It's a rainy day in San Francisco, so I'm listening to Mozart's Requiem for the Dead. It's appropriate rainy day music I think.

I had the weirdest dream this morning. I dreamt that the civic center part of downtown San Francisco was all giant condo buildings. It must have been a futuristic dream because there were electric and hover cars everywhere. I was looking for a new place to live, and was contemplating a top floor apartment with one heck of a view. I wish!

I'm supposed to go to a pre-New Year's eve cocktail party tonight, which I should go to just to put in an appearance, since it's being given by a very good friend of mine. I hope the rain stops by then.

I've been listening to futurists talking about the year 2003, and they don't have very good news. Everyone says we will go to war sometime between January and February, and most likely February 1 because it's a new moon. One futurist said the military has always started an attack on a new moon to provide cover for the stealth fighter planes. I wonder if this is true.

One interesting comment from one of them, Sean David Morton, was about the airline industry. Morton said that a group called the Carlyle group, a primarily Republican Billionaire Boys club run by Former Sec. of Defence Frank Carlucci and Former CIA Dir. "Buzzy" Kronengard, was buying up train companies like CSX. Apparently, this same Carlyle group SHORTED MILLIONS of dollars worth of AMERICAN and UNITED AIRLINES stock the DAY BEFORE the 9/11 Twin Towers attacks. Morton said if the Carlyle Group is investing in trains, then they're expecting something to happen to the airline industry, which most likely will be terrorist related.

I think the airlines industry is in serious financial free fall right now, and one more terrorist related incident like 9/11 will clinch it. I think the United Airlines bankruptcy will have far-reaching effects on the SF Bay Area and Chicago economies, and that we've only seen the tip of that financial disaster.

What's weird about all the futurists is they're all predicting doom and gloom. Usually they differ very greatly in their predictions, but not this time, and that's the most frightening part.

I still tend to believe that we should go to war with Iraq, but then you have the law of unintended consequences to deal with. Sean David Morton said the same thing. The terrorists, the Al-Queda network is the X-factor. Who knows how strong their response will be to an attack on Iraq? There are even rumblings in the conservative papers about what's going on politically in Iran, so I wouldn't necessarily rule out the war in Iraq spreading to Iran.

Morton also said that Osama Bin Laden is still alive, but would be caught or killed in early 2004 and that the Al-Queda network will go on without him.

It's grim news I know, but all futurists will tell you that the future is not set in stone, that it can still be changed. But perhaps not this war in Iraq. The only thing that could change our government's plans for war with Iraq, is North Korea detonating a nuclear device in the DMZ. And no one knows what North Korea is capable of at this point.