Word: bleak
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...haven't given the Afghan security forces the resources to win," Cordesman told TIME on July 22. His 28-page study, titled "The Afghanistan Campaign: Can We Win?," raises strong doubts about Washington's willingness to do what he thinks is needed to prevail. Its conclusion is bleak: "The odds of success are not yet good, and failure is all too real a possibility." And Cordesman isn't some ivory-tower critic - he recently returned from a month in Afghanistan, where he served as a member of McChrystal's strategic-assessment group. (Read "Can Afghanistan Support a Beefed-Up Military...
...know that next year's budget crunch could be even tighter. Thanks to dwindling revenues, paltry collection rates and the economic storm soaking taxpayers, the $142.6 billion budget shortfall that states faced during the 2009 fiscal year is but one hurdle in a longer financial gauntlet, according to this bleak assessment from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Corina Eckl, the NCSL's fiscal program director, recently compared the endless waves of grim economic forecasts to "breaking your leg and then getting pneumonia." Cheery stuff...
Word has spread. The state's employment agency now fields calls from people in hard-hit cities like Phoenix and Miami who want to know how to get a job in North Dakota. Last winter, facing bleak work prospects in upstate New York, William Phillips boarded a Greyhound bus and three days later landed in Bismarck. He was shocked, he says, when the same day he applied for a job at Fireside Office Solutions, an IT-management firm, he got called in for an interview. With the city's dearth of tech-oriented workers, the company had been looking...
...recent uptick. Traditionally a safe bet amid economic mayhem, the dollar climbed about 25% against the euro in the eight months to March this year; the unattractiveness of rival currencies only made it more appealing. But, says Derrick, "that drive seems to be shifting substantially." Sure, a hint of bleak economic data can still goose the greenback - the prospect of poor U.S. payroll figures for June, set for release Thursday, has helped boost the currency in recent days - but optimism in other assets is on the rise. Global equity markets, in particular those in emerging-market countries, have performed well...
...were engaged not only in worshipping each other's high-mindedness but also in destroying another woman's home, hobbling her children emotionally and setting her up for humiliation of a titanic proportion. The squalor and pain that resulted from the Sanford and Ensign midlife crises make manifest a bleak truth that the late writer Leonard Michaels once observed in his journal: "Adultery is not about sex or romance. Ultimately, it is about how little we mean to one another." (See the top 10 regrettable e-mails...