Rolling Stone’s Obama commemorative issue, Barack Obama and the Triumph of Hope, hits stands today (it’s also available through BarnesandNoble.com). One of the surprises we had while putting it together was rediscovering a 2004 interview with the then-newly elected Illinois Senator. Read the full conversation below, in which Obama talks about Bush’s re-election and vows to not run for President in 2008.

• People of the Year 2004: Barack Obama

The lame duck Republican senate, a handful of rogue Democrats, and the intractable United Auto Workers have conspired to kill the $14 billion bailout plan for the auto industry.

If Bush doesn’t sober up and make this bridge loan happen, the global economy is in for a world of more hurt. Fuck Chrysler. If GM fails it’s Lehman take two. Consumer confidence is going to pancake and this world economic crisis is going to take on a whole new level of magnitude.

Bernanke: Show GM the money.

Musicians whose work has been used to torture terror-war detainees have banded together to work to ban the practice.

This Chu guy is a nobel winning scientist, a seasoned administrator, and a sober communicator, who both understand the magnitude of the challenge we face in terms of energy and climate and who can evangelize for a sea change while making it seem commonsensical.

Prepare to be impressed:

From allowing loaded guns in national parks to gutting the Endangered Species Act, Bush is rushing through last-minute regulations to ensure that his cronies benefit for years to come.

Full story here:

• Bush’s Final F.U.

Looks like NATO will soon be purchasing another 300 vehicles:

Pakistan militants torch NATO vehicles

Obama clearly views crisis as opportunity. Much of his sweeping agenda for technology and energy efficiency has been neatly repackaged here as stimulus.

I must say I love not only the bridge and road construction but also the modernization / high-tech upgrades he’s plotting for schools and hospitals and doctors’ offices. This is going to be a recovery plan that targets not just guys in hard hats and orange highway vests but IT professionals and software engineers, window installers and roofers.

The focus on energy efficiency of government itself is a no-brainer but also the kind of wonky green reform long advocated by Henry Waxman and his man-in-the-White House Phil Schiliro.

What’s also striking about these measures is how many of them target climate change, but how little Obama is having to do to sell them as such … they already make sense on simple economic terms.

The economy purged more than half a million jobs last month — 100,000 more than the high end of the consensus projections. Official unemployment is now 6.7%, but that doesn’t count another 420,000 would-be-workers who gave up on the job market last month. As the NYTimes.com puts it:

If they had continued that search, the unemployment rate in November would have been closer to 7 percent.

We’re looking at a very unmerry Christmas for millions of Americans this year.