Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 375

What Makes Harrison Ford Great: An actor recovering after a crash landing that belongs in a movie

There are a lot of phonies in Hollywood. Most of the time actors will tell you that they are nothing like the people they play in a movie. Some actors even try hard to find roles that are not even close to their real personality. I���ve had a chance to meet some of them, and I always walked away from those projects feeling let down. Even though my adult mind knows and understands show business well enough to comprehend that actors are just actors���when they attempt to portray tough people in the context of a story but are afraid of a bug that crawls across the table during lunch���it���s a let down. But I have high expectations because one of my favorite actors is Harrison Ford, and he has always been at his core���the carpenter that he was when he first started. He���s always been very physical in his roles which obviously goes back to the days that he broke into the business while building a studio for a producer when George Lucas asked him to read some lines for Star Wars as Han Solo. I���m one of those people who think that Star Wars and Indiana Jones would have never been as good as they were without Harrison Ford because of what he does to bring his characters to the screen.

When the 72-year-old crashed shortly after taking off his vintage era World War II single engine craft to the air at the Santa Monica airport due to engine failure I was a little worried for him. I understand he���s old, but he���s been one of my favorite actors for most of my life. I don���t expect him to live forever, but it would be sad to see him lose his life in such a ridiculous fashion���after playing some of the most loved and most action oriented roles of any actor. Ford has played a hot-shot pilot in the Star Wars films and in every Indiana Jones movie; airplanes are a very important part of the story lines. In two films, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and the Last Crusade, the feature character had to crash-land airplanes. I raised my kids on those movies so it would have been sad to see Ford die in a plane crash like so many other stars have in years past.

As details emerged from the crash it turned out that Ford was in real life every bit as creative and dynamic as Indiana Jones or the role only he could have played���Han Solo. According to a NTSB report filed after an investigation of the March 5th 2015 crash Ford took off from Santa Monica which is in a heavily residential area–lost power nearly immediately not even getting any altitude to give time to glide away from the city or make a ditch in the ocean. Ford as a very good and experienced pilot made a critical decision to turn left back to the airport instead of right because of some quick thinking of making an emergency landing. He made a call back to the tower to make an emergency landing hoping to glide back in, but realized quickly that he wasn���t going to make it. So he set up an unpowered landing over the golf course spotting a place that would take him away from the people below and hit the ground before he overshot the narrow patch of turf and into the road beyond.

He cut his head badly and broke some bones. It was the second time in a year that Ford had broken bones in his leg; the first was during the filming of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Now it was during a recreational flight he was taking between film projects as he has been lobbying for another Indiana Jones film from Disney. Some would say that Ford should hang it up���that he���s too old to do these kinds of activities and that all these broken bones should tell him to stop for his own safety���but that is why I like the actor���because he���s always been an incredibly physical person and his characters have shined because of him.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark during the filming of the flying wing fight, Ford tore his ACL when the plane ran over his leg during a stunt. Then in the Temple of Doom Ford herniated a few disks in his spine aggravated by riding elephants. The film was brutal for even actors in great shape. There was even more crawling around and tumbles that Ford had to do even with his stuntman Vic Armstrong doing most of the back to camera work. Because of all the injuries on the set of Temple of Doom it is unlikely that a major film will ever feature so many live action stunts again. Liability insurance these days make such a thing prohibitive. Ford was out a month nearly shutting down the picture���ironically just as was the case for the upcoming Force Awakens. Ford spent more time hurt as a younger man in his thirties and forties than he has in his 50s and 60s and it���s good to see him getting back into the kind of roles that made him a household name in the first place.

One of my very first favorite books was The Making of Raiders of the Lost Ark��which chronicled the day-to-day efforts of making that classic film. Harrison Ford was every bit as much of an action hero off the screen as he was on it, and in many ways I liked the story of making the film more than the actual film. I loved the stunt guys and the general attitude on the set and I never stopped loving everything about that movie, from the sound editing, the music, to the screenplay���but most of all the dirty, gritty daily life of an action movie set in the desert. I���ve judged movies off the Raiders standard ever since���fair or unfair. I think for Ford it shaped him as an actor as well���it set the bar so high that he had to live up to it, and as a hard worker first, an actor second, Ford never shied away from holding himself to that standard. As good as he was playing Han Solo; it was really Raiders of the Lost Ark that put Ford into another universe as an actor.

For me what makes his roles better is knowing that the real person playing these roles is an authentic, and sincere person���and Ford is. He���s everything an iconic actor should be on and off the screen. When Indiana Jones crash lands a plane in the Last Crusade you want to think that such things are possible so you can believe in it when you see it on the screen. One of my favorite sequences from Temple of Doom is the plane crash in that film where Indiana Jones and the gang jumped out in a life raft which inflated during the decent. It was a real stunt and I���ve never seen it topped in any film since���and it just might work in a life and death situation. So when Ford crash landed his vintage aircraft on a Santa Monica golf course there was more at stake than an old man dying from his injuries. There was the fear that the magic of movies would remain in the realm of fiction, and that real people actually buckled under such pressure and succumbed to fate. Instead Harrison Ford always the good pilot no matter what the conditions had an escape plan already in mind when his engine cut out at the most dangerous period of flight���the take-off. Ford knew the plane was going down so he set up a situation that would do the least amount of damage to himself, his plane, and the property and lives around him. He hit a very narrow window to achieve the best case scenario.

A month later Ford was at home recovering and telling his old-time friend and producer Frank Marshall that he was ready to play some tennis. Marshall was the Nazi pilot in the flying wing sequence, so he has seen the actor hurt on set many times. And as the producer reported, ���Harrison is at home and he���s up and about, he���s recovering remarkably. He made an incredible landing, to his credit. He is after all Indiana Jones.��� And that is the difference between Harrison Ford and every other actor. If Disney truly wants to make more Indiana Jones films, Harrison Ford will have to be a part of them; otherwise the audience just won���t buy into the change. Indiana Jones is much better than James Bond���the fan base won���t follow a new actor the way they did Harrison Ford because there is always the belief when the actor is seen on the screen that all the things the adventurer is doing is possible in real life. At 72 years old, Harrison Ford is showing that a life lived is more important than a life saved at the expense of safety. When it comes time to make the hard decisions, Ford is as able as any fantasy character created in the mind of a writer���and that is what makes his characters better and his movies timeless���like the man himself.

Rich Hoffman

��CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Glory of Spring in a Capitalist Culture: Loving life and the flowers that emerge from it

I have to take a moment to just step away from the treacherous topics of the day and utter an appreciation for the majestic opulence of spring. I continue to be amazed by American culture within capitalist climates and how resilient they are to positive stimulation. We have invented for ourselves a continuous parade of positive celebration which is fueled throughout the year with a new activity every other week. When I speak to foreign nationals and explain American culture to them my optimism is not a false one. Recently we just had a Super Bowl in the hardest part of winter, then some minor holidays like Valentines Day, St Patrick���s Day and so on, then there was the Final Four, and coming up is the opening day of baseball, the NFL draft, and every weekend there is NASCAR racing. But there is nothing that sets the tone for human activity more than the period around Easter when spring is in the air and a renewal of life begins. Stepping into Wal-Mart the other day the shelves were filled with flowers waiting to be planted and the freshness of a heavy rain was filtering the outside air with an ionized cleanliness that only comes after a spring time storm.���� Easter decorations were complete with their vibrant colors and promises of family gatherings, and I knew that life was good.

Spring is where all the fun starts for a human being in free, capitalist society. It’s about lawn mowers, radio broadcasted baseball games around the grill, and landscaping private property in a way that reflects the pride of ownership. It���s about fresh water and flowers as buds emerge from trees coming alive again after the stifling cold of winter. Spring tells us that we have gotten through it and are ready for the sun, the pool, and amusement parks in the upcoming summer months. I never tire of spring���ever.

I love the upcoming summer movie season where every weekend produces a potential blockbuster of some sign stimuli meaning, and then there are the holidays, first Mother���s Day, then Memorial Day, Father���s Day, then the Fourth of July. I am always a little sad when Labor Day hits in September and the WEBN Fireworks blast away the memories of summer in my downtown of Cincinnati. But the NFL starts the weekend after and every weekend for the rest of the year is a festivity of epic drama as we pick our favorite teams for Sunday clashes. Then there is Halloween and the cool air of October and all the mythology of pagan rituals long forgotten. Then there is Thanksgiving and Black Friday���time with family and all day football games around a raging fireplace. After all that comes Christmas and New Year where the world takes a deep breath and some time off work to appreciate everything and everyone in their lives only to start the whole process all over again���with every two weeks or so producing some new product of some human beings mind.

But I love most of all when stores put out their flowers for spring planting because it means more to the human consciousness than anyone cares to articulate. I love to get the lawn mower started for the first cut of the year as Reds baseball plays in the background, with drawers to my tool boxes opened for the many gadgets and gizmos I���ve picked up over time. The air in Ohio is just cool enough to not wear a jacket, but not hot enough to sweat and the sun begins to direct its rays with more precision into the Northern Hemisphere���and the plants reach out to it like fans at some great concert listening to a symphony that the rest of our solar system cannot conduct���because it lacks human beings to organize all the elements around a centerpiece of culture.

When it comes down to it, I���m not in love with the nature of what the earth provides, the rain, the flowers and the trees which spring forth in this particular time part of the year. I love what human beings do with those elements to enrich their lives���I love the creativity of the human spirit to invent something to always look forward to���to always lean forward as a means to awake each day to face new challenges. I love the way America celebrates the seasons and I wish every culture on earth would take notes from us and do better in their own cultures.

It would be fair to say that I���m rather obsessed with culture building. Most of the contents of this blog are a means to successfully recognize elements in our lives���mostly political���that allow for a successful culture. Management of resources after all is all about building a culture whether the intent is to fuel the lives of individual people with a livelihood or to deliver products to a global marketplace. The best kinds of culture are those which do both things and I never tire of contemplating the best means of achieving those elusive tasks. For me spring represents the best aspects of creation���it���s about creativity and the innate possibility for renewal.

My wife and I use our outside hot tub nearly every day���even on the harshest winter days. It gives us a reason to go outside and stare at the sky. If not for the hot tub, we wouldn���t typically spend an hour a day nearly everyday outside looking up. I love to study the weather patterns across the vast canvas of the sky, to watch the clouds form along cold fronts, or the high thin clouds of a hot day. But equally I like the menacing storms that roll in and dump a lot of rain and are propelled along by gusts of wind. From our hot tub we watch them all and the formlessness of their configurations never gets tiring. But another element that never goes away is the wonder of watching the stars come out at night as a roar of a train blowing out its horn emerges from the valley at the end of my street. I love trains because they are big, powerful, and they haul around the heavy products of mankind to markets a long way from their base of manufacture. When I hear the evening trains travel into the night from my hot tub as I count the stars in the sky on a blackened canvass I think often that out of most of those stars they are all lacking a culture���a simple train that is carrying products to market from the mind of imagination���and I feel sorry for them. I don���t think of the oceans and volcanoes on distant planets���I think about the products of human kind���and the happiness they bring to minds able to appreciate them.

I was at my daughter���s house yesterday and their dog was playing with my grandson. To cool off he lay down in a puddle of freshly placed water which had come from the last torrential downpour of the day. The dog just wanted to be a part of the water and to cool off after playing hard outside. The dog is one who was raised to be nearly human, my daughter talks to him like another person, so he tries with all his ability to be���human. But he doesn���t of course have all the senses and intellect to pull off the task and gets frustrated when he can���t carry on a conversation. I often look into his eyes and feel sorry for him because he cannot be a person���because he obviously wants to be. He would love to put on a pair of pants and hunt Easter eggs with my grandson and trade in his four legs for our two in less than a second. Then later I was taking a shower when a newly hatched bug fell into the bottom of the tub. I scooped him up before he went down the drain and took him outside. The little fella��� just hatched and being sucked down a drain right out of the gate is a rough life to live. Again, I felt sorry for the little bug, because it was just acting out of impulse toward living. But it didn���t have the intellectual facilities to appreciate the culture of spring and even though I saved it from certain death, it still wouldn���t enjoy life the way I do every day. However, that is the beauty of spring in a lot of ways. It happens whether or not we want it to and it comes again and again always offering a chance at renewal. Spring is best appreciated by the human being���and it is there that everyone should consider themselves lucky. The rest of the star laced sky would love to trade with us in our American culture and our continuous parade of celebration created by many minds for the pure service of our intellectual entertainment. When it comes to appreciating a season, I do spring more than any other for all these reasons and many more. Life is good���because through living, we get to experience all the culture of our imaginations���and the products of that enterprise never ceases to amaze me.

We bought some of those flowers at Wal-Mart, and I was glad we did.

Rich Hoffman

��CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Doc Thompson and Skip LeCombe: The Henry Reardens of talk radio

Doc Thompson and Skip LeCombe��on their Morning Blaze radio show have been doing daily wrap-ups for the topics they covered during their 6 AM to 9 AM time slot on a video summary. Below is a sample of their show from April 1st��2015 which I picked because at the end Doc shows off his Rearden Steel t-shirt. The two of them have done a great job keeping a lively and informative broadcast that has become for me essential to beginning my day. Breakfast just wouldn���t be breakfast without Doc and Skip on The Blaze Radio Network.

One of the best parts of the Morning Blaze Show is the police blotters that come on at around ten minutes to 7 AM. Doc reads various news stories featuring police arrests in an old-fashioned style that is laced with rhyming comedy. It takes some work everyday, but they put their time in and do it right leaving me openly laughing during the segment much of the time. The segment encapsulates to what extent Doc and Skip do just a little bit extra above everyone else in talk radio to give their audience something fresh.

Most radio hosts show up on the radio and talk for 1 to 3 hours���take a few calls and essentially read the news to listeners, which for me is a valuable service. But Doc and Skip go just a bit further every day consciously mixing comedy with some rather pointed commentary on contemporary events. They know their subjects and relish in breaking down some of the most complicated topics of the news cycle.

In a lot of ways the Doc and Skip Show on the Morning Blaze reminds me of something that would come out of Atlantis in the book Atlas Shrugged. I know Doc enjoys that book���I wasn���t sure how much over the years he had retained his enjoyment, but obviously he enjoys it enough to wear a shirt featuring it. Ayn Rand for many conservatives is tricky stuff, mainly because she was an atheist, and I know that Doc is a Christian. In my own life, I wouldn���t call myself a Christian, and I wouldn���t say I���m a libertarian���I���m certainly not a social liberal. I���m not loosy��goosy��on topics of conduct. There is a lot I like about Ayn Rand���s philosophy of Objectivism just as I like a lot about the Christian faith as a religion, but neither tenant of thought goes far enough for me. The problem with Christianity is that I love the values, but I hate the notion of surrendering life to a deity in a spirit of sacrifice. Ayn Rand is really one of the only writers to emerge to capture the spirit of productivity and to embrace capitalism as a moral premise. But the religions of the world���Christianity included���are at odds with it. Rand dared to ask why sacrifice was necessary for a productive society, as capitalism is the mode of the creative. If people are creative and make things from their minds, why is sacrifice needed in a culture at all? That is the greatest moral dilemma of our age and humanity is facing it for the first time.

Over the years I have become less religious not leaning toward atheism in any fashion, but in developing a thought process that has the values of Christianity, but the empowerment of Objectivism. Current religions don���t go far enough in my opinion to solve the riddles of our age���and instead stay too far anchored into the past. I want to see more responsibility out of individuals instead of just pointing to the heavens and declaring that God wills something to be done in my life, so thus it shall be done���good or bad. That doesn���t work for me and never has.

Henry Rearden from Atlas Shrugged,��the head of the company on Doc���s shirt���was a very self-empowered person, and there is a serious lesson to be learned from that book which should be expanded and promoted in a much greater fashion.���� Of those in modern media, there aren���t many like Doc who has not run away from an association with Ayn Rand���s philosophy. He may not agree with everything about Rand���s Objectivism���but he understands the message of personal responsibility that pours from it in defining why some people do things that are really important in life, and why some just become parasitic entities for their entire existence. Without that very important distinction, there would be no proper identification in our art to properly explain why capitalism is important to societies.

Much of what Doc does on his show is paint the world from a vantage point as though he were broadcasting from a real life Atlantis featured in Atlas Shrugged. Viewed through the prism of a person who has read and understood the Ayn Rand classic, the news on the Morning Blaze is unquestionably in that spirit���which is why it has become a must in the morning for me. As the world crashes down around us, there are pockets of sanity popping up around the country that are migrating to The Blaze to live our lives independent of the wrecked economies of socialism, including the embrace of American culture of more European style collectivism.

In my own life I feel like every character who was a protagonist in Atlas Shrugged wrapped up into one person���and I���m living that life currently. I have a little Ragnar, a lot of Rearden, but even minor characters like Richard Halley I understand all too well. In my own work I am seeking to step beyond Rand���s musings, which is now over 50 years old and explore topics spawning off her initial concepts. I am less interested in pleasing the masses of society, and have instead come to broadcast them to a much smaller audience in a metaphorical Atlantis for the same reasons that Halley did in Atlas Shrugged. My Curse of Fort Seven Mile is one of those projects that I know going into it that will not be accepted in New York literature circles, and I don���t care. I write those stories for people like Doc Thompson���not for the pop culture icons of progressive definitions of coolness. Since I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead I have wanted more to the story, but there just isn���t many writers out there who can write that kind of material with the authority and definition that Ayn Rand did. First of all they lack the experience, but mostly they lack the personal conviction and couldn���t write such a thing in their wildest fantasies. Just as there are a lot of talk radio hosts, there really aren���t any like Doc Thompson who puts forth just a bit more effort shown proportionally throughout his endeavors, like his police blotters.

Doc Thompson could be a talk show host at the level of Howard Stern if he wanted to be. I remember when he was brought to Cincinnati to take over as the primary man on WLW. But Doc has never really played well with others, not where it had to compromise who he is���even if the opportunity for more money and fame threw themselves at his feet. He has stubbornly been like Henry Rearden from Atlas Shrugged and conducted his radio show his way for his own purposes, and it took someone like Glenn Beck to recognize the benefits and to give him a prime slot on a global network. But even with the reach of The Blaze, the primary audience is an extreme minority���like the members of the fictional Atlantis from Atlas Shrugged. For those people Doc and Skip put on a great daily show. To the rest of the world, they are sadly being left behind. Even though the broadcast is easy and free to them, most of the time they will find themselves the butt of Doc���s jokes, instead of on the side of the typical audience member���and laughing intellectually at the follies of the world.

Rich Hoffman

��CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

I’m Sick of Homosexual Marketing: Their lifestyle choices are imposing, and disrespectful

Personally I���m really sick of the whole social homosexual issue and don���t have much sympathy for the Indiana and Arkansas governors under protest from gay groups over their recent legislation which should be covered already by the 1st��Amendment anyway. I���m not gay, and don���t personally associate with gay people because they typically don���t share my values, and I have no plans to change that value judgment. I think the Rocky Horror Picture Show was a terrible movie, and I hate gay pride parades because of all the stupid color combinations. Yet in spite of the opinions of the progressive left and right, that does not make me a homophobe���as they like to call people who don���t share their appreciation for anal intercourse���which is gross in any fashion���man or woman. When I look at people I try not to think about what kind of sex they enjoy, just as I don���t want to know if they like fried chicken or sushi. Whatever their choices���keep it to themselves, because I likely don���t want to know. Sex is a very small part of existence, so policy should not be built around any sexual orientation. Gay people don���t have a right to molest straight people with audacity and gross behavior in public���then cry foul when people don���t like what they see. When those people utter such, they don���t deserve to be called names and attacked socially by a collective mob to change their behavior under coercion, which is what has been happening in Indiana. At that point gay people lost their sympathy and have simply become bullies. They may have a rainbow inspired aggression���but they are still bullies.

An example of how gays step over the line all too often occurred when I was much younger���I was at a video game arcade using the rest room when a very wiry person came up to the stall next to me. Now it was a big bathroom so there were many other stalls he could have used, instead he stood right next to me. That was problem number one, because I don���t like people too close to me unless there is no other option���and there were options. Then he tried to have a conversation with me, which was mistake number two. I really don���t like to talk to people when using the restroom. I like to get finished as quickly as possible and get out of those places���because they usually smell bad. So I didn���t want to talk to him. Then he tried to look over the divider at my assets, and he was not shy about it. I���m not ashamed of anything there, so that didn���t bother me so long as I���m dealing with a heterosexual. But as it turned out, the guy was gay, and he asked me if he could perform oral sex. That was it. I called him a fag. He called me a hater and grabbed my shoulder to look me in the face as if he had authority to touch me, so I punched him. I heard a pop when my fist hit his face and he went down and stayed there. I stood there for a moment to see if he would move, which he did a little. I finished with my bathroom visit taking extra time to see if the guy would try to engage in conversation���but he didn���t. Instead he stood up, refused to engage in any further conversation not even bothering to wipe the blood from his face in the sink and left. It was a really strange ending to a really uncomfortable trip to the restroom.���� He was obviously embarrassed that he ended up on the floor after trying to engage in sexual activity, and left quickly once he could stand again. I expected security to come, but they never did so after waiting around for about 15 minutes, I left never to see that guy again. If that had been today, I would have had an army of PC police there to put my face on the news and the newspapers would have written about it until they ran out of ink���but back then distinctions in such behavior were still judged as something negative���and the sentiment toward change has not enriched our culture. There have been similar incidents over the years, but that was the worst and most obvious���and the question I���ve always had is–why should I have to put up with those people?

Men and women have separate bathrooms for a reason, so that sexual conduct doesn���t get mixed together. But with gay people, there are no barriers, and they defiantly have the advantage because only they really know if they are gay or not. If a guy wants to use the stall next to me in the restroom, my wife has a right to know if some rival for her affection is trying to get a mental picture of her private affairs. If the guy is heterosexual, she doesn���t have a rival, but if he���s gay, she does. This is a problem, as a straight person, I should have a right to use the restroom without sexual advances���and in this modern society���you never know. If you���re endowed, you can���t hide that stuff behind a stall, so the eyes of a gay person can see everything clearly���if they want to. So where are the rights of heterosexuals in this whole discussion over non discrimination���because in order to protect ourselves from sexual advancements, one must make a value judgment against those who clearly are willing to cross the lines of acceptability?

It is baffling to me how critics of the new Indiana law interpreted The Religious Freedom Act. Gay advocates as reported by The Blaze in the following article reflect the lunacy.

MSNBC host Ed Schultz clashed with a conservative guest from the Heritage Foundation Tuesday night over Indiana���s controversial religious freedom law.

The liberal host opened up his show asking Ryan Anderson, ���How does this law open it up for blatant discrimination?���

���This law doesn���t open the door for discrimination,��� Anderson quipped back. ���This is the law that���s been on the federal books ��� and it governs over 30 states.���

���Wait a minute, that���s not true,�����Schultz responded, contending those laws don���t have ���the definition of a person connected to a corporation.���

���No, no it does,��� Anderson rebutted. ���The Supreme Court held just last term that the definition of person in the federal RFRA includes corporate persons.���

���Cut his mic off! Cut his mic off! We���ll bring him back if he wants to be courteous.���

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Schultz disagreed and reiterated his view that the law opens the door open for discrimination against gay and lesbian individuals.

���Corporations do have rights!��� Anderson said. ���The New York Times has free press rights. It goes not just to each reporter, but to the institution. ��� In the same way, people who form organizations also have their religious liberty rights protected.���

Schultz then asked Anderson if it was the position of the right-wing that business owners should be permitted to tell gay people to ���get the hell out��� of their restaurants.

��

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/03/31/msnbcs-ed-schultz-loses-it-on-conservative-guest-over-controversial-indiana-law-cut-his-mic-off/

To make matters even worse, members of the UConn coaching staff are boycotting the Final Four in Indianapolis because of the Religious Freedom Act saying ���UConn is a community that values all of our members and treats each person with the same degree of respect, regardless of their background and beliefs, and we will not tolerate any other behavior.��� Well, given that they are a progressive institution to begin with, their statement is consistent with the teachings of the progressive movement���but they fail to identify one glaring issue. In order for this whole thing to work���this equality thing, it requires people like me to put up with swanky perverts who want to turn our bathrooms into pick-up joints and to treat them with some level of restraint. If I were to walk into a women���s bathroom undoubtedly there would be quite a stir as woman would likely scramble to cover their private parts from my male eyes. But we are supposed to disregard this restraint in the presence of gays and allow them to view without any feelings of guilt the fruits of our privacy for the benefit of their sexual perversions. The action on their behalf requires nothing. But for someone like me, it requires an abandonment of value and preservation reserved typically between the sanctity of a husband and wife.

If there is a business that typically caters to a religious crowd, don���t they have a right to discriminate against those who might drive away other members of their business who seek refuge in their endeavors? Don���t straight men and women have a right to use the restroom without being eye candy to the deviant���or will UConn protest the term deviant to describe a person who spends too much time thinking about sex? Don���t businesses have a right to sport productive enterprises that might be negatively impacted by a couple of dudes making out in public with pink tights and a hat full of flowers? Of course they would. To argue otherwise is insane. Yet the progressives have done just that and revealed to what extent they wish to impose themselves on society. They want normal people to lower their expectations to the level of the valueless, and to allow themselves to be sacrificed to the mass whims of collectivism. And when faced with such a vile understanding, the conservatives don���t even have the guts to speak out against it���except for Ryan Anderson from the Heritage Foundation. He defended the law quite well and you saw what progressive Ed Schultz did���he cut off his microphone.

The only way that gays can win their position is to stop the debate against them with name calling, or break down any moral retribution that might be cast in their direction due to them being entirely too focused on sex instead of higher elements of mental acuity. In both cases they act as a parasitic organism against society at large, and personally, I���m tired of hearing about their feelings. Homosexuals represent between 2% to 10% of the total population depending on the survey source. At best they are asking 90% of the rest of the country to put up with their marketing efforts toward finding more dating options. That���s pretty much what it boils down to. And for the rest of us, particularly me, I���d say we���ve heard enough from them. I���d like to go to the can without worrying about some rainbow princess trying to watch me, and if two drag dressing transvestites want to suck face in a business of mine, I should have a right to toss them out to keep from intruding on the privations of the other customers, and all their kids. At some point enough is enough, and we���re there.

Rich Hoffman

��CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Iranian Obamanation: A socialist apocalypse in the Middle East

So the deadline came and went between Obama���s administration and Iran yet the result essentially was nothing but to talk more. The Obama people lost their momentum well before Bibi came to speak before congress. They lost it when the administration set the deadline in the first place and let those hostile to America���and capitalism in general���know that there was a light at the end of the tunnel on sanctions if they played their cards close to their vest. Meanwhile, many in the streets of Iran chanted, ���death to America��� as John Kerry tried to spin the situation into something positive. Yet again, the actions of the Obamanation��showed just how stupid the President is, and the people around him���how tactfully ignorant they truly are. It is the second time in the course of a week that I have been too embarrassed by President Obama and his team to even utter a criticism, the first was the Bowe Bergdahl situation. It is simply unbelievable that an American president could be so stupid.

Iran has a long history with communism and socialism, in the 1920s it was the Hizb-e��Socialysist Party. Into the 50s, 60s and 70s a variety of Marxist groups penetrated Iran and the rest of the Muslim world ranging in the spectrum between Trotskyist to Moaist��recruited largely through universities and inciting the working poor against the capitalism of the West. Several generations of Iranians now have been nurtured into a hatred of capitalism because of the long history that Iran has with socialism. They have destroyed their economy nearly completely because of their commitment to socialism. The people of Iran are so under developed that they cannot ever hope to embrace the gifts of the West in their lifetimes���so hatred has seethed there for decades made worse as time has went on. When the United States launched sanctions against Iran it cut off the only hope that common people in the nation could have had for a good life���since internally the socialism of their country destroyed all potential prosperity. Most Iranians would have loved to have the arrangement that communist China has with the United States���because at least there are jobs given to them, but since Iranians are now two generations of sanctions into years of a dismal economic activity they really have nothing left to lose but to lash out at others like parentless children desperate for attention.

Cut off from capitalism, and some resemblance of an honorable living, the Iranian people are stuck fighting among themselves like dogs over scraps of meat���since their economy is so dismal, due to their choices. As a strategy against the world they have nothing to offer the world but a reprieve from violence���because that is what their adherence to socialism has done for them masked behind Islamic faith. To get the attention of the developed countries they have sponsored terrorism, and created anxiety over nuclear weapons to maintain some relevancy on the world stage.

The Obama administration, leaning toward socialism in their own way, is sympathetic to the collectivism efforts of Iran over the capitalist leanings of Israel���and they despise any trace of the West in the Middle East���not so much due to religious differences, but in the differences between a capitalist economy and a socialist one.���� They want to lift the sanctions in a similar way as Obama did for communist Cuba���and Iran knows it. So the power in negotiations goes to Iran. America also wants everyone in the Middle East to have equality without the qualifier of a capitalist country or a socialist one using collectivism to destroy commerce. This again gives power to Iran over America. Yet the worst of all is that America has a deadline whereas Iran has all the time in the world. They have absolutely nothing to lose in negotiations with America���whereas Obama wants to make Iran a part of his legacy as President. Of course Iran has the upper hand in such an exchange giving nothing to Obama���s team in the form of leverage. Like insane fools they have rushed to enter negotiations against an adversary that wants to kill all Americans as a collective society.

Choking on ideology and really poor strategy, Obama lost before he ever went to the table against Iran���and they were at least smart enough to realize it. They should have seen what was clear to everyone from the beginning, but they ignored the evidence and chose to view the world with rose-colored glasses and the pipe dreams of typical liberals taught through academia to trust logic to the gods of speculation and wishful thinking. And in Iran, there is nothing to wish for leaving only desperate foes and scandalous bandits seeking with great desperation to get their hands on a nuclear weapon so that they might bomb their way to a loaf of bread, or a used 1970s American car���because in the beginning���they chose socialism over capitalism, and their world is suffering an apocalypse as a result.

Rich Hoffman

��CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Rich Hoffman Hosting WAAM Radio: Matt Clark’s Honeymoon and Hillary’s destruction of evidence

The news is fresh; my friend Matt Clark at WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan is getting married in June 2015, and has asked me to cover for his show while he���s on his honeymoon. Of course I said yes, because I like the station and what they are doing in a part of the country that is typically a blue state. Matt���s show is a shout in the darkness toward entrenched liberalism with their hand firmly on the light switch. Yet Matt does his show each week even though he doesn���t need to financially, just as I do with my blog. The show is an extension of himself in the perpetual fight for freedom. We always have a good time on Matt���s show, which was obvious from the clip shown below where we discussed Hillary Clinton���s deleted emails.

Several years ago I was offered a similar deal at 700 WLW��with Doc Thompson just prior to his own honeymoon, which eventually cost him his job. Not because he asked me to fill in for him, but because the station was preparing behind the scenes to get rid of him. After Doc���s termination I more or less cut my ties to WLW��and Clear Channel in Cincinnati including 55 KRC. Some of that led to the controversy the following month���they were as eager to part ways with Doc���s memory as I was of them. The other person I was loyal to at WLW was Darryl Parks, and he was not far behind Doc as far as a termination���the station obviously wanted to go into a different, more moderate direction, which did not fit the scope of my concerns. So I drug my feet with Doc because instinct told me something was wrong. I wasn���t sure what, but it was obvious that something was brewing, so I knew to stay away. I turned out to be more than right���as usual.

I have no such concerns at WAAM and have no problem making a commitment to the station even this far out. It will be fun to fill in for Matt, and I���m sure it will make his honeymoon just a bit sweeter knowing that someone of like mind is taking care of his show while he���s traveling. Like me, Matt does quite well for himself so his radio show is mostly a labor of love for the republic that is America. It means more to him to have the show do what he wants it to do while he embarks on one of life���s great adventures���marriage.

As far as the content of the show we did together about the Hillary emails, his take on it comparing her to The Office was spot on. Obviously she is obstructing justice by destroying evidence and covering up her involvement in the death of people who lost their lives because of her actions���or inaction. Her management of the situation in Benghazi led to the death of people and empowered the terrorists in the region on her watch to grow into the threat it is today. We had some fun with it on talk radio because the only other option is to grow depressed about how far we���ve fallen as a nation where the expectations of people in positions like Secretary of State have become simply a stepping stone to the presidency. The message behind the Hillary emails is that no evidence of incompetence would be allowed to be seen to derail that objective of obtaining the Oval Office. Hillary is the ultimate case of why institutionalism is nearly always a failure when individual responsibility is not nurtured.

Hillary Clinton is such a bad person that she will literally stop at nothing to obtain her personal quest for power and prestige���which is gained from collective enterprise and social acceptance. She���s a disgusting person, and is the reason that people like Matt Clark does a radio show every week. There are bad people in the world, and somebody has to call them out on their treachery and on Matt���s show, it���s a way to do that even if the task might seem like a drop in an ocean of corruption. Calling out the actions of one bad act, or even five during the airtime on WAAM is better than allowing them to go unanswered.

So yes, I���ll enjoy hosting Matt���s show. I���m sure we���ll light some fireworks and fire them off in a way that might be a little different. But I know that Matt wants what I do���and that is to save the Republic one broadcast at a time, one blog post at a time, one speech, or sometimes a whip crack all in the name of justice. The books I write and activities of enterprise I embark on are not necessarily for the immediate gratification of financial security���as I am a productive person, and already have those bases covered. They are for a functioning philosophy for the 22nd century. It will take that long to turn back the wheels of progressivism and get people thinking of a new and better way of maintaining and preserving a free republic with an intellectual aptitude that is required to sustain it for subsequent centuries. America has not yet come to those terms���and neither has mankind for that matter. But it never will so long as people like Hillary hide evidence of their incompetence to fulfill personal ambitions rooted in collectivism. The inept and treacherous find it too easy to hide under the covers of collectivism���which is why they support such things, and are often the loudest voices in favor of progressivism, socialism, and communism.

I will promise one thing, and those who read here every day know full well, I will make it count on the airwaves. It may be for a short time, but I will promise to give people something they haven���t received before���just because that���s my tendency when doing things like this. Otherwise, anybody could fill in for such a spot. Since Matt asked me, I will give him what he���s looking for. And for the listeners of WAAM, they will enjoy it immensely.

Rich Hoffman

��CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Why Grover Norquist Lost His Value as a Republican: A battle within the GOP that has to happen

In the debate between Grover Norquist��and Glenn Beck the battle for the Republican Party of our modern age is clearly articulate. Beck had Norquist��on his television show and did a considerable amount of radio about the ties that the machine political leader had to the Muslim Brotherhood, specifically Abdurahman��Alamoudi��who is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence on terrorism charges. Through his Islamic Free Market Institute, Norquist��has apparently fancied himself as a kind of insurgent in the Arab world, hoping to spread free market capitalism to the socialist leanings of the Middle East. The trouble is, the Muslim extremists had the same idea and they appear to have come out on top in that battle for the minds of the world. Here is the interview where Norquist��came on with Beck to defend his record, and intentions. But as you can see in the subsequent videos dear reader���it is obvious that Norquist���Mr. Republican inside man himself shaping the mind of the party for all to follow���was the one seduced by the sentiments of Muslim radicalism. He likely wasn���t always this way, but in 2004 just a few years into his attempts to convert the Middle East into a capitalist zone, he married Samah��Alrayyes a Palestinian Muslim and Kuwaiti PR specialist. After this marriage he appeared to radically support the position of Muslim causes. He wouldn���t be the first man to adopt the views of a woman in exchange for a good bed mate���but when he is advising the entire Republican Party on policy and strategy���it makes him a liability. Watch closely.

This game where Republicans think they can out-wit the loose liberals of political ideology is a failed tactic. The typical liberal has very little personal conscience and view themselves as part of a collective whole, so they tend not to take personal responsibility for their actions. In the extreme, this is why they are willing to blow themselves up as terrorists. In the norm, they will lie to your face because they have no sense of personal responsibility���rather they focus on collective salvation. Norquist��I believe thought he was smarter than his political opponents, and that he could get the White House to support his actions as a change agent in the Middle East. But he fell in love with a Palestinian woman and began to soften his position. From there his enemies, the people he was trying to convert, used him as a platform of insurrection from the inside out. In the battle Norquist tried to wage in the Middle East, it was he who lost and it likely started in his bed.

As much as Republicans like Norquist try to utter the conservatism of their actor president Ronald Reagan, they discover quickly that they are too easily led astray under pressure. I have a lot of personal experience with this from my own community, which contains some of the strongest Republican elements in the United States. I have been invited into their inner circle, but I keep my distance because they lack conviction. They don���t stick to their principles as stringently as I require and are too in love with the power of their position instead of the essence of their political philosophy.

Norquist��as much as the political left wishes him to be the face of extremism for his desires toward tax reform and smaller government is a dangerous moderate because of his softness on issues of conservatism when the rubber hits the road. Clearly his marriage to Samah��Alrayyes��was a turning point for him, which led to likely a prolonged war in Iraq because of Norquist���s proximity to President Bush. The strategy formed by the Republican Party through Norquist and Karl Rove was one that favored his bed mate, and not the hard lined conservatives from Kansas���which is a polite way to put it.

Norquist��likely has more in common with Bob Bergdahl��today than he ever would Ronald Reagan. As Bowe Bergdahl defected to the Taliban his father who encouraged the behavior tried to justify the issue by growing his beard and reconciling with the enemy. The Taliban had his boy���because of his bad advice, and he tried to reconcile the situation with appeasement. Norquist��as a power broker and social climber went to the Middle East hoping to convert them to western ideology���but once there he saw that many on the other side were just like he was���social climbers looking for power. Instead of using political parties to control people and money, they used religion���so they found common ground. He married one of their women and began to soften his position against them. But, all along, because the radical Muslims in question identify themselves with collective salvation, they were able to easily outwit the Republican Party, and they already had domestic penetration ideologically in the Democratic Party���so their influence spread in North America instead of the way Norquist originally intended. His plan backfired.

I���m sure Samah��Alrayyes��is a nice lady���people tend to become friends and lovers with people who they share some things in common���whether it is a love of power, prestige, or a breakfast ritual. When a man decides to put a ring on the finger of a woman, it is usually not just so that he can have sex with her, it���s so that he can share other parts of his life with a spouse. But a man is crazy to think that a woman won���t have an influence on him once she���s in his daily life. That���s usually not a problem so long as the man isn���t trying to sell himself as the savior of the Republican Party while trying to bring peace to the Middle East with the kind of mind games that belong on day time soup operas. At that point a line was crossed that Norquist cannot return from. He blew his credibility and his years of fighting for conservative causes because he fell for the exotic appeal of a foreign culture.

It is one thing to respect a culture and its people���to even be friendly to them. There are a lot of people who��I like from different cultures���some of them come from communist backgrounds and I try to help them see the wonders and joys of capitalism because I want to see them improve their lives. But, I have to maintain my emotional distance from those people because they think differently. If I feel I cannot convert them over to a right way of thinking according to my viewpoint, I don���t bang wine glasses with them. I drop them like a dirty rag before they get too close. It looks like that���s what Norquist should have done in 2002 and 2003���but he didn���t. He might make a nice husband and friend to the Arab world but a leader in the Republican Party he has forfeited. Conservatives like me aren���t going to put up with it. So we are having this ideological battle now because we are between major elections.

The left may enjoy the spectacle because they don���t fight each other���they assimilate toward the same collective ideology easily. But to me they also aren���t relevant to the debate. Republicans have to stand for something or they will be like Grover Norquist���full of a lot of tough talk, but soft in their core and easily swayed by skirts and lobbyists because their real love is not the ideology or philosophy of conservatives, its in the power they wield as beltway insiders. I don���t think Norquist is a bad person, or even had bad intentions. But he���s weak at his core and has allowed himself to be a carrier of Muslim radicalism into the roots of American politics and that means people like him have to be shoved aside for more conservative representatives less in love with power, and more in love with conservative philosophy.

Rich Hoffman

��CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Rich Hoffman on Matt Clark’s WAAM Radio Show: Why Ted Cruz is considered a radical

I was on with Matt Clark���s WAAM radio show over the weekend covering the Ted Cruz presidential candidacy when a topic of some importance came up���the reason why he specifically is considered an extreme and dangerous radical. This was a topic I have personal familiarity with as those types of terms have been thrown in my direction as well���so I have a clear understanding of why members of the left, center and even the political right cast those aspersions in the direction of their foes. Matt and I talked a bit about these issues in the following clip.

Speaking��from personal experience, and I imagine Ted Cruz went through this in a much grander fashion, I remember when I first started this blog and why. I had come out openly against a new tax increase in my school district and the union thugs instantly targeted me with name calling and searched deep into my closet looking for skeletons they could use against me���to keep my mouth shut. That made me very angry. I have dealt with much worse in regards to evil people before, but it was clear to me why they were doing what they were doing and I had to imagine how many like me were forced into silence with such terror tactics. I was in a unique position, as a bullwhip handler and long time Wild West enthusiast with a martial art background I am uniquely suited to deal with personal threats to my safety and those of my family. I didn���t have to worry about personal violence against me. I am also not a social climber in a community fashion or in a career���so I don���t worry an ounce in what people think of me. But more than anything I have lived a life consistent with my utterances and I have a long history going back to my earliest childhood memories of standing up to bullies, fighting on the side of a well-defined, ���good,��� and being uniquely bold in my proclamations. At the time just before this blog I considered that I was likely one of the few people in America who didn���t have skeletons in his past that he was ashamed of���there were no stories of whores from wild weekends in Vegas, no drugs from my past, no personalities who would emerge to call me a hypocrite���I have always been what I am, and was always extremely proud of it. I have been consistent in my beliefs from the time of my first memory to the present. The conclusion was that the battle before us was worth fighting and I was qualified, so it was my responsibility to embark on the journey.

This position is important because much of what the political left does to disarm those who threaten them is apply guilt as a tactical move to shake off their opposition. All of their Saul Alinsky��tactics center around using guilt as a weapon��of perpetuity constantly moving the bar of righteousness further toward their tactical objectives���which have largely been shaped by a Karl Marx philosophy. The way to beat them, and to do so badly, is to force them to fight people who don���t feel guilt and are immune to their tactics and thus force them to answer questions that they can���t���because their entire premise is one built on emotion. If their opponent does not feel guilt and cannot be moved off their position, the left and center political radicals lose a lot of their tactical advantage.

That has largely been my story and the essence behind Overmanwarrior���s Wisdom, the blog I have written for over five years now���every day.���� I know from experience that there isn���t a single person on the left, or middle who can match my efforts and I use my ability and position like a sledge-hammer against them day after day gradually pulling the mind of America back to the right���where it has always belonged.

At the start of the above radio show I joked a bit with Matt that I was politically to the right of Ted Cruz���that the new presidential candidate is likely too far to the left for my liking. The joke is that Cruz is clearly one of the most conservative right leaning candidates running for president in 2016. However, in reality, I am likely quite a bit further to the right fiscally and socially than Ted Cruz is���and I don���t consider myself a right-winged extremist by any means. Many on the left have tried to paint people like myself as part of the Nazi wing of fascism���which is simply laughable. Hitler was a socialist���and I am the complete antithesis to people like him. I am probably one of the least fascist people currently on earth. Such a definition doesn���t even meet a unit of measure on my political spectrum because such a position is still way too far to the left for me. I don���t want to control anybody. By default, because I���m a responsible person, I do have a lot of people who look to me for means���but there is never a day where I take joy and contemplate how I might leverage them to my advantage so that I might massage some intellectual desire to rule over others.���� So the typical left-winged definition of the extreme right-winger is completely wrong and does not apply to me in any way. And I know that they don���t have an answer for it, which is why there aren���t more comments on my pages���because I can put up millions of words of opinions and thoughts about a great many subjects and they can���t answer to any of them. They can only ignore you and hope you go away.

Ted Cruz likely is a similar personality and he had to make the decision before entering the senate if he wanted to even play this game with the left. He appears to have went through the same process I did and decided that he was a personality that could handle the scrutiny, would not be subject to the bribes and deals from K-Street, and would be poised to stand in the fire like a block of ice and not melt under the heat. The big fear from the left about Cruz, as well as the right, is that they will have a hard time matching up to him. Cruz brings to the field of candidates a difficult match up for which the left does not have���a person who can function without an ounce of guilt and is therefore immune to the Saul Alinsky style attacks.

As an added bonus Ted Cruz was a champion debater at Harvard and may well be one of the most capable minds currently in the world who can go toe to toe with anybody on any rhetorical argument���including the slickest beltway lawyers. Ted Cruz will likely give thousands of interviews over the next two years and will have very few gaffs. ��His confidence alone will win voters who either didn���t vote in previous elections or convert those who are on the fence.

In the Matt Clark interview I brought up my experience with the Ross Perot campaign from many years ago���in 1992. I had been deep in that campaign and learned a lot about politics during that time of my life. I was on Fountain Square in downtown Cincinnati passing out literature for Perot when most people came up to me and showed an interest but stated that he didn���t have a chance of getting elected���so why vote for him. The problem was that if everyone who wanted to vote for him actually did, Perot would have been president instead of Bill Clinton and the disasters of the next century would have likely been averted. But people didn���t vote for Perot, and they received eight years of the Clintons, another eight years of the moderate Bush family, then eight years of a socialist oriented Barack Obama���and now an America going over a fiscal cliff as a result. All that damage could have been avoided by voting for Ross Perot who wasn���t even as well positioned as Ted Cruz is now.

Perot was a candidate who likely went through the same process I went through and undoubtedly Cruz underwent as well���which is why it took him so long to announce his candidacy which ultimately hurt him down the stretch. Perot was able to tear up Clinton and Bush in the debates because he was functioning without guilt and that made him very dangerous to the established powers. Cruz is a better candidate than Perot in every capacity���so this should be exciting. What will get accomplished are things that must be addressed. There is no option at this point; America needs a presidential race that battles out the philosophy of good and evil once and for all. And for that fight, Ted Cruz is uniquely poised. It will be an exciting two years for sure to watch the left and political moderates scramble to hold their positions without the weapon of guilt at their disposal. My prediction is that like this blog, they won���t be able to do it���leaving Cruz to always be the last man standing in an argument. That is not a way that the establishment can hold onto power. And they know it���and they are genuinely terrified���as they should be.

Rich Hoffman

��CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Meaning of Cliffhanger: Boons beyond the edge of safety

It has come up more than once over the last several weeks, most noticeably after the recent release of the latest installment of the Cliffhanger stories, The Curse of Santa Maurta as to what���s behind the name. The name of Cliffhanger for me is a personal one for two reasons, first I grew up loving the Jules Verne inspired films, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Island at the top of the World. Those films were done with a style and approach to adventure consistent with the best cliffhanger serials of their day and I fell in love with the optimism of how they combined science and adventure���much which was refined so well in the 1980s by the Indian Jones films, and Back to the Future��specifically in the character of Doc Brown. I think I always wanted to grow up into something of a mix between Doc Brown, Indiana Jones, and Dirty Harry���and all of those stories were very top-heavy in the swashbuckling cliffhanger style of story telling typical in early cinema. For me personally the start of a love for cliffhangers was in the Disney classic, Island at the Top of the World. I always loved the fearless desire to solve problems in that movie while pushing to see what was around the next corner always presented in the style of a cliffhanger.

Also, for as long as I can remember, up until just yesterday, I have had a nearly obsessive quest to live life on the edge. I love danger and taking very large chances. When I was a kid I was always the first to jump from one cliff face to another while in a high adventure explorer post. And now I am involved in politics and transactions with other human beings that could have perilous consequences with even a slight misstep. But, in spite of giving peace a chance���I just can���t do it. If there isn���t a certain amount of danger in my daily life���I���m just not happy. I have always believed that some of the freshest and most innovative ideas come to a mind on the edge of reality���pushing the limits���and somewhere in that science is the key to invention.

My first jobs before I was 19 years of age consisted of a body-guard, a repo man, a fashion model and other colorful, short-lived enterprises consisting of living a very fast life as quickly as possible. It was on the way to a live stage performance as a model that I decided to marry my wife and chose a way of life that didn���t involve taking so many chances���thinking at the time that at some point my luck might run out. It turned out to be the very best thing for me as my first endeavors emerging straight out of a stable relationship were a gunsmith, an inventor, and an entrepreneur by starting a little company called Cliffhanger Research and Development. I desired greatly to invent new tools and concepts traveling to trade shows and filing patents on my ideas���and I did this for several years���until I was in my mid-twenties and realized what was stacked against me–politically. The world seemed poised to destroy the type of adventurous spirit I fell in love with in movies like Island at the Top of the World,��and wanted to stuff my spirit into a box to be controlled. During this period of my life I met mayors, the extreme wealthy and learned to read the tides of politics. I learned a lot from one particular woman who lived in Indian Hill and had a very successful husband who spent most of the year traveling around the world avoiding his wife. I wondered often why a man like him would leave the fruits of so much labor behind to avoid his responsibilities in marriage, as his wife at the time had a lot of influence in the media around Cincinnati. After many offers from this woman and her immediate friends around Indian Hill to become a gigolo to them���it was an obvious conclusion that their husbands were driven by the same condition that pushed me along���a need for danger and adventure in their lives. However, I didn���t want in my wake such chaos and destruction. There had to be a better way, which displayed clearly to me that a new philosophy was needed in our culture that was clearly missing.

Instead of becoming wealthy from all my adventures I ended up being sued, owing a lot of money in taxes to the government, and putting a lot of strain on my own marriage just from some of the sheer risks that I always wanted to take. All of my endeavors where legitimate and well in the spirit of Doc Brown, but the world was deliberately standing in my way for some reason, and that condition became the next danger to overcome. It was the reason why I named my company Cliffhanger Research and Development. Much of my life was coming from the edge where literally every day could have been the end of my life as I knew it, and I was most comfortable in that position. I needed, and still do, to know that life is unpredictable from moment to moment and that anything can happen.

Over the years I���ve learned to waltz with this tendency of mine without leaving so much destruction in my wake. The desire to live life as a cliffhanger has become quite an asset instead of a liability���I never have a shortage of fresh ideas to solve complicated problems���because as I���ve always felt, most good ideas come from the edge of acceptable reality���the parameters of safe travel, intellectually. So I can take massive chances to my heart���s content���the luck never runs out not because its given out by some strange unmet gods, but because it’s internally generated through natural optimism, and I live a pretty good life without any regrets. I would still like to make my living as an inventor, but in the barriers to entry to that marketplace I found a much more lucrative target���the failed philosophy of Eastern and Western civilization.

The best way to tackle many of our modern problems and all the inventions that are being held back from human civilization because of a failed way to embrace a proper philosophy is the reason I created the character of Cliffhanger to fight crime and a world hell-bent on internal personal destruction. The characters in my Cliffhanger stories come directly from my past which is vibrant and full of color in a way that is unique. Really the lessons I learned living life so recklessly on the edge in my late teens and twenties has given me an insight into things that I haven���t been able to find in any books or stories that I have ever read. For me it goes back to that woman in Indian Hill who had it all���a wonderful home in an exclusive community, all her bills paid into the future for a hundred lifetimes of excess lifestyle, a beautiful pool in the back with a pool house larger and better furnished than most wealthy people���s homes, and a husband who liked her enough to marry and at least keep her from having to work for an employer. She had the adoration of the Cincinnati media and could call up some of the wealthiest people in the country any time she wanted. But she wasn���t happy���and her husband wasn���t either. They had lost their edge to life���the very thing that made them fall in love with life, and made them rich in the first place. They lost as they tried to secure their holdings with political maneuvers that took their fortune and placed it on the safe bets���thus destroying them as people.

For many years thereafter a friend of mine and I worked as part of his tree trimming business. We would climb trees and remove them from dangerous precipices on the property of many wealthy people. The men were always the same no matter where we went, and the women all had that hunger in their eyes for some needed adventure. During their climb for wealth they had lost something���that edge some sports teams have when they have a lead late in the game, then start playing it safe to protect it. More often than not they shockingly lose the game in the final seconds. The reason for that behavior became an obsession of mine.

I could now in my life become one of those people���but I avoid it like the plague. At a stop light just this week the temperature was 32 degrees outside and it was pouring rain at 6 AM. I was on my motorcycle as usual, my tires were bald from a hard winter of everyday driving, and the bike nearly slid to every stop I made. A guy pulls up to me at a stop light and yells, ���F**kin��� ride hard man! You rock! Livin��� the dream!��� He was of course referring to a middle-aged man riding a motorcycle on bald tires in near freezing conditions in a pouring rainstorm during early morning rush hour traffic. He desired himself to be out in the danger of life with me, but likely he was taught at some time in his past not to do things like that for fear of his own safety. Instead he takes other chances against life itself, like drinking too much, having relationships with other people who are dangerous and unhealthy and approaching safety in his life with a passive-aggressive rebellion they think nobody notices���like getting a tattoo where they think nobody can see.

Like the heroes from the movie Island at the Top of the World I have discovered in people something they don���t know much about themselves���perhaps not to the degree that I feel it���but most people do. There is a deep child-like yearning for adventure���for cliffhangers in their life where each day is a new one, and they never know what might happen. I am most happy in those conditions. I love the fire and I seek to stand right in the middle of it wherever it���s at. Because within it there is a boon to society that lives out on the edge, over the cliff���and often you have to hang over and extend yourself to reach it. So I invented Cliffhanger as a character to explore those boons. It is my hope that people who find their lives too safe and un-tempered in the fires of life will get what they need through my Cliffhanger stories. The safest way to bring people the needed danger their lives demand is through a character that is as fearless as anything ever put to print. But for those stories to have validity, they have to come from something tangible, and in the case of Cliffhanger���it does���a life lived hard and without a single day of reflection into something safer.

Rich Hoffman

��CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Obamanation: Just too embarrassing to discuss

I don���t like Obama, I think as a president he���s an idiot, and he���s at best one of the worst things that���s ever happened to America. But today I actually feel sorry for him. It would be terrible to live in his shoes, to have such an intellect that has led to so much destruction���and to be solely responsible for it. What a mess his presidency is���its not even dignified enough to have a closure as Nixon did���with a resignation ahead of impeachment. Obama���s time in the White House is such a miserable failure that it can���t even end with dishonor and an apology. He is so bad that such things wouldn���t even help.

���Was it worth it?���

That���s the first question Fox News host Megan��Kelly posed to State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Wednesday night, several hours after the U.S. Army announced they were charging Bowe Bergdahl with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. The Obama administration released five Taliban commanders to free the former Army sergeant from captivity last year.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/03/25/megyn-kelly-gets-tough-with-state-dept-spokeswoman-on-bergdahl-swap-was-it-worth-it/

I hate to say it, but I reported on all this in 2014 when Obama brought the Bergdahl��family to the Rose Garden for a press conference as if his actions in releasing a very controversial figure would give him a chance to wipe his hand across the ass of the deserter���s mother and allow the father to show the radical roots of their son through his speech. Obama stood by and smiled a knowing smile looking fully supportive of the misunderstood terrorist of the Taliban as Bob Bergdahl��spoke Pashto–as if the Bergdahl��family represented the future fate of all Americans���soon to buckle under the weight of Stockholm syndrome complete with a Taliban beard and worship of Allah from the White House. Obama had just made plans to release 5 terrorists for a deserter and had the parents of the weak-kneed solider thank the god of the terrorists in front of millions of people. Somehow Obama calculated that his Saul Alinsky tricks would wipe the minds of America so that they wouldn���t see what he was doing.

It took the army most of a year to release their findings but finally they had to agree that Bowe Bergdahl��was in fact a deserter and had actually caused the death of American soldiers trying to retrieve him from his defection to the Taliban. There was no way for them to spin the situation in the White House but Jen Psaki��tried���but to no avail. What was she thinking even going on the Kelly File to try to��spin the story? As I watched I couldn���t help but feel sorry for her���as all her words would go down in history and never be forgotten. Even worse was the thought that Obama himself was watching and hoping for a half court miracle shot by Jen to turn the tide against public opinion. But she only dug the Obamanation deeper into the quandary of failure.

It was ugly. So ugly, I can���t even write any more about it. I���ve said all this before, and as usual, I was more right than I wanted to be. But even as much as I despise Barack Obama as an American president, I don���t hate anybody that much���to watch them make such complete idiots of themselves���the failure of the White House is complete. And they have nobody to blame on earth but themselves���and that is the worst punishment for their crimes imaginable, because it will be stuck to all of them for the rest of their lives. This Bergdahl situation is simply that bad. It is embarrassing, insulting, and deeply revealing all in a single action. And it is a story that will have legs for a long time, and go down in history books for centuries.

Even worse look who is defending people like Bob Bergdahl. Here is a quote from the extremely liberal New Yorker.

���Imagine that you have a child, a wanderer by nature, who gets caught up in a war that has persisted aimlessly for many years; his roaming has festered into a chronic pathology for which there is no known cure. Then imagine that the child, who had hoped to help make a change for the better, becomes so disillusioned that he or she decides that there is no choice but to just walk away into unknown territory. If that were your child, what would you do?���

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/bob-bergdahl-good-father

Clearly, Bob and his wife started the process of imbedding in the young Bowe the type of weakness that made him a deserter. For that family, as bad as the embarrassment is for Obama���it will be worse. What a mess!

These are just embarrassing human beings.

Rich Hoffman

��CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.