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It's the time of the year to practice necromancy, and since nobody here drinks tea, there are no tea leaves for prognostication. Neither is there a Tarot deck, and the bigoted local zoning laws discourage the ancient Roman practice of haruspicy -- divining the future by examining the entrails of recently slaughtered beasts. Nor is there a crystal ball in sight, although a liquid crystal display is before me and it is connected to a rectilinear metallic chamber which holds a harmonic crystal with a resonance of 1.2 billion vibrations each second.
Instead of the traditional Ouija board, a modern Qwerty board is at hand. I can sense the mysterious geomantic powers of the Rio Grande Rift revealing what will happen in 2005:
· Tired of being overwhelmed by offers for
genuine reproductions
of Rolex watches, great deals
on and \/i@6r& and other prescription medications, and
extremely low interest rates to refinance their homes
within 48 hours, millions of Americans just quit checking
their email, and millions more delete it without checking
to see if any of it is legitimate.
For written communication, they turn to traditional postal mail. What it lacks in speed, it more than compensates for in effectiveness -- the recipients actually read it and often respond. By mid-summer, even Fox News has proclaimed that this is a pretty good deal for only 37 cents.
The resulting increase in postal volume forces American companies to hire more workers to handle correspondence, although there is soon talk of leasing a fleet of chartered aircraft to haul the mail overnight to and from India.
· In keeping with the philosophy of No Child
Left Behind,
the Bush administration announces a key
new initiative: Child-proofing America.
The goal,
according to President Bush, is an America where every
child can feel safe in every sense -- physically,
psychologically and morally.
To that end, the Federal Communications Commission
announces that it will accept complaints about any
programming that might expose children under the age of 12
to anything they might not have seen before, ranging from
car chases to seduction. Although the First Amendment
prohibits direct action against the printed media, federal
rules of civil court procedure are amended to allow suits
based on creation of a family-unfriendly home
environment occasioned by the publication of lurid
undergarment advertising in newspapers delivered to the
home.
Employers are told to adopt zero-tolerance workplace
rules concerning pocket knives, butane lighters, sharp
implements and other devices already deemed unsuitable for
children or airline passengers, and people caught by police
with these controlled objects can expect some hard
questions. The only fair way to protect our
children,
a high-placed administration source says,
is for everyone to follow the same rules.
President Bush added that When it comes down to a
choice between infants and adults, there's infantry, which
we support, and adultery, which we're against.
· The Colorado General Assembly will come up with a solution to the state's fiscal crisis this year, and it will involve using money for public services that would otherwise have been refunded under TABOR.
Gov. Bill Owens will arrange to be out of the state when it's time to sign the legislation, leaving that to Lt. Gov. Jane Norton. As an unannounced candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Owens can't afford to be associated with anything that resembles a tax increase -- witness his campaigning against Fast Tracks even though it was so popular with the public that it passed 58-42.
As one of the governor's aides put it, speaking on
condition of anonymity, Even if you could cure cancer
and have peace on earth with a tax increase that cost a
dime for every Coloradan, Grover Norquist and his Club for
Growth would still jump all over him for supporting it, and
that would be the end of his political career.
· Although Owens has positioned himself well as
America's Best Governor,
he will be competing for
political attention against Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. It won't
be easy, since millions of Americans love dynasties, and
there's also that special Bush Health Care Plan under which
no one dies.
· The drought will abate, but there will still be large forest fires in Colorado this summer. Many Coloradans will blame environmentalists for opposing logging operations that might have removed the trees before they could be burned. Environmentalists will blame loggers for removing the biggest trees and leaving small flammable growths.
But quickly these arguments will cease and everyone will agree to blame a couple of kids sneaking a cigarette behind the schoolhouse.
In Colorado, big forest fires with major residential damage never result from people building ignitable houses inside tinder-dry drought-ravaged overgrown forests. It's always somebody's fault, and that tradition won't change.
· It will be revealed in May that there's a reason it's been so hard to find the new World Almanac. There used to be piles of them even at Safeway and Wal-Mart. However, the Department of Homeland Security required the publisher and retailers to set up a system to identify and track purchasers, since people who care about facts could be an impediment to the War on Terrorism.
· The Iraqi elections, scheduled for Jan. 30, will be postponed until March so that it can be conducted in a fair and modern way. This provides enough time to ship Diebold voting machines from Ohio to Iraq, and this will provide two benefits.
One is that the machines won't be easily available for
inspection in this country, and the other is that the
American administration will be assured of a congenial
outcome. After all, Walden O'Dell, the company's CEO, wrote
in 2003 that he was committed to helping Ohio deliver
its electoral votes to the president next year.
His
talents and products are desperately needed to insure that
Iraq has a fair election.
· Americans will rebel against being divided into Red and Blue by the punditocracy. As the year progresses, we will read about many new organizations, like Vegetarians Who Love NASCAR, Deer Hunters Concerned About Global Warming, Wal-Mart Shoppers for Choice, ACLU Members Who Support the Second Amendment Too, Sons of the Confederacy for a Living Wage, Sierra Clubbers Opposed to the Corporate Income Tax, etc.
Even so, the commentators will stick to Red and Blue, because it's so much simpler than dealing with reality.
And that's the way it will be in 2005.
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