Demosthenes_

Would it be true that they actually pay for the birth control through their insurance plan that is offered in their contract with Hobby Lobby? If their insurance no longer covers birth control but in their contract they are making more money by not having to pay more for insurance, what actually changes? I would understand the issue if birth control was no longer covered but paid the same in insurance, but I do not see why religious groups or women activists need to be so involved.

I do not feel like I can have an honest opinion until I know what she will be tried for after this conviction failed. I am not ready to call sexism/racism in the favor of her being a female or white quite yet. Even though their conclusion would not be the one I would've made, I feel it is still a rational one if it goes by the rules of the law.

After reading/watching more on this, it sounded more like the woman had the intentions of putting a knife to the officer's throat so he'd give her the keys. What she imagined would happened after that I am not so sure. It can be argued that because the officer was cut was because he moved suddenly and she either panicked or he turned into the knife. However in a robbery if the robber points a gun at the teller demanding money, I think it is fair to say that the robber is threatening the teller's life for money, thus he'd be willing to kill the teller. I feel the jury would disagree in that the person is threatening to take their life but it is a bluff and had no actual intentions of killing anyone. I believe they back this up since she was a registered nurse and would likely know how to kill a person quickly by targeting major veins or arteries. I do not agree with the jury's conviction, but I understand their point of view. It is clear to the jury that she did do a crime, but to them it was not clear that she was attempting to kill him.

So what you're telling me is that you're a dog? Jokes aside you only talked about your mother and say "...need to please your parent." On what conditions did your father leave ie died, divorced, ran away, never knew him? What was and is the relationship between your parents if there is any? You feel like your existence is to please people which you have become socially close to. I could be wrong about how expansive the guilt in your life goes, but you were saying you were enjoying the time with the FDR member, so you became socially close with this person. They left, so you felt abandoned. I feel it is safe to assume you do not feel the same way to people you have no become socially close to? I do not believe it needs to be positive or a negative relationship. You were socially close and dependent on your mother but you also feel your existence to her was a nuisance. I imagine it is like every time you are around her she is leaving you conversationally by putting you down or deterring you from what you know or believe. The difference I would imagine between positive and negative relationships with you is if it is positive you are more engaging because you know the person's interests. If it is negative you are passive. If this is true, you assume people have negative feelings rather than neutral or positive feelings towards you. This would be a rational response because if you were dependent and close with your mother, she would be the primary source of learning and interacting. Please let me know if any of this isn't true or off base. When I was nine my mother went to jail. She was an alcoholic and physically abusive, but compared to what would happen after she went to jail, I felt a lot more protection when I was with her. The short story is I lived with my father in a less desirable neighborhood. Seeing prostitution, hard drug use, and being physically abused much worse than my mother from older kids and some other adults became a regular thing and I never became content to it. Have a 20-something guy, and a lady a bit older than him, break into your house, go into your bedroom, push you off your bed and tell you to get out. Having to then witness the man on my bed ripping the woman's cloths off and she is laughing in some drunken stupor, until I barged out of my house in tears. My parents would not call the police because break-ins were common and the police would typically ignore them unless someone died or was injured. After six months of this I never felt safe anywhere. For a while I wished I was a mute so that I could not talk and then no one would want attention from me. Any interaction for almost two years with anyone else was a negative one; in school, at home, or on the streets, it only got worse and would be any better until I got out of high school. When I was in high school, I would only talk if I was spoken to and purposely kept the conversation as short as possible. In some cases I would purposely be boring so that people would not want to talk to me. The pain I felt for a long time no longer came from others around me, but generated it in myself. A lot of people were friendly to me but I was too afraid to see that and made myself afraid to be around them. I often though that it was them tricking me like I had been before, so it was best I stayed away. It was understanding the current environment that helped me get past it all. I used to be in a justified state if terror because my environment was not safe. I moved to a place which was safe but I was still terrified. Right now you are in a safe place -- I like to imagine so -- but you still act in in your previous environment when you were dependent on your mom. There is no equation to stop feeling guilty about your existence immediately or even soon. I started to understand other people's intentions. I questioned if they were rational people. If they were rational, then I must think if their intentions would be the result of someone who is rational. So, when the FDR member wanted to leave, if they are rational, you must think of rational reasons why he'd want to leave. If there was no point in the conversation which the person acted deterred from you, but the only reason he would leave were for positive reasons like he actually needed to sleep. I am putting it in an over analytical point of view just for understanding the motions. The reality is that you must understand where you are right now, which is not in a place where you must feel guilty to survive. When you were dependent on your mom, you were justified to feel guilty, but you no longer are because you are not in that environment. Realizing what environment you are in will not come easily. It would be like living in Alberta, Canada for your entire life and then one day living in Panama. It only makes sense that you are having a hard time adapting, but you must adapt. And how to adapt is to realize and understand your environment.

You have the complete right to be upset, but I'm not so much as asking why are you angry, but rather why are speaking on this topic right now? I believe I understand you are angry because the lies of bias we are propagandizes while growing up. Your mother talked about how incompetent your father was and then generalized it to that is how men are. I see this as your mother also telling you that you are incompetent because you are a man. It didn't stop with just your dad but proceeded with other men in her life. Your mother lacked a distinction between common mistakes and male behavior. It wasn't just a behavioral issue towards men, your mom believed in how men are and not how people are, or specifically how ought to be. You have naturally larger calf muscles and wore pants which would make those muscles distinct. Your mom acts in the persona that it is okay for women to be more touchy of men, including their sons or possibly younger men. However if men had that persona, the bias of men would be that he is a pedophile for touching his daughters legs, if the roles were reversed, or even his son's legs in that manner. Your have been criminalized through your life for being a man while women get the pardon. When I first read "#killallmen " on social media, I sat in silence for a long while. In one area of my head I was terrified, now understanding that if a man were to die, it is not that bad because he is a man. It is something a person thinks they can joke about because men lack value. In another place in my head I felt that if this statement were to be change or reversed to "#killallwomen" or "#killallblacks" that there would be nation wide out roars. But because this only includes men, it isn't a big deal. Deep inside me I felt like I could cry because it made me feel like I lacked value and that my death would not be such a big deal, especially since the #killallmen was a generally agreeable statement, though intended as a joke. If the joke were to be turned around to #killallwomen, it would certainly not be seen as a joke, but because it is a joke about killing men, it is culturally acceptable, and to me is disgusting. I'm not trying to insult you by asking why are you expressing your feelings at all, but rather what stemmed you to make this thread at this time? I believe this thread is valid, but to you, Joel, why are you making it now and not yesterday or tomorrow? Is there a specific event which occurred which hurt you recently or was it just the last twig on the camel's back of cultural accusations/pardoning in our day to day lives which you are willing to tolerate?

What is causing you to feel so angry? I understand the frustration your are feeling in your life and about your mom, but you said you are going to sit in anger now. Is this a recent realization?

I believe if people spent a 5th of their time of believing and promoting a subject, instead if they were to check the facts behind the subject, it would save people a lot of trouble. It is important for people to be consistent to have public support. For that same reason it is likely why FDR uploads so many videos to youtube -- though they are all quality work -- in a short amount of time so that it keeps people constantly aware of the subject(s). For example, if there was no more war in the world, then a military general, for the most part, would be out of the job. If there was no more economically reachable oil in the world, then the petroleum engineer would be out of the job. For that it is important for social rights groups to be consistent in their public awareness and to always be fighting something. If a person or group is fighting something, then in theory what is being fought for will eventually go away, assuming they win their fight. Once the thing which was being fought goes away, the social rights people will be out of the job. So to keep public awareness, it helps keep people in the job to create issues so they will always be fighting something. For people to stop supporting a once peaceful group into a turned hateful group, check the facts and spread the knowledge. Anyone can do it. Do not depend on 'someone else', be someone else and do it yourself. Some people want to actually do good, some other people want to keep their job, despite their job being good or bad.

I would love to see more. I haven't read the entire graphic novel, but it would be good to see conversions like this riddled throughout the book rather than in one conversation. It does depend how the message is sent of course, but I do like it.

When a person leaves, do you feel like you want them to stay gone, you wish they came back, or do you wish that you were gone from the place that the other person left from i.e. a restaurant. When a person leaves, are there any other verbs or adjectives you feel/want to do? How many people have you gone out with? Have you ever asked any of them out? How many people in your life would you consider a friend? How many jobs have you had and what is the typical length you hold a job? How many different places have you lived and were they because of a job/school or family/friends? How often do you interact with your family? I am asking these questions to understand the degree to which guilt and anxiety affect you. I do not currently have the issues that you do, but I used to. I was anxious of what others thought of me and the results of my actions. This lead me to being very passive around the people I was around. It was sometimes okay because the people who got to know me often fought their way to get to know me, but in general I was an intimate person, at best. This changed because instead of seeing things from their point of view at my point of view, I just saw things at their point of view. Say I walk up to you and ask if you can split a $5? In your case you may believe I am asking you to do something for me and do not want you to let me down, so you should it. If you say no, you've let a person who needed you down, so you cannot say no. If I look at it from their perspective, I am a person who is approachable and can likely help my situation. You feel guilt when there is no reason to feel guilt. All things are 50/50. If someone gives, you should give. If someone pushes, you should push. The only problem is knowing how to identify is someone is truly pushing or giving. What I mean by this is, if the FDR member went to sleep to get away from you, they are pushing. If the FDR member went to sleep so he could talk to you again later, they are giving. How to identify this is to know is the person rational, and if they are, which is the rational result. As of right now, I feel your issues are that you feel guilt when guilt is not warranted and you may have issues in understanding other people's intentions because of the guilt. For now it is to figure out what you feel guilty about. If you do not agree with my conclusion, please let me know why.

The 2009 tax year of income tax of adjusted gross income, marital status, and gender. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/09in01gender.pdf "To help put these data in a broader context: (1) a total of 94.2 million men and 99.8 women are represented in the 140.5 million individual income tax returns filed for the tax year 2009, and (2) the separate data shown for both men and women in the spreadsheet (that is, those with either wages and/or business income subject to selfemployment tax) account for approximately 88% of total income tax returns filed and nearly 80% of the total amount of AGI. It is also possible for some of these taxpayers to have both wages and self-employment income. The amounts of income shown here are less than the total AGI for the various income classifications, because data for pensions, annuities, and social security benefits are not included and other income items such as interest, dividends, capital gains, rents and royalties have been excluded since they cannot be accurately separated on jointly helf accounts." Disclaimer! All money amounts are in the thousands. All returns, total. 70,061,307 males filed W-2 form with a total return of $3,436,969,206 68,892,210 women filed W-2 form with a total return of $2,167,945,055 Males filed 1.6%(1,169,097) more W-2 forms than females. Males had a 63%(1,269,024,151) more return in $ from salaries and wages than females. Average is $49.05 per male and $31.46 per female with a 35.86% higher return for men. 11,026,338 males filed business income report with a return of $366,774,219 7,513,559 females filed business income report with a return of $112,700,815. Males filed 31.85%(3,512,779) more a business income reports than females. Men had a 69.27%(254,073,404) higher return in $ from a business income report than females. Average is $33.26 per male and $14.99 per female with a 54.93% higher return for men. Returns of taxpayers filing joint returns, total. 37,331,027 males filed salaries and wages on W-2 with a total return of $2,396,403,123. 31,921,439 females filed salaries and wages on W-2 with a total return of $1,133,122,926. Males had 15%(5,409,588) more filed W-2 forms with joint return than females. Males had 95.27%(1,263,280,197) higher return in $ from W-2 income with a joint return than females. Average is $64.19 per male and $35.49 per female. Males filed 7,023,882 business income report with a joint return for a total return of $291,964,816 Females filed 3,733,993 business income report with a joint return for a total return of $64,646,755 Males filed 47%(3,289,889) more business income reports with a joint return than females. Males had a 78%(227,318,061) higher return in $ from business income return with a joint return than females. Average is $41.57 per male and $17.31 per female. Returns of taxpayers filing non joint returns, total. 32,730,281 males filed W-2 form without a joint return with a total return of $1,040,566,083 36,970,766 females filed W-2 form without a joint return with a total return of $1,034,822,128 Females had 11%(4,240,485) more filed W-2 forms without a joint return than males. Males had .005%(5,743,955) higher return in $ from W-2 return without a joint return than females. Average is $31.79 per male and $28.03 per female. 4,002,461 males filed a business income report without a joint return with a return of $74,809,402. 3,779,567 females filed a business income report without a joint return with a return of $43,054,063. Males had .055%(222,894) more filed business income reports without a joint return than females. Males had 42%(31,755,339) higher return in $ from business income report without a joint return than females. Average is $18.69 per male and $11.39 per female. Definitions: Joint Return- A U.S. income tax return filed on behalf of a married couple, resulting in a combined liability. Married taxpayers can choose to file two separate tax returns or a joint tax return. The joint return is often referred to as a married filing jointly. In order to file a joint return in any given year, the couple must be legally married on or bother the last day of the year, and both spouses must agree to file the joint return. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/jointreturn.asp W-2 Form- The form that an employer must send to an employee and the IRS at the end of the year. The W-2 form reports an employee's annual wages and the amount of taxes withheld from his or her paycheck. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/w2form.asp AGI(Adjusted Gross Income)- A measure of income used to determine how much of your income is taxable. Adjusted gross income is calculated as your gross income from taxable sources minus allowable deductions, such as unreimbursed business expenses, medical expenses, alimony deductible retirement plan contributions. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/agi.asp Personal comment: This may give an objective answer on how much males or females spend on taxes, but if a person has a higher return, it is likely they paid higher in taxes to have that return. Assuming the income return had an equal ratio to how much taxes were paid, then males paid 35.86% in employer tax and 54.93% in self business tax than women. I currently have no evidence to support the hypothesis of the ratio but a person often has a higher return with the higher taxes they pay. In conclusion, based on the total taxpayers in this sample, men would pay more in income tax than females. This does not account for other taxes such as estate tax, sales tax, ect.

I can go out and run 5 miles a day and tell people that I run and it would be true. But if I also eat 6 crispy creme donuts a day on top of a regular diet, the running doesn't do too much for me since I am not becoming any healthier because the bad food is combating the good I do to my body. It is a good thing that she was willing to go to therapy, but if she still has unresolved issues and cannot determine why the issues were there, the therapy did nothing for her. The effort was admirable but the problems in her life which pushed her to go to therapy were not solved from therapy. I know you know this because you recognize she has unresolved issues with her parents even after she stopped going to therapy. If her reaction to her father's death is her taking care of her mother, then it is blatant that she has issues. Many people, myself included, can hear advice but have a hard time acting on it. After hearing advice such as "this what you need to do to make it work", do you feel your are capable of acting on good advice and sticking to it? I will be blunt about your original question, do not go out with her. She is pretty and smart, but neither of these make it worth it if you are not capable of solving her issues, which is important because she is not able to either. You already recognize that you do not have the capacity to help her so the answer is clear. Just be friends and have a good time. You haven't slept with her yet or even went on a formal date. She is probably a good person, but is just as likely not the right person for you. If you are trying to credit who you are quoting, type < blockquote class =" ipsBlockquote" data-author=" MrLovingKindness "> so that it shows the name in the quote. To do it this way, you would need to enable html. The traditional way would just quote someone on the bottom right of their post or quote someone and copy/paste the quote into a post which you are editing. I hope that answers your question.

A few more questions for you... How good looking is she (1-10 it, if it helps you). Have you slept with her yet? How long have you actually known her, like seen her more than 2 times a week outside of work, if you do work with her. What were the dates with her like? Could you better explain why she feels like this is a vice? I get the impression she does this because she knows she shouldn't but does because she is holding onto something. Do you honestly think this sounds healthy? If this is something she blames on her father, such as she mentioned her father's death and now feels like she should help her mother even though she believes it is bad to, in what way did therapy help her get over he father's death? If she did start doing this once her father died, she still needs help. If that is true, would you believe you could tackle this problem?

From an immediate point of view, this would be a red flag for me. She is an enabler because she does things which are, presumably asked of her, but has an opposite opinion of doing those actions. It is possible that she knows that she is an enabler but the idea eclipsed from any change in her life that may have come from therapy. If this problem was going on before she went to therapy and continues to, how much help did the therapy truly do? It would be like holding a painting and flipping it upside down. It is still a painting, but it is being seen from a different perspective. Would you imagine that a person who says they do not like the way hot dogs taste but then eats hot dogs could be easily determined as virtuous? To be more blunt, she has an opinion of something and does the exact opposite of what she says. Do you believe it is possible this woman would not do others things like this in her life? If her parents split up when she was five and the father recently died, what does the dad have to do with her mom and why she enables this behavior?

I want to give a quick summary of your two points just to make sure I understand. On one side of the coin, when other people express their wants/needs which deter interaction from you, such as someone going to the bathroom while you and they are eating dinner, it makes you feel negative of yourself. On the other side you have a hard time expressing your wants/needs so that you do not upset other people. Am I correct in the interpretation?

I'm starting to feel the question, "how to deal with a thief in the family" was not the reality of this thread. I do feel the question itself is a valid one to ask, but was not the true question I was asking. The other day my brother had visited my parents while I was there. I knew what to do but did not do it; I acted as if nothing happened when something did. I spoke with my father today to ask him about his early life. I already know some of it, but his age 18-24 years are pretty vague because these are the years my father had moved to the US, met my mother and married her. In short, I am my father. I believe this because through his life he often knew what was right, but did not act on it because of X excuse as to why it was not best for someone else. For me, this is not calling the police because it is not good for my nephew even though I'll let myself and others to continue to be hurt by my brother. The real issue I feel like it is not how to deal with a thief in the family. I think I knew all along and was possibly hoping someone would tell me otherwise so that I did not feel contempt against this person and against how I was brought up by my family, but more importantly, that person. Much of my life and to those I am expected to look up to end up acting in a altruistic way. My mother often needed money to feed whatever she was doing while on her errand runs. In return, my father gave her money for this and took up a second job. My father often spoke of how much distrust and how violent my mother would be to him even though he continued to give her money. She never worked until they divorced and even then forced my brother to do certain things such as take care of his siblings or clean the house on his own when he was 5-9 years old. In the same, I feel I have been trained to be silent to not offend or hurt anyone. My cousin's family depends heavily on the state; they are a household of five and all collect disability, though their disabilities are in question. It was only today I found this out, but all of the family knows of this fraud and scorns it, but does not act on their morals as well associates with their family regularly. I have grown up to not be virtuous in what I believe in because I am expected to be walked on and be sympathetic to the other person because they were in the right. The real question I should have asked was how to accept yourself when you need to get people out of your life. I know what needs to be done, but I do not know how to bring myself to do this. Such as I know how to run a marathon, but I do not know how to train to do that marathon. I have to say that this post is a serious derail from what readers may be expecting in the comments, but it is the truth of the problem. When we see a problem from the outside, such as when you, LizardKing52, asked if a classmate had done this to me, how would I act? I do not think seeing the problem from the outside opens the door to the answer because I know I knew the answer, and very likely others do as well. It is a feeling like being religious, finding a contradiction in your religion but then ignoring the contradiction because it is what you are to believe in. I have done the same thing my relatives have done; they recognize the issue but act as if it does not exist so that they do not offend and put up with being hurt or letting others be hurt while justifying it with "they are family." Now all of this may be an over reaction to my inability to confront my brother. I know my brother will never pay me back as well I know I cannot easily bring myself to get my brother, and possibly much of my family out of my life. It is true that there is good in my family, but much of them do not live virtuous lives. Outside of this, it is a question of what else is true. Do I really act like my parents or my family for that matter? heck, how applicable is this to others because if this is actually a specialized situation in that I am actually just an apathetic apologetic person, then it would require me to accept myself and change this instead of blaming others around me for my problems. I do not believe anyone wants to be bad (maybe .005% people do) yet still do bad things because of excusing themselves or others for the violence on others. I do not think the people in my family do intend to do me wrong and when they do, they very likely feel shame about it. If there are not direct repercussions such as I do not confront them about it, shame can be an easy thing to over look when you feel power over others and do not accept that is what you/they are doing. In the end, I feel I am my father and my brother is my mother. It isn't that I need to divorce my brother, it is that I need to stop being my father and not make the same mistakes. My father did divorce my mother, but he also did end up marrying a woman much like my mother and in some ways was worse. I can only see the same future for myself.

We'd all like to vote for the best man, but he's never a candidate. A quote from a famous political cartoonist and journalist, Kin Hubbard.

Hello Adreas "GingerStrength". I hope you are able to become a licensed coach like you'd like to. I understand where you are coming from since I am studying under a field where a person cannot work professionally unless you have papers which say they could this job. Just remember that going through the efforts to get that paper is not supporting it, which is something I feel all of us, including yourself can agree on. Keep working hard and do not give up on what you believe in.

If by created you mean manipulated, sure. Why wouldn't it mean nonconsciousness is naturally manipulated to create consciousness? We cannot make the argument that something can be created from nothing since that does not exist anywhere which we have studied, thus the claim could not be backed up by evidence. If a vastness is becoming conscious of itself or of anything, then at a time it would not have been conscious at all. Before I was sperm I was carbohydrates, proteins and lipids, then synthesized into sperm. I was created from nonconscious by nonconscious into a conscious. The bodies mechanics are not conscious, or at least we have no evidence of consciousness outside of the human mind, though the human body is reactionary to the outside such as repairing a cut or fighting viruses. Our bodies are a mechanism, like a factory, in that the parts of the body do something which manipulate other parts such as arteries pumping blood, but veins are not conscious nor is blood. A factory can create cars on its own if it is given the parts, just as how I was created into sperm, yet the factory is not conscious. If something exists now and must have been created and god exists now, he would have been created. If God always existed, does today, and was not created, then why is it that thermodynamics was created and did not also always exist? Thermodynamics can be observed as far as our satellites and telescopes can reach through the light years as well as exists today in our daily lives. Anything we discuss we must have evidence to prove beyond a hypothesis that it exists, and our observations is the minimum we can do for evidence. But for a reason, which I cannot determine, thermodynamics was created, but the one that created thermodynamics was not created. We need evidence for these claims. If only consciousness can create consciousness, by that law god could not have always existed as a conscious being. The law that something can only exist if it was created, yet god exists without being created and is conscious is contradictory. A being which was everything but was not conscious and then became conscious does not prove that consciousness only come from consciousness, it suggests that consciousness evolved from nonconsciousness. If you are saying god is outside of the laws of nature, on what grounds do you have evidence of this? My parents created me, yet live by the same laws as I do. By that matter, everything we experience and ever have experienced lives by the same laws as I do. Since that is true, and if god is outside of the same laws which I experience, I do not experience god and thus did not create me.

Many things are created without consciousness. The water cycle (hydrologic cycle) contains no consciousness yet creates puddles, streams, rivers, and can take those all away. If your argument is a sentient consciousness created the earth leading to the water cycle on earth, thus the consciousness still creating the water cycle, then I would argue where did that consciousness (god) come from? The second law of thermodynamics states that all energy is neither lost nor created; everything that exists has and will continue to .Since energy is neither lost or created from nothing and that things can be created from other thing like a rain drop turning into a puddle which neither have consciousness, how does god exist? If in my example that is your argument, then it would be impossible for god to exist because something would have needed to create god since god has a conscious and consciousness can only create consciousness, which would then continue forever. If god created itself then it goes against the law that all energy is never lost or created since god made energy out of thin air to bring itself into existence. You would need to disprove thermodynamics to prove that god could exist. If your argument is incorrect and that nonconscious things could create conscious things which could create god, then why wouldn't it be possible that humans could have come about the same way?

I may be derailing from the original post, but would you say that when you lend out money to a person it may be like paying them to find out if they are virtuous or not? If they do not pay you back, then you have your money's worth and you find out they are not a person worth keeping in your life. If they do pay you back then you also get your money's worth by not spending any money at all but you spend the time in finding out that the person is worth spending more time with. If I'm acting on this in accepting that I may never see that money again, I do not think this view of lending money would be too far off. It is a tough topic for myself and likely most other people on the subject of family and betrayal. Do you believe that family offers security is a fallacy? You could use my previous example of selling a car to a stranger vs relative as an example of what I mean. Now that I look back on it, I would say more of my family members have lied to me than my friends. I feel this is because I choose my friends and not my family. If I play soccer, some of my friends may also play soccer or have some interest because I chose them and we have a common interest. My family may not have any interest in soccer despite my interest. Yet the only thing which keeps my siblings together is that we all came out of the same womb and have spent some of our early years together, but did not choose to. To be more direct, my question is, how much weight does family actually have? Is it all about choosing what I feel is best for me? At the end of the day my siblings are just people like everyone else. It is a tough concept to mull over because I feel I have been propagandized to think family is the utmost important thing. Some of my family members act on that concept and are virtuous about it in they will do things for me and I will do things for them to meet them half way. On the flip side, family members understand this concept and exploit it.

This has happened once before. A friend in middle school wanted to borrow a dollar for potato chips. About a 3 days later I asked him about the dollar. He said he paid me back already and acted insulted about it. I know he did not pay me back since we only talked 3-4 times between those days and we never talked about the dollar. What I did is I stopped talking to him and he did the same. I brushed it off as it was just a dollar lost and a friend. I feel the same result is happening with my brother that him and I are just disconnecting from each other and when I try to talk to him about the money, he ignores me or acts defensive when he is forced into the conversation. If a classmate who had a child, wife, and bedridden sister, then stole money from me, I would try to talk about it. But I also feel I would not think twice about threatening to call the cops. If the classmate were to act the same way my brother is, I would feel guilty about doing it thinking about what it would do to those who depend on him, but I would call the authorities. For a long time the feeling of family has given me a sense of security. For example if I were selling a car and a stranger said, "I will give you 5% now and 5% each week" versus a relative making the same offer, I would likely accept the offer to the relative. I do not expect a family member to cheat me for the sake that we are family. It does sound foolish, but we are two people who will likely know each other for the rest of our life, so we have incentive to not cheat each other whereas the stranger may only know me until the debt is paid or until he runs away with the vehicle. I believe I understand what you are saying though. If my brother felt the same way as I do, he would not have stolen from me. In the very least if he needed money and did not believe I would accept to borrow the sum stolen from me, he would have given the money back voluntarily and not ignored me, much like my middle school friend did. Associating with my sister and my brother's family is tough. Whenever I am visiting my sister, my brother often asks me to watch his son while my brother and his wife leave the house or all three leave so I am with my sister alone. The only time my sister, my brother and I are together is on holidays. What they are doing when they leave is beyond me. Whenever I ask, they usually just say, "just out." I do feel concerned, but they do not appear to be intoxicated. This leaves me to believe they do not value my sister very much, despite how much my sister would prefer to live with them. I believe being around my sister gives my brother more incentive to not be around me since he is still ignoring the topic of the money owed. Knowing how my brother's family acts around my sister is not something to happening until my brother pays me back. But, as you know, my brother has no intentions of paying me back, so I may never truly know how they treat my sister. She is still alive after all, so I have that to consider about how they treat her. My sister's health condition is of no sign on how they treat her since she became bed ridden due to drug use and has never shown motivation to become better/healthier. She is still pale, but she has been pale since she became bed ridden. I believe if my sister is in an unhealthy state that it is 50/50 between my siblings. My brother has incentive to lie so his family can keep receiving cheques via my sister; my sister has incentive to lie about her living condition so she does not have to go back to a nursing home. And a thought occurred as I was writing this. It is possible that they are giving her drugs since she has no signs of getting better and would account for my sister not wanting to be in a nursing home. However my brother has no history of holding or using hard drugs like my sister had . While my sister was in a nursing home, all she would ever do is watch tv, eat, and talk about how painful her physical therapy is, not that there is much happening in her life when your day consists of those three things. Nothing too positive came out of her mouth while in the nursing home. Since she started living with my brother, she appears happier, though no thoughts of becoming physically active. It is not a case that it is impossible for her to be physically active again because she does still have feeling in her legs and several physicians believes with good therapy she could walk again. You've given me a lot to think about, thelizardking52. I hope I didn't misinterpret any of your thoughts because you spent the time to read and respond to what I said. I feel when I do the same, I usually like to know the result of what I said. What I believe I will do is attempt to contact my brother one last time. I will contact him via phone unless I find out he will be at a relative's house, which I will have to visit them unexpectedly. If contacting him via phone or in person doesn't work, I will just take him out of my life. My brother has a lot to lose since I am not alone in this. My family (father, mother, step mother, and half brother) are all well aware of what is going on and most of the rest of the family knows my brother stole money from me, but that is all. If telling the whole family in detail about what my brother has done to me, likely resulting in my family ignoring him as well, would not make me feel guilty. The downside I feel to this is if my sister is in serious danger, the only ones who can help her is the family. The direct contact to my sister is through my brother and his wife. If none of the family are willing to talk to them, it could mean bad news for my sister's life. It is only a thought that they are giving her drugs and I am more convinced that they feed her the bare minimum than feeding her bad habits. Even that I am skeptical of due to her weight gain and stagnation over the months.

I will say that it is near a grand. I am also a college student, so this amount of money does mean a lot to me. However it wasn't necessarily the amount of money which bothered me the most, it is the fact that he ignored me and then lied to my face about it. It is very possible that I did not communicate to him well enough that this money is important to me, despite his own financial problems. However, I have lent him money in the past, so he would be used to asking me for money rather than stealing it. About my sister, my brother's family depends on her because she receives disability cheques and my sister-in-law is paid 8 hours a day to take care of her. There has been talk of keeping my sister in nursing home, but she has made it clear that she hates it there. She has never directly said why, but I believe it is because the nurses are not always quick to respond, as my sister has said, and when she is in a nursing home, people visit her less often. My sister has stated that the place she would prefer to be is living with my brother, even though she also complains about being constantly neglected - I have a feeling more than if she were in a nursing home - such as only eating 1-2 times a day with meals consisting only of a bagel w/ butter or some orange juice and crackers, showering once a week, and they no longer taking her to the bathroom and just giving her one of those metal bowls to do her business in. This is only what she has told me and lying runs in the family, so it may not be the case all of the time or even the majority of the time, but it is a credible story knowing my brother and my sister-in-law. As you guessed it, I do not want to call the cops because I do not want my nephew to lose his father and be raised by his questionable mother alone. Both of his parents are not the best, but they do keep each other in line about what is right and wrong for the child like making sure he reads a book a day or brushing his teeth. My nephew is 3. On the flip side my brother lives a dangerous life with some illegal activities which I cannot completely confirm them all, I do have my suspicions. I know my brother does buy and smoke marijuana for recreational reasons, his wife also partakes and encourages it. It bothers me knowing that my nephew may grow up having a father in his life who is constantly in and out of jail while his wife simply says, "oh, your brother is in jail again", and then goes on with her day. For the most part, though I know my brother does buy weed, I feel like the majority of the money goes to supporting their life style. My brother is a freelance software developer but I have a feeling he works no more than 15 hours a week. I know this because I often see him on Steam (a digital video game distribution and social network software) before I go to work/class and come back and still see him online. After I ask him what he did, he often responded with "relaxed" or "played X game." His wife has much of the same condition. She proclaims to work 60-90 hours a week, yet they often go on vacations to see her parents which is 3 states away, as well is always at their house whenever I try contacting them. If the neglect my sister states is true, I would be impressed if she actually works more than 20 hours a week. It is most likely they used the money which was taken to allow them to keep living a more lax lifestyle.

In early April I had discovered my debit card was missing. A few days before I had let my brother borrow the card. He wanted to borrow it and had 3-4 times before, with me, to cash cheques. He would not go to his bank because he said someone was taking money out of his account. I eventually found out he had overdrawn and did not want to pay it back. We would typically go to an ATM, deposit the cheque and then I would take out the amount that was deposited. This was typically done at night because that is when he claims to have free time. The last time he needed to cash a cheque I had a fever and did not want to get out of bed but he pushed on that that he needed the money. I told my brother my pin and gave him my card. He was gone a normal amount of time. When he came back, he told me he cashed the cheque and then asked me stuff about how I was doing. I did not suspect anything but I was also disoriented from being sick. 5 days later I went to buy something online and found that my card was not in my wallet. I began to search and had no luck in finding it. I assumed my brother left my card somewhere in my room if not in my wallet, but it was nowhere to be found. I checked my balance online and found a great deal of money had been missing from the time my brother had cashed his last cheque to the day I found the card missing. After I cancelled the card I tried to contact my brother. I messaged him via Skype and he responded saying "word up home skillz" when I asked him about my card. He would not respond afterwards to any messages or phone calls from myself or any of the family. This is not normal since he is close with most of the family, including myself. After 3 weeks of trying to contact him, I said, "if he actually took the card he probably would have at least given it back and would talk this out, so he must not have the card", and I called the police. The bank would not handle this matter since someone other than myself knew the pin (my brother), so it was all in my hands. I waited the 3 weeks because my brother has a history of going to jail and deep down I knew he did keep the card. If he was found guilty, he would surely have a have a terrible punishment for fraud and theft. His wife would not be able to support their child, pay rent, and support my bed ridden sister who lives with them, so I want to avoid severe punishment since it would hurt more than my brother. There were some technical difficulties with my phone when talking to the officer which would lead him to not calling back. Before I figured out the issue with my phone, I was told my brother was in jail but not for stealing my card. He was in jail for something he had done years ago, though he already served for it, it was in the system that he had not. After 2 weeks he was out of jail and I was still timid about calling the police because I sympathetic when I heard he damaged pelvis while in jail and was/is suing. I would be in contact with my brother again once he was out of jail and this time in person. While talking to him, I showed him the balance report and where the withdraws were taken. Before talking to my brother in person I knew for a fact my brother had kept the card since his wife ended up finding the card, while he was in jail, in their car. He told me which ones he did and pointed out some of them which he did not do. Considering he had the card while the withdraws were happening and over a month and a haf after, I know he did all the withdraws. After we talked he told me he would pay me what he confirms he took and we would investigate the others. My intentions in this is to get my money back. However there are people which depend on my brother and I do not want to see them go down a bad path because my brother is a thief and I and vengeful. It has been almost 3 weeks since I last spoke to him and we are playing the game of me attempting to get in contact with him and he ignoring me, again. I feel I have 3 options. I can call the cops again, I can go to his house, which he will likely tell me everything I want to hear while not paying me, or I can threaten him with a contract stating he needs to pay me X amount a month or I will bring this to court. However, people depend on my brother and I do not want to hurt them since they didn't steal money from me and do not want to hurt them by my brother going to jail, unable to provide for them. I do not want to keep playing the attempt-to-communicate game since it is getting me nowhere and my brother has made it evident he is okay with lying to me. And the third option, I feel is coercive because I am threatening him to give me something, assuming the contract would be effective. I know I am compromised in this decision simply because he is my brother. Some non-compromised advice would be appreciated.

Just look at that lush and flowing mane. However Stefan resembles an ancient greek philosopher, so it may be more fitting.

"I'm sorry to hear that you're involved in the political process. To me, that's like hearing somebody saying, 'Help! I'm trapped in slow moving machinery that is eating my go-nads'"