Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 358

Chuck Norris in Iceland: How National Geographic unveiled American treasures

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Kids make you most proud when they do things that adult experience dictates are productive, and memorable exchanges destined to build positive intellect. For instance, no parent wants to hear that their child got drunk and ground the night away pointlessly with some member of the opposite sex at a night club. Not only is the behavior useless and primal, anyone can do it—so there’s nothing unique about the act. For every baby born is the hope from a parent that the little life will grow up and do something significant—that is unless the parents are the typical lottery ticket, chain-smoking trailer trash types who only go to the mail box hoping for the next welfare check—for which children mean additional benefits from the government. Everyone else in the world hopes their children will do something good with life and not waste the opportunity to pave their own path through the roads less traveled and do something special with the gift of life they were given.

My kids often give me much to feel good about. More than other parents even, I expect my children to be unique and to make the most out of every day. And within the restrictions of reality, they do. My oldest daughter and her husband just returned from Iceland over this past weekend which was an unusual trip for a couple of twenty-somethings that illustrated a number of interesting parallels worthy of note. When I discuss how the destruction of American culture by the progressive intelligentsia class is intentional, it is one thing to say it, it’s quite another to have proof to compare to. It should also be noted that some people who know me best know that I have a soft spot for people who are foreign, and I am rather hard on people in America who grew up taking for granted the wonders of capitalism. I once got into a pretty significant fight with an old friend of mine when I told him he had a “Hamilton attitude” which was reflective of a type of blue-collar mentality that evolved in my hometown as I was growing up that I personally find reprehensible. Even thirty years ago when I said the term, I saw where it was taking our culture and I didn’t like it. A “Hamilton attitude” reflected the limited global perspective of the typical Fisher Body worker, or Armco employee from Middletown. It was a glass half empty reference as opposed to my perpetually glass half full outlook. I see people with a “Hamilton attitude” as destroying our nation. And I didn’t limit the designation to just friends and associates but family members as well. Those people are on a slow decline toward a place our society can never recover where sex, drugs, alcohol, lottery tickets and bad living destroy families, political structure, and economic growth. However, most foreigners who come from someplace else in the world who believe in the type of the American dream shown in motion pictures remind me of what we all used to be like. Most foreigners remind me of the type of people my grand parents were, hard-working people who believed strongly in family, personal intelligence, and responsibility. So my personal record is that I’m very hard on people whom I designate have a “Hamilton attitude” and very accommodating of people who come from other cultures to pursue the American dream in the traditional way.

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Listening to my kids tell the story of their trip after their plane finally landed back to our hometown of Hamilton, Ohio after two weeks of back country struggles, high winds, glaciers, lava fields, freezing oceans and serious car problems I heard my kids tell a story that America could learn a lot from. I’m sure my daughter will go into more detail about the specifics, but for my purpose I’ll stick with the philosophical aspect that should be considered a warning shot for American culture. Iceland would be nothing if not for the American military base that was established there in Reykjavik. England built another airfield and from there Iceland assimilated with the rest of the world as a mixed culture of those two countries. The people of Iceland have evolved into the type of people who are often found within the United States in rural areas—determined, responsible, kind, and with an emphasis on tradition. They are not like the typical New Yorker—progressive, confused, and scribbles of human flesh dancing into an eventual fire for which they will eventually be incinerated.   Iceland and its people are examples of the type of society you get when you get government out of people’s lives and let them live relatively freely. My son-in-law who is from Canterbury, England about an hour west of London enjoys aspects of European sentiment and ritual, while my daughter is all about the wild west of capitalism. As they told their story it was clear that Iceland had evolved into a nice mixture of the two without all the progressive nonsense.

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But why Iceland? Well, my daughter is a professional photographer who does quite well for herself with commercial jobs around Cincinnati. She travels quite a lot throughout the year photographing for money, but that doesn’t quite do it for her. As a baby she was practically raised by National Geographic magazines. I used to actually read them to her before she knew anything about how to read a word; she’d look at all the pictures with me. When she went to bed, her mother and I used to watch the Discovery Channel religiously—back when they had an emphasis on science. And as one of the first big trips she remembered, I took her to the National Geographic headquarters in Washington D.C. to essentially show her the gates of Heaven where some of the greatest photographs on planet earth have been taken for that publishing empire. She strives to take National Geographic style photographs, so Iceland was the best opportunity to do such a thing—which was the purpose of their visit.

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But my son-in-law being from Europe, who traveled a lot over the last decade, and watched the gradual decline of the American TSA system knows better, and he didn’t want my daughter—his wife—accosted in the embarrassing fashion that they suffered through once while returning from London via Raleigh North Carolina. The TSA agents were aggressive and ridiculous leaving him to proclaim never again. The next time they left the country, they decided to avoid the American TSA all together. They drove up to Toronto, Canada and flew out of there for nearly a half priced ticket. There the security was much better, and professionally accommodating. To make a long story short, it is more reminiscent of how America used to be during the 50s and 60s—professional, eager to serve, and bright-eyed—not half dead like some gage-ringed malcontent at JFK in New York.

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My kids drove 8 hours out of their way to avoid the American TSA agents and to save half the money on an oversea flight, which was more than worth it. The gas to get there was about a $100 which was about the tax on an American ticket on an airline to a foreign destination.   No wonder foreign markets are expanding so rapidly. American airlines within the states are choking on regulation and union regulations have driven up ticket prices treacherously. So people like my kids vote with their feet—and they saved a lot of money and had a much better experience.

Landing in Iceland, it was one lonely security member who stamped their passport. No physical accosting, no harassment, just a hello, and a stamp. They drove around the island for the next two weeks photographing shots that belonged in National Geographic, which was of course the point.

They camped in caves, in the tent bought from the Cabela’s in West Chester on opening day, and bounced around from one rustic village to another eating food mostly grown on the island because there just wasn’t enough population on Iceland to attract many American corporations.

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So everything is pretty much homegrown and authentic regionally. Iceland is about the size of the state of Ohio. But the population is only about 329,000 whereas Ohio has over 11 million people. So my kids traveled for vast spans of terrain without seeing many people, and the villages they did stay in were like little Wild West towns with populations of only a 100 people or so.

That’s why the end of their trip after two weeks of trail food, soup, water and freezing winds brought them to a little oasis that I have long talked about, the influence of America throughout the world and the hope that it has brought people. They ate what they think is one of the best hamburgers they’ve ever had at the Chuck Norris Grill in Reykjavik on Laugarvegur. Obviously the owners of the restaurant are fans of Walker, Texas Ranger but it was one of those little treasures that speak for itself.

Out of all the global influences in the world open to Iceland’s economy, the Chuck Norris Grill is a thriving hot spot highly sought after by weary travelers who just want a hamburger and a cup full of fries. A timeless American tough guy has substantial appeal throughout the world, still, and there is a serious lesson to be learned from that. It surely wasn’t lost to my kids. They understood it and immediately sent me pictures. After all the brilliant scenes they had witnessed, that little western style hamburger place had put a nice exclamation point on the essence of their trip. Iceland had become more American than most of America. They are what we used to be, tough, kind, enterprising, intelligent, and creatively ambitious.

My kids landed in Toronto then drove back down to Cincinnati staying on the north side of Lake Erie the whole way until Detroit. The security on the way back was professional. Not lax, but certainly not intrusive. There was a sense of quality in Toronto that impressed my children. And when they hit the American border, it was by car. So it was just reasonable questions and the stamp of their passports. Not the kind of thing that would let terrorists in, but not the harassment that weary travelers should have to endure when all they want to do is get back to their home and lay down in their bed after a hard trip. Within a few hours they were back home and at our house for a long needed get together. It was one of my grandchildren’s birthdays. My wife and I had been out all day buying her a new car, which was an interesting and positive experience that I’ll write about in another article. To celebrate all these fine events I picked up about a hundred dollars worth of Chick-fil-A food and we had a nice little party—looked at pictures, and compared stories. Our evening and the time we spent together was the opposite of that “Hamilton attitude” that I have said so much about over the years. Even though we still live in Hamilton, and I was born there, I am not happy to surrender what I remember best about it to this new age behavior of negativity that often comes from people who smoke way too many cigarettes and have an idea that a good time centers around a cheap 12 pack of beer from a gas station. It’s about hope, determination, and all the things that Chuck Norris represents to American culture. And behind all that is a love of family and the bonds of a life well lived together. The way it used to be, and should always yearn to continue. Other places in the world understand it, but America has clearly forgotten.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

George Lang For Governor of Ohio: Why you can trust him first in West Chester

There really isn’t any reason to say anything against Chuck Cramer after watching his performance in the following video debate with George Lang, the sitting president of the West Chester Trustees. Chuck sounded like a good man. But he was certainly out of his league as the clear winner of the debate was my friend George. George Lang graciously helped Chuck through the ordeal without embarrassing the challenger, which was respectful even if it was unnecessary. In politics you can’t take anything for granted, but after watching this video–George will easily win re-election as Chuck–as well-intentioned as he was–doesn’t pose a challenge at the level it would take to remove Lang from his current position. Lang did reveal during the debate that he plans to run for Governor of Ohio sometime soon, and has higher political ambitions so West Chester better enjoy him while it can. He won’t remain as accessible as he is now for long. He’s just too politically talented.

I don’t like politicians, but I do like George. Because of politics I don’t have many close acquaintances. I know a lot of people, but I avoid close attachments because you have to reserve the right to act on your own accord when needed. In politics there are often hundreds if not thousands of people who expect something from whoever is in a public office, and it becomes clear really quick that you can’t please them all. So you have to stay very true to your own inner compass and navigate the mine field accordingly. I don’t trust career politicians who have been in the business very long because after a period of time, it becomes nearly impossible to listen to that inner compass while at the same time satisfying all the social requirements of the people who donate money to your campaign. I know George to the point that I know his core function isn’t very far from mine and that he wants ultimately a small government that does not want additional tax money, because as he says, government will spend it. As a trustee he has done extremely well in West Chester and I have no doubt he will have success wherever he ends up. Independently, he’s quite successful, so politics is not his primary endeavor. But he enjoys “the game” and believes he can do well there and I see him as the best option to penetrate those depths in a search for treasure that has thus far been hidden.

Daily I live a rather complicated life myself, which I share with George to some extent. The reason I trust him more than the average politician is due to parts of George that I have seen under duress. I’m a pretty controversial person and if George really wanted to “play the game” in the typical way that politicians do, without merit—then he would not have come to some of my private Overmanwarrior meetings (located in the back room of the Liberty Township LaRosa’s) that we’ve had for people who have most supported this site over the years. I have never asked for any special favors from George, but he has supported what I’m doing under his own free will even through it may not have been politically expedient to do so for him. Not everyone gets to see that side of him, and it may have been a huge political gamble for him at the time, but when gambles pay off, they usually do big. And working with me is always a safe bet, which many people have come to learn over the years. So I benefit from knowing George under pressure and under duress and therefore knowing more about his true character than many people have the opportunity to see.

Politics however, especially for people in leadership is a tricky field. When you are in charge of something, there are thousands of nipping parasites called second-handers who loom in your wake waiting for a mistake by you to exploit for their own advantage. They are second-handers because they often do not have the courage to live out in front, so they exclusively make their livings in the wake of people in a leadership role. The trick in politics, whether it’s in a public setting like what George is doing, or whether its being the head of a company, is to not get caught up in what the second-handers want or need from you. When politicians get corrupt it is at this point, when second-handers begin to take over the decision-making of the leadership of those out in front. A leader has to accept that they will be hated often by somebody in their wake at some point, if not constantly. That hatred is not necessarily against a leader, it’s really against themselves for lacking the courage to live their own life authentically, depending on someone else to give them something. Politicians go bad when they start giving in to this relationship which then degrades them into a second-hander themselves. Often, donors are these second-handers because they want something from government, so politicians who may start off as valiant leaders who need money to run campaigns have to step out of that leadership role to solicit funds. The business is tricky on a philosophical level, and without good philosophy a leader loses their authenticity, and potency.

It is lonely at the top, not because there are always people who want your attention. When people pass you in the parking lot there is never a stranger, because most people are second-handers who are nice to your face hoping for a favor down the road, whether it’s in a job, or a political mechanism in their favor. It’s important to know that they aren’t being nice to you out of a human need for kindness. To best articulate this phenomena the Clint Eastwood western High Plains Drifter best illustrates this issue in the most defined way possible. For the person in the leadership position, the best way to maintain their sanity is in accepting that deep down inside, most people do resent you and would cut off your head to suck out all your blood in a second if it were legal and they could get away with it. As cynical as that may sound, it’s correct, and resembles best what is in most people’s hearts—truly. It’s a bad reflection for most to gaze at in the mirror, so they avoid the characterization, but if a politician or leader of any kind is to remain uncorrupted, then they must accept this reality. And to a large extent, I see that George has.

I see in George potential, but I like him not for what he does or what he may do, but because of who he is. I see in him a little boy who wanted to grow up and do something really good, and that same enthusiasm is present even in polished campaign speeches. There are of course those who want something from him that they may not get, and they will be upset with him. If I had a dime for every person who is upset with me on a daily basis, I’d have more money than Donald Trump, so you can’t get caught measuring the worth of somebody based on their popularity within second-hander social groups. That is not an accurate way to measure worth—only merit can determine the value of a leader. The masses will always want what falls off the wagon of true productivity and will like or hate a leader based on what they can get from them. So it does no good to pay them any mind, but to stay on target with the objectives often only the leader can see. If people lose faith in that direction, they can vote the politician out of office. If they sense that they’ll gain an advantage by keeping a politician in office, then they’ll continue to vote for them hoping for success through someone else’s leadership.

Regarding West Chester, there is little not to like. Sure, George has enemies, he gets sued constantly and there are hoards of people in his wake who would love to knock him off his pedestal in a fraction of a second because they fantasize that they might do better. But George knows how good he is and when the chips are on the table through all the smoke of wheeling and dealing, I know what’s in his heart. And what is there is gold, which is the reason why West Chester is currently flourishing. One person does make a difference, and West Chester is the direct recipient of the gold that flows out of George Lang in ways that some resent, others overlook, and many others want to consume for their own advantage. But without George, nobody would have it, and deep down inside, I know that he knows it. That’s why I trust him.

By no fault of his own, Chuck Cramer didn’t have a chance.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

2015 Lakota School Board Candidates: Options for management of tax payer resources

The people who run for school board, such as those at Lakota in Butler County, Ohio, should be people who truly want to save the system and make the best management decisions possible. So for this article, I’ll cover the election of 2015 for two potential school board seats in the fashion of neutrality. In my district there are four candidates, two who currently sit on the board, Julie Shaffer, whom I’ve had my share of spats with, Lynda O’Connor that I’ve supported, along with Ernest D.Gause and Tom Tran. They had a Meet the Candidates night down at my old high school building on Taylorsville Rd on the night of the big CNN debate—which was hosted by the valuable West Chester Tea Party. Refreshingly, quite a few people showed up to watch the event. However, not enough did, so a video of the candidates at that forum can be seen here:

There was some pressure on me to run for one of those spots, but as I explained to everyone who asked—I’m not a public servant type of person. I don’t really care to shake hands, when people call me who I don’t want to talk to, I like to ignore them and when I get mad at something, or someone, I like to be free to unleash my inner T-Rex on them. I don’t like being beholden to a community established set of values. Plus, I feel I’m too young to do anything like run for an office. But most of all, in regard to Lakota, I’m not a public education supporter. I think public schools should be profit based, the unions should be crushed and made illegal, and the government should be completely out of education starting with the DOE in Washington. I don’t want more money from the state to pay for higher collective bargaining agreements for the teacher’s union just so busy parents can have a free baby sitter for their children. If I ran for school board it would be to destroy the system, which isn’t necessarily the best thing for those who do support public education. I have enough respect for the republic system of government that we have to have a vigorous debate instead of imposing my personal views on the masses. So my belief is that people who want to work together to manage a good school system should run for office, and by my appraisal those are the kinds of people who are running in 2015 within the Lakota district.

This time around there aren’t a bunch of crazy lunatics, as there have been in the past running for office, so there really isn’t a downside to any of them. Julie and Lynda have I think done a good job of adapting to the tax opposition and try to avoid reckless tax increases. Listening to Julie, she has come a long way over the last four years. I don’t forget things, but I will put things aside to make a fair comment, and she is better now than the person who debated me on 700 WLW four years ago. That largely comes from experience. I personally liked the spunk of Tom Tran although I don’t think he can apply that gumption to reality on the board. He’d likely assimilate to the current culture uneventfully and be a standard vote. I did talk to Ernest Gause after the debate and was very impressed with his bright-eyed professionalism. He is a professional educator deeply committed to learning. He said some things that were obviously progressive to me and likely weren’t very conservative. But I could tell that he really cared about education. He probably deserves to be some new blood on the school board who could at least elevate some debate regarding the allocation of resources. My friend Ann Becker used to be a very pro levy, pro education type, and he reminded me of her which isn’t at all a bad thing. So there are some good choices for school board that voters have to pick from.

Due to the declining enrollment at Lakota even with the cuts in state funding, the increased tax revenue from commercial endeavors and diligent fiscal policy should prevent Lakota from seeking a tax increase from property owners for the rest of the decade. But, as I’ve said before, the current trajectory of spending and over priced government employees at well over 60K per year will put stress on logic and create the temptation to put another tax increase on the ballot by 2017. Out of all the candidates all of them sound like they’d be supportive of voting for that tax increase. The only way to avoid that is for three conservatives to make it on the board during the next election to out vote the current members. Otherwise, that fight is inevitable. For the sake of this Lakota forum, everyone was peaceful, because tax increases have not yet been put on the table. When the school board does move in that direction, then its time to take away the handshakes and glad tidings and go to war—which we will.

But it’s best to avoid war, and even better to provide good management so that unfortunate incidents in the future can be avoided in the present. And that’s what elections are all about. Of the choices, there are some promising ones, so take advantage of them, communicate with them, and let’s see where it takes us.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Seattle Education Association: Caving to communism in a progressive utopia

When politicians use the word progressive, be clear that what they are talking about is essentially Bernie Sanders socialism. They intend to “progress” society toward collective salvation to nearly a religious fervor. That’s why they don’t have any hard opinions about North Korea, China, Iran, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, Greece, France or even Russia for that matter, because socialism and communism are the modes those countries are functioning under, and they want the same for the United States. That is what politicians mean by “progressive” when they indicated that society needs to “lean forward” toward it.

Clearly one of the most progressive areas of the United States is Seattle, Washington. The massive union culture of the Boeing employees contribute largely to that, and the music culture that has evolved through their garage bands were undeniably socialist in orientation. They have an actual city council person who is a socialist. It is a highly liberalized part of the country and was one of the first places to attempt a $15 per hour minimum wage for fast food workers. So they have serious issues against capitalism and are certainly as a city leaning well toward pot smoking liberalism of the most severe version of progressive. With that said, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the teacher’s union in Seattle went on strike at the start of the school year holding the tax payers to the fire until city management—which is already on the same side as the progressive labor union—buckled just to get the teachers to go back to work again. Here’s what the school employees received in the deal followed by a short report from the Seattle Times.

 Highlights of tentative 3-year contract:

Raises: 3 percent in first year; 2 percent in second; 4.5 percent in third (state cost-of-living raise is additional). More in 2017-18 for some teachers for collaboration, and eight hours of “tech pay” for all school employees.

Discipline: Half day of training on reducing disproportionate discipline for all school employees. Equity committees launched in 30 schools.

Testing: New joint union-district committee to review and recommend testing and testing schedule.

Teacher evaluations: Test scores will no longer play any role.

School day: Will be longer, but not much for students, and teachers will be paid for the additional time.

Specialist caseloads: Sets limits, which union says is a first, for physical therapists, occupational therapists, psychologists and audiologists.

Source: Seattle Education Association

After four months of negotiations, a five-day strike and one final all-night talk, the Seattle teachers union and Seattle Public Schools reached a tentative contract agreement early Tuesday, and school is scheduled to start Thursday for the city’s 53,000 students.

The Seattle Education Association’s board of directors and its elected building representatives both voted Tuesday afternoon to suspend the strike, recommending the union’s membership approve the deal. The agreement will go to a full vote of the union’s 5,000 members at a Sunday meeting.

The building-representative vote came after hours of deliberation, where cheers and fervent discussion could be heard outside a packed room at the Machinists Hall in South Seattle.

Union bargaining chair Phyllis Campano, exhausted after one hour of sleep after the marathon negotiation session, declared victory.

“Let’s be clear,” she said. “We won the fight on this contract agreement.”

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/seattle-teachers-and-district-reach-tentative-agreement/

What a bunch of communist idiots. That is exactly why education costs so much in America, and why our children are being liberalized during that institutional training. There are no rational conservatives in the process, and even if they did manage to get elected to a board seat, progressive politicians have skewed the table to always favor the labor unions. To properly negotiate a deal against labor unions you really have to be an ass, and enjoy it, because it’s tough. But with a 5 to 7 member school board, one will always be out-voted by the rest, as those who typically run for such offices are liberalized types themselves. I would argue that the best education the kids of Seattle could have had was a few more days at home as these progressive teachers went on strike for more money and power.

This strike was not about any kids. Kids were clearly used as extortion pieces to secure higher wages, lower testing expectations, and more secure livelihoods. To hell with the kids, which is what the Seattle Education Association declared when they went on strike—there’s no other way to frame the debate. It was about money at the expense of the kids for the progressive aims of further substantiation of a communist agenda spreading across the world.

However, this story is an old one. We’ve covered it many times before. We’ve covered it on radio broadcasts, many articles, public debates and anywhere that the issue has been raised. Yet in Seattle, the situation is clear, the politics are grossly progressive and the aims of the insurrection directly applicable to the region. The apparatus for political theater has a well-known cast and everyone benefited except for the kids, because a liberal education is not necessarily better than not having one at all. I would argue that children could learn far more from the popular Leap Frog devices so popular now at the local Target store than a K-12 education in a public school. Such educations are as dirty and disrespected as public libraries where everything is shared and stagnate. The value of such education is clearly deficient. As pollsters like to announce often during the presidential race of 2016, college graduates support Hillary Clinton whereas blue-collar non-college graduates generally support Donald Trump. The accusation is that highly educated types are more able to understand “higher concepts” of progressivism. But such a term is purely marketing and has no basis in reality. It could be just as argued that 16 years of liberalized education is detrimental to a conservative mind and they will leave college prepared to support progressive platform points such as gay rights, open borders, and socialist wealth redistribution. Whereas those who make their own way in life work hard from the ground up and go to bed tired each night, they don’t like to have their money stolen from them by progressives—so they vote with their wallets. The Seattle Education Association is clearly attacking the hard-working as opposed to the unionized slugs and the wealth redistribution that they most support in Seattle, so it’s no surprise that the government school union got what they wanted so quickly. There really wasn’t any opposition, just political theater that showed clearly that the children were not the priority to the teachers.

It’s a hard reality for many to realize, but the educations we all go through within the public education system is nearly worthless. It exists for these unionized teachers to mooch off of, as they provide very little of any worth for a young, inquiring mind, except a radicalized progressive education. Kids don’t learn about the value of cowboys and Indians in public school, but they sure learn how to stand in line, organize in a collective unit, and get voluminous exposure to the progressive religion of global warming. It’s hard work to unlearn all the crap we learn and for those who reject the experience, it’s easier for them. But for all, the reality couldn’t be clearer. If you support the teachers in Seattle you essentially support Bernie Sanders socialism. The people who won in that case were the socialists represented here by the Seattle Education Association. And they pulled it off because there is no free market competition for their services and it’s nearly illegal to avoid the reach of public schools. So they have a government backed monopoly on building future progressives with tax payer money and every year the price tag goes up. And nobody does anything to stop it because they are afraid of being called names for identifying the behavior what it really is—which is a diabolical socialist scheme that would make the communists of the world bulge with pride. And today in Seattle, they are.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

What Donald Trump has in common with Marcus Mariota: Lessons for the Republican Party to learn

I had just been complimentary of the 2015 Tampa Bay Buccaneers in spite of my concerns that they had picked the right quarterback in the draft, but trusted that Lovie Smith knew what he was doing. As the Tennessee Titans won a game epically 42 to 14 with the quarterback I wanted, Marcus Mariota being pulled in the third quarter so not to rub the nose of my favorite team in an opening day disaster—it was obvious Lovie Smith had not prepared his team. Smith was stuck in the past when the Bucs were successful, when the Tampa 2 defense was created, and an era that built several Hall of Fame players reigned supreme. Tennessee drafted Mariota and let him play virtually the same spread offense that he won with at Oregon. Mariota, who had been picked two in the draft, was clearly the better quarterback. The negatives on him were that he wasn’t NFL ready as a rookie, was not a pocket passer, and that his stunts would not work in the NFL. Well, Tennessee ignored all that, let the kid play his game, his way, and the Bucs weren’t even competitive. Mariota had a perfect QB rating for his first NFL start. Lovie got caught looking toward the past and adhering to the unspoken rules of NFL coaching—where Cover 2 defenses are still respected and pocket passers at quarterback are tickets to playoffs.

It was discussed all preseason that Mariota was not NFL ready, yet while playing a pretty good Tampa Bay defense, he was baiting defensive ends and line backers to jump off coverage and defend him leaving often three receivers in single coverage down field as the safeties pulled up to cover the linebackers. He looked pretty NFL ready, and the stats proved it to be. But as good as Mariota was that day, Lovie Smith made him look far better by preparing the Bucs incorrectly for the game. Obviously the Tampa Bay coaching staff assumed from the tape provided by Tennessee’s preseason games that Mariota was going to be forced to adhere to the unspoken NFL rules. But in reality, within 2 minutes of playing, it was obvious that the Tennessee Titans pulled the reigns off Mariota and let him play the way he won in college with the Ducks. Innovation gave way to tradition and the Titans won in a big way.

As I was thinking about that game and writing off another Buccaneers season before it ever got started, two Republican insiders contacted me for the first time in a long time. These were people who had been critical of my aggressive political approach on things and people I had relegated to ineffective wimps in the past. They assumed that my fight first strategy against political opponents was wrong, because the majority in the Republican Party wanted to play nice and expand the base through appeasement—to slowly win over Democrats and other moderates to the Party of Lincoln. I have always been against that strategy and have written much about how to win women voters, minorities, and the youth, and I have been at odds with the general strategies of orthodox political behavior. This has been going on for a number of years with pretty public spats involving Chairman of the Republican Party Carlos Todd, Commissioner Michael Fox, Trustee Bob Shelly, the Lakota School boards of 2004-2005, 2010 through 2015 and of course Judy Shelton and Patti Alderson. Generally the assumption was that my approach was reckless and unprofessional. Then Donald Trump became a political sensation in 2015 and the orthodox was beginning to understand what I’ve been talking about for two decades. If they had only listened instead of fighting me on every little thing they would have won more often and maintained a much more conservative Republican Party as a result, instead of curbing their party to the weakest links of political philosophy.

This article was published during the mighty CNN debate which was poised to change history as Donald Trump—who has always been an original, was essentially doing what I have said to do for years—and he’s winning—big. The presidential debate brought huge numbers to CNN, well beyond even their fantasy of beating Fox News for a change, and it’s essentially because Donald Trump has been a fighter and is offering that to the political landscape for the first time in most people’s lifetimes. And people are responding. As the debate started it was obvious all the other Republican candidates were gunning to put an end to Trump, but the New York billionaire staved off the threat in much the way that Marcus Mariota had avoided the Bucs defense and Lovie Smith’s game plan to dominate easily over a political establishment who had been following the wrong strategy for the past four sitting presidents. I couldn’t help but see a correlation between Donald Trump’s run for president in 2016 and the terrible defeat of my favorite team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on their opening day by a creative and outside the box quarterback in Marcus Mariota. Lovie had picked the wrong guy in the draft and now the Republicans were trying their hardest to pick the wrong guy to run for president in 2016 by destroying their best option.

Currently the biggest issue on the table of the world is the lifestyle of America versus the rest of the world which is leaning heavily toward socialism and the sense of collectivism that fuels it. There isn’t a single policy or law which could be created under the next American president which could save the world from its ridiculous commitment to social collectivism. Nothing said on the debate stage for CNN will manifest into action by any of the candidates other than Trump, and here’s why, because he represents the pronoun I, and every other candidate represents the “we.” America needs to feel good about itself again starting with individual achievement, not through collective “team work.”

The Tennessee Titans without Marcus Mariota would have probably lost to Tampa Bay and Lovie Smith’s “team concept.” Tampa drafted a team leader who could elevate the other players through motivation. Mariota on the other hand easily beat that same quarterback in the college playoffs earlier in the year when Florida State had been undefeated at the time. Mariota beat that player with all different team members on the field in precisely the same basic way, with an unconventional spread offense that favored the intelligence and physical attributes of Mariota. The offense had been built to accommodate the individual who Mariota was.

On the other hand, Jamies Winston of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was molded to an NFL style of play that is quickly becoming extinct but features “team play.” Obviously that approach was wrong and lost to the innovations of the Titans who catered their entire team toward the individual of Mariota. While Smith insisted all preseason stated that the young Winston would need time to acclimate to the NFL, the Titans turned their player loose, and expected immediate results. Time will tell if this approach will last, but for one game anyway, it worked marvelously well and the results were grossly obvious. Winston was picked to be a typical pocket passing quarterback in the style of Payton Manning and Tom Brady. But the game is changing, and Mariota is part of that innovation, and Smith just didn’t see the truck that hit him on opening day.

The Republicans are making the same mistake with Trump. The way to fix America is not through a leader, it is in making people leaders of their own lives, and to do that we need someone who won’t apologize for being proud of their efforts. The self-boasting and pride obvious by Trump in himself is exactly what America needs to feel about itself. That is the innovation of the future in politics, advocating the proper political philosophy, not just going after votes at the booth by appeasing pop culture into participating enough to get Party support for their candidates. It doesn’t matter if Trump was a Democrat, or was a typical New York progressive, or if he is the scum of the universe. What matters in Trump is that he loves himself and America needs to have that guilt removed from them so that they too can feel good about themselves once again. That is the only way to fix anything. I have said so for a long time, and now Trump is really the first to show how powerful such an approach can be. The key is in not allowing the other side to use guilt to paralyze us into inaction. That is the strategy of Democrats and it has worked. The way for Republicans to win is to stop feeling guilty and just let the truth do its job. If Republicans would do that, they’d win a lot more in the game of political theater. And like Trump, and Mariota, they make it look pretty easy because it is. Trust in the pronoun I, and let that “team” crap die with Lovie Smith’s approach to the game of football.

The game plan is now out and there is no going back. Now that Trump has done it, every liberal celebrity who thinks they can run for president will. Mark Cuban might very well be next, so if Republicans don’t seize a celebrity who is currently a conservative, they may very well lose the opportunity to take the White House for the next five decades. There is no going back to a Mitt Romney, or a George Bush. Politicians have abused the system so long that the public is done with them.   So Republican Party people who should have listened to me years ago better listen now. You better embrace Trump. If you do you can have the White House for probably the next 16 years and in 2024, you might just get someone like Ted Cruz. Learn from Lovie Smith of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and don’t get caught looking at what worked in the past. Embrace what will work in the future, and seize the opportunity when you get it. For Republicans, that opportunity is now.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Unconquered Donald Trump: CNN’s debate of the century–and beyond

I have watched a lot of very smart people over the last several years throw up their hands in frustration because the political class will not listen, or let them in, to help solve the problems of our states and our country. The desire is there from those smart people to give it everything they have to fix very complicated problems, but they are purposely kept on the fringes to allow the entitlements that come with public service to continue like whores in a Port Royal brothel. Those same people are angry and frustrated that Donald Trump is poised to bring CNN more than 30 million viewers hoping to watch the billionaire presidential candidate bring a smack down to his rival Republican contenders on the debate stage on Wednesday September 16th.

Their frustration is very similar to those who refuse to believe that big time wrestling is fake—because they want to buy the story line that political theater can somehow be solved with logic. But it can’t. The system is too far gone for anything like that, and as well intended as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz may be, the political establishment is against them to the death. So for a president in 2016 to be successful they have to be good at two things, they have to understand “big time” wrestling, and they have to know how money works. It is well-known that Donald Trump understands money. He is a mostly self-made man built the old-fashioned way. But he’s also an entertainer who knows the value of a brand—and his brand is so strong that it has even survived the testosterone filled banter of wrestling fanaticism. Out of all his accomplishments, the sentiment that Trump is an inductee of the WWE in the celebrity wing of the Hall of Fame likely makes him most equipped to be President of the United States in the years following the embarrassments of Obama, Clinton and Bush than anything else.

Trump has always been a fan of the WWE and is good friends with Vince McMahon in real life. Trump hosted both WrestleMania IV and V from Trump Plaza. This marked the first and only time a WrestleMania has been held at the same venue in consecutive years.

Younger fans will probably remember him best being involved in WrestleMania 23. It was billed as the “Battle of the Billionaires”, with Trump’s representative Bobby Lashley beating McMahon’s representative Umaga. Trump got to shave McMahon’s hair off at the event.

There was even a storyline when Trump bought Monday Night Raw off of McMahon in 2009. He staged a historic commercial-free version of the show, which was one of the highest rated Raw shows in many years at the time.

http://www.rantsports.com/pro-wrestling/2013/02/26/donald-trump-enters-the-wwe-hall-of-fame/

Most notably with that “Battle of the Billionaires” was when Trump body slammed McMahon and punched him in the face several times. It was obvious choreography, but think about a 60-year-old Trump actually body slamming McMahon, even playing around. What is important about that event is that the Trump brand was so well-known and respected, that millions of fans supported Trump as the winner of that engagement where McMahon had his head shaved on stage. It was all entertainment theater agreed upon ahead of time, but the fact that McMahon agreed to allow a relatively old man billionaire to beat him in front of millions of people shows to what extent Trump protects his brand.

Trump with all the gusto of the entertainment value he learned through his support of the WWE is promising to release prisoners from Iran, make Mexico build a wall to seal off the American border, and has shown open support of Israel against Iran. He’s promised to cut taxes, save Social Security, and to make America great again—and rich. And a lot of what he has said is done in the same fashion as a WWE wrestler. Now when I showed some of the clips included here to my wife she was immediately turned off by Trump’s participation in the activity. But I found it fascinating. Not only did he fill the seats of his Trump Plaze, protect his investment in WWE, help his friend Vince promote great ratings for his Wrestle Mania events—Trump also increased his own personal brand which is known throughout the world as a quality—larger than life—persona. Trump worked a relatively simple deal at multiple levels to have world-wide impact, and he even participated as a wrestler. He didn’t just sit up in a glass box and watch; he was ring side with McMahon playing along. It was quite a business transaction—fascinating to watch.

The pressure on Trump for the CNN debate must be overwhelming. Everyone on that stage will be gunning for him. Everyone in the audience is carefully waiting for him to body slam someone. And the moderators want to be the ones to go down in history as the one who stumped Trump’s 2016 campaign. And he knows that’s what’s going to happen in front of nearly as many people who watch the Superbowl ever year. Talk about pressure—it doesn’t get any heavier. But Trump has set this whole thing up for several decades, and I wouldn’t doubt it if it didn’t play out in his mind when he and Vince McMahon were setting up “The Battle of the Billionaires.” The Beltway types will look at these clips of Donald Trump at Wrestle Mania and consider it low brow Entertainment Theater appealing to the trailer trash of America—as they sip their white wine during the appetizer portion of a tax payer funded dinner. But Trump knows that cultures around the world don’t care about debates or fancy talk. They will know when he comes to the table to negotiate that the 6’ 3” man from America in the blue suit and red tie that body slams celebrities in front of millions of people Trump is not going to play nicely. When people like Hulk Hogan and many other WWE greats will likely be part of Trump’s body guard entourage from the White House, Trump will have built up a mysticism that no body else could have dreamed to match.

Who would little 5’ 7” Vladimir Putin respect more, the chain-smoking John Boehner with the fake tan and fake courage—who gets pushed around by the skinny communist bastard Obama, or the larger than life Donald Trump who is seen on video, recently, body slamming Vince McMahon? What about negotiations with Iran? Iran doesn’t understand American culture, they don’t watch the debates. But they will watch the tape of Trump at Wrestle Mania—it will likely scare them because they respect that type of bravado. How about Mexico, a country filled with drug lords and corrupt politicians. Do they respect false words from the Beltway or someone who openly scolds El Chapo and fights giant men in front of thousands of people?

I think what Trump has done is brilliant and it all culminates at this CNN debate. It will be the fight of the century, and this one isn’t as planned out as the one between Trump and McMahon—this is a real fight. But the theatrics are what Trump knows and understands and he’s already working at many different levels well ahead of everyone else. To me its clear Trump has been building up his brand to perform this task for a long time. The brilliance of that strategy is to use an unlikely source, such as the WWE to catapult that brand to a voter base that has not been participating in elections—and to also use that footage to gain footage for future capital. There are all kinds of capital. Most of the time we think of capital as money, but there are other kinds. And Trump is planning to use that capital to break through some things that have been in a stalemate for a long time. And it is fascinating to watch. That is for sure.

All this gives me hope for those smart minds who have been trying to fix things. In the wake of this political destruction, which is going on presently, there will be room from those bright minds to flourish in the wake. When Trump avoids specifics it’s because he won’t be the one to solve all the problems of the nation. His role is to clear out the opposition. But the fixes have to come from the best and brightest that America has to offer. And we need a president who understands how to unleash that talent. Ironically, the best way to learn how to do that is by watching Wrestle Mania. There is more truth in a typical WWE fight than all the political speeches on CSPAN collected over a decade. And that’s the sad truth.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

‘Star Wars’ is not a “Slam Dunk” for Disney: Chuck Wendig’s sticky seats with ‘Aftermath’

On Force Friday as my family was in acquisition mode for new Star Wars merchandise. My brother sent me a picture of the new book, Aftermath by Chuck Wendig to show that he had put his hands on the long-awaited book. I politely dismissed the innuendo that the novel was a “hot item” to purchase even though in our house we have EVERY single Star Wars novel ever produced up to this point. My family loves the Expanded Universe and is on the fence as to how much of ourselves we’ll invest in this new day under Disney. I’m personally hopeful. I think millions of young people will love it. I think it’s mostly a slam dunk of positive infusion culturally. But I’ll have to see how the movie turns out and how much they wreck the continuity of the story which at this point takes place over thousands of years. So I have not yet read Aftermath. I certainly will at some point, but not until I have some basic questions answered—such as, why is Chewbacca alive in the new film—those kinds of things.

However, apparently there is a gay character in Chuck Wendig’s new book, and while a galaxy filled with crazy aliens, species that convert to female when it comes time to mate, and literally thousands of primary and secondary characters—some of which are bound to have some unique sexual habits, Star Wars is NOT about sex. Not in the least. Yet Wendig chose to respond to criticism over his character the Imperial turncoat Sinjir Rath Velus with the following diatribe on his blog, Terrible Minds. Wendig hit back at readers who accused the author on Amazon of “blatantly pushing a gay agenda” and suggested that the franchise was no longer “children friendly”.

“If you’re upset because I put gay characters and a gay protagonist in the book, I got nothing for you,” Wendig wrote. “Sorry, you squawking saurian — meteor’s coming. And it’s a fabulously gay Nyan Cat meteor with a rainbow trailing behind it and your mode of thought will be extinct.”

“You’re not the Rebel Alliance. You’re not the good guys. You’re the fucking Empire, man. You’re the shitty, oppressive, totalitarian Empire. If you can imagine a world where Luke Skywalker would be irritated that there were gay people around him, you completely missed the point of Star Wars. It’s like trying to picture Jesus kicking lepers in the throat instead of curing them. Stop being the Empire. Join the Rebel Alliance. We have love and inclusion and great music and cute droids.”

He later told a reader who attacked his confrontational approach to his critics that he would not engage in a conversation on the issue. “Because on this, I am not interested in conversation. If your problem with the book is only the inclusion of gay characters, then no conversation is possible. Because that’s homophobia, that’s bigotry, and there’s nothing to be done or said. Someone wants to talk to me about the writing style or whatever, sure, I can have that discussion. On this, no.”

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/11/star-wars-aftermath-novelist-chuck-wendig-strikes-back-at-gay-character-slurs

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/09/04/star-wars-aftermath-gay-character

If I were Disney execs and Kathleen Kennedy at Lucasfilm, I’d be very concerned. You really can’t have an author for a kids series dropping “F” bombs and proposing that gay meteors are coming with trails of rainbows to follow. Because the use of a gay character in Star Wars clearly was political, and agenda based, otherwise he wouldn’t be so quick to come unglued. Also, it is disturbing that as a Star Wars author, Wendig assumes that the definition of Star Wars resides along the lines of inclusion of gay people within the Jedi Order of Luke Skywalker. While Star Wars can mean lots of things to a lot of different people, the space opera is about good, old-fashioned story telling based on the Saturday morning serials of George Lucas’s youth. They are westerns set in space and if they become anything less than that, then the profit-making machine Disney hopes the property to be will quickly fade away.   I’ve loved Star Wars all my life, but I will be the first one off the train if that’s the direction Disney decides to go. Star Wars is not about where one parks their male sex organs at night. Any romance that does emerge from the stories has direct connections to furthering family lineage. Star Wars is not Game of Thrones. If there is sex and romance, there has always been a point to it. Star Wars is not the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and if Disney thinks they can expand their market share by 2% then they’ll lose 40% who just will drop interest. Times have not changed as much as Wendig thinks based on his comment that conservative modes of thinking will soon be extinct. Miley Cyrus recently said something similar, and I’m sure around San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and places where progressivism is rampant, it’s easy for them to think so. But in Kansas, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Dallas—people aren’t going to rush out to buy the next Star Wars product if they feel a gay agenda is being forced down their throat. They’ll drop interest before Episode 8 hits in May of 2017 and Disney will be in trouble.

Here’s how it works, Disney considers the Avengers: Age of Ultron to be a box office failure even though it made $1.4 billion dollars world-wide. While I enjoyed the movie, I walked out disappointed—I knew how Disney would view the profits from the movie. It wasn’t as good as the first film and it had noticeable progressive influences in the movie that just don’t play well with traditional audiences. Feminism and gay pride may be topics now because of the progressive influence of studio projects, but those are not enduring traits that will still be beloved many years from now. Star Wars is a mythology that should have the same resonance 100 years from now as it does in this decade. And I’ll bet money that 500 years from now, we will be laughed at as a culture for even entertaining all this gay pride stuff. For instance, the two best Star Wars movies are A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Without those two movies, there wouldn’t be a franchise. Obviously the romance in those two stories was the one between Han Solo and Princess Leia. Leia in A New Hope was a raging feminist who was slowly conquered by a strong male archetype typical in most westerns, Han Solo. Over two films he melted her into submission and made a real woman out of her. That is a story point that will endure with human development for hundreds of years and will sustain the growth of billions of dollars in action figures. But if Princess Leia were to stave off Han Solo and start a sexual relationship with Mon Mothma, the whole mythology would have been rejected by the movie going public in seconds. If Disney turns Star Wars into Broke Back Mountain, then there will be hell to pay. They may gain 2% approval from the gay community and the rainbow weirdos who cheered when Obama colored the White House in pretty colors after a Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. But straight people—who will always be in the majority based on biological function, will reject things that they are uncomfortable with. Disney will not be happy when they learn that Star Wars movies won’t make them $2 billion each and the book market dies from a lack of demand for the product. People go to Star Wars to get away from progressive politics, not to relish in it. For me it’s a traditional storyline that is similar to a western—so I love it. Take that traditional element away and I’m not interested. And there are millions who think just like I do.

http://www.therealstanlee.com/disney-considered-avengers-age-of-ultron-a-box-office-failure/

Just a word of warning to Disney—I love the company and its products. Part of that love comes from the traditional family values that it represents. If traditional value is removed from the product, I’m not inclined to spend money on it. There have been many times where obvious gay people perform at Disney World, and I put up with it to be inclusive, but when they are flamboyant about being males pretending to be women with high-pitched tones to their sentence structures, it just gives me a headache. If some hot chick dressed up as Sleeping Beauty wants to stand next to me for a picture, I’m fine with it. But if a dude dressed up as Sleeping Beauty wants to cuddle up next to me to satisfy their own sexuality—that’s not OK. I don’t want to explain that kind of thing to the young people around me, and I don’t want to be put in that position if I’m spending a $1000 dollars a day at an amusement park. And I’m not going to rush out at midnight to buy a book about gay protagonists. Star Wars is not a sure thing. It can be screwed up, and based on the comments from Chuck Wendig, that apprehension is well justified.

I’m completely alright with expanding the role of women in Star Wars. Jaina Solo is bigger than God in our household. I’m also alright with heroes of different skin colors. But when it comes to sex, I don’t want to know about it. Heterosexual activity can be gross at times, but gay sex is just unappealing and I don’t want to be reminded of it when I look at an action figure. If Disney wants to kill Star Wars, then let these “artistic” types have their way with the traditions of Star Wars by turning it into the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Fans of the series will be turned off, but the real terror will come to Disney execs who measure box office receipts—when they find out that their cash cow just laid an egg—and that’s not something that’s supposed to happen in a galaxy far, far away.  Star Wars is not about gay pride, or inclusion. Sex is a “collective experience” something that is shared. Star Wars is about following the bliss of the individual and in saving yourself you save the galaxy. When many people follow their “bliss” evil is conquered and good resumes its work in the world. That has nothing to do with sex. But it has everything to do with what goes on in the human soul. Based on Wendig’s comments, he needs to go back to Star Wars school and Disney needs to re-think who they let drive the car of the franchise—because artists like Chuck are bringing that car back with lots of new dents, scratches, and sticky seats. And that’s just gross.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Need for American Exceptionalism: How the political left has killed thousands and made life miserable for millions

Now you know dear reader why American Exceptionalism is so important. For all you peace lovers, only now do you understand that the wars in the Middle East that took place in recent years were not about oil. They were about stabilized government and the opportunity to live life for the indigenous people of those lands. The so-called American Imperialism that the political left is always talking about is very good for the world. American capitalism is also very good for the world. Wherever America has a military base or business influence, the cultures in those regions prosper. Where America does not have influence, there is war, death, and corruption. What should that tell the United Nations? And what would the United Nations be without the United States?   Nothing. So where does that leave us?

Worldwide presently there are 59.5 million people on the move as refugees within their home countries, victims of tyrannical regimes, poverty-stricken economies, abusive thugs, and environmental disaster. There have never been more people looking to leave where they were hoping to get refuge somewhere else. That is the cause of the problem on the American border with Mexico. Mexico is an impoverished nation collapsing economically under its 100 year commitment toward socialist oriented policies and now they are impoverished. The only real money they have is from American businesses fleeing the high taxation and union demands within the United States, and tourism. The political left is at fault for all those issues, the high taxes, the open border push, the drives toward socialism—yet they take no responsibility for any of it leaving the world a mismanaged mess that is killing many hundreds of thousands of people and leaving millions without hope and opportunity.

The latest crises in Syria has 4.1 million refugees registered fleeing the war-torn area of the Middle East destroyed by ISIS for destinations in Europe hoping for sanctuary somewhere that radicals won’t cut off their heads, rape their women, and corrupt their children. They leave for countries that will allow them to live on welfare—which is why so many are primarily fleeing to Germany. Greece doesn’t have any money to deal with even more people seeking social benefits from a socialist economic system. Obama blew the deal in Syria with Bashar al-Assad when he failed to enforce his “line in the sand” then refused to help that same dictator when indirectly America gave arms to his enemies which rose up to become ISIS—an even greater threat. The cause of that increase of aggression was the power vacuum left behind when America left Iraq, as telegraphed by Barack Obama—who ran for president on the platform of leaving the unpopular war.

As politicians like Rand Paul and his father Ron were technically and Constitutionally correct that America needs to take care of our own borders and not be the police of the entire world, the world actually needs the cowboy heroism of America to save them from mismanagement, religious zealots, and the ugly claws of communism that still seek to spread across the world with a vengeful effort at mass collectivism. So long as the world is rife with communism, socialism and religious fanatics, America is the only country responsible enough to provide peace and shelter to a world literally on fire. The global migrations happening right now are because America has pulled up its global influence and went home to drown in its 19 trillion-dollar deficit.

To any sane mind all these problems, again caused by the political left and their armies of progressives in virtually every field of endeavor. You could further trace much of this trouble back to billionaires like George Soros. His money goes into programs like open border societies, marijuana legalization, and extreme political left progressive candidates. What do all those things have in common? Well, drugs soften the minds of indigenous people while open borders destroy nationalism, creating new voting blocks with socialist foundations to elect progressives to manage the countries while people like hedge fund investors make money on the chaos. There’s no conspiracy there, it’s happening right in front of our faces and nobody is really denying it. Meanwhile, Republicans are more concerned with “playing nice” as millions of young people are killed in China and elsewhere under socialist, communist, and religious administrations. Planned Parenthood is a perfect example of this crises—abortion isn’t just about political and theological debate anymore. Practitioners under tax payer funding are deliberately killing children to sell their body parts. That is a crisis of epic proportions—and again the avocation of the evil is a strategy of the political left. So isn’t it explicitly clear what’s happening and why people are being made to suffer?

One of the terms used to disgrace American occupation of foreign lands is to refer to the act as “cowboy diplomacy” and the concept of the Wild, Wild, West where the naive concept of good guys shooting bad guys is considered reprehensible. America feeling guilt about that accusation stopped making westerns, stopped shipping its values abroad, and avoided the finger-pointing of American Imperialism that has so long loomed like a cloud over the freest capitalist nation on earth. Well, now we see the results of that avoidance. The world was so much better when it made westerns, and kids played cowboys and Indians as opposed to Miley Cyrus grinding on some teddy bears and passing around joints at a press conference. Miley was shaped by progressive politics whereas conservativism was shaped by American westerns and their values.   Turn a cowboy loose in the Middle East and there will be lot fewer refugees fleeing to Germany. I promise. Punish the bad guys so good people can live free. To a liberal that’s an overly simplified statement, because to their minds, evil has a seat at the table of debate. Liberals created all the problems, and the world is suffering under their mismanagement.

The question we have to solve now is what to do about all this. Just blindly taking in refugees and putting them on government assistance won’t solve the problem. They need real help in places like Syria, and Mexico. Those regions do need a return to cowboy diplomacy and a sense of honor typically associated with American westerns. They need capitalism and the opportunities that come with that economic system. The Greek isles depend nearly exclusively on tourism to sustain livelihoods for their inhabitants. They don’t make cars, or even brew beer there, not in any quantities to provide economical means toward social sustainability. They need tourists to visit to provide income to the families who live there. But tourists won’t come if dead bodies continue to wash up on the beach from failed attempts to cross the Mediterranean from Africa and the Middle East by families fleeing the terrorism of ISIS and the caliphate of Islamic extremism. Nobody wants to go on vacation only to see dead bodies on the beach. Yet the United Nations is in complete paralysis as to what to do about it all. They are totally clueless trying to deal with the problem, not the cause of the problem.

The cause of most of the world’s problems is a lack of capitalism and the American bravado to promote it. The reluctance to spread “cowboy diplomacy” throughout the world has been catastrophic. The world needs our help, and we have instead run like chickens—which progressives have told two generations now is a noble cause. Progressives would rather support abortion deaths; rainbow-colored transvestites, and legalized marijuana, than to allow America to feel good about its traditions and responsibility. Saving the world is the responsibility of those most able to do it. If a victim is in distress and a strong personality is nearby to do something about it, the responsibility for action is on those capable of solving the problem. America is the only nation capable of such a thing. And because we are not performing that job now, the world is suffering. The blame for that suffering is not only on the liberals who have caused the mess, but in those of us who have failed to act correctly in the face of danger and opposition. The world needs a little “cowboy justice” and it’s about time we stop apologizing and start giving it to them. Once the world learns to be more like Americans, then maybe the United States can be the way Rand Paul wishes. But not until then.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

An Answer to Rand Paul: Why Trump is good for the GOP

Watching Donald Trump on the Jimmy Fallon Show Friday September 11th, 2015 just ahead of the second Republican debate of the campaign season on CNN, it was clear that the New York billionaire was in his element and most poised to become the next president. He had such a good show with Fallon that it may be remembered in history as Teddy Roosevelt’s “I carry a big stick” speech. Trump is independently successful, in the old-fashioned way, and after more than a decade on television with his own reality show teaching others how to be successful, he has become a very polished performer in front of the camera. He has a stage presence better than Ronald Reagan and far surer of himself. And I think that’s a great thing, considering we’ve just come off nearly 16 years of a divided country almost as fractured as America was during the Civil War. We have the Clintons to thank for bringing us that fracturing during 90s, but that’s a story that’s been told before. Now we have to clean up the mess and figure out who is most poised to perform the job of president now.

 

The real test for Trump will be this upcoming CNN debate. I’m sure he knows that the Republican establishment will throw everything but the kitchen sink at him over the next few weeks, but essentially he can lock down the nomination for president with this next debate. If he dominates, most of his rivals will be forced to step out, as Rick Perry just has. Likely that is what is at the heart of Rand Paul’s frustrated comments just before Trump went on the Fallon show and gave a brilliant performance. If Trump dominates the CNN debate, the money will dry up for most of the Republican candidates and the road to the White House will have ended for them. Here is what Paul said:

“What does it say about GOP when a 3 & half term Gov w/ a successful record of creating jobs bows out as a reality star leads in the polls?” Paul tweeted.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/09/11/rand-paul-has-a-question-for-republican-voters-following-rick-perrys-suspension-of-campaign/

Well, let me answer that question for Paul and the rest of the GOP field—as well as all the other people like Glenn Beck who think Trump is a simpleton, a buffoon, a reckless madman, and a wildly progressive candidate who will bring destruction to the country if elected president. Trump is a polished television performer. He understands how television works and how much information common people can retain in a speech. While he may not be a Constitutional attorney, or a talk show host who has built their life as an expert on American history, he is aware that all that knowledge is useless if you can’t sell the Constitution to the house and senate on Capital Hill. So even if Rand Paul were elected, or Ted Cruz—who know the Constitution likely better than the Supreme Court, the normal zombies out there who live in pop culture land don’t care even a little bit, so there will be no adherence on Capital Hill to the Constitution, so why dwell on it. Trump has a different strategy, which I agree with.

Since I’ve been writing these daily articles starting in 2010 I have watched Glenn Beck fill the Mall in Washington with hope filled speeches, I have watched Governor Kasich run as a Tea Party darling, promising big changes and Constitutional adherence, and I watched my hometown congressman John Boehner take over as Speaker of the House and watched Mitch McConnell across the river become Senate Majority Leader. I watched Boehner force members to read the Constitution after his swearing-in and talk like he was going to reform Washington. Guess what happened in all those cases? Big waves came and swept away Beck throwing him into near irrelevance in Dallas, Texas away from the media culture of New York, where the fight for our nation’s survival really is happening. Beck picked a fight with George Soros and the billionaire unleashed his wrath on the pest forcing him to leave town and find solace in Jesus. Boehner, McConnell and Kasich all had their asses handed to them with just a little bit of progressive resistance. Obama clearly outplayed Boehner. Kasich lost to the unions. And McConnell was never anything but a muddy middle ground player in Washington. He’s far from conservative as the party platform professes small, limited, government with responsible spending. They are effectively wimps and they are the most powerful in Washington.

Along comes Trump, independently successful, charismatic, and he has a wrathful temper. He’s used to winning everything he does and he actually loves to fight. While people like Beck used to be alcoholics and drug addicts open to vices that corrupt man’s mind, Trump has always been against weak personality flaws. He has been shaped by the typical New York progressive view of the world in the past, but he currently has the ability to go on the Jimmy Fallon Show and declare without hesitation that America needs to decrease its spending, close its borders, and become a rich nation again without apologizing to the world—and people clap. Movie stars line up to have selfies taken with him, and he is generally admired by even people on the left. When he states that he supports taxing the rich, it is a calculated effort—a way to take the wind out of the sails of open socialists like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. What can they say to “trump” Trump when the Republican candidate is advocating the same things they are in their platform? (It’s called political strategy) On the Fallon Show Trump advocated during a comedy segment that corporate taxation needed to be lowered—and again people cheered him on. That is important—I believe taxes in general will be lowered by Trump, especially for corporations. Hedge fund investors are easy targets who are like Vegas gamblers. The wealth they create is all in paper—so taxing them is an easy target. Corporations on the other hand actually make things—and their taxes need to be lowered—considerably. In the climate we live in now, Trump knows he won’t get both and still get political support from the population in general. Not when socialism is what the political left is selling.

I know that people are worried that Trump is poised to become an American version of Russia’s Putin—but I think he’s smarter than that. I think a lot of the egomaniac persona is an act designed to throw people off while conducting The Art of the Deal in real life. For people who don’t understand those kinds of skills I can see why they are timid. People think when they meet me that I’m a hard right-winged guy who is intolerant of the world and that I live in a fringy cave of conservatism. They are surprised when I can sit down with people who think very differently from me and conduct myself in a reasonable way. I’ve been in sales of some kind or another all my life, and the first thing you do when feeling out an opponent’s position is to find out where they are. So you club them over the head with aggression to find out what they are willing to defend most, then you work toward an agreement with that knowledge. It’s a strategy, and Trump is certainly good at it. What he shows is not always where he’s willing to sign a deal. That’s likely what scares Beck and Paul, because they are Constitutional purists. However to me, I think the Constitution was framed by the Federalists way too much—I live near Hamilton, Ohio which is named after Alexander Hamilton—who was an idiot in my opinion. I did not like Hamilton’s fiscal fights with Thomas Jefferson—and I didn’t respect the way George Washington let Hamilton have his way with the country’s financial approach of too much centralized government intrusion. I think with all the rhetoric that I’ve heard from Trump that he’s a closet Anti-Federalist. I think he’d be more of a president like Jefferson than Washington. I think he may be as bombastic as Teddy Roosevelt was, but away from progressivism instead of toward it. I actually think Trump as a president would be a combination of George Patton, Thomas Jefferson, and the Democrat Andrew Jackson. Personally I like Jackson, he balanced the books in America for the only time in its history, and I think Trump is the only person right now in the world who could tackle the 19 trillion-dollar deficiency facing us right now.   I see no downside to a Trump president, only strategic opportunities that benefit our country.

Trump is far more than a television reality star. It must be remembered that his television stardom only came after he had a successful career as one of the best in his field of endeavor. And he’s offering something to politics that we haven’t seen before. People like Trump don’t run for president. They purchase them, and then stay in the shadows. There isn’t another person on the Republican stage for president right now who can resist that purchasing power—including Ted Cruz. But Cruz knows what he’s doing. Trump is breaking through a lot of ice and Cruz is succeeding in his wake. And that is how someone like Cruz can get a foothold in Washington that he otherwise wouldn’t get. It takes someone like Trump to bust up the old way so that something new can come about. And in 2016 we are in a bust up year. We have to destroy the garbage that politicians like Barack Obama and George W. Bush have given us. And we need to do it fast, and spectacularly. Out of all the possible candidates in the world on any continent at this moment in time, only Trump has an opportunity to perform the task. And instinctively, people know it.

The American Constitution is excessively important, but to my eyes, it was corrupted from the gate. The Anti-Federalists folded too soon and gave way to Alexander Hamilton entirely too much. So I’m all for making the Constitution more conservative with Supreme Court appointments who survived The Apprentice instead of some liberal trash from a left-leaning university. I want to see Secretaries of State who know Project Management, and negotiators who know how to cut off the head of their opposition and stick it on a pike for all to see. And I want a President who will do all this with a smile on his face and who has the ability to walk onto Saturday Night Live and joke about it selling back to America all the things that are good for it—starting with their national pride. So to answer Senator Paul, the reason the GOP finds itself losing to a reality television star is because they have lied, cheated, and allowed themevles to be beaten by complete idiots for over two decades now. And people like me are sick of it. Trump offers something different and I’m willing to try it—because doing the same thing over and over again is the definition of insanity. Voting for anybody but Trump would be considered insane because nobody else, Paul included has the ability to market their good ideas to the public—and therefore would drown in the corruption that pours off K-Street like water over Niagara Falls.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Vote No on Issue 3 in Ohio: Why marijuana and the people who use it are the scum of the earth

Two of the most prominent Tea Parties in Butler County, Ohio had a meeting at one of my favorite places, the Elk’s Club which overlooks Trenton to discuss the pros and cons of the upcoming marijuana legalization vote in November. I couldn’t make it as I had another engagement, but I wanted to go. Sheriff Jones was there along with others and I would have liked to been there to express my opinion. So I’ll give it now for posterity–for those who wonder where I stand on the issue. I am dead-set against the legalization of marijuana for any use—even for a rope. I hate the product in every form possible. I hate the shape of the leaves, I will not buy anything with hemp in it, and I hate the smell. More than once I have been in physical confrontations with people just for smoking it near me, which I promise will happen more often if it becomes legal. I hate the stuff in every form that it was created.

I do not support medical marijuana. If I was in pain and needed some chemical from marijuana to have relief from the pain, then it is time to die. I say that as I have had a broken wrist and ankle for the last two months, still competed in my summer bullwhip competitions, rode a bicycle for exercise 24 miles most of those days and I have not once taken an aspirin for the pain. So I sure as hell won’t be smoking or injecting anything from marijuana into my body ever for any reason. Pain I can deal with. A corrupt substance that brings out the worst of the human race I want nothing to do with. I HATE POT. And I hate people who use pot, who think about pot, or justify pot. There are better scientific methods for dealing with illness; medical marijuana is not one of them. It is a pathetic ingredient for weak people.

I have managed to get along ok with people who have used marijuana in the past. People make mistakes. I never used it. I have always had a hard-line against it all through my high school years. I had girl friends that used it, I lost friends to it, but they never, ever, ever consumed marijuana in my presence—ever. It was always a major no, no as a predicate for my friendship, and those who forced me to pick between friendship with them and marijuana learned quickly that I meant it when I said I would never speak to them again if they used it after knowing me. And I did not compromise on that prerequisite at any point in my life. There are a lot of people who are stupid when they are teenagers. They grow up a bit by their late twenties. In their thirties they start to regret being so stupid. And by the time they are in their forties, they are alright; I can begin to forgive them for their past transgressions involving pot. But I always look at them as a bit tainted. I don’t hold it against them in the fashion that they can’t erase their past mistakes, but because they chose to do it at some point in their life, it does have an impact on my assessment of their personal value.

For that reason, most of my best friends are well of 60 years of age. That is because most people my own age have at least tried pot at some point in their life. I get along plenty well with younger people, but I don’t have very many close associates because of my feelings toward pot. I can be friendly with people who are users—especially business friendly—but anyone who uses marijuana even for medical reasons I have little respect for. Some people grow up and mature away from pot and I treat them fairly. But always in the back of my mind look at them as a personality that was susceptible to its use—and that is an alarm flag to me.

I don’t care that the Indians (Native Americans) used pot. To my mind, that’s why they were so easily defeated by a bunch of people who came from Europe and stole their land from them. Smoking pot, peace pipes, and their entire drug induced shaman tricks are some of the reasons their culture has failed. Their foundations of earth worship and tribal nonsense centering on collectivism is disgusting to me. Dances with Wolves was a great movie by Kevin Costner, but the premise of it is rather ridiculous. The Sioux were slaughtered because they were a collectivist culture and pot is the chosen recreation among those types of people, because it turns off the individual mind, lowers the walls of personal sanctity, and introduces collective consciousness.

When I learned that Ayn Rand was willing to smoke pot to prove she was open-minded, it had an impact on how much I was willing to take her work seriously. I think she did great work, which eventually led to the basic foundations of the current libertarian political philosophy, but her comments about pot limit how seriously I regard her. And the same is true of libertarians. I am not one. When I hear the name I think of pot, so I could never be a libertarian. I don’t want my neighbor smoking pot in their back yard because I don’t want to smell the shit blowing around in the air anywhere near me.

Now the typical pot user would tell me, as they have for over four decades, that I need to “mellow” out, that I’m twisted up too tightly about too many topics—that I need to “loosen up.” Well, it’s not going to happen. I like who I am, and part of that is that I have never used pot, I’ve stood against it, and I am completely clean to have such an opinion. I have nieces and nephews who have used it and I don’t compromise on their behalf. It does change the way I see them. It saddens me to know that the bright little kids that they used to be were crushed into oblivion by the peer pressure use of pot. I still care for them, but I don’t respect them. That is the cost of using pot, and me finding out about it.

Many would say that I have an impossibly high standard. That may be. But I’m fine with that. When my wife and I were younger we knew a couple who were newly married who got severely stoned on their honeymoon, and I was a serious stick in the mud over the issue, which put a tremendous amount of pressure on our relationship at home, because I was virtually the only person who felt so strongly about such things that my wife knew. Everyone else, parents included were much more accepting of it. My position was that I’d rather be single and alone for the rest of my life than to ever try marijuana. In other wedding parties while everyone else was relishing in drunkenness and drug induced stupor I have always been the square one that didn’t partake in the mindless orthodox of collective numbness. And I am very proud of that.

With all that known, it should be clear what my position on legalizing pot in Ohio is. I’m not a live and let live type of person like libertarians are advocating. I’m not one who proposes more laws either. But in regard to marijuana, it is illegal now, and I’m fine with keeping it that way. It is a drug that I have observed makes people stupid. It destroys minds before they are fully grown—by the age of 25—and handicaps them for life. I don’t care what a government study group says in support of hemp, pot, marijuana, or even medial use of the THCs in the pot plant. I hate pot, I don’t find anything funny about Cheech and Chong’s movies. Pot is just bad. It’s stupid to smoke it, it’s weak to want it, and it’s a huge negative to a culture of any kind that uses it in any form. People should love to think, to be aware, and to live freely under their own ambitions. They should not want to numb themselves for any reason even under sickness. Life is meant to be lived and drugs alter that life. The Indians were wrong in their use. Every musician, actor, or pop culture idol is wrong in their avocation of it. There is nothing good that comes from pot and I’ve watched the behavior for a long time. Since I’ve been free of its use, I can speak clearly, and with certainty as to its evils. Pot has no place in a culture that anticipates that it should be ambitious, and forwarding thinking. Being comfortably numb, as the Pink Floyd song has advocated for years is not an honorable position. It’s the position of a weak and self-destructive personality that has little to offer existence except for excuses.

VOTE NO against the vile, despicable marijuana use in Ohio, in any and all forms. Vote HELL NO!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.