Pat Robertson and other Christian frauds are not the only ones who made blatantly false predictions for 2012. “Psychic” fraud Sylvia Browne did her usual terrible job of predicting what would happen, only hitting on the broadest and most obvious predictions and missing on some specific ones. You can find the full list here.
There will also be earthquakes in Japan, China and Europe.
There will be a tsunami in Florida in the fall.
We are going to see an economic package in place in November.
There will be a cure found for M.S.
Obama will not be reelected.
The next president will be a Republican.
I guess her spirit guide, or whatever she claims to have, is just as inaccurate as God. Or maybe, like Pat Robertson, she’s just a huckster getting rich from the ignorant and the credulous.
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daved
January 4, 2013 at 12:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
On the plus side, her predictions for 2012 did include a blanket statement that vaccines do not cause autism. So she gets a point for that from me.
imrryr
January 4, 2013 at 12:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
From her 2010 predictions:
OMG HOW DID SHE KNOW
busterggi
January 4, 2013 at 12:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t have the book available to check but I think the quote goes something like this, “I tink it ban rain purty hard purty soon.”
ERB was a prophet!
busterggi
January 4, 2013 at 1:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Weather stays terribly erratic. We are in a polar tilt.”
This is a prediction? That the planetary axis just tilted last year?
“I am still worried about train travel.”
I worry about the traffic on I-91 every time I drive to work & back – I guess I’m a prophet too.
Seriously.
Area Man
January 4, 2013 at 1:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I wonder if those two things are related.
Reginald Selkirk
January 4, 2013 at 1:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Blair Robertson’s predictions
Har har. The first 19 are all crap.
Randomfactor
January 4, 2013 at 1:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Obama will not be reelected. The next president will be a Republican.
Maybe she just overshot her prediction. I’m really worried about Obama’s chances for re-election in 2016.
reinderdijkhuis
January 4, 2013 at 1:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Daved@1: she probably cheated with that one. You know, she reached a conclusion by applying reason, logic and evidence, and then put it in with her predictions because why the hell not?
Tabby Lavalamp
January 4, 2013 at 1:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To be fair, she’s probably just the wrong kind of dinosaur… https://twitter.com/tyrannopsychic
markr1957
January 4, 2013 at 1:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
daved @ 1 – she said “these vaccines”, so not quite a blanket statement… no doubt in her mind the tetanus vaccine does cause autism – or something.
Where’s the brain bleach?
Ray Ingles
January 4, 2013 at 1:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Y’know, if she’d said “a cure for MS in mice“, I’d be inclined to give her that one: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/252967.php
holytape
January 4, 2013 at 1:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
1. There will also be earthquakes in Japan, China and Europe.
2. There will be a tsunami in Florida in the fall.
3. We are going to see an economic package in place in November.
4. There will be a cure found for M.S.
5. Obama will not be reelected.
6. The next president will be a Republican.
I don’t know what you people are complaining about. She’s 6/6. Note. For 1 and 2, she never says how big the earthquakes and tsunami would be. 3. She never says where or how big the economic package would be. So when I placed a quarter under my kids pillow, pretending to be the tooth fairy, the “economic package” was in place. 4. She never specifically states what M.S. stands for, and I do believe that in 2010 Mississippi was cured. 5. Obama was not re-elected as the Harvard Law Review’s editor. 6. And the next president of Fresno State’s Young Republicans was in fact a republican.
Area Man
January 4, 2013 at 1:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
From the Robertson predictions:
“Fashion tragedy: I predict the return of mesh shirts for men.”
He could have saved us all that stuff about natural disasters and deaths and told us what really matters.
noastronomer
January 4, 2013 at 2:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I took a look at the whole list and many of the prophecies were nice and proper. Blindingly obvious, but right, and as holytape demonstrates sufficently vague as to be useless.
Mike.
Carolyn
January 4, 2013 at 2:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t mind these hucksters. They entertain me. If I ever felt like going in for a tarot card reading with some friends and spent $20 of my own money on that as entertainment instead of a movie and overpriced popcorn, I think it is my right. That being said, I love your updates on the failed predictions, and calling them out for being wrong is just as much your right is it is theirs to separate dummies from their money.
Kevin
January 4, 2013 at 3:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I am 100% accurate in the predictions I made in 2012 about 2012.
I predicted Obama would be re-elected.
I predicted a continued slow improvement to the US economy.
I predicted no major terrorist assault within the territorial US (Bengazhi, being US soil technically but not in the territorial US doesn’t count).
I predicted my Dad would get Walker’s shortbread cookies for Christmas.
And I was right.
Of course, I made all those predictions on December 31…
This prediction stuff is easy if you do it the way the writers of the Bible did it.
John Hinkle
January 4, 2013 at 4:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Kevin
Those Walker’s Shortbread cookies rock…. Not that my wife ever shares them.
caseloweraz
January 4, 2013 at 5:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Holytape wrote: “4. She never specifically states what M.S. stands for, and I do believe that in 2010 Mississippi was cured.”
You’re misinterpreting those initials. They stand for Michael Steele. So she was right! (That is, the problem that was Michael Steele as head of the Republican Party was cured.)
Or was that in 2011?
caseloweraz
January 4, 2013 at 5:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Blair Robertson: “2013 will see the passing of a number of former world heads of state as well as their spouses.”
No kidding? There’s a foolproof prediction.
Ariel Sharon, perhaps? He’s 84 and had a stroke in 2006.
Area Man
January 5, 2013 at 5:39 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yes it is. As long as you understand that it’s entertainment, and that’s what you are buying, then there’s no reason to think it’s wrong. A contract, as it were, satisfied.
No, no, no. It is not okay for them to separate dummies from their money. Being dumb is not a legitimate criterion for being defrauded. If someone is led to believe that they’re getting service X in exchange for money, and they end up not getting X, then the contact is clearly not satisfied.
Psychics, barring some new and exciting evidence that we’ve been waiting decades to see but never have, are by definition unable to do what they claim to be able to do. That makes any contract for their services, aside from pure entertainment, null and void.
I don’t mean to be overly legalistic about this, but even by the loosest libertarian standards, there is no legitimate means by which a purported psychic can suck money out of some stupid mark. It is fraud, plain and simple.
dingojack
January 5, 2013 at 6:55 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Area Man – “…It is fraud, plain and simple”.
Is it? Only if the person perpetrating the ‘fraud’ can be proved to passing on information they know is false, and that the ‘mark’ acted on it and, in so acting, they’ lost out because of the false information.
Can all these be proven?
Fraud can be very difficult to prove in these kind of cases.*
Dingo
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* certainly that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t try (and remember IANAL)
Linksplat « Cubik's Rube
January 13, 2013 at 6:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
[...] – If you still think there’s any chance Sylvia Browne is psychically connected to some kind of deep universal truth, and isn’t just a huckster making shit up, you are paying no goddamn attention. [...]