Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama IIis the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office and the first president born outside of the continental United States. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney and taught...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionUS President
Date of Birth4 August 1961
CityHonolulu, HI
CountryUnited States of America
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed.
I know that campaigns can seem small, and even silly. Trivial things become big distractions. Serious issues become sound bites. And the truth gets buried under an avalanche of money and advertising. If you're sick of hearing me approve this message, believe me - so am I.
I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.
We welcome the scrutiny of the world - because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems and make our union more perfect.
I just miss - I miss being anonymous.
Now you have a choice: we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America.
I'm no longer just a candidate. I'm the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn't return. I've shared the pain of families who've lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who've lost their jobs.
To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.
That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want.
It's one thing when you're reading about a nuclear site in a book. It's another thing to be able to describe what I've seen, ... You realize as a senator there are so many issues out there tugging on people, you've got to make things vivid for them in order to capture people's attention.
It's puzzling, given his immediate response during 9/11, that he did not feel a greater sense of empathy toward the folks that were experiencing this enormous disaster, ... This Week.
The notion that we are going to stand by in the face of this is unacceptable.
That solves about 95 percent of the cases but the cases that get to the Supreme Court are the five percent that aren't easily answered and that's where you fall back on judgment and perspective,
It was apparent on the first day that blacks were disproportionately impacted, and I felt it was important to help frame how we think about that issue, ... I was outraged and heartbroken by what happened and felt anxious. I felt like I needed to do something.