WHHOOO CCAAARRREEEEESSS??!!!!!!!

Shouldn't we be talking about the obvious fact that HILLARY CAN'T BEAT MCCAIN AND OBAMA CAN???!!

http://thepersonalispolitical.tumblr.com/post/26659785

What's muddy?

Plagiarism is when you use something without permission, not when you fail to attribute.

besides, if we forced our politicians to attribute every phrase they spoke, speeches would sound like recitations of court opinions, not political discourse and rhetoric.

Garbage issue brought by a campaign in the dirt.

You know what is even more pathetic than this latests attempt to trash Obama? The fact that they have some poor intern (or maybe a few) sitting on a computer googling the hell out of Deval Patrick and Obama's speeches trying to find similarities.

And when is ABC going to come out and endorse Hillary already? They are always at the forefront of her mainstream media smear campaigns.

I'll let the Repug-lite speak for herself (from Dec 2007):

"Well, now the fun part starts," Clinton said in kicking off the week with a new round of attacks on Obama...

Whoopeeeeeee!!!! Ripping apart a party for self-gain is spectacularly enjoyable.

Nah, say it isn't so. The clintons use the same language in speeches. I would never believe that one. Next thing you'll say that the clintons have used statements that obama has used, like "yes we can" or some such things. Never happen in a million years. The clintons are perfect.

What Jake Tapper also conveniently leaves out in his "reporting" is that Deval Patrick stole some of the same lines that Obama is being accused of stealing from Obama's 2004 senate run. So at the end of the day, if our lazy press actually did any real research, we'd see that Obama 2008 is poaching lines from Obama 2004.

Please to be cuing up the "TPM is pro-Obama" posts now.

if our lazy press actually did any real research, we'd see that Obama 2008 is poaching lines from Obama 2004.

The press is what it is. The press has not distinguished in a generation. To expect that coverage will suddenly become more accurate is unrealistic.

I've been saying this for some time now. All the campaigns needed to speak out against crappy reporting and coverage. To do so only when one's favorite candidate is now being trashed doesn't do any good.

This whole "plagiarizing" thing is going to turn into the 2008 equivalent of the Swiftboats. Doesn't matter how inaccurate the actual coverage is. At all.

The obama campaign had better jump all over this.

In the quote you just posted, Obama fully credits Patrick.

Deval and Barack are friends and speak about the same themes. This all makes sense, but Obama should have credited him this weekend and I bet he will from now on.

http://www.politicalinaction.com

Hillary has learnt well from Rove. Attack the strengths instead of the weaknesses of one's opponent. We'll see how Obama deals with the democratic version of swiftboating.

Why is this ridiculous non-story getting so much attention on a day where two more states are voting and Fidel Castro announces he's stepping down? How about some reporting on the candidates' positions on relations with Cuba and immigration reform and how that might play in Texas in Ohio?

LOL

LOL

The snake oil salesman is being found out!

Maybe you should have voted for Duval Patrick. He's better looking too!

LOL LOL

Rae

I describe plagiarism to my students as using someone else's words (whether written, spoken or transmitted by evil mind rays from Mars) without attribution. The permission issue isn't as big of an issue.

And in this sense, Obama has committeed plagiarism...off and on.

And so has every politician who has ever given a speech, I'd bet.

CT Voter - agree about the press; disagree that this is on the same level as the Swiftboating - esp. w/ Hillary guilty of the exact same "crimes" her staff are accusing Obama of. I think Obama could even have some fun with this. He could do a quick speech or Q&A session in which he drops a series of pointed attributions, or refer to himself with a wink as Deval Patrick, etc. Take the wind right out of the story.

You obama followers better brace for it! The rug is about to be pulled out from under obama's feet.

Don't be screeming 'bout it. That's what you get for lining up behind a puff of air.

'Puff the magic (paper) dragon,Lived by the sea '(Hawaii) .... la, la, la,

Rae

God, what rot. To qualify as plagiarism in the context of political speeches, there has to be something more than some similarity of language. There has to be identifiable facts unique to the speaker that are appropriated, or wholesale lifting of large passages of a given speech verbatim.

I mean, every Republican politician out there (and probably most Democrats) have use the phrases "greatest country in the history of the world," "support our troops" "No new taxes" etc., etc.

You can't invent a whole new language to describe the at most half dozen organizing principles of political campaigns. And, if you're going to parse political speechifying down to the sentence, then every politician in America needs to resign for a lack of original expression.

Aren't there any grownups out there who can stop this ridiculousness? Because it looks like the media's finally got their "tell" with which they can hang the "inauthentic" label on Obama, and it's even more banal than the one they used to destroy Gore and then Kerry.

this story is starting to get out of hand...BO needs to come out and address this thing once and for all...IMO its a non issue, but the Clintons are like a cornered animal now and they are throwing everything at Obama...he needs to address this...if he cant weather this and wins the nomination, the Rep will eat him alive...

it would be nice if TPM didn't fall into the same black hole of journalistic disingenuousness as everywhere else but, just for clarification, here is the whole quote from Obama from that piece:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/12/obama-scoffs-th.html

"But you know in the end, don’t vote your fears. I’m stealing this line from my buddy (Massachusetts Gov.) Deval Patrick who stole a whole bunch of lines from me when he ran for the governorship, but it’s the right one, don’t vote your fears, vote your aspirations. Vote what you believe."

That is the speech USA Today quoted partially from. They omitted his attribution!

I think this issue has been beat enough, but I must say that I am frustrated that my fellow Obama supporters seem to be giving The One a total skate on his error. Even He has admitted he should have cited Patrick, and he goofed (a minor one, though). Funny that Obama supporters exonerate him for a mistake that he freely admits, and they attack Hillary to boot.

Very sad. We should be going through McCain's speeches and looking for plagiarism and everything else we can possibly come up with.

This is one of those parallel reality issues that pervade in Rovian/Clintonian politics: accuse your competition of doing something you're guilty of doing yourself but "own" the news cycles around it and take the focus off the real issues of the campaign. It also underscores the laziness of our press corps. - who took this charge from the Clinton campaign at face value and reported on it without any ensuing investigation. And now they continue to propagate it as an Obama character flaw, without any supplemental reference to Hillary's own very liberal record of lifting choice lines from under any available rock (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-wolfson-plagiarism-at_b_87209.html). Will she have to answer for her own plagarism? Not likely. The press has been too busy and distracted running with her campaign's talking points and propping up the Clinton double standard.

The press also left unchallenged the dubious claim that Obama has staked his candidacy on rhetoric and oratory. Someone please send me the news coverage where Obama says his campaign is based on oratory? He's a great orator, to be sure, but he ain't never said he's running for orator-in-chief. That's another unchallenged Clinton charge that our supine press is happy to run with. Why think when you can react?

As for Obama being able to take it, he took it just fine, no matter how imbalanced the coverage. And his message remains the same, as it has consistently since this campaign began. An interesting story unto itself but don't count on hearing much about it.

btw - thanks to Hillary for eliminating several of her own talking points (never had a negative ad run against him, not tested, not vetted, etc.).

*Assume the Lotus postion*

Good...pure...Barack...good...pure...Barack...good...pure...Barack...Oohhmmmmmm

(Lather, rinse, repeat.)

LOL, you don't even get it?

Its not about the plagarism people.

Its the fact that he has positioned HIS ENTIRE campaign on HIS oratory, HIS words...

"WORDS mean something."
"DOn't tell me words don't count"
"Just words?"
blah blah blah.

And yet, that wasn't even REAL! NOTHING about this guy is genuine!

Wake up from this stuff he's given you - this snake oil he's sold you.

Yes, Be inspired by the original speakers' words! That's good. Martin Luther King and all the great men (& women) before him. Be inspired by their words.

But this guy has taken you all in! The words ain't HIM, and their not even HIS words. Don't mix the inspiration of those words with this pretender.

Rae

Rae,

No he hasn't "positioned his entire campaign on his oratory, his words." Sorry, non sequitor.

We should be going through McCain's speeches and looking for plagiarism and everything else we can possibly come up with.

Why? If the HRC is the nominee, I'm voting for McCain.

Please don't talk about his position on the Iraq War. I'm fully aware that people are dying there.

And I'm irritated that HRC has been able to spin the campaign away from anything substantive. Be it "pimping", delegate threats, and, now this.

I hope voters recognize that Obama was be damned clean if this is the best HRC can do. He Obama has already released *his* financial data...

According to the Kennedy library, the line "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" is derivative of Rousseau, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others:

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Derivation+of+Ask+not+what+your+country.htm

And of course Lincoln neglected to give attribution to the Bible when he said "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

Give it a rest.

Next comment from Rae will be about how Obama supporters are just Hitler Youth in disguise....

I have discovered that Hillery Clinton has stolen her speaking style from this person, and she has never given him credit for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJyp

Your Obama maniac will never understand this but I will give it a try! It is not Obama's borrowing Patrick's words per se that is a problem. It is the juxtopositon between Obama and Patrick that will be a major problem. It is Patrick who said words do matter. He won the governorship. guess what? Words, at least in his case, did not matter at all. He started miserably as a governor and has not fully recoverd and is now campaigning hard for Obama. Why? He's trying to get a job at Obama administration so he can get out of the mess in MA.

Do you know why with Patrick, Kerry, and Kennedy backing Obama and he still lost by huge margin in MA? The good people have seen a good talker and no doer before. They have seen this movie before. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you!

It may well be unfair to infer from Patrick's inablity to perform that Obama will fail the same way. But certainly it serves as a fresh reminder what kind of buyer's remorse you can get into when you voted for somebody just because of rhetorical power. By avoiding citing Patrick, Obama is trying not to be associated with Patrick. If Patrick's record is examined closely by the national media and exposed, Obama's hope and dream campaign may well be over!

People, wake up! Axelrod has managed to sell a lemon to the good people of MA. Do you really want him to succeed in selling a lemon to the whole nation.

Just say no!!!

Patrick has already gone on Good Morning America to discuss how ridiculous and unfair this story is:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Vote2008/story?id=4310143&page=1

Meanwhile, Hillary has come out and explicitly denied (LIED) having any involvement in pushing this plagiarism story.

"Look, it's not us making this charge. It's the media. You know, the media is finally examining my opponent which I think is important because we're trying to pick a president, someone for the toughest job in the world [...] So, I think the media is going to be putting forth whatever facts and information it has for voters to assess on their own."

And yet, as The Nation reports:

Clinton's claim is demonstrably false. Her campaign has aggressively and openly pushed the plagiarism attack, including a national conference call by senior campaign aides on Monday. Her aides also circulated a YouTube clip comparing footage of Obama and Gov. Deval Patrick.

Initially, Clinton operatives apparently did attempt to conceal their involvement....

Yet by Monday morning, Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson and Rep. Jim McGovern openly made the plagiarism attack on the conference call, while the campaign openly distributed the YouTube clip without requesting to only be identified as a "rival campaign."

In the end, as it has been said before, I am not gong to allow myself to be upset by the Clinton tactics. If Obama wins the nomination, it IS best that as many attacks as possible be put out there and settled now.

However,the Obama campaign has been relatively kind to Clinton and has not slung nearly as much mud. What does this mean? Should Clinton get the nomination, the Republicans will have plenty of fresh mud from 2000-2008 to throw at Clinton that will not have been discussed.

Aimey, what are the chances you're going to take a logic class at any point in your life and realize how profoundly stupid that kind of argument is?

Also, one is a die, two are dice.

This all just makes me sad. I realize that Sen Clinton is trying her hardest to win the nomination. I respect that and I expect nothing less from either candidate. Sometimes, though, I wish her people would step back and think for a second before they go forward with a strategy.

First of all, this type of attack will likely boomerang back at her should she actually get the nomination. Forget the fact that Obama researchers are now going over everything she has ever said, how many RNC people are doing the same thing? And she wins the nomination and the RNC should bring it up, what will she possibly be able to say? What... It mattered a few months ago, but now I consider it unimportant? Nice.

Secondly, and more importantly, there is a large block of dedicated democratic voter out there who could very easily take this the wrong way. If Sen Clinton should win the nomination, what would their campaign have to do to convince African- American voters that they didn't really mean it when they made the 'Jesse Jackson' comments, the 'articulate man' comments, and what could be perceived as 'A successful black politician couldn't possibly have been able to come up with a lot of his stuff alone?' Seriously... This is becoming insulting.

African-Americans, according to census numbers, make up around 12.8% of the total population. Based on 2004 numbers, 68% of those voters were registered to vote and approximately 60% voted in the election. Considering that the African-American community tends to vote reliably democratic at a 90%+ clip, what happens to her general campaign if she continues to irritate and anger them? I don't know and I don't think the Clinton campaign knows either. I suspect a lot of people will sit out.

Look, I believe that Mark Penn, especially recently, deserves a lot of the ridicule that he gets at times. That being said, I do think that there is some nugget of truth to some of the micro-trend argument. However, even though there may be some wisdom to be gained from some of his philosophies, I still think that the Clinton campaign has lost sight of the forest due to the trees.

The democratic party has been blessed to have three strong candidates run for the 2008 nomination. Two of them remain. The problem is that winning the nomination does not automatically win you the ultimate prize. I implore the Clinton campaign to look at the larger picture before making such silly attacks in the future.

OH MY GOD!

You mean they found ANOTHER example of a similar speech between Obama and a guy who says that he and Obama often share their ideas for speeches?!?!?!

That's it! I'm voting for Huckabee!

I am disheartened by the fact this subject actually draws any response, it is even showing up in Gallup's tracking polls. The idea that somehow a politician uses phrases, if not whole lines once uttered by another well-known individual should not cause anyone a moment's pause. You would be hard pressed to unearth a Presidential candidate who did not use lines without immediately giving attribution, it is a stump speech not a research paper.

Seriously, Liam, why do you insist on misspelling Hillary's name? If you're making some clever point, I don't get it. Please explain.

This is nuts:
Raeka, you and others don't get it,

It is common knowledge that all but a tiny percent of political speeches are not written by the politicians giving them. Most are written by paid professionals. I don't believe Ronald Reagan wrote any of his speeches. Has anyone critical of Obama here, or that is calling this plagiarism seen a political candidate read the credits for the speech while at the podium.

Have you seen Hillary Clinton announce who wrote any of her speeches while giving them. As linked in the post above, the Huffington Post has put up similar borrowing of Hillary from Bill.

Senator Biden: The reason that the criticism of Biden was legitimate and justified is because he defrauded the audience into believing the biography he gave in a speech was his own even though it was not incompatible with his own life circumstances and was actually the biography of a British politician named Kinnock. He relayed the story and thoughts as if they had actually happened to him. It was the misrepresentation that was both dishonest and a breach of ethics.

Obama was describing concepts and beliefs he shares with another politician and used the same words. If Obama is guilty, then every politician is guiltily.

There is a huge difference. If you banned political speeches that did not include words and ideas of others, the speeches would be worthless and 5 minutes max.

Peace
JK

JK wrote:
"This is nuts:
Raeka, you and others don't get it,

It is common knowledge that all but a tiny percent of political speeches are not written by the politicians giving them."

JK, again, you have missed the point. He made such a big deal about the W-O-R-D-S

"Words matter"
"Just words?"
"Don't tell me words are important"
"Words?"

And the were spoken in the same tone, same speech. Same everything! He even said the same things in an interview as Patrick.

Rae

Here is a link to ABC news Video from last night.

Watch at the very end where they show Hillary Clinton repeating the exact same words that John Edwards had used about keeping track of people entering the country, including how Blockbuster can keep track of people. John Edwards said the words five months before Hillary stole them and used them without giving John Edwards credit.

Hillary is a total hypocrite.

Watch it for yourselves.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4308238

People, Rae and Bill Glad are goading you and being willfully obstinate.

I care more about what cheese heads have to say on the matter now...

They're trying this again? Look, they're edging towards a twenty point loss in a state polls were saying was going to be close.

Not only did this attack not work how it was supposed to the first time, but there's a huge problem going in the second time: the supposed victim is a colleague, friend and collaborator who doesn't mind the lifting of the material. Avenging this poor soul again is insanely dumb strategy, especially given the double-digit defeat that these kinds of politics have brought about. It was a non-story the first time, now it's just clueless idiots banging their heads against the wall trying to get it to fit snugly in the hole.