Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question:What Are Your Predictions For 2018?
David Schuler: I've given up doing predictions at the end of each year.
I had an annual prediction post for the better part of a decade and my track record was pretty good- about 85% correct IIRC. However, nowadays despite my greater engagement with the outside world (or maybe because of it), I find making meaningful predictions very difficult indeed. I mean, very few predicted Trump's first defeating the Republican and then the Democratic Parties.
Here's a near term prediction for you: the mullahs in Iran won't be driven from power by street demonstrations. That would take a real shootin' revolution and that does not seem to be materializing.
Here's an example of why I don't make predictions any more: at this time next year Chicago and Illinois will be in worse fiscal shape than they are today. That's hardly a prediction more a foregone conclusion.
Instead I'll wish us all the best, happiest, and healthiest of New Years.
Don Surber: My predictions for 2018 are modest after 2017, which as we know was the best year in American history.
This year will be better because Trump will be president for all 365 days, not just the last 345 that followed his inauguration.
Clip and save:
1. The Dow closes above 30,000.
2. Unification talks between the Koreas yield some fruits. The best thing for everyone would be Kim Jong Un reaching an exile deal with China, which now sees North Korea more as a hindrance than a buffer zone.
3. DACA is resolved. Democrats either end chain migration and get DACA in part, or Trump goes ahead and ends DACA.
4. The wall is half finished before anyone notices.
5. Iran's mullahs hang on but Hezbollah is dead. Hamas too. Palestinians seek peace. Bibi tells them to pound salt. He becomes the most popular man in Gaza.
6. England botches the Brexit, pisses off Trump, and basically becomes France without the cuisine or vineyards.
7. Investors leave Londonistan because of security concerns.
8. Republicans figure out a way to hang onto the House and gain the first filibuster-proof Republican Senate.
9. Fears of inflation are offset by the increased take-home pay and bonuses following the tax cut will ease pressure to raise pay.
10. Finally -- and I may be going out on a limb here -- but the Cleveland Browns will win a game. This will end my NFL boycott.
Rob Miller : Ah, 2018! Lessee...
I personally see 2018 as something of a watershed year in history. 2017, to borrow from Sir Winston, was not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. 2018 will see whether the process continues and which way it goes.
Politics? 2018 in America will of course be dominated by the midterms. The Angry Left has two primary objectives. The first one is to elect as many far Left congressmen as they can while holding on to what they have. They still fantasize about impeaching President Trump. The second will be to introduce both the talking points and the players jockeying for 2020.
I would be surprised to see them take either house of Congress, but recent events suggest the Senate won't be a walkover for either party. The Democrats have a lot of seats in Trump Country to defend, and they will certainly lose some of those. But OTOH, two seats the GOP would likely have won could very well slip out of their hands. Josh Mandel quit his campaign in Ohio today due to his wife's illness, so Sherrod Brown could win re-election. And the influx of traditionally Democrat voting Puerto Ricans into central Florida could very well doom Rick Scott's senate bid to take out Bill Nelson. Alsoexpect the #metoo tactic used to torpedo Roy Brown will be used extensively.
The fake news will continue, as will President Trump's tweets. Mueller has said he wants another year on the gravy train for his investigation, a sign that he has found little or nothing worth the time or the millions spent just yet. At the same time, DOJ investigations are being opened on the Uranium 1 scandal, the Clinton Foundation and exactly what was behind the whitewash Ms. Clinton was given by the FBI. This will start with minions like Huma Abedin and move up the ladder as the rats turn on each other.
I predict that the Democrats will refuse to give President Trump what he wants to sign off on a DACA amnesty. Their voter base won't stand for it. Based on precedents, he would be wise not to trust any assurances they give him on this matter.
The president has done a great deal to free up the economy. This will promote an amazing amount of prosperity (as well as government revenue) in 2018. Companies are already giving employees bonuses to keep them loyal as competition increases for the best people.
Automation will increase, but only in blue cities where huge increases in minimum wages are voted in by city councils and state legislators. The answer, of course will be robotics, something already happening in places like Seattle and San Francisco...with predictable results.
And speaking of robots, rest assured you will see technical advances in both male and female sex robots. The AI will be improved and things like more mobile, human like muscle movement, particularly in facial muscles will be improved. We will also see sex robot brothels, something that is already beginning in Europe and a few other places.
Foreign affairs, something I've always been interested in...wonderfully feminine with a delightful accent...hmmm....
Never mind.
One of the things about President Trump that has delighted me is his grasp of foreign policy. The Left as always is clueless,
but what our president is doing is forming a coalition of the free democracies and sympathetic wanna bes, especially those with a significant military quotient. This includes Australia, India, Israel, the Visograd nations in Eastern Europe and their allies,the Baltic states, newly rearming Japan, and to a degree, Egypt, the Saudis and the Sunni led Emirates among others. Canada also properly belongs on this list, and when push comes to shove, even with Trudeau in charge the Canadians will be there, just as they always have. It should also be noted that these are all allies President Obama seriously damaged our relationships with, almost to the point of dissolution in some cases.
At the same time, President Trump is also rebuilding our own military while distancing America from 'allies' who never were anything of the kind, like Turkey, Pakistan, and some of the other clown countries in the UN. Also part of this list are the declining powers of Western Europe; Germany, the UK, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands,among others. None of these EU countries have much of a military clout anymore, and all have large populations of restive, aggressive Muslims to appease. France still has a military, but its armies are now mostly deployed on its own soil trying to maintain a vestige of law and order in its cities. Britain's military, particularly the Royal Navy is a shadow of its former self after years of budget cuts, and Germany's Bundeswehr is an underfunded, undermanned joke that can't even defend its women and children.
Jah, Das ist aber schade.
This, to me, is a sign that a number of security threats allowed to fester for decades are finally going to be dealt with one way or the other in the near future. I am speaking specifically of the 17 year old War on Jihad, and a reckoning with Iran and North Korea, not Russia or China. Neither of those countries could afford a war with the U.S. economically, nor would it benefit them in the slightest. China will go the way of 1980's Japan, building factories and hiring Americans. Russia has a number of severe problems to deal with, not least the demographic one involving the growing number of Muslims in the Russian Federation.
In the Middle East is as always a proxy war staging ground. You will see the Russians slowly withdrawing from all but their naval bases and a few strategic areas in Syria. Iran will be replacing them, and depending on how deep the Iranians penetrate and whether they start putting missile bases in Syria, you will almost certainly see major response by a certain country. I would rate the chances of actual, full blown hostility between Hezbollah, Iran, what's left of the Syrian military and that certain country at around 50-60%, depending on the factors I mentioned.
Oddly enough, I see the chances of war between Hamas and this certain country as much less.
Contrary to what you might read, rest assured that the recent news that Hamas is releasing it's arms to Abbas and PA control is sheer propaganda. Hamas still is holding on to their arms, but doing their best to keep things quiet while Abbas continues to wage war on this certain country at the UN, the ICC and anywhere else he can think of. The missiles being fired right now are from Islamic Jihad and ISIS subsidiaries in Sinai. When the time comes, the Arabs whom call themselves 'Palestinians' will try to recreate the situation they had before, during the second intifada. Abbas and the PA will attempt to act out with protests and diplomatic warfare while Hamas gets plausible deniability while carrying out most of the killing. I doubt it will work anywhere near as well as it did in 2000, but it's essentially all they have left.
The Houthis will be run out of Yemen, and increased sanctions on Iran as well as increased oil supplies are going to play havoc with their economy and result in increased civil unrest. The EUrines will continue to be Iran's chief benefactors economically, something President Trump could make very costly for them by prohibiting companies and individuals trading withIran to have access to the US banking system. GW Bush did this to al-Qaeda in one of the few smart moves he ever pulled off to stop jihad, and it had a major effect on them.
Fausta Rodriquez Wertz : I don't usually make predictions, but going by the
bombogenesis surrounding the Fire and Fury book, the Left will not only continue but intensify its efforts to remove Pres. Trump for office.
The more effective Trump is, the more books and fake quack psychiatrists will sprout like moss on an old tree. Or on a vagina costume.
Bookworm Room: I have two sets of predictions, depending on whether I'm in an optimistic mood or not. I'll start with the pessimistic predictions, so that I can end on a cheerful note with the optimistic ones:
Pessimistic possibilities in 2018 and beyond:
Mueller manages to pull together a package showing that Trump (who Wolff claims in Fire and Fury didn't even want to win the presidency) nevertheless colluded with Russia and than engaged in obstruction of justice to hide this fact. Despite the complete absence of evidence to support either charge, the media, which remains peculiarly powerful despite open its bias and insanity, manages to convince the bulk of the American people that Trump is not fit to be president, forcing a Nixonian resignation.
The moment Pence steps into Trump's shoes, the Progressive Wolff pack begins a sustained attack against him, alleging that his hostility to gays shows that he is mentally ill and must be pushed out of office.
With the unending chaos surrounding the Oval Office, the American people attempt to clean house by handing both the House and the Senate to the hard-Left, Progressive wing of the Democrat party. If the timing on this works out well, Pence's being pushed out of office coincides with Nancy Pelosi having retaken her position as Speaker of the House. She is now President Pelosi.
At this point, two things can happen. First, flush with power, Pelosi clings to her new position like a tick embedded in a pig's ear. Alternatively, having ascended to the White House, she appoints Michelle Obama as her Vice President and promptly resigns. Michelle Obama is now president of the United States and, for the first time, is really, really proud of her country.
Either way, whether President Michelle or President Nancy occupies the White House, the fundamental changes Barack Obama dreamed off now take off on afterburners. Medicine is fully socialized; our border is opened wide; taxes on the wealthy and corporations soar to 90% in all brackets; conservative Supreme Court justices sporting unexplained black eyes and damaged knee caps are "encouraged" to resign, only to be replaced by judges from the Ninth Circuit; Sharia law is declared compatible with the Constitution and quickly becomes the unofficial law of the land; women start wearing burqas as a voluntary rape preventative; in order to definitively wipe out "white provilege," abortion is mandatory for all genetically Caucasian children; all surviving children of color are encouraged to abandon any gender roles and to end voluntary reproduction to save the planet (although Muslims are given a pass on this diktat lest the new government be viewed as Islamophobic; and, eventually, the remaining citizens of the United States gently slide under complete United Nations control. Americans are told that the best is yet to come.
Optimistic possibilities in 2018 and beyond:
The Inspector General's report completely vindicates Trump, proving that, not only did he do nothing wrong, but that the Obama administration engaged in illegal spying and other election meddling against him. While it's questionable whether any charges can be leveled against Obama himself (he was careful to keep his fingerprints off things), those who served in Obama's State Department (starting with Hillary), the DOJ (starting with Holder and Lynch), the FBI (starting with Comey), and all other agencies involved in trying to throw the election or in enriching themselves in Pay for Play schemes are trying to convince themselves that orange really is the new black, and that a white house is still a White House even if the sign over the door says "Federal Penitentiary" rather than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Freed from the burden of onerous taxes and regulations, the economy soars. The greatest benefits flow to blacks and Hispanics, who start to get an inkling of the fact that the Democrat Party has been using them as election fodder since Roosevelt's presidency.
The combination of the great economy and the realization among blacks and Hispanics that freedom is their friend means that there is a giant Republican wave in the mid-term elections, sweeping everything before it at the federal, state, and local levels. Everyone acknowledges that Trump will get a second term. The assumption is that, after him, the Presidency and Vice Presidency will be occupied for at least four more elections by some combination of Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Tom Cotton, and Ted Cruz, or their intellectual heirs.
The American military, which is now under the control of military strategists and tacticians, rather than a community organizer, makes it plain to all jihadists that they will all be sent to those 72 virgins with such speed and in such numbers that there'll be long lines in Paradise, with many jihadists waiting millennia for a chance at their erotic reward. The jihad against the West collapses.
Fracking will mean that the Muslim Middle East suffers an economic crack-up. The American Marshall plan will promise relief only if Sunni and Shia nations embrace Enlightened Western manners and mores -- and the men start holding real jobs.
The Iranian people overthrow the Mullahs. The nation either devolve into utter chaos, taking it out of the world equation for several years, or, which is devoutly to be hoped, it returns to the pro-Western values and policies that characterized Iran before the 1979 Revolution.
America gets a southern border wall and chain immigration ends completely. The price, unfortunately, is DACA, but we are a sensible people and recognize that we live in an imperfect world. On the good side, California loses all federal funding and its top officials, starting with Jerry Brown, end up in federal prison for violating immigration laws. Indeed, in every sanctuary town and city in America, those government officials who imposed and enforced sanctuary policies spend time in Club Feds.
America's strong support for Israel, combined with the economic collapse of Arab Muslim states and Iran's temporary sidelining, sees Israel finally free from economic, terrorist, and military threats. She continues to be a world leader in science and technology.
The idea of anthropogenic climate change is kicked to the curb where it belongs. America continues to focus on clean air and water, as well as environmental preservation, because we recognize that we are stewards for the earth and want to leave something lovely for our children and grandchildren. Nevertheless, without the Marxist, redistributionist insanity of climate change, our efforts do not destroy the economy, do not leave people to die in the cold or heat, and do not turn food crops into dirty fuel. Instead, we have room for sane and affordable environmental management.
We return to a scientific mindset that holds that, barring occasional genetic mistakes, there are only two sexes: male and female. We feel compassion for those people who suffer from body dysmorphia, and avoid discriminating against them as much as possible. However, we do not engage in their craziness by pretending that mere belief affects ones sex identity.
Universities are required to guarantee student loans. In the event they are called upon to repay a deadbeat ex-student's loan, they can offer as defenses the fact that the student has deliberately avoided employment; has been legitimately ill (physically or mentally); or has died. Otherwise, Harvard's endowment is on the line. The evidence piles up that the loans on which universities most frequently make good are for Womyn's, Queer, and African studies. Who knew?
Universities are denied any federal funding if the ratio of administration to faculty exceeds a 1:1 ratio.
Bakers are not required to bake cakes for anybody.
The U.S. withdraws all funding from the U.N., which collapses completely. The building at Turtle Bay is turned into a New York-based campus for Hillsdale College. The campus is a donation, without strings attached, and Hillsdale continues to refuse all government monies.
Europe does what Europe does. Thanks to President Trump, we have breathing space in fortress America. We do not squander our blood and gold trying to rescue Europe from its suicidal fecklessness.
America is great again. It's not perfect because nothing is. But it is a bastion of individual liberty and free market wealth. It is a light among nations and people queue up (legally) for the opportunity to enter. Immigrants, incidentally, are required to comply with American law, rather than demanding that the law comply with them. If they like their doctrines, manners, mores, and customs so much that they are unwilling to change, they can stay in their home countries.
Laura Rambeau Lee : I wish I had a crystal ball. We are engaged in a clash of ideologies in our country right now that I believe could go either way. As we are nearing the end of President Trump’s first year the Democrats still refuse to accept the fact that they were defeated. Whatever they stand for has been soundly rejected by the American people. President Obama set the stage for Hillary Clinton to complete the fundamental transformation of America… and they LOST!
The scandals and crimes of the Obama and Clinton years that the media refused to cover or report on may finally be investigated and prosecuted. It appears that they are in full panic mode. All they can do to deflect and distract is attack the president and that is what they are doing. They are trying everything to get him removed from office.It is truly incredible.
The latest attempt questions President Trump’s sanity and competence and the pundits are talking about invoking the 25
th Amendment. Seriously? These are the same people who insist that human activity affects the temperature of the earth and that there are more than two genders. And are they saying a mentally unfit and unstable person defeated Hillary Clinton? What does that say about their candidate?
What we do know is the effects of the income tax reduction bill will be reflected in workers paychecks beginning in February. When people see more money in their bank accounts how are the Democrats, none of whom voted for the bill, going to explain that the Republicans are NOT for the average American? All of the hyperbole, the continued narrative of the mental state of President Trump, the push to impeach him for who knows what, will fall on the deaf ears of people who are feeling better about their personal economic situation. More Americans will realize the Democrat Party has been infiltrated by people with a radical agenda that if implemented will destroy our country. If the economy continues on its current trajectory the 2018 election should be good for Republicans and I believe it will.
I am hopeful that 2018 is a year for restoration of sanity and certainty and a restoration of the rule of law, as this is the only way we can defeat the un-American agents in our government and the media.
In my predictions for 2018, of one thing I am certain - President Trump will continue to drive the left crazy with his Tweets.
Patrick O'Hannigan : I predict that in 2018:
1. U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis will NOT say that "Islam" means "peace."
2. Twitter and Facebook will again arouse the ire of conservatives by banning or shutting down accounts of people who flout conventional wisdom.
3. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI will go to his eternal reward accompanied by respectful obituaries that still manage to wonder whether it was wise of him to step down from the papacy the way he did.
4. Democrat under-performance in midterm elections for the United States will be blamed on "stupid voters" and "stupid voter ID laws."
5. "Hamilton," the musical, will spawn imitations.
6. Cursive writing, vinyl records, and bound books will continue making quiet comebacks.
7. Late-night comedians will briefly find themselves in that sunny but unexpected country where they can introduce their shows without telling jokes about President Trump. Backlash from the left will ensure that none of them goes more than three consecutive monologues in that state.
8. Activist groups that pushed urban police departments to invest in bodycams for their uniformed officers will insist that film showing officers acting with restraint has been edited or manipulated unfairly.
Well, there it is!
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