Looking Forward

It's time for everyone and their brother to make predictions. Have you met my brother?

1) Next year's Burlington Liar's Club winner won't be near as lame as this year's.

2) Scott Walker will feud with his County Board. Bloggers will step up to defend both sides. Neither side deserves their efforts.

3) Jess McBride will piss off the Brawler 3 days out of 5.

4) The Observer will remain our one best source for City news until the new Evansville website is up and running. Then the Observer will be the better of two.

5) November will find us wondering when the troops will start to leave Iraq. With poll numbers in the high 20's GWB will tell us that protecting the last 4 buildings in Baghdad is a mission whose success we haven't seen yet.

6) Dan Wietecha will be greeted as a conquering hero until the first budget cycle. After that his dog won't look him in the eye for two months. He will not deserve the grief he'll get from the city or his pooch.

7) Flyin' Jim Sensennbrenner will propose building a wall around Aurora HealthCare. Just because he can.

8) Riverboat gambling won't come to 6th and Vision in 2007. Neither will a dry collector.

9) Scott Jensen will lose on appeal. Mark Green will lose on appeal. The cranberry guy will lose on appeal. JB van Hollen will claim that injured consumers are clogging our courts.

10) William Jefferson will resign to spend more time with his family.

11) Tom Delay won't start posting to his own blog.

12) Bill Hammann will miss public life until the first time Melissa comes home after a contentious School Board meeting. Thanks, Bill for your hard work.

13) When a Progressive finally does declare candidacy for Mayor of Madison even the Democrats will be disappointed in who it is.

14) The backlog at the Crime Lab will be two days longer in December 2007 than it is today. Jim Doyle and JBvH will blame each other.

15) The Tommy Train will never get past the Des Moines station.

16) Mitt Romney drops out soon after that.

17) The City will wind up owning a lot more of the Value Store project than we want.

18) Building permits for new construction will triple in 2007 in Evansville. 60% will be for multi-family dwellings.

19) Paul Ryan will have a diving board installed on his campaign vault so he can dive into the surplus like Scrooge McDuck until the 1st District Dems can field a real candidate.

20) No TABOR. No Conceal and Carry. No school funding reform. No real ethics reform. No kidding. Some of this is too easy to write.

Happy New Year anyway.