2011 is a prime number. The last year that was a prime number was 2003 and the next year that is prime is 2017. I have always been fascinated by prime numbers; anything of such a singular nature is worth the devotion of some wonder and awe.
The end of a year is a time when people traditionally take stock, review the past year, and make some predictions for the coming year. To that end, here are some predictions, in no particular order and based on nothing more than my sense of the moment; if any of these predictions (beyond the most obvious) come true I will be delighted; if any prove to be spectacularly wrong, I will forget them. Herewith, I offer 11 predictions in homage to the prime year that is upcoming:
1) There will be no nuclear device exploded in anger this year, as there have been no such cataclysms for some 65 years. Iran's nuclear program apparently remains in some disarray, thanks to a number of 0's and 1's (ie, the software program known as Stuxnet) and they lack the sophistication to resolve their infection anytime soon.
2) The ambivalence at the heart of our economy and politics will persist. The Washington elites and their allies will continue to attempt to micromanage the lives and businesses of more and more Americans; more and more Americans will simply refuse to comply and the result will continue to be a dearth of investment and a paucity of jobs. The President will alternate between making speeches proclaiming the need for bipartisanship and fostering a bureaucracy that promulgates more and more rules of finer and finer granularity. The end result will be that those grains clog the gears.
3) The world's press, the Europeans, and the Muslim world will continue demonizing Israel. The need for an object upon which to externalize all problems and deflect attention from the failures of the elites makes Israel the perfect container. The toxic mixture of envy and hatred that has always fueled anti-Semitism will only increase in the next year as Europe heads into a double dip (facilitated by the failure of their bail out of the PIIGS.) President Obama will double down on his misguided belief that all problems in the Middle East stem from Israeli settlements in land which has always been considered part of Israel proper.
4) China may, but probably will not, finally experience the recession that it has seemed to have been immune from, with incalculable results. It is unlikely that they will experience unrest intense enough to threaten their rulers but no economy expands forever, especially when their foreign markets can no longer absorb all of their goods.
5) Our luck will run out and a slightly less incompetent than usual group of Islamists will manage to kill a large number of innocents in a Western country. "A large number" will be determined to be any number large enough to provoke demands for investigations by the usual suspects.
6) Fox News will continue to outperform its rivals and its rivals will remain mystified by its relative success.
7) A drug will emerge from a lab which will substantially stop aging in part of a mammalian biology, most likely the mouse immune system; once this proof of concept result is discovered the venture capital that has been looking for a place to go will start to pour into Biotech; the early trickle in 2011 will become a flood by 2013. An alternative development will be the discovery of a drug which can metabolize beta amyloid, the constituent of amyloid plaques which are pathognomonic of Alzheimer's Disease. The drug will be found to work in the test tube and early experiments on mice will be look promising.
8) The President will continue to be ambivalent about the war in Afghanistan and its spread into Pakistan and will continue to use extrajudicial assassinations (ie, drone attacks) at an accelerating pace; these attacks would be considered the worst kind of illegality by a rogue state were a Republican President but under Obama will be barely mentioned in the MSM or by relevant NGO's.
9) The House will vote to repeal Obamacare; the Senate will demur and the struggle for the soul of America will be on; the Tea Party movement will not go away and will continue to be demonized by the MSM and political establishment.
10) Goldman-Sachs and its Wall Street brethren will have a stellar year; the regulations promulgated to control their excesses (many of which will have been written by Goldman alumni) will primarily serve to damage small banks and investment houses, many of whom would be rivals of the large banks were the rules less onerous.
11) 2011 will offer many surprises, including the possibility of finding an Earth like planet in the habitable zone around its sun; Sarah Palin will decide not to run for President, much to the chagrin of the MSM and the liberal establishment; Mike Pence will emerge as a dark horse possibility for the Republican Presidential nominee by the end of the year; President Obama will triangulate and our entitlement programs will begin to be addressed; Obama will also take umbrage at the continuing series of slaps from petty tyrants and will show some spine to America's enemies.
Mostly, in 2011, we will continue to muddle through as we have managed for most of our time on the planet.
May the New Year bring us all Peace, Happiness, and Good Health.
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