I think all of your predictions are good ones, but some of them will happen in 2010 or even 2011. You’ve got 2009 written down as a VERY portentous year!

It takes time to prepare the major terrorist attack. For all my libertarian, fiscal-conservative disgust with President Bush, he must receive credit for the disruption of major terrorist activities. Under Obama the terrorist networks will pull it back togeether, and launch their successful assault(s) perhaps late in 2010, or in 2011. The major biological or nuclear attack won’t occur until then. I don’t know that the terrorists will be so bold as to hit the USA – we’re still the most prepared, after all – but hit somewhere in the West, they will. A VERY major attack, with a minimum of 50,000 dead, a maximum of two million, in late 2010 thru early 2012 is my best prediction.

(The minimum involves a biological attack that does not succeed in achieving maximum lethality; the maximum is the large nuclear device that does succeed, near the heart of a major city during the working day. The Islamic Jihadists had better be careful in getting what they wish for – an America unleashed would not be a pleasant thing at all to comprehend. After a major nuclear attack, the Islamic Jihadist forces’ only hope might then be that Obama hangs on thru 2012, giving them time for our rage to ebb… so that the subsequent President no longer might have the full desire of the American people to exact total retribution. The closer to 2012 the attack occurs, the more likely our reaction will be maximally severe.)

Prediction: Economic and social onditions finally collapse in the UK. The government is finally completely and irrevocably discredited. There is a backlash against Labor and the EU.

Prediction: The European wing of Nato pulls out of Afghanistan. U.S. has to go it alone. Pakistan and India’s crisis explodes.

Prediction: There is a major attack on the U.S. and/or international U.S. interests. Obama votes “present”.

I really hope that all my predictions amount to nothing.

Given that I never would have predicted the biggest event of 2008 (namely, the media successfully anointing a socialist neophyte as our new president), the merits of my predictions are probably pretty small. Nevertheless, I can’t resist the chance to….

Re #10 -In Connecticut, there’s a state representative who’s pushing for the government to bail out the local newspapers. So you see, there’s a third option for the Times, given all Pinch has done for Obama…I mean, it is the newspaper of record and all.

What a depressing list.