Vice President Kamala Harris’s new running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), has a reputation as a “reliable friend” to Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials.

“It’s a good sign for us,” Oleksandr Merezhko, Ukrainian foreign affairs chairman, told the Washington Examiner. “Of course, we don’t know whether or not he will become the vice president because, you know, this political struggle is very close, and again, it’s becoming interesting and unpredictable.”

Merezhko and other Ukrainian officials have become avid American political news followers, given the importance of U.S. military assistance in continuing Ukraine’s ability to fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion. And Walz has found ways to cultivate relationships with them, even as a governor.

“Gov. Walz is definitely one of the leaders of such support and a reliable friend of our country,” Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova told a Ukrainian outlet Tuesday. “When I visited Minnesota in December … the governor and I met with the Farm Bureau and actually joined him in convincing them of how important Ukraine’s victory is to the U.S. national interest.”

And in February, Walz signed an agreement with Markarova to establish a partnership between the state of Minnesota and Chernihiv Oblast, a region near Kyiv.

“He is very pro-Ukrainian and our press and our people, they view him as a friend, as a true friend of Ukraine,” Merezhko said.

The presidential election has put Ukrainian officials in a tricky diplomatic position, given the divergent rhetorical postures of the Republican and Democratic tickets. Harris and President Joe Biden have maintained a very supportive tone throughout the full-scale war despite their policy of doling out aid by degrees or imposing restrictions on the use of American weapons against military targets inside Russia. 

Former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), have downplayed the relevance of the conflict to U.S. interests and signaled their desire for a quick end to the war — a prospect that worries many Ukrainians, who fear that such a scenario would amount to a victory for Russia. Yet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team has been reaching out to Trump and his allies in recent months, which included what Trump described as “a very good phone call” with Zelensky after the Republican standard-bearer survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania.

“The fact that Trump described this as a good call means his animus against Zelensky is old news,” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, John Herbst, told Politico. “It’s why the populist wing of the party was against Ukraine. If Trump is not there, then they’re not there.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/foreign-policy/3114458/ukraine-sees-walz-reliable-friend-against-russia/

READ FROM TOP

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

SEE ALSO: 

The woke zealotry of Tim Walz
Kamala Harris’s VP pick confirms that the Democrats are beyond saving.

Now that US vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has picked her running mate, the true nature of the 2024 election has come into sharp focus. When Americans walk into their voting booths this November, they will see the names Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Donald Trump and JD Vance. But woke ideology and its resultant policies are really what are on the ballot.

Any hopes that the Democrats would tone down on woke, or cater to independents even a little bit, disappeared on Tuesday with the announcement that Governor Walz of Minnesota would be Harris’s running mate. Walz has for the past five years presided over a once-moderate state, which has now become a byword for ideological capture.

A more obvious bait-and-switch has perhaps never been played in American politics. Walz may have humble, centrist roots. But since ascending the ranks of power in the Minnesota Democratic establishment, he has fully embraced the kind of woke policies that have alienated working-class voters across America.

Walz is a zealot of gender ideology. He made Minnesota a ‘safe haven’ for the medical transitioning of children. He signed a bill into law last year that allows the state to take custody of children whose parents refuse permission for their child to receive ‘gender-affirming care’ – that is, harmful experimental drugs and surgeries. As of this year, menstrual products must now be put in the boys’ bathrooms in all public schools, as per a law he championed. Tampons and sanitary towels must be available to all ‘menstruating students’, regardless of their gender, above the age of nine, the bill states.

Walz has also gone hard on racial identity politics. During the Covid-19 crisis in 2021, as concerns over medicine scarcity raged, he backed a ‘weighted lottery’ approach to giving out monoclonal antibodies that prioritised not just health concerns, but also a patient’s race.

Of course, after his selection, the mainstream media’s narrative machine immediately jumped into overdrive to paint Walz as ‘kind’ and ‘folksy’ – just your average Joe with the common touch, as befits a football-coaching dad from the American heartland. John King of CNN described him as ‘a small-town Midwesterner’ who ‘won a Republican House seat and held it, in very difficult years for Democrats’. ‘He has that small town, rural appeal’, King insisted.

Having Walz on the Democratic ticket was a show of ‘love versus hate’, according to Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe, who described him as a man ‘with an authentic touch that could really break through’. ‘Very, very, positive’, intoned her husband, Joe Scarborough. Elsewhere on MSNBC, Pete Buttigieg claimed that Harris ‘has found an extraordinary partner, who has brought that joy immediately to the campaign trail’.

At Harris and Walz’s first rally together in Philadelphia last night, Kamala projected total faith in being on the right side of history. ‘We are the underdogs in this race’, she said. ‘We will govern on behalf of all Americans.’ That seems unlikely.

For an American populace still reeling four years after the politically motivated riots that started in Walz’s home state, following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, Harris’s VP pick feels like a smack in the face. In the aftermath of Floyd’s death in May 2020, Minneapolis became a flash point for the radical ‘defund the police’ movement. Three years later, even the New York Times admitted the experiment was a ‘failure’. ‘Violent crime soared’, wrote Ernesto Londoño in the Times in 2023. ‘Many residents have given up on the local public-transportation system, where some stations increasingly have become gathering points for people who openly smoke fentanyl and other drugs.’ Walz, while not directly responsible for Minneapolis’s policing, hired defund-the-police activists to the state’s sentencing commission.

Pay no attention to the Democrats’ paeans to fighting for the poor and oppressed. Just like every other woke policy, the ones overseen by Walz in Minnesota have harmed the very people he claims to fight for.

Take education. According to figures from 2022, Minnesota has ‘one of the largest education-achievement gaps between black and white students in the country’, notes one African-American journalist based in St Paul, the state’s capital. ‘Just 31 per cent of black students are proficient in reading compared to 59 per cent of white students. In addition, just 20 per cent of black students are proficient in math in comparison to 54 per cent of their white counterparts’, he adds. This is despite – or more likely, because of – the state’s enthusiasm for embedding the ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ agenda into schools.

Much has been made about Walz’s star turn a few weeks ago, when he called the Trump-Vance ticket ‘weird’. The banal jibe went viral. Many commentators say that this quip was what made Harris ultimately decide in Walz’s favour, instead of the popular and centrist Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. Given that the Harris campaign has thus far operated mostly on vibes, I find it quite plausible that the Democrats would go with a man who brings no electoral advantage, but who simply said something that caught the attention of people online. However, picking Walz over Shapiro betrays a more sinister impulse as well – it also speaks to the Democrats’ abandonment of American Jews.

Shapiro has high approval ratings, at just over 60 per cent overall and over 40 per cent among registered Republicans, in his own battleground state. He would have given the campaign a crucial edge in that all-important Electoral College vote. But he is an observant Jew who in the past has spoken out in defence of Israel and against anti-Semitism. This means he was the focus of ire from some pro-Palestine activists who campaigned to keep him off the ticket. As the New York Times wrote at the beginning of the month, this meant Harris was faced with a significant choice: ‘Should she take the opportunity to stand up to her far-left flank in an appeal to the centre of the party and to independents, or should she shy away from inflaming an issue that has divided and bedevilled the party – Israel’s war in Gaza?’

Well, Harris has made her choice: she has sided with the Hamas-loving, kid-transing wing of the Democratic Party. The battle lines have now been firmly and clearly drawn. Americans will face a stark choice this November.

Jenny Holland is a former newspaper reporter and speechwriter. Visit her Substack here.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/07/the-woke-zealotry-of-tim-walz/

READ FROM TOP

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

Tim Walz has embellished and selectively omitted facts and circumstances of his military career for years. 

We, retired Command Sergeants Major of the Minnesota National Guard, feel it is our duty and responsibility to bring forth the truth as we know it concerning his service record. So, we have put together a timeline of his service post 9/11. To the best of our knowledge, this information is completely true, having been verified by all those who served in positions with first hand knowledge of the facts and circumstances of his service and departure from the Minnesota National Guard. Many of the dates and time frames are from his official discharge document and the reduction order reducing him to Master Sergeant. 

On September 18th, 2001 Tim Walz reenlisted in the Minnesota Army National Guard for six years. 

In early 2003 he was selected to attend the United States Army Sergeants Major Academy. The non-resident course consists of two years of correspondence coursework, followed by a two-week resident phase at Fort Bliss, Texas. When a Senior Non-Commissioned Officer accepts enrollment in the course, they accept three stipulations. First, they will serve for two years after graduation from the academy, or promotion to Sergeant Major or Command Sergeant Major, whichever is later. Second, if they fail the course they may be separated from the military. Third, they will complete the course or be reduced to Master Sergeant without board action. Senior Non-Commissioned Officers initial and sign a Statement of Agreement and Certification upon enrollment. The State Command Sergeant Major or Army National Guard Command Sergeant Major counsels the soldier and certifies that the senior Non-Commissioned Officer understands their responsibilities. These stipulations are put in place because the academy is a college level school, the military invests a lot of taxpayer money in the student. The military needs to ensure they will get the return on investment that the taxpayers deserve. 

In late summer of 2003, First Sergeant Walz deployed with the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion in support of Operation Enduring Freedom to Italy. The mission was to augment United States Air Force Europe Security Forces doing base security for six months. In no way were the units or Soldiers of the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion replacing any units or military forces so they could deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan. 

After the units return to Minnesota in the spring of 2004, he was selected by high level Command Sergeants Major to serve in the position of the Command Sergeant Major of the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion. 

On August 5th, 2004 he was photographed holding a sign at a protest outside a President Bush campaign rally in southern Minnesota. 

On September 17th, 2004 he was conditionally promoted to Command Sergeant Major. The conditions had been outlined to him when he was counseled and he signed the Statement of Agreement and Certification. If the conditions are not met, the promotion is null and void, like it never happened. 

In early 2005, a warning order was issued to the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion, which included the position he was serving in, to prepare to be mobilized for active duty for a deployment to Iraq. 

On May 16th, 2005 he quit, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war. His excuse to other leaders was that he needed to retire in order to run for congress. Which is false, according to a Department of Defense Directive, he could have run and requested permission from the Secretary of Defense before entering active duty; as many reservists have. If he had retired normally and respectfully, you would think he would have ensured his retirement documents were correctly filled out and signed, and that he would have ensured he was reduced to Master Sergeant for dropping out of the academy. Instead he waited for the paperwork to catch up to him. His official retirement document states, SOLDIER NOT AVAILABLE FOR SIGNATURE. 

On September 10th, 2005 conditionally promoted Command Sergeant Major Walz was reduced to Master Sergeant. It took a while for the system to catch up to him as it was uncharted territory, literally no one quits in the position he was in, or drops out of the academy. Except him. 

In November of 2005, while the battalion trained for war at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, it received an offer from retired Master Sergeant Walz. He offered to fund raise for the battalions bus trip home over Christmas that year. 

The 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion was deployed for 22 months in 2006 - 2007. During this time, they were restricted by Army regulations and could not speak out against a candidate for office. In November 2006 he was elected to the House of Representatives. He claims to be the highest-ranking enlisted service member ever to serve in congress. Even though he was conditionally promoted to Command Sergeant Major less than eight months, quit before his obligations were met, and was reduced to Master Sergeant for retirement. Yes, he served at that rank, but was never qualified at that rank, and will receive retirement benefits at one rank below. You be the judge. 

On November 1st, 2006, Tom Hagen, Iraq War Veteran, wrote a letter to the editor of the Winona Daily News. Here are a couple of sentences from the letter: But even more disturbing is the fact that Walz quickly retired after learning that his unit -southern Minnesota's 1-125 FA Battalion - would be sent to Iraq. For Tim Walz to abandon his fellow soldiers and quit when they needed experienced leadership most is disheartening. 

Here is part of Tim Walzs response: After completing 20 years of service in 2001, I re-enlisted to serve our country for an additional four years following Sept. 11 and retired the year before my battalion was deployed to Iraq in order to run for Congress. 

According to his official Report of Separation and Record of Service, he re-enlisted for six years on September 18th, 2001. However, in his response he says that he re-enlisted for four years, conveniently retiring a year before his battalion was deployed to Iraq. Even if he had re-enlisted for four years following Sept.11, his retirement date would have been September 18th, 2005. Why then did he "retire" on May 16th, 2005, before his supposed four-year enlistment was up? And he makes it sound like he "retired" a year before his battalion deployed to Iraq; when in reality he knew when he "retired" that the battalion would be deployed to Iraq. 

The bottom line in all of this is gut wrenching and sad to explain. When the nation called, he quit. He failed to complete the United States Army Sergeants Major Academy. He failed to serve for two years following completion of the academy, which he dropped out of. He failed to serve two years after the conditional promotion to Command Sergeant Major. He failed to fulfill the full six years of the enlistment he signed on September 18th, 2001. He failed his country. He failed his state. He failed the Minnesota Army National Guard, the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion, and his fellow Soldiers. And he failed to lead by example. Shameful. 

Thomas Behrends, Command Sergeant Major (Retired) 

Paul Herr, Command Sergeant Major (Retired)

https://www.wctrib.com/community/letters/the-truth-about-tim-walz

WE HAVE NO WAY TO VERIFY THIS INFORMATION BUT BELIEVE IT IS CORRECT....

READ FROM TOP

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

“You shall have no other gods before me.”—The Ten Commandments

“Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”—Donald Trump

Politics has become our national religion.

    by John W. And Nisha Whitehead

While those on the Left have feared a religious coup by evangelical Christians on the Right, the danger has come from an altogether different direction: our constitutional republic has given way to a theocracy structured around the worship of a political savior.

For all intents and purposes, politics has become America’s God.

Pay close attention to the political conventions for presidential candidates, and it becomes immediately evident that Americans have allowed themselves to be brainwashed into worshipping a political idol manufactured by the Deep State.

In a carefully choreographed scheme to strip the American citizenry of our power and our rights, “we the people” have become victims of the Deep State’s confidence game.

Every confidence game has six essential stages: 1) the foundation to lay the groundwork for the illusion; 2) the approach whereby the victim is contacted; 3) the build-up to make the victim feel like they’ve got a vested interest in the outcome; 4) the corroboration (aided by third-party conspirators) to legitimize that the scammers are, in fact, on the up-and-up; 5) the pay-off, in which the victim gets to experience some small early “wins”; and 6) the “hurrah”— a sudden manufactured crisis or change of events that creates a sense of urgency. 

In this particular con game, every candidate dangled before us as some form of political savior—including Donald Trump and Kamala Harris—is part of a long-running, elaborate scam intended to persuade us that, despite all appearances to the contrary, we live in a constitutional republic.

In this way, the voters are the dupes, the candidates are the shills, and as usual, it’s the Deep State rigging the outcome.

Terrorist attacks, pandemics, economic uncertainty, national security threats, civil unrest: these are all manipulated crises that add to the sense of urgency and help us feel invested in the outcome of the various elections, but it doesn’t change much in the long term.

No matter who wins this election, we’ll all still be prisoners of the Deep State.

Indeed, the history of the United States is a testament to the old adage that liberty decreases as government (and government bureaucracy) grows. To put it another way, as government expands, liberty contracts.

When it comes to the power players that call the shots, there is no end to their voracious appetite for more: more money, more power, more control. Thus, since 9/11, the government’s answer to every problem has been more government and less freedom.

Yet despite what some may think, the Constitution is no magical incantation against government wrongdoing. Indeed, it’s only as effective as those who abide by it.

However, without courts willing to uphold the Constitution’s provisions when government officials disregard it and a citizenry knowledgeable enough to be outraged when those provisions are undermined, the Constitution provides little to no protection against SWAT team raids, domestic surveillance, police shootings of unarmed citizens, indefinite detentions, and the like.

Unfortunately, the courts and the police have meshed in their thinking to such an extent that anything goes when it’s done in the name of national security, crime fighting and terrorism.

Consequently, America no longer operates under a system of justice characterized by due process, an assumption of innocence, probable cause and clear prohibitions on government overreach and police abuse. Instead, our courts of justice have been transformed into courts of order, advocating for the government’s interests, rather than championing the rights of the citizenry, as enshrined in the Constitution.

The rule of law, the U.S. Constitution, once the map by which we navigated sometimes hostile government terrain, has been unceremoniously booted out of the runaway car that is the U.S. government by the Deep State.

What we are dealing with is a rogue government whose policies are dictated more by greed than need. Making matters worse, “we the people” have become so gullible, so easily distracted, and so out-of-touch that we have ignored the warning signs all around us in favor of political expediency in the form of electoral saviors.

Yet it’s not just Americans who have given themselves over to political gods, however.

Evangelical Christians, seduced by electoral promises of power and religious domination, have become yet another tool in the politician’s toolbox.

For instance, repeatedly conned into believing that Republican candidates from George W. Bush to Donald Trump will save the church, evangelical Christians have turned the ballot box into a referendum on morality. Yet in doing so, they have shown themselves to be as willing to support totalitarian tactics as those on the Left.

This was exactly what theologian Francis Schaeffer warned against: “We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way, ‘We should not wrap Christianity in our national flag.’”

Equating religion and politics, and allowing the ends to justify the means, only empowers tyrants and lays the groundwork for totalitarianism.

This way lies madness and the certain loss of our freedoms.

If you must vote, vote, but don’t make the mistake of consecrating the ballot box.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it doesn’t matter what religion a particular candidate claims to subscribe to: all politicians answer to their own higher power, which is the Deep State.

Reprinted from The Rutherford Institute.

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/american-theocracy-politics-has-become-our-national-religion/

READ FROM TOP

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.