Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has served as secretary of state, senator from New York, first lady of the United States, first lady of Arkansas, a practicing lawyer and law professor, activist, and volunteer but the first thing her friends and family will tell you is thatshe’s never forgotten where she came from or who she’s been fighting for.Hillary grew up in a middle-class home in Park Ridge, a suburb of Chicago. Her dad, Hugh, wasa World War II Navy veteran and a small-business owner who designed, printed, and solddrapes. Hugh was a rock-ribbed Republican, a pay-as-you-go kind of guy who worked hard and wasted nothing. Hillary helped with the family business whenever she could.Hillary’s mother,Dorothy, had a tough childhood. She was abandoned by her parents as a young child and shipped off to live with relatives who didn’t want to raise her. By age 14, Dorothy knew the only way she’d get by was to support herself, and she started working as a housekeeper and babysitter while she went to high school. Her mother’s experience inspired Hillary to fight for theneeds of children everywhere.Hillary’s childhood was very different from her mother’s. Her parents built a stable middle-class life. Hillary attended public school and was a Brownie and a Girl Scout. She was raised a Methodist, and her mother taught Sunday school. On a trip to Chicago with her youth ministry,Hillary got to see Martin Luther King Jr. speak—this sparked her lifelong passion for socialjustice.After graduating high school, Hillary attended Wellesley College, where she became more involved with social justice activism. By the time she graduated, Hillary had become a prominent student leader—she was elected by her peers to be the first-ever student speaker at Wellesley’scommencement ceremony.After college, Hillary enrolled in Yale Law School, where she was one of just 27 women in her graduating class. While attending Yale, Hillary began dating one of her classmates, Bill Clinton.After law school, Hillary didn’t join a big law firm in Washington or New York. Instead, she went to work for the Children’s Defense Fund, going door-to-door in New Bedford, Massachusetts,gathering stories about the lack of schooling for children with disabilities. These testimonials contributed to the passage of historic legislation that required the state to provide quality education for students with disabilities. This commitment to public service and fighting forothers—especially children and families—has stayed with her throughout her life.After serving as a lawyer for the congressional committee investigating President Nixon, she moved to Arkansas where she taught law and ran legal clinics representing disenfranchised people. She co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, one of the state’s first child advocacy groups.On October 11, 1975, Hillary married Bill in a small ceremony in Fayetteville, Arkansas. As firstlady of Arkansas, she was a forceful champion for improving educational standards and healthcare access. And she and Bill started their own family when their daughter, Chelsea, was born in 1980.Bill was first elected president in 1992 and re-elected in 1996. As first lady, Hillary tenaciouslyled the fight to reform our health care system so that all families would have access to the care they need at affordable prices. When the insurance companies and other special interest defeated that effort, Hillary didn’t give up. She worked with Republicans and Democrats to help create the successful Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides health coverage to more than 8 million children and has helped cut the uninsured rate for children in half.In 1995,Hillary led the U.S. delegation to Beijing to attend the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women,despite being told by some officials not to go. She gave a groundbreaking speech, declaring that“human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights once and for all”—inspiring women around the world.In 2000, Hillary was elected to the U.S. Senate. After the terrorist attacks of September 11,2001, Hillary pushed the Bush administration to secure $20 billion to rebuild New York and fought to provide health care for responders who were at Ground Zero. Hillary worked across the aisle to expand TRICARE, giving members of the Reserves and National Guard and their families better access to health care.When Congress wouldn’t do enough for rural areas and small towns, Hillary didn’t back down.She launched an innovative partnership in New York with eBay and local colleges to provide small businesses with tech support, microloans, and training programs to sell their goods online.She helped expand broadband to remote areas of the state, and she launched Farm-to-Fork, an initiative to help New York farmers and producers sell their products to New York’s restaurants,schools, colleges, and universities.In 2008, Hillary ran for president. When she came up short, she gave a powerful speech thanking her supporters and threw her support behind then-Senator Barack Obama. She campaigned hard to make sure there was a Democrat in the White House.[10/15, 22:27] SKILL INDIA: Neilia Hunter Biden American teacher ‧ Joe Biden’s wife Neilia Hunter Biden was an American teacher and the first wife of Joe Biden, the 46th andcurrent president of the United States. She died in a car crash in 1972 with her one-year-olddaughter, Naomi. Her two sons, Beau and Hunter, were critically injured but survived theincident.Just weeks after being elected the junior senator from Delaware, Joe Biden’s first wife,Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, are killed in a car accident while out shopping for aChristmas tree on December 18, 1972, when a tractor-trailer strikes their vehicle.The Bidens’ sons, Beau and Hunter, were also in the car and survived with serious injuries. Atthe time, Beau was 4 years old and suffered multiple broken bones, while Hunter, who was 3,had a fractured skull. Investigations revealed the tractor-trailer broadsided Neilia Biden’s Chevrolet station wagon at a rural intersection in Hockessin, Delaware. Neither driver was foundto be at fault for the collision.The future president, who had recently turned 30, learned of the tragedy while interviewing staffin Washington, D.C. After considering resigning, he ultimately chose to remain in office, and, onJanuary 5, 1973, was sworn in as senator from his sons’ hospital room in Wilmington, Delaware.Throughout his lengthy Senate career, Biden commuted daily from Wilmington to the U.S.Capitol to kiss the boys good morning and goodnight.“Many people have gone through things like that,” Biden said during a 2015 Yale Universitycommencement speech. “But because I had the incredible good fortune of an extended family,grounded in love and loyalty, imbued with a sense of obligation imparted to each of us, I not onlygot help. But by focusing on my sons, I found my redemption.”Neilia, who married Biden in 1966 and played a key role in his campaigns, was honored fiveyears after her death with the dedication of the The Neilia Hunter Biden Park outside the city ofWilmington.Biden later married Jill Biden in 1977, who became first lady when he assumed the presidencyin 2021. The couple have a daughter, Ashley. Beau Biden, a rising political figure himself, diedfrom a brain tumor at the age of 46 in 2015.about her. They recall that she was reserved, naturally beautiful and modest. But time andagain, despite the haziness that comes with the years passing, everyone says, more thananything, she was kind.NeiliaIn the summer before seventh grade, 12-year-old Susan Spooner couldn’t wait to go back to herschool, Bellevue Heights. She had received her teacher assignment in the mail. “Oh, boy, you’regoing to have Neilia Hunter?” her friend said. “She’s beautiful, Sue.”On the first day of the school year, a hot summer morning, Spooner took her seat in the middleof the classroom and glanced up at Ms. Hunter. She was wearing brown-rimmed glasses andhad her hair pulled back. “When she started speaking, she was exactly what my girlfriend hadtold me: very soft spoken and beautiful personality, and looking,” Spooner said.Neilia was the teacher every student wanted to have, Spooner said. She fostered a comfortablespace in her classroom, and she easily connected with her students. Like them, Neilia hadgrown up and attended school in central New York.Her extracurricular involvement continued atSU, where she joined the university’s chapter of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority while studyingat the College of Liberal Arts.While recruiting for the sorority, Neilia would always rave about the potential new members shespoke with, speaking kindly about everyone she met, said Arlene Vanderlinde, one of Neilia’ssorority sisters. “When I think back, of all my sisters, in all those years, she was probably thesweetest, kindest, most lovely,” Vanderlinde said.She also remembers Neilia’s shyness. While scanning her SU yearbook from 1962, she noticedNeilia wasn’t in the Kappa Alpha Theta group photo, though her name was listed. “She justdidn’t try to call attention to herself,” Vanderline said. “She was very beautiful in a veryunderstated way. She was not flamboyant in her dress and makeup or anything.”After graduating from SU in 1964, Neilia taught English at Bellevue Heights until 1968. Shetreated every student the same, whether they were a cheerleader or a quiet kid, and she kepther door open if they needed her, said Patricia Smarzo, who was a student of Neilia’s forseventh grade. Smarzo described Neilia as a “big sister” who supported Smarzo during some ofthe worst moments of her adolescence.When a few kids made up a song mocking the teenager for being overweight, Smarzo went toNeilia, crying. “Who said that to you?” Neilia asked. She was so angry, and “it was like waving aflag in front of a bull,” Smarzo said.Neilia would position herself near Smarzo’s bullies in the hallway to ensure they couldn’t makefun of her. After the teacher spoke with them multiple times, the bullies’ rampant teasingeventually stopped. One apologized years later, Smarzo said, and she believes it’s becauseNeilia’s words resonated with them.Whenever Smarzo felt insecure, especially in her teen years, she would remember how Neiliawould call her beautiful and help her understand that, one day, she would be happy with whoshe was and how she looked. “Don’t worry. You’ll grow into yourself,” Neilia would say.“Since I was a kid in school, there have always been bullies. There always will be. But there willalways be teachers out there that will take you under their wing and say, ‘It will get better,’”Smarzo said.In her 2019 memoir, Jill Biden wrote of the family’s annual visits to the cemetery where Neiliaand Naomi are buried. “I owed her so much: my loyalty, my gratitude for the gift of thesebeautiful boys, and, yes, my love,” she wrote.[10/15, 22:27] SKILL INDIA: Jo JorgensenPoliticianJo Jorgensen is an American libertarian political activist and academic. Jorgensen was theLibertarian Party’s nominee for president of the United States in the 2020 election, in which shefinished third in the popular vote with about 1.9 million votes, 1.2% of the national total. She wasthe Libertarian Party nominee for vice-president in the 1996 U.S. presidential election as therunning mate of Harry Browne.She was also the Libertarian nominee for South Carolina’s 4th congressional district in 1992,receiving 4,286 votes, or 2.2%.Jorgensen is a senior lecturer in psychology at ClemsonUniversity. She holds a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Clemson, which she received in 2002. She earned a B.S. in psychology from Baylor University in 1979 and anM.B.A. from Southern Methodist University in 1980.Outside of academia, Jorgensen’s professional experience includes working as a marketingrepresentative for IBM and starting her own software and computer technology salescompany.Former Vice President Joe Biden (D) won the presidential election on November 3,2020. Biden received 306 electoral votes and President Donald Trump (R) received 232electoral votes. In the national popular vote, Biden received 81.2 million votes and Trumpreceived 74.2 million votes.As vote counting continues in key battleground states like Georgia and Pennsylvania, whereVice President Joe Biden has taken the lead over President Donald Trump on Friday, Libertarianpresidential candidate Jo Jorgensen says third party candidates don’t “take” votes from otherparties.”I don’t consider it taking votes, because those votes belong to the American voters,” Jorgensentells CNBC Make It.In the 2020 election, Jorgensen, 63, a mother of two and a ClemsonUniversity senior lecturer (she doesn’t do research, but teaches classes) who holds a Ph.D. inIndustrial and Organizational Psychology, made history as the Libertarian Party’s first femalenominee for president. On Thursday, her campaign announced that Jorgensen won more than1.6 million votes nationwide. NBC News has Jorgensen’s total at about 1,621,273 votes as ofFriday afternoon.While Jorgensen says the idea of a third party “taking” votes from Democrat and Republicancandidates just “shows the arrogance of the dominant parties,” it is true that the number of votesthird parties get can help determine elections.For instance, as of Friday afternoon, Jorgensen had more than 61,391 votes in the state ofGeorgia, according to NBC News. In the state, Trump and Biden are just under 1,600 votesapart with Biden in the lead as of Friday, and the state is headed to a recount.And in 2016, according to NBC News, third-party candidates like Green Party nominee Jill Steinand Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson got solid portions of the vote in a handful of keyswing states. In Michigan, for example, then a “must-win” for Democratic presidential candidateHilary Clinton, Johnson and Stein got a little over 222,400 votes combined. Clinton lost Michiganto Trump by 10,704 votes. And, in Florida, third-party candidates collectively drew more than293,000 votes and Clinton lost the state to Trump by 119,770 votes.Jorgensen, who has been a Libertarian since the ’80s and ran in 1996 as the party’svice-presidential nominee (alongside Harry Browne), says research by the Libertarian Partyshows that, historically, the party gets voters from both major parties, with a slight increase inRepublicans “but mostly equal.” When Jorgensen first joined the party, she says she used to tellpeople that her party “takes the best from the best from the right and the best from the left.”most of our votes come from Independents or people who have never voted before,” she says,citing her party’s research. (According to a Pew Research Center report from 2019, nearly fourin 10 U.S. adults who identify as politically independent, do lean toward one of the two major parties, with 13% leaning toward the Republican Party and 17% leaning toward the DemocraticParty.)Jorgensen says the particular statistics for this election aren’t clear yet clear, but she told USAToday about 70% of her campaign volunteers were registered Democrats or Republicans.The Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971, “strongly oppose[s] any governmentinterference into [people’s] personal, family, and business decisions,” according to the party’swebsite. It “seek[s] to substantially reduce the size and intrusiveness of government and cut andeliminate taxes at every opportunity,” and says “government’s only responsibility, if any, shouldbe protecting people from force and fraud,” among other tenets.”Essentially, we believe all Americans should be free to live their lives and pursue their interestsas they see fit as long as they do no harm to another,” the website says.For instance, Jorgensen, who started her career at IMB and later became an entrepreneur,according to her Clemson bio, does not believe Americans should be mandated to wear masksduring the Covid-19 pandemic.”If you want to wear a mask, great. You can vote to shop at Wal-Mart or one of the the manyother stores that now require you to wear a mask. And if you don’t want to wear a mask, youcan vote to not wear a mask by shopping at a store that doesn’t require it,” she says.As for the presidential race, Jorgensen says it really doesn’t matter who wins.”[Trump and Biden] are much more like each other than we are,” she says, referring toLibertarians.[10/15, 22:27] SKILL INDIA: Pete ButtigiegPeter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg is an American politician and former naval officer who iscurrently serving as the 19th United States Secretary of Transportation. A member of theDemocratic Party, he was the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana, from 2012 to 2020, whichearned him the nickname “Mayor Pete”. Pete Buttigieg, in full Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg,(born January 19, 1982, South Bend, Indiana, U.S.), American politician who serves as U.S.secretary of transportation (2021– ) in the administration of Pres. Joe Biden. Buttigieg is the firstopenly gay cabinet member in American history. He previously was mayor (2012–20) of SouthBend, Indiana, and he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in2020.Encyclopedia BritannicaHomeQuizzes & GamesHistory & SocietyScience & TechBiographiesAnimals &NatureGeography & TravelArts & CultureMoneyVideosPete ButtigiegHomePolitics, Law & GovernmentWorld LeadersOther Politicians History & SocietyPete ButtigiegAmerican politicianAlso known as: Peter Paul Montgomery ButtigiegWritten and fact-checked byLast Updated: Jul 1, 2023 • Article HistoryRecent NewsJul. 1, 2023, 10:30 AM ET (AP)Guest lineups for the Sunday news showsGuest lineups for the Sunday news showsJun. 23, 2023, 6:05 PM ET (AP)Buttigieg warns airlines to finish retrofitting planes to avoid interference from 5G signalsTransportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is warning airlines to be ready when wirelesscompanies power up their 5G service next monthPete Buttigieg, in full Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg, (born January 19, 1982, South Bend,Indiana, U.S.), American politician who serves as U.S. secretary of transportation (2021– ) in theadministration of Pres. Joe Biden. Buttigieg is the first openly gay cabinet member in Americanhistory. He previously was mayor (2012–20) of South Bend, Indiana, and he unsuccessfullysought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.Pete ButtigiegPete ButtigiegSee all mediaCategory: History & SocietyBorn: January 19, 1982 (age 41) South Bend IndianaTitle / Office: U.S. Department of Transportation (2021-), United States mayor (2012-2020),South BendAwards And Honors: Rhodes ScholarshipEducation and early careerBoth of Buttigieg’s parents were professors at the University of Notre Dame. His father, animmigrant from Malta, taught literature, and his mother taught linguistics. Buttigieg attendedHarvard University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history and literature in2004. He later studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. After earning abachelor’s degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford’s Pembroke College in2007, he returned to the United States. For several years Buttigieg worked for the managementconsulting firm McKinsey & Company in Chicago. In 2008 he served as an adviser to Jill LongThompson, a Democratic candidate in the Indiana gubernatorial race; she lost the election. Thefollowing year Buttigieg became an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, serving until2017.Mayor of South BendButtigieg first ran for elective office in 2010, losing a bid to become treasurer of Indiana. Hequickly rebounded from that defeat, winning election as mayor of South Bend in 2011. At thetime he took office in January 2012, Buttigieg was the youngest mayor of an American city with more than 100,000 residents. Because many of his constituents had difficulty pronouncing hislast name (“BOOT-edge-edge”), he was widely referred to simply as “Mayor Pete.” During hisfirst term, he carried out an ambitious program to demolish or repair more than 1,000abandoned houses in South Bend. His “Smart Streets” initiative also transformed the city’sdowntown by redesigning its streets and sidewalks, an effort that helped bring hundreds ofmillions of dollars in new investment to the area. In 2014 Buttigieg took a leave from his mayoralduties to serve a seven-month deployment in Afghanistan with the Navy Reserve. In June 2015he came out publicly as gay in an essay published in the South Bend Tribune. He later married(2018) Chasten Glezman, a schoolteacher.Buttigieg won reelection by a wide margin in November 2015. During his second term, racialtensions in the city increased, particularly in the wake of the fatal shooting in 2019 of Blackresident Eric Logan by a white South Bend police sergeant. Buttigieg was criticized for hisoversight of the police department. He later acknowledged that many of his efforts to reform thedepartment, including attempts to recruit more minority police officers, had been unsuccessful.During this time, Buttigieg’s national profile began to rise, and in 2017 he ran for chairman of theDemocratic National Committee. Although he ultimately dropped out, many pundits viewed himas a rising star in the party. In 2018 he announced that he would not seek a third term as mayorthe following year; he left office in 2020.In April 2019 Buttigieg entered the 2020 U.S.presidential race, joining a crowded field of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination. Hequickly gained momentum, positioning himself as a political outsider who could bring a freshperspective to Washington. He called for a significant increase in federal funding for renewableenergy development and stronger gun-control laws. He also proposed a new health care plan,summarized by the slogan “Medicare for all who want it.” The plan offered a public alternative toprivate health insurance while allowing Americans to retain their private coverage if theypreferred. In February 2020 Buttigieg narrowly won the delegate count in the Iowa caucuses,becoming the first openly gay candidate to win delegates in a major U.S. political party’spresidential primary. Shortly afterward he placed second in the New Hampshire primary. Incontests held later that month, however, Buttigieg lost ground, placing third in the Nevadacaucuses and fourth in the South Carolina primary. The poor showings were largely attributed tohis limited funds and inability to win the support of Black voters. Buttigieg ended his campaign inearly March as Democratic voters began to rally around former U.S. vice president Joe Biden.Buttigieg subsequently endorsed Biden, who defeated Pres. Donald Trump in the Novemberelection.In December 2020 Biden nominated Buttigieg to lead the Department of Transportation (DOT).The Senate overwhelmingly confirmed Buttigieg on February 2, 2021, and he was sworn in thefollowing day. Not only was he the first openly gay person to hold a U.S. cabinet post, he alsowas the youngest person to serve as secretary of transportation. Among his top priorities wereplans to rebuild roads, bridges, railways, and other transportation infrastructure across thecountry. In addition, he sought projects that would increase racial equity. Later in 2021 he was avocal supporter of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which passed Congress inNovember. The legislation provided billions of dollars to DOT.THE CURIOUS MIND of PeteButtigieg holds much of its functionality in reserve. Even as he discusses railroads and airlines, down to the pointillist data that is his current stock-in-trade, the US secretary of transportationcomes off like a Mensa black card holder who might have a secret Go habit or a three-secondRubik’s Cube solution or a knack for supplying, off the top of his head, the day of the week for arandom date in 1404, along with a non-condescending history of the Julian and Gregoriancalendars.As Secretary Buttigieg and I talked in his underfurnished corner office one afternoon in earlyspring, I slowly became aware that his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of hiscognitive powers. Other mental facilities, no kidding, are apportioned to the Iliad, Puritanhistoriography, and Knausgaard’s Spring—though not in the original Norwegian (slacker).Fortunately, he was willing to devote yet another apse in his cathedral mind to making his ideasabout three mighty themes—neoliberalism, masculinity, and Christianity—intelligible to me.Because Buttigieg, at 41, is an old millennial; because as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford he got afirst in PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics), the trademark degree for Labour-party elitesof the Tony Blair era; because he worked optimizing grocery-store pricing at McKinsey; becausehe joined the Navy in hopes of promoting democracy in Afghanistan; because he gotgay-married to his partner Chasten in 2018; and because, as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, heagitated to bring hipster entrepreneurism and “high-tech investment” to his rust-belt hometown, Ihad to ask him about neoliberalism, the happy idea that consumer markets and liberaldemocracy will always expand, and will always expand together. I was also fascinated by theway that Buttigieg, who has long described himself as obsessed with technology and data, hasresponded to the gendering of tech, and especially green tech, by fearsome culture warriors,including Marjorie Taylor Greene.Buttigieg, whose father was a renowned Marxist scholar, washimself a devotee of Senator Bernie Sanders as a young man. He now recognizes that thepersistence of far-right ideology, with its masculinist and antidemocratic preoccupations, is partof the reason that neoliberalism has come undone. Not everyone, it seems, even wants a risingstandard of living if it means they have to accept the greater enfranchisement of undesirables,including, of course, women, poor people, Black people, and the usual demons in the sights ofthe world’s Ted Cruzes and Tucker Carlsons.He also talked about his faith. Lefties these days are said to be less religious than right-wingevangelicals, but between Buttigieg, whose Episcopalianism grounds his decisionmaking, andhis boss, President Joe Biden, whose robust Catholicism drives his sincere effort to reviveAmerica’s soul, perhaps a religious left is rising again.Pete Buttigieg, the only child of JenniferAnne (Montgomery) and Joseph Anthony Buttigieg II, was born on January 19, 1982, in SouthBend, Indiana. His mother uses the name Anne Montgomery. His parents met and married whileemployed as faculty at New Mexico State University.Last name is pronounced “boot-edge-edge.” It is the designation for “poultry” in Maltese, aSemitic language.He was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana from January 1, 2012 until January 1, 2020.Announced his candidacy for the 2020 US presidential election in January 2019. He is the firstopenly gay Democratic presidential candidate.Came out as gay in an essay published in the South Bend Tribune in June 2015. Served seven months in Afghanistan in the Navy Reserves while also serving as mayor ofSouth Bend.Met his eventual husband Chasten on the dating app Hinge.Son of Jennifer Ann (Montgomery), a professor, and Joseph Anthony Buttigieg II, a literaryscholar, professor, and translator. His father was an emigrant from Hamrun, Malta. His mother,whose family is from Indiana and Oklahoma, is of English, Scottish, German, and more distantSwiss-German, Welsh, and Cornish, descent.Spent several months working on Senator John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, where hespecialized in policy.His father passed away eight days after his 37th birthday.In November 2016, President Barack Obama included him on a short list of gifted, risingDemocrats.Taught himself Norwegian in order to read Erlend Loe’s “Naïve. Super” in its original language.Later started periodically attending a Norwegian church in Chicago to keep up.Plays the piano.He became the first openly gay person to win a presidential nominating contest, as well as thefirst to win delegates, when he won the Iowa Democratic caucuses in 2020.Said to bear a resemblance to Logan Lerman, and also to fictional character Alfred E. Neuman.Portrayed by Colin Jost on Saturday Night Live (1975). Jost and Buttigieg attended Harvard atthe same time and lived in the same dormitory at one point, though they had never spokendirectly until Buttigieg interviewed Jost for his podcast in 2020.U.S. Secretary of Transportation (2021 – present).[10/15, 22:27] SKILL INDIA: Julius CaesarGaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate,Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in acivil war, and subsequently became dictator from 49 BC until his assassination in 44 BC. Caesarchanged the course of the history of the Greco-Roman world decisively and irreversibly. TheGreco-Roman society has been extinct for so long that most of the names of its great menmean little to the average, educated modern person. But Caesar’s name, like Alexander’s, is stillon people’s lips throughout the Christian and Islamic worlds. Even people who know nothing ofCaesar as a historic personality are familiar with his family name as a title signifying a ruler whois in some sense uniquely supreme or paramount—the meaning of Kaiser in German, tsar in theSlavonic languages, and qayṣar in the languages of the Islamic world.Caesar’s gens (clan) name, Julius (Iulius), is also familiar in the Christian world, for in Caesar’slifetime the Roman month Quintilis, in which he was born, was renamed “July” in his honour.This name has survived, as has Caesar’s reform of the calendar. The old Roman calendar wasinaccurate and manipulated for political purposes. Caesar’s calendar, the Julian calendar, is stillpartially in force in the Eastern Orthodox Christian countries, and the Gregorian calendar, now inuse in the West, is the Julian, slightly corrected by Pope Gregory XIII.Caesar’s gens, the Julii,were patricians—i.e., members of Rome’s original aristocracy, which had coalesced in the 4thcentury BCE with a number of leading plebeian (commoner) families to form the nobility that hadbeen the governing class in Rome since then. By Caesar’s time, the number of survivingpatrician gentes was small; and in the gens Julia the Caesares seem to have been the onlysurviving family. Though some of the most powerful noble families were patrician, patrician blood was no longer a political advantage; it was actually a handicap, since a patrician wasdebarred from holding the paraconstitutional but powerful office of tribune of the plebs. The JuliiCaesares traced their lineage back to the goddess Venus, but the family was not snobbish orconservative-minded. It was also not rich or influential or even distinguished.A Roman noblewon distinction for himself and his family by securing election to a series of public offices, whichculminated in the consulship, with the censorship possibly to follow. This was a difficult task foreven the ablest and most gifted noble unless he was backed by substantial family wealth andinfluence. Rome’s victory over Carthage in the Second Punic War (218–201 BCE) had madeRome the paramount power in the Mediterranean basin; an influential Roman noble family’sclients (that is, protégés who, in return, gave their patrons their political support) might includekings and even whole nations, besides numerous private individuals. The requirements and thecosts of a Roman political career in Caesar’s day were high, and the competition was severe;but the potential profits were of enormous magnitude. One of the perquisites of the praetorshipand the consulship was the government of a province, which gave ample opportunity forplunder. The whole Mediterranean world was, in fact, at the mercy of the Roman nobility and ofa new class of Roman businessmen, the equites (“knights”), which had grown rich on militarycontracts and on tax farming.Military manpower was supplied by the Roman peasantry. This class had been partlydispossessed by an economic revolution following on the devastation caused by the SecondPunic War. The Roman governing class had consequently come to be hated and discredited athome and abroad. From 133 BCE onward there had been a series of alternate revolutionaryand counter-revolutionary paroxysms. It was evident that the misgovernment of the Romanstate and the Greco-Roman world by the Roman nobility could not continue indefinitely and itwas fairly clear that the most probable alternative was some form of military dictatorship backedby dispossessed Italian peasants who had turned to long-term military service.The traditionalcompetition among members of the Roman nobility for office and the spoils of office was thusthreatening to turn into a desperate race for seizing autocratic power. The Julii Caesares did notseem to be in the running. It was true that Sextus Caesar, who was perhaps the dictator’s uncle,had been one of the consuls for 91 BCE; and Lucius Caesar, one of the consuls for 90 BCE,was a distant cousin, whose son and namesake was consul for 64 BCE. In 90 BCE, Rome’sItalian allies had seceded from Rome because of the Roman government’s obstinate refusal togrant them Roman citizenship, and, as consul, Lucius Caesar had introduced emergencylegislation for granting citizenship to the citizens of all Italian ally states that had not taken uparms or that had returned to their allegiance.Whoever had been consul in this critical year would have had to initiate such legislation,whatever his personal political predilections. There is evidence, however, that the JuliiCaesares, though patricians, had already committed themselves to the antinobility party. Anaunt of the future dictator had married Gaius Marius, a self-made man (novus homo) who hadforced his way up to the summit by his military ability and had made the momentous innovationof recruiting his armies from the dispossessed peasants. The date of Caesar the dictator’s birth has long been disputed. The day was July 12 or 13; thetraditional (and perhaps most probable) year is 100 BCE; but if this date is correct, Caesar musthave held each of his offices two years in advance of the legal minimum age. His father, GaiusCaesar, died when Caesar was but 16; his mother, Aurelia, was a notable woman, and it seemscertain that he owed much to her.In spite of the inadequacy of his resources, Caesar seems to have chosen a political career as amatter of course. From the beginning, he probably privately aimed at winning office, not just forthe sake of the honours but in order to achieve the power to put the misgoverned Roman stateand Greco-Roman world into better order in accordance with ideas of his own. It is improbablethat Caesar deliberately sought monarchical power until after he had crossed the Rubicon in 49BCE, though sufficient power to impose his will, as he was determined to do, proved to meanmonarchical power.In 84 BCE Caesar committed himself publicly to the radical side by marryingCornelia, a daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, a noble who was Marius’s associate inrevolution. In 83 BCE Lucius Cornelius Sulla returned to Italy from the East and led thesuccessful counter-revolution of 83–82 BCE; Sulla then ordered Caesar to divorce Cornelia.Caesar refused and came close to losing not only his property (such as it was) but his life aswell. He found it advisable to remove himself from Italy and to do military service, first in theprovince of Asia and then in Cilicia.In 78 BCE, after Sulla’s death, he returned to Rome and started on his political career in theconventional way, by acting as a prosecuting advocate—of course, in his case, againstprominent Sullan counter-revolutionaries. His first target, Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella, wasdefended by Quintus Hortensius, the leading advocate of the day, and was acquitted by theextortion-court jury, composed exclusively of senators.Caesar then went to Rhodes to study oratory under a famous professor, Molon. En route he wascaptured by pirates (one of the symptoms of the anarchy into which the Roman nobility hadallowed the Mediterranean world to fall). Caesar raised his ransom, raised a naval force,captured his captors, and had them crucified—all this as a private individual holding no publicoffice. In 74 BCE, when Mithradates VI Eupator, king of Pontus, renewed war on the Romans,Caesar raised a private army to combat him.In his absence from Rome, Caesar was made a member of the politico-ecclesiastical college ofpontifices; and on his return he gained one of the elective military tribuneships. Caesar nowworked to undo the Sullan constitution in cooperation with Pompey (Gnaeus Pompeius), whohad started his career as a lieutenant of Sulla but had changed sides since Sulla’s death. In 69or 68 BCE Caesar was elected quaestor (the first rung on the Roman political ladder). In thesame year his wife, Cornelia, and his aunt Julia, Marius’s widow, died. In public funeral orationsin their honour, Caesar found opportunities for praising Cinna and Marius. Caesar afterwardmarried Pompeia, a distant relative of Pompey. Caesar served his quaestorship in the provinceof Farther Spain (modern Andalusia and Portugal).Caesar was elected one of the curule aediles for 65 BCE, and he celebrated his tenure of thisoffice by unusually lavish expenditure with borrowed money. He was elected pontifex maximus in 63 BCE by a political dodge. By now he had become a controversial political figure. After thesuppression of Catiline’s conspiracy in 63 BCE, Caesar, as well as the millionaire MarcusLicinius Crassus, was accused of complicity. It seems unlikely that either of them had committedhimself to Catiline; but Caesar proposed in the Senate a more merciful alternative to the deathpenalty, which the consul Cicero was asking for the arrested conspirators. In the uproar in theSenate, Caesar’s motion was defeated.Caesar was elected a praetor for 62 BCE. Toward the end of the year of his praetorship, a scandal was caused by Publius Clodius in Caesar’s house at the celebration there of the rites,for women only, of Bona Dea (a Roman deity of fruitfulness, both in the Earth and in women).Caesar consequently divorced Pompeia. He obtained the governorship of Farther Spain for 61–60 BCE. His creditors did not let him leave Rome until Crassus had gone bail for a quarter ofhis debts; but a military expedition beyond the northwest frontier of his province enabled Caesar to win loot for himself as well as for his soldiers, with a balance left over for the treasury. This partial financial recovery enabled him, after his return to Rome in 60 BCE, to stand for the consulship for 59 BCE.[10/15, 22:27] SKILL INDIA: Bob Saget American comedian Robert Lane Saget was an American stand-up comedian, actor, and television host. He portrayed Danny Tanner on the sitcom Full House and its sequel Fuller House. Saget was the original host of America’s Funniest Home Videos, and the voice of narrator Ted Mosby on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother.Following a short stint as a member of CBS’ The Morning Program in early 1987, Saget was cast as Danny Tanner in Full House,which became a success with family viewers, and landed in the Nielsen ratings’ Top 30beginning with season three. In 1989, Saget began as the host of America’s Funniest Home Videos, a role he held until 1997. During the early 1990s, Saget worked on both Full House and AFV simultaneously. In 2009, he returned to AFV for the 20th-anniversary one-hour specialco-hosted with Tom Bergeron.In 2014, his book Dirty Daddy was released, in which he write about his career, comedy influences, and experiences with life and death. He embarked on a small tour in support of the book, including the Pemberton Music Festival, where he Introduced snoop Dogg prior to performing his own set. In the same year, he toured Australia for the first time with a stand-up show called Bob Saget Live: The Dirty Daddy Tour. The show was performed in the major cities of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth.Bob Saget, the stand-up comic and actor who was known as Danny Tanner on the long-running sitcom “Full House,” as the host of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and for his deadpan, ribald stage routine, was found dead on Sunday in Orlando, Fla. He was 65.His death was confirmed by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, which said that Mr. Saget was found unresponsive in a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes. The cause was not known, but the sheriff’s office said there were no signs of foul play or drug use.Mr. Saget, who was on tour, had performed on Saturday night at Ponte Vedra Concert Hall in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., southeast of Jacksonville. In a tweet early on Sunday, he thanked the“appreciative audience.” “I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight,” he said. “I’m happily addicted again to this.”On “Full House,” Mr. Saget played a widowed father who shared his house with his three daughters(Candace Cameron, Jodi Sweetin and, alternating as the youngest daughter, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen), his brother-in-law (John Stamos) and his best friend (Dave Coulier). The show,seen on ABC from 1987 to 1995, got consistently good ratings and made stars of Mr. Saget and his fellow cast members, including Lori Loughlin, who joined in the third season.Robert Lane Saget was born on May 17, 1956, in Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University in 1978 before finding his way into comedy clubs. In contrast to his squeaky-cleanimage on “Full House” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” he became known for raunchy,profanity-laden stand-up routines.At Temple, Mr. Saget studied film, and in the year of his graduation he received a Student academy Award for documentary merit for his film “Through Adam’s Eyes,” about a nephew ofhis who had undergone facial reconstructive surgery.But even then he was pursuing comedy. He told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2016 that he had won a local radio contest at 17 by singing a song about bondage, and that while he spent most of his time at Temple shooting film, he would also go to the University of Pennsylvania’s campus to do improv.After graduating, Mr. Saget moved to Los Angeles and became a constant presence at one of the city’s main comedy clubs, the Comedy Store. “I lived in that room for seven years,” he said on the comedian Marc Maron’s podcast in 2010.“I did jokes and some stories, but most of them were just silly — dirty silly,” he remembered. He said he had been drawn to jokes with foul language and raw anatomical references because hewasn’t supposed to talk that way in his youth.Originally planned to pursue a career in Medicine while studying at Temple University, won a student Academy Award for his Documentary through Adam’s Eye was a fixture on the Los Angeles comedy-club circuit in the early 1980s, along with future castmate Dave Coulier Best known for playing clean-cut dad Danny Tanner on the long-running sitcom Full House, aswell as hosting America’s Funniest Home Videos for eight years Directed the acclaimed TV movie For Hope (1996), inspired by his sister Gay, who died of the autoimmune disease scleroderma in 1994Wrote, directed and produced Farce of the Penguins (2007), an all-star spoof of the nature documentary March of the Penguins (2005)Made his Broadway debut in 2007, starring in the Tony Award-winning musical comedy The Drowsy Chaperone Bob Saget was an American actor, stand-up comedian, and television host from Philadelphia.His best known role was playing pater familias Danny Tanner on the hit sitcom “Full House”(1987-1995). He played the character again in the sequel series “Fuller House” (2016-2020).Saget served as the original host of the long-running clip show “America’s Funniest Home Videos” from 1989 to 1997. Saget voiced the narrator in the hit sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”(2005-2014), depicted as an older version of main character Ted Mosby.