When I was a little girl in St. Benedict’s school, I used to get my penny candy at a store that sold tabloids, like the Star, and the Enquirer. You may not consider today’s colorful gossip rags to be respectable news sources, but compared to what they were in the ‘60’s they’re practically the Wall Street Journal. Of course, I was forbidden to look at them. They were not only lurid, they were tainted with the occult. They published New Year’s predictions by witches like Sybil Leek, and psychics like Jeane Dixon. I wouldn’t dare touch them. Make a sign of the cross if you even think about it.

But of course, eventually, I had to know what these gifted people had to say about the future. I cannot overstate my bitter disappointment when I discovered that they used their powers, gained no doubt at the cost of their immortal souls, to peer into the future and come up with stuff like this–
“Elizabeth Taylor will marry again.�
Like that was any surprise, and anyway, who gives a rat’s posterior? When it came to political predictions they were not much better–
“There will be unrest in the Middle East.�
Or global–
“A natural disaster will occur somewhere, sometime in the next year.�

I realized that the prediction biz has a pretty low bar. Last year I made my own psychic predictions, and in the tradition of psychics everywhere, I will cherry-pick the ones that even remotely correspond to what actually happened.

July — Stock market dives, President Bush says the economy is strong.

August — The Fed prints up another batch of money to keep the stock market happy. New bills are pink, with picture of Paris Hilton.

The Hilton bills never happened, but I noticed my money was more colorful this year. I give myself a ‘C’ for accuracy.

Yahoo has a collection of predictions for ‘08, with comments. Here is an excerpt–

4. “The market is in the process of correcting itself.” — President George W. Bush, in a Mar. 14, 2008 speech

For the rest of the year, the market kept correcting and correcting and correcting.

You would think there would be lots of pundit predictions for this past year up on the net, but many of them have mysteriously been taken down. I was able to get some conservative foresight from the experts on National Review—

Regardless of what they tell pollsters, many fewer people will vote for a young African-American man than an established white woman, even if they don’t really like her. So, if Obama is the candidate, he loses big. (Unless he is running against Huckabee.)
–Lisa Schiffren

Running against Hillary Clinton — who will be tarnished once against by new campaign finance scandals — the House GOP will pick up a dozen seats in the House of Representatives, leaving Speaker Pelosi a greater challenge to manage an already unmanageable House.

Christina Applegate’s new show on ABC will be cancelled.

After a surge in Iowa, Fred Thompson will win the GOP nomination and then be elected the 44th President of the United States.
–Carrie Lukas.

So okay, how about the weather?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA has predicted above-average temperatures for the United States this winter. The national temperature average will be 4 percent warmer than the 30-year normal.

Score one for the scientists.

The year 2008 is on track to be one of the 10 warmest years on record for the globe, based on the combined average of worldwide land and ocean surface temperatures, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. For November alone, the month is fourth warmest all-time globally, for the combined land and ocean surface temperature.

Eerily, it’s back to a psychic for a foreshadowing of the national mood this November…

2008 is more than a year. It is a turning point in history. It is the exact apex in time when the balance of ages, suspended, begins to tip away from forces and themes defining the last 2,000 years. History will now incline with ever increasing direction, for better or worse, towards those values and influences that mark a new 2,000-year era.

Hello, 2008. You are the real dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

You are the age where even the smallest individual can change the course of the future.
–John Hogue

Well, that’s what I heard from Moveon.org, more or less.

This year my cards are heavy on the suit of swords, indicating strife, but you knew that already because you read the paper. I can’t make any predictions yet. My crystal ball rolled under the bed and it’s stuck somewhere behind the baseball glove and the cat toys.

So, readers, how about you? Are you feeling lucky? What do you think the new year holds?