In today’s edition: people actually bought cars, we just paid for a lot of bonuses, and the Iranian fight goes on.

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The U.S. government’s initiative to get people back into buying cars and getting gas guzzlers off the road, the “Cash for Clunkers” plan, has been a tremendous success.  It’s been so much of a success, it looks like the program might already be over:

The White House said Thursday it was reviewing the government’s popular “cash for clunkers” program amid concerns the $1 billion budget for rebates for new auto purchases may have been exhausted in only a week.Transportation Department officials called lawmakers’ offices earlier Thursday to alert them of plans to suspend the program as early as Friday. But a White House official said later the program had not been suspended and officials there were assessing their options.

The White House said auto dealers and consumers should have confidence that transactions under the program that already have taken place would be honored.

Offering up to $4,500 per gas guzzling clunker turned in, that means that somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 cars may have been sold from this program alone – all of which coming in the past week.  While that alone might not be enough to unclog the auto inventory glut that has exasperated the tremendous economic problems facing the industry, it will at least go a long way in helping to unclog the system, and perhaps even get auto companies into strategies that involve making and selling cars – not figuring out how to get rid of so much inventory (since production has already been greatly scaled back).  Just another small success that will likely go under reported and be overshadowed by forced race debates.

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The next time you take a look at your pay stub (if you are fortunate enough to be employed), check how much in taxes you’ve paid, and then settle into your chair as you realize that at least a portion of that amount has gone toward this:

Citigroup Inc., one of the biggest recipients of government bailout money, gave employees $5.33 billion in bonuses for 2008, New York’s attorney general said Thursday in a report detailing the payouts by nine big banks.The report from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office focused on 2008 bonuses paid to the initial nine banks that received loans under the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program last fall. Cuomo has joined other government officials in criticizing the banks for paying out big bonuses while accepting taxpayer money.

That’s $5.33 billion of reward for a year that Citigroup that lost $18.7 billion in the same time period.  You’d think logic would be nice enough here to tell those running Citigroup that they could have trimmed their annual losses to $13.37 billion just by not paying the bonuses.  No, however, because in the end the people who failed so badly… they need their rewards, too.

$5.33 billion, by the way, would pay the average yearly earnings of 186,579 Americans ($28,567, 2006 data).  According to Citigroup, at least 738 employees were given a bonus of $1 million or more.

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The band is playing on in Iran, still, with a defiant and emboldened opposition, still rallying around their martyr of the rebellion, Neda Agh-Soltan:

Security forces in Iran on Thursday confronted thousands of protesting Iranians across the city, first at a cemetery and later at a prayer venue and near a government building, witnesses and news reports said.

Clashes erupted at the cemetery as two of Iran’s main opposition leaders tried to join the several thousand people at a memorial for the slain woman who became the symbol of Iran’s post-election violence, witnesses said.

The gathering was banned, but participants ignored the government strictures.

Iran has, and probably will for the near future, remain in a state of political flux – with the outside world not really knowing how to take or trust the current government of the nation at any given time.  What is the real Iran?  Is it the relics of the Revolution still trying to hold on to power?  Is it Ahmadinejad and his near dictatorial behavior?  Is it the Revolutionary Guard itself playing everyone else as puppets?  Is it the street force that has united behind Moussavi?  Will this truly go somewhere or will it just fade quietly, over time?