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."

A phone in a secret room at the Kremlin rings at midnight. VLADIMIR PUTIN answers)

PUTIN: Hallo?

DONALD TRUMP: Vlad, old buddy, it's the Donald. How's your genius invasion of Ukraine going?

PUTIN: At least as well as your trying to avoid getting speared by Merrick Garland is, Donald. But maybe we can help each other.

TRUMP: I was hoping you would say that, Vlad. I've got lots of Top Secret stuff at fire sale prices right now. I've got lawyer bills to pay.

PUTIN: Ordinarily, I would be enthusiastic. But right now I'm spending all my money on Iranian drones. Just until we can get our powerful Russian drones working with the microchips we pried out of toaster ovens, naturally. Also, we have a little manpower shortage over here. ​I know I said I would give you many rubles for the nude pictures of the French President oil-wrestling with Greta Thunberg when she was eleven, but right now I could use some trigger-happy Proud Boys. Got any?

TRUMP: Love to help you, Vlad, but the PB's are keeping on the down-low until the January 6th trials blow over. How about a list of all US spies in Russia?

PUTIN: Anybody I thought was a spy, I sent to Ukraine. Zelensky dropped missiles on them all. Spying problem way down. I can offer Russian citizenship to the Oath Keepers. They can bring their own guns. As a matter of fact, they get double-secret-enhanced-super-citizenship if they bring their own guns.

TRUMP: How about the inside info on Brazil's nuclear defense posture?

PUTIN: Brazil is low on my attack list right now, Donald. How about you have one of your famous packed rallies in Irkutsk in a couple weeks. No-cost airplane tickets  to Russia provided--incoming flights are kind of empty for the next few months. Afterwards, free van transportation to all attendees to their new positions on the front lines in Izyum! 

TRUMP: A direct feed from our spy satellites?

PUTIN: Nyet. Can you persuade Q-Anon that Hillary Clinton is running sex slaves out of a basement in Kyiv? Where they go one, they go all, so they might as well go to Ukraine is what I think.

TRUMP: We're not getting anywhere here, Vlad. But I still wish you well. Don't end up in front of a firing squad. 

PUTIN: You too, old pal. I'm the last person in the world who wants to see you broke and in prison.

(The phone call ends)

TRUMP: Prick!

​PUTIN: ублюдок овец! (Sheep-fucker!)

In his typically unwavering approach to racial controversy, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas has announced a ban on teaching the history of black mermaids in Texas schools. At a press conference, a spokesperson for the Guv said, “The history of mermaids in Texas will be taught free of racial biases. Little white Texas mermaids will not be made to feel guilty about something they had nothing to do with, since all black Texas mermaids have been free since 1863. There is no separate, ‘woke’ story of black mermaids that will be forced on our schoolchildren.”
 
Why is it necessary to teach the history of mermaids of any race at all, since it is nowadays thought that historical mermaid sightings were the hallucinations of sailors drunk on rum and dying of scurvy and personal horniness?
 
“The Governor is aware that the anti-family media, particularly Disney, is pushing the idea of black mermaids along with the rest of their PC agenda, on small children. People who go to the beach in Galveston or Corpus Christi just want to relax in the sand and wash down Walmart-size bags of Fritos with a case of Lone Star. They don’t need their kids to go bugging them to find a black mermaid.”
 
Or a white mermaid?
 
“That’s innocent family fun. The important thing is, white people today are not responsible for any injustices inflicted in the past on black mermaids.”
 
Never heard of any, honestly, unless you count black Ariel to be the first black mermaid to ever land a job. So, long history of unemployment for black mermaids?
 
“NO! And as proof, for just a twenty-five-dollar campaign contribution to the Governor, you can get this t-shirt. (Holds up a t-shirt that reads “All Imaginery Lives Matter”)
 
“Imaginary” is misspelled.
 
“The people who are lining up to buy this shirt aren’t going to notice that.”
 
Why is Abbott even bothering with this?
 
“He’s pissed that the Governor of Florida is getting all that great ink for taking our illegal aliens out of here and dumping them in Martha’s Vineyard. We were planning to ship those Venezuelans to La Jolla. At first, Abbott was going to send the Texas National Guard to Venezuela to grab some Venezuelans direct from the source--there's a nearly unlimited supply of Venezuelans in Venezuela, you know--and force them on a plane to the Catskills, but for legal reasons he decided to go after black mermaids instead.”
 
What about Mexican mermaids?
 
“Bite your tongue!”

​In an abrupt tit-for-tat, in response to Florida governor Ron DeSantis sending two planes full of what the Guv called “illegal immigrants,” to the resort town of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts responded by sending an equal number of Martha’s Vineyard residents to Orlando, Florida.
 
Local authorities proclaimed themselves overwhelmed. “We can’t accommodate all these people in knit hats wandering around demanding ‘fresh lobstah’ and ‘clam chowdah,’ said one spokesperson, who insisted on anonymity. “I mean, we have eleven Denny’s in Orlando alone. If you want sit-down dining, go into one and crack a menu. And don't be asking where you can buy a scarf for 'when it gets cool at night.' Ask when. And the answer is, December."
 
Another local complained that he was constantly being asked by people wearing Red Sox jerseys to ‘bring my cah up.’ “Haven’t they heard of Uber?” he said testily. “Another couple asked me if I knew any good Greek tutors for their boy, because they didn’t want him falling behind before he got back to St. Episcopal’s Prep School.” He shook his head wearily. “I mean, we got a couple bilingual guys working as Mickey Mouses at the World, to make the Cuban kids happy. We got Hercules too, but all he ever does is curse about how hot wearing all those foam-padded muscles is in the summertime. And he don’t curse in Greek.
 
“Send ‘em back where they came from is my solution.  I hope DeSantis gets right on that.”

Used to be (and I’m saying this in my best, creaky old guy voice) that the Republican Party got along fine just being regular Republicans. By that, I mean they got plenty of votes and won their share of elections by standing up for Republican principles. Principles like hating Obamacare, dishing out the bare minimum of Social Security to keep old people alive, squawking about how raising taxes on the wealthy would ruin the economy because then they couldn’t afford to pay poor schlubs to mow their lawns and polish their silverware, and spending the equivalent of a car payment every month for insulin.
 
And the deficit, the deficit, the deficit. Fixing it was the Benghazi of economic principles, endlessly talked if never actually addressed. Republicans always talked about eliminating it, but when they actually had a chance to, they expanded it like it was the roof of a Russian ammunition dump.
 
People noticed this, but it mostly never kept them from voting Republican. The American people are a thick-headed sort, but now it seems to have dawned on them that, now that everybody has at least one relative on Obamacare and a couple on Social Security, and that billionaires are flying themselves into space on the money they save on not paying taxes, that there are flaws in old school Republicanism.
 
Plus, a pandemic’s worth of sitting inside and eating chips has greatly increased our nation’s need for cheap insulin.
 
So, the Republicans now have a new rallying cry—INFLATION! They’re hoping that if you elect them to cure inflation, you won’t notice that they will do absolutely nothing about it, just stick it on the wall next to the Benghazi/Obamacare/deficit stuff and take credit for it if it solves itself.
 
Might not work for the GOP this time, though. They have inadvertently shot themselves right in their elephant feet by appointing enough religious zealots to the Supreme Court to throw abortion rights to the wind, which started blowing back right in their faces immediately. They are discovering that lifelong Republicans PawPaw and MawMaw, despite attending the Church of the Ever-Flowing Waters of Jesus’s Love, where the preacher thunders against abortion every week, are not so keen about having abortion criminalized. Especially since they were forced to adopt their granddaughter because their daughter is in jail for selling fentanyl, and they found their adoptee’s panties on the roof of their doghouse one morning last week.
 
And she listens to nothing but rap music.

The Republicans need to scour for votes, and the conspiracy community is looking for political leaders. Chemtrailers want to clean out the skies, flat-earthers are looking for validation, election-deniers want to overturn every election they lose and Q-Anon just discovered the Queen was dead. Elizabeth Two was always on the top of their list as a leader of the global child-abuse conspiracy.
 
Of course, many Q-sters believe the Queen has been dead for years, replaced by a clever holograph, although why the cabal would have her officially dead just now instead of replacing her batteries and letting her go on forever is not explained.
 
Q-Anon also claims that the Queen was Queen of the Lizard People as well as of England. The Lizard People are our reptilian overlords, controlling us from a parallel universe through their agents, Bill Gates, George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Harambe, the dead gorilla.
 
None of this makes any sense, but that doesn’t stop Republicans from screeching for Q-Anon votes. Without them, they could lose. Republicanism, historically, has never had to really make sense.
 
Ask Herschel Walker.

Most of us who have achieved a certain age have an ex, or several, or a dozen or more in our lives, although if you have a dozen, you probably ARE the ex. The lucky among us have exes that move far away and stay there. I am blessed to have one of those. She choses to live on another continent. I encourage that.

But now, all of the US has an ex. I speak of the Former Caucasian-in-Chief, natch, and he combines all the bad qualities that an ex can exhibit, the worst being that he refuses to go away. He is the loser ex constantly trying to convince you that you made a mistake by rejecting him. In fact, he refuses to believe that you really did get divorced.

He bad-mouths his replacement constantly. Sure, you're not always happy with him either, but you think back on the days of constant Tweets and turmoil, and you realize you made the right choice. You were sick of a guy that constantly has to put others down. The lying had to go, too.

He won't give back your things. This is all too common in legal separations. It is not your fault you had to serve him to get what legally belonged to you returned. His howling about the sheriff "breaking in" to his house to take your possessions out of his nasty clutches can be ignored without a cloud on your conscience.

He is constantly begging for money. Not from you, but from your friends and relatives that think you ought to give him another chance. He shows up at all their barbecues and reunions, howling about how unfair you were to him and asking for handouts so you can get your divorce "reversed." Some of them are stupid enough to believe that's possible. There's a cold chill between you and people you used to get along with on account of this. The ex notices, and accuses you of dividing your own family.

He has a whole new bunch of friends. His only standard for making them is that they need to, first and foremost, hate you. If they threaten you, he just laughs it off and proclaims it is all your fault for the way you treated him.

But, most of all, he's just there. If the White House had a detached garage with a mother-in-law apartment on the second floor, he'd be living there, where you (and the rest of us) couldn't avoid looking at the parade of prostitutes (like Lindsey Graham) he summons to his door every weekend and listening to him play the same shitty Kid Rock and Ted Nugent albums over and over.

Yep, Trump is America's Ex. Let's keep it that way.