Please predict what the next 3 years have in store.

[begin_within]

[NNadir]

1. Total economic collapse.

[sakabatou]

2. Possibly another war

[Wabbajack]

3. A new low

every couple of months. Is there a bottom?

[Horse with no Name]

4. Locusts.

Lots of em.:silly:

[daninthemoon]

5. Plagues and pestilence.

[wtmusic]

6. Troops overrun in Iraq nt

[daninthemoon]

7. * will nuke someone

[Sabriel]

8. Not a real popular thread, is it?

I predict they'll put the worst possible people in jobs that are the most crucial.

[mmonk]

9. Hopefully,

Fitzgerald can provide us with an exit strategy before too long.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DBoon]

11. US invades Venezuela

US is defeated by Venezuelan military.

[kster]

12. bye bye * within 2

months. After that USA flag companies can not keep up with demand!!!

[Sperk]

13. more of the same...deceit, death, destruction and deficits

:-(
are you listening Patrick?

[Joebert]

14. Great Depression II: No soup for you.

With

adjustable rate mortgages,
interest only loans,
high fuel prices,
no bankruptcy protection,
high medical bills,
outsourcing,
massive foreign debt,
greedy politicians,
obscene levels of personal debt,
war in several countries,
continued natural disasters around the world,
etc...

I see really ugly times. Housing market will implode. All that debt based on equity will stay, but that equity will vanish. Millions will be underwater on their loans all of a sudden.

So, should I buy food, medicine, or heat this month...

With outsourcing, more and more people in lower and lower paying jobs.

Taxes will have to go up to cover the obnoxious debts run up.



And, no rich person to run the soup kitchens this time.

[maine_raptor]

18. Sadly, I think you are right on spot there, Joebert, but

I don't agree with the "war in several countries". If you mean new countries, no. Even the most rabid neo-con could not get a new war thru Congress. The right is up in arms now with Bush League's proposed spending, never mind the spending that a new war would entail, no matter how much they may want just a thing.

And as to the two we have now....I do think that by 2008 we MAY be out of Iraq. Slight chance I know, but Bush League may just declare victory and pull out because of his NO spending.

On all the other I agree. This winter is going to VERY hard on some low-income (fixed-SSI). Folks will be making choices between food, medicine, and fuel (auto and home).

I think the Dems could make some headway, if they would propose a tax on the top 2-3%, say raise the rates in that bracket. That would help. If not I think we will be see the "Darking of America" over the next 3 years.

[Joebert]

22. I did mean the two we have now...

But, I wouldn't put it past them to hit somebody else, if we were hit first.

If Japan and China start aruging over the oil fields the Chinese have recently been patrolling, even though they're technically Japanese fields...

If there is a coup in Saudi Arabia...

If Iran continues to persue nuclear power...

If Israel gets hit by somebody...

We could be entering a 3rd fight.

[maine_raptor]

29. It's funny you should mention China/Japan/oil

Just finished a book along those lines, a near future novel called:

Dragon Strike: A Novel of the Coming War with China

by Humphrey Hawksley & Simon Holberton, 1997, St. Martin's Press

They postulate a "war" between US/Vietnam/Taiwan vs. China over the Spratly Islands and the oil reserves there. Not bad, but it is a plodding read.

The other possibilities you mention are also out there, along with a couple of others:

India vs Pak.

India vs China (over Tibet and other lands)

Fundamentalist Muslim take over of Indonesia that threatens oil supply there.

Never mind the chance of Russia and the old Soviet states (the 'stains) getting into a tiff or something down Africa way.

No, I just hope we don't get hit or drawn into anything more. We're stretched too thin as it is. Maybe the neo-cons will realize that they have bitten off more than they can chew sometime in the next 3 yrs.

[Joebert]

30. I purposely didn't mention India / Pakistan.

I didn't mention that one because US corporate interests are far too great for those two countries to fight.

Our gov't would sit back and eat popcorn if Indonesia was attacked, or had a coup.

But we send SO much money to China, India, Pakistan, I don't see us letting it happen.

[maine_raptor]

31. Remember the two diplomats discussing the cause of World War I?

When asked by a historian how the war started, one said:

"Ach, if only ve knew!"

Wars can start easy, in spite of common sense, but they always end hard.

[Joebert]

33. Very true.

I just think we funnel so much money there, that they'd each have to ask permission to do it.

However, if I'm not mistaken, we're equipping both of their armies right now.

So who knows.

[Lexingtonian]

15. *snigger*

Defection from the GOP continues at 1% of the electorate a month, net, as it has since September '01. The details are kind of boring.

A year from now the Beltway pundits will be debating not whether Democrats will take over Congress but whether enough Republicans will survive and their party hang together enough to sustain a filibuster.

All the GOP designs will, hanging together as they do, all go into the crapper together. Did I mention that that will be treated with great relief by everyone except regular denizens at Halliburton HQ. And a lot of the creativity stifled in the past few years will do a great deal to change morale and the economic climate.

Stupid DU posters will still be posting the most extreme demands of the Democrats they can imagine, and (as before, and as deserved) get no intelligent replies.

In 2007 the Christian Right gives up and disintegrates. President Pelosi will not find mildness in her heart for their heathen ways. Did I say President Pelosi? I meant to say President Marionette Bush, who cuts a deal not to be impeached or removed on the condition of not vetoing any Democratic legislation out of Congress.

Mitt Romney is the Republican Presidential candidate in 2008. Or shall I say, the Rip Van Winkle candidate. He'll get asked on the campaign trail whether he belongs in a museum. "Because that's where we go to see dinosaurs, we don't want them on TV" will be the explanation.

[bunny planet]

16. have they done boils yet?

[Jim Sagle]

17. Martial law. The Democratic party will be outlawed and its leaders

executed on network TV.

[mattclearing]

21. You can't be serious. n/t

[BlueIris]

19. Worsening economic problems, more natural disaster, possible anarchy,

and, thankfully, the resurgence of the Left, indymedia, Art, and the Democratic Party.

[applegrove]

20. A slow and sickening realization on the part of most Americans how

bad things really are. Grief and suffering. Then anger. Then the elections.

[kath]

23. Oh, GAWD, what'cha trying to do - make us all go out and slit our wrists??

[Skittles]

24. one of the most depressing DU threads ever, kath

:o

[begin_within]

35. People could have said things like replacing Bush with Kerry, etc.

[drdtroit]

25. Doom & Gloom n/t

[agincourt]

26. The Bush twins,

will do a reality TV series.

[kath]

27. 3 years?!?!? 3 years??!?! ACK!! After the outrage and despair of this

past 18 days, I feel like I can't take even one more WEEK of this regime, much less three years.

[Stinky The Clown]

28. It shall be seen that Bush appointed his own executioner

As Clinton appointed his .... as Nixon appointed his .......

(What follows is more fantasy than prediction ..... well, most of it anyhow. Some of it I see as more than possible.)

Patrick Fitzgerald will complete his work. It will be seen to have started with the leaking of the name of a CIA covert operative, but went much deeper and higher. The term 'unindicted co-conspirator' will again be in the Main Street lexicon.

The revelations that come out of the investigation will lead to criminal charges against some in government. Startlingly, these indictments, including some in the highest levels of government, will seem almost parenthetical to the indictments of people outside the official government. This will start an unraveling that will lead to the revelation of an entire network of lavishly funded extreme right wing ideologues who hold as their sole mission the creation of a fascist power center in the United States. Several of those indicted face the death penalty for their crimes.

Through all of it, Patrick Fitzgerald will refuse to grant media interviews.

For the first time in its history the United States will see the ascension to the Presidency the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, who will serve only to the end of the current congress and then, dramatically, resign. The ensuing constitutional crisis will be settled by the Supreme Court, with Chief Justice Sandra Day O'Conner writing for the court its unanimous decision that a special election, using paper ballots to be counted by hand, be held. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, will serve as Interim President during the campaign season, limited to 45 days of campaign events funded solely by federal money. The suspension of Free Speech as it relates to political oriented media advertising leads to what will be termed the 'fairest election in American history.'

The newly elected President of the United States (you don't think I'm nutty enough to name one in this fantasy, do you? :) ), as his first act, visits each country in the Middle East and offers his regrets to their citizens and calls for a Middle East summit. A representative of Osama bin Laden is reportedly planning to attend. The sovereign nations suggest he not do so as he will not be welcome by any of them.

Four MIT engineers, working with four from CalTech, will announce a breakthrough of epic proportions, leading to easily and cheaply produced energy through cold fusion. Oil, it is predicted, will see use only as a lubricant in some special applications. The per barrel price falls to less than $10. Later analysis of the science behind the breakthrough will reveal it had been made decades before in a laboratory owned, at the time, by Texaco, but never shared with anyone outside the company.

The city of Houston sees a major exodus of its population base.

This period will be called in future history books, the dawn of the Second Age of Enlightenment.

[applegrove]

32. I'll say something positive. 3 more years of bush and neocons & all

will be reviled by everyone in the U.S.A. except the worst of the freepers. Bush will be at 15% when he leaves. Widely acknowledged as the biggest puppet ever.

[Strelnikov_]

34. Old Testament, Bob, Real Wrath-Of-God Type Stuff

Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling.

Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes...

The dead rising from the grave.

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.

[Joebert]

36. The last post I read before bedtime.

And it sends me to sleep with a smile.

What a wonderful movie.

[BlueIris]

Aw, man. This post is NICE.

Keep the faith, fellow poster. And don't cross the streams.

[nonconformist]

37. The Rapture. nt

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

38. I predict we'll ...

...see great refinement over the next three years:

http://www.karlandkinggeorge.com/Great_Refinement.html

[The Magistrate]

39. Locking

This has proved to be flame-bait.