There have been far too many police officer funerals in Stanislaus County lately.

This time more human debris illegally here from south of the border causing great pain – this time in Newman.

We don’t have a gun problem in our country. We have a human debris problem and on top of that an illegal immigration problem. Trump was right, of course, that there are lots of people coming here with lots of problems. It’s too bad it’s come down to a government shutdown to do the right thing.

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Jerry Brown says some amazing things when he leaves office and doesn’t have to worry about political fallout.

If you remember, in 1992 before he was re-elected for a second term Brown said he had lied about ever having a plan for California.

In an honest moment before TV cameras the soon-to-be ex-governor said he thinks California Democrats have gone far too left. He said:  “The weakness of the Republican Party has let the Democratic Party, I think, go get further out than I think the majority of people want.”

Brown is not stupid and warned, in so many words, that President Donald Trump’s agenda is closer to what Americans want than that of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the House’s newly elected nonsensical socialist. Brown is paying attention. He saw that despite Trump being blasted by leftists over pulling out of the Paris climate accord, the French people screamed about an unpopular climate-change gas tax that would have raised France’s average price per gallon to nearly $8. Yet California Democrats will continue in their off-the-rails attempt to run climate change policies down our throats at whatever cost to us all at the pumps.

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On the national level, look for new representatives like bug-eyed Ocasio-Cortez and wet-behind-the ears Josh Harder to push for  a “single-payer” health care, “Medicare-for-all” or “Sanders care.” Ocasio-Cortez claims it can all be paid for by ending the waste, fraud and abuse in our defense budget. But it’s an outlandish claim given that the price tag for “Medicare-for-all” is generally estimated to cost $32.6 trillion over 10 years. The U.S. defense budget this year is under $700 billion. As she often does, Ocasio-Cortez speaks socialist nonsense.

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Some people have a difficult time with reality, but such things tend to happen, especially the farther you distance yourself from common sense – and  biblical principles such as Genesis which states that God gave man dominion “over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creep upon the earth.”

So it didn’t surprise me that animal rights activists took up a lot of Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department time when they descended on the RayMar Ranch in rural Oakdale on Sunday, Dec. 16. A Berkeley based group called Direct Action Everywhere was present to demand an investigation of “blatant animal cruelty” at the farm. The frantic group of urbanists – a lot of them looked like young Bernie Sanders voters – erected illegal stop signs to block traffic on Dodds Road and harassed deputies for not wanting to get into a “dialogue” about farm practices. They whipped themselves into an emotional frenzy by some misguided liberal headline grabber named Wayne Hsiung who went on a tirade about cows being abused – actually separated from their mothers and placed in small cages – and how deputies weren’t protecting animals from slaughter. Hsiung even goofily likened the horse-mounted deputies on scene to protect the ranchers from the urban wackos as something out of the “wild, wild west.” Sir, you might get out of Berkeley or Chicago once in a while and understand how agriculture works and feeds the world. We get that your reference to equestrian units was intended to make Stanislaus County appear rurally backwards and unsophisticated but perhaps you’ve never been to Central Park? The group was specifically upset that “babies” (ahem, calves) were kept in cages (I guess they never heard of veal?) One woman even stated that she showed up with a baby bottle and a sweater to rush any of the to the UC Davis vet clinic. She begged to save one life and bragged about sparing the lives of thousands of turkeys from a Utah slaughter house. Another millennial stated that “We got to go home and celebrate the holidays with our families and they never did.” (I didn’t know cows celebrated the holidays). She later called the brainless calves “angels in hutches.” While she cried about “babies” being “ripped away from their mothers” I think her efforts should be spent fighting the real fight – protesting abortion mills where human lives are snuffed out as they are separated from their mothers.

You can’t make up the insanity from the Left. Welcome to off-the-rails liberal California where not even farmers are safe from radical ideologies.

Get a life, folks. A real life.

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Speaking of people who need to get a life, Gaylord Phillips, don’t you have anything better to do than troll the Ceres Courier Facebook and try to demean people like Jeff Denham and myself. Really, Jeff Denham a “morally bankrupt swamp creature in trumpland”?  I should expect that from a former local labor union official who reposts this message: “I think it’s perfectly acceptable to say, ‘Happy holidays,’ ‘Merry Christmas,’ or ‘F--- Trump. It’s the sentiment that counts.”

Dave Carreon is another troll who spends a lot of time commenting.

Gotta love those Democrats.

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California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is concerned with mostly liberal causes, such as global warming, providing taxpayer money for abortion, soaking millions from corporations and fighting a repeal of the unconstitutional Obamacare law. This is an official who is supposed to be enforcing law, not creating law policies. He also interferes when the law is something he opposes, such as enforcing illegal immigration.

If anyone deserves impeachment in this country it is Xavier Becerra and the 17 other liberal attorneys general who thumb their nose at federal law. But the grossly low information voters of California gave this political activist another four years to wreak havoc on the state.

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If the city wants more attendance at the City Council meetings it might want to quit the freeze out in the Community Center. The room where the council meets is routinely at “meat locker” on the AC dial. At the Dec. 10 meeting Lisa Mantarro Moore commented that it was so cold “you could hang meat in here.”

Lee and Shelia Brandt and I sit in the back of the room and share how we shiver through every meeting.

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California is abandoning its June primary in 2020 for a voting day on March 3. The reason is lawmakers want more of a say who will be the next president.

Typically by the time we get to vote in presidential contests the frontrunner has already been established. I get that because in 2016 I wanted to vote Ted Cruz but saw he was a goner as Trump took the lead. And yes, I voted for Trump.

This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com