Yep. Claudia is still very much a child but because she developed in a way her parents don’t like, they don’t have any empathy for her.

I’m sorry for what you’ve been through.

I’m sure that she’s going to experience the lasting repercussions of having a parents(s) like this and that her sense of “normal” is skewed.

I think a lot of people don’t know how to process the abuse of others/the evidence of abuse. That’s not because all people are from good families, but there seems to be a prevailing belief that kids will be kids and adults will, in the very least, be casually cruel. No matter what, you’re supposed to maintain contact…

I’m sure some think tank thinks they’re very clever because they found a way to punish women without arresting her.

If we actually ran background checks on them I guarantee that 70% of politicians would be disqualified because of their foreign and business interests.

So I’m sure there would be some negative social impacts if the the FBI/CIA/The Government screened people before they ran for/took office.

Tangentially, they’ve decided to cling to “cancel culture”  a very Internet phenomenon whose “victims” are those who said something ten years ago on Twitter that was stupid. The GOP has decided that they’re victims of cancel culture because they go out of their way to be mean and stupid and people don’t tolerate it.

We’ve been joking about the GOP having a humiliation fetish for a while now...but it has to be true, there’s no other explanation. How else do they get to be simultaneously a victim as well as a champion?

I know the adage is that “if you wait until you have enough money, you will never have kids”

Babies are cool and all (I guess) but imagine this, and maybe this is my avocado toast talking, but stick with me:

The attitude of Americans is that you need to perform being poor or you don’t deserve help. You have to be publicly shamed where possible to remind you of your place, so they start early and trash kids’ lunch or make a show of their balance being overdue. The humiliation of poor kids is a deliberate ritual we’re…

I don’t know if we qualified for free lunch or not but my parents certainly had too much pride to have enrolled me but I was painfully aware that my parents could not give me as much as the kids of other families (financially, emotionally)

Ah, you see, I offer my kids rugged individualism and a can opener and wish them luck.

Universal free school breakfast

If nothing else, it is clear that Joe Biden deeply loves his children. Which makes the right’s attempt to use Hunter has a means of getting to him all the more vile. Joe refrained from enumerating the flaws and actual crimes of the Trump children, which I’m not sure I’d have the strength to do.

Just like Ted Cruz, Rubio is a “Cubano” when it suits him which is usually when he needs to pander to other second generation Cubans about how Fidel Castro personally spit in each of their faces and those other brown people from Mexico are “different” than them.

Rubio has zero charisma or ambition or soul. He’s just like the rest of the Tea Party wave and would be re-elected for no other reason than being a Republican, even though he has accomplished nothing. He might be angling for another presidential run but the field is deep.

During these Trump years I checked his Twitter almost daily in the fear that I would miss “something” and it’s like...the moment I looked away, because I could just let news of Biden’s administration roll over me and I could spend all of a minute sneering at Buttigieg getting picked for Transportation, a coup happens.

I guess I feel the worst for the people who were under the impression that her job and disposition would lead her to begging for mercy at Trump’s feet like some medieval queen.