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Barack Obama II (
born August 4, 1961) is the President-elect of the United
States and the first African American to be elected President
of the United States. Obama was the junior United States
Senator from Illinois from 2005 until he resigned on November
16, 2008, following his election to the Presidency.
He is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law
School, where he was the first black president of the
Harvard Law Review. Obama worked as a community organizer
and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving
three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.
He also taught constitutional law at the University of
Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful
bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in
2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in
January 2003, won a primary victory in March 2004, and
was elected to the Senate in November 2004. Obama delivered
the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention
in July 2004.
As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress,
he helped create legislation to control conventional weapons
and to promote greater public accountability in the use
of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern
Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 110th
Congress, he helped create legislation regarding lobbying
and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism,
and care for U.S. military personnel returning from combat
assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Fifty things
you might not know about Barack Obama
• He collects
Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
• He was known as "O'Bomber" at high school
for his skill at basketball
• His name means "one who is blessed" in
Swahili
• His favourite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini
• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of
his memoir, Dreams From My Father
• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president
to be left-handed
• He has read every Harry Potter book
• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by
Muhammad Ali
• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as
a teenager and now can't stand ice cream
• His favourite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein
bars
• He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper
while living in Indonesia
• He can speak Spanish
• While on the campaign trail he refused to watch
CNN and had sports channels on instead
• His favourite drink is black forest berry iced tea
• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before
running for president – he didn't
• He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia
• He can bench press an impressive 200lbs
• He was known as Barry until university when he asked
to be addressed by his full name
• His favourite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
• He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag
party of his half-sister's fiancé, but left when
a stripper arrived
• His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert
Kennedy
• He and Michelle made $4.2 million (£2.7 million)
last year, with much coming from sales of his books
• His favourite films are Casablanca and One Flew
Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a
bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck
• He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar
while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.
• His favourite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan,
Bach and The Fugees
• He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The
Right Thing on their first date
• He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker
• He doesn't drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol
• He would have liked to have been an architect if
he were not a politician
• As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana
and cocaine
• His daughters' ambitions are to go to Yale before
becoming an actress (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha,
7)
• He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag
beneath the backside
• He repaid his student loan only four years ago after
signing his book deal
• His house in Chicago has four fire places
• Daughter Malia's godmother is Jesse Jackson's daughter
Santita
• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his
BlackBerry
• He uses an Apple Mac laptop
• He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his
gas-guzzling Chrysler 300
• He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx
suits
• He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes
• He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber,
Zariff, who charges $21 (£13)
• His favorite fictional television programmes are
Mash and The Wire
• He was given the code name "Renegade"
by his Secret Service handlers
• He was nicknamed "Bear" by his late grandmother
• He plans to install a basketball court in the White
House grounds
• His favourite artist is Pablo Picasso
• His speciality as a cook is chilli
• He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were
"street urchins"
• He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand
holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life
• His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan
government
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