With 2015 upon us, we offer the 26th anniversary edition of the WestraDamus antidictions, those for the year 2014 presented each December or January for the year gone by and generally wrong. 'Damus started as a parody of the forward looking astrological year-enders appearing in the supermarket tabloids, almost always wrong but never acknowledged. The Non-Prophet has grown into an American institution, like the Tea Party, the Heritage Foundation, Ted Cruz, the Public Television begathon, global warming, the Kardashians, Reality TV and the war in Afghanistan. So, we continue...
Top of the Year:
President Romney will score a health care hit. Better than the Romneycare he brought to Massachusetts as governor, the presidential version is a single payer system similar to those of every other first world nation.
At first there will be some doubt about approval in Congress. But the President will offer his fellow Republicans the tax cuts they seek thus winning them to his side on health care.
Also surprising will be the smoothness, simplicity and efficiency of the sign up process.
On the warfront, the US will achieve success in several areas.
--Ukraine: we will help our good friends the Russians in their takeover of all territory except the city of Kiev.
--Iraq: At last, a democratic government, freely elected and supervised by the Carter Center. Former President Jimmy Carter, speaking from his cell will say he's being well treated by his “hosts” and expects to be home by June, 2023.
--Iran: The newly elected moderate president will agree to end his country's nuclear weapons program provided the US supplies long range ground-to-ground missiles for the pre-existing atomic warheads.
--Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu will say all those settlements were really just a joke, then push a button and cause the entire project to implode like an abandoned and bankrupt Las Vegas hotel casino.
--palestinians will continue to honor their faith by sacrificing themselves with Improvised Explosive Devices, but will apologize for collateral deaths because "the Jews won't sell us the technology to be more efficient and therefore less deadly when we set off a suicide bomb in a bus station or shopping mall."
--The stock market will completely eliminate human beings from the buying and selling processes, finally reaching a decades-long goal of freezing out individual investors.
--There will be a sudden and unexplained epidemic of tonsillitis that breaks out in St. Helena, a small island off the west coast of Africa. It will affect the entire population of 5,000 people, and all eight of the American medical workers. Republicans will demand a travel ban to the US to avoid spreading the dread disease here.
--And the website "Snopes.com" will finally expose climate change and global warming as urban legends and announce they've received a donation of $3.4 billion from "a couple of rich brothers from the lower Midwest."
So, quite a year coming into our rearview mirror.
Now, the month by month anti-dictions:
JANUARY:
It'll be a big month for the Russians. The Olympic Games in Sochi are but a month away and so far, the facilities look like a movie set with nothing behind them. President Putin says they will have at least ten flush toilets available by the time the flame reaches the end of its journey.
Cartographers are eager to route the flame runner through Ukraine. That would slow him down because the country is in the midst of a three way fight for its heart and assets. If the delay is long enough, Putin's promise can be kept. Meantime the fighting between Ukraine and Russia will continue as completely independent "rebels" side with Moscow, not Kiev.
At home... conservatives will continue their decades- long attempts to co-opt Martin Luther King's "Dream" speech by gathering on Washington's National Mall to stage a group recitation by 10,563 invited guests.
FEBRUARY:
CBS News will announce that since Walter Cronkite is still dead, it remains okay not to mispronounce the name of the month.
Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman will fake his death and hide in Michigan which has been hospitable to allegedly dead celebrities Tupac Shakur, Elvis Presley and Ronald Reagan.
The Scottish Parliament will legalize same sex marriage but will fail to mention that it remains illegal to look under the kilts.
Jay Leno, scheduled to leave the Tonight Show this month, will surround NBC's Los Angeles area studios with his car collection and refuse to leave the building.
January's plans to delay the arrival of the Olympic torch by routing its journey through Ukraine will fail and the games will begin on schedule despite the delayed installation of the tenth toilet.
MARCH:
Wedding bells for Fyffes and Chiquita creating a banana cartel the likes of which have not been seen since United Fruit owned two thirds of Latin America. No one outside of Ireland ever heard of Fyffe's or knows how to say it.
President Romney will announce sanctions against Russia for its bad behavior in Crimea. Romney says he will double the tax on beets, thus depriving Moscow of borscht, its second- most important plant product after the grain used in making Vodka.
Somali pirates will seize a beet-carrier, believing it can extort ransom from three countries: the exporter (USA), the importer (Russia) and the country under whose flag the ship operates (Panama.)
Turkey un-bans Twitter and can't figure out why it can't post its 142 character announcement.
Kim Kardashian will be reported resting comfortably at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angele, recovering from a broken finger nail. Doctors say she'll be released sometime in early April.
APRIL:
Scientists will discover a lake on a moon of Saturn, but later realize it was only raindrops on the lens of their telescope.
Secretary of Health and Human Services and former US Senator John Barrasso, MD (R-WY) will say he has no plans to step down following the overwhelming success of the healthcare.gov website.
With election fraud rampant across America, the US Supreme Court will approve voter ID laws, but restrict their issue to Democrats. Twenty million Democrats, mostly of minority heritage switch registration to Republican.
MAY:
Monica Lewinsky's new book on her dalliance with Bill Clinton will be remaindered before its debut.
Oscar Pistorious will throw himself on the mercy of the court in South Africa where he is charged with pumping his girlfriend full of lead. He'll say "You have to let me go. I have no feet to run away with, and no ankle on which to place a locator bracelet.”
Climatologists will declare this is the hottest May on record. In response, climate change deniers will propose eliminating the month and extending April and June by two weeks each.
JUNE:
In another stunning decision, the US Supreme Court will rule cops need a warranty and receipt to search a cell phone. So if you're stopped on the street for, say, selling loose cigarettes or being black, the police cannot search your phone unless you are carrying the proof of purchase.
Somewhere, a tour bus carrying senior citizens or college kids will overturn or receive the sheet metal accordion treatment by trying to fit under a low hanging underpass.
Or maybe that'll be a ferry operating at 230% of capacity sinking in a mud puddle in a country you never heard of and can't pronounce.
Mexico will announce reduced penalties for kidnapping, saying "we never catch any of these guys anyway, so why bother with harsh sentences?"
JULY:
Historians will discover that due to a quirk in the calendars of the day, the United States was actually born on July 7th. The Texas board of education will reject high school textbooks that are revised to show this error.
In a related development, climatologists will declare July, 2014 as the hottest month since they started collecting statistics in 1887. Or maybe the coolest. Or the wettest?
The CIA will admit it hacked the email accounts of United States Senators. But a spokesman for the agency will say "we weren't snooping. We just wanted to find a home phone number for Kirsten Gillibrand without paying Intellicheck."
AUGUST:
The United States this month will begin attacking Iceland. Unsurprisingly, Icelanders will find this offensive. Its president will cable American authorities suggesting the B-52s took a wrong turn and might mean to attack ISIS.
Comedian Robin Williams will sign a new multi-year contract with Sony Pictures. Concerns for his health and mental well being will be shown to be unfounded. Fans will express relief.
An outbreak of the deadly West African Toe Fungus will be reported and US hospitals and foot clinics, unprepared for the influx of patients will rush to put on extra staff. Meantime, Republicans in Congress will agitate for a ban on travel from the fungus-torn countries.
Megamart will start decorating for its Christmas sale.
SEPTEMBER:
A man in a chicken costume will breach the White House fence and run toward the building. Secret Service agents will open fire and kill the intruder, thus passing a pop quiz. The Secret Service training bureau will withhold the name of the chicken for reasons of national security.
Television personality Betty White, 92, will lodge a formal complaint with the hackers who posted nude celebrity pictures on the internet because hers were excluded. Asked for reaction, Nancy Reagan, 93, said "those young girls like Betty White and Debbie Reynolds are just feeling their oats.
Tennis star Victoria Azarenka of Belarus will miss the rest of the season because of an undisclosed injury. Doctors in Minsk will later disclose Azarenka has contracted the much-feared West African Toenail Fungus. Republicans in the US will renew their call for a travel ban.
OCTOBER:
How about those Mets! Third consecutive world series win for the Forceful Fluishingistas. And here you thought they were nothing but an expansion team struggling to make up for the loss of the Dodgers and Giants.
The Japanese industrial giant Takata will sign a consent agreement to stop using recycled ShopRite grocery bags and bubble gum in its airbags. Takata will state "We did nothing wrong and we'll never do it again."
Megamart will start decorating for its January White Sale.
The director of the US Secret Service will be admitted into the witness protection program and issued her own chicken costume.
NOVEMBER:
Megamart will start decorating for its Presidents Day sale.
Democrats will retain control of the Senate and regain control of the House in a shocking repudiation of conventional wisdom.
China and the US will reach a landmark decision on climate change. Both will agree there will be little land left to mark if global warming trends continue. At the same time, both countries will agree to trade coal mining technology.
New York's One World Trade Center will reopen, reclaiming its spot at #2 on the list of the world's ugliest man-made structures and presenting a new target to the next hijacker of an aircraft.
DECEMBER:
Attorney General Holder will announce new plans to hide racial profiling, believing police, the Border Patrol and the TSA have been too open about picking on Middle East freedom fighters, religious and minorities, Mexicans and other innocents.
A New York Grand Jury will indict a police officer for the choke-hold death of a seller of illegal individual cigarettes on a street corner, leaving Al Cardinal Sharpton with nothing to rabble-rouse about for the rest of the year.
Benyamin Netanyahu will declare himself the messiah.
And Yahoo! will announce it's buying Russia for two billion rubles ($32 million USD,) spinning off its search engine, its news division, and Crimea in hopes recouping about half its investment.
Happy 2015, everyone. See you next year.
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© WJR 2015
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