Reviewing Last Year's Predictions

Time for that trip through last year's crystal ball to see how well we did.

• Politics - Local - a continuing series of low level indictments. We've been hoping for more years than we've been running this blog that something big will break, but we are always disappointed. This year, we'll aim low.

Result? Not too much on the local political scene in the indictment sense. We smell blood in the water and hopefully the feds do, too. Who knows what Blago will spin about the Machine.

• Politics - State - Someone big indicted. Blago or Mrs. Blago. And if the media did it's job, it will have a big impact on Obama's future as well.

Result? We guess we called this one 100% on the money. Including the part where the media didn't do its job and as a result, we have a president-elect with pretty much the thinnest and most questionable resume in history.

• Politics - National and International - Hillary has already gone negative and it's cost her. Obama is running pretty well, but has too many skeletons if the media would just look for them. Edwards? Let's face it - the presidential race on BOTH sides is looking truly grim. Everything else? Same as 2007 - the more it changes, the more it stays the same.

Result? McCain ran a crappy campaign and was not the candidate the Republicans should have fielded. Hillary snarked her way into oblivion, Obama's skeletons remained hidden by the media and Edwards blew up in a political fireball not seen since Gary Hart and Monkey Business. America is the loser in this election.

• Sports - continuing mediocrity everywhere with the notable exception of the Blackhawks. With Bill Wirtz out of the picture and and the Hawks on free TV, we've seen our first consecutive sellouts in a few years or more. A few right moves and the Hawks are playoff bound like the old days and competing for the Cup in 3 years.

Result? We'll call this one another homer for us. Hey? We're grading it. We'll grade it on the curve if we have to. We expect the playoffs like the Blackhawks expect to win. And we'll wait the three years if we have to.

• Department - The Chinese proverb states "May you live in interesting times." Let's just say we're hoping for really really interesting this year from the new Supe and not so interesting changes as the SOS and other scandals wind down finally. Manpower continues to suffer.

Result? We really ought to charge for the prediction in 2008. This was a pretty damn amusing year at times and at other times, we wanted to pull out what remains of our poor gray hair. We sense more of the same in 2009.

• General - global warming continues to not impact anything except Al Gore's bottom line; the economy continues to chug along, never spectacular but not a massive downturn either; illegal immigration continues to drain resources; and no one really cares.

Results? Global warming has become "climate change" which is a polite way of saying, "Oops, sorry, we don't know what next year is going to bring, let alone 50 years from today." Gore continues to get rich off smoke and mirrors and flawed science, so we can call that a win for us. We, along with most of the world, didn't think the housing market would tank, credit would tighten and oil would drop to $37 a barrel, so that's a loss. And the only drain illegal immigration is having nowadays is the population - the number of illegals fleeing back over the borders because of the economy is pretty high.

In our opinion, we did a bit better than last year, but not as good as two years ago. We've got a separate post up for 2009 predictions.