Brooklyn Ron

The YouTube President: Obama Will Do Weekly Addresses on the Web

Franklin Delano Roosevelt [photo] was associated with "fireside chats" to the American people on radio; later presidents, beginning with John F. Kennedy, mastered the use of television.

Now comes Barack Obama as the post-boomer president who will do weekly broadcasts to the populace on, yup, YouTube.

In fact, President-elect Obama just launched the first of the weekly broadcasts he says he will continue into his presidency, which begins on January 20.

In this first weekly video, done in Obama's Chicago transition office on Friday, Obama makes clear how he differs from President Bush in how to deal with the financial crisis that's throwing the nation for a real loop.

Obama wants Congress, even in this lame duck session, to immediately begin doing more to help the unemployed. Bush has made it clear he feels pumping money directly into the financial markets is the better way to go.

Obama opens by mentioning today's meeting of the G-20 nations -- those with the world's biggest economies -- in Washington, and then he makes an exhortation to U.S. Congressmembers who are scheduled to meet next week:

"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."

Here's the whole four-minute video Obama did on Friday:

Hey, Number Two Guy is Also a First -- First Catholic Veep

Joe Biden, as it turns out, will have the distinction of being the first Catholic vice president.

This comes by way of Brooklyn College Professor Paul Moses, who also wrote on Commonweal magazine's blog that Biden has had run-ins with the Bishop of Biden's hometown, Scranton, Pennsylvania.

That would be Bishop Joseph Martino.

The issue of Catholics and abortion, as reflected in this episode featuring Biden and the Bishop, has lately been low on the national radar, it seems.

Of course, by the way, there was one Catholic president, John F. Kennedy.

And before JFK here was the beloved New Yorker Al Smith, former New York governmor, who ran for president on the Democratic line in 1928 and lost to Herbert Hoover.

Hmm. Republican Hoover handed us the Depression, and it took a Democratic ex New York governor to begin undoing the mess. That was, not Smith, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt.