Bowing to congressional pressure, we are going to give you an extra year to complete our latest Week to Week news quiz.
Here are some random but real hints: That's about how long it will take people to use the website; we'd like to export our own economic dysfunction; apparently Obama listened; and it once claimed my campus paper would "misspell FMLN." Answers are at the bottom of the quiz.
1. What did President Obama pledge to do with his health care reform plan?
a. Refuse to change "even one period or comma, because that's what the American people demanded of us"
b. Repeal and replace it
c. Outsource its website to Yahoo
d. Allow people with "substandard" plans to keep them for a year if they like them more than the ObamaCare offerings
2. What milestone will Ireland reach next month?
a. It will become the first eurozone country to complete the EU's economic bailout program
b. It is expected to report that its GDP has grown by a record 12% in Q3
c. It will celebrate 100 years of independence from the United Kingdom
d. Its national debt will eclipse the UK's
3. What did 11,000 people volunteer to do in San Francisco on Friday?
a. Attempt to get into the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest group of people to tweet simultaneously from the same location
b. March to protest high rents and $4 toast
c. Help re-sod the grass damaged during this past summer's America's Cup races
d. Help a five-year-old boy with leukemia be Batman
4. The European Union and the U.S. Treasury Department have criticized Germany for what?
a. Its falling educational standards
b. Its trade surplus
c. Overspending on the Greek rescue
d. Its need to spend more to beef up its military
5. What did Egypt's military government do in response to a court order?
a. Institute martial law
b. Pardon former President Hosni Mubarak
c. Pardon former President Mohammed Morsi
d. Lift a state of emergency
6. How many people enrolled in ObamaCare during its first month?
a. Zero
b. 1 million
c. 106,000
d. 960,000
7. What did Bill Clinton say about the troubled rollout of ObamaCare?
a. HillaryCare would have been better
b. Obama shouldn't have passed the law if he didn't have a working website
c. Clinton had been forced to give up his plan and choose a new one under the law
d. President Obama should honor his pledge to let people keep their health-care plans if they want to
8. According to a new three-part Reuters investigation, how did Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei come to control a hoard worth more than $95 billion?
a. Confiscating personal property of Iranians
b. Investing in Western oil companies
c. Selling the former Shah's palaces and boats
d. He's the number-one investor in Tehran's leading cable television provider
9. Another government website crashed this week because of high demand. What was it?
a. The House Republicans' petition demanding the repeal of ObamaCare
b. A German government site to locate owners of 1,400 artworks possibly looted by World War II-era Nazis
c. A Chinese website raising funds for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan
d. Lady Gaga's new MonsterMash website, created in partnership with New York state's Health Policy Agency to encourage healthy eating
10. In the continuing saga of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, what did he tell city council members that he had done?
a. Stolen an old woman's purse
b. Saved Toronto from invasion by immigrants
c. Bought illegal drugs during his time in office
d. Shot a man just to watch him die
BONUS. Humor publication The Onion has announced the end of its print edition. How did The Onion begin?
a. It was founded in New York City in 1995 by a German businessman who is currently serving a prison sentence for embezzlement
b. It was a film-and-television quarterly supplement of the Wisconsin State Journal
c. It was originally called The National Lampoon Onion, created by striking staffers from the now-defunct National Lampoon magazine
d. It was a weekly humor paper on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, with the bottoms of the pages filled with coupons
The news and the quizzes don't stop there! Join us Monday, December 16 in San Francisco for our next live Week to Week political roundtable with a news quiz and a holiday-themed social hour at The Commonwealth Club. Panelists include Huffington Post's Robin Wilkey, Hoover's Tammy Frisby, and CBS SF's political analyst Melissa Griffin Caen.
ANSWERS: 1) d. 2) a. 3) d. 4) b. 5) d. 6) c. 7) d. 8) a. 9) b. 10) c. BONUS) d.
Explanations of the hints That's about how long it will take people to use the website: an exaggeration, of course, because it only takes many hours to sign up for ObamaCare; we'd like to export our own economic dysfunction: the trade deficit countries such as the U.S. want Germany to be more like them and not so exporty; apparently Obama listened: Obama subsequently announced his plan to address the problem with people losing their plans; and it once claimed my campus paper would "misspell FMLN": The Onion did, indeed, begin as a coupon-supported humor paper on the UW-Madison campus, where The Badger Herald was occasionally typo-plagued.