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 National Rifle Association, along with the gun industry, has fallen on hard times. No one was rooting for Hillary harder than the NRA, which confidently expected her to carry on the Obama policy of not confiscating everybody’s guns, but at the same time not being really enthusiastic about people shooting each other, which the organization interprets to its membership as the government thinking about confiscating their guns.

With Trump in office, and him intent only on taking away everybody’s health insurance, the NRA is lacking a bogeyman. True, Wayne La Pierre, the NRA’s inimitable spokesman, has recently decried “violent leftists,” and suggested the only way to keep the country safe from them is to keep buying guns and ammo at a frantic pace, so when a swarm of women wearing pink pussy hats and carrying correctly spelled protest signs attacks you in your home, you’ll be ready to deal with them.

Nobody is really worried much about that, apparently, and gun enthusiasts are starting to think that the twelve AR-15’s and the full crate of ammunition for each one that they have in their basements already are enough to last them until the Apocalypse or the election of a Democratic President, whichever comes first. This is really a bitch for gun and ammo manufacturers, whose sales are falling off a cliff, and for the NRA, whose dues-paying members are maybe thinking their dues would be more wisely spent on beer.

While the people who make guns are stuck with that racket, the NRA, which only stokes gun lust, is more flexible. It is starting to sell gun insurance.

Personally, I understand that. When my writing genius fails to pay all of my bills, which is almost always, I resort to selling insurance myself. What I sell covers a wide variety of misfortunes, protecting my clients against numerous other-and-self-inflicted injuries and woes. The NRA insurance only covers you if you shoot an intruder in your home. And it’s nice coverage if you do that, paying your legal bills if you don’t put enough bullets into your intruder to kill him and he sues you, and also paying for cleaning up “biohazards and stains,” caused by someone bleeding out on your carpet. It even covers psychological counseling, in case putting a couple rounds in somebody’s liver proves to be less of a life-enhancing experience than you thought it would be.

What it doesn’t cover, though, are many of the hazards actual gun owners have experienced, such as accidentally shooting off one of your favorite toes or kneecaps, or your toddler finding one of the guns you routinely store in the sofa cushions and putting a round through your Aunt Mary. If you are in bed having a threesome with your wife and your Glock, which a police chief in South Carolina was doing a year or so back, and thereby experienced the sad but accidental plugging of his missus, and you remember your safe word (A good one is “Don’t shoot me”), but forget that you took the safety off, you’re not covered.

If you hand an Uzi to a pre-teen girl and she’s too frail to manage the recoil and she, in her adorable little-girl way, unintentionally drills you in the noggin, which also recently happened to a machine gun enthusiast, your NRA policy won’t pay your widow a dime. You’d better have life insurance.
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But, what the hell. I’ll be happy to sell you some.

Whatever you may think about Trump,
and I personally think that he's a safety-orange Hefty bag full of easily refuted lies, you have to admit that he’s accomplished a wide variety of “firsts” in his first 100-some days in office. And don’t be crybabying to me about how he’s not building the wall and can’t get a Muslim ban through the court system. There’s plenty of pioneering on the Trump Administration. Here’s ten items that DT can scratch off his bucket list that he’s done bigger, better and more beautifully than any previous President. I mean really beautifully, of course. Spectacularly beautifully, even.
 
First President to meet with a Russian spy in the Oval Office, pass along classified information and brag about firing the FBI Director to him.

First President whose income is better known to Moscow than it is to American taxpayers.

First President with widely distributed nude pictures of his wife.

First President with a wife worth viewing in nude pictures.

First President with a daughter living in the White House who’s out of school and married.

First President to call Kim Jung Un smart and the Prime Minister of Australia dumb.

First draft-dodging President to have his picture taken in the White House with a man who crapped himself to avoid service.

First white President able to blame all of his problems on a black President.
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First President with more derogatory nicknames than there are slang expressions in American English for vaginas.
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First President who’s ever been given the remotest chance that he will eventually be forced to beg the Kremlin for political asylum.

There may be more by now--as of last report Trump had visited the Wailing Wall without suggesting it should be renamed the Trump Wailing Wall and hung with the Pope without calling him a "loser," making him the first President to get kudos for behaving normally.

More to come, I'm sure, and by that I don't mean more normalcy.

Jim Bakker, who some of you may remember as the high-living TV evangelist later convicted of mail fraud and eventually ending up serving five years for that, is back in the news.

Bakker is still in the preaching and revelating trade, although he has added survivalist gear sales to his résumé, on the theory, I suppose, that if you’re not quite Christian enough to qualify for the Rapture, you could have to hunker down for a spell while you wait out the end of the world.  Between selling ammunition and MRE’s he still has time to do a bit of prophesying, and his latest bombshell from beyond is that Satan is plotting to kill Donald Trump.

My first reaction was Why is Satan chatting with Jim Bakker? I called up his show and asked the prosperity preacher that question.

“Satan does like to stay in touch after you’ve sold your soul to him, making sure you’re keeping up with routine maintenance, like I do," Bakker replied. "Sure, my best years were long ago, when I stole enough money from gullible believers to end up owing the IRS six million large, but I still do my bit, selling bottled water and collapsible shovels to people who don’t seem to realize that the end of the world also includes the end of cable TV. My soul will be in tip-top shape to suffer eternal torment,” Bakker replied cheerfully. “And that’s why Satan’s so browned off at Trump. The guy is constantly trying to renege on his deal with the Dark Lord.”

I’ve heard that. Shouldn’t Satan have realized that a guy who cheated every contractor in Atlantic City was likely to try and welsh out of a deal for his soul?

“You know, the Prince of Evil doesn’t like his decisions criticized. Just a piece of advice if you ever end up Down There. Lucifer just figures he’s going to have to work a little harder to get Trump the eternal filleting he deserves. But you know Trump and the way he bobs and weaves through negotiations. First, he made all of his staff sell their souls to the Devil, too. I mean some, like Bannon and Kellyanne, were already on board, but Sean Spicer was actually going to Heaven before Trump made him sign a deal with Satan. It ain’t the New York Times he’s hiding in the bushes from—it’s Beelzebub. So Trump turned around and claimed he’d brokered enough souls into eternal damnation that he wouldn’t have to bother with it himself.”

But it doesn’t work that way, right?

“You betcha. And offering to throw in Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan just made Satan chuckle. He’s had them in the bag since Ryan was an altar boy. So Trump upped the ante by offering to sell every living American’s soul to Satan, but the big guy really started laughing then. I mean, since the invention of free downloadable porn and Internet gambling, how many Americans are going to stay out of Hell in the long run anyway? The margin on that deal is pitifully small.”

I’m pretty sure selling all the souls in the USA to Old Nick would in some way violate the Constitution, too.

“Don’t worry about that, because Trump sure doesn’t. And if there’s one thing for certain, Hell has got enough lawyers to work through any legal entanglements. But the Wicked One nixed the deal, like I said. He’s gunning for Trump.”

Trump just got finished doing a “sword dance” with a bunch of armed Muslims. If Satan’s so powerful, why didn’t he just cause one of them to stick his sword through Trump’s liver?

“The Prince of Evil has a great sense of humor, believe it or not. He just wanted to watch the Secret Servicemen crap themselves all the way through that sword dance. But the hit’s been put out. Trust me on that.”

How do think it’s going to go down?

“Depends on whether the Old One wants to make a splash or go subtle. Ivanka could finally get completely creeped out at the way he looks at her ass and whap him to death with one of her handbags, or Kim Jong Un could get lucky and figure out how to put one of his bombs on top of one of his missiles, and get a little help from Mr. S so it doesn’t blow up over Singapore. Or it could be just a fatally beautiful piece of cake.”

So, we’re going to have President Pence?”
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“Hell, yeah. What do you think Mike sold his soul for?”

One of my readers lost his shit over a few alternate names for popular reality TV shows that I coined in one of last week’s outbursts, and I’m always looking to pick some low hanging fruit for laughs when I grow weary of keeping track of dumb moves by Trump, so here’s the rest of my pet names for shows that are watched occasionally in my household. Thanks, MR!
 
SHARK TANK--No Matter What You Got, You’re Never Going to be As Rich as Us.

HELL’S KITCHEN--You All Have Knives, Why Doesn’t One of You Just Stab Him?

ALASKA STATE TROOPERS--No Matter How Beautiful the Wilderness, It’s Still Full of Dumbasses.

WICKED TUNA--Pretending We Still Need to Catch Fish for a Living When We Can Pick up 500 Bucks an Hour Signing Shit at Any Sporting Goods Store Anywhere on the Weekend.

RIVER MONSTERS--Fish Don’t Care How Bad Your Teeth Are

I FOUND THE GOWN--Too Round for the Gown

NAKED AND AFRAID--My Blurry Genitals

MOUNTAIN MONSTERS--Fat Guys in the Woods

FAT GUYS IN THE WOODS--You Can’t Make Pizza on a Campfire
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KEEPING UP WITH THE KARDASHIANS--We’re Rich, and We’re Almost Naked, and We Have a Cross-Dressing Stepfather, But We’re Going to Bore the Shit Out of You Anyway.

UNDERCOVER BOSS--If You Can Keep from Laughing at My Fake Moustache, I’ll Buy You a Car.

DOOMSDAY PREPPERS--Canned Food Fetishists

MY BIG FAT FABULOUS LIFE--Not with My Worst Enemy’s Dick

REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ANYPLACE--Only Our Plastic Surgeons Have More Money Than Us

HOARDERS--For God’s Sake, Just Set It on Fire and Collect the Insurance Money

SWAMP PEOPLE--Yickadoos That Smell Like Mold

MY CAT FROM HELL--Just Whack It with a Broom A Few Times Every Time It Acts Up, Dipshit

FLIP THIS HOUSE--We Get Way More Excited Laying Carpet Than Anything Else

PLAYHOUSE MASTERS--Yeah, We Spent Our Kids’ College Money on Something They’ll Get Bored of in Ten Minutes, But We’re On TV!

PIT BULLS AND PAROLEES--Losers and Lapdogs

President Donald Trump made it known today that he would henceforth fire anyone in the government that needed firing by firing them Apprentice-style. Sarah “Poundcake” Huckabee-Sanders, daughter of Mike “Piehole” Huckabee, delivered a short statement to the assembled White House press corps announcing the change. The complete text follows:

The President from this point forward will dismiss any employees in reality TV fashion, i.e., on a brightly lit sound stage with dramatic music swelling in the background. The President will pick the person to be fired out from a small group of people who probably all deserve to be fired. For example, if he wanted to fire Rod Rosenstein, after using him for an excuse to fire Comey and then basically lighting a cherry bomb and sticking it up his ass, Rosenstein would be seated among, say, Sean Spicer, whose job I pretty much stole while he was hiding in the hedges, Ben Carson, Kellyanne Conway and Mike Pence. All of them would look pale and worried that they were about to lose their jobs, which Spicer should be because my moon face is currently rocking his podium, Kellyanne because she’s been invisible lately, and Ben Carson because he’s black. The President can’t actually fire the Vice President, which President Trump unfortunately wasn't aware of when he hired Pence, so Pence has nothing to worry about, but Pence will look worried anyway, because he’s an incorrigible suck-up. It’s the only thing that stands between him and losing his job to Omarosa Manigault for the second term.

The President will have his hair perfectly coiffed and his tie tied at the correct length by makeup and wardrobe specialists. His face will glow a deeper shade of tangerine when he pronounces the words “You’re fired!” Special effects may be added, like a slow-motion replay of the drops of Presidential spittle hitting the face of the firee.

Afterwards, the person fired will have a chance to have a few minutes solo before the camera, where they will make a self-abnegating speech in which they will praise Mr. Trump for giving them a chance to work for him in the first place, acknowledge that their being shit-canned was entirely due to their own inadequacies, and reflect on what a rich learning experience that working for the White House was for them. And that will be all. THERE WILL BE NO MORE OF THIS RUNNING OFF TO TESTIFY BEFORE CONGRESS SHIT!
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The President has spoken. That is all.

In a long and much more thoughtful article than I intend to produce here, Politico summarizes the findings of one Mark Grant, a psychologist, who claims that liberals are just as intolerant as conservatives.

This does not mean liberals are not more tolerant of racial and ethnic minorities, new ideas, science-based concepts and keeping assault rifles out of the hands of the mentally deranged than right-wingers. They are. What they are not tolerant of is conservatives.

Grant also finds smart people are not well-disposed towards dumb people, and vice-versa. If this isn’t obvious to you, you’re probably just another dumbass, or as you would put it, Your just another dumbass.

The article goes on to list various groups that liberals are prejudiced against (It also lists groups that conservatives are inclined to disfavor, but who gives a crap what they think?) Here’s what Grant has to say:

Liberal political views… were correlated with coldness toward conservatives, Christian fundamentalists, rich people, the Tea Party, big business, Christians, Mormons, the military, Catholics, the police, men, whites, Republicans, religious people, Christians and upper-class people.

Notice Christians are mentioned twice? Is that because lefties hate Christians most of all? It’s tempting to say yes, but actually we disrespect Mormons even more, because while the origins of Christianity are lost in the mists of time, the origins of Mormonism were right here, less than two hundred years ago, and were reported on duly by the media of the time, which accurately noted that the founder of the faith was a con man with a serious weakness for young girls. Nonetheless millions subscribe to Mormonism today, and sometimes two of them make the mistake of coming to my door. They know they are dealing with a tough customer when I say “Oh, you’re both named Elder? What a coincidence!” and, when I grow tired of being harangued about some angel favoring a particular child-molester over all the others, point to the mezuzah on the doorframe and say through clenched teeth “Do you see the little Jew thing on the door?”

Which is the only time I find my girl’s mezuzah useful.

Christians, on the other hand, come in a huge variety, from your basic Presbyterian types to whom Sunday services are just a part of the weekend entertainment package, like drinking or football, to solemn souls who think God’s purpose for them on earth is to be the public restroom police. Many Presbyterians are in fact, liberals, so we don’t hate them, although we are slightly annoyed when they refuse to set morning tee-times on Sundays.  And aren’t Catholics Christians anyway? Christians who like nice robes and pederasty, true, but followers of the same One True Guy, right?

I’ll let you decide that, but I’d also like to add a couple of things I personally am prejudiced against, because they were left off the list.

The State of Texas—Too big, mostly too flat, and has the two most boring major cities in the US contained within its borders—Dallas and Houston, both a couple skyscrapers surrender by hundreds of square miles of strip malls and franchise restaurants.

Being told my password choice is “weak” by some goddam website. I don’t know how conservatives feel about this, but I hate it way more than hearing “Por Espanol, marque el dos,” when I dial into some drugstore’s voicemail. They probably think the opposite, boneheads that they are.

Vegetable Smoothies. I won’t start drinking liquified lawn clippings anytime soon. Trust me on that.

Too Fat for the Dress, Finding Old Shit and Paying Too Much for It, My 600-Pound Hiney, Making Fish Tanks Out of Old Machines and Used Furniture Instead of Just Buying a Big Square Fish Tank Like a Normal Person, Spending More on a Tree House Than a Person With a Regular Job Makes in a Year, or any other reality show that doesn’t involve catching big fish.

I could go on, but it would be too much work. Of course, I blend in, here in California, where we are all tolerant liberals, kind and open-minded towards all, slow to wrath and judgement, patient and forbearing towards those that offend.

If you want to keep believing that, my advice is, don’t get stuck in traffic with us. 

House Republicans got crunk last week and threw themselves a kegger over finally agreeing to replace Obamacare with something way shittier.

They were celebrating an ability to agree with each other over something besides hating Obama. They were able to bridge the divide between the two biggest House Republican fraternities, the Freedom Caucus and the Tuesday Group.

The Freedom Caucus thinks Americans, unlike the citizens of every other First World nation, should have the freedom to drop dead of random diseases without government interference.

The Tuesday Group worries that when people drop dead because they don’t have health insurance, somehow the people who took it away from them will get blamed and not re-elected. The Tuesday Group folded when the Freedom Caucus said, “The trouble with you guys is you don’t hate Obama enough, and the Tuesday Group replied, “Aw, jeez, you’re right about that,” and the bill passed.
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Now, Obamacare is not dead yet. The new healthcare bill still has to pass the Senate, and many Senate Republicans are already looking at the plan and saying, “Hey, I didn’t order this turd sandwich. Take it back. But leave the fries.”

But, let’s face it, Obamacare has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, and I mean a banana peel situated on an oil slick, so we might as well explain the differences between the programs.
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First off, a few popular features of Obamacare will be preserved under the Republican plan, plus ALL the unpopular ones. The $10,500 family deductible? It’s still on, mofos. The high co-pays and having only six doctors that will take your plan stays, dude. What’s different is not everybody has to be covered.

People with pre-existing conditions, conditions that many Americans suffer from irreversibly, like being fat, may have to get coverage in a high-risk pool.

High risk pools, in case you have forgotten about them, mean you get to pay more money than you actually have for health insurance.

If you are healthy, you will be able to get cheaper health insurance, because you will now be able to buy a plan that covers everything except being sick. Insurance companies will now be able to offer drug coverage that includes all drugs except expensive ones, like those $50,000 dollar-a-month cancer pharmaceuticals, so if you make the poor decision to have cancer, it’s on you. Take some Vitamin C.

Even conservatives are saying that the Republican plan is so twisted and awful that the nation is eventually headed for single-payer insurance for all. That’s a euphemism for socialized medicine, and it might well be the end of the Union, because then health insurance companies would be out of business, throwing thousands of people whose job it is to deny your claims out of work. Also, anyone could go to any doctor they wanted, which means white people would have the same coverage as minority people.

The Freedom Caucus will never stand for that. They hark back to the beginnings of the nation, which means they think that if you’re too poor or too sick to have health insurance, and you are suffering from some disease that would have killed you in Colonial times, it will kill you nowadays, too.
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That’s how the Founding Fathers would have wanted it.

Caution--This post contains actual, semi-carefully researched facts. Read at your own risk.

Andrew Jackson was a decorated war hero, a veteran frontier fighter turned general who won the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812 (actually, he won it after the war was over, but you can’t blame him for that—they didn’t have Twitter then). Trump was a draft-dodger.

Jackson owned slaves—a lot of slaves, estimated at one-hundred-fifty. Trump just tried to keep black people from renting apartments from him, although the exact number of them prevented from having Trump as a landlord is unknown.

Jackson never suggested hard negotiations could have prevented the Civil War, because he was dead for it. Trump has wondered “Why did we have a Civil War?” Answer—IF WE HADN’T, WHAT KIND OF FLAGS WOULD YOUR SUPPORTERS HAVE TO WAVE AT YOUR RALLIES?

Jackson’s nickname was Old Hickory. Trump’s nicknames are too numerous to list here, but they include Agent Orange, The Lyin’ King, President Cheeto, The Orange Piece of Shit, Twitler, etc. Here’s a link to a recent list: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Donald%20Trump%20Nicknames.htm Please note that none of these nicknames compare him to a sturdy native hardwood tree, and we’re betting here Melania’s pet name for him doesn’t, either.

Jackson has his name on our money. Trump has a lot of our money in his name.

Jackson won the popular vote once but lost the Presidential election. Jackson was hugely popular and swept to a landslide victory in the next election. Trump lost the popular vote by the largest historical margin of anyone who ever won the Presidency. Why can’t I think of anything funny to say about this? Because it’s not.

Jackson wanted to abolish the Electoral College. If he had succeeded, Trump would never have become President. Trump loves the EC almost as much as he loves cruise missiles, cake and pussy.

Jackson presided over the forced relocation of Native Americans from their native lands to the plains of Oklahoma, over a route aptly named the Trail of Tears, partly because, having picked numerous fights with them, Jackson just hated Native Americans. Trump hates Indians, too, but just because they own competing casinos.

Jackson didn’t start running for President again 100 days into his term in office because he did not enjoy running for President more than being President.
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Jackson was re-elected.

Last month it was Earth Day, and also 4/20, Marijuana Day, two occasions I take pride in noting, since they were both invented in my lifetime and not by Hallmark. As I recall, Earth Day came first, and was celebrated, at least by my friends, by smoking marijuana, which inspired a day solely devoted to marijuana, when it was okay to be so stoned you might forget you were still on the Earth.

I support the creation of more holidays because the US is sorely lacking in them, compared to other nations. We only have eight, and that’s counting the ones where just the post office is closed. France has fifteen. Sri Lanka has twenty-five. Where is the demand for American exceptionalism when it comes to bagging work in favor of drinking and setting off fireworks? Shouldn’t we be ashamed of being behind Sri Lanka?

Even if promote such notable celebrations as Cinco De Mayo and Arbor Day to full, hang out the flag and tap a keg status, we’re still going to lag compared to the island formerly known as Ceylon, so let’s exercise a little creativity and devote some party time to our crackpot citizens.

Why not a Flat Earth Day? The Internet has made us aware that there are a sizable number of people who think that the Earth is flat, the atmosphere is enclosed by a glass dome sprinkled with stars and decorated by the Sun, which is a little heat lamp that rolls across the sky, and the Moon, which, literally, is only a paper moon. The reasoning behind the flat Earth theory is simple—the Earth is flat because it looks and feels flat. Cased closed in the minds of these thinkers, who will be happy to illuminate you on the real causes of time zones and satellites and the conspiracy by NASA to convince us that our planet is a mere sphere among countless others in space. Yes, even though Pythagoras first promulgated the concept of the Earth as a sphere in the 6th century BC, flat-earthers think that idea didn’t really catch on until NASA could employ it to fake moon landings.

Should people who believe that the Earth is a globe but nonetheless the moon landings were fake have a separate holiday? I leave that to Congress to decide, but here we’re going to move on to honor 9-11 Was an Inside Job conspiracy theorists. Unlike flat-earthers, who beg us to believe our own eyes, 9-11 inside jobbers urge us to ignore the evidence of our senses. Don’t pay attention to the actual images of planes flying into buildings is their argument. Planes can’t actually destroy buildings, is what they feel, even though none of them has so much as crashed a Cessna into a tool shed as an experiment. Only the US government can destroy buildings, because it is composed entirely of employees who, when told they were going to randomly kill 3,000 of their fellow citizens, responded in a single voice, “AWESOME!”

When the dust has settled from that merry celebration it’s on to Vaccines Cause Autism Day. This holiday is for people who believe that God or Darwin would not have just randomly effed their kid up, even though it happens to other people’s children all the time. It’s vaccinating their progeny that puts their kids on the spectrum, so let’s give a bunch of nearly eradicated, sometimes deadly illnesses a new lease on life on the off chance that it’ll keep little Johnnie and little Susie off the short school bus.

A little full disclosure here—I have an autistic nephew. He is absolutely a genius, a full savant, and he’ll never give you measles, either.

If we’re still behind the Sri Lankese, there’s plenty of other fringe citizens we could honor with a day of their own. Sandy Hook Didn’t Really Happen Day, or A Celebration of Chemtrails. We could even have Everybody Who Knows Anything About Hillary Clinton Will Eventually End Up Dead Day.
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That last one I happen to believe myself.