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Well I did pretty good on my predictions for 2008.  I correctly predicted both the eventual presidential nominees for the Republican and Democratic parties and the eventual outcome.  I also predicted Coleman would lose to Ciresi, and I’m confident that if Ciresi had been the DFL candidate he would have…without a recount being necessary.  So I consider it a close enough that I predicted that Coleman would lose.  Also correctly predicted the outcome of the SCOTUS Heller decision and a number of other issues.

So I like to think my crystal ball is working pretty well….so here’s what it tells me for 2009

Despite eight years of liberals claiming otherwise, Bush will not in fact declare a dictatorship at the last minute…..yeah, I know I’m starting them out tough.

Despite their respective scandals, neither Senator Dodd nor Senator Rangel will resign their Senatorship nor their respective committee chairmanship.

The irony that the only reason they’re the chair of a committee is because Democrats regained the majority by campaigning on Republican’s “culture of corruption” will never be mentioned by the mainstream media nor the liberal left (but I repeat myself).

Immigration will not become a major legislative issue this year

The recession will begin turning around in the fall of this year

Democrats will be unwilling to pass another bailout bill without bi-partisan support.  Republicans will not provide it.

Obama, despite his record otherwise, will govern as a moderate this year

Fairness Doctrine, not gonna happen

Assault Weapons Ban? Not gonna happen, although if any anti-gun legislation is passed it’ll be to increase tax on ammo….effectively accomplishing the same thing

Vikings? One and out in the playoffs

Wild? Don’t even make the playoffs.  Gaborik is traded at basement value to an east coast team.

A member of Obama’s administration will be forced to resign due to a scandal

Global warming will lose popularity and credibility rapidly.

Some how that doesn’t effect the fact that “green jobs” becomes the new hip trendy thing to worry about.

Microsoft gives up on making Vista work and just skips right to the next version.  Consumers are somehow still stupid enough to buy it, not having learned the lesson of Vista.

Oil prices remain low through the year.

China is the first to start to recover from the recession with the US following shortly thereafter

Iran declares it has nuclear weapons, although this might actually be verified

Regime change in North Korea….from internal forces

Iraq continues to progress

In Afghanistan, the central government signs a power sharing agreement with the Taliban

Mainstream media continues it’s love affair with Obama

Newspapers continue to go bankrupt

Israel stops it’s war against Hamas before eliminating the threat.  We got back to the same cycle all over again.  Rinse. Repeat.

Large Hadron Collidor will be started up again and will complete a full scale test.  World does not end

GM declares bankruptcy.  Again world does not end….neither does GM.

Home prices continue to fall, bottom out in the spring.  Eventually settle around a 3:1 to 5:1 median home price to median income ratio.

And that’s 2009 for you.

UPDATE : It’s been pointed out to me that I’ve been negligent on my prediction for a draft.  In the run up to the elections for both 2000 and 2004, liberals tried to scare college kids into voting for the Democrat by insisting that Bush was going to instate a draft.  This claim was made with absolutely no evidence but that didn’t stop them.

So here’s my prediction….not a chance in hell.

blargelfuss

Top ten Academic Abuses of 2008

You remember the value of all the bailouts we’ve offered this year?? If you have a weak heart/wallet/temper you will not want to click here.

Iowahawk is turning five….his 25 least suckiest posts….

Smoking Gun’s best mugshots of 2008

The Sun’s Top 100 Women of the Year….some are NSFW.

Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2008

National Geographic’s Top Ten Photos of 2008

2008’s Top Ten Dud Predictions About Global Warming

Popular Mechanics Wish List For 2009

LifeHacker’s Top Ten List of Top Ten Lists for 2008

Top Ten Google Search Items for 2008

Time’s Top Ten of Everything for 2008

The infamous Dave Barry gives his hilarious year in review

2008 is the year that Global Warming proved to be a load of crap.

Ten things Global Warming allegedly caused in 2008.

The most outrageous media quotes of 2008

The top 15 most overlooked deaths of 2008

2008….the year nothing turned out like it should

12 Most Embarassing Photos of 2008

Exurban League’s Best “Best of 2008″ Lists of 2008 List

George Will sums up the year

One of the dangers of…well, any punditry is the risk of existing and therefore postulating any ideas or thoughts within an echo chamber. Many of us, for completely natural and healthy reasons, tend to associate with…well people we like. In many cases those are people like us, who share many of the same values, interests, etc. If you exist only within that paradigm, you can make the mistake of assuming the rest of the world thinks as you do…or at least thinks ABOUT the same things you do.

A common example is political junkies who wonder how in the world Joe Schmo off the street doesn’t know the name of his state representative, or even US representative. Or why that same person doesn’t have an opinion on US trade parity with China. It’s easy to get so stuck in your bubble that you apply your experiences/thoughts/ideas to the rest of the population.

So I make a very conscious effort to keep tabs on what people outside my circles are doing/thinking/etc, especially the before mentioned Joe Schmo. It doesn’t always reveal what I’m expecting.

Some of it is fairly obvious and not overly creative. Things like setting up Google Alerts for keywords, so that when something new on a certain topic or name goes online, I get emailed a link to it. Other times it’s snooping on the message boards/forums of groups of people I’m interested in. News aggregators can give you an overall glimpse of news of the world. Sites like Digg, can let you know what news is gathering interest, as long as you take into account that many of these sites develop a culture of their own.

But one of my favorite tools of the past is using scripts to take a glance at the most recently uploaded images to a site, like LiveJournal for instance. Uploaded images tend to reflect the topic of a conversation. By taking a glance at the last 100 photos uploaded, I can get a snapshot of what is attracting the interest of the common Joe Schmo off the virtual street. And I can do it in a timely manner rather than sifting through hundreds of posts.

And it’s been pretty accurate too. For the most part political images didn’t start showing up into the final month of the campaign. Sports images change with the seasons. Graphic parodies change as public opinion has. For instance, images goofing on gas prices, while previously very common, have disappeared.

Reason I mention all this though, is that recently the uploaded images method has well, changed…and I’m not sure I’m inclined to trust it anymore. Because either we’ve become completely obsessed with soft-core porn, or most of the Joe Schmo’s have wandered off to Facebook or MySpace, leaving LiveJournal the exclusive domain of smut peddlers.

Typically in a listing of the last 100 images, I’ll get maybe 1 that is a little revealing, although probably still fit for the pages of Maxim, or even Cosmopolitan. But lately it seems as if I can count on at least a half a dozen soft-cores, whose content is starting to blur that line between soft and hard (pun accidentally intended). If this shift of content is indeed indicative of public interest, did I miss some announcement of impending doom or the release of an upgraded version of Viagra to trigger a sudden increase in soft-core porn?

The Wall Street Journal reports that US workers are crowding out illegal immigrants in jobs that “American’s won’t do”. This is good news itself, but it also represents a fresh start for employers, especially those who employ low to unskilled workers. Inevitably this economy will turn itself around, when that happens many of those workers are going to be tempted to leave for greener pastures. Employers will have a choice.

Previously, employers complained they couldn’t adjust to the sudden removal of millions of their (illegal) workers. Now they will be without them, and it will be up to them to make the gradual adjustment to higher pay and better working conditions to keep many of those US workers working for them, rather than once again resorting to illegal workers.

The next time this issue comes around, even the most die-hard open borders activist should be unwilling to show any sympathy towards the employer who claims they can’t adjust to losing their illegal workers.

[Crossposted at True North]

Merry Christmas To All!  Have a wonderful holiday with family/friends and hopefully any traveling you have to do is short, painless and safe.

Schizophrenia – Do You Hear What I Hear?

Multiple Personality Disorder – We Three Queens Disoriented Are

Amnesia – I Don’t Know if I’ll Be Home for Christmas

Narcissistic – Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me

Manic – Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Street and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants

Paranoid – Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me (Of course, the kid is paranoid: He knows when you are sleeping! He knows when you’re awake He knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!)

Borderline Personality Disorder – Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire

Personality Disorder – You Better Watch Out, I’m Gonna Cry, I’m

Gonna Pout, Maybe I’ll Tell You Why

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder – Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells …..

Agoraphobia – I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day but Couldn’t Leave My House

Autistic – Jingle Bell Rock and Rock and Rock and Rock and Rock and Rock

Senile Dementia – Walking in a Winter Wonderland Miles from My House in My Slippers and Robe

Oppositional Defiance Disorder – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus So I Burned Down the House

Social Anxiety Disorder – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas While I Sit Here and Hyperventilate

Americanization, it’s important part of the immigration process…but the responsibility for it is apparently in dispute…

The United States must embark on an aggressive effort to integrate immigrants, including teaching them English and U.S. history, a federal task force recommended Thursday.

If this “Americanization” fails, the nation could see major problems in 20 or 30 years, with foreign-born populations detached from the larger society and engaging in anti-social behavior, said Alfonso Aguilar, who heads the U.S. Office of Citizenship.

Aguilar compared the potential strife to what is occurring in some Western European countries where foreign-born populations do not feel part of the larger society and are not accepted by many as full citizens.

“We should not be naive and assume that the assimilation process is going to happen automatically,” Aguilar said at a news conference.

I won’t dispute that Americanization is an important part of the process. Actually you could fairly easily argue it’s absolutely necessary for long-term success. One could also make very credible arguments that it’s critical for national security, and using the past two years of virtually any European country as a perfect case study…although France and Britain would probably be your best examples.

Problem is that normally it HAS been automatic. In fact it was Teddy Roosevelt who said,

“Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”

In the past while immigrants have been proud of their heritage, they’ve also been proud of their new home. After all, they came here for a reason. It was them that came here, not us that came there. Many saw Americanization as part of the path to success, and if they never quite learned English, certainly their kids did.

Somewhere along the line, and especially in the past generation, we appear to have forgotten many of these truths. Now we’re become so obsessed with diversity, and how “each of us is special and that’s okay!” Now immigrants are encouraged to resist the suffocating grasp of American hegemony. Americanization is now seen as “selling out” or “disgracing your ancestry”. The result is that not only are immigrants are no longer assimilating, they can’t even function in American society in some cases.

The long term and large scale effect of this practice of not assimilating is playing out in the suburbs of Paris, where riots and torched cars light up parts of the city where even the police dare not go. This obsession with diversity for the sake of feel-good liberalism, but at the expense of long term harmony, is stupid. Not only stupid, but it’s downright dangerous and will lead to our downfall.

So while Americanization is important to the country, a government program isn’t going to solve the problem. This requires a cultural shift. It means immigrants are going to have to embrace what it means to be an American. Presumably, since they came here, that idea should not be repulsive or offensive. That is not necessarily in opposition to being proud of one’s heritage either.

Where it is in opposition, well, I can’t help but recall another quote by Teddy Roosevelt

“The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.”

[H/T Mark Krikorian]

[Crossposted at True North]

Peter Kirsanow has what should be a good observation…

Rod Blagojevich, $1 trillion “fiscal stimulus”, Harry Reid, expiring tax cuts, Nancy Pelosi, socialized health care, Charlie Rangel, reinstitution of the oil drilling ban, Joe Biden, liberal judicial nominees, Al Franken (maybe), nuclear Iran, John Murtha, car czars, Dennis Kucinich, PC culture, Chris Dodd, entitlement explosion, Barney Frank, entitlement implosion, Barbara Boxer, card check, the Clintons, Russian adventurism.

If Republicans can’t come back in 2010 they should be sued for political malpractice.

Sued for political malpractice, I agree, but I think we passed that point about 3 election cycles ago.

Fact is Republicans are either unable, or unwilling, to hold their people accountable. Both 2006 and 2008 should demonstrate that conservatives and libertarians have registered their disapproval by refusing to play ball anymore. Not just refused, many have taken their ball and gone home with it.

That should have been an obvious lesson from 2006, but it’s fairly clear that Republicans paid no attention. As a result many of those same malcontents refused to come out and play once again. As a result, 2008 looked pretty similar and the same lesson was pretty obvious. So far it appears as if Republicans are continuing not to pay attention.

By the time the results of 2010 comes around, who is still going to be around to sue them???

[Crossposted at True North]

First Rule of Holes : When you find yourself in one, stop digging.

It would be awfully nice if our Minnesota legislators could comprehend that simple fact.  Minnesota faces a huge budget crisis this next legislative session.  Exactly figures depend on who you ask but it seems to fall around the $5 billion range.  With a deficit like that severe across the board cuts are all but a certainty.  However, to at least stop the bleeding it seems like we should stop digging our own grave and stop the out of control spending.

Fortunately, at least one legislator, Rep. Kohls, understands this basic concept and is asking Minnesotans to join him in demanding a spending freeze.  You can sign the peitition here, but you should also talk to your legislator.  Explain to them the First Rule of Holes.

[Crossposted at True North]

blargelfuss

They’ve come up with the equation on why people procrastinate.  I’ll tell you what it is tomorrow.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm (Michigan), please call your office….turns out 55% of Americans are “unamerican” by your standards.

Apparently the honeymoon is over before he even took office.  45% of the public thinks Obama had something to do with Blago’s Pay-To-Play scandal. Change you can believe in….unfortunately this looks likely to be a change to the Clinton era, where we were treated to a new scandal every other week.

Kid kills himself during a traffic stop.  Without any evidence whatsoever, the NAACP declares that it wasn’t a suicide, obviously shenanigans were at work.  In case you didn’t guess, the kid was black.

Fun part of sizeable majorities in politics is they tend to fragment very quickly.  The Democrats are falling apart and Pelosi is moving for a power grab.  Who thinks this will turn out well….at least for her?

Not news : Police make a traffic stop.  News : Driver doesn’t stop for police.  Halarious : Driver decides to order a burger instead.

Video of a R/C helicopter mounted handgun….who thinks this will end well?

AP hysterical bemoans how critical the global warming issue has become.  Scientists probably thrash their idiocy.

Want to track an aircraft…here’s your tool.

Al Gore, please call your office….it’s snowing in Las Vegas.  We need to know how to spin this as more evidence of global warming.

Good Morning!!! The Sun is up!!  ….literally.  The sun has started exhibiting solar flares again, beginning a long overdue active period for the sun.

I’m not one to get hooked on a TV show, I rarely follow any show….typically whatever is on the History or Discovery channel is more my thing.  But I’ve become absolutely hooked on the show House.  Turns out there is a real-life House….but he’s quite a bit less entertaining….boring is probably the word you’re looking for…..maybe if we got him hooked on Vicodin.

Attempts to revive the Fairness Doctrine.  I’ve written before about why I think it’s unlikely to happen, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.

The guy that leaked the existence of a NSA surveillance program has been identified.  Wonder how the media will treat him, considering he actually and purposely leaked top-secret information.  As opposed to the treatment of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, who didn’t leak information about an agent who wasn’t undercover.

The Periodic Table of Awesoments.  I do take issue with a few of the elements….I mean where is Pizza??  I don’t think either Ramen or Bob Saget deserve a place on this table.  Other than that I’m good with it.

My Hope is being crushed….the world is gonna hate the US regardless of who is President.  Because it’s never been about us, it’s been about them.

The four worst case scenarios for our economy….although even in those cases we’re a lot better off than the rest of the world.

Wont’ someone think of the Lizard People!?!??  They can be disenfranchised too!!!

If anyone is looking for a last minute Christmas present for me, I’ll take this tank.

Or I suppose if I had to settle for my own space shuttle (for sale…only $42 million), I’d do that too.