Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 283

Playing ‘The Art of War’: The Flynn plea deal sets up a Hillary Clinton prosecution

Many people in our Country are asking what the “Justice” Department is going to do about the fact that totally Crooked Hillary, AFTER receiving a subpoena from the United States Congress, deleted and “acid washed” 33,000 Emails? No justice!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

It was actually hilarious to wake up on Sunday morning after a really crazy week in politics to hear that President Trump had plunged in his job approval rating to 62% disapproval.  Where do they get these numbers, from the sales office of CNN where someone comes into their cubical maze and takes a show of hands?  The reality is likely that those numbers are completely opposite because plenty happened this week to eliminate any suspicion to the contrary.  And with that I have to give Rush Limbaugh a lot of credit.  He also showed this week why he is the best in the business.  As news broke on Thursday of General Flynn flipping to deliver the goods on President Trump to the special investigation prosecution of Bob Mueller the world melted for a few hours thinking that this was it—this was the smoking gun that was going to knock Trump out of the White House.  I often joke about how many times I’ve been to court and those experiences have ruined the formality of those proceedings for me now—so much so I don’t take anything serious.  As the stock market plunged over 300 points with the news liberals were literally stepping all over themselves with excitement revealing their true prejudice—most notably on The View at that mid day moment.  I was in my car going to a lunch meeting when the calm voice of Rush Limbaugh came on at noon and told everyone to calm down—don’t believe what you are hearing.  He went on to say that the news breaking on the Flynn news was ABC after all, and specifically Brian Ross.  Ross had jumped to judgment before filling in facts with his fantasy outcomes and that he couldn’t be trusted in this matter.  ABC within hours of that release had to suspend Ross for four weeks without pay once it was revealed that the information released by ABC News was grossly inaccurate and filled only with wishful thinking—exactly the way Rush Limbaugh had called it in the heat of the moment.  Rush was the only one to do that and after his words came out the Dow -market was already climbing back into its position over 24,000.

http://news.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx

As part of his job on the transition team General Flynn was assigned to contact Russia, and many other countries to pave the way for the Trump agenda. Specifically in this case he was supposed to get talks going with Russia to get their buy-in for dealing with Syria and the fight with ISIS.  That way by day one after the Inauguration Trump’s White House would be ready to go.  The Obama people knew what Flynn was doing because they were illegally spying on Trump’s people in Trump Tower and looking to derail the incoming president using the Deep State to destroy him before he ever got into office.  So they used the little bits of information they heard during their unmasking operations to leak assumptions to the media to cast doubt on the validity of the election—just like what Brian Ross was guilty of—and the Democratic Party took the baton and ran with it.  They did after all what they always do when they are the ones guilty of something—whether its racism, sexual misconduct, or flat-out corruption, they transfer their guilt to someone else and accuse them of doing the deed.  But Trump doesn’t play that game.

I was actually in a pretty good mood after the Flynn news broke because if he was going to plead guilty to lying to the FBI over his role in missing a few details to investigators while they all got their feet wet in the Trump administration when pressured by the FBI, then Hillary Clinton and the Obama White House were in much more trouble.  To me this news from the previous year that had terminated the employment of big names like Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes at Fox News had to of course be applied to everyone else.  So when it was the liberals lost their heroes to the same criteria.  With Flynn pleading guilty to lying to the FBI which is why Trump had to fire him in the first place, when the same criteria was applied to someone like Hillary, she was going to be in much more trouble.  So I couldn’t see why everyone was so excited—other than that they were too stupid to understand all the legal issues at play.

Any information that might lead to some bad polling for Trump was obviously taken from people who were watching The View that morning and bought the media narrative that Trump was going to be driven out of office by his former friend Michael Flynn who was turning on Trump with a plea deal to save his family from ruin by Mueller’s team.  There is just so much wrong with all that—the nature of the Mueller investigation and the liberal hope that they might violate all kinds of rules to deliver an outcome they desire.  Then their willingness to play that out through a vast media conglomerate owned by the Disney Company proved the bias that we’ve always known was there but only in speculation arrived at by observation.  Now we had the fact that people like Brian Ross were willing to tell a completely false narrative hoping to drive the contents of the story toward an outcome of pure fantasy—fake news.  It was now in front of our faces—there was no speculation.

By the time I arrived at my lunch meeting it was pretty obvious to me what Trump was doing.  After all, every good negotiator has the skills to do it—and Trump is great at negotiating.  Trump was just utilizing The Art of War to flush out his enemies and get them to reveal their positions—fighting those who have already lost, fighting on the high ground—and all that.  When Bill O’Reilly criticizes Trump for stumbling over every good thing that he does, but then Tweets something that fuels the fires of discontent—what Bill and virtually everyone miss is that those actions are purposeful.  Only a politician wants credit for all their little accomplishments—and they want to be showered in adoration for them.  In the past this is how the media was able to move presidents toward their liberal desires because deep down inside those politicians wanted to be loved.  Trump as a businessman understands where that love comes from—it isn’t given out by the media, or by the political class.  It is given out by results, and so long as results drive his motivations, Trump will always have enough by the public to do what he needs to—which is to produce tax cuts, or return Christmas to the White House—or stand up to North Korea.  Or make fun of Elizabeth Warren’s self-proclaimed Indian designation while standing in front of some elderly Navaho posing for pictures in front of a portrait of Andrew Jackson.  By doing outrageous things, it draws out your enemies from their hiding places making it so that you can then crush them.  I use that tactic every day in some form or another just as any good business person does.  And Trump is now using those tactics in a place where they have never been applied, and the results are devastating for the opposition.

When Trump gave his first interviews as president-elect he stated that he didn’t want to go after his old friends the Clintons—and I think he was sincere about that at the time.  Since he won the White House, why drive a stake through the heart of his enemies?  It wouldn’t look good after all to prosecute his former rival because he just might see her again in four years for the next presidential run.  Trump couldn’t be accused of throwing his political rivals in jail—so he indicated that he would let the matter go of Hillary’s crimes for which the FBI obviously covered up for her. But Trump set the stage, he sent out Tweets which outraged his enemies and he flew his flags to unify the country behind his cause.  He picked his fights with the NFL, with CNN, with LaVar Ball, with Little Rocket Man—with even the mayor of London and their supporters pushed hard to fight Trump which drew them off their perches in darkness to reveal their motivations in the light of day. And they have been slaughtered day by day because of it.  Now because of the Flynn plea, which is nothing new after all that Mueller investigation cost of time, money, and public opinion—now those who are much more guilty than Flynn are going to have to have justice applied to them—and that means people like Brian Ross and Hillary Clinton are now going to be held accountable—which is what Trump wanted all along.

I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017

So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday “interrogation” with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times…and nothing happens to her? Rigged system, or just a double standard?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

To fight your enemies you have to draw them out to where you can see them—and that’s what Trump has been doing with his Tweets, and other methods.  By the time the smoke clears it will be the Trump White House that is still standing.  Everyone else will be vanquished in defeat, and that’s how America will be Great Again.

Rich Hoffman

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The Biggest Tax Cut in History: It looks like we’ll have a nice, “green” Christmas–and we deserve it!

I am excessively proud of everyone who stayed late on Friday night and passed the largest tax cuts in American history sending the bill into reconciliation next week.  That keeps the tax cuts on course for President Trump to sign the legislation into law likely on Christmas Eve in quite dramatic fashion.  In this day and age something like this is excessively rare, and not to take anything away from those in the Senate who did and would always support this president, but for those who have been actively working against him, this was a significant thing for them to do at a critical time. The forces against this tax cut were monumental—as all day long during the debate period news against Trump was released attempting to derail the entire process—including the plea deal with General Flynn.  But the Flynn case is going nowhere; of course he was directed to talk to Russians—and many other countries AFTER winning the election—not before.  That would have been his job—so that is the end of that story.  Yet the way the Senate stayed on the road and avoided distractions to do something that essentially is one of the biggest days in American history is to be commended.

One thing that was exposed during this whole ordeal was just how ignorant many people these days are about the basic nature of economics.  I often point around the world to show how poorly places we typically think of as great countries struggle in comparison to the United States.  How much time have I spent on the radio, television, and writing literally hundreds of articles on the topic of economics trying to teach people why they should support something like what happened on December 2, 2017 at 2 am in the morning?  If I added it all up it would come out to years of my life dedicated to the cause of just educating people on basic economic principles.  Yet so many people are taught incorrectly about how money works and what the value of capitalism is, that they just don’t understand why this tax cut was so significant.

We are one step closer to delivering MASSIVE tax cuts for working families across America. Special thanks to @SenateMajLdr Mitch McConnell and Chairman @SenOrrinHatch for shepherding our bill through the Senate. Look forward to signing a final bill before Christmas! pic.twitter.com/gmWTny3SfS

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017

It was stunning leading up to the big vote that the Dow Jones stayed over 24,000.  That is trillions more added to the United States economy in just the few weeks that we thought it was a miracle to see the record high of 23,000.  How high can this thing go?  30,000, is that even possible?  I think it is. Once you add deregulation with reduced corporate rates we are talking about a recipe for success unlike anything that has been seen in America—or anywhere—in human history.  If Trump retired today from the White House he would go down in history as the greatest of all our presidents—essentially because of his work at putting our economy back on track.  With these tax cuts and the tremendous amount of money pouring into the stock market coming essentially from investors who have been sitting on their money for years, I predict we will see economic growth in the United States of over 6%.  I actually think it will be much higher than that, but declaring such a thing at this point is pretty astronomical—so for credibility reasons, I’ll have to stick to the parameters of history. How do you pay down the horrendous national debt that we’ve had that is up to over $20 trillion dollars—you have 6-10% growth for a few years and the flow of money back into the United States takes care of all that and touches literally the lives of every single person.

I remember what it was like the last time America experienced that type of economic growth.  I was a young guy just entering the world of adulthood and I was making a lot of money.  I was making more than my dad was after years at the top of management at the company he worked at for decades, and I was doing it right out of high school.  For a person like me willing to work, there were boundless opportunities.  I was doing so well I was looking for a condo separate from my primary residence just as a bachelor pad so I didn’t have a bunch of girls fighting each other at my front door.  That all changed of course when I found the perfect girl for me and we married on the backs of that very strong Reagan economy.  The world seemed like it had endless possibilities to us and I always felt I could support my family by working whatever jobs I needed to so everyone had what they needed.  Then the 90s came with the global tampering of George Bush, then with Bill Clinton—and America entered a dark period of decline due to high taxes and over regulation.

By the time Obama was in the White House the global plot for America was obvious.  The capitalism of our great nation was fully under attack and a major wealth redistribution scheme was well underway, just as Ross Perot had warned during the 1992 election.  Yet it was even worse than Perot had said.  As a last-ditch reaction, the Tea Party movement emerged and over the next five to six years a major shift in philosophy toward economic and moral matters exploded on the scene which resulted eventually in the election of Donald J. Trump—the mastermind behind the popular television show, The Apprentice, and now the rest is literally history.

Economists on the TAX CUTS and JOBS ACT:

“The enactment of a comprehensive overhaul – complete with a lower corporate tax rate – will IGNITE our ECONOMY with levels of GROWTH not SEEN IN GENERATIONS…” pic.twitter.com/2vCBDtLh3C

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 1, 2017

Trump is the whole package; he made himself into a celebrity combining entertainment with excessive fiscal knowledge making his billions the hard way.  That has poised him for just these kinds of battles and now in a spectacular fashion he was able to pull people together with masterful negotiating skills and open up our economy on the eve of Christmas 2017.  It was the Christmas of 2010 that the Obamanites in congress unleashed their Obamacare bill which took over a fifth of our economy.  But late last night, and likely to survive the reconciliation process is the heart of Obamacare, the individual mandate.  Without that individual mandate the socialization of our health care industry has no teeth, and this puts competitive dollars back at work to bring all costs down for the first time over that nearly decade long process.  It was one of the saddest Christmases that I can remember reading the newspapers on Christmas morning 2010 as congress took advantage of everyone’s Holiday distractions to essentially inject socialism into our American economy in a purposely crippling way.  At Christmas dinner that year my family contemplated the unthinkable—violence to take back our government—or a miracle of a politician in the White House.

With this kind of positive news 2018 will be a noticeably different year.  When it comes to economies, it’s your industry that makes GDP.  You have to have jobs in order for wages to increase.  And you can’t create jobs that pay well off the backs of tax payers, the way it has been for some time now.  Corporations, as much as socialists like to yak about Wall Street and faceless boards of directors and the profits generated—are what give individuals wealth.  Giving individuals a few hundred bucks in tax cuts won’t do much for your economy, but giving job creators tax cuts unleashes a tremendous amount of potential, and for Trump and the Republicans to stay focused on that says a lot about their fiscal understandings.  It is too early to know if we will all have a white Christmas—but one thing we can all be sure about assuming that congress continues on their path of approval, is that this year we’ll certainly have a “green” Christmas—and it will go down in history as one of the most significant we’ve ever had, or ever will.  This tax decrease is a historic game changer!

Rich Hoffman

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The Communists of ‘Black Lives Matter’: What we can learn from LaVar Ball

Now we are seeing what they are all about, but never forget that from day one, yours truly told you that Black Lives Matter was a communist group advocating for anti-American sentiments.  They have never been about justice regarding police violence, and their controversy within the NFL has never been about fairness.  Those were always just cover stories.  What they don’t like about America and the people who founded it is that it was built on Adam Smith’s brand of capitalism—and they want to put a stop to it. What they want for America is essentially what we see today in modern-day Africa.  Think about it for a moment, let’s go visit the great cities of Africa on that vast continent and study what it is they want for us all in America. Oh, wait a minute—there isn’t a single city in any nation that is of a comparison.  Every country in Africa is an impoverished mess with not a single powerhouse of economic activity among them.  Most American households have a stronger GDP than any African country—so why would Black Lives Matter be so against American capitalism?  Yes that was a facetious statement, but you get the point.

http://www.newsweek.com/black-lives-matter-black-christmas-capitalism-724309

Hey, Black Lives Matter people, yes I’m a white man—but I’m not guilty of shit.  I didn’t bring any black people to America on slave ships.  European losers who were defeated in the American Civil War did.  I live in Ohio which is about as pro-Lincoln in the movement to end slavery as anybody was in the 1860s and I’m very proud of that.  If I had been alive during the years leading up to the Civil War I would have been on the side of John Quincy Adams and advocated my hatred of any culture that owns another human being in any way.  So I don’t want to hear any bitching from a bunch of uneducated, lazy slobs who happen to be black on what kind of country we should all live in.  In America anybody is welcome to make good with their life if they so choose, but you have to want it. I know a lot of people of color who do quite well for themselves under American capitalism and they are a whole lot better off here than in their countries of origin, especially anywhere in Africa.

Going back to the villainous Black Panthers what these communist advocate groups have sought to do was use the guilt of racism to advance their arguments for collectivist oriented governments—essentially big villages like what they have in Africa.  In America we have been way more tolerant than we should have been as black communists have infected our youth with their thuggish culture of hatred, which you can hear in any song from Snoop Dog, or Jay-Z.  Behind the lyrics of their rap songs is a hatred of American capitalism which seeks to corrupt the youth against it.  Many of our white youth in America looking for their own way in life have found that siren song of hate attractive—as their own generational thing.  But when it comes to really choosing communism over capitalism, that’s quite another thing—most people, black included prefer running water over their counterparts in Africa who still shit in the corner and try to put up a curtain to keep the flies off them. In America we like our microwaves, our cars, and our Playstations.  Capitalism is quite nice to all those who live under it—even if they don’t appreciate it.

These idiots in Black Lives Matter are communists and they should be treated as enemies of our nation—they are domestic terrorists.  It has nothing to do with their skin color which they hide behind as a shield to unfold their plots of villainy.  Everything about their movement is to bring America down as a nation of values and to convert it into a mess of economic instability and war—just like every country in their home world of Africa. What they are trying to sell to the world is that same dank communism that has been bouncing around since the early part of the 20th century.  But because many of the leaders of BLM can’t read very well, they don’t know their history enough to understand that communism was and will always be a sinking ship. That’s why nobody who utilizes it is a profitable country.  No country in Africa has done well under communist revolutionaries and many, many innocent people have died under the economic depravity of those failed economic policies. Far, far more people have been beaten, raped, and died poor because of communism in Africa than ever suffered under slavery in America.  Far more—by the millions even up to this very day.  America provided a way out of impoverished conditions—and it was capitalism that freed those people where it could—within American borders.  Even as villainous as slavery was in America it at least provided a path to freedom which those left behind in Africa never had.  Their family lines have suffered much more since.

There is nothing for Black Lives Matter to complain about—nothing, not even police violence.  They don’t have a point to make for which sympathy has a role.  If police beat black people, it’s because too many black people are involved in crime.  Police beat white people too—the difference is that culturally black people have been taught from children up to adulthood not to respect anything about American lifestyles which the police are sworn to protect.  The stupid parents of many black youth who are addicted to welfare benefits and the ghettos set up by Democrats to garner bloc votes in elections to keep them in power on the backs of modern slaves, have raised their kids to hate capitalism—and thus the police who are there to protect private property.  Black kids specifically have been taught by their baby mommas to hate white people and to hate the police—and like militant soldiers of ISIS, to attack those symbols of capitalism anywhere they could.

Look at the situation with LaVar Ball whose kid was one of those busted in China for shoplifting while on tour with the UCLA basketball team.  Ball’s kid was in serious trouble before Donald Trump convinced the authorities in China to give the kids a break.  Rather than show gratitude for giving his kid a second chance Ball went after Donald Trump.  Ball showed no shame that he raised a kid that would conduct himself poorly—especially in a foreign country.  LaVar Ball’s argument against Trump was essentially that tired old communist banter that Black Live Matter is advocating—and the result is that he raised a kid oozing with natural talent, but can’t behave in a civil society.  The fault for the shoplifting in China was the fault of LaVar Ball’s terrible parenting—which was on defense nationally once the father attacked President Trump for even trying to help the kids.  When you get an opportunity to sit down with people like LaVar Ball and understand the values they have instilled into their children it becomes clear that they are guilty of a form of espionage that likely could be prosecutable in a court of law if we were that kind of country.  In some places around the world—especially communist nations—what Ball did to his kid intellectually could justify the death penalty.  In America we simply live and let live and we let economical means be the judge and jury.  But people like LaVar Ball should be careful what they wish for—because they just might get it.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/brennan/2017/11/08/lavar-ball-gets-reality-check-sons-arrest-liangelo-china/844650001/

There isn’t anywhere in the world where people, no matter what their name is, can have a chance to make it big in life because under American capitalism, that is the mode of operation.  Anybody who hates that system are just lazy fools trying to justify their failures or lack of ambition behind their skin color as cover for their bad decisions in life.  There is no system more just than the one all people have under the flag of America and I’m personally sick of enduring the communist messages of Black Lives Matter. They don’t have a point worth listening to.  If black lives matter so much, then the parents of black children need to raise them to be good kids instead of little ghetto thugs who hate everything, because that’s what they are being raised to believe.  If you step into many black households right now it will be discovered that many of the parents secretly are using their children to be young militants to fight battles they lack the courage or intellect to do themselves, and that’s why the kids get pulled into gangs and other criminal behavior.  That’s also why young people like LaVar Ball’s kid are out stealing when they actually come from a wealthy family themselves—because the values taught to them are wrong.  If black lives really matter then it starts in the home in what a parent teaches their children—and where they go wrong is in teaching those kids that capitalism is bad.

Rich Hoffman

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The Pervert Matt Lauer: What happens when good guys are there to keep the bad guys in check

This is why it was so laughable that anybody on the political left thought they could even hang Donald Trump with that Access Hollywood tape, because as we are now learning, especially with the recent firing of Matt Lauer, most men—especially liberal men—use their power over women to exploit them for sexual pleasure. Trump of course did the right thing and declared that what he was engaged in was locker room talk, because that’s all it was. Trump has had hundreds if not thousands of women who have worked for him and there wasn’t anything credible that has ever come out about his behavior with them. And if he was engaged in pussy talk with another guy it was in the eyes of most sane people, no big deal. We all know what goes on between men and women. But the most vocal voices who sought to condemn Trump for that silly little tape we now know were engaged in much, much worst. Just what we are learning about the behavior of Matt Lauer is downright shocking. He’s not talking about just grabbing the pussy of women who throw themselves at powerful men looking for a competitive advantage over other women as they make their own climbs for power—like Trump was discussing—Lauer’s just downright creepy. NBC sat silent knowing full well what they were dealing with as they hypocritically went after President Trump. I never watch NBC, but with exchanges like this one below with Anne Hathaway and the hot mic utterances with Katie Couric—this guy should have been fired a long time ago.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/awkward-matt-lauer-tv-moments-resurface-in-wake-of-firing/ar-BBFWtiB?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

What I remember most about Katie Couric is when she did that anti-gun town hall with a bunch of 2nd Amendment advocates and chopped up the editing trying to make them look stupid. She is a major progressive but taken in the context of her relationship with Matt Lauer over the years it’s no wonder she turned toward liberalism looking for help—or women’s empowerment as a hope that she could live in a world where she didn’t have to get pinched on the ass a lot just to have a job. Here’s a news flash for everyone, all men are not like these idiots. Yet the major networks and the entire entertainment industry has pushed out good guys and kept losers like Matt Lauer around to abuse women in every way imaginable for a reason. That’s why good guys have been pushed out of those industries so that creeps like Lauer could run the herds.

Even as the entire news industry celebrated when Bill O’Reilly was fired from Fox News, and Roger Ailes was terminated just before his death—everyone apparently knew about people like Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose who were icons of the news media and how they sexually harassed not just a few women, but virtually everyone. I have serious doubts that Bill O’Reilly’s accusers were authentic, but even if they were, the level of sexual misconduct that Matt Lauer showed is incredible, for a guy who was at the top of his game in the news industry. His behavior is beyond reckless and in order to sustain that behavior he would need a lot of help. Obviously, you could see by Anne Hathaway’s reaction that she felt she had to endure the incident. She did after all have an obligation to promote her film—and she knew that everyone behind the cameras were tag assing wherever they could get away with it, and she was constantly hit on by men in the industry—so if she wanted to continue working, she had to put up with it. My long-term readers here know that I’ve said for many years that a woman doesn’t get an Academy Award in Hollywood until she takes off her cloths and shows the goods. Producers then pass around the tape and they enjoy their power over these young girls. When the women get up in years a bit and can then leverage their success, actresses like Anne Hathaway feel they can push back a bit which she did in that interview, very well. She handled the situation as best she could, but she also knew not to slap back too hard at Matt if she wanted to continue to work in movies. Because some producer like Harvey Weinstein would never hire her if she became known as a pain in the ass.

I hate to see that women have had to endure these types of situations. Just because the industry has stacked liberal men like Lauer in positions of power within entertainment, it does not mean that all men are that way. I know a lot of men who handle themselves and power very professionally, and that’s how it should be. But these liberals have painted themselves into this corner all on their own. They created an impossible standard and tried to stick it to people like Trump and Bill O’Reilly. Yet when that standard came back at them—they were far guiltier than anybody they were accusing.

There is a line from the movie, The Lost World where Vince Vaughn’s character says to Jeff Goldblum something to the effect that he gets involved in liberal causes because the chicks are hot. Well, there is some truth to that, there are a lot of men who identify with women’s issues so that they can get a sympathetic back door to the emotions of women, so they can sleep with them—or at least play with them a little. They pretend to be champions for women’s rights and to vote for Obama, or Hillary because they want access to beautiful women. Most women are much more liberal than men, they empathize with others in ways men don’t, and if men want access to those women they tell them what they want to hear so they can grab their asses without getting slapped—and the women forgive them because they tend to be of that nature. Women do forgive because they have empathy which often drives them toward compassion. Men like Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose were obviously taking advantage of that nature. The women who obviously bonded with the creepy men because they either felt sorry for them or had just rationalized their relationship with them out of necessity—the way a lot of women do who are in bad marriages—they turned to liberalism even further seeking protections from the behavior. And what we are seeing right now is the vicious cycle consuming itself.

Trump was correct to blow off the attempt to paint him as some kind of diabolical menace to women—like Matt Lauer and many others did with that Access Hollywood tape. When Trump refused to accept guilt, he put the standard back on his accusers who were up to much worse. Trump was after all a celebrity and lots of women sought to use their assets to gain access, and that can be very tempting until you get used to it. Trump at that time in his life was getting used to it. Trump may have let women near him when he wanted them, but that’s not the same as using his power to make them do things they didn’t want to do, like Matt Lauer was doing. There is a big difference. And it is good to see justice finally coming their way. They certainly deserve everything they have coming.

Rich Hoffman

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Ann Becker Sworn in as a West Chester Trustee: Everyone loves a winner

I thought it was ironic that the same day Donald Trump won his case in court for his appointment to head the CFPD that my friend Ann Becker was sworn in as the new West Chester Township Trustee. What they had in common was they were both ushered in on the backs of victory where opposing forces had once been hard lined against them.  The key wins in elected offices had solidified sentiment toward a productive outcome. Former political adversaries had been united under the banner of victory and that is truly something wonderful. I sat in the back of Ann’s swearing ceremony, which made the video below a little hard to hear, because I wanted a nice panoramic of the packed audience. There were many there to show their support for Ann who were certainly no fans of her just three years ago. But Ann had shown wonderful leadership in helping get people elected into key Central Committee positions and she was a paramount figure in helping Donald Trump get elected in southern Ohio with Sheriff Jones. From there the rest of the Republican Party put their differences aside to rally behind Ann when she ran for George Lang’s vacant seat as he went on to become a congressman for the State of Ohio. For this moment to arrive it took a lot of effort and careful politics, and for all that tenacity I am extremely proud of Ann Becker.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/11/28/while-the-white-house-battles-for-control-heres-whats-at-stake-for-the-cfpb/?utm_term=.7402db0acb62

Yes, the tide is changing and even people who reluctantly put their finger to the wind just months ago and thought that John Kasich’s brand of GOP would win out in Ohio now see that Trump is setting the agenda at the top and local politics is building that infrastructure at the ground level and people can now see the results. The victory for Trump at the CFPD represented a major blow to the kind of politics we are all used to. And as Ann Becker took her oath many of the people in the room who were there to welcome her into that new level of politics, had plans for her they hoped to shape. Whether those plans might be easy passage of the next police budget, or some favorable vote to use tax payer money on some private venture—Ann was the President of the Cincinnati Tea Party—so politics as usual was something that would be difficult for them to adjust to. Reform is in her every drop of blood. She is savvy enough to be nice about it, and to listen to all sides, but when the rubber hits the road, Ann is a major part of the countrywide revolution that took place over the last 10 years and now she’s on a career path as a powerful politician.

After the ceremony many of us went over to RJ’s Sports Pub to celebrate and I was surprised by how many people showed up. The waitress confided to me that they were nowhere near prepared for the onslaught of people who arrived. I don’t think Ann even thought so many people would show up to see her sworn in, let alone go to RJ’s after to celebrate with her. Winning has a unique way of unifying people. Everyone loves a winner. I remember a few years ago when secret tapes came out of the Republican Party of Butler County where the old guard was laminating against Ann Becker’s Tea Party oriented philosophy because back then conventional wisdom mandated that the Tea Party would fizzle out after the IRS crackdowns, and establishment Republicans all the way to the top were part of that conspiracy—they were part of the Swamp, part of the world that created government divisions like the CFPD to embed itself into our capitalist system and run everything from a centralized authority of Republicans and Democrats bringing to life FDR’s “Middle Way.” Ann didn’t appear to have a chance at ever being a formal candidate for anything—because her political outlook was just too pure for many establishment types to consider. But after her win to the State Central Committee and her gradual work from within, people began to see the light and like everything in life, once she proved herself to be a winner—they wanted to be near her.

We can see this phenomenon when a winning sports team is doing well, the community usually jumps on the bandwagon at the end and supports them with jersey purchases and an increase in ticket sales. Losing does not bring this kind of behavior about in people. Only winning. Winning can convert the most adversarial enemy over to your way of thinking by track record alone, and is the key to a strong negotiating position. Respect always accompanies winning, by the nature of human beings. After a year in office and all the powers of the press and politics to derail President Trump, he is a winner and is steamrolling right over everyone, friends and enemies alike. Because he’s a winner he can do things that nobody else can, which is why he is now the leader of the Republican Party. Ten years ago the Butler County Republican Party was much different from the one of today. No longer are the John Boehners and John Kasichs running things it’s people like Ann Becker and Mark Welch who are challenging their peers to the north in Liberty Township and to the west in Fairfield with a level of competency that has not been expected before—but is now. In that way the politics of Butler County changed quite a lot with the swearing-in of Ann Becker.

I’ve certainly not been a fan of Lee Wong, but even he was wearing the colors of change in his demeanor as he welcomed Ann to the board during the swearing-in. I don’t think Lee is a conservative at all by the way he legislates, but in the politics of Butler County there really isn’t a choice. The philosophy of Ann Becker has pulled the party much more to the right just as Donald Trump has at the federal level just by standing her ground and being authentic. That is a trait all winners possess, an unmistakable tenacity that brings people to you rather than you to them.

When Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer refused to come to the White House on the same day to talk budgets and taxes with Trump that was a first for the Democrats—it was something we hadn’t seen before. What it essentially amounts to is that they are losing the game and are refusing to finish. It is obvious now that the special prosecutor investigation is going nowhere, and momentum is completely on Trump’s side. Tax cuts are happening without their involvement or ability to stop it. Trump is appointing conservative judges, without their ability to stop him. Christmas has returned to the White House, without anybody in the media being able to stop it through ankle biting criticism. And good luck beating Trump on a government shutdown. Yes, times have changed a lot.

And that change was obvious with the election of Ann Becker as the newest member of the West Chester Trustees. By winning the winds of reform are at her back and all she needs to do to continue winning, is just to be herself. Everything else will take care of itself. For a young woman who just a few years ago had so many enemies she suddenly has lots of friends, and that is how real change is implemented. Change that Ann has fought hard for over a long period of time. And now she has an opportunity to really make a difference, and I’m very happy for her.

Rich Hoffman

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The Great Carl Rullmann and Melania Trump’s Wondrous Christmas Trees: Stumps of life that give meaning to existence

As I was admiring the magnificent Christmas decorations at the White House by the gifted fashion eye of Melania Trump I received the notification from his widow that one of my long-time friend and readers Carl Rullmann had died on Monday November 20th. She went on to say that even in his final days when he could no longer read himself, she would read my articles to him. She elaborated that Carl looked forward to everything I had to say about everything which was a nice way to put it. Because I do literally write about everything, and often deeply, which is my inclination. I first met Carl over eight years ago when I was at a meeting and he rushed over to tell me how much he enjoyed my segments on 700 WLW radio and we have been friends ever since. He often would send me private emails wanting to talk more explicitly about things I had written that he took issue with, as a deeply religious man. I enjoyed the banter and understood what role some of that interaction played in his life as he suffered through several illnesses over the last couple of years culminating in his event on the 20th. I felt sorry for his wife Rita immediately as it had to have taken a lot of personal courage for her to contact me in the way she did just seven days after. But I view death differently than most people and I found the beauty of Carl’s life to be a similar reflection as what Melania Trump was doing at the White House, and instead of feeling sorrow for a lost friend, I found joy.

This year was the first my wife and I bought a real tree for Christmas. You have to understand, my wife and I are people who keep our emotions close in check all the time and we have enjoyed over the decades the knowledge that after New Year’s celebrations are complete and we head into those cold January days with nothing much to look forward to until spring arrives, that our Christmas tree would go into a box in our basement to be resurrected the next year. She came from a wealthy family and that’s how they did things, mainly for the convenience of it. So when we were married way back in 1988 we did much the same thing, getting artificial trees that were easy to put up and take down without a lot of emotional pomp and circumstance. What I didn’t know, that really didn’t emerge until our children were fully grown and we started having lots of grandchildren to deal with, was that deep down inside she always wanted to have a live tree for Christmas.

I grew up with a live tree, each year my family had bought one going through the ritual of picking one out and then putting it up. The whole experience climaxed on Christmas Day when the whole mythology came alive to a nice end. It was always sad to take the tree down, but always extraordinarily exciting to put them up. I never remember a Christmas from my childhood that wasn’t an exciting period of my life—and the live Christmas tree was always the centerpiece. It always seemed odd to me that after Christmas my dad would take the tree out to our burn pile and we’d burn it sometime around late January and February. I’d look at it dormant on its side out in the cold covered in snow with the branches all brown and dry and wonder if it was the same magnificent thing that had been in our living room bringing so much joy.

My wife and I mutually didn’t want the emotional roller coaster of a live tree during our marriage. It gave us counsel to know that the centerpiece of our Holiday joy was always in our basement—yet the experience never seemed quite authentic. So it was much to my surprise when we were out shopping for early Christmas items when she declared, “let’s get a live tree this year.” Well, it didn’t take much for me to agree to it. We are after all empty nesters. Our kids come over for Christmas and it’s always nice, but they have their own lives these days and we are often only in it when they can find the time and will to get together. Our Christmas mornings now are very lonely and for us that is devastating, because we both always loved to have children in the house to bring mornings like Christmas to life in such grand ways. Now there are grandchildren, but we get about a half hour and it’s nowhere near the same. So buying a live tree for Christmas with all the emotion that can be involved for that Holiday I thought was a bold move for her.

I’ve watched the various presidents over the years in how they decorated the White House for Christmas because it says a lot about who they are. Back with the Clintons in the 90s there were utterances that they hung condoms on their Christmas tree because as progressives, they were actively pushing politically to replace Christianity as a guiding light for the masses. The Bush White House was more traditional and a welcome sign after the debacle that was the Clintons but that particular White House was too careful and sensitive to the progressive movement seeking to accommodate them more than traditionalists like me would have liked. Then there was the Happy Holidays of the Obama era—which was not as anti-Christian as the Clintons, but certainly wasn’t what we would call “traditional” in America. They sort of went through the motions and everyone could tell. But it wasn’t until Melania was able to design the decorating in the White House that we could see for the first time how magnificent the Executive Branch could be in leading the charge to restore Christmas to its proper place in American culture. Melania’s use of live trees and lighting was simply phenomenal, and it actually made me proud that my wife and I had decided to do a live tree this year as our personal tree has had the same kind of effect on our personal household. Because it was my wife’s first live tree she has put a lot of extra love in it knowing that the life of the tree deserved the extra attention. As she put it the whole reason the tree was raised and cut down was to serve this one purpose for just one little month of our lifetimes. Melania on the grand scale did much the same and the combined result to me was spectacular and filled me with pride and patriotism.

Of course it will be sad to take down our tree this year. And it will be sad to take down all the great trees in the White House. But the joy they provide for that very short time I think is a proper metaphor for all our lives. We are talking about the four seasons of course, Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, or conception, birth, life and death metaphorically for us all. These Christmas trees represent life in the dead of winter when life ends and renews on the first day of the New Year. It’s a lifecycle and during Christmas in addition to celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, we have constructed our holidays to serve a more appropriate and modern-day relevancy to our own existence, and Christmas trees are at the center of that mythology. They are a symbol and celebration of life in the time of death—winter. And in the case of my friend Carl Rullmann who lived a great life and was eager to learn something new right up until the end, he like our Christmas trees are wonderful to look at and appreciate. For the radiance of life that flowed through them does end and the body of the lifeform does diminish and fall away. In the case of Christmas trees we toss them out after the Holiday season for disposal, just like the dead of our human species. But it’s the celebration of their life in the times of Christmas all lit up and displayed with honor that is the point of living. Carl was one of those people and during life his lights and ornaments representing his experiences will carry on in our memories. Yes the body does die but all our lives are better because of our experiences with each other. And that is what I will always think of for now on when I see a live Christmas tree. They are beautiful things!

Safe travels Carl Rullmann on the next adventures of existence. Because like the Christmas trees we are all cut off at the stem and drinking water out of a little pot that keeps us alive just long enough. It is when we transcend that limit and drink from the waters of eternal life that our real adventure begins. And that is a beautiful thing as wall, in many ways more beautiful than life itself.

Rich Hoffman

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Power Does Not Corrupt, Fools Do: Institutions used Hitler, the Church, and fear to protect themseleves from the rise of “overmen”

I think we need to have a proper definition of what a fool is.  We often make such a frame of reference when we deal with people who don’t meet our expectations of competency.  But the term itself is often uttered when frustration has strangled our reason leaving us in moments of despair.  Through history the term “fool” has been tossed around a lot.  I’m not a big fan of the Fabian socialists George Bernard Shaw, but I tend not to look at things in hindsight with the lack of understanding.  After all, it is difficult to make the correct decisions while moving forward in uncharted waters and after the concept of the Übermensch in his stage play Man and Superman was explored, it is obvious that Shaw was at least asking the right questions.  He and his Nazi counterparts would completely misinterpret the great work of Friedrich Nietzsche in the pinnacle work of philosophy titled Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  The idea of an “overman” is a dangerous one.  Shaw was knocking on the door to truth when he used the word fool as the opposite of the superman idea to articulate the nature of power when he said, “power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.”  This is an important reference when considering the unleashing of the many sex scandals by household names recently in both politics and entertainment—places where power is often traded, not earned.  The result has been that fools are often in charge and they use power to articulate the corruption inherit in their minds which fall short of human necessity.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/11/16/eyes-wide-shut-actress-sexual-misconduct-in-hollywood-and-how-to-survive-in-world-full-harveys.html

A fool is therefore a person functioning from a lack of individualized values but instead yields to institutional concerns blindly accepting the values of the collective for the benefit of the faceless hordes of reality.   A fool is essentially a person too lazy to think who uses institutional values as a substitute for reason.   Where socialists like Shaw and fascists like Hitler missed the point was that they could not turn off their love of institutional thinking to develop the concept of being “more than human.”  They thought by making the concept of an Übermensch institutionalized, that they could advance mankind into a new century of thought and competency.  Yet all they accomplished was a new kind of tyranny which makes them villains in respect to history.  Shaw was so entrenched in institutionalized thinking that he actually performed his play before the Royal Court so it’s not like he was a fringe thinker. But his idea that a fool corrupts power rather than the other way around is a revolutionary idea and a proper designation of responsibility.

The falsehood that power is in itself the designation of corruption is the old definition of the institutions, politics and the church which sought to keep their flocks under control so they have suppressed us all by purposely putting fools in positions of power to protect the definition leaving always to turn toward them for protection from those in power.  That is the basic premise of the Star Wars movies, which I do not agree with.  But it’s a kid’s show, so teaching children the basics of how power and corruption can be dangerous is important.  It is better to be safe than sorry after all.  But for the rest of us, we seldom have any mechanisms to inform our developing minds of what the true nature of power is, or even what a fool is.  The two are left to linger so that they will find each other in popular culture and protect our institutions from the change that is really needed.

The idea that money corrupts is a popular fictionalization of the institutionalized protection of itself from the notions that individuals don’t need them, especially if they develop in a graduating characteristic of mankind.  Man might be termed as the embodiment of the reproduction cycle, birth, growth, procreation and death.  To be more than man is to extend one’s thoughts beyond these human necessities, such as to contemplate the nature of the universe or to dominate the elusive traits of leadership—an overman is a conscious state of mind to step beyond terrestrial definitions.  People in power obviously don’t want such a thing to happen so they have devised means though politics to clip all our wings through education, media, and religion to keep us all in a substitute of human experience.  And the way they have done that primarily is by putting fools in charge of things and spreading the rumor that the fools became that way because they were corrupted with power making us all fear falling to the same fate.  That is how the institutions protected themselves from us.

It has been safe to look at great minds of the past who might have sought to be overmen—which is kind of an English word for the Übermensch—the best that we have for such a state of existence and to pay respect from hindsight.  But when one exists in our modern times we tend to try to kill them and execute them to preserve our institutions whether it be the church or some country’s government.   That is how so many fools ended up in positions of power and why once they get there they cannot control their decent into corruption.  Because they are not fit for the power—power in and of itself is a value that has meaning in our existence.  Once you mix people who suddenly have this power but are intellectual fools—people like Harvey Weinstein and Charlie Rose—liberals addicted to institutionalized power, it’s not hard to see why the abuse happens—and it certainly isn’t surprising.

Donald Trump by his own nature has always sought to be more than just human.  As a wealthy man who fought his way through many stages of his life he seems to have arrived at a special place about halfway through his television show The Apprentice.  It took a few years but that show combined with being married to a good woman in Melania seems to have taken him intellectually to that next level.  His story actually reminds me of the story of Siddhārtha Gautama—the prince who would become the future Buddha and sit on the immovable spot under the tree of enlightenment.  Siddhārtha at the tender age of 29 became tired of all the dancing-girls at his father’s palace and so he left to find essentially the meaning of life.  His adventure had many pitfalls and terrors but ultimately he discovered his middle way and the rest is history.  The motivation for this trip was to find a way to deal with the various lifecycles previously mentioned so he sought philosophical atonement for the realities of life—a kind of early overman idea. Trump found his overman idea late in life after he had enjoyed all the sins and flesh of being on top of the food chain.  He had good parents and an intelligent mind so he had the power, but it never corrupted him.  He was a rare example on a public stage for the masses to see who was able to hold power without it corrupting him.  Many of the rumors about sexual misconduct come from institutions assuming that such things occurred because they are not used to people holding power without failing under its weight. Thus, the myth has been broken and people now see it.

This has created an environment where other people in power cannot now compete, because Trump has set such a suddenly high standard. Now that he’s president, which is head of our most beloved institutions of government recognized throughout the world, the comparison is beyond control at this point, and those corrupted by power are failing under the same public scrutiny that was intended to shoot down Trump.  The old institutions crave the stories of how Kennedy had blow jobs given to him in the White House swimming pool by hot young girls looking to use sex as a way to leverage the authenticity of an American president.  And until recently Bill Clinton was forgiven for his sexual proclivities because he defined the essence of the fool who holds power and is corrupted by it—which sent the masses to their churches asking god to save them from the vast evil of our world governments.  What they didn’t know was that the church and the state were essentially the same and both wanted to protect themselves from the overman by promoting the fool in place of the righteous people who were striving to get more out of life.

The fool has been very useful to modern society and you can see them in just about everything created by institutional thinking.  From Six Sigma management classes to the local manager at a McDonald’s the fool is often in charge.  You don’t often find that overman survive the purges they must endure, because society does not want them to emerge.  But when they do, they change everything and that is what we are seeing today.  The institutions that have put fools in their front offices and used the myth of power corrupting their minds are now being snuffed out and reality is taking on new meanings.  It was never power that corrupted.  Power is just a thing of value.  But fools cannot handle it and should never be allowed near it.  Overmen however do quite well and power has a way of finding them whether the world is ready or not for them.  So while Shaw was onto something with his early explorations into this matter of the Übermensch his position as a head of institutionalized thinking prevented him from getting the unified thought out to a public that wanted to rebel against the notion rather than embrace it.  Hitler also missed the mark copying from the American Democrats their segregation strategies to rid their German nation of undesirables that they thought were corrupt with power—because Hitler never understood the nature of power. He was a fool himself allowed to rise to the top because the institutions of the world wanted a fool to have the power, to keep all of Europe under their institutionalized umbrellas.  I’d go so far to say that the institutions wanted Hitler to validate their story of human declination under the influence of power to protect themselves from the kind of reform of thinking that Friedrich Nietzsche was advocating.

Never-the-less, we now know the truth, power does not in and of itself corrupt.  Fools are not equipped to handle power and should not be given access to it.  Fools should always be challenged when they make a grab for power.  But under America’s free market system where fools are often beaten easily by the competent, it was only a matter of time before an overman ended up in the White House.  That very act has changed the world for the better.  For the first time since George Bernard Shaw wrote his play about the nature of the superman, and our comic book media propelled that type of character into popular mainstream mythology, we now have a president who can operate without the fear of becoming corrupt, who is beyond concern and is punching through the limits of human intellect for the first time.  The results are destroying the fools, wherever they may have been hiding right out in the open.  And that is a wonderful thing.

Rich Hoffman

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The List of Accomplishments of the Trump Administration: After just one year, there is a lot to be thankful for

It’s hard to say how many articles I’ve written about the potential for a Donald Trump presidency, or the success of the events of his first year.  I have a million things to do each day it seems and little time to do any of them, but due to the truly corrupt forces that have always been at work against our nation the Donald Trump presidency was the first solution in my mind to putting those forces back into their place.  I saw the election of Donald Trump as a self-funded, outsider who strives pressure because he functions best with it to solve the many problems that we have leeched into our republic to overthrow it and cast us all back into the stone ages.  My reason for writing so much is that I don’t feel our professional media has the aptitude or reasoning to see the situation properly so that I must write about this president defending him righteously because there are so few outlets out there that will. I never expected Trump to be perfect but I did expect him to strive for perfection and he does.  After just one year since Trump was elected, when the major changes to our national outlook started to take place, the fine people at MAGAPill.com have compiled a list of all the accomplishments of the Trump administration for all to see at the following link.  It is well worth a look.

Wow, even I didn’t realize we did so much. Wish the Fake News would report! Thank you. https://t.co/ApVbu2b0Jd

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2017

http://www.magapill.com/

That is an impressive list and as a student of history you will not find a single other president who has done more or even attempted so much.  Before Trump put his name in the ring at Trump Tower in Manhattan back in the summer of 2015 I was looking for a Calvin Coolidge type of president—someone who would bring hard work back to the White House and try to sell the idea of America back to the people who live around the world in a positive way.  It was obvious to me due to inside baseball experience that the two-party systems just couldn’t produce the right kind of person for the job so I had lost faith in the ability of our elections to find a suitable candidate.  To be president a person has to love all the things it takes to get there.  For instance, for me, as busy as I am, I don’t like it.  I love lots of private time.  I do enjoy doing television work, and talking on the radio—and standing in front of a crowd is something that comes naturally for me.  But to my very core I like my private thoughts and I hate dealing with stupid people.  A president has to actually enjoy people and all the ceremony of such a high-profile job.  But they must also like to do the hard work of reading, listening, and managing all the elements that come with such an important job.  People can say what they want about the politics of Trump, but what they can’t take from him is his enthusiasm for Americana and a genuine love of hard work.

Way too often we elect people into these responsible positions, John Kasich of Ohio comes to mind, where they come into an office with lots of ambition but quickly dissipate once they start running into the resistance of the establishment.  Being in any leadership position requires stamina and an inner drive that is unique among our human populations.  Very few establishment organizations so far in all of our history respect these traits of leadership and our education system certainly doesn’t know how to bring them about in our culture.  But we know it when we see it, like in champions of sports such as Michael Jordan, Tom Brady or tycoons of industry such as Alfred Sloan from General Motors or Elon Musk of our modern times—they all have an ingredient in their personal constitutions which drive them toward excellence. The great novelist Ayn Rand captured very well the essence of those types of people in her novels from the previous century and they are still very relevant today—but our culture is still hard pressed to understand how to invest their values into the ever-expanding consciousness of human enterprise and why it’s such an important consideration utilized across the tapestry of time and space. We often elect the wrong people to manage our governments, local, state and federal because we still don’t understand truly what we are looking for.

One thing that always bothers me about holiday-get-togethers and in speaking to family members that you don’t see very often is how they revert to the value systems of their peer groups.  Such as when people ask what my wife and I have been up to, especially the women, their first question is whether my wife is working or not.  Well, of course she works—but the next layer to their question is whether or not she is working for an employer—whether she gets a paycheck. Part of being married to me means my wife doesn’t have to sell her services to any group or organization outside of our home.  Her primary concern is the needs of our family and she likes it that way.  In our case our kids have moved out, but she is still there to help wherever a situation may arise so that the quality of our family experiences are managed by someone who truly loves everyone.  It’s a very traditional role, but one that I think is important to managing family affairs in a quality way. But other women who do not have such support are resentful and that comes out in our discussions in a very palatable way.  People don’t mean to, but most seek out the rules of a static institutional concept rather than creating their own.  Housewives have been targeted by progressive groups as a way to diminish the family experience casting individuals into getting parental support from institutional thinking, whether that entails a woman working for her own paycheck and having relationships outside the home, or in the way that we elect politicians first through our chambers of commerce, then through popular sentiment—resulting then in office holding where the concerns of donors are the first priority for party politics.  When women find out my wife is a full-time mother, grandmother and that each day she makes sure I have what I need at the end of a long day as traditional women often provided in the past, they are aghast.  You can even sense the hostility in them as they speak which of course makes the discussions difficult.  That hostility is there because biologically they are inclined to similar behavior but to survive in the modern world they have had to suppress those inclinations and to be the opposite, which of course nobody really wants.  Our institutions have adopted those traits as values so everyone ends up very confused until there is a base point of change for everyone to examine.  In our family my wife is that for everyone.

In politics we have needed to make a similar stand, where we had a politician who redefined that experience with outside the box thinking and came to office in a different way than the usual methods. Trump was and has been that guy. He was elected by what many considered a miracle, although I was never in doubt—I saw it a long way out.  But his behavior once he obtained office has been one of exceptionally hard work and a need to please those who elected him with an earnestness usually reserved for campaign donors.  While Trump may rub establishment types in the same way that modern women resent knowledge of a housewife when they meet them happily doing their work in the world, politicians hate Trump for many of the same reasons.  Trump represents a changing of the rules and institutions don’t like that.  They like to make the rules then live by them to the exclusion of new influences so that they can protect their lifestyles as they’ve lazily adopted them.  In women we expect them to work like men these days even if it’s obvious that the children of a family are in desperate need of love and attention and we see that someone needs to be there to provide that care.  And in politicians we expect them to be cheesy, corrupt, and to not serve our best interests—but when we meet one that is exceptional, it is hard to accept them because we have allowed ourselves to become institutionalized in our thinking.  Being exceptional is what we are really after and by the list showing the accomplishments of the Trump administration after just one year, it is obvious that we are living in a new world, thankfully.  I didn’t like the old one and changes had to be made for the sake of everyone.  However, it is nice to take a moment and think about how far we’ve come in just the last year.  The media like those jealous women I mentioned are reluctant to say good things about this president because they have to protect their own institutional investments, but the reality is telling another story, and the evidence is there for all to see.  To present that evidence is why I write—because few other places will and that information needs to get out there so that people can see it.

Rich Hoffman

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?aff...  Use my name to get added benefits.

 

William Bradford’s ‘Of Plymouth Plantation’: How the pilgrims invented capitalism to have the first Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is for me one of the best days of the year, I like it more than I do Christmas because it gets to the heart of things without all the pressure of gift giving.  It is an American holiday like none other in the world and I simply love it.  My feelings about it have been compounded since I was able to stand in the jail cell at the West Gate in Canterbury, England where Robert Cushman was kept due to the crossfire of politics from the Church of England that his puritans were involved in.  It was in that spot where Cushman had decided he and his followers wanted to be free of the constant struggles between the Church and the king to pursue something different, a new life in the recently discovered continent far off to the west across the great ocean to live as they saw fit.  If not for that moment America may never have come to be because the journey they were about to undertake as puritans established a philosophy that took another 100 years to flush out, but eventually became America.  If not for the actions of Robert Cushman in commissioning the Mayflower for that purpose, the settlement of America by the kings of the world would have simply duplicated the failures of Europe.  But Cushman and his Pilgrims did not have the clear lens of history to guide their philosophic advances—all they had was the collectivism typical of religious life and the great work by Plato in his book, the Republic to start with and it is there that our story begins as Americans.  It’s really quite enchanting.

https://fee.org/articles/how-communism-almost-ruined-the-first-thanksgiving/

It wasn’t called communism yet, but the Pilgrim were essentially intent to apply the methods of the kind of collectivism articulated by Plato’s Republic in this New World utopian colony.  Karl Marx wouldn’t call it communism for another two centuries but the plan from Cushman and his crew as chronicled by Governor William Bradford was to essentially operate free of private property and to share the collective wealth of everything produced by the colony.  As fantastic as that might sound to the sentiments of emotion, the reality was quite another thing. The Indians which the pilgrims encountered were of the same type of hive mind approach as the collectivism from their original cultures which were from the Far East reflected the efforts of the early colonists.  But the Indians were not industrialized, they did not know of the markets in Canterbury or the great cathedral there—or anything about the king.  They didn’t build houses like these European settlers.  They had become refugees after the great treasure ships from Zheng He dropped them off all over the world on behalf of emperor Zhu Di.  Some of the Chinese adventurers bred with the great cultures of the Aztec in Mexico, some with the descendents of the Bering Strait migration, some with the Vikings who had been coming for hundreds of years as well.  All these cultures were interacting with what was left of the great culture of giants which had come out of the Middle East thousands of years earlier and all these societies had failed, so there was nothing to indicate that these pilgrims would fare any better.

The great insult that was taught to all of us in our public education experiences was to hide these communist beginnings and to make it sound as though the Indians rescued the colony by teaching them how to farm—as if Cushman and his followers were too stupid to figure out how to care for themselves after they had shown the great ambition to even charter the journey to begin with.  Quite the opposite, the pilgrims were quite smart and hardy.  Even though many of them died within a few years of their journey they were able to think and apply what they learned to the world around them with innovation.  The Indians were watching, they were a culture of nomads who had long ago given up on private property ownership and the result was that they didn’t build houses and conduct all the fancy mathematics which had been common to the Mound Builders of the Midwest—they were content to dedicate their lives to the new goddess of earth, so they had little to do with Thanksgiving except to attend dinner with the pilgrims after the survivors of the new colony had figured out the puzzle which had been hampering the world up to that point.

As William Bradford chronicled in his Of Plymouth Plantation it took a few years but through necessity the pilgrims rejected the concept of communism as Plato had envisioned it and evolved into a free market system.  They were able to do this because they had no institutions to confine them to a set philosophy.  They were free of the ominous pressure of the church and the kings always fighting them for power over the people, the pilgrims were able to create the first free market system of capitalism the world had ever seen.  It was the combination of the industrious nature of the Europeans whom had come from a background of accomplishment—they knew what was possible so they had a foundation of intellect to begin with.  But what made the pilgrim capitalism possible was that they had all the tools to be successful, what they needed was a way to strip away all their institutionalized concepts so that the necessity of survival would surpass their desires to continue as all humans had in every endeavor previously known to mankind and that was to function within the confines of the orthodox, and to be regulated by that commitment.  That was certainly the case with the Vikings, it was also of the giants from the Bible lands, the Chinese were already functioning from the rise and fall of many oriental cultures—and what was left of all of them were the Indians who were just a mix of everyone chained to the superstitions of the past rooted to institutionalized behavior that imprisoned the mind of mankind from the beginning of time.  The pilgrims were making the same mistakes and they were dying off, until they changed course and decided to try something different while they still could.  They invented capitalism.

Once the pilgrims allowed for private property and structured their society on individualized survival they began to see after the first couple of doomed years that their colony was producing a surplus.  For the first time they had more food than they needed, and they were able to take their minds beyond the needs of daily survival—and to think about other things on a grander scale.  This is why there was a first Thanksgiving, because the puritans of the Plymouth colony were able to produce more than they needed resulting in a feast.  As ironic as it may sound, the Pilgrims were able to be successful where others hadn’t because they were smart enough to change their behavior before their failures had become accepted as institutional thinking.  Had they the rigid structure of the church there to enforce their will, or a king to confide them to the patriotism of national order, the pilgrims would have been stuck to the way of thinking which had imprisoned mankind for thousands of years.  But because they had the tools of modern thinking, and literacy, they were able to make adjustments that stepped beyond the thinking of Plato at the time and invent something new—a way of thinking that would launch a new nation.

That is why I love Thanksgiving so much.  I love Black Friday and all the advertisements that come out in the paper that day.  It is appropriate that capitalism is such a big part of our Thanksgiving holiday because it’s not just the food or the friendship with the Indians that made the annual event so special, it was the means to recognize private incentive as the fuel that propelled mankind into the future, for really the first time. The excess that was produced by the early Plymouth colony was a discovery of what human ambition could produce if left alone and not micro managed by institutionalized thinking, such as churches and governments.  And that is why Thanksgiving in America is such a special time, and they never get old. I love every one of them.

Rich Hoffman

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Criticism of ‘Battlefront 2’ is Completely Unwarranted: The challenges of marketing a capitalist product to Marxist losers

Like everything else in politics the level of hate we see today and the way that people react to a little pressure can be blamed on progressive public educations which have pretty much ruined the minds of several generations.  We can see it everywhere, in our entertainment culture, our jobs, and our politics especially; we now have an entire younger generation of Millennials who have such high expectations about everything and not a clue on how to get a happy result.  The entertainment press that is largely made up of these new types of people has control of entire industries through their editorial boards and their footprints in the sand are obvious.  As I said recently in my review of the new Justice League movie, if that film had been released in a different time, it would be considered a miracle of film making.  But today it is ridiculed for not being everything that a collective hive mind could dream of—so it is picked apart by a hostile press hoping to cannibalize the filmmakers like zombies from the latest Walking Dead episode.  I mean when did anybody consider a $93 million dollar opening weekend a problem—ahead of a four-day Thanksgiving weekend where most kids are off school and can go to the theater with their parents?  I mean Justice League is going to be more than profitable for the Warner Bros. studio that distributed it—yet somehow that’s not enough—the expectations by today’s youth is that everything should always increase and if it doesn’t then there are problems.  And that was never more clear than in the recently release of Battlefront 2 and the massive controversy about loot crates which are used to increase the performance and effectiveness of the in-game characters and vehicles used in the massive online Star Wars first person shooter just released a week ago.  The article below will set the stage for just how ridiculous the situation truly is.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-11-20-lucasfilm-reacts-to-star-wars-battlefront-2-loot-crate-controversy

Even though I am normally concerned with much more serious things, I often write a lot about Star Wars and video games because both are a tremendous part of our modern culture.  Without addressing those markets and their influence on modern people, we can’t really claim to be speaking with any relevance to the concerns of our times. In that lens of thought, I find this Battlefront 2 situation very fascinating and direct evidence to the state of our world today, and where it’s going.  But before I can say any more, I have to provide my foundation thoughts on what Battlefront 2 does and is.  As an older person I have watched the industry go from little pixellated dots on the screen of an Atari 2600 to this latest photo realistic offering from Electronic Arts putting players as directly as possible into the role of their favorite Star Wars characters and situations.  I was after all up at midnight the day the new game was released to play it as close to first as possible.  The game came out November 17th yet I had pre-ordered it so was given entry to the experience at midnight November 14th. The moment I started playing it, especially the Starfighter Assault modes which put players in very ambitious dogfights with other live players set in Star Wars environments on a truly epic scale, I was in love with it.  If this game came out with just Starfighter Assault as the offering I would have been amazed, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg, So why all this consternation about loot crates?

Let’s make one thing clear; the purpose of the Battlefront 2 game is to make money.  It makes money by offering a good product to a public that wants what they are selling.  It really isn’t complicated, and without the incentive to make a lot of money, there really is no reason to make such a beautiful game.  I have no doubt that the loot crate idea was hatched based on the Electronic Arts mobile app game called Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes.  It’s a free game, but to really get to the good stuff you either have to play the game a lot, or pay a lot of money-getting the right in-game currency to unlock the things players really want. Like to get the proper number of shards to unlock the members of Phoenix Squadron so that you can fly the Ghost in squadron combat you can pay $99 dollars for a bundle package hoping to get what you need.  In a lot of ways it was like the days of the old Topps movie cards that we could get as kids hoping to get that very special card to collect.  In the case of the Galaxy of Heroes game, a player could literally spend several thousand dollars getting their ranking up to an elite level.  I’ve done pretty well not spending a dime, but I’ve done the work—which is another option.  Based on their internal studies at EA they know that on a game like Battlefront 2 which is much more epic and detailed than a game on a phone app, players will be willing also to spend many thousands of dollars for an elite status that gives them an advantage over other players.  That was unquestionably the original plan with the loot crates in Battlefront 2—and I personally think they are fun.  I’ve only been playing the game a week so far and I find myself wanting to earn enough credits to unlock new cards within the game so that I can boost up my performance when playing against other players.  It’s very much a capitalist system and everyone comes out well in the exchange.

The problem comes from the fact that many people in the world today have been trained to be little socialists and they don’t want to compete against people willing to work harder at something than they are, and they certainly don’t want to compete against people who are willing to “pay to win” as they call it.  There are of course people out there in the world where Battlefront 2 is their calling in life, that’s all they have going on—they don’t have a family to worry about, they may have a cushy job that pays them a lot of money—and they don’t want to waste time on girlfriends and going out into the world to play golf, shoot guns, or even spend a couple thousand dollars on an NFL game, so they spend their money on video games.  If they can drop a few thousand dollars on the Battlefront 2 game to be considered elite at something in their life, they’ll do it and that is a good offering that any video game company could propose in a product.  But the players of these games have this entitled belief that the game somehow belongs to everyone—that Star Wars as a mythological institution is now part of the collective hive mind—and it’s not.  All players are not born equal in the game world, and all people are not equal in real life.  What players are criticizing EA over, and ultimately Disney as a parent company, is that they want to get to what they want in the game faster and without having to spend a lot of money—because the base game can cost up to $80 dollars.

Now to me, it’s a bargain.  I paid $80 dollars for a steak in a restaurant recently, so I have no problem paying that money for such a fun experience, and Battlefront 2 is FUN!  I find it a mild miracle still that I can play such an epic game with players from all over the world any time of day in my living room.  If I were a lazy person and wanted to get an advantage over other players by dropping a lot of money into the game to get more of these “loot crates” I’d have no problem with that option.  I mean a box of ammunition for my .500 magnum costs $65 dollars for just twenty shots. And I go through a box or so every couple of weeks because I like to go shooting at lunch to blow off the stress of my often very hectic days.  There are plenty of people like me that EA is trying to make some money off of so it’s their job to create something in their products to be appealing to me—and getting an advantage over other people is the name of the game.  That’s life.

That’s where the communism and socialism creeps into the discussion.  Star Wars is such a big cultural phenomenon around the world these days that is truly is a global reach for Disney.  They literally have to listen to everyone to market their products to them. And of course around the world especially in Europe, India, Australia, and many other places, people don’t have much money to spend on these kinds of entertainment options.  And young people in America have been so coddled for so long that they don’t think they should even have to work at anything to be able to play a game like Battlefront 2 without being dominated by players who pretty much spend their life on the game, or have purchased in-game bonuses to have an advantage.

As a general rule I don’t look to get an advantage in games by outspending other people.  I consider it a lazy approach—even in life.  I always do the work because if you can beat somebody using inferior equipment at a disadvantage, then you are really doing something—and when I’m in my leisure time having fun, always in the back of my mind is my desire to make myself better.  I don’t do anything to just waste time.  Even playing a phone app like Galaxy of Heroes for me is a way to work my mind strategically toward objectives that are pleasurable.  I may be doing business with VIPs spending money on $80 dollar steaks, but I have no problem taking a break from what I’m doing for a few minutes to run a quick battle on my phone just for the pleasure of winning something, then getting back to work. During the first week that Battlefront 2 was released I put over 60 hours into just the Starfighter Assault mode and I’ve become pretty good at it.  I am actually killing between 8 to 20 other pilots per round—which I expect to double soon—and I’ve earned some nice loot crate specialties that have really increased the performance of my starfighters.  It’s a lot of fun and I find myself often playing the game at 3 AM in the morning.  I stayed up all night two nights in a row last week playing the game because I think its fun.  It’s not as fun as winning in real life is, but I find that by winning in simulated environments that it conditions your mind to winning in real life—where things really count.  So I still love video games whether they are on my PS4 in my living room, or on a mobile app on my iPhone.  I find that games keep you on the balls of your feet staying mentally sharp when you need it most.

But way too many people these days want to just show up and have people give them things.  They want to be equal to everyone else and they want to treat Battlefront 2 as just another game of the week.  There are so many games out there that I can’t possibly play them all.  I’d love to, but I have to pick because I’m a busy guy.  The way Battlefront 2 is designed it seeks to consume as much of your time as possible, and it plans to still be a relevant game two years from now. Ultimately its purpose for the parent company Disney is to keep Star Wars fresh on the minds of their customer base until the next movies come out.  So the companies putting out this massive Battlefront 2 game, production companies like Electronic Arts, Lucasfilm, DICE and many others are always updating the content—and that all takes money.  Games, especially video games these days, are about more than just playing them, they are actual lifestyles—and that’s how they should be.  I find actually any criticism of the game by these cry baby Millennials to be unwarranted.

I personally love Battlefront 2 and I will be playing it often.  Of course my name on the game is Overmanwarrior so if you want to fight me, come and find me there.  If anybody had told me as a kid that I’d have access to something like it on a giant wall sized television with 4K definition and a Bose surround sound system to engulf my senses—I wouldn’t have believed them.  The game is a series of small miracles all culminating into quite an experience.  I think it’s beyond criticism for such a trend setting market that is still figuring out what it is.  The role these video games play in our cultural exchange is nothing short of an explosion of intellect and something Karl Marx never could have imagined.  We are literally in a whole new world—so the criticisms of Marxists, socialists and communists have no place in the discussion at all.  My advice to the makers of these games at EA, Lucasfilm, and Disney is not to listen.  Do your thing and let the chips fall where they may.  You’ll be a lot more profitable in the end, and everyone will be a lot better off.

Rich Hoffman

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