The presidential election happened yesterday and this edition of the Courier went to press before the polls closed. It appears Adam Gray is Ceres' next congressman but we cannot be sure until all mail ballots are counted. We not have to depend on the sometimes incompetent postal system to deliver the mail. I’m convinced that if we had in-person voting with required IDs we would know on Election night who won. In the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s that was the case. But our governor signed a bill declaring that counties cannot certify election results until 30 days after the election – more time to come up with ballots for potential fraudulent ballots. No wonder Americans have lost faith in election integrity.
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Last week I mentioned how Virginia state officials purged ballots from 1,600 noncitizens and the Department of Justice stepped in and a lower court told them no. Well, days after my column, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked Biden’s DOJ which claimed the state’s voter removal process violated a so-called quiet period under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), or a federal law requiring states to halt all “systematic” voter roll maintenance for a 90-day period before a federal election. Of course the justices who wanted to allow votes from noncitizens were three liberals – Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Noncitizens have no right voting in elections and it’s too bad the liberals attempt to thwart the U.S. Constitution.
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I would have no problems voting for a woman president but not that woman. She offered no policies and apparently would keep governing just as Biden has. She didn’t even run for president this time around. Seventeen million American voters wanted Joe Biden through the primary process. Democrats were all in on Biden as a competent candidate until his true state of mind was reflected in his dismal debate performance on June 27. Imagine that. They pressure the guy to back down less than a month later – on July 21 – before the Democratic convention and Harris was eagerly installed with absolutely no convention challenge. Americans have seen her failed campaign with no policies and a lot of word salads and cackling. And yet there are folks like Alvaro Franco of Ceres who wrote a letter to the editor last week chastising us all that we needed to vote for Harris because she was a woman.
A woman president would be fine for me as long as she is someone like Tulsi Gabbard or Kristi Noem. But never for a Kamala Harris, a Gretchen Whitmer or an Elizabeth Warren.
Which brings me to an anonymous comment emailed me in response to Franco’s letter which we published on Oct. 30. The comment was as follows: “I would never begrudge any female that makes it to our highest office. But to install an incompetent person just because of their gender is INSANE on its face. We’ve never had a canine president or a bovine president. I’m going to vote for the mouse, I think it’s about time we had a rodent in the White House. Or maybe we could get the democratic symbol into office. Never mind, we just got rid of an ‘a - -.’ This decision effects REAL Americans with REAL struggles and you’re voting for a gender over policies. This kind of nonsense is why we’re where we’re at right now. I know by the time this is in print the election will be over. But I couldn’t NOT comment on the lack of, well, I’m not going to cast aspersions. Let’s just say wow. I had to read it over and over just to make sure I didn’t miss a nuance of some kind. THINK! DO THE WORK! LISTEN TO ALL POINTS OF VIEW THEN FORM YOUR OWN.
“It’s about time we had a female president?’ Really? Un-bleeping believable.”
It’s good to see I’m not the only one who found Franco’s assertion ridiculous.
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Earlier I referenced the postal system as being incompetent. I say that because it used to be if you mailed an envelope or larger on the east coast it would get to California in three days. That’s hardly the case now.
Let me give you an example of a photo I purchased on eBay last month. According to the tracking number, the envelope left Florence, Alabama on Oct. 22 and was in Memphis later that day. It was in Salt Lake City on Oct. 23, and in Reno and then Sacramento on Oct. 24. I expected delivery the next day. On Oct. 25 it was headed east to San Antonio (why?) where it arrived on Oct. 26 and sat for three more days. It then went to San Francisco on Oct. 30, then to Sacramento for a second time and was finally was delivered to me on Halloween after enduring a nightmare experience. A U.S. tour from Oct. 22 to Oct. 31!
And we trust our previous ballots to this system?
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I was in disbelief when passing by War Printing in downtown Modesto at 600 H Street. There in the window were three Javier Lopez for Mayor of Ceres yard signs. Ceres mayoral campaign signs in Modesto? Interesting but why? A display of the shop’s work or did the mayor request that they do so?
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My daughter is a very hard-working mom. She works full-time and has a gig taking portraits and she’s quite good at it. She recently borrowed my camera as a backup and went into the foothills to shoot senior portraits for a 17-year-old Hughson High School senior girl. The series of photos – still on my SD card and date stamped Sept. 21 – show a young lady with a bright smile, modeling some flirtatious glances and looking confident as she faces graduation.
Little did anyone know that this young woman would be dead 26 days later.
The photos are of Abbegail Stoneham.
Abbegail attended Hughson High School but lived in La Grange. She was headed home in her 2001 Toyota on the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 16. Miles east of Waterford something horrifying happened – she failed to negotiate a curve, perhaps because of speeding or distracted driving, but she ended up hitting a westbound car. Abbegail died from her injuries.
It was a shocking and horrible end to a promising life. But senseless tragedies like this play out across our land day and night.
Abbegail was a Christian and understood that we live in a fallen world. She knew that Jesus died for her sins and promised her eternal life, which by all accounts in the Bible is a glorious life which holds no comparison to his life.
We have a problem as humans: Death and nobody gets out alive in a physical sense. Death claims everyone, rich and poor alike, rock stars and roofers, presidents and pastors, moms and mail carriers, dads and dieticians, teachers and tax attorneys, siblings and friends. It is the antithesis of life. I’ve walked countless cemeteries and see the manifestation that death is the enemy. Nobody wins against it.
But Jesus had some good news about this dire situation. He promised that those who believe in Him and his sacrifice on the cross would not taste death, meaning as we pass from this life we enter a realm of new life that we cannot comprehend with human understanding.
Abbegail knew and understood that. While her parents grieve her great loss, they know she made it to heaven and that is comforting to them.
There’s a lot we will never be able to reconcile about the cruelty of life. We know that really bad things happen to really good people. We are made of corruptible flesh and any small misstep, any small miscalculation, any momentary lapse of judgement, any failure of crucial body parts like heart and lungs or vessles can end our lives in a moment that is least expected.
Put down the phones when driving.
Slow down.
Make each day count.
Appreciate life.
Stay close to God.
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California offers the second-most expensive price of a home in the nation at $436.88 per square foot.
A study, conducted by real estate experts at AgentAdvice, calculated the approximate price per square foot for homes in each state and then ranked each to reveal where offers the worst price for a home.
Hawaii, California and Massachusetts are the top three locations where buying a large house will cost an arm and a leg.
Median house listings in California go as high as $789,000, likely due to California being one of the most desirable locations to purchase a property.
Their press release acknowledges what many of us conservatives already know: California has a lot of untapped land; however, the state has many zoning and land use regulations, making it difficult to construct new property and ultimately impacting the cost of pre-existing homes.
The median size for listings in California is 1,806 square feet, 6% below the national average property size – which is 1,927 square feet.
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In all my years at the Courier I have never seen a year in which there have been so many cancellations of Ceres Planning Commission meetings.
Ordinarily there are two meetings per month, on the first and third Monday of the month. October is the tenth month so there should have been 20 meetings thus far. To date in 2024, the commission has only met seven times, two of them special meetings.
No wonder Bob Kachel and Gary Del Nero are retiring and Cerina Otero and Gary Condit wanted council seats.
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I’ve been at this game for a long time and it’s hardly coincidence that agendas for council meeting become strangely light just before an election. One city manager winked at me decades ago when I brought this up. Think about it: no councilmember wants to make what could end up being a controversial vote days before the election so the idea is to make it very light. On Oct. 28 there was no new old business and no new business, only very limited consent items.
Oh and by the way, the Nov. 11 Ceres City Council meeting has been cancelled.
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It seems that a number of Ceres residents have been slapping up these metal carport, many right up to the sidewalk and some filling them with crap. If I had one next to my house I’d be upset that neighbors violated the city’s zoning laws. But as we know some politicians like to cater to the voters regardless of the impact to the neighborhood.
I drove by a number of these ugly structures and can’t believe they got away with it but they did.
Councilman Daniel Martinez suggested that the council consider seeing “if there’s anything we can do to help these people who came here this evening.” These people being the ones who violated city code.
If Ceres is going to have standards and reverse blight as the council says it wants, they shouldn’t even consider looking at undoing this section. In my opinion, carports do not compliment any neighborhood and they often become publicly visible outdoor storage facility. And many of them cause visibility issues for their neighbors.
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
