© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
This is every columnist's nightmare and opportunity – the chance to make in-print predictions about the future. Look, the truth is that if I knew even the contents of next Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, I'd be too rich to have to work for a living. The fact that I'm not rich should clue you in about my track-record as a prophet. Nevertheless, I'm going to make a bunch of predictions anyway, and devil take the hindmost (which in all likelihood, will be me).
The Dow Jones will be higher by December 2003.
Yep, I don't know much about next Tuesday's stock prices, but I am willing to bet that one year hence, the Dow will be higher (along with the S&P and NASDAQ). The reason has nothing to do with Republican economic brilliance (the written history of which may be found in three richly bound but blank pages) – rather it will happen once the war clouds dissipate over Iraq. Or to be more precise, over the Straits of Hormuz through which much of the Gulf oil moves by tanker.
Now that is the word "real" in real estate, and it's what Bush is really defending. If Iraq cracks, what's liable to come pouring out (after the human blood, that is) is oil and lots of it. That means if Bush's gambit on the old Euphrates River works, petroleum prices will be tumbling. Also good news for Mr. Dow Jones.
The Republican Party will be well on the way toward political self-destruction.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely as the old saying goes, and while George Bush isn't the Sun King, I would have to say that in terms of American democracy, his party is real close to absolute control – the House, the Senate, the White House and the Supreme Court. What does this mean? Well, the fall of Trent Lott is a foreshadowing, a taste of things to come.
As with Newt Gingrich, these guys get mighty over-confident after an election or two. They get careless about what they say and what they do. For example, on tax reform, these guys are about to throw themselves a party – by ending taxation on dividends, eliminating the estate and capital-gains tax, and all the other goodies on the Republican wish list, they will succeed in ... in ... in turning an awful budget deficit into a horrific one and such will force them to actually raise taxes on ... on ... on the backs of the working class.
Think I made this up? Nah! It is already being reported that the White House has directed the Treasury Department to study the possibility of raising taxes on the bottom 50 percent of income earners. Lott's replacement, Sen. William Frist, is a well-respected man, but respect is no excuse for insane policies. Get ready. I know the New York Times is.
On the international front, here is one that may surprise you: Saddam Hussein, George Bush's personal whipping boy, won't actually use any weapons of mass destruction, even if he has them.
Why? Because Saddam doesn't want to prove us right. The only means he has of staying in power is to continually deny the allegations levied against him. That enables the European peaceniks to find a reason to oppose a U.S. war. Any biological or chemical strike, and Saddam loses the international ambivalence that has kept him in power for the last decade. So remember this – the threat from Saddam is much smaller then we think, because any use of his weapons validates George Bush and probably means Saddam's demise.
And, finally, for the sports prediction you have all been waiting for, Pete Rose will finally make the baseball Hall of Fame.
The powers that be in Cooperstown will finally bend to overwhelming public support and put Charlie Hustle in the Hall, where he belongs. Baseball's all-time hits leader will be included in the pantheon of the game's greats, ending a lifetime ban that began over a decade ago and has become an unreasonable blemish on the game.