QAnon Huey Long is not only as bad as El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago, he’s also all kinds of bad in his own way, too.

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ gets done and where you better start swimming, or you’ll sink like a stone.

If this semi-regular weekly survey does nothing else, let it help America’s pundits avoid the temptation to normalize Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as a potential president. QAnon Huey Long not only is as bad as El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago, but he’s also all kinds of bad in his own way, too. (This also goes for Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin.) There is, for example, this little shot of Lysenkoism. From the Miami Herald:

The college’s influence has been seen in the state’s rejection of math textbooks over what DeSantis called “indoctrinating concepts,” the state’s push to renew the importance of civics education in public schools, and the rapid growth of Hillsdale’s network of affiliated public charter schools in Florida. Hillsdale also has had sway over the Republican-led Legislature. In 2019, lawmakers approved a law that allowed the college and three other groups to help the state revise its civics standards. Three years later, those guidelines are part of a DeSantis-led civics initiative that has concerned several educators about an infusion of Christianity and conservative ideologies.

At the risk once again of being accused of not caring about poor children, especially poor Black children, I feel compelled that the involvement of Hillsdale in the charter school movement is yet more evidence that said movement is too replete with fakes and hustlers to remain unregulated. As the Herald points out, the Hillsdale model of how to teach American history makes David Barton look like Manning Marable.

A Herald/Times review of nearly 6,000 pages of textbook examination showed only three of the 125 reviewers found objectionable content. Two of the three were affiliated with Hillsdale College. One was Jonah Apel, a sophomore student majoring in political science, and the other was Jordan Adams, a civics education specialist at the college. Apel is listed as the secretary of the Hillsdale College Republicans, a group whose mission includes connecting students to the “political arena” and “changing the United States in accordance with truth, liberty and human flourishing.” Adams is tied to Hillsdale’s 1776 curriculum, a history and civics-based education program that covers American history, government and civics to provide the “knowledge and understanding of American history and of the American republic as governed by the Constitution and morally grounded in the Declaration of Independence.”

Dear America, run, do not walk, away from this dangerous man. My lord, the guy was an MTG-level joke in Congress and he’s turned Florida into his personal satrapy. I think he would’ve found a way on January 6 to declare martial law and seize the ballot boxes. Gavin Newsom can’t carry this battle alone.

While we’re on this subject, let’s check out the latest in GOP attack ads, and when I say attacks, I am not kidding. These cats are armed and they mean business. Jerome Davison is one of five Republicans running to be the representative in the U.S. Congress for Arizona’s 4th Congressional District. Davison shows every indication that the primary process will be interesting, if extraordinarily noisy.

If I’m one of the four other candidates, to say nothing of Greg Stanton, the Democratic candidate, I’m keeping an eye on this dude. Moving on to Missouri, we see Republican U.S. senatorial candidate Eric Greitens, whose rap sheet should preclude him from being a Klingon warlord, let alone a U.S. senator, but here we are. Greitens has decided to sell himself as an armed home invader. Bold strategy, Cotton etc. They all think that they’re actual action heroes. This is, of course, insane.

And while we’re on the subject of insane, things have gone completely haywire in Georgia, and they didn’t need Rudy Giuliani to get there this time. From CBS News. And from USA Today:

Erected in 1980, the massive granite monument stood 7 miles north of Elberton, Georgia, near the South Carolina state line."For safety reasons, the structure has been completely demolished," the GBI posted on Twitter while releasing videos showing the powerful blast and what appears to be a four-door silver car at he scene. Elbert County Sheriff’s Office deputies who responded to the scene found the explosion destroyed a large part of the monument, the GBI reported.

OK, nothing can be “America’s Stonehenge” if it was built in in 1980, and the Georgia Guidestones were weird enough for anyone’s taste. But, dammit, blowing up tourist monuments is not a trend that needs setting at this particular point in history. Which crackpot Georgia gubernatorial Kandiss (Jesus, Guns, and Babies) Taylor should have realized before dragging the Guidestones into her crazy-ass campaign.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, whence Blog Official Dust Devil Exorcist Friedman of the Plains brings us some political wisdom from the Heartland. Listen up, ya coastal elite bastids. From the Norman Transcript:

“Rooster people vote,” said Robert Turner, a Stigler gamefowl breeder and treasurer of the Oklahoma Gamefowl Association. “We’ve been dormant for 20 years. We thought that with the situation with decriminalization of illicit drugs and everything else, we just thought we would give it a shot.”

If I were a member of the Oklahoma legislature, I would not vote to legalize cockfighting, if only to keep scurvy bloggers like, well, me, from making distasteful puns for the next decade, but I beg you, do not miss the profound truth contained therein.

Rooster people vote.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.