Word: abruptness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Before he took his abrupt leave as the President's National Security Adviser, Vice Admiral John Poindexter mused, "An activist President cannot be satisfied with the status quo. A President must have a way to develop bolder options." Even David Durenberger, who as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee has had his share of harsh things to say about Reagan's swashbuckling, asks, "How in the world ((can)) a President make and implement policy in a world in which we're trying to anticipate events, rather than confront them after they have occurred...
...reversed during the Reagan presidency. White House researchers could find only two other examples this century of foreign policy vetoes that were overridden -- a World War II immigration measure and the 1973 War Powers Act, which Richard Nixon tried unsuccessfully to scuttle. In effect, Congress called for an abrupt end to the Reagan Administration policy of "constructive engagement," through which Washington sought to nudge South Africa into gradually liberalizing its system of apartheid. Instead, Congress adopted measures designed to bring about social change by exerting economic pressure on the government of State President P.W. Botha...
...unacceptable shift," snapped Socialist Chancellor Franz Vranitzky. He was referring to an abrupt rightward lurch by his conservative coalition partner, Austria's Freedom Party, which had just elected Jorg Haider, 36, as party chairman. With that, Vranitzky called for snap elections in November...
...from the dominant Sunni Muslims over doctrinal issues concerning the descendants of the prophet Muhammad. In recent years the Shi'ites have waged a successful struggle for political equality and economic well-being. With success has come unprecedented power, and power has created a cauldron of shifting alliances and abrupt betrayals within their own ranks...
...recollections by the people she met on her lonesome road, all of whose insights into her character or motives are banal. The director's style is as bleakly austere as her subject's life. Varda's camera is nearly always at an objectifying distance from Mona, her editing as abrupt as the small changes in the journey's rhythm (here a spot of comfort, there a moment of near unconscious cruelty). She avoids large explanations of Mona's fate, and any implication that political reform or therapeutic intervention might have saved her. And though Varda is clearly influenced by existential...