Word: grips
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ONCE IN A GREAT WHILE, A DEEPLY FELT NOTION SEEMS TO grip almost everyone at the same time. In 1991 Americans said, "Enough," and became sensible again. Out went heedless consumerism, the cult of the new, the expectations of Having It All. As the 1980s began to come into focus as a misguided era of borrowed luxury, Americans got back to basics. They cut down on spending, started to pay off their debts and learned to make do with less. It happened just in time. The recession, which at first seemed quick and painless, took a scary dive...
...that will force him to higher consciousness begins when his car breaks down in a bad neighborhood and his life is threatened by a menacing gang, then saved by Simon (Danny Glover), a lonely tow-truck operator. The episode is Mack's first lesson in just how tenuous our grip on normality...
...successful negotiation has to give something to everyone. As it turned out, when the end of the hostage crisis came into sight, the U.S. leaned toward concessions that cost it little. It looked the other way when Syria tightened its grip on Lebanon. It continued to release blocked Iranian funds. Last week Washington handed over $278 million it owed Tehran for American-made ships and planes that Iran had paid for but never received after Khomeini took power. The U.S. also stopped objecting to other people -- U.N. and Israeli negotiators -- dealing with the kidnappers...
...October when his talented underboss, Venero (Benny Eggs) Mangano, was convicted of extortion in the window-replacement industry. And federal racket busters have weakened the family's hold on such labor unions as the Teamsters and Longshoremen. But the Genovese gang remains a sturdy symbol of the Mafia's grip on society. As investigator Coffey puts it, "The Mob will never be finished as long as there's a dollar to be made." They'll just be talking about it more...
Beyond fine-tuning the balance of terror, Bush's proposal was intended to help him get a grip on a more general political problem: the difficulty that statesmen have in keeping up with events, particularly in a period of seismic changes in the geopolitical landscape. Bush opened his speech with the image of the world facing a "fresh page of history before yesterday's ink has even dried." He might have been speaking about the ink on two documents in particular...