I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a terrible prognosticator. My predictions are nearly always wrong. Yet for some reason I’m still compelled to make my clumsy attempts to predict what will come to pass in the coming year. Some are just obvious to anyone paying attention, some are very unlikely, and some are just stupid. Enjoy!
- Arizona House Speaker Weiers will resign his leadership post following a scandal and a moderate Republican will be elected Speaker with the aid of House Democrats.
- Janet Napolitano proclaims the major goal for her second term will be electing Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate in 2008.
- Al Gore will announce his bid for the Presidency near the end of 2007 after an intensive draft campaign. He will immediately become the front-runner in primary polling. After his announcement he will demonstrate his new image by actually having sex with Tipper on stage using a PowerPoint presentation to illustrate.
- The Democratic majority in Congress will grow due to resignations and indictments of sitting GOP members and the subsequent appointments and special elections. Not to mention the suicides, oh, the many, many suicides.
- Bush will go from rare use of his veto to making Janet look like a pushover in comparison, but the real fireworks will occur when he tries to use a signing statement to ‘reinterpret’ a Democratic bill coming out of Congress for the first time. Nancy Pelosi will put Bush over her knee and spank him at the signing ceremony. Bare bottomed.
- Human to human communicable avian flu will break out in east Asia, testing world-wide preparedness for an influenza epidemic and finding it severely wanting. The Democratic Congress demonstrates that they know how to deal with a grave and looming threat. They invade China.
- Saudi Arabia will reveal that it has secretly obtained one or more usable nuclear weapons. There’s just nothing funny about this at all.
- Several more oil producing countries will begin to trade oil and keep reserves in both dollars and euros, or euros exclusively. The dollar’s exchange rate will take another 10% beating against other major currencies. U.S. government starts printing currency with even more fruity colors in a misguided attempt to compete.
- The real estate bubble will catastrophically deflate (more than the ~30% they’ve already given back) in the most overheated coastal markets leading to a debt crisis that will push many mortgage lenders into insolvency and create a wave of bankrupcies that will create a massive economic hangover going into the Presidential cycle that will be much harder to clear due to the new bankruptcy laws. In short, the GOP will paradoxically lose the Presidency for having sucked the cock of Mammon so energetically.
- Several Western nations (except the U.S.) and the United Nations will list the polar bear as an endangered species due to habitat loss. Bush will order that polar bear be served at all state dinners.
- Former members of the Bush Administration (though not Bush himself) and top leadership of the armed forces will be indicted for crimes against humanity by a foreign government or governments under the Torture Convention. Of course, we won’t extradite and those governments wouldn’t dream of coming and kidnapping those criminals to bring them under their courts’ jurisdiction, so former high Bush-era officials just spend the rest of their lives vacationing in places like Tajikistan instead of the Spanish Riviera.
- The sound of Bush Administration officials testifying before Congress and repeating the mantra, "I decline to answer because the answer may tend to incriminate me…" will become auditory wallpaper by Spring.
- Al Qaeda will make a spectacular strike on the Chunnel to finally dislodge the UK from the ‘coalition of the willing’. This will be followed by strikes in the United States against major dams in Southwest. Ironically, George Bush will again be reading ‘My Pet Goat’ when informed.
- Dick Cheney will ‘resign’ the Vice Presidency due to ‘health problems’. He will move into the White House residence and join the Office of the President as an ‘advisor’. John McCain will be nominated as Vice President, and due to long-standing traditions of comity between Senators, he will be easily confirmed, never missing a beat in his campaign for President. The nation will realize that reason McCain moves like he’s got something shoved up his ass is not due to a bad back.
- A silent coup in Iraq places Shi’ite militias and clergy in effective total control of the Iraqi government, the provisional constitution and parliament are increasing ignored, oil revenues are diverted away from the state and full-scale ethnic cleansing and civil war erupts around our troops. Surrounding nations become increasing involved in the conflict, notably Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Unable to affect political events or control Iraqi police or armed forces, our troops withdraw into the Green Zone and enduring bases and baton down the hatches until we get a Democratic President who will bring them home. Again, there’s just nothing funny in this.
- Friday Night Lights will be the sleeper hit of 2007. Great show, even if you don’t give a fig for football.
- Hillary Clinton undergoes sex reassignment surgery to improve her chances at winning the Presidency. She misses becoming the first female President, but the Clintons have a shot at becoming the first same-sex marriage in the White House (unless you count GHWB and Barbara, of course…).
That’s it. Every bit of it is based on the latest psychohistorical predictive algorythyms and bellybutton lint necromatic autophagia. If you have a bookie, call and make your wagers now.