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Carnes: 2023, the year nothing really changes

What makes us think we can predict anything with certainty, much less the future?

Sure, I know how to channel my inner Yogi Berra, yet here I am, once again providing Happy Valley with the promise of things to come, but like Capital Hill subpoenas, feel free to ignore the ones you disagree with as there are no real repercussions to worry about either way.

2023 will be a year the national debt and unemployment increases, inflation decreases, Democrats take credit, Republicans lay blame, the DOW, NASDAQ, S&P 500 and gas prices fluctuate up and down and the president will have nothing to do with any of it.



Bill Cosby began 2023 with one of the funniest one-liners of the year when he announced his plans for a new Comedy Tour. I predict tickets will sell just as well as NFT trading cards.

I stayed in Denmark for over a month last summer, making me Dan…ish, so thanks, George Santos.

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Speaking of chronic liars, Putin will continue to claim he’s retaking land stolen by Nazi’s in Ukraine (as long as he doesn’t run out of troops without choices) and that Florida hotel owner will continue to claim the 2020 election was stolen (as long as he doesn’t run out of money grifted from cultists without brains).

Even though nothing could be further from the truth, certain political types will keep claiming the U.S. has “open borders” for the simple sake of publicity, while ignoring the fact that their lies provide even more incentive for those south of the border to keep heading north.

I guarantee a well-dressed man on TV will promise everlasting life, but only if one believes in the same supernatural being that he does, and he needs you to send him money first in order for the whole everlasting thingy to work.

An elected Republican will be arrested for committing the exact type of crime that he (or she) has railed against their entire career.

So will a Democrat.

I can say with the utmost confidence that in 2023 a racist wearing a confederate flag jacket will use the n-word while shooting a gun on YouTube, and for the umpteenth year in a row the NRA and gun stores will do everything possible to convince other paranoid bigots that a libtard is “coming for their guns” so they better “stock up quickly before it’s too late!”

I look forward with delicious irony to the restaurant space previously leased for Lauren Boebert’s Shooters Grill in Rifle reopening as a Tapatio’s Family Mexican Restaurant.

The clueless will continue to condemn and express their anger about being fact-checked by Facebook concerning their easily provable lies, and do it all on (drum roll please) Facebook.

Our property taxes will increase, affordable housing and seasonal parking will be “major” issues, tourists will arrive, seasonal workers will leave and neither the Cowboys nor the Broncos will win this year’s Super Bowl.

I will get excited when Google Earth has an updated photo of our neighborhood, will use every possible angle of leverage and every ounce of strength I can muster to squeeze out every possible blob of toothpaste and will still giggle like a 6-year-old whenever I, or someone within hearing distance, has a “Forever Active Rectal Transmission.”

I resolve to start drinking mint green tea, alcohol-free beer and eating all the unicorn-based foods so when I toss my resolutions out the window in a few weeks (like most of you will) it won’t have any actual effect on the rest of my year.

I pledge to take care of dishes in the sink, take off my shoes in the house and provide for my family.

As long as we all work hard, play hard, relax often, chase dreams, follow logic, use common sense and go out of our collective way to be nice to one another, the monotonous issues of the day won’t have any real lasting effects for 2023. 

They’ll just be little virtual blips on our weekly radar, sort of like this column.

Richard Carnes, of Avon, writes weekly. He can be reached at poor@vail.net.


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