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By Tobin Barnes
Who knows what the nose knows? So speak beak.

And I will, even though as Yogi Berra said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

But I’m fearlessly going to do it anyway. I know the future. I see it clearly. And I defy anyone to prove my predictions wrong.

I know this might spook some people out, reading the prophetic words of a seer, but stick with me and experience your conversion, eerie though it may be.

Take, for instance, the pending health care legislation before Congress.

My first prediction is that something’s going to pass. Yep, you can take this one to the bank. After working on it all year long, Congress will go thumbs up on at least something. How can they not and keep their fifteen percent approval rating? No way. If not they’d look like fools…again. Something’s got to come out of the pipe, even if it’s a gurgle like after a flush.

My second prediction on health care is that the passed bill will make some people sick and others healthy. Some will get sick because the bill didn’t go far enough, and some will get sick because it went too far. Uh huh, there’s going to be a lot of moaning and groaning amongst the talking heads. Matter of fact, everybody’s going to moan and groan, at least a little.

As far as people getting healthier, well, hey, that’s inevitable. Some people somewhere will be healthier after the passage of this bill.

That’s right. Some people who had bad health before will get healthier later. It happens all the time, and I guarantee you it will happen this time, too. Of course, people will die as well, because everyone who lives dies.

But what can you do? Better health care overall can only do so much. You can’t always blame politicians, although you’d like to.

My third prediction?

Everyone’s going to declare victory on this baby. Just like in Lake Wobegon, in Congress everybody’s above average. So one way or another, everybody’s got to figure out how he or she was a winner in this and every other ideological confrontation. Might take a lot of figuring, but that’s why we pay them.

There will be no losers, even when you’re talking to the losers. It’s kind of amazing really, almost magical.

When health care legislation passes, the Democrats are going to take the credit for it. Once again, progress was made even though Republicans had to be dragged into the Twenty-First Century kicking and screaming. Things are now in the law books that weren’t there before. Woo-hoo! Smiles all around and everybody gets a pen at the signing.

Then they’ll go to bed that night and lie awake, thinking, “Oh my God! What did we do?”

You see, the problem with championing legislation is that you “own it,” as President Obama says. For the next generation or two, people are going to be second-guessing and nit-picking the legislation that Democrats took credit for passing.

Positives naturally carry with them negatives, and negatives naturally carry with them positives. It’s the yin and yang of life. Consult any philosophy professor or talk to your local town drunk.

Nevertheless, your political opposition will always focus on the negatives to your disparagement unless the general population finally comes to a consensus that the positives were worth it after all. So it goes.

Those against progressive legislation will turn out to be winners, too. According to the positives-produce-negatives and vice-versa theory, opposers will be fully equipped with negative ghosts to haunt those who helped pass the legislation. And for a long time, it’ll be fun for them. They’ll be able to dig up all kinds of pertinent, if isolated, horror stories proving they were right to oppose the legislation in the first place.

Now that may lead some to think it best never propose anything and to be against everything. Makes them think the past is always better. Matter of fact, they think, let’s go back to it as soon as we can. “Return to Normalcy.” Yeah, the past is so good, they never want to leave it until maybe after they’re dead.

These things I predict.

So you be the judge. How were those predictions? Spot on?

I told you it would be eerie.