@ Seth Halpern:
I used the term “economic democracy” to summarize the gist of the phony quotes. A closer reading would have raised other questions, but the awkwardness of the writing may, at first glance anyway, have made them seem more authentic as supposedly a college student’s work.

I’ve taken a longer look at Jumping in Pools, and it reads like a fairly typical blog that’s been around for a while. The “hoax” piece can be found with other “Satire” pieces: Maybe it was intended to be a fake news item a la Scrappleface. If so, the main problem is that it isn’t funny.

It’s interesting that the incident has generated an unusually large number of comments and trackbacks, as well as several news articles, and public comments by Klein, but the blogger hasn’t – as of the moment – yet commented on it. Instead, he’s just gone on with typical blog fare – comments on political races, a feud with with the infamous Charles Johnson of LGF, and so on.

The term quoted from the alleged thesis was “economic freedom”, not “economic democracy,” which when I heard it seemed to me to be such an inappropriate categorization of compulsory. wealth redistribution as to reflect some weird species of pre-fascist Mitteleuropische or Islamo-Germanic philosophical idealism , ie the notion that true freedom emanates only from submission and obedience to authority. You don’t suppose this was another stunt by LaRouchies do you? If anyone would be familiar with the jargon….

J.E. Dyer wrote:
I would say it’s even more the concept of limited constitutional government that the advocate of “redistributive justice” and “redistribution of wealth” is opting out of.

I agree, and I should have used a broader and more political formulation than “American capitalism.”

I found the reporting on the thesis being about nukes and the Soviets – complete with a picture of the professor – persuasive. That said, I agree that the failure to produce the thesis and other writings and records is suspicious – bound to provoke suspicions.

…just one of many things about this president that make his political opponents more than usually distrustful of a leader they never wanted.

@ fuster:
You can purchase it at this link, Smidge:

http://www.stormingmedia.us/21/2187/A218763.html

I believe you can also buy it directly from CARL at Fort Leavenworth.

@ J.E. Dyer:
Will you send me an autographed copy of your thesis?

@ Peter Shalen:
I don’t know. The “daisy chain” innuendo doesn’t seem to have much to do with women not aging as well as men, and it all being so unfair. That, it seems to me, is the default proposition with MoDo.

But I guess it can be hacked around to if Mary Cheney is dragged into the reckoning. Following in John Edwards’ sly, smarmy footsteps — now there’s pursuing a high standard.

@ Peter Shalen:
I hop corrected.

@ CK MacLeod:
I would say it’s even more the concept of limited constitutional government that the advocate of “redistributive justice” and “redistribution of wealth” is opting out of.

Of course, Smidge merely reveals his own predilections by concluding that what OSlash did say wasn’t anything that anyone should find controversial.

Obama didn’t merely say black people were poor, he conceptually linked their being poor with the failure of the civil rights movement to advocate “redistributive justice.” He explicitly puts all this together with the practice of viewing the Constitution as a document that guarantees what government can’t do to us, rather than reimagining it as a document that guarantees government doing things for us.

I have to say I wasn’t even aware of the thing with the Obama thesis hoax. But the hoax was plausible based on what CKM has cited here. That said, given OSlash’s organizational involvement in the nuclear freeze movement, it’s equally plausible that it was about nuclear arms and US-Soviet relations.

It’s surreal that there has to be all this speculation about it. What possible reason could there be for it not being available to the public as a research document? The normal thesis is made available for just that purpose.

fuster wrote:
When I was a serious sprout

You mean a tad?