Somehow, way back in 1991, Barack Obama’s literary agent slipped something into his bio about him being born in Kenya.

Either Barack didn’t notice it or he figured it made him sound a little more interesting.

My guess is that the agent knew that Obama had aspirations to be President of the United States and he slipped it in there because he’s a racist.

Or maybe this document was doctored by Dan Rather and/or The New York Times.

What does this mean? Who knows. But it’s one more reason why it’s ridiculous for anyone to suggest that Obama is the only president who’s native birth has been questioned because he’s black.

It has always been because of his foreign born father, and the  fact that he lived as a child in Indonesia under a different name.

Now this.

I’m sure there is a perfectly logical explanation.

And I’m even more sure that the media will get to the bottom of this.

Of course, it will never work. Makes way too much sense.

I will have the president and CEO of the new USFL on my talk show t0oday at 1:30 on TribLive Radio.

“Is this [vice presidential debate] about her brain power?… Do you think cute will beat brains?…Do you think she’d do better on the questions on Jeopardy! or the interview they do during a half-time?…My suspicion is that she has the same lack of intellectual curiosity that the President of the United States has right now and that is scary!”

“Senator, do you think Sarah Palin is qualified to be President of the United States?…If she were on Jeopardy! right now and the topic was national government, American government generally defined, would she look like an imbecile, or would she look okay? Does she know anything?”

“I’d like to see her on just a couple of episodes of Celebrity Jeopardy! or It’s Academic Mac McGarry to just see if she knows anything.”

Chris was on “Jeopardy” last night and made Sarah Palin look like Margaret Thatcher.

Will this get the same amount of coverage that the stupid story about Romney in high school got?

Should it?

Yep. It should be the number one story on every network. It’s more important than his statement about gay marriage and the story about Romney when he was 17.

It shows that the guy who sold himself as someone different from all the rest and above politics was/is nothing but another Chicago political hack.

Not to mention a liar and a phony.

If this story had come out in October of 2008, John McCain would be running for re-election right now.

One thing you can be sure of. It will be dismissed by Obama’s supporters because it appeared in the New York Post.

You’ll be expected to believe that the New York Post is more biased and has less of an agenda than the Washington Post, where the Romney story was on the front page.

It will be interesting to see if Obama is ready to call his mentor,pastor and the man whose quote he used for the title of his book, a liar.

*********************************************************************

“Who sent the e-mail?” I asked Wright.

 

AP

QUIET, PLEASE: President Obama’s onetime pastor Jeremiah Wright says he was offered money not to preach.

“It was from one of Barack’s closest friends.”

“He offered you money?”

“Not directly,” Wright said. “He sent the offer to one of the members of the church, who sent it to me.”

“How much money did he offer you?”

“One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Wright said.

“Did Obama himself ever make an effort to see you?”

“Yes,” Wright said. “Barack said he wanted to meet me in secret, in a secure place. And I said, ‘You’re used to coming to my home, you’ve been here countless times, so what’s wrong with coming to my home?’ So we met in the living room of the parsonage of Trinity United Church of Christ, at South Pleasant Avenue right off 95th Street, just Barack and me. I don’t know if he had a wire on him. His security was outside somewhere.

“And one of the first things Barack said was, ‘I really wish you wouldn’t do any more public speaking until after the November election.”

**********************************************************************

How much will have to be thrown in the Rev’s collection basket to get him to say he never said those things or was taken out of context?  I wouldn’t be surprised if his comments were recorded.

Toast.

The Nationals are in town. They have two of the biggest young stars in baseball. The Pirates are almost at .500.

So why did only 11,000 show up Wednesday night?

Maybe the media and way too many more people in this area have become numbed by the Pirates pathetic existence the last 20 years.

We are talking about the most pathetic major professional sports franchise (italics don’t do this justice, so excuse me for going to caps) IN FRIGGING NORTH AMERICAN FRIGGING HISTORY.

It’s astonishing that more than 11 people, who aren’t members of the players’ immediate families, show up.

The Pirates are in the throes of the worst long term performance by any sports team in the history of North America and the media are lecturing the local citizenry about not showing them enough support?

If there’s not a massive walkup tonight to see Stephen Starsburg pitch, expect to be lectured again.

These lectures are coming from people who are cursed (like me) with the experience of having watched and/or covered a real, competitive Major League Baseball team. If they’re old enough, they remember being motivated to go to a game to see Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale or Bob Gibson. If they’re a little younger than that, they still remember going to to see Tom Seaver  or Steve Carlton.

But, if you went to see those guys pitch, you went because you wanted to see what Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell or Dave Parker could do against them.

You didn’t go because you didn’t want to miss Koufax striking out 17 Pirates.

I heard the guys on The Fan asking listeners what it would take to get them out to a Pirates game and, for the few minutes that I listened, I didn’t hear much of a response.

It’s a stupid question.

How about not having the WORST FRIGGING TEAM IN THE HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICA?

I don’t care if they figured out a way to have Sandy Koufax in his prime show up to pitch for the Nationals tonight, the Pirates still wouldn’t deserve to have more than 11 paying customers.

Humans have known what it is for 5,000 years. It’s when a man and a woman make a vow to commit to each other for the rest of their lives.

It shouldn’t matter if two men or two women want to make the same commitment to each other.

They should be free to do so and they  deserve the same treatment from the government that a married couple deserves.

And, by the way, the government should have just about nothing to do with any union between two people other than protecting the integrity of a contract.

But a word is a word and a definition is a definition and the President doesn’t have the right to change the meaning anymore than the Pope or the Queen of England does.

But, just so you know, Barack Obama now believes that a union between a man and a man is a marriage.

He has evolved on the issue and it just so happens that the evolution became complete six months before an election and at a time when he needs to shore up his far left supporters.

My White House Sources tell me that next week Obama is going to announce that his position on a sport consisting of 10 players shooting a ball into  hoops at opposite ends of a large wooden floor has also evolved.

From now one he will be referring to it as hockey.

I’ve been saying here for a while that I think that technology has caught up to all contact sports –football and hockey —  and the more we learn about concussions the harder it’s going to be to find parents who will allow their kids to play.

I’ve quoted Dr. Charles Yesalis here many times.

He’s one of the foremost authorities on performance enhancing drugs and sports.

I had hoped to get him on my talk show tomorrow, but he was on his way out of town and couldn’t commit to a time. I did get a chance to talk to him and here are some of the highlights of what he said:

The number, severity  and frequency of concussions is going to profoundly change the game of football.

Yesalis said that the brain studies being done on former players, who have died at a young age, will make it harder and harder for parents to sign off on their kids playing football. He said that it will be in trouble not only at the high school and collegiate level but, as he called it, the “pipeline” — pee wee level.

“I’ve said for the last year that the concussion issue in the NFL is going to dwarf the steroid issue in baseball.”

“How many middle class families allow their kids to box? How many colleges have boxing teams?”

“I’m 65 now, but if I had a young kid, I would not let him play football.”

“We don’t need to have a Nobel Prize in physics to know that the size and speed of players contribute to the impact, which contributes to the increase in concussions.”

“Roger Goodell should be prepared for a tsunami of law suits and questions about player safety. This is the tip of the iceberg.”

When I asked him if he still believed that 90-95% of NFL players are using PEDS, he said, “There has been no decrease in steroid use in the last two decades. They’re just more sophisticated now.”

He also said that there have been so many spinoffs of drugs that the testers can’t keep up.

“The drugs are readily available and they work. Multi-millionaires can get whatever they want.”

“The major sports have drug testing systems that amount to the fox guarding the hen house.”

“I find the claim that we are now in the post-steroid era of Major League Baseball to be hilarious.”

“Steroid fatigue has set in. The leagues don’t care because they know their customers don’t care.”

“You can deny that your favorite athletes or favorite teams use steroids, but you can’t deny that they’re getting concussions.”

“The media are  the same on the issue now as they were during the baseball steroid era–a bunch of sycophants who look the other way.”

“The concussion issue in the NFL is not going to change unless they do what my late, good friend Steve Coursin suggested– put weight limits on players by position.”

Yesalis also told me that there is no definitive proof that steroid use leads to depression and suicide. He said steroids have been used to treat depression and there is also a belief that discontinuing their use can lead to depression.

(I also heard several talk show callers and received email at TribLive Radio  saying the same things.)

I thought it would be a good idea to post this column written by a guy who has lived with clinical depression.

The Flyers blocked 40 of the Penguins’ shot in their series clinching win in Game 6.

It’s a sign of commitment and a good way to win games.

But have blocked shots gotten out of hand?

Larry Brooks of the New York Post thinks so and he thinks it time to discuss and idea that was dismissed a few years ago.

Put me down as in favor of Bob Gainey’s idea.