Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 318

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Published on December 24, 2016 04:08

December 23, 2016

Right-to-work legislation protection in West Chester, Ohio: Lakota’s out-of-control budget and the neccessity of creating friendly pro-business climates

It is one thing for Donald Trump to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States—which he has already made great strides in doing. It is quite another to deal with the reasons they want to leave in the first place. For many, it is the regulatory burdens of doing business which push them into oversea markets where those regulations do not exist. The other is the cost of labor is just too high in America—and that was largely driven up by ridiculous labor union expectations. Labor unions which I have covered here extensively over the years is a socialist concept and really doesn’t have a place in any American endeavor, and time under a Trump economy should finally flush that out once and for all—but that could take a decade or more to realize. In the meantime, states and the counties within those states need tools to deal with the parasitic nature labor unions impose on businesses.

As much as I like hard-working people, it is not they who create jobs and steer economic success into the realm of achievement—it is the management of companies—and it is they who need protection from labor incursions like labor unions which threaten their efforts with negative tactical influence. And Ohio, where I live, is still considering avenues to becoming a proper right-to-work state which would go a long way to helping that treacherous situation. But recently there was some wonderful news which erupted like a volcano spewing news across America from the unexplored depths of earth that in Hardin County, Kentucky, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that local governments can free their citizens from mandatory union dues and memberships. That means, theoretical by legal precedent, that the government of West Chester—which I think is the most business friendly government in the entire Midwest could potentially protect businesses in their jurisdiction from unionized activity that drives up their labor costs and rob them of proper management forcing them into some hostile corner of the world just to avoid losing their companies to a mob of workers responding to economic desires not checked properly in perspective under a free market system of competitive equilibrium. In fact, this issue was considered at a recent West Chester trustee meeting and can be heard in its entirety at the 59-minute mark in the video below. Watch for yourself.

Watch “West Chester Township Board of Trustees meeting of December 20, 2016” on #Vimeo https://t.co/tksOD5AbsX

— Rich Hoffman (@overmanwarrior) December 23, 2016

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on November 18, 2016, that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) permits local governments to free their citizens from mandatory union dues and membership. This update offers analysis gained from Frost Brown Todd LLC’s (FBT) role in securing this ruling. FBT labor and employment lawyers, John Lovett and Kyle Johnson, represented Hardin County, Kentucky, in the successful defense of its “right to work” ordinance in the Court of Appeals.

http://www.frostbrowntodd.com/resources-local-right-to-work-decision-creates-new-opportunities-for-improving-labor-climate.html

Interesting enough just prior to that 59-minute mark there was a discussion about the Lakota school system and its desire—just like I said they would in 2017—to invade the community for yet another property tax increase. The suggestion about a localized West Chester right-to-work zone to attract businesses would have no impact on public sector labor unions like those at the local school of Lakota, but as George Lang suggested attracting more manufacturing to West Chester would be a short-term way of avoiding further tax incursions on properties—particularly the residents who shoulder most of the burden of out-of-control labor costs irresponsibly handled by the Lakota school system. The school board does not have control of their labor contracts because the inmates run the asylum in every public school—so what the West Chester trustees are proposing are ways of dealing with those cost overruns at the school—until the Trump administration can bring down the cost of education properly through methods such as School Choice without putting the community through another three or four years of levy fights—which Lakota will certainly get the next time they go after a tax grab through a new school levy.

I haven’t spoken about Lakota for a long time, largely because I’ve had my eye on the end game solution which for me is the nomination of Betsy DeVos to run the Department of Education and bring competitive elements to the education system which more properly reflect the capitalist country that constitutes the American GDP. All public schools must bring down the cost of education per child while increasing the results and need to be the point of emphasis. Lakota as a school system in the great township of West Chester in Ohio on the norther edges of Cincinnati are only throwing money at their labor force with their school levy attempts which then throws more burdens on businesses needlessly. However, by adding more businesses to the mix in West Chester and Liberty Township which share burdens with Lakota then the short-term cost overruns that the school board has failed to stop—because of the union contracts with state employees—can be met while the long-term fixes from the federal level under Trump take effect. I am personally against any tax increases especially for a public education system that has proven to be completely ineffective at preparing young people to live in a capitalist society. Public schools have not used tax payer’s money properly and have made it their priority to radicalize students toward left-leaning propaganda and that is something I won’t support with further drains on our community financially.

An interesting note from that trustee meeting, even Lee Wong was entertaining the possibility of a right-to-work West Chester township, and for that I might even sit at a table with him at Sushi Monk without getting up and leaving. His comments were “encouraging.” I know business in West Chester very well and understand the challenges as people come from all over the world unlock the treasures available there. I can personally testify to how wonderful it is for me to entertain people from faraway lands from the new Holiday Inn across from Ikea, and to have dinner options for those same people ranging from Jags to the Top Golf complex—or how often I go to Barnes and Nobel to buy new books during a mid-day lunches and have proudly watched the new Bass Pro rise from an empty field next to I-75 as luxury hotels continue to fill the skyline around it—all created by the pro-business growth climate created by the trustees in the above video.

I’ve traveled extensively and there is no better place in the world in my opinion to do business, and that includes places like Chicago and New York—as far as amenities. There really isn’t a more pro-business climate anywhere that has such low taxes, friendly zoning, and capitalist embracing government than West Chester, Ohio and this proposal of right-to-work for the county of Butler which surrounds West Chester is in that same spirit. West Chester offers the services you might find in exotic locations like a large American city or a foreign destination like Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, or Tokyo which is important to facilitating foreign travel. Businesses are all about trade and to perform that you have to talk to people and amenities are extremely important to that task followed by reduced regulatory and financial burdens. So the West Chester government gets that, and it is truly wonderful to see that they are taking proactive measures to bridge the gap in innovation that will solve problems in the long-term by short-term solutions that give everyone what they need.

Ohio is an at-will state, but if a labor union tries to impose itself on your business premises that socialist activity is protected by current state laws–you can’t just fire the participants meaning hours and hours of nonproductive activity usually follow such an attempt. Local, state and federal governments have for too long given legal protections to “workers” without understanding the nature of “productivity.” A worker is just a person looking for a job until a business creates an opportunity for employment and that emphasis needs to be respected in future legislation, and under a Trump administration that will likely happen making these trustees in the above West Chester video sound a lot smarter five years from now. But in the meantime, businesses need assurances that they can operate without the terror of a labor union imposing financial burdens that could destroy all their efforts forcing them to oversea markets to hedge against radicalized workforces. Hopefully West Chester can fast track this effort and set an example for the rest of the country, the timing couldn’t be better. What they are proposing is the direct second answer to what Trump is working on nationally, and when those jobs do come back from other countries where they are currently—West Chester would be a good home for them. It would help Lakota with their ridiculous budget until Betsy DeVos gets things under control by 2020 and it would help Trump convert those union votes who supported him into free market Republicans in the most peaceful way possible. And there is nothing wrong with any of that.

Rich Hoffman

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Published on December 23, 2016 04:11

December 18, 2016

How Hillary Clinton Lost the Election: The Russians and why liberalism is a mental illness

Even though I am not a fan and could point previously to the hundreds of articles I personally wrote warning people about the Clintons—or the thousands of other people who did the same—it is astonishing that supposed “smart” people would ever have supported her at all. What’s worse is that many people give even a blink of credit to the news story that the Russians hacked the DNC and specifically Hillary Clinton thus handing the presidency to Donald Trump. The Russians in this story are irrelevant—Hillary lost because she was a terrible candidate and finally we had an alternative to the usual type of politician and people signed up for it. The “Russians” had zero impact—it was all Hillary and her stupidity and arrogance leading up to the days of her loss. And the reason the DNC is now facing extinction is because they clipped themselves to Hillary Clinton knowing full well that she had criminal problems that they would likely be exposed during the election. It could have been the Russians or it could have been a 14-year-old boy from Iowa—the material that was exposed was produced by the stupidity of the DNC and their politicians—and nobody else.

The same bad judgment that would provoke a nuclear power just to cover their failure explaining to donors, who spent millions on the Hillary Clinton campaign to get absolutely nothing in return, is the same stupidity that cannot look at itself in the mirror and even know who looks back—because they are broken people at the very core of their beings. I haven’t said much since the election because I’m not the kind of person who rubs victories in the face of losers, but these people deserve it for their behavior and sheer audacity in the days since the election.

Liberalism is a mental illness—granted it can be a regional one. People who grow up and live in places like California and New York have a tendency to think in favor of liberalism because their first thoughts were shaped by them. As human children, it takes a long time to fully develop our brains—the entire purpose of our childhoods is to develop our brains outside of the womb so that we can think dynamically over our lifetimes. We are one of the few species of mammal who do this. A cow when born plops out on the floor of a barn or in the middle of a field and within moments stands up and can nurse from the mother for a short time before gaining the ability to live on its own. Deer, dogs, cats and virtually every other creature on earth does much the same. They live, they die, and their brains don’t develop very far along to know much different. Humans on the other hand spend at least 18 years developing strong family bonds which last a lifetime and over that period—especially the first ten the human brain develops through mimicry and other forms of input until that person develops into a full functional adult. This gestation occurs outside of the mother’s womb and is a summation of all that a child is exposed to. If the child is lucky, they are born into a loving family full of interesting people—good at heart and not exploiting the weaknesses of children to sustain some ego based malfunction in their own minds—and those children grow up healthy physically and mentally. However, if a child is unfortunately born into a family that is stupid—where the brains of the parents are undeveloped and dependent on the world around them in crippling ways, then the child will likely adapt those traits to its own detriment and a liberal is created.

Liberalism is often regional, because the inputs which form it often come from the social conditions for which one is born. For instance, I am a person that at the level of my very soul is a conservative—probably in an extraordinary way. I had extremely conservative thoughts during my very first memories and this would have been the case if I had been born in Ohio or in San Francisco. But in the case of San Francisco it would have been harder for me to develop properly surrounded by other liberals as opposed to the country setting of my youth which included a stay-at-home mom, two grandparents who lived a fairly long time who both had farms and taught me hard work my entire life and an upbringing that encouraged mental growth. My mom used to buy me books often hoping that I’d take to them and learn to like to read and further develop my brain. The encouragement of a young mind by parental figures is the key to building a fully functioning adult and if that is the point of emphasis, likely a good healthy person will result. But if a child is forced artificially to be too “dependent” on others growing up, or is put in a day care facility with other competing interests always pushing for attention the children are not getting at home, a mind will be stunted during that critical 18-year gestation period and a neurotic adult will result—most of the time one rooted in liberalism. These screwed up people, usually not by a fault of their own, but creations of the world they grew up with—are the type of people who supported Hillary Clinton. You could take any of her voters, any member of the media which supported her, any of the actors and corporate donors—and if you talk to them one on one, you will find that something went wrong deep in their childhood to give them the broken desire to support such a loser as Clinton just because she was a liberal. It’s not just political ideology, its science—liberalism is a mental handicap in the same way that someone might unfortunately be born without hands or feet in a birth defect. If a young child is born into a family of stupid people—they will unfortunately be handicapped for life lacking the ability to think—most of the time.

It really isn’t complicated, if you go to a birthing center at any hospital you can tell which kids are going to grow up to be stupid based on the parents you see in the waiting room—those crippled with liberalism from birth. Once they enter their first conscious moments the unprogrammed mind—which might have a wise soul within it finds that it’s tutors in life just don’t have much to offer it and its poor little mind will grow without anything really important imparted to it during those critical years out of the womb. When nobody puts their arm around such children and teaches them anything of any value, those poor little things find themselves getting most everything they learn in day cares and public education institutions where radical liberals do the work parents should have—and as those people grow they become liberals. If a child is really lucky when born into such families, a strong mentor might enter their life and give them something to formulate thoughts around. If this happens sometime before age 18, a child might be saved. If not—likely that child will struggle all its life with broken thoughts geared toward liberalism—as liberals are a collective based portion of our species which has lost the ability to think independently—as a fully functioning human being. Liberals require other people to share responsibility of decision-making with them because as children they did not gain the ability to process data on their own. This is why most children born and growing up on Iowa, or Kansas farms generally have the same healthy attitudes toward family where the poor little things that grew up to a welfare momma’ from the hood—within the inner-city culture of today’s urban dwelling—the child will grow up stunted and mostly forever stunted mentally. There are exceptions—like Ben Carson, and a few others—but numerically, the odds are against those poor children if they have idiot parents who pass on their deficiencies to a hungry young mind.

A mind and what you put into it is much like what you eat. If all you eat is junk food—you will likely be fat and unhealthy. If you however make a point to eat good food, and exercise a bit, your body will mostly be in good shape. I mean you can’t expect to look like a supermodel if all you like to consume is chocolate bars and whisky shots. The cells in your body will take on the form of the food consumption you place into your mouth. What too you place into your mind whether it is from visual stimulation or interpersonal relationships will largely shape the type of person you become. John Podesta—Hillary’s key person and the one who found all his emails hacked and exposed by Wikileaks participates in “spirt cooking” and other hooky practices because he does not trust himself or his mind to function on its own, so he relies always on outside influences to guide him through life. If you were to pull him aside and get to know his childhood you’d likely discover his parents were idiots—in fact we do know that his father never graduated high school and that John grew up in Jefferson Park, in Chicago—a notoriously liberal part of the city. He likely didn’t have a chance and by the time he went to college at a few places to eventually get a law degree he was already mentally formed. The fine details we hope to give children in college are mostly useless if the foundation of their lives was rooted in liberalism from birth. Putting John Podesta in charge of anything is like putting a physically handicapped person on a football field and wondering why they aren’t a star running back. They just can’t compete in life when put up against someone without handicaps. So it’s best to raise children with the fewest handicaps as possible. If they unfortunately occur physically, certainly don’t do them in with mental handicaps rooted in liberal thought. At least give a kid a chance by teaching them conservatism in the American traditional manner. If you go through the Democratic Party what you find if you really get to know them are misfits destroyed intellectually during their 18-year gestation period outside the womb, and now they seek a political party to rectify their handicaps collectively—which simply doesn’t work.

This is why Hillary lost, not because of the Russians. She lost because she went up against a political candidate who was loved as a child, and taught to think independently. Additionally, Donald Trump was the first person in American history to really be elected into such a high office without owing anybody anything—except the people who voted for him. He doesn’t have to give cabinet positions based on financial contributions and elements like that—so he was an appealing candidate to enough people who really didn’t want another broken politician in the White House. Instinctively Americans knew better, they had acted out of compassion and elected twice Barack Obama with all the baggage that American President brought to the table—coming from a broken home, growing up outside the United States and being crippled by radical leftists in college—and likely earlier. Americans were done feeling sorry for people and electing them into important positions. With Trump, they wanted someone who actually knew what they were doing, and that is why Hillary lost. People had enough of the Obama liberalism that they switched parties when someone else came along that was personally confident and functioning as an independent mind that came from a healthy family environment—someone who was conservative not by some regional ideology, but by the nature of coming from a good and loving family. That is the hidden truth as to why Hillary Clinton lost the election, and why Democrats are a passing political party. They represent human beings with mental handicaps and finally Americans are seeing the light of that error—and they are not inclined to continue that practice in the future—especially now that they know better. And that certainly isn’t the Russian’s fault.

Rich Hoffman

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Published on December 18, 2016 16:00

December 17, 2016

The ‘Rogue One’ Review: A New Hope, not only for Star Wars, but the entire movie industry

For me it was an entirely magical experience. I’ve always loved Star Wars, even though over the last few weeks I had been troubled with the makers at Lucasfilm who obviously were in despair that Donald Trump was the new President of the United States. After a few weeks of “banter” it became obvious to me that the root of their problem was a regional one. Lucasfilm is located in San Francisco at the old Presido so their points of emphasis on all things political lean-to the left. But prior to Rogue One being released on December 16th 2016 as the first standalone film to be presented in the Star Wars storyline I personally wished Chris Weitz and others at Lucasfilm luck with the opening because I felt that the direction of the series was growing up and going where George Lucas always intended—to be bigger than terrestrial politics and that this new film deserved fresh judgment. Gareth Edwards as everyone who reads here knows, I think is a wonderful director—as assessed by the 2014 Godzilla film—so I was very eager to see Rogue One on opening night and once I had was met with a number of Star Wars characters in the lobby of my local theater just days before Christmas. Outside of the Cobb Luxury Theater at Liberty Center, Ohio were brilliant Christmas lights lining the streets as Star Wars music blared from the park across the street in the harsh 20 degree cold. A little Jawa and Imperial Trooper were outside adding to the excitement as seen in my Twitter update below from that moment.

This is how it was coming out of seeing Rogue One at Liberty Center, in Ohio. Very magical. Greeted by a nice little Jawa. pic.twitter.com/XJrouvUtRB

— Rich Hoffman (@overmanwarrior) December 17, 2016

Rogue One was a bold movie—certainly created by hard-core Star Wars fans and by committee which hurts it a little bit—but the love for the film by all those who made it was really a jaw dropping experience. It was a fabulous film done with a classic Saturday morning serial style. The title screen was very distracting at first because it was the first Star Wars film done without the crawl. We’ve had seven Star Wars films with a grand opening followed by a crawl of text telling us where we were in the story and what was going on and with Rogue One, that was noticeably gone—on purpose. It felt to me like this Star Wars movie was actually rebelling against our expectations to be its own thing even though by the ending it literally took us to the beginning of Episode IV the very first Star Wars movie from 1977.

I always wondered as a kid what that first major victory of the Rebellion was as mentioned in that text crawl and Rogue One nearly reflected my imagination remarkably well. After all, A New Hope plunged us all into the middle of the story and we could only guess at the history of the situation based on what the characters told us about it. The heroes of the Skywalker family and specifically Han Solo were larger than life manifestations of heroism propelled by unnerving optimism and that carried the saga into realms of mythology which has formed our society around philosophic concepts unparalleled in the history of storytelling. Rogue One and the rebellion before those heroes entered the metaphorical stage noticeably is about average people daring to do extraordinary things under the collective assembly of a rebellion against the empire. This was evident in the directorial approach of Rogue One which might have been tempted to retell a modern story with epic heroes which would continue on for generations—but instead they stuck to the mode of the story and the Michael Giacchino musical score never tried to outstrip the original John Williams score—even though I think he could compete with Williams if he wanted to.

One thing I know quite a lot about is John Williams music—I think I know every note from every film he’s ever done for every scene put to film. I listen to John Williams music in my office almost every morning—it is my breakfast for starting a day and the music from A New Hope is so full and rich. The themes for each character are so fleshed out and defined—it is an unquestioned masterpiece so it is quite a task to ask Michael Giacchino to step in with only about a month of time to score Rogue One which is a film designed to essentially be the first moments of A New Hope. And the music has that rushed feel not in a bad way, but in the way of Rogue One itself—a band of incomplete and flawed people joining together in rebellion against a tyrannical empire also full of jaded and incomplete people not quite fleshed out as life forms to do battle on the epic planet of Scarif in a kind of grand crescendo. I have listened very carefully to Michael Giacchino’s score and I think many of his tones are underplayed on purpose to be deliberately fleshed out in A New Hope as Luke Skywalker eventually enters the picture and finds his own guardian angel in the veritable Han Solo at the cantina in Mos Eisley space port. That’s where the rebellion finally finds its true heroes which they can clip their star onto and finally overtake the empire in the movies we all know so well by now. By the end of Rogue One the music coalesces into themes that sound nearly right out of the New Hope soundtrack. Maybe that was on purpose, maybe it just took Giacchino time to find his Star Wars legs—but I think the small amount of time given to him was to evoke that kind of unorganized chaos that often happens with battle only to be brought to a finer point in movies we’ve already seen and that was quite brilliant. In that way these standalone movies never have to be as good as George Lucas made the originals, or the John Williams music which accompanied our memories. But the stories of how those events came to be are infinitely fascinating and in that regard Rogue One is a masterpiece of cinema.

Even bolder was the inclusion of old Star Wars characters who are either long passed from life on this earth or too old to ever possibly be seen again as a 19-year-old princess. The decision to make lifelike full onscreen CGI characters in this day and age of 4K televisions was monstrously bold because every little flaw would be easy to detect. But these makers of Rogue One had full scenes of the late Peter Cushing speaking to members of the empire under hard light and in close-up—which was bewildering. Give the movie a standing ovation for not playing it safe. And it works. When Princess Leia speaks finally at the end for a brief second accompanied by the strings of Giacchino’s bold soundtrack I looked around me in the theater and there were tears streaming down the faces of the full crowd. The audience looked as if they had Christmas lights on their faces which glittered in the reflection of the white interior of the Tantive IV—the ship which we first see at the start of A New Hope. Then suddenly the film cut to credits not letting anybody linger in contemplation which gave the effect of wanting to see it again immediately. This wasn’t just a movie, or a tip of the hat to a cinematic masterpiece—this was a bold rebellion of conventional cinema history declaring its independence to throw off convention and serve a timeless story with new installments to bridge mankind into the everlasting.

So dear reader, you might understand now the feeling I had when I shot that short video for the Twitter upload. Until you’ve seen the movie, you won’t understand—it just sounds like music with some people dressed up in front of a movie theater. But the unconscious connection that those characters had to our mood was very similar to that experience when you’re coming out of church after a particularly inspiring sermon to greet someone you otherwise wouldn’t talk to because you shared a common experience. They understood how magical the movie was from behind their costumes and they could see the joy on our faces and they played right along. Rogue One is a great movie without all those secondary considerations, but there is a magic to seeing one of these Star Wars movies on opening night as they now have such a hook into our human culture. To make it better for me, my wife and I saw Rogue One at the Cinebistro and had a very nice dinner at the theater which I never get tired of. So it was very nice that the theater management went to the extra step to bring in costumed Star Wars characters to patrol the lobby and had the foresight to set up a booth at the park pavilion at Liberty Center to blare Star Wars music down the street to mix with the Christmas festivities of Holiday shoppers vibrant on a cold December Friday evening. Yes it was very magical.

I think those tears on the faces of the audience were of pure joy even though it was quite sad to see each member of the Rogue One team get picked apart by the ominous strength of imperial might. The movie reminded me of The Magnificent Seven—the original starring Yul Brynner who were gunned down at the end trying to save the town. But the film didn’t end there. Getting those plans to Princess Leia was like a last-minute play in American football where the losing team had almost no chance of scoring an impossible needed touchdown as a superior opponent set up a tenacious defense. It didn’t so much matter how many poor rebels were killed so long as before one died they handed the plans to the next so that they might just get the objective to the Tantive IV before Darth Vader killed them all. The desperation was so evident and the end of the film felt the same as when a team goes into overtime in a football game—and at the end we’re not dealing with an outmatched opponent as we might have thought at the beginning, but two even teams about to do battle to the death in A New Hope (overtime).

I loved Rogue One, I’ll probably go see it many more times while at the theater and I will buy it on the first day its available on Blue-rey. The film is a gift to the next generation. My grandchildren will love these new Star Wars movies and I can clearly see the benefit of taking this series well into the future. My wife and I did some Christmas shopping after the movie and sort of walked around sorting out our feelings about Rogue One. One of my daughters called me to get my verdict of the film, as she and her husband had seen it already with an advance screening—and she was anxious about my opinions and wanted desperately to share her enthusiasm for the film. She had to contain her feelings for our sake not to give anything away, and when she called, I was still in stoic mode. I don’t get emotional about anything unless its extreme joy or anger—except for when I write. So I mechanically went through the events of the movie with her that I liked, but didn’t come close to articulating the full impact of it until after I had slept on it. That’s what kind of movie this is. It’s a no brainer—everyone should see Rogue One. It’s a special film for a special time and it not only leads to a classic story called A New Hope but it is in and of itself “a new hope” for the entire movie industry. It’s a feat in and of itself that not only unites people of different political beliefs, world cultures, and young and old alike, but with our primordial past and the hope we all have to live free of tyranny against the natural inclinations by those whose faulty personal identifications seek to imprison us much like Galen Erso was. That is after all the point of the movie. Even under duress for his natural brilliance Galen Erso “rebelled” in the only way that he could and hoped that freedom would follow. And in those tears in that audience I think that most people understood the situation that Galen was in—because in their lives—they are stuck in much the same scenario—thus the brilliance of cinema to reach our hearts in ways that no other mode can. Rogue One does. It wasn’t the best movie I’ve ever seen, but I’m a 50-year-old man. For a lot of young people ages 4 through 15 though—this will be and it will become the standard they measure everything off of in the future. And that is a very, very, very good thing.

Rich Hoffman

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Published on December 17, 2016 04:40

December 12, 2016

Atlas Shrugged, the Sequel: The Trump Way

The best way to describe the situation now transpiring in Washington D.C. politics is as a sequel to the famed American novel Atlas Shrugged—where the engines of the world came down from their mountain hideaway to save society from the depots of statism—once of course that those politicians had surrendered their authority to John Galt at the climax of the novel. As Rex Tillerson the CEO of Exxon was announced as the next Secretary of State as kind of bookend to the previous week’s nominations it was clear that what was about to happen under the Trump administration was a new classic American novel being written before our very eyes which would change the nature of politics and human philosophy for all time.

Watching the very good series The Crown on Netflix it captures wonderfully the problems of our thus far human history. We most define our human existence with the thousand years or so of domination from Great Britain and how that island country shaped European history. But essentially, they are a carryover of the Roman Empire which was a spawn of Greek, Egyptian and Mesopotamian life. Then of course is the orient and their variety of god-like kings and queens who have ruled in much the way of the British monarchy—so by watching that one Netflix show—a novice viewer can get quite a grasp which was displayed I thought brilliantly during Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, of the trouble between religion, aristocracy and the management of government with the “commoner” stuck in the middle.

Communism was a philosophic invention along the lines of Immanuel Kant and had appeal to the “commoner” who simply wanted to be free of that impossible situation stuck between monarchies, state governments and religious institutions so they sought to level the playing field—justifiably so. Governments of the day, at the end of the 19th century into the 20th recognized that communism would cripple the economies of their enemies, so they purposely shipped it to Russia to keep them out of future world wars and the land acquisition that came with kingdom building. Then they sought to spread it around the world to pull free countries like the United States back into that control of the state, religion, and a society of aristocrats acting as “fighters for the people” when in fact they were just another royal class of despots seeking power on the backs of the “commoner.” Atlas Shrugged was essentially an argument against this behavior whereas this new sequel under a Trump presidency is a proposal going forward for how things should be.

Of course people who sympathize with the communist philosophy do not like Atlas Shrugged or Donald Trump—but that’s good—because it has been their thinking which has threatened to throw the world backwards—essentially to the European middle-ages all along. The new religion of their control is not Catholicism this time, but “environmental regulation” which is the modern term for religious control and statism typical of the monarchy driven European mentality so evident at the end of the Roman Empire and the start of the Inquisition.

In that context the political nomination of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State is quite extraordinary. As demonized as oil executives have been over the years, largely by the communist/environmentalist movement, to put one in charge of such an important diplomatic role from the Executive Branch is one of Donald Trump’s boldest picks yet. Tillerson is one of those “engines of the world” a person who makes things happen and for the first time in known history—these kinds of people will be running the affairs of the United States—a young country that has deliberately turned away from the statism of Europe for an opportunity under capitalism to evoke a new philosophy utilized by the human race rooted in freedom. In America aristocratic concerns don’t matter as merit defines worth and that is largely the type of people who are making up Trump’s cabinet.

Where up to this point the understanding of what built an economy or generated a nation’s GDP was ill-defined as would-be aristocrats hemorrhaging the political class of its ethics hid the truth behind Kantian philosophies—the big switch now is that it will be forever clear who and what those engines are—and there will be no going back. Currently the reaction from the liberal-minded is fear at Trump’s picks because they have been trained to be essentially stupid people—purposely handicapped to play their social roles—in much the way that Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflix show, The Queen was purposely educated only in matters of the Constitution and little else, to keep her properly in check within the various balances of power between the State and the Church. Millions upon millions of children have been purposely handicapped through their public educations to be enormously stupid adults illiterate in basic functions to essentially prevent them from discovering the truth that the Trump presidency will reveal—that the engines of the world are businessmen and those engaged in commerce from first the creative side, then the ruthless competition which forges only the best to emerge followed by-product fulfillment—the boons it brings to a society are born.

Recently I was on a flight from Tokyo, Japan to Osaka and I sat next to a young Japanese girl who was quite impressed with the suit I was wearing. You see, in Japan their youth had not been taught to hate business, but instead saw it as an extension of the samurai philosophy from their 1600 A.D. feudal period. She bowed deeply before sitting next to me and thanked me for bringing business to her country. She couldn’t have been any older than 21 or 22 years old, so she was just a kid, but I was quite surprised how sincere she was about seeing a businessman on an airplane. That goes a long way to explaining why the Japanese are so successful with a much smaller country than say China or even Korea—because they revere business and commerce as a natural extension to their warrior past, and they value it. That value is reflected in their culture and young people don’t think anything of bowing to a foreigner on an airplane dressed in a suit because they have been taught that businessmen and women make the world move forward. It is something to respect. Now the fool might say the girl was looking for a sugar daddy, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. People who think like that are stupid and there is no way to salvage their lives for goodness.

Watching Saturday Night Live since the Trump election it has been grotesquely obvious that our youth do not understand Trump, business, or the politics of economic necessity. All they’ve ever been taught is to hate capitalism and to adhere to the new age religion of global warming—as a backdoor means of communism repackaged for our modern youth. The jokes on Saturday Night Live have been horrendously flat because the writers and actors clearly do not understand the world revealed to them by the Trump election so they only know to grapple with it through demeaning means. The root of their failure is that they don’t understand or respect merit—therefor they have no appreciation for value. For instance, two weeks ago from this writing they proposed a skit about young children who desired a Fisher Price Wishing Well—gifted children who wanted to step over childhood and enter adulthood where they could announce their great achievements to the world perched atop a great balcony, and the wishing well was a toy meant to appease their anxiety at being trapped as children to inexperience. Honestly, they were essentially attacking my own childhood, because I was living the punchline of their joke only it didn’t come out funny—it was spiteful, even to people who couldn’t personally identify. SNL was mad at the type of children who know they are too smart and good for the social standard and couldn’t wait to grow up and become great John Galts.

This past Saturday was yet another really pathetic skit about a day in the life of Donald Trump where the writers completely failed to understand the president-elect except through the lens of having deficiencies which portrayed him as an out-of-touch bourgeoisie—the only public education definition given to them to understand wealth. The sad irony is that before Trump the writers were free to make jokes about the political right because we don’t take things too serious. After all, we’re used to not being represented in popular media, so we have no choice but to support liberal artists if we want some culture. But the political left don’t know how to do the same for us because they’ve always functioned from the aristocratic assumption that their way of thinking was in the majority. It wasn’t and now they are having a hard time understanding how to cope.

The truth of the matter is that it is extreme minorities who make everything in the world work—and those are the best of us determined to be so through intense competition, merit through education, and those who just out-work everyone else. In Trump’s new world the engines of the world will be free to do their justice and those opponents which have guarded against innovation through statist controls are having their voice taken from them in a social context. The engines of the world now carry the torch for the first time, and that is quite an achievement. One that will have lasting, and deep consequences right out of the gate in 2017. And that is a very exciting prospect. For those who love the original Atlas Shrugged, novel, finally they get to write the sequel. This time it won’t come to us through the great American novel, but through the Executive Branch. And that will be a story that will literally change the world for the better.

Rich Hoffman

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

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-supporters-star-wars-rogue-one-boycott-2016-12

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Published on December 12, 2016 15:40

December 10, 2016

10 Seconds of Sheer Bliss: ‘Star Wars’ transcending politics and the #dumpstarwars movement

Obviously, many of the makers of the new Star Wars film, Rogue One regionally identify with San Francisco politics, because after all, that is where George Lucas moved his Lucasfilm company just prior to selling his empire to Disney in 2012. They are not Donald Trump fans and have foolishly engaged in a progressive campaign against the president-elect adopting the same slant as Saturday Night Live has—lampooning Trump and the supporters of the new rebellion in America which they’ve associated as racists, bigots, and homophobes.

Where they’ve gone wrong is in assuming—including Mark Hamill, (Luke Skywalker himself) is that the meaning of Star Wars was always about diversity and togetherness in a collective kind of ooze, as opposed to what the masses actually cleave to making it one of the most popular modern stories of all time. They obviously don’t understand why Star Wars is successful, and they don’t necessarily need to so long as they stick to the formula that George Lucas started so many years ago. Rogue One is a war movie inspired from the World War II era, and that involved European politics from a time when nations came together to combat the evil of Hitler—and that is a universal theme everyone can get behind. I personally like Garth Edwards as a director—he did a great job on the recent Godzilla film, and now that I’ve heard the Michael Giacchino soundtrack for Rogue One, particularly the section shown below at the 1:40 mark, I am getting very excited for the new film. I wish I could have an hour-long soundtrack of just that kind of music because it reflects how I personally think. If you could put music to my way of thinking 24 hours a day seven days a week—it would sound like that—that’s it!

I’ve went to the trouble of warning these modern Star Wars makers, like the Rogue One writer, Chris Weitz to story group leader at Lucasfilm Pablo Hidalgo and the director of Episode 8 Rian Johnson through Twitter that they needed to can their opinions because they don’t understand Star Wars in an ethical way so far as it relates to the world outside of Lucasfilm—by way of its art. I think they are too young and as natural second-handers to George Lucas, they don’t get the appeal because they live in a filmmaking bubble. Even George Lucas didn’t understand it for most of his life—if he ever did. In fact, Lucas may have only understood Star Wars after he survived the car crash that nearly killed him and ever since—he has been losing that understanding year by year. As an artist, he tapped into something by accident and that became something that changed the world philosophically and when film industry employees seek to bring modern political meaning to Star Wars, they cheapen it. For instance, as Chris Weitz stated about Trump supporters—foolishly—the empire from the Star Wars movies were racists white supremacists and that the villains from Rogue One were much like those who put the New York billionaire into the White House over the corrupt Hillary Clinton—whom many at Lucasfilm were openly supporting. I reminded all those mentioned above that Finn was a black guy and that Captain Phasma was a woman and as my friend Matt Clark pointed out recently, all of the Clone Troopers were copied from the DNA of Jango Fett—who certainly wasn’t a “white guy.” So I told Chris that if he thought that’s what made Rogue One tick as a movie—as the writer—then the film would likely suck.

What those Lucasfilm employees obviously don’t understand is that most of the people I know who ran the Trump campaign on the ground level all loved Star Wars and that from their perspective the evil empire was the Democratic Party and the villains were clearly the Clintons. The destruction of the second Death Star was election day 2016 and we celebrated by pulling down the statue of the evil empress Clinton in the city square of a metaphorical Coruscant. So we are clearly at odds with each other and our definitions of things are defined by regional relationships—Lucasfilm by the progressive views of the coastal cities of New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles—and the Trump rebellion from the flyover states like Ohio, Georgia, Texas, Indiana and Michigan. One thing that Star Wars taught me as a young person, which the modern Lucasfilm employees have not yet mastered is that the space opera is best defined on wings of art—the kind James Joyce participated in—which tapped into ancient roots of human experience and that it is there that the keys to understanding the power and success of Star Wars is best applied.

It was only because of Star Wars that I was inspired as a young twenty-something to read the great European classics like The Canterbury Tales and Finnegan’s Wake. One of those is actually medieval literature while the other is an attempt at preservation of life before the Catholic takeover of Europe specifically in the British Isles. Star Wars is all about that kind of thing mixed with oriental cultures. Lucas properly took all of the world’s mythologies and placed them on an infinite tapestry of galactic magnitude and benefited it even more by setting the story long before our modern human history. The genius of that was to remove the audience from the here and now and place it comfortably in the past so that reflection was possible without the immediacy of modern troubles. So I literally have spent the last thirty years reading classic literature from around the world because I was inspired by Star Wars as a kid to do so—and I am far better off for it now. With these new Star Wars films I am hopeful that the same thing happens to millions of other people over the coming decades because there is a real hope that I have that this art of Star Wars will carry mankind to a new level of understanding even in spite of Kathy Kennedy’s immediate desires to find female directors and stick progressive causes into Star Wars which rips the mind away from the transcendental nature which evokes the magic in the first place. She and Lucasfilm in general understand I think enough to get by.

For instance, Rogue One is really a classic spin on an old World War II movie. The upcoming Han Solo film which goes into production at the turn of the year 2017 has the art department looking at old Frederic Remington paintings to get the look of that movie to reflect a classic western, so these guys get it, and I look forward to seeing what they get up on the screen. I understand that we will see a newer Millennium Falcon with some cool paint schemes on it, which will be wonderful as Han Solo is my favorite character. He’s a very Ayn Rand type of hero. I am so excited about that project that I’m planning to visit the studio where they are filming while they are there in the first quarter of 2017—because it’s wonderful as a work of art to see those types of elements being put together in something that will inspire the world. I’m not saying anything more about the Millennium Falcon because it’s all kind of a secret and I respect that. We’ll all see it soon enough.

The success of the new Han Solo movie will largely depend on how well Rogue One does, so I am rooting for the film to do well. I won’t be boycotting Star Wars just because the filmmakers at Lucasfilm don’t understand the presidency or modern necessity of Donald Trump. They’ll get it in hindsight, but if they don’t see it now—I won’t fault them for it. They have an important job to do in my mind and they need to stick to it. I will say that I am encouraged by what I’ve seen so far, like that Michael Giacchino film score, and the recent update to the video game Battlefront where there is a DLC featuring Rogue One events which came out this week. I’ve been playing it and let me just say—it’s quite astonishing. Additionally, this past week the new VR Mission for X-Wing came out on Playstation and it was jaw dropping cool. The neatest video game experience I’ve ever had. There isn’t even a close second and all this is a result of Star Wars newest film Rogue One which has resurrected the science and ambition those films evoked in the 1980s. I never thought in my wildest imaginings that I’d be able to sit in the cockpit of an X-Wing Fighter and perform dogfighting with other ships around a massive Star Destroyer on the edge of an asteroid field in the most perfect 3D imagery I’ve ever seen. I say that from the perspective of working with the RealD 3D guys back in 2008 when they were perfecting their cameras for the revolution we see now in movie theaters. I can only imagine what kind of technical breakthroughs we will see over the next few years as Star Wars continues to inspire science and art to push human understanding and the Trump presidency opens up the purse strings of capitalism to make those ideas happen. If everyone can’t yet see the big picture—I can deal with that. But lack of vision doesn’t make people correct in their assumptions. Chris would do his project and Lucasfilm a tremendous service if he’d just keep his mouth shut and do his job within that context.

Meanwhile I will be one of the first to see Rogue One. I ordered the soundtrack from Michael Giacchino based exclusively on that clip. I will now go listen to those few seconds of music at the 1:40 mark for the rest of the day because it’s that kind of thing which feeds my brain—which is my favorite part of my body—and it likes to eat. Matt Clark and I are planning a Star Wars special on 1600 WAAM on New Year’s Eve and we’ll review the new Rogue One movie and elaborate on all these topics more, once we have had the benefit of seeing the movie and comparing it to the history of the franchise which are shaped in translation by the politics of our time. So we’ll see. I’m hopeful, but will reserve my judgment on the product presented. And as of now, I’m enjoying the possibilities that come with Star Wars and the hope for the human race that often trails in its wake. I will say this, thank you Michael for that 10 seconds of music shown in the Rogue One scoring session. Because I love it!

Rich Hoffman

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

http://www.allenbwest.com/matt-palumbo/breaking-trump-labor-secretary-announced

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Published on December 10, 2016 05:30

December 8, 2016

Andrew F. Puzder is the Labor Secretary: Trump’s brilliance versus Teddy Roosevelt’s poor understanding of business

I happened to hear a bit of the Glenn Beck radio show recently where their faces were melting off over Trump’s “big government” ideas and were comparing him to the progressive Teddy Roosevelt. Beck was also making fun of Sarah Palin because she had supported Trump and then she was outraged when the President-elect picked up the phone and worked with Carrier air conditioners to keep their jobs in Indiana. It is amazing to me just how stupid people are out there about business which is disappointing in the case of Beck—because he’s rich. But obviously, with him, it was luck, because if he understood business he’d have done better things with the money he acquired during his years with Fox New than he has because the biggest difference between Trump and Teddy Roosevelt is that Donald knows the value of money. Teddy Roosevelt with all his hard work, all his books and efforts never really understood how his family’s fortune was made whereas Donald Trump not only figured it out, but he grew it. This has been reflected in Trump’s cabinet picks, most of which I am very excited about. But the most exciting one so far was that of Andrew F. Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants. You might recognize his work from the following commercials.

Yeah, that’s my kind of guy and certainly not a friend of labor unions. Glenn Beck should know better, you can’t have a Constitution if parasites like these labor unions are continuous imposing themselves on that political philosophy. For the Constitution to work, capitalism must be free and open and only then can we have a true Constitutional Republic. The danger of course is that you never want politicians to use big government to keep themselves in power, and with the Roosevelt family, both Teddy and Franklin, they were obsessed with power largely because they never in their lives understood the value of money. Trump though, and people like Andrew Puzder do understand money and for them the Executive Branch is a “step down.” If they wanted power and money they’d stay in the private industry and continue to pay off politicians to preserve their fortunes. However, they are after a complete philosophy change in America that will take our Constitutional Republic to roots that it would otherwise never have had—and really never has.

So I LOVVVVEEEE the pick of Andrew F. Puzder as the Secretary of Labor. THAT is a dream come true for me! I like having smart people in these positions for a change, because by their very nature, they will reduce the size of government because of their philosophy of pro economic growth techniques. And few understand that needed swagger more than Andrew Puzder. GREAT pick Donald Trump! Great pick! I am looking more and more forward to January 20th 2017!

Hey, hot models who eat hot dogs need jobs too, and now we have someone in a big job who understands that.

Rich Hoffman

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

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Published on December 08, 2016 10:08

December 4, 2016

The Future of Politics in America: Conservatives split over philosophy, progressives fade in failure

As I said on WAAM radio with Matt Clark a long time ago, everything is now occurring just as I predicted it would. The Democratic Party is coming to an official end, the last vestiges of it are dividing and separating themselves out as we speak here on December 4, 2016. The upcoming Trump presidency will further destroy the party forcing old liberals to join Republicans who defect into a Libertarian Party. Those who cannot make that leap will then become an extreme minority of old communist relics who no longer have a hook into the political world. By necessity, the networks will have to adapt to the populism being broadcast from the White House leaving all the current liberal controls needing to adapt or lose their careers to fresh faces not corrupted with the downward looking limits of the Millennials employed by mass media. The networks will use this change in populism to put fresh faces in front of the cameras so they can get younger and more attractive reporters in hopes of boosting their declining ratings which will continue to slide into new forms of media presentation over the coming decade. Welcome to the new world in America which will put its stamp on the rest of the world in a uniting way. But now let’s get more specific in these far looking predictions—because after all, there are tactical advantages in knowing these things that will benefit Republicans if they’ll listen and position themselves accordingly.

A few years ago when radio personalities like Glenn Beck and John Stossel were making it fashionable to call themselves “libertarians” many in the Tea Party movement migrated in that direction because they wanted a live and let live approach to all things in life—which sounds good until you get down into the details. In Beck and Stossel’s case, both are former liberals who did drugs in their early days, and those aspects of their characters were rising to the surface to essentially form a new political party of people who were financially conservative, but essentially socially liberal. The Trump administration will further exacerbate this difference by uniting America under the flag of fiscal responsibility and strong economic dollar performance forcing political identities to split along social parameters. The good thing will be that both political parties will be united on the fiscal matters as Trump reverses the direction of the debt performance.

This is already evident in the sword rattling that is going on between China and America over Taiwan. China using American debt and jobs invented in the United States to feed mostly capitalist markets have leveraged themselves into a superpower falsely propping up their communist government. The big secret that Trump and his billionaire friends know is that the great fear China has is in America taking that economy away from them—because the Chinese as a culture do not have the ability to invent. They can use the “Art of War” to steal other people’s inventions and economic power, but they cannot as a communist country of over a billion compliant souls invent things themselves. Yet China has supported the communist rule of North Korea and the further stifling of economic activity in Vietnam and Cambodia where great sins in the markets of sex trafficking thrive in the vacuum of civility.

China poised falsely on its booming economy of stolen wealth is the greatest threat of war with Japan which of course costs America a lot of money to defend diplomatically, and literally. So the way to put China back in its place and renegotiate trade deals, and interest rates is to take away their security and for Trump—that starts by making friends with Taiwan. That is the first step of many in Making America Great Again starting with trade imbalances between America and China. To the critics out there who fear war with China if provoked—China can’t afford war with America—so don’t worry about it.

Now with the smoke clear and the type of philosophy that Trump will bring to the Republican Party which he now controls, long time conservatives like Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin are beginning to be critical as their Tea Party libertarian roots prevent them from joining the new Republican Party. Instead they will join with Stossel and Beck into the new liberal party in America for which many moderates left over from the current Democrats will find refuge. Granted Ann Coulter is not a libertarian but as things evolve, they will be more appealing to her sense of identity in much the way that she dated Andrew Stein a decade ago—a major liberal in New York. People like Ann who have made their livings as pundits standing against the current administrations needs to be in a rebellion party, so as Trump reaches across the political battle lines that have been entrenched for several centuries and makes deals that puts fiscal conservativism on ground that everyone can agree with, the focus will then move to social big tent government republicanism and small government Constitutionally based philosophy which will pull Ann and those like her more toward the evolving Libertarians.

I’m not a pundit and do not make my living off opinion. I offer those opinions to help people navigate more appropriately with the challenges of our day, but I don’t have a hook in the swamp of Washington D.C. or its connecting entities in the states. But I am a manager of many things, and a good one at that, so the means to getting to a fiscally responsible country that broadcasts morality to the rest of the world is my concern. If government gets too big and wants to suppress me, I have my Bill of Rights to use as a weapon against it, so I’m not afraid of anything when it comes to government. A few years ago I took a test when libertarians were becoming fashionable because many people wanted to pull me into that tent of political thinking and I wasn’t about to go because essentially I have very hard-line views on drugs and ethical conduct at a national level. I am not a “live and let live” guy on drug policy. If a neighbor of mine smokes dope and I smell it, there will be trouble.

So as far as the war on drugs and stopping drug cartels in far away lands, the government and its military is something I can get behind if they are managing the finances properly. After all, you can’t have a good moral country if everything is loose like they might be at a Grateful Dead concert. Those types of philosophies do not go together. I am all for advocating strength and military superiority to broadcast the nationalism to the far corners of the world to help them adapt capitalism and that won’t happen smoking dope with John Stossel on a street corner complaining about a long work week. When I took that test I was somewhere in the range of 98% Republican as opposed to any kind of liberal view. The manager in me often uses the structure of the rules of the day to tactically outmaneuver people so I can see how a Donald Trump would have success at the federal level where a loser like Barack Obama would become a tyrant. Likely Donald Trump is probably between 50% and 75% Republican, I’m sure he has much softer views on things than I do, but the future of the Republican Party will be defined by him. There will be things I don’t like—that are too soft, but I’ll be able to live with those because most people disappoint me anyway. What I care about in the end are results, and Trump will get them.

Already I can see a huge political change locally in my home town of Cincinnati. There was a great dinner that many of the leaders of the freedom movement attended several years ago, Matt Clark included. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. Doc Thompson was there too, along with Ann Becker and many other movers and shakers of Southern Ohio politics which has very directly shaped the current political climate over the last eight years. Of those people who were all united behind the effort to stop the liberalism of Barack Obama—the socialist slide over the abyss–under Trump many of them will soon be at odds with each other because that’s how the new party of conservativism will evolve. Former friends will become enemies politically and America will hash out that evolving philosophy in a much more productive fashion than they have in the past. But the old Democrats—those who can bend will join the Libertarians. Those who can’t will simply break. The Clintons and their progressivism are out. Their funeral was the concession speech that Hillary Clinton gave and the faces in that room confirmed it.

The media also knows it. The Saturday Night Live episode from 12-3-2016 confirms that the political left is lost in European liberalism and as the topography changes there will further castigate liberalism out of Europe. Remember too what I said about the election of Francois Hollande as socialism took over completely the politics of France. After just one five-year term which is up in 2017 he is out and the socialists do not have a replacement that can stop the rise of conservativism in France. So, this is something that’s happening all around the world. Brexit in the United Kingdom, Trump in America, and now a conservative eruption in France of all places. The entire European Union is on the way toward dissolution and progressivism is out of fashion and from that new philosophies and political parties will emerge—forever.

When the smoke clears, I will still be a committed Republican and the party will be stronger than it ever has been. Many of my friends will be Libertarians and that movement will gain in strength as traditional Democrats simply fade away. The evidence is already mounting, Democrats have bankrupted cities, schools, and states. College institutions will have to completely rethink how they go about business because the structure that liberals have committed themselves to is gone. The last vestiges of their world is chipping away by the second and it’s never coming back. They are morally and philosophically bankrupt and now that they’ve been exposed in an election, the world is turning away from them for good. Little do they know, but they’ll all be better off for it and soon former friends will become new political enemies as the story marches on in a chapter of American history not yet written. And it will be exciting.

Rich Hoffman

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

http://immersivevreducation.com/the-apollo-11-experience/

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Published on December 04, 2016 05:13

December 3, 2016

Playstation VR: The future of education

I’ve had it for a while now but given all the news of the day haven’t really had a chance that was justifiable to discuss it, but I have to say, the new Playstation VR system is an absolutely stunning evolution for home video game play. I have a rather insatiable appetite for adventure and violence with an emphasis on competitive necessity so video game play is actually a time management tool for me which I enjoy immensely. For instance, I am proud to be a grown man with many intense responsibilities who can still reach level 90 on Star Wars: Battlefront and being one of the top players in the ship to ship combat even against the best in the entire world—who have nothing else to do in life but play video games. I don’t have that luxury and I still manage in some games to have 30 or more kills per game—which is quite high. Video games are a nice outlet for my aggressive nature so when Sony came out with the new Playstation VR in October I was one of the first to get it—because honestly, I couldn’t wait. However, I was highly skeptical about how well it would actually work so let me report that it is absolutely mind-blowing.

For context, my video game playing days began almost 40 years ago with the Atari 2400 set up on a spare black and white television that had a very small 10” or so screen. When my family wanted to do something really nice for me on a special weekend when I had friends over, or for a birthday, my dad would hook up that old Atari on a slightly larger 24” color television and we could see colors in our video games—so that was my point of reference. Of those old Atari games one of my favorites was the game called Adventure—which was a story of dragon slaying and treasure hunting that needed a lot of imagination to buy into—since the game play was some really primitive graphics. My other favorite game was The Empire Strikes Back which was essentially a Star Wars version of the popular game Defender. So I was around at the beginning of home video game play and it’s been something I’ve done now for four decades. I’ve never been one of those people who only play video games in what little spare time that I have—it’s always been a supplement to my life—but I have always enjoyed them. I remember fondly growing up and playing games at the arcade for 25 cents each play then coming home and playing games on our home system. So when Sony beat everyone else to the market with an affordable VR system for the counsole market, I had to get it mainly for the sentiment. I didn’t expect it to work very well, and I thought it would have some bright spots—but my expectations were pretty low.

So I get this thing home and spent a lot of time setting it up—and getting to know it since much of the motion control stuff were things I wasn’t familiar with. To be honest I bought the Playstation VR so that I could play the Star Wars: Battlefront VR mission that was coming out on December 6th, and at the time, that was still a few months away, so I wasn’t in any real hurry. I picked up a few games to try out with it, like VR Worlds and a horror game called Rush Blood, but otherwise had my target on that extension of Battlefront during the upcoming Holiday Season. Once it was all hooked up one of the first games I played was Ocean Decent on the VR Worlds disk and I was immediately enraptured. The graphics were so jaw dropping real that I felt immediately that the concept of video game play had just changed forever. By the time I played a game called The London Heist, I was sure of it. The graphics were stunning, the game play intensely real and the entire platform truly did take your mind to a different place. I took the headset off and put it down for a little while thinking of all the nice things I had said earlier in the year about the latest Uncharted game for Playstation and I found myself looking very much forward to the first wave of adventure games that surely would hit the market because the VR game play truly did put a player into another world while sitting in the middle of your living room. You can easily be transported to another place and time with the Playstation VR because honestly, your mind doesn’t know the difference. We are so used to accepting realities with our eyes and ears and the Playstation VR does a great job of giving those two senses enough information to convince your brain that what you are seeing is truly real. It is quite astonishing.

I found the Playstation VR to be a real hit during our Thanksgiving celebrations as it was a real ice breaker. People visiting our house for dinner were able to go on a deep ocean dive or battle robotic monstrosities in the safety of my couch and as each person took off the headset there was a look of wonder on their faces. That alone would have made the cost of the whole enterprise worth it to me. But coming up still was my Battlefront DLC so the adventure was just getting started. It seemed unbelievable that such a thing would even be available for the home market. It would seem that the VR technology should be so expensive that you could only get the experience at a place like Dave and Busters or the Main Event.

Recently I was at the Main Event in West Chester enjoying the video games they have there during a lunch break on a rather intense day of work and I couldn’t help but think that the Playstation VR made all the games exhibited there seem clunky. What I had at my house far exceeded what the best of the video game market had to offer and that is saying something. I have been in contact with the people at VR Immersive Education who are about to present their Apollo 11 Experience to the Playstation market. They already offer their VR documentary of an Apollo 11 moon landing on the Oculus Rift and HTC Hive systems. They told me they plan to release their wonderful software to the Playstation community around Christmas time. To me, projects like their Apollo 11 Experience are where VR really thrives and is certainly the future of that technology. The games are fun, but what VR does best is put you into places that might otherwise be prohibitive, such as on a conference call with a contact in another country where you can see what they do and look around the room at things you couldn’t see unless you are actually there. Or visit a city or museum in a far away place and look at things in the same fashion as you would if you were just strolling around. That makes all VR technology extremely education oriented because it can put you in places you otherwise couldn’t get to. Regarding this Apollo 11 VR Experience, it puts you on the moon realistically which is as close as you’re going to get aside from actually being there.

Not only is this new VR technology fun for gaming, it is the most powerful tool we have now for education. On the Playstation VR headset there is voice activation, so this would be the best way to learn a new language, get a pilot’s license, learn to drive a car or interact with an environment that is not around your home. The potential is just jaw dropping. Needless to say, I am deeply impressed. What I thought would just be a gimmick turned out to be a technical game changer. I am still looking forward to the Star Wars: VR Mission coming up, but now more than anything I am looking forward to the education programs like Apollo 11 and voyages to Mars that are coming up for VR headsets. For kids, there is no better ways to learn about space, or even the inner workings of the human body, geography, or human interactions through speech than with the VR technology that is being unleashed before us now. My respect extends beyond evolutionary nostalgia derived from my first youthful aphorisms—it comes from the recognition that VR is the best education tool that we currently have for all ages of learning and it couldn’t have come at a better time. To those who worked hard to bring that technology forth, fantastic job. You have opened the world to everyone and made it so the only limit to filling our minds with good things is our own personal restrictions based on effort. Because VR does most of the heavy lifting in a spectacular way. Every home should have some version of a VR headset for education purposes primarily. It is a fantastic invention that will fill minds with experiences it otherwise couldn’t get.

Rich Hoffman

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Published on December 03, 2016 05:40

December 2, 2016

Trump and the Value of Money: What a history of Europe tells us about why liberals fail

"I don’t lose any sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word."
General James #MadDog Mattis pic.twitter.com/W2QklT5F1N

— Dan Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) December 2, 2016

The day Donald Trump announced that he had brokered a deal to keep Carrier in the United States, he also set the unprecedented standard of launching his official “thank you” tour in Cincinnati, Ohio returning to the US Bank Arena to announce that he was nominating Mad Dog Mattis to the Secretary of Defense position. Never have the rifts between two political philosophies in America and throughout the world been so obvious, because later that same night at Harvard, one of Trump’s top advisors, Kellyanne Conway blasted members of the Clinton team who had lost the election recently when they continued to propose that values long-held since the beginning of human civilization still held merit.

.@TeamTrump back in #NYC. AMAZING day in IN & OH for @realDonaldTrump & @mike_pence! Watching news now – seeing some sore losers @Harvard! pic.twitter.com/GHIiRHHcMJ

— Dan Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) December 2, 2016

Kellyanne and all members of the Trump team, including his supporters for which I am enthusiastically included proudly sunk the flag of capitalism deeply in the ground represented by the American flag and proposed that there would be no further wavering in the future. The political left was dead and all that was left of them were these carcasses in denial. An entirely new way of thinking in the human race was launching and we were seeing the beginning of it essentially in Cincinnati, Ohio.

I had been thinking of Thanksgiving and a lot about European history of late because my family is planning a trip to that part of the world soon—so the definitions presented were well in context. A lot of people don’t know it, but the leader of the pilgrims who came to Plymouth Rock for which we celebrate the Thanksgiving Day rituals and launched our capitalist version of the Holiday season in the states—which for me is always such an exciting time–was James Chilton who was born in the city of Canterbury, where my son-in-law is from in England. It was he who commissioned the Mayflower to set sail for the New World to flee the politics of the of the Church of England and their rigid rules and ceremonies which were used by the King of England to unite the kingdom behind the great cathedral which loomed large over the town’s skyline. Like my son-in-law looking for opportunities not tied to the limitations of state sponsored controls, James Chilton fled for reasons of religious freedom toward the unknown destinations of a savage land to be free of the limited scope of kingdom politics spoken through the efforts of the church. As history well chronicled, it was that same cathedral in Canterbury where Sir Thomas Becket was assassinated by his former friend, King Henry the 2nd for which spawned the great literary classic, The Canterbury Tales.

You see dear reader, the goal of the mediaeval church, which is remarkably aligned with the modern progressive political movement—which is a direct evolution from communism—which descended of course from European mediaeval churches, which descended from the last remnants of the Roman Empire and so on—was to unite the masses behind statist mindsets for which solitary rulers and aristocrats rule over the minds of mankind. The remnants of that thinking can be found on virtually every college campus, every political order around the world, and it originates in the period of European history where the Roman Empire pushed north to conquered the “barbarians” and “pagans” to leave behind the Catholic Church to institute state sponsored religion—which therefor controlled all aspects of human life. When bishops developed a guilty complex at the Church of England in Canterbury, the king of the day whomever he may have been, killed the rebel and found a replacement who would do the king’s bidding behind a mask of God. This is why the puritan James Chilton organized a movement to leave that picturesque town in England with all its security and solidifying ritual and migrated to the wild and woolly unknown of America to sit down with primitive Indians and carve out a new life for themselves. After a few hundred years the descendants and followers of this puritan movement launched through rebellion the American concept led by philosophy shaped by Adam Smith economics and Thomas Paine’s conceptual thinking. America was born out of a rejection of the European imposition of statism and the further conquests of the so-called nomads who lived in North America upon the arrival of the Europeans escaping this turmoil from their homeland which was a natural collision of cultures inevitably bound to occur—the West and the East. The winner was those who followed the philosophy of Adam Smith. The losers were those chained to collectivist philosophies rooted in statism—which the tribal nomads of North America were limited by through their Chinese and Siberian roots. Out of anger against statism in Europe the more developed idea of free people evolved and the American culture spawned from that desire clashed with the nomads who had diffused from Asia into North America looking for food—but not inventing much of anything new philosophically—except a new form of religion—nature worship.

Understanding history in this way it is explained why modern progressives have aligned themselves with the crises of the vanquished Indian, whether it is in fighting the trademark of the NFL football team, the Washington Redskins, or the Dakota Access Pipeline where the media has sided with the Standing Rock Sioux Indians. The real fight is against capitalism—the same capitalism proposed by Adam Smith—the capitalism and need for it which put Donald Trump in the White House. For generations people saluted the flag and they took for granted the capitalism which made their lives so good in North America—and could solve many problems around the world, but after an increasing statist president in George W. Bush made that way through terrorism and war then an openly socialist president in Barack Obama, the American people had enough, and they turned to an unapologetic capitalist in Donald Trump—a guy who loved his large planes, his golden palace at the top of Trump Tower—and was the commander of the hit television show The Celebrity Apprentice who understood capitalism and how to make it work for America again.

Those on the other side, those against Trump in this election, are those who hate the value of money. They don’t dislike what money can buy them, such as power, or luxury, but they despise that money represents value. They hate what money means to an economy of individuals in the same way that the kings of England hated common people who dared to challenge their social status, or when the church dared to deviate away from being a voice of the state toward individual conciliation. Progressives are against individual value and thus they hate that money is a means of representation of that value. Trump’s ultimate audacity is that his wealth was built on “value,” as opposed to someone who gains wealth through an inheritance or through a state sponsored lottery. If you put a million dollars in the pocket of a loser, they will lose all that money in a few years—which is how so many star athletes end up bankrupt a few years after their careers are over. Money can’t give someone value, but it is a product of value. For instance, a person of value can never be poor even if they lose all their money many times over. But a person of little value can only camouflage their value with money to hide what losers they really are. This is unfortunately from our European heritage—the progressive viewpoint—has been the dominate view of money and how it’s made. It comes from those days where bishops held up the values of the kings and queens of England—and other places around Europe—until they fell out of favor with those monarchs. The bishops thought they had power because they held the keys to religion. The kings thought they had value because of some royal bloodline or social station when people like James Chilton and Sir Thomas Becket just wanted to be left alone to worship their God in peace and pursue their own prosperity—free of statist controls.

Trump standing on a stage in Cincinnati for the second time in two months was a direct product of that bold Mayflower move by Chilton so many years ago—and for the first time in human history was living free of any guilt generated by the state to control behavior. Instead, Trump was growing beyond the state and the people of Ohio attending that rally were there to prop him up beyond those ancient limitations for the first time in any human being—to be in such a high office of political power. So in the context of history, what Trump did on Thursday December 1st 2016 was remarkable. There was a lot of effort which came before him and it culminated essentially with his long-needed election. And now, from that poised platform we have a man who understands the value of money and how it builds a nation of people—and that the power comes from them, not the state. Like the Bishop Becket from the long ago medieval Canterbury Cathedral he’s a rebel against the thrones of Europe. He has transcended from a royal bloodline, or a religious leader into a creation of Adam Smith himself—and he is now in the most powerful high office in the world, and he’s not afraid to use it for good—as opposed to evil–defined by the values which govern money.

Liberals, those descendants of European statism, will claim that it is evil to not equally distribute wealth to the populations of the world—because to them, everyone has “equal” value as under the premise of collectivism for which kings rule, nobody is more powerful than their kings or queens be them President Obama or Hillary Clinton. But in a free society, value is determined by merit and that is represented in a moral culture by money. Not money stolen from someone else or given as a gift by someone else—but money earned through something produced—by being a productive citizen of the world. To those who work hard and long every day channeling their values into their efforts, they typically are wealthy if they do it long enough. But the bum on the street will never be their equals if they spend their days chasing primal effects such as food and sex. Such people will never be the equals to the captains of industry like those filling Donald Trump’s cabinet seats. And he knows how to pick them, because he is like General Mattis—people who don’t understand what the word “failure” even means. Trump’s White House team are the types of people ostracized by a progressive society pushed to the corners with rules and regulations in the same manner that Sir Thomas Becket was murdered for falling out of favor with King Henry the 2nd. The hidden fear of all progressives is that the great secret of value will spew out revealing their belief in blood lines and aristocratic connections ruling the masses to be a hoax. This is largely why my son-in-law left Canterbury as James Chilton had centuries before, for the hope of opportunity through freedom. And it’s taken thousands of years to get their wish, but finally on a stage in Cincinnati on a cold December night—their dreams came true. It was an extraordinary event. Mankind will be changed forever. Just watch!

Progressives and other liberals know what happened and they are in a state of panic because for the first time—ever—the rules of human conduct have changed and they no longer have anywhere to hide, and that’s a good thing. The human race needs money to determine value and those who have stood in the way of that value need to be removed so that history no longer repeats itself in favor of aristocratic rule—but through the rule of the individual and the massive amount of work they produce when free from tyranny. Work after all isn’t bad—it’s what happens when people are productive and for America to be Great Again, this long-held truth in North America must be instituted for all time—wrestled from the tight grasp of the progressives from history who are terrified of merit—because as a people—they know they have no real value without the mask of looted wealth to conceal their valueless traditions.

Rich Hoffman