i've been out for over 20 years and really can't keep up with the doctrinal and physical changes.
there have been so many construction projects, property sell-offs, and whatnot.
can someone clarify what exactly is in each city/town.
All that money spent and nothing to help hungry and homeless people.
And so much of it seems to be extravagance. I wonder how much money is spent on the locations and technology, all to produce videos of similar quality to what many YouTubers produce in their bedrooms, or that college students produce with a cheap video recorder and some friends. The inefficiency must be colossal. But it won't stop them from 'encouraging' the followers to give even more.
i know there was a leak a few weeks back, but this really does seem to have come out of the blue.. the anomaly was the original decision.
it clearly had no basis in law or the constitution, and was a flimsy, ridiculous ruling.
plus the whole thing was based on a fraudulent case in the first place.. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61928898.
I think I'm in the camp of most Americans on the subject- accepting of abortions as long as there are restrictions on when they can be performed. Many states are setting the limit at between 15 and 24 weeks, which is around four to six months, out of what is normally a nine-month period. I'm not sure if 24 weeks is too long, but I don't think it is too short.
I take some exception to the idea that it's not for "us" to decide, especially if the criteria is that I'll never become pregnant and thus the choice of having an abortion is one I'll never have to face. Does this mean that only people on Death Row should be allowed to discuss the pros and cons of capital punishment? That only people who have fired a gun or been shot should be the only ones discussing gun control? I don't think it works that way in the context of a human community/society. I think it's more important to be able to confront the issue and see what agreement we can come to, based on a reasonable approach to it.
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I am willing to accept that the WTS would not want to give Evans publicity because it would just get messy for them. But other than that, I would imagine that there are at least three or four GB members who would love to try to take him down, because he's gone at them many times in his videos. And if Evans is a raging narcissist, I can only imagine how bad it is with those guys. Evans didn't even get to 1,000 patrons; the GB has millions of admirers who believe that their words are coming almost directly from Jehovah.
They would risk giving him a publicity boost that he could never get on his own. I mean, people marvel over how much attention he is getting from the exJW community lately, but what did he need to do to get it? Have the details of his disastrous private live leaked online? Partly. Give everyone those sordid details himself in a long, rambling, insane livestream? Yep. Go nuts afterwards and expose himself as an unstable sociopath with delusions of grandeur? YES.
Why would the WTS even need to intervene at this point? I bet at least a couple of them, if they ever discussed Evans, predicted that he would eventually blow himself up. All they needed to do was ignore him. Anthony Morris has probably been buying more champagne recently, for all of the toasts they keep offering at their get-togethers now.
i know there was a leak a few weeks back, but this really does seem to have come out of the blue.. the anomaly was the original decision.
it clearly had no basis in law or the constitution, and was a flimsy, ridiculous ruling.
plus the whole thing was based on a fraudulent case in the first place.. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61928898.
The argument I’ve heard is the words “liberty and pursuit of happiness” in the constitution which is the grounds for gay marriage and everything else under the sun including abortion.
The freedom to live your life as you choose is an important protection that the Constitution was meant to protect, with the understanding that your decisions did not impact others in a way that was unfair or unjust. Many of our civil rights, including those which protect gays, are codified into law (or added as amendments) because they were not clearly delineated in the Constitution. Gay marriage has been left to the states to decide, in the same way that abortion will be now. That is how it works, ideally.
To me, the issue around abortion is the fact that you are ending a life, and that should never be done lightly. If there is a question of the life/safety of the mother, that strikes me as the one thing that would be a clear priority. The issues of body autonomy and circumstances of the pregnancy should be secondary to that. We should first consider that to kill a baby that is viable is effectively murder, or I'd want to hear a good reason that it would not be. We can work our way back from there, but that should be the start point: do we value human life, or don't we?
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That looks like Paul Grundy.
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Emily consistently dishes out the best burns in this topic.
i know there was a leak a few weeks back, but this really does seem to have come out of the blue.. the anomaly was the original decision.
it clearly had no basis in law or the constitution, and was a flimsy, ridiculous ruling.
plus the whole thing was based on a fraudulent case in the first place.. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61928898.
I think it's a constant back-and-forth. In the 80s, Reagan moved the Republican party more to the right and empowered the religious factions within it, and they made a strong push for more legislation and more control. I think this eventually led to the pushback that got us where we are today, and the pendulum is beginning to swing the other way again. If the Supreme Court had ruled that abortion was illegal in 1973, we'd probably be hearing the opposite arguments from each political wing today.
At some point, the pendulum will swing so far in one direction that the structure will topple, instead of correcting itself.
i know there was a leak a few weeks back, but this really does seem to have come out of the blue.. the anomaly was the original decision.
it clearly had no basis in law or the constitution, and was a flimsy, ridiculous ruling.
plus the whole thing was based on a fraudulent case in the first place.. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61928898.
It IS a significant ruling and significant change, because abortion is no longer protected by federal decree. The decision is the correct one, as the Constitution itself states that any rights/restrictions not enumerated within the document are left to the states to decide. The recent ruling regarding the Second Amendment was a reminder that states cannot decide which parts of the Constitution they can ignore (through restrictions designed to get around it). This ruling is a reminder that the federal government must not use the Constitution as a way to expand its reach and power. It is long overdue.
I don't think the USA will survive as a democratic republic in the long run, because our system has been under constant assault from all sides, pretty much from the start. It is a credit to the founding fathers that it has held up as long as it has, but it's become clear in the last 40-50 years that there are now enough people willing to overturn it that it is only a matter of time. I'm hopeful that this doesn't happen in my lifetime, or that we learn enough in the next couple of decades to come to appreciate what we have and protect it. But I am not optimistic about that.
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Facebook --like so many social media these days-- is infested with fake accounts looking to get people to click links and enter personal info so that their ID can be stolen and used to defraud others. It has gotten out-of-hand the last few months.
But they did seem to pick the right photo to get him to click, lol.
i know there was a leak a few weeks back, but this really does seem to have come out of the blue.. the anomaly was the original decision.
it clearly had no basis in law or the constitution, and was a flimsy, ridiculous ruling.
plus the whole thing was based on a fraudulent case in the first place.. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61928898.
It won't happen, they are controlled by the left and the left are currently in power and things are already bad enough without them making things worse.
I hope you're right. But I don't think those groups will see that. The extreme left wing seems to be taking the approach that they have to act now, and this would be an attack against a court that may have a conservative majority for a pretty long time. They must also be concerned that, if 2022 and 2024 lead to a Republican President with majorities in both houses and a friendly court, much bigger changes may be coming. Changes that they will not like at all.
This might be their last real chance to do a lot of damage and unleash violence and destruction with relatively little cost to themselves. That is a very tempting opportunity for a group that believes that their cause is so important that any action is moral and just.
