Word.

Speak your own mind, and if you can't, at least give credit, you hacks. ;)

Working with the Melania speech was a no-win mission. She was going to get what she wanted and no one was going to argue with her for fear of the wrath of Donald. As long as Melania got what she wanted "all was well". Does anyone argue with the boss' wife?

Who cares... Seriously, if you're so butt-hurt about someone lifting a few lines from someone elses speech then you need to reevaluate your life.

To quote Hillary when discussing a more serious topic....WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE???

Joe Biden's act of plagiarism was more extensive than Peralta and his quoted source state. Biden's ancestors worked 12 hours a day in coal mines, Kinnock's only worked 8! As per the NYT, Biden "lifted Mr. Kinnock's closing speech with phrases, gestures and lyrical Welsh syntax intact for his own closing speech at a debate at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 23 - without crediting Mr. Kinnock."
http://www.nytimes.com/1987...

But, the circumstances were more complicated. Biden used variants on these lines frequently. They were part of his stump speech. And it was reported that he credited Kinnock on numerous occasions prior to the televised comments. I cut the man some slack for telling variants on the same story multiple times a day, and eventually growing lax about crediting a UK politician that most Iowan primary voters had never heard of. What's much more problematic is that Biden probably didn't even have a coal miner in his family, as the last two paragraphs of the above Times article comically attest.

The speeches of most Republican and Democratic politicians- original or plagiarized-are utterly forgettable but have a unity of purpose: they invariably bless the market place values of the capitalist way of life. More often than not the words are original but the " message " is false. How can any honest soul heap praises on a rotten economic system that perpetuates war and so much mass misery ?
For more than a hundred years democratic socialists have told the damning truth about world capitalism. Working class people should be able to vote this system out of existence.
They support neither fascism nor the insufferable status quo.Both disdain the common good.

Let's not get too carried away with this issue of plagiarism. Don't forget the legitimate practice of "fair use." As regards publishing and copyright law, it is generally regarded as acceptable for publishers and authors to quote up to 200 words without getting approval. Further, some consider anything on the internet as being in the public domain (i.e. wikipedia, etc.) and acceptable to cut and paste.

Just for fun, I exercised a little fair use/public domain by cutting and pasting from the internet what it says about fair use:

"(in US copyright law) the doctrine that brief excerpts of copyright material may, under certain circumstances, be quoted verbatim for purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, and research, without the need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder."

There's a difference between fair use doctrine and unattributed use.

HRC as FLOTUS was enabler in chief for her s e x harassing husband. How does that compare to what Melania did with a few words from a bad speech by Mrs Obama?????

The, "values," comment came right out of a speech given by Elizabeth Dole on August 14th, 1996.

Michelle is probably hoping that people will leave the fact checking alone before more is discovered.

Speech writers can be downright sleazy.

What do they have in common? They fuel the imaginations of people who still think phrenology is science.

Um, yeah. It's called forensics and pathology.

We were actually just talking about you over on another thread.. The one about how all Americans are completely insane and live their entire lives inside "Imagination Land"..

These are all wonderful examples of expressing the same thing as someone else (in some cases sentiment and others fact), and paraphrasing someone in tribute. They don't compare to outright copying someone while claiming originality.

So many meaningless words fly over the page, and air, who cares? This was written by me!

There is nothing new under the sun

Isn't that called "paraphrasing"? Like when reporters paraphrase articles from the AP? Or students paraphrase from Wikipedia? Like what we were taught to do in school? Assignment for tonight : write a sonnet in Shakespearean style. Really, Melania was probably just handed a speech written by a lazy speech writer who paraphrased other popular speeches.

Oh come one...even I don't buy that....it was 90 pecent word for word. Even so a close paraphrase (you should have learned in school) is still supposed to be cited.

Oh, and i recall that Obama had the same speech writer as Duval Patrick.

Where did Melania graduate from college? I'd like to see the long-form diploma.

She didn't. She "attended"

But she said she graduated.

You mean like when Oprah called Obama "the one"

I didn't think Obama's was all that special. Similar, yes, but both of them were vamping on Hamlet Act 2, Sc. 2. Plus, the quotations they were citing were pretty obvious choices.

By the same virtue, I think the McCain one is just silly: how else can you give a factual timeline except to list the facts and the times?

she is pretty cute.....does anything else really matter?

Why would you care if she is cute or not?

why wouldn't I care......? should I not care?

Chelsea gave the speech to Ivanka. Ivanka gave it to Melania. Melania liked parts of it and changed parts of it. Hillary's team was first to point it out to the media. Anything to keep everyone from thinking about how awful it would be to have Bill living in the White House again.

Libs will hyperfocus on this for the next 4 months and when they finally look up from their laptops, Trump will be president and they'll be confused.

okay so both had aid from the same speech writers. who would have thunk. or maybe the two women share the same experience and intelligence.

If its because of a speech writer fess up! Don't keep claiming originality when obviously there's nothing original about it.

I am waiting for Hillary to apologize for posing as a decent and truthful human being.
It'll be a very long wait.

Since it's not anything that anyone would bother to wonder about, I guess if you want to sit in your room and dream of a time when your fantasies come true, you probably won't be annoying anyone else.

Utterly trivial news ! You would think that Melania Trump was submitting a thesis on the political philosophy of her husband for a Harvard University Phd.
American capitalist society is cracking up ! As if intellectual integrity were sacrosanct in presidential politics. Take Brian Williams out of TV news exile to interview Melania Trump .

Much as I despise Trump, I despise the Plagiarism Police far more. They are the lowest of intellectual bottom-feeders. McCain's remarks on Georgia are similar to Politico's because there are very few ways to string those facts together and they will inevitably be similar. If it matters, like Walsh's degree, then it's important. For a speech. Who cares?

Oh, by the way, I'm a retired college professor with 36 years experience. Most style guides are worthless on this subject because the excerpts they use are so short there's no effective way to say things without being similar to something else. How many ways can you say "The Civil War began when the South fired on Fort Sumter?" I just Googled that exact phrase, with quotes, and got 1410 hits. Without them, I got 187,000, the vast majority of which would count as "plagiarism" according to the Plagiarism Police.

Melania would look better without that big orange zit.

So would the country.

Wait--Politicians aren't being honest? Stop the presses!
Oh, this is a radio program? Sorry...

If you are a college sophomore , you soon learn that the 9th circle of Academia Hell is reserved for shameless plagiarists. But a politician's wife ? Donald Trump's attractive wife ? A future First Lady ? The big " news " this morning seemed exceptionally trivial in view of all the really important news stories. Like a world in chaos !

But consider the substance of the plagiarized message : good people work hard and love and respect everybody -even incorrigible political enemies . Right up there with the original Jesus " Sermon on the Mount ".
We should forgive all such well meaning , benevolent plagiarism from whatever self-serving source.

One more time folks: Melania is not running for elected office She is campaigning for someone who is. Her name isn't gonna be on the ballot anywhere in the USA. That alone keeps her out of the category occupied by Biden and Obama who also stole words.

Well, the politician who is running, hired her speech writer...

Apparently he's not so rich after all.

It was 57 words in a 5 minute address. Most but not all were arranged the same way as Michelle’s. Did Melania or her speech writer not know? Were they Michelle’s words, or from some other source altogether? The bottom line is that in the context of political speeches, a lot of material gets passed around. Many themes are invoked over and over with stock language. Obama and Biden have done some very non-trivial plagiarization that Dems conveniently want to ignore. In this case, somebody screwed up - but it’s truly trivial.. Dems are desperate to negate the draw that Melania will obviously have. But hyping this will only backfire. Move On

MO 2008: "because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach --- of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them."
MT 2016: "Because we want our children --------------------------- in this nation --- to know that the only limit to ------------------ your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work ------- for them."

Why would it be important to anyone else that you wonder such things?

Yeah, Melanija will have a draw. Kim Kardashian also has a draw.

And just for the record - her English is absolutely horrible.