The Loopy Oracle.
Dec. 2007: Gas prices go down late 2006 to around $2.16 (nationwide average) and stay at this level. Iraq picture suddenly looks better with the majority of American soldiers gone. Terrorism gets less media coverage in Iraq without american deaths, and public memory looks back on the whole thing with rose colored spectacles, especially as a series of elections in Iraq go by without incident, of course buttressed by a relatively large presence in a more friendly Kuwait.
However, due to saavy politicking in 2005 (Iraq? what we worry?) by the majority of center-left democrats who are in contention, the presidential election looks to be close. Mccain takes it for the team again, settles for vice presidency with someone nobody even thought about it in 05. Powell loses big in Iowa and New Hampshire in rather viscious primaries.
Hillary Clinton and Lieberman scores big with mainstream America and poll numbers look to be close at the time of this fortune-telling.
San Francisco, then Las Vegas, become the two cities after Denver to legalize up to one ounce posession of marijuana.
The housing bubble in California sputters, but doesn’t crash. Instead, it remains stagnent after years of consecutive growths . Arnold in California becomes reelected when the democrats cannot muster a single viable candidate after Warren Beatty drops out after allegations of sexual assault comes to light.
Arizona becomes the first state to organize a state-funded border control after a terrorist attack at the NBA Phoenix Sun basketball game kills 10, mostly maintenance personal, but also a higher level executive. It is later revealed that the terrorists (who were part of an indonesdian islamic group not remotely connected to al queda) in the plot entered the US with the help of local smugglers operating along the border. In the US congress, talks of a nation-wide border along the Mexican-US broder contructed with barbed wire and concrete fences is dismissed as being too expensive and nothing else actually happens.
North Korea experiences a brief political struggle when Kim Il Jung becomes seriously ill, but control is taken back (along with reports of mass executions) within weeks.
