estellasmum

I'm so happy to see Leah and Mike go for the tax exempt status this year. Unfortunately, I think taking that away is the only thing that will do damage. As an ex-Jehovah's Witness, I have seen several scandals go down in that organization, and a lot of the ex members always think that this is going to be the catalyst of what causes their eventual downfall, but it never does. I'd love to see the Scientology tax exempt status go away, and then have the IRS look into the status of other religions. The JW's have moved their headquarters from Brooklyn, NY to a tax exempt haven in upstate NY. They have sold over a billion dollars worth of buildings, all of which had free labor renovations provided by their members, all tax exempt. And they still have quite a bit of prime Brooklyn real estate in their portfolio that they haven't sold. Think of how much money has stayed in the hands of the "church" that should have made its way back to the government, and how much more will stay in their hands should they chose to unload their remaining properties. Unfortunately, there's always going to be a vulnerable population that easily falls into a cult like this, and there's always going to be a hardcore membership that the more you attack, the more they dig in and support the organization.

Look up cognitive dissonance, it is a very common thing among people in cults.

Other than Gary and Katherine, none of them really have jobs, do they? They don't really have anything else better to do. I get there's the restaurant, but it doesn't seem like much is happening there. They're bored.

So much this. My cousin died because my aunt and uncle refused a blood transfusion for her. She was a minor, so some authority managed to get a court order to force them to give her one, but it was too late. And what I remember most from that is being somewhere in the hospital and even though the room was full because all of my family was there, and I felt so alone, because I felt like I was the only person from the family that was sad she died. They had various hospital people there, and my family was trying to tell them how it was a good thing, because now she will be resurrected because the family stood firm in their beliefs. They sent the hospital chaplain down, and all my grandpa wanted to do was tell him how he was a minister for Jehovah's Witnesses and get in to a doctrinal debate with him about the scriptures and what they had to say about blood. The hospital chaplain didn't take the bait, graciously said something to the effect of then he was going to go and let the family grieve, since my grandpa seemed to have it covered. I was only 8 or 9 at the time, and I remember comprehending on some level that the chaplain wasn't afraid of my grandpa's superior knowledge, he just was trying to be a decent person. I never did feel like anyone thought twice about her as a person after she died, she was just a symbol of how much faith my aunt and uncle had to let her die.

Yes, they do it themselves. People from surrounding congregations come and help, and they have regional building committees to take charge. Some of the more specialized work might require bringing in someone from a congregation farther away, and they do so on their own time and expenses. My uncle was not raised a JW, and he has a college education, and he was constantly travelling on his own dime. When I was in, they were very proud they could build a Kingdom Hall in about a weekend, so I'm surprised it took such a long time. They did have it pretty worked out how to do it.

It is mostly financed on the backs of the members. They used to charge for their publications years ago, but then that would have taken away their tax exempt status, so Jehovah changed his mind, and went to a donation only arrangement for everything. They are very proud of the fact that they don't tithe, but there are constant reminders to donate, and they have things set up like, how you can leave your money to them in your will, and other financial arrangements like that, and they have taken credit cards at their gatherings for awhile now. My grandpa used to be in charge of the money at assemblies, and once I went with him to pick up money from the contribution boxes. They were packed full, yet they made an announcement that the assembly was running at a large deficit. I don't ever remember them not running at a large deficit, and then people would contribute more. Rlb was correct, they had vast properties in Brooklyn and Brooklyn heights, and not only have they sold them for $1billion, they had free renovations on those properties from the people working at their headquarters. When a Kingdom Hall is built, the individual congregation takes out a loan from headquarters, which is then paid back with interest, (from donations from people in the hall) and then if the hall is ever sold, the money goes straight back to headquarters, not the people who donated, because it is the property of the organization. A lot of ex-Jws that I've seen call it a real estate corporation, not a religion.

Some people in JW land certainly aren't as strict as others. My mom's family has nothing to do with me to the point of I was at Costco once, and saw my aunt (her sister) and the aunt saw me, and took a hard right with her cart to get as far away from me as possible, and crashed her cart into a little older lady. One of my aunts in my dad's family has actively pursued a Facebook relationship with me at least. But most of my generation on that side of my family has left, and I know that my mom's family felt she was marrying "down" when she married my dad because they "weren't as strong in the truth" as my family was. Other factors can be if the person has gotten baptized or not. If you haven't gotten baptized there is less they can do to you. I was actively encouraged to do so from about age 8, and got baptized at age 12, which is when you should be making all big life decisions, right? It also depends on the culture. My Kingdom Hall shared the same building with a Spanish speaking congregation, and they were nowhere near as strict about shunning disfellowshipped people as the English speaking congregation was. I remember one of the Elders in our congregation saying in a very disparaging way that if they made the Spanish congregation enforce the no contact with DF'd people rule, most of the congregation would leave.

I knew Mike and Leah would do right by us. I am so glad they chose to do a special on Jehovah's Witnesses. Nothing they said on there wasn't true. I was in tears last night the whole time, because it brought back so many memories, and I have been out of the cult for so long. I have been married to my husband for 20+ years, and I think last night was the most he's ever understood of my life before I left, because I don't want to tell the stories of what happened to me back then. I am hoping beyond hope that this does to the JWs what it has done to Scientology. Suicide, hidden molestation, and ripping apart families happens over and over and over, and it is so frustrating that people don't see and think that JWs are only those kooky, nice people that come to your door. They did a great job showing how joyless life is in the cult, and how you spend your whole life doing things for the organization as busy work to keep you occupied and brainwashed. Your life is nothing but joyless and being afraid. Thank you so much for this.

I've had my issues with Bill, too (I believe he would trade Nick for Zach as his son in a split second), but kudos his crew. I was really impressed with how (relatively) calm, speedy, professional and encouraging they were as soon as Spencer hit the water. There was definitely luck involved, but a lot of skill in that rescue. That being said, my daughter echoed exactly what I was thinking when she said that he was lucky he wasn't on Jake or Josh's boat, because she doesn't know if they would be able to get him out.

Way to "captain" from the driver's seat, Josh. Nope, you're not back for the cameras at all. I can't even with Jake. The only difference between Josh and Jake is that Josh has the person doing all the work in the boat with him. Jake has all of his crab finders on other boats. I can't believe anyone out there would pick up the phone to talk to him unless it is a producer driven story from now on.

Thank you for the warning. I had the same problem.

Is there anyone else here who is behind everyone else in episodes? I got the 1st episode on a Friday the same time as everyone else, and then it skipped a week, and started being shown Tuesdays at 4, and I've consistently been 11 days behind this board. I thought it was just my DVR recording wonky, but I've been checking my guide, and it only comes on Tuesdays at 4, and that is the only time it airs. I could see it if it was PBS, but I'm confused.

Wait, what? I didn't realize that. I have my local CBS affiliate, but I see now that Pop has been replaced by Bravo. I'd say I was upset, but I feel like the show jumped the shark with Romano having the helicopter fall on him, so overall I think I just feel relief in the fact that I can catch up on my 20 something episodes I haven't had time to watch and not worry about all the ones I didn't want to watch anyway.

So much this. Anytime Benton does his eye roll and lets out a pshh sound out of his mouth, it always takes me out of the scene because it reminds me so much of the main character in the movie Dazed and Confused, who spent so much of the movie doing the exact same thing and both actors do such a poor job of acting it. Whenever that happens, I either say (out loud or in my head) that Eriq La Salle is having another Wiley Wiggins moment.

My family is obsessed with Penn and Teller: Fool Us. Usually we watch those tricks and are clueless as to how anything happened. Watching Eric Jones, we could tell that the trick with the bill was going to involve something appearing under it, even before he started with the coins and the judges, and it was super easy to tell how it worked with 3 of the 4 judges. We also caught the big problem with his act last week. Everyone was disappointed with tonight as a whole.

My PBS station has been on a different schedule than any of them here that I've seen, (we got episodes 4 and 5 together in the same week), and it looks like we get episode 9 this week, and 10 next week. I'm fine with that, because I feel like we are in the end of an era, and I don't mind prolonging that. (I'm very oddly sentimental about this show.) I am, however, miffed that we get none of the historical blurbs at the end, and instead, every single week we get a PBS commercial saying if we give a certain amount of $$, we can get PBS passport, and have all the episodes unlocked at once.

My family has been on a massive Hawaiian food kick lately, so it really stood out to me when Matthew called it Hawaiian box lunch in his segment. Bobby was the one that used the words plate lunch. I do not like this show at all, but my kids have 5 shows on FN that they absolutely love, and this is one of them, so I let them DVR it. Last night, they were in a silly mood and helping me make dinner. All of a sudden my daughter starts yelling as loud as she can to a fake camera about all the steps she is doing to make dinner. I was confused at first, but then I realized she was yelling in Rusty's exact cadence. When she had nothing in her hands, my son hip-checked her out of the way and started smirking to the fake camera about how he was a chef, and he knew what he was doing and was going to tell a story and then proceeded to smirk and smarm about how awesome of a chef he was and how he knew everything about food and he was better than everyone else. My daughter butted back in and started naming all the different color layers of food in the bowl and after each one, she said it had flavor. She then yelled "Game Day!!!' and then said if her kids didn't eat her food, she was going to starve them. They didn't do Jason. They loved Jason in Holiday Baking Championship, and they still love him now. I think FN will lose 2 viewers if he doesn't win. My husband had never seen the show until he walked in on them watching it last week. He walked in when the camera was on Giada in her cut out dress. He wanted to know exactly what we were watching. He watched all of this weeks episode, and wanted to know why "the skeleton with all the teeth doesn't want to wear clothes on TV." He's pretty sure that is the reason my son likes this show.

I'm confused about the timing of all of this, because Radar Online (eww, I know, but they have links to the police documents) posted a story in December of 2016 that John Tesar had been arrested in December of 2015 for bodily family violence against his "employee and girlfriend". So what was his wife doing at Charleston???

It seems like on this season every challenge that goes by gets easier and easier. Sugar cookies with a citrus twist and tell us a story? What is the next challenge going to be? Grab a can of frosting and decorate store bought cookies? My kids love this show, but this season drives me absolutely batty. I have a hard time, watching because I work at a school, and Kaniyah and Jason make my teeth hurt. I work with several Kaniyahs and Jasons, and the thing that they all have in common is parents who don't see how disruptive or bratty (granted there are children out there that are much, much more of a behavior problem than they are) their children are, and are offended that the school would see them in that light at all, because their children are just special and profoundly cute. I told my kids they are going to have to DVR this and watch it when I'm not around.

I am, and I did disable my ad-block, and still does the same thing. Sweet! Thank you for that. I don't know why I never thought of that.

Every time I go to watch LCK, it plays the episode I want for about a millisecond, then switches over to the preview for the entire season, no matter what I do. I haven't seen one yet. Way to go, Bravo.

I'm from the 'burbs, but recently had an experience in a Portland restaurant that made me look around to see if they were actually filming the show. My husband and I were having breakfast and the restaurant was fairly empty except for a big group of people who were artists. They were talking about painting the sky. They were pretty quiet at first, and we weren't really paying attention to them. Then it came to the topic of painting gray skies. They all started talking louder and louder about who they had studied with to teach them how to paint the "proper" color gray for Portland skies, since that is important because we get so much rain here. Then the conversation veered off into how authentic a painter are you if you are only painting gray skies from a picture, or if you are only painting from indoors, and how the only way to capture the "trueness" of the sky was to be outdoors. There is no way I could do this conversation justice, I'm afraid. I haven't seen that many episodes of the show, but I literally was looking around to see if there were Fred and Carrie and a production company there, and after that, I had to bury my head in my husband's shoulder, because I was almost in tears from silent laughter at all the pretentiousness going on in the room, and thinking to my self how THAT would have made a perfect Portlandia skit.

This a million times. I feel like this season she repeatedly more than other seasons keeps doing all these ridiculously annoying, embarrassing, smothering things that go way too far over a line and then guilts the kids (and by extension the audience) into forgiving her at the very end because she's just worried about the kids being grown up and feeling pushed out of her life. I don't forgive her or find it entertaining. If it weren't for my kids' desire to watch this show (they think Murray and Barry are the funniest characters out there on TV) I'd be done.

We can? How do we do that?

It was too good of a concept not to Google. I found an article that says he is a radiologist, and the other Goldberg brother (Eric) is a neurologist. My favorite part of the article was the mention that the real Barry is a fan of the show, but he wanted to make it known that he does NOT run like a tool.