Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 353
November 6, 2015
Confirmation of what I’ve said about Modern Education: A six-year-old suspended for being a normal boy
This story made me so angry when I heard it that it’s taken me a few days to calm down about it. But it has made national news. Of course there will be a lot more on this story to come. Here is how the New York Daily News reported the issue.
A 6-year-old Ohio boy was suspended from school for three days after being spotted shooting an imaginary bow and arrow.
The boy was sent to the principal’s office for engaging in make-believe marksmanship during recess at Our Lady Of Lourdes Catholic in Westwood, Cincinnati.
Now, his dad Matthew Miele has slammed the school, who insist they have a zero-tolerance policy to any threatening gestures.
“I don’t see anything wrong with the way he was playing, ” Miele told WCPO News.
He notes that his son has never had a problem with discipline.
“The punishment is so severe that it’s hard, as a parent, to make this a teachable moment for our kid so that we can move forward.”
The school’s principal Joe Crachiolo was alerted to the incident after a teacher spotted him pretending to be a Power Ranger as he was playing outside with friends.
The parents say they encourage their son to use his imagination as much as possible, and are frustrated that their pleas for their son’s suspension to be reconsidered fell on deaf ears.
“I didn’t really understand,” said mom Martha, who spoke to Crachiolo after the punishment was handed down.
“My question to him was ‘Is this really necessary? Does this really need to be a three-day suspension under the circumstances that he was playing and he’s 6 years old?’ “
In a letter to parents, Crachiolo said the school has no tolerance for “any real, pretend or imitated violence.”
It is simply disgraceful. Testimony to all the negatives I have stated about modern education practices. The warnings have now manifested into reality.
Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman
CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.
Rodizio at Lunch in Liberty Center: Only $19.99 and defining the Metaphysics of Quality
It might be because I believe that advanced civilizations first erupted in South America a long time ago that I find the Rodizio at Liberty Center, Ohio so enchanting, but I love the place. It has become a personal refuge for me of late because I love the atmosphere, the enthusiasm, and the food—and I love the location. I previously wrote about a VIP night that I was a part of which can be seen by clicking here. But that was at night where the price per person was $33 dollars for the all you can eat full Rodizio experience—where they bring skewers of meat to your table in a very theatrical way and you eat as much as you want or can. Well, I wanted to try it out for lunch so I brought some people important to me to the place to see if the lunch was as magical as the dinner—and sure enough it was.
The night before I watched the very exciting Battle of Ohio at Paul Brown Stadium where the Bengals continued to have an impressive season. It was Thursday Night Football and the nation was watching. The night was long and the crowd was rowdy, but it was enchanting to watch the game from the Club section with the same demographic type of people who will enjoy the new Liberty Center. However, once the game was over, I shared with tens of thousands of other people a strong desire to get back to our cars and get on the road—which clogged up I-75 all the way back to West Chester. The highway really didn’t begin to move until we moved north passed the I-275 bridge. We were all going home from the Bengal game to the same place. It was well passed midnight and we just wanted to get to our beds. That was a persistent thought that I had all evening during the football game. Take away the Bengals, the Reds, the museum and an occasional theater play and there isn’t much that downtown Cincinnati has to offer. Sure they have nice dinner options, but downtown is such a pain in the neck to travel around. For the people who can afford it, such as the people in the Club section at the Bengal game, once the fun was over, they wanted to get back to their homes—north of Cincinnati in the suburbs of West Chester, Liberty Township and Mason.
For years I have enjoyed going downtown for the exotic experiences that you can have there, but have more than once been dismayed at how trashy it was. For instance, when you’re walking around with your date in front of Fountain Square with the Westin Hotel in the background, you want to enjoy the luxury and options of the setting, but then some dude walks by with his pants half down cursing up a storm looking like he just crawled out of the gutter—which most of the time he has, it tends to alter an otherwise good mood. You may have just spent $400 at Ruby’s Steakhouse and had an otherwise nice time until something like that happens. Cincinnati, because of the environment they’ve allowed to percolate just wasted your money on the experience you were trying to have. At the Bengal game, money flowed better so long as there was a set-up that allowed people who wanted to enjoy the game without a lot of ruckus to do so with a pretty decent guarantee that the exchange would be worth it. Those same people didn’t want to spend much time not getting to their car and were eager to get back to friendlier territory as soon as the drama of the game was done. So much of the imagery shown on the television of the downtown cityscape was an illusion, it wasn’t real. Downtown was dead because the people best able to support it wanted to get as far away as possible once it came down to putting money on the table for a nice evening. Snobby, sure it is and there is nothing wrong with that. People of value enjoy association with other people of value. If other people don’t share those values, then there will be tension, and in this day and age where political correctness is choking off our opinions, people vote with their wallets.
That brings us back to the wonderful Liberty Center downtown that is privately managed by the Steiner group which essentially gives people the Club option of shopping and dining. It has the same appeal as going to an NFL game in the Club and Box seats—it puts everything on a pedestal, keeps the riff raff at bay, and ensures that the money you spend will be worth as much as possible. And so far, I have discovered that the Rodizio is the best value of all those elements. It’s just a top class place—it reminds me of the type of place you’d find in South America without the language barriers, the sweaty hotels with half working air conditioning units, and the modern socialism that is crippling their current economy. When I walk into Rodizio each time, I think of the ancient cultures which seeded planet earth well before any established religion laid claim to history. There is an ancient truth to the place that first appealed to me. Now I find it sustaining to attend their salad bar which is only $12.99 for lunch including all the hot dishes, and pick from some very healthy selections of food prepared by a kitchen staff that really cares. But for lunch at only $19.99 you can have the whole Rodizio experience which is a business lunch bargain. So I had to try it out with those thoughts of the Bengal game fresh on my mind.
Yes Captain Hook was there and he personally cared for our table. We were very happy and the management at the Rodizio made it a very memorable experience. Our waitress, Crystal was exceptionally professional and poured a lot of passion into our experience. I had stated previously that I considered Rodizio a great business lunch option and it has certainly lived up to that assessment. This wasn’t a VIP evening, this was an actual business day in what I consider paradise—a well managed downtown where I don’t have to worry about my car, or nasty people ruining my investment dollars with degradation. To say anything less would be dishonest just for the stylishness of being politically correct. Thus far, I don’t have to worry about wasting money at Liberty Center or Rodizio. If you are taking clients or associates out to lunch to impress them, you need the whole experience, the food, the atmosphere, the people—everything that your senses perceive. It all has to work or really you are just wasting your money.
The Rodizio crew understands that investment which is why I am so glowingly supportive of them. If Liberty Center were the kind of shopping destination that John Galt would have built from the novel Atlas Shrugged, then Rodizio is one of the unique places that would belong on the pages of that classic story for all the right reasons within it. It’s better than reality, which is what I feel each time I visit the Rodizio Grill. They do a good job of caring for their customers with an experience that is better than the reality of the outside world—the world beyond the parking lot of Liberty Center.
It’s not being snobby to enjoy nice things. For me it’s all about the Metaphysics of Quality. I love a quality experience and when variables create mundane results, I often resent whatever investment I’ve put into the endeavor—whether that may by time, money, or emotion. I don’t like to waste resources—so if I do something, I like to see a return on that investment in a quality experience. When I get that I do enjoying talking about it. There is nothing wrong with setting the bar high for yourself. There is nothing wrong with playing above your head, because it can make you a better person. And there is nothing wrong with eating the best food that you can for the best price in the best place. At Rodizio Grill at Liberty Center, quality is what the experience is all about. And with that, I’m pleased to report that they are the real deal, not just a flash in the pan. If you are looking for a good place to grab lunch, they should be at the top of your list.
Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman
CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.
November 5, 2015
Pot Users and Insects: How they are one and the same
One of the biggest problems with the way the marijuana push to legalize it within the state of Ohio was displayed clearly in the ballot language itself, shown below. The emphasis of protection from “weed” use and sales was placed on “public” places, such as public schools, churches, parks and libraries. But what were completely ignored are residences and especially home schoolers. What if a neighbor is smoking pot in their backyard in full view of a family who happens to be home schooling their children? Issue 3 and the recreational push for marijuana across the country completely ignore this issue which is probably the most devastating imposition of the proposal. Here is how the ballot languages was presented—notice that the emphasis of the entire legislation is on public protection, not private individuals.
The official ballot text was as follows:[1]
“
Issue 3
Grants a monopoly for the commercial production and sale of marijuana for recreational and medicinal purposes
Proposed Constitutional Amendment
Proposed by Initiative Petition
To add Section 12 of Article XV of the Constitution of the State of Ohio.
A majority yes vote is necessary for the amendment to pass.
The proposed amendment would:
Endow exclusive rights for commercial marijuana growth, cultivation, and extraction to self-designated landowners who own ten predetermined parcels of land in Butler, Clermont, Franklin, Hamilton, Licking, Lorain, Lucas, Delaware, Stark, and Summit Counties. One additional location may be allowed for in four years only if existing facilities cannot meet consumer demand.
Permit retail sale of recreational marijuana at approximately 1,100 locations statewide. Such retail establishments must have a state license that may be obtained only if the electors of the precinct where the store will be located approve the use of the location for such purpose at a local option election.
Legalize the production of marijuana-infused products, including edible products, concentrates, sprays, ointments and tinctures by marijuana product manufacturing facilities.
Allow each person, 21 years of age or older, to, grow, cultivate, use, possess, and share up to eight ounces of usable homegrown marijuana plus four flowering marijuana plants if the person holds a valid state license. Allow each person, 21 years of age or older, to purchase, possess, transport, use, and share up to 1 ounce of marijuana for recreational use. Authorize the use of medical marijuana by any person, regardless of age, who has a certification for a debilitating medical condition.
Prohibit marijuana establishments within 1,000 feet of a house of worship, public library, public or chartered elementary or secondary school, state-licensed day-care center, or public playground, however: after a certain date, a new day-care, library, etc., cannot force a preexisting marijuana establishment to relocate by opening a new location within 1,000 feet of the business.
Prohibit any local or state law, including zoning laws, from being applied to prohibit the development or operation of marijuana growth, cultivation, and extraction facilities, retail marijuana stores, and medical marijuana dispensaries unless the area is zoned exclusively residential as of January 1, 2015 or as of the date that an application for a license is first filed for a marijuana establishment.
Create a special tax rate limited to 15% on gross revenue of each marijuana growth, cultivation, and extraction facility and marijuana product manufacturing facility and a special tax rate limited to 5% on gross revenue of each retail marijuana store. Revenues from the tax go to a municipal and township government fund, a strong county fund, and the marijuana control commission fund.
Create a marijuana incubator in Cuyahoga County to promote growth and development of the marijuana industry and locate marijuana testing facilities near colleges and universities in Athens, Cuyahoga, Lorain, Mahoning, Scioto and Wood Counties, at a minimum.
Limit the ability of the legislature and local governments from regulating the manufacture, sales, distribution, and use of marijuana and marijuana products. Create a new state government agency called the marijuana control commission (with limited authority) to regulate the industry, comprised of seven Ohio residents appointed by the Governor, including a physician, a law enforcement officer, an administrative law attorney, a patient advocate, a resident experienced in owning, developing, managing and operating businesses, a resident with experience in the legal marijuana industry, and a member of the public.[5]
http://ballotpedia.org/Ohio_Marijuana_Legalization_Initiative,_Issue_3_(2015)
After the measure was defeated on Election night 2015 a pot supporter wrote me on Twitter to advocate that pot was so similar to alcohol that it was an unfair prohibition. Well, I’m rather sick of that argument. It is not the same, and for the record, I don’t like to look over the fence into a neighbor’s backyard and see a bunch of drunks drinking beer and carrying on. If they stay to themselves, it’s a personal freedom issue, but if that carries over into my life, it’s something else that intrudes on me. Intoxication in all forms is disgusting and is something I don’t want children I care about to see as their young minds are building hope for their futures.
I saw two young people smoking dope in the car next to me at a traffic light just the other day, a West Chester cop sitting behind both of us watching smoke pour out of the windows. The kids probably anticipating the mood of the nation and potential of Issue 3 to pass had an arrogance about them that I’ve only seen recently. Just five years ago with a cop car behind them, those same types of kids would be stuffing that pot under their seats afraid of being caught. Now dope smoking millennials have been led to believe that marijuana is acceptable in public due to the massive amounts of money that has been spent promoting it by progressive groups. When I was a kid it was actors like Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood who were the stars of cinema and they didn’t smoke pot on-screen. There are reports that Ford smoked it with the cast and crew of the Star Wars films, but that was kept tightly under wraps until the present time, because it used to be shameful. Now young people have Seth Rogen, Seth MacFarlane, and several others who openly advocate pot use. Kids today don’t have a chance as their role models are dead head pot scum. They don’t care about the current laws because they’ve been convinced that its equivalent to the prohibition movement of a century ago.
But pot is different; it’s a mind altering drug that stays in the fat cells of your body way too long. With alcohol, there is a natural regulator, it takes a toll on your body to consume too much—so there is a natural risk and reward element to it. If you drink too much, the next day there will be a price to pay. Marijuana steps around that issue and gives all the fun about “losing your mind” without the negative effects which provides too much of an incentive for a country to be weak-willed and lack luster. Progressives are obviously behind the pot push to change the country from a conservative one into a liberal one in the same fashion that Indians were easily conquered by getting them addicted to alcohol. The same is happening to our youth.
I’ve been to rock concerts and parties where there was a lot of pot smoked, and I have always felt the way I do about it. I never took it and I never will and I always looked down on people who did it. It’s a weak and pathetic substance that isn’t good for the human mind in any fashion. And I shouldn’t have to smell it in my back yard. Kids shouldn’t have to see it in a car at a traffic light. And I shouldn’t have to walk down the road and see a pot store next to anything. As it stands right now, I don’t see pot. It may be easy to get, but so are insects. If I want to find them, I can. But I typically don’t notice them out in the open. Drugs and insects have that in common. What pot users want is to function out in the open, and that is an insult to me and people like me.
The next step for the pot people is to try again with medical marijuana as a gateway to public acceptance. They won’t go away. They will be back just like insects are when you leave food out too long. Their parasitic nature will mandate it. What they want is for their vile behavior to be accepted—legally, and if we allow that to happen, it won’t just be arrogant kids in cars smoking weed—they’ll be in out in the open everywhere, because the stigma will have been removed. And once that happens, it’s over. You can’t get back to a time when pot heads, losers, and scum bags hid themselves form the sight of the righteous. Once pot is legal in any way, the insects of our existence will have a foothold into the world of goodness, and will seek with every effort they have to ruin our lives with their presence.
Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman
CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.
November 4, 2015
Opinions of a Pothead: What they see in the mirror
In the 24 hours before the Election of 2015 this site had several thousand hits just on political issues ranging from Lakota school board candidates, Fairfield tax issues, and of course Issue 3—the pot legalization in Ohio. It was a little sad because many of those articles have been out there in cyberspace for weeks, but people were too consumed with other thoughts to pay attention—until right before the election. It was like a bunch of stupid college kids partying all week-long then the night before a big test cramming for it like a bunch of idiots taking caffeine pills to stay awake. The moment the test was over they were right back to their original stupidity getting drunk in the local bar and partying it up like it was the end of the world. Of course of those there were late comers who noticed I had very strong opinions against pot legalization in Ohio and left me comments. Some of them sounded like the idiot diatribes of a dog that had just consumed its own feces—incoherent and obviously had their brains destroyed by sustained marijuana use over time. But some were like that of the guy below. I don’t agree with this guy on much of anything, but at least he strung together a few sentences that could generate discussion. Here is what he said:
JLeno thetonightshow.comx mrmeeseeks420@hotmail.com 83.32.44.167
JLeno thetonightshow.com mrmeeseeks420@hotmail.com 83.32.44.167
Submitted on 2015/11/02 at 10:25 pm
I think it’s great that you have your own opinion and are expressing it and all, but why don’t you present any solid info to back up your hatred? I got the impression that the whole article was just you stating your dislike of pot and the people who smoke it without providing any real evidence. You say that people aren’t really living their lives because they smoke a mind altering substance but have you ever considered that weed actually helps people to approach subjects from a different angle and offer a different take on things. Before I smoked weed, I lacked empathy and was very closed-minded. Since then, I’ve gained a new perspective that has allowed me to admit that I am wrong and take other people’s feelings into account, apparently unlike you who seems to just go around hating on a group of people who never hurt anybody. I don’t know what has to happen in a guy’s life to make him so resentful towards such a small thing that has proven time and time again to be less harmful (and more beneficial) than many legal drugs (such as caffeine and alcohol). I know you’ll probably disregard this because I’m a “filthy pothead” but I really don’t think your hatred of people who decide to ingest a natural substance is fair.
People advocating pot use always attack the amount of evidence presented in making an argument against it. I did present plenty of arguments in my article against Issue 3, but explaining it to a stoner is like trying to tell a person suffering from Alzheimer’s where their car keys is. You can show it to them on the kitchen table and they’ll act like they heard what you said, but two hours later they won’t remember anything you said, because their short-term memory centers in their brain has been destroyed and they can’t remember anything that happened five minutes ago. They can remember things that happened decades ago, but not things that happened that day because long-term memories are stored in a different part of the brain. Short term memory is one of the first things to go and pot heads have that in common with Alzheimer’s patients. I make that statement based on my own comparison, not some doctor who is behind Issue 3 and threw their name behind a study to the contrary so that they can get into the business of prescribing it to their patients. I see nothing good about marijuana use in any fashion and I’m against it for every reason—pain relief, social bonding, even as a material for making rope.
The next things these stoner types attack is the uptightness of the typical “conservative.” Their assertion is that if only we’d get stoned with them that we might “mellow out” and see the world from a different perspective. No, marijuana is a mind altering substance. If it helps users see the world differently it’s because it changes the way a human brain thinks rationally about something. Losing rationality is not a beneficial attribute to the human condition or the maintenance of a republic. Lacking empathy is not a bad thing when people of value are surrounded by people who lack values. Being empathetic toward other human beings is not an admirable trait if the person receiving the empathy is a scum bag. Empathy is not a value if the sum of the scum exceeds what a viable society can withstand without collapsing. Ten scum bags and one person of value is not a good ratio and pot makes too many scum bags and not enough people of value tipping the scales of value toward the scum bag leading to a declining civilization. Being “mellowed out” while all this is going on makes you a pussy, not a valued citizen.
Pot heads often refer to people like me as being “closed-minded.” I consider that a compliment. Having an open mind is not necessarily a good thing when there are people within collective organizations that want to impose on you their values and expect you to assimilate to their shared beliefs—which may or may not be good. My mind is impervious to hypnotism, scary dreams—I don’t have them, or suggestions under coercion—such as threats of violence, torture, social manipulation or other mechanisms of tyranny against the individual. To those who want to penetrate that mind to inject their values, they will prescribe that my mind is closed—which it is–for the same reason that I lock the doors to my house or car—because I don’t want easy access to the contents within from those without. I don’t want just anybody inside my property and I feel even stronger about the contents of my mind—so it’s not open to others for manipulation. I like my mind and I protect it from those who want to damage it. For that reason I don’t get drunk and I don’t do drugs. And I don’t let doctors give me a lot of mindless prescriptions. Most of the time I completely ignore a doctor’s advice if they are recommending a prescription—because I don’t want a foreign substance influencing my thoughts. Would I be more fun to “party” with if I did drugs—sure—but that is not a valuable trait. So I’ll remain closed minded for the same reason that I lock the doors to my car—because I don’t want hippie scum bags and rotten bastards molesting my property. My mind is my property and I will continue to protect it.
What that commenter is saying about himself, which speaks true of everyone who falls for the pot lure—which is most people reading this article is that he’s a conquered person. Out of every 10,000 people there is typically only one person who feels about it the way I do. Even religious fanatics typically have a background with the drug. They only speak against drugs as born again Christians—but at some point in their past they tried pot, likely as a high school kid, probably in college, or in other social gatherings. They disgust me too. For me there is no wiggle room on the issue. People who have taken the drug have allowed themselves to be conquered by its lure and in most cases that is irredeemable. I know a lot of people who have used pot, and I do grow to like them occasionally. But it always tells me that they were at some point in time weak people and that is something I will never respect. They can say that my mind is closed—that I’m a conservative hater. But what they are really mad at is the reflection in the mirror. They surrendered their mind to a conscious altering substance, and they can never again claim to have the sanctity of an original thought. And that makes them feel guilty even when they are surrounded by several million other idiots who have traveled down the same path.
Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman
CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.
November 3, 2015
Issue 3 Fails in Ohio: Now, reload for the next round–because they will try again and again like stoned idiots
Looks like Ohio has defended itself from the pot smoking scum bags for at least another year. But get ready, the joint craving lunatics of the lazy youth will be back for another round of tradition destroying endeavor by progressive activists. Interesting reactions by the general public, seen below as the results came in.
State Issue 3
Issue 3 permits commercial production and sale of marijuana by what amounts to a monopoly in 10 locations around the state, It allows individuals to grow limited amounts for personal use. (read more)
YES
478,815
NO
908,431
60 comments
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spazzmaticjust now
Better luck next time hippies! Find another hobby to define your life by.
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CleveBobjust now
Where are those pesky paid trolls of RO? I wonder if RO at least gave them a parting gift basket.
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b4icrokejust now
@CleveBob I’m here!! You lose with this win. Enjoy your chemo BEE-OTCH!
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AmericanSenator1 minute ago
Issue two doesn’t do anything but take away power from the people and puts it in the hands of legislators.
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factsdohurtjust now
@AmericanSenator BS It takes away special interests and lobbyists from trying to tie up the Constitution by using monopolies and special taxes
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Mousey2 minutes ago
We all know the corruption never ends in Ohio – it’s where it starts. Talk about monopolies..get a grip folks
e2450just now
It’s a shame the amendment wasn’t structured differently. Clearly, at a minimum, medical use should be permitted. Ohio had a chance to be ahead of the curve for once. There goes that.
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LLCxx1 minute ago
Did issue 3 go up in smoke?
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Chalmette023 minutes ago
Soooooooo not to point out the obvious but didn’t you guys just outlaw monopolies? Anyone know of any electric companies with no competition in your area?
Did Republicans really just think that was a good idea just to stop weed?
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Aggrieved_by_CleClownsjust now
@Chalmette02 I hear what you’re saying, and respect it. I really didn’t want to have to vote Yes on Issue 2. It was promulgated by the GOP in the Ohio legislature, which I don’t trust … however, it was the ONLY way I could see ensuring that Ian James and his Irresponsible “We Feel the Need for Greed with Weed” crowd from bringing back Issue 3 over and over again — until it passed. Sometimes, you have to choose the lesser of two evils — HEY!!!! I do that in every PRESIDENTIAL election! Who knew?!
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BlingFingersjust now
repubs like me hate monopolies. we are business starters you fool
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david4 minutes ago
this is not America
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LS20252 minutes ago
you forgot f******
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Aggrieved_by_CleClownsjust now
@david Then move to China! And work for 7 cents an hour, and love it. You’ll go far!
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Mousey5 minutes ago
They’d rather let the dope boys on the street monopolize…
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ClevelandTchotchke3 minutes ago
@Mousey Or? We’d rather do it the right way! NO TO MONOPOLIES!
Ian James? Dafuq outta here!
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ClevelandTchotchke5 minutes ago
So far, so good! Ohioans are proving that they are smarter than Ian James, John Pardee, their carpetbagging buddies, and their cronies! Ohio may legalize, but it will NOT be with monopolization for fat cats to make money off Ohioans, and ship it back to their ivory towers!
THE CLOCK STRUCK TWELVE! THE MONOPOLY IS LOSING!
What a great day it is to be an Ohioan! ISSUE 3? GTFOH!
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Saganhawking3 minutes ago
This was more a vote against monopolies than it was against marijuana. They just don’t get it.
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BlingFingers1 minute ago
responsible ohio strategized this issue to legalize it. was their best chance.
your a little naïve and that’s ok sagan
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david7 minutes ago
Ohio is the worst f****** place to live I f****** hate this place nothing but f****** idiots
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BlingFingers6 minutes ago
hahahahah
LEAVE NOW Dopey
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david5 minutes ago
go die in hell you f****** prick
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aspen124 minutes ago
Sour…..how much money did you guys lose !,,,,,…..?…?
Bahaaaaaaa
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BlingFingers3 minutes ago
why don’t you try to send me there cockgobbler
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david5 minutes ago
you better watch your f****** self
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ClevelandTchotchke4 minutes ago
@david Oooh… we’re so scared! Internet Rambo we have here, ya’ll!
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david3 minutes ago
sorry buddy you are a big piece of s***
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BlingFingers1 minute ago
go smoke a Winston menthol loser
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david4 minutes ago
you f****** communist piece of s***
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ClevelandTchotchke4 minutes ago
@david Go listen to your 98 degree songs, you scab!
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david2 minutes ago
go and f*** yourself alcoholic
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aspen125 minutes ago
What’s wrong. Ohio will have weed next year
Leagalizeohio2016.com
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ClevelandTchotchke5 minutes ago
@david Dafuq outta here!
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LS20255 minutes ago
@david is the poster child for for the Issue 3 investors, Ohio needs more davids.
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ClevelandTchotchke4 minutes ago
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david1 minute ago
No what we need is a non communist society
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baron104 minutes ago
@david relax….your dealer loves you and giant eagle has doritos bogo
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Chalmette028 minutes ago
Expect to see a few people leave the state who have kids who need medical marijuana. Ohio is a strange place.
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BlingFingers7 minutes ago
@Chalmette02 why don’t you petition for a medicinal ballot instead of a recreational one genius???
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ultra517 minutes ago
@Chalmette02 If these kids “really” needed it, you’d figure they’d already be gone. If they “really” needed it.
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Chalmette026 minutes ago
Not if you were expecting the voters to do the right thing.
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ultra516 minutes ago
@Chalmette02 @ultra51 Apparently they did. Call your state legislator and do it the right way.
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Saganhawking5 minutes ago
Could not agree more ultra.
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Aggrieved_by_CleClowns5 minutes ago
@Chalmette02 I do feel for those who want to use medical marijuana to relieve severe pain including terminal illness … but you have to understand, IrresponsibleOhio’s greed grab of a monopolistic pot plan — leaving my entire Southeast Ohio region out of the pot “mix” when we po’ folk need the jobs down here! — alienated A LOT of voters. You have no one but IrresponsibleOhio to blame. Its celebrity greedy weed grab crowd could not be trusted and it showed in the polls – BIGTIME.
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Aggrieved_by_CleClowns9 minutes ago
Today is like going to McDonald’s — “I’m LOvin’ iT!” on these Issue 1, 2, 3 results!!!! IrresponsibleOhio lost on BOTH Issue 2 and 3 — the voters HAVE SPOKEN, so take your taxpayer-funded lawsuit idea, Ian, and go live in ANOTHER state where Monopolies can”take root.” And take weird hermaphrodie Buddie with you!
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david10 minutes ago
Ohio is a terrible state
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Saganhawking9 minutes ago
Put the bong down, you are repeating yourself.
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Aggrieved_by_CleClowns8 minutes ago
@david Then move to Chokelahoma, or wherever you and your favorite cartel can go along to get along! Pal
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Saganhawking7 minutes ago
I’m having trouble understanding what you just posted. It was funny though. Am I supposed to agree or disagree with what you just said?
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Aggrieved_by_CleClowns3 minutes ago
@Saganhawking Agree if you believe in free markets and the right to a responsible free market weed plan — let the best cultivator win — let it be about who GROWS THE BEST WEED — We down here beside Meigs Gold will win — and YOU should have the right to buy it without a cartel interfering!
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baron1012 minutes ago
why is america coming too when you can’t set up a weed monopoly?
sucks
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david13 minutes ago
nothing but retards
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david14 minutes ago
Well i can say Ohio is a terrible place to live
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Saganhawking10 minutes ago
Yuep, horrible place to live. I hear Colorado, Washington and California calling your name. It’s a free country, go for it. The doors are open to you. Now write legislation concerning weed here in Ohio we can all agree to and maybe more would vote for it…
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BlingFingers8 minutes ago
go enjoy the skyrocketing fatal accidents due to marijuana OVI.
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Saganhawking15 minutes ago
Wow! Was not expecting those numbers.
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baron1014 minutes ago
@Saganhawking 65/35 like I said
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Saganhawking13 minutes ago
Right you were. Well played, well played.
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baron1011 minutes ago
@Saganhawking I was wrong on 1 however….
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Aggrieved_by_CleClowns15 minutes ago
YOUR MARIJUANA CARTEL FAILED, IAN JAMES!!!! LONG LIVE FREE MARKETS!!!! WaHHHOOooOO!!!!!
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BlingFingers19 minutes ago
well the Cleveland.com poll sure was off this year wasng it.
marijuana got its leaf kicked.
way to go people, send the pot smokers back to Colorado so they can drive while impaired elsewhere. we don’t need pot smokers here
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ultra5117 minutes ago
@BlingFingers We especially don’t need greedy constitutional monopolies.
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Syphon16 minutes ago
You don’t live in this world apparently. You must have no idea how many people that are driving around are high. Go into a convenience store and count the amount of people that walk in there buying blunt wraps. I don’t smoke. I just know the real world.
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avex1110 minutes ago
@BlingFingers There will be plenty of pot smokers here as there always has been. I guess most people here still favor a nanny state.
http://www.cleveland.com/election-results/index.ssf/2015/11/statewide_results_for_ohio_iss.html
Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman
CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.
The Liberal Radicalization of Disney: How progressive voters are built from youth
As I wrote this article it was during the election night of 2015. One year later we’d be electing the next President of the United States and several congressional and senate seats. As Ohio decided whether or not to legalize marijuana caving in to the endless amounts of money spent by progressive groups funded by George Soros types to essentially dumb down the public to the extent that there is no resistance to their global efforts—I can’t help but think of the American Indian who was given easy access to liquor to make them more easily conquerable. Pot advocating by progressives is intended to lower the morality of our nation so that we can be more easily conquered by global interest. It’s very clear that is the intention behind the effort and the money propelling it—the goal is to dismantle traditional America through drug induced emphasis followed by a progressive oriented government school program. And that radicalism is certainly present in the entertainment industry. That was the basis behind a discussion I recently had with Matt Clark on his WAAM radio show in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The topic was Star Wars and the Disney Corporation and how both were being shaped by progressive influences.
Lately I have been less interested with elections because they don’t have much effect currently. For instance, in Ohio if marijuana fails, it is a 100% chance that it will be back on the ballot likely within the year, just like school levies, and the casino issue from a few years ago. These idiots will keep putting it on the ballot until it passes—they will continue in spite of what voters indicate—their goal will be to wear down the public until they cave—so the effort should be viewed as a military exercise, not a democratic endeavor. I don’t see much hope in any of these elections until we get personalities in office who will stand up for the republic concept. Paul Ryan is a perfect example of this whole effort—he was elected a Tea Party darling, but has now moved toward establishment protector. He’s the new Speaker of the House based on his past reputation as a reformer, not as a current conquered personality. The process of lobbyists destroys good people and leaves us all yearning for authentic personalities which is too infrequent. I hope for a Donald Trump to shake up this mess. Without him, or someone like him—I don’t have much hope for the future of politics.
But I do find hope in Disney and the new Star Wars property, which Matt and I discussed in a way that should be very useful to all concerned minds. Disney doesn’t hear enough good criticism from their customer base to navigate by, and I sincerely hope that articles like this one, and the radio content that Matt and I provided helps them. The same lobbyists who bend politicians backwards, and constantly advocate on behalf of marijuana are those who push Disney as a company to move always to the political left—or to be threatened with lawsuits, boycotts and other types of radicalism designed to destroy a traditional social position. Disney out of all the production companies out there is best poised to stand for traditional American values, but there is a real risk that nutcases within the Disney organization will start populating Star Wars with gay characters and progressive tripe just to appease the elements of evil that are so prevalent in our present society.
I spent the last three articles on this topic because it is one of the most important of our time, a major movie is coming out that will touch just about everyone’s life in some way or another. But these filmmakers are not George Lucas of the 1980s, the conservative Ayn Rand type of dystopian individualist—it is the evolution of a tight group of friends from Kathy Kennedy all the way through Steven Spielberg who have mellowed over time and are now quite liberal in their activism. Wealth and the California culture have tamed their once conservative spirits. For instance, one of George Lucas’ best films is THX-1138 which was essentially a movie version of Ayn Rand’s Anthem. Lucas would not make a movie like that now—but when the first Star Wars came out, he was very much a limited government advocate where his Rebel Alliance would have been considered Tea Party Patriots in our contemporary world. Over time George become more like Darth Vader than Han Solo which was certainly reflected in the prequel films.
I actually think that Disney has become so radicalized that there is probably talk behind closed doors that two gay characters should have a legitimate romance in a future Star Wars movie. The reason Matt and I covered this topic on the radio is because there have been threats from more conservative groups looking at the new Star Wars and seeing the alarm signs that the new heroes are a woman, and a black guy, and the villains are mostly white males. While having women and dark-skinned protagonists isn’t a big deal to me, I can see why people would be concerned—because it certainly strays from the original formula—old white man, young white man, middle-aged white man, hairy beast that is a male—and a mouthy feminist. Then of course there are two male droids—unless R2D2 tries to pull a Bruce Jenner. Even worse is Kathy Kennedy’s comments to a women’s summit recently shown above where she specified that her goal as a CEO of Lucasfilm was to put more women in the movie making business.
Kennedy said she had been recently to a taping of a Saturday Night Live and noticed that most of the camera operators were men, not women. She attributed this to a possible union rules issue and bosses who hired men over women—which is a typical progressive belief. She went on to say that her goal was to inspire women to become more camera operators and behind the line talent. That was interesting. Then, if you consider recent statements by Carrie Fisher to the new young actress Daisy Ridley to not to allow herself to become sexualized in the future Star Wars films there is plenty of evidence that some serious progressive radicalism is percolating on the horizon of one of the most powerful entertainment vehicles in the history of the world.
What these old women represented by Fisher and Kennedy don’t understand about people is that a fair number of women want to be sexualized for the attention it gives them, and that the reason for that attention is biological. That is part of what made the original Star Wars films so powerful. Princess Leia went from a radical feminist to a conquered love interest. By the third film she was in a hot bikini looking very sexual and it went down in history as one of the most memorable costumes in history. If Kathy Kennedy thinks that she’ll expand the market share of Star Wars by going in reverse, she is sadly mistaken. Han Solo conquered Princess Leia through testosterone induced masculinity. When Lucas tried to soften the Han Solo character up for Return of the Jedi into being a nice, understanding equal to Princess Leia, the story doesn’t work. What did work was the metal bikini that Carrie Fisher wore. So there is a real risk that Kennedy is going to screw the whole thing up. I think people will still enjoy the movies, but they won’t be in the same passionate way. If Star Wars gets softened under progressive influence, there is a real risk of the whole thing being destroyed and with it, a major ray of hope that traditional families across the world have as an entertainment option that is safe for their children.
My interest in all this isn’t just because I like Star Wars or Disney. It’s because the release of this film is nearly on scale with the Biblical Armageddon. When this movie is released, it will soak up so much of the news cycle and the Christmas shopping efforts ahead of the Holiday that people will forget that Santa Clause and Jesus are central to the festivities. Star Wars will be all-encompassing. This is one of the biggest things to happen in our lifetimes. I know it’s only a movie, but it’s not. It’s much more than that. Only time will tell how well Disney navigates through this mine field. I’m not ready to boycott Disney over any of this. But if they try to cram gay rights, feminism, and gun control down our throats the way that marijuana, high taxes, and democratic tyranny through corrosive elections have been imposed on us, then I will drop Star Wars in less than a second as an entertainment option, and I know millions of others will as well. This year it’s not the elections that will determine our future—it’s a movie that comes out next month. And the fate of humanity literally hangs in the balance. We’ll see.
When the first Star Wars films were released, Nancy Reagan had a program urging children to say “NO” to drugs. Marijuana was used by kids—lots of kids, but it had a stigma against it imposed by the righteous forcing it underground. Now progressive parasites have put marijuana into the mainstream and they are seeking to break down the pillars of conservatism in Ohio hoping that all blocks of a delicate electorate will topple. If Issue 3 fails, activists will be right back at it for 2016, or 2017—however long it takes for them to impose their conquest. The foundation for the cause of that erosion comes from a lack of resolve established in the human understanding of good versus evil in a very black and white type of way. That is why Star Wars and the condition of Disney are more important than many of the ballot issues up for discussion during the 2015 election. If Disney fails and with it, Star Wars—there isn’t much for good-hearted people to put their effort behind. That is the risk that is before us and the merit of the pre-election coverage on WAAM radio with Matt Clark. The results of an election are less important than the condition of the minds of the people who vote in them. Cultural events, like the opening of a new Star Wars film and a corporation like Disney that was built on family values says a lot as to how elections will be conducted in the future—and that is what is at risk presently.
If you haven’t yet watched all the videos on this article, you should do that now, then read this article again. It’s all very important to our future.
Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman
CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.
November 2, 2015
Robert Tracinski, Rich Hoffman and Matt Clark on WAAM: Why ‘Star Wars’ is better than ‘Star Trek’
Matt Clark had me on his show to actually co-host with him as we spoke to Robert Tracinski who writes for The Federalist. He had written an interesting article about how it was unlikely that J.J. Abrams could screw up the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, so long as he stuck with the formula. There were some condescending aspects to Tracisnski’s article which I was willing to overlook, because he was right about a lot of things. But more than anything Tracisnski had been dismissive of the original trilogy as not being very good—which I thought was odd. So I was eager to talk to him. It only took a few moments into the interview however to learn the root of his issues—he was a Star Trek fan and had only come to Star Wars through his children. His position was that Star Trek was philosophically superior to Star Wars and that these new movies were kid stuff that he was enjoying with his children. Listen to that interview here:
I don’t care much for Star Trek, to me it is the United Nations in space. While Robert Tracinski is not a liberal and is a pretty committed Objectivist, which is Ayn Rand’s philosophy—it was clear to me quickly why Robert didn’t like Star Wars much in his article. I disagree with him on a number of topics regarding the formula of Star Wars, or its appeal. I think the Star Wars films are deeply philosophical; especially The Empire Strikes Back—much more so than Star Trek. I mean, people are not lining up across the world to see the latest Star Trek movie, and Star Wars isn’t as popular as it is because it’s just adults living out their childhoods once again through a movie. It’s more complicated than that. As we were talking to Tracinski, because of his background with Ayn Rand I kept wondering if I had met him someplace before, so I wanted to cut him some slack. Everyone comes to things in their own time and if he came to Star Wars late in life through his kids—so be it. One aspect that Tracinski got right in his article was the perception that Han Solo is the key to the franchise—so I stuck to that topic in our conversation.
Matt and I spent the first segment of his Saturday WAAM show talking about Disney and their progressive activism with a gentle warning about messing with the formula of Star Wars and the impact that might have on their massive investment. Matt and I love Disney—the Uncle Walt version. I love that Disney is a family friendly entertainment group—so I am willing to overlook a little of their liberal activism. Something that Robert Tracinski did bring up on his show that was true. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were the best conservative filmmakers coming out of the 80s. I personally think they were both seduced by Bill Clinton in the 90s and have lost their minds since. The reason their early films were so successful was because they all had conservative leanings to them. Once both directors had achieved their monstrous success and essentially stepped away from the Objectivist roots of their film careers, their movies started making a lot less money. Without question George Lucas was at least attracted to Ayn Rand in his early days—when she was at the height of her influence—and Han Solo was a character that represented that struggle within George. As he become more liberal with age and success—perhaps feeling a little guilty that all his liberal employees were constantly berating him for his capitalist tendencies, he softened up on his stance for individualism and began to accept collectivism to a much higher degree, which was clearly represented in the prequel films—which were noticeably absent of the Han Solo type of character.
Where I disagree with Tracinski about the prequel films is that I don’t think George Lucas ever intended those films to be successes. They were dark movies about the failure of a Republic—and have great political merit to them. They are very philosophical from the position of how poorly constructed philosophies can destroy a body of government. Even though Lucas had been moving to the left—politically, his message about the failure of groups to detect evil, and how institutional failure is indicative of all government cycles is powerful stuff that set the stage for some pretty deep storytelling. As much as people dismiss the prequel films as silly, they are important in the larger scope of the intended message. The movies did lack heroics on the scale of a Han Solo, but that was on purpose. A lot of characters including Yoda and Obi-wan Kenobi made mistakes that they spent the rest of their lives correcting. So the films were never supposed to be heroic repeats of the original trilogy. For that story Han Solo was the savior, he kept Luke alive, married his sister Leia and that set up the events of these new films. Solo is an Ayn Rand character and Disney even with all their activism against conservative causes—can’t ignore that the magic of Star Wars isn’t Luke Skywalker, or anything about the Force—it’s about Han Solo’s position against hooky religions and ancient weapons not being as competent as a good blaster at your side.
Just a few days before Matt and I had our radio show together Harrison Ford was on with Jimmy Kimmel dressed up for Halloween as a hot dog. It was a funny segment and of course Ford was asked about the new Star Wars film. I thought his comments were interesting to say the least. He stated that nobody would be disappointed—at all. That was a remarkable statement considering what’s at stake. He knows the potential cost of over-anticipated hype—so his comments had me very curious in relation to Disney’s strategy going forward. Han Solo is going to be playing a larger role in Star Wars than he has in the past largely because the character tests well demographically. His children will without question be the subject of the new stories but Disney will find every opportunity to insert a younger Han Solo into the movies at every juncture. To be successful at that, Disney will have no choice but to adopt the obvious aspects of Han Solo’s Objectivism view points—his natural conservatism and love of capitalist endeavors if they want Star Wars to continue being successful.
After Matt’s show I spent time at my children’s house going trick or treating with my grandkids—and kids. Late into the night my oldest daughter and I spent time talking about Han Solo and how it seems obvious now that Disney will find a way to put him in the stand alone films as much as possible just to use him as a springboard to success. Like Robert Tracinski and I spoke about on Matt’s show, without Han Solo, I think the Star Wars saga crashes and burns. If they try to turn him into a sacrificial collectivist Disney will lose a lot of money because people will reject the premise. The ticket buying public will only accept the Objectivist Han Solo—and nothing less—the hero who acts in his own self-interest. Even though the moment at the end of A New Hope was intended to show that Solo was able to act for others, the need to save Luke at the last moment was out of Solo’s self-interest because he was starting to like the kid. Like I said, Star Wars is a lot more philosophical than people give it credit for, and I’d think that as much as Tracinski likes Ayn Rand, that he’d prefer Star Wars over the United Nations in space—Star Trek and all that “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” crap. Screw Spock and his pointy ears—he’s a damn collectivist. Solo is a rugged, gun slinging individualist who acts out of his own self-interest. That’s why Star Wars is better than Star Trek.
We’ll see what happens, time will tell. It was a good conversation that was worth listening to, especially given what Star Wars will mean when it opens in a few weeks. There will be no escape; the opening of The Force Awakens will impact just about everyone no matter where they live. It will be impossible to not notice something about it as the merchandising around Christmas will be everywhere. Just watch the Duracell commercial shown above. Star Wars will literally be everywhere in just a few weeks of this writing. There will be nothing like it ever—history is being made both commercially and philosophically. The question will be whether or not The Force Awakens will be as anticipated on the 19th of December as it was on the 18th after people start seeing the movie. To be as successful as Disney needs it to be people will need to see the film several times. And to have that kind of power over the mind of fans—Han Solo will have to be a part of it with an Objectivist approach—otherwise the whole thing falls apart. It’s not the lightsaber battles and space antics that make Star Wars so great—it’s the Objectivist leanings of its basic premise:
Han Solo—“marching into the detention area is not what I had in mind.”
Luke Skywalker—“but she’s rich.”
Han Solo—“How rich?”
Luke Skywalker—“More wealth than you can imagine.”
Han Solo—“I don’t know, I can imagine quite a bit.”
Luke Skywalker—“you’ll get it.”
Han Solo—“I better!”
Luke Skywalker—“You will!”
Han Solo—“Alright kid, what’s your plan?”
That’s Star Wars—it’s an Objectivist love fest designed before George Lucas was overly liberalized. It’s also why twice during the broadcast with Matt that I uttered to his millions and millions of listeners—“Han shot first!” When Lucas changed Star Wars in 1997 to have the bounty hunter Greedo shoot at Han first in the Mos Eisley cantina fans were angry. It was a liberalized mistake for Lucas to cave under the pressure from the liberal film community to make Han Solo not appear as such a blood thirsty killer. But Solo acting out of self-interest shot first because that is the nature of his character—he’s an Ayn Rand survivalist and the heart of what makes Star Wars great.
Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman
CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.
November 1, 2015
The Best Thing About ‘The Force Awakens’: John Williams
Matt Clark and I over the weekend did a rather important show about the new Star Wars picture and the radicalism of Disney from its employees based on an article I wrote several weeks ago. You will be able to listen to that broadcast on WAAM radio soon. However, Matt had on a guest that was late to the call at the bottom of the hour and needed to fill some time while his producer got him on the phone. So we had to come up with a bit of off-script content to bridge the gap. I brought up something I had been thinking about a lot in anticipation of the new Force Awakens Star Wars film based on persistent fears that the expectations were just so high. There was a real danger of walking away disappointed. I realized after a lot of thought that the primary reason I was looking forward to the new Star Wars film was for one simple reason—I want to hear new Star Wars music from John Williams. Everything else is literally secondary. To understand why, watch this old 20/20 segment about John Williams from 1983.
I was a strange kid—which should have been assumed based on a casual reading of my millions and millions of words. There are a lot of people who get paid decent amounts of money for writing far less than I do about far, far fewer topics. Yet I know that I have to write otherwise my head would explode with too many thoughts. I have too many hobbies, too many passions, too many philosophical quandaries that reside at the root of politics that if I don’t get them out and onto some kind of page to look at I may well explode with enthusiasm. So I have to write because I opened the door to something when I was very young that I have never closed. I only wanted to be one thing when I grew up—but I was caught between two worlds really. There was no other job that I wanted to be involved with than a director of movies. The trouble was I also had a pretty powerful physical aptitude. Creative types tend to enjoy escaping from reality and creating what they do in a vacuum of contemplation—whereas I didn’t. I wanted to be in the thick of reality at all times, which flew in the face of the film industry. But at age 13 in 1983 when that 20/20 episode came out on John Williams I wanted to be a film director so that I could work with people like him. What I learned eventually, and much later that there really isn’t anyone like John Williams, the great composer and conductor for some of the most powerful and important movies our American culture has ever produced. So that 20/20 episode was very important to me—I watched it over and over again on a new device called a VHS video tape. I had recorded it and showed it to every member of my family whenever there was some gathering trying to share with them the passion I felt for John Williams music. Most of them didn’t understand.
John Williams is the most important musical personality of the millennia—more so than Beethoven, Mozart, Bach or anybody else. Many years later as I worked at Cincinnati Milicron in Oakley, just north of downtown Cincinnati I listened to all those composers religiously on NPR radio while I worked as a tear-down person for rebuilt machine lathes. The other workers had a typical unionized approach to work, they watched the break clock closely—paced out their day making sure not to produce too much too quickly, and they listened to a lot of classic rock. I wasn’t adverse to rock and roll—there is a certain magic to it blaring from a radio in a machine shop—a freedom that is healthy and defiant in all the right ways—but its not very intellectual. Rock music is very linier—which has never been something I was interested in—rock music equals a can of beer resulting in unstable personal relationships. I enjoyed it for its ambiance, not for the lifestyles that draped off it—the limited vision of the world and lack-luster ambition typical of its fans. So I listened to my radio tuned to NPR’s classical station in Cincinnati and listened to the greats for hours on end while I worked. I was the only one who did this within the entire facility which eventually was dismantled and is now covered by the upgraded development occurring around the Rockwood shopping complex. I have always thought that if more people listened to that classical station with me that the employees would have been smart enough to see the writing on the wall years ago, and Cincinnati Milicron would not have eventually closed down their Oakley facility—but that’s a story we’ve covered before. For this purpose, I considered classical music to be the supreme type of music a human being can listen to—and among them at the very top is John Williams. There is nobody better—and I’ve listened to them all.
Most classical composers wrote their music for some play centuries before they ever appeared on NPR radio. So to me it was not deficient to look at John Williams as one who will eventually surpass the memory of all the obvious musical minds in the future. Movies are modern plays, so a film score is tomorrow’s classical music that will play on NPR radio in the future, all the time. These days however if anybody happened to look at my iPod they would only see two primary names on the entire 10G device, John Williams and Hans Zimmer. There are a few others, but 95% of my iPod is filled with those two musical film composers. Of those two, Hans Zimmer is clearly the student of the master, John Williams. I don’t see them as comparable in any way—other than they both make music. Nobody writes music like John Williams—I listen to him nearly every day in some fashion or another and I never get tired of the way he strings together compositions.
As we were sitting at the bottom of the hour trying to get Matt’s guest on the air, I thought about why I was eager for The Force Awakens by thinking about what I liked most about the recently released trailer—the final one before the film opens on December 18th. It was the scene from a series of clips where the Millennium Falcon was entering hyperspace from the inverted direction speeding into blue light accompanied musically by an upgrade from the previous Han and Leia theme. That was fresh music made just for this trailer and it was stunning in how it helped invoke curiosity. John Williams understands just the right notes to put on a page for what is happening on the screen. The way he tells stories through music is extraordinary, and it was his music that I wanted to hear most regarding the new film.
I meant it when I said it on the air, the Disney Company could put hand puppets on the screen for The Force Awakens and I wouldn’t care so long as I had yet another opportunity to listen to a film score by the great John Williams. He enjoys making swashbuckler type of compositions and really thrives in the type of story that Star Wars is, so it typically brings out the best in him. If the story is not something I can get into, I will at least enjoy the John Williams music—which is what I am looking forward to most. It’s not often that the entire world will attend a musical concert that is classical in nature. Literally the entire planet will be attending a John Williams concert when The Force Awakens opens just ahead of Christmas 2015. And there is nothing negative about that.
Music doesn’t need language—it transcends social limitations and reaches for the pit of our very souls for understanding. Based on that 20/20 clip, it was obvious then that John Williams was on a crash course with destiny as the greatest composer of all time—at least over the last 1000 years—because there has been nobody like him ever. He’s just the right mix of everything musical. No matter how much I listened to Bach, or Mozart on NPR radio, when they would occasionally put on some John Williams music—from any movie—it was clear that a master had assembled the notes. With that in mind there isn’t much Disney can do to ruin Star Wars so long as John Williams is the man behind the music. Star Wars will always be good so long as the music from those movies are made by the 83-year-old composer who was always ahead of his time and is the best that ever occupied nostalgia. Film music is considered low-brow entertainment among the art critics of our day—but that’s because they’re in the back of the train. Eventually those art analyzers will catch up to what I’m saying today—that John Williams is the primary reason that millions will love the new film and it will be the largest and most diverse opening to an orchestral concert in the history of earth—and that is enough to give anyone goose bumps because the impact it will have on shaping our future generations will be paramount. I suspect that The Force Awakens score will be the grand fortissimo to a long and prosperous career. But more than that, it will be the last act of a brilliant mind, who would rather write alone all day behind a piano than do anything else—which is why he has been and will always be the greatest.
Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman
CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.
October 31, 2015
Sergio Leone at Liberty Center: Taking a step back to the lessons of classic spaghetti westerns
The very first movie I can remember seeing was A Fistful of Dollars when I was four years old. I had seen it a year before on Channel 19 but it was something I had watched with my mom while she canned tomatoes. Our house didn’t have air conditioning but I didn’t care. Our television back then was color, but it barely had good enough reception to see what was going on through the static. But when it did Sergio Leone’s westerns were the coolest thing on television and I watched them in pools of my own sweet as my first conscious memories. If it could be said that I had a primary influence on my life it was in those moments of watching Leone westerns with my mother well before I ever turned five. Back then all I remembered of A Fistful of Dollars was the end where Clint Eastwood chained a steel chest-plate to his chest hidden under his poncho and taunted Remon Rojos to aim for his heart. Each time a bullet struck Eastwood he’d fall down but keep getting up again until he closed in on the villain with honor and killed him with a great final standoff. I used to watch the entire film not understanding anything anybody was saying just so I could see that ending over and over again. Back then there were no DVDs so you’d have to wait for it to come back on television at some unforeseen time. So I learned to read by going through the TV guide and looking for old Sergio Leone westerns looking hoping A Fistful of Dollars would come on again. To learn more about Leone as a person and director watch this fantastic documentary on him to understand why I enjoyed his work so much.
Sergio Leone had more influence on me as a result of those continuous viewings than I’d typically give credit. Because I was always looking for A Fistful of Dollars I’d sometimes confuse the films with For A Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and Once Upon a Time in the West because I learned that they were directed by Sergio Leone which was easier to remember than the title of the movies. So I watched them all often disappointed that they weren’t the one where Clint Eastwood kept getting shot, yet continued to get back up. Sergio’s impact on cinema was incalculable. He directly influenced the Star Wars films and literally hundreds of future directors, actors, cinematographers and many others not even in the show business industry. His westerns were stunningly passionate yet dystopian. He did so much with so little money that each frame of film was made as if it were his last. His use of sound effects, music and the visual medium of film is something that very few directors were ever able to achieve. He was simply stunning.
Like me Sergio Leone loved classic American westerns, which were a primary export to his home country of Italy. Unlike me, he didn’t live in the United States, so when he met Americans for the first time coming to Rome as conquerors after World War II they didn’t live up to his expectations and the director sought to reconcile that disappointment with his westerns. After all Leone was living in a Marxist oriented European mindset looking to the West with a bit of hope—but the people from that land were less than valiant which put his unique spin on the American western—famously known as the spaghetti westerns.
That disappointment was never more clear than in Once Upon a Time in the West where the primary villain was the clear-eyed Henry Fonda—the star of many American westerns. He was a classic bad guy cast against a break-out role for the young Charles Bronson. The anger I felt toward Fonda because of the scene where the hired gun for the railroad tycoon known as Morton killed the land owner McBain and his children with a brutal hanging was excessive. That anger lasted most of my life, because I have since seen that type of evil firsthand. Sergio Leone as an Italian who was in love with the image of America was poised to make films that criticized the western while at the same time relishing in them. Leone captured the raw personality of evil in his films in a way that nobody else had or has since—never with such grandiose passion. But for me, the trilogy of films that embodied the “Once Upon” films, which would make eventual stars of many actors were not the best work of Leone. As he became older and had attended several film festivals, he leaned more toward Marxism—which was the home philosophy of Italy. The hope of his youth had left his films by the time he made Once Upon a Time in America. More and more Leone was obsessed with the evils of crony capitalism as if to justify his Marxist leanings which essentially helped fuel the Hollywood insurrection more toward the political left.
Quentin Tarantino who is about to release the modern western The Hateful Eight, which I’m eager to see and shares with me a love for Leone leans more toward the later part of Leone’s career as opposed to the front with the Fistful of Dollars trilogy. Most of Hollywood for that matter saw how Leone turned the American western on its head and thought that prevailing trend was “high art.” So they turned their eyes to Europe and made movies that punched even deeper holes into the American mythology of the Old West. But that approach was misguided and doomed from the start. While I really enjoyed Leone’s later work, especially his Once Upon the Time in the West, it was his Dollars films that I think are the hopeful musings of a would-be capitalist and his yearnings for the kind of America that it should have always been—as represented by the self-reliant individualist Clint Eastwood. Tarantino pays many tributes to Sergio in his films, but he never quite gets it, which I’m sure will be a continued problem in his The Hateful Eight. Tarantino is a broken person because he loved the wrong Leone.
But I didn’t, I saw through that conflict before I was age 7 and was beginning to understand these strange western films from a foreign director who couldn’t even speak English. People like Tarantino and his producers at the Weinstein Company gravitated toward the Marxist Leone, not the hopeful treasure hunter of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—where the good guy played by Clint Eastwood gets the treasure, gets his revenge, and rides off into the sunset alone. He does the same thing in For A Few Dollars More and to a lesser degree in A Fistful of Dollars. In that first film released in 1964 Eastwood has more of a classic showdown with the bad guys as he comes back to town to save a friend of his from hanging. Hanging in these western films which are now 50 years old represented the brutality of unjust application of authority and the abuse of the strong against the weak. In those films Eastwood played a classic avenger, which he would go on to build a career on. Smartly, Eastwood turned down the role of the lead protagonist in Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West—which was a brilliant film wonderfully shot, but did not have the capitalist message that had made Eastwood such a superstar. Good move on Eastwood’s part because even though Sergio Leone had larger budgets to work with and studio backing that he never dreamed of a decade before—like George Lucas his vision began to be tainted as his hope for America moved from tradition to progressivism. When most of their Hollywood friends were jealous European sympathizing Marxists and are all left-leaning at film festivals, the lens of their vision changed from hopeful capitalists to regulated Marxists. As a result the American public generally began to reject Leone films whereas critics began to praise them—because they were moving toward the left as well. American however stayed center-right and just stopped paying attention to Leone.
This was on my mind because I was shopping with my wife at Liberty Center and couldn’t help but notice a fashion trend that was emerging—perhaps 40 years too late, but it’s emerging. The influence of Leone’s spaghetti westerns is rising into the mainstream as many of the high-end clothing designed for affluent types look like they are coming straight off the screen of Leone’s classic westerns. This is a great thing as they are not the type of westerns that Tarantino loved, but the kind that I did. America is slowly beginning to wake up to the sleep it has been under and is turning back to its origins—sharing that bright-eyed hope that Sergio Leone once had that America could be a place for personal gain and intact justice. Clint Eastwood’s character in the Leone westerns never had doubt in himself and was always able to slug through any situation presented to him. He just kept getting up and up which my four-year-old eyes never forgot. That movie is as part of me as anything else is and it all started with my mother watching that film with me knowing that it would somehow be important. That’s why she’s such a good mom. She launched me in the right direction which apparently the rest of the world is just starting to understand—perhaps not deeply, but at least emotionally as it is started to show itself in our fashions.
For a long time I’ve had the hunch that all aspects of American culture needed to go back in time to that precipice of history to when A Fistful of Dollars was released, and start over. Instead of hating the crony capitalists Rojos as a reason to steer society toward Marxism we should focus on the capitalist that played both sides against the other for the personal gain of reward while doing good for those around him as a natural by-product. In those days nobody in the world understood capitalism better than Sergio Leone and his good friend Ennio Morricone. America should have listened then. But it’s not too late. I saw several women standing at the corner of Bales Street and Haskell who looked like they stepped right off the set of For A Few Dollars More. They may not have been aware of it, but it was obvious to me that the fashion designers for their clothing were clearly fans of early Sergio Leone westerns likely for the reasons I just mentioned. European Marxism has taken the world nowhere. So its time to re-evaluate our philosophy and to step back to that very first film, A Fistful of Dollars and see it through the eyes of its maker—and not make the same mistakes going forward. I received the message the first time, and I have never looked back and been with any doubt. Tarantino and the modern films schools have it wrong—they need to go back to Leone and understand what it was in the beginning that made him so great—and its not that he cast Henry Fonda as a villain.
Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman
CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.
October 30, 2015
CNBC is Actually a Cable Television Station: The marathon race of people who already lost
I honestly didn’t know CNBC was still a cable channel until I watched the Republican debates on October 28th, 2015. What a pathetic mess those moderators were. They had a record 14 million viewers which is probably more than watch their network over an entire year and those idiots spent their time in the sun showing the world why they are such a ratings bust. I can’t believe those people are actually employed who work at CNBC. I know there is a liberal bias in the media—we know where it comes from as I’ve covered The Naked Communist for a number of years now, and that was one of the strategic objectives by the communists going into the 1960s was to take over both political parties and to control the media. They do—and have on both accounts—but come on. These idiots were just way too obvious about it. Who do they think their potential audience is—the Bolshevik Revolutionaries of 1917? Or maybe it’s the Cuban nut jobs under Castro. Perhaps even the Mao fanatics from China? I didn’t know that there was such a television network that actually had so many radical leftist on a payroll, because I can’t say I’ve ever watched the network—because they never appeared to have anything on that I’d be interested in. Now I know why—geez!
I’m not a fan of all the Republican presidential candidates, but after listening to some of the questions by the CNBC moderators, each of them—even Governor Kasich sounded like rock solid Republicans. Trump’s lambasting of CNBC at the end of the debate was spot on—and so was Marco Rubio’s comments—as were Ted Cruz’s—even Jeb Bush looked like a conservative next to the crazy lunatics on the CNBC moderations panel. Where do these people come from—Hugo Chavez’s personal bathroom? The presidential nominees had a right to be upset, during the recent Democratic debate the questions were so much easier for them—but for the Republicans everything was a gotcha question. They were deliberately designed to make Republicans look bad.
Although I generally liked all the Republicans on the stage that night for different reasons I am still a firm Trump guy at this point. The whole system needs a Teddy Roosevelt type who may very well yank the nation back away from progressivism—whereas Teddy pulled the bar so far to the left as a Republican. By the end of his 7 years in office, Roosevelt was more like Grover Cleveland than he was Abraham Lincoln. The Republican Party now needs the opposite to happen and it will take a bombastic personality like Trump to do it. No soft talking Ben Carson will work, or soft faced Marco Rubio. Cruz is too hated by insiders while Rand Paul is not worldly enough. Fiorina is too weak—she is a good debater, but her track record as a CEO is not robust enough. Jeb Bush is too establishment and way too nice. John Kasich is too far behind the times, he’s like those marathon runners who cross the finish line three hours behind all the top-tier runners and then puts a picture of himself on his office desk showing that he’s a marathon runner. He confuses participating in a marathon to being a contender. Huckabee is a nice guy—a pastor type but is way too passive to slug it out with the greasy slime of K-Street—which is where the real fights for the next president are really at. Nobody but Trump has the right stuff to be president on behalf of the Republican Party. Nobody likes to fight as much as Trump does, and the next president will have to LOVE fighting.
It would be my hope that either Ben Carson or Ted Cruz would be the Trump running mate so that a president Trump could set the stage for a 2024 election of a real conservative for perhaps the first time since Calvin Coolidge. Ronald Reagan was an actor playing the part of a conservative that he acquired late in life. I want a conservative that is that way in their marrow of their bones, and within Cruz, I think there is one. But he’s not ready yet and the environment is all wrong for him presently. The day after the debate Paul Ryan was elected Speaker of the House which many people think is the same as electing an establishment candidate, and he is. But the bar is at least headed to the right again as opposed to the left. Ryan is at least an Ayn Rand fan and deep down inside will lean in that direction if allowed. Under a president Trump I think he would move more conservative than he is under an Obama president, much more so than John Boehner. Like his friend Kasich, Boehner is another hour behind him in the marathon puffing away on cigarettes. The sun has set on Boehner a long time ago only nobody told him that the flashlights at his feet were from his supporters who didn’t have the heart to tell him that the sun had already set—and the race was over and the finish line was already disassembled. They didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Paul Ryan is not the best choice, but he was a Tea Party darling at one point, and is proof that the needle is moving back to the political right.
So that’s the trend yet CNBC seemed so far behind the times that they hadn’t even started that marathon race that Boehner and Kasich were already proudly running well behind the front-runners. I mean, it was disgusting—that people actually think as liberally as those idiots at CNBC. I can’t imagine how they even pay for the cameras to keep the network on cable—unless those people work for nothing. It’s a good thing they had the debate because I didn’t even realize they were a channel—I had mistaken them for MSNBC which I used to give some credit to just because I liked Microsoft. But that loyalty went away after Bill Gates became the face of Common Core—and Jeb Bush with it. Microsoft’s influence on MSNBC is gone now, whereas in the early days it was on the tech side of news coverage with was good. But now they are all about progressive politics and are just ridiculous. I had no idea there was even a channel to the left of them!
I supposed I’m grateful that now I know, because of the debates, but I am seriously embarrassed for them as a network. There were so many stupid things that they said that even in hindsight it seems unfathomable. Yet they are real, and the questions they asked were to—all of them with a liberal spin. If there was ever any doubt that The Naked Communist had predicted such a thing successfully, that the media would be controlled by communists in the future—then CNBC is the proof as to that reality. But even that terrible reality isn’t anywhere as sinister as it was a year ago. Now liberals are more of a joke than ever—their policies have been proven ineffective and rejected by sane voters everywhere. They just haven’t paid attention to the memo yet. And that was never more evident than at CNBC. Wow, they are out there and are a dying breed. Watch them before the go extinct, because in this climate, they are well on their way.
Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman
CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.
