The Glade 4.0

That's the point he's making rorithas. Nor did al gore claim he invented the internet.

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.

Well then, I guess it's a good thing Obama really is a socialist, Muslim, terrorist from Kenya who hates America, Christians and white people so the Republicans didn't have to rely on such dirty tricks when running against him.

Oh, and of course it was fortunate for the Republicans that John Kerry really was a filthy traitor who lied about his military service in order to aid the Vietnamese communists because he hates America. And then there's Bill Clinton who, of course, was a communist drug kingpin who had people murdered, was conspiring with Janet Reno to take away all our guns and install a UN dictatorship, and who, it goes without saying, hates America.

That's the point he's making rorithas. Nor did al gore claim he invented the internet.

He crafted the legislation responsible for DARPAnet. He wasn't claiming to have invented tcp/ip. His statement might have been a bit of overreach but was factually correct.

No, but in Palin's case, Tina Fey DID say she could "see Russia from her house" and because she was A) impersonating Palin and B) closely resembled her, people started thinking she actually did say it.

In Gore's case what he said was he "took the initiative in creating the internet", which while not the same thing as claiming to have invented it, is certainly a case of massive self-aggrandizement since any "initiative" he took in fostering its development was a drop in the bucket of everyone else's, at most.

The difference between the two is that Palin had someone else's statement attributed to her due to a bizarre coincidence of physical appearance, Al Gore did actually say something strongly resembling the "I invented the internet" meme.

The basis for the line was Governor Palin's 11 September 2008 appearance on ABC News, her first major interview after being tapped as the vice-presidential nominee. During that appearance, interviewer Charles Gibson asked her what insight she had gained from living so close to Russia, and she responded: "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska"

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

You also seem to have inaccurate statements about the Democratic candidate confused with openly campaigning against the incumbent who is not running for re-election... hence the endless use of the phrase "same failed policies" in Obama's campaigns.

It was his acceptance of the nomination, not the inauguration. But either way, you don't think those are kind of, you know, natural moments to highlight as the beginning of a change in direction? Sure, the energy level and "poetic" factor were a bit much for my more curmudgeonly tastes, but whatever.

When Reagan talked about American renewal, a second American Revolution, history looking back on the period of his administration as "the golden years", etc. at his nomination speeches and inaugural addresses, was he also fostering a cult of personality, or was he just engaging in the same puffery intended to inspire and rally his audience that Obama was engaging in?

That is clearly not what he's saying. You're inserting meaning based on your own bias. This may be a bit no-true-Scotsman, but no reasonable listener would take that away from what he was saying.

That's remarkably different from being able to see Russia from your house.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

A change in policy direction yes, a change that affects the tides - no. A change that begins the earth to heal - no you're not an incarnation of nature you're a politician holding office.

and "taking the initiative creating the internet" is remarkably different than "invented the internet"

Inventing != creating

He crafted the legislation responsible for ARPAnet. He wasn't claiming to have invented tcp/ip. His statement might have been a bit of overreach but was factually correct.

Although Vice-President Gore's phrasing might have been a bit clumsy (and perhaps self-serving), he was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet in the sense of having designed or implemented it, but rather that he was responsible, in an economic and legislative sense, for fostering the development the technology that we now know as the Internet.
To claim that Gore was seriously trying to take credit for the "invention" of the Internet is, frankly, just silly political posturing that arose out of a close presidential campaign. Gore never used the word "invent," and the words "create" and "invent" have distinctly different meanings: the former is used in the sense of "to bring about" or "to bring into existence" while the latter is generally used to signify the first instance of someone's thinking up or implementing an idea.

As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.

As a Senator in the 1980s Gore urged government agencies to consolidate what at the time were several dozen different and unconnected networks into an "Interagency Network." Working in a bi-partisan manner with officials in Ronald Reagan and George Bush's administrations, Gore secured the passage of the High Performance Computing and Communications Act in 1991. This "Gore Act" supported the National Research and Education Network (NREN) initiative that became one of the major vehicles for the spread of the Internet beyond the field of computer science.

Our next-door-neighbor... versus see them from my house. I could see those being radically different statements.

Two words: Jimmy Carter. Republicans have been running against him for 30 years. In the 1984 campaign, Reagan talked about Mondale taking us back to the failed policies of the last administration. In the 1988 and 1992 campaigns, Dukakis and Clinton were going to take us back to the Carter era. I don't remember Carter featuring heavily in '96 and 2000, but in 2008, the Carter playbook came out again and Obama was characterized as the most liberal Democratic nominee since Jimmy Carter, looking to undo the Democrats' move to the center that Clinton (now that he was out of office) could safely be credited with. And so on, and so forth. It's standard politics to take the most recent (or even not so recent) unpopular President of the other party and try to associate your opponent with that guy. And given the increasingly clear party sorting and polarization, it's actually a reasonably fair charge when that last guy was only a term or two ago. Mondale and Dukakis really would have tried to reverse a lot of Reagan's policies and their administrations would have looked a lot more like updated versions of Carter's. Ditto with McCain and Romney vis-à-vis Bush. And hey, in 2016, you won't hear me complaining when the Republicans argue that the Democratic nominee represents a continuation of Obama's supposedly failed policies, because chance are, he or she really will!

You know, since it was't patently obvious from her statement that she was talking about alaska rather than her house, and she didn't specify that it was one particular island or anything.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Alaska closer to Russia than Western Europe is. In geographic terms, they truly are neighbors. The real issue is that most of you aren't aware that, yes, they actually are that close together. That's why Russia owned Alaska at one point. You're also idiots who, when this is pointed out to you, want to continue making cracks in order to deflect attention from not being suitably educated in geography.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

I am sorry I trod upon your Palin boner a little bit. You can go back to jerking it to pictures of her holding shotguns in a bikini now

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin