My Predictions for 2020

This is the time of year when pundits and others like to make predictions for the coming year.  I don't have psychic abilities, and I am not a particularly astute student of current events.  But that doesn't stop me from attempting my own predictions. I will share six of them here:


1.  The assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani won't provoke WWIII.  The act of throwing this M-80 into the world's biggest hornet's nest will instead cause a condition like a festering boil. It will drain resources and energy (and cost lives) that are needed elsewhere; just as a non-fatal infection drains a body's health and well-being.

2.  Nancy Pelosi will delay sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate until after Feb. 4, in the hopes that Trump will have a full-on meltdown on national television during the State of the Union address.  If he does, it will be a bad look, but won't make much difference to his base.  It might sway some who are on the fence. (This prediction is not original with me; if one of you made it, I apologize for not remembering who it was.)

3.  The Democratic nominee for president will be Joe Biden, with Cory Booker for a running mate. I am basing this prediction (sort of) on a book I am currently reading, "American Nations:  A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America", by Colin Woodard.  It doesn't mention the coming election, it was actually written in 2012. But the factors mentioned in the book will drive the nomination process in this direction.

4.  The Democratic candidate for president (whoever he or she is) will win the election in November by a comfortable margin. Because all hands will be on deck to defeat four more years of Trump.

5.  There will be some significant clean energy breakthroughs. One of them will be that a commercially viable fusion reactor model will be closer to possibility.
Another will be Heliogen, "... a clean energy company supported by Bill Gates and Patrick Soon-Shiong, which ….claimed it has achieved a breakthrough in concentrated solar energy that could replace the fossil fuels used in heavy-emissions processes such as making cement, steel, glass and petrochemicals."

6.  The perennial food fights will be on; the usual Paleo vs Keto vs veganism vs Peta vs you name it; a largely first world dispute. Because a healthy diet in much of the rest of the world basically has to answer two questions: Is it edible? and Do we have it?
But adding to the fractiousness this time will be the "plant-based diet" enthusiasm, which will feed into a regional, possibly Blue State, Red State fight. The farmers and ranchers of flyover country are resenting the nutrition gurus whom (they feel, perhaps justly) have no clue about agriculture. And whose derrieres have never sat on a tractor seat, and have never been in a barn at midnight assisting in a bovine birth. However both sides aren't paying enough attention to the fact that four mega-corporations control our food supply.

I am under no illusion that many or all of these predictions may turn out to be b.s. (that's bright sunshine!)
If anyone would like to add their own predictions, please feel free.