1. True or false? After the mid-July failure of IndyMac Bank, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned that the economy "could be in complete meltdown in two months."
a. True. He said that estimate "might even be optimistic."
b. False. He reassured the public, saying, "It's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation."
2. Who's who?
___ Barry Blitt
___ Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet
___ Alex Kozinski
___ John Gibson
___ Tyrone Freeman
___ Tom Putnam
___ Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher
___ Tyson Gay
a) The federal judge presiding over a Los Angeles obscenity trial who declared a mistrial after acknowledging that he had a publicly accessible website that featured sexually explicit material.
b) The Service Employees International Union labor leader whose local spent several hundred thousand dollars on services provided by firms owned by his wife and mother-in-law.
c) The director of the Paris Hilton movie "The Hottie and the Nottie" that grossed $27,696 in its opening weekend, which -- when ticket prices, number of theaters and number of screenings were factored in -- averaged out to an audience of about four people per show.
d) The Fox News host who made fun of Heath Ledger's death by playing an audio clip from "Brokeback Mountain" in which Jake Gyllenhaal's character said, "I wish I knew how to quit you," then said, "Well, he found out how to quit you!"
e) The illustrator of the New Yorker cover depicting the Obamas as fist-bumping terrorists in the White House -- an image apparently too politically incorrect to be appreciated as satire.
f) The financial executive who became the first Bernard Madoff-inspired suicide.
g) The Olympic sprinter whose name in an Associated Press story triggered an auto-replace feature on the far-right American Family Assn.'s website, resulting in his being renamed and repeatedly referred to as "Tyson Homosexual."
h) Joe the Plumber.
3. Hillary Clinton's campaign cried "Plagiarism!" after Barack Obama used a couple of lines in a speech that were very similar to lines delivered in 2006 by successful Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate (and Obama supporter) Deval Patrick. Complete her mocking of his slogan: "It's not change you can believe in, it's change you can ________________________"
a) Xerox.
b) make carbon copies of.
c) take to the scrivener's shoppe and have him re-scriven for you.
d) copy onto the walls of your cave from memory after having seen it on the walls of your friend's cave.
4. How did each of these men distinguish himself during the 2008 presidential campaign?
___ Mitt Romney
___ Mike Huckabee
___ Newt Gingrich
___ Fred Thompson
___ Rudy Giuliani
a) He pointed out a former New York City police officer at a Florida campaign rally and marveled that the man looked exactly as he had "on Sept. 11."
b) Rival campaign chairman Ed Rollins described him as "a guy ... whose teeth I want to knock out."
c) He equated gay marriage with marriage between a man and an animal.
d) He called John McCain's I'm-suspending-my-campaign-and-I-can't-debate-until-the-economic-cris is-is-solved gambit "the greatest single act of responsibility ever taken by a presidential candidate."
e) He was so lazy that nearly all press coverage of his campaign mentioned his aversion to exertion.
5. What did John Edwards do during the "Nightline" interview about his extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter?
a) He asked Bob Woodruff twice, "Can I explain what happened?" which of course was the reason for the interview.
b) He pointed out that when he cheated on his wife, Elizabeth, her cancer was in remission.
c) He declared that "none of" the members of his family was responsible for his cheating, lest anyone think that maybe somehow his young children had caused it.
d) All of the above, plus he smarmily reminded people that John McCain had cheated on his first wife.
6. How did John McCain's spokesman, Tucker Bounds, respond to CNN anchor Campbell Brown's efforts to get him to explain why Sarah Palin's nomination didn't make a mockery of McCain's insistence that the main qualification for being his running mate was readiness to take over on Day One?
a) He grinned sheepishly and said, "OK, you got me. She's not ready. But you gotta admit, she's hotter than Lieberman."
b) He pointed out that "she's been the commander of the National Guard, of the Alaska National Guard that's been deployed overseas. That's foreign policy experience."
c) He scolded Brown, saying, "I think the 5 1/2 years John McCain spent as a POW is more than enough foreign policy experience for the both of them."
7. How was one of the candidates' names misspelled in a TV ad?
a) Barack O'bama
b) Johm McCain
c) Hillary Clintone
d) Sarah Plain
