HereAndGone2
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User ID: 4074
HereAndGone2
14d ago
its clearing $100k/m+ in revenue from both government and customers
What insurance premiums are they paying? What is their average utility bill for electricity, for heating, for water, etc.? Are they paying rent on the premises? Staff are not getting one third of the $375/hr in take-home pay, but have you considered the gross pay not the net (which includes tax etc.)? Maybe US taxes work differently and there isn't the equivalent of PAYE, but employers must have to pay payroll taxes of some sort. That's the minimum staff ratio, but in practice you would want to have 2 to 12 (so e.g. if one staff member is dealing with taking kids to the bathroom, or on a break, there's someone in the room looking after the rest of the kids). Parents have to provide packed lunches, but does the daycare provide snacks and drinks (something that can be part of regulations, though if it really is run out of someone's home, maybe not required)?
It's not simply a matter of "aha, here is a sackful of money that I can just cream off" unless it's a scam. And as has been noted in different comments, you can't get money from the government for looking after your own kids in your own home. If Susie and Betty and Jane arrange that Susie minds Betty's kids, Betty minds Jane's kids, and Jane minds Susie's kids so they can apply for government funding, that may not work as they'll have to explain why Susie can't mind her own kids if she can mind Betty's kids etc. It's really not just as simple as "rack in thousands from the government". You have to apply for this funding and that can mean a lot of hoops to jump through, which is why cases like Minnesota do require co-ordination and corruption to succeed on the large scale.
HereAndGone2
14d ago
People complain about the cost of childcare but if it's properly licensed, employs qualified staff, and is a decent place for the kids, it's expensive to run.
If it's cheap, either it's Neighbour Sally looking after her two kids and your two for money under the table in her own home, or it's not someplace you want your kids to be for hours per day.
If it's 12 kids for in-home daycare, then they are supposed to be registered and all associated admin etc. should be performed. Doing it on the cheap means shoddiness all round. Don't state old age homes in the USA have terrible reputations, precisely because it is done on the cheap?
Looking it up online, for the USA it depends on which state the premises is located in, but:
In-Home Child Care Some states and territories may not require certain in-home child care programs to have a license if they meet the following criteria:
- Are related to the children they care for
- Care for only a few children, as defined by the state or territory
- Provide care occasionally for only a few hours a day
In these instances, states may consider the in-home provider to be legally exempt from needing a child care license. As such, with the exception of in-home child care providers participating in the state or territory’s child care subsidy program, license-exempt in-home child care providers do not need to meet the following health and safety requirements to provide care:
- Basic health and safety requirements, including comprehensive background checks and monitoring
- Training standards, such as first aid and CPR training
In California, for example, you can have 14 children in your home if you have an assistant, but there are regulations around this. Paying cheap rates to unqualified staff and skimping on insurance etc. is not going to work unless you're doing all this under the table or are very, very sure you will never be inspected to make sure you're compliant, and that no parent is going to complain:
1597.531. (a) All family day care homes for children shall maintain in force either liability insurance covering injury to clients and guests in the amount of at least one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) per occurrence and three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000) in the total annual aggregate, sustained on account of the negligence of the licensee or its employees, or a bond in the aggregate amount of three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000). In lieu of the liability insurance or the bond, the family day care home may maintain a file of affidavits signed by each parent with a child enrolled in the home which meets the requirements of this subdivision. The affidavit shall state that the parent has been informed that the family day care home does not carry liability insurance or a bond according to standards established by the state. If the provider does not own the premises used as the family day care home, the affidavit shall also state that the parent has been informed that the liability insurance, if any, of the owner of the property or the homeowners’ association, as appropriate, may not provide coverage for losses arising out of, or in connection with, the operation of the family day care home, except to the extent that the losses are caused by, or result from, an action or omission by the owner of the property or the homeowners’ association, for which the owner of the property or the homeowners’ association would otherwise be liable under the law. These affidavits shall be on a form provided by the department and shall be reviewed at each licensing inspection.
HereAndGone2
14d ago
Remember, out of that you are paying:
(1) Staff wages (including pension contributions, taxes, etc.)
(2) Running costs of the premises (heat/light/phone/insurance/maintenance, etc.) Rent as well if you don't own your own premises.
(3) Are you feeding the kids? Then the cost of buying in meals pre-cooked (if you don't prepare them on-site) or buying food to be cooked
(4) Equipment and materials for the rooms (everything from toys, mats, furniture, books, art supplies, etc.)
(5) Cleaning and hygiene supplies, anything else you can think of
(6) Unexpected expenses (oh crap, cold snap, we're running the heating all day long at full blast; yikes, the sinks in the bathrooms fell off the wall; hey, what's this leak in the roof?)
(7) Little treats: Easter eggs, Christmas presents, trips to the cinema etc.
Then after all that, if you're a private operator, make some profit.
HereAndGone2
14d ago
Again, no idea how the USA works, but there are various subsidised childcare schemes under the Irish government. Depending on your circumstances (e.g. are you lone parent, low income, etc.) and the age of the child, some parents will pay full fees and some parents will get a subsidised place (i.e. government funding for the kid while parent pays some percentage of the fee). Pre-school children are eligible for free care for 3 hours per day x 5 days per week x 38 weeks in the year. If the child stays longer, then the parents have to pay for the extra hours.
It's confusing to work out, so I'm glad I don't handle it. Parents have to register their child online and all the associated paperwork then gets processed, and the childcare service then submits how many hours a day and days a week each particular child attends. There are also ratios of how many staff to children per room, depending on age of children and how many in the room.
At the same time, the government is also recently increasing pay rates for childcare workers. So there's the juggling act of "how much do I pay the qualified staff plus running costs, versus what I can charge parents and get under funding" for operators. For the less scrupulous, that makes it a temptation to understaff the premises or hire less qualified/unqualified staff or cut corners while, let us say, maximising revenue streams. We don't have anything like the Minnesota scandal here (as yet), but that doesn't mean that some mini-scandal can't happen in future.
HereAndGone2
14d ago
Some of them are technically legit, and the people who work in child sex crimes units will agree that it is scarier.
Yeah. Here's a lovely story that demonstrates that at least the Somalians are (allegedly) only screwing the state government, not the kids:
A tip from gardaí has led to the chief executive of a childcare company in California being arrested and charged with 16 counts of sexually exploiting six children in his care.
Miguel Adrian Gonzalez, a 28-year-old from west Los Angeles who is the chief executive of a childcare programme and a private babysitter, was charged with a series of child abuse offences on November 25.
Gonzalez was charged with two counts of obtaining custody of a minor with the intent to produce child sex abuse imagery, seven counts of production of child abuse material, two counts of distribution of child abuse material, three counts of receipt of child abuse material and two counts of possession of child abuse material.
According to a court filing from a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agent based in LA, she received information from the HSI office in Kentucky in September that implicated Gonzalez in enticing an 11-year-old male victim, called MV-1 in the court filings, to produce child sexual abuse material on Snapchat.
The HSI Kentucky office received information leading to the identification of the victim from HSI’s cyber crimes centre, which had itself been notified of the existence of the material by the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau.
...While privately messaging PHOENIXV on Snapchat, the boy was instructed to send nude photos and videos or PHOENIXV “would come to MV-1’s home and harm him”.
The boy was sent his address by PHOENIXV as part of this threat. The PHOENIXV user then proceeded to instruct the boy to produce child sex abuse material while calling him “daddy”. The LA agent says investigators were able to establish that Gonzalez controlled the accounts using the PHOENIXV username.
A US attorney’s office statement issued in November said that its complaint against Gonzalez alleges that from 2021 to 2025 the childcare provider and CEO of Let’s Play LA LLC “produced sexually explicit images of children in his care or supervision”. It said Gonzalez also sexually abused at least one minor victim.
“In October 2023 and May 2024, Gonzalez texted the parents of two minor victims, each of them 6-year-old boys at the time, and offered to obtain custody or control of the two victims through his babysitting services, knowing that each victim would be portrayed in a visual depiction engaging in sexually explicit conduct. These requests led to two instances in which Gonzalez produced child sexual abuse material (CSAM).”
I don't know how it works in America, but you can mind children out of your own home in Ireland so long as you stick to the regulations (these have been tightened up recently, before that you could mind mind kids in your own home, say for a neighbour, and they could pay you what you both agreed on, which generally would not be declared as taxable income, hence the regulating):
A childminder is a person who runs a childminding service looking after other people’s children (under the age of 15 years) for at least 2 hours per day, in the childminder’s own home. This definition does not apply to people who care for children in the children’s own home (such as nannies and au pairs). Childminders work by themselves and do not employ any other people to assist them with the children they are caring for.
This now requires that childminders working out of their own home register with a local committee, undergo training, will have inspections carried out, and will need to keep records and make sure tax affairs are in order. There are small grants available, but you can't apply for government funding as such (that goes to professional and community childminding services and day cares).
Now, of course you could still pay a relative or neighbour to look after your kid with their own and nobody needs to register or undergo formal training, but if anyone is minding more than three kids not of their own family in their home for money, they have to comply with the new regulations.
What's being described in the links sounds like they were formally set up as businesses (even if de facto it's someone's home and they let the kids run around unsupervised), and of course there are always opportunities for scams and fraud, or even just "we charge parents full-whack fees, most of that goes into our pockets and what gets spent on the kids is buttons". I've heard that informally at second-hand where I work, allegedly passed on by one of the inspectors; one of the perks (for parents) of us being a community service which is not-for-profit and government-funded is that we do get inspected out the wazoo by several bodies and have to have paperwork backing up every last thing, so they keep track of what got spent where by whom on what. No real opportunity to shove 80% of funding into our own pockets, unlike private operators where (by what I was told the inspector says) you can see it when you go into the services even though they're charging parents market rates. Or to have fake kids enrolled and claim the funding, but no such kid exists (in fact, we could fill the spaces available twice over, such is demand, so no need for ghost enrolments unless you're scamming).
HereAndGone2
14d ago
Instead, these women are normally open feminists, more or less loud ones, treating the “male gaze” and “unwanted attention” with disgust, loudly declaring that it’s not like they are trying to cater to icky men or anything, and are supposedly engaging in all this virtual whoring / thirst farming with a sort of weird irony in mind, where this is all simultaneously an act of female empowerment and a display of girlboss agency while at the same time some sort of critical commentary on the sad state of a shitty society that treats women like sex objects or whatever.
Or a third option: young female performers (take the case of Britney Spears) get steered by older male managers into "now it's time for your hot horny bitch phase" under the pretext of "no, no, this is empowering you, you're claiming your sexuality!" and similar guff. By the time they wise up to what's going on, it's too late and they're stuck with this image. I hate that girls are being taught that 'yeah, you gotta send nudes to your boyfriend if you want to keep him, that's just how it is' and then we get 13 year olds finding out that their private photos are being shared around for laughs and wank material.
But I'm a dinosaur. The socially conservative society I would prefer has been dynamited and we're all standing in the rubble.
It has become an accepted social reality that average women will happily suck dick, swallow cum, do gangbangs online for the money, and it’s all normal, because it’s not like they are doing anything objectionable or whatever.
Because it became normalised first in sexual relationships, when men started asking for what they saw in porn. "What do you mean, you don't want to suck my dick? Fine, you don't want to do that, I'll find another girl who will". Now blowjobs are just commonplace parts of what is the expected sexual repertoire. Heterosexual anal sex has gone the same way: from something only seen in porn to something daring when discussed in the mainstream to "spice up your sex life, ten top tips for having butt sex and keeping your man happy". See Dan Savage's "Good, Giving and Game" where if your partner doesn't want to engage in whatever kink or fetish you apparently can't live without, then if they're not willing to give in you are perfectly entitled to look for someone willing outside the relationship, or dump that partner's vanilla prude ass. That was in the context of gay sexual relationships, but the advice was trickling out for straight relationships as well: if she won't do it for you, then you are justified in finding someone who will.
Are you really surprised young women have learned this is what is expected of them? OnlyFans and the rest of it are just the fruits of this taken to its logical extreme.
HereAndGone2
15d ago
I don't get the impression that Walz is personally corrupt. I could well believe he never touched a cent of dirty money.
What he is, is weak. Kamala picked him precisely because he was biddable and wouldn't have opinions of his own to clash with her. I could well see that he just went along with what the advisors and civil servants told him to do. And if that meant "sign this, Governor, no don't worry, ignore the racist MAGA noise about bad things happening, ha ha you know everything is hunky-dory", then sure.
From "107 Days" (and boy, having just finished the book, I meant to finish giving my opinion of it but all this happened) re: her decision about who her running mate would be:
[Shapiro] peppered me with questions, trying to nail down, in detail, what role I saw for my VP. At one point, he mused that he would want to be in the room for every decision. I told him bluntly that was an unrealistic expectation. A vice president is not a copresident. I had a nagging concern that he would be unable to settle for a role as number two and that it would wear on our partnership. I had to be able to completely trust the person in that role. “Every day as president,” I said, “I’ll have ninety-nine problems, and my VP can’t be one.”
...It was quickly clear to me that Tim had walked into that room feeling he wouldn’t get the job. The first thing he said as he sat down—I don’t even know if the door had closed behind him—was: “Whether or not you pick me, I’m going to do everything I can to get you elected.” He was immediately self-critical. “I’m not a good debater.” “I’ve never used a teleprompter.” He was less polished than Josh. But he had an appealing authenticity and was genuinely self-deprecating. A lot of people in politics act self-deprecating, but it’s just that, an act. If anything, Tim over-indexed his own liabilities.
...[The debate with J.D. Vance where Walz was too civil for her liking] When Tim fell for it and started nodding and smiling at J.D.’s fake bipartisanship, I moaned to Doug, “What is happening?”
I told the television screen: “You’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate.”
HereAndGone2
15d ago
I don't know, before all this blew up the impression I got was that Walz was returning to Minnesota after the crash-and-burn Harris campaign and planned to run for the third term because why not, he was generally popular as the governor, and everyone was supporting him online and saying he was the reason Minnesota was so wonderful a place to live in and so progressive and so well-run. Even if enthusiasm for a third term was tepid (and I don't know if it was or not), there was no big glaring reason he shouldn't run again.
Well, that escalated quickly, didn't it?
HereAndGone2
15d ago
I mean, I'm glad he wants to be an involved father. I suppose I'm just surprised an intelligent guy doesn't know, or had nobody tell him, that parenthood is a slog. You may love your kids and still be delighted to hand them over to Granny or the day care so you get a few hours to yourself. You won't always feel like rainbows and sunshine when they want to play with you or want your attention.
The important part is not "I should be spending X hours a day with them", the important part is "Can I put on my big boy (or big girl) pants and take care of them even when all I want is to go off by myself?"
Kids don't need 100% focussed attention from the parent all the time, just being in the room and they are playing with their own stuff while you keep an eye on them but do your own work is enough. Neglect is the thing that does damage; Dad or Mom brushes you off and can't be bothered ever to pay attention to your game or your question or your stunning kindergarten finger painting. Even half-assed attention is better than nothing there.
So if he's at least half-assing it, good job!
HereAndGone2
15d ago
If Maduro's personal guard was made up of Cubans, that might indeed make the VP more willing to break some eggs to make the omelette. So long as the eggs were Cuban not Venezuelan, well, you have to make tough decisions when you're a leader, don't you?
HereAndGone2
15d ago
Well, yeah it's a chore. Do you think every mother is singing songs of joy while cleaning up toddler mess for the umpteenth time?
Some things you have to do because they have to be done, and that doesn't mean it's always fun and joy. Parenting is hard. This is the flip side of all the talk about "what can we do to make people have more kids?" While women may naturally be more amenable to looking after children, this is the reality of it: it's hard work. Fathers have to share in it as much as they can, otherwise you will not - no matter how many rights you strip away from women - get that elevated TFR so many solutions on here have been posted about.
Welcome to parenting: it's a job. If you want four kids, you can't dump it all on your wife, you have to take some share as well. And it's not going to be fun and laughter and bliss every moment.
HereAndGone2
15d ago
I wonder if this is downstream of the failed campaign with Kamala? Walz didn't achieve the kind of breakthroughs with white male rednecks they were hoping for, and failure is contagious: he was willing to abandon Minnesota for the big job but when that didn't pan out, now he's crawling back for a third term? Why re-elect a loser?
HereAndGone2
15d ago
Living to be old is an achievement gained only after much human suffering, thanks to better economic conditions, better medicine, and a little luck. Therefore, sneers about middle age are instead a ribbon of commendation for being one of the fortunate humans to live at this period, when you don't risk death before the age of five, or death via childbirth (as frequently as previously) or death from getting a cold that turns to pneumonia, or death by eating bad food that spoiled.
HereAndGone2
15d ago
Why mention middle-age, since you don't know my exact age? The amount of times men assume "gotta be old ugly hag since complaining about us liking hot young women" is laughable, and you did that exact thing there.
I am old enough to be old ugly hag! Go me, I have survived to live this long! Whether I'm sixteen or sixty-six has no bearing on 'is what I am saying true/sensible/reasonable/not flat-out crazy at least' and reaching straight away for the "middle-aged women" bit is a weakness on your part.
Should I assume you are fifteen, by your writing? I'm going to do you the courtesy of imagining you are a grown adult, without assumptions about your precise chronological state.
How sweet of you:
forum poster A is older; poor; overweight; prone to histrionic, antagonistic outbursts, etc. when she sees a comment she doesn’t like.
The mens, they always gots to reach for "DE HYSTERIA" when they can't back up their fronting.
HereAndGone2
15d ago
That part was hyperbole since yeah, you guys will step in and send this exact message.
HereAndGone2
15d ago
Interesting news just in, if it's anything more than gossip - the VP stabbed Maduro in the back? She and her brother were having secret talks in Saudi Arabia Qatar with the Trump administration to hand Maduro over (presumably in exchange for her getting backing to take over):
In a meeting room in Doha, 12,000km away from Caracas, officials were busy discussing the future of Venezuela without its dictator Nicolas Maduro.
A senior member of the UAE royal family was acting as a “bridge” between the regime and Donald Trump, who was building an armada to pressure the Venezuelan leader to surrender.
Except Mr Maduro had no part in the secret meetings in Doha. Instead, it was his deputy, the then vice-president Delcy Rodriguez, and her brother Jorge, who were leading the talks.
According to reports in the Miami Herald, which has strong contacts in Latin America, Ms Rodriguez, who is now running Venezuela with the approval of Mr Trump, had reached out to Washington to present a “more acceptable” alternative to the Maduro regime.
Details of the meeting are now fuelling suspicions of an inside job to remove Mr Maduro from power and leave a president in power who can manage a transition without dismantling the state completely and causing turmoil and riots. As the October reports of the meeting say, Ms Rodriguez would be offering “Madurismo without Maduro,” a kind of “Regime Lite”.
HereAndGone2
16d ago
Trump daughter. Ivanka is supposedly his favourite child, and this would be the bonus of "First Female President" 😁
HereAndGone2
16d ago
I liked the guy calling me "middle-aged". Oh no, I've lived past early adulthood, how embarrassing! We all know women should die the minute they're not hot by male standards, which seems to be "over 13 because fake porn of 13 year old girls is hot and normal".
HereAndGone2
16d ago
Ah, okay. Well, just let Letitia take a run at it, I'm sure she could figure something out 😁
HereAndGone2
16d ago
I have indeed seen photos where my reaction is "put more clothes on!"
HereAndGone2
16d ago
Okay, you did give your definition. Thank you, that's useful.
It's still a little broad: "one definition I'm using here is a fascist is not a standard conservative". What's a standard conservative, by this measure? There's a lot of disagreement on here about 'is that just a liberal, what is a conservative' and so on. But you do at least have a starting point there, so again, you did well there.
This which fantasizing about mass industrial killing tons of Americans is cosigned by JD Vance
The link says he did a cover blurb, but unlike the rest of the article doesn't provide any link to it. Dude, do you not know how the publishing industry generates cover blurbs? They can take a generally negative, critical review of anything and extract two words from it, then slap those (with a copious garnishing of ellipses) on the back as a positive recommendation. Let me see if I can find said blurb and see what it says.
By the bye, I see that book is also described as "NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and PUBLISHERS WEEKLY NATIONAL BESTSELLER". Wow, the NYT is a fascist publication now? 😁
Okay, here's the Vance blurb:
"In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR, college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back." --J. D. Vance, Senator (R-OH)
I'm def one of the ones that will end up in neo-Auschwitz for being one of the ill defined "cultural Marxists" by the way, excuse me if I don't have tons of patience for this cute routine (wHaT is FAsCism huh?!) like I should be too stupid to know who my enemies are.
Honey sweetie boy, I am one of the ones who take badly to that cutesy-poo inconsistent capitalisation trick. If I didn't write it that way, don't attribute it to me. I like your belief in your incipient martyrdom, who says you are going to be important enough to even be noticed by the big bad wolves?
"Oh no they're weird". Well I am shocked to hear a nice, normal, wholesome, down-home family values Mom and Apple Pie cultural Marxist tell me that! Weird, you say? Guess that means I am indeed a fascist, because I am weird too.
Funny you should instance vril, I suppose that makes the entire nation of Britain fascists, seeing as how they drink Bo-Vril 🤣
HereAndGone2
16d ago
The Sixth Amendment says you have the right to a trial "by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed."
If they're going to blame Venezuela for drug-running, none of the drugs ended up in New York? At all? Would be difficult to prove, I imagine, and if they can construct 39 FELONIES OUT OF NOT PAYING A HOOKER OUT OF CAMPAIGN FUNDS!, I'm sure they can construct "he presided over the regime where illegal drugs which might have originated from the country under said regime have been sold to our good citizens" for a case.
HereAndGone2
16d ago
No more would I, but apparently (1) if there's no legal harm, what harm? and (2) you only say that because you're a woman and you want women to be treated as Wonderful and deprive men and boys of their natural right to masturbate over pictures of naked women.
At least, that's what I'm being scolded for on here, I think?
Oh gosh, yes. As I slogged my way through the book, I was panting to get to the end and her Big Fat African-Asian-American Loss because I wanted to luxuriate in her tears.
I realise that sounds mean, and it is, but good God this woman is insufferable. Here's a taster of what she did when her staff threw her a surprise birthday party:
Now, I've had a joust with Sloot on here about me being middle-aged, and I've never worn stilettoes in my life, but I am not ashamed of being the age I am (a couple years older than the Cocoanut Queen here) and even I would never be so ungracious as to deliberately burst a balloon with my age on it. There's several little gems scattered throughout the book where you just know some poor staffer got screamed at for how very dare they! 😁
But not just some staffer, no, Hubby Darling comes in for a whack of the stick too for not being special enough about her big important birthday (I have no idea who the ghostwriter was, but I wouldn't have let her include this little anecdote. Or at least not this way. Though I guess Kamala wants things her way, so her way it is):
Now, I imagine that she thought this was a cute, candid, slice-of-life little story that showed how she's only human after all, she and her husband have tiffs just like you ordinary folks, but they are strong and united.
However. She covers his birthday in the book, too, but naturally she gets everything right and perfect. She isn't there because she's out campaigning, but she gets her staff to hang up a happy birthday banner, she arranges his favourite meal, she gets the perfect gift for him. We don't get what he thought about it all, or if he wanted to complain about "but you didn't do anything special" as well. Of course not.
The queen cannot be expected to get out of her damn bath and walk across the room to the towels. He doesn't love her! Her perfect social secretary, though, saves the day by lecturing the wayward Second Gentleman on how he has failed her majesty and what he must do to make up for it, complete with homework, which he then dutifully completes every night (and again you just know she's keeping tally of whether it's every night or he forgot one night).
Good Lord Almighty, imagine being married to this woman. Imagine working for her: you get a fun birthday balloon with her correct age on it and instead she stares at you with the cold-blooded reptilian gaze and tooth-baring 'smile' of an alligator as she deliberately bursts it with her sharp heel, leaving you sweating as you realise she is imagining it's your head not a balloon, and you have to wait for the screaming scolding later. Because You. Have. Failed. Her. Did you not remember, or did you just not care, that the queen does not count birthdays anymore? How could you be so insulting and so cavalier? Are you really cut out for this job, after all?
EDIT: Also, yikes. Hubby Darling is Jewish. And she plonks down a story making him look like a cheap huckster: hey, I can kill two birds with one stone, repurpose this present for anniversary and birthday, not have to buy two different gifts! Yeah, way not to lean into the stereotype of Jewish money-obsession. She is very tone-deaf this way, too centred on how she feels, what she thinks, what other people think about her. I know she's the candidate and this is her campaign, but she really talks about others as though they're just there to orbit her, the one and only sun. There's a way of describing "we were all stressed and tired after a long campaign, and I felt disappointed about my birthday" without making it "Because my husband is a selfish, cheapskate, jerk".
EDIT EDIT: Imagine making your staff address your husband as "Mr. Second Gentleman". Had she been elected, it would have been "Madam President and Mr. First Gentleman" like they were royalty! 😊 Yeah, that might be correct protocol, but in a "this shows how we're only human" anecdote, "Listen, Mr. Emhoff" (or even "Look, Doug") "you have to fix this" etc. works a lot better for that humanising insight than the "I am a robot, beep boop" tone here. That kind of formality shows what working on Kamala's staff was really like, what her expectations of behaviour were, how you were supposed to know your place.
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