Word: obvious
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...things that were reviled the first time. The Beatles and Shakespeare need no comeback and thus have less nostalgia value. But Abba has been making these incursions into American culture (Muriel's Wedding! The Gold album!) for 35 years. That persistence suggests the band offers an appeal beyond the obvious one of watching unathletic people in white catsuits and platform boots. Why the cultural valence...
...parliamentary elections will take place in 2010; and Presidential elections in 2011. Mubarak's son, Gamal, has always seemed an easy pick as the dynastic candidate, but he is not a member of the officer corps, from which every leader since the 1950s has emerged. There is no other obvious alternative. Meanwhile, the rapidly expanding, impoverished and young population of Egypt will continue to gravitate toward the outlaw appeal of the Muslim Brotherhood...
...when I decided in 1995 that we should repeat our security audit, I expected that most of the more obvious breaches would prove to have been corrected. We decided to put particular emphasis on bomb detection this time. But I was bitterly disappointed: in 1995 my agents, together with FAA inspectors, carried fake bombs--strapped to their bodies or in briefcases with marzipan candy or other substances arrayed on boards to look like plastic explosives--and guns and knives through metal detectors. They got into secure areas at the big international airports around the country. They were not stopped...
...days after [our investigators' visit], the Atlanta FAA staff wrote a memo to headquarters. For eight pages, they described accidents and poor FAA surveillance until reaching an inevitable conclusion so startling and obvious that it should have changed history--except that it was also a conclusion so threatening to ValuJet and contrary to FAA habit that the memo was immediately buried, secreted away until disaster forced it into the open...
...Snow was unabashed in his defense of the Administration but managed to be respectful, even helpful, to the reporters on the beat. His experience as a Fox News broadcaster and radio personality was obvious; his quick wit and verbal dexterity made him fun to spar with, but his precision with language, and with the complicated details of policy, made him remarkably effective. But the clincher for a skeptical media was his disarming honesty. When he didn't know an answer, he said the rarest words in Washington - "I don't know." When he made a mistake he made a point...