Given the choice between a bear and a man who refers to women as “females,” I think I would choose the bear.

"Females” is a clear and unmistakable sign: This person is not normal about women.

“Females”! It has all the pseudoscientific confidence of a proud eighth-grade boy sharing a lewd term he read on Urban Dictionary. “Females”! Turn around, go back; nothing humanizing is at the end of this sentence. We are about to hear a pronouncement that is both insulting and incorrect, delivered as though it was just handed down by God on tablets. If we are unlucky, it will be followed by nods.

If we are even more unlucky, we are listening to a podcast from 2020 and JD Vance will be there to interject with a “yes.” Grandparents, voluntarily helping raise grandchildren? A lovely thought, until the podcaster, Eric Weinstein, managing director of Peter Thiel’s Thiel Capital, observes that it’s “the whole purpose of the post-menopausal female, in theory” and JD Vance agrees.

“Female” will make you long for the cozy familiarity of “bitch,” which at least lets you know that the speaker understands you are capable of perceiving insult.

No, you are being insulted by someone who doesn’t realize you’re the sort of creature that can hear him. He would be equally surprised if you told him he’d just insulted a side table. Insulted? But I didn’t know they could understand language! The language of men? The language of Hemingway? Females?

I am so glad someone is here to tell us these things. Tell us: What are these females good for, these post-menopausal females? (Do you mean women? Do you mean people? Do you mean voters? Do you know we can all hear you? We have always been able to hear you.)

On a trip home to Ohio soon after starting at Yale Law School, JD Vance stopped for gas and noticed a woman in a Yale T-shirt. When he asked about it, she said her nephew attended the Ivy League school - and asked whether Vance did, too.

'I had to choose: Was I a Yale Law student, or was I a Middletown kid with hillbilly grandparents?' Vance recalled in his memoir, 'Hillbilly Elegy.'

If he admitted going to Yale, he and the woman 'could exchange pleasantries,' Vance wrote. But if he denied his Yale ties, the woman would deem him one of 'the unsophisticates of Ohio [who] clung to their guns and religion.' An unbridgeable gap would open: The woman would move to 'the other side of an invisible divide,' Vance wrote.

It was his years at Ohio State University and Yale Law that taught Vance to see America as divided, and how to use that division, according to a review of his public and private writings at Ohio State and Yale, as well as interviews with more than a dozen of Vance's friends, former classmates and professors. At first, Vance pitched himself as an author who could explain the divide, people interviewed said. In later years, he became a politician who would build his appeal around it.

'It allowed him to develop a brand of politics tailored to what people care about.'

During that gas station encounter in 2011, though, Vance had just begun to see his country as fundamentally fractured, and to figure out his place within it. He lied to the woman, telling her he didn't go to Yale, Vance wrote in his book.

Then he drove away.

'A chameleon': JD Vance's former classmate describes his shifting positions

but what I've seen is a chameleon. Someone who is able to change their position and their values dependong on what will amass them political power and wealth.

JD Vance calls Trump 'morally reprehensible'in resurfaced emails

He has previously called Trump 'America's Hitler' and 'cultural heroin' And in one of the emails from 2016, Vance told Nelson: 'The more white people feel like voting for Trump, the more Black people will suffer. I really believe that.”

He also called Trump 'a disaster' and 'a bad man' Later, after Trump beat Hillary Clinton, Vance told Nelson he was 'deeply pessimistic'

Bad polling, awkward speeches and Democrats seizing on Vance's misogynistic remarks about women without children, whom he called 'cat ladies' have spurred some reports that high-profile Republicans view Trump's pick as a mistake.

There was no need for me to bring cats into this. Or dogs, for that matter. If I brought dogs in. I apologize to them both.

“When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power,” he told the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute. “You should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality. If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”

Such a voting system would almost surely face legal challenges, experts in election law said. It would also create logistical hurdles. Election officials would need to track which voters were eligible to cast multiple ballots and regularly update their voter rolls to account for moves, divorces and court decisions in child custody cases.

An ugly quote from J.D. Vance just surfaced in which he described Kamala Harris and other Democratic leaders as 'childless cat ladies,' and spun out a whole theory based on this absurdity.

"I truly can't believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States," the actress wrote

In the 2021 interview, Vance told Carlson that the country was being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He further lamented, “You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.”

In the past, Aniston has been vocal about her use of IVF, and the difficulty of handling pregnancy rumors in the public eye.

Much of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, including the decision to tap Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate, was structured around attacks on President Joe Biden.

Trump decried Biden’s decision to drop out in a post on Truth Social, writing that his team would have to “start all over again” and asking to be reimbursed for the cost. At the same time, Vance has set straight to work, calling for Biden to resign from the presidency.

When JD Vance first met Peter Thiel in 2011, Vance was a student at Yale Law School and Thiel, a venture capitalist, gave a speech at the university criticizing modern society.

Vance later wrote that he was trying to find his place in a highly competitive atmosphere, and Thiel’s speech awoke something in him that made him realize he didn’t want to practice law.

Vance would go on to work for Thiel at his venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. More than a decade after they met, Thiel would help Vance win a seat in the U.S. Senate with $15 million to support his campaign, which launched Vance to his selection Monday as former President Donald Trump's running mate.

Vance’s first claim to fame may have been his rise from rags to riches, but Thiel was key to his political success.

Who is Peter Thiel and what does he believe?

Thiel made his fortune as an early investor in PayPal in the 1990s and Facebook in the 2000s. He's also known as the financier of a lawsuit against Gawker that bankrupted the website and a longtime Republican donor who has spent more than $49 million on campaigns since 2000.

A self-described libertarian, Thiel has expressed opinions and associated with figures on the far-right fringe. In a 2009 essay, he wrote, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," and that women gaining voting rights "rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron." In 2016, he hosted a "Right Wing Dinner Squad" that included white nationalist Kevin DeAnna.

Mr. Vance opposes abortion rights, even in the case of incest or rape, but says there should be exceptions for cases when the mother's life is in danger.

Mr. Vance has been one of the leading opponents of U.S. support for Ukraine in the war with Russia. 'I think it's ridiculous that we're focused on this border in Ukraine,' he said in a podcast interview with Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser and longtime ally. 'I've got to be honest with you, I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.'

https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2024/07/24/how-a-region-responded-to-ohio-u-s-sen-j-d-vances-hillbilly-elegy-with-their-own-book/ >How a region responded to Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance’s ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ with their own book

As a tenth generation Appalachian, Ivy Brashear sees J.D. Vance’s 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” as a “really one-sided and simple view of the region.”

“This is a book born out of frustration,” the introduction reads. “This is a book born out of hope. It attempts to speak for no one and to give voice to many. … It is meant to open a conversation about why that book struck such a deep nerve with many in the region, but it is not meant to demonize J. D. Vance.”

“Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” chronicles the challenges Vance faced growing up in Middletown, Ohio — which is not part of Appalachia. Vance’s mom and her family were from Eastern Kentucky, which is part of Appalachia.

But Vance’s memoir has faced criticism for generalizing Appalachia and the working class.

‘Hillbilly’ Women Will Get No Help From J. D. Vance

The one time I met J. D. Vance was shortly after his book, Hillbilly Elegy, came out, at an event in Kentucky—the state where his grandparents were from and that he wrote about in the memoir. I told him I was working on a book about women from the Appalachian Mountains, about the hill women who hold communities together. He seemed interested. “My mamaw was a hill woman,” he said. “I wrote about her.”

But Vance, it soon became clear, had no business speaking for the people of Appalachia. He capitalized on Americans’ interest in the area, turning a tenuous family connection to the mountains into a lucrative and powerful platform. He then abandoned Appalachia when he ran for Senate, trading in his “hillbilly” rhetoric for speeches about his “Ohio values.”

Real hillbillies like me don’t trust JD Vance. You shouldn’t trust him either.

In his bestseller memoir, JD Vance uses a wide brush to paint Appalachians as lazy, ignorant and unwilling to try at life.

It’s easy to understand why “Hillbilly Elegy,” the 2016 memoir by JD Vance, piqued the interest of the American people. It recycles a narrative America has relied on for a century to sleep soundly despite the everyday horrors of our society: Rich people do well because they are morally better than the poor.

You’ve also got a dangerous lie, one relying on ugly stereotypes that harm real Appalachians in order to advance a political career.

Unlike me, Vance is not Appalachian. He was born and raised in Middletown, Ohio, well outside any maps of the distinct geographical and cultural region.

J.D. Vance once compared Trump to Hitler. Now they are running mates

I can’t stomach Trump,” Vance told NPR that August. “I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy. I never liked him,” Vance told Charlie Rose in October 2016, weeks before Trump was elected president.

Vance was a fierce critic of Trump before becoming a close ally, once calling himself a 'never-Trumper,' and dubbed Trump 'a total fraud,' 'a moral disaster' and 'America's Hitler' during the 2016 campaign.

'You think, well, is this person, how did he get the job? Did he get it because he was really the best qualified to be president?' Hume said. 'Or did he get it because he sucked up effectively to the nominee? People will have questions about that.'

J.D. Vance pick unnerves GOP’s business elite, thrills populists

The Ohio senator leads a GOP faction sharply breaking with party ideology on free markets, trade and other policies

Vance has suggested a break with the Republican Party's economic orthodoxy of the last several decades on a range of policy issues, including unions, antitrust, trade and taxes, even making comments that appear at odds with Trump, who already scrambled the party's ideology.

It's clear to most leaders of the party that the future will be the Vances, the Hawleys and the Rubios ' to have one of them be on the ticket is a very significant marker, or in some ways validation, of the direction the Republican Party is now heading on key economic issues,' said Oren Cass, a Vance ally and president of American Compass, a think tank closely tied to the economic populists in the GOP.

“Vance articulates a very clear perspective on the failure of what he’ll call the ‘market fundamentalism’ of the GOP — the consensus economic policy of the last few decades.”

J.D. Vance Is an Oil Booster and Doubter of Human-Caused Climate Change

He once said society had a climate problem but changed his position sharply while seeking Donald Trump’s endorsement in his Senate race.

Mr. Vance, a fierce critic of Mr. Trump before becoming one of his most loyal MAGA supporters, also appears to have undergone an evolution on the issue of climate change. As recently as 2020, Mr. Vance said in a speech at Ohio State University that “we have a climate problem in our society.” He praised solar energy and he called natural gas an improvement over dirtier forms of energy, but not “the sort of thing that’s gonna take us to a clean energy future.”

Fast forward to 2022. As Mr. Vance sought Mr. Trump’s endorsement for his bid for the Senate, his positions on climate change took a sharp turn.

“I’m skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man,” Mr. Vance told the American Leadership Forum that year.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s pick of Senator JD Vance as his running mate has many in Silicon Valley rejoicing — they see the former venture capitalist as one of their own. With Elon Musk’s commitment of $45 million a month to a super-PAC supporting the Trump campaign, it's the latest sign of Silicon Valley elites embracing the MAGA movement.