John McCain aide Mark Soohoo at the Personal Democracy Forum:
“John McCain is aware of the Internet,” says Soohoo. “This is a man who has a very long history of understanding on a range of issues.”
That is certainly a relief, but when Soohoo went on to say McCain planned to drill “the Google” for oil, the crowd again became concerned. And, in all honesty, the more pressing question is whether or not John McCain is aware of all internet traditions.
jake
But is he aware of its traditions?
jake
Damn it. Premature snark strikes again.
evie
John McCain is “aware” of the internet???? And he has a 50-50 chance of leading this country for the next four years? Beyond frightening.
nightjar
Oil in the Googles. I wouldn’t have imagined that. I typed in “cheap gasoline” and nothing happened. Mr. Magoo must esplain this to the American public.
El Cid
Is this an actual statement? I’m not asking if it was in fact uttered as such. I’m asking if there is any substantive meaning in it?
Is he saying that there is a range of issues John McCain understands and has understood them for a long time?
Is that a special capacity of John McCain, to have a range of issues which he’s understood for a while? And does his understanding lend some sort of knowledge about those issues, or does he simply comprehend that those issues do in fact exist?
Is his understanding of a range of issues temporal, in that at one time he understood them but that understanding may or may not endure?
Dreggas
scary but true: He does not know how to use a computer.
JoshA
John McCain is aware of the internet. He has told it to get off his lawn, and is considering prodding it with a stick.
Palooza
Who is The Google?
RSA
But do the “issues” he understands include “the Internet”? For example, I am aware of life, the universe, and everything, and I also have a long history of understanding on a range of issues, but you wouldn’t want me in charge of it all.
mantis
John McCain is also aware of the steam engine, the spinning jenny, and the kinetoscope. He doesn’t know what any of them new-fangled gadgets do, but he’s aware they exist. He is also itchy, he’s got ants in his pants, is discombobulated, and needs a calmative.
Yes. You are a proper douchebag.
Susan Kitchens
Kewl. Came here to make you aware of the Politico post that talks about what John McCain is aware of, and to further wonder if he’s aware of all those other things.
But I see you already wrote the post, and touched on all the high points.
Zifnab
Thank god. I was worried he did not meet the minimum prerequisites for the job. Just long long as he “understands things”, we can sleep peacefully knowing everything will be all right.
My god, the man is like a conservative Dukakis. God will, a conservative Mondale. I just can’t wait to meet his VP.
Keith
In his defense, all the Iraqi base are belong to us.
jake
No. SA2SQ.
The most depressing thing about a McCain win: Four more years non-stop assaults the English language.
TCG
John McCain achieved internet awareness on June 23, 2008 at 12:01 PM.
John McCain has now become fully aware of the internet.
The Internet is a series of tubes.
John McCain is aware of the Tubes.
Ron M
Don’t forget that he’s also aware of the Al-Qaeda in Iran.
Susan Kitchens
OMG, if John McCain is aware of All Internet Traditions, what does this to do the Party of
InternetTraditional Values vote?NewUnansweredQuestions
Yes, if only he could remember it.
And … today a McCain campaign official was quoted on CNN as saying that a terrorist attack will help McCain get elected.
Blitzer’s Churn-o-Rama show is billboarding it as we speak.
Dennis - SGMM
Welcome back, Silent Majority.
Adam
Soohoo…John McCain is aware of the internet, is he?
mantis
Found em!
TheFountainHead
I will donate $100 dollars to the first Democrat that gets on television and correctly and succinctly calls McCain on the hypocrisy of grandstanding on public financing.
I’m having one of those days where I consider locking myself in a cave for my own well-being. There’s just too much stooopid floating out there today.
Joshua Norton
Uh, would you believe the telegraph?
Random Asshole
John McCain is aware of the tubes; notably, how the tubes must be used for delivering bottled hot water to dehydrated babies.
David Hunt
His VP is going to the same guy that’s my VP and your VP: that being whoever Obama chooses for his running mate.
mantis
I must take a break from Grandpa Simpson jokes to bring you this special message from Karl Rove on Obama:
But not the country clubs Karl goes to, because they don’t allow the negroes in those.
Jake’s wrong about which guy at the country club Karl is. He’s Spaulding Smails.
Unbelievable.
Dennis - SGMM
McCain has just called for a $300 million prize for a battery that will “leapfrog” the abilities of current hybrid and electric cars.”
Um, Johnny, lithium-polymer and A123 batteries will already do that. It’s just that no one wants to pay $60,000 for a sub-compact that can’t be efficiently recharged in most of America.
Tax Analyst
John McCain, “Mr. McGoogle”
…and his aide, “Mr. McSoohoogle”
whatta paira cards.
jrg
McCain Adviser Charlie Black: Another Attack on U.S. Would Be “Big Advantage” For McCain
That, to me, is a lot scarier than the fact that McCain has become aware of the internet (on the most basic of levels, I’m sure) 10 years after it’s use became widespread.
Rick Taylor
McCain interviewed by Fortune magazine on the economy, via Kevin Drum
.
There’s a lot that could be said, but I stalled trying to figure out what it means to “affect” our “very existence.” How do you “affect” someone’s existence? It sounds like he wanted to say “threaten” but thought that sounded too obviously crazy, and so settled on “affect” as a compromise.
RSA
How dare John McCain’s aides bring up the issue of John McCain being very old?
The Dangerman
AWARE of the Internet? Aware? Is the ANY job except for POTUS where you can still be hired by only being AWARE of the Internet?
NewUnansweredQuestions
Yeah, I think we should make sure every voter hears this.
CNN has the video, I saw it within the last hour on Blitzer’s Blatherfest. But no sooner did they churn it up, they seem to have gone silent on it. Hmm. I am keeping my ears open.
DFD
Through the power of the internets I have an understanding of teh McCain policy, third verse same as the first!
jake
Well if McCane gets his way and leaves our military in Iraq for 100 years the various groups of people who call themselves Al-Qaeda might get together and launch a successful invasion and occupation of the U.S. …
Nope. No matter how you slice it that shit is chock full o’ nuts.
NewUnansweredQuestions
Cafferty on the Black statement now ….
Including comments from viewers, CNN.
Dreggas
And how the tubes must never be tied because barefoot and pregnant is how every
cuntgood wife should be.NewUnansweredQuestions
WHOOOAAAAAA ….
Black “deeply regrets” his “attack on US advantage to McCain” remark. Blitzer is breathless.
Dana ObamaBash helps Black sugarcoat the gaffe. So we know who is paying her salary.
I cannot explain in words how much I detest that smarmy blond idiot.
joe
This isn’t just a McCain problem.
Remember “I know there are a lot of rumors on The INTERNETS,” from Dubya at the 2004 debate?
I saw Ted Kennedy on his cable access show refer to “Er, ah, your sites, ah, web numbah.”
We are being governed by people who are much further behind the technological curve than the average American, and this problem is only going to get worse as the speed of innovation keeps increasing.
Time to bust out Future Shock.
joe
Will he veto EVERY INTERNET?
mark
If the Libruls let us drill the Google we wouldn’t be paying four bucks a gallon for gas.
PeterJ
I have to agree on this.
Another successful attack would lead to McCain being elected and this would have devastating concequences for the United States, it would probably affect its very existence.
The Moar You Know
There’s so much wrong with this quote I hardly know where to start – but it strikes me as more of the same from Karl, that the president should be a guy you want to sit down and have a beer with, rather than somebody who just might be smarter/more successful/have more on the ball than some schlub with a six-pack of cans and a trailer.
America: Tyranny of the Lowest Common Denominator.
Oh yeah: also, damn, Karl has issues. I think he’s a little bitter.
Svensker
That statement certainly explains a lot about Karl’s feelings of inadequacy and his lifetime spent cutting other people down to size, doesn’t it?
To think how much the world would have been spared had Little Karl been thin and good looking.
Zifnab
Emphasis mine.
Yeah, this is why our media sucks. They don’t want to cover the news. They want to cover the latest episode of 24.
rawshark
Spaulding Smails is our current president. I’ve been saying this for years.
The Moar You Know
No shit. We are going to end up looking more like Zimbabwe than a First World nation in a few years if Congress doesn’t get a beating with the clue stick and fix our patent (and copyright) system.
Sadly, they are headed full steam in the opposite direction, digging a trench to the 19th century rather than blazing a trail to the 21st.
NewUnansweredQuestions
STOP THE OPRESSES!
PRIEST WHO MOCKED CLINTON AT OBAMA’S CHURCH IS STILL MOCKING! REFUSES TO STOP THE MOCKING.
This raises Unanswered Questions about Dem unity!
McCain campaign aide advocating attack on America as campaign tactic has short shelf life on CNN, NEW TOPIC AND NEW UNANSWERED QUESTIONS!
Not making this up, this is liveblogging from CNN’s live air right now.
Kevin
Doodie!
AkaDad
He’s saying that McCain is aware of Al Gore inventing the Google.
Dreggas
The question is, Does John McCain know what the internet is FOR?
Punchy
Good to know McCane is “aware” of the net. I hope he’s aware of electricity. He damn near preceeded it.
jrg
The Country Club in the city where I grew up still has no black members to this day, even though it is in a diverse university town with many successful and wealthy minorities (doctors, lawyers, professors, entrepreneurs)… That is also true of the Cotillion/Debutante balls in the area. From what I’ve heard, this is not uncommon across much of the U.S.
I genuinely hope that Rove is dumb enough to keep spewing this line of attack.
Maybe then we can consider who the “elite” really is, and what they really stand for, instead of pretending that the “elite” is just a collection of literate people who have had a latte at one time or another, live within a hundred miles of the coast, and don’t believe that the earth is flat or that it was created in seven days by some man in the sky that had been around for eternity, but just happened to be bored on August 3rd, 4021 BC.
Punchy
Coke —> Computer monitor.
Asshole.
Zifnab
Well, that’s kinda the joke. We’re going to be living in a Technocracy at the rate of business – where the high tech guys can just run laps around their low tech counterparts. We’ve seen it in business, with behemoths like IBM falling to spry giants like Microsoft who in turn suffer from even sprier and smaller software pirates and shareware developers.
The science isn’t going to wait on dinosaurs in the government to catch up with it. If anything, netroots action like Daily Kos prove that its the tech savy who will set the political discourse, not the politically savy who will control the future of technology. There’s no real reason for DKos to dominate the net like it does based on political ideology alone. They’ve just got the gurus on their side, so they thrive while Red State begs for quarters on the side of the road to refurbish the shitware they host on because the internetz are too lie-brul.
The end result of all this has already become apparent. Companies and consumers duke it out on the web without much in the way of government oversight, control, or protection. The RIAA can’t fight guys like Pirate Bay in court if the servers float beyond US jurisdiction. Comcast goes to war on torrent traffic in general with hopes of suppressing a handful of high-use users. Websites pop up and get shut down only to spring back to life again under a different URL. Spam floods the net and viruses sweep across the ‘tubes like some sort of natural phenomenon. It’s total anarchy. The government hasn’t moved significantly to change that. It doesn’t employee people who would know how.
I don’t think this will make us into a 3rd World Nation. I don’t know if regulations and legal enforcements would be a Marshall Plan or a War On Drugs in terms of good-idea / bad-idea. But its worth noting which candidate would know what the fuck he was doing and which candidate would keep insisting that the internet is a big truck you can just drop something on. It’s not.
Marshall
John, are you here at PdF ? I would be glad to raise a glass at dinner.
NewUnansweredQuestions
Yes, when I saw Bhutto fall, my first thought was, we need John McCain.
Discuss.
NewUnansweredQuestions
Black’s gaffe, all over CNN air right now.
Krista
Obama has a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about passers-by? How has this cigarette not gotten its own show?
Karl Rove = grammar FAIL
Marshall
.
Isn’t this a new character on Mad Men ?
HyperIon
my guess is that they will both be lousy spellers.
and i doubt the tech savvy will set any political discourse. they’ll rail on for thousands of posts but they will not determine the discourse.
NewUnansweredQuestions
Something more suave, using the French Inhale.
blueintheface
Yes, in fact, here’s a preview of his new blogger outreach ad campaign.
skippy
lol! john, you beat me to the punchline w/all internet traditions!
chiggins
At least he doesn’t put things in blockquotes like a trollop.
Delia
When John McCain is Preznit, he will send Homeland Security after all our little laptops. Then he will impound them and drill holes in their little screens, looking for the series of tubes, hoping to locate teh Google so he can order his minions to vacuum all the oil out of its vast reserve. Then he will send them back to us, all broken and empty, but having done their duty for their country.
Hope this helps.
Jill
Don’t you just love it when the jokes write themselves?
Vetle
Well, good thing you got Obama. Now everything is going swimmingly.
Cheers.