Barack Hussein Obama

Barack Hussein Obama
44th President of the United States From: January 20, 2009-Present
Vice President	Joe Biden
Predecessor	George W. Bush
Successor	Incumbent (no successor)
U.S. Senator from Illinois From: January 3, 2005 – November 16, 2008
Predecessor	Peter Fitzgerald
Successor	Roland Burris
Information
Party	Democratic Party
Spouse(s)	Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama; may have had a prior marriage.
Religion	unknown (see Obama's religion)

Barack Hussein Obama II (born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961) is the 44th President of the United States. Obama was elected president in 2008 with 365 electoral votes and 53% of the popular vote. In 2012 he was elected to a second term with 332 electoral votes and 51% of the popular vote, losing 5 million voters from four years earlier.

Obama is pro-abortion. In fact, he is the most pro-abortion president yet. Obama has dedicated himself to promoting abortion—rather than reduce them as he promised. Just to name a few of the administrative actions by which he has done this would include expanding abortions through Obamacare, appointing many pro-abortion judges and officials, moving to strip medical professionals of rights of conscience, and forcing taxpayers to support the pro-abortion movement around the globe. During his campaigns Obama said that he intended to "spread the wealth around" and has been portrayed as saying that entrepreneurs and employers deserve no credit for building their businesses. On March 1, 2013 Obama issued executive orders to implement his sequester of budget cuts which has been widely criticized for destroying jobs in what was an anemic and fragile recovery.

Warren L. Dean Jr., an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, wrote:

• Washington has done more during Mr. Obama’s term in office to promote wealth and income inequality than at any other time in history.

Obama's bizarre gaffes, or Obamaisms, are frequent and embarrassing, but typically unreported by the liberal media. Some examples are: spelling respect as R-S-P-E-C-T when he was attempting to sing that line from Aretha Franklin's famous song, spelling Ohio as O-I-H-O, and saying that we built the Intercontinental Railroad instead of the Transcontinental Railroad, saying "How's it going, Sunshine" when he was in the city of Sunrise, Florida. . Many hardworking American businessmen took offense to a 2012 campaign speech about the economy where, referring to infrastructure improvements, he said "You didn't build that." Obama offended Poland by referring to the Nazi death camps there as "Polish death camps." Later Obama apologized.

The number of jihadis worldwide has grown by a factor of 4 or 5 at least, since Obama took the reins of power as Commander-in-Chief. Remarkably, the New York Times was critical of Obama's incessant boasting about the killing of bin Laden.

According to a NBC news poll, from August of 2014, Obama's approval rating was a dismal 40%, showing that six in ten Americans disapproved of his liberal policies. Given that liberals frequently engage in deceit, the actual approval ratings could be much lower.

Biography

Birth

Main article : Early life and career of Barack Hussein Obama

See also : Barack Obama's Muslim Heritage

Obama was born in Hawaii to Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr.—who had married just six months prior—on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. After many leading conservatives—including the leadership of this site and Donald Trump—called for Obama to release his birth certificate he produced a document that he claimed was his birth certificate on April 27, 2011. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in Arizona conducted an investigation of Obama's eligibility and questioned whether the alleged "birth certificate" was a fake; however, no charges have been filed. Obama was reportedly assigned a social security number whose area code was assigned to applications coming from zip codes in Connecticut.

As an interesting side note, the Hawaii official (Loretta Fuddy, State Health Department Director) who verified Barack Obama’s birth certificate died in a plane crash. Besides Fuddy, Health Department Deputy Director Keith Yamamoto was also on board. The plane's engine had failed right after take off and crashed about a half-mile off Molokai's north shore on Dec 11, 2013 at about 4:00 p.m. Interestingly enough, Health Director Loretta Fuddy was the only death of the nine people on board; she died of "cardiac arrhythmia". Of course, this may be unrelated.

The original claims that Obama was born in Kenya come from the Obamas themselves. In 1991, Obama's literary agent, Acton & Dystel, published a promotional booklet that stated that Obama was born in Kenya. The claim that Obama was born in Kenya remained on the agent's web site until 2007. Internet archives confirm this information. In addition to the information from literary agents, Michelle Obama stated in a speech that Kenya is Obama's "homeland".

Barack Obama Sr. was not a citizen of the United States. At the time of Obama's birth, Kenya was a British colony, meaning that not only was Obama Sr. a British subject, but he passed that status on to his son. When Kenya gained independence, Obama and his father both ceased to be British subjects and became Kenyan citizens. Barack Obama was a dual citizen of the United States and Kenya until his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired in 1984, as he had failed to renounce US nationality and swear loyalty to Kenya. Even if he had been born with US citizenship through his mother, it has been argued that as he was born with dual nationality, he is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and thus constitutionally ineligible to become President. Despite this, no court that has considered such arguments has accepted the proposition that Obama is not a natural-born citizen.

Early Life

Obama's birth parents divorced in 1963 when his mother discovered Barack Obama Sr. was already married to a woman living in Kenya. When Obama was 2 years old his mother married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian geologist. At age 6 his mother and adoptive father took him to Jakarta, Indonesia for 4 years while his mother pursued a Ph.D. in Anthropology requiring fieldwork there. His mother then abandoned him in Hawaii with his grandparents (Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, who had moved to Hawaii in 1959) so she could return to Indonesia after her divorce. Obama's grandfather arranged for his friend, the noted communist writer Frank Marshall Davis, to serve as a mentor and role model for an impressionable African-American youth.

Other siblings of Obama's include his half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng and 7 other children born to his father by 4 different women. For much of his early life, prior to his transfer to Columbia University, he went by his nickname, "Barry." In the summer of 1988, before attending Harvard Law School (he'd just been accepted), he visited Kogelo, Kenya, to learn more about his father's family. When his mother died in 1995, he and his sister Maya scattered her ashes over Hawaii's south shore.

Personal Life

Michelle (Robinson) Obama, wife of Barack Obama.

Barack Obama met his future wife, an attorney named Michelle Robinson, herself a recent Harvard Law School graduate, while he was an intern and she was on staff at Sidley Austin LLP, a prestigious corporate law firm. Despite company policy prohibiting relations between staff and interns, the two started dating. The two continued dating long-distance while he finished law school, and on October 18, 1992, were married by Reverend Jeremiah Wright at Trinity United Church. In 1999, their first child was born, Malia, and in 2001, another daughter, Natasha (often called Sasha).

Obama attended Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church from 1984-1988 during his time as a community organizer (See 1985-1988, Community Organizer section). Obama credits Wright with his conversion to Christianity, and had both his daughters, Sasha and Malia, baptized there.

Education

At age 6, Obama attended schools in Indonesia, the first a Catholic School while he was in Kindergarten, and later a public school. The school had mostly Muslim students (since most Indonesians are Muslim). In Dreams from My Father, Obama writes, "In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to my mother that I had made faces during Koranic studies." Insight Magazine first reported Hillary Clinton's organization had "questions about Obama’s Muslim background: Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?"

In 1971, at age 10, Barack Obama moved to Hawaii, and his grandparents helped him gain entrance to the prestigious Punahou Academy in Honolulu where he began substance abuse and illegal drugs. He was accepted through a scholarship for disadvantaged minorities while he was in 5th grade. At this elite high school with 1,200 students he was just 1 of 3 black students, and couldn't make the starting lineup of the state champion basketball team his senior year. He wrote a poem for the school's literary magazine, Ka Wai Ola.

In 1979, he began a 2-year stint at Occidental College college in Los Angeles, and then transferred to Columbia University in New York, which he graduated from in 1983. During this time he published an anti-military tirade embracing Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev's proposal for a nuclear freeze in the campus newspaper and allegedly spoke at an Anti-Apartheid rally, although several prominent student leaders said they did not remember him there. Professor Michael L. Baron was impressed by Obama and wrote him a recommendation for Harvard Law School. In the winter of 1988 Barack Obama decided to attend Harvard Law School, and left Chicago for Cambridge, Massachusetts. In his 2nd year a power struggle broke out among the dominant white liberals over control of the Harvard Law Review. Obama was elected its first black president as a compromise candidate following a "marathon voting session" in which he finally won on the 19th ballot. This led to national attention and numerous job offers, which Obama passed up, at age 30, to pursue his political career in Chicago.

Early Employment

1983-1984, Financial Analyst and Writer

In 1984 Obama worked as a writer and financial analyst for Business International Corporation to help pay off some of his student loans. Business International Corporation was a small newsletter-publishing and research firm which aided multinational companies understand overseas markets. Obama served as a writer/researcher for a company reference service, Financing Foreign Operations, and wrote for their newsletter, Business International Money Report. His supervisor was Cathy Lazere.

1984-1988, Community Organizer

In 1984, Obama was hired by the New York Public Interest Research Group, a non-profit organization promoting environmental, consumer, and government reforms. He also was paid just under $10,000 annually as a full-time organizer for Harlem's City College to mobilize student volunteers.

From 1985-88, Obama worked as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago funded with a $25,000 grant by Bill Ayers' Woods Fund. The New York Times reported he was paid $1,000 a year, with $2,000 extra for a car however stories vary wildly. Jerry Kellman, who hired him, says it was "$10,000 a year and a $2,000 car allowance". Obama himself gave different numbers; his memoir says $10,000 (as well as the car), in his Wesleyan speech he gave it as "$12,000 a year plus $2,000 for an old, beat-up car", and when he announced his candidacy for president, it was "a group of churches had offered me a job as a community organizer for $13,000 a year".

Ryan Lizza at The New Republic reported that "Jean Rudd of the Woods Fund...had provided Kellman with his original $25,000 to hire Obama". Ari Berman reported in The Nation that the "[Woods Fund] gave a $25,000 grant to the Developing Communities Project, which hired Obama". CBS Channel 2 in Chicago ran a story with a document showing that Obama's proposed salary in 1987 was $25,000, a number that the Obama campaign confirmed while insisting at the same time his original salary was $13,000.

During this time Obama joined Reverend Wright's Trinity United Church because in the words of Suzanne Malveaux of CNN, "It was the church to join if you wanted to be one of Chicago's black movers and shakers." At the time, community organizing involved close affiliation with churches, which was how Obama met Wright.

1988-1996, Law Practice

In 1988 Obama gained work as a Summer Associate at one of the most prestigious corporate law firms in the world, Sidley Austin LLP, owned by Newton Minow, thanks to the recommendation of Minow's daughter Martha, a professor at Harvard Law School. It was at Minow's law firm that Obama would meet Michelle Robinson, his future wife. From 1993-96 he practiced civil rights law including suing Citibank to force them into making subprime mortgages to unqualified minority borrowers. After graduating from Harvard he was hired by Miner, Barnhill, & Galland, a small politically-connected law firm. It was at Miner, Barnhill, & Galland that he would meet influential real estate developer Tony Rezko.

1991-1992, Project Vote

In 1991 Obama was recruited by Sandy Newman to head the Chicago chapter of Project Vote!, and in 1992 was the Executive Director, overseeing a voter registration drive which registered 125,000 black voters and was credited with defeating an incumbent Democrat in the primary and electing U.S. Senator Carol Mosely Braun.

1992-2004, Lecturer at University of Chicago

Obama taught part-time at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992-2004. He was a Lecturer from 1992-96, teaching 3 courses per year, and a senior lecturer from 1996-2004. After Obama was criticized for lying about his job title, the University of Chicago released a statement stating that senior lecturers are considered Law School faculty and regarded as professors but not full-time or tenured. Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time, tenured track position several times during this period but declined each time.

1995, Author

In 1995 Obama published Dreams From My Father about his life and family background.

Personal Awards

2009 Nobel Peace Prize

On October 9, 2009 Barack H. Obama became the third sitting U.S. President to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". Obama stated that he was "surprised and deeply humbled" to receive the unexpected award, and also said, "To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize -- men and women who have inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace".

1996-2003, Illinois State Senate

1996 Election

Main article: Radical roots of Barack Hussein Obama

In 1995 a cadre of like minded individuals gathered for a fundraising event in the early career of Barack Obama hosted by Weather Underground (WUO) terrorist William "Bill" Ayers. Besides Obama, those in attendance were Ayers wife Bernardine Dohrn, and Carl Davidson, veterans of guerrilla warfare training in Cuba just prior 1968 Democratic National Convention riots. Ayers and Dohrn have taken credit for, and never denied, bombing the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and the State Department.

Ayers and Dohrn used their celebrity status among leftists to launch Obama's career. Ayers, Dohrn and Jeff Jones are authors of Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-imperialism, the title taken from The Sayings of Mao Zedong. The book declares "we are communist men and women." Ayers later jokingly, publicly admitted to ghostwriting Obama's book, Dreams From My Father and Obama was to appoint several openly avowed Maoists to prominent White House and Executive Branch positions.

Knocking Candidates Off the Ballot

Barack Obama ran for the Illinois state senate in 1996. He was initially supported by incumbent Alice Palmer, who declared she would run for the U.S. Congress. However, when her bid for Congress failed on November 28, 1995, she tried to run for her old seat in the March 1996 election. Her supporters asked Obama to step aside, although whether this was with her permission remains uncertain. Not only did Obama not step down, he gathered a team of high-priced lawyers, including fellow Harvard Law School graduate Thomas Johnson, to challenge his opponent's petition signatures on technicalities after the filing deadline had passed. Such tactics are legal and frequently used in Chicago; in 2006 they eliminated 67 of the 245 aldermanic candidates; yet nevertheless led to the term "hardball" by The New York Times and "cutthroat" by David Mendel as reported by both CNN and MSNBC. The Chicago Tribune declared Obama had mastered "the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics", noting "The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it." As one of Obama's four opponents, eliminated through his ballot challenges, would put it:

“

"Why say you're for a new tomorrow, then do old-style Chicago politics to remove legitimate candidates? He talks about honor and democracy, but what honor is there in getting rid of every other candidate so you can run scot-free? Why not let the people decide?" -Gha-is Askia, 1996 Illinois Senate candidate

”

Mark Ewell, another candidate, filed 1,286 signatures, and Obama's challenges left him 86 short of the minimum requirement (757). Ewell filed a federal lawsuit contesting the election board's decision but Tom Johnson intervened, and Ewell's case was dismissed just a few days later. Ewell and other Obama opponents were using early 1995 polling sheets to verify signatures of registered voters, but city authorities had just purged 15,871 unqualified people from the 13th district list, and Obama's challenges used the more recent, updated list. Askia was left 69 signatures short of the requirement. If names were printed instead of signed in cursive, they were declared invalid. If they were good but the person registering the signatures wasn't a registered voter (e.g. underage) they were invalid. Palmer had according to Obama campaign consult Ronald Davis, used two children to help gather her petition signatures. To this day Palmer denies the challenges were valid, and maintains she could have overcome the objections with more time and resources. Thanks to his lawyers, Obama would win the election without a single other candidate on the ballot.

2000 Election

Main Article: Illinois 1st congressional district election, 2000

In 2000, Obama lost his only political election when he chose to run against experienced incumbent and former Black Panther and Bobby L. Rush for the U.S. Congress in a 65% black district. Rush's name recognition began at 90%, Obama's at 11%. Michelle Obama opposed taking on an such an iconic figure dear to the community and threatened divorce. Establishment Democrats considered Obama "a white man in blackface". Rush said of Obama, “He went to Harvard and became an educated fool,” adding, “We’re not impressed with these folks with these eastern elite degrees.”Todd Spivak would give voice to this impression of Obama, noting that

“

"My view of Obama then wasn't all that different from the image he projects now....One thing I can say is, I never heard him launch into the preacher-man voice he now employs during speeches. He sounded vanilla, and activists in his mostly black district often chided him for it."

”

Rush would go on to win the Primary with 61.02% of the vote; Obama received 30.36%.

2003 Emil Jones Deal

Main Article: 2003 Barack Obama deal with Emil Jones

When Illinois' U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald announced he would be retiring in April 2003, Obama jumped at the opportunity, declaring that he would be a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2004. To boost his chances Obama approached the newly crowned president of the Illinois Senate, Emil Jones Jr., with a proposal. According to Jones, whom Obama has since called his "godfather" the conversation went as follows:

“

"After I was elected president, in 2003, he came to see me, a couple months later. And he said to me, he said, ‘You’re the senate president now, and with that, you have a lot of pow-er.’  And I told Barack, ‘You think I got a lot of pow-er now?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you got a lot of pow-er.’ And I said, ‘What kind of pow-er do I have?’ He said, ‘You have the pow-er to make a United States sen-a-tor!’  I said to Barack, I said, ‘That sounds good!’ I said, ‘I haven’t even thought of that.’ I said, ‘Do you have someone in mind you think I could make?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah. Me.’ "

”

Because of the deal, Obama's entire Illinois Senate legislative record was, as longtime Obama reporter Todd Spivak put it, built in a single year. During his 7th and final year in the Illinois Senate, Obama sponsored an incredible 26 bills into law, including many he now points to when criticized as inexperienced - as CNN's Suzanne Malveaux observed, "With help from on high, Obama got his name on hundreds of bills that he pushed through." Jones not only had Obama craft legislation addressing daily tragedies to raise his political profile, he also appointed Obama head of almost all high-profile legislation in the Illinois Senate, angering other state legislators with more seniority who'd spent years supporting the bills. Illinois State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of the famous racial profiling bill requiring videotaped confessions in police interrogations, complained bitterly about Jones' decision. Jones' influence had a major impact on Obama's chances in the 2004 elections, preventing major political players from backing Obama's opponents. To quote Emil Jones,

“

"He knew if he had me in the run for the Senate, it would put a block on the current mayor. The current mayor and the father of the controller, which was Dan Hynes, they were roommates in Springfield when the mayor was a state senator, so they had a relationship. Another big financial backer for the governor was Blair Hull. Barack knew if he had me it would checkmate the governor, ’cause the governor couldn’t come out and go with Blair Hull, ’cause the governor needs me. Same with the mayor. So he had analyzed and figured all of that out. He knew I could help him with labor support. And I could put a checkmate on some of the local politicians that didn’t know him, but they couldn’t really go against me." -Emil Jones

”

2004 Primary Election

Despite initially trailing in the polls to frontrunner Blair Hull, Obama greatly benefited from what the Chicago Tribune called "the most inglorious campaign implosion in Illinois political history" when pressure from journalists and opposing candidates, just weeks before the election, forced the unsealing of Hull's messy divorce files. The files revealed Hull's ex-wife's accusations of verbal and physical abuse. Hull would afterwards criticize the media, stating, "As for the press, I will never read the newspaper the same way again." Obama would go on to win the Primary with 53% of the vote. Obama's unexpected victory led to him being termed a "rising star" by the media.

2004 General Election, Jack Ryan

Once again Obama found himself trailing to popular frontrunner Jack Ryan, and once again a candidate's campaign imploded thanks to media intervention. In an unprecedented move, the Chicago Tribune and local TV station WLS sued to force the unsealing of Ryan's divorce files, despite opposition from both Ryan and his wife, Jeri Ryan, who in the files accused Jack Ryan of trying to coerce her to perform sex acts in public. Though Ryan advisors told him he could still win if using a negative attack on Obama, Ryan refused to engage in what he considered dirty politics. Ryan then dropped out of the race (per request by the Illinois GOP), following which the Illinois GOP scrambled to find a replacement, leaving Obama uncontested for weeks to campaign and build up public support. On top of all this, Obama was selected to give the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (July 27), catapulting him into the national spotlight, and leading to further media publicity terming him a "rising star".

2004 General Election, Alan Keyes

Main Article: Obama born alive controversy

After a number of candidates including former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka declined to run, the Illinois GOP finally settled on fiery Alan Keyes, a former Ambassador to the Economic and Social Counsel of the United Nations, with less than 3 months left before the November 2004 election. His sudden entrance into the state for the election was initially attacked in the press as "carpetbagging". Keyes repeatedly claimed his primary motivation for entering a race he had seemingly no chance of winning was his disgust at Obama's votes on the popular Born Alive bills. Keyes, from his first day of arriving in Illinois (August 9, 2004), accused Obama of having voted against bills mandating medical care for newborn children, and supporting "infanticide" (the term twice used in the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act) where hospitals left newborn infants to die like garbage. Obama in a debate on October 13, 2004, defended himself against Keyes' accusations of infanticide by claiming that Illinois law was already sufficient.

However, Keyes' rhetoric, calling Obama's votes "the slaveholder's position" and saying "Jesus Christ would not vote for Obama" was widely ridiculed by the press. Keyes' unabashed criticism of homosexuality as "selfish hedonism" was also targeted. Obama would ultimately win the election, 70% to 27%.

U.S. Senate Voting Record

Obama's incomplete term in the U.S. Senate was largely not noteworthy. In voting against raising the debt limit in 2006 Obama famously said, "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. ... I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit." In 2008 as candidate for president Obama called George W. Bush's request to raise the debt limit "irresponsible" and "unpatriotic".

Obama frequently used the filibuster to obstruct the operations of government, and voted against the minimum wage bill he introduced because it included a provision to pay active duty U.S. troops. He voted for the $700 billion TARP program to bailout the big banks after receiving more than $120,000 in contributions from Fannie Mae, a government sponsored entity taken into conservatorship for mismanaging its affairs and responsible for all the big bank's problems.

According to Opensecrets.org, of the 671,269 contributions to Obama during his time in the Senate, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley were among the top 20 biggest money donors to his campaigns. All four subsequently received approximately $70 billion in taxpayer assisted bailout money from the TARP program he voted for. UBS AG, a foreign bank and the 12th largest donor to Obama, was fined $780 billion in February 2009 in a U.S. Federal Court on charges it helped thousands of Americans evade taxes.

Primary Election

In 2007-08, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton competed for the Democratic nomination. Hillary Clinton cleverly resurrected the "Born Alive" controversy surrounding Obama that had lain largely dormant since 2004 (notwithstanding the continuing mentions by Jill Stanek), by accusing Obama of not being pro-choice for voting "Present" on a number of abortion-related bills - including the Born Alive ones, and cowardly ducking the votes. This led to criticism of Obama by two pro-choice organizations, Emily's List, and the National Organization for Women. However, Pam Sutherland, the long-time head of Illinois Planned Parenthood, came to Obama's aid, criticizing Clinton for making the attack, and stating repeatedly that Obama's present votes were part of a broader strategy used by Planned Parenthood to keep Illinois voters from knowing their state senators were voting against the controversial and popular bills.

“

"He came to me and said: ‘My members are being attacked. We need to figure out a way to protect members and to protect women. A ‘present’ vote was hard to pigeonhole which is exactly what Obama wanted. What it did was give cover to moderate Democrats who wanted to vote with us but were afraid to do so" because of how their votes would be used against them electorally. A ‘present’ vote would protect them. Your senator voted ‘present.’ Most of the electorate is not going to know what that means." -Pam Sutherland, President/CEO of Illinois Planned Parenthood Council, 1980-2012

”

As the contest in Iowa drew near and the former First Lady's inevitability was being usurped by a challenger, Hillary Clinton organizers began circulating rumors that Obama was secretly a Muslim. Clinton also made the claim repeatedly that while Obama was leading in Delegates she was winning the Popular Vote, though this was in part because Obama hadn't been registered in Michigan. Obama's advantage with super-delegates over Clinton was about 2-to-1. Obama was able to attract the support of liberals by pointing out that he had come out against the Iraq War "from the beginning" whereas Clinton had voted in favor of the war in 2002. On June 7, 2008, Hillary Clinton withdrew from the Primaries, conceding the race and endorsing her opponent, when Obama passed the 2,118 Delegates required; winning 2,201 delegates to Clinton's 1,896.

Born Alive Record Resurfaces

On June 30, 2008, Obama's voting record on the "Born Alive" bills came once more to the forefront when CNN gave voice to the growing controversy and revealed the defense Obama had been using since 2004-2008, that the Illinois bills he'd voted against were different from the federal bill, was false, since he'd brought up for a vote a bill word for word identical to the federal bill in the Health and Human Services Committee he chaired, and voted against it, defeating it. This led in August to a confrontation between Obama and the NRLC. After Obama accused critics of 'lying' the NRLC challenged the assertion, and the Obama campaign conceded he "misspoke" and had voted against an identical bill to the "federal bill that everybody supported" but focused on Obama's new claim, that Illinois law was already sufficient to protect newborn children. The NRLC promptly declared "Senator Barack Obama's four-year effort to cover up his full role in killing legislation to protect born-alive survivors of abortions continues to unravel."

Jeremiah Wright

See also: Barack Obama and Liberation Theology

One major dilemma that arose for Obama during his campaign was his connection to his preacher Jeremiah Wright. Obama and his wife (raised a Baptist) were members of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a church that embraced black liberation theology and its emphasis on empowering so-called "oppressed groups" against "establishment forces". This denomination was the first in America to ordain gays as ministers. Church pastor Jeremiah Wright had been making inflammatory comments and posting his sermons online for sale. These include the statement "G-d damn America," and in describing the September 11th attacks, "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost." In addition, Rev. Wright blamed America saying "We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic."

In April 2008, after 20 years in the church, candidate Obama made public statements poised to set him at odds with the man who conducted his wedding and baptized his children. With the negative publicity persisting, a month later Obama ended the friendship, left Wright's church, and blamed the media. Obama claimed “It’s not fair to the other members of the church who seek to worship in peace...", and distanced himself from Wright's sermons as "a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in the truth."

Result

Obama made an effort to portray John McCain as similar to George W. Bush, drawing attention to McCain's refusal to criticize the unpopular president. McCain was particularly criticized for saying of how many years we should be willing to stay in Iraq, "Make it a hundred."

“

"John McCain went on television and said that there has been great progress economically over the last seven-and-a-half years. John McCain thinks our economy has made great progress under George W. Bush? How could somebody who has been traveling across this country, somebody who came to Erie, Pennsylvania, say we’ve made great progress?" -Barack Obama

”

On August 22nd, Obama selected Joe Biden as his running mate for the vice presidency, which would be contrasted one week later with John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin.

On November 2, 2008, Barack Obama won the presidential election with 365 electoral votes to John McCain's 173. Obama received 53% of the popular vote to John McCain's 46%.

2009-: U.S. Presidency

Main article: Obama administration

President Barack Obama meets with former President George H. W. Bush in the Oval Office, Feb. 15, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza).

Five years into Obama's presidency the number of people holding jobs still was 3 million below the all time high of 138 million workers - despite an increase of 10 million people in population over the same period of time. Under Obama and Senate Democrats budget management, the United States suffered its largest deficits in history and its credit-worthiness downgraded from Standard and Poor's. Obama assured Americans that unemployment would not rise above 8% if his economic stimulus program was adopted, however it rose and stagnated in the 8-10% range for the entirety of his first term.

Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen, writing in the Wall Street Journal, noted, "Rather than being a unifier, Mr. Obama has divided America on the basis of race, class and partisanship." The commentators also note Obama's approach to governance has encouraged radical leftists to pursue a similar strategy on his behalf. Mary Frances Berry, former head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, acknowledged that the Obama administration has taken to polarizing America around the issue of race as a means of diverting attention from other issues, saying, "Having one's opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness." Caddell and Schoen, who worked for President Carter and Clinton, respectively, further stated, "Mr. Obama has also cynically divided the country on class lines. He has taken to playing the populist card time and time again. He bashes Wall Street and insurance companies whenever convenient to advance his programs, yet he has been eager to accept campaign contributions and negotiate with these very same banks and corporations behind closed doors in order to advance his political agenda... President Obama's divisive approach to governance has weakened us as a people and paralyzed our political culture."

Economic policy

[[File:Keynes.jpg|thumbnail|right|190px|Barack Obama advocates the use of the debated Keynesian economic concepts

Critics of the Obama administration have coined the word "Obamunism" to describe Barack Obama's socialistic economic planning policies. Obamunism can also refer to Obama's fiscal policies and monetary policies. Nevertheless, budgets passed under President Obama have included the smallest average annualized growth of federal spending (1.4%) since before President Reagan. Federal spending grew an average of 8.7% per year during Reagan's first term and an average of 8.1% per year during George W. Bush's second term.

Wall Street firms and banks that were bailed out were among Obama's biggest campaign supporters. Therefore, the Obama administration bailouts of corrupt, unproductive, and reckless Wall Street firms was hardly surprising, and many argue that it was not helpful in making the United States economy more productive and prosperous by encouraging more risk taking through letting banks off with a slap on the wrist. Others argue that bailing out the banks kept credit flowing and prevented a much deeper recession and a total collapse of the financial system. The government will recoup some though not all of its capital infusions over time. A 2005 study found that government corporate bailouts are often done for mere political considerations and the economic resources allocated exhibit significantly worse economic performance than resources allocated using purely business considerations. Proponents of free market capitalism said Bernanke should not have bailed out failing firms and instead should have allowed free market capitalism to quickly recover as it did in the depression of 1920 without government intervention (free market capitalists assert that government intervention drags out economic recessions and depressions).

During what the White House billed as Recovery Summer, one half million workers per week continued losing their jobs. His signature legislative achievement, ObamaCare,has been found to be unconstitutional by several judges and constitutional by others, and is credited as a major cause of uncertainty, high unemployment, lagging job creation, and risk of a credit default crisis.

His 2012 Budget plan has been roundly criticized in the mainstream and liberal press as not a serious effort to deal with the nation's economic crisis.

Jeffrey Tucker wrote, "President Obama's economic policy has been catastrophic for liberty, enterprise, and the American dream—the very archetype of what not to do to end recession."

Stimulus

See also: Recovery Summer

In early 2009, Obama lobbied Congress and the public to pass a sweeping Stimulus package known as The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (H.R. 1). The report of the Congressional Budget Office mandated by law stated that the legislation would ultimately harm the economy. Contrary to his promise of bipartisanship, the bill passed the House 244-188 on January 28, 2009 with 11 Democrats voting with the entire Republican caucus against, and received just 3 Republican votes when passing the Senate 61-37. One third of the massive $838 billion bill consisted of backdoor tax expenditures and the rest direct new spending on "just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years." In responding to criticism of the broken bipartisanship promise at the time, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously quipped, "We won the election. We wrote the bill." On February 18, 2009, the Stimulus was signed into law by Obama. In August 2009, Republicans and Democratic Senator David Obey drew attention to mistakes on the Recovery.gov site claiming millions of Stimulus jobs created that didn't exist. Obama responded by saying the errors just indicate his accounting is an "inexact science".

Sequestration

According to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, Obama misled the American people in a Presidential debate only two weeks before the 2012 election when he said, "The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” when in fact his chief budget negotiator and current Chief of Staff, Jack Lew, made a call to Democrat Harry Reid at 2:30 pm on July 27, 2011 with the proposal after clearing it with Obama, as fully documented in Woodward's book, The Price of Politics. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned of immediate jobloss of about 750,000 jobs - about the same level as under George W. Bush - if Obama's budget and economic plans were allowed to take effect.

Woodward, who's reporting on Watergate is credited with toppling the administration of Richard Nixon, told Wolf Blitzer of CNN he was told by a senior White House official he'd regret talking about the President Obama's positions on the sequester.

Healthcare mandates

Main article: Obamacare

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the unpopular Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The act originated in the Democratically controlled House and was amended and passed the Senate just prior to Sen. Ted Kennedy's death largely along party lines with a significant number of Democrats voting to oppose. In what was construed as a de facto rejection of the bill, Massachusetts voters elected a Republican candidate, Scott Brown, who promised to vote against the bill if given the chance. After Obama made a promise to issue an executive order that would ultimately prohibit the use of taxpayer subsidies to pay for abortion services, the Democratic House of Representatives would pass the bill as it left the Senate 219-212, with 34 Democrats and all other parties dissenting.

Amongst other things, the act mandated that everyone purchase health care coverage or face punitive tax measures, and was upheld by the Supreme Court.

Regulatory reform

Obama criticized the "revolving door" of government and business. After appointing Peter Orszag his first Budget Director to dole out the stimulus cash, Orszag resigned to become Citigroup's Vice Chairman of Global Banking. Citigroup was the recipient of $476 billion in bailout money - more than any other bank - after the disastrous Financial crisis of 2008. Before the bailout, Orszag's expert opinion of the chances of a mortgage meltdown were 1 in 500,000.

Environment and energy

Main article: Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster

President Obama authorized offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico stating, "oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills" and was widely criticized for his mishandling of the "worst environmental disaster in US history."

Labor law and compensation to 9/11 first responders

Obama's first act of office was to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act - effectively nullifying the Supreme Court case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., which ruled that Ledbetter had to have filed a pay discrimination suit within 180 days of the first time Ledbetter was paid less than her male peers; the law made corporations subject to suit within 180 days of each time the employee was unfairly paid.

On January 2, 2011, Obama signed the James Zadroga 9/11 Healthcare and Compensation Act. The act, which afforded 9/11 first responders who were sickened by the dust from the collapse of the World Trade Center health care and compensation, passed Congress after its sponsors agreed to scale down the pricing from 7.4 to 4.2 billion dollars.

Foreign policy

Unlike Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, Barack Obama has shown scant concern about the revival of slavery which took place on his watch shortly after his "apology tour", intended to diminish U.S. influence in the world. Obama, who was raised a Muslim and is not a descendent of slaves, criticized Christians and the Crusades as reports of thousands of women and girls being captured, sold, and raped flooded in.

Al Qaeda and Libya

Main article: Libyan uprising 2011

In February 2011, the political unrest that spread through the Arab world showed up as protests in Libya. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, leader of Libya for 41 years, responded to the violence with legitimate steps. The United Nations Security Council voted to impose sanctions, and later passed a resolution to protect civilians. Obama, without approval from Congress and over the objections of his own National Security staff, directed American forces to take out Libya's air defense system. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough, and White House counterterrorism chief John O. Brennan all opposed the action. Obama later said, "if we waited one more day Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world." Alan J. Kuperman, in an editorial for the Boston Globe - suggested this statement was false, writing, "intervention did not prevent genocide, because no such bloodbath was in the offing. To the contrary, by emboldening rebellion, US interference has prolonged Libya’s civil war and the resultant suffering of innocents." Kuperman, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas who authored a book called The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention, further stated that the rebels had tricked the world into thinking a bloodbath was at hand and that Obama had lied to the American people in order to act on this theory.

Gaddafi [never] threaten civilian massacre in Benghazi, as Obama alleged. The “no mercy’’ warning, of March 17, targeted rebels only, as reported by The New York Times, which noted that Libya’s leader promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away.’’ Gaddafi even offered the rebels an escape route and open border to Egypt, to avoid a fight “to the bitter end.’’

Gaddafi wrote to Obama and told him he bore no ill will. "We have been hurt more morally than physically because of what had happened against us in both deeds and words by you," he wrote. "Despite all this you will always remain our son whatever happened. We still pray that you continue to be president of the USA. We endeavour and hope that you will gain victory in the new election campaign."

Al Qaeda in the Maghreb

Two more Americans were killed, along with 35 others, after being taken hostage by rebel jihadists in Mali shortly after the Libyan upheaval.

Hillary Clinton testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the wake of the Benghazi murders under her stewardship, that weapons and fighters equipped by the Obama administration made their way to Mali and Algeria:

“

There is no doubt that the Algerian terrorists had weapons from Libya. There is no doubt that the Malian remnants of AQIM [Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb] have weapons from Libya.

”

2012 Presidential Campaign

Main article: Presidential Election 2012

2011: Birth Certificate Released

Main article: Barack_Obama_Controversies#Birth_Certificate

On April 27, 2011, a long-running controversy surrounding Obama's birth was largely put to rest when Obama had his long-form birth certificate posted at WhiteHouse.gov. Donald Trump, who had attacked Obama on the Birth Certificate issue and was then leading Republicans in polls for the upcoming GOP primary, was effectively knocked out of the race because of this.

The following is a timeline of previous events leading up to the release:

• In June 2008 the Obama campaign allowed FactCheck.org to look at his “Certificate of Live Birth” and take photos.
• In July 2008 a blogger discovered a birth announcement from the Honolulu Advertiser from August 13, 1961 for Barack Obama. It has since been discovered another newspaper, the Star Bulletin, also documented the birth.
• PolitiFact went to extreme lengths to verify Obama’s citizenship, attaining scanned copies of his 1992 marriage certificate from Cook County, IL, his driver’s license record, and his registration and disciplinary record. PolitiFact also addressed a number of concerns about the documentation.
• In October 2008 Hawaii’s Department of Health released a statement by Dr. Chiyome Fu.kino verifying that Obama’s birth certificate was on record.
• In August 2009 it was revealed that an alleged Kenyan birth certificate for Obama was a hoax. Another website allows you to create your own imitation Kenyan birth certificates online.

2011: Death of Osama bin Laden

On May 1, 2011, Obama misled the public when he announced that Osama bin Laden was "killed in a firefight" after a U.S. special operations group infiltrated a compound in Abottobad, Pakistan. Attacks, murders, and kidnappings of Americans have since escalated as reprisals for bin Laden's death. Al Qaeda, once broken and on the run, operates openly as the jihad has now become global. Relations with Pakistan, a longtime ally throughout the Cold War and War on Terror, became strained. The government of Pakistan denied White House claims it allowed Americans to kill Muslims on its territory. For all his duplicity and criticism of the War on Terror, Obama experienced only a temporary blip in approval ratings.

An NBC investigation revealed Obama was informed of bin Laden's whereabouts one full year before he attempted to use it as an election year issue. NBC further reported that there was no "firefight" at all, contradicting what the president told the nation. As early as the day after bin Laden was executed, it was learned bin Laden was not armed in the alleged "firefight" that Obama claimed took place.

Results

On November 6, 2012 Barack Obama won reelection with 332 electoral votes to Mitt Romney's 206. Obama received 51% of the popular vote (65,899,660 votes) to Romney's 47% (60,932,152 votes).

External links

• Barack Obama Doubletalk
• National Journal: Obama facing crisis over incompetence
• The New Cult of Personality
• Che, Obama, and the Revolutionary Agenda
• GAFFNEY: America's first Muslim president? Washington Times
• Barack Obama and Islam. by John L. Esposito.
• Democrat: Obama's grandma confirms Kenyan birth.
• Barack Obama on the issues.