"Mic check!"

"Whose luxury hotel?"

"Our luxury hotel!"

Greetings from the tony headquarters of the Democratic National Committee's caucus war room, located in the historic Renaissance Savery Hotel, which also briefly became Occupy Iowa Caucus' tony headquarters on Monday afternoon. It was one of its last significant occupations this week before the Iowa presidential caucuses picked Mitt Romney by the slimmest of margins as the Republican candidate to beat.

Outside the hotel, the Des Moines cops, who have all started to look pretty familiar, wandered stone-faced through a gaggle of frigid demonstrators while MSNBC host Joe Scarborough schmoozed with the riffraff. Inside the lobby, a couple dozen occupiers' bodies were piled atop each other during a silent "die-in" soundtracked by torture-bad Muzak and awkward murmurs from the helpless hotel staff.

The idea was that money is killing the democratic process, you see. The Democratic Party didn't particularly feel like receiving this message face-to-face, so the occupiers were once again escorted off in zip ties by the handful, continuing the arrest-lemming tactics they'd executed at candidates' headquarters all week.

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An older woman made the announcement as she breezed into and Occupy Iowa Caucus' headquarters early Thursday afternoon: word had gotten out about the group's latest demonstration. They'd already hit local offices for Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and the Wells Fargo branch irresistibly close to Romney's campaign headquarters, and now their next target apparently knew they were coming.

The occupiers scurried to their cars, armed with their anti-Wall Street placards still fresh with marker ink. While navigating the streets of downtown Des Moines, Jess Mazour, 24, fumbled with her cell phone and a Ziploc bag of reporters' business cards as Katie Rockey, 19, fed her phone numbers from the back seat.

"Let me call Channel 13," Mazour said. "I know that number by heart." After an answer, she began her spiel: "I'm calling to let you know we're headed to occupy Iowa's Democratic headquarters right now."

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