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."

There’s a lot of fraught talk nowadays about armed insurrection over a disputed election in November, and the phrase “second Civil War” has been tossed around a lot, like a chewed-up old dog Frisbee.
 
A senior spokesman for the National Health Institute dismissed this speculation out of hand. “Americans are way too portly and aged to fight a meaningful Civil War,” was his analysis.
 
“During the original Civil War, the population was way younger and skinnier. Most people made their living through manual labor and, while they had some bad health habits back then, like chewing tobacco, drinking whiskey by the jug and eating deep-fried muskrat, overall, they stayed in better shape than modern Americans, before they succumbed to some disease which can be cured in one visit to an Urgent Care nowadays.
 
“I cite the case of some Proud Boys back east, where they were drilling for the upcoming race war. They tried to put some snipers in the trees around a member’s farm. Out of the ten snipers, six couldn’t climb up in the trees, two fell out of the trees, and the other two climbed back down within an hour because they needed some snacks.
 
“If you’ve ever been to Gettysburg, you’re aware of the size of the battlefield there. Be honest--can you imagine trying to wheeze across it carrying a rifle and an ammo belt? Most Americans find it uncomfortable just riding around its hallowed grounds in an air-conditioned tour bus equipped with box lunches and a defibrillator.
 
“I mean, some modifications to current medical equipment could make limited skirmishing possible, I suppose. An all-terrain diabetes cart would help. MRE’s would have to include flavors like Loaded Nacho and Little Debbie, or morale would sag on both sides.
 
“Are we going to have an hour’s truce every day so everybody can smoke medical marijuana and watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy? That’s a problem Grant and Lee never had.
 
“Look, it’s not impossible for us to have some sort of armed conflict. Most Americans are still capable of sitting on their porch or stoop with a gun across their lap, and some still do, when they’re taking a break from calling each other libtards and Trumpkins on Facebook. I suppose if you had differing political views in a single neighborhood, gunfire could break out, but that’s really uncommon, and a Civil War where nobody’s leaving the house unless they’re driving for GrubHub just isn’t possible.
 
“So, relax. There’s not going to be violent civil unrest. No matter what our political opinions, conflict is unlikely to break out between you and me. Especially if you let me have some of those cheese fries.”

An Oregon man stood up for his Second Amendment rights by shooting himself in the genitals while waiting in line in an Oregon supermarket a few days ago.
 
Nick Ellington performed this act, and likely altered the size of the condoms he will be buying in the future, while showing off his Glock to a friend of his who was also standing in line at the supermarket.
 
This event raises any number of questions besides the obvious one, which is why are you taking your friend shopping anyway? The answer to this is, probably, that there’s only so many cubes of Natural Light a man can carry on his own, and shopping carts are for girls.
 
Now, there are good reasons to carry a rod while standing in line at the supermarket. We’re not going to argue with Nick on that. Quick, on the spot enforcement of the fifteen-item rule in the express line is optimized by firearm possession, and when the octogenarian in front of you pulls out a checkbook with her shaking fingers and asks the cashier, in a quavering voice, for a pen, a stern “Nobody does that anymore,” accompanied by letting her have a glimpse of your chiller will have the old girl whipping out her debit card like a regular American and getting the hell out of your way in no time.
 
I’m not saying there aren’t other occasions when carrying a gun may be more important. When you’re in possession of a paper bag full of hundreds is one good example. When you’re sitting on a batch of freshly cooked meth is another. If you’re a Proud Boy or a Patriot Prayer you keep your gun on you like a nun wearing a rosary—you just can’t feel close to Jesus without it. A lot of open-carry aficionados like to carry their gats into Walgreens when they’re picking up a thoughtful birthday or tender Valentine’s Day card, although from the pictures you see of guys doing that, long guns with telescopic sights are the preferred firearm for such occasions.
 
It is also much harder to shoot off your own dick with an AR-15, so maybe that’s the lesson Nick should learn here. Glocks are natural genital mutilators. If you’re a clumsy, excitable guy, a heavy-caliber pistol is not something you should be shoving in your belt before you go off to pick up a can of peas. A semi-automatic nearly as long as you are tall poses far less of a danger to the leading citizen of your trousers.
 
In any case, Nick has picked his spot on the mantlepiece of Guys with Guns. When your gun is fired, whom it hits determines whether you’re a Good Guy with a Gun, a Bad Guy with a Gun, or a Stupid Guy with a Gun. Before that, you’re just Another Guy with a Gun.
 
Congrats on finding your place on the Guys with Guns spectrum, Nick.

I just read my umpteenth Internet pundit who described my native Pennsylvania as “an important Midwestern swing state,” and it caused me to reflect that the least important thing that will happen if Trump loses in November will be that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will no longer be in the Midwest.
 
Unlike other states in the Northeast, the citizens of PA’s Democratic urban centers do not completely outnumber the residents of Pennsylvania’s Republican hinterlands, known locally to insider Pennsylvanians as “Pennsyltucky,” or “Baja West Virginia.” This makes the Keystone State a crucial swing state. But it does not put it in the Midwest. From Philadelphia, it takes about 70 minutes to drive to Atlantic City, which is definitely on the East Coast, which you can tell on account of you can put your toes in the ocean there. The Acela Corridor, the preferred transportation route for egghead Eastern libtards everywhere, runs through Pennsylvania.
 
Upstate PA has a substantial population of older white people who blame BLM and antifa for the fact that nobody wants to pay their kids to mine coal anymore, which makes it similar to Michigan, where white people blame climate scientists and Mexico for them not having auto plants anymore, and Wisconsin, where the local custom is to sit in a deer blind with your hemorrhoids killing you, for hours on end. There is no more Republican feeling than this.
 
But PA has a distinctly East Coast vibe. Pennsylvanians speak in five different accents, for one thing, from the simple Amish, who agreeably say “Ayup,” to almost everything, to South Philadelphians, who drink, bathe and put out fires with “wooder.” People in the Midwest have one accent for the whole region.
 
People in Pennsylvania tend to be not nearly as nice as Midwesterners. Maybe putting ketchup on hot dogs makes you a better person. Linguists have proven that conversations between Pennsylvanians are 72% percent more likely to contain the phrase “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” than conversations between Ohioans, Indianans and residents of other states that are geographically in the Midwest.
 
It's true that Pennsylvania borders on the Midwest, and has a shore washed by one Great Lake. But people who color maps of the US red, blue and purple according to hypothetical election results for a living should have noticed by now that Pennsylvania sits far to the right of other states they think Trump might carry again and that did not belong to the Confederacy. It’s squished up against New York, New Jersey and Maryland, states notorious for being top-heavy with liberals and other people who think that there are more than two seasons (hunting and football) in any year.
​
Besides, ask a Pennsylvanian, even one living in a trailer in the hills with at least six dogs sleeping under it and four cases worth of Rolling Rock empties in his recycle bin, if he’s living in the Midwest.
 
“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” is liable to be his answer.

​In a week where the Caucasian-in-Chief spent most of it denying what he said on tape and blaming Joe Biden for the US not having a national mask mandate, Attorney General Bill “Consigliere” Barr put this out for the public to contemplate:
 
"You know, putting a national lockdown, stay at home orders, is like house arrest. Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history," Barr said.
 
To describe having to wear a mask in the middle of a plague as a “different kind of restraint” as opposed to actually being owned and forced to work for other people belongs in the Euphemism Hall of Fame, is what you’re thinking. How many bowls of ice cream did Barr eat to get on a sugar high so intense that it would cause him to babble that out loud?
 
Conservatives love to compare things to slavery, for shock effect and also to let us know that they finally disapprove of it, even though they depend on the votes of white supremacists to get elected, and those people think it was a fine idea. It’s been the mantra on the right for years that the Democratic grip on the black vote is akin to slavery, when it’s really black reluctance to vote for people whom they know can barely conceal their distaste for them. Conservative bipolar black musical artist and Presidential candidate Kanye West was recorded urinating on one of his Grammys the other day while complaining that the American music industry was worse than slavery, when, really, it’s not. Take your meds, Kanye.
 
Some other stuff has happened in the story of America that possibly caused more hardship than having to wash your hands frequently. Maybe they should print history on the inside of pizza boxes, so Barr can have a chance to read it when he feeds. We interned Japanese citizens during World War II just because they were Japanese, for one. If those people were given an option between getting ripped out of their homes and put in camps and wearing a mask every time they went outside, which do you think they would have chosen?
 
Women weren’t given the vote here until 1919. If suffragettes were told, “All right, you can vote if you stand six feet apart,” do you think they would have said, “Nah, we’ll wait another sixty years?”
 
If Native Americans were told, “Okay, you can keep your ancestral lands. No death marches, no cavalry attacks, no blankets infected with smallpox. You just have to gather in groups of less than fifty for a year or so,” do you think they would have replied, “Nope, we’ll just wait until you let us have casinos?”
 
There are other examples available—giving black guys syphilis so you could win the science fair comes to mind—but you’re getting my drift. Barr knows there’s lots worse things America has done than make people wear masks so they don’t snot virus all over each other. He just wants perfectly free white Americans to complain that they’re reliving the lives of slaves when they have to put on a mask to get into Walgreens, and that the chains are just going to be clamped on tighter if they even think about voting for Biden.
 
And we know you’re just doing your job, not merely auditioning for the Shameless Fat Shitbird Pantheon of Heroes, Bill.
 
Just don’t watch your cholesterol on my account.

Tara McCarthy, who describes herself as an “ethno-nationalist,” which is a euphemism for white supremacist, was caught complaining on the Internet the other day about being harassed by trolls from her own side for being a woman.
 
You might have suspected that men who shoot paintballs at protesters or carry automatic weapons into Hallmark when buying their Christmas cards might not be the most supportive of bros when it comes to female equality, but it was a revelation to our girl Tara, who apparently has never made a sandwich and brought it, along with an ice-cold beer and slippers to her man after he’s spent a hot afternoon chanting “Blue Lives Matter!” and shooting pepper spray at social justice warriors downtown.
 
When Tara is on the Internet, complaining about rap music and advocating for a separate white homeland, or at least a return to segregation, she is attacked by trolls who believe in exactly the same thing, except that they also believe she should shut up, get married, and start raising some little blonde stormtroopers of her own.
 
“It’s the Proud Bois, not the Proud Bois and Girlz. It’s the Boogaloo Bois, not the Boogaloo Chicks,” she is constantly reminded when she’s spewing racial hatred on the ‘Net. “Can you even bake a pie?”
 
Tara gives as good as she gets, or so she claims, fiercely defending her right to add a woman’s voice when it comes to calling out race traitors and cukservatives. She can Jew-bait and noose-make as well as any man, she notes. Why can’t she be treated equally by those whose bizarre beliefs she shares?
 
Tara, if you think about it, it’s almost as though all professional racists are sordid little dicks who are all misogynists to the bone as well.
 
There’s your answer, girl. But you go on. Maybe you’ll find your perfect man someday—a Nazi in the streets and a freak in the sheets.
 
When you do, make him a sandwich.

​I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I couldn’t be—my mother dragged me into the doctor’s for a fresh set of vaccinations every year in my long-ago youth, and thanks to them, I’ve never gotten polio or smallpox.
 
I’ve never suffered any weird aftereffects from them, either. Unless one of the unknown side effects of the vaccines I’ve already gotten turns out to be becoming an elderly alcoholic that nobody pays attention to, they’ve done me no harm.
 
This year, I’m even going to get a flu shot, just to be a good citizen and also because my Significant Other says if I don’t, I’m free to sleep in the garage with a roll of paper towels wrapped around me for warmth.  In vain have I argued that wearing a face mask everywhere, as we have to do here in San Diego County, and washing my hands like an OCD raccoon, makes it extremely unlikely I’ll get the flu as well as the ‘rona.
 
But when I’m going to get a purported Covid vaccine depends on who’s selling it. The Caucasian-in-Chief claims he might have one before Election Day, at which point he thinks the sixty percent or so of Americans who think he’s an amoral, compulsively lying, traitorous, ignorant miscreant are going to be so grateful for the cure that they’re going to vote for him anyway, conveniently forgetting that by November, there will probably be about 300,000 Americans who will need neither a vote nor a vaccine, thanks to him.
 
I’m not rolling up my sleeve for that one, even though I’m as sick of this pandemic as anyone. No one likes eating in restaurants, drinking in bars and running across the border to Mexico more than I do. It keeps me off the streets at night, much to the relief of my neighbors and the police.
 
If it’s Trump waving that needle in my face, I’m avoiding it like it was just pulled out from  an HIV-positive junkie’s arm.
 
I’m getting the Covid shot the day after Fauci gets his. And I’m getting the same one.
 
I recommend this course of action, without a hint of my usual smart-assedness, to everyone. 

Several craft in a flotilla of Boat People for Trump capsized like Philippine ferries in Texas over the weekend, causing a wave of risibility that endangered the funny bones of political America.
 
A spokesperson for the Travis County Sheriff’s department said that conditions on Lake Travis, where the boat parade set out, were calm, with winds under 10 miles an hour and no storms in the area. She did not add, “You’d have to be a complete drunken bonehead to sink your boat under those circumstances,” but she could have. She merely said that the cause of the accident was “under investigation.”
 
My bet is they won’t need to investigate much, nor will they find that antifa-loving Democrats had mined Lake Travis. As someone who has spent as much time as I can and can afford on the open ocean in small craft, I will explain here exactly what happened.
 
A bunch of country club, boat-owning jerkholes gathered on the lake to show their support for the Jerkhole-in-Chief. And well they should, for the mission of this Administration is not something complicated. It is not about law and order, or keeping socialism at bay. It is to make certain that privileged white male peckerheads continue to get what they want out of living in America.
 
But there’s a pecking order among these insensitive oafs, because boats come in all different sizes. The biggest jerks have the biggest boats. Other dimwads have smaller boats. But that didn’t matter when they first set out. They are emotionally united under the Trump flag. And they are chugging brews, White Claws and rum coladas as fast as they can, for it is hot on Lake Travis on a Texas summer afternoon.
 
And, laughing wildly about Nancy Pelosi’s haircut all the way, they push their throttles forward as far as they’ll go, because they are not going to support Trump any less than boisterously, and no-wake zones are probably a Democratic invention, anyway.
 
There are simple rules about how much of a wake a boat kicks up. The bigger the boat, the bigger the wake. Also, the faster the boat, the bigger the wake. So, you have a couple of giant lake-yachts going as fast as they can, with the smaller boats trying to keep up. Pretty soon there is enough wake-action on the lake to make those Trumpsters in the little boats wish they’d popped some Dramamine before the parade. And, shortly after, enough foaming white water to start swamping those little boats.
 
Which is good, because once you start swimming for your life, you forget about how seasick you are, every time.
 
But the biggest assholes’ boats didn’t sink, just because they were the biggest. It’s the little boneheads that started pooping in their American flag shorts.
 
But it’s a sweet, if unintentional, metaphor for Election 2020. White-privileged America elected the biggest, most careless oaf in the country as President, and his re-election campaign is the biggest boat on the lake. Anyone who’s following him, I have some advice for you:
 
Put your life jacket on.

Chuck Parry, the spiritual leader of the Bethel Church in Redding, California, has claimed that he has brought two people back from comas via the video app Zoom.
 
This is less impressive than one might think. Thanks to the pandemic, we are all familiar with Zoom. I doubt that there’s anybody out there who hasn’t been a face in one of those little Zoom boxes since March, and we are all powerfully aware of the ability of Zoom to render participants comatose. Nothing like a sales meeting that was supposed to last 45 minutes but is dragging on past an hour thanks to that one salesperson who keeps asking stupid questions that everybody else already knows the answer to, to put you in a state of stupor so advanced that you can only be brought out of it by the boss saying your name.
 
I handle Zoom meetings like any intelligent adult would, by claiming that my camera doesn’t work so I don’t have to put on clothes or quit drinking, throwing my headphones to the floor so that the other participants’ voices became tinny, far-away and blissfully irrelevant, and opening a fresh browser window to something moderately entertaining, like TMZ, Facebook, or porn. The only hazard to this approach is forgetting to mute the sound on whatever web site you are actually on, and everybody else on your Zoom being able to hear the love cries of the Hot Big-Ass Stepmom.
 
That woman knows how to keep a coma at bay.
 
But back to the Bethel Church. Presumably, someone else logged in a comatose believer to Bethel Zoom, and during the course of whatever theological spouting was occurring on it, the unconscious church member responded by sitting upright and abruptly shouting “Hallelujah!”
 
Or even, “I think I filled up my bedpan!” Really, when you’re in a deathlike coma, you can say almost anything when you come out of it and people will be impressed.
 
There is some doubt among the cynical and sinful this miracle actually occurred, because the Bethel Church has some underpinnings of its faith that are really out there, and I mean out there like the left moon of Uranus. They were the congregation that tried to pray a dead two-year old back to life last year, only admitting failure after it became apparent that the child coming back to life would be basically an episode of the Walking Dead.
 
Instead of acknowledging what is obvious about God (there’s nothing He enjoys more than pointless tragedy) the Church buried the child with full religious honors.
 
Zoom, meanwhile, instead of being an app used only by distanced geeks, has taken over the world. Various conspiratorial fantasies have sprung up around the ‘rona. That it was deliberately created by the Chinese is something the CIA is investigating. That it was deliberately created by the CIA is something China is investigating.
 
But who is benefitting the most by the virus? Is it Zoom?
 
Nope, it’s Amazon. Forget I said anything.