Dear Friend and Reader,<\/p>\n
2008 WAS a year full of\u0412\u00a0“interesting,” as the Chinese say. We’ve watched an under-known US Senator with a terrorist’s name\u0412\u00a0become the nation’s 44th President. We’ve watched our economy and the markets around the world go from\u0412\u00a0pothole to giant sinkhole. We were awed by\u0412\u00a0the opening of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, ushering\u0412\u00a0in what will be the new world era of China\u0412\u00a0in dominance. And after months of silence, we’ve finally heard from Dick Cheney after his party’s loss in this year’s general election. He made a brief appearance from his warren below ground,\u0412\u00a0calmly reassuring us\u0412\u00a0that we as a proud nation still need to be terrified.<\/a><\/p>\n Aside from these high-profile players, countries and events\u0412\u00a0entering into and out of our consciousness, where the heck did everyone else go?\u0412\u00a0In Planet Waves’ inimitable fashion,\u0412\u00a0here’s our own version of “Page Six”<\/a>\u0412\u00a0to slake the thirst of\u0412\u00a0dry-mouthed newsaholics,\u0412\u00a0filling in the blanks for sufferers of Attention Deficit Disorder, and generally providing you more news than what you get out of CNBC–and that’s not a high bar to jump. Here we go:<\/p>\n Sarah Palin and Bristol Palin:<\/strong> It could be that\u0412\u00a0Governor Sarah Palin’s hope may be realized that one day, she\u0412\u00a0could retire from her gene pool expansion<\/a> activities and let her daughter carry on the tradition of overpopulating Alaska with more Palins. Through a series of rituals performed by African priests and portents dug from the entrails of birds, it has been confirmed<\/a> that Sarah Palin’s first grandchild\u0412\u00a0will be a boy. The boy’s mother, Bristol Palin is scheduled to deliver on the 20th of December. Bristol and her\u0412\u00a0betrothed Levi Johnston, father of the child,\u0412\u00a0are considering\u0412\u00a0these possibilities for baby names: Puck, Mandate, Shotgun,\u0412\u00a0Unsustainable and\u0412\u00a0Extremist. In other news, it was reported today that the new baby’s\u0412\u00a0paternal grandmother-to-be was arrested<\/a> for possession of drugs by Alaska State Troopers. Another day in the life\u0412\u00a0of the great state of Alaska.\u0412\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fidel Castro:<\/strong> Cuban President Fidel Castro continues to exist as a corporal being despite urgent prayers uttered at Washington DC power breakfasts since 1962. He was last seen meeting heads of state<\/a>, even while in frail health, and continuing to make policy for Cuba. Much to our\u0412\u00a0government’s chagrin,\u0412\u00a0Castro remains America’s living lesson in why you should\u0412\u00a0never piss off a Leo with a Mars in Taurus and Scorpio rising.<\/p>\n Ted Stevens:<\/strong> Former AK Senator Ted Stevens, indicted and convicted of seven charges of filing false financial statements to the US Senate, will have to find a new venue of generating income other than law. His license to practice law in Washington has been suspended<\/a> by the Bar for\u0412\u00a0the District of Columbia. It seems as though the Bar Associations of DC and Alaska, which recently filed to disbar Stevens, get it better than Stevens himself that a conviction on charges of\u0412\u00a0lying to Congress\u0412\u00a0has its consequences.<\/p>\n Blogo, Blago, Blogwitz aka Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich: <\/strong>Despite the proceedings taking place in Illinois, the state’s Supreme Court ruled on the basic American judicial principle of innocent until proven guilty and decided<\/a>\u0412\u00a0they would not place themselves in the position of declaring Governor Rod Blagojevich “unfit” to serve. It is anticipated that Governor Blagojevich will\u0412\u00a0say something incriminating\u0412\u00a0and just plain dumb anyway, which will probably be caught by one of\u0412\u00a0US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s listening devices before 2008 ends.<\/p>\n AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch: <\/strong>Hey, whatever happened to those guys? You know, the ones who built profits based on pure speculation? A judge ruled to approve a $115 million dollar settlement against former executives of AIG. This judgement is a victory<\/a> for AIG shareholders. Lehman Brothers, which filed the nation’s largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection case, is working to save the company’s pension plan, 95% of which is funded by the company and the remainder to be funded partially by you and me<\/a> to the tune of $18 million dollars through the US Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC). Merrill Lynch executive Bob Wigley,\u0412\u00a0one of\u0412\u00a0the company’s most senior bankers\u0412\u00a0in Europe plans to depart.<\/a> After the company’s collapse\u0412\u00a0and sale to its rival Bank of America\u0412\u00a0in the September Wall Street financial\u0412\u00a0meltdown (there were more in October and November), Merrill Lynch’s terse statement on the departure read: “(Mr. Wigley) would leave the firm to focus on the next stage of his career outside our organization, following a brief hand-over period.” In other words, Merrill Lynch told Wigley in a nice polite way to pound sand.<\/a><\/p>\n The Auto Industry<\/strong>: In a brief moment of lucidity and\u0412\u00a0disregarding partisan rancor, the Bush White House agreed<\/a>\u0412\u00a0to a settlement bolstering the country’s ailing auto industry through a $17.4 billion dollar bailout loan. The decision came after Congressional Republicans, predominately from the South, engaged in a no-holds-barred battle in Congress, reminiscent of the Civil War. Republicans tried to block Congress’ original plan to bailout\u0412\u00a0northern US automakers, while foreign-based automakers built new plants in southern states paying much less for labor and feigning amnesia over the existence of the United Auto Workers union. Looks like for today at least, the north won.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The Burger King:<\/strong> This omnivore is speechless that the\u0412\u00a0symbol of hormone-laden beef and beef by-product was given a new sexier appeal to revitalize sales of the fading Whopper. Not to be outdone by healthier food choices driven in part\u0412\u00a0by rising statistics of early-onset diabetes, heart disease\u0412\u00a0and morbid obesity in Americans, Burger King’s makeover brought us a more studly liege of the burger, who appeared in your rear view mirror, your office and your bedroom, reminding us that we need that greasy piece of meat between two soft pieces of soft nutrition-free white bread. This comely version of The King is now reaching new heights in mass marketing appeal, as Burger King Inc. announced a just-in-time-for-the-holidays edition\u0412\u00a0of an “Eau de Burger King”<\/a> cologne, which makes the user smell like freshly charbroiled meat.<\/p>\n I wish I was making\u0412\u00a0at least half of this stuff up.\u0412\u00a0 A few\u0412\u00a0more days to go before we party like its 2009…<\/p>\n Yours & truly,<\/p>\n Fe Bongolan from San Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Friend and Reader, 2008 WAS a year full of\u0412\u00a0“interesting,” as the Chinese say. We’ve watched an under-known US Senator with a terrorist’s name\u0412\u00a0become the nation’s 44th President. We’ve watched our economy and the markets around the world go from\u0412\u00a0pothole to giant sinkhole. We were awed by\u0412\u00a0the opening of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, ushering\u0412\u00a0in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1,14,601,762],"tags":[846,36,847,848,577,1788,775,612,52,143,313],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8234"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}