Barack Obama Biography and News Blog.

Biography :

Barack Obama (born August 4, 1961) is a U.S. Senator from Illinois. He is a member of the main Democratic Party. He has received international media coverage for his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, delivered while he was still an Illinois state senator. As a senior lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago law school, Obama won the open Senate seat by defeating former ambassador Alan Keyes. He is the only African American who is currently serving in the U.S. Senate, and the fifth in the entire United States history and the third since Reconstruction. The 2004 U.S. Senate election in Illinois made history as the first Senate election to feature black nominees from both major parties. Obama won the election in a landslide, with 70% of the vote to Keyes’ 27%. He is junior senator to Richard Durbin. Obama is married to Michelle Obama, a Chicago native. They have two daughters: Malia Ann (born in 1999) and Natasha (born 2001).

Some general Questions and their Answers about Barack Obama.

Q: Who are Barack Obama’s parents?

A: Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961, to Barack Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham. His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student. Barack’s parents eventually divorced, and after his mother remarried, he lived in Indonesia for a time before returning to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. He later moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983

Q: Is Barack Obama a Muslim?

A: No, he is not a Muslim, he is a Christian. While his grandfather was a Muslim, and this father an atheist and his mother an agnostic, Barack has been an actively practicing Christian for nearly 20 years, attending Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ.

Read the story →

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama finished building a cabinet of prominent and strong-willed players on Friday, but he is putting together a governing structure that will concentrate more decision making over his top domestic priorities in the White House.

With new offices in the White House to coordinate health care, urban policy and energy initiatives, Mr. Obama has signaled that he intends to keep real power over domestic issues close at hand. The collective

moves shift the political center of gravity farther away from the cabinet, a trend that has accelerated under presidents of both parties in recent years.

At the same time, Mr. Obama’s reorganization suggests a willingness to tolerate, and even encourage, competing power centers within his administration, but it is unclear how that will work in practice. Not only is he creating new positions with authority over key areas, he is filling his West Wing with people of stature equal to or even greater than the members of his cabinet, including two former cabinet officers and a former Senate majority leader.
Read the story →

Some Lines From American Blog Roll.

“Or is it 43, remember President Cleaveland  served two non-consecutive terms, regardless, Barack Obama has soundly defeated John McCain! 333 electorial votes as of this writing and probably will go up.

Congratulations to President Obama and let us hope the change that was promised will indeed be change for the better. Today is indeed a historic event in many ways and will be remembered for eternity. Maybe now this country can move on and become as strong as it once was and should always remain a solid nation.

The American people have chosen their leader in Barack Obama and his sound win truly shows, we have come a long way in my lifetime and I am in my fifties. I hope that you are thankful that you live in a country that you have a voice in electing who you want to be your leader.

John McCain showed class in his concession speech, vowing to bridge the differences between the parties and become one Nation, working together. This was one hell of a campaign for both parties, John McCain would not let his audience boo Obama, or Biden and he wished the best for the new President elect, as we all should!

God Bless America

I am proud to be an American!”

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama will kick off his inaugural celebration on Jan. 17 — the weekend before his swearing in as the country’s 44th president — by traveling on a train to the nation’s capital.

He and his family will start their daylong journey with an event in Philadelphia before boarding the train and picking up Vice President-elect Joe Biden and his family in Wilmington, Del. The president-elect and his group then will make a stop in Baltimore before making their way to Washington.

Obama will take office Jan. 20.

“We hope to include as many Americans as possible who wish to participate, but can’t be in Washington,” Emmett Beliveau, the executive director of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, said in a statement. “These events will allow us to do that while honoring the rich history and tradition of previous inaugural journeys.”

Aides said Philadelphia and Baltimore were chosen because of the roles they played at pivotal moments in U.S. history and because they fit in with the inauguration’s theme, “Renewing America’s Promise.”

The committee has said the theme was chosen to underscore Obama’s “commitment to restoring opportunity and possibility for all and re-establishing America’s standing as a beacon of hope around the world.”

Washington – Most Americans have been watching the presidential transition here in Washington very closely. But another, much broader political transition has also been accelerating in recent weeks: the shift from the US-dominated world we have lived in since 1989 to one in which global power has become significantly more diffuse, more networked, and more Asian.

This broad global shift will shape the agenda and achievements of the Obama presidency from Day 1.

One key event illustrates this change. On Dec. 4, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson went to Beijing to beg China to help stabilize the tanking US economy. In earlier decades, when nations around the world had economic crises, they’d send officials to Washington to ask for help. Now, it’s the US that’s in trouble. President Bush, to his credit, recognizes that America needs the help of others and has started to work at getting it.

Welcome to the networked world, one in which cash-rich China and Japan each own more than $570 billion of Treasury debt – and the People’s Bank of China holds a reported $340 billion stake in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Read the story →

A perplexing new chapter is unfolding in Barack Obama’s racial saga: Many people insist that “the first black president” is actually not black.

Debate over whether to call this son of a white Kansan and a black Kenyan biracial, African-American, mixed-race, half-and-half, multiracial — or, in Obama’s own words, a “mutt” — has reached a crescendo since Obama’s election shattered assumptions about race.

Obama has said, “I identify as African-American — that’s how I’m treated and that’s how I’m viewed. I’m proud of it.” In other words, the world gave Obama no choice but to be black, and he was happy to oblige.

But the world has changed since the young Obama found his place in it.

Intermarriage and the decline of racism are dissolving ancient definitions. The candidate Obama, in achieving what many thought impossible, was treated differently from previous black generations. And many white and mixed-race people now view President-elect Obama as something other than black.

So what now for racial categories born of a time when those from far-off lands were property rather than people, or enemy instead of family?

“They’re falling apart,” said Marty Favor, a Dartmouth professor of African and African-American studies and author of the book “Authentic Blackness.”

“In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois said the question of the 20th century is the question of the color line, which is a simplistic black-white thing,” said Favor, who is biracial. “This is the moment in the 21st century when
we’re stepping across that.”
Read the story →

For many the success of Barack Obama seems to come as a complete surprise. To those who seem to be surprised, it is as if there was some truth to the notion that a man of African American descent was some how less qualified then a white man, but now a miracle has occurred. The fact is the good Lord made all men potentially equal in intelligence appears to be overlooked. How many Barack Obamas have there been in history that somehow have been ignored?

History is littered with hundreds of men of color with intelligence and wit that could have easily qualified for the highest office in the nation. Gabriel Prosser, a skilled and literate man, who had studied the American, French and Haitian revolution, has been compared to George Washington as the leader of the slave revolt of 1800. If not for a quirk of the weather, he came within hours of capturing Virginia’s Governor James Monroe, seizing the state arsenal in Richmond, and freeing all the slaves in the state. At Prosser’s hanging, Governor James Monroe, the future President of the United States, said that Prosser was a man that achieved well beyond his station in life, and that an educated black man was dangerous to the continuation of slavery. After the Prosser revolt it became the law throughout the south that it was illegal to teach black men and women to read and write.

Read the story →

By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 13, 2008; Page C01

Sherry Jones was driving her 13-year-old son, Malcolm, to school the other morning when he mentioned something about some kid he didn’t like.

Something about the kid being a jerk.

Jones told him that wasn’t kind. When you speak of people, she said, always speak good of them.

“Look at Barack! . . . During the campaign, no matter what, Obama always took the high road,” she told him. “During the debates when John McCain would say a dig, Barack would never react. . . . He was always positive.”

Malcolm, who likes a good debate, was, for that moment, quiet.

  Read the story →

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday announced the selection of Shaun Donovan as his secretary of housing and urban development, taking another step in the formation of his future cabinet.

Making the announcement in his weekly radio address, Obama said that Donovan, currently the New York City Commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development, “will bring to this important post fresh thinking, unencumbered by old ideology and outdated ideas.”

A qualified architect, Donovan served at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) during the Clinton administration.

Read the story →

Continuing a tradition among Washington’s power elite, President-elect Barack Obama and his wife have decided to send their kids to Sidwell Friends School. Michelle Obama confirmed yesterday that Malia and Sasha, the incoming first daughters, will enroll at the pricey private school when the family moves into the White House in January.

Although Mrs. Obama has said that public schools were under consideration and consulted with D.C. school officials, the decision narrowed this week after she and the girls visited Sidwell and the private Georgetown Day School. Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, visited classes and met with students while their mother talked with administration officials and parents. Mrs. Obama also visited both schools last week when she came to Washington with her husband to tour the White House and meet with President and Mrs. Bush.

At Sidwell, the Obama girls will be following in the footsteps of Chelsea Clinton, who attended and graduated from the Quaker school during the eight years her father, Bill Clinton, was president. The last presidential child to attend Washington public schools in modern times was Amy Carter.

Read the story →