Word: cracking
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Trying to remain optimistic, Dole looked out at the throng and said, "You know why they call this the Granite State...because it is so hard to crack...
...transition--some of us got an education. If we were lucky, we had teachers--Monroe Engel, Justin Kaplan, Gail Porter and Peter Stansky in my case--who shaped our sensibilities forever. But the Vietnam war also exposed the fallibility of America's institutions, and to witness close-up the crack-up of Harvard, the alma mater of the American establishment that created the quagmire, was a harrowing education in itself...
...effect of last week's maneuvering was to leave the candidates only inches apart on welfare: both would require recipients to go to work after two years; both would cut off all benefits after five years for the able-bodied; both would crack down on deadbeat dads. And both would allow states to cut off payments to unwed teenage mothers. So much consensus, however, may be bad for real reform: now that it's no longer a defining issue in the campaign, it probably won't go anywhere anytime soon...
Some of the recent disputes have indeed been about making money. The U.S. has charged China with failing to live up to its pledge to crack down on the piracy of American computer software, films, music and other intellectual property. Rightful owners of the copyrights claim they are losing an estimated $2 billion a year. The U.S. has warned that if the Chinese government does not close the pirate factories, Washington will slap an extra $2 billion tariff on imported Chinese goods. Beijing is threatening to retaliate in kind, and there is worried talk about a trade war, though veterans...
...much the anthropologist trekking through the heart of darkness. He is, perhaps, too relentless in his grimness, too unforgiving. But there is a certain perverse integrity in his depressive's gaze, something weirdly compelling in his refusal to ingratiate himself with his audience. You keep waiting for him to crack a smile, offer a consoling gesture, express some softening sentiment. He does not. And if there is much that is withering in his contempt, there is also something bracing in the loony tunelessness of this hymn to human dispirit...