Word: direful
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Even Gore's note-perfect concession speech--brief, unbowed, ruefully funny and unabashedly patriotic--carried a dire subtext. The Vice President quoted Stephen Douglas' concession to Abraham Lincoln after the 1860 election: "Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism. I'm with you, Mr. President, and God bless you." But when Douglas offered those uplifting words, the nation was weeks away from the Civil...
...Before the New Economy showed up, 2.2 percent growth wasn't shabby at all; now it's dire news. The Tech Decade didn't just produce Greenspan's "irrational exuberance," it produced his "wealth effect," in which fat portfolios make for long shopping lists. Consumer spending kept us afloat while the world sank, and now that the engine of our recent prosperity is misfiring, wallets are closing all over America...
...result, energy demand in the state has sky-rocketed, to the point where the power grid cannot support the demands. The situation is so dire that the state recently instituted an energy emergency, which gives the system's administrator the right to black out houses on a rotating basis for an hour at a time. Added to the fact that the state cannot supply enough power for its residence, the price of power has also risen dramatically. In San Diego, for example, the price of energy tripled this summer...
Some candidates now say the council's financial situation is dire enough to justify Lewis' decision to propose the hike...
...much damage, really? The losers, their minds reverberating with their own dire rhetoric, will work themselves into a state. They will want to fling themselves off cliffs, like the Japanese on Okinawa when the Americans arrived in 1945. That's the human nature of politics. When Rudolph Giuliani first ran for mayor of New York City, the editorial board of The New York Times sounded as if Hitler himself aspired to City Hall. In the fullness of time, the Times came to concede that in many respects, Giuliani proved to be an excellent mayor...