Seeing stars

McCain Voted For Same Bill He Attacked Obama For Voting For, Labeling It Pork-Barrel Spending [my bold]

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Adler hosts over 400,000 school children and visitors every year and is considered one of the best science education facilities in the country.

However, with parts and support no longer available for its aging projector, the planetarium theater sometimes is dark, leaving visitors without that valuable teaching tool to explain space to them.

McCain's hammering Obama for alleged pork-barrel spending earmarks for a projector for Adler Planetarium during the presidential debate Tuesday night was all the more galling for two reasons. First, because the funding request for a new projector was not approved and second because McCain, like Obama, voted for what McCain is now labeling pork-barrel spending.

The Obama campaign had this to say about the situation:

"Senator Obama is firmly committed to enhancing our nation's science education programming, and he joined a bipartisan coalition of Illinois Members of Congress including Senator Durbin and Congressmen Kirk, Jackson Jr., Davis, and Emanuel in requesting funding to enhance and restore the Planetarium. Before leveling dubious charges against this science programming again, John McCain should check his own record - he voted for $200,000 in funding for the Adler Planetarium."

Funding for the Adler Planetarium education programs of $200,000 was included in the FY06 Commerce/State/Justice appropriations bill.

More by Jules Seigel of the Huffington Post:

The Adler Planetarium slur reveals both the slovenly nature of the McCain campaign's opposition research as well as the cynical and tone-deaf disconnect from reality. This is a high-tech scientific educational project, not an entertainment device. When I was a child and teenager growing up in New York, the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History was among my favorite places to visit. It was an important factor in the formation of my life-long interest in science and technology.

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The Planetarium item dramatizes the know-nothing, anti-science, anti-education attitudes of the McCain voter base, as well as his cynicism. I think this is an opportunity to highlight that. The United States should be financing the world's most effective and entertaining museums, science exhibits and educational facilities. The Defense Department was once a leader in promoting education in many different ways. It was a strong factor in the country's cultural and economic development before the Reagan revolution began pushing non-military science out the window.