wants it, and reducing costs for small businesses. And it also means giving every child the world-class education they need to compete with any worker, anywhere in the world.
Doing all this will require not just new policies, but a new spirit of service and sacrifice, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. If this financial crisis has taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers -- in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people. And that is how we will meet the challenges of our time -- together. Thank you.
Eight days after Obama picked Rahm Emanuel as his White House Chief of Staff, Vice President-Elect Joe Biden has now selected his own chief of staff: Ron Klain, who was VP Al Gore's chief of staff as well as a senior adviser in Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.
Big surprise...effective Sunday (11/15/08), Obama will resign his Illinois Senate seat. Guess he's just gonna be too busy being President to be able to be a Senator too. ;-)
It will now be up to Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to appoint his successor, who will serve until 2010.
First Read lists possible candidates as "Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr., Jan Schakowsky and Melissa Bean; Tammy Duckworth, the unsuccessful 2006 House candidate who now heads the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs; Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan; and State Comptroller Dan Hynes."
As you probably know, the truth is that Barack Obama is not a Muslim, though he sees and values the common threads at the heart of all religions. (Can you begrudge a Christian the virtue of tolerance?)
Once again, for those of you who are still confused, Barack Obama is a born-again Christian (though he's careful not to claim a monopoly on Truth, and I admire that in a President-elect of a religiously diverse nation that also has a clear and constitutional separation of its church and state).
He details his beliefs, religious influences, and journey to Christ in this 2004 interview republished in full for the first time on Beliefnet.com
And the VP and his wife shall be known as: Joe Biden: Celtic Wife, Jill Biden: Capri
NBC News reassured viewers this evening, as did Fox in their report, that the code names serve no security function anymore, and continue today simply as a favorite tradition of the Secret Service. They do their best to come up with great code names, and then release them to the press for broadcast.
The Obamas visited the White House today for the first time. Barack Obama and George Bush talked in the Oval Office together for more than an hour, while Laura Bush gave Michelle Obama a tour of the private residence and the two talked about raising daughters in the White House.
First, here are a few pics.
And here's some news footage of their arrival and the walk down the colonnade.
Judd's writing has appeared in USA Today, Association Management magazine, and numerous trade publications. He is the author of three novels, a book on decision-making, and a film short. He is currently writing a historical novel set in Nazi Germany, 1934.
