Hype and spin are part of politics but how has Barak Obama managed to con the whole world into thinking that he is some kind of God's gift to the world. One woman wrote yesterday of how she cried when he was elected. Another one today has called him the big ' O ' and superman. It was this kind of sentimental tosh that got him elected in the first place. So what are the facts. 1. He is not black, not only because his mother was white, but because he was brought up by white grandparents in beautiful Hawaii, went to a good school and later to Harvard and not by a single parent in a ghetto exposed to drugs and violence since birth. Has he ever been subjected to the indignity of stop and search as blacks in New York have to suffer everyday? 2. He is African and American and not African-American because he does not come from slaves in Confederate states. His mother was white and his father a Kenyan muslim which was hailed as a symbol of tolerance to muslims but which he is now trying to hide by not going to the Golden Temple so as not to cover his head with a handkerchief. 3. His relatives in Kenya and Indonesia were cited as proof of his cosmopolitan background as though having relatives that he has no contact with makes him an expert on international affairs. He has been insulted by the Chinese, the Pakis have been running rings round him and Latin America is just as hostile to the US as before. In the midterm elections on Tuesday he will become not just a lame duck but a dead duck and he does not have the guts of Bill Clinton to face down a Newt Gingrich. Perhaps we should be cultivating Sarah Palin instead of a gasbag.