HawkShack.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRyyTAs1XY8&t=1535s

Guy barely sounds like a Republican. Sounds like some hybrid Demo-Publican. Wish he didn't have to come up in a Trump dominated Republican Party, but if you want to rise up in the Republican Party right now the path is with Trump. Vance sounds nothing like Trump. I hope to see more Republicans like this rise up in the Party after Trump is finally done.

I can't say I agree with all his viewpoints, but he's definitely a moderate who shows concerns for the middle class and the way the Democratic Party has embraced upper class technocracy on the environment, big pharma, and corporations "privatizing profits and socializing costs" meaning the American people absorb a large part of the costs of corporate irresponsibility while the corporations benefit from the profits. He thinks government legislators should punish heavily corporate irresponsibility, fraud, and the like.

Vance is definitely not the standard Republican. Surprised Trump picked him as VP.

I thought I would post this so any open-minded folks can see Vance isn't like Trump. He's worth supporting in the future of the party.

I personally have no intention of punishing Republicans that work with Trump because it's not optional over the last eight years if you want to rise up in the Republican Party. I hate to see quality Republican candidates like Vance expected to halt their political career when they can't control who the Party picks at the top of the Party. I hope some guys like Vance can help lead this party away from Trump once they become more of the voice of the party.

JD Vance is highly likeable. He is the antithesis of how Trump handles himself under fire. The whole "weird" didn't last very long and rightly so. Washington needs more of what he brings to the table.

MackStrongIsMyHero wrote:JD Vance is highly likeable. He is the antithesis of how Trump handles himself under fire. The whole "weird" didn't last very long and rightly so. Washington needs more of what he brings to the table.

I don't agree. Vance lost me when he characterized childless females as "Cat Ladies". Hugely insensitive and insulting. My daughter and son-in-law couldn't have conceived had it not been for IVF, a very expensive way to get pregnant of which most young couples can't afford. There are a multitude of reasons why many women don't reproduce, and he painted all of them with one brush stroke.

Highly likeable doesn't mean everybody likes him. He admitted it was the wrong thing to say and explained himself. Not surprised that's not enough for you. Even with his missteps and faults (and you know all politicians have them), he's got a good head on his shoulders. I do hope there's more like him on both sides of the aisle.

I sympathize with your daughter and son-in-law. My best friend of over 30 years is having difficulty with having a child, and he and his wife have gone out of country for IVF. They'll make great parents, and I hope this administration helps makes and easier path for IVF. I'll ask him what he thought of that comment, but I never took it as them who Vance was referring to.

MackStrongIsMyHero wrote:Highly likeable doesn't mean everybody likes him. He admitted it was the wrong thing to say and explained himself. Not surprised that's not enough for you. Even with his missteps and faults (and you know all politicians have them), he's got a good head on his shoulders. I do hope there's more like him on both sides of the aisle.

It wasn't as if Vance said something in the heat of the moment or in an impromptu press conference, it was in an interview where had a chance to prepare his remarks, friendly territory with a sympathetic host, where questions and answers are choreographed. Here's exactly what Vance said and the context in which he said it:

In a 2021 interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, then-Senate-candidate Vance complained that the U.S. was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and "a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too."

"It's just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” Vance continued. “And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?"

First, many took issue with the accuracy of his comments. Harris is the stepmother of two children, now in their 20s, who famously call her “Momala.”

Their biological mom, Kerstin Emhoff, has publicly decried the “baseless attacks” and credited Harris for being a “loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present” co-parent over the last decade. Ella Emhoff, one of Emhoff’s daughters, also defended her stepmom in a post on social media, writing, “I love my three parents.”

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/29/nx-s1-50 ... dy-history

It was a vile, baseless attack not only on women who have failed to conceive, but also those who have adapted like Harris. It was indefensible, and there's no amount of apologizing that's going to make it right.

MackStrongIsMyHero wrote:I sympathize with your daughter and son-in-law. My best friend of over 30 years is having difficulty with having a child, and he and his wife have gone out of country for IVF. They'll make great parents, and I hope this administration helps makes and easier path for IVF. I'll ask him what he thought of that comment, but I never took it as them who Vance was referring to.

Thanks. My daughter got lucky. She had her first and so far only child when she was 36 years old, at an age where the odds of a successful pregnancy starts dipping below 50%. She got lucky and was successful on her first attempt. I helped them with the financial end of it as it cost $30,000 and was not covered by insurance.

My daughter certainly took the remark to be directed at women who have not conceived, that because they are childless, that they somehow aren't in touch with the types of problems young American families are facing. Her and I had a long talk about the subject before we embarked on IVF, discussing sensitive things like a woman not feeling as if she were a true woman unless and until she had conceived, that if they chose to adapt that I'd love the child as if they were my own blood, and so on. Vance's comments were like a dagger directed straight at her heart. After all, she wouldn't have conceived without the help of modern science.

River Dog wrote:I don't agree. Vance lost me when he characterized childless females as "Cat Ladies". Hugely insensitive and insulting. My daughter and son-in-law couldn't have conceived had it not been for IVF, a very expensive way to get pregnant of which most young couples can't afford. There are a multitude of reasons why many women don't reproduce, and he painted all of them with one brush stroke.

This is a ridiculous expectation that the man speak perfectly at all times. His comment certainly wasn't aimed at people using IVF and trying to have children. It's more of people having unreasonable expectations for candidates and driving off quality candidates due to this politically toxic environment that purports to want perfect people when they themselves if their language was culled could not live up to such expectations. I'd bet money you have said offensive things in your life even if you adjusted at different times. It's a strange standard to hold people to this level of accountability for statements that are not what they believe and didn't apply to the people they think it applied to.

Vance is a quality candidate with reasonable viewpoints on a great many topics. He is highly educated, a military veteran, and the kind of Republican I'd like to see rise up as he looks at politics as they should be looked at: not as a black and white viewpoint.

This culling of some viewpoint, taking it personally, and extrapolating it as some reason to dismiss a candidate is one of the worst things I've seen in modern politics and a big reason many quality candidates are driven off. It's cancel culture and too high a standard for any human to be held to that leads a public life.

Both sides of the political spectrum do this as they find some thing a candidate said and vilify them acting as those this one statement is the person without viewing their full credentials and analyzing their ability to govern. It's bad analysis and leads to bad politics.

Vance's overall resume and his viewpoints on many things are intelligent, reasonable, and show a person that respects his opponents and the political process. I'm glad he's in there to take some of the sting off Trump winning and provide a voice of reason these last four years if Trump does try anything crazy.

I know when campaigning Vance has to support the leader on the ticket, but listening to hi8m also makes clear he won't participate in political shenanigans and foolishness. He's a lawyer and knows where those lines are drawn. Happy to have Vance as VP and I hope now that Trump has no further elections to run, we won't see the type of foolishness Trump did with Pence at the end of his term.

River Dog wrote:I don't agree. Vance lost me when he characterized childless females as "Cat Ladies". Hugely insensitive and insulting. My daughter and son-in-law couldn't have conceived had it not been for IVF, a very expensive way to get pregnant of which most young couples can't afford. There are a multitude of reasons why many women don't reproduce, and he painted all of them with one brush stroke.

Aseahawkfan wrote:This is a ridiculous expectation that the man speak perfectly at all times. His comment certainly wasn't aimed at people using IVF and trying to have children. It's more of people having unreasonable expectations for candidates and driving off quality candidates due to this politically toxic environment that purports to want perfect people when they themselves if their language was culled could not live up to such expectations. I'd bet money you have said offensive things in your life even if you adjusted at different times. It's a strange standard to hold people to this level of accountability for statements that are not what they believe and didn't apply to the people they think it applied to.

Vance is a quality candidate with reasonable viewpoints on a great many topics. He is highly educated, a military veteran, and the kind of Republican I'd like to see rise up as he looks at politics as they should be looked at: not as a black and white viewpoint.

This culling of some viewpoint, taking it personally, and extrapolating it as some reason to dismiss a candidate is one of the worst things I've seen in modern politics and a big reason many quality candidates are driven off. It's cancel culture and too high a standard for any human to be held to that leads a public life.

Both sides of the political spectrum do this as they find some thing a candidate said and vilify them acting as those this one statement is the person without viewing their full credentials and analyzing their ability to govern. It's bad analysis and leads to bad politics.

Vance's overall resume and his viewpoints on many things are intelligent, reasonable, and show a person that respects his opponents and the political process. I'm glad he's in there to take some of the sting off Trump winning and provide a voice of reason these last four years if Trump does try anything crazy.

I know when campaigning Vance has to support the leader on the ticket, but listening to hi8m also makes clear he won't participate in political shenanigans and foolishness. He's a lawyer and knows where those lines are drawn. Happy to have Vance as VP and I hope now that Trump has no further elections to run, we won't see the type of foolishness Trump did with Pence at the end of his term.

The point is that there are a lot of women out there that want to have children but for one reason or another, can't conceive, and there's a lot of women who don't feel as if their life is complete until they've had a child. If a woman is in her 40's or older and has no children, she has to face questions, both asked directly and implied, as to why she never had kids.

Roughly 20% of all the women age 35+ in the US have not had a child, a percentage that has been increasing for decades. They're the butt jokes..."She doesn't have kids because no one can get drunk enough to wanna f@#k her." It's a social stigma that's going to get worse before it gets better. Vance's comments, regardless of who he was or wasn't directing them to, were taken by many to be very offensive and extremely insensitive. It's as bad or worse than using racial epithets as like race, ethnicity, national origin, et al, as in many cases, it's not something that the individual has any control over.

I'm not saying that I won't vote for Vance because of that one incident. All I'm saying is that I lost a ton of respect for the man, that he his personality does not fit what I want to see in our nation's leader. He would not be my preferred candidate.