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 importance of coolness in a national election can never be over-estimated. The cooler of the two candidates usually wins, especially in recent years. Carter, the pious peanut farmer was cooler than Ford, who kept hitting his head on the doorway of Air Force One. Reagan the movie star was cooler than Carter. Daddy Bush coolly portrayed Dukakis as soft on crime and looking shitty in a tank, and Clinton played H W into history with his saxophone. No musical instrument is cooler than a sax.
 
Dubya was sort of cool, in a Texas preppie I’ll-give-ya-a-nickname-that-sticks kind of way. At least he was marginally cooler than the earnest Al Gore, and he only marginally won. The Dems found the least cool Senator on their roster, John Kerry, to match up with him in ’04 so they could lose.
 
Then came 2008. As was proven shortly after that election, America wasn’t really ready for a black President. We were, however, ready for a really cool President and Obama had that going on. From playing with the skins in a basketball game to telling a few jokes at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, then getting up from the table and coolly killing Bin Laden, to the tan suit, to Amazing Grace, the man could not be out-cooled. McCain never had a chance.
 
Come to 2016, and the cool pendulum swung as far as it could in the other direction. Both parties decided to go with candidates that were hideously uncool. Fox News had been painting Hillary as a cold, power-hungry bitch who didn’t even know which end of a saxophone to pick up ever since her hubby had been President. Every white guy sitting in a hunting blind in Wisconsin said to himself, “That see-you-next-Tuesday is not gonna be the boss of me,” and their votes managed to push the skeezy real-estate developer from New York over the Electoral College finish line.
 
January of 2017 was Trump’s chance to go cool, and he proved totally incapable of it. All he had to do was occasionally be noble about something. But he never has. From his inauguration crowd of that year being on the small side, to his discovering that the average age of a bloodied antifa sprawled on the sidewalk was 75, which was a few days ago, the man has never learned to let anything slide. From squawking raw insults at Democrats to intramural mud-wrestling with his fellow Republicans, the Cantaloupe Dope has shown that his one enduring quality is that he can’t take even the tiniest dis in stride.
 
Which is not cool. But the death knell came the other day, when Pat Robertson told him, speaking of Trump tear-gassing protesters so he could waltz around Lafayette Square with a Bible, “That’s not cool.”
​
Now, Pat Robertson is definitely not cool. He is the Anti-Cool, which is similar to the Anti-Christ, except instead of leading the forces of Satan, he leads the forces of Zip Up Your Pants, Join Me in Prayer and Give Me Some Money. He has been against every form of fun since his birth in 1892. He can get his sweaty, browned-out undies in a wad over just about anything, but even he noticed that Jesus never had to pepper-spray anybody to get into Jerusalem. When the leader of the Gay Cakes Mean the Apocalypse squad says you’re not cool, that’s a death sentence to your cool. You have fallen into the Well of Uncool so far even Lassie can’t get you out.
 
“Well, Joe Biden isn’t that cool,” I hear you saying, and that’s true. Uncle Joe has a spotty public record that goes back to the Korean War, and a proven penchant for sniffing anybody's niece’s hair. But here’s a picture of Obama laughing at one of his jokes.
 
That’s cool enough to beat Trump. 

I plan to be off the grid tomorrow, so you're getting Thursday's post a day early.

President Donald Trump claimed credit for commercial aviation's remarkably safe year in 2017 Tuesday, touting the industry's successes as due solely to his own efforts.

“Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!” he said. News item.
 
When the President Tweeted this yesterday, critics of the White House were quick to point out that there had not been a fatal commercial airplane accident involving a US carrier since 2009, when Trump had just begun to birther his way onto the national political scene and Melania was still willing to have sex with him.
 
The White House, as is its wont, doubled down. “Not only did the President personally improve airline safety, he was also responsible for last summer’s fantastic solar eclipse, which was visible all over the country,” said White House Press Secretary and current pie-eating champion Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “Obama weakly let all the solar eclipses move overseas when he was President. It took Donald Trump to bring solar eclipses back to the United States, where they belong. The President plans to apply his America First policy to all future spectacular astronomical events. Like meteor showers. From now on all meteors will hit the United States before they hit anywhere else. That’s another promise to the American people that the President plans to keep.”
 
When reporters pointed out that the solar eclipse happened back in August, meaning Trump took an uncharacteristically long five months to take credit for it, Huckabee replied, “Fake news,” and flounced off from behind the podium.

President Trump over the weekend identified the two biggest threats to our country, and, surprisingly, they are not terrorism and Mexicans. They are Obama and Schwarzenegger.

Tweeting in the predawn darkness, after another no-good, pretty bad, terrible week as POTUS, Trump accused Obama of ordering surveillance on Trump in Trump Tower during the last election.

Why the former President would want to listen to his successor any more than he had to was left unexplained by Trump. Obama just collected a flat 65 million for a book deal, so maybe, anticipating the literary riches that await any former President, he was doing research for a chapter he was going to title Trump Tower Trailer Trash. Maybe he was hoping to pick up some golfing pointers known only to overweight billionaires.  Maybe he just liked to listen to the rustling of Melania slipping in and out of lingerie, or marveling at her ability to talk like a whore in six different languages.
​
In any case, he must have taken them with him when he left the White House, because Trump can’t actually find them. Perhaps Obama and Richard Branson are cracking up over Barron’s struggles with his homework when they go kite-surfing together. Barron, like many of his fellow fifth-graders, probably has difficulties with the spelling of three-letter words. At least he does if he takes after his dad. 

​Turning from a casual comparison of Obama to Richard Nixon, which neither the supporters nor the enemies of either man had actually made before, Trump went after one of his fave frenemies, the ex-Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who announced he was leaving Trump’s employ as the host of Celebrity Apprentice.

Only Ivanka’s shoe line was rated lower than Celebrity Apprentice this year, which Schwarzenegger blamed on the fact that a goodly portion of the American public hates Trump and everything he stands for, and would sooner have a hemorrhoidectomy without anesthesia than watch something he produces. Trump, however, stayed true to form by not accepting the blame for anything, and put the show’s rating struggles at the feet of Arnold, whom he feels cannot match him for good looks, charisma and acting chops. He's also critical of Schwarzenegger for fathering an illegitimate child by his housemaid, saying scornfully "Anytime I've ever knocked up a servant, I've made sure she gets an abortion." 

Defenders of Schwarzenegger point out that many of his best movie lines have been re-produced on t-shirts, while Trump’s utterances so far have been confined to baseball caps. 

True dat.

And as far as Obama possessing secret recordings of Trump’s private life, observers of the Donald have a simple explanation for the President’s confusion.
​
He’s just got Obama mixed up with Putin. 

After being called out on it by former Trump Ohio campaign chairwoman Kathy Miller, the White House issued a brief statement expressing the President’s regret on starting America’s racial divide.

“It just seemed like a good idea at the time,” said a spokesperson who commented on condition of anonymity. “Going forward, the President expects to act in a racially evenhanded way for the remainder of his term in office.”
​
The President’s critics were not satisfied. Former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan David Duke issued a statement that read “It’s about time Obama admitted he began our era of racial dissatisfaction. But what about anti-Semitism? I mean, where did that come from, if not from the current Administration?"

“Obama might as well admit he started racial profiling as well,” said Maricopa County Sherriff Joe “Sherriff Joe” Arpaio. “I don’t remember anybody being accused of racial profiling before he took office. He needs to own that, too.”

Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who became a national figure by refusing to grant gay couples marriage licenses, was quick to point out Obama’s fingerprints on homophobia. “Neither I nor nobody else I know hated homos before Obama took office,” the spirited Christian lady was quoted as saying.

North Carolina Governor Pat McCroy, proponent of that state’s transgender bathroom ban, flatly stated that Obama invented transgenderism. “Never even saw none of them he-she’s till that feller became President. Ain’t no coincidence in my book.”

Ex-FOX head honcho Roger Ailes chimed in as well. "Obama started sexual harassment, too. Why won't he admit that? Before him, American working broads didn't mind a slap on the ass or a quick goose at the water cooler a bit."
​
As of this writing, the White House had not responded to this column’s request for comment. 

Joe Redstate called me again, just to get something off his chest. “I think it’s about time somebody said this out loud,” he began.  “Barack Obama is deliberately souring racial relations in this country by continuing to be black.”

I don’t think he’s got much choice about that, Joe.

“Obviously, that’s not true. Look at Michael Jackson.”

You think the President ought to emulate a man who died of a drug overdose?

"A Republican can dream, pal."

And we’ve only got a few months left of him, anyway.

“That’s something the nation can look forward to after the next election. A period of racial healing under a white President. You heard what a Republican voter said the other day—before Obama, she never thought about black people, and since he’s been President she notices black people and wonders if they like her. Once we have a white President again, her mental anguish will be over.”

Isn’t that woman like the people who get ticked off at the bilingual smiley face signs in Walmart? It’s really more her problem than anybody else's.

"Bite your tongue, you heartless liberal. Who do you think is causing all the violence at the Trump rallies? None other than Obama! His being black is causing otherwise peaceful Americans to lash out at the dirty thugs who criminally like to claim that white people are not a hundred percent nice to non-white people all the time in this great nation. Nicer than many of them deserve, we might add, but we won’t, because we’re not racists.”

By the way, Trump…

“We’re not talking about Trump. Rest assured, we big-time Republicans are either going to get behind his candidacy 110% or throttle his orange ass at the convention, as soon as we figure out whether we can control him or not. So that’s settled."

Oh. Nice for you.

“It’s the Republican genius for governing. We’re going to get it going again. And when we do, we can return to a racially benign America, where white Americans and black Americans get along fine because they stay out of each other’s neighborhoods.”

Obama will still be around for a while. Probably. And he’ll still be being black.

“Yes, but he won’t be in the White House. After we scrub the black out of that place, it can resume being a symbol of wise white American leadership, a leadership that doesn’t constantly and fecklessly remind white Americans that there are black Americans. Racial amity will return from sea to shining sea.”
​
Nobody can say you don’t have a dream, Joe.

“Yep. Me and that black guy.”

It’s awards season, and while most of us are arguing whether white people really deserve all the Oscars they are going to get, the more sophisticated of us are trying to predict the winners of the Nobels, and specifically, the big one, the winner of which can arguably be said to be the best person on the planet, the Peace Prize.

Past winners include many notables and also many people most Americans have never heard of, because they brought peace to conflicts in which the United States was not involved. Hard to believe there is such a thing, but they happen; people start shooting and bombing each other and America just ignores them.

The Peace Prize, unlike the Best Supporting Actor award, is not always given out—if no one has been peaceful enough, the Norwegians just keep the money for themselves. This happened for two years in a row, 1966-67, when apparently all the notables of the world behaved like complete jerks to each other, and the Nobel Prize Committee just spent the prize money on appetizers like kippered herring and goat cheese cubes for the Nobel cafeteria, because Scandinavians like snacks like that and also nachos had not yet been invented. They finally gave the prize to a Frenchman, Rene Cassin, in ’68, for being President of the European Court for Human Rights and handed him about the same amount of money they had given out in ’65. Monsieur Cassin was quoted as saying afterwards “Vraiment? Je pensais que ce serait rouler, comme Powerball.’’*

This year, the nominees are just being put forward, and it promises to be an unprecedented gala of peace. Some people no doubt deserve the award. The Greek islanders who have been fishing Syrian refugees out of the Mediterranean to keep them from drowning have been nominated, for rescuing people from a place where everybody wants to kill them and delivering them to a place where everybody just wishes they were dead.
​
Also Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle on the NSA being able to spy on all Americans’ phone conversations, has been nominated. If he wins, his best course is to have the statuette shipped to Moscow because another Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama, is gunning for his traitor hiney.

I don’t think this has ever happened before, and when I looked up the list of past winners, it’s tough to imagine. Jimmy Carter would never throw down with Mother Theresa, and you’ve never heard the Dalai Lama trash-talking Nelson Mandela. But Barack and his pals have a special can of whup-ass in their cupboard with Edward’s name on it, and he’ll spend his Nobel winnings in the lunchroom at Leavenworth if they have their way.

Donald Trump has been nominated as well, which most people think would only happen if you could nominate yourself. You can’t, so someone else thinks The Donald is worthy of the Peace Prize. It’s tough to say what for. Planning to forcibly deport several million people hasn’t snagged a Nobel before, and it’s not like no one has ever tried it—Mao and Stalin come to mind, and no one thinks that either of those guys failing to get a Peace Prize to hang on their walls was an oversight.

And if Donald deserves the prize, what about the rest of the Republican field? I mean, some of them are obviously not big peace guys, but at least Ted Cruz deserves consideration, for machine-gunning bacon for his breakfast and promising to bring tranquility to the Middle East by “making the sands glow” over there.

But he hasn’t even been nominated. Sad. 

*"Really? I thought it rolled over, like le Powerball."

Veteran Republican political operator Joe Redstate called me the other night. “I’m tingling all over,” were the first words out of his mouth.

Geez, Joe, that could be diabetes. You’d better get yourself checked out.

“I’m speaking metaphorically, dude. The Iowa caucuses are almost here! The first step towards Republican control of everything!”

Yeah, well, maybe, Joe. So far the Republican candidates haven’t impressed many people besides themselves.

“What are you talking about? Our leader in the polls…”

You’re talking Trump, right?

“Yep. He finally did something really Presidential. Part of being a Presidential candidate, especially a Republican one, is finding some blatant nonsense and making it your own. You remember when Mitt Romney claimed he saved the auto industry by opposing the bailout that actually did save those guys?  Trump could have claimed he was the reason the economy is so much better now than when Obama took office. Never mind the Prez and the Fed. He could have said he fixed it just by not being a loser, and the voters would have cheered their assent. But Trump took the foreign policy route--he just announced he was the reason those Iranian prisoners got released. And he was the reason we got our boats and sailors back when they drifted into Iranian waters.”

A lot of people are under the impression the current President did that, I must admit.

“Bah! That weakling! Left to his own devices, he would have let the situation drag on forever, like the embassy hostages, the Pueblo, or that spy crew Bush had to beg back from the Chinese. You saw how it started out, with those Navy guys on their knees with their hands above their heads. Utterly humiliating.”

Sure. Because when people surrender to American forces, we usually just high-five them and give them a man-hug.

“I’m not following you there. But then those Persian bastards starting thinking to themselves that in about a year, we’re going to have to deal with President Trump. That’s what started the wheels of freedom turning for all those men. Sixteen hours later, after an all-you-can eat goat taco dinner, they were released. Trump triumphant!”

So forget Obama and Kerry-- it was all fear of Trump that had the mullahs quivering in their sandals?

“That’s what the base thinks. Plus, Ted Cruz helped out by pointing out that sixteen hours was plenty of time to start World War III. If Trump wins, we Republicans feel Ted would make an excellent Secretary of State. We need a guy at State whose specialty is tearing up treaties, not negotiating them. Iran and anybody else who messes with the US of A will know that, under Republican leadership, this nation will not hesitate to once again pour a trillion dollars down some Middle Eastern hellhole. Bomb them until they love us—just because it didn’t work once doesn’t mean it’ll never work. Probably we just didn’t use enough bombs.”

Are you going to be part of the committee that writes the party platform this year, Joe?

“I hope so. I really want to use that line in it.”
 

FOX News recently suspended two commentators for two weeks for using vulgar language to denounce President Obama. The vulgar terms involved were “shit” and “pussy.” FOX hastened to explain that while it firmly believes the current occupant of the White House is full of shit and definitely a pussy, those words should not be used on FOX, lest they fall upon impressionable young ears.

“Why, that’s just FOX pretending that anybody under fifty is watching unless they are being baby-sat by their grandparents, and then they are probably playing on their cell phones,” you may demur. But you have to admire FOX’s principled stand, which may be the first one the network has ever taken. And you also have to admire the words of reactionary commentator Eric Erickson, who recently called Obama our “mom jeans wearing squat to pee President.”

Admirably well said, Mr. Erickson, and passably non-vulgar according to FOX standards. But we here worry that you may have used up all of your creative juices in coining that one memorable phrase. We want to help. Just insert the word “President” after any one of the snappy phrases below and it will impress your audience with the intellectual rigor and intense patriotism that you and your listeners possess, and keep you qualified to sit on the FOX News bench, in case they suspend anybody else.
 
Obama Bin Hidin’

Chicagoweinie

The Vagina of Kenya

Harvard Fried Chicken Doo

Candyass of Cook County

Makes You Wonder Who the Real Father of Malia is

White House Negro

Nappy-Headed Homo Lover*

The Only Muslim Who’s Afraid to Blow Himself Up

Socialist and Sodomist Sympathizing Scaredy-Cat

Yellow-bellied Yapper

Red-line Drawing Dope-smoker

Only Michele Keeps Him from Sexing Tons of White Chicks Thank God

Baller Without Balls

Needs Viagra to Find It

*Well, maybe you could get fired from FOX for calling him this one. It's tough to come up with fifteen of these things.

Woe is Obama. Not a day passes that some talking head or op-ed writer doesn't proclaim the virtual end of his Presidency. He's lost the trust of the American people, Democrats are dissatisfied with him, he's mired in "scandals," although none of these scandals involve selling arms to our bitter enemies or getting oral sex from an intern or burglarizing the opposing party's campaign headquarters, scandals other recent second-term Presidents have enjoyed.

He might lose the Senate and spend his last two years in office wearily vetoing the mudslide the Republicans are planning to push his way and depart as a shadow of the pol he once was. But once out of office, his rep will rebound, and not just because this happens to all Presidents, even George W. Bush. I suspect that this phenomena is not because Joe Public thinks more highly of the actual Administrations of the past; Joe just looks back and sees that his life was better then, because he was younger. His wife hadn't ran up all their credit cards and left him yet; his kids hadn't caused him to cash in his IRA so they could get D's in college; he didn't need Viagra to prime his pump. He thinks past Presidents were better because he was better.

The prediction here is that Obama's rep will soar after he quits his current job, further and faster than any President before him. Why? Because the guy is just cool.

He might be the coolest President that has ever held the office. I admit Kennedy and Roosevelt might have shined on Between Two Ferns as well, had they the opportunity, but coolness was easier to achieve back then. A nice head of hair or a cigarette holder gave you a vast edge on being more chill than your opponent. In these days of the 24 hour news cycle, affecting cool is not enough. You have to emanate cool. It has to be one of your core attributes.

That's where Obama has always stood out. He succeeded in making Hillary wait an extra eight years to be President just because he was obviously dope and made her look whack. He destroyed John McCain's claim to cool, which the war hero had cultivated for years, so quickly that McCain felt forced to nominate a mouthy Valkyrie from the frozen north as his running mate just because she had nice wheels. He bested Romney because the guy couldn't turn his dress-shirt-tucked-into-dad-jeans ass around without pulling a dork move.

This brings us to the Dork Theory of Presidential Politics, which is that the less dorky of the two candidates usually wins. I intend this to supplant my previous HD TV Theory of Presidential Politics, which held that the best-looking candidate usually wins. The Dork Theory explains subtleties that the HD TV theory does not, like how the ugliest man ever to run for President (Lyndon Johnson) managed to landslide over Goldwater in '64 (the man wore huge blocky glasses and was on record as being in favor of the end of the world. Dork). How could a pious incompetent from Georgia upend a sitting President in '76? Because every time the sitting President stood up, he hit his head on something. Dork.

Bush 1 bested Dorkakis, but was stranded on the Dork Side himself by Slick Willie. Need I go on? Gore and Bush—so dead heat on the Dorkmeter the election had to be decided by the Supreme Court. How do you not sweep an obvious bungler out of office in '04? Nominate a horse-faced dork to oppose him.

Armed with the Dork Theory, we are able to penetrate the veiled future far earlier and more adroitly than Nate Silver ever could. Hillary is not unbeatable from our perspective; she is obviously not as chillax as Obama or even her husband. She's a woman who can be a bit overbearing and defensive at the same time, a high school principal of a personality. She's vulnerable. But who do the Republicans have to oppose her?

The leading contenders—the Toupee-Wearing Dork, The Dork from the Great White North, the Water-Sipping Dork and the Altar Boy Dork—all have dork in their DNA. Chris Christie is not a dork—that's why he represented the only real threat to Hillary before he was revealed as a Bully. Bullies are not dorks. They are in fact the final arbiters of who is a dork and who is not, but nobody elects a bully to anything. They are, by nature, self-appointed.

Who's left? Maybe somewhere there is a currently unknown Republican listening to Pandora on his tastefully appointed patio, barbecuing free-range chicken wings and making wry posts to Twitter while watching his wife smoke medical marijuana, who would make a cool candidate, but the GOP had better find him, quick. Otherwise cool will disappear from the Oval Office in 2017 and it may never return in our lifetimes.

My advice is to start missing Obama already.

BUNKERVILLE, Nevada (Reuters) - U.S. officials ended a stand-off with hundreds of armed protesters in the Nevada desert on Saturday, calling off the government's roundup of cattle it said were illegally grazing on federal land and giving about 300 animals back to the rancher who owned them.

The dispute less than 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas between rancher Cliven Bundy and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management had simmered for days. Bundy had stopped paying fees for grazing his cattle on the government land and officials said he had ignored court orders.

Anti-government groups, right-wing politicians and gun-rights activists camped around Bundy's ranch to support him in a standoff that tapped into long-simmering anger in Nevada and other Western states, where vast tracts of land are owned and governed by federal agencies.

News item


I chanced across this bit of news yesterday after lunch and thought to myself, Well, there's got to be a reaction to this. Sure enough, I clicked on a Huffpost video and Senators McCain and Graham and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were sneering at Obama's lack of will in failing to provoke a Waco-style standoff over three hundred cows and an endangered tortoise.
 
MCAIN: Just another example of Obama's fecklessness. International bullies everywhere think that they can get away with anything because of Obama's refusal to plunge the nation into war, in this case civil war, over any small incident or another.
 
GRAHAM: True 'nuff, fellow Senator. Vladimir Putin will throw a girl band in prison for months just for messin' with him. That's why when he goes invading, he gets respect. Obama is going to regret not treating northbound I-15 near Bunkerville as a breakaway republic that needed to be cruelly stomped into submission.
 
MCCAIN: It only encourages America's enemies to see us refusing to open fire on our citizens. I mean, they're totally convenient. If we won't send a military column a few miles north of Vegas to shoot a few of our own outback crazies, can our allies trust us to defend them? It reminds me of Benghazi.
 
GRAHAM: Benghazi? How's that?
 
MCCAIN: Almost everything reminds me of Benghazi, if you hadn't noticed. But to get back to the subject of Bunkerville, it's my belief that if Obama can't stand up to a bunch of tumbleweeds armed with light weapons, the Iranians are absolutely going to go ahead and build a bomb.
 
GRAHAM: I couldn't agree with you more, Senator. How about you, Bashar?
 
BASHAR AL-ASSAD: I'm solid with you guys. I don't mean to brag, but when it comes to killing my own citizens, I'm a guy that can really bust a move, if you know what I'm saying.
 
MCCAIN: And we respect you for that. Right now Obama's only going after those rebel snakes in Nevada with "legal and administrative" means. What's that sound like to you, Senator Graham?
 
GRAHAM: Like the weapons of wimpitude. Like international sanctions, only for sun-baked armed idiots.  What do you think of international sanctions, Bashar?
 
BASHAR AL-ASSAD: We in Syria have enjoyed them for years. I can tell you confidently that they don't work. Me and my inner circle have enough wine, prostitutes and Viagra to last us at least until our ally Russia invades all the countries in between us and them and rescues us from the rebels. Sanctions don't scare us.

GRAHAM: America would get back some of the international respect we've lost if we were more like you and Putin, Bashar.
 
MCCAIN: (Rolling up sleeves) You bringing up sanctions reminds me that you're a wanted international criminal, Bashar. How did you get on this show anyway?
 
At that point I woke up and realized it was all a dream, probably brought on by eating too many taquitos, causing me to fall asleep in front of the computer. I also noticed that the next link on the page was headlined ANGELINA JOLIE 'LOOKALIKE' FORCES CABBIE INTO SEX, THEN STABS HIM SIX TIMES.
 
Glad I didn't dream about that.