Bush Says Americans 'Ought to Have' Broadband and a Pony by 2007

wrttnwrd writes "George Bush is calling for universal broadband by 2007. He doesn't say how, or who's going to pay for it, or who's going to build it, but hey, isn't almost good enough? (for all of you Boondocks readers out there)" First step to universal broadband: don't have your Justice Department argue against communities providing their own broadband service. And don't forget the pony!

Comments

Re:Bush is just jealous...

[inkswamp]

Isn't it sad that we live in an age where information is at your fingertips and people still can't seem to figure out when they're being lied to? Anyone who watched/heard Al Gore's comments in context knew exactly what he meant, and yet these right-wing whack jobs on the radio and TV still managed to spin it like Gore was taking credit for the invention of the Internet. I don't know about the rest of Americans, but when I hear a claim made by media loudmouths, I sit down and Google for it to read the whole story. Invariably, these right-wingers leave out key elements of a given story or take comments totally out of context. I can't imagine that nobody in their audiences bothers to look these things up on their own. That or they don't care. Either way it's somewhat depressing to think about.

There's this right-wing talk show host Kirby Wilbur in Seattle and he rants during a promo for his station that a school district in Yakima, WA turned down free circus tickets for children in the school district because the issuers of the free tickets failed to offer Spanish documentation about the tickets. He even punctuates the rant with a frothy-mouthed comment about how those kids should be learning English and implies that the school has an anti-English/multicultural agenda and is using the circus tickets to push it.

But of course that wasn't the whole story. I went out on the Internet and found the whole story in a matter of minutes. It turns out that the school district in question has a high enough Spanish-speaking population that issuing English-only documentation about the free tickets causes an undue amount of confusion and forces the school to correct the problem at great expense to itself. The school district was simply requesting that the issuers of the free tickets help them out so as not to incur the expense of altering the fliers about the free tickets.

You're always just barely getting the whole story with these guys.

Re:A pony indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Well...if Bush mentions it...it'll never happen. For example;
No child left behind=all children left behind.
15 billion for AIDS=nothing for AIDS.

Anything he touts gets the kiss of death.

Re:Your mistake.

[PostItNote]

> liberal Republicans, like Bush

Whoah, time to take a step back. I'm a little unclear on how Bush is liberal at all. You may not like his policies, but they are pretty much straight down the social conservative and neoconservative party lines. Neither of which could be called liberal by any stretch of the imagination.

Liberals (like myself!) generally want increased envronmental controls, more internationalism, lots of social safety nets, more peace, and progressive tax rates. Many of them (like myself!) also support a high degree of individual freedom. I find it hard to call the USAPATRIOT Act, the Iraq War, or the no-gay-marriage amendment liberal in the least. Liberal doesn't mean "I, as a conservative, don't like it". Bush might be accurately called a fascist, but fascism is an extreme form of conservatism.

Unless, of course, you are from any other English speaking country, in which case your confusion about how we use the labels "liberal" and "conservative" is quite understandable.

Re:trivista@AddressMungedToFoilSpammers

[orthogonal]

your suckage seems to be on the rise

Recapitulating the thread: Grandparent comment accuses Great-grandparent of pro-Bush administration spinning by asking "How is the weather in D.C. today, Mr Rove?"

Parent comment decides that's unfair to Karl Rove, who, as President Bush's primary political advisor, is clearly a public figure and one who would spin the administration line.

Parent commenter decides that the proper way to argue his case against grandparent is not to argue that facts, but to make a (rather lame -- "your suckage") ad hominem attack, and then injury to the insult by displaying grandparent poster's (unmunged) email address, in the hopes that spam-bots screen-scraping Slashdot will find it.

Now, there are these who would say that such personal smearing of opposition, without making any attempt to refute their arguments, is precisely what the Republican Party in general, and Karl Rove in particular, are doing to Richard Clarke, for Clarke's courage in coming forward and telling the American public that the Bush Administration was more concerned about going to war with Iraq than with fighting Osama bin Laden.

And there are some who would say that this sort of smear is similar to the Administration's false accusation that former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill disclosed classified documents, in an attempt to discredit O'Neill's candid account of the Bush Administration's shortcomings.

And some might even go so far as to say that posting an unmunged email address is a pale echo of how the Bush Administration punished Ambassador Joseph Wilson for telling the truth -- that Iraq didn't have nuclear bomb making materials --, by telling conservative columnist Robert Novak to publish to the world that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA agent, thereby ending her effectiveness as a agent -- and thus harming the country's national security -- as well as threatening her own life.

But I would never say these things, because I'd be afraid that some Anonymous Coward might post my unmunged email address. Congratulations to you, Mr. Republican Coward! Once again you've let everyone know that lese majeste, any offense against King George, will be punished, even if -- especially if -- that offense is to tell the truth about this Administration's smear tactics.