Organizing for America, the president's field wing of the Democratic National Committee, has begun airing TV spots calling for Senators to get behind the push for a massive overhaul of the health care system. The 30-second spot is called "It's Time, Senators." It features Americans telling their personal health care stories, a favored technique in Obama-land, and drawing a line in the sand about the need for immediate action on health care. The ads are targeted to the home states of both key Republican senators and a handful of Democrats who have raised questions about parts of the president's plan. Politico reports that the ads will air in states including Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Ohio. (Watch it here.)

Notably, OFA's health care hard sell is getting some high-profile backup this week -- in the form of the president. President Obama has been recording a weekly video address since the days of the transition; the mini addresses, which generally last in the ballpark of five or six minutes, vary between dry state-of-the-union recaps of this week in America to more spirited takes on what faces the president and the country.

But in this week's YouTube-hosted address, Obama is showing more fire in the belly than has been seen in past weekly address. This week, he used his few minutes of direct-to-citizen video to aggressively undercut the arguments of health reform's critics and opponents: "I know that once you’ve seen enough ads and heard enough people yelling on TV, you might begin to wonder whether there’s a grain of truth to what they’re saying. So let me take a moment to answer a few of their arguments." Many of those opposed to health reform, argues the president, have a vested interest in the status quo. And those most vocal in their concern about the bill's impact on the deficit, says Obama, are members of the same crowd that ran up a sizable deficit in recent years. Watch the Obama spot "Health Care Reform Cannot Wait" above or here.

President Barack Obama used his weekly address this week to highlight his plan to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The new office, proposed by Elizabeth Warren a few years back, would aim to help American consumers make better financial decisions by constructing choice options fleshed out by better, clearer, more structured data.

Also from the White House film unit: a new video celebrating fatherhood.

President-elect Barack Obama is out with the second of his weekly bite-sized video messages to the American public, billed as "Your Weekly Address" and posted on both Change.gov and YouTube. (Though there's no Google monopoly at work here. Obama's video addresses are posted not only on the search giant's video site but on MSN Video and Yahoo! Video as well -- though you do have to squint a bit to see the links to the non-YouTube postings.)

In this week's four-minute spot, Obama talks with urgency about the economic situation facing the country, saying that struggling Americans "need help, and they need it now." The President-elect details the serious need for an economic recovery plan, and talks about directing his economic team to craft an ambitious plan that will create 2.5 million jobs by the start of 2011.

Obama's in a tough spot, though. He's eager to demonstrate that he gets that the U.S. is in dire straits. But as President-elect, he doesn't have a tremendous amount of official power. He's pledged to do this weekly YouTube address until January 20th, which, by my count, means eight more times he'll go before us to provide his insight into a government he's not yet helming.