Don’t look now but here comes 2024

Wait a minute! What was that that just blew by me? It looks like 2023, but it has gone so fast I hardly saw it. Okay, I know we have a few days left in the year, but by the time I write this and you read it, it will probably be July. Or at least it seems that way.

I remember sitting in Ms. Bolton’s fifth grade class at S.R. Young in College Park and thinking the school day would never end. The day began around 8 a.m. as I recall, and several eons later we would have morning recess, go back inside and wait another eon or two for lunch. Then more hours would drag by until afternoon recess, followed by a few more eons, and then finally the school day would be over, only to be repeated the next day. Today? Whoosh!

Maybe it is just as well that time flies these days. About the best thing I can say for 2023 is that we have survived it (as of this writing.) Ironically, we may look back on these days fondly when we are neck deep in 2024. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that it is a (shudder!) presidential election year.

I have been around the political block more than a few times, but I don’t ever recall a presidential election where both major candidates are two old codgers with approval ratings currently in the mid-40s. This is the best we can do?

I won’t make any predictions on who will win in November, which in political terms is a couple of light years away. Besides, people still remind me of my prediction that there was no way an obscure Republican state senator from Bonaire would ever beat the Democratic incumbent in the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial election. We all know how that turned out.

But does this deter your intrepid scribe from buffing up the ol’ crystal ball and boldly looking into the future? Need you ask? Danger is my middle name. (Actually, Richard is my middle name but I am trying to make a point here.)

Note: These predictions are the property of the Yarbrough Worldwide Media and Pest Control Company, located in Greater Garfield, Georgia. Any rebroadcast, retransmissions, pictures, descriptions or accounts without the expressed written consent of general manager Junior E. Lee, a highly-regarded media maven and certified pest control professional is strictly prohibited. In fact, I wouldn’t suggest you bothering Junior at the moment. I am told he is busy poking around in Aunt Flossie Felmer’s drawers. He claims he is looking for fire ants. I wonder.

In 2024, I predict that the five members of the Georgia Public Service Commission will announce they’ve had a change of heart and instead of making customers pay $7.5 billion for Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle cost overruns, they will absorb the cost themselves through a payroll deduction plan. “It’s only fair,” their press release will say, “we are the ones that mismanaged the project along with Georgia Power, not the rate payers.” The cost to each commissioner will come to $1.5 billion. Or $125 million per month. Georgia Power will agree to help the commissioners absorb the costs.

I predict that Vice President Kamala Harris will return Donald Trump’s $6,000 he donated to her reelection campaign as California attorney general, saying she thought it had come from Donald Duck, not Donald Trump. Trump will blame the whole embarrassing situation on the law clerk in his civil fraud case in New York. Georgia election conspiracists will blame Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

I predict that the Food and Drug Administration will declare that anything green such as broccoli, asparagus and English peas – but not collards and green beans cooked in bacon grease – could be hazard to your health and prescribe banana pudding as the only possible cure.

I predict that the University of Georgia, the oldest state-chartered university in the nation, will once again win the national football championship in 2024 while adding more Rhodes Scholars to the 25 or so we already have. (There have been so many, I’ve lost count.) On the outside chance I am wrong about the national championship and the Rhodes Scholars, I predict we will still be the oldest statechartered university in the nation. Take that to the bank.

Finally, I predict that by the time I finish writing this and you finish reading it, it could be July 2024. Times flies when you are having fun.

You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@dickyarbrough.com or at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.