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."

Shock waves reverberated through Washington this week, as Robert Mueller ended his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election after Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders proclaimed from the podium that it was God’s will that Donald Trump be President. A spokesman for Mueller’s office explained:
 
“We had really uncovered a boatload of evidence that it was Putin, the ex-KGB agent, busy, busy murderer and Oligarch of All the Oligarchs, who wanted Trump to be President, from the boatloads of cash the Russian prez had funneled to the Trump campaign to the disinformation war he waged on  social media on Trump’s behalf, to all of those Democratic emails he had hacked and released, which no one, including ourselves, has actually read but which we all presumed to be horrifying, but now that the White House has revealed that it was actually God who pushed Trump over the finish line in 2016, what’s the point of all this investigating?”
 
When pressed for further explanation, the spokesman said, “Look, God is way out of our jurisdiction. People were already smirking about our pointlessly indicting those 13 Russians, because they’re never going to be extradited—they’re just going to sit over in Smolensk until they die, splitting a bottle of vodka with a different hooker every day, no matter what they did to us. God is even less likely to show up in court.
 
“Besides, as soon as Ms. Sanders announced that it was God who ordained Trump to be President, all of our targets changed their stories. Roger Stone confessed that it was not Guccifer 2.0, but the Angel Gabriel who had appeared to him to reveal the Word about Wikileaks. Paul Manafort said that he had been spreading the Gospel in the Ukraine, not collecting shady consulting fees and splitting bribes without registering as a foreign agent, and Trump Jr said that he was really thinking prayerfully about those Russian orphans after all, and that collecting dirt on Hillary was the last thing on his Christian mind when he took that Trump Tower Meeting.”
 
When asked if there was anyone who was still in legal danger from the Mueller probe, the spokesman replied, “Kushner, maybe, because he’s a Jew.”

This subject was briefly debated the other day on Fox and Friends, the morning television show that usually spends its time fawning over Trump’s latest attempt to mangle the Constitution. The entire exchange between hosts Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt is reproduced below:
​
Ainsley asked, “You don’t think that God cares who wins the game, right?”

Kilmeade responded “I’m pretty sure God lets the game just play out,” which seemed to surprise Earhardt.

“I think God is in everything,” Earhardt proclaimed, which was followed by an angelic sound effect.

Ainsley is one of Fox’s interchangeable blondes, attractive women who look great in short dresses with their legs crossed and who probably had to have sex with Roger Ailes to get their jobs, but, unlike most people who were forced to have sex with Ailes, that has not cost Ainsley her faith. God is in everything, she says, on America’s fave cable network, including in the hearts and minds of huge professional athletes who merely think they are being managed by burly, stressed-out men wearing headphones who are desperately trying to outwit each other.
 
Kilmeade, on the other hand, is a football atheist who probably belongs on MSNBC.
 
Here, we do not see God having much of an interest in American football, unless He and Jesus bet on it. If they’ve got a little pool going, maybe with Mary, St. Peter, Lucifer and the Holy Ghost, though, all kinds of divine interventions are possible. Was it Jesus who temporarily blinded the referees at the Saints-Rams game, because he had the Rams but the Holy Ghost wouldn’t give him any points? Did Satan arrange for the Patriots to win the coin toss in overtime in their game against the Chiefs? Obviously, because Belichick and Brady long ago sold their souls to him, with Brady driving the harder bargain by getting Gisele Bundchen along with all that Super Bowl hardware.
 
Ordinarily, you would think that Jesus would always take the Saints on account of their name, but Up High He is thoroughly sick of His saints, a bunch of monks and virgins who are about as much fun as a tonsillectomy, and He hates to be reminded of them. There are teams that everyone in Heaven and Hell dislikes, like the Browns and the Chargers, so they never win anything. St. Peter is an Atlanta fan, and the Falcons' epic giveaway of the Super Bowl to the Pats in 2017 was God’s punishment to him for letting Steve Jobs into Heaven.
 
Mary, the original passive-aggressive martyr bitch, likes the Carolina Panthers, just because no one else does, and is always threatening to appear in their locker room, because she’s sick of her contract that says she can only appear to groups of small children who don’t speak English. The Holy Ghost claims not to favor any particular team, but all the others say He’s just a bandwagon-jumper.

All this speculation is fascinating, but Fox is just content with wondering whether God determines the result of football games. Even that is beneath their dignity, because as far as we can tell, Fox has never even debated the biggest question about God, i.e., is He white?
 
You know, like Santa Claus.

Chaos reigned in Washington, DC today immediately following the resignation of Donald Trump, which most observers thought was inevitable after geriatric screwup Rudy Giuliani accidentally posted the pee tapes to Instagram.
 
Trump’s resignation, delivered on Twitter, which consisted of two sentences, “I’m outta here. Thanks for the Emulomints,” was vague enough that no one even went looking for the Vice President for several hours. It was not until Air Force One was spotted on a straight path to Russian air space that anyone realized that Trump had skedaddled out of the highest office in the land, and when Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts went looking for Pence to swear him in as #46, the VP was nowhere to be found. Another crucial half hour passed before Pence’s Secret Service detail confessed shamefacedly that Pence had been Raptured right before their eyes.
 
“He suddenly sprouted a big set of angel wings and just flapped off towards Heaven,” one of the embarrassed agents said. “I know we’re supposed to take a bullet for the people we protect, but none of us were ready for this. I mean, one of the guys tried to grab him by the shoes, but he couldn’t hold on. All that’s left of Pence in this world is one size 10 1/2 wingtip.”
 
Defense Department officials confirmed that the Rapture had indeed taken place. “People are missing from all over the world, except in America. It seems that possibly the only person Raptured here was Pence, although both Nick Foles and Miley Cyrus can’t be found, either. Even the Vice President’s wife is busy at her day job, teaching art and homophobia to six-year-olds. Everyone else in the US was Left Behind because they were unworthy. We blame PornHub.”
 
Roberts, conscious of his constitutional duty, went straight away to the Capitol and swore in Pelosi as President. Pandemonium broke out in both parties, as the Republicans in the Senate tried to get a resolution passed declaring Pelosi the Antichrist. It failed because some of the Senators wanted to vote for Beto O’Rourke instead. Still others wanted Mitt Romney. “Hey, Mitt really wants to be something,” one of his backers explained. In the meantime, the Democrats went into full backstabbing mode over who was going to be the next Speaker of the House.
 
Pelosi proved to be a decisive leader, however. As her first act, she appealed to NATO to shoot down Air Force One before it could make it to Moscow. The Norwegian Air Force was more than happy to comply. “Fucking aye,” was their official response, and Trump’s plane was soon a debris field in the North Atlantic. Large numbers of state secrets, gold-plated urinals and bundles of cash were being recovered, along with multiple cheeseburgers, from the choppy waters off the Norwegian coast.
 
Pelosi will address the nation tonight. The title of her speech is said to be, “The End Times Will Be the Best Times, Thanks to the Democratic Party, And Also, I Need A New Plane.”
 
No other details are available as of this writing.

​Back in 2005, someone named Cliff Arnall, who bills himself as a Life Coach and Happiness Consultant, discovered that the third Monday in January is the worst day of the year.
 
He did not say it was the worst day of the year for him personally, because for a Life Coach and Happiness Consultant, there are no bad days—it would hurt business—and your job is merely to distract people from the fact that life is a slow process towards a painful, aging death. Or contracting a fatal illness in your prime. Or a quick, unexpected sign-out that can happen at any time.
 
Most people want to be distracted from this, so Cliff’s job is a piece of cake. No wonder he’s so fucking happy all the time. Let’s take a look at the situation of someone who might decide he needs a happiness coach. He wakes up alone in a hotel room, surrounded by empty whiskey bottles. He has no memory of the night before. He cannot find his wallet containing his cash and credit cards, because it was in his pants, which he also cannot find. Instead of realizing that he needs to start going to AA meetings, he decides he is desperately unhappy. He calls Cliff. For a couple hundred bucks, Cliff tells him he needs to start going to AA meetings.
 
This is way easier work than coal mining or selling insurance, and Cliff’s happy that he’s got the gig and you don’t. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and examine his reasoning behind his theory that today is the worst day of the year, and this column’s thoughts on how to make it better. Cliff’s excuses for January depression are in italics.
 
The holidays are truly over, and you’re broke from splurging on Christmas. Yeah, so what? There are plenty of other ways to go broke during the year. Congratulate yourself for waiting until the twelfth month to make it happen.
 
The weather is terrible, and there’s still lots of winter to come. Live in Australia until July, which is their January.
 
Most people have abandoned their New Year’s resolutions by now. Avoid this by not making any resolutions. Chances are, you’re never going to be thinner, richer, or get laid more than you are now, so wall off depression by not thinking you can change that.
 
If you’re doing Dry January, it has amazing health benefits, but it doesn’t exactly lend itself to going out. The answer to this problem is completely obvious. Dry January wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for social media’s habit of promoting really shitty ideas, and Dry January is the worst one since Trump being President. If God wanted us to sit in the cold and dark sober, He would not have invented winter ales, or liquor stores that deliver. We don’t do Dry January here because it would mean waking up with a massive hangover on February 2nd, which would ruin one of our favorite holidays, Groundhog Day.

Arnall doesn't even mention the most plausible reason for being depressed on the third Monday in January, which is that it is Martin Luther King Day and you don't get it off.
 
Arnall offers solutions. Plan a fun fitness vacation to someplace exotic and warm. Strike the word “fitness” from that and it describes the cruise along the Mexican Riviera we just got back from exactly. So, we don’t always disagree with Arnall.
 
The whole fakey nature of the article is exposed by the picture accompanying it, which we have conveniently cribbed off the Internet, an elegantly dressed model sitting in a window well pretending to be sad. What’s she got to be depressed about? She has a house big enough to have window wells and a pair of boots that’s worth more than our Mexico car (2003 Dodge Neon, 158,000 miles).  Now put a picture of a real depressed person there, sitting in a lawn chair in her kitchen because one of her regular chairs is being repaired but she can’t afford to get it out of the shop, in a worn bathrobe, amid a clutter of unwashed dishes, with a pile of collection notices, losing lottery tickets and a parking violation sitting in front of her, crying softly. There’s a lady who needs a life coach.
 
But Arnall wouldn’t take her case. Probably bum him out too much, and it's already the worst day of the year.

With paleolithic congressman Steve King sidelined from any committee seats in the next Congress for wondering out loud when “white supremacy” became a bad word, some of you may wonder when white supremacy became a concept at all.
 
The answer is, surprisingly, not so long ago. Civilization was invented by the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Sumerians, etc., none of whom were white. All of these early civilizations probably thought they were cooler and more badass than anybody else, like all arbitrary collections of humans usually do, from tribes to neighborhoods to military units to Philadelphia Eagles fans, and they would have laughed at the idea that they were inferior to whites, who at the time were living in smelly lean-tos in Europe, having spear fights with each other and occasionally providing nourishment for wolves and bears.
 
The Greeks became the first white people to take a stab at civilization. They invented science, drama, philosophy and long, boring epic poems. They took sculpture to new heights, although they apparently thought only men with small penises were worthy models for their statues, or else those guys were forced to model only on really cold days. Finally, they picked up a rookie warrior from the minor leagues of Macedonia to spread their civilization all over the world. There is no evidence that Alexander the Great thought much about white supremacy, though. Anyone with a yearning for a career in the rape-and-plunder field was welcome to join his forces.
 
It fell to the Romans to be the next hot white thing, and they did the job proud, ruling their patch of the world for 800 years by wearing skirts, helmets  with toilet brushes on top and using their short swords to chop up anybody who laughed at their wardrobes. They chopped up the white people of Gaul and the swarthy folks of Carthage equally, however, so playing the race card to a Roman legion did not result in you not getting slaughtered, or even being left in more generous bits.
 
The Roman Empire finally fell, and the ancestors of today’s white supremacists celebrated by becoming peasants under the yoke of the Catholic Church, and got their fun from burning heretics and having plagues. They eventually got into religious warfare, which had been invented by the Jews and perfected by the Muslims, but which white people went at with great enthusiasm. This caused them to develop better weapons than anybody else. When they got tired of fighting people equally well-armed, they said to themselves, “Hey—let’s try out some of these muskets and galleons on those people that Chris Columbus just discovered.” They went to the Americas and found that cannons and steel swords worked great against spears and stone axes. Then they discovered that you could easily convert the locals to Christianity at gunpoint and then they would build cathedrals for you. The first inklings of white supremacy were stirred.
 
In no country was the concept of white supremacy received more enthusiastically than in a boggy island in the North Atlantic called Britain. This nation of pale alcoholics went off to conquer the world and, between gin breaks, succeeded at most of it, including many parts of it that had been pre-conquered by other white people. They only had trouble with a breakaway bit in North America that eventually turned itself from a hodgepodge of querulous states to the greatest nation on Earth. White supremacists were happy to go along for the ride.

One of their major achievements was to raise the bar for whitehood extremely high—at one point in the US, such obviously melanin-deprived people as the Irish and the Poles were written off as non-white. Likewise, those Greeks and the descendants of the Romans were derided as dark and inferior. Popular feelings ran high against non-Anglos, and campaigns were organized to keep them out of the country. These didn’t succeed, as the growing nation needed these people to do its manual labor and later on, fight in World Wars.
 
Today, white supremacy is far more sophisticated and thoughtful in the US. Far from being looked-down upon, Irish-Americans and Polish-Americans are now freely afforded the opportunity to become white supremacists themselves. In this ongoing spirit of tolerance, the Greeks and the Italians have been let back into the white club, too, especially when Steve King speaks fondly about western civilization, which they started and which King regularly claims is endangered by Mexicans.
 
Funny thing is, though, without western civilization, we wouldn’t have Mexicans at all.

Looks like we’ll make it out of Mexico before Trump closes the “Boarder.” Maybe not-- we still have two days to go, but our only source of news here—the shipboard New York Times—tells us that right now Agent Orange is dropping that threat to contemplate diverting funds away from hurricane victims to build his Wall, figuring that while those hurricane survivors may not like sleeping in tents in the dirt, at least they won’t have to worry about Guatemalans sleeping in the tent next to them. 

There’s a considerable contingent of our fellow passengers who don’t leave the ship in our Mexican port calls, or if they do, don’t go any further than the gated disembarkation area, where the thoughtful natives have set up souvenir shops and temporary cantinas, so the nervous may set foot on Mexican soil that is already conveniently walled off.

We venture beyond, of course, because stuff gets even cheaper past the security portal, where you can drink, eat and bargain in Spanglish. Yesterday we took a cab out to Chico’s Paradise, a riverside resort about thirty miles outside of Puerto Vallarta, where we could zip-line in the company of monkeys and parrots, and get a platter of seafood the size of an off-road tire for the equivalent of 45 bucks.

The zip-lines and the seafood were there, but the waiter said they only had one monkey left.

“And Thursday is his day off?” we suggested helpfully. The waiter was not amused.

One fellow passenger wore the same shirt every day, a red, white and blue number emblazoned heavily with American flags and eagles, which we took to mean he was in contempt of those of us who sauntered ashore to keep the company of mariachis and margaritas, and chose instead, to express his disdain for our host country by patriotically staying on the deck of a ship registered in the Netherlands.

That didn't keep him from being in contact with actual Mexicans--a pair of local customs officials were spotted at the buffet in P.V. Nothing really happened as a result of their visit--they might have been there just to nosh on some lox--but it proved the Mexican government was on the job.

People do get killed in Mexico, of course, but they are mostly cartel members and soldiers killing each other. The US finances both sides of the drug war, by being a nation that likes to use drugs and having a government that wishes they would stop. The drug users pay for the cartels’ weapons and the US government pays for the military's, and then we bitch about the results. If you, as an ordinary citizen, want to participate, you need to get caught in a cross-fire, which is difficult, as the firefights are not generally conducted in tourist hot spots. If you are really determined to get hit by a stray bullet, you are far better off going to Chicago.

Likewise, if you want to be killed because you picked the wrong disco, movie theater or elementary school to be in, stay in the US. Mexicans are not permitted to own guns unless they are for legitimate hunting purposes. We are sure they have people here like we do at home, that think that everybody at a particular concert or in a certain church needs to die, but Mexican mad killers lack the means to bring their dreams to life. A deficit of personal guns and ammo also means they seldom have the opportunity to accidentally shoot themselves or each other. If you need to have that kind of fun, stay in the US.

Only one shopkeeper, who learned his English in Fresno, wanted to talk politics. He was very voluble, and would have been content to lecture us for hours, but we had cervezas to drink, and detached ourselves from his company before he was done. We grasped his central point, though. It was that no matter how brown and disgusting and inferior we want to regard a group of people, it is almost impossible to get them to feel that way about themselves.

We have to admit, he might be right.

​Among the numerous threats Trump spewed in the waning days of 2018 was his warning that he will close the entire US-Mexico border, (or Boarder, as he refers to it) if he doesn’t get his beloved Wall.
 
We haven’t heard much about that in a week or so, as cooler heads have been telling the Hothead-in Chief that zipping up the whole border would be an economic disaster that would crash the market, bankrupt numerous import-export businesses and leave the nation’s salad bars complete bereft of tomatoes until around July.
 
Which is not to say that Trump won’t pull a Syria, ignore everyone’s advice, and do it anyway. This bothers my Significant Other and I, because we are setting sail today on a cruise to Mexico and, after a week of sunny skies and carefree maximizing of our unlimited beverage package, we need to get back into the country.
 
“Quit worrying,” I hear you saying. “Trump isn’t going to keep cruise ships full of elderly Republicans docked behind barbed wire at cruise terminals, with wary Border Patrol agents making sure they don’t disembark,” to which I reply, “He may not want to, but carefully thinking things out beforehand is not the way this Administration rolls. Witness the Muslim ban, in which people in Iraq who worked for our side  weren’t allowed into the USA.”
 
So, I see a distinct possibility that we may sail home to a barricaded dock, at least until a judge rules in our favor. I see all of us passengers wheeling on our chairs, leaning on our walkers, tottering on our replaced knees and hips, staring mistily at the shores of freedom through our glaucoma-ed eyes and shouting out our battle cry:
 
“HEY! WE HAVE DOCTORS’ APPOINTMENTS!”
 
Attempting to forcibly overcome the barriers would be foolhardy. It’s going to a be a slow charge, for one. Egging the authorities into tear-gassing us would be near insanity. Fortunately, the decks of cruise ships are not nearly as well-supplied with rocks to throw as the streets of Tijuana. May of us will be carrying souvenirs, though, and when those customs agents start getting hit with volleys of pinatas, rainsticks, and paperweights with scorpions embedded in them, they may decide they have no choice but to use force to keep us aboard.
 
Some of us may decide to have heart attacks or strokes in response, letting heartless Homeland Security hottie Kirstjen Nielsen host another press conference where she blames our deaths on ourselves, for leaving the country in the first place, and also on our cholesterol consumption at the ship’s buffet.
 
And on the Democrats, too. For sure.
 
Me, I’m retaining a lawyer before we go.

2019 has just started, and already we are awash in predictions of the world ending this year. At this outpost of literature, we are always excited about the end of the world, because we confidently look forward to enjoying it as much as everybody else does. The first three predictions that none of us will live to see 2020 are in, and we are happy to rank them in order of the date the world is predicted to end, the likelihood of that occurring and excitement level of the final whomping.
 
PREDICTION 1: Asteroid 2002 NT7, a hunk of rock discovered in 2002 and thought at first to be possibly on a collision course with Earth, really is on a collision course with Earth, as NASA lied when they said 17 years ago that the 2.6-mile-wide chunk of planetary debris wasn’t going to hit us after all. These conspiracy theorists think this real-life Death Star is going to plunge into our atmosphere on February 1st, wiping us out like a similar asteroid did the dinosaurs 63 million years ago.
 
SCHEDULED DOOMSDATE: February 1st.
 
EXCITEMENT LEVEL: Big time. Not as big time as the above artist’s conception of the event, where the offending asteroid seems to be considerably larger than 2.6 miles across, but still the equivalent of shooting all of humanity’s nuclear weapons at one spot on the planet. Fiery death for many plus plenty of fallout to choke the rest of us. Mile-high tsunamis if it lands in the ocean. A real crowd-pleaser.
 
LIKELIHOOD OF OCCURRING: Depends on how much you think NASA is in the habit of lying. If you believe that the exploration of space is one of the highest achievements of the human race, and are awed by pictures sent from Mars and Pluto and, most recently, a dumbbell-shaped rock called Ultima Thule, which is so far from Earth it takes radio waves six hours to get there, you are relatively confident of living to see another Groundhog Day. If, however, you think the moon landings were fake and the only reason for NASA’s existence is to conceal that the Earth is flat, you are probably nuclear-winterizing your basement right now.
 
PREDICTION 2: Jesus finally gets his shit together and returns.
 
SCHEDULED DOOMSDATE: Sometime in June.
 
EXCITEMENT LEVEL: Another pulse pounder. There’s nothing like seeing your Redeemer morph across the sky, sucking dead people out of their graves and sending them to Heaven or Hell, with the certain knowledge that your personal Judgement is on the clock. Moon dripping blood, Antichrist creating mayhem all worthy opening acts. A spiritual E-ticket.
 
LIKELIHOOD OF OCCURRING: Ronald Weinland, the predictor, also predicted the Return in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Having taken a five-year break from the prophesying game, he’s back.  ‘Nuff said.
 
PREDICTION 3: The Greater Magellanic Cloud, a nearby galaxy, will collide with our Milky Way, possibly causing Earth to be captured by another star not nearly as convenient for us as our current Sun, or maybe we get smooshed by a stray planet, or just get flung out to freeze to death in the intergalactic void.
 
SCHEDULED DOOMSDATE: Two billion years from now.
 
EXCITEMENT LEVEL: Utter and complete snorefest. We will have long since crock-potted ourselves into extinction via global warming by the time 2 billion years is up. It’ll be someone else’s turn to be doomsdayed by then. It’s about five times the time needed for dinosaurs to evolve from microbes again, go extinct, turn into oil, and be succeeded by a non-human sentient species who will drill into their remains and burn enough of them to start up global warming anew. So, it could happen a couple of times in the next two billion years. It’s not us, but some advanced form of Space Monkeys that will have to fend off the Greater Magellanic Cloud.
 
LIKELIHOOD OF OCCURRING: 100%.

Been spending some time this weekend perusing the Go Fund Me page for the border wall with Mexico, which aims to raise one billion dollars to fulfill Trump’s dream of a full stop barrier between ourselves and Mexico.
 
The page is sponsored/run by Brian Kolfage, a triple amputee veteran of the second Iraqi war, a man who has sacrificed much for this country, and who is an ardent admirer of someone who has sacrificed nothing for anybody, ever, our President, who appears thumbs up at the top of the page, superimposed on a picture of the Wall as it currently exists in my home town of San Diego. We’ve had a wall on the southern border of our city ever since I first moved here, in 1980, but for sure Trump has never visited it, hence the need for photoshopping.
 
A running list of recent contributors to the Wall Fund runs alongside the faked-up picture of Trump. People give $5, $10 or $20 mostly, and their names appear next to the amount of their donation. Most of the names are pretty ordinary white people names, although one $100 donor was named Abraham Rozensweig, despite the fact that our country once denied a lot of people with names like Rozensweig asylum, letting them get sent back to Europe to be put in concentration camps by Hitler.
 
But that was back when Jews weren’t white people. Now that they are, even though there are prominent Trump supporters with some reservations about that classification, there’s at least one named Rozensweig who’s ready to slam the golden door behind him, so to speak.
 
Kolfage, whose picture appears at the bottom of the page, along with his stunning blonde wife and two adorable towheaded children, says that he’s Go Funding the Wall to keep us safe from being murdered by illegal aliens and to keep their brown paws off his hot wife. Just kidding! He doesn’t say that about his wife. He just lets us think it--Why shouldn't someone so gorgeous, and also the mother of kids so adorable, be able to wear that sexy slit dress without worrying about being ogled by horny Hispanics? Build the Wall!
 
Not that many of us get murdered by illegal aliens anyway—it seems to be about three or four per year. I’m confident of that number because every time it happens, it gets splashed all over the media, whereas most of the 17,000 or so of us who get murdered by our fellow citizens every year expire much more anonymously. It’s pretty easy to see Kolfage railing against murderous Latinos someday, as he makes a speech at a shopping mall in the deep white suburbs while running for Congress, surrounded by his photogenic family. He'll be  campaigning on a platform of shutting the border and denying healthcare to people with pre-existing conditions, because the future of our country depends on both those things.

​Pretty sure that’s his long-term plan.

Not until after he’s raised a billion for the Wall, though, even though the Wall is supposed to cost 25 billion. A billion is only one-fifth of what Trump is willing to settle for to reopen the government, so it’s basically chump change, impenetrable-border-barrier-wise.
 
AND THE MEXICANS WERE SUPPOSED TO PAY FOR IT IN THE FIRST PLACE! Doesn’t anybody remember that? That whole negotiation was botched from the beginning. We shouldn’t have put the Mexicans’ backs up by demanding they pay for the Wall. Mexican politicians are hardly incorruptible. We should have bribed them to build the Wall themselves. If we had, it would already be standing, probably at a bargain basement rate. Of course, then the Mexicans would already know where all the good spots to tunnel underneath it were, and it might collapse in a heavy rain like the toll road to Ensenada did a few years back, but it would at least be there, and Trump could take full credit for it.
 
As it stands, basically zero pesos are going towards building the Wall. That changes now. Here are some pesos I fished out of the cup holder in my car, probably change from the last time I took that toll road, which has been rebuilt. I am willing to donate these funds toward the Wall, even though I am going to be in Mexico next week and could freely spend them there, because the Wall needs to be funded with at least a few symbolic pesos, for the sake of our national self-respect.
 
I’m clicking on the Donate button on Brian’s page right now. And finding they only take dollars!
 
Irony lurks everywhere, amigos.