God, Riverside County is so weird. It's the kind of place where Bachelorette contestants turn up dead in the desert and reclusive old women hoard $2 million moon rocks from the feds. And the kind of place where crazy Republican politicians think they're living in the 1800s, and they can just like, declare war on the union.

Yup. It just happened. County Supervisor Jeff Stone announced yesterday that he prefers Riverside County, and all its neighboring hicktowns, be left to their own weird devices. Essentially, he wants SoCal to secede from NorCal and rename itself “State of Southern California.” (Original.)

Here are the counties who can be in his little conservative club: Riverside, Imperial, San Diego, San Bernardino, Kings, Kern, Tulare, Inyo, Madera, Mariposa and Mono.

So… we level-headed folk in Los Angeles and Orange County would basically be an island stranded in a sea of self-governing minutemen and meth heads. Great. (And we wouldn't even have any lesbians around to keep us sane.)

Here's Stone's reasoning — cough, publicity stunt — via the Los Angeles Times:

The split, Stone said Thursday, would allow officials in the new state to concentrate on securing borders, balancing budgets, improving schools and creating a vibrant economy.

“Our taxes are too high, our schools don't educate our children well enough, unions and other special interests have more clout in the Legislature than the general public,” Stone said in a statement. “It has to change.”

Translation: We want to kill/enslave all the border-hoppers and funnel the welfare budget into our private-jet fund, and not get any shit from those liberal homogays in Sacramento.

Everyone's freaking out like this is some batshit idea out of left field, but 1) he's obviously just doing it for attention, please don't give it to him; and 2) come on, guys! History! SoCal has always wanted to secede from NorCal — and came this close during the Civil War. Only that time, L.A. was at the front of the pitchfork mob, and we were going to name ourselves Colorado.

So anyway. In light of Stone's hilarious new proposal, anyone down to secede from Riverside?

[@simone_electra/swilson@laweekly.com]

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