Here it is 2010 and I still don’t have a jet-pack or flying car. Those were the kind of things that I was led to believe would be here by now when I was a little kid. The real problem is that there isn’t one on the horizon either. You know what is in the near future for us? A remake of the Yugo or some other Euro-crap car that doesn’t burn up much dinosaur remains and tops out at a heart stopping 50 or 60 miles per hour.

It is that time of year for me to let my psychic self loose and gaze into the future. Yeah, I know I’m a little late but I promise not to predict anything that has already happened like a lot of your mainstream psychics tend to do. Last year Kevin Costner didn’t even have the decency to make a bad film, so I was o-fer-09. The only way for my psychic score to go is up!

My Predictions

In 2010 a well-known Hollywood film maker will produce a film that by most Midwestern standards would be called “porno.” It will be hailed as a great step towards artistic freedom and rated “R.”

In the coming year I will not be familiar with the work of anyone who wins a Grammy.

This year General Motors will introduce the “Volt” as the car of the future. It will sell slightly less units than Paris Hilton’s last CD.

Vince Vaughn will star in a movie as an over-confident bumbler with a heart of gold who  has a wife or girlfriend that is so far out of his league the movie will be classified in the science fiction genre.

It will be revealed that having a supply of “non-hybrid seeds to plant an acre of nutrient dense food” for your family will do you no good in an extreme crisis unless you also have a tractor, a fuel supply, a water supply, some knowledge of farming, several high powered rifles, lots of ammo, food to last you until harvest time and at least an acre of land to plant.

The price of gold will drop to $450 an ounce. Obama will place the blame on the Bush Administration.

The State of California will go out of business and divide into three smaller states, Upper California to the far north, South California from Orange County to the Mexican border and The People’s Republic of Central California which will go broke again in 2011.

The Chicago Cubs will win the National League pennant and during the World Series be bought by Warren Buffet who donates the team to Haiti.

A record cold spell holds the Midwest and Northeast in its grip for the entire month of February. Obama blames the Bush Administration for its failed weather policy.

Kathy Griffin hosts New Year’s Eve celebration on the new Hustler Channel and is again fired for being too crass. She blames the Bush Administration and the Patriot Act for the “chill wind” blowing through Hollywood.

An Islamic fundamentalist attempts to create a “man-made disaster” by placing a bomb up his backside. The device is detected after he dines at a White Castle before going to the airport. Janet Napolitano orders “inspections” of every passenger on all flights. This job is given to the IRS which is already highly skilled in this type of work.

Keith Olbermann challenges Rush Limbaugh to a charity boxing match but refuses to remove his glasses in the ring and then cries foul when Rush punches a guy wearing glasses.

All very caring stuff  – and we are introduced to Iraqi refugees, people from the Niger Delta and the Alps to witness the supposed climate problems they’re already facing. (Although in reality the problems in Iraq and Nigeria had nothing to do with climate and the character in the Alps seemed largely concerned about increasing traffic destroying his peace and quiet.)

But the characters were sympathetically drawn and one would believe the filmmakers genuinely cared about people and their lives. However, occasionally the mask slips. The filmmakers now send out regular emails about the film’s progress and any “climate news,” and the latest email shows just how much they care about ordinary people losing their jobs and probably their homes during one of the worst recessions in a hundred years. 

Under a section entitled “Good News” the email chirpily informs us: 

Good riddance to US car giant General Motors, who declared bankruptcy this week! Whilst this is sad news for the thousands of workers set to lose their jobs, it is very good news for the climate.  

The Age of Stupid opens in the US in September – presumably not in Detroit or any other city depending on car manufacturing or indeed on any type of heavy industry. 

Ann McElhinney & Phelim McAleer are the Producers and Directors of Not Evil Just Wrong – a documentary which reveals the true cost of Global Warming hysteria. Noteviljustwrong.com

But, in an effort to “save American jobs” and keep an American musical from having to make way for an imported show, President Mondale has deemed “42nd Street” “too big to fail”: “This show has been running since 1980 and has been providing jobs for hundreds of working families in New York.  My administration is determined to keep this production running and to keep these long-suffering, union workers on the job,” the President said.

“Critics will say that the federal government has no business taking over a Broadway musical, and believe me, I don’t want to be a Broadway producer, but the collapse of this show would have been devastating for countless Americans and brought enormous damage to our economy beyond the theatre industry,” the President said in a news conference where he also announced the removal of David Merrick from his role as Producer of the show as well as a restructuring of the investors’ payouts putting top union officials in new decision making positions on the production.

Representatives of the Majestic Theatre ownership said in a statement:

Let’s not forget that “42nd Street” first opened at our Winter Garden Theatre location and in 1982 we paid to move it to the Majestic to make way for the successful production of “Cats” that is now playing to record houses at the Winter Garden.  At the time, we were criticized for giving preferential treatment to the British musical, but as we have seen, that production of “Cats” as well as the five national touring companies are employing many many more stagehands, musicians, actors, and show personnel than “42nd Street” ever did, not to mention the jobs at the neighboring hotels, bars, and restaurants created due to the huge hit running in the neighborhood.

In a pointed rebuttal, the President’s spokesman said:

The greedy theatre owners can rationalize their un-patriotic business practices all they want, but this administration stands for American shows.  We are not in the business of lining British producers’ pockets at the expense of American workers.  We stand by our constituents.. er, I mean, the stagehands and the actors who have sacrificed so much to keep this production running as long as it has.

President Mondale has also announced the formation of a new, cabinet level department, the 27th of his and his predecessor’s administrations.  “There is no doubt that ‘42nd Street’ and other American productions have suffered from poor management decisions over the years.  So we have created the United States Theatrical Union Personnel Improvement Department (USTUPID) which will address those issues,” the President said.

In a surprise move, Arkansas Governor William Clinton has been named Secretary of USTUPID.  Long seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, Governor Clinton has unveiled an aggressive approach to stimulating ticket sales for “42nd Street”:  “Let me be clear: the American people are choosing these foreign productions because we have been stuck in the past with these Broadway shows.  I mean, look at ‘A Chorus Line’: heck, those costumes are straight out of 1976, those girls should be wearing ‘Solid Gold’ style leotards, nice and high-cut with maybe a little thong in the back, you know what I mean?”

While touring the new Jimmy Carter Monument For Peace & Understanding in the Palestinian Capital of Jerusalem, President Mondale remarked that the new government take-over of “42nd Street” was really about protecting American jobs.

This new production of “Phantom” uses computer-controlled scenery and lighting that will put American stagehands out of work.  What do you say to the man who has been pulling a rope for the past twenty years?  How do you tell him that a computer is going to pull that rope for him now?  I know some say that new jobs will be created by having stagehands program and operate the computer and I know that some are speculating that by being able to move so much scenery these productions will be bigger and more lavish and more popular, thus ensuring longer runs in the future, but I do not stand with these risky speculators.  I say that we continue to invest in our American jobs as they are.

“42nd Street” can once more be a symbol of American success if we institute some minor management changes.  Some of the changes include a doubling of the lights currently designed for the show.  This move will not only add more jobs thus ensuring a higher demand for comp tickets, but it will also increase the heat generated in the theatre, which, we hope, will help reverse the coming ice age that has been predicted by our top scientists.  We also intend to purchase hundreds of tickets each night and re-distribute them to public school students, the elderly, UAW workers, trial lawyers, and other deserving constituents.. er… Americans.

My un-named source inside the industry has revealed that the costs of the changes to the production as well as the re-distribution of free tickets will change the financial picture for the production drastically: “If USTUPID does what it has announced, the show will have to run at 275% capacity each week to break-even.  It is currently selling about 46% of its seats.  If it were to have an unprecedented reversal of fortune and sell-out, the show will still lose $350,000 per week.

When asked how USTUPID can account for the projected losses and how the show will ever be able to make money while running at a loss each week, Governor Clinton bit his lip and said, “Volume.”

~~

EPILOGUE: In 1987, “42nd Street” was indeed evicted from the Majestic to make way for “Phantom.”  It moved across 44th Street to the St. James Theatre and ran for another two years.  At the time, NY Times theatre critic Frank Rich ominously referred to the travails of “42nd Street” due to the productions of “Cats” and “Phantom” as a sign of the “shift of power” on Broadway.  “Phantom” opened in 1988 and is still running as of this posting.  It has run longer, employed more people, sold more tickets, and stimulated more economic activity on Broadway and across the country than any other show in the history of the American Theatre.  All without any public stimuli.  And, by the way, the theatrical unions’ pension funds have been bolstered by contributions from the producers and theatre owners throughout the entire run.

Stage Right is on Facebook.

By and large, I don’t find the baker’s dozen to be overly impressive, either as leaders or as individuals.  There are only three or four of them I can even imagine being friends with or wanting to have as next-door neighbors.  But there are only two of them, Carter and Obama, whom I regard as unmitigated disasters.  While it took Carter four years in office and 29 years out to achieve his greatly deserved recognition as an incompetent, a phony and a sanctimonious anti-Semite, Obama has pulled it off in just a few short months. 

He has managed this by displaying his general incompetence by surrounding himself with clowns like Joe Biden; the seriously corrupt, such as Bill Richardson and Tom Daschle; and too many tax cheats to list in the space available. 

Obama has also proven himself to be a liar of such proportions that if he had started out life like Pinocchio, his nose by this time would stretch from sea to shining sea. He has fibbed about everything from barely knowing Bill Ayers to never listening to a Jeremiah Wright screed, from banishing pork and lobbyists to providing transparency and change we can all believe in.  On top of all that, while spouting the usual political piffle about economizing and saving the environment, he hosted the largest, most expensive inauguration in history, and from the way he and his posse jet around on the fuel-guzzling Air Force One, you’d think he was a rock star. 

All of that would be no more or less than business as usual, Washington style, if he weren’t also working overtime to simultaneously bankrupt the country and turn America into a socialist state patterned after Castro’s Cuba. 

The scariest part of all this is that so many Americans continue to root him on.  Those of us who are opposed to his agenda are accused, like Rush Limbaugh, of hoping America fails.  Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.  What we’re hoping for is that America can somehow survive this frontal assault on our freedoms, and that our economic system can remain basically intact in spite of the combined efforts of Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Dodd and Geithner, to destroy it. 

When I hear people in and out of the media who should get down on their knees and thank God or at least their ancestors that they were lucky enough to be born in America, instead parrot left-wing insults about this country, I want to slap them silly.  I sometimes wonder if those folks who, in the 1950s, nattered incessantly about the Communist-inspired fluoride conspiracy were right.  Perhaps there was something in the water that turned so many brains to mush.  I mean, why else would so many of my fellow Jews be so utterly convinced that Barack Obama is the messiah we’ve been waiting for?

For what it’s worth, now that the president has fired CEO Rick Wagoner and taken over General Motors, do you suppose it will henceforth be called Commander in Chief Motors, and that Cadillac, Buick and Chevrolet, will be re-named Michelle, Natasha and Malia Ann?  Which reminds me, it’s still nothing but a rumor that Obama fired God earlier today, claiming that the universe isn’t big enough for both of them. 

My old friend, Pat Sajak, who, when not busy spinning his wheels, is politically savvier and wittier than any of the talking heads you find on TV, has revised the question that plagued Richard Nixon 60 years ago to better fit GM’s new chief honcho: Would you buy a new car from this man? 

Although I am not usually given to omens, I can’t help feeling it means something that the next presidential election will take place on November 6, 2012, the day before Gen. David Petraeus turns 60.  I, for one, can’t think of a more appropriate birthday present for the man and the nation than giving him a well-deserved promotion.

But then the multimillionaire and self-proclaimed champion of the little guy opens his foul, uneducated, lying mouth and I’m reminded why I made that movie and continue to write and talk about Moore. Someone somewhere has to tell the truth about this country and I guess it might as well be me. I guess fate has appointed me his much less wealthy, way less well-known, and much thinner (even though I’m fat) counterpart. I just read Moore’s latest diatribe and got Hulk-angry. HULK SMAAASHHH!

I am now thoroughly convinced that even though millions look to him as thought-leader, there’s really not much going on upstairs. Moore is quite simply an uneducated populist. He’s Mos Def with a bigger vocabulary. He has no interest in studying history, because if he did, he’d find his whole worldview to be antithetical to what this nation is defined as by the documents that do the defining. Michael Moore hates what America is.

It’s certainly clear that Michael Moore loves power. He loves crushing people. He loves destroying the lives of others. He’s done it over and over for his own benefit. So it’s probably no surprise that Moore thinks the firing of the CEO of a private company by a federal bureaucrat is a good thing. Especially when Moore can make hay and horde millions of dollars because of it (his next populist rant is about the evil Wall Street puppetmasters). If there were ever more of a mind-blowingly hypocritical person in the history of the world, I can’t think of it.

Moore actually wrote in his latest insane and unbalanced screed that Obama “has the massive will of the American people behind him — and he has been granted permission by us to do what he sees fit.”

No, you stupid motherfucker, he hasn’t. You see, the Constitution of the United States of America determines the power of the President, not the people. Specifically, it LIMITS that power. And the guys who wrote that document were scared shitless of guys like Obama. George Washington referred to the President as the “Chief Magistrate” and the Founders saw government as something that had to be limited to prevent it from committing the sorts of atrocities we’ve seen in the last couple of months. Government has no business firing anyone in the private sector. None. Zip. Nada.

But Moore cheers for Obama’s overturning of centuries of Constitutional and common law like a high school girl whose panties are a little moist at the site of the big, strong quarterback. He cheers him on because he loves the sight of OTHER rich guys squirming (DO NOT FORGET THAT MOORE IS A MULTIMILLIONAIRE WHO HAS A TRACK RECORD OF AVOIDING UNION FILM WORKERS BECAUSE THEY COST TOO MUCH!!!) because the almighty government is inflicting pain on them.

Moore has talked in the past about the “free” health care and dentistry provided to him by GM when he was a kid. He talks about how the “common man” could make a “living wage” when times were good for GM. He talks about how it was the line workers that made the company one of the greatest on earth and how the rich elite have always been bald, cat-stroking evil geniuses bent on pouring liquid waste on everyone they can before anally raping their mothers and firing them and burning their houses down and pissing on the ashes. In fact, his NEW MOVIE is about just that! Of course if you’ve seen one Michael Moore movie, you’ve seen them all.

Despite all that GM provided for Moore and his family (it wasn’t “free,” GM paid for it), Moore can’t help but demonize the company, writing about the “hundreds of thousands of workers over the past 25+ years who have been tossed into the trash heap by General Motors.” Despite the fact that the primary reason the company is failing is because it overpaid its workers and now pays retirees more in salary than when they actually worked there, Moore is happy that it’s time for a little revenge.

Moore thinks its good that government is now telling private companies who will run them, what products they will make, and how they will operate (regardless of whether it’s profitable). He thinks it’s great that government is using the IRS to target specific individuals Ex Post Facto to take away money they rightly earned. He loves that big daddy government is there to take care of us.

I can’t imagine how that must feel. It must be awful to be so weak and unable to care for yourself that you need a bureaucrat to do it for you. But then, Michael Moore knows that he’ll be okay. He knows that the ultra-wealthy like him don’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else. He’ll be able to go to a private doctor when we’re in line at the government hospital. He won’t have to beg the IRS to honor the warranty on his GM (yes, Obama’s promise to honor GMs warranties falls under Treasury) because he can just buy another car. He won’t have to worry about government seizure of his property (they own most of the mortgages now) because his multimillion-dollar penthouse in New York and giant vacation home in Michigan are paid for.

What I don’t understand about Moore is how just a few months ago he abhorred the power-grabbing Bush “regime” but now he’s cheering on the most overreaching President in the history of the United States. I guess as long as his guy is in charge, it’s okay for one man to have way too much power. If you want an almighty government, Mike, you’ve gotta be okay when it’s your liberty that’s under attack. Based on your sycophantic slobbering over Obama’s action, you’d better be happy when the next President tells you what your next project is going to be about.

They’ve already come for the capitalists. They’ll eventually get to the lying, scumbag communist propagandists and Moore will be fucked.