What can you say about a year that hasn’t happened yet? An optimist looks to the future with hope and a pessimist looks to the future with realism, but most people are too busy looking at their phones to see anything.
I definitely belong to the pessimist camp. There’s nowhere to go but up when you’re expecting the worst next year. So let’s look ahead to the future and see what terrible, annoying and stupid things 2015 can bring us.
Once Republicans take full control of Congress, President Barack Obama will spend more time with his magic pen and phone. By vetoing a bill passed by the people’s duly elected representatives, Obama will hold the phone to his head for hours and “listen” to the 2/3 of people who did not vote in November. He will then operate his magic pen to order the Department of Justice to reopen the polls so that those who were so inspired and supportive of Barack Obama’s policies that they did not bother to vote can exercise the right they gave up in disappointment. He will also play a lot of golf.
Panic will once again grip the White House as the Secret Service suffers another security breach amid a feared kidnapping of Vice President Joe Biden. The nation, which has been missing for several days, fears the worst. When no demands are made and no group takes responsibility, confusion reigns. The collective sign of relief is the discovery that Biden has locked himself in a closet next to the Oval Office with a stash of Capri Sun juice bags and peanut butter Snickers bars in an attempt to gain publicity and raise his ID. It worked, as his number among likely Democratic primary voters doubled to 4.
In an attempt to identify with “average Americans”, Hillary Clinton will drive a car for the first time in 20 years. While driving, her PTSD flashes back to when she was “dirt poor” and “broke,” and she drives her car into a telephone pole. She escapes unharmed because the car was wrapped in reporters who were desperate to get close to her and protect her from potential harm. But tragically, this accident devastates most MSNBCdaytime and primetime repertoire. Nobody notices it.
The political world is shaken to its core when it is revealed that the modern Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, is in fact Morningcharacter from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This shocking discovery occurs when an intern at ABC News he becomes addicted to Red Bull and amphetamines and becomes the first person to stay awake throughout McConnell’s press conference, and finds this ends her saying, “Secretly I’m Morn from DS9, yo.” Research shows that he has ended every press conference and speech on the floor this way since he was first elected to Congress, except that no one managed to stay awake for more than three minutes of his speech. During his first “out” press conference, shocked press members immediately fall asleep during his introductory speech and it is never mentioned again.
Someone from cable news accidentally books a series of live interviews with real journalists. A green room full of experts and paid contributors will be confused by this, as will the host. There will be a slaughter when people who read Related press coverage of an event as part of the preparation of a television hit on a topic in which they were not involved and with which they were not familiar an hour ago, they come across people who have first-hand knowledge of the event. Radio hosts, columnists and those with the false title of “contributing editor” will suffer enormous losses. With all their usual talking guests hospitalized, there’s a panic on cable news: how to talk about the news without people being completely disconnected from it and expressing their unrelated, uninformed opinions. They decide to take a risk that hasn’t been attempted in years – to deliver news and information to their audiences only by interviewing people actually involved in the news. The words “for reaction we turn to” and “join us now (some idiot on the right and some idiot on the left) to discuss what you just heard” disappear from the airwaves and people start receiving information again. Then Kardashian recorded an audible fart at LAX and everything goes back to the way it was before.
House Speaker John Boehner finds himself embroiled in controversy when his office is found to be spending $3,800 a month at Costco. The scandal is quickly put to rest when, at a hastily scheduled press conference, the Marshal shows a receipt for a monthly shipment of 2,500 boxes of Kleenex. A Reuters reporter drowned after being asked how much his tissue budget was while growing up in Ohio.
A bad batch of Botox will have every student in the Democratic primary hospitalized just before the first debate, except former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who refused to go with “Biden’s guy” because he always carries his own supplies. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is filing “hate crime” charges against a doctor, saying he should have used less tainted Botox because of her high, “Native American” cheekbones. This case is dismissed when, during a pretrial hearing, no one could stop laughing at her claim to be a minority. The following January, he wins the Iowa primary by focusing his campaign efforts on driving those who had recently suffered head injuries to the polls.
The possibilities for 2015 are endless and will probably be annoying (at least). Republicans are “selling out” or otherwise annoying the people who make a living screaming about “the establishment”, the president will continue to ignore the Constitution and get away with it, the media will siphon off and pollute televisions from coast to coast with people who make up lack of first-hand knowledge, double the lack of institutional knowledge, and the Cubs will not win the World Series. That last one is just a swipe at my friends in Chicago, but it has a good chance of being the least true of any of these predictions.
Happy New Year.
