• The issue of a nuclear Iran fully ignites as a major global crisis and precipitates some type of military action before the end of the year.
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• Despite the conventional wisdom that Academy members won’t choose two portrayals of dead musicians back to back, long-shot Joaquin Phoenix takes home an Oscar for his Johnny Cash performance when Hoffman, Strathairn, and Ledger split the “progressive” votes.
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• Voters, upset with a blatantly hypocritical broadening of investigations into the governor’s partisan supporters, cast ballots to further reduce the number of Democrats in the Kentucky House.
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• Aggragetors and reading lists for RSS feeds will hit a tipping point of mass appeal in the same way that Web logs did in 2005, making blogs an even more popular “spectator sport.”
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• Senator Clinton enters the autumn with such an insurmountable lead in funding over Kerry, Edwards, and her other opponents that the media acknowledges her inevitable nomination and shifts its attention to who might successfully challenge her on the Republican side, leaving the door open for Bayh to exploit her “frontrunner” status and surge in polls by the end of the year.
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• Critics shower Tom Cruise with praise for finally “getting it right” with his decision to put the fate of his M:I franchise in the hands of “Alias” creator J.J. Abrams, and the partners follow their summer box-office smash with an announcement that Abrams will scrap “Alias” to develop a new “Mission: Impossible” television series starring Ving Rhames as the team leader, with “the voice” of the mission controller to be Cruise himself.
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