Happy New Year! Here it is, 2016, and time for our annual look back at the 2015 predictions made by psychics.

I predicted last year that, like every previous year we’ve done this (2014, 2013), the psychics would be wrong pretty much 100% of the time, and once more, I was right!

I must be psychic!

Of course, some of their predictions did come true, but you didn’t have to be a psychic to predict some of these things.  (These are real “psychic predictions” from December of 2014. I am not making these up):

• Hollywood will release big blockbusters sequels in 2015: Hunger Games, Star Wars: Episode VII, Mission Impossible 5. (Really? Who would have predicted that these three films would be released in 2015? Why, you’d almost have to read anything on the internet to know that!)
• Windows 10 released by Microsoft. (Yes, this was an actual “psychic” prediction as well.)
• There are going to be the deaths of three celebrities in 2015. One will be by suicide, one will be drug related, and one will be of natural causes. (Given that “celebrities” here could mean anything from TV stars to recording artists to newscasters to politicians, yeah, I’m going to guess that at least three of them died last year and at least one would be from each of the reasons given above.)
• An evangelical minister is going to outed for being gay. (Geez, that never happens!)

But, as you may guess (just like a psychic does!), the vast majority of these random guesses supernaturally provided predictions were absolutely wrong:

• South African to win Ms. World; runner-up, Ms. India  (Nope to both)
• Major religious leader passes away, as also a former President of U.S. (Well, you can probably find some random “major religious leader” who died, but President? Nope.)
• U.S. Congress will pass a law to ban the sale of guns to people with mental disorders. (Yeah, I wish!)
• Rumors of an Illness or accident around Hillary Clinton will sideline her chances of becoming the first female U.S. President in 2016. This will concern her feet (as in tripping and falling) or a medically related disease connected to her bones. (We all remember that, right?)
• Tokyo in ruins after a giant earthquake. (Or maybe Godzilla?)
• A dog breaks a world record. (What? That’s the entire prediction? Come on, guy, you have to give me more than that! What world record? Most albums sold? Tightrope walking? Smelliest farts?)
• There are going to be many UFO sightings in 2015. Sightings of actual aliens, and people being abducted by aliens, will also be on the rise. This will be due to the major planetary shifts our planet will experience in the upcoming year. (Because who could forget these? And that “major planetary shift” that all the astronomers talked about all year?)
• Last year for Vladimir Putin to be in power in Russia. (Nyet)
• Pope resigns because of hidden illness. (Nuh uh)

You get the idea; we could do this all day.

Now, just for kicks, let’s think about what some of the biggest stories were in 2015 (according to ABC news).

• Chalie Hedbo attacks in Paris
• Germanwings plane crash
• Shootings by police officers
• Amtrack train crash
• Prison escape in New York
• Charlestown church shooting
• On-air shooting in Virginia
• Major murder trials
• European refugee crisis
• Gay marriage approved by the Supreme Court
• Pope visits America
• Massive terrorist attacks in Paris
• Many mass shootings in America

You’d think at least one of these would be foreseen by psychics, wouldn’t you?

Every once in a while, one out of every hundred predictions made by these people will come true due to the vagueness of the prediction and the law of probabilities, and that’s the one they remind everyone about so people keep giving them money.

If a con artist scams someone out of their money, they can be prosecuted. That’s a crime.  How these people get away with the same sort of thing is beyond me.

This is what scam artists do, of course.  Speaking of which, here are some of the actual predictions Republicans made about what would happen if Obama was re-elected:

• Gas will be $10.00 a gallon (According to Newt Gingrich, who promised to bring it down to $2.50 a gallon. It’s now around $2.25)
• Unemployment will be over 8% (According to Mitt Romney. It’s now at 5.8%)
• The Stock Market will crash (According to Donald Trump; it’s now around 18,000 and has risen 35% since Obama was elected)
• Obamacare will destroy jobs (According to many Republicans. Instead, unemployment has dropped, especially since medical jobs are growing because of Obamacare)
• Obama will force young people to go to FEMA re-education concentration camps (Okay, that one was from Michelle Bachmann, so no one with a brain ever took that seriously) 

I guess we can say then, given their similar track record on predictions, that Republicans are psychic.