2010 Predictions
So here are me annual predictions for 2010. Don’t forget to check out last year’s predictions and how I did.
1. Obama will cause a constitutional crisis due to his executive orders circumventing US Constitutional law (which is illegal). He has already done this here and elsewhere. When the administration allows international law enforcement to supersede US sovereignty, there will be a huge backlash and they will have to back down, or they will become seriously damaged as a result. I suspect it will be over a terrorist related issue.
2. Democrats will suffer epic losses in November, despite a slew of outrageous voting shenanigans involving the usual suspects. The Senate may go to Republicans and the House will be close to flipping. This will be aided by many Democrats changing parties in 2010.
3. But a third party conservative movement continues to grow as tea parties get larger through the year. Some congressional seats will go to these candidates.
4. The health care bill will not sustain the internecine politics of the Democrats and public opinion. So Obama care will fail, barely.
5. Obama will poll consistently in the 40s, and then in the 30s toward the end of the year. A growing anger toward his administration will begin to dominate the news cycle. Rumors that he won’t run in 2012 will circulate.
6. Obama’s second stimulus will not help the economy. Unemployment continues to be bad. Housing sales will be sluggish due to continuing lending problems and defaults.
7. Obama’s “cool” demeanor will slip publicly more than a few times. He will be openly mocked by the press that once lionized him Especially when they they sense he can’t recover his popularity and theys tart to blame him for his party’s fall from grace.
8. Many top Democrats will lose their seats including Dodd, Reid, Boxer, Nelson. “Blue dogs” will be especially vulnerable.
9. The stock market will continue to have sucker’s rallies, but it will also have more bear sessions.
10. A commercial real estate crash will continue to harm the economy.
11. Obama will try to claim we came out of the recession only to go into a “double dip” recession again. At this point most of the press will lable it the Obama recession after all his failed polices and empty rhetoric.
12. Massive protests around the world due to unemployment and inflationary problems that will be blame on US spending policies. Obama will get a lot of fire for his spending, which he will try to claim he is cutting back. But it will be too little too late.
13. Apple’s tablet PC will be a hit when it debuts next year. Tablet PCs will become a vogue form of PC use. Comics will make major inroads there.
14. Climate Change will continue to die a slow painful death in the public’s mind and certain proponents of it will come under increasing disfavor and even lawsuits. Politicians will start back peddling on it. More climate scandals will erupt.
15. There will be more terrorist attacks on the US and the administrations attempts to PC whitewash the Islamic aspect will start to incite a backlash.
16. The Obama birther issue will not die. It will grow. More calls for his background documents like college, etc, to be disclosed will grow louder.
17. Growing calls for impeachment will start to echo across the land.
18. Hillary Clinton will quit the Obama administration and start to become a critic, trying to distance herself from it. But she will not be able to recapture her political power.
Prediction Review for 2009
Every year at the end of the year I review my predictions from the previous year, and then on New Years eve I make predictions for the following year. Here are my predictions from last year. I must be psychic!
Obama will follow many of Bush’s policies, alienating him from many Democrats.
Yep. He has, and this has bothered the far lefties. But in many ways, he has done stupider things than Bush ever did.
The Democrats will become a fractious party with a lot of contention and some of them will challenge Obama’s authority.
Yep. I suspect that will continue to increase next year. Obama is a weak leader. Worse than I expected.
The economy will continue to suffer some setbacks, but there will be signs of improvement toward the end of the year.
Yep. But I wonder how valid those signs are.
Unemployment will get as high as 10% or more in some states.
Ha ha…it’s said to be more like 16% in reality.
More scandals will dog Democrats.
Yep.
Chicago politics will be a can of worms for Obama as more stuff haunts his administration.
Yes, especially with Blago and the failed Olympic bid.
SAG will not strike after all.
Yes, indeed.
There will be a backlash against rich celebrities who flaunted their money last year.
Well, not as much as I thought. Though people like Paris Hilton and so are are now in disfavor. More than before, anyway.
Obama will be fairly centrist on a lot of his policies, but his strong AGW stance will be met with a growing backlash.
I was wrong about the centrist thing, but right about the rest. Though he does do a fake kind of centrist act, Just not very well.
Obama will become less receptive to the press and the public as he becomes the target of more criticism.
Yep. It’s getting more so lately.
Many America haters in the Middle East and elsewhere will start testing the US. Obama’s responses will encourage more of our enemies getting emboldened.
That latest attack and all the domestic terrorist attacks prompted by Islamtic clerics, like the Ft. Hood point to this happening.
The Middle East will continue to heat up as Israel finds itself in more and more conflicts with the US having to take a position supporting them.
Obama has not been supportive of Israel at all.
Obama will not withdraw troops from Iraq as quickly as he implied before.
More or less true.
Gas prices will be fairly stable in 2009, but will probably be in the low $2 range most of the year.
Wrong. We have a white house that is hostile to oil and will make things worse.
More shocks in the housing market to come as ARM and other special mortgages cause another wave of defaults.
Yes, defaults continue. And the commercial market is expected to follow.
I suspect 2010 will be worse in many ways, but perhaps better toward the end. We’ll discuss that tomorrow.
Debt Drivers
Obama should have his license revoked.
Also, I agree with this sentiment. But Obama is getting the next decade off to a bad start.
Still No AGW
In case you haven’t seen it, this PDF has been making the rounds. Several people have emailed it to me. It shows how the AGW myth was fabricated over 30 years with detailed references.
Meanwhile, some German scientists cut the whole AGW argument to shreds in this piece. As if the current weather patters around the world weren’t convincing enough.
Meanwhile, Global Warming believer President Obama is making sure all the terrorists are caught while he phones it in from the golf courses in Hawaii. We’re in good hands.
Doctorin’ the Tardis
A UK hit in 1988
UPDATE: I just watched the latest Doctor Who episode: The End of Time pt 1., which brings back the Master and a bunch of other characters as well as Timothy Dalton in a surprising role. The second part airs New Years Day. It will be the last episode starring David Tennant as the Doctor, alas. He was the best one, in my opinion. The next guy is in his 20s and looks like a 70s glam rock star. Not sure what I think of that until I see him perform.
Holmes Beats Avatar
Didn’t see the new Holmes movie, but I have to say it’s somewhat satisfying to see it beat Avatar which I reviewed earlier in the week. Avatar was an amazing looking film about as deep as a saucer and had the temerity to expect audiences to cheer the killing of American troops, who were the bad guys. No wonder James Cameron was snippy with fans this weekend. Maybe next time he’ll get a clue and stop comparing our military to General Custer.
Meanwhile, I saw a movie this weekend that was another fool’s errand: “The Invention of Lying”. An attempt by Ricky Gervais to make a comedy that was flatter than a one sided pancake. The premise is a world where no one lies, becomes easy for our hero to trick because he discovers people believe anything he makes up. The problem lies in the fact that no only is it so obvious in everything that happens, the whole movie is a set up to making fun Christianity. Gervais character makes up a religion just like the one in the bible, and he writes the 10 commandments on the back of pizza boxes so he has something tablet like. Ho ho.
See, people will believe any lie he tells them so why not make up a religious about heaven to give people false hopes?
I don’t know about you, but I am really tired of Christian bashing and I’m not even religious. It’s become such a trite cliche because they never have the guts to take on any other religions. It’s always Christians who get attacked as being stupid or crazy. Maybe because they know they won’t fight back. Well, actually they do. Movies like this one usually bomb. As did this.
The only saving grace of the movie was Jennifer Gardner who was good in it. It had other decent actors, but they were all wooden. Gervais needs to come up with something more original next time.
I also checked out Ninja Assassin, which is as trite as the title implies. The trailer looked like it would have some good action, but it was rather morose and talky with characters almost as one dimensional as the villains in Avatar. Hey, maybe Cameron can direct Flatland next.
The movies I recommend that are out on video this week are Inglorious Basterds, which I think may be Tarantino’s most mature film. District 9, a real sleeper that was way better than I thought. Pandorum, an excellent sci-fi movie with a lot of surprises. Harry Potter, Star Trek and Public Enemies if you didn’t see them. I also kind of liked the Night at the Museum sequel. A decent enough dumb comedy. It has Amy Adams in it, so that sold me on seeing it. Hank Azaria is really funny as an evil Egyptian prince with a bad lisp.
Elf Yourself
You can do a flash movie of yourself as an elf at this site.
Change You Can Believe In
According to Rasmussen, President Obama is less popular now than George Bush was when he left office. 46% strongly disapprove of Obama today as opposed to 43% did for Bush in his last week in office. So much for the Won.
As I said when he got elected, the only place for someone to go who is built up so high is down. And since Obama is a mediocrity at best, it has done this in an incredibly short time. It took Bush years and two wars to be as unpopular as he was. Obama did that in less than a year. Imagine how bad it will be next year as the recession rolls on. And taxes go way up. And unemployment continues to rise.
And it’s an election year which means the Democrats are facing massive losses. Especially considering how angry people are on the right AND the left over this health care fiasco. As it is now, everyone’s insurance policies will go up dramatically but you don’t get any benefits for years, you will be forced to buy insurance when you weren’t before, under the threat of fines or jail and all sorts of new taxes kick in, etc. That is really going to play well. Yep.
The Democrats showed themselves to be way more arrogant and out of touch than Republicans did a few years ago. Quite an achievement, and they did it in a lot less time, like the president.
Obama may go down as the most unpopular, ineffectual and incompetent president in history. And he may take his party with him when he goes.
Detroit in Ruins
Steve Crowder does an excellent piece on the state of Detroit and how that can be America’s future if Obama’s polices are continued.
Detroit is an example of what happens when leftist Democrats have complete control of government for too long. That’s where it leads you.
Review: Avatar
Well I saw it, and did I think it lived up to the hype, both good and bad? Eh.
It was very beautiful to look at but the world of Pandora was very familiar to me. Hayao Miyazaki did many similar things in some of his animated films like Nausicaa. In fact, I could see a lot of Miyazaki influence and Roger Dean, the artist of the Yes album covers of the 70s. There was also a feeling of Alan Dean Foster’s Midworld books which I read back in the 80s. Many ideas seem to be cribbed from that series. It’s about a human who is raised, Tarzan-like, by these ape-like creatures on a planet that is covered by giant rain forests much like those in this movie. And then these aliens show up to bulldoze the place and he has to fight them off.
The story of the movie is really insipid. First of all, the depiction of corporations and the military bear absolutely no relation to reality. Real corporations bend over backward to be PC. They do not go around killing people willy nilly. Neither does the US military which spends billions on rebuilding infrastructure in places it invades. It tries to win over the natives, not kill them with the detached kind of amusement as we saw here.
This is the classic anti-war lefty propaganda stance that was wrong in Vietnam and its wrong now. The real monsters were the other guys, but they have to make us out to be the villains. This movie is a thinly veiled Oliver Stone-type Vietnam movie. With blue guys and flying dragons.
Was it entertaining? Sure, if you can turn off your brain and not groan at every cliche that comes along. The dialog is ok, the acting is good. The cgi is wonderful, especially the subtle performances that come through on the faces of the alien actors. You forget that they are cgi, even though at times it looks it.
Cameron can write and direct a good action film. He is not as bone headed as Lucas. But he reveals himself to be another Hollywood bubble head. No relation to the real world. He writes from his ivory tower how people should commune with nature like a Rousseau noble savage. Yet Rousseau, who influenced all the back to nature fools that followed him, really abhorred nature and spent most of his time in the cities. In fact, he hated people, too. He was another hypocrite like the green clowns who are pushing AGW while flying around on private jets.
The Na’vi in this movie spend a lot of time trying not to be killed by nature. But they have so many absurd advantages to commune with other animals humans don’t have, including some kind of fiber optics cable in their braids (don’t ask). And the trees talk to them. Yeah.
As a movie I think this is important for the technical achievements. Other than that it’s as trite and puerile as a Carson of Venus story by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Check out this scene from Nausicaa and see if it doesn’t remind you of Avatar a little. The difference is Nausicaa has a great story, is a well grafted and original yarn. And he doesn’t copy other people’s ideas to death. It also came out in the 80s.
RSS
Facebook
Google+
LinkedIn
Twitter
YouTube
IMDb
