Comment us with either your prediction or your favorite prediction made by someone else. Keep 'em short and sweet. We'll pull the best up into the post with full attribution. Local, national, international, intergalactic...all topics are fair. Let the game begin!

My "favorite by someone else" entry:

"MY BIG PREDICTION FOR 2006: Some big celebrity couple will meet, get engaged, married, have a baby and get divorced all within the calendar year 2006. Bonus points if they're Scientologists. Double bonus points if they're gay. Triple bonus points if they're gay Scientologists (though some would say that's a redundancy)." John Podhoretz at NRO's The Corner.

UPDATE: One of Mark Steyn's predictions backs up our commenter Bob H.:

Hollywood will have another bad year following the failure of its latest critically-acclaimed masterpiece. In "Broke Bank Mountin'", the entire movie industry is flying in a jet to New York when a terrorist stewardess announces she's crushing their dissent by crashing the plane into the Empire State Building. Fortunately, an unemployed giant gorilla from Animal Equity is rampaging around at the top of the tower after his film career tanked when he agreed to take a challenging role in which he played the world's first gay giant gorilla and answers a personal ad in the Village Voice from a plus-sized bear. The enraged ape reaches into the sky and picks up the plane, sending the terrorist stewardess tumbling to the back of coach, where her wig falls off and she's revealed to be Dick Cheney. Industry insiders will be taken aback by the $300-million multi-Oscar-nominated flop but have high hopes for the new Spielberg movie "Cycle Of Violence" starring Nicole Kidman and Kate Winslet as Israeli and Palestinian unicyclists who elope after the Cirque du Soleil opening ceremony at the Italian Olympics.

Read the rest of the NRO Symposium predictions via Mr. Steyn's link above. Ned Rice's work is the most consistently funny:

"More gloomy economic news for President Bush as thousands of unemployment offices are forced to close."

And the best of our entries so far is from our own Portia:

Oil prices will go up, and down, and up, and down, and Bill O'Reilly will say it is all because of him.

There is an interesting debate on the Constitutionality of public schools over at Extreme Wisdom.

Apparently, we here at this little blog have gotten a mention from Paul Burka in the current issue of Texas Monthly. We may have to post again before the end of the year.

Details when I get them.

UPDATE: We did get a mention! And they even provided the URL! Congrats, though, to our very own commenter "a&mgrad" who really got the mention for one of his comments rather than *cough* one of our fine and insightful posts.

Megan McArdle on income redistribution and happiness:

Everyone buys expensive goods in order to signal their status to the community, but because status is a zero-sum game--one person must lose status in order for another to gain it--these are wasted activity from the point of view of the group; there is no net gain in happiness from all that expenditure.

I thought seeing all of the new Benzes and Porsches and Corvettes running around town and huge new houses going up would make me happier. I guess not! Actually, McArdle's post is not about that so much as it is about government making the decisions on where your income should go. I don't agree with a few points, but she will get you to think. Great stuff! Read the whole thing.

Another developing crisis for Midland:

Midland continues to post strong employment numbers

November labor market figures, said Robert Crawley, labor market analyst with the commission in Austin, indicated Midland was showing some stabilization with little change in labor force, employed and unemployed residents. The slight uptick from October, he said, was due to the agency's calculations.

"There was essentially no change," he said, noting the labor force rose by 100 workers, sending the number of employed Midlanders up by 100 and unemployed little changed from October.

"The story to talk about," Crawley said, "is the year-over-year change. The Midland area has done quite well in job creation. The economy seems to be stabilized and exhibiting rather broad-based job growth over the last 12 months."

What are we to do? How will the Midland Development Corporation, Downtown Midland and our 3 (three) Chambers of Commerce continue? It seems that a strong economy begats job growth, not specious tax incentives, kickbacks, free buildings/office space and well compensated consultants doing feasability studies. Surprise.

A blurb on the front page of the MaRT today reads: "Coming Sunday: The Reporter-Telegram begins a three day series looking at Midland's growth and prosperity in 2005. From record oil prices and increased spending to employee shortages, tight housing markets and infrastructure concerns, the report examines what all this means for our city and its residents."

I can't wait. More from our city planners and the above mentioned tax-supported business development groups on what they have done to increase the employment base this past year. Joy.

UPDATE:

Proposed rule change may limit availability of toxic emissions

Oh no! What if we need more not less? If their availability is limited, a crisis could develop! We all know that increasing levels of toxic emissions are key to our growing economy!

Or maybe the headline writer did not read the article. Again.

Rule changes proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce paperwork could also reduce the amount of information available to the public regarding the level of toxins emitted by several companies.

Hint: Read article. Discuss with author, if available. Think. Then, write headline.

Houston is a tough place to try and keep up with things Midland, especially things that would have (or not have) shown up in the local paper. My due diligence has been spotty, but I am pretty sure that we have not been treated to a report on the second full year of operations for the EZ Rider bus system.

I remember a report a while back that told of increased ridership numbers due to the high cost of gasoline but that is the last I recall.

The Reporter-Telegram did a great article a year ago that provided a lot of information on the cost/expense side of the story which showed that fares only covered about 6% of expenses. We did some rudimentary analysis that showed that if ridership doubled and expenses were held constant then fares would then still only cover about 12% of all expenses.

I think ridership is up but I don't think it has doubled. And we all know that expenses did not stay constant. After all, EZ Rider needs gasoline/diesel to operate the buses.

So what do the numbers show in Year 2 of operations? It would be interesting to find out. Last year's MRT article was dated October 20, 2004, so the total financial picture for Year 2 would be available from the authorities.

My personal theory? Ridership went up but was more than offset by an increase in expenses and that fares now cover even less a percentage of total expenses than a year ago.

Last year, every trip taken on an EZ Rider bus cost the taxpayers just under $7.

Had this number dropped, the marketing arm of EZ Rider would have splashed the numbers everywhere. No mention of Year 2's performance tells me that my theory is likely to be correct.

Is BR going Buh Bye?

ConocoPhillips is in advanced talks to purchase oil and gas producer Burlington Resources for more than $30 billion, people familiar with the matter say.

From a WSJ Online e-mail news alert this evening. If true, and the deal closes, what are the chances COP keeps BR's Midland office open? The Oil Company Ghetto on the Katy Freeway may be getting a little more crowded next year...

Bill O'Reilly is a total freakin' idiot.

CAVUTO: Okay. Gas prices are down a lot. Why do you think that is?

O'REILLY: Because they're afraid they'll go to jail. And those C.E.O.s who manipulated them-

CAVUTO: Why are you sure that they manipulated them?

O'REILLY: I have guys that are inside the five major oil companies - my father used to work for one of those oil companies, by the way - who have told me that in those meetings they look for every way to jack up oil prices after Katrina, every way. When they didn't have to. And they got scared because in my reporting and some other reporting, they said-

CAVUTO: Wait, you're taking credit for gas prices being down?

O'REILLY: My reporting and reporting of others.

CAVUTO: Has nothing to do with refineries that came back online or the crisis calmed after the hurricanes?

O'REILLY: The demand for oil in this country is the same now as it was one day after Hurricane Katrina. It's the same. Selling the same amount of gas and oil.

CAVUTO: But the supply has increased, right?

O'REILLY: The supply has increased? Who knows.

CAVUTO: And it's traded like a stock, correct?

O'REILLY: It's traded by speculation, and the bottom line is they were afraid of a federal investigation and they said-

CAVUTO: I think you're crazy, but you're right on the Christmas, but wrong on this.

So let me get this straight: O'Reilly has access to proof that the major oil companies are controlling prices in order to gouge consumers....probably the biggest story since Watergate if he can prove it....but he chooses to let it die with the fallback of oil prices rather than continuing to report on it? Sure, Bill, whatever you say.

This is why Cavuto handles the business news and O'Reilly handles the spitting matches on the television. O'Reilly probably has no idea that Cavuto, with his three last questions, was completely stripping O'Reilly naked on national television.

Cavuto's next step? Get O'Reilly's father on as an interview (if he is still living) and make a big note of it every day he doesn't agree to the interview.

How strange that journalists pontificate post facto about all the mistakes that they think have been made, nevertheless conceding that here we are on the verge of a third and final successful election. No mention, of course, is ever made about the current sorry state of journalistic ethics and incompetence (cf. Jayson Blair, Judy Miller, Michael Isikoff, Bob Woodward, Eason Jordan). A group of professionals, after all, who cannot even be professional in their own sphere, surely have no credibility in lecturing the U.S. military about what they think went wrong in Iraq.

Victor Davis Hanson on Iraq, from NRO on Friday. He piles on the White House thusly:

Of course, the White House, as is true in all wars, has made mistakes, but only one critical lapse - and it is not the Herculean effort to establish a consensual government at the nexus of the Middle East in less than three years after removing Saddam Hussein. The administration's lapse, rather, has come in its failure to present the entire war effort in its proper moral context.

Emphasis mine. Well, maybe that's not quite piling on.

We are winning a very difficult and unprecedented war, setting up a country long a dictatorship to become a true democracy. The next round of elections is coming up fast and by all reliable accounts, should be successful. Bombs still explode. Civilians and troops are still injured and killed on a too frequent basis. But that frequency is dropping and the Iraqi troops are picking up more of the load each day.

The Administration needs to continue what it seems to have just started: talking about/selling the war again, on moral terms, discussing America's clear successes. The American public is tired of the nay-sayers and anti-American spin of the MSM. As Hanson points out, why should anyone believe them anymore? Their credibility on the war is zero.

And VDH points out another interesting twist to the story:

Europe is quiet now. Madrid, London, Paris, and Amsterdam have taught Europeans that it is not George Bush but Islamic fascism that threatens their very existence. Worse still, they rightly fear they have lost the good will of the United States that so generously subsidized their defense - an entitlement perhaps to be sneered at during the post-Cold War "end of history," but not in a new global war against Islamic terrorists keen to acquire deadly weapons.

Emphasis mine again. This will be a long war. But the upper hand is held currently by the US and the forces of freedom and democracy. We cannot afford to lose the upper hand.

"In all my years in politics, I've never sensed such anger and frustration from our volunteers - those who do the hard work of door to door mobilization that Republican candidates depnd on to get elected. Across the nation, wherever I go to speak with them, their refrain is the same: 'I can't tell a dime's worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.' Our base rightly expects Republicans to govern by the principles - lower taxes, less government and more freedom - that got them elected. Today, with Republicans controlling both the legislative and executive branches of the federal government, there is a widening credibility gap between their rhetoric and their public policies."

Just another sorehead "aginner", I suppose, who can't see the obvious value of government spending be it welfare checks to individuals in the name of compassion or welfare checks to big business to further "economic development".

In this particular case, though, the sorehead aginner is former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. The quote is from his Wall Street Journal column of November 29, 2005 (Page A18). (Hat Tip to bob for the article find.)

On that same page is an article from Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) taking a hard line on Iraq and why our troops must stay until the job is finished.

If enough Democrats start talking like Joe Lieberman and enough Republicans ignore Dick Armey's warnings, the Republicans will quickly lose control of either the Senate or the House. Or both.

Let's be frank. The Republicans are no more interested in (or at least no more in control of) limiting the expansion of government than are the Democrats. Thankfully for the GOP, most of the Democratic leadership is made up of lefty barking moonbats that the public very rightly senses can't be trusted with national security.

This same problem of rhetoric not matching public policy goes on at the local level also....with much criticism directed at "those big spenders in Washington"....sandwiched (metaphorically, at least) between two photo ops, one announcing the receipt of federal funds (Great job, Kay, John, and Mike!) for interactive water fountains and the other announcing the transfer of taxpayer funds into the pockets of private business owners in the name of economic development.