Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jack Cashill's Obama derangement continued in a Dec. 27 column, in which he (and a friend) accused Barack Obama of plagiarizing another book for his memoir, then demanded that his fellow right-wingers give him credit for manufacturing the accusation:
Two weeks ago in this space I documented the good company in which Harvard President Claudine Gay finds herself as an aspiring plagiarist.
Harvard worthies Doris Kearns Goodwin, Laurence Tribe, Charles Ogletree and Fareed Zakaria have all been forced to wear the Scarlet P just in the last 20 or so years.
One Harvard plagiarist, however, has managed to escape scrutiny, at least from the mainstream media. But then again, former President Barack Obama escaped scrutiny on all fronts in his miraculously "scandal free" White House years.
Although I have documented Obama's perfidy in the past, I raise the issue again, not only because the subject is in the air, but also because others on the right have been raising it without attribution.
If I might offer friendly advice to my allies and imitators, it is wise to avoid even the appearance of plagiarism when scolding others as being plagiarists.
I worry less about credit for myself than for my informal research associate, Shawn Glasco. It was Shawn who first alerted me to Obama's pillaging of Kuki Gallman's 1994 memoir, "African Nights," for his 1995 memoir, "Dreams from My Father."
Cashill's alleged proof of this is merely circumstantial, of course, based on words that allegedly appear in both works:
Shawn Glasco, who has no Pulitzer Prize and no access to the president, figured out on his own how Obama likely got the Kenya chapter finished.
Instead of going to Africa, Obama may have spent his six-week leave from his law firm copying passages from "African Nights"
Glasco found scores of phrases and words in Obama's"Dreams" that also show up in "African Nights": Baobab (a tree), bhang (cannabis), boma (an enclosure), samosa (a fried snack), shamba (a farm field), liana (a vine), tilapia (a fish), kanga (a sheet of fabric), shuka (decorative sashes).
Both books feature women "wrapped" in their kangas and "dressed" in "rags." The women in both books wear shukas, head shawls, head scarves and goatskins, and they balance baskets on heads graced with "laughing" smiles.
Men in both books spearfish in "ink-black" waters and hunt by torchlight. Elephants are seen "fanning" themselves, birds "trill," insects "buzz," weaver birds "nest," and monkeys "mesmerize."
The books share a veritable Noah's ark of additional fauna: crickets, crocodiles, starlings, dragonflies, cattle, lions, sand crabs, vultures, hyenas, "herds of gazelle," and leopards that can hold small animals "in their jaws."
Cashill doesn't seem to realize that Pulitizer Prizes aren't given out for partisan speculation.
In his Jan. 3 column, Cashill tried to claim that Obama was "guilty of insurrection" by allegedly making sure Donald Trump's Russian ties were investigated:
According to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, no person shall be eligible to hold federal office who "shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion."
Although all parties know the "insurrection or rebellion" clause refers specifically to recently completed Civil War, the Department of Justice argues for a much more elastic definition, all the better to hang Donald Trump with.
Yet if there were one president guilty of insurrection in recent years, that president would have to be Barack Obama. In late 2016 and early 2017, Obama knowingly conspired with others to subvert the presidency of Donald Trump.
Thanks to the zealous note taking of his once and future factotum, Susan Rice, we have documentation of this flagrant act of sedition.
[...]
"President Obama began the conversation," wrote Rice, "by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities 'by the book.'"
The "issue" in question was the framing of Donald Trump for collusion with Russia. Obama had to know by this time that the collusion accusation was spawned by the Clinton campaign.
Cashill conveniently omits that there was no "framing: actually needed, given that the 2016 Trump campaign met dozens of times with Russian operatives and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort gave internal polling data to another Russian operative. But Cashill would rather rant about the Steele dossier:
In 1974, Nixon campaign aide Donald Segretti made "dirty tricks" a household phrase. The nation was scandalized that Segretti would send fake letters using the letterhead of presidential candidate Edmund Muskie. For his dirty tricks, Segretti served four months in prison.
For hers, the mother of all dirty tricks, Hillary Clinton walked away without even a scolding. The Steele dossier proved to be the most consequential dirty trick in American political history.
There is no "book" that justifies what Comey and pals did in the weeks immediately following this meeting while Obama was still president.
In fact, an internal watchdog in the Trump-led Justice Department found in 2019 that the Russia investigation was justified and did not act with political bias, and that the Steele dossier as not a factor. But who cares about facts when there is a conspiracy theory to peddle?
