This past year of 2008 proved to be a successful one in the prognostications of the Amazing Kreskin.
Early in the year, ten days before the Iowa Caucus vote, I appeared on CBS News, CNN News, Fox News Network, etc. and made three predictions about the results of the Iowa Caucus. Each proved to be correct.
Later on in the year, when the Super Bowl was about to be played, I appeared on a Fox television program 4 days before. My prediction was that the Giants would win. I did not expect to give the score, but stated they would win by 3 points. The final score was 17 - 14.
The major prediction, of course, was the Presidential election, but what made it special is that I filed the prediction at a location next to the United Nations called the World Bar eleven months earlier, namely in December of 2007, when key prominent figures included Mayor Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, as well as Senator McCain. My prediction of the Presidency, which was revealed 2 days after the election in November 2008, was correct. My analysis of his thinking to bring this about is even more dramatic.
2009
These are some of the impressions that I have for the coming year:
Waterboarding, and its controversy regarding unfair torture, will be taught as a skill to be experienced by terrorists. This will be uncovered before the end of the year.
If a terrorist attack succeeds on the U.S. mainland within the next 2 years, Attorney General Eric Holder will be blamed by a considerable percentage of the American public.
Hillary Clinton will be seriously encouraged to run for the Presidency in 2012. If President Barack Obama doesn't win a second term, the cause will be Hillary Clinton.
As Hollywood diminishes as a meaningful location for the motion picture industry, along with India, one of the strongest locations of movie-making will be the state of Connecticut. Unfortunately, it will not be successful in the state of New Jersey.
In the spirit of the great Jackie Gleason, a renewed area for professional entertainers, many of whom are out of business because of the recession, will develop in the next few years. It will be on trains. Thankfully the government will come to its senses and borrow and learn from Europe, making trains a viable and tremendously successful public form of public transportation.
Within 4 years it will become clear to businessmen and the American public that bankruptcy is a far more realistic and successful form of reconstruction for a business or industry than is tremendous amounts of bailout money.
If immense monetary bailouts continue and spread, the recession will last longer than 4 ½ years.
As our national politicians who are claiming to represent the American people continue to put heavy restrictions and controls over certain industries, such as the automotive industry, the lack of insight into how to control the banking industry will result in less and less loans for the American citizens, and the money the banks receive being abused and used to buy other banks. The likelihood is that by the end of Obama's first period in office, there will be less than 6 banks in the United States.
There will be an outcry, both from professional behaviorists and some part of the U.S. public, especially during the increasing and deepening recession, that something be done to bring the lotteries to a realistic level, instead of destroying the lives of individuals winning tons of dollars, sometimes in the 40-50+ millions. Since the average person would probably be happy winning just a couple of million dollars, some enterprising, mathematical-minded individual will come up with a way in which a multitude of people can win the results of a lottery, rather than dropping the money into one family, and in many, many cases destroying their lives with the sudden, excessive wealth.
One of the blessings that will come out of the deepening recession will be the rebirth of mom and pop stores. This will be counter-balanced to the disaster and the closing of many shopping malls in the United States, or at least many of their occupants.
A study will reveal, as has been expected, that many very young kids are developing more slowly and later in their ability to verbally communicate. Cell phones will be suspected as one of the causes, because of parents ignoring communications of children while they are preoccupied on the phone.
There will be a growing movement in the United States to follow in the steps of England, and that is to restrict, discourage, or even ban cell phones in restaurants.
The practice of vegetarianism will be found to be a dangerous aspect in the health of certain individuals.
While I cannot give the month and the year, it is inevitable that the draft in the United States will be reinstated. It will be realized by more and more Americans that the dissolving of the draft was a gigantic mistake.
There will be a movement to increase the length of the school year for children.
While the recession will continue to deepen and affect every aspect of the business world and even our social lives, there will be some pluses to come out of this. One of the most significant is the popularity of the kitchen. People will join together, sitting around a kitchen table, a popular activity amongst many nationalities when they originally came to this country. It will be a source of socializing, while imbibing in light meals or food or drink, and will enrich the relationship of people with their loved ones, relatives, and friends. People will discover that it is possible to communicate more deeply in such an informal manner without the need to stare at a television set, listen to a radio, look at a box, or hold a miniature screen in their hand. This may very possibly result in a revolution in American society, in that families will begin to become tightly knitted once again.