The Washington Post Editorial Board, under the paper’s collective byline published a scathing take-down of AZ’s idiotically partisan Secretary of State, Gomer Pyle Ken Bennett, who also happens to be the Romney campaigns co-chair in the state.

Think Bennett’s biased or just dumb? Or both?

Look deep into his eyes…

Imagine waking up and reading something like this about yourself as you’re rubbing the sleep from your eyes? It’s not often that a major newspaper chooses to mock someone this harshly, but I think a colossal fuckwit like Ken Bennett deserved it with both barrels.

IF ONE-FIFTIETH of 1 percent of Arizonans demanded that Ken Bennett, the state’s Republican secretary of state, go to work in the nude, would he comply? Not likely. After all, Mr. Bennett, the former Republican president of the Arizona Senate, is planning to run for governor in two years. It wouldn’t pay to pander to crackpots — and humiliate himself in the bargain. Or would it?

The question arises because Mr. Bennett, allegedly in response to e-mailed requests from 1,200 Arizonans, has demanded that Hawaii provide him with verification of President Obama’s birth certificate. If he doesn’t get it, he says, he might strike the president’s name from the state’s ballot this fall.

Never mind that Hawaii has confirmed publicly and repeatedly, since before the 2008 presidential election, that Mr. Obama was born there; that the Hawaii Department of Health has released both the short and long forms of the president’s birth certificate; and that all this information, along with clear-as-a-bell explanations, is available to the public online. Mr. Bennett insists that none of that is sufficient proof for the Show Me Your Papers State.

Remember that the Washington Post isn’t exactly what you’d call a liberal newspaper… They’re still just sharpening the knives at this point:

Mr. Bennett hastens to add that he is no birther. Of course he isn’t: Everyone knows that birthers — the few that remain against the overwhelming facts of documentary evidence — are half-baked clowns who live for their pet conspiracy theory. And Mr. Bennett, an energy company CEO and plausible gubernatorial candidate in a midsize state, couldn’t really be one of those. Could he?

Charity overcomes us, so we assume not. More likely, he is simply throwing a bone to the birthers, who in most states constitute a laughable fringe of the Republican Party.

Hawaii may yet furnish Mr. Bennett with the already-public documentation he wants. So far, in compliance with state law, it has invited him to provide the legal authority under which the request was made.

More on this below.

Fine. Let the buffoonery play through its final act. We’re confident that, in the end, Mr. Bennett will ensure that Arizona’s ballot includes the name of the president of the United States, all the while insisting, disingenuously, that his actions were merely an instance of due diligence.

But by threatening to exclude Mr. Obama from the ballot, Mr. Bennett transformed what should have been a farcical sideshow of the 2012 election into an actual menace to democracy. He legitimized the lunatic leanings of the United States’, and his party’s, most extreme elements. He put it in the minds of radicals everywhere that elected officials, for the shabbiest reasons (or none at all), can float the idea of bending ballot rules and suffer no adverse consequence.

In the process, he shamed Arizona on the 100th anniversary of its statehood, giving it the appearance of a banana republic that’s come unhinged under the influence of partisan fever.

Hilarious and justly deserved. That must’ve hurt.

Here’s how Bennett has responded to some of the more, uh, rabid emails of support his asshattery has received. I wonder if he’s feeling proud of himself now?

With all due respect, the MCSO investigation has not proven anything other than raised probable cause that the birth certificate posted on the Whitehouse website “may be” a forgery. The next lawful step would be for the Sheriff’s office to turn their findings over to the County Attorney for prosecution. Evidence would be brought on both sides and a judge should issue a decision. Whether or not that happens, if Hawaii can’t or won’t provide verification of the President’s birth certificate, I will not put his name on the ballot.

I can tell from the tone and language of your letters that the only acceptable outcome for you is that his name not be on the ballot, period. That may be what happens, but under my watch, it won’t happen based on opinions, petitions, probability or pledges to support or oppose me in the 2014 Governor’s race. My oath of office is to uphold the Constitution and laws of our State and country, and I’m going to do that by following the law. I look forward to continuing to work this issue under those parameters. Otherwise, I will respectfully agree to disagree.

So now he’s getting all coy??? Clearly AZ Romney co-chair Ken Bennett is a man of integrity! Why, to even suggest that he’d leave the PRESIDENT OF THE FUCKING UNITED STATES off the ballot in his state for A FRIVOLOUS REASON, is just beyond the pale!

Someone hit this guy on the head with a heavy wrench!

HARD.

Draw some blood!

But equally as good as the total drubbing that WaPo’s editorializer wrecking crew dropped on his dumb ass this morning was the oh-so-polite reply he got over the weekend from Hawaii’s Assistant Attorney General, Jill T. Nagamine, who demanded that Bennett provide his own qualifications before he wastes any more of her time. It’s pretty genius:

From: Jill T. Nagamine
Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2012 3:38 PM
To: Bennett, Ken
Subject: RE: Request from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office
Dear Mr. Bennett:

I am in receipt of your email dated May 17, 2012. As I have informed you and Mr. Drake, Hawaii law requires that for verification of a vital record the requestor must satisfy the requirements of section 338-18(g), Hawaii Revised Statutes, which provides:

(g) The department shall not issue a verification in lieu of a certified copy of any such record, or any part thereof, unless it is satisfied that the applicant requesting a verification is:
(1) A person who has a direct and tangible interest in the record but requests a verification in lieu of a certified copy;
(2) A governmental agency or organization who for a legitimate government purpose maintains and needs to update official lists of persons in the ordinary course of the agency’s or organization’s activities;
(3) A governmental, private, social, or educational agency or organization who seeks confirmation of a certified copy of any such record submitted in support of or information provided about a vital event relating to any such record and contained in an official application made in the ordinary course of the agency’s or organization’s activities by an individual seeking employment with, entrance to, or the services or products of the agency or organization;
(4) A private or government attorney who seeks to confirm information about a vital event relating to any such record which was acquired during the course of or for purposes of legal proceedings; or
(5) An individual employed, endorsed, or sponsored by a governmental, private, social, or educational agency or organization who seeks to confirm information about a vital event relating to any such record in preparation of reports or publications by the agency or organization for research or educational purposes.

I asked you for legal authority that establishes your right to obtain verification, and your email of May 17, 2012 provides me with references to Arizona Revised Statutes 16-212, 16-301, 16-502, 16-507, and unnamed others. These statutes seem to deal with election of presidential electors, nomination of candidates for printing on official ballot of general or special election, form and contents of ballot, and presentation of presidential candidates on ballot, but none, as far as I can tell, establish the authority of the Secretary of State to maintain and update official lists of persons in the ordinary course of his activities. I researched other sections of the Arizona Revised Statutes and was unable to find the necessary authority.

If I have missed something, please let me know. My client stands willing to provide you with the verification you seek as soon as you are able to show that you are entitled to it.

Thank you,
Jill T. Nagamine
Deputy Attorney General
State of Hawaii

Ken Bennett may not have set out to make his name (and dumbshit dipsy-doodle Republican face) the definition of “moron,” but he sure did succeed spectacularly!

Below, Arizona Secretary of State, Ken Bennett sings “Thank God I’m Republican” at the March 17, 2012 Fountain Hills Republican Club meeting:
 

 
It looks like Jan Brewer, the mean-looking, lemon-faced old lady who rules Arizona from deep within her scorpion-protected lair in the Grand Canyon—I always picture her as a super-villain from the sixties Batman TV series—has decided to take on organized labor in her state.

AZ Republicans have already deeply offended Hispanic voters, so why not go for broke pissing off the public worker unions too? That worked so well for Scott Walker and John Kasich…

From the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’s petition:

To the lawmakers, governors, policy-wonks, and corporate backers who are dead set on destroying unions in America:

Your latest attempt to dismantle workers’ rights in Arizona will not go unnoticed.

Firefighters, police officers, nurses, school bus drivers, home health care workers, public servants and workers of all kinds will not stand by while you scapegoat us – the people who play by the rules and do our fair share – and take away our rights by abusing your power and forcing through your extreme anti-worker laws.

No way. That’s all. NO WAY. We will fight back wherever you attack us. Because when you attack workers you also attack the work we do. Work that matters to every single person in this country – taking care of your grandparents, picking up your trash, making sure your kids are drinking clean water, putting out your fires, and so much more.

And in the end, we will win because the American people are overwhelmingly with us – they are us.

Where you see public workers and unions as a nuisance to get rid of, we see a movement. We see a movement of public and private workers, of moms and dads, of grandparents and students. We are the middle class and we will remember your abuse of power each and every time that we vote. That’s our promise.

A fascinating political strategy, indeed! Another recipe for Republican ruin!

Jan Brewer you are like a character from a Grimm’s fairy tale! You’re straight out of Central Casting for an “evil Republican,” but you could’ve played Rosa Kleb, too!

Sign the petition.

6 Things You Should Know About Arizona’s Worse-Than-Wisconsin’s Attack on Public Workers (AlterNet)

Below, a funny anti-Brewer ad using Brewer’s own brain-fart during a televised debate (She won the election anyway):
 

 
Frankly, if I was planning a drive to New Mexico from Los Angeles, I’d rather drive around Arizona than buy gas in the state and give a single penny to Jan Brewer and her venal Republican pals to spend on their racist, anti-immigrant law enforcement. When I think of Arizona, I can’t get Gov. Jan Brewer’s mean, sun-damaged lemon-face out of my mind. The sight of her sickens me. Apparently quite a few folks in the southern part of the state must feel the same way and have decided to do something about it. BRAVO! From Pueblo Politics:

A political committee comprised of a handful of attorneys, including the former chairman of the Pima County Democratic Party, have established a political committee dedicated to helping Southern Arizona secede from the rest of the state.

Start Our State, which is asking other like-minded counties to join the effort, is hoping to put the question before Pima County voters in 2012.

Co-chair Paul Eckerstrom said it’s not a joke and not a political statement. He said the state legislature has gone too far to the right, particularly with a round of measures to challenge federal supremacy.

“This really does border on them saying they don’t want to be part of the Union any longer,” he said. “Well, I want to be part of the United States.”

He said at a minimum, it will send a message that Pima County doesn’t want to go along with the priorities being outlined in Phoenix. He said Pima County has more land and more people than several other states.

“It’s no longer a laughing matter to me,” Eckerstrom said. “My kids’ futures are at stake because if this continues, the economic ramifications could be very dire. I’m tired of hoping and praying that rationality will come to Phoenix.”

The committee is pressing the Pima County Board of Supervisors to put the measure on the ballot. If that doesn’t happen, Eckerstrom said the group is prepared to circulate petitions.

Frankly, it’s about time something like this happened in Arizona. The hard right, racist asshats in Phoenix need someone to call their bluff. But would the new state be viable? Absolutely. Pima County has more than 1 million residents, about the same number of people as Rhode Island as. It actually has a larger population than Vermont, Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas, as per the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2009 estimates. The proposed new state would be larger than Rhode Island, Delaware and Connecticut. And secession would absolutely decimate the tax coffers of the state they’d depart!

And again I say, “Bravo”!

Via Little Green Footballs

 
Jared Lee Loughner is identified as the man responsible for a shooting this morning, in Tuscon, Arizona, which left 10 people injured, 5 critically, and six confirmed dead, including a 9-year-old girl and Judge John Roll.

Amongst the injured is Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot at allegedly point blank range - the bullet going “through-and-through her head.”

Loughner is a 22-year-old native of Arizona, who allegedly has his own You Tube Channel “classitup10” that contains very strange and disturbing messages, including his Final Thoughts, in which he writes:

I’m a sleepwalker - who turns off the alarm clock.

Jared also writes about terrorism, grammar, the value of money and the Bible in a rather cryptic fashion, and attacks the US government for implying “mind control” and “brainwash”. In conclusion, Jared writes:

I can’t trust the current government because of the ratification: The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar.

No! I won’t pay debt with a currency that’s not backed by gold and silver!

No! I won’t trust in God!

What’s government if words don’t have meaning?

Under interests, Jared writes in past tense:

My favorite interest was reading, and I studied grammar. Conscience dreams were a great study in college!

He lists as his favorite books, again in the past tense:

I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver’s Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno.

No doubt Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto will be highlighted for agenda-pushing. But there are also books by Ken Kesey, Charles Bukowski, Lewis Carroll, Harper Lee, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Hesse, Ray Bradbury, Plato, Homer, Norton Juster, Jonathan Swift, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and J M Barrie. If anything is notable is the mix of children’s fantasy and parable.
 

 
With thanks to Aulde Holborne
 

 
OK, America, here’s how it seems to be going down in Tuscon, AZ as of earlier today, despite the standing federal injunction against SB1070, the state of Arizona’s attempt to enforce national border laws.

Run a stop sign, get detained potentially by Border Patrol.

What now, America? What do we got?
 

 
Hat tip Charlie Bertsch.

 
The following was posted on Wonkette and I am reposting it here in full because I don’t think they’d mind and I sure couldn’t say it any better. As an American I am horrified by this. Please post this story on your Facebook and Twitter and get it out there:

Hard to find even the Gallows Humor in this story, so maybe we won’t even try. Maybe it’s time to admit that large chunks of America are in the hands of unreconstructed racists and vulgar idiots, and that the popular election of a black man as president just might’ve pushed these furious, economically doomed old white people into a final rage that is going to end very, very badly. Ready? Here you go: An Arizona elementary school mural featuring the faces of kids who attend the school has been the subject of constant daytime drive-by racist screaming, from adults, as well as a radio talk-show campaign (by an actual city councilman, who has an AM talk-radio show) to remove the black student’s face from the mural, and now the school principal has ordered the faces of the Latino and Black students pictured on the school wall to be repainted as light-skinned children.

This is America, in 2010, and there’s a dozen more states and endless white-trash municipalities ready to Officially Adopt this same Official Racist Insanity.

From the Arizona Republic:

A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school. The project’s leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children’s ethnicity….

R.E. Wall, director of Prescott’s Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town’s most prominent intersections.

“We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars,” Wall said. “We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics).”

The children depicted on the mural, as we mentioned before but feel compelled to repeat, are little kids who go to the school — “a K-5 school with 380 students and the highest ethnic mix of any school in Prescott. Wall said thousands of town residents volunteered or donated to the project.”

And these children, for the past several months as this happy mural encouraging “green transportation” was being painted by local artists, have been treated to the city of Prescott’s finest citizens driving by and yelling “Nigger” and “Spic” at this school wall painted with pictures of the children who attend the school. And this has been encouraged by a city councilman, Steve Blair, who uses his local radio talk show to rile up these people and demand the mural be destroyed.

And now the faces are being painted white, “because of the controversy.”

Remember where you were, when you could still laugh about teabaggers and racists and Arizonans, because funny time is almost over. If the unemployment keeps up — one in five adult white males has no job and will never have a job again — and people keep walking away from their stucco heaps they can’t afford and the states and cities and counties and towns keep passing their aggressive racist laws to rile up the trash even more, shit’s going to very soon become very bad, and whether it’s the National Guard having wars in the Sunbelt Exurbs against armies of crazy old white people who are finally using their hundreds of millions of guns, or whole Latino neighborhoods burned to the ground the way the Klan used to burn down black neighborhoods a century ago, we are in for a long dark night and no light-colored paint is going to fix that.

Postscript: So that asswipe Steve Blair got fired from the radio station. Blair emphasized in his statement that “I’m not a racist by any stretch of the imagination, but whenever people start talking about diversity, it’s a word I can’t stand.” What a fucking idiot.

DJ Spooky and Chuck D just collaborated on a free download song “By the Time I Get to Arizona,” riffing, of course, on the old standard “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” and, uh, you know, commenting on some pressing news items and stuff.

In the wake of Republican Governor Jan Brewer’s anti-immigrant law, me and Chuck D were rappin’ and we decided to put together an update of his classic track “By The Time I get To Arizona.” Anyone who knows about hip hop from the early 90’s remembers John Mccain’s unwillingness to endorse creating a local version of Martin Luther King’s birthday. The update here is a 21st century look in the rear view mirror. The cliché that “those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it” still holds sway in our hyper amnesiac culture. I remixed D.W. Griffith’s infamous film “Birth of a Nation” with a bit of Public Enemy in mind, and later on, they named an e.p. with the same name as my project. Me and Chuck D have done several projects in the past around progressive, non knucklehead hip hop.

(Reality Sandwich: By the Time I Get to Arizona)

(The Actual Song)

(DJ Spooky: Drums Of Death)