Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 385

Cliffhanger as a Gift: Evil beyond the tesseract

Christmas presents are more about what people you care about think of you than so much in what you get. For instance, one of my daughters’s bought me two extremely rare Joseph Campbell books that are beyond treasures. They are literary classics that are difficult to find in rare book stores in places like New York, let alone Ohio. But using Amazon.com, she was able to get her hands on them and give them to me—which I will devour. My other daughter bought me a simple Jurassic Park t-shirt that is vintage from the 90s which is simple enough.   For whatever reason, I never bought one in the 90s, and would have loved to have one. I almost bought one while at Universal Studios but didn’t quite get around to it. So she bought me one for Christmas this year—because she knows that I want one, but that so many other things usually get in the way that I just didn’t get around to it for myself—like the Campbell books. So my kids took care of me. But the best present I received this year is actually for the first time something I created. It is a written character I created over a decade ago and my wife has been gently prodding me to return to. Now that I have with the series of stories called The Curse of Fort Seven Mile she rewarded me with the newly embroidered pull-over seen below with the simple name of Cliffhanger stitched across it.

The reason for her encouragement is due to the fact that my intentions for Cliffhanger are epic, he is a hero unlike any ever created in literature or mythology at any point in the human drama. He is on a scale that is epic, more so than the Biblical characters such as Noah who was chosen by God to survive as mankind was wiped clean by a wrathful Yahweh. Cliffhanger is not David from the same book who haphazardly brings down the giant Goliath only to become a king that can’t keep his pants on getting himself into trouble in a sexual context due to his buckling under the reigns of power. Cliffhanger is not Moses who must flee Egypt and the Pharaoh. Rather than part the Red Sea to escape into the wilderness, Cliffhanger would stop and fight every one of the soldiers seeking his destruction—so in that regard and many others he is the strongest literary character ever put into a story and my wife thinks that the world is in desperate need of him. So when she learned that I was returning to that character in my artistic work, she was very happy which was reflected in my Christmas present.

But it’s no small order, let me say that. Human beings have been conditioned to accept that nothing on earth is perfect. This trend has been established by our religions to hold us tethered to control by the deities of mythology. Even our heroes are flawed flesh that is destined to return to God by means beyond the design of the human race. We are taught to accept fate—not to make it. The trouble is, when we approach problems in such a manner from budget concerns to psychological family issues, we are always looking for someone else to solve our problems instead of ourselves which often means, we never reach a solution. We spend our days praying for some supernatural aid to help us, and most of the time it never does leaving us either feeling dejected, or unworthy of the grace of Gods.

So to write about a character that is inwardly empowered and self-reliant to such a measure that he does not reject the values of religion but does not surrender to passivity either is a very delicate balance that can be extremely difficult. To create a character in this day and age who does not fear anything—anything at all—yet to be compelling in a narrative is a particularly difficult hat trick. To be a superhero without any superpowers but a highly developed intellect might otherwise be a recipe for youthful rejection. But, as my wife and I have talked about many times for many years, the world needs new heroes as the old ones have either been killed and slaughtered, or are failed people who eventually let us down. The world needs to see a character who does not fall, surrender, or react out of fear so that they can see what it looks like—and take a step in human development that has been placed before us for a long time but not yet acted upon.

In Islam there is a reason that they don’t allow criticism of their Quran characters—it’s because they are all terribly flawed and if people actually considered the quality of the characters that they were sacrificing their lives for, they would have second thoughts. So the religion requires non-thinking so that followers can believe in the flawed prophet Muhammad, the vengeful Allah, or the pacifist participant of his own life in following orders to a fault in Abraham. These flawed traits are bred into our human nature by the mythologies which form our religions and they lead us as a society to perpetual war and doom—stifled with intellectual stagnation. Cliffhanger is intended to step beyond those limits.

But its one thing to think something, it’s another to make it real, to flesh it out in a story that interacts with other characters which challenges the premise. I felt good in doing that in The Symposium of Justice where Cliffhanger was introduced. But I had only touched the tip of the tip of an ice . I wanted a character so strong and so powerful that his greatest challenge was in standing against the real villains of the universe, those beings from an ultra advanced future civilization that can step across space and time to manipulate through disguise and dreams our present civilization through subtle means. Because here is the quandary of our times, all time and its events are occurring at the same time, the expansion of the universe as an entity is still a measurement made within the dimension of time—so the reason and cause of it is still a mystery because more information is needed to contemplate it—which is missing unless the additional dimensions of quantum law are considered—those beyond time. And civilizations that advance to the ability to use entire solar systems—and galaxies for their energy hundreds of billions of years from now are still anxious about their role in the universe and their need to move beyond it—as the universe is not infinite, but doomed to destruction as well within billions of years. So what’s beyond the universe? Well to discover it, or find a way to last long enough as beings to find out, those advanced cultures have their own insecurities and fights for power. But their war is not so literal, but more passive aggressive because of their advanced state. So they journey back and forth through time and space manipulating the past to affect the far distant future. It is not ancient aliens out there more advanced than we who have always been causing human beings trouble; it is a further developed ghost of ourselves using quantum physics to manipulate our time to benefit theirs. How better to wipe out a future political rival than to just eliminate their bloodline `from millions of years in the past by entering their dreams and lives as a parasitic entity hell-bent on destroying them with temptations of intoxication, adultery, and other reckless living.

The more I read about the gods and goddesses of mythology, which I’ve done a lot and continue on each year, the more this tesseract idea of fifth, sixth and seventh dimensional villains seems valid. So to defeat such creatures there is only one way—and that is a new hero not bound to terrestrial limitations—and evolution of the human being that is well beyond anything yet created who isn’t just roaming the earth fighting evil, sex trafficking, drug distribution, political upheavals, and all manners of human terror—but to fight against the manipulators of history itself, those outside of the living world who step across millions of years of evolution like steps from one level of a house to another. Because evil, as we define it in the context of our own lives is a big entity which encompasses the universe as a whole and to defeat it requires a new kind of hero—not one with super powers, or even the grace of some God like the womanizing slug Zeus, but a human being that has grown more than human to the eternal well of life essence which our bodies simply catch through living bodies so that the root of evil can be explored properly, and identified by a clueless, busy audience.

That is the task, and why my wife has encouraged me to the effort. So for Christmas while I dive down that deep well of difficult scholarship to bring to the surface a story which covers that enormity my wife gave me a reminder of how that character of Cliffhanger should be emblazoned with memory. It is one thing to wear such an emblem that is created by others, but in this case, Cliffhanger can come from nowhere else, and by seeing such a creation, it is a reminder to me of how important such a character can be to the emerging world mythology. The only restriction is the difficult task of telling those stories from a place deep in the gut where they reside. And her Christmas present will help me greatly. That is the benefit of Christmas and a wife who understands how difficult, and important the task is.

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development

The Indian and Christian Cover-up: A relic from my past made present

One of the byproducts of resurrecting my old company Cliffhanger Research and Development for the slate of current projects starting in 2015 is the memories of the past that were good at the time, but matured over time into something better. It hasn’t been just recently where I have dedicated myself to completely changing the way people think about virtually everything. I have always known that it would likely take a few hundred years—but the effort is worth the wait. And in my case I started trying to re-educate people at a very early age.

When I was just 22 years old I started a philosophical line of t-shirts that were poised to directly compete with the No Fear Gear line. One particular shirt from that line sold by the multitudes. It was so popular in 1992 that I literally sold a shirt right off my back since it was the only one left. I remember it vividly, I was in the food court at Tri-County Mall wearing a shirt design seen in the below pictures. I was buying food at one of the restaurants there, and the clerk loved the saying on my shirt so much that he literally bought the shirt I was wearing since I was sold out at the time. I left the mall shirtless and proud.

 

I knew it at the time but the design on that shirt featuring the Indian on the back was more than just a message against development over Indian lands. I have been particularly obsessed for most of my life at the casualness that archaeology has been destroyed in America so to preserve the belief that Indians were the first inhabitants of North America—which wasn’t true, and that they had higher wisdom over the new capitalist country—which wasn’t true, and that American’s had no right to westward expansion over Indian land—which of course is preposterous. Indians didn’t own American land—they lost the war for it as one culture came out on top, and that was the end of the story as far as I was concerned. Yet it wasn’t quite enough.

 

I spent several evenings in a Waffle House restaurant drawing the designs that became the Cliffhanger line of shirts, and this Indian one provoked much talk around my booth as I purposely ate my omelet each night while coming up with just the right concept. Most watching me draw the picture thought that it was a conversation message. Others thought it was religious—especially accompanying the saying that was on the front. Others thought that I was up to something else all together. For me it was a fun moment and I had a taste of what it must have felt like to be Pablo Picasso in Paris creating his art for the first time to a skeptical audience with great voraciousness and eccentricity. My sketches were relatively simple artistically, but the story they told was quite extensive and worthy of discussion that erupted around the Waffle House at 4 AM in the morning.

Those who know me today understand why I blame Christianity for being a weapon against historic understanding. Many churches—particularly in Europe are built on old “pagan” sites so to show how the new religion had conquered the old one. In much the same way we are presently going through the same purge with the religion of Islam as they are deliberately attempting to carry mankind into another Dark Age with sheer intimidation and brutality. But before the Muslim, European conquistadors were just as brutal eradicating the Mayan, the Aztec and gradually all of the North American tribes not out of desire for their land so much but to destroy the intelligence of a people who came long before during the Archaic Period—in that little known age from 8000 BC to about 1000 BC well before the Hopewell and Adena Indians came to be during breeding with the Chinese who had been trading in the area in the years leading up to 1421 AD. What was being done was a religious purge by one over another and the great crime against not only the Indians, but humanity was that the last remnants of their mythology and folklore was wiped out and destroyed with great aggression. The unfairness to them was not out of broken treaties due to greed, but in suppressing what was already in the New World that the powers of Europe wanted to conceal.

 

Living in Liberty Township, Ohio I watched first-hand as construction crews plowed right through burial mounds of the people from the Archaic Period discarding the bones and relics like trash found around the footers of almost every American home—where construction crews fresh from their lunch breaks toss in their discarded trash too lazy to carry it away from them off site—so they bury it once the backfill the foundation of a home. Native Americans used the Great Miami River as a main artery to get deep into the land of Ohio and Liberty Township was a popular hunting ground and burial-place. That history was wiped away, first by the greed of the developers but there was something even more sinister at work. There was a deliberate erasing of history going on by the zoning boards at the time who were supposed to protect the past. Without question many of the deals which destroyed the archaeology of my Liberty Township were struck from the pews of churches where developers and zoning officials broke bread together over communion to approve new developments before the public hearings on Monday evening knowing that Indian mounds were present. And so it goes that most of the only remnants of archaeology left in Liberty Township are those from the English settlers who came shortly after the French and Indian War. Progress was used as the mask that destroyed the evidence of a culture that had long been in America before even the Hopewell or Adena. I should know because I walked nearly every mile of farmland in Liberty Township when I was a kid and I know what was destroyed to make way for the various neighborhoods who now overload the voting booth at election time in favor of Lakota schools—named after the Indians only in the hope of hiding the real crime of erasing their culture from memory—because of their pagan roots.

 

So I poured all that emotion into a t-shirt design and started a company around the premise which did quite well carrying me all the way to a large apparel trade show in Chicago by the age of 24. Most people my age were still immature partiers looking for their way through life—but even then I was being called an old man whose mind didn’t fit my age at all. At Chicago many of the older trade show patrons were astonished by my designs, and my age. Inside the McCormick Center there were very expensive deals taking place, but at night I was sleeping under the stars next to the lake at Meigs Airfield—because I couldn’t afford a hotel in Chicago at the time. I spent my last dimes to attend the show with my product line and to send my family to the south to open our store and manufacturing facility for Cliffhanger Research and Development in Gatlinburg Tennessee.

 

It all started with that simple shirt designed at a Waffle House in 1992 and the controversy that followed. It was a good controversy as it made people think which my real intention was always. I knew even then that I wanted to commit my life to changing not just the way people think but what they think about. Of course it’s not a short process, and currently I’m only twenty years into the project.

 

One of the treasures from my children’s childhood was that I gave them copies of their own versions of that shirt so that they could learn something from the message—particularly the one on the front. My kids grew up sleeping every night in their shirts and eventually wore them so thin that the material nearly wore away into dust. So for Christmas this year I had a reprinting done and gave it to them as one of their presents. They had asked me five or six years ago for new updates and it took me a few years to dig up all the old stuff so I could get the original artwork—but in 2014 I finally got around to it once again. Now they can use them for sleep shirts as they did once before or just have them in the closet for conversation with their own kids. There are plans to resurrect some of the other designs to bring out a modern line of t-shirts which is fun, but it will never be the way it was in 1992 when expressions on t-shirts were a fairly new concept. Today such expression is everywhere, so the shirts don’t have near the same appeal even though the art on them is timeless. It’s a different market in a different time. It is unlikely that anybody, anywhere would purchase the shirt right off my back these days as they did then—because everyone is so overwhelmed with messages of all kinds that nobody pays attention to little things anymore—like what people are wearing and what they mean.

 

But for my family it was fun to resurrect the design. It signifies the start of a quest that I knew very well from the outset at that Waffle House long ago at 4 AM in the morning as springtime winds beat at the window through layers of pouring rain that I was making some kind of history in the process. That journey would likely extend out for a few centuries but the starting point was literally at the restaurant table with a nice steaming omelet freshly made accompanying my obscure designs that for a few nights had the entire restaurant peering over my shoulder and asking questions that would resonate through the halls of time.

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development

 

 

Making Omelets: The essence of leadership

Another aspect to the perils of collectivism is the cheerleader for the concept of a “TEAM” especially when great emphasis is placed on the specific terminology. One of the premier drivers of social and economic socialism is the desire to hide one’s cowardly behavior under the blanket of society pointing to the greedy management of some organization to rise up against and overtake. But then there are those who provide justification to the cowardly by becoming abusive tyrants when given authority through position who are clueless and inept attempting to hide their minor dictatorships behind the concept of a “TEAM.”

Many years ago I worked at one of many fast food restaurants and without question I was one of their most productive workers. However, the manager there and I did not get along. She was a raging feminist who was attempting to live all her life’s failures through her career decisions hoping beyond hope that a successful management career would somehow off-set two decades of diabolical personal decision-making mistakes. She looked for respect not by earning it, but simply because she had schemed some executive within the company to give her responsibility and that by simple virtue of a nameplate identifying her as a “boss” she had earned the right to infinite respect. Well, she was wrong.

 

At this job I was just a grill cook—but I was the fastest in the area and I could work two lines by myself saving the company two staffed positions, sometimes three, four, up to five so I knew the value I brought to the table. I also knew that this manager’s role within the company was purely ornamental; after all she was a young woman who helped their staffing numbers—especially in management, and fit the profile of what corporate wanted to see on paper for their labor statistics. However, she was ineffective as far as official management duties often carrying her store over staffed, under stocked, and ill prepared for dinner rushes. And because she treated everyone like slaves on her personal plantation the workers would lay down on her and refuse to give her a good shift of productive output—because they didn’t respect her. They simply showed up to collect a check.

I’ve always believed in authenticity so I never pandered to her authority or the company overall. I let her know that I could see that she didn’t know what she was doing and I offered to help her help herself if she needed proper counseling on how to perform such an elusive task. But of course she thought she knew everything so she refused to listen—instead she chose to pick fights with me at every turn which ultimately sealed her fate.

When a member of corporate came through the drive thru window to check on things and see how the store was operating—he asked how things were going. I told him that the store manager had no idea what she was doing and that she was pushing his margins toward the negative needlessly. Of course he wanted to know more where I proceeded to disassemble her piece by piece which was easy because she had been hiding her ineptitude behind a love for her title and the authority it wielded. When she had to actually be accountable, she was absolutely clueless and had no resort but to fall on her feminist teachings accusing the executive and me of being prejudice against her because she was a woman in a man’s world and all that other nonsense. Of course I told the executive that too, right in front of her which sent her deeper into defense without being able to bring up anything professionally which justified her continued existence as manager of that store. Instead she leaned on her title, her authority, and her sex to shield her ineptitude from further social judgment.

The executive gave her another store after that encounter putting her into a really bad neighborhood where the workforce was much more antagonistic toward management. The store was already performing poorly so she couldn’t screw that up any worse. She had a nervous breakdown within two months and actually ended up in the hospital for psychological treatment. The reason was that she had to actually perform to hold her job and not rely on titles or even her feminism to shield her incompetence—so with no other option to lean on she had a mental breakdown as her only escape from the situation.

 

I felt bad for the manager only in that she had to take things so far before she actually listened. But she should have known better than to think I was going to let her abuse me and others just to fill her own ego with pride as a second-hander. I used that example of failed leadership because it is one of the easier to explain—and one of the shortest examples of how top down incompetence can fuel the collective desire for communist concepts like socialism, unionism, or committee driven consensus—it is because leaders fail to lead when they place the value of their positions on a nameplate or organization chart instead of the actual performance of the position.   In my past I have so many examples of such conflict with authority similar to that above story that I can’t even remember them all—given that I have an excellent memory, it should provide context to the multitude. Behind me is a dark and bloody river of many such conflicts and people from my past reading this—which of course they do can offer nothing in defense because they know it’s all true. The difference is that I never felt compelled to join with others to solve any of these problems. I simply confronted those targets with the truth about their real desire for power—and exposed them to the people who fund the endeavors.

There have of course been more men than women but in general there are far too many people who enter the work force believing that a title of authority will grant them power they otherwise don’t have. Once they get this power they find they need their egos constantly massaged and instead of their productive effort going into making money for their company’s needs, they use the workforce as their personal playground of boosting their own internal worthlessness. They often use authority to mask their own incompetence which they hope will go undetected from behind their commands. But it never does—people can naturally detect bullshit and immediately set about ways to protect themselves from it—which leads often to collective unification against a tyrant. So in the end both sides end up wrong and the business suffers or goes out of existence all together unable to produce a profit.

 

I have been in the business of making omelets and to do that you have to break a lot of eggs. In that metaphor of course eggs represent the ego of the type of people who fall in love with power out of their own insecurity. This has been exposed at the Lakota school district, many businesses, and within several organizations and I have behind me a lot of omelets made and eaten by grateful financial interests. And the omelet making will continue wherever I am at the time—because I personally have no tolerance for abuse of leadership. It’s not a mystery that requires collective endeavor to stand up against—all it takes is a good heart, a clean conscience, and a will to do well. If one possesses those traits they will find that they can move mountains and solve the world’s problems just by showing up for work without malice or social gratification.

Most businesses that fail do so because of poor leadership at the top. Most organizations are weak and next to worthless because they have people running them who care more about the nameplates on their desk than in accomplishing the task at hand. And government is filled with poor leaders who seek office not on merit but by popularity allowing them to believe they are important when in fact they are just more examples of detrimental human frailties. The way to fix all these issues is to recognize the attributes of proper leadership as the values are removed from social consensus and instead based upon individual performance. And for the worker who thinks they are at the bottom of the food chain and not able to do anything about the tyrant they work for, take it from someone who knows very well, if you are a superior worker and bring a good heart to your business backed by honesty you will find that your employer will value you far more than the guy with the brass nameplate on their desk. And your counsel will be very valuable because it is so rare these days to have such authentic people on a payroll.   Don’t be afraid to expose an idiot when they present themselves. The cost in not doing so only brings misery to more people for a longer period of time needlessly. In the end, it’s not just you who will suffer, but everyone else.

 

A TEAM is not something where everyone contributes equally. A “team” is where a leader rallies people behind a common cause not out of duty—but respect. Not everyone is capable of being a leader. Most people are terrified of it. But if you are one of the rare few who are of leadership quality be careful when nameplate lovers start using the word TEAM to describe an enterprise. The reason they do it is to cover their own ineptitude and to piggy back off your efforts so they can use your leadership to mask their own fallacies using the designation of a “TEAM” to perform the task. When a politician says the words, “we did it as a team” look carefully at what is going on behind their words—because there is likely something hidden there they are trying to mask. Likely what it is will be a series of abused people who have done all the work and lost the credit to a politician who seeks to associate themselves with success by gradually taking over the enterprise by putting their nameplate upon it and expecting their authority position to allow them to do it without question. When that happens there really is no choice, its time to make some omelets by breaking several eggs and making something positive out of a bunch of broken shells and the contents which ooze from them once shattered. It takes a leader to do the shattering and to see the need for an ordered up omelet.

Rich Hoffman

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The Nights Before Christmas: White House guilt in the IRS targeting of conservative groups

Shhhhhhhhh, do you hear that dear reader?  SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.  It’s a few nights before Christmas and not a creature is stirring…………..not even a mouse.  Instead, they are all huddled together in the cracks of society planning what to do next.  If you listen carefully you can hear them making their plans at damage control.  Did you wonder why Obama suddenly showed courage and support for Hollywood in the face of North Korean aggression when he had blamed an anti-Muslim video for the whole Bengahzi incident?  And could the timing of the Cuban deal have come months before, or several months later—instead of right now.  And how about the executive orders in favor of amnesty?  SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, listen carefully.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report Tuesday that found the Obama White House turned the IRS into a political organization that has spent years attacking conservative groups.  Yet with all the noise surrounding Christmas, the 18 trillion-dollar debt, the Korean crises, the Cuban crises, the Chinese crises, the declining Russian economy, the parade of scandals following the Obama White House like tin cans chained to a beat up car hosting newlyweds after a shotgun wedding, the race wars in America, the plummeting gas prices, there just isn’t any room in people’s minds for the most important news item of them all—how the government from the very top used the IRS as a personal weapon to attack political rivals so that their regime could stay in power during the 2012 election.  Here’s some of what the report said:

“The Internal Revenue Service has compromised its traditional position as an independent tax administrator,” the report found. “The IRS’s inability to keep politics out of objective decisions about interpretation of the tax code damaged its primary function: an apolitical tax collector that Americans can trust to treat them fairly.”

The report indicated that improper IRS activities began with a 2010 comment from President Barack Obama, who said some of the Tea Party groups were being funded with corporate money, and “we don’t know where this money is coming from.” That criticism was prompted by Democratic reactions to the Citizens United case in the Supreme Court, which many Democrats blamed for allowing the wealthy to pour more money into campaigns.

Five days after Obama spoke in 2010, former IRS official Lois Lerner spoke at Duke University and said many wanted the IRS to “fix the problem.”

“The pressure to ‘fix the problem,’ as articulated by Lois Lerner, originated with President Obama and senior party leadership,” the report found. “For twenty-several months, from February 2010 until May 2012, the Internal Revenue Service systematically targeted conservative tax-exempt applicants for additional scrutiny and delay.”

“As prominent Democratic politicians and the media condemned conservative non-profit groups, the IRS sought ways to rein in the groups’ political speech,” the report found. “Lois Lerner initiated a ‘c4 project’ — careful to ensure that it was not ‘per se political’ — and called applications filed by Tea Party groups “very dangerous” because she believed that they could undo existing IRS limits on non-profit political speech.”

That led to additional scrutiny of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. The report said that while a few groups were targeted with the words “progress” or “progressive” in their title, almost all were conservative-leaning organizations.

The decision to target conservative groups was followed by later decisions to cover it up, and blame lower level workers for the initiative.

The report also blamed Obamacare, which gave the IRS a key role in implementing Obama’s health program, for turning the IRS into an arm of the White House, when it should have remained independent.

“Evidence shows an IRS responsive to the partisan policy objectives of the White House and an IRS leadership that coordinates with political appointees of the Obama administration,” it found.

It said efforts to cover up the scandal were ultimately led by Obama himself. Obama initially said the IRS’s actions were inexcusable, but later said there was not a “smidgen of corruption” at the IRS.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/12/22/report-blames-obama-white-house-for-turning-the-irs-into-a-political-weapon/

 

Yet there’s a good bet that the report will be largely ignored.  Most of the premier newscasters are on vacation using replacements to fill the airtime while everyone has their eyes on the Christmas Holiday and time with families.  The story will likely die on the vine as everyone is thinking about everything but the IRS.  Even those who do watch the news over the holiday season do not give it much weight as their minds are heavily encumbered with social obligations—and that is all by design.  Obama and his White House simply overloaded the news cycle with news bits with such density that most people’s heads would simply explode if they tried to take it all in.

So punishment for the IRS crime and the “smidgen” of evidence pouring in from the White House will go unpunished.  When the senate released their report about the waterboarding torture conducted by the CIA under the Bush administration—the entire news cycle covered the story even as Paul Gruber was testifying on the Hill about the deceptions that helped Obamacare get passed as a new tax because Americans were too stupid to notice—his words.  But regarding the White House aggression in using the IRS as a personal political weapon next to nothing will be said, even on Fox News because all the heavy hitters are on vacation and by the time they come back in January, there will be new things to talk about and the IRS story will be old hat—and uninteresting.

But the proof that the White House was involved from the very start of the scandal is there.  You just have to listen very closely to hear it.  SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.  Do you hear it now?  Good, so can I..  Now, what do you want to do about it?

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development

What’s Behind the Cheap Gas: A big secret meant to be hidden through appeasment

I’ve always reported that the oil industry and the price of oil per barrel was a scam. It was always artificially inflated to fulfill the strategic aims of foreign aggressors. And while the price of oil has plummeted during the 4th quarter of 2014 dropping gas to under $1.99 per gallon at the pump just days before Christmas giving consumers thousands of extra dollars for that needed shopping spike in economic data returns, there is much, much more going on that is not all that good. First and most obvious is the OPEC desire with the United Nations to push Russia out of the Ukraine and punish Putin for his expansionist aggression. After all, the United Nations was created to take away the edge of war through mutual economic destruction instead of with military action, and this is what the UN working with OPEC is doing to Russia to crush their economy without any troop movement.

For those worried about World War III and Russian aggression—do not fear that inept pimple on the world’s ass–they are not the real worry. Just as Putin threatened to cut off natural gas into Europe if they raised a hand against his Ukraine aggression, the UN in conjunction with OPEC has lowered the price of oil to cut down the Ruble and prevent Russia from having the ability to act aggressively. With the Russian economy collapsing due to the low oil prices, Putin cannot afford to act aggressively and will have to return to the table of diplomacy—just as the United Nations wanted. That is what is called passive aggressive terrorism on both sides—both powers have defanged each other so that publicly no hostilities will percolate and they will return to back-slapping in Geneva soon enough without war. China may buy up Russian assets to “help” them, but that will be the extent of the aggression.

 

Yet, there is something more to the matter which has suddenly filled American pockets with an instant raise to their weekly salaries. Hmm, what might that be? Hmm, what could it be…….Keystone? Hmmmmmm.

Fracking in America has been wondrously successful as it has uncovered natural gas reserves that are so abundant that most of the companies who invested in the fracking infrastructure have come to realize that they can’t make much money just because the new discoveries of cheap and clean energy is nearly limitless. Politicians have tried to regulate fracking out of contention through legislation and EPA activism—but in spite of those efforts, boundless quantities of cheap energy have been discovered. Largely due to high oil prices, America turned inward to solve the problems of crippling energy prices and discovered a major boon to the energy business. Hollywood has attempted to help politicians maintain the status quo which empowers OPEC dramatically with movies like Matt Damon’s anti-fracking work, but it hasn’t taken and Americans have embraced fracking anyway.

 

The traditional oil industry doesn’t want the hydraulic fracking revelation of cheap energy that is as close to free as it could possibly be. So the prices of oil are being dropped through market manipulation at this particular time to put money in pockets of the American market ahead of some very difficult decisions that must be made regarding the pension systems in many cities. Also during amnesty illegal immigrants have been given Social Security rights along with other citizen assistance programs sponsored by the government. To pay for all this the government needs higher tax acceptance, and they hope to get that by putting more money in the pockets of American consumers so that once again they will give freely of themselves as they did at the voting booths during the 80s and 90s. It is that short-sighted and silly. In the process of that objective the U.S. government removes the appeal of fracking away protecting the energy industry structure that currently exists, global bankers get to leverage their investments behind a temporarily strengthened dollar, the United Nations gets to flex a little muscle to keep Putin in check and Iran losses some of its ability to develop nuclear weapons by reducing the size of their economy by simply cutting their global allowance. And Americans will hopefully go back to sleep once they can put gas in their cars at under $2 per gallon.

But energy prices could be cheaper yet, and that is what the industry is really terrified of—and these global bankers that come up so often in conspiracy theorist dialogues and communist banter—like that of Elizabeth Warren—are in trouble. Hydraulic fracking puts the power of the global economy back into the hands of Americans and makes it so that the wealthiest capitalist country in the world no longer has to play with the toys of the rest of the world making them once again self reliant. So gas prices have been reduced to take American eyes off the obvious before they notice.

 

So while its nice to see gas prices drop so low that we can once again fill up an SUV for under $40 per tank, it is ultimately a trick designed to take American eyes off hydraulic fracking and the self-reliance that will ultimately follow. Once Americans realize that they can have energy for next to nothing all the problems talked about above—especially the pension system crises that is no longer coming—its here—will exacerbate without resolution collapsing the system that the government mismanaged. There won’t be additional funds to bail the government out of short-term trouble. They have really screwed up and they hope that low oil prices will take the edge off the American temper.

But it’s all fake, the increasing value of the American dollar, the low gas prices, the global intentions—its all about covering up the really bad economic data coming out of the fourth quarter GDP in North America, the mismanaged government programs and their need for tax payer bailouts with valueless money cheapened by quantitative easing—because if America goes the way of the Ruble the whole world will collapse economically. Even China will collapse because they need Americans to buy what they make. Without that market, even though China holds much of the 18 trillion dollars of current American debt, they will never get their value back if capitalism doesn’t drive market influence in some respect. China cannot live on their own with exports to Russia and Europe—so they need America more than the United States needs them. The real issue is the one that nobody wants to talk about—American innovation without government assistance—but in spite of it—has developed a technique in hydrolic fracking that makes America self-reliant and if Americans learn just how much—they will throw their support behind the cheap energy and become isolationists once again as they were before the creation of the United Nations. Because after all, who wants to be forced to associate with such reckless global personalities as those currently manipulating these oil prices. They stay in power as long as the fish bite on their hooks thrown into the water with lucrative bait. But if Americans stop, they find themselves all out of a job—including the global banks who really want the ultimate power of 21st century kingship. Fracking is a threat to them—and is the premier reason we should all support it.

Rich Hoffman

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Panty Waste: Florence Mall evacuates because of a loud noise

There used to be a term that was very common while I was growing up terming properly the type of behavior we are seeing today—whether it is the Sony studios pulling a film lampooning about North Korea or a bunch of Christmas shoppers running out of the Florence Mall because a CO2 tank blew up at the food court. That term was “panty waste.”

Panty waste meant that someone was so useless that they didn’t even deserve to be the waste material created during the construction of panties which we all know is next to worthless. Not only would such a material not make the cut into an actual garment intended for women and all the waste product that emerge from their southern regions, but it wouldn’t even find its way into the plans for such a thing. Once a panty is made, the left over material has no place to go but in the trash, and such panty waste doesn’t even get the benefit of being soaked in minstrel blood, sexual waste, and genital leakage. That is how bad being “panty waste” is.

 

Panty waste is not even talked about any longer, because it might hurt someone’s feelings. It’s too derogatory and mean spirited—even sexist. It implies that women are not as strong as men—or equal to them by the feminist definitions of our day. So nobody has any proper words to describe who terribly cowardly it is for shoppers to become scared enough to run out of the Florence Mall just because they heard a loud noise—and overreacted to it being a possible gun shot.

I’ve blown up lots of CO2 type containers, and I’ve shot a lot of guns, even had them pointed at me in aggressive ways on several occasions and let me tell you, anyone who ran from the Florence Mall on Saturday December 20, 2014 just because a silly little CO2 tank blew up, are best defined as “panty waste.” Anyone who cowardly transferred their neurosis into the disguise “but my children had to be safe” trying to hide the fact that you are panty waste to begin with, you have now doomed your children to becoming panty waste in the future with your cowardly behavior. Shame on you.

Children should not be taught to be such cowardly specimens. They should be taught that panty waste is not a good thing to be indulged in by some confused man who wishes to wear high heels with fish net stockings. Panty waste is the worst of the worst because it’s not even material fit for the occasional skid mark absorption that panties are technically supposed to utilize.   Most panties are not the Victoria Secret types of G-strings, but those balloons that overweight women often wear not to entice a sexual partner, but to provide comfort after a day of shopping at the grocery store while the bearer picks their ass constantly between the aisles when they think that nobody is looking. Once in the laundry basket, those used panties are likely to turn off anybody from wanting to engage in sex with the regions of the female that produced such a monstrosity leaving the wash as the only next destination. Panty waste is not even fit for such a disgraceful existence.

So for those who ran from the Florence Mall because of a loud noise, they are the modern embodiments of panty waste. To the Sony executives who pulled their Christmas Day comedy satirizing North Korea, they too are panty waste because of their cowardly behavior. And if you generally cry every time something scary happens and run for some authority figure in your life—you are panty waste. Geez, even some liberals knew the difference such as Obama and George Clooney. I mean, they are really wimpy modern men weakened greatly by progressivism and even they know that enough is enough when it comes to North Korea and Sony.

Once again we have our education system to blame for all this useless sensitivity. They have nearly banished the word panty waste out of political correctness calling it “hate speech.” But in many ways, panty waste is the only tactful way of describing such a cowardly society. That society was largely shaped by modern public education backed by government lawyers, lobbyists of sensitivity, and progressive hate baiters. They are responsible for making so many detrimentally neurotic people who ran from a shopping mall as soon as they heard a loud noise.

The proper behavior would be to hear the noise, determine whether or not there is danger by judging the circumstances—then taking action. In this case once the direction of the loud noise was identified and it was seen that a bunch of oriental people were scrambling to contain their accident at a little restaurant then it would be concluded that they had some kind of cooking mistake—and you could quickly return back to your business. If however it did turn out to be a crazed gunman shooting innocents—then the proper thing would be to engage the target directly and disable the aggressor. If in doing so you take a few bullet shots—the moment the target is disabled, you get yourself to the hospital before you lose all your blood. Try to plug up the loss the best you can during transit. But don’t stand around waiting for someone to save you—save yourself and those around you quickly and instinctively—then get on with business. Don’t be a panty waste.

There is no sympathy for those who behave like panty waste. They tend to vote for every school levy that comes their way, every police levy, every fire levy, every tax increase that comes up because they want some authority figure to make them feel safe—because they are essentially panty waste. They empower terrorists to be meaner than their natural courage would normally allow just in providing such an easy target. When panty waste is so easily scared, it makes those who hope to terrorize others so much more embolden that their attempts might be successful giving terrorists that momentary jolt of power which they crave so aggressively. Those terrorists may find themselves in the end arrested and jailed, but not before the momentary power of ruling over others provides a spike to their sappy egos.

Just because the term “panty waste” isn’t used anymore does not mean that it shouldn’t be. There needs to be some way to describe cowardly behavior and that was what evacuating the Florence Mall was. It was cowardly behavior. Thankfully, nobody was hurt and business resumed as normal just moments after the chaos, but for all those would be terrorists out there watching the behavior of the panty waste at Florence Mall—they were empowered to believe that if a simple little CO2 tank could create such havoc than other easy things might work as well—giving their ego starved intellects the jolt of confidence they need to engage in aggression against Americans. Being panty waste makes our society more dangerous, not less. And there simply isn’t any other word to describe these modern events created by our public education system of pacification and over-reaction all in the name of safety.

Rich Hoffman

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Dreams of a Giant: The Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake

There are plenty of modern things to write about—however, most of them have been covered here and are predictions previously submitted simply manifesting before our eyes. Every day feels like an “I told you so moment” so I no longer feel inclined to provide warnings—because they are before us. Personally, I am about to embark on the most intense, and difficult year so far in my life, and for those who know me—there have been some really difficult years leading up to this one. Also for those who know me, they by now know that I deal with difficulties through intellectual expansion. In much the way that a fighter trains for a big match, so to must the intellectual who will have to move mountains of passive aggressive opposition hell-bent on mediocrity to punch through to the other side. So for that I seek lots of literature to help push my mind to the point where it can deal with anything. In the past, I have found that novels like Finnegan’s Wake does that for me. I have read it before, I have it even on a book to tape that I have listened to many times. It is likely the most difficult book of literature ever created. I love the book and I love the primordial giant at the start of the book named Finnegan who dies and is buried by his wife Annie (Anna Livia Plurabelle) who puts out his body for the mourners to eat. But before they can feast on his body, he vanishes only to rise again by the end of the first chapter bawling for whiskey. His mourners put him back to rest convincing him that death is better and so he dreams through death that he awakens into the modern family man and pub owner H.C.E. H.C.E. stands for “Here Comes Everyone” meaning all of mankind. So in essence the giant Finnegan in Finnegan’s Wake dies and is born again as all of mankind and the content of the book is primarily a dream that takes place in the wake of his life.

There aren’t many sentences in Finnegan’s Wake that sound even remotely like the normal dialogue of a novel. The book is written in reference to over 60 different languages and none of them seem to string together in a coherent way—yet they do. They are meant to transport the reader beyond the conscious mind into the primordial ooze of a dreamlike existence and to actually peer into the possibly of life beyond death as mankind is but a resurrection of thought—exclusively.

For years many have pondered over the meaning of the novel. It is one of the great puzzles of literature.   Personally I came to the work by the lectures of Joseph Campbell and read the novel knowing that Campbell was obsessed with it. My teacher was so obsessed with Finnegan’s Wake that he spent over four years attempting to translate line by line the entire 600 page novel with another novelist by the name of Henry Morton Robinson. The result of that collaboration became A Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake. It was a book that promised to unlock the mysteries of James Joyce’s masterpiece Finnegan’s Wake.

However, since Finnegan’s Wake is such difficult literature to read, there isn’t much of a market for it even among the most serious intellectuals. Some people spend their entire lives contemplating Finnegan’s Wake—so it is intimidating to even start the book, let alone trying to figure out what it all means. As I’ve said before I am a big fan of the Joseph Campbell Foundation and all the great work they do there. I have virtually everything Joseph Campbell ever wrote—except one thing—his Skeleton Key. The infamous book first went to print in 1944 then again in 1961 but died on the vine for many, many years until the JCF picked up the copyright in 2005. The book was finally republished by the Foundation at the New World Library in March of 2013. Well, at the time I was enormously busy with politics and business—which I still am—and couldn’t find the time to jump back into Finnegan’s Wake through the Skelton Key. But standing here at the end of 2014 looking into a very, very difficult 2015 the time is now to capture Campbell’s classic wonder about the very elusive Wake before it goes out of print once again. So for Christmas this year I gave myself the book and the time to read it so that I could use the expanded intellectual muscle to deal with an ominous set of obstacles lined up to defend complacency with raised swords and curses from another world.

It is one thing to struggle through Finnegan’s Wake it’s another to seek out its meanings line by line—which is what Campbell was the first to do not long after the first printing in 1939. James Joyce spent nearly twenty years writing the Wake—exclusively. It was a work of obsession to say the least and is a revolutionary masterpiece that more or less killed the author with exhaustion. But thank God he did the work, and even more so, thankfully Joseph Campbell was the first to attempt to unlock its secrets.

My personal obsession with the Wake is that it taps into the ancient mythology of the Hill of Tara in Meath Ireland—the ancient high seat of the Ardri, the High Kings of Erin. The Hill itself is an item of archaeological concern as it is said to have ties to the Lost Tribes of Israel and the ancient Ark of the Covenant. The thoughts of some are that the Tribe then took the Ark to America and settled into the Midwest to establish the mound building cultures found there. It is also thought that among these lost tribes were the Biblical Nephillim whose gigantic stature has been found in the mounds of Ohio, Indiana, and the entire Mississippi Valley. This certainly lends credence to the possibility of how the mound building cultures in Ohio had such advanced mathematics and science. The Hill of Tara is a massive mound structure along the lines of those in Newark, Ohio so there is a connection to the two styles—and intentions.

Joyce essentially wrote Finnegan’s Wake to recreate the illegal Dark Tongue for the Teamhur Feis which took place on the Hill of Tara which had been made illegal after the victory and Christian conquest there by Saint Patrick. So obviously, there is much, much more to the Finnegan’s Wake than just an unintelligible book meant to frustrate readers. It is a coded connection to the illegal language of Dark Tongue. Finnegan’s Wake holds a key literally to understanding the long, deep past of humanity which was deliberately erased by Christian crusaders during 433 AD directly leading into the Dark Ages of Europe.

As if all that wasn’t enough, the main character in my novel The Symposium of Justice and all the subsequent stories coming out starting in 2015 involving the trails and tribulations of Fletcher Finnegan is a direct tip of the hat—literally—to the giant leader from the Teamhur Feis rituals which took place at the Hill of Tara. Fletcher Finnegan for me is the resurrection of that giant who steps into the world of mankind and carries it beyond the limits of the tavern owner H.C.E.

Understandably, many books have been written after Joseph Campbell’s Skeleton Key. But for me, his work is the best because he was the first and many after him were able to take his work and extrapolate further—and deeper than he was able to do with just a few years of puzzling through Joyce’s bizarre work just prior to World War II. When the topic is the resurrection of an ancient language connected to the Druids—made illegal by Christian orthodoxy that wanted Ireland to unite behind English rule—under careful regulation by the church—Joyce wrote in code to preserve an aspect of human life that has long since descended into the recesses of morality. And to truly understand who we are, and where we really come from—the truth is locked up in works of art like those of Joyce. Campbell was the first to offer a key. So for Christmas this year—I finally put my hands on the book so that I can use what I find there to solve the many riddles coming quick and under ominous intent. Like an encroaching army it takes more than muscle to defeat the swarms’ amassing to keep history erased and protect their grip on revision. It takes great intellect and the best way to give intellect a boost is with the mysterious work of Finnegan’s Wake. For me, my Finnegan—Fletcher Finnegan is what begins again after the sentence “A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and the Environs.”

In Finnegan’s Wake it begins with the end of the last sentence of the book, the one described in the previous paragraph. All the events that occur between the beginning and end of that sentence which folds over on itself by the end is reflective of all humanity which is always beginning again after perpetual death. It is in this immortality that the eye must focus—and the keys to most everything reside. And it is in that realm that Fletcher Finnegan lives. And to all those who I’m about to piss off in a grand and epic way—you have it coming for being content to sit in the pub of H.C.E. and sip at the contents of mortality when in all reality you are but the dreams of a giant.

Rich Hoffman

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Erasing History: Glenn Beck’s vision of sheer terror

I had a nice talk with Doc Thompson the other day about some really cool things that are on the horizon—which ironically corresponded to some of the really good work that Glenn Beck has been doing. Beck on December 18th 2014 did a very dystopian video playing himself as a man 40 years older thinking back on this time and the events of our day. His message corresponded perfectly with the contents of the discussion Doc and I had just hours earlier. In a lot of ways the reason I write this blog every day, and produce the other creative content that I do is that I know we are entering a new age where collectivism will be the new open mantra and it is my responsibility as an individual to speak out against it. The revisionists are already hard at work steering the world in the direction Beck alluded to in his video just as they did with the Christopher Columbus voyage—declaring that Europe had discovered America—even though that was very far from the truth.

I have watched and learned over the years how diabolical the church aligned with politics can be in destroying history. In order to maintain the theory that the North American Indian was “native” to the New World and that Columbus discovered them the government has virtually destroyed those nomadic people so to remove the evidence of their very lives, and destroyed numerous archaeological sites that proved human beings had advanced cultures in America thousands of years before Christopher Columbus ever thought of sailing across the Atlantic. In America there were of course Vikings who moved as deep into the country as Oklahoma and Minnesota. There were also Chinese who apparently mated with a giant species of man possibly from the lost tribes of Israel. There were Aztecs and Mayans who traveled up the Mississippi to exchange goods with Cahokia and other large population centers with advanced knowledge of astronomy and mythology. And likely there were advanced cultures in America before any of those groups came to be—well before Europe was even a land of kingdoms. But to maintain the illusion that Europe had discovered America—much evidence had been destroyed on purpose.

So Beck’s video drama is not far off the mark. Revisionist history is hard at work in the present trying to erase events only decades old—let alone centuries so that an order centered around collectivism can rise to power. And if that assault is not met with aggression, Beck’s apocalypse will come true. So I write my postings, my books, and do whatever I can to preserve the history that I have witnessed personally through a colorful life full of experience. I have first hand witnessed the world before the revisionists put their hands on fate—so I’m dedicated to that preservation.

 

The history erasing is mostly happening by the public school system followed closely by the media. The most current evidence of historic revision is the Cuban issue of Obama reopening ties with the southern communist country. In my lifetime I watched the Cold War struggles between America and Cuba and have watched how during the Obama presidency that slowly the anger toward communism has abated with full support of the media culture to watch the revision of a former enemy to a friendly southern neighbor occur virtually overnight. Within a few years the dark days of the Cold War will be wiped away.

 

Ironically the best way to study revisionist techniques comes from the attempted passage of local school levy issues where public relations professionals spin reality often and hide crimes to gain tax increases by public vote. They will cheat any way possible to acquire their funds. The same basic Alinsky methods have been used by the Obama White House to cover their many scandals. Once that game is understood it is easy to see how history is being erased right before our eyes as fast as it is created.

Beck’s apocalyptic vision is quite realistic if taken at the value of true observation. Those who might call it conspiratorial or paranoid are the type of people erasing history presently. And this cannot be allowed to occur. So in a lot of ways I have dedicated my life to the preservation, and resurrection of the proper history before it is gone forever—wiped clean by the revisionists trying to hide their tracks. And that was the content of the talk Doc and I had. 2015 should be a very interesting year.

Rich Hoffman

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Communist Cuba Open for Business: Obama’s master plan

Book your trip to communist Cuba now; America’s unofficial communist president has just declared an end to the half century stalemate between capitalism and communism by surrendering to the later. Barack Obama showed what kind of secret deals he’s capable of as he arranged between the United Nations, the Pope, and Cuba a lifting of the sanctions against the oppressed island to the south of Florida to provide that communist country an infusion into their economy that will at least allow American tourism to flow money into the pockets of the Cuban people. What Obama gets out of the deal is that Americans will get a taste of communism polished up specifically for the influx of tourism to help expand the ideals stateside. Ultimately it’s about economically propping up Cuba in much the way that tourism helps Mexico so to disguise the terrible failures that socialism and communism have been to that country with American capitalism slowly weakened by inclusion into the international community watered down by Socialism International.

 

The Cuban deal is the opposite of OPEC’s maneuver where the oil-producing countries in agreement with the United Nations are lowering their prices to squeeze Russia out of the Ukraine—to take away the teeth of the aggressive president and former KGB member. The declining oil prices are meant to strangle Russia’s emerging oil markets and choke off their economy until Putin says uncle and plays nicely one again on the playground of the international community. At that time, oil prices will return to the previous levels so to force car companies and airline manufactures into more environmentally friendly innovations.

 

The Cuban model as Obama sees it will follow a similar path as communist China by allowing private investment to bring money into the country so that the communist nation can appear to be successful only by marriage with the capitalist America. Communist countries in such a marriage are like the parasitic spouse who simply lives off the money the other spouse makes—and does little to contribute to the relationship—like a trophy wife without the trophy. China likes western money because it makes them look like they have an expanding economy—but without capitalism in the world, there would be nobody to give them money leaving China to be an armpit in the global economy.

Cuba has not been forced to amend its oppressive ways—Obama has simply folded and given the communists everything they wanted. In the chess game of global politics which desires socialism to accompany a central power at the United Nations governing world affairs, Obama can further weaken America while propping up Cuban communism so that the ideals of collective endeavor can gain a further foothold among countries like China that are emerging markets of expanding economy.

Obama has simply shown the cards we always knew he held—but denied. Now in his last two years of office he is clearly the communist from the South Side of Chicago that he has been accused of. The only difference is that now it is unmistakable what his intentions have always been. It’s not the freedom of the Cuban people from oppression—it is the lowering of America into the grip of communism by allowing tourists to visit the country—buy its cigars and come back to the voting booths declaring—“its not so bad in Cuba.” But what they won’t see on the tours are the prisons of those prosecuted under the Castro brothers—and the oppression that has long stained that country with the taint of communism and all its ugly tenets.

Even though Obama brought the Pope into the deal to take the edge off the conservative right and their Catholic followers—the intent is clear. And again I can only say that I and several others told you so dear reader. But you didn’t listen.

Rich Hoffman

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The Liberalized Hollywood Bubble Has Burst: Sony Studio leaks prove it so

 I don’t think the worse thing that came out of the recent Sony movie studio controversy is leaks of oncoming projects and what they personally think of the talent working under their financial backing. The worst thing is that it has confirmed everything I have been saying for five years about the situation in Hollywood and where it’s going—which is downhill fast. There are some wonderful projects on the horizon like Star Wars, new Godzilla films, and comic book adaptations but Hollywood is facing a massive black hole for which it will not survive. Ten to fifteen years out from now, Hollywood will be a memory—evaporating into dust collapsing under its own weight. To begin to understand why listen to George Lucas explain it to Charlie Rose below. Then check the links after the video to see what types of things Sony had leaked and what it says in support of my next assertions.

http://defamer.gawker.com/sony-leak-studio-exec-calls-kevin-hart-a-greedy-whore-1669403407

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Sony-vows-to-survive-hackers-Christmas-gift/articleshow/45536120.cms

 

http://www.blastr.com/2014-12-14/sony-leaks-reveal-other-studios-plans-x-men-fantastic-four-aquaman

 

Whether it is the opinions of studio executives that Angelina Jolie is a spoiled brat, or that the new James Bond picture needs to have more twists and turns at the end one thing is clear—the studio execs at Sony are dreadfully out of touch with what audiences want and they mask that ignorance with haughty Hollywood statesmanship—which might sound wonderful around a dinner conversation but won’t deliver a billion dollar multi national box office film to theaters. And with the prevailing union wages attached to the entertainment industry coupled with the ability of independents to compete directly with technology–the business model of Hollywood just does not hold up much longer—so enjoy it while you still can.

Hollywood executives as George Lucas said are not creative people and have no business trying to manage creative endeavors. If they want to be the money men, then they should place their bets and shut up resuming their latté sipping at Santa Monica Pier.  But when they resort to calling their talent names and trying to inject their opinions into a franchise like James Bond which has been around forever—they are setting themselves up for extinction—which is exactly where it’s going.

 

Star Wars is not new. Jurassic Park is not new. The Avengers is not new, neither is Batman, Superman, Spiderman, or the Hulk. None of it is new—Hollywood is simply tapping into material already loved and created—just like James Bond to live for another business quarter until the expenditures finally exceed the investment. There were a lot of movies in 2014 that lost money, the total box office is down 4.7% from 2013 numbers and that trend will continue. It is likely that the Ridley Scott film Exodus will lose money over the Holiday 2014 season as the final Hobbit film will soak up what is remaining in ticket sales for the fiscal year. Exodus would have to have strong sales for the next three weeks to make back its domestic take and that just isn’t going to happen—especially since the early word in religious circles is that the movie is too secular for them as opposed to the numbers seen by The History Channel’s Bible. Again, neither the Bible movies nor the Hobbit films are new—they have been around for a long time—they are not original productions coming from Hollywood and that is a really dangerous thing to an industry that is so dependent on fiscal increases at the box office every single year forever. In this case, forever never comes and by the time Star Wars has run its course in 2020, as well as the Marvel movies—there is nothing left in the tank that can drive the kind of numbers needed to make movies these days.

It doesn’t help that the executives at companies like Sony are as clueless as a rock under a car tire about how to make a good movie—then are arrogant enough to actually put their opinions in an email. They should kiss the feet of Angelina Jolie, she is beautiful, smart, and knows how to speak to the media—which is a lot more than the executives bring to the table. She drives me crazy with her endorsement of the U.N. and Brad Pitt her husband the actor flirting with socialism as a government means to solving problems—but they are generally good people who make generally good movies routinely. They can at least tell a story.

 

So it really doesn’t matter what came out in the leaks from Sony because they are already a dying company. With people like that in their leadership—they are finished. Their new James Bond film sounds terrible as they have moved away from the confident swagger of Sean Connery into a sensitive and troubled “modern man.” I mean who wants to watch James Bond get tortured again and again—if he was such a superspy, he’d avoid those kinds of problems—but the writers are out of ideas and it shows.

So Hollywood is doomed—they just don’t know it yet. Only very rarely does a film like Interstellar come along and people like Christopher Nolan will have individual success at the box office for a number of years into the future, but as an industry, the movie business is set for its own reboot—and they will only have themselves to blame. They were warned—but they did not listen.

Rich Hoffman

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