Midterms Quotes

How did I go so long without noticing you, damn it? Why did it take seeing a stupid A on your midterm to make me notice?” He sounds so genuinely upset that I scoot closer and kiss him. “It doesn’t matter. You know me now.” “I do,” he says fiercely.

I roll my eyes. “I’m not asking you to take your clothes off, baby. I just want to peek at your midterm.” “Baby? Goodbye forward, hello presumptuous.

Lucas was fifteen minutes late to class on Friday, and we had a pop quiz first thing—which he missed. My first thought was how irresponsible it was to miss a quiz… and then I remembered that I missed the midterm. I couldn't exactly point any fingers.

Real fairy tales are not for the faint hearted. In them, children get eaten by witches and chased by wolves; women fall into comas and are tortured by evil relatives. Somehow, all that pain and suffering is worthwhile, though, when it leads to the ending: happily ever after. Suddenly it no longer matters if you got a B- on your midterm in French or if you're the only girl in the school who doesn't have a date for the spring formal. Happily ever after trumps everything. But what if ever after could change?

... Like having to be able to say to yourself, ‘I am pretending to sit here reading Albert Camus’s The Fall for the Literature of Alienation midterm, but actually I’m really concentrating on listening to Steve try to impress this girl over the phone, and I am feeling embarrassment and contempt for him, and am thinking he’s a poser, and at the same time I am also uncomfortably aware of times that I’ve also tried to project the idea of myself as hip and cynical so as to impress someone, meaning that not only do I sort of dislike Steve, which in all honesty I do, but part of the reason I dislike him is that when I listen to him on the phone it makes me see similarities and realize things about myself that embarrass me, but I don’t know how to quit doing them—like, if I quit trying to seem nihilistic, even just to myself, then what would happen, what would I be like?

How did I go so long without noticing you, damn it? Why did it take seeing a stupid A on your midterm to make me notice?

Well, they got caught of course. The whole thing was so dunderheaded, how could they not? By November 1986, Reagan's "Secret Dealings with Iran" had supplanted the 1986 midterm election results on the front page of Time magazine.

The scientific research is very clear that experiencing trauma without control can be debilitating. But I also worry about people who cruise through life, friction-free, for a long, long time before encountering their first real failure. They have so little practice falling and getting up again. They have so many reasons to stick with a fixed mindset. I see a lot of invisibly vulnerable high-achievers stumble in young adulthood and struggle to get up again. I call them the “fragile perfects.” Sometimes I meet fragile perfects in my office after a midterm or a final. Very quickly, it becomes clear that these bright and wonderful people know how to succeed but not how to fail.

In less than an hour I have to hold class for a group of idiot freshmen. And, on a desk in the living room, is a mountain of midterm examinations with essays I must suffer through, feeling my stomach turn at their paucity of intelligence, their adolescent phraseology. And all that tripe, all those miles of hideous prose, had been would into an eternal skein in his head. And there it sat unraveling into his own writing until he wondered if he could stand the thought of living anymore. I have digested the worst, he thought. Is it any wonder that I exude it piecemeal? (“Mad House”)

I shouldn’t be here,” I appeal to the captain, wondering if I’ve told him this before. “I have midterms and papers due and dirty clothes I never picked up from my bedroom floor, and I have friends, lots of friends.

I failed. I fucking failed. For fifteen years, Timothy Lane handed out A’s like mints. The year I take the class? Lane’s ticker quits ticking, and I get stuck with Pamela Tolbert. It’s official. The woman is my archenemy. Just the sight of her flowery handwriting—which fills up every inch of available space in the margins of my midterm—makes me want to go Incredible Hulk on the booklet and rip it to shreds.

I roll my eyes. “I’m not asking you to take your clothes off, baby. I just want to peek at your midterm.” “Baby? Goodbye forward, hello presumptuous.” “Would you prefer miss? Ma’am maybe? I’d use your name but I don’t know it.” “Of course you don’t.” She sighs. “It’s Hannah.” Then she pauses meaningfully. “Garrett.” Okay, I was waaaay off on the M thing. And I don’t miss the way she emphasizes my name as if to say, Ha! I know yours, asshole!

Talk is cheap, voting is free; take it to the polls...

People were polite here, on the whole. They were rule followers, and do-gooders. They voted in midterm elections. They mowed their lawns.

I want to say to the literature teacher who remains wilfully, even boastfully ignorant of a major element of contemporary fiction: you are incompetent to teach or judge your subject. Readers and students who do know the field, meanwhile, have every right to challenge your ignorant prejudice. Rise, undergraduates of the English departments! You have nothing to lose but your A on the midterm!

It was the end of the October term of my sophomore year, and everything was petty normal, except for Social Studies, which was no big surprise. Mr. Dimas, who taught the class, had a reputation for unconventional teaching methods. For midterms he had blindfolded us, then had us each stick a pin in a map of the world and we got to write essays on wherever the pin stuck. I got Decatur, Illinois. Some of the guys complained because they drew places like Ulan Bator or Zimbabwe. They were lucky. YOU try writing ten thousand words on Decatur, Illinois.

They are sitting in Gwendy’s bedroom after school, listening to the new Billy Joel album and supposedly studying for an English mid-term.

Real fairy tales are not for the fainthearted. Children get eaten by witches and chased by wolves; women fall into comas and are tortured by evil relatives. Somehow all that pain and suffering is worthwhile, though, when it leads to the ending: happily ever after. Suddenly it no longer matters if you got a B- on your midterm in French or you're the only girl in the school who doesn't have a date for the spring formal. Happily ever after trumps everything. But what if ever after could change?

As a Republic governed through the utilization of a democratic process, elections are necessary in order to give every United States citizen a voice in the governing of this great nation.

I saw, during the midterm campaign of 2006, how difficult it was for opponents of stem cell research to run against hope. And so it was in the 2008 presidential contest. This was hope in the collective, a definition that should always apply to the expression of a people's political will. Christopher Reeve had believed in a formula: optimism + information = hope. In this case, the informing agent was us. Granted, it may all look different in six months to a year, but it is hard not to be buoyed by the desire for positive change as articulated and advanced by Barack Obama. It is okay to hope. This time the aspiration of many will not be derided as desperation by a few, as it was during the stem cell debate of '06. By the time you read this book, President Obama and the 111th Congress will have established federal funding for stem cell research. The dam has broken. Just as I'd hoped.

Not many people in Washington are thinking beyond the 2016 presidential election. It is sometimes argued that an American administration operates strategically for only about six months, at the beginning of its second year—after it has gotten its staff confirmed by the Senate and before the midterms campaign begins.

So what did you want to talk to Wesley about?" he asked me. "Kelly likes him," I said. "So I figured while we were discussing Lady Macbeth's insanity and Duncan's murder, I could, you know, casually find out if he likes her too." Colton didn't blink. "He likes her." "He does? How do you know?" He shrugged like it was a silly question. "We talk sometimes. He told me on the drive over he hoped she would be here." "Then why hasn't he ever asked her out?" "He's shy. And we're in the middle of wrestling season, midterms, and Christmas." Colton picked up the liter of soda. "Have a little patience." I reached for the bowl of popcorn, but didn't start out of the kitchen yet. "Well can I hurry him along? Is there any chance he'll ask her out before this weekend?" Colton shook his head at me, then walked toward the living room. "You're not quite grasping the nature of patience, Charlotte.

TO: ALL TEACHERS FROM: JAMES J. MCHABE, ADM. ASST. PLEASE PLOT AND HAND IN THE MEDIAN PERCENTILE CURVE BASED ON THE MIDTERM MARKS IN EACH OF YOUR CLASSES. IF A CLASS CURVE FALLS BELOW THE PERCENTILE OF FAILURES ALLOTTED TO IT, THE EFFICACY OF THE TEACHER MUST BE QUESTIONED. TEACHERS WITH THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF PASSING STUDENTS ARE TO BE COMMENDED. JJ McH

Senator Bernie Sanders, who was the hope of so many, considering Democratic losses after the 2018 midterm elections, remarked, “There are a lot of white folks out there who are not necessarily racist who felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American.” How is not voting for someone simply because they’re black not racist?

This historic general election, which showed that the British are well able to distinguish between patriotism and Toryism, brought Clement Attlee to the prime ministership. In the succeeding five years, Labor inaugurated the National Health Service, the first and boldest experiment in socialized medicine. It took into public ownership all the vital (and bankrupted) utilities of the coal, gas, electricity and railway industries. It even nibbled at the fiefdoms and baronies of private steel, air transport and trucking. It negotiated the long overdue independence of India. It did all this, in a country bled white by the World War and subject to all manner of unpopular rationing and controls, without losing a single midterm by-election (a standard not equaled by any government of any party since). And it was returned to office at the end of a crowded term.

I was walking around in an almost blind, crazy rage of madness. There was a story burning a hole in my brain, and it was dying to come out on paper. It was begging of me to create it, but I didn’t know where to begin. A month after giving birth to the idea, I felt like I was losing my mind. Ideas would pop into my head in the middle of the night, or during a midterm, and I missed them, quite narrowly, almost every time. Every time an idea left my mind without taking the shape of a word on paper, my mind would automatically begin to churn something just as impressive, or at least close to it. I was digging myself into a shallow grave, and I was getting nowhere. And this was even before the thoughts were committed to paper.

Exams make the students tired and exam-duties make the teachers exhausted. So, there should be an official vacation for at least 15 days after the end of mid-term & final exams in private universities so that the students and teachers can relax and freshen themselves up!

He wouldn’t talk about it—at all. Not that Sophie had many chances to bring up the subject. Only a handful of people knew the truth. The rest believed the Black Swan’s carefully crafted lie, and thought Keefe was taking time away to mourn his mother’s disappearance. Even the Council had no inkling, and Sophie hoped it would stay that way. The less everyone knew, the easier it would be for Keefe to come home. If he came home. “You okay?” Fitz asked, making her realize she’d forgotten to say hello. “I hope you’re not worrying about your tests. There’s no way you didn’t pass.” “I don’t know . . .” Her photographic memory helped—but lately she’d struggled to concentrate during her school sessions. Honestly, though, she’d barely given her midterms a second thought. She wasn’t the same girl she’d been the year before, who thought failing out of Foxfire would be the end of the world. Now she’d been kidnapped, presumed dead, banished from the Lost Cities, and helped stop a plague from killing off the entire gnomish species. She’d even snuck into the ogres’ capital and helped destroy half the city—which happened to be why the Council was struggling to negotiate a new elvin-ogre treaty. “Relax,” Fitz said as her mind spun to nightmares of lumpy-faced ogres tearing through the elves’ glittering streets. “We’re supposed to be celebrating.” His cheer sounded forced. But she knew Fitz was trying. That’s what they did now. Try. Wait. Hope.

This is shitty to say, but there's not much pathos involved in a case like that. Think about it: Little So-and-so the Fourth drowns himself Tuesday night after receiving his midterm grades in the school of civil engineering. The body goes back to Westchester, and a lounge in the library or a nature path gets named after him, and a bunch of blue-blood kids remember him fondly. Sorry. There's about one story a year like that. Poor Billy Fuckup, Jr., in his Gap khakis, the pressure of going to classes all day really got to him. If I were a better person, I would have felt badly having seen things like that.

[WAIT—IT WON’T LET ME REDACT THESE LITTLE SUBHEADING THINGS? THAT’S SUPER ANNOYING!] [FINE, I’LL JUST GIVE YOU MY SUMMARY.] [SO, WHOEVER WROTE THIS WAS ALL BLAH-BLAH-BLAH-STELLARLUNE-SOMETHING-SOMETHING-LEGACY. BUT SERIOUSLY, NO ONE WANTS TO READ ABOUT THE CREEPY STUFF MY MOM DID BEFORE SHE GOT PREGNANT WITH ME! (AND WE’RE ALL SUPER SICK OF HEARING ABOUT MY “LEGACY,” AMIRITE?) SO, LET’S JUST LEAVE IT AT THIS: MY MOM IS EVIL. SHE THINKS SHE’S WAY SMARTER THAN SHE IS. AND NOTHING SHE DID IS GOING TO AFFECT MY GENERAL AWESOMENESS, OKAY?] A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY: [WOW, HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH SUCH A CLEVER TITLE?!] [AND YEAH, I HAVE A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY. NOT SURE WHY ANYONE CARES. BUT IT DOES COME IN HANDY DURING MIDTERMS AND FINALS.] AHEAD OF THE GAME: [BASICALLY: I’M A GENIUS. I SKIPPED LEVEL ONE AT FOXFIRE. YES, YOU SHOULD BE IMPRESSED.] UNREASONABLY HIGH STANDARDS: [GOTTA ADMIT, I WAS TEMPTED TO LEAVE THIS ONE ALONE, SINCE WHOEVER WROTE IT ACTUALLY GOT THINGS PRETTY MUCH RIGHT. I GUESS EVEN THE COUNCIL KNOWS MY DAD’S A JERK WHO FREAKS OUT ALL THE TIME BECAUSE I’M NOT A LITTLE MINI-HIM. WHO KNEW?] A POWERFUL EMPATH: [UGH, THAT’S THE BEST YOU COULD DO FOR THIS SUBHEADING???] [HOW ABOUT “LORD OF THE FEELS”? OR “TRUST THE EMPATH”! OR “HE KNOWS WHAT YOU’RE FEELING—AND YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF”?] [OOO! I’VE GOT IT! “HE KNOWS FOSTER BETTER THAN YOU DO! BETTER THAN SHE EVEN KNOWS HERSELF!”] [THOUGH… KEEPING IT REAL? THE FOSTER OBLIVION CAN BE KINDA NOT COOL SOMETIMES.] THE HEART OF THE MATTER: [I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU GUYS NAMED A SECTION OF MY FILE AFTER MY FATHER’S SUPER-BORING BOOK—AND THEN RAMBLED ON FOR TWO PAGES ABOUT HIS SUPER-BORING THEORY!!!!!] [YOU DON’T NEED TWO PAGES ON IT. YOU DON’T EVEN NEED TWO SENTENCES. HERE’S ALLLLLL YOU NEED TO KNOW—BESIDES THE FACT THAT HE’S TOTALLY NOT THE FIRST PERSON TO COME UP WITH THIS (JUST THE ONE WHO LOVES TO TAKE CREDIT): OUR HEADS AND OUR HEARTS SOMETIMES FEEL DIFFERENT EMOTIONS, AND WHAT’S IN OUR HEARTS IS PROBABLY STRONGER.] [THAT’S IT!] [WELL… OKAY… I GUESS HE ALSO GOES ON A BIT ABOUT HOW EMPATHS PROBABLY ONLY READ THE EMOTIONS FROM THE HEAD.] [AND THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT HEART EMOTIONS BEING PURER BECAUSE NO ONE CAN CONTROL THEM.] [BUT THAT’S IT.] [AND DON’T TELL LORD BORINGPANTS I READ HIS DUMB BOOK! I MOSTLY SKIMMED.] PRANKSTER AND TROUBLEMAKER: [100 PERCENT ACCURATE. ALSO, I’M LEAVING YOUR LITTLE ATTACHED DETENTION RECORD BECAUSE IT’S THE GREATEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!!!!]

What I mean is, a professor is the only person on earth with the power to put a veritable frame around life— not the whole thing, God no— simply a fragment of it, a small wedge. He organizes the unorganizable. Nimbly partitions it into modern and postmodern, renaissance, baroque, primitivism, imperialism and so on. Splice that up with Research Papers, Vacation, Midterms. All that order— simply divine. The symmetry of a semester course. Consider the words themselves: the seminar, the tutorial, the advanced whatever workshop accessible only to seniors, to graduate fellows, to doctoral candidates, the practicum— what a marvelous word: practicum! You think me crazy. Consider a Kandinsky. Utterly muddled, put a frame around it, voilà — looks rather quaint above the fireplace. And so it is with the curriculum. That celestial, sweet set of instructions, culminating in the scary wonder of the Final Exam. And what is the Final Exam? A test of one’s deepest understanding of giant concepts.

Unlike animals, we are able to produce emotional states through thinking,” she says. “A zebra is only going to be horrendously stressed if a lion is chasing it, but my students can get themselves in the same state by worrying about their midterm.” And, she points out, it’s much easier for us to think ourselves into worry than into happiness. People

The actual “Root Bug” is the fact that earning opportunities (work) aren’t allocated to people (in the mid-term) according to their willingness to spend and invest.

For example, if a college student fails a midterm exam, she might view herself as less capable and view the class as more difficult, making her more worried and less confident about doing well on the final. While some students might knuckle down and work harder as a result, others might become so intimidated they begin to question whether they can pass the class at all.

Just let me grab my thinking cap,” she told him, heading for her locker. The long floppy hat was required during midterms, designed to restrict Telepaths and preserve the integrity of the tests—not that anything could block Sophie’s enhanced abilities. But after the exams, the hats became present sacks, and everyone filled them with treats and trinkets and treasures. “I’ll need to inspect your presents before you open them,” Sandor warned as he helped Sophie lift her overstuffed hat. “That’s perfect,” Fitz said. “While he does that, you can open mine.” He pulled a small box from the pocket of his waist-length cape and handed it to Sophie. The opalescent wrapping paper had flecks of teal glitter dusted across it, and he’d tied it with a silky teal bow, making her wonder if he’d guessed her favorite color. She really hoped he couldn’t guess why. . . . “Hopefully I did better this year,” Fitz said. “Biana claimed the riddler was a total fail.” The riddle-writing pen he’d given her last time had been a disappointment, but . . . “I’m sure I’ll love it,” Sophie promised. “Besides. My gift is boring.” Sandor had declared an Atlantis shopping trip to be far too risky, so Sophie had spent the previous day baking her friends’ presents. She handed Fitz a round silver tin and he popped the lid off immediately. “Ripplefluffs?” he asked, smiling his first real smile in days. The silver-wrapped treats were what might happen if a brownie and a cupcake had a fudgey, buttery baby, with a candy surprise sunken into the center. Sophie’s adoptive mother, Edaline, had taught her the recipe

Mid-Term Break I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home. In the porch I met my father crying— He had always taken funerals in his stride— And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram When I came in, and I was embarrassed By old men standing up to shake my hand And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'. Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, Away at school, as my mother held my hand In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him For the first time in six weeks. Paler now, Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot. No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

He was realistic about it. there was that new hardness in his stomach. He loved her but he hated her. No more fantasies, he told himself. Henceforth, when he thought about Martha, it would be only to think that she belonged elsewhere. He would shut down the daydreams. This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity. Kiowa was right. Boom-down, and you were dead, never partly dead.

But what if that failed midterm also happened to be the first exam they ever took in college? What if they perceive not just the class but college as a whole as being a greater challenge than they’re able to meet? Since they’re unaware that failing the midterm has distorted their perceptions (such that the class and college appear harder than they actually are), they might reach premature and inappropriate decisions as a result. Indeed, many students drop out early in their freshman year for this exact reason

When Nixon resigned over Watergate, it provided all the leverage Hayden and his activists needed. The Democrats won the midterm elections, bringing to Washington a new group of legislators who were determined to undermine the settlement that Nixon and Kissinger had achieved. The aid was cut, the Saigon regime fell, and the Khmer Rouge marched into the Cambodian capital. In the two years that followed, the victorious Communists killed more Indochinese than had been killed on both sides in all 13 years of the anti-Communist war.

Cows, by virtue of the plentiful and varied bacteria in their rumen, are able to derive energy from things that would pass through a human undigested. The prune pit has a hard, nutritionally blank hull, but the embryo inside provides protein and fat. Rumen bacteria can break down the hull and free these nutrients, though it takes them a few days. DePeters showed me one of the mesh bags. “Sometimes I put a midterm exam in there,” he said. Cows can’t digest wood pulp. “I tell my students, ‘The cow didn’t digest that material any better than you did.

THIS IS WHAT they want. The words tumbled through Sophie’s mind as she raced up the spiral staircase, counting her steps, trying to guess which door to take. The first handle she tried was locked. Another opened into darkness. A third revealed a path that glowed with eerie blue balefire sconces. The floor shook as she hesitated and threads of dust slipped through the ceiling, scratching her throat and making it hurt to breathe. She followed the flames. Back and forth the halls snaked—a careful maze, designed to deceive. Swallow. Separate. The tremors grew with every step, the shifting subtle but unmistakable. And too far away. No one else would feel the ripples swelling, like waves gathering speed. They were too focused on their celebration. Too caught up in their imagined victory. Too trusting. Too blind. Too late. The ground rattled harder, the first fissures crackling the stones. This is what they want. ONE THIS IS A security nightmare!” Sandor grumbled, keeping his huge gray hand poised over his enormous black sword. His squeaky voice reminded Sophie more of a talking mouse than a deadly bodyguard. Several prodigies raced past, and Sandor pulled Sophie closer as the giggling group jumped to pop the candy-filled bubbles floating near the shimmering crystal trees. All around them, kids were running through the confetti-covered atrium in their amber-gold Level Three uniforms, capes flying as they caught snacks and bottles of lushberry juice and stuffed tinsel-wrapped gifts into the long white thinking caps dangling from everyone’s lockers. The Midterms Celebration was a Foxfire Academy tradition—hardly the impending doom Sandor was imagining. And yet, Sophie understood his concern. Every parent roaming the streamer-lined halls. Every face she didn’t recognize. Any of them could be a rebel.

It hadn’t worked out that way. Even if we’d outgrown the need to stay quiet and hidden during the dark hours—the only predators left were those we’d brought back ourselves—the brain still needed time apart from the world outside. Experiences had to be catalogued and filed, midterm memories promoted to long-term ones, free radicals swept from their hiding places among the dendrites. We had only reduced the need for sleep, not eliminated it—and that incompressible residue of downtime seemed barely able to contain the dreams and phantoms left behind. They squirmed in my head like creatures in a draining tidal pool.

major piece of financial regulation—the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act—moved toward passage. Wall Street money flowed to some of its fiercest critics in the 2010 election. That year, seven out of the ten top recipients of Goldman Sachs contributions, for example, were Democrats. Former Clinton secretary of labor Robert Reich declared that this was evidence that Wall Street was “bribing elected officials with their donations.”14 I would argue that Reich had the power equation wrong. It was the Permanent Political Class that threatened to cause severe damage to the financiers—not the other way around. As the late economics professor Peter H. Aranson puts it, “The real market for contributions is one of ‘extortion’ by those who hold a monopoly on the use of coercion—the officeholders.”15 The midterm election passed, and so did Dodd-Frank.

Conservatives concerned about the “creeping socialism” of the welfare state under Truman were emboldened by the Republican gains in the midterm elections of 1950. In an upbeat letter to Alfred Sloan, the head of General Motors and an ardent supporter of his work, Fifield reflected on the recent returns. “We are having quite a deluge of letters from across the country, indicating the feeling that Spiritual Mobilization has had some part in the awakening which was evidenced by the elections,” he wrote. “Of course, we are a little proud and very happy for whatever good we have been able to do in waking people up to the peril of collectivism and the importance of Freedom under God.” But the battle was far from won. “I do not consider that we can relax our efforts in any way or at any point,” Fifield noted. “It is still a long road back to what was and, please God, will again be America.”47

On a drive down from Philly to D.C., where I was scheduled to appear the next morning on Meet the Press, Gibbs and Axe, along with Axe’s business partner, David Plouffe, asked me what I planned to say when the show’s host, Tim Russert, inevitably grilled me about my plans. “He’s going to run back the old tape,” Axe explained. “The one where you say unequivocally you will not run for president in 2008.” I listened for a few minutes as the three of them began hashing out various ways to sidestep the question before I interrupted. “Why don’t I just tell the truth? Can’t I just say that I had no intention of running two years ago, but circumstances have changed and so has my thinking, and I plan to give it serious thought after the midterms are over?” They liked the idea, admitting that it said something about the strangeness of politics that such a straightforward answer would be considered novel. Gibbs also advised that I give Michelle a heads-up, predicting that a direct suggestion that I might run would cause the media frenzy to immediately intensify.

They’ll also have an extensive amount of makeup work to tackle during the midterm break—and no, that option is not available to you, so don’t ask and don’t test my patience. I can become very creative with my punishments if you force me to.” “See, but now you’ve got me curious,” Keefe told him. “Uh-uh,” Ro jumped in. “I have to suffer through this stuff with you.” “You do,” Magnate Leto agreed. “And I found an entire room filled with recordings of speeches from the Ancient Councillors that I think you’ll find particularly enjoyable.” Ro grabbed Keefe’s arm and hauled him toward the door. “We’re going to your session, and you’re acing that test and taking lots of notes or I will hang a banner in the middle of this campus—and we both know what I will have that banner say!” “Bo and Ro 4 Eva?” Keefe guessed, because he clearly had a death wish. “That’s it!” Ro picked him up, hefting him over her shoulder and trudging toward the door. “We’ll be back after study hall.” “You’ll be back tomorrow,” Magnate Leto corrected. “Lord Cassius is expecting you both to be home immediately after school—and I wouldn’t recommend disobeying.” “Why not?” Sophie asked. “He was in . . . a mood.” “Goody! Raise your hand if you’re jealous of my life!” Keefe said, twisting in Ro’s grasp to survey the room. “No takers?” “Don’t worry,” Ro told him, patting his back as she carried him into the hall. “I’ll sneak your dad some amoebas tonight.

On cue, Sarah Palin’s voice pops into my head. She’s always doing this, showing up when my spirits are lowest. It’s like I have a fairy godmother who hates me. “So,” she asks, “how’s that whole hopey, changey thing workin’ out for ya?” It’s a line she started using in 2010, when President Obama’s approval ratings were plummeting and the Tea Party was on the rise. And here’s the thing: if you ignore her mocking tone and that annoying dropped G, it’s a good question. I spent the lion’s share of my twenties in Obamaworld. Career-wise, it went well. But more broadly? Like so many people who fell in love with a candidate and then a president, the last eight years have been an emotional roller coaster. Groundbreaking elections marred by midterm shellackings. The exhilaration of passing a health care law followed by the exhaustion of defending it. Our first black president made our union more perfect simply by entering the White House, but a year from now he’ll vacate it for Donald Trump, America’s imperfections personified. The motorcade keeps skidding and sliding. For twenty miles we veer left and right, one close call after another, until we finally reach the South Lawn. Here, too, I have a routine: get out of the van, walk through the West Wing, head to my office across the street. It’s a trip I’ve made countless times before. It’s also one I will never make again. And as I walk past the Rose Garden, the flagstones of the colonnade pressing against the soles of my leather shoes, Sarah Palin’s question lingers in the January air. How has it all worked out?

VIOLATION SERIOUSNESS SENTENCE PRINCIPAL’S COMMENTS DESTRUCTION OF ACADEMY PROPERTY According to a report from Miss Foster, Mr. Sencen set off a device in my office, shattering the majority of the windows in the glass pyramid. 20 out of 10 None. Mr. Sencen remains absent, making punishment difficult to issue. And this does appear to confirm his involvement with the Neverseen. But I suspect there’s more to the story. —Magnate Leto Update: The glass pyramid has been rebuilt. Foxfire is also teaming up with Exillium for skill lessons. And Mr. Sencen has yet to return to campus. The Council is pressuring me to expel him, but I see no reason, (particularly since everyone should be focusing on the upcoming Peace Summit in Lumenaria). —Magnate Leto VIOLATION SERIOUSNESS SENTENCE PRINCIPAL’S COMMENTS Second Update: Foxfire’s midterm break was extended after the tragedy in Lumenaria, and… I’m grateful to have the time to adjust. There’s so much to do… and I’ll be so much more limited now.… But I’ll find a way to manage. In the meantime, it should be noted that when the academy resumes sessions, Mr. Sencen will be returning, and no disciplinary action will be taken against him. —Magnate Leto Third Update: Sessions still haven’t resumed. But Miss Foster brought Mr. Sencen to see Elwin for treatment after Mr. Sencen received several serious wounds during a sparring match with King Dimitar. Apparently, one result of the match is that Keefe will now have Princess Romhilda serving as his bodyguard, which will likely cause tension on campus. Preparations will need to be made. —Magnate Leto

Somewhere in between are the rest of us natives, in whom such change revives long-buried anger at those faraway people who seem to govern the world: city people, educated city people who win and control while the rest of us work and lose. Snort at the proposition if you want, but that was the view I grew up with, and it still is quite prevalent, though not so open as in those days. These are the sentiments the fearful rich and the Republicans capitalize on in order to kick liberal asses in elections. The Democrats' 2006 midterm gains should not fool anyone into thinking that these feelings are not still out here in this heartland that has so rapidly become suburbanized. It is still politically profitable to cast matters as a battle between the slick people, liberals all, and the regular Joes, people who like white bread and Hamburger Helper and "normal" beer. When you are looking around you in the big cities at all those people, it's hard to understand that there are just as many out here who never will taste sushi or, in all likelihood, fly on an airplane other than when we are flown to boot camp, compliments of Uncle Sam. Only 20 percent of Americans have ever owned a passport. To the working people I grew up with, sophistication of any and all types, and especially urbanity, is suspect. Hell, those city people have never even fired a gun. Then again, who would ever trust Jerry Seinfeld or Dennis Kucinich or Hillary Clinton with a gun? At least Dick Cheney hunts, even if he ain't safe to hunt with. George W. Bush probably knows a good goose gun when he sees one. Guns are everyday tools, like Skil saws and barbecue grills. So when the left began to demonize gun owners in the 1960s, they not only were arrogant and insulting because they associated all gun owners with criminals but also were politically stupid. It made perfect sense to middle America that the gun control movement was centered in large urban areas, the home to everything against which middle America tries to protect itself—gangbangers, queer bars, dope-fiend burglars, swarthy people jabbering in strange languages. From the perspective of small and medium-size towns all over the country, antigun activists are an overwrought bunch.

In Hiding - available for pre-order on Amazon! The emotion of her words silenced him. He knew it was the damn truth. The bastard’s lawyer claimed the video of the robbery was too blurry, which made it ineffective. Grand’s attorney then pulled some bullshit about the inability to find the gun. Without it, they would never link the ballistics to the shooting. To stress the point, their hired ballistics specialist rattled off enough mumbo-jumbo to confuse any layman. When the specialist left the stand, the prosecutor hung his head, knowing that his case had died. Not enough evidence to bring it to trial, the prosecutor could take another run at it after they solidified their case. The defense attorney had successfully fooled the Grand Jury, but Kate hadn’t accepted this. Instead, she hunted Grand down and shot him point-blank, just like he'd killed her folks. After her family posted bail, Kate ran, and Wayne chased her. Now, they both sat steeped in the events that brought them to this moment. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same!” Kate’s words struck a chord that he struggled to ignore. He couldn’t say he disagreed. He’d never expected it to end like this. Despite his skepticism, a part of him rooted for her; he wanted to believe that she was not a bad person; she was just in a bad situation. Kate should be back in college, busting her ass to pass a mid-term or, at worse, making a questionable decision with some dude. She didn’t deserve to go to prison for murder. Most of the people he chased were assholes like Grand. The world was better for it, and he moved to the next skip. Kate was different. The world would be lacking without her.

Impeachment, after all, is not a high mountain to climb. The Constitution vests in the House of Representatives “the sole power of impeachment.”1 Currently, the House is controlled by President Obama’s opposition: Republicans hold a comfortable 33-vote majority, with reasons for optimism that their ranks will swell after November’s midterm elections. Formal “articles of impeachment” require just a simple majority for approval. The historical rarity of impeachment owes to its gravity, not its difficulty.

His administration has sicced the Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies on his political opponents—frustrating the capacity of conservative groups to have the powerful impact on the 2012 presidential election that they had on the 2010 midterms.

Mooney was the class bully, a boy who had already failed two grades by the time he landed in mine. He was fat, sweaty and loud, and all the kids were scared of him. With good reason. If Mooney wanted something he took it, and woe to the child who tried to stop him. But Mooney was also crafty and sly. He never retaliated when an adult was near, preferring to ambush his prey when he could catch them off-guard, knowing it would be his word against the victims if the kid were stupid enough to tell. Sitting next to him was torture. I always carried extra pencils because I knew Mooney would confiscate the one I was using. And I considered myself lucky that pencils were all he’d taken so far. At least, I was lucky until the week before our midterm tests. Because the weather was nasty that Monday, our recess was taken in the gym. I was sitting on the bleachers taking a breather, watching Jenna chase Hugh in a game of tag, when Mooney confronted me. “You’re gonna let me copy off your paper when we take our tests next week,” he said. “If you don’t, I’ll stomp you into the ground.” He swaggered off, secure in the thought that I’d comply with his demand. I watched him in shock. Cheat? He wanted me to cheat on the tests? The Judge would disown me. I would never be able to look my grandfather in the eye again. There was no way I could let Mooney copy, even knowing he would kill me when it was over. Death before dishonor was my family motto.

Dear Bea—Can’t make it today—sorry. Parent arriving lunch per. to ask why son got 35% on Midterm. Must answer him. How? Sylvia Dear Syl—Don’t try. There’s no communication; no one really listens. Every man is an island. Give him a container of coffee instead. Bea

Ariely’s book clearly gives empirical verification for what you and I know happens all the time. Here is a tiny example I hope you cannot relate to: Ariely says, “Over the course of many years of teaching, I have noticed that there typically seems to be a rash of deaths among students’ relatives at the end of the semester. It happens mostly in the week before final exams and before papers are due.” Guess which relative most often dies? Grandma. I am not making this stuff up. Mike Adams, a professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, has done research on this. He has shown that grandmothers are ten times more likely to die before a midterm and nineteen times more likely to die before a final exam. Worse, grandmothers of students who are not doing well in class are at even higher risk. Students who are failing are fifty times more likely to lose Grandma than nonfailing students. It turns out that the greatest predictor of mortality among senior citizens in our day ends up being their grandchildren’s GPAs. The moral of all this is, if you are a grandparent, do not let your grandchild go to college. It’ll kill you, especially if he or she is intellectually challenged.

She never came back after mid-term break; according to the Automator, ‘unforeseen circumstances’ had forced her to extend her holiday. Every day Howard sees her classes trooping despondently from the Geography Room to the study hall, or carrying votive bundles of cardboard and paper to the recycling bins, their faces anxious, hopeful, like Indians doing a rain dance. He knows how they feel. Since mid-term he’s existed in a constant state of tension, braced against every moment as the one that might finally restore her. Even out of school, even on his own, shopping in the supermarket, sitting at the traffic lights, he finds himself holding his breath. But the days are a series of ghost pregnancies, delivering nothing.

We professors are often forced to hand out grades, and if I were teaching Risk Management 101 and had to give us humans a midterm grade based on our existential risk management so far, you could argue that I should give a B-on the grounds that we're muddling by and still haven't dropped the course. From my cosmological perspective, however, I find our performance pathetic, and can't give more than a D: the long-term potential for life is literally astronomical, yet we humans have no convincing plans for dealing with even the most-urgent existential risks, and we devote a minuscule fraction of our attention and resources to developing such plans. Compared with the roughly twenty million U.S. dollars spent last year on the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the largest organizations focused on at least some existential risks, the United States alone spent about five hundred times more on cosmetic surgery, about a thousand times more on air-conditioning for troops, about five thousand times more on cigarettes, and about thirty-five thousand times more on its military, not counting military health care, military retirement costs or interest on military debt.

Dillon’s project partner had a ruptured appendix, thus blowing their chances of finishing the midterm

Another early sign that the investment was yielding real results on the national scale was the Republican wave that swept the 1978 midterm elections. That year, Republicans gained three Senate seats, fifteen House seats, and six governorships. In Georgia, in a development that would have unforeseen future repercussions, Newt Gingrich was elected to Congress. E

He scoffed at the pictures of fruit vendors on city streets; they were selling apples at five cents apiece, he said, because it was more profitable than working a regular job. The Republicans had been routed in the 1930 midterm elections, losing seventeen seats in the Senate and control of the House.

she had accepted that doling out sarcastic criticism invited a cutting response. They circled each other, in consequence, like exactly matched opponents unwilling to declare open war. For as long as he could remember William had been irresistibly attracted to horses and had long affirmed his intention to be a jockey, of which Sarah strongly and I mildly disapproved. Security, William said, was a dirty word. There were better things in life than a safe job. Sarah and I, I suppose, were happier with pattern and order and achievement. William increasingly as he grew through thirteen, fourteen, and now fifteen, seemed to hunger for air and speed and uncertainty. It was typical of him that he proposed to spend the week’s mid-term break in riding horses instead of working for the eight ‘O’ Level exams he was due to take immediately afterwards. I left his letter on my desk to remind myself to send him a cheque and unlocked the cupboard where I kept my guns. The air-gun that I’d taken to school was little more than a toy and needed no licence or secure storage, but I also owned two Mauser 7.62s, an Enfield No. 4 7.62 and two Anschütz .22s around which all sorts of regulations bristled, and also an old Lee Enfield .303 dating back from my early days which was still as lethal as ever if one could raise the ammunition for it. The little I had, I hoarded, mostly out of nostalgia. There

I’m not asking you to take your clothes off, baby. I just want to peek at your midterm.

On October 14, 1982, less than a month before Republicans would suffer an embarrassing showing in the midterm elections, Reagan declared a new front in the war on drugs—establishing a dozen task forces under the direction of the attorney general “to mount an intensive and coordinated campaign against international and domestic drug trafficking and other organized criminal enterprises.” But three years later, Reagan called the Contras, who were seeking to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, “our brothers” and “freedom fighters” who were “more equal of our Founding Fathers.” They were also, as National Security Council Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North knew, protecting traffickers and running cocaine themselves. “We permitted narcotics,” then-U.S. senator John Kerry said at a 1988 subcommittee hearing on drugs, terrorism, and international operations. “We were complicitous as a country in narcotics traffic at the same time as we’re spending countless dollars in this country to try to get rid of this problem. It’s mind-boggling.” “I don’t know if we’ve got the worst intelligence system in the world,” Kerry blasted.

Fear is a threat to one side of the self—if a child is in a fight, he may get hurt, but that hurt would not be a threat to his existence; or the university student may be somewhat scared by a midterm, but he knows the sky will not fall in if he does not pass it. But as soon as the threat becomes great enough to involve the total self, one then has the experience of anxiety. Anxiety strikes us at the very “core” of ourselves: it is what we feel when our existence as selves is threatened.

An art degree wasn’t all hands-on, I still had several midterm papers for my Art Business class and my Art History class that I needed to work on.

How do I live less in the past, and more in the present? How do I build an investment strategy that is aligned with my mid-term and long-term goals and commitments? What does it look like to move from mindless consumption to mindful creation?

The Ferguson riots of 2014 immediately preceded the midterm elections, where the Republicans picked up a mindboggling sixty-three seats in the House and six seats in the Senate. (Fun fact: the Wikipedia entry is listed as “Ferguson unrest,” which is the leftist euphemism for rioting.)

Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico and invest $2 billion in terminal and transportation expansion, a move the company said was made possible by “changes in the U.S. corporate tax rate,” that is, the Trump tax cuts.11 Had they stuck to that plan, the pain Americans were experiencing at the pumps in the lead-up to the midterm

I deeply admire the president’s determination to defy the small, poll-driven politics of our day to tackle big things. However, the gap between the singular focus of the campaign and his varied and ambitious agenda afterward undoubtedly sapped some of his political strength, leaving Americans wondering if he was truly focused on their concerns. You can’t take politics entirely out of the process. I don’t speak with the president as much anymore. With the campaigns over, our once-frequent conversations have slowed to a trickle. I miss them. And when I hear the thundering hooves of the Washington pundits and pols on a stampede to run him down, I feel for him. Hell, I bleed for him. The brutal midterm election of 2014 was another painful rebuke. Yet I know this: There are people who are alive today because of the health coverage he made possible. There are soldiers home with their families instead of halfway across the world. There are hundreds of thousands of autoworkers on the assembly line who would have been idled but for him, and the overall economy is in better shape than it has been in years. There are folks who are getting improved deals from their banks and mortgage lenders thanks to new rules in place and a new cop on the beat. There are gay and lesbian Americans who are, for the first time, free to defend their country without having to lie about who they are. There are women who have greater legal recourse when they’re paid less than the man doing the exact same job alongside them. There are families who can afford to send their kids to college because there is more aid available. Oh, and yes . . . just as he predicted in my conference room back in those wonderful, heady days when we first considered an audacious run for the presidency, millions of kids in our country today can dream bigger dreams because Barack Obama has blazed the trail for them.

The phrase “conflict of interest” barely begins to describe Tom Lanphier’s rabidly partisan approach to advising one of the most powerful congressional allies of the American military-industrial complex. Yet he was in good company. Air force intelligence was crammed with highly competitive analysts who believed they were in a zero-sum game not only with the Russians but also with the army and the navy. If they could make the missile-gap theory stick, America would have to respond with a crash ICBM program of its own. The dominance of the Strategic Air Command in the U.S. military hierarchy would be complete—and Convair would profit mightily. It is hardly surprising that the information Lanphier fed to Symington and Symington to every politician and columnist who would listen was authoritative, alarming, and completely, disastrously wrong. Symington’s “on the record” projection of Soviet nuclear strength, given to Senate hearings on the missile gap in late 1959, was that by 1962 they would have three thousand ICBMs. The actual number was four. Symington’s was a wild guess, an extrapolation based on extrapolations by air force generals who believed it was only responsible to take Khrushchev at his word when, for example, he told journalists in Moscow that a single Soviet factory was producing 250 rockets a year, complete with warheads. Symington knew what he was doing. He wanted to be president and believed rightly that missile-gap scaremongering had helped the Democrats pick up nearly fifty seats in Congress in the 1958 midterm elections. But everyone was at it. The 1958 National Intelligence Estimate had forecast one hundred Soviet ICBMs by 1960 and five hundred by 1962. In January 1960 Allen Dulles, who should have known better because he did know better, told Eisenhower that even though the U-2 had shown no evidence of mass missile production, the Russians could still somehow conjure up two hundred of them in eighteen months. On the political left a former congressional aide called Frank Gibney wrote a baseless five-thousand-word cover story for Harper’s magazine accusing the administration of giving the Soviets a six-to-one lead in ICBMs. (Gibney also recommended putting “a system of really massive retaliation” on the moon.) On the right, Vice President Nixon quietly let friends and pundits know that he felt his own boss didn’t quite get the threat. And in the middle, Joe Alsop wrote a devastating series of columns syndicated to hundreds of newspapers in which he calculated that the Soviets would have 150 ICBMs in ten months flat and suggested that by not matching them warhead for warhead the president was playing Russian roulette with the national future. Alsop, who lived well but expensively in a substantial house in Georgetown, was the Larry King of his day—dapper, superbly well connected, and indefatigable in the pursuit of a good story. His series ran in the last week of January 1960. Khrushchev read it in translation and resolved to steal the thunder of the missile-gap lobby, which was threatening to land him with an arms race that would bankrupt Communism. Before the four-power summit, which was now scheduled for Paris in mid-May, he would offer to dismantle his entire ICBM stockpile. No one needed to know how big or small it was; they just needed to know that he was serious about disarmament. He revealed his plan to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at a secret meeting in the Kremlin on

When he visited developing countries, he made a point to say they reminded him of China three decades ago. “Can other developing countries achieve a performance similar to that achieved by China over the past three decades?” he asked in a speech he called “The China Miracle Demystified.” “The answer is clearly yes.” He advised poor countries that if they want to get richer, they needed to delay political reform or fall victim to the chaos of post–Soviet Russia. He argued for the virtues of being free not from repression but “from the fear of poverty and hunger, of which I hold vivid childhood memories.” When he wrote in his own name, not on behalf of the Bank, he was even more strident: he dismissed the “optimistic, and perhaps naïve, argument put forward by some scholars that democracies … are more likely to undertake economic reforms.” He quoted Deng Xiaoping, who once said, “The United States brags about its political system, but the president says one thing during the election, something else when he takes office, something else at midterm, and something else when he leaves.

Political issues were interlinked more closely than he had previously imagined. He had always thought that problems such as Berlin and Cuba were separate from each other and had little connection with such issues as civil rights and health care. But President Kennedy had been unable to deal with the Cuban missile crisis without thinking of the repercussions in Germany. And if he had failed to deal with Cuba, the imminent midterm elections would have crippled his domestic program, and made it impossible for him to pass a civil rights bill. Everything was connected.

I was saddened by a poem I saw stuck up on the wall of an English reading and writing club that I visited. It was written by a 10-year-old girl, and was titled ‘Exams’. All exams are significant, And I am going to FAINT! For my poor mid-term scores Which drive grandma dizzy And make my grandpa crazy. My world is not fantasy, And my mind is in vacancy. My teachers are getting chilly, And thinking if I am silly. My classmate is not a bully Just making unfriendly raillery. I am so afraid of the terrible shouting And endless moaning. How I wish I have nubility, To improve my ability. From now on I get to know That life isn’t interesting And I must be hard-working.

The abysmally low turnout in last week’s midterm elections — the lowest in more than seven decades — was bad for Democrats, but it was even worse for democracy. In 43 states, less than half the eligible population bothered to vote, and no state broke 60 percent. In the three largest states — California, Texas and New York — less than a third of the eligible population voted. New York’s turnout was a shameful 28.8 percent, the fourth-lowest in the country, despite three statewide races (including the governor) and 27 House races.

Chris Krueger, long-time Capitol Hill watcher for Guggenheim Securities, says the people expecting this kind of kumbaya moment are “Pollyannas”. He said: “My reading of the White House is that they already feel pretty good about their legacy, having done what no administration since Harry Truman has done and extended access to healthcare.” These are the facts on the ground, which bode ill for investors, but there is a conundrum: history suggests we are at a point in the political cycle when markets usually do well. After some volatility around the midterms, the stock market has historically settled into a very strong year in the third year of the presidential cycle, according to an analysis by Jeff Hirsch, editor of the Stock Trader’s Almanac. Sweeping in 180 years of data on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and predecessor indices, he calculates the average Year 3 gain to be 10.4 per cent, almost double the next best year, the presidential election year itself.

intended to be more inclusive than the one run by his predecessor, Nuri al-Maliki, whose sectarian policies led to disaffection by Sunnis and contributed to the rapid advances by IS. The new government includes members of Iraq’s Sunni and Kurdish minorities. Although he flexed the White House’s executive muscle over IS, Mr Obama went limp on his promise to take executive action on immigration reform. He said he would do nothing until after November’s mid-term

Dennis and Mario, meanwhile, have fallen behind to debate the merits and demerits of Mario’s new phone. ‘The thing you don’t understand about this phone is that it’s state of the art, which means, this is the best phone you can get.’ ‘I do understand that, you moron, I’m saying what’s the point of having a state-of-the-art phone when everyone who’s going to call you on it is living six feet away from you?’ ‘I think what it is, is, you are jealous of my state-of-the-art phone, which has a camera and an MP3 player.’ ‘Mario, if you can’t see why your parents suddenly gave you that gay phone you’re even dimmer than I thought. I mean, think about it, they leave you in school for the entire holiday, and then they give you some rinky-dink piece of plastic so they can talk to you without having to see you face-to-face. They couldn’t say, “We don’t love you” more clearly if they wrote it in skywriting over the rugby pitches.’ ‘That shows what you know, because my parents do love me.’ ‘Well, why did they leave you here over mid-term, then?’ ‘They did not go into it, but they were very specific about it not being because they didn’t love me, and I know because I asked them that very question.

To be clear, the dispute over executive amnesty is not between President Obama and Republicans in Congress; it is a dispute between President Obama and the American people. The Democrats suffered historic losses in the midterm elections largely over the prospect of the president’s executive amnesty.  President Obama was correct: His policies were on the ballot across the nation in 2014. The elections were a referendum on amnesty, and the voters soundly rejected it. There was no ambiguity. Undeterred,

2010 is not just any election year: it is crucial given that this class of governors will be in charge as their states draw Congressional and state legislative districts as part of the reapportionment process after the next census. And given historical trends in midterm elections and the lopsided majority Democrats enjoy in Congress, the possibility that Republicans could make gains in House races next year could give the party a psychological boost at the halfway point of Mr. Obama’s term. Jankowski immediately recognized the opportunity. As provided in the Constitution, every state redraws all of its district lines every ten years, that is, after the census. That means elections in “zero years” matter more than others. Jankowski realized it would be possible to target states where the legislature is in charge of redistricting, flip as many chambers as possible, take control of the process, and redraw the lines.

New York Times: Republicans should mount an aggressive campaign to flip state legislatures ahead of post-census redistricting, then press the advantage to both redraw congressional and state legislative lines in their favor and aggressively advance the conservative agenda. Presidents almost always lose seats in a midterm election. Democratic turnout always falls in non-presidential years. Smart money spent on the right races had the potential to make more of a difference than ever. Republican

The catch with arresting him is that his million-strong tribe was helping bring stability to a violent region, and without his criminal influence things are likely to tumble much further out of control. A triumph for the DIA may prove a mid-term disaster for Afghanistan.

The word dharma can be a kind of catchall word in Buddhism. Dharma sometimes means the Buddha’s teachings specifically. But here the meaning is much wider. It’s almost like saying “stuff.” Dharmas could be stuff you’re going through — studying for your midterms, getting a divorce, making an egg-salad sandwich. Or it could be the people and things that are going through whatever it is they’re going through. The phrase “all dharmas” means the whole universe.

For reasons of electoral calculation—to preserve his Democratic majorities in a congressional midterm election—Roosevelt wanted American troops fighting Germans before the end of the year. “We failed to see,” Marshall would write, “that the leader in a democracy has to keep the people entertained. The people demand action.

Live fire is analogous to mid-term exams; dry-fire is the study you put in to be truly prepared for those exams.

In their view, we’d compromised too much, and by continually chasing the false promise of bipartisanship, we’d not only empowered McConnell and squandered big Democratic majorities; we’d thrown a giant wet blanket over our base—as evidenced by the decision of so many Democrats to not bother to vote in the midterms.

The topic of motivation often comes up when dealing with the issue of follow-through on plans. Many adults with ADHD may aspire to achieve a goal (e.g., exercise) or get through an unavoidable obligation (e.g., exam, paying bills), but fall prey to an apparent lack of motivation, despite their best intentions. This situation reminds us of a quote attributed to the late fitness expert, Jack LaLanne, who at the age of 93 was quoted as saying, “I’m feeling great and I still have sex almost every day. Almost on Monday, almost on Tuesday . . .” Returning to the executive dysfunction view of ADHD, motivation is defined as the ability to generate an emotion about a task that promotes follow-through in the absence of immediate reward or consequence (and often in the face of some degree of discomfort in the short-term). Said differently, motivation is the ability to make yourself “feel like” doing the task when there is no pressing reason to do so. Thus, you will have to find a way to make yourself feel like exercising before you achieve the results you desire or feel like studying for a midterm exam that is still several days away. You “know” logically that these are good ideas, but it is negative feelings (including boredom) or lack of feelings about a task that undercut your attempts to get started. In fact, one of the common thinking errors exhibited by adults with ADHD when procrastinating is the magnification of emotional discomfort associated with starting a task usually coupled with a minimization of the positive feelings associated with it. Adults with ADHD experience the double whammy of having greater difficulty generating positive emotions (i.e., motivation) needed to get engaged in tasks and greater difficulty inhibiting the allure of more immediate distractions, including those that provide an escape from discomfort. In fairness, from a developmental standpoint, adults with ADHD have often experienced more than their fair share of frustrations and setbacks with regard to many important aspects of their lives. Hence, our experience has been that various life responsibilities and duties have become associated with a degree of stress and little perceived reward, which magnifies the motivational challenges already faced by ADHD adults. We have adopted the metaphor of food poisoning to illustrate how one’s learning history due to ADHD creates barriers to the pursuit of valued personal goals. Food poisoning involves ingesting some sort of tainted food. It is an adaptive response that your brain and digestive system notice the presence of a toxin in the body and react with feelings of nausea and rapid expulsion of said toxin through diarrhea, vomiting, or both. Even after you have fully recuperated and have figured out that you had food poisoning, the next time you encounter that same food item, even before it reaches your lips, the sight and smell of the food will reactivate protective feelings of nausea due to the previous association of the stimulus (i.e., the food) with illness and discomfort. You can make all the intellectual arguments about your safety, and obtain assurances that the food is untainted, but your body will have this initial aversive reaction, regardless. It takes progressive exposure to untainted morsels of the food (sometimes mixing it in with “safe” food, in extreme cases) in order to break the food poisoning association. Similarly, in the course of your efforts to establish and maintain good habits for managing ADHD, you will encounter some tasks that elicit discomfort despite knowing the value of the task at hand. Therefore, it is essential to be able to manufacture motivation, just enough of it, in order to be able to shift out of avoidance and to take a “taste” of the task that you are delaying.

In the 2018 midterm election campaign, and in a far cry from the ethos of “Born in the USA,” another Bruce Springsteen song, “The Rising,” provided the soundtrack for a Democratic advertisement featuring “women rising,” consisting of, with one apparent exception, white female Democratic congressional candidates who had served in the military in the Middle East. Why the Middle East has to suffer for women in the West to “rise” is a question still in need of an answer.

What the current aura of disenchantment means for the future of American and world politics is uncertain. Will members of the public turn their backs on politics and turn to aesthetic appreciation, enjoying the comforts of religion, or building Shangri-las in their own minds?20 The post–World War II record-low voter turnout in the 2014 midterm elections might be one indication that Americans are washing their hands of even the most basic expressions of political engagement. But there are other indications that the legions of discontented do not reject the idea of progress as such and will not retreat from politics; instead what we are seeing is a rejection of liberal universalist visions of progress and the political programs associated with them. In a 2013 address before the Federal Assembly, Russian president Vladimir Putin declared that “attempts to push supposedly more progressive development models onto other nations actually resulted in regression, barbarity and extensive bloodshed.”21 Putin’s military incursions in Russia’s near (and not- so-near) abroad aside, increasing numbers of Westerners seem to agree with the sentiment of his remarks, punishing establishment politicians as “globalists” and rewarding inward-looking populists. From Brexiteers bucking the European Union to America-firsters looking to make their country “great again,” from supporters of the National Front in France to loyalists of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands or the Freedom Party of Austria, nationalists are on the ascent, seeking progress for themselves and their compatriots on their own terms.

National Black voter registration during the 1970s reached scarcely more than half its potential. Hispanics remained equally unmobilized, while only a quarter of the unemployed – of all races – bothered to vote. Enfranchising 25 million 18-20 year old’s would create a left-liberal electoral majority, only 23 per cent of potential voters under thirty participated in the 1970 mid-term election. Overall, the effect of this increasing abstentionism was approximately the same as if a property-franchise limitation had been introduced to guarantee a middle and upper-class electoral majority.

Gingrich didn’t survive to enjoy the fruits of his success, however, since young Republicans persuaded him to step down after their poor showing in the 1998 midterms and because he was having an extramarital relationship at the same time the GOP was going after Clinton for doing the same.

Back to School As surreal as being a grown adult in high school was, it was also brief: in only one semester I had completed enough credits to obtain my diploma. From there I went directly to the “Adult Entry Program” at my local university and enrolled. I would spend one semester in remedial classes to catch up on missing prerequisites and then college would begin in earnest. One might imagine that by now I would have learned that being a good student takes significant effort, but I continued to coast my first semester, missing classes, and skipping homework. Then, one time after missing a few days in a row, I returned to discover the professor handing back a midterm exam –– one that I had not written! Apparently, I had skipped class that day. Although it would not lead to me failing the class (and as a remedial class it would not affect my overall grade,) it did require a “mercy pass” on the part of the instructor to get me through. The approach I’d been following all along simply wasn’t working. I had the right goals now but evidently I still lacked the right approach. As I think it might be for many people, the fundamental shift in how I went about things came with the realization that I was not going to school because I had to. No one was making me go. I was there of my own accord, for my own purposes and reasons. This understanding completely transformed the way I went about school; from that point forward, I treated it as something I wanted for myself, and I worked accordingly. By the end of my next semester, I was on the academic Dean’s List, and I would graduate with Great Distinction from the Honors program four years later.

I’m not asking you to take your clothes off, baby. I just want to peek at your midterm.” “Baby? Goodbye forward, hello presumptuous.

I remember he said something like ‘this should be completely obvious to you’, and to me that was crushing… we had a conversation after the mid-term exam, in which the class had averaged 20 out of 90. It was 25 years ago, and I still remember what he said: ‘Frustration is necessary for learning. This idea that you can enjoy learning is a very American idea’.” Dan pauses, the memory of that conversation etched on his face. “I felt so offended by that claim. My professor felt that to learn, you had to push yourself. One of my dreams was to go back to Venezuela[7] and start a university, and I vowed that I would write in the walls of the university that frustration was not necessary for learning.

in the week before final exams and before papers are due.” Guess which relative most often dies? Grandma. I am not making this stuff up. Mike Adams, a professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, has done research on this. He has shown that grandmothers are ten times more likely to die before a midterm and nineteen times more likely to die before a final exam. Worse, grandmothers of students who are not doing well in class are at even higher risk. Students who are failing are fifty times more likely to lose Grandma than nonfailing students. It turns out that the greatest predictor of mortality among senior citizens in our day ends up being their grandchildren’s GPAs. The moral of all this is, if you are a grandparent, do not let

I was just a nerd, for crying out loud. A college student just doing his best to survive. I couldn’t be a werewolf. I had midterms next week.

With thirty-three days to go before the 2018 midterm elections, I am headed for the fellowship hall of the Unionville Baptist Church, about forty-five minutes outside of Charlotte, North

A specter terror loomed over them all. One which threatened to steal the the courage from mightiest heart. Midterms "You know." Thundar grumbled. "I think maybe choking the life out of one of my professors would be easier than studying from one of his lectures.

The day after Republicans used Black votes to regain the House in the 1906 midterm elections, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the dishonorable discharge (and loss of pensions) of 167 Black soldiers in the 25th Infantry Regiment, a Black unit that had been a huge source of Black pride. A dozen or so members of the regiment had been falsely accused of murdering a bartender and wounding a police officer in the horrifically racist town of Brownsville, Texas, on August 13, 1906. Overnight, the most popular US president in Black communities since Abraham Lincoln became the most unpopular. “Once enshrined in our hearts as Moses,” shouted out a Harlem pastor, the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr., Roosevelt was “now enshrouded in our scorn as Judas.” In the final days of 1906, it was hard to find an African American who was not spitting ire at the Roosevelt administration. Roosevelt’s efforts to regain Black support with new Black federal appointments failed. Sounding the indignation of the observant press, the New York Times reported that “not a particle of evidence” had been given to prove the men were guilty. Roosevelt was defiant in his Annual Message to Congress on December 3, 1906 (defiant in his crude attempts to gain southern White voters). He warned “respectable colored people… not to harbor criminals,” meaning the criminals of Brownsville. And then he turned to lynchings: “The greatest existing cause of lynching is the perpetration, especially by black men, of the hideous crime of rape.

The single most important thing we want to achieve,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, on the eve of the midterm elections in 2010, “is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

Worse yet, my administration was deporting undocumented workers at an accelerating rate. This wasn’t a result of any directive from me, but rather it stemmed from a 2008 congressional mandate that both expanded ICE’s budget and increased collaboration between ICE and local law enforcement departments in an effort to deport more undocumented immigrants with criminal records. My team and I had made a strategic choice not to immediately try to reverse the policies we’d inherited in large part because we didn’t want to provide ammunition to critics who claimed that Democrats weren’t willing to enforce existing immigration laws—a perception that we thought could torpedo our chances of passing a future reform bill. But by 2010, immigrant-rights and Latino advocacy groups were criticizing our lack of progress, much the same way LGBTQ activists had gone after us on DADT. And although I continued to urge Congress to pass immigration reform, I had no realistic path for delivering a new comprehensive law before the midterms.