Rich Seymour's stochastic statements.

“Last 10 minutes of Barack Obama’s speech in Milwaukee on 2/16 where he responds to Hillary Clinton’s recent criticism he is all talk – and good speeches don’t necessarily produce results.”

[update]
It’s interesting to note that some of Clinton’s campaign staffers zeroed in on the “” just words? “” just words? for plenty of reasons. Obama shot back with, “yeah, duh, I know the original speaker of those words and we’ve talked about the ideas in them.” The obvious one being that Obama is friends with Deval Patrick who used the same speech, but also that… the quote itself quotes 3 uncited sources, which are famous enough not to be cited. Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts has talked this over with Obama and is glad that his ideas got a wider audience. For indeed, it is the ideas that matter. When in this above speech Obama mentions how hope is the fuel that drives the efforts behind positive legislative change, that’s the real idea here. And indeed, that’s a transcendental truth.

And here is my favorite article on plagiarism The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism by Jonathan Lethem.

Also, I’m reminded of this story from GWB (I believe it’s in his book, which I must read, called A Charge to Keep): “His mother had drilled it into him that it was wrong when writing to repeat words already used. Having employed “tears” once in the essay, he sought a substitute from a thesaurus she had given him and wrote “the lacerates ran down my cheeks”.” I got that quote direct from here.

So in the end, Clinton’s staffers had to say that they couldn’t guarantee the originality of anything Clinton said either (citation needed) and… well… I’m sure someone somewhere got kerfluffled.