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WASHINGTON (CNN) – In an exclusive interview with CNN, Vice President Joe Biden said Friday he believes the economy has "hit bottom" and he's confident the stimulus package is helping to put the economy back on track.

"Oh I'm confident we've hit bottom," Biden said. "The question is look, we're not going to be satisfied, Ed, until I'm able to sit in front of you and say, 'Look, this month we grew jobs.'"

The vice president acknowledged that with unemployment at 9.8 percent across the country right now, it is hard to convince the American people the nation is coming of out of recession. Biden made his comments on a day in which he released a new report claiming the stimulus has created or saved somewhere between 640,000 and one million jobs.

"The net effect is growing jobs," said Biden, though he quickly acknowledged: "It doesn't say a lot to people to say, 'You know there would have been a million more ... jobs lost but for this [stimulus]. My grandpop used to have an expression... We lived in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

He said when the guy in Dixon City, a suburb, is out of work it's an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law's out of work, it's a recession. When you're out of work, it's a depression. And it's a depression for millions of people."

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WASHINGTON (CNN) - President Obama plans to name a maverick Republican, former Sen. Chuck Hagel, to co-chair a powerful board that will oversee the work of the intelligence community at a time when CIA officials are facing investigations into whether the agency's enhanced interrogation program violated the law during the Bush administration.

Two senior administration officials told CNN that Hagel and former Sen. David Boren (D), will be unveiled as co-chairs of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board Wednesday afternoon at a White House event. CIA Director Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair will also attend the event.

The prestigious post has been previously held by foreign policy luminaries like Brent Scowcroft, who ran the board during the George W. Bush administration, when it was known as the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
Hagel, who served as an informal foreign policy adviser to Obama during the presidential campaign, was rumored to be a possible Secretary of Defense or Ambassador but ended up running a Washington think tank, the Atlantic Council, instead.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Two officials say President Obama is hosting a bipartisan, bicameral meeting with congressional leaders on the war in Afghanistan Tuesday afternoon, marking his first major bipartisan conclave on the issue in some time. Committee chairs and ranking members of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees will be on hand, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Democratic Sens. John Kerry and Carl Levin and Republican Sens. Richard Lugar and John McCain, among others.

(CNN)–Two senior officials tell CNN the president is planning to invite centrist Senate Democrats to the White House tomorrow to immediately try to get the key fence-sitters into a room and try to start working them. CNN has also learned Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel met with more than a dozen of these centrist Democraic senators on the Hill this afternoon, including Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – With the Senate poised to pass a bill Thursday night expanding the "cash for clunkers" program with an infusion of $2 billion, White House aides say President Obama will quickly sign the bill into law by the end of the week so there's no interruption to the popular incentive this weekend.

"He's going to want to make sure the funds are in place by this weekend," one senior White House official noted because of the particularly brisk weekend business the program has sparked.

There has been concern the program is so popular it will run out of its initial $1 billion in funding if the Senate leaves for recess this week without completing a deal. Several top Republicans, including Sen. John McCain of Arizona, raised concerns about pouring more money into the program at a time when the government is deep in debt.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other top Democrats have been lining up votes for the expansion by making the case that the program is providing a boost to the economy by increasing weak auto sales, while also helping the environment by getting "clunkers" off the road in favor of more fuel-efficient vehicles.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) – White House spokesman Robert Gibbs is trying to downplay expectations for Thursday night's "Beer Summit", saying President Obama "is not going to announce anything" in terms of new initiatives to address racial profiling and will not address reporters when they are briefly let in to take pictures of the confab.

"You won't hear from the president," Gibbs told reporters. "You won't hear from the glass of beer."

Gibbs said Obama simply hopes "this will help foster a dialogue" by bringing together the president's friend, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and the man who arrested him, Sgt. Jim Crowley of the Cambridge, Massachusetts police department, over a few beers.

Gibbs added that the president will not engage Gates and Crowley in questions about what happened on the night of the incident. "This is not an after-action report," he said.

Instead, the summit is planned to be held in a more casual setting, with White House aides revealing that Crowley and Gates will be bringing their family members for the meeting at the picnic table on the South Lawn of the White House.

Sasha Obama wandered into President Obama's bed early Tuesday morning to have a chat with her parents.

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) - An unexpected visitor wandered into the bedroom of President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama in the wee hours of Tuesday morning - but the Secret Service wasn't worried about a security breach.

The visitor was 8-year-old Sasha Obama, who's touring Russia along with her older sister Malia. The younger girl could not contain her excitement about Dad's fifth foreign trip in office, so she decided to wake her parents to tell them about it, the president cheerfully recounted in a CNN interview.

"Sasha this morning around 4 am just wandered into our bed and plopped down and started chatting," Obama said in the interview a few hours later. "That was sort of a highlight, although I'm a little groggy now as a consequence."
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President Obama on Tuesday called Michael Jackson a 'core part of our culture.'

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) – As millions around the globe prepared to watch the public funeral of Michael Jackson, President Obama told CNN on Tuesday the entertainer's legacy will be a man who had extraordinary talent "matched with a big dose of tragedy."

In a CNN interview focused on his diplomatic efforts at a two-day summit in Russia, Obama took a question about Jackson's cultural impact and called him "one of the greatest entertainers of our generation."

"I think like Elvis, like Sinatra, like the Beatles he became a core part of our culture," Obama told CNN. "His extraordinary talent and his music was matched with a big dose of tragedy and difficulty [in] his private life and I don't think we can ignore that."

But Obama added it's important to "affirm what was the best of him and that was captured by his music."

"Music that Michelle and I listened to from the time we were little kids," said Obama. "I remember listening to 'A, B, C' when I was 8 or 9 or 10, and he kept on producing extraordinary music for years after that."

More bad news for the newspaper industry, as President Obama's top aides signal it will not be getting a government bailout.

WASHINGTON – This just in: More bad news for the newspaper industry, as President Obama's top aides signal it will not be getting a government bailout. With the Boston Globe just the latest big-city newspaper teetering on the edge of shutdown, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs brushed aside a question about whether the federal government will consider stepping in to help save newspapers, as it has with so many other industries.

"I don't know what, in all honesty, government can do about it," Gibbs told reporters. Gibbs signaled one difference from bailouts for the auto industry and financial firms is that it's a "bit of a tricky area" for the White House to be helping media companies that cover the President, given the potential for conflicts of interest.

It's not like the President, who is routinely spotted with a newspaper tucked under his arm when he's getting into a motorcade, is completely unsympathetic to the industry. Gibbs said Obama feels "concern and sadness" over the plight of the print media, though the spokesman couldn't resist a poke at some of the reporters in the briefing room who had recently posed skeptical questions about the President's push to trim a small amount of federal spending.

"You guys didn't think $100 million meant a lot a few weeks ago," Gibbs said. "But looking at some of the balance sheets, $100 million seems to mean a lot." Ouch.

President Obama will announce Kanasas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as his pick for HHS, sources say.

WASHINGTON (CNN) –President Barack Obama on Saturday asked Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be his nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, according to two White House officials.

The officials told CNN that Obama is expected to make the announcement Monday afternoon. The officials asked not to be named because the announcement has not yet been made.

Chu is Obama's choice for energy secretary, sources tell CNN.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – President-elect Barack Obama is likely to name Dr. Steven Chu, a physicist who runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as his new Energy Secretary, three Democratic officials close to the transition told CNN.

The three officials said the announcement is expected to come next week in Chicago and that Obama will also unveil Carol Browner, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration, as the newly-created "climate czar" inside the White House itself.

Chu won the 1997 Nobel prize in physics and is highly respected in energy circles. But some Democrats have privately expressed concern that Chu has no political experience as he takes on the monumental task of passing a landmark energy reform bill early next year.

While Browner is seen as a shrewd inside player who could help the incoming Energy Secretary navigate Capitol Hill, Obama will face questions about how effective his team will be going up against oil companies and other special interests that do not want to change the status quo.

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Obama is now calling on Blagojevich to step down.

(CNN) – President-elect Barack Obama Wednesday joined calls for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to resign.

"The president-elect agrees with [Illinois] Lt. Governor Quinn and many others that under the current circumstances it is difficult for the governor to effectively do his job and serve the people of Illinois," Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

On Tuesday Blagojevich was arrested on federal conspiracy charges. Prosecutors alleged in their complaint that Blagojevich pressured candidates to replace Obama in the Senate for campaign contributions and other benefits.

Gibbs said Obama also supported legislation that will be considered by Illinois lawmakers on Monday to authorize a special election to choose his successor.

Obama believes Illinois lawmakers should "put in place a process to select a new senator that will have the trust and confidence of the the people of Illinois," Gibbs said.

Full story

CHICAGO (CNN) - The Obama transition team has just set up a special team to interact with the State Department’s Operations Center as well as the office of the Director of National Intelligence, according to an Obama aide. That information is then being filtered to President-elect Obama, who is getting regular updates at his residence here in Chicago. He is scheduled to be home all day Thursday celebrating Thanksgiving with family and friends.

An Obama spokesman told reporters the president-elect had spoken by phone with both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Indian Ambassador Ronen Sen.

Orszag is expected to join Obama’s team tomorrow.

(CNN) - Two sources close to the transition tell CNN that on Tuesday, President-elect Barack Obama will officially unveil Peter Orszag as his nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget at a press conference in Chicago.

Obama hinted at this at an event Monday, when he suggested his Tuesday event would focus on finding cuts in the federal budget to help dig the nation out of the fiscal crisis.

“Full recovery will not happen immediately,” Obama told reporters. “And to make the investments we need, we’ll have to scour our federal budget, line by line, and make meaningful cuts and sacrifices as well, something I will be discussing further tomorrow."

(Updated 6:25 p.m.: Bill Richardson is still on track to be named Commerce Secretary, but not Tuesday.)

CHICAGO (CNN) - The logistics for today's economic team rollout had a taste of Chicago baseball mixed in. The room was divided into two sides: reporters on the south side of the room have small White Sox tickets on their seats. Those on the north have tiny Cubs scraps of paper, complete with semi-official MLB insignias. The President-elect, of course, is a South Sider who roots for the Sox.

Bill Richardson is expected to be named as the Secretary of Commerce, two Democrats tell CNN.

(CNN) - Two Democrats close to the transition tell CNN that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is now expected to be nominated as Secretary of Commerce by President-elect Barack Obama, pending the final vetting process.

Richardson, one of the leading Hispanics in the Democratic Party, had been seeking the Secretary of State post but lost out to Sen. Hillary Clinton. Obama aides have told CNN that Obama is “on track” to nominate Clinton as his secretary of state after Thanksgiving.

The precise timing on the announcement of Richardson’s appointment is unclear.

Two Richardson advisers said privately that Richardson had been hoping State would be his prize after facing political heat for picking Obama over Clinton, but the governor is willing to accept another post in hopes that he will move up in the Cabinet later in the administration.

Richardson served as Energy Secretary and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration.

Obama’s pick will now mean that at least three former rivals from the Democratic presidential primaries will be in senior posts in the Obama administration - Richardson, Clinton and Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

The Obama girls on their way to school in Chicago

(CNN) – Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter confirms to CNN the Obama daughters will attend Sidwell Friends school in Washington, DC.

"They looked at a lot of great schools but they felt Sidwell fit their best interests," spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter told CNN.

Chelsea Clinton also attended the school when her father was in the White House.

After dropping out of the presidential race, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who had worked in Bill Clinton's administration, endorsed Barack Obama.

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) - Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico is a serious contender for commerce secretary in the Obama administration, two sources close to the transition said Friday.

The same sources, however, cautioned that Richardson could be tapped for another senior post as well. They do not consider Richardson's appointment to the Commerce Department to be a done deal.

Richardson, 61, was a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Currently in his second term as New Mexico's governor, he previously served as ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary in the Clinton administration.

Jones is the leading candidate to be Obama's national security advisor.

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) – Two sources close to the Obama transition team tell CNN retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones has emerged as President-elect's leading choice to become national security adviser in the White House.

The sources said Jones has been given the impression by the President-elect that the job is his if he wants it. But the officials said there are still private discussions underway and no final decision has been made.

The discussions are focused on precisely how much power Jones will have in the staff job since he is used to being in a command role. Among his many posts, Jones served for several years as the operational commander for NATO.

In the third and final presidential debate, Obama noted that he deeply values advice from Jones, who has four decades of military service.

One person close to the transition noted Jones is a bipartisan figure who has warm relationships with both current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who may stay on the job for at least a brief period, as well as Sen. Hillary Clinton, who is now on track to be nominated as Secretary of State after Thanksgiving.
CNN first reported last week that Jones was getting serious consideration for either national security adviser or Energy Secretary.

Sources tell CNN Tom Daschle is Obama's choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

CHICAGO (CNN) - Three sources close to the transition and in a position to know tell CNN that former Sen. Tom Daschle is President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be Secretary of Health and Human Services and the former Senate Majority Leader has indicated he wants the job.

Most significantly, Daschle negotiated that he will also serve as the White House health "czar" - or point person - so that he will report directly to the incoming President. The significance is this guarantees that by wearing two hats Daschle, and not White House staffers, will be writing the health care plan that Obama submits to Congress next year.

The sources said the precise timing of the announcement has not been worked out, but Daschle is likely to officially join the Obama transition team as the lead adviser on health issues in the next few weeks. An Obama transition official had no comment.

Daschle is billed as a "special public policy advisor" in the Washington office of the lobbying firm Alston Bird, though he is technically not a federally registered lobbyist. But his wife, Linda Daschle, is a registered lobbyist at the powerful firm Baker Donelson, which does have some health clients.