NightSG

I've yet to hear of him personally and openly denying it; the only claim of that was filtered through his son/lawyer. (Which sounds amusingly closely kin to uncle-dad when you actually say it.) Even after she made the accusation? Even a drooling idiot would realize at that point it's time to make any denial right away. "I don't recall but I'm sorry if I did" is awfully convenient when we have Ron "Rain Man" Leavitt clearly remembering this specific one out of thousands of meetings with his flock 34 years ago, and claiming that was because it lacked credibility. Can you imagine if your brain kept meticulous and readily recallable track of every bit of information you didn't believe for decades? I can clearly remember every girl I've gotten to second base with in the last 27 years, (technically in the last 41, but since the number prior to age 14 was zero, that doesn't really count) so how common would sexually abusing women have to be to relegate any particular one to "gee, I don't remember if I did that to you" status?

First HP to wake up when you yell at them.

I think the goal is to slowly pull everybody into one meeting, then announce that they're eliminating that one too and Sacrament Meeting will extend to fill the time.

Does this mean HPs have to stay awake another hour, or everybody gets to sleep?

Don't you mean "She said, and he didn't deny it?"

Well, compared to what they do in lieu of writing traffic tickets, it's fairly tame.

You'd certainly like us to believe that, wouldn't you? Socks do come in pairs, after all.

OK, so now she's got the police lying too? If her statement was the only evidence against him, then that might be relevant, but it's not; he confessed to at least one substantially similar occurrence, and repeatedly declined to clearly deny her accusation. Really? This is what they've got? That she had bad credit and used her ex's name on the utilities to avoid (frankly ridiculous) deposits? First time I had to get electric service after my divorce, the deposit would've been $450 (for a tiny apartment that never had a $100 monthly bill) because I hadn't had service in my name for nearly a decade. I went prepaid instead, but had a couple of friends offer to let me put it in their names. It's South Carolina; they just didn't want it getting out that this is what they use in lieu of a pickup line. I continuously question my ex wife's motives and credibility. It's what exes do. Frankly, when I find someone with no animosity whatsoever toward a former spouse, I really have to question their respect for the entire concept of marriage. And what was the outcome of these reports? Absolutely, undeniably false or just unable to be proven?

Cats? Needlepoint? A bridge club?

Be glad you're not in Texas; people here lock their cars at church to keep from coming back to a seat full of zucchini, okra or pecans, depending on the season. As one Lutheran minister put it, "Find Jesus, and you'll find pecans in your car. Turn from Him, and you have to pay $6 a pound for them."

If you're ever in Hamilton, head out to the north and watch for the Dutchman's Hidden Valley Store. Stop in for a ~$4 Reuben on fresh made rye bread with horseradish prepared on site, (free range bison instead of beef on request) and a bottle of Reed's Extra Ginger Brew. Something about the combination of sauerkraut, fresh horseradish and ginger beer just makes it all so much better. Spend a few bucks in the old fashioned candy store on the way out for dessert. They have a few other brands of ginger beer and ginger ale on hand, but Reed's is the best one I can usually find anywhere else.

Irrelevant until you can get the judge to approve changing therapists. There is malpractice insurance for counseling and therapy practices, from an impressive number of carriers, so I'd assume there are suits making it necessary. "Counselor" is one thing, while "licensed" or "certified" is (usually) a completely different thing. AFAIK, most states, "certified" could mean one of the fly-by-night "accrediting organizations" that sends the certificate in the same envelope as the 3 DVD "training material" that's a thinly disguised 6 hour infomercial for their "gold level" training, while "licensed" means the state has at least verified you have insurance, haven't been banned from practicing in the state, etc. Some states require a 4 year degree for licensing. Most will waive all of the above for clergy of any sort. (Not sure whether a ULC or Church of the SubGenius ordination counts in many of those.) I'm not aware of any that require a Masters or PhD for counselor licensing. Of course, one can also get around all of the above by being a "life coach," which, last I checked, was completely unregulated in most states; it seems the only requirements, like regular coaching, are to be an abject failure at actually doing what you're coaching, and an epic lack of integrity.

Probably not nearly as many times as Mirkwood hears "my lawyer said..." Whether someone is court ordered into therapy, or goes voluntarily in order to be able to show the court they're trying to work past something, they should be applying whatever their therapist tells them, just as often as, if not more often than they should be applying their lawyer's advice.

Hush! The betting hasn't finished yet, and based on that last post, I'm thinking Blossom is a TFP puppet. You can't deny the similarity.

Fail; trains on time was Mussolini, and kindness to dogs is a fairly common trait among psychotic dictators.

For example, did he make the trains run on time, and was he kind to dogs?

Then maybe she should have gotten her training from someone with a proven success record rather than an ad in the back of Auto Trader. I've spent some time working in the mental health industry, and nobody in our office counted their successes in repeat customers. While I disagree with the way some things were handled there, I have a lot of respect for the attitude that everybody's job was to get clients to not need to come back. You get what you pay for. No more so than medicine as it's practiced way too often these days; trial and error to diagnose an illness by which meds work and which don't is far less scientific than many of the methods used in mental health treatment. Can you imagine if mechanics worked like doctors? "Well, this might fix your brakes. Go drive around for a couple weeks, and if they're not better by then, that'll narrow it down a bit." And frankly, most science is whatever it's paid the most to be.

You think that the root of human relationships is listening to your advice?

Yeah, I don't think the chicken industry has the logistic capability to deliver that many live ones, and if I'm paying someone to dance around in a loincloth and chant, it's going to be purely on the basis of her looks, not her title.

I was counting that under particularly bad lawyer given the nature of the advice.

No, it's simply pointing out that a bishop isn't trained to distinguish between, for example, anxiety wholly due to guilt over sin and anxiety due to a physical issue.

And all those times I thought I was just there to smack the missionaries when they (probably unintentionally) insulted an investigator's current religion. Then the jerks were in too much of a hurry to get home to give me a healing blessing for my sore hand.

At least two of mine have certainly acted like it. And a tax advisor, and a (particularly bad) lawyer.

Well, if either of them ever figures out how to work a doorknob, I might get worried.

That's going to be infinitely slower than the infinite number of monkeys needed to properly conduct the experiment. AFAIK, nobody has yet managed to get infinite monkeys to do anything together. Reddit is getting close, though.