‘[A gun control advocate in Mississippi] said Tuesday that he often reminds his colleagues in other parts of the country that “what they go through don’t even compare to what we have to go through in the South. Because in the South, guns is like having a bottle of water [sic]. Everybody got it. And then it’s a right-to-carry state. It’s a castle doctrine state. It’s constant gun shows every other week in Mississippi somewhere. So guns are just bloody in Mississippi…. Get us all together. You bring in alcohol. Then you bring in all the crazy drugs they got these days, and you got a state where everybody got at least 10 guns. What you asked for? You asked for violence.”’

This guy seems upset that one of this nation’s standard-issue retarded nazis is a way-proud Arkansan who drapes a Razorback flag behind him whenever he films himself talking.

Apparently, this featherweight champ and all round flat earther – I mean all flat flat earther- “defile[s] the very name of ‘Arkansas'” when he shares his knowledge that the mass killings of children in this country are carried out by the deep state to make us think guns are dangerous, that Hitler was sent by God to kill dirty Jews who were going to make everyone gay, that Jesus is King, and that our greatest state by far is Arkansas.

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Well. We’ve followed the benighted state of Arkansas on this blog for years – a standard-issue brainless drunk sports obsessed southern wasteland – and it’s been on a self-defilement tear for decades. It really needs no help from some fascist clodpole, and he won’t have any effect on the state’s ranking cuz it’s already third from the bottom and it’s hard to get lower than that.

And now – ahem! – lemme tell you why yall should reelect me governor.

‘[A vicious national cabal made up of degenerate liberals] sees our progress on education and the economy and they want to stop it. You see, a successful, thriving, growing Mississippi does not work for them, not if it is also a God-fearing, family loving and truth-believing, hard-working conservative Mississippi … They want Mississippi to be the butt of their jokes …‘

Great cast of characters there, and I’m sure she would have won if she’d added John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, and Sidney Powell. Where were her campaign advisors?

“We were looking for things that were new and exciting,” [one parent] said. “You can only buy so much cookie dough, cheesecake and wrapping paper. We were looking to be unique in our offerings the best we could.”

…* possession of loaded  DPMS Panther Arms model AR-15 Rifle …

* possession of massive amounts of drugs…

* possession with intent to deliver.

Ah, but he’s costing them so much more than that.

Lawyers anticipating the severance deal already have stars in their eyes.

… what looks to me like a stealth effort on the part of high-ranking administrators there to turn ASU into their own personal for-profit online domain. Here’s the background on the quite astounding story of ASU’s former president – now a professor there as well as (until recently) the president and chairman of an online for-profit educational outfit – who, along with ASU’s interim chancellor, apparently tried to power through a takeover of the faculty for the business.

The faculty have been a bit slow to catch on, but have now passed a “resolution calling for a moratorium on any further involvement with Academic Partnerships until the partnership [can] be investigated…”

You can understand the ex-president’s eagerness, though. Online for-profit is SOOO much better than face-to-face non-profit, he just couldn’t wait to offer its blessings to the youngfolk.

Curious sort of savior. Because she stole over a million dollars from a big federal grant, the government went ahead and killed it. The most vulnerable Native Americans in Arkansas – drug addicts and suicidal depressives and impoverished widows – will now just have to do the best they can on their own.

So fuck her and her tears and her I dunno and her I took all the money because I’m Jesus. She’s going to jail for four years (no parole) and has to pay it all back.

And this U Arkansas poli sci prof has a lot of them – or so it’s claimed. It’s claimed she simply made up a whole interview with an Iranian political activist (the person making the claim is, uh, the political activist); it’s claimed she engaged in research fraud in her dissertation (Cambridge, which published it, is investigating). As head of a mideast studies unit on campus, she called for the destruction of terrorist state Israel, which the university seems to have felt fell a bit short of the sort of official statement they had in mind when they appointed her.

… and even though his name still emblazons the Arkansas State Medical Board website (he appears twice!), his apparent practice of billing the government – always at the severest level of illness – for patients he’s reportedly never seen has attracted the attention of the Attorney General.

Maybe update the web page? Maybe not so cool that the just-resigned CHAIR of your state’s medical regulator has all this time possibly been a bigtime Medicaid fraudster?

Arkansas Proud!

A parochial school … baptized 100 students without permission from parents—some of whom were left angry by the surprise. “My daughter calls me from the school and says, ‘Mama, can you bring me some dry clothes? I got baptized today,’” the parent of an 11-year-old told the Fayetteville Observer. “I said, ‘WHAT?’” At least three parents complained to the Northwood Temple Academy principal, who said a handful of students were scheduled to receive the sacrament and the others “just began to respond to the presence of the Lord.” 

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The Honey, I Baptized the Kids! problem is more widespread than you might think.

Unbelievable.

Wyoming, UD comes to think, is our most peculiar state. In 2013, it was our fifth richest. It’s bilious with billionaires, but also boasts plenty of brick and mortar industry.

It’s got guns up the wazoo: “Wyoming has, by far, the highest number of guns per [shot off] capita. Of Wyoming’s 581,075 people, there are 132,806 registered guns.”

Shot off? What’s UD mean?

Waaal, you know… all them guns….

In 2020, 181 Wyomingites killed themselves. That’s a rate of 31 deaths per 100,000 residents, up from 29.4 in 2019, the highest suicide rate in the nation. The state’s suicide rate has remained high for years…

Round these parts, people say Let a smile be your umbrella. In Wyoming, they say Let a Colt be your bolt.

Or, as they say at the NRA: Guns don’t kill people; people with guns kill themselves.

And here’s another peculiar Wyoming statistic: It’s almost smack-dab at the bottom of states with the lowest covid vaccination rates. Only some of our poorest states (Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi) rank lower than wealthy Wyoming. (“Wyoming is currently ranked 4^th in the United States for its economic outlook.”) Ain’t dat something? I mean, when you put it all together: A gorgeous, well-off state with everything to live for, whose most noteworthy output is suicidal gun-hoarders who don’t give a shit about their health or yours. Paging Cormac McCarthy.

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And hey maybe UD finds all of this arresting because maybe she’s looking at the future. Where America’s cutting-edge, paranoid, venture capitalists go, there go I. There go all of us. To quote the title of that funny book about grammar: Eats, shoots, and leaves.

It’s not – as Samuel Johnson claimed – patriotism. Months ago we got past whatever muck-sweat heavery the president thought might convey love of country to his rallies. We’re now into the final scenes (which, faithful UD readers know, I believe have a small but real chance of featuring executive self-slaughter), and these begin with institutional nihilism: All of our elections are rigged, including the one I won last time. Every operating part of America is bullshit: The law, the constitution, the FBI, the CIA: It’s all NOTHING. NOTHING! Nothing but global communist interstellar Soros machinations against me and you and there’s NOTHING we can do. None of it means anything. It’s pure murderous malignancy.

Here, Arkansas is the cutting edge. Got there a long time before everyone else.

So now the Republican party is worried that Republican voters will sit out the Georgia run-offs because why not? Why the hell not? Nothing matters. Nothing means anything. It’s all rigged. I don’t want to be a sucker.

Listen to Mitch McConnell lead his fellow Republican senators in singing the national anthem here.

So that’s the institutional final scene. We’re gonna get Trump’s personal nihilistic endgame pretty soon. Hold onto your hat.