GeneralHelghast In reply to Kajm [2009-10-07 23:02:37 +0000 UTC]
Well which is better? An NAU that is democratic, free, free marketed capitalism, lets gay marriages allow, have people choose their jobs, a responsible leader like Obama or someone else, and a fair and balanced government which is decentralized or an NAU dictatorship that is a command economy, chooses jobs for people, rises taxes on people, bans gay marriages, and then is a completely centralized under a horrendous tyrant. You see, most conspiracy theories like Howard Zinn, can lead to the path of dictatorship similar to Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, and Caesar. In America, we arrest corrupt officials due to their injustice and unfair cruelty and that we follow the rules of the Declaration of Independence, even though times have changed.
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GeneralHelghast In reply to Kajm [2009-10-09 00:59:11 +0000 UTC]
Let me get this straight, you went to a war in the 50's or 40's and you felt betrayed the same way as Hitler? During WW I, Hitler was gassed off while fighting against the west. And history repeats itself thing is more like blowing up America, genocide between Jews and Muslims, and then getting our asses back to the stone age and end up as tribes. truth is that we americans have a literacy rate of 99% and we know our history well, even Obama. Here is info about Obama in his early life:
From wikipedia:
Parents' background and meeting
Barack Obama's parents met in a basic Russian language course while both were attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where Obama's father was enrolled as a foreign student.[5] Obama was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, with his birth being announced in The Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.[6][7]
Obama was born in Kapolani Medical Center, 1319 Punahou Street[8]. The Honolulu Advertiser reports that
The future president's first boyhood home is still standing on (6085) Kalaniana'ole Highway, in the Kuli'ou'ou area between 'Aina Haina and Hawai'i Kai. The yellow, four-bedroom, single-story home was built in 1948. Nani Smethurst, who has owned the home since 1979, said the place is essentially the same as it was when it was built, although it has been upgraded and landscaped by Smethurst, who is an architect. The property also has a 450-square-foot cottage in the back that was built in 1953. It's feasible the couple occupied the back cottage at 6085 Kalaniana'ole. Public records from the time show that Barack H. Obama, 25, also had a residence at 625 11th Ave. in Kaimuki. The 11th Avenue address is now occupied by a larger dwelling that was built in 1990.
[9]
Old friends in Mercer Island, Washington recall his mother visiting them with her new baby later on that summer.[10][11][12] She subsequently enrolled at the University of Washington, and lived in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle as a single mother with her son.[13][14][15][16] She and her son left Seattle in the summer of 1962 and she re-enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
In 1963, Obama moved to 1427 Alexander Street, Apartment 110, which still exists in 2009. Later that year and for 3 years, Obama's mother's address was listed in the University of Hawaii directory as 2277 Kamehameha Ave. In 1964, Obama lived at 2234 University Ave. a single story home in the Manoa area of Honolulu near Noelani Elementary School. His parents divorced in January 1964.[17] After the separation, he, his mother and his grandparents moved into a single-story home in the Manoa district.[6] His father received a Masters degree in Economics from Harvard University, then returned to Kenya, where he became a finance minister before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.[18][19]
[edit]Indonesia
Throughout his early years, Obama was known at home and at school as "Barry."[20] He attended kindergarten at Noelani Elementary School, near his home.[21][22] While still resident in Manoa, Dunham married Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro who was attending the University of Hawaii.[23] When Suharto, a military leader in Soetoro's home country, came to power in 1967, all students studying abroad were recalled and the family moved to Indonesia.[24] During his time in Indonesia, Obama attended local schools in Jakarta, from ages 6 to 10, where classes were taught in the Indonesian language. He first attended St. Francis Assisi Catholic school for almost three years.[25][26] When his family moved to a new neighborhood, Menteng,[27] he attended the secular, government-run SDN Menteng 1 school (also known as the Besuki school) for his fourth year.[28][29] Obama was a Cub Scout while living in Indonesia.[30] Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng remembered Obama's stepfather as "not religious", and "never went to prayer services except for big communal events"[31] When Obama was in third grade he wrote an essay saying that he wanted to become president. His teacher later told the Chicago Tribune that she was not sure what country he wanted to become president of but that he said that his reason for becoming president was that he wanted to make everybody happy.[20]
[edit]Return to Hawaii
After returning to Hawaii for high school, Obama lived with his maternal grandparents at 1617 S. Beretania, Apt. 1206 and two year later at Apt. 1008. In 1973, Obama's mother returned to Hawaii and lived in one of the 9 apartments at 1839 Poki Street.[9] Obama attended the exclusive private school of Punahou School, which is closed to the public. He worked at a nearby Baskin Robbins, which still stands in 2009. His maternal grandparents lived at the Punahou Circle apartments on South Beretania Street, Honolulu, while attending Punahou School, a private college preparatory school, from the fifth grade until his graduation in 1979.[32] Obama's mother, Ann, died of ovarian cancer and uterine cancer a few months after the publication of his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father.[33]
Obama (right) with his father in Hawaii. ca. 1971
In the memoir, Obama describes his experiences growing up in his mother's middle class family. His knowledge about his African father, who returned once for a brief visit in 1971, came mainly through family stories and photographs.[19] Of his early childhood, Obama writes: "That my father looked nothing like the people around me — that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk — barely registered in my mind."[34] The book describes his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage.[35] He wrote that he used alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of who I was out of my mind".[36] Obama has said that it was a seriously misguided mistake. At the Saddleback Civil Presidential Forum Barack Obama identified his high-school drug use as his greatest moral failure.[37] Obama has stated he has not used any illegal drugs since he was a teenager.[38]
Some of his fellow students at Punahou School later told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that Obama was mature for his age as a high school student and that he sometimes attended parties and other events in order to associate with African American college students and military service people. Reflecting later on his formative years in Honolulu, Obama wrote: "The opportunity that Hawaii offered — to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect — became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear."[39] During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama took a well publicized trip to Hawaii to visit his dying grandmother and suspended his campaign. [40]
[edit]College and living in New York City
Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years.[41] He then transferred to Columbia College in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.[42] In 1982, Obama's father, Barack Obama, Sr., died in Kenya. Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, then worked at Business International Corporation and New York Public Interest Research Group.[43][44]
[edit]Early years as a community organizer in Chicago
After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer. He worked for three years from June 1985 to May 1988 as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side.[43][45][46] During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from 1 to 13 and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.[47] Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.[48] In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks then Kenya for five weeks where he met many of his Kenyan relatives for the first time.[49]
[edit]Harvard Law School
Langdell Hall, home of the Harvard Law School library
Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. In an interview with Ebony in 1990, he stated that he saw a degree in law as a vehicle to facilitate better community organization and activism: "The idea was not only to learn how to hope and dream about different possibilities, but to know how the tax structure affects what kind of housing gets built where." [50] At the end of his first year he was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review based on his grades and a writing competition.[51] In February 1990, his second year at Harvard, he was elected president of the law review, a full-time volunteer position functioning as editor-in-chief and supervising the law review's staff of 80 editors.[52] Obama's election as the first black president of the law review was widely reported and followed by several long, detailed profiles.[52] He got himself elected by convincing a crucial swing bloc of conservatives that he would protect their interests if they supported him. Building up that trust was done with the same kind of long listening sessions he had used in the poor neighborhoods of South Side, Chicago. Richard Epstein, who later taught at the University of Chicago Law School when Obama later taught there, said Obama was elected editor "because people on the other side believed he would give them a fair shake."[46]
While in law school he worked as an associate at the law firms of Sidley & Austin in 1989, where he met his wife, Michelle, and where Newton N. Minow was a managing partner. Minow later would introduce Obama to some of Chicago's top business leaders.[53] In the summer of 1990 he worked at Hopkins & Sutter.[54] Also during his law school years, Obama spent eight days in Los Angeles taking a national training course on Alinsky methods of organizing.[46] He graduated with a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991 and returned to Chicago.[51]
[edit]Settling down in Chicago
The publicity from his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and advance to write a book about race relations.[55] In an effort to recruit him to their faculty, the University of Chicago Law School provided Obama with a fellowship and an office to work on his book.[55] He originally planned to finish the book in one year, but it took much longer as the book evolved into a personal memoir. In order to work without interruptions, Obama and his wife, Michelle, traveled to Bali where he wrote for several months. The manuscript was finally published as Dreams from My Father in mid-1995.[55]
He married Michelle Robinson in 1992[56] and settled down with her in Hyde Park, a liberal, integrated, middle-class Chicago neighborhood with a history of electing reform-minded politicians independent of the Daley political machine.[57] The couple's first daughter, Malia Ann, was born in 1998; their second, Natasha (known as Sasha), in 2001.[58]
One effect of the marriage was to bring Obama closer to other politically influential Chicagoans. One of Michelle's best friends was Jesse Jackson's daughter, Santita, later the godmother of the Obamas' first child. Michelle herself had worked as an aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley. Marty Nesbitt, a young, successful black businessman (who played basketball with Michelle's brother, Craig Robinson), became Obama's best friend and introduced him to other African-American business people. Before the marriage, according to Craig, Obama talked about his political ambitions, even saying that he might run for president someday.[53]
[edit]Project Vote
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