Word: combative
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...next few weeks will be on a bipartisan amendment, sponsored by Democrat Ken Salazar of Colorado and Republican Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, that would enshrine the findings of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group as national policy. One of those findings calls for the withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by March 2008, but the wording is sufficiently muzzy--the President can change policy "subject to unexpected developments," Alexander told me--so that Bush can pretty much ignore it at will. Still, there is a possibility that the amendment will succeed as an anodyne bipartisan plea...
Granted, Lifetime's highest-rated series ever, which takes place on a Stateside base, never sets a dusty foot in the combat zone. It's a guilty pleasure first, soapy and clichéd; there's rarely an emotional moment without a big-eyed kid or a Jude Johnstone ballad to cue the waterworks. There are affairs, alcoholism and girl-talk sessions in which the characters chat about nicknaming their "lady parts" ("my fine china," for instance...
...precisely because it's a domestic drama on the network "for women"--the same reason, perhaps, that it hasn't been taken seriously enough to be controversial. There is something a little obvious--a little male, maybe--about assuming that telling truths about war has to mean showing battle. Combat is so foreign to many viewers, however, that it can actually distance the audience...
...Sprint isn't necessarily being unreasonable. There are customers who refuse to be satisfied. What's the fun in that? To these ultimate whiners, a cell phone contract is not an exchange of money for a specific service, it's an opportunity for corporate combat, for indulging their Goliath-killing, "they can't mess with me" fantasy. It's a chance to continually move the goalposts and then complain about a rule change...
...being a bad tourist: Why haven’t I taken advantage of my time here? Why am I merely holing up at the house with my 300 book-long summer reading list and enough food to feed a small country? It should be a minor guilt to combat: lazy Saturday mornings in the backyard hammock with a lime popsicle, a tattered Woolf, and a thick Dostoevsky hardly constitute a squandered summer...