Word: coups
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...large degree by leftovers from the corrupt political class that once had a lock on power, they tried and failed to wrest power from Chavez with a coup d'etat in 2002 and a nationwide oil strike that paralyzed the country later that year. They only seemed to deepen their hole when they lost a 2004 referendum to oust Chavez and then boycotted parliamentary elections last year - a blunder that allowed Chavez allies to take 100% control of Venezuela's National Assembly and strengthened his seeming omnipotence. Since then, divisive infighting has been the opposition's norm...
Getting Gen. John Abizaid, the Pentagon's top Middle East commander, to admit at a Thursday hearing that it's possible Iraq "could move toward a civil war" wasn't the only coup Senate Democrats scored. The same day they also managed to plant another political time bomb, which could explode in the next three or four months over George Bush's conduct of the war, by winning approval for a new National Intelligence Estimate focusing on Iraq's growing sectarian violence...
...makes a doll out of tar to ensnare his nemesis Br'er Rabbit. The Oxford American Dictionary defines tar baby much like Romney used it, "a difficult problem, that is only aggravated by attempts to solve it." But the term also has had racial implications. In his book Coup, John Updike says of a white woman who prefers the company of black men, "some questing chromosome within holds her sexually fast to the tar baby." The Oxford English Dictionary (but not the print version of its American counterpart) says that tar baby is a derogatory term used for "a black...
...swords that each academician receives upon election. Suddenly, the much-vaunted French “defense of high culture” gained new meaning.One visit to a prestigious and well-guarded institute hardly constitutes a new form of travel, and in fact the Academy was not my only coup. More prosaically, in the manuscripts division of the French National Library, I enjoyed peeking at the illuminated pages of my medievalist neighbors. Even better, I applied to enter the French National Assembly, which boasts a small but gloriously frescoed library. After being allowed permission to enter while France?...
...SOME IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, the ideal strategy for dealing with Kim has always been economic and diplomatic strangulation, with the hope that his government will eventually atrophy into collapse or succumb to a coup that might usher in a more amiable--or at least more predictable--leader. That approach is based on the idea that rather than try to negotiate with Kim or take military action against him, the U.S. and its allies are better off keeping him in a box and focusing on preventing him from peddling his arsenal to other rogue actors. Elements of that strategy have...