The Annual WestraDamus Rite 2005 Part II

First, some background:

For the last ten or eleven years, posing as “WestraDamus,” your blogger has been predicting the past.

What?

Yes, predicting the past and largely getting it wrong.

The whole idea started with astrologers’ predictions for the year ahead. They appeared in papers like the “National Enquirer” at the time its reporters specialized in stories about two headed aliens born to celebrities and miracle weight loss pills.

Did anyone ever check on which of these came true? Yes, but the results never were published because they were always wrong. It didn’t matter.

Hence, came the idea of “Retrodicting” the past and getting it largely wrong. Saves time and effort. Chances are, you KNOW it’s wrong to begin with. No research needed.

In past years, these retrodictions appeared on the website westradamus.com. While the site lives on, it has become cumbersome to handle and therefore, this year’s material is made available here.

The Retrodictions:

The year 2005 will see many important developments in war, politics, science and social events. New personalities will emerge and lead America and the rest of the world in new directions.

Perhaps the most important of these is the establishment of democracy in Iraq. The administration in Washington will succeed in bringing true American style government to this war-torn former dictatorship. The feuding factions will unite behind the idea that it is better to work together than it is to bomb each other.

Upon the establishment of peace, General Motors, Ford and at least two other auto companies will build factories in the country and start building Middle-East branded versions of their US and Japanese counterparts. The Chevy Ali, The Ford Farsi and the Toyota Ayatollah will sell well. But all will not be harmony. The German built Shalom-Mobile will fail.

Because Iraq will become America’s number one Arabic-speaking ally in the middle east, the price of gasoline in the U.S. will fall to under 70 cents a gallon.

The President, having triumphed over the nay-sayers and “nervous Nellies” will resign to give Dick Cheney a chance to show his stuff.

Cheney will immediately propose legislation to move the Capitol to Wyoming, to be built by Haliburton, start a military action against Chechnya, and work toward statehood for China.

He will pardon Kenneth “Kenny Boy” Lay for his evil doings in the Enron scandal, but will reject a pardon request from WorldCom’s Bernie Ebbers.

Federal aid for education will be withdrawn from states whose science curricula do not include “intelligent design.”

Eight of the ten commandments will be uniformly inscribed on stone tablets and supplied to every federal courthouse. The two commandments NOT engraved will be the one about not stealing and the one about bearing false witness.

This will be seen as the administration’s willingness to compromise on issues that affect all Americans.

So much for the national and international retrodictions. Wednesday, we will address the personalities of the past year.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.™

©wjr 2005