Obama's half brother and 12 dollars a year

That is how much Senator Obama's half brother lives on in Kenya per year. [Link]

His name is George Hussein Onyango Obama, and he is the 26-year-old half brother of Mr. Obama, the multimillionaire autobiographer who neglected to write that his paternal sibling lives on less than a dollar a month in the outer slums of Nairobi, Kenya.

They have met twice.

Unearthed by Italian Vanity Fair and virtually ignored by the American press, the inconvenient George Obama could emerge as a compelling character in the freshman senator's carefully edited road-to-the-White-House narrative - especially now that his campaign has unleashed a personal attack on Sen. John McCain's station in life.

And

Yet Mr. Obama has a half brother who lives in Africa on three cents a day, and the story breaks in an Italian magazine and is picked up by a London newspaper and a few others in Australia. Perhaps the story would be carried widely in America if they could figure out how to blame President Bush. But as Bob Geldof pointed out, he "has done more [for Africa] than any other president," and of the press harshly judged, "You guys didn't pay attention."

Nor will they pay attention that the McCains have adopted a poor Bangladeshi child and done untold amounts of humanitarian and charity work.

What makes this story newsworthy for Italians, Brits and Aussies, but not Americans, is that the U.S. free press is free to ignore stories that could take down their preordained president. And after the Internet and talk radio-driven "Swift Boat" story unexpectedly sank their last guy, the mainstream American press is taking extra precautions this time around.