Word: bits
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...White House last week dumped its second load of videotapes of Bill Clinton schmoozing potential donors. Watching them is a bit like sitting through Groundhog Day, the movie in which Bill Murray keeps repeating the same 24 hours of his life. In almost any segment, you see the President entering a room or in a receiving line. Now he charms, now he mixes, now he makes small talk ("Nice tie!"). At some point he may accept a token of appreciation, like a lucky rock or a ceremonial dagger. He delivers some cheerleaderish remarks and shakes every hand that looks capable...
...With a bit more funding and access to the Air Force's satellite-tracking telescopes, say astronomers, they could find and track the most threatening asteroids within a decade. The cost to taxpayers, they estimate, would be a few million dollars more a year. If you think of it as an insurance policy for the entire planet, it's a small price...
This is not a bad premise for a cautionary science-fiction tale. And anyone who has cheated on an expense account can identify with a character like Hawke's, working a much bigger scam on a bureaucracy quiveringly alert to genetic impostors. A lost eyelash, a bit of exfoliated skin left on his keyboard could undo him--especially when the cops, led by a very querulous Alan Arkin, suddenly descend on his facility and, as they investigate a murder, start subjecting everyone's detritus to genetic spot checks...
...such cities as St. Louis, Allentown and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and let Comair offer service. "All our service now from St. Louis to Cincinnati is Comair service," says David Anderson, a Delta executive in Cincinnati. There are even some advantages to the smaller jets. Says Paffenroth: "This is every bit as quick as a large plane, and it loads and unloads much faster. And there are no middle seats...
WASHINGTON: Almost completely obscured by Monday's market dive was a bit of good economic news: The federal deficit has shrunk to $22.6 billion, the lowest since 1974. While Wall Street screamed, President Clinton was before a benign crowd at the Democratic Leadership Council, proudly bearing the news that uncomfortable first-term taxes and a chest-beating economy had driven the number down to a fraction of what even administration officials had predicted...