I have been watching this story develop over the last 12 hours and have to say that I am very disturbed by it's potential.  The scoop? Apparently the half sister of Obama's father, Zeituni Onyango, is living in public housing in Boston. as an illegal alien.  I guess this is the October Surprise I have been working for.  Here Here is a link to the story.

I have bee reading the right wing blogs all night and it is devolving very quickly. Lot's of conversation about how Obama should be "spreading the wealth to his poor auntie."  This story has a lot of red meat for desperate Republicans.

  1. There is a sub-story that she scraped together $260 and donated it, which is trackable through the Huffington Post campaign donation tracker.  Since she is not a US citizen, she would not be allowed to do this.
  1. Her asylum request was turned down in 2004 so she has been an illegal for 4 years
  1. She is living in public housing, also something not available to someone who is not a US citizen

The story is on the front page of Fox.

This story is, frankly, great stuff for the Republicans.  It fans the flames of xenophobia built on a foundation of misinformation that have become rampant in this campaign. The have already used pictures of his half brother living in a "slum" in Kenya, now they have picture of his aunt. It also taps in to the white hot anti-immigration feelings running rampant through the Republican Party and builds nicely on the xenophobia.  It fans the flames of the "spreading the wealth" argument in a way where Obama can't win - she is on public assistance (aka welfare) and he should have helped but if he had helped he would have been assisting an illegal alien.  Lou Dobbs is going to eat this up.

So, there you go folks.  This is one nasty little story that I believe will drive news cycles for the last few days.  This is the Republican swift boat. They have been holding on to it till they saw the whites of our eyes. We don't have enough time to get all the answers but enough time for the right to whip themselves in to a frenzy.

Could this be enough to knock five points off Obama's lead?  It depends what the mainstream media does with it.  Reverend Wright knocked at least five points off.  Granted, there appears to be no direct relationship between Obama and this woman, so it is unclear how this will effect independents, but I bet it gets a few more Republicans to the polls.

So, we need to fight back in the only way we can.  Make calls on Obama's behald RIGHT NOW.  If you know anyone who is in the elusive "young voter" category, you know - the ones that HAVEN'T been getting to the polls in Florida, DRAG THEIR BEHINDS TO THE POLLS RIGHT NOW!  Finally blog like hell on the Fox news story to get a little spin going our way.