010104224728– Niagara Falls, NY–
Happy New Year.
We’re up in Niagara Falls tonight, for the fireworks display at midnight. We’re actually not far from where I’ve written columns in the past.
They have two shows tonight. As this is written, it’s between shows, and we’re waiting for the Midnight show. We’ve already seen the one scheduled at 9:15 (though they actually went up at about 9:25). The Midnight show is supposed to be quite something; They’ll shoot fireworks off the top of the Skylon tower AND up out of the Niagara river gorge.
At moments like this one tends to wonder what lies ahead, and since I have the time, I may as well jot some notes down. Within this context, then, here’s my predictions for 2004, in no particular order:
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Lord of the Rings Return of the King will be nominated for picture of the year, and will lose.
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The Democrats will swing so far left in search of primary voters, they will be easy targets during the general election
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Yet more links will be revealed between Saddam and Bin Laden, and the left will try to deny such revelations are of any import.
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More links between Saddam and Syria, as regards Saddam’s weapons programs will be found and the left will try to deny such revelations are of any import. These denials will be ignored, given the obvious.
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Howard Dean will win the Democrat nomination.
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Following that convention, polling data will show Howard Dean with less than 40% of the support in a general election.
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Hilary Clinton, who wants Dean nowhere near the leadership of the party, will try to step in at the last minute to supposedly “save the situation”. Her greed will be shown and understood at last… even by the Democrats.
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Despite this, and in fact because of it, to a large degree, George W. Bush will win a second term as President with around 60% of the popular vote.
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Tony Blair will face an election, and will win again.
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Nancy Pelosi will be a disaster for Democrats in the ’04 election cycle, particularly in the south, where Republicans will pick up more seats, and governorships.
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The Democrats will scream about how polarized politics has become, as the majority moves to the Republicans. It’s only way they can explain away their losses.
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“The 2004 election campaigns will break a record in money spent on elections, but a little noted factor will be how much of that money did not come from PACs and corporations, but from everyday people… which is a ratification of President Bush’s policies… and that grassroots movement, that majority will be the biggest push toward the Republican electoral victory in ’04.
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The situation in Iraq will continue on it’s course of steady improvement. Of course the Democrats will deny it’s an improvement, and we’ll see occasional statements that we were better off with Saddam.
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To the dismay of the un-American left, Bin Laden will be captured in mid-summer.
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Bills and proposals regarding homosexual ‘unions’ will become a political ‘third rail’ as polls will report 70% percent of Americans against allowing them despite decades of attempts to change that situation.
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Given court rulings allowing any two persons to “marry” we’ll see the ACLU come out in support of the legalization and normalization of all kinds of kinks, including bestiality and necrophilia, incest, polygamy, pedophilia, and so on. They will argue that such restrictions are unconstitutional, and will use the pro-homosexual rulings as their basis for motion.
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The long awaited “liberal radio network’ will be near stillborn, being heard on lower power and “rimshot” stations only, in the few markets it manages to get into. It will die quietly inside two years.
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Dow at or above 12,000. So great will be the growth of the economy, in fact, that the Fed will be forced to react with increased prime rates.
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As an indication as well as an outgrowth of that fact, IT spending will skyrocket and the IT services field will see large growth. This spending will more a more careful spending than we saw in the 90’s, since we won’t have the 2000 bug to worry about, but will instead focus on the ROI for each company.
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Linux will increase it’s hold on the desktop.
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As bandwidth gets cheaper, we’ll see higher and higher speed internet connections at the home desktop level. This trend is actually already established, but will continue exponentially.
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AOL/Time Warner will split in ’04, leaving AOL to boil in it’s own juices for a short time, before AOL gets swallowed up by some other ISP, and the AOL shell will die the death it’s deserved for decades.
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Voice over IP will become a household phrase, and will clearly demonstrate that government regulation hobbles development. Calls will begin to be made to eliminate such regulation. Democrats will of course fight it. May not be resolved in ’04, but the path will be clear by ’05.
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George Soros will no longer be the 38th richest man in America, but will fail in unseating Mr. Bush.
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Castro dies. The end of communism is in sight on Cuba.
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By year’s end the number of states that will have enacted conceal-carry permit laws, will be at or above 40. The associated drop in crime will be ignored by the leftists, who will be suffering apoplexy about how ‘wild west’ things have gotten. (Disconnection from reality is a safe bet for the left in ANY year, after all.)
* There will continue to be an amusing struggle among Democrats seeking to describe the recently passed drug bill as corporate welfare for the drug companies, when despite their protests, it’s exactly what they’ve been pushing for decades.
By the way; here’s a link to the display we saw at Midnight