Some Predictions About the BP Oil Spill

I generally try to stay away from predicting the future. I find accurately analyzing the present challenging enough. Still, I feel I'm on pretty safe ground with the following:

• The undersea gusher will get plugged.
• The beaches will get cleaned up.
• Obama will take the major share of the credit.
• There will be onerous and illogical regulations put in place.
• Those regulations will not only do nothing to reduce the odds of future spills, they'll make them more likely and harder to clean up.
• The Feds will not permit drilling in safer, easier to extract and protect, easier to clean up areas.
• BP will pay out far more to politicians in the future than they already have, and the majority of the cash will go to viro-organization-friendly Democrats.
• BP will pay far more than they are liable for to all manner of individuals, many of whom are only peripherally affected at most.
• A year from now, very few people outside the southern states will care about the spill, and not many of those.
• In the coming year, Obama and his cronies will create many new, far worse crises — which partly explains the previous bullet point.

Cynicism? I think not. It's just an instance of the response Hope Lange's character gives to Harrison Ford's in the movie Clear and Present Danger, when he complains: "Senator, I don't know where you're getting all this," after she makes some contentious suggestions. She says, "Long experience, sir."