Harper's Weekly Round Up is really hilarious sometimes
After much bargaining with the largest banks in the United
States, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced the
results of the Treasury's "stress tests," studies that
estimate how the banks will fare if the economic crisis
deepens. Ten banks, said Geithner, including Bank of
America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo, must collectively
raise $75 billion in extra capital by November; the rest,
however, are fine. Analysts questioned Geithner's
conclusions, which assume a worst-case unemployment rate
of 10.3 percent when the current rate is 8.9 percent, and
which, after banks complained, ended up measuring
bank-capital levels with standards more forgiving than
expected; Bank of America's potential capital deficit, for
example, was finally pegged at merely $33.9 billion
instead of the $50 billion initially projected. President
Barack Obama said that his staff went "line by line"
through the $3.4 trillion federal budget and found 121
programs that could be cut to save taxpayers $17 billion,
or half a percent of the budget's total. Democratic
lawmakers immediately protested the cuts, and
Representative Maurice Hinchey (D., N.Y.) vowed to force
the White House to accept delivery of a new presidential
helicopter even though Obama says he doesn't need or want
it. The U.S. Navy reported that 12 crewmembers aboard the
amphibious transport ship USS Dubuque had been diagnosed
with influenza A (H1N1), bringing the total number of
U.S. cases of the flu to 1,600, with 2,500 cases reported
worldwide in 25 countries. Afghanistan, despite having no
cases of swine flu, took its only known pig, a gift from
China named Khanzir (which means "pig"), away from the
friendly goats and deer with which it grazed at Kabul Zoo
and placed it in solitary confinement.
Maine recognized same-sex marriage, as did Washington,
D.C., where the city council approved a bill by a 12 to 1
vote, with only former mayor Marion Barry dissenting. "All
hell is going to break loose," said Barry, who was once
arrested for using crack cocaine. "We may have a civil
war. The black community is just adamant against this."
The Simon Wiesenthal Center presented its 2009
Humanitarian Award to actor Will Smith, and President
Obama appeared at the White House Correspondents'
Association dinner. "I must confess," he told the crowd,
which included Robert De Niro, Natalie Portman, Sting, and
Ludacris, "I really didn't want to be here tonight. But I
had to come. That's one more problem I inherited from
George Bush." Obama also pointed out that Michelle Obama,
by wearing a sleeveless dress, supported the "right to
bare arms." Senator John Kerry attended a Senate
subcommittee hearing on the future of journalism. "I see
cacophony without standards," he said. "I see more and
more people operating in public life with snippets." Pete
Seeger turned 90. Pope Benedict XVI visited Israel, where
he spoke of his support for a Palestinian state and
Israeli president Shimon Peres presented him with an Old
Testament that fits on the head of a pin. The wife of
Kenyan Prime Minister Ralia Odinga agreed to forgo sex
with her husband as part of a national sex boycott
intended to force government leaders to stop feuding, and
Kenyan James Kimondo, denied conjugal rights by his
boycotting wife, sued women's rights groups for "stress,
mental anguish, backaches, and lack of sleep."
Congolese government soldiers sodomized pygmies to gain
supernatural powers, and Marilyn French, author of the
novel The Women's Room, died. "All men are rapists," she
wrote, "and that's all they are. They rape us with their
eyes, their laws, and their codes." The price of oral sex
from a prostitute in Russia had fallen to that of a
sandwich and soda, and many Russian men were hiring
hookers just for conversation. Moscow schoolgirl Katya
Kazakova, struck by stage fright, was unable to sing a
patriotic song, "The Dug Out," for Russian Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin, until Putin joined in. "The fire is
pulsing in a cramped stove," they sang together, Putin's
voice soft and melodious. "The resin on the firewood is
like a tear." Scientists in North Carolina announced a
tiny medieval "rack," or robotic bioreactor, that can
stretch slivers of foreskin to twice their original size
and may some day be used for skin grafts. Jeff Kepner, a
57-year-old Georgian man who lost both his hands to a
bacterial infection ten years ago, received the nation's
first double hand transplant, and five months after her
operation, Connie Culp, who was the first American to
receive a full facial transplant, unveiled her new face,
which--while squarish and floppy--is a drastic improvement
over the old one after her husband blew it off with a
shotgun in 2004. A two-nosed Wisconsin cow named Lucy gave
birth to a normal calf, and a New York City cow named
Molly broke free of her handlers on the way to the
slaughterhouse and ran free through the streets of
Queens. Molly's owners, responding to public outcry,
agreed to spare her and move her to Long Island, where she
will live with a steer named Wexley. "He's been neutered,"
said Wexley's owner, "so they are just going to have to be
good friends."
-- Claire Gutierrez
