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 Journal has recently published a sweet little essay entitled “The Science of Prayer,” during the course of which it acknowledges that there is no such thing, almost.
 
The body of evidence of prayer’s efficacy in the article is mostly provided by people who testify, “Praying makes me feel gooder.” Also, there are studies that show that people who pray have more positive self-images than people who watch porn while they are driving.
 
The psychological boost of having a nice chat with the Creator of All Things is not to be denied, despite the overwhelming evidence that if there is such a Being, He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about humanity. Maybe the transactional nature of most prayers is why He can’t be bothered with them. “Oh Lord, cure me of cancer.” “Oh God, let me win the lottery.” “Oh, Jesus, would you move this motherfucker out of the fast lane before I’m late to work again?”
 
It’s no wonder that God, instead of listening to such petitions, just turns up the radio in the Wheelhouse of the Universe and keeps on setting the quasars just precisely right.
 
But what about unselfish prayer? What about when you ask God to make you a better person? Of course, when you pray for that, the corollary question of why God didn’t make me a better person in the first place? is bound to pop into your head. Why did He make you such a bottomless pit of eating disorders and horny cravings? It was His Will in the first place that made you such an inadequate, roiling mass of conflicting emotions that you are forced to try and soothe them daily with a nearly poisonous level of substance abuse. You’re basically asking Him to acknowledge His mistake at making you such a mess from the get-go. Are you surprised when He replies, “Talk to My Hand?”
 
Having the Pope or a televangelist with his own private jet advising us to pray is one thing, but having the Journal advising us to do the same is certainly a bad sign. The WSJ has, in the past, spoken highly of junk bonds, leveraged buyouts, derivatives and Enron, some or all of which have caused Wall Street to occasionally suck up all of America’s cash, feed it into a paper shredder and blow it out of corporate windows like confetti. This has happened several times in my lifetime. Now, in this summer of depression, rioting and covid despair, the best advice that capitalism can offer to the seething masses is pray?
 
No wonder people are trying to burn the country down. And what better time? They all already had masks on, anyway.

The Prez, after canceling a trip to Poland to guard the Southeast’s electoral votes against Hurricane Dorian, found time to get in a round of golf as the hurricane paused to destroy the Bahamas first, but the big news of the weekend was him firing his longtime personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, after she got I'd-better-call-an-Uber drunk with a bunch of reporters and started dishing about Trump’s eating habits and family relationships.

Westerhout, among other things, shot off her inebriated mouth about Trump not wanting to be photographed with his daughter Tiffany because he feels Tiffany is “fat.” He apparently feels that unless he’s standing next to another person who is overweight, nobody will notice that he could stand to shed about sixty pounds himself. Westerhout also mentioned that Trump routinely eats double Quarter Pounders on the toilet while holding his fries between his knees.

In her most revealing chunk of shitfaced gossip, Westerout claimed to have a better relationship with Trump than any of his children. Whether an attractive twenty-eight-year-old woman who routinely wears tight dresses could achieve this level of easy comfort with Trump without at least occasionally tending to his mushroom was not something Westerhout was sufficiently buzzed to discuss, apparently, but she blathered heedlessly on about how much his kids can’t stand the Tangerine Turdbite, much like the rest of us. 

Imagine, if you will, an alternate universe in which Fred Trump, instead of leaving his boy Donald nearly half a billion dollars, had sunk his fortune into Fotomat or a company that made pagers instead. If Trump hadn't inherited a big chunk of change, and held on to at least some of it, none of his kids would have anything to do with him, like the children of any ordinary, dead-broke malignant narcissist.

Trump himself would be living in a mobile home park in Florida, because he would need to maintain his pockmarked tan naturally, which wouldn’t happen in New York. Most days he would be wearing a nothing but a bathrobe that too-often flapped open in front of his neighbors, necessitating yet another visit by the cops. He wouldn’t have been able to spend much money to maintain a head of hair, so a baseball cap would be permanently glued to his skull. His sole indulgence would be having a fifteen-year-old car, an ATV that won't start and a boat with two flat tires on the trailer, all with the vanity license plate “TRUMP” attached to them. He would constantly complain about his kids not sending him money.

The only one who could afford to would be Ivanka. She wouldn’t be married to the scion of a real-estate baron, of course, but she could find herself a guy with some cheese, like maybe the chubby bald owner of a Southern California plumbing company who appears in his own TV commercials, so she would constantly be reminded of her soulless marriage. She would spend most of his money getting plastic surgery so she could appear on a reality TV show and to make herself more attractive to the personal trainers and hot yoga instructors that she is having affairs with. She blames the time difference for the fact that she never returns her dad’s phone calls.

Donald Jr., after a couple of convictions for poaching deer in his adopted state of Pennsylvania, had been unable to get any work other than installing Dish antennas out near Altoona. He finally lucked out by falling off a roof. He collects permanent disability and gets a hundred bucks a week under the table for keeping an eye on his neighbor’s grow house. 

Eric was killed in an auto-pedestrian collision because he didn’t have a personal attendant to remind him to look both ways before he crossed the street. 

Barron doesn't exist. Even in this alternate universe, Melania wouldn't have any trouble finding a rich guy to marry.

Tiffany really would be fat. She would have moved to Florida to be closer to her dad and blossomed into obesity as some Southern girls are prone to do. All them hurricane snacks, I guess. She lives in the trailer park next to Trump's. Every birthday, holiday and whenever she gets a new iPhone, she comes over and insists on taking selfies with him.

Trump can't stand that.

​The Years of Trump are about to begin, and the leaking of names of future Cabinet appointees is already well underway. Wilbur Ross, Trump’s billionaire neighbor in Florida, and Betsy DeVos, another 13-figure net-worther, are in line to become Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of Education, respectively.

I contacted the Siren of Spin herself, Kellyanne Conway, and asked why billionaires are going to be in charge of shaping America for the next four years. Her reply was remarkably on point.

“Few people understand the problems of ordinary Americans like billionaires do,” she said. “Most people who reach billionairehood are thinking hard, deep and often about ordinary people, and how to make more money off of them. Many billionaires employ thousands of working Americans, regular Joes who learn to survive on sustenance wages and work overtime for free in order to hang on to the American dream, which billionaires inspire them by living.”

So, putting billionaires in charge means high-paying jobs will return from overseas, as Trump promised?

“Of course. Who better to bring good jobs back to America than the people who exported them in the first place?”

This guy, Wilbur Ross, the future Commerce Secretary, doesn’t seem to have much many more qualifications to be in the Cabinet other than being Trump’s neighbor.

“Well, that’s a funny story. Donald was playing golf with him one day, and Ross said, ‘If I make par on this hole, will you make me Commerce Secretary?’ Well, the President-elect said sure, why not? Damn if that duffer didn’t manage a par-4. My boss does not break promises to his billionaire friends, unlike regular people that contract with him or banks that lend him money, so Ross has Commerce.”

Betsy DeVos, on the other hand, the future Secretary of Education, has quite an extensive record on public education. She is firmly against it.

“Mr. Trump will be the School Voucher President. More people will be able to send their kids to private Christian schools, where they will learn that making abortion illegal again is far more important to America than them having Social Security or Medicare when they get old.”

But even the Deputy Secretary jobs are going to people like the owner of the Chicago Cubs.

“Hah! The Cubbies thought they were having a good year, until Mr. Trump came along. But you, like a typical member of the fraudulent liberal media, are ignoring Donald’s other, non-billionaire Cabinet picks. What about Dr. Ben Carson for Housing and Urban Development?”

He seems stunningly unqualified, to be honest with you.

“Nonsense. Carson knows plenty about housing. The man has lived indoors almost his whole life. Plus, it is important to Mr. Trump that he starts healing the terrible racial divide in this country that was caused by us having a black President. The first step is having a white President, which Mr. Trump will be proud to be, but the second step is showing that he is willing to work with black people, particularly black people like Dr. Carson, who agree with the white people who think that all of black people’s problems in this country are basically their own fault.”

Plus, he’s the only black guy Trump really knows.

“Nonsense. He knows Don King, too.”

Rumor has it that Mitt Romney might be Secretary of State.

“Naw. Mr. Trump is not going to let his most important Cabinet member be someone who has way better hair than him. When is Romney going to be Secretary of State? When he gets a frigging bowl cut, that’s when.”

I, like many of my fellow Americans, lost more than a billion dollars yesterday. I refer, of course, to my picking the wrong numbers in the Powerball drawing.

I feel the loss keenly. A billion dollars doesn’t seem like much to some people. Bill Gates makes that much every time he brings out a new, even more infuriating version of Windows, and Mark Zuckerberg, who has apparently made a buck every time someone has clicked “Like” on Facebook, probably likes being worth 47 billion greenbacks. The Pentagon buys ships that don’t float and planes that don’t fly very well for a billion bucks each, sometimes.

But to an average American like myself, a billion dollars is real money. And don’t tell me that I’ll really collect only half of it after taxes, and I acknowledge I have to split that with my Significant Other or else cover myself with Kevlar instead of blankets when I sleep so as not to get stabbed to death while I’m catching some z’s. Reality denial is all part of winning the lottery, because everybody who plays knows they have a better chance of being attacked by a shark, or struck by lightning, or adopting a rescue dog that they later discover speaks fluent Romanian than of winning the big prize.

I also play the lottery badly, by letting the machine pick my numbers for me. Experts on winning the lottery poo-poo this lazy strategy. They advocate picking a set of “lucky” numbers and playing them consistently, although it seems to me the odds in both situations are exactly the same, which is hopeless.

But while the nation is in the grip of lottery mania, I’m going to run something here that I wrote during another episode of Powerball fever many years ago.

                                                 SENATOR POWERBALL

Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire recently won one of the second place prizes, $853,000, in the recent record, $340 million Powerball drawing. Gregg is already worth at least two million dollars. (News item)

Let's start by pointing out the obvious: No one buys a lottery ticket and fantasizes about winning second prize and the Senator wasn't, either. He wanted the whole 340 million. He was dreaming like the rest of us dream when we buy lottery tickets-of buying our own island, or maybe a sports franchise, or the company we work for and firing our boss, with enough left over for a decent shot at Elizabeth Hurley. The Senator is letting us know something, and that something is: Being a multi-millionaire with a seat in the world's most august deliberative body sucks!
 
Bad news, you're thinking, especially if your job is saying "Thank-you for shopping at Wal-Mart" four thousand times a day, or crawling down a coal seam, or any job where it takes you more than an hour to earn twenty bucks. "Why bother with wealth and prestige? It doesn't make Senator Gregg happy, so why should I complain about my inevitable future of carpal tunnel syndrome and credit card debt?" you wonder. We don't want you thinking that. That makes you a quitter, and America doesn't want anybody to quit, unless they're in rehab or belong to a band of Muslim insurgents, so our job is to convince you that an ultra-wealthy white male who basks in electoral approval every six years and who never has to pay a postage on anything, wallows in a prison of existential misery every day. Easy.

(A press conference. Senator Powerball speaking. He has never looked happier. He is polishing off several small liquor bottles, the kind they sell on airplanes, as he speaks)
 
"First of all, I want to assure my constituents and all of the American people that they will continue to enjoy my best efforts as their Senate representative despite the fact that I am now one-third of the way towards being a billionaire. I have only redoubled my efforts on their behalf. My recent emergency measure, making lottery winnings free of all federal, state and local taxes, retroactive to last week, is a prime example of my ceaseless efforts to improve their quality of life. I'll take your questions now."
 
UNDERPAID REPORTER: But Senator, won't you yourself benefit enormously from this bill?
 
SENATOR POWERBALL: Only incidentally. Future lottery winners have to be able to spend their entire fortunes tax-free. That's supply-side economics. Taxing lottery winnings is what's keeping our economy from taking off. (Giggles uncontrollably)
 
POVERTY-STRICKEN JOURNALIST: What about your relationships with your fellow legislators?
 
SENATOR POWERBALL: I doubt they will change much. Many of my colleagues are quite wealthy themselves, although for sure none of them have quite as much cream cheese on their bagels as I do. There's gonna be a new Big Bluffer at our Senate poker games, though, and if those party caucuses start to drag, don't be surprised to hear a loud burp or well-timed burst of flatulence from yours truly. (Burst of flatulence) Whoop! There it is!
 
UNPAID POLITICAL BLOGGER: You belong to important sub-committees studying global warming, nuclear proliferation and steroid use among foreign field-hockey players. How do you think being insanely wealthy is going to affect your attitude towards these problems of pressing concern to the United States and, indeed, all humanity?
 
SENATOR POWERBALL: You're a reporter, so I assume you know where to place the apostrophe in 'rat's ass.' Next?"
 
DEBT-RIDDEN OP-ED WRITER: Has your windfall affected your family?
 
SENATOR POWERBALL: Tragically, the news that we were suddenly, unbelievably rich caused my wife of thirty years to become mentally deranged. She is currently confined to a sanitarium on an island off the coast of Newfoundland. Only armed guards, sharks and menacing rip tides protect her fragile mental health from being torn apart by the pressures of the outside world. I pray for her recovery. In her absence, however, I will be accompanied at all times by a twenty-two year old lap dancer that I met fifteen minutes ago, named Tawny.
 
MENIAL POOL REPORTER: How are you going to relate to your constituents now that, instead of being merely five or six times wealthier than most of them, you are now hundreds of times richer than any of them can ever dream of being?
 
SENATOR POWERBALL: Thanks for asking that question. I want to answer it right now. Can the TV cameras focus in on my face? Thank-you. To all of my constituents watching, please go get a sheet of blank white paper. Place it on a flat surface. Place your left hand with the middle finger upraised, on the paper. Yes, that finger-the one you use to express yourself when you are cutting my limo off in traffic. Take a black marker. Trace the outline of your hand and finger. Flip the paper over. Using the marker, trace the outline on the opposite side. That's right. Now tape the paper underneath my image on your TV. That, my constituents, is my message to you. I'm never groveling for your votes again. I've shaken the last of your filthy hands; I've kissed the last of your sickly babies. I've taken my last poll to gauge the depths of your ignorance in order to adjust my political positions to reflect your abysmal prejudices. I've attended my last prayer breakfast, power lunch and fund-raising dinner with all of you. In the most simple and sincere way possible, I want to say: Screw you! I'm rich! I'm rich! I'm rich! Ha! Ha! Ha! (Stumbles offstage, hiccupping, calling loudly for Tawny off-microphone}
               
 There you have it. Be grateful every day you are not a Senator, a Powerball winner, or worst-case scenario, both. Be content with your lot in life. By the way, we'll have fries with that.