Word: magical
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...magic number is four. If Senate Democrats can pick up that many seats in this year's elections, they will overturn the G.O.P.'s 53-to-47 majority. For both parties, this means war. "Never has a Democratic victory been more urgently needed," exhort letters from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "We're in the fight of our lives!" exclaim letters from the Republican Presidential Task Force. The White House too is signaling red alert. "For this Administration's next two years," says Reagan's political adviser Mitch Daniels, "nothing approaches control of the Senate in importance...
...Wagner's noblest, most poignant scenes at the end of the opera. Indeed, Acts I and III are so primal, so powerful and so popular that audiences have cheerfully overlooked the tedium of the second act in order to revel in the Ride of the Valkyries and the Magic Fire Music. As George Bernard Shaw observed, "Die Walkure is endured by the average man because it contains four scenes for which he would sit out a Scotch sermon or even a House of Commons debate...
...never forget that moment of magic potential. In a flash I understood that it would be utterly impossible to fail with a double-play combination named Spike and Marty...
Breaux's hope is to prevent Moore from winning the magic 50%, then to unify all the Democratic factions behind him for the runoff. "I have been an effective legislator," says Breaux. "I am talking performance while he is talking plans." Known as an artful wheeler-dealer on Capitol Hill, Breaux has $ in fact pushed through 19 pieces of legislation in the House, vs. none for Moore. The Democrat has played down the issue of party affiliation in his campaign, urging people to vote for the man, not the party. "I am an independent moderate Democrat," says he. "To elect...
...distraction and him to the bank. Now Erno Rubik is beyond cubic. His latest brain twister, unveiled last week in Budapest, consists of eight thin 2-in. plastic squares joined by a cunning latticework of plastic threads: "Fishing line pretty much," he says. The key to Rubik's Magic Puzzle, which he has been working on for two years, is the thread and a special hinge allowing the linked squares to be rearranged in a countless array of three-dimensional configurations. "I haven't been able to calculate it," says Rubik with a trace of mischief...