Obama Plagiarizes Patrick

It amazes me when the media and many Barack Obama supporters circle the wagons around the junior Illinois Senator to protect him from being scarred by the discovery of his plagiarism of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Many either dismiss the action entirely or say it is OK, rationalizing that other politicians do it too. Barack Obama said that he and Deval Patrick share ideas all the time and even said his own words have been used by Hillary Clinton before.

It will take digging to find out if this statement is disingenuous. Lou Dobb's asked today what ideas Governor Deval Patrick has taken from Barack Obama. Naturally, it will take investigation to answer that question. Though Dobbs did not ask this question, the next would be "What has Hillary Clinton taken from Barack Obama?"

One blogger uses New Republic's Noam Scheiber to call Hillary Clinton the thief for using phrases similar to those used by John Edwards or even John McCain. The comparison is disingenuous. Every example is a sentence, or rather less than a sentence, as a phrase that is common to the Democratic Party. They are generalized statements and so far I have only seen Barack Obama and those on the media try to use generalized statements to defend Obama.

No one will make the distinction between the long uncommon words of Barack Obama (or rather Deval Patrick) and the short, generalized statements of Clinton. Barack Obama needs to take responsibility for what he did and all of his supporters need to stop defending his action.

Senator Obama's refusal to take responsibility for what he did is an awful flaw in his character. His failure to publicly and forcefully articulate his stances and offer solutions make it more difficult to hold him accountable. Third, Senator Obama is refusing to take responsibility for what he did. He should apologize and move on. His failure to apologize is indicative of a flaw in his character. Especially dangerous is how he hardly articulates his stances publicly (at least not vocally) and how it will be more difficult to hold him accountable when you have to search through vote records and written papers to see what the man is actually thinking.

Obama's generic rhetoric has been made worse by his derivative language. If this is his behavior it shows how much his "change" is actually worth.

A second issue that must be brought up is that both Patrick and Obama are belittling the history of the United States by saying what they said. It took Lou Dobbs to fully articulate this for me and what is important to note is that a lot of blood shed happened to make those words have as much substance as they did. Today Barack Obama talks in relatively quiet times. The media, political members, and publics' comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, the references to the World Wars and comparisons between the illegal immigrant situation and the Civil Rights era are all belittling the incredible atmosphere of many pasts.

Obama Can Steal With Immunity

Barack Obama plagiarized Massechusetts Governor Deval Patrick last Saturday, February 16, 2008, and said it is not a big deal. Obama said that he and Governor Patrick share ideas all the time. As Lou Dobbs asked today, what exactly has Deval Patrick lifted from Obama?

The answer as we know it now is absolutely nothing. There are those such as Brian Maloney of The Radio Equalizer who claim that Deval Patrick used "Obama like language" when Patrick called 9/11 a "failure of human understanding" but hindsight is 20/20 and Maloney didn't even mention Barack Obama last year when Patrick made the statement.

But the statements are all that people can find. Really short statements. No one can find a whole paragraph like the one that Barack Obama lifted from Governor Patrick. Sentences revolving around basic Democratic principles are flying around blogs in an attempt to heal the wounded Barack Obama but the truth is that Barack Obama plagiarized. Obama should just apologize and move on instead of letting all the starry eyed Obama lovers circle the wagons.