Welcome Will B. Greene to BlogForArizona!

Editor MDB- I have long recognized the lack of any specific expertise in environmental issues among our writers, with the notable exception of occasional contributor Russell Lowes. We at BfAZ are all passionate about the need to preserve our environment as the foundation of all human well-being and wealth, but the crew of bloggers and … Read more

A Thanksgiving Trip to Alice’s Restaurant

By Michael Bryan

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Thanksgiving activity that could now be considered a popular tradition is the enjoyment of a rendition of Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant. Tonight, I am going to local Tucson restaurant Acacia for their Thanksgiving menu. Hopefully, the police will not become involved…

Have a traditional listen to Arlo's adventure after the click…

McCain’s Slide into Irrelevance

By Michael Bryan Senator McCain has embarrassed himself, and the state of Arizona, over his baseless attacks on Susan Rice and the Obama Administration regarding the Benghazi attack. It is now clear, and has been since Petraeus' testimony, that Ambassador Rice's comments on the attack were vetted by the intellegence community and reference to terrorist … Read more

Want to Leave the Union? Just Move…

By Michael Bryan It seems a lot of folks are so upset by that black Muslim Communist winning a second term that they are ready to split… from the Union. People from more than 20 states have created petitions on the White House web site to allow their states to leave the Union. Including Arizona, … Read more

Governor Brewer Signals Support of Comprehensive Immigration… and Then Walks it Back

By Michael Bryan

hat tip to Crooks & Liars:

Perhaps Governor Dingbat's staff should just stop allowing her to do live interviews.

Brahm Resnick interviewed Brewer post-election and prodded her regarding the softening in her party nationally on comprehensive immigration reform after the drubbing her ticket got among Latinos (a 44% gap on the Presidential line). He asked Brewer if she would now be open to a comprehensive immigration deal now that her enforcement first position has so thoroughly alienated Latino voters.

"But here's the thing," Resnik pointed out. "With John Boehner and Sean Hannity, Grover Norquist and [Maricopa County Attorney] Bill Montgomery — what he said in particular was, 'You know what? We can do both at once. We can secure the border and do comprehensive immigration reform.' Is that something you're on with? Because it sounds like you are just a secure-the-border-first person."

"What ever works," Brewer replied. "If we can do both at the same time, I'm fine and dandy with that. But we cannot resolve these kinds of issues today and then have the problems still existing."

Well, that's certainly a new tune for Brewer.

Of course, she didn't really mean it. On Sunday, KPNX reported that Brewer's office had contacted Resnick after the interview was recorded on Friday to walk back her support for comprehensive immigration reform in concert with securing the border.

Spokesman Matt Benson said, "the governor still believes in securing the border first," Resnik wrote. "He added that she was willing to 'come to the table' to deal with all immigration issues. Later Friday, the governor's office issued a statement reaffirming her 'secure the border first' stance."

It should not come as a surprise that Brewer's head remains buried in the sand. Toward the end of the interview she clearly implied that the Obama Administration intentionally leaves the Tucson sector "unsecured" in order to whip up racial animus to secure the Latino vote.

GovBrewerObamaWhen asked if the GOP, and the AZGOP especially, deserved any blame for alienating Latinos, she replied, "No, President Obama, in the last four years, they've had four years to get our borders secured and they refused to do it, but yet we know they can. We know that they can secure the borders. Why won't they secure the border? Because they wanted that out there because they knew that they could turn it into an issue of all about racism."

Say what? So Obama has purposely left the border insecure (despite cleverly covering his tracks by plowing more billions into enforcement, deporting at a record clip, and radically expanding manpower on the border) in order to alarm white folks so much that they'll go batshit, pass a bunch or racist legislation and piss off Latinos, so that in turn Latinos will feel so disrespected by the GOP that they'll vote for him in droves? Now we're deep in the crazy…

Reality adjustment just isn't in the cards for politicians like Brewer and Arpaio. They are incapable of acknowledging that their belief that the Obama Administration and Dems are exploiting racism is nothing more than projection of their own racist motives onto the opposition. The AZGOP has been successfully exploiting racial animus and the fears of white America to win elections for several cycles now. Expecting them to stop now and support a reasonable resolution is like expecting a Coatimundi to ditch its own tail rings.

If the GOP wants a fresh start with Latino voters, they can only do so with fresh GOP politicians who didn't cut their teeth on denigrating Latinos and scaring the shit out of white voters (with headless corpses in the desert, for example…)
to get elected. Of course, that disqualifies nearly every currently elected AZ GOP pol… 

See the video after the click…