dead sure

Walsh immediately called Roosevelt back up to testify again, and Roosevelt said he was “dead sure” what he had heard.

I report on the dying and the dead, sure, but I also spend my days talking to the scientists, conservationists, activists, politicians and average citizens working hard to make sure that as few species as possible go the way of the flat pigtoe, the Molokai creeper, the Scioto madtom, the Little Mariana fruit bat, or any of the other 19 species the Fish and Wildlife Service just proposed as extinct.

I know for dead sure that’s not so.

“The confidence behind what he thought the club might be, the wind direction or what the yardage was, he was dead sure in it. He just knew the right things to say, and I think that’s what makes a great caddie. . . . And the way he went about that I thought was super impressive. And that’s kind of when I was like, ‘All right, this is my guy.’

He said flatly: ‘No. That’s not the right angle at all. I’m dead sure it’s not. In the first place, you’d never get out of town. They’d break it up by saying it’s a menace to public health—or some such trumped-up reason. They’d arrest you and nothing would come of it. But even if by some miracle you got to Washington it wouldn’t do a bit of good. Why, the whole notion is crazy.’