New Year's Expectations

We find ourselves this morning at the start of a New Year, when everything is supposed to be fresh and, well, of course, new. So, not entire unlike the fluff journals found conveniently at the checkout line of your favorite grocery store, it seems fitting to make a few predictions about what 2012 will bring. What can it hurt? If we're right, we get points for courage. If we're wrong, then the crystal ball was a spot of dirt on it. We call that a win/win.

Detroit will fall under the direction of a state emergency manager. There will be great convolutions as all involved try to keep that from happening, but in the end it will. Detroit is simply too messed up and wrought by infighting for any other result to be expected. The rest of Michigan will be labeled racist; it will yawn in response with the only the barest attempts at hiding the yawn from Detroit. Michigan as a state isn't racist; Detroit as a city is incompetent.

November 2012 will see the election of a Republican President and a Republican Senate. Yet unless the GOP finds a headliner with the ability to really energize the electorate, it will not be with the same excitement as the 2010 debacle suffered by the Democrats. To wit, it will be another election where people vote against certain people and ideas rather than for great new leadership. Mitt Romney will benefit from not being Barack Obama. Unless Ron Paul can truly stir things up in the primaries and force the Republicans towards a more truly libertarian/conservative, smaller government focus, our next President will be Obama lite.

Hopefully, a strongly conservative GOP led Congress will keep that in check, but, as you know, power corrupts. It would not be a huge surprise to find the Republicans drifting leftwards once in power, as the Democrats tend to drift right. Sadly, our feeling is with the former. But that may be more of a 2013 prediction than a 2012.

The Detroit Lions will not win the Super Bowl. But they might snag a playoff game for the first time since, 1991, was it? Yes, we know this isn't a political prediction. But why would they all have to be?

The new Iraq will survive without a strong US presence. Call it a hunch, for that's all it really is, the old gut feeling at work, but something has to change in the Middle East. We feel that, on the whole, the US excursion there went well. We think it will prove of lasting benefit to the people there.

The American economy will not exactly boom this year, but it will improve. Much of the reason for that will be the anticipated change in Washington. You see, the world really doesn't work on particular initiatives but on broad principle. Say all you want about analyzing the economy or the political atmosphere or whatever, people and businesses (who are moral people, moral in the sense that we must see them as a types of persons in order to judge their actions and intentions) tend to work on much more vague ideals. For businesses, even, quite frankly, for the general populace, it's GOP good, Democrats bad for business. As money makes the world go round, there will be hedging on long term financial workings until the Republicans are in control, but enough short term action to make things begin to improve.

That's five of our best guesses on what 2012 will look like. For what really will happen, keep reading. We will score ourselves honestly, we promise, if for no other reason than, we will be called on it when we err. Happy New year!