This is how the next 7 & 3/4 years are going to go down..crystal ball moment

I have been away for a few days, making lemon pie ;).. and it gave me a chance to get back to a healthy perspective. Sometimes, the road is so rocky, getting to where we are going, it is hard not to think of nothing but the rocks instead of the destination. But I digress....


In the long haul of the course of the next 7 3/4 years.. we are going to see..

A. The return of a healthy economy, and the fairly distinct progress in reducing the national debt.

B. The car companies will be smaller, but they will be productive. The US gov. will be out of the car buisness also.

C. Pakistan, and Afghanistan, with the help of other middle eastern nations, will have finally kaboshed Al Qaeda. We might still have a presence in that area, but it will be more like what we are in Sorth Korea, or Germany.

D. There will be a national health care system that uses both public and private entities. We will also have a national health agenda being promoted in all the schools.

E. Gay marriage, will just be another ceremony. Everyone will be registered at their favorite store, and everyone will have their announcements in the newspaper. And it most likely will go through state by state. There will be a few hold outs in the deep south, but few indeed.

F. In that same vein.. DADT will be a thing of the past.

G. President Obama will have secured 3 supreme court justices who are moderate left of center. It is who he is.

H. Even the republicans will have changed one of two things..
1. split with a libertarian and constitutionalists branch..
2. or they will have purged their talking hounds from having leadership roles, and have moved themselves to the middle..
Either way, a more centrist party will appear to challenge us.

I. The securing of the Social Security System for the next 80 years by the lifting of caps

With all that being said, there will still be vociferous challenges to sane people from the fringes, that will drive all of us nutsy fagen..

But that is my crystal ball moment.

EDIT//thank you for the heads up.. sheesh..north..what was I thinking

it doesn't seem to be headed that way, unfortunately.

if at least 75 to 80 % of that did not work out.. I will buy you a cup of your favorite coffee..

I hope it all works out but if it doesn't at least I get the coffee. :-)

:hi:

;-)

Leaving that one to the more scientifically inclined in our midst... But I will offer that green jobs will be much larger than anyone anticipates

A. The health of the economy will come from parents selling their children, either into slavery, or as food sources, much like Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal."

B. No American car companies will exist. There will only be two car dealers in the United States, both located in California, and they will be the sole source of California income, since they will be selling cars throughout the US to those few who can still afford them.

C. Al Quaeda will falter, because with the end of the American economy there will be no source for the cheap remote controls they used to make roadside bombs from model cars and the like. When those run out, they will simply have to throw lit dynamite.

D. There will be a national healthcare system for those who wish to die. Since life will be hopeless in America, this system - seen in the movie Soylent Green - will be one of the few growth industries in the country.

E. Gay marriage will still be argued and debated. Most poignant will be those gay and lesbian couples who will get married on courthouses, then produce pistols and commit mutual suicide from lack of work and food. This issue will dominate political discussion, while survival issues receive little or no attention from the left/liberal blogs. (Organizations like GLAAD will collect the tuxedos and bridal gowns from the suiciding couples, and make them available for recycling to the next group of suicide couples.)

F. "Don't ask, don't tell" won't matter, because you can't be fired from a job that you don't have.

G. President Obama will have attempted to appoint three Supreme Court justices, but none will pass. The Court will have three vacancies for most of those years. All decisions by the Court during this period will be marked with an asterisk.

H. The Republicans will have changed two things..
1. They will grow increasingly loud and hostile, since they own all the media, and will have publicly labeled the Democratic Party "the Osama Gay Boys Party of Socialist America."
2. Black and Log Cabin Republicans will suffer a wave of mysterious deaths.

I. Social Security will consist of someone coming to your door, giving you a warm handshake, and giving you a delicious fruit-flavored cyanide drink. The military will pick up your rapidly cooling corpse and load you onto a wagon for disposal. This will be known as Operation Clearing Brush.

The right-wing noise machine will have to compete with the wailing and futile cries of the passive, sheeplike Democrats, who will have lost their one moment to take down the powerful, and thus seen the promise of their country thrown onto an Operation Clearing Brush wagon.

ON EDIT: You may see suicide and death as terrible. It could be worse. You could be one of the people trying to live through the Trump/Gates/Wal-Mart era of this country. The living will envy the dead.

You will never win the battle, if you are assure yourself you will lose the war.

It's a universally (almost) understood principal that people rise no further than their self-expectations.

Having taught (treated?) long-term incarcerated youth, I can speak with some authority that if you help them believe that success if possible, they will believe in themselves and persevere.

The poster has lost the game before it's begun...

:toast:

Even in my most despairing moments, I couldn't endorse your point of view.:wow:

:pals:

You do realize this post is flamebait, I think you know what I mean. :evilgrin:

Stop making sense!

I agree on all but C, in which we'll have made great progress but putting out the likes of Al Qaeda is like making weeds extinct.

:toast:

but by george I am hanging on to it. If Iowa now allows gay marriages.. Heck, can peace in the middle east be completely out of bounds..

:toast:

We have lost. YOU have lost. We are ALL lost. We should have BEEN on <i>Lost. Lost</i> should have been about the Democratic Party, and it should have been filmed in Flint, Michigan, not Hawaii.

Lemon Pie seems to work wonders for you!

be bop a re-bop rhubarb pie.. if that does not cure what ails you, nothing will

Your crystal ball post is wonderful and very optimistic. All we have right now is hope that things will improve. Great Post and very appreciated by this DU'er!

:yourock:

I am ready to get back in and move us forward. A little break now and then is just what a person needs.. Glad to see the Obamas are doing the same thing!!

I seriously doubt we have any sort of presence in North Korea, LOL.

Otherwise, Kicked and Rec'd.

whew.. not much difference there.. :rofl: had NK on the mind I guess..

A. I don't think there is much appreciation for the scope of the disaster we just went through, its implications, or the problems the US faces long term, or the interconnection between capitalism, peak oil, and global warming. If by a healthy economy you mean the delusional bubbles of the internet 90's or the leveraged bullshit of the 00's will be replaced by yet another bubble, well then perhaps we may have another tulip frenzy. However the decline in living standards for working americans will continue, the disparity between rich and poor will increase, and every boom will fizzle as it slams into peak oil's barrier to fossil fuel based economic growth. Meanwhile, we are just tipping into the global chaos known as catastrophic climate change. Again, a system that functions only if it manages continuous growth is faced with a fundamental contradiction when it reaches the sustainable limits of that growth. We are there. Nobody in office is dealing with the fundamental problems here, they are sticking chewing gum in the fractured hull of our economic system and hoping the pumps won't fail on their watch.

We are in for a decade or more of economic stagnation. The federal debt is not going to be fixed anytime soon. That one time moment of opportunity handed to Bush by Clinton was most deliberately squandered and we are going to suffer from that malfeasance for generations.

B. GM and Chrysler are dead. Ford might survive. The car companies that might be around are Toyota, Honda, Ford, and perhaps one of the low cost Koreans.

C. I assume you meant South Korea. Our occupation forces will indeed still be mired in muslim countries, politically unable to leave and unable to convince the hostile natives that their continual slaughter is a good thing that they should accept from the heathen foreigners.

D. If we get a corrupt mandated private insurance system it will be a fucking disaster.

E. The gay marriage culture war front will have divided this nation as it has not been divided since the segregation battles of the 50's-60's, and perhaps not since the late 1850's. The good news is that it is likely that our side will vastly outnumber their side. The bad news is that they have a lot more guns.

F. DADT will be in force unless there is a miracle and a congress is seated that actually has a spine.

G. I agree - Obama will likely make three USSC appointments all of whom are less asshat fascist than the four knobs of idiocy currently on the bench. Unfortunately all but one of these will be replacing an equivalent justice. This will result in a 5-4 moderate majority.

H. The Palin faction will dominate the Republican Party. This is good news in that the Democratic Party will win congressional and presidential elections in 10, 12, 14 and 16. It is bad news as in (E) above.

I. Social Security is not and will not be in trouble. Please stop repeating the lies of the right. Medicare is fucked. The way to unfuck medicare is to institute a national healthcare program (single payer) that puts all of us into medicare and pays for it with a payroll tax sufficient to pay the bills and deliver quality healthcare to all. The Obama administration has no intention of doing anything of the sort.

Some things appear to be more wishful thinking than based on reality (such as C, H, I and I'm not even that confident about A).

:-(

home.

Also, that any kind of mustard, especially Dijion, is widely accepted as a hamburger condiment. ;)

Glad you got your mojo back kid! ;)

:loveya:

Here's my take on each:

A. As long as it's not a boom that's on the backs on the middle class and poor, that would be great. Even the Clinton 90s had some bad signs for the middle class, poor, and domestic workers.

B. Very possible! I like how Obama is handling the auto industries after all. Bush would never be involved like he is.

C. I worry about this one. My take has always been that a presence won't make things better. That said, glad Obama's focus is more on winning people over than military control.

D. I think we'll get a decent health care plan. Hoping Franken arrives soon to help. Might not start out great, but it should get better and not worse as long as the public option isn't weakened too much.

E. This is doable with the proper organization. :thumbsup:

F. Agreed

G. I think Sotomayor is a stealth liberal. Haven't seen much evidence of her "moderation." His possible 3 nominations are another reason I'm thrilled to have Obama even when I disagree with him.

H. The wingnuts will probably stuggle for control of that party for a while - the Repuke Party is so far gone.

I. Very possible

:hi:

thread effect.

So refreshing to read instead of all the doom, gloom, and gratuitious shit stirring.. day in and day out, ad infinitum.

Will some things go well? Probably.... but not everything. Reducing the national debt while extending health care and *continuing* to fight two wars? No freaking way.

I love, and share, your hopeful spirit. :)