Look, I certainly don't expect everyone to agree with my opinions. But if you disagree, put in the effort to debate rather than feebly default to name calling. If you have an opinion, state your case why, not twist things and make issues personal.

Crystal McCoy, for example, didn't like what I had to say in applauding the Ceres City Council for not wanting to do the job that parents are entrusted with when it comes to deciding what they drink, for crying out loud, at a restaurant. My comments were in keeping with my ideology that people can and should control their own kids and not let the government dictate, among other things, if they will drink soft drinks or not. It's about less government and letting us control our own lives.

But Crystal didn't like that one bit. She commented on the Courier Facbook page: "Can't you do anything more than attack Ceres residents, Jeff ? You are just a bully with a platform. Stop giving us your personal opinions and report the facts. You are mean, rude and completely one sided."

By "attacking" is she suggesting that my opposition is an "attack" on the 600 something signatures on a petition? Mark Dice is living proof that you can get people to sign petitions for ludicruous things, such as mandatory euthanasia for senior citizens under Obamacare, to imprison all registered gun owners, to increase inflation by 100 percent to cause hyperinflation. (Check out his videos on YouTube if you don't believe me.)

So now it's really "mean and rude" to suggest that people keep their God-given rights as parents! You're now a "bully" if you want families to retain control rather than hand it over to the nanny state.

Most of those commenting on the story agreed with me, and the Ceres City Council.

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I find myself amused at some of the postings on the Keyes City News Facebook page. It's akin to dropping in on the party line - if anyone remembers those.

Judging by all the loose or lost dog posts, I'd say there is a problem in Keyes with people unable to keep their dogs from wandering. More recently a loose German shepherd ripped a poodle loose from a girl's arms.

One lady said it was the same dog which attacked her "chiuwawa." (I think she meant Chihuahua but the way people spell things amazes me).

Jeff Greener was advertising the new tri-tip steaks that came into State Food Market.

The other day some lady posted about the circles being burned into an intersection with someone commenting that if the kids are bored they can pick up the trash in the alleyways.

Another post asked what happened on or near 7th Street when someone answered "Some idiot did some burn-outs in front of the school."

Apparently there is some kid who has money to replace tires often.

Melanie Garber-Santiago reported seeing "on Good day Sacramento that there was a hit & run on Cora & Lucinda. Anyone know what happened? Betting someone ran the stop sign. I've almost been hit a few times by people running stop signs around town."

Speaking of Keyes, there will be a Christmas Parade at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 16. All are invited to come out and watch.

Nighttime Christmas parades are always special. Turlock has one. It's been a tradition of mine to check out the annual Sonora Christmas Parade. It is always held the day after Thanksgiving down Washington Street where I can usually bump into a Ceres person. This past month I bumped into Traci Farris, the city of Ceres Recreation Supervisor.

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Has Black Lives Matter (BLM) lost its collective mind?

Black Lives Matter is calling for holiday shoppers to only spend money at black-owned businesses and "resist white capitalism." Talk about racism.

Melina Abdullah, a leader of Black Lives Matter and a professor at California State University, Los Angeles, justifies the action of shunning non-black businesses by saying, "We have to not only disrupt the systems of policing that literally kill our people, but we have to disrupt the white supremacist, capitalistic, patriarchal, heteronormative system that is really the root cause of these police killings."

And I thought 99.999 percent of all police killings were due to criminal activity or stupid behavior, not the so-called heteronormative system that allowed people like Abdullah to be procreated. Silly me.

There's too much in that to unpackage. Suffice to say she is a prime example of the unhinged and delusional left wing radicals. And note that she is a teacher. Wonderful, so she's indoctrinating others to this anti-white racist ideology crap.

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Do you ever notice how the media and society tends to obsess about different topics for a while? There was the Tylenol scare in the early 1980s. There was the clown scare of recent. Now we're in the sexual harassment cycle. I have always liked Garrison Keillor's and his homespun program "Prairie Home Companion" but disliked his personal politics. The masterful storyteller was fired last week for apparently touching a woman's bare back.

Thanks to the misconduct of others, we have been entering a sad era in which physical touch - even the innocent kind - is forbidden. Nueces County, Texas Sheriff Jim Kaelin - who apparently is a hugger - posted a message on his Facebook page saying no more hugs. "...my hugging days (outside family and or close friends) are over. Sad, but you just don't know when this hug might come back and bite you. The workplace, for one, can become hostile if an employee ‘feels' threatened by your hugs...SO IT'S OVER. In the future I will offer a hand shake, or knuckle bump, but NO MORE HUGS."

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Was Colin Kaepernick paying attention to history studies when he was attending Pittman High School or was it just on girls and football? Did you hear that he came out with his own Bill of Rights which happens to be the 10 so-called "rights" designed by the Black Panthers? The "rights" he is espousing are:

1) You have the right to be free.

2) You have the right to be healthy.

3) You have the right to be brilliant.

4) You have the right to be safe.

5) You have the right to be loved.

6) You have the right to be courageous.

7) You have the right to be alive.

8) You have the right to be trusted.

9) You have the right to be educated.

10) You have the right to know your rights.

Those are things we hope to get out of life but honestly most of them are not rights at all.

The right to be brilliant? A right? What about the ones who chose to be dullards? A right?

A right to be courageous? Really, a right? What about for cowards?

The right to be trusted? Really? What if you're dishonest as all get-out?

The right to be educated? Well, Colin isn't exactly the model for good education in America. And he's now teaching these as real rights? No wonder our young people are pushing for things like free immigration, free college and socialist America.

* * * * *

The stage is being set for one bloody Congressional election next year with the Democrats pontificating about Denham's support of the tax reform bill. Democrat TJ Cox writes that he "couldn't get to sleep last Saturday night. I could hear the high-fives from Wall Street all the way here in California as the GOP passed their tax-scam. The uber-wealthy were celebrating the investment of a lifetime. A billion dollars spent to install a narcissistic nihilist as president is about to give them a trillion and a half dollar return. That's a 150,000% return. But where they win, we lose. We all lose. But it won't be for long. Our largest newspaper, The Modesto Bee, got it right with their headline today, ‘Hold those who voted for the tax plan accountable in 2018.'"

Beware of the falsehoods. A Tax Policy Center analysis of the Senate bill reveals that three-quarters of all families would get a tax cut. Just 12 percent would see a tax increase - and they are concentrated among the rich. The average middle-income family would receive a tax cut of approximately $850 per year through 2025. At that point, Congress would have to vote to extend most of the family tax cuts. This vote would probably occur as a formality. Even in the worst-case scenario, where the cuts fully expire, the typical middle-income family would receive a cumulative $7,000 tax cut in the early years, followed by a (roughly) $100 annual tax increase later. How do critics portray this as a middle-class tax hike? By ignoring the $7,000 tax cut in the early years (assuming a full expiration after 2025), and then implying that the later tax hike is much larger. That is flat-out dishonest.

Even a proportional tax cut will save wealthier families more money. In 2013, the typical family in the top one percent paid $420,000 in federal income taxes. The top 20 percent averaged $47,000, and the typical middle-income family paid $2,000. The bottom 40 percent collectively paid zero income tax! It is impossible to give the largest income tax cuts to those who already pay no income tax! That said, the Senate bill would make the tax code even more progressive. The bottom 80 percent of families currently pay 33 percent of all combined federal taxes, yet would get 37 percent of the tax cuts. By contrast, the top 1 percent currently pays 27 percent of all federal taxes but would get just 18 percent of the tax cuts. The result would be wealthy families paying a larger portion of the federal tax burden.
Be informed against BS.

Do you have any feedback about this column? Let Jeff know by emailing him at jeffb@cerescourier.com. He will read it, promise.