Congressman Quotes

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it. -Andrew Young, author, civil rights activist, US congressman, mayor, and UN ambassador (b. 1932)

When I gained the attention of both Val and Congressman Richards, I shook my head and sighed.“I have international superstar status and she goes fangirly over you.

Every Congressman who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is not fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class.

You cannot be afraid to speak up and speak out for what you believe. You have to have courage, raw courage.

way I figure it, if you send us to do a job, let us do it. That’s why you have admirals and generals—let them supervise us, not some fat-ass congressman sitting in a leather chair smoking a cigar back in DC in an air-conditioned office,

Once a President or congressman is elected, we the taxpayers take care of them for life. I ask myself: If they are qualified to be our leaders, why can’t they take care of themselves?

I didn't have a cell phone because I never needed to play video games or surf the Net, or exchange nude photos with a congressman. - Odd Thomas - Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz pg 137 chapter 19

There are many farm handouts; but let's call them what they really are: a form of legalized theft. Essentially, a congressman tells his farm constituency, "Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you.

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps, And here you are the mothers' laps. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. ... What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Franklin and his petition were roundly denounced by the defenders of slavery, most notably Congressman James Jackson of Georgia, who declared on the House floor that the Bible had sanctioned slavery and, without it, there would be no one to do the hard and hot work on plantations.

The silence lasted precisely five seconds, during which time eyes roamed other eyes, several throats were cleared, and no one moved in his chair. It was as if a decision were being reached without discussion: evasion was to be avoided. Congressman Efrem Walters, out of the hills of Tennessee by way of the Yale Law Review, was not to be dismissed with facile circumlocution that dealt with the esoterica of clandestine manipulations. Bullshit was out.

Journalist: Congressman Kucinich, I believe you're the only one here who voted against the PATRIOT act right away after 9/11. Why is that? His Reply: Because I read it.

Believing that presidents have taxing and spending powers leaves Congress less politically accountable for our deepening economic quagmire. Of course, if you’re a congressman, not being held accountable is what you want.

Ultimately, I wanted to own a big truck, exercise my second Amendment rights, listen to hardcore music, and let my congressman know how poorly he represents me. None of this could occur in France.

Once, when a Republican congressman from Massachusetts accused Lincoln of having changed his mind, Lincoln replied, “Yes, I have; and I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

Every Senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave... This chamber reeks of blood... it does not take any courage at all for a Congressman or a Senator or a President to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Viet Nam, because it is not our blood that is being shed.

Do you inquire why, holding these views and possessing some will of my own, i accept so imperfect a proposition? I answer, because I live among men and not among angels.

You can explain it to a Congressman in six minutes and he can talk about it for six months.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

Greenstone is cursed. We had mines, but they shut. Ships used to dock, now they sail past. Our water tower comes loose and rolls over people, our congressman gets leprosy, Bob Dylan drives through and gets two flat tires.” Ann glowed as the idea coalesced—she couldn’t have been more incandescent if she’d physically caught fire. “Hard luck! That’s our legacy.

When the Populist congressman "Sockless" Simpson of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, misspelled his hometown while running for office, he said, "I wouldn't give a tinker's durn for a man who can't spell a word more than one way.

Yet,in this same moment near the end of America,it is hard to imagine a current Congressman,Senator or cabinet member who would go to prison for the United States.Or,who would willingly be shot or stabbed for his nation, or his religion,or his family or almost anything except his own brilliant carreer.History is larded with irony.

Fossils were placed there by God to test our faith. - U.S. congressman Paul Broun

On the card I wrote, “Thinking of you,” and the picture was of my erect penis. I hope my local congressman got it OK.

A brick could be used as a deodorant deterrent. Just ask any stinky Congressman.

Our financial system is a false one and a huge burden on the people . . . This Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth." —Congressman Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Sr.

Now, explain it to me very slowly, like I’m a congressman.

That’s incredible,” said the congressman. “Or incredibly incompetent.

There are many expressions to describe someone who is going about something in the wrong way. “Making a mistake” is one way to describe this situation. “Screwing up” is another, although it is a bit rude, and “Attempting to rescue Lemony Snicket by writing letters to a congressman, instead of digging an escape tunnel” is a third way, although it is a bit too specific.

Former Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank once said, “I only voted once for someone who believes in 100 percent of what I believe. And that’s when I voted for myself—the first time.

As the Congressman rose, I calmed the tremor in my gut. I was in close quarters with some representative specimens of the most dangerous creature in the history of the world, the white man in a suit.

President Theodore Roosevelt had created the bureau in 1908, hoping to fill the void in federal law enforcement. (Because of lingering opposition to a national police force, Roosevelt’s attorney general had acted without legislative approval, leading one congressman to label the new organization a “bureaucratic bastard.”)

New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A couple of weeks ago, I was asked on CNN if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. Well, the station was flooded with emails, and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad, because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which (a) proves my point, and (b) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him. Now, before I go about demonstration how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness that's dragging us down, let me just say that ignorance has life-and-death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, seventy percent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Six years later, thirty-four percent still do. Or look at the health-care debate: At a recent town hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross-country to protest highways. This country is like a college chick after two Long Island iced teas: We can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget the town halls, and replace them with study halls. Listen to some of these stats: A majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. Twenty-four percent could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket. Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators, and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only three got their wife's name right on the first try. People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes more twenty-four percent of our budget. It's actually less than one percent. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen ad a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence, because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge." Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll say eighteen percent of us think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. And I haven't even brought up religion. But here's one fun fact I'll leave you with: Did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which came first. I rest my case.

My grandmother had never been very political, and she sure didn't follow high finance. But decades later, she was still repeating her line that she knew two things about Franklin Roosevelt: He made it safe to put money in banks and---she always paused here and smiled---he did a lot of other good things. And that was my pitch to Congressman Frank. Start with something that people understand, something that solves a problem they can see. Do that, and then they'll have confidence in the work you do to fix the parts they can't see... Start simple. Fix something people can see.

A short fifty-three days after Congressmen Boggs and Begich were killed, Congressman George Collins became the KGB’s next flying fatality while he was returning to Chicago on December 8, 1972. The Congressman’s plane, United Air Lines Flight 553, was “descending near 71st and Lawndale when it plunged to the ground, smashed through a row of one-story houses and burst into flames . . . .

Congressman Lewis, I know the Oscars may not be the time or place for politics, but I must ask you, for those of us who are feeling activist, resistance fatigue—what would you say to us to encourage forward momentum and engagement?” Congressman Lewis’s eyes lit up, he gave me that knowing look, and he clicked right in. “We can neva give up! We can neva give in! We must resist! We must fight for what’s right. Equality for all!” .

Who had made the U.S. the world police? Should a congressman or Senator or even President be removed by force if necessary to preserve all that is right and good about America? The answer in my heart is a resounding “YES!” but can one man alone bring down their army of evil men? Doubtful.

Behind his bedroom door, he can sit and put Hall & Oates on the record player in the corner, and nobody hears him humming along like his dad to "Rich Girl." He can wear the reading glasses he always insists he doesn't need. He can make as many meticulous study guides with color-coded sticky notes as he wants. He's not going to be the youngest elected congressman in modern history without earning it, but nobody needs to know how hard he's kicking underwater. His sex symbol stock would plummet.

He invested heavily in a company that bought perishable foods and shipped them in the latest refrigerated cars to far-off cities. It was a fine, forward-looking business. But the Pullman strike halted all train traffic through Chicago, and the perishable foods rotted in their train-cars. He was ruined. He was still young, however, and still Bloom. He used his remaining funds to buy two expensive suits, on the theory that whatever he did next, he had to look convincing. “But one thing was quite clear…” he wrote. “[B]eing broke didn’t disturb me in the least. I had started with nothing, and if I now found myself with nothing, I was at least even. Actually, I was much better than even: I had had a wonderful time.” Bloom went on to become a congressman and one of the crafters of the charter that founded the United Nations.

He still had a fragment of his boyhood belief that congressman were persons of intelligence and importance.

Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz tweeted, "@TuckerCarlson is CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America. The ADL is a racist organization.

Already a congressman, to a mentor "I hope sometime you run across something you think I can do well 24 hours per day.

Yo Mama's so fat, her ass has its own congressman!

MURRAY (with a cynical laugh). Interesting? On a small town rag? A month of it, perhaps, when you're a kid and new to the game. But ten years. Think of it! With only a raise of a couple of dollars every blue moon or so, and a weekly spree on Saturday night to vary the monotony. (He laughs again.) Interesting, eh? Getting the dope on the Social of the Queen Esther Circle in the basement of the Methodist Episcopal Church, unable to sleep through a meeting of the Common Council on account of the noisy oratory caused by John Smith's application for a permit to build a house; making a note that a tugboat towed two barges loaded with coal up the river, that Mrs. Perkins spent a week-end with relatives in Hickville, that John Jones Oh help! Why go on? Ten years of it! I'm a broken man. God, how I used to pray that our Congressman would commit suicide, or the Mayor murder his wife just to be able to write a real story!

I realize the congressman isn't in. I want you to deliver this message to him personally: Tell him to shut his goddamn mouth!... I know we're working behind the scenes to protect the oil company from its victims. That's exactly why he needs to go mute. Those were the strict ground rules from the beginning of his term: no press conferences, no interviews except Fox, and sit like a silent lump in the committee... Because he's fucking stupid! And I'm not going to let him throw this away! Do you have any idea how hard it was to get a moron like that elected?

Congressman John Lewis, before his passing, wrote: “Democracy is not a state. It is an act.” And what he meant was that America’s democracy is not guaranteed. It is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it, to guard it and never take it for granted. And protecting our democracy takes struggle. It takes sacrifice. There is joy in it and there is progress. Because we, the people, have the power to build a better future

Through The Mecca I saw that we were, in our own segregated body politic, cosmopolitans. The black diaspora was not just our own world but, in so many ways, the Western world itself. Now, the heirs of those Virginia planters could never directly acknowledge this legacy or reckon with its power. And so that beauty that Malcolm pledged us to protect, black beauty, was never celebrated in movies, in television, or in the textbooks I’d seen as a child. Everyone of any import, from Jesus to George Washington, was white. This was why your grandparents banned Tarzan and the Lone Ranger and toys with white faces from the house. They were rebelling against the history books that spoke of black people only as sentimental “firsts”—first black five-star general, first black congressman, first black mayor—always presented in the bemused manner of a category of Trivial Pursuit. Serious history was the West, and the West was white. This was all distilled for me in a quote I once read from the novelist Saul Bellow. I can’t remember where I read it, or when—only that I was already at Howard. “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?” Bellow quipped. Tolstoy was “white,” and so Tolstoy “mattered,” like everything else that was white “mattered.” And this view of things was connected to the fear that passed through the generations, to the sense of dispossession. We were black, beyond the visible spectrum, beyond civilization. Our history was inferior because we were inferior, which is to say our bodies were inferior. And our inferior bodies could not possibly be accorded the same respect as those that built the West. Would it not be better, then, if our bodies were civilized, improved, and put to some legitimate Christian use?

Grant’s fortuitous move to Illinois on the eve of the election had monumental consequences, conveniently situating him in the president’s home state and overtly pro-Union northern Illinois. It also placed him in the district of Congressman Elihu B. Washburne, an emphatic Lincoln supporter. Had Grant remained in Missouri, riven by internal strife, he would never have enjoyed the same chance for rapid advancement in the coming war.

It will even bring into question our system of representative democracy. The tech is there for people’s identity to be proven and for them to vote instantly on just about any issue that comes up – gay marriage, abortion law, planning permission, military intervention. Liquid democracy – where people actually vote on decisions as they get made – is surely a far truer democracy. Why then do you need a congressman or parliamentary representative?

In 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court declared de jure (by law) racial segregation legal, which caused it to spread in at least twelve northern states. In 1898, Democrats rioted in Wilmington, North Carolina, driving out the mayor and all the other Republican officeholders and killing at least twelve African Americans. The McKinley administration did nothing, allowing this coup d'etat to stand. Congress became desegregated in 1901 when Congressman George H. White of North Carolina failed to win reelection owing to the disfranchisement of black voters in his state. No African American served in Congress again until 1929, and none from the South until 1973.

Sometimes, you fact-check and research the congressman’s speeches. The year is 1999, and you seem to be the only one in the office who knows how to perform an Internet search properly. “You’re a wizard, Aviva,” says the supervisor.

There were a million things we needed to figure out—and the congressman thought the most important thing we needed to do was slice up the operating budget so each political party was assured its “fair share”? Welcome to Washington. Once

Power and influence in Congress," he explained, "are not obtained by promoting one's own measures. They come either from blocking measures others want enacted or sup-                                     porting measures others oppose. As a member of the Agricul- ture Committee, Mrs. Chisholm would have been in an ideal position to make her presence felt. Without offending her own constituents, she could have voted against all of the bills introduced for the benefit of farmers. At the same time she could have introduced bills to scuttle price supports and other farm programs. Before long, farm belt congressmen would have been knocking on her door, asking favors." That kind of long-range Machiavellian strategy may be fine for a white, mid-western congressman whose district has more cows than voters, and who has all the time in the world to try to work himself up to that comfortable share of power that a House member can achieve if he plays by the rules, makes his district "safe," and lives long enough. What I can never forget, and what my friend the reporter apparently never knew, is that there are children in my district who will not live long enough for me to play it the way he proposes.

I think you'll make a great Congressman, Sam Porter. The people of New York couldn't ask for anything better. New Jersey." What do you mean, New Jersey?" I live in Jersey. That's my home state." But what about people of New York? Don't we deserve honest representatives, too?" It was one thing when he was going to be her Congressman, but he was going to be someone else's Congressman, not hers? New York has good representatives." But not as good as you, Sam. We deserve the best." Move to Jersey.

A South Carolina native, Miles was a lawyer, a mayor of Charleston, and a congressman. He was one of his state's "fire-eaters," a term applied to men who openly advocated secession rather than finding accomodation with the Union in the summer and fall of 1860.

Sometimes sexy women like to act stupid because it helps them get exactly what they want. Theresa Boudreaux was one of those types: a bodacious waffle-house waitress with a devilish streak. Unfortunately for a certain high-ranking elected leader, she had the wits to go to RadioShack and buy herself a nine-dollar phone-recording device. She then used it to tape her dirty phone calls with US Congressman Huey Hartley, a powerful, sanctimonious, married-for-thirty-years politician from the solidly red state of Mississippi.

Andrew Young, a former U.S. Congressman and U.N. ambassador turned Wal-Mart spokesman, seemed to offer an explanation: “Poverty in America,” he said, “is market potential unrealized.” It seems that the poor benefit the discounting industry far more than the discounting industry benefits the poor.

Still, their affection for each other remained strong: while Baker was serving in Washington, the Lincolns honored him by naming their second-born son for the congressman. (Edward Baker Lincoln died tragically at age three in 1850.) When Baker finished his term, he dutifully handed off his House seat to Lincoln.

He did everything. He studied hard. He went to Harvard. He got married. He had children. He worked. He dreamed big. He pulled his bootstraps all the way up from his humble beginnings to the presidency. He lived the American Dream. And he was called an African Witch Doctor. People asked for his birth certificate. A congressman shouted at him "YOU LIE!" He faced the most recalcitrant Republican Congress ever that was elected by a constituency that wanted to "take the country back."If a black man can be elected as guardian of the American empire, do exactly that, and still not be shielded from racism, what hope is supposed to be left?

. . . why not ask your congressman or woman to support universal background checks? Ask him or her to renew the ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Offer a pink slip to any legislator who refuses to explain his or her lack of support for these common-sense measures. With rights come responsibilities. While we enjoy a right to bear arms, we have a societal obligation to do so responsibly and safely. We are, after all, responsible for each other. Our governing is done by the people and for the people.  It is in the best interest of the people, all the people, to apply common sense to the gun issue . . .

Listening Without Thought I do not know whether you have listened to a bird. To listen to something demands that your mind be quiet—not a mystical quietness, but just quietness. I am telling you something, and to listen to me you have to be quiet, not have all kinds of ideas buzzing in your mind. When you look at a flower, you look at it, not naming it, not classifying it, not saying that it belongs to a certain species—when you do these, you cease to look at it. Therefore, I am saying that it is one of the most difficult things to listen—to listen to the communist, to the socialist, to the congressman, to the capitalist, to anybody, to your wife, to your children, to your neighbor, to the bus conductor, to the bird—just to listen. It is only when you listen without the idea, without thought, that you are directly in contact; and being in contact, you will understand whether what he is saying is true or false; you do not have to discuss. JANUARY 4

I always got the feeling with John Paul that if he could have narrowed down the people he met and blessed those he loved the most, they would not be cardinals, princes, or congressman, but nuns from obscure convents and Down syndrome children, especially the latter. Because they have suffered, and because in some serious and amazing way the love of God seems more immediately available to them. Everyone else gets themselves tied up in ambition and ideas and bustle, all the great distractions, but the modest and unwell are so often unusually open to this message: God loves us, his love is all around us, he made us to love him and be happy

Only the Democratic Party could produce a string of presidential candidates who oppose school choice and vouchers while sending their own children to lily-white private schools. Only the Democratic Party could hysterically denounce a Supreme Court nominee for allegedly making unwanted sexual advances in the workplace and then applaud a president who was receiving oral sex from a White House intern while discussing deploying American troops with a congressman on the phone. Indeed, only the Democrats could oppose Clarence Thomas, actually block Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg (for marijuana use), and then run Bill Clinton for president.

But one thing was quite clear…” he wrote. “[B]eing broke didn’t disturb me in the least. I had started with nothing, and if I now found myself with nothing, I was at least even. Actually, I was much better than even: I had had a wonderful time.” Bloom went on to become a congressman and one of the crafters of the charter that founded the United Nations.

When it was Jim Jordan’s turn to speak, the Ohio congressman—perhaps Trump’s closest ally in the House—was dismissive of the discussion about the legal process for challenges and recounts. Jordan was not interested in understanding or discussing the rules. He didn’t seem to think the rules mattered. “The only thing that matters,” Jordan said, “is winning.

When the speech concluded it was very late. One of Congressman Bachus’s aides took me back to the office to get Colston. We opened the door and those interns looked whooped. Ties were off, hair was all messed up, and my son was running around the room energetically asking to play another game. He was bouncing off the walls and his babysitters looked like they’d been hit by a truck.

I heard Steven Solarz [former Democratic congressman from Brooklyn] on the BBC. He said the world has a double standard: 700,000 Yemenis were expelled from Saudi Arabia and no one said a word (which is true); 415 Palestinians get expelled from Gaza and the West Bank and everybody’s screaming. Every Stalinist said the same thing: “We sent Sakharov into exile and everyone was screaming. What about this or that other atrocity—which is worse?” There is always somebody who has committed a worse atrocity. For a Stalinist mimic like Solarz, why not use the same line? Incidentally, there is a difference—the Yemenis were deported to their country, the Palestinians from their country. Would Solarz claim that we all should be silent if he and his family were dumped into a desert in Mexico?

Congressman Ryan give a talk at the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia. He said that we all want two things for our children: We want them to care about others and we want them to pay attention. He pointed out that parents and teachers are always telling children, “Pay attention” and “Be nice.” But he went on to ask, “How often do they teach them how to do those things?

Like most of my colleagues, I promise my constituents a lot of stuff I can never deliver. But what the hell? If it makes them happy hearing it, and they're stupid enough to believe it, shame on them.

All told, the Fifty-first Congress passed 531 public laws, representing an unprecedented level of legislative accomplishment unequaled until Theodore Roosevelt’s second term. After the final adjournment on March 3, the historian and Republican congressman Henry Cabot Lodge wrote, “No Congress in peace time since the first has passed so many great & important measures of lasting value to the people.

This was tricky. They had, right now, at home, boxes of letters addressed to Michael from college football coaches and boosters and just people who wanted to get to know the future star. They had a personal letter from Congressman Harold Ford Jr., who seemed to want to become Michael’s friend, and a stack of letters from a football coach at the University of Alabama, who seemed prepared to offer his hand in marriage.

THE CONGRESSMAN’S SPEECH was about being one of very few Jewish kids at Annapolis and how it was not a bad thing to find you were the “only one” from time to time. Being the “only one” was good practice for imagining what it was like to be a minority or even a poor person, the congressman said. Government’s greatest danger was myopia and egocentrism. Good leaders and good citizens had to consider the needs of those who were not like us, too.

This brings us to the crux moment in the supposed 'Show Trial' melodrama. Employing the confusing and confused testimony of Jude Wanniski (who he also describes as a political nut-case, if not a nut-case flat-out, and to whom he introduced me in the first place) Blumenthal suggests that I concerted my testimony in advance with the House Republicans, notably James Rogan and Lindsey Graham. Feebly bridging the gap between sheer conjecture and outright conspiracy, Rogan is quoted as saying: 'Hitchens may well have called Lindsey..' I did not in fact do any such thing. Why should my denial be believed? It's not as if I care. I probably should have colluded with them, if my intention was to land a blow on Clinton (which it was) let alone to plant a Judas kiss on Blumenthal (which it was not). But every other fragment of Blumenthal's evidence and description shows—even boasts—that Congressman Graham was essentially punching air until the last day of the trial. That could not possibly have been true, especially in his cross-examination of Blumenthal, if he knew he had an ace in his vest-pocket all along. Only a tendency to paranoia or to all-explaining theories could suggest the contrary. I'd even be able to claim for myself, I hope, that if I'd truly wanted to gouge a deep or vengeful wound I could or would have made a better job of it.

Sol Bloom, chief of the Midway, emerged from the fair a rich young man. He invested heavily in a company that bought perishable foods and shipped them in the latest refrigerated cars to far-off cities. It was a fine, forward-looking business. But the Pullman strike halted all train traffic through Chicago, and the perishable foods rotted in their traincars. He was ruined. He was still young, however, and still Bloom. He used his remaining funds to buy two expensive suits, on the theory that whatever he did next, he had to look convincing. “But one thing was quite clear. . . .” he wrote. “[B]eing broke didn’t disturb me in the least. I had started with nothing, and if I now found myself with nothing, I was at least even. Actually, I was much better than even: I had had a wonderful time.” Bloom went on to become a congressman and one of the crafters of the charter that founded the United Nations.

You don’t represent the working men,” Haywood charged. “I do,” the congressman replied in a huff. “You are an employer, are you not?” “Yes.” “Then you do not represent the working people. You represent the employers. There is nothing in common between the two classes so you - couldn’t possibly represent them both.” Despite Haywood’s belligerence, the congressman warmed to the verbal jousting. Laughing at the charge that he had never done an honest day’s work, Ames said he worked longer hours than anyone Haywood knew. This caused Big Bill to snap to attention. “Do you think six dollars too little pay for a man to work a week for?” Haywood demanded. “Don’t you think $7,500 a year too much to pay a man for making laws when only six dollars a week is paid a man for making cloth? Don’t you believe that it is more essential to mankind to make cloth than it is to make laws?” The congressman replied that his federal salary was not his chief income and that he gave it, and more, to charity. Haywood said charity would not be needed if workers were given living wages.

America’s last step into the Vietnam quagmire came on November 22, 1963, when Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth president of the United States. Unlike Kennedy, Johnson was no real veteran. During World War II he used his influence as a congressman to become a naval officer, and, despite an utter lack of military training, he arranged a direct commission as a lieutenant commander. Fully aware that “combat” exposure would make him more electable, the ambitious Johnson managed an appointment to an observation team that was traveling to the Pacific. Once there, he was able to get a seat on a B-26 combat mission near New Guinea. The bomber had to turn back due to mechanical problems and briefly came under attack from Japanese fighters. The pilot got the damaged plane safely back to its base and Johnson left the very next day. This nonevent, which LBJ had absolutely no active part of, turned into his war story. The engine had been “knocked out” by enemy fighters, not simply a routine malfunction; he, LBJ, had been part of a “suicide mission,” not just riding along as baggage. The fabrication grew over time, including, according to LBJ, the nickname of “Raider” Johnson given to him by the awestruck 22nd Bomber Group.

Wrote the veteran Congressman DP Mishra: “…Soon after, I heard Nehru’s voice on All India Radio at Nagpur, committing the Government of India to the holding of plebiscite in Kashmir. As from my talk with Patel, I had received the impression that the signature of the Maharaja had finally settled the Kashmir issue. I was surprised by Nehru’s announcement. When I visited Delhi next, I pointedly asked Patel whether the decision to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir was taken at a meeting of the Cabinet. He sighed and shook his head. It was evident that Nehru had acted on Mountbatten’s advice, and had ignored his colleagues.” It seems

On the labour front in 1919 there was an unprecedented number of strikes involving many millions of workers. One of the lager strikes was mounted by the AF of L against the United States Steel Corporation. At that time workers in the steel industry put in an average sixty-eight-hour week for bare subsistence wages. The strike spread to other plants, resulting in considerable violence -- the death of eighteen striking workers, the calling out of troops to disperse picket lines, and so forth. By branding the strikers Bolsheviks and thereby separating them from their public support, the Corporation broke the strike. In Boston, the Police Department went on strike and governor Calvin Coolidge replaced them. In Seattle there was a general strike which precipitated a nationwide 'red scare'. this was the first red scare. Sixteen bombs were found in the New York Post Office just before May Day. The bombs were addressed to men prominent in American life, including John D. Rockefeller and Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. It is not clear today who was responsible for those bombs -- Red terrorists, Black anarchists, or their enemies -- but the effect was the same. Other bombs pooped off all spring, damaging property, killing and maiming innocent people, and the nation responded with an alarm against Reds. It was feared that at in Russia, they were about to take over the country and shove large cocks into everyone's mother. Strike that. The Press exacerbated public feeling. May Day parades in the big cities were attacked by policemen, and soldiers and sailors. The American Legion, just founded, raided IWW headquarters in the State of Washington. Laws against seditious speech were passed in State Legislatures across the country and thousands of people were jailed, including a Socialist Congressman from Milwaukee who was sentenced to twenty years in prison. To say nothing of the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 which took care of thousands more. To say nothing of Eugene V. Debs. On the evening of 2 January 1920, Attorney General Palmer, who had his eye on the White House, organized a Federal raid on Communist Party offices throughout the nation. With his right-hand assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, at his right hand, Palmer effected the arrest of over six thousand people, some Communist aliens, some just aliens, some just Communists, and some neither Communists nor aliens but persons visiting those who had been arrested. Property was confiscated, people chained together, handcuffed, and paraded through the streets (in Boston), or kept in corridors of Federal buildings for eight days without food or proper sanitation (in Detroit). Many historians have noted this phenomenon. The raids made an undoubted contribution to the wave of vigilantism winch broke over the country. The Ku Klux Klan blossomed throughout the South and West. There were night raidings, floggings, public hangings, and burnings. Over seventy Negroes were lynched in 1919, not a few of them war veterans. There were speeches against 'foreign ideologies' and much talk about 'one hundred per cent Americanism'. The teaching of evolution in the schools of Tennessee was outlawed. Elsewhere textbooks were repudiated that were not sufficiently patriotic. New immigration laws made racial distinctions and set stringent quotas. Jews were charged with international conspiracy and Catholics with trying to bring the Pope to America. The country would soon go dry, thus creating large-scale, organized crime in the US. The White Sox threw the Series to the Cincinnati Reds. And the stage was set for the trial of two Italian-born anarchists, N. Sacco and B. Vanzetti, for the alleged murder of a paymaster in South Braintree, Mass. The story of the trial is well known and often noted by historians and need not be recounted here. To nothing of World War II--

As for the world beyond my family—well, what they would see for most of my teenage years was not a budding leader but rather a lackadaisical student, a passionate basketball player of limited talent, and an incessant, dedicated partyer. No student government for me; no Eagle Scouts or interning at the local congressman’s office. Through high school, my friends and I didn’t discuss much beyond sports, girls, music, and plans for getting loaded. Three of these guys—Bobby Titcomb, Greg Orme, and Mike Ramos—remain some of my closest friends. To this day, we can laugh for hours over stories of our misspent youth. In later years, they would throw themselves into my campaigns with a loyalty for which I will always be grateful, becoming as skilled at defending my record as anyone on MSNBC. But there were also times during my presidency—after they had watched me speak to a big crowd, say, or receive a series of crisp salutes from young Marines during a base tour—when their faces would betray a certain bafflement, as if they were trying to reconcile the graying man in a suit and tie with the ill-defined man-child they’d once known. That guy? they must have said to themselves. How the hell did that happen? And if my friends had ever asked me directly, I’m not sure I’d have had a good answer.

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped, Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them; It may be you are from old people and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mother’s laps, And here you are the mother’s laps. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues! And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. What do you think has become of the young and old men? What do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere; The smallest sprouts show there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceased the moment life appeared. All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

As a nonwhite person, the General, like myself, knew he must be patient with white people, who were easily scared by the nonwhite. Even with liberal white people, one could go only so far, and with average white people one could barely go anywhere. The General was deeply familiar with the nature, nuances, and internal differences of white people, as was every nonwhite person who had lived here a good number of years. We ate their food, we watched their movies, we observed their lives and psyche via television and in everyday contact, we learned their language, we absorbed their subtle cues, we laughed at their jokes, even when made at our expense, we humbly accepted their condescension, we eavesdropped on their conversations in supermarkets and the dentist’s office, and we protected them by not speaking our own language in their presence, which unnerved them. We were the greatest anthropologists ever of the American people, which the American people never knew because our field notes were written in our own language in letters and postcards dispatched to our countries of origin, where our relatives read our reports with hilarity, confusion, and awe. Although the Congressman was joking, we probably did know white people better than they knew themselves, and we certainly knew white people better than they ever knew us.

for the next century could raise the world’s temperature some 4°C (7.2°F), bringing serious coastal flooding and other damage.” The Conservation Foundation urged renewed funding for Keeling’s CO 2 project and pressed the National Academy of Sciences to pay attention to the subject. From then on, awareness of climate change ascended right along with the Keeling Curve. In 1971 Barry Commoner’s environmentalist bestseller, The Closing Circle, gave an early public warning about greenhouse gases. In 1978 a young congressman from Tennessee, Albert Gore, held hearings on global warming, starring his Harvard teacher Roger Revelle, who had sponsored the Keeling CO 2 research

Well, “maybe it is,” Chotiner wrote, “but the Republican Party must do something more than point out the evils of the administration’s plan—it must show that it is ready to meet the needs of Tom Jones when illness strikes.” And so Congressman Nixon joined with other Republican moderates to introduce a national health insurance plan in which the states and federal governments would subsidize the purchase of insurance from private companies. “Our bill involves neither socialized medicine nor medicine for indigents only,” the announcement said. “It recognizes that the problem of medical care for the people is urgent and that government should participate in its solution.

When politicians and pundits fume about long-term welfare addiction among the poor, or the social safety net functioning like “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency,” to quote former Republican congressman Paul Ryan, they are either deeply misinformed, or they are lying.[20] The American poor are terrible at being welfare dependent. I wish they were better at it, just as I wish that we as a nation devoted the same amount of thoughtfulness, creativity, and tenacity to connecting poor families with programs that would alleviate their hunger and ease their hardships as multinational corporations devote to convincing us to buy their potato chips and car tires.

Gentlemen, it is not my place to tell you how to do your jobs. I am a scientist, not a congressman. My task is to raise questions, carefully record observations, and vigorously analyze the dat, in hopes that others might raise more questions after me. There cannot be science the interrogation of closely held beliefs, as well as the demolition of personal aversions and biases, There cannot be science without free and unfettered dissemination of the truth. When you, as the creators of policy, seek to use your power to curtail understanding and thwart free exchange of knowledge and ideas, it is not I who will suffer the consequences of this, but rather the whole nation, and, indeed, the the entire world.

Established politicians are also bumping into a new cast of characters within corridors of legislative power. In 2010 parliamentary elections in Brazil, for example, the candidate who won the most votes anywhere in the country (and the second-most-voted congressman in the country's history) was a clown - an actual clown who went by the name of Tiririca and wore his clown costume while he campaigned. His platform was as anti-politician as it gets. "I don't know what a representative in congress does," he told voters in YouTube video that attracted millions of voters, "but if you send me there I will tell you". He also explained that his goal was "to help needy people in this country, but especially my family".

North Carolina’s Robert Rice Reynolds, who had just that week granted an interview to Hitler’s mouthpiece newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter, headlined “Advice to Roosevelt: Stick to Your Knitting.” A sample of Reynolds’s reasoning: “I can see no reason why the youth of this country should be uniformed to save the so-called democracies of Europe—imperialistic Britain and communistic France…. I am glad to be able to state that I am absolutely against the United States waging war for the purpose of protecting the Jews anywhere in the world.” Among the most outspoken isolationists was the powerful New York congressman Hamilton Fish, who was already heading up the National Committee to Keep America Out of Foreign Wars.

We've become a superficial nation obsessed with fluff. Americans may be hard-pressed to name their two senators or find Afghanistan on a map, but they know everything about the loopy Kardashians and Brad and what's-her-name. I worry about our country's future when critical issues take a backseat to the inane utterings of illiterate athletes and celebrity twits.

President Theodore Roosevelt had created the bureau in 1908, hoping to fill the void in federal law enforcement. (Because of lingering opposition to a national police force, Roosevelt’s attorney general had acted without legislative approval, leading one congressman to label the new organization a “bureaucratic bastard.”) When White entered the bureau, it still had only a few hundred agents and only a smattering of field offices. Its jurisdiction over crimes was limited, and agents handled a hodgepodge of cases: they investigated antitrust and banking violations; the interstate shipment of stolen cars, contraceptives, prizefighting films, and smutty books; escapes by federal prisoners; and crimes committed on Indian reservations.

On the other hand, irrational fears are difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. Here’s an example: when 152 people were infected with swine flu in Mexico in 2009, people around the world, prodded by the media’s manufactured hysteria, erupted in fear of an epidemic. We were warned that the threat was everywhere—that everyone was potentially at risk; however, the data showed these fears to be completely unwarranted. Weeks into the “outbreak,” there were around 1,000 reported cases of the virus in 20 countries. The number of fatalities stood at 26—25 in Mexico, and one in the United States (a boy who had just traveled to Texas from Mexico). Yet schools were closed, travel was restricted, emergency rooms were flooded, hundreds of thousands of pigs were killed, hand sanitizer and face masks disappeared from store shelves, and network news stories about swine flu consumed 43% of airtime.9 “There is too much hysteria in the country and so far, there hasn’t been that great a danger,” commented Congressman Ron Paul in response. “It’s overblown, grossly so.”10 He should know. During Paul’s first session in Congress in 1976, a swine flu outbreak led Congress to vote to vaccinate the entire country. (He voted against it.) Twenty-five people died from the vaccination itself, while only one person was killed from the actual virus; hundreds, if not more, contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome, a paralyzing neurological illness, as a result of the vaccine. Nearly 25 percent of the population was vaccinated before the effort was cancelled due to safety concerns.

Tell you what: Ask a Baptist wife why her husband treats her like a personal slave. Ask a homosexual couple why their love for one another is treated as a sick joke in some parts of the world and as a crime punishable by death in others. Ask a starving African mother with ten starving children why she doesn't practice birth control. Ask a young Muslim girl why her parents sliced off her clitoris. Ask millions of Muslim women why they cannot attend schools or show themselves in public except through the eye slits of a full-body burqa. Ask the Pakistani woman who's gang-raped why she is sentenced to death while her rapists go free, and why it’s her own family leading the murderous chorus. Ask the American woman who’s raped why her local congressman would question the “legitimacy” of that rape and would force her to bring her rapist’s child to term. Ask the dead Christian children why their fundamentalist parents wouldn’t give them an antibiotic to stave off their infection or an insulin injection to control their diabetes. Ask the Parkinson’s or paralysis victims why their cures have been mired in religious and political red tape for decades now because an increasingly hysterical and radical segment of American society believes that a clump of cells with no identity and no consciousness has more rights than they do. Ask them all to point to the source of their misery, and then ask yourself why it doesn't bother you that they are pointing to the same goddamned book you're using in your religious services and in the celebration of your “harmless” and “quaint” traditions.

There’s the early marriage that ended in divorce when she was eighteen. Then the studio-setup courtship and tumultuous marriage to Hollywood royalty Don Adler. The rumors that she left him because he beat her. Her comeback in a French New Wave film. The quickie Vegas elopement with singer Mick Riva. Her glamorous marriage to the dapper Rex North, which ended in both of them having affairs. The beautiful love story of her life with Harry Cameron and the birth of their daughter, Connor. Their heartbreaking divorce and her very quick marriage to her old director Max Girard. Her supposed affair with the much younger Congressman Jack Easton, which ended her relationship with Girard. And finally, her marriage to financier Robert Jamison, rumored to have at least been inspired by Evelyn’s desire to spite former costar—and Robert’s sister—Celia St. James. All of her husbands have passed away, leaving Evelyn as the only one with insight into those relationships.

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands, How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps, And here you are the mothers' laps. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colourless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

MASSOUD DISPATCHED his foreign policy adviser, Abdullah, to Washington in August. Their Northern Alliance lobbyist, Otilie English, scratched together a few appointments on Capitol Hill. It was difficult to get anyone’s attention. They had to compete with Pakistan’s well-heeled, high-paid professional lobbyists and advocates, such as the former congressman Charlie Wilson, who had raised so much money for Pakistan’s government in Congress during the anti-Soviet jihad. Abdullah and English tried to link their lobbying effort with Hamid Karzai and his brother, Qayum, to show that Massoud was fighting the Taliban with multiethnic allies. But the members they met with could barely manage politeness. Guns or financial aid were out of the question. Some barely knew who Osama bin Laden was. With the Democrats they tried to press the issue of women’s rights in Afghanistan, but even that seemed to be a dying cause now that the Clintons were gone. Both Massoud’s group and the Karzais were “so disappointed, so demoralized” after a week of meetings on the Hill and at the State Department, Karzai’s lobbyist recalled.37

New Rule: Democrats must get in touch with their inner asshole. I refer to the case of Van Jones, the man the Obama administration hired to find jobs for Americans in the new green industries. Seems like a smart thing to do in a recession, but Van Jones got fired because he got caught on tape saying Republicans are assholes. And they call it news! Now, I know I'm supposed to be all reinjected with yes-we-can-fever after the big health-care speech, and it was a great speech--when Black Elvis gets jiggy with his teleprompter, there is none better. But here's the thing: Muhammad Ali also had a way with words, but it helped enormously that he could also punch guys in the face. It bothers me that Obama didn't say a word in defense of Jones and basically fired him when Glenn Beck told him to. Just like dropped "end-of-life counseling" from health-care reform because Sarah Palin said it meant "death panels" on her Facebook page. Crazy morons make up things for Obama to do, and he does it. Same thing with the speech to schools this week, where the president attempted merely to tell children to work hard and wash their hands, and Cracker Nation reacted as if he was trying to hire the Black Panthers to hand out grenades in homeroom. Of course, the White House immediately capitulated. "No students will be forced to view the speech" a White House spokesperson assured a panicked nation. Isn't that like admitting that the president might be doing something unseemly? What a bunch of cowards. If the White House had any balls, they'd say, "He's giving a speech on the importance of staying in school, and if you jackasses don't show it to every damn kid, we're cutting off your federal education funding tomorrow." The Democrats just never learn: Americans don't really care which side of an issue you're on as long as you don't act like pussies When Van Jones called the Republicans assholes, he was paying them a compliment. He was talking about how they can get things done even when they're in the minority, as opposed to the Democrats , who can't seem to get anything done even when they control both houses of Congress, the presidency, and Bruce Springsteen. I love Obama's civility, his desire to work with his enemies; it's positively Christlike. In college, he was probably the guy at the dorm parties who made sure the stoners shared their pot with the jocks. But we don't need that guy now. We need an asshole. Mr. President, there are some people who are never going to like you. That's why they voted for the old guy and Carrie's mom. You're not going to win them over. Stand up for the seventy percent of Americans who aren't crazy. And speaking of that seventy percent, when are we going to actually show up in all this? Tomorrow Glenn Beck's army of zombie retirees descending on Washington. It's the Million Moron March, although they won't get a million, of course, because many will be confused and drive to Washington state--but they will make news. Because people who take to the streets always do. They're at the town hall screaming at the congressman; we're on the couch screaming at the TV. Especially in this age of Twitters and blogs and Snuggies, it's a statement to just leave the house. But leave the house we must, because this is our last best shot for a long time to get the sort of serious health-care reform that would make the United States the envy of several African nations.

IN ADDITION TO having become a distinctly Christian party, the GOP is more than ever America’s self-consciously white party. The nationalization of its Southern Strategy from the 1960s worked partly because it rode demographic change. In 1960, 90 percent of Americans were white and non-Hispanic. Only a few states had white populations of less than 70 percent—specifically Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Alabama. Today the white majority in the whole country is down nearly to 60 percent; in other words, America’s racial makeup is now more “Southern” than the Deep South’s was in the 1960s. For a while, the party’s leaders were careful to clear their deck of explicit racism. It was reasonable, wasn’t it, to be concerned about violent crime spiraling upward from the 1960s through the ’80s? We don’t want social welfare programs to encourage cultures of poverty and dependency, do we? Although the dog-whistled resentment of new policies disfavoring or seeming to disfavor white people became more audible, Republican leaders publicly stuck to not-entirely-unreasonable arguments: affirmative action is an imperfect solution; too much multiculturalism might Balkanize America; we shouldn’t let immigrants pour into the U.S. helter-skelter. But in this century, more Republican leaders started cozying up to the ugliest fantasists, unapologetic racists. When Congressman Ron Paul ran for the 2008 GOP nomination, he appeared repeatedly with the neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, who was just coining the term “alt-right” for his movement. Senator Rand Paul employed as an aide and wrote a book with a former leader of the League of the South, an organization devoted to a twenty-first-century do-over of Confederate secession. After we elected a black president, more regular whistles joined the kind only dogs can hear. Even thoughtful Ross Douthat, one of the Times’s conservative columnists, admitted to a weakness for the Old South fantasy. During the debate about governments displaying Confederate symbols after nine black people were shot dead by a white supremacist in Charleston, he discussed “the temptation…to regard the Confederate States of America as the political and historical champion of all…attractive Southern distinctives….Even a secession-hating Yankee like myself has felt, at certain moments the pull of that idea, the lure of that fantasy.

Subect: Sigh. Okay. Since we're on the subject... Q. What is the Tsar of Russia's favorite fish? A. Tsardines, of course. Q. What does the son of a Ukranian newscaster and a U.S. congressman eat for Thanksgiving dinner on an island off the coast of Massachusetts? A.? -Ella Subect: TG A. Republicans. Nah.I'm sure we'll have all the traditional stuff: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes. I'm hoping for apple pie. Our hosts have a cook who takes requests, but the island is kinda limited as far as shopping goes. The seven of us will probably spend the morning on a boat, then have a civilized chow-down. I predict Pictionary. I will win. You? -Alex Subect: Re. TG Alex, I will be having my turkey (there ill be one, but it will be somewhat lost among the pumpkin fettuccine, sausage-stuffed artichokes, garlic with green beans, and at least four lasagnas, not to mention the sweet potato cannoli and chocolate ricotta pie) with at least forty members of my close family, most of whom will spend the entire meal screaming at each other. Some will actually be fighting, probably over football. I am hoping to be seated with the adults. It's not a sure thing. What's Martha's Vineyard like? I hear it's gorgeous. I hear it's favored by presidential types, past and present. -Ella Subject: Can I Have TG with You? Please??? There's a 6a.m. flight off the island. I can be back in Philadelphia by noon. I've never had Thanksgiving with more than four or five other people. Only child of two only children. My grandmother usually hosts dinner at the Hunt Club. She doesn't like turkey. Last year we had Scottish salmon. I like salmon,but... The Vineyard is pretty great. The house we're staying in is in Chilmark, which, if you weren't so woefully ignorant of defunct television, is the birthplace of Fox Mulder. I can see the Menemsha fishing fleet out my window. Ever heard of Menemsha Blues? I should bring you a T-shirt. Everyone has Black Dogs; I prefer a good fish on the chest. (Q. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A. Fish.) We went out on a boat this afternoon and actually saw a humpback whale. See pics below. That fuzzy gray lump in the bumpy gray water is a fin. A photographer I am not. Apparently, they're usually gone by now, heading for the Caribbean. It's way too cold to swim, but amazing in the summer. I swear I got bumped by a sea turtle here last July 4, but no one believes me. Any chance of saving me a cannoli? -A

As I became older, I was given many masks to wear. I could be a laborer laying railroad tracks across the continent, with long hair in a queue to be pulled by pranksters; a gardener trimming the shrubs while secretly planting a bomb; a saboteur before the day of infamy at Pearl Harbor, signaling the Imperial Fleet; a kamikaze pilot donning his headband somberly, screaming 'Banzai' on my way to my death; a peasant with a broad-brimmed straw hat in a rice paddy on the other side of the world, stooped over to toil in the water; an obedient servant in the parlor, a houseboy too dignified for my own good; a washerman in the basement laundry, removing stains using an ancient secret; a tyrant intent on imposing my despotism on the democratic world, opposed by the free and the brave; a party cadre alongside many others, all of us clad in coordinated Mao jackets; a sniper camouflaged in the trees of the jungle, training my gunsights on G.I. Joe; a child running with a body burning from napalm, captured in an unforgettable photo; an enemy shot in the head or slaughtered by the villageful; one of the grooms in a mass wedding of couples, having met my mate the day before through our cult leader; an orphan in the last airlift out of a collapsed capital, ready to be adopted into the good life; a black belt martial artist breaking cinderblocks with his head, in an advertisement for Ginsu brand knives with the slogan 'but wait--there's more' as the commercial segued to show another free gift; a chef serving up dog stew, a trick on the unsuspecting diner; a bad driver swerving into the next lane, exactly as could be expected; a horny exchange student here for a year, eager to date the blonde cheerleader; a tourist visiting, clicking away with his camera, posing my family in front of the monuments and statues; a ping pong champion, wearing white tube socks pulled up too high and batting the ball with a wicked spin; a violin prodigy impressing the audience at Carnegie Hall, before taking a polite bow; a teen computer scientist, ready to make millions on an initial public offering before the company stock crashes; a gangster in sunglasses and a tight suit, embroiled in a turf war with the Sicilian mob; an urban greengrocer selling lunch by the pound, rudely returning change over the counter to the black patrons; a businessman with a briefcase of cash bribing a congressman, a corrupting influence on the electoral process; a salaryman on my way to work, crammed into the commuter train and loyal to the company; a shady doctor, trained in a foreign tradition with anatomical diagrams of the human body mapping the flow of life energy through a multitude of colored points; a calculus graduate student with thick glasses and a bad haircut, serving as a teaching assistant with an incomprehensible accent, scribbling on the chalkboard; an automobile enthusiast who customizes an imported car with a supercharged engine and Japanese decals in the rear window, cruising the boulevard looking for a drag race; a illegal alien crowded into the cargo hold of a smuggler's ship, defying death only to crowd into a New York City tenement and work as a slave in a sweatshop. My mother and my girl cousins were Madame Butterfly from the mail order bride catalog, dying in their service to the masculinity of the West, and the dragon lady in a kimono, taking vengeance for her sisters. They became the television newscaster, look-alikes with their flawlessly permed hair. Through these indelible images, I grew up. But when I looked in the mirror, I could not believe my own reflection because it was not like what I saw around me. Over the years, the world opened up. It has become a dizzying kaleidoscope of cultural fragments, arranged and rearranged without plan or order.

The Republican Roosevelt wanted to fight plutocrats as well as anarchists. Their plunder of oil, coal, minerals, and timber on federal lands appalled him, in his role as the founder of America’s national parks. Corporate criminals, carving up public property for their private profit, paid bribes to politicians to protect their land rackets. Using thousand-dollar bills as weapons, they ransacked millions of acres of the last American frontiers. In 1905, a federal investigation, led in part by a scurrilous Secret Service agent named William J. Burns, had led to the indictment and conviction of Senator John H. Mitchell and Representative John H. Williamson of Oregon, both Republicans, for their roles in the pillage of the great forests of the Cascade Range. An Oregon newspaper editorial correctly asserted that Burns and his government investigators had used “the methods of Russian spies and detectives.” The senator died while his case was on appeal; the congressman’s conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on grounds of “outrageous conduct,” including Burns’s brazen tampering with jurors and witnesses. Burns left the government and became a famous private eye; his skills at tapping telephones and bugging hotel rooms eventually won him a job as J. Edgar Hoover’s

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why if all politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes? You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don’t have Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don’t write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don’t set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don’t control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does. One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices — 545 human beings out of 235 million — are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. I excused the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered by private central bank. I exclude all of the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislators’ responsibility to determine how he votes. Don’t you see the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of Tip O’Neill, who stood up and criticized Ronald Reagan for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating appropriations and taxes. Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses — provided they have the gumption to manage their own employees.