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."

Now that the Republicans' efforts to repeal Obamacare have sunk like a Philippine ferry, where is their path forward? I put that to a high-ranking Republican staffer, who agreed to answer questions on a promise of anonymity.

“It’s easy,” he insisted. “We got burned on healthcare because it’s a real problem. We discovered too late that the thing people hated most about Obamacare is that it began with 'Obama.' Otherwise, people were good with having health insurance. We're going to return to our Republican roots by only solving imaginary problems.”

Like allowing mentally ill people to buy guns?

“Good example. Delusional people have Second Amendment rights, too. Who pays attention to an unarmed crazy? Having a chiller under your bed when you go off your meds is the American way. Problem solved.”

Another imaginary problem is that the American military doesn’t have enough money, right?

“You bet your britches we’ll be fixing that one. That’s an easy lift. We just have to make sure we spend those extra billions on expensive hardware built in Republican home districts rather than any more benefits for the troops.”

Transgender bathroom rapists, of which there are currently none?

“And none better show up, pard. Republicans will make sure those sex-crazed trannies have to use the bushes outside of the 7-11 when they have to make tinkle.”

How about problems that actually affect your base? Like opioid addiction?

“That’s a real problem, buster. We Republicans will always understand that when opioid addiction meant black people on heroin, it was a crime problem. Now that it’s white people on oxycontin, it’s a health problem. But it’s still real, so ix-nay on solving it. Give me voter fraud any day. Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress, voter fraud will be wiped out across this great nation.”

Because there almost isn’t any?

“There will be almost even less when we’re done.”

Don’t you think voters will notice the GOP doesn’t solve any real problems eventually and vote the Democrats back in?

“Of course. And the Democrats will try and fix real problems, like they always do. If they fail, we’ll dog-whistle to American people that they’re candyasses. If they succeed, we’ll start screaming about the deficit. But right now, while we’re on top, you can say goodbye to all of the USA’s imaginary problems, from billionaires crumbling under their tax burdens, to women getting their birth control covered by insurance, to baking gay cakes. All will vanish under bold Republican initiatives.”

Sounds like you have it all planned out.
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“Like the song says, these are the good old days.”

The Lord appeared to me again last weekend. The place was a mess, as usual. I was torn between sponging it up a bit or just cracking my first coldie of the afternoon when suddenly He was sitting on my La-Z-Boy.

“Oh Lord,” I said, hoping I hadn’t left a pizza crust on that chair, which is something that can happen on weekends at my place.

“That's Me,” the CEO of the universe replied. “Hope you’re not too busy to do My will, because I need you to ring up Pat Robertson and tell him to back off making commitments in My name.”

“You mean when Pat promised you would rescue Trumpcare?”
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“That’s right.”

“Why don’t You just appear to Pat Robertson?”

“He’s 87 years old. He might think I was coming to take him to Heaven, and I don’t want to give him the impression that he’s going there.”

“I understand that, My Lord, but why did Robertson think you were going to get involved in the healthcare debate anyway?”

“Well, I actually might have let slip to Pat that I was thinking about threatening the Freedom Caucus with a plague of boils and locusts if they didn’t get in line.”

“So, you were in favor of kicking 24 million people off their insurance?”

“Look at it from My point of view. I’m the one who sends people diseases and accidents, causing them to suffer and die. That’s all part of My plan. Doesn’t have jack shit to do with insurance, so why should I care?”

“But you changed your mind? Why?”

“Jesus.” I thought the Supreme Being was just using Christ’s name as an imprecation, but then he went on. “My Son is fed up with the Trumps. He spent His time on earth with whores, thieves and lepers, he says, but that family is all three. He's not touching any one of them with a ten-foot crucifix. All those Facebook memes which show him wrapping his arms around the President? Everyone who made or posted one of them is going straight to Hell.”

“But You created Trump.”

“I guess. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, except that maybe this guy will eventually give Alec Baldwin a good reason to sober up at least once a week. But Jesus is another story.  When He heard that Trump was going to eliminate maternity care from the bill, He actually stormed into My throne room and tossed a couple of My thunderbolts around, he was so pissed. You know how He feels about His Mother.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard.”

“But you know how it goes. A one-night stand 2000 years ago shouldn’t lead to a relationship for eternal life, is what I thought at first, but all of the counselors we ever saw told us We have to think of our Kid. It was a rough couple centuries in the beginning, but now we mostly we stay out of each other’s way Up Here. But I digress. Get on the horn to Pat and tell him STFU for me.”

Then He vanished, off to spin a couple quasars, I guess. And he didn’t leave Pat Robertson's private line, and I think it’s a sin to call the 700 Club number and not pledge any money.
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So this is the only warning you're going to get, Pat. You’re welcome.

The security of the country is in peril because the FBI doesn’t want to hire stoners to serve as cybersecurity experts.

As revealed in this Mother Jones article, the FBI is failing to recruit the best anti-hacking pros for two reasons—one, they are snatched off for better pay by private companies who are also concerned about cybersecurity and, two, these computer geeks are higher than the Van Allen Belt most of the time on killer bud.

The FBI drug-tests its applicants, which the totally blazed hacker community knows full well, so those citizens are busy providing Internet security for Wall Street, Wal-Mart or wherever, leaving the CIA, the NSA and the State Department more vulnerable to foreign cyber-criminals than a senile senior's bank account. Also they are being stoned to the bone.

Why do we need to weaponize these weed warriors? The hacking specialists that the FBI manages to hire are not as effective as their ganja-smoking counterparts. Why a sober computer security specialist can’t detect the ugly electronic tentacles of Guccifer 2.0 as well as someone who’s been baked more often than frozen pizza no one can say for sure, but a person whose most commonly used declarative sentence is “I mean…I want…did you see that? Whew,” followed by “Anybody up for a run to Jack-in-the-Box?” is apparently the more gifted cybersleuth of the two.

The FBI director, himself the beneficiary of a crap-ton of publicity lately, has acknowledged contemplating changing the Bureau’s drug-testing policy, so patriotic potheads can serve to protect America’s security. Bong hits may become as vital a part of our nation’s defenses as launching drones. The Marines will always be a bulwark of American response to foreign threats, but Americans way too wasted to get through the rigors of basic training can also serve. If you can’t be Semper Fi, be Semper High.

It’s not as if there’s no precedent. Didn’t a couple Nazis help NASA land on the moon?  Why can’t natural American stoners protect us from hackers? I see no reason why not.
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Uncle Sam, meet Jeff Spicoli. 

Another week, another disastrous summit for President Trump, as the only thing he succeeded in accomplishing by meeting Angela Merkel is proving he doesn’t know how to behave around a woman he doesn’t want to have sex with.

Of course, there’s some doubt he knows how to behave around women he does want to have sex with, but that’s no help to the euro and to NATO.

The President also suffered by comparison by summiting with the boyishly handsome Prime Minister of Canada last month, an articulate man whom a neutral observer can’t help but noticing has way more natural skin and hair colors than Trump.

It’s not Trump’s fault that many of the nations of the world have thoughtful, responsible, occasionally photogenic leaders. These are people with whom Trump has nothing in common. What he needs to do is get out of the humdrum Presidential rut of meeting with democratically elected politicians. There’s a whole world of world leaders out there that Trump looks good in comparison with, murderous kleptocrats who rule over vast swaths of Asia and Africa, but one name stands out above all others.

Kim Jong Un.

A Trump-Un summit is a natural. These fellow national leaders have much in common. Both were given a hefty head start in life by their fathers, Trump to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while Un was bequeathed an entire dirt-poor nation.

Both men are tastefully overweight, although Trump rules over a nation of fat people and Un is the only fat guy North Korea can afford to feed.

Both have shitty hairstyles.

Both can launch missiles at Japan.

Trump once bragged he could shoot somebody in the middle of the street in broad daylight and not lose a single supporter. Un actually does shoot people whose support he suspects he has lost, in broad daylight, in the middle of a field, with anti-aircraft guns. Does he enjoy that? “Beats playing golf,” he is rumored to have said to close associates he hasn’t executed yet.

The eerie similarities don’t end there. Un encourages his people to starve. Trump has canceled Meals on Wheels and school lunches. Both are anti-immigration, although Trump wants to kill people coming into our country and Un kills people who are trying to escape his. Both have uneasy relationships with China, although Un entirely depends on the Chinese for his nation’s continued existence, while Trump only depends on Peking to manufacture almost everything his family sells.

A more cordial relationship with North Korea can be pioneered by Trump. After all, North Korea does not pose any threat to the United States apart from an unhinged desire to precipitate a world nuclear conflagration. There’s no chance of the People’s Republic starting a trade war with the US, since we already have plenty of its chief export, which is dust. And the Large Hadron Collider will be converted into a bowling alley before ISIS opens a branch office in Pyongyang.

Most importantly, Un will not make Trump look bad during any photo ops or joint press conferences. He will probably just emphasize his nation’s unique foreign policy, which could be put on a cardboard sign and held at an intersection, “WILL STOP ENRICHING URANIUM FOR FOOD.”

Trump can praise him as ‘the best,’ ‘fantastic,’ and ‘does a great job of murdering any relatives who might pose a threat to his power.”

It’s a win-win. Trump needs to meet a world leader who doesn’t make him look like a crabby know-nothing.
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And North Korea could use a new hotel.

Most people are too concerned with the air of incompetent evil that the Trump White House exudes to notice this, but Trump is the ugliest man to occupy the Oval Office since Nixon.

Since color televisions came to be owned by a majority of the country’s households, the better-looking man has generally prevailed in Presidential elections. Carter bested Ford because he was handsomer, in a shitty haircut kind of way, but he couldn’t match Reagan’s movie-star looks. Bush I beat Dukakis because Dukakis looked like Snoopy in pictures, but the cares of office had worn him down enough by ’92 that he was no match for a  curly-haired, horny young stud from Arkansas named Bill Clinton.

You couldn’t say Bush II was really better-looking than Al Gore, but then, you couldn’t say he really won, either.

You get the picture. The leader of the Free World is a good-looking dude, up until now. Now we have a fat guy that if he hadn’t been born into cheese, would be sitting on his porch in a bathrobe, yelling at the neighborhood kids to stay off his lawn. He’d always wear a baseball cap, because he couldn’t afford that hair weave, and he’d be the least favorite customer at the local massage parlor, when he’d save up enough money from his Social Security check every month to get himself fondled by an immigrant hooker.

And the guy has surrounded himself with other ugly guys. Jeff Sessions begged to be Attorney General because he was tired of the other Senators calling him “Dumbo” or “Wingnut” on account of his ear style. Rex Tillerson looks like a highly alert amphibian, capable of snatching flies out of mid-air with a tongue flick. Mike Pence’s hair resembles the pelt of a white rabbit, glued to his scalp. Credit where credit is due, though—it nicely complements his concentration camp guard personality.

But the big-top attraction in the lack of personal grooming department is, of course, Steve Bannon. Ever since he was a tender young Nazi, Bannon has dreamed of being where he is now, implementing his theory that governmental chaos benefits white people. You’d think he’d have taken better care of himself, knowing that the American people want a shadowy puppet master pulling the strings on the President that they can be proud of.

But, no. Instead we have a guy that you just want to make a “Homeless Veteran” sign for and hang it around his neck. I don’t know how many Hot Pockets you have to eat because no woman will cook for you before you  get a gut too big to suck in, but it’s more than a freezer full, I’m certain. The embryonic whiskey nose and the bed hair belong on an incipient child molester, not a Presidential chief of staff.

And the scruff, Steve. A couple day’s stubble looks good on Bruce Willis. And, if I may say so, immodestly, on me. On you it looks like your hand isn’t steady enough to risk shaving. We’d appreciate it if you’d never wore shorts again, either.

But Steve and the rest of the White House posse no doubt think they look just fine the way they are. It’s a near-universal male delusion. Just like most of us have always thought that we could run the country better than those who are actually doing it.
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And up to now, we were probably wrong. 

Most observers think that the batshit incompetence exhibited by our national government since Trump was sworn in is the head Cheez-it’s fault.  Trump runs the country the same way he runs his businesses, they say, with a minimum of attention to detail and a maximum amount of golf.

This is no doubt true, but it doesn’t account for the down-low spitefulness with which Trump pursues his aims. I mean, hating Mexicans and Muslims is popular all over the land, and taking health coverage away from the indigent is no big deal, because they were going to die of something anyway, but to dump on the Coast Guard? Nobody hates the Coast Guard.

Except a man who’s not getting any sex from his wife. I suspect the Head of State is being denied by his spouse. First of all, would you be having Twitter tirades at 4 AM if you had just been satisfied by the sex star of Slovenia? I know I wouldn’t.  I’d be drifting off to dreamland in a contented glow, thinking generous thoughts like “Who needs a wall and healthcare reform? Why shouldn’t people be able to keep their Obamacare and their landscaping crew? And remind me, honey, to get that puppy I promised Sean Spicer.”

If Melania and I were making our love nest in Trump Tower, I’d also murmur, “And goodnight to you too, Barack,” just in case.

But we’re not getting that from our President. He is exhibiting all the behaviors of a man cut off from his nookie. He’s lashing out at everybody, from the cast of SNL to Preet Bharara to Meryl Streep. He’s sublimated his sex drive into spasms of executive orders.

Possibly he’s fantasizing about Betsy DeVos naked.

Now, before you recoil in horror from this image, remember, the man is more to be pitied than blamed. No one really knows what goes on between two people, and Trump bought Melania fair and square from her father, in the time-honored tradition of European arranged marriages. Of course, he thought that she came with a guaranteed lifetime supply of sex, and he’s understandably bitter that she’s having a permanent headache in Manhattan while he roams the White House in his bathrobe, alone, listening to Steve Bannon snore off another whiskey and Adderal binge.

Let’s have some empathy for Melania, too. She didn’t sign up for this, either, and by that I don’t mean being First Lady. I mean being guarded by the Secret Service all the time so she can’t have sex with the pool boy or her personal trainer, which I’m sure she regarded as a necessary relief from her marital duties. “They're going to be installing a new Ice Age in Hell before he grinds that pasty golf gut up against my creamy, unblemished skin again,” is what she’s probably thinking.

And she can think that in six different languages.

But we’re begging you, Melania (I know, I know—so is he). Do your duty. Lie on your back and think of America next weekend in Mar el Lago.
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Oh, right, I forgot. You’re not from here.

There is nothing this column enjoys more than a good end-of-the-world scare, and while nothing compared to the great apocalypses of the Mayans and the Rapturists, who both foresaw the end of the world in 2012, is scheduled for this year, 2017 does have a few noteworthy end time predictions.

The most popular is that the August total eclipse of the sun will presage the Second Coming, when Jesus finally returns and judges all seven and a half billion of us. The logistics of this seem immense, and, historically, mass trials have never demonstrated much in the way of impartial justice. It’s probably why it’s taken the Son of God 2,000 years of tinkering to come up with a foolproof plan to get it all done in one Judgement Day.

I’m sure when it goes down we will all appreciate his efforts, but the two millenniums of suspense are killing us.

Of course, there have been a lot of solar eclipses since 33 AD, although Google failed to supply us with an exact number, and none of them so far have been world destroyers. The reason the faithful feel this one will wipe out humanity is that it will be visible across the length of the USA and the United Kingdom, although, like all solar eclipses, only on a narrow track across the two nations, which track seems to avoid the Bible Belt entirely, but that doesn’t keep believers from pining for all human closure. The prediction is based on the Biblical statement that “A darkness will fall across the land,” before all the worthiest souls get juiced up into heaven by the blender of God’s love.

The importance of the American nation and the English-speaking world in Christian prophecy is reflected by the fact that they are mentioned in the Bible zero times. Take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me. You’ll find a psalm that contains convenient, quick recipes for microwaved meals before you’ll find anything concerning the USA. That doesn’t keep American Christians from thinking that when humanity ends, they’re going to have the front-row seats.

If you don’t think American exceptionalism will be a factor on Doomsday, you can take heart in the predication of Matteo Tafuri, the “Italian Nostradamus.” Why Tafuri merits this title is a mystery to me, since Nostradamus predicted the future more often than he had a hot lunch, and Tafuri only made one prediction, that being that when the southern Italian town of Salerno gets snow for two days in a row, that’s when God is going to ix-nay mankind’s future.

This just happened. When they get out the snow shovels out in Salerno, it’s time to kiss your ass goodbye, according to the late Tafuri, so don’t buy season tickets to anything.

Also, a statue of the Virgin has been observed crying in Macedonia. Highly emotional sculptures are a rarity indeed, and Macedonian believers think the previously inexpressive hunk of marble’s collapse into teary vulnerability means our Earth is getting eighty-sixed from the company of planets. No one has tried dissolving a little Zoloft in the holy water, but that’s our suggestion.

Finally, the dodgy planet Nibiru is back in the global ass-kicking picture. You may remember Nibiru from 2012, when it was thought to be ready to whomp us into fragments as part of the Mayan end of times. But having failed to validate the Mayans’ prediction doesn’t mean that Nibiru has dropped out of contention to deliver us a fatal blow. No, Nibiru is the Ronda Rousey of world-ending, always ready to get up off the mat and make a failed comeback attempt. The most recent one happened last February,​ when it no-showed again, rendering yet another prophet still, like the rest of us, breathing. He’s disappointed about that, but those of us looking forward to life after Groundhog Day are okay with it.

Another prognosticator has Nibiru whamming into us in October of this year instead, but we’ve lost all faith in Niburu over here. While other planets spin in their orbits like clockwork, making their paths predictable for millennia in advance, Nibiru wallows around the heavens like it’s been playing a drinking game involving shots of Jägermeister. Stumbling back and forth across the orbits of other planets doesn’t make it “mysterious.” It just makes it unreliable. It’s just as likely to crash into Venus or Mars as here, or just weave around the asteroid belt looking for a karaoke bar, before finally stumbling home and falling asleep on the bathroom floor.
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So, maybe no Doomsday this year. Disappointed? There’s always 2018.

President Trump over the weekend identified the two biggest threats to our country, and, surprisingly, they are not terrorism and Mexicans. They are Obama and Schwarzenegger.

Tweeting in the predawn darkness, after another no-good, pretty bad, terrible week as POTUS, Trump accused Obama of ordering surveillance on Trump in Trump Tower during the last election.

Why the former President would want to listen to his successor any more than he had to was left unexplained by Trump. Obama just collected a flat 65 million for a book deal, so maybe, anticipating the literary riches that await any former President, he was doing research for a chapter he was going to title Trump Tower Trailer Trash. Maybe he was hoping to pick up some golfing pointers known only to overweight billionaires.  Maybe he just liked to listen to the rustling of Melania slipping in and out of lingerie, or marveling at her ability to talk like a whore in six different languages.
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In any case, he must have taken them with him when he left the White House, because Trump can’t actually find them. Perhaps Obama and Richard Branson are cracking up over Barron’s struggles with his homework when they go kite-surfing together. Barron, like many of his fellow fifth-graders, probably has difficulties with the spelling of three-letter words. At least he does if he takes after his dad. 

​Turning from a casual comparison of Obama to Richard Nixon, which neither the supporters nor the enemies of either man had actually made before, Trump went after one of his fave frenemies, the ex-Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who announced he was leaving Trump’s employ as the host of Celebrity Apprentice.

Only Ivanka’s shoe line was rated lower than Celebrity Apprentice this year, which Schwarzenegger blamed on the fact that a goodly portion of the American public hates Trump and everything he stands for, and would sooner have a hemorrhoidectomy without anesthesia than watch something he produces. Trump, however, stayed true to form by not accepting the blame for anything, and put the show’s rating struggles at the feet of Arnold, whom he feels cannot match him for good looks, charisma and acting chops. He's also critical of Schwarzenegger for fathering an illegitimate child by his housemaid, saying scornfully "Anytime I've ever knocked up a servant, I've made sure she gets an abortion." 

Defenders of Schwarzenegger point out that many of his best movie lines have been re-produced on t-shirts, while Trump’s utterances so far have been confined to baseball caps. 

True dat.

And as far as Obama possessing secret recordings of Trump’s private life, observers of the Donald have a simple explanation for the President’s confusion.
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He’s just got Obama mixed up with Putin. 

The reason for banning several news organizations from a press “gaggle” last Friday at the White House quickly became apparent when the gaggle started, as Press Secretary Sean Spicer made an opening statement that Trump’s secret plan to defeat ISIS in thirty days, a plan the President claimed to have while campaigning for his office, had been successful and ISIS had been defeated.

Even the news organizations permitted to be the recipient of this news, Breitbart and FOX, were skeptical. “Isn’t ISIS currently duking it out with the Kurds in Mosul?” asked one member of the FOX team.

Spicer replied, ”No. There may be something going on in Mosul that involves an exchange of gunfire and bombs, causing death and suffering and more refugees that we don't want here, but it is not fighting by ISIS because ISIS has been defeated, as promised, by President Trump, secretly.”

“Did ISIS formally surrender?” shouted a reporter in the back.

“They secretly surrendered,” Spicer replied. “They’re a terrorist organization. No way we were getting them to show up on the deck of the Missouri. But they’re defeated, all right, thanks to the plan put in place by our President, who has also lowered his golf handicap by one stroke since he took office. The battle against ISIS was won on the putting greens of Mar el Lago.”

“We want to worship your boss, as usual, but what I'm hearing here is that ISIS actually may not know they were beaten?” said a youngish white supremacist from Breitbart.

“Secretly beaten,” Spicer corrected him. “Of course, they may not know it, since we had to keep it secret. But they are done, finished, kaput. Total losers, like NATO and Chuck Schumer.”

“How was victory achieved?” shouted a young woman in a tight skirt sitting with her legs crossed, indicating she was also from FOX.

“That’s a secret,” Spicer replied. A chorus of skeptical groans rose from the assembly, but Spicer hushed them by waving the Ceremonial Sword of the Press Secretary, which he claimed he found in a closet in the briefing room after he took the job, and has lately taken to wearing, at the assembled reporters. “Look, we can’t divulge the details of our successful secret plan because we might want to use it again on some other enemies of mankind, like Boko Haram or Nordstrom's.”

“What about individual acts of terrorism inspired by ISIS?” asked the Breitbart guy.

“Obviously, since ISIS no longer exists, it can’t inspire deranged loners anymore,” Spicer replied. “So that threat has been eliminated as well.”
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“Since ISIS doesn’t know they were defeated, and are still trying to murder their way into Heaven as far as we know, aren’t you merely saying you had a secret plan and it worked, when really there was no plan and you’re just claiming victory over terrorism?"  asked the perky sex object from FOX.

At that point, Spicer lost his temper and told the assembled reporters that they were all banned from the gaggle. “Go sit in the hall with CNN and the Washington Post, you other fake news peddlers!” he yelled. Then he added, “Except Hannity,” as the room cleared.

​What transpired after that no one knows.
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