Word: straws
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...first he has to win back some of the smaller tent, where he's been losing a number of local straw polls of Florida's conservative GOP base. Crist has let Republican fundamentalists hammer him on the stimulus - and the now famous picture of him and Obama sharing an onstage hug - but his campaign is poised now to hammer back with reminders that as Governor he led a crusade to tamp down Florida's runaway property taxes and insurance premiums. Conservatives are still apoplectic about his appointment of an African-American Democrat to the Florida Supreme Court this year...
...alienating the less impassioned Republicans who don't come out for straw polls - especially in a state with Florida's centrist and independent streak - is also risky. Crist knows they vote in primaries. They helped give him a landslide victory in the 2006 gubernatorial primary against a more conservative candidate. They also lifted John McCain, the more moderate Republican Crist backed for the presidential nomination last year, to a key Florida primary victory. (They also know, according to polls, that Crist has a better chance of defeating a Democratic candidate next fall than Rubio does.) As a result, Crist insists...
...following a series of inexplicable events: a doctor injured when his horse stumbles over a trip wire, a woman killed in a sawmill accident, a child who suffers a horrific beating. As the mystery builds, Haneke examines how the villagers, in the face of their despair, grasp at any straw offered to them - in this case, religious doctrine. Despite moments of unfathomable cruelty, The White Ribbon is a warmer, happier film than Haneke's earlier efforts; the director's black humor is sprinkled throughout rather than painted on thick. There's even a sweet love story between the village schoolteacher...
...many, last month's attack on a U.N. guesthouse was the final straw. Not because suddenly, as foreigners, we felt ourselves to be targets. No, it was the decision to pull all U.N. staff out of their private guesthouses and force them to live in massive walled-off compounds far from the city center. Overnight, 93 guesthouses were closed down, meaning 93 families suddenly deprived of rental income, and thousands of employees - cooks, cleaners, drivers and guards - without a salary...
...does, the church has remained mum. As insistent as it is on passing judgment, the Vatican remains troublingly resistant to singling out any genuinely serious modern art or literature to criticize. Hand-waving vaguely at “contemporary representations of beauty,” or straw-manning Ron and Harry, is far easier than starting a real debate about what role religion can play in the arts. So far, the church’s reaction to complex—if provocative—creative products like Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ?...