Democratic Nominee for the 2008 Presidential Election
Barack Hussein Obama II, born August 4, 1961, s the junior United States Senator from Illinois and presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 general election. Obama is the first African American to be nominated by a major political party for president.A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama worked as a communit organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003. After a primary victory in March 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He was elected to the Senate in November 2004 with 70% of the vote. As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 110th Congress, he helped create legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel. After announcing his presidential campaign in February 2007, Obama emphasized withdrawing American troops from Iraq, energy independence, decreasing the influence of lobbyists, and promoting universal health care as top national priorities.
Obama's Youth
Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Obama, Sr., a black Kenyan of Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, a White American from Wichita, Kansas.His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student.They separated when he was two years old and later divorced.Obama's father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.After her divorce, Dunham married Lolo Soetor, and the family moved to Soetoro's home country of Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended local schools in Jakarta until he was ten years old. He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade in 1971 until his graduation from high school in 1979. Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972 for several years and then back to Indonesia for her fieldwork. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995. As an adult Obama admitted that during high school he used marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol, which he described at the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency as his greatest moral failure. Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years.He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations. Obama graduated with a B. A. from Columbia in 1983, then worked for a year at the Business International Corporation and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Top 10 reasons why to vote for Barack Obama
1. Barack Obama has personal experience with poverty and the growing income gap, having grown up abroad in Indonesia and working as a community organizer in the south side of Chicago.
2. After graduating Harvard Law, Magna Cum Laude and president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama could have become a wealthy corporate or trial lawyer but returned to Chicago to practice civil rights law.
3. He also taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, so he knows how our government is supposed to work.
4. He has the most experience as an elected official and legislator with over 10 years in state and federal public service. He is the only top Democratic candidate who understands both state and federal government as an elected legislator.
5. He opposed the Iraq war before it started and has a specific plan for redeploying all combat troops by March 31, 2008.
6. He has received an A+ score from the Genocide Intervention Network for being a "champion" and taking crucial action to end the genocide in Darfur, co-sponsoring and voting for all significant Darfur legislation.
7. He is committed to universal health care by the end of his first term.
8. He has sponsored, co-sponsored and advocated for significant and realistic legislation to end global warming by capturing and safely disposing carbon dioxide, raising vehicle fuel economy standards and replacing petroleum with home-grown biofuels like cellulosic ethanol.
9. He has the broadest base of supporters, has not accepted PAC money and is the least compromised by big money special interests.
10. Barack Obama has the intellect, natural talent and charisma to communicate effectively to the entire world, bring people together, change the status quo and move our country forward.
