Republican VP nominee JD Vance thinks that mass shooting are a "fact of life": Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz disagrees

Vance made his comment, minimizing school shootings, in Phoenix.

From Politico -

It’s ‘not a fact of life’: Walz responds to Vance’s school shooting comments

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz sharply criticized Sen. JD Vance’s response to this week’s school shooting in Georgia, telling an LGBTQ+ advocacy group Saturday evening that such events are “not a fact of life.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, Walz and Democrats have fiercely condemned Vance’s comments about the shooting after he responded to a reporter’s question Thursday by saying: “I don’t like that this is a fact of life.” A 14-year-old boy is accused of using a semiautomatic assault-style rifle to kill two fellow students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. At least nine others were wounded.

[snip]

On Saturday evening, Walz recalled Vance’s comments as he addressed the Human Rights Campaign, a major LGBTQ+ advocacy group, during its annual dinner in Washington.

“It’s a fact of life some people are gay. But you know what’s not a fact of life? That our children need to be shot dead in schools,” Walz said.

“That’s not a fact of life,” he added. “Folks are banning books, but they’re okay with weapons of war being in our schools.”

Vance's comments:

From the linked AP story, emphasis added by me -

JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and calls for better security

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said Thursday that he lamented that school shootings are a “fact of life” and argued the U.S. needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia.

“If these psychos are going to go after our kids we’ve got to be prepared for it,” Vance said at a rally in Phoenix. “We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.”

Vance has an interesting definition of dealing with it - deride and oppose efforts to address mass shooting.

Short attention span musing

...Could someone please tell the Harris campaign to stay off the "send" button?  If they've got energy to burn, knock on a few doors, instead.

In the last three days, I've received 41 emails from one or another arms of the Harris campaign, which is about 35 more than necessary.

...Speaking of the Harris campaign, she's selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate.

Two things:

1. Do I believe he'll be great VP?  Yes, unequivocally.

2. When I hear the name "Walz", I think of former NHL center "Wes Walz".  Wes is unrelated to Tim (as far as I can tell), but while Tim is the governor of Minnesota, Wes played for the Minnesota Wild.

It turns out that while Tim is from Nebraska, Wes is from Canada.  While, as a a Canadian, Wes can't be POTUS and probably shouldn't be in the line of succession to the presidency, this all made me think.

Wes Walz, or another former hockey player, should take a newly-created high sub-cabinet position with the state department in a Harris Administration.

Undersecretary of Hip Checks. :)

I expect that certain international negotiations will go very smoothly.

Of course, if Cheeto wins, the newly-created position would be "Undersecretary of Kissing Vlad's butt."

...Arizona has returned $29 million to the feds.  The funds were intended to aid underperforming schools but it was never used.so it had to be returned.  The current Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, may have worked against the best interests of public schools and lost the money, but he attempted to blame his predecessor, Kathy Hoffman, for his own malfeasance in office.  Hoffman and others would have none of it.

From the linked story (italics from the story) -

[snip]

{From an emailed statement from Hoffman}“Tom Horne has had nearly two years of responsibility over the federal funds and this is his mistake to resolve. There were no issues with the school improvement grants during my administration. Schools should not have suddenly found out they had $29 million cut from their budgets just as the new school year is starting. My office prioritized transparent and frequent communication with our school leaders. Tom Horne does not seem to have continued that policy.”

[snip]

However, both the Arizona Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, as well as the Arizona School Administrators Association say they’ve heard that communication has been lacking from Horne’s office.

“The fact that the superintendent wants to blame the former superintendent for what happened, it doesn't matter. The situation is what it is, and he should be doing everything he can to fix this and take accountability for it,” AEA President Marisol Garcia said. “This is a position where we elect people to lead us and it doesn't matter how it happened. We now have to deal with it.”

Governor Katie Hobbs also chimed in with a press release excoriating Horne.