I’ve lost all respect for the League of Women Voters.
I always trusted the group was straight up and fair, famous for offering debates in a nonpartisan manner.
But the organization showed their leftist bias when they denounced the Department of Justice’s indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
Let’s be real here. While the SPLC once fought the noble cause of giving blacks their due civil rights and fighting the KKK, it’s become a leftist organization that foments racism so it can justify its own existence. It would be like putting arsonists in charge of the fire department.
The League of Women Voters said that the DOJ’s indictment is a “declaration of war on the civil rights movement” and a “malicious attempt to criminalize advocacy and clear the path for absolute power.”
Is that so? According to the respected Heritage Foundation, the SPLC has “turned itself into a left-wing smear factory.”
The days of the KKK and widespread discrimination of persons of color are long over. Are there remain examples of racism against blacks that exist in the hearts of men? Yes, but racism knows no color; it exists against whites, Jews, Latinos and Asians too.
The DOJ indictment charges the SPLC with secretly funding some of the very “hate groups” – including KKK affiliates – that the SPLC tells its donors it is fighting against.
“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” declared Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked. This Department of Justice will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable. No entity is above the law.”
According to the DOJ, between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to individuals who were associated with various violent extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, Unite the Right, National Alliance, National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, National Socialist Party of America (American Nazi Party) and the American Front.
The SPLC has been essentially hiring trouble makers to stoke images of racism which arms that group with “examples” which are used to seek donations to go after those groups. One such individual paid by the SPLC planned the 2017 United the Right protest in Charlottesville, South Carolina where a person was killed and the media used it as a battering ram against candidate Trump. That man received about $270,000 over the course of eight years!
The SPLC even waged war on Moms for Liberty, part of the parental rights movement that’s currently sweeping the nation. They also are for Critical Race Theory.
It is their hate map that has caused them great controversy. Chick-fil-A, the Catholic Church and Turning Point USA have been on their map.
In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins, a black man, went into the Family Research Council offices with a gun and a bag of 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches to smear in the faces of those he was plannihg to shoot in that building and smear a Chick-fil-A sandwich in their faces. This was when the Chick-fil hate thing was going on where the left was saying that Chick-fil-A was funding hate groups. He was stopped when the FBI was questioning him, he said, “Look, I targeted them because Southern Poverty Law Center lists anti-gay groups and I thought I would go and kill everybody at one of these groups on the hate map.” Why was Chick-fil-A a target? Well, it’s owned by Christians who believe same-sex marriage is morally prohibited because of the Bible.
That’s just another example of how the SPLC has gone off the rails.
Another is when in 2024 they added Turning Point USA, a major conservative youth organization, to the Hate Map. Turning Point USA, founded by political activist Charlie Kirk, is a student-based right-of-center organization that claims to have a presence on 3,500 campuses. Why? Because they promoted the biblical concept of maternal responsibility.
Charlie Kirk himself accused the SPLC of “peddling their ‘hate map’ nonsense” to “line their own pockets.” How right he was!
In 2012, following the arrest of five Occupy Wall Street activists after an attempt to set off explosive devices on a bridge in Cleveland, Ohio, a SPLC representative was asked if his group would track both left-wing and right-wing acts of political violence and extremism equally. The response: “They were Anarchists… We’re not really set up to cover the extreme Left.”
So you tell me if SPLC is actually combatting racism or fomenting hate and targeting Christians so they could stay in business.
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Trump hating Democrats running for governor of California would have you think Donald Trump is the reason when you get cancer in your lifetime, for the times you have a car crash or when a plane falls out of the sky. It would be humorous if it wasn’t so pathetic.
No, Donald Trump and his efforts to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons is not the reason California’s gas prices are high. If that’s the case, please tell me why gas prices are like $6.99 but at Fort Mohave, Arizona a short distance away you can buy gas at $4.49 per gallon. At Bullhead City, Arizona it was $4.35 per gallon at Chevron!
If you’re honest you would admit it’s because of Democrat policies set in Sacramento. And yet you (California) keep electing these folks who are screwing you. I’m left trying to figure why you haven’t made the connection yet.
Newsom said recently that he unequivocally said he will not suspend the state’s gas tax. Why would he? If he did the price of gas would drop and he wouldn’t be able to capitalize on his argument that it’s Trump’s war causing the prices being so high. Most of us are not fooled and know what our family members in other states are paying. For example, my father lives in Huntsville, Alabama where he can gas up for $3.46 at Sam’s Club this week. My son, who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, can buy gas for $3.89 per gallon at Shell – the most expensive station there is next to Chevon.
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Last week’s gubernatorial debate showed Californians that what you will get by electing any of the four Democrats is more of Newsom.
As Dan Walters of Calmatters noted “the four Democrats are not inclined to criticize Newsom on one of the truly relevant issues, having the nation’s highest numbers of homeless people.”
And when asked to grade Newsom on homelessness, none offered anything lower than a B, even though the problem is at last as severe as it was when Newsom took office in 2019. The two Republicans, of course, gave him Fs.
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There will be all sorts of ideas for a name if the Ceres Unified School District board decides to drop the use of Cesar Chavez for Ceres’ third junior high school.
Last week a longstanding member of the community told me that the late Sid Long (1936-2019) is deserving of the honor. Long was heavily involved in Ceres community affairs for decades. But he’s a good choice for another reason: as the major force behind the Superior Fruit Ranch not far from the school, he believed in the bracero program that allowed Mexicans to have work visa to work the fields and then returns to their families in Mexico. Since Chavez was a champion of the farm laborer, Long would satisfy that aspect.
Consider too that Sid was elected to the Ceres School Board in 1959 and served for eight years. He also sat on the Ceres Planning Commission and spent 16 years as a director on the Turlock Irrigation District board of trustees. Sid was also a longtime member of the Ceres Lions Club. In 2001 he was honored as “Citizen of the Year” and in 2016 the Ceres Chamber of Commerce recognized Superior Fruit Ranch with its “Legacy Award,” which was accepted by Mr. Long. In 2017 the community honored Sid as the grand marshal of the Ceres Street Faire Parade.
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Well another leftist looney tried to kill the president. This weekend’s shooting at the Washington Hilton was the third serious attempt to thwart democracy by use of violence against Trump in three years.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is real and if you have it, seek professional help for your sake and ours. You don’t have to hate so much that you want to kill. And realize that maybe it’s the coordinated media outlets and the Jimmy Kimmels of the airwaves that are actually responsible for programming you into acts of hatred.
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Speaking of would-be assassins, have you thought it strange that we still know nothing about that loon Thomas Crooks who nearly shot Trump’s head off and killed a Trump supporter? We all know the names of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby who killed him, and the names of Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore who tried killing Ford. We also know a lot about John Hinkley Jr. who shot Reagan in 1981. I find it concerning that the corporate media seems to lack any interest in delving into who this guy was and if he wasn’t a lone wolf.
Why the blackout?
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
