Posted on 02/01/2009 3:03:39 PM PST by quesney
Apparently, former presidential candidate, Senator, maverick and jokester, John McCain, is fond of saying, "It is always darkest just before it goes totally black." In that same jocular spirit, I give my predictions for the Obama Administration, short term and long. Let the hilarity ensue.
1. Obama and the Democrats will pass a massive stimulus bill. It will come with a cost of about $849 billion. That is, it will cost just a smidgeon less than the $850 billion bailout proposed, pushed and passed by President Bush and supported by Senator McCain. Thus the Democrats will be able to deflect any accusations of irresponsible spending with "our bill cost less than the Wall Street bailout bill supported by the Republicans." Be prepared to hear that Main Street deserves just as much of a bailout as Wall Street got.
2. The $849 billion stimulus will be a bit short on construction spending but chock full of funding for the left. ACORN will make out big time. So will lawyers and education bureaucrats. We'll have to see if Bill Ayers gets some juicy new government grant. Barney Franks' friends will do OK. The devil will be in the details, of course, but $849 billion to the ACORNs and Sierra Clubs of the world is effectively easy street into perpetuity. By 2010, any person or organization pushing freedom or a free market will be met with a swarm of massive PR, media coverage, protests and law suits. You'll wonder where the freedom-killers get all their money to do such things. It will no longer have to be from George Soros. They'll be funded by your government.
3. The current recession will end later this year, although its end might not be declared until some time in 2010. President Obama will be seen as the man who fixed the problem started by President Bush. Democrats will say, and people will believe, that his stimulus package and wise governance ended the crisis. (The real story, of course, is that it was only a mild downturn to begin with, until the trillion dollar bailouts turned it into a real recession. The uncertainties associated with the bailouts and a new Obama administration spooked the markets. Once the parameters of all that become known and uncertainty reduced, the markets will start recovering. Not to a Dow of 14,000 though - don't be ridiculous.)
4. Obama will keep his promise about pulling US troops out of Iraq. His promise was to pull nearly all troops out 16 months after becoming President. That would be by June 2010 by my reckoning. The public will consider his promise met and, once again, Obama will have gotten us out of another mess President Bush got us into, despite the real victory earned in Bush's time. Those who were killed or injured there will not be considered brave soldiers who kept America safer, overthrew a tyrant and freed 25 million people; they will be considered victims of an irresponsible cowboy Republican.
5. Benjamin Netanyahu will be elected Prime Minister of Israel. When the Mideast situation degrades to constant warfare and higher casualty levels than even now, it will not be blamed on Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah or Iran, nor will it be blamed on the new US policy. It will be blamed on Israel's right wing, intransigent Prime Minister.
6. Iran will get the bomb. Some voices will say "but we can't be sure they really have it." Other voices will say, "we need to be nice to them now; they have the bomb you know." In any case, no one will take action against them. And some will say we have no right to deny another country weapons of its own making. Sanctions will either be lifted or ignored, and Iran will have oil money, WMD and terrorist connections. Ahmadinejad will be personally welcomed to the nuclear club, either by President Obama himself, or by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
7. Osama bin Laden will be killed or captured, with credit going to US troops. President Obama will be hailed as doing what President Bush could not get done in eight years. The War on Terror will be considered over, with Iraq relegated to one huge mistake for all history. Pakistan and other Muslim countries won't be too happy about Osama's demise or US actions in Pakistan, but Obama will make them an offer they can live with: let me get credit for getting Osama, and the US will not intervene in the Mideast - develop your WMD and harass or attack Israel as desired. We'll release some former Gitmo detainees for good measure.
8. A host of leftist legislation will become law, but most of it will be made to look like moderate steps. Instead of the government outright owning the means of production, banking and communication, it will regulate them with rules incomprehensible to the layman.
* Instead of the Fairness Doctrine, we'll get broadcasting ownership restrictions that will have the same effect. You might have to get Sirius to listen to Rush, Sean or Mr. Savage - if Sirius is still in business then. * Instead of the Employee Free Choice Act (eliminating secret ballots in union votes), we'll get other unionization laws that will effectively make unionization easier. The proportion of the workforce that is unionized will increase significantly. Union bosses will be well compensated; workers, not so much. * We will get universal health care, but it won't be single-payer, at least on its face. Regulations and mandates will effectively mean that health care in the US will be run by the federal government, but mostly paid for by employers, individuals and states. (Not all that different from now; just more expensive.) * Banks and banking will be effectively nationalized. (Bank execs will still be well compensated. But they will, almost magically, contribute generously to Democrats. Think Franklin Raines.) * Gay marriage will not be passed at the federal level, but the Defense of Marriage Act will be overturned. Once the federal government recognizes gay marriage in one state (e.g., Massachusetts), it will be defacto law everywhere. Congress will also overturn the rule prohibiting open homosexuals from serving in the military. * Abortion will be totally unrestricted, and all civilian and military hospitals, secular and religious, will be forced to provide them. Abortion will be funded by the government both in the US and as part of foreign aid. Of course, embryonic stem cell research and embryonic cloning will be funded with federal dollars.
For guidance on what else will be enacted, see the Communist Manifesto or go here http://www.cpusa.org/article/archive/3/ and click on "Election 2008."
9. In a development that will surprise many, President Obama will not spend like a drunken sailor (or a compassionately conservative Republican), at least in 2011 and 2012. We will have uncomfortably large deficits, but they will be blamed on the lingering effects of the mess the Republicans left and the smoldering crisis (always a crisis). Obama will actually be painted as fiscally moderate and responsible. Of course, defense spending will be cut to 3% of GDP or less (from the current 4%). He won't "raise" Social Security taxes; he'll just apply them to all income levels. And much of a leftist agenda can be accomplished with rules and regulations (see above) rather than spending, at least in Obama's first term.
10. Barack Obama will be re-elected in 2012 with approximately 60% of the popular vote. He will be hailed as the man who got Osama bin Laden and ended the War on Terror, the man who extracted us from the Republican messes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the man who pulled us out of a Republican recession that almost became Great Depression II. Yet his fiscal policies will seem almost moderate: deficits of 3% of GDP after the Republicans left us with deficits of 7% or more. Republicans will lose more seats in the House and Senate in 2010 and 2012. Efforts to remove the 22nd Amendment will gather steam.
Those are my predictions for the short term, through Obama's first term. My long term predictions are worse. The US will be bankrupt by 2020, 2030 at the latest. We'll be such a basket case that few will care whether we are governed by communists or the caliphate (even fewer than now). Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Switzerland will have to enact stricter laws to limit American immigration.
The new unilateral superpower will be China. China will adopt the models of Singapore and Hong Kong: economically free, politically unfree. China will have the largest GDP in the world, nukes, access to oil deposits and natural resources and over a billion people who are good at math and work hard. You will be very screwed.
That is the rosy scenario. The less rosy ones involve mushroom clouds.
Randall might be on target, but he’s forgotten the human element here. The Soviets had an even larger state apparatus to control and contain their population, but in the end, they were just an empty shell. Everything outlined in this article would increase public cynicism about the government and officially-sponsored government activities, especially from the left. A culture with a disconnected elite and a sullen, disaffected mass might have the appearance of power, but when people are really needed, they won’t show up, or won’t care.
The end result of this scenario would be out-of-touch bureaucrats imposing meaningless regulation which would be ignored and subverted by most people - some of which already takes places in government-run insitutions like the public schools, where those of us who are conservative and patriotic silent put up with inane leftist workshops, return to the classroom, and teach what we wanted to in the first place. The scenario outlined in this article would grow the ranks of those who will be increasingly empowered to fight back in the old style of the slave, with incomplete work, half-assed efforts, sly subversion, and undermining the slaveowner. This also implies the occasional slave revolt.
In the words of the old Soviet joke, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
Eventually it will disappear like the nothingness it is based upon.
The big assumption underpinning this scenario is that the economy recovers and Obama gets credit for it.
Frankly, I think the government will continue to have its own financial crises (what’s happening in California is a sneak peek of what will happen in the Federal government), continued deficit spending will crowd out private investment, thus stalling any economic recovery. We will be economically stagnating for years, and Obama will get booted out in 2012.
It all comes down to deficit spending and the uncertainty and pessimism becoming ever more prevalent among investors. Investments, not consumer spending, will lead us out of the recession. Investors have to be confident in future economic performance, AS WELL AS EXPECT PRIVATE INVESTMENTS TO OUTPERFORM GOVERNMENT BONDS, to begin investing, which will itself spur recovery.
Investors tend to see things as improving or on the verge of improving before consumers themselves do. All this talk of consumer spending and how it drives the economy ignores the critical business spending (i.e. investment) side of the equation.
The thing that is the most amusing about the victorious, gloating Socialists is the way they're whistling past the mosque...
Actually, Islam's breeding machine will wash over the Socialists like a tsunami.
It WILL be hilarious - the feminists becoming pieces of meat for the men to own, the homosexuals dealt with according to Islamic law, the impotent subjugated Greenies watching in horror as the Muslims turn their beautiful nature preserves into rotting ghettoes dedicated to the glory of The Prophet, and Allah.
Oh, yes - and the return of outright slavery. Leftists make retarded morons look like rocket scientists.
You got that right.
Hope no terrorists are watching and "thinking" about what just happened.. The whole area just shut down.. lock stock and barrel.. No water, gas, elec, gasoline, heat, grocerys or refrigeration.. Just shut down the elec grid.. and any area is in a world of hurt..
Would not take a couple of genius's to do it either..
Even a primitive sand monkey could do it..
A dirt bike and load of explosives.. boom no elect...
Doesn't seem too rosy to me...
Gulp is right!
I think so. Not just because most in america think the gravy train is endless but also the baby boomers are retiring.
We're going to need a better plan than that. Let's start out by supporting Michael Steele.
Start with yanking conservative kids from the government indoctrination camps ( misnamed "schools") tomorrow!
Bismarck: "God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America."
Quoted in Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World (2002). pg vii
Thanks to GOPJ who pinged me this one : Says the US will be bankrupt by 2020, 2030 at the latest.
One wild a$$ guess among 300 million, and worth no more than any others.
Bismark had a bunch of great quotes, that’s a new one to me, thanks!
I’m sorry, I dont share your optimism. We no longer have the manufacturing jobs to pull us out of this one without creating a tax state.
Some would argue that the USA is bankrupt today...
We don’t need manufacturing jobs.
We need to cut taxes across the board, eliminate taxes on capital and divends, and then have the government go on an austerity program.
We dont need manufacturing jobs? That’s the most rediculous thing I have ever heard! Manufacturing pulled us out of the Great Depression. www.mises.org.
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