TrueTomHarley

Tell @Witness to send me $10 and I ‘ll see if I can send him one of him sitting on the toilet.

It is not just cows. Educators as well. I mean, can you look at that headline without thinking of some old guy ripping one?

I’m on it. Thanks for the tip.

Not even Paul.

For a while I toyed with starting another persona - like @A Nice Guy, @Vic Vomidog, @Dr. Adhominem, Prof Bob “Hammer” Urabi, @Top Cat O’Malihan , ...... a phony “Mike Hammer” account & harass your with it. I came pretty close. Trouble is, I could not be sure that you and he might not hit it off and come after me, even though he was my creation.

Jane Spillane Mickey’s wife. okay, okay, so it is only through social media. I wrote a Mickey Spillane summit parody for Jane Spillane, who is re-releasing the Mike Hammer tough-guy series of late 1940's private eye books. It is a spoof on what if the President had handled Putin like Mike Hammer might handle a crime boss. She loved it. She said so on my FB and Twitter feed. Mickey Spillane later became one of Jehovah's Witnesses and his work changed a lot. That triggered my interest in his books. Now, Jane is not a Witness, probably has mixed feelings about them at best, and may feel they were responsible for 'sabatoging' his work, since his post-JW writings lose the excess sex and violence and thereby become less of what Mickey himself once said about Hemingway and the highbrow authors: "What those guys could never get is that you sell a lot more salted peanuts than cavier." Since the violence and sex is excessive in his early days, it is easy to dismiss the novels as so much garbage. However, as to the writing itself, Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) lavished high praise on them and compared them favorably to some elite authors of the day. Mickey's own dad, I think he was a bartender, called his writing "crud." Ayn Rand did not feel that way. Atlantic Magazine (I think it was) interviewed him in later years ('I may write one more Mike Hammer, but that's it. I can't sit eight hours in a chair anymore. My rear end gets sore.') and pointed out that his latter books were winning some critical acclaim. "To Mickey's disgust, one suspects," the author adds. Come on! It is impossible not to love this guy. He had the combination of intense interest, yes, even love, of people, coupled with an absolute lack of pretence, and a willingness to go 'in your face,' traits that were a trademark of Jehovah’s Witnesses of a certain generation. The parody follows: Mickey Potus strode into the room and eyed his enemy. The crime boss was not so impressive in person as when he was pretending to be a tough guy on horseback. He sat in his tailored silk suit, hoping to bluster, trying to look like he didn’t have a care in the world, but Mickey knew his entrance had shaken him to the core. The puddle of piss on the floor gave him away, That often happened when Mickey came calling. Mickey decided to play with this piece of human scum for a while. Real casual-like, he said to Vicious Vlad, “Let me tell you about a friend of mine, a knockout woman name Velda.” A bead of sweat broke out on Vlad’s brow. Maybe he had heard. Maybe he knew the game was up. “My friend Velda, she’s got intelligence, you know what I mean? She’s got real intelligence. She has more intelligence in her little finger than you have in your whole nation of goons. And Velda tells me….,” Mickey stopped dead, so that next words he said would hit the little punk with the force of a sledge hammer. Velda tells me that – you’ve – been – meddling – in – our – election.” That hit home. The little man shook. Mickey grabbed the punk by the lapels. “Now you listen up and you listen up good. Cut it out!” But Vlad was too much of a stool pigeon to know when to cut his losses. He voice trembled, but he tried to stammer back: “We didn’t me-me-medd….” He never got the words out. A smashing blow from Mickey’s fist sent blood and teeth flying everywhere. “I said ‘cut it out’” Mickey roared. What! You think I’m taking the word of scum over my intelligence? I checked out that floozie you were with and I’m not impressed. She can’t hold a candle to my Velda, a real class act, and one of these books I’m going to marry her. There won’t be any hanky-panky beforehand either. I’m kinda an old-fashioned type of guy.” “Now I’ve got one and only one question for you,” Mickey glowered. The little man, real cooperative all of a sudden, all the fight out of him, quavered, “Wh-What?” “Why don’t you get me a cup of coffee?” [it is what Mickey said to Jane during HIS interview when she began to hog it (in his estimation): “Honey, can I ask you a question?”]

The 100, a book by Michael Hart, lists Mohammad as most influential person who has ever lived. Jesus is #3. 1) The rationale? Jesus said to have split credit with Paul for the founding of the Christian religion. 2) Mohammad founded a religious AND political movement. Jesus founded a religious one only. 3) Mohammad’s followers by and large obey him whereas Jesus’ followers by and large don’t. Question: Who does the author rate #2 as the most influential person who has ever lived? (no fair peeking)

“Your crimes are among the most despicable and heinous actions that I ever seen! They are utterly repulsive and I shake my head how anyone could act in such a depraved manner!” ”However, I accept your plea that you will not do it again. I sentence you to 90 days probation.” ”Gosh, judge. I don’t know what to say. Thank you for your....” “APRIL FOOL!! 40 YEARS, YOU ROTTER!!!”

There is a “playbook” that they do not stray far from. His entire beef about how JWs react to issues of environment is exactly the same as one I answered 10 years ago on my blog. (And JWs that respond do not do so effectively, IMO. They say ‘well, we care about the environment too. Really, we do’ and then say something about the Green Globes - buying into his premise that his side is fixing things and might even solve them if JWs would but forget their preaching and pitch in. I like to show how stupid the premise is.)

It’s good. It’s thorough. I’m glad the brother wrote it. It wins the ‘fact’ battle. But it does not win the ‘perception’ battle. It is too long. There is no possible way that Lloyd would ever read it. At absolute most he would skim it & it would have no effect upon his overall program. It is not even an attribute of he specifically. It is an attribute of human nature. People are supertankers who, assuming they want to, turn very very slowly. (and he doesn’t want to) It is persuasive only when linked to as a footnote for support. It is not persuasive in itself. People simply are not that way. That is why I am happy that such things exist, but I do not focus on them.

Some things are too trivial to spend time on. One blows past it instead, accept the common sense explanation that anyone with common sense would accept, and move on. You don’t have to sanitize everything. Let the anal people try to spin gold out of what is at worst a Rutherford faux pas. All you really need do is demonstrate that they are anal. Such things don’t interest me. I have come to feel that an anal person will never stop being an anal person. Don’t indulge them unless your purpose is for something greater.

Nah, not for my sake anyway. Scoundrels always disassociate remarks from the settings in which they were written so as to create a false impression. I’m willing to accept that in JR’s bluntness (for he certainly was that, wasn’t he?) he failed to steer around some negative stereotypes of the day. It wasn’t his purpose to give PC lectures. It was his purpose to remove roadblocks to the spread of the Bible message.

No. Lloyd certainly seems to me a nasty piece of work. Still, he represents kicking over the traces and partnering with authority, rather than submitting to it. Those things are all the rage today. I never engage with him for the sake of engaging with him. There is always another purpose. And it doesn’t happen often. The important thing is to never retaliate. Then his nastiness stands out all the more clearly.

As you may know, the current organization purposes that many of its deeds will extend right into the new system. I’ve been assigned to work on this problem. I just about have it figured out.

Here is all that anyone needs to know about Evans: The most abusive of the major players is Lloyd, though perhaps that is because we have already crossed paths enough for me to consider him my nemesis. He is certainly not the most abusive of the minor players. One of the Redditt latter said: “F**k you! Call me:” and then supplied phone and email. “It is not as though you have given me fine incentive to do so,” I replied. Did he seriously expect a response? What is it with these characters? One thing that will be said of my remarks is that I do not run anyone into the ground, I do not call anyone a liar, nor do I call anyone I disagree with a “disgusting human being,” as Lloyd does with me in a heartbeat. TTH: It is the common mark of a zealot to demand full agreement in every particular and denounce anything falling short of that as evidence of “a disgusting human being.” It is common practice for such a one to slash & burn, while offering nothing in replacement. LE: Tom, you stood up for Rutherford over his vile antisemitism, so it's no surprise to see you standing up for written, documented policies that put children within reach of the most depraved of humanity. You are an utter disgrace. Thankfully, nobody's listening to you. TTH: It’s a little too soon to tell who is listening. You will probably never know, nor will I. There are many people in the world. They form & change points of view as new things comes to their attention. Nobody turns on a dime. LE: As obnoxious as Tom’s sniveling apologetics for antisemitism and the cover-up of abuse may be, laced as they are with dishonesty, cowardice & a total abandonment of logic & humanity, it’s hard not to pity him. He’s a boy in a man’s body trying to feel important. He raised the antisemitism charge several times, apparently thinking that it got under my skin. It refers to a letter Rutherford wrote in 1933 to an infant Nazi government in which he assured them that Witnesses were apolitical and not a threat. He did not avoid derogatory stereotypes of the day regarding Jews. This was long before anything of the Holocaust took shape, and a former director of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, Rabbi Michael Barenbaum, has declared it insignificant to the overall picture. https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/01/the-1933-letter-to-the-fuhrer.html TTH: Aside from those minor points I am actually very likable. And [I finally indulged myself] the anti-semitism charge is drivel, you infantile idiot. I noticed some tweets had vanished and I am unaccustomed to seeing this: LE: Ste blocked you due to realizing what I’ve known all along: that you’re disingenuous & bereft of reason & humanity. I’m entertained by you, which is why I’m not blocking you. Ste thought he could persuade you and has better uses for his time and indulging your brain farts. Hmm. Could that be? Nah: TTH: I didn’t come after him. In no way was I a troll. I have never had to block anyone in my life, even if they were not entertaining. No, I think it is for my first reason. [that he had tagged some journalists and now he didn’t want them to see answers to charges he had made] But Lloyd told me that Ste blocked me because I was odious and that he “has the right to manage his social media experience,” as though his Twitter feed was an artistic tapestry that would hang on his wall for posterity. TTH: Demonization & abuse of the ideological enemy happens everywhere. It is played out in many areas, most notably today (but not limited to) national politics of right vs left. It is a good thing to follow these other concerns, both sides, for it enables one to see the overall picture. LE: Again, I’m not demonizing you. I’m merely giving you a rare dose of reality. You’re little more than an anomaly lurking in the Twitter shadows terrified of going public lest your elders give you a spanking in the back room. It bothers me not whether you wit or carry on, because—follows a gif of a Spongebob character: “Nobody cares!” TTH: I would say that writing two free books IS going public. The pen is mightier than the podcast, especially when the host of that podcast has an affinity for taunting gifs. I mean, how far is one going to get on such a podcast? LE: As you know, the podcast invitation has long since been withdrawn now that I know how disingenuous and morally-bankrupt you are. And it’s cute that you think the public are remotely interested in your e-books, one of which lauds you as the self-proclaimed vanquisher of apostates. Just how stupid does he think his followers are? He worked tirelessly to get me on his podcast and was as nice as pie until it finally dawned upon him that I was not going to take the bait. That invitation would reappear in two seconds if he thought that I would take it now. He lives to tear to shreds those he opposes, and his followers know and relish it. After an interval, when he thought my back was turned (but it wasn’t) he tweeted to a chum: LE: I love your ability to see the best in people but Tom’s not really a nice guy IRL or elsewhere. If you’re a “nice” JW and you discover Rutherford’s antisemitism, you keep quiet and chalk it down to human imperfection. Tom, on the other hand, defends & minimizes it. Nasty sigh… TTH: You blockhead. It’s the same thing! “Human imperfection” WAS my defense! What! One should be crucified for human imperfection? Don’t misunderstand. I didn’t knock the ball out of the park. I think it is pretty clearly demonstrated who the bigoted bully is, but that does not mean more will not side with him then with me, for the topic is nasty, the article is actually well-done, and the figures within are portrayed as ones who have suffered mightily in their unrelenting quest of whistleblowing. That sort of thing plays well today. Besides, he had already clearly shown his bullying tactics when he tweet-bombarded certain woman’s groups for 52 straight days with counsel that they should denounce WT for some council to women that he found appalling. He even kept hammering them after one of them said: ‘We’ll look into it.’ He even kept hammering after I appended my tweet to his: “It’s as though Lloyd says: G*d****t, ANSWER me when I’m talking to you!!” But he has tons of followers. There is considerable infighting in that community and I suspect his side puts up with his swaggering because he gets the job done. No, I didn’t hit any grand slam home runs. On the other hand, I didn’t tell myself that I was going to. I simply appeared to present a contrasting take. Otherwise, the take is monolithic, and it is presented over and over and over again.

Yes. It would. Every penny that we spend determines not only matters of climate change, but all of reality.

Okay, TTH, admit when you have overstated it. You told @Srecko Sostar and @JW Insider that Americans were split 50/50 on climate change. In fact, it looks like 2/3 think it exists and is man-made. 1/5 think it is a fraud. 44% worry much about it, down from 60 something. About 1/3, including some who think it is real and manmade, don’t fret about it. With all the ideologues, zealot, and sometimes outright liars trying to skew perceptions in their direction, one looks for new indicators from trustworthy sources. For me, that is statements of the WT that they are now devoting multiple times the resources that they one did to disaster relief. https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/03/28/gallup-poll-americans-remain-concerned-over-global-warming-44-worry-a-great-deal-about-it/

I don’t spend an inordinate amount of time on videos, but this one almost becomes addictive. It’s the break dancing I love, as though workout gymnasts are really getting into it. I like the pacing, the sudden breaks in tempo, the shifts of one, two, and three persons on screen, sometimes two of the same person. It really is too much.

Sorry, JWI. I couldn't resist. I mean, someone has way too much time on their hands:

Chuck Schumer. Not me. My wife. She ran into him at some community college function and came across him unexpectedly. She was there for other reasons and probably had no idea that he was visiting. She asked him about high taxes in New York--so high that reports are of many people fleeing the state. He told him that yes, many do leave, however they come back later when retired. Why? For the services, he told her. He did not seem to realize that that made the situation worse. They leave when they can put into the pot. They return when they can take from it. There is a certain pundit known to @James Thomas Rook Jr. (I've never met him, by the way, otherwise he would top my list) who maintains that the most dangerous place in the world to be is between Chuck Schumer and a TV camera.

Take note, @The Librarian. Take a screenshot. Save it for posterity. Show it to your grandchildren. JWI made a comment and he only used ONE WORD! I’ve heard of turning over a new leaf before, but this takes it to a whole ‘nother level. ”There were too many...um...uh....notes,” the prince told Mozart.

Well, that’s a new one. I know that AI is smart, but has it even adjusted to my being religious? What must I do to be one of the chosen? Wait. My bad. I misread it. It is me who has to choose, (despite being on this network forever) not be chosen. I was about to ask @Witness. MSFT should be a penny stock.

Okay. Got it. Let me pencil that in the calendar.

I suggest one start with the Jerry Reed song, When You’re Hot, You’re Hot: Well me and Homer Jones and Big John Talley Had a big crap game goin' back in the alley And I kept rollin' them sevens , winnin' all them pots My luck was so good I could do no wrong I jest kept on rollin' and controllin' them bones And finally they jest threw up their hands and said "When you hot, you hot" I said "Yeah?" When you're hot, you're hot And when you're not, you're not Put all the money in and let's roll 'em again When you're hot, you're hot (La la la la la la la) (La la la la la) (La la la la la la la, when you're hot, you're hot) Well, now every time I rolled them dice I'd win And I was just gettin' ready to roll 'em again When I heard somethin' behind me I turned around and there was a big old cop He said "Hello, boys" and then he gave us a grin 'n' said "Look like I'm gonna hafta haul you all in And keep all that money for evidence" I said, "Well, son when you hot, you hot" He said "Yeah" When you're hot, you're hot And when you're not, you're not You can 'splain it all down at City Hall I say, yeah, when you're hot, you're hot You're hot (La la la la la la la) (La la la la la) (La la la la la la la, when you're hot, you're hot) Well, when he took us inta court I couldn't believe my eyes The judge was a fishin' buddy that I recognized I said "Hey, judge, old buddy, old pal" "I'll pay ya that hundred I owe ya if you'll get me outta this spot" So he gave my friends a little fine to pay He turned around and grinned at me and said "Ninety days, Jerry, when you hot, you hot" 'n' I said "Thanks a lot" When you're hot, you're hot And when you're not, you're not He let my friends go free and throwed the book at me He said "Well, when you're hot, you're hot" I said "well I'll tell ya one thing judge, old buddy, old pal" "If you wasn't wearin' that black robe I'd take out in back of this courthouse "And I'd try a little bit of your honor on" "You understand that, you hillbilly?" "Who gonna collect my welfare?" (When you're hot, you're hot") "Pay for my Cadillac?" Whadda you mean 'contempt of court'?" (When you're hot, you're hot") "Judge" Songwriters: J. Reed When You're Hot, You're Hot lyrics © Hori Pro Entertainment Group

Oh, stuff it, Billy. I can outlast you on this. I am like a hurricane that gathers strength over warm water. I am every bit as crazy as you, only set on a more pleasant and peacemaking course. I write in a more appealing manner. There is only so far one can go in telling everyone else to EDUCATE themselves if they are not too UNINTELLIGENT so as to avoid revealing how APOSTATE they are. I have never detected an ounce of humility in any of your writing. Before you make like a theocratic POTUS set to drain the Internet swamp, you should repent and cultivate some. Let's go back to what you proposed before in another persona: "You keep out of my way and I'll keep out of yours."