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Dan Rather: Elon Musk Pushes Lies and Fake News

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2024 //
7

Dan Rather warns about the danger of one-man control of a major social media company. He had Elon Musk in mind. Musk is supporting Trump, and he is using Twitter, his personal megaphone, to help Trump and smear Harris.

I have been locked out of Twitter since mid-July, because Twitter says I am underage. Really! So I am no longer influenced by Musk propaganda. But millions of other people are.

Rather writes on his blog “Steady”:

Imagine having the ability to instantly lob information, true or not, to millions of people across the globe. Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly known as Twitter), has that ability. One would hope that with that power would come responsibility. In a perfect world, the owners of social media companies would be fair-minded and objective. Alas.

For all the talk of social media reform after 2016 and the Facebook fiasco when misinformation ran rampant across that platform, it now appears that Musk has decided not only to support the Republican candidate for president but to personally help spread misinformation about voting and the election.

Plus, in 2024, Musk has more powerful tools than Facebook ever imagined eight years ago. Artificial intelligence is coming into its own, and the dangers it presents to our democracy are profound.

Musk has recently released an AI chatbot, which, if you don’t know, is basically a computer that can simulate a human conversation. Musk named his Grok, and within hours of President Biden bowing out of the race, it created a post that read: “The ballot deadline has passed for several states for the 2024 election,” naming nine states: Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. The message suggested that Kamala Harris had missed the filing deadline to get on the ballot in those states.

This is 100% false and was shared with millions of users on X.

Secretaries of state in five of the nine states have written a letter to Musk urging him to “immediately implement changes” to Grok. I’m not holding my breath.

When Grok was launched late last year, Musk called it the anti-“woke” chatbot — his characterization. He said he wanted the AI search assistant to “answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.” Those other AI systems, powered by OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, are specifically designed to avoid controversial topics.

But it’s not just Grok that is pushing out lies. Musk himself reposted a manipulated version of Harris’s first campaign video. It featured an altered voice track that sounds just like Harris. In it “she” says she didn’t “know the first thing about running the country” and that she is the “ultimate diversity hire.” Musk tagged the video as “amazing” and didn’t include a disclaimer. His post has garnered 135 million views, so far. It has not been taken down.

Talk about strange bedfellows. Over the years, there has been no love lost between Musk and Donald Trump. As recently as May, Trump was a vociferous and vocal proponent of the oil and gas industry. Remember the Mar-a-Lago get-together where he promised to end Biden’s green energy initiatives, including his electric vehicle policies, in exchange for $1 billion in campaign contributions?

Apparently Musk and Trump have mended some pretty tall fences. For his part, Musk has promised lots of cash to the pro-Trump America PAC. Maybe Trump didn’t get what he asked for from his oil and gas friends.

The Musk-backed America PAC is already helping Trump in swing states. The PAC’s website is tricking people into sharing personal data. The site promises to help people register to vote, but when a user enters a zip code in a battleground state, after also giving their name and phone number, they are directed to a page that says “thank you.” They are then asked to “complete the form below.” But there is no form. And there is no redirection to a voter registration site.

In exchange, Trump now thinks electric vehicles are “incredible.” What a shocker. At a rally in Georgia on Sunday, Trump told his supporters, “I’m for electric cars. I have to be because, you know, Elon endorsed me very strongly. So, I have no choice.”

The Michigan secretary of state is investigating Musk and the PAC. “Every citizen should know exactly how their personal information is being used by PACs, especially if an entity is claiming it will help people register to vote in Michigan or any other state,” a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office said.

In 2022, President Barack Obama gave a speech at Stanford University about the dangers of artificial intelligence, foreseeing that “regulation has to be part of the answer” to combating online disinformation. His closing thought is a reminder that AI can be a help as well as a hindrance — but that it can’t exist in a vacuum.

“The internet is a tool. Social media is a tool. At the end of the day, tools don’t control us. We control them. And we can remake them. It’s up to each of us to decide what we value and then use the tools we’ve been given to advance those values,” Obama said.

For all intents and purposes, social media has become our town square — but unlike most communities, it has no sheriff, and it very much needs one. In his or her absence it is up to us, social media’s users, to be wary consumers.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Harris, Kamala, Media, Propaganda

The New Republic: Tim Walz Is the Best Antidote to the Poison and Lies of FOX News

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2024 //
45

I don’t know how any self-respecting journalist could work for FOX News. It offers a good job in a competitive industry, but why sell your soul to the devil? I have recently seen tweets by Megyn Kelly, viciously attacking Kamala Harris, and every time I do, I remember Trump saying of her in 2016, after the first GOP debate, that she had blood coming out of her orifices. Yet still she is his sycophant.

In The New Republic, Thom Hartmann writes that Tim Walz may be the perfect antidote to FOX’s vitriol. If you want to reprogram family members, introduce them to Tim Walz. He is a good man, a decent man, not a FOX liar.

Hartmann writes:

All across America families are in mourning: Their parents and grandparents, particularly the men in their lives, have been stolen from them by the right-wing hate and rage machine.

Jen Senko produced a movie—The Brainwashing of My Dad—about losing her own father to Fox “News”; it was also made into a book of the same title. She’s been a guest on my radio show a few times, and her story is one replicated across America millions of times. Her father—a totally normal Midwestern guy—began watching Fox “News” when he retired, and within a year had become withdrawn, bitter, angry, and filled with hate.

Jen and her family staged an intervention and locked Fox out of Dad’s TV with the child lock option built into her cable system; within a few months, back to watching normal TV news like CNN, MSNBC, and the BBC, Dad made a full recovery from the temporary mental illness Murdoch’s infamous hate machine had thrown him into.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick, is America’s intervention against the mind poison that Trump, Fox “News,” and right-wing hate radio have infected our nation with.

He’s a normal guy, who joined the Army National Guard right out of high school at 17, rising to the rank of Commander Sergeant Major and becoming a top advocate for America’s veterans during his decade in Congress.

He used the G.I. bill to go to college, getting his master’s degree and going on to teach high school social studies. He coached his school’s football team, taking it to the state championships for the first time ever.

He smiles. His students love him, as does his family. He’s a normal guy. He’s the father everybody who grew up in a dysfunctional family wishes they had. He’s the grandpa everybody who’s lost one to Fox “News” wishes could sit down with their own and set him straight.

He carved butter at the state fair. He helped start his school’s first gay-straight alliance back in the 1990s when homophobic hate was still widely accepted; he said the coach doing so would be a powerful statement of support. He loves his country, his community, his family, and his nation.

No purchased bone-spur X-rays for Tim Walz; he embodies the very definition of patriotism that I grew up with in the Midwest. He reminds me of my own dad, who joined the Army at 17 to go fight Nazis in World War II, an echo of the past that most Americans recognize.

His contrast with Trump’s infidelities, con jobs, and constant angry bitterness is a sunlight-like disinfectant for our body politic. He shows up J.D. Vance—with his creepy obsessions with women’s genitals and birth rates and fealty to his billionaire patrons—for the weird guy that he is. He even highlights jokes about Vance, saying: “I can’t wait to debate the guy. That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”

Trump and Vance are riding a wave of hate, fear, and bigotry made acceptable and even viral by a multibillion-dollar media machine that emerged from the Reagan years.

To steal the minds of America’s grandparents, President Reagan fast-tracked citizenship for Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch in 1985 so Murdoch could legally purchase U.S. media properties; Reagan ordered the Federal Communications Commission to stop enforcing the Fairness Doctrine, and Republicans in Congress later gutted the Equal Time Rule.

In this, Reagan knew what he and the GOP were getting: Murdoch had by that time already flipped both Australian and British politics toward the hard right using frequent and lurid stories featuring crime by minorities.

Writing for The Sydney Morning Herald (the Australian equivalent of The New York Times), former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called Rupert Murdoch and his right-wing news operations “the greatest cancer on the Australian democracy.”

Fox and Murdoch’s power in Australia came, Rudd says, from their ruthlessness.

It’s the same here. When Fox and Tucker Carlson set out to rewrite the history of the treasonous January 6 coup attempt at our nation’s Capitol with a three-part special alleging it could have been an inside job by the FBI, two of their top conservative stars, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, resigned in protest.

Text messages released by Congresswoman Liz Cheney and the committee that investigated the January 6 attempt to overthrow our government show that the network’s top prime-time hosts were begging Trump to call off his openly racist and murderous mob while at the same time minimizing what happened on the air.

Even worse, revelations from the Dominion lawsuit show that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham all intentionally lied to their viewers for over two years with the encouragement of Rupert Murdoch himself. While they were privately ridiculing Trump and acknowledging he was a “sore loser,” they said the exact opposite to their audience.

Along with its relentless attacks on America’s first Black president, Fox’s support of Trump’s Big Lie helped tear America apart and set up the violence and deaths on January 6—while also making billions for Murdoch and his family.

Steve Schmidt, a man who’s definitely no liberal (he was a White House adviser to George W. Bush and ran Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign as well as John McCain’s 2008 campaign), has been blunt about the impact of Fox “News”:

Rupert Murdoch’s lie machine is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, the poisoning of our democracy and the stoking of a cold civil war. There has never been anything like it and it is beyond terrible for the country. Bar none, Rupert Murdoch is the worst and most dangerous immigrant to ever arrive on American soil. There are no words for the awfulness of his cancerous network.

While Biden press secretaries Jen Psaki and Karine Jean-Pierre have been humorous in their dealing with Fox’s Peter Doocy’s attempts at gotcha questions in the White House press room, there’s nothing funny about inciting attacks on our country and then openly lying on the air about “antifa” to cover it up, as Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented that Fox “News” did.

Tim Walz is the antidote to the Fox “News” poison that is now so widely imitated across the right-wing media ecosystem, stealing the hearts and minds of millions. He’s America’s everyman, a welcome dose of sanity, and a wake-up call about how badly our country has been damaged by billionaire-funded right-wing hate.

So let the dad jokes begin!

As Liz Gumbinner points out, Seth Meyers’s head writer, Sal Gentile, summarized it brilliantly on X: “Tim Walz will expand free school lunches, raise the minimum wage, make it easier to unionize, fix your carburetor, replace the old wiring in your basement, spray that wasp’s nest under the deck, install a new spring for your garage door, and put a new chain on your lawnmower.”

And God willing and we all show up to vote, he’ll soon be vice president of the United States.

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Goodness, Lies, Walz, Tim

Washington Post: A Biased View of Tim Walz’s Record on Education

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2024 //
11

Laura Meckler and Hannah Natanson wrote about Governor Tim Walz’s record on education in Minnesota. In making decisions, Walz relied on his own knowledge as a veteran public school teacher and very likely on research, but The Washington Post misleadingly attributed his views to “the teachers’ union,” the bugbear of the far-right.

The article is saturated with bias against teachers unions and presents the pro-education Walz as a tool of the union, not as a veteran educator who knows the importance of public schools. Walz grew up and taught in small towns. They don’t want or need “choice.” They love their public schools, which are often the central public institution in their community.

The 2019 state budget negotiations in Minnesota were tense, with a deadline looming, when the speaker of the House offered Gov. Tim Walz a suggestion for breaking the impasse.

They both knew that the Republicans’ top priority was to create a school voucher-type program that would direct tax dollars to help families pay for private schools. House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, floated an idea: What if they offered the Republicans a pared-down version of the voucher plan, some sort of “fig leaf,” that could help them claim a symbolic victory in trade for big wins on the Democratic side? In the past, on other issues, Walz had been open to that kind of compromise, Hortman said.

This time, it was a “hard no.”

He used his position’s formidable sway over education to push for more funding for schools and backed positions taken by Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union of which he was once a member. His record on education will probably excite Democrats but provide grist for Republicans who have in recent years gained political ground with complaints about how liberals have managed schools.

Teachers and their unions consistently supported Walz’s Minnesota campaigns with donations, records show. And in the first 24 hours after he was selected as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, teachers were the most common profession in the flood of donations to the Democratic ticket, according to the campaign.

During the chaotic 2020-21 pandemic-rattled school year, Walz took a cautious approach toward school reopening that was largely in line with teachers, who were resisting a return to in-person learning, fearful of contracting covid.

Critics say that as a result, Minnesota schools stayed closed far too long — longer than the typical state — inflicting lasting academic and social emotional damage on students.

As a former teacher, Walz knew that teachers were reluctant to return to the classroom until safety protocols were in place.

Walz also advanced his own robust and liberal education agenda. He fought to increase K-12 education spending in 2019, when he won increases in negotiations with Republicans, and more dramatically in 2023, when he worked with the Democratic majority in the state House and Senate. He won funding to provide free meals to all schoolchildren, regardless of income, and free college tuition for students — including undocumented immigrants — whose families earn less than $80,000 per year. He also called out racial gaps in achievement and discipline in schools and tried to address them…

And as culture war debates raged across the country in recent years, Walz pushed Minnesota to adopt policies in support of LGBTQ+ rights…

In the 2022 elections, Walz was reelected, and Minnesota Democrats took control of the Senate. Democrats now had a “trifecta” — governor, House and Senate — and a $17.6 billion budget surplus.

After taking his oath of office in January 2023, Walz said Minnesota had a historic opportunity to become the best state in the nation for children and families. His proposals included a huge increase in K-12 education spending.

“Now is the time to be bold,” he said.

The final budget agreement in 2023 increased education spending by nearly $2.3 billion, including a significant boost to the per-pupil funding formula that would be tied to inflation, ensuring growth in the coming years. Total formula funding for schools would climb from about $9.9 billion in 2023 to $11.4 billion in 2025, according to North Star Policy Action. The budget also included targeted money for special education, pre-K programs, mental health and community schools.

Walz also signed legislation providing free school meals for all students — a signature achievement — not just those in low-income families who are eligible under the federal program…

In his 2023 State of the State address, Walz drew a pointed contrast between the culture wars raging in states such as Florida and the situation in Minnesota.

“The forces of hatred and bigotry are on the march in states across this country and around the world,” Walz said. “But let me say this now and be very clear about this: That march stops at Minnesota’s borders.”

Through his tenure, he repeatedly took up the causes of LGBTQ+ rights and racial justice.

He signed a measure prohibiting public and school libraries from banning books due to their messages or opinions, and another granting legal protection to children who travel to Minnesota for gender-affirming care.

Categories Bigotry, Character, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Ethics, Freedom to Read, Funding, Health, Minnesota, Teacher Pay, Teachers and Teaching, Unions, Vouchers, Walz, Tim

Massive Hack Exposes Personal Info of Everyone!

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2024 //
4

This is not April Fools’ Day. This is real. And it’s serious.

The Los Angeles Times reported a massive data breach that includes the Social Security numbers and other personal data about every American.

About four months after a notorious hacking group claimed to have stolen an extraordinary amount of sensitive personal information from a major data broker, a member of the group has reportedly released most of it for free on an online marketplace for stolen personal data.

The breach, which includes Social Security numbers and other sensitive data, could power a raft of identity theft, fraud and other crimes, said Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director for the U.S. Public Information Research Group.

“If this in fact is pretty much the whole dossier on all of us, it certainly is much more concerning” than prior breaches, Murray said in an interview. “And if people weren’t taking precautions in the past, which they should have been doing, this should be a five-alarm wake-up call for them.”

According to a class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the hacking group USDoD claimed in April to have stolen personal records of 2.9 billion people from National Public Data, which offers personal information to employers, private investigators, staffing agencies and others doing background checks. The group offered in a forum for hackers to sell the data, which included records from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, for $3.5 million, a cybersecurity expert said in a post on X.

The lawsuit was reported by Bloomberg Law.

Last week, a purported member of USDoD identified only as Felice told the hacking forum that they were offering “the full NPD database,” according to a screenshot taken by BleepingComputer. The information consists of about 2.7 billion records, each of which includes a person’s full name, address, date of birth, Social Security number and phone number, along with alternate names and birth dates, Felice claimed….

Several news outlets that focus on cybersecurity have looked at portions of the data Felice offered and said they appear to be real people’s actual information. If the leaked material is it what it’s claimed to be, here are some of the risks posed and the steps you can take to protect yourself.

The threat of ID theft

The leak purports to provide much of the information that banks, insurance companies and service providers seek when creating accounts — and when granting a request to change the password on an existing account.

A few key pieces appeared to be missing from the hackers’ haul. One is email addresses, which many people use to log on to services. Another is driver’s license or passport photos, which some governmental agencies rely on to verify identities.

Still, Murray of PIRG said that bad actors could do “all kinds of things” with the leaked information, the most worrisome probably being to try to take over someone’s accounts — including those associated with their bank, investments, insurance policies and email. With your name, Social Security number, date of birth and mailing address, a fraudster could create fake accounts in your name or try to talk someone into resetting the password on one of your existing accounts.

How to protect yourself

Data breaches have been so common over the years, some security experts say sensitive information about you is almost certainly available in the dark corners of the internet. And there are a lot of people capable of finding it; VPNRanks, a website that rates virtual private network services, estimates that 5 million people a day will access the dark web through the anonymizing TOR browser, although only a portion of them will be up to no good.

If you suspect that your Social Security number or other important identifying information about you has been leaked, experts say you should put a freeze on your credit files at the three major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. You can do so for free, and it will prevent criminals from taking out loans, signing up for credit cards and opening financial accounts under your name. The catch is that you’ll need to remember to lift the freeze temporarily if you are obtaining or applying for something that requires a credit check.

Placing a freeze can be done online or by phone, working with each credit bureau individually. PIRG cautions never to do so in response to an unsolicited email or text purporting to be from one of the credit agencies — such a message is probably the work of a scammer trying to dupe you into revealing sensitive personal information.

For more details, check out PIRG’s step-by-step guide to credit freezes.

You can also sign up for a service that monitors your accounts and the dark web to guard against identity theft, typically for a fee. If your data is exposed in a breach, the company whose network was breached will often provide one of these services for free for a year or more.

As important as these steps are to stop people from opening new accounts in your name, they aren’t much help protecting your existing accounts. Oddly enough, those accounts are especially vulnerable to identity thieves if you haven’t signed up for online access to them, Murray said — that’s because it’s easier for thieves to create a login and password while pretending to be you than it is for them to crack your existing login and password.

Of course, having strong passwords that are different for every service and changed periodically helps. Password manager apps offer a simple way to create and keep track of passwords by storing them in the cloud, essentially requiring you to remember one master password instead of dozens of long and unpronounceable ones. These are available both for free (such as Apple’s iCloud Keychain) and for a fee.

Beyond that, experts say it’s extremely important to sign up for two-factor authentication. That adds another layer of security on top of your login and password. The second factor is usually something sent or linked to your phone, such as a text message; a more secure approach is to use an authenticator app, which will keep you secure even if your phone number is hijacked by scammers.

Yes, scammers can hijack your phone number through techniques called SIM swaps and port-out fraud, causing more identity-theft nightmares. To protect you on that front, AT&T allows you to create a passcode restricting access to your account; T-Mobile offers optional protection against your phone number being switched to a new device, and Verizon automatically blocks SIM swaps by shutting down both the new device and the existing one until the account holder weighs in with the existing device.

Open the link to read the rest of the article.

Brave New World, indeed!

Categories Ethics, Evil, Technology

Trump Lies About Kamala’s Crowd in Detroit

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2024 //
15

It’s not news when Donald Trump lies. Maybe it’s news when he tells the truth. But this is too weird to pass up.

Trump is angry that Kamala Harris is drawing large crowds whenever she gives a speech. So when she landed in Detroit and was met by a large crowd, Trump insisted that there was no crowd at all and that the image of a crowd was generated by artificial intelligence.

Trump claimed that no one attended Kamala’s rally at the airport: No one.

The news media covered the event; they saw the crowd. People who attended the event saw the crowd. But Trump insisted they were all lying. No one was there.

CNN reported:

Donald Trump falsely claimed in a series of social media posts Sunday that “nobody” attended Vice President Kamala Harris’ Michigan rally last week — and said his Democratic rival should be “disqualified” over a “fake crowd picture.”

The former president appeared to have fallen for a far-right conspiracy theory — one easily disproved by photos and videos captured by attendees and media showing thousands of supporters at the event at an airport hangar near Detroit.

The false claims about attendance at Harris’ event come as Trump navigates the contours of a changed presidential race, with the vice president riding a wave of new Democratic enthusiasm after replacing President Joe Biden atop the ticket. The GOP nominee, who regularly draws large crowds of his own, has long been fixated on audience size, with his speeches often filled with exaggerated boasts about the turnout.

Trump, on his social media website Truth Social, made the fabricated claim that Harris had been “turned in” by an airport maintenance worker who “noticed the fake crowd picture.”

He then said Harris should be “disqualified” from the 2024 election “because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!”

However, photos and videos of the event — including videos captured with CNN’s cameras — reflect a sizable audience for Harris’ Wednesday event. The crowd filled a large hangar and spilled onto the sprawling tarmac where Air Force Two had stopped. Two large risers and many rows of chairs were outside, as were several giant screens for the outdoor crowd that couldn’t see the rally stage.

Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said on LinkedInthat he analyzed the photo with two models designed to detect patterns associated with AI-generated images. Both models found no evidence of AI generation, he said, adding that “the text on the signs and plane [showed] none of the usual signs of generative AI.”

“While the lack of evidence of manipulation is not evidence the image is real,” he said, “we find no evidence that this image is AI-generated or digitally altered.”

Julia Nikhinson/AP

People listen to Harris speak at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport on August 7, 2024, in Romulus, Michigan, where screens were set up for those who couldn’t see the stage.

David Plouffe, a Harris campaign senior adviser, wrote on X: “These are not conspiratorial rantings from the deepest recesses of the internet. The author could have the nuclear codes and be responsible for decisions that will affect us all for decades.”

Trump on Sunday shared a screenshot of an X post that featured two photos: one shared on X by a Harris staffer that showed thousands of people greeting Harris’ plane; another zoomed in on the curved, reflective side of one of Air Force Two’s engines in which the crowd isn’t clear.

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane.”

“She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches,” Trump added. “She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!”

CNN suggests that Trump fell for a conspiracy theory. There is another possibility: Trump’s father suffered from dementia. Is he losing it?

Categories Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Harris, Kamala, Lies, Trump

Adam Kinzinger: The Despicable Attacks on Walz’s Military Service

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2024 //
9

Adam Kinzinger is a military veteran who did not like JD Vance’s attack on Tim Walz’s military record. Now that I’m restored to Twitter, I have seen many military veterans express disgust for Vance’s low blows against Walz, who was a member of the National Guard for 24 years, in Nebraska and in Minnesota.

Kinzinger was elected to Congress from Illinois in 2010 as a Republican. He was a popular elected official but ran afoul of Trump when he voted to impeach him after the 2021 insurrection. He served, with Liz Cheney, on the Commission investigating the January 6 insurrection. He left Congress and is now a commentator on CNN.

His Wikipedia says this about his military service:

Kinzinger resigned from the McLean County Board in 2003 to join the United States Air Force. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in November 2003 and later awarded his pilot wings. Kinzinger was initially a KC-135 Stratotanker pilot and flew missions in South America, Guam, Iraq and Afghanistan. He later switched to flying the RC-26 surveillance aircraft and was stationed in Iraq twice.[11]

Kinzinger has served in the Air Force Special Operations Command, Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command, and Wisconsin Air National Guard and was progressively promoted to his current rank of lieutenant colonel.[12] As part of his continued service with the Air National Guard, Kinzinger was deployed to the Mexico–United States border in February 2019 as part of efforts to maintain border security.[13]

Kinzinger wrote on his own blog:

As anyone who has served in the military knows, there are often good-spirited jokes about other branches and jobs. The Air Force gets called the “Chair Force” (we love this, actually), the Marines get called dumb, and so on. While not true, these jokes keep interservice rivalries lively and everyone on their toes. In general, we all respect each other and understand that whether you are kicking down doors, flying planes, gassing vehicles, or cooking food, you are willing to do what 98 percent of the country isn’t: serve for a cause above all others. This makes the attacks on Tim Walz, particularly from JD Vance, especially sickening.

JD Vance was an enlisted Marine who served honorably. While he didn’t see combat (he was in public affairs), he still deployed and served his nation as expected. He got out at the end of his service commitment and did not make it a 20-year career. Tim Walz joined the Army Guard and served honorably for 24 years, achieving the highest enlisted rank offered. That is quite an accomplishment. The nation should be proud, and JD Vance should be respectful of his fellow warrior.Subscribe

The attacks on Walz have proven to be not only false but also disgusting. I will debunk the attacks that have been floating around. But first and foremost, keep one thing in mind: Donald Trump not only didn’t serve in the military, he actively avoided service by claiming he had “bone spurs.” With him, everything is a projection, and he’s projecting his cowardice onto others, in this case, Gov. Walz.

First Lie: Governor Walz quickly exited the military after learning he was going to deploy, thereby leaving his men out to dry.

Truth: Gov. Walz actually put in his paperwork for retirement before any deployments were alerted. In fact, he served for four years AFTER 9/11 and two years after the Iraq war. He did not leave at the first sign of combat. He stayed well past when he could have retired at 20 years.

Even if he had learned of a deployment and then retired (he didn’t), there were countless people during that time who were retirement eligible and left when deployments were on the horizon. After 20 years of serving, it was their right, and who could fault them?

Lie: Gov. Walz left his men without leadership.

Truth: His unit was fully staffed and had adequate leadership without him. In fact, had the unit not had appropriate staffing, they could have denied his retirement and ordered a “stop loss,” which happened to thousands of military members in jobs that needed people. Stop loss was used regularly and would have been enacted if the situation deemed it.

Lie: Gov. Walz never made Chief Master Sgt.

Truth: He was a CMSGT for a few years, and after retiring, was only demoted because he had not completed his professional military education and hadn’t served in that rank long enough to retire in it. To retire at a rank, you must have held it for three years. I retired as a Lt Colonel; had I retired before being an LTC for three years, I would have reverted to the previous rank of Major. There is no dishonor in this; it happens all the time. I still would hold the title of LTC.

In fact, in the Army aviation branch, many officers resign their commissions to become warrant officers, a lower rank, so they can keep flying and do less desk work. This is common in the Army National Guard, and just because they did that doesn’t mean it was a scandalous demotion.

We have a pandemic in this country of weak men attacking stronger men to feel better about themselves and to denigrate military service to make their own lack of service not appear so self-serving or cowardly. It bodes darkly for the future, and we must push back against this with everything we have. Serving in the military is honorable and must be seen as such, regardless of the veteran’s party affiliation.

The attacks from anyone, especially the coward Trump, are a disservice not just to Gov. Walz but to anyone who served in uniform. Now, any military member thinking of running for office could be dissuaded because who knows how any part of your military record could be twisted or distorted to make your service look less than honorable.

Finally, JD Vance got out after his initial enlistment. If we wanted to play his game, we could say he left his country out to dry by not reenlisting, and if he was a real hero, he would have stayed. Of course, I don’t mean that, he served honorably, but it’s equivalent to what they are doing to Gov. Walz now. And it makes me sick.

Categories Accountability, Character, Elections, Ethics, Lies, Trump, Vance, J.D., Walz, Tim

Walz Left the National Guard Before His Unit Learned about Deployment to Iraq, Says Man Who Served Under Him

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2024 //
28

JD Vance has accused his rival, Tim Walz, of evading combat duty by quitting the National Guard before his unit was deployed to Iraq.

But a man who served under Walz’s command in the same unit told journalists that Walz retired to run for Congress before the unit received orders to deploy to Iraq.

The Hill published the story:

Al Bonnifield, who served 22 years in the Minnesota National Guard, told NewsNation’s Joe Khalil that Walz, like many of the men in their unit, suspected they might be deployed soon but had been given no such official order when he decided to retire.

“He told us that he wanted to run for Congress, and he was in a tough spot, because he was pretty sure we were going to Iraq,” Bonnifield said. “We didn’t have orders. We didn’t have any kind of orders at all.” 

Bonnifield added that Walz struggled with the decision, and talked with his fellow service member for 30 to 45 minutes about, “‘What do I do? Where can I be a better person for the soldier? Where can I be a better person for Minnesota? Where can I be a better person for the United States?’…”

Joe Eustice, who served with Walz for years, told The Washington Post he disagreed with the governor’s politics, but Walz did not avoid combat duty and was a good soldier. At the time Walz left the unit, Eustice told the Post there had only been speculation the unit could be deployed.

“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did?” Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), former President Trump’s running mate, said at the Michigan campaign event. “He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him.” 

But Bonnifield vehemently pushed back on the assertion that Walz abandoned his unit, calling it “wrong” and “bulls‑‑‑.”

And after Walz retired, Bonnifield said there was “a little remorse” in the unit, given he had trained many of them across a decade.

“He was our person to go to. He had the answers. He was also a father figure to us. If we had a problem we needed to talk to somebody, he was there.” 

It’s ironic that Vance would bring up this topic since Donald Trump was a notorious draft-dodger. When he was eligible for the draft, his father arranged for him to evade the draft by getting a diagnosis of “bone spurs” from a storefront podiatrist in Queens, enabling him to receive five deferments. The podiatrist rented office space from Donald Trump’s Father, Fred Trump. Neither Donald nor his older sons—Don Jr. and Eric—ever wore their country’s uniform.

Categories Accountability, Character, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Fake News, Lies, Vance, J.D., Walz, Tim

Jess Piper: A Rural Democrat Celebrates Tim Walz

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2024 //
34

In her latest post on her blog “Dirt Road Democrat,” Jess Piper expresses her joy at Kamala Harris’s choice of Tim Walz to be her Vice-Presidential nominee. She opens by describing her return from a vacation in Maine, where she ate her first lobster roll and checked off her bucket list. Maine was everything she imagined it would be.

When she woke up this morning, like the rest of us, she was thrilled with the news. She wrote:

I woke up to some of the most hopeful and exciting news…Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz as her VP. From the day I saw his name on the short list, I was rooting for Governor Walz.

He is a former Social Studies teacher and he understands the assignment.

Walz is so perfect for the job of VP. He’s a rural progressive. He’s my people. A dirt road Democrat. He’s a liberal guy who lives among conservative folks. He’s a veteran, a teacher, a lawmaker, and a dad. Walz can speak to Republicans and can likely help pull in Independent votes. 

He can show up to an event in a tee and a hat and a Carhart jacket and not look like he’s trying to be something he isn’t. 

Walz is the guy who could install your gutters and snake your drain and patch a hole in your drywall. He can also sign a bill into law to feed every kid in your state breakfast and lunch for free. How can you not love the guy?

Here are just a few of his education and child-centered accomplishments:

As governor, Walz took advantage of a Democratic trifecta in state government to push through a progressive policy agenda that included free breakfast and lunch for all schoolchildren. Minnesota was the fourth state to offer school lunch to all students, an early adopter of a policy that has become a growing national trend.

The budget he signed in 2023 included a major funding boost for Minnesota schools and a $1,750 per-child annual tax credit that aimed to reduce childhood poverty. Congress has failed to reinstate the pandemic-era federal child tax credit that dramatically cut childhood hunger and poverty.

Walz also signed a free college tuition program for Minnesota families earning less than $80,000 a year. The program provides last-dollar scholarships that close gaps between students’ financial aid packages and the actual cost of attendance.

Tim Walz was my pick from the short list because of what he has done for kids in his state. I can’t tell you how heartwarming it is to see a person who actually cares for kids enact policies. In a time in which I am overwhelmed with mailers for political candidates who claim to be “pro-life” or “pro-child” but who are really just about abortion bans and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, Governor Walz is a breath of fresh air. He’s the real deal. 

His Midwestern dad vibes are true. 

Here’s the fun part though: Gov Walz is speaking on a call tonight — Rural Americans for Harris. I started talking with a few rural organizers two weeks ago about setting up a call to mimic many of the others supporting our next President, Kamala Harris. We worked to get several rural folks and lawmakers on the call and Gov Walz agreed to speak last week. I’m crossing my fingers that he can still make it since he’s had some big news today.

Here is the invitation below and here is the link. I will be on the call as well. I would love to see you there.

I feel so hopeful, friend. I feel so excited for our country. 

Seriously, I have not been this pumped for national candidates in such a long time. You know I try to stay Missouri-centered because that is where the nasty policies for my state originate, but I am going to bask in the warmth of a woman Presidential nominee and her Social Studies teacher VP for a few minutes. 

LFG.

~Jess

P.S. Missouri has the chance to elect our first woman Governor, Crystal Quade, and I am on my way to vote for her in the primary as soon as I hit send!

Categories Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Ethics, Funding, Harris, Kamala, Rural Schools

Politico: Almost Everything You Need to Know About Tim Walz

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2024 //
17

Politico gathered 55 fun facts about Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s choice to run as her vice-president.

JD Vance said that Walz is even more “radical left” than Harris. That means Walz thinks people should have affordable health care (when his father died of cancer, his mother had to go to work to pay off the medical debt); he believes children should get free meals in school (feeding kids! very “radical”); he supports veterans; he opposes school vouchers; he is pro-union and passed legislation to protect unions; he supports abortion and passed legislation to protect women’s right to choose.

That sounds centrist and sensible to me, no matter what Vance says. Vance’s smear says more about him than about Walz.

Tim Walz
Categories Education Reform, Elections, Ethics, Funding, Harris, Kamala, Health, Trump, Walz, Tim

Kamala Picks Tim Walz as Her Vice-Presidential Nominee!!!

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2024 //
38

This is wonderful news!

I heard it this morning and could not believe it. It seemed too good to be true, but it was true!

Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz to run with her on the Democratic ticket.

She intended to announce it at 5:30 pm today in Philadelphia. It leaked.

It’s a great choice.

Governor Walz is a strong supporter of public schools. He graduated from public school in Nebraska in a graduating class of 25.

He grew up in a rural area, and he is able to discuss complicated issues in plain language.

He has a way of speaking that is wise, smart, direct, and easy. He has a twinkle as he speaks.

He launched the word “weird” as a description of Trump and Vance.

He has a net worth of $13,500.

He taught social studies for 20 years.

His masters degree is in educational leadership.

He served from 2007-2019 as a member of Congress, where he headed the Committee on Veteran Affairs.

He served in the National Guard for 25 years.

Walz will be a great addition to the Harris campaign.

Hurrah!

Categories Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Ethics, Harris, Kamala, Supporting public schools, Teachers
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