Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting is now on her way to the gold medal boxing match after a storm of gender-related controversy took over most of her 2024 Olympics experience. 

Apparently, driving around Paris in a bus with a sign on it that says “Stop attacks on Christians” will get you arrested. On the other hand, if you’re a Muslim migrant attacking Christians in Paris, you might get arrested, but probably only if you kill someone.  h/t Nita

By Joan Swirsky There’s a good reason I wrote about the media’s prostitutes a few years ago, actually, seven years ago, with a preface that apologized to legitimate prostitutes who made an honest living. What I reported then was based on the formidable work of ace journalist Ashley Lutz, who scrupulously documented her findings in a Business Insider […] The post The Media Still Turn Tricks for The Democrat Party appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Tim Walz, a former public school teacher who has called for putting tampons in boys’ bathrooms, has vehemently attacked school choice, calling actions to support such policies “schemes.” One year ago, in August 2023, Walz traveled to Iowa, where he ripped GOP Governor Kim Reynolds’ school choice program, Alpha News reported. “Whenever you come up with one of these schemes — and that’s exactly what they are — to transfer wealth to folks on the backs of these students, we already know that we’re going to underfund public schools that are already underfunded,” Walz snapped. “And we know that about 70% of those students that are going to receive those vouchers or whatever they’re calling them are already attending those schools. What we end up doing is subsidizing folks who are already attending private, religious schools, whatever it may be, or homeschooling, and it leaves our teachers in the short.” “We know these (nonpublic) schools don’t have to take everyone and they’ll send kids back,” Walz claimed, then said there was “no data to support that those students are doing any better, that those schools are achieving any better.” WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI “Unlike their public counterparts whose academic scores have returned to that of 30 plus years ago, Catholic schools have not experienced such a decline over the same time period, with student academic performance post-COVID still higher than it was in the 1990s, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Long-Term Trend assessments,” American Experiment, a Minnesota think tank, noted in July 2023. “Regents examination scores recently obtained by The Jewish Press under a Freedom Of Information Law request. These scores reveal that New York yeshiva students are outperforming their public school peers in the four core subjects of English, math, science, and history – by far. They show, for example, yeshivas earning 19 of the top 20 average private school scores in New York’s English Language Arts exam,” the Jewish Press reported in 2018. “You don’t want your child or your student to do something, then don’t let them do that, but don’t take away my freedom, don’t take away my child’s freedom,” Walz declared. “Don’t enforce your views on all of us. And let’s be very clear about this. This entire agenda, this entire voucher agenda, is exactly about that, about not wanting to teach that, because I’m sure at these schools we may not hear the whole history of how things are happening. We may hear that it is OK to discriminate against some of our students.”

The World Federation of Advertisers has disbanded a group that worked to ensure companies only advertise with “responsible” media outlets, hours after it was sued by X and Rumble. WFA chief executive Stephan Loerke wrote to members on Thursday that the “discontinuing” of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative was “not made lightly,” Business Insider reported. His letter added that he believes GARM will prevail against the lawsuits. The shuttering comes weeks after Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro testified to Congress about evidence that GARM targeted conservative news outlets. GARM counted almost all advertising companies as members, and used that membership as leverage to bully tech platforms into censoring more content. To qualify for membership, advertising firms had to pledge not to place advertisements alongside “harmful” content like “misinformation.” But internal emails obtained by the House Judiciary Committee suggested that the advertising officials were using claims of “misinformation” as a pretext to withhold ad dollars from conservative outlets. GARM told members not to advertise with X, formerly Twitter, after Elon Musk purchased the company, Musk’s lawsuit said. Emails show GARM chief Rob Rakowitz rejoicing that Twitter’s revenue was 80 percent below forecasts. Emails show that Unilever, a member of GARM’s “steer team,” was angry at Musk’s views on the Hunter Biden laptop story — a reference to Musk’s opposition to Twitter’s prior ownership censoring a story harmful to Joe Biden before the election. Unilever called Musk “overly partisan.” Will Gilroy, a WFA spokesman, did not provide comment on the shutdown to The Daily Wire, except to say that a statement would be forthcoming on its website. The partisanship baked into GARM may still be present in its parent group. Top articles on the WFA home page are headlined “Scared to speak up about DEI or sustainability in the current environment? Don’t be: fortune favors the bold” and “Inclusion is the future for brand growth.” In recent press releases, the group has announced a “framework to measure media’s carbon emissions” and discussed “setting targets on DEI.” Emails show that Rakowitz consulted with advertising mega-firm and GARM member GroupM about The Daily Wire. A GroupM “brand safety” executive, Joe Barone — in an email replete with a rainbow and the phrase “black lives matter” — said, “Fyi we have Daily Wire on our Global High Risk exclusion list, categorized as Conspiracy Theories…” Another GroupM “brand safety” executive, John Montgomery, said there was “an interesting parallel here with Breitbart.” “As much as we hated their ideology and bullsh—, we couldn’t really justify blocking them for misguided opinion. We watched them very carefully and it didn’t take long for them to cross the line — but it was a useful academic lesson,” he wrote. GroupM CEO Christian Juhl was replaced after he struggled to explain the emails to Congress while testifying opposite Shapiro. The X and Rumble lawsuits say that GARM broke antitrust laws by facilitating collusion between companies that otherwise would be competitors. Emails show that the companies fretted that withdrawing advertising from X, a major platform, would be contrary to their interests — unless they had assurances that their competitors would do the same thing. In November 2022, Orsted, a company on GARM’s “steer team,” wrote to GARM, “I’m reaching out to you to ask you if it’s possible to arrange a meeting and hear more about your perspectives about the Twitter situation and a possible boycott from many companies…we are about to make a recommendation to management about actions and when we need to consider whether we should continue promotion on the platform or find alternatives.” Orsted ultimately removed all advertising from X “due to brand safety concerns.” At least 18 GARM members did the same, and others removed almost all their advertising, the suit said. In March 2023, Orsted wrote to GARM, “some time has passed, and I am curious to know what you would advise us to do. And what are other global advertisers doing – have they come back to the platform, or are they still off?” “In a competitive market, advertising agencies would compete with one another on their ability to place their customers’ ads according to their customers’ individual preferences and marketing plans,” Musk’s lawsuit said. Instead, “GARM uses the market power of its members and their clients to force platforms to submit to GARM’s demands.”

During a tense interview in which she sought answers about how a crisis of confidence led to a massive shakeup in the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential ticket, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) candidly admitted that she has “never been that impressed” with President Joe Biden‘s “political operation.” The swipe came as The New Yorker editor David Remnick asked Pelosi about her much-discussed appearance last month on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in which Pelosi insisted she would support whatever decision Biden made about his political future — even though Biden was already saying at the time he would not leave the race. Remnick noted that people around Pelosi said her “Morning Joe” appearance gave them “space” to call on Biden to end his 2024 bid after a fumbling debate performance. Although more than 14 million people voted for Biden during the primaries, the president eventually dropped out amid a growing pressure campaign led by his own allies. His vice president, Kamala Harris, has since become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. “When I pressed Pelosi to talk in greater detail about her language on ‘Morning Joe,’ she looked at me silently, unblinking,” Remnick wrote in a story published on Thursday. “Finally, as the silence expanded past the boundary of awkward, I said, ‘You’re looking at me and waiting for this moment to pass.'” “Yeah, but I’m trying to think of why you’re even asking it, because, you know, I’m not going to answer it the way that you want,” Pelosi said. “I didn’t plan to do that on [‘Morning Joe.’] In fact, if I did, I probably would’ve worn a different suit or something, because I didn’t look too professional.” Remnick wrote that he told Pelosi, “It was like you felt his pain.” In the moments that followed, “Pelosi dropped her calculated reserve,” according to Remnick’s write-up of his conversation. “I’ve never been that impressed with his political operation,” Pelosi said. “They won the White House. Bravo. But my concern was: this ain’t happening, and we have to make a decision for this to happen. The president has to make the decision for that to happen. People were calling. I never called one person. I kept true to my word. Any conversation I had, it was just going to be with him. I never made one call.” WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI The response appeared to add more context to Pelosi’s comments in a recent interview for CBS. Journalist Lesley Stahl told Pelosi it had been said that Biden was “furious” with her, ostensibly for not having the president’s back. Pelosi denied she was “a leader of any pressure party,” and insisted she “did not call one person.” Also during the CBS interview that aired last weekend, Pelosi suggested Biden’s face should be added to Mount Rushmore. A number of Democrats had been publicly urging Biden to end his campaign by the time he stepped aside. Pelosi was not one of them, though she did tell Biden in private that polls showed he could not defeat former President Donald Trump in the 2024 contest and warned the president he could hurt other Democrats in down-ticket races if he did not bow out, according to CNN. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) similarly did not publicly break with Biden but reportedly used a meeting to discourage the president from staying in the race. “They said I was burning up the lines, I was talking to Chuck [Schumer]. I didn’t talk to Chuck at all,” Pelosi told Remnick during their conversation. “I never called one person, but people were calling me saying that there was a challenge there. So there had to be a change in the leadership of the campaign, or what would come next.” Remnick wrote that Pelosi acknowledged she had not been in contact with Biden since the Sunday on which he announced his exit from the 2024 contest via a letter posted to X. Asked whether her relationship with Biden would survive, Pelosi did not appear certain. “I hope so,” she said. “I pray so. I cry so.” Pelosi claimed she had lost sleep on it. She said her goal was simply to make sure Trump “would never set foot in the White House again.”

It’s been just about 48 hours since Kamala Harris announced Tim Walz would be her running mate. And in that time, it’s already become clear how Walz has enjoyed such a successful political career in Minnesota. It’s not because he’s achieved anything notable for people living in the state, aside from making major cities far more dangerous. It’s not because he’s particularly charismatic or intelligent or compelling to listen to. Walz is none of those things. Tim Walz is the governor of Minnesota because the local media, under orders from the state’s political machine, protected him for nearly two decades. They created a false persona — Tim Walz the war hero-turned-folksy teacher — and shut down any attempt to scrutinize his background. Specifically, the media buried evidence that Walz is a fraudster who has repeatedly and openly lied about his military service — maybe the one moral infraction Americans still universally condemn, regardless of party. But Walz is on the national stage now, which means he’s receiving a lot more scrutiny from people who actually care about the truth. And it doesn’t appear that Walz’s allies — or Kamala Harris’ campaign — were remotely ready for this scrutiny, because with each passing day, they’re inadvertently providing even more evidence that Walz is guilty of stolen valor. For instance, this is a video that Kamala Harris’ official campaign account uploaded on social media the other day. It shows Walz speaking about his opposition to gun rights: 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   The fact that this video was uploaded by Kamala Harris’ team tells you the extent of their “vetting” and their competence. They just uploaded footage of their VP lying about his military service, apparently without even realizing it. In that clip Walz says he carried “weapons of war” while he was serving “in war.” But Walz never gets around to saying what war he was serving in, because there wasn’t one. He deployed to Italy with the Minnesota National Guard. And this was long after World War II ended, so Italy wasn’t a combat zone at the time he was there. There was no war in Italy. Therefore he never carried a weapon of war “in war.” He’s lying — pretty flagrantly — about his military service. WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show Walz’s defenders will try to parse what he said very carefully, and suggest he was really referring to the Global War on Terror. And they’ll suggest Walz carried rifles as part of that effort — maybe in training, or maybe while he was at some guard post at an airfield somewhere — so therefore, his statement is technically accurate. This is obviously a very strained attempt to change the clear meaning and implication of what Walz said. There is no reasonable person who would say he was carrying a weapon “in war” if he was sitting around in a non-combat post in Italy.  Walz and his defenders have specifically gone to great lengths to associate him with Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, in a way that’s as misleading as possible. Alpha News reports that on his gubernatorial campaign website in 2018, Walz’s biography stated: “He joined his battalion overseas in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.” That’s somewhat close to the truth, but it’s deliberately misleading because it doesn’t clarify exactly where exactly Walz was stationed.  Even more egregious, the Washington Free Beacon reports that in 2006, Walz’s campaign announcement described himself as a “Veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom.” And during the 2004 presidential race, Walz also held a sign that read, “Operation Enduring Freedom Veterans for Kerry.” It was purposefully misleading. It was all clearly designed to create the impression Walz had served in a combat role in Afghanistan. Tim Walz held a sign in 2004 falsely identifying himself as an Operation “Enduring Freedom veteran,” even though he never served in Afghanistan. https://t.co/e4wRUWS08N pic.twitter.com/egUG45GtNx — Matt Wolking (@MattWolking) August 8, 2024   But Walz kept saying it. Also in 2004, as Jordan Schachtel reported yesterday on his Substack, the Bloomberg reporter Joshua Green — who was then employed by The Atlantic — repeated the lie. Green wrote that Walz had left his hometown, “to serve overseas in Operation Enduring Freedom.”  At points, the implication was even more explicit. In The Atlantic profile, Green states that Walz was a “command sergeant major who’d just returned from fighting the war on terrorism.” This alleged service, Green says, is why Walz was chosen by Democrat Party elites for a career in politics. Green writes that these operatives were looking for, “veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” when they stumbled on Walz. It’s obvious that Walz fed lies to this reporter and to the public, going back two decades, in order to portray himself as a war hero. But he was no war hero. He was a coward who abandoned his own National Guard unit. The moment he learned his battalion was going to Iraq, while his congressional run was underway, Walz quit.  In a March 2005 press release, Walz claimed: “I don’t want to speculate on what shape my campaign will take if I am deployed, but I have no plans to drop out of the race.” He said his wife will be a major part of his campaign “whether I am in Minnesota or Iraq.” Walz’s press release concluded: “If called to duty, Walz would leave behind his wife Gwen and four year old daughter Hope.” But Walz avoided that situation by quitting. Walz was a Command Sergeant Major at the time he quit. That’s a rank he accepted, knowing it came with responsibilities. But Walz didn’t meet those responsibilities, so he was demoted after he left the military. But Walz kept on referring to himself as a command sergeant major anyway, which is yet another instance of stolen valor. It’s like someone who wears a Ranger tab because they were selected for Ranger school and then failed. It’s a lie. As Just the News reports:  The Minnesota National Guard confirmed Wednesday that Gov. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate, was demoted and did not retire as a command sergeant major like he has claimed for years, including on his official gubernatorial biography. While Walz temporarily held the title of command sergeant major he ‘retired as a master sergeant in 2005 for benefit purposes because he did not complete additional coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy,’ Army Lt. Col. Kristen Augé, the Minnesota National Guard’s State Public Affairs Officer, told Just the News. Separately, Alpha News spoke to Tom Behrends, the actual retired command sergeant major who replaced Walz. Here’s his assessment of Walz’ cowardice and deception: There are a lot of people who served in Walz’s same National Guard unit who feel the same way. JR Salzman for example tweeted this picture, along with the caption: “Here I am on our Iraq deployment with the Minnesota Army National Guard, the very same deployment @Tim_Walz bailed on.” Here I am on our Iraq deployment with the Minnesota Army National Guard, the very same deployment @Tim_Walz bailed on. https://t.co/FNEhq3FHFM pic.twitter.com/unfNptN2Oi — J.R. Salzman (@jrsalzman) August 7, 2024 Salzman added: “I served in the Minnesota National Guard with him. He literally abandoned us when we were about to be deployed to Iraq. He’s a coward and should be treated as such.” What’s remarkable about Walz’s lies is that he does it so often that his own allies are the ones outing him, albeit inadvertently. For example, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy just uploaded this photo of Walz and Josh Shapiro. Can confirm. https://t.co/C22rIzkn7m pic.twitter.com/5TjLdAfvNV — Phil Murphy (@PhilMurphy) August 6, 2024 The intent was to show that they get along. But Walz’s hat stuck out to a lot of veterans because it shows the Special Forces crest. It’s a hat that Walz wears a lot, even though he was never in the special forces: Hey @Tim_Walz, this you? Do you often wear our crest even though you were only National Guard with zero deployments, never went through SFAS or the Q course, and by all accounts never even worked with Special Forces? Stolen valor much? pic.twitter.com/5Jw0ebCk7I — Green Beret Nap Time (@GBNT1952) August 7, 2024 By itself, you might argue this isn’t a big deal. But if you put it together with all of the lies Walz has told about his military record, it starts to paint a picture of a narcissist who enjoys portraying himself as an accomplished veteran, when he’s really a coward who’s hated by the people he served with and later abandoned. At this point you have to wonder whether Americans will tolerate this for much longer. It’s truly a test of how low the bar is in the Democrat Party, if they keep Tim Walz on as their nominee. And from what we’re hearing, this is just the beginning. More and more examples of Walz’s stolen valor will come out. And it’s pretty ironic given that, when he was in Congress, Walz voted “yes” on the Stolen Valor Act, which makes it illegal to falsely claim military service to obtain some benefit. In other words Tim Walz may have violated the very law he passed against stolen valor. In 2009, an Iraq War veteran named David Thul confronted Tim Walz’s staff about this. He brought the photo of Walz identifying as a “Operation Enduring Freedom” veteran. And the staffer admits that Walz had tricked some people into thinking he served in Afghanistan. Watch: The staffer acknowledges that people were being misled about Walz’s biography, but apparently no one in Walz’s office changed it. And according to the Free Beacon, the staff took no action to correct Walz’s bio after this confrontation. It’s an incredible video. At the moment there appears to be some creeping realization in the Harris campaign about how bad all of this is. Yesterday Walz was asked about his military record and he quickly ran away: REPORTER: Your response to allegation of stolen valor? WALZ: *ignores* REPORTER: Your response to allegation of stolen valor!? WALZ: *runs away* pic.twitter.com/el3sPGDYuM — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 7, 2024 So Walz’s strategy is the same as Harris’ — he’ll just avoid answering any questions. He’ll count on the media to cover for him, as they did for 20 years in Minnesota. But there are signs that strategy may not work anymore. Even CNN is now pointing out Walz’s history of fraud. Watch: CNN: "[Tim] Walz did make a comment…he’s done it a couple times, where he has used language that has suggested that he carried weapons in a fighting situation…There is no evidence that any time that Gov. Walz was in the position of being shot at and some of his language could… pic.twitter.com/f3W6D3ZsIX — Breaking911 (@Breaking911) August 7, 2024 There was some opposition research on Josh Shapiro that surfaced over the past week or so. He may have covered up a homicide by ruling it a suicide in order to help a friend. That was one allegation. Oh, and he may have swept a sexual harassment claim under the rug too. That was another one. The truth is that, in the modern political landscape, none of those alleged sins is really disqualifying. Josh Shapiro could have survived them. But there are very real questions about whether Tim Walz can survive this. Stolen valor is the one moral infraction that no one tolerates. It repulses all reasonable people at a fundamental level. And somehow, Tim Walz survived Kamala Harris’ supposedly rigorous vetting process despite lying repeatedly about his military record. WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI As damning as this is for Tim Walz, it’s also a massive indictment of Kamala Harris. Picking Tim Walz to be her vice president was the first major decision that Kamala Harris has made since stealing the nomination. And, left to her own devices, she immediately flopped on her face. For all of her campaign’s contrived attacks on Donald Trump for supposedly malingering the military, Kamala Harris has managed to pick a running mate who, by his own actions, demonstrated very clearly that he thinks military service members are suckers. He’ll leave them behind in an instant, and then he’ll lie about it for decades. If nothing else, the selection of Tim Walz is a pretty clear preview of the level of absolute incompetence a Kamala Harris administration would entail. She could have chosen the governor of Pennsylvania but instead, she went with a Leftist who abandoned his own National Guard unit and then repeatedly lied about it. No matter how many celebrities line up behind Kamala Harris, and no matter how long she hides from the press, the truth about Tim Walz will be impossible to deny. He will continue to drag her campaign down even further with each new revelation of his stolen valor. And by Election Day, millions more people will have come to a basic and obvious realization — which is that a woman who can’t even manage her campaign is not capable of running the country.