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James Thomas Rook Jr.

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Everything posted by James Thomas Rook Jr.

  1. If I could get over the stunned realization that you are SERIOUS about this .. I could have a have a good, long, extended, knee slapping, fall down and lie on the floor gasping for air crying jag belly laugh.
  2. Having grown up reading my Father's U.S. Navy books on Atomic, Biological and Chemical Warfare, I often, when my children were at home, lamented that they could not get a smallpox vaccination, like I got when very young. I still have the scar on my left shoulder. I hope that someone who is profiteering off of this crisis, and there are milliuouns (... apologies to Carl Sagan ) who would with a reintroduction the Smallpox vaccine to the world market, and not just a rip-off, I hope they become multi-millionaires.. I have often lamented that a person who knows how, could wipe out most of the population of the East Coast of the United States, with two cartons of eggs.
  3. Infinite variety ... I have been considering putting an index finger from each hand under my lower eyelids, and pulling down while crossing my eyes. I am fairly certain this will discourage any handshaking.
  4. I am so glad I began to ignore things that were supposed to happen , or supposedly have happened invisibly, all without the SLIGHTEST shred of actual evidence. New Light ... Old Light ...Twilight ... Strobe Light ... Bud Light. How many AWAKE! magazines have featured articles on how to deal with anxiety and stress in the last 50 years? LOTS! Yet ... we still have anxiety and stress. Well ... not me ... I even gave up Bud Light.
  5. Does anyone know if you get the coronavirus , and survive it, whether you now do or do not have future immunity to it?
  6. Kosonen: Time of the end? I could just as easily speculate ...ALSO ... without any basis, that those who survive the coronavirus, will lose the "ability" to age. Both ideas have no basis in reality.
  7. The first amendment ONLY applies to the actions of the Federal, State, and Local Governments, etc. restricting the speech of individules or legal entities. IT DOES NOT APPLY TO NON-GOVERNMENT CENSURE OF INDIVIDUALS Your Boss may fire you for saying something he does not like, or I may throw you out of my house for speech I do not approve of. ... the same with the "owner" of this blog. You cannot legally discriminate against someone on the basis of race, creed color, or national origin, etc. .... there is a list .... ... but you CAN discriminate against anyone for being too tall, too short, ugly, or stupid. .... or snarky, and mean spirited, etc.
  8. This was inevitable. That is why soon the most precious metal may soon be lead, with a brass casing.
  9. You need to meditate on what I just finished saying. You are smart enough to derive correct answers from what I have already said ...... if you work at it. Those determined to remain clueless will almost always succeed.
  10. I don't expect much from ANY humans, so although what you say is true, I see no real alternative ... that is why I stay with Jehovah's Witnesses. It is a deeply flawed organization ... but all the others are so much worse. ..and that's the fact, Jack. I CAN write the Society about this, but I would not, because of who I am, be able to do it anonymously ... but I have done so many times in the past about other issues, over the past 50 years, and they have either not replied, or replied with a computer generated form letter vaguely reminiscent of the topic I asked about. ... so the short answer, is no.
  11. Very simple ... hold the Memorial in people's homes, limited in size to whatever is determined to be safe .. I see no problem with 20 Memorials of 15 people, per Congregation. It does not have to be one hour. It can be one paragraph of commentary read, with a prayer at both ends. 15 minutes. Tops! My guess is that the original Memorial (reading from Luke), was SHORTER than 10 minutes. ...and only had 12 people present !
  12. I would prefer it to be a clarification in the Watchtower ... perhaps "Questions From Readers." ... but then again, about half of those questions appear to come from the mind of Eddie Haskell, Wally Cleaver's best friend, from the TV show "Leave it to Beaver". The "Secret Elders Handbook " can be found on the Internet ten minutes after the Branch Offices get a copy, and although the Society has given printed copies to the Australian Government, and the Finnish Government, among others, most JWs do not know it even exists. The United States Armed Forces have a book that covers the foundation of military law that covers life and regulations, and punishments in the military, the UCMJ ... the Uniform Code of Military Justice. ... which EVERYBODY in the military knows about, and has access to.
  13. This is what is written. As JWI indicated from his father, who just went to Elder's School, any person whose conscience is clear as to his obligations both to Ceasar, and to God, and decides to vote in a national election ... specifically that such a man would need counsel and discipline can be taken on the face of it to be an application of the unwritten, and therefore secret "rules" Elders have a very different range of talents, perceptions, training, experiences, educations and backgrounds. The way it is now, a Brother or Sister in one State or Nation may be ignored by the local CCJW, as they recognize the points you made, Melinda, to be quite valid, and it is none of their business. It is a matter of personal conscience. In another Congregation that same Brother or Sister would be "disciplined", harassed, "counseled", and possibly even disfellowshipped, censured, "marked:", or otherwise ostracized.for making the exact same decision. This is not fair, equitable, or just. I can tell you from personal experience, I do not LIKE being chastised and discriminated against because of an Elder's personal viewpoints. I have related how about 35 years ago, in a Congregation in Pennsylvania, I had a beard .. and got a letter of recommendation to go to Peru to work on the Bethel Home in Lima ... but the Brothers in the Airport in Miami, and later in Lima, did their very best to try and get me off the project, and excluded me from after work social events, yet the Branch Overseer asked me to stay at Bethel permanently. Things like that should have not happened to me, or ANY Brother, anywhere. The ONLY way to stop it .. is clear and unambiguous policy, articulated to everyone equally. That is why the OFFICIAL answer to my question is so very important. OTHERWISE ... we chase more conscience driven, honest hearted people away from the Truth, than we can recruit.
  14. That is the ONLY thing I need to know ... nothing different ... nothing vaguely related .. no ancillary considerations ... I just need an official, referenceable, dependable, honest and straight forward answer. YES .. or NO. ...and after that, perhaps an explanation of the logic and reasoning directly applicable to how that was decided would be helpful, and if YES, what would that punishment be. I am trying to establish a baseline principle, that at the present time seriously needs official policy clarification. Otherwise ... why have a conscience at all? With all the people on this forum, the fact that after THREE WEEKS, NOBODY knows the answer, indicates to me how important the question is.
  15. I appreciate your input JWI, but it still is nebulous, iffy, arbitrary, and subject to the whim and/or understanding of any particular Body of Elders. It appears the Governing Body is deliberately NOT answering the question ... the specific question ... that I posed. This becomes a problem, particularly when a person is said to be able to follow the dictates of his conscience ... to appease secular authorities and avoid being sued into oblivion for interfering with elections, when the reality is that a person exercising his natural conscience is severely punished, ostracized from his friends and family, and "banned to Coventry". That is why nations have secret elections ... so that people who attempt to influence their own destiny do not run afoul with those who want a different result ... and they have the bayonets. Freedom does not really exist if we exercise our conscience, and we get bayoneted, burned at the stake, or expelled or sanctioned from our Nation, whether it be secular or theocratic. Sir Isaac Newton could not speak freely of his conscience because of swift and terrible sanctions, including being hanged by the neck until dead. The question, even with your input, is still: The principle of whether or not this actually occurs ... or does NOT occur .... is EXTREMELY important, for the reasons previously stated.
  16. It's always good to be corrected when wrong, however I quoted from a news article, which I made a "screen copy" to have as a reference. I was there, but I did not even notice at the time, except to glance at the news without interest, at the time, as I do not take "flu" shots.
  17. I am sure that it is "cancelled" in the sense of being cancelled until everybody gets a handle on this novel disease, and how it spreads, and like the swine flu which began in 2009 with the influenza virus known as H1N1, it spread around the world and according to the CDC there were 61 million cases globally, between April 2009 and April 2010, and globally, 575,000 people were killed by it. No one has experience with this new, novel virus, and many false steps will be made by EVERYBODY, before an optimum protocol is realized and put into place. Like a massive ocean liner carrying 8-1/2 million passengers ... it's easier to diagnose problems, and make repairs when it is temporarily stopped.. It is my firm belief that this virus has been hyper-hyped by the media to a frenzy of panic, as previous pandemics have not been, because the "fake news" media is infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), as shills of the Democrat Party, and is obsessed with trying to destroy Donald Trump and his Presidency, using any excuse imagined. Perhaps what REALLY needs to be done to scale back artificial panic, is quarantine Democrats. Like the old saying "Climate is what we expect .. weather is what we get.", we won't have a good handle on this for several months. I hope that by June of this year the crisis will have proved to be artificial. ... and by June of 2023, ike H1N1, it will just be a footnote in history. ...soon enough, we will all know.
  18. I am absolutely sure that there is an answer that the GB has decided upon ...It's just that it has not been conveyed to us in general. Somewhere in 8-1/2 million people it seems reasonable that this issue has been adjudicated one way or the other, already.... and the question HAS been answered in actual practice. I think it is VERY important to know the answer. That will establish either the nonsense or the credibility of the 1999 article about that subject, down on the ground, where "the rubber meets the road".
  19. tH I strongly suspect that if anybody filled out the forms, the "Orange Man Bad" people would be certified insane.
  20. Neither I or my wife have ever taken an annual "flu shot" (vaccine). "So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu," Trump tweeted Monday morning. "It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!" ================================== So ..... think about that! One thing to consider is which is the most dangerous ... in your PARTICULAR case ...considering age, immune system, underlying health conditions, and other things applicable to you personally, is whether or not you want to take the risk of the Coronavirus being a threat to life, or long term health ... or a vaccine rushed to market. I just got this email from an Elder in my congregation: " Good evening everyone. Tomorrow evening our service group is assigned to do the light cleaning, which means we are responsible for disinfecting "all frequently touched surfaces in the Kingdom Hall including but not limited to door and fixture handles, microphones, seat arms, hard surface furniture, sinks, toilets, urinals, and drinking fountains" after the meeting. (The whole congregation is invited to do this before the meeting.) The more hands we have the more quickly we can get this done. Thanks! " I am pretty much going to ignore the whole virus apprehension/scare thing, but probably wash my hands more often. I already avoid people. Do we stop eating at restaurants, or handling canned goods at the grocery store, that some checker has bagged? I understand a Dilbert character, Ratbert, intended to achieve immortality by living in a coffee can away from all of this, but after a day of hiding in a coffee can, found immortality to be overrated.
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