In June, California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman (R) reminded California Latino voters of her opposition to Arizona’s controversial immigration law in an ad that aired on the Spanish-language broadcast of the Mexico-France World Cup game. A few weeks ago, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Whitman had also put up billboards throughout the state saying she (would have) opposed Proposition 187 and opposes the controversial Arizona immigration law, SB-1070:

[No to Proposition 187 and no to SB-1070 in Spanish]

However, despite touting her opposition to SB-1070, Whitman told English-language talk show hosts this Wednesday that the law should be able to stand in Arizona. Whitman explained that the only reason she opposes implementing the Arizona law in California is because it is a “much bigger state with much bigger geography”:

You know, I’m running for the governor of California so I had to make a decision, does the Arizona law make sense for California? And I have said no, I don’t think the Arizona law makes sense for California because we have a much bigger state with much bigger geography. [...] Hey I understand that immigration is a federal issue, but I would say that the states have got to be able to decide what is right for the state, so I would let the Arizona law stand for Arizona. [...] My view is you gotta let the states do what they gotta do until the federal government proves they can secure these borders.

Listen here:

Whitman likely understands that she will have a hard time winning the general election without significant Latino support. However, she also built much of her tough primary campaign around an image that portrayed her as a tough immigration hawk. The catch is that most Latino voters in California understand Spanish and English. In fact, 33.4 to 73.5% of California’s foreign born Latino population is proficient in English.

Whitman’s stance on Proposition 187 is also a contradiction in itself. During her primary campaign, Whitman released an ad featuring former Gov. Pete Wilson (R-CA) who affirmed that Whitman will be “as tough as nails” on immigration. Wilson’s endorsement might have scored some points with right-wingers, but it also meant a lot to California Latinos who remember him backing Proposition 187 — an Arizona type law that was ultimately deemed unconstitutional. The law never really went into effect, but Republicans are still hurting from it. After 1994, Latino voters helped California Democrats win every presidential, U.S. Senate, and gubernatorial election until 2003. Allan Hoffenblum, a longtime Los Angeles-based GOP strategist is worried about the potential fallout from Whitman’s primary campaign. “This is bringing back all the fears that the Republican Party is a white man’s party,” Hoffenblum told Politico. “It’s depressing.” Wilson now serves as campaign chairman for Whitman.

In her interview, Whitman also claimed that the stimulus package has not created jobs and bragged that the tea party “likes” her “fiscal conservatism.”

Today, Time magazine reports that the border is “one of America’s safest places,” pointing out that the Arizona’s overall crime rate dropped 12 percent last year and 23 percent between 2004 and 2008. However, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) seem fixated on the right-wing myth that the bloody Mexican drug war has spilled over the border and that violence is, as McCain puts it, “the worst I have ever seen.”

In that vain, Kyl and McCain proposed legislation last night that would direct $701 million towards 1,200 additional Border Patrol agents, 500 more Customs and Border Protection officers, three new border-enforcement bases, grants to support local law enforcement, two drones, and additional resources for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Kyl and McCain’s proposal is almost identical to the legislation recently pushed and passed by Democrats in the House, however, the troubling difference is that they’re proposing to use unspent stimulus money to pay for it:

The legislation we introduced today will provide additional resources to help gain control of our border, without impacting our nation’s deficit. It is our hope that Democratic majority will swiftly work with us to ensure passage of this bill. We also look forward to working with the Administration toward the adoption of our 10-Point border plan, which will provide the additional resources that are so desperately needed by so many living along the border in Arizona.

Repealing what is left of the stimulus translates into taking away money that’s dedicated to middle class tax cuts. The stimulus cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, and there are still $55 billion in tax benefits that have yet to be expended. Pat Garafolo explains that “repealing the stimulus to pay down the deficit amounts to raising taxes on all of those people.”

It would be one thing if Arizona’s economic woes were over and the stimulus funds dispensable. However, the state is still on the road to economic recovery. Though University of Arizona economist Marshall Vest recently declared the recession officially over in Arizona, he also noted that “it will be months before a recovery is evident and years to repair all the damage that’s been done.” Indeed, Arizona is now $10 billion in debt. The unemployment rate is slightly below the national average, hovering at 9.7 percent. Arizona is one of the four states responsible for the top 20 metro foreclosure rates. Meanwhile, CNN reports that the state’s new immigration law, SB-1070 — which McCain and Kyl support — is furthering economic woes. “[A]necdotal evidence from business owners, real estate agents and community leaders indicates the mere specter of the bill [SB-1070] has created a culture of fear among Hispanics in Arizona that’s slowly paralyzing sectors of the economy,” wrote CNN correspondent Emanuella Grinberg.

McCain initially dubbed the stimulus bill “generational theft” in 2009 and criticized it for being “full of unnecessary spending.” Kyl has been on a crusade since 2009 to scrap unused stimulus money, arguing that it’s not working. He’s also fought tooth and nail against extending unemployment benefits because it would supposedly be a “disincentive” to those who can’t find jobs. Both senators criticized the stimulus for containing too much pork. “It doesn’t stimulate, it just spends,” said McCain.

However, while Kyl and McCain appear to think that the stimulus is a failure and a lost cause, economists Alan Blinder and Marc Zandi believe it “probably avert[ed] what would have been called Great Depression 2.0.” The Congressional Budget Office further estimates that the stimulus’ effects on “output and employment are expected to increase further during calendar year 2010″ and predicts that it’ll start fading away in 2012.

Today, Countdown to Zero – a new documentary from Lawrence Bender and Participant Media – opens in many cities throughout the country. The documentary has gotten rave reviews and may be for nuclear weapons what Bender’s other documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” was for climate change – a massive national wake up call.

The film is in many ways a real-life horror movie. One reviewer described it as “smart, swift and scary as hell.” Sometimes the truth is terrifying and being awoken to it is unsettling. Nuclear weapons issues have faded from national consciousness. The Cold War is two decades gone and now many college students were actually borne after the Berlin Wall fell. Yet the dangers from nuclear weapons and nuclear materials remains.

Watch the trailer:

The film effectively goes through each of the four baskets of nuclear dangers – nuclear terrorism, nuclear proliferation, nuclear war and a nuclear accident. On nuclear terrorism it walks the viewer through how easy it is to acquire nuclear materials and how easy it is to smuggle into the US – acclaimed Harvard national security expert Graham Allison mockingly notes that a terrorist could hide it in smuggled shipments of marijuana. On nuclear proliferation, it explains that there no longer is any “magic” to developing a nuclear weapon and that should the nuclear non-proliferation regime collapse their could be a cascade of nuclear proliferation.

But the threat of a nuclear accident is perhaps the most unsettling due to its inherent randomness. As the movie so vividly exposes, accidents happen. Mistakes happen. And most troubling these things have happened in the past, but fortunately we as a world have gotten lucky. While a nuclear incident caused by accident is unlikely, who would have thought that the biggest news story of this year would be a massive catastrophic oil spill. Well you might say environmentalists have for years been warning of the potential dangers of oil extraction but no one paid attention. The same applies to nuclear weapons. Experts for years have been warning of the dangers of a nuclear accident and nuclear terrorism yet the sense of urgency has been lacking – until perhaps now.

President Obama outlined the visionary goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. Thus far he has gotten the US back in the arms-control business with the New START treaty and has worked to strengthen and bolster the nuclear non-proliferation regime at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference. He has also vitally prioritized the issue of securing loose nuclear materials and stopping nuclear terrorism and held the largest numbers of head of states in Washington since the founding of the UN at the Nuclear Security Summit in April.

Yet there is much much more to do and this agenda has fierce opponents some who are stuck in their attachment to the nuclear bureaucratic legacies of the Cold War and others who want to build and test more nuclear weapons, are clueless when it comes to addressing the transnational challenge of nuclear terrorism and securing loose nuclear materials, and even want to rekindle a new arms race with Russia. Countdown to Zero exposes the absurdity of such views and demonstrates that the status quo as it exists today is immensely horrifying.