The Magic 9-Ball Predicts 2013

Now we come to the end of another year and the dawn of a new one. While others are busy thinking up lists of resolutions to break (let’s be real.  New Year’s resolutions are nothing but a list of self-promises with a time limit) I instead will once again look into the Moderate Separatist’s Magic 9-ball for hints and clues from the upcoming year.  Why not the standard 8-ball?  Simple. I prefer stripes.

 

Let’s start close to home.

• 2013 will see the continued death spiral of Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s poll numbers.  After a still-eyebrow raising victory in the Spring ’12 provincial election, Redford has tripped, slipped, and fumbled her way into a massive fiscal hole, eroded personal rights, and has generally swept away any evidence of the sacrifice the government and citizens endured in the 1990’s which put the province on a positive economic path.  All of this wrapped up in layer upon layer of scandal, spiced with arrogant MLA’s living in kind of culture of entitlement means another not-so-memorable year ahead for Albertans. Prediction: here comes the ‘it-will-never-happen-here’ provincial sales tax.

• On the national front, Canadian P.M. Stephen Harper will continue to enjoy, but not exploit, his party’s majority in Parliament.  Continued deft stick-handling by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty should move the nation through some rough international economic chop.  Jason Kenney over in the Immigration portfolio will continue to streamline a very old and flawed system.  Prediction: another 12 months of a government fast becoming the envy of the free world yet still underappreciated at home.

• In the U.S., it will be more of the same.  Obama will continue to lead America down his anti-business, anti-individual freedom, socialist path.  The political right will continue to bicker internally with the chasm between ‘establishment GOP’ and the ‘Tea Party’ crowd growing much to Obama’s delight.  Prediction: the end of 2013 will look very much like the end of 2012, but worse.  Much, much worse.

• Internationally, President Obama will continue to push for, and sometimes get, new governments established throughout the Middle East.  His agenda of replacing oppressive dictators with oppressive Islamic Muslim Brotherhood dictators will roll right along with many more dead.  Israel will have no choice but to launch an airstrike against Iran.  Tensions will rise between China and Japan over disputed territory.  Canada will continue to find buyers other than Obama’s America for our natural resources. Prediction: the United Nations will make several attempts to install world government over environmental and gun rights issues.

 

Last prediction: one year from now I’ll look back, find that I was right on some and way off on others.