Of course they won’t. But here’s what said wackaloon and likely Texas Board of Education member, Mary Lou Bruner, believes:

Her statements were introduced by board member Lawrence Allen (D): “You believe … people from the Middle East are buying, using their dollars, to persuade textbook publishers to put more —”

“I think the Middle Easterners are buying the textbooks!” Bruner said, wide-eyed. “They’re buying everything else here.”

“So, they’re buying the, the morality of the —”

“I think they’re using their influence to get what they want in the textbooks,” Bruner nodded.

But that was in 2010. Maybe she has changed since then? Ha! I make the funny!

In Facebook posts originally reported by the Texas Freedom Network, a nonpartisan watchdog group monitoring the far right, Bruner shared her views on a number of subjects.

On climate change, she wrote last June: “Climate change has nothing to do with weather or climate; it is all about system change from capitalism (free enterprise) to Socialism-Communism. The Climate Change HOAX was Karl Marx’s idea.”

On the Civil War, she wrote in 2014: “Slavery is not the Reason for the Civil War. by [sic] Mary Lou Bruner…. Historians waited until all of the people who were alive during the Civil War and the Restoration were dead of old age. THEN HISTORIANS WROTE THE HISTORY BOOKS TO TELL THE STORY THE WAY THEY WANTED IT TOLD.”

On the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, she wrote last November: “Many people believe the Democrat Party had JFK killed because the socialists and Communists in the party did not want a conservative president.”

As recently as last October, Bruner declared in a post that President Obama used to be a gay prostitute:

Obama has a soft spot for homosexuals because of the years he spent as a male prostitute in his twenties. That is how he paid for his drugs…Since he supports gay marriage, he should be proud of his background as a homosexual/bisexual. He is against everything else Christians stand for, he might as well be for infidelity.

Obama was a male prostitute? How disturbing.

This isn’t the typical “I think evoultion isn’t real” or “climate change is a hoax.” This is not someone who is being conned by Fox News. Nor is she just an asshole for whom racism and bigotry are organizing principles in understanding the world.

This, as incomprehensible as it may seem, is worse. These are the spittle-flecked rantings of a madwoman. There is no other way to describe this than lunacy. If someone you knew started talking like this, you would worry about her mental health.

Keep in mind that she is the odds-on favorite to win a state-wide election. And Texas matters for school textbooks: it’s a very large market, so it can set a de facto standard for textbooks. Yet nothing seems to have changed from two years ago when it comes to the reformers:

Will Michelle Rhee or anyone from Students First decry the teaching of outright falsehoods? Will the leaders of the Common Core, such as David Coleman, make the obvious point that this crap doesn’t belong in a school textbook? What’s the point of having a Common Core if it’s utterly ridiculous? Will Education Secretary Arne Duncan say anything?

Of course they won’t. They have never decried creationism, climate change denialism or any other rightwing hooey. It also explains the support for charter schools: it’s easier in charter schools to use public funds to indoctrinate children with less oversight (by the way, that link discusses Texas. Go figure).

Education reformers have an agenda, but it’s pretty clear the welfare of children isn’t at the top of the list.

We really need to start winning back local and state governments. This is insanity.