2. Barack Obama Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in August 4, 1961. Obama is the only president born in Hawaii He is the 44th and current president of the United States of America. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resinged after his election to the presidency in November 2008.
3. University Obama is graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review and where he received a doctorate in law. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School School from 1992 to 2004.
4. Senator Obama Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he ran for United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in March 2004 Democratic primary election for the United States Senator from Illinois and his primetime televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won the election to the U.S. Senate November 2004.
5. Presidential Campaign Presidential Campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Clinton, he won his party’s nomination. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Obama also earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.
6. Awards Obama won Best spoken Word Album Grammy Awards for audiobook versions of Dreams from My Father in February 2006 and for The Audacity of Hope in February 2008. Also his “Yes We Can” speech, which artists independently set to music, was viewed by 10 million people on you tube in the first month, and received a daytime Emmy Award. In December 2008, Time magazine named Barack Obama as its Person of the Year for his historic candidacy and election, which it described as “the steady march of seemingly impossible accomplishments”.
7. On October 9, 2009 the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that he had won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “ for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperative between peoples”. Obama accepted this award in Norway on December 10, 2009. Obama is the fourth U.S. president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and third to become a Nobel laureate while still in office.
8. Presidency The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president took place on January 20, 2009. In his first few days as president he told the U.S. military to develop plans to withdraw troops from Iraq. He is also closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp on January 2010. He also reduced the secrecy given to presidential records and changed procedures to promote discloser under Freedom of Information Act.
9. Domestic Policy The first bill signed into law by Obama was a Fair Pay Act of 2009, relaxing the statue of limitations for equal-pay lawsuits. Five days later, he signed the reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to cover an additional 4 million children currently uninsured. On September 30, 2009, the Obama administration proposed new regulations on power plants , factories and oil refineries in attempt to limit green house gas emissions and to try to stop global warming.
10. Economic Management On February 17, 2009, Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a $787 billion dollars aimed helping the economy recover from deep deepening world wide recession. The act includes increased federal spending for health care, infrastructure, education, various tax breaks and incentives. Which is being distributed over the course of several years. Obama unsatisfied with the pace he called his cabinet for a reunion to accelerate the process.
11. Iraq war On February 27, Obama declared that combat operations would on Iraq within 18 months. His remarks were made to a group of marines preparing for deployment to Afghanistan. Obama said, “Let me say this as plainly as I can : By August 31, 2010, our combat mission on Iraq will end” The drawdown is scheduled to be complete by August 31, 2010 decreasing troop levels from 142,000 while leaving a transitional force of 35,00 to 50,000 in Iraq until the end of 2011. The plan is to transition the mission of the remaining troops from combat operations to counter-terrorism and training, equipping, and advising of Iraq security forces.
12. Afghanistan war Afghanistan war (2001-present) Obama announced an increase to U.S. troop levels of 17,000 in February 2009 to “stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan”, an area that needs strategic attention, direction. Obama replaced the military commander in Afghanistan, with former Special Forces commander Lt. Gen. Stanly A. McChrystal in May 2009, indicating that McChrystal’s forces experience would facilitate t he use of tactics in war. On December 1, 2009, Obama announced the deployment of an additional 30,000 soldiers to Afghanistan. But he also proposed to begin troop withdrawals 18 months from that date.