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 Rapture did not happen yesterday, September 22, 2023, although it was predicted to do so. The cynics jeered once again, because predictions of the Rapture have failed before--here, here, and here are a few examples of the Final Days not occurring when scheduled.
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This time, though, Jesus has a good excuse for not returning in glory to judge the living and the dead—he was busy forgiving the Christian congressperson from Colorado, Lauren Boebert, for getting “eccentric,” (her word—it’s okay if you read “drunk,” instead) at a musical in Denver.
 
Boebert, an avowed Christian, advocate of family values and merging church and state, was videoed vaping, singing, groping with her date and giving security the finger as she was tossed out of the theatre on her Freedom Caucus tushie.
 
That’s a lot of Commandments to break before intermission, and then she pretty well fractured the Eighth when she tried denying it all, before being shown the videotape.
 
But, according to standard Christian theology, she can be forgiven if she asks for forgiveness, and when she did, Jesus had to strap on his best forgiving sandals to get the job done. “Me Christ,” he muttered. “Push back the Rapture again. This job is going to run through the weekend.”
 
Jesus’s main squeeze, Mary Magdalene, and his side chick, Joan of Arc, were already mad at Christ’s plans to incept the Apocalypse Saturday or Sunday, depending on what time zone the quivering sinners he was going to condemn to Hell lived in, since both had plans for His Body, as they usually did over the celestial weekend. His plan to spend it forgiving Lauren Boebert instead, and ruin some future weekend fun with a dreary old Final Day then, had both of them boiling over.
 
“What can I say?” Jesus told them. “She fucked a Democrat. You just can’t snap your fingers at that. Forgiving a loathsomely horny hypocrite who bleats about following Me is something I have to work myself up to. It’s not like forgiving masturbation, which I already have to do a couple times a day, in her case.”
 
“I still don’t see why it has to take the whole weekend,” Mary Magdalene said, bitterly.
 
“Being the Redeemer of the World is a job, you know. With great power comes great responsibility.”

“THAT’S SPIDERMAN! NOT YOU!”
 
“Yes, but I like it. I often wished I’d added that to the Sermon on the Mount, instead of leaving it for Marvel to snatch up. Now, run along. You can always go to Hell and watch Satan’s imps eviscerate Pat Robertson, like they do every day. You know you like that, and it helps work some of your anger out.”
 
So, Jesus is still forgiving Lauren Boebert while this is getting typed. That’s why we didn’t have the Rapture yesterday.
 
Lauren is going to be cool with Christ by Sunday. Whether she is going to be cool with her voters remains to be seen.

Ron DeSantis has promised to invade Mexico “on Day One” of his still putative Administration. The Tangerine Drama Queen has already threatened military action to that friendly, warm, tequila-producing neighbor of ours to the south. The rest of the GOP field is yittering about it as well.
 
We are not talking about marching to Tijuana and then driving through Rosarito all the way to Cabo, drinking margaritas all the way. I’ve done that personally, but not in the company of a hundred thousand heavily armed soldiers.
 
No, both Meatball Ron and Defendant Don are talking about Special Ops missions to surgically take out Mexico’s cartel kingpins, who are pumping the USA full of fentanyl, which is killing US citizens.
 
Naturally, Mexico is averse to this theoretical occupation. Why, you ask? Shouldn’t they be grateful the US is putting its criminal warlords out of business, because they don’t seem to be able to do it?
 
Consider an alternative scenario. Mexicans are getting fatter, and that is killing some of them. Some people blame that on American fast food, franchises for which are spreading throughout that sunny land. More rational minds note that Mexicans could easily get fat without the help of KFC and Pizza Hut, because their own food is delicious, but a future Mexican President decides that American junk food is to blame for the deaths of Mexican citizens, and launches surgical strikes using Mexican Marines on McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago, Wendy’s in Dublin, Ohio and, for good measure, the castle of the Burger King in Miami, Florida, even though their fries suck.
 
Would the US respond by saying, “Thank God! All those Double Quarter Pounders and Whoppers were giving us heart attacks, too. Praise the Mexican Marines! Too bad they left so fast in those black helicopters instead of sticking around to have sex with our daughters!”
 
Um, NO. I imagine the US would respond by laying waste to the Mexican land, from Mexicali to Cancun, killing thousands in the process. Mexico is not going to be able to return that favor, but they are going to be miserably unhappy about it.
 
Let’s face it, people love to suck down cheeseburgers and get high, although not necessarily in that order, and no amount of covert or overt military action is going to change that.
 
Mexico is our #1 trading partner. It’s true China sends us all the cheap shit in Walmart that breaks as soon as you try and use it, but that doesn’t make them number one. Every tomato in every American supermarket in January was grown in Mexico. Every bottle of Modelo was brewed there. I could go on, but mostly I oppose military action in Mexico because it is my favorite place para comer, beber y pescar.*
 
Most Republicans are afraid to go to Mexico. This is another of the pleasant wonders of this beautiful country. Republicans think that Mexicans hate us, and are liable to shoot us on sight. This is the opposite of the truth. Mexicans are the most hospitable people on earth, and you are much more likely to be shot at an American mall than on a Mexican street.
 
That would change if the Meatball or the Don started sending Navy Seals into the Mexican jungle. I would have to live out my days entirely north of the border, deprived of cervezas and pangas, misty-eyed over the loss of my favorite vacationland.
 
And it could happen. Besides using military force against our neighbor because Americans won’t give up drugs, Republicans could point out that the Mexican Supreme Court just legalized abortion.
 
That’s another reason to invade. Just ask Marjorie Taylor Greene.

*Eat, drink and fish.

People have been talking to Jesus for 20 centuries and counting, but now, thanks to the miracle of artificial intelligence, Jesus will now answer you back. Several AI programs will now let you ask questions of the Lord, and He will answer your prayers.
 
AI Jesus is no more likely to solve any real problems for you than church Jesus. The program will not be able to give you winning lottery numbers or assist your baseball team in scoring runs in the bottom of the ninth, anymore than praying to Our Savior currently does. It will not raise the dead, cure deadly diseases or turn water into wine coolers. You can buy a loaf of bread and a fish and they will not get multiplied for you, although AI Jesus will give you some paltry excuse as to why he’s gone out of the feeding the multitudes trade.
 
As you eat your fish sandwich, you may be thinking of other Biblical characters you’d like to text with, and, lo and behold, you can. You can communicate with Moses, if you’re in a burning bush, Ten-Commandmentsy, idol-melting kind of mood. You can ask him why he wandered for forty years in the desert without consulting his digital buddy, GPS Moses.
 
You can ask Mary what it felt like to be impregnated by Almighty God, although it may be a sin to listen to the answer. You can ask Noah if he ever learned to tread water. You can ask Joshua what it felt like when the walls of Jerico came tumbling down, and did he think God was really doing his bidding when it happened, or did he suspect that the Jericoans just didn’t know how to pour a foundation?
 
You can talk to Satan, too, although I suspect that AI Satan may not have all the knowledge you really need about Hell, which you are going to now for sure, just for talking to Chatbot Baphomet. AI Satan is not likely to give you any useful info on the place of eternal damnation, like which of your friends are already there, and do they take turns lighting Rush Limbaugh’s hair on fire?
 
I look at the development of AI Jesus with some regrets, because He is obviously forcing my own personal Jesus, Dollar Store Camouflage Jesus, to eat His dust. Dollar Store Camouflage Jesus just stands in his nine-inch, plastic glory on my bookshelf, not answering any prayers or questions, just inviting worship, like any old school Jesus, soon to be as outmoded as a floppy disc.
 
In the near future, we will no doubt have entire digital churches, which the faithful can flock to on Sunday, to see a holographic Savior, whose ethnicity and theology may be adjusted by the pastor, on a scale from Humble Jesus the Holy Brown Person to Blonde Jesus with Anger Management Issues, according to the whims of his congregation.

As it is now, to be honest about it. Just with a slightly higher electric bill.

The Pope is pissed off at many American cardinals and assorted other Holinesses of the US church, for being backwards purveyors of big hate. If he really wanted to communicate with Americans he could have used the term "back-asswards," but, hey, the guy is from Argentina.
 
Aping the attitudes of American evangelicals, the American Church concerns itself far too much with politics, including abortion politics and gay marriage politics, for the current Pope’s taste.
 
This Pope has always wanted Catholics to be nicer, which is not the historical position of the Church, which has usually favored banning, excommunicating, torturing, and occasionally burning its perceived enemies at the stake. Not this Pope, though. This is the Pope that let atheists into Heaven, much to our surprise, so we rationalists have a soft spot for him, or at least, we nice ones do.
 
The Pope let gays into Heaven, too, although he still doesn’t let them get married in the Church. He’s in favor of civil unions for gays. So, if you’re a gay Catholic, you can get civilly unionized, do gay stuff with your gay partner until you die, and, as long as you confess it all before your number is up, you skip right up to St. Peter.
 
This is a complicated route to the Pearlies. The suggestion here is that you peeps just become atheists. It’s a much more direct path to our section of Heaven, which is a huge nightclub where we party all eternity and laugh at the schmucks who have to hosanna 24-7.
 
Conservatives on the American Catholic scene are especially browned off at the Pope for letting divorced Catholics back in the Church. You, a Catholic, get divorced, thinking you are escaping hell, but Catholic doctrine used to be you were automatically being consigned to Hell. You have to stay married for life, according to the Church, even to someone you bitterly hate, even if you never have sex again, or at least, sex with your spouse. The hatred and cheating that inevitably follows results in a build-up in the sin industry, which corresponds to an increase in the confessional index, which is what traditional Catholics want. They want you to hate yourself as much as they hate you. The whole point of the Church, and most other faiths, is to loathe yourself into Heaven.
 
For those of you who think this is just silly, I’ll have you know dated a woman for several years that was a divorced Catholic and had been excommunicated from her parish. Still, her religious impulses lingered. At one point she asked if we should start going to Episcopal church together. “No!” I exclaimed, spitting out bits of breakfast egg. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
 
Now, my woman is Jewish. One of the many reasons I love her is she never asks questions like that.
 
While this Pope preaches niceness and tolerance, American bishops gnash their teeth in the darkness, believing that the Church is straying from its mission, which is to find excuses to despise the rest of humanity, including atheists, agnostics, Protestants, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Bahai’s, unaffiliated people who claim to be spiritual, and, most importantly, the vast majority of other Catholics as well.
 
What a waste of effort. You don’t have to believe in anything to despise other people. Trust me on that.