Planetarium - politics/music/culture/smarts

Planetarium's here, watching the Bush speech so that you don't have to. The thing is, you can only play the "what's that really mean?" game for so long. (Admittedly, for a few minutes, it's fun: Bush says "I will see to it that every doctor can practice without fear of reprisal from bureaucrats or lawsuits." Translation: Eliminate government-sponsored healthcare, and take away the right to sue a doctor who accidentally takes out your kidney during an appendectomy.) After that, it just gets scary. It would look an awful lot like a meeting of the Third Reich if the network cameramen weren't tripping over themselves trying to find the few dark faces in a sea of whitey. As he gets closer to the end, he's invoking "God" a lot more, and sounding remarkably like someone determined to fight a holy war. Unfortunately, fighting a holy war is easily spun as being "resolute" and "brave". Now he's making jokes about how people say he can't speak well, and how he swaggers and acts like a cowboy. It's really creepy, especially when he is just blatantly lying, talking about how much he's tried to do to help the 9/11 victims, or how what he says is always what he does. Invoking a lot of exploitative victim-imagery, which is bold when you're spitting on veterans' benefits. Or, rather, it WOULD be bold if he didn't know that nobody in the press is going to call him on it. Oh, God. He just said that, years from now, a plaque in New York City will say "Here, buildings fell. Here, a nation rose."

The Democrats have already released their response sheet. No mention of North Korea, or any foreign policy, essentially. No real discussion of health care. Apparently, just trying to remind people that some jobs have been lost.

Here's the thing. We at Planetarium have a lot of respect for people on the left who continue, year after year, to believe in the innate intelligence and goodness of people. People who think that no matter what, Americans will, in the end, stand up for what is good and decent and right. That Americans know what's up. This election, we fear, will be quite the test of this. It's so important for so many reasons that George W. Bush lose this election. And yet, the Republican Convention has come out with all the subtlety of the movie Armageddon. And people, by and large, seem to be buying it. The media, for their part, have been quite open in their reporting about the fact that this convention is bull. That the Republicans are putting on their "moderate" face, just like they did four years ago. And people, again, seem to be buying it. So we ask you: How much faith do you have? If the answer is a lot, then Planetarium salutes you. Frankly, we're a little worried.