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."

​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.

BREAKING NEWS--Kyle Rittenhouse, the alleged pre-adult killer of two random protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, will not occupy a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention.
 
The 17-year-old, whose social media accounts indicate an affinity for cops, guns, and Trump, would have made a perfect addition to the roll call of speakers, admit the convention’s organizers. “Kyle’s previous career as a Public Safety Cadet indicated his strong desire to grow up, become a police officer and shoot people, which is a treasured Republican value,” said one prominent Republican, who wished to remain anonymous. “We just wish he’d waited until then. Kyle will too, most likely, when he finally loses his virginity in the shower at some state prison. ”
 
That’s an example of this column being on the cutting edge of the news. Here are some previous thoughts on the RNC:
 
I was catching up on the highlights of the Republican convention second-hand, and I couldn’t help but noticing that if I don’t vote Republican this year, violent demonstrators are going to roll up my driveway, burn my house down, and kill everybody I love, and Joe Biden and the Democrats will cheerfully let them do that because that’s the way socialism works.
 
Only Trump will be law and order enough to prevent this from happening. He’s going to do this by keeping the burbs white ‘n wealthy by forbidding low-income housing from being constructed there, particularly subsidized housing with names like Antifa Acres, Black Households Matter, or M-13 Livin’ the Dream.
 
Trump will respond to protests that erupt when unarmed black people are, say, shot in the back seven times at point-blank range, in the only way that preserves America’s twin commitments to justice and equality—tear gassing everybody who objects and shooting elderly women protesters in the face with rubber bullets, while waving a Bible.
 
Only Trump’s re-election will assure me of certain privileges. If Biden is elected, my girl and I will watch our dream of standing outside, barefoot and drunk, and waving guns at protesters, if any march down our cul-de-sac, go down the drain. Likewise, a Democratic Administration will probably look suspiciously at my plan for starting a fake charity to embezzle money from, so I can buy a boat with it, like Steve Bannon did.
 
Did you notice how good Steve looked when he got out on bail? All that rosacea and crust he usually has on his face, which gives his complexion that varicolored hue that closely resembles the surface of Mars, had vanished. That’s what a boat tan will do for you.
 
I still don’t have a boat, and a Biden victory will leave me reflecting bitterly that Mexico is never going to buy me one.
 
My Significant Other, on the other hand, is worried that a Biden win will mean she won’t get to be inspired by Women for Trump leader Becki Falwell, and have the option of boinking the pool boy now that she’s retired, with me having the option to watch. I pointed out that we share a community pool with the rest of the condos, which is cared for by a commercial pool service, so we have more than one pool boy. She said that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
 
If Trump somehow loses, when will we again be treated to the spectacle of a convention speech by a Presidential son who is at that very moment resisting a subpoena while proclaiming his dad is all about law and order? All we’ll be left with is drunk Hunter. Maybe he’ll surprise us and come out with his own brand of vodka, made, naturally, in the Ukraine.
 
That’s about all we can hope for, and that’s not much—a Billy Beer for this century. It will be a bleak future, especially for satirists, if all of his grifters, liars, backstabbers, relatives, cretins and full-on demented loonies follow the Caucasian-in-Chief out the White House door in January and are replaced by earnest policy dweebs who actually want to make the government work instead of starting fights and stuffing their pockets.
 
I might have to find other work.

"You know what that is? That's right. That's God testing me. He said, You know, you did it once. And I said, 'Did I do a great job, God? I'm the only one who could do it.' He said that you shouldn't say. Now we're going to have you do it again. I said, 'OK. I agree. You got me.' But I did it once. And now I'm doing it again. And you see the kind of numbers that we're putting up. They're unbelievable. Best job numbers ever. Three months, more jobs in the last three months than ever before." Trump on talking to God. News item.
 
While Trumped bragged about bragging to the Almighty while campaigning in Minnesota last week, he did not release the full transcript of his conversation with the Creator of All Things. Fortunately, this column has been able to obtain it. It follows below.
 
The scene: Golf course, Bedminster, New Jersey. The President is playing his third round of the weekend.
 
TRUMP: Dear God, please let me not slice this shot, for then I couldn’t do any better than two over par.
 
The Lord appears, in a golden golf cart powered by flames.
 
GOD: (Thunderously) Don’t you have better things to pray for, Donald?
 
TRUMP: Not currently, Oh Lord, because I’ve had to cheat to break 90 all weekend. (looking at the Supreme Being. Suspiciously) How do I know you’re not Obama trying to punk me?
 
GOD: I am the Lord thy God, Donald.
 
TRUMP: Swear?
 
GOD: So help Me, Me.
 
TRUMP: Are you coming to thank me for tear-gassing people so I could hold a Bible backwards in front of a church? Or are you here to answer my prayers about Ivanka? The Bible is fairly pro-incest is what I told that girl after she became Jewish, especially the Old Testament. Or are you here because one of Paula White’s visions, where I ride next to Jesus in the Apocalypse, is coming true?
 
GOD: The one where you’re riding a white horse covered with jewels, your mighty sword in hand, and your vast swelling manhood is covered by a condom made of woven gold?
 
TRUMP: That sounds about right.
 
GOD: Hell no. I just give Paula those visions to gross out Jesus. It really pisses Him off. Guy that got crucified once ought to be able to take a joke, don’t ya think? But no, He gets all sulky about it. But I’m getting off the subject. I came by to tell you you’re going to lose big in November unless you get more like Me.
 
TRUMP: You mean wise and merciful? (looks a little queasy)
 
GOD: No! That wise and merciful stuff is just spin. I mean work in mysterious ways. You’re constantly kissing Putin’s ass, even though nobody knows what he’ll be up to next. You admire him because he kills whoever he feels like and has a job for life. AND I DON’T? Think about it. Same goes for Duterte and Erdogan. Why do you suck up to brutal dictators? They’re just puppies compared to me.
 
TRUMP: Oh, Lord, now I see the error of my ways. But why did you have to send the pandemic to screw up my re-election?
 
GOD: I just love a good plague. If it was possible for me to have any weaknesses, it would be that. Nothing personal.
 
TRUMP: I think I’m getting the picture. But if You really want me to change, I could use a little supplication. I’m already You-like in that department, You know, demanding worship, begging and praise before I lift a finger. A few wet kisses on my hiney goes a long way with me, as it does with You. How about you write me a beautiful letter like my boy Kim did? (Hits ball. It slices wide right, into a thick clump of hedges.)
 
GOD: There’s your answer.

After a week spent partially in Thighland and publicly proving that he didn’t know the difference between World Wars I and II, you couldn't be blamed for thinking the Caucasian-in-Chief might be a tad embarrassed by his lack of the kind of basic knowledge that most high school seniors possess by graduation.
 
“Not at all,” a Trump spokesperson assured this column. “After all, plenty of guys do graduate from high school without really grasping the distinction between the World Wars. Those guys mostly go on to become short- order cooks and hunting guides, with the more ambitious ones getting to own their own heating and air-conditioning companies. Not one of them has risen to become the President of the United States before now. It is a tribute to Trump’s genius that he occupies the White House without being able to name more than say, seven or eight former Presidents, not counting Benjamin Franklin, who Trump occasionally mistakes for a former President because he has his picture on the money.  The fact that all 44 of those guys liked to read and could spell turned out to be no advantage for them over Donald Trump.
 
“There’s nothing Trump likes to do more than insert himself into the glory hole of history. That’s why he needs to be on Mt. Rushmore. That’s why, after nobody wanted to show up at the Republican convention except for the coronavirus, Trump wanted to accept the nomination at the White House. But somebody brought up that crummy old Hatch Act, and, rather than proclaim a Goya Beans Executive Action permitting it, the President is probably going to accept Republican accolades at Gettysburg.
 
“That’s all because of the history, of course. I overheard the President saying the other day, “Gettysburg! I want to be re-nominated there because that’s where George Washington and the Continental Army defeated the Mexicans and won back the Alamo!”
 
You’ve got to be kidding.
 
“I am. Trump wouldn’t know the Continental Army from the Salvation Army.”

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, bored with his Presidential campaign, which currently consists of shutting up while the Caucasian-in-Chief flails around like a monkey tap-dancing on a hot griddle, took Trump's suggestion and got in some him-time this week by vandalizing religions icons and institutions, admitted a spokesman for the Biden campaign.
 
“First, the ex-Veep set out to hurt the Bible. It’s tough to tell when you’ve succeeded in causing an inanimate object physical pain, but Joe’s a determined guy. He’s also a Catholic, so he doesn’t actually own a Bible. He had to borrow one from Obama to hurt. First, he doused it with lighter fluid and put a match to it. Then, when it was fully aflame, he put it out by beating on it with a Quran, which he also got from Obama, natch.
 
“Satisfied that the Bible was in agony, he set out to hurt the Church. Not his Church—like I said, he’s a Catholic, and the Catholic Church knows how to hurt itself. Smell the altar boy ass on your favorite priest’s fingers if you don’t believe me. First, he emptied out the poor box at an Episcopalian church. Then, after dark, he went out to a Methodist graveyard and pushed over a couple of tombstones. He had Hunter help him with that—at his age, Joe can’t topple a tombstone like he used to.  Finally, he went over to one of his favorite Evangelical haunts, the Church of the Ever-Flowing Waters of Christ’s Love, and let all their snakes loose.
 
“When it came to hurting God, Joe was in a bit of a quandary. How do you hurt Someone who is either the omnipotent Creator of All Things or else an entirely delusional being? Joe finally settled on dropping trou in the middle of his driveway and mooning the sky, thinking that exposing his grizzled, white-guy-flat old hiney to the view of the Almighty might hurt Him, especially since God gets credit for making that extremely unappetizing product of Creation in the first place.
 
“Joe then went back to his basement in Delaware, where he and Jill enjoyed a relaxing threesome with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. After that, he got a great night’s sleep. He woke up this morning refreshed and got busy with his week of napping, occasionally picking a Vice President and letting Trump capsize his own candidacy like a Philippine ferry.
 
“Next weekend he’s going to confiscate all your guns.”

In a recent interview, the Cantaloupe Dope claimed that if the voting public chose his opponent in November, “religion would be gone.”
 
Wow. So cool, is what you’re thinking to yourself, and vow to mail in as many fake ballots marked for Biden as any foreign power looking to fix the election will let you have.
 
I urge you to calm yourself, even if that requires taking or smoking medication. This may come as a seismic shock to you, but Trump is lying. Biden cannot abolish religion, thanks to the First Amendment, which promotes freedom of it, on account of our Founding Fathers, a bunch of white guys in wigs and pantyhose that are ordinarily depicted favorably in the media. They even have musicals made about them, despite them having left us such dubious inheritances as slavery and the Electoral College.
 
You can’t really say they were wrong about religion, although many of them were not particularly religious but if they were clear-minded about it, they could have given us freedom of religion only for the religions that existed at the time, and spared us uniquely American religious concoctions like Mormonism, Dianetics, and Jim Jones, batshit faiths that developed in the fertile soil of native religious lunacy in later years.
 
But you can’t think of everything when you’re starting a country from scratch, especially when you can’t wait to quit pondering about equality to get back to banging your favorite slave girl after work, so we’ll let the FF’s off the hook for letting religion flourish here.
 
Another whopper by Trump was that Joe wants to abolish the suburbs, but if you read into that carefully, what Trump means is that Biden can’t be counted on to maintain suburbs as lily-white enclaves where you have to go to the 7-11 to get a Slurpee if you want to see a person of color.  We don’t really have those kinds of burbs out here in California now, and our property values are truly bodacious anyway. We're not worried about the urban hordes invading us. We'd like to keep out the cousin-fuckers and meth labs that dot Trumpland first.  
 
And, it turns out that by “abolishing religion,” Trump just meant that Biden would merely require people to maintain social distancing while praying. This theory, that God will not listen to the prayers of people who are not snotting viruses all over each other, represents theology at its most dubious, with the exception of the concept of prayer itself, which, even if it is muttered with the utmost sincerity, like a kid begging for a snow day because he didn’t do his homework or a guy getting his leg chewed on by a crocodile, is never answered very consistently, if at all.
​
Being required to stand six feet apart while begging God for a vaccine that science will eventually deliver, and then praising Him lustily when it happens will not destroy any religion, although the illogic of thinking this way may hurt your brain. You can’t organize a congregation to stand outside the CDC and chant “Yay science!” anyway. It would just distract those guys.
 
But churches will still thrive. They just need longer handles on the collection baskets.

Pop star turned Presidential candidate Kanye was chilling at home, looking at his shoes worth more than a reliable, late-model used car, and thinking how fine they would look under the Resolute Desk, when Jesus appeared to him.
 
“Do you have an appointment?” West asked.
 
“I’m Jesus,” Our Lord said tersely. “Check the halo.”
 
“I’m Yeezus,” Kanye replied. “Check the shoes.”
 
“Oh, Me, I knew this was going to be difficult. Kanye, this is about you running for President.”
 
“I accept Your help, My Lord, especially in getting my name on the ballot in all fifty states. There are some deadlines, apparently, that the greatest genius of this generation can’t be bothered with. If You would just inscribe my name on all of them divinely, and then, on Election Day, point it out to every voter with a glowing Finger from Heaven, I would probably win a few more votes. In return, I will let you play my music in eternity.”
 
“We don’t listen to your music in Heaven, Kanye. It’s one of the things that makes it Heaven. Don’t take it personally—there’s lots of musicians we don’t listen to in Heaven besides you. Huey Lewis, for example. Nickelback, natch. Justin Bieber. And any soul who even starts to so much as hum “The Joker” is cast into the fiery pit, where they have to listen to Ted Nugent for all eternity.”
 
“What kind of music do you play in Heaven, then, Jesus? And how can it be Heaven without my music. After all, who is more talented than me?”
 
“Well, Bach, for one. Beethoven. The classics are always good. I make the band play ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’ whenever I make an entrance into a party. But other tunes are cool. Miley Cyrus is one of my faves. Alanis Morissette. Warren Zevon.”
 
“Who’s Warren Zevon?”

“Werewolves of London, baby.” Jesus then rocks out and lip syncs the first few bars of WW of London. “But we’re getting off the subject. I want you to quit running for President and go back on your meds.”
 
“The white pills? I hate the white pills. They make me think I’m just a spoiled rich black guy who says cringey things like My greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself live, who fulfills the fantasies of hundreds of millions of men whenever I do my wife doggie-style, and who will inevitably end up playing for years in some showroom in Vegas when I haven’t had a hit in a decade or two in order to pay off a lifetime of debt.”
 
“You got it, Kanye. Reality. In My wisdom, I made it to suck, and you have to live in it.”
 
“But being President?”
 
“Nope. America is not my favorite nation, but I've already given them a black President and a hoebag first lady. No need to combine the two."

The Caucasian-in-Chief’s reelection’s in trouble, according to every single available poll, and his campaign made an inevitable move, firing campaign manager Brad Parscale who was last seen being Rick-rolled by a bunch of Korean music fans on TikTok, in favor of old pro Bill Stepien, who gained political fame in the first place by persuading the people of New Jersey that Chris Christie wasn’t too fat to be their governor.
 
This accomplishment pales next to rehabilitating Trump’s image, though. Fifty-five percent of Americans now think of Trump as something they need to work off the sole of their shoe with a butter knife, and they can’t wait until November to do it.
 
The Trump campaign needs to fix that, fast, and there’s only two ways to accomplish that. The first is to persuade people that Trump is not an enormous gob of offal, staining the Oval Office like someone accidentally pumped a Porta-Potty out in there. This is a tall order, because time and time again Trump has proven himself to be a nasty, ill-tempered shit-stain. He has shot himself in the foot so many times, re-election wise, he currently has to borrow other people’s feet to shoot when he wants to do it again. His remaining thirty-six percent of support comes exclusively from his “base,” which has been whittled down to full-throated, warbling racists and people who think the only important issue in the country is them being able to ram their Christianity down other peoples' throats, and also, they’re racist, too, and homophobes to boot. Further shrinkage in their numbers is almost guaranteed by the coronavirus.
 
Even a champion manure-buffer like Stepien might quail at the magnitude of that task, so look for him to drop his poop-shining wheel in favor of option 2, which is to convince people that, while Trump may be a piece of crap, Joe Biden is a bucket of warm spoiled bait that’s been urinated in by a dozen drunk fishermen. Right now, he’s planning to tell you that Biden is the pedophile-in-a-white-van-with-candy of politics. He’ll be trying to convince the American public that Biden’s first act upon taking office will be to kiss AOC’s hair and, while they twerk together, whisper in her ear, “Let’s get the socialist hellhole started.”
 
And even if he manages to do that, he still runs the chance that voters will realize that they’re living in a hellhole now, what with them being unable to leave the house without the fear of getting punched out for either wearing a mask or not wearing one, after rooting around the sofa cushions for enough spare change to buy a pack of Ramen noodles. “What the everlasting fuck,” people will say, “I’d rather live in a hellhole with healthcare,” and vote for Biden anyway.
 
So Stepien’s job looks like it won’t even run through Thanksgiving, and he’s got to be looking for opportunities after that. But I have no doubt he’ll land on his feet.
 
Goya will need a new bean salesman, for one.

It’s been a bad thirty days for rallying for the Cantaloupe Dope, what with no one showing up in Tulsa and then nearly the whole Secret Service, Herman Cain and Don Jr.’s tootsie getting the rona after it, then a couple of 4th celebrations in which the basic theme was how Joe Biden was trying to destroy America.
 
Which is wrong, of course. Joe Biden will have only what’s left of America to try to destroy, should he win in November. Trump will try to rally again, but not only will people fail to show up for fear of the covid, but he’s not going to have any music to play for them. Most recently, Neil Young, geriatric rocker, flat out told the Trump campaign to knock off playing his ancient hit, Keep on Rockin in the Free World. Young, who was born in Canada and was good with that until Trump was elected, became an American citizen specifically so he could vote against Trump this year. He's a little bit p-o'd about being Trump's soundtrack.
 
This follows fast on the heels of the Rolling Stones telling Trump not to think about even humming one of their songs in the shower, and a while back, Bruce Springsteen ixnaying Trump playing Born in the USA before raging against the immigrant hordes.
 
Now, anyone who’s ever read the lyrics of Born or Free World knows that neither song is a paean to the unsullied American Dream. And Trump does read, or at least the Mendacious Mannequin, Kayleigh McEnany, assures us he does. But not song lyrics, apparently, and for sure his base doesn’t read them, either.
 
But the bunch of creaky boomers that attend Trump’s rallies need music to rouse them out of their insulin comas long enough to cheer when Trump takes the stage and even though Ted Nugent still makes his work available for Trumpfests, no matter how tired and cranky and racist you are, there’s only so many times you can listen to Cat Scratch Fever or Wang Dang Sweet Poontang without having a fatal health event, or at least wishing you could have one.
 
Even Kanye West’s oeuvre is not available to Trump now, since West will probably want to use it himself in his own Presidential campaign, which he announced the other day after splitting a big bud of Himalayan Kush with Elon Musk. Just as well, because not a single person born before 1990 can name one song Kanye has ever written.
 
There is one band out of the Cretaceous era of rock that had quite a few hits and, so far, has not objected to Trump playing them. I speak of the Beatles, of course. The fact that they are 50% deceased may have something to do with this.

Now, there are some Beatles hits that wouldn’t be suitable for a Trump rally. Norwegian Wood would be pointless, and I Wanna Hold Your Hand in bad taste in this pandemic year. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds might be better for a Lindsey Graham campaign event.
 
But Lennon and McCartney did write at least one rocking, soaring anthem with an irresistible hook that would have Trump’s supporters cheering madly and jumping around in their support hose.
 
BACK IN THE USSR!
 
Think about it. If you concentrate hard enough, you can practically see Putin wiping away a nostalgic tear.