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How to think about the attacks on Tim Walz’s military record

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The claims that Republicans have made about Walz focus on three issues: his decision to retire from the Army National Guard in 2005, his rank upon retirement, and a comment he made about carrying weapons “in war.””

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“Walz retired in May 2005, two months prior to his unit receiving an official deployment order to Iraq. He stated in 2009 that his reasons for retiring were to pursue a run for the House of Representatives, which he won the following year, and to avoid conflicts under the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from engaging in certain political activities.
Walz filed for his run for office before the National Guard had notified his unit of the possibility of a deployment to Iraq. It’s unclear if, at the time, he already knew that a deployment could be a possibility.”

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“Walz did, in fact, attain the position of Command Sergeant Major. However, after he retired, his title was changed to Master Sergeant, because he did not finish the coursework required to retire under the promoted title.

As a result, it’s accurate to say that he was once a Command Sergeant Major, but not that he was a “retired Command Sergeant Major.””

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““We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at,” Walz said in remarks about an assault weapons ban in 2018.”

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“Walz was deployed as part of the National Guard to Vicenza, Italy, in August 2003 as part of Operation Enduring Freedom but was not in a combat zone.
The phrasing of the statement in his gun control remarks, suggesting that he carried the weapons “in war,” was imprecise. While technically correct given the operation he was part of, it appears to suggest an experience he didn’t have. Walz has openly acknowledged in other interviews that he hadn’t seen combat while deployed.

The Harris campaign has stressed Walz’s training with firearms in response. “In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times,” the Harris campaign told Vox in a statement.”

https://www.vox.com/politics/366195/jd-vance-tim-vance-military-record-national-guard

Russia appears to be using wired, unjammable fiber-optic drones that could fix a big problem its operators have faced in this war

Posted on by Lone Candle

Russia appears to be using wired, unjammable fiber-optic drones that could fix a big problem its operators have faced in this war

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-appears-using-wired-unjammable-180442739.html

Free medical school won’t solve the doctor shortage

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The US does have significantly fewer doctors per capita than some other wealthy nations, such as Germany and Sweden. But America’s physician-to-patient ratio is actually about the same as other developed countries — Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, France — that still generally rank better on measures of health care quality than the US does. So aggregate numbers alone are not enough to explain the access problems that patients face, and experts disagree over whether we need to boost the overall supply of providers in the short term.
The bigger problem is misallocation in the US physician workforce, Coffman told me last year. We know that we don’t have enough doctors in certain important specialties: primary care, obstetrics, and psychiatry, for example. We also don’t have nearly enough providers in a broad swath of specialties practicing in rural and other low-income communities. Between 2010 and 2017, while large urban counties added 10 doctors per 100,000 people on average, rural counties lost three. As a result, metro regions had 125 doctors per 100,00 patients, while rural areas had 60.

America is littered with doctor deserts, areas where there are not enough primary care providers, much less specialists or hospital-level services. The federal government estimates that 80 percent of rural Americans live in medically underserved communities.

In the long term, the US will undoubtedly need more doctors in rural and urban areas alike. Groups like the Association of American Medical Colleges continue to project long-term workforce shortages, as boomer-generation doctors reach retirement age and the population of seniors requiring medical care swells.”

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/361620/bloomberg-johns-hopkins-free-medical-school-doctor-shortage