Okay, the Cookies Were Stupid and Silly, But Plagiarizing Your Foreign Policy Too?
John McCain’s campaign seems to have a serial problem with plagiarism. First there was the Passion Fruit Mousse and then there were the Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies. Now, apparently, McCain’s stooped to stealing his foreign policy plans from others. And of all sources, he’s stealing from Wikipedia!
A Wikipedia editor notices some similarities between Sen. John McCain’s speech today on the crisis in Georgia and the Wikipedia article on the country Georgia. They appear similar enough that most people would consider parts of McCain’s speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia.
First instance:
one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion (Wikipedia)
vs.
one of the world’s first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion (McCain)
So here’s the pathetic thing. The first two times McCain got caught plagiarizing, at least it was a fairly reputable source. Rachael Ray? Hershey’s? Both reasonably respectable sources of recipes.
But Wikipedia? For a foreign policy speech?
Back when I taught college, I would always reserve a special kind of failing grade for those who stole from Wikipedia. After all, it would take someone both lazy and stupid to steal from Wikipedia, right?
Shall we at least infer from this that he is finally using the Internets?
Probably better to assume that whatever flunky he has in charge of speechwriting has discovered the Toobz.
And the fact that he can’t speak a complete sentence without referring to “his” notes speaks volumes as well. He doesn’t know WTF he’s talking about. He’s reading and giving shit eating grins.
Please, bring on the debates.
Do you think McCain has read this Wikipedia page about his chief Foreign Policy Adviser?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Scheunemann
Randy Scheunemann
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Randy Scheunemann is the President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which was created by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), of which he is a board member. He was Trent Lott’s National Security Aide and was an advisor to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Iraq. He is 2008 Presidential candidate John McCain’s foreign-policy aide.
Scheunemann has been criticized for his close association with Ahmad Chalabi during the George W. Bush administration’s campaign to generate public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[1]
In mid-July 2008, The Sunday Times linked Scheunemann to Stephen Payne, a lobbyist covertly filmed as he offered to arrange meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and others, in exchange for donations to the George W. Bush presidential library. Payne said Scheunemann had been “working with me on my payroll for five of the last eight years”.
OR TODAY’S ARTICLE IN THE WSJ ABOUT RANDY CONSULTING FOR GEORGIA?
Here’s a nice photo of Randy with Mr. “Heroes In Error” himself:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoi….._advis.php
oh, thank you for that plunger!!!! i’ve been pushing these guys all over for a while, till i gave up.
wsj, cool.
look up th emeeting in riga last nov/dec check out the list of attendees…links on scarecrow’s post in comments last night.
here is the link for the baltic group where stephen payne was a board member, and recently randy scheunemann and another mccain advisor visited them…..
http://www.jbanc.org/
funny thing is, up until right now, there was a photo of the baltic group and the advisors…with scheunemann front and center, a bragging kind of article, how mccain is their friend and oh so knowledgable about the baltics…..weasels, i wondered why they would do something so stupid.i don’t know how to retrieve a page that has been changed.i was going to copy the text tongiht, wasn’t quick enough.
they’ve smacked up some more dems stuff to cover. geez.
can anyone help with that? retrieving that page i saw?
How shocking. Foreign policy by wiki, just the kind of addled leadership you would expect of a confused and unprincipled old man with no honor. For McCain’t, the “3 am phone call” is but another senior moment. That’s okay, he won’t remember by 3:10 am. Leadership you can forget; he does every day!
Good thing that Democrats like Russ Feingold and Bob Kerrey are sticking up for the senile angry old mental midget though. At least we got that going for us. Or not.
It says that Mr. McCain hasn’t the smarts to know his lobbyists haven’t the smarts or energy to develop more creative language or policies.
Presumably, Mr. McCain’s lobbyist-aides are too busy hiding or protecting the clients of their lobbying firms (or their own money) to work on Mr. McCain’s speeches early in the day. It’s almost shameful to say it, but a McCain White House would make the CheneyBush regime look competent. What does that tell us about the GOP?
This makes me want to compose a limerick with “syphilis” and “Tiflis”.
I prefer Paris Hilton’s appellation, “wrinkly white-haired dude,” except that I’m rapidly approaching that status myself.
Bob in HI
John McCain uses YUMOcat, a little known dialect that substitutes neocon talking points for Rachel Ray-isms.
My heart belongs to my
red-nosed pit bullfriends in Georgia,IsabooAbkhazia and before her,BooSouth Ossetia, who gavemeus 13 of the happiest years ofmy lifefreedom. Inthe cityNATO,she isthey are about all I couldfit into my apartment-no baby moose would be happy going up the elevatorhope for as partners in a strong military alliance !Pit bullsFormer regions of the Soviet Union get such a bad rap and I never understood why-my girlsmy freedom loving friends in Georgia are the most gentle, sweetestanimalsfreedom loving people you could ever meet andcuddle up to adults and children like little babiesare staunch allies in the transcendent battle of our time, the fight against radical extremeism. –RachSen. John McCainSaakashvili has 2000 troops in Iraq (does Putin plan to let us fly them back as a courtesy?). What is Georgian for “traitor”, or “lamppost”?
USAF is supposed to be flying them back today (per CNN). I would not want to be a pilot flying those transports.
Fortunately he’ll have Vice President Lieberman to field all of the tough questions or prompt him on the correct answers…and now that Cheney has ensured that the OVP’s office is the most powerful in the land, John can just hang out in the residence eating cookies while the remainder of the coup is solidified under “Traitor Joe’s” direction.
You know what makes me sad. I really think most americans don’t care if we have a smart president or not. I also think most americans (present company excluded, of course) would not recognize an intelligent life form in front of them.
It makes me really sad. We have come a long way down from the brilliant minds of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, (to name a few).
Hold up! We have lots of smart folks. Leahy, Waxman, Holt…there are critters who are smart. In the (outside) media we have EW, Christy, bmaz, LHP, Jane, Josh, Glenn, Dehlia…on and on. It’s just that the corporate media controls who is heard…at least they have in the recent past. We’ll see.
As far as having folks like our forefathers, it’s different. It’s not brand new. It’s fixing a lot of crap within an existing system.
I did say present company excluded!!
(and I assume that ALL the smart people read this blog!)
There is increasing evidence that what is seen and heard can be impacted another way.
The Media Equation
All of Us, the Arbiters of News David Carr
There is a lesson there for rest of the media, most specifically The Philadelphia Inquirer, where the managing editor, Michael Leary, issued a memo last week suggesting that all of the paper’s good stuff — “signature investigative reporting, enterprise, trend stories, news features and reviews” — would not appear online until they first appear in print.
“For our bloggers, especially, this may require a bit of an adjustment,” Mr. Leary informed the staff. “Some of you like to try out ideas that end up as subjects of stories or columns in print first. If in doubt, consult your editor.”
Even to the eye of this reporter — to use a hack newspaper term — The Inquirer seems to be making a mistake. If the future of our business is online, then why set up a firewall, delaying the best content to protect a legacy product? And more adept reporters are beginning to realize that the Web is not just a way to broadcast news, it is a great way to assemble it as well.
For the last few years, the locus of control has been shifting and consumers not only expect to customize their media experience, they demand it as a condition of engagement. The horizon line for when a newspaper on the street is serving as a kind of brochure of a rich online product does not seem far off.
Ithought I hit the quote button. The paragraphs are from David Carr’s article.
harry shearer’s show this weekend had a segment about pr people ‘buying’ advertising for articles to be written and air time as segments, not as advertising–19%
http://www.leshow.com
Thanks for the link. I didn’t know about this.
She said as she forgot to put a question mark at the end of her sentence.
“You know what makes me sad?”
Yah, that lack of intelligence thing sucks!!
OT – i haven’t been paying close attention to the posts lately, but am wondering if anyone is going to wade into the russia/georgia conflict via any commentary? it seems all the political bozos – bush, mccain and even obama are saying the same kind of crap that one would expect in an upside down world…. as it is a big issue and appears to be growing, i thought i would throw it out…
Comment @16 addressed to you.
EW,
I think you’re grasping at straws here. Certainly there are better things to beat McCain about the head and shoulders with than this. Now if it were a matter of substance, that’s another matter.
Also, even though I, too, am a Michigan Ph.D., I don’t think it is fair to pick on Wikipedia as a source for non-controversial information. We should not expect footnotes in political campaign speeches. There are plenty of other issues of more substance to criticize him about. — and to criticize Wikipedia about.
From a public knowledge perspective, Wikipedia is an Everyman’s Encyclopedia, and I would rather encourage its use (by ordinary citizens) than discourage it. If we make fun of Wikipedia, then what we are saying, in effect, to the general public, is don’t bother looking things up, you’ll just confuse yourselves.
I happen to like footnotes. I sometimes read them all at once, after finishing an article. I admit it, I’m a geek, and I am addicted to geeky things. But I know I’m a bit odd in that respect, and that most people want less information, not more.
Bob in HI
A friend of a friend, every single semester, goes into Wikipedia the morning before an assignment and adds in completely erroneous information. Invariably, about half his class includes that completely erroneous information in their assigned papers.
It’s a very good lesson in the fallibility of Wikipedia. I use it, but only as a quick guide to cross-check off of.
Agreed. Sadly, at a time when we are ready to drown in an ocean of information, skills for evaluating information and checking sources are seldom taught. Many voters don’t even know the difference between opinion and fact. I think every talking heads show on TV should be prefaced and concluded by a Warning statement that “the opinions stated on this program are not necessarily based on facts.”
One of the simple things about Wikipedia is that it is a secondary source. Students need to learn the difference between secondary sources and primary sources, and why the difference is important.
I appreciate the efforts at Wikipedia to supervise the writing of wikipedia entries. I have several times attempted to write an article for Wikipedia, and they do make you jump through some hoops before posting anything. Its just not true that anyone can get into wikipedia and write anything about anything. Its a much more structured process. Your friend who writes misinformation into Wikipedia to intentionally deceive should be reported to the editors so that they can figure out how s/he is able to abuse the system, and stop it. The Wikipedia is an amazing resource and a treasure.
Bob in HI
Well, the last two Wikipedia entries I consulted were erroneous: One was on Jeff Taylor, I forget what the other one is. A third had no links to back its assertions. They do have a control process, but I’ve been seeing some crappy Wiki lately.
Incidentally, the friend either fixes the entries himself (so they’re erroneous for about 4 hours), or they are fixed in the normal vetting process.
EW–
I don’t disagree. In a sense, we get what we pay for. The Wikipedia is essentially run by volunteers, isn’t it? So, its essentially run on the honor system, and we know there are always people who will take advantage of that.
Do you know of an equivalent “-pedia” that is free, as well as being more error free, and as comprehensive and up to date?
A good blogger, like you, or journalist who is not merely a stenographer, might use the wikipedia as a starting point, but will use it to get a jump start on more primary sources, and will view all of the information critically. I know how difficult it can be to write a good blog, and I marvel (and am grateful for) your thoroughness.
Thanks,
Bob in HI
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a large scale study which went through Wikipedia and found it surprisingly accurate. Where it tends not to be accurate are entries on contentious issues.
Which makes it dangerous for politics, of course.
And that’s a pretty apt description of the Georgian/Russian “dispute”, isn’t it, a “contentious issue”?
This is where two or more resources that are well-versed and neutral, or obvious in their agendas, are absolutely essential. Wikipedia doesn’t ask participants what their political bent may be on an issue; it only trusts that other members of the community will vet for any bias as well as accuracy.
That’s a lot to ask of a community that overwhelming doesn’t live in Georgia, South Ossetia or Russia, let alone speak any of their languages.
But the article will be read by people who do care about Georgia, South Ossetia, and Russia, and who care about it.
The current Wikipedia entry for Ossetia contains these caveats, right at the top:
Note the date!
On any article flagged with such warnings, one should look for the “Discussion” tab at the top of the page. For the Ossetia article, the Discussion tab leads to 9 sets of comments, with this editorial preface at the top:
The sets of comments includes one set from 2007, labelling the article as a “POV” (point of view) article, with one commenter recommending that it be deleted.
Another set brings the comments up to date, and includes a partisan rant, and a number of responses dated today!
Anyone who uses the Wikipedia, or allows its use for class assignments, should demand that the student using the article check the Discussion tab and report on any controversies. The discussion tab is valuable, and I haven’t heard anyone mention it yet.
Bob in HI
I’d just like to say that during the past eight years we’ve sure profited from Ms. Upper East Side Manolo Blahnik herself, Condi the Condi–i.e. the Stanford University Provost and protoge of Madeline Albright’s daddy–the Russian expert.
As Condi and Shrubi take their bows, not only have they shitspiked the Constitution, but they have installed the US as a paper tiger–laughed at by Putin when they chide Russia as they invoke the tanks rolling into Checkoslovakia.
So much for perestroika and the Western alliance of Russian states. Turning on your TV and it might as well be the time when Kruschev banged his shoe.
Bush has all the moral authority of a newt, and Condi’s Russian skills have produced nothing but several giant steps backwards.
Joke of the Day: The Hillary Norma Rae dihards saying that if Edwards’ affair had broken earlier in MSM, Hillary would be the nominee. And if pigs could fly…
Meanwhile one of the best examples of Hillary’s Democratic party loyalty is here memo for memo:
The Front-Runner’s Fall
The Clinton Memos Sweet Nothings from Camp Norma Rae Two HundredMillionairess
And Condi sees this as important as Katrina obviously since she is unwilling to buck her vacation to address it.
Condi is probably on vacation enjoying an illegal-occupation-hot-tub-moment. See? LOL
Condi is handling the wars in Samoa, New Zealand, and Australia between the villagers and the Koala bears.
Condoleezza Rice’s South Pacific vacation
Boy Russia is quackin’ at McCain’s threats since McCain will be in such a great position to shape Russian policy.
Johnny McTeleprompter is still living in the Cold War. I bet he would love to attack and invade Russia. He probably still calls it the Soviet Union. *rolling eyes*
I do this too, but just to be ornery.
There is a hilarious article about Wikipedia by Nicholson Baker. An excerpt describing the Wiki pop tarts entry:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21131
My 4th grade son and 6th grade daughter are not allowed to use wiki as a resource but to follow proper resource citations. They can get ideas through wiki but have to find actual sources for their papers.
HELLLLLOOOOOOOO!
That looks like fun. I may try it next time I assign a term paper that could be written with “creative help” from wikipedia. heh….
The point here is, I think, that McCain purports to be an expert on the subject of foreign affairs and specifically the Caucasus, and therefore should have more detailed and rich information available than the appearance of having cribbed his statement from Wikipedia.
Nothing wrong with Wiki, especially if one follows the notes into source material, but as a basis for a plagiarized statement by a presidential candidate on a current war? No thanks.
You’re right, and I guess that was really EW’s point, too.
But the fact that he cribbed from the wiki on this won’t impress the public. His “expertize” is a fraud, and we need to demonstrate that, but we need to do it in ways the public understands. We need the equivalent of Bentson’s take-down of Dan Quayle. Unfortunately, however, Quayle’s imbecility did not drag down his ticket to defeat.
Bob in HI
Disagree. This betrays two things about McCain:
1) His admitted computer illiteracy shows he did not write this speech so his alleged expertise is supplied by aides.
2) I would be willing to accept that if the expertise rose to a level higher than I could provide – but this proves that McSame’s aides are just hacks who are willing to plagiarize a web site open to all to gain political advantage.
This is an issue and it totally undercuts any credibility McCain has as an expert on foreign affairs – as if we neede more. The question? Will the traditional media say ANYTHING about this.
I don’t know, EW – when I’m trying to sound smart, I plagerize you…That’s just what guys with little brains, like Grumpy, and me do when we can’t come up with some shiny riff of our own…
Just trust the deep thinkers in our media. Here’s Chuck Todd scratching his head (these are just his “First Thoughts”, mind you):
I think Pootie feels free to act in Georgia because he knows that we’re stretched thin as parchment paper in Iraq and Afghanistan, and anyway we prolly don’t even have any ships in the Mediterranean right now. So, if any further instruction on the limits of imperial power were needed, here’s another lesson for us.
Bob in HI
More to the point, he’s freer to act because that stooge sent 2000 troops off as Halliburton mercenaries instead of keeping them at home to defend their country (Putin is displeased that we’re bring them back). It’s not as if a small Caucasian nation hasn’t fended off a Russian attack before.
i thought justin raimondo summed it up pretty good re georgia/russia and the typical knee jerk response from the political bozos, not to mention the mainstream media joke… The Real Aggressor
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13285
If I were the Georgians, I would be a little pissed off with Scheunemann. They paid him big bucks to lobby for them and he can’t even pull off a speech without plagiarizing Wikipedia.
But he probabaly came up with “Rose Revolution”.
scheunemann is helping in so far as he still has mccains ear, if one can call that help, lol. he only stopped being a paid lobbyist for georgia march of this year… http://rawstory.com/news/2008/….._0810.html
Don’t disregard the possibility that McCain staffers are changing Georgia’s Wikipedia page to suit his future speeches.
Oh bob…this wouldn’t be acceptable for a 5th grader, let alone a high school student (and I know, as I have one of each in public school). Kids get failing grades for this kind of behavior.
It doesn’t matter if it’s Wikipedia (although the laziness of cutting and pasting is remarkable), or Encyclopedia Brittanica. It’s the repeating of what is little more than a collective wisdom — rather than the expression of knowledge that has been acquired from independent sources, digested and analyzed to create a singular policy that’s a hallmark of this person’s ability to lead — that is unacceptable.
This wrinkly white-haired dude is unable to develop a thought for himself that has not be pre-packaged and canned for him by equally lazy campaign-staffers-cum-future-administration-officials.
Can you imagine the lackluster-to-damaging nature of a foreign policy pulled on a systematic basis from any form of encyclopedia, glued to an underlying corporatist ideology?
Can you imagine hiring anybody to work for you who is unable to do their own research, let alone hire a team that cannot do it?
Gah.
There is only one possibly worse situation here, and that is if the same team actually posted the content to Wikipedia before lifting it.
Rayne,
I work for a research and training center. We write reports for a state agency funded largely by the feds. We work with advisory committees consisting of panels of professionals, who are supposed to advise the state agency on goals and objectives for the coming year.
Do you know what I’m being told? My 50-page reports are “too long”. I get complaints about footnotes. My boss tells me that end notes are preferable to footnotes, and that no notes at all are even better, because “people won’t read them.” A constant refrain around here is “too much information.” The chair of one of the advisory board’s subcommittees wants one page of bullets rather than a 50 page report. And these people are supposed to be professionals.
So why do you think that your average voter wants to know where McCain learned that Georgia was “one of the world’s first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion”? I don’t think they give a rat’s ass. They care only if the information is wrong, or deceptive. Do you really expect footnotes in a political speech? That would be unbelievably pedantic. “Too much information.” It would be different if it was a “White Paper” published by the campaign in support of a campaign position.
It would also be different if it were offered as justification for military action, or a major federal initiative costing taxpayer dollars. We needed the footnotes for Colin Powell’s speech to the UN about Iraq’s WMD. That’s a situation where sources become important.
But most voters are overwhelmed with information these days, and they want less, rather than more. They want to know who they can trust.
The most effective campaign for Obama against McCain is that you can’t trust him. That’s where you badger his flip flops where first he says one thing, and then another.
Bob in HI
And I manage an online news outlet, providing news that the mainstream media either ignores or half-heartedly covers. I’ve also got experience in corporate communications.
It’s not that people are overwhelmed with info; they aren’t getting info they can digest and use readily.
I recommend heartily using Information Mapping techniques for your business purposes (Google up “Robert Horn + Information Mapping”).
But for a presidential candidate not to have access to his own, original content and his own policy? that’s bullshit — especially if you’re a multi-term Senator with access to research resources that you should have been using for years as part of your job, PARTICULARLY if you’ve been a leading member of the Armed Services Committee.
Rayne–
Thanks. I’ll have to study this method in more detail. One of our additional challenges is that the head of the agency that we’re contracted with is blind. And so is the new chair of the advisory committee.
We’ll have to see if this old dog (me, not the wrinkly white-haired dude) can learn this new trick.
Bob in HI
Hey bob — that info mapping has been a godsend in difficult communications. I have to thank a certain Fortune 100 company often seen as evil for requiring as a core curriculum a class in info mapping for all employees. It’s an absolute must in technical documentation. It makes emails so much more effective
Info Mapping is based on the theory that humans have an optimum info uptake rate of 5 to 9 bits of information at a time.
To speed uptake, break info into chunks.
Chunk sizes are 5 pieces (5 words, 5 sentences, 5 paragraphs at a time) for persons who are new to a subject.
Use up to 9 pieces in a chunk for persons who are more familiar with a subject.
Using this method, you can transmit the same info with a fraction of the words, in a fraction of the time.
And you can still preserve the footnotes for persons who need more data.
I don’t envy your additional challenge of accessibility — but perhaps info mapping will make that more manageable.
That’s one of the saddest anecdotes I’ve heard in a long time Bob. One page of bullet points? How can he understand?
You do realize though, the power that gives you? If they don’t understand anything, you can feed them any plausible sounding BS and get them to do what you want.
This is why Bill Clinton read the entire report, all the appendices and the footnotes when he was president. Which is why his policies, agree or disagree with them, generally worked.
It’s not like anyone else grew up reading Cliff Notes and Classics Illustrated.
why can’t you write the report properly and then attach a ‘bullet points’ page on the top? they can act like the bullet sheet is for the meeting about it.
Did McCain find anything on Wikipedia that explains the presence of both Blackwater mercs and Israeli Advisors in the midst of the offensive against civilians?
That is an interesting wrinkle, isn’t it? Also quite funny: see the McCain staffers typing away wiki updates. Do you think Jon Stewart has this yet?
Bobschacht’s points taken, but this appears that this was McCain’s chance to seem statesmanlike and exploit it being a scary world out there, and he has just laid himself open to be made fun of. That’s almost pitiable.
And in the speech he suggests that NATO revisit membership for Georgia! You need a better reason for Georgia to be a member than simply Russia threatening them. This could be seen as a threat to isolate Russia for the near future.
Can you imagine the lackluster-to-damaging nature of a foreign policy pulled on a systematic basis from any form of encyclopedia, glued to an underlying corporatist ideology?
Isn’t this what we have been experiencing for the last 40 years? One drone for the corporatocracy after another.
wrinkly white haired drone. dude.
Think about this in relation to the news that McCain’s new minders are monitoring his phone use and so on–to isolate and minimize gaffes.
But does that mean those same handlers have put themselves in charge of McCain’s public foreign policy speeches? Bad as Sheunemann is, I’d be appalled if this speech were written without his input. Yet, if you had his input, presumably you’d have sources of knowledge besides Wikipedia.
Which begs the questions:
– if Scheunemann’s the minder for Georgian policy, why use Wikipedia? because Scheunemann knew the source for the content in Wikipedia?
– or did Scheunemann not have access to his own Georgian resources and they swagged it, because that’s how Scheunemann always operates?
– or did they deliberately and cynically use Wikipedia because their idiot supporters trust anything they read from Wikipedia?
– or are they all bordering on brain-dead, relying on another Regent University graduate junior staffer to whip up a speech on the spur of the moment?
I can come up with more questions, but they’re all pretty grim. I cannot believe that we might have a nearly even chance in some states to be ruled by a Wikipedia president.
I’d much rather have Jimmy Wales.
Yeah, my guess was on the Regent U grad. That Rove’s buddies have put Regent U idiots in charge of McCain, up to and including foreign policy speeches.
Remember when his campaign manager corrected McCain on t.v stating “well he didn’t really mean that” in regard to whether or not he would raise taxes. McCaine wouldn’t promise he would, wouldn’t promise he wouldn’t. I thought it was hilarious (and damn frightening) that his campaign talking head manager would come on t.v and “correct him”. (NO NEW TAXES-I AM A REPUBLICAN, (except for poor people)HEAR ME ROAR)
I have a feeling this is why they don’t care how old you are when you represent them. (and that’s not meant to say that there aren’t brilliant capable 70 year olds out there…but Reagan was semi impaired before the end of his reign, bush jr had cheney to keep him on the straight and narrow, and now McCain) I think their choice of nominees could say something about their priorities. Or am I stretching it?
this morning in San Francisco:
http://freewayblogger.blogspot…..cisco.html
gorgeous, some of them…
Lazy and stupid? EW, I think you’ve found the perfect descriptors for McShame!
McCain can claim that this plagerism prooves that he knows how to get around the internet. He’s not old! He’s Modern!
I don’t think we should discourage McCain from checking wiki . . . Probably wiser/safer than relying on his advisers.
I hope that the story lines that McCain is ready to lead and that McCain is a foregin affairs expert die soon. There is no evidence that either is true.
I wonder if the new McCain campaign rules about lobbyists prevent Randy from advising McCain about Georgia, since he so recently accepted money from them?
Of course, Georgia having hired Randy is not an indication that Randy knows anything about historic Georgia, I suppose.
Pretty funny……go to MyrtleBeachGolf.com
I guess this means Johnny McTeleprompter as president will read from My Pet Goat in a time of crisis instead of just reading it as his predecessor did.
What gets me is his using windmills in his ad
as though he has any intention of actually building one!
So, John McCain believes in democracy after all?
for more, see http://koulflo.wordpress.com/2…..gn-policy/
i meant at the end, as a summary. i would want the full report, i’m sure there are some who would require it.
Your 75 is the direction we’re heading. That’s what “Executive Summaries” are for. Its kinda like an abstract, but with different formatting rules. We now call my full report a “technical report.”
The previous acting agency head actually read my reports, and would poke holes in it when I goofed up. The present head was appointed by our Republican governor. {cough. full stop.}
Bob in HI
plunger–riga conference. 2006
http://64.233.167.104/custom?q…..#038;gl=us
if the experts are reading wiki, what does that make me ???
I don’t have to read wiki to know this stuff
am I a Maven, a Savant
what ???
is there a word for people who know stuff the “Experts” got no clue about ???
oh, yeah
Democrat
that’ll do
Hey, I’m not saying that Wikipedia is of the quality of the Encyclopedia Britannica, but there’s good information to be found at the Wiki. Just don’t assume it’s 100% correct without checking.
Plagiarism, that’s a different issue.
There are a lot of wikipedia spinoffs. Google has one coming where the “expert” has control of his content.
Knol
There’s also
citizendium
and
Veropedia
The difference in these other three is that anybody can’t edit, and the attempt is made to verify the information.
Some of the best articles at wikipedia are the disputes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W…..g_disputes
So much for John McCain’s “honor.”
From the website of the United States Naval Academy:
(emphasis added)
If McCain were back at his old alma mater as a student, the Brigade Honor Committee would likely look on his plagiarism very, very sternly. Cadets have been kicked out for this kind of thing.
What? John McCain has no honor? I am shocked, shocked to hear such a thing!
So, John McCain’s been on the phone with the Georgian leader and all over the TV condemning Russia. Do we need to remind Mr. McCain of the Logan Act? Most accusations of violating the Logan Act are pretty silly, but take a close look at what McCain is doing. He’s clearly inserting himself into a controversy between the U.S. and Russia. The Logan Act reads:
If McCain is making private assurances to the Georgian government, he’s almost certainly moving beyond what the State Department is willing to do right now.
Likely true. But to tag along with those earlier carping about the State sending off a mid-level blank while Condi maintains her vacation; there really is something to the complaint. First off, it really does demonstrate how impotent we are; and secondly it shows, once again, how pitiful Rice is as a Secretary of State in light of the fact that her supposed specialty is in Russian matters. Guess that wasn’t good for much. The US foreign policy vis a vis Russia has totally screwed the pooch; and now the poor pooch has been run over.
One of the reasons that the less authoritarian party in this country loses so much is that they cede too much to the right. Just do a google search for Obama Logan Act and you’ll see that the right is quite happy tossing that old chestnut around. This is one case where I think the center-right (i.e. the Dems) should respond in kind.
I have no problem with those 16 words. hehe.
The scrutiny of a campaign and McCain’s move to the right has revealed a less then supple mind. He has struggled with the shifts in policy and tone. Regardless of how strategy is determined, I don’t think he works it out himself, even if just to sell it convincingly. This apart from whether he’s hired bright and principled staff.
Talking about coming back/not coming back from vacation…
So, I know you’ve all been asking, what have those ultra-professional eagle eye prosecutors and agents of our crack Federal Law Enforcement apparatus been doing with their time since their sterling handling of Tommy Kontogiannis ended? Well, now we know:
Well now we know. Our crackerjack boys have been twiddling their thumbs as their own informant helped run the biggest credit and debit card theft and fraud ring in the world. To be fair, it was the Secret Service this time instead of the FBI in the role of agents, but the same Department of Justice would have been supervising. Brilliant eh?
OMG.
Cindy Sheehan Qualifies to Run for Pelosi’s Seat
Time to run her Pelossiness and her $10,000/day outfits out. She’s served as Bush’s pissing tree for way too long.
But why would John McCain be dishing on what needs to be done with regard to Georgia/Russia at all? Can you imagine the flack if Obama had been giving a speech of this type?
Is Obama’s sourcing, oh so much better:
Yahoo.
Here’s a transcript of the conversation for you.
“Yo Condi–
How come you posed purported Russian expert and you’ve fucked up everything you’ve touched?”
Condi’s not his sourcing. He’s asking the morons in the Bush administration how they’re going to clean up the mess they’ve made and how many more messes they’re leaving for him to clean up.
The list is growing exponentially bigger. Condi Rice is not on Obama’s foreign policy team.
I dare say he was seeking credible information or at least information he could verify. By the way is there really much dispute that Georgia has had an institutional Christian element since the 4th Century? We can do better in a time of international crisis than to quibble over the authenticity and attribution of generally verifiable assertions.
I think our time may be better spent in attempting to verify the conflicting justifications for military violence in Ossetia and Georgia. Russia, with a speed that betrays any honest effort of diligent verification, claims first 2000 dead then 1600 dead citing genocide, civilian killings, the killing of women and children and the defiling of graves. This clearly is a calculated reflection of the rhetoric of US and Western foreign policy over the last 15 years. Check out russiatoday.ru and you can verify the intensity of this characterization. Analogies are being drawn in these sources to US treatment of Afghani and Iraqi civilians. Georgia cites Russian incited Ossetian violence in outlying hamlets the night before is their movement last week as provocation.
But Georgia lacks the broad scope media where with all of the Russians. Western media outlets have had to rely on even more nebulous general themes in matching the Russians glossing over many of the Russian accusations that Georgian leadership is criminal. Here we do have sourcing and verification issues that are begging for the kind of forensic analysis that the folks around here can provide.
Please ignore the “is” in this sentence. I am.
NYT on Ivins:
I’ve been saying that for months back in the Hatfill articles by Marcy which invoked the consummately stupid use of puppy dogs by the stupid FBI and stupid DOJ.
And to continue with the doggie theme, getting the anthrax out of the jaws of those 400 labs that have been spawned and 15000 workers is going to be like pulling a favorite rope toy out of the jaws of a pit bull.
It’s going to be damned hard to put the anthrax genie in the bottle.
And as I’ve been saying, and Elisa Harris echos, we ain’t got no plan and we ain’t got no defense against acute anthrax. We have 60 million vaccines that are meant to be used against cutaneous anthrax, not fatal pulmonary anthrax that must be given over 18 months to confer immunity.
If someone drops a pound of anthrax over San Diego this morning, 100,000 people are dead quickly.
Add plagiarizing Michael Myers’ Wayne’s World for his campaign ads to the list.