Predictions for 2008

Predictions for January 1, 2008

1. Military draft.
2. Roe v. Wade overturned.
3. Prayer in schools.
4. English As The National Language.
5. National debt at $9.5 trillion.
6. U.S. National Guard deployment to Iraq continues.
7. Dow and Nasdaq at 5% annual growth.

Predictions for January 1, 2008

1. Military draft. 2. Roe v. Wade overturned. 3. Prayer in schools. 4. English As The National Language. 5. National debt at $9.5 trillion. 6. U.S. National Guard deployment to Iraq continues. 7. Dow and Nasdaq at 5% annual growth.

20 thoughts on “Predictions for 2008”

  1. hmm

    1. Military draft. As for this they already have a back door draft by just extending the active duty soldiers and leaving the reservists out there longer then there supposed to be, heck they are even calling people out of the IRR,(individual ready reserve) these guys never drill or train. 2. Roe v. Wade overturned. 3. Prayer in schools. Not that this would be a bad thing 4. English As The National Language. why would this be bad? 5. National debt at $9.5 trillion. 6. U.S. National Guard deployment to Iraq continues. 7. Dow and Nasdaq at 5% annual growth.

    1. Draft and Prayer in Schools

      As for this they already have a back door draft…

      Many Conservatives view the resumption of the draft as a good thing that would help get the country “back on its feet again”. They think that lack of a draft results in indolence and laziness in the youth. Witness the label attached to my generation, the first generation to grow up without any sort of draft at at: “Generation X”. They called us do-nothings. Wrongly, I might add, but that’s still a common perception.

      I’m personally somewhat ambivalent about conscription. Much like Mormon missions, I think military service for young adults is a valuable chance to prove themselves, develop life skills, and help them discover who they really are. On the other hand, I have many humanistic leanings, and the idea of forcing someone to put his life in danger without his consent rubs me the wrong way. Today’s soldiers choose to go, and the armed services sustain less loss of life because our soldiers are better-trained, more motivated, and want to be there.

      <Prayer in schools.> Not that this would be a bad thing

      If we’re not careful, we’ll all be chanting five times a day while facing Mecca.

      As a nonreligious person, I abhor the idea that my children would be forced to pray in some fashion prescribed by the State. I’m certain you, as a Latter-Day Saint, would object to your child being coerced into following Muslim rituals daily. Involvement of the state in prescribing religious ordinances is counter to the best interests of most religions, unless it’s that religion’s ordinances being supported.

      The LDS Church even has this philosophy written as doctrine in the Pearl of Great Price:

      We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.

      My kids can’t worship God according to the dictates of their conscience if a state-supported religion is rammed down their throat.

      English as the national language? I really don’t care. As long as our country doesn’t get too Balkanized, let us speak whatever we wish.

      —
      Matthew P. Barnson

      1. let us pray

        Without taking a position on this one: Allowing prayer in schools is not the same as mandating it, lets be clear.

        1. Prayer in schools…

          Allowing prayer in schools is not the same as mandating it…

          Prayer is allowed in public schools… I’ve actually been in an email correspondence over this very thing with Curtis over the last day or two. It’s an urban legend that prayer is not allowed in school. Prayer is allowed, within reason, where the canonical example of “within reason” is that you can’t use “I’m praying” as an excuse not to answer when a teacher calls upon you. Students can pray in the hallways between classes; nobody can stop them. They can pray vocally over their meals. They can pray in any non-disruptive fashion they wish.

          The O’Hare decision, which most right-wing Christians refer to as the one that led to “prayer banned in school”, was actually very narrowly defined. Local administrators have chosen to interpret it in various ways, but the gist of it boils down to “the state cannot favor one religion over another, including bias against lack of religion”. This means that teachers acting in their official capacities cannot mandate a moment of silence, private prayers, etc. in public schools.

          I maintain that prayer in school is extremely common, even today. Lord knows I prayed hard before every big test 🙂 The whole “put prayer back in public school” movement is a smokescreen, in my humble opinion, for advocates of a particular sort of prayer.

          It’s a real big hotbutton for me, though. Church/state separation, in my opinion, was also critical for many of the Founding Fathers who held unsual religious (or anti-religious, in the case of Thomas Jefferson) opinions and did not wish the government to discriminate against them because of it.

          —
          Matthew P. Barnson

    2. The backdoor draft is a result of not reading the fine print

      I’m a veteran and am and was fully aware of the inactive duty that you sign up for as well as the active time. My four year enlistment started in 1999 and ends in 2007, which is well worth the benefits I’ll receive for the rest of my life.

      The military was reduced under clinton, and given the state of world affairs that didn’t seem unwise, but now we need more troops, so everyone that signed on to the military for the benefits now gets to make good on their promise. Until they increase the military enough, people are going to get called back, but instead of whining they should learn to read the fine print, and accept their duty to fulfil their promise.

      I think it is also worth mentioning that many democracies around the world have some form of a draft, be it a year to three years of mandatory military service for males. South Korea, Singapore, and Isreal come to mind immediately.

      While no one wants a draft, serving your country is not a punishment.

      I do not believe that a draft will be instituted, but rather more incentives (bonuses) to lure people in. But if you sign up because you are poor, unemployed, or simply patriotic, make sure you realize that this is not a McDonalds job you can just quit.

      EDIT by matthew: Formatted.

  2. Roe v. Wade

    I feel particularly strogly on this issue. Most of you know that I’m a pretty moderate Republican. I’m pretty tolerant on most issues, even when I disagree. But abortion is a whole other story. The idea that this is a womens’ rights issue is ABSURD. You heard me. It is a total distraction by those who want to justify treating the life of a child (yeah, yeah, is it a child before birth, yada yady… give me a break) as if its the leftover dinner garbage. Let me say it again another way. Abortion is the American equivilant of German death camps. If have absolutely zero tolerance for any argument to the contrary. I refuse to stay level-headed and reasonable about it. When will politicians stop talking about abortion like its a line-item in a departmental budget?

    WHEW

    1. Abortion opinions…

      Your opinion, according to exit polls, was that favored by the majority of the turnout Nov. 2. It is that issue, along wtih several others where GW Bush took the conservative stance, that appears to have motivated so many voters to get out and vote for him.

      When people talk about a “divided country”, it is certain issues like this that polarize those opinions. And I remain purposefully silent on where I stand, because I haven’t resolved the ethics on it yet (it’s on my list, though).

      —
      Matthew P. Barnson

    2. Abortion

      Paul, I respect your opinion (even if I disagree with it). But I have a question for you. Since you have a hard-line opinion regarding abortion, are you then open to ways to dissuade potential mothers from having abortions? For instance, lessening the chances of unwanted pregnancies by HONEST and THOROUGH sexual education, which includes frank discussion of contraception and the difficulties of raising a child? And do you support increasing aid for mothers who decide to keep their babies, in the form of welfare programs, subsidized day care, and job training? As far as I see it, if we remove this one option from women, it’s our responsibility to provide them with other options.

      — Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor

      1. Ben…

        Yes. That’s my short answer to your question. I always contend that I am pro-choice. What I mean by that is that I support a woman’s right to choose to have a child or not. That said, there are risks involved with certain behaviors and I feel the right to choice exists before the risky behavior, not after.

        If you have sex there is always a risk of pregnancy. Just like driving, crossing the street and filleting a chicken have risks. The trick is, as you say, to educate people (not just women) about the inherent risks involved with sexual activity. By education, I mean real facts. I also believe in people having to deal with the consequenses of the situations they find themselves in. I don’t believe that a woman’s choice to pregnancy can be made after the fact, however. If one chooses sexual activity, one also chooses to accept the risks.

        You may have noticed that I am being non-gender-specific on these points. I also feel that it’s a huge problem for these to be treated as “womens’ issues”. Men and boys need education on the inherent risks of sexual behavior just as women and girls do.

        Overall I’d like to see more people taking responsibility for their own situations. Does that mean that I have no compassion for an unwed 15 year old girl with no insurance? Of course not, I just feel that nothing is solved by simply “aborting” the problem. I also think that her having an abortion is nothing short of murder. Period.

        I also know that many abortions are the result of unwanted sexual activity, although I suspect that percentage is low. This is an emotionally difficult situation but one that does not excuse doing the wrong thing. In life, we are often faced with situations created through no choice of our own. We are still obligated to make the correct choices in those situations and do the best we can. I have yet to hear a compelling reason to kill a baby. Sorry.

        EDIT by matthew: tpyo, formatting.

        1. Education

          I think that’s the area where you differ from most people who oppose abortion: you support education in methods other than abstinence.

          As far as I can tell, the reasoning against sex education, including contraceptive methods, goes something like this (fundamental logic here, I’m open to alternative reasoning using simple propositions):

          • If you teach kids about something, they’ll get curious about it and want to experiment.
          • Teenage kids having sex is bad.
          • Therefore, teaching kids about sex, which will cause them to be curious and experiment with it, is bad.

          I’m not going to argue the supposition that (teenage) kids having sex is bad. That’s up to individual parents to decide. But the simple fact is that only one in five haven’t had sexual intercourse by the time they are eighteen.

          As a father of four, that’s a sobering statistic. Of course, I realize that there’s probably a statistical skew… it probably doesn’t apply within a single family. Girls born of single mothers are more likely to be single mothers themselves, and that kind of thing. Yet still, it means it’s extremely likely at least one of my two oldest kids is going to have sex for the first time within the next nine years. And it’s likely it will happen right in my house.

          But really, I think the question boils down to a question of prevention priorities. When I look at the prospect of my kids impregnating, or being impregnated by, another person while they are teenagers, my goal is simply to prevent that. Whether or not they’re sexually active is not something that’s in my control; they are their own person, and the only thing I can do is give advice and offer rewards/punishments for behavior. That’s it. I can’t baby-sit them 24 hours a day to try to keep them from doing what I don’t want them to.

          I think home sex education is fairly simple:

          1. It’s undesirable, and frowned-upon by society, to have sex before marriage. But by age fifteen, 1 out of 5 girls and 3 out of 10 boys have had sex. Education must begin well before this point. By eighteen, that statistic changes: 4 out of 5 have had some form of sexual intercourse.
          2. Kids need to decide, themselves, how they are going to manage that. We encourage abstinence. It is the most effective form of birth control, and, since my kids are religious, involves no censure from their chosen religious organization.
          3. I’ve said before that I want my kids (once of sufficient age) to know where the birth control stuff lives in our house. I want them to know that I don’t count how many are gone. The stuff is there to help prevent a bad decision from becoming a worse decision.
          4. Teaching them how to use it? I don’t know, I’m personally a little uncomfortable showing my daughter how to put a condom on a cucumber. She’s nine now, though, so I need to get over my ambivalence sometime in the next three or four years, I think

          I don’t think there’s a simple solution to the problem of teen pregnancy, but my own (admittedly biased) experiences with seeing friends that went through it were pretty straightforward. The girls almost invariably lived in households with a strong abstinence ethic. Since there were no resources available to prevent it (and going to the store to purchase condoms definitely carries a stigma when you know the cashier), the girls chose to have unprotected sex. They got pregnant, and either decided to abort or carry the child to term.

          I knew a lot of sexually active teenagers growing up, and the ones who avoided pregnancy were also the ones who were most educated about birth control options. I don’t want my kids “sleeping around”, but dangit, I really don’t want them to be saddled with parenthood before they would choose to become parents.

          I think a home education program that centers around not just dogmatic adherence to a certain creed, but an acknowledgement of the reality that most teenagers have sex before they’re twenty and that it’s a good idea to educate them on how to do so safely, is a good idea.

          Abortion’s a rough subject that I prefer to avoid unless I have to personally face it. I won’t make someone else’s decision for the, but I do think society, while notbanning the practice, should strongly discourage it and (much more strongly) encourage alternative methods of birth control.

          I read an interesting statistic the other day: the single largest indicator of future poverty is impregnation. If you’re pregnant (or impregnated someone else) before the age of nineteen, you’re in the most likely category to be part of the poorest 20% of the population. It’s a correlation, not a causation, but an interesting one.

          —
          Matthew P. Barnson

        2. Cool

          OK then. Rock on, Paul. I wish more pro-life advocates felt as you did.

          And Matt, I don’t think kids care the slightest bit about what is frowned upon by society. The tack I intend to use is that if you have sex before you’re ready, you have a very good chance of having a baby, and you REEEEEEALLY don’t want that.

          — Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor

  3. I Have Some More Predictions

    8. Prescription drug purchases by U.S. citizens from Canada reach $2B annually. 9. 10% annual growth in charter school enrollment. 10. NASA reduced to half agency size. 11. Secretary of Health replaced after making off-hand comment to press on need for stem cell research. 12. Democrats regain majority in Senate.

    Of Note: I was originally going to put down Social Security Reform, but that’s kind of an easy gimme. It’s obvious that it’s on the top of Bush’s agenda.

  4. My current wacked out schedule determines..

    THat, as much as I would prefer not too, I must consume large quantities of pie..

    Had I participated, here’s sopme of what I might have said:

    …DRAFT!?? Are you…..But Abortion is….under “God” can mean… foriegn drugs are… social security is better if we….

    Thanks.

  5. My $.02

    A) The Alaskan wilderness opened to drilling B) A Bush Twin spread in Playboy C) A Madonna/Cheney daughter video D) A mandatory ID chip implanted in every American

    Weed

    1. I like the ID chip!

      I like the idea of a universal ID chip implanted into every human.

      But then again, I also like the idea of brain implants to assist memory recall, eye implants to fix vision, ear implants to attune hearing, and all that kind of stuff. An implanted universal ID would help locate lost children and reduce identity theft, among other things.

      And never forget, there are breast implants!

      —
      Matthew P. Barnson

  6. 5 of the 7 are coming true!

    You heard it last night — President Bush calls for English As The National Language during his national address on immigration. We’re sending more National Guard troops to Iraq and now will be using the guardsmen to patrol the Mexican border.

    Back in March, Congress voted to raise the nation’s debt limit for the fourth time in five years, increasing the ceiling to $9 trillion. It’s only a matter of time…

    The Dow has grown over 14% since I first prognosticated.

    Montana has banned abortion. How soon until it becomes nationwide?

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