John Walsh is a liar, a cheater, and unethical; I suppose this qualifies him to be a politician. Yet somehow I wish we as Montanans held our elected officials to a higher standard, beyond that of a stereotypical ‘politician’. It was found that John Walsh plagiarized his Masters Thesis
We at the Copper Commando want to better the Republican party, but more so, we want to better politics as a whole. Name calling, pandering, cornering politicians into extremist positions — these things don’t solve politics. But we can’t even reach a point where we debate well reasoned arguments until the people we champion people who adhere to basic ethics. Prior to this realization I wasn’t that worried about the upcoming Senate election. Walsh or Daines, they both seemed to have Montana’s values at heart. I hold this sentiment no longer. I now compare Steve Daines, a person who has successfully built a company and created jobs in Montana through his hard work, to a second rate politician who can’t even write a Masters thesis without cheating. I have my disagreements with the party and elected officials, but that is the beauty of living in a federal constitutional republic — the power (ed: supposedly) resides in the people and they get to choose who they vote for. I choose to not support John Walsh because he has proven himself to be a liar and a cheat whose ethics are highly questionable at best. I only hope the fervent left comes to this same conclusion.
[ed: Well that was fast. Pogie is already rushing to John Walsh’s defense, the post goes as far as calling John Walsh a “principled man“. A teacher and academic rushing to defend a plagiarist because he’s in the same political party? Either Pogie is a paid political hack or bad at looking up words in the dictionary. In either case we worry for his students.]
I’ll have to agree with you today. What’s more, isn’t a poll being released today uselss? The way Democrats in this state are falling all over themselves to make this go away is pathetic.
You can’t defend plagiarism;
You can’t get away with this “not an academic argument” (General Petraeus anyone?);
I have stress too, as do many writers, it’s not an excuse;
Character and trust are huge with this story;
Overall I’m glad I voted for Adams and I wish this would have broken before the primary. The arguments that this should have been vetted are valid. What I’m so surprised by is why this took so long to come out. I’m sure the GOP knew about this, sat on it, and waited. And why not?
Walsh has no one to blame but himself for this and the Montana Democratic Party will suffer because of it. How long is anyone’s guess at this point.
A few of us also preferred Dirk Adams to John Walsh. Mr. Adams seemed genuine in his interest for Montana and appeared to be a hard worker. Senator Walsh was a rather ineffective Lt. Governor who has a habit of claiming other peoples work. He claimed he was involved in privacy laws during the 2013 Legislature (and yet never testified), he falsified his academic paper, and even on his rebuttal he included blatant falsehoods (he ‘survived’ hundreds on IED’s). It’s a patten of behaviour unfitting for a Senator.
See http://mediatrackers.org/montana/2014/02/05/democrat-walsh-takes-credit-montana-republicans-privacy-bill ,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/opinion/thomas-edsall-a-shift-in-young-democrats-values.html?_r=0
While I certainly don’t encourage plagerism as a worthwhile habit, that Walsh was not caught and confronted at the time of submission of his plagerized “thesis” (it was only 14 pages, hardly anything I would consider thesis length) in my mind shifts the nature of the discussion. Let’s compare John Walsh to Lance Armstrong for a moment. Like John, Lance “cheated”, like Walsh, Lance purposely and decidedly used his life for good, be it fighting against cancer or public service (can we agree that public service is a good thing?). Why are we arguing about how terrible John Walsh is and why are we not spending more time reading his thesis (what purpose does acedamia have if not to be read and considered?), reflecting upon it, and comparing the arguments made therein with anything his opponent might make? This is what disgusts me with modern politics.
Maybe we aren’t reading it because it’s not his thesis. Just a thought.
Honestly, and this is documented, I spotted Walsh to be an uninspired and unoriginal thinker months ago. My first tip was that he was a military man, which ought to disqualify him from public office because 1) they are deeply indoctrinated, 2) they are punished for not following orders, and 3) they are compartmentalized. As General Smedley Butler noted, “my mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military.” Indeed, military people are over-glamorized – if they were smart, they would not volunteer.
However, in an empire like ours, saying things that are true is a far more serious offense than plagiarism. Walsh will survive, but is going down, and no matter who the alternative, at least we’ll not have that lowlife to deal with. Man, bad enough that we had a quarter century of Baucus, and now Lewis, a Baucus man, is rolling in money. Democrats are so corrupt! But then, don’t get me going on Republicans.
Don’t get me going. Oops. Too late.
First of all, “Montanan’s” is not a possessive. I worry about *your* English teacher.
Second, I think an anonymous astroturf blog that appeared in the middle of election season, as has been the pattern for the past 3-4 Montana elections for the GOP, should probably be careful about throwing around accusations that anyone is a “hack.”
Third, your assertion that Senator Walsh’s “entire Senate qualifications and career position are predicated on a poorly plagiarized paper” is an incredible insult to people who serve in the military. His 25+ year career in the military and his service in Iraq didn’t qualify him for Congress? That’s some serious contempt for military service there. And you make want to call Ryan Zinke and let him know he’s not qualified.
Finally, you may want to revisit your condemnation of “namecalling” given…uh…the rest of your post.
Thank you for pointing out our error, the post has been updated! We will strive to avoid the perils of late night writing with no copy-editing for future posts. We have no counter for the hack accusation, we don’t know who our authors are and thus they plausibly could be involved in a campaign. Third, the post did generalize a bit. Perhaps it would be more fair to say that Walsh would not be as far in his career without cheating. We do feel it appropriate to call him a liar, cheater, and unethical, as his plagiarism exemplifies these qualities.
It’s certainly strange that your army of unknown, anonymous posters all have the same basic grammar and writing issues, not to mention the same tendentious, leaden voice.
I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
Perhaps you should run our articles though a plagiarism website to see if we have a common voice with other authors? On another note, you disabled auto-link backs in your new site design?! That was why we liked linking you so much.
I appreciate the effort you’re making to get a GOP blog up and running. Montana really needs one. But you need to be less sloppy. Your first 9 words are “John Walsh is a liar, a cheater, and unethical.” You later declare as follows: “Name calling, pandering, cornering politicians into extremist positions – these things don’t solve politics [sic].”
Notice a problem?
There’s nothing wrong with hard-hitting posts – Walsh is clearly unfit for public office and we shouldn’t, in order to “better politics,” be bashful about proclaiming that fact.
By the way, how do you “solve politics”? Your post has other grammatical errors. Blogging inevitably results in typos and errors, but you should strive to avoid them. Whenever possible, have one of the other “Young Guns” proofread your work before you press the “send” button.
Also, your obsession with “Pogie” is starting to look a little creepy. Yes, he’s a left-wing radical. But at least he can write. And he uses his real name. Find another whipping boy. Or, better yet, improve your writing to the point where Pogreba feels compelled to try to take you down rather than the other way around.
I’m not trying to be obnoxious. I simply want you to improve and become more articulate than the unhinged Left.
Correction: Pogreba already did take you down (see above)
Good god, we get this so often, it needs correcting: Pogie is about as left wing and radical as Bill Gates. He’s a somewhat centrist Democrat but his politics can be summed up in one letter: “D.” If that appears next to a name Pogie will adjust his beliefs to jive with that candidate. You can see it here plainly – Pogie now asserts that plagiarism is not a big deal. Were it a person with an “R” next to the name, plagiarism would be a big deal.
I am a lefty. I take umbrage in being lumped with this hack as such. If you want to attack a lefty, go after me. I like that sort of thing.