McCAIN WAS DEAD: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Donald didn’t go, he wasn’t welcome, but McCain was dead. Old McCain was as dead as a door-nail.
Donald knew he was dead? Of course he did. His hat and his hair had both told him and they were both of well repute. McCain was dead.
How could it be otherwise? Donald had watched the nation mourn the passing of McCain, the po-faced men and the ladies hiding their lack of tears behind squares of lace. Donald and McCain were rivals for many years, an enmity growing plump between them toward the end. The country mourned performatively, mourned the passing of a man more for who he disagreed with than any love for the man himself. Donald was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but he was a man of politics on the very day of the funeral, and raised the flag from half-mast soon after.
The mention of McCain’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that McCain was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.
Donald never mentioned McCain’s name after he died, never dined with McCain’s wife or took a stroll in a park with McCain’s obese daughter. Donald continued on his business like McCain had never existed, never opposed him, was never loved like Donald wanted to be loved.
Nobody ever told him he would be a great President or a beloved President. No one stopped him in the halls of the White House to ask, with gladsome looks, “My dear Donald, how are you? When will you come to see me?” No reporters implored him to bestow an interview, none of his Cabinet members asked him over for dinner, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired of Donald the way into the history books.
But what did Donald care? His own counsel was very thing he liked. To own the libs, to womp the womp womp, to rave and rail on Twitter all day long with his only two friends was all Donald professed to care for.
Once upon a time–of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve–old Donald sat busy in his Oval Office. The door of Donald’s office was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond was practicing press conference statements. Donald had a fine large can of Diet Coke, but the clerk’s can was so very much smaller that it looked like a single swallow. The clerk pulled out her cellphone, and tried to tried to catch up on Twitter; in which effort, not being a woman of strong concentration, she failed.
“Happy Holidays, Father! HaShem save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was Donald’s daughter, the Jew-married Ivanka.
“Bah!” said Donald, “McNugget!”
“Holidays a McNugget, father?” said Donald’s daughter. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”
“I do,” said Donald. “Say Merry Christmas! What reason have I to be merry? You’re Jew-married and thrice-childed.”
“Married, yes. Now a Jew, yes. And I have three children. But you know this means I celebrate Christmas no more. Holidays, holidays. Happy Holidays! Come, then,” returned the daughter gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose?”
Donald having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “McNugget.”
“Don’t be cross, father!” said his daughter and sat in his lap. She ground her bottom into his lap and pulled his arms around her and giggled like when she was small.
“What else can I be,” returned her father, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Happy Holidays? No, Merry Christmas, indeed. Holiday time to you but a time for Congress to not be in session and therefore not shutting down the government; a time for TV specials that I don’t star in, the end of the regular football season so there is no more kneeling; a time for a nightmare grove of Christmas trees to infest my home? If I could work my will,” said Donald indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Happy Holidays’ on his lips, should have a stiff steel tariff and be the subject of a Fox and Friends expose. He should!”
“Father!” pleaded Ivanka.
“Hottest of my daughters!” returned her father sternly, “Keep Hanukkah or whatever in your own way, and let me keep the legislative recess in mine.”
Donald leaned toward her and smelled her hair and shuddered.
“This is my only joy,” Donald said.
“Keep it!” repeated Donald’s daughter.
The press secretary in the outer room involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, she drained her Diet Coke noisily and burped lustily.
“Let me hear another agreeable sound from you,” said Donald, “and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation! You’re quite a useful creature, Pie,” he added, “But a dozen land whales who could do your job beach themselves in Adams Morgan every day!”
“Don’t be angry, Father,” Ivanka said. “Come! Dine with us tomorrow.”
“Chinese food? I hate Chinese food,” Donald groused. “And no Hollywood film would please me.”
“Oh, Father!” Ivanka said despairingly. She leaned back and his hair did mingle with her hair.
“Why did you get married?” said Donald.
“Because I fell in love.”
“Because you fell in love!” growled Donald, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a Happy Holidays. “Good afternoon!”
Ivanka stood and Donald’s hair did whimper at the parting.
“I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute, Father. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have come to you in homage to the Holidays, and I’ll keep my wry Jewish humour to the last. So Happy Holidays, Father!”
“Good afternoon!” said Donald.
“And a Happy New Year!”
“Good afternoon!” said Donald.
His daughter left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. She stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on Pie, who returned them cordially.
“There’s another moron,” muttered Donald; who overheard him: “the stout-hipped Pie, heart disease and a husband and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I should send her to North Korea.”
At length, the hour of shutting up the Oval Office arrived. With a dyspeptic glare, Donald put down his phone.
“You’ll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?” Donald demanded of Pie.
“If quite convenient, sir.”
“It’s not convenient,” said Donald, “and it’s not fair.”
Pie observed that it was only once a year.
“A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!” said Donald. “But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.”
Pie promised that she would; and Donald walked out with a growl. The Oval Office was closed in a twinkling, and Pie, with the long ends of her red slanket dangling below her waist (for she boasted no great-coat), waddled off to her DC home.
Donald took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy McDonald’s; and having read all Twitters, and talked quietly with his hat and his har, and beguiled them the rest of the evening with his Candy Crush, and went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once housed a Negro and his wife; they were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Donald, the other rooms being all let out as offices.
Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the door to the Residence, except that it was very large and the knob is large and brass. It is also a fact, that Donald had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place. Let it also be borne in mind that Donald had not bestowed one thought on McCain, since his overwrought funeral. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Donald saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change–not a knob, but McCain’s face.
McCain’s face. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Donald as McCain used to look: with bald pate and liver spots, bandage on his nose and forehead. The eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That made it horrible; but as Donald looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knob again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. He looked around for the Secret Service agent that should have been near the door. He looked up at the security camera that he had unplugged months before.
His hat said: “What the fuck was that?” And his hair shivered on its perch. Donald opened the door, his hand touching nothing but smooth knob and looked into the room beyond. Nothing. His hat told him to look behind the door. Nothing. There was nothing, so his hair said, “Aw, shit, just close the door.”
But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.
Tweeting-room, bedroom, panic-room, wig vault. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Tweeting-room as usual: wrist braces, retweeting tools, two Filet-o-Fish boxes, bidet on three legs, and a solid gold shitter.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his hat and hair; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down to read a few late-night tweets.
Every tweet he read seemed to be about Old McCain.
“McNuggets!” said Donald; and walked across the room.
The door to the secret Kennedy fuck tunnels flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard a noise much louder. Donald and his hat and his hair moaned with fear. They heard a sound, clanking sound, deep down below where the mutated offspring of JFK live. Donald clutched his hair and hair to his chest.
“Who is there?” asked Donald.
“Oh, great,” said his hat, “Step up to be in a horror movie why don’t you?”
“It’s McNuggets still!” said Donald. “I won’t believe it.”
His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. “I know him,” Donald cried. “McCain’s Ghost!”
The same face: the very same. McCain with his baldness and dour expression, in the uniform they buried him in, starched and pressed; the medals on his chest clanking as he walked.
“What the damn hell fuck is going on?” asked Donald’s hat.
“I don’t believe it,” his hair said, quaking, and did shit dandruff onto Donald’s nightdress.
Donald looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
“What do you want with me?” Donald asked in a high queer voice.
“Much!”–McCain’s quarrelsome voice, no doubt about it.
“Who are you?” Donald’s hair asked.
“Ask me who I was,” said the spirit.
“I hate riddles,” moaned the hat.
“Who were you then?” said Donald, raising his voice.
The Ghost sat in a chair in and offered for Donald to do the same.
“In life, I was your rival, John McCain,” said the shade.
“Bullshit,” the hat spat.
“You three don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.
“We don’t,” said all three in uncertain chorus.
“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”
“I don’t know,” said Donald.
“Why do you doubt your senses?”
“Because,” said Donald, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of Big Mac, a blot of secret sauce, a crumb of McGriddle, a fragment of an underdone Apple Pie. There’s more of the Dollar Menu about you than Deathly Menace, whatever you are!”
“Good one, Donald,” his hat said. “I’m going to put that one on Twitter.”
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chest of medals with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Donald held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. His hat and his hair were blown backward, off his head and behind the chair in which he sat, both cursing and tumbling.
Donald fell upon his knees, and bowed his bald head. “Mercy!” he said. “Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?”
“I come to help with your legacy” replied the Ghost, “and I don’t mean your Twitter archive.”
“I worry for my legacy,” said Donald. “I must. But why do you walk the earth, and why do you come to me?”
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its medaled chest and wrung its shadowy hands.
“You are medalled,” said Donald, trembling. “Tell me why?”
“I wear the honors I gained in life,” replied the Ghost.
“I made it medal by medal, and ribbon by ribbon; I got them being shot down so many times; I bear them for the time I spent as a POW. They are the pride of my Warboner. Is my Warboner strange to you?”
“I had bone spurs,” Donald said.
“Bone spurs! A totally real thing!” said the hat, riding as he did on the hair. They jumped into Donald’s lap and scaled to his shoulder and then climbed to his head.
“You missed your chance to create honor,” said the Ghost, “but it is not too late to become a great President. A beloved President. A President with statues and parks named after him. A President that has every excuse made for him.
“McCain,” he said, imploringly. “Old John McCain, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, McCain!”
“I have none to give,” the Ghost replied. “You must embrace the Warboner as I had done and be elected President which I could not.”
“But you were always a Never Trumper, McCain,” faltered Donald, “why would you want to help me?”
“The Warboner is its own end,” McCain said in sepulchral tones. “The dead desire only more dead to share their suffering.”
The hat and the hair were very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on this, and began to quake exceedingly.
“Hear me!” cried the Ghost. “My time is nearly gone. I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate, the failed Presidential candidate, never to be loved, a footnote of a joke in the history books.”
“I didn’t go to your funeral,” blurted Donald. “And you daughter is still quite large.”
McCain’s Ghost grimaced. “You will be haunted,” it resumed, “by Three Spirits.”
“Three more ghosts? This is the shittiest Christmas ever,” the hat said. The hair shushed it loudly.
“Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “you and your head gear cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first when the bell tolls One.”
“Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it over, McCain?” hinted Donald.
“Like a ghost foursome,” the hat chipped in.
“Expect the second on the next hour. The third upon the next hour! Remember what has passed between us!”
The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the door to the Kennedy fuck tunnels opened a bit wider. McCain beckoned Donald to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, McCain’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Donald stopped and became sensible of confused noises in the tunnels, incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated down the dark damp stairs.
Donald looked down the stairs: desperate in his curiosity.
The tunnels below were filled with phantoms, each of them, like McCain, a failed Presidential candidate. Mondale and John Anderson, Bob Dole and Gerald Ford and many Donald could not recognize floated by, mummified from the neck down in bumper stickers.
“What the fuck?” the hair asked, pointing with a tendril, “Mitt Romney isn’t dead.”
“He might as well be,” McCain’s Ghost said, as clear and loud as if it were still in the room with them. “He will never know a proper Warboner…”
Donald closed the tunnel and locked it, double-locked locked and checked the locks a third time. And being, from the confusion he had undergone, or the fast food he had consumed all day, or his glimpse of the afterlife of politicians past, or the dull conversation of McCain’s Ghost, or the tiredness of his Tweeting thumbs, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.
Absolutely brilliant! Bravo!!! Author! Author!
Oh, well done indeed. As ever, hard to pick a favorite, but this one got a chuckle:
Seconded.
Thirded!
*Wild applause*
I fear the next three ghosts.
Piss hookers?
The ghosts of warboners past-
1. Woodrow wilson
2. Teddy Roosevelt
3. Lyndon Johnson
Or Lincoln, Truman, and Bush, Bush & Barry
Eh. I don’t think Truman belongs on that list.
Purposefully kept in the dark and surprise sprung into the presidency in the last year-ish of the war? That’s very arguably the most sudden and overwhelming increase in responsibility in the history of mankind.
I’d cut the Kansan a bit of slack.
Kansan?
And, fair play on WWII but maybe some blame for Korea?
(Whoops. Thinking Kansas City.)
Living in Korea, I admit my bias and that my opinion on that is tinged in favor of intervention.
It was at least a war to defend against aggression (yes, I know it’s more complicated than that) against Maoist China and the Soviets.
More importantly to me, 70 years later, Koreans might get angry about the crassness of US GIs here from time to time, but they universally are beyond thankful for US/UN service here. It seems to be one of the rare violent interventions that stood the test of time as a way of actually keeping people out of abject poverty and misery, and that the 55M people living in SoKo now free from the NoKos was legitimately worth the blood and treasure lost in ensuring the 38th Parallel.
Yeah, that’s fair enough. And, in the context of post-WWII America, it’s hard to see Truman making any other decision once the invasion took place.
I may not be as knee jerk anti war as I should but I think Korea fit all the requirements for a just war.
I was thinking more Korea. I really just put down what was on the top of my head. Maybe scratch Truman and insert Clinton or Reagan for their shenanigans.
The ghost of warboners past; the ghost of warboners present, and the ghost of warboners yet to come!
Does Ford really count? I mean, sure he lost, but he was President for a few minutes.
We wear the chains we forged in life. My advice to you is don’t walk on any frozen lakes.
“mummified from the neck down in bumper stickers.”
I aaprove
Slanket?
https://www.theslanket.com/shop/the-ultimate-slanket/
I thought it would be what a blanket would look like – crusty and covered in man juice – after after a hard week of working by a slut..
You thought… or hoped?
That would be the skanket.
““Why do you doubt your senses?”
“Because,” said Donald, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of Big Mac, a blot of secret sauce, a crumb of McGriddle, a fragment of an underdone Apple Pie. There’s more of the Dollar Menu about you than Deathly Menace, whatever you are!”
“Good one, Donald,” his hat said. “I’m going to put that one on Twitter.””
I humbly bow to your literary brilliance.
I wonder how long he’s been holding that one in.
This was great. The change in tone and style reminded me of that time the Simpsons did Poe’s “The Raven”. Well done.
I thought the same.
Very excellent and I can’t wait for the rest of it!
“Kennedy fuck tunnels.”
Bravo
Sandra Locke dead. I was just watching The Outlaw Josey Wales over the weekend.
Not for nothing, but Eastwood knows how to nepotize.
Without comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWtUL5Rx364
McCain seems to have missed out on the learning/regretting/growing kindlier that Marley did after death.
That is truly an extraordinary amount of effort. I would feel guilt and shame, were I capable.
SF puts the Dick in Dickens!
Spectacular, man!
Put the Dick in Dickens….
Lol
ALOL
I was waiting all morning for this. I read the first few sentences, then BANG the transformer outside blew and I was without power for almost an hour.
Twas a Ghost, I say. And a mean one at that. Dan Brown, perhaps. Or a vile spectre of SNL writer’s room past.
Was a squirrel, so must be the ghost of Reason past.
Haha. Good one.
Magnificent work, SF!
*gapes in awe*
It is hard to start somewhere and point out the brilliance…
““I don’t believe it,” his hair said, quaking, and did shit dandruff onto Donald’s nightdress.”
TW- OT.
It’s like an Endangered Species Act for farmers.
The average American farmer, according to the most recent United States Department of Agriculture data, is white, male, and 58 years old. Just 8 percent of America’s 2.1 million farmers identify as anything other than non-Hispanic white; only 14 percent are women. And as the average age of American farmers has risen over the past 30 years, the federal government has taken small steps to address a situation that if left unaddressed, would almost certainly prove to be a crisis for American agriculture and the American food supply.
The new farm bill, which passed through both houses of Congress last week and is waiting on Donald Trump’s signature, nearly triples funding for the only two programs specifically designed to support beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers; in other words, farmers outside the current dominant—and aging—demographic. The two grant programs—the Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers Program, often known as the 2501 Program after its original section number, and the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program—will exist within one new initiative, called the Farmer Opportunity Training and Outreach (FOTO) Program.
Absent prompt federal action, farmers face extinction. We must act immediately.
almost certainly prove to be a crisis for American agriculture and the American food supply
Because when farmers die and their kids don’t want to farm, they just burn the place down rather than sell it to the neighbors or an agribiz conglomerate.
If selling the family farm is a bad thing, then why do we still have an estate tax which forces the larger, more successful ones to be sold?
Doublethink dude, it’s easy. Just give in.
Just lie back and think of subsidies, eh?
Corn and pigs; corn and pigs; corn and pigs.
…when farmers die and their kids don’t want to farm for years and years just to pay the inheritance tax.
Eeeewww!! But, the kids in question are also likely going to be white men! How are we ever going to have racial and gender balance in farming if we just let white guys leave their farms to other white guys?
South Africa has an idea or two addressing this very problem.
The Congressional Black Caucus is taking notes.
Are all the latino farm hands not counted as “farmers”
No, they are victims.
Slave chattel.
No, because what they mean is “farm owners” not “farmers”. Here in Texas the majority of farm owners are white but the vast majority of farmers are Hispanic. There are pros and cons to each position, but the complainers only see the net worth and whine about inequality.
Kinda like my neighborhood: 70% of the “home owners” are white but 100% of the drywallers are Mexican.
Can someone please explain to me why what the farmer identifies means anything? I mean I can kinda see being worried about bringing new blood into the farming business but what kind of a moron do you have to be to think that it matters one bit whether they are brown, black, white, yellow, red, pink, purple, orange, or any other color and how exactly does their genitalia and choices of who to have sex with impact their ability to farm in the least?
Can someone please explain to me why what the farmer identifies means anything?
It forms the basis of a tripling of someone’s budget. That’s all that matters.
There is absolutely no way on this earth that these programs will increase the number of farmers, period, much less Latinx farmers.
We need transgender farmers
How are you going to get lesbian cows and transgender chickens if you’re so narrow minded about animal husbandry?
What about the great tragedy that the decline in the number of butch lesbian cows which corresponds with the rise of the number of transgender cot to bulls?
(Yes there are articles about this “tragedy” among their homo sapiens equivalents.)
You know the goal is to eliminate animal husbandry because it sounds so shirtlord-y. No different that the uproar over genetic engineering, aka plant husbandry.
“animal husbandry?”
Don’t neglect animal wifery either. You may end up on some WOKE list. Equal opportunity means more than just 50 %. Ask any divorced man.
In a cruel bit of irony, the Farm Bill also authorizes the administration to continue funding Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, where mass starvation has begun to grip part of the country. But, diversity or something
In a cruel bit of irony, the Farm Bill also authorizes the administration to continue funding Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen,
God-President Dean would veto the bill and return it to Congress with instructions to send me a Farm Bill, not a Farm and Bombing Yemen Bill.
So I can have the pleasure of vetoing a clean Farm Bill now, and a clean Bombing Yemen Bill later.
OT: The literary tastes of our cultural elite.
I need to look into this. I bet I qualify for a subsidy.
I could start baling my lawn clippings and sell the bales at the farmer’s market.
The subsidies would pour in.
Locally sourced, fair trade, non GMO, artisanal, lawn hay bales need subsidies too.
Speaking of farm subsidies, this is always fun.
https://farm.ewg.org
You can see which of your rich ass neighbors is on farm welfare.
https://farm.ewg.org/search.php
Better link.
my raging prog father-in-law’s on there to the tune of $38K from 1995-2017. oddly, 3 of the last 4 years has been zero.
You’ll all be shocked to learn that my local congressman’s family and farms have sucked up millions in my area.
Diversity of farmer skin color and genitalia will save agriculture, obviously.
But what I really want to know is why Congress isn’t doing anything about the 1 in 5 cucumbers that are raped.
Do I need to post the Mencken article about farmers again?
And as the average age of American farmers has risen over the past 30 years,
Considering that people generally transfer their farms to their children when the die, the fact that life expectancy has gone up over the past 30 years means that the average age of the American farmer should go up as well. If the median example goes from a 70 y.o. farmer leaving the farm to his 50 y.o. son to an 80 y.o. farmer leaving the farm to his 60 y.o. son, the average age of the farmer has increased without anything meaningful changing. This seems like another example of a crisis that exists only in the statistics, not in reality.
So what you’re saying is that we need to start killing farmers?
Well, people were talking about the South Africa solution up-thread, and I imagine the violence in that country has indeed improved this statistic on paper…
Hey, it worked for Zimbabwe. I think… let me check…
The average American farmer, according to the most recent United States Department of Agriculture data, is white, male, and 58 years old. Just 8 percent of America’s 2.1 million farmers identify as anything other than non-Hispanic white; only 14 percent are women
I can’t fathom how this is relevant.
If the following parts are as inspirational and appropriate to the times we live in, I say that the Glibertariat nominate SugarFree for the Nobel in Literature.
Genius Sir, it must be added to the canon of American Literature to reside among “Huckleberry Finn” and “Fear and Loathing”.
OT: Take heart, New Yorkers – Democrats are finally going to swoop in and clean up the MTA!
Um… is this guy even aware of his base?
He didn’t say they weren’t going to shovel more billions into the MTA. He said he wanted to grandstand first.
I’m guessing the hearing will go something like this:
“So how many more billions ya want?”
“How many youse got?”
Sen. Leroy Comrie (D-Queens) told The Post that he plans to summon top MTA officials — including NYC Transit chief Andy Byford — to testify before the Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions about their failure to smooth the ride for long-suffering strap-hangers.
He’s going to drag them in for hearings. Why didn’t someone think of that before?
And let me guess. The failure to smooth the ride is because not enough money.
Well, I think it depends. How many of the Senator’s cronies is the MTA willing to hire?
How many is the Senator willing to fund?
The failure to smooth the ride is because not enough money.
In fairness, yes. To smooth the ride would require upgrading either the train cars or the track, both expensive propositions. The fact that it is likely that any money appropriated for smoothing the ride would more likely be spent “studying the issue” than doing anything about it is, technically, a separate matter.
I think “smooth the ride” is some sort of awkward metaphor for “making everything suck less” – not literally “smoothing the ride” although I guess that could be one part of it, even though replacing rails is something they already do literally non-stop.
I guess it could be a metaphor, but I took it literally since they specified smoothing it only for “strap-hangers”, and the only thing that sucks more for a strap-hanger than someone with a seat is a bumpy ride.
Also, if they are replacing the rails non-stop without smoothing out the ride, I suspect great incompetence. If you regrade when replacing the rails (and why would you not?) you’ll get a much smoother ride. And if they did that they wouldn’t even need better shock-absorbers for their cars. Of course, they also wouldn’t have a reason to ask for more money in the future, so we all know what that means.
All of it though would be moot if the customers actually paid for the service. But it’s the non-customers that foot most of the bill.
Okay, let’s see if I can get it right this time.
OT: The literary tastes of our cultural elite.
You spelled “cultural trash” wrong.
Alice Walker’s not “cultural trash.”
More like cultural candy floss.
Mr. Lizard hisses from his heated rock.
You know who else read the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”?
JFC – Alice Walker pimps a David Icke book and nobody at the NYT bats an eye?!
TBF: those who run the NYT are almost certainly Reptilians. So the outcry over Icke’s anti-semitism draws attention away from Icke’s efforts to expose the Reptilian conspiracy.
TBF: those who run the NYT are almost certainly
ReptiliansRetards.My money is on whoever wrote and edited this has no idea who Icke is or the noxious ideas he promotes.
Genius, SugarFree!
Very inspiring…
What it might inspire…
Horrifying.
Be sure to work Melania into this story. And whatever bimbo eruptions are likely to enliven our holiday spirit.
For your overflowing “Bullshit Files”:
Apparently, RGB is claiming that her busted ribs are almost repaired. Remember, it was reported as 3 fractured ribs, on November 8. So this 85 year old woman, showing definite signs of calcium deficiency common to women her age, managed to heal fractured ribs in about a month?
Pull the other one; its got bells on.
Is she claiming that? Or are her handlers claiming that?
She cannot be reasoned with, she cannot be tamed. She is the undead.
“She can’t be bargained with, she can’t be reasoned with. She doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and she absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until the government is regulating everything (except abortion)”
I call bullshit. RBG has been dead for at least 5 years.
You’re thinking of John Roberts and he’s only dead inside
The husk that contains a litch’s essence heals quickly.
Giuliani Explodes When Asked If Trump Will Sit Down With Mueller
When Wallace asked for clarification about what Giuliani meant by “good luck,” the former prosecutor made his opinion of the special counsel investigators and their interview hopes even more clear.
“They’re a joke,” he said. “Over my dead body, but you know, I could be dead.”
“I am disgusted with the tactics they have used in this case,” he added later. “What they did to General Flynn should result in discipline. They’re the ones who are violating the law. They’re looking at a non-crime collusion, the other guys are looking at a non-crime campaign violations, which are not violations. And they are the ones who are violating the law, the rules, the ethics and nobody wants to look at them. They destroyed Strzok and Page’s texts, 19,000 texts.”
I agree with Rudy Giuliani. And now I need to take a shower.
People in Belgium protested outside of the EU headquarters. Tear gas and water cannons needed to be used to control the demonstration.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/police-anti-migration-protesters-clash-eu-headquarters-59848662
The Weekly Standard is no more and the EU is collapsing. So many early Christmas presents this year
Why are the signs in English? Does the EU use English as its official language?
If you read the article, those are pictures of some Canadian protests that have been occurring (although not as large as their European counterparts). Canadians speak a kind of English
I’m thinking of the wrong article. I have no idea why they also have English language signs