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Yahoo! News: Politics - Barack Obama

AP - Showing the emphasis that some lawmakers are putting on health care issues this year, former Sen. Tom Daschle will be the first of President-elect Barack Obama's Cabinet choices to undergo a hearing.

Reuters - President-elect Barack Obama will seek Thursday to rally support for a massive fiscal stimulus package by warning that the United States could remain mired in recession for years without bold action.

AP - President-elect Barack Obama said Thursday that the nation's recession could "linger for years" unless Congress acts to pump unprecedented sums from Washington into the U.S. economy, making his highest-profile case yet on an issue certain to define his early presidency.

AFP - President-elect Barack Obama was to flesh out details of his economic stimulus plan Thursday, after warning that dramatic action is needed to shrink a record trillion-dollar US budget deficit.

AP - Nancy Killefer, the management consultant chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to make federal agencies work better for the public, has a lot of experience trying to improve the agency taxpayers love to hate, the Internal Revenue Service.

AP - Eric Holder Jr., President-elect Barack Obama's pick for attorney general, brings to his confirmation hearing next week a dream resume and a bull's-eye target with his picture in the middle.

AP - The House and Senate are coming together in a centuries-old tradition to count the electoral votes from the November election and formally declare that Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States.

AFP - US president-elect Barack Obama plans to name influential academic Joseph Nye, best known for coining the phrase "soft power," as ambassador to Japan, a newspaper said Thursday.

AP - The upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama is an attractive target for international and domestic terrorists, but U.S. intelligence officials have no information about specific threats to the Jan. 20 event.

AP - Confronting a grim economy and a Middle East on fire, Barack Obama turned Wednesday to perhaps the only people on the planet who understand what he's in for: the four living members of the U.S. presidents' club.

AP - Senate Democrats beat a hasty retreat Wednesday from their rejection of Roland Burris as President-elect Barack Obama's successor, yielding to pressure from Obama himself and from senators irked that the standoff was draining attention and putting them in a bad light. Burris said with a smile he expected to join them "very shortly."

AP - Pointing with concern to "red ink as far as the eye can see," President-elect Barack Obama pledged Wednesday to tackle out-of-control Social Security and Medicare spending and named a special watchdog to clamp down on other federal programs — even as he campaigned anew to spend the largest pile of taxpayer money in history to revive the sinking economy.

AFP - Gun sales continue to increase sharply in the aftermath of Barack Obama's presidential election, a trend gun rights lobbies attribute to concerns over a potential new gun ban.

AP - Police are blocking off all bridges crossing the Potomac River into Washington and a huge chunk of downtown when Barack Obama takes the oath of office Jan. 20, securing the largest area of the nation's capital for any inauguration.

Reuters - President-elect Barack Obama will revamp the way the U.S. government coordinates counterterrorism efforts, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Reuters - President-elect Barack Obama will decide how to spend the remaining half of a $700 billion economic rescue package, a top Bush administration official said on Wednesday, while a key Democratic lawmaker outlined his vision of how new rescue funds should be spent.

AFP - Cyclists have launched a campaign to boost bike use for Obama's inauguration on January 20, expected to draw record crowds in the capital and block traffic in and around the city.

April 27, 2008

Dear Friends:

Please meet my friend Troy McCullough. I was sitting in my warm car waiting for the doors to open at a conference I was attending at 6:45am this past Saturday morning, in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood, when I observed something across the street out in front of the “Streetwise” offices, where poor folks wait for the doors to open to get their magazines to sell for the day. There was one man standing there in the cold. He was solitudinal, he looked lonely and cold, but there was an effervesence about him. He was wearing a raggety shirt and tie, but you could tell he was working hard and he had a mission. I left my warm car to walk over to this man. I introduced myself, and what I found out in the next 45 minutes changed me forever.

His name is Troy Mccullough. I invited Troy in to my car to warm up and we got to know one another. I ended up being late to the conference, but I walked in to steal some fresh fruit and water for Troy before we parted ways that morning. Troy is 52 years old and he is a sterling example of a fighter who caught a few bad breaks in life. The harsh reality is that we are all a few bad breaks from Troy’s reality. Troy never did drugs or drank. His wife, and the mother of his two children, died in 1996. That crushed him. It didn’t get much easier in 1998 when Troy, a laborer who was only provided with pay and benefits when he was physically able to work, had a major stroke. He lost sight in one eye and lost significant feeling in one leg. He was forced to stop work and his benefits only covered him for a certain period of time. Troy was sent to a nursing home in Chicago. Exactly one year ago, the nursing home decided that Troy had to be removed because it was costing them too much and he had no money, no source of income, and no long term care coverage. Troy was sent to the streets. He has been living in alleys, parks, churches, and missions for the past year. This is tough because Troy is a diabetic he has some ongoing special medical needs, and he needs a warm place to sleep each night. He is always the first in line at StreetWise so he can get his magazines and get to the corner of Michigan and Delaware first thing in the morning so he can raise $45 that day and thus get a restful night sleep in the hotel. Troy has amazing discipline considering the circumstances and hasn’t missed Sunday chuch once in the last year.

To test Troy and see how much he really wanted help, I asked him to meet me outside of my conference again on Sunday morning at 7am, when we could talk more about improving his life. Sure enough, on Sunday when I pulled up Troy was standing there at 6:45am with his best suit and tie on, waiting for me. Troy and I talked further and I invited my friend Kevin, who has experience working with the homeless, to meet Troy. Kevin’s evaluation was the same as mine. This is a great person who was struck by tragedies in life.

So… I gave Troy $200. To say he was thankful was an understatement. His eyes welled with tears. He said he had been praying every day for a savior, and I was it.

The reality was that I am not a savior because $200 won’t get Troy all that far. It will take a community to help Troy. Troy needs a place to sleep every night where he has some privacy and a warm home to care for his ailments. He needs access to some form of medical care. He needs a system that transcends just what $200 can provide him with.