Hell Year -- Month 8

In another bonehead move, Obummer is continuing his petulant final-year hazing of the American people by permitting the turning-over of control of the Internet to another assembly of boneheads, the United Nations ... see: Wall Street Journal Article.

He is also still obsessed in his backdoor attempt to permit more terrorism by releasing more Gitmo prisoners into places where many will surely rejoin their band of Muslim extremists ... killing more innocents ... see: Fox News Story.

He either is a total crazed ideologue ... or he really does hate us.

Hell Year -- Month 7

I have written many times before about the hazing that Obummer is putting this country through in his last year in office ... see: Hell Year, Hell Year -- Month 3. and Hell Year -- Month 4. We are now in month seven of this hell year and it has just been revealed that Obummer paid $400 million in ransom this past January to spring five American citizens from Iran prisons ... see: Wall Street journal Article. It is illegal in this country to pay ransom in U.S. currency ... so, what did Obummer and Valerie Jarrett do? Why they transferred 400 million U.S. dollars to Switzerland, had it converted to other currencies, Swiss francs, Euros, etc., loaded it on pallets and shipped it on an unmarked cargo plane, at night, into Teheran ... the same day that these hostage were release. And we are supposed to believe that this was not tribute paid to those malodorous Mullahs?

Pleeease ...

And in a coincidental matter, today our fearless leader has also commuted the sentences of 214 felons ... 67 who were in for life ... all in one fell swoop ... most of whose offenses include the serious trafficking of drugs ... see: ABC News Story. Unlike what was stated in this referenced article, over one third of these convictions involved the illegal possession of firearms ... likely quite a few more were not counted since many of these gun charges were plea-bargained away. Now, I think I haven't heard Obummer talk about guns for a few days ... and I have forgotten his stance on gun laws ... does he think we need any more such laws that won't be enforced or will be forgiven?

Thank you sir! May I have another?

Bitter Klinger

I know that I have to catch up to modern times ... as defined by Obummer. By that I mean that I and the entire military establishment MUST now accept transgender, cross-dressing soldiers as part of everyday barracks life ... this, according to the latest diktat of our lame duck in the White House ... see: Breitbart Article.

Yes, I do remember how Corporal Klinger, in the MASH award-winning TV series, would frequently dress up as a woman in an attempt to be sent home on a Section 8 code infraction. But that was funny because it was so bizarre ... and Klinger wasn't for-real transgender. Now the bizarre has become normative in a society that has been fundamentally changed according to the twisted mind of our current president.

Not only is military cross-dressing WAACy, it is rubbing the noses of our fighting forces in the bohemian life-styles of the fringes of our society ... apparently the fringes so favored by Obummer. If our president toys with the tradition of our military bending to civilian control to push our men and women in uniform to embrace what, to many, would be unembracable, he is jeopardizing the whole notion of such civilian control. Either that or he is trying to emasculate those who need to be powerful.  Whichever way, it is a foolish leap into the uncertain abyss of social engineering.

I have, in previous posts, discussed how I thought that Obummer would try to punish his minions in his last year in office ... haze us if you will ... see: Hell Year. Unfortunately, I was correct ... and we are clearly in for seven more months of such gratuitous challenges. Whether this will cause this country's people to embrace the maudlin mind set of this man-child is yet to be determined.

Hell Year -- Month 4

Attorney General Loretta Lynch has generally seemed to be fairly rational at the Justice Department (other than her slow-walking the Hellery Clinton private e-mail server prosecution.) However, she has now gone full-throated political in her attack on North Carolina's gender-specific bathroom law. John Hinderaker, an excellent lawyer, has dissected this Lynch decision at the Powerline Blog and finds it to be without any semblance of legal logic.

I have in the past surmised that President Obummer would slake a vengeance in his last year on the country he has misgoverned for a seeming eternity ... see: Hell Year. This Justice Department attack on North Carolina, threatening to freeze federal funding to it unless it toes the administration's transgender line, is but another of these vengances. We are now into month four of Obummer's hazing of his countrymen before he retires to Chicago or Hawaii next January to write his Manifesto. And I am not the only one who feels that Obummer will salt the fields and poison the wells of his "native" land on his way out ... see: Michael Savage Comments..

And there are a few more of these paddlings that are currently  in the Obummer pipeline ... see: The Hill Story and Fox News Story.. And I am certain that there are more to come ... each getting more onerous as his sun is finally setting.

Afterward: Take your blood pressure meds and also read: Ben Rhodes Spills the Beans.

Hazing

Navy SEAL hopefuls in the surf

I find it interesting how the purposeful shifting of semantics is often used to achieve social and political ends.  There is currently a brewing brouhaha at Dartmouth College about hazing ... spawned, in my opinion, by a vindictive fraternity member who was ratted out by his brothers for his drug use and then, also in my opinion, concocted a bizarre story about his hazing experiences.  He has now gone national with this narrative and, as a consequence, hazing is rapidly becoming a cause célèbre.  The word "hazing" is taking on a relatively new and ominously pejorative tone that is being used not only to bash such previously tacitly accepted practices ... but also to attack fraternities in general.

Let me be clear, initiation rites when practiced with sadistic intentions are wrong, but finding a bright line between cruelty and those ordeals designed to encourage institutional loyalty and unit cohesion is sometimes difficult to define.  May I present some examples to illustrate my point:

- The Navy SEALs undergo extreme and rigorous "training" (see: Navy SEAL Training) in which the drop-out rate is about 90%.   This training is quite successful ... witness the series of dramatic victories this unit has achieved in recent years.  However, this training does include one section that one might classify as somewhat sadistic, viz:

Another important part of basic conditioning is drown-proofing. In this evolution, trainees must learn to swim with both their hands and their feet bound. To pass drown-proofing, trainees enter a 9-foot-deep pool and complete the following steps with their hands and feet tied: bob for 5 minutes, float for 5 minutes, swim 100 meters, bob for 2 minutes, do some forward and backward flips, swim to the bottom of the pool and retrieve an object with their teeth, and then return to the surface and bob five more times

- The Stations of the Cross that Jesus Christ had to endure ... possibly even endorsed by God himself ... have always appeared to be a bit sadistic. Flogging, spearing, a crown of thorns, a vinegar drink, etc. ... as well as the crucifixion itself, may all have been ordeals ordained to create a cohesive empathy among the Christian community.  I think it has worked.

- Discipline aboard British naval sailing ships was quite brutal and often sadistic.  However, it did help propel the English navy to world dominance.  One needs only read some of Patrick O'Brian's books such as Master and Commander to understand how the savage discipline aboard these man-o-wars was required to insure that the crew acted as a well-oiled unit when the bigger tests came ... naval battles when all their lives were on the line.

- Even though it is just mythology, the Twelve Labors of Hercules were ordeals mandated by Hera to test Hercules's strength and make him atone for his crimes. However, being made to clean the Augean stables in one day seems a little over-the-top sadistic to me.

There are numerous other examples of initiation ceremonies ... such as the sometimes weird Neptune frivolities celebrated when crossing the equator aboard ship, "boys will be boys" pranks in English public schools (read a few Harry Potter books), the current exposure of bullying in U.S. High Schools, and even that which is shown in al Qaeda propaganda training films. 

Although a noble objective, the current mania to banish sadism from the human psyche may (hopefully) cause pause among some initiators ... but I seriously doubt that "hazing", under whatever semantic form, will ever disappear entirely from our societies ... because it sometimes does seem to have a meaningful purpose.