What is it with The Times of London, (UK). This morning it was the leak about Obama’s aunt – his father’s half-sister having been rejected for asylum and still remains on U.S. soil. We’ve not heard all of it.
So is this an attempt to be fair and balanced? The Times’ Sunday edition has very damning allegations against Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UTAH). Have this not been published in the U.S. before or am I dreaming? Anyhow The Times of London needs to be seen as – fair and balanced:
Republicans try to use Oxford don to smear Barack Obama
The Republicans have made a last-minute attempt to prevent Barack Obama’s ascent to the White House by trying to recruit an Oxford academic to “prove” that his autobiography was ghostwritten by a former terrorist.
With two days before the election, Obama is poised to become America’s first black president, according to polls showing he has an average six-point lead over John McCain, his Republican opponent.
Dr Peter Millican, a philosophy don at Hertford College, Oxford, has devised a computer software program that can detect when works are by the same author by comparing favourite words and phrases.
He was contacted last weekend and offered $10,000 (£6,200) to assess alleged similarities between Obama’s bestseller, Dreams from My Father, and Fugitive Days, a memoir by William Ayers.
[.]
The offer to Millican to prove that Ayers wrote Obama’s book was made by Robert Fox, a California businessman and brother-in-law of Chris Cannon, a Republican congressman from Utah. He hoped to corroborate a theory advanced by Jack Cashill, an American writer.
Fox and Cannon each suggested to The Sunday Times that the other had taken the initiative.
Cannon said that he merely recommended computer testing of the books. He doubted whether Obama wrote his autobiography, adding: “If Ayers was the author, that would be interesting.”
Fox said he had hoped that Cannon would raise the $10,000 to run a computer test. “It was Congressman Cannon who initially pointed me in that direction and, from our conversation, I thought he might be able to find someone [to raise the $10,000].”
He believed that if “proof” of Ayers’s involvement was provided by an Oxford academic it would be political dynamite.
Fox contacted Millican, who said: “He was entirely upfront about this. He offered me $10,000 and sent me electronic versions of the text from both books.”
Millican took a preliminary look and found the charges “very implausible”. A deal was agreed for more detailed research but when Millican said the results had to be made public, even if no link to Ayers was proved, interest waned.
(highlights added)
Related
The Times of London is a Murdock rag. It was a venerable paper prior to Murdock’s acquisition. Rawstory has a piece noting Murdock’s preference was Hillary Clinton; Murdock held fundraisers for her and is quoted as saying Obama could worsen financial crisis. (Broken link)
Just as Obama suspected He warned of last ditch ‘dirty tricks campaign’ to scare away supporters.
The Democratic candidate urged voters not to take victory for granted as he expected his opponents to launch a dirty tricks campaign to scare away voters.
Referring to previous smears and insinuations about his background and associations, the Democratic candidate said: “Don’t believe for a second this election over. Don’t believe for a moment that power concedes anything. It’s going to get nasty in the next four days. They will throw everything at it.”
Despite his healthy lead in the polls, he implored a crowd of more than 20,000 in Columbia on Friday not to forget to vote and asked them to take five friends along and “dig deep and make history”.
Addressing the most recent attacks from the campaign of his rival Senator John McCain, he adopted a mocking tone. “They can’t even decide what to call me. They are calling me every name in the book but they can’t decide on a single angle,” he said.
The Republicans are still running on their old, tiring dirty tricks; so Rovian. Never expect a fair fight.
Know Hope.
It’ll be a landslide.
A repudiation of the last eight years…of Bushism and McCain’s sleaze.
On Tuesday, turnout will be huge and I expect Polls will not close at the scheduled hour.