Front page or comic page?

To the Editor:

I laughed out loud. Then I double-checked to make sure I hadn’t mistakenly turned to the Sentinel’s comic page. Nope. I read with amusement the Sentinel’s front-page AP opinion/comic story on Wednesday, August 7, “Five Things to Know about Democratic VP Pick Tim Walz.” The Sentinel’s recent front-page story about a groundhog stuck in a claw box was funny, but the front-page Walz editorial was downright hilarious.

Since the undemocratic anointing of a presidential nominee by a party that disingenuously screams about threats to democracy, the cheerleading media have gone into overdrive in a desperately naked attempt to normalize joyful Kamala Harris and paint her as an unknown entity who, golly shucks, has had nothing at all to do with the three-year Biden-Harris dumpster fire.

Now the media’s love affair with Harris has been extended to Tim Walz, current Governor of Minnesota. Five things to know about Walz? How about these five things, conveniently omitted by the Sentinel’s front-page AP story:

1. Governor Walz signed a bill requiring the free availability of feminine hygiene products in all school restrooms from 4th to 12th grade. The intentionally gender-neutral language of the bill, narrowly passed by the Minnesota legislature 35 – 32, provides for the possibility of including such products in boys’ restrooms.

2. Governor Walz has attempted to make Minnesota a sanctuary state for persons who have entered the United States illegally. He supports tax-payer funded tuition, health-care, and driver’s licenses for illegal aliens.

3. Governor Walz sat by and watched Minneapolis burn during the 2020 “summer of love,” refusing for days to call in the National Guard to restore order despite pleas from the Mayor of Minneapolis and cries for help from black small business owners who watched helplessly as their stores were pillaged and burned to the ground. His wife commented that she kept the windows of their house open so she could smell tires burning. This story will never appear on the Sentinel’s front page, but interested readers can easily find the video online.

4. Governor Walz signed into law a Minnesota bill that permits the killing of babies (let’s call it what it is) up to the moment of birth. In Tim Walz’s Minnesota, the only thing that stands between life and death for full-term babies is a few inches of birth canal.

5. Governor Walz served admirably in the National Guard for 24 years before retiring just before the battalion he led was to be deployed to Iraq. Nothing wrong with that. However, in actual videos of Walz speaking about his Guard service, he uses language that strongly implies that he also took part in that deployment. Slick. Very slick.

The Associated Press story notwithstanding, Tim Walz is no midwestern, heartland moderate. He is an extreme progressive. In fact, Walz even labels himself “progressive,” not moderate, as the media would have us believe. If that’s what voters want, then so be it, but let’s tell voters who he is so we all know what we’re getting, rather than candy-coating him as some sort of heartland moderate who shares our middle-America values

While it is true that voters tend to vote for the top of the ticket rather than the bottom, the fact that the top of the ticket selected a left-wing progressive with a jarring record to hold down the bottom of the ticket shines a bright light on the political views and aspirations at the top. Harris has evaded any questions of her positions for three weeks. But she doesn’t really have to say anything. Walz’s record clearly speaks for her and says it all.

I look forward with amusement to future stories in the Sentinel about the moderate, mainline Harris-Walz ticket. I will look for those stories in the comic section, somewhere between Peanuts and Beetle Bailey.

Kevin Zook

Lewistown