I saw a meme the other day posted by my friend, Gail Hyatt of Ceres that was pretty good. It read: "I think since all these children want guns taken away we should take all video games with guns and violence in them away as well."

Food for thought if anything else.

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AB 2943 has generated a lot of controversy in Sacramento but what's new? Most actions taken by the Democrat-led state Legislature leave the normal Californians' head shaking.

AB 2943 is a huge assault on free speech and our freedoms and very dangerous.

If passed - on April 19 it passed the Assembly by a vote of 50 to 18 - would outlaw helping anyone with unwanted same-sex desires or gender confusion. As if being gay is sacred and nobody is allowed to help out, if asked.

Adam Gray did not vote on AB 2943.

As a result, it could be a violation if a pastor encourages a congregant to visit the church book store to purchase books that help people address sexual issues, perhaps including the Bible itself, which teaches about the importance of sexual purity within the confines of marriage between a man and woman."

Who authored this nutty bill? Evan Low, an openly gay Democrat from San Jose.

Those of us with common sense know that Democrats like Beavis love outlawing things they don't like and this is no exception. I bet someday there will be a fat Democrat lawmaker who wants to make it illegal for anybody to call somebody fat. Don't like the sound of gum chomping? Hey, let's outlaw it! Don't like how Mormons go around riding bicycles and witnessing to others? Make it a crime! Don't like people saying ‘God bless you' because it makes athiests feel bad, make it against the law too. I'm not surprised that the state doesn't tell us how we can cut chicken in our own kitchens because of all the people who cut themselves preparing dinner.

This state is governed by a bunch of tyrants. It's little wonder why people want to either leave California or see it diced up into smaller states to allow the average Californian to take control for Beavis and Buthead.

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I didn't have a clue you could find anyone crazier than state Attorney General Xavier Becerra. But I've discovered someone nuttier than him: Shankar Singam, one of the proponents leading the Calexit effort to secede California from the United States.

California's Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced last week that a ballot proposal had been cleared for Calexit. Now if 365,880 low-education voters sign the petition to place the matter on the 2020 ballot, California could be moving toward the next civil war. Radical lefties want California to be its own country.

Singam was interviewed by Tucker Carlson on Fox TV News and the guy seemed like an anarchist on drugs. Singam admitted he wants to run the middle class out of California for other states.

Democrats are doing a great job of running California in the ground without being autonomous from federal governance. Singam applauds "the middle class leaving the state" (because he wants the remaining poor, the ones who by design are forced to feed out of the government oney trough, to vote Democrat). He told Tucker: "We need these spots opened up for the new wave of immigrants to come up." I.E., those who dependent on handouts and who will support Xavier Becerra and Jerry Brown types. This is typical class warfare.

I predict none of this will happen. The U.S. Constitution does not allow a state to secede from the union so one would have to amend the constitution, which is VERY HARD to do. Amending the Constitution requires approval of the amendment by either 1) two-thirds of each branch of Congress; or 2) two-thirds of states at a specially-formed constitutional convention, with the amendment then being ratified by three-quarters of the states.

I am considering supporting the Yes California effort to break the state into three parts. Under the plan, Northern California would consist of the counties from Merced northward and unfortunately include San Francisco County. The new Southern California would consist of Fresno, Imperial, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mono, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Tulare counties. The third state would consist of the coastal regions of Los Angeles, Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

There is also another proposal known as "New California," that was introduced on Jan. 15, to carve out rural counties and make them into individual states. The leaders of that movement say - and I agree - that California is "ungovernable." The plan is exactly what I envisioned years ago - making a Coastal California where all the liberals exist and creating our own inland state.

Robert Paul Preston and Tom Reed are proponents of New California. But they also ran the failed 2016 attempt to split California into six states.

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It's kind of funny watching political types jockey around for new jobs because of term limits. Tom Berryhill, 64, running for county supervisor in Modesto seems like an act of desperation. Tom is a Ceres native, of course, comes from the esteemed Berryhill family and graduated Ceres High School. He served in the state Assembly from 2006 to 2010 and served out the maximum time in the 8th District of the California State Senate. When in 2010 he ran for the 14th state Senate District and moved to Oakdale to qualify, Berryhill came under fire as a carpetbagger (candidates who only change addresses to live in the district they are seeking so they qualify should they win). He was even sued by candidate Heidi Fuller who said he didn't move into the 14th District soon enough. It now seems like a step down to drop from state legislator to county hopeful. He's running in District 4 and facing Frank Damrell and Janice Keating. We'll see how the voters there feel.

We see that same jockeying in position with local career office aides who manage to keep employed for decades despite the turnover in elected officials and their differing party affiliations. I suppose the public sector has always offered all the good pay and cushy benefits versus many jobs in the private sector.

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I had no idea what the response would be to our story on the Central Valley High walkout. Posts on our Facebook page were overwhelmingly anti-walkout.

Cheryle Lanzetti Monahan wrote: "They don't know what they want because they're puppets and they're followers. With this pouty {stomp your feet, look at me, throw your hands in the air, walk out} behavior, these children will never become leaders. They're just picking up the crumbs that someone else dropped and saying that they did the cleaning. We already have extremely strict gun laws. You will never keep guns from criminals, only the law abiding citizens. If these children bothered to research instead of skipping class they'd know that. ... ~Stay In School."

I agree.

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For nine minutes a frazzled Ceres woman shared at last week's City Council meeting about being at her wit's end about a meth-head dirt-bag in her apartment complex on Whitmore Avenue. Apparently this guy has been making false reports to Ceres police about her. The whole conversation ended when she was referred to the Police Chief who had no prior contact from her. Despite a citizen's arrest she is still being harassed by these people. Police Chief Brent Smith said he hadn't heard of the problem but suggested "I think there's some things we can do."

Where are the good landlords?

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Why does it seem that where you land on the side of respecting U.S. law depends on your ethnicity? I hope I'm not the only to notice that not all but most Hispanics support sanctuary state policies that fly in the face of American immigration law. If you're an American citizen (new or old) and have a true allegiance to America, you should respect that tradition and understand that those laws trump your ethnic biases. Having the state of California defy U.S. authority in order to make friends of illegals with the ulterior motives of ushering them into citizenship so they will vote Democratic only cheapens American citizenship, mocks the law and it's downright self-serving and reprehensible.

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The Ceres City Council resists attempts to strip away local control by the state and SB 827 is a prime example. The bill died in committee and would have basically allowed anyone to build up to eight-story apartment complexes near transportation hubs, like the ACE or Bart train stations. So if the neighbors protest, tough, the cities would have been stripped from blocking such projects. Imagine the Ceres City Council having no say in whether or not an eight-story apartment complex can go in near the future downtown Ceres ACE rail station.

I researched and found out the bill was authored by San Francisco Democrat Scott Wiener whose official Senate home webpage shows him with two drag queens, one of which is a rather feminine looking male with a black T-shirt reading, "STUD San Francisco." These are the people writing your laws, folks. And you don't think it's time for the state to split?

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