January 2020 – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Recession? Nah, It’ll Be Fine.

“My God! If they could market that in pill form, Switzerland would be plunged into a recession.” – Absolutely Fabulous

So you should save your money because a recession is coming. A recession that’s caused by too many people saving money . . . ?

It was the middle of December.

I looked across the desk at my boss. He had called me in to his office, asked me to close the door, and looked very uncomfortable. Not “Abraham Lincoln at a play” uncomfortable, but more “Pope in the woods without toilet paper” uncomfortable. It was unusual to see him look uncomfortable, because this boss was an old hand, very calm. I had worked for him for about 18 months at that point, and we had a great relationship, so he wasn’t going to fire me right before Christmas. Unless he had figured out who what put the Gummy Bears™ in the paper shredder.

“Umm, John, the company is giving you a bonus.”

I perked up. I liked the sound of a bonus, but didn’t like the “Umm” so much. “Umm”, in my experience, is a verbal placeholder that means, “This is going to sound good, but really isn’t.”

“Great!” I actually was enthusiastic, even given the “Umm”-modifier. Bonus is a great word.

“Well, the board of directors voted on the bonus structure and the bonus pool back in October, about sixty days ago. And they chose a specific number of shares for each employee. And when they voted, the shares were worth seven times what they were today. I just want you to know I value you, and the company values you.”

What was left were the unspoken words . . . “I hope you’re not insulted.”

No swimming pool this year . . . .

I wasn’t. I could multiply my bonus by seven and see that someone, somewhere, liked me when the corporate board voted. Sometimes it really is the thought that counts. Except when I get deodorant for Christmas – that seems more like thought that indicates a passive-aggressive criticism about my hygiene. And comments like this when The Boy introduces me don’t help: “This is my dad, he doesn’t drink quite as much as his poor hygiene might indicate.”

When I finally cashed in that stock five years later, it was worth 15 times what it had been on the day my boss looked so upset. By no means was it a life-changing amount, but I’m still pretty happy. What changed to make the bonus worth so much more?

The economy. That puny stock bonus was given to me in the middle of the Great Recession. Five years after that, the company was worth a LOT more. I sold my shares (I kept the certificates in my underwear drawer), paid my income taxes on the stock, and was certainly not insulted.

We sit at the start of 2020. By 2030, I can assure you we will have gone through at least one recession, and probably more. Right now, the United States is in the single longest economic expansion in its history, passing the 1991-2001 economy in duration by six months.

I hear the economy is so rough that Bill and Hillary Clinton shared a room on their last trip.

Doubling an all-time record? It certainly won’t happen. It cannot. No matter how the Federal Reserve™ manipulates the economy, it can’t go that far unless they give everyone roofies and tell them that they have twice as much money in the bank as they actually do. Besides, we shouldn’t go that long without a recession.

Why?

Let’s look at the economy as if it were a natural, physical system. Generally, physical systems are not continuous; they operate in of cycles. Trees grow leaves in spring, through the summer they gather nutrients, in the autumn the leaves fall, and in winter the tree is dormant.

Companies follow a cycle, too. A company is founded. It starts in business, sometimes growing, and in the end, it’s finally bankrupt or sold off and then it’s dead. For example, the top 10 companies in the United States in 1917 were:

US Steel
AT&T
Standard Oil of New Jersey
Bethlehem Steel
Armour & Co.
Swift & Co.
International Harvester
DuPont
Midvale Steel
S. Rubber

What are the top ten companies today?

Apple
Alphabet (Google)
Microsoft
Amazon
Facebook
Berkshire Hathaway
Johnson & Johnson
Exxon-Mobil
JPMorgan Chase
Wells Fargo

How many of them are still in the top ten?

One, kinda. Exxon used to be Standard Oil of New Jersey, so at least we know the Rockefellers are doing okay. That keeps me up at night, worrying that the Rockefellers might have to drive their own cars.

How many of the top 10 companies today will be in the top 10 in 50 years? How many in 100?

If it’s raining, that might be a drizzly bear.

I’ve shared this opinion before: recessions are good for the economy. Bankrupt businesses are good for the economy. Are they painful in the short term? Certainly. But they provide a great service – they clear out the companies that don’t add value to the customers. Eaton Rapids Joe (LINK) had a great post a while back that describes the impact on physical systems when they’re overly managed and constant. He used the example of salmon streams that had been dammed, that no longer experienced spring flooding from snow melt.

From the post:

At one time it was commonly believed that dams would benefit salmon spawning. It was believed that regulating the flow so that it was constant would be most beneficial.

The unintended consequence was that the constant stream cut a deep and narrow channel, just like a band saw.

The narrow channels intercepted very little sunlight…the driver of nearly all life on the planet. The channel was devoid of pools and riffles, gravel beds of various coarseness, rocks to break the current and beds of seaweed. They were a desert for salmon fry.

Before dams were installed across every stream, spring flooding would fill old channels with rock and gravel and would cut new meanders and channels. The flooding would flush the silt out of gravel beds. Stream beds were braids of old, crisscrossing channels. Not only did they look like strips of bacon from the air but they intercepted huge amounts of sunlight and the gravel beds provided outstanding habitat for the pantheon of invertebrates that were the base of the food chain.

The Fed™ is trying to manage our economy like that salmon stream, making a nice, constant flow.

A decade is a long time without a recession. Based on the past experiences of the 2001 and 2008 recessions it’s easy to come to the conclusion that the longer you wait to address a problem economy, the bigger impact it will have on people’s lives. Heck, the longer you wait to address any problem, the worse it becomes.

Want a housing bubble? This is how you get a housing bubble.

If the Housing Bubble had popped in 2004, the associated recession would have been much smaller than the nearly economy-ending Great Recession of 2008. If the 2001 recession would have happened in 1998, it would have certainly pulled some of the inflation away from the Dotcom Bubble and perhaps avoided making the Spice Girls® celebrities entirely, and no one would know who Scary Spice, Posh Spice, Sporty Spice and whatsherface were. I guess we’re safe now that they’re all Old Spice™.

We sit in the year 2020 with severe economic unrest a certainty in the next decade. What year? I’m not sure. And I’m also not sure I’d trust anyone who says they know the exact timing. But it is coming. 2020? 2021?

Don’t know.

This coming recession has had a decade to build up. That decade has seen significant bubbles building in, well, everything. One of the biggest bubbles is in corporate profits. Let’s pick . . . insulin. The price of insulin has doubled in five years. Does it cost more to make insulin today? Almost certainly not – the techniques to make this insulin have been known and perfected for decades – it probably costs less to make it. Is it better insulin, somehow new and improved like the Super Bowl® without the Patriots™? Nope.

Well, then, why does it cost more? So Eli Lilly and Company® can increase corporate profits.

I like profits. I think that profits are good for society for a number of reasons. They allocate funds to effective businesses during competition. If the McDonald’s® in your town sucks? Go to the local Burger King©. Effective management and good products are rewarded. Bad management is punished, all without anyone having to lift a finger. That’s the beauty of capitalism – everyone votes on which businesses get to stay in business, every day.

But Eli Lilly and Company™? They are raising the price of Humalog® insulin because they can. How do we know this? They’ve recently introduced a new insulin with the same exact formulation as Humalog™, but with a new name, Lispro™. But the price of this new rebranded insulin? Half. For the same exact stuff.

Eli Lilly and Company© didn’t do this in the past, but they do it now because investors demand not only profit, but profit growth. How long is this sustainable? Not forever. But it’s a great example of how in 2020, instead of just a housing bubble, we have a bubble in corporate profits. We have a bubble in money (which is the only way to get to negative interest rates).

Will Eli Lilly and Company™ start charging double the current price to bring the total to $1000 a bottle for Humalog®?

No. They can’t. There is a cap not on what diabetics will pay, but on what they can pay. There is a maximum profit that can be obtained. Period. You can’t rent a house for $20,000 a month if the average wage is $15 an hour in your neighborhood, just like you can’t fight crime with a macaroni duck.

Obscure, I know. But it felt right.

Without the cleaning that a periodic recession brings, junk builds up in the economy. The average recession historically happens every three years or so. When the recession of the Tumultuous Twenties® hits?

It will hit hard.

The outcomes are unpredictable. The Federal Reserve© interest rate is ~1.5%. Back in the 1990’s, it averaged 5.75%, so the Fed™ had the ability to lower rates to stimulate the economy. That mechanism is gone. What’s left, printing money? Tax collections are down due to tax rate cuts. This is a good thing. But government spending is up, too. Add them together, and we’re looking at deficits of a trillion dollars a year or more . . . forever. We’ve already slipped into Modern Monetary Theory (The Worst Economic Idea Since Socialism, Explained Using Bikini Girl Graphs).

That means there’s a limit on how much more money we can print.

The trigger for this future recession will be blamed on some other event – the 2001 recession was blamed on 9/11, even though the stock market started to fall well before September. Our minds like explanations, so we sometimes create them even when they don’t exist. Maybe it’s the Great Internet Blackout of 2020 that caused it.

Mark my words: This economy will be cleaned up by a recession, probably a big one that we will find difficulty in spending our way out of.

Don’t get caught in the flood.

And if someone offers you free money? Smile and take it.

Civil War Weather Report #7: All Eyes on Virginia

“Who do you favor in the Virginia Slims tournament?” – Top Secret

Don’t put in extra hours at the clock factory – they hate that.

People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.

I didn’t expect to move the clock up this month, but yet, here we are, and it’s all due to Virginia. More on that below.

In this issue: Front Matter – Violence and Censorship Update – Flashpoint Virginia –Updated Civil War II Index – Virginia and Rallies and Aesop – Links

Welcome to Issue Eight of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War II, on the first or second Monday of every month. Issue One is here (LINK), Issue Two is here (LINK), Issue Three is here (LINK), Issue Four is here (LINK), Issue Five is here (LINK), Issue Six is here (LINK), and Issue Seven is here (LINK).

Violence and Censorship Update

Organized violence seems to be lower this month, as you’d expect in winter. Or perhaps AntiFa® is just on a snowboarding trip to Colorado so they can get some dank weed? Societal violence tends to drop as it gets colder, because people look stupid rioting in knit hats and parkas. Well, people look stupid rioting in any weather, except for the South Koreans who have rioting down to a spectator sport. South Koreans riot about, well, anything. It’s like living in San Francisco, but with less poop.

The Korean beef riots? Udder madness.

YouTube® announced a change in the terms and conditions for video creators that would go into effect December 10, 2019. The major change (of concern) was that YouTube© announced that they would delete accounts that, in YouTube’s™ sole opinion, weren’t commercially valuable. There were several creators that I watch on a semi-regular basis that were quite upset – this was proof that YouTube™ was coming after them. Several refuse to put controversial videos on YouTube® at all now – they save those videos for other sites, like Bitchute©.

As far as I can tell, most of these channels are still up and running. Several that had been demonetized for political content even had monetization restored. Like the end of the world in 2012, the dread YouTube® apocalypse is currently overdue.

Switching to Twitter©: their most notorious purge in the last period was Danielle Stella, a candidate for congress running against that paragon of virtue, Ilhan Omar. Stella’s offense? She tweeted:

“If it is proven @IlhanMN [Ilhan Omar] passed sensitive info to Iran, she should be tried for #treason and hanged” – I agree with Ms. Stella, that hanging people who collaborate against the United States with foreign governments is a good thing.

But I will never trust her because of sage advice that my brother gave to me one afternoon while driving: “Never trust a person who has two first names. Like Scott George. Or George Scott.” He was proven right when George C. Scott stopped by our house and ate all of our mayonnaise. Man, that man loved his mayo.

I guess the decided they should see other siblings.

Twitter® has also admitted a practice they had long denied, but was obvious: they shadow ban people – you can type away all you want, but no one is really going to see your Tweet™. How better to control a populace than to let them think that “bad” opinions are ignored?

Flashpoint Virginia

Since Virginia has been changed from state controlled by the Right to a state where Leftists hold all major offices and control the legislature, the Left has had a great desire to spike the ball and exert complete control. That control is focused on Leftist goals. The first Leftist goal mentioned?

Elimination of many Second Amendment rights, including banning ownership, with no grandfather provision, of “assault” weapons.

It also goes much further, and bans parts of rifles the same way an entire rifle would be banned. Outside of cloning Stalin, elimination of private gun ownership is a primary goal of the Left. It is also a trigger on the Right, and this legislation couldn’t be more tailored to antagonize the Right if Rosie O’Donnell read it as an alarm clock message.

As political battles go, this gun ban is an uphill one, even for the Left.

What is unusual here is the reaction from localities. More than 98 bodies (counties, cities, towns) as of this writing have declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries” – and have vowed to not cooperate.

The Attorney General (a Leftist) has issued an opinion that the counties can’t just ignore state law, they have to follow it. Therefore? The Governor (a Leftist) has requested $100 million extra for incarceration and $4 million for an 18 person gun ban team.

It’s not enough.

Sometimes you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. Like me in my first marriage.

The Left owns all of the levers of government. So what do the people that want to keep their rights do?

Form an opposing governmental structure. Those are the Second Amendment sanctuaries. Like it or not, these declarations are the first step towards a unified governing structure that opposes the Leftist government in Virginia. For a civil war to occur, you have to have civil structures. I had expected them to form along the lines of opposing state governments.

But the societal divisions in 2019 exist more along the rural/urban divide than the old northern/southern divide. In my home state, it’s very (from a combined vote total) far Right, so my entire state would likely pitch in. Given this new circumstance in Civil War 2.0, renegade counties make sense in a state like Virginia. And despite anything the Attorney General might say, should a significant (20%?) percentage of Virginia’s population – an armed 20% of the population – decide a law isn’t valid?

The law won’t be valid.

Laws exist in the United States because we generally agree with them as a group. Does everyone agree to all laws that are on the books? Certainly not. But when there is determined opposition to a law or group of laws (marijuana legalization, illegal alien sanctuaries, Second Amendment sanctuaries) an attempt to enforce the law will nearly instantly make the government look weak, ineffectual, and illegitimate. And when that determined group takes over a legitimate arm of government?

We’re one step closer to war, and this is why I moved the clock. The Left is moving quickly, and in Virginia, I think it’s still a very dangerous game of chicken.

I think they’ll end up blinking, and swerving off at the last minute.

Updated Civil War II Index

More graphs, with full bikini treatment.

Violence:

Up is more violent. Violence dropped a bit, and I imagine it will remain low for the winter, though it edged up a bit in December. April and May will likely see increased incidents, assuming we end up okay in Virginia. And assuming we don’t run out of suntan lotion.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable. It skyrocketed this month. Tension was high in the first place, but impeachment increased it significantly. Don’t expect it to go down soon.

Economic:

Down indicates worse economic conditions. The economic indicators all were positive, and strongly so, in November. It was a one month recovery.

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, since (in theory) ICE is catching fewer aliens because there are fewer people trying to get in. The numbers are down this month, and if you put them in context, winter is normally a lower time for illegal immigration, which will pick up in the spring.

Virginia and Rallies and Aesop

There is a large pro-Second Amendment rally planned in January 20, 2020 in Richmond. Since I started paying attention to such things, I’ve noticed something – that people on the Right don’t live in Washington, D.C. Why we would go to protest there escaped me. Statistics back this up – in 2016, nearly 95% of voters voted for Leftist candidates.

For a group of citizens that support the Right to try to protest in D.C. is silly. Protestors in D.C. are in hostile territory. From observation, cities attract Leftists. The larger the city, generally the farther Left it is. Richmond, Virginia is no different. It voted nearly 80% for Leftists in 2016. Richmond is hostile territory for the Right.

But yet the rally is planned. Aesop over at The Raconteur Report has covered why this rally is a bad idea, in detail here (LINK) and here (LINK). Read the comments, and also the links to previous posts that he suggests.

Read it all before you attend – or before you organize.

Links

Please leave links either in the comments below, or feel free to send me an email if you’re shy. If you email me, I won’t say that the link is from you unless I get permission.

From McChuck.

From Glenda.

From Bob.

From Vote Harder, over at The Burning Platform:

From Ricky:

A Texas Church, Aesop, and the Future of Freedom

â€œI’m the plumber. Â I’m just hanging around in case something goes wrong with her pipes.Â (to audience) That’s the first time I’ve used that joke in twenty years.â€ â€“ Horsefeathers

â€œWhy a four-year-old child could understand this report.Â Run out and find me a four-year-old child. Â I can’t make head or tail out of it.â€

In a Texas church this weekend, the worst nightmare of the Left happened.Â The only thing that could have been worse for the Left would have been a video of Bernie Sanders spending his own money.Â A good guy with a gun (Jack Wilson) stopped a bad guy with a gun.Â Part of what made it bad for the Left:Â clear video evidence showed a good guy taking down a bad guy with a single shot.Â To make it even worse for the Left: Â the bad guy was a killer, shooting a pair of grandfatherly looking men in a room filled with grandma and grandpa types.

It was quick.Â From the time the bad guy pulled his gun to the time the bad guy ceasing to . . . be was five seconds.Â Five short seconds.Â This was, perhaps, a final blow for the Left.Â The idea that the police, who arrived very quickly (four minutes or less) should be the only ones with guns evaporated, especially since two church members were dead within three seconds.Â A very well-trained citizen saved lives â€“ how many weâ€™ll thankfully not know, since he acted.

Not a cop.Â A citizen.

Every Leftist commenter on the web that was trying to justify gun control in the wake of this tragedy couldnâ€™t do so without defending the shooter as being somehow justified in wanting to rob the church.Â The biggest problem in the eyes of the Left, perhaps, is that the churchgoers werenâ€™t sufficiently Christian enough to quietly line up to be shot.Â Texas is probably not the state for that.

What made the difference is that the good guy was able to ignore disbelief at the situation occurring right in front of him, and was able to react.Â How could Jack Wilson do this?Â He didnâ€™t know exactly what threat he was going to face.Â He didnâ€™t even know if there ever was even going to be a threat.Â But yet, he trained.Â Dare I say it?Â He was prepped.

Ok, Zoomer.Â (For the record, Iâ€™m neither.Â I just like stirring things up.)

Jack Wilson scanned the churchgoers.Â He was looking for data points.Â He saw them and acted.

This week, Aesop over at The Raconteur Report posted his 2019 Quincy Adams Wagstaff Lecture.Â Itâ€™s here (LINK).Â RTWT.Â As usual, Aesop writes excellent material â€“ not only to ponder upon, but to act upon.Â There are many wonderful points in it, and here is the opening:

Wherever you’re reading this, you’ve had unmistakable evidence that things aren’t going to go all rosy. Â Perhaps ever again. Â Perhaps just for a long dark winter of the soul, and/or of the entire civilization. There has been more than one Dark Age period in human history, and they will happen again. Â You may very well get to see this firsthand, and experience life amidst it. Â Howsoever long or briefly.

You’ve had a respite of some 37 months to get your metaphysical crap together in one bag, and use the time prudently.

If you’ve squandered that lead time, woe unto you.

This post made me think, which is dangerous.Â At least thatâ€™s what my therapist says.Â My therapist who says Iâ€™m â€œmentally creativeâ€ and â€œreality impaired.â€Â Thankfully, sheâ€™s imaginary, which really lowers her billing rate.Â But what that post made me think most about was:

Mindset.

This is what would happen if my imaginary therapist talked to The Mrs. Â Itâ€™s funnier if you read the whole thing in a pirate voice, really.

Aesop mentions mental readiness, and thatâ€™s key.Â The last 37 months have been, to put it mildly, an indication that we are headed towards a very uncertain future as the culture around us continues to polarize, as the monetary debt we face (all over the world) continues to mount, as soccer is still taken seriously as an international sport rather than a game for attention challenged three-year-olds, and as the international stability that was so hard won with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War dissolves.

Iâ€™m not trying to sell you on any one future, on any one fate, unless thereâ€™s money in it.Â But I am trying to emphasize the start of your salvation:Â your mindset.Â If you believe that the world will continue in an unbroken, linear stream, I can assure you that youâ€™re wrong.Â Weâ€™ve had the precursor warnings of 9/11 and the Great Recession.Â If I am correct, this decade will bring tumult of a similar, if not greater magnitude.

Evacuate the women and children first!Â Then we can solve this in silence.

You should believe this, too.Â Not on a surface level.Â This is a mindset.Â Your daily decisions should take these future unknown and unknowable calamities into account.Â Why?

Because if Iâ€™m right, and youâ€™re prepared a week, a month, or five years before you need to be, you win.Â Also?Â Society wins, because the more people that are prepared, the better we come through the next crisis/shock.Â If we were all prepared, a hurricane could hit the shore and the stores would still be full.Â When we prepare, we manage to make sure there will be less stress on the system during an emergency.

The other way to help is with skills, and the longer the crisis, the more important those skills will be.Â And, no, your experience in saving the PrincessÂ® in Super Mario Brothersâ„¢ doesnâ€™t count.Â At least my therapist says it wonâ€™t.Â Real skills provide for a basic human need, like food.Â During the Great Depression, people gardened and farms werenâ€™t big factory affairs â€“ they were much smaller Mom and Pop style farms.Â Even though there was significant malnutrition, starvation deaths in the United States were minimal.

He said his New Yearâ€™s resolution was 1920×1080.

More evidence?

One of the biggest enemies of seeing reality is seeing the world you think should be, not the world as it really is.Â People look at AntifaÂ® rioting and think, â€œThey should be arrested.â€Â They arenâ€™t.Â What does that data point tell you?

The government of Virginia is threatening to take semi-automatic guns, dedicate a team to confiscating guns and the government should allow honest, law abiding citizens to exercise the right to self-protection.Â But the government wants to take it away and make honest people felons.Â What does that data point tell you?

Government debt today is at 106% of GDP.Â During the worst of the Great Depression, debt was less than 50% of the GDP.Â During the height of the Vietnam War?Â Debt was less than 40%.Â What does that data point tell you?

I canâ€™t promise the cause of the next crisis.Â But I can promise that itâ€™s coming.Â Cultivate the mindset.Â Itâ€™s the first step.

The key is to avoid despair even though you see the world as it really is.

â€œI, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. Â I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. Â I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.â€ â€“ Marcus Aurelius Groucho Marx

I have been accused of being too cheerful from time to time throughout my life.Â And I plead guilty â€“ with a smile on my face.Â Why?

First â€“ Iâ€™m naturally an optimist.Â I want to achieve the best, but I also know that thereâ€™s no fixed way the world should be.Â There is just the way that the world really is today.Â If I donâ€™t let myself get upset at the difference between an ideal and reality, I sleep a lot better.Â Does that mean Iâ€™m satisfied? Â No.Â I work with every fiber to change some things for the better, but I donâ€™t let it wreck my life like a pink-hatted blue-haired creature of fluid gender when confronted with a person who had to ask what their gender pronouns are.

The first two hours are rough.Â Caffeine is my best morning friend.

Second â€“ Life has been awesome for me.Â I can think of a LOT of times that I thought it was ruined.Â But each of those times resulted in a situation that was pretty good for me.Â Am I worth $30 million dollars?Â No.Â But thatâ€™s probably for the better.Â If I had that kind of scratch Iâ€™d probably make Elon Musk look like the model of public restraint.

Third â€“ Iâ€™ll admit, there was a time (about a year ago) where I got a little gloomy myself. But as I looked around me, I looked at what we have done.Â I realized that freedom has won here in the United States for hundreds of years against all odds.

There were 2.5 million people living in the 13 colonies in 1776.Â Thatâ€™s less than the population of Utah. Â In that 2.5 million we had a Washington, a Franklin, a Jefferson.Â Sure, Franklin in 1789 might have drank more than the state of Utah in 1989 all by himself, but there are men that are the equal to our founders, and they exist in every state.Â You know they exist, too.Â The tricorn hats and powdered wigs are a dead giveaway.

Always remember that there is a line.Â If you look at them standing along the church pews, scanning the congregation to keep them safe, they look nice.

Heck, they are nice.Â Until they cross the line.

Then they’re not nice.Â Then they become good men.

So, to gently change Groucho:Â The past we wish to cling to is dead. Â The present that we have is generally not so bad.Â And we have a future, even if we can only see it dimly now, even if its golden age is years or decades away.

Let us go and make it.

I predict: these are the funniest predictions for 2020 you will read in 2020.

“Predictions are hard. Especially about the future.” – Yogi Berra

Okay, some people do pretty good predictions.

Once upon a time I tried to do real predictions. The big downside of real predictions is being wrong sometimes. I’d much rather be wrong all of the time, like last year (Silly Predictions for 2019. Bonus? Golden Bikini Force.), so here are my stunningly incorrect predictions for 2020:

January

The Senate takes over the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump. Because of poor ticket sales, the trial is cancelled, but people who had reserved tickets were given a 20% off voucher for the Nirvana® reunion tour. I’d love to bum a ride with you guys – I’d call shotgun, but Kurt beat me to it.
Joe Biden suspends his presidential campaign for Black History Month© so small black children across the nation can have the opportunity to pet his wet leg hair. When informed that Black History Month is in February, Biden suggests to the reporter that they bare knuckle box, because he’s “tired of your stupid malarkey, 23 skidoo, Tippecanoe and Tyler too! Cockroaches!” Biden calms down later after getting some tapioca pudding and watching Price is Right®.
Hillary Clinton asks the question, “Do you want to play a game?”

Chelsea calls Chardonnay “Mommy’s Monica Juice.”

February

Ruth Bader Ginsburg sees her shadow on Supreme Court day, assuring us of six more weeks of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Tom Brady’s body reconfigures itself into a new form on national television during Super Bowl® LIV. His new body appears like a low slung muscular tank, and Brady “throws” passes by expelling the football explosively downfield from a brand new fleshy orifice designed by Bill Belichick, based on the anatomy of a platypus. Sadly, this doesn’t help the Patriots© at all, since they were eliminated earlier in the playoffs and are not even playing in the Super Bowl™.
The New Hampshire Democratic primary is won by Kim Jong Un. Unfortunately, it was actually Hillary Clinton being mistaken for Kim Jong Un after her next round of plastic surgery. Rumor is she was secretly pleased to be called Dear Leader instead of the usual nautical term, “Seaward.”
Brexit happens on schedule, but Boris Johnson’s hair stages its own Borexit and joins the Labour Party.

I guess technically we’re all undead, but Ruth takes it to the next level.

March

Super Tuesday, a collection of 13 primaries is held on March 3^rd. The top three Democratic finishers are Johnny Depp, Harvey Weinstein, and a resurgent O.J. Simpson. Nancy Pelosi states, “We are so proud to have our Democratic values and inclusivity on display in these results.”
Patrick’s Day replaced by a new gender and religion inclusive holiday: “Buy Expensive Green Things and Drink if You’re Not a Muslim Day.”
Joe Biden again suspends his presidential campaign, noting that he needs to focus on saving lives by using his true talent – being able to detect diseases in women by holding their shoulders and sniffing their hair while standing behind them.

“Don’t thank me . . . now. Thank me later. Want to play with my leg hair?”

April

Ralph Northam, governor of Virginia, is discovered eating living children on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion while in blackface. After calls for his resignation, he noted that it was, at most, a “youthful indiscretion.”
Ruth Bader Ginsberg develops a desire for human flesh much like Tom Cruise or Keanu Reeves, and soon appears to be no older than about 30.
A vortex connecting our dimension to another dimension containing hellish beasts is accidently opened by Pentagon scientists. This is almost exactly like the plot to the Stephen King novella The Mist, though not in a legally actionable way, at least according to my lawyer, Lazlo.

“How could I make this worse? Oh, yeah, I’ll go after the guns.”

May

Beto O’Rourke, while no longer a presidential candidate, decides to create an anti-gun organization, PistolsMakeScared (PMS®). He noted, “I really needed something to do while my wife has quality time with her boyfriends.”
France declares war on Canada on Tuesday morning. France surrenders to Germany later that afternoon, declaring Paris an open city. The Germans refuse the surrender, indicating they can’t determine the number of troops required to defend France, since that’s never been tried before.
Australians will discover a spider that is the size of a cat, is as fast as a mongoose, has a diet of eagles and crocodiles, and is as poisonous as a middle school girl’s Instagram®. They name it “Dave.”

Pictured: Australian infant’s crib mobile.

June

LGBT Pride Month (June) officially replaced with LGBT Smug Condescension Months (June, July, August).
Elon Musk unveils a Kleenex® dispenser that automatically pops up a new Kleenex© every time you take one out at a base price of only $45,000. 25,000 people place a deposit, even though there’s a two year wait.
Chick-Fil-A® decides to start serving food on Sunday, adding hamburgers to their menu, and encouraging the worship of Satan as part of a new marketing campaign. “We’ve got to change with the times,” said their new spokesman, Lena Dunham.

I mean if you have to choose between values and a tasty sandwich . . .

July

The Democratic Convention is moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Malmo, Sweden as the Democratic Committee considers it unfair that people outside the United States have been denied a vote. Greta Thunberg, noted school dropout, is nominated. Her vice presidential nominee, Joe Biden, is quoted as saying, “I’m thrilled to be behind her.”
The Republican Convention is held in a hollowed out volcano somewhere in the South Pacific. Donald Trump is nominated as the presidential candidate, and in a surprise move, he is also nominated to be vice president. “Job’s too easy. And I need someone whose I can trust to be vice president.” Trump also adopts a pure white Persian cat with a diamond collar.
The 2020 Summer Olympics® open in Tokyo. Bingo is not an approved Olympic sport, primarily because the Japanese are still a bit superstitious about “B-29.”

We now know what Paul Tibbets would do for a Klondike Bar®.

August

Google® is found to be censoring ______, ______ and _____, and working with Facebook™ and Twitter© to also censor _____. It is feared that the election might be impacted because ____ ____ ____, ____ and ____.
Elon Musk unveils an electric reusable coffee mug – he calls it Teasla©. Initial claims are that it is autonomous and can be used for both hot and cold liquids. It also requires the new Teasla™ Supercharger, which can recharge it in 70 minutes using a 50’ by 50’ solar power array costing only $25,000. The mug weighs 43 pounds.

(Pssst – it’s in the trunk.)

September

For the second straight year, September is again cancelled by general consensus.

October

Two televised presidential debates and one televised arm wrestling contest are held. The planned presidential MMA bout is cancelled when Greta Thunberg tests positive for high levels of testosterone. She is furious, “How dare you assume my gender? You have ruined my fight plan.” She then proceeds to spend all of her campaign funds on a live commercial showing her eating seven pounds of mashed potatoes (no gravy) in one sitting while scowling at the camera.
Gormongous, Ruler of the Dark Empire, emerges as a dark horse third party candidate after having emerged from the Pentagon’s dimensional experiment earlier in the year. “Everyone can be an American,” he hissed through clouds of sulfurous vapor. The Ninth Circuit Court ruled that his alternate universe was “technically America” so he was a valid candidate for president, despite him being seven stories tall and covered in an exoskeleton made of material from neutron stars.

Never take potatoes from a testosterone-raging Swede with fetal alcohol syndrome. It’s a rule I live by.

November

The 2020 presidential election is held on the third. California immediately protests because the Electoral College now has fraternities, and no one asked California to join one so she could go to that cool Kappa Sig kegger and maybe hook up with Montana.
Donald Trump wins both the popular vote and the Electoral College. Democratic candidate Greta Thunberg says, “That is not enough – it makes a mockery of our democracy. You must also defeat me in a best-of-seven game of Jarts®.”
Joe Biden celebrates his 78^thbirthday. His hair and teeth turn 22.

Many a G.I. Joe® experienced a fatal chest wound to Jarts™.

December

Santa Claus is now required by the 9^Th Circuit Court of Appeals to be race, gender, and species neutral when used in any public school setting. Ironically, this has the effect of making most kindergarten pictures of NuSanta™ highly accurate.
Gormongous, Ruler of the Dark Empire, decides that he will use the fame from his presidential run to launch a top tier tequila as well as a chain of animal shelter/fast Asian restaurants in the Midwest.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg looks down on the lights of the city at night from her perch at the top of the Washington Monument. She smells, senses, and sees the life below her. The life that she drains, person by person, to prolong hers. Then . . . a target. She aims her bat-like wings to take her quickly down the side of the monument, and then to strike. Ahhh, fresh blood. Ruth feels the gravity drawing her down as she leaps . . . .
National Park Ranger Report, 12/22/20: Bat killed by hawk near Washington Monument.

To all: Happy New Year!