obama versus clinton

presidentvalet i USA 2008 kommer bli intressant. medan republikanerna inte verkar ha en enda säker kandidat och efterträdare till george w bush står kampen om demokraternas presidentnominering mellan två personer - hillary clinton och barack obama. jag tror att nästa år samt 2008 kommer bli ett verkligt intressant år och förhoppningsvis kommer vi slippa en republikansk president 2008-2012. bruce willis wills it. and god.

Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama Sr. of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. His parents met while both were attending the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student. In his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama describes a nearly race-blind early childhood. He 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."^[3][4]

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced and his father returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian oil manager, moving to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. According to novelist Scott Turow's March 2004 Salon.com piece about Obama's diverse background and his prospects in the 2004 Senate race, Obama spent "two years in a Muslim school, then two more in a Catholic school" in Jakarta. At age 10 he was sent back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents so that he could attend the highly-regarded non-sectarian private Punahou School; he entered in fifth grade and went through high school, graduating in 1979.

U.S. Senator Obama poses in front of the Superman Statue in downtown Metropolis, IL. known as the home of the DC Comics super hero.

In Dreams from My Father, Obama writes about smoking marijuana and trying cocaine during his teenage years. Inviting journalists to contrast his earlier admission with Bill Clinton's "didn't inhale" remarks made during the 1992 presidential campaign, Obama recently stated: "I inhaled—that was the point." Obama added: "It was reflective of the struggles and confusion of a teenage boy; teenage boys are frequently confused."

After high school, Obama studied for two years at Occidental College in California, before transferring to Columbia College, the undergraduate division of Columbia University, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations. Upon graduating in 1983, Obama worked for one year at Business International Corporation before moving to Chicago and taking a job with a non-profit organization helping local churches organize job training programs for residents of poor neighborhoods.

Obama then left Chicago for three years to study at Harvard Law School. He was elected president of the Harvard Law Review, obtaining his Juris Doctor degree, magna cum laude in 1991. On returning to Chicago, Obama supported a voter registration drive, then worked for the civil rights law firm Miner, Barnhill & Galland, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 until his federal election.

After describing his maternal grandfather's experiences as a World War II veteran and a beneficiary of the New Deal's FHA and GI Bill programs, Obama said:

No, people don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better. And they want that choice.

Questioning the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War, Obama spoke of an enlisted Marine, Corporal Seamus Ahern from East Moline, Illinois, asking, "Are we serving Seamus as well as he was serving us?" He continued:

When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they're going, to care for their families while they're gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.

Finally he spoke for national unity:

The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

While working at the corporate law firm Sidley Austin LLP in the summer of 1989, Obama met Michelle Robinson, then an associate attorney at the firm. They married in 1992, and have two daughters, Malia (born 1999) and Sasha (born 2001). The Obamas are members of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Of his religious affiliation, Obama has written:

I was drawn to the power of the African American religious tradition to spur social change. [...] In the history of these struggles, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death; rather, it was an active, palpable agent in the world. [...] It was because of these newfound understandings–that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world that I knew and loved–that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized. It came about as a choice and not an epiphany; the questions I had did not magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

Presidential ambitions

Obama's keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention sparked expectations that he would eventually run for U.S. President. Speculation on a 2008 presidential run intensified after Obama's decisive U.S. Senate election win in November 2004, prompting him to tell reporters: "I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years". Asked again in a January 2006 television appearance on Meet the Press, Obama repeated his intention to finish his Senate term. However, in an October 2006 interview on the same television program, Obama appeared to open the possibility of a 2008 presidential bid:

I don’t want to be coy about this, given the responses that I’ve been getting over the last several months, I have thought about the possibility. But I have not thought [...] about it with the seriousness and depth that I think is required. My main focus right now is in the '06 and making sure that we retake the Congress. [...] after November 7, I’ll sit down [...] and consider, and if at some point, I change my mind, I will make a public announcement and everybody will be able to go at me.

In September 2006, Obama was the featured speaker at Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's annual steak fry, a political event traditionally attended by presidential hopefuls in the lead-up to the Iowa caucus. TIME magazine's October 23, 2006 issue featured Obama on its cover beside the headline "Why Barack Obama Could Be The Next President."

Commentators have suggested that Obama's chances to be elected president would be better in 2008 than in 2012 or later. A December 2005 article published in The New Republic reasoned that, with no incumbent president or vice president in the race, 2008 offers Obama his best chance at winning the presidency. In an October 2006 editorial published in the Chicago Tribune, Newton Minow compared prospects for a 2008 Obama presidential bid to John F. Kennedy's successful 1960 presidential campaign. An editorial published that same month in The Economist presented a similar opinion.

During his first year in the Senate, Obama acquired several high profile supporters, including U.S. businessman and philanthropist Warren Buffett. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Illinois State Comptroller Daniel Hynes have both urged Obama to consider running in 2008. Celebrity television show host Oprah Winfrey and actors George Clooney and Kristin Chenoweth also recently expressed their enthusiasm for Obama entering the 2008 presidential race.

In October 2006, following Obama's statement that he is considering a run for president, opinion polling organizations added his name to surveyed lists of Democratic candidates. The first such poll ranked Obama in second place with 17% support among Democrats after Hillary Clinton who placed first with 28% of the responses. In latest Gallup polling on December 07, 2006 Obama had 36% positive and Hilary Clinton had 37% while on the negative side Obama only had 17% but Clinton had 50%.