Tag: New Year

New Years Eve–A Look Back, Then Ahead

Yes my friends it has been yet another year and a good year it was for blogging at least for me….the year itself kinda sucked.

I have added a few new regulars and lost a couple but that is how blogging works……bloggers come and go a I am just thankful that most of my die hard regulars continue to visit and comment and I cannot thank them enough for their loyalty.

The last week of 2025 was great for views even if most were bots being irritating.

2025 I have written 720 posts and had 1825 views which is an uptick from the year before (not breaking any records but still feels good)…..although the uptick is probably ‘bots come to visit.

2025 was a terrible year…..politics sucked, international stage was alight, but most of all for me personally…..my best friend and my heart passed away….Sue was the best thing that every happened to me…..and then I was diagnosed with a double cancer…..after 6 months of steady treatment those tumors were shrinking…..and then in December a new shadow has shown up in my lung….now I must wait until next year to find out what is what.

So I am not a fan of 2025 for the obvious reasons.

There has been lots of predictions for the coming year….Nostro has had something to say, Cayce as well and then there are a few others but the one that caught my attention was the predictions from some shamans in Peru….

A group of shamans gathered Monday by the sea in the Miraflores district of Peru’s capital, Lima, to carry out an annual ritual in which they make predictions for the upcoming year. Dressed in traditional Andean ponchos and headdresses, the group performed a ceremony and made predictions about the course of international relations, ongoing conflicts, and the fate of world leaders, reports the AP.

  • Maduro: This year, the shamans said Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro will be removed from office. “We have asked for Maduro to leave, to retire, for President Donald Trump of the United States to be able to remove him, and we have visualized that next year this will happen,” said shaman Ana María Simeón.
  • Trump: As for the American president himself, “The United States should prepare itself because Donald Trump will fall seriously ill,” Juan de Dios Garcia said, per RNZ.
  • Spotty record: The group has a mixed record with its annual predictions. Last year, for instance, they warned a “nuclear war” would break out between Israel and Gaza. But in December 2023, the group correctly predicted that former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who had been imprisoned for human rights abuses, would perish within 12 months. Fujimori died from cancer in September 2024 at the age of 86.
  • Ritual: Before Monday’s ceremony, the shamans met to drink hallucinogenic concoctions derived from native plants—including Ayahuasca and the San Pedro cactus—which are believed to give them the power to predict the future. After dancing in circles and playing ancestral instruments, the shamans asked for peace in the Middle East, an end to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and the fall of Maduro. The prayers to the gods, performed amid flowers and incense, as well as dances, are intended to encourage leaders to make good decisions. The shamans also predicted natural disasters, such as earthquakes and climatic phenomena.

Will these predictions be accurate….more so than some of the others I have seen?

Thoughts?

I can only hope that 2026 will be a better year.

Please be responsible and careful if you plan on celebrating the new year…..I look forward to seeing everyone next year and the comments that will follow.

Happy New Year to everyone.

See you soon.

chuq

New Years Eve–2024

As per my tradition I look back on the past year and report on the doings here at IST.

As I have written it has been 18 years since I started my blogging journey and in that time there have been lean days and occasionally some really excellent days…..I have written 18,937 posts and have 3670 subscribers (although only a hard core few have stuck it out) and in that time I have gotten 490,000 hits (not earth shaking but still something I am proud of for all my hard work).

Today is a day of relaxation for Sue and myself as we ready for the influx of family for the traditional first meal of 2025.

I thought I would do what I seem to always do….look back at the past year here om IST….

My stats for the past year….

Total number of posts for 2024–619

A total of 403,000 words posted

Total ‘likes’–4520

Total comments for 2024–5720

Not a bad year in retrospect….I may not be breaking any records but I am satisfied with what the year brought.

Moving On!

For the post on this the last day of 2024 I want to give a look at what was predicted about a hundred years ago for 2025.

Look around you. The future has arrived.

Nearly 100 years ago, a group of deep thinkers dared to imagine what life would be like in 2025. Some of their prophecies were completely off target, while others proved to be weirdly accurate. 

Join us now as we gaze into that crystal ball from 1925.

Beauty is skin deep

The future looked ugly to Albert E. Wiggam, an American psychologist. According to his calculations, homely, dull people were having more children than beautiful, intelligent people.

“If we keep progressing in the wrong direction, as we have been doing, American beauty is bound to decline and there won’t be a good-looking girl to be found 100 years from now,” he told an audience in Brooklyn, New York.

Looking around the auditorium, he added: “However, this lack is not apparent yet, especially here in Brooklyn.”

….there is so much more interesting predictions check them out….

https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2024/12/30/predictions-about-2025-from-100-years-ago/77021358007/

That does it for me for today….Sue and I will be spending some down time with the pups before the New Year….

Please if you are out celebrating the new year enjoy yourself but be careful and be safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Was 2020 The Worst Year Ever?

The easy answer is….depends…..depends on your definition of “worse”…..

A New Year And I feel I need to look back…..not at the horrible year that 2020 was but rather through history at all the bad years.

2020 sucked bad with the pandemic, the loss of jobs, the loss of some many people, bad it was not the worst year ever even with Donald the Orange in charge….

You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d say 2020 was great, but a group of 28 historians says there have been other years in US history that were even worse than this one, CBS News reports. In a survey conducted by self-help therapy app company Bloom, the academics from American and UK universities such as Yale, Stanford, and Oxford, as well as a few indie historical writers, were asked to select what they believed was the most stressful year ever in the United States. While 2020 definitely made that list, there were others that beat it out for the dubious distinction of worst year ever. Read on to see what those troubled times were:

  1. 1862: The darkest year of the Civil War, including the one-day battle of Antietam, which killed 23,000 men.
  2. 1929 and 1838: Tie for the Wall Street stock market crash and “Trail of Tears,” respectively.
  3. 1919: The worst year of the Spanish flu pandemic, which left 675,000 Americans dead.
  4. 1968: The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.
  5. 1962: The Cuban missile crisis.
  6. 2001: The Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Check here to see what years the same historians ranked as worse than 2020 in world history.

You see as bad as the country looks….there were worse times that had far reaching consequences.

But as long as the pandemic continues then this could very well be the worse year in our history….time will tell and our actions will feed the narrative until it is no more.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

New Years Day News–2019

Before I shut it down for the day…..let us look into the year, 2019…..

First, you heard that GM was shutting down plants and laying off people, right?  Well 2019 will see the end of several models of cars that have become sort of iconic….

  • Cadillac ATS
  • Cadillac CTS
  • Cadillac XTS
  • Chevrolet Cruze
  • Chevrolet Impala
  • Ford C-Max
  • Ford Focus
  • Ford Taurus
  • Honda CR-Z
  • Hyundai Azera
  • Nissan Juke
  • Toyota Prius V
  • Volkswagen Beetle
  • Volkswagen Touareg

See what other cars are leaving the production line here. (The “surprise” among GM’s discontinued vehicles.)

I own a Ford Focus and it is a great car it has been reliable for 15 years…..but I guess they are not profitable in the SUV generations….I hate fads and trends.

Since I am a international relations geek there are some conflicts that need watching so that the US will not be drawn in (some we are already ass deep)……

Instruments of collective action, such as the UN Security Council, are paralysed; those of collective accountability, including the International Criminal Court, are ignored and disparaged.

Nostalgia can be deceptive. Too fond a portrayal of the era of Western hegemony would be misleading. Iraq’s chemical weapons use against Iran in the 1980s; the 1990s bloodletting in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia; the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; Sri Lanka’s brutal 2009 campaign against the Tamils; and the collapse of Libya and South Sudan: all these happened at a time of – in some cases because of – U.S. dominance and a reasonably coherent West. A liberal and nominally rules-based order hardly stopped those setting the rules from discarding them when they saw fit. The erosion of Western influence, in short, looks different from Moscow, Beijing, and the developing world than it does from Brussels, London, or Washington.

https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/10-conflicts-watch-2019

This will be overlooked I fear….but not to worry someone will pick up the coverage when it is too late to stop it.

Every American knows that National Security is primary to any president or Congress…..these are the 5 NatSec concerns for 2019…..

Trouble with Russia and China top the list.

Winston Churchill once wisecracked that the politician’s job is to predict what will happen—then explain why it didn’t. More to the point, George Orwell mocked “the unsinkable Military Expert” who keeps venturing strong predictions about martial affairs, keeps getting forecasts wrong, and keeps drawing “fat salaries” despite repeated failures as a soothsayer. Be humble when prophesying—lest the ghosts of wars past appear before you and terrify you!

In that spirit of humility, my Five National Security Predictions for 2019:

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/12/31/5_big_national_security_predictions_for_2019_114068.html

2019 will be an interesting year but more so on the international stage than any other…..we will be watching and reporting….

**********A parting thought……2019–the Dems take control of the House…and now DEFICITS will matter.*********

One more thing……

Have a day and a good day of rest and hangover remedies…..

What Did Asimov Say?

2019 is just a day away……and pundits are all over the tube predicting the next 6 to 12 months…..but 35 years ago SciFi writer Issac Asimov predicted year 2019…..

lf we look into the world as it may be at the end of another generation, let’s say 2019 — that’s 35 years from now, the same number of years since 1949 when George Orwell’s 1984 was first published — three considerations must dominate our thoughts:

1. Nuclear war. 2. Computerization. 3. Space utilization.

If the United States and the Soviet Union flail away at each other at any time between now and 2019, there is absolutely no use to discussing what life will be like in that year. Too few of us, or of our children and grand· children, will be alive then for there to be any point in describing the precise condition of global misery at that time.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/12/27/35-years-ago-isaac-asimov-was-asked-by-the-star-to-predict-the-world-of-2019-here-is-what-he-wrote.html

Does anyone want to look that far into the future?  If so then let the predictions fly.

Another short posting day….everyone please be well, be safe…..chuq

New Years Eve–2017

The year is all but a memory and I would like to thank all my followers and commenters for their continued patronage and for making 2017 an excellent year for IST.

It has been a helluva a year….the election of a president without the popular vote…..the systematic tear down of the institution that we Americans have come to depend on….the total destruction of our diplomatic endeavors….a year where autocrats were praised and democracy takes a back seat to personal gain….a year of fake news and a year of accusations…..

Now we look forward to the new year, 2018, that is……and most of us have little what to expect….will the country destroy itself from the inside or will it finally come to its senses?

Here is a little help with the expectation thing…..

The world is on edge. North Korea is threatening war. No one knows what Donald Trump will do next. And deeper forces of disruption are at work, from fake news to cryptocurrencies.With that in mind, welcome to the latest edition of the Pessimist’s Guide…to 2028. It’s an attempt not just to look at the potential shocks of next year but also to consider how they could shape the coming decade.The scenarios outlined here are not meant as forecasts. Instead, they are provocative ideas intended to make you think about how quickly our world is changing.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/pessimists-guide-to-2018/
There is another look at what to expect in the coming year…..
https://thinkprogress.org/2018-us-international-relations-e8840525f841/
I hope that all have a good evening and remember do not drink and drive….contact me for a hang over cure if needed…..enjoy you celebration but carefully……be safe……chuq

End Of The Year–2016

Today is New Years Eve…the end of yet another year….during that year we lost so much and so many….

Just a reminder of all we lost…..The Year The Music Died!

Since I wrote this draft we have lost three more……George Michael and Carrie Fischer…..and the “unsinkable” Debbie Reynolds….

I would like to thank you guys for making 2016 a great year for IST….it makes it all so worthwhile and makes this old man very proud of all of you.

Please my friends have a safe and secure New Years Eve…..Please do not drink and drive…..remember you will pay for too much fun the next morning….

Time for a spinach and goat cheese omelette with a bit of champagne…..now that is breakfast….then a little relaxation to recharge the mental batteries…

Peace Out

2015–A New Year

 

Today we enter into a new year……it will most likely be filled with lots of crap and I do mean CRAP about the 2016 elections……should present people like me with a wealth of subjects on which to mock and to laugh…..and inform.

I started this blog in 2006 while recovering from an injury I got while working in an area devastated by Hurricane Katrina….an injury that left me unable to work and this blog became my outlet.  Originally it was for me to cut and paste stuff that I enjoyed reading to expand my knowledge….but shortly I went back to writing my thoughts on stuff that I found interesting…..and as they say “the rest is history”.

Since the beginning I have 1030 followers which is not ground breaking but it is good for a blog that has done nothing to promote itself other than finding people with like mind or those that take exception to my views.  This blog has 19,021 comments……people expressing their views on a wide array of subjects…….and during this time IST has gotten 187,00 hits….again not ground breaking but those that chose to come and read my stuff and for that I am very grateful.  During this time I have blocked 1.3 million unwanted comments.  Finally in those years I have written 7637 post and that comes to about 2.7 million words for the average post contains 350 words….short?  Yes…..my grandfather said “why write a novel when a paragraph will do?”

As we begin a new year I want to express my gratitude to all my followers and regular readers and commenters….writing a blog everyday is a daunting task but my followers make it a labor of love….THANK YOU.

I will stop now and wish everyone a Happy New Year….now go enjoy your day filled with family, fun, food and football.  We will be back at it in full force tomorrow.

THANX AGAIN AND HAVE A GREAT DAY!

Turn The Page!

2014 New Years Predictions

We begin a new year and let me say a couple of things….thank you…..thank you….thank you…..for without my readers and followers I would be talking to myself…..here’s hoping we all have a great year, 2014……..

AS per my tradition I will make my 10 predictions of what I think will happen in the world and in this country….so far, in the last 5 years I am batting about .750…….Nostradamus can kiss my butt….and you do not need a Capt. Video de-coder ring to figure out what I am saying……

Last year’s predictions (2013) came off as expected……(drum roll)……results are……

1–unemployment will rise during the year–blew this one

2–Consumer Confidence hits new low–blew this one

3–GOP settles into same talking points–PLUS

4–Problems in Syria spills over into border countries–PLUS

5–Major country leader dies–Mandela and Chavez–PLUS

6–Immigration will be a hotly contested issue—-this was a push

7–Democrat wins Mass Senate seat of Kerry—-PLUS

8–Earth 2 will be found–PLUS…matter fact they say they found 2 Earth 2s

9–US GDP will shrink by about 0.5%–blew this one

10-Gun issue will be missed–PLUS

Now you know why I do not use my economic training as a profession…..all my misses were in the field of economics…..but I did get a score of 6 out of 10 or 60%……..a fair year but it could be better….

Now let’s see if I can be a better soothsayer for 2014…….

1–GDP will rise to 3%

2–Unemployment will NOT go below 6.5%

3–Fed policies will NOT change with new chairman

4–Syria will become more messy than now

5–US Congress will not change much…same gridlock

6–GOP wins seats in Senate and it will be 50/50 mix

7–2014 mid-terms will be a circus for GOP

8–Clinton will let her intentions be known for sure

9–Afghanistan will become more and more chaotic as we pull out

10-Iraq will descent into chaos once again, Maliki will be gone.

I like to throw a little lagniappe in once in a while……the markets are reaching new highs almost daily…they creating another bubble…..there will be a correction after June of 2014……

Happy New Year, my friends!

2013 New Year’s Predictions

I hope everybody is having a great day…..and since the ass clowns in DC cannot do anything right we will slip into uncertainty……But wait!  Senate actually did something……….grab your crotch and whole your nose!

Welcome to the New Year, 2013……I have a feel that it will not be one of this country’s better years…….

A new year and a new set of predictions by yours truly……..every year I predict ten things that I feel will happen and at the end of the year I grade myself and post my record……

Last year, 2012, I had a great year and think no crystal ball………

1–Obama squeaks out a win—good

2–Dems retake House but lose Senate–bad

3–Violence returns to Iraq–good

4–New problems for Libya–good

5–Inflation creeps up–bad

6–Europe slips into chaos again…EU in danger–good but barely

7–Syria sinks into all out civil war–good

8–Taleban steps up violence in Afghanistan in the Spring and Summer–good

9–Eliz. Warren wins Mass Senate seat–good

10-Romney wins the GOP nomination–good

That is 80% accurate….let me see Nostradamus do that!  SCHOOLED!  And you did not need a Capt. Video de-coder ring!

Enough back slapping!  Time to move on to 2013!

1–unemployment will rise during the year

2–Consumer Confidence hits new low

3–GOP settles into same talking points

4–Problems in Syria spills over into border countries

5–Major country leader dies

6–Immigration will be a hotly contested issue

7–Democrat wins Mass Senate seat of Kerry

8–Earth 2 will be found

9–US GDP will shrink by about 0.5%

10-Gun issue will be missed

There you have it, my annual Nostradamus moment……anything I missed?

I will be back tomorrow just as opinionated as ever……hope you all the continue to show up and read….shall we dance?