Barack Obama

Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. (born in Nyanza Province, Kenya) and Ann Dunham (born in Wichita, Kansas). Barack Hussein Obama (born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and a member of the Democratic Party.

Obama grew up in culturally diverse surroundings. He spent most of his childhood in the majority-minority U.S. state of Hawaii and lived for four years in Indonesia. Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention while still an Illinois state legislator. Since announcing his candidacy in February 2007, Obama has emphasized ending the Iraq War and implementing universal health care as campaign themes.

As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, Obama co-sponsored the enactment of conventional weapons control and transparency legislation, and made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Obama's parents separated when he was two years old and later divorced. His father went to Harvard University to pursue Ph.D. studies, then returned to Kenya, where he died in an auto accident when the younger Obama was twenty-one years old.



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today's papers Obama Country ByDaniel Politi Posted Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008, at 6:44 AM ET The polls were right. Barack Hussein Obama easily cruised to victory last night and made history by becoming the country's first African-American president. The first-term senator from Illinois was elected the 44^th president by beating John McCain in the key states that the candidates had spent months battling over, including Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, which voted for a Democrat for the first time since 1964. A few states are still too close to call, but a preliminary tally gave Obama 349 electoral votes to McCain's 144, far more than the 270 needed to win the White House. Democrats also won big in the congressional races, even as they appeared to fall short of the dream 60-vote majority in the Senate. In all, Democrats picked up five Senate seats with four key races still undecided and were on the path to pick up as many as 20 House seats. All the papers mention the historic aspect of Obama's candidacy in their banner headlines. USA Today points out that a mere "four decades ago, when Obama was 4 years old, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act to ensure blacks can vote." The Los Angeles Times calls Obama's victory "a leap in the march toward equality." The Washington Post points out that Obama is the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win more than 50 percent of the popular vote. The Wall Street Journal notes Obama is the first northern Democrat to be elected president since John F. Kennedy in 1960. The New York Times says the election amounted to "a national catharsis--a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama's call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country." To continue reading, click here. Daniel Politi writes "Today's Papers" for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE \| READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Six Ways Obama Can Show He'll Be a New Kind of President Sept. 24: The Day McCain Lost the Election Shafer: How To Speak Blitzerese	Advertisement
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" He describes his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known.

In August 2004, with less than three months to go before election day, Alan Keyes accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination to replace Ryan. Speaking to an elderly Jewish audience during his 2004 campaign for U.S. Senate, Obama linked the linguistic roots of his East African first name Barack to the Hebrew word baruch, meaning "blessed. In the same week, Zogby International reported that Obama leads all prospective Republican opponents in polling for the 2008 general election.

They know we can do better. Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996 from the state's 13th District in the south-side Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park. Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention while still an Illinois state legislator. He spent most of his childhood in the majority-minority U.S. state of Hawaii and lived for four years in Indonesia. In a nationally televised speech at the University of Nairobi, he spoke forcefully on the influence of ethnic rivalries and corruption in Kenya.

The first, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, was published after his graduation from law school and before entering politics. In February 2007, standing before the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois, Obama announced his candidacy for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Obama's own self-narrative reinforces what a May 2004 New Yorker magazine article described as his "everyman" image. Obama's fundraising prowess was affirmed again in the second quarter of 2007, when his campaign raised an additional $32.5 million, the most ever raised by a Democratic Presidential candidate in a single quarter. Asked to name a "hidden talent," Obama answered: "I'm a pretty good poker player. Lugar and Obama inspected a Nunn-Lugar program-supported nuclear warhead destruction facility at Saratov, in southern European Russia.