I am writing this blog on my new ipad, given to me by my kids for Chrismas. I am now almost up to date with the technological world!  I predict that they will avoid the fiscal cliff by kicking the can down the road further.

My predictions for the Big Ten stay intact with MSU's come back victory.  A good win for them after all those close losses this year.

Happy new year!

When is it going to be enough?  How many more innocent lives have to be lost before we ban all assault weapons and magazines that carry more than 10 bullets at a time.  What are these weapons for except to attack other people?  This is a national security issue.  This is domestic terrorism.  I don't think the freedom to own these assault weapons trumps our freedom from being wire-tapped.  Yet after 9/11 the government can wire-tap citizens.  We kill 4 times more of our fellow citizen each year than 9/11 but we can't give up the freedom of owning assault weapons?

The argument that if good guys can't buy weapons then they can't protect themselves from bad guys is absurd.  It is much more likely that guns owned by ordinary citizen will kill someone innocent, kill someone during an argument, or kill someone accidentally than to have stopped a criminal.  Certainly the guy in Florida who shot the black kid in a struggle would not have even approached the kid if he did not have a gun.  He would have simply called and waited for the police to show up. 

I think we should ban all manufacturing of assault weapons except for those to be purchased by the military and law enforcement.  It is not a right to make these weapons.  After all, I am sure one cannot legally build an atomic bomb.   The line has to be drawn now.

It is time for my yearly Big Ten bowl predictions.  There are 7 teams from the Big Ten in bowl games this year.  It would have been 9 if Penn State and Ohio State were eligible.  Since those two beat Wisconsin, the Big Ten champs, this means everyone plays a higher bowl than they would have otherwise.  So it is not likely the Big Ten will do very well.  This explains why Big Ten teams are all underdogs in their games.  I am going to predict that Michigan State, Michigan and Northwestern are going to win, for a total of 3 victories for the conference.  These three are from 2-4 points underdogs but I think they can come through.  The others have no chance at all will possibly exception of Wisconsin which showed some life against Nebraska.  Still I don't think they can beat Stanford.

Four weeks to go before the fiscal cliff occurs.  I believe that a last second deal will be made to avoid the cliff because both sides are scared of the consequences.  Frankly I don't know why people are afraid of this so called cliff.  I say bring it on.  I think we will survive it and will gain some knowledge of how the economy really works.

The predictions are that if the tax increases and spending cuts occur as scheduled on Jan. 2, 2013, we will lose about 4% of GDP, putting us back into recession.  I am no economist so I don't have any idea if these calculations are accurate.  But this law was passed so that if the so called super committee can't find a way to reduce the deficit then the tax increases and spending cut to be implemented will reduce our deficit by 1.2 trillion dollars.  Now throughout the last few years all I have heard is that we have to reduce the deficit as if not doing so will be the death of our economy.  So now with less than a month we are saying that by reducing the deficit we are going to kill our economy?  So I say let us go over the cliff.  If we go into recession, then I guess reducing the deficit is not the cure all that we heard about in recent years.  But if we don't go into recession then may be we will be more brave about cutting more of our deficit in the future.

The extreme right wants to reduce the deficit by cutting spending only.  The extreme left wants to cut the deficit by raising taxes only.  But most people think that both need to be done.  This cliff forces us to do both just as most people want.  I think initially the stock market will be spooked.  There will also be less spending by consumers.  But after a while maybe we will see that we don't need to spend more money on our military as the next ten nations combined.  Maybe we see that a little cut on medicare do not lead to deaths to our seniors.  Maybe our millionaires will see that losing a few thousand dollars a year in tax should not change their strategy in expanding their businesses.  But if the recession lasts longer than I think it will, well, then maybe we won't be so vocal about drastically reducing the deficits next time.