The Immaculate Invention!

This is rich. I have several friends who work at RIM in Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA where, of course, the BlackBerry was invented.

I have to SMS them right away and let them know about this.

Aren't Blackberries made by a Canadian company?

I was recently on a steering committee whee I work and we approved implementing a new VoIP phone system enterprise wide.

I guess that makes me a telecommunications pioneer and innovator as well.

Where's my fat ass stock option package?

He knows how to catch bin Laden and fix the economy. For the low, low price of $1995 (in 75 yearly installments, on average) and your vote for him, he'll tell you how! As seen on TV!

As thepixelsuite mentioned above, Research In Motion, the company which owns the Blackberry, is Canadian. Somebody please let the McSane people know this.

The biggest problem isn't some insinuation that McCain had a role in the development of the Blackberry. (By the way, doesn't this conflict with the idea that he's not familiar with computers) It's that it implies a record concerning telecommunications that, until now, nobody has heard of, unless I missed something big in the last eight months or even eight years.

But didn't Jonah say McCain couldn't use a blackberry due to his POW wounds?

On top of which, notwithstanding the core strength of computers and communications innovation in this country, actual innovation in telecom service to consumers here has lagged behind Europe and Asia for some time.

Hahahha.

Hahahah. Yeah. I know MaryL and thepixelsuite pointed it out already, but RIM is a Canadian company.

Holtz-Eakin. What a moran.

As a former POW, McCain had plenty of time to scratch up the Blackberry design on the dirt floor of his cell.

Wait....was it a cross or a Blackberry design?

No... seriously... "the miracle John McCain helped create" ....

Really?

"the miracle John McCain helped create"

And they claim Obama thinks he's the chosen one?

I mean, come on!

This is particularly brilliant when we consider that the BlackBerry is a Canadian invention.

Help me, Obi-Wan Obama! You're my only hope!

Which is it Mr. McCain, Are you Panamanian or Canadian?

Release your birth certificate now!!

As stated above, Senator Clueless (et al) is/are apparently unaware that RIMM (Blackberry) is a Canadian company.

Man, if this whole debacle doesn't show that both he and his running mate are in above their heads, nothing does.

Palin not knowing one of the most important (and frightening) aspects of Bush policy, and McCain having no bloody clue about one of the most important things to the whole of America should equally disqualify them for the highest positions in this land.

Not that the dishonorable, sleazy liar John McCain deserves "fairness", but in fairness ...

The bogus slander that Al Gore claimed to have "invented the Internet" was based on a statement that Gore made referring to his role in the Congress where he championed legislation that enabled the vast expansion of public and commercial access to the Internet (a.k.a. the "information superhighway"). Gore continued to lead on this issue in the Clinton administration, through the 1990s. Even Newt Gingrich has acknowledged the importance of Gore's work in making possible "the Internet" as we know it today.

Now, Douglas Holtz-Eakin's describing a Blackberry as "the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did" seems like the very sort of self-aggrandizing exaggeration that Gore was falsely accused of making regarding the Internet. Of course, since McCain is a Republican, we are not likely to see the corporate-owned media go into a feeding frenzy over the McCain campaign's claim that John McCain "invented the Blackberry" (or perhaps McCain "miraculously" created it with help from the same God who is building that pipeline with Sarah Palin).

But back to the "fairness" that McCain doesn't deserve.

Grandiose hyperbole aside, the substantive claim in Holtz-Eakin's statement is that "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce committee" which McCain chairs, with the implication being that what McCain did in that committee played some role in the "innovations" in the telecommunications field over the last 15 years.

So, what is McCain's record as chair of the Senate Commerce Committee on telecommunications issues? Has he in fact ever done anything that can be plausibly credited with enabling the expansion and development of telecommunications technologies or the telecom industry, that helped to realize the Blackberry-connected world we live in today? Or not?

And, by the way, what would that have to do with his qualifications to deal with the collapse of the financial system, anyway?

Very funny indeed.
But McCain will probably die in office.

Anybody know:
What has Caribou Brownie invented?

I seem to remember that the Repubs pushed (enabled by Clinton) patent and copyright protection to the point of ridiculousness (90 year copyright? Assholes, please.)

Which is why I find it highly amusing that McCainiac would claim to invent the Blackberry which was nearly shut down in the US over a patent fight with a US company whose sole purpose was to be a parasite holding company that bought patents so they could earn royalties without actually doing anything with the technology.

Innovation, indeed.

Secular Animist is right -- and I would urge all of you to email Declan McCullough, the bullshit artist who perpetrated the "Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet" fraud in the first place: Gore never made any such claim. He stated as a matter of fact that he took the lead to draft and enact legislation opening the NSF backbone to commercial traffic, which was precisely the legal step that made the development of the Internet possible. McCullough was too ignorant to understand this was simply TRUE, too stupid to understand what it meant, and too partisan to report it accurately or to resist the temptation to mock Gore.

So, ask him (and every other wingnut clown on the Web) if McCain invented the Blackberry, "the miracle he helped create" -- in a pig's eye.

I hope that Hon. Sen. McCain doesn't expect anyone with actual knowledge of the mess that telecommunication laws have become to hear him bragging about his tenure on the committee which saw a refusal to institute actual competition in almost any area under its jurisdiction. We would have probably not have had reduces cable, cell phone, broadband and other rates with a Dem (see 1996 Telecom Act), but Senator McCain was in the vanguard helping to protect these and other industries' prerogatives, at the expense of consumers.

looks like the article isn't there anymore at the noted link.

Did Cheney start working at Politico?

Thanks former dan - I had forgotten about that

The story that the link points to doesn't exist.

Did Cheney start working over at Politico :-)

I vote we just hand tech illiterate McShitForBrains a Blackberry and ask him to access any of its functions or features. This is a guy who didn't know how to use Google, for pity's sake.

This biggest bailout and nationalization in human history comes from the most fanatically and ideologically zealot free-market laissez-faire administration in US history. These are the folks who for years spewed the rhetoric of free markets and cutting down government intervention in economic affairs. But they were so fanatically ideological about free markets that they did not realize that financial and other markets without proper rules, supervision and regulation are like a jungle where greed – untempered by fear of loss or of punishment – leads to credit bubbles and asset bubbles and manias and eventual bust and panics. - Nouriel Roubini http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini

Looks like the Politico whacked the link.

I think McCain had help with Ted Stevens. See... Canada is between Alaska and the US, and there's some tubes. Or something.

SARAH PALIN VETOED EARMARKS! LIPSTICK!

So according to Jonah "Doughboy" Goldberg, McCain's arms are so crippled by his beatings by the Viet Cong (in the alternate Goldbergian universe where McCain was captured by the VC and not the NVA) that he can't use a computer keyboard, but still nimble enought that he can use a BlackBerry.....

You'd think Palin would at least be an expert on all things Canadian given, you know, that she can see it from her house too.

So I can blame John McCain for the cell phone, the i-pod, the i-phone and the trio and every moron I run into in the grocery store that I can't resist yelling at? "Hang up and shop!".

Good Ford....it's bad enough that McCain's lies are making the so-called "liberal media"'s bogus narrative about Gore in 2000 rankle even more, but now his surrogate is , only with a lot less justification.

Al Gore, call your office, indeed. It's no surprise to say these people have no shame -- McCain's campaign is run by Rove and his minions -- but even Richard Cohen is waking up to the fact that McCain has none either.

The new Politico URL is this.

This is particularly brilliant when we consider that the BlackBerry is a Canadian invention.

Yes, but Alaska, where McCain's running mate Sarah Palin is governor, is next to Canada (in fact, you can actually see Canada from Alaska) and hence McCain relayed the BB technology to RIM by osmosis.

True, it sounds like nonsense to me, but then I'm no technologician like McCain is.

The page has been removed from Politico. Anyone have a mirror to the original article?

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain....

Dumb or not, I'll bet many will believe it on one level, just because the gray haired man war hero said it on T.V.

Seems like McCain has decided he can make up anything he wants. If he can successfully re-define terms like "Fundamentals" when talking about the economy to champion the harried and low-information voters.

Yes, it's demeaning and yes, it seems to work.

If Obama/Biden don't get simplify their message, it won't carry.

And one more thing--why the heck is Biden still referring to McCain as "John"? He did it several times this am on the "Today Show". You don't call your opponent by his first name--it sounded way too informal and warm and fuzzy.

Does McCain call Biden "Joe"? Argh!!!

@Anonymous @ 11:20: Does that mean he's sticking lipstick in a pig's eye now? Does PETA know?? That's animal testing!!!

I've been going through the morning show videos of John McCain this morning. Man, he looks tired. But on this point, Harry Smith asked him about the uproar yesterday about the "fundamentals being strong." McCain went into his American worker mumbo jumbo. Then Smith asked him about not understanding the economy. McCain used his experience with oversight on the Commerce Committee, and Smith hit him with the "then aren't you partly responsible" question.

Here is the link to Early Show. I'm not sure how to link the video! Sorry.
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/earlyshow/main500202.shtml

The most laughable part is the idea that commercially available telecom in the US is in any way particularly innovative. We're light years behind far too many countries to tout this as an accomplishment.

John McCain, who admittedly doesn't know who to use even e-mail, helped create the Blackberry?

While idiotic statements like this just cement his doom with people who have at least a year of community college, many of the great unwashed in the not-so-great heartland will be scratching their heads and saying, "Did I hear right? God made blackberries. And strawberries, and . . ."

Al Gore is loving it.

What's your Over/Under date for St. John developing a "health crisis" that will force him from the race? I've never seen a campaign make such a run of the SuperStupids.

Yes, the Blackberry is a Canadian invention and so is the "Hockey Mom". These lies! When will they stop?

Oh come on, it doesn't matter that RIM is a Canadian company. It's owned by Jim Balsillie, who is a big hockey player and fan (and keeps wanting to buy US teams and move them back to Canada). Sarah Palin doesn't have to see the Yukon to understand the great hockey spirit behind the Blackberry. And John McCain can just channel that through her.

"And and I created the,....uh,...Blackberry! Yeah, that's the ticket....."

Okay, I'm waiting fo the McCain camp to finally take this whole "running for President" thing serious.

Any day now.........

Of course McCain is an economic expert. Why, from the committee room of the Senate Commerce Committee you can SEE an investment bank.

More Americans are closer to Canada along the northern border of the lower 48. 5,525 miles long.

These people are so stupid it really is starting to cause me physical pain.

The fact is we are not the great innovators with wireless telecommuications. The Japanese have been a generation or two ahead of us technologically for decades now. I was stationed in Japan in from 1996 to 2000 and there was just no comparison between what the average guy had on the street over there and what was still considered cutting edge over here.

Or maybe McCain was serving in the Japanese Diet, too? That’s probably the next bald faced lie coming down the pike.

Here’s just one example of what I’m talking about:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4306834/

McCain-san bakayaro!

These people are so stupid it really is starting to cause me physical pain.

The fact is we are not the great innovators with wireless telecommuications. The Japanese have been a generation or two ahead of us technologically for decades now. I was stationed in Japan from 1996 to 2000 and there was just no comparison between what the average guy had on the street over there and what was still considered cutting edge over here.

Or maybe McCain was serving in the Japanese Diet, too? That’s probably the next bald faced lie coming down the pike.

Here’s just one example of what I’m talking about:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4306834/

McCain-san bakayaro!

Oh good! I'm having some issues with my Blackberry right now, I think I'll just call McSame for some assistance. Seeing as how he invented it (and then secretly shipped it to Canada, because that's how we defeat terror)... despite not knowing how to use a computer.

McCain-san bakayaro! Posted by: Bill in Chicago

Totemo bakayaro. Aho. Kuso jiji!

Your turn.

Must resist temptation to pull one out of the Rove playbook for some Al Gore payback . . .

Ah, what the heck!

JOHN McCAIN INVENTED THE BLACKBERRY?!?!

ROFLMAO!!!!!

So according to Jonah "Doughboy" Goldberg, McCain's arms are so crippled by his beatings by the Viet Cong (in the alternate Goldbergian universe where McCain was captured by the VC and not the NVA) that he can't use a computer keyboard, but still nimble enought that he can use a BlackBerry.....
Posted by: Stefan on September 16, 2008 at 11:29 AM | PERMALINK

__________________________________

ok, but luckily, under the americans with disabilities act, his office will be outfitted with a 508-compliant computer system to allow him to have equal access. damn government mandates.

I can only hope and pray that someone shot some video of that idiot holding up the blackberry.

Priceless.

RIM is a canadian company geniuses...

Bill in Chicago wrote: "Or maybe McCain was serving in the Japanese Diet, too?"

McCain was once served some sushi, which is a food item in the Japanese diet. Does that count?

And it was moose sushi, too. With no arugula.

According to the later story on Politico, the McCain campaign has described the statement as a 'boneheaded joke by a staffer.' Sounds reasonable to me. McCain's people aren't that dumb. (On the other hand, if it had been Palin's staff crediting Todd or Bristol with doing it...)

According to the later story on Politico, the McCain campaign has described the statement as a 'boneheaded joke by a staffer.' Sounds reasonable to me. McCain's people aren't that dumb.
Posted by: Prup

Of course they're all that dumb. How would you otherwise explain them working for McCain?

koreyel@11:15 asks: Anybody know:
What has Caribou Brownie invented?

That's easy. She invented Russia. She can see it from her house, after all. She also invented the oil industry, natural gas, snow, polar bears, glaciers, moose-hunting, and Pentecostalism.

Are you kidding me? For better or worse, the radical changes in telecommunications products and services have been the result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

John McCain voted against it.

Where's Kevin Drum?

I'm serious - I wandered away for a bit there, but Drum was the reason I started reading this site, and if he's gone for good I'll go away for good.

Tell me that Kevin's just taking a long vacation.

Tim: Mr. Drum is now presiding over a new blog at Mother Jones.

Now, Douglas Holtz-Eakin's describing a Blackberry as "the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did" seems like the very sort of self-aggrandizing exaggeration that Gore was falsely accused of making regarding the Internet.

This is what I thought too. McCain now deserves all the crap Gore got but didn't deserve.

Of course, since McCain is a Republican, we are not likely to see the corporate-owned media go into a feeding frenzy over the McCain campaign's claim that John McCain "invented the Blackberry" (or perhaps McCain "miraculously" created it with help from the same God who is building that pipeline with Sarah Palin).

I wouldn't be so sure! The media seems to be not too happy with McCain now as he has turned from the BBQ Master to a stereotypical lying Republican candidate.

"And it was moose sushi, too. With no arugula."

Posted by: SecularAnimist on September 16, 2008
----------------------

I see your memory is as good as John McCain's.

ROFLMAO 707