I watched Tim Walz speak to a crowd in his home state of Nebraska, and he was wonderful.
I encourage you to watch this good, decent man. He knows that what matters most in our leaders is their character and their values. He has them.
The above link is for Tim Walz’s speech.
If you want to watch the whole event, including his introduction by his wife Gwen, open this link. If you are a teacher, you will love her call-out to teachers, and the crowd roaring “TEACHERS! TEACHERS! TEACHERS!”
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 Her father—a totally normal Midwestern guy—began watching Fox “News” when he retired, and within a year had become withdrawn, bitter, angry, and filled with hate.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.
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.
ABC News did some digging and contrasted the holdings of the two Vice-Presidential candidates. Members of Congress are required to disclose their income and net worth (within broad ranges) every year. Since Walz is a Governor, not a member of Congress, they examined other public sources.
Vance has earnings as a Senator, plus book royalties and investment income.
Waltz receives a salary as a governor, supplemented by his wife’s teaching income, as well as his pension fund. He has no investment income; the Walz family owns no stocks or bonds.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former teacher and member of the U.S. House of Representatives, earns about $127,000 in salary per year, retains no stock holdings and relies on a pension account as his primary asset, financial disclosures show.
By contrast, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, a former venture capitalist, brought in roughly $221,000 in 2022 from salary and book royalties, as well as hundreds of thousands in investment income, a U.S. Senate financial disclosure showed. He also held significant wealth in brokerage accounts and dozens of business investments, according to the financial disclosure.
ABC News estimates that Vance is a multimillionaire, while Walz has a net worth of less than $1 million.
The New York Times wrote up the comparison as well.
After JD Vance was elected to the Senate from Ohio in 2022, he and his wife bought a five-bedroom house — their third home — for $1.6 million in Alexandria, Va., not far from the Capitol. Their real estate agent told a local magazine that the buyers paid in cash.
When Tim Walz was elected governor of Minnesota four years earlier, his family was living in a heavily mortgaged Cape Cod-style house, with one room rented out, about 90 miles from Minneapolis. After moving into the governor’s mansion, they sold the house for $304,000 — less than the asking price.
These real estate transactions are just one example of the vast gulf in wealth between the two vice-presidential candidates. On their tax return for 2023, the Walzes reported $299,000 in income, more than they had declared in years. Mr. Vance, a multimillionaire, had more than that in just his checking accounts the year before, according to his most recent financial disclosure form….
Mr. Walz has released his tax returns virtually every year since he was first elected to public office in 2006 as a congressman representing a rural district in Minnesota. The Walzes’ income has remained fairly consistent, averaging about $211,000 annually over the past decade, according to their returns.
In his final disclosure as a member of Congress, filed in 2019, Mr. Walz listed assets ranging from $113,000 to $330,000 in value, almost all in retirement, pension or life insurance accounts. He also listed a college-savings account, but as of 2019, it held at most $15,000. His daughter finished college last year, and his son is in high school, a spokeswoman said.
The Walzes’ savings might not be as meager as the form suggests. Mr. Walz, 60, should be eligible for a federal pension, with a potentially generous annual benefit, and he might also have money in a federal savings plan — neither of which he would be required to disclose. He and his wife reported only $167,000 in income in 2022, but their income rose significantly last year, mainly due to $135,000 in payments from pensions and annuities.
Mr. Vance, 39, and his wife, Usha, 38, who was a corporate litigator at a prestigious law firm based in San Francisco before resigning last month, listed about $4.4 million to $11.5 million in assets in 2022. That included holdings Mr. Vance reported in recent days, but not the value of the couple’s homes.
In addition to the house in Northern Virginia, the Vances bought a townhouse — that they now rent out — in Washington, D.C., for $590,000 in 2014, the year they married. Four years later, they bought a 6,400-square-foot home overlooking the Ohio River in Cincinnati for about $1.4 million.
Mr. Vance reported more than 160 different investments, accounts and assets, but Mr. Schroeder, his spokesman, said Mr. Vance did not hold individual stocks.
A financial expert explain the Walz’s low wealth:
She said the Walzes’ assets reflected the years they spent teaching in public schools with modest salaries. “You are not accumulating wealth,” she said. “You are at most paying off your mortgage, and hopefully you have a pension to see you through retirement.”
Walz had an opportunity to raise his salary as governor but declined to do so:
He now earns about $128,000 as governor. He was entitled to a salary of $139,000 in 2023 and $149,000 in 2024, but he turned down the increases.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Walz said that he did so because he had appointed the members of the council who had recommended higher salaries for state officials, including himself.
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.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian of fascism, points out in a column for MSNBC that strongmen can laugh at others but they bear being laughed at. That’s why Governor Tim Walz’s reference to Trump and Vance as “weird” cut them down.
She wrote:
It’s the summer of weird Republicans. GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump repeatedly mentions Hannibal Lecter at his rallies, speaking about the fictional cannibal as though he were a real person. “He’s a lovely man. He’d love to have you for dinner,” must be one of the strangest things a candidate has said while trying to attract votes. Meanwhile, Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has made news with his bizarre opinions, including a 2021 remark that Americans with children should be able to vote more times in an election than their childless compatriots. Even Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent candidate for president who met with Trump to discuss the possibility of dropping out of the race, admitted to dumping a bear carcass in Central Park a decade ago. (“We thought it would be amusing for whoever found it,” he claimed.)
“These guys are just weird,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said last week on “Morning Joe.” That label has stuck ever since, to the right’s frustration and fury. Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has seized the messaging advantages of “weird,” and on Tuesday she even named Walz to the ticket.
When fringe beliefs become mainstream, it’s easy to accept a political environment where the surreal and the extreme are everyday affairs.
For scholars of authoritarianism, the success of “weird” is no surprise. That’s because humor has long been one of the most effective weapons of anti-authoritarian politics. Behind the facade of their omnipotence, most strongmen are brittle and insecure personalities. They don’t mind being called evil, but being ridiculed is a different matter.
When fringe beliefs become mainstream, it’s easy to accept a political environment where the surreal and the extreme are everyday affairs. That’s how we get to Fox News host Jesse Watters telling viewers that “scientists” believe that “when a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman.” The misogyny and transgender phobia that may have inspired this proclamation are no joke, but the opportunity for satire at the ridiculous statement should not be missed.
Strongmen have their own sadistic sense of humor, which is amply displayed in the awful authoritarian spectacles staged by their governments. The Nazis enjoyed making Communists who entered Dachau concentration camp in 1933, like Hans Beimler, wear signs that said “A hearty welcome!” But they cannot take a joke when they are the targets. That’s why they have to surround themselves with sycophants and lackeys, and their enablers know their prestige must be policed. When a man brought his pet rabbit named Mussolini to a bar in fascist Italy, thinking others would enjoy seeing him order it around, he was quickly arrested and served a year in confinement.
Chilean graphic artist Guillo Bastías discovered the price of puncturing the leader’s personality cult with humor when the magazine Apsi published his caricature of dictator Augusto Pinochet as Louis XIVin 1987. The regime sent the magazine’s editors to jail for “extremism”: That’s how threatening humor can be as a truth-telling vehicle, in this case about how Pinochet saw the scope of his power.
Satire shifts our perception of things and people, helping us to see them in a new light that is often unflattering to them. And it reminds us that what we are living through is out of the ordinary. As Bastías told me in 2018, he wanted to reassure Chileans suffering under the dictatorship that there were people who were “refusing to accept the disinformation and lies … refusing to accept the abnormal as normal.”
And so we are back to “weird” as a strategy of disruption, and how thankful we can be that our democratic rights afford us freedom of speech to level such critiques at the powerful without fear of detention or worse. That is how artist Robin Bell was able to stage his projections on the front of Trump International Hotel, like a May 2017 work that read “Pay Trump Bribes Here.” While Bell worked in very different circumstances than Guillo, he, too, saw his work as a way of reminding people that “what we are experiencing is not normal.”
Humor can have a crucial role in the work of mobilization and civic education to keep those democratic rights. “Laughtivism,” as Serbian democracy activist Srdja Popovic has called it, views humor as more effective than anger in highly polarized situations. When we laugh together, fear and distrust lessen, which is the opposite of what authoritarians want. That, too, is why such leaders can’t take a joke.
John Thompson of Oklahoma writes about a Zoom he attended for people over 60, called “Elders for Kamala.” What a great idea to harness the power of Zoom to reach thousands, tens of thousands of people, and bring them together in conversationfor a common purpose. I joined a Women for Kamala. There was also White Dudes for Kamala, and many more. The purpose now is to change the direction of the country from the personal vendettas of Trump to Kamala’s capacious vision for the future.
He writes:
An incredible burst of energy has grown out of zoom calls for Kamala Harris by Black women, then Black men; White women and men; Black queer men, South Asian women, Latinas, Native women; and, now, the Third Act’s “Elders for Kamala.” I was blown away by the Third Act’s zoom call which spoke to around 11,000 and harnessed “our long years of wisdom and courage to back Kamala Harris as she tries to protect our democracy.”
The Third Act is a “community of Americans over 60 determined to change the world for the better.” It “harnesses an unparalleled generational power to safeguard our climate and democracy.”
The call began with Jane Fonda, who was particularly eloquent in calling for an end to tax breaks for oil and gas industries. She was followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders who praised World War II veterans and those who suffered through the Great Depression, and who laid the foundation for post-WWII generations. Similarly, Black co-moderator Akaya Windwood thanked her mother for her dream as she put her Akaya on the bus to the Sit-Ins, and helped pave the way for the dream of a Black President.
Co-moderator Bill McKibben praised today’s “mild chaos of the best kind,” and shifted his focus to kids who will be alive in the 22th Century. Robin Wall Kimmerer advanced the conversation about how such change occurs. It requires today’s elders to be “good Ancestors;” she then brought the house down by proposing the meme, “Pollinators for Kamala.”
Judith LeBanc, Executive Director of the Native Organizers Alliance, and a citizen of the Caddo Nation, articulated a message which I believe is especially important for young people. She said, “Representation is not destination,” but it lays a crucial foundation for empowering “our ancestors” in behalf of “our descendents.” She cited the progress made by Interior Department Secretary Deb Van Holland as evidence that, “Politics doesn’t end on election day; it begins on election day.”
Gus Speth, who served in the Carter Administration, as well as co-founding the National Resources Defense Council, and who was jailed for protesting the Keystone pipeline, gave more specific advice. He said that the positions he took in political and legal battles were less important than the position he took in a D.C. jail for civil disobedience. Reverend Lennox Yearwood, who was arrested for protesting the pipeline while campaigning for Barrack Obama, also explained how he found a balance between working outside and inside the political system.
Former Senator John Kerry, who had been a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, stressed another way to find such a balance. Sen. Kerry explained how and why climate change is our greatest security threat. It will produce 10s of millions of climate refugees, further undermining stability in a dangerous world. Sen. Kerry then praised Jane Fonda for her leadership in the 1969 Earthday. Then, Kerry recalled how his team targeted and defeated 7 of the “Dirty Dozen,” who were the worst climate deniers in Congress. That helped lead the way to the foundation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Similarly, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit explained that corporate powers sought to “privatize our imagination.” She then pointed out Sam Brown’s experience in organizing the nation’s biggest anti-Vietnam War rally, and how Brown said “we don’t want to elect Putin’s best friend.” Author and co-founder of the Chief Relationship Officer of Bioneers, Nina Simons, explained that we need Kamala to win big so we will have more power to “really win for the earth.”
And Terry Tempest Williams called in from a house in Utah where the heat wave produced temperatures as high as 100 degrees in-doors. She personally witnesses so many tragic climate disasters, but she also set the stage for hopeful advice. She began by introducing the audience to her cats, and then calling the crowd to “put our love into action” for Kamala Harris. We should see ourselves as “Elders in training,” who “listen and support our young people.”
Of course, this is just a brief account of the Third Act’s elders’ advice. I haven’t even gotten to all the former legislators, activists, and authors who shared their wisdom on zoom. My personal focus is on cross-cultural and cross-generational conversations, so I was thrilled to experience the eloquence with which they discussed the stages of history that produce change. I loved the way they grounded those processes in the best of humanity. Even though participants were blunt about the existential threats we face, they offered hope.
For instance, the author Catherine Grundy said that humans “have the ability to evolve on a daily basis,” and “impossible is just a word.” Former Senator Tim Wirth addressed the nuances of operating in the political system, but also said, “the nicest thing about the last two weeks is …. So many people had a great smile on their face.”
While our immediate focus must be on the next three months, their call for shortterm and longterm grassroots actions after election day were extremely valuable. Between election day and the inauguration, we can celebrate but, mostly we must beat back Trump’s likely efforts to steal the election. Then we must commit to decades of work. “Elders for Kamala” is thus an inspiring, as well as pragmatic, call for unity and building on our better selves to save both our democracy and planet.
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.
On Monday, we started watching the Kamala & Tim rally in Philadelphia an hour early. We couldn’t wait! The arena at Temple University was packed, and the crowd was excited. We shared their excitement, watching at home.
Josh Shapiro was terrific, dynamic, and passionate in introducing the candidates. I thought, “This guy has a great future ahead of him. He might be President in eight years.” But I was glad Kamala didn’t choose him to run with her, because the ticket will be bombarded with racism and misogyny; it doesn’t need the additional handicap of anti-Semitism. Also, I was turned off by his support for vouchers; Republicans do that, not Democrats.
What was enthralling about the Philly event and the rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, was the euphoria. The large crowds cheered and applauded with ebullience.
They chanted “We won’t go back!”
When JD Vance’s name was mentioned, they chanted “He’s a weirdo!”
When Trump’s name was mentioned, the crowd chanted, “Lock him up!”
In Eau Claire, Kamala thanked President Biden for his fifty years of service, and the crowd chanted, “Thank you, Joe!“
The crowds cheered every reference to restoring the right of women to control their bodies. They cheered their support for gay rights. They cheered the importance of clean air and clean water. They cheered her pledge to pass gun control legislation. They cheered her promise to sign voting rights legislation. They cheered the candidates’ pledge to champion unions and to build the middle class. Kamala said, “When the middle class is strong, America is strong,” and the crowd cheered louder.
Ebullience! Enthusiasm! Energy!
Something transformative is happening in the race and to the Democratic Party. People are ready to work for this ticket, ready to turn the country in a direction that serves the people, not big corporations.
A political party that was divided and fearful has been transformed in only weeks into a mass of people willing to march, cheer, sign up new voters, dig deep, and turn this country towards the future.
Two things stand out.
First, MAGA is a backward-looking movement, longing for the days of white Christian male supremacy, when men ran the world, and women had babies and stayed in the kitchen. Kamala says: “We are not going back!” and she paints a picture of building a nation with a better future for everyone.
Second, there is a striking difference in tone between the two parties. The Republican candidates are angry, humorless, bitter, and vengeful; their candidates scowl. The Democrats are happy, joyous, and excited; their candidates laugh and are enjoying the experience.
One party is fading, the other is energized.
Hope is in the air.
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.
Diane Ravitch's blog 