The New Nation - Internet Edition

Leads held by Barack Obama over his Republican rival John McCain remained steady in five of the battle-ground states, six days before the Presidential election. John McCain is ahead of Obama in two of these states while the standing of the two candidates in opinion polls showed a dead heat in Florida. Obama’s lead in the five battle-ground states of Virginia, North Carolina, Missourie, Ohio and Nevada are still narrow. McCain’s lead in the two swing states of West Virgina and Indiana look more solid. But he is still struggling to keep his lead in about a dozen states won by Bush in 2004. Obama’s lead in all of the states won by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004 faces no challenge.

On Monday, McCain made vitriolic remarks in Ohio about Obama’s policy of redistributing wealth through taxation. He said his policy was for creation of wealth and opportunities for Americans. Referring to a recent radio talk by Obama where he said that the Supreme Court’s decision on racial equality did not go far enough, McCain insinuated about a plan to redistribute wealth on other consideration also. Though an innuendo, this reference was seen as an attempt to play the racial card by McCain. Obama, on the other hand, in his speech in Ohio, avoided the attacking mode and urged the audience to give their verdict against dividing the nation.

BBC Online

Two men, who officials describe as neo-Nazis, have appeared in a US court accused of plotting to kill Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Paul Schlesselman and Daniel Cowart planned a murder spree targeting dozens of black people and culminating in Obama’s murder, officials said.

Obama said he was not worried by the news and it was “not who America is”.

He told reporters that “these kinds of hate groups” had been marginalised and were not part of America’s future.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) said the men, aged 18 and 20, had made their first appearance before a court in Jackson, Tennessee, on Monday after being arrested last week in Crockett County in the same state.

An ATF official said agents had seized a rifle, a sawn-off shotgun and three pistols during the arrests.

They were charged with making threats against a presidential candidate, illegal possession of a sawed-off shotgun and conspiracy to rob a gun dealer.

Court documents showed that the plot did not appear to be very advanced or sophisticated.

The two men have not yet entered a plea but are due to appear in court again later this week.

The pair allegedly planned to rob a gun store and then carry out a killing spree at an unnamed predominantly African-American high school, the Associated Press quoted court records as saying.

Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Nashville field office of the ATF, told AP that the two men had planned to shoot 88 black people and decapitate another 14. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.

Mr Cavanaugh said the men had sought to go on a national killing spree, with Mr Obama as its final target.

“They said that would be their last, final act - that they would attempt to kill Senator Obama,” Mr Cavanaugh told AP.

“They didn’t believe they would be able to do it, but that they would get killed trying.”

The court documents quoted the two men as saying that they would dress up in white tuxedos and top hats then drive their car as fast as possible toward Senator Obama, shooting at him from the windows.

The BBC’s Adam Brookes in Washington says that although the plot seems to have been amateurish and the threat to Mr Obama himself not particularly credible, the US authorities clearly believe that the two had the means and the intent to carry out some kind of attack on black students.

Mr Obama, who if elected will become the first black US president, is leading Republican rival John McCain in opinion polls ahead of the 4 November election.

The White House rivals were to hold competing rallies on Tuesday in the rust-belt state of Pennsylvania before splitting, with McCain fighting a rearguard action in North Carolina and Obama on the attack in Virginia.

Despite holding a robust poll lead nationally and in battleground states, Obama, 47, warned against complacency as he prepared to air a costly 30-minute “infomercial” on major US networks on Wednesday evening.

“Don’t believe for a second this election is over,” the Illinois senator said Monday in Pittsburgh, whose withered steelworks are symptomatic of Pennsylvania’s industrial blight.

“And Pittsburgh, that’s why we cannot afford to slow down, or sit back, or let up for one day, one minute, or one second in this final week,” he told 15,800 supporters in the cavernous arena of the Penguins ice hockey team.

“In one week, you can choose hope over fear, unity over division, the promise of change over the power of the status quo,” Obama said, his oratory returning to its early campaign heights as the electrifying race climaxes.

“We can’t let up. Not now. Not when so much is at stake,” he added in what aides called his “closing argument” to voters.

For McCain, Pennsylvania and its swollen ranks of disaffected, white, working-class voters is must-win territory on November 4, along with historically Republican bastions such as North Carolina and Virginia.

The Arizona senator, 72, tried to reignite fears of “socialism” by citing a 2001 radio interview given by Obama where he appeared to lament the failure of the 1960s civil rights movement to bring about greater financial equality.

“That is what change means for Barack the Redistributor: It means taking your money and giving it to someone else,” he told a crowd of around 2,000 at a sports hall in Dayton, Ohio.

In Cleveland earlier, McCain said: “Today he claims he’ll tax the rich; but we’ve seen in the past that he’s been willing to hit people squarely in the middle class.”

Obama’s camp responded swiftly, rejecting McCain’s comment over wealth redistribution as a “false, desperate attack,” as the candidate tarred the Republican with the taint of President George W. Bush’s economic policies.

“I can take one more week of John McCain’s attacks, but this country can’t take four more years of the same old politics and the same failed policies. It’s time for something new,” Obama said both in Ohio and Pennsylvania Monday.

The challenge facing McCain was underlined by his choice this late in the game to head to North Carolina, which has not voted for a Democratic White House hopeful since 1976 but is now a raging battleground.

Virginia is an even deeper shade of Republican “red,” having last backed a Democrat for the presidency way back in 1964. But Obama has a double-digit poll lead there, and is hoping the forecasts could portend a landslide in his favour.

The Republican was to address an evening rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of the vast Fort Bragg army base, as the former Vietnam prisoner of war hammers Obama as unfit to serve as commander-in-chief.

“I have fought for you most of my life, and in places where defeat meant more than returning to the Senate,” McCain said in Dayton.

“There are other ways to love this country, but I’ve never been the kind to back down when the stakes are high.”