We're No. 2! We're No. 2!

And I'm not talking about basketball here ...

Hello, hungry people.

Kinda bleary-eyed today since I was up way past my bedtime watching the University of Florida beat the University of Houston for the NCAA men’s basketball championship Monday night.

Go Gators!

But that’s not the only reason we should be deliriously happy down here in Florida.

The real cause for celebration?

A recent study reports that for the first time in a dozen years Florida did not lead the nation in population growth. No, that “honor” goes to Texas, where some 562,941 new residents moved during the study period compared to a mere 467,347 newcomers transplanting themselves to Florida.

My fellow Floridians, it’s time to pop the champagne and do our happy dances! Is this some good news or what?

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Of course, we’re still No. 1 in plenty of categories, such as:

• Most convicted January 6 insurrectionists.

• Highest number of fraud reports and losses.

• Loss amounts from climate disasters.

• Most banned books in public schools.

And we’re surging to the top (or sinking to the bottom, depending on how you look at it) in sex offenders per capita, job security, most dangerous state to live and fatalities per vehicle miles of travel.

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So yes, we’ve got a lot going for us. Especially, if we want to keep our population growth spiraling downward so that we eventually become the fastest shrinking state.

That’s a title currently held by New York, which lost more than 125,000 residents in 2024 and which accounted for the most people to move to Florida.

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I have every confidence that our governor can keep this momentum going. He’s doing everything he can to make things less livable around here.

Waving at you, Ron DeSantis — who recently announced that, in an attempt to make himself relevant and parrot the Cretins-in-Chief, or Elump, as we call them around here — plans to get all DOGE with things and start his very own “Florida State Department of Government Efficiency Task Force.”

Yes, it would have been more efficient to use fewer words.

Gov. DeSantis says that, just like Elump, he plans to use AI in this task. And he says Florida will be much improved after FSDOFGETF gets the dirty work done and ferrets out all the stuff in our state that no longer pleases him like books and science and sexual preferences and state universities and parks that don’t produce income.

Hmm, on second thought, maybe it would have been more accurate to make that name even longer—”Florida State Department of Government Efficiency Task Force Using Computerized Knowledge to Empower Dickheads.”

I thought about being polite and calling them “Dumbasses” instead of Dickheads. But these folks ain’t dumb. They know exactly what they are doing. And they are devious about it.

So … Florida State Department of Government Efficiency Task Force Using Computerized Knowledge to Empower Dickheads.

I’ll let y’all figure out that acronym for yourselves.

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And, on a more uplifting note, let’s celebrate a No. 1 we can truly be proud of: