Word: obvious
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...story he told last spring at a gathering of conservative leaders when asked to explain his faith in God. "He blew that question off by telling us about the faith of his jailer," direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie fumed to the Los Angeles Times afterward. "It was very obvious to those three or four hundred conservative leaders there." One month later, McCain pulled out his trusty tale once again when a student at a town-hall event asked what effect his faith would have on his "executive decision-making...
That's why Crist and just about every other Florida politician is pushing for a national catastrophe insurance fund, which would shift some of that risk to federal taxpayers. But the idea is not so popular with other states, for the obvious reason that other states don't have as much risk. Florida has spent the last 80 years ignoring its vulnerability, developing its floodplains and shorelines, selling the dream of the Sunshine State to northerners and foreigners. But the day of reckoning will come...
Shiller spent much of his early academic career--he earned a Ph.D. from MIT in 1972 and has been teaching at Yale since 1982--making the case that stock-market prices jump around more than is warranted by economic fundamentals. This may sound obvious, but it was for a time heresy among finance scholars, who believed markets were paragons of informed rationality. Since then, the academic consensus has shifted in Shiller's direction. But identifying exactly when prices have gotten out of hand isn't easy...
...easy to write fiction inspired by current events, especially if those events involve politics. The stage is too grand, the spotlight too bright. Our public life already is ridiculously flagrant, far too obvious and overwrought for good fiction. And so, all too often, political novels descend from satire into cheap farce. Such books can be entertaining and sometimes cathartic but usually not very nourishing. American Wife is something else entirely--the opposite of a political satire, in fact--with a languorous pace and a fierce literary integrity: Alice and Charlie are complete creations, unique in their humanity--Alice especially...
...This small-c conservatism is, in part, a calculation. Obama doesn't want to seem angry or threatening, for obvious reasons. But it is also a reflection of who he really is: a fellow who does not like to disappoint anyone, who is obsessed with finding common ground. That may be a great advantage in a President at this ugly moment in our history - but I would feel more comfortable with Obama if he took an occasional play from John McCain's book of partisan transgressions and gored some Democratic oxen. It would be nice if he, say, challenged...