2019 predictions.

Though it is probably a few days late, it is finally time for me to write out my predictions for 2019. I do this every year and it is probably one of my favorite posts to do since I can close the year out seeing if I was smart or foolish and generally have fun with it. I already graded myself for 2018 so if you missed that post you can find it here.

I've decided to switch up the format this year. In the past I have used probability rates to hedge my bets a bit. I don't think there is much of a point to it so I am not going to do it this year. Instead I will just make the predictions with the caveat that some of these predictions will be stronger than others.

POLITICAL PREDICTIONS:
President Trump will still be the president in 2020 and will not be removed from office or otherwise be out of office.

Efforts will be made to try and impeach President Trump but those efforts will die in the Senate.

The Mueller investigation will linger on but will not find any wrong doing by President Trump.

Congress will pass no major bipartisan legislation and will be deadlocked.

There will be at least one incident of violence directed at prominent Republicans.

There will also be at least one incident of violence directed at prominent Democrats.

At least one politician or pundit on either side will be seriously injured or even killed due to this violence.

One way or another there will be work done on the border wall with Mexico.

President Trump's approval rating will be near or higher than the current rating of 46% (via Rasmussen).

At least one major politician will go down to #MeToo accusations. 

There will be no clarity on who will be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2019.

The Democratic Debates will have lower ratings than the GOP ones in 2016, (don't worry, I will still do my reactions if I can watch them).

President Trump will face a primary challenge with at least one major candidate declaring in 2019.

WAR PREDICTIONS:
America will not get involved in any new wars in 2019.

US Troops will no longer be on the ground in major numbers in Syria (with an exception for special forces)

Despite lower troop levels Afghanistan will remain an absolute mess with the Taliban making further gains.

ISIS will lose whatever remaining territory they have in Syria.

There will be a terror attack in the United States where 10 people are injured and/or killed.

There will be a terror attack in Europe where 10 people re injured and/or killed.

There will be at least one terror attack in Canada and Australia.

There will NOT be a terror attack that kills and injures more than 100 people committed by Islamic terrorists in a Western country in 2019.

President Trump will meet with Kim Jong Un and will have a successful meeting.

Real work will be done on the peace deal between North and South Korea and the North will begin to get rid of their nuclear weapons.

The Russia/Ukraine conflict will remain status quo ante with no major changes.

The Mexican Drug War will continue with large numbers of deaths and little media coverage.

CULTURAL PREDICTIONS:
Tech censorship will get even worse to the point where more mainstream Republicans will be banned from placed like Twitter, Facebook and Google.

Nothing will be done about this tech censorship by the United States government.

This will lead to another incident like the YouTube headquarters shooting.

Black Lives Matter will continue to be irrelevant.

The Alt-Right will also continue to be irrelevant.

Targeted harassment for people expressing political opinions openly will continue at a fever pitch.

Ratings for the NFL will continue to be stagnant but the kneeling issue will get next to no media coverage.

Star Wars Episode 9 will have a lower opening day than The Last Jedi (we won't have enough time to see if it will be a bomb before the end of the year, will be release on December 20th).

#MeToo will claim a few more scalps in Hollywood.

The backlash against #MeToo will continue as more truly innocent men are caught up in it.

CONCLUSION:
I think I played it a bit more safe this year. I am not expecting any huge drama to come up. Terrorism won't be the threat it used to be and ISIS will fade into the background. News will be dominated by Trump news which will be a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing.

I'm significantly less optimistic on the culture war. It shows no signs of slowing down and I think it will likely get worse before it gets better. The tech censorship will likely get so bad that there is a non-zero chance that this blog and my associated social media accounts could be scrubbed from the web, which makes this whole post kind of pointless.

I will probably still be around though so hopefully we will be able to go over my predictions in late December/early January. That is genuinely my favorite post of the year so we will have that to look forward too!