Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Anyone Can Just Make Shit Up

I made passing reference a couple of months ago to the dead rhino ad which, unfortunately, has since been removed from YouTube (though you can read about it here).  It was a plug for Andy Thomas and an attack on Tom Horne, his opponent in the Republican primary for Arizona Attorney General.  The point of the bizarre ad is that Horne is really a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and a closet liberal, which is preposterous, but it's what politicians do in campaigns.
And, of course, I've done plenty of sneering about Andy and his abuses of power as County Attorney in Maricopa.
So it's maybe time to point out that the alternative to Andy, this Tom Horne fellow.  He's Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and, apparently, wholly out of touch with reality.  We can thank the ever intrepid blogger Nick Martin at Heat City for the proof
Tom Horne, the head of Arizona’s public school system, drew huge applause from a crowd of tea partiers earlier this month when he said Israel’s war on terror proves that the U.S. needs to build a wall along the Mexican border.
“Israel totally put a stop to terrorism by building their wall,” said Horne, a Republican whose final term as school superintendent ends after this year and who is vying to become the state’s next attorney general.
Wait, you say, there are terrorist attacks all the time in Israel.  What's he talking about?
Ah, that's your mistake.  Horne knows better. As he told Nick,
It’s been all over the newspapers.
Oh, sure, the Israeli Security Agency publishes monthly reports on terrorists attacks.  But what do they know?
Asked which newspapers had reported it, Horne could not name one. When told, then, about the number of attacks in just those two months, he was momentarily speechless.
“How do they define a terrorist attack?” Horne said finally.
The education chief insisted he had made the same statement at numerous campaign events and no one questioned him about it before.
But instead of changing his mind after hearing the facts, Horne stuck to his story. He said he remained certain of his claim’s accuracy despite what the Israeli government reported.
“I’ll stand by it,” he said. “I’m talking about something that there is pretty common knowledge about.”
Of course, Horne also believes that 2 + 2 = 47, that the moon is made of cheese, and that the earth is flat.  (Not really, he knows that 2 + 2 = 11.  It's been in all the papers.)
Harvard, no doubt, is proud.  
For those who are wondering, Horne received his law degree from Harvard before Elena Kagan became Dean.

5 comments:

  1. I have to stop reading this shit. It's making me ill. No wonder we are the laughing stock of every other civilized nation. And if you think we aren't, well, its probably because you haven't left this country.

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  2. I think Jeff is hilarious - and right on target. The funniest humor is based on truth and cannot be made up. (Except for the previous comment, "...every other civilized nation."? Puh-leeze!) Now I'm really howling!

    Levity aside, our systems of politics, governance, finance, justice, or whatever, are so well protected by special interests - and allowed to stand by an apathetic public - that they have to crash before they can be exposed and rebuilt. We might as well laugh at the stupid antics we encounter along the way.

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  3. There are other civilized nations? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I would have read something about that in the newspapers if there were.

    You know, even if the Israeli wall worked (and for all I know, it greatly reduces the rate of terrorist incidents), it did so because it was built between the source of the terrorists and their targets. When it comes to middle eastern terrorists attacking the U.S., it's hard to see how a wall separating us from Mexico would be much of an improvement over a whole frickin' ocean.

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  4. You miss the point. After the middle eastern terrorists cross the ocean into Mexico, they'd be stuck there.

    Oh, wait, that isn't how they get here?

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  5. This reminds me of the scene in Anchorman where Christina Applegate and Will Ferrell are taking about the origin of San Diego's name.

    Ron Burgundy: Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diego, which of course in German means a whale's vagina.

    Veronica Corningstone: No, there's no way that's correct.

    Ron Burgundy: I'm sorry, I was trying to impress you. I don't know what it means. I'll be honest, I don't think anyone knows what it means anymore. Scholars maintain that the translation was lost hundreds of years ago.

    Veronica Corningstone: Doesn't it mean Saint Diego?

    Ron Burgundy: No. No.

    Veronica Corningstone: No, that's - that's what it means. Really.

    Ron Burgundy: Well, agree to disagree.

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