Commentary
Who is Tim Walz?
If you stay up on the news, no doubt you’ve heard enough about this radical progressive, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, selected to be Vice President Harris’ running mate, but I thought I would pass along a few comments you may not have heard.
First, be aware that Walz truly may not have been Harris’ choice. Former Obama attorney general Eric Holder, who you may recall defied a congressional subpoena, did the vetting of the candidates.
Fellow blogger Ben Domenech, however, sees Walz’ selection as a mistake because “it reveals how out of touch she’s been with the nation’s politics for her entire career … you have to make choices that reveal who you are.
“The choice is bizarre for a number of reasons, though as a miscalculation it makes sense as an insight into Harris’s understanding of America in this moment. For an election where the economy, immigration and crime are paramount voter concerns, Harris has just added a blue state who is weak on all three.”
The cost of living in Walz’s Minnesota got a thorough airing in “Kamala Harris’s Revealing VP Choice,” published by the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, but too lengthy to spell it all out. Briefly, Minnesota has the fifth highest top income-tax rate among states, it levies a death tax up top 16 percent on top of the federal government’s 40 percent rate.
There’s much more in the negative column for life in Minnesota, but here are a couple choice radical actions. He made 81,000 illegals eligible for driver’s licenses along with health insurance through MinnesotaCare. All new commercial or multi-family structures are required to have EV charging infrastructure, subsidized by the state, of course.
Following its listing of the high cost of living in Minnesota, the editorial board suggested that voters who “don’t much like Mr. Trump might decide he’s better than signing up for that.” “That” could be on the Harris-Walz agenda for the country.
From the New York Times
In Jess Bidgood’s latest reporting in the Times’ “On Politics: Your Guide to the 2024 Elections,” she sought grassroots comments from people waiting in line to attend the Harris-Walz rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
“He’s so Midwest,” gushed Sandee Kosmo, praising his wry sense of humor, his hunting background. Even his ever-so-Midwestern faith. “I’m a Lutheran pastor, and Walz is a Lutheran.”
Sara Godlewski thought “Kamala made a good pick, not just because Tim understands our love for a good Friday fish fry, but he also embodies our shared beliefs.”
Powerful stuff, eh?
From the Free Press
“He’s a governor with a majority in the state house, a power he’s used to pass laws that protect abortion access and double down on gender-affirming care for minors,” wrote Oliver Wiseman in the Free Press. “Republicans are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on Walz, who they will paint as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or a progressive in a hunting cap.”
They’re already taking him on for stolen valor, claiming carried an AR 15 in combat when he abandoned his National Guard outfit when he learned of a pending deployment to Iraq.
From Just the News
Well-known investigative journalist John Soloman and Steven Richards wrote of how Minnesota, under Walz, bilked hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds.
“Walz’s financial management has drawn little attention in national news media, but the non-partisan Office of Legislative Auditor, tallying the losses, find they are nearing $1 billion since 2019,” according to the Free Press.
A big spender, the Free Press noted that Walz increased spending in Minnesota by almost 40 percent in one year while spending all of a $17 billion surplus.
The Harris-Walz Rallies
As a former speechwriter, I’m familiar with “laugh lines,” and “applause lines,” but watching Harris and Walz, their speeches seem to call for laughs after every line.
Who cares what Biden says?
You better care, because the uninformed public is listening to him even though he’s nearing the end of his presidency, and what he says is always anti-Trump.
I hope you recall the 2020 presidential election debates when millions of viewers heard him lie about the content of the letter signed by 51 former intelligence officers. It is believed that it cost President Trump votes.
I recently wrote about his habit of repeating untruths – lying. This week, he taped an interview to be broadcast on CBS Sunday Morning, August 11, 2024. Asked by host Robert Costa if he were confident that there would be a peaceful transfer of power in January 2025, Biden responded:
“If Trump loses, I’m not confident at all. He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it, all the stuff about, ‘If we lose, there’ll be a bloodbath, it’ll have to be a stolen election.’”
Informed voters know that former President Trump’s reference, made on March 16, 2024 while speaking in Ohio about China’s electric vehicles being built in Mexico, threatening to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, stating “you’re not going to be able to sell those cars.” Here’s an excerpt of Trump’s key phrase about the economic bloodbath it would give our auto industry and autoworkers:
“If I get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath, for the whole – that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars.”
Robert Farley, in hisFactcheck Reports, duly noted that Trump rightly used the term “bloodbath” to describe what Merrian-Webster dictionary lists as “a major economic disaster,” while adding that the Biden campaign chose the definition “a notably fierce, violent, or destructive contest or struggle.”
Don’t doubt for a minute that the Biden-Harris campaign, and the dirty tricks political machine of the Democrat Party, wasn’t fomenting political violence in repeating the use of “bloodbath” to sway votes away from Trump in November.
And if you believe this …
A CNN panel was recently discussing remarks Nancy Pelosi made about her long relationship with President Biden after he dropped out of the race, saying that she had not spoken to him. You may recall that she denied that she was part of the effort to push him out. Despite the fact that she’s no longer Speaker of the House, she still wields power in the party.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
Happy Trails to Trump and Vance
