Topic category:  Other/General

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had better hurry up. We’re down to the last few hours of 2006 and she hasn’t resigned yet.

How do I know Justice Ginsburg is hanging it up this year? I read it on CaliforniaPsychics.com, which modestly bills itself “the net’s Number 1 resource for psychic guidance.”

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden also need to get a move on. When CaliforniaPsychics made its political predictions for 2006 a year ago, included was the prophecy that Mr. Bush would be “laid up and in a health care facility of some sort.”

The news was even grimmer for Mr. Cheney; he would suffer a massive heart attack. Senator Obama was supposed to announce his intent to run for president. Bin Laden was destined to be captured.

There was more. One psychic said the war in Iraq would end in the middle of the year. Another foresaw American soldiers withdrawn from there beginning in September. A New York City terrorist attack was to be planned in April and May. An “intense campaign” to reinstate draft registration would be launched in 2006.

Not all of the forecasts made by the net’s Number 1 resource for psychic guidance were off the mark. One prediction was the 2006 elections would bring about a major shift in power. Did they ever.

The CaliforniaPsychics record is pretty typical. You can bet the ranch, though, that everything that didn’t come to pass will be overlooked while the few instances of accuracy will be touted as astonishing and irrefutable proof of psychic efficacy.

It’s the Jeanne Dixon effect. Many people still credit the late psychic with predicting John Kennedy’s assassination. Her multitude of egregious blunders, such as foretelling the start of World War III in 1958, is forgotten.

Even her Kennedy prediction is open to debate. In the late 1950s, she told Parade magazine the president elected in 1960 would die in office. This wasn’t so astounding. At the time of her interview, three of the previous nine presidents had died while occupying the White House.

It was after Kennedy’s murder that she maintained she had predicted an assassination but Parade wouldn’t print it. Maybe she had. Either way, that was her claim to fame and she made a darn good living.

If you shoot enough times in the dark, you’re bound to eventually hit something. With that in mind I’ve decided this week to exchange my usual headgear (a fetching beanie with propeller covered by tin foil) for a swami’s turban and fearlessly make the following predictions for 2007:

· Leaving their wives, Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell elope, keeping everyone but the 400 publicists they’ve hired for the occasion in the dark.

· On the third day of her grandiose installation as House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi falls off her portable throne and hits the floor of the Capitol Rotunda face first. The floor cracks.

· The floundering Air America radio network announces a change in its broadcasting mode. From now on, it will be available exclusively on CB radio. The change is for naught; it still has no audience.

· Jimmy Carter finds an enemy of the United States that he doesn’t like.

· Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, planning to form their own religious order, are disappointed to learn the name Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence has already been taken.

· Donald Rumsfeld wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

· Macy’s announces that 62 of its Midwestern stores will revert to the Marshall Field’s nameplate. Spontaneous boycotts erupt from customers who’ve grown accustomed to the Macy’s name on the stores for almost a full year.

· In an unprecedented move, Microsoft pledges to not release its newest operating system until all the bugs have been corrected. Tentatively, the release will be deemed Vista 2010.

· Lovebirds Bill and Hillary Clinton are seen together at something other than a political fundraiser.

· Caving in to public demand, Congress enacts legislation bringing all American troops home immediately and permanently. Never again will they be placed in harm’s way for any reason.

Remember, folks, you read it here first. And have a terrific 2007, no matter what happens.

Mike Bates

Biography - Mike Bates

Mike Bates wrote a weekly column of opinion - or nonsense, depending on your viewpoint - for over 20 years. Additionally, his articles have appeared in the Congressional Record, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Mensa Journal. He has been a guest on Milt Rosenberg's program on WGN Radio Chicago, the Bruce Elliott show on Baltimore's WBAL, the Jim Sumpter show on the USA Radio Network and the New Media Journal's Blog Radio. As a lad, Mike distributed Goldwater campaign literature and since then has steadily moved further to the Right. He is the author of "Right Angles and Other Obstinate Truths." In 2007, he won an Illinois Press Association award for Original Column