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Barack Obama
With an historic, momentous win in the US presidential election
former Illinois senator Barack Obama has generated worldwide
headlines for having been elected as the first African American
president in U.S. history. His platform of unity, change, self
determination and hope was defined by the catch phrase, "Yes,
we can!" and statements such as "We are the change we
have been waiting for...".
Most
recently the only African American serving in the Senate, Obama first came to
national prominence with a stirring speech at the Democratic National Convention
in 2004, in which he called for an end to polarization along party lines, saying,"There
is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States
of America."

With grandmother
Madelyn Dunham at his
high school graduation
in 1979.
| Obama's
appeals for both national unification and international diplomacy made the attractive
and charismatic orator the most popular grass-roots presidential candidate in
a generation. Drawing support from the online population, his campaign netted
millions in small donations. The outreach has continued after the election. It
seems that Obama has the key to mobilizing the country as an online community
organizer through his Change.gov
site. In the recent
past, he has attracted thousands of residents from local U.S. communities on the
campaign trail, and spread his message of hope with two books still on nationwide
bestseller lists, "Dreams of My Father" (a 1995 memoir) and "The
Audacity of Hope : Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" published in
2006. Barack
Obama Bios, News & Pictures | Barack Obama Quotes
Barack
Hussein Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii to a Kenyan
father and white Kansas-born mother. He
later graduated from the local Punahou School before embarking on a political
science degree at Columbia University. Moving
to Chicago, he helped organize local job training programs in poor neighborhoods.
Later, Obama decided to return to school to pursue a law degree at Harvard, where
he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, graduating
magna cum laude in 1991. His
career in law began with a return to Chicago, working as a civil rights lawyer,
then as a teacher
of constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 until
his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.
Barack Obama
as a toddler with mother, Ann Dunham.
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Barack Obama first
entered politics several years before, having run his first successful campaign
to the Illinois state senate in 1996. Four years later, he made an unsuccessful
run for the U.S. House of Representatives, but rebounded with reelection to the
state senate in 2002, running unopposed. It
was in 2004 while running for an open seat in the U.S. Senate when Obama delivered
the famous "Audacity
of Hope" keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, and overnight
became a national political figure. His subsequent landslide victory in November
set the stage for a presidential run. Obama
formally announced his candidacy
for the 2008 presidential election in Springfield, Illinois, on February 10,
2007. A year
later, following a hard-fought primary battle against Hillary
Clinton - the first woman presidential candidate - Obama claimed victory in
clinching the Democratic nomination on June 3, the first black politician in U.S.
history to do so. He faced Republican presidential nominee John McCain in the
2008 election in November and the result is history... the first African-American
President of the United States of America.

Barack Obama, wife
Michelle, and daughters Malia and Sasha on the campaign trail.
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to a number of Barack Obama "firsts", his campaign is also noteworthy
for revolutionizing the way presidential candidates raise donations outspending
rivals by raising millions in small donations from supporters via the Internet.
In June, the
Obama campaign again illustrated its Web savvy by launching Fight
The Smears that will attempt to answer charges brought against his campaign
in daily blogs. The
following month, Obama embarked on a fact-finding mission to the Middle East,
with stops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and enjoyed worldwide press coverage for his
diplomatic afforest at ending the war there and bringing American troops home
as soon as possible. On
the same trip, his last stop in Berlin brought international headlines after giving
a speech
in which Obama declared The walls between old allies on either side of the
Atlantic cannot stand," signaling hope for strengthened cooperation between
U.S. and Europe in the fight against terror organizations. At
rally on October 18, 2008 in the traditionally Republican leaning state of
Missouri, Obama drew his largest crowd ever numbering an estimated 100,000 who
gathered to here him speak under the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. A week later,
AskMen.com named Obama
the most influential man of 2008 according to an online reader poll. Vice
President Joe Biden
After months
of speculation focused on Obama's "short list", Delaware
Joe
Biden was picked as Obama's vice presidential nominee. Others
who picked up buzz were a list of VP possibilities that also included
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh and Virginia
Governor Tim Kaine.
Widely
known for his expertise on foreign affairs, Biden chairs the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee and has joined Obama in his criticism of the war effort.
He is also
regarded as a vocal proponent of women's issues and drafted the
Violence Against Women Act which became law in 1994.
Personal
life

President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama,
and daughters, Malia, second from left, and Sasha,
pose for an official family portrait in 2009, by
famed photographer Annie Leibovitz.
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Barack
Obama has been married to Michelle
Robinson Obama since 1992 and together they have two daughters, Malia (born
1999) and Sasha (born 2001).
Since the
election of their father to the nation's highest office, the two
girls have not unexpectedly become media darlings but have surprisingly
taken their father's notoriety in stride.
His
private grief suffered over the loss of his beloved grandmother in September,
Obama made a sudden departure from the campaign trail to fly to the side of 85-year
old Madelyn
Dunham, who had fallen seriously ill in her home state of Hawaii. She passed
away a day before Election Day 2008 and would never share in his historic, barrier-breaking
victory as America's first African American to hold the nation's highest office.
America's
First Puppy
With other
important matters related to the transition of power from the
George
Bush administration, perhaps the biggest buzz about the new
First Family was the speculation over the First Family pet. President-elect
Barack Obama in his acceptance speech in November 2008 promised
daughters that "you have earned the new puppy that's coming
with us to the White House!"
Delivered,
as promised on April 1, 2009, was a Portugeese
water dog named Bo.
More
about President Barack Obama around the Web: Barack
Obama.com
Meet
Barack Obama
Barack
Obama - Wikipedia THE
CANDIDATE - New Yorker magazine profile BBC
Profile : Barack Obama Rolling
Stone - Campaign '08 : The Radical Roots of Barack Obama
Barack
Obama Quotes:
If there is anyone out there
who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still
wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions
the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. - Presidential acceptance
speech, November 4, 2008.
"We live in a culture
that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal
in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained."
"We need to steer clear
of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice
clothes and live in nice apartments but don't want to work hard to accomplish
these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.
"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the
United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and
Latino America and Asian America - there's the United States of America."
"As Americans, we can take enormous pride in the fact that courage has been
inspired by our own struggle for freedom, by the tradition of democratic law secured
by our forefathers and enshrined in our Constitution. It is a tradition that says
all men are created equal under the law and that no one is above it."
"What Washington needs is adult supervision."
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are
the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
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