It's been close to a year since Arizona passed SB-1070 — the anti-immigration law that encourages racial profiling and can land a cop in jail if they don't do it — and several states were supposed ride the wave of hate and pass similar bills. But, as Muzaffar Chishti from the Migration Policy Institute told the Los Angeles Times, "Now I think reality has set in."
In the sun-scorched cauldron of violence and hatred that is Arizona, humans are no longer able to procure sustenance without fighting off rabid beasts driven half-mad by the incessant, life-sucking heat. A family in Yuma arrived home and opened their door, only to be overtaken by a black dog rushing past them into the artificial sanctuary of their air-conditioned apartment, made cool by burning vast quantities of fossil fuels which will, ironically, cause our dying planet to become even hotter over time. The interspecies showdown quickly devolved:
Republican Arizona state senator Scott Bundgaard avoided a night in jail because of a law which grants lawmakers immunity while the legislature is in session. He and his girlfriend, Aubry Ballard, got in a fight in their car on the side of the road after a "Dancing with the Stars" fundraiser last weekend. According to Bundgaard, Ballard got upset after accusing him of "inappropriately touching" his partner in the event. Cops showed up and found marks suggesting violence on both Bundgaard and Ballard, but only arrested Ballard. Bungaard got to use his official state legislature Get Out of Jail Free card.
Does anyone have a solution for America's "Arizona problem"? The once-peaceful cactus colony is now an embarrassment to a nation that has many, but nothing quite like this. It really should've been obvious for years: When you move billions of elderly white people to an area with a large minority population and then take away everyone's money and houses in an overnight market collapse, everyone gets all worked up, and they all have guns, and the legislature responds by crapping out strange, violent pieces of legislation that should only appeal to dogs but get a decent reception among delirious broke people, too. And then someone shoots a member of Congress, which may or may not have anything to do with anything.
Two girls were hurt in Arizona over the weekend when the inflatable castle in which they were bouncing was carried away by a sudden gust of wind and deposited on the roof of a neighbor's house. One of the girls is still in the emergency room with serious head injuries, apparently in "serious but stable condition"; the other seems to have escaped with only minor injuries. In the future, please, remember to properly secure your enormous air-filled castle; but remember that wind is not the only danger threatening your bounce house-occupying children: Last year, California's attorney general filed a lawsuit over high levels of lead in bounce-house vinyl. [ABC15; KOLD; stock image via Shutterstock]
Drinking windshield wiper fluid doesn't exactly sound refreshing (or, you know, safe), but that's what 84-year-old Henry Morello did to survive while he was stranded in the Arizona desert for five days. He got his car stuck in a ditch on the way home one night from his favorite restaurant, Harold's Corral: "My phone went dead, my battery went dead, and I went dead," Morello told The Arizona Republic.
On Monday, a jury in Tucson found former beautician Shawna Forde guilty of killing nine-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father Raul in a bizarre paramilitary raid on the Flores home in 2009. Forde, the leader of a group called "Minutemen American Defense," is what you might call an anti-immigration activist, if you include murdering fourth-graders under your definition of "activism"; two years ago, she and two of her fellow "minutemen" burst into the home of the Flores family, apparently looking for drugs that they planned on using to fund their creepy military games, and shot Raul, Brisenia, and Brisineia's mother Gina. Gina survived by playing dead and later testified against Forde.
Michael Gilliland, the founder of onetime Whole Foods rival Wild Oats, was arrested in Phoenix, Ariz. for allegedly "soliciting sex online from a girl who identified herself as a minor." According to police, Gilliland agreed to pay for sex with an underage girl (who, one presumes, was actually an FBI agent) and arranged a hotel-room rendezvous; eight men in total were arrested in the same sting.
