By Bob Gaydos

President Joe Biden reaches out to touch a U.S. soldier’s tombstone as he and first lady Jill Biden tour the Normandy American Cemetery on the 80th anniversary of D-Day on June 6, 2024 in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.

   “Where were you on D-Day this year, Daddy?”

     “Well, honey, I was at work, as usual, but I did take the time to see how the leaders of our two political parties remembered that fateful day 80 years ago that led to the defeat of the German army in Europe. After all, without the bravery of those Allied soldiers on that day, the Nazis might have prevailed and you and I might not even be having this conversation.

     “Anyhow, I read that President Joe Biden was in France, at Pointe du Hoc, a point on Normandy beaches where Army Rangers scaled 100-foot cliffs to capture machine guns and ammunition from the Germans that was to be used against Allied forces on Omaha and Utah beaches.

   “The president said in his speech, ‘As we gather here today, it’s not just to honor those who showed such remarkable bravery that day June 6, 1944. It’s to listen to the echo of their voices. To hear them. Because they are summoning us and they’re summoning us now. They’re asking us what will we do? They’re not asking us to scale these cliffs. They’re asking us to stay true to what America stands for. They’re not asking us to do their job. They’re asking us to do our job. Protect freedom in our time, defend democracy, stand up to aggression abroad and at home, be part of something bigger than ourselves.’ ”

    “And where was Donald Trump, daddy?”

     “Well, honey, being out on bond after just being convicted in New York of 34 felony charges for trying to illegally influence the 2016 election in a case involving an extramarital affair with a porn star, Trump, the leader of the Republican Party and its probable presidential nominee, was at a campaign event in Arizona, speaking to a group of young MAGAs in training. 

    “He blamed all our country’s troubles on Biden and immigrants unlawfully entering the U.S. from Mexico, encouraged Republicans to oppose the president’s plan to put a temporary moratorium on border crossings, which Trump has also proposed, because it would help Biden’s reelection campaign.

   “Trump also commented on the happenings ‘here in Texas’ regarding banning abortion and said the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott had ‘done a very good job.’

     But, of course, Trump was in Arizona, where he did not mention Normandy or Nazis or D-Day or veterans, although six years ago he did refer to veterans buried in France as ‘losers’ and ‘suckers.’ Also in Arizona this year, he did vow to use his power to get revenge on those he calls his enemies if he is elected president. He did not speak about doing our job to protect freedom and democracy.

   “Oh, President Biden also met and thanked a group of veterans for ‘saving the world.’

   “And that’s what the men running for president of the United States of America did on D-Day, honey.”

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski at work, governing.

If you’re looking for a maverick, you don’t go to Arizona where they brag about the “dry heat” and almost everybody is a retired something or other from somewhere else looking to be left alone while they head for the air-conditioning. The state motto in Latin is Ditat Deus, which means “God enriches.” Whether one is a believer or not, that certainly doesn’t suggest an attitude of going out and stirring the pot to make things happen. It’s more like, “Well, OK, let’s chill and if it doesn’t work out, it’ll work out.”

No, if you’re looking for a maverick, by which I mean in this case, an independent-minded person, you go where it’s cold a lot of the time and winters are rough and people don’t have time for pettiness and pettifoggery. “Get on with it! What are you talking about? That’s nonsense; don’t waste my time.”

You go to Maine or, better yet, Alaska. If you’re lucky, both.

The Maine state motto is, “I direct,” or “I lead.” Alaska’s is “North to the Future.”

Action words. Follow me. I know the way.

On the floor of the U.S. Senate early Friday morning, John McCain, the Arizona senator whose reputation as a maverick disappeared in a puff of “Holy smoke!” at Liberty University when he was running for president in 2008, staged a dramatic moment in which he cast a “no” vote — complete with a theatrical thumb-down — on the Republicans’ last-gasp effort at repealing Obamacare.

Boom! The bill was dead. Gasps from Republicans. Applause from Democrats and millions of Americans. The maverick — fresh from surgery for brain cancer at a Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix — was back.

Not really.

Yes, McCain’s was the deciding 51st “no” vote, which killed the bill. But without the preceding “no” votes from Republican senators from Maine and Alaska, McCain’s would have been meaningless and those two senators had been in the forefront of opposing their party’s hypocritical efforts at “health care reform” from the outset.

In the matter of saving Americans from the cruel reality of the disastrous GOP effort to kill Obamacare (as opposed to passing its own health care measure), the real mavericks were Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Both women endured insults and threats from male (Republican) colleagues in Congress — and the president — as they stood firmly opposed throughout the sham process conducted by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. No last-minute theatrics for them. They let McConnell and the president know where they stood from the outset — on the side of truth and reasonableness, no petty politics.

For doing their job, voting their consciences and what was best for their constituents, rather than toeing the strict party line, Murkowski and Collins were referred to as “witches” and “bitches” online by the Trump troll patrol. Rep. Blake Farenthold, another sad excuse for a legislator from Texas, said that he would challenge them to a duel if they were men. He’d never survive.

The narcissist-in-chief tweeted his displeasure with Murkowski and suggested, in true Kremlin style, that her state might face retribution by the administration. In fact, Senate Democrats said they would ask for an investigation into calls from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to Murkowski and fellow Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, in which Zinke threatened projects important to their state if Murkowski persisted in voting no. That was merely more thuggery from an administration that has no respect for laws or rules of conduct, much less respect for differing opinions.

Collins displayed no patience for McConnell’s nonsense from the beginning of the latest Republican effort to squash Obamacare, pointing to the lack of information and debate on the measure, as well as its negative impact on millions of Americans — the things most other Republican senators were fully aware of but chose to neglect in voting yes.

Collins and Murkowski, of course, were not among the dozen white male Republican senators appointed by McConnell to try to figure out how to repeal and replace Obamacare. No women were on that special panel.

This is today’s Republican Party. A misogynist, or worse, in the Oval Office and a bunch of dumb white men trying to tell women to mind their place.

McConnell, of course, famously shut off the microphone of Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren during a Senate debate, only to listen as she persisted. Clearly, he has similar feelings about Republican women, senators or not.

But Murkowski, who vowed to defend funding for Planned Parenthood (eliminated in the GOP health plan), was elected as a write-in candidate over a Tea Party opponent who beat her in a GOP primary. She doesn’t scare off.

After the big GOP health care flop, she said, “My vote yesterday was from my heart for the people that I represent. And I’m going to continue working hard for Alaskans and just focus on that. I have to focus on my job. I have to focus on what I came here to do.” She had earlier said that it would be nice if some “governing” actually went on in Washington, rather than constant campaigning.

Collins was heard on an open microphone saying Trump’s handling of the budget was “completely irresponsible.” She opposed the Republican health process from the beginning, including the vote to even allow debate. McCain described that tactic as irresponsible, before voting for it. Then he actually voted for a GOP health plan offered later. Collins, Murkowski and several other Republicans voted “no,” (as did all Democrats on every vote). McCain saved his “maverick” vote for the end.

Some called it statesmanship. It was political theater — the deus ex machina coming in way too late. We’re glad you did it, senator, make no mistake, but where have you been all this time, through all this arrant nonsense from McConnell and Trump?

It brings to mind another “mavericky” theatrical moment in the McCain biography, one that also involved an outspoken woman politician from Alaska. Sarah Palin, senator. Remember her? What were you thinking? Were you that desperate for votes in 2008 that you had to sell out to the loony fringe now running your party? Don’t bother answering. Thanks for this decision; it’s a big one. But it doesn’t come close to making up for that earlier one.

No, if you’re looking for statesmanship and courage in this story, look to Senators Collins and Murkowski. If the Republican Party hopes to reclaim its soul, it needs more mavericks like them.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Rio Grande Near Taos

By Carrie Jacobson

I made my way home to the Eastern Shore of Virginia a week or so ago, having been on the road for most of three months, painting, doing shows and enjoying the lack of winter.

I went all the way to the Pacific Ocean, then doubled back and spent my time in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, living, breathing, eating and sleeping painting.

It was a joy to immerse myself in this astonishing country – and in painting, and tasks associated with painting and my sponsored painting trip (22 people bought paintings in advance from me – I painted these, and more, en plein air on my travels). It was a pure, pure joy – and a boon to my painting. My pieces got stronger and stronger throughout the trip, I think – and new ideas and new approaches came to me more and more readily.

It was hard to be away that long. It was hard to do that much painting. It was scary to plan this trip, knowing what it would cost and not knowing whether I’d get enough sponsors to make it worthwhile.

But the fears and the difficulties vanished in the face of what I saw, and what I strove and stretched and managed to produce. There might not be many times in a life when you have the chance to devote yourself to your passion. But if the possibility exists – or if you even catch a glimpse of it – I’d encourage you to do whatever you need to do to have the experience. It will be worth whatever it takes, whatever it costs.

***

I had a fabulous stroke of luck while I was in Tubac, Arizona, visiting my dad. Actually, two related strokes of luck. I was taken on by a marvelous gallery there – Art Gallery H – which is a lovely place, run by a very nice, very enthusiastic couple, Karl and Audrey Hoffmann.

Every year, Tubac produces a visitors guide, with listings of every shop, restaurant and gallery in town, maps of the town, advertisements, and a calendar of events. The guide is available for the entire year, and is distributed in all the businesses in town, and many in the general area.

Gallery H is responsible for supplying the art for next year’s guide – and they chose me to make the painting for the cover!

Burros!

By Carrie Jacobson

I’ve spent an awful lot of time during this painting trip missing my husband, and our home, my friends and my dogs and our little town on the Eastern Shore. I’ve felt guilty about leaving for so long (mid-January to mid-March), for missing this dire winter (yes, mid-January to mid-March; I’ve missed all of it), and for leaving my husband alone with the dogs in this cold, dismal time.

Now that my California Calling painting trip is winding down, I am surprised at how sad I am feeling!

It seems impossible that I could feel these two very strong, very divergent feelings at the very same time – but I do. I can’t explain it and I apparently can’t stop it, so I am just living with it, rocketing between tears and sadness that this amazing adventure is winding down – and joy and anticipation at being home and living my small, colorful life with my dear man.

I imagine that everything will sort itself out once I get going. And the trip is not finished. I have a show in Albuquerque this weekend – click here to find out more about it – and drop me an email if you’d like a coupon that gives you a discount off admission.

Between now and then, I have a few days to paint in New Mexico, and I’m excited about that. And then after the show, I head home. Even thinking about it makes me excited – and wistful!

At any rate, I love this burro painting, which was commissioned by a lovely woman who lives out here in Tubac. It’s one of my favorite paintings ever – and I can say that with no contradictory emotions at all!

Red Hills

By Carrie Jacobson

My heart and soul respond with joy to the colors of the West. I have loved seeing and painting the known places, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley – but what has made my painting soar are the unprotected places, the empty, unnamed lands, the spots beside the road that people drive every day to work.

These rough places, these daily sights, these truly stir me. I love the yellow grasses that line the edges of the roads. I love how the sage is green and in these winter days, a soft and gentle blue. Wildflowers grow in soft and fragile colors, and tumbleweeds blow through. The red earth delights my eyes and spirit, and the streaks of color in the mountains amaze me – and make me want to get out of the car Right Now and paint!

By Jeffrey Page

It took long enough, but Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, after several days of contemplation, finally found the need to veto a piece of legislation that would have set civil rights statutes in the morning trash.

As you probably know, State Senate Bill 1062 would have restored some of the odious Jim Crow laws of decades ago – not that its sponsors would agree. Briefly, SB-1062 would give shopkeepers and business people the right to refuse to serve gay men and lesbians. Arizona knew just how to talk up SB-1062. It wasn’t anti-gay, Arizona said, it was pro-religious freedom.

Arizona has good practice in describing certain travesties. It’s Arizona, after all, where police officers are required to check the immigration status of anyone who looks like he might be in the U.S. illegally. Can you take a guess who the state has in mind? Clue: It’s not Poles, Lithuanians or Canadians.

SB-1062 might have reminded you of the south before the Sixties, but its supporters say it was really a matter of ensuring religious freedom. Take a grocery store owner, for example. If he can show that selling a can of tomato soup or a pack of English muffins to a gay couple would violate his “strongly held religious beliefs,” he could point to the door and tell the two not to come back.

Question: Where in the Bible does it note that God would be greatly offended if he ran a luncheonette in Phoenix and two lesbians walked in to order tuna sandwiches on rye and coffee?

Question: Where in the Constitution of the United States did the framers define marriage?

And if SB-1062 – approved by the Arizona State Senate by an anemic vote of 17 to 13 and by a less than overwhelming Assembly vote of 33 to 27 – had become law, how easy or difficult would it be to allow shopkeepers with “strongly held religious beliefs” to refuse service to certain other people who don’t hold those same beliefs.

In considering undoing what the State Senate did on Feb. 19, Governor Brewer consulted with politicians and business people who feared that SB-1062 would harm the Arizona economy. She most likely was pushed along the road to veto by the National Football League’s starting talks on yanking next season’s Super Bowl game out of Phoenix if SB-1062 was enacted. It could be said that in Arizona, the economy trumps “strongly held religious beliefs.”

The NFL, several corporations, politicians from around the country, and Arizona’s two U.S. Senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, all appealed to brewer to make SB-1062 disappear.

They were joined by three of the state senators who voted in favor of SB-1062 and who were now looking for a way to kill it. Their reasoning for introducing the bill was misunderstood, they said.

In their letter to the governor, the three state senators said: “We must send a clear message that Arizona is a state that values religious tolerance and protects and values each individual’s ability to follow the dictates of their [sic] own conscience.”

That’s about as close as they ever got to the word “gay.”

Next, the measure went to Brewer for approval or veto. It took her seven days to kill SB-1062. It should have taken seven seconds.

By Jeffrey Page

There is talk in Arizona about secession from the United States, but little information about why.

It is a state that gets $1.19 in return for every $1 the 6 million Arizonans shell out to the federal government. This leads to another question: Why would anyone give up a sweet deal like a 19 percent return on investment? Why would a state wish to give up all that money Washington sends for education aid, highway projects, farm programs, and more.

Also, what recent events would cause a state to betray the nation? The failure of the Republican Party to impose a Tea Party agenda on the country? The reelection of President Obama?

In their naïveté, Arizonans clamoring to leave the union believe that this one-sentence demand will do the trick: “We petition the Obama Administration to peacefully grant the State of Arizona to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own new government.”

No. You don’t engineer a breakup of a nation and then ask the president to go easy on you. It doesn’t work that way. Last time some states seceded, 650,000 men and women were killed in the war to sew the nation back together. Still, as of this week, secession petitions have been signed by about 15,000 Arizonans. There are similar campaigns in some other states as well.

Another reason why secession is not easy becomes apparent when you do the math. Arizona’s share of the national debt, based on population, comes to $335 billion. Fairness dictates that they pay their share as they walk out on America.

The secession petitions are just one example of why Arizona’s view of the relationship between government and the governed is at odds with the rest of the country.

As you know, Arizona enacted a law giving the police the power to pull a driver over if a cop has reasonable cause to believe the driver is in the United States illegally. Probable cause includes whether the driver looks a little out of place.

You know exactly what this means and exactly who it refers to, and it is noteworthy that authorities in Phoenix have yet to report how many motorists who look Polish, look Japanese, look French or look Congolese have been stopped and asked for some kind of proof that they’re in the United States legally.

There’s another example of Arizona and the people.

In a move that puts the lie to Arizona’s reputation as a libertarian bastion, the state has made it legal for physicians to lie to their patients without fear of consequence. True libertarians do not stand between women and their doctors.

The statute declares that a patient (read: a woman) can’t take action against her physician (read: her OBGYN) for malpractice if the doctor discovers, for example, that her fetus is deformed but says nothing about it. Sensible people understand that this is a lie of omission. In Arizona, it’s OK.

Three’s a crowd, so why would a state wish to enter the patient-doctor relationship? Because, if the woman is informed that the fetus is badly damaged or deformed, she might choose to undergo a certain legal procedure (read: an abortion) as a matter of personal choice and privacy (see: Roe v. Wade).

If Arizona lawmakers can give a doctor the right to look into a patient’s eye and lie about the condition of her fetus, what’s to prevent physicians from downplaying serious medical conditions of poor, undocumented Mexican men, women and children? Some Latinos would grow sicker and sicker and possibly go back home to be cared for by family. And then Arizona could brand itself the champion of the ever-complaining Anglo population.

By Emily Theroux

Come one, come all to the three-ring circus of Willard “Mitt” Romney’s “This Week in Immigration” road show! Step right up and have the time of your life!

That cornball “Greatest Show on Earth” hype was what came to mind while I listened to the Mittster’s “traveling press secretary,” Rick Gorka, an apparently sentient young man behaving eerily like a trained parrot before an assembled media gaggle. Undaunted by the attempts of reporters to elicit a different response to their repeated questions about Mitt’s immigration agenda, Gorka managed to say absolutely nothing substantive for a full seven minutes. When asked about Mitt’s considered opinion of the recent Supreme Court ruling that rendered Arizona’s notorious “Papers, Please” Act legally impotent, his laconic, gum-chewing flack echoed the Boss Man’s desultory “states’ rights” bibble-babble, as he noted, “over and over and over again.”

Willard “Lizard Boy” Romney has apparently designated the robotic Gorka as his substitute ringmaster. This inspired hire has provided the candidate with a nifty dodge from the media circus converging on “The Magical ‘Mitt-stery’ Tour” of daring escapes from accountability, mind-boggling platitudes, and broken-record ballyhoo that the campaign has devolved into. Why the calliopes and clown brigade every time the campaign stops at a new venue? Because the GOP candidate mulishly refuses to answer a potentially lethal question: What is his policy on immigration reform?

“The governor supports the right of states,” Gorka mechanically replied. “That’s all we’re going to say on this issue.”

That and Mitt’s tedious contention that President Obama has broken his campaign promise to “address” the immigration system within the first year of his presidency and, “therefore,” hasn’t made any attempt to reform it since then. Mitt jumped to the conclusion that the states have some nebulous “Tenth Amendment right” to “craft their own immigration law” when the executive branch “fails” to act. (This view also enabled dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia to “strike down the results of the Civil War,” in the words of a clever headline writer for Alternet.)

We’ve almost arrived at the main attraction: Mitt’s audacious high-wire act in the center ring. But first, send in the clowns! I think I spy Rush “Bubbles” Limbaugh, fortunately still looming in the wings – but I have no doubt he’ll swing by soon, his imposing bulk dangling from the high bar of a very slender trapeze. And mira, amigos – here comes Jan “Rosie Sunshine” Brewer! She’s got her platinum wig all in a wad because she thinks the Supremes don’t like her finger-wagging routine any more. She’s so goofy, she still thinks her side “won” when the ruling came down!

Look over there – is that Michael “Emmett Kelly” Steele, returning for Act II of his hilarious GOP stand-up routine? I barely recognized him without the villainous moustache. What’s that he’s saying – Mitt’s going to lie low for the rest of the summer, then give us some general-election “straight talk” after Labor Day to let us know, finally, what he’s decided to say he thinks about Amercia’s “illegals” quandary? What’s that about David Koch and the Super PAC puppeteers? Very funny, Pennywise!

And there’s Hizzoner, Nino “Bozo” Scalia, riding bareback on Ann Romney’s prized dressage horse. That’s some clown get-up he’s got on there – a judge’s robe! Bozo probably should have been wearing boxing gloves, because he had a big spat with the majority, who didn’t think much of his highly politicized dissenting opinion – or his brainstorm about calling down the Insane Clown Posse on all 12 million of those “alien” interlopers, chasing them back across the border, and then letting Mexico deal with them, even though they didn’t all come from Mexico. (And you’d never know that Nino himself was the son of an immigrant, would you?) Take a bow, Nino/Bozo – or get that fancy horse to do some of those little fluttery ballet steps for you! (That equine must have been pricey. Good thing Mitt could write it off as a “business expense.”)

I realize Mitt’s really teetering up there; at least he’s risk-averse enough to always use a net. (Obama’s the real daredevil, though; no net, no sissy tights, just a big stick to help him keep his balance.) What’s really scary is what Mitt’s up against, straddling “the danged fence” the way he does. If he leans too far to the right, he’s in danger of losing even more of that baffling demographic, Latino voters (which he can’t fathom until he figures out how to tell the “legal” immigrants from the “illegal” ones). And if he swings too far to the left, he’s going to fall off the back of the “Restore Our Future” campaign bus! (Odd concept, by the way – how can you “restore” something that hasn’t happened yet? Sounds like a socialist takeover, if you ask me.)

When the Romney traveling circus comes to town, prepare yourself for the awful truth: This circus is no genuine fun at all, with the exception of a little schadenfreude. (We’re laughing at you, Mitt, not with you.) This Big Top spectacle offers its share of elephants, aerialists, and clowns, and it even has its own traveling pitchman. But it’s so repetitive that it’s guaranteed to “cure insomnia,” as Martin Bashir quipped on his MSNBC show – and it’s no place to go searching for honest solutions to the serious economic dilemma this country has been tricked into by GOP hucksters. The same scam artists who flim-flammed Americans into buying what Dubya’s Great Neocon Illusionist Exposition was selling 12 years ago hope to fool the gullible into believing that Brother Mitt’s Traveling Salvation Show offers a shiny new approach to the one that drove the wagons into the ditch in the first place.

As P.T. Barnum is falsely credited with saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” If Mitt manages to pull a fast one on the American people and sell them his own bill of goods by talking in circles for the next four months, we’ll only have the folks who aren’t paying attention to blame (like all of those registered Democrats who stayed home in droves during the primary election for a candidate to run against Tea Party freshman Nan Hayward; if you’re reading this, which would surprise me, you know who you are).

I wonder what pearls of wisdom Mitt Romney will have to offer about Scalia’s “miscarriage” of judicial propriety, by the way?

Very likely, nothing new. Move along, folks. The show is over. Nothing to see here.

In circus lingo, a “fireball outfit” is a traveling circus that earns a reputation for swindling patrons. If that’s indeed what’s been going on during this comedy of errors, the voters should demand their money back and ride the bums out of town on a rail when they show up at the next whistle stop with their hands out.

By Bob Gaydos

Addendum to “10 states my sons should not live in”

After I posted my latest piece on the Zest site (the next one down), I asked Son the Younger (Zack) if he had read it and naturally he said no. So I told him the headline on the column and asked him what states he thought might be on the list of places I urged him and his brother to avoid.

“Well … Texas probably and maybe Arizona and South Carolina,” he started off without hesitation.

“That’s great!” I said. “You got three of the worst right off the bat. Which one do you think is the worst?”

“Probably Texas because it’s dumb and there’s nothing there. But … Arizona has that new law on immigrants which is pretty bad.”

“Terrific … A-plus,” I said. “I put Arizona first only because A comes before T. Who else?”

“Alabama? Maybe West Virginia and Kentucky. Louisiana?”

“Yes, yes, yes and on the watch list.”

“Well, they have New Orleans.”

“Precisely.”

“Maybe Mississippi, too’” he continued. “Pretty much all the southern states.”

“Pretty much,” I agreed. “Fantastic job. I also included Alaska.”

“Well, yeah, it’s kinda like Texas and they pay people to live there.”

“Plus they elected Sarah Palin.”

“Oh, yeah. Pretty bad.”

The moral to this story? I dunno, maybe to pay attention to what you tell your kids because they may actually be paying attention.

I do know that after that brief chat I upgraded my own score as a father and a couple of days later treated Zack to a steak dinner — Aussie style, not Texas.

bob@zestoforange.com

A citizens militia group at the border in Vekol Valley, Arizona. Photo from: vandal49588.blogspot.com

By Bob Gaydos

I ran into an old newspaper colleague at the Times Herald-Record offices the other day and in the process of catching up and complaining that I didn’t know what to write about for my blog this week, he asked if I was the one who had written an editorial for the Record (they’re anonymous) about some congressman claiming there are about 80 Democrats in Congress who were members of the Communist Party. “The nut job from Florida,” he said.

I was, I admitted, proudly. He shook his head and said something to the effect of, “Where do they find these guys?”

Where indeed, I agreed. “But more to the point,” I heard myself say, “who are the people who keep voting for them? I mean, really, would you want to live in a place where people put a guy like that in office? It’s one of the things I try to get across to my sons — you get to choose your own career paths, but please, you don’t want to live in places where they keep electing morons.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a column,” the newspaper guy says.

And so I do.

Brief intro: Max is 20 and currently studying art at SUNY Purchase. Zack is 17 and will attend (no declared major) Western New England University in Springfield, Mass., in the fall. They are both bright and, due to environmental influences, liberally inclined politically and accepting of people of all types — except, bless their hearts, morons in politics.

So yes, if nothing else I tell them sinks in, I figured at least I can warn them off living in some states later on, unless they never want to see me or their mother ever again.

This is not, by any means a scientific effort. Rather, it’s an off-the-top-of-my-head-with-a-dollop-of-research compiled list of states where you (Max and Zack, that is) don’t ever want to live. The primary criteria for making the list are: Rampant racism, anti-intellectualism, bigotry, intolerance, religious fanaticism, and electing morons to office over and over again. (If anyone who reads this is from any of these states and doesn’t see it, well, that’s your right. Just add denial to the list.)

These are going to have to be in no particular order mainly because I couldn’t decide which was worst among Texas, Arizona and Mississippi.

Let’s start with Arizona since it starts with an A. Arizona has devolved to such an extent that Sen. Barry Goldwater, darling of the John Birch Society, who was famously demonized by Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election (“Goldwater in ‘64, Cold Water in ‘65, Bread and Water in ‘66”), would have trouble getting support from the angry white conservatives who run the state today. Gov. Jan Brewer, who recently went toe-to-toe with President Obama on the airport tarmac, signed into law the most repressive, intolerant immigration law in the country.

The state’s current senators are Jon Kyl, whose only job as minority whip is to whip up votes to oppose anything whatsoever proposed by Obama, and John McCain, who used to have a spine and principles until he decided to run for president and needed the support of the Republican right wing. And he gave us Sarah Palin.

Also, Arizona is brutally hot, there’s no water and there’s a bunch of men with guns driving around patrolling the border with Mexico and they’re not cops.

OK, Texas. I could stop with George W. Bush and Rick Perry as back-to-back governors. OMG, Texas. But there’s more. Texans are loudly proud of a board of education that never heard of scientific research and a penal system that likes to keep the line moving on Death Row. Toss in religious fanatics, Tom Delay and a hostility to anything not Texan and no amount of Tex-Mex cuisine is enough to want to live there. Plus, outside a few big cities, it’s miles and miles of miles and miles. It’s no country for young men either.

As for Mississippi, what can you say about a state that perennially ranks at the bottom of lists of states whose residents have a high school diploma, whose children are read to daily, who visit the dentist regularly, and who have a livable family income. Then there’s the racism, the anti-gay atmosphere and lack of concern with proper nutrition. Haley Barbour stepped down as governor in January, but not before granting full pardons to 193 inmates, including five convicted murders. His successor, Phil Bryant, on Wednesday said of Democrats in his state: “Their one mission in life is to abort children, is to kill children in the womb.” He said it after signing a bill to close down the state’s last remaining clinic that performs abortions.

Alright, this is getting depressing and that was not my goal. Let’s add South Carolina, which gave us the Civil War and, to prove things move slowly in the south, segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond, anti-Obama at all costs Sen. Jim DeMint, immigrant-bashing Sen. Lindsay Graham and former Gov. Mark Sanford, who told his wife and the world he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was getting his exercise with his mistress in Brazil. You might get away with that in New York, but considering South Carolina’s arch-conservative approach to religion, family, etc. that qualifies as rank hypocrisy. Plus they still like to fly that Confederate Flag.

I’m going to wrap it up because this now looks like it could go on forever and I‘m beginning to feel intolerant. Other states to avoid, boys:

Alabama: See Mississippi.

Oklahoma, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky: Lots of intolerant religious folk who carry guns, and don’t like blacks or gays. Or even women sometimes.

Alaska: Texas with snow. Plus they elected Sarah Palin.

OK, that’s ten, a nice number for headline writers. But I gotta warn you, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana, I’ve got my eye on you, too.

(And thanks, Paul Brooks, for inspiring this column.)

bob@zestoforange.com