A reader comments on the VP debate:
If this were a real debate, Kaine wiped the floor with Pence. But since it’s an artificial TV spectacle, it was a lot more even. Pence did a good job of making bald-faced lies sound truthy, sounding like an evangelical and paternalistic minister, appealing to the emotions not the brains of the audience. Kaine provided specifics of plans and how they might work. Pence engaged in a load of fake bonhomie and the “I’m an all American red-blooded small town boy so you got to believe this bullshit I’m handing you”. Kaine flubbed some opportunities to pin Pence and Trump to the wall on some obvious lies, but in other cases, did a good job of nailing them on those lies. There was a lack of decorum on both sides, but since it would be tough to win by letting the other guy bullshit at length beyond his time, I guess one is forced to be rude and interrupt.
I about vomited when Pence bragged about the “good” things he’s done in Indiana, when factually he’s fucked the state and its citizens up but good — and along the way, dragged the American taxpayer into the mess. Like the HIV epidemic in southern Indiana due to his screwing over the only health care facilities they had in an anti-abortion attempt, and which grew so large and bad the federal government had to step in and spend millions of dollars. Pence makes my blood boil.
Here are the NPR and The New York Times fact-checks; I find I prefer the Times over NPR, as it seems more definite. With regard to the situation involving abortion and HIV in Indiana, Romper provided coverage just prior to the GOP Convention:
In 2015, Pence declared a public health emergency in Indiana after officials determined that the growing number of cases of HIV caused by needle-sharing among drug addicts in one southern county had reached the scale of an epidemic. But the story doesn’t start there. Pence, whom you may know as the man who last year championed a religious freedom law that critics argued essentially codified discrimination against LGBT people, was involved in the making of the epidemic long before he publicly admitted its existence. Even before he signed into law a measure that restricted abortion access so severely it prompted the #PeriodsForPence campaign during which Indiana women called his office to encourage their governor to stay out of their uteruses by describing their periods to him, Pence’s anti-abortion agenda was setting the stage for a major health crisis.
I had not heard of this, but it sounds like a serious misjudgment and indicative of a lack of deep thinking, much akin to his blunder last year with the anti-LGBT bill that caused such a ruckus. Or is he just the hand-puppet of someone else? I suppose, sans an inside leak, we can never be sure. I’ve noticed the current chatter is that Pence was really making a bid for the 2020 GOP nomination by throwing Donald under the bus, but this early on it’s only rumor. Does he really want to run against Hillary in 2020? Well, his plan might be to assume the economy goes south and the electorate sours on her.
I should be appalled by the number of lies Pence told, bald-faced lies. They should have made me faint from shock. It’s a sad tale of the GOP collapse of responsibility that I didn’t. I did shake my head, though.
