Vance Recruits More Women for Anti-Vance Army
This time, Vance is inspiring post-menopausal women to join those inspired by Harris
Aug. 15: Vance weighs in on post-menopausal women … Trump to re-demonstrate uselessness of news conferences … Harris to ramp up price-gouging battle … Gaza death toll tops 40,000 …
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Fun fact: Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) did not say that helping rear grandkids is the whole purpose of post-menopausal women. In fact, he denies even thinking that.
So let’s get into the icky, slime-covered misogynistic weeds, shall we?
Yesterday, a 2020 audio clip circulated online after it was posted by progressive Chicago radio station WCPT, also known as Heartland Signal.
Quick sidebar to appreciate that Chicago has a progressive radio station, and one with the resources to move the dial (sorry) the way they did yesterday!
Woot woot, Heartland Signal!
The audio is Vance appearing on the podcast of Eric Weinstein, of whom I hope you have not heard. At one point, Vance discusses the benefits of kids spending time with their grandparents, his son with his in-laws, specifically.
Vance: “You can sort of see the effect it has on him to be around them. Like, they spoil him, sort of all the classic stuff grandparents do to [sic] grandchildren. But it makes him a much better human being to have exposure to his grandparents. And the evidence on this by the way is super clear.”
Weinstein: “That’s the whole purpose of the post-menopausal [Vance: “Yes”] female, in theory. Now let me ask you a question, not knowing the answer.”
Vance: “Please.”
A spokeswomanpersonman for Vance said in a statewoment:
“The media is dishonestly putting words in JD’s mouth — of course he does not agree with what the host said. JD reacted to the first part of the host’s sentence, assuming he was going to say: ‘that’s the whole purpose of spending time with grandparents.’ It’s a disgrace that the media is lying about JD instead of holding [Vice President] Kamala Harris accountable for her policies that caused [[blah blah inflation blah blah immigration blah blah drug overdoses]].”
Get comfy cuz we’re gonna have some fun.
First of all, Vance said he agreed with Weinstein. He didn’t say “Yes” until after the word “post-menopausal.”
Second of all, if Vance “of course” didn’t agree why didn’t he say “Of course I don’t agree?” It’s not like there wasn’t time. Vance welcomed a new question without hesitation and they had been talking for two hours.
Third of all, Vance also agreed with Weinstein in this exchange:
Weinstein: “If you’re not taking care of your babies, and you’re not taking care of your grandmothers, what are you?”
Vance: “Yes.”
Fourth of all, what, I wonder in my not-wondering-at-all brain, might possibly be the point of spending time with pre-menopausal women? If it’s not becoming a better human being, what could it possibly be in the eyes of the running mate of an adjudicated rapist who has discussed the fine points of assaulting women and left a trail of accusers in his slimy trauma trail? It’s not as if Vance has bizarrely clinical and mechanical and bloodliney-obsesssed notions of women as mere child-bearers. Is it?!?
Fifth of all, why wouldn’t spending time with any other caring adult make kids a better human? Or might that allow non-traditional families into Vance’s weird taxonomy that no one asked him to construct? In reality, Vance actually does embrace some fairly progressive notions about government supporting families, but we don’t need him for that when we’ve got Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes a Village,” do we?
Sixth of all, even if Vance thought he was agreeing with the idea that the whole purpose of spending time with post-menopausal grandparents is that it makes kids better humans, what the fuck is that? The value of human interaction is predicated solely on future return on investment? WEIRD.
Seventh of all, the problem here isn’t even the specific things Vance or Weinberg want to say about pre- and and post-menopausal women, it’s why are you even thinking about those demarcations?!? Who the fuck categorizes women that way in this context?
Eighth of all, if Vance didn’t want to trip on his own agreeing face, what the fuck was he doing on Eric Weinstein’s podcast?
Weinstein is, of course, a Harvard guy who coined the term “intellectual dark web” to encompass himself, Ben Shapiro, and Jordan Peterson. Weinstein works, of course, for Vance patron Peter Thiel.
And he’s one of those guys who’s come up with a theory to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. A theory to which Joe Rogan responded, ““I don’t know what the fuck you just said… How about that?”
And Vance can complain all he wants, but this is the kind of shit that doesn’t stick unless…
You’ve already complained about catless child ladies running the world.
You oppose all kinds of abortion until Donald Trump decides to exempt some medications.
You oppose letting women escape marriages, even violent ones.
You literally on the same day say it’s weird for women to care about abortion rights.
Also helping this stick is when — again, on the same day this breaks — your rapey running mate is campaigning with the North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate, Mark Robinson, who:
Said humanity is “called to be led by men.”
Said “I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote.”
Said women getting abortions “weren’t responsible enough to keep her skirt down or her pants up.”
Called transgender people “demonic.”
And if Trump guy Dan Bongino didn’t also yesterday blame Kellyanne Conway, a woman, for stories about Trump regretting picking Vance, threatening her: “I’m going to say to Kellyanne and others: it’s time to pipe down. You’ve been warned. I’ve had about enough.”
All of this, of course, will just be grist for the male mill when Trump gives yet another lookitme press conference today. Which will likely include a multitude of questions mathematically calculated to demonstrate why the public doesn’t give a shit whether Harris gives a news conference.
And it’ll likely yield nothing as informative as the conversations Trump and Vance had and keep having with the weird “intellectual” leaders of their reactionary politics.
In fact, it’s thanks to Vance’s weird, old conversations that a lot of people are learning that everything really really is political and that there’s no such thing as “I’m not interested in politics.”
Because this isn’t about changing the minds of Stockholm Syndrome tradwives who’ve already cast their lot and changed their name to Ofdonald or OfJD. This is about getting people off the sidelines who previously didn’t get a shit, exposing them to the worldview that wants the White House.
Which means the army of people fighting back against this misogynistic, medieval shit just got a whole new battalion of warriors with zero blood coming out of their wherevers.
Harris To Announce Policy Trump Didn’t Announce First
Vice Pres. Kamala Harris tomorrow will outline some broad strokes of her economic vision for the country if she becomes president.
One teaser trailer they’ve released: Cracking down on grocery store prices, with yet-to-be-specified anti-price gouging measures.
At the moment, former Pres. Donald Trump has the upper hand on economic issues. That’s due only to a small extent to him being first to offer the bad idea of ending taxes on tips (Harris upped that ante, adding a minimum-wage raise). Mostly Trump is trusted more on the economy because the shitty news coverage hasn’t made clear that everything Trump wants to do for to the economy is inflationary rocket fuel + steroids + Mountain Dew.
Meanwhile, new inflation numbers yesterday were even better than expected. Just not for Trump.
Which means that the Federal Reserve next month will be better positioned to lower interest rates. Which should goose jobs numbers without goosing prices.
All of which means Harris may go into the election with Republicans pointing to prices — thereby helping people notice that inflation is fading — and with the cost of borrowing coming down, bolstering hiring. And, as of tomorrow, voters will also see Harris on record saying she’ll take new steps to keep prices down. Steps that Trump won’t.
Harris has targeted price-gouging before. And Pres. Joe Biden has, too. But Biden has resisted using every tool the White House has, which thanks to the Supreme Court now includes using drones to murder Tony the Tiger.
So tomorrow’s Harris speech will likely offer at least some new details on what Harris is prepared to do. As I keep banging on, one root cause of inflation is that both Trump and Biden let Wall Street turn commodity markets into casinos, driving up the cost of everything from chickens to corn to oil. That said, corporate profits are at record levels, suggesting that companies aren’t just passing on their own higher costs, they’re padding the difference with greed. Which is what we should expect executives to do after decades of warping our economic regulations to incentivize short-term profit-taking over long-term thinking.
It’ll be fascinating to see how the He-Man’s Women-Hater Club responds to Harris threatening to take on corporate CEOs. Trump hasn’t shied from going after some companies for some things. But on an issue that doesn’t directly benefit him personally? I dunno!
And as for Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), let’s hope we get a detailed policy response from the man who just yesterday said his plan for fighting inflation is to fire Agriculture Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who is the secretary of energy, unlike Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who is the secretary of agriculture.
Man, even when Vance wants to attack a dude, a woman just somehow ends up in the crosshairs instead.
Gaza Death Toll Tops 40,000
Health officials in Gaza, whose numbers have been considered credible by neutral organizations in the past, say that the war’s death toll there has now topped 40,000.
That’s almost 2% of the population, or one out of every 55 of Gaza’s two million people. Health officials say most of the dead are women and children. Israel says it’s killed 14,000 combatants and that it will keep killing until all of Hamas is dead, which non-Israeli intelligence estimates say will be never.
Israel says it will continue the assault until it frees all of the remaining 100 or so hostages, even though not-assaulting has freed more hostages than assaulting, which has also succeeded in killing some of the hostages.
Hamas bowed out of today’s cease-fire talks with Israel and international mediators, but said it will speak with those mediators afterward if Israel puts anything serious on the table other than another missile.
The Green Jobs Boom Is Here, Blowing Up Trump’s Platform
The New Republic’s Greg Sargent writes up a new study showing yet again that preventing the worst future climate-change scenarios doesn’t have to kill today’s economy.
Just like anyone with a solar-powered brain has been saying since the ‘90s, when it would have been infinitely1 cheaper to prevent climate change.
Since Pres. Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Don’t Tell Anyone It’s a Climate-Change Act Act, more than 600 manufacturing projects have been announced or are already under way, the study found. One estimated outcome: 335,000 jobs.
Who’s benefiting? Red states, obvi. Most of those jobs, almost 200,000, are projected in red districts.
Sargent undoes the multiple lies that former Pres. Donald Trump has told about the hundreds of billions of dollars spurring all this manufacturing and greenifying of our economy. It also undermines Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s claim that we need to go slow scaling down oil and gas. We need to go fast and this spending will help make that possible without societal or economic calamity along the way, no matter what Delonald Trmumpsk says.
Three Quickies
Guatemalan police on Tuesday arrested a leader of Pres. Bernardo Arévalo’s party on what amounts to charges of violating campaign-finance laws. If this sounds like stereotypical corruption, it is — just not how you’re thinking. In this case it’s the police that appear to be corrupt — working on behalf of the conservative faction that got voted out last year despite its best efforts to, ahem, steal the election. To understand how American politicians helped make this all happen, here’s a thing I reported.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., tried to sell his endorsement for a position in the Kamala Harris cabinet, the Washington Post reports. This comes after Kennedy tried to sell his endorsement for a position in the Donald Trump cabinet. Anyway, the point is at least Kennedy’s authentic and stands for something.
Texas loves the rights of private enterprise so much that Attorney General Ken Paxton is threatening to sue the privately run state fair for choosing to ban guns this year. Three people were injured in a shooting at last week’s fair, suggesting that the only kind of guns allowed at a state fair should be deep fried.
TCB
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I know, not mathematically possible. Would this be a bad time to mention Zeno’s Paradox?
Regarding your takedown of Vance's "post-menopausal women" agreement, your "Seventh of all" paragraph is SPOT.ON. There's only one reason to refer to women that way and we all know why that is.
Great job…just sent a small donation. Wish I could do more. ✌️