By Pat Bagley

| The Salt Lake Tribune

Pat Bagley is writing solo, without a net, this week:

On New Year’s, I used to get together with friends to make predictions for the upcoming year. It would start with reading famed psychic Jean Dixon’s "National Enquirer" predictions from the previous year. Despite having allegedly foreseen the JFK assassination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeane_Dixon she turned out to be vaguely in the ballpark in only one forecast out of three. Then we would move on to reading our own predictions from the previous year. Again, nothing to be especially proud of, unless you cheated and read scientific journals with the latest in cutting-edge scientific conjecture and had to act surprised when your previous year’s prediction was chosen as the year’s most correct; that rings would be spotted on Voyager 2’s flyby of Uranus.

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This last year, Harold Camping, an important Evangelical Christian radio minister, predicted that Judgment Day would be May 21, 2011. When Jesus failed to make his appointed curtain call, Camping juggled the numbers again and came up with a new end-of-world-sell-by-date: October 21. Camping suffered a stroke, apparantly disappointed at God’s lack of zeal in murdering billions of people not on Camping’s Heavenly Caribbean Cruise list.

Keeping in mind that I probably won’t be rewarded with a celestial perch from which to spit on the damned even if I’m correct, here are a few of my predictions for 2012:

Ron Paul will win the Iowa caucuses tomorrow, unless the weather turns bad, in which case all bets are off. Paul’s young enthusiasts may then decide to stay in and play World of Warcraft while getting stoned. Older Romney supporters with bad night vision may get lost on the way to the caucuses, depending on the severity of the weather.

Even assuming an Iowa loss, Romney will get the GOP nomination. I mean, really; who else is there?

For her endorsement of Romney, Sarah Palin will insist on prime-time in Tampa, Fla. Her convention speech, indelibly labeling Obama as lipstick-on-a-socialist-pig-floating-downstream, rallies the base.

Unless the unemployment rate shoots back up over 10 percent, Obama will win a second term.

The economy will collapse, shooting unemployment above 10 percent, if either a) Europe can’t get its act together or, b) China’s real estate bubble bursts.

There will be a 50 percent chance of either a), or b), happening.

Democrats will claim Obama’s failure to gain a second term is George W. Bush’s fault.

Republicans will claim Romney’s failure to win in 2012 is because of voters, and will take their case to the Supreme Court with ample evidence that secret GOP campaign money bought the election fair and square.

Wall Street will be pathologically optimistic, until it is not. Then it will blame greedy poor people, who control .7 percent of the economy.

Occupy Wall Street will be taken over by the League of Women Voters, who will teach OWS manners and hygiene.

The Utah Legislature will embarrass all of us Utahns in front of the whole country. (This is a gimme: When has the Legislature not been an embarrassment?)