WIKINEWS article:
| QUOTE (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_elected_44th_President_of_the_United_States?curid=115616) |
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
2008 United States Presidential Election
The 2008 Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, 47, is projected to win at least 349 electoral votes, more than enough to clinch the Presidency of the United States. Obama is the first African American to be elected President in U.S. history. His Republican opponent, Arizona senator John McCain is projected to win at least 173 electoral votes. McCain has phoned Obama to concede the election. Obama officially became the President-elect when John McCain issued his concession speech shortly after 9:00PM Mountain Time.
President-elect Barack Obama.
Image: United States Senate.
The Electoral College will officially elect Obama on December 15 and he will be inaugurated as the 44th President on January 20, 2009 at noon.
"We have come to the end of a long journey. The American people have spoken and spoken clearly. This is an historic election and I realize the significance this has for African-Americans [...] Let there be no reason now, for any American should fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth," said McCain at a final event in Arizona.
Barack Hussein Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. from Kenya and Ann Dunham from Wichita, Kansas. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. He graduated from high school in 1979 and attended Occidental College and Columbia University, receiving his B.A. in political science in 1983. Afterwards he moved to Chicago and worked as a community organizer.
He enrolled in Harvard Law School in 1988, became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, and graduated magna cum laude in 1991. He returned to Chicago, lecturing at the University of Chicago and practicing as a civil rights attorney.
He was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1997, and became the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator from Illinois in March 2004. The following July, he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, catapulting him into the national spotlight.
He won election to the U.S. Senate with 70% of the vote. On February 20, 2007 he announced his candidacy for President and clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3, 2008, after a tense primary battle with Hillary Clinton. Obama is married to Michelle née Robinson, with whom he has two daughters. |
Will Smith said he cried (according to YouTube video from an Oprah show). Minority populations have mixed feelings, but surely like seeing a minority rise to the top executive position in government. FOX news supposedly called the election before any other news agency in a televised segment which didn't show any graphic nor have a close up of the reporter (again, a YouTube vid).
Locally, had a guy tell this joke at the poker table after reading it from his cell phone text he'd just received:
"It's official, Obama has been elected president. All white people report to the cotton fields tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM." <--Tasteless. Especially since my mom was the daughter of a sharecropper. I don't find that funny at all. After they did away with slavery, they just labelled it something else and wrangled around the legal issues.
Barack Obama has been holding meetings to instill plans of action as soon as he takes office. This alone makes him seem like a positive choice. If nothing else, the fact that we've elected a black president is a sign of change which might snowball into something even greater.
I guess some action is better than no action? Well I'm not sure how well he's going to do, but I do like his rules about lobbyists working for him.
Someone was mentioning at the poker table that there was talk of an early take-over of the Presidency for the sake of our economy's improvement before year's end. Though he's probably going to take the reins quickly enough to try to resolve many of the outstanding issues, I believe that it will be mostly perspective more than anything which will affect the holiday shopping until 2009.
Anything that gets our minorities and the youth involved in politics again is a blessing. There has been way to much apathy in this country for some while. While things may seem fairly hopeless at times, the worst part is when many feel that nothing is going to change, regardless of what our elected government officials might do.
I'll be interested to see what happens with our domestic automotive industry in the next few months.
I haven't been around in a while, but judging from the "Last Post Dates" around here I don't expect much of a response. But I'll reply anyway.
So far, Obama has done a lot of little things and not many big ones. He was quick to close Guantanamo and pass those anti-lobbyist laws (great PR), but the war efforts are falling a bit short (though he says he'll have our troops out by the end of...was it 2010? His plans to leave some troops to "support the Iraqi government" are almost identical to Bush's). As far as the stimulus bill...we'll see.
I voted for Obama because he seemed like the best choice out of the candidates (I'm reg'd independent, so no primaries for me). He still does, but unlike too many others, I don't think he's a saint. I realize he's human, and even more so that he's a politician. That needs to be taken into account when you debate about whether he's telling the truth or not.
Sure, he's a celebrity, but so is Paris Hilton. You don't want her running the country, do you? "Does that say 'Arm Nuclear Weapons'? That's HOT." :P And Bush seemed like the kind of guy you'd go and have a beer with; but (in his own words): "Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice...well....uh....you can't fool me again!" Yet he did fool us into voting him into office twice. Go figure.
And on a related but more general note, if I hear the terms "Anti-American", "Patriotism", or "American Pride" used one more time to stir up persuasion, I'm moving to Canada. I swear it.
-IMP ;) :)
"My president is black/
my lambo's blue/
and i'll be goddamned if my rims ain't too"
Challa.
