Author Richard Cahill's Website--Living By Our Motto:"There Are No Stupid Questions, Just Stupid People Asking Questions Everybody else already knows the answer to."

The Rapture did not happen yesterday, September 22, 2023, although it was predicted to do so. The cynics jeered once again, because predictions of the Rapture have failed before--here, here, and here are a few examples of the Final Days not occurring when scheduled.
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This time, though, Jesus has a good excuse for not returning in glory to judge the living and the dead—he was busy forgiving the Christian congressperson from Colorado, Lauren Boebert, for getting “eccentric,” (her word—it’s okay if you read “drunk,” instead) at a musical in Denver.
 
Boebert, an avowed Christian, advocate of family values and merging church and state, was videoed vaping, singing, groping with her date and giving security the finger as she was tossed out of the theatre on her Freedom Caucus tushie.
 
That’s a lot of Commandments to break before intermission, and then she pretty well fractured the Eighth when she tried denying it all, before being shown the videotape.
 
But, according to standard Christian theology, she can be forgiven if she asks for forgiveness, and when she did, Jesus had to strap on his best forgiving sandals to get the job done. “Me Christ,” he muttered. “Push back the Rapture again. This job is going to run through the weekend.”
 
Jesus’s main squeeze, Mary Magdalene, and his side chick, Joan of Arc, were already mad at Christ’s plans to incept the Apocalypse Saturday or Sunday, depending on what time zone the quivering sinners he was going to condemn to Hell lived in, since both had plans for His Body, as they usually did over the celestial weekend. His plan to spend it forgiving Lauren Boebert instead, and ruin some future weekend fun with a dreary old Final Day then, had both of them boiling over.
 
“What can I say?” Jesus told them. “She fucked a Democrat. You just can’t snap your fingers at that. Forgiving a loathsomely horny hypocrite who bleats about following Me is something I have to work myself up to. It’s not like forgiving masturbation, which I already have to do a couple times a day, in her case.”
 
“I still don’t see why it has to take the whole weekend,” Mary Magdalene said, bitterly.
 
“Being the Redeemer of the World is a job, you know. With great power comes great responsibility.”

“THAT’S SPIDERMAN! NOT YOU!”
 
“Yes, but I like it. I often wished I’d added that to the Sermon on the Mount, instead of leaving it for Marvel to snatch up. Now, run along. You can always go to Hell and watch Satan’s imps eviscerate Pat Robertson, like they do every day. You know you like that, and it helps work some of your anger out.”
 
So, Jesus is still forgiving Lauren Boebert while this is getting typed. That’s why we didn’t have the Rapture yesterday.
 
Lauren is going to be cool with Christ by Sunday. Whether she is going to be cool with her voters remains to be seen.

Ron DeSantis has promised to invade Mexico “on Day One” of his still putative Administration. The Tangerine Drama Queen has already threatened military action to that friendly, warm, tequila-producing neighbor of ours to the south. The rest of the GOP field is yittering about it as well.
 
We are not talking about marching to Tijuana and then driving through Rosarito all the way to Cabo, drinking margaritas all the way. I’ve done that personally, but not in the company of a hundred thousand heavily armed soldiers.
 
No, both Meatball Ron and Defendant Don are talking about Special Ops missions to surgically take out Mexico’s cartel kingpins, who are pumping the USA full of fentanyl, which is killing US citizens.
 
Naturally, Mexico is averse to this theoretical occupation. Why, you ask? Shouldn’t they be grateful the US is putting its criminal warlords out of business, because they don’t seem to be able to do it?
 
Consider an alternative scenario. Mexicans are getting fatter, and that is killing some of them. Some people blame that on American fast food, franchises for which are spreading throughout that sunny land. More rational minds note that Mexicans could easily get fat without the help of KFC and Pizza Hut, because their own food is delicious, but a future Mexican President decides that American junk food is to blame for the deaths of Mexican citizens, and launches surgical strikes using Mexican Marines on McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago, Wendy’s in Dublin, Ohio and, for good measure, the castle of the Burger King in Miami, Florida, even though their fries suck.
 
Would the US respond by saying, “Thank God! All those Double Quarter Pounders and Whoppers were giving us heart attacks, too. Praise the Mexican Marines! Too bad they left so fast in those black helicopters instead of sticking around to have sex with our daughters!”
 
Um, NO. I imagine the US would respond by laying waste to the Mexican land, from Mexicali to Cancun, killing thousands in the process. Mexico is not going to be able to return that favor, but they are going to be miserably unhappy about it.
 
Let’s face it, people love to suck down cheeseburgers and get high, although not necessarily in that order, and no amount of covert or overt military action is going to change that.
 
Mexico is our #1 trading partner. It’s true China sends us all the cheap shit in Walmart that breaks as soon as you try and use it, but that doesn’t make them number one. Every tomato in every American supermarket in January was grown in Mexico. Every bottle of Modelo was brewed there. I could go on, but mostly I oppose military action in Mexico because it is my favorite place para comer, beber y pescar.*
 
Most Republicans are afraid to go to Mexico. This is another of the pleasant wonders of this beautiful country. Republicans think that Mexicans hate us, and are liable to shoot us on sight. This is the opposite of the truth. Mexicans are the most hospitable people on earth, and you are much more likely to be shot at an American mall than on a Mexican street.
 
That would change if the Meatball or the Don started sending Navy Seals into the Mexican jungle. I would have to live out my days entirely north of the border, deprived of cervezas and pangas, misty-eyed over the loss of my favorite vacationland.
 
And it could happen. Besides using military force against our neighbor because Americans won’t give up drugs, Republicans could point out that the Mexican Supreme Court just legalized abortion.
 
That’s another reason to invade. Just ask Marjorie Taylor Greene.

*Eat, drink and fish.

People have been talking to Jesus for 20 centuries and counting, but now, thanks to the miracle of artificial intelligence, Jesus will now answer you back. Several AI programs will now let you ask questions of the Lord, and He will answer your prayers.
 
AI Jesus is no more likely to solve any real problems for you than church Jesus. The program will not be able to give you winning lottery numbers or assist your baseball team in scoring runs in the bottom of the ninth, anymore than praying to Our Savior currently does. It will not raise the dead, cure deadly diseases or turn water into wine coolers. You can buy a loaf of bread and a fish and they will not get multiplied for you, although AI Jesus will give you some paltry excuse as to why he’s gone out of the feeding the multitudes trade.
 
As you eat your fish sandwich, you may be thinking of other Biblical characters you’d like to text with, and, lo and behold, you can. You can communicate with Moses, if you’re in a burning bush, Ten-Commandmentsy, idol-melting kind of mood. You can ask him why he wandered for forty years in the desert without consulting his digital buddy, GPS Moses.
 
You can ask Mary what it felt like to be impregnated by Almighty God, although it may be a sin to listen to the answer. You can ask Noah if he ever learned to tread water. You can ask Joshua what it felt like when the walls of Jerico came tumbling down, and did he think God was really doing his bidding when it happened, or did he suspect that the Jericoans just didn’t know how to pour a foundation?
 
You can talk to Satan, too, although I suspect that AI Satan may not have all the knowledge you really need about Hell, which you are going to now for sure, just for talking to Chatbot Baphomet. AI Satan is not likely to give you any useful info on the place of eternal damnation, like which of your friends are already there, and do they take turns lighting Rush Limbaugh’s hair on fire?
 
I look at the development of AI Jesus with some regrets, because He is obviously forcing my own personal Jesus, Dollar Store Camouflage Jesus, to eat His dust. Dollar Store Camouflage Jesus just stands in his nine-inch, plastic glory on my bookshelf, not answering any prayers or questions, just inviting worship, like any old school Jesus, soon to be as outmoded as a floppy disc.
 
In the near future, we will no doubt have entire digital churches, which the faithful can flock to on Sunday, to see a holographic Savior, whose ethnicity and theology may be adjusted by the pastor, on a scale from Humble Jesus the Holy Brown Person to Blonde Jesus with Anger Management Issues, according to the whims of his congregation.

As it is now, to be honest about it. Just with a slightly higher electric bill.

The Pope is pissed off at many American cardinals and assorted other Holinesses of the US church, for being backwards purveyors of big hate. If he really wanted to communicate with Americans he could have used the term "back-asswards," but, hey, the guy is from Argentina.
 
Aping the attitudes of American evangelicals, the American Church concerns itself far too much with politics, including abortion politics and gay marriage politics, for the current Pope’s taste.
 
This Pope has always wanted Catholics to be nicer, which is not the historical position of the Church, which has usually favored banning, excommunicating, torturing, and occasionally burning its perceived enemies at the stake. Not this Pope, though. This is the Pope that let atheists into Heaven, much to our surprise, so we rationalists have a soft spot for him, or at least, we nice ones do.
 
The Pope let gays into Heaven, too, although he still doesn’t let them get married in the Church. He’s in favor of civil unions for gays. So, if you’re a gay Catholic, you can get civilly unionized, do gay stuff with your gay partner until you die, and, as long as you confess it all before your number is up, you skip right up to St. Peter.
 
This is a complicated route to the Pearlies. The suggestion here is that you peeps just become atheists. It’s a much more direct path to our section of Heaven, which is a huge nightclub where we party all eternity and laugh at the schmucks who have to hosanna 24-7.
 
Conservatives on the American Catholic scene are especially browned off at the Pope for letting divorced Catholics back in the Church. You, a Catholic, get divorced, thinking you are escaping hell, but Catholic doctrine used to be you were automatically being consigned to Hell. You have to stay married for life, according to the Church, even to someone you bitterly hate, even if you never have sex again, or at least, sex with your spouse. The hatred and cheating that inevitably follows results in a build-up in the sin industry, which corresponds to an increase in the confessional index, which is what traditional Catholics want. They want you to hate yourself as much as they hate you. The whole point of the Church, and most other faiths, is to loathe yourself into Heaven.
 
For those of you who think this is just silly, I’ll have you know dated a woman for several years that was a divorced Catholic and had been excommunicated from her parish. Still, her religious impulses lingered. At one point she asked if we should start going to Episcopal church together. “No!” I exclaimed, spitting out bits of breakfast egg. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
 
Now, my woman is Jewish. One of the many reasons I love her is she never asks questions like that.
 
While this Pope preaches niceness and tolerance, American bishops gnash their teeth in the darkness, believing that the Church is straying from its mission, which is to find excuses to despise the rest of humanity, including atheists, agnostics, Protestants, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Bahai’s, unaffiliated people who claim to be spiritual, and, most importantly, the vast majority of other Catholics as well.
 
What a waste of effort. You don’t have to believe in anything to despise other people. Trust me on that.

Country music has been in the news recently, which means that someone like me can feel on top of the country music scene, without actually listening to country music. So that’s a good thing.
 
I’m not saying that country music doesn’t have its uses. If you walk into a diner and hear a country song playing in the background, you can order grits with pork chops and eggs confidently, without even glancing at the menu. If you go on a first date with a woman that switches your car radio to a country station the minute the engine starts, she has already decided to have sex with you. I don’t eat grits and there is only one woman in my dating pool, so this info is not relevant to me, but feel free to use it if you need it.
 
There are about three country songs I like, and Dolly Parton is a national treasure. Apart from that, I didn’t have much use for the genre, until country went Republican. Country has always been a little bit Republican, of course, being listened to primarily by white guys who can’t dance, but are lured onto the dance floor anyway by leggy white girls who favor short-shorts and cowgirl boots. Often these types are staunch Republicans, until one of those cowgirls needs an abortion.
 
The serious Republicanation of country, though, started with Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” a song which threatens anybody from a bigger town who wants to attempt a carjacking or mugging in some mythical tiny burg. Of course, committing these crimes is a shitty idea in some hamlet where everybody knows everybody else. “Gollee, Clem, I ain’t seen you since you dropped out of fifth grade. And you grew up to be a carjacker! Wonders never cease!”
 
If you want to commit crime in a small town, it’s better to stick to small-town type criminal activities, like niece-fucking or being a closeted gay phys-ed coach who eventually gets busted for patting the wrong boy on the rump. Jason Aldean could have written a whole other verse about crimes you can get away with in a one-stoplight town, like smacking your woman around or embezzling money from your congregation. He didn’t, though.
 
Then came “Rich Men North of Richmond,” a song by former nobody Oliver Anthony that got to be number 1 on the country charts, which complains vaguely about wealthy snots who control the lives of poor, honest people like Oliver Anthony and his kin. Of course, this relationship between the haves and the have-nots has existed since about 6,000 BC, so Anthony is a bit late to this party.
 
Republicans seized on this ditty, and even played it at their debate in Milwaukee. That pissed even Oliver Anthony off, because while he and his friends bitch about shadowy forces that control their lives, the Republicans that were onstage in Milwaukee are those shadowy forces, trying to get Anthony and his ilk to worry about bilingual signs in Walmart and transgender hootenannies in the holler while their bridges rot and their healthcare gets ripped away.
 
Also, Milwaukee is well north of Richmond. You don’t believe me, get out your Mercator and a straightedge and see for yourself.
 
John Cougar Mellencamp, who really grew up in a small town, wrote a song about small town life that was neither racist, vaguely threatening or whiny, back in 1985. You can listen to it here.
 
Or not. I don’t blame you. Fucker sounds like a Democrat.

The indicting is done, the convicting is yet to happen, but already professional prognosticators are examining the question of what future President could accumulate at least 92 formal legal accusations of felonious behavior.

Some, of course, scoff at the idea that any President, no matter how far in the future, could top Trump for sheer criminality. "He or she would have to sell the moon to man-eating aliens and rule the Earth from an orbiting White House to even come close," said one distinguished future foreseer. "There will never be anyone like Trump for unparalleled venality."

Others are not so sure. "The US is full of criminals," said another. "Prior to Trump, none of them had even considered then Presidency as a vessel for their crimes. But, for sure, their eyes are open now."

"Certainly Trump's record can be beaten," asserted a third. "Just look to his kids. Who's more of a slippery, teeny-peeny grifter than Jared Kushner? All he needs is Ivanka in the Oval Office and he'll be renting out Rhode Island to the House of Saud. Eric is obviously oblivious to nearly everything, unless he can feel it in his underwear, and the law is no exception. Junior, though, is the heavy hitter of the trio. Utterly soulless, murderous, and self-centered. If he ever gets 270 electoral votes, the United States is a frog and he's the blender. And, bonus, his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, would have a real shot at being a worse First Lady than Melania.

"And nobody knows how Barron will turn out, but his background just drips with potential."

Of course, the panel had to include at least one Republican clairvoyant, but when it was his turn to predict, he didn't elaborate. "Two words," he said. "Hunter. Biden."

It’s no secret Trump’s in big legal trouble. I saw somewhere on the Internet that, if you take all the crimes he’s been accused of, and add up the maximum sentences for each, it totals 541 years in prison.
 
The evidence against him seems strong, as it’s mostly of Trump committing crimes on a recorded line, or videos that he tried to erase but didn’t have minions technically competent enough to do so, or even innocently inquiring if he could get his swimming pool emptied into his servers.
 
Inevitably, during the course of one or more of his trials, Jack Smith or the Atlanta DA is going to offer a plea bargain, and Trump’s lawyers are bound to listen to it and present it to him.
 
What kind of a deal would Trump accept? Obviously, one with no prison time. Trump wants to hang out with people like Hannity and Maria Bartiromo, not guys with nicknames like Sweaty Ben, the Redneck Rammer, or other lifer types that have acquired a taste for big butts, especially old and pimply ones.
 
He’d have to go to a prison big enough to house his Secret Service crew.  Boy, would those guys hate to pull that duty, instead of accompanying Biden to party countries like Belgium and Bora Bora.
 
The Big House for Trump would probably be Mar al Lago, with some modifications. First, a name change for the length of Trump’s sentence. Slammer Por El Mar would be nice. Then, an ankle bracelet. It would have to be the biggest, best ankle monitor ever, so he could brag about it on social media. Maybe one for each ankle, so they wouldn’t knock his golf swing off balance.
 
Conjugal visits? Does Melania want to have to slap his hand away once a month? Will others be permitted to service the mushroom? I foresee tense, disgustingly intimate legal wrangling before this issue is settled.
 
Staff? The most important felon in US history can’t be expected to handle the burdens of his office alone. How about an Unindicted Co-Conspirators Wing, just south of the pool shed at el Slammer, where Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone and random gardeners and valets can try and overturn the results of his criminal convictions. At least they can help him add up the days left in his sentence, by Magic Markering four vertical strokes with one slash on his cell wall for every five days served, the traditional hard-timekeeping method.
 
Food? Prison food is part of the punishment. He might have to eat Burger King, or even Wendy’s, instead of McDonald’s. The sogginess of his fries, the flatness of his Diet Cokes will only fuel the bitterness of his confinement.
 
He could still brag on polls showing that at least 50% of Republicans still think that he would be the best choice, if they had to pick a convicted traitor for President.
 
He could still call into Fox News, but it would have to be collect. And there would be that little recording, telling whoever answered the phone that the caller was incarcerated, and would they accept the charges?
 
And Rupert Murdoch would have to say yes.

"If you're coming after me, I'm coming after you!" Donald Trump, last Friday.

This terrifying threat, issued by the Tangerine Drama Queen himself, has all of us shaking in our flip-flops out here in Libtard Land. Should we be constantly looking over our shoulders, fearing for a glimpse of his enraged orange visage, or at least wary of hearing the rumble of the mighty wheels of the Golf Cart of Vengeance?

Being "come after" by Trump seems like an idle threat to the most insouciant of us. How can an obese 77-year-old, a man who looks like running a hundred feet would give him a brain aneurysm, catch up to us comparatively fleet-footed Democrats? The answer is, of course, that Trump himself does not have to chase us down. His army of supporters, men armed with automatic weapons and powerful trucks flying anywhere from ten to fifteen Trump and "Don't Tread on Me" flags, depending on bed size, are standing by, waiting for his command to blast away at our treacherous bodies or run our pitiful Priuses off the highway.

These men, people with birth names like Lew, or Booney, or Cled, are willing to leave their loved ones and their catfish ponds behind to respond to the clarion of Trump's voice, echoing over hill and holler, commanding them to save real 'Murica' from Marxists, transgender athletes competing in any sport from track to pickleball to cornhole, pregnant immigrants and little old lady Democrats harvesting ballots.

Except maybe not. The specter of the last citizen army Trump tried to raise sitting in DC jails, awaiting long prison sentences, deprived of all human companionship besides Marjorie Taylor Greene's, is causing a drop in numbers of MAGA's willing to physically fight for Trump. That's the speculation, anyway. But when Trump calls, and people who bought hats and flags and yard signs from him sigh and say, "Love to be out there with my gun and pepper spray for our real President, but my catfish look hungry and my old lady took the keys to my truck away," who is going to come after Jack Smith and the rest of us?

Trump has even begged the Supreme Court to "intercede" for him. Nobody knows what that means, but, rest assured, it's nothing Brett Kavanaugh is going to put down his beer to do.

So, who will come after Trump's enemies? Possibly nobody. Lock him up.

Governor Ron DeSantis, in his bid to become an even nastier and more despicable version of the Tangerine Drama Queen, only without his pool boy getting indicted, gave his imprimatur to the new version of racial history in Florida, which states that, among other things, that slavery taught slaves valuable life skills, like blacksmithing.
 
I called up my old pal, veteran Republican political operator Joe Redstate, and asked him if blacksmithing slaves were going to become a touchstone for all Republicans from now on.
 
“Sho ‘nuff,” he replied, in a pitiful attempt at dialect. “The personal benefits slaves got from slavery have been concealed by woke history for too long.”
 
What were they besides learning to blacksmith? I mean besides whippings, rapes, and having your kids sold down the river? And I mean, the Mississippi river. To Mississippi.
 
“Florida is going to cover the travel benefits of slavery next semester. Right now, we’re teaching the vocational gifts that slavery gave slaves. And blacksmithing tops the list.”
 
So, there would be no black blacksmiths without slavery?
 
“Oh, there would probably be a few. But slaves were not natural blacksmiths, unlike white people.”
 
That does sound like open racism, Joe.
 
“Of course, it’s not! It’s just apparent that centuries of peasanting in Europe gave white people an advantage in learning blacksmithing, and other stuff that nobody does anymore, like wagon-wheel-making and cooking whales for their oil, when they escaped to freedom in America. Whereas, what did the slaves having going for them before they were imported here? Chanting, painting themselves, making war clubs, and being so afraid of solar eclipses that they immediately quit boiling explorers when one occurred?”
 
Tarzan movies are not considered documentaries nowadays, Joe.
 
“Tarzan! One of my childhood heroes. He was raised by apes, you know, and look at all he accomplished! Vine-swinging, yodeling, knifing lions. And Jane! Ooooh, Jane.”
 
We better change the subject, Joe, before you get lost in your boyhood memories of Jane...
 
“And Tarzan, too. One of the greatest white Americans ever, at least until Jason Aldean came along.”
 
Never mind that Tarzan was British, Joe.  So, what you’re saying, before we got sidetracked, is that white people were naturally better at picking up pre-industrial skills than black people, who needed to be enslaved to learn the colonial arts?
 
“Exactly! Man, that was precise! Have you ever considered writing textbooks for the state of Florida?”

Facebook has apparently decided I need another job. I don’t know why. I’m perfectly content with my current job, as it is part-time most of the year, largely unsupervised and pays me enough for food and beer.
 
I’m reasonably sure I know how Facebook works. When I evince an interest in anything, the Zuck fills up my feed with opportunities to buy it. When I shop for fishing gear, all kinds of great deals for shiny reels and expensive lures interrupt the meme-flow. When I price cruise vacations, my feed fills up with pictures of attractive older people smiling and holding glasses of champagne with a calm tropical ocean in the background, instead of pics of cruise reality, which is regular old people disoriented by days of heavy drinking, staggering from rail to rail in twelve-foot seas.
 
But I enjoy that kind of vacation. Meta knows that. Where they got the idea that I wanted to be a spiritual coach, though, I haven’t a clue. There it was, though, yesterday, right between some guy I don’t really know giving me an update on his blood sugar and Smudge the Cat--BECOME A SPIRITUAL COACH!
 
I guess I could send in my money and learn to be spiritual enough to coach spirituality, but they would have to start training me at rock bottom, for I am the least spiritual person I know. Alphabetically, from the A of angels through the g of ghosts and God, the k of karma, the m of metaphysics, all the way to the z of Zen, I don’t give credence to much of the spiritual realm. I worry about dandelions way more than I worry about demons, and I don’t worry about dandelions at all. When the sun rises over the mountains, I don’t feel united with the universe. I see a ball of exploding gases billions of years old rising over a geological formation caused by continental drift.
 
Maybe I just need a shot of ayahuasca in my coffee, but before I start charging people to help them tune the tines of their inner vibrations, I could just start my own religion or mega-church, and loot from the gullible in the name of Jesus. That’s tried and true, and has a 2,000-year head start on Internet bullshit.
 
Maybe Facebook sensed that, because my feed soon dropped the “spiritual” and offered me the opportunity to become a simple “life coach.” I imagine most of this involves coaching people to make more money. I could tell people to work harder and save more, I guess, but I don’t do that myself. I don’t set much of an example for living a lucratively rewarding life. I drive a 2009 Ford Escape because it’s a nice, anonymous vehicle in which to travel in Baja when I want to fish, eat, and drink there. It’s no Ferrari. It’s not even a Tesla.
 
Or maybe life-coaching means coaching people on their relationships. I could see myself saying to one of my life students, “Objectively, you’re a fairly boring person, and your wife-girlfriend-object of your lust is not very interesting either. Both of you need to jump out of an airplane in an active war zone. If you survive, I could probably listen to you without having to pinch myself to stay awake.”
 
I could see myself giving advice like that. I couldn’t see anybody paying me to listen to it, though.
 
One guy is offering me a twenty-seven-step program to becoming a certified life coach. I’ve been told I could quit drinking in just twelve steps. Why would I buy anything off him?
 
Finally, FB decided they couldn’t lure me into life-coaching. The next ad I saw was BECOME A LICENSED HYPNOTHERAPIST.         
 
I could do that. I don’t know if I need to be certified, though. If you read this far, you’re probably getting very sleepy, anyway. Send me your money.