I’m hearing an echo. You hear it?
But her dismissive point, and I hear it a lot from her staff, is that all I have to offer is words — just words. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ Just words – just words! ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words! ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ Just words! ‘I have a dream.’ Just words!
– Deval Patrick (D)
Don’t tell me words don’t matter! ‘I have a dream.’ Just words. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ Just words! [Applause.] ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words — just speeches!
– Barack Obama (D)
Some are calling it plagiarizing but apparently Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Obama are good buddies and he gave Big O his permission to use his lines:
In a telephone interview on Sunday, Mr. Patrick said that he and Mr. Obama first talked about the attacks from their respective rivals last summer, when Mrs. Clinton was raising questions about Mr. Obama’s experience, and that they discussed them again last week.
Both men had anticipated that Mr. Obama’s rhetorical strength would provide a point of criticism. Mr. Patrick said he told Mr. Obama that he should respond to the criticism, and he shared language from his campaign with Mr. Obama’s speechwriters.
Mr. Patrick said he did not believe Mr. Obama should give him credit.
So its not plagiarizing. But it does show us that this man whom make women swoon, who has been compared to JFK and other great politicians (even though he has no accomplishments), and is supposedly a man of character is nothing but the same old calculating politician ie. Hillary Clinton.
And from The Politico we find that apparantly the “plagiarizing” goes both ways:
Obama also used “Yes, we can!” — now a staple of his presidential campaign — as a rallying cry in his successful race for U.S. Senate in 2004.
The Globe reported: “After Patrick employed the same phrase at a state Democratic Convention in 2005, a reporter alerted the campaign that it was Obama’s signature line, and they went back to the drawing board,” said Dan Payne, a Democratic strategist working for Patrick at the time. (Patrick would adopt “together we can” instead.)
I wonder how the MSM and the MoveOn peeps would feel about this if both those (D)’s were changed to a (R)’s?
There would be hell to pay.
UPDATE
Obama responds with…..it’s no big deal:
Sen. Barack Obama said Monday that he probably should have given his friend — the governor of Massachusetts — credit for using his lines over the weekend.
Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for Hillary Rodham Clinton accused Obama of plagiarizing Gov. Deval Patrick. Wolfson said that raises questions about the premise of Obama’s candidacy — his rhetorical skills.
Obama, D-Ill., says that’s going too far. He says he really doesn’t think it’s a big deal to use Patrick’s words because they share ideas all the time.
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Haha…Medved brought this up first hour, along with the water bottle fainting episodes.
I think Obama has a very well-crafted image, and may be nothing more than a house of cards.
I’ve helped out at a bunch of campaign events, and people do faint. Any time you have a crowd that size, the room temperature goes up, people have been waiting around for hours, standing up without anyone passing around food or water. Blood sugar drops and people faint. I’m sure you can find people fainting at Hillary Clinton rallies (I personally saw people faint over Bill.) I doubt it has anything to do with Obama, and I bet that in the next few days, we’ll hear about people fainting over Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Mike Huckabee.
The thing is Steve, some of these venues are out in the open air. And what’s strange, is how it seems to follow a certain pattern….woman in the front row, and Obama’s reaction comes across almost scripted, by how similar his words and responses are to one another. It’s possible there’s nothing funny going on here; but I think it’s suspect. If anyone can point out that this is COMMON to ALL campaigns, regardless of who the speaker is, I’d be curious to know. If it’s mostly happening at Obama events, then the man either is a charlatan, or he’s got the messiah mojo/rock star effect on his masses. Which brings us back to having accurately pegged his movement as a kind of religious revival and Rapture.
Curt, any chance of putting up the Medved audio of the first part of the 2nd hour, before the first commercial break? Medved strung together and isolated Obama’s response from several venues.
I could care less if Obama used the words, but when you see video evidence that he’s a carbon copy of Patrick in ’06 it’s pretty disconcerting:
A sad state of affairs when someone is claiming to rise above and be his own man, be authentic, when he even has the same intonations down as the governor’s speeches. I used to think I would be happy to vote for whomever the democratic nominee is, but I can’t make that promise. Obama will sink immediately. At least Hillary has the balls to stand up and fight.
Word, I just put that segment up on the water bottle thread.
“I think Obama has a very well-crafted image, and may be nothing more than a house of cards.”
IMO, he is a puppet and George Soros is the puppet master.
Link
‘Because of a special provision campaign finance laws, the Soroses were able to give a collective $60,000 to Obama during his primary challenge. Obama faced millionaire Blair Hull, which allowed donors to give more than typically allowed.”
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“I think Obama has a very well-crafted image, and may be nothing more than a house of cards.”
IMO, Obama is a puppet and George Soros is the puppetmaster.
“Because of a special provision campaign finance laws, the Soroses were able to give a collective $60,000 to Obama during his primary challenge. Obama faced millionaire Blair Hull, which allowed donors to give more than typically allowed.”
Article
Mary Katharine Ham:
If anything, the focus should be on the “just words” reference. Whether Patrick or Obama said it first, the “just words” reference denigrates everything this nation is. If “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …” or “I have a dream …” to be “just words,” then Patrick, Obama, and their ilk have a very cynical view of America. Why would Patrick or Obama want to lead if we, as a nation, have not lived up to the ideals which define us?
Yes, but Obama diverted attention from the actual substance of the criticism masking the real crux of the issue with “just words”. Irony is a funny thing, ain’t it?
Since Obama has no substance other than someone who wants to turn the US into a Third World country and the savior of other Third World countries, he has to play with words to defend against attacks on his other words. He has nothing to offer but meaningless words.
I recently likened him to a bubble, like the Internet of Housing bubble, about to burst. The king has no clothes, and once it’s pointed out he won’t be able to withstand the ridicule. Shrinkage will occur.