(One long prediction - and then a series of quick ones):

1) Iran—and the combined two stories of their nuclear program and their ongoing new revolution—will be the dominant news story of the year.

1a) There is a strong likelihood that the Islamic Republic itself will fall in 2010. That is what is now at stake. Not regime change—the switching of one office-holder for another within the same system—but total governmental change.

The young have decided the aging and corrupt and obscenely-rich mullahs—and the rigged governmental system which sustains them—can no longer stand. That is why these brave young people are willing to risk their lives on the streets each day facing the thug Basij militia and the VEVAK security forces, both of which—on direct orders from Ayatollah Khamenei—specialize in using terror to quash dissent.

The development of the Iranian nuclear program is a key factor driving the fomenting revolution. As the West draws a line for Tehran not to cross, the Iranian people—already disaffected by last June’s rigged elections—see their government pursuing a policy that will isolate Iran from the West and cause terrible economic dislocation for the Iranian people for years to come.

Yet the Ahmadinejad Government insists on racing to join the Nuclear Club, figuring that once they’re in the club the other club members will treat them differently. Tehran reads history this way: if Saddam had had nukes, no 2003 American invasion of Iraq. Thus, if Iran has ’em, no US or Israel aggression against Iran. Plus, they can bully the Saudis and other rich Arabs with their superior military power once they acquire these weapons.

So Iran is the flash-point for many stories in 2010.

Look for violence, hatred, ugliness—a passive President Obama refusing to side with these brave people fighting for their freedom—and ultimately for the Hand of God. “What,” you ask?

Yes, the Hand of God is at work here. Go back to 1989—the fall of the Berlin Wall followed by the almost-totally-peaceful end of the Soviet Union, the “focus of Evil in the modern world,” as President Reagan called it. How could the dreaded, all-powerful Soviet Empire crumble—without a shot being fired—if it weren’t for God’s intervention, perhaps beginning with the mysterious selection of Pope John Paul II followed by the creation of the Solidarity Movement in Poland?

Indeed, God triumphed over pure man-made evil in that situation.

And perhaps it will repeat itself in Iran—only this time there is already more bloodshed. There are also reports that some Iranian police are refusing to fire on demonstrators—always a sign of the regime’s imminent loss of power.

Pray for the creation of a Persian democracy.

So—in sum—Iran is the nation to keep our eye on in 2010.

2) Obama: is going to decline even more in the polls. The jobs situation will continue to rot away any good feeling about his Administration. There will be more and more Americans who see him as a political fluke, in-over-his-head, incompetent, too liberal and without a clue about how to get the economy back on track. His approval rate will drop to 42%.

3) The Health Care Bill—whatever version ends up passing—will grow even more unpopular as time goes on. Why? Because from the day the bill becomes law, every medical billing or prescription problem or denied service will be blamed on “ObamaCare.” We all have these medical glitches—but now they will be “Obama’s fault.”

4) The Democrats are going to get creamed in the November mid-term elections. Some big names may go down. Chris Dodd in Connecticut is on the Endangered Species list; so, too, is Harry Reid. One or both will lose. Former GOP Congressman Rob Simmons in Connecticut will defeat Dodd.

In the House, there will be a strong anti-Obama, anti-Pelosi push back in November. The GOP might not quite take back control, but they will narrow the gap and force the House back toward the political center.

5) In New York, Andrew Cuomo will be elected Governor. But the Republicans will recapture control of the State Senate.

6) In Florida, Governor Charlie Crist will lose to Marco Rubio in their GOP Senate primary.

7) John McCain will sweat all through the year about his August Arizona GOP primary. Former Representative J.D. Hayworth will run a tough race against McCain. If the immigration issue is pushed in DC by Obama—as he has said he would—then McCain will lose his primary by either flip-flopping on the issue or sticking with his pro-amnesty position. (McCain losing his own party’s primary less than two years after being that party’s presidential nominee would be a huge story. It will happen if the illegal immigration issue is back on the front page.)

8) In California, it will be former Governor—and former every-other-job-in-the-state—Jerry Brown versus GOP newcomer and former EBAY Boss Meg Whitman for Governor. She has tons of money; he is known throughout the state from his four decades in public life. It is a Democratic state reeling under financial collapse—with a GOP Governator who hasn’t gotten the job done.

Brown can be testy and nasty; Meg is nice—and a bit boring and stiff.

He has been around a long time; she hasn’t even voted in most elections—a shocking revelation for someone who wants to run the biggest state after never holding a governmental position before. You can bet Brown will make a big deal out of this. It hurt Caroline Kennedy here in NY a lot. Not voting is inexplicable.

He can argue that he knows every nook and cranny of state government; she can argue that she will make Sacramento run like a business.

He is Mr. Inside; she is Mrs. Outside.

Who wins?

Meg Whitman—by 3 points.

And right away you will hear talk of her for Veep on the 2012 GOP ticket. After all, California is 55 Electoral votes - one fifth of the total you need to win.

9) The economy will grow in 2010—but notquickly—and not enough to reverse the horrendous 17.5% underemployment picture. The perception of the bad economy will not change in 2010—or 2011—and thus Obama and incumbent Democrats will suffer greatly for it. He better pray that this perception changes by 2012, or he is a goner.

10) Al Qaeda will soon implant bombs right into the abdominal cavity of suicide bombers—and equip cell phones as detonators. Can our airport screening machines look into someone—like an X-Ray machine—to see these objects? (Hey, if drug cartels use people as mules with swallowed condoms filled with heroin and cocaine, why won’t their terrorist cousins do the same thing?)

11) On The Right: Sarah Palin will continue to dominate the scene in 2010—and suck all the oxygen away from other potential 2012 GOP candidates. Romney, Pawlenty, Huckabee, Barbour and any others just get no coverage whatsoever compared to her.

11a) The next Conservative Leader will emerge onto the national scene in 2010. He is not prominent as of today.

11b) The Tea Party will be more popular than the Republican Party.

11c) If this new Conservative Leader can harness the passion of the Tea Parties and the built-in structure of the GOP, he can sweep the nation in 2012.

12) A controversial new book will emerge in 2010 that will reveal the truth about Obama’s past. The publisher will be under pressure to quash the book. The so-called Mainstream Media will attack this book. But when it finally comes out, it will sell over a million copies hard-cover and several million in paperback—and the truth about many of the controversies in Obama’s past will finally be revealed.

Happy 2010 to you all!!!

1) As 2009 comes to an end and winter begins, a cold future for the Democratic Left is almost assured.

But that does not mean all is peachy-keen among the Republicans. Indeed, many conservative voters are as angry at the GOP as they are at the Obama Left. For example, the Rasmussen poll found that on a generic ballot, the Republicans have a seven point lead over Democrats in the 2010 Florida Senate race. But, if a "tea party" candidate jumps into the race, everything changes. Rasmussen found in a three-way race, Democrats would then pull in 36 percent of the vote, the tea party candidate will bring in 23 percent and Republicans would finish last at 18 percent.

So this poll tells us that many voters prefer the so-far-non-existent Tea Party to the Republican Party.

The good news for the GOP—so far—is that there is no Tea Party and no funding for a Tea Party and all that is required to get on the ballot.

But this poll should be a warning to conservatives: we could split ourselves up and thus allow Obama a second term—ala Ross Perot and his Reform Party back in 1992.

2) Obama and his Congressional minions have perpetrated a fraud on the American people. The $780 Billion so-called Stimulus Bill has now been revealed to be a total sham. Instead of “stimulating” the national economy - which it hasn’t and won’t—it was a bill to give Democratic Congressional districts—and their incumbent Congressmen—twice as much money as GOP districts!

The average Democratic district received $439 million in stimulus money in the form of 152 awards. The average GOP district received $232 million in 94 awards.

These numbers prove the $$ was handed out by Democrats for Democrats—and political considerations shaped federal spending—not economic conditions.

Thus another argument against federal spending to “stimulate” the economy. The truth is Obama-Pelosi-Reid were just trying to “stimulate” their chances to keep power in 2010.

There now is little doubt that Obama has had a rough first year—and it is all his own fault.

His hubris and arrogance and puffed-up demeanor have now been exposed to half the nation. The honeymoon is long forgotten.

As long as the jobs situation remains dire, Obama’s poll ratings will decline. And there is little prospect for an improvement for several years to come.

In sum, the political world is in turmoil. The Democrats have all the power. But they have blown their Golden Opportunity to re-make America into a quasi-Western-European style cradle-to-grave socialist economy.

Their mis-management of the health care debate has cost them dearly—and may cost them as much as it cost them in 1994. It is the template of how the Democrats run government: slap-dash, sloppy, ignorant, foolish and blind-to-history.

It will be good if they are punished at the polls in November 2010.

But what they are doing to the nation is bad—and sad—for us all.


Merry Christmas to you all!!!

And the next column will be my annual Predictions column—this time for 2010. Look for it just before January 1.

“Imus in the Morning” producer Julie Kanfer summarized Friday’s interview this way:



Just Because He Went To Harvard Doesn’t Mean He’s Any Better Than Imus

Former Congressman John LeBoutillier had an interesting assortment of songs today, from Linda Ronstadt to The Beach Boys. One of his songs, The Doobie Brothers’ “What A Fool Believes” somewhat appropriately stirs up memories of when LeBoutillier met President Richard Nixon in California.

“It was one of the big moments of my life up to that time, to meet President Nixon in his office,” said LeBoutillier, then a business student at Harvard. “I had an hour with him and Ray Price, his speechwriter. It began a good relationship I had with President Nixon all through the 80s and into the 90s.”

Imus agreed Nixon might have been one of the best President’s ever, save for the fact that he was crazy. A President we're hoping is slightly less insane accepted the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, and LeBoutilier called the whole thing “unfortunate.”

“I can’t give the guy any grief for it, except that it’s absurd,” he said of Obama getting the prize and having done almost nothing to deserve it. His acceptance speech, however, was more believable than the one he gave last week announcing he’d send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, LeBoutillier added.

“He’s struggling to say, ‘I’m a man of peace while I’m waging a war,’” he said.

LeBoutillier believes Obama should tell the Afghan and Pakistani people, “Bring us Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, dead or alive, I don't care. Bring them to us, and we will pack up and be gone in 60 days.”

The President’s message on the war in Afghanistan has been totally misconstrued, neglecting to even mention Bin Laden. It's all the more indication, at least to Imus, that Obama has little idea what he’s doing.

“He’s been learning this year how to be an executive, and I’m not sure he’s really learned that much because he’s made a lot of mistakes,” said LeBoutillier, who then asked “Bigfoot” to show on television a chart indicating Obama’s slipping approval numbers.

“You can’t go to Harvard College and Harvard Business School and then refer to the executive producer of the program like I do,” Imus told his guest.

Obama’s numbers have suffered because he has “lurched all over the place,” said LeBoutililer, who offered his rationale for why Obama seems, at times, aloof.

“His mother was an anthropologist,” said LeBoutillier. “Obama is a big brain, he’s well-educated in an intellectual sense but his comment… that people ‘cling to their guns and their religion’ was almost like an anthropologist studying a strange species.”

Good politicians, he added, can feel what people care about. “I’m not sure he really does,” said LeBoutillier.

— Julie Kanfer

[Watch more video from John LeBoutillier’s 12/11 appearance on “Imus in the Morning.”]

John LeBoutillier will on “Imus in the Morning” tomorrow, Friday, December 11th, at 6:30 AM Eastern. Please listen on your local affiliate, or through www.imus.com.




Listen to John’s 12/11/09 appearance on “Imus in the Morning”:
Imus in the Morning 12 11 09 by bootsblasts

The latest Gallup Survey showing President Obama’s approval rating at 47% is indicative of something: once the media-induced honeymoon ended, it has been a steady decline for this rookie, in-over-his-head executive neophyte.

Just look at this graph from pollster.com—a compilation of dozens of polls—of his approval/disapproval ratings during the year since his election:


(source: pollster.com)

It is indeed a steadily-declining approval rate—and a correspondingly increasing disapproval rate.

Obama has mis-managed his first year so horribly that he might not—ever—be able to get himself back to his honeymoon highs—the mid 70’s in some polls.

He has:

1) Veered Left on Federal spending and bailouts; thus the deficits are exploding;

2) Lurched way Left on bringing the 9/11 terrorists to NYC;

3) Totally mis-managed the health care debate—to the point where he has devoted seven months to something—and then last night settled for the removal of the troublesome ‘public option’—that he could have had with bi-partisan support last June!!!

4) Dithered on Afghanistan—and then given a speech last week which has confused us all—probably including the Taliban! And then Secretaries Gates and Clinton have subtly changed the timeline since the West Point speech to indicate we will be in Afghanistan for perhaps 5 more years.

5) Seemed to be standing by while the economy—and the jobs situation—has deteriorated. None of his “cures” are seen as working. Thus talk of yet another stimulus. But Obama is seen now as behind the eight ball on the economy—primarily because he has only been talking Health Care for seven months!

5A) The Jobs Summit was a total PR farce—and hurt him even more. That was a sham—all for show—and demonstrates that Team Obama is just paying lip service to this crucial problem.

6) Copenhagen and the Global Warming Issue are seen as another sop to the Left—not as something vital to the economic survival of the country.

7) Make no mistake about it: we are at a critical time in this nation: a political vacuum, a deteriorating economic and global position and a President in-over-his-head.

8) 2010 will be a good year for the GOP. But it will be more an anti-Obama-Reid-Pelosi vote than a pro-GOP vote. The Republicans still need to get their act in gear. Being anti is OK for now, but in order to win in 2012 we will have to have a good, tight positive message.

9) Sarah Palin is sucking all the oxygen away from any other GOP presidential candidates. Romney, Pawlenty and the others are getting nowhere—as of now—as long as she is on stage.

10) Many things will change by 2012. Whoever is up today, will be down—and vice versa. That’s how it works.

BYNON AND THE BOOT RADIO SPECIAL

Arlene Bynon and John LeBoutillier—on AM640Toronto—today explored the Tiger Woods Scandal from several angles:

1. Is he a sex addict? Or is there even more behind the ongoing meltdown of the world’s most famous athlete?

2. Does Team Tiger yet have a viable Crisis Management Plan?

3. How will this mess affect his golf? The Times of London’s John Hopkins reveals that Tiger's ability to intimidate his PGA rivals has run out. And Tiger's on-course temper and crass behavior has deteriorated even more this past year.

4. Tiger—like Andre Agassi and so many other driven-by-the-parents athletic prodigies—has grown into a dysfunctional adult. What does this say about the role of sports in the education of our youth?

5. BYNON AND THE BOOT became the first-ever international talk radio show—co-hosted from Toronto and New York with guests on the phone from London, Los Angeles and Washington DC. Future shows—on one Big Topic—will expand our global reach—with guests in Asia and South America.

Listen to a Breaking News Tiger Woods Radio Special, Sunday at 2pm, on www.am640toronto.com

John LeBoutillier in New York and award-winning Canadian broadcaster, Arlene Bynon in Toronto, will co-host the first ever international talk radio show—BYNON AND THE BOOT—broadcast live on AM640 in Toronto and on the Web—this Sunday, December 6, 2009 @ 2pm Eastern Time—with guests from London to Los Angeles and from Singapore to Washington DC—and interactive listener input from around the globe—all as we reveal shocking news about the Tiger Woods story.

The following Memo to the President was emailed to him at 10:00am this morning:

MEMO

TO: THE HONORABLE. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
FR: FORMER U.S. CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEBOUTILLIER
RE: CHANGE YOUR SPEECH TONIGHT AT WEST POINT - NOW

Tuesday, December 1, 2009, 10:00 AM


Mr. President, I urge you—before you depart this afternoon for West Point—to scrap your speech and the troop escalation the Pentagon and CIA have pressured you to adopt.

Instead, what you should do—to the overwhelming applause of the Left, Center and Right here in the USA—and the Afghan people, too—is to announce a simple and stunning new American strategy tonight:

“Bring to any American forces stationed in Afghanistan both Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri—dead or alive—and we will then pack up and leave Afghanistan within 60 days.”

That plan, Mr. President, would solve multiple problems:

1) It would decapitate Al Qaeda and end its ability to threaten us;

2) It would give a definitive purpose to our seemingly never-ending mission in Afghanistan;

3) It encourages the Afghan people—and maybe some Pakistanis, as well—to help us so that we will leave them alone; they will suddenly decide to stop protecting these two mass-murderers and instead grab them or give them up to us;

4) Politically, here at home, you will be applauded by all sides—instead of being called Bush III.

Do this tonight, Mr. President, at West Point, in front of those wonderful young cadets and you will once again represent hope and change.

However, if you proceed with the Surge that White House officials say you are to announce tonight, Afghanistan will bedevil you for the rest of your presidency.

Have the courage to scrap the speech already written—and announce this bold and simple plan: give us Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri and we’ll leave for good within 60 days.

Sincerely,
John LeBoutillier