The Electron Pencil

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THE QUOTE

“The Bible tries to make humans not animals the whole time. I think it’s a bit of a mistake.” — Neko Case

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BIBLE BABBLE

Marco Rubio looks to be in line to become the next Republican pretty boy.

I figured way back in 2010 that he’d be the GOP nominee in the election just past but it seems he and the gang decided his time hadn’t come yet. Either that or the party had a wacky urge to see what would happen if they ran an empty shell of a man for the nation’s highest office.

2016?

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Anyway, GQ this month jumped on the Florida junior senator’s float, running a wide-ranging interview with him. For instance, he tells of his enjoyment of the music of Afrika Bambaataa and Public Enemy, among other hip hop acts. He even expresses misgivings that hip hop has become, well, vanilla.

BTW: The very notion that a white GOP sweetheart digs hip hop — and even knows who’s who in the fabled, homicidal East Coast/West Coast rap rivalry — has caused me to suffer a juddering seizure. I’m better now, thanks.

GQ throws the obligatory how-anti-intellectual-are-you interrogatory at the putative Party-of-God candidate, causing Rubio to muse on cosmology, geology, evolution, and other un-godly concepts all in a one-paragraph riposte.

GQ: How old do you think the Earth is?

Rubio: I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says…. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified  to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all….

The GOP Is Still Riding The Dinosaur

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Isn’t it telling how he leads off by saying he’s not a scientist? At first glance, it might seem a nice, humble way of saying the question of existence is far beyond a single human being’s limited intellectual capabilities.

But knowing what we know of the GOP’s marketing strategies over the last few decades, doesn’t it sound as though he’s still hewing to the science-is-evil line? I’m not a scientist, man can be as much a manifesto for a Republican as I’m not a Commie or I’m not a Satan worshipper.

No matter how many hip hop acts a Republican may be into, he or she still has to move into the 21st Century.

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A CONSPIRACY TO THWART A CONSPIRACY?

And speaking of my fave whipping boy party, the interwebs are all aflutter over the claim by Anonymous that it foiled a nefarious Republican plan to steal the 2012 election for its empty shell of a man candidate.

Anonymous, in case you’ve lived in a Himalayan monastery for the last several years, is the secretive collective of hacktivists who’ve sabotaged or exposed numerous corporate or government meanies by electronically waltzing into their computer files. They’ve pulled the curtains back on the Kony 2012 charlatans in March and the loons who run Scientology over the last couple of years.

Anonymous Has No Leader Or Formal Organization

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In a rococo letter allegedly penned by members of the uber-geek group, Anonymous claims to have thwarted Karl Rove and friends from jobbing the Ohio ballot via their sophisticated vote tabulation software called ORCA. Anonymous operatives, the letter claimed, knew in advance that Rove’s mob was going to play dirty so they preemptively hacked ORCA and stopped it from turning Obama votes into Romney votes.

According to this scenario, that’s why Karl Rove had apoplexy on election night when his Fox News masters called Ohio for Obama. That would be impossible, Rove presumably would know, had his ORCA plot played out properly.

You Can’t Say That, We Fixed This Election!

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The fact is I don’t trust Karl Rove as far as I can throw him, which wouldn’t be terribly far considering a formless blob is awfully difficult to heave. Still, I don’t know about this dime-novel plot and knight-in-shining-armor rescue tale.

Here are the main questions to consider:

• Did Anonymous actually thwart an election-rigging cyberplot?
• Has someone claiming to be speaking for Anonymous created this out of thin air?
• Has Anonymous itself created this out of thin air?

Believe me, I’d love to see Karl Rove and his fellow reprobates go down in flames. This story seems a little too Man From Uncle-ish, though. I’d like to see some good investigative journalists take this one on.

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I WISH I WAS THE MOON

By Neko Case.

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