Had he not been a politician, Barack would have liked to have been an architect.
Barack means ‘blessed’ in Arabic.
He hates the youth trend for trousers that sag beneath the backside.
The Germans have paid tribute to President Barack Obama by rolling out some frozen chicken fingers bearing his name. A German frozen-food company has introduced Obama fingers. The tender, fried chicken bits come with ‘a tasty curry sauce’. But Spiegel Online reports the company, Sprehe, ‘was unaware of the possible racist overtones of the product’.
Of the billions of searches carried out on the portal Yahoo.com over 2008, Obama was third behind Britney Spears and World Wrestling Entertainment.
A ‘shy’ photographer in Indonesia is in great demand because of his resemblance to Obama. Ilham Anas, 34, is already a celebrity in Jakarta, where the President once lived, but his fame is spreading. He has appeared on Indonesia’s premier TV talk show, appeared in an advertisement as Obama, and received other marketing offers from companies in the region.
Barack is on Facebook.com, and has over 5.5 million friends (called supporters) who like to log on and poke the President. Martin Luther King provides Barack with his favourite quote: ‘The Arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’ Barack’s wall contains nearly 600,000 posts, and Barack has posted nearly 2000 notes.
His house in Chicago has four fireplaces.
According to Obama, 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.
During the presidential campaign, a huge range of merchandise became available – from Obama dolls, key rings, licence plates, earrings, stamps, wristbands to Obama wine, the list was endless. You could even buy Obama condoms – the packet bore the slogan ‘Hope is no Protection’. Funnier still, Obama nappies were available. They carried a picture of Obama and the words ‘Change we need’.
Around the world, 1.5 billion watched America’s first black President give his inaugural address.
Logistics for the swearing-in ceremony were difficult for the inaugural planners. Jumbotron TVs and 5,000 portable toilets were set up throughout the National Mall to accommodate the massive crowd. The number of toilets, as determined by the National Park Service, allowed one toilet for approximately every 300 people.
While a record number of people attended Obama’s inauguration, the overall cost was approximately $160 million. President Bush’s inauguration, by contrast, cost approximately $42 million and was attended by 400,000 people.
Gamblin’ Man
Barack loves playing poker. When he was a young state politician in Illinois, he used to attend weekly games at the home of Senator Terry Links, who has acknowledged that Barack played his cards right: ‘He had the stone face. He didn’t stay in hands if he didn’t think he had a chance of winning. Barack wasn’t one of those foolish gamblers who just thought all of a sudden that card in the middle was going to show up mysteriously. He’s as competitive in politics as he is in poker.’
Denny Jacobs, a former State Senator who also played poker with Mr Obama, said, ‘You find out a lot of things about a guy from the way he plays cards. Number one, Barack’s conservative with his money, which is always good. It’s hard to tell when he’s bluffing. In fact, I never could – that’s why he usually beat me.’
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Early Obama
CHILDHOOD
Barack Hussein Obama was born at the Kapiolani Medical Centre for Women and Children on 4 August 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii, and he has the same birthday as Louis Armstrong and the Queen Mother.
According to his birth certificate, Barack was born at 7.24pm.
His father chose the Muslim name ‘Hussein’ in honour of Barack’s grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama.
Barack Obama Sr (the President’s dad) was born in 1936 in the village of Kanyadhiang on the shores of Lake Victoria, Kenya, when it was a colony of the British Empire. He grew up herding goats and went to school in a tin-roof shack.
At the age of 20, Obama Sr married a 16-year-old girl called Kezia in a tribal ceremony. He met her while on holiday in her hometown, and sent Kezia’s parents 14 cows for her dowry. They set up home in Nairobi, where he was by this time working as a clerk. At the age of 23, Obama Sr left for Hawaii on an economics scholarship, leaving behind his pregnant wife, Kezia, and one-year-old son, Abongo, in the care of his father’s third wife Sarah Hussein Onyango.
Barack’s white American mother – Stanley Ann Dunham – was born in 1942 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, USA, while her father was serving in the US Army. She was named ‘Stanley’ after her father, because he wanted a boy and she was an only child.
Barack Sr and Stanley Ann met in 1960 while attending a Russian class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa – he was 24 and she was 18. Obama Sr declared Ann a ‘good woman’ because she waited for him when he was late for their first date. Lucky for him (and us, if you think about it), they married on 2 February 1961 in Maui. No one was invited to the wedding.
Barack’s mother was already three months pregnant when she married and was under the impression that her new husband was a divorcee. Mixed-race marriages were rare at the
