Fresno County Libraries Celebrate Men & Democrats During Women's History Month

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This isn't too particularly newsy, but gosh, it's funny, and
I think it highlights certain problems that are happening in
our federal politics, that are happening right here, right here
in good old Fresno County, of you have within the
federal government this problem of the swamp, as Trump sort

(00:22):
coined the term, the idea that basically there's this permanent
class of left wing federal government employees, sort of the
permanent employees of the federal government who have job protections
of dubious constitutionality, I would say, who all work for

(00:42):
the executive branch, but for some reason can't readily be
fired by the person who the only person who has
executive power in our constitution, which is the president. For
some reason, you have this permanent class of career federal
employees who somehow aren't subject to being fired by the president.

(01:05):
And presidents come and go, but these left wing employees stay,
and for some reason, we think that somehow it's a
legitimate quote check on the power of the president to
have federal employees opposing the president's will in spite of
the fact that the president is their boss and that

(01:26):
they're only exercising the president's federal authority. So it's like
the argument from the left is that, basically, no, it
does not matter if the American electorate picks via the
Electoral College a Republican to be president. We have to

(01:48):
have a permanent liberal federal workforce to stemy and slow
down the president's job. The president's work. We have to
allow them to stay and the president can't fire them,
and the president has to fund them, and blah blah
blah blah blah. All right, now, it seems like we

(02:10):
have something very similar to that right down to the
local level in Fresno County government. Fresno County has and
has had for a very long time, a majority of
Republicans on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors three to two.

(02:35):
Nathan Magzig, Gary Brettefeld, Buddy Mendez, all Republicans. There are
only there are only two Democrats on the President County
Board of Supervisors. You've got Luis Chavez, You've got Brian Pacheco.

(02:56):
All right, So it's three to two, and it's been
three to two with different personnel coming in and going out.
It's been a three to two split on the County
Board of Supervisors forever. Okay, for a very very long time,
we've had a three to two split, whether that was
with Steve Brandau, whether that was with whoever. Okay, we've

(03:20):
had personnel changing, people come and go, but we've had
a Republican majority on the President County Board of Supervisors
for a really long time, and yet county government employees
feel empowered to do really liberal, really left wing stuff,

(03:42):
particularly with it and I think this is this was
on full display throughout COVID when county health officials were
just as left wing as anybody else. But since COVID, really,
I think the most significant touch point that where we've
seen seen this has been with our library system. Okay,

(04:05):
where Steve Brandaw sort of started this revolt, well, he
didn't start it. He responded to constituents like me who
were really upset about the use of really aggressively sexualized
content within the children's section of libraries, and he tried

(04:25):
to put together this citizen's review board to review the
content of books in President County libraries, and the state
government basically passed a law saying no, you can't do that,
Steve brand Out. So as a result, it never got
off the ground, and all of the librarians within the

(04:47):
President County system are furious over this, furious, furious at
the idea that their expertise was being challenged, their book
curation expertise was being challenged, their alleged expertise, which I
have no idea where they thought they had this particular expertise,

(05:07):
or that it was the exclusive domain of librarians where
they got their expertise on childhood social sexual development, on
childhood sex education, on the ethical questions, the profoundly ethical
questions about how to educate talk to children about these

(05:30):
very foundational ethical issues surrounding sex, reproduction, et cetera. And
just the fury that no, we have to have basically
unchecked left wing slop within the children's section of libraries,
and anyone who challenges it is a monster, and that

(05:53):
you're interfering with the expert We have to trust our
experts in the library system, as if the librarians are
sort of this special unelected branch of government that we
have to support with our taxpayer dollars, but are in
some way just not accountable to the taxpayers, not accountable

(06:16):
to the voters. Because let's again remember the fundamental structure
of Fresno County libraries Okay, Fresno County libraries are creatures
of county government. County government is overseen by the elected
county Board of Supervisors. They're elected by the people of

(06:37):
Presnoe County. We believe that within America, we view political
authority as coming from the voters. Okay, it's a kind
of self government. So it's the idea that no, for
somehow county employees, whether they're county health officials during COVID,

(07:02):
whether they're county librarians, their expertise, they're technocratic expertise, whatever
alleged expertise they have, all of a sudden that librarians
have over the field of childhood social sexual development, which
I think are not necessarily transferable skills. I don't think
the librarians actually have any particular insight into those things.

(07:26):
Over and above, say me, as a dad and a lawyer, okay,
or just a voter. I don't think that their opinions
on the topic are any more better or more valid
than mine. The idea is, basically they should be insulated
from criticism, critique, even insulated by critique from their boss,

(07:47):
the county Board of Supervisors. That was the wildest thing
I heard people saying, what business to the county board
of Supervisors have butting into the affairs of the library.
What business they're in charge of the library? It's a
county government service. They're the board of supervisors. They supervise,

(08:08):
that's the thing they supervise. Are county services like the library? Wrong,
the library. I'm going nuts on the radio, all right.
So I thought the whole argument was so ridiculous it
violated like every democratic principle according to which American government
functions at the local level in this country. To act

(08:32):
as if it was like this wildly illegitimate thing for
Steve Brandow as a county supervisor, how dare you supervise
services provided by the county? How dare you ask that
county employees be responsive to you their boss? Which leads

(08:57):
me to something my wife found this is this might
be a real feather in the cap for one of
the great shadow producers of the John Girardi Show, my
wife Holly. So Holly and I have on our phone.
We are library card holders and frequent users of the library.

(09:19):
So there's this app you can get on your phone
called Libby Libby and Libby connects you with you can
use it in various parts of the country and various
local library systems sort of hook in with the Libby app,
and basically you can use the Libby app to along
with your library card number, to download audio books and

(09:48):
ebooks to like your kindle or something, to borrow books
in digital form for free as part of your library
card service. So Holly and I have use the Libby
app for downloading audiobooks and ebooks that you know, Holly
reads on our kindle or I read on my kindle.

(10:09):
And there's this sort of feature on the Libby app
right now, because it's allegedly right now it's Women's History Month.
Women's History Month. Congratulation gals, you get one month, and
so I'm in. I'm in it. We're logged in through
the Fresno County Public Library sort of portal thing within Libby.

(10:31):
We're logged in as Fresnoe County Public Library, and it
has listed on here over four hundred and twenty titles
chosen by our librarians. Now, I'm not sure whose librarians
they are. In fairness, I'm not sure whose librarians they are.
I'm not sure if this is Presno Counties librarians or

(10:52):
just some other librarians that Libby has access to. I
think it might be Fresne County librarians, but I'm not
a not one hundred percent sure, So in fairness, maybe
this is now. I certainly don't get the sense that
the Presdent County librarians would mind any of these choices,
as evidenced by what you'll see below, what you'll see

(11:13):
later on. Hear about later on in this segment. So
the first six of these over four hundred and twenty
titles that are highlighted on the front page of Libby
are becoming by Michelle Obama, the Light we carry by
Michelle Obama, Something Lost, Something Gained by Hillary Clinton. So

(11:43):
that's three of the six books that are highlighted on
the very front page. I don't know what the other
three books are. They don't seem to be by democrats.
But Holly then scrolled through. We were sitting on the
couch the other night and we're scrolling through on her phone.
All of these books within this list approved by your librarians.

(12:04):
Dozens and dozens and dozens of books either by or
about elected partisan democrats and or Democrat appointees to the
Supreme Court. Dozens, so many books about Ruth Bader Ginsburg,

(12:34):
so many books about Hillary, so many books by Michelle Obama,
Gretchen Whitmer was in there. Just book after book after
book after book after book by elected partisan democrats, glowing
biographies and not like The Nightmare of Hillary, an in
depth examination of the monster. No, not any books like

(12:57):
that about Hillary. It's all like glowing about you know,
Saint Hillary Rodham Clinton. In this list of over four
hundred books, Holly found two examples, only two books that

(13:20):
were positive books about Republicans. One about Condealiza Rice, who
was Secretary of State twenty years ago, and another book
about Nikki Haley. End of list of Republicans. You know,

(13:45):
I mean Christy Nomes got a book. There are plenty
of Republican women out there who have or have written books.
Two out of four hundred whatever they've got, at least,
I can't remember exactly how many. I think it was
around ten books just about Ruth Bader Ginsburg in this list,

(14:06):
either by or about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who's apparently the
only woman who's ever served on the Supreme Court. Like,
let's acknowledge. I mean, let's also acknowledge Ruth Bader Ginsburg
was not the first woman on the Supreme Court. That
was Sandreday O'Connor, who I hate SANDREDE O'Connor. You know,
I trust her as far as I could throw her.
The problem with sandreday O'Connor, though, is that she was

(14:30):
appointed by Ronald Reagan, so we can't say anything nice
about her in's pite of the fact, by the way,
that nobody was more in favor of legal abortion than
Sandreday O'Connor. Like, you know, if that's our measuring stick
for who is a woman and who is a legitimate
woman apparently, which is really I think the measuring stick.

(14:51):
Connelly's a right who I think was softly pro choice.
Nicki Haley was actually pretty pro life, so I don't know,
maybe you know, Nicky Haley I think is very moderate
in another one, but has been pretty pro life. So anyway,
so there you go, our beloved county librarian. Now again,
I'm not one hundred percent sure if this is our

(15:13):
county librarians curating this specific list, or if this is
librarians through Libby curating it. But when we return we'll
talk about what our specific local librarians are highlighting. That's
next on the John Girardi Show. The Fresno County librarians
apparently think that they are a separate branch of government.

(15:36):
It's this new thing within American government that we've discovered.
We discovered over the last few years when Steve Brandau
introduced his measure for maybe some kind of review board
looking at children's literature to see if it promote it
was you know, healthy sexual sexual development was being indicated
in some of these books that were aimed towards discussing
sex with children, whether they were maybe just you know,

(15:57):
maybe a section of a book showing children and showering
with naked male strangers with their you know, schlangolas hanging out.
Maybe that that's not a great kind of a book
to share to five year olds in the public library.
You know, a book aimed at five year olds with
pictures of men's penises just flung out there for all

(16:17):
to see, of men showering with children in a like
locker room setting, boys and girls you know, within the
same picture. Now, Fresno County librarians reacted to Brandon DAW's
proposal with this shock and horror and just fury that

(16:39):
the county supervisors would dare supervise their work as county employees.
What expertise do the county supervisors have, Well, I don't
know what expertise they have, but they have authority. They
are your boss, They supervise, they supervise county services. And

(17:01):
apparently we are just because State of California said now
you can't have a review board of that kind for
over county libraries. We are apparently in this situation where
the people of Fresno County elect our board of supervisors,
but somehow our board of supervisors cannot oversee their employees.
They cannot tell their employees what to do. And this

(17:21):
is on full display at the Clovist branch of the
Presnoe County Library. Now it's the Clovis branch of the
Presnoe County Library that started all this insanity. They have
all these like left wing displays, and Diane Pierce, the
Clovis City council member, brought this to the public's attention,
all these insane left wing books. And by the way,

(17:42):
I go to this library branch all the time, I've
found insane books. Some of the books in fact that
Brandow highlighted or books that I found not even like
looking just like I'm not like hunting for smut. It's
like my wife was going around looking at books and
saw a book kind of caught her eye, pulled it out,
looked at it. I was like, oh, okay, here's a

(18:04):
picture of a man's penis just out for all to
see in a book aimed at five year olds. But
somehow it seems like the employees at the Clovist branch,
specifically of the Fresne County Library are so left wing
and they so despise Diane Peerce for having highlighted all
the crap that's going on there, that they're going out

(18:24):
of their way to have left wing material. So they
have a display out at the Clovis branch of the library,
or at least a few days ago this was out there.
They had this display out in the Presnow County Library
for Women's History Month, and they had a Facebook post saying,

(18:45):
yas Queen Sleigh, to celebrate Women's History Month, we are
spotlighting all things queens. Come check out these books about queens,
real and fictional, and take a mirror selfie to leave
in our comments. Books are available on a first come,
first served basis, and availability may change daily. One of

(19:08):
the books in this display is by a drag queen,
Rue Paul, who, by the way, any of you who
have comcasts for cable have been assaulted by like constant
advertising for Rue Paul's Drag Race, which I guess is
some kind of reality sort of contest show where Rue

(19:32):
Paul judges who is, you know, the most transgender of
you know whatever, who is the biggest drag queen of
them all? That there is just this immaculate confidence that
Exfinity slash Comcast slash NBC Universal has that this is
the content that America wants to see. It seems like

(19:53):
they're still living in twenty twenty one and don't realize
you do realize that transgenderism is deeply on pop popular
with the American electorate like this is not. This has
a very narrow and limited audience. So effectively, what our
President County librarians are choosing to do is during Women's

(20:15):
History Month highlighting a book about a man, because that's
what rup Paul is. He's a man. So Rupe Paul,
just again for context, is an American drag queen. His

(20:39):
actual name is RuPaul Andre Charles. He's a guy. He's
a sixty four year old biological man who dresses up
like a woman. That's it, Okay, this is not a woman.
So in Women's History Month sounded almost like Trump there

(21:01):
in Women's History Month. In Women's History Month, the Clovist
branch of the President County Library has taken the bold
step of putting in a book by a man. We
see no irony here, we see nothing ridiculous here. These

(21:24):
are the people whose judgments on library curation are just
utterly above reproach. Just no, the voters of Fresno County
who vote for our bosses, the supervisors who pay for
our salaries through their taxes, through their you know what

(21:44):
business do they have telling us what to do? Apparently
Fresno County librarians cannot identify who even is a woman.
If you cannot give me as apparently they can't, If
they cannot give me a solid definition of what a
woman is, why aren't we trusting them to do the

(22:06):
displays for Women's History Month? Maybe highlight actual good female authors.
Jane Austen, George Elliott. You know you could go through
find find some good female authors. There's plenty of them.
Jk Rowl. Oh not jk Rowling. Oops. Jk Rowling, you know,

(22:28):
only the author of one of the most popular series
of books of modern times, the Harry Potter Books. No,
because she doesn't like the transgender movement, so all of
a sudden she's out. But some trashy book about ru
Paul who hosts a biological man who hosts the TV show. Yes,

(22:54):
that's where we're gonna highlight that. And I think the
Closet branch of the Presno County Library specifically hates Diane Pierce.
They specifically hate Steve Brandow. Maybe they specifically hate me,
given how much I've talked about it, I've written about
I haven't had not been in the Fresno b about it.

(23:16):
And they're like, yeah, we know that we are above
aproach because we know that the state of California will
stop any effort by the President County Board of Supervisors
to limit and restrict what we're doing here. When we return,
I want to talk about the First Amendment and how
it relates to both our county library issues, but also

(23:39):
how it's relating to the case of a Columbia University
graduate student whom the Trump administration is trying to deport
for his involvement in illegal student protests at Columbia in
connection with their various anti Israel protests that is next

(24:00):
on the John Girardi Show. There's been a lot of
big national news regarding efforts by the Trump administration to
deport resident Aliens who participated in some of the anti
Israel protests that took place on a variety of college

(24:21):
campuses in the spring of twenty twenty four. Following the
October seventh, twenty twenty three, terrorist attack against Israel conducted
by Hamas. In the spring of twenty twenty four, there
are a number of different protests against the Israeli government

(24:42):
that took place on college campuses around the country, and
some of them devolved into one outright support for Hamas,
which is a terrorist organization. Two other kinds of illegal activity,

(25:03):
illegal forms of trespass, such as at Columbia where student
protesters violated legitimate directives from the university and were occupying
buildings on campus, camping out on campus when the campus
was telling them to leave, So just violating like basic

(25:23):
trespass things, other kinds of crimes, and in all likelihood.
I think some of these universities were guilty of violating
certain kinds of federal civil rights protections for Jewish students.
Some of these protesters on some of these college campuses
were basically setting up like checkpoints around campus to basically

(25:46):
harass Jewish students, that it was limiting their ability just
to walk around on campus and just to live on campus.
There was a time there was a moment at Columbia
where basically a bunch of Youjewish students just left, like
the anti Israel protesters were just so everywhere and so

(26:07):
threatening specifically towards the Jewish students that a lot of
the parents were just pulling their kids out of the school,
a lot of them were going home. I think there
was like a rabbi who was in charge of Jewish
student services or whatever at Columbia who was telling you
should all get out of here because there's no way
that the university or the police can guarantee your safety

(26:29):
on campus. Now, the Trump administration is initiating deportation against
a Columbia graduate student named Khalil mah Mood. Now, this

(26:51):
might be a difficult case for the Trump administration to
win because Khalil ma Mood is within the within the
structure of the American immigration system, the American system of
allowing aliens to live in the United States. Khalil Mackmuon

(27:12):
is about as high up as you can get without
quite being a US citizen, yet he has It seems
as though what happened was he was coming to Columbia
on a student visa. He was in a graduate he
was in a master's degree program. I think it was
some kind of Polly sci or international affairs thing, and
he then married an American and his student visa got

(27:38):
sort of bumped up to a Green card holder. So
he's a permanent resident alien, probably because he's married to
an American citizen. But he is still an alien. And
when you are an alien there if you do bad

(28:00):
stuff in America, if you abuse your status as an
alien that we're letting you live in the United States
even though you're not a citizen. If you do bad stuff,
you can get sent back. Now, a lot of people
on the left are arguing that Khalil Mahmoud is being
basically that his First Amendment rights are being violated, that

(28:22):
he's being deported or deportation efforts are beginning to be
initiated against him. It's been arrested on the basis of
his protected First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. Now,
let's talk about that. I'll admit that I had some

(28:46):
questions about various of the pro Palestine protests. Now, there's
a couple of things to factor into it. One is
just the act of protesting itself. And when an active
protest exceeds the bounds of the reasonable kinds of time, place,

(29:07):
and manner restrictions that the government might have, or exceeds
the bounds that a private actor like Columbia University is
a private college, gives for such action to take place
on its own private property. All right, Just protesting is fine.

(29:32):
Protesting though in ways that leads to other kinds of
violation of the law beyond protesting is not good. Okay, Columbia,
I'm sure allows students to have protests on campus. Colombia
does not allow students to occupy campus buildings in ways
that disrupts classes and cancels classes, and at a certain

(29:56):
point that becomes like criminal trustpath violations of the law trustpath. Yes,
Columbia also can't allow that this becomes a violation of
federal law. Can't allow on campus protests to grow to
the point of intimidating students on the basis of their
religion or their ethnic background, in this case, Jewish students. Okay,

(30:21):
So if Khalil mah Mood was purely going to a
protest holding up a sign that says, no, think about
the innocent victims of war in Gaza, Okay, Let's say
he's holding a sign that says that the Israeli government

(30:45):
must protect the lives of innocence in Gaza. All right,
If he just did that, I think i'd agree. Yeah,
that's First Amendment protected. If he's protesting in a time,
place and manner that the government, you know, if he's protesting,
like on a public sidewalk in a way that's not
obstructing the sidewalk or or blocking entrances, to blocking rights

(31:08):
of way or things like that, or if he's protesting
on Columbia's campus in a fashion that Colombia allows, and
all he's doing is holding a sign that says, hey,
let's protect the innocent children of Gaza. Totally fine with that.
I don't think he should be subject to deportation efforts
for something like that, But that's not exactly what Khalil

(31:32):
Muchmu did. I don't know that he has anything dead
to rights in this way. But there's also a difference
between saying, you know, the Israeli government is you know,
is engaged in violations of international law principles by killing civilians. Okay,
if you want to say that, that's you know, you're

(31:55):
entitled to that opinion. Okay, that's a fine. You might
get into trouble though, if you've got a sign that
says go Hamas beat Israel. Okay. Hamas is an international
terrorist organ is a terrorist organization designated as such by
the State Department, and we would not let someone into

(32:18):
the country if they have a history of supporting a
terrorist organization. So it gets a little dicey, and you
can see where this could become like a dicey question
between the First Amendment you write, a freedom of speech
versus you know, legitimate immigration law concerns about importing people

(32:41):
who support terrorist organizations. Right, Hamas is a terrorist organization.
They are effectively the government of Palestine, but they are
a terrorist organ of Gaza rather but they're a terrorist organization.
So where do you where is the line drawn between
support of the cause of the people of Gaza opposition

(33:04):
to Israeli military action in Gaza versus outright support for Hamas.
You know, that's a that's a difficult line to draw. However,
with this Khalil Mahmoud guy, basically he was acting as
the spokesperson, the negotiator on behalf of these Columbia students

(33:27):
who are engaging in various kinds of illegal conduct like
trespass and taking over classrooms and you know, intimidating Jewish students.
He was there like hostage negotiator. Basically, well, you got
to give in to our demands before we stop occupying
this building on campus. So I think that's a pretty

(33:53):
solid case to be made that this guy should be
deported because we're not deporting him because he was engaged
in stuff that goes well beyond what we would view
as protected speech. But and it's also a thing of
like not every time you say words, is the First
Amendment right to freedom of speech kicked in? Okay, If

(34:19):
if you're calling a mafia don on the phone and
the mafia don says I want you to whack Billy Tuccins,
and you say you got it, boss, I'll go kill,
I will go murder Billy Tuccins for you. On your orders,
you and the mafia boss get prosecuted for a conspiracy

(34:43):
to murder. You're not going to be able to get
away with it by saying, WHOA, we were engaged in
our First Amendment right to freedom of speech. No, the
First Amendment right to freedom of speech, it's a it's
a term of art. It doesn't refer to every word
you know, at any time air passes across your vocal
cords to make sounds. All right, there's a kind of

(35:09):
core area of content that's protected on the First Amendment
right to freedom of speech, speech about topics of political, social, religious,
et cetera, kinds of concern. And the further out you
go from that core, the less kind of protection your
speech has, the more ability the government has to regulate
it or even penalize it. So advertising speech has less

(35:31):
protection in American First Amendment law. Then again, these kind
of core protected ideas of you know, religion, politics, et cetera. Okay,
if you engage in false advertising, the government has the
ability to sort of regulate that more so than me
giving my opinion on Israel versus Palestine or blah blah
blah blah blah on the radio, so Khalil Khalil Mah

(36:00):
Food being the spokesman for the Palestinian students, saying well, okay,
so we'll get out of Howard Hall if you do X,
Y and Z. No. He's acting as like the representative
representative for a group of people who are engaging in
criminal conduct. Now when we return, I want to talk.

(36:21):
I'll just talk briefly about the First Amendment with regards
to our little local libraries and all of their little controversies.
As I've been ragging on the libraries for some of
their great choices for us to read during Women's History Month,
like a book by a man RuPaul. We'll talk about
the First Amendment and regulating our libraries next. On The
John Girardi Show, when Steve Brandau introduced his measure to

(36:45):
have like a citizen's committee reviewing library books, everyone was
crowning foul that this was somehow violating the First Amendment.
That Fresno County curating what books it would have for
age and development suitability in their children's section of their

(37:09):
library at the directive of the County Board of Supervisors,
which oversees the library, that the county Board of Supervisors,
overseeing its own employees curation of books somehow violated the
First Amendment. That the First Amendment requires every book that

(37:31):
every Tom Dick and Harry has ever published that County
librarians want to put out in the kids section needs
to be put out in the kids section. That is nonsense.
Maybe there's a First Amendment issue if, on the basis
of disputed political social topics, for example, President, county librarians

(37:54):
only put out books written by Democrats, childhood, sexual development
and curating age appropriateness does not violate the First Amendment.
It's idiotic to argue otherwise. That'll do it, John Geordy Show,
See you next time on Power Talk