TrueTomHarley

JTR never responded to this. After he had made the charge that: “I was the subject of a Congregational Committee Trial once, and the three judging me REFUSED TO TELL ME THEIR NAMES.“ He never responded. JTR always responds. His responses are as dependable (and often as smelly) as a bear pooping in the woods. He has responded to many other things in the interim. It makes me think that I hit the nail on the head. If not directly on the head, then close enough. I strongly suspect his seemingly outrageous “mistreatment” that I have never heard of as happening anywhere before was somehow triggered by something outrageous on his part. And here he is trying to portray himself as a victim.

I have no idea. If he is, he certainly is not a typical one, that’s for sure. I don’t think that he is mentally sound. That does not mean that he is stupid. But both oars are somehow not in the water. It is just too weird to be as outrageous as he consistently is, picking fights with everyone.

It depends upon what you mean by insult. Alas, you tend to take the slightest reproof (which I have given you) as an insult. When Allan returned from one of his many banishments, I took the time to say (maybe someone with more patience than me can pull it from the pile) that he truly did bring much to the table, but he jeopardized his contribution by indulging his anger. ‘You cannot afford that luxury,” I told him. He was somewhat of a prickly character—who can say what makes a person what he is?—but he seemed to take that counsel to heart. It was some time before he got into hot water again, and as stated, we got along well afterwards, even though our exchange was mostly through DM. Had I ever rebuked him? No. Had I ever reproved him? Yes. Have I ever rebuked @JW Insider? Yes. Once, and he took it to heart. He said so, and I saw the difference that it made. It did not change his basic philosophy of telling whatever he has experienced. But once he stepped over the line to tell something (and no—it has nothing to do with CSA—don’t even go there, John) that would not be known otherwise—revealing a confidential matter that truly was confidential. And he has reproved me on different things, whether he knows it or not. Not quite a rebuke, but maybe that is coming someday. Have I ever rebuked you? Nothing like I am going to. It is outlandish how you let yourself get carried away by your anger. To the extent people accept you as a genuine member of the faith, it makes for a terrible witness. I’m not sure that JTR does worse. In fact, I think he does better, for it is very clear that he is way way out there as a Witness. He does not pretend to be representative of them.

All the same, you are not he, and that was my sole point. He was very nice to me. You are mean to me. That clinches it from my point of view.

Well...I will lend you some support on something that seems to be important to you. So many here seem to think that you are one of the Allans—he got all the way up to #30 something, advancing a number each time he got tossed out on his ear for getting too abusive (and he was right to object that others had been equally abusive and had not been disciplined, which @JW Insider pointed out even more than me, and on more occasions.) I used to point out that Allan made a significant contribution here—he proved the resurrection. I messaged him privately, or maybe he messaged me—I forget—and in the course of a very nice exchange, I gave him a copy of Tom Irregardless and Me, which he said nice things about, as well as nice things to me. So I don’t think that he was you at all. Hear that, @Witness, @JW Insider, @James Thomas Rook Jr., @JOHN BUTLERand others? He’s not the same guy. Billy is mean to me. Allan was not.

I would still think it over beforehand. I doubt that is so. You can always blow away a chipmunk with your sharpshooter.

I have altered posts after they have been commented on, but almost always it is for something minor—to plug in a better synonym, for example, or to smooth something out that was initially said too clumsily JTR has been caught in the crossfire of this once or twice, and he screams because he thinks that he is writing the Magna Carta. If he didn’t have such an itchy trigger finger and could wait a few minutes while I worked the bugs out, he wouldn’t find it pinched in a closing window. Technically, I should not do this and JTR is right to object to it. But it is hard for me to imagine it is such a big deal. If it were my defense before the Sanhedrin, that would be a different matter. There I might polish up every word beforehand.

Last I checked, they had not hacked into my bank account to take anything. It is others who try to do that, and that is why a simple command on my computer may takes seconds, even minutes to execute, due to security measures in place to thwart the theives.

Are you sure that you just didn’t leave your hearing aid home that day? Look, in the entire big wide world of theocratic doings, I would never say that such and such could never happen. What I can say is that it is nothing of which I have ever heard. Even Mark O (who blocked me), who cries how people are after him, even “high-level” people, and who is victim prima dona in some circles, does not allege that anyone is unnamed: https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/04/he-has-blocked-me-i-think-that-says-it-all.html In view of your astonishing disrespect and never-ending tirades, perhaps some extraordinary measures were resorted to, but even then, I can hardly imagine it. Why in the world would they withhold their names? It is not anything that we do. UNLESS, in view of your open enthusiasm for carrying weapons, they began to fear, rightly or wrongly, that they might be risking life and limb to be more candid. I mean, in the courts of law that you revere, steps can be taken to protect ones thought to be at risk from suspects supposed violent. Not so in the congregation, where they are unlikely to try to enlist a cop should they fear that someone might get ornery. When I worked a part time job that attracted some backward characters, and my immediate supervisor was fired (for explosively angry speech in front of all the customers), I later tried to get his job back for him—it was a crummy job and they used him shamelessly—‘the most selfish company in the world,’ one former manager told me, but it was all he had. Much as they liked me, they wouldn’t hear of it. They had locked down the HQ office for a week after firing him, fearing reprisals that never came. They were not necessarily overcautious to lock it down, either, for he did have a violent temper. He had legitimate things that could provoke it, but that does not mean that it did not exist. It is just speculation on my part to apply parallel perceptions to you, but in view of your love of guns and the crass way you sometimes express that love, it is one way to explain something that is otherwise inexplicable. If so (and if it is not this, it will be for some other good reason, because I have never heard of such a thing as unnamed judges, even though I have been around forever) it is rather like drawing a foul in basketball. Or it is like ones who carry on so outrageously that authorities finally deal with them with some harshness, after which they scream how they—lovable, harmless they—have been viciously attacked for no reason at all. I think of arrangements in the Law of various penalities for various offenses—if you had done this, then you were to do that as a penalty. But if you blew off the whole arrangement as nothing and simply refused to comply, you were put to death. I can picture allies of the lout back then misrepresenting things as someone being put to death for a relatively minor offense, whereas it is really being put to death for contempt toward the arrangements that God had put into place through Moses. Perhaps something akin to this was active in your case. I would not be surprised.

For the life of me, I don’t know why anyone would ever downvote a comment. I can easily see why one would upvote, but to downvote? It is like booing and hissing the villains when they appear on the stage. They’re villains. That is understood. Why the need of all the theatrics to boo and hiss?

The trick is not to deny that Jehovah’s Witnesses are a cult. The trick is to say that they are if and only if the Bible is a cult manual. If you accept the first bit of nonsense, then you must also accept the second. Srecko has done that, I think.

Since all these parables are explained in the context of working for kingdom interests—largely, in the preaching and disciple-making activity, I think this line translates into the “wicked” slave refusing to do that work and throwing it back in the Master’s face, as though to say: ”You want disciples? Then get off your lazy rear end and make them yourself!”

that old hen

Okay, time’s up. I am not rescinding that part of how judicial committees are superior to the world’s system of justice, even if you give me 100 likes. I mean, you must really really really give them a run for their money, if you are even the slightest bit there as you are here. Yes, maybe they should exert superhuman effort to discover that beneath your incendiary manner, there lies a loveable fuzz ball. However, I have exerted such effort and even i could not swear that it is the case. I mean, with me........ ”A better adjudicator.you never will find. If I was a griper who’d seen it all, being hailed by opposers both great and small, would I start weeping like a cesspool overflowing? or carry on as if my home were in a tree? Would I run off at the mouth, not knowing where I’m going? WELL, WHY CAN’T JTR... be like ME?”

What an accusation!! Have you no shame?

If I edit it out, can I count on your ‘like’? It is just a little blip tossed in at the end anyhow—hardly the main point.

I never comment on what the lawyers are up to because it is a tangled mess that they must operate in where justice does not necessarily prevail. The courts, particularly the civil courts, are not so much a forum to establish truth as they are a forum to establish blame. There is some overlap here, but they are far from the same thing. In a real forum for establishing truth, you lay out each and every fact, in no particular order, without regard for whether it makes you look good or not. If you do that in the courtroom modeled on the adversarial system of justice, your adversary sifts through the facts, seizes the one most to his advantage and your detriment, and beats you over the head with it. Is it not so? Anybody who has ever watched a lawyer show on television knows it. Lawyers themselves know it. “Anyone who acts as his own lawyer in court has a fool for a client,” they say. Why would they say this were it not common knowledge that there are endless headgames and intrigues played out in the courtroom, and anyone who does not know how to play the game gets his head handed to him on a platter. In many areas, a significant conflict of interest is enough for a person to be removed from the venue. In the field of lawyers, it is the name of the game. I would prefer my case heard by a judicial committee any day. No, they are not perfect. It is just that they have a better track record than the alternative.

And don’t think that you are springing any sneaky traps on anyone. Talk to my financial advisor, @Witness And then just link to the thread that already exists. I’m not about to reinvent the wheel here.

Anyone who has any money at all must park it somewhere when not in immediate use. Large swaths of the market far emphasize safety of principle over its increase. After all, if you do nothing at all, you lose your principle due to inflation.

Well.....if you insist upon going there, then you must also include Pharoah’s daughter, who went down to the Nile bank and withdrew a small prophet.

It certainly can be indulged in as though gambling, but so can most things. Start a business, for example, and you are “gambling” with many unknowns. Far “safer” to walk into the factory and ask for a job. You are “gambling” every time you get behind the wheel of a car. But the basic idea of “investing” in the stock market is not gambling at all. Buying a stock is buying a very very tiny piece of a company. You benefit the company by supplying it with the funds it needs to expand. In turn, you are (a very tiny) part owner of that company, to thrive if it thrives. How “moral” it is is anyone’s guess. It depends upon where you are & what companies you invest in. In the case of huge companies, it becomes the case of the tail (the stockholders) wagging the dog (the company). If you, for example, own John’s Bomb Company [and I am not being snarky or suggestive here, I am just trying to illustrate a point] then you are content to wait for customers. When you get an order for a bomb, you go into the workshop to make one. But when you are a gigantic weapons company with many stockholders to “feed,” you have to keep feeding them. You cannot just wait for bomb orders to roll in—what if there is a period of peace? If you don’t make and sell a lot of bombs, then you don’t make money for your stockholders, and they go somewhere else where they can make money. So there is an irresistible temptation to make your market. That’s why the armaments companies have a huge presence in government circles as lobbyists. It is not merely to say, ‘Hey, if you need bombs, we are better than that other company.’ More significantly, it is to say, ‘The world is a very dangerous place, with many many enemies that must be kept in check. You cannot have too many bombs on hand, and as it turns out, we make them.’ For the longest time, Russia (or the Soviet Union) has been identified as the king of the north, who puts his trusts in fortresses. It is he who hosts public parades of weapons rolling through the streets—boasting in military might. Still, right now, the U.S. is bombing more countries than he. This is but the most blatant example. Parallels can be found in most industries—energy, food, chemical, pharmaceutical, banking, for instance. They can’t just wait around for people to order their product. They must, in order to “feed” the stockholders, go out and make markets, and expand ones already made. It is entirely separate from “gambling,” and might be seen as the bigger evil. After all, if you have some money, you are “gambling” far more by sticking it under your mattress. You are gambling that there is no fire or thief. And if you put your money in the bank, you know very well that they are not just sitting on it. They are putting it in the stock market in hopes of making a profit. Or they are loaning it out to other people, who may not pay it back. How’s that for gambling (with your funds)?

Do you think that is the “real” issue here? Do you think that God loses any sleep over it? Do you think that should he see the error of his ways and back down, there will not be 100 to take his place? Do you plan to take them all on? I mean, you haven’t really put out any fires here. You’ve even managed to get Mt. JWI to erupt again. He had been content to post pictures of kitty cats.

Attend any business school or talk to any banker or businessman. Go to any retirement seminar. Talk to any financial advisor. Contact the Human Resources department of your employer. See if the stock market is considered gambling.

W

The $100,000 dollar bill in the Game of Life has (or used to) G. I. Luvmoney’s picture.