Word: assertive
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...given way to mixed signals and throat clearing. Lack of federal leadership has led to regulatory chaos as states and municipalities, going it alone, have passed scores of differing environmental statutes. Other nations now find it easy to dismiss American calls for action. If the Bush Administration is to assert its promised international leadership, it must take action to reassure the world that it is serious about dealing with environmental threats...
...precisely because of their lowly status, these men had a more than usually powerful need to assert their manhood through deadly exertion. Glory is at its best when it shows their proud embrace of 19th century warfare at its most brutal. Director Edward Zwick graphically demonstrates the absurdity of lines of soldiers slowly advancing across open ground, shoulder to shoulder, in the face of withering rifle volleys and horrendous cannonade. The fact that the 54th finally achieves respect (and opens the way for other black soldiers) only by losing half its number in a foredoomed assault on an impregnable fortress...
Some of the costuming was also well-done and frequently quite amusing. All of it was reasonably true to the time period (with the exception of the sailors' black loafers). And Sir Joseph's life-jacket, complete with gold tassels to assert his importance and the nighteap and gown which he later sports, made him even more of a comic figure...
...news conference, Bush said, "We stand at the threshold of a new era..." but declined to assert the Cold War has ended as Gorbachev suggested...
...Aoun's stronghold is likely if, after a face-saving interval, the general does not accept the new government's authority. By week's end he had taken no action hostile to the government beyond denouncing Hraoui's election as illegitimate. Hraoui, on the other hand, swiftly moved to assert his powers by dismissing the three-man interim Cabinet that has been serving under Aoun...