TrueTomHarley

What it proves is that when it is clear they have erred, interpreting scripture incorrectly, they admit it in print and move on—the very opposite of the line you and Witness are peddling that they hide their mistakes at all costs.
The only one who says that it is impermissible for humans to err is you. They have never taken that position.

It can be awkward running into one of these characters. Sometimes they start fights with us. Sometimes (alas) we start fights with them.
Recently I spoke with one fundamentalist type and it threatened to go that way. Finally learning, after all these years, I said: “Look, you think we’re doing it all wrong. We think you’re doing it all wrong. We’ll steal members from your church in a heartbeat if we can, and you’ll do the same to us. Let’s just agree on those things.
That out of the way, we were able to enjoy a fine conversation on the importance of faith and the challenge of maintaining it today, knowing that we could always come back and haggle out those things later.
With liberal clergy, I sometimes just ask them to describe what they do in the course of a day. I don’t assume, as I might have when I was younger, that the answer will be: “Nothing.”
Not too long ago I hopped out of the car to do a minister’s home. A sister of the old school wanted to accompany me, but I said: “No, you’ll get in a fight with him.” She felt bad, so did I, and I did apologize. Still, I know how it would have gone:
”Interesting. Thank you for that. Now let’s see what the Bible has to say.”

It can be awkward running into one of these characters. Sometimes they start fights with us. Sometimes (alas) we start fights with them.
Recently I spoke with one fundamentalist type and it threatened to go that way. Finally learning, after all these years, I said: “Look, you think we’re doing it all wrong. We think you’re doing it all wrong. We’ll steal members from your church in a heartbeat if we can, and you’ll do the same to us. Let’s just agree on those things.
That out of the way, we were able to enjoy a fine conversation on the importance of faith and the challenge of maintaining it today, knowing that we could always come back and haggle out those things later.
With liberal clergy, I sometimes just ask them to describe what they do in the course of a day. I don’t assume, as I might have when I was younger, that the answer will be: “Nothing.”
Not too long ago I hopped out of the car to do a minister’s home. A sister of the old school wanted to accompany me, but I said: “No, you’ll get in a fight with him.” She felt bad, so did I, and I did apologize. Still, I know how it would have gone:
”Interesting. Thank you for that. Now let’s see what the Bible has to say.”

I wouldn't think of it. I promise.
By the way, while I'm here, can we renegotiate that 95/5 split of these profits that we agreed on? I'm not feeling the love, and would like to change it to 96/4. Have your people call my people! After I finish the back nine, we'll do lunch. OK?

Shh. don’t tell anybody.
Besides, I don’t trust that JWI as far as I can spit. He is scheming to become top dog.

Nobody but nobody has “apostates” like Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is almost as though I am proud of them. Every NT writer wrote about opposition and apostasy. If it happened then, it should happen now. What if there was no opposition today? Wouldn’t you have to wonder why?
Since Witnesses do not seek to evade taxes, they pay into social & police services to a greater proportion than most groups. Since they put into practice Bible principles that improve lives, they draw upon those services to a much lesser degree. They are honest. They don’t resort to violence, either, in contrast to the majority who will when the cause is deemed right. 
It should be taken as more evidence that what Witnesses have is the truth. It would not be so determinedly opposed were that not the case. The opposition to them is hugely disproportional to their “offenses.”
 

The founder of the BITE model that is used to label whoever thinks out of the mainstream as a “cult”  has just written a book entitled: “The Cult of Trump” about how that one employs aspects of mind control.
When you think half the country has fallen under the influence of a cult, it is evidence, in my view, that you have drunk too much of the Kool-Aid yourself.
It is also evidence that the entire BITE anti-cult model is no more than a leftest political philosophy that attempts to scientifically endorse a culture of victimhood and move it into protected status.
That’s not to say that everyone who doesn’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses is a leftest. But those who don’t like them on the basis that they are a “cult” usually are.
“Victimhood” overplayed is an odious thing. No one ever made a bad decision. When that appears to be the case, it is only because that one has been misled.
No one has ever changed goals in life simply in the course of human development. When that appears to be the case, it is only because that one has been misled.
And yet these same ones, who do no wrong themselves unless it can be blamed upon someone else, are the first to cry how others should be “held accountable” and must “take responsibility” for anything not according to their wish list of looking at things.
What a culture of crybabies anti-cultism spawns.

In “Tom Irregardless and Me” I write that, when Tom conducts the Watchtower, he will milk that introductory paragraph, taking comment after comment about how bad things are in the last days, and then just when they are dying down, he himself will throw in that item about the rhinoceros at the zoo that stomped over that child, as though that, too, was a sign of the last days, and get everyone going again.
 

The founder of the BITE model that is used to label whoever thinks out of the mainstream as a “cult”  has just written a book entitled: “The Cult of Trump” about how that one employs aspects of mind control.
When you think half the country has fallen under the influence of a cult, it is evidence, in my view, that you have drunk too much of the Kool-Aid yourself.
It is also evidence that the entire BITE anti-cult model is no more than a leftest political philosophy that attempts to scientifically endorse a culture of victimhood and move it into protected status.
That’s not to say that everyone who doesn’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses is a leftest. But those who don’t like them on the basis that they are a “cult” usually are.
“Victimhood” overplayed is an odious thing. No one ever made a bad decision. When that appears to be the case, it is only because that one has been misled.
No one has ever changed goals in life simply in the course of human development. When that appears to be the case, it is only because that one has been misled.
And yet these same ones, who do no wrong themselves unless it can be blamed upon someone else, are the first to cry how others should be “held accountable” and must “take responsibility” for anything not according to their wish list of looking at things.
What a culture of crybabies anti-cultism spawns.

I think the main thing to be concerned about, particularly if you live in a "fat nation",  is whether you will be a survivor of the "last days", not if you will be a survivor of Armageddon. Luke 21:34-36./Rom.10:13.  

In “Tom Irregardless and Me” I write that, when Tom conducts the Watchtower, he will milk that introductory paragraph, taking comment after comment about how bad things are in the last days, and then just when they are dying down, he himself will throw in that item about the rhinoceros at the zoo that stomped over that child, as though that, too, was a sign of the last days, and get everyone going again.
 

In “Tom Irregardless and Me” I write that, when Tom conducts the Watchtower, he will milk that introductory paragraph, taking comment after comment about how bad things are in the last days, and then just when they are dying down, he himself will throw in that item about the rhinoceros at the zoo that stomped over that child, as though that, too, was a sign of the last days, and get everyone going again.
 

“Brother, when I hear you speak I marvel at the wisdom of Jehovah’s organization in cutting public talks down from 45 minutes to 30.”
 
All that I will say on this is that the last meeting was enough to end my study with Santa Claus. He had. been making such good progress. I had finally gotten him to stop disrupting meetings with a “HO HO HO!” whenever the speaker made even the lamest of jokes. He had stopped pronouncing the elders “bad” when they asked him and me to take his outbursts  to the back room. He had even said he was giving up the extreme sports stunt he pulls every late December, out of regard for appreciating the gift of life. It wasn’t the full beard the fellow had at the beginning that stumbled him. Nor was it the shaven-off beard that he had at baptism. It was the half-beard that he had at his study, thus indicating progress.
Sigh...and he was a good study. His wife always served the most delicious cookies.
I will weigh in on some of these other things, too, when I get a moment. Thought has gone into them.

“Brother, when I hear you speak I marvel at the wisdom of Jehovah’s organization in cutting public talks down from 45 minutes to 30.”
 
All that I will say on this is that the last meeting was enough to end my study with Santa Claus. He had. been making such good progress. I had finally gotten him to stop disrupting meetings with a “HO HO HO!” whenever the speaker made even the lamest of jokes. He had stopped pronouncing the elders “bad” when they asked him and me to take his outbursts  to the back room. He had even said he was giving up the extreme sports stunt he pulls every late December, out of regard for appreciating the gift of life. It wasn’t the full beard the fellow had at the beginning that stumbled him. Nor was it the shaven-off beard that he had at baptism. It was the half-beard that he had at his study, thus indicating progress.
Sigh...and he was a good study. His wife always served the most delicious cookies.
I will weigh in on some of these other things, too, when I get a moment. Thought has gone into them.

I had forgotten what he had said about Jehovah’s Witnesses. But it fits well with this remark from a Russian scholar:
“Nikolai Gordienko, of the Herzen Russian State University in St. Petersburg, has stated ‘When the experts accuse Jehovah’s Witnesses for their teachings, they do not realize that they are actually making accusations against the Bible.’”
 

I would certainly never say that it was impossible. I took the word of some what I thought were respectable sources that the laws were not aimed primarily at religion. But sometimes even respectable sources don’t know their knee from their elbow.

Nobody but nobody has “apostates” like Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is almost as though I am proud of them. Every NT writer wrote about opposition and apostasy. If it happened then, it should happen now. What if there was no opposition today? Wouldn’t you have to wonder why?
Since Witnesses do not seek to evade taxes, they pay into social & police services to a greater proportion than most groups. Since they put into practice Bible principles that improve lives, they draw upon those services to a much lesser degree. They are honest. They don’t resort to violence, either, in contrast to the majority who will when the cause is deemed right. 
It should be taken as more evidence that what Witnesses have is the truth. It would not be so determinedly opposed were that not the case. The opposition to them is hugely disproportional to their “offenses.”
 

Nobody but nobody has “apostates” like Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is almost as though I am proud of them. Every NT writer wrote about opposition and apostasy. If it happened then, it should happen now. What if there was no opposition today? Wouldn’t you have to wonder why?
Since Witnesses do not seek to evade taxes, they pay into social & police services to a greater proportion than most groups. Since they put into practice Bible principles that improve lives, they draw upon those services to a much lesser degree. They are honest. They don’t resort to violence, either, in contrast to the majority who will when the cause is deemed right. 
It should be taken as more evidence that what Witnesses have is the truth. It would not be so determinedly opposed were that not the case. The opposition to them is hugely disproportional to their “offenses.”
 

Give them permanent “W”s

That's true, but it would not attract as much attention. Rutherford had been a political marketer before following Russell/WT/Bible Students. This is why he would ADV/ADV/ADV. And why gimmicks like putting David and Abraham on a property deed were important to him. This is why he used the title "Judge."
But I think it was Covington who figured out that he could do much better in the courts if we agreed to be recognized as a religion. Religious rights were easier to fight for than unspecified rights or civil rights of a group who would otherwise be seen only as "peddlers." Tresspassing laws were decidedly against peddlers, but the United States was being recognized in the twentieth century as much more amenable to a variety of religions, and we weren't the only religion asking for (and getting) expanded rights.

Give them permanent “W”s

No. Unless she is very very subtle. The main thrust of the laws do not even specifically target religion, though she may be no friend of it. Others have point it that way.
As to our reputation in the general world, I would put it: “When perusing religion, look for the people who are individually praised but collectively despised.”

Give them permanent “W”s

Back to the topic of the OP. I think that the Democrats have show a usual level of stupidity, and then in addition, are falling into a huge trap here. I have seen Giuliani so sloppy at times that he doesn't realize he was being an accidental whistleblower himself (against Trump), but I saw him much better prepared on this particular story (in a Fox News interview) and even there he hinted that the Democrats are walking into a trap. Trump himself does not usually come across so well prepared on any particular news story, either, and he often wings it with statements he ends up walking back.
But this is so clearly a story they are well prepared for, not just in defense against attacks by Democrats, but as a proactive strategy to bring down Biden a couple notches, and embarrass the Democratic party.
The Democrats had many Republicans on their side in creating a big anti-Russia strategy that attempted to tie everything Trump did to a close "nefarious" association with Putin. To this end, Democrats even sloppily tried to tie Paul Manifort to Russia, when Manifort was mostly an anti-Russian working for Ukraine's interests (which are opposed to Russia).
A lot of people think that it's unfair to speak of any nation as having a "Nazi" agenda, but Ukraine is really an exception, because it has truly held onto the Nazi legacy from 1945 until today. Although we don't know if the new president, a former Jewish comedian, will attempt to stem the Nazi party which has dominated official Ukrainian government agencies for years.
Democrats had to ignore this "Nazi" agenda when FaceBook and the Democrats were looking into Ukrainian accusations against Russia. Ukraine had to be presented as "the good guys" to try to paint Russia in such a bad light.
Inseparably, Russian oil pipelines always ran through Ukraine although Russia only recently created some workarounds, so the "oilgarchs" of Russia and Ukraine might have less leverage now. But corrupt "officials" and "unofficials" from the US and elsewhere have been able to profit off the oily corruption between these two states for years.  I mention this because the only parry to the sword hanging over Biden right now was the fact that Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manifort was ALSO involved in getting money from related entities in Ukraine. Then, Biden's son (Hunter) was evidently put on the board of a mid-sized energy company and paid about a million euros a year. Ukraine's Attorney General wanted to look into this and his father, VP Joe Biden, tried to get that Attorney General removed. (There are also additional monthly payments totalling closer to 2 million a year going to undisclosed persons.) 
The Democrats have already gloated over the demise of Manifort, but on separate grounds, so that it would just create confusion or appear like sour grapes to try to present Manifort as Biden "parity." Letting the whole Mueller thing play out was a bit risky, but has paid off for Republicans. Democrats are now just grasping at the few remaining straws.

Nobody but nobody has “apostates” like Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is almost as though I am proud of them. Every NT writer wrote about opposition and apostasy. If it happened then, it should happen now. What if there was no opposition today? Wouldn’t you have to wonder why?
Since Witnesses do not seek to evade taxes, they pay into social & police services to a greater proportion than most groups. Since they put into practice Bible principles that improve lives, they draw upon those services to a much lesser degree. They are honest. They don’t resort to violence, either, in contrast to the majority who will when the cause is deemed right. 
It should be taken as more evidence that what Witnesses have is the truth. It would not be so determinedly opposed were that not the case. The opposition to them is hugely disproportional to their “offenses.”