TrueTomHarley

Forty years ago Lynard Skynard's plane went down, killing six. I didn't know it at the time. It was during my righteous period when I was not listening to music. But in the years since I have heard song after song that I have liked, starting with 'Sweet Home Alabama,' only to find it is one of theirs. My righteous period lasted nearly 20 years. It didn't end until my kids reached the age where they wanted to attend concerts like their friends and I wasn't too happy about it. But I realized you cannot stop lava and so I gave in, with the stipulation that I would go along too. The first concert was Weezer. Everyone held their hand out in line to get stamped, so I held mine out too. "You don't need a stamp," the attendant said - I little disrespectfully, I thought. (it was to verify drinking age) So I shot back: "Aren't there any grownups here?" Oh, yeah, the boy was thrilled to have me along. But I rather liked Weezer, or at least I did not dislike them. I used to play a game with my kids which, in hindsight, was a little sick, but the purpose was noble and I think ultimately successful. I didn't want them idolizing any band members, so we would play: 'How did they die?' Was it suicide, overdose, or plane crash? It's amazing how long that game can be played. Lynard Skynard wins hands down, though Badfinger gets runner-up. The Badfinger lead singer hung himself. The group disbanded and some went back to laying carpet. Years later they regrouped with a new lead singer ... and he also hung himself! The fate of the second group, however, and the existence of the first group, I only discovered after my righteous period had ended. Lynard Skynard had just released the album 'Street Survivors' when their plane went down. The cover pictured the group standing before a wall of flames. Someone prevailed upon the record company to take the flames out and substitute a plain black background. The surviving members were ever a mess and some met their end through overdose. The band still survives with but one original member. Removal of the flames from the album cover was for emotional reasons. Strictly speaking, it was not necessary. There were no flames in the plane crash - the plane had run out of fuel. You would almost think someone would check on something like that before takeoff. It is a fine reason not to be stoned.

Surely when questions are asked they ought to be answered. I always do yours.

No, she has not. These, too, are fine questions that were not answered.

I have never asked. However, Mr. Rook, though your respectful request for a transcript may fall upon deaf ears even if you send both Putin and the GB a check for $20.....I am better than both of them put together. I solemnly swear that if you send me a check for five dollars and ninety nine cents I will send you a complete transcript of 'Tom Irregardless and Me.'

Pure guesswork follows, I admit, but it is educated guesswork. It could be wrong. But it could well be right, seeing that the reporter has shown herself either partial or inept. Any decent lawyer will raise objections at any trial. Some are sustained. Some are over-ruled. When overruled, the judge will say why, which invariably can be taken as a slap at that lawyer. A biased reporter, if she was one, could report that as the judge's 'exasperation' or sharp rebuke - implying that the lawyer really pushed her buttons, whereas in fact such retorts are routine. A vengeful reporter, if she was one, would surely report things this way. We should not assume that she isn't. In the field of politics today, many reporters are vengeful, for either one side or the other. Neither is. That is not even the nature of a tort case. One side is equating money with justice. The other side expelled a scoundrel (you have described expulsion as a fate worse than hellfire) once his deeds were known and presumably saw him jailed for a long long time, though that doesn't seem to have happened - but if it did not happen, it is clearly the legal system's screw-up, not ours. Unless there is some reason he should not be jailed, a reason not reported, and a reason that would alter everything.

excellent compare ! What in the world is a 'spiritual stoning?' Who is to say it is bad?

Yes, I have no doubt that you really highly suspect that.

This reminds me of a passage in 'Up the Down Staircase' in which a student was given a failing grade for wrongly interpreting a poem. He protested. The grade stood. It stood even when the student brought the poet himself to school and the poet said 'yes'- that's exactly what he meant. The only satisfaction he received was to see school policy changed. From that point on, only dead poets were used in connection with assignments.

I will go further. Since there is one large hole in this story (why isn't the perpetrator in jail?) and one blatant untruth, (JWs are prohibited from telling authorities) everything else must be viewed in this light. Thus, the judge's reported exasperation over the Witnesses' defense may be exaggerated, misrepresented, or even concocted. Maybe it is like the media reporting that Trump and Tillerson do nothing but argue and that Tillerson is about to resign - and so Tillerson calls a news conference to say they get along just fine and he has never once thought of quitting. And they say: ‘well, did you call him a moron as we said?’ and he answers ‘where I come from we don’t have time for such petty nonsense I mean, the San Diego case might be as reported, but the story is flawed enough and the reporter negligent enough, perhaps hostile, that it makes you wonder. It's not great to see JWs mentioned in courts in this connection - there is no positive way this can be spun. However, no tort lawyer wants to go to court - he or she wants a much-easier out-of-court settlement. The fact that this case is, nonetheless, in court indicates that one side or the other (or both) has dug in and is intransigent. People are used to seeing lawyers employ every type of legal maneuvering. If it is for a cause they like, they praise them for it. If it is for a cause they do not like, they condemn them for it. There are no legal loopholes in court because if it is legal, it is not a loophold. It is a chaotic and inconsistent system, not of our doing, and one must operate according to whatever flies legally. I'd rather not see such things play out in the courts, but if they do, most people realize that lawyers will do what lawyers have to do given the adversarial system they operate in.

I can get my head around that without much effort.

You seem to feel that I had you in mind in my last comment. I didn't. The idea of coming to the aid of immature ones who are playing in the street, not realizing the dangerous drivers deliberately trying to swerve into them, appeals to me. That's what you are doing. I am. Well - I guess I'm not - not really. But there a few serial gripers who seem unhinged, and I do not think it wrong to observe that.

Someone here made the charge that mental illness is higher among JWs than elsewhere, with the cryptic challenge: 'look it up.' When asked to produce proof by someone who did look it up and found only similar unsupported allegations, he immediately caved. I've heard the allegation before. I get around it by pointing out that, even if it were true, it is no more than what you would expect when Jesus says he came to seek, not those who do not need a physician, but those that do. The groups to worry about, to my mind, are those who have low rates of mental illness among them, for there are a lot of those people around. It must be that they feel excluded - driven away by condescension or lack of love or hospitality. I would not say our people suffer especially from mental illness, and even if I did, I would attach no stigma to it - a stigma is the very reason certain ones try to make the charge stick. From what I have seen on this forum, certain opposers - not all of them or even most of them - are the ones who are pure loonytoons, not the Witnesses who comment. Plus, if our people go off the rails, they nonetheless wouldn't hurt a fly. But if persons of the greater world go off the rails - better call the SWAT team and get a new identity from the FBI!

I am waiting for you to do this. I truly am. You are more savvy searching every nook and cranny of everything than I. You certainly seem to have the time. You even have the motivation to portray things as black as you can. I would like to know the truth about this.

Shouldn't you be sniffing under a pyramid about now? Your week at the museum is not yet up. Just because you don't like someone doesn't mean you have to dis him at every opportunity. There was a time when we could barely speak of churches without trashing them, but it is less so today. No longer are we attempting to break their stranglehold on public thought. That was done long ago. It is true that we hardly praise them for their charitable works but neither do we down them, unless there is obvious hypocrisy about. Whenever I am at a door and the subject comes up, I like to acknowledge charitable works people may be doing, whether through their church or not. There are hungry people. How can it not be a good thing to feed them? Moreover, we don't do it - no one can do everything. .So it is a good thing that someone else does. At another time - it needn't be right then - one can say that the 'problem' arises when churches do such works instead of the ones they are primarily assigned. If they do it in addition to, it is excellent and praiseworthy. But almost always, it is instead of. It is the illustration given that you hire someone to re-roof your house and he paints it instead. True, it did need painting, but that is beside the point. But you don't have to state that from the get-go. Better to build bridges by acknowledging good works. Whenever I run across a clergyman, I ask him to describe his day. I don't just assume he does nothing. I invite him to describe what he does do. When he takes me up on it, we have some good conversations - the beginnings of who knows what? - and he is always able to describe a very active life. Many clergymen of long ago had much free time and used it to advance other pursuits - sometimes in science. Gregor Mendel comes to mind. They have less free time today. They keep their nose in the job, as is true with almost every line of work today. The days of the Renaissance Man passed long ago.

The fact that this fellow is not behind bars is very strange to me, in light of what he is supposed to have done. There may be an answer for it, but surely it is something that should be explained, and the reporter behind the story mentions none. It has been covered already that there is a blatant untruth in her story - her statement that Witnesses are prohibited from reporting to authorities. If she had said many Witnesses were disinclined to run to authorities, that would be one thing. But she said they are prohibited from doing so, when right on the Witness website is a statement that they are not. Even if she didn't believe it, a decent reporter would at least note it. Instead, she has been fed a line by someone and she repeats it uncritically, without research. So what about the fact this fellow is not in jail? It seems he should be if his crimes are as unambiguous, repeated, and grievous as announced. Why is he not? Are there some mitigating circumstances that no one has seen fit to cover? Maybe not, but it seems a relevant point.

When you read a person's statement and you disagree, he will say you must consider the context. You must read more. When you do that and still disagree, he will say you have to read yet more to get a more complete picture. When you do that and still disagree, the answer is to read yet more. When you do that, to the point of reading everything the idiot has ever written, and you still disagree, he will call you a fool. It is just the way he is. Who was it that said one must season their words with salt? Make words winsome, and not wincing.? If I read a short article and it is well-written, I am motivated to read more. If what little I have read persuades or intrigues me, I look for the next installment. If, on the other hand, what I read is insults and taunts and photoshopped silliness, my attention wanes. It may be that I have thereby missed out on the revelations of a true genius, but it is a price I am willing to pay. If you want to persuade, you must go about it differently. You cannot salt your comments with words that do nothing but turn off. Who do you think is going to suffer through that in order to determine - when all appearances are to the contrary - whether you truly have both oars in the water? This is particularly so if you keep demanding that I submit myself to cross-examination, as though in court.

It is all but one question, rephrased and repeated endlessly. How many times must one answer it?

I don't think that is the case.

You do not. You keep telling me I'm in serious needs of meds. And maybe I am. But I never was before I started hanging out here. It's not enough that you have driven yourself loony?

I can think of a pair of ears between which there are air spaces. It's because nobody reads this stuff. And what of this next beaut?

'Just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait!'

Who would have thought scriptures could be weaponized?

When I said 'unfortunately, I think you have lost it,' I was not kidding. I was a bit worried for you, and - I am internally conflicted to admit it - I am relieved to find that it is not so. Or is it? I mean, that last remark was as long as it was just plain unhinged - comparing the Watchtower to Stalin, the Gestapo, and to ...... Vlad the Impaler?! 'Surely he has lost his mind!' I said, and I expected even your fellow opposers to sing - "and another one gone and another one gone. Another one bites the dust!" Your period of silence after that last comment was, for you, astoundingly long. Or so it seemed to me. And now you are back. Where it was relief tinged with sadness, now it is sadness tinged with relief. Or is it the other way around?

Let's see, GF....You quoted 8 scriptures. Matt quoted 15. You lose. Especially do you lose if @Witnesscomes along and quotes 90. True, they will not be relevant and for that reason must be discounted 4 to 1. But what remains will still be enough to clobber the both of you put together

Unfortunately, I think you have lost it. It would have been better had you listened to @Arauna. Perhaps it is not too late.