Candidates Blog

The gag in the video, in case you are behind on the news, rests on Obama’s actual brother (yes, that’s really him in the picture, and the info on his lifestyle is correct). Here’s some background on it, with some new takes on some week-old news, mainly about Obama’s brother:

The latest rich man to invite Mr. Obama’s fire is, of course, Republican John McCain. Mr. McCain, who is married to a beer heiress, much as Sen. John Kerry is married to a ketchup heiress, owns seven homes. Excessive this may be, and it did Mr. McCain no good when he said he couldn’t remember how many homes he had. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Obama pounced on that one.

“If you don’t know how many houses you have, then it’s not surprising that you might think the economy is fundamentally strong,” he said. “But if you’re like me, and you got one house, or you are like the millions of people who are struggling right now to keep up with their mortgage so they don’t lose their home, then you might have a different perspective.”

That would ring true with most Americans, but closer scrutiny reveals yet another of Mr. Obama’s hilarious gaffes. For one thing, that “one house” boasts a solarium, four fireplaces, a 1,000-bottle wine cellar and granite-floored kitchen. It’s worth about $1.6 million.

For another, the same day that Mr. Obama ridiculed Mr. McCain, readers around the world, of which Mr. Obama is a citizen, learned that his half-brother, George, lives in abject penury in a hovel in Kenya. George Obama says he spends about a dollar a month. “I have had to learn to live,” the candidate’s half-brother told the Italian edition of “Vanity Fair,” “and take what I need.”

So there was Mr. Obama blasting Mr. McCain for his wealth, even as Mr. Obama, who wangled a sweet real estate deal for his Georgian mansion from a man later convicted on corruption charges, permitted a half-brother to languish in African squalor. You wonder how much hope George Obama has.

The Republican party of Texas took a more serious route, taking the opportunity to attack:

Is it fair? well… kinda, ya. Ed Morrisey notes that On one hand, everyone has some relatives who don’t do as well, and not everyone can afford to support them. However, Obama started this attack on the financial status of family, and while he barely knows his half-brother, George Obama is still a pretty close relation — close enough to get a mention in Barack Obama’s memoirs. Plus, with his haughty condemnation of America as a place lacking the kind of charity mentioned in Matthew (and an incorrect diagnosis, too), the lack of basic charity shown by Obama towards his destitute brother makes him look like a hypocrite twice over.