An exclusive interview with Barack Obama in 2039

In yet another Clairvoyant Times exclusive, correspondent David Durantz met with former President Barack Obama in 2039, on the 30th anniversary of his inauguration into the White House.

They talk racism, the insanity of war and Chicago pizza. Below is their interview:

The future of for-profit news, from the future (Becky Hammond, Kate Upton, Olivia Wilde)

New York, N.Y., 2044 — Newsgathering organizations that operate for profit have become little more than megaphones for popular topics du jour, a Clairvoyant Times analysis has shown.

Gone are the days when journalists were watchdogs, holding those in power accountable for their deeds and calling for justice when scales were imbalanced. Journalists are increasingly being asked to write stories geared toward search engine optimization, or SEO, and trending topics on Google and Twitter, the analysis found. Here is one example, from the Aug. 6, 2044 edition of the New York Times, once considered a bastion of journalism integrity:

When Becky Hammon was named coach of the San Antonio Spurs in 2014, the sports world was at once shocked and excited. This week marks the 30^th anniversary of Hammon’s hiring.

Hammon, however, was close to Kate Upton at that time. Back then, rumors claimed that Upton was pregnant, because she had gained weight. It quickly became apparent that the rumor was stirred to create publicity around Upton’s favorite dessert, Drake’s Yodels, which had only been on the market for a year after the company was rejuvenated by a Greenwich, Conn., billionaire after Drake’s parent company, Hostess, had earlier shuttered its doors.

Then came the case of Olivia Wilde, who also loved Yodels. In 2014, Wilde created a storm of controversy over a photograph of her breastfeeding her child. It was later confirmed that the photo was a fake, and was created by a fifth grader using advanced computer graphics techniques and Photoshop. 

The fifth grader happened to be a distant cousin of then-Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who himself became hot news when his son invited a slurry of disreputable souls to join the ‘boys for a party on board the team’s $17 million bus. The night climaxed with a midnight showing of a pirated version of the blockbuster movie, Divergent, starring a bunch of improbably good-looking young people who have to fight their way to freedom.

Joining the bus party was London mayor Boris Johnson, who also made headlines in 2014 for announcing that he would run for prime minister of his beloved country. That news made Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu accidentally push a red button, which launched additional missiles into Gaza, further inflaming tensions there.

Gaza decided to then release a biological weapon onto the Israeli people, using a nearly 100% lethal strain of the ebola virus. The ebola spread to many parts of the country, killing thousands before an effective quarantine was established. People said the attack was reminiscent of Hitler’s assault on Jewish people the century before, so the ebola strain was nicknamed “Hitler’s ebola.”

It’s clear that this story, like many others, was crafted solely to generate the maximum number of web hits, which would please advertisers whose first goal is to maximize the number of eyes that read their ads. It’s rarely considered, however, that web hits in Japan for a business in America might not be a benefit.

Other critics note that only elite businesses and corporations benefit from the “hits from anywhere” philosophy, since they are the only ones that can afford a strong international presence. The traditional mom-and-pop stores that were once the foundation of a thriving economy have become little more than a nuisance for the global conglomerate behemoths that dominate the world economy.

Some say the small business owner should diversify and offer products to sell online, and embrace this globalizing marketplace. The sad reality is that the global market is over-saturated with so many products that the lone salesman working on her own would find it nearly impossible to compete with the bottom-floor prices advertised by competitors who make money through volume.

During a previous era, these inequities would surely be covered ad nauseum by media outlets that saw this as an economic injustice and an affront the basic tenants of democracy. Not any more. The status quo is what matters, and to challenge it would be to bite off the hand that feeds.

The only hope for journalism, according to this media outlet’s analysis, is the non-profit model. Some websites have been able to make it work through generous donations, often by angel donors. Sometimes, money is raised through the audience itself, such as through the National Public Radio model.

In this way, the news organization is accountable to its audience, and not advertisers who only care about maximizing its sales reach. In this way, there is an incentive to write about stories that actually matter, and not ones that would simply benefit the advertiser. This model allows a news organization to focus on quality over quantity, and to create news that is so compelling that people would pay to continue to receive that organization’s work.

It’s not perfect, and it certainly has its flaws. But it’s better than the hyper-hit era that has dominated for-profit news since the early 21^st Century.

Becky Hammond, Kate Upton, Olivia Wilde, Boris Johnson and Benjamin Netanyahu could not be reached for comment. Some are presumed dead, although it’s unclear because news organizations no longer write about people who were once famous but who have since fallen out of favor.

Is McDonald’s new flavored air beverage, McAir, full of gas? Or is it the wind of change? A Clairvoyant Times exclusive investigation

THE CLAIRVOYANT TIMES — Sitting at his walnut and mahogany desk overlooking palm trees and an azure lagoon, Ray Crock III thumbs open a small canister and instantly inhales deep. He sucks in three or four more breaths before pausing, eyes closed, and allowing a wide smile to spread across his well-tanned face.

“Try it,” he insists, tossing me a can of his newest concoction, McAir, set to be rolled out in McDonald’s stores worldwide in the summer of 2055. I can’t help but think of the Spaceballs movie, when one of Mel Brooks’s characters, President Scroob, enjoys a few salient whiffs of Perri-air. Crock senses my hesitancy.

“It’s nothing but air, pure air, with a couple of scent chemicals,” he says. It’s this last part that worries me. Scent chemicals? That’s what I’m interested in learning more about. Always the intuitive businessman, Crock knows my question before I ask it.

“They’re derived from the food we make,” he says proudly, as if it were an inevitable evolution. “Not everybody wants all the fat and calories in a Big Mac or large fry, so we bottled the scent of our best-selling products, so fat people don’t have to feel guilty about eating crap anymore.”

His notorious no-nonsense logic — offensive, hypocritical and hypothetically self-defeating — distills my fear into petrification. “Yeah, but, what exactly are the chemicals and are they safe?” I ask. Crock laughs, as if my question were rhetorical.

“Safe? We’re selling it, ain’t we,” he says, with no hints of irony. “I can’t talk about specifics, mind you. It’s proprietary.”

Of course it is. “Well, can you tell me about the process of putting the scents into the bottle? How does that work?” I figured if I could massage his ego a bit, he might slip up and tell me something I wanted to know.

“Well, take the Big Mac for example,” Crock begins. “What we do is we take about a thousand Big Macs and we stack ‘em on top of each other, like a tower. They sit in this cylinder that is perforated with tiny holes, so air can be sucked out but solids stay inside. We then suck the air out, add our chemical concoction to make the smell stronger and last longer, and voila! You have McAir.”

What happens to the 1,000 Big Macs after they’re used for their scent? “We recycle them into cow feed. We’ve been a green-certified facility since green was green,” Crock says, exploding in laughter. “Recycling is a priority of ours.”

Cows eating beef? Is that normal? To Crock, that’s what makes McDonald’s burgers taste so unique. “It’s double beef flavor. We feed burgers to all our cows.”

Fearing he would take that statement off the record, I quickly changed the subject. “So all McAir scents are derived in this way?”

Crock affirms, then tosses me another can. On the front is an attractive, racially mixed couple with stylish hair and bright white smiles that beam off the red can. It reads: McAir, hot fudge sundae with nuts. Crock smiles at me, nudges me with hand gestures to quit stalling and take a whiff. I reluctantly oblige.

It hits me like a burning crack rock upon the lips of an impressionable ghettoian. My mind actually wanders to a different place in time. My feet lighten, my heart beats faster but feels somehow slower. The unmistakable sensation of chocolate and vanilla fuse in the back of my throat through my nose. My tongue trembles, and the natural signs of hunger kick in with a vengeance. I want more.

“Try this one,” Crock says, and tosses me a McAir version of the apple pie. It’s euphoric. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine a sensation to bridge sensations in such a magical and improbable way.

I stayed with Crock for three days, and inhaled roughly $114,000 worth of McAir cans at $5 a piece. Crock comped them all, of course. The first rule of journalism is free food, or in this case, free whiffs of scented air. Considering a Big Mac still only cost 27 cents to make and sells for $2, and from 1,000 Big Macs Crock generates about 20,000 cans of McAir, the profit margin is astounding.

I quickly retired as a journalist and became PR manager for McDonald’s Nike Inc. Ten days later, the United States Department of Agriculture approved an organic version of McAir, called McConscious Whiffer.

Rumors that Burger King is working on a prostate-massaging enema that reverses the digestive track, giving people the sensation that they are eating a Whopper roughly 20 hours after insertion remain unverified. However, Taco Bell’s Scratch-n-Sniff Chalupa division has filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s for stealing its Olfacto-food® technology for McAir. Crock vehemently denied any correlation between McAir and Olfacto-food®, and is countersuing Taco Bell for buying all the USDA Grade F meat on the market, leaving no putrid scraps for McDonald’s burgers.

The Clairvoyant Times: Coca-cola declares war on itself using ‘elephonkey’ method

CLAIRVOYANT TIMES — July 28, 2029.
Coca-cola flipped the marketing world upside down once again, this time by publicly trashing Dasani, the bottled water division of the Coke empire.

Strategists are baffled by this bombastic buffoonery.

“I really don’t know what to make of it,” said Ray Crock III, CEO of McDonalds Nike Inc. “I haven’t slept in three days, mulling over the, ‘Is this genius, or lunacy?’ sentiment.”

Crock spearheaded the fast food industry’s 2022 campaign to successfully define naturally-occuring water as an enemy of public health, and is widely regarded as the master of corporate propaganda. His confusion regarding Coke's masochistic maneuvering is an almost universal sentiment in consumer-marketing circles.

However, a former Coke official close to The Clairvoyant Times explained that Coke’s move is beyond genius, “It’s god-like."

"What they’re doing is engaging in what marketing insiders call the ‘elephonkey method,’” explained the former executive, who wished to remain anonymous.

The elephonkey method, the source described, reflects the campaign tactics devised by oil companies and weapons manufacturers and used by Republicans and Democrats in the American political system. “When you start a fight, people take a side,” she said. “When people take a side, the government, or the corporation in this case—well, it's really corporations in both cases, but you get my point—when people take a side, the company wins either way, because they own both products, just as in the case of the government, the corporations win either way because they own both candidates. Voters, or rather, consumers in Coke's case, don’t care who owns what, they’re only interested in the drama, the fight, and taking a side.”

When Crock heard of this concept, he keeled over and died from a massive aneurysm. The official death report indicated he was smiling larger than his face could handle, causing the eventual ballooning of a facial artery which then traveled to his brain.

Crock’s second in command, Sam Knight IV, said he would watch for other drink labels to pick up what he calls “the independents.”

“These ‘third-partiers’ are people who hate the fight,” Knight said. “These people think they are outside of the system, so they seek the drinks that don’t market at all, that don’t play the games.”

But Coke is already ahead of the game, according to the company's former executive. She confirmed that Coke is the owner of the recently released soda called Anarch, and was marketing it strictly through street graffiti, tattoos, web hacking, media sabotage and guerilla theater.

“There are no traceable connections to Coke, so Anarch looks like a grassroots beverage,” she said. “It's anti-establishment theme attracts all consumers who hate being called consumers. However, it also includes the same addictive secret chemicals that are in Coke, so they're basically guaranteed record profits.”

There are also unconfirmed reports of an underground version of Dasani called Neechuh, to be released sometime in the fall.

Dasani officials declined to comment for this story, but noted that its water still comes straight from the tap in Mexico City and will never deviate from selling nature’s most abundant resource for the same price as a Coke. Experts expect Dasani will be forced to inject its water with empty calories if it hopes to compete with its carbonated brethren, especially in the developing world where every calorie counts.

Utilizing government tactics as firepower for corporate propaganda has a long and glorious history that dates back to the invention of the wheel. When Walmart Inc. purchased the rights to the wheel in 484 B.C., it immediately began utilizing Persian Empire tactics of fear and intimidation to force people to pay homage to the Walmart god, Waltonia.

Coke's angle may be more secular than Walmart's, but investors say its end effect will be no less potent: angering people to the point of purchasing their only escape—a carbonated or flat beverage bottled by the propaganda masters.

White people leave United States in droves: A Clairvoyant Times exclusive (as always)

The Clairvoyant Times, March 1, 2040:

Caucasians have left the building... and the country. A 400-year reign has ended for white people after recent census numbers revealed that Hispanics are now the majority ethnic group in the United States. Celebrations across the country juxtaposed the somber mood on Wall Street and throughout the midwest and most of New England.

White people have been steadily fleeing the country since losing power in all facets of government and economy.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said white guy Steve Doramus, CEO of PoopGro, a sludge fertilizer company formerly based in North Carolina. Doramus and his family recently left for Beijing where he will start selling human excrement to Chinese farmers as fertilizer. He said that ever since other ethnicities took control over the United States, environmentally disastrous businesses have not been able to turn a profit. China, however, is still open for business.

“It’s a scary day in America when you can’t buy your way to power,” Doramus said. “It’s a good thing China doesn’t give a crap about its environment. At least some U.S. policies will survive [in other countries].”

The mass emigration of white people from the U.S. to other lands – mainly Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa and China – has created an economic ripple effect, said Jorge Sanchez, an economist at Harvard Escuela de Negocios.

“Many markets are soaring, but there are several that seem hurt now that white people are leaving,” Sanchez said. The plastic surgery market plummeted because many surgeons are white, Sanchez added, and these people are now seeking hideous faces to conform to shallow standards in other countries.

Mental health pharmaceuticals lost 90% of their customers and three companies have already gone belly-up. Health insurance providers are racing to affect international health care laws to get a piece of the global market which, until now, was untapped because of “stupid public health care systems.”

“But now that white Americans are finally infiltrating the rest of the world, we can pretty much guarantee that public health systems will crumble and make way for the private health insurance companies that are the backbone of a thriving capitalist democracy,” said Rich Merchant, president of the Walmart Insurance Network (WIN).

The changing of the racial guard spurred a sharp drop in crime and has sociologists and economists – people who aren’t normally confused – confused. “We can’t figure it out,” said Sho Gun Di, professor of social economics at Chiang Ze Princeton Tao University. “We suspect that maybe white people were once the targets of crimes, but now they’re gone, most people aren’t interested in criminalizing people they like.”

Others consider the phenomenon a result of police departments and judges becoming increasingly multiethnic, now that most of the white people who once held those positions are fleeing like mice after seeing a cat.

“You really don’t see any more instances of people being arrested for being black on a Friday night,” said Sgt. Jerome Jenkins of the Los Angeles Police Department. “We have seen a rise in arrests for people being white and in a black church on Sunday, though.”

Prison populations have also declined, an effect attributed to the rise in alternative punishments, Jenkins added. Graduation rates among African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans have skyrocketed since the U.S. Department of Education hired Redtree Coyote to run its operations in 2036.

Coyote has since become the first Native American woman to be elected president of the United States. Her tenure sparked an unprecedented explosion of native freedoms, said Greg Bear, president of Americans Indians for American Freedom.

Studies by the AIAF indicate that almost all Native Americans that were once in Alcoholics Anonymous classes have now left and have not touched the bottle since Coyote’s election. Many lands that were confiscated have now been returned to the natives and health care for native people has actually become a reality.

“I guess now that white people gave up, native people don't feel like they have to drink themselves into oblivion to deal with the fact that their homeland was raped and abused and our people murdered and lied to,” Bear added.

But countries receiving the influx of American refugees are not overly excited about housing Uncle Sam’s pale orphans. “Everywhere I look in the world it’s white people,” said Francis Bobowokoye, South Africa’s minister of culture and tourism. “I thought colonialism was over. When are they just going to go away? Haven’t they ruined the world enough?”

Indian officials are just as skeptical. “We had the English rule our country for centuries, now we have to worry about the Americans coming in? It’s too much,” said Raj Patel, India’s ambassador to Pakistan.

Canada denied Americans attempting to cross its border. In an official statement, the Canadian government stated that “all you needed to do was teach your children better (read: languages) and none of this would have happened.” Mexico also denied Americans, claiming they would “steal Mexican jobs, drink all the Mexican tequila and try to open up Taco Bells.”

A small contingency of white people flocked to the Caucasus Mountains in Armenia and Azerbaijan and buried themselves in the ground in an attempt to “get in touch with their roots.”

Not all white people are leaving or plan to leave. Several thousand stayed behind to join the party that has become an epic multicultural extravaganza ever since the news hit that white people are no longer the majority.

“These white folks get it, they understand,” said T-bone Bisceiwitz, a former drug runner who recently completed law school and is now running for attorney general in Utah. “These white people know that human beings are all just one race anyway. Now, with bad whitey on the outs, maybe we can all just get along.”

During her State of the Union address, President Coyote made her position on the emigration clear: “White people are always welcome in America. Everyone is welcome. But just remember, if you visit someone and they let you sleep on their couch, that doesn’t mean you can take the couch, kill the children, rape the mother and enslave the father. Just sleep on the couch.”

Information Deemed Illegal: Reading The Clairvoyant Times Could Give You Five Years in Prison

THE CLAIRVOYANT TIMES NEWS WIRE FROM THE FUTURE: Jan. 1, 2015. After reports of Sarah Palin’s affair with Julian Assange made headlines in late 2014, the two have succeeded in criminalizing all forms of information this week with the passing of the U R EFFED Act.

Spearheaded by Palin, Assange and the Hitler Coalition for Silence, the U R EFFED Act (which is an acronym for United Reinforcement of the Elimination of Free Facts and Earnest Deliberations), has made information illegal. By reading this article, you are breaking Sec. 1-4 of the law, which states “Words strung together in the form of sentences to create a meaningful or otherwise informative and/or entertaining sensation shall be limited to school books as deemed appropriate by the U.S. Walmart Department of Education... any other such coordination of phrases shall be punishable by no less than five (5) years in Federal prison.”

Free speech advocates are screaming foul play, but security experts claim that information is creating a “know everything” phenomenon where every person has access to knowledge. “There is no worse thing in the world than information access,” Palin said at her press conference in an abandoned bear cave in the middle of nowhere. “Julian and I came together to... well, he came first, to me and said that he wanted... What the hell did you want Julian?”

Julian was on a live Skype feed from his headquarters on Mars. The lag time was roughly ten minutes, where the entire press core sat in silence, watching a mysterious red liquid drip off Palin’s hand onto a large fish which flopped around on the floor. Finally he spoke.

“Yes, Sarah, we came together to end information access,” Assange said. The press went ballistic.

“Why this action, after WikiLeaks broke down the access barrier in 2010?” asked Juan Gutierrez of Mother Jones.

“Where are you, really?” inquired Fred Merchant of The New York Times.

“Who are you?” asked Ron Jones from Fox News.

After another long lag, Assange spoke. “WikiLeaks was just a way to get on TV. I was thinking about being an axe murderer, but I hate guns,” Assange said, as eyebrows raised throughout the crowd in bewilderment.

“But if information has become illegal, how can we have this press conference?” yelled a young girl from the local high school newspaper. Everyone turned to scowl at the teenager, whose question seemed to put everyone in danger.

Palin assured everyone that the press conference – because it was strictly for propaganda – was perfectly legal. “It’s other information that’s illegal,” she said, as she whacked the flopping fish with her Gucci club.

But the climax of the conference came after Assange revealed that all WikiLeaks’ reports were actually falsified, and that the so-called "classified" documents were derived from video game scenarios that “were just too damn cool to ignore.”

Bedlam ensued upon hearing the news that every major story from the past four years was based not on facts, but on a nine-year-old's experience playing the hit game Medal of Honor. Three people in the press pit had heart attacks and died on the spot. Another two had debilitating strokes. The AP reporter spontaneously ignited on fire, and the Fox News correspondent lit a cigar off the flaming carcass.

“Everyone calm down,” Palin urged. “Information isn’t that important anyway. If ignorance is bliss, why can’t we all just be blissful?”

Renown author Ray Bradbury sat in the corner, surrounded by burning books and wagging his finger. The books were lit by panicked members of the press who thought they were breaking the law with their possession of information.

San Sveritas, editor of The Clairvoyant Times, noted that Palin’s 2011 lawsuit against The Clairvoyant Times for printing her torrid affair before it happened has nothing to do with the accurateness of this report.

Walmart Launches Nuclear Reactor Sales At Consumers

FROM THE FUTURE: Nov. 12, 2029. Walmart announced today that it will begin marketing plans for the YouNuke, a consumer-friendly nuclear reactor that enables families to generate their own nuclear waste, with electricity as an added benefit.

“It’s a great day for the world economy,” said Richie Madoff, CEO of Walmart, a subsidiary of We Own Everything, Inc., a global corporation which owns pretty much everything. “Living better is all about saving money. Always. And nuclear reactors are the best way to save money and live better.”

The YouNuke is the size of a Volkswagon Beetle, and can easily fit in a basement or in your dirty neighbor’s yard. Walmart has partnered with Coca al Qaeda to negotiate the purchase of enriched uranium from Iran, which will be used in conjunction with sewage from the home to create the toxic waste. This waste can then be sold as raw materials to fast food eateries or rocket fuel manufacturers.

Madoff added that, like his father Bernie who left him as a bastard in 1990, he has nothing but good ideas for the future of his company. To promote the launch of the YouNuke, Madoff is offering a free Indonesian slave child for every two YouNukes purchased.

“Originally, we planned to give away a slave child for every YouNuke purchased, but we realized the child population in Indonesia wasn’t large enough to coincide with our sales projections.”

Madoff expects to sell at least 74 million units during its promotion, which would have effectively eliminated Indonesia’s under-5 population. Under the adjusted marketing plan – if sales meet projections – Indonesia’s child population would only be cut in half. “That’s much better for Indonesia,” Madoff admits. “Plus, we don’t want America to be overrun with slave children. Then there’d be no work for the illegal immigrants.”

Human rights groups were appalled at this notion, and called for a worldwide boycott of Walmart to prevent what is being called the “most abominable affront to human dignity since The Biggest Loser.” The boycott quickly lost steam, however, after Walmart donated $1 trillion to the major human rights organizations.

The United Nations announced it would set up a committee to examine if a commission on studying the need for an agency would be needed to investigate whether Walmart’s donation violated international treaty.

The idea for consumer-based nuclear energy is nothing new. In 2022, the Belgian-based company Luftwaffles Andsyrup created an isotope of enriched uranium that when combined with human sludge generated powerful flows of steam which were used to rotate a turbine. But the odor of vaporized excrement was too strong to be mass marketed, and the project was dropped.

Walmart engineers then picked up where the Belgians left off. The company learned how to handle the stench by partnering with pharmaceutical giant Phizer, which offers YouNuke buyers a lifetime prescription of Smellnomor, a drug that kills the human olfactory glands.

Walmart’s expansion plans continue to grow in ambition. After declaring itself a Corporate Republic in 2018, Walmart became the first global corporation to function as a sovereign state. Headquartered on the moon, Walmart positioned itself to dominate the interstellar economy. The YouNuke is its first step at ensuring ubiquity in the universe.

Walmart set the MSRP for the YouNuke at $1,423.64, but will also accept DNA from the Warren Buffett Genotype Laboratory as currency.