Obama stealing speeches?

One is tempted to ask just how stupid the Clintons think we are ... but then you realize that the answer to that question is the underpinning for both of their careers to this point.

 

This is a total non story - Obama has cited Patrick in speeches at other times, Patrick has endorsed him and certainly doesn't feel he was being plagiarized. If this is what the Clinton camp has left to fight with, they're done.

 

PWNED?

 

Don't see why it would be a big deal. After all, how many times did we hear George W. Catchphrase, Cheney and Rumsfeld repeat the terms "Cut and Run", "Surrender" and "Stay the Course" in every speech that they attacked critics of the Iraq War?

 

I realize that journalists are going to focus on the plagiarism aspect of this. But that's not at all the point.

This is the first indication that Obama might be less sincere than I once thought. Yes, as Zeke says, everybody does it. But part of what makes Obama so popular is that he's painted himself as an alternative.

Now we're reminded that he's a politician like all the others. He mixes a bit of this and a bit of that and hopes to bake up a winning recipe. I gobbled it up without hesitation. Now, as a steadfast supporter of his campaign, I am left wondering whether he's even tried his own recipe. Or is it just something he swiped from a cookbook? Is it real or is it Memorex?

 

As an issue, it's bullshit.
And, of course, as we all know, bullshit issues never have any kind of impact on our politics, especially not launching one day before a contested primary, when our major news gathering entities can replay the comparative TV footage over and over again.
If she hadn't done this, McCain and the Republicans would have. (Having been around both the campaigns in question, I wondered when somebody would pick up on the obvious fact that the speeches were the same.) Obama needs to push back, smart and hard, and quickly, before this thing metastasizes. And there better not be more examples because -- logic and common sense be damned -- this is the kind of faux "authenticity" issue that the elite political press loves, lurfs, loaves to chew on so they won't have to talk about, oh, health-care mandates.
If Obama was getting a free ride, it ended yesterday.

 

What's good for the goose (Biden) ought to be good for the gander (Obama).

Oh Sheila.

 

Well, this is small potatoes compared to Clinton possibly going after Obama's "pledged" delegates. You know, the ones won by voting. It's in the party's best interest for this to end as soon as possible.

 

Biden's campaign was destroyed by the Kinnock lift because it was a campaign waiting to be destroyed by something, so, pragmatically, this is far from the same thing. Ethically, if you borrow something from someone who says it's all right if you borrow it, you're really not stealing. Also, in the history of American oratory, especially American black pulpit oratory, the same system of borrowing other riffs exists that existed among blues singers. (Who really first wrote the lines, "Woke up this morning/Felt around for my shoes"? It wasn't Robert Johnson. It pre-dates "Walkin' Blues.") Good luck, however, explaining all of this to the gang on Morning Joe.

 

Agreed that this story is largely BS, but still, you’ve got to think Obama’s people are pleased (and Hillary’s are pissed) that this whole Castro thing broke. It’s now the second or third story instead of the top story.

Either way, I imagine this nonsense will fizzle out and we’ll be on to the next scandal the next time Obama doesn’t say God Bless You, or Hillary third cousin gets a speeding ticket.

 

Personally, what worries me more is why Obama has Jim (The Torpedo) Cooper -- the Democrat who did the most to undermine the 1993 health-care proposal -- out there as a surrogate on health care. Yeesh.

 

Because he was the Democrat who did the most to undermine the 1993 health-care proposal?