From wearing a swin suit in Hawaii to a dressed up president in Washington

Dressed up in his swimsuit, a smile on his face, here stands the future 

president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama.

 

Born August 4, 1961, in Hawaii, presidential candidate Barack Obama won the 2008 election over his Republican opponent John McCain. He is the first African American to be elected president in the history of the United States. 

The announcement of Obama’s victory awakened a mountainside of emotions all over the world. His inauguration and swearing in  ceremony occurred January 20, 2009, on the steps of the Capital, at 12 noon. He is the 44^th president. Thousands upon thousands of spectators watched the historical event in chilling cold weather in Washington, DC. Millions watched while sitting in the warmth of their homes.

Supreme Court Justice John G. Roberts administered the oath to Obama. Judge Roberts was either asleep at the wheel, or had a sudden brain freeze when he instructed Barack Obama to repeat the ceremonial words after him. Judge Roberts stumbled. Obama did as he was instructed. Criticism was immediate.

Taking oath a second time in White House

I watched the same swearing in ceremony as the rest of the world, but the media and the know-all gum bumpers (pundit) put their own spin on what happened. It was Obama who stumbled not Roberts they tooted.  

Roberts prompted: " . . . That I will execute the Office of President to the United States faithfully." Obama stopped at "execute" and waited for Roberts to correct himself. Roberts, after a false start, then followed Obama's "execute" with "faithfully", which resulted in "execute faithfully", also incorrect. Obama then repeated Roberts' initial, incorrect prompt, with the word "faithfully" after "United States."

Pres. Barack Obama

Obama, who taught Constitutional Law for 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School, had a puzzled look on his face as he repeated Robert’s confused words. The next day the newly minted president repeated the oath in a private ceremony January 21 in the White House. 

Once again, Roberts administered the oath. Correctly.  Good thing he did. The media hurriedly declared that Obama was “unofficial" as president because he flubbed the swearing in. The media could not accept that Judge Robert bungled the swearing in. Obama’s presidency began with Roberts screwing up, and a media seriously trying to create controversy.

Below is legislation the President signed into law immediately.

• January 29, 2009 President Barack Obama, signed his first piece of legislation: "The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act" of 2009. The bill eased the statue of limitation for equal pay lawsuits.

• February 3 President Obama signed the "Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIP)", increasing the number of children on CHIP from seven million to 11 million.

• February 17, 2009, in Denver, Colorado, the President signed into law the $787 billion "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" (ARRA). The bill was passed by the House and Senate, but mostly passed along party lines. No Republicans in the House voted for it. However, many House Republicans took credit when their states received funds. They took photos at groundbreaking ceremonies, displaying large checks with the amount their states received.  On TV they continually downgraded the financial helpfulness of ARRA.

• March 2009 President Obama reversed a Bush-era policy which limited funding of embryonic stem cell research. He pledged to develop strict guidelines on the research. Bush’s religion was instrumental in his decision.

• May 26, 2009, President Obama appointed two women to serve on the Supreme Court in the first two years of his Presidency. Sonia Sotomayor, nominated by Obama to replace retiring Associate Justice David Souter. She was confirmed on August 6, 2009, becoming the first Hispanic to as a Supreme Court Justice.

• 2009 President Obama turned around U.S. Auto Industry. His advisers didn’t have the faith and confidence he had that industry could rebound. Obama went with his intuition and invested $62 billion in federal money, in addition to the $13.4 billion the Bush administration had previously invested in GM and Chrysler, in return for equity stakes and agreements for massive restructuring.  Whereas Bush placed no other conditions on the funds, Barack Obama put strict guidelines and demands on the borrowers. Pop goes the weasel, the auto industry created a workable plan, and followed through on it. The auto industry added more than 100,000 jobs. By 2011 the industry gained their market share for the first time in two decades.

• March 30, 2010, President Obama signed the "Affordable Care Act" into law, putting in place comprehensive reforms that improve access to affordable health coverage for everyone and protect consumers from abusive insurance company practices. The law allows all Americans to make health insurance choices that work for them while guaranteeing access to care for our most vulnerable and provides new ways to bring down costs and improve quality of care.

• May 10, 2010 Elena Kagan was nominated by the President to replace retiring Associate Justice John Paul Stevens. She was confirmed on August 5, bringing the number of women sitting simultaneously on the Court to three, for the first time in American history.

• 2010 the President signed the "Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act". It is designed to re-regulate the financial sector after its practices caused the Great Recession. The legislation tightens the screws on capital requirements on large banks and other financial institutions. Derivatives are required to be sold on clearinghouses and exchanges, mandates that large banks provide living wills to avoid chaotic bankruptcies, limit their ability to trade with customers’ money for their own profit, and creates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to put a choke hold on abusive lending products and companies. The Chase Bank scandal is good reason for the reform.

• 2010 President Obama tightened the noose around the neck of Iran, locking done on sanctions. The idea is to deter Iran’s goal to engage in the construction a nuclear weapon. He, along with a number of other countries, signed "The Comprehensive Iran Sanctions Accountability and Divestment Act" of 2010. This act punishes firms and individual businesspeople willing to aid Iran via purchasing petroleum from the country.

• March 2011 was the year Muammar Gaddafi was sniffed out by angry Libyan rebels with a cause. The U.S. joined a coalition of European and Arab governments to execute military action, that included air strikes and naval blockade. Gaddafi was on the run, but he was finally cornered and shot to death by Libyans. That ended Gaddafi’s 42-year reign of terror and dictatorship. After eight months of bombing and on the ground fighting by Libyan rebels and citizens, Gaddafi was killed October 20, 2011. Not one American died.

• May 1, 2011, terrorist Osama bin Laden met his waterloo on this date due to a successful plan to take him out. Skilled Navy SEALS executed the plan without incidence. The SEALS raided bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where the architect of 9/11 was shot to death. A treasure trove of documents was found and taken by the SEALS. The night before the killing of bin Laden, President Obama was telling jokes and being funny at the annual Correspondent Dinner. He told the world the next day that the #1 terrorist had been taken out. Though his advisers wanted the President to go the easier route–bombing the compound–he went the riskier route. He didn’t want bin Laden blown to smithereens, making it impossible to identify his body. The President’s hunch was correct. It was a brave call. Had it gone wrong the media would have destroyed his political career. As it stands, they are trying to destroy him anyway.

• June 2011 the President issued the order to initiate troop withdrawal from the war in Afghanistan, bringing home 101,000 troops. That reduced U.S. troops to 91,000, with 23,000 scheduled to head back to the U.S. by the end of summer in 2012. The mission is expected to end by 2014.  

• 2011, because President Obama understands the importance of a complete education in order to compete on a global scale, he initiated "Race to the Top". It is a federal program that provides grant money to improve and encourage interests in math and science. Schools had to follow three guidelines to apply for a share of allocated $4.35 billion.

All of the accomplishments that President Obama and his administration have achieved in three-in-a-half years are too numerous to list. That is why I am puzzled when presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Republicans, and Obama haters say he has no record to run on.  They claim he has achieved nothing since he became president. They refuse to acknowledge that he  out achieved Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and George Bush during this time period in their presidency.

Barack Obama (r), half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, mother Ann Durham, grandfather Stanley Durham. Photo taken in Hawaii.