90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Lay Down With Dogs, Get Up With Fleas...

Let's Not Allow This To Happen To America Too..

VP Debate: Tim Kaine Calls Himself ‘Strong 2nd Amendment Supporter,’ Then Pushes Gun Control

During the October 4 Vice Presidential debate, Tim Kaine proclaimed himself a “strong Second Amendment supporter” then pushed more gun control for law-abiding citizens.

In response to a question on policing–focused on whether “we ask too much of police in our country?”–Kaine responded by talking about officer relations with community members, mental health reforms, and gun control.

He segued to gun control by mentioning gun violence, then saying:

I’m a gun owner, I’m a strong Second Amendment supporter, but I’ve got a lot of scar tissue because when I was governor of Virginia there was a horrible shooting at Virginia Tech. And we learned that, through that painful situation, that gaps in the background record system should have been closed and that could have prevented that crime. So we’re going work to do things like close background record checks and if we do, we won’t have the tragedies that we did.

An ambiguous point in Kaine’s statement needs to be clarified and an inaccuracy needs to be addressed.

The ambiguity that needs clarification is the fact that the Virginia Tech gunman passed a background check for his gun–background checks were in place and the gunman submitted to one to get the firearm he used to kill innocents in the Virginia Tech gun-free zone. The inaccuracy that needs to be corrected is Kaine’s intimation that there are loopholes in the background check system that need to be closed in order to prevent “tragedies” from occurring.

In truth, the background check system is one that looks back–thus the name “background” check. If the person buying the gun has no criminal or mental health record in his or her past then there is nothing to trigger a rejection during the background check process. In other words, background checks do not stop latent criminals, only actual ones. To pretend otherwise is to...

For the first time since Dan Quayle in 1988, a vice-presidential candidate actually did damage to his running mate in a debate. Democratic Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Republican Governor Mike Pence (R-Id.) squared off Tuesday night in their one and only debate — and the Clinton campaign has to be grateful there are not more.

From the opening bell of the debate, Kaine interrupted Pence nearly every time he spoke, refusing to let him finish a sentence, particularly when he was scoring points on Hillary Clinton. It was a deliberate strategy. You can’t delete Pence’s answers as easily as Hillary’s emails, but you can try to stop voters from hearing them.

But Pence patiently carried forward, unrattled, ever gentlemanly and soft spoken, racking up points on substance while Kaine kept obsessing over Donald Trump’s taxes, tossing snarky asides and hurling insults.

At one point, Kaine even charged that Trump didn’t pay income taxes 15 years ago because he didn’t want to fund our military after 9/11.

After one particular interruption and insult, Pence finally said, “That is beneath even you and Hillary Clinton and that’s pretty low.” And later, “This isn’t the the old days were you can just say things and people believe it.”

Tim “Henchman” Kaine

Kaine started by calling Pence Trump’s “apprentice.” (As if it’s a smart thing to remind the public that Donald Trump parlayed his business success into a hugely successful show celebrating entrepreneurialism.) If so, Kaine was Clinton’s henchman. His task was to keep the debate away from Clinton’s failures or scandals or the sufferings of the American people or the chaos abroad and...