Please Cook the Crow Very, Very Well Done

Well the end of the year brings two annual events at TAC.  I make predictions about the coming year and I eat crow over my predictions made the prior year.  Here beginneth the crow eating post:

1.  No new gun control legislation-Whenever either party wins a presidential victory for a second term, they begin feeling their oats and tend to overestimate both their popularity and their power.  The Democrats are in that condition now, and I predict that the beginning of the path to what I anticipate will be a bad election year for Democrats in 2014 will be a bitter, and failed, attempt to pass new gun control legislation.

Absolutely 100 percent correct!  I love starting with a correct prediction!

2.  Recession-The Economy will slip back into a recession with the unemployment rate rising above nine percent by the end of the year.

Nope.  The economy is marginally better than a year ago, although still sluggish.  The official unemployment rate is 7% which, considering the drop of labor participation due to discouraged workers giving up on finding employment, is rather deceptive.

3.  Kerry seat-John Kerry will be confirmed as Secretary of State, God help us, and Scott Brown, the pinch hitter of the Senate, will win the special election for his seat in icy blue Massachusetts.

Nope.  Brown decided not to run and the Dems retained the seat.

4.  Virginia and New Jersey-The Republicans will retain the governorships in both New Jersey and Virginia.

Half right.  I suspect that if the Virginia election had been held a week later as the dimensions of the ObamaCare debacle became clearer, the prediction would have been entirely correct.

5.  Contraceptive Mandate-The contraceptive mandate will be ruled to be unconstituional on First Amendment religious freedom grounds.  Go here to the Becket Fund, which has been waging the court fights across the country in regard to the mandate, for the decision of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals which begins  setting the ground for ultimate Supreme Court review in 2014.

Hasn’t reached the Supreme Court yet, although numerous federal courts have declared it unconstitutional and a few have upheld it.

6.  Tell all Books-A flood of tell all books by former insiders of the Obama administration will begin to hit the market.

Not quite yet.  Stay tuned for this year.

7.  Sad Cubbies-The Cubs will continue their 105 year streak of not winning the World Series.

Wow, I should qualify for prophet status for getting that one correct!

8.  Syria-The Syrian regime will be unseated and that will send shock waves throughout the Middle East.  The Syrian state was the classic Arab one party dictatorship kept in power through a completely loyal military with no compunction about drowning any revolt in a sea of blood.  When it falls look for uprisings throughout the Middle East.  The prime prop of the Syrian regime, Iran, might well have a violent revolt that will make Syria look tame by comparison.

Nope, it is hanging on, although I would not wager that it will be there at this time next year.

9.   Israel v. Iran-The long delayed Israel-Iran war will occur unless a popular revolt occurs in Iran first.

Nope, not quite yet, although the sham deal that Obama worked out with Iran probably makes such an attack inevitable as the Israelis, with good reason, view Obama as entirely unreliable.

10. Wrong again Don-McClarey will be wrong in some of his predictions.

And we end with a correct prediction!