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New Krugman. Go!
Planetarium World Headquarters has been a punk rock dance fiesta ever since the newly remastered version of X-ray Spex's classic album Germ-Free Adolescents arrived in our offices. If you've never heard this album, you should go buy it now. For you new-school folks, imagine Bikini Kill covering Sex Pistol songs. Seriously, Kathleen Hanna, you're biting Poly Styrene's styles pretty hard. It's an amazing record, though, and doesn't sound outdated in the slightest- unlike, say, the aforementioned Pistols tend to these days. And there's a saxophone; how can you beat that?
Also, the latest Boondocks collection is pretty great, despite being a few years behind, politics-wise. Consider this offering from 2003:
Huey: You think the Democrats in California are going to beat "the Terminator"?
Cesar: Depends. Is it too late to run John Connor?
According to the Times, the White House is opening its doors, throwing out a bunch of garbage papers that are of not much value to the Senate confirmation team for Judge Roberts, and saying "Oh, you want relevant paperwork? Go fuck yourself." Which is not surprising at all, really. Planetarium is impressed that they kept up the "we want to work WITH the Democrats" charade for as long as they did. It was so out of character and unsettling. Glad they're back to being honest about the evil intentions. Well, maybe not glad, but it's so unseemly when they try to make nice. Watching them try to smile and play fair is not unlike the feeling we imagine you'd get if you watched a group of small aliens take over a human body, and were still figuring out how to move all the appendages properly. Nonetheless, this confirmation info better get cracking along- we all know how famed the American people are for their legendary patience.
Planetarium's got another trailer for you today....at first glance, this movie seems like it would probably suck, until you look closer and realize that it's the same folks who wrote, directed, and starred in Anchorman. Then you realize that you have to go see it.
Click to watch the trailer to The 40 Year Old Virgin!
That's right, one of Alan Moore's greatest works, second only to Watchmen, really, is getting the big-screen presentation this fall. And the trailer for what looks like it might be quite the awesome riff on politics, people, and of course, some good ol' action has finally hit the net:
Click here to see the trailer for V for Vendetta!!!!!!
"The president is a man of his word. He promised to nominate someone along the lines of a Scalia or a Thomas, and that is exactly what he has done."
-- Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council,
positively giddy over the nomination of John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court
From the official White House transcript of a press briefing on July 12
(with White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan):
QUESTION: Scott, can I ask you this: Did Karl Rove commit a crime?
MCCLELLAN: Again, David, this is a question relating to a ongoing
investigation, and you have my response related to the investigation.
And I don't think you should read anything into it other than: We're
going to continue not to comment on it while it's ongoing.
QUESTION: Do you stand by your statement from the fall of 2003, when you
were asked specifically about Karl and Elliot Abrams and Scooter Libby,
and you said, "I've gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told
me they are not involved in this"?
QUESTION: Do you stand by that statement?
MCCLELLAN: And if you will recall, I said that, as part of helping the
investigators move forward on the investigation, we're not going to get
into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time
as well.
QUESTION: Scott, this is ridiculous. The notion that you're going to
stand before us, after having commented with that level of detail, and
tell people watching this that somehow you've decided not to talk.
You've got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from
that podium or not?
MCCLELLAN: I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said. And I
will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate
time is when the investigation...
QUESTION: (inaudible) when it's appropriate and when it's inappropriate?
MCCLELLAN: If you'll let me finish.
QUESTION: No, you're not finishing. You're not saying anything.
You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And
now we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson's wife. So don't you
owe the American public a fuller explanation. Was he involved or was he
not? Because contrary to what you told the American people, he did
indeed talk about his wife, didn't he?
MCCLELLAN: There will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the
time to talk about it.
QUESTION: Do you think people will accept that, what you're saying today?
MCCLELLAN: Again, I've responded to the question.
QUESTION: Well, you're in a bad spot here, Scott, because after the
investigation began, after the criminal investigation was underway, you
said -- October 10th, 2003, "I spoke with those individuals, Rove,
Abrams and Libby, as I pointed out, those individuals assured me they
were not involved in this." From that podium. That's after the criminal
investigation began. Now that Rove has essentially been caught
red-handed peddling this information, all of a sudden you have respect
for the sanctity of the criminal investigation?
Pretty sweet how abortions are going to be illegal soon. All the coverage of the nomination of Roberts last night (Planetarium was glued to it) kept reiterating how "only the 'outside' advocacy groups", with all their evil liberal money, were going to have a problem with Roberts, and all the good men in Congress, apparently unburdened with concerns such as money, were going to be in agreement that Judge Roberts would make a damn fine Supreme Court Justice. The ONLY person to raise a stink was the head of NARAL on CNN, who basically went on the air and said "Are you fucking kidding me?", and was promptly relegated to the "evil special-interest group" seats in the bleachers. So allow us to reiterate for her: Are you fucking kidding? The dude who argued for OVERTURNING Roe Vs. Wade before the Supreme Court is going to get a free pass? Where's Kennedy? Where's Feinstein? Why aren't they screaming bloody murder right now and vowing to hunt down the first-born children of any democrat who supports this nomination? Gonna be kind of strange to live in a country where only outlaws will have abortions. Oh, wait, we meant to say outlaws and the children of rich people. God bless America.
The Times has a blandly logical rebuttal to the nomination here.
New Krugman. Go!
Dorks around the world are gleefully digging into he new Harry Potter this weekend, and good for them, we say. As much as we like to rag on the series of loser-novels and the losers who read them, we get the impression the books are actually pretty good, and anything that's helping to keep kids from being raised solely by Grand Theft Auto is a very good thing. Oh, did we mention we're super-hungover today? Yeah, anyways, among the detritus strewn about the Planetarium world headquarters this morning was a crumpled PBR can that was used for highly illegal purposes last night, apparently after Planetarium went to bed. As heads began pounding, all that could be thought was "wow, that crumpled can looks a lot like Richard Nixon's head."
As we type, Jon Stewart is once again proving why he's the greatest man on television. The man is currently in the process of eviscerating Bernard "Damn the Liberal Media" Goldberg, completely proving the uselessness of Goldberg's new book, and doing so in the most downright polite, friendly, and unstoppably logical way imaginable. God bless the man. Go watch the rerun. Or find the clip on the Internet.
Couple of movies opening this weekend that we'll be seeing: Wedding Crashers, which needs no explanation, you just know it's going to be funny; Hustle & Flow, which the ads are making look really really stupid but is actually getting crazy amounts of critical raves from everyone under the sun- plus, story of a rapping pimp, how can it not be good?; and finally, the one you all know and possibly dread, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which there is no reason not to see, folks: either it's going to manage to be entertaining, or it's just going to be a 100 percent total fucking train wreck nightmare from hell. Either way, that spells entertainment to us. Or at least worth seeing unfold.
Thank christ on a crutch, Planetarium is back up and running again, after almost a week of no posting. Sincerest apologies to all our loyal readers. So, now that that's taken care of, we have to say, even WE honestly didn't think that the White House would have the fucking balls to go back on their pledge to fire whoever was responsible for leaking Valerie Plame's name once it came out that Karl Rove was the guilty party. Even the weak-ass Reuters cover story points out that, now that it's known, if you go back and look at press room transcripts and Bush's responses, they are all very carefully tailored in such a way that it's painfully fucking obvious they all knew EXACTLY what the fuck was going on. Jaw-dropping, what these fucking people will do. Just when you think "oh, there's no WAY they'd be able to do that", they go and do it. As B.Alec pointed out way back when, we're eagerly anticipating the new "Everybody Lives" initiative.
Planetarium is all over the Supreme Court debate like Kirstie Alley on a shitty "fat-chick" pun. The way that the Court has evolved from a "settling issues" machine to a weird, kinda fucked-up political tool that you can crank one way or the other is strange enough, but the fact that we're getting articles like today's (in the NYT) Bush Urges Civility in Debate Over Supreme Court Vacancy is yet more evidence that the media left Planet Sanity years ago, never to return. Does ANYBODY think he tells the truth any more? Anyone, anywhere? As was made clear in this blog looooonnnng ago, we all know that they have a "do-the-opposite-of-what-they-say" policy firmly in effect, and that assuming anything less than 100% bullshit is shooting out of their mouths, much like a rabid squirrel, is ludicrous. But damn, this debate is SO interesting, the whole swing vote retiring thing brings out the beltway wonk in us. More reason to stay away from D.C.- we'd turn evil WAAAAAY too quickly.
And Sarah Vowell's editorial from today is pretty funny, and vaguely related. Though it really doesn't say anything, at all. Much like This American Life in general, hey?
So who's seen War of the Worlds yet? Planetarium will be attending a screening this evening. It's only made $100 million or so in its first five days, which apparently means it is somewhat lackluster as a blockbuster. Which is creepy.