Common Core at Lakota: Jaden Smith “School Is The Tool To Brainwash The Youth”

The reason I have been pointing out recently the excessive popularity centering on the war games from Fantasy Flight Games is that there is an obvious social shift that modern statists are not observing.  The amount of people who are rushing out to purchase new updates of the new Star Wars Miniatures game is quite astonishing.  The reason is that when I was a kid, it was very unpopular to be such a geek and openly play Star Wars games, or even Dungeons and Dragons.  That kind of activity came with a kind of social stigma that was negative.  If a young person didn’t play a sport, or hang out with a certain kind of popular personality type, they were on the out and thought of as social rejects.  But in 2013 that stigma is all but gone.  To get a sense of what I’m talking about watch the video below which was an annual address given by Fantasy Flight Games at the recent Gen Con in Indianapolis.  Pay particular attention to the 41 minute mark of the video and measure the crowd reaction.

I find that an important observation for the simple reason that within ten years there will be a dramatic shift in public sentiment toward the traditions of public education, especially the benefit of extra-curricular activities like football and cheerleading.  As the college bubble busts, millions of kids realizing they are not going to get a scholarship to a school that will only waste their time will not submit to the age-old scam of public education funding. When the youth of the current generation, the age of young people who are rushing out to purchase the latest Fantasy Flight Game offering, there will not be sympathetic ears to future levy requests and the type of tripe offered by the Lakota school system shown below attempting to sell the benefits of Common Core instruction to a gullible public.Common Core Curriculum 1


Common Core is a statist education system, and those who support it typically see big government solutions to family problems.  They envision the school stepping in to a family to save the child from a future their parents are not qualified to provide—at least as defined by the statist.  The pro and con selections above are clearly in favor of preserving the present education system—which a year or two ago might have upset me greatly.  But there is a trend forming that the supporters of Common Core and public education in general has not yet identified—the trend that can be seen in gaming circles where young people from age 15 to 30 are gathering to play games like Magic the Gathering, X-Wing, and War Hammer.  Those gamers are not raising families as their predecessors did many years ago, the types of people who attended the Cherokee Elementary meeting about Common Core shown in the above documents.  Those previous generations loved the social activity of public school, the bands, the cheerleading and the football.  The next generation doesn’t care so much, and it shows.  There’s nothing in a Friday night football game for them when it is far more exciting to play a war game with friends over pizza.Common Core Curriculum Page 1 of 2

When I was a kid, only remote pockets of people did these kinds of things, playing games and indulging in “anti-social” behavior which was the typical stereotypes of Dungeon and Dragon players.  Most everyone else craved to “be seen” at the football game parents and students alike.  In this way, the school was the center piece of a community, and the labor unions took advantage of the social addiction with high taxes for wages that were clearly inflated.  Increasingly, the demographic group who plays Fantasy Flight types of games and video games is changing the marketplace.  Speaking with these people increasingly with my experiences playing X-Wing there is a noticeable rebellion against school centered activity.  I do not see today’s X-Wing, and Magic players sitting in a future meeting of Common Core education and listening like mindless drones to the diatribes of big government school board types.  I see a rejection of state centered education in favor of alternatives.

Jaden Smith represents well this new emerging public school sentiment from the upcoming generation.  Jaden might be best known as the star of the remake of “The Karate Kid” and for his lifelong role as the son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, but the 15-year-old is also starring in his own online controversy after sounding off against America’s education system, calling school a brainwashing tool.  And guess what………….It should come as no surprise, but as a 45-year-old man, I agree with the young fellow.  He’s dead right.Common Core Curriculum Page 2 of 2

Jaden tweeted to his more than 4.5 million followers on Sept. 12, “School Is The Tool To Brainwash The Youth” and “If Newborn Babies Could Speak They Would Be The Most Intelligent Beings On Planet Earth.”

Jaden, 15, is considered Hollywood royalty, being a friend of Justin Bieber and dating a sister of the Kardashians, Kylie Jenner, but some people say he is setting a bad example with his comments.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2013/09/jaden-smith-finds-wisdom-in-everybody-dropping-out-of-school/

Jaden Smith’s opinion is rather typical of the gaming crowd—a crowd that is growing rapidly.  Again, when I was a kid, nobody spoke the way Smith did.  Nobody wanted to be considered a “social outcast.”  But increasingly, it is cool to be against statism, and to play table-top war games and World of Warcraft late into the night.  Those people once they become property owners of their own and get married are likely to plug their children into a computer and homeschool them so that they can save the expense of paying for fees at a public school for typical sports programs, and transportation costs.  The parents of tomorrow won’t be whisking their children off to soccer games to satisfy some silly social imposition of public opinion—they will be playing games with their kids at their dinner tables and staying home to save the money so they can buy more games from Fantasy Flight Games.

I bought a new B-Wing fighter over the weekend from the Wave 3 release of Star Wars: X-Wing.  The store owner told me that his shipment of 50 arrived on Thursday and were gone by Sunday.  I bought his last one. Ten years ago, I along with a handful of others would have been the only ones to make such a purchase.  Today, there are at least 50 in three days.  Ten years from now, it will be commonplace, and high school sports will be the rarity.  The social gains made in public school that were so important to previous generations are dying on the vine, and Common Core, with all the cheerleading by statists for it, is an education system that is currently on the life support of extraordinary high taxes paid by a sympathetic generation who still sees public schools as the center of communities.  But at Yattaquest in Mt. Healthy on a Friday night, or Gamestop any day of the week, an entirely new voting bloc is emerging, and they feel about public school the same as what Jaden Smith does.  When they grow up and have property and their own families, they won’t listen to the kind of Common Core presentations that Joan Powell and company performed at Lakota with the above documents.


Public education may win a victory here and there, but the nail is already in their coffin.  The youth of today will not support it in the future the way that other generations have because they have seen the scam firsthand.  The statists who advance the myth that public education and society in general are the pillars of a community are going to learn in the very near future the folly of their beliefs.  To see the future, visit a war game store on the weekend and study the type of people who are so passionate about those games.  Society may call them nerds, but they are smart, because their hobby demands they use their brains, and they see through the veil of statist education programs like Common Core—and they won’t bite on the bait thrown into the tax increase waters.  They won’t care if the statists call them names such as selfish, greedy, or anti-social.  Because all they will care about is having enough money to purchase a new pack of Magic the Gathering, or X-Wing Miniatures.  To them, the schools can rot away into oblivion and free the children who are imprisoned within their clutches of unthinking tyranny.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The “For Lakota” Cult: Levy supporters, voodoo priests, and South Pacific cannibals

For LakotaLike a voodoo priestess sprinkling blood from the cut off head of a chicken upon a sidewalk making shapes in tribute to the shadow gods, the Zombies of Lakota have come up with a new slogan for their 2013 tax increase campaign, “For Lakota.”  The zombies of that cult ridden school district in Southern Ohio would have voters believe that a sacrifice of higher taxes would be to the benefit of the community when in fact it is only “For Lakota.”  The zombies would have all believe that their campaign is for the kids of the school, but in reality it is only “For Lakota.”  The concept of sacrifice to the mysticism of superstition is the cornerstone of the levy zombie argument as logic is the victim of their offering.  The tax increases the Levy Zombies propose in the upcoming election are sacrifices by the community “For Lakota,” for teacher contracts, for political union control, for price-fixing, and for the pervert teachers who prey on the children who innocently attend the school.

As the yard signs in favor of tax increases pop up like zits on the face of an unfortunate teenager, the message of “For Lakota” has many meanings.  But the primary one is sacrifice.  Sacrifice to the gods of academia and their teacher’s union.  It is they who drive up the cost of education and require the sacrifice of the community to sustain their blood thirsty cult of thoughtless zombies.  It is “For Lakota” that the wealth of the community residing around the Lakota school district is tossed hoping through superstition that children will miraculously become smarter, more independent, and functional adults when the grim reality is that they are bred to be thoughtless hominids half dead to the world around them.

When signs displaying “For Lakota” pop up in a neighborhoods across Liberty Township and West Chester beware, a Lakota Levy Zombie resides there and will attempt to toss everything they can of value into the pit of fire the way South Pacific cannibal tribes tossed their virgin daughters to the fire gods residing in the lava pits of a volcano.  Among all these primates, the voodoo priest, the volcano cannibals, and the Lakota levy zombie, they all declare the need for sacrifice to satisfy their appetites for destruction.  In the case of Lakota it is the loss of fiscal value that they seek, not just the blood of a living being.  One type of parasite seeks the life energy of the human being; the other seeks the lifeblood of an economy.  But they both thrive off social sacrifice for the greater good—their good. No Lakota Levy When the signs stating “For Lakota” are seen remember that the displayer believes in this brand of sacrifice, and that their intellects are no different from the slack-jawed cannibal which haunts the remote islands of the South Pacific.  Only these sacrificial parasitic zombies of Lakota are worse because they look and smell like normal people, but they are far from it.  The best way to recognize their treachery is to look for yards where “For Lakota” is displayed.  Upon such places the Zombies of Lakota reside.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Wonderful HWK-290: Working with the Millennium Falcon to dominate X-Wing Minatures

For me the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars is a symbol of freedom.  It was the pirate vessel of the smuggler Han Solo and became the premier deterrent against tyranny in the plight against the evil Empire.    I love the ship in the fictional context for which it is presented.  When I ride the Star Tours Ride at the Disney Parks I always hope for the beginning shown below, where the Falcon is sitting in a hanger surrounded by Imperial troops before suddenly leaping off the deck to launch itself into a firefight in space before escaping.  There is no presidential address in human history which moves me more than seeing the Falcon sitting there at the opening of the Star Tours ride.  The video below does not capture the mood completely, only in reference.  On the actual ride, it is quite spectacular because visually it is captivating, but metaphorically, it is multi-dimensional—and important.  There is no level of sign stimuli more appealing, no sporting event more dramatic, and no political event more powerful to me than watching the Millennium Falcon in flight.

I became hooked on the new Star Wars game called X-Wing Miniatures because of the fantastic model they had made of the Millennium Falcon.  There has never been another more meticulous model of such a thing ever produced to my knowledge for the simple task of playing a game.  But that game has deep combinations of options that are much more dynamic and interesting than any game of chess known to intellectual circles.  The 3’X3’ game surface of a typical X-Wing game holds seemingly infinite strategies to use against an opponent which is refreshingly wonderful for strategy prone war gamers—such as myself.   It has been many years since I have loved something so much as I love Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures.

I look for reasons to play with the Millennium Falcon at every opportunity, but because it is such a powerful ship I have found that I can’t use it the way I want as I have been teaching players new to the game to play using simpler rules instead of my Falcon build which involves many complex options. I have been looking for a great support ship for my Falcon that points-out right at 65 points.  I shudder to consider spending so much on one ship in the game, but if my reason to play the game is to play the Millennium Falcon, then I owe it to the game to find a way to justify the experience.  Most 100 point games in X-Wing come out to three ships, sometimes four or five.  So tying up 65 points on my Falcon build is a steep price indeed.  That means the Falcon will be continuously outnumbered and will have to take a lot of abuse to survive—which is ironically the actual role it had in the Star Wars mythology.  Winning is not guaranteed under such conditions, but it’s the way I like to play the game.  It requires excellent piloting instead of attacking opponents with mass, which is usually the best strategy for everything.

The ship I found to support my Falcon is the HWK-290, which just came out on Wave 3 from Fantasy Flight Games.  Manufactured by the Corellian Engineering Corporation in the decades preceding the Battle of Naboo, the HWK-290 was a concentrated effort by talented shipwrights at breaking into a new market. Focusing on making the new design appeal to the wealthy of high society, the HWK-290 was an attempt at capturing business outside of its normal audiences.

Major marketing research was conducted on the demographic segment CEC sought to capitalize upon. As such, they designed the ship to appeal to entrepreneurs and wealthy merchants. One concern of the individuals questioned during the research phase was that the current designs of the time were often delayed at checkpoints and customs stations because they were armed; it was thought that the time it took goods to be delivered could possibly be reduced by removing the armaments of the ships. Additionally the majority of those interviewed said that the ideal ship would not only be fast but aesthetically pleasing as well, unlike most freighters, which are bulky in appearance.

The research provoked a design totally independent of the iconic YT-series freighters, which tended to be associated with the less savoury elements of society. The HWK-290 prototype had the appearance of a large bird of prey and when displayed at trade shows and conventions brought about many questions as to the availability of the ship. Designers also listened to initial feedback regarding the ship and made minor modifications to the interior until it was determined that the right balance of aesthetics and functionality were achieved. At that point, production began in earnest.

When the HWK-290 rolled off the production line, it was an unarmed, extremely fast, agile ship that could outmaneuver and outrun most fighters and had largest weight capacity for carrying cargo of any freighter up to 30 meters long. It also contained an impressive state of the art sensor array for a ship of its size and class, the purpose of which was to detect trouble before falling victim to it. Additionally, it was a lot more luxurious inside than normal freighters, boasting large passenger and sleeping areas, entertainment consoles and a cockpit that was designed with the comfort of the pilot and co-pilot in mind.

While only seeing relatively moderate success in contrast to that of the YT series, production of the HWK-290 was discontinued during the Clone Wars in favor of military production. Despite no longer being manufactured, the HWK-290 has found popularity in the inventories of smugglers and pirate groups, a far cry from the original clientele for whom it was initially designed.

http://www.swcombine.com/rules/?Light_Freighters&ID=158

I ordered the HWK-290 well in advance of its release date, and it shipped to me from American Hobby Supply in a box coming from Fantasy Flight Games.  As I was helping my daughters get set up for their big party over the weekend, knowing that at least one of my nephews from out-of-town was coming, I was hoping my HWK-290 would arrive in time for the party so I could fly it while teaching him about the game.  Sure enough the tracking information showed that my HWK-290 was coming and it arrived right on time on my front porch.    Receiving that package was one of the most thrilling things I have put my hands on in years.  That statement is not in reference to a lack of options in my life—quite contrary.  But in my life mythology is extremely important, and the X-Wing game is a perfect symbiotic relationship of hobby model building and strategy mixed with deep metaphorical mythology.  In that context the HWK-290 is the perfect complement to my Millennium Falcon and it was exciting to put my hands on it after thinking about it so much.

The reason I love that ship so much even though it is comparatively slow as opposed to the A-Wings and Tie Fighters is that both my Falcon and HWK-290 feature a 360 degree shooting radius.  The strategy I plan to use with these two ships is not for everyone as the key to winning with them will be in maneuvering strategy.  When the package arrived the day was a picture perfect sunny day in Southern Ohio, the sky was cloudless and the temperature was in the lower 70s.  It was a weekend day with little pressure other than the upcoming party at my kid’s house for my first grandson.  Opening the package from Fantasy Flight Games with the HWK-290 so carefully packaged within the box revealed the climax of such sentiments.  At that moment it was a perfect day in every respect.

Of course I played with it that night as I showed my nephew how the game worked.  It was challenging to fly, but I got used to it quickly and can see how it will play out in many future strategies to my liking.  But seeing the HWK-290 parked next to my Millennium Falcon brings back to my mind that wonderful opening on the Star Tours Ride at Hollywood Studios, where the Falcon begins in captivity, frees itself, nearly collides with a cruiser in space during an intense battle only to escape in a nick of time into the safety of hyperspace.    The HWK-290 and the Millennium Falcon go together well and I am excited for the many wonderful adventures that await those two during epic battles yet to be fought.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Communist Teachings At Lakota: Superintendent Mantia Protects Teacher Wages

The scouting report at Lakota regarding all things campaign related is that I am a narcissist that thrives in the spotlight and the way to win this next election is to diffuse me without engagement—so not to play into my strengths.  Lakota as a progressive institution find it appalling that any individual would see themselves as “bigger “than their socially centered school.  On the other hand, my scouting report on Lakota is that they are the narcissists as a collective organization who believes they are the center of the community, and that they are acting on behalf of what’s good.  The reality is that they are a cancerous leech that uses children to drive unionized government workers into inflated wages and have tied themselves over time to real estate values as a back-up to their child extortion racket.  As a progressive organization they were set up years ago to fulfill the communist infiltration of America after McCarthy overplayed his hand—and the insurgents were emboldened by the public support of their cause which followed.  Communism sought to infiltrate the public school system through the teacher unions and advance progressive goals, and there was never a finer example of this trait than the article by Superintendent Mantia in this week’s Today’s Pulse.

To know how ridiculously misleading and parasitic the Lakota school system intends to make itself upon the community which is its host it is important to read the quarter page public awareness column that the community newspaper gives to Lakota’s Superintendent each week.  This latest week, as much as their campaign strategy has been designed to diffuse my “narcissism” Mantia acknowledges that she is reading here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom frequently, because she addressed several of my recent points made upon these pages.  Her topic this week was a proposal to reduce fees in extracurricular activities so to increase student participation.  But first she felt she needed to set the record straight on the value of teachers who volunteer their time—“for a small fee of course”—to provide students with extracurricular activities.  She said, “Many, though not all of our extra-curriculars are guided by our teachers.  They earn a small amount of extra money for doing it, but the vast majority put in far more hours than they’re required to, because they love what they’re doing and know how much it means to kids.  Per-hour our coaches and advisors could make far more money working at any fast food restaurant.”  The most dangerous part of that statement is that Mantia is a quarter million dollar member of Lakota’s management team and they are preparing to engage the labor union in 2014 contract negotiations.  Mantia clearly is on the side of the teachers and the union based on just the statement she provided above—so anyone hoping that Lakota will put up a good fight against the union can wake up.  Mantia is a former teacher, and she is on the business side of teachers.  The management at Lakota is bought and paid for by the labor union and they are just “narcissistic” enough to believe that the residents of Lakota are stupid enough to supplement their scam with higher taxes.

Mantia goes on to say, “The two qualities we see young people develop so often in extra-curricular activities are leadership and teamwork.  They also learn the value of sacrifice and hard work, and often, other life lessons.  They may have to accept that they may not always be the star.  Sometimes they will have other roles to fill.”  She goes on for several more paragraphs with the same kind of progressive drivel for the next quarter page in the newspaper in that same fashion neglecting to report that the causes for the high fees imposed upon students and their families in the first place are due to her mismanagement.  She chose to raise sports fees to punish parents for voting down Lakota’s previous three levies, and not ask the teachers and other Lakota employees to take a 5% pay cut which was proposed by No Lakota Levy after the levy defeats.  Instead she advised the rest of Lakota’s management to raise sports fees to protect the teachers who work under her from unnecessary public scrutiny over their average salaries of 63K per year.  She chose protecting the highly paid public employees over the community health then, and now to appear as though she were doing the community a favor ahead of the fourth levy attempt, she is floating the idea of being “compassionate” so that she can earn votes for a levy allowing her to throw that money gained straight at her upcoming union contract—which she already blew the negotiations by revealing her pro-teacher position—which for those who know her was a foregone conclusion.  CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FINANCIAL FACTS ABOUT THE UPCOMING LEVY.

Mantia had the audacity to state that her teachers would make more money working at a fast food restaurant then they would be paid to stick around a few extra hours a day to teach kids during extra-curricular activities.  For those who aren’t so good at math, with an average salary of 63K per year, the teachers average approximately $30 dollars an hour, so teachers can make a lot of extra cash off their “extra-curricular sacrifices.”   But what’s worse in Mantia’s comments are the things she values from these experiences which come straight out of the progressive playbook, sacrifice, team-work and other “shared values.”

The statements about communist penetration of our public schools have been underway for many years, so long that it is doubtful that Mantia has the intellectual history to grapple with the issues.  She and her teachers are paid well to not pay attention to the “big picture” only to teach it.  She was raised into the system and knows of nothing else.  The attack against America was subtle, and occurred before her time.   She believes she is sticking up for her employees with her comments and support of another tax increase against the community.  But she is the one who’s narcissistic, and wrong.  My father-in-law was visiting over the weekend and told me the story of how on Friday he was called into a school district where he lives in Kentucky as a substitute—a very affluent district that is the home of many thoroughbred owners.  The demographics there are very similar to Lakota.  He was called in to teach as he has been a teacher for public schools for several decades, and now in his later years does it only as a substitute.  He holds several degrees, one of them a Master’s in geology.  He reported his anger to me upon seeing two of the topics given by an advanced English teacher to their class written on the chalk board, one on the merits of Marxism, the other on the merits of feminism.  Students had to pick one of those two topics to write about.  It wasn’t hidden with subtle dialogue the way that Lakota hides their progressive educations, because there isn’t a narcissistic Rich Hoffman in my father-in-law’s school district to call them out, so they recklessly placed their agenda up on the chalk board for all to see.  He was aghast at what his very affluent public school was teaching children and his obvious question—why wasn’t there a third topic about capitalism to choose from?  The answer was that public schools are not about American traditional values, they are about collapsing economies and advancing fairness for all—at the expense of productivity.  They are about higher taxes through schools as a way to redistribute income from one sector of the economy to another and they advance their agenda recklessly through the narcissism of the parents who support a large centralized institution that is simply a parasite upon the community.  Those parents believe that in exchange for their support of people like Superintendent Mantia, and the 63K per year teachers at Lakota, that their child will escape a life of mediocrity and become successful adults.  But what those parents discover too late is that the taxes raised are intended to be spent on teaching their children the merits of sacrifice—of sharing their wealth for the benefit of others.  What their children are learning, which was confirmed in the comments of Superintendent Mantia in the Sunday, September 15, 2013 edition of Today’s Pulse of Butler County, is that kids are learning to work hard for the sacrifice of others so that collective society can advance fulfilling the aims of communists many years ago.  These school officials will mislead, manipulate, and stoop to any low to advance the progressive platform.

The fight of our day is not in Syria, Russia, or even the Middle East, it is in our public schools where saboteurs are using our money stolen from property taxes to convert our children into socialists through an advanced communist plot hatched before Superintendent Mantia was even born.  She is paid to advance that plot and look not too closely at their intentions—which is driven by government for the service of government with the ultimate example of narcissism provided anywhere.  And it is our task to put an end to their scheme.  There is no hiding it now; they are out in the open with their intentions.   All that is required now is to admit that such sinister plots are at play and they intend to feed off the innocent minds of our children for a social goal that is not in their best interest.  As Mantia said in her article, sometimes kids need to “learn the value of sacrifice and hard work, and often, other life lessons.  They may have to accept that they may not always be the star.  Sometimes they will have other roles to fill.”  Those roles under communism are to work hard for the benefit of the greater good, a greater good that is determined by mother government for the benefit of itself and the employees who make it grow.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

A Morning In Liberty Township: Celebrating a backyard fantasy land of creativity and life yet to live

IMG_8055I usually wake up at 5 AM every morning to begin my day, and I am often alone with the early morning noises that accompany a sunrise.  I never tire of mornings.  There is something optimistic about every one of them that I find endlessly enduring.  Every start of a new day is a hope for something that was better than the day before.  However, over the weekend I awoke to find my wife still up, not yet having gone to bed, baking and preparing for a mammoth day of celebration that occurred at my oldest daughter’s home—a celebration of my youngest daughter’s first born son paying tribute to his first birthday.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THE DAY HE WAS BORN.   My daughters created for our first grandson a complete conversion of their Liberty Twp home into a story book themed party inviting both sides of the family to a mythological exercise that will lay the path for static patterns lasting a lifetime.  For the many birthdays that follow, my grandson will have this first one to launch him onto a lifelong quest of adventure, curiosity, and creativity.

In our family creativity is extremely important.  I raised my girls on the idea of creative enterprise even when the world no longer values such things because the benefits extend well into more remote aspects of individual lives.   As little girls my wife and I would allow them to convert the entire house into the concepts of their creative thoughts.  My girls had access to the entire basement to create anything they wished any time they desired.  If their creative enterprises took them into the late hours, we let them do it without restriction.  This followed a tradition my mom started with me, allowing me to do much the same, only on a smaller scale.  The belief was that the mind being active had value on a young person and that value would translate over into other aspects of their lives.  It was certainly true for me.  I did so much of it that many adults were deeply concerned when I arrived into my teenage years showing no desire for pop rock music, girls, or fashion of any kind.  I didn’t care about school, or the people I knew there because I was more content to live within the world of my own making, than in sharing my space with others.  The creativity that I had as a young person was the first foundation I had into self-reliance.  When some of those adults decided that I needed to grown up, and took away all that creativity, I gave them a string of violent years in protest which really never went away.IMG_7933

For my children I never restricted them in manners of creativity.  Over many years I have known many very affluent families in Indian Hill, Northern Kentucky, and other similar places where their wealth afforded them the luxury of eccentricities.  I have known entertainment types on both American coasts who make their livings off creativity, and host grand extravaganzas at great expense for their children and grandchildren.  But all such events and people fell short of what my daughters did for my grandson, for reasons that defy conventional logic.  As adults, and for the first time in their lives my wife and two children all shared equally in creative input as each are extremely gifted at different crafting skills, which was why my wife had baked, and cooked for a straight 30 hours without going to bed or resting.  She even forgot to eat all day Friday in preparation for our grandson’s birthday.  Her mind was in rapture with creative enterprise as the cake, and various other extravagant deserts she prepared had her mind working on overdrive.IMG_7713

My daughters meanwhile where busy at work transferring their Liberty Township home into a storybook setting of a living mythological significance.  Most everything cooked was done by either my wife or daughters, and every decoration was made or built by an immediate family member meaning my children or one of their husbands.  Nothing was store bought directly.  Everything was made by hand only for the event of my grandson’s first birthday.  There was no financial reward at the end of the endeavor, not a single bit of it was done with a fiscal concern.  The entire effort was performed for the solitary reason of launching the young fellow into a life filled with creativity unhindered by convention.

When I was a kid, my mother was a room mother at school hoping that it would engage me more in my classes which I found grotesquely boring.  I hated every moment of school, starting as early as kindergarten.  My teachers noticed my obvious athletic ability early on, but more than even that, they found I was very artistically inclined.  My art projects were always the features hanging up in class for all to see as my teachers hoped to use me to show what a good job they were doing, and hoped to inspire other students to do the same—which none of them could of course.  The reason is that I learned my creativity at home, from my mother who would do multiple craft projects all the time.  As a room mother for our holiday parties, she would do elaborate gifts to give all the kids in my class.  She did this until I was in the fourth grade and every kid wanted her for a mother.  Many of them acted like the little craft gifts she brought to school to give them were the best things they had ever received in their lives.  For some, it was.  Even some of those young kids who would grow up and become wealthy, driving Ferraris and indulging in the rewards of fiscal surplus never forgot the wonderful things that Mrs. Hoffman did for them during their grade school holiday parties.  The reason is that many of their parents were just beginning to accept the progressive dual income role that is now the standard today and they had no parents at home who did nice things for them—because the parents were too busy.

I made a point with my own children to make sure they at least had what I had—hopefully more.   I made it so that my wife was always home, and my children had unlimited creativity to indulge in to build their brains.  My children when they were little came home from school, and went straight into the basement where they built entire cities out of wood, cardboard, and putty.  This went on until they were essentially graduated from high school.   My wife extended the tradition my mom had started and provided for my children–an unlimited creative environment.  My wife, a creative bastion herself makes blankets, clothing, cakes, and exotic foods and is a limitless resource of creativity that mixes style and fashion perfectly.  When she was a teenage girl she was a model for the John Casablanca School of Modeling and had parents who had wonderfully high tastes.  She was set to become a fashion model in New York—until she met me.  That sense of style helped shape my kids from the raw creativity that I had, into a careful balance of fashion that my wife brought to the table.  The result has been the best of the two worlds.  The culmination of that experience was seen at the magnificent party my children put on for my grandson—and extended family.IMG_7793

The intention was not to impress anybody, not me, not the family, not their neighbors—nobody.  My children simply wanted to participate in the act of creation with the opportunity to provide for my grandson a life that holds all possibilities that the mind might possibly generate.  Many might think that the little boy will never remember the events—that such an extravaganza was a waste of time.  But they fail to understand that even though the brain does not consciously remember, it unconsciously writes information upon itself forming the static patterns of an individual’s life.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW STATIC PATTERNS.  This is why it is so important to put good things into a brain even during sleep so that good things come out of the mind.IMG_7708

Driving home the other day on my motorcycle a very expensive Harley Davidson pulled up alongside me with its radio blaring.   Normally motorcycle riders wave to one another, but this guy didn’t want to look at me.  He was a middle aged guy, bald, fat around the middle, and he had a mustache typical of cops and firefighters.  Sure enough by the stickers on the back of his motorcycle he displayed several showing that he belonged to a firefighter’s union.  He seemed to recognized me because of my heavily anti-union stance, especially among cops, firefighters, and teachers.  He was playing classic rock on his Harley radio very loud and truly thought he was cool.   I looked at him directly laughing hoping to engage him, but he refused to look my way.  He was an example of garbage in, garbage out.  Young people in their 20’s can put garbage into their minds and hide the results from the rest of the world because they are only a few years away from their childhoods—from the constant positive messages aimed at kids through toy commercials, and  popular entertainment.  But after abusing themselves from 18 to 30 with careless sex, terrible music, and chemical intoxicants such as marijuana and alcohol the effects begin to show by age 31 to 40.  By the time those individuals are 40 to 60 they look like beat up sacks of garbage that have been drug behind a truck for twenty years.  Their cell structures rebel against years of abuse and their small minds cannot give any other command to their bodies but to look like chaotic messes.  They are often fat, smelly, and look sickly.  This rider was a victim of many years of bad decisions and his music was an attempt to carry him back to the beginning of his life, to his morning years.  In his mind he hoped that a young 20-year-old girl who is at her own beginning might find him appealing.  But the young girls only see a ruined old man—fat, ugly, hairy in all the wrong places, and a follower of other such men because he’s so proud of his “union brotherhood.”  The girls laugh and snicker sending photo texts to their girlfriends making fun of the Harley rider as they pull up next to the guy at stop lights.IMG_7699

The reason my daughters put on such an elaborate party for my grandson was to give him the start of a life that carries him far away from the fate of people like the Harley rider.  It was to launch him into a lifelong quest of creativity that will take him further than any of us have been able to go thus far.  The extravagance was not to impress, but to repeal a society that does not value such things—which is why society is struggling with so many personal issues.   The party was intended to write upon the young boy’s static patterns a brain activity that carries him to new heights not yet known, for a life that has possibilities only experienced through boundless creativity.IMG_7692

I am proud of them and all their work.  They did what they did not for a single ounce of social gratitude, but for the unsaid mysteries that feed the human mind of a young child.  Birthdays are a celebration of life and in our family; life is meant to be lived not squandered.  It would be a failure if my grandson grew up and became like the unionized Harley rider, middle aged and still stuck mentally at the age of 15, and still looking for girls the same age.  The work my family did was to insure against that tragic scenario, to guarantee that our grandson will grow up to reach for the stars instead of another bottle of Jack Daniels and become just another adult porn addict.  My wife stayed up all day and night cooking and baking to make sure that her grandson can begin the second year of his life with the knowledge that life can be whatever you make it to be.  Learning to make life good starts by developing creativity at an early age. Creativity can be applied not just toward career goals but in every aspect of life from the time that a person wakes up in the morning until they journey off to sleep each night.IMG_7751

I love mornings because like my grandson’s life, they hold infinite possibilities for creative use toward goals only a human being can conger up.  I never tire of their infinite possibilities as the sun gradually grows brighter throughout the day.  I am proud of the party not only for my grandson’s life, but for the rest of my family, who contributed, from my mom who went against the grain when the rest of the world was going to their jobs to be the mom every kid in school wanted.  IMG_7751I gave that to my fashion model wife who gave even more of that creativity to my own kids.  While at Disney World over this past summer, my children hatched this birthday party by looking at the way Downtown Disney was decorated and decided to elaborate further into their own backyard for my grandson’s first birthday.  I am proud to have watched the creative arc occur over many decades culminating at this wonderful event, dedicated to a life lived, not squandered to faceless decay.  As my reference to the Harley rider shows distain, it is because in the morning of his life, he chose to waste it, and the cost of his waste is evident now, no matter how shiny the motorcycle, or loud the radio.  For my grandson, the first steps into his life will more than guarantee that his life will not be wasted as the day of his life lengthens and gets warmer, and busier muddled with complexity.  The intention of the party was so that when he arrives at bed at the end of the day he can rest his head knowing that he lived his day fully, and utilized every measure of what is offered to the mind that thinks creatively.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

What Is Meant by Having “Thin Skin”: Stealing value from those who have it

It has always come up, and for whatever reason lately, has come up more often than usual, the notion of having a “thin skin.”  The insinuation is that one should develop a “thick skin” and yield to insults of whatever kind for the purpose of collective opinion.  Most of the world functions on this premise; however I disagree with it vehemently.  I take name calling as a challenge to combat, otherwise it wouldn’t be attempted—for that is the real meaning behind the action.  Yet our modern American interpretation of name calling and subtle slander is to assimilate the individual into group oriented behavior—to do as the drill sergeant does and drive out individual ego from a task and replace it with group assimilation.  When the term “thin skin” is used, most of the time it is because the accuser wishes to impose upon another the destruction of individual ego so that they yield to collective enterprise.

When the issue of bullying is addressed in public schools, this is almost always the root cause.  Schools do not know what to do about bullying because they are institutions of compliance, and require the destruction of individual ego.  They generate bullying behavior by their very nature of existence.  So they hope to curb the most violent forms of bullying with rules which never work, because the desire of institutionalism craves more the compliance of ego destruction than the compliance of rules to serve the whims of individuals.  So as along as public schools exist in their current form, bullying will always occur.  There is nothing a teacher, an administrator, or a parent can do about the issue.

In the military, bullying is used heavily during basic training.   Personal insults are flung at individuals to strip them of their ego.  The military mind molder then replaces the stripped away ego with compliance to greater causes associated with sacrifice to the group.  Colleges do the same in their hazing rituals for the similar reasons.  This is why such large portions of functioning adults have duality issues in their lives—why so many of them feel individually unsatisfied, ethically, sexually, intellectually when they are alone and are driven like moths to fire at social circles of group assimilation in order to find personal comfort, which never fully comes.  They drink, get drunk, pop anti-depression medicine, or indulge themselves in some type of television prime time fiction, or fantasy sports selection to compensate their personal loss.  The human craving of such activity comes from the destruction of their individual egos—and usually at the young age of grade school.

The entire human race past the age of 15 years of age expects group yielding to some degree or another.  It has been pounded into our minds from a young age and the results are terribly obvious.  Personal depression is driven by the need to align the values of individual ego with the social imposition of group assimilation.  The desire to fulfill the empty goals of any group whether it be in a business enterprise where the underlings structure their lives around sucking up to their boss for the needs of the company rather than the drives of their individuality.  The boss should not be surprised when they discover that a parade of incompetents work for their company.  The boss hired individuals to fulfill certain tasks, yet those employees have built their lives around group pecking order, becoming obsessed with who is where on an organizational chart, believing falsely that the title one holds provides the merit of value for a job done—and those titles are given out by the boss—so sucking up might provide such merit.  Both parties miss what they are looking for in the relationship, the boss loses because they end up hiring incompetent staff members who bring nothing to an enterprise but bobble heads who nod in agreement not because they agree with the boss, but because they want the titles the boss is entitled to provide to those deemed worthy.  Because the boss often thinks the same way, they often give such titles to those who are most prone to assimilation to their organization—and failure ensues.

When I was young as is still the case, I did not accept this assimilation.  In sports I sabotaged my own career because I would not allow myself to be assimilated into the group.  I refused the snippy comments and personal insults from my coaches thinking they were making me better with violence earning me the nickname of “animal.”  The older I got, the worse it got until coaches stopped trying to involve me.  They wanted my athletic ability but I was just too much of a pain for the “team” they were trying to build.  In class, I didn’t accept it from teachers.  One example was an English teacher who was late every morning for home room class.  This went on for months. The entire class had to stand outside waiting for the teacher to arrive.  I felt as an individual that this was wrong, because it disrespected the individual rights of the other kids, and it made me very angry.  So one morning when this teacher arrived to class—late, they discovered that the lock to their classroom door was packed shut with chewing gum, so that a key would not unlock the door.  My message to the teacher was that if they wanted to ensure they could unlock their door in the morning, they better arrive early to protect it from sabotage.  It took half a day to get a locksmith to open the door, which I had packed with gum in full view of everyone.  Of course some of the students told the authorities on me as they were seeking favoritism from the teacher in a similar way that businessman kisses ass to work their way up the institutional ladder.  They want the authority figure to grant the titles not based on individual effort, but by degree of personal sacrifice to the organization as a whole.  I got into a lot of trouble, but it didn’t stop the behavior.  I went on with a group of friends to set off fireworks in the halls under student’s feet within the very next week, and had frequent fights with other students.  I sought to sabotage authority any way possible.  It wasn’t that I went out looking for trouble, but was simply protecting my individuality against group assimilation.

As an adult I am very happy, and healthy.  I’m in my middle years now, I take no medicine for depression, heart disease, or any other physical aliment.  And while many my age seem to rely on Viagra to maintain their bedroom stamina, I couldn’t imagine having such a stupid problem—and don’t need it.  I don’t drink, I don’t over eat, I don’t lose sleep at night over social issues, I could care less what my neighbors are doing so long as they don’t bother me.  And I could sit for entire weekends totally alone and not get enough “me” time.   I love myself, and I am happy I do.  The result is that I have much love to give my family because the value of “love” is generated by my ego—which is uniquely preserved.  Part of the preservation is in not tolerating attempts to assimilate my behavior to the whims of group compliance.

When it is said that such people have “thin skin” this is what the accusers hate, they wish to see a person who will yield their individuality to group goals instead of an individual pulling the group toward their goals.  When it is wondered by the masses what the invisible qualities of leadership are, the root is in the ability of individuals to get groups to follow them.  But leaders are not provided in this fashion by titles given by a boss.  Leaders have intact egos that can bend the will of broken intellects to their desires by sheer force—the force is in unifying conquered souls toward a goal the individual leader desires.   Really good leaders can do the same with individuals as well, and I am of this latter category.   Because of my background that is often dripped with blood I learned how to achieve leadership without destroying the individuality of the participants.  The spilt blood was worth the value, because the skill is unique in modern America, and it serves me well.  That value wasn’t given to me by anybody; it is something I gave myself by not allowing my ego to be stripped away by group assimilators at any point in my life.

The same rules hold today.  I don’t worry what people say behind my back, but if they engage me directly, they will get a fight—100% of the time.  It is a personal policy that I have for my life to protect it against the forces of group assimilation which I have determined is one of the most corrosive forces in the known universe.  At times when I have found myself at Walgreens to get a passport picture, or just to pick up some small grocery item I continue to be amazed at the long lines of people seeking doctor prescriptions for ailments that are mostly psychological.  Most of the morbidly obese, the headache prone, the depression driven, the faulty heart conditions of those seeking Walgreen prescriptions, and even the blue pill popping men who desire to keep a four-hour erection for 5 minutes of bedroom engagement with their wives are driven to their multiple forms of insanity because of their stripped away egos which they yielded to group compliance imposed upon them by name calling.  Of course my attitude has put me before many court judges who threatened years in jail if I did not become more compliant, but I always presented to them the perilous dilemma, which I covered in my novel Tail of the Dragon.   I was always basically a good person, with moral authority on my side.  The cost of putting my non compliant behavior into a locked up area is greater for them than against me, so they have elected not to do it.  In times when blood has been spilt and bodies were broken, it was cheaper for the statist system to yield to the individual, because the refusal to yield in a locked up environment means death and liability for the captors—and knowing that they were looking at a pure example of goodness, they elected not to impose that cost on themselves. Thus, the benefit of being an individual in a socially broken world full of followers who are lost if they don’t have a leader in their lives to issue out merit for unearned action.  Name calling is the first step into removing ego from individuals for the benefit of group assimilation.  The loss of ego destroys individuals and robs the gifts that personalities have to give to their families, their friends, their companies, but worst of all, themselves.  Such victims die a slow death beginning in their grade school years once they start yielding to authority instead of fighting to preserve themselves.

So I have a strict policy against assault, I don’t allow it, verbally, or physically.  It is not my duty to learn to take it for some mythical “greater good,” yielding to the needs of institutionalism.  The by-product is that I have unique gifts to offer, and those who know me best, understand how much it enriches their lives—and institutions.  But the benefits cannot be understood without the context of leadership and what makes someone a “natural leader” and what makes others just kiss-ass administrators as worthless as toilet paper—the tragedy of our current society is in their lack of ability to know the difference because they are functioning from the wrong motivations in their lives given to them by faulty educations at an early age.  It is for these reasons that I have a zero tolerance policy for personal insult, and why many refer to my behavior has being “thin skinned” as if it were my social duty to allow impositions from inferiors to loot my value to bolster their own deflated egos with the value of my personal worth.  The term, “thin skin” is just another name calling attempt to do for the egos what Viagra does for their genitals, and that is something I won’t allow—and never will.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

Obama Looks to Kickstarter to Fund World War III: The reason both political parties love war

Isn’t it cute that some groups are trying to raise money for President Obama’s World War III campaign?  Even though the below video is satirical, the humor is based on reality.  Obama is looking to start World War III and has proven to what extent statism has taken root in American government.  When the political left has turned against Obama and referred to him as a war monger, the extent of the statism in American, and all world governments should be terribly obvious.

For those who have the memory of a second hand on a clock that is perpetually fast, President Obama won his election based on his anti-war stance.  Many of the liberals standing with Obama now in his campaign against Syria were the same people who called former President Bush the same—a war monger—yet it is ironic how quit those same protesting voices have become now that it is a man of color in The White House who leads the progressive agenda in America from the political left.  The hypocrisy is grotesquely obvious.   That hypocrisy is captured wonderfully in the satirical video about the Kick Start campaign for President Obama’s World War III campaign.

Most of those who voted for President Obama, school levies, and virtually all tax increases, are just as stupid as the actors pretending to support Obama’s World War III campaign appear to be.  The typical Obama supporter does think it’s cool that Obama hangs out with a race baiting rapper and is social media savy.  Those are the criteria for voting for a politician so it is no wonder that the American republic is in danger.   They don’t care that Syria is a political smoke screen that serves the interest of the same powers which drove Bush to drive for perpetual war.  They only care that Obama knows Jay-Z.

The modern war of the statist government is not one of valor, or individual nobility where one man wonders whether or not they have the courage to take the life of another.  Few progressives wish to acknowledge that Teddy Roosevelt craved to attack San Juan Hill in Cuba not because he wanted to drive out the Spanish from the island closest to the continental United States, but to kill a man.  “The charge itself was great fun” Roosevelt declared, and “Oh, but we had a bully fight.” His actions during the battle earned a recommendation for the Congressional Medal of Honor but politics intervened and the request was denied. The rejection crushed Roosevelt. As though in consolation, the notoriety from the charge up San Juan Hill was instrumental in propelling him to the governorship of New York in 1899. The following year Roosevelt was selected to fill the Vice Presidential spot in President McKinley’s successful run for a second term. With McKinley’s assassination in September 1901, Roosevelt became President.  Roosevelt would spend his presidency stomping all over the American Constitution and would later lead America’s first Progressive Party, paving the way for Woodrow Wilson to become president as Progressives assimilated into the Democratic Party for the most part.  Roosevelt however had been a Republican, and many followed his lead.  Few who study history know the real reason Roosevelt wanted war; it wasn’t for national security, but to prove that he could kill a man, as he had hunted all the big game the world had seen—except a human being.  It was nothing more complicated than that—or moral.

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/roughriders.htm

No question Obama does feel sorry for the poor people who suffer under a tyrannical regime in Syria, as all right thinking people do.  But tyranny is not limited to Syria, and there are many terrible deeds occurring all over the world yet Obama does not rush to help those.   Perhaps he chose not to look into the slums of Brazil when traveling to Rio to see the horribly poor who live under South American socialism, or the sad underpinnings of the radical Islamic faith, which Obama has been shy to scorn for reasons that are not mysterious considering Obama’s childhood in Jakarta.  Obama says nothing of the multiple human rights violations taking place in China, or even gives casual care for the millions of aborted babies who have had life snuffed away from them before they were even born.  At least the people in Syria killed by either Rebels trying to pin the act on Syria’s ruthless dictator, or the Syrian government—had a chance to live.   Obama doesn’t care about such things for reasons that might otherwise be mysterious, if it wasn’t known that the president was just the latest spokesman for government statism that doesn’t care if the occupant of The White House is a Democrat or a Republican.  If they sit in the Oval Office, presidents are expected by statism to adhere to certain rules, and one of those rules is perpetual war to always cover up the deeds of the wicked, and strategies of sinister intentions.

Obama wants war because he is a bad manager and he needs a distraction.  He was put in office because of his lack of skill so that the architects of destruction could maneuver him witlessly into their schemes.    Obama in just five years went from an anti-war protestor to a war monger and it has not gone unnoticed.  But it’s not just because Obama changed his position—it is because he doesn’t really have roots that sink deeply into any belief which allows him to be steered by real war mongers who wish to remain anonymous—concealing their actions behind a progressive president who won the Nobel Peace Prize, and is beyond refute to the international media.  That is the harsh reality, that not even the sinister communist Obama is really in charge but is just a slut spokesman for progressivism the likes of Lady Gaga or Mily Cyrus.  Their role is to carry the flag of progressivism, and to shove through more statist policies upon the American Constitution, they need war to keep the wheels of power from losing their concealment as they pull all the political levers of known politics.

The satire of Obama’s World War III scenario is not far off the mark.  It is funny because it’s real.  It does not take much imagination to consider whether or not Obama and his supporters would stoop as low as the actors of the video have, because they have before.  Obama was elected by people just as stupid and ridiculous as the fictional actors pretending to raise money for Obama’s World War III effort.   Only the Obama Presidency wasn’t a joke—it was real, and the menace to America has become obvious.   So maybe the video isn’t so satirical after all.  Maybe it is rather a work of seriousness brought to fruition in an insane world.   In that case, World War III has already started, and the money is already spent.  Obama doesn’t need Kickstarter—because he has the American taxpayer.  Americans tend to vote for higher taxes in cases of patriotic war, but not when it comes to large statist social programs.   It is there that anyone interested in discovering why Obama craves war suddenly need look.   War increases tax revenue—and for a money grabbing statist like Obama, it’s all about raising taxes.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

What Fast Food Workers and Teachers Have in Common: Rich Hoffman and Matt Clark talk about it on WAAM Radio

Matt Clark had me on his WAAM radio show in Ann Arbor, Michigan to discuss the inflated wages fast-food workers have been demanding as unions are attempting to infect the food service industry with communist oriented mediocrity.  During our conversation we covered some of my personal stories and feelings about how value has been robbed from all fields of endeavor due to the subtle influence of communism through labor unions, and how that has lowered the performance level of productivity in America.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW MY THOUGHTS ON THIS MATTER IN GREATER DETAIL.  As our discussion evolved we discussed public school teachers and how they are like the ridiculous fast-food worker in thinking they are worth a lot more money than they really are just because of their collective-bargaining agreements.  Watch and listen to the interview for yourself:

What has been robbed from the fast food industry, the teaching profession, and every endeavor where unions’ public and private have taken root is the value of value.  Value has been stolen from the American worker through these collective bargaining agreements, the belief that just because the ignorant masses believe something, that they can assert a value to it.  Obviously, they can not.  When people like Matt and I show outrage at the behavior, it is because we see that it is value for an endeavor that has been lost in the process of teaching, building cars, or simply making hamburgers as mediocre workers inspired to achieve a “living wage” through collective enterprise no longer reach for the stars, dream of becoming more than they are, or constantly invent new and better ways of doing things because they are complacent.

American industry was the best in the world because it offered the prospect of profit, even at the lowest level job—as effort and value drove the market.  Through the typical progressive, through the unions, the government workers, and all forms of collectivism from the private union steward to the college fraternity, it is the concept of “fitting in” to a group that is destroying American ingenuity, and thus, destroying the American worker.  All participants in such processes understand the concept of collectivism and they sense there is something wrong with it, yet they continue to keep their mouths shut because they know they must do so to reap the benefits of group affiliation.  Groups do not like individuals who speak out, because there is comfort in silence, and under the communist like methods of the labor unions, there is pay through collective bargaining.

That mentality is attempting to migrate into the fast-food industry out of sheer desperation.  Like a cancerous leech, labor unions have destroyed American manufacturing, all government unions, and a good portion of the food distribution network.  They need fresh blood to keep their influence migrating off the used carcasses of their members, so they are targeting restaurants.  The cost is a loss of value from the industry that is there to some degree in individual pockets where exceptional workers can still make a difference in some fast food stores, and rise to the top to eventually run some of those establishments.  But the threat of a labor union moving in to build a nation of more complacent workers happy to make $15 an hour for doing a job that is only valued under $10 is a threat not only to cheap and easy food, but the value of capitalism that is implanted in every free-standing restaurant in America.

Once workers become unionized they are forever tainted by the effects of collectivism, and are more or less ruined for life.  The union employee is a typical individual that has been cannibalized for the greater good, and yielded all their hopes and dreams to the value of the worst of their group affiliation.   Unions are anti-America, anti-capitalism, and anti-productive.  They are no good for anybody.  But worse than anything they are looters of value as they not only rob individuals of their merit, but steal value from every task they are affiliated with.  And for that reason, they are agents of destruction upon a wasteland that was once known as the most productive country on the planet—now consumed with the parasite named “collective-bargaining.”

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Overworked Lakota Teacher: New levy talking points from the regime of public union monopolies

If it was ever wondered what the cost of public education monopolies are, read the following comment from an apparent Lakota teacher who came unglued the other day on the Channel 9 website for a story they did about the upcoming levy attempt.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  The teacher’s comments are shown below.  Before I dismantle this teacher’s claims to pain and suffering, read it for yourself.  The short of the issue is that this teacher can make the claims of hardship because they are working for a monopoly—they have no competition to judge against.  So they can claim any little thing as an unwarranted pain, because the unionized workforce of the teaching profession backed by the federal government is operating as an anti-trust.  Their demands, and pay rates are dictated by price-fixing, and their expectations are ridiculously high because of it.   Now read what a teacher from Lakota thinks is a hard day as they answer to a commenter named “Joe Jobs.”

Let me be succinct in case you can only hold one or two thoughts in your head at any one time. First, those “unions” are made up of teachers; teachers who spend their every day in the classroom with their students and then do the grueling “union” job after hours in many cases. Teachers choose their profession because they are dedicated to helping children be successful people and citizens of their communities. See, it benefits us all when our children succeed in life. Joe, take a “sick day” this week and visit any Lakota school. Sign in and tell the secretary you want to volunteer in a classroom for the day. Don’t forget to pack a small lunch; you won’t be going out and you won’t have much time to eat that lunch anyway. Better be sure to go to the bathroom before the students arrive, because once they do, your only “break” of the day will be after the students go home. Please dive right in; help that teacher manage classes filled with students who arrive with a myriad of abilities and challenges. Some don’t speak English yet. Others are living through family wars, losses of parents or jobs, some are latchkey and arrive at school before the sun is up and most people are not even dressed for work. Be sure you help the students understand how to edit their writing to make it clear. Then help the students understand the challenging new math curriculum that the state and the new “common core” dictates they must understand and succeed with. You’ll have to write for the student whose muscular disease no longer allows her to hold a pencil. You’ll need to always be aware of the time so that students get to the nurse for their insulin checks and their medications. The counselor will need to see some who desperately need his/her help. Several in your class will need to leave at their appointed time to go to the resource room where they’ll continue to work with their specialist who tailors their work to meet the individual needs of each of those students who struggle. Don’t forget to challenge those kids who fly through their work and crave more! Follow the students as they travel their day to each of their classes without their favorite subjects: art, music, and PE. They’ll get a lunch and small recess; you won’t. During your half hour lunch, I hope you can eat with one hand while you answer parent emails with the other, tutor that child that comes in needing help with their math facts, and of course, you’ll have a meeting 4 out of 5 days. When everyone is exhausted, and you finally send your students home, get your butt outside because you have carpool duty. See, Lakota lost most of their busing, so you’ll stand outside every afternoon while hundreds of cars line up to retrieve their children. Pay attention; make sure the right kid gets into their car quickly. The kids will be too busy talking with their friends to be paying attention, so you’ll have to. Finally, at 4:30, go to the bathroom, finally, and drag your butt into your car. Did you remember all those papers that must be assessed before the kids arrive tomorrow? Take them home. Forget watching TV or going out for a run or walk, you have work to do. This is your 60+ hour a week job, that you love, by the way, for 40+ weeks of the year. With an advanced degree and 20 years of experience, what is your salary? Seriously? Think again, JoeJobs. Support our children and their education. Teachers have been doing just that every day.less

I see no problem with arriving at work at 7:30 in the morning and not taking a break until 5 PM.  The teacher however does get a bit of a breather between class periods all through the day, so no matter how grueling this teacher attempts to portray their day; it is an obvious neurotic exaggeration.  A ten-hour work day is a piece of cake, and I have offered Lakota schools to take this teacher’s challenge and teach not just one of their classes, but four of them at the same time.  I made such a challenge to Lakota East’s Spark Magazine where Dean Hume is the head of that endeavor.  Of course they didn’t take me up on the offer, and our relationship is so deteriorated now that it is off the table.  But the gist is they know at Lakota that their claims of hardship are overblown in a big way, and their collective bargaining agreement expecting over $60K a year on average is too high.  Way too high—by about 10K per year.

Much of what the teacher complained about is driven by failures in progressive education, where teachers have attempted to take the place of traditional parents, infusing themselves to the lives of all children in intrusive ways.  They have desired to push traditional parents out-of-the-way and raise children into a statist education making students always dependent on others.  This has made the teacher’s job harder as parents have yielded to this intrusion seeking a taxpayer-funded babysitter while they build their careers for their own pursuits.  The teacher at Lakota made themselves advocates of a progressive education, and they are dealing with the results of a classroom full of dependents.  The failure is in the style of education.  If the teacher’s job is harder, it is because the progressive education children are receiving has made it so.  The task of putting a band-aid on the failure by throwing money at education through permanent tax increases is a stupid idea.

If there were competitive options, that teacher would be happy to have the problems they are complaining about now.  The only reason they feel obliged to complain in this case is because there is no competition to their profession other than a few remote private schools, or the occasional home-schooled family.  Therefore, the severity of the workday expressed by this teacher is measured against the unrealistic expectations of employment created by a government monopoly at Lakota.  Only in such monopolies could employees behave as badly as some of those teachers at Lakota who have been involved in sex scandals, and gotten away with the crime, and still make the claims of hardship similar to what was made in the above statements.  The reason is that they are anti-trust employees justifying their impositions on the communities that employ them with parades of complaints that are driven by their own incompetency.

For further proof of this mentality, here is a letter to me from a pro tax supporter I received just the other day.

Rich,

I disagree with your goal of $45K average salaries for teachers.  But the public will ultimately decide that.  If that goal is reached, it will be up to the teachers to work at a $45K pace and not the pace they are currently working..  Your comment that “teachers at Lakota are making too much money for doing too little” is the point of the levy results.  Why would anyone devote so much time toward a job which the community deems as being not worth it?  Why isn’t 8 hours of hard work each day enough time toward their jobs?

Mr. George says that the public wants to work with the teachers, but the union won’t let them.  Who does he think the union is?  It is that 2nd grade teacher that comes in to school 3 weeks early to set up her classroom and prepare for the year.  The union is the 5th grade teacher who postpones her bathroom break so her students are under constant supervision..  The union is the AP teacher who teachers college level material using a high school schedule with high school materials and support.  When parents go to open house and conferences, that is when they should voice their displeasure with the union because that is who they are directly talking to.

Once again I call on the labor force of the schools to determine the next round of cuts if the levy fails and those cuts should be in the time devoted to the job at hand.  Make gone the 50-60 hours work weeks.  The public, by voting no, is saying they can’t afford to type of service.

William Schmidt

Isn’t it amazing how similar those comments are to each other?  It is the new union talking points for the elections of 2013.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The HWK-290: Preparing for war, gaming way into the night, and the start of revolutions

I have a running fantasy that someday the government will show up on my doorstep with tyrannical intentions and shred off the pretext of decency for open warfare.  At that time I will be free to do what I do best and have loved since my feet could carry me upward, and that is to fight—fight for independence, fight for respect, fight for the human race—fight for anything—but fight.  Now when I say fight, I don’t mean “serving” for some greater cause made up by a statist government.  I mean fighting where my strategy and effort destroy an opponent no matter how great the numbers or odds of victory, the worse, the more attractive.  So the fantasy of a large statist government having the audacity to believe that they will win my submission with force is an attractive one to me.

I do not make a good soldier material, or a sports player who simply does what somebody else dictates.  That is not the kind of fighting that I’m good at.  In sports I never wanted to be a player, only the coach or the owner of a franchise, never some meat head player who was simply a field soldier.  In the military, I never wanted to be a soldier, only a commander.  But the way the human race is set up, they expect people to run through some kind of social initiation period where they start on the bottom and work their way up.  However, by the time that such people find themselves in charge, they have been beaten down into submission and lose the ability to “think” uniquely.  So I avoid all structured war games like the plague, and always have.  When I play at war whether it is politics, business, or physical submission of one group over another, I require being in charge otherwise I’m just not interested.  If people shut up and listen, they find that they benefit greatly by doing what I tell them.  I don’t get out of such arrangements anything from the participates—any level of camaraderie, any back slapping from social respect—any feeling of “fitting in” to the structure of human existence.  I simply enjoy winning in games of conflict.

One of the greatest aspects of being human is that we are thinking creatures and find many ways to entertain ourselves.  Of the many things invented to entertain the human race, war games for me have always been the thing that I most enjoy.  When I was a kid I ran into tabletop war gaming from a military history class I took where famous Revolutionary War battles could be re-enacted.  As an adult my wife introduced me to similar games such as the Star Wars: Assault on Hoth which we played nearly every night during the first couple years of our marriage.  When I started having kids I played a lot of video games with them—all of which were about war, fighting, and combat.  I never approached the games as an escape from reality, but as the only way I could do the types of things I enjoyed doing without destroying the fabric of the world around me.  Then of course there was the Wiz Kids Pirate Constructible Strategy Game that I have discussed in great detail here before, which my family spent a good five solid years playing together.

As fate would have it, one of my son-in-laws is a serious table top gamer.  He plays games I never had the patience for like Magic the Gathering relentlessly and will play any board game that has ever been invented.  He simply loves games.  He along with my nephews over the past summer introduced me to the Dungeons and Dragons like game, Hero Quest which I enjoyed greatly But I have since discovered something much, much cooler—Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures by Fantasy Flight Games.   This game has all the things I enjoy and have only found possible since LucasArts produced the old video game X-Wing, which was a combat flight simulator that I often spent entire nights playing.  As video games became better and moved online, Star Wars: Galaxies had Jump to Hyperspace, which was the latest evolution of the old X-Wing game, but it has since left the scene since Star Wars: The Old Republic arrived.  There was a void in my heart that was there in the years between the exit of Jump to Hyperspace and the creation of Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures that wasn’t filled by anything else.  Now that I have discovered X-Wing Miniatures, it has been like revisiting my favorite games of the past with new updated spins which should be expected with evolution, and I have been soaking up.  I have enjoyed myself more since the discovery of X-Wing Miniatures than I can remember consistently in decades.  I have been buying up ships for the game like crazy and getting very serious about it.

Both of my son-in-laws have also been getting into the game, so over the weekend we went to Yattaquest in Mt. Healthy to purchase a mat for our X-Wing Miniatures game as the playing surface is supposed to be a 3’X3’ area and we wanted something nice.  So we went to Yattaquest and saw that the place was absolutely rocking with activity as they had a game night where the back room was filled with players.  I was stunned how many other people were playing these games for the same reasons that I do, and I was shocked by how many different games were on the shelf at Yattaquest.  There was an entire section for Warhammer—it was simply amazing.

  I picked up my game mat and the last two ships they had for X-Wing Miniatures, a couple of A-Wings.

http://www.yottaquest.com/

Then all my kids along with my wife went to Sci-Fi Cincinnati over in Northgate Mall and found two Y-Wing Fighters and a Tie Fighter Advanced, which are both extremely rare.  I bought them up knowing that they were selling for over $50 dollars a piece on the internet because of their rarity.  I felt I had just uncovered a gold nugget—a rare treasure and it made my entire weekend.

http://www.sci-fi-city.com/cincinnati.htm

We arrived home late after the mall had closed and began playing X-Wing as a family with the game ending at around 3 AM.  We then played most of the next day and I can report that it is some of the most fun I have had in years.  It has many of the elements that I personally enjoy more than anything, it’s about miniature detail models, strategy, technology, large concepts, and it has a creativity level that is limited only by the player—which is very attractive to me. After our very successful weekend of playing X-Wing Miniatures, I treated myself to a rare privilege; I pre-ordered a ship that I am hungry to get as a compliment to my Millennium Falcon builds, the new HWK-290.   In a 100-point game, the HWK-290 will provide for me the perfect support for my aggressive style of game play and I am very happy to see it come available as it does not technically ship to the general public until September 11th.  Fantasy Flight Games pre-released HWK-290s during Gen Con in Indianapolis, but until then and since nobody has put their hands on them.

The ship is a sentimental favorite for me; it’s from the video game called Dark Forces which my daughters used to play with me.  So it meant more than just a game piece for X-Wing Miniatures to make the purchase, I am just ecstatic that it will be coming to me.  It is a unique item that I can’t wait to put my hands on, and it feels good to have something which drums up so much happiness.  Yes, there are a lot of very bad things going on in the world, and I have written about many of them here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom.  But the new game X-Wing Miniatures has given me new juice where few things prior provided.  I simply love the game for what it does.  But more than anything it is allowing me to build a squad that has the Millennium Falcon as a tactical option with the HWK-290.

I don’t socialize much, but it was nice to see so many people with similar interests at Yattaquest.  The place was huge and very busy as business was good.  I’m obviously not alone in my love of combat because most of those games were themed around conflict resolution.  As I stood in the center of Yattaquest I had the sense that if the first American Revolution started in pubs around New England, then the second and third will be in places like Yattaquest.  The game players were simply enjoying some escapist fun while not compromising their minds in the process.  Those people are not compliant statists of the type who built the trouble of LBJ’s Great Society.  They are rebels, commanders, and tacticians that nobody else takes serious as they have fallen through the cracks of the establishment only to become the next sleeping giants awakened during the next great crises.  But never before that I can recall did so many people flock to games like Warhammer, Magic the Gathering, and X-Wing Miniatures as they do now.  I attempted with all my resources to find Y-Wing fighters but could not, because they were sold out everywhere I looked, even on Ebay and other online outlets.  I found them by chance at Sci-Fi Cincinnati and quickly bought them up.  They weren’t sold out because the company didn’t make enough of them—quite the contrary—they were sold out because the demand is that high.  I find that extremely encouraging.

I might have to wait for my fantasy of a statist government gone mad showing up on my door step to declare war against me and my family.  Obama can’t even make a decision against Syria, so I’m not worried about progressives making a visible move against the American people who would cost them terribly—because such things at least require courage, which they lack.  But until then, I love that there are games like X-Wing Miniatures that I can play with my family late into the night and all the next day.  War gaming is a good substitute for the real thing and I love being a member of the human race because it invents such things.  But one thing that is a running theme among these gamers is that submission is not an option.  They enjoy war gaming because players contemplate resistance and wish to play out scenarios that bring about such results.  The exchange is peaceful so long as participants have an outlet.  But heaven forbid that places like Yattaquest didn’t exist.  These are not the games of our grandparents, these are the direct response to large-scale statism, and the minds drawn to them are not compliant.

I’ve bought cars, homes, taken exotic vacations and raised families.  I’ve been successful, won many real battles and have enjoyed my life immensely in many capacities.  But let me just state that when I purchased the HWK-290 for $14.95 a chill of delight went up my spine that I can’t get from anything else in this world…………….and the reason is beyond the comprehension of the average statist politician.  Only people who play such games understand.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!