Word: firstness
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...Besides, for all the health care hullabaloo, constituents have other things to worry about. The first question after McMahon's speech was about the rising cost of living, the next about offshore drilling and the third about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I'm this way about the health care bill," says Anna Porto, 80, a retired clerk, wagging her index and middle fingers in opposite directions. "I like that it helps the uninsured, but I don't like that we're paying for it. We can't afford it right now - we can't afford anything...
...Democrats who are defending the interests of Main Street and most Republicans who are in the pocket of Wall Street. Kaufman, by contrast, argues that neither party has yet shown much seriousness about undoing decades of deregulation, and nonregulation, that created the conditions for the financial collapse in the first place...
...this in the candid remarks made by Vice President Xi Jinping - front runner to become President in 2012 - during a trip to Mexico last year. "It seems there are some foreigners who've stuffed their bellies and don't have anything else to do but point fingers," he said. "First, China does not export revolution. Second, we're not exporting hunger or poverty. And third, we aren't making trouble for you. What else is there to say?" So leave us alone, he might have added. (See "China and the U.S.: Too Big to Fail...
...Xinhua news later explained, "is being employed by Chinese to express a sentiment deeper than just the passive voice: they are using it to convey a sense of helplessness in deciding one's own fate." There's a sharp edge to this phrase's popularity, since it was first used on Chinese blogs to describe court cases in which suspects were found to have committed suicide under unlikely conditions, probably killed by police or other inmates. Such a suspect was, police said, "suicided." And there are now many variations on the phrase, like bei hexie, which means "to be harmonized...
...first glance, this might look sinister. But the reality is that it is simply different and not yet necessarily good or bad. China could try to reshape the global order alongside the U.S., in ways that help by supporting American economic recovery, defining new norms on proliferation, cooperating on computer security. Or it could undermine the U.S. - and its allies - in each of these endeavors. Accepting this indeterminacy will be a real challenge. For it is possible to assemble the facts of what China is doing into different narratives. When a research institute in Sichuan publishes a piece on vulnerabilities...