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As an unmarried childless cat lady, I’m curious why Vance thinks I have no stake in this country. I LIVE HERE!

As always Dr Richardson, thank you for the voice of reason. I still have tears in my cheeks from laughing about how you described JD Vance and the couch. Normally, I’d feel for him as slander is generally wrong. But the unmarried childless cat lady in me is pissed that he dismisses me as unimportant or not invested. I hope he has no plans to go furniture shopping for quite a while, although I’d love to be there to watch the reactions of everyone present in the store…

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Cheers for Kerstin Emhoff and Momala! For co-parents, step-parents, adoptive parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, siblings, nannies, extended family, blended families, neighbors, teachers, librarians, coaches, pediatricians, policy makers . . . and every person and group that cares for the next generation. And not only a personal next generation. It doesn't just take a village, it takes a nation and a global community. Caring not just for a child but for the world children live in and the planet they live on.

That's what Republican 'pro-life' and 'family values' hypocrites, cynics, and anti science demagogues don't understand.

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Just think of how different you education and even your life would be without that one teacher that influenced you the most. And many of us were fortunate enough to have several that did.

My sister and my daughter both had neighbors that taught them many of life's lessons. Our neighbor passed away several years ago but she was still editing science papers and books until she was in her mid-nineties. She taught my daughter how to paint and how to knit and many other skills.

You're right lin -- it takes a village and the Republicans couldn't care less once the baby is delivered. Look at the overall quality of the schools in most of the red states.

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Saw this quote the other day, I think it’s kind of what you are describing.

The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.

Mother Teresa

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I love that! Thanks Chere.

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My best friend is a "godmother" to more than 10 now grown children and is working with a 3rd generation of godchildren,even though she is childless. A woman doesn't have to birth children to have a positive influence on future generations!

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Auntie chiming in here. We've had 3 of our 5 nieces/nephews live with us at some point in their lives, either while going to school in town, or in a housing transition time before starting grad school. We support our sibs with their children as much as we can.

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Correction Pro-fetus not pro-life!

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Correction: pro-controlling other people's lives. Their concern about the fetus is just their phony rationalization for criminalizing healthcare.

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For those who aren’t familiar with the term “Mamala”, it’s an endearing Yiddish slag word for momma. Very sweet…❤️

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Momala is what Kamala Harris' children by marriage call her. Yes, very sweet ...

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Exactly! I never wanted to birth any children and always said if God wants me to have kids, he’ll send them to me. I’ll be damned if he didn’t send 4! I helped raise them and send them on their way into the world.

And, since I served in the military and currently work for this government, how dare he say I don’t have a stake! What an entitled ***hole!

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Diana, I’m an adoptee..My WWII vet mom adopted four children.I worked for state govt.

JD Vance is going down with Cheatolini. Doing all I can to make that happen. GOTV !!!

It surprises some that mom was also pro-choice. When “pro-lifers”tell me I should be grateful I wasn’t aborted….”Same soul,different body”.

💙

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Same here, Dianna! Second marriage gave me 3 grandboys--a surprise and gift I thought I would never have! I absolutely love them and enjoy their personalities. We had quite a role in their early life when things were rocky in their own family. All much better now! I want to live long enough to see them happy and launched!!

JD Vance is projecting onto the country his need to remake a childhood he never had. What he should do is get down on his knees and thank God for his MeeMaw who raised him through the tough times. He also would do well to acknowledge rather than disparage all the women who step into the breach to care for children!! But he is much too young and inexperienced (and too ambitious) to be that aware, or to be in public life and service. He may have an Ivy League degree but he is woefully in need of some real life "seasoning". Hopefully all the "cat women" will rise to the moment and send him back home, pronto!

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I guess no one ever told JD - "Don't f**k with cats."

Also not wise to f**k with witches.

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Right … he never saw that video— how long before Trump starts yelling at him?

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I think along with everything else, Biden's decision and Harris' subsequent momentum has broken some of the grasp Trump had on his party and on the media. He is looking weaker and smaller by the day. I don't think he has the power he previously had. I say this because yelling at Vance other than providing more in fighting looks like a yap rather than a bark.

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Love your cat headdress. Stay strong, with blessings from a cat lady stepmom.

🐈‍⬛

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That was pretty funny! 😄

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Sioux, Vance's "chiIdless cat lady quote" has me really pissed off, too.

I read JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” pretty soon after it came out, probably just after Trump managed to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016, and thought it was a good read with some important insights into why anyone might vote for Trump. It also explained to me why Hillary’s “deplorables” comment was such a big political mistake, and why her failure to campaign enough in several crucial states helped make Trump’s 2016 victory possible. I thought at the time that Vance was a pretty smart guy and that I would be curious to read any subsequent books he might write.

Well, that was then, as he has clearly gone over to the dark side, and it remains to be revealed why he has chosen to assist Trump now rather than ambitiously carve out his own political space in what little remains of the old GOP. Perhaps he has understood there will be no political room there for anyone but loyal insiders if Trump is re-elected, so it was better to be brave and throw caution to the wind. It will likely be the biggest mistake he ever made, at least I hope so. That said...

I think Vance’s comment about “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made” is really offensive and raises a number of issues in need of consideration as we prepare to vote in November. So, a few questions I would ask him if I could:

1. Why does he assume that childless people who have chosen not to bear children (yes, men can be childless, too) are miserable?

2. Does he believe there is an obligation for married couples to have children and that those of us who have decided not to are somehow immoral, selfish, misguided, unchristian or worse?

3. Does he know that some folks, while not wishing to have their own children, in fact dedicate a good part of their time and energy to helping other people’s children, even adopting them (and not necessarily to satisfy some innate parenting urge, but just to help someone in need as an act of simple generosity).

4. Does he know that there is no need to have any sort of religious beliefs in order to be kind to other people, make sacrifices on their behalf and expect nothing in return beyond the simple satisfaction of doing the right thing?

Of course, for people who strongly desire to have their own children, raise a family and make the sacrifices required to do it well so that children have a reasonable chance of developing into sane and happy adults, most societies offer encouragement and thanks, and certainly this is the mainstream through life for most people. But it’s not the only way to live a moral life, and there is much to be said for caring for unwanted children who are not one’s own as an alternative to expecting the state to resolve the problem of parentless children. This is something the first Trump presidency failed at spectacularly as it separated immigrant children from their parents for no good reason whatsoever, and I believe some of these families have still not been reunited 7-8 years later.

I could say more, but this should suffice:

I really have as little need for a lying, flip-flopping, bigoted, criminally ambitious Yale grad with hillbilly cred to be my vice-President as I have for a lying, addled, scamming, racist, misogynistic, hateful, raping, genital-grabbing piece of crap to be my President.

I’m expecting Kamala Harris to bring us a blue landslide in November.

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Let's not get sidetracked on a single issue. It was said now let's move on. Cat lady etc. is a ploy to distract form the real issues such as Project 2025 women's control over their bodies, gun control, climate and Ukraine.

We have the extremely valuable legacy of the Biden Administration to capitalize upon. Go to Simon Rosenberg Substack. He has superb facts on the issues Americans are interested in.

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Barbara, there are lots of important issues and lots of information that needs to be sorted into facts and falsehood by each of us. No one knows how this will end yet, though soon enough we'll all know or think we do. Separating one issue from the rest is not getting "sidetracked". Knowing what sort of jerk Vance is might convince some undecided voters to vote against Trump. And how many undecideds will take the trouble to read Project 2025 or even really read much about it?

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More importantly than Vance being a jerk are the realities of his extreme views on domestic violence, women's rights and his support of Project 2025. This is what we focus on. At the end of the day people didn't care about trump's grab 'em comment in 2016 and people aren't going to care if Vance is a jerk. Democrats get so pious sometimes and frankly it is a turn off.

Single issue campaigning is deadly.

We slam them with Biden's record, Project 2025 and women's rights.

We read Project 2025. We pick a chapter and know highlights. I have and it is terrifying:

Nuclear proliferation

Discontinue NOAA

Go after the media especially public media

Eliminate all federal government employees and install trump people

Move the budget and control of the DOD and DOJ under the President

Mandate secondary school students to take military readiness tests

It is a 920 page manifesto of the dismantling of our Democracy and a blueprint for an Authoritarian government in the United States.

Cat ladies and jerks are cultural stuff.

We need to tell the American people what we are going to do for them. And that is our job as a voter.

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Barbara, excuse me, but why are you wasting your ire on me? Our political views are likely quite similar or we wouldn't be reading HCR's letter. I agree with most of what you have to say, but your tone is angry, aggressive, self righteous and, frankly, obnoxious. And if Joe Biden's accomplishments were sufficient to get him reelected, that might have shown up by now in the polls. He has handed the task of defeating Trump to Kamala Harris for a good reason. I believe Trump's choice of Vance for VP will turn out to be a blunder. It's just an opinion, nothing more, nothing less. Please feel free to ignore it. And give me a break.

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Sir. This isn't ire. We were having a political discussion over the electronic back yard fence. Unfortunately, when the name calling begins the discussion ends.

Take Care

Barbara

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Excellent points!

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Nation’s Cats Lash Out at J.D. Vance in Million Meow March😂

https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/nations-cats-lash-out-at-jd-vance?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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🤣🤣🤣

I now know why my 🐈🐈‍⬛ were looking a plane tickets...

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I so agree!!

I am an American women . I have had a stake in this country for 78 years...I have been an educator for 48 of those years believing that education is one of our greatest resources.

I'm voting 💙🇺🇸📚💙🇺🇸!!

Let's go get 'um!!

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If you are female, the present republican party thinks you are nothing but a breeder, hoping to breed more little nazis. Anyone who doesn't get pissed off by that mindset is not paying attention!

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We ALL have a stake - you're so right. JD sadly is reaping what he sowed. I've seen so many couch memes that Instagram is showing me only furniture ads now LOL

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OK, that algorithm story is hilarious.

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I, too, am a childless cat lady; married until SCROTUS overturns Obergefell. I am hoping someone with more creativity than I is able to come up with a "safe sex for couches" parody (Randy Rainbow to the pink courtesy telephone, please).

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Vance is just another awful creature dredged up from tRump’s cesspool!

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Hmm I’ll take the plush velvet pink loveseat…

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An American that don't have a real stake in the country is an American who looks at the country the way a flee looks at a dog, and if there's a person in a leadership position in today's Republican party that doesn't fall into that category, they're keeping a really low profile.

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Fair dinkum!

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People like Vance want your tax revenue and productivity, they just don't want you to be able to vote. Never assume they are arguing in good faith or trying to be reasonable.

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Thank you for your comment. I look back in my life to all those unmarried and/or childless men and women who had a positive impact on me. My wife and I have no children. I discovered two years into our marriage that I am not able to have children. We have dogs. Too bad Mr. Trump never had a dog. Sharing your life with a companion animal gives the opportunity of finding your empathy and compassion for others . Especially when it is time to say your final goodbye to a devoted companion animal

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