Baruck Obama
Outline
Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu,
Hawaii, He is the 44th and current president of the USA. He was a civil-rights
lawyer and teacher and pursued a political career later. He won election in the
Illinois State Senate in 1996, attending from 1997 to 2004. He was elected to
the U.S. presidency in 2008, and won election in 2012 against Mitt
Romney, Republican competitor.
President Obama carries on perform policy changes in response to the health
care and economic crisis problems.
Early Life
Barack Hussein Obama was born
on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Ann Dunham, His
mother, grew up in Wichita, Kansas, where her father worked on oil rigs during
the Great Depression. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dunham's
father, Stanley, recruited in the service and trooped across Europe in Patton's
army. Dunham's mother, Madelyn, went to work on a bomber. After the war, the
couple studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing
Program and, after several moves, landed in Hawaii.
Barack
Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province,
Kenya. Obama Sr. grew up herding goats in Africa, eventually earning a
scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams of college in
Hawaii. While studying at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, Obama Sr. met
fellow student Ann Dunham, and they married on February 2, 1961.
Barack was born six months later.
Obama did not have a relationship
with his father as a child. When his son was still an infant, Obama Sr.
relocated to Massachusetts to attend Harvard University, pursuing a Ph.D.
Barack's parents officially separated several months later and ultimately
divorced in March 1964, when their son was 2. In 1965, Obama Sr. returned to
Kenya.
In 1965, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an East–West Center
student from Indonesia. A year later, the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia,
where Barack's half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born. Several incidents in
Indonesia left Dunham afraid for her son's safety and education so, at the age
of 10, Barack was sent back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents.
His mother and sister later joined them.
2008
Presidential Election
In February 2007, Obama made
headlines when he announced his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic presidential
nomination. He was locked in a tight battle with former first lady and
then-U.S. senator from New York Hillary Rodham Clinton. On June 3, 2008, however, Obama became
the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party, and Senator Clinton delivered
her full support to Obama for the duration of his campaign. On November 4,
2008, Barack Obama defeated Republican presidential nominee John McCain,
52.9 percent to 45.7 percent, winning election as the 44th president of the
United States—and the first African-American to hold this office. His running
mate, Delaware Senator Joe Biden,
became vice president. Obama's inauguration took place on January 20, 2009.
When Obama took office, he inherited
a global economic recession, two ongoing foreign wars and the lowest
international favorability rating for the United States ever. He campaigned on
an ambitious agenda of financial reform, alternative energy, and reinventing
education and health care—all while bringing down the national debt. Because
these issues were intertwined with the economic well-being of the nation, he
believed all would have to be undertaken simultaneously. During his
inauguration speech, Obama summarized the situation by saying, "Today I
say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are
many.
Challenges
and Successes
In the second part of his term as president, Obama has faced
a number of obstacles and scored some victories as well. He signed his
health-care reform plan, known as the Affordable Care Act, into law in March
2010. Obama's plan is intended to strengthen consumers' rights and to provide
affordable insurance coverage and greater access to medical care. His
opponents, however, claim that "Obamacare," as they have called it,
added new costs to the country's overblown budget and may violate the Constitution
with its requirement for individuals to obtain insurance.
On the economic front, Obama has worked hard to steer the
country through difficult financial times.
2012 Re-Election
As he did in 2008, during his
campaign for a second presidential term, Obama focused on grassroots
initiatives. Celebrities such asAnna Wintour and Sarah Jessica Parker aided the president's campaign by
hosting fund-raising events.
"I guarantee you, we will move this country
forward," Obama stated in June 2012, at a campaign event in Maryland.
"We will finish what we started. And we'll remind the world just why it is
the United States of America is the greatest nation on Earth."
In the 2012 election, Obama
faced Republican opponent Mitt Romney and
Romney's vice-presidential running mate, U.S. Representative Paul Ryan. On the evening of November 6, 2012, Obama
was announced the winner of the election, gaining a second four-year term as president.
Early election results indicated a close race. By midnight on Election Day,
however, Obama had received more than 270 electoral votes—the number of votes
required to win a U.S. presidential election; later results showed that the
president had won nearly 60 percent of the electoral vote, as well as the
popular vote by more than 1 million ballots.
Nearly one month after President Obama's re-election, the
nation endured one of its most tragic school shootings to date: On December 14,
2012, 20 children and six adult workers were shot to death at the Sandy Hook
Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Two days after the attack, Obama
delivered a speech at an interfaith vigil for the victims in Newtown,
discussing a need for change in order to make schools safer, and alluding to
implementing stricter gun control.
http://mashable.com/2012/01/31/obama-hangout/
http://www.topnews.in/people/barack-obama
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/lessons-learned-potus-takes-fights-to-congress-85935.html
http://www.justjared.com/photo-gallery/2732642/watch-presidential-debate-barack-obama-mitt-romney-20/
http://blogs.bet.com/news/andresword/tag/barack-obama/
http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369
