October 26, 2004

Ashley's story On September 11th, Ashley lost her mom at the World Trade Center. Earlier this year, she was comforted by President Bush. Spread Ashley's story with your contribution.
  • um. just... um.
  • Can't get it to work in mozilla, and yet it wants me to send it to 5 of my friends? yeah right.
  • Reminds me of a politician doing the old, holding a baby to get votes trick.
  • Okay, that does it, I'm voting for Bush. Except . . . one time, on the Discovery Channel, I saw a mama wolf cuddling one of its babies. [Cognitive dissonance ensues.]
  • That's totally photoshoped, right?
  • Christ. I think I need an insulin shot.
  • Wow, Ashley can really code! That's professional-grade design. I bet the president would be really touched if he knew she made a website about him. I like how this dovetails with the nomenclatural tendencies his brother has, with his "Terri's Law" bullshit.
  • On September 11th, Ashley lost her mom at the World Trade Center. Earlier this year, she was comforted by President Bush.
    Motherfucker waited three years to comfort her? Boo fuckin' hoo.
  • I didn't know that just anybody could run up and hug the president.
  • So Network Solutions is pimping for Bush? Whois for the site is Network Solutions. Yet another reason to hate NS.
  • Tough crowd in here. Where is the love?
  • I almost posted this earlier today, Wolof, but I couldn't stop shuddering long enough to type.
  • I feel love, heck even did a little awwwe but then I saw the beady eyes, the semi blank look and the BS detector went off.
  • I have plenty of love, and I'm so happy to find out that I can share it with Bush. I can just run up and hug him. I feel so much safer knowing that security in this country has improved so much that any person can run up and hug the president. No paperwork involved, no planning, just a spontaneous hug that anyone can give and recieve from the president. What a great and safe country! Hug line starts after me!
  • I started to do some homework on this (firstly Network Solutions are just the registrar -* the domain is owned by Network Processing Services LLC of Arizona) but then discovered that the whois heavy lifting and dot-joining had already been done over here. *can anyone tell me how to write an em dash round here? &8212 and &mdash don't seem to work. ditto for tags on superscript.
  • vamoose — Alt + 0151 seems to work nicely
  • Thanks vamoose. I saw that whois page but just read it "Network Solutions". Should get some sleep I guess. Your link makes much more sense doing this than NS doing the page (though they are still a crap company). Wolof: the love is on hold until the 3rd at best, unfortunately. This may or may not be a factual story with some partisan spin on it but I assume fake. Without doing a bunch of research (which I have no real interest in doing), the company registering the page and the "Paid for by Progress for America Voter Fund" notice make the whole story a partisan scam and one of staged, embellished or outright false to me. If the story is true, then this is even more disgusting.
  • beeza: thanks for the tip, but your comment came up as "a with a hat, Euro symbol, end double quote mark, Alt + 0151" on my screen so I'm not sure how to interpret it.
  • Not that I actually watch campaign commercials, but, being in Ohio, it's nigh impossible to completely avoid them. There is a Bush commercial about him comforting her. I assume this is the same one (I'm on dial-up so I didn't watch). It's so nice that this touching story is getting wider attention. At least I can share the pain.
  • Try — (or —, if you must). The semi-colons and hashes are important.
  • thanks fuyugare
  • Wow, she's like a little junior starfucker.
  • Well, I'm sorry about her loss, & I'm equally sorry that she is too young to realise she's being used. What can one say? I seriously doubt Bush gives too much of a shit about her in real, human terms.
  • Sorry about that vamoose. My fault, my browser is set up for Unicode. Switched over to Western encoding and can see what you mean.
  • yes... as mentioned, this is the website for a schmaltzy, gagtastic, and pointless tv ad by the ironically-named "progress for america voter fund". in the "battleground state" known as wisconsin, we have been bombarded by this sort of tripe relentlessly. i especially love the phony-ish newspaper clipping, and headline: "bush comforts daughter of 9/11 victim". my immediate thoughts, were, (among other things) 'BIG FUCKING DEAL? bush hugged some chick! awesome!!! somebody should give that man the US presidency for another four years, because the argument put forward by that ad just sealed the fucking deal! i am totally convinced!' what's that you say? it's not an appeal to reason, it's an appeal to emotion? even better! i'm definitely going to vote for the redneck that hugged that ashley chick, now! she had tears in her eyes, folks! c'mon! my second favorite reason... heard on the street, call-in tv and radio shows, etc., goes like this:
    some guy: "so, why are you voting for bush/kerry?" some tard: "i'm voting for bush, because he's stronger on security."
    like... WTF? huh? what? what does that even mean??? JUST REPEAT WHAT YOU ARE TOLD, REPUBLICAN SIMIANS!
  • ' the ironically-named "progress for america voter fund" ' i wonder about this name. doesn't it imply that there's been a lack of progress under the incumbent?
  • For Ashley's sake I hope the prez remembered to put on deodorant that day.
  • beeza: it was my lack of computational intercultural skills that were the problem. I just looked in Unicode and it all made perfect sense. If only computers spoke Esperanto.
  • We in Missouri are seeing this ad also. It makes me feel a little sick. My skin crawls when I hear this ad. I can't understand how this kid and her family can't see that Dubya doesn't actually care for her or her family. Where were the secret police, how did she get close enough to hug him? Publicity stunt. A dear close friend was discussing the election with me a couple of days ago. He unfortunately is going to vote for Bush, not because of this ad, but because he feels Kerry is a liar. He couldn't give me a specific instance he was absolutely sure Kerry lied about. I named several of Bushy's untruths. It didn't make one wit of difference to him. He is also a vietnam vet, my friend. I think he is still upset over the issue of Kerry and his protests of that war. I still love him, but it scares me about the upcoming election results. My friend is a level headed soul, but for some reason he can't see what a liability Bush is to our country. How many more like him are there out there?
  • Motherfucker waited three years to comfort her? Boo fuckin' hoo. How cynical. Don't you know its hard work being the president? The man is busy choking on pretzels, setting up a legal category of second-class citizens, and putting us half a trillion in debt. Show a little empathy.
  • I've seen the "Ashley" TV spot a sickening number of times. It may never cease to amaze me that so many voters are seduced and convinced by this sort of cheap greeting-card sentiment, this thin emotional gruel of fear and platitudes the Republicans have been spewing all year. I wonder if perhaps this tactic only works on frightened people. Are so many Americans spending every day in mortal terror of another 9/11? I'm not.
  • Are so many Americans spending every day in mortal terror of another 9/11? The fear factor goes up in direct proportion to how deep one travels into the heart of the country, which is least likely to suffer any terrorist attack whatsoever. The same people who buy into this treacle are the same who harbor these irrational fears. The media certainly doesn't help by promulgating this climate and culture of irrational fear in their news reporting.
  • Ahh, but this is not a binary election, bratcat. Perhaps your friend -- and similar folks that would never vote for Kerry -- should be reminded that, from a "real" conservative point of view, there exist several superior alternatives to George W. Bush. Remember, everyone, that a vote for Bush is a vote for Bush... and, more importantly, votes for Nader and Badnarik are votes for Not_Bush.
  • What a load of moaning fucks. She lost her mom, dicks. I'm just off to see if I can legally gay marry my mom and gay murder my dad. If they haul me up in court, I'm inditing you crapheads for incitement. Next move -- sue Google for bad advice.
  • PS -- this was an awful post, and an obvious troll. But I had to do it.
  • You can't just run up and put your arms around the president without getting filled full of lead, even if your just a teen. The Secret Service had to have been prepped, and told to stand down. So it was pre-arranged hug, which makes it a blatant exploitation of her mom's death. Anyways, look at the massive amount of guilt on his face as he hugs her. His guilty conscience is starting to catch up with him.
  • I've seen the comercial a couple times and the thing that jumps out to me most is the fact that everyone is from Ohio, a "battleground" state and they never miss a chance to remind you of it. Co-incidence? I think not. I donn't know about anyone else, but if I had known anyone who had died in the 9/11 attacks, I would be pissed as hell about the ways in which the Republican party have been using that tragedy to scare people and try to get votes.
  • Meet a thousand other American kids. Over the past 18 months, they all lost mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters because their president sent them to Iraq. None of them have ever been comforted, or even acknowledged, by President Bush. Please spread their story with your contribution.
  • don't know about you monkeys, but when I comfort someone, my eyes are generally on them... not on waiting cameras.
  • His guilty conscience is starting to catch up with him. Hah! 1 Timothy 4:
    1 ¶Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; 2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
    Guilty conscience indeed. They very notion!
  • I sent it five times to Dubya. I encourage all of you to do the same.
  • sometimes I thank God I live in a state the presidential candidates have decided not to waste much money on (NC). I saw my first presidential campaign ad this weekend. I'm not gloating, all in all I'd rather live somewhere my vote has at least a chance of counting in the electoral college, but it is nice to skip some of the advertising.
    My favorite part was the long pause after "Dad" said "What I saw was what I want to see..." That's the faith-voting vs. facts-voting debate it in a nutshell isn't it? Nobody votes 100% on facts, you'd be kidding yourself to believe there's absolutely no irrational personal bias in your choices, but c'mon, how bout a little balance, hm? Seems to me the little disadvantage to voting on faith is that people lie sometimes. Y'all all know that, I just haven't spoken on it yet and had to get a little off my chest....
  • if I had known anyone who had died in the 9/11 attacks, I would be pissed as hell about the ways in which the Republican party have been using that tragedy to scare people and try to get votes. I didn't, but I am anyway...
  • The political commercials are getting pretty thick and furious, especially during the World Series. I'd bet 8 out of every 10 commercials during the Series have been political, so far. Darn you Ohio for being all battlegroundy! Darn you political commerical guys (on both sides) for being such merciless hacks!
  • Yeah, that whole Ashlee story was really funny...wait, what? Oh. You mean the site that collects donations to show dopey GOP ads like the "Windsurfer" bit. That one? Wolof: Doesn't that strike you as the least bit exploitive? To use her loss to fund ha-ha isn't John Kerry teh librul-type ads? You're not spreading her story with your contribution. You're helping to elect the man that ignored CIA warnings and let Ashley's mom die.
  • "President Bush got my mother killed, and all I got was this stupid hug."
  • spectrusery: I hope I get to see what I want to see on November 2: a Bush concession speech. It'll be classic. Will we see graciousness? Defiance? Petulance? Will Bush refuse to concede, because, well, God chose him to do the hard, hard work of killing the heathens, and all that?
  • One of the nice things about living in Texas is that it's so uncontestedly a Republican state, that both candidates barely even try here. Now, if we could only change it from being uncontestedly Republican, it might be even nicer...
  • I think if we all pass this website along to our friends in need of a heartwarming story (and who isn't?), and ask them to send a postcard to little Ashley so she knows how much we all care, the world will become just a little bit kinder. It isn't much, but after the heartwarming kindness and compassion shown by our President, its the least we can do. Glurge. It's called glurge.
  • I'm totally confused. Anyone want to spell it all out for the dim?
  • "Ashley lost her mom...." If Ashley ever finds her, she'd better chain her down so she doesn't get lost again. I don't like it when people try to manipulate me, and it allows me to dismiss them and their causes. The fact that it's shilling for the idiot Bush just reinforces my distaste for wheedling heart grabs and cements my opposition to the Bush regime.
  • "President Bush got my mother killed, and all I got was this stupid hug." Yea, the absolute least he could have done was fund her for college. What a prince.
  • jb confused about what the link is about? From where I sit I see a blatent polical attempt to tug at peoples heart strings and manipulate their feelings using a personal story about 9/11 as their focus. We're supposed to think Bush has gone after the evil nasty people and made the USofA safer for America and the rest of the world. Ashley on the other hand, forgot to take her backpack with the WMD inside and lost the opportunity to fire at will... heh. I figure 'they and them' hope in the end people will remember the softer side of the evil beady eyed Bush and vote for him next week. Me, I'll always remember how Ashely forgot her backpack ;) Reality is it's a polical ad (paid for by the Progress for America Voter Fund) that they want you to spam you friends in family with. hopefully this is what you were asking
  • Wait... This isn't about Ashley Olsen? *leaves in a huff*