By John F. Di Leo -
It has recently surfaced that a large number of once well-known English words are suffering from a severe shortage of definitions. We will do our best to help alleviate this condition.
Bike path:
A scenic obstacle course for basement dwellers.
Carbon footprint:
The image left behind by the jackboot of the Left on society’s neck.
Economy:
The place where medieval doctors and modern bureaucrats inject the needle, when it’s time to start bleeding the patient.
Fertile farmland:
A beautiful place to cover with Chinese solar panels and windmills.
Free market:
An endangered species.
Free lunch:
Ain’t no such thing.
Free fall:
Sure, but Winter’s gonna cost ya…
Grocery store:
A ghost town.
Inflation:
The time-honored culinary art of serving half the steak and charging twice the price.
Investment:
The process of converting tax dollars to kindling.
Environmental subsidy:
A magic trick in which currency is burned by the ton but nobody notices the smoke.
Solar farms:
Frying wildlife for fun and profit.
Windmills:
The fourteenth century’s technology, today!
Recession:
A job creation program for repo men and foreclosure lawyers.
Real estate:
A taxable asset designed to keep the Madigan family employed.
Real estate taxes:
A brilliant program in which you work two jobs until you’re 75, so your school district’s Deputy Assistant School Superintendent in Charge of Basket-weaving Equity can retire at 50.
American real estate:
Something nice for the Chinese military to spend its money on.
Ukrainian real estate:
Something nice for the Russian military to spend its money on.
Weapons systems gifts to Ukraine:
Something nice for American taxpayers to spend their money on.
Mansion:
The means of exchange when obtaining Bernie Sanders’ support.
Manchin:
The means of exchange when implementing a Bernie Sanders policy.
Sinema:
The NC-17 version of a Manchin.
Schumer:
Karl Marx without the beard.
Maxine Waters:
Karl Marx with the beard.
Nancy Pelosi:
Karl Marx.
Venezuela:
Coming soon to a country near you.
Food shortages:
Those cheery empty grocery store shelves that you don’t really mind because if they had the stuff, you couldn’t afford it anymore anyway.
Dietary rules:
Thou shalt not question the source of that “meat.”
Arms dealer:
The means of exchange when bartering for the freedom of a drug-abusing athlete.
Durable goods:
Things Americans don’t make anymore.
Non-durable goods:
Things Americans can’t afford anymore.
Limited government:
Things Americans don’t have anymore.
Luxury Loft:
Where the service industry lives.
Factory:
An empty building being prepped as the site of a future luxury loft conversion.
Stocks and bonds:
The proper means of restraint, specially designed for politicians in the public square.
Government agency:
A taxpayer-funded office, chartered to shut down your employer and leave you penniless.
Federal bureaucracy:
A lucrative career path for the schoolyard bully.
Ukraine War:
A country-sized dumpster fire into which we feed our tax revenues.
Recession:
A completely undefinable circumstance that only occurs during Republican administrations.
Two consecutive quarters of negative growth:
<Crickets…>
Depression:
The impression left in the ground when Whoopie Goldberg and Alec Baldwin fall down.
Social Security:
An outdated relic from the days when the public valued security in retirement.
Healthcare:
An outdated relic from the days when the establishment valued human life.
Fauci:
An outdated relic.
Crickets:
Dinner, after environmentalists have wiped out all the cattle.
Small Business:
Getting smaller by the day.
Big Business:
Friends in high places.
Organized crime:
The U.S. Department of Justice.
Unemployment:
A weekly check that the entire world wishes Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would start collecting as soon as possible.
Copyright 2022 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer and transportation manager, writer, and actor. A one-time county chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party, he has been writing regularly for Illinois Review since 2009, including such columns as The Chicago Dictionary, Volumes One through Six.
A collection of John’s Illinois Review articles about vote fraud, The Tales of Little Pavel, and his 2021 political satires about current events, Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes One and Two, are available, in either paperback or eBook, only on Amazon.
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