Well, it is time for New Year’s predictions.  This is an opportunity to promote and provoke discussion and not an effort to tout my own seriously limited political prognostication skills.

Iowa Caucuses.  On the National level, I predict that John Edwards will either win the Iowa Caucuses or will come in a close second.  On the positive side, Edwards has a strong grass-roots organization across the 99 counties of Iowa, especially in the rural counties where the vote is weighted.  Edwards also has strong support from Iowa labor which is well-versed in getting-out their vote.  Also, the polls are showing upward movement on Edwards part. and downwards pressure on Clinton and Obama, though Clinton seems to have stemmed the tide.

Hillary Clinton has the endorsement of the Des Moines Register and is so set on preventing Barack Obama from doing well in Iowa, that when she is faced with elimination at the caucuses, her people will encourage her caucus goers to throw their support to Edwards.  Obama is relying on college students especially to turn-out the vote.  Unfortunately for him, this means that a 20-something has to debate between staying home on winter break and partying with friends and intimates versus returning to freezing cold Iowa to walk precincts and to work.  My guess is this is a no-brainer for a college student.  Also, with the Bhutto assassination, foreign policy comes to the fore, and this is Obama’s area of weakness.  The last two Presidents elected with little to no foreign policy experience?  Pres. Jimmy Carter and Pres. George W. Bush.  Carter has only shown foreign policy expertise during his only term in office when stipulating that morality be a central concept when using diplomacy while Bush has yet to show anything approximating foreign policy accumen.  I am afraid that Obama sees relations between Chicago, IL and Gary, IN as a foreign policy issues.  I do not think that the American people are ready to again provide on-the-job training re foreign policy.

Prediction:  John Edwards finishes first, Hillary Clinton finishes second, Barack Obama finishes third in the Iowas caucuses.

(xposted from mydsert.com as bluepslmspringsboyz)

More insightful predictions below the flip…

New Hampshire Primary.  This is a quick hop, skip, and a jump from Iowa.  After the Iowa caucuses, the pressure will begin to build on Obama to withdraw from the race so the anybody-but-Hillary people can coallesce behing one candidate, Edwards.  Obama will be damaged going into the NH primary due to his less-than-expected showing in Iowa.  Free media coverage about Edwards’ upset in Iowa and Hillary’s strong showing will overwhelm Obama’s news-framingg apparutus.  Clinton has long had a lead in NH.

Prediction:  Clinton wins NH primary with Edwards a close second and Obama finishes third.

Prediction:  Edwards wins the South Carolina primary and Clinton wins the Nevada caucuses.

Prediction:  Clinton, Edwards, and Obama all do well during the February 5 primaries and Clinton wins the California primary handily.

Prediction:  Clinton, Edwards, and Obama head into the Denver Democratic National Convention and it becomes a brokered convention.  Obama forces join Edwards forces to prevent Clinton from winning the nomination.  John Edwards is named Democratic nominee.  Edwards names Bill Richardson as his running mate.

Prediction:  Edwards/Richardson wins Presidential election handily, carrying such typically Republican states as Florida, North Carolina, Arkansas, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico.

Prediction:  Edwards names Sen. Joe Biden as Secretary of State.

Prediction:  Edwards immediately suspends all Bush executive orders and demands a review of each.  Edwards overturns most of the orders, especially the ones encouraging violating the U.S. Constitution.

Prediction:  Edwards immediately orders a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss how to effectively and immediately withdraw from the occupation of Iraq without further unnecessary bloodshed.

Prediction:  Supporters of the Democratic party and the Edwards/Richardson ticket in the business community drive the stock market to new highs following its victory in November 2008.  

Prediction:  Edwards begins a series of investigations into the illegal activities of Pres. Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and others.

Prediction:  Edwards delivers several Republican miscreants to officials at The Hague for the Iraq War Crimes Tribunal.  Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Gates, and others endure lengthy trials and then are found guilty of crimes against humanity.  Bush and Cheney servie time in prison for their crimes against the people of Iraq and of the U.S.

Prediction:  The U.S. economy under the mismanagement of the Bush Administration enters a recession with a second consecutive month of negative employment growth.  The California housing market drags the National housing market under.  The Bush recession in addition to the Iraqi occupation quagmire dooms the GOP in the 2008 elections.

Prediction:  The CA 80th Assembly District sees Gary Jeandron as the Republican nominee and Greg Pettis as the Democratic nominee.  Jeandron is dogged by the school scandals where the State Board of Education threatends to sanction the Palm Springs Unified School District due to its poor academic performance.  Jeandron attempts to distance himself from his Board of Trustees membership to avoid guilt by assocation.  But his lack of leadership on the Board becomes a major issues.  Jeandron also opposses SB 777, the State bill to protect all students from discrimination, harassment, and bullying in the schools.  People in the West Valley, even the Desert Sun, decry Jeandron’s regressive policy position and turn against his candidacy.  Immigration becomes a major issues during the Presidential campaign and Mexican-American voters see Jeandron as a jack-booted supporter of the Minutemen.  The Desert Sun endorses Jeandron for CA 80th AD, but to no avail.  West Valley voters, Mexican-Americans across the district, especially the Imperial Valley, and the 13,000 Democratic majority help to recapture the seat for Pettis.

Prediction:  The Desert Sun publisher finally realizes that the transition of the West Valley and the East Valley to solidly Democratic dooms its thoughtless support of the Republican party, and the Desert Sun begins to make serious efforts to reform its news coverage and editorial page.  The Desert Sun actually begins to follow its mandate to independently hold Coachella Valley governments accountable for decimating the environment, for blocking families from adequate healthcare, and and for the lack of economic development with good-paying jobs.

Prediction:  Bonnie Garcia gets her chance for private sessions with the Governor.  The scandal is that no one cares any longer.

Prediction:  Mary Bono Mack is revealed to have used the Homeland Security act for political purposes and the U.S. Attorney’s office begins an investigation.

Prediction:  The Democratic-controlled Palm Springs City Council develops a plan to make Palm Springs the cultural hub for the Coachella Valley.  Plans for a Native-American museum, Hispanic museum, Jewish museum, Gay and Lesbian Museum and others are formulated.  Plans for the West Valley campus of the College of the Desert are finalized for Palm Springs.  Other major educational institutions follow suit.  More linen-service restaurants are developed along Palm Canyon, Indian Canyon and Taququitz Canyon Drives.

What are your thoughts?  What are your preferences?  

Incredibly, this story has only been in the New York Times and not one state paper (UPDATE: The SacBee apparently had something on this back in September; there are some choice quotes in it from the Governor and other lawmakers, Democrats too, who basically have the attitude “screw the prisoners, we’re building!”  Um, isn’t there a little bit of the Constitution which might not be totally trashed yet about “cruel and unusual punishment”?).  Apparently hundreds of inmates and employees at Pleasant Valley Prison in Coalinga have taken ill, and many are dying, from a fungal infection called “valley fever”:

At least a dozen inmates here in Central California have died from the disease, which is on the rise in other Western states, including Arizona, where the health department declared an epidemic after more than 5,500 cases were reported in 2006, including 33 deaths […]

In most cases, the infection starts in the lungs and is usually handled by the body without permanent damage. But serious complications can arise, including meningitis; and, at Pleasant Valley, the scope of the outbreak has left some inmates permanently disabled, confined to wheelchairs and interned in expensive long-term hospital stays.

About 80 prison employees have also contracted the fever, Pleasant Valley officials say, including a corrections officer who died of the disease in 2005.

The infection is caused by spores that are located in the soil, and any disturbance kicks them up into the air where they are inhaled.  It does not appear that the valley fever outbreak is a result of prison overcrowding, though overdevelopment of the surrounding area, particularly the building of a new hospital, appears to have played a role.  But it does indicate the little pitfalls of building our way out of this crisis.

Last fall, heeding advice from local health officials and a federal receiver charged with improving the state’s prison medical care, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation delayed plans to add 600 new beds out of concern that the construction might stir up more spores […]

The delayed expansion here was part of a $7.9 billion plan signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last summer to relieve overcrowding in the state’s prisons. Pleasant Valley was built in 1994 to house 2,000 inmates.

Pleasant Valley was built at the height of the “prison boom,” and though valley fever has been known to the area for eons, nobody stopped to wonder whether a prison with lots of dirt floors outside in an area where windy conditions blow fungal infections hither and thither would present a health risk.  That’s because communities like this need prisons to survive economically.

(In the case of Coalinga, the biggest penned-in population are cows, actually.  You see thousands of herds of cattle as you go up the I-5.  I can’t help but think that their waste product contributes to this)