“He didn’t feel that I had treated him cordially” in the book, Brewer explained to reporters Wednesday. “I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read the excerpt.”

A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation, said that Obama told Brewer he would be happy to meet with her after receiving her invitation. However, the official added, Obama “did note that after their last meeting, a cordial discussion in the Oval Office, the governor inaccurately described the meeting in her book.”

The book is what the book is. The meeting is what the meeting was. The two don’t seem to agree.

Accounts of the June 2010 meeting on immigration between President Obama and Governor Brewer right after it happened are in accord with the White House official’s description. Here’s Tucson Sentinel reporter Dylan Smith’s report from June 3, 2010:

The media lead-up to Thursday’s meeting between Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and President Obama would have you believe that some sort of ultimate showdown was about to occur.

The Washington Post said that the pair “brace for a tense meeting.”

ABC called it a “face off.”

Over at Fox, it was a “showdown.”

“A very cordial discussion,” was how Brewer described the meeting afterward.

So much for a Frankie Goes to Hollywood “Two Tribes”-style throwdown over illegal immigration, then.

“We agreed to try to work together in order to find some solution” to border security issues, the Arizona governor said after the meeting.

But that doesn’t make for good hagiography slingin’, does it? That meeting was turned into a showdown in Scorpions for Breakfast and Jan Brewer was transformed into a cross between Gary Cooper and Penelope Pitstop.

“We sat down and started with some chitchat,” she writes. “But after a few minutes, the president’s tone got serious – and condescending.”

Brewer’s magnum opus was ghostwritten by Jessica Gavora, wingnut welfare recipient, who had distinguished herself prior to Scorpions by contributing a wingnutty essay about the horror of unmarried women to a collection of wingnut welfaristarian diatribes about threats to freedom.

Obviously Gavora, a writer with so prodigious a talent for right wing spin, wasn’t going to let a meeting between President Obama and Governor Brewer taking place at the height of the SB1070 hubbub escape with a mere “cordial” description. Oh no. It had to be so much more epic than that. It looks like Governor Brewer wasn’t prepared for the possibility of President Obama being briefed on Gavora’s embellished account of their meeting in 2010. Not that it will matter to her fans but it should matter to people who report on political matters here.

They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues.

That is not how traditional conservatives view the world. There is no such society that I’m aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.

– Rick Santorum

Iowa’s eventual winner, Santorum, came in third in South Carolina. The winner was the guy who proposed an open marriage to his second wife because he didn’t want to give up his mistress.

Per Jamelle Bouie in American Prospect

This was the Gingrich that Republicans love. A confident, combative firebrand, who exudes a persona of erudition, even as he offers an incoherent take on the world, the issues, and the views of his opponents. To wit, Gingrich accused Barack Obama of believing in a “Saul Alinsky European radicalism where the stage is sovereign and we are its subjects.” This is absolute nonsense—Obama is a center-left Democrat with centrist instincts—but it sounds correct to he audience. They were thrilled.

Indeed, the enthusiasm was infectious. Everyone I spoke to was either a long-term fan of the former House Speaker, or a new supporter, who was eager for Gingrich to win the nomination, and—as one attendee said—“destroy” Obama in debates. “I like him because I really enjoy watching him debate…he could just tear people apart and be really intelligent about it. And I would to see him do that to Obama”, said Cathy Nichols, a local high school student who plans to vote in Saturday’s primary.

For everyone I talked to, I asked if they were concerned about the recent revelations from Gingrich’s ex-wife, who alleged that the House Speaker wanted an “open marriage.” Chuck Gregoire, a semi-retired internet marketer, had a response that was pretty typical of the reactions I received. “We really need someone to come out and kick some but, and I think that’s really where the country is now, and he’s got the ego to get it done.”, said Gregoire. He clarified—he wouldn’t “trust him with my wife,” but he does believe that he could lead the country and correct for Obama’s presidency.

Brian and Cathy Renaud, who moved to South Carolina from Michigan after losing their homes to the Great Recession, were also dismissive of the allegations against Gingrich. “I think we all see through the media’s ploy,” said Brian, “Putting her up to talk two days before a primary? Give me a break.”

As popular feminist blogger and Facebook friend of mine Amanda Marcotte observed: “‘Family values’ is code for “putting bitches in their place”. Gingrich’s behavior is consistent with that.” South Carolina GOP primary voters preferred Gingrich to Santorum because Gingrich comes off as a tougher opponent against the Kenyan Usurper, not because there’s any difference between the two on the culture war. Individual liberty and privacy are reserved for straight white Republican men. It’s “radical”, to use Santorum’s description, for people who aren’t straight white Republican men to have those things.

That’s it in a nutshell.

NYT editorialist Joe Nocera, tried to explain, yet again, how Fannie and Freddie were not, in fact, the “epicenter of the financial meltdown”, as Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann claimed at the most recent GOP debate.

Yet these real sins have been largely overlooked in favor of imagined ones. Over at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, two resident scholars, Peter Wallison and Edward Pinto, have concocted what has since become a Republican meme: namely, that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were ground zero for the entire crisis, leading the private sector off the cliff with their affordable housing mandates and massive subprime holdings.

Nocera’s piece linked to another one of his from January 2011:

But I wonder. Had there been a Dutch Tulip Inquiry Commission nearly four centuries ago, it would no doubt have found tulip salesmen who fraudulently persuaded people to borrow money they could never pay back to buy tulips. It would have criticized the regulators who looked the other way at the sleazy practices of tulip growers. It would have found speculators trying to corner the tulip market. But centuries later, we all understand that the roots of tulipmania were less the actions of particular Dutchmen than the fact that the entire society was suffering under the delusion that tulip prices could only go up. That’s what bubbles are: they’re examples of mass delusions…

…There is a telling moment in the commission’s report, when some A.I.G. executives are questioning whether they should stop insuring triple-A tranches of C.D.O.’s, which have become increasingly risky. In search of answers, they visit a housing analyst at Bear Stearns. One A.I.G. consultant later recalled that “the analyst was so optimistic about the housing market that they thought he was ‘out of his mind’ and ‘must be on drugs or something.’ ” But of course he wasn’t on drugs. His hallucinogen was the housing bubble.

In pushing the idea that the crisis was avoidable, Mr. Angelides is also trying to make an additional point: if we just do it better next time, we will avoid the next crisis. I’m all for holding the bad actors accountable, and to the extent the F.C.I.C. has done that, I tip my hat. But mass delusions, alas, are part of the human condition, and no report, no matter how scathing, is going to change that.

No report may do it but maybe we should tell the cool rich kids of the world to stuff it when they blame convenient scapegoats for their delusional and destructive actions. I lived in Ahwatukee (a suburban Phoenix village), which is known colloquially as “All-White-Tukee”, from 1999 to 2009. I was there at the height of the 2000s housing bubble. Every apartment there was “upgraded” to a condo, to take advantage of the mad upswing in housing values. Every third person I met, it seemed, was a real estate agent or a house flipper. As I recall, you were insane to opt for a boring traditional mortgage or home equity loan when there were so many great exotic and more lucrative options at your disposal!

I don’t recall any of this being geared toward inviting low income minorities into the 85044/85048 locale. I don’t recall one eager agent or mortgage broker confiding in me how the meanybutt Feds were forcing them to extend loans to low income minorities to satisfy Community Reinvestment Act or Fannie and Freddie requirements. Nope, I recall them being really stoked to make fat commissions, irrespective of who was buying homes or refinancing. I also don’t recall All-White-Tukee getting a speck browner during that heady time. And a Congressional inquiry concluded in January 2011 that loans to minorities under the CRA were “not a significant factor in subprime lending or the crisis.”

But hey, you’re having a real hard time convincing them that it’s “them”, and not you, who are the problem, right, rich kids? Must be that damn liberal media.

Phoenix New Times writer Amy Silverman has a poignant post up at her own blog Girl in a Party Hat about Jason Rose’s tweet. Amy’s the mom of a special needs daughter and she had the same question I did yesterday about the wisdom of Arizona Special Olympics hiring the likes of Rose to do PR for them.

Under the best circumstances, that tweet was ignorant and offensive. It’s also, let’s be honest, the kind of thing lots of people say every day. Mild, actually, compared to what I overhear all the time. Funny, I never much heard those things before I had a kid with Down syndrome. Now I can hear you whisper the word “retarded” a block away.

But here’s the “you can’t make that shit up” part. At the time, Jason Rose counted the Special Olympics of Arizona among his clients.

Really.

I say “at the time” because — per its zero-tolerance policy — the Special Olympics has already ditched Jason Rose.

My as-yet-unanswered question: Why did they hire him in the first place?

Then again, I guess it’s not too puzzling since ours is a land where end results are everything and cash is king. Jason Rose has a two decade long record of results and cash. But as the arc of the universe bends toward justice so too does the arc of commerce, at least sometimes. Rose is learning this now. I think there are many other Arizona businesses and organizations who should learn the same lesson where this guy is concerned. Here’s his latest, uh, pearl of wisdom:

First off, Limbaugh is repeating a falsehood about the Obama campaign “jettisoning” working class white voters. Second, his oblique dog-whistles about the “losers in life” who “don’t think they should work” and who have been “conditioned to hate this country” aren’t even close to as bad (as bad as they are) to some of the more overtly egregious racist things he’s said.

And he’s not real respectful to women either.

Then there’s this really stellar example of Rush Limbaugh being a consummate human being toward a disabled person in 2006, Michael J. Fox:

Rush Limbaugh is broadcast Monday through Friday on AM 550 KFYI Phoenix from 10am to 1pm. He has lots of listeners and KFYI has lots of national and local sponsors. I suppose those sponsors are thinking of results (ratings) and cash (profits). Maybe they should hear from the community like Jason Rose’s clients are hearing about him. Really, why has this person been given a platform to spew venom in our community, paid for by businesses and charities many of us patronize?

You can contact KFYI here.

I don’t want to be a single-issue blogger but there are times when I think I should just confine my posting to reminding the ladies (and the dudes who care about the ladies) about the numerous and relentless ways that conservatives wish to impose theocratic misery upon us ladies. And Rick Santorum is one sick, scary, creepy mofo who never disappoints on making it abundantly clear how much the conservative movement is motivated by pure misogyny.

“Look at the political base of the Democratic Party: it is single mothers who run a household,” he said on the American Family Association’s radio show Today’s Issues.

“Why? Because it’s so tough economically that they look to the government for help and therefore they’re going to vote. So if you want to reduce the Democratic advantage, what you want to do is build two parent families, you eliminate that desire for government.”

As I’ve reported in past posts, the view that single women imperil freedom by voting for Democrats has a lot of traction among conservatives. I first encountered it years ago in well-known wingnut U of Chicago professor John Lott’s writings. Lott and those who agree with him (like Santorum) claim that the growing size of government (and you’re supposed to assume that’s a bad thing) can be directly attributed to women getting the vote. Now, none of them are making a serious argument that all women should lose the right to vote. Conservatives are fine with women like Ann Coulter or Cathi Herrod voting because those women are committed to keeping other women down. No, it’s women who vote for Democrats who must be stopped.

There is much discussion of voter suppression among progressives lately, what with massive GOP efforts across the country (including in Arizona) to disenfranchise likely Dem voters. Those discussions focus on how suppression efforts target voters based on race and economic class. It is certainly true that racism and classism are main drivers of voter ID laws and other anti-voting measures. But female voters outnumber male voters in nearly every Democratic constituency, particularly minority and low income so suppression efforts directed at those groups will disproportionately affect women. And that is the intention.

Governor Jan Brewer announced the appointment of Jay Heiler to the Board on Wednesday, saying “Jay’s extensive leadership in education, business, government and strategic planning makes him uniquely qualified to serve in this role helping direct the future of higher education in Arizona.”

Uniquely qualified.

Before he was Fife Symington’s right hand man, Heiler distinguished himself in his own college career at ASU in the 80s for the obnoxious wankery that was typical of privileged conservative students of that era. Heiler made a nuisance of himself as editor of the ASU State Press in ’82 and ’83, where he used the paper to rail against, well, everyone who wasn’t a straight white rich conservative dude. Here are some highlights of Heiler’s journalistic career from a June 1992 New Times report.

On homosexuality: It is my impression that by `coming out of the closet,’ as their emergence has come to be called, homosexuals hope to make the rest of us less uncomfortable about their aberration-and despite one’s feelings about it, it is most definitely an aberration.”

On illegal immigrants: The immigrants come here to start a new life, then try to cling to their own language and customs. This tendency leads to all sorts of societal problems, ranging from interracial unrest to unexplained disappearances of dogs. The former difficulty crops up wherever aliens are to be found; the latter arose in California when the Vietnamese arrived.”

On liberals: Through their past bumblings, I have discerned that Ted Kennedy and Tip O’Neill are the two most misguided men to ever stink up the Capitol building, and that includes some stiff competition. They are paraders of socialism whose actions and utterances have left many of us with sour looks of disgusted disbelief.”

On abortion: Those with the stomach for it are forced to take note of the fact that thousands of this country’s unborn babies are slaughtered at the hands of their mothers every year.”

Fine choice for the BOR, Governor Brewer. Just what we’d expect from your administration.

Stuff like this should make us keep in mind that right wingers aren’t getting worse. They’ve always been this way.

Nope, nothing offensive about this at all.

ALEC itself is a tool for hundreds of corporations to use for the sole purpose of obtaining access to thousands of legislators and then exploiting that access to pass profit-making legislation. ALEC works like a think tank, devising legislation that benefits the corporate elite at the cost of the masses and then putting that model legislation in the hands of legislators along with gifts and incentives to urge their passing and now more than 200 of ALEC’s model bills have become actual laws throughout the country over the past year. The links between corporate greed, state oppression, and you have never been clearer.

This website is dedicated to the rising resistance against ALEC, their planned summit, and all corporate greed that would serve to perpetuate state oppression in already impoverished communities on already occupied land. Here you will find a lot more information on the link between ALEC, the private prison industry, and recent legislation like Arizona’s own SB-1070; you will find news articles, reports, and websites exposing ALEC; you will find multimedia pieces explaining the growing and explicit connections between corporate power and community oppression; you will find links to other websites and organizations building resistance in Arizona; and lastly, you will find ways to plug in.

We’re calling on all people to take a stand.

*Come to Phoenix from November 29-December 3 to tell ALEC we will not allow them to further criminalize and oppress our communities in order to fatten the coffers of their corporate members.

*Organize an action in your community for November 30th.

I don’t know who is behind it but I’m going to hazard a guess they’re based in Tucson (on account of they list Tucson first in their “about us” page, just a hunch). Also, the impetus behind it appears to be ALEC’s heavy involvement in private prisons and targeting immigrants to fill those prisons.

Here’s their Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/AZ-resists-ALEC/247353411962424

EDIT: By some mistake of divine provenance I linked to a clip of our lovely and courageous Rep. Gabby Giffords. I’ll leave it up.

Here’s the debate clip:

It’s a really quick segment but I wanted to make sure I got the most important message out: It’s not the deficit that is causing our economic problems and cutting the deficit will not get us out of them. It’s a Washington obsession that has no relevance to the immediate needs of Americans for jobs, education, health care, functioning infrastructure, etc. Also, Brahm asked if I felt President Obama had been “rolled over” by the deal. I said not at all. Considering that the President was dealing with a Congress taken over by rabid anti-tax cultists (elections have consequences) the deal could have been worse. Which is not to say that it is good.

Shane repeated the Tea Party mantra that “spending is the problem”. I guarantee he doesn’t mean spending on the military or oil subsidies. From the Alternet Joshua Holland piece I linked:

Last year, with the private sector economy continuing to slump, an analysis by Moody’s Analytics found that almost one in five dollars in American consumers’ wallets came from one government program or another. The public sector has already seen deep cuts, and that trend will only worsen with Washington’s relentless focus on deficit reduction. Without those dollars, there will be fewer consumers demanding American companies’ goods and services, and the private sector will continue to have little incentive to hire. That’s our core economic problem at this time.

Those government programs include public sector jobs, Social Security, unemployment payments, and various forms of public assistance and transfers. Thanks to decades of racebaiting and cultural conservative propaganda many Americans are blissfully unaware of how likely they are to use a government program at one time or another in their lives.

So it’s easy to say “cut spending!” when you think the cuts are going to be to people not like you because you don’t use any government programs (even though you use a bunch of them), which is why when I press conservatives about what cuts they would make they suggest “welfare” (a catch-all for government money going to undesirable people) or earmarks. (The “no spending on undesirable people” was definitely a factor in the newly elected Tea Party Congress going after Planned Parenthood right out of the gate.) It simply doesn’t register that sweeping budget cuts may also impact veterans benefits and college aid. And most Americans are tragically unaware of how austerity regimes are used to shove through the privatization of public services and the takeover of public property by private entities. (ALEC is making great strides in privatization at the state level.)

Folks, our grandparents and great-parents went through this in the 30s. Hoover and FDR bowed to conservative business interests and implemented austerity programs. In both cases, it worsened the Depression. Austerity in a bad economy is a lousy idea (unless you’re really, really rich and will profit from it) and Americans should reject it outright and demand better from our leaders.