The Daily Background

At the end of 2006, I offered a series of (mostly joking) predictions for 2007, and said I’d revisit them in a year’s time. Well, a year has gone by, so let’s see how I did.

- Former Vice Presidential aide Lewis Libby manages to “forget” the date of his first day in court and does not show up. This ends up enraging the judge, but ultimately serves to bolster his faulty memory defense in the CIA leak case in which he is charged with 5 felony counts including perjury and deliberately lying to federal investigators (he maintains he merely “forgot” the truth so he told them some lies instead).

Nope. Libby arrived for his first day in court on time, and was convicted (although he hasn’t served any jail time due to a sentence commutation by the White House).

- CNN will suddenly stop over-using the “breaking news” label in their lower third.

Ha! Fat chance. From June:

- Tony Snow will not only start acting more like Scott McClellan, but will also start looking like him too. Watch out for the Press Secretary to lose start gaining a lot of weight and losing a lot of hair. Also, he may shrink several inches.

Tony Snow didn’t lose hair or gain weight, but his hair did get noticeably whiter during his tenure at the White House, which ended in September.

- Laura and Barney (the first pet) actually do end up being the last two that support President Bush’s handing of the Iraq war. Rumors will later circulate that Barney’s support is may be waning.

Didn’t happen.

- By April 1st, former Virginia Senator George Allen finally manages to convince everyone that he is not a racist after all.

- On April 2nd, former Virginia Senator George Allen gets caught on tape calling somebody the n-word. After it is uploaded to YouTube, He later apologizes indirectly 11 times but insists that he thought he simply “made up” the slur, and meant it as a harmless joke about somebody’s hairstyle. Nobody buys it.

Haha, nope, neither of these have happened. But Allen has signed on to fellow Good Ole Boy Fred Thompson’s campaign.

- YouTube gets ever more popular and ABC News’ hyper-investigative reporter Brian Ross (the guy who runs The Blotter) gets his own account, BRoss2007, and begins posting exposes about other YouTube users. He will start his first video by saying: “Hello I’m Brian Ross, and you’re watching the BRoss2007 channel. Anonymous sources tell BRoss2007 that Lonelygirl15 is in fact a hoax.”

Yes, YouTube got more popular, but no, Brian Ross didn’t get his own account. I did however have an unexpected dealing with his Investigative Unit over at ABC, which picked up a story I wrote.

- Conservative pundit/columnist Bob ‘Prince of Darkness’ Novak suddenly becomes relevant again, shocking everyone. This is short lived however, as he is abruptly fired from Fox News after blurting out obscenities the likes of which Rupert Murdoch has only dreamt of– after being asked for the millionth time if he knew that Valerie Plame was an undercover agent.

Half right: Novak did become briefly relevant once again when he claimed that Clinton’s campaign was spreading vague rumors about Obama’s background, however this story faded away pretty quickly.

- Karl Rove doesn’t live down his “You may have polling numbers but I have THE polling numbers” remark to an NPR reporter, and spends much of 2007 in one of Dick Cheney’s undisclosed locations.

Karl Rove never did live down that NPR interview, and he left the White House with his reputation somewhat in shambles in late August. In fact, Bush may be doing better without him.

- Virulently anti-gay former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum turns out to be (you guessed it) … gay. He moves to Colorado to chill with Ted Haggard. Nobody is particularly shocked, least of all Mrs Santorum.

Rick Santorum didn’t turn out to be gay, but we got another surprise: another Senator with a staunch anti-gay voting record, Larry Craig, certainly seems to be (and Larry Flynt keeps on teasing the prospect of another closeted GOP senator).

- George Bush Senior dies, and Bob Woodward reveals that the former President confided to him in an embargoed interview that he “very strongly” disagreed with the decision the current President made to go to war with Iraq.

Fail. This one made more sense as a joke in context, given Woodward’s December 28th, 2006 article revealing former president Ford told him in an embargoed interview that he disagreed with Bush’s decision to invade Iraq.

- Disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley turns out not to be gay after all. Everyone is shocked, most of all Mrs Santorum (no one is quite sure why).

Hah, no. Foley is, as far as anyone knows, still very much gay.

- Global warming causes the President’s Texas ranch to become too hot for him during his customary month-long August vacation. After Bush makes a “is it just me or is it hot out here” joke at a press conference, Al Gore steps out of nowhere to offer the most well deserved I don’t want to say I told you so, but I told you so” that anybody in the White House Press Corps can remember in all their combined notebook-toting, Air-Force-One-riding, and tame-question-asking years.

Heck naw! Bush took his 65th trip to Crawford this August.

- Democrats increase the minimum wage, lower prescription drug prices for seniors, and increase grants for college students. President Bush claims all of these were originally Republican ideas in the first place. When Nancy Pelosi hears the news while on the House floor, she personally walks up and down the aisle flipping off every one of her distinguished colleagues from red states. Unfortunately though Republicans swear it did too happen, C-SPAN does not catch any of this, due to the preservation of antiquated camera angle regulations. Democrats claim to have no recollection of the incident, but are unable to stop themselves from snickering every time Republicans look at their feet when Speaker Pelosi walks past them in the future.

Minimum wage increase? Yes. Prescription drug prices? Sort of, but Medicare Part D still hasn’t been unfucked. Pell grants for college students? Increased. And as far as anybody knows, Nancy stayed composed.

- Bill O’Reilly’s ratings continue to sink. Fox renames “Hannity & Colmes” to “Colmes & Hannity” in hopes of gaining greater ratings in the new political climate. For some reason this fails to work, and they quickly switch it back.

Billo’s ratings continued to sink. Fox didn’t rename H&C though (or if they did, they switched it back so fast that nobody noticed).

- A certain NY Senator makes a big announcement (and it won’t be Chuck Schumer).

Yep, Hillary Clinton did indeed announce her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president.

- A certain IL Senator makes a big announcement (and it won’t be Dick Durbin).

Yep, Barack Obama did indeed announce his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president.

- Arizona Senator John McCain continues to hire every Republican staffer and aide under the sun for his still-unannounced Presidential bid.

Yeah, he hired everybody and then they all had to quit when it turned out he had no money to pay them.

- Rudy Giuliani gets divorced. Again. This manages to crush any last hope that he may have had of winning the southern Republican primaries.

Nope, Giuliani is still happily on Wife Number Three. His prospects in the GOP primaries are unclear however, due to his odd strategy of eschewing the early states and waiting until February 5th to compete.

- Newt Gingrich gets divorced. Again. Miraculously, his third divorce does not hurt his standing with conservative southern voters- perhaps because nobody thinks he’ll run with Kansas Senator Sam Brownback in the race (well, Brownback not officially yet but just you wait).

Nope, the Newtster is still married to his latest everlovin’. And Brownback did indeed enter the race, only to exit it several months later, endorsing St McCain of the No Cash.

- Despite his triumphant re-election, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman is never heard of again.

Actually, Lieberman endorsed McCain too! (This, despite saying in 2006 that he was committed to electing a Democratic president in 2008…)

- Nothing John Kerry says in 2007 is taken out of context whatsoever by the media or by right-wing pundits.

Actually, Kerry didn’t do too bad for himself in terms of tripping over his own tongue this year (instead, Joe Biden did enough of that for the whole Senate).

- Right-wing pundit and author Ann Coulter is convicted of voter fraud in Florida, and as a convicted felon, she loses her right to vote in her home state because of the same disenfranchisement statues that Katherine Harris once used to erroneously disenfranchise tens of thousands of Americans in the 2000 Presidential election.

Sadly, no. Annie the Ice Queen got away with her crime. But I’m still holding out for a repeat performance of her 2006 behavior in Florida’s 2008 GOP primary.

- Katherine Harris does something (anything) and Wonkette covers it. Nobody is surprised, but many are amused. Lather, Rinse, Repeat^tm.

Oh yeah baby. Wonkette mentioned Kitty in a whopping 30 posts throughout 2007.

I have to say for a bunch of joke predictions, I’m surprised that a lot of these actually came true or half true. I suppose this means I’ll have to try harder at coming up with unlikely scenarios for 2008 then.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog