what i thought
Mrh can begin with Nostradamus maybe
Here's a conditional prediction regarding a potential U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran from the the NYT today:
We don't know what's going on behind closed doors in Washington -- or what Mr. Olmert heard from Mr. Bush. But saber-rattling is not a strategy. And an attack on Iran by either country would be disastrous.
or the Delphi's Oracle or who it was the first one
just to bring like more audience
I've already done the Cassandra thing and it ain't no fun.
You want a prediction? Buy up all the IronMan toys you can because in twenty-five years they will be worth a fortune. Not as much as if you spent the money on a mutual fund but how much fun is that?
I'm serious. Mark my words.
I predict that all my strawberry plants will be dead next week.
Come on, people, a prediction by a pundit that you remember, or google up in a few minutes! Don't tell me you're too busy!
Another thing that would be helpful would be a few comments on the posts that are already there, regarding the accuracy of the predictions contained therein. To get the ball rolling, as it were.
Thanks, team. And kudos to read for thinking outside the box.
Everybody's 2008 Superbowl predictions were wrong, I remember that. I'm not being lazy (except w/r/t my work) I just can't think of anything right now.
I think you need a catchy ratings system. Something like rottentomatoes or thumbs up or even the terror threat level.
Or an overall award or razzie thing:
The Cassandra, for the person whose pessimistic predictions were ignored but turned out to be correct.
The Sibyl, for someone who claims after the fact to have been right by capitalizing on the triviality or ambiguity of their predictions.
The Stopped Clock, for someone who is right now and then.
The Blind Pig, for someone who is usually wrong but manages to be impressively right once or a handful of times.
Surely there were many predictions about Big Brown winning the Belmont.
9 -- The Heebie, for someone who's always right?
Hmm. One place I'd look for predictions now is about who will make which of the various Olympic squads, which teams are favored to win medals, that sort of thing.
Bill Simmons, May 30th:
The bad news? Nobody is beating the Lakers this season. Not Boston, not Detroit, not anybody. They have the best team, the best player and a Hall of Fame coach. It's really that simple.
I suppose you only want recent predictions, right?
Eventually, I want to set it up so that there's a voting system on each post (for rightness and wrongness), and I like Cala's award suggestions.
Bad sports predictions are a dime a dozen. Not that there shouldn't be a sports category, but I think the original idea was more politics-oriented.
18: gripe, gripe, gripe. I don't see you being constructive!
Bush: Clinton will be the Democratic nominee, and will lose to the Republican.
Ah, here's a good one from the front page of Making Light:
Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003: Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators... .
Q: If your analysis is not correct, and we're not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?
Cheney: Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators... . The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.
McCain: the Iraq War will be won by 2013.
18: That's true, but the Olympic ones are more fun.
For that matter, Billmon was full of (mostly dire) predictions. His site should still be available on the Internet Archive.
Bernanke: there's no housing bubble.
From 20: Bush said Giuliani's popularity was a sign of how important the terrorism issue is to Republican voters
Awesome.
26.---Wasn't Greenspan talking up adjustable-rate mortages in like 2002?
19: I'm procrastinating working, man. I'll try to come up with something, but my memory, she is not so good. I blame my children.
Now that I think about it, I'll try to find Karl Rove's from an NPR interview just before the 2006 elections. Not exactly the same as a pundit prediction, but it should be included, since its ratio of confidence to accuracy was basically infinity.
Following 20, Fox News' most read article headlines include this:
Lionel Richie: I Survived 27 Years of Nicole Richie
9 there is our fairy tales personage
of Daldug kharagch dalan khudalch (the one who tells 70 lies who can see through the blinds)
he is like Hamza Nasreddin in arabic folktales
Summer '08 Gas prices from Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service in January.
Kloza noted that wholesale gasoline prices have fallen about 30 cents since the start of the year, and retail prices are just now beginning to come down.
But then recession or no recession, he expects gasoline prices to surge again to set a new record of over $3.22 a gallon sometime between March and May, when refiners leave stocks low and switch over to summer blends and traders anticipate the high-demand summer driving season.
"The same things that make the rally every spring are still there," he said.
But from May onward, he said prices could fall quickly, especially if there is a recession.
Greenspan recommends ARMs to consumers in 2004
Correct predictions, if they're not obvious, are also good.
I predict that punditpredictions.com will find a bonanza among prognosticators on prices, rates, stock market averages and all other manner of economics numbers.
Pet Weather Rock award: For someone who makes correct predictions by saying only safe and obvious things. (from this old joke gift with a rock, and a card extolling its virtues: if it's frozen, it's cold. if it's wet, it's raining, if it's gone, it's been stolen.)
I couldn't find Billmon's archives within five minutes of searching, so I gave up. Who know what would be another good source? Brad Delong's site, which respects no fair use claims or pseudonyms, but which does have a pretty good internal search engine, iirc.
Karl Rove on the 2006 midterms:
SIEGEL: I'm looking at all the same polls that you are looking at.
ROVE: No, you are not. I'm looking at 68 polls a week for candidates for the US House and US Senate, and Governor and you may be looking at 4-5 public polls a week that talk attitudes nationally.
SIEGEL: I don't want to have you to call races...
ROVE: I'm looking at all of these Robert and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I'm entitled to THE math.
SIEGEL: I don't know if we're entitled to a different math but your...
ROVE: I said THE math.
Link-
http://www.npr.org/about/press/061024_rove.html
I couldn't find Billmon's archives
That's because he took down the site. However, I gots what you need, pretty lady.
This one's just for Sifu:
"We're only going to score 17 points?" Brady said before chuckling about it. "OK. Is Plax playing defense? I wish he had said 45-42 and gave us a little credit for scoring more points."
But yeah, sports is too easy, especially when you include upsets (although the Simmons quote above is pretty dumb).
Glassman-Hasset Award for Stupendously Wrong Financial Predictions?
Watson Award for Stupendously Wrong Technology Predictions?
And yeah, Rove in 40 might get himself a named award, too. Political Hubris.
there were a lot of rosy predictions about Iraq's elections, i.e. David Brooks:
Washington will continue to get distracted by microscandals about leaks and such, but the Iraqi constitutional process is the most important thing that will be happening in the world in the next year. If it succeeds, Iraq really will be a beacon of freedom in the Middle East. The Americans who have died in Iraq will have given their lives in a truly noble cause.
But is this too far back in time?
Brooks, May 18, 2004
There's something about our venture into Iraq that is inspiringly, painfully, embarrassingly and quintessentially American. No other nation would have been hopeful enough to try to evangelize for democracy across the Middle East. No other nation would have been naive enough to do it this badly. No other nation would be adaptable enough to recover from its own innocence and muddle its way to success, as I suspect we are about to do.
24- This one is perfect. I think you have to make it something people are thinking about now, mrh. Something like a mid-term elections prediction won't be interesting now. Rupert Murdoch saying the Iraq War would bring $20/gallon gas would be a good one.
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Reading a trial transcript now, and one of the lawyers is admonishing the jury pool not to go looking stuff up on the internet about the case: "I know it's tempting. Lickopedia and all." Cracking me up. Tempted to google that, of course, but...
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Rupert Murdoch saying the Iraq War would bring $20/gallon gas would be a good one.
Not that this is disproven...
With sports predictions, you want to highlight ones that are made on the basis of alleged reporting - so-and-so will sign with such-and-such team; Coach so-and-so will be fired, etc.
With political predictions, I think you want to focus on the predictions that are specifically designed to implicate policy: Iraqis will greet us with candy, therefore we should invade; temperatures will go down, therefore we ought not worry about global warming, etc.
Sports guys are obliged to predict the Super Bowl, and nobody can be expected to take that seriously; likewise, political pundits often use an end-of-the-year column to make humorous/speculative predictions about the coming year.
Thanks apo! I haven't found anything that leaps out at me yet--at least half an hour in.
50- Really? I just got that from Moyer's video with the Fox producer. OK, let it serve as just an example.
I've always envisioned a punditpredictions web site that would consist of the traditional sections of a daily newspaper - an A-section given over to hard news predictions, and other sections discussing sports, finance and soft news (Lohan is pregnant; TomKat divorcing, etc.)
I remember seeing an ad for Us magazine featuring past covers. Whoever designed the ad wasn't the least bit self-conscious about the fact that one of the covers referred to events that never happened. (Somebody's pregnancy, I think.)
How about Krugman's prediction the other day that the media will be as substance-free as possible in their coverage of Obama-McCain?
He also had an interesting one about the sun rising tomorrow - can't wait to see if that one works out!
Doesn't each member of the panel make a prediction at the end of every McLaughlin Group? I can't believe there isn't a blog just devoted to those.
This might be a good one, wherein Chuck Todd predicts that if Dems won control of Congress, Bush's approval rating would be over 50% by July (07). But perhaps too far back
http://mediamatters.org/items/200707050011
based on the history of this site, whoswrong.com , I predict that punditpredictions.com will last about a month and a half.
59: That's a prediction ! Book it !
punditpredictions will do better if it avoids that horrible color scheme.
I believe apo predicted that Obama would reveal himself as the anti-christ and inaugurate the second coming.
I just provided the space for others to predict that. But I'll note that nearly all of my predictions regarding Obama's candidacy have been wrong.
I'm not good at remembering predictions, but a few thoughts for anyone who wants to do the research. Some of them are oldish but still interesting, I think:
- what the surge would accomplish
- whether Bill would help or hurt Hillary's campaign
- the 3 House seats we picked up in the South
- Dem pundits (DailyKos, TPM)
- Juan Williams (he's such a hedger that he's probably not made direct projections, but it would be nice to find one)
- Friedman & Brooks; there have got to be some doozies
Juan Williams really bugs me. Of course more of them do.
They are so free from facts.
Juan Williams really bugs me.
I find it hard not to turn off the radio when he comes on.
me too.
I've become a cranky old person who sends nasty emails to NPR.
Juan Williams is an asshole. This isn't the well-established consensus?
I've added most of the predictions found in this thread... it would probably be good to find some slightly more recent (6 month window?) predictions, and yes, we'll take correct ones, too.
*sniff* You guys are the greatest.
Via a link in the swim thread, Sam Boyd predicts that Cavendish bananas will not be commercially available in a few years.
Yesterday, writing in TPM, Ta-Nehisi Coates gratifyingly observed: I find Juan Williams about as ignorant about the current state of black folks as Pat Buchanan.
whether Bill would help or hurt Hillary's campaign
How did that work out ?
There was some confusion above about Murdoch's prediction, by the way. He wasn't predicting $20/gallon gas. He predicted $20/barrel oil. The invasion was going to lower oil prices.
Here's the interview in the Guardian:
He believes that deposing the Iraqi leader would lead to cheaper oil. "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy...would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."
Oil at the time was seen as very expensive - $35 or so a barrel. Now it's about $135 a barrel.
Actually, the Guardian article I referenced in 76 was quoting an Australian publication.
I was cursing Juan Williams when my wife told me she was pregnant with Iris. I'll never forget that tender moment.
By the way, Moyers turning the table on the O'Reilly ambush was fun viewing.
It's nice to see an old-fashioned honorable journalist exhibit some swagger, instead of being all hunkered down and intimidated. The transcript doesn't really do it justice because it doesn't convey Moyers' amusement at being pestered by Bill O'Reilly's troll.
79: That is great. Gotta love Moyers.
I won't make any predictions, but if the Dems can't turn today's two energy bill votes into big gains in November, I'm going to be really pissed off.
That's a prediction, I suppose, but a safe one.
a safe one
Awfully hard to measure, though.
82: It's not hard to tell when I'm really pissed off, apo.
I'll be pissed off too, and so will McManus and Stras. These are foolproof predictions.
I predict that I will eat this popsicle, and that it will be delicious.
86: Unfogged does not condone folk psychology. You seem to be assuming the possibility of agency, though possibly you just expressed yourself carelessly.
By the way, Moyers turning the table on the O'Reilly ambush was fun viewing.
It's nice to see an old-fashioned honorable journalist exhibit some swagger, instead of being all hunkered down and intimidated. The transcript doesn't really do it justice because it doesn't convey Moyers' amusement at being pestered by Bill O'Reilly's troll.
I really enjoyed Moyers in that video.
I have now dropped the popsicle an there's this strange dog eatin it off the sidewalk. Oh the hubris of man, that we could ever read our destiny!
never pays to tempt fate, fafnir
Honorable mention:
We have seen Weird Times in this country before, but the year 2000 is beginning to look super weird. This time, there really is nobody flying the plane. ... We are living in dangerously weird times now.....
There is an eerie sense of Panic in the air, a silent Fear and Uncertainty that comes with once-reliable faiths and truths and solid Institutions that are no longer safe to believe in. ... There is a Presidential Election, right on schedule, but somehow there is no President. A new Congress is elected, like always, but somehow there is no real Congress at all -- not as we knew it, anyway, and whatever passes for Congress will be as helpless and weak as Whoever has to pass for the "New President."
If this were the world of sports, it would be like playing a Super Bowl that goes into 19 scoreless Overtimes and never actually Ends. ... or four L.A. Lakers stars being murdered in different places on the same day. Guaranteed Fear and Loathing. Abandon all hope. Prepare for the Weirdness. Get familiar with Cannibalism.
Hunter S. Thompson, November 20, 2000
Bill Kristol, Dec. 17, 2006: "Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary. I'll predict that right now."
So far I have learned that Bill Kristol is always wrong.
Wait, I already knew that. Go figure!
Yeah, Bill Kristol's a goldmine. Just from the second page of one column (16July2007, "Why Bush Will Be a Winner"):
"Bush is a war president, and war presidents are judged by whether they win or lose their war. So to be a successful president, Bush has to win in Iraq. Which I now think we can. Indeed, I think we will."
"If we sustain the surge for a year and continue to train Iraqi troops effectively, we can probably begin to draw down in mid- to late 2008."
"But can Bush maintain adequate support at home? Yes."
"Many Americans will recoil from the prospect of being governed by an unchecked triumvirate of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. So the chances of a Republican winning the presidency in 2008 aren't bad."
Meanwhile, conservative talk radio, which I have been following with interest for almost 20 years, has become a tornado alley of hallucinatory holograms of Obama. He's a Marxist! A radical leftist! A hater of America! He's "not that bright"; he can't talk without a teleprompter. He knows nothing and has done less. His wife is a raging mass of anti-white racism. It's gotten to the point that I can hardly listen to my favorite shows, which were once both informative and entertaining. The hackneyed repetition is numbing and tedious, and the overt character assassination is ethically indefensible. Talk radio will lose its broad audience if it continues on this nakedly partisan path.
I don't know if that is just total BS that she would know is not true if she thought about it for a second...or if she is actually saying something in that last sentence.
Hey! Here's one he got right: "We are tempted to comment, in these last days before the war, on the U.N., and the French, and the Democrats. But the war itself will clarify who was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction."
And it did!
95 is disqualified on the grounds that everything else she says being so nakedly idiotic.
Hey, it's still a prediction.
She says that if conservative talk radio starts being partisan, its audience will stop listening. Let's see what happens.
She says that if conservative talk radio starts being partisan
"Starts"! There is a prediction in there but it is actually something like: "If even a dumbshit like me can now discern how partisan they have become, they will lose their 'broad' audience." The change is within Ms. Paglia (and others of her ilk one hopes) .
I would love to see a section on disease breakthroughs, too. It seems like every week, another cancer or AIDS cure is 'months away from FDA approval.' Never to be heard from again.
Or, a Peak Oil section...
Hey mrh!
KEvin Drum just made an easily measured, specific prediction about states Obama will carry in the fall.
99, that's the point.
Hmmm...this makes me think.
If a prediction is phrased as "If A happens, then B will happen"...under the impression that A has not already happened...but A has in fact already happened, and B has not happened -- then that prediction has actually achieved infinite wrongness in two dimensions.
First, it has achieved infinite wrongness as measured by wrongness divided by temporal proximity to the thing being predicted.
Second, it has achieved infinite wrongness in that it posits that the thing predicted not only could happen, but will happen -- however, the thing predicted cannot possibly happen, since the opportunity for it to happen has already passed, and it didn't happen.
mrh, I don't know if you want to collect predictions from schlubs, or only from pundits, but here's Hamilton-Lovecraft's official electoral map prediction for the 2008 election in increasing specificity:
Prediction 1: Obama wins.
Prediction 2: Obama 271, Republican 267.
Prediction 3: Obama takes Kerry's 2004 states minus Michigan, plus Ohio, Colorado, Iowa.