On the eve of the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s release of employment numbers for November, President Obama will host 130 business leaders at the White House today for a "Jobs Summit." The President's summit will include a meeting of the minds between CEOs of large corporations and small business owners; economists, labor union leaders and non-profit groups. Newt Gingrich, in response to the president's summit, announced yesterday that he will hold his own meeting, deeming it the "Real Jobs Summit." So with all the summits, we at The Takeaway decided to hold our own, including Dan Gross, senior editor at Newsweek; Ken Rogers, executive director of Automation Alley in Troy, Mich. (Rogers will be attending President Obama's summit later today); and Dave Thompson, news director for Prairie Public Radio in North Dakota, where unemployment numbers are at a nationwide low.

• Listener Takeout: Listeners respond to President Obama's speech and plans for the war in Afghanistan, as well as our piece on vinyl records. 
• Money Takeout: Louise Story of The New York Times explains why Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is taking steps to slow down the re-confirmation of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
• Washington Takeout: Todd Zwillich offers a wrap-up of Capitol Hill news you may have missed. The focus this week is on our Afghanistan strategy, Ben Bernanke's confirmation hearing, health care reform, and the never-ending saga of the White House party crashers.
  

Over 40 million Americans watched President Obama’s speech Tuesday, in which he announced that he’ll be sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Among those watching most closely were U.S. soldiers and families of soldiers who could be sent over. Mary Galeti's husband will soon be deployed to Afghanistan with the Ohio National Guard; she joins us to talk about what it’s like to wait for those marching orders. Also joining us is Col. Bill Buckner, public affairs officer for the 18th Airborne Corps stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. He’s been deployed to Iraq twice.

On Wednesday, Google refined a program to help struggling news organizations limit readers' unpaid access to some news content. It's called the "First Click Free" program, and it means news consumers may be asked to register or subscribe once they've clicked on the website of a particular news outlet through Google News more than five times per day. It's all part of the continuing shakeup over whether or not reading news online should continue to be (mostly) free. For a look at what this might mean for those of you who get most of your news online, we talk to Steven Brill, the founder of Journalism Online.

The US Department of Defense is launching a bizarre experiment in social networking this weekend. They're putting up 10 giant red weather balloons across the country, and they're asking regular folks to find them. The point? To study how we can work together on sites like Twitter and Facebook to solve problems. Whichever team finds all 10 balloons first wins $40,000.

Takeaway tech Baratunde Thurston and Peter Lee, the Director of the Transformational Convergence Technology Office, at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as DARPA, explain why social networking and whimsical red balloons will be all the rage this weekend.

You might call the nation of Pakistan the buried headline in President Obama’s big Afghanistan speech Tuesday. Like Afghanistan, Pakistan faces its own instability and its own Taliban problem. Its president, Asif Ali Zardari, has looked in recent days significantly weakened. Last Friday Zardari handed over control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal to the prime minister, and he’s facing pressure from the Obama government to crack down on the same insurgent groups whom Pakistan's army and intelligence services have themselves cultivated as a kind of secret weapon.

So what does a U.S. strategy in Pakistan look like, and is Pakistan a strong enough partner for that strategy to succeed? We're joined by Ahmed Rashid, longtime Pakistani journalist and author of “Descent Into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.” We're also talking with Adil Najam: He's professor of International Relations at Boston University, and he worries that even if President Obama is succesful in Afghanistan, we may lose Pakistan as the Taliban is forced over the Afghan border.

• Auto Takeout: We check in with Paul Eisenstein of The Detroit Bureau, who's out at the LA Auto Show. He's got the latest news on GM's new products (small is, apparently, once again becoming beautiful) and their hunt for a new CEO after the surprise ousting of Fritz Henderson.
• Business Takeout: Bank of America has permission to pay back the $45 billion it received in federal bailout money. Louise Story of The New York Times says BofA and the government have their own reasons for wanting to move past the bailout.
• Sports Takeout: Ibrahim Abdul-Matin says all eyes will be on college football this weekend when powerhouses Florida and Alabama go head-to-head for the SEC championship.

Last month the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force issued a recommendation saying that women should hold off on breast cancer screenings until they turn 50, not the previously recommended 40. The task force comprises doctors from across the country, and their recommendation is based on firm science; despite this, the finding has sparked a firestorm of controversy, with many women saying they are not willing to give up the screenings.

We talk with author Barbara Ehrenreich, whose most recent book is "Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America." She wrote a controversial op-ed for the Los Angeles Times in which she argues that the feminist movement has been hijacked by what she calls "pink ribbon brigades." She says the debate over breast cancer screenings has stolen the limelight from much more important issues, like abortion rights.

NASA recently found water on the moon; maybe they can help California find some now. Experts are expecting record lows for the amount of water that they'll be able to deliver next year: a measly 5% of what cities and farms are requesting. What can Californians and Gov. Schwarzenegger do? We talk with Eric Garner, managing partner of Best, Best & Krieger. He's one of the leading experts on water in California, having litigated many water disputes and negotiated many agreements in the Golden State. He's also seen many other countries around the world sucessfully deal with the same problems as California.

On Dec. 3, 1984, 40 tons of poisonous gases escaped the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India. Thousands of people died. The Union Carbide factory is now abandoned and Union Carbide a subsidiary of chemical giant Dow, but the leak's effects on Bhopal still linger in contaminated water supplies and the chronic illnesses of survivors. BBC correspondent Allan Little returned to the Indian city on the 25th anniversary of the disaster and talked to residents still looking for justice.

The NFL will announce new rules to protect football players who show "significant signs of concussion," including barring them from further play or practice for the rest of the day. We talk with Gary Belsky, editor in chief of ESPN the Magazine, about whether this change will make a dent in the injury rates for players.