You Know Who Wrote "Dreams From My Father"? Bill Ayers.

HARVARD IS LYING TO COVER UP HIS LACK OF AN EDUCATION!!11!!!!111ELEVENTY!!!1!1

I found footage of Obama learning to write from Bill Ayers. Chilling.

O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisell 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.
Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

-William Shakespeare, Eleventy-first Sonnet (111)

111th Congress of the U.S. will follow the current one!

Ahh, I see patterns everywhere!!!

I really thought Subrosa was joking when he mentioned the 23-word sentences. Then I read the article.

Nope! Other good tidbits of evidence:
-Both Obama and Ayers like to use "ocean" analogies.
-Both Obama and Ayers talk about race.
-Both Obama and Ayers are liberal.
-Both Obama and Ayers score the same on some readability index, so long as you make sure to use excerpts of their books to ensure that they score the same, rather than use the whole book where they would score differently.
-Obama is black, Ayers once claimed he was black.

Personally, I think Web Bot wrote the book. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Think about it.

To me excerpt implies some sizable portion of both bodies of work, but the article only compares two sentences for readability.

Also, it calls Barack Obama at the time of the book's publishing "an unschooled amateur". If being a graduate of Columbia and Harvard Law school in addition to the stuff I mentioned earlier makes you an unschooled amateur, then this author doesn't belong anywhere near a keyboard. Though apparently he's written 7 books that I've never heard of so maybe he's a bit jealous of Obama's success?

You are entirely correct, sir.

Typically when making an argument in the realm of stylistics (which is where this accusation is coming from), the statistical analyses are used to support a much broader and more insightful argument that covers elements of style, word choice, grammar, and register. Further, they usually involve large bodies of a corpus, not chunks randomly selected for comparison, and build the qualitative analysis on a quantitative underpinning. One might surmise that the author of this article is a woe-begotten fucktard wandering around with a screw driver trying to hammer nails.

No, no REALLY. We're serious this time! We have proof!!!

oh come on, they both used the word baleful. only terrorists use words like that !

Allah finds it embiggening.

-TM

Yeah, I'm pretty sure sharia doesn't say anything about equal pay for equal work.

hilzoy pwns them all.

Well, and D&D players.

Or a wise-ass buying hay (how much? Oh, a bale full ...), or computer paper.

I love Wonkette's term - "Internet hobo" - for Mr. Cashill.

If the 'serious people' he has been in communication with are of the same quality as Mr. Wurzelbacher it is little wonder they prefer to remain anonymous.

The insane hubris of this statement is what gets me. Like the media glare on some insane wingnut yayhoo who is referenced in an obscure blog posting by another insane wingnut yayhoo would be in any way comparable to the way they looked at a guy who at every opportunity injected himself into the most hotly-contested presidential campaign in history after being mentioned 37 times in a nationally televised presidential debate. It's practically the same thing, you see.

Yes, Jack Cashill, the spotlight on you us just that bright, simply for being the mad genius of literary criticism that you are. It's pretty much Brangelina, Blanket Jackson and Cashill that everyone wants to know about NONFUCKINGSTOP.

Had to read up on this guy's thesis, and came away less than impressed.

The program used to "prove" these linkages was FictionFixer, which purports to chomp through an author's work, and deliver editing suggestions on how to make it more like an amalgam of current best-sellers. Towards the bottom of Cashill's argument is a link to this program's output and a commentary which reads in part like an advertisement.

Excerpt from page 12.

Never heard of this algorithm, and learned it was developed by Moshe Koppel - a respected linguistic scientist - but the claim that it is nearly impossible to fool it doesn't necessarily hold up to closer scrutiny.

One of the names Mr. Carhill drops is Andrew Longman.

He does appear to be an engineer, but his writings in WorldNetDaily tend toward the absurd. Here he is arguing that compact fluorescent bulbs will increase carbon dioxide emissions by forcing homeowners to use more heating fuel.

Yes, let's consider a normal home running thirty fucking 100 watt light bulbs!

... and you gotta love this quote from Cashill

Crap, I'm a landlubber, and learned what ballast was in grade school. Despite not knowing what it is Jack Cashill certainly seems to be full of it.