B-Man

YOU CAN’T HATE THE MSM ENOUGH: Earlier today, the MSM repeated Hamas propaganda as fact, not bothering to note that “local health officials” in Gaz are Hamas. Here is CNN, just for example. Besides repeating the casualty figures as presumptively accurate despite the source, CNN did not mention that the strike was at 5 AM, in the summer, on a Hamas HQ. And as happens so often, Hamas couldn’t keep the lie going, reducing the casualty count from over 90 to 40 within hours, and who knows if that is also exaggerated: Meanwhile, Israel identified by name twenty wanted Hamas terrorists who were killed in the bombing. https://instapundit.com/666344/

Tim Walz’s Military Service Controversy Dr. Mackubin Owens Kamala Harris’s vice-president choice is embroiled in an unexpected controversy. It’s not about his dismal record as governor of Minnesota but his National Guard service, specifically the circumstances surrounding his decision to “retire” just as his unit was scheduled to deploy to Iraq. Many people might consider the whole affair much ado about nothing but there is an important issue at stake here. Walz served 24 years first, in the Nebraska Guard and then the Minnesota Guard. During his time with his Minnesota unit, the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery Regiment, he was deployed overseas twice, first in support of NATO and then in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Neither deployment was to a combat zone. At the time of his separation, he had been conditionally promoted to Command Sergeant Major (CSM), the senior non-commissioned officer (NCO) of his battalion. The condition was that he complete the Sergeants Major Course (formerly known as the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy). The timing of Walz’s decision to “retire” from his post on the eve of the unit's pending deployment to Iraq created some understandable resentment on the part of other members of the unit. For instance, in a letter posted to Facebook in 2018 when Walz first ran for governor, retired Command Sergeants Major Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr claimed that Walz retired from the National Guard after learning that his battalion would be deployed to Iraq, despite allegedly assuring his fellow troops he would join them. As Behrends and Herr wrote: “On May 16th, 2005, [Walz] quit, betraying his country, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war.” Why does this matter? Because Walz’s decision to leave at such a critical time essentially undermined his battalion’s unit cohesion, the fundamental foundation of military effectiveness. This unit cohesion depends upon the mutual trust among soldiers and between soldiers and their leaders. Anyone who has served in the military, officer or enlisted, knows that the backbone of any unit is the NCO. For an NCO, especially the unit’s senior NCO to voluntarily leave his troops as they are preparing for a combat deployment seems to me to be a dereliction of duty. Critics have accused Walz of “cowardice” and “treason” which is nonsense. But the fact is that he did place his personal interest above loyalty to his soldiers. That decision reveals a serious character flaw. The controversy has seen the revival of certain old tropes, including “stolen valor” applied to Walz and “swift boating” to describe his critics. For a veteran, “stolen valor” is the greatest of all sins. The terms come from the title of a book by a friend of mine, B.G. “Jugg” Burkett, about the widespread misrepresentation of service in Vietnam. Using the Freedom of Information Act to examine service records, he discovered that during the 1980s and 1990s, some 1,700 individuals, including celebrities, had fabricated their war stories. Many had never even been in the service. Many had been but had never been in Vietnam. The profusion of claims by frauds to have been in this war or that, or to have been awarded this medal or that, led to the passage of the Stolen Valor Act of 2013 (Public Law 113-12), which makes it a crime to lie about service in order to receive benefits or money from others. For me, calling out and publicly humiliating a fraud is punishment enough. If stolen valor is a felony, embellishing one’s military record is a misdemeanor. After all, soldiers have embellished their war records since the beginning of time. Anyone who has spent more than an hour in the military has heard a “war story” (or the Navy-Marine Corps variant, the “sea story”). The attitude of most vets to these sorts of tales is an old joke: What’s the difference between a fairy tale and a war/sea story? The former begins, “once upon a time;” the latter begins “now this is no s**t!” A case no doubt familiar to New Englanders is that of Connecticut U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Marine Vietnam-era veteran who claimed to have been a Vietnam veteran when, in fact, he never left the United States during his term of service. Walz is credibly charged with the same misdemeanor. First, he implied that he had served in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), when in fact he had been deployed to Europe “in support of” OEF. He also claimed to have retired as a CSM when in fact he did not fulfill the conditions of appointment to that rank, as noted above. He retired as a Master Sergeant. https://www.golocalprov.com/politics/tim-walzs-military-service-controversy-dr.-mackubin-owens

No Sh*t. Kamala Harris Can’t Articulate The Case For Voting For Her by Elizabeth Stauffer FTA: But sooner or later, Harris will have to face reporters. She will also (likely) face former President Donald Trump on a debate stage. If Trump can remain disciplined, share his vision for a second term, ask voters if they were better off under his leadership than they are now, and simply let Harris be Harris, he can regain his lead in this race. Harris will be forced to make her case in her own words. My guess is that voters will be shocked by her inadequate communication skills. They may also be surprised by her arrogant demeanor. Aside from the fly that landed on then-Vice President Mike Pence’s head (and remained for two minutes) during the 2020 vice presidential debate, the biggest takeaway was Harris’ imperious behavior: “I’m speaking. I’m speaking.” When Fox News asked attendees at Harris’ recent address to the American Federation of Teachers’ Convention in Houston, Texas, what they see as her policy accomplishments during her time as vice president, well … no one could say. One supporter told Fox, “I really don’t know much of what she did.” https://thefederalist.com/2024/08/07/kamala-harris-cant-articulate-the-case-for-voting-for-her/ .

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The role of the Star Tribune revisited By Scott Johnson Some observers outside Minnesota may reasonably ask, if Governor Tim Walz is so bad (and, as I say, worse than bad), why he has done so well politically. The reasons are many. One reason is the subservience of the Star Tribune to the needs of the Democratic Party. The work of the Star Tribune in Walz’s service provides a current case study. See, for example, Rochelle Olson’s treatment of the current controversy regarding Walz’s departure from the Minnesota National Guard before it was to deploy to Iraq in this classic “Fact check: Walz’s National Guard records show that Vance’s claim of ‘stolen valor’ is false.” Subhead: “GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance claims that the Minnesota governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate bailed as his unit headed to Iraq, but Walz retired before his unit was called up.” The Star Tribune featured Olson’s story on page one yesterday. (Dustin Grage has stepped up to serve as a one-man Walz truth squad.) https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/08/the-role-of-the-star-tribune-2.php .

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Las Vegas Police Recordings Released From Biden's Medical Event and Code 3 Transport to Airport https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2024/08/09/breaking-las-vegas-metro-pd-recordings-released-from-bidens-leaving-las-vegas-n2177942#google_vignette .

LUNACY.

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Look a picture of a couch ! .

Because he didn't lie about it. . . . . . . . . . . . . but you knew that.

Just Who Is the Real Middle-Class President? Stephen Moore President Joe Biden talked incessantly about his "from the middle class out" economic strategy. Given his record, it would have been more accurate to call it the "middle class down and out" plan. Inflation has eroded away any income gains under Biden's presidency. Now Vice President Kamala Harris has her own riff on this theme. Her campaign motto is "building up the middle class." It isn't exactly "Make America Great Again," but Dems don't have a lot of time to come up with anything catchier, given that Kamala was reluctantly chosen as the 8th inning relief pitcher for Old Joe, who had long ago lost his fastball. But Harris and Biden are, as the old saying goes, birds of a feather who flock together. They are running on almost precisely the same agenda as we've seen for four years. The central problem is that the record for most Americans is a lot more meaningful than the message. The irony of this "build the middle class" mantra is that no administration in recent times has done more to tear down the middle class than Biden-Harris. The most recent Census Bureau data on incomes and poverty shows that under former President Trump, incomes of the middle class rose faster than under all the three previous presidents combined. The difference between the Trump and Biden administrations is $8,000 per household in Trump's favor. This same data shows income gains for minorities and female-headed households were larger under Trump. Poverty rates fell faster under Trump as well. https://hotair.com/stephen-moore/2024/08/09/just-who-is-the-real-middle-class-president-n3792894 .