Overview (4) Born August 4, 1961 inHonolulu, Hawaii, USA Birth NameBarack Hussein Obama II NicknamesBarryBamaRockThe OneNo Drama ObamaMr. PresidentPresident Barack ObamaPresident ObamaObamaBarack H. ObamaB.H. ObamaBO Height 6'1"(1.85m) Mini Bio (1)
U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama II was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a white American from Wichita, Kansas. His father, Barack Obama Sr., who was black, was from Alego, Kenya. They were both young college students at the University of Hawaii. When his father left for Harvard, his mother and Barack stayed behind, and his father ultimately returned alone to Kenya, where he worked as a government economist. Barack's mother remarried an Indonesian oil manager and moved to Jakarta when Barack was six. He later recounted Indonesia as simultaneously lush and a harrowing exposure to tropical poverty. He returned to Hawaii, where he was brought up largely by his grandparents. The family lived in a small apartment - his grandfather was a furniture salesman and an unsuccessful insurance agent and his grandmother worked in a bank - but Barack managed to get into Punahou School, Hawaii's top prep academy. His father wrote to him regularly but, though he traveled around the world on official business for Kenya, he visited only once, when Barack was ten. Obama attended Columbia University, but found New York's racial tension inescapable. He became a community organizer for a small Chicago church-based group for three years, helping poor South Side residents cope with a wave of plant closings. He then attended Harvard Law School, and in 1990 became the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He turned down a prestigious judicial clerkship, choosing instead to practice civil-rights law back in Chicago, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination and working on voting-rights legislation. He also began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, and married Michelle Robinson (now Michelle Obama, a fellow attorney; their daughters are Sasha Obama and Malia Obama. Eventually, he was elected to the Illinois state senate, where his district included both Hyde Park and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side. In 2004, Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, representing Illinois, and he gained national attention by giving a rousing and well-received keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. In 2008 he ran for President, and despite having only four years of national political experience, he won. In January 2009, he was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, and the first African-American ever elected to that position. Obama was re-elected to a second term in November 2012.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
Loud, strong voice when delivering speeches.
Grace under pressure
Mole just to the left of his nose
His first name comes from the word that means "blessed by God" in Arabic.
In the Kenyan town where his father was born, the long-brewed "Senator" brand of beer has been nicknamed "Obama."
U.S. Senator from Illinois from January 3, 2005 to November 16, 2008.
Won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word for the CD version of his autobiography "Dreams From My Father" (2006).
Candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 US presidential election.
At his wife's suggestion, he quit smoking before his campaign to win the Democratic nomination began.
His paternal relatives still live in Kenya.
Confessed teenage drug experiences in his memoirs "Dreams from My Father".
Shares his surname with a small city in western Japan, which means "small shore" in Japanese.
Named one of Time magazine's "100 most influential people in the world" list in 2005 and 2007.
Chosen as one of "10 people would change the world" by New Statesman magazine (2005).
Won his second Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for "The Audacity of Hope" (2008).
On June 3, 2008 he won the Montana primary election giving him enough delegates to become the first Black American presidential candidate to win a major political party's presumptive nomination for the office of President of the United States.
More than 215,000 people attended his speech in Berlin on 24 July 2008.
Has a half-sister, Maya, born to his mother and stepfather in 1970.
Maternal grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham, died in 1992. Barack Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Lee (Payne) Dunham, died Sunday November 2, 2008 in the early evening in Honolulu from cancer, two days before he was elected to the presidency. She was 86.
Is the first African-American man to be elected President of the United States (November 2008).
When elected President, he won the battleground states of North Carolina, Florida, Virginia and Colorado - all of which had voted Republican in 2004.
Is the first American president to be born in Hawaii.
Was the 27th lawyer to be elected American president.
Was elected to be the 44th president of the Unites States of America on 4 November, 2008.
As a child growing up in Hawaii, his classmates knew him as Barry.
Presidential campaign slogan: "Change we can believe in".
His father was Kenyan, from Alego, and of the Luo tribe. His mother, who was from Wichita, Kansas, was white, and was of English, with small amounts of Scottish, Irish, German, Welsh, Swiss-German, French, and possibly remote African, ancestry. Genealogists believe she may have been descended from John Punch, an African-American slave who lived in the 1600s.
First ever US President to address a Muslim community at an inaugural speech.
October 2009, won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Obama's birthplace of Hawaii makes him the first U.S. president not born in the 48 contiguous United States.
The character of Matt Santos in 'The West Wing' is based on him.
The first US President to be born after the Vietnam War started.
Is a big fan of the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man and collected the comics as a youth.
Notable for being the first United States President to participate in social media. He is the first President to have a personal Facebook page and a Twitter account, and the first President to hold Q&A sessions via those forums and YouTube. He is also the first sitting President to own and use an iPod, Blackberry (custom made for security purposes), and iPad.
His daily newspapers are The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. He claims to not watch cable TV news stations.
Can speak Indonesian to a certain degree, having lived in Indonesia for a number of years during his childhood.
One of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World (2013).
Elected the 44th President of the United States of America [November 2008]
In the 2008 presidential election, he won the state of North Carolina with a 0.32% margin of victory. Normally considered a solid Republican state, the margin was small enough that it took days after the election to call the state, although this had little regard on calling the election, as nationally it was a landslide victory and winning or losing North Carolina would have made no difference. The last time prior to this that North Carolina elected a democrat was in 1976 when they elected Jimmy Carter.
One of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. [April 2014].
First sitting US President to visit a federal prison when he toured El Reno Correctional Institution in Oklahoma (July 16, 2015).
Became the first sitting US President to enter the Arctic Circle when he visited Kotzebue, Alaska, to address the adverse effects of global warming in that particular region (September 3, 2015).
How Much A Dollar Cost by Kendrick Lamar was his favorite song of 2015.
Officially endorses Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Presidential race. (June 2016).
Was offered a book publishing deal before graduating from Harvard University.
Was the first African-American to be elected President of the Harvard Law Review.
Graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University.
Normalized full diplomatic relations with Cuba in July 2015.
First sitting US President to visit Myanmar (November 2012).
3rd sitting US President to visit Vietnam (May 2016).
First sitting US President to visit Laos. (5 September 2016).
Is the Second US President to visit Greece (November 15 2016).
By the end of his second term, he granted clemency to over 1,000 non-violent drug offenders, which was more than the past 11 presidents combined.
Vowed retaliation against Russia for the cyber attacks.[December 2016].
Awarded 21 recipients The Presidential Medal of Freedom.[November 2016].
Met with CIA director John Brennan, FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., to discuss the cyber attacks made by Russia.[December 2016].
During his 2009 inauguration, he had an approval rating of seventy nine percent, the highest for any modern day incoming president.
Taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.
Had a 70 percent approval rating at the 100 day mark into his first term as President.
It was the second time he appeared in a video message to support Macron.
Sign one book deal as two separate memoirs with Michelle reportedly worth $60 million.[May 2017].
As part of the deal, the publishers will donate one million books in the Obama family's name to First Book: a nonprofit organization.
As a child, he had an ape for a pet.
Worked at a gift shop as a teenager.
Worked at Baskin-Robbins as a teenager.
Can bench press over 200 pounds.
Gets his haircut from the same barber every week.
Tried modeling when he studying at Harvard by submitting his photographs to be considered one of "Harvard's hunks" in their university calendar but was rejected.
Worked at a deli as a teenager.
First President to use Twitter.
Was the first Democratic presidential candidate to win his presidential election & re-election without the wining the state of Arkansas (which had been a swing state for decades before turning into a safe red in the 2000s).
Third-youngest person to be elected President of the United States, at the age of forty-seven, and the fourth-youngest President overall.
Wrote his two volume memoir A Promised Land in longhand.
When first elected president, Obama's hair was black. By the time his two terms were up, his hair had turned gray.
[from keynote speech given at the 2004 Democratic party national convention] There's not a liberal America and a conservative America. There's the United States of America. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states, and have gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war, and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
And it lives on in those Americans -- young and old, rich and poor, black and white, Latino and Asian and Native American, gay and straight -- who are tired of a politics that divides us and want to recapture the sense of common purpose that we had when John Kennedy was President of the United States of America.
In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
As President, I will end the war in Iraq. We will have our troops home in sixteen months. I will close Guantanamo. I will restore habeas corpus. I will finish the fight against Al Qaeda. And I will lead the world to combat the common threats of the 21st century - nuclear weapons and terrorism; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. And I will send once more a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says, "You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now."
This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
Change is coming to America.
In America, we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations.
In America, we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations.
In Washington, we call this the Ownership society, and it is especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in life's lottery, that we're the one who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won't be the chump who Donald Trump says: "You're fired!"
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 the structural feminists and punk rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy. When we ground our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.
(visiting Ireland) My name is Barack Obama of the Moneygall O'Bamas. And I've come to find the apostrophe we lost along the way.
Hopefully, more and more people will begin to feel their story is somehow a part of the larger story of how we're going to reshape America in a way that is less mean spirited and more generous. I mean I really hope to be a part of the transformation of this country.
I'm not interested in the suburbs. The suburbs bore me. And I'm not interested in isolating myself. I feel good when I'm engaged in what I think are the core issues of the society, and those issues to me are what's happening to poor folks in this society.
It's crucial that people don't see my election as a sign of progress in the broader sense that we don't sort of point to a Barack Obama any more than you point to a Bill Cosby or a Michael Jordan and say "Well things are hunky dory".
To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, or at least as it's been interpreted and Warren court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the Federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the Federal government or the state government must do on your behalf, and that has shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.
Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
It's great to be here this evening in the vast, magnificent Hilton ballroom, or what Mitt Romney would call a little fixer-upper.
You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we're talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn't dawn on them that somehow their friends' parents would be treated differently. It doesn't make sense to them and frankly, that's the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective. (May 9, 2012)
I have to tell you that over the course of several years, as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don't Ask Don't Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I've just concluded that for me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married. (May 9, 2012)
I believe the majority of gun owners would agree we should do everything possible to prevent criminals and fugitives from purchasing weapons. And we should check someone's criminal record before they can check out a gun seller. A mentally unbalanced individual should not be able to get his hands on a gun so easily. These steps shouldn't be controversial. They should be common sense.
We can't continue to sustain a situation in which some countries are maintaining surpluses, others massive deficits and there never is the kind of adjustment with respect to currency that would lead to a more balanced growth pattern.
My image of Onyango, faint as it was, has always been of an autocratic man - a cruel man, perhaps. But I had also imagined him an independent man, a man of his people, opposed to white rule... What Granny had told us scrambled that image completely, causing ugly words to flash across my mind. Uncle Tom. Collaborator. House nigger.
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Barack Obama - Biography - IMDb