Supreme Court

Trump has already chosen his next Supreme Court nominee ...

Thirty Pieces of Silver

Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.

It seems that Bill Clinton had Loral Corp. supply China with critical missile technology in exchange for something more than $3 million in China's contributions  to his campaign.

And Hillary Clinton permitted controlling interest in Uranium One, representing 20% of U.S. uranium stockpiles, to be sold to the Russians for its $145 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation.

At the very least the Clintons  apparently have learned to charge much more each time they  sell out their country. Judas Iscariot never learned this economic lesson since there was only one Christ.

Good Friday Thought

Jesus Christ may or may not have been the son of God, but he certainly was someone full of love for humanity, transcendent understanding and wisdom for the ages. Since his crucifixion these possible davine gifts have been sullied by the natural baseness of man, but still can guide those, who care to look for them, to a life of grace. He is not to be ignored or forgotten.

Happy Easter

In a brilliant public relations move, Representative Nancy Pelosi chose to emulate Pope Francis and Jesus Christ by humbling herself and washing the feet of an immigrant ... see: Washington Times Story. Now, I can't help but secretly wonder if she is planning to take this pre-Easter act of Jesus's contrition all the way to the California equivalent of the Calvary hill?

Nah! ... can't be.

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.

Naive Nuts

A couple in South Carolina has discovered an image of Jesus Christ on a receipt from Walmart's don't yah know.  (See: above image and Walmart Miracle)  Now, as much as I admire this couple faith, I still classify them as naive nuts.  I believe that, if Jesus wanted to send a message to his flock, I suspect it wouldn't be on a Walmart receipt ... perhaps in 5,000-point bold Times New Roman type in the clouds on top of a giant rainbow? 

Now, there are a number of other naive nuts that often surround such an event, viz:
- the crowd of acolytes who will pilgrimage to South Carolina to catch a glimpse of this receipt (probably for a hefty fee)
- the cable-news reporters who will, in hushed terms, probe and promote this "miracle"
- the guy who will spend $10,000 to buy this image on EBay
- the evangelist preachers who will point to this "sign" as a warning about our decaying society

Rush to Judgment

Let me begin by saying that I am a big fan of Rush Limbaugh. He, almost daily, offers insights that enlighten the political and social dialog. But in the last two days he has said two loopy things that have me worried.

Yesterday (or Monday) he said that the U.S. stock market is up in September because the Federal Reserve is buying stocks to prop them up before the elections in November. This clearly is nonsense. The Fed is prohibited from such equity speculation. After a while Rush tried to back off this statement (after his e-mail inbox went viral?) by saying that he meant that the low interest rates that the Fed was charging banks was essentially inflating the money supply which was then being used to buy stocks. Even this is not totally true. Most of the money that banks borrow overnight from the Fed (for essentially the doughnut) is then reinvested in government securities for a small marginal profit. However, the huge dollar amounts of these money flows still make a healthy return for these banks nonetheless.

Today, he opined on Obama’s comments in Albuquerque on how Obama’s Christianity taught him to be “his brother’s keeper.” Now, this reference comes from the Old Testament when God asks Cain where Abel was and Cain says, “Am I my brother’s keeper.” (Rush sounded very much like he had been reading a reference to this incident on the Powerline blog. See here.) However, Rush called this concept the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” said by Jesus Christ in Matthew 7.12). This mixing of religious dogma was later backtracked by Rush (after another e-mail storm?) but he never really dumped the Golden Rule reference.

Now these brain farts were so unlike Rush that I am concerned that something is afoot. I won’t speculate on what it is here, but, if something transpires in the near future, remember you heard my concern here first.