Weekly Review

By Sam Stark

Caught in the Web, 1860.

President George W. Bush gave the State of the Union address, in which he discussed plans to balance the budget, double the size of the Border Patrol, reduce gasoline consumption in the United States by 20 percent, and institute a tax deduction to help American workers afford private health insurance. He announced that he was sending more than 20,000 additional soldiers to Iraq, asked Congress to authorize an increase of 92,000 active soldiers over the next five years, and proposed forming a “Civilian Reserve Corps.” He complimented several guests on their heroic kindness, courage, and self-sacrifice, including NBA star Dikembe Mutombo and Julie Aigner-Clark, the founder of an independent video-production business now owned by the Walt Disney Company. The state of the union, Bush said, is strong. ¹ Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, an expert on counterinsurgency, replaced Army Gen. George Casey as U.S. commander of troops in Iraq, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a non-binding resolution opposing President Bush's plan to increase the number of troops. Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia expressed hope that “wherever possible, the Iraqis should bear the brunt of the sectarian violence.” ² U.S. and Iraqi forces in the Shiite holy city of Najaf killed at least 200 members of an apocalyptic cult, ³ and an egg crate full of pigeons exploded at a pet market in Baghdad, killing 15 people and injuring 35. “My friends and I rushed to the scene,” said a witness, “where we saw burned dead bodies, pieces of flesh, and several dead expensive puppies and birds.”⁴ At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Adel Abdul Mahdi, the Vice President of Iraq, called the occupation of Iraq an “idiot decision.”⁵

The U.S. military gave a public demonstration of a new non-lethal heat-ray gun known as the Active Denial System,⁶ and the perjury trial of former vice-presidential aide I. Scooter Libby began. Cathie Martin, former communications director for Vice President Dick Cheney, testified that the government often releases bad news late on Friday. “Fewer people pay attention to it,” she explained. CIA official Craig Schmall testified that Libby had met with Tom Cruise to discuss the treatment of Scientologists in Germany. Libby “was a little excited about it,” he recalled; Schmall said that he too had been excited.^{7 8} Six teenage girls were arrested on conspiracy charges after a list of 300 assassination targets, including Tom Cruise and the Energizer Bunny, was discovered in a trash can in a rural Tennessee high school. “I was very scared, my friends were scared,” said sophomore Lakyn Ledford, who stayed home after learning that student-athletes were also on the list. ⁹ It was revealed that Government Elementary School Number 4, the public school in Indonesia that Barack Obama attended when he was six, had a painting of Jesus on the wall. Fox News acknowledged that they had given too much credence to a claim by Insight Magazine that Hillary Clinton's campaign was investigating the possibility that Obama's public school was a madrassah.¹⁰ Republican legislators in Georgia introduced a bill to allow a white suburb of Atlanta to secede from the city. ¹¹

North Korea demanded 44 million euros from the insurance company Lloyd's of London as compensation for damages in an alleged catastrophic helicopter accident in April 2005. According to their filed claim, a helicopter owned by the state airline was flying from Pyongyang to a remote island to save a woman who was in labor with triplets when it crashed into a warehouse full of humanitarian-relief supplies, causing a fire. “All this business about spending their money on their nuclear program,” said a source close to the North Koreans, “is complete tosh.” ¹² Ford posted a loss of $12.7 billion for 2006, the largest in its 103-year history, and equivalent to the GDP of Jordan. Asked about his plans for the company, CEO Alan R. Mulally said, “At the top of the list, I would put dealing with reality.”^{13 14} Profits at Tokyo-based Nintendo Co. were up 43 percent in the nine months ending in December, largely on sales of its new Wii video-game system,¹⁵ and Apple CEO Steve Jobs was questioned by federal investigators about his role in an options backdating scandal. ¹⁶ Scientists in Jena, Germany, who had been using spaghetti and cucumbers as bait to make a sloth climb up and down a pole, gave up after three years,¹⁷ and veterinarians at Aquatopia in Antwerp announced that Mozart, an iguana that has had an erection for a week, would have to have one of his two penises amputated. ¹⁸ In Leisureville, a retirement community in Florida, a registered sex offender died of heart disease while looking at pornography on his computer while naked,¹⁹ and a ring-neck duck named Perky, who was found alive in a hunter's refrigerator two days after being shot, died, then came back to life in Tallahassee. ²⁰ A molecular scientist who owns a café announced that he had found a way to put caffeine in a donut.²¹ Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that being the only female Supreme Court justice made her feel lonely, ²² and Ryszard Kapuscinski, Polish reporter and author of several acclaimed works of nonfiction, including The Soccer War, died.²³ At the Gulf Cup tournament in Abu Dhabi, Iraqis painted their faces and cheered their national soccer team. “By God, football unites us,” said one woman in the crowd. “I wish we could be like that back home.” The team failed to make the final round. ²⁴