Word: mortall
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...Hillary: Uh-oh? Well, it does indicate that she's mortal - i.e., not a lock, in what we gasbags like to call the All-Important First Test of the Primary Season. And that 8% among county leaders - i.e., the people who really take this stuff seriously and drag people out to the precinct caucuses - sure seems dire. It may just be that Clinton hasn't been out to Iowa recently, hasn't yet given the solipsistic cornheads the full-frontal embrace they demand of contenders. Or it may be something a bit more chronic: "You hear...
...After 9/11, Bush became convinced that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons and represented a mortal threat to the West. He also came to believe that ousting Saddam would turn Iraq into a democracy that would become the model for the rest of the Arab world. Saddam turned out not to have nuclear weapons, and Iraq turned out to be more prone to civil war than democracy. It runs the risk of becoming a failed state from which terrorists run global operations, and/or breaking into ethnic mini-states that inspire secessionist trouble throughout the region...
...risk in the same way. But that's clearly not the case. Some people enjoy roller coasters; others won't go near them. Some skydive; others can't imagine it. Not only are thrill seekers not put off by risk, but they're drawn to it, seduced by the mortal frisson that would leave many of us cold. "There's an internal thermostat that seems to control this," says risk expert John Adams of University College London. "That set point varies from person to person and circumstance to circumstance...
...larger point in it and its butterfly-fiction cohort that cuts across political boundaries: that in the globalization, global-warming, global-terror era, other people's problems are our own, and class privilege and a U.S. passport are no force field. (Indeed, Babel's story of Americans in mortal peril among foreigners even echoes, if inadvertently, a Bush Administration refrain: that we are no longer protected by two big oceans.) You can argue the politics and the art of Babel and company. It is harder to argue their premise: in a troubled, interdependent world, we all have to drink...
...Republican, Mike DeWine, had put up a spot that called into question Democrat Sherrod Brown's record on national security, using a smudged, smoking, slightly distorted image of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. The thrust of the ad was accurate: Brown is a mortal dove who repeatedly voted against increases in the intelligence budget. And the attack had been expected. "Our candidates were really worried about how to counter the Republicans on national security," says J.B. Poersch, executive Director of the DSCC. "It's what worked against...