28 Comments

Something we should all remember -- and never stop pointing out to Neanderthals like Vance: pro-choice progressives are NOT "anti-children." We are against women being forced to have UNWANTED children. Statistics show that unwanted children are more likely to be abused, to become abusers, and to commit a disproportionate share of crimes. One notable study even demonstrated a correlation between the number of unwanted children and crime rates nationwide. Pro-choice advocates want all children to be loved, cherished, and raised to be productive citizens. There's nothing "anti-family" about that!

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Yesterday Republicans voted against expanding the child tax credit. The number one killer of pregnant women is abuse. Between 40 to 60% of women experience abuse while pregnant. Everyday a pregnant woman dies of abuse. Everything that comes out of these Christofascists mouths is bullshit. Spare me the unity speech. Until men and the women who carry their Phyllis Shaflay misogyny flags actually gave two shits, instead of preaching their purist bullshit, nothing will change. JD Vance wants to drag women by the hair into the 19th century.

JD Vance is a soulless greedy misogynistic homophobic xenophobic bigoted asshole without redeeming qualities. They all remind me of a used car salesman in a blue leisure suit, gold chains, fake tan, misogynistic creepers wearing cheap cologne. Fucking useless.

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Well said! I agree completely.

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I love your understated style Lisa59.

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Beautifully stated!! THANKS.

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JD Vance is showing true Trumpist hypocritical colors. While Trump goes on about immigrants, his wife and in-laws remain immigrants, and his first wife too. All of his children that he actually acknowledges have one immigrant parent. JD Vance has a wife who has immigrant parents. She is not an immigrant, but his in-laws are. Should they go back to India? By saying that if we create Americans by allowing immigrants in, instead of by forcing women to breed, he is contradicting his own situation where his children exist because of immigrants coming to America. So is Trump. I would love to see the ads attacking both of them on their immigrant hypocrisy, since they are making this a central theme of their party in the election. I feel sorry for their children on all accounts. Shame on their spouses for supporting them. There is no way my husband could get away with saying such things and having any respect from our child or me.

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My mom's family immigrated to America in the 1600s.

That some of today's politicians complain of immigration trends while their own families are themselves 1st or 2nd generation immigrants is the epitome of melodrama.

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As to the suggestion that Vance would take up the mantle of RFK … there’s just the matter of charisma: Kennedy had it (in spades); Vance sorely lacks.

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Whether Vance's clear change of values reflects cynical calculation or a sincere change in outlook is a matter for psychologists and historians. (Though hopefully Vance's career will be undistinguished enough to excite little interest from historians). What matters is that the values and policies he espouses are wrong, dangerous, offensive to ethical people and must be resisted.

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When I was coming of political age in the late '60s and '70s a popular truism had it that "Women grow more radical as we get older, men grow more conservative." At the time, it was obvious: women discovered the barriers against us in everything from employment to credit to medical care, while men who were on the barricades as college students discovered that the wider world treated them -- the white ones anyway -- pretty well. Something similar may be at work with JD Vance: connections with "outsiders" fade into history when the likes of Peter Thiel extend a hand.

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Man, what a contrast! I looked up Tyler Childers on Youtube (thanks for bringing him to my attention) and listened to some songs- his message is love, acceptance, hope, everything we need! Where as d j trump and j d vance are working overtime to sow hate, resentment, intolerance and rage, AND to force all that ugly down our collective throat in the form of Project 2025.

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We're big Tyler Childers fans at my house. We listen to him daily. I love his humble lyrics.

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Though the Never Trumpers turned against Trump and Trumpism, many still refuse to understand that the conservative movement was at its core an incubator of racial division and hate after an era of tremendous social and economic progress. The playbook goes back to the days of slavery, which was a designed class system that made poor Whites support structures against their economic interests while also claiming at least they weren't an African American held in bondage. Racism is a divider that is often used by powerful interests to pass unpopular policies in a nation built on democratic ideals. That fever took over the GOP in the 20th century and it is central to why the party has failed today. That can not be denied even when Never Trumpers try their best to deflect and ignore that reality about the legacy of Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan.

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The rise of MegaChurches , segregation, wealth disparity, and political transformation are close if not apparently connected …trying to add them up as fracking complexities shouldn’t be too hard.

I don’t think coincidental. It’s another chicken vs egg topic ultimately however.

Seemingly forever in the span of human nature controlling others produces war. Cultural differences , religious differences, rich vs poor , or skin color , always eventually starts oppositional behavior, as someone -usually at the top of whichever hierarchy - wants…..MORE.. and NOT (really) for everyone else but basically themselves.

The Good Samaritans…are few … Martyrs emulate some putting principle before even their own life . And the most deviant promise on the pretext of saving the least FROM their suffering with seduction and lies.

And here we are….

💙💙VOTE BLUE AND END THIS COUP💙💙

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This is an excellent overview of that period in politics. Excellent exposition of "how we got here" with regards to Republican Party. ETA I was a college student and followed politics closely. I attended college in Portland, Oregon and RFK made an unscheduled stop at the campus while campaigning in Oregon primary (students tracked him down and begged him to come) so I got to see him in person. I was not a fan at the time because I was from Minnesota and supported Eugene McCarthy who was the first to challenge LBJ in the primaries. This was shortly before he was killed. Those were terrifying times for me and many others.

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Another thought: Hmm, I had always thought that the Southern Strategy was devised by Richard Nixon to seduce the Dixiecrats to the Republican Party with the promise of stalling or even reversing Integration.

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This came out of the Joe McCarthy days. Barry Goldwater initiated it. Nixon ran with it. In 1979 things really kicked into gear when the Heritage Foundation was organizing this strategy. As they wrote in the Southern Economic Development Model (www.epi.org) in 1980 for the Reagan administration.

The founders of Heritage picked Reagan to become President. Reagan could stay on script. He could stay busy talking about communism, while they deregulated the country. Project 2025 is their golden ring.

Check out the secretive Council For National Policy. Formed in 1980, is the formation of radical ultra conservative heavy weights that support Christian Nationalism. Google it. This goes to the top of the food chain.

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This was really good. Thank you. The simple reason that people who are intelligent and know better, as Vance did once show, is the deeper lure of a route to take to fame, power and fortune. So out the window goes values, empathy, the idea (the truth) that we are all connected and that the harm you do will come back to you and or your loved ones, society. The side that works on dividing us works to destroy what tries to make us really great, or to make us successful. Their work is to bring us down for their temporary elevation, if they achieve that. And that depends on conning enough of us. For me that is and has been my definition of evil.

The decision to not have children in today's world should be encouraged. We do not need, nor can we take care of more and more people on this planet.

Maybe the problem with so called "intelligent" people like Vance that rise is that they don't think deeply enough and abort the process of growth, a psychological maturity. Allying with Trump who displays his child-like immaturity and selfishness continuously is something Vance will never recover from I predict.

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or this :"Vance’s politics are now, like Trump’s, fully grounded in exploiting divisions. Some might say that Vance sold his soul for success. But there's a more mundane interpretation. Vance may never actually have been a person of serious moral commitments, given how easy he has found it to turn on his friends and adopt an ideology he almost certainly knows to be repugnant."

The other Vance was fake.

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“As Vance’s former law school roommate put it, “He is using his tremendous intelligence and thoughtfulness to deliberately choose contempt as a political strategy, as opposed to building the bridges he used to talk about building.” That’s it, really puts it perfectly. The politics of contempt, using people’s misfortunes as a way to divide and exploit. There is nothing the least bit “conservative” about these hucksters, and it’s long past time we stopped calling them that. Right-wing grievance babies would be a lot better IMO.

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Wow, such a thoughtful piece connecting the dots of US (V)presidential ambitions and Vance’s rise and un bigoted past. I previously knew nothing about Tyler Childers. Thank you for bringing us name to the fore for me.

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Thank you for introducing me to Mr. Childers.

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Well, well, well. The truth will out! Vance transitioned himself into a loathsome creep.

I'm not gloating. Taking the wrong turn could happen to anyone,but most turn back. The

Vance we see chose the wrong road.

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Thank you! Nothing new under the sun, I guess. Unending misery.

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