4 – A Future on Wall Street
Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwe president often accused of corruption and election-rigging, seems close to stepping down as returns from the country’s recent elections indicate he will lose the contest. Since Mugabe took power in 1980, the country’s inflation rate has skyrocketed to an unreal 100,000 percent, the highest in the world, while 80 percent of its people are unemployed. Why would Mugabe want to run Zimbabwe, anyway? He’d have a bright future at Bear Stearns.
6 – Skate to the Top
This weekend, the top-ranked Michigan hockey team won two games in Albany, N.Y. to make it to the Frozen Four for the first time in five years. The Wolverines are headed to Denver next week to make a run at the National Championship. Unfortunately for students, the games are scheduled for the weekend before the start of finals. Fortunately for student-athletes, they’re mostly taking independent studies, anyway.
3 – Political Irony
An article in yesterday’s edition of The Michigan Review painted an unkind picture of Justin Zatkoff, the chair of The Michigan Federation of College Republicans, suggesting that he may have violated state campaign finance laws by starting an organization that paid for students to attend a prominent Republican leadership conference if they pledged to vote for John McCain in an influential poll held there. That’s one way to show support for McCain, considering he helped craft the campaign finance reforms that made many practices like those illegal in the first place.
7 – A Torch, but no Pitchforks
Although China has come under fire in recent months as this summer’s Beijing Olympics nears, an Olympic torch-lighting ceremony took place in Tiananmen Square Monday without any protests. Considering the location’s past as a site of political resistance, the lack of protests at the invitation-only event shows how popular the Chinese Communist Party is. Think about it – if citizens thought the government was brutally suppressing free speech, wouldn’t they speak out about it?
5 – High Prices, High Profits
At a Congressional hearing yesterday, representatives of the five largest oil companies in the United States said their companies weren’t to blame for high gas prices and tried to justify why the companies received huge tax breaks in a year when they made a record $123 billion in profits. The executives tried to reassure Congress that they’re feeling the pain of high oil prices, too. After all, it takes a lot of expensive jet fuel to fly a private plane to the Caribbean.
1 – Announcer-in-Chief
It’s almost as if he’s given up on trying to turn around his poor approval rating. On Sunday night, President Bush threw the opening pitch at the Washington Nationals’ season opener, also the first game played in the team’s new stadium. Bush then proceeded to head up to the press box and announce much of the game alongside the broadcasting crew. As Bush has always said, being president is hard work. He would have settled for calling the plays on Opening Day.