What caught my eye about McGee’s flyer was who paid for it. Who knew that a woman who lives in north central Phoenix is such a fierce advocate for farming?

The flyer states, under the bullet point of “Border Security”, that McGee supports “taxpayer services to U.S. citizens only”. Really? According to the mailer, McGee is backed by a host of business groups that include the AZ Chamber of Commerce, the Home Builders Association, the NFIB, and the two groups that paid for the mailer – the Farm Bureau and the United Dairymen.

So they’re supporting a woman who favors “taxpayer services to U.S. citizens only”. In the case of the Farm Bureau and the Dairymen, enough to pay for a mailer via an independent expenditure.

Wait a second…Who are the people clamoring for a guest worker program all the time? And yet these business leaders are happy to throw their cash behind a candidate who would deny basic social services to the workers they claim to need so desperately?

Really?

Once again, I have to remind y’all that conservatives never have been and never will be “good on immigration”.

A little over a week after Pearce introduced S.B. 1070 on the floor of the Arizona Senate, CCA enlisted Highground Consulting, one of the most influential lobbying firms in Phoenix, to represent its interests in the state. Lobby disclosure forms filed with the Arizona Secretary of State indicate that Maricopa County also employed Highground during the time of the bill’s formation. Highground’s owner and principal, Charles “Chuck” Coughlin, is a top advisor and the current campaign manager of Gov. Brewer.

State lobby reports show that Brewer’s current spokesman, Senseman, previously worked as CCA’s chief lobbyist in Arizona as an employee of Policy Development Group, another influential Phoenix consulting firm. His wife, Kathryn Senseman, is still employed by Policy Development Group and still lobbies the legislature on behalf of CCA.

In other words, in 2005 and 2006, as Arizona legislators—many of them ALEC members—were drafting provisions of what would eventually become the “Breathing While Brown” law, Brewer’s director of communications, Senseman, was lobbying them on behalf of CCA.

H/T to my friend Diane for alerting me to this companion to the recent In These Times article I posted. Anticipating the inevitable compassionate response of the nativist horde – So what? They’re illegal! They belong in jail! – I will make note of a couple of things:

1. Assuming SB1070 stands and results in mass arrests and incarcerations of immigrants in these private prisons, who is going to pay for that? I’ll give you one guess. Starts with T and ends in “payers”.

2. You want the undocumented immigrants to leave, right? So let’s think about this for a sec. Here’s an industry (private prisons) that stands to profit from a steady stream of “customers”. That industry has strong ties with the legislator who was the chief architect of SB1070 and the Governor who signed it. Do you honestly believe they have a true incentive to stop illegal immigration now? Where would the profit be in that?

Also from the article:

Brewer’s “chief policy advisor,” Richard Bark—a man Senseman and Pearce both say was directly involved in the drafting of S.B. 1070—remains listed with the Office of the Secretary of State as an active lobbyist for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI). CCA is a “board level” member of the ACCI and is the top employer in Pinal County, located just south of Maricopa County, where it operates five detention facilities for both state prisoners and immigrant detainees.

Would this be the same Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry that just endorsed Jan Brewer, along with a host of other pro-SB1070 candidates? Why, I believe it is.

If you missed the first post, catch up with part I.

January 20, 2009: Got up at 5:30am to get ready. Justin woke up a bit after me. Took us a while to get geared up. I had so many layers on, I could barely move. Tights, long johns, jeans, two sweaters, two long sleeve shirts, two sets of ear warmers, warm hat, two pairs of gloves, long jacket. Seriously, I looked odd, but I was hoping to stay warm.

Got to the metro station at Vienna around 7am. Got on the metro fairly quickly, but it took an hour and a half to get to our station. We stopped on the tracks for 30 to 45 minutes at one point. We had seats, so I took a nap while we waited.

Exited the metro after waiting in a long line to do so and headed towards the silver gate.

View of the crowd behind us:

View of the crowd ahead of us:

We got off the metro around 9:30, and it took us over two hours to get through the Silver gate. The organization and crowd control was non-existent. The street was wide open, and they were funneling everyone through a small area, and it took forever to get through. We kept pushing our way through until we finally made it. The nice thing about it was it kept us relatively warm to be stuck in the crowd.

When we got to security, there were dozens of security checkpoints to choose from, and they were almost all empty. It took us all of a minute to get checked out before they let us through. There were a lot of people, but there was a huge section that had lots of room, so we headed there.

View of the crowd behind the Silver ticket area:

View in front of us from the Silver ticket area:

As you can see, the view wasn’t the closest, but we were so happy to get through and to be there. After we parted from the rest of the crowd, the cold really started to hit. It was hard to type on the BlackBerry, but I did my best to keep up with my tweets.

Happy inauguration-goers:

The ceremony itself took a long time to get started. They slowly announced all the VIPs. Everyone booed Bush, and people started singing, “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, good bye!”, which was kind of cool.

The happy party bit started when Biden was introduced. Everyone was cheering for him. Then Obama was introduced, and everyone went crazy. When Roberts fumbled Obama’s swearing in, Justin and I caught it and thought Obama had messed up. We were relieved when we found out it was Roberts who’d messed up. I mean, what a time to fumble, right? After Obama’s swearing in, people were crying and cheering. I was crying myself. It felt so good to have Obama in the House.

People slowly started leaving, but mostly, people were meandering and moving closer towards the reflecting pool to take more pictures. People were tentative at first, but then they got adventurous and started walking across the ice in the reflecting pool. It took a little while, but eventually someone broke it and water was pooling over it by the time we left.

People walking across reflecting pool:

We still had some action going on with the big screens and saw the Obamas saying good-bye to the Bushes. They got into a helicopter, and then we started looking for it in the sky. It was great to see them go.

Bye, bye Bush-y:

We knew it was going to be tough getting back to my friend’s house, so we walked around for a bit. It was getting colder and colder, so we headed towards one of the museums and hung out there for a couple of hours before trying for the metro.

We tried to get on the closest metro, but the line was wrapped around the block, so we headed to the next one. The line for that one was super long, too, so we tried the next. The line for the third one wasn’t too bad, and I was so exhausted, I couldn’t think of trying to make it to another metro. It didn’t take long to get through the line, and soon enough, we were on the metro. And because we had walked out to an earlier stop, we were able to get seats. It took us a couple of hours to make our way back to Falls Church, but we made it!

I was exhausted and know I looked it. But we had something for dinner and got gussied up to go to the Arizona Ball anyway. It was worth it! A totally different crowd from the Pederson event, but there was lots of food, lots of drinks, and it wasn’t so crowded we couldn’t move.

Best friends at the Arizona Ball:

Here’s my other best friend:

We danced, we talked, we drank (cranberry juice for me!). We caught up with Mark and Donna, George Arredondo from Coolidge, some of my Emerge Arizona cohorts, Jim Walsh (Pinal County Attorney) and his wife dancing to rap, Corporation Commissioner Paul Newman, who I really enjoyed talking to, and various and sundry others. We didn’t have VIP tickets, so we only briefly saw Sinema, Ann Kirkpatrick, and others going to and from the VIP room. It kind of sucked that the VIP area was so off-limits. We didn’t get a chance to talk to some of the people. But overall, it was a great ball and a lot of fun.

So, that was the quick summary of my inauguration experience. It was worth every minute. Here are a couple of bonus pictures from earlier in the week:

Picking up tickets from Congresswoman Kirkpatrick’s office:

Setting up for the inauguration:

The scenery:

And more:

Sizing up the inauguration location:

Democratic Divas represent:

Mr. Mitchell, Congressman Mitchell, Krista, and Justin at the Pederson party:

Tickets to the Arizona ball:

January 17, 2009: We made a mad dash to the airport but ran into very little issues and almost no one in line for security. We didn’t even need my husband’s US Airways status to propel us past the line – there wasn’t one.

As Justin and I waited to board, he pointed out one of our distinguished co-passengers, Sandra Day O’Connor. We were on the same flight! But she was in first, and we were in coach. Still, it was really cool to be on the same flight with a former Supreme Court Justice. I’m still in awe.

Flight was full of crazy and excited inauguration goers. I’ve never been on a flight with that much chattering – non-stop, too! It seemed like every passenger was on their way to witness Obama’s inauguration. There was also a little flirting going on. My husband sat in front of two people who seemed to hit it off – until the girl mentioned she would vote for Bush again if she was transported to 2000. Serious gaffe on that flight – the guy couldn’t wait to get off the plane.

My best friend and her husband met us, and we went to pick up two of our four tickets to the Arizona ball. We got them off Craigs list since they were sold out when we decided to go. Then back to my best friend’s house for a short break before getting gussied up for our National Association of Minority Government Contractors ball. It was a lively ball with lots of dancing and a lot of happy people. There were random cheers to Obama, and the DJ interjected a lot of comments about change and “yes we can” to keep the crowd excited.

January 18, 2009: Nothing much in the way of political excitement. The guy from which we bought the second set of tickets to the Arizona ball met us to give us the tickets. They looked legit and like the first set, so we figured we didn’t get swindled.

January 19, 2009: Headed to Congresswoman Kirkpatrick’s office just to find long lines wrapped around the house office buildings. Apparently, they didn’t have the tickets till late last week, so people were unable to pick them up early. We waited in line for about an hour before we got in, but then we headed straight to Kirkpatrick’s office and got our tickets. The tickets were very fancy looking, and I’ll upload some pics when I can get them from my hubby.

Since we were in the building, we went by Congressman Mitchell’s office and saw Alexis Tameron, who we met during our Dean for America days. She gave us a tour of Mitchell’s office, very nice, but I hope he gets to move to a bigger office as he continues his Congressional journey. As we were leaving, we saw Bob Mitchell, Harry Mitchell’s brother. Bob Mitchell, from Casa Grande, was my government teacher when I was in high school. He was also a newly elected mayor that year, and I still remember how he drew real life examples from his mayoral experience into the classroom. I learned a lot in that class.

We walked around for a few more minutes then headed out to the mall to get the lay of the land. Kirkpatrick’s office gave us Silver tickets. I didn’t realize there were different areas when I asked for them, so I was disappointed and anxious about having standing room only tickets – mostly because pregnancy makes my back hurt all the time. Still, we were thrilled to have tickets. The mall was a maze of fences and blockades. Lots of people milling around and also a lot of street vendors selling Obama paraphernalia. Strangely, while walking around, we ran into my husband’s neighbors from when he lived in Georgetown. Crazy.

Headed back to my friend’s house to get ready for the Pederson party. We really lucked out on getting on the list. I called to ask about it, and Pederson’s assistant said it was full. So, I asked if there was a waiting list in case someone couldn’t make it, then went on to say I was an active Dem, supported Pederson for Senate, was from Casa Grande (Pederson’s home town), and my mom was born in the same hospital in CG that Pederson was born in (different year, but same birthdate). Pederson’s assistant laughed at that and said since my mom and Pederson were born in the same hospital, she’d put me on the list. I thought that was cool, and the party ended up being a lot of fun and very crowded.

Some of the who’s who of Arizona politics were there – Kirkpatrick, Mitchell, Grijalva, Pastor, Napolitano, Sinema, Lujan, Schapira, and even the mayor of Flagstaff, Sara Presler-Hoefle. And, of course, Jim Pederson. Then there were the stalwart Dems, like Mark and Donna, Carol Pearsall, Judy Kennedy. It was quite the party, and although there were a lot of people we knew, there were also a lot of strangers. We tried meeting a few people, but we had a tendency to gravitate towards friends and acquaintances.

We did get to talk to Congresswoman Kirkpatrick. I find her to be one of the most gracious politicians I’ve met. She hugged me to say hello, always gives her full attention to whoever she’s talking to, and is so charming. I’m sad that we’re moving out of her district.

We just bought a house in Congressman Pastor’s district, so Justin and I introduced ourselves and talked to him for a few minutes. We chatted with Mark and Donna for a bit, Reps. Lujan and Sinema for a few minutes, and Rep. Schapira and met his new wife, Rosemary I think (congratulations!). Other than that, we got to chat with Bob Mitchell and company for a while and got a couple of pictures. We ran into Dana Kennedy as we were leaving, so that topped off the night for me. I got to see and talk to all the people I was looking forward to seeing. We headed back to Falls Church to prepare for an early morning on Tuesday.

Sorry to cut it short, but Tuesday will have to wait. Pregnant women need a lot of sleep.

I’ve been meaning to write some cheesy, maudlin cliche-ridden and stale metaphor-laden paean to the Obamassiah and the significance of his swearing in, and much as I want to because I am becoming more smitten with him with each passing day – I’ll spare y’all that. Besides, that’s ground that has already been covered (See? I told you I suck at metaphors) by people far more eloquent than I.

But I do have to say that I was mostly an emotional mess from the minute I got to DC until I left. We arrived last Saturday and I swear there was just this palpable sense of excitement and optimism in the air. I should point out that DC voted for Obama by like 91% so it was definitely a welcoming place to the swarm of visitors. The whole city was basically a big old Obama love in. Sunday we went to the Yes We Can concert. Mark and I secured ourselves a fairly good spot in front of a Jumbotron. It was a great show and if you didn’t see it, it’s on HBO so they’ll be replaying it approximately 7 million times in the upcoming weeks so be sure to catch it if you can. I was tearing up throughout the whole thing but – for reasons that are still inexplicable to me – I sobbed like a baby when Garth Brooks walked onstage to sing “American Pie”. “Oh my God, Mark! Garth Brooks supports Obama! Gaaaarth Brooooks!!!”

Monday was spent in line for several hours at the Rayburn Building to pick up Inauguration tickets from my Congresscritter’s office. Someone in their ultimate wisdom decided that making everyone wait to get their tickets until the day before the event was a great idea so thousands of people snaked around the block. Finally, some members’ staffers started bringing tickets out to constituents in line, leading to other staffers following suit, which sped things up considerably but the whole process still ate up about 4 hours for us. Met cool people in line from all over the country. We shivered and grumbled but everyone had good spirits and was amazingly polite. I can honestly say I have never seen such patience and tolerance in such large crowds and long lines before. Everywhere in the city – on the streets, on the Metro, in restaurants – people were nice to each other. It was magical.

On Inauguration Day Mark and I awoke at insane o’clock to head down to the Purple Ticket Holders entrance. I think some of you might realize what is coming. Yes, Mark and I were among thousands stranded in the Purple Tunnel Of Doom. At 11:20 it was announced that the gate was closed. We decided to just make our way back to the hotel. We began walking and I spotted a little grocery store we could pop into for a cup of coffee. We ended up watching the swearing in ceremony on a 10 inch TV that the store owners kindly turned to allow us to see it.

I was disappointed and Mark was crushed. He’d bought a brand new camera for our trip…

…Okay, I’ve got to go off on a tangent here for a minute since I just typed the word “camera”. I must be some kind of freak anomalous curmudgeon but it is my honest opinion that digital photography is the single most aggravating development of the modern era. Incessant flashbulbs and the click-click-click of cameras all around me mar nearly every vacation, excursion, and important event of my life and this DC trip was no different. I’m not saying don’t take pictures at all but honest to God how many stinking pictures of the Lincoln Memorial do you NEED? Who are you going to show them to, anyway? The person next to you who is also taking 700 identical pictures of the same statue? What is WITH this bizarre obsession people have with chronicling every moment of their lives in photos? I’ve never been a shutterbug, have rarely even owned a camera, and loathe to have my own picture taken. Matter of fact, if not another picture were ever taken of me as long as I live I would die a happy woman. I’m 40. My best days are behind me. Plus, I’m pretty sure I weigh about 9000 lbs these days. Unfortunately, it is my fate to be surrounded by people who not only love to take photos, but thrill in their ability to take an infinite number of them and store them on 4 gigabyte memory cards. My darling Mark is this type of person. He loves taking pictures. Including of me, to my everlasting horror. He then likes to put said pictures of me (ones that display my recently-added extra chins in glorious vivid detail) on Facebook. I long for the old days when the camera fiends were constrained by film rolls. Again, I’m not saying don’t take pictures but try a little moderation. Just because you can take thousands of pictures on your nifty whizbang camera doesn’t mean you should.

Anyway, back to the tunnel experience. It sucked not to see the ceremony but I’ve kinda made peace with it. Because there’s something to be said for the fact that thousands of pissed-off inconvenienced people, who didn’t get to see the very thing many of us flew thousands of miles to see, can experience that but still be decent to one another. No arrests or altercations. Considering that people sometimes get trampled in Walmart trying to buy plasma TVs, I’d say that’s pretty remarkable. I’m sure the tight security and large number of cops had something to do with it too but it was more than that. I was reminded of a conversation I had with a 50-something woman a couple weeks after the election. She told me that when she was a little girl during Kennedy’s presidency, her mother would ask “What would President Kennedy think if he saw you right now?” of her and her siblings when they misbehaved. She told me this was a common parental rebuke in her community at the time. She said that’s the kind of President that Kennedy was. He made you want to be on your best behavior. That’s the kind of President we swore in last Tuesday.

I wish I were kidding but this is an honest-to-goodness press release from the American Life League about Krispy Kreme giving out free donuts on Inauguration Day. Seems that the group (“largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the United States”) is taking issue with the company’s use of the phrase “freedom of choice” in its marketing of the free donuts:

…President-elect Barack Obama promises to be the most virulently pro-abortion president in history. Millions more children will be endangered by his radical abortion agenda.

Celebrating his inauguration with “Freedom of Choice” doughnuts – only two days before the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision to decriminalize abortion – is not only extremely tacky, it’s disrespectful and insensitive and makes a mockery of a national tragedy.

A misconstrued concept of “choice” has killed over 50 million preborn children since Jan. 22, 1973. Does Krispy Kreme really want their free doughnuts to celebrate this “freedom.”"…

*Sigh*

People, I’m leaving for DC in a few hours and I’ve still got packing to do and a shower to take. I really don’t have time to do wingnuts’ grunt work for them but this kind of slackitude simply cannot go unaddressed.

Quoth Krispy Kreme, maker of addictive sugary fat laden fried pastry:

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American’s sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies — just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet “free” can be.

Hellooo, righties! The A.L.L. caught the obvious promotion of abortion in that statement but how are the rest of y’all missing its other references to the evil leftist conspiracy? It’s “sense of pride and freedom of choice”. Pride. Everyone knows that pride is code for gay agenda. So just to get everyone up to date: Krispy Kreme is giving away gay abortion donuts.

But there’s more Machiavellan liberal malevolence to be found …

“Freedom of choice” is not just a reference to the Freedom of Choice Act, it can also easily be interpreted as an endorsement of the Employee Free Choice Act. Unions! That’s ZOMG TEH COMMUNIZM!!1!

There. I can now resume my preparations for my trip to DC, where I will enjoy my free commie gay abortion donut with 2 to 5 million of my closest friends. I’ll try to kick out a blog post or two while I’m there.

Toodles,

Donna Hussein Diva

My best friend is meeting us at the airport, so we’ll have a joyous reunion and then head to her place for a quick chat and a change before heading to the National Association of Minority Government Contractors ball. My husband works with governments and contractors, so it’ll be a mixture of business and pleasure. Then we head back to my best friend’s house and hopefully a lazy Sunday. I can’t think of anything more exciting than getting to go to the inauguration AND seeing my best friend. I am loving 2009.

On Monday, we pick up our tickets in the morning. In the evening, we’ll go to the Pederson party. I still can’t believe we got on the list.

Tuesday, well, you should follow my tweets on Tuesday. If I have reception, I’ll tweet about it. You can follow me here: http://twitter.com/kristabellerina.

Tuesday evening is the State Society of Arizona Inaugural Ball. They were sold out by the time we decided to go (we weren’t going to but changed our mind a couple of days ago), so we got tickets on Craigslist. My fingers are crossed that they’re legit. We also got tickets for my best friend and her husband, so I get to introduce her to all the political peeps I’ve met over the last few years.

That’s it for political stuff. I’ll spend the rest of the week hanging around with my friend before heading back to Arizona and the real world.

I’ll try to keep up with the festivity summaries. I’ll probably be using Twitter more than blogging, so if you really want to keep up, check out my Twitter: http://twitter.com/kristabellerina.

This is a two-way street. Keep us updated on all your inauguration shenanigans. Have fun and have a toast to President Obama for me!