The "aw shucks" Governor Tim Walz, a regular next-door guy who fixes cars on YouTube, got tapped by VP Cackles yesterday, as you all are by now totally aware.

The fact that moon-faced, pleasant Minnesotan demeanor and jovial, bonhomie public delivery masks a stone-cold socialist doesn't hurt the guy one bit. It's like I heard someone say in the flurry of digesting the news yesterday: Walz is the guy who wanders into your backyard with a beer in his hand, helps fix the grill, and has a pleasant conversation with every single person at your barbeque. When he leaves, everyone loves the guy.

But Walz in his own element, comfortable among his peeps speaking his language of revolution and social change, is scary af.

Another truism I saw yesterday, besides the explosion of information about what he's done to destroy MN while under his purview, alluded to what possible parallels one could expect from a victorious Harris-Walz team:

Kamala Harris has progressive plans she wants to enact. Tim Walz and Minnesota are the result when those are enacted in real life.

But I'm not going to parse the terrifying social programs today. 

I've taken an interest in the picture of citizen soldier Walz that was presented yesterday. The vet-cred Walz is supposed to bring that the Harris campaign is so proud of.

The warrior cred the campaign feels confident enough to use that they posted one of his former appearances speaking of his rationale for gun-control measures. How the weapons of war veteran Walz carried in war shouldn't be allowed anywhere but a battlefield. 

Gov. @Tim_Walz: I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt. I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks. We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war,… pic.twitter.com/3IVaXi2RP2

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 6, 2024

Well, okay - he has a right to his opinion.

But not to his own version of the facts if he's going to use his biography as an appeal to authority as justification in denying your 2d Amendment rights.

Because Tim Walz has never "carried" a weapon "in war" because Tim Walz - citizen soldier - has never been to war.

The closest he got to a battlefield in 25 years in various Guard units was a deployment to Italy.

...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.

Then, when his unit got called up for deployment to an actual war zone in 2005 and Tim Walz had been appointed as their command's acting senior enlisted leader?

Tim Walz bugged out on his guys. "Retired" to run for Congress, while everyone else he'd trained with left for battlefields in Iraq for almost the next two years.

...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.

They were gone for twenty-two months.

The two Command Sergeants Major (CSM) - Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr - who penned the above letter to the West Central Tribune were the ones who did go, with CSM Behrends stepping in to take the spot Walz had abandoned (great video interview with him here).

...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.

There was a third CSM who stepped forward to corroborate the accounts of the others.

A third retired command sergeant major is speaking out against Gov. Tim Walz, saying he “let his soldiers down” by avoiding a deployment to Iraq in 2005 before running for Congress.

Doug Julin worked his way up to division command sergeant major (CSM) before he retired from the Minnesota National Guard in 2012 after serving 35 years.

“This was a backdoor deal,” Julin said of Walz not going on the mission.

...Julin said a group of senior leaders met in early 2005 to get on the same page about the deployment. He said six battalions in total were going on the Iraq mission and four were from Minnesota. Julin recalled that Walz was at this meeting because he had just been conditionally promoted to the rank of command sergeant major of the First Battalion-125th Field Artillery. According to Julin, Walz said he would be going on the deployment.

...Julin said he was most upset with how it was handled because Walz didn’t come to him as brigade command sergeant major, the position he held at the time.

“He went around my authority to get out of the position. I probably would have told him ‘No, you’re going on the deployment,’” Julin said.

“At that point in time my focus wasn’t on Tim Walz walking out the door. My focus was on all the enlisted. I had to make sure all the soldiers had their head on straight. Their health and welfare were at the forefront, and we had to make sure they had everything they needed to do their jobs,” he added.

He said, however, that Walz pulling out set a tone.

“Soldiers are thinking, ‘What does he know that I don’t know?’ That’s the kind of message it sends,” he said.

In the short time since news of Walz's selection as Harris's running mate broke, there has been a tremendous amount of information emerging on this aspect of the governor's career. He has claimed to be a retired "Command Sergeant Major" (E-9 pay grade) which is completely wrong. He held the rank temporarily [Beege adds: "conditionally promoted"]. never completed the requirements for the permanent rank, and bugged out before bothering to even sign his paperwork. The Army reduced his retired pay grade to E-8. 

He also might not have ever been the "highest ranking enlisted member of Congress" because he had never been permanently promoted to the rank he claimed he was.

So flying under a false flag there? Yeah. You could absolutely make that argument.

And about that trip to Italy? It got kind of a heroic burnishing job just a couple of months after ditching his unit when it came time for Walz's first congressional run.

...Instead of being honest about his early departure from the military, Walz told the media a much more heroic tale, one that was entirely fictitious.

Bloomberg’s Joshua Green, then employed at The Atlantic, was the first major reporter to profile Walz. In an interview with the then-congressional candidate, Green writes that in 2004, Walz left his hometown in Minnesota “to serve overseas in Operation Enduring Freedom.”

Command Sergeant Major Tim Walz is a twenty-four-year veteran of the Army National Guard, now retired but still on active duty when a visit from President George W. Bush shortly before the 2004 election coincided with Walz's homecoming to Mankato, Minnesota. A high school teacher and football coach, he had left to serve overseas in Operation Enduring Freedom. Southern Minnesota is home to a large Guard contingent that includes Walz's unit, the First 125th Field Artillery Battalion, so the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are naturally a pressing local concern—particularly to high school students headed into the armed services.

It’s unclear if this is Green, a veteran reporter, omitting major facts, or if Walz, the interviewee, is selling Green on a particular narrative. Nonetheless, the assertion is incredibly misleading, as it leaves the reader under the impression that Walz served as boots on the ground in the Global War on Terror, when in reality, he merely deployed to Italy in 2003 for a six month stint.

If this is the best they could do for vet cred, it might well have been better not to have any at all. As Rep Mike Waltz noted this morning, you betcha vets are talking about this.

“If we get Harris-Walz, we will pine for the days of Biden-Harris,” says Rep. @michaelgwaltz about the inexplicable hard left turn Harris took yesterday. Waltz added about Walz’s controversial exit from reserves that “it’s creating enormous buzz in the military community.”

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) August 7, 2024

And you know how you take the temperature of what the "military community" is saying?

By how the spin is going already in the media. 

Right out of the box, a subscriber Politico story gussies up Walz with the wrong rank.

And a shameless Military.com feature - I mean, breathtakingly partisan - extols the wonders of Walz while screaming, "FAR-RIGHT, FAR-RIGHT, FAR-RIGHT" when it comes to any question of his exit from the service. They are also desperate enough to claim Walz's diagnosis via the VA of tinnitus makes him an expert on Veterans Affairs.

I Schlitz you not.

...His Guard career included responding to natural disasters in the United States, as well as a deployment to Italy to support U.S. operations in Afghanistan, according to a 2018 article by Minnesota Public Radio. Walz earned several awards, including the Army Commendation Medal and two Army Achievement Medals, according to his military records. Working a civilian job as a high school teacher and football coach, the Nebraska native was also named that state's Citizen Soldier of the Year in 1989, according to official biographies.

During the 2022 Minnesota governor's race, Walz' opponent accused him of leaving the Guard when he did in order to avoid a deployment to Iraq, though Walz maintained he retired in order to focus on running for Congress, according to the Star Tribune newspaper.

Far-right commentators and media resurfaced those allegations and knocked him for never serving in combat -- something he has never claimed to do -- in contrast with Vance's deployment to Iraq as a combat correspondent.

By the by, that tinnitus was also part of his excuse for his DUI.

...Walz's campaign manager Kerry Greeley didn't dispute that Walz was speeding when he was pulled over that night, but she said Walz was not drunk. She attributed the misunderstanding to Walz's deafness, a condition resulting from his years of serving as an artillerist in the Army National Guard.

"He couldn't understand what the officer was saying to him," Greeley said.

She said deaf people also can have balance issues. The judge eventually threw out the DUI charges against Walz and chastised the officer for not realizing that Walz was deaf, Greeley said.

This guy's one helluva operator. I mean, DAY-YUM! I can't wait to use that excuse after 12 years on a flight line. Who knew? I also did not know tinnitus could be "surgically repaired," as my doctor tells me I'm stuck with it. What gives?

Back to damage control central - Military.com also does an admirable job of glossing over Walz's inexplicable waffling for four days while Minneapolis burned before calling out the National Guard to finally stop the riots.

Oh, golly, says the author - the mayor asked for help when "some protests turned destructive," and Walz sent them right along. The mayor later bitched.

...Since becoming governor of Minnesota in 2019, Walz' role as commander in chief of the Minnesota National Guard has come under a spotlight several times. In response to a request from the Minneapolis mayor, he activated the Guard in May 2020 to assist law enforcement when some protests over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd turned destructive. At the time, Minneapolis' mayor accused Walz of being too slow to order the deployment, a charge he denied.

What a tongue bath.

But that tells you that they know they are in trouble. They even use an Erickson quote about Swift boats, but, again, in the Lefty gaslighting context. The Swiftboat guys had Kerry dead to rights about his lies and exaggerations, so naturally, the Left has turned it into a pejorative.

If they can get out ahead of the country discovering that Walz is, in reality, a Blue Falcon/Chicken Hawk poseur maybe there's hope they can salvage some military faux moral authority out of this. 

The Harris campaign is going to have to work awfully hard, though, because my military contacts and friends are exploding, as are the social media platforms.

I made the point yesterday a couple of times. First, when an NPR reporter was wondering how a Vance v Walz record match stacked up.

And then, when you hold Walz up against someone like, say, Mayor Pete?

Shoot. Mayor Pete, God bless his little pointy head, shines red, white, and blue.

You know, chicken hawk Walz really looks bad when you think that as goofy as Pete Buttigieg looked larping in his half-assed combat kit?

Mayor Pete WENT to Afghanistan when he got called up.

He SERVED there.

Walz should hang his head in shame.

— tree hugging s*ster 🎃 (@WelbornBeege) August 6, 2024

Tim Walz is kind of a sickly, jaundiced yellow right now and the Progs are already in overdrive.

No one cares if you were a "Command Uber driver," as Mayor Pete calls himself (which is actually pretty funny), or a combat journalist, like JD - if you're honest about what you did. 

The most important thing is that when the call came, you went.

Walz went in the other direction.

Good luck scrubbing that yellowish tinge off in 90 days.

BEEGE ADDS:  This story has grown its own legs all evening, from Tom Behrens appearing on Laura Ingraham, to the absolutely crushing information coming out by the hour. The biggest one I can see so far has been to the excuses being made by apologists for the campaign that Walz retired  MONTHS BEFORE HE KNEW a deployment was imminent.

This completely discounts the testimony of the other Command Sergeants Major but would be a convenient escape if only...?

Dammit. They have it in Walz's own words.

OMG this is SO AWKWARD.

In Walz's OWN WORDS, no less.

Whatever will you do? And who is delusional now, dude?https://t.co/tcQdvwPdQG

— tree hugging s*ster 🎃 (@WelbornBeege) August 8, 2024

How awkward.

Does Walz last to the weekend?

This is really bad.

ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD: Again the Command Sergeants Major were correct. Walz DID reenlist for SIX years vice the four he says he did (EAS on his DD-214 2007), and how the hell did he wangle a retirement almost 3 years early, especially with a war zone deployment imminent?

LEMME JUST ADD: I have since confirmed an enlisted military member can apply to retire once they've reached their 20-year mark, regardless of what obligation they have left. Now, that is subject to a number of restrictions, one of which is deployment status - is one imminent and does the member wishing to retire have sufficient time to complete the deployment plus 30 days for processing. If so, they deploy with the unit and do NOT retire unless there is a confirmed and approved hardship issue.

That's the regs I"ve found so far.

So AGAIN the Command Sergeants Majors were RIGHT! walz DID re-up for SIX years and bugged out WAY early.

How did he get that OKAY?https://t.co/SDnsog2UPc https://t.co/jAQmxg8Ywr

— tree hugging s*ster 🎃 (@WelbornBeege) August 8, 2024