I have noticed a trend in the diaries I've read about Obama's weekly address. When people summarize Obama's five-point plan for his new jobs program, they mention only four points. I'm guessing that they didn't want to hear what he said.
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 technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.
Get that? Roads/bridges, schools, wind/solar, cars, alt-energy tech. But no one mentions the "cars" part.
Where will Obama get the cadre of skilled-but-jobless auto workers for his new program that will put people "back to work" making fuel-efficient cars? It seems he is expecting that the Big Three will not get their bailout. For all I know, he may even have ordered that they not get it.
Some diarists are claiming that the Rethugs have been blocking the bailout in order to screw the Democrats. Not true: Obama's already planning on it. Perhaps the problem with GM & Friends is that they are like Enron: they are beyond "too big to fail" and thoroughly into the "too corrupt to save" category. So those companies will go out of business and then new jobs need to be found for the displaced workers.
I'm a little concerned that Obama *might* be buying the hype that 2008 is like 1933. Actually, 1873 is a more salient comparison. It seems that Obama is planning to begin his administration by repeating the things that Roosevelt did (like the WPA) that turned out to be effective. But you can go only so far by copying the successful battle plans from the wrong war. The 1930's Depression was resolved by the gear-up to World War II, while the Panic of 1873 was ended by opening the floodgates of immigration. Obama is clearly interested in trying to restore the armed forces that Bush shattered, but he's not saying anything about liberalizing immigration policies.
Or maybe Obama is just trying to move the Overton Window, by making "2008=1933" the conventional wisdom, so he can start talking about 1873? I don't know. Obama is really, really smart—maybe he's got this covered.