Saturday night at Lord Botetourt High School was the place to be if you were hungry for pork. The Botetourt County Republicans held their annual “Pull the Pork” dinner with over 200 people in attendance. The main theme of the dinner was to remind people that November is coming and they need new representation in Washington.
The evening featured a buffet dinner, silent auction, music to dine by and several well known speakers. The Master of Ceremonies was Adrian Cronauer of “Good Morning Vietnam” fame.
Senator Mark Obenshain recalled how he learned politics at the knee of his Aunty Lucy. “In the 1950’s, the family farm was split in half and taken by the government in order to build Interstate 81. One day when I was 8 years old, my Aunt took me outside to an apple tree to practice with a shotgun. When I asked her about all the cars driving by on the new interstate, she replied ‘Well boy, you better not miss’. I learned about eminent domain, tort law, criminal law and gun control all in one day.”
Rep. Bob Goodlatte presented his list of “wasteful spending by The Stimulus Act” including:
• $1.9 million to study ants
• $714,000 to make a joke machine
• $51 million to “green” the Poff Federal Building
• $3.4 million for a turtle fence
• $25 million to convince people that spending stimulus money was a good idea
Keynote Speaker Adnan Barqawi was visiting from Arkansas, where he is in his second year teaching low income children through the “Teach for America” program. Barqawi became a naturalized citizen in 2009 and was the first foreigner to command the Corps of Cadets at Virginia Tech.
He had the crowd laughing with his tales of the differences between Kuwait and Blacksburg. He had never seen such a large university and had never performed regular physical exercise since the temperature in Kuwait is over 110 degrees most days. He said, “On one of my first days of being a cadet, I had to run a mile and a half. I am proud to say that to this day I hold the record of 18.5 minutes, the slowest in cadet history.”
Barqwai says that one of the things he tries to teach his students is that they are ultmately responsible for who they will become, and that freedom is never free.
By Carla Bream [email protected]
