Well, the holidays are over and New Year has begun so let’s get back down to business. Here are the 2009 predictions - in no particular order:

• The economy has not yet reached rock bottom. More dislocations will occur in 2009; more bubbles will burst; credit cards and further home mortgage problems come to mind; and more scandalous behavior will be revealed - from Wall Street to Washington DC.

• The world economy will follow our’s and plummet to the worst degree since the 1930s.

• We may not begin the long climb back upward for several years to come.

• Politically the economy is everything in 2009 - and will be the main focus of the Obama Administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress; all other legislative activity will be put on the Back Burner until there is an up-tick in the national economy;

• President Obama will prove to be boringly staid when it comes to bold economic initiatives such as suspending the capital gains tax for 3-5 years; instead he will opt for traditional Democratic spending measures, i.e. “Infrastructure” repair and new roads and bridges; these measures will do nothing to juice an ailing economy or to hire people - especially in the short-run;

• Obama will also expand the federal Government’s payroll - as if that is a cure for what ails the American economy; his team will boast of new “jobs” but that is a false statistic; the real stat is new private sector jobs - and we are hemorrhaging those jobs monthly right now;

• Obama will not be blamed for the continuing - or worsening - economy for his first year in office. But by the end of 2009 the economy becomes his - for better or worse;

• He will have a substantial honeymoon; there will be a world-wide collective sigh of relief once G.W. Bush is out of office; in fact, once Bush leaves DC, we will not see or hear from him for several months. He will not be able to sell his memoirs either. His lecture appearances will be few and far between.

• It will be Jeb Bush who will be the Bush most in the news in 2009 as he contemplates a US Senate run in 2010; and Jeb’s presence - yet another Bush! - will bedevil the GOP for years to come;

• If Jeb then tries to run for President in 2012 or 2016, it will divide the GOP; true conservatives will never again accept another Bush - so the conservatives will fight it out to settle on one candidate to stop the Bushes from yet again seizing control of the GOP;

• There will be more of the usual political scandals in DC - and in Cook County - but none will even touch Barack Obama;

• Instead, what will take Obama down a notch will be a combination of his heretofore un-reported personal hubris and his total inexperience in national and international affairs;

• His collection of his own Team of Rivals is a sign of his personal acknowledgment that he really is unprepared to be President - so he hired everyone else who ran for the job, figuring that all he has to do is to manage these people and some how, some way their will find the right answers;

• Hillary will be a loyal soldier - for a while; but before the first year is over she and/or her husband will be revealed to be out for themselves; so what else is new? Believe this: they still have their eyes on returning to the White House;

• Blago will not go down easily; he will be governor for at least another 5 months; and he may not go even then; and if and when he is forced to leave, he will try to take some Big Names down with him as negotiating leverage;

• Harry Reid will be seen as a total dope, a fool and an idiot;

• Caroline Kennedy - despite a myriad of reasons not to be appointed to Hillary’s Senate seat - including the fact that she cannot string three words together without inserting a “You know” and an “um” and that she has never shown any interest in matters of state nor has she donated money or even bothered to vote in half the elections over the past 20 years - will in fact be named by Governor David Paterson as soon as Hillary resigns her seat. This will be a disgraceful appointment - if made - and will undermine Paterson’s heretofore ‘independent’ image; in other words, the fix is in;

• Charles O’Byrne, the defrocked gay Catholic priest who didn’t file his taxes for 5 years and who has been an intimate of both the Kennedys and David Paterson, is the key intermediary - and after the appointment is made this connection will again be revealed;

• Bernard Madoff will try some sort of insanity/mental illness defense. And it won’t work.

• More than the reported $50 Billion will be the final total in this Madoff Ponzi scheme.

• And others were in the “know.”

• And some more Big Names will yet surface as victims - they are desperately trying to hide as it is embarrassing to reveal how stupid these supposedly-smart investors were;

• As for Wall Street, we have not heard the end of their malfeasance and incompetence; more revelations are to come about disgusting financial remunerations even after the massive taxpayer funded bailouts;

• The New York Giants will - for the second year in a row - win the Super Bowl;

• A prominent cable TV host will be revealed as having an ongoing affair.

• 2009 will be some year!

If the Kennedy Mystique and Money do not overwhelm New York Governor David Paterson and convince him to appoint Caroline Kennedy to fill out the remaining two years of Hillary’s term, a gay, disgraced, former Catholic priest will.

(Former) Father Charles O’Byrne is the hidden player in this saga who will broker this deal.

How?

O’Byrne is unusually close to both the Kennedy Family and Governor Paterson. In fact, he was the New York Governor’s Chief of Staff (entitled Secretary in New York political parlance) for the past year until it was revealed that he had not filed tax returns for five years. That scandal forced him from the job amid revelations of “chronic depression” and cash payments to gay lovers. But he remains an extraordinarily influential Paterson adviser.

O’Byrne also has served as an “inside spiritual adviser” to the Kennedy Family for years - and conducted several weddings for them.

This behnd-the-scenes two-way connection is the real reason Governor Paterson will appoint Caroline to the Senate.

It is, of course, a total farce that she would even be considered for this Senate seat.

Despite the spin that she has been involved in issues for years, the plain fact of the matter is that she has been a Park Avenue Society Mother and Wife - and has had nada to do with any public issues.

If her name was just Caroline Schlossberg - which it used to be but that married name has suddenly disappeared - with the exact same resume, who would possibly think she could be appointed to this soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat?

Ironically, Hillary Clinton’s ascendancy to this seat in 2000 actually helps Caroline by creating a recent precedent for a liberal female rookie to parachute into New York State - replete with instant entourage and a pre-packaged Listening Tour. Already Caroline has started traveling to foreign lands (for her) - upstate New York - and is surrounded by aides and handlers with one assignment: do not let her suffer the fate of the mouthy Sarah Palin and thus talk herself into trouble.

Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo will see this circus this week.

And all along you can bet that Team Paterson is watching and waiting - for a mistake or a reason not to pick her. Paterson - who has not yet been elected statewide on his own - is acutely aware that in this deteriorating economy he could rapidly be blamed by an angry electorate for the rotten condition of the New York State economy. And, even though today it seems unimaginable, it is possible the New York State GOP could re-appear out of somewhere and field a candidate to take him on in 2008.

So, Paterson has to be seeing that a Kennedy-Paterson ticket in 2010 is almost un-beatable.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called Paterson and urged him to appoint Caroline. Obviously President-Elect Obama owes Caroline Big Time for her timely endorsement last winter and her Veep Selection work.

Paterson - and New York - need federal money pored into the state as the Wall Street Melt-Down has deprived the State and City of billions in tax revenue. Who better to go to Reid and Obama and plead for it than Caroline Kennedy?

On the other side of the ledger, Paterson is hearing from every other Democratic politician in New York - and they are all aghast at the thought of this dilettante cutting the line and getting this plum job.

State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the son of the former Governor - and a former first cousin by marriage of Caroline’s - is the other most prominent name rumored for this Senate slot.

There are also several female Representatives and up-staters who want the job.

If Paterson picks Caroline - yes, it will help him get re-elected/elected in 2010 - but it will infuriate virtually every elected Democrat in the state.

So Paterson will wait a while for Hillary to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate - sometime in late January or early February. She will then resign the Senate seat. And Paterson will have to make his decision.

Does he deny the Kennedys - and Harry Reid - and Barack Obama?

Or does he tell members of his own party in New York that he is bypassing them all just to pick a Big Name?

When Decision Day comes, Governor Paterson will not be alone in his deliberations; his long-time mentor and aide, Father O’Byrne, will be brokering this deal to help both the Kennedys and the Governor.

Look for Caroline Kennedy to get the appointment - thanks to O’Byrne.

The political word was set on its ear last week by the report that Caroline Kennedy might be interested in being appointed to fill Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat in New York.

Clearly the entire Kennedy Family is putting a major push on to get New York Governor David Paterson to appoint the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy.

Bear in mind that Caroline has never done one thing politically in her life until endorsing Barack Obama earlier this year.

But, because of her last name and her family’s history, she can call Governor Paterson just “for informational purposes about the Senate” - or so we are told by the Governor himself. I know major political figures in New York who cannot call the Governor and get him on the phone - but Caroline Kennedy can get him to explain to her rudimentary facts about what the Senate does and how this selection works!

Caroline has three children who are almost grown up and, according to a source in yesterday’s New York Post, “She’s looking for a mission in life. Preferably in politics.”

So someone from a “royal” political family - in the midst of a mid-life crisis - can just choose whether or not she can be a US Senator. Wonderful. Only in America.

This is, of course, a total farce. Serious people who have worked in the political vineyards are aghast at this recent trend in American politics: the Bushes, the Clinton and the Kennedys all have dominated national politics because of the power of name ID.

In politics today you have to buy name identification through huge and expensive amounts of TV and radio advertising. But if you already have a famous last name, i.e. a Bush, Clinton or Kennedy, then you have already leap-frogged ahead of regular, normal politicians. (Or you could be like Barack Obama: the national news media, book publishers, and the political establishment gives you national name ID - even though you have done nothing to earn it.)

So Caroline Kennedy, in the middle of a mid-life crisis, gets up one days and muses that she might just want to be a Senator. So she calls Governor Paterson, this incredibly busy man faced with massive budget problems and an economic meltdown on Wall Street which is costing the state a huge loss of tax revenue - his staff puts her right through of course because she is “Caroline Kennedy!” - and she then asks him to brief her on what exactly is involved in the naming of Hillary’s replacement.

Incredible.

These people think these jobs are theirs by right. Not merit. Whatever happened to doing it the “old fashioned way” - earning it?

Let’s be clear about something: Hillary Clinton would not have been a senator nor a presidential candidate nor now the Secretary of State-Designate if she had not been married to a former President. Period. For all her ‘feminist’ positions, she has risen up the ladder of the law (Rose Law Firm) and politics because of one thing and one thing only: she was Bill Clinton’s wife.

And when she has been allowed to run something on her own - health care reform in 1993-1994 and her 2007-2008 presidential campaign - she proved to be an incompetent, inept, failed manager. Period. But, oddly, few in the media write that, do they?

Similarly, Caroline Kennedy has done nothing to warrant her consideration to be a US Senator. Nothing at all. And yet it seems as if she asks for it she will get it.

Hopefully Governor Paterson, a good and wise man who has lived a difficult life due to almost-total blindness from early childhood, can somehow escape the pressure being applied on him by Teddy Kennedy and Robert. F. Kennedy, Jr., both of whom are out actively campaigning for Caroline’s appointment.

If he succumbs to this pressure, we will see the so-called mainstream media slobber all over Caroline Kennedy and treat her as if she is the Second Coming. Her lack of experience and knowledge will be extolled as a virtue. And any mistakes she makes will be glossed over.

(No wonder so many people can’t stand the newspapers or TV anymore. And no wonder the media is going broke, too. Their bias has turned off so many readers and viewers.)

America was created as a rejection of inherited power. Yet, somehow, we keep drifting back to it.