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rods_and_chains t1_j80ceqp wrote

Reply to comment by zuzg in FBI conducting search of former Vice President Mike Pence's home by Picture-unrelated

The only reason anyone knew about the search/raid/investigation (whatever you want to call it) at Trump's place is because Trump himself shouted about it. If he had kept quiet, we might never have known. The FBI handled the situation as tactfully as they could. A lot more tactfully than they would have if he hadn't been a former president.

Trump truly is how he was described in that joke of a hearing the other day.

Meanwhile, good on Pence for acting like an adult. It's probably the fact that anyone in high federal office ends up with documents where they shouldn't be. That's why it isn't a crime in itself. It's only a crime when you lie about them to the authorities and then try to obstruct their recovery.

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EvlMinion t1_j80r5hu wrote

Yeah, intent and all. As the news for this stuff has come in, I've been considering Biden and Pence's searches to be roughly the same level of bad: Not great, but both teams are working to get anything they might have returned. Part of me wishes it wasn't newsworthy at all, but it's also comforting to see it being handled without any theatrics. Trump's situation was, as he typically is, just exhausting.

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Aazadan t1_j80s7yv wrote

The way Pence has handled this search is the second good thing I’ve had to say about him, the first being his conduct on January 6th.

I disagree with him to basically the greatest extent possible on his politics and I probably always will, but at least from Jan 6th onwards I can’t say that he has acted in bad faith.

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Specialist-Put6367 t1_j80xzkn wrote

I’ll say third. He also admonished the Republican Party if they banned abortion it was also their responsibility to open their homes to all the unwanted babies that’d suddenly be in the foster system. At least he’s consistently pro-life, not just anti-abortion

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tcmart14 t1_j80zj57 wrote

Yea. Him wanting to ban abortion sucks. But at least he follows it up with, "it is our responsibility to take alternatives to abortion seriously for unwanted kids."

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One-Guilty-Finger t1_j8146li wrote

He needs to put his money where his mouth is, then, but we all know that’s hard for a Cosplay Christian to do. When they come to a fork in the road, they prefer to go to the cruel side.

PS I can’t understand why more than half of our national budget goes to the military. Just way too much.

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Specialist-Put6367 t1_j86hv81 wrote

Majority of our budget (~73%) is locked up in "mandatory spending", which is majority Social Security and Medicare. Almost half of our discretionary spending is defense. Overall it's ~14% of our overall budget. That said, it's still obscene, and still ~6x what the feds pay for education.

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Aazadan t1_j80zuq8 wrote

I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t see that as even being a pro life position, it’s just telling women that a babys life is more valuable than their life. Additionally, even thought he told Republicans that, he didn’t favor expansion and funding to government programs to make the care for those people possible.

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WisdomInTheShadows t1_j811x87 wrote

Right, because the expansion of government spending is not consistent with his views on smaller, leaner government and that private citizens and civil organizations should have that responsibility. His statement was specifically that those people that wanted to ban abortion should open their homes and their money and their time to provide these alternatives because they were the ones that outlawed abortion. He's saying put your money where your mouth is.

You may never agree with him on much, and I don't agree with him on a lot of things, but in this age of inconsistency and MTG insanity, Pence has been very consistent in his views and that includes his views on this topic.

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Painting_Agency t1_j81wi86 wrote

> Pence has been very consistent in his views

A lot of Republicans, as far as I can tell, believe in nothing except power. But Mike Pence, I think he really is a true believer. I think he's the real deal. It's just that what he truly believes in is Christian hegemony.

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Panchorc t1_j82hq2r wrote

>but in this age of inconsistency and MTG insanity

The hell did Magic The Gathering do now?

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WisdomInTheShadows t1_j82mlfe wrote

Card quality hald that of my HP printer, going down to 7 card packs for $7 per pack, magic 30th being $1000 for 4 booster packs of low quality proxies, the assasination of the local gaming store, should I go on?

But..... In this case, I meant Marjorie Taylor Greene, someone who condenses more crazy into a human body than I ever thought possible.

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mvw2 t1_j81a0v2 wrote

Pence is a very good politician. He could do great if...he wasn't so religiously extreme.

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Aazadan t1_j81be8g wrote

I don’t know about that. He has a political base that supports him, but this is also a guy who killed a bunch of his own constituents with an AIDS outbreak, with knowledge that his policies would cause that very thing, based purely on ideology. Because he didn’t like tax dollars going to needle exchange programs (even though this then lead to exponentially more tax dollars going to treating AIDS after the fact).

That’s not being a good politician.

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mvw2 t1_j81bqsn wrote

Nope. But it fits his religious side. He's remarkably driven by that component of himself.

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Aazadan t1_j81o633 wrote

Sure, but even Christianity generally says that people have a duty to uphold their community and not ruin it. It even supports the idea of people changing their minds based on new information. And if we want to take the idea that he’s a Bible literalist, there’s still abortion instructions given in there.

Edit: I can give him points for ideological consistency I suppose, but I’m not sure how that actually rates a positive, either by the teachings of his religion or by the metrics of what makes for a good politician.

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hyouko t1_j81lhee wrote

Ah yes, I forgot about the Bible verse castigating needle exchanges. One of those bonus commandments they only teach you about in Advanced Christianity 301.

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ScienceLivesInsideMe t1_j8168od wrote

Meanwhile in healthcare there's nurses losing their license if it's found they accidently came home with patient information. The discrepancy is insane

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Guarder22 t1_j81iush wrote

You should see the discrepancy in how Conflict of Interests are handled.

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somme_rando t1_j817afl wrote

> anyone in high federal office ends up with documents where they shouldn't be.

From what I've read, notes on a post-it taken by people in some meetings can be classified. That'd take a fair bit of discipline to manage correctly.

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