New Years Perspective

New Years is often a time for sappy remembrance pieces on the news and even on the blogs.  Thankfully there isn't much of that around this year - and there won't be any sappiness here.  I do (as always) have a few of my odd perspectives to pass along.  Enter our annual friend, Janus, stage left...

The reason why there are few sappy "biggest news of 2011" stories on the air appears to be the Iowa caucuses, which, judging by the palpable excitement of breathless news bimbos, are going to be any minute now.  The Iowa caucuses are such a big deal because they mean just about nothing.  Pretty much exactly nothing.  The Stupid Party winner last time was Mike Huckabee, who went on, flush from that victory to ... nothing.  He appears to have gained back about 50 pounds (like I should talk...) and hosts a variety show.  The Iowa thingy isn't even an election, so anyone with a good organization can bring people from a thousand miles away to caucus.  Whatever that is.  New Hampshire is a real primary, and means marginally more.  At most, these early things sort out some real marginal candidates.  Maybe, maybe, they alert us to an unknown who has put together a popular approach (Bamster won last time).  As far as campaigning goes, wake me in a month or two.  Actually, living in Florida, I probably need to be awake sooner, since we vote January 31. 

News pundits regularly try to predict what's coming in the new year, but the major news stories of the year are never guessed. 

I'd say the biggest story of 2011 was the Japanese quake and tsunami - of course that couldn't be predicted.  Probably the next biggest story would be the Arab uprisings which started in Tunisia and consumed the region; again, unpredicted.  In the coming global war, this might be the true "archduke Ferdinand moment" (my reference was to the coming financial collapse).  The combination of the Islamists trying to establish a caliphate working with socialists trying to collapse the west could be the most important story of the year, for its potential, but I don't recall that being predicted this time last year.  Finally, the biggest domestic story was probably the Occupy Whatever idiots (all of what I've written is here, I think).  A marriage of convenience between zero-government anarchists and total-government socialists, this seems to go back to a talk by an SEIU vice-president last spring, but was not predicted.  Occupy got enough good will from the Evil party - and even some III patriots - that you can expect them back when the weather warms a little.  The potential I see is for them to act up so badly that the (bankrupt) cities can't handle the expenses.  Perhaps they assassinate a politician they don't like, or duplicate the Chicago 1968 DNC riots.  The (bankrupt) cities beg the (bankrupt) feds for help, and the National Guard is called up.  Martial law is enacted, giving the fascists the chance to surround the white house with tanks and address the (right wing) domestic terrorism problem.  This could make the last presidential election The Last Presidential Election. 

While Fast and Furious is a story that gets most of us ready to heat up tar and gather feathers, it has yet to as much national traction as it deserves.  The excellent work of Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea goes without saying; the right folks know who broke this story.  Kudos to Sharyl Attkisson of CBS for trying to make this the national story it deserves to be. Our runaway federal debt with no elected politicians calling for actual spending cuts should be a big story, but only us deficit-geeks care about it.  Until the collapse. 

Actually, looking at my post for New Year 2011, most of it still goes, and worked out pretty accurately.

Finally, I'd like to thank all of you who stop by and read my rantings.  A year ago, Sitemeter said I got about 70 visits per day average; this last week it was 350 per day average.  My aim is to make it worth both of our time. 

Happy New Year to all.  May we look back some day and say 2011 was the worst year we ever went through.