Who Knew?!

Wow… it’s amazing just how much of a charlie-foxtrot John McCain created with his ill-timed and inaccurate attack against Senator Obama over the Adler Planetarium.  Ever since he lobbed that attack from completely out in left field in last night’s debate, all of us planetarium supporters, workers, vendors, and friends have been rallying to the cause of some of the most under-funded yet FUN places to go in the world! (Alan Boyle of MSNBC has a good listing of blog entries you might find interesting, including mine!)

Of course you’ve read MY entries (some 700 of you in less than 24 hours), and loads of other people have leapt on the bandwagon. Which is great — planetariums have now become another “third rail” in this political race. I’m not saying that they are more important than things like the housing issues and social security and the financial crises and getting over the war in Iraq and other causes.

But, perhaps the attention paid to the Adler and other planetariums in the world will help people focus on the fact that science education — all education — is a bridge to the future. Planetariums are certainly doing their part to hold up that bridge.  So, we should be supporting them and the educators who teach us about the cosmos. It’s way better than deriding planetariums and science education (by inference).  Doing that is like… building a bridge to nowhere.

Update: Well, gosh darn it, the planetarium intrigues just keep growing.  At CBS2Chicago, there’s more info about the planetarium funding shows up:

And despite McCain’s attack, records suggest the GOP nominee has voted for millions of dollars worth of similar earmarks himself, including a $200,000 education grant to the Adler Planetarium.

McCain’s vote came as part of a vote on appropriations for the FY06 Commerce/State/Justice appropriations bill.

Again I have to ask: why didn’t McCain’s aides know this?  Or if they did, did they think it didn’t matter? That people are too stupid to look things up (Mark found that news as part of a Google search) and find out about his voting record as well as his opponent’s?  If his campaign is getting this wrong, what else is it flubbing up?

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(Note: U.S. citizens — have you registered to vote?)