Former Trump National Security pick, scandalized by charges of plagiarism, will now lobby for powerful Ukrainian oligarch.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

A would-be Trump White House appointee who withdrew in the face of plagiarism allegations is now lobbying on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch who has recently advocated greater concessions to the Russian government, according to newly filed documents. 

Monica Crowley told the Justice Department's National Security Division that she will represent billionaire Victor Pinchuk in discussions with U.S. government officials “and other policy makers” regarding “issues of concern to Mr. Pinchuk.” 

Crowley, a Fox News contributor, was in line for a senior post at the White House National Security Council until reports from CNN and Politico reported that she had plagiarized large portions of her 2012 book What the (Bleep) Just Happened and her Columbia University Ph.D. dissertation.

Now isn't THAT interesting?

By the way Pinchuk, the Ukrainian oligarch Crowley would be lobbying for, has demonstrated pro-Russian sentiments and has written a column suggesting that Ukraine abandon plans to join the EU and instead acquiesce to Russia's intervention.

But of course you probably already assumed as much.

I swear, they are not even trying to hide this shit anymore.

Monica Crowley drops out as Trump's foreign policy advisor over plagiarism scandal.

Courtesy of the Washington Times:  

GOP foreign policy adviser Monica Crowley said Monday she will relinquish the senior job she’d been poised to take in the Trump White House. 

Ms. Crowley, who had been tapped to be senior director of strategic communications at the National Security Council, had been dogged in recent weeks by questions about whether she lifted portions of her past written work from other writers. Her move seemed designed to keep that from becoming a distraction as the Trump team prepares to take office.“

After much reflection I have decided to remain in New York to pursue other opportunities and will not be taking a position in the incoming administration,” she said in a statement. “I greatly appreciate being asked to be part of President-elect Trump’s team and I will continue to enthusiastically support him and his agenda for American renewal.” 

She was to have worked for National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general.

I have to admit that I am a little surprised, I thought lying and cheating were prerequisites for a job with the Trump administration. 

There was so many instances of plagiarism that Harper Collins decided to pull her book "What the (Bleep) Just Happened" off of store bookshelves.

Well that's one down, I wonder how many scandals will be uncovered concerning the rest of Trump's administration?

The Late Show features the best Melania Trump impersonator ever, and the Trump campaign finally got a scapegoat for "speech-gate."

I actually think that speech would have gone over better than the one that Melania actually gave.

In other news the Trumps have thrown some woman named Meredith McIver under the bus as the bitch who wrote those plagiarized portions of Melania's speech.

Here is her Everipedia page, which totally does not look like it was thrown together in a hurry.

(Some are even wondering if a Meredith McIver actually exists.)

Interestingly enough if this is all true it may cause a completely different problem.

Courtesy of the Washington Post: 

But there's another problem. Notice the letterhead of the statement: The Trump Organization, which is to say Donald Trump's personal business. And notice how McIver describes herself: As an employee of the Trump Organization, not the campaign. 

If Trump used corporate resources to write a political speech, that could be illegal. 

"On the face of it, this looks like a corporate violation," explained Lawrence Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center. And that is "a violation of federal law. It can result in civil penalties to the corporation and the campaign." If the campaign used corporate resources "willingly and knowingly," the offense is a criminal one.

Anybody need a refill on popcorn?

So apparently in the Trump family plagiarism is not a bug, it's a feature. Update!

👀 pic.twitter.com/QEftnTTwy3

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) July 20, 2016

Courtesy of NBC News: 

For the second night in a row, a speech given by a member of Donald Trump's family is raising eyebrows for lines previously used elsewhere. 

Donald Trump Jr. in his headline address at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland delivered a near-exact repetition of a small part of an American Conservative article written by F.H. Buckley, titled "Trump vs. the New Class." 

"Our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class. Now they're stalled on the ground floor. They're like Soviet-Era Department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers," Trump's son said in his speech Tuesday night. 

The line in Buckley's article reads, "Our schools and universities are like the old Soviet department stores whose mission was to serve the interests of the sales clerks and not the customers."

Two convention speeches, two charges of plagiarism.

I can hardly wait to see who Eric Trump plagiarizes tonight.

My money is on either Bill Clinton or Spongebob Squarepants. Or, perhaps both.

Speaking of plagiarized speeches, after revealing that the first draft of Melania's speech did not contain the portions "borrowed" from Michelle Obama, they have now decided that those were the fault of former ballet dancer and English Major Meredith McIver.

Personally I'm a little surprised, I always thought that former ballet dancers were the shit when it came to speech writing.

Update: Courtesy of Vox:  

"I was a principal speechwriter for the speech," Buckley told Vox. "So it's not an issue." 

So here's the difference, and it's big: Melania Trump's convention speech copied whole paragraphs from Michelle Obama's convention speech. That's not okay. Don Trump Jr.'s speech was written by a speechwriter who used some of his past material in the speech. You can argue whether that's the height of speechwriting, but there's nothing unethical about it — it would be a very weird standard to argue that writers couldn't take a line they were proud of writing in a small-circulation policy magazine and let a political figure they like use it in a major national speech.

Okay so here's the question that we have to ask ourselves.

DID F.H. Buckley help to write the speech, after all he was not given credit at the outset, or is this the Trump way of providing cover for yet another example of plagiarism.

I do not know the answer to that question for certain, but let's just say that I remain skeptical that things are ever the way that Donald Trump or his handlers say that they are.

Update 2: Donald Trump has now decided to see all of this controversy as a good thing.

Good news is Melania's speech got more publicity than any in the history of politics especially if you believe that all press is good press!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 20, 2016

The media is spending more time doing a forensic analysis of Melania's speech than the FBI spent on Hillary's emails.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 20, 2016

Well, I guess if you are a serial liar what else can you do but obfuscate? 

By most accounts Melania Trump gave a speech as good as Michelle Obama's speech in 2008. In fact it was Michelle Obama's speech from 2008. Update!

So that's pretty blatant, right? pic.twitter.com/EPnHME7afV

— Mike Hearn (@mikehearn) July 19, 2016

Courtesy of Vox: 

One of the more uplifting sections in Melania Trump’s convention speech tonight was virtually identical to a passage from Michelle Obama’s convention speech in 2008.

I kind of exaggerated how much of the speech was plagiarized in the headline for comedic value, but it IS still a speech given by a wannabe First Lady that borrows liberally from a speech given by the current First Lady, so it is definitely worthy of mocking.

What's more it speaks to the sloppiness of the Trump campaign which has been pointed out again and again. After all how you run your campaign is a voter's first hint as to how you will run the country.

And so far it appears that Trump would run it into the ground.

Speaking of the campaign Trump's campaign manager knows just whose fault all of this is....Hillary's.

Courtesy of Politico: 

But Tuesday morning on CNN’s “New Day,” Manafort categorically denied that Melania Trump’s speech had been lifted in any way from remarks by Obama or anyone else. 

“I thought Melania Trump hit it out of the park when she talked about her love of family, the feeling of an immigrant that comes to this country and succeeds,” Manafort said. “And I thought that the feeling she has towards her husband and her depiction of the real Donald Trump came through loud and clear.” 

“There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech. These are common words and values that she cares about her family, things like that,” he continued when asked by anchor Chris Cuomo about the plagiarism allegations. “I mean, she was speaking in front of 35 million people last night. She knew that. To think that she would be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy. This is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, how she seeks out to demean her and take her down. It's not going to work.” 

For the record news outlets and folks on social media were already pointing out the plagiarism well before anybody on the Clinton campaign got around to tweeting it out.

Besides I think we all know where the blame really lies.

Yep, that makes sense.

Update: Jokes on you liberals, Melania Trump did not plagiarize Michelle Obama. She plagiarized Twilight Sparkle.

Here is the RNC'a chief strategist citing My Little Pony to argue that Melania Trump did not plagiarize her speech pic.twitter.com/eRifu41wHC

— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) July 19, 2016

Damn, just how deep is this rabbit hole? 

A graphic from one of our faithful readers.

Notice how completely sensible it sounds before Sarah Palin steals it and poops all over it.

Hey do you remember how Sarah Palin piled on with criticizing Steve Scalise for "palling around" with racists? Can you spell "hypocrite?" Update!

Scalise and Boehner went to visit Palin in Alaska and they all color coordinated pic.twitter.com/yRRqZUyZnX
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) June 19, 2014

(Steve Scalise in the guy on the far right.)

Gee it seems like just yesterday that Palin was agreeing with Mark Levin that Rep. Steve Scalise is a naughty naughty racist man who should lose his job, with absolutely NO mention of the fact that she once posed for a photo-op with both he and John Boehner.

Oh wait, it was yesterday.

The Twitter account is for one Benny Johnson who is a serial plagiarist who at the time of this tweet was still working for Buzzfeed. (He now works for the conservative National Review, where things like making shit up and stealing from others is much more accepted.)

Now there is still the possibility that this picture is photo-shopped, though it is hard to imagine why one would do so in June of 2014. By July of that year Palin and Boehner were trading barbs over the idea of impeaching the President, but in June everything seemed relatively calm.

I mean it's not like Palin is so desperate for attention that she will pose for a picture with anyone even remotely well known even if she does not agree with them politi....yeah the picture's most likely real.

So gee it looks like Rep. Scalise has a history of hanging out with racists.

Update: Yeah I'm thinking that if the photo is real it is from 2008. And that link really suggests that it is real.

(And thanks to the anonymous commenter who sent me that link by the way.)

Update 2: Oh yeah it's real.

Update: Boom!

Hey remember how Rand Paul is now off the hook about stealing the NSA lawsuit from that guy? Yeah, not so much.

Courtesy of Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: 

The intrigue over the authorship of Sen. Rand Paul’s NSA lawsuit continues. In a column posted Wednesday, I wrote that constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein had been unceremoniously dropped from the complaint after writing it, that he had been replaced on the complaint by former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, and that Fein had not been fully paid for his work. I quoted his spokeswoman and ex-wife, Mattie Fein, accusing Cuccinelli of stealing Fein’s work. 

After furious complaints from Paul advisers, Fein issued a statement Thursday saying: “Mattie Lolavar was not speaking for me. Her quotes were her own and did not represent my views. I was working on a legal team, and have been paid for my work.”

So that's it right? I mean Rand Paul's history of plagiarism and stealing the intellectual property of others has come to an end.

I mean it's not like somebody has e-mails which contradict this story.

Wait, there ARE e-mails? 

Here is the first email Fein wrote, which he sent to Doug Stafford, Paul’s top political advisor. 

On Feb 12, 2014, at 1:56 PM, “Bruce Fein” b*****@thelichfieldgroup.com wrote: 

Dear Doug, 

The protocols for preparing and filing the class action complaint today were hugely suboptimal. 

My name was not on the complaint despite the fact that it was predominantly my work product over several weeks and two hundred hours of research, meetings, and drafting. Ken never showed me the final complaint before submission. My name could not be on the complaint under DC Bar Rules because I could not prepare a timely engagement letter. I was never informed until yesterday by Ken of the details of the collaborative arrangement between FreedomWorks and Rand for litigating and paying for the lawsuit. I promptly revised the engagement letter when the information was received, and it has been forwarded via Ken to Rand and FreedomWorks. 

I did not learn of the date for filing except by inadvertence from Ken a few days ago. 

I was not included in any briefing of Rand about the complaint before filing and press conference today despite the fact that I know vastly more about the Fourth Amendment issue and the history of NSA surveillance than anyone else on the team. 

All of this has been especially distressing because I have been an impeccable team player from the outset. I did not ask for an upfront retainer. I did not publicize my role to the media. I heavily discounted my fees. I shared my work product freely with Ken. I responded to all of Ken’s inquiries with alacrity. And I have eagerly defended Rand in the past on Fourth Amendment issues in the media. 

Yet I was excluded from key decision points leading up to the filing of the complaint and press conference as though I could not be trusted. I was not only excluded from meetings. I was never informed that they took place and what the decisions were. 

My marginalization was thoroughly unfair. Going forward, I expect complete transparency and inclusion on all non-trivial decisions. My name will be on all future pleadings. Ken and I plan to meet shortly to discuss these matters. 

My outstanding invoice for work indispensable to the lawsuit should be paid no later than Friday, February 14, an expectation which is completely justified in light of all the circumstances. Please alert me if the work description on the invoice needs alteration. 

Thanks for your attention to these matters. 

Bruce Fein

Wow, if I did not know any better I would think that this, and all the other e-mails that Dana Milbank has in his possession, prove that Paul's people pressured Mr. Fein into lying in order to protect a man with presidential aspirations.

But that would make Rand Paul a lying douchebag. And nobody thinks that, right?

Plagiarist extraordinaire Rand Paul has even been caught plagiarizing his lawsuit against the NSA.

I swear the lawsuit is as original to me as the hair on my head.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been caught using purloined passages in several of his speeches. Now the aspiring presidential candidate stands accused of filing a lawsuit stolen from its author. 

Since December, the libertarian lawmaker, a tea party favorite, had been working with former Reagan administration lawyer Bruce Fein to draft a class-action suit seeking to have the National Security Agency’s surveillance of telephone data declared unconstitutional; the two men appeared together as early as last June to denounce the NSA’s activities. 

But when Paul filed his suit at the U.S. District Court in Washington on Wednesday morning, Fein’s name had been replaced with that of Ken Cuccinelli, the failed Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia who until last month had been the state’s attorney general. Cuccinelli has never argued a case in that courthouse, and he isn’t even a member of the D.C. bar (he also filed a motion Wednesday seeking an exception to allow him to argue this case in D.C.). But he is, like Paul, a tea party darling. 

Fein, who has not been paid in full for his legal work by Paul’s political action committee, was furious that he had been omitted from the filing he wrote. “I am aghast and shocked by Ken Cuccinelli’s behavior and his absolute knowledge that this entire complaint was the work product, intellectual property and legal genius of Bruce Fein,” Mattie Fein, his ex-wife and spokeswoman, told me Wednesday. “Ken Cuccinelli stole the suit,” she said, adding that Paul, who “already has one plagiarism issue, now has a lawyer who just takes another lawyer’s work product.”

Yeah nothing undermines a suit against stealing people's data without their knowledge like having the lawsuit itself be stolen from the author without his knowledge.

I know that Rand Paul is making a play for the disenfranchised young voters that supposedly feel disappointed in Obama, but if he wants to demonstrate his integrity by comparison, he might want to actually develop some first.

Before this he was trying to appeal to female voters by using her husband's sexual dalliance to attack Hillary Clinton.

Next he will probably make a play for the Hispanic vote by demanding that they learn to speak English.

Disgraced due to charges of plagiarism, and with no credibility remaining, where could Rand Paul possibly get a job writing a column? Go ahead, take a guess.

"I'm back!"

Courtesy of Breitbart:

Breitbart News Network is pleased to announce that it will be the new home of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's editorial column. 

Did you guess? 

Of COURSE Breitbart is willing to take Rand Paul! After all where else are journalistic ethics and the use of facts as frowned upon as much as over at Andrew Breitbart's stillborn hate child?

I swear I don't know how sites like the Onion can stay in business with reality being so much like parody these days. 

Update: This could be Paul's header for his pieces in Breitbart.

Seems fitting.

Amid charges of plagiarism the the Washington Times essentially fires Rand Paul as a columnist.

Courtesy of the Washington Times:  

The Washington Times said Tuesday that it had independently reviewed Mr. Paul’s columns and op-eds and published a correction to his Sept. 20 column in which the senator had failed to attribute a passage that first appeared in The Week. 

The newspaper and the senator mutually agreed to end his weekly column, which has appeared each Friday since the summer. 

“We expect our columnists to submit original work and to properly attribute material, and we appreciate that the senator and his staff have taken responsibility for an oversight in one column,” Times Editor John Solomon said. 

“We also appreciate the original insights he has shared with our readers over the last few months and look forward to future contributions from Sen. Paul and any other members of Congress who take the time to help educate our readers,” Mr. Solomon said. 

This article also claims that Paul took "personal responsibility" for the plagiarism however THIS is how he supposedly did it: 

Mr. Paul took personal responsibility for the oversights, which he and aides said were caused by staff providing him background materials that were not properly footnoted. 

So the staff did it?

It seems to me that either the Washington Post or Rand Paul do not really understand the consept of personal responsibility.

Bottom line the guy is a habitual plagiarist and there is NO reason to trust him on any of this, or excuse his behaviors and being the fault of overzealous staff members.

Had to post this one. Rachel Maddow's response to Rand Paul's vague threat to challenge her to a duel.

I actually watched MSNBC quite a lot yesterday and saw this story covered by Al Sharpton, Chris Matthews, and Chris Hayes. But of course it was Rachel's response that I was the most interested in, and of course it was great.

However it must be pointed out that Rand Paul's problem on this subject is certainly NOT simply being driven by one cable news network. If you do a quick Google search of "Rand Paul and plagiarism" you can certainly see that for yourself.

However possibly even more damaging than the fact his plagiarism is sop wide spread and consistent, is his response to having been found out.

You see he is not simply labeling it a partisan attack and loading his dueling pistols, he is also pulling a Sarah Palin and scrubbing the evidence from the internet: 

Several transcripts of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s speeches have disappeared from his website. The change was noticed after reports by BuzzFeed, Politico, and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that said the senator had plagiarized in several of his speeches. BuzzFeed also recently reported that Paul plagiarized pages of his book from The Heritage Foundation and from a Cato Institute scholar.

"Plagiarism? What plagiarism?"

You know I NEVER thought Rand Paul had a legitimate chance to win the GOP nomination for president, but if you wanted to know when his very last chance died, it would be right about now.

Rand Paul's plagiarism-a-palooza also included huge sections of his book. Gonna be awful busy fighting duels if this keeps up.

"Okay that's it! My hair is challenging all of ya'll to a duel. Dandruff specks and fifty paces!"

Courtesy of Buzzfeed:

An entire section of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s 2013 book Government Bullies was copied wholesale from a 2003 case study by the Heritage Foundation, BuzzFeed has learned. The copied section, 1,318 words, is by far the most significant instance reported so far of Paul borrowing language from other published material. 

The new cut-and-paste job follows reports by BuzzFeed, Politico, and MSNBC that Paul had plagiarized speeches either from Wikipedia or news reports. The book was published in August 2013 by Center Street, a division of Hachette Book Group. 

In this case, Paul included a link to the Heritage case study in the book’s footnotes, though he made no effort to indicate that not just the source, but the words themselves, had been taken from Heritage. 

A Paul aide defended the senator, saying he makes clear in the book’s “notes and sources” that he didn’t individually research each case. 

“In the book Government Bullies all the information… was sourced by end notes. In the two cases described, the end notes clearly define the sourcing for the book. In no case has the Senator used information without attribution,” said Doug Stafford, an advisor to Sen. Paul who co-wrote the book. “There were 150 endnotes and cites including The Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute. This is a witch hunt and grasping at straws.”

Yes pointing out that a nationally known politician with aspirations fro the White House has engaged in cutting and pasting huge portions of text from an online site or has taken entire blocks of information, verbatim, from a case study without making it perfectly clear that they have done so is NOT grasping at straws. It is a little thing called reporting the the facts.

Very, very troubling facts.

I have it on good authority that Paul's hair is not original to him as well, and may in fact have been manufactured elsewhere and then passed off as his own. Truly there is nothing about the man that can be believed.

Is anybody else looking forward to watching Rachel tonight as much as I am ?

Did Rand Paul just challenge Rachel Maddow to a duel?

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) fired back Sunday against accusations that he plagiarized portions of his speeches from Wikipedia articles, musing "if dueling were legal in Kentucky" he could "challenge" the charges. 

Last week, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow pointed out that parts of a speech Paul gave in support of Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for Virginia governor, had been lifted from the Wikipedia page for the film "Gattaca." BuzzFeed also found that another set of Paul remarks had borrowed from the Wikipedia entry for "Stand and Deliver." 

In an appearance on ABC's "This Week," Paul dismissed the claims. 

"Yes, there are times when [speeches] have been sloppy or not correct or we've made an error," Paul said. "But the difference is, I take it as an insult and I will not lie down and say people can call me dishonest, misleading or misrepresenting. I have never intentionally done so." 

He continued, "And like I say, if, you know, if dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, you know, it would be a duel challenge. But I can't do that, because I can't hold office in Kentucky then."

Seriously WTF?

In what century does Paul think he is living that would make it appropriate to challenge journalists for reporting the truth about plagiarism?  And not to be sexist but exactly WHEN was it deemed reasonable to ever challenge a woman to a fight to the death for any reason, much less doing her damn job?

I think somebody should grab that toupee of his head, slap him in the face with it, and take him up on that challenge. I can guarantee the little shit would crap his pants if anybody actually called his bluff.

And yes, that includes Rachel Maddow.

Rachel Maddow reports on fact that Rand Paul blatantly plagiarizes Wikipedia for his speeches. No, I mean word for word.

Currently Rand Paul consistently polls in the top two  potential candidates for the GOP nomination in 2016, so the fact that he is this incredibly lazy. and disrespectful of intellectual property, is big news.

Is it wrong that I can hardly wait for 2016 to arrive?

Because I have a feeling that if you thought the GOP lineup in 2012 was ridiculous that you haven't seen ANYTHING yet.

Creator of "Friday Night Lights" demands that Romney campaign stop plagiarizing his work.

Courtesy of Hollywood Reporter:

Peter Berg, the writer-director of the Friday Night Lights movie and television series, is not pleased that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has co-opted a phrase from the show for his campaign appearances. 

In a letter to the Romney campaign sent Friday and obtained exclusively by The Hollywood Reporter, Berg calls the use of "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose" an act of stealing. "Your politics and campaign are clearly not aligned with the themes we portrayed in our series," Berg writes in the letter. "The only relevant comparison that I see between your campaign and Friday Night Lights is in the character of Buddy Garrity -- who turned his back on American car manufacturers selling imported cars from Japan."

Personally I kind of liked this last part of the letter best:

"Your use of the expression falsely and inappropriately associates "Friday  Night Lights" with the Romney/Ryan campaign. Mitt, we all wish you and your family all the best. We are grateful for your support of our beloved show, but we are not in any way affiliated with you or your campaign. Please come up with your own campaign slogan."

But you see therein lies the problem, because NOTHING about the Romney campaign is original. neither Mitt Romney, nor his staff, have "come up" with anything.

His economic plan is stolen from the Bush administration. His hair is stolen from Ronald Reagan. And his policies are stolen from whoever happens to be leading him in the polls at the time.

If EVERYBODY were to stop Romney from borrowing his ideas from them that would pretty much be the end of his campaign.

"Four score and seven....Yeah I know, but he's dead so HE won't write a letter!"