Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 306

Trains in West Chester: The magic and exuberance of a thriving economy

For the second time in my life I had the strange privilege to gain the viewpoint of foreign visitors and their intense interests in American trains.  In America, we take the length of our trains for granted as most of the rest of the world, particularly Europe and the East do not have they type of freight trains that we do in the United States.  But I remember the magic of when my future son-in-law visited over a decade ago how he thought the length of our trains were simply amazing which surprised me because I took them more as a nuisance that was in my way when I wanted to cross a road.  Then over this past week I had visitors from Japan and we were in a new office space that overlooked a very active railroad line that moved through West Chester, Ohio and they were simply amazed by the length and frequency of the trains.  We were working on some very important things, but I had the seating in such a way that they were able to look out the windows, so they had a prime seat for several hours of the day to see how many trains moved along that track in both a north and south direction.

I noticed that they seemed very interested in what was going on outside the window which made me wonder if I had the seating arrangements correct—and after a few days of this they simply asked me how long those trains were.  My reply was that most of them looked to be a mile long—or 1.6 kilometers as they understand it.  Some of the trains were longer clearly.  This information was simply stunning to these guys who spend a lot of time in places like Tokyo and London—even France. The length of American trains told them a lot about our culture and it was worth taking a moment to consider.

I’ve always loved trains—and like a lot of old men who have train sets in their basements, and like to visit the popular tourist destination in West Chester—Entertrainment Junction which features some of the largest model trains in the world—trains have an essence of optimism about them that largely goes unexplored.  We love them, but often don’t understand why.  After visiting Europe recently with this topic fresh on my mind I have some unique thoughts on the matter which might unlock better our understanding of this condition.  From my vantage point in both Japan and England I admired their train systems which was mostly regulated to passenger transportation.  People needed to get someplace fast so they took the train and it worked pretty well.  I was impressed with the complex way the trains ran in England particularly around London.  However, what was missing was the way that trains are used in the United States—you don’t often see the magic of an American train any place else even in places that are supposed to be the most popular and largest cities in the world.

Over the last year I had some very nice lunches in both Tokyo and London over looking their train systems and neither was as impressive as that display in this new office space where I had these Japanese guests.  After all, it was a fabulous spring day on this occasion where my guests were so enamored with the trains going by my window—so we brought in some good ol’ American pizza from Donatos and you’d think I took these people to a 5 star restaurant.  One of these guys had said that during this business trip they wanted to try some authentic American pizza—so you can image the elation that was experienced with a stack of five different pizzas with all different toppings sitting there being enjoyed while watching three, mile long trains all traveling south by our window while having lunch with a brilliant sun pouring in making us enjoy life that much more.  Just a bit beyond the train tracks was the endless energy of the American highway system which was unique also in the world.  Our big cars and trucks pouring endlessly by all day and night was another thing unique to American culture and we sat for about an hour eating our pizza and talking about trains and trucks in a way that impressed me with its philosophic content.

Japan for a small island economy produces about 4.4.trillion dollars a year which is impressive. To achieve that their people work very hard and intensely 365 days a year—you can feel the energy when you land there.  The people are vigorous, industrious, and extremely well-mannered and it shows in what they make.  And England where London is certainly one of the most important financial centers in the world produces somewhere between 2.2 to 3 trillion dollars if you count all the coins in your pockets on a rainy day—to be generous.  You can feel the energy there too—but in both cases, you can tell something is missing from an American perspective.  I knew what it was as I poured garlic sauce all over my nice juicy pizza watching the traffic under that morning spring sun in Ohio—and my guests were getting the gist of it too.  The American economy produces an astonishing 18.5 trillion dollars over a larger land mass, but the effect was clear by counting the trains and trucks up on I-75 going by then multiplying that over the land mass then dividing it by the hours of the day.  What we were looking at was a vibrant economy which was a product of mankind in all its glorious creativity emerging unencumbered by the powerful locomotives pulling freight from the north to destinations in the south.

The trains were a large part of that 18 trillion-dollar economy as some of the cars were double stacked and loaded with product headed toward distribution centers awaiting shipment.  China has a nominal GDP of 11.3 trillion although they have a PPP projection of over 23 trillion this year which equates out to $11-15,000 per pupil.  All that sounds impressive until you consider that they have over 1 billion people and in the United States our per pupil capita is roughly $53,000—quite a bit higher and that’s with 7 million people still unemployed as of this writing.  What we could see from our vantage point looking at trains and highway traffic was a very efficient and productive country making a lot of money and our big trains were a tremendous part of that.  Even the big tractor trailers cruising by down the highways couldn’t move the sheer volume of product that was chugging along by our train system.  And none of us said it at the time, but the American economy has been stagnant for a long time functioning at only a fraction of its potential due to the weaknesses of several decades of American presidents and destructive politics seeking to duplicate Europe instead of continue on with the polices that built America in the first place.

The trains didn’t just represent massive power by the large diesel engines which propelled them—they were aspects of a very powerful economy and contained within them many hopes and dreams which spill over into the enthusiasm that old men who build train sets in their basements share with their grandchildren. It was the length and frequency of those trains that caught the attention of my guests.  It’s one thing to read about the powerful American economy in a trade publication, or to watch a news story about it on television—it’s quite another to see it up close and personal and to see those trains going by our window was to confirm the majestic nature of American capitalism and the land of abundance that it produces.  That’s exactly why we love our trains and they continue to hold a special place in our hearts.  Trains are vital arteries of American capitalism and they continue to be impressive as the world watches jealously at how we took a relatively small country and made it into such an economy powerhouse.  Many can hope through colleges and other liberal institutions to hide just how powerful the American economy is—but when they see our trains—they can’t escape the reality of it.  Trains in America isn’t so much about taking people from one place to another—but in taking big things to large markets for income producing utilization and that is their specific purpose which is truly unique in the world.  And that is a truly majestic concept worthy of all the imagination ushered forth by our human race.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Betrayal of Kirsten Powers: A grim reality surrounding all the women accusing Bill O’Reilly of sexual harassment

I always knew while watching The O’Reilly Factor that Kirsten Powers was bad news.  As a liberal political pundit from USA Today Bill O’Reilly put her on constantly and I often wondered if Bill put up with her because she was having occasional sex with him.  Otherwise, who would put up with that terrible mouth of hers, obviously not her husband whom she was only married to for a short time from 2010 to 2013.  Putting her on Fox News almost every night was dangerous in my opinion and given the way she piled on disrespectfully as Bill O’Reilly was pulled off the air at Fox during an Anderson Cooper interview—my instincts were certainly correct.  She sounded like a train wreck and her motives were clearly exposed.  What I saw speaking to Anderson Cooper was a spiteful woman who was in her middle years and not so cute any more that had pushed away everything good in her life—including Bill O’Reilly and she was resentful.  Ultimately that was the cost of trying to be fair and balanced on Fox—you put on spiteful, aging pundits who want to suddenly make a living without the aid of their youthful beauty—and they are scared.

And the same could be said of the several women who accused Bill O’Reilly and specifically Fox News for sexual harassment. Egged on by Media Matters behind the scenes and many liberal activists—the women took every opportunity to swipe at the older generation men who ran Fox News in an effort to make the place more progressive—and ultimately more like the other loser networks in competition—overly concerned with silly PC culture and modern nonsense that will be out of fashion with the very next generation.  What you find at the bottom of the complaints are a bunch of women who were fine to make good livings off their looks—but now that they are arriving at those middle ages where estrogen doesn’t come so naturally and skin wrinkles don’t look so good on 4K 70” televisions—a new generation of younger women doing just as they did twenty years ago is coming along and pushing them out of a job—and women like Kirsten call that “sexual harassment.”  I call it getting old.

If you peel the onion away that’s all that is really going on with the sexual harassment claims against Fox News. The women used their looks to get into the doors at Fox then they changed the rules of engagement mystifying the older men who came from a time when you could call women “blonds” even when they artificially dyed their hair to increase their supernormal sign stimuli to evoke the image.  The women’s complaints against O’Reilly and Fox News specifically are only defined by Obama era politics as harassment, when at any time prior or likely in the future will be considered normal human interaction.  The real hope of liberal ladies like Kirsten Powers is to stay relevant into her 50s so people will still want to listen to her without the visual quality behind someone who might lure men to sleep with them for attention.  Because lets face it, that was the only reason Bill put her on Fox News.  Whether or not he had occasional sex with any of these women it was important for the audience to wonder about such things because that’s what drove the ratings.  Nobody wanted to hear what Kirsten had to say from a fair and balanced point of view.  They wanted to think about what she looked like naked and in suggestive sexual positions.  Surely Kirsten understood that when she came on The O’Reilly Factor many times.

Women watch The View during the day, and other shows geared toward women—and that’s the only way that garbage heaps like Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar can make it in modern television—by bitching and squawking like a bunch of hungry baby birds that were knocked out of their nest during a heavy storm. People feel sorry for them, the might actually listen—but they aren’t going to change their behavior patterns—they’ll just watch.  Yet to the wider audience which might include men—there is no appeal.  Men and women are still and will always be—men and women.  Men biologically want to have sex with women and women will always look for ways to make their assets work to their advantage.  And that only works for them pre-menopausal.  After that, they become spectators in the games of life.  That may seem vicious, but take it up with God, because it’s the design of the universe.

Even knowing all this however it was shocking to hear Kirsten speak out so blatantly against Bill O’Reilly. I watched her so many times come on his show and eat out of his hand all the while I knew she was a nasty person waiting for a moment to strike like a snake. I used to tell my wife anytime she appeared that she reminded me of spit—because that’s just what she reminded me of.  The way she spoke, the way she made eye contact—her politics—virtually everything about her evoked something you’d want to spit out of your mouth—not put in it.  It actually made me trust O’Reilly less because he had her on so much.  I figured he was either having sex with her, or wanted to.  But so what?  Kirsten got exposure she never would have otherwise obtained—which she’ll never get again and she should be grateful.

In the demise of Fox News, these women accusers had some air time on all the major networks rejoicing that their rival had one of its major stars knocked off a prime time slot. But those same women have labeled themselves for life as a pain in the ass so we won’t see them again.  Kirsten is certainly done.  She might be praised now, but she’s still a woman approaching 50 who won’t be desired to be on television.  She may still write for USA Today for a while, but nobody is going to want to see her face or hear that terrible noise that comes out of her liberal mouth.  Because people tune into Fox not to see O’Reilly, or the hot chicks he had on as pundits—they are just visual icing for the cake.  They want conservative viewpoints on the news of the day.  Anybody else can come along and do the same job and if Fox moves into an even more progressive direction—some upstart will take over what they do now—because ultimately the audience is in charge—not the networks.  And nothing in the world can make people tune into a show they don’t want to watch to see a wrinkled up Kirsten Powers utter liberal nonsense.  They might put up with it to have her flirt with them as a youthful woman—but not as a serious political commentator.  There are plenty of ugly people who already do that work—one more used up old woman won’t change the conditions of the marketplace.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Decline of Fox News: Why not standing behind Bill O’Reilly makes them a bunch of pussies on their way out

It’s not Bill O’Reilly or Roger Ailes at Fox News who changed, it was the world run by these modern and very confused feminists. It’s those same people pleasuring themselves with a copy of Fifty Shades of Gray in one hand while gazing at their iPads and reading the headline to the New York Post this morning, “The No Job Zone,” enjoying the fact that Fox News cut ties with Bill O’Reilly over sexual harassment allegations.  The extreme progressives who made this new generation of neurotic feminist activists think that by taking down Fox News that they can stop the direction of the world when in fact they couldn’t be further from the truth.  Even though I’ve watched The O’Reilly Factor for roughly 20 years, I’ve often felt the show was entirely too moderate and that a dramatic shift to the traditional political right was badly in need.  Even though the O’Reilly Factor had great numbers in cable news, it was still only 4 million viewers a night.  And while it’s true that Bill O’Reilly has been a bestselling author at the top of the New York Times list for over a decade—his footprint of influence is limited to a relatively small national audience.  Getting rid of Bill O’Reilly won’t bring back the days of Obama simply because people like Alex Jones and Mark Levine seen below in a marvelous discussion on socialism in America have been rapidly gaining in popularity.  Bill O’Reilly wasn’t willing to go that far to the right and the world was starting to pass him up—and at 68 or 69—whatever he is, retirement or a complete job change was already in order just to stay relevant.  So losing The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News won’t change anything.  It won’t make Donald Trump lose his presidency, and it certainly won’t stop the slide that Democrats are finding in their political party.  It is simply chasing a ghost that when you grab for it suddenly isn’t there anymore.  When it comes to Rupert Murdoch, his kids aren’t as smart as he was, and he is an old man now—turning things over to idiots who are too much a part of New York progressive society—and still give The New York Times relevancy.

If you ever watch daytime television geared toward women, you can see clearly the problem. Several generations of women have been hard-boiled into European socialism, and feminism, yet their biological instincts are telling them something else and they are all over the map.  Not that long ago I was at a television studio with a couple of very attractive twenty something on-air personalities and when they were in the presence of an alpha male—the responded like school girls waiting to be asked to the prom, which was a purely biological response to the mating customs of human beings.  The more refined parts of our nature—the fact that I’m married, and that they were young professionals kept everything on the up and up—but clearly if we didn’t maintain a certain layer of civility our conversations would have quickly spiraled into something that Bill O’Reilly was accused of—such as calling one of his guests “hot chocolate.”  Such things might be appropriate if the subtext of the interaction had some power climbing flirting going on—but later depending on how things went—the definitions could be changed to garner a different approach to the desired outcome—which is usually the acquisition of power by using feminine charms.

Ugly women hate that attractive women have an advantage over them in this category. It drives them crazy that a perky little former model might get someone like Bill O’Reilly to slap her on the ass so she can get a top job somewhere within the organization—because it’s unlikely they will get the same opportunity.  So as feminists they desire to level the playing field so that they can have a top job in entertainment too.  But what they forget is that people don’t like to see ugly people on television, and whatever show they get on will likely tank.  It wouldn’t be Roger Ailes fault—it’s the fault of their ugliness.  Not that anybody can do anything about being ugly—but it is a factor in television.  As it is always in entertainment when you put attractive young people in a room with powerful producers—men or women—mating customs and business practices get crossed—just as it did with the Access Hollywood tape that was meant to bring down Trump.

The proper thing for Bill O’Reilly to have done in the case of Fox News was to just blow it off—maybe even say that he “wanted to tag that ass,” or something to that effect and move on. And Fox News should have stood by him understanding that if they caved on this issue, they’d be expected to cave on every issue henceforth.  The Fox News formula obviously has been to put attractive women into anchor spots, show a little cleavage, flirt with the camera while attractive alpha males in most cases did the hard news.  Of course, progressive stations like MSNBC and CNN were upset by it because they couldn’t compete.  Who wants to look at Racheal Maddow?  The hope they all have is that now Fox News will be forced to live by the same rules as the other progressive networks now that O’Reilly is gone—but that is not what’s going to happen.

This trend of hating everything that “white males” are a part of is getting old and is already swinging back the other way politically. So attacking traditional male roles in society by extreme feminists who really don’t know what they want to be in life won’t deliver our society to some wonderful Utopia.  Biologically, women love to be around powerful, strong men, and strong alpha men know how to read the signs of flirtation when it’s tossed in their face.  And you can bet that it can be very hard to tell the difference if you are one of those “powerful white males.”

Honestly, I take it as a personal assault when I see attacks against people like Bill O’Reilly and Donald Trump because I too am a white male with an inclination toward alpha maleness. I don’t go around rubbing it in, but I am most happy in a room where I’m the leader and everyone else does what I tell them too—as an aspect of my nature.  Women typically do what they’ve done for millions of years—they recognize that and they find a way to navigate.   If they challenge me directly they’ll get the same treatment that other males get—and often women are better at using other skills to avoid direct conflict with me.  And that’s how these things happen to the old timers like Bill O’Reilly, Donald Trump, and Roger Ailes.  A young hot woman might plop herself into their laps and make sexual advances through flirtation but turn off the advances at a strategic time hoping to use modern progressive definitions to keep them from getting dirty—but still using their bodies to advance their careers. (cough………Megan Kelly)  That likely happened on the set of the O’Reilly Factor all the time—young women looking for a break flirting with old man O’Reilly so they could get their book mentioned, or maybe even get a job at Fox News on a permanent biases.  Then to make matters worse, modern progressives—especially the drooling feminists—hope to erase the whole event by pushing “white men” out of “the business” hoping to hide what they did to get themselves into professional positions.  But they can’t hide it—because everyone knows and these modern progressives can’t hide the nature of biology.  There will always be alpha, “white” males, and there will always be “betas” who are willing to do anything to advance their careers—and those betas come in all sexes and colors.  They do not discriminate because flattery works at any level.

My life won’t change because Bill O’Reilly isn’t on the air anymore and likely I’ll watch Fox News a lot less. That is their problem.  But I’m not going to switch to CNN or NBC.  Likely, it will be more Alex Jones and Mark Levine—those types of people because they better represent my personality type.  Progressives had their eye on O’Reilly as a target but little did they know that he kept people from getting their news from harder political right sources—so Bill O’Reilly helped them—he didn’t hurt them.  O’Reilly’s audience won’t change to the left—they’ll drift more to the right and that’s not what these idiots had in mind when they went after Fox News with sexual harassment claims to sink the careers of Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly.  When they tried it with Trump—he was the only one who behaved properly.  “Yeah, I said what I said….so what.”  And as “white males” who are powerful because that’s what we’re inclined to do, we should learn a lesson from this Bill O’Reilly situation.  Next time don’t apologize—or change your behavior to appease the progressive mixed up modern feminists.  Because they don’t know what they are doing and are acting against their biological natures.  That is a truth no law in the land can avoid acknowledging.  Women still like to be told they are pretty and its often right to tell them so out of politeness.  If they come at you with a sexual harassment lawsuit, then in the future don’t hold the elevator open for them when they come asking for your autograph.  But never apologize for being true to your nature.  And if they fire you from your job, then move on and be successful elsewhere and let them choke on their bad decision—which is what will eventually happen to Fox News on the dying platform of cable programming.  It’s just a matter of time, and I won’t lose one moment of sleep over it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Value in Judging Other People: How a McDonald’s employee prevented murder

 

Steve Stevens, the cold-blooded murderer from Cleveland who killed an innocent man on Easter Sunday claiming to be emotionally deficient after breaking up with his girlfriend was in Erie, Pennsylvania ordering a 20 piece chicken nugget meal at McDonald’s. There a drive-thru employee spotted Stevens and after taking his money notified police.  The McDonald’s staff tried to stall the killer at the pick-up window, but the fugitive knew something was up and fled the scene without his French Fries.  Police were quick to get there and give chase leaving Stevens with no choice but to take his own life, just as the inmate murderer Aaron Hernandez just did hours after. When the law painted these thugs into a corner where there was no other option left to them—they simply killed themselves—which is a good thing.  The former professional football player facing life in prison hung himself knowing that his life was ruined forever for the murders he committed, and this Steve Stevens guy knew that the Facebook testimony he gave would see him convicted of murder for sure—so he shot himself in his car before authorities could arrest him.  The whole event was set off by a McDonald’s employee who was keenly aware of what was happening in the world.   Bravo.

http://www.abc15.com/news/national/mcdonalds-employee-recognized-steve-stephens-as-he-was-ordering-at-drive-thru

And that is really how crime is fought—by individuals doing the good work of observing their environments and taking action when necessary. Luckily in this case the citizen action didn’t require guns, but sometimes it may.  However by having eyes and ears on the ground level, police were able to pin down Stevens and force him to take his own life—which makes everyone happy.  Our society saves the money of prosecuting the loser, and further killings were avoided as this guy was obviously spiraling downhill fast.  If Stevens hadn’t been arrogant enough to go through a McDonald’s drive thru, there is no telling how long the ordeal would have transpired.  And in this case it was a slam dunk of a case—but if he had to be prosecuted the cost would have been enormous to the state of Ohio—and the media frenzy would have been very distracting.  Things are much better this way—with him killing himself.

The Aaron Hernandez case was never in question, yet it took the former Patriots tight-end turned murderer years to move through all the legal gates to arrive at his sentencing and eventual fate in a single cell prison. Once there and all the means of appeal exhausted, he had no other choice but to kill himself, which if he had done so sooner would have helped everyone out.  Hernandez committed a horrific crime, and there was no question of his guilt during the trail—and we could have all saved a lot of money if we had removed the hope he had of getting away with it.  If he had committed suicide years ago the entire legal profession would have been less strained.  But here’s the problem, there are so many parasites who work in the legal profession that make a lot of money off long celebrity trials like Aaron Hernandez’s case—that justice is not the objective—milking the crime for all that can be obtained is.

If this Facebook killer—Steve Stevens had been arrested, the same kind of long legal proceeding would have occurred—it would have taken years to get that guy in jail convicted for life. And if he turned out to be a death penalty case—he would have cost the state of Ohio many millions of dollars of maintenance for the next twenty years until the justice system could finally enact the penalty. But when the threat of quick justice is present it certainly puts pressure on fugitives from justice to either escape or to kill themselves before someone else beats them to it.  So without that McDonald’s employee’s sharp eyes, this terrible ordeal would have prolonged for many more years unnecessarily.

Citizen action is paramount to our free republic. Without it, we cannot have justice in the world.  You have to engage suspicious people and to always question intentions.  This of course goes against the progressive tendency against passing judgment on other people.  It is in fact our ability to judge that makes us a civilized nation.  For instance, if that McDonald’s employee had not judged that the drive-thru customer handing her money might be the killer of the elderly person from Cleveland on Easter Sunday, the killer would have driven away and he’d still be free to terrorize people.  But that’s not what happened.  The McDonald’s employee passed judgment on the physical features of Steve Stevens, the kind of car he was driving, the manner of his voice, the amount of eye contact that he made—and she acted accordingly.  That is the first line of defense in our society—judgment.  And when we pass judgment on bad guys, they often don’t expect to deal with civilians as part of their antagonism, or their escape plans.  It is absolutely true that a well-armed population in America prevents many lunatics like this Steve Stevens murderer from stepping into a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and doing what they desire unimpeded.  There is no way that America as a vast rural landscape could ever hope that the police might defend each and every person.  Just like with all the police, FBI, and CIA that are out there spying on us constantly with input from the NSA and Homeland security, they can’t prevent us from harm.  They can discourage bad guys from doing bad things, but when people like Steve Stevens or Aaron Hernandez who realize that if they wanted to, they could pluck off a large part of society on a whim and nobody could do anything about it.  When people get involved and the bad guys are put on television complete with social judgment against them—there is no place for such people to go—not even a McDonald’s in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Villains depend on people to be terrified of them and to rely on the inefficient “state” to evoke justice. They also require that good people hide their thoughts from the court of public opinion so that progressive insurgents can hopefully get them off the hook when they do commit crime—which was the hope of Aaron Hernandez.  Once his fate was eventually sealed and he had to admit to himself that he was no O.J. Simpson—and that he was going to do hard time for the rest of his life—he killed himself—and for that we are all better off.  Steve Stevens was at least smart enough to know that the legal system would chew him up and spit him out because of the vast testimony he provided against himself—himself. The reason that statists and criminals alike push for society not to “judge” is so that they can roam about unmolested harming anybody they wish whenever they wish.  That’s also why those same people are against personal ownership of firearms.  However, when each and every citizen in the United States has the right to a firearm—and the power of judgment between right and wrong in their arsenal of living—they are very dangerous to bad guys.  And even a worker at McDonald’s can be a hero with just their judgment as their weapon and the courage to act on instinct.  That is how justice is enacted in the most efficient way possible.  People need to be involved, personally.  The cops are there to build a case.  They can’t always be there to prevent harm from happening and that must be understood in any civil society.  You can’t drive evil from the world with good intentions and a progressive education.  You need guns and people who are able to judge good from evil.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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What Causes Factories to Die: The benefit of a good work ethic

Something strange occurred while my wife and I were trying to get to the Kings Island Gold Pass preview night last Friday night. Back in my twenties when we lived in Mason I worked at several of the area manufacturing opportunities, but since moving back to Liberty Township, we really only come back to the area to visit the Fields Ertle shopping district, or to go to Kings Island.   But because the traffic was so terrible at Kings Island that night I had to take a bunch of side roads to escape and return home because there was no way of getting into the amusement park because it was obviously saturated with people trying to get in on a beautiful Friday spring night.  That brought me out on Route 42 by the Huston Restaurant then across the street to a little road that would take me back into Liberty Township along the Mitsubishi Plant. It was there that I saw that a large manufacturing plant that I had spent a lot of time in was up for sale, and that shocked me—even through Worthington Custom Plastics had sold off their automotive division way back in 1999.  It was just at that moment 18 years later that I had driven by that building once again—and that place was something I could have never imagined seeing empty.

We were in our late twenties and in need of a lot of money as we were raising children. My wife was homeschooling our children mostly.  They did attend Mason schools back then, but we didn’t like the job they were doing, so she took care of most of the deprogramming as a house wife.  I fully supported that kind of thing, but on the weekends to make extra money we had two Door Store routes that we delivered—which was a kind of coupon newspaper that we delivered door to door.  We’d pick up the papers on Friday night then spend the weekend rolling them into plastic bags which we delivered on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings.  That job alone took up most of our weekend together and was a lot of hard work.  But it was an independent way to make the money we needed. But that wasn’t our main income—it was my job at Worthington Custom Plastics that was.  I worked there an astonishing 16 hours per day through the weekdays and every single weekend from 4 PM to midnight.  Most of my work there was on overtime and I worked on the big projects, particularly the Corvette facias which were made completely with injected plastic at that Mason facility.  From there they went to the Bowling Green Corvette manufacturing facility for installation and I sometimes had to go there for quality audits.  I was very busy and I was making a lot of money doing something that was very important—and my wife and I were literally working every minute of our lives on something.  When I hear kids complaining about being overworked these days with a 50 hour work week I look at them like they are social rejects because honestly, we worked much harder and still enjoyed our lives.  So they have nothing to complain about.

The only time that Worthington facility shut down and we turned off the lights was for Thanksgiving and Christmas. All other times of the year that big plant ran all around the clock all week long.  Now I knew what was coming even back then.  They were paying me enormous amounts of money to do general manufacturing work which was cutting into their margins big time. Good workers were hard to find, so they let me work all I wanted.  But in business, that is throwing good money into bad practices and it eventually caught up with them.  Within a few years of my employment there they announced that they were selling their automotive division.  But by then I had obtained a job at Cincinnati Milacron working on precision machines and I never looked back at Worthington—or what had become of them.  Even though we go as a family to Kings Island all the time which is very near Worthington’s old plant, I never drove by it—but around it except for that nice spring day in 2017.  It was strange to see that old vibrant place completely dead and for sale.  Something which had provided so many jobs to so many people was just sitting there a dead plant.

Most people go to their jobs and do their work never really thinking of what it takes to make a business work, or how close to the precipice of becoming extinct their jobs really are. They complain around the water cooler about their bosses and everyone thinks they can do a better job.  But they never do, they never get involved in the management side of things and if things go bad, they simply get another job.  I was never like that.  I always wanted to help management be successful—even when I was too young to be taken seriously.  And I really wanted Worthington Custom Plastics to succeed and I felt it could if only I worked harder—which was always in the back of my mind.  Part of the reason I left was that it had the feeling that it was going to run itself into the ground—even though when I did go to Milicron it seemed like that would never happen. The place was just too busy.  But a business cannot operate at negative margins for long, and employees should appreciate the health of whatever company they are working for so to prevent such things from happening to them in the future.

These days it’s my job to make sure that a company doesn’t find themselves in the same fate as Worthington. Even though I say the same things that I’ve always said, now I’m old enough that people actually listen—and they are better off for it.  But seeing a big vibrant company like the one I worked at in my twenties gone the way it was, reminded me of how close almost every company out there really is toward their own extinction.  A good healthy company is something everyone should strive for even if you are an employee that only pushes a broom.  Good jobs should never be taken for granted.  I worked at Worthington doing 96 hours per week for two years.  One the weekends my wife and I delivered Door Stores an additional 20 hours per week.  On a typical Saturday I got off at midnight from Worthington and my wife and I delivered Door Stores until 4 AM.  We rewarded ourselves with White Castles from Fields Ertle Road.  We got up at 8 AM then did our walking route through downtown Mason until 2 PM.  We’d grab lunch then I went to work at 4 PM—and that was my weekend.  During the week, it was 16 straight, go home, take a shower, sleep, then I’d go back.  And I did that for two straight years without complaint.  Later the same year that I moved to Milicron we got dinged by the IRS for not paying enough self-employment tax on our Door Store route.  So to pay off our taxes I took a night job at Wendy’s by Kings Island and I worked there for another three years to pay off our tax burden to the IRS while working 60 hours a week at Cincinnati Milicron.

It is just something to consider when you are working somewhere that you should do everything you can to keep that company alive—and not take it for granted that it will always be there. Places of business are like living beings, they have to be fed and maintained in a healthy fashion, otherwise they die.  And it was sad to see Worthington Custom Plastics in Mason dead.  But it was.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

‘Star Wars’ Land Updates: Toy guns and realistic play contribute greatly to a healthy, and sane life

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I know there are a lot of big things going on in the world, but from my perspective, some of the most important are happening in Orlando, Florida with the Star Wars Celebration.  The reason is that one of my favorite topic is human cultures, their influences, and how they vary from region to region and I see Star Wars as one of the greatest positive contributors to the future of our human race, psychologically, philosophically, religiously, and scientifically.  It’s a fun topic but under it all I see the potential for tremendous opportunities in the future.  And as we celebrated Easter at my house and I went out to Target and bought up a bunch of Star Wars Nerf guns for the kids to play with on a really nice Sunday in Ohio I watched the footage of the Imagineers at Disney World conducting their Galaxy in the Making update on their two Star Wars themed worlds to be opened in Orlando and Anaheim during 2019.   Check out what they have in store.

I love guns—everything from my favorite .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum to the Star Wars Nerf guns.  My mom bought me for the fun of it a little Cassian Andor Nerf pistol which I wrote about during the Christmas of 2016 because I was deeply impressed with it.  When I was a kid, I loved the Star Wars guns, but they didn’t shoot anything.  That didn’t stop my brother and I from playing war all the time.  There were several years of my youth that playing war with the kids who lived near me was my favorite thing to do and if I had the guns that kids today can buy at Target and Wal-Mart I would literally have been in Heaven.  Star Wars for me was always about gunfights and being able to play some of those gunfights in real life which was just great.  Knowing all the kids were coming over for Easter I stopped by Target to buy their specific Cassian Andor sniper rifle which is just something special.  It has a clip that holds 12 shots which can be fired as fast as you can pull the trigger.  The trigger pull activates a cool little internal light that charges up your glow in the dark Nerf darts and they come out of the gun’s barrel looking like tracer fire.  The gun fires off compressed air generated by a fan which takes away some of the mechanical aspects that might complicate a real AR-15.  The gun operates much better than I would have guessed.  We had a lot of fun with that gun after our Easter Egg hunt.  I now have a nice collection of these Nerf guns and am a real fan.

But the guns and other toys available to kids these days are just part of the Star Wars experience.  The fun is in being able to play in real life what you mythologically experience through the movies.  And as I’ve said, these days the options are much better than what I had when I was a kid.  For instance, my favorite toy when I was a child was my Han Solo “Empire Strikes Back” version blaster which made a whine sound when you pulled the trigger.  The gun itself wasn’t very impressive because it just made a noise—and not a very good noise at that.  But we’re talking 1980 when I had that gun, yet what it symbolized to me was very special.  However, I just bought the Han Solo Nerf Blaster from the Force Awakens and it is very impressive.  These new Nerf guns not only make great blaster noises that sound like what they do in the movies, but they really shoot.  To get both functions to happen seamlessly is part of the magic of these new toys.  What they are talking about doing down in Orlando at Disney World is something that is certainly next step exciting.  If blasters and games from Star Wars are enhancing the kind of imaginative activities that take place at home—those big theme parks have to go well beyond what the movies can offer, and that’s what they are going to do with Star Wars at Hollywood Studios and Disneyland at Anaheim.

When I first started talking about these new Star Wars Lands at the Disney Parks I was very excited about this because as I said then, many new scientists and philosophers will have their imaginations explode in those places.  Yet, what they are doing with Star Wars Land is far beyond what even I imagined. They are going for a full experience here and that’s a game changer for all amusement parks.  The Disney and Lucasfilm employees in charge of this project are really bringing us the future in every category and the results will be jaw dropping.  We’re talking about full scale spaceships like the Millennium Falcon sitting around that people can see and touch. Imperial Walkers in full scale excitement—a new lightsaber technology that will be patented and developed for Disney World—this is very exciting.  Imagination is now merging with real science to tell stories which evoke leaps in further technological develop which we will eventually find in our daily lives.  Ideas are born in such places and that’s what makes them important for discussion.  The people attending the Star Wars Celebration in Orlando are movie geeks.  But the product of their enthusiasm eventually advances our culture because they spend a lot of money on Star Wars products and Disney reinvests that money in new ways to keep them coming back.  But in the process, they all unlock the human potential available to our species, and that is a beautiful thing.

I know a lot of people.  Some of them are big shots in the world—and some of them run comic book stores and spend all their time escaping in fantasy environments.  I’m not some dude living on a mountaintop in the Rocky Mountains who is out of touch with reality—quite the opposite, and honestly I am probably one of the sanest people alive in the world.  My mental health is excellent.  I can’t imagine anybody being healthier than me and I became that way playing with guns all of my life.  And my first experience with guns came from Star Wars.  Later it came from the great westerns of our movie culture—which eventually migrated into what Star Wars became.  Just like our first five years of life where all we do is play, adults do best when they continue playing well into their mature years—because that’s how we learn as people.  And what Disney is doing at their theme parks with Star Wars is a chance to make play a part of our lives in ways never done before.   And there is nothing wrong with that.

Sure Star Wars is about war, and guns, and people dying.  But it’s about ideas and optimism too and moving beyond the things that scare us.  Guns are the first step in that journey because once you learn to master them, you learn not to be afraid and new ideas can then come to your life.  So the toy guns, the light sabers and confronting villains is a part of our life within Star Wars and making it more real only makes the myth making that much more powerful.  The more playing we do in this realm of overcoming our fears—the better we all are and that is precisely what Disney is creating at its theme parks and I think it’s just riveting.  I am very much looking forward to the new Star Wars Land opening up.  But in the meantime, I think I’ll enjoy the Nerf guns and play Star Wars with my grandchildren as much as possible!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

Don’t Worry about World War III with North Korea: Its about economics, not firepower and that stupid fat kid doesn’t have any money

It didn’t surprise me at all that the North Korean missile test blew up just off the launch pad.  There is technology that allows for that kind of thing. Kim Jong-un’s military show that was on display during the 105th birthday celebration looked like just that, a 30-year-old grandson who didn’t know what century he was in.  As a country North Korea is about as far behind as anyone on earth.  The people of North Korea are essentially victims of the movie, The Village where through their educations and state-run television have no idea what’s going on in the outside world they or what the abilities other countries around the world might posses.  They are taught to worship the ruling family of North Korea with a cult-like effort which looks incredibly pathetic when it is shown on full display.  Strategically speaking, North Korea has already lost this new war with the world—particularly the United States, and I said so yesterday which provoked a comment from a person who had some thoughtful things to say.  This commentator shown below holds a belief that many people around the world continue to entertain—that the United States is on the precipice of war and that World War III could break out at any moment.  So Instead of answering that guy directly, I’ll do it below to share with the class.

Attacking North Korea would potentially start WW3 and that would not be good for anybody let alone the USA. Not all dope smoking Americans are progressive liberals looking to destroy America from the inside out but instead hardworking, free thinking individuals that want to see America thrive and prosper all the while not always meddling in things that do not concern us. Just an outsiders opinion

Rolltide

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/853583417916755968

Here’s the big secret that nobody wants you to know dear reader—including China and Russia who are the supposed super powers in today’s world.  Socialism and communism have destroyed most of the world’s economies—particularly in North Korea which is completely dependent on foreign resources.  China has used North Korea as kind of a barking dog to keep tensions high for a throwback war so that they would have negotiating leverage with other countries who didn’t know any better.  North Korea in such circumstances is like having that sign in your window that says “beware of dog.”   But really, the dog is a toothless, lazy concoction of flesh when you get to know it—and in North Korea’s case, this isn’t the same country that America fought during the early 50s.  The only thing that will happen is that Korea will try to bolster its world profile and America will keep embarrassing them to the point where the people on the inside of the country will begin to lose faith and North Korea will collapse from the inside out.  There won’t be a World War III—so don’t worry about it.

Like most things in life the entire issue comes down to capitalism and socialism.  America is a rich country not out of luck—but because it has an economic philosophy that is conducive to wealth creation.  But nobody else on the world stage has anything close—so they can’t fight a war.  Wars are expensive and the most terrifying aspect of the MOAB which was dropped into Afghanistan last week is not its raw power to create a blast radius that was a mile wide—it was its cost to manufacture.  It was circulated by Glenn Beck and many other anti-Trump pundits that the MOAB cost $314 million each—which of course the Trump White House allowed to circulate.  The actual cost is $170,000 but Kim Jong-un doesn’t need to know that because his country or any other around the world wouldn’t be able to produce one—so by the time he could buy one, it would end up costing him almost the entire GDP of North Korea.  So let them think it cost that much because the psychological warfare is much more potent than the actual blast. Even if they wanted to, North Korea doesn’t have enough GDP to fight a war with one American state—let along the entire country.  So there won’t be any fighting, because nobody can afford it—but the United States.

The world wants to still think they are all relevant at the United Nations and on the stage of world affairs—but they aren’t because they have artificially limited their economies over the last five decades to the point where they have nothing to fight with.  It was part of a global strategy of disarmament that all countries participated in to some extent, but the end result has been extreme limits on financial excess and that is what Trump’s White House is able to exploit now.  We promised to defend Japan from North Korean aggressions, so Trump moved in a naval fleet between the two countries which allows for countermeasures in case of another North Korean missile launch.  But honestly, it is possible now to win such a war without even firing a shot—because science thrives in rich countries—and the USA has a lot of science.  We could make it so that North Korea might never fire another shot outside their country with science.

Kim Jong-un never had to face such an embarrassment and his country really can’t endure a public relations challenge from the United States.  The old tricks simply won’t work.  Nobody is afraid of the toothless dog, or the sign in the window.  Everyone knows that North Korea could easily be wiped off the map just by cutting off their resources from China.  Trump played the right cards and will force China to cut off North Korea—so there will never be a World War III.  All North Korea has is some missiles and ground troops that are totally irrelevant in today’s fighting.  They have no money.  North Korea’s total GDP for 2015 when Kim Jong-un was in his hey-day of 28 years old was a measly $25 billion dollars.  Donald Trump himself has a personal worth of half that—and there are many other billionaires in the United States worth more than that.  North Korea is that little distraction that would-be hostile nations like to hide behind.

Sceptics claim North Korea's deadly weapons are actually 'painted wooden boxes' https://t.co/tgKlqQftyy

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) April 16, 2017

They have given North Korea resources so that they could use them as a shield to their own aggressions—so long as North Korea was out there rattling sabers, countries like Russia, China and Iran could slide under the radar of attention.  But before Trump’s 100th day in office the threat of North Korea has already been diffused—no country that only produces $25 billion of GDP is going to be in a war with the United States.  There is more value in United States assets sitting in the South China Sea right now than the entire economy of North Korea and in the United States we don’t even notice it. The average person has no idea where North Korea even is—and they certainly haven’t a care in the world about battleships and aircraft carriers stationed there ready to protect Japan from aggressions.  They might if there were steel rations like there were in World War II, but the American economy is so much stronger now than it was back then.  We could have a war with the world and people in America wouldn’t even know it, because the abundance of our production means would keep personal sacrifices off their minds and that’s what’s different now than say 50 to 60 years ago.

Kim Jong-un is fighting his grandfather’s war and back then such displays of military might would have terrified military generals.  But not any more.  “Left of launch” strategies can keep North Korean missiles from ever leaving their launch pads and now that the United States is off the coast, that 30-year-old fat kid who is running North Korea is caught in precarious situation.  Trump will make a fool of the kid and what happens in the wake of that is that the world won’t have any use for Kim Jong-un anymore forcing them out in the open—and the North Korean people will realize that their leader isn’t the “god on earth” that they learned about in their public educations.   He’s just a stupid fat kid who inherited his grandfather’s tiny little communist plot of land on the Korean peninsula—that is bankrupt.  And once North Korea is stripped away, it forces all the countries that have been hiding behind it out into the open.  So there won’t be any World War III.  There is nothing to fear from the American vantage point.  Because this war isn’t about missiles, troops and airplanes—it’s about economics—and North Korea simply doesn’t have the resources to even think about fighting.  And those are the facts.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

Beating the Drums of War: Time to take North Korea away from the stupid fat kid

Obviously I’m not a dope smoking libertarian who wants the United States to be a live and let live Constitutional Republic which allows for the legalization of pot and ignores threats around the world hoping everyone just behaves. While I like the Constitutional Republic part I am an expansionist—I think the world would be a lot happier if they’d just become another state in the United States.  They can keep their integrity and culture so long as the pledge allegiance to our flag.  The world is simply too small now to allow lunatics of theocracy like Iran, North Korea, and Syria to host tyrannical dictators.  I knew what I was getting with Donald Trump and he’s doing exactly what I wanted him to do—flexing the muscle of American military around the world fixing the numerous problems that 28 years of weak American presidents let brew out of control.  I understand that the only way to get to the kind of prosperity America enjoyed in the past is to be the top dog on the world stage—and we should be.  We are the best country with the best ideas and we are open to sharing those ideas with places not so fortunate.  But the bad guys need to be taken out-of-the-way.

I’ve written and written, and written about the effects of Socialist International around the world and how dominate it is really everywhere.  Russia has a former KGB agent from their communist days as their president and China is an all out communist nation.  Europe is all diseased with socialism and all the poor countries of Indochina are rotten with communism.  Stop by Cambodia sometime and walk the streets and 12-year-old girls will throw themselves at your feet offering sex because that’s the only way they can make enough money to eat.  The same in Kenya, Vietnam and the east European nations still trying to develop economies after the collapse of Russia—the world is unstable and many people are suffering for it.  So the grim reality is that nobody in the world is a reliable trading partner with the United States until these problems are solved.  The biggest difference with Trump is that he’s not in love with United Nations group hugs approach.  He’s fine to let NATO and the UN ride on America’s back as long as they shut up and do what he says.  The minute they don’t, they lose their United States funding and they’ll drown with the rest of Europe.  That is the Trump message to the world and as my representative, that’s what I sent him to Washington to do, along with about a 1000 other little things.

America can’t have peace so long as North Korea and many other countries empowered by the 20th Century failed experiments of social engineering remain alive—and that means cleaning up on all the unresolved issues started by past American presidents and getting back to polices that put North America the center of the world, not Brussels.  Since the Korean War ended in 1953 North Korea has been a pain in the neck and the excuse of many United States presidents to have reasons to have military spending as a cover story for their other failures.  And now there is this fat kid who runs the country like a spoiled brat teenager who was given a Lamborghini by his dying dad and he has nuclear warheads which can threaten United States partners in South Korea and Japan.  For the uneducated in the ways of geography, South Korea makes Samsung phones and televisions as well as Kia cars. So right now, they are a very important partner in the United States economy, so we do have a major interest in the area.  Then of course there is Japan who we fought in World War II, and beat.  We took away their weapons and now they are completely dependent on United States protection to produce one of the most powerful economies in the world—so we gave ourselves the responsibility to protect them from China and North Korea both of which have been making moves against that tiny little island in Pacific Ocean.  The American general Claire Lee Chennault warned what would happen if America left the region after World War II and our stupid government allowed communism to spread into China, the Korean peninsula and down into Indochina.  That pulled us into two major wars and essentially a half century stalemate which needs to be broken before there will ever be peace in the region.

This mess extends right in front of the Himalaya Mountains across the impoverished continent of India and into the chaos of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran which then borders Iraq and Syria. The average dope smoking American anti-war pacifist couldn’t find any of those countries on a map, so they have no idea what the dangers are in leaving those places free to produce dictators and theocratic nightmares.  There is a tremendous economic cost to the United States in addition to the moral cost of turning away and letting millions of people rot or rush American borders so they can try to escape.  Melania Trump happens to be one of those East Europeans who were lucky to have perfect super model features, like long legs, the proper height and facial features to be a top model in Paris.  If she had been two inches shorter she would have had to be a prostitute of some kind to escape the poverty of her native country in Slovenia.  People who don’t travel much and see the world for what it is who preach legalization of pot and think they can play video games through life leaving everyone alone, have no idea how bad things are out there beyond the borders of the United States.  And open border progressives love all this chaos because they want refugees of the wars they have caused to over burden our American capitalist system and to change it from the inside out.  Just listen to the average American college professor who preaches to our youth to hate those “rich white guys” so that the displaced refugees will flee to America and replace freedom with the only thing they’ve ever known, domination by dictators and failed economic opportunities.

So I say to hell with North Korea.  Let them send their “pre-emptive” strike. Because I’m tired of hearing about them—it’s time to call the bluff of that ruling family.  The solutions have always been there in these hostile countries—we just didn’t have the political will to do anything about it.  But now we do and the world needs to see what will happen to North Korea.  Let them try to fire a missile at the VP in South Korea or at any of the American Navy vessel parked in the waters off North Korea—and the THAAD system that is now in place will shoot them down and that fat kid running things will learn a hard lesson.  Trump can take that victory and negotiate all kinds of good stuff with China and Russia for the first time in over two hundred years of American foreign policy, which is exactly why I supported and voted for Donald Trump for president—to end these problems instead of just letting them simmer from one generation to another.

The best way to put America first is to defend American ideas around the world and to stand up to the bullies who want to end it everywhere.  The human race has to make a decision—will it be freedom or tyranny, because the world is too small to have both.  The world must pick—and they have to do it now.  Smoking another joint and listening to old Led Zepplin songs won’t solve the problem—instead, America must have peace through superior firepower and let bad guys know it when they step out of line.  That’s the way it has to be for a while until all those untied disputes are finally settled.  And based on Trump’s performance as Commander and Chief—it won’t take long.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

‘The Last Jedi’ Movie Preview from Celebration, Orlando: Ending the Vico Cycle philosophically

[image error]I cover a lot of Star Wars news because, as I’ve said before, it’s the best mythological tool that the human race has right now—which sets it clearly apart from other movies.  It’s special and even though Star Wars these days is made by people who likely voted for Hillary Clinton 100%–the people who work at Lucasfilm are the best in the business of making movies on a commercial-scale.  The stories of Star Wars clearly extend beyond modern politics.  I think they are extremely important to our status as a culture on planet earth.  So I pay close attention to Star Wars and enjoy very much when they have their Celebration activities.   It just so happens that this year Celebration is in one of my favorite cities in the world—Orlando, and I find it creatively refreshing to hear the latest news from the Star Wars universe.  And this year, there was a lot of news, some of which is shown below.  But the biggest news was the release of the movie trailer for the next film due out this Christmas.

I’ve loved Star Wars most of my life—it actually opened a lot of doors for me.  I completely understand that Star Wars was intended for 12-year-old children, but in a lot of ways that part of me is still very much alive.  Even if I didn’t have grandkids, and my own kids didn’t still love Star Wars, I’d spend a considerable amount of time enjoying the art and ideas that come out of the Star Wars stories.  I understand why George Lucas made the films and what his source material was and I plunged myself into that world quite dramatically, not as the 12-year-old material for which became Star Wars, but the great literature of James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Joseph Campbell and many great literary figures for which Star Wars was based—including the Holy Bible. Star Wars for me was the gateway to much more serious literature and it has enhanced my life greatly.   So I’m quite open for my joy toward all things Star Wars.

Specifically, what I see in this new trailer for the film that is called The Last Jedi, is a philosophic contemplation on ending the Vico Cycle which is something that was heavily featured in the great literary classic Finnegan’s Wake.  I talk about the Vico Cycle a lot, because our present civilization is at one of those points in our history, so it doesn’t at all surprise me that Star Wars is addressing that very challenging philosophic concept.  George Lucas always said that if there were more Star Wars movies beyond Episode 6 that he’d deal with the philosophic challenges of the life battle between pairs of opposites.  It’s a motif that is as old as human civilization—probably longer.  So yes, Star Wars is all about making movies for kids—but there is more to them than that.  Adults could learn a lot too.

Obviously Han Solo is my favorite character and there is a lot of that guy in me. I saw Star Wars 40 years ago with my parents as a third grader and it stuck with me—especially the character of Han Solo.  I knew that was who I wanted to be when I grew up—and that is largely what happened.  As it turned out, I’m a lot smarter than Han Solo, but I can certainly relate to him.  For my recent 49th birthday my youngest daughter made me the picture featured above, which is what she does.  She’s a marvelous illustrator and this picture of Han Solo fighting it out with stormtroopers using dual pistols is an original picture that can’t be found anywhere else and to me it was quite an astonishing work of art.  She knows I’m excited for the new Han Solo movie coming up within a year or so, where the character is much younger—so she made the picture as a tribute to a much younger Han Solo.  As I’ve said many times also, Han Solo is essentially an Ayn Rand character within Star Wars—and that’s why he’s so popular.  George Lucas may have wanted to have Han transform into a compassionate human being by the end of the series, but the best elements of Han Solo are his Ayn Rand hero traits of acting out of self-interest.  And that is the brilliance of Star Wars—lots of competing ideas can fit into the storytelling and still have a role to play because they are grounded in historical motifs specific to the human race.

When Luke Skywalker says that it’s time for the Jedi to end—he’s talking about a very large idea of taking mankind beyond the pairs of opposites battle that has always been a part of our culture from the beginning. I’ve been thinking about that for a very long time because it is essentially the Vico Cycle, theocracy, aristocracy, democracy, anarchy then rebirth.  And that is a bigger concept than just making a movie for kids.  This stuff is important because it has the potential of taking us all to a new level—as a species.  It’s much more than just a movie or a way for Disney to make money.

For me it’s fun to see my grandkids getting into Star Wars because it at least gives me something to share with them.  My oldest grandson without a whole lot of encouragement has already gone to great lengths to learn all he can about it—which is a great way to have discussions about other topics.  During my birthday celebration, he couldn’t pull himself away from TV where I had Rogue One playing.  As a little boy the hand to hand battles with guns had his mind racing and he was running around the house pretending to shoot at invisible villains—which is very healthy and natural.  It’s a primal concern—especially with little boys.  I’ve spoken in the past also about the great little miracles that Nerf makes as far as Star Wars guns.  These are a lot better than what I grew up with and I have to say that my Han Solo Nerf Blaster is one of my favorite things that I play with around the house.  I will have countless hours of fun with my grandchildren shooting those things and if not for Star Wars—they wouldn’t exist.  The guns and action are part of the Star Wars experience.  Once you get into those, the deeper aspects of the stories become accessible, and if you really go down the rabbit hole—like I did—a whole new world of fresh ideas emerge—and that is a wonderful thing. Even though I’ve been hard on The Force Awakens, my favorite part of that movie is the Rathtar scene and when my grandson comes over he wants me to play the Lego game as Han Solo to beat the Rathtar level because the monsters are scary to him and he likes to see me defeat them.  He amazes me at all his observations even though he’s only four.

I’ve watched all the old Zorro movies and Flash Gordon serials that Star Wars was based on.  I’ve seen all the Akira Kurasawa movies that inspired the Star Wars movie, A New Hope.  But what George Lucas created and these new filmmakers at Lucasfilm under Disney’s ownership are doing is quite a lot more sophisticated.  I think most of the credit goes to Joseph Campbell than anybody—or even John Williams who has created so much wonderful symphonic music for our modern generations that Mozart and Beethoven aren’t even relevant any longer.  Our culture is much richer because of Star Wars than it otherwise would have been, and by the premise of the new movie, there is a lot to look forward to.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

Bomb the Towels Right off the ISIS Heads: The joy of getting a bag of chips out of a vending machine

Obama would have dropped apology letters with a bundle of cash… #MOAB pic.twitter.com/I9D8LpU7fb

— Educating Liberals (@Education4Libs) April 13, 2017

It continues to be a topic of fascination how the world of politics deals with Donald Trump. They are just bewildered by him, one minute he’s for dismantling NATO.  The next he’s for it.  One minute he’s anti-China—the next he’s shaking hands—palm up with the communist leader and talking about trade.  Then there are the accusations of a “bromance” with Vladimir Putin—then the hammers of war being beaten in the direction of Russia. The people in politics and those who cover it are literally about to explode with frustration because they don’t understand what Donald Trump is doing.  But I do.

It’s a long story but today marked something of a personal milestone in achievement. I bought a bag of potato chips out of the new vending machines of a beautiful new manufacturing facility that I along with many other people breathed to life.  Whenever I do something like that I like to do little things like enjoy a bag of potato chips from there because it tastes very sweet due to all the effort it takes to get such a monumental task accomplished.  The road to get to where you actually put vending machines into such a place is a long one, and many pitfalls and challenges have to be navigated, so once you get the vending machines installed, you always achieve something tremendous.  But to get there you are constantly negotiating with other people, you are always employing some kind of strategy, you are always fighting something—because you have to remember that the world of government looks down on achievement—so you are always fighting various aspects of government corruption to do anything productive.  It could be zoning, unfriendly socialist trustees such as in the township where I bought the aforementioned potato chips.  There are three trustees there.  George Lang is a good one.  Mark Welch is another one.  But then they have a socialist who is always trying to build some sidewalk with tax payer funds, or yacking about his military record in the same breath as declaring himself a minority candidate.  He doesn’t understand business at all, so lucky for West Chester, there are two votes against that guy so business can happen.  But not every place is so lucky.  Many places around the world, especially in California, Seattle and other progressive areas, the good guys get outvoted by the bad guys (the anti-business people) most of the time.  So it is always a good feeling to get to a point where you can buy a bag of chips out of a vending machine because it’s nearly a miracle these days to get to that point.

TRUMP: I will bomb the SH*T out of ISIS. There will be nothing left!

Campaign promise: fulfilled! #MOAB #ISIS pic.twitter.com/VO9trlMKR7

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) April 13, 2017

But the administration part is only the beginning, there are deals that are constantly being made with other human beings to move a project along, and for someone like Donald Trump who has operated most of his life as a high-end developer, the chance to buy a bag of chips out of a vending machine is a very tall road to climb—indeed. The kind of person that does these types of things has to be unique because often it’s the thrill of accomplishment that drives such people—not necessarily the payday.  And for a person to master those skills means they can operate at many human levels of communication and are masters of negotiation, manipulation, and strategy.  Donald Trump is certainly all those things and I think he will be viewed by history as the unquestionably best president we’ve ever had in America because what he will produce during his time in office will be something that is rare.

You have to understand dear reader that for most of human history mankind didn’t have much of an economy that was driven off free market ideas. Always there was some king or emperor in the way skimming off the top of any national endeavor—and this effectively put the shackles on human production because people just don’t do much unless they are free.  They may work in the fields all day to pick rice, but they don’t think of better ways to pick that rice unless they can have the opportunity to get rich off it.  So without the free market system—innovation just doesn’t happen.  People don’t invent better ways to do things so some ruler can take their idea and live well off it.  If there isn’t some concept of reward, human beings keep their thoughts to themselves which is why socialist societies just don’t make it very long.

Now for complex economies where many people are pushing and shoving other people for a chance to win big, things get very complicated. In order to navigate any project where many such people are a part of your success you have to learn how to read everything about them to get some leverage that is mutually advantageous.  I say that because if you screw people over you may win once, but they won’t deal with you in the future.  So you must learn to read every non-verbal sign of body language, every variability of sentence structure, every hidden motive to learn how to move people to where you need them to be—where they also come out smelling wonderful.  And that is hard.  Very hard.

This is what we might call a “dynamic personality.” They tend to see things well ahead of other people, and are also personally courageous—perhaps to the point where they are thrill junkies who thrive off great risks.  Without them invention and economic expansion doesn’t happen.  Most people in the world are very static.  They learn the routines of their days starting with their very first experiences as human beings and once they level off in adulthood they are quite comfortable taking orders and falling in behind the leaders of society because it allows them to live within a framework of routine that is comfortable.  They don’t like risky behavior because it might make them late for dinner—that kind of thing.

Politics is built around static people—very predictable and having their roots back to aristocratic days when clear social levels could mandate what kind of home you lived in, what types of sexual encounters you might experience, and what the fate of your children might be. But when you introduce dynamic people suddenly the lives of the static people are always in jeopardy—because they don’t like change and dynamic people are all about change.  For many centuries, political people have prevented dynamic people from holding offices.  They allowed them to somewhat thrive in business so long as they could tax and control them through some legal means—but they didn’t allow them into politics. That makes Donald Trump the first of his kind to break through that invisible barrier for the long-span of the human race—and this dynamic has made the static order very uncomfortable.

That is why Trump’s negotiation skills are so frustrating to the static order of today’s politics—because the sheer dynamism of Trump threatens the future of the entire political system. As a businessman, Trump may want China to put an end to North Korea’s threats while closing the gap between the trading deficit.  So he does what he needs to in order to achieve that objective.  He may need to threaten war, or he may offer a bottle of wine—whatever is needed at that moment.  To the static political culture used to predictability—in fact their entire existence depends on it—this is a nightmare.  But for Americans in need of an American renaissance—its precisely what is required.  Just today Trump dropped a massive bomb on an ISIS hideout in Afghanistan.  Guess he wasn’t joking about ending ISIS—and the capital earned off that bombing will help with Russian deals, Chinese negotiations over territory and trade, and stop the butchering of innocent people in Syria.  In the end, everyone will get what they want because that’s what deal makers do.  And that really is the only way you can get to a bag of chips in a vending machine—you have to navigate very complicated engagements to arrive at such an opportunity. With that in mind, for the first time in the history of the world such a person is running things on the political levels, and the dynamism of that reality is shattering the static world of politics—likely forever.  And that is such a wonderful thing.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here: http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707 Use my name to get added benefits.

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