Barack Obama: Is the MAN!

Tuesday Nov 4^th was a festive time for United States particularly for the supporters of Obama when he won the election. People are in hope that things will change, especially the living standards. I mean l have seen people living from their cars! The new president of United States Barack Obama is all set to balance the financial standard of America. He spoke regarding the tough economic times and his solution strategy to the financial crisis. "I do not underestimate the enormity of the task that lies ahead," Obama said. "It's not going to be quick, and it's not going to be easy to dig ourselves out of the hole that we're in." Ok, so l guess we all have to wait and see. Still luck is also on his side as 4 years ago he did not even have plans to run for presidency and now look at him, he sits (or will sit) in the White House and in turn own the world! So who is Obama and how did he come to be the man he is?

Obama's Childhood: Barack Hussein Obama was born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. So that just makes him 47 years old! Not bad at all. He grew up herding goats with his own father Barack Obama, Sr., who was a domestic servant to the British. Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, was from Wichita, Kansas. At the time of his birth, Obama's parents were students at the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Obama's parents separated when he was two years old and later divorced.

Obama's father went to Harvard to pursue Ph.D. studies and then returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro, another East-West Center student from Indonesia. In 1967, the family moved to Jakarta, where Obama's half-sister Maya was born. At the age of 10, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents and as we know this grandmother dies just before he was elected. He saw his biological father only once in 1971 after his parents divorced and his father died in a 1982 car accident.

Education: In 1979 Obama was enrolled in the fifth grade at the esteemed Punahou Academy, graduating with honors. He was only one of three black students at the school. This is where Obama first became conscious of racism and what it meant to be an African-American. After high school, Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York, graduating in 1983 with a degree in political science. Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988. In February 1990, he was elected the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. Obama graduated magna cum laude in 1991.

Obama's wedding: Obama met his wife, Michelle, in 1988 when he was a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin. They were married in October 1992 and live in Kenwood on Chicago's South Side with their daughters, Malia (born 1998) and Sasha (born 2001).

Career: Obama started working with Business International Corporation (a company that provided international business information to corporate clients) and NYPIRG. Then he moved to Chicago in 1985. There, he worked as a community organizer with low-income residents in Chicago's Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city's South Side. Obama joined the firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland to practice as a civil rights lawyer,. He also taught at the University of Chicago Law School. Obama published an autobiography in 1995 Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. And he won a Grammy for the audio version of the book. His second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, was published in October 2006. Well l did not now about those two bookd, at all, l wonder if the numbers of copies sold will sky rocket now he is President?

Obama in politics: He helped organize voter registration drives during Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. Obama's advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat. He was elected in 1996 from the south side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans in drafting legislation on ethics, expanded health care services and early childhood education programs for the poor. In 2000, Obama made an unsuccessful Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by four-term incumbent candidate Bobby Rush. Obama was an early opponent of President George W. Bush's push to war with Iraq.

Once he said "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars,". "What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne."

The war with Iraq began in 2003 and Obama decided to run for the U.S. Senate open seat vacated by Republican Peter Fitzgerald. Obama suddenly found himself in the national spotlight, when John Kerry (1943-), expected to win the Democratic Party's nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004, asked Obama to deliver the convention's keynote address. The keynote speech is expected to set the tone of the political campaign, and those chosen to give face tremendous expectations.

In the 2004 Democratic primary, he won 52 percent of the vote, defeating multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. In the November 2004 general election, Obama received 70% of the vote to Keyes's 27%, the largest electoral victory in Illinois history. Obama became only the third African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. Sworn into office January 4, 2005. At just forty-three years old, he became one of the youngest members of the U.S. Senate. Obama partnered with Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana on a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Then with Republican Sen. Tom Corburn of Oklahoma, he created a website that tracks all federal spending. In 2008 he ran for president as a democrat and won. He is set to become the 44th president of the Unites States and the first African-American ever elected to that position.

Lets see what Obama does and where this takes America and in turn the rest of the world. Who would have thought even 50 years that a Black man, would be president of the United States where black people where segragated and not even allowed to travel together, let alone sit together!

(Sources: biography.com, notablebiographies.com)