Barack Obama Will Never Be President

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Sunday, June 14, 2009

Of his early childhood, Obama writes: "That my father looked nothing like the people around me—that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk—barely registered in my mind.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama

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
Tehran Down the House
By Jesse Stanchak
Posted Sunday, June 14, 2009, at 5:14 AM ET

The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times all lead with reports of rioting in Tehran after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced he had won Friday's election by a landside 62.6 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, reform candidate and second-place finisher Mir Hossein Mousavi is still insisting that he won, even though official results show him garnering just 34 percent of the vote. Ayatollah Khamenei says he won't get involved in the election, meaning there's no way Mousavi can challenge the results. Following the controversial announcement, police and protesters fought, journalists were harassed and several political opponents were arrested, possibly including Mousavi. Why are voters so suspicious of the results? The LAT explains that during the last 6 Iranian presidential elections, conservative candidates have only won in elections with low turnout-- like the 2005 election that swept Ahmadinejad to power. That year just 48 percent of Iranians voted, compared with up to 86 percent this year. Analysts say they think it's unlikely that so many more people would turn out just to support the incumbent.

In a news analysis column, NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller writes that Ahmadinejad's victory will hobble reform efforts in Iran. Keller notes Ahmadinejad shows none of Mousavi's concern about human rights issues and he isn't likely to suddenly reverse his frosty stance toward the West. This leaves President Barack Obama in the uncomfortable position of trying to work for peace with a belligerent leader who may have rigged his reelection. Yet the election is good news for right-wing governments, Keller writes, since the outcome makes it easier for them to continue taking a hard-line stance on Iran.

To continue reading, click here.

Jesse Stanchak is a writer living in Washington, D.C.

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Posted by Zephaniah Holwell at 2:31 AM  

Obama plays basketball, a sport he participated in as a member of his high school's varsity team. His parents met while both were attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student. In the fall of 2002, during an anti-war rally at Chicago's Federal Plaza, Obama said: I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda. After the visits, Obama traveled to Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. After describing his maternal grandfather's experiences as a World War II veteran and a beneficiary of the New Deal's FHA and G.I. Bill programs, Obama said: No, people don't expect government to solve all their problems. In July 2005, Samantha Power, Pulitzer-winning author on human rights and genocide, joined Obama's team. "Lugar-Obama" expands the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles and anti-personnel mines. In 2000, he made an unsuccessful Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by four-term incumbent candidate Bobby Rush. " Obama writes: "It was because of these newfound understandings—that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world that I knew and loved—that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized. Supporters and critics have likened Obama's popular image to a cultural Rorschach test, a neutral persona on which people can project their personal histories and aspirations. He flew his wife and two daughters from Chicago to join him in a visit to his father's birthplace, a village near Kisumu in rural western Kenya.

As an associate attorney with Miner, Barnhill & Galland from 1993 to 1996, he represented community organizers, discrimination claims, and voting rights cases. US$24.8 million of Obama's first quarter funds can be used in the primaries, the highest of any 2008 presidential candidate. Born to a Kenyan father and an American mother, Obama grew up in culturally diverse surroundings. " Time magazine's Joe Klein wrote that the book "may be the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician. I've been chewing Nicorette strenuously. Obama encouraged "others in public life to do the same" to show "there is no shame in going for an HIV test. "Writing about Obama's political image in a March 2007 Washington Post opinion column, Eugene Robinson characterized him as "the personification of both-and," a messenger who rejects "either-or" political choices, and could "move the nation beyond the culture wars" of the 1960s. Together with Warren and Brownback, Obama took an HIV test, as he had done in Kenya less than four months earlier.



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