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    The Amazing SneijdermanSarah Hedgecock
    10/30/13 12:17pm

    This is a pretty common practice in politics. Ted Cruz, for example, takes all of his speeches from the Yahoo! comments section.

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      ItsARampageLanaThe Amazing Sneijderman
      10/30/13 12:23pm

      That's not a Texan accent, he's just trying to pronounce the misspellings.

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      GregSamsaThe Amazing Sneijderman
      10/30/13 12:29pm

      And of course Michele Bachmann apes from YouTube constantly.

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    VeryWellSarah Hedgecock
    10/30/13 12:15pm

    There is nothing in the bylaws of pure libertarianism that says plagiarism is verboten. In fact, he who steals the best is entitled to eat the most poor. Unfettered free market, bitches!

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      CaryGrantLivesVeryWell
      10/30/13 12:23pm

      Rand Paul is not a libertarian. You may be thinking of Ron Paul, his father. Rand vehemently rejects the social liberalism inherent to libertarianism.

      Also, a wholly unfettered free market is anarcho-libertarianism, as opposed to pragmatic libertarianism which I would strongly prefer over the prevailing intolerant, socially conservative Tea Party right-wing of today.

      I may not agree with it on most points, but I don't want "Libertarian" to become a dirty word, because it's a far better paradigm than what we're getting from Rand Paul & his ilk today.

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      YoDADDYCaryGrantLives
      10/30/13 12:28pm

      Rand Paul sold himself out by throwing in his support for that money bag asshole Romney during the last presidential election. I will never forget what you did Rand, fuck you.

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    Sean BrodySarah Hedgecock
    10/30/13 12:20pm

    We can hate Rand Paul and still like Gattaca, right?

    I never saved anything for the swim back!!!!

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      apeshapedmanSean Brody
      10/30/13 12:22pm

      I want a future where everyone drives nuclear-powered classic cars.

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      Claudia GeorgeSean Brody
      10/30/13 1:00pm

      Oh hell yeah. Best sci-fi noire ever. (Dark City a close second.) (Blade Runner doesn't count because everyone says Blade Runner.) Best personal motto ever. Best over the top soundtrack ever. Best Ethan Hawk and Uma Thurman and Jude Law sad faces ever. Fucking Gore Vidal. (I mean that as a fucking compliment.)

      Did I mention the soundtrack? Also... look at this poster for the soundtrack. It's a cell but it's also a planet! OMG!

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    PoopiesAFSarah Hedgecock
    10/30/13 12:22pm

    This is evidence of the media stupidity (and I say this as a fan of Maddow). I don't give a flying fuck if it's from Gattaca, Wikipedia, Pokemon or elsewhere.

    His comment is ridiculous on it's face. Ok. But we're not getting (as) exercised by the fact that this guy is making absurd allegations that universal access to healthcare = eugenics.* We're more annoyed that he broke the rule about attribution. It's not like he writes his own speeches anyway.

    But of course, if the media (besides Maddow) collectively said, this guy is a fucking loon . . . universal access is the norm and it works and what we have now is some dystopian future whereby the poor are charged the most for a simple IV and the working poor are bankrupted if they break a leg. That's outrageous. But, if the NYT reporting pages said, "delusional senator misunderstands health policy" they'd be called "advocates" and "biased" — so instead, they adhere to this false narrative of balance whereby, they can't call out the crazy shit Rand Paul says, except if the crazy shit was plagerized or broke some other agreed MSM rule where you can call out politicians without inviting yourself to spurious claims of bias.

    *To wit, if his statement was original, as crazy as it was, it wouldn't have been "newsworthy."

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      TRUMP DELENDUS EST (fka Chatham Harrison)PoopiesAF
      10/30/13 12:36pm

      This would be a great follow-up, or a couple paragraphs in an article about a Senator's nutty speech. Gawker actually calls it Rand Paul's "Crazy Abortion Speech," they just go on to put the emphasis on the least important part, because pageviews.

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    ItsARampageLanaSarah Hedgecock
    10/30/13 12:22pm

    I still say the plagiarism is less disturbing than a sitting senator using movies to argue policy. I mean, can we do this with any movie? Because, counterpoint, Rosemary's Baby.

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      jamesbrummel1ItsARampageLana
      10/30/13 12:25pm

      I was thinking more Handmaiden's Tale, but that was a book first and the movie sucked.

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      ItsARampageLanajamesbrummel1
      10/30/13 12:28pm

      Ugh. DON'T TRY TO ADAPT ANYTHING THAT'S AT LEAST 50% INTERNAL MONOLOGUE, HOLLYWOOD. JUST DON'T.

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    vaulyreaSarah Hedgecock
    10/30/13 12:24pm

    Conservatives are claiming that the Gattaca wiki page was edited after his speech to "make him look bad."

    Not like there's a publicly available revisions history or anything on Wikipedia...

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      cheerful_exgirlfriendvaulyrea
      10/30/13 12:31pm

      I imagine all these olds sitting around a conference table saying stuff like "is that like wikileaks??" "Is this Snowden type site??" "How do I turn this computer on?"

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      Nick Footevaulyrea
      10/30/13 12:33pm

      That's why he should have copied from Sparknotes or IMDB instead.

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    Cannikin_MK3Sarah Hedgecock
    10/30/13 12:20pm

    Maybe it's not plagiarism. It's possible that Rand Paul is such a Gattaca fan that he wrote the Wikipedia article too.

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      hilikusopusSarah Hedgecock
      10/30/13 3:55pm

      If he'd actually watched Gattica and paid attention, he'd know that the state does not run or enforce any kind of eugenics program.

      In the near future Pandora's box has been opened: the power and ubiquity of DNA information is such that society undergoes a restructuring from top to bottom. Without sufficient regulation from the government, employers can, for example, illegally but easily acquire a DNA sample from a job applicant with as little as a stray hair left behind, filtering out the least desirable candidates based on probabilistic analysis of their DNA.

      The central point of the movie is that the human spirit can overcome determinism or probability, but in any event it is essentially an argument against Rand Paul's notion of a free market and libertarianism. The most deserving among us may be those who are tragically sidelined by the unfettered, self-imposed survival-of-the-fittest social dynamic.

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        StenchofaburnerSarah Hedgecock
        10/30/13 12:20pm

        Wait until he quotes Logan's Run in his speech about Obamacare.

        "And we will be forced to enter the Carrousel where the death panel we hand us a pill".

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          buttxfaceSarah Hedgecock
          10/30/13 12:20pm

          nevermind that it was plagiarized. the real problem is that he plagiarized SCIENCE FICTION to create fear about real life issues. very irresponsible, but typical for today's GOP. get real, please.

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            ApassionataVonCbuttxface
            10/30/13 1:02pm

            I believe I have found a solution to Detroit's socio-economic woes. See, we build this cop, that's a robot...

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