Editor's column: The top news stories of the coming year

Anyone can review what happened in 2008, so we’ll break with tradition and look back at what happened the following year, 2009.

• Gov. Chris Gregoire, winking at her Democratic colleagues, renewed her pledge not to raise taxes despite the fact the projected deficit had increased to $20 zillion next biennium. To save money, she said all foster children and prisoners would be released and the state would euthanize orca whales, so it would no longer have to spend money trying to save them.

• Defying their governor, Democratic legislators went ahead and raised taxes, forcing the governor to smile for the first time in two years.

• Oak Harbor’s can-do mayor, Jim Slowik, fixed the Highway 20 mess, built the pier, erected a new water tower, completed a new sewer plant and built a new stormwater collection system, all in the first six months of his second year in office. He stepped down in July, saying his job was finished.

• The Island County Commissioners, entirely Democratic for the first time in history, declared the whole county a critical wetland and ruled that anyone who wanted to do anything would have to do it in Okanogan County.

• On the national level, Senate Republicans filibustered a plan by President Barack Obama to bring peace to the world, saying it would decimate the defense industry which was the only industry left in America.

• The Obama sisters appeared on the Hannah Montana show, started their own musical group and posed for a photo spread in Vanity Fair.

• Iran erected a huge statue of President Bush in Tehran as a way to say “thanks for giving us Iraq.”

• NASA ended the Space Shuttle program, selling the entire fleet to Island Transit for $1, which planned to convert them to buses and run them fare-free up and down Whidbey Island.

•To appease Republicans in the Senate, President Obama went ahead and brought peace to the world but declared war on the Andromeda Galaxy, assuring survival of the defense industry. To his surprise, the aliens attacked.

• Hundreds of Whidbey Island fishermen were found frozen in place on the beach, having futilely waited for the humpies who for the first time ever did not return in an odd-numbered year.

• The Legislature, concerned that people were ignoring the law against talking on their cell phones while driving, set the penalty at $1 per word, thereby solving the budget crisis.

• China announced it has completed its purchase of the United States, which would become a huge destination resort for affluent Asians.

• Americans organized on YouTube, grabbed their guns, revved up their SUV’s, and drove the Chinese out, except for Washington, D.C., which they were allowed to keep.

• Civil
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• Free of profanity

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