Enemy of the State not just a Movie

Since I declared traditional American democracy dead back in August, the government has gone out of its way to prove my point.

Exclusive: Donald Trump Followers Targeted by FBI as 2024 Election Nears

The federal government believes that the threat of violence and major civil disturbances around the 2024 U.S. presidential election is so great that it has quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers.

The challenge for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the primary federal agency charged with law enforcement, is to pursue and prevent what it calls domestic terrorism without direct reference to political parties or affiliations—even though the vast majority of its current “anti-government” investigations are of Trump supporters, according to classified data obtained by Newsweek.

Just a couple of observations on that.  You need a brand-new category of extremist?  The old ones weren’t cutting it anymore?  See that sounds almost like you are making it up.

But given that, I’m not surprised that the most anti-government investigations are on Trump supporters.  I grew up in a time when leftists were fighting The Man, the establishment, and multiple varieties of isms.  Now, leftists are The Man and the establishment. So, who do you rebel against now?  Why the people who are NOT The Man and the establishment.

Continuing…

Right after January 6, the FBI co-authored a restricted report (“Domestic Violent Extremists Emboldened in Aftermath of Capitol Breach, Elevated Domestic Terrorism Threat of Violence Likely Amid Political Transitions and Beyond”) in which it shifted the definition of AGAAVE (“anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism”) from “furtherance of ideological agendas” to “furtherance of political and/or social agendas.” For the first time, such groups could be so labeled because of their politics.

This seems to boil down to, if you don’t think Joe Biden is the bestest President ever, then you are a dangerous extremist and need to be watched by the government.

Of course, the recent attacks on Trump’s eligibility to run in various States have extended.

Democrats Want Over 130 Republicans Banned From Holding Office

More than 130 Republicans have faced challenges to their eligibility to serve in office based on their alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in recent years.

Critics also say those involved in the riot should be barred from holding office, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. It states that those who took an oath to defend the Constitution and went on to engage in “insurrection or rebellion” should not be permitted to hold “any office, civil or military, under the United States.”

Since the 2020 election, at least 134 Republicans, including Trump, have faced legal challenges questioning whether they are qualified to hold office. None of these challenges have been successful.

Putin must be so jealous! 

Meanwhile our system is trying to institute its own version of a one-party oligarchy; gradually, and then suddenly as Hemingway might say.  I’m not going to bother making too much in the way of predictions for this coming year since the wild swings that our political system is taking are getting wilder and crazier.  I feel confident though in saying that Trump won’t be President, no matter how the “election” goes.  Nor do I think the House has much chance to remain with the Republicans.  But who wins what office is almost a minor consideration at this point.  One thing that I’m confident predicting is that the one-party oligarchy is likely to win.

2022 Predictions Wrap Up

Another year, and another look back at my predictions for the year.  So compared to the predictions I made last January, how did I do?

There will be a Supreme Court vacancy this year.

I got this one correct right out of the gate as Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement

However…

There will be no major invasion by Russia of Ukraine this year.

This one I got wrong soon after; so, sue me.  I really thought this could have been negotiated ahead of time to prevent an invasion.  It didn’t occur to me at the time that the Biden Administration wanted this war.                      

The FED will raise interest rates more than once this year.

Batta batta…

From strike 1,  Fed raises interest rates for the first time since 2018, and strike fill in the blank. We’ve gotten multiple rate hikes

this year so this is a winner.

Twitter and Facebook will ban some GOP House and Senate candidates; no Democratic ones.

Well yeah, I got this one right, however the damage is not as nearly severe as I thought it would be thanks to the chaos that Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter brought to the system.

Florida Republican Candidate Permanently Suspended From Twitter

Arizona GOP Candidate’s Twitter Account Restored

Marjorie Taylor Green Personal Account Permanently Banned from Twitter

The Republican Party will win back control of the House of Representatives.

This was one of the few times that I agreed with the conventional wisdom.  Notice I didn’t call the Senate race however…  Interestingly in October I had made a more targeted prediction rate for the 2022 race at the request of a family member in which I did call all of the Senate seats in contention and got them all right except for one, the Georgia race between Warnock and Walker.  Getting one wrong from that makes me practically a Superforcaster!

I think JD Vance will win the Ohio Senate race.

The one Senate race I did call as part of my annual predictions.  I was hoping the combination of a good candidate, Peter Theil money, and an industrially depressed state would equal victory.

The US economy will begin to enter a recession by the end of the year.

This is a technical win, in that we did have two quarters of negative growth this year, which is the definition of a recession, but the Biden Administration took a chance in ignoring it and not publicly acknowledging it, and that paid off since growth resumed in the next quarter.

US inflation will stay above 5% through the year.

Given that it’s currently 8.3 percent, that’s a good call.

China will also begin an economic downturn by the end of the year.

China’s problems started much earlier, and like many economic downturns, much of it was self-inflicted.

Housing prices will began to decline in Blue States by the end of the year.

Well sooner than that actually.  I underestimated the impact of the interest rate rise on the housing market.  So that’s on me, but still this is a win.

In fact, getting 9 out of 10 predictions right is pretty good.  I think I’m still in the prediction game!

Preparing for the Next Housing Crisis

This looks like it’s going to be a good year for my predictions, although that’s not necessarily good news for the country.  Scanning through a few business headlines over the past two months reveal a trend.

Property Values Fall Across US, Europe on Bite From Inflation

Real estate firms Compass and Redfin announce layoffs as housing market slows

Mortgage demand is now roughly half of what it was a year ago, as interest rates move even higher

Home prices have begun falling in these 10 cities, according to Realtor.com

At least 40% of Denver homes for sale saw price reductions in May

And of course…

Could housing slump sink the entire economy?

Short answer, Yes!

“… This is a “complicated moment in the market,” he said in an earnings release.

“The weight of a rapid doubling of interest rates over six months, together with accelerated price appreciation, began to drive buyers in many markets to pause and reconsider,” Miller said, adding that Lennar “began to see these effects after quarter end.””

If this all sounds a little familiar, it should.  I wrote about our last mortgage and financial crisis a few years ago where I observed that all the clues to a housing crisis were fully available to the average person and totally ignored by the Ivy League economists and policy planners who helped drive us off the cliff.

Not much has changed.

2022 Predictions

I’ll start off with (I think) an easy one, and it’s one of the few times that I agree with the conventional wisdom, but…

The Republican Party will win back control of the House of Representatives.

I’m making no such predictions about the Senate, but I have a prediction about one race…

I think JD Vance will win the Ohio Senate race.

The Big tech war against conservatives will continue…

Twitter and Facebook will ban some GOP House and Senate candidates; no Democratic ones.

Because of the Dodd case, the Supreme Court will come under renewed focus and…

There will be a Supreme Court vacancy this year.

On economic matters, my magic 8 ball says outlook isn’t so good…

The US economy will begin to enter a recession by the end of the year.

And…

US inflation will stay above 5% through the year.

But wait, there’s more…

The FED will raise interest rates more than once this year.

And relatedly, I’ve long been predicting that the Housing market would crash by the end of 2022, but the rise of inflation and the continuation of Covid complicates that.  So I modify that prediction a bit…

Housing prices will began to decline in Blue States by the end of the year.

Beyond our borders…

China will also begin an economic downturn by the end of the year.

Given the “leak” that US intelligence think it “very likely” that the Russians will invade Ukraine, I don’t believe it…

There will be no major invasion by Russia of Ukraine this year (the ongoing cross border stuff will continue however).

Prediction Update; now with even more predictions!

I want a do-over!

In my 2020 Predictions post, one of the predictions was that President Trump would face a second impeachment.  Well, I counted that as a missed prediction since there was no second impeachment …in 2020, but almost immediately into the New Year, guess what?

We had a second impeachment.

Now technically, it didn’t happen within the 2020 calendar year, but it was so close, mid-January; how can this not be an accurate prediction?  And therefore I have declared it so!  My 2020 prediction score is now 6 out of 8 predictions, giving me a grade of 75%.  That’s a solid gentleman’s C, so I’ll take that.

So while I’m updating my predictions, I thought I would gift a few bonus predictions.  These are just off the top of my head but let’s see..

 

The Derek Chauvin trial begins this week.  Chauvin, is charged with killing the sainted George Floyd (PBUH).  Watching the video, I came to the same conclusion that the rest of the country did, Chauvin murdered Floyd.  But then the autopsy was released showing a fatal amount of fentanyl in his system, and I had to reconsider my priors. Chauvin is charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges.  I don’t know which charge is going to stick, but in spite of the autopsy results, I’m confidently predicting that Chauvin will be convicted on one of those three charges.  If you were on that jury, would you want to put you and your family’s life in danger by adhering strictly to the evidence?  Would you want to be responsible for setting off new rioting?  Chauvin is getting the shaft on this one.

In economic news, I think we are facing a future stock market crash and real estate market crash, within the next 18 months.  I do have a criteria that I use to determine this, which I’m keeping close to the vest for now, but handle your investments with this in mind.

Also a little far afield, but I’m predicting that the Republicans, as hopelessly messed up as they are, take back a majority in the House of Representatives in 2022.  I know it’s a little early for that, and if HR 1 passes, all bets are off, but right now it’s about the only national level place the GOP can win.

Predictions for 2021

Democrats will take at least one of the run off Senate seats in play in Georgia.

 

China is going to make a move on the dollar this year.  I don’t when or how, but now that they have their guy in the White House, 2021 looks like the perfect time.

 

Google’s anti-Trust case gets settled or dismissed by servile Harris-but-also Biden Justice Dept

 

There will be another “stimulus” bill, with cash money for everyone as “Stimulus.”

 

Related to the stimulus bill, US higher education tries to wrangle a bail out, probably as part of the future stimulus bill.

 

There will still be some COVID restrictions up through the middle of 2021 regardless of the vaccination schedule.

 

A major amnesty bill will work its way through Congress, supported by the Harris-and-also Biden administration.

The Harris-but-also Biden Administration will try to get a tax increase bill signed by the end of the year, but won’t be able to get one through.

 

Most of these political predictions hinge on how the Georgia run off races go, so it could be a year of wildly successful prediction or utter failure, just like every year!

2020 Predictions Wrap Up

My Prediction mojo usually gets wobbly during Presidential election years and this year was no different.  Not to mention that 2020 turned out to be…2020.  I sure didn’t see that coming!  In any case, I still feel obligated to own up to my wins and losses of the past year.  So going through my 2020 Predictions:

What I got Right.

Reparations will be on the Democratic Platform

Called it!  Technically it’s the “study” of reparations, which is something that Democratic Congressmen vote on at the beginning of every session, but now that it’s in the platform, it will be part of the Democratic Party wish list forever.

There will be some sort of Brexit this year.

Again I was right, there was, “some kind” of Brexit.  At least it’s a start.

There will be a Supreme Court vacancy this year.

I thought either RBG would shrug off the mortal coil or Justice Thomas would see the handwriting on the wall and take a dive for the good of the Supreme Court.  Well he didn’t, which will work against us during the Harris-also-Biden administration.  He’s not young enough to be able to skip nearly a decade of Democratic Presidents.  In fact, he’s making the same mistake RPG did.  Despite the millions of atheist prayers, RPG left a gap in the Supreme Court that President Trump was only too happy to fill.

Republicans will retain control of the Senate.

Despite the blue wave predictions, the GOP maintained control of the Senate, with of course a big caveat of the runoff race in Georgia.  Well for the purposes of this year it still looks good for the Republicans so I’m comfortable calling that a win.

Democrats will retain control of the House.

I also got this right but surprisingly by a margin a bit thinner than I foresaw.  I expected the Democratic lead to remain about the same, with a few seats traded out here and there. Instead the Republicans made some real progress.  Thanks “Defund-the-Police” Democrats!

 

What I got Wrong.

Joe Biden will not be the Democratic Nominee.

Yep, I got this wrong. My reasoning was simply this:  As woke and identity politics conscious as the Democratic Party had gotten, why would they select on old white male with a history of troublesome racial statements?  Plus, I assumed that no way would Democrats want someone with declining mental faculties to go against Trump in the debates, not to mention govern the country.  But the hatred of Trump was so strong, they didn’t care they were voting in someone stretching the bounds of senility.

There will be an additional impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives this year to consider new impeachment charges.

This one I got wrong, but by a hair.  Democrats were planning to do an “Impeachment 2.0” after Trump was acquitted, but COVID-19 got in the way and blew everything else out of the water.

There will be an independent never-Trump candidate in the race

My assumption was that Never Trump forces would be up to their old tricks, but I think the years have worn on them since 2016 when they promoted a couple of nimrod embarrassing characters to run against Trump.  Of course in 2016, they were expecting a 50 state blow out for Hillary.  I think this year, they finally began to admit they were Democrats all along and just went ahead and supported Biden.

So I got 5 out of 8 predictions: That’s a 62.5% success rate.  Or in other words a ‘D.’  In some schools, that’s passing and considering that it’s been 2020, where nothing was as predicted, I don’t feel I did too bad.

 

Predictions for 2020

I had a pretty good prediction run for 2019 so hopefully I can continue that; however it’s an election year so everything should be extra crazy.  So with that in mind, I present my 2020 predictions.

Reparations will be on the Democratic Platform

After several of the Democratic Presidential candidates came out in support of reparations, it’s hard to imagine that this year reparations wouldn’t finally make the platform somehow.

There will be an independent never-Trump candidate in the race

I don’t know how well-funded he or she would be, but for the purpose of sapping GOP votes from Trump to throw the election to the Democrats, there will be an effort to promote someone to give the several hundred never-Trumpers some voting alternative.

Joe Biden will not be the Democratic Nominee.

I’ve been saying it for months, in spite of his rather constant lead near the top of the polls, but the issue is that ultimately, it’s not the gaffes, but the fact that the gaffes will look more and more like dementia rather than “that’s just Joe.”  I think the Democrats would prefer a crazed socialist to an obviously mentally failing “moderate.”

There will be an additional impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives this year to consider new impeachment charges.

This of course, is the action of a crazed opposition, but that’s where we are, so I’m confident the House will consider new charges for impeachment.

There will be a Supreme Court vacancy this year.

Even though the Supreme Court prediction burned me last year, I guess I’m a moth driven to the flame on this, so I’m going to say that either due to retirement or death or disablement, there will be an opening.

There will be some sort of Brexit this year.

Democrats will retain control of the House.

Republicans will retain control of the Senate.

 

 

You may notice that I didn’t make a prediction on who wins the Presidency.  In 2016 I held off until August…and got it wrong.  My prediction on what makes the difference in the race is that this will be a turn out election; whoever gets their people to the polls in high enough numbers will win, and as of now, Democrats tend to dominate the ground game.

 

Also, a not quite prediction:

I wouldn’t really say this is a prediction, both because it’s outside the one year window of this post and because at this point it’s more guess than prediction, but this could move up to a full blown prediction in the future (but that’s just a prediction).

Notre Dame, when rebuilt, will have some sort of Islamic imagery included.

 

2019 Predictions Wrap Up

I had a fairly substantial improvement in the predictions biz success rate this year so let me take a moment to brag:

Whoohoo!

Now to my predictions!

Mueller’s Investigation will not show any collusion between Trump or the Trump campaign and Russia to “hack” the election.

Easy win.  The charge was absurd to begin with, so the only uncertainty was when the report would be released, not what it would say.  So the much awaited “Mueller Time” turned out to be a big goose egg for the Democrats and media.  Not that it mattered.  They still believe Trump is a Russkie spy anyway.

The House Judiciary Committee will vote on articles of impeachment this year.

This was getting a little down to the wire, but the Judiciary committee finally voted on impeachment. Of course, even if they hadn’t I might have taken the credit for this anyway since the House did hold an “impeachment inquiry” then of course a full vote in the House.  But I still win even with my very specific prediction.  I must have powers!

Sorry Bill Maher, but no recession by the end of this year.

Not just Maher, but multiple economists all generated “reports” stating that the economy had topped out and would begin sliding into recession or that Trump’s crazy trade policy would push us into recession; in any case, the economy would be in recession in time for the 2020 election.  This sounded like a lot of wishful thinking, and considering some of the sources (I’m looking at you Mark Zandi!) I figured this was a hope, not a data driven prediction.

No Brexit.

In spite of that “hard date” of October 31, 2019, I had a suspicion that with a government jam packed with remainers, it would be next to impossible to push Brexit through this year, and on that I was correct.  Of course, the recent British elections have cleared that logjam, so next year may be a different story.

President Trump will have another Supreme Court nomination to make by the end of the year

This was my choke point.  I thought that Clarence Thomas might see the opportunity to resign and get a strict constructionist, a much younger one, to replace him.  Instead, Thomas is having the time of his life and shows no sign of leaving.  RBG is apparently much sicker than was known this time last year but I saw a Thomas graceful exit as more likely than Ruth Bader Ginsberg being carried out.

So that gives me an 80% success rate this year.  Let’s see if I can maintain that level of success next year!

The Impeachment Shoe Dropping

At the beginning of the year I made my annual list of predictions, and included by prediction of impeachment for some time this year, “The House Judiciary Committee will vote on articles of impeachment this year. I’m not going to guess whether there will be enough votes to bring the issue to the floor of the House, but the Judiciary Committee will for sure be voting on it.  It’s too tempting to leave that candy in the pantry.” Of course, we already had a vote on impeachment back in July so this isn’t all that new.

Apparently that candy looked really good, and as the number of Democrats who were in favor of impeachment slowly rose throughout the year, it became apparent that eventually Nancy Pelosi would have to either go along or get left behind. She decided that she would rather drive the train than get run over by it, and so announced an impeachment inquiry, a made up thing that has no constitutional or legal basis.  However it does announce the official beginning of the Impeachment Bowl, “play ball!”

This trigger, the outrage over the President’s call to the Ukrainian President, hasn’t caused such uproar since…a few weeks ago during the Scottish Airport scandal, when Trump was allegedly directing military flights to his resort.  That scandal turned out to be fake as I suspect this one will be, although the difference is that the impeachment machinery of investigations will remain. After all, Pelosi announced her inquiry yesterday before either the whistleblower’s complaint or the contents of the phone call transcripts were known.  So it didn’t matter what the actual accusation was or what the content of the transcripts were, impeachment ho!

Reading the transcript, I was surprised at how banal it was, not at all the snarling Trump threatening the President of Ukraine to bring him Oppo research on Biden or no aid, as I had been prepped by MSNBC to expect.  So…no quid pro quo for military aid.  Like every other fake crisis about Trump over the past two and a half years; a nothingburger.

Meanwhile, three Democratic Senators wrote a letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor urging him to reopen investigations involved with the Mueller probe and of course, good old Sleepy Joe himself successfully got the investigation of the company Burisma shut down.  As Marc Thiessen noted in The Washington Post:

“And then there is Joe Biden. In 2016, the then-vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine if the government did not fire the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. According to the New York Times, “Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden … who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general.” The Post reports that it is “unclear how seriously Shokin — who was under fire by U.S. and European officials for not taking a more aggressive posture toward corruption overall — was scrutinizing Burisma when he was forced out.” But what is clear is that Biden bragged about getting him fired, declaring last year: “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a b—-. He got fired.””

Well there is some quid pro quo right there! It would be hilarious if the Democratic Congress, in attempting to smear Trump with yet still more nonsense, actually drops a ton of crap on Joe Biden.  Then again, maybe that’s their plan after all…