My predictions for 2006

Disheartened by my cluelessness on popular culture I’m going to concentrate on politics, geo-politics, and economics where my track record was a little better. Here are my predictions for 2006:

• Iran will test a nuclear weapon.

  Yes, I know I struck out with this prediction before but I really believe that they will.

• Neither the U. S. nor Israel will bomb or invade Iran in 2006.

  Of the potential courses of action in response to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons (and truculence) i.e. bomb and/or invade, UN Security Council sanctions, or blockade my best guess is that we’ll do nothing. Unless, of course, Iran attacks Israel in which case all bets are off.

• The Democrats will not take control of either the House or the Senate in 2006.
• Bush will not be impeached over the wiretap issue.
• Alito will be confirmed for the Supreme Court.
• Bush will nominate one additional justice to the Supreme Court.
• We won’t have any meaningful Social Security reform, Medicare reform, or immigration reform.
• The number of U. S. troops in Iraq will not go below 100,000.
• The new Iraqi government will be majority Shi’a but will not be Iran Rev. 2. The new government won’t be as wonderful as its proponents predict nor as awful as its opponents claim.
• Mostly Sunni and foreign terrorist activity will continue in Iraq.
• There will be a resurgence of terrorist activities by the Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka partially funded by tsunami relief money.
• Osama bin Laden will not be captured.

I plan on rounding up other 2006 predictions from around the blogosphere.

A number of blogs have interesting predictions for the coming year:

All Things Beautiful
Ann Althouse has an interesting Supreme Court prediction. From your lips to God’s ears.
The Anchoress
Bitsblog
Calculated Risk predicts the big economic stories of 2006.
Dean Esmay
The Indepundit
Ezra Klein
Arnold Kling predicts the economics stories of 2006
Mover Mike
Jonathan Singer at MyDD
A (somewhat) amusing list of predictions from Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred
Spoons
The Sundries Shack
Matthew Yglesias

I’ll update this list as more become predictions become available.

UPDATE:

Juan Cole ends his predictions for 2006 with the following prudent caveat:

The author, a historian, has a fair amount of expertise with the past, but knows nothing out of the ordinary about the future

Bill Quick has five rather aggressive predictions for 2006.
John Battelle predicts the developments in the Internet and technology for the coming year.
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