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Barack Hussein Obama (born August 4, 1961) is the junior United
States Senator from Illinois and a Democrat. The U.S. Senate Historical Office
lists him as the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history and the only
African American currently serving in the U.S. Senate and recently won Democratic
Party nomination for the 2008 Presidential Election.
Born to a Kenyan father and an American mother, 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. A graduate of Columbia University and
Harvard Law School, Obama worked as a community organizer, university lecturer, and
civil rights lawyer before entering politics. He served in the Illinois Senate from
1997 to 2004, launching his campaign for U.S. Senate in 2003.
Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention
while still an Illinois state legislator. Boosted by increased national standing,
he went on to win election to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 with a landslide 70%
of the vote in an election year marked by Republican gains. 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.
He is among the Democratic Party's leading candidates for nomination in the 2008
U.S. presidential election. Since announcing his candidacy in February 2007, Obama
has emphasized ending the Iraq War and implementing universal health care as
campaign themes. He married in 1992 and has two daughters. He has authored two
bestselling books: a memoir of his youth entitled Dreams from My Father, and The
Audacity of Hope, a personal commentary on U.S. politics.
 Personal
life
In 1988, while employed as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley
& Austin, Obama met Michelle Robinson, who also worked there. They were married
in 1992 and have two daughters, Malia, born in 1999, and Natasha ("Sasha"), born in
2001. The family moved from their Hyde Park, Chicago condominium to a nearby
US$1.6-million home in 2005. Obama plays basketball, a sport he participated in as
a member of his high school's varsity team. Before announcing his presidential
candidacy, he began a well-publicized effort to quit smoking. "I've never been a
heavy smoker," Obama told the Chicago Tribune. "I've quit periodically over the
last several years. I've got an ironclad demand from my wife that in the stresses
of the campaign I don't succumb. I've been chewing Nicorette strenuously." Replying
to an Associated Press survey of 2008 presidential candidates' personal tastes, he
specified "architect" as his alternate career choice and "chili" as his favorite
meal to cook. Asked to name a "hidden talent," Obama answered: "I'm a pretty good
poker player."
A theme of Obama's keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and
the title of his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, was inspired by his pastor, Rev.
Jeremiah Wright. In Chapter 6 of the book, titled "Faith," Obama writes that he
"was not raised in a religious household." 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." He describes his Kenyan father
as "raised a Muslim," but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and
his Indonesian step-father as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful."
The chapter details how Obama, in his twenties, while working with local churches
as a community organizer, came to understand "the power of the African American
religious tradition to spur social change." 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."
Source : Some of the information on
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Documentation License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Barack
Obama - Projector - Biography
