At the corner of Mendacity and Hysteria...

...lies Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.

After signing off on an immigration law that allows police to stop anyone brown enough that they "reasonably suspect" to be in the country illegally, she realized that she had to make the case to her constituents--as well as the country, at large--that the Arizona immigration problem outweighs the burden this will undoubtedly cause on U.S. citizens whose appearance is now just a bit too illegal-y. To that end, she devised a strategy:

Lie.

And lie, shamelessly, at that.

Now that her "drug mule" scare-mongering has blown up in her face, she's decided on a new tactic:

Avoid criticizing feds who might take umbrage at looking incompetent, and make sure the fear factor is even more outlandishly pants-filling:

Arizona governor says immigration leads to beheadings

In an interview with Fox News, Brewer said, "We cannot afford all this illegal immigration and everything that comes with it, everything from the crime and to the drugs and the kidnappings and the extortion and the beheadings."

"Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert, either buried or just lying out there, that have been beheaded," she added.

You can't put more "peril" into the Brown Peril than conjuring up images of crazed (and, most likely, drug mule-ing) illegal immigrants rampaging through the countryside, lopping off people's heads, right?

Surely, the gruesome threat of imminent, violent, non-English speaking death will provide more than ample justification for even the most bleeding of hearts who might currently object to everyone darker than John Boehner having to carry proof of citizenship lest they find themselves detained by the police...

You can guess what happened next, can't you?

County coroners can't back Brewer beheadings claim

Officials with six county medical examiners offices in the state, including four from counties that border Mexico, say they have never heard of such attacks.

The Arizona Guardian contacted the coroners' offices in Yuma, Pima, Pinal, Maricopa, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties. All of them said they'd never investigated an immigration-related crime in which someone's head had been head cut off within their respective jurisdictions.

The way I see it, the reality-challenged governor has gone so far around the bend, so quickly, that she has left herself with very few options for her next step in this insanity arms race. Her choices:

Undocumented workers A.) are a known cause of cancer, or B.) are, in fact, zombies.

My money is on zombies. Don't disappoint me, Jan.

Problem not scary enough? Lie.

Governor Papers Please has apparently decided that her state's immigration problems aren't inducing the proper level of panic among her constituency, both locally, and those whom she's pandering to in the national news. After what could charitably be called a minimal amount of thought, she's hit upon a novel solution: simply make shit up:

"Well, we all know that the majority of the people that are coming to Arizona and trespassing are now becoming drug mules," (Governor Jan) Brewer said. "They're coming across our borders in huge numbers. The drug cartels have taken control of the immigration.

"So they are criminals. They're breaking the law when they are trespassing and they're criminals when they pack the marijuana and the drugs on their backs."

Now, I don't claim to be an expert on lying as a politician, but it seems to me there are probably a few guidelines to follow. Near the top of the list: when selecting the basis for your fabrication, don't pick a scenario that has an entire government agency dedicated to dealing with it. Agencies like those tend to have employees who just might take issue with your attempt to make them look like they're doing an already nearly impossible task even more poorly:

T.J. Bonner of the National Border Patrol Council told CNN that Brewer's claims were "clearly not the case." Bonner said that some undocumented immigrants caught by border patrol agents have drugs on them, and that they sometimes blame pressure from the drug cartels.

But, he said, those claims have little credibility because drug smugglers are typically transporting much larger quantities of drugs. And besides, he said, if what Brewer said were true, there would be many more prosecutions for drug smuggling.

Brewer's comments, Bonner said, don't "comport with reality -- that's the nicest way to put it."

But, in the grand scheme of things, if Iraqi WMD, death panels, and the president being a commu-islamo-socialist sleeper agent didn't "comport with reality" why start being straight about the brown people you're using to terrify the electorate?

Actions: *Still* having consequences...

How much "not racist" can you really buy with $250K?

 

Arizona finds itself at the vortex of an immigration debate that is increasingly bitter and, figures on both sides say, increasingly unwinnable. Opinions are split, with fear of harassment rising among Hispanics and worry about an economic boycott growing among the state's leaders.

 

Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has appointed a committee and allocated $250,000 to re-brand the state's image, while 13 Arizona chamber of commerce executives appealed to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to keep the 2011 All-Star Game in Phoenix after he faced pressure to change locations. They said it would preserve jobs for "innocent citizens, including our Hispanic community."

 

Musical performers such as Sonic Youth, Kanye West and Rage Against the Machine have said they will boycott the state. Phoenix City Hall calculates that Arizona has lost nearly $100 million in convention commitments. Meanwhile, supporters and opponents of the immigration law are taking to the streets weekly.

 

$100M sounds like a pretty good start, and the monetary hemorrhaging is likely to only continue once the law goes into effect and the "existing while brown" questionings and arrests begin to occur. 

 

Further, Bud Selig needs to recognize that this is win-win for him.  He can finally realize his pipe dream of making the All-Star Game "count" if he simply shows the spine to move this otherwise meaningless spectacle, elsewhere.  It's a chance to both do the right thing as well as put his product center-stage not just on ESPN, but on every news network across in the nation, both at the time of the announcement, as well as next year when, "The 2011 baseball All-Star Game, originally scheduled to be held in Arizona..." will be obligatory lead-in material.

 

If he doesn't, hopefully the players of hispanic and latin american ancestry will take the decision out of his hands and do a little boycotting of their own.