In the Better Timeline...

I've heard people who are fans of science fiction, including time travel stories, say things like, "We are living in the worst timeline."

I've also heard people who are fans of the TV show The Good Place use that show's Season 1 finale shocker to describe the real world in which we now live: They've come to realize that this is the Bad Place: Hell.

The idea being that, maybe, there's another world where a historical event happened differently, leading to a better timeline, or that maybe we died, and began living in what would be, to us, considered Hell.

There's an old bit:

Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian, and it is all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is where the police are German, the chefs are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and it is all organized by the Italians.

And Trump has been President continuously since 2009, because there was a coup after President Black Man was elected.

In the better timeline...

* On November 2, 1968, a plane had mechanical difficulties, and Anna Chennault couldn't get on it to fly to Paris and sabotage the Vietnam War peace talks.

* Hubert Humphrey was elected President. The peace talks continued. Lyndon Johnson got a peace deal by Christmas. Humphrey took office without having to worry about Vietnam. He placed the call to the astronauts on the Moon, not Richard Nixon. There was no Kent State Massacre. Humphrey took us one step closer to universal health care, with MediKid, a children's version of Medicare. He replaces the retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren with former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, the man who, as Robert F. Kennedy's Deputy, got George Wallace out of the schoolhouse door in 1963.

*  With Nixon out of the way, Ronald Reagan was free to be the representative of both the traditional conservative movement and the evangelicals, and ended 12 years of the New Frontier and the Great Society. Reagan's Vice President was chosen because he was a part of the "Southern Strategy": Senator John Tower of Texas.

* It was the Reagan Administration that bugged the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post got right on it. It was also Reagan and company who orchestrated the coup in Chile in 1973. Mark Felt was still at the FBI, and, as "Deep Throat," he spilled the beans, and Reagan was impeached, and removed on August 9, 1974. The conservative and evangelical movements were struck a blow from which they could not recover in the short term.

* Tower became President, and couldn't stop the recession Reagan's tax cut had caused. The evangelicals abandoned him, because of his apparent womanizing and alcoholism. With the Reagan scandals hanging over him, he had no chance in 1976, and Jimmy Carter was elected.

* As President-elect, Carter met with the new Speaker of the House, Thomas "Tip" O'Neill of Massachusetts, and the new Senate Majority Leader, Robert Byrd of West Virginia. In our timeline, by his own admission, "I treated Congress like the Georgia legislature, and they treated me like the Governor of Georgia." In this timeline, they get off on the right foot, and, with the Kennedy-Harkin Bill, sponsored by Representative Tom Harkin and Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy of Massachusetts, universal health coverage passes on October 18, 1977. (I chose the date because it's the day the Yankees ended a 15-year World Series drought.) 

* With Nixon defeated in 1968, Henry Kissinger never becomes a person of influence in the American government. He's not there to, along with others like David Rockefeller, convince Carter to let the Shah of Iran into America for cancer treatment. Instead, Carter is warned by his Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, and Humphrey's, George Ball, not to do it, and he agrees. While Iran remains a problem from 1979 onward, there is no Iran Hostage Crisis.

* There is still a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This time, though, with no hostage crisis, and no resulting OPEC actions that have jacked up gas prices and caused overall inflation, Carter's announcement of a boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow is treated as a principled action, and widely supported. Ted Kennedy sees no reason to run for President, gets his drinking under control, and his separation and divorce from Joan is relatively quiet. Unopposed in the Democratic Primaries, Carter rolls to re-election over former Representative and Republican National Committee Chairman George H.W. Bush.

* In a bipartisan gesture, Carter makes his one and only appointment to the Supreme Court the 1st woman, a Republican, Sandra Day O'Connor.

* Having gotten the Camp David Accords and the Panama Canal Treaty, then a 2nd term, Carter mediates the reunification of Vietnam under a coalition government committed to free elections, and ends the civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. He gets a peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, there is no Israeli incursion into Lebanon, and that nation, Jordan and Egypt work with Yassir Arafat to turn the West Bank into the Republic of Palestine, with a capital to be built in East Jerusalem. It is nicknamed "Israel's Marshall Plan," and Carter is awarded the 1982 Nobel Peace Prize.

* Having achieved several domestic aims in his 1st term, there wasn't a whole lot for Carter to do in his 2nd. His Vice President, Walter Mondale, won a narrow victory over Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas. There was no Iran-Contra Scandal.

* In 1986, Chief Justice Katzenbach retired. In his place, Mondale appointed the leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joe Biden of Delaware. And there was no bitter partisan fight over the nominations to the Supreme Court of Robert Bork in 1987. Because, in 1987, to replace Lewis Powell on the Court, Mondale nominated Laurence Tribe, and the popular Harvard Law School professor was easily confirmed.

* By 1987, the economy had slowed, and the stock market crash that October sends the nation into recession. Complaints about "kitchen table issues" and crime lead to the election in 1988 of the darling of the tax-cut movement, Representative from New York, and former professional quarterback, Jack Kemp.

* It became one of the great ironies of American political history that President Kemp should be best remembered not for the tax cut he signed into law, or the recession it deepened, or for the budget reconciliation bill he signed to alleviate it, raising taxes, and causing those who had once been his foremost advocates to abandon him as "a traitor to the cause."

It was the Persian Gulf War. It could have been worse: He could have been dumb enough to press on to Baghdad, but his Secretary of State -- 1980 Republican Presidential nominee George H.W. Bush -- warned him against it, and he agreed. Kemp also presided over the closing of the Cold War, as first the Berlin Wall, then the Soviet Union, fell.

* There was no bitter partisan fight over the nomination to the Supreme Court of Clarence Thomas in 1991. Because, not desperate to pander to the conservative movement as the elder Bush was in our timeline, Kemp would have considered Thomas' record, and found him to be under-qualified to replace anyone, let alone Thurgood Marshall, the 1st black Justice on the Court.

Instead, he appointed Amalya Lyle Kearse to be the 1st black woman on it. (In our timeline, Carter appointed her to the federal bench, and Reagan thought enough of her to make her a finalist for the seat that went to O'Connor in 1981.) Kemp "crossed the aisle" to appoint her, being strong on civil rights. The joke was, because he'd played pro football, he had showered with more black people than most Republicans had ever actually met.

* Kemp responded to the beating of Rodney King by working with Democratic leaders to come up with a Crime Bill that not only would properly respond to escalating crime in the inner cities, but also hire more and better police officers. He knew it had to be done, but he also wanted to take crime off the table for the 1992 election. The officers who beat King were convicted on the 1st try, and there was no riot in Los Angeles.

* The 1992 Presidential election has been called one of the best ever. Kemp, only 57 and still full of vigor, was opposed by Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas. It was a conservative idea man vs. a liberal idea man, both very popular with college-age voters, who didn't yet have to go out and get a job. People who did turned to Clinton, because the recession was still going on, and the Republicans' attempts to blame Mondale for starting it weren't working anymore. With Vietnam a non-issue after 1968, Clinton didn't have it as part of his problems. But with universal coverage passed, Clinton couldn't campaign on that, either. The election was very close, but Clinton won a narrow victory.

* Without an evangelical movement to stand in his way, the more ridiculous accusations against Clinton never gained traction. But with much of what our timeline's Clinton wanted to do having already been done, there seemed little for him to do domestically after getting his budget passed. With Israel at peace with every neighbor except Syria and not-so-neighboring Iran, he was able to end the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia. But while his economic and peace achievement got him a 2nd term in 1996, over Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, there seemed little reason beyond ambition for him to run again. His 2nd term looked like it would be dull.

* It wasn't. Conservative journalists broke the scandal of his affair with Monica Lewinsky. With the country in peace and prosperity, on January 26, 1998, Clinton came clean, and, deciding that Vice President Al Gore could be President, but only he could be the one to work on his failings to his family, he became the 1st President ever to resign the office. He spared the nation a drawn-out story, and there was little celebrating among the Republicans, for whom the evangelical movement was just a quirky memory.

* Gore's environmental and tech initiatives helped, but while he proved an able administrator, he wasn't much of a politician. With the evangelical movement ruined, and the Bush name unable to regain momentum following the defeats for Governor of George W. in Texas and Jeb in Florida in 1994, the Republican nominee in 2000 was Senator John McCain of Arizona. He defeated Gore in a close election.

* On August 6, 2001, McCain read a Presidential Daily Briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside U.S." He took it seriously. On September 11, he announced to the nation that a major terrorist attack had been foiled. On September 14, he gave a press conference at Austin J. Tobin Plaza at the World Trade Center in New York, one of the saved targets, and warned Afghanistan to turn Osama bin Laden over to the U.S. It did. McCain also worked with Iraqi rebels, and Saddam Hussein was toppled from power in late 2003, without a large U.S. military presence.

* The Democrats thought they had to counter McCain's various foreign policy achievements with their own war hero and foreign policy expert. This was Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. But, with most of the things our timeline's Democrats wanted already long established in law, and with most of the things our timeline's Democrats wanted prevented already done so, there seemed little reason to vote for him. McCain won in a landslide.

* But the recession that began in 2007 due to the Republicans' deregulations turned into a full-blown crash in 2008. With Hillary Clinton teaching at Yale Law School, and not in the Senate, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois cruised to victory in the Democratic Primaries. The Republican Primaries were a mess, as McCain's Vice President, Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana, was seen as insufficiently intelligent and mature for someone 60 years old. His demand for "a return to honor and integrity" following the 1998 Clinton scandal got him on the ticket, but his actions and words since nearly derailed him in the Primaries. Obama beat him in a landslide, becoming the 1st black President. With Biden on the Supreme Court, his running mate, lending experience and "gravitas," is Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

* Obama solved the recession. But there was no reason to fight for "Obamacare": Something better had already been passed. There was no reason to kill Osama bin Laden: He was rotting away in the "supermax" federal prison in Colorado. What could he run on in 2012? In part, civil rights, including for women, by convincing Congress to codify Roe v. Wade into law and approve a renewal of the Equal Rights Amendment; and gay rights, including replacing Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" with an Executive Order allowing openly gay military personnel.

* Obama put Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court. With them joining a liberal wing that included Joe Biden, Laurence Tribe, Amalya Lyle Kearse, and Clinton appointees Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer, the 2 conservative McCain appointees of 2005, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, are all but powerless. The cases of Citizens United v. FEC, Shelby County v. Holder and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. go in the liberals' favor; while Obergefell v. Hodges goes the same way.

* In 2011, Donald Trump brings up the issue of Obama's birth certificate. Only this time, every living former President -- Carter, Mondale, Clinton, Gore and McCain (Kemp having died in 2009) -- signs a joint statement denouncing this as the rantings of a bigot, and saying it has no place in 21st Century America.

* With fewer achievements, Obama's win over former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts is a close one. His 2nd term amounts to little more than holding the fort.

* On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump comes down the escalator in the lobby of Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, ready to begin a press conference to announce his campaign for President of the United States. When he gets there, he is arrested by the FBI. It seems that Jeffrey Epstein chose to save his own skin as much as he could, and ratted Trump out. Before the 2016 election can be held, Trump is convicted of over 100 felonies, from the "Epstein Island" charges to business fraud.

* Governor John Kasich of Ohio is elected President in 2016, since Obama had no obvious successor, given that Vice President Leahy was 76 years old and not interested in the Presidency himself. Kasich governs as a traditional Republican, with tax cuts, deregulation, and the appearance of a strong foreign policy. There is little about him that is racist, and nothing like the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville ever happens. Because of earlier policing initiatives by Presidents Kemp and Clinton, many of the victims of police brutality in our timeline live out their lives. There is no Black Lives Matter movement, because nearly everybody in America agrees with that principle.

* Because of previous appointments to the Supreme Court, Kasich gets to make only one, replacing the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Neil Gorsuch in 2020. The Heritage Foundation wanted Brett Kavanaugh, but Kasich rejected their choice based on his inexperience and his personal behavior.

* When COVID hits in March 2020, Kasich follows the suggestions in the "pandemic playbook" that the Obama Administration left behind. Over 300,000 people die, but people take his word for it that things could have been even worse than that. By November, because people took him seriously in March, the crisis is over, and Kasich is re-elected over the 1st Jewish nominee for President of any major American party, Senator Al Franken of Minnesota.

* Kasich's 2nd term dealt mainly with the economic fallout of COVID, and the early 2020s are a time of recession. He aids Ukraine in its defense against Russia. He appoints Amy Comey Barrett to replace Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court in 2022, so the next appointment will decide the 5-4 majority. For this reason, Biden, Tribe and Kearse refuse to retire.

* Noting that these Justices, in 2024, are, respectively, 81, 83 and 87 years old, the Democratic nominee for President made the Court a big issue, saying that abortion rights and gay marriage could be overturned. Her message of "We're not going back" resonates, making Kasich's Vice President, the archconservative Mike Pence, look like the man who would reestablish a rejected old order. Kamala Harris is elected the 1st female President of the United States.

In our timeline, this was her swearing-in as Vice President in 2021.

* In 2025, Justice Kearse retires, and President Harris appoints Ketanji Brown Jackson to succeed her. Later in the year, following his cancer diagnosis, Chief Justice Biden retires, and President Harris appoints Patricia Guerrero, 53 years old and Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, someone she'd once worked with as California's Attorney General, to be the 1st Hispanic Chief Justice. She joins a liberal contingent with Jackson, Tribe, Sotomayor and Kagan; while the conservatives have Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett.

And here we are: A nation at peace, both domestic and foreign. Bigotry has been put in its place: In private, out of the public sector. When Democrats win, progress is made. When Republicans win, it's difficult, but it's not insane.

Less insanity -- in an official capacity, if not overall -- may have been the greatest gifts that Barack Obama and Joe Biden gave us in their time in office. Maybe the next President can do that for us, whoever he -- or she -- turns out to be.

October 21, 2015: "The Future" Is Here!

Today is October 21, 2015. The "future" part of Back to the Future Part II, a film made and released in 1989, took place on this date. "The Future" is here!

(Note: This is an update of a piece I did on January 1, 2014.)

What predictions did the film get right, and what did they get wrong? Using the newspaper photo above, and some other things mentioned in the future sequence, we can get an idea.

Don't worry, there will be sports involved.

Right: USA Today has changed its logo.

Wrong: They didn't use the one shown here. I wish they had: Their actual new one is stupid.

Right, sort of: "Cholesterol may be cancer cure." We do now know about "good cholesterol," as opposed to "bad cholesterol." "Good cholesterol" isn't a cure for cancer, but it does help with good health.

Wrong: A female President. In 2008, Hillary Clinton showed that it's possible. And, if she had simply said words to the effect of, "I voted for the Iraq War, and I was wrong," she would have won the Democratic nomination, and she would have won the general election, and she probably would have been re-elected as Barack Obama was, and -- presuming no medical or ethical calamity -- she would still be President today.

But she didn't admit she was wrong in Iraq, and Obama is in the White House, watching the various contenders to succeed him, including Hillary, jockey for position for the next year's election.

Right, sort of: "(something beginning with T) Bandits Strike." I'm not sure what this refers to, but recent years have seen an upsurge in pirate activity, especially on the Indian Ocean coast of Africa.

Wrong: "Queen Diana." The scriptwriters must have presumed that, in 2015, Queen Elizabeth II would be 89, and unlikely to still be alive; thus, Prince Charles would, by then, be King Charles III, and his wife would be Queen Diana.

They forgot that the Queen Mother was still alive at age 88, and in fact made it to 101. During her annual Christmas message last week, Queen Elizabeth, while definitely looking old, seemed healthy, and very much with it. But that's not the hard part: No one could have guessed in 1989 that, in 1992, Princess Diana would have begun divorce proceedings with Charles; and that, in 1997, she would die. Come to think of it, why is Diana visiting the U.S., with no mention of Charles? Shouldn't the King and the Queen be coming, together?

Right, possibly: "Swiss Terrorist Threat." Now, Switzerland isn't a base for terrorists these days, and it isn't exactly a target for terrorists, either. But plenty of places have been -- including Russia, which could hardly have been guessed when the movie was being made, as the Soviet Union was still in place. And, with the Swiss' secret banking system, and movements like Occupy Wall Street making their discontent known (although they haven't yet resorted to terrorism), is it really hard to believe that Switzerland could become a target?

Wrong, almost certainly: The Chicago Cubs win the 2015 World Series, by beating a Miami-based team whose logo is an alligator. For a moment, let's put aside the Cubs' inability to win a Pennant since 1945 and a World Series since 1908, and their failure to show up in the 1st 3 games of this year's NLCS against the Mets. After all, strange things have happened in baseball before, though not usually in the Cubs' favor. Let's talk logistics:

In 1989, it was hardly outrageous to suggest that Major League Baseball would have a team in Miami in the near future. Indeed, also released that year was Major League, in which the new owner of the Cleveland Indians said she had an offer from Miami to build a stadium for the Indians if she could get out of her lease at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. And, indeed, in 1991, MLB announced that a Miami team would begin play in the 1993 season. But the team would be called the Florida Marlins -- not the Gators, possibly due to issues with the University of Florida -- and would be in the National League, the same League as the Cubs, making a Cubs-Miami World Series impossible.

Granted, Commissioner Bud Selig has already moved the Milwaukee Brewers from the American League to the NL, and the Houston Astros from the NL to the AL. So it's not totally impossible that new Commissioner Rob Manfred would move the Marlins to the AL -- it might just boost attendance at Tampa Bay Rays games -- making a Cubs-Miami World Series possible. But it's highly unlikely.

The paper also says that the Cubs "sweep" the Series in 5 -- meaning the World Series, a best 4-out-of-7 competition since 1922, had become a best 5-out-of-9. But when the announcement goes up on the big screen in Courthouse Square, somebody says it was, "Four in a row." So whoever wrote that line didn't consult with whoever was making up the front page of the paper.

Right, sort of: "Pitcher Suspended for Bionic Arm Use." Okay, we don't yet have bionic arms. But players, including pitchers, are getting suspended for a form of cheating: Performance-enhancing drugs.

Wrong: Other sports. What's "slamball"? And a 3-minute mile? On July 7, 1999, Hicham el Guerrouj of Morocco ran the mile in 3 minutes, 43.13 seconds. That was a new record -- and now it's an old record. It hasn't been seriously challenged since. If we couldn't run a mile in less than 3:43 in 2015, I don't think even the most steroided-up middle-distance runner is going to do 2:59.anything in the foreseeable future.

Right: "Home Prices Increase." After the housing market became a cause (although hardly the biggest cause) of the 2008 economic crash, housing prices finally started to go back up in 2013. They have continued to rise in 2014 and 2015.

Wrong: "Man killed by falling litter." Some yutz threw garbage out of his flying car, and it landed on someone and killed him. That's the thing nobody ever mentions when talking about future predictions of flying cars. Oil leaks from such vehicles wouldn't be good, either. And if there's a crash in the sky, the cars and their pieces would fall to earth. Uh-oh, maybe it's good that we don't have flying cars.

Actually, my mother pointed out that we do already have flying cars: They're called "helicopters." Maybe, but the average person can't afford a helicopter. And it's not like every workplace has parking spaces for them (helipads).

Right, sort of: "Kelp Prices Increase." Health foods have become more popular. But it's not yet at the level at which an increase in kelp prices would be news serious enough to cause worry.

Wrong: "Jaws Without Bite." The film shows a holographic ad for Jaws 19, directed by Max Spielberg, the son of original Jaws director Steven Spielberg and his former wife Amy Irving. In 1989, Max was 4 years old.

In 2015, he is 30. Although he has appeared in brief roles as an actor, he has not become a director, instead working in films' art departments and designing video games. And after Jaws: The Revenge (the 4th film in the series) tanked, there has not been another. Although I wouldn't put a reboot of the series out of the question. Then again, if Max wants his first blockbuster to be a reboot of his father's, well, "You're gonna need a bigger budget."

From sources other than the paper:

Right, mostly: A travel office has a poster saying, "SURF VIETNAM." If you've seen the film Apocalypse Now, you'll recognize this as an inside joke: Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore (played by Robert Duvall) has his soldiers take over a beach, so that they could take a little time off to surf. They would, he thinks, be safe from snipers, because "Charlie don't surf!" (Using the "military alphabet," the Vietcong became the VC, or "Victor Charlie.")

BTTF II suggested that, between 1989 and 2015, relations between the U.S. and Vietnam -- a nation that had been united and Communist since 1975 -- would have improved to the point where travel between the countries would actually be encouraged. Much like China, Vietnam has gotten to the point where it is Communist in name only, totalitarian but embracing free-market reforms. And they do offer tours of war-related sites in their country.

Sure enough, surfing has taken hold as a popular recreation there. And an American who wants to go to Vietnam in 2015, presuming he can afford the trip, will almost certainly be able to do so.

Right, sort of: Virtual reality. In the scene in the Cafe '80s, Marty shows the kids how to play the (fictional) arcade game Wild Gunman. To this, they say that games played with your hands are for babies. Though kids nowadays are addicted to their smartphones (which really requires more finger movements than anything), playing games without your hands is done.

Right: Drones. The rise of drones has had effects both useful and scary. Although they may not be a common household item, to the point of taking our dogs for a walk, it is now possible.

Wrong: Hoverboards. There is, in 2015, one particular machine that works magnetically, on metal surfaces only. But skateboards that hover over the ground, and can be propelled by your trailing foot, and are available in your local toy store? They don't exist yet.

Right, possibly: Tranquilizer pills have become the drug of choice, where getting "tranked" has replaced getting drunk or high. This hasn't happened yet, although Ecstasy (or "molly," as Miley Cyrus calls it) seems to be young people's recreational drug of choice. But with the nation as a whole getting angrier, it is not hard to imagine a calm-down drug becoming popular in the late 2010s.

Wrong, mostly: Fashion. Teenage Marty McFly Jr., with the 1985-brought teenage Marty Sr. getting replicas from Doc Brown, wears a varsity-style jacket whose sleeves shrink to fit, and which automatically dries itself after getting wet. They also wear sneakers whose laces tie themselves: "Power laces, all right!" Neither is available today.

Later, we see the middle-aged Marty Sr. of 2015 wearing a suit with two neckties. And Doc Brown wears sunglasses that look like they're made out of reflective cardboard. Neither of these fashions is impossible today, but neither has either of them taken hold.

Right, possibly: Genetic manipulation. Marty Jr. looks like an exact duplicate of his father, and daughter Marlene also looks just like him, and not much like her mother Jennifer. Is Marty's ego so easily bruised that he needs to have his children look exactly like him?

It may now be possible to do this -- although it would suggest, as does the McFlys' nice suburban home, that the family is doing very well. We are led to believe that Marty's 1985 truck crash hurt his hand and ended his dream of becoming a guitar-cranking rock star. Yet, while he seems to be just another corporate drone, with a dull life, that job seems to pay pretty well. (Until he gets fired, that is.) He's certainly better off than his father George was in the pre-altered 1985.

Wrong: A Japanese economic takeover. Marty works for a company called Fujitsu. In 1989, Japan's economy was roaring, to the point where they were buying up American companies and property left and right. Johnny Carson, in his Carnac the Magnificent persona, even did the following joke on The Tonight Show:

A: Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York.
Q: What are the three largest Japanese cities?

But the early 1990s recession, which the film's producers apparently didn't see coming, socked Japan every bit as hard as it did America. In 2015, Japan is relatively strong and stable compared with the early 1990s, but the idea of Japan becoming the world's leading economic superpower is now ridiculous. China has been frequently predicted as such since that recession ended, but even that isn't all that likely in the next few years.

Right, sort of: Inflation. A "hoverconversion," making your car a flying car, can be done for $40,000 -- well, $39,999.95. In 2015, a new car, before you factor in options and trade-in value, will cost around $25,000 to $30,000. So, presuming that turning your car into a flying car were possible, a cost of $40,000 isn't particularly hard to believe.

Wrong: Inflation didn't go up by nearly as much as expected. Indeed, prices are only about twice what they were in 1989: On the average, something costing $1.00 then would cost $1.92 now. That doesn't hold for everything, but, still, prices haven't gone up by insane amounts.

A single ride on the New York Subway cost $1.00 in 1989, and it costs $2.75 now. Back then, $4.00 would get you into a movie; now, $12.00. A gallon of gas averaged about $1.00 at the time, and today, in my hometown of East Brunswick, New Jersey, the average price is $1.85 -- well down from the over $4.00 it was in 2010. (Thank you, President Obama -- a black man in the White House is something else they didn't predict, although they predicted a 2nd Goldie Wilson as Mayor of Hill Valley.)

$45 for a bottle of Pepsi? Try $1.50. Even Starbucks doesn't charge much more than $5.00 for a Venti (large) coffee drink. And while most people now (as opposed to 1955, when -- at least in the novelization -- Lou at Lou's Cafe was shocked to see teenage Marty with one) don't think anything of carrying $20 bills, most people prefer not to carry $50 bills (as Doc gave to Marty to order the Pepsi), and many stores refuse to take them.

Right: Pepsi and Pizza Hut are still in business. After the 1990-93 and 2007-10 recessions, no company staying in business permanently can ever again be taken for granted. But then, predicting consumer trends is harder:

Wrong: The Coffee Revolution. The rise of Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Tim Hortons, et al. wasn't predicted. In 1989, Starbucks was still limited to Seattle, Dunkin to the Northeast, and Timmy's to Canada.

Wrong: As I said earlier, no flying cars, and no highways in the sky. Although, as I pointed out, this may be a good thing.

Right: Advances in television. A screen the size of the one the McFlys have in 2015 is hardly impossible, and putting 6 shows at once on it can probably already be done. The novelization of the film has Marty Sr. telling Marty Jr. and Marlene, "When I was your age, if I wanted to watch 2 TV shows at once, I had to put 2 TVs together!" It's good to know that, even now, we can still give kids the old, "When I was your age... "

Wrong: Books no longer need dust jackets, because dust-repellent paper has been invented. The way the woman at the bookstore was describing it, this was not a new phenomenon. If it has yet been invented, it hasn't yet been publicized.

Right: Using your TV as a video telephone. It's pretty expensive, but it's being done today. This could also be a TV with a computer built in, allowing the kind of videoconferencing we now see with Skype and FaceTime.

Right: Tablets. In an attempt to save the historic courthouse clock tower, Marty is presented with a petition to sign on a flat, hand-held computer. These days, people use their tablets more (or in place of) their actual computers. After all, who wants to lug around a laptop?

Right: Google Glass. Marty's kids are just like kids today, totally distracted by technology at the dinner table. And while Google Glass may not be mainstream yet, the idea behind glasses that function as a computer and phone is exactly the concept behind the TV glasses of the film.

Wrong: Fax machines, fax machines everywhere. The fax was still a big thing in the late 1980s, and it was only at the tail end of 1989 that the World Wide Web began. It was only in 1994 that most people began hearing the words "the Internet," and even in 1996, it still sounded really funny to hear people say, "Double-you double-you double-you dot (fill in the blank) dot com."

BTTF II did not include references to the Internet because they simply didn't know. It was far easier to discuss horseless carriages (the original English term for automobiles) when predicting the future in 1885 (the year BTTF III went back to) than it was to discuss what the early 1990s would call "the information superhighway" in the late 1980s.

Wrong: Phone booths, phone booths everywhere. With smartphones being common, just try finding a payphone at all, never mind one in a booth.

Wrong, mostly: Medicine. Doc Brown said he went to "a rejuvenation clinic." Now, he didn't specifically say that he did this in 2015. But he did say the process, including changing his blood and replacing his spleen and colon, "added a good 30 or 40 years to my life!" (Yeah, right -- if you don't go back to 1885 and get shot by a desperado just 8 months after you arrive.)

When we meet the McFly family of 2015, Old George has thrown his back out playing tennis, and is suspended upside-down by what looks to my 2015 eyes like a Roomba. No, that's not going to happen. And even if it does, is it really going to be good for a bad back?

Old Biff complains about his implants not working. There are various kinds of implants that make maladies easier to live with -- but they certainly don't spark the way Old Biff's do.

Wrong: Three-second meals in a microwave oven. It would be nice, but it hasn't happened yet.

Right: Suburbs are boring and sterile in 2015. Yes, they are, just as they were in 2000, in 1985 for BTTF's "present" and my high school days, in the 1970s when I was a kid, and even in 1955 when BTTF's "past" takes place.

Wrong: The legal system. Fifteen years in jail for a simple theft? It must be something that even Edward Snowden wouldn't be willing to steal. And all lawyers being abolished? Remember: In the 2015 that we know, a lawyer is President -- and this would be true if Hillary had won, as well. And even if Mitt Romney had won in 2012, considering all his business and tax shenanigans, he wouldn't have gotten lawyers abolished, either. Most likely, this was the writers going for a cheap laugh.

Right, sort of: Marty's physical difficulty. His 1985 truck crash (averted in BTTF III) left him with damage in his right hand, rendering him unable to play guitar as well as he had before.

Sadly, his portrayer, Michael J. Fox, has spent years dealing with Parkinson's disease. Meaning that, if a Back to the Future Part IV had been made for release in 2015, to dovetail with the earlier films as "future" becomes "present," the 54-year-old Fox would have been less able to play Marty than the 77-year-old Christopher Lloyd would be to play Doc Brown.

Left to right: Theme writer-singer Huey Lewis,

Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, 2015

So Back to the Future Part II got a lot of things wrong. But, if you stretch things just a little, they got a lot of things right as well.

So, feel free to look at what they did get right, and say, "Great Scott!" Or, "Whoa, this is heavy."

But then, in the words of the now late, great Yogi Berra, "The future isn't what it used to be."