That’s because he’s weird. Very very weird.
This one was really annoying. The bottom line is he has never willingly released his tax returns. Some have been leaked, and in those they show that he indeed paid no taxes, or paid insultingly low numbers relative to his supposed income. At worst, this was an inflated number.
I was shocked this was even a question at the debate. I mean, who the fuck cares? How is this at all relevant to his campaign for vice president? So, he misspoke and/or tried to puff himself up a little. This is such weak sauce bullshit compared to the 500 different outright lies that Trump or Vance says every day.
It’s kind of telling how this fact check article listed lie after lie that Vance told, many of them whoppers and all they could dig up on Walz was some weak sauce bullshit.
And wouldn’t it be nice if these debates were scored like actual debates?
I remember high school forensics, it was football for the smart kids. There were winners and losers in the debates.
I didn’t get to watch the debate live last night as I wasn’t home, but I did watch the replay and I totally agree with your assessments.
Vance came across like a used car salesman. He was slick and smooth like I would expect a Yale-educated lawyer to be. He also seemed disingenuous and the amount of easily disprovable lies he told was staggering. The way he kept talking about the “Harris administration”, calling her “border czar”, and blaming her directly for things was really offputting. Not to mention the constant gaslighting around Trump’s years in office. The constant mention of how much better people had it in 2017, never mind those were due to Obama handing Trump an economy on the upswing. His whinging about being fact checked was the icing on the cake. I am glad I don’t drink otherwise if I were to take a shot every time Vance talked about Trump’s “common sense” I would be dead of alcohol poisoning.
Walz was rough around the edges and made some flubs but he came across as genuine. He made his points with conviction and coherence. I appreciated him reminding us of the many ways he has tried to uplift his constituents and make their lives better as Governor and Representative. This is in sharp contrast to Vance who in recent weeks has knowingly and willingly endangered the lives and safety of his own constituents with his lies. Things he has admitted are lies, and then has the gall to blame the media for making him tell these lies.
Many years ago Spouse and I went looking for a new car. One salesguy started off with a lengthy complaint about people being allowed to negotiate prices. Then when Spouse mentioned Consumer Reports he snapped “They just lie!” Then he handed us a piece of paper and said he could only discuss pricing if we signed it. The words “agrees to buy at this price” were right below the signature line. When Spouse crossed that out the salesguy jumped up and started yelling “Don’t write on my paper!” When we got up to leave he physically blocked the exit and wouldn’t look at us while complaining to his manager that we’d been wasting his time.
Any comparison to Vance would be an insult to that guy.
Holy cats that is one bonkers salesguy story.
Yuck!
The blocking-your-exit thing is aggressive and approaches the fine line of false imprisonment, or unlawful detention/custody/imprisonment.
Also: I am certain that Carvana knows all about these weird scenarios, and has a huge consumer marketshare based on people who hate car shopping for the many reasons you just listed.
I really intended the last line to be a joke but, yeah, the experience was so upsetting there’s nothing funny about it. Also I’m not kidding when I say Vance does act like that guy.
Had an experience like that years ago, when my wife went to buy a new truck. After looking around and getting no help, she approached a salesdude who said he would talk to her “once her husband got here.” Needless to say, she left in a foul temper. Went to a different dealership, purchased truck, returned to the first long enough to inform the salesdude that “this is the truck you could have sold me, but because you are an asshole I went elsewhere.” Nicer than I would have been.
Your wife is fucking awesome, that is a boss move. 
It’s like the shopping scene from Pretty Woman but without the tacit endorsement of a gross exploitative relationship!
I think it’s even less of a gotcha than people think it is. If he’d gone and looked it up to make a point ex post facto, inventing a connection where there was none, then he will have looked it up and just said “I was there not long after…”. That’s what someone who wanted to make a connection where there wasn’t really one would do.
Instead, he was remembering a situation that he was in, and exact dates aren’t something that necessarily come along with those sort of memories. He arrived in Hong Kong, which knew that it was going to be given back to China, filled with people who knew full well what was going on in Beijing and what it meant, and also with refugees trying to get out of China before they were disappeared. Australia at the time just made a blanket pronouncement: all Chinese nationals in Australia were offered asylum on the spot. All 42,000 of them..
It’s that environment, and that sense of panic that you’d remember, and its association with the triggering event. Not necessarily the exact date.
Why is your predecessor not running with his former boss?
That’s the official midwestern pronunciation of “nuclear.” 
Walz did say something about the GOP VP candidate not being Pence when they talked about Jan. 6th…
This image makes me sad. The policy on the left is straight up late 1930s Nazi. The policy on the right is still that of a far-right party, slogging the supply-side economics line.
Don’t help shovel money at corporations, especially when most of it will go to private equity that has caused so much of the problem in the first place.
Help make housing affordable by kicking the vultures out of housing entirely.
