Category: Rev. Joe Dirt’s Ramblings

The unsolicited, unreasoned, uninformed, unapologetic opinions of Rev. Joe Dirt

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Quote of the Day – Hubert Reeves

Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence.  I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.

“Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshiping.” ~~ Hubert Reeves

To see more Quotes for Day, visit this link: Quotes for the Day

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #5,004

yeah I know you did not ask!

You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.

Okay, here is something I find vaguely ironic.

I was downstairs in the basement exercising in our little gym (treadmill, stationary bike, weights, room for floor exercises).  Before I started, I selected an album from my music server. For this particular day, it was Mr. Boogie Man by John Lee Hooker.  Just in case you are not familiar with Hooker, this is a blues album. The thing about the blues and reason for the blues is that the songs frequently have very depressive themes.  A little bit like the iconic country song, You Never Even Called Me By My Name (The Perfect Country & Western Song):

Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got run over by a damned old train

As I sat in a chair doing some stretching-type exercises recommended by a physical therapist, I found myself tapping my foot as mama got run over by that damned old train.

But then again, that may be a bit of the point of the blues, take a situation that normally has you crying in your beer and getting you tapping your toes until you drive the blues away.  Of course, sometimes it just nice to wallow in your blues as long as you do not stay down there too long.

And that, my friends, is my two bits for the this day, the 257th day of 2026.

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Quadrillion versus trillion

Sorry.

When I originally posted my article The Three Biggest Lies, I was rushing out the door. I mixed up trillion and quadrillion.  A trillion has 12 places (1,000,000,000,000) while a quadrillion has 15 places (1,000,000,000,000,000) after the first set of numbers.

C’est la vie.

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The Three Biggest Lies

  1. Sure, I will respect you in the morning (clean version)
  2. The check is in the mail
  3. I will give every American $5,000 if the Republicans win the mid-terms, or so sayeth El puta pendajo

Let’s see…  the current population of the United States is 342,620,143.  Multiple that by $5,000 and you have an amount of this blatant bribe of $1,713,100,715,000. To put it another way, 1.7 trillion dollars.  Even if he is just talking about taxpayers in the United States of which there are 153,800,000 that number is $769,000,000,000 or 7.69 billion dollars.

Yeah, right!

That, my friends, is the definition of inflation, when the government starts printing money wildly like would be needed for that give away.

To give you some perspective, the first number is roughly what the United States spent on social security in 2025, a program that the Republicans are trying to eliminate as they say it is too costly.

Sorry.  When I originally posted this as I was rushing out the door, I mixed up trillion and quadrillion.  A trillion has 12 places (1,000,000,000,000) while a quadrillion has 15 places (1,000,000,000,000,000) after the first set of numbers.

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Venn Diagram for Upcoming Election

Apologies to the comedian Don McMillan, an engineer who has forged a very good comedic career using Venn diagrams. This is not his Venn diagram, but I like his idea of using Venn diagrams for such things. Check him out on YouTube.

If you like what the Enshittificator-in-chief has done to this country, the economy, the world, our relationship with our allies, the return of childhood diseases, a food inspection program in shambles, a military in disarray, the dismantling of our social safety nets, ICE harassing folks simply for the color of their skin and murdering citizens and non-citizens, climate change about to hit us like a sledge hammer, a man who idolizes murderous dictators, a man who started an unnecessary, unwinnable war that has killed hundreds of innocents, a man who has made $2.2 billion using the office of the President,  a man who has made the United States the laughing stock of the world, and a man who is mentioned 38,000 times (according to the New York Times) in the Epstein files, then by all means vote Republican in the upcoming mid-terms.

Remember that Trump could not have done any of this without the Republicans enabling him or minimally, lacking the backbone to stop him.

Venn diagram of what happens when corruption meets incompetence

May Ahura Mazda save our souls.

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #5,697

yeah I know you did not ask!

You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.

I have decided that I want to get into a poker game with a bunch of MAGAs.  They obviously do not know when to fold a losing hand or how to bluff convincingly about such a losing hand.

But then again, they might follow their idol’s example and ignore the rules. Thus, claiming their pair of jacks beats my 10 high straight. An argument would ensue with the flipping of the card table sending chips, cards and cash flying to all corners of the room causing a mad scramble for the greenbacks. Phones would be drawn, racing to post a video of the bad behavior on social media. They neighbors would hear the clash and the loud voices.  They police would be called and I and the others would spend the night in the hoosegow for disturbing the peace and illegal gambling.

Perhaps I should forego the opportunity to pad my wallet.

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The USA’s Problem in One Image

The image below is circulating on social media.

There is so much wrong with this image, I am at a loss as to where to begin. While the majority of our Founding Fathers were deist, and many other presidents were not particularly religious, Abraham Lincoln comes to mind, Trump does not believe in anything except himself.  And I am even doubtful of that. I do not even believe him to be irreligious as that would imply he has thought, even if only shallowly, about religious beliefs.  If he has a god, it is green or gold. If I were a religious person I would view this depiction as a gross sacrilege. Come to think of it, I am not religious, and I still view it as a gross sacrilege. If there is such a thing as unholy, the definition is: See Trump.

What is sad to me is that politics and religion have almost always walked hand in hand.  Both are efforts to control the behavior of large groups of people.  Religion tends to pretty it up with ideas about improving the person and society, with ideas about aiding the believer to get to heaven or, more importantly, stay out of hell. Politics frequently dresses itself up as doing the most good for the most people, but often does not even bother with that. In the end  they are both about the same thing, power and control.

The melding of conservative politics with fundamental religions is as scary to me as various theocracies, past and present. There are good reasons the Founding Fathers were so adamant about the separation of church and state.

God save us from the religious.

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #5,351

yeah I know you did not ask!

You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.

Spellcheck…

I am trying to decide which is the lesser of two evils.  To release one of my puerile little blog articles into the wild with spelling errors, or to release it with spellcheck having unknowingly substituted my original intended word with a word spelled somewhat similarly but with an entirely different meaning.

Between my fat fingers and the inability to edit my own writings, it is of deep concern for this poor, deluded scribbler.

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #5,070

yeah I know you did not ask!

You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.

Back in the day… what used to trigger my decision that I needed a haircut was when my bangs began to interfere with my vision, or in recent years when Señora began chasing me around with her scissors.  As the years have descended on me like a rugby scrum, my decision is frequently triggered by my eyebrows having grown to the point that they are interfering with my vision.

Gotta love this getting old gig.

*****

Señora has been cutting my hair for years now.  Her doing so was a combination of things.  First, there was COVID with everyone staying home afraid of being around other humans.  Then, the barber who I had been going to for years had a series of small strokes.  She was still trying to work, but her quality was less than optimal.  I hung with her as long as I could out of loyalty, but at some point I had had enough of her hacking up my hair.  A lot of other customers must have felt the same way as her shop closed up not too long after I stopped going there.

Gotta love this getting old gig.

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Quote of the Day – Marcus Tullius Cicero

Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence.  I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.

 “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.” ~~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Yup, that Roman cat Cicero was prescient about our current situation in the United States… just saying.

Sad part is that he was writing about a situation in the Roman Empire 2000 years ago, and it still applies today. As a species, it seems we never learn some very basic lessons, we seldom learn from our mistakes.  What was it a renowned sage once asked, “are we suffering  the Arrogance of Ignorance, or the Ignorance of Arrogance?”  Either way, we are screwed.

And so it should not go.

To see more Quotes for Day, visit this link: Quotes for the Day

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