Caucus Quotes

In a single week, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquium, congresses, and conventions variously coming together to establish codes, set courses of action, levy complaints, and generally clamor about the world's oldest problems in its newest nomenclature.

Soul, wilt thou toss again? By just such a hazard Hundreds have lost, indeed, But tens have won all. Angels' breathless ballot Lingers to record thee; Imps in eager caucus Raffle for my soul.

Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I'll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of Identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying "The Personal Is Political." It began as a sort of reaction to defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones that a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they 'felt', not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of the small difference, because each identity group begat its sub-groups and "specificities." This tendency has often been satirised—the overweight caucus of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs—but never satirised enough. You have to have seen it really happen. From a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being reactionary; the Clarence Thomas hearings demonstrated this to all but the most dense and boring and selfish, but then, it was the dense and boring and selfish who had always seen identity politics as their big chance. Anyway, what you swiftly realise if you peek over the wall of your own immediate neighbourhood or environment, and travel beyond it, is, first, that we have a huge surplus of people who wouldn't change anything about the way they were born, or the group they were born into, but second that "humanity" (and the idea of change) is best represented by those who have the wit not to think, or should I say feel, in this way.

Race scholars use the term white supremacy to describe a sociopolitical economic system of domination based on racial categories that benefits those defined and perceived as white. This system of structural power privileges, centralizes, and elevates white people as a group. If, for example, we look at the racial breakdown of the people who control our institutions, we see telling numbers in 2016–2017: - Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) - US Congress: 90 percent white - US governors: 96 percent white - Top military advisers: 100 percent white - President and vice president: 100 percent white - US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white - Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white - People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white - People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white - People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white - People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white - People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95 percent white - Teachers: 82 percent white - Full-time college professors: 84 percent white - Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white These numbers are not describing minor organizations. Nor are these institutions special-interest groups. The groups listed above are the most powerful in the country. These numbers are not a matter of “good people” versus “bad people.” They represent power and control by a racial group that is in the position to disseminate and protect its own self-image, worldview, and interests across the entire society.

As best as the Count could determine, the Bolsheviks assembled whenever possible in whichever form for whatever reason. In a single week, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquiums, congresses, and conventions variously coming together to establish codes, set courses of action, levy complaints, and generally clamor about the world’s oldest problems in its newest nomenclature. If

Inside the tin of sweets are four jewels, like candy drops. Look at them closely...and stories spill out.

In fact, caucus, a word derived from the Algonquin languages, better reflected the layers of talking circles and the goal of consensus that were at the heart of governance.

Nobody knows what the whales may have to click and clack about, but it could be a form of voting-time to stop here and synchronously dive down in search of deep water squid, now time to resurface, move on, dive again. Clans also seem to caucus on which males they like and will mate with more or less as a group and which ones to collectively spurn. By all appearances, female sperm whales are terrible size queens. Over the generations, they have consistently voted in favor of enhanced male mass. Their dream candidate nowadays is some fellow named Moby, and he's three times their size.

During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and 'experience' to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband’s help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration?

in the end he required political pull to do so. After years of wandering, Grant had popped up in the right congressional district in the right state. Lincoln had the power to appoint brigadier generals of volunteers, and the Illinois caucus enjoyed such sway that six Illinois brigadiers were selected, two more than any other state.

Kinkade sketched the occasional nude woman, and was generous about passing the sketches around to the men and cheerful about accepting criticisms and suggestions, which he seldom incorporated, as he had his own vision. He signed them O.McCaucus-Bigg A new soldier was always puzzled by this, given that this wasn't Kinkade's name. "O.McCaucus-Bigg?" "Braggart, are you?" Kinkade would roar. "Not as big as mine,laddie!" A good joke, suitable for thirteen-year-old boys and bored sergeants and subalterns.

Dear men in Congress, You think banning birth control is conservative progress? You think sanctioning my ovaries won’t bring me to violence? How about I tell you what to do with your caucus? It is now illegal to think about me topless. To keep your lotion where your socks is. To refer to powerful women as monsters like those jocks at Fox did.

Unfortunately, come opening night it was clear that the production had more kinks than a Tory caucus.

„Was IST ein Caucus-Rennen?

...I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere. I hear my father-in-law's response: 'Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam. But don't tell *me* about justice! Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the rednecks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes that they are black-washed Whites! Sail to the Old World, tell 'em their imperial slaves' rights are as inalienable as the Queen of Belgium's! Oh, you'll grow hoarse, poor & gray in caucuses! You'll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!' Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

What kind of appointments?” Fran squinted at the screen. “Let’s see. The red ones are usually mandatory or urgent: info session for new chairs and directors; convocation; faculty cabinet; humanities council; faculty appeals board; university caucus…” Fitger had the sensation that he was listening to his obituary read aloud, including a detailed account of the things that would kill him.

The American people were sick and tired of endless “negotiations.” They were sick and tired of politicians hiding behind closed doors. They wanted the Senate to vote on legislation to improve their lives. At the very least, they had a right to know where their senators stood on the issues. But Senate leaders preferred to do nothing rather than “divide” their caucus by exposing the pro-corporate stances of a handful of their Democratic colleagues.

Yet isn't it all—all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga—exactly like that? And isn't some of it a little bit more serious? For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her 'greatness' (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done. In the New Hampshire primary in 1992, she knowingly lied about her husband's uncontainable sex life and put him eternally in her debt. This is now thought of, and referred to in print, purely as a smart move on her part. In the Iowa caucuses of 2008, he returns the favor by telling a huge lie about his own record on the war in Iraq, falsely asserting that he was opposed to the intervention from the very start. This is thought of, and referred to in print, as purely a tactical mistake on his part: trying too hard to help the spouse. The happy couple has now united on an equally mendacious account of what they thought about Iraq and when they thought it. What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama—yet again—a central part of our own politics?

The dark money playbook is straightforward. Take advantage of shady campaign financing; circumvent electoral rules where you can; and draw on a network of supportive think tanks, a receptive media run by a handful of magnates and hard-line caucuses within the long-established political parties.

In passing, I continually marvel at how different today’s lawyers and politicians are from us of the first generation. We did not possess a single orator to compare with the present crop. Jefferson and Madison were inaudible. Monroe was dull. Hamilton rambled and I was far too dry (and brief) for the popular taste. Fisher Ames was the nearest thing we had to an orator (I never heard Patrick Henry). Today, however, practically every public man is now a marvellous orator—no, actor! capable of shouting down a tempest, causing tears to flow, laughter to rise. I cannot fathom the reason for this change unless it be the influence of a generation of evangelical ministers (Clay always makes me think of a preacher a-wash in the Blood of the Lamb who, even as he calls his flock to repent, is planning to seduce the lady in the back pew); and of course today’s politician must deal with a much larger electorate than ours. We had only to enchant a caucus in a conversational tone while they must thrill the multitude with brass and cymbal.

Scholars discern motions in history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules, only outcomes. What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts. What precipitates acts? Belief. Belief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the mind's mirror, the world. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being, & history's Horroxes, Boerhaaves & Gooses shall prevail. You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our gunships, our heritage & our legacy? Why fight the 'natural' (oh, weaselly word!) order of things? Why? Because of this: -- one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction. Is this the entropy written in our nature? If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers [sic] races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass. I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real. Tortuous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword. A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living. Upon my return to San Francisco, I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere. I hear my father-in-law's response. 'Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam. But don't tell me about justice! Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the red-necks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes are black-washed Whites! Sail to the Old World, tell 'em their imperial slaves' rights are as inalienable as the Queen of Belgium's! Oh, you'll grow hoarse, poor & grey in caucuses! You'll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!' Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

McConnell seemed an unlikely Republican leader. He showed no aptitude for schmoozing, backslapping, or rousing oratory. As far as anyone could tell, he had no close friends even in his own caucus; nor did he appear to have any strong convictions beyond an almost religious opposition to any version of campaign finance reform. Joe told me of one run-in he’d had on the Senate floor after the Republican leader blocked a bill Joe was sponsoring; when Joe tried to explain the bill’s merits, McConnell raised his hand like a traffic cop and said, “You must be under the mistaken impression that I care.” But what McConnell lacked in charisma or interest in policy he more than made up for in discipline, shrewdness, and shamelessness—all of which he employed in the single-minded and dispassionate pursuit of power.

I would recommend you run as if you are running for governor in three states - Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. There were the first three caucus or primary states. "Run and sound local, like you want to be their governor." A lot of candidates make the huge mistake of trying to run in 27 states. "Run three governor's races, and you'll have a really good shot. Focus on three. Do well in three. And the others will come.

In their articles and on the air, political journalists loved including local color (meat on a stick at the state fair, polka bands, caucuses held in a gun shop or grain elevator) in inverse proportions to how much they'd disdain such spectacles in their actual lives, off the job. A reporter had once told me that if she was getting dinner on her own on the road, she would choose a restaurant by googling the zip code and kale salad.

Attempts to thwart or muzzle the media continued as well. At a conservative caucus meeting in Charlottetown in August 2007, journalists assembled in the lobby of the hotel, as they usually do at such gatherings, to talk to caucus members as they passed by. The [Prime Minister's Office] communications team, however, was not prepared to allow it. Taking their cue, or so it appeared, from a police state, they had the RCMP remove the reporters from the hotel.

Except when he feels enthusiasm for a leader, the voter in a large democracy has so little sense of power that he often does not think it worth while to use his vote. If he is not a keen propagandist for one of the parties, the vastness of the forces that decide who shall govern makes his own part in them appear completely negligible. In practice, all that he can do, as a rule, is to vote for one or other of two men, whose programmes may not interest him, and may differ very little, and who, he knows, may with impunity abandon their programmes as soon as they are elected. If, on the other hand, there is a leader whom he enthusiastically admires, the psychology involved is that which we considered in connection with monarchy: it is that of the tie between a king and the tribe or sect of his active supporters. Every skilful political agitator or organiser devotes himself to stimulating devotion to an individual. If the individual is a great leader, the result is one-man government; if he is not, the caucus which has secured his election becomes the real power.

If either one or two candidates is dominating the field at the time of the first primaries and caucuses, the voters are superfluous because the victor is already guaranteed. If, however, no candidate is dominant, then the primaries and caucuses will determine the winner. Nonetheless, in recent campaign cycles, that determination has been made earlier and earlier in the process, by fewer and fewer voters, who pick from only a few candidates - the ones who have not already eliminated themselves from serious contention by their weak performances in the pre-primary phase.

Bernie’s entire campaign was a character assassination—a moral-high-ground argument that she was less pure than he was. Of course, that was true in the sense that she believed in moving forward by building political coalitions. Bernie didn’t work with anyone. He didn’t do it in the House. He didn’t do it in the Senate. His “coalition” on the campaign trail was almost entirely white and disproportionately male. Hell, he was only competitive in states where just a handful of people showed up for caucuses or large portions of the electorate were independents, not Democrats.

THE HOMECOMING is the face of reality. (A literary approach to the social re-engineering of a decadent society) It was a two-fold finding - a home and a son - and a time for happy family reunion and laughter. Life went on normal in the genteel old town and Ekoyata Egbe was glad to return home to Iyala. And disappointed he was. For he was confronted by unsightly community in the clutches of corruption and superstition. In a moment too soon, Ekoyata found it hard to believe that his father, Egbe, was a member of a caucus and could give him as a ransom for his image. Also revealed was the top secret of the willful neglect of Iyala because the strong caucus benefited from confusion, with a long history of assassinations. Until he was warned about his honesty of purpose, Ekoyata did not know that he had taken the central stage in the fight and campaign against the caucus. Was he also going to be the next victim of assassination? It was the beginning of a misery that would sit Ekoyata on he keg of peril... with the thrill of romance... adventure... and keen justice. Would daring to accept the help of a handsome stranger named Okojie prevent the caucus from finding his corpse? ....

Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana gave public voice to what angers so many Americans today about Congress—it operates like a dysfunctional family. “The people’s business is not being done,” Bayh declared in February 2010. Congress suffers from multiple pathologies, he said, and he ticked them off: “strident partisanship, unyielding ideology, a corrosive system of campaign financing, gerrymandering of House districts, endless filibusters, holds on executive appointees in the Senate, dwindling social interaction between senators of opposing parties and a caucus system that promotes party unity at the expense of bipartisan consensus.

The transformationist leaders are not men, but they are white, they are “European,” they are middle-class. Minority women have begun to deny that the leaders of the women’s movement have any right to speak for them. Most members of the women of color caucus boycotted the 1992 Austin National Women’s Studies Conference I attended for its failure to recognize and respect their political identity. The slighted group sent the conferees an African-American women’s quilt made from dashiki fabrics, as both a reprimand and a “healing gesture.” The assembled white feminists sat before it in resentful but guilty silence. In the game of moral one-upmanship that gender feminists are so good at, they had been outquilted, as it were, by a more marginalized constituency.

So Rhodes will go to his corner, leading a charge he can’t really control because his caucus twitches at each tweet. Some days, my side isn’t much better. Participation in our democracy seems to be driven by the instant-gratification worlds of Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle. We’re using modern technology to revert to primitive kinds of human relations. The media knows what sells—conflict and division. It’s also quick and easy. All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony. It reminds me of the old political joke: Why do you take such an instant dislike to people? It saves a lot of time.

He laughed. “Neither do I,” he said. “But I’m going to need you for Iran.” We were entering the homestretch of negotiations with the Iranians, and the ferocity of opposition to the agreement—which didn’t even exist—was building. In late January, Speaker Boehner put out a press release announcing that Netanyahu would be traveling to the United States at his invitation to address a joint session of Congress. We received no advance notice of this visit from either Boehner or the Israeli government. This type of interference in American foreign policy—a foreign leader invited to lobby the U.S. Congress against the policy of a sitting president—would have been unthinkable in 2009. But by 2015, Netanyahu had become almost a de facto member of the Republican caucus, and Republicans had abandoned any norms about working with a foreign government to undermine the policies of a sitting president.

Identity politics’, meanwhile, has become the place where social justice finds its caucuses. It atomizes society into different interest groups according to sex (or gender), race, sexual preference and more. It presumes that such characteristics are the main, or only, relevant attributes of their holders and that they bring with them some added bonus. For example (as the American writer Coleman Hughes has put it), the assumption that there is ‘a heightened moral knowledge’ that comes with being black or female or gay.3 It is the cause of the propensity of people to start questions or statements with ‘Speaking as a . . .’. And it is something that people both living and dead need to be on the right side of. It is why there are calls to pull down the statues of historical figures viewed as being on the wrong side and it is why the past needs to be rewritten for anyone you wish to save. It is why it has become perfectly normal for a Sinn Fein senator to claim that the IRA hunger strikers in 1981 were striking for gay rights.4 Identity politics is where minority groups are encouraged to simultaneously atomize, organize and pronounce. The

And then I saw him speak. Years later, after writing dozens upon dozens of presidential speeches, it would become impossible to listen to rhetoric without editing it in my head. On that historic Iowa evening, Obama began with a proclamation: “They said this day would never come.” Rereading those words today, I have questions. Who were “they,” exactly? Did they really say “never”? Because if they thought an antiwar candidate with a robust fund-raising operation could never win a divided three-way Democratic caucus, particularly with John Edwards eating into Hillary Clinton’s natural base of support among working-class whites, then they didn’t know what they were talking about. All this analysis would come later, though, along with stress-induced insomnia and an account at the Navy Mess. At the time, I was spellbound. The senator continued: “At this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said you couldn’t do.” He spoke like presidents in movies. He looked younger than my dad. I didn’t have time for a second thought, or even a first one. I simply believed. Barack Obama spoke for the next twelve minutes, and except for a brief moment when the landing gear popped out and I thought we were going to die, I was riveted. He told us we were one people. I nodded knowingly at the gentleman in the middle seat. He told us he would expand health care by bringing Democrats and Republicans together. I was certain it would happen as he described. He looked out at a sea of organizers and volunteers. “You did this,” he told them, “because you believed so deeply in the most American of ideas—that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.

ethanol may actually make some kinds of air pollution worse. It evaporates faster than pure gasoline, contributing to ozone problems in hot temperatures. A 2006 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that ethanol does reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 12 percent relative to gasoline, but it calculated that devoting the entire U.S. corn crop to make ethanol would replace only a small fraction of American gasoline consumption. Corn farming also contributes to environmental degradation due to runoff from fertilizer and pesticides. But to dwell on the science is to miss the point. As the New York Times noted in the throes of the 2000 presidential race, ―Regardless of whether ethanol is a great fuel for cars, it certainly works wonders in Iowa campaigns. The ethanol tax subsidy increases the demand for corn, which puts money in farmers‘ pockets. Just before the Iowa caucuses, corn farmer Marvin Flier told the Times, ―Sometimes I think [the candidates] just come out and pander to us, he said. Then he added, ―Of course, that may not be the worst thing. The National Corn Growers Association figures that the ethanol program increases the demand for corn, which adds 30 cents to the price of every bushel sold. Bill Bradley opposed the ethanol subsidy during his three terms as a senator from New Jersey (not a big corn-growing state). Indeed, some of his most important accomplishments as a senator involved purging the tax code of subsidies and loopholes that collectively do more harm than good. But when Bill Bradley arrived in Iowa as a Democratic presidential candidate back in 1992, he ―spoke to some farmers‖ and suddenly found it in his heart to support tax breaks for ethanol. In short, he realized that ethanol is crucial to Iowa voters, and Iowa is crucial to the presidential race.

In the fall of 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait, and in the run-up to the Gulf War, Americans were sickened by a story that emerged. On October 10, 1990, a fifteen-year-old refugee from Kuwait appeared before a congressional Human Rights Caucus.23 The girl—she would give only her first name, Nayirah—had volunteered in a hospital in Kuwait City. She tearfully testified that Iraqi soldiers had stolen incubators to ship home as plunder, leaving over three hundred premature infants to die. Our collective breath was taken away—“These people leave babies to die on the cold floor; they are hardly human.” The testimony was seen on the news by approximately 45 million Americans, was cited by seven senators when justifying their support of war (a resolution that passed by five votes), and was cited more than ten times by George H. W. Bush in arguing for U.S. military involvement. And we went to war with a 92 percent approval rating of the president’s decision. In the words of Representative John Porter (R-Illinois), who chaired the committee, after Nayirah’s testimony, “we have never heard, in all this time, in all circumstances, a record of inhumanity, and brutality, and sadism, as the ones that [Nayirah had] given us today.” Much later it emerged that the incubator story was a pseudospeciating lie. The refugee was no refugee. She was Nayirah al-Sabah, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. The incubator story was fabricated by the public relations firm Hill + Knowlton, hired by the Kuwaiti government with the help of Porter and cochair Representative Tom Lantos (D-California). Research by the firm indicated that people would be particularly responsive to stories about atrocities against babies (ya think?), so the incubator tale was concocted, the witness coached. The story was disavowed by human rights groups (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch) and the media, and the testimony was withdrawn from the Congressional Record—long after the war.

If I had lied to the CIA, perhaps I might have passed a test. Instead of writing a book about the White House, I’d be poisoning a drug kingpin with a dart gun concealed inside a slightly larger dart gun, or making love to a breathy supermodel in the interest of national security. I’ll never know. I confessed to smoking pot two months before. The sunniness vanished from my interviewer’s voice. “Normally we like people who break the rules,” Skipper told me, “but we can’t consider anyone who’s used illegal substances in the past twelve months.” Just like that, my career as a terrorist hunter was over. I thought my yearning for higher purpose would vanish with my CIA dreams, the way a Styrofoam container follows last night’s Chinese food into the trash. To my surprise, it stuck around. In the weeks that followed, I pictured myself in all sorts of identities: hipster, world traveler, banker, white guy who plays blues guitar. But these personas were like jeans a half size too small. Trying them on gave me an uncomfortable gut feeling and put my flaws on full display. My search for replacement selves began in November. By New Year’s Eve I was mired in the kind of existential funk that leads people to find Jesus, or the Paleo diet, or Ayn Rand. Instead, on January 3, I found a candidate. I was on an airplane when I discovered him, preparing for our initial descent into JFK. This was during the early days of live in-flight television, and I was halfway between the Home Shopping Network and one of the lesser ESPNs when I stumbled across coverage of a campaign rally in Iowa. Apparently, a caucus had just finished. Speeches were about to begin. With nothing better to occupy my time, I confirmed that my seat belt was fully fastened. I made sure my tray table was locked. Then, with the arena shrunk to fit my tiny seatback screen, I watched a two-inch-tall guy declare victory. It’s not like I hadn’t heard about Barack Obama. I had heard his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. His presidential campaign had energized my more earnest friends. But I was far too mature to take them seriously. They supported someone with the middle name Hussein to be president of the United States. While they were at it, why not cast a ballot for the Tooth Fairy? Why not nominate Whoopi Goldberg for pope?

BUYING OFF THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS Where are the environmentalists? For fifty years, they’ve been carrying on about overpopulation; promoting family planning, birth control, abortion; and saying old people have a “duty to die and get out of the way”—in Colorado’s Democratic Governor Richard Lamm’s words. In 1971, Oregon governor and environmentalist Tom McCall told a CBS interviewer, “Come visit us again. . . . But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live.” How about another 30 million people coming here to live? The Sierra Club began sounding the alarm over the country’s expanding population in 1965—the very year Teddy Kennedy’s immigration act passed65—and in 1978, adopted a resolution expressly asking Congress to “conduct a thorough examination of U.S. immigration laws.” For a while, the Club talked about almost nothing else. “It is obvious,” the Club said two years later, “that the numbers of immigrants the United States accepts affects our population size and growth rate,” even more than “the number of children per family.”66 Over the next three decades, America took in tens of millions of legal immigrants and illegal aliens alike. But, suddenly, about ten years ago, the Sierra Club realized to its embarrassment that importing multiple millions of polluting, fire-setting, littering immigrants is actually fantastic for the environment! The advantages of overpopulation dawned on the Sierra Club right after it received a $100 million donation from hedge fund billionaire David Gelbaum with the express stipulation that—as he told the Los Angeles Times—“if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.”67 It would be as if someone offered the Catholic Church $100 million to be pro-abortion. But the Sierra Club said: Sure! Did you bring the check? Obviously, there’s no longer any reason to listen to them on anything. They want us to get all excited about some widening of a road that’s going to disturb a sandfly, but the Sierra Club is totally copasetic with our national parks being turned into garbage dumps. Not only did the Sierra Club never again say another word against immigration, but, in 2004, it went the extra mile, denouncing three actual environmentalists running for the Club’s board, by claiming they were racists who opposed mass immigration. The three “white supremacists” were Dick Lamm, the three-time Democratic governor of Colorado; Frank Morris, former head of the Black Congressional Caucus Foundation; and Cornell professor David Pimentel, who created the first ecology course at the university in 1957 and had no particular interest in immigration.68 But they couldn’t be bought off, so they were called racists.

국제적 사천출장안마( Ymz44.COM )양산섹파매칭으로는 인도네시아 국립도서관(2012.5.28)을 포함하여 프랑스, 영국, 러시아, 체코 등 세계 16개국 17개 기관과 양해각서를 체결하여 꾸준히 교류협력을 확대하고 있다. 국립중앙도서관은 2012년 5월 28일~29일 인도네시아 발리에서 인도네시아국립도서관 주관 제20회 아시아·오세아니아 국립도서관장회의와 2012년 8월11일~17일 핀란드 헬싱키에서 열린 제78회 세계도서관정보대회(WLIC, 주제 ‘도서관은 지금! : 영감, 경이로움, 역량강화(Libarry Now!-Inspiring, Surprising, Empowering))'에 참석하였다. 특히, 도서관인회의(Korean Caucus)에서는 한국관련 사서들의 단합과 한국 참가자들의 국제 활동을 독려하였고 국립중앙도서관 주관 IFLA 국가도서관정보정책 특별관심그룹(NILP SIG) 사천출장안마( Ymz44.COM )양산섹파매칭회의를 개최하였다. 제39회 세계국립도서관장회의(CDNL)에서는 각 나라의 법, 제도, 문화 등의 국립도서관에 대한 가이드라인의 필요성 등이 논의되었다. 한편 1963년 외국 국립도서관과의 교류를 시작으로 현재 각국 주요 국립·공공도서관, 대학도서관, 전문도서관 등 93개국 280개 기관으로 정비하여 자료교류를 하고 있으며, 또한 연속간행물의 현지 활용여부 확인을 위해 총 5회에 걸쳐 “국제자료교류용 구입 연속간행물의 현지 수요 조사”('12.6~11월)를 실시하여 수요조사 결과를 반영하여 사천출장안마( Ymz44.COM )양산섹파매칭자료를 발송하였다

The McGovern–Fraser Commission issued a set of recommendations that the two parties adopted before the 1972 election. What emerged was a system of binding presidential primaries. Beginning in 1972, the vast majority of the delegates to both the Democratic and Republican conventions would be elected in state-level primaries and caucuses. Delegates would be preselected by the candidates themselves to ensure their loyalty. This meant that for the first time, the people who chose the parties’ presidential candidates would be neither beholden to party leaders nor free to make backroom deals at the convention; rather, they would faithfully reflect the will of their state’s primary voters. There were differences between the parties, such as the Democrats’ adoption of proportional rules in many states and mechanisms to enhance the representation of women and minorities. But in adopting binding primaries, both parties substantially loosened their leaders’ grip over the candidate selection process—opening it up to voters instead.

Interestingly while the Nuremberg Laws are now history, the “one drop rule” is very much with us, not only as a matter of law but also as a matter of personal identity. Think about Obama: he’s half white and half black, yet he identifies as black. Many African Americans have white ancestry, yet they consider themselves black. Why? Because of the one-drop rule. If any of these people tried to self-identify as white—or refuse to racially classify themselves at all—left-wing groups like the Black Caucus and the Southern Poverty Law Center would condemn them for it.

After only eight months in office, Meadows made national headlines by sending an open letter to the Republican leaders of the House demanding they use the “power of the purse” to kill the Affordable Care Act. By then, the law had been upheld by the Supreme Court and affirmed when voters reelected Obama in 2012. But Meadows argued that Republicans should sabotage it by refusing to appropriate any funds for its implementation. And, if they didn’t get their way, they would shut down the government. By fall, Meadows had succeeded in getting more than seventy-nine Republican congressmen to sign on to this plan, forcing Speaker of the House John Boehner, who had opposed the radical measure, to accede to their demands. Meadows later blamed the media for exaggerating his role, but he was hailed by his local Tea Party group as “our poster boy” and by CNN as the “architect” of the 2013 shutdown. The fanfare grew less positive when the radicals in Congress refused to back down, bringing virtually the entire federal government to a halt for sixteen days in October, leaving the country struggling to function without all but the most vital federal services. In Meadows’s district, day-care centers that were reliant on federal aid reportedly turned distraught families away, and nearby national parks were closed, bringing the tourist trade to a sputtering standstill. National polls showed public opinion was overwhelmingly against the shutdown. Even the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, a conservative, called the renegades “the Suicide Caucus.” But the gerrymandering of 2010 had created what Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker called a “historical oddity.” Political extremists now had no incentive to compromise, even with their own party’s leadership. To the contrary, the only threats faced by Republican members from the new, ultraconservative districts were primary challenges from even more conservative candidates. Statistics showed that the eighty members of the so-called Suicide Caucus were a strikingly unrepresentative minority. They represented only 18 percent of the country’s population and just a third of the overall Republican caucus in the House. Gerrymandering had made their districts far less ethnically diverse and further to the right than the country as a whole. They were anomalies, yet because of radicalization of the party’s donor base they wielded disproportionate power. “In previous eras,” Lizza noted, “ideologically extreme minorities could be controlled by party leadership. What’s new about the current House of Representatives is that party discipline has broken down on the Republican side.” Party bosses no longer ruled. Big outside money had failed to buy the 2012 presidential election, but it had nonetheless succeeded in paralyzing the U.S. government. Meadows of course was not able to engineer the government shutdown by himself. Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, whose 2012 victory had also been fueled by right-wing outside money, orchestrated much of the congressional strategy.

I've been watching politics for 35 or 40 years and you just never know. You can have one person win the Iowa caucus and then the whole picture changes ten minutes later. The same thing can happen again after New Hampshire. I have no idea what's going to happen with our country in the future.

So that wasn’t much help. I was torn. I wanted to be judged on what I did, not on what I represented or what people projected onto me. But I understood how much this breakthrough would mean to the country, especially to girls and boys who would see that there are no limits on what women can achieve. I wanted to honor that significance. I just didn’t know the best way to do it. I carried all that uncertainty with me back from California, all the way to David Muir’s interview room in the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Tuesday night. Results were starting to come in. I won the New Jersey primary. Bernie won the North Dakota caucus. The big prize, California, was still out there, but all signs pointed to another victory. Bill and I had worked hard on my speech, but I still felt unsettled. Maybe it was about not being ready to accept “yes” for an answer. I had worked so hard to get to this moment, and now that it had arrived, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. Then Muir walked me over to the window, and I looked out at that crowd—at thousands of people who’d worked their hearts out, resisted the negativity of a divisive primary and relentlessly harsh press coverage, and poured their dreams into my campaign. We’d had big crowds before, but this felt different. It was something more than the enthusiasm I saw on the trail. It was a pulsing energy, an outpouring of love and hope and joy. For a moment, I was overwhelmed—and then calm. This was right. I was ready. After the interview, I went downstairs to where my husband was sitting with the speechwriters going over final tweaks to the draft. I read it over one more time and felt good. Just as they were racing off to load the speech into the teleprompter, I said I had one more thing to add: “I’m going to talk about Seneca Falls. Just put a placeholder in brackets and I’ll take care of it.” I took a deep breath. I didn’t want the emotion of the moment to get to me in the middle of my speech. I said a little prayer and then headed for the stage. At the last moment, Huma grabbed my arm and

On the surface, it therefore appears that voters choose the nominee by choosing convention delegates in their state primaries and caucuses. But the appearance is deceiving because, as we have suggested, party insiders use the invisible primary to coordinate behind a preferred candidate and to endow that candidate with the resources and prestige necessary to prevail in the state-by-state contests.

NumbersUSA's work was critical to derailing the 2007 comprehensive federal immigration bill, which had, at that point, received the support of President Buch, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the high-tech industry, the Catholic Church, immigrant-advocacy organizations, and several industries reliant on immigration labor, including farming, food services, and construction. During the weeks leading up to the floor vote on the bill, NumbersUSA coordinated weekly phone calls with the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, mobilized its members to engage key senators, and provided those senators with information and arguments necessary to oppose the bill. Several actors, including pro-immigrant advocates, restrictionists, and members of Congress, have credited NumbersUSA with causing the collapse of the bill in the Senate.

Obama nonetheless continued to seek bipartisan support. His experience with what Hillary Clinton labeled the “vast right-wing conspiracy” was limited. He had vaulted in only five years from the Illinois State Senate to the White House. He turned out to be unrealistically confident that he could transcend partisan rancor as he had while editing the Harvard Law Review. So when he received an invitation from Boehner and the others in the House Republican caucus to come up to Capitol Hill to consult with them about the stimulus package, Obama accepted, with much fanfare.

Only a little more than a quarter of eligible voters cast ballots in Democratic or Republican primaries and caucuses. More than half of the Republicans and nearly half of the Democrats supported candidates other than the two we got.

radicals in Congress refused to back down, bringing virtually the entire federal government to a halt for sixteen days in October, leaving the country struggling to function without all but the most vital federal services. In Meadows’s district, day-care centers that were reliant on federal aid reportedly turned distraught families away, and nearby national parks were closed, bringing the tourist trade to a sputtering standstill. National polls showed public opinion was overwhelmingly against the shutdown. Even the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, a conservative, called the renegades “the Suicide Caucus.” But the gerrymandering of 2010 had created what Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker called a “historical oddity.” Political extremists now had no incentive to compromise, even with their own party’s leadership. To the contrary, the only threats faced by Republican members from the new, ultraconservative districts were primary challenges from even more conservative candidates.

Double-Standard Bigotry. It is not uncommon within progressive circles to find the assumption that certain kinds of people are less equal than others. White people are assumed to be racist, for example, and they must be watched closely lest they abuse their position of power at the expense of people of color. This viewpoint is so common today that even mainstream liberals like Hillary Clinton buy into it. It is most often true for black-white relations, but the double standard extends into other areas as well. Jews, for example, are often accused of bias on matters in the Middle East, while Arabs and Muslims, occupying the morally advantageous position of victimhood, are not. It is so natural to slice the world into privileged and underprivileged groups that no one longer gives a second thought to the fact that a man would never be invited to lead a woman's organization. By the same token, a black caucus in Congress is welcome but a white caucus would be dismissed out of hand as racist. The double standard is tolerated because it is seen in and of itself as a form of corrective justice. But the fact remains that it is validating a double standard of bigotry, no matter how benign the intentions may be.

No one believed the mindless cuts, which were called a “sequester,” would ever get enacted. But in fact, when no other resolution could be reached, they were. The mechanism placed Obama in a fiscal straitjacket indefinitely. The chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Emanuel Cleaver, denounced the deal as “a sugarcoated Satan sandwich,” which the House minority leader, Pelosi, amended to “a Satan sandwich with Satan fries on the side.

The last day of March was the first at work for Mark Meadows as Trump’s fourth chief of staff, tied for the most a president had had in a single term. Meadows, as a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, had been one of Trump’s most committed champions on Capitol Hill. As chief of staff, Meadows was intent on pleasing Trump in a way none of his predecessors had been, hoping to establish himself not only as the White House’s internal manager but Trump’s most important adviser. Meadows became the latest chief to try to show Trump he could root out press leaks just as Trump wanted, going at it with distinct vigor.

Caucus n.m. – team discussion

the clique, the caucus, and the conspiracy were as ineradicable features of civility as the council or the committee.

From his perspective on Capitol Hill, Miles Taylor saw the impact of the order on the Republican caucus: “The House Republican leadership were, of course, furious. Furious that the White House hadn’t consulted us.

The Ohio Republican John Boehner, the new Speaker, now had a caucus bursting with Tea Party enthusiasts who had ridden to power by attacking government in general and Obama in particular. Several had won primaries against moderates. Many owed their victories to donors expecting radically conservative change. Compromise wasn’t in their interest.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described socialist who caucused with the Democrats, seemed to see the world as a vast conspiracy of big corporations and the wealthy. (Corporations and the wealthy have lots of power, certainly, but in the real world most bad things happen because of ignorance, incompetence, or bad luck, not as the result of grand conspiracies.)

Emerging from the caucus, Johnson told reporters that he had no plans to release his delegates; “My name will stay as long as the American people are interested.

fend off any possible competition, stretching to win Iowa’s political caucuses, now only eight months

The American presidential election is a drawn-out, byzantine process that involves precinct meetings, regional caucuses, state primaries and national conventions, all to give citizens the impression that their participation matters, for in the end, the lying buffoon who gets to stride into the White House has long been vetted and preselected by the banks, death merchants and brainwashing media that run our infernally corrupt and murderous country. It's foolish to expect a system to allow anyone who threatens it to the least degree to rise to the very top, for all those who benefit from this system will do all they can to snuff out such a pest each step of the way. He'd be lucky to get a job teaching freshmen English at the community college, and is as out of place in this bloody scheme as an Iowa beaver trapper at a Hamptons pool party. As for dissidents who get print space or airtime, they are but harmless, distracting foils or court jesters. Since voting cannot change the system but legitimizes it, voters become collaborators in all of the system's crimes, as well as their own destruction, for the system works against nearly all of them.

The casino magnate Sheldon Adelson would pour at least $60 million into the 2012 election, seeking in part to protect foreign tax shelters worth billions. Super PAC spending via the Wyoming mutual-fund honcho Foster Friess was said to have powered Rick Santorum’s upset win in the Iowa caucuses, which in turn kept Santorum going for months. Not since the Gilded Age had a handful of super-rich individuals so easily used their fortunes to fuel the presidential ambitions of a few people so radically out of the mainstream of American politics.

Passive acceptance of the teacher’s wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes men to seek a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position. It makes the power of Churches, Governments, party caucuses, and all the other organizations by which plain men are misled into supporting old systems which are harmful to the nation and to themselves. It is possible that there would not be much independence of thought even if education did everything to promote it; but there would certainly be more than there is at present. If the object were to make pupils think, rather than to make them accept certain conclusions, education would be conducted quite differently: there would be less rapidity of instruction and more discussion, more occasions when pupils are encouraged to express themselves, more attempt to make education concern itself with matters in which the pupils feel some interest.

Oh, yeah. They killed him, all right. Some guy, who just happened to be linked to Troy, walked into a Territorial Caucus and toasted him with a lasomag.

While the word “republic” derives etymologically from the Latin “res publica”—which literally means “the people’s thing,” what a republic or a “republican form of government” is today remains debatable; but what it is not is clear: No matter its political composition, a government that does not adhere to the rule of law, is ruled by a president who dictates, courts that legislate, and a legislature that is elected by a minority, led by the few, and administered by members who fail to embody the will of the people, represent party caucuses and factious special interests, overlook executive overreach, transfer legislative powers, and maintain monarchic lengths of time in office—and all of this to the detriment of justice, the Union, and the Constitution—is not a republic or republican form of government but something else.

If you've made it this far in this book, you might be thinking yourself lucky. You might be feeling be feeling grateful that you never went to a tea party meeting, you never wrote a climate research paper, you never donated to Prop 8, you never supported Scott Walker, you never donated any money to ALEC, you never ran a company subject to shareholder proxies, you never volunteered for Americans for Prosperity, you have never had your speech rights assaulted. Only, you'd be wrong. You have. Every person in the United States of America did on Sept. 11, 2014. That day goes down in constitutional infamy. In some ways it shouldn't have come as a surprise. The Left started its intimidation game by trying to silence a non profit here a company there, a big donor here a trade associate there, but along the way it wrapped in small donors and scholars and scientists and petition signers and share holders and free market professors and grass root groups. It was only a matter of time before it came to the obvious conclusion - everybody has too much free speech. And so on Sept. 11, 2014, fifty four members of the senate democratic caucus voted to do something that has never been attempted in the history of the this glorious country. They voted to alter the first amendment.

But, win or lose, it isn’t in me to promise what I can’t deliver. When you go to your caucus site on Tuesday, I want you to think about the promises the other candidates have made, and my lack of promises, and ask yourself, do I want one of the guys who’s confident he can turn this country around on a dime, or do I want the guy who isn’t so confident, and therefore will be asking questions and making objective analyses every step of the way? Evaluate that by whatever measure you choose.” An

The enormous power held by each of the southern committee chairmen individually was multiplied by their unity, by what White called a “oneness found nowhere else in politics.” The symbol was the legendary “Southern Caucus,” the meetings of the twenty-two southern senators which were held in the office of their leader, Richard Brevard Russell of Georgia, whenever crisis threatened—meetings that were, White said, “for all the world like reunions of a large and highly individualistic family whose members are nevertheless bound by one bond.” In those meetings, the southern position was agreed upon, its tactics mapped, its front made solid.

What seems to have happened in Boston is that certain lawyers, editors, and merchants of the upper classes, but excluded from the ruling circles close to England—men like James Otis and Samuel Adams—organized a “Boston Caucus” and through their oratory and their writing “molded laboring-class opinion, called the ‘mob’ into action, and shaped its behaviour.” This is Gary Nash’s description of Otis, who, he says, “keenly aware of the declining fortunes and the resentment of ordinary townspeople, was mirroring as well as molding popular opinion.” We have here a forecast of the long history of American politics, the mobilization of lower-class energy by upper-class politicians, for their own purposes. This was not purely deception; it involved, in part, a genuine recognition of lower-class grievances, which helps to account for its effectiveness as a tactic over the centuries

Identity politics’, meanwhile, has become the place where social justice finds its caucuses. It atomizes society into different interest groups according to sex (or gender), race, sexual preference and more. It presumes that such characteristics are the main, or only, relevant attributes of their holders and that they bring with them some added bonus. For example (as the American writer Coleman Hughes has put it), the assumption that there is ‘a heightened moral knowledge’ that comes with being black or female or gay.

Of the four key leaders, I knew Harry best, but I’d had my share of interactions with McConnell during my few years in the Senate. Short, owlish, with a smooth Kentucky accent, McConnell seemed an unlikely Republican leader. He showed no aptitude for schmoozing, backslapping, or rousing oratory. As far as anyone could tell, he had no close friends even in his own caucus; nor did he appear to have any strong convictions beyond an almost religious opposition to any version of campaign finance reform. Joe told me of one run-in he’d had on the Senate floor after the Republican leader blocked a bill Joe was sponsoring; when Joe tried to explain the bill’s merits, McConnell raised his hand like a traffic cop and said, “You must be under the mistaken impression that I care.” But what McConnell lacked in charisma or interest in policy he more than made up for in discipline, shrewdness, and shamelessness—all of which he employed in the single-minded and dispassionate pursuit of power.

They were productively adversarial, like superforecasting team discussions. Managers grilled engineers and forced them to produce data to back up their assertions. The process had worked remarkably. The space shuttle was the most complex machine ever built, and all twenty-four flights had returned safely. But on the emergency conference call, that same quantitative culture led them astray. On their engineers’ advice, McDonald and two Thiokol VPs on the call initially supported a no-launch decision. The Challenger had already been cleared, so this was an eleventh-hour reversal. When NASA officials asked Thiokol engineers exactly what temperature range was safe for flight, they recommended setting a limit at 53 degrees, the lower bound of previous experience. NASA manager Larry Mulloy was flabbergasted. He thought the shuttle was supposed to be cleared to launch from 31 to 99 degrees. A last-minute 53-degree limit was setting an entirely new technical criteria for launches. It had never been discussed, was not backed by quantitative data, and meant that suddenly winter was off-limits for space exploration. Mulloy found it frustrating; he later called it “dumb.” How had the engineers arrived at that number? “They said because they had flown at 53 degrees before,” a NASA manager reflected, “which is no reason to me. That’s tradition rather than technology.” Boisjoly was asked again for data to support his claim, “and I said I have none other than what is being presented.” With the conference call at an impasse, a Thiokol VP asked for a five-minute “offline caucus,” during which Thiokol concluded that they had no more data to provide. They returned to the call a half hour later with a new decision: proceed with launch. Their official document read, “temperature data not conclusive on predicting primary O-ring blow-by.” When conference call participants from NASA and Thiokol later spoke with investigators and gave interviews, they repeatedly brought up the “weak engineering position,” as one put it. Their statements comprised a repetitive chorus: “Unable to quantify”; “supporting data was subjective”; “hadn’t done a good technical job”; “just didn’t have enough conclusive data.” NASA was, after all, the agency that hung a framed quote in the Mission Evaluation Room: “In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data.

The obscene laws that constitute apartheid are not crazed edicts issued by a dictator, nor the whims of a megalomanic monster, nor the one-man decisions of a fanatical ideologue. They are the result of polite caucus discussions by hundreds of delegates in sober suits, after full debate in party congresses. They are passed after three solemn readings in a parliament that opens every day’s proceedings with a prayer to Jesus Christ. There is a special horror in that fact.

I mean the poetry of differential calculus. Calculating points in time and place. The infinite movement we make in time, moving forward, but never eating zero. Integral caucus, where we don't head to zero -- we head to fucking infinity, man. Get as close as we can. But again we never get there. Because in nature we never get an absolute. Absolutes are bullshit.

The 'plan of secession,' if any, and the purpose of secession, unquestionably, originated, not in Washington City, or with the Senators or Representatives of the South, but among the people of the several States, many months before it was attempted. They followed no leaders at Washington or elsewhere, but acted for themselves, with an independence and unanimity unprecedented in any movement of such magnitude. Before the meeting of the caucus of January 5, 1861, South Carolina had seceded, and Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas had taken the initial step of secession, by calling conventions for its accomplishment. Before the election of Lincoln, all the Southern States, excepting one or two, had pledged themselves to separate from the Union upon the triumph of a sectional party in the Presidential election, by acts or resolutions of their Legislatures, resolves of both Democratic and Whig State Conventions, and of primary assemblies of the people—in every way in which they could commit themselves to any future act. Their purpose was proclaimed to the world through the press and telegraph, and criticised in Congress, in the Northern Legislatures, in press and pulpit, and on the hustings, during many months before Congress met in December, 1860.

Nothing would seem to be too absurd for such uses. Thus, it has been gravely stated that a caucus of Southern Senators, held in the early part of January, "resolved to assume to themselves the political power of the South"; that they took entire control of all political and military operations; that they issued instructions for the passage of ordinances of secession, and for the seizure of forts, arsenals, and custom-houses; with much more of the like groundless fiction.

With each passing day, Nancy Pelosi found herself growing more agitated that chances for legislative victories were slipping away. In August, she cut a deal with the moderates in her caucus. They wanted her to guarantee a vote on the infrastructure bill, and she promised them one by September 27. But that deadline slipped because she couldn’t deliver enough votes.

If you think of the House GOP as less a legislative caucus than a right-wing website, she was the comments section come to life.

Congress has many more powdered milk experts than intelligence experts. Of the 535 members serving in the 116th Congress, only eighteen ever worked in an intelligence agency, but dozens of representatives came from dairy districts in New York, Wisconsin, Vermont, Texas, and elsewhere. That’s better than it used to be. In 2009, only two members of Congress had prior intelligence careers.114 The same year, the Congressional Dairy Farmers Caucus was founded with more than fifty members.115

we see telling numbers in 2016–2017: • Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) • US Congress: 90 percent white • US governors: 96 percent white • Top military advisers: 100 percent white • President and vice president: 100 percent white • US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white • Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white • People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white

Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) • US Congress: 90 percent white • US governors: 96 percent white • Top military advisers: 100 percent white • President and vice president: 100 percent white • US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white • Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white • People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white • People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white • People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white • People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white • People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95 percent white • Teachers: 82 percent white

I did not, and could not, know when writing this book that our nation would soon awaken violently from its brief colorblind slumber. In the final chapter, I did predict that uprisings were in our future, and I wondered aloud what the fire would look like this time. What actually occurred in the years that followed was, to paraphrase James Baldwin, more terrible and more beautiful than I could have imagined. We now have white nationalist movements operating openly online and in many of our communities; they’re celebrating mass killings and recruiting thousands into their ranks. We have a president who routinely unleashes hostile tirades against black and brown people—calling Mexican migrants “murderers,” “rapists,” and “bad people,” referring to developing African nations as “shithole countries,” and smearing the majority-black city of Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” Millions of Americans are cheering, or at least tolerating, these racial hostilities. And yet, in the midst of all of this, we also have vibrant racial justice movements led by new generations of activists who are working courageously at the intersections of our systems of control, as well as growing movements against criminal injustice led by those who are directly impacted by mass incarceration. Many of these movements aim to redefine the meaning of justice in America. A decade ago, much of this progress seemed nearly unimaginable. When this book was first released, there was relatively little racial justice organizing, and “mass incarceration” was not a widely used term. Back then, the Congressional Black Caucus, as well as most civil rights organizations, did not include criminal justice issues among its top priorities. Little funding could be found for work challenging the enormous punishment bureaucracy

Race scholars use the term white supremacy to describe a sociopolitical economic system of domination based on racial categories that benefits those defined and perceived as white. This system of structural power privileges, centralizes, and elevates white people as a group. If, for example, we look at the racial breakdown of the people who control our institutions, we see telling numbers in 2016–2017: • Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) • US Congress: 90 percent white • US governors: 96 percent white • Top military advisers: 100 percent white • President and vice president: 100 percent white • US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white • Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white • People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white • People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white • People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white • People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white • People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95 percent white • Teachers: 82 percent white • Full-time college professors: 84 percent white • Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white26

2016–2017: • Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) • US Congress: 90 percent white • US governors: 96 percent white • Top military advisers: 100 percent white • President and vice president: 100 percent white • US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white • Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white • People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white • People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white • People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white • People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white • People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95 percent white • Teachers: 82 percent white • Full-time college professors: 84 percent white • Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white26 These

If, for example, we look at the racial breakdown of the people who control our institutions, we see telling numbers in 2016–2017: • Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) • US Congress: 90 percent white • US governors: 96 percent white • Top military advisers: 100 percent white • President and vice president: 100 percent white • US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white • Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white • People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white • People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white • People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white • People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white • People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95 percent white • Teachers: 82 percent white • Full-time college professors: 84 percent white • Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white26 These numbers are not describing minor organizations. Nor are these institutions special-interest groups. The groups listed above are the most powerful in the country. These numbers are not a matter of “good people” versus “bad people.” They represent power and control by a racial group that is in the position to disseminate and protect its own self-image, worldview, and interests across the entire society

From the beginning, the New Right sought radical change. They would establish themselves “first as the opposition, then the alternative, finally the government,” according to Conservative Caucus chair Howard Phillips.

for example, we look at the racial breakdown of the people who control our institutions, we see telling numbers in 2016–2017: • Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) • US Congress: 90 percent white • US governors: 96 percent white • Top military advisers: 100 percent white • President and vice president: 100 percent white • US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white • Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white • People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white • People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white • People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white • People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white • People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95 percent white • Teachers: 82 percent white • Full-time college professors: 84 percent white • Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white26 These numbers are not describing minor organizations.

who control our institutions, we see telling numbers in 2016–2017: • Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) • US Congress: 90 percent white • US governors: 96 percent white • Top military advisers: 100 percent white • President and vice president: 100 percent white • US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white • Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white • People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white • People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white • People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white • People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white • People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95 percent white • Teachers: 82 percent white • Full-time college professors: 84 percent white • Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white26

Well, we are certainly experiencing a heyday for irrational discourse and 'alternate facts.' Donald Trump, Alex Jones, Devin Nunes, Ann Coulter, Dinexh D'Souza, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Rush Limbaugh, and the entire Republican congressional caucus inhabit a world in which down is up, up is down, and science is fake news. It is hard for some people to have faith in American institutions when they are being told every day that climate change is a hoax, that Obama is a Kenyan, that the United States government brought down the Twin Towers, that the grieving parents of murdered Sandy Hook kindergartners are "crisis actors," and that Hillary Clinton is splitting time cooking up uranium deals with the Russians and running a child-sex ring out of a pizzeria. Not to mention every word that tumbles from Donald Trump's lying mouth.

for example, we look at the racial breakdown of the people who control our institutions, we see telling numbers in 2016–2017: • Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) • US Congress: 90 percent white • US governors: 96 percent white • Top military advisers: 100 percent white • President and vice president: 100 percent white • US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white • Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white • People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white • People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white • People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white • People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white • People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95 percent white • Teachers: 82 percent white • Full-time college professors: 84 percent white • Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white26

As best as the Count could determine, the Bolsheviks assembled whenever possible in whichever form for whatever reason. In a single week, there might be committees, caucuses, colloquiums, congresses, and conventions variously coming together to establish codes, set courses of action, levy complaints, and generally clamor about the world’s oldest problems in its newest nomenclature.

• Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) • US Congress: 90 percent white • US governors: 96 percent white • Top military advisers: 100 percent white • President and vice president: 100 percent white • US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white • Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white • People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white • People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white • People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white • People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white

My problem in replying to you is that Velikovsky always tosses with a two-headed coin. If ordinary orientalists like myself simply leave him aside & get on with real work, he complains of their disdain (& the public are left unprotected). If, conversely, orientalists like myself (who happen to be burdened with several thousands more facts than Velikovsky even dreams of) actually dare to stand up & expose him, then of course he snidely implies that we are some sort of closed caucus with interests at stake. It’s always “heads you lose, tails I win”…. Would you, I reflectively wonder, publish a book that insisted on the identity of Harold Wilson and Harold of Hastings, of Napoleon, Bismarck & Charlemagne, and on the role of your firm as secret HQ of the IRA, all as absolutely genuine historical fact, with “proofs” (e.g., all aunts in France are large, because tante is the feminine for tant)? Because that is, comparatively, the level of historical fraud that V. represents.

If, for example, we look at the racial breakdown of the people who control our institutions, we see telling numbers in 2016–2017: • Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) • US Congress: 90 percent white • US governors: 96 percent white • Top military advisers: 100 percent white • President and vice president: 100 percent white • US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white • Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white • People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white • People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white • People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white • People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white • People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95 percent white • Teachers: 82 percent white • Full-time college professors: 84 percent white • Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white26 These numbers are not describing minor organizations.

Representative Jim Jordan, a leading conservative and one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus in the US House, wished Republicans in Congress had acted sooner to “avoid creating this environment” that allowed someone like candidate Trump to rise.

The CIA’s talk of a peaceful solution was a smokescreen. “As is typical of such clandestine operations,” Hyland writes, “the policy discussion was cryptic.”53 Just as it was better not to mention any possible collusion with South Africa, so it was better to shroud IAFEATURE in a mist of peace. This was particularly true in light of the Hughes-Ryan amendment, passed by Congress in December 1974, which stipulated that the CIA had to report “in a timely fashion, a description and scope” of covert operations to eight congressional committees. And Congress, in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, was an unreliable partner. “It can be assumed,” the Davis task force warned, “that there would be strong Congressional opposition to any US involvement in support of one of the contending factions [in Angola].”54 Through the summer and the fall of 1975, the administration briefed the relevant congressional committees about IAFEATURE, but the briefings were less than candid. Representative Diggs, who chaired the Congressional Black Caucus and was a bitter foe of South Africa, would have strenuously objected had he known the true scope of the operation. “[We were told that] South Africa was not going to be any part of this. . . . So we were not going to ‘be embarrassed’ by South Africa,” Senator Biden noted in January 1976.

Above all, like much in Biden’s life, his relationship to Obama was built on loyalty. Once you become vice president, Biden said, “you have an obligation to back up whatever he does, unless you have a fundamental moral dilemma with what he’s doing.” He added, “If I ever got to that point, I’d announce I had prostate cancer and I had to leave.” At a Democratic Caucus lunch, after the party had lost the House of Representatives, the then congressman Anthony Weiner criticized Obama for making a deal with Republicans on tax cuts. Biden erupted, saying, “There’s no goddamn way I’m going to stand here and talk about the president like that.

Congress revisited drug policy in 1988. The resulting legislation was once again extraordinarily punitive, this time extending far beyond traditional criminal punishments and including new “civil penalties” for people convicted of drug crimes. The new Anti-Drug Abuse Act authorized public housing authorities to evict any tenant who allows any form of drug-related criminal activity to occur on or near public housing premises and eliminated many federal benefits, including student loans, for anyone convicted of a drug offense. The act also expanded use of the death penalty for serious drug-related offenses and imposed new mandatory minimums for drug offenses, including a five-year mandatory minimum for simple possession of cocaine base—with no evidence of intent to sell. Remarkably, the penalty would apply to people with no prior criminal convictions. The severity of this punishment was unprecedented in the federal system. Until 1988, one year of imprisonment had been the maximum for possession of any amount of any drug. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) were mixed in their assessment of the new legislation—some believed the harsh penalties were necessary, others convinced that the laws were biased and harmful to African Americans. Ultimately the legislation passed by an overwhelming margin—346 to 11. Six of the negative votes came from the CBC.90 The

Well, that’s not even a question, Mr. President,” Nancy said impatiently. “We’ve come too far to give up now.” She thought for a moment. Then, as if testing out an argument she’d later use with her caucus, she added, “If we let this go, it would be rewarding the Republicans for acting so terribly, wouldn’t it? We’re not going to give them the satisfaction.

Penn was Hillary’s trusted pollster who, after her third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, went from being the brains behind the former first lady’s political ascent to the asshole responsible for everything bad about the 2008 campaign. (Poor bastard couldn’t even blame the Russians.) Mark had some