Fake Justice

I saw a show on Christian television in which these two young guys were, as is so often the case there, trying to sell a book. Because I don't want to promote them, I won't name the show or the book. Their theory is that freedom of religion in America is a Satanic conspiracy and that the founding fathers gave it to us so occult forces could freely sneak their mystery religions into our new country. In case you wondered, yes, the young men looked like Millenniuals. I could go on about the faux gravitas, but I'll spare you. I didn't pay attention to all of it. I was reminded of Isaiah 8:12 Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy, neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. A modern translation I read put it something like this: Conspiracy, conspiracy. Everything this people speaks of is a conspiracy. Don't be afraid of what they fear. I'm not a seminary graduate, but I think what was going on was that people in Isaiah's time were focused on conspiracy theories instead of focused on solving the real problems facing the nation. Sounds very familiar. Just because something sounds logical and fits the facts doesn't make it true. We have a literary genre for that. It's called Historical Fiction.

While I didn't watch every single minute of that show, a picture of the Supreme Court building caught my eye. Carved in stone was Equal Justice Under Law. It reminded me of "hate crime" laws. When those were first being debated, it was pointed out that there are no hate crimes. All crimes are "hate" crimes. A crime is a crime no matter what. In our legal system the law is supposed to punish people for what they do not for what they think or feel. The law can never ever know what a person was thinking or feeling at the time of a crime. Knowing that would require a supernatural act. The law is not supernatural. Even if the criminal swore he felt hate at the time, the law can never ever know if that's really true.

As a theoretical example, suppose you got into an argument with a stranger that led to a fight. Suppose the stranger was a member of a special class according to hate crime laws, but you're not. If the law charged the other person, he would get a light sentence if any. If the law charged you, the sentence would be severe with lengthy imprisonment. This is not equal justice under the law. What this actually does is allow the government to selectively punish people they don't like. That's what hate crime laws are really for. The government has figured out a way use dictatorial and oppressive powers under the illusion that it's constitutional, when the very carving on the Supreme Court building tells us it's injustice.

Have a great weekend.

How Could They?

I think it's that time again, the time when I talk about politics. Since 2016, I've become more and more disgusted with the liberal media and the left. Take the Russia thing. Before Obama left office, his administration investigated and cleared Trump of the accusation. Consider that. One of the most corrupt administrations in the history of this country said Trump was innocent. Despite that, the Democrat party wouldn't stop talking about it. The false accusations and lies never stopped. The baseless attacks by the media have been relentless. They began accusing him of all kinds of things before he even had a chance to do anything in office at all. It's been rabid and perhaps insane as if they were being controlled by malevolent supernatural entities. The lack of integrity in the media and among the Democrat party since 2016 has thoroughly disgusted me. And it's been in sight of the public.

How in the world could this country have given control of the house back to the Democrats when they're clearly incompetent to rule? Historically, it was expected that that would happen. The party opposite the President usually wins the congress. Nevertheless, I'm extremely disappointed by such a large step backward, especially after the inexcusable behavior of the left. The silver lining is that the Republicans control the Senate, which means good things for Supreme Court justices. On the whole it turned out better than expected. The Democrats took the house back, but they did worse than anticipated.

In Europe terrorists protest, riot, burn cars and attack people. Terrorist organizations are banned over there. After the 2016 elections Democrats protested, rioted, burned cars and attacked people. Should we should think about banning the Democrat party as a terrorist organization? It seems logical, especially after the last two years.

Washington, D.C. has a lot of problems. We all know this. The way I see it the Democrat party and the Republican party are the two main problems. If we could get rid of them both, the other problems would solve themselves. Neither one of them are interested in solving the problems of the country. The "problems" they keep trying to solve are how to get reelected and how to find more time on the golf course. I don't see those as problems.

Let's talk treason. When congressmen are sent to Washington, they vote on bills that become laws. The votes do not belong to the congressmen. They belong to the people. Every time a congressman trades or sells a vote, that's theft. Every time they vote according to an order given by a party official, that's theft. That's violation of their oaths of office. That's treason. Maybe not hang them all from a lamppost treason, but it's still treason against the Constitution and treason against the American people. It's a blatant violation of their fiduciary responsibilities to voters. Both parties are rust from the past. As long as they stick around, we'll never have a bright future.

So, last week I reported that Tesla had made a Q3 profit. It turns out they fudged the numbers by reporting money from previous quarters as third quarter profits. It appears they made a little money but only a little and not the way they massaged the numbers to make it look.

Despite all that, have a great weekend. :)

Low Confidence Score

I've mentioned Tesla and how it looked like they could go bankrupt. I was a huge Tesla fan until the Solar City bailout, a move that according to analysts ended up costing them a billion dollars a year. Well before that nugget was revealed, I stepped back and reevaluated. The bailout made absolutely no sense. Tesla kept losing money. My time as a Tesla fanboy came to an end. I decided I had no confidence in the company unless they could turn a profit for two quarters in a row. They've turned one in a row before. It didn't stick. After the bailout, the loss per car began to grow instead of shrink. It looked like a train wreck in slow motion.

It's taken a lot longer than it should have, but Tesla finally made a profit. Third quarter results came in the other day. The train wreck, if not stopped, has at least slowed down. Will they be able to do it again next quarter? Time will tell. They've done so many wrong things I have a hard time placing any confidence in them. Stories in the past have described Tesla as having a very high lemon rate. That has not changed.

I've looked at them partly from the analyst side but mostly from the consumer side. I can't afford a Tesla, but I kept track of them hoping for the day I could. After the Solar City fiasco that changed. If the funds came through today, I would buy something else. It would still be electric. It would just be a different brand. Maybe later I've reevaluate but not today.

Have a great weekend.

Last Night's Georgia Tech Game

Watching Georgia Tech football has been hard this year. There have been lots of fumbles and turnovers and lost chances. In one game a referee called a penalty against them that never gets called. I forget the name of it, but it was something that every team does multiple times in every game. I never even realized it was a penalty, but college football rules don't always make sense anyway. It changed the momentum of the game, and after another bad call later, they ended up losing. Tech is one of the cleanest-playing teams in college. Save the never-called penalty calls for the teams that play dirty.

Tech's main quarterback has been playing with an injured foot for most of the season. For a while he was getting five hours a day of treatments. Why not let him heal? I've been metaphorically screaming at my television nearly all season to put in the backup quarterback. In every game he's gotten a few minutes to play, the opponents have not responded well. Tech seemed to go on a rampage. I thought it was because the other teams had practiced in anticipation of the normal quarterback and were thrown off by one with a different style or maybe had different plays to run.

Last night the backup got to start the game. I was wrong about the practice thought. The backup is a lot better than I was giving him credit for. Tech played Virginia Tech who was number one in the ACC Coastal Division and was undefeated in conference play. Tech was second from the bottom, and let's not talk about their defeats. They ended up crushing Virginia Tech 49-28. VT is still number one. Tech is now third from the bottom.

For the first time this year, I'm excited about the rest of the season. The backup quarterback, Tobias Oliver, wasn't perfect, but he did a good, solid job. I can't give him all the credit. The team as a whole played better. How much of that is due to the quarterback, and how much is due to unknowable factors? I don't know. I just know I really liked what I saw from Oliver. What I saw before in the games in which he got a few minutes of playing time really makes sense now. This kid can win. All he needed was a chance. I'm not dreading the rest of the season any more, not even the game against Georgia. The only thing I'm dreading is if they put the regular quarterback in.

Something else that makes it even more fun is that Oliver is only the backup quarterback, because the "real" backup quarterback got injured and was lost for the season. Oliver was supposed to be the backup to the backup, and now he looks better than the regular quarterback. It's a great story about the kid who wasn't even supposed to be in the game getting that big break and doing well. At the end of last night's game Oliver was taken out to rest, and his backup went into the game for the final few minutes. I'm pretty sure that was James Graham. The announcers were talking about other things. So, the backup to the backup to the backup got a chance to play, because the backup is out for the year. I love it when people who are on the team but don't normally get a chance to play get the chance. You can imagine how excited he must still be. He also did a good job for good yardage.

The Dodgers have lost the first two World Series games. I'm kind of dreading the rest of it, although they did come back from what looked like certain doom against the Brewers in the league championship series. Let's hope they bring their A game from here on out. It's not that I'm a Dodgers fan. I don't want to see the American League win.

Have a great weekend.

Divergente 2

I was in a rush last week and didn't get to everything. A couple of weeks ago I said I thought the Braves would be swept by the Dodgers or win one game, two at the very most. They won one. It was brutal. They didn't score the first two games. One of the commentators said no team in history has been shut out two games in a row in the post-season. That's not the kind of history I want to see made. Knowing ahead of time that failure was inevitable, I couldn't get into the games this year.

It was a slow week on the writing front. I got some done but not what I had expected. It seemed like everything lined up to get in the way. I did a ton of cleaning, and I'm still not finished. I had to replace my bed frame, which took forever. It was a tiring week.

Back in June, I ordered Divergente 2. It arrived toward the end of August. I ordered it from Germany, which was the cheapest price. I saw 17 for the delivery date and assumed it was July. Boy, was I wrong. I finished it the other day and moved on to book 3. I had this idea that if I read a million words I'd be relatively fluent in written French. I passed a million a while back, and I constantly have to look words up. I'm getting better, but it sure does seem slow. I'm thinking now that 10 million words is my new goal. I'm still listening to shows on YouTube. Sometimes I can follow along. Sometimes I get quite lost.

I must be making progress, because I've had some weird things happen to my English. French has a lot of reflexive verbs. This past week I was saying something and the construction of my sentence made the verb reflexive. I didn't notice until after I'd said it. It wasn't something conscious. The other day I used a conditional form of an English verb without thinking about it. After I said it, I realized what I'd done. Those were strange occurrences. They reminded me of a video by a French woman I used to listen to. I need to check her videos again. She was making French teaching videos and practicing English, too. She said in a video that English was doing weird things to her French, but she didn't explain it. I see now.

Have a great weekend.

Non-Fiction Progress

The way I do these blogs is usually to work on them the day I post. Today I need to go help someone that probably doesn't really need the help, but you know how it is. I'm a bit pressed for time. I can't post nothing, so it's going to have to be a brief update.

A few weeks back I posted about Hurricane Florence going through. This week it was Hurricane Michael. Flo was nothing but light rain and light wind here. Michael was stronger winds and much more rain. We lost power twice. The first time was for about thirty minutes. The other time was just under fifteen. I think the second one was so they could install something. It was well after the winds had stopped, when the danger was well passed.

This week was some real work on the non-fiction book. I've gotten most of the introduction done. Some of that depends on exactly what goes into the book. I won't know everything I need to put in until the book is done. I'll need to tell people what they can expect to see later. I've also gotten most of a couple of chapters done. Rough draft done, I mean. I'll need to polish later, of course. It's both easier and harder than I thought. Fiction takes a certain logic to makes things happen in the proper order and to reveal information in stages. Non-fiction is taking a different kind of logic. This book is about biblical topics. I'm presenting verses to support what I'm saying. There's a bit of research for that and a logical progression that's not the same as fiction. It's hard to explain it as I'm pressed for time. It's harder in that sense. It's easier in the sense that I can be as conversational as the text requires. There's a certain formality to fiction prose. I can loosen up more with the non-fiction. It's also not as hard to fill pages as I thought. I'm not putting in filler. I don't mean that. Explaining things takes more space than I would have anticipated. For example, there's a verse that's about the Holy Spirit, but you almost never hear an explanation of why. He's not mentioned by name. I had to explain it, and it took multiple paragraphs and verses to lay a foundation of why it has to be him. It fills space.

I'm out of time.

Have a great weekend.

Propaganda in Action

I was a store I don't shop much and decided to pick up some toilet paper, when I saw something absurd.

It was such an outrageous lie I laughed. I couldn't help it. Seeing six equal twenty-four was too much. It was like common core math. I see garbage like this all the time. Paper towels will claim that six rolls equal nine rolls, but no one else has gone to six equals twenty-four. I was laughing while taking a photo of it, hoping people didn't think I was going crazy in the store. I think most advertisers are going to hell.

So, the Braves made the playoffs this year. The usual announcers have been so excited and so enthusiastic. The hype was almost off the rails. Most of it was propaganda. They didn't promise a World Series appearance. There was a little bit of caginess amidst the selling of playoff tickets. It's because there's more than one problem with the team, and nobody is talking about it.

The Braves are in a very weak division. If they had been in any other division, they would not have won the division title. That leads to a second problem. They played a lot of games against very weak opponents and crushed them. That leads to the elephant in the room, and this is half of the real problem in my mind. The Braves have not played well against top-ranked teams. They've been swept more than once. They've been dominated. They have not been able to compete against tough teams.

The other half of the problem is the composition of the team. The bullpen has been a problem all year. The owners did not fix it. Starting pitching hasn't been bad, but it has not been dominating. It has been too inconsistent. The owners picked up a starter. One more guy is not enough. Also, the hitters have been very streaky. They're either on fire or in a bad slump. They don't have enough top-level hitters either. They have a few guys who do well. It's not enough.

As much as I'd like to see the Braves win, I think they have a good chance of being swept by the Dodgers. They lost last night's game 6 to 0. To me it comes down to how they've played against real opponents. They've been crushed all year. That may be why the announcers have been giddy as schoolgirls up to a point but no further. Maybe the team wins one game, two tops. I think they've gone as far as they can go this year. Hopefully, I'm wrong, but I've been following them all year. I see what I see.

So, last week I mentioned I had finally realized the one, main problem with a business a friend of mine has been trying to get off the ground for a decade and a half with no profit. I felt I should tell her but knew she wouldn't want to hear it and didn't think she would listen. What to do? What to do? I finally did the right thing. I told her. She came up with reasons why I couldn't be right. After that she said in so many words she would consider what I'd said. At least I had a tremendous sense of peace after telling her. There are multiple problems that could be fixed that would turn things around. It's easy to ignore the people around you. I think what she needs is a consultant to come in, evaluate the problems and lay it on the line in black and white with figures.


Have a great weekend.