I’m suspicious about why the state of California recently spent thousands of dollars to buy large ads in local newspapers to remind voters to vote. I don’t recall the Secretary of State’s office buying this kind of advertising for any other election. I suspect this overarching appeal is really a ploy to get Democrats to show up since polls say they aren’t enthused about showing up at all in the recall election.
The California electorate is 46.1 percent Democrat, 24.2 percent Republican and 24 percent with no preference. If all the Democrats showed up to support their party guy, the recall would go down in flames. But the polls indicate the anger toward Newsom is burning through both parties.
Governor Newsom is sweating bullets over the fact that Republicans are highly energized about voting him out of office while Democrats are less enthused. Since polls suggest there’s a 50-50 chance Newsom gets the boot, low Democrat voter turnout will seal his fate. His ambitions to be president would be over – if they aren’t already.
The Secretary of State in California is Dr. Shirley N. Weber, a Democrat appointed by Newsom.
Her predecessor was Democrat Alex Padilla who is now sitting in the U.S. Senate thanks to Newsom. Padilla recently tweeted, “We simply CANNOT afford to sit this one out. Make sure to tell your friends, family and neighbors … VOTE NO by September 12th!!!”
Detect the panic?
Newsom’s only hope is a high voter turnout because that means more Democrats would be out to vote and so far the polls indicate that they are not as motivated as Republicans. We assume that the Secretary of State is concerned that not enough Democrats will be voting by Sept. 14 and therefore why there is a big push to get out the vote. Those of us who have watched the Democrat operatives in action smell a rat in this one.
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We are such a polarized country.
The last three presidential elections showed us that clearly.
The polarity rift runs right down into the center of families with relatives pitted against one another.
It’s not fun to be accosted by your own children because you have retained the old fashioned values that you grew up with.
I relished in demonstrating to show a son that I’m not the racist he hinted I was because I opposed Obama policies and voted for Trump (who the Left dishonestly branded a racist.) I informed him that I’m supporting Larry Elder for governor, not because he is black but because I like his ideas about government. He deflected when I suggested I’m all in favor of a conservative no matter his ethnicity, and suggested that I needed to quit getting my news from Fox. (Whenever I make a good point he always ping-pongs off to some other argument).
Recently my son accosted me for my “extremist” political views. The fact that he feels the values I grew up are “extremist” views just shows how far the newer generations have been indoctrinated by our leftist school teachers and media.
See for yourself if my political views are “extremist” and if theirs is far left from where the country was:
• The government should not be taking our money to pay able-bodied people to be lazy, COVID or no COVID.
• Government must live within its means like we have to.
• Babies have a right to be born, not cut up in an abortion lab.
• A strong national defense is needed because we know what will happen if we don’t.
• Capitalism produces the best in life because profit rewards ingenuity and hard work and the best systems.
• Socialism fosters laziness and unrest.
• Government overregulation can stifle business and drive it elsewhere. See California regress while Texas and Idaho grow.
• Race baiting and most cries of racism today are intended to divide the country because the truth is most Americans and police are not racists.
• Protesting is allowed in our country but not burning buildings and police cars and looting from stores.
• If you take innocent life you must pay for it with your own.
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A woman called up Iowa State Rep. Carter Nordman and left a pathetic voicemail because he wants all school kids to say the Pledge of Allegiance like we all did in school.
If this practice ended I didn’t know about it since I left junior high in 1975.
The caller sounds like a well-off white MSN-watching soccer mom who think BLM is heralding the same cause as the civil rights movement of the 1960s and who didn’t like Trump’s tweets so she voted for a bumbling senile old white guy whose judgment has been called into question with the Afghanistan debacle. I’d even go so far as to say she probably is a school teacher and probably a California Democrat who infest Iowa.
She accused Nordman of encouraging “white nationalism” because of his support for recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in first through third grades in public schools.
“I’m curious, sir, when did we start teaching white nationalism in schools?” she said, “because that’s exactly what the f--- you’re doing, sir, and you have absolutely no right to require something like that.
“Our children aren’t proud to be American. Maybe the white suburban kids out in Adel (Iowa) are proud to be American because their rights are afforded to them every day and they don’t have to fight for them but for the rest of us who are women, the poor, the elderly, the elderly, the minorities, we’re not so f--------g proud. What are we proud of? We’re proud of our racist history? We’re proud of our racist roots? Is that what we’re proud of? We’re proud of the fact that not all citizens in the United States are afforded the same rights and the same privileges as the blonde-haired, blue-eyed ones?”
But that’s not all. She continues her fomenting hatred for the country I love: “That’s a bunch of colonizer bulls**t, Carter. And the fact that you’re f------ perpetuating that is disgusting.
“Everything that you stand for is the same bull---- that the Trump administration stood for, and clearly you and (Governor) Kim Reynolds still have your head so far up his a-- that you can’t f------ tell where one of you ends and the other begins.”
This angry, bitter woman is a product of our horrible education system and the dishonest reporting from national corporate media who read the same talking points from the DNC.
If the country is as horrible as she claims, why do so many try to escape their native lands and sneak across the border?
If I could leave a voicemail for this female caller, I’d tell her: “Please, please leave the country. We really don’t need miserable traitors. There are plenty of freedom-loving Cuban and Afghan refugees that should replace your stake in our real estate.”
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After last week’s column in which I chastised state Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell), for his bill, AB 1475, I have been informed that mugshots of suspects arrested for crimes will still be made available to newspapers. His bill will make it illegal for our law enforcement to release mugshot of suspects on their media sites, said a member of Low’s staff which read my column.
It was the Sheriff’s Department public information officer who suggested the bill prevented them from releasing mugshots to the media.
An official with Low’s office told us: “The bill will not prevent California law enforcement agencies from giving a suspect’s mugshot to media outlets or even responding to a citizen’s Public Records Act (CPRA) request. Rather, the bill simply states that agencies will not be allowed to post mugshots of nonviolent suspects on social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).”
It’s still a crappy piece of legislation that further ties the hands of law enforcement. The public should be informed about arrests no matter what platform.
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Socialist Evan Low’s legislative agenda is one of the reasons people laugh at California.
Last year he decided to abandon – for reasons of COVID but it may have been the heat that he received – his ridiculous bill in AB 2826 which would have forced stores to have gender neutral store departments. The bill would have required larger retail department stores to maintain undivided areas of its sales floor where children’s clothing, or toys regardless of whether a particular item has traditionally been marketed for either girls or for boys. In other words, no pushing dolls on girls and Tonka trucks for boys. That’s a big no-no in Low’s mind.
In abandoning the bill for now, Low said: “The policy behind this bill is not only important in regards to addressing perceived societal norms but also ensuring that prejudice and judgment does not play a prominent role in our children’s lives. I look forward to working on this issue in the future.”
He’s also licking his chops to pass Universal Basic Income, which is paying people who don’t produce a thing or who don’t have skills worth higher pay. Low also wants to make Election Day a holiday because he doesn’t think people have enough free time to vote. No, sir, they don’t vote because they choose to spend time watching TV or TikTok than reading the Voter’s Handbook. Previous attempts to have Election Day as another day off as a paid vacation failed because it would cost the state $11 million. Forget about the costs to merchants who are already getting hammered from other state regulations and taxes.
We need a part-time state Legislature to limit these stupid kinds of bills.
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Liberal are not generally supportive of Israel. Trump was a staunch supporter of our ally and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, effectively quashing the possibility that East Jerusalem would ever belong to a Palestinian state. Trump also moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, a signal of the abandonment of even the pretense of good-faith negotiations with the Palestinians. Israelis are not so fond of Biden or his party.
In California, the Jewish people are upset at the Democrats and the ever-powerful teachers union.
Hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their descendants have urged the Legislature to vote against AB 101, a bill mandating an ethnic studies high school graduation requirement. They are deeply alarmed by AB 101, and the likelihood that it will lead to overtly anti-Semitic lessons making its way into every high school and inciting hatred and hostility towards Jews.
AB 101 would allow local school districts to use any curriculum, including the highly controversial and overtly anti-Semitic first draft of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) which was already rejected by Jewish organizations, Gov. Newsom, the State Board of Education, and California’s Jewish Legislative Caucus.
While the final State Board of Education-approved curriculum was free from anti-Semitic content, the rejected first draft – including its anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist lessons – was enthusiastically supported by the California Teachers Association (CTA) and United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) as well as dozens of ethnic studies departments on California State University and University of California campuses. Those groups have warmly endorsed the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Institute (LESMC), a for-profit organization launched by the original ESMC drafters to market a ‘liberated’ curriculum that incorporates the main elements of the rejected first draft.
Jewish organizations fear that students will be indoctrinated to view Jews as “white” and “racially privileged” which would put an even larger target on the back of every Jewish student.
While Liberated has yet to publish its final curriculum, several webpages under “Preparing to Teach Palestine: A Toolkit” suggest the Liberated curriculum will be even more politicized, divisive and anti-Semitic than before. One webpage smears Israel with false charges of “settler colonialism” and “apartheid” and uses classic anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish wealth and power to vilify Jewish organizations speaking out about antisemitism; another encourages teachers to “create a space within your school” to engage in anti-Zionist activism and to fight the “Zionist backlash,” identified as “white supremacy”; and a third offers “a few resources” that vilify Jewish organizations, promote anti-Zionist groups calling for Israel’s destruction, and provide “skill-building” and “training” on “how to start your own BDS campaigns.”
It’s funny how the media picks and chooses what victims to highlight in the country.
If you’ll remember the media and liberals focused a great deal of attention on attacks on Asians – in my opinion because they were trying to insinuate that Trump started it all by calling the corona virus the China Virus, which it was – while virtually ignoring more than 3,500 anti-Semitic incidents on more than 450 college campuses since 2015.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
