As long as it fits...
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Posted:Jan 10, 2022 11:30 am
Last Updated:Jun 22, 2023 5:13 pm 8731 Views
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Bill and Barbara Challangra set up an appointment with an adoption agency. The couple meets with two social workers, Mr. Tarsalt and Ms. Deswalle, both of whom are quite impressed. The couple are well-dressed, well-spoken, and well-liked. When Ms. Deswalle asks about their profession, the couple confidently and proudly say in unison, “We run a circus.”
Mr. Tarsalt and Ms. Deswalle immediately glance at each other. In fact, Mr. Tarsalt utters a long, “hmmmm.” Both Tarsalt and Deswalle pause. They have the . The that says, “A circus is no place for a . It’s an environment with dangerous animals, constant moving, and who knows what else.” Ms. Deswalle looks them both in the eyes, and says in a calm voice, “the thought of the circus raises doubts about suitability as parents.”
Bill and Barbara are prepared, well-prepared with their answer. Barbara pulls from her purse photos of their 55-foot motor home. It is clean and well maintained. And she points out the motor home is equipped with a large and spotless room for a .
Tarsalt and Deswalle smile at each other and are happy to see the pictures. Deswalle asks, “I’m wondering about the kind of education the would receive while in a circus.” Again prepared, Bill puts their minds at ease saying, “We’ve arranged for a full-time tutor teaching the all the usual subjects along with Spanish, Mandarin, and computer skills.”
And Barbara adds, “We also have a nanny, who is a certified expert in pediatric care, welfare, proper nutrition, and exercise — all that a requires.”
Both Deswalle and Tarsalt visibly relax as the Challangras have finally satisfied their concerns. Tarsalt then asks, “What age are you hoping to adopt?”
Bill squeezes Barbara’s hands, smiles, and says, “It doesn’t really matter, as long as the fits in the cannon.”
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Not a rebuke of Trump...but one of Biden
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Posted:Nov 3, 2021 2:04 pm
Last Updated:Nov 6, 2021 9:54 pm 8543 Views
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At McAuliffe HQ, A Trumpless Reality Sinks In
By RealClearWire|Nov. 3rd, 2021
By Philip Wegmann for RealClearPolitics
MCLEAN, Va. — The party faithful had been chatting amongst themselves for three hours, periodically craning their necks for a glimpse of the cable news playing on mute in the press pen, nervously refreshing their drinks at the cash bar, and quietly complaining about the lack of reliable wi-fi in the Hilton ballroom, when Terry McAuliffe finally arrived.
He didn’t say much.
In a speech that barely lasted five minutes, the normally chatty politician thanked his supporters and his family and his staff before quickly leaving the stage. Notably, he did not concede. And, for the first time in a long time, the Democratic candidate for governor didn’t say a single word about Donald Trump.
McAuliffe’s strategy had been to tie his Republican opponent, Glenn Youngkin, to the former president so often that the race would become a replay of the 2020 election in a state Joe Biden carried by percentage points.
Instead, McAuliffe wound up turning his own race into a referendum on whether Democrats could win without Trump in the picture. Prior to Tuesday night, was measured optimism that this gambit would work. “We are very hopeful,” Debbie and Thomas Siebert said of McAuliffe’s chances.
Longtime friends of the candidate, Debbie Siebert and her husband, a former ambassador Sweden, added early in the night that “we are realists too.”
Some caution was in order, especially with next year’s midterms on the horizon. “Virginia is a leading political indicator,” observed Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington, “mainly because ’s nothing better in 2021.”
Farnsworth can be forgiven for not seeing the looming New Jersey surprise looming — no one else did either — but his point about Virginia being a bellwether is a bracing one for Democrats. Republican Bob McDonnell won the race for governor in 2009 before his party regained the majority in the House of Representatives in a 20 rebuke President Obama.
A similar thing happened in 2017 when Ralph Northam was victorious a year before Democrats retook the House. Hoping to make history by bucking that trend, McAuliffe and Democrats went all in.
seemed like everyone was in the final weeks. Biden and Obama both the stump. So did Vice President Kamala Harris. Even singer-songwriter Pharrell Williams made an appearance. Then was the old Virginia boss himself. “If anybody could pull this off, is Terry,” John Seher explained.
Another longtime friend of McAuliffe and a former Biden Senate aide, Seher told RealClearPolitics was “not one stone he left unturned, one hand he hasn’t shaken, one he hasn’t kissed, one not petted.” Waiting on early returns, he added that no matter what, even “if it doesn’t work out, he can always say, ‘I did my best.’”
Democrats knew what was at stake, including the vice president, warned a week before the election that “what happens in Virginia will, in large part, determine what happens in 2022, 2024, and on.”
By Tuesday night, most McAuliffe supporters acknowledged that the Democratic machine was chugging uphill and that the obstacle was bigger than just Youngkin. The mild-mannered Republican in a fleece jacket had become the standard-bearer in a larger struggle over culture as much as politics.
Exhausted by the pandemic and angered by liberal school lesson plans, parents were flooding into local school board meetings to protest as early as this summer. When McAuliffe said in a September debate that he didn’t think “parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” Youngkin seized the issue.
The Republican said he would ban critical race theory in schools, and he promised to give parents the option to opt their out of reading material they found objectional. McAuliffe accused him of trying to “bring his personal culture wars into our classrooms.” Biden agreed and, in the final days of the campaign, echoed the argument that Youngkin wanted to “ban books.”
Most of all, the two compared the Republican candidate to Trump. At a campaign stop one week before the election, Biden invoked his predecessor’s two dozen times in a speech lasting just 18 minutes.
At least with the Democratic base, that was motivation enough. Debbie Siebert dubbed Youngkin “a Trumpster without a zipper problem,” a reference the 45th president’s sexual extracurriculars. “So finally you a Trumpster with a nice personality,” she added later, “but he’s still a Trumpster, OK?”
If the comparison stuck, it was not enough dissuade voters from flocking support the Republican. When Youngkin jumped out an early lead Tuesday night, some of the McAuliffe faithful had been milling about in the lobby retreated the hotel bar watch Game Six of the World Series side-by-side with CNN. Nancy Espinoza and Christian Martinez stuck behind.
They were volunteers with the liberal immigration group CASA in Action, and they had been knocking on doors in the rain all day help get out the vote. “We are not going lose hope,” Espinoza said even after the Cook Political Report called the race for Youngkin. “It isn’t over until it is over,” added Martinez before noting hopefully, “We’ve seen in past elections that we’ve got wait until all the votes are counted in the end.”
As the evening dragged on and their numbers didn’t improve, some Democrats fretted openly that the Trump offensive might been a mistake. About an hour before McAuliffe went on stage, Rep. Don Beyer still hadn’t made up his mind. “I guess we will find out tonight,” he said.
“Clearly, Trump was very unpopular a year ago,” Beyer continued. “He probably is not more popular now but is less relevant: He isn’t president, his account is turned off and he isn’t on . You know? So I don’t think McAuliffe could run against Donald Trump as effectively as Joe Biden did.”
He added, though, that “ is certainly annoying for Terry McAuliffe see Glenn Youngkin go full Trumpian win the primary and then not even mention his again!”
That’s not actually what Youngkin did, but the Virginia congressman was making a larger point about the direction of his party. He predicted that, come the midterms, he and his colleagues will “want talk about all the stuff we’ve gotten done — all the Democratic promises, the Joe Biden promises, that we’ve kept.” The conversation will naturally shifted by then, Beyer explained, and “I doubt seriously that 2022 will be about Trump.”
Before leaving for Europe, Biden had pushed his party set aside its differences and back his $1.75 trillion compromise on social spending. “I don’t think it’s hyperbole say that the House and Senate majorities and my presidency will be determined by what happens in the next week,” he reportedly told congressional Democrats about an upcoming vote on that agenda.
He was not successful, the president departed for an international climate summit in Glasgow empty-handed, and Virginia Democrats were left to talk about “the former guy.”
Julius Reynolds is glad Congress didn’t rush a package through. The president of Employees International Union local 5, he noted the “many people saying they’re annoyed with some of the progressives holding up the infrastructure plan.” But that is the wrong way at , he said. “You’ve got realize this is a plan that is going finally help those people that live at the margin.”
A loss in Virginia could end up dooming that legislation, however. Political commentator David Axelrod worried last night that a McAuliffe loss could spook moderates from swing districts. Putting himself in their shoes, the former Obama adviser wondered aloud, “Are you rethinking tonight your vote on this reconciliation package? Are you thinking, … you shouldn’t do ?”
Legislative strategy was the last thing on McAuliffe supporters’ minds as the evening dragged on and hope of victory dimmed. Siebert, the former ambassador, admitted, “I thought it would be over by over 9.” Contemplating what a loss could mean for his party nationally, he returned to Biden’s that Youngkin wanted ban books, specifically the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Beloved,” which is often assigned in advanced-placement English classes.
The Republican aired an ad in the last week of the campaign featuring a Virginia championed a bill years ago parents notified of the explicit reading material. “‘Beloved,’” Siebert concluded, “is now part of the lore of how Republicans run in the suburbs.”
The couple reminisced about the victories and losses they had supported McAuliffe through. But this race felt different, they both agreed. “This cultural stuff is way over the line in my opinion,” the former ambassador said. “It is a sickening way to gain the loyalty of people,” Debbie Siebert added. “It’s just sick.”
“I guess McAuliffe gets a nice Cabinet position in the Biden administration now,” he joked.
The president hasn’t reacted to the race just yet. He knew what happened before he was back stateside. On his way home from Europe, the televisions on Air Force One reportedly flipped back-and-forth between CNN and Fox News. The networks called the race for Youngkin around :30.
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And the winners are...
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Posted:Oct 5, 2021 8:53 pm
Last Updated:Oct 6, 2021 7:59 pm 7569 Views
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These are (allegedly) the winners of a Washington Post Mensa Invitational Challenge, where contestants change the meaning of a word by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter.
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