The Dean's wish list for 2005. Not a bad one. - And here's to hoping your wishes for 2005 come true.

At a most appropriate time, the Dean shares his 2005 wish list. I can understand the Dean realistically being hopeful on most everything on his list except the last one.

The Dean often engages in tongue-in-cheek, and when from time to time such goes right over the heads of some of his readers, they get upset with him, real upset.

I don't know if the Dean was engaging in such when he penned the last item on this list or if, by the time he was about through with his column, he was finishing a refreshing glass of holiday eggnog, spiked with some fine bourbon with just a dash of some freshly ground nutmeg courtesy of lovely wife Reny.

Why do I say such?

The last item on the Dean's wish list is "Gov. Sonny Perdue will prove his critics wrong. He will do something."

Because while all good Georgians would appreciate their Governor actually doing something, we have an enigma here with this Governor.

We know he is a Do-Nothing Governor who hasn't done anything; we assume he wants to remain a Do-Nothing Governor who won't do anything; but we don't know if this Do-Nothing Governor, assuming he ever wanted to do anything, could do anything.

Thus how could Shipp hope the man can do something that the man might be incapable of doing.

You know what I mean, don't ya? Sort of like how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. We know the woodchuck can't chuck wood. We don't know whether Sonny can chuck. Can you chuck Sonny? If you can, I'm with the Dean. Start chucking.

But still we don't know if he can. Thus I remain undecided -- with the Dean, was it tongue-in-cheek or the eggnog?

Heck, truth be told, I'm getting all mixed up myself. Sally, how about a little eggnog.
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Maybe next year -- In 2005, here’s some news to look forward to

By Bill Shipp

Looking for some good news? You have come to the right place. As 2004 fades into the ages and 2005 begins, there may be plenty to celebrate, even in politics.In some ways, the nascent 2005 offers more hope than any year since 2000. The terrible events of Sept. 11 knocked the breath out of us for a while. But we seem to be recovering.

Sure, gloom and doom still dominate the headlines. With a little luck, however, those clouds may evaporate.

So let’s cross our fingers and hope that:

-- Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss is right, that the Iraqi elections will turn out OK, and we can begin to scale down our military presence in the Middle East. Chambliss recently visited Iraq and said he was encouraged by what he saw. He returned to Washington just in time to be appointed Senate Agriculture Committee chairman. With only two years’ service in the Senate, Chambliss is on his way to restoring the reins of power to Georgia’s congressional delegation. Chambliss’ chairmanship ought to be a good omen for even better things ahead on the federal front.

-- In his role as an analyst and employee of Fox News, former Sen. Zell Miller will bring a new level of decency to Rupert Murdoch’s empire. With his recently acquired credentials as a crusader for moral values, Miller can serve as a beacon for higher standards and less smut on Murdoch’s airwaves and cable outlets.

-- Georgia’s new senator, Johnny Isakson, will find the Senate less distasteful than Miller did. Isakson won’t bother to take his dueling pistols to Washington.

-- Former Sen. Max Cleland, the tireless campaigner for fellow Vietnam vet John Kerry, will land an important job outside government and politics.

-- Both Republican-dominated chambers of the Legislature will usher in a new era of unity as well as urgency to dealing with the state’s major problems: health care, education, transportation, water supply, economic development and runaway immigration.** State Senate leaders Eric Johnson and Bill Stephens have the experience and brain power to set an example for more cooperation and less nuttiness for the neophyte House leaders.

-- The Legislature will finally approve the new city of Sandy Springs.
The state will abandon the outrageous idea of turning Ga. 316 into a privatized tollway.

-- Georgia’s Democratic Party will right itself to become solidly competitive once more. Congressmen Jim Marshall of Macon and John Barrow of Athens will emerge as leading lights in a reinvigorated party. The freshly organized legislative rural caucus will restrain some of the over-the-top impulses of urban-suburban carpetbaggers of both parties.

-- Few Georgia military installations will appear on the government’s hit list as the federal base-closing commission prepares to make its final recommendations.

-- Georgia’s unemployment rate will continue to drop. New industries with better-paying jobs will locate here. More Chinese businessmen will begin showing up in Georgia in search of economic opportunities. Fewer Georgia jobs will be shifted to China — and India, Singapore and the Philippines.*

-- Air travel will become fun again, but cell phones will remain banned on scheduled airlines.

-- Coca-Cola shares will rise to $50 and more.

-- Georgia high school students will finally break out of the cellar in rankings of national SAT scores.

-- The Atlanta Falcons, enjoying one of their best seasons ever, will make it to the Super Bowl. Michael Vick, the Falcons’ indispensable Golden Boy, will survive another season without major injury. With its pitching staff overhauled, the Atlanta Braves will go to the World Series. The Georgia Bulldogs will ignore the return of Coach Steve Spurrier to the SEC (as South Carolina coach) and rack up another string of victories, including a romp over Spurrier’s Gamecocks.

-- Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin will win an easy re-election victory and continue the work of bringing order out of chaos to our capital. Lisa Borders will return as City Council president.

-- Former State School Superintendent Linda Schrenko will avoid prison time. (Wouldn’t it be sad if the first woman elected to a statewide executive office in Georgia finished her career behind bars?)

-- The Legislature will adopt a constitutional amendment to create an appointed (instead of elected) post of state school superintendent.

-- Gov. Sonny Perdue will prove his critics wrong. He will do something.
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* And from the Other Georgia, we add Brazil to the Dean's list of countries. In 1995 Tecumseh Products Co. spent $40 million on an engine and carburetor plant that employed 550 workers in a 317,000 square foot facility in Douglas, many of the workers coming from adjacent counties.

Shortly before the following noted decision was made, Tecumseh announced it was expanding to 800 employees, and that the Douglas facility was its best plant -- worker and production wise -- in America.

Then last year Tecumseh decided that with the difference in labor costs, it made financial sense to close the Douglas operation and move it to Brazil, which it did, spending $55 million on a new plant in Brazil.
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** And we know this issue also needs some attention on the federal level, and it cries out for a bipartisan solution. Each time President Bush talks about immigration reform, he makes it clearer that as a former governor of Texas, he understands this issue on a personal level. At his year-end press conference last week, Mr. Bush talked about enforcing the nation's borders while showing the "compassionate heart of the American people" to those coming for work. He talked about keeping out smugglers and drug runners, while letting in those who will take the jobs that Americans won't take. He noted that these immigrants were coming over the border to put food on their tables and that they wanted to be able to go back home, then return to work in the United States.

"Family values do not stop at the Rio Grande river," he reminded the members of his own party who are already rising up against him on this issue. And, finally, he said he was "passionate" about changing the immigration laws in his second term.

President Bush also recognized that many Hispanics voted for him this year. But change won't come easy. Already the noisiest opponents of immigration reform, most of them Republicans, have started pounding their tambourines. (The leader of one anti-immigrant group denounced Mr. Bush as a "lame duck" shortly after the newly re-elected president put immigration on his priority list.) Meanwhile, the Democrats are eyeing the talk of Republican immigration reform warily.

Immigration reform will take time, and the longer it takes, the more illegal immigrants will stream into the country. Estimates have grown from about eight million, when the president first began promising a reform plan, to about 10 million today. If President Bush wants to tackle a huge problem that cries out for a bipartisan solution, he could not have picked a better target.

(Primary source: 12-29-04 New York Times editorial.)