Biden says he worries that cutting oil production too fast will hurt working people - NPR

tebagbagasi.blogspot.com

Enlarge this image

President Biden spent three days in Rome talking to world leaders before and during the G-20. He held a formal press conference before heading to the UN climate summit in Glasgow. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

President Biden said on Sunday that the world can't immediately stop using oil and said OPEC and Russia need to pump more of it, even as he pushes the world to pledge to cut climate-changing carbon emissions at the Glasgow climate summit this week.

After three days of meeting with world leaders in Rome, where he attended the G-20 summit, Biden said he is worried that surging energy costs are hurting working class families.

"On the surface it seems like an irony," Biden said of simultaneously calling on major oil producers to pump more as he heads to the COP26 climate change summit. "But the truth of the matter is ... everyone knows that idea that we're going to be able to move to renewable energy overnight ... it's just not rational," he said.

Biden said the idea that Russia, Saudi Arabia and other producers are holding back to boost prices "is not right." With gas prices averaging $3.40 a gallon in the US, according to AAA, Biden said families are feeling it.

"It has profound impact on working class families just to get back and forth to work," Biden said. He talked about the issue with other major oil-consuming countries at the G-20, but told reporters he was reluctant to reveal any of their plans to spur producers to pump more.

Biden says he isn't worried about his sagging approval ratings

Surging gas and grocery prices and supply chain snarls have prompted concerns among Americans about the state of the U.S. economy, even as unemployment continues to improve and wages rise.

Biden's approval rating has sunk well below 50%. An NBC News poll released Sunday that found 70% of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction, eight points worse than in August, a moment when Biden's fortunes really began to slide because of the surge in COVID-19 cases and the chaotic troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Asked about his poll numbers, Biden said "the polls are going to go up and down and up and down," adding that he didn't seek the presidency for the ratings.

Enlarge this image

President Biden leaves the stage after addressing a press conference at the end of the G-20. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

He says he's confident his big legislative package will soon pass

Biden said he's confident the U.S. can meet his goal of cutting U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030 from 2005 levels, even though a key climate measure was cut out of the legislative package currently before Congress. He said that sweeping package of climate measures and social safety net spending, combined with the infrastructure bill passed by the Senate, together contain $900 billion in climate and resilience measures.

Lawmakers within his own party have struggled to agree on the scope and cost of his plan. "It's going to pass in my view – but we'll see," he said, saying a vote could happen soon.

He acknowledge that climate activists found the G-20 agreement on climate measures underwhelming, but blamed Russia, China and Saudi Arabia for not making commitments. "I found it disappointing myself," he said.

Enlarge this image

President Biden leaves the Vatican on Oct. 29 after visiting Pope Francis. Tiziana Fabi/AFP via Getty Images

Tiziana Fabi/AFP via Getty Images

In Rome, Biden expounds on his relationship with Pope Francis

Biden spoke at length about his meeting on Friday with Pope Francis. Biden finds himself at the center of a debate among American Catholic leaders about whether the Catholic president should continue to receive communion, because his stance in favor of abortion rights conflicts with the church's position.

Biden had told reporters the pope told him he was a "good Catholic" and should continue to receive communion. Asked how that made him feel and whether it should put the debate to rest, Biden said "a lot of this is just personal," explaining that Francis had "provided great solace" after the death of his son Beau Biden in 2015.

"He is just a fine, decent honorable man," Biden said of Pope Francis. "He is everything I learned about Catholicism from the time I was a kid going from grade school through high school."

Adblock test (Why?)

"that" - Google News
November 01, 2021 at 03:41AM
https://ift.tt/3BxV0Zk

Biden says he worries that cutting oil production too fast will hurt working people - NPR
"that" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d8Dlvv

Roblox is back online after an outage that lasted three days - The Verge

tebagbagasi.blogspot.com

After an outage that began Thursday evening, Roblox appeared to be back online Sunday evening. The company said in a tweet at about 4PM ET Sunday that it was “incrementally bringing regions back online.”

Quick update as we work to get things back to normal. We are incrementally bringing regions back online.

— Roblox (@Roblox) October 31, 2021

The problems began October 28th around 7PM ET, when the platform first reported it was having issues, and said it was “working hard to get things back to normal.” Some speculated that the outage was caused by a cross-promotion with Chipotle that went live about a half hour before the problems began, but the company said the outage was “not related to any specific experiences or partnerships on the platform.”

Roblox confirmed in a statement to The Verge late Saturday that the outage wasn’t the result of an “external intrusion,” and that it had identified an “underlying internal cause.”

On Sunday, the company said in a tweet that it had identified the root cause of the issue and a solution, but didn’t provide any further details.

It was a remarkably lengthy outage for the wildly popular game-building platform which counts more than 40 million daily users. It provided few updates during the process, going nearly 24 hours between status page updates at one point. It also likely made for a long weekend for parents; more than 50 percent of Roblox players are under the age of 13.

Adblock test (Why?)

"that" - Google News
November 01, 2021 at 05:24AM
https://ift.tt/2ZQ4WAm

Roblox is back online after an outage that lasted three days - The Verge
"that" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d8Dlvv

Colorado Rockies news: Moments that still haunt me - Purple Row

tebagbagasi.blogspot.com

Each Halloween I have a tendency to think about things that frighten or have traumatized me. I saw parts of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead when I was a very young lad and that scared me to the point where it took almost two decades before I could even attempt to watch it again. Things such as scary clowns, dolls like Chucky, and spiders have a way of sticking with you and triggering those fears that still haunt you. The same can be said for the Colorado Rockies and today seemed as good a time as any to revisit some of the moments in Rockies history that still haunt me.

Stanton’s Gargantuan Smash

In the debacle of a season that was 2012, the Rockies sent old man Jamie Moyer out to face the Miami Marlins. Things were looking good for the Rockies heading to the bottom of the fourth as they led 4-2 but unfortunately things quickly soured. With the bases loaded and two outs, the soft-tossing Moyer was set to face the slugger Giancarlo Stanton.

The at-bat was quite a battle as Stanton managed to work the count full until he demolished a ball to left field for a grand slam to give the Marlins the lead. Not only was it a devastating hit for Moyer and the Rockies, but it was literally a devastating hit to the brand new Marlins scoreboard as the ball slammed into the screen and blacked out a panel section. To this day, I still think about that home run and it will wake me up in a cold sweat.

A Nightmare on Blake Street

The Rockies are no strangers to struggling relievers and bullpen implosions but one performance in 2014 sticks with me because of the baffling horror of it all. On April 8, 2014, the Rockies were playing the Chicago White Sox at Coors Field. Franklin Morales didn’t have a great outing, but he managed to pitch into the seventh inning before giving way to the bullpen. In the eighth inning with the Rockies down 7-2, Walt Weiss turned to reliever Wilton Lopez to attempt a clean inning and just get through the game.

Lopez immediately gave up back-to-back home runs to Avisail Garcia and Alexei Ramírez followed by a single to Tyler Flowers. He was then able to get a pair of ground-outs before things truly unraveled when he gave up an RBI double to Marcus Semien, a two-run homer to José Abreu, and three straight singles to score another run. His six runs allowed on eight hits put the game well out of reach and basically ended his big league career. The Rockies optioned Lopez to Triple-A Colorado Springs the next day and he would never appear with the parent club ever again.

The Brewers clear the bases

Like a repressed memory, I had forgotten about the time that the Rockies allowed three runs on a wild pitch until Jomboy made a breakdown video about it in 2020. Another haunting incident from 2014, the Rockies were playing the Brewers at Coors Field when things got out of hand in the third inning. With Christian Friedrich struggling on the hill, the Brewers managed to load the bases with pitcher Wily Peralta up to the plate with two outs.

By some paranormal circumstance, Friedrich fired a fastball up the zone that sailed to the backstop. Rockies catcher Michael McKenry made a valiant effort to try and retrieve the ball and fire towards home for a play at the plate to get the runner but instead had a throwing error sail towards the Brewers dugout allowed another run to score.

Friedrich picked up the ball and slowly walked back towards home where McKenry stood slumped over and staring at the ground. No one was paying attention to Jean Segura who rounded third and bolted home to score the third run. It’s an embarrassing moment in Rockies history and unfortunately encapsulates everything about Rockies baseball.

The horrors live on...

I could sit here and write for hours about the other terrifying things that still haunt me about the Rockies. We could talk about trades, organizational decisions, awful contracts, and the cold, lifeless eyes of Dinger but at the end of the day, it’s better to focus on the good things and don’t let the moments haunt you forever.

What moments still haunt you from Rockies history? Share your thoughts in the comments below and Happy Halloween!

★ ★ ★

Why Ryan McMahon will (probably) be robbed of his first Gold Glove Award | Rox Pile

On Thursday, it was announced that Ryan McMahon was a finalist for the Gold Glove Award at third base along with Nolan Arenado and Manny Machado. Rockies fans are eager for McMahon to win his first Gold Glove, but there is the danger that voters will instead opt for Arenado or Machado simply due to veteran history as opposed to the actual superior defense that McMahon displayed on the field.

The Pfister Hotel mystery | Outside The Lines

Jon Gray’s interest in paranormal activity and his hobby as a ghost hunter took front and center in this video from Outside The Lines that made the rounds on Twitter on Friday. The video focuses mainly on the mystery surrounding the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee and the strange occurrences that big leaguers have experienced there.

On the Farm: Arizona Fall League Edition

Glendale Desert Dogs 5, Salt River Rafters 4

It was a rough night for Michael Toglia as the young first baseman went hitless in four at-bats during the Rafters' loss to the Desert Dogs. The lack of success at the top of the lineup spelled trouble for the Rafters as Toglia had a pair of strikeouts to contribute to the nine strikeouts the team had on the night. On the other hand, Jake Bird had a notable appearance on the mound in the seventh inning. He quickly tallied a strikeout and a groundout before issuing a walk and giving up a single to the Desert Dogs. With two men on Bird managed to strike out James Outman and eliminate the threat and lower his ERA to 1.69 in the Arizona Fall League.

★ ★ ★

Please keep in mind our Purple Row Community Guidelines when you’re commenting. Thanks!

Adblock test (Why?)

"that" - Google News
October 31, 2021 at 07:00PM
https://ift.tt/3w22z9s

Colorado Rockies news: Moments that still haunt me - Purple Row
"that" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d8Dlvv

Biden's Glasgow Challenge Is to Convince World That U.S. Can Lead on Climate - The Wall Street Journal

tebagbagasi.blogspot.com

President Biden, along with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, spoke to the media in Rome on Sunday at the summit of G-20 leaders.

Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press

President Biden heads to the climate summit in Glasgow aiming to show that the U.S. is ready to take a leadership role on global warming, but with few concrete options for rallying international support for the tough measures scientists say are needed.

The summit, which is sponsored by the United Nations and begins Sunday, provides a stage for world leaders to pledge their national commitments to stem global warming. They are also expected to wrangle over an array of thornier issues, including who should bear the biggest burden...

President Biden heads to the climate summit in Glasgow aiming to show that the U.S. is ready to take a leadership role on global warming, but with few concrete options for rallying international support for the tough measures scientists say are needed.

The summit, which is sponsored by the United Nations and begins Sunday, provides a stage for world leaders to pledge their national commitments to stem global warming. They are also expected to wrangle over an array of thornier issues, including who should bear the biggest burden for cutting emissions.

Mr. Biden has staked a large part of his legacy on U.S. leadership, but he arrives with his plan to spend $555 billion to cut greenhouse gas emissions still awaiting congressional approval and with a key element—a $150 billion program aimed at pushing utilities to draw more power from clean-energy sources—cut under pressure from Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.).

He now needs international support for what is a global problem, and for that he must overcome skepticism from other nations that the U.S.—after years of waffling on climate policy—can assume the mantle of leadership.

Developing nations want the U.S. and other wealthy nations to fork over more money to help transition to cleaner sources of power. And they believe it is unfair that the U.S. is asking developing countries to sacrifice for the good of the planet after the U.S. spent decades industrializing without any restrictions on its growth.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met Saturday at the G-20 summit in Rome.

Photo: Andrea Solaro/Associated Press

India’s Foreign Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, whose country is the third-largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, is among those who say the commitment by the U.S. and other wealthy nations to raise $100 billion a year to help poorer countries to transition to cleaner energy isn’t enough.

“One-hundred-billion dollars is less than the money [that the] NFL is making from media rights,” Mr. Jaishankar said recently.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry, the U.S. special climate envoy, said a new study showing that wealthy nations will meet their $100 billion-a-year climate finance commitment for the first time in 2023 is a sign of progress, even though that is three years later than promised.

He acknowledges that it isn’t enough money in the long run, but that governments alone don’t have the money to raise that total to the trillions of dollars a year ultimately required.

“People are right to worry about why it’s taken so long, but I’m proud of what the United States has done to help pull that money together and to put us on track to produce it,” Mr. Kerry said by telephone from London.

Mr. Kerry said too many countries are refusing to act aggressively enough to meet the goals of the Paris agreement, which set a collective target of limiting the earth’s warming by the end of the century to well under two degrees Celsius compared with the preindustrial era, and to strive to keep warming to 1.5 degrees.

“Yes, there will be a gap in Glasgow,” Mr. Kerry said. “Not every country is going to commit this year to hit the 1.5. But they are committing to do things that [are] beginning to change their approach and economy, and over the next year or so we have time to continue the process of transformation.”

Mr. Kerry and other U.S. officials say their top goal in Glasgow is to keep the momentum going. They note that in the lead-up to the summit more than 140 countries, including major emitters such as Japan and Brazil, have announced more aggressive commitments to reduce their greenhouse gases.

John Kerry, the U.S. special climate envoy, and other U.S. officials say their top goal in Glasgow is to keep the momentum going.

Photo: pool/Reuters

U.S. officials said more successful collaboration at Glasgow can send a signal that governments and businesses should get even more aggressive.

But that type of intangible goal is a political challenge for world leaders looking to soothe public frustration over government inaction, former diplomats said. At Glasgow, also known as COP26, there is no grand bargain on the table for dramatic emissions reductions that world leaders can tout as a breakthrough.

“COP26 was always going to be very difficult,” said Kaveh Guilanpour,

vice president for international strategies at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, an environmental group that works with businesses and governments, and a former climate negotiator for small island nations. “Glasgow was never going to be a Paris moment.…COP26 is much more complicated, and it makes it much harder to define what success means.”

Mr. Biden has tried to convince other countries to ramp up their ambition in part by showing a greater financial commitment and more aggressiveness in the U.S. The U.S. has cut its greenhouse gas emissions by about 20% since 2005, thanks to environmental measures and a shift from coal power, but that progress has been leveling off in recent years.

Mr. Biden earlier this year committed to cut U.S. emissions 50%-52% below 2005 levels by 2025. But the U.S. isn’t certain to meet a lower interim target set by former President Barack Obama. And it won’t meet Mr. Biden’s without additional federal action, such as new regulations and the renewable-energy tax credits included in the social-spending and climate legislation currently before Congress, according to outside analysts.

The pending half-a-trillion-dollar plan to reduce U.S. emissions would be the largest in the country’s history, but it is still a framework agreement pending congressional approval.

Money is a sticking point in climate-change negotiations around the world. As economists warn that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will cost many more trillions than anticipated, WSJ looks at how the funds could be spent, and who would pay. Illustration: Preston Jessee/WSJ The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

European allies see Mr. Biden as a welcome change from former President Donald Trump, who withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. But they have taken note of Mr. Biden’s struggles to turn his agenda into law, European officials say.

In China, the world’s No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases, leaders can mandate climate action and boast of having met past climate pledges to curb the growth of their emissions. This year, they repeatedly drew contrasts with Washington by highlighting the divide between its promises and actions.

Neither China nor the U.S. have enacted policies that will meet the 1.5-degree target, according to Climate Action Tracker, an independent group that analyzes countries’ climate plans. It ranks China’s efforts as “highly insufficient” and U.S. efforts as “insufficient.”

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Do you think the Biden administration is doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Why or why not? Join the conversation below.

Policies implemented by the European Union, Japan and Chile were also categorized as insufficient, while the U.K., Costa Rica and Nigeria were labeled “almost sufficient.” Russia and Saudi Arabia were among countries ranked “critically insufficient.”

Some longtime climate advocates have privately started to make comparisons between the Glasgow summit and a December 2009 United Nations meeting in Copenhagen. The Copenhagen summit was Mr. Obama’s first as president, and activists had sky-high expectations about what could be achieved.

In the end, the Copenhagen negotiations themselves produced only incremental progress, prompting frustration from activists, who called it a failure. Like Copenhagen, the Glasgow summit isn’t expected to result in a game-changing agreement.

Some world leaders still harbor anger toward the U.S. for its decision not to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first major global agreement to address climate change, and Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris accord and undo many of Mr. Obama’s climate regulations.

Yvo de Boer, who served as the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change during the Copenhagen summit, said foreign diplomats now better understand the political limits of U.S. presidents.

When asked if world leaders can set aside how the U.S. has changed course on climate change, he said, “For me, it’s a bit like: Are you able to ignore the infidelities of a straying wife?” Despite any misgivings, he said, “the United States is too important to ignore.”

—Georgi Kantchev, Rajesh Roy and Sha Hua contributed to this article.

Write to Timothy Puko at tim.puko@wsj.com and Andrew Restuccia at andrew.restuccia@wsj.com

Adblock test (Why?)

"that" - Google News
October 31, 2021 at 09:00PM
https://ift.tt/3CzYb3T

Biden's Glasgow Challenge Is to Convince World That U.S. Can Lead on Climate - The Wall Street Journal
"that" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d8Dlvv

Shell Is the Greenest Big Oil Company. Look What That Got It. - The Wall Street Journal

tebagbagasi.blogspot.com

Shell is under pressure to separate its fossil-fuel operations from its renewables business.

Photo: Peter Boer/Bloomberg News

Royal Dutch Shell PLC shows much that is wrong with environmental, social and governance investing. The Anglo-Dutch company was the first to target reduced carbon emissions from customers, has gone further than any of the other oil supermajors to shift its direction away from fossil fuels and is closest of any of them to meeting the Paris carbon target. It even has a better ESG score than electric-car leader Tesla or hydrogen wonder stock Plug Power.

The result? Shell has been rewarded with a stubbornly low market valuation,...

Royal Dutch Shell PLC shows much that is wrong with environmental, social and governance investing. The Anglo-Dutch company was the first to target reduced carbon emissions from customers, has gone further than any of the other oil supermajors to shift its direction away from fossil fuels and is closest of any of them to meeting the Paris carbon target. It even has a better ESG score than electric-car leader Tesla or hydrogen wonder stock Plug Power.

The result? Shell has been rewarded with a stubbornly low market valuation, is shunned by the increasing number of big money managers that have rejected oil investment outright and was the target of a successful lawsuit ordering it to reduce emissions.

Now hedge fund Third Point has an answer that makes perfect sense from a theoretical perspective: split it in two. The “green” and transition business it has built up should attract shareholders who want heavy investment in growth, and trade at a premium valuation. The “brown” oil operations should appeal to investors who just want a fat dividend from a dying business, and while it might trade at a discount it would throw off huge amounts of cash. Third Point founder Daniel Loeb, in a letter to investors, argued that this would be better for ESG and better for shareholders than the current hodgepodge of businesses that satisfies no one.

The Third Point theory is already being put into practice on the quiet by big dirty companies as they try to reduce emissions. Shell recently signed a $9.5 billion deal to sell its U.S. shale-oil business to ConocoPhillips, the big miners have been selling their coal businesses to private equity, and Anglo-Australian miner BHP Group this summer exited from oil and gas by selling the business to Australia’s Woodside Petroleum for $28 billion, although it took a big stake in Woodside in return.

The practical problem for both shareholders and the environmentally minded is shown by the sales of oil wells and coal mines. In themselves they did nothing to reduce emissions, merely changed the ownership. To the extent that the buyers have to sell the assets on the cheap because ESG pressure means buyers are scarce, those willing to buy get a bargain and so higher future returns from the dirty business. Any shareholder pushing for a sale for environmental reasons needs to think through what they are up to.

Third Point’s argument is that this is better for the environment because the new dirty business would have a higher cost of capital, visible as a lower valuation, and so should invest less in production. If true, the existing oil wells would be tapped to pay dividends, but less new production will be brought on stream, speeding the transition to cleaner forms of energy.

The environmental risks are twofold: Management might not care much about what are fairly small shifts in the cost of capital, and anyway the new brown business might end up with a higher value on its own than it does within Shell.

Paul Chandler, director of stewardship at the Principles for Responsible Investment, a United Nations-supported investor group, says shareholder engagement with executives and carbon taxes are far more effective than the share price at pushing change.

“The cost of capital associated with an increase or decrease in their share price isn’t likely to be a major driver of their activity,” he says.

If Shell is really doing what it says and extracting cash from the oil business to invest in clean-energy projects, then it might internally be giving the oil business a higher cost of capital than the market would—especially at a time when soaring oil prices have made the dirty industry financially attractive.

The practical problems come from the large number of investors who refuse to invest in oil and gas altogether. Shell is rated AA by MSCI for ESG, better than the other supermajors of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Conoco and Europe’s BP, TotalEnergies and Eni. MSCI estimates that Shell’s carbon plans are compatible with a temperature rise slightly above the Paris agreement of at most 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels. Of the others, only Italy’s Eni has plans that MSCI thinks are compatible with a rise below the catastrophic level of 4 degrees. In principle, ESG investors ought to ascribe a higher value to Shell as a result, but perhaps they don’t because so many steer clear of all oil stocks.

Environmental campaigners often dismiss all oil-industry ESG activity as greenwashing, and certainly Shell still produces and sells a lot of oil and gas.

But as more big investors such as endowments and pension funds are pressured by their members to avoid fossil fuels altogether, it makes sense for the market to split, and perhaps for Shell to follow.

A plausible future market will have a choice of green or brown energy companies, with green investors paying a premium for their beliefs, and so having a lower long-term return. Brown investors would pick up a bargain from fossil-fuel stocks servicing the continued demand—including from the members of those pension funds—for oil. If ESG takes over public markets altogether, those brown businesses will go private. Whether this ends up being better for the environment remains an open question, but I doubt it will make a lot of difference.

Write to James Mackintosh at james.mackintosh@wsj.com

Adblock test (Why?)

"that" - Google News
November 01, 2021 at 12:11AM
https://ift.tt/3nEHuOy

Shell Is the Greenest Big Oil Company. Look What That Got It. - The Wall Street Journal
"that" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d8Dlvv

The suburban Virginia block that explains how Democrats might be about to blow it - POLITICO

tebagbagasi.blogspot.com

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Drive down this leafy stretch of Crestwood Drive and it is clear 2021 is an election year in Virginia.

A visitor with no other context, however, might suppose that Election Day is still a couple months away. Or perhaps was a couple months ago. It sure doesn’t look like an exquisitely close race for governor in a contest with big national implications is down to its final hours.

Here are a couple of yard signs for Democrat Terry McAuliffe. Over there are a couple of signs for Republican Glenn Youngkin. But no stated preference is winning the lawn battle on this block by a considerable margin.

If McAuliffe, a former governor who wants his old job back, loses in this state that President Biden won by 10 points a year ago — and that’s looking like a distinct possibility — the collective shoulder shrug of Crestwood Drive will be one clue about what happened. The story of an increasingly large and diverse state can be understood in part by the story of one small suburban block.

That’s because this stretch of Crestwood Drive is not just any block. One of the houses is owned by former Trump administration acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf. A year ago, his disapproving neighbors set the street ablaze in a gaudily colorful display of progressive activism. Many houses were festooned with multiple large signs — for Joe Biden, for Black Lives Matter, and for a host of liberal causes.

There was a community parade and rally outside Wolf’s house, to protest Trump and the Homeland Security’s efforts to suppress civil unrest in Portland, Ore. Political street theater in a neighborhood normally more concerned with elementary school theater was novel enough to prompt a story in the Washington Post (no easy feat given the Post’s depleted and generally inattentive Metro coverage).

Twelve months later, there is scant evidence that McAuliffe’s attempt to revive the agitated emotions of 2020 and to cast Youngkin as a Donald Trump proxy is working. What seems evident is that many residents are feeling drained and ready to return to a time when politics wasn’t all-consuming.

“Everyone exhausted themselves with the presidential election. And I think there was such a sense of fear that Trump would be reelected, that when thank God he wasn’t, you know, people tend to [say] ‘That crisis has been averted. I can go back to other priorities in my life,’” said Tony Sanchez, a 57-year-old Democrat who works for a defense contractor.

Crestwood Drive has not reverted to Pleasantville. A combination of politics and the pandemic, some residents say, still has neighbors feeling not especially neighborly. A festive block party that has been an annual tradition — one the Wolf family has helped plan — has not yet been revived, and at least some people say they aren’t much in the mood.

Let’s be clear on the limits of anecdotal reporting. There’s nothing scientific about a couple days of door-knocking in one neighborhood in a city that Democrats always carry easily. But the sedate mood on Crestwood is consistent with other evidence that explains why Democrats are worried.

Statewide polls show that McAuliffe’s lead has narrowed to a statistical tie. The Democrat has asserted that Biden’s softening support in the state, plus Washington partisan warfare, is creating a headwind for him, and recently admonished leaders in both parties to “get their act together.” The fact that Republicans have won no statewide elections since 2009 may have created an exaggerated perception that a historically center-right Old Dominion is now reliably Democratic. More likely, this year’s gubernatorial contest suggests, Virginia remains a competitive purple state.

No one, of course, would place Alexandria on their list of swing precincts. It’s a Democratic stronghold that Biden won with 80 percent of the vote in 2020. A year ago, the only Trump signs here were from people making a self-consciously defiant statement, designed to offend liberal pieties. This year, though, many people plainly feel they can safely express public support for a Republican without starting a neighborhood row.

“You see a ton of Youngkin signs around,” said Holly Ford, who has lived on the block for a quarter-century. “I think there’s a lot of quiet voters who are not going to vote for him, but you don’t see the signs in the yard [for McAuliffe] because I think Democrats are typically more demure” — especially in comparison to last year.

The block of 20 solidly attractive but hardly opulent houses on Crestwood between Valley Drive and Kenwood Avenue is nearly three miles from the famous Old Town area by the Potomac River. It is pedestrian in appearance and in fact — the kind of place where families with kids and dogs amble to a nearby small plaza for pizza or ice cream.

But it also illustrative of how in Washington’s inner suburbs, even seemingly unexceptional neighborhoods are infused with historical and contemporary politics. The block is just a few hundred yards from Parkfairfax, a World War II-era development where both former presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford rented apartments as young congressman in the 1940s. Besides the connection with Chad Wolf, this block of Crestwood backs up to Agudus Achim temple, where former Chicago mayor and Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel sometimes worshipped. A few weeks ago, McAuliffe himself was at the nearby house of veteran Democratic operative J.B. Poersch for a fundraiser featuring famous Clinton-era personality James Carville, whose now-adult children used to attend a private school in the neighborhood.

In short, it is the kind of place where people tend to pay pretty close attention to elections.

Most people understand the basic bets that McAuliffe and Youngkin are making in their respective strategies.

For Youngkin, a wealthy private equity executive, it is that he can put together a coalition of parts. One group is voters who don’t want to vote Democratic and think the candidate seems like a Virginia version of Mitt Romney, one who no doubt privately disdains Trump as much as they do. The other is a group of voters who like Trump and who think Youngkin seems like Kevin McCarthy — they don’t care what he thinks privately as long as he doesn’t publicly break with the ex-president.

Sanchez said he worries what he sees as Youngkin’s flagrantly disingenuous contortions might actually work. “I don’t know if Youngkin is perceived to be as big an evil as Trump was,” he said. “He’s a Trump-ophile and a disgusting human being. But I don’t think people view him as big a threat as they viewed Trump, so there may be a little bit of apathy there.”

Sanchez himself may modestly illuminate the trend. A year ago someone called the cops on his family because his “Biden for President” sign was too large, breaking city ordinances. His solution was to cut the sign up and display the pieces within less than an inch of each other. It was also lit up at night.

This year a McAuliffe sign is dwarfed in the front yard by a spooky Halloween graveyard.

For McAuliffe’s part, his strategic bet is all about voter turnout: The lower it is the more trouble he’s in. In recent days he’s summoned Biden, former president Barack Obama, and Georgia political star Stacey Abrams to the state, all trying to awaken latent blocks of people who lean progressive but don’t necessarily vote in non-presidential elections.

“In a gubernatorial election, we're normally flirting with 50% turnout and in a federal election, we're usually flirting with 80% turnout,” said Justin Wilson, the Democratic mayor of Alexandria who is running for reelection this election. “And the question is, you know, whether Democrats win or not, it's how many of those voters between the 50 and the 80 turn out in Northern Virginia.”

As for the political traumas of Crestwood Drive, where no one answered the door at Wolf’s house during two recent days of interviews on his block, the question is when Trump-era bruises will finally fade.

“Not just because of Covid, but the protests and everything put a real chill on the neighborhood relationships,” said one long-time resident, a government retiree who preferred not to be publicly identified. “Some people are still friendly, others are far less friendly than they used to be. Some people were downright nasty on both sides of the issue.”

Adblock test (Why?)

"that" - Google News
October 31, 2021 at 05:50PM
https://ift.tt/3bqBnrg

The suburban Virginia block that explains how Democrats might be about to blow it - POLITICO
"that" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d8Dlvv

Review: 'Win Me Something,' by Kyle Lucia Wu - NPR

tebagbagasi.blogspot.com

Tin House Books

Willa Chen, the narrator of Kyle Lucia Wu's novel Win Me Something is an unlikely nanny. The 24-year-old Brooklynite, by her own admission, doesn't even like children; she's spent her early adulthood working in bars and coffee shops. But she longs for a job "where I didn't have to talk to ninety people per shift who all said the same things. I wanted to stop forcing myself to laugh. I wanted peace."

When she's hired by a wealthy Manhattan couple as a nanny, she doesn't quite find peace, but she does find something else — a glimpse at a life that's foreign, yet familiar to her, a chance to experience something like a sense of family, one that she never really had. Wu's novel, her first, tells Willa's story with subtlety and compassion; it's a literary debut that's beyond impressive.

Willa doesn't know quite what to expect when she starts working for Nathalie and Gabe Adrien as the caretaker of their 9-year-old daughter, Bijou. "I didn't know what it looked like to take care of someone," she admits — her own childhood wasn't traumatic, exactly, but she was "undercared for," spending most of her life with her white mother in New Jersey, occasionally shuttling to the Hudson Valley, where her Chinese American father and his new family live.

Whatever preconceptions Willa has about children disappear when she meets Bijou. An aspiring chef, despite her young age, Bijou prefers langoustines and duck liver over macaroni and cheese and dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. The girl learns yoga at her school, where P.E. is called "cooperative teamwork time." It's a big contrast to Willa's middle-class upbringing, but the two become close despite their differences.

Willa finds herself a little intimidated by Gabe, a doctor, and especially Nathalie, who works in finance: "Around her, I felt like a sixth grader in the home of the senior prom queen, finally invited into her lair." Nathalie gives Willa her cast-off clothes, a gesture Willa is unsure how to interpret.

The Adriens eventually ask Willa to become a live-in nanny, and Willa accepts; while her relationship with the couple is cordial, she never quite feels as if she's part of the family. Part of this is the obvious class difference; another part is the racial microaggressions that she endures at the hands of Nathalie's siblings: in one uncomfortable scene, Nathalie's sister asks Willa to bring her tea, "a Japanese kind, preferably? I'm sure you know best."

Incidents like this rankle Willa, understandably, but she's reluctant to call them out: "Nathalie and Gabe weren't perfect, but any prejudices of theirs were neatly tucked away, in a place I didn't have to see; [Nathalie's siblings], they were different. And yet everything ended with me feeling like the discomfort was my fault. If I made too big a deal about it, if I acted upset." The result is a resentment she's not quite sure how to live with.

And that kind of unsureness is at the heart of Win Me Something. Wu perfectly captures the feeling of being young and unmoored in a large city, unable to find close friends ("I have trouble finding the right people, I think," she tells Nathalie's brother), and still carrying a dull pain from a childhood that was neither really happy nor unhappy.

Wu perfectly captures the feeling of being young and unmoored in a large city, unable to find close friends and still carrying a dull pain from a childhood that was neither really happy nor unhappy.

Wu intersperses scenes from Willa's adulthood with ones from her past, and the flashbacks are masterfully done, depicting the alienation that's haunted Willa for her entire life. She recalls being taunted as a child by a classmate who asked her if she bathed in soy sauce, "and since that day, I'd made sure to eat the plainest food available." In a contrasting scene, her father takes her to dinner at a Japanese restaurant — just the two of them, a rare treat for her — and the two get a chance to connect, one that Willa knows might not happen again.

Willa is a compelling character, conflicted and rootless, but so is young Bijou, who Willa senses is dealing with disappointments of her own, being left with a nanny when she wants nothing more than time with her parents. Bijou, like Willa, is sweet and sensitive; in one scene, the girl feels betrayed after a salmon sandwich gives her and Willa food poisoning. "I think they should know that they hurt us," she tells Willa, plaintively. In one line of dialogue, Wu conjures up a world of heartbreak, the sadness of a young person whose trust has been broken.

Win Me Something is filled with moments like that, quiet moments that pack a devastating emotional punch. The novel is perfectly structured; it's clear that Wu has thought carefully about each sentence. It's a book that's filled with seemingly small moments that are actually anything but — Wu understands the human heart keenly, and her novel is a subtle but powerful triumph.

Adblock test (Why?)

"that" - Google News
October 31, 2021 at 04:00PM
https://ift.tt/3CvUGeJ

Review: 'Win Me Something,' by Kyle Lucia Wu - NPR
"that" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d8Dlvv

U.S. and EU settle tariff rift that started with steel and escalated to Kentucky bourbon and motorcycles - Fortune

tebagbagasi.blogspot.com

Adblock test (Why?)

"that" - Google News
October 31, 2021 at 03:13PM
https://ift.tt/2ZKmv50

U.S. and EU settle tariff rift that started with steel and escalated to Kentucky bourbon and motorcycles - Fortune
"that" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d8Dlvv