And so the solstice passes and a new year dawns, leaving \u201cnewsmen\u201d everywhere with a dearth of \u201cnews\u201d to report (since the government bureaus close down, issuing no new edicts for the \u201cnewsmen\u201d to interpret and praise, which should give you some indication of what really passes for \u201cnews,\u201d these days.)<\/p>\n
Traditionally, those in the \u201cnews\u201d business respond by taking a stab at predicting noteworthy events of the year to come.<\/p>\n
We can predict the future quite accurately. Unfortunately, accurate predictions are a bore.<\/p>\n
The sun will rise 363 more times this year. When I ask for extra salt and pepper in my takeout bag at Wendy\u2019s, I\u2019ll continue to get a lot of salt and hardly any pepper. Instead of actually admitting \u201cman-made global warming\u201d was a scam, the eco-extremists will simply pull an Emily Litella, saying \u201cNever mind\u201d and coming up with some new \u201curgent crisis\u201d to justify demanding the same prosperity-crushing government interventions they used to demand based on the \u201csettled science\u201d of \u201cman-made global warming.\u201d<\/p>\n
(\u201cWhoa. How does he DO that?\u201d)<\/p>\n
I wish I could offer some cheery prognostications for 2010.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to predict Barack Obama will awaken some morning soon, rub his eyes, and go, \u201cHoly cow. Do you realize we\u2019re actually letting welfare recipients VOTE? Talk about a conflict of interest! If we don\u2019t want this republic to descend into a communist slave state we\u2019ve got to immediately limit the franchise to only net tax payers. We also need to restore the right of the states to limit voting to only those who own real property. The Seventeenth Amendment, which encourages senators to collect millions in \u2018campaign\u2019 bribes from corporations and labor unions from here to Hong Kong, has to be repealed, restoring the states\u2019 veto power over congressional mischief by going back to a system where the state legislatures appoint and instruct our senators. Anybody can see that.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeantime, I can\u2019t believe the way this federal government has been sucking the lifeblood out of our most productive citizens, till the wealthiest of them are actually fleeing the country with their remaining assets, the way the entrepreneurial class fled Russia in 1918. And we\u2019ve been wondering why there\u2019s no \u2018job creation\u2019? Man, those communists mom used to hang out with sure had it wrong. Why, we\u2019re only a short step from the mess the Russians got into! We need to repeal the death tax, the capital gains tax, and the federal income tax immediately, replacing them with nothing. And let\u2019s close down the Fed and tell Congress to get back to doing their job and setting the value of the dollar as a fixed weight of gold or silver, while we\u2019re at it. If all that reduces the size of the federal government by half, at least it\u2019ll be a start.<\/p>\n
\u201cRahm, get me Ron Paul on the phone, let\u2019s see if he\u2019ll take over Treasury. Meantime, find out how Michelle and I can change our voter registrations to Libertarian.\u201d<\/p>\n
I could predict all that\u2019s going to happen. But that would surely earn me a new nickname — something along the lines of \u201cBarry the Stoner,\u201d which I understand is what his high school classmates used to call a certain fellow now holding high office in Washington (and continuing to send people to prison for violating our absurd drug laws, by the way), in between snorkeling vacations.<\/p>\n
Health care? Once they realize new federal regulations block them from ever raising their rates again, health insurers could promptly raise their rates by 40 percent this winter, as a pure short-term survival measure. (I actually think more, but let\u2019s be \u201cconservative.\u201d) Outraged congressmen will immediately hold press conferences, storming \u201cWe\u2019re going to find out who (other than us) is responsible!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOK, Vin,\u201d some will say, \u201cbut that\u2019s good news, in a way. It means rush-to-socialism Democrats like Obama, Reid, and Pelosi will get tossed out on their butts, and the GOP will come back strong under another president named Bush – right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Pardon me, but when has the post-1912 Republican Party even tried to repeal a major plank of the enervating socialist welfare state, whether it be the Federal Reserve, the income tax, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, or the government\u2019s role in the indoctrination camps known as \u201cpublic schools\u201d?<\/p>\n
As far as I can figure out, the motto of the modern Republican Party is \u201cHold on, there! There\u2019s no need for us to race over the cliff toward a communist slave state at 70 miles an hour! Surely 50 miles an hour will suffice.\u201d<\/p>\n
There can be no \u201crecovery\u201d so long as it\u2019s national policy to drive new job-creation offshore by \u201ctaxing the rich\u201d when they earn money, \u201ctaxing the rich\u201d when they invest money, \u201ctaxing the rich\u201d when they die, taxing carbon dioxide emissions, forcing unionization without a secret ballot, blocking new nuclear plants, blocking new coal-fired plants, blocking new oil refineries, blocking drilling in ANWR or on the continental shelf, and promising all our energy needs will be met by ethanol – which consumes more energy than it \u201csaves\u201d while creating pollution and driving up both grain and meat prices – along with a bunch of big windmills which will sit idle for 20 years while the eco-extremists file lawsuits to block the transmission lines needed to deliver their pitiful contributions to market.<\/p>\n
To be optimistic during this political equivalent of a nuclear winter requires taking the kind of view a teacher (not the kind retained by the government) once encouraged my class to take when I was a child. She took us on a \u201cnature walk\u201d during the dead of winter, which sure seemed dumb to us.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at the trees,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey look dead,\u201d we said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, look closer,\u201d she insisted. \u201cSee those little red things? Those are buds. Even in the middle of winter, the trees know the spring will come. They\u2019re getting ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
The vacant storefronts, the unbelievable new initiatives to make air travel even more onerous and unattractive to foreign tourists (who already have to be fingerprinted, prodded, strip-searched, and otherwise humiliated before being allowed to bring their money here), the bankruptcies almost certainly still coming on the Las Vegas Strip, marking an end to debt-financed major construction there for quite come time – all make the search for truly hopeful signs (as opposed to mere statistical blips) a task for those who can step back and take a long view.<\/p>\n
(By the way, we\u2019ll finally start \u201cprofiling\u201d young Islamic males — though without laying off a single worthless hands-of-blue \u201cTSA\u201d goon. At which point, al-Qaida will rope-a-dope us by hiring some young Japanese or German mercenary terrorists to shoot up an airport.)<\/p>\n