The Arizona Brewers

Since Sarah Palin has now embarked on a literary career that seems bound and determined to supplant literacy itself and Schwarzenegger has left Sacramento and is depending on his old rival and fellow right winger Sylvester Stallone to get his deflated body back on the silver screen, it could be said that Jan Brewer is now the stupidest Governor alive today and quite possibly the most racist one since George Wallace. And after the tarmac incident in Phoenix a couple of days ago, Obama could easily be imagined kicking himself yet again for making her predecessor, Janet Napolitano, his Homeland Security Chief.

Jan Brewer is simply a superannuated version of Sarah Palin, a brain fart-prone grifter who sees absolutely no problem whatsoever in abusing her authority as the state's chief executive for the advantage of her relatives. Like Palin and so many other right wing racists (or am I being tautological?), the Governor who signed the most draconian anti-immigrant bill in modern times (SB 1070, which even many prominent Arizona law enforcement officials define as unconstitutional), showed her true colors by waggling her finger at the President of the United States. She then showed another true color (yellow) by trying to downplay the incident in much the same manner that Cheney's office downplayed the "Go fuck yourself" incident with Sen. Patrick Leahy ("...a frank exchange of views" is how Cheney's dungeon masters tried to sweep it under the rug).

Whatever his reasons for trying to keep the peace, Obama didn't exactly help his own cause by ordering his administration, led by Jim Carney, to chastise the press for paying attention to this virtually unprecedented show of disrespect to the office of the Presidency. As if the look on his face in the lead photo isn't enough ("Yassa, massa, my name be Toby"), it only gives Obama the appearance not of a statesman taking the high road but of a long-suffering black man explaining away the whip scars given to him by a plainly racist right wing by saying that he fell down the stairs.

Sorry, Mr. President, but you were too far away from Kansas for a house to drop on top of Jan Brewer at the right moment.

Moreso than the union busting Scott Walker and Chris Christie, the anti labor Paul LaPage and the stupendously corrupt Rick Scott, Jan Brewer is on all counts a national laughingstock as well as an embarrassment and it seems only a vengeful God Hell bound to show us some Dutch Uncle lessons in how not to self-govern is responsible for Brewer not getting recalled. Perhaps it's more of a reflection of the rabidly racist constituency of Arizona, a place where pasty old right wingers go not to die but to accrue more political power.

Brewer's tall tale of "the scary black man intimidated me" was largely unsupported by witnesses to the incident and Brewer being flustered afterwards was more cerebral flatulence after meeting someone with a superior intellect. The office of the presidency and any person holding it can certainly be intimidating but if you're a state governor and you've met the POTUS before, as Brewer has, then your given moment of being star struck has long since past. It should not be personally held against the President.

But being biracial has made Mr. Obama a huge target and the most hated African American since Nat Turner and Dred Scott. His reluctance to call out Republicans on their overt racism and confirming that racism does indeed still exist does not do anything for the ongoing struggle for civil rights for his people or the American people in general. In fact, while Obama could easily make a case that he's being singled out for his race, his tack seems to be to simply ignore the fact that racism still exists in our supposedly enlightened age. Pointing out racism is not the same thing as pulling the victim card as so many white Republicans do and it is not dividing a nation that's already divided by racial differences.

And Jan Brewer's Phoenix had risen once again from the ashes of the civil war and the civil rights movement to rear its ugly hooded head.

Jan Brewer represents much of what is wrong with America and its politics today. She had abused her power while still a state legislator to lobby for more state hospital money "to prescribe a new drug for the treatment of schizophrenia. The drug, Risperdal, was later used to treat her son’s illness, according to court and medical records."

Ronald Brewer, as many of us know, is a mentally ill criminal who remains unconvicted only by reason of insanity after being charged with sexual assault and kidnapping. While that shouldn't be held against Jan Brewer, what more people should pay attention to is Brewer's conduct once it became clear that she was to move from Arizona's Office of the Secretary of State to the Governor's mansion. Even before taking the oath of office, one of her first thoughts was to appoint several high-ranking members of her transition team to seal her son's criminal and medical records, a highly unprecedented move. It had all the appearance of Sarah Palin sweeping under the rug her daughter Willow's own burglary and B&E past.

Then, after lobbying for that extra money for state hospitals, such as the one in which Ronald Brewer has been locked up since 1990, Brewer then decided to deny patients live-saving allocations from Mr. Obama's stimulus that would've offset Brewer's own cuts, a move that has resulted in the deaths of at least three Arizonans waiting for organ transplants.

Brewer's claim of beheaded bodies in the desert and trying to spin it as a rationale for SB 1070, which essentially allows law enforcement to racially profile and harass even legal Mexican Americans, was so over the top that even the perennially supine MSM pressed her on it, making her double down and then, finally, say that it wasn't true.

This is just a short, abbreviated list of Jan Brewer's crimes against the people of Arizona and the Office of the Presidency. If any Democratic Governor had ever waggled their finger in George Bush's face during his alleged presidency, the right wing would've called for that Chief Executive to be publicly drawn and quartered. But IOKIYAR, EITVIB (Especially if the Victim is Black).

Jan Brewer is the poster child for most everything that's wrong with America, with its politics, with the moribund and virtually dead civil rights movement and with the right wing. The shriveled Red Queen of Arizona, with her inexplicable book deal and incumbency, is in itself a damnation of the stupendous danger of stupid people working together in concert in large numbers.