The reasons Mr. Romney and Republicans, in general, were so thoroughly surprised and disappointed is because they had been purposely deluding themselves for months -- actually taking seriously agenda-driven political hacks like Karl Rove and Dick Morris, who confidently predicted an electoral college landslide win for Mr. Romney.
"I think Holly [Willoughby] and I have both struggled with that slightly – with having our ideas taken seriously and showing how driven and how ambitious we are.
But seriously, he's very driven, very dedicated and he absolutely has his eyes on the prize.
The fact that the techno tunes were the ones that stood out made a case for the fact that dance music was just as worth taking seriously as its guitar-driven competition, a truth that was far from obvious to most people in 1996.
It was far more seriously sponge- and scone-driven.
"It's hard to imagine how a presidential candidate is going to seriously confront the powerful, greed-driven interests on Wall Street when they're taking advice and staffing cabinet posts with people who just clocked out of the same big banks and investment firms that made bundles from wrecking our economy," Sroka said.
Extraordinary disturbances (such as global warming) and more-frequent local disturbances (such as wildfires and storm-driven events) can, however, seriously affect the capacity for self-adjustment.
That China has undervalued its currency, the renminbi, for much of the past decade to boost its surging export-driven economy is not seriously doubted; China intervenes in the markets by buying an estimated $1 billion a day using renminbi.
In fact, the G.O.P. leadership has yet to seriously attempt oversight or consistent policy-driven criticism in this area.
A kind, gentle, intense and driven man, Hopkins took his work very seriously.
