TrueTomHarley

Unfortunately, though the strip is remembered fondly, and for good reason, Capp himself is not. He was ever the womanizer. His own family had harsh things to say of him.

For quite some time on my Facebook page I ran quotes from Wikipedia about Lil Abner. Some older friends commented on how they remembered and loved the characters. I always, always write my own material. But in this case, I simply quoted Wikipedia and left it at that. And, no, don't ask to friend me. There is a part of me that would like that, but I fear you would not behave.

Given that a man feels he must have a cartoon collection, he cannot do better than the complete works of Gary Larsen and Scott Adams. Only Al Capp would be an equal, of another generation.

First of all, that is nonsense. These are legal professionals with no personal stake and if they are in any danger of getting hurt financially, they quit. The world today is a lawyer's playground - we all know it - and lawyers seek out culprits with deep pockets, so that they may transfer some of the contents therein to their own pockets. Sure, it is possible that the aggrieved party got his barber who does lawyer work on the side to represent him. More likely though, he responded to overtures of lawyers with deep pockets, like the ones who advertise on TV to sue a myriad of causes. I'd also appreciate if you didn't slobber over the civil courts as the ultimate font of justice. The justice it delivers is as much a by-product as it is the main event. If there are no deep pockets, the system does not bother. I'm not saying it is wrong to use the existing system, or that I wouldn't do it myself if aggrieved, necessarily. I just don't like to herald it as the ultimate source of justice. It is the source of wealth transfer which sometimes parallels justice. Because we are about the same age and our religious background is the same and even in some other ways our inclinations are not dissimilar, I think you will agree with me that true justice demands such a person be put to death when his heinous crime is uncovered. The world has managed to persuade most that the transfer of money is the same as justice, and a rising star legal profession eagerly pushes that new truth. Even the criminal system - by the way, why isn't this fellow in jail? - cannot deliver 'justice,' sentencing a rapist to a not overlong prison term, the last years of which are appearances before the parole board, and the victims kin, who should be left to heal - are dragged into pleading why he should not be released, a battle that they face repeatedly and eventually lose. Lay off on the praise for the human court system, will you? *the movie is a John Grisham novel, probably. If you knew as much about Bible principles and the new personality as you do about pop culture, you'd be a lot easier to take.

This is interesting thought! It is also a true thought. If the greater world's education was worth the paper that its diplomas are printed on, it would have resulted in a better world than it collectively has. Its education gives exclusive attention to training the mind, and none (or little) to training the heart, with the apparent assumption that moral qualities will take care of themselves. As is painfully obvious by looking at the result, they don't. Better to focus on training the heart, as divine education does, and then pick up secular education a la carte as needed. This is more in the category of picking up job skills. No one not opposed to that, particularly since you did so after reaching an age of maturity.

I don't want to let this go quickly because it is typical of how you start with something true and then use it as a platform to lie, or at least deliver unproven & harsh judgements. Nobody slaps Jesus in the face with his own counsel about being slow to judge more than you. Your lie, in this case, is that the Watchtower seeks to bankrupt those seeking redress through the courts. It is not necessarily a lie. It may just be a ignorant accusation. Choose for yourself which it is. In fact, it is impossible to bankrupt a person in this manner, unless this case is very unusual. Deep pocketed legal firms take on these cases - the plaintiff incurs no expense whatsoever - in return for one third of any awarded amount. There is no question that Bethel has a significant mess on its hands. It turns out there was a real scoundrel in their midst who harmed several people. Whether the legal means employed is the best one or not I am not qualified to say. The point is that you, whose legal library consists of the complete works of Gary Larsen and the complete works of Scott Adams are not qualified to say either. It is a sad fact of human nature that the more ignorant a person is, the louder they are.

Yes. I did. The fellow involved did despicable things, hurt many people and brought much reproach on God's name. But that has nothing to do with the question I posed. Your assertion that Watchtower is intent on bankrupting the persons who seek redress though the courts must be regarded as another lie until you provide some proof of your statement.

Yes, yes - you are smart. We know that. Nonetheless, please provide some proof that Watchtower seeks to bankrupt those who seek redress through the courts

How do you know this?

Not the children in Jesus' illustration. Nor the children in the back seat of car in which the driver finally whirls around and shouts: "If you kids don't stop crying back there, I'll give you something to cry about!"

They can be likened to the children of the marketplace who wail no matter what.

If I had named a dog @Top Cat O'Malighan, I would expect it to bite me and not you.

Okay. I'll modify that statement. It's a l**ky thing for you it was me and not @Top Cat O'Malighan. He would have bolded, underlined, and enlarged the words.

Please help! The evil monster @James Thomas Rook Jr. kidnapped my father and turned him into a lamp! Just look at what he did to him! Mengele was nicer:  This was my dear old dad, who taught me how to pee on fire hydrants. My dad, who taught me how to be irresistable so that gullible sap humans would do anything I want. This heinous monster just gutted him, stuffed him with pages of old bound volumes, and uses him to entertain his guests! The despicable savage! Please write @The Librarian that this murderous animal is brought to justice. Do not say as he does: "They came for the gerbils but I was not a gerbil; they came for the cats, but I was not a cat; they came for the dogs, but I was not a dog. They came for the GB - actually I kind of liked that one." Beware! They will soon be coming for YOU! Do you know what he thinks PETA stands for, an organization of which I am a card carrying member? People Eating Tasty Animals!!! It's outrageous! And don't let him fool you, saying he keeps several dogs at home that he feels sorry for. Those dogs are about as safe with him as are actresses with Harvey Weinstein!

I think there is only one person in the whole wide world who did not laugh at this little joke to illustrate how one can trade away much for little.

This recalls an experience 35 years ago when I studied the Bible with a much older Czeckoslovakian woman, who - in hindsight - must have regarded me as a grandson. One week I could not make it and asked a similarly aged woman, who also professed to be of the annointed, to cover for me. It did not go over well. My student started the study session by offering refreshments - as she always did with me and I always accepted. "My food is to do the will of him who sent me," my sub said, turning down the offer. 'It is theater!' my student sputtered on during the next week's session - whatever the pious sentiments expressed were completely lost on her. 'People are human. They need to eat.'

Sometimes personal attacks, if they are accompanied by the reasons for it, are exactly the way to go. Even raising a strawman is at times appropriate, for 'God wants men of all sorts to be saved' - even strawmen. Shiwiii again: "Why are you sooo bitter?" 'Bitterness' is in the eye of the beholder. I would say that my goal here, and that of many others, is to defend certain dedicated ones from relentless and often infantile attacks.

Shiwiii delivers his coup de grace (this time for sure!) and Witness immediately high-fives him! They are both so excited! Both are either too stupid, too deceitful, or too blinded by hate to notice that the Watchtower's letter is exactly based on the scripture that is quoted in the same paragraph. In fact, the two are intertwined, so that they are seemingly impossible to separate save for someone with an 10-foot ax to grind with which to separate the bone from the marrow of those they cannot tolerate. Is it too harsh to say we are dealing with a couple of losers? In fact, the Watchtower shows more consideration than Paul. Paul simply says 'I'm coming for it - have it ready!' without any detail as to what he will use it for. Why isn't there an account to keep him honest - as has been demanded repeatedly elsewhere?! The Watchtower simply says we can be instructed by Paul's letter - it doesn't twist the arm as he does - and, unlike Paul, it gives the reason for monies needed: for rent and maintenance. Even @Witness, who knows the Bible better than anyone in the whole wide world, especially the Governing Body, and who cannot pour herself a bowl of Cheerios without citing five scriptures to justify it, misses this most obvious point in the world - collections in a congregation have full scriptural backing. Once again,we go back to the point already stated: nobody is less intrusive about money matters than are Jehovah's Witnesses.

I was outraged when I read this! My blood pressure shot to the moon! They had to call NASA! @Shiwiii is right to warn us about this disgusting book - the Bible. How dare Paul TELL the Corinthian congregation AND the Galatian one and probably every other one - what a racket he had going - to set some money aside every day of the week!!! What a greedy self-serving scoundrel! What? Is he trying to pretend God needs it? Why does God need our money. It's ours!! Tell him to keep his grubby hands off it!! Yeah! Sure! You expect me to believe that? He's going to take their kind 'gift' (extorted, if you ask me!) to the Riviera or Las Vegas for some high living - and fly business class to get there!!! Thank you, Shiwiii, for alerted me to this blatant greed and Bible money-loving. You make a fine investigative reporter.

The shrewd student of God's word is not easily tempted by signs of the 'last days.' When someone points to shooting gallery terrorist attacks or imminent World War III, he smiles and moves on. He does not seize upon such low-hanging fruit. It is eye candy, which the evil one dangles before him to get him to jump. It is an intended sucker punch, and he declines to insert his face in the path of the blow. Instead, he follows the subtle pulse of day-to-day reality, and here he finds the proof - 1000 times in doings so subtle that they miss entirely the attention of the average donkey. He recognizes, for example, that in the pond of urine he spies under every urirnal lies sure proof of the decline of humanity. In my entire life, I may have spilled two or three drops of urine. The principles of peeing have been understood from the days of righteous Lot. It is not rocket science - or it is the propulsion theories behind it have long been mastered. Another is seen while driving the very highways and byways of the country. One's eye casually drifts over to the guardrails, with the warm and fuzzy feeling that if you should veer off the road, these mother hens of engineering with ever so gently nudge you back on the road to life, just as @The Librarian gently guides her pupils. What a shock to discover a railing whose end might as well contain the words: 'Hit me and you die!"  Dozens of highly educated engineers have okayed this latest advance in human protection. Score of adminisrators after them. Experts in the field of public safety have said: "I certainly see no problem with that.' Hundreds of people installed them and if they gave feedback - they probably did - their higher-ups rejected it because it came from ignoramuses. The most telling sign of the last days being imminent is uncovered in the trade publications that monitor real estate and use of office space. In a tiny note on page 337 at the bottom right corner is a notation from the Office of the Devil that he has run out of special places in hell.

Well, whose fault is that? And surely that statement can be turned around 180 degrees - with you misunderstanding me. If you are going to say the most offensive things as casually as you breathe air, you cannot sniff and sob that 'nobody understands me' when you are called on it.

Having said what I have said about 1984, I do agree that it applies to you in one regard.

Okay, there is some revisionist writing on this, probably from guys like you so that they can apply it to anyone else they disagree with. Is it valid? Here is from https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/12109/what-happened-to-winston-smith-at-the-end-of-george-orwell-s-1984 "This is one of the scariest part of Nineteen Eighty Four, the fact that The Party is so powerful that it will not even let dissent to be felt in the mind of someone they are about to execute. They are not interested in merely obtaining a confession and punishing dissent, they are not simply interested in scaring others from rebellion, they need the dissenter to repent absolutely and to happily go to their death as fitting punishment for their earlier thoughtcrime. This is a world where The Party believes there is no objective truth outside of Party dogma - if you are told that a man can fly, you will make yourself see it and believe it. A rebellious thought even in a man about to be executed is intolerable. "The Party is even willing to let Winston Smith to live following his torture in Room 101 without needing to work, with more money and living in relative comfort compared to his earlier life until he reaches a state where he truly believes in the Party and loves Big Brother. "The party needs everyone to live their life and eventually die loving Big Brother, and will not execute Winston until this happens..." Has anyone executed you lately? Has anyone tortured you in Room 101? Has anyone said you could live on their dime without working? All you do is bellyache about that job-of-a-lifetime you quit long ago and forevermore regretted. And page after page here from long-time Witnesses indicate that, apart from 100-year-old doctrinal points, they disagree with impunity on everything under the sun & and as long as they do not make themselves obnoxious about it, seeking to gather converts, all is fine. If I join that other fellow who complained about you to @The Librarian, it will not be because you air apostate views (though that does not help). It will be because your remarks betray a mentality so infantile that it is hard to stomach. My comment stands:

Mr. Cos, If you ever want to know the truth of everything, I'd be more than happy to share some of my boundless knowledge with you as my precious time permits. I mean, c'mon! There is such a thing as modesty