Ya just never know what the hell Florida is going to do next.

The Florida Department of Education announced it has rejected dozens of math textbooks submitted by publishers for schools, saying they “contained prohibited topics” including critical race theory.

And, you know, adding and subtracting.

The fun part is that these are elementary school math books. Are some of the word problems being done with names not found in Shakespeare or the Bible?

Holy cow, wait until they find out that Arabic numerals are being taught, too. Here’s betting DeSantis will demand we start doing doing multiplication tables with Roman numerals.

State Rep. Carlos Smith (D) tweeted Saturday that DeSantis was “hysterically pulling math books outta FL schools claiming they ‘indoctrinate’ kids with CRT.”

• “This isn’t just crazy right-wing pandering— next they’ll spend MILLIONS of tax dollars forcing schools to buy math books from GOP campaign donors,” Smith added.

Oh yeah, check to see how many textbook sellers are donating to DeSantis.

The race for the nominations of the two major parties are moving closer and closer. Normally, when the midterm elections end then the two sides come out swinging at each other. Governors, prominent senators, and cults of personality collide on stage and on the roads of Iowa and New Hampshire. One often wonders why those particular states get such a prominent position, but we can set that down for the moment.

The Democratic side has some intrigue. Joe Biden will be 80 before the campaign for the nomination is over. One can’t help but wonder whether he has the energy to do this again. Obviously, the right would like nothing more than to see him step aside. It opens the door to Kamela Harris and other potentially more progressive candidates.

If we assume norms for a moment (I know, I know) we would assume that past presidents will move on into the sunset (or an eight by ten room with bars) then the Republican side has a handful of challengers that would seem to be ready to run. Most of them are governors, so we should probably take a moment to look at the latest.

The headliner just might be Ron DeSantis from Florida. It’s a populous state and he finds himself in the news often enough. We can go with the free version or the pay wall version. It’s the same basic story. Recent data has them third in current COVID cases. Being behind California and Texas is par for the course. They are bigger states. The fact that they are ahead of New York and Illinois is perhaps more telling.

In all fairness, that was the past. Newer data would seem to indicate that they are not the most egregious offenders in the past month. Great. They still have had more than 70,000 people die from COVID-19. That number could become 80,000 by the time campaign season gets here.

Not to be outdone, Greg Abbott in Texas has been at the helm when nearly 90,000 Texans have died from COVID. He will be one of the other major contenders for the nomination. Of course, Abbott is an equal opportunity to killer. If he doesn’t get you with lax regulations and mind-numbingly stupid belligerence then perhaps he will freeze you to death.

Both DeSantis and Abbott have postured their way into the former guy’s good graces. I’m sure the hope there will be that he will step aside (or step inside) and will tab one of them as the heir apparent. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. In this case, freedom could lead to the loss of more life.

South Dakota governor Kristi Noem should not be forgotten. Her track record is a double edged sword. She set marks for positive COVID cases per capita, but was also part of a response that turned the tide. I’ll just let the charts do the talking.

I’m sure the usual suspects like Lyndsay Graham and Ted Cruz will throw their hat into the ring. Why vote for a senator who may lead thousands of people to their death when you can elect someone that’s actually done it? Let freedom ring all the way to the cemetery.

Last week we kept hearing differing stories about how the Russian flagship Moskva ended up on the ocean floor.  Ukraine says they hit it with two missiles at exactly the right places kinda like Luke Skywalker did to the Death Star. The Russians said there was fire in the engine room and their fire alarm was on the fritz.

Who knows? But, here’s the story I’m going with.

It was Jesus.

Come to find out, a rich Russian oligarch brought a small piece of the cross that Jesus was crucified on. He probably got it on talk radio claiming they only had one of the few remaining samples of this along with the death defying magical money-making sex-attracting water-to-wine lifetime guarantee.

It’s true.  I swear it’s true. Maybe it’s not true where he bought it, but he bought it.

So, this Russian guy buys it and donates it to the fanciest warship in Russia because he figures it’ll be safe there. You know, kinda like the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones. Or maybe not that.

Okay, so they put the piece of the cross on the Moskva just recently.  And the next thing you know … you know.

So here’s how I found out about this. A friend found it on Reddit. Reddit, in case you don’t know has about the same reliability as … well, none. I’m not saying it can’t be  fun place to follow your hobbies and r/coolguides, r/askscience, r/earthporn, r/awesome, r/DiWhy, r/ThatLookedExpensive, r/AskHistorians, r/whatisthisthing, and a hundred other time sponges, but it’s not reliable.

Now, the problem is that the article Reddit notes is written in Russian.

But, through the miracle of modern journalism, if you go to Goggle and get a translation, you get —

A piece of wood a few millimeters in size was purchased by Moscow patrons and transferred to the fleet

SEVASTOPOL, February 26. /TASS/. The Christian relic – a particle of the Lord’s Cross – will be stored on the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet – the Moskva missile cruiser. Archpriest Sergiy Halyuta, Dean of the Sevastopol District of the Russian Orthodox Church, told TASS about this.

He was sick and tired of looking at the cross thing. He was sick and tired of war. He got pissed off and overturned the tables of the moneychangers. It’s ain’t his first rodeo.

Hell, my story is as good as Russia.

There is an episode of “Night Court” where the characters believe that one of their colleagues had died. The hold an impromptu memorial service for him and all of them try really hard to say something nice about him. One by one they all get up and one by one they all fail to produce anything. Luckily for him, they only thought he was dead. He was in the back soaking all of this.

One wonders whether that will be Majorie Taylor Greene someday. In her latest statements I have to wonder if her goal is to sit in back of that court room and watch her colleagues to fail to come up with anything. Apparently, she questioned why anyone would want to join the military. According to her they are just throwing their life away.

It’s a remarkable turn of events that somehow echoes the former president. So, are her comments an extraordinary example of someone trying to curry favor the leader of the abyss. Lemmings will follow each other off the cliff. Salmon will swim upstream only to die in the end. Republicans will echo the words of a sadist until they cease to be what they once were.

It doesn’t take much to remember a time when conservatives were the ones that loved the military. They would spend on them with reckless abandon. They would heap love on them with every opportunity and would accuse the other side of a failure to love them. Whether their love was true or not, they certainly wanted you to believe it was.

In its place is some kind of cultural nihilism. Nothing is sacred. Nothing outside of self is paramount. There is no high honor. We instead focus on invisible sex traffickers while we ignore the sex traffickers sitting right next to them in Congress. These are all empty pursuits in the name of owning the liberals and maintaining power.

Keith Olbermann used to have his “worst person in the world” segment on his old MSNBC show. Even then it seemed that the moniker was temporary. Someone else would hold that honor the next day. I’m not sure anyone can at this point. MTG is stealing good oxygen from the rest of us. It’s high time that she went away never to be heard from again.

Okay, as we say a fond farewell to Louie Gohmert, the FEC joins in the praise by issuing him one last violation of ethics rules.  It appears that Mr. Grubby Fingers took excessive donations from …

And it will come as no shock to you that the House Freedom Fund is every Donald Trump puppet in congress.

Way to go out, Louie!  Violating rules is the monument to your time in the House.

As you know, Louie ran for Texas Attorney General in the Republican primary against an indicted felon whose whole upper staff resigned and called him a crook, Ken Paxton. There were four candidates in the race. Louie came in fifth.

No, no, I just made that up. But, he came in such a distant fourth that it might as well been seventh.  Which goes to show you that Louie isn’t all that popular in Texas as a whole.  Face it, they placed an indicted felon and George P. Bush above him. That’s gotta sting.

Now you’re probably asking yourself, who is going to replace ole Louie? The Devil.

He’s the current county judge in Smith County.

Nathaniel Moran.  I’m not sure how you pronounce his last name but … he’s gonna be a fun one, that guy.

Okay, so here’s the deal. The only thing keeping Georgia on the map is because Florida blows.  Otherwise, Georgia would just float off into the ocean somewhere and be its own little banana republic.

There’s a Republican primary coming up in Georgia that’s become a freak show.  The current governor, Republican Brian Kemp, just allowed constitutional carry. That means if you can pick up a gun, you can carry it around with you. No license needed. No background check. No matter how much you’ve threatened your ex-wife. And, in this primary, Kemp is the moderate.

Keep your eye out for Dr. Kandiss Taylor, who is Sarah Palin with a drawl.  I do not know where she got her doctorate but I deeply suspect it required money and postage.

Her campaign slogan —

She’s got a website and is driving all over Georgia preaching her gospel of how awful the government is, calling for a forensic audit of the 2020 election, and has even said that if we had secure elections that gas prices wouldn’t be so high.

She stresses that she is “working class” and “just like you.”  She’s a school teacher.

“I want to ensure that Georgia stays red, conservative and we protect our morality and put that over money … and that’s the most important thing we’re doing.”

Now when I said that she was driving all over Georgia preaching “Morality Over Money!”, you probably had a vision of a pick up truck or something, right?

Nope.

She’s got a damn fancy ass bus. I guess she sold her morality to rent that sucker and buy gas for it.

Jesus, Guns, and Babies.  Why not children? Why just babies? Hummmm …

One other thing.

“Don’t talk to me about separation of church and state,” she said. “Church and state was written because the state has no business in our church. But we are the church. We are the church, and we run the state.”

She said that Georgia is “sovereign” and “we’re running the state with Jesus Christ first” before adding that other religions don’t get to “silence” Christians.

Honey, she’s Sarah Palin with a drawl.