James Thomas Rook Jr.

... just because prostitutes wear shoes .. does NOT mean all those that wear shoes are prostitutes.

TTH: I see that once again you have given a Mel Brooks "History of the World - Part 1" to scatter the field with irrelevant to the discussion you yourself pontificated upon, debris ... but guess what? DESPITE the whiny obfuscation, you still did not give a single, EXAMPLE of how these words you bludgeon people with ... and in this case a fine BUT IRRELEVANT TO ANY POINTS YOU WERE TRYING TO JUSTIFY WITH THAT SCRIPTURE. not one! For those in Rio Linda that means ZERO, ZIP, NADA, GOOSE EGGS. You know what a "theocratic bully" is? I can give you an example ... PONTIFF. Or anyone who bullies other people with irrelevant scriptures to support their fantasy agenda. The fact that you have to delude yourself FIRST does not make it better ... it makes it worse. And your "but Jesus did THIS... and uh... Jesus did THAT" (paraphrased) is a pathetic attempt to hide naked behind a transparent plastic shower curtain. OK... sigh ... ONE MORE CHANCE .... listen up ye of multiple personalities ..... ...here it comes! .JTR

I have no idea.... YOU used that scripture to support YOUR thesis. You need to tell me why THAT scripture applies to the subject YOU were discussing ... If you can't ... it doesn't ... and you condemn yourself of being a "theocratic bully". JTR

TTH: In the context of your excellent essay above, can you please give some specific examples of EXACTLY how a person would " ... nail the Son of God to the stake again for themselves and expose him to public shame." The only example I can think of is in Catholic Hospitals where they have an emaciated statue of "Jesus" nailed to a cross you have to look at from your hospital bed. I spent a lot of time in Catholic Hospitals in my youth, and the only comfort I got is that the emaciated "Jesus" on the wall looked sicker than I was. What does that really mean ... with some REAL LIFE CONTEMPORARY EXAMPLES of EXACTLY how it is stated? For those in Rio Linda, that means it is DIRECTLY related to the thread of the discussion, and not just a "grabbed-out-of-the-air" scripture used as a bludgeoning tool. Thanks, JTR

Remember what happened when Jack Nicholson as the President of the United States, in the movie "Mars Attacks" entreated the Martians "Why can't we all just ....... get along?" ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ....

In February of 1974 it was reported that Phyllis Diller had been a Centerfold in the Watchtower magazine, and she commented, if memory serves. "That was the only Centerfold I could make!" It disturbed me so much that even today I have five naked five females and two naked males running around my home, and lying about in repose on cushions about the house ... if you don't count their collars and rabies tags. The paws that refresh!

I thought of posting a picture of myself in my designer Jabba-The-Hut Chain Mail Link Bikini, but I didn'a want to stumble anyone. People are NO FUN when they fall right over, ripping out their eyes.

When I was about 12 years old, my Dad took me to the Virginia State Fair, in Richmond, and I got on the Double Ferris Wheel in a seat by myself. There were no seat belts back then, and I don't know if there are any now. When the Ferris Wheel would stop and start to fill or empty seats at the bottom, the seats would jerk and rock forward and backwards, and you had to hold onto a horizontal metal bar in front of you that the attendant who seated you that was hinged on one end and clipped onto a hole at the other end of the bench seat, to keep from being catapulted out into space by the jerking motion. I was somewhere near the top when the seat jerked, and the bar fell off the front of the bench seat and fell away into space below me. I had to hook both arms behind the seat and wedge my feet against the floor to keep from following the bar to the ground. I have jumped out of many airplanes since then, because from two miles up, the ground is oh-so theoretical ... but crashing through a maze of steel on the way to the machinery below does not appeal to me. I have never been on a Ferris Wheel since then. ... and I am not gonna .... .

Well, AllenSmith ... and I assume you ARE Allen Smith, just trying a little deception ... (If I am wrong, please correct me...): People rely on news where they can find it. Truth is where you find it .... especially when starving for truth! The WTB&TS ONLY reports news that make them appear noble, and pure, and innocent and rightous ... and they are human beings just like all others, except that they NEVER report anything that might reflect on their IMPLIED claim of absolute competence ... and they NEVER apologize for any harm they cause by pretending to be experts on everything, misquoting references ( often with ellipsis ... to deliberately obscure the real context of a quote..). Like the old Soviet newspaper PRAVDA, and the last story in today's Watchtower ... they gloss over general disasters with an obscure reference, because ONE couple was able to adapt, AND ALL NEWS ABOUT THEMSELVES .. IS GOOD NEWS! Fine if you are a Soviet Commissar, that is to be expected but .... everybody in Russia knew AND KNOWS the glorious worker's paradise was AND IS anything but .... except the IGNORANT, the delusional, and the stupid. Like Charles Taze Russell said in the very first copy of the Watchtower ... IF Satan himself told you something that was the truth ... it would STILL be the truth, irregardless of the source. Over the years, with their HIDING of relevant information, OBSCURING relevant information, and making up prophesies and types/antitypes that had absolutely NO basis in reality, generating artificial fear and anxiety over "end-times" predictions ... and then weasel-wording around the facts that such things were ever said .... and the list goes on, and on, and on, and on .. ad nauseum ... to directly answer your specific question .... "My question would be, when did Jehovah Witnesses start relying on “apostate” NEWS by Johnny the Bethelite, and anything this EX-MEMBER has to say about the Watchtower in his blog" THIS IS WHEN. NOW. Oh .... and thank you for monitoring the many apostate websites to verify the source of YOUR research.

...and it is true that money cannot by happiness ... ... but it can RENT happiness ... other things being equal.

The best way to not have any SPIES ... ... is not do anything that needs to be SECRET !

My wife and I have seven dogs. We have found that dogs contribute a great deal of joy to our lives ... somewhat in part due to their one-word vocabulary.

That is probably a good idea, considering how many times you have actually BEEN right ... in our little verbal tete-a-tetes. BAZINGA!

All complimentary letters I assume?

I remember many years ago, author Truman Capote ( "In Cold Blood", and "Breakfast at Tiffanys", etc.) was being interviewed on the Tonite Show by Johnny Carson. Capote was a short fat man with glasses and a nasal twang to his voice. Hold your nose and talk slowly, and you will get the idea... Capote had contemplated suicide, and even checked himself into a mental institution where he had a "revelation", which was in the news, and Johnny asked him about his thoughts on killing himself. Capote replied (paraphrased) "Well, Johnny ... I got a bedddder idea ... if someone is bugging me so mucccch .... I am thinking of killing myself ....... I'M GONNA KILL THEeeeeM." I was stunned by the clarity of that thought. He may have been insane ... but apparently he was not stupid.

In at least 40 years of my experiences, my experience and conclusions are and have been the same as yours, Noble Berean. Several times, as an experiment, I wrote about matters as serious as life and death matters .. and enclosed a contribution. The check was cashed, and I got a form letter back having NOTHING to do with the subject of my inquiry, with a disclaimer at the bottom of the letter that my contribution did not obligate them to do ANYTHING ... Without the enclosed check, I only received one letter back, circa 1986, after a year, and it said basically I should read the Bible more, completely ignoring the appeal to help other brothers who needed food, and dental care.

AllenSmith: Just because someone is EXTREMELY critical of someone else's performance, competence, or motives ... does NOT necessarily make them an opposer. It's like "God LOVES you, he just hates the bad things you do ..." which we hear quite often. I can be a great fan of the New York Yankees baseball team but when someone fouls up ... player, coach or manager, etc., I might completely excoriate them, and "rip them a new one" .. AND STILL BE A LOYAL FAN! Loyalty being "My Country, right or wrong ... but MY COUNTRY" ( Nathan Hale), only works with politics, by those not claiming a special relationship with God. The German Army once had belt buckles with the inscription "Got Mit Uns", or "God is with us". Their mission to spread German Culture and Civilization to the World was opposed, and with blood, fire and steel, they had to be destroyed .... TWICE!

Not to worry .... One of the reasons Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, resigned as Pope, was that he was involved in the Great Pedophile Priest Cover Up .... ( a German in the Hitler Youth as an artilleryman, that looked EXACTLY like the Star wars Emperor ... what could go wrong ? ... ), it is rumored that he tried to redeem himself by forgiving all those despicable, lustful children that seduced his priests.

The following cartoon has been around the world MANY times, and SAYS IT ALL ... a TRAGIC comedy of errors.

As I go thorough the house, I shuffle my feet to plow the ould newspapers up from the bottom to get some air ... you know, if it gets more than several feet deep, it COULD become a fire hazard! ... and of course , there is always the problem with fermentation.

That is SO CRUEL ... and not even a Giant Hamster Exercise Wheel ....

b4ucuhear: I find your logic and reasoning irrefutable . The "stoplight" analogy applies to many things. Thank you for another arrow in my quiver!

Sounds fishy to me, but hey ... it's YOUR head !

TTH: Well, I am big .. 290 pounds, and tall, also .. 6'-6" tall ... and I have over the past five years or so posted about 7,000 comments on the archive ... but I do not care if anyone likes my posts or not, but I do smile when they do. That is to say, I do not write for anyones' approval. As far as a reward goes .. even when tied to a stake, and they stack brush and firewood around your legs, the reward for telling it like I see it ... is self respect. We are all, to the best of available information, going to die anyway .. so why fret about it. Years ago (1969) while driving from Virginia to California, I stopped in Georgia at a random Piggly Wiggly convenience store to buy some milk and Hostess pies for breakfast, and some guy said to me "Hi Tom!, Howareya doing! Still taking photographs?" ( I used to be a professional photographer at that time.). It so startled me I mumbled something I do not remember. I remember the store but I do not remember anything about the person except he was male, and about my age. In 1977 Warren Publications put out a fictionalized version of my life's adventures, ( The Rook ) but other than getting the working clothing correct, not much else had any relationship to this spacetime continuum. I still have the black vest and pants and hat, but nothing fits anymore except the hat. I lament that if someone does visit parallel universes, that aging does not stop, and is cumulative. Bummer! Back when I had a beard, and looked quite a bit like former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, during the Reagan Presidency, I was in a Home Depot in North Carolina, and I saw a black couple staring at me and talking to each other, and I grinned, knowing they were going to come up and ask if I was C. Everett Koop. Sure enough, they came up to and asked "Are you Tom Rook?" . That disoriented me. I replied I was, but had NO IDEA who they were. They told me, but I forgot ... but they said they had met me ten years before at a Kingdom Hall at "somebodys" wedding .. who I also forgot. I guess I am just not a "people person". JTR . . Oh .... and thanks for letting me live rent free in your head. .

For awhile, I tried to learn Klingon .... even bought audio cassettes and considered taking classes at the KLI (Klingon Language Institute), but alas ... I could not get my throat to make those hard guttural sounds, and yell and spit at the same time.