Word: vacuumers
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...dismal and disillusioning national scene. "This is a generation of hopelessness," says former National Assembly member Daniyal Aziz, "and people need hope to get by." Pakistan's institutions are weak, its political leaders are discredited and its economy is a shambles. An explosion of religious seminaries has filled the vacuum caused by a deficient government education system; a million children are enrolled in medressas and emerge qualified only for religious work. Housewives and grandmothers who used to spend their mornings gossiping and getting manicures are diligently attending Koran study groups...
Hence early, armed retaliation is likely to be limited to Afghanistan. From 1994 through 1996, the Islamic extremist Taliban moved to fill the power vacuum that had existed since the end of the war. Although the Taliban frequently claims to keep bin Laden in a box, in practice it has defended him. Opposition sources say a brigade of his fighters has been on the front lines in the Taliban's war against the Northern Alliance, led by Ahmed Shah Massood. (In what may turn out to be an indication of trouble to come, Massood was the victim of a suicide...
...Actually, I clean more than I call. I took the small attachment to the vacuum, the one not worth the aggravation to use ordinarily, and sucked up every cobweb in my house. Even that nether region under the radiators would pass the white glove test. This wouldn't be worth mentioning, except there's a lot of this going around. Sen. Richard Shelby lives on my street and we marveled Tuesday morning about how the street was spilling over with black trash bags. A lot of closets being cleaned out. I told the Senator about...
...chamber known for its self-impressed, vacuum-packed politicians, the avuncular Hastert has some natural advantages. Raised in northern Illinois, where he grew up on a farm, he's lived virtually all of his 59 years in his sprawling commuter district west of Chicago, which also includes Ronald Reagan's hometown. Heavyset and rumpled, Hastert looks a little like comedian Drew Carey. In public his staff addresses him as Mr. Speaker, but in private he prefers that they simply call him Denny. He shuns the Beltway talk-show-and-cocktail circuit and, at the end of the week, usually catches...
Four years later, the same benign neglect greeted his next book, Strong Motion, about toxic subterfuges carried out by a Boston chemical firm. "Sixty reviews in a vacuum," as he later put it. Franzen began to wonder if literary fiction were going the way of the lyric poem, a deluxe specimen of cultural product enjoyed only by the happy few. When, he asked himself, was the last time an ambitious novel achieved the name recognition of Portnoy's Complaint, to say nothing of Catch...