Kenders' Musings

Dr Gene Rogers, the former Medical Director of Sacramento County's Indigent Services program has been fired for questioning why illegals are given non emergency health care while our own citizens go without.

In a negative work review Program Manager Nancy Gilberti wrote:

"I am concerned that you continue to focus on patients' immigration status, which is outside your and [the] program's purview."

Mrs. Gilberti's remarks reflect a prevailing culture that has emerged in government: a culture that will not tolerate anyone who dares to draw a distinction between American citizens and illegal immigrants. It is a culture that now pervades police departments, public schools and universities, social services and health care.

Dr Rogers has filed a lawsuit, which is currently in appeal in Federal Court. Last year a nervous Latino Legislative Caucus in California pushed through a special bill by state Sen. Deborah Ortiz that explicitly allows counties to "opt" to provide non-emergency medical care to illegal immigrants.

Dr Rogers explains:

"I've seen cases and case histories of patients who essentially have come up from Mexico for the express purpose of being treated here, and then leaving to return home. I've watched illegal immigrants brazenly demand free, non-emergency health care that was meant for our poorest citizens. I've heard them and their families complain. They feel entitled to it."

That the state bureaucrats continued to provide services to illegals while cutting budgets is a travesty of justice and complete failure to do their actual job, which is taking care of CITIZENS.

For those that do not understand the difference between a citizen and an illegal let me clarify. Citizen are those here legally, those born here and those naturalized here (although those born here to illegal parents should not be citizens, but we'll work on getting the 14th Amendment re-interpreted later), while those that are illegal are those that sneak into the country without permission.

The fact that our citizens are not being taken care of while illegals are demanding and getting non emergency medial care is bad, but the fact that the medical director loses his job over demanding that our bureaucrats do their job and follow the law is an injustice.

But now for the meat of the post.

This smacks of.....RACISM.

That's right, I said it. A white guy speaks out about illegals (mostly mexican) getting free non emergency health care while his fellow citizens went without is fired by people in a bureaucracy that actively works to give away services to illegals while taking them away from our citizens, who are the rightful recipients of our tax dollars.

So now we have white guys that are speaking out against injustice and illegal activities being fired for his courage while the Legal Mexican Mafia comes up with special bills that make those illegal activities appear more legit all the while stealing non emergency health care away from the tax paying citizens of this state while giving it to mexcian citizens for free.

No wonder they march in our streets demanding rights and feel entitled to free health care, education and housing.

How long are we going to let this travesty continue?

Yeah you heard me. Now be a good little muzzie and run off to some Screamin Moojie Preacher and GET ME MY FATWA!!!!

Damn, it's gettin so's ya c'aint get good help, ya know?

What? You say I am being confrontational, hateful and racist with my remarks?

Hateful, possibly. I hate what the representatives of Islam are doing to my country.

For just two of the most recent examples go see Theodore's World and read about a story of some CAIR representatives knocking on a former Marines door one night to "dialogue" with him about his bumper sticker, which read "Jesus Loves You, Allah Wants You Dead." Had a couple of Christians knocked on the door of some muslim guy at night to "dialogue" with him about a bumper sticker it would be called a "hate crime" with CAIR screaming loudly for sensitivity training at the least if not outright jail time.

Example number two comes from Florida, where a late night TV Preacher talked about islam in his show a few too many times for the local CAIR branch, so they whined to CBS to get him pulled off of the air, and dhimmis that they are, they complied. Mind you nobody said this preacher threatened anyone or lied, instead they claimed he disparaged islam.

Free Speech for Me, but Not for Thee seems to be the message here.

So yeah I am a bit hateful about this crap.

Racist? No not at all. First off racism is the belief that one race is superior to another, and I do not believe that. I am an individualist. I believe that individuals make themselves great and that their race has nothing to do with it.

Besides that, "muslim" is NOT a race.

Am I being confrontational?

You bet your ass (or camel or goat) I am.

Apparently being an illegal alien is not illegal.

So if actually BEING in the country illegally is not illegal (unless one has been deported already, THEN it's a felony. Is driving without a license really illegal?

It seems that ILLEGAL ENTRY is a crime, but sticking around isn't. So if I break into someone's house, it is still breaking and entering, but is it still trespassing?

And while we are on points to ponder, how about a little Affirmative Action in the NFL?

See? Affirmative Action works like this:

You aren't as good as we are at this, so we're gonna give you an extra point for the color of your skin. Now, since the fastest runners in the world seem to be black for the last many years, it would stand to reason that blac----excuse me----African-Am----NO, SCREW THAT DAMMIT----BLACK folks are just plain faster runners than white folks, but there are plenty of white guys in the NFL.

So here's what I propose. We either make the goal line for the white guys out at, oh I don't know, maybe the five yard line, or we give the white guys an extra couple of points for actually scoring a touchdown.

We could do that same for basketball. Give the white guys three point instead of two for a regular shot, four for something past the three point line and two for a free throw.

Maybe even let it carry over to baseball huh? Or for white guys shorten up the baseline to maybe 80 feet instead of 90.

Whaddya think?

..well, not really. After all one cannot say farewell to a species that is now extinct.

The Yangtze River Dolphin, one of only four exclusively fresh water dolphins in the world is now "functionally extinct" says a scientist that conducted a six week 2000 mile survey of the Yangtze river without spotting even one of the creatures.

This is exacerbated by China's explosive growth, lax environmental rules and large hydrological projects.

One the one hand this doesn't bode well for China, as a river that can't sustain the dolphin probably won't be able to sustain people either. That's just common sense.

On the other hand I am not going to feel bad about the chinese getting into a bind. They made their bed, now they gotta sleep in it. Maybe if they are busy trying to figure out how to take care of the 6% of the worlds population that lives next to the Yangtze they'll be too busy to continue to build up their military with an eye towards being the big kid on the block.

And that can't be a bad thing for us.

On the third hand (hey, whaddya want? River pollution does funny things) this just shows that animals that can adapt will survive, and those that can't don't.

I mean, come on, the damned thing was mostly blind and relied on sonar for finding food? So what did we lose here? I blind mammal.

There is a reason that animals have eyes, and those that lose that sense usually end up dying because of it.

Trust me, nature knows what she's doing, folks.

I will keep this short and sweet.

I despise you.

Let's not mince words.

You disgust me.

Socialism takes away the greatness of the human spirit. Without the possibility of abject failure the possibility of true success cannot be possible.

Imagine a ladder. Imagine a wall that stretches for infinity and has ladders all along it.

In your system the ladders are ten feet tall, at a 45 degree angle and bolted to a wall and there are cushions beneath it. All but the most inept creatures make it up their ladder, to mingle with all of the others that have made it up their ladder.

Where is the glory? Where are the people that have conquered adversity to rise up and shine as an example for the rest of us?

In your system, they simply don't exist.

Now imagine that wall is now higher than you can see. It disappears into the clouds, and lining it are ladders leaning up close to the wall, not bolted on, and there are no cushions below to break your fall. Once you start climbing the ladder you find that every so often there is a level place where you can step off and stay if you wish. But you find that the higher you climb, the more enjoyable are the amenities.

Which ladder do you want to try to climb?

I want to climb that ladder into the clouds. Oh sure, I know I may fall, but the rewards are greater the higher I climb. I don't want to climb the little ladder and be mingling with the people that also made it up that ladder. Where is the glory in that?

Where is the greatness of the human spirit?

You folks that believe we should have a more equal outcome, and that life isn't fair, want to set up the system to give everyone short ladders on an easy climb.

And that is because you are cowards.

You are so scared of actually failing that you want to live in a system that takes away the possibility of failure, and to hide that cowardice you hide your intentions in alleged goals of "helping our fellow man."

Help them do what? Be mediocre? Be run of the mill? Help them be just like everyone else? Help them be cowardly like you?

You socialists are so craven that you cringe at the thought of anyone actually succeeding, and hide behind platitudes and feel good language all the while hoping that nobody realizes what weak creatures you really are, and you sit around with a smug air of superiority that deep down you know is a hypocritical lie, and you grow to hate yourselves for it.

I am ashamed to share a planet with you.

I am ashamed to share DNA with you.

To those of you in the U.S. I am doubly ashamed to share a country with you. (move to france)

I am ashamed that there are humans so scared of life, so terrified of actually being a human and failing, that you advocate a system to make failure the only possible outcome for all.

I just wish you knew what it felt like to be ashamed, but you have no more shame. Your fear has overcome all of your other emotions, and you are leading us down a path that is going to make humanity much duller, less colorful and simply pointless.

Thanks for that.

Now hang your head and cry.

A Kansas Minister, Kenneth Davis, in Florida for a Gospel Conference, reported not feeling well at the end of his flight and was placed into a wheel chair and set on the curb by airline employees, where he sat for three days, suffered a stroke and almost died.

The airline Air Tran, (formerly ValueJet, remember them?) has not responded to inquiries yet.

From one of the reports:

"He urinated on himself and his clothes were soiled but he was dressed in nice clothes -- didn't look bummy or anything like that," daughter Melinda Davis said.

"And nobody noticed him?" Local 6's Erik von Ancken asked.

"No one noticed," Davis said. "(He was found) curbside of the sidewalk where you catch a taxi where people walk by. Several people walked by."

The family said Davis suffered a stroke during the days sitting outside the airport.

"He is alive but unfortunately he did suffer a stroke and we feel like it contributed a lot to him being in the heat," son Kenneth Davis said.

A spokesman for the airport said he could not be certain that Davis sat in the same spot for such a long time and said "it doesn't seem plausible," von Ancken reported.

Davis remains in an Orlando hospital and is barely able to speak, the report said.

The family is asking for surveillance video to determine how long Davis was sitting outside the facility.

The incident is under investigation.

I will be very interested to see if he was in the same place the whole time. I am also betting that someone gets involved and claims racism somehow contributed to this sorry state of affairs, and the first person that does so should be roundly criticized for taking away from the real problem here. The real problem is that people seem to be in such a hurry and so self involved that they don't take the time to talk to anyone anymore.

I cannot imagine sitting in one place for three days so heavily traveled and not have anyone ask me what I was doing there. Especially if I were an elderly gentleman.

I pray Kenneth Davis heals quickly, and I hope that the airport has learned a valuable lesson and maybe in the future when the security guards see someone sitting around teh airport for days on end they will have the decency to check on them.

I figured after the asswhipping meaty took at the hands of distracted bloggers (imagine what we'd do to it if we actually paid attention to it) that it was time for another theme song dedication to my favorite cat toy.

I won't link to that hypocritical lying coward but it dribbles, drools and stutters at thinkingmeat.net (and I only gave that URL out so maybe when someone looks for it this page will come up)

Now go on and click the title and turn up your speakers.

Raising a Mt Dew in your honor meaty....

Remember when you were a kid and you and your friends got together and built a fort? Whether off in a field or built into the spreading branches of a tree, the childhood is something that most of us built, cobbling together scraps of wood from where we could beg, borrow or steal them, usually giving it a name and granting the privilege of entry to our friends and barring those icky girls and the nerd from around the block.

That is the spirit of America.

Rugged invidualism. Doing for oneself. That's the American Way.

And now the laft along with many, many unthinking Americans that simply go on feelings want to ruin that decidedly American mindset.

Let me sum this up for you.

The Government doesn't owe you anything beyond making sure you are safe from foreign aggression and that the roads between states are paved. In fact, beyond the interstate highways that actually run between states the federal government should not be involved in roads at all.

They also should not be involved in education, healthcare, business grants, or any of the other myriad things they have stuck there hands into, and while I am on tghings they shouldn't be involved in let's add "low cost housing", which is theft of my money to give housing to lazy, ignorant criminally minded cretins that, if life had a shred of justice, would be living under a bridge.

Americans have lost that attitude that hard work leads to its own rewards. Most of them it seems would rather sit back and let the government take care of them. There is precious little left of that attitude that had men standing proud, no matter how little they had compared to their neighbor, simply because they had worked an honest job to get what they had.

When the going got tough before the depression, people picked up and moved on, looking for better opportunities elsewhere, and making a life for themselves, often struggling for years, even putting their children to work at times.

These days when the going gets tough people whine that the government must do more.

It is precisely this mindset that will be the end of this great country.

You, my friend, are living in the last great days of a grand experiment that looks as if it will fail. And it will fail because the nature of humans as we have evolved have overtaken the ideals that founded this nation. The ideals that free men making their own destiny was not only a good idea but the way that God wanted us to live.

We have slipped away from the noble ideals that birthed this nation, falling for a feel-good-anything-goes-secularism that denies the spiritual aspect of life in favor of the materialistic. It is now more important to get all you can no matter what, as opposed to getting what you earn and being happy with it.

This, above all, shall be our downfall.

Really.

Why fight it anymore?

Hillary is apparently up in the polls, and many are saying she will be our next president, with all of the attendant socialized medicine (which will kill our medical establishment and ruin my healthcare) and stealing from all of the people that made money on the stock market to give it to those too stupid or lazy to make a better life for themselves.

What that will do of course is take away money from private corporations because there won't be an incentive to invest your money for a return on stocks through dividends which in turn means that companies won't have as much working capital to expand and improve which means people will be put out of work which is fine with the dems because they will help you anyway, even if their policies put you in the poor house in the first place.

So why fight it?

I am going to join the far left socialists. I figure they can get me an apartment, a small stipend for food (which I will dutifully use to sit around a coffee shop with wifi and bitch about the capitalists all day while writing bad protest poetry) and a bus pass. Once a month I can go down to the unemployment office and toss in the proof that I am looking for a job so my "benefits" will continue. In the meantime when I do go look for a job I won't bathe, I will talk in slang and be slothful and nobody will hire me.

Doesn't matter though because the dems will take care of me.

I will sit and sneer at all of you boobs that go work for the military-industrial complex and write long rambling missives about how much better it is that I sit and rail against an unfair system rather than bing a productive citizen.

And the dems will take care of me.

I will use my government money and bus pass to go to protests against multi national corporations that have invested money in great tracts of forest with the goal of employing people and turning a profit and chant loudly that they are killing some owl I will never lay eyes on while completely ignoring the fact that several people are now out of work and their children don't have enough food or healthcare due to the actions of me and my shortsighted compatriots.

And the dems will take care of me.

I will stand outside of a prison at midnight, yelling about the evil state taking the life of a convicted murderer, never once giving a thought to the family of the murder victims, and not letting a shred of wonder at some kid growing up with out his dad and what that must have done to him.

And the dems will take care of me.

I will do all I can to stop the evil oil companies from exploiting the land to build refineries in an attempt to bring cheaper gas to the masses. They should all ride the bus like I do. The freedom to go where you want when you want must be tempered with the environment and the good of the whole kept in mind. You don't need that car. It would probably do you good to walk anyway, lardass. You should be riding the bus like me and the other slacke....errr...people that care about the future of humanity.

And still the dems will take care of me.

Finally I will demand that they pay for my schooling, so I can be trained to be a productive member of society, and I will get a degree in 15th century spanish poetry, and learn to say "Would you like fries with that?"

And still the dems will take care of me.

And when, at the end of a long life of living under a socialist umbrella, when I die and have nothing but an old bed in a shitty apartment, a laptop, a bus pass and a "Buy 10 get the next one free" card from my local coffee house, the government can pay for a paupers funeral, tossing me into a mass grave along with all of the other railing, coffee addicted bad poets that keeled over on the Number 12 bus that week.

And let our grave marker say:

The Dems Took Care Of Them.

We have a large group of people in this country these days that don't believe we should fight against our enemies.

We have a large group of people in this country that have bought into the socialist belief that it is the governments job to take care of everyone, that it is not the individuals job to decide how they want to live their life or how successful they wish to be but rather it is the governments job to make sure that outcomes are equal.

We have a large group of people that believe it is unfair for one man to have so much less than another man, and to that end we must steal from the man that produces and give to the man that doesn't, because that man has a larger house and more income, and it just isn't fair.

That is the antithesis of The American Way.

Allow me to explain why socialist policies destroy the greatness of the human spirit.

In a society that gives a man the ability to truly succeed the possibility of abject failure must be present. If one is guaranteed by the government that they will provide food, shelter and healthcare no matter what, a false floor is created. The necessary counter to this false floor is a false ceiling. Somebody must pay for that floor. Now if you have a guaranteed level that you cannot fall below, in essence a line you cannot fall beneath, what is "success" in that system worth?

This mindset is mirrored in todays youth sports, where everyone gets a trophy no matter what happens or where their team finishes. This is teaching nothing more than "all you have to do is try and you will be rewarded." This is not how life works.

In the wild trying doesn't get the bear dinner. Actually getting dinner is the only thing that gets the bear dinner. So in society should it be the same. Trying to make a life for yourself is not the same as doing it. Just getting up and going to work everyday should not be sufficient to be successful. Success should come with hard work, ambition and some luck.

Stealing from the producers to give to those that don't produce not only is an evil action, but is one that lessens the greatness of humanity. For if we are artificially propping up those with no ambition, we are diluting our pool of worthwhile humans.

Now at this point I am sure that many people are going to scream, but that fact is this; Some People Are Worthless.

People that lack ambition, people that are prone to be criminals, people that basically are a drain on society bring us all down through their lifestyles and bad choices. Frankly these folks shouldn't even be allowed to breed, but they do, and copiously I might add.

And herein lies our problem.

Look at it like this; The average IQ is 100....half of the people are stupider than that....and they vote.

Follow home a stupid kid and you will find stupid parents.

Water seeks its own level, therefore stupid people breed with stupid people, and they tend to breed a lot.

Therefore the stupid to smart ratio is growing at an ever faster rate.

With this ratio growing at an ever faster rate, what is the shot that we can stay where we are as a nation?

If we enact more and more socialist policies how are we eventually going to pay for them when everyone gets what they need provided by the government, thereby taking away all incentive to actually work and produce something of value for society?

People on the left have this idea that people are basically good at heart, but I have seen too much of humanity to believe such simplistic ideas, and know that when you take away the incentive to succeed people will sit back and take what they can get.

When we no longer have the ability to truly succeed, and fighting for a better life is no longer possible because the government will provide for your basic needs we will not have a great country, but one where everyone does the bare minimum to get by, for at that point when you can only go so far in life no matter how hard you try what becomes the point of trying?

Think about that.

Yes Amtrak Sucks!!! It is probably amazing to you that a subsidized public transport system using antiquated equipment and surly employees who know their jobs are secure and therefore don't care about making you a happy customer could possibly suck but when I say Amtrak Sucks I mean that Amtrak sucks in the worst way it is possible for anything to suck.

To quote that great Animated American Homer J. Simpson, "They are the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked a sucked."

So....


Have you ever been bent over a table full of spikes, with car jumper cables hooked to a battery clamped on your nipples while a bear trap was clamped around your nuts?

Figuratively speaking, that is exactly where I am at the moment of the writing of this post.

It all started a couple of weeks ago when my GF looked up flight info for Screamy and I to go visit my Dad, Grandma and various other relatives. On a lark I decided to check Amtrak.

I was surprised to find that the Amtrak ticket was very affordable, and the thought of spending some quality time with my boy for a couple of days and seeing the countryside was enticing, so the plans were made, tickets reserved and bags packed.

So the GF, Screamy and myself toddled off to Union Station in L.A. via the Metrolink. Once at the station we grabbed our tickets through the automatic ticket machine, then had to wait in line to check baggage. Forty five minutes in line to find out that the sign that said “Check Baggage Here” really meant that for our train baggage did not get checked, but thank you for choosing Amtrak.

I should have known then that the clusterfucks of all grand clusterfucks was commencing. After standing in another line to receive a boarding pass we stood in yet another line in hopes of being one of the first people to get to the train.

As I said, clusterfuck.

When the line was allowed to head to the train for boarding it was everymen for himself, and those that got to the line late but with very little baggage shot past those of us that had been standing there for over an hour.

So we said good bye to the GF, who stayed home to care for the dogs and such.

I won’t bore you with all the little details, as I was actually having a good time traveling on the train. The (eventual) six hour delay and lack of smoky treat time notwithstanding, it was a fun trip.

Up until we hit San Antonio Texas.

You see, I paid extra for the privilege of staying on one train, mostly due to the fact that I knew we would get to San Anton in the wee hours and waking a 7 year old to move from train to train is not my idea of a good time.

Apparently it IS the idea of a good time to someone at Amtrak who decided that we would be leaving the train car we were traveling in at the station in San Anton and switching trains at O dark thirty.

Up to this point I had not uttered one word of complaint. This was about to drastically change. After fighting the crowd, moving our gear and then not being able to sit together (our assigned seats suddenly didn’t seem to apply) I called customer service.

I wanted my money back. Not all of it mind you, just the 30 or so extra I paid for the privilege of not having to hump my gear and a seven year old to another train.

Let me say that the person at customer service that finally picked up the phone to help me was a unique individual whose level of indifference to my anger at having thirty dollars stolen from me was unable to be measured by any instrument yet made.

And it turns out that Amtrak doesn’t refund tickets that have already been traveled on. They do however issue credits, good for applying to a future trip on the Official Train of the Second Level of Hell.

Now at this point I am furious, and the last thing I want is a credit to ride this shitbox again. They may as well send me a roll of used toilet paper. At least then I could decorate an Amtrak train.

It should be pointed out that several people were angry before this point, mostly due to delays.

Now once we left San Anton things proceeded smoothly…for awhile.

By “for awhile” I mean about three hours. Down the way at another station we picked up about 70 people, mostly kids, as in under the age of driving kids. As fate would have it they would not be with us long, as at Austin they whisked away in taxicabs to make a connection that our train was suddenly unable to get them to in time.

This of course was just before the announcement stating that we would be sitting in Austin for a couple of hours and would be getting out of there around 2:30. Several people at that point went to the store down the street. The kids I was sitting with had decided to go also, and I took down one of their cell numbers just in case, which is a good thing because about 20 minutes after they left the announcement came over that we were pulling out in 5 minutes.

I went down and let the conductor know that there were people still off of the train, and he said “Then they’re staying off, cuz we’re leaving.”

Great customer service huh?

I called the kids and they literally dropped their items while standing in line at the store and ran back, barely making it onto the train, breathless and sweaty, but others weren’t so lucky. About 4 people were left behind. One, as I understand it, was given a ride on a freight train to catch up with us. The others were given a taxi ride two stations ahead to wait on us. They were waiting for three hours.

So we left Austin and proceeded a couple of miles up the track and stopped there instead, right out where we could sit on the train going nowhere but not get off and smoke. So instead of waiting at the station we went to sit up along the track…. I am still not sure why. Up ahead was a derailed car, and nobody was getting through, but there we sat.

Finally the derailed car was moved and we set out, again, and again things proceeded smoothly….for a short while.

Then we stopped again and were told that a couple of locomotives were “on the ground” and we would be waiting for that to be cleaned up.

At this point jokes were flying and now mottos were being thought up, and one fellow even talked about buying some horses and covered wagons to compete with Amtrak.

Imagine our surprise when we finally got underway. By now the sun was going down and the word was that we were about 7 hours behind. This meant I would be into Malvern sometime around dawn. That would leave me plenty of time to get showered and off to dialysis, which was scheduled for 1 PM in Little Rock, although the dialysis unit had called me the night before and asked me if I could come in early. If we had been on time I could have, and then I would not have had a shortened treatment and spent three days of my vacation feeling crappy.

We blasted through the night, wheels clacking and the train swaying and finally, FINALLY it seemed as if we had an actual train trip going. I should have known that would not last. About 4:30 AM we pulled into Texarkana, a town obviously named by people on the border of Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana that seriously lacked imagination when it came to place names.

I called my dad at that point to let him know we hit Texarkana, which gave him about an hour and a half to get to Malvern. I rolled over and went back to sleep, figuring that it would be an hour or so more before we got close to Malvern, my destination

What a surprise when I awoke an hour later to find that we were in…… Texarkana……and the train was quiet…almost too quiet….in fact it was stifling. That’s when I realized the AC was out. I made my way down the train and found the kids I had been hanging out with, (in all fairness they weren’t actually “kids”, but at my age anyone born in a year you can remember qualifies as a “kid.”) and found out we had lost the generator to the train, and we had no toilets either.

I called Dad back and caught him about to leave for Malvern. Shortly after that we started moving again, after an announcement about the dead generator and some ephemeral plan about getting another engine hooked up from another train.

Had I known then what I know now I would have taken myself off of the train in Texarkana and waited for a ride. Not too long after dawn we stopped on the tracks as the crew tried to hook up another locomotive to ours so we could have flushing toilets and AC once again.

Finally they succeeded in that endeavor only to inform us that we now had no brakes.

At this point the crept up the tracks, finally stopping seemingly within longbow distance of Arkadelphia, a town named by people that apparently thought names like Texarkana to be too sane.

It was at this point that I saw one man bail from the train to wade through a ditch full of water and escape in a car that had pulled up on the road alongside of us. I was in contact on the cell with my Dad at this point, and knowing I had to get to my treatment he wandered up and told the conductor my problem. Dad was wearing his “Retired Air Force” hat, and the man he talked to, retired AF also, seemed more than concerned and helpful, from what Dad said. I was paged to the diner car, where the conductor talked to me, got the info and said he would see what he could do about getting me off of the train to get to dialysis.

Yeah that never happened. I paged the conductor again and never got a reply. About an hour later we moved up the few hundred yards to the station, where I met my Dad and headed to dialysis, with the train more than 14 hours late and having to get off of the train one stop before the stop I had paid for.

I can still turn in my unused ticket, and get a refund of 90% of the purchase price, which is what I plan on doing. I am losing money on the train tickets, and will spend more to fly home, but at this point I don’t care.

I will never, EVER ride Amtrak again.

Amtrak absolutely and completely sucks balls. They don’t care if you are happy, their coaches are ugly and falling apart, the food in the dining car is shit (it is actually worse than Denny’s food) and the only bright point on the trip, Kevin, who ran the snack bar in the lounge car, was running out of supplies earlier than I believe he should have.

Amtrak basically screwed me out of about 30 bucks, plus the cost difference between Malvern and Arkadelphia, plus the 10% they won’t refund, and they don’t care. So be forewarned. The service sucks, the cars are old and crappy and falling apart, and Amtrak employees could give a rats ass less about you once they have your money.

Click the title....