In Celebration of a NEW AMERICA!

Our First Family!

I was too overwhelmed yesterday to post so, here I am today; celebrating the dawn of a new chapter in American history!

44 Facts About our 44th President.

1.)He won a Grammy Award in 2006 for Best Spoken Word Recording. It was for the audio version of his book Dreams From My Father .

2.)As a teen, he worked at Baskin-Robbins and therefore, does not like ice cream.

3.)He enjoys a good game of Scrabble.

4.)He is a smoker.

5.)He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii but went to live in Indonesia with his mother when the parents divorced. There he was introduced to dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper.

6.)His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili.

7.)He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed.

8.)While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead.

9.)He can bench press 200lbs.

10.) His favourite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.

11.)His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy.

12.)His favourite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

13.)He doesn't drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol.

14.)He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician.

15.)He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal.

16.)He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling Chrysler 300.

17.)He was given the code name "Renegade" by his Secret Service handlers.

18.)He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds.

19.)His favourite artist is Pablo Picasso.

20.)He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life.

21.) He cooks up a mean pot of chilli.

22.)Michelle says that he is very romantic.

23.)His favourite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini.

24.) He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics.

25.)He was born on August 4th, 1961.

26.)In 1988, Barack Obama began his studies at Harvard Law School. He became the editor of the Harvard Law Review and was eventually elected president of that legal journal. He graduated with honors in 1991.

27.) He later sponsored a law that monitored racial profiling for civil rights purposes, and eventually made Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations.

28.)In 2005, he traveled to Russia with Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ill.) to renew anti-proliferation efforts (i.e., finding and securing nuclear weapons that have spread around the world.)

29.)Obama is known for refusing contributions from lobbyists and political action committees (PACs). According to DNC Chairman Howard Dean: "The American people's priorities will set the agenda in an Obama Administration, not the special interests."

30.)A July 2008 poll by Newsweek found that 12 percent of voters wrongfully believed that Obama is a Muslim, and some thought he was raised in a Muslim home. Barack Obama is a Christian. He was the son of an atheist father who thought religion was "mumbo jumbo," according to Barack. His mother was interested in all the world's religions but was an agnostic [again according to Barack].

31.)Obama is distantly related to Vice President Dick Cheney. He is also eligible for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution; one of his maternal great-great-great grandfathers was a decorated Union soldier.

32.)Some of Barack Obama’s maternal ancestors were slave owners.

33.)Obama's mother died in 1995 of ovarian and uterine cancer. Obama and his sister, Maya, spread her ashes in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii. On December 23, 2008, Obama spread his grandmother’s ashes in the same spot.

34.)Following 9/11, Obama was an early opponent of President George W. Bush’s plan to go to war with Iraq.

35.)Obama was the first to raise the threat of avian flu on the Senate floor.

36.)Neil Young mentions Barack Obama in the lyric to his 2006 song Lookin’ for a Leader.

37.)Obama once said the three men he admired the most were Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

38.)He is portrayed by Fred Armisen on Saturday Night Live!, and even made an appearance on the show.

39.)His second daughter, Sasha, whom is 7, will be the youngest resident of the White House since John Kennedy's son, John Jr. and Caroline.

40.)Do The Right Thing was the movie Barack and his future wife Michelle Obama saw on their first date.

41.)Barack Obama served on the Environment and Public Works Committee, the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and the Foreign Relations Committee.

42.)As a boy, Barack's nickname was Barry.

43.)Barack is 6'1".

44.)owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali.





All I can say is I am filled with hope, optimism, and expectation beyond measure.

Americans... still believe in an America where anything's possible - they just don't think their leaders do.

So, I beg of you President Obama, prove us wrong!

Sunny Side Up!,
Krista