CRYSTAL BALL 2006 written by Dr. Jack Wheeler

The title is a tease – because contrary to what some think, I really don’t have a crystal ball. That’s because there’s no such thing as the future. How could there be – it hasn’t happened yet! What there are in reality is a large number of possible futures – some of which are more possible than others.

The trick is to not confuse what you want to happen with what’s likely to happen to best handicap the possibilities. That’s not easy.

I have to admit that 2005 has left a bad taste in my mouth. The dominant story of the year has to be the treasonously vicious and pathologically dishonest war of the liberal “mainstream” media and the Democrat Party waged relentlessly against the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Which is why the liberal media needs to be renamed the Bad News Media, the BDM, the Washington Post renamed the Washington Pathology, and the New York Times renamed the New York Treason.

There was plenty of good news to report in 2005 – the great success of the American economy, with GDP over 4% , full employment, median family income at $54,000 and net worth over $100,000, being one example, military and electoral successes in Iraq being another – but the BDM was determined to ignore it all.

The December 19th issue of Time Magazine featured “The Best Photos of 2005,” which were mostly shots of Katrina victims, Tsunami victims, Kashmir earthquake victims, Iraq War victims, etc. 70% of Time’s readers voted in an on-line poll for Michael Yon’s incredible picture of an American soldier cradling an Iraqi baby wounded in a terrorist attack:

Time’s editors chose not to include it at all in the 24 pictures selected for the issue.

The best news of 2006 may be that the BDM can no longer continue the bad news scam – because at the end of the year, all their efforts have failed. Bush is headed upwards towards approval ratings of 50% and above.

This could cause the stranglehold of the radical treasonous left (e.g., MoveOn.org, Howard Dean) around the neck of the Democrat Party to loosen, with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid losing their Capitol Hill leadership to grown-ups like Joe Lieberman.

Then again, maybe not, and the Defeatocrats will continue their masochistic America-bashing all the way to electoral disaster in November.

Thus I see 2006 as a far better year than 2005. Sam Alito will be confirmed for the Supreme Court, and we’ll be on out way to a conservative SCOTUS majority. After Alito replaces O’Connor, there will be only four solid liberals: Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer, and Stevens – and Stevens turns 86 next April. He won’t last through GW’s second term, and his replacement – let’s start now pushing for Janice Rogers Brown! – will mean the libs will be outnumbered three to six. Good odds.

The Bush tax cuts will be made permanent, and incoming Fed Chief Ben Bernanke’s first move will be to lower interest rates. No way José are we going to be in recession for the November elections.

There will be plenty of war next year. Attention will be re-directed away from the one in Iraq, where by next November it should be clear to voters that we have substantially won, to Israel’s massive airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and frantic efforts by NATO to prevent The Next War in Europe between Russia and Ukraine.

There will be some wonderful deaths acknowledged next year, primarily of the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty and Osama Bin Laden, of whom there hasn’t been a confirmed sighting in years now. The best death of all will be Saddam Hussein’s. An appropriate date for his public hanging would be May 23, the day another fascist psychopath, Girolamo Savonarola suffered the same fate in Renaissance Florence in 1498.

The Florentines then burned the body and threw the ashes into the Arno River, ensuring no shrine on his gravesite. Hopefully, Saddam’s ashes will be thrown into the Tigris.

Latin America’s slide to the left will continue until and unless someone takes out Hugo Chavez. The election of coca farmer and Chavez protégé Evo Morales to the presidency of Bolivia portends that country’s breaking apart, as predicted in Bye-Bye Bolivia last April.

The biggest geopolitical story of next year will be the growing democracy movement in China, as discussed in The Beijing Epiphany.

But the Number One story of 2006 will take place next summer, when Dick Cheney resigns due to his health, and Bush appoints and the Senate confirms Condoleezza Rice as Vice-President of the United States.

The GOP will retain the House and Senate in a wave of Republican euphoria and Democrat disarray. The big handicapping debate will be over who Condi’s running mate will be in ’08. (Best bet: former Virginia Governor and current Senator George Allen.) Which is why Little Johnny McCain will climb into political bed with Hillary Clinton.

We won’t get any closer to Utopia next year – for Utopia, Nirvana, a World At Peace, and all other fanciful heavens-on-earth are fantasies. Let’s hope our luck continues and we avoid (despite the Democrats’ every effort to make us defenseless) a Moslem terrorist attack. But the world will still be full of Moslem crazies, our universities still infested with Marxist crazies, our culture still infected with politically correct lunacy.

Yet for all of this and more, America will continue to thrive, the goodness and decency of America will continue to greatly outweigh the forces of darkness.

I’m betting that 2006 will be a distinct improvement over 2005. And I am wishing you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year.

I would hope his crystal ball is right. As a Protestant though, one thing I didn't like...

"the day another fascist psychopath, Girolamo Savonarola suffered the same fate in Renaissance Florence in 1498."

Wheeler must be Catholic, Protestants view Savanarola, despite his, shall we say, eccentricity, in quite a different light.

Just a month ago, Dr. Wheeler was saying his pal Abramoff would never plead guilty and plea bargain.

4 posted on 01/04/2006 6:49:23 AM PST by Mind-numbed Robot (Not all that needs to be done needs to be done by the government.)

<<<<
But the Number One story of 2006 will take place next summer, when Dick Cheney resigns due to his health, and Bush appoints and the Senate confirms Condoleezza Rice as Vice-President of the United States.
>>>.

Where the heck is he getting the above information from ?
There has been speculation about this since the beginning of 2005, which started to accelerate when Cheney checked himself into a hospital sometime last year and it has not happened yet. I think this guy is dreaming.

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