Predictions for 2010

Time once again for the annual predictions for the year. But before we spin the coming year, let's review last year's predictions and see just how well we did.

Predictions for 2009:

1. Something will go wrong with the idealistic government that is being formed by the man selected because he offered hope for a change. It could be something brutal, extreme, and life ending for one or many, or it could be something slow, scandalous, and life ruining but a nonetheless end of what was hoped.

This didn't happen. The current low approval rating should be expected for someone who had such high approval when he began, but there were no brutal, extreme life ending event nor were there anything scandalous that brought the man or his party down. Democrats struggle to pass a health care bill even with a filibuster-proof majority is just Democrats being democrats – nothing new with Will Rogers' party inability to organize itself even when a super majority.

2. Although the full impact of the recession will be felt in the first half of
this year, by the end of the year, recovery will appear.

I believe this happened, or is happening. The slowness of the recovery makes it suspect, but the bale out of the economy worked. However, the job benefiting results have been the meanest of trickle -downs.

3. Our involvement in Iraq will continue for another year as we prop up the current Iraqi government, that is unless one or both of the following does not happen:
a. Something big and bad is going to happen. It always has in the
past. It could be like Tet in Vietnam, which by the way the Americans won, or like the Marine barracks in Lebanon, or something big, blooded, and laden with doom, gloom, and damnation.
b. A person or a group will feel they have enough power to take over Iraq and view the Americans as an interference, in which case the above action will be even more precipitous.

4. The current government in Afghanistan is so corrupted, that Afghanis will turn back to the Taliban because even though they are extremist in their government, they are at least not as corrupted as the current administration. This will reach a boiling point in Afghanistan and we
will be invited to leave. I’m not sure this prediction will mature this year, but that this will occur is a foregone conclusion. It is as written in the terrain of the land and the faces of Afghanis as it is written in books.

Neither number 3 with all its qualifications nor number 4 has happened - yet.

5. The prison at GitMo will be closed, or at least closed for all practical
purposes.

Closed, no. Closed for all practical purposes, yes.

6. Alabama will win the college football BSC.

Got that one right.


Well I missed a lot. I though sure something would ruin Obama's administration but he and his advisors have made smart choices – given the choices they had – and kept the administration viable. Obama's decision to double down in Afghanistan jerked the rug out from under the conservative pro-war crowd, so they are only left with general liberal basing and a desperate game of fault finding, searching for anything to stick the Obama administration.

Predictions for 2010:

1. The Obama administration will end the year pretty much as it begins. Some sort of health care package will pass. Obama approval rating will improve just because he is able to hang on.

2. Iraq will continue with the U.S. maintaining a status quo that doesn't really exits, a farce that will end as soon as we leave.

3. The Afghanistan build up will appear a success but the hopelessness of the policy will also become known to anyone with any real intelligence.

4. The economy will steadily improve, jobs will begin to return, markets will end significantly higher than the beginning of the year.

5. Castro dies, this year for sure.

6. GITMO will close.

7. Alabama will with the college football BSC again.

Well there it is. This year I'm going for normalcy, good old Warren G. Harding normalcy. Instead of dread, doom, and events, I'm going same-old, same-old.

That's a sure sign something will happen. We'll see.