Who says that McCain does not have a handle on new technology!
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080916.wmccain0916/BNStory/International/home
I can’t wait for more claims from the boneheads in McCain’s campaign:
“McCain cures lepers”
“McCain was first man on moon”
“McCain invented fire”
I wonder if his staffer realizes that Research in Motion (BlackBerry manufacturer) is a Canadian company?
<snerk>
The whole thing is a big misunderstanding. The campaign gopher just happened to have a Blackberry in his hand when he said McCain invented the Blackberry.
What he meant was that McCain invented the right hand.
So a staffer states that McCain’s work on several committees, including the Commerce Committee, regulating and de-regulating the telecom industry helped create the blackberry, a statement then specifically denied by a senior aide: " He would not claim to be the inventor of anything, much less the BlackBerry. This was obviously a boneheaded joke by a staffer” turns into “McCain invents blackberry”?
Wow. Comprehensive reading is clearly a lost art.
Sorry, we learned how to parse from the Republicans.
<Jon Lovitz as the pathological liar> It was a joke! ya, that’s it, a little joke. A funny. Ya, that’s the ticket. I first heard it from… Madonna. Ya, Madonna. On her… yacht. Ya, that’s it… </JLATPL>
A joke? Sheyah. If only there was some analog, about another presidential candidate who claimed that his position on a committee helped spearhead the creation of some technological advancement…some point of connection on which a satire rest. Then, and only then, could it conceivably be a joke.
But that never happened, right?
But that isn’t what he said now, is it? If that is what he meant, he shouldn’t have started by waving his Blackberry around and saying “You’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.”
Perhaps that’s where the reading comprehension breakdown began.
Did McCain actually invent the Blackberry? Was his staffer serious?
“No, I but know that he chooses his words carefully, and it was the wrong thing to say.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/15/mccain-no-obama-didnt-cal_n_126586.html
Oh, come on. Al Gore said they same thing and everyone made fun of him- correctly.
Ah, but you see McCain is known for choosing his words carelessly, even recklessly, at time even in a fit of rage, so this really is inaccurate to say of his speaking style. Obama must be held accountable for every single interpretation any disingenuous nitwit can argue is conceivable, because he chooses his words so carefully–obviously a major liability in a candidate for President–while McCain can talk any bizarre shit that passes through his mind and he must be given a free pass. That’s only fair.
Besides, the man served honorably. In uniform. As a POW. Cut him some slack, would ya?
In the interest of fighting ignorance, I have to point out that Gore never really claimed to have invented the internet. Furthermore, the guys who actually did invent the internet give Gore total props for his early and strong support in Congress.
Anyway, Gore still got burned for it. The McCain campaign can try to weasel out of it because it was a staffer, not McCain himself. It’s still one more lie. It’s habitual liars making things up to sound interesting.
For five and a half years, this American hero sat in his cramped mudhole and DREAMED of the day he would play BrickBreaker!
When he was a POW, John McCain invented the two-tin-cans-and-string communications technology.
Actual quote " “Telecommunications in the United States, the premiere innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create. And that’s what he did.”
And here’s what Gore actually said "I’ll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I’ve traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."
From wiki "*UCLA professor of information studies, Philip E. Agre and journalist Eric Boehlert argued that three articles in Wired News led to the creation of the widely spread urban legend that Gore claimed to have “invented the Internet,” which followed this interview.[91][92][93] In addition, computer professionals and congressional colleagues argued in his defense. Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn stated that “we don’t think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he ‘invented’ the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet.”[94][92] Cerf would also later state: “Al Gore had seen what happened with the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, which his father introduced as a military bill. It was very powerful. Housing went up, suburban boom happened, everybody became mobile. Al was attuned to the power of networking much more than any of his elective colleagues. His initiatives led directly to the commercialization of the Internet. So he really does deserve credit.”[95] Former Republican Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Newt Gingrich also stated: “In all fairness, it’s something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is – and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got [to Congress], we were both part of a “futures group” – the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the '80s began to actually happen.”[96] Finally, Wolf Blitzer (who conducted the original 1999 interview) stated in 2008 that: “I didn’t ask him about the Internet. I asked him about the differences he had with Bill Bradley […] Honestly, at the time, when he said it, it didn’t dawn on me that this was going to have the impact that it wound up having, because it was distorted to a certain degree and people said they took what he said, which was a carefully phrased comment about taking the initiative and creating the Internet to – I invented the Internet. And that was the sort of shorthand, the way his enemies projected it and it wound up being a devastating setback to him and it hurt him, as I’m sure he acknowledges to this very day.”[97]
Gore, himself, would later poke fun at the controversy. In 2000, while on the The Late Show with David Letterman he read Letterman’s Top 10 List (which for this show was called, “Top Ten Rejected Gore - Lieberman Campaign Slogans”) to the audience. Number nine on the list was: “Remember, America, I gave you the Internet, and I can take it away!”[98] A few years later in 2005, when Gore was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award “for three decades of contributions to the Internet” at the Webby Awards[99][100] he joked in his acceptance speech (limited to five words according to Webby Awards rules): “Please don’t recount this vote.” He was introduced by Vint Cerf who used the same format to joke: “We all invented the Internet.” Gore, who was then asked to add a few more words to his speech, stated: “It is time to reinvent the Internet for all of us to make it more robust and much more accessible and use it to reinvigorate our democracy.”[100]"*
Sounds to me like an official staffer said that Email McCain invented the Blackberry. It’s a bitch that what goes around comes around.
No, but he claimed to have created it, which was a silly thing to say regardless of context.
Jesus Christ can the average level on integrity on this board sink any lower? How many of you farkleberries were outraged - OUTRAGED, I say! - when the same slam was made against Gore?
Except that he did. See DrDeth’s post above. You turned down the presidential aspirations of a guy who foresaw the internet and created the legislation for the internet and enthusiastically brought us W. W, who has destroyed the economy and let Grover Norquist drown New Orleans in a bathtub calls that: Mission Accomplished.