Nambla will provide FREE Daycare for the children of parents against Home-Schooling.
Posted on 12/28/2010 7:28:55 AM PST by SeekAndFind
What might happen in the upcoming year? We asked a few of National Review Online’s sages to prophesy the events of 2011.
JOHN DERBYSHIRE
Domestic affairs: 2011 will be the year that the full scale of our fiscal crisis becomes clear, even to politicians. They will likely be able to postpone the inevitable for another year or so, though. (The inevitable being real, massive reductions in federal and state spending, entitlements cut to the bone, major public-sector layoffs, etc.) Start practicing the term “QE3.” Of course, the longer the politicians postpone it, the worse the crash will be: but politicians always think the horse may sing.
Federal bailouts of states and cities whose finances have collapsed will become a major issue. Citizens of better-managed jurisdictions, and Tea Partiers everywhere, will object mightily, and the rest of us will watch in horror as the deficit doubles, but the bailouts will happen anyway for fear of a devastating crisis in the bond markets.
Numerology: People will make a great fuss about 11/11/11.
Vocabulary: The word “austerity” will be heard a lot.
The culture: Obsessive texting on tiny communication gadgets will become so widespread that at some moment in some daylight hour of 2011, nobody in the U.S.A. will be speaking to anyone else.
Foreign affairs: One country will leave the euro, probably Germany.
China will begin visibly to turn the corner from Wirtschaftswunder to 東亞病夫 (Sick Man of Asia) as all the rising graphs start to flatten out. Environmental degradation, class resentments, demographic cratering, corruption, and fiscal reality will gain ground over resource development, embourgeoisement, entrepreneurial energy, Party authority, and grandiose government projects. Just a beginning, nothing very dramatic: a big-city demonstration out of control here, a local food or water crisis there, some high-profile corruption trials, continuing intractable price inflation …
Math: Some generous publisher will offer me a handsome advance to write a book on the Banach-Tarski Paradox.
Leadership: Barack Obama will turn 50, the age at which Confucius said he knew the will of Heaven.
— John Derbyshire is a contributor editor of National Review.
JONAH GOLDBERG
My predictions for 2011 will be 12.7 percent more accurate than my 2010 elections were, which is to say not very accurate at all.
By the end of the year, WikiLeaks will be recognized as the “Napster” of data-dump sites and Julian Assange as the Shawn Fanning of a phenomenon that totally eclipses his importance.
The mainstream media will, by the end of the year, start to rekindle its love for Obama after a few months of bickering and sniping over his alleged move to the center.
Obama will face another moment arguably similar to the Iranian Green revolution, only this time in North Korea. He will opt for stability over freedom, again.
There will be a large number of very successful symbolic cuts to the budget and too few substantive ones.
Newt Gingrich will do much better than expected in the pre-primary debates, garnering support from both anti-establishment conservatives who don’t think Sarah Palin is electable and from mainstream conservatives who don’t think Romney is conservative enough.
The total number of “serious” candidates seeking the Republican nomination will be over twelve. The number of “serious” candidates running after the South Carolina primary will be less than six.
Guantanamo Bay prison will not be closed.
Fidel Castro will die.
Europe’s financial crisis will get far worse. At least one country will actively try to leave the Euro, causing a major political crisis.
China will experience a major economic correction, causing global concern over Chinese political stability.
A rise in global food prices will create an international crisis.
By the end of the year, no one will think the Newsweek–Daily Beast merger was a good idea.
There will be no major international global-warming agreements.
My predictions for 2012 will have a lot more jokes.
— Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online.
MARK GOLDBLATT
In sports: No New York franchise will win a championship in 2011. The Jets will fire Sal “Day Tripper” Alosi, but he’ll land on his feet and star in a reality-TV show.
On the war: President Obama will continue to play Predator Whac-A-Mole with al-Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. He will be right to do so. Noam Chomsky will repeatedly and publicly call him a war criminal. Noam Chomsky will be called a racist.
In politics: Sarah Palin will announce her intention to run for president in 2012, then announce a week later that she was only kidding — that she just wanted to see what the op-ed page of the New York Times would say. Frank Rich will call her a war criminal. Frank Rich will be invited to the White House.
On television: The funniest show on TV will be Family Guy, ending the ten year reign of C-SPAN’s live coverage of Tavis Smiley’s State of the Black Union. (Smiley has said he will no longer hold the event.) If you never thought SOBU was funny . . . well, I guess that GED’s not working out for you, is it?
In books: Having been ignored by critics and readers, my latest novel, Sloth, will win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. At the awards dinner, I will give a stemwinder of an acceptance speech decrying the sphinctering effect of MFA programs on American fiction . . . in the middle of which I will wake up and kiss Victoria Principal.
— Mark Goldblatt’s latest novel is Sloth, from Greenpoint Press.
CHARLOTTE HAYS
After the last two terrible years, 2011 is going to be a tipping point, and I think the country will tip in a positive direction, thanks largely to the Tea Party, the heroes and heroines of 2010. The apparent lurch to the left two years ago was the result of mistaken identity. Here are my predictions:
The Republicans and the Tea Party will disappoint the media by getting along swimmingly. The Republicans know what a mess they left behind the last time they were in power. This time they know they must be sober and will begin the process of cutting back on spending. This is not because of the perfectibility of Republicans — it is because of the Tea Party and because the financial situation has become so dire that we are at a tipping point. The public will throw out the (Republican) bums if they don’t do what they said they would do.
The Left will be emboldened by the president’s tepid attempts to bow, ever how ungraciously, to reality. They are far more numerous and more radical than many realize, and they will go wild in 2011; the Democratic rump in the House, under the fetching leadership of San Fran Nan will wage holy war on every sensible proposition that comes before them. But there will be no real effort to mount a primary challenge against Barack Obama: They know their own. When Edward Kennedy ran a primary challenge against Jimmy Carter, Carter still looked enough like the southern Baptist gentleman to appear alienated from the Left. Today the Left knows that Obama is as good as it gets.
The rich will start sticking up for themselves. Hey, we mid-income bloggers can’t be the only ones making the argument for you Richie Riches. The rich must stand up and say that, in a country founded by people who sailed across the treacherous Atlantic and founded a great (exceptional, even) nation on wild shores and went on to prosper, making money and doing well is no sin. We must be charitable to those who fail, but we must realize that those who succeed help society more than the next government handout. I think we’re at the tipping point on this issue, too.
President Obama will go completely gray. He thought this job would be a lot of fun. He thought it was all about talking. But it isn’t. Most presidents have experienced failure before they reach this high office — he had not and now he doesn’t quite know what to do. I predict that he will give serious consideration to not running again. I know which way I want him to decide. I don’t go along with those who think he has rescued himself with the tax deal. The fight to dismantle Obamacare is going to prevent the president from posing as a centrist, as he did during the campaign.
Republicans will learn to avoid the words “American Dream.” These are the words that seem to make Speaker-to-be John Boehner cry. It’s not a good look. But you know what? I think that, as long as it’s not a daily occurrence, Americans won’t mind Boehner’s tears. They are genuine. We elected a glamour puss for president last time. I predict that 2011 will be the year we reject charisma. This is good news for a whole batch of Republican hopefuls, including, most notably, Mitch Daniels. It is not good for Sarah Palin.
— Charlotte Hays is co-author of Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral.
KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ
Mitt Romney will seriously consider not running for president.
Jeb Bush will seriously reconsider not running for president.
Hillary Clinton will not resign and run for president.
I will finally stop making presidential-primary predictions.
Sarah Palin will continue to be the subject of at least one MSNBC news story a day.
We will stop talking about mama grizzlies because mama grizzlies have officially broken the longtime conventional insistence that conservative women don’t quite count as serious women.
At a quarter after one and a little drunk, country group Lady Antebellum will officially cross over to pop.
Michael Steele will become an MSNBC commentator.
I will live-tweet Dana Perino at the Country Music Awards (see below).
I will compile all of my near-decade-long blogging output into an encyclopedia-sized series of bad predictions.
— Kathryn Jean Lopez is an editor-at-large of National Review Online.
STEVEN F. HAYWARD
The great thing about predictions is that no one ever checks back six months or a year or 500 years later to see how they turned out (most Nostradamus predictions are fake anyway), so the obvious incentive is to offer up the outlandish and fanciful. On the other hand, these days the outlandish and fanciful have a way of coming true. As Churchill put it in My Early Life (1930), “Scarcely anything material or established which I was brought up to believe was permanent and vital, has lasted. Everything I was sure or taught to be sure was impossible, has happened.”
So here are my offerings. See if you can spot the fake ones:
1. One of the cable channels will offer up a summer replacement reality show, Jonah and the Cosmos, about an insouciant syndicated columnist transporting a squad of dogs across the country to Alaska in a minivan. The dramatic tension will revolve around who will drive the columnist the most crazy — editors, or the dogs. Media Matters for America will join with PETA to allege animal cruelty. Keith Olbermann will . . . oh heck, finish that sentence yourself.
2. House Democrats will hand Republicans a gift by renaming Nancy Pelosi as their leader. Oh, wait, they already did that? Another vindication of the reason Malcolm Muggeridge gave up satire — real life is now so absurd that you can’t make this stuff up.
3. The Arab League will come out publicly with a plea for the United States to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, and will do so in a way that implicitly gives the green light for Israel to do it if Obama is too timid. This will involve a second implicit setback for Obama, as it will hang out to dry the West Bank-settlements issue and Palestinian negotiations.
4. When Democratic efforts to eliminate the Senate filibuster fail, a new surprise cause will emerge — repeal of the 22nd Amendment, so that Bill Clinton can run for a third term in 2012 and save the party from Obama. Why shouldn’t Democrats turn to the hyper-competent first black president to save us from the incompetent second black president?
5. New Jersey governor Chris Christie will go on a diet and/or grow a mustache. Even if he doesn’t, expect a grassroots groundswell behind a GOP ticket of Christie and John Bolton, for the singular purpose of reviving the William Howard Taft look (rotundity and facial hair) in presidential politics.
— Steven F. Hayward is F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The Age of Reagan.
CARRIE LUKAS
2011 will be a great year for education reform and a devastating one for teachers’ unions. The historic Republican gains in state legislatures will give innovative governors the opening to push for bold reforms. Governors across the country, from Daniels in Indiana to Scott in Florida to Martinez in New Mexico, won’t let this opportunity go to waste.
While Sarah Palin will draw the most media attention in 2011, the mainstream media won’t be able to demonize all the emerging Republican women. Be on the watch for new rising GOP female stars.
Sarah Palin will realize she can have the most positive impact — and frustrate the Left the most — by staying out of the presidential contest, remaining as a lightning rod for Republican-bashers and a king-maker for aspiring Republican leaders.
New Jersey’s Chris Christie will run.
— Carrie Lukas is executive director of the Independent Women’s Forum and the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism.
JOHN J. MILLER
Sarah Palin will announce that she won’t run for president.
Large numbers of American troops will remain in Afghanistan.
Fidel Castro will die.
The New England Patriots will win the Super Bowl, the Detroit Red Wings will win the Stanley Cup, the Los Angeles Lakers will repeat as NBA champs, and the Philadelphia Phillies will take their second World Series title in four years.
— John J. Miller is NR’s national correspondent and the author ofThe First Assassin. His personal website is HeyMiller.com.
DANA PERINO
President Obama will exercise his first veto. Only a minimal number of American troops will come home from Afghanistan. It will become fashionable not to be on social-media sites 20 times a day. I will be invited to provide commentary at the Country Music Awards (this is not a prediction — it’s a wish!).
— Dana Perino was White House press secretary under President George W. Bush.
DAVID PRYCE-JONES
Being of a cautious disposition, I go only for safe bets. One, Spain’s economic troubles are going to precipitate the long-awaited crisis of the euro. Two, eurocrats will no longer be able to pretend it is business as usual, and gold bugs will be jumping high. Three, riots throughout Europe are going to do wonders for the plate-glass industry. Four, a crisis in Egypt — it is impossible to decide which is worse, the 82-year-old Hosni Mubarak rigging the presidential election for the umpteenth time, or pushing his son into the office. And five, more power to Stuxnet.
—David Pryce-Jones is an NR senior editor.
ANDREW STUTTAFORD
There will be dramas and panics to spare (Portugal will be next), but the euro will still be around at the end of 2011, bolstered by ever-increasing eurozone budgetary harmonization. The EU’s ruling class has invested too much political capital in this project to allow it to fail: whatever the cost — and the cost will be very high, economically, politically and socially.
No clear leader will have emerged in the GOP contest for the presidential nomination. Beyond the declared (or more or less declared) candidates already out there, Paul Ryan will not (alas) run, but Mitch Daniels just might. Mike Huckabee could well have a go, fusing social conservatism with a dash of leftist economics, while Jim DeMint might well be tempted to have a go. Sarah Palin? I have no idea.
The financial plight of many states will continue to worsen, and the muni market will lurch deep into crisis.
Iran and North Korea will end the year looking pretty much as they look today, except that their nuclear programs will be further along. Cyber-attacks can only do so much. One game changer could be if the Grim Reaper comes calling for Kim Jong Il. If his son actually succeeds his unlamented father, it will be as a figurehead, with the real power resting with one or two generals. Could they be (relative) pragmatists?
Silvio Berlusconi will continue to be Europe’s most entertaining prime minister. Belgium will continue to be Europe’s most unnecessary country.
The Japanese will continue to reject the advice of those who claim (wrongly) that large-scale immigration is the answer to the “problem” posed by a declining population.
Vladimir Putin will announce that he is “running” for the Russian presidency in 2012.
As always, terrorism remains a hideous wild card. Recent events in Stockholm are just the latest warning.
— Andrew Stuttaford is a contributing editor of National Review.
CHARMAINE YOEST
Congress passes a $40 million increase in funding for Planned Parenthood. Their board fires Cecile Richards from her $600K-a-year post as president of the world’s largest abortion provider because $40 million wasn’t enough.
Seeing her opportunity, Hillary Clinton resigns her post as secretary of state to take the position and the pay increase, saying she is doing it “for the children.” President Obama appoints Angelina Jolie to replace her.
On the eve of the annual March for Life, Clinton reports the formation of the National Association of Abortion Providers International for Excellence (NAAPIE) to focus on the expansion of online abortions. The program will be managed domestically by LeRoy Carhart. An exuberant Planned Parenthood spokesperson reports, “Since the passage of TeleMed Legislation, all abortion providers are now located in China and India. Their online setup provides a much lower cost with only minor service interruptions and a minimum increase in complications.”
Pres. Barack Obama solves Cecile Richards’s job crisis by appointing her to a newly created position, “Abortion Czar,” and tasks her with enforcing the abortion mandate in Obamacare.
— Charmaine Yoest is president and CEO of Americans United for Life.
NICOLE GELINAS
President Obama will out-Reagan Bush and finally give the nation something it hasn’t had in a decade: permanent tax rates to run on ahead of the 2012 election.
California’s Governor Brown will lead the nation in being serious about addressing his state’s long-term pension, healthcare, and debt liabilities. He’ll achieve real fixes because, as someone who helped to grow California’s public sector, he has the credibility to say to the legislature and the public that it’s finally time to pare it back.
– Nicole Gelinas, contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, is author of After The Fall: Saving Capitalism From Wall Street — and Washington.
Bump for reading tonight!
“Vocabulary: The word ‘austerity’ will be heard a lot.”
At least we don’t have to hear ‘gravitas’ all the time anymore, LOL!
I predict that while we Ants work hard, the Grasshoppers will continue to fiddle...and yet we Ants will STILL be expected to bail out the Grasshoppers. Grrrr! But THIS time, I think the Ants will rise up, kill the Grasshoppers, smother them in chocolate and call it ‘Lunch’! :)
Carrie BUMP! :)
It seems most of the NR writers think Palin is going to tank and can’t be a serious candidate. There’s a freaking surprise.
1,000 servicemembers will try to avoid deployment to Afghanistan for openly stating they’re gay...
...and fail...
...giving them yet something ELSE to be PO’d about.
I predict the temperatures will warm up towards the summer months and then cool off towards the end of the year.
“It seems most of the NR writers think Palin is going to tank and can’t be a serious candidate.”
***
Prediction: National RINOview comes fully out of the closet to support Romney for president.
2nd Prediction: At some point, someone will start to wonder if the views of NR are influenced by the sources of its funding to stay afloat.
112% of all predictions will be mindless, straight-line extrapolations. I know this because last year 92% were and the previous year 72% were.
RE: 112% of all predictions will be mindless, straight-line extrapolations. I know this because last year 92% were and the previous year 72% were.
I should have looked at the predictions made in 2005 more closely, most would have been pretty good then. :)
63.1% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Re: Derbyshire’s “Math” prediction:
“What is an anagram of “Banach-Tarski”?
Obviously: “Banach-Tarski Banach-Tarski”
Yes, once they got out of the negative numbers.
Just for AGW or everywhere?
Diana, what do you think about her predictions? I’d pretty much have to agree.
Did part II of “A Christmas Carol” ever appear? If so, I missed it!
Happy New Year!
A famous rock star will die next year. Also, an obscure Hollywood actor. U.S. Congress will have a vote of no-confidence for the Obama Administration. The Prime Minister and his Cabinet will resign. Oh, wait, never mind, we have a perfect Constitution.
A politician despised by Conservatives will die. Prayers-up and accolades will fill the FR pages. “He was a good man.”
Mormon vs Protestant vs Catholic urinating matches will continue on FR.
Threads of outrage about teachers having sex with students will dominate.
Apple vs Microsoft vs Google religious wars go on unabated.
The prophecy that breaks my heart is that Tavis Smiley’s C-Span show,”State of the Black Union”, will go.
I’ll be lost without it.
:-)
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