“You’re multicultural with different lifestyles and beliefs,” he said, “and together, you represent the face of America.”

Those words could have come from the mouth of another of last weekend’s commencement speakers, President Barack Obama. The President has made multiculturalism as American as apple pie, and invested what used to be fraught cultural territory with a sense of shared destiny. In this case, though, I was listening to Dr. John Ruffin of the National Institutes of Health address the 25th graduating class of Morehouse Medical School, a class which includes my cousin.

The medical school is affiliated with Morehouse College, a historically black male undergraduate institution founded after the Civil War. Yet though the majority of students and families were black American, other families helping to robe the newly-minted doctors included women in saris or wearing Muslim headscarves; mothers and fathers in lavish matching garb from West Africa; parents with the last name Chen or Rodriguez; and families from our nation’s racial majority for another three decades, plus or minus: white Americans.

Just a decade ago, America was in denial about our rapidly changing racial and cultural landscape. The U.S. Census had released projections that by the year 2050, America would have no racial majority. Today, they’ve moved that projected date up to 2042.

Some people think that having a black President means we can afford to put away the topic of race altogether. That complacency, combined with our current economic crisis, could put the lives and futures of students at risk. Education is what turns the American Dream into the American Reality. And education is in deep trouble, first as a thing-in-itself, and also as an indicator of our racial future.

As Dr. Ruffin called on these young doctors to end health disparities, I flashed back to experiences I’d had a decade ago reporting a book called “The Color of Our Future.” For two years, I crisscrossed America from the Crow reservation in Montana to the Georgia/Florida line, to get teens’ take on the role of race in their lives. Many of them struggled to reconcile the fact that the deck was stacked against them–because of race, income, immigration status, and more–with their own righteous belief that they could break through the barriers and fulfill their dreams.

The Media Academy at Fremont High School in Oakland put those struggles in plain sight. It lies on a street filled with idling day laborers, and operates out of worn trailers or “portables” over a decade old. But it has a track record of doing big things with tough or educationally challenged kids.

Earlier this year, I brought graduate students from the journalism school at The University of California, Berkeley, to meet the teens at Fremont High. The grad students were a mix of races, themselves; but the Fremont students included immigrants from several countries including Vietnam and El Salvador as well as black students born in the neighborhood. As was true a decade ago, the high school was what I call “ABW”–Anything But White.

We talked about media, education funding cuts and local school closures (which one brave Fremont student was investigating, much to the consternation of some officials), plus issues including the economy and the fatal shooting of a cuffed man by transit police on New Year’s day. A mix of student and professional crews videotaped the event so we could leave some record of who we were and what are struggling with in our time.

In another environment, many of these kids would be tracked low-achieving or low-literacy and put on the back burner of society. Instead, this graduation season brings moments of joy as students from this tough little program get their diplomas and gear up to go to college. That kind of scene doesn’t happen often enough.

Yes, the Obama Administration is juggling the crises of jobs, foreclosures, banking, wars, and healthcare. We still have to ask when our President intends to foreground educational opportunity, and what he will ask of us as a nation. For example: how will we balance short-term stopgapping (like the State Fiscal Stabilization Funds) with “big think” long term change? Why are so many public schools today, even high-achieving ones, “ABW”? Is school integration effectively dead, fifty-five years after Brown v. Board of Education? How can not just white but middle- and upper-middle-income families be reconnected to public schooling? Will the new political rainbow coalition lose its might once people start debating who should get affirmative action–rich and black, or poor and white? Will “equality,” in this economic crisis, mean that more white Americans are poorly educated, as opposed to more students of color doing well? (That prospect should chill our bones.)

Let’s take a moment during this graduation season to ask how we can raise the profile of educational equality among the issues our nation faces. When I looked at the smiling, multi-ethnic group of newly minted doctors marching out of Morehouse Medical School, I saw an extraordinary example of how shared struggle and success brings people together. The question for all of us is how we can take this kind of achievement, broaden it to the education system at large…and make it the rule, not the exception.

_________

Farai Chideya is an award-winning journalist who has written three nonfiction books on media, politics and race, including “The Color of Our Future”; plus the newly released novel “Kiss the Sky.” She is now researching “The Color of Our Future in the Age of Obama.”

You can find the rough cut of the video about the Media Academy and U.C. Berkeley students here download the return .

In his address to Congress Tuesday, President Barack Obama said, “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

It sounds good. Will it happen? It’s very much up to us.

We live in a country that, until recently, floated on a bubble of consumer spending. Every time we ran up our credit cards, we made it a little easier to generate economic indicators (like the Gross Domestic Product) that said we were fine. We were producing and consuming. Who cares if we were also spending to excess, speculating on homes we couldn’t afford, and failing to save? We ignored those indicators, to our peril.

I say this not as a financial goody two shoes. Though I am lucky enough to have some savings and no debt RIGHT NOW, I have been tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt in the past. I learned that scrounging for change to buy lunch is not a fun way to live when you KNOW you could have had money in the bank if only you didn’t take that vacation, buy those shoes, and speculate on money you thought was coming in but didn’t. I had to learn that lesson dozens of humiliating times before I finally said, “I ain’t doin’ that no more.”

Of course, there are times when some of us are buying groceries off of credit cards, not because we are spending too much but because there seem to be no options. It for folks who have spent as wisely as they can and are still backed against the wall that we have to figure out how to rejigger this economy. How can we sort out how to help people who are trying their best and not just funnel the money into tax breaks for people who jacked us to begin with?

I believe the first thing to do is to read the news and to educate ourselves about the economics of the nation at large and of the communities we live in.

I’ll be posting some more on jobs and economics soon… a lot more. And you can read the full version of Obama’s speech here.

Rise Up, Stay Strong

On my way back from a long trip that included my stop in Detroit, I ended up watching the airplane movie. I hate airplane movies. They usually pick the worst thing that failed in the theatres and throw it on the screen 33,000 feet in the sky.

Then I saw Ice Cube, one of my favorite “blacktresses,” Tasha Smith, and this wonderful teen, who I found out was KeKe Palmer of “Akeelah and the Bee.” The movie is called The Longshots and it’s about a girl whose spirit-broken, ex-football star uncle (Cube) teaches her to be a Pop Warner football quarterback in a broke-down factory town. It sounds treacly, right? Well, I loved it. It’s a straight up feel good movie. And my favorite part is when the salty bar owner gives a speech about how no one is going to come rescue this town, but they can up their own game, clean up their own streets, and take some pride in who they are. This girl’s ambition helps lift folks up. Best of all, it’s a true story.

My Pollyanna side says we can make more of those true stories… the kind about people finding pride in their towns and their friends, family, and creative talents. Money pays the rent but it doesn’t make people happy. I believe that. Of course I’m hustling for mine, but we can either face the hard times with some heart or fall apart. We do have choices, even if they’re only how we react to the challenges at hand.

GMC Yukon Denali vs. Toyota Prius Hybrid

Waaah Waaah Waaah Detroit. Automobile makers are crying the blues at President Obama’s interest in imposing stricter emission standards on their vehicles. The president recently “ordered the government to reconsider whether California and other states could regulate vehicle emissions to help control greenhouse gas emissions, a reversal of a position taken by the Bush administration.” (At the moment, automakers say only the Toyota Prius hybrid and similar vehicles would meet those standards.)

In true Obama form, he emphasized his willingness to work with the carmakers to meet his administration’s goals: energy independence and stopping global warming.

“Let me be clear: Our goal is not to further burden an already struggling industry,” Obama said at the White House according to MSNBC. “It is to help America’s automakers prepare for the future.”

American automakers claim the emission modifications could potentially put them out of business because they would have to stop producing the larger, gas-guzzlers (read: more profitable vehicles). Although GM and Chrysler just borrowed billions of dollars from the federal government, it appears they were counting on the fat price tags of their less fuel-efficient and not greenhouse gas emission-friendly vehicles like Cadillac Escalade (MSRP mid $60,000’s), GMC Denali (MSRP mid $50,000’s), Hummer truck (MSRP $60,000-70,000’s), and even the Saab 9-5 (MSRP $40,000’s).

“I think this is the pathway to their survival,” David Doniger of the National Resources Defense Council said to the New York Times. “If carmakers are going to survive in a world of volatile oil prices and global warming, they have to be making more efficient vehicles. When the economy comes back and people start buying cars again, they’re going to expect that gas prices are going to go up, and they’re not going to want the gas hogs that they used to want. Consumers’ tastes have changed in terms of what’s cool.”

Hey Detroit, you proved that you could make a hybrid Escalade. Surely, you can get to work on updating the technology for the rest of the cars, which gives options for larger families and is better for the environment. After all, Americans are paying for it—to the tune of $17.4 billion.

In other news…

Former Vice President Al Gore is urging Congress to support legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions. In his recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gore warned the government to not get so blindsided by the economic crisis that they forget to work on international global warming initiatives. In fact, he reminds them that “the economy, terrorism and the Iraq and Afghan wars are linked by a common thread—our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels.” In addition to the greenhouse gas emissions cap, there is another solution that both Obama and Gore agree on: the President’s economic stimulus plan. Obama’s proposal includes investments in clean energy and green jobs that Gore and others think will help the U.S. economy. Green thinking could add up to more green..dollars that is.

Check ou“>t Gore’s recent testimony before Congress on greenhouse gases.

Akon Did It! He admits…. Rapper Akon pleaded guilty to harrassment when he threw a fan off the stage during a concert in upstate New York last year. The incident, which was caught on tape and posted on YouTube, occurred after the fan, Anthony Smith, threw an object on the stage. The singer shook hands with Anthony and his parents after entering his plea. But don’t expect any jailtime for Akon—he’s covered after doing 65 hours of community service and paying a $250 fine.

A Lawsuit for Weezy F. Baby… Lil Wayne is facing a lawsuit that accuses him of copyright infrigement for his song “I Feel Like Dying.” The song samples Karma Ann Swanepoel’s “Once,” but the federal suit says that his record label, Cash Money, failed to negotiate a license to use the song. Weezy’s lawyers have asked for an extension to turn over documents requested by Urband & Lazer Music Publishing.

Live Nation in Trouble, By Black Sabbath…. Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi is suing Live Nation for selling merchandise with the band’s logo after their contract expired. The concert ticket company is accused of selling over 100 items with the band’s “likeness, name and logo.” Iommi is asking for three times the amount of the sales and the halt of Black Sabbath product sales.

Leaker of Chinese Democracy Pleads Guilty… The blogger who leaked nine out of the 14 songs from Guns n’ Roses’  long-awaited album has admitted to posting the songs on his Web site Antiquiet. Kevin Cogill, who initially pleaded not guilty to federal copyright violation, agreed to changing his plea after requesting probation only. Still, Cogill might face a year in prison, probation, and a fine.

November has been a long string of weekends finishing ahead of last year’s numbers.

In movies, that is.

The Thanksgiving long weekend was no exception, with audiences flocking to see a range of new releases, from the treacly (Four Christmases, $32 mil ) to the teen-y (Twilight, $27 mil) to the family-friendly (Bolt, $26 mil) to the action-packed (Quantum of Solace, $20 mil) to the Oscar-contending (Australia, $16 mil). A little something for everyone, so to speak.

The real news of the moment, though (as much as I would love to dwell on happy-go-lucky box offices numbers), is the impending actors’ strike.

Sharon Waxman broke the story this weekend about a meeting, “like a scene from one of the Godfather movies” of the biggest names in acting in the last thirty years – a meeting that happened (if it happened) before AFTRA cut its deal. Continuing to negotiate without AFTRA was at least a step toward a strike.

Meanwhile, 17 thousand people have signed a “No SAG Strike” online petition, including Bill Murray, Cybil Shepherd, Jessica Biel, and Jason Patric.

SAG leadership is expected to ask for strike authorization in the coming weeks, despite intense pressure from the economy (officially in recession) and industry insiders and dependents still smarting from last Christmas’ WGA strike.

Twenty years ago today, Benazir Bhutto became the first ever female to lead a Muslim country when Pakistan appointed her prime minister December 1, 1988.

Oldest child of Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Al Bhutto, Benazir received a B.A. from Harvard University where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa, later studying at Oxford. She was repeatedly to call her four years as an undergraduate in Cambridge, Mass. the four happiest of her life, as they instilled in her a deep-rooted respect for democracy.

She married in 1987, taking office a year later. She was twice accused of corruption and went into “self-imposed” exile to Dubai 10 years ago. She returned to the post last fall, only to be assassinated a couple of months later by Al-Qaeda on December 27, 2007.

Whether the corruption charges were founded on true crimes and indiscretions or not, it would be difficult to deny the fact that Bhutto is both a legendary and inspiring figure, if only because of what she represents.

…Other significant events to occur today:

1864 President Abe Lincoln gives a State of the Union address that reinforces the Emancipation Proclamation he had made a mere 10 weeks before, urging the end of slavery.

1913 Greece annexes Crete a year after the mini-Minoan island had achieved independence from Turkey following the first Balkan War.

1918 Iceland, though remaining a member of the Danish kingdom, achieves sovereignty, Transylvania unites with Romania and Serbs, Croats and Slovenes proclaim a kingdom by that name in the land that will later become the fraught Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

1934 Russia continues to replace the old-guard Bolsheviks with Stalinist henchman in another killing, this one of Politburo member Kirov.

1944 Axis power-controlled U-869, the sub that would later become the subject of New York Times riveting bestseller Shadow Divers, departs from Norway with an American Northeastern destination.

1955 Ms. Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a White man on the bus, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott and creating another watershed moment in the Civil Rights Movement.

1981 The world officially recognizes the AIDS virus’ existence and threat, making today World AIDS day.

Slate V has the outtakes from other turkey interviews Palin has given. They’re bloody good!

Yesterday, the sun looked like a giant grapefruit. By dusk, it had added that coral-orange shade to a sky so colorful it resembled the contents of one of the bottles you see filled with different levels of sand…the rainbow kind available in curio shops all over the southwest. Right, those.

At first, I didn’t think these sights had anything to do with one another. Then I smelled the air and read the paper.

It was happening again.

Every fall, the Santa Ana winds bring with them an uncomfortable heat—inducing an Indian summer that nips at days getting dark by four p.m., while the rest of the country prepares for Thanksgiving and Christmas wearing scarves and heavy coats.

Every September and October, or October and November, fires follow the winds, searing through the dryer parts of California.

The mountains and hills, and the valley in between them have gorse, brush and weeds parched enough to ignite when aided by even the tiniest spark.

Whether by a stray gust or arson, that spark inevitably appears.

And every year around this time, hundred, if not thousands, of people lose their homes—some their lives—to the explosive fires borne from those winds.

It breaks my heart. The flames consume these peoples’ personal spaces, the proof of their memories and everything they own.

The LA County air looks and smells so smoky it’s almost as if there were a giant city-wide BBQ . Like the weird light peaking behind forbidden doors in Little Nemo or Harry Potter films, the day seems to have adopted a sickly yellow tinge.

The Los Angeles Times dedicated most of its Sunday edition front page to these fires. The print headline read “Driven by Wind, Catastrophe Sweeps Across Three Counties.” Through its gallery, the online version presents an array of photos depicting still shots of the brilliant red, orange hues of flames devouring everything in their path.

If this, like the mudslides that will certainly come after the rains that will certainly follow these fires, is a predictable disaster, why is it still legal to build houses in those areas? Or, short of that, why is constructing homes with ultra flammable material still so common? While people are not to blame for wanting their houses to look a certain way, the developers, could stand to quell their greed or at least tap into some hindsight by noticing that houses using stucco and tile are more resistant to flame, and since fire comes every year, exposing people (those living there, those fighting the fires and those covering them for news outlets) to needless tragedy and danger is inexcusable.

President-elect Barack Obama is hip and technology savvy. In fact, many political analysts contend that his use of technology and email during his presidential campaign contributed significantly to his win in the age of Web 2.0. Yet according to a recent New York Times article, as president, Obama may be forced to lose his favorite campaign device: his BlackBerry.

Because of the Presidential Records Act, Obama’s BlackBerry (a hacker liability) poses a national security risk. It also allows the president’s location to be trackable via GPS and cell networks. And the law makes all of his correspondence available for the public to review should they be subpoenaed by Congress. There is no “work only” clause either; his personal emails to his daughters, wife and friends would be combed through as well.

Unlike his self-proclaimed technophobic contender from the general election, Obama will definitely feel the loss. Like most of us (including this author), Obama’s BlackBerry has become a part of his life. For him, the device may have been one of his few escapes to the real world and a much needed lifeline to his friends and family.

“Given how important it is for him to get unfiltered information from as many sources as possible, I can imagine he will miss that freedom,” said Linda Douglass, a senior adviser who traveled with the campaign to the NYT.

In the transition days ahead, our president-elect may have to wean himself off his BlackBerry like he did cigarettes. The former may be harder than the latter.

courtesy Staten Island Advance

It’s been almost two weeks since Barack Obama was elected the first black U.S. president, and since then there have been “hundreds” of documented racial crimes across the country, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, reported by the Associated Press.

Documented in the AP article are burned crosses in Apolacan Township, Pennsylvania and Hardwick, New Jersey; racist graffiti in Staten Island, Los Angeles and Kilgore, Texas; and a “Osama Obama” assassination prediction pool in Standish, Maine.

In Springfield, Massachusetts, a church under construction to house a black congregation was burned to the ground in the early morning after the election. While investigators have concluded the fire was caused by arsonists, they have no evidence it was racially motivated. The church’s leader has made up his own mind.

“I’ve seen segregation. I’ve seen Jim Crowism,” Bishop Bryant J. Robinson Jr. told the Boston Globe. “We’ve come quite a ways, but we’re not that perfect union yet. There’s obviously a remnant of that kind of behavior still being practiced, for whatever reason.”

Even more frightening, the splintered and ineffectual white supremacist movement has seen interest surge in the wake of the election. Two white nationalist Web sites have crashed because of heavy traffic, and a secessionist site has also had interest skyrocket.

These attacks follow on the heels of the racial epithets yelled at John McCain and Sarah Palin rallies during the waning days of the campaign.

Throughout the campaign, the Obama camp stayed away from discussing race, and the candidate had to convince his aides it was OK to give a major speech on race after the Reverend Jeremiah Wright issue came to a head. But while there may not have been a true dialogue between the candidates about race, some voters had to reconcile previously held beliefs.

In Levittown, Pennsylvania, and other cities in the western part of the state, voters overcame concerns about Obama’s race that had been present until the final days of the campaign. But in other counties that straddle the Appalachian Mountains, and down through the deep South, racial questions led to increases in support for John McCain. Voter analysis by the New York Times found that less than a third of white voters supported Obama in the South, compared to 43 percent of whites nationally. In Alabama, 18 percent of whites voted for John Kerry. Only nine percent voted for Obama.

If some upset voters have no trouble expressing their frustration by writing the N-word on parked cars, others don’t object to speaking their minds to a reporter. In the Times article, voters compete for the Most Racist Quote Award.

“I think there are going to be outbreaks from blacks. From where I’m from, this is going to give them the right to be more aggressive.” — Gail McDaniel

One white woman said she feared that blacks would now become more “aggressive,” while another volunteered that she was bothered by the idea of a black man “over me” in the White House.

Conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh are crowing that the country is still more red than blue, ignoring the fact that the number of solidly conservative counties is steadily shrinking. And while Limbaugh says liberals “organize in little communes and cliques and cities and so forth and only want to hang around with each other and themselves,” he ignores places like Blount County in northern Alabama, where 84 percent of voters picked John McCain.

David Brooks, as moderate a Republican there is, worries the traditionalist arm of the GOP will cater to the base with more fear-mongering and suffer even more defeats on the national stage. An increased number of hate crimes can hardly be called a good start to rehabilitating the Republican image.

A funny thing happened after Barack Obama got elected. Everyone suddenly liked John McCain. His concession speech, they said, was a return to the “old McCain,” the one everyone applauded when he bucked the system way back in 2000 and challenged Republican front-runner George W. Bush during the GOP primaries. Everyone liked that McCain, and said he had disappeared during the course of his 2008 campaign. The narrative went that his campaign had been hijacked, the candidate himself had been muzzled, and another ‘they’—Schmidt etc. al—were controlling the “real McCain” and twisting his beloved maverick image.

The lovefest for the “old McCain,” began with the Alfred E. Smith dinner, and continued with the Saturday Night Live appearance the weekend before the election, where it seemed he was willfully poking fun at his attention-starved, power-hungry Vice Presidential pick, Sarah Palin. He seemed to be saying to the lefty American public, we’re on the same side, you and me. The McCain image overhaul culminated with this week’s all-in-good fun appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, where he joshed and joked: “I’m sleeping like a baby. I sleep two hours, wake up and cry.”

Perhaps his reversal to the “Old McCain” was calculated. But i think we’re just as complacent. We want to remember the “old McCain,” not the one who dominated the campaign, throwing out invectives about socialism and Bill Ayers and all the other wag the dog tales of woe. I call this pre-emptive revisionist nostalgia—that is, nostalgia for an event that didn’t happen at all and for a time that isn’t even over yet.

Sarah Palin, just a few days ago, remember, was a dangerous pick, a terrible hatemonger, a fraud dressed in a $150,000 wardrobe. Faster than you can say “community organizer,” Sarah Palin was tarred and feathered by her own camp, derided for supposed ignorance about world affairs—not knowing Africa was a continent, or which countries signed the North American Free Trade Agreement—making all those arguments about sexism in the media suddenly valid. Faster still, she retreated to her home state and gave interviews with the local reporters, speaking competently about energy reform in complete sentences, properly using the English language. Her look suddenly lost the slick polish we had gotten used to—her hair was a little frizzier, less done, her clothes a little more frumpy, and Sarah Palin, suddenly stopped seeming like Cruella Deville, and was almost….sympathetic.

Did someone spike my drink?

It’s happening with the rest of the Republican guard, too. Bush’s open arm embrace of Obama’s transitional period is being viewed as supremely kind—”generous”— as if he has any other choice, given the state he’s brought our country into. Never forget, these are the final days of his presidency, and Bush wants to be remembered better than he is certain to be remembered—as a total, utter, failure.

Bush’s cooperation with the man who will be President is being hailed as a monumental achievement; likewise, the rest of his administration’s images are being getting softened with this post-electoral nostalgic glow. Condi Rice, once considered by the left to be as evil and as fiercely right wing as her boss, held a press conference, in which she essentially praised Obama’s win as an awesome achievement that made her very proud. You could hear the collective liberal swoon. Awwwww. How soon we forget, it was she who helped pushed the Iraq War to the American public. After she appeared at the Glamour magazine awards with a new, fresh updo, Huff Post readers gushed, “I’ve always admired her for what she has accomplished. I don’t care for her politics, but she’s a great role model.”

They say time heals all wounds, but the didn’t mention that it can happen in seconds.

Colin Powell, too, gets a pass. After four years out of the administration, he’s forgiven for his unfortunate WMD at the UN moment, and we look askance at what those actions helped bring, because he endorsed the right man.

Pre-emptive revisionist nostalgia might be a way to feel less hateful toward our current administration and help cleanse ourselves of our dark thoughts over the past eight years, but we should never forget.

As an African-American woman, I do not believe in voting for a man because he is of a similar race as myself (I say similar due to his bi-racial heritage). Race is an ever-present influence in our society and, therefore, influences the minds of most Americans. I cannot deny that it had maybe a 15-20% influence on my vote. According to this CNN article, 20 percent of those polled say that race played a factor—in Obama’s favor.

It’s hard not to want to make history for civil rights. Yet in all honesty, I think it is unfortunate how much race affected the election because I fear that, not only has it put lofty expectations on Obama now that he has won, but that these lofty expectations, if they are not reached, might set African-Americans back in the game of racial disparity. Michael Jackson (whom I adore) is an example of an African-American who fell fro grace. He was the King of Pop for over a decade. Then, two accusations (not even guilty verdicts) of child molestation tanked his career and have made him a nationally understood joke. I don’t want that to happen to Obama.

What if now that “we’ve” gotten “our” chance, it comes back in failure? Sure we’ve got one Black president, but it doesn’t guarantee there will ever be another one, especially if Obama doesn’t follow through on his promises. It is much more important to vote for a man on what he can do than who he is.

I await his actions as President before I can make any judgment as to whether or not this was a wise choice for America, as I would for any other President. I would like to see what he does about the looming Social Security problem and about our collapsed economy. The number of people of retirement age in this country will be in a one-third ratio with the workforce that is supposed to support them by 2020. This means less social security benefits for retirees or more taxes for the workers. This will be a huge economic problem that has not been planned for. This is in addition to the fact that future generations are going to be paying for the recent bailout, the economic future of America is grim. Obama plans to cut taxes for the middle class, but that might be completely offset by these future financial burdens. If he can truly turn our country around and straighten things out when it falls on these aspects, he will be a great president in my eyes, not just a great Black president.

Let’s not bail out the auto industry, too, writes Rich Lowry of National Review. Giants like GM and Ford have long mismanaged their empires, and the argument that the country can’t afford to lose 100,000 jobs casts Detroit automakers as job and welfare programs, he writes. Bailing them out would put us on track for a new wave of protectionism from free-market competition. And President-elect Obama has signaled he may be willing to do it.

On economic policy, Barack Obama’s not really about change. So holds Jonathan Weil at Bloomberg. The president-elect chose 17 people last week for his transition economic advisory board, and many of them ought not to be guiding his decisions on financial matters because they’ve got shady pasts of their own. One of them, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, was chairman of Citigroup’s executive committee when the bank “helped Enron Corp. cook its books.” There’s more.

Should the courts defer to the popular vote on Prop 8? Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Just, respectively the legal affairs editor and managing editor at The New Republic, have an on-going debate on the issue. The first two parts are here and here. In the third part, Rosen argues that when the Supreme Court’s constitutional authority over an issue is uncertain, as he says they are in the case of abortion and gay marriage, then it should defer to the people and to the Legislature. It’s a high-minded debate.

A black man is president; America no longer needs racial quotas, writes Ken Blackwell in National Review. Racial preference programs harm minorities, anyway, he writes. For example, a 20-percent minimum requirement for minority attendance at a school quickly becomes a 20-percent maximum in practice. Barack Obama has championed change and put forward a vision of a post-racial America, and that’s something everyone should celebrate.

What-next fest continues. David Brooks at the New York Times sees two camps in the struggle for philosophical control over the Republican Party: the Traditionalists, who want to cut taxes, cut big government, and restrict immigration; and the Reformers, who want to address inequality and middle-class economic worries and who tend to see global warming as a more serious issue. His prediction? The Traditionalists will win the near-term battle, but the outcome of the war is uncertain. Over at National Review, Deroy Murdock’s mantra: “What would Reagan do?”

What about Sarah Palin? She appeared in an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren yesterday, covering everything from the clothes fiasco to why she feels the McCain-Palin ticket lost. Part one is below. Part two is here.

Michelle and Barack Obama out for dinner on Saturday night.

The McCain camp scored one of its few victories over the course of the campaign when it labeled Barack Obama a celebrity in advertising spots that ran in August. The criticism stuck because in many ways it was true: Obama was drawing thousands of adoring fans to every campaign rally he held.

But now that Obama is President-elect, Americans can obsess about their new, handsome Commander-in-Chief and his beautiful family without fear of being labeled star hounds. On Friday, the Obama camp posted election-night photos of the family waiting for Barack to be declared the winner on Flickr, and the page wouldn’t display for a while as visitors eager to see the new first family overloaded the site.

The Obamas are getting the real celebrity treatment: There are now grainy photographs chronicling their every move. The Huffington Post breathlessly declared Sunday, “Obamas Eat Out For First Time Since Win.”

Barack and Michelle Obama are meeting with George and Laura Bush Monday afternoon for their first official tour of the White House, and Washington insiders are predicting awkwardness as Obama meets with someone he has spent the last months criticizing on the campaign trail. But while Obama meets with the exiting president, continues to assemble his cabinet, and weighs what policy initiatives to take on first, us lowly citizens are tackling the real issue the first family needs to address, asking “what kind of dog should Malia and Sasha get?” [Ed note—presidential celebrities are just like you and me!]

Obama addressed this concern at his first press conference as president-elect on Friday.

With respect to the dog, this is a major issue. I think it’s generated more interest on our Web site than just about anything. We have—we have two criteria that have to be reconciled. One is that Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypo-allergenic. There are a number of breeds that are hypo-allergenic. On the other hand, our preference would be to get a shelter dog. But obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me. So the—so, whether we’re going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household.

Obama has been praised for running a brilliant campaign, but clearly he knows the real way to get into Americans’ hearts: talk about pets. Just Google “Obama family dog” and there will be thousands of stories and hundreds of breed suggestions for the Obamas to consider.

Even Bill Kristol is concerned a dog-friendly Obama will be an unbeatable president. Writing about Obama’s press conference, the conservative New York Times columnist said, “Here, in a few sentences, Obama did the following: He deepened his bond with every dog lover in America. He identified with every household that’s tried to figure out what kind of dog to get. He touched every parent with a kid allergic to pets. He showed compassion by preferring a dog from a shelter. And he demonstrated a dry and slightly politically incorrect wit by commenting that ‘a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me.’”

A common refrain during the campaign from McCain and others was that Obama was an unknown. Now that he will be the next president, there is a demonstrated hunger from Americans to learn more about Obama and his family. What new styles will Michelle introduce? Where will the girls go to school? Will Barack follow through on his pledge to install a basketball court in the White House?

We’ll all be able to follow along as the Obamas make their new home in Washington. Some celebrities complain about the lack of privacy in their lives. But that doesn’t apply when it’s the president, right?

While most of my peers were partying it up with the Dems at some local celebration-popping champagne, high-fiving and hugging, and chanting about change—I was (not by choice) at the GOP’s “Election 2008 Victory Party” in Orange County.

Woot! Woot! Some victory.

I surveyed the room early in the evening. Most folks still had hope that the American people would pull through for their candidate. Twenty minutes after McCain gave his concession speech, the same folks still had hope—for Proposition Bigot.

McCain hit the big screens, started talking, and you could hear a pin drop. The room was silent and attentive. I was hoping to snap a photo or two of Republicans shedding a few tears while falling to the ground, looking to the ceiling, and asking God why he had forsaken them—but that didn’t happen. When McCain mentioned Palin, however, the room erupted into applause. No joke.

And then, Barack Obama stepped into the limelight.

The bustle in the room stopped, the Republicans looked over at the big screens, my heart was about to burst—but wait. Two minutes into the speech, some punk Republican walked onto the stage, stepped up to the podium, and said, “I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of this.”

With that, the volume went out.

Obama was still on the TV, but his voice was gone. The next president of the United States had been silenced.

I mention this because I think it’s indicative of what lies ahead for President Obama. He has massive support from a good portion of the country—but the other portion is adamantly against him. And those voters may never budge, despite Obama’s achievements.

I have no doubt that the man will be a leader of a lifetime, but he has no control over his opponents and if these people stubbornly decide to undermine and disrespect him, then—divided, we will fall.

Call me naïve, but I was expecting more out of the Republicans. I was expecting grace and humility. I was expecting something a little more maverick-y and a little less South Park: