The Thailand Forum

The Thailand expat forum for Travel, Lifestyle and Fun.


Advertise here!

Forum Home Donate Arcade Chat Room Gallery Blog Mark Forums Read
Go Back   TeakDoor.com - The Thailand Forum > Banal Banter > Issues > US Domestic Issues
Home Register TD Links FAQ Members List Calendar Weather Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

US Domestic Issues Topics which focus on issues within the US or concern those who come from or live in the US.

Good Thai Girl

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Old 17-10-2008, 09:02 AM   #101 (permalink)
sabang
Watching the Wheels
 
sabang's Avatar
 
Last Online: Today 11:28 AM
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: where the streets have no name
Posts: 11,561
sabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expat
^ Yeh, knowing that left leaning PC Fag, he probably even provides them with a healthy option.

Why doesn't he get a real job, with GM or something.
sabang is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 17-10-2008, 09:06 AM   #102 (permalink)
AntRobertson
Ich Bin Ein Auslander
 
AntRobertson's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 12,720
AntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand Expat
^Actually didn't Comrade Buffett recently give away a substantial portion of his fortune to charity? Follow that trail of funds to terrorist training camps and the real left-wing moonbat will be revealed!

Quote:
he probably even provides them with a healthy option
No burgers and Freedom fries!? That's unpatriotic and, even worse, unAmerican!
AntRobertson is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 17-10-2008, 09:07 AM   #103 (permalink)
sabang
Watching the Wheels
 
sabang's Avatar
 
Last Online: Today 11:28 AM
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: where the streets have no name
Posts: 11,561
sabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expat
McCain ant-Terrorist vigilante group- aka Dads Army.

sabang is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 17-10-2008, 09:29 AM   #104 (permalink)
lom
#&§~
 
lom's Avatar
 
Last Online: Today 04:50 AM
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Dark side of the room
Posts: 5,157
lom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expat
Quote:
Originally Posted by AntRobertson
I heard that Buffett provides free lunches to his employees.* The socialist, left-wing, pinko, commie scum!
That's not socialism, it is called maximize your profit.
He'll get more mileage out of his workers by sticking them a bone every now and then.
lom is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 17-10-2008, 09:38 AM   #105 (permalink)
AntRobertson
Ich Bin Ein Auslander
 
AntRobertson's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 12,720
AntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand ExpatAntRobertson Thailand Expat
Quote:
Originally Posted by lom View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by AntRobertson
I heard that Buffett provides free lunches to his employees.* The socialist, left-wing, pinko, commie scum!
That's not socialism, it is called maximize your profit.
He'll get more mileage out of his workers by sticking them a bone every now and then.
Making excuses for his behaviour makes you a commie-left-wing-pinko-liberal. And a terrorist sympathiser! What next comrade, free health care for all!?
__________________
The Revolution will be televised... Eleven o'clock... Channel 10.
AntRobertson is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 17-10-2008, 09:41 AM   #106 (permalink)
attaboy
Elite Member
 
attaboy's Avatar
 
Last Online: 01-11-2009 06:53 AM
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 2,902
attaboy Thailand Expatattaboy Thailand Expatattaboy Thailand Expatattaboy Thailand Expatattaboy Thailand Expatattaboy Thailand Expatattaboy Thailand Expatattaboy Thailand Expatattaboy Thailand Expatattaboy Thailand Expatattaboy Thailand Expat
Hey, Ant, you're sigline reminds me of commies except they patiently hang around.
attaboy is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 17-10-2008, 12:43 PM   #107 (permalink)
sabang
Watching the Wheels
 
sabang's Avatar
 
Last Online: Today 11:28 AM
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: where the streets have no name
Posts: 11,561
sabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expatsabang Thailand Expat
Some more of Obamas terrorist friends-



Obama comes clean, finally -

“John McCain is onto something. There was a point in my life when I started palling around with a pretty ugly crowd, I’ve got to be honest. These guys were serious deadbeats, they were lowlifes, they were unrepentant no-good punks. That’s right: I’ve been a member of the United States Senate.’’
__________________
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
sabang is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 17-10-2008, 06:02 PM   #108 (permalink)
Norton
Days Work Done!
 
Norton's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Roiet
Posts: 11,507
Norton Thailand ExpatNorton Thailand ExpatNorton Thailand ExpatNorton Thailand ExpatNorton Thailand ExpatNorton Thailand ExpatNorton Thailand ExpatNorton Thailand ExpatNorton Thailand ExpatNorton Thailand ExpatNorton Thailand Expat
^Watched this on CNN. McCain won this debate. His piece was by far much more humorous than Obama's.
Norton is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 17-10-2008, 07:04 PM   #109 (permalink)
ChiangMai noon
punk douche bag
 
ChiangMai noon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: o dan y bryn
Posts: 28,059
ChiangMai noon Thailand ExpatChiangMai noon Thailand ExpatChiangMai noon Thailand ExpatChiangMai noon Thailand ExpatChiangMai noon Thailand ExpatChiangMai noon Thailand ExpatChiangMai noon Thailand ExpatChiangMai noon Thailand ExpatChiangMai noon Thailand ExpatChiangMai noon Thailand ExpatChiangMai noon Thailand Expat
this would be funny if it was a satirical poke at white trash.

ChiangMai noon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18-10-2008, 03:25 PM   #110 (permalink)
Jet Gorgon
Jihad Barbie
 
Jet Gorgon's Avatar
 
Last Online: Today 04:50 AM
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Near Libbies
Posts: 12,470
Jet Gorgon Thailand ExpatJet Gorgon Thailand ExpatJet Gorgon Thailand ExpatJet Gorgon Thailand ExpatJet Gorgon Thailand ExpatJet Gorgon Thailand ExpatJet Gorgon Thailand ExpatJet Gorgon Thailand ExpatJet Gorgon Thailand ExpatJet Gorgon Thailand ExpatJet Gorgon Thailand Expat
I love the libbie twist on this. Watched Nebraska's Gov say he demanded Ayers be cut from a speaking engagement at the state U. The libbies regrouped and say Ayers was cancelled for security reasons.

LINCOLN, Neb. — Safety concerns have forced University of Nebraska-Lincoln officials to cancel plans for William Ayers to speak on campus.
Ayers, who founded a group in the late 1960s that claimed responsibility for bombing several government buildings, was to speak Nov. 15.
But officials said Friday the university’s threat assessment group received e-mails and phone calls over the last day or two that identified safety issues.
When asked about details of the concerns, including if they contained threats against Ayers, University spokeswoman Meg Lauerman declined to comment further.
“We don’t discuss the specifics of any threat assessment on campus,” she said.
Ayers, a University of Illinois at Chicago education professor, was invited by UNL’s College of Education and Human Sciences because of his expertise in research related to small schools and urban education.
Ayers also is vice president-elect of curriculum studies at the American Educational Research Association.
But he’s become a lightening rod in the U.S. presidential campaign for his role as founder of the Weather Underground. The group formed in the late 1960s claimed responsibility for nonfatal bombings of the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.
Friday’s announcement comes after Gov. Dave Heineman and several other Nebraska politicians asked the university to rescind its invitation.
“Bill Ayers is a well-known radical who should never have been invited,” Heineman said earlier Friday. “The people of Nebraska are outraged.
Ayers' University of Nebraska-Lincoln Speech Canceled - FOXNews.com Elections
Jet Gorgon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18-10-2008, 03:32 PM   #111 (permalink)
Milkman
Gone Off
 
Milkman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: shelf
Posts: 15,352
Milkman Thailand ExpatMilkman Thailand ExpatMilkman Thailand ExpatMilkman Thailand ExpatMilkman Thailand ExpatMilkman Thailand ExpatMilkman Thailand ExpatMilkman Thailand ExpatMilkman Thailand ExpatMilkman Thailand ExpatMilkman Thailand Expat
^ This is just another election year issue, that in reality is not an issue.

It's just a game. It will fade away soon after the election is over.
Milkman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 20-10-2008, 11:40 PM   #112 (permalink)
Boon Mee
Thailand Travel Forum
 
Boon Mee's Avatar
 
Last Online: Today 07:30 AM
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 12,913
Boon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand Expat
Donor
Quote:
Originally Posted by sabang View Post
McCain ant-Terrorist vigilante group- aka Dads Army.

Better the above than this:

Boon Mee is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 21-10-2008, 06:32 PM   #113 (permalink)
spiff
Impregnator
 
Last Online: 31-07-2009 02:13 PM
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: amidst dogs and ducks
Posts: 2,735
spiff Thailand Expatspiff Thailand Expatspiff Thailand Expatspiff Thailand Expatspiff Thailand Expatspiff Thailand Expatspiff Thailand Expatspiff Thailand Expatspiff Thailand Expatspiff Thailand Expatspiff Thailand Expat
That guy's been dead for a looong while, oldtimer.

You really need to see a psychologist about your affliction with baracknaphobia and OCDD.

Last edited by spiff : 21-10-2008 at 06:37 PM.
spiff is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 22-10-2008, 06:01 AM   #114 (permalink)
Boon Mee
Thailand Travel Forum
 
Boon Mee's Avatar
 
Last Online: Today 07:30 AM
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 12,913
Boon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand Expat
Donor
Quote:
Originally Posted by spiff View Post
That guy's been dead for a looong while, oldtimer.

You really need to see a psychologist about your affliction with baracknaphobia and OCDD.
He's alive and well among y'all who worship at the feet of the new Messiah!
Boon Mee is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 24-10-2008, 05:58 AM   #115 (permalink)
Boon Mee
Thailand Travel Forum
 
Boon Mee's Avatar
 
Last Online: Today 07:30 AM
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 12,913
Boon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand Expat
Donor
Obama’s Friend Bill Ayers Planned Taking Over Government, Re-Education Camps, and Genocide

"The guy that Barack Obama shared an office with for three years is as radical as they come, and Obama is a liar when he tells folks he thought the man was rehabilitated. You can’t rehabilitate monsters, and Obama respects the man that headed up the Weather Underground"
__________________
ผมเป็นคนบ้านนอก
Boon Mee is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 24-10-2008, 12:43 PM   #116 (permalink)
lom
#&§~
 
lom's Avatar
 
Last Online: Today 04:50 AM
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Dark side of the room
Posts: 5,157
lom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expatlom Thailand Expat
Too late now Booners, you shoudda brought that up earlier in the campaign
lom is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 24-10-2008, 11:31 PM   #117 (permalink)
Boon Mee
Thailand Travel Forum
 
Boon Mee's Avatar
 
Last Online: Today 07:30 AM
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 12,913
Boon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand Expat
Donor
Academic Termites Have Set the Stage for Obama

America doesn't just wake up one day on the verge of electing a dangerous radical like Barack Obama, any more than a sound house suddenly collapses from termites. The insects need to have been eating away in the darkness for some time, gradually weakening the structure — as they have been doing to our country. Academia's acceptance of Obama's mentor Bill Ayers gives an indication of how deep the damage goes.

Nobody — least of all Ayers — denies he is a communist, in the mold of the totalitarian monsters who killed 100 million of their own people in the past century. In their own manifesto Prairie Fire, Ayers and friends boast of the following crimes:





Obviously the plan is to overthrow the US Government and BO's pal, Ayers is gonna help him...
Boon Mee is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 25-10-2008, 08:28 PM   #118 (permalink)
Boon Mee
Thailand Travel Forum
 
Boon Mee's Avatar
 
Last Online: Today 07:30 AM
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 12,913
Boon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand Expat
Donor
You knew it had to happen. The Leftards version of "I am Joe" has gone full-circle to "I am Bill"!

Every time I turn on the internet these days, it seems like another right wing blogger is digging up more baloney on Professor Bill Ayers. Apparently these people would rather talk about Bill Ayers’ passionate youthful rambunctiousness than the issues that really matter to us, like Sarah Palin’s shoe bill. Well, I’ve got a message for you, Mister Google cache McCarthy fascist: I’m mad as H-E-double sippy straws, and I’m not going to take it any more. No longer will not remain silent while you smear and slur this great America-hating American with his own quotes. Hear me now: when you mess with Bill Ayers, you’re messing with me.
Because I AM BILL.


I AM BILL. I am the everyday forgotten little guy in your neighborhood, the quiet anarcho-syndicalist family man who gets up early and punches the clock at the local state university, writing the manifestos and polemics and grant proposals that keep America humming. I’m just doing my job, and all I ask in return is a little respect. And tenure. And Chicago Citizen of the Year awards. And two graduate assistants to grade exams for Practicum in Imperialist Racist Hegemony 311, because I’m teaching two sections this semester. Also, a sabbatical to Italy next summer would be nice.


I AM BILL. I grew up in a simple little gated community just like yours, with white picket fences and where all the aux pairs and gardeners know your name. When my dad came home from a hard day’s work as a CEO, he was never too tired to help me with my homework or tousle my hair for winning the Lake Forest Academy essay contest on Hegelian Dialectics. Yes, he was a simpleminded bourgeois technocrat of the capitalist war machine, but he made sure I got the tuition and tutors and sailing lessons and allowance I needed to make it on my own. I wish he was still alive so I could tell him how much I really planned to kill him last."


Read it all here

Just your regular kid next door!
Boon Mee is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-11-2008, 07:58 PM   #119 (permalink)
Boon Mee
Thailand Travel Forum
 
Boon Mee's Avatar
 
Last Online: Today 07:30 AM
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 12,913
Boon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand ExpatBoon Mee Thailand Expat
Donor
Here's the first issue of Osawatomie: the Weather Underground newspaper.

And it outlines a strategy of “working from the inside” to radicalize America and bring about a socialist revolution.
If that sounds familiar, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. Or your imagination. Or maybe you’re a racist.


Osawatomie: the Weather Underground newspaper · zomblog
Boon Mee is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-11-2008, 11:33 PM   #120 (permalink)
lysander
Ratchaburi
 
lysander's Avatar
 
Last Online: Yesterday 05:54 PM
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Tum Salieng
Posts: 480
lysander Thailand Expat on the Thailand travel forumlysander Thailand Expat on the Thailand travel forumlysander Thailand Expat on the Thailand travel forumlysander Thailand Expat on the Thailand travel forumlysander Thailand Expat on the Thailand travel forumlysander Thailand Expat on the Thailand travel forumlysander Thailand Expat on the Thailand travel forumlysander Thailand Expat on the Thailand travel forumlysander Thailand Expat on the Thailand travel forumlysander Thailand Expat on the Thailand travel forumlysander Thailand Expat on the Thailand travel forum
Here's a news piece and an article published in today's Sunday Times (London):

Newspiece:

The Republicans have made a last-minute attempt to prevent Barack Obama’s ascent to the White House by trying to recruit an Oxford academic to “prove” that his autobiography was ghostwritten by a former terrorist.

With two days before the election, Obama is poised to become America’s first black president, according to polls showing he has an average six-point lead over John McCain, his Republican opponent.


Dr Peter Millican, a philosophy don at Hertford College, Oxford, has devised a computer software program that can detect when works are by the same author by comparing favourite words and phrases.



He was contacted last weekend and offered $10,000 (£6,200) to assess alleged similarities between Obama’s bestseller, Dreams from My Father, and Fugitive Days, a memoir by William Ayers.


Ayers, now a university professor in Chicago, co-founded the Weathermen, a radical 1960s underground group that bombed government buildings in Washington and New York. The Republicans accuse Obama of “palling around” with him.


The offer to Millican to prove that Ayers wrote Obama’s book was made by Robert Fox, a California businessman and brother-in-law of Chris Cannon, a Republican congressman from Utah. He hoped to corroborate a theory advanced by Jack Cashill, an American writer.


Fox and Cannon each suggested to The Sunday Times that the other had taken the initiative.


Cannon said that he merely recommended computer testing of the books. He doubted whether Obama wrote his autobiography, adding: “If Ayers was the author, that would be interesting.”


Fox said he had hoped that Cannon would raise the $10,000 to run a computer test. “It was Congressman Cannon who initially pointed me in that direction and, from our conversation, I thought he might be able to find someone [to raise the $10,000].”


He believed that if “proof” of Ayers’s involvement was provided by an Oxford academic it would be political dynamite.
Fox contacted Millican, who said: “He was entirely upfront about this. He offered me $10,000 and sent me electronic versions of the text from both books.”


Millican took a preliminary look and found the charges “very implausible”. A deal was agreed for more detailed research but when Millican said the results had to be made public, even if no link to Ayers was proved, interest waned.

Millican said: “I thought it was extremely unlikely that we would get a positive result. It is the sort of thing where people make claims after seeing a few crude similarities and go overboard on them.” He said Fox gave him the impression that Cannon had got “cold feet about it being seen to be funded by the Republicans”.


Cannon insisted, however, that he was not interested in making an issue of Obama’s memoir “even if it were scientifically proven” to be someone else’s work.
Obama said this weekend that the campaign would “get nasty” in its closing days. Last night he was forced to deny that he knew a Kenyan aunt was living illegally in the US. Zeituni Onyango, half sister of his late father, lost a bid for asylum in 2004. Obama said he had no knowledge of her status, but that the law should be obeyed.

Article by Dr Millican:

Last Sunday I received an urgent call from Bob, a man close to a Republican congressman in the American west. He wanted to enlist my services to prove a scandalous allegation against Barack Obama, which would surely affect his prospects in the forthcoming election. Namely, that his famous 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, on which so much of his reputation was built, was in fact written largely by Bill Ayers, a Vietnam-era domestic terrorist.

Many Republican attacks, in the mainstream media, websites and blogs, have focused on this connection, described by Sarah Palin as Obama’s “palling around with terrorists”. The new scandal held the promise not only of proving that Obama was a pal of Ayers, but even that he was, in a sense, Ayers’s creation, groomed for high office by his mentor’s ghost-writing hand.
Viewed from Britain all this seems like fantasy, but in some US circles it is taken very seriously indeed. If the charge against Obama could be made to stick, with objective evidence of Ayers’s involvement in his famous book, then perhaps it could sway significant numbers of voters back to the Republican side.
So where do I come in, an Oxford philosopher and 18th-century scholar? Well, until three years ago I taught at Leeds University in a job that combined philosophy with computing. While there I wrote several software systems (available online) designed to make the study of computing more attractive and relevant for students in the humanities.

One of these, called Signature, performs “stylometric” analysis for literary detection. The idea is that by analysing different texts one can try to identify the distinctive authorial fingerprint or stylistic “signature” of each writer and thus decide questions of disputed authorship. Did St Paul write the Epistle to the Hebrews? Did Shakespeare write Edward III? Who wrote various anonymous political works, such as the Federalist Papers of 1787 or the 1996 novel Primary Colors?
Investigators have hoped to answer all of these questions – and many others – by such means and have sometimes been very successful (although more often wildly overoptimistic and naively uncritical).


My Signature system acquired some publicity this year through its involvement in a heated debate about Coleridge’s alleged authorship of a translation of Goethe’s Faust. So some Republicans were keen to make use of my expertise to help them in their quest to unmask Ayers as the hidden puppet master behind the Obama of 1995.


The person who came up with this strange theory is Jack Cashill, an American author who claimed to find striking similarities between Dreams from My Father and Ayers’s 2001 memoir Fugitive Days.


The trouble with these sorts of claims is that they are far too easy to make: take any two substantial memoirs from the same era and you are likely to be able to pick out a fair number of passages that have some similarities. Unless the similarities are really close (and they weren’t), just listing them makes no case at all, even if it might be enough to persuade some readers.


Cashill and friends – who were convinced but aware that more evidence would be needed to convince others – enlisted teams of analysts to try to give the theory a solid statistical basis. All of these analyses supposedly delivered positive results, but they seem badly flawed.


One pair of university engineers tested frequencies of words in the two books against a “random control”; but the book chosen for this role was a 1919 road novel which just happened to be easily available on the web. Hardly surprising, then, that the two contemporary memoirs came out relatively similar: they were always likely to be closer to each other than to a novel written 80 years before.


Another “team” – consisting of a private engineering consultant – used my own Signature software but didn’t get beyond the first primitive test for word-length frequencies (proportions of one-letter, two-letter, three-letter words, etc). Although he did rigorous statistics with more appropriate “controls”, his results were rather weak. But even if they had been stronger, using such limited data is like trying to argue that two houses were constructed by the same builder purely on the basis that they contain roughly similar proportions of different bricks.
Finally, the third analysis that I have seen used far more sophisticated measures, built into a proprietary software system for helping aspiring writers to develop their style. But it records no “control” measurements at all, so the results produced are impossible to assess.


The author of the analysis describes some of his results as “striking”, but this looks very exaggerated to me. Without any comparable statistics involving other texts, we have no way of assessing their true significance. So his claim to have made “a strong case for the likelihood that the author of Fugitive Days ghostwrote Dreams from My Father” is completely unsubstantiated.


Bob – the man who brought me into all this – seemed sincerely interested in getting to the truth about Cashill’s dramatic allegation. He supplied me with the relevant texts and a number of appropriate “controls”.


Some preliminary tests, using various data measures and a range of powerful statistical facilities that were recently added to Signature, indicated nothing that would give Obama any cause for concern. So I felt that any analysis I did would be far more likely to put an end to the story than to substantiate it, by providing objective data against what looked like partisan allegations.


The Republicans were apparently keen to press for a full-scale investigation, which would take a good deal of my time but for which they were prepared to pay through Oxford University Consulting’s personal consultancy arrangements.
Oxford University Consulting, on my behalf, insisted quite properly that any such arrangement would have to be agreed before the results were known: there could be no question of carrying out an analysis that would be paid for only if the results came out in their favour. And I insisted that the analysis, once produced, would have to be in the public domain and thus made available to the Democrats also.


Having got to this stage, with texts and controls carefully prepared and special facilities added to Signature for the purpose, my little adventure into US politics ended. I was left with the impression that payment for propaganda was fine; but payment for objective research was quite a different matter.
Maybe one day I’ll go back and do the analysis in detail, but I doubt it. I would rather spend my time on serious research questions than on improbable theories proposed with negligible support.

Last edited by lysander : 03-11-2008 at 12:24 AM.
lysander is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Register Forum Home Donate FAQ Members List Calendar


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On


All times are GMT +7. The time now is 11:45 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.12
Copyright ©2000 - 2009, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
SEO by vBSEO 3.0.0
Copyright ©2005 - 2009 by TeakDoor.com
Page generated in 0.58815 seconds with 20 queries