In the Year 2044

In 1969, a pop-rock duo named Zager and Evans recorded a song that quickly soared to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for six weeks. Its title was “In the Year 2525.”

Coincidentally, last week a crystal ball washed up along the shore here in Vero Beach and I was fortunate enough to be there when it did. I dried it off, took it home, and started polishing it up when all of a sudden… BAM! It began to glow, and I was able to peer inside.

Guess what? It showed me the headlines from March 5, 2044, exactly 20 years from today. I feel like it would be selfish to keep that information to myself and so, here are a few of the top news items from that future date.

1. Having lost his 2024 rematch to Donald Trump, former President Joe Biden has formally announced his candidacy for the 2044 presidential race. “That gives me eight months to get permission to leave my nursing home,” said Biden, age 101. His main competition for the Democratic nomination is expected to include 102-year-old Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, who is due to be paroled from the maximum-security U.S. Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado just prior to the election. Until her release, Hillary will be campaigning via Skype wearing a prison-issued orange pant suit.

2. Speaking of campaigning for office, former President Bill Clinton was just re-elected to yet another term as Governor of Little Saint James, once known as Epstein’s Island, where he promises to lower the voting age to 14.

3. President Gavin Newsom is forced to resign in disgrace when it turns out that he has been bald since birth and his flowing locks were a ruse all along. He was to be replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris, who has served as VP under four of the past five presidents, just waiting for one of them to die. Sadly, the realization that she was finally going to get to sit behind the Resolute Desk was too much for the 79-year-old Harris, who passed away just minutes before she was to be sworn into office. The Supreme Court rules that the office will remain vacant for the duration of Newsom’s unexpired term, with Justice Samuel Alito writing in his majority opinion that there is no measurable difference between having a President Harris and having an empty chair.

4. Microsoft founder and CEO Bill Gates buys up the last remaining acre of privately-owned farmland in America. He now owns ¾ of the Western Hemisphere and 2/3 of our solar system.

5. Madonna announces that she will be launching her Octogenarian World Tour at the Home for Corrupt Politicians in Wilmington, Delaware, where former (and future?) President Joe Biden is a resident. Biden issues a press release saying that he can’t wait to see Madonna’s performance and that his roommates Francois Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl are equally excited.

6. Hunter Biden declares his candidacy for president, pitting him against his own father whom he describes as a “corrupt career politician who has repeatedly used his office for personal gain.” When pressed for details of his own involvement in shady foreign business deals, Hunter then retracts his statement and agrees to run for Vice President on the same ticket with his dad.

7. Congress passes a new law, awarding a free Sam's Club membership with unlimited purchase power to every illegal immigrant. Costco counters by suing in federal court and so, all illegals will be permitted to shop for free at both chain stores. Just before his resignation goes into effect, President Newsom signs the bill into law, declaring that the cost of the new program will be covered by a $10,000 per person tax on all legal immigrants and natural born citizens.

8. The last existing gas-powered automobile is scrapped in a special ceremony at a landfill on Staten Island. “This is a great day for America,” says Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose country now owns every internal combustion engine in the world and controls 98.5 % of the world’s economy… while producing 100% of the world’s pollution. President Xi simultaneously announces his plans to build the world’s largest coal-fired fan to blow the smog from China to the United States.

9. After 146 years in business, the Schwinn Bicycle Company, which had controlled the remaining 1.5% of the world’s economy, declares bankruptcy saying it can no longer afford to pay its employees the federally mandated $1,000 per hour minimum wage. Campaigning for president from his nursing home bed, Joe Biden blames the company’s closure on corporate greed and says that it’s high time that Schwinn paid its fair share of taxes. If elected, former President Biden also promises to create millions of new union jobs working in China’s rice patties.

10. Rescinding his resignation, President Gavin Newsom declares a national climate emergency, saying that the sea levels have risen another ¼ inch. Newsom orders a mandatory evacuation from every coastal state except California. He also issues a special waiver so that Barack and Michelle Obama can continue to live in opulence on Martha’s Vineyard.