The reason I provide so many comparison articles about the influence of Star Wars on our modern society is because it is unique in the history of the world. As much as many would assume that it was just a series of movies made years ago and will fade away in popularity in the years to come are grossly mistaken. Star Wars in the future will have more influence on philosophy, science, art, history, politics, religion and virtually every aspect of culture than ANY other influence from the 20th Century. If books like the Communist Manifesto had the ability to change the world with massive collectivism and wealth redistribution sentiments, Star Wars will dwarf that small little book in its ability to reach the hearts and minds of virtually every corner of the globe. This was never truer than the present age where a new company in Poland has invented a holographic projection system that will revolutionize all forms of communication in the next decade. It is the new hot thing and will soon make iPads and iPhones look clunky and archaic. It is very difficult to understand how many astronauts, how many NASA scientists, how many bio tech engineers, physicist, and computer programmers journeyed to those fields because of Star Wars. But it is quickly becoming apparent in vehicle design, political trends, and social patterns where their influence has come from. As of this writing the first Star Wars film came out 37 years ago, and now that the kids from that age are in their 40s–the impact of their imaginations stirred in those stories has become obvious. This has never been truer than the new company called Leia Display Systems created because the Polish entrepreneurs wanted to recreate the holographic message Princess Leia gave to Obi Wan Kenobi in the first film A New Hope. With that basic premise in mind they worked out the problems of implementation while at European night clubs and the rest is………….the future.
The new way of advertising
Small screen – infinite possibilities
Screen dimensions are 65cm x 65cm. Very thin projection surface (about 6mm) makes possible to project hi definition pictures. Now the only border is YOUR imagination!
Perfect for promotion, premieres, introductions and any applications when you want to draw attention and astonish your guests.
The whole new experience
Clear image on giant screen
3m x 2,5m screen is a perfect solution for event marketing, stage, fashion shows, trade shows etc. You can put your hand through it or walk through it and the screen goes back to its previous form immediately. Interactive kit allows translating it into a giant multi-touch screen or other solution based on people movement.
Leia Display System
Technology for tomorrow
LDS are the devices that allows to display images in mid-air. This unique technology makes possible to walk through the image, touch it or interact with it. Streams of bearly visible fog becomes an image carier and their laminar structure allows to display hi resolution contents. Our patented way to produce laminar airflow for very long distance from the output makes Leia Display the most steady midair screen on the market.
When the 1989 film Back to the Future II came out showing Hill Valley in the far away year of 2015, there were holographic images everywhere advertising products and communicating ideas. Well, it’s now 2014, and with the Leia Display System our society is nearly on target for these kind of video interaction services. The units seen above should be available to the mass population in approximately five years from now, but without question they will begin to show up at trade shows within the next few years. This upcoming technology is so powerful that it will change how everything is done by way of communication. Suddenly public venues such as sports stadiums, night clubs, shopping complexes, even movie theaters will utilize these powerful devices to bring graphic images from the two-dimensional world to the 3D world.
Just ten years ago such cutting edge entrepreneurs would grudgingly admit that they got their ideas from a movie like Star Wars. But in this day and age where one of the most popular television shows is Big Bang Theory where geeks are the new “jocks” of society, it is now cool to make such announcements. These guys after all named a cutting edge company that will revolutionize communication after Princess Leia. So what we are talking about is a whole new way of looking at virtually everything that centers around human activity inspired by the limitless world created by a film series that has only become more popular as time has moved on—not less.
Just this past weekend the popular discovery show Myth Busters did a special on Star Wars and the cast had obvious fun with the topic with open—outright geeky joy. The important thing to conclude from these activities is the way that science fact is being driven by science fiction—where an idea is communicated through a story and the minds of society seek to manifest that idea into reality. With Star Wars this has already been a powerful force in our culture but it’s not one from the past only, but will continue well into the future. In the case of Leia Display Systems the televisions and telephones of tomorrow will be directly influenced by a fantasy science fiction film series which will catapult to even more popularity now that Disney is the force behind the movement. Without question these Leia Display Systems will find their way into the Disney Parks.
For me personally this new invention of Leia Display Systems means that I can have a Dejarik table within my lifetime. Dejarik is the chess game of the Star Wars universe. Dejarik was a popular game which withstood the test of time better than nearly any other game in that fictional galaxy. It originated as a Jedi game, though as it became much more widespread over time, many beings became unaware of its origins.
Dejarik was played on a hologame table, which comprised a hologram generator within a table-sized cylindrical base, with a black-and-white checkerboard pattern on the top surface. When active, holomonsters – full-color, three-dimensional hologram playing pieces measuring between 5-30 cm tall – would be projected on the board. The pieces all resembled creatures, real and mythic, from throughout the galaxy, including the Mantellian Savrip, Grimtaash the Molator, Ghhhk, Houjix, Ng’ok, Kintan strider, K’lor’slug, and the M’onnok. These pieces, when moved by the player, actually acted out the moves as if really specimens of their species. If the pieces were not used for a certain amount of time or the game was abandoned by both players, they would simulate boredom.
It is only a matter of time before this game played only in the fantastic world of Star Wars will be played in homes the way Chess is played today. It will be just one aspect of a future shaped by Star Wars influence. It is important to understand why and how these influences do the work of molding society—and is why I’m so interested in Star Wars. On one hand education institutions have thought that they were shaping society with a huge influence of government pulling the strings—but in reality Star Wars as a work of art has had a momentous impact that is just now being realized. Much of the future technical innovation coming our way as a species will find the origin of their ideas in a darkened theater where Star Wars planted the seed.
One of those first very obvious seeds is the new holographic system by Leia Display Systems. The future is here and it’s relatively on schedule. In the past, many from the previous generation kept these kinds of technical innovations from being proposed to secure their own archaic ideas concocted from usually impure motivations. Colliding with the compactness of modern computing power and a generation raised on Star Wars, exciting new inventions are about to explode upon the marketplace. It was only about 7 years ago when I was seeking out the kind of compact cameras that were the size of a pin head for use in spy techniques. Such things cost $300 to $1000 dollars at The Spy Store back then. Now they are in the front and back of a paper-thin iPad for virtually no cost. Star Wars is specifically a creation of American cinema, but its reach is world-wide. In the case of Leia Display Systems, they are a European company. Star Wars is popular in virtually every country in the world and has touched minds in those far-flung regions that only a functionally healthy mythology can perform. And those benefits are just now beginning to come to us in the form of political discourse, technology, and philosophy that is unique to this period of time in history. The fledgling bud from a deeply planted seed that will soon grow into a new way of thinking where once before only dark, archaic thoughts once prevailed has arrived with the very exciting new developments at Leia Display Systems.
Over the weekend I saw what I think is one of the most effective commercial campaigns I have ever seen while watching some of the NFL playoff games. Old Spice aired its 60 second “Momsong” which was absolutely hilarious not just in a quirky way reminiscent of Monte Python humor or a Pee Wee’s Playhouse episode, but in a social metaphorical one. It actually brilliantly points to a central problem in modern “Western” society and dares an entire demographic to challenge the premise. That challenge will likely sell a lot of the Old Spice brand of deodorant, aftershave and soap. “Momsong” deals specifically with the pain that women experience watching the little boys they spent and sacrificed so much for—growing up, and having to hand away that care to another woman—a much younger woman. For most women, this is an epic crisis that they never fully get over and most will take that pain to their graves. It is the primary cause of overeating and mental disorders centering on female neurosis in that age bracket and is a major contributor to many modern social problems. The commercial had my wife and I laughing hard for a good part of the weekend and now several days later it is still funny. Have a look for yourself.
I think being a mom is the most important job in the world. There is nothing which more properly sets in motion the consciousness of a human being than the contributions of a mother. I don’t care if it is the CEO of a company, or the president of a nation—being a mom is the number one job in order of importance among all professions in the human race. There isn’t even a close second except perhaps fatherhood. However, I have watched more moms destroy their children right out of the gate because they held on too long to the lives of their little babies when they should have played a role in the launching of their lives. I say such a thing as I have walked two of my own children down the aisle of marriage—so I know something about this subject matter. Thinking back on my own youthful years where I was the gravity well that so many other rebellious young men grabbed on to so to escape their overbearing mothers, I deliberately provoked those moms into occasional melt downs to pay them back for what I saw them doing to my friends. One mother of a very close friend hated me so badly that she encouraged her son to hang out with known drug addicts and sexual perverts rather than Rich Hoffman who was symbolic of a virtual devil to their neurotic hearts. And this particular woman wasn’t the only one. In many homes all across Southern Ohio as there still is, was a virtual voodoo doll of “yours truly” made by mothers who saw me as the single greatest threat to their happiness because I encouraged their children to rebel away from the safety of their safe embrace and to leap boldly out into the danger of the world. I literally watched many moms behave not far off the mark of that Old Spice commercial—I watched more literal melt downs not much different from the mom who floated out of the couch at the end—across the floor and sorrowfully back into her seated position to conclude the commercial with a pathetic whimper. Typically it is another female that provokes this reaction from mothers—but in my case it was my personality who delivered these overly coddled young boys to women through my charisma, fast driving, and overly perilous lifestyle that made me public enemy number one in their book. And those emotions have lasted for decades, and nobody suffered more than my own mom who was very loving, very caring, and put a lot of effort into her thankless job. For that reason I rebelled harder than any room full of testosterone driven virulent males. The situation was so bad that literally every friend I had male and female behaved like the mothers in the Old Spice commercial to some extent or another. As over-the-top as that commercial appeared—I have seen firsthand the same behavior from moms of almost every person I grew up knowing.
My reasoning for provoking these poor mothers was not to torture them into mental breakdowns—which some of them actually submitted to. Even back then I had a very clear understanding of what I was doing and what my social role was in the greater society. As advanced as American culture appears technologically, we are very primitive psychologically and I knew of other cultures considered primitive that had very specific rituals designed to deal with this specific problem—the initiation into manhood. Girls do not have this problem as they become literal women the moment they develop breasts and begin having their menstrual cycle. Boys to men do not have this coming of age moment—a ritual which announces to them that they have arrived to manhood. Many cultures have circumcision rituals to mimic the menstrual cycle in women to allow young boys to have a psychological crisis which allows the mind to accept a new social role as a man. Other cultures have rituals where the women play a role of coddling the young boys until other men of a tribe dressed as monsters steal the boys from their mothers and take them away from their homes terrifying them into manhood. The message to the boys is that your mothers cannot save you, you must save yourself. The introduction of a crisis launches the boys into manhood and after the ritual the other men of the tribe treat the boy as an equal warrior.
In American culture—especially with the introduction of feminism there is no ritual for young boys. Young girls of course still have their menstrual cycles but boys are left to create their own manhood initiation and by default it is sexual experience which determines the men from the boys. Once a boy has sexual intercourse he can then proclaim to other males that he has arrived to manhood. It is this ritual that the Old Spice commercial is tapping in to. Mothers know that their little boys are attempting to break away from their loving embracing by “bagging and tagging” a young female who will then become the new female in his life—away from mother. Since the mother often these days does not have a loving relationship with her husband—a real male of her own sense feminism has taught her that she doesn’t need one—women have by default overly coddled their sons to fulfill their own maternal needs.
Women desire to love and be loved and in a healthy relationship with a husband—they can find that love which they desperately yearn for. Without that love, they become miserable specimens often prematurely becoming old, ugly, and bitter—they become the moms in the Old Spice commercial. Feminism has told women that they can substitute a man in their lives with a career—but they can’t. Women in the work place are still looking for love wherever they can find it, whether it be in an office stockroom, on top of a copying machine, or in a hotel lobby while traveling on the road with perfect strangers away from their wives. The career woman seeks such sexual conquests knowing they are stealing away men from their wives—their new mothers—and it touches a spot of joy lacking from their lives. But once the cloths go back on and the woman goes through a decade or two of these kinds of relationships they are emptier shells of people than the mother who cleaved desperately to her son out of fear of having something in her life to live for.
Old Spice is doing what I have done to young men and mothers for most of my life—daring moms not to be so narcotic, and young men to shake off their moms by buying such a rebellious product. I think the marketing is brilliant because it is tapping into a primal urge that is completely ignored in modern society—and is literally holding down our entire worldly culture. I never saw my rebellious actions as harmful to the mothers of my friends. I saw it as saving them. In some cases those women reconnected with their husbands after pouring their attention into their sons for over 15 years—ignoring the poor chaps—and out of anger against me—dusted off their relationships. Having a calculated crisis is much different from a crisis that happens without your control. I see the need for a ritual that delivers boys to men not just for their sake, but for the mothers who love them—for their own psychological preservation so that they can become productive grandparents and healthy contributors to society. I have seen many women carry grudges against the wives of their sons for decades because the moms never forgive the new women for how they wrecked their lives by tragically stealing away from them the object of their love—their sons.
The Old Spice commercial is brilliant in that they are even attempting to define this problem. When I first saw it I knew that somewhere at the Old Spice marketing department was a guy or a group people who understood this crises the way I did and it brought a smile to my face. The commercial will certainly help sales for Old Spice. But it will also bring to light a problem that is as old as time itself—the crisis of a mother and her sons and the need of all males to understand when, how, and why they must become men. Moms need to be a part of that process—not a hindrance and to that point—Old Spice has contributed not only a great commercial worthy of a Superbowl, but a work of art that speaks to a central problem in our very confused society.
The really hilarious thing about progressives is their duality nature—their living lie with every breath that they take because their actions defy their philosophic positions. Nothing more exacerbates that lie than the progressive excuses given for Barack Obama’s behavior with Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt snapping selfies of themselves at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service with obvious flirtations. That in itself didn’t surprise me, after all aren’t these confused progressive types the very people dressing in drag at gay bars, attending Fantasy Fest in Key West, or flying to Cancun to spend long weekends at the Temptations Resort. Obama as a progressive and defender of the LGBT community obviously endorses strange deviant sexual behavior and swinging is part of that culture. Obviously the Clintons are swingers—so it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Michelle and Barack Obama support such relationships.
But it quickly became clear that Michelle isn’t into that kind of thing because she was angry about the behavior of her husband—so angry that she made him switch seats with her—which I thought was the biggest part of the story. But the behavior was only picked up on by a few remote conservative outlets. Most everyone else saw that Michelle was upset and assumed that it was just a normal issue of a wife reigning in a flirtatious husband from sexual activity that would flourish without her edit. But what is more telling is the fact that Obama’s infatuation with women who look like Helle Thorning-Schmidt should be obvious. Most young men pick wives who are most like their mothers—it’s a natural reaction to the development of their psyches. Helle Thorning-Schmidt in her mannerisms, in her presentation of herself, and in her skin color more resembles Obama’s mother than Michelle does. Deep insecurities about Obama’s past seem to have come out which would threaten Michelle’s current life, and she felt she needed to interject herself for her own self-preservation. It is this that the American people need to know about the situation which really hasn’t been discussed properly. Obviously what is about to be reported here could only be confirmed by Michelle Obama—but since her family, and her supporters are well-known to denying facts, lying, and behaving in an underhanded manner, then good old-fashioned detective work will have to do. The Obama family won’t be able to dispute any of these things, because if they could—honestly—they would. But they can’t. Silence is the testimony of the guilty.
Michelle was, according to Bill Ayers himself, working with his wife the Weather Underground Terrorist Bernadine Dohrn at the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin a year ahead of Obama joining. The four got together for mutual benefit, the terrorists seeing in Obama a Trojan Horse into politics that could do what their bomb from the 70s couldn’t—destroy the evil imperial America from within. In 1995 Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn launched Obama’s political career from their living room once the socialist-oriented New Party member Alice Palmer announced that she wanted Obama as her successor in the state senate when she stepped down to run for Congress.
At this point in his life Obama had already had several white girlfriends—which as a young man from an interracial union, was his prerogative. Michelle would have to change that by becoming the mother in his life—rather than his lover. Obama, understanding that he needed that kind of balance in his life to achieve any level of success yielded to it knowingly—and put his white skinned girlfriends of the past well behind him without looking back.
When Genevieve Cook first met Barack Obama in the kitchen of a mutual friend’s New York flat in 1983, he was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a dark leather jacket. As the night wore on, they sat close together on an orange beanbag in the hall while Cook swigged Baileys Irish Cream straight from the bottle. They were amazed at how much they had in common: both were children of divorced parents, both had lived all over the world and had never felt truly at home anywhere. They exchanged phone numbers. Within days, he was cooking her dinner at his apartment. ‘Then we went and talked in his bedroom,’ Cook recalled. ‘And then I spent the night with him. ‘It all felt very inevitable.’ For Genevieve Cook — to whom admittedly the President alludes to in his memoirs — she wasn’t the first white girlfriend in his life, nor the last.
As a young student in the early Eighties at Occidental College, a small arts university in Los Angeles, Obama developed a serious crush on another student Alexandra McNear, who was co-editor of a college literary magazine which published two of Obama’s poems. She was a white woman and had a presence much like his anthropology loving mother.
But once Obama got serious about a political career and knowing he needed to appeal to the minority voters around Chicago and greater Illinois to do it, old flames like Genevieve Cook and Alexandra McNear wouldn’t be very acceptable to voters. And if Obama was ever going to get high up in political office as he and Ayers planned, he’d need a nice traditional wife – like Michelle Obama to “darken” him up a bit and get people to forget about his past, his mother and connections to the Communist Party through Frank Marshell Davis. Ayers knew Obama needed more of a Jessie Jackson type of progressive representation than the one he and his wife projected—and that was the ticket to possibly even The White House over a ten-year span. Imperial America would never see it coming. Jackson at the time was at the height of his power and was bringing companies to their knees with unfettered guilt from their unsubstantiated role in American slavery. America couldn’t resist the communist underpinnings of Barack Obama or they’d be called a racist, but Obama needed Michelle to complete the public relations package.
Likely, Michelle knew from the beginning that this was her role in the whole affair. Arranged marriages are not uncommon in the world and Obama wasn’t the worst option. He was a genuine person who really believed things, so she could make it work. But she’d have to keep him focused on the tasks at hand, and for the most part she has. Unlike the Clintons the Obamas are fairly sexually conservative for progressives. They are more about radical social reform than personal pleasure.
Fast forward nearly 20 years to Nelson Mandela’s memorial service where the Obamas found themselves seated next to a nearly mirror image of Barack’s mother, Helle Thorning-Schmidt—a woman from a very permissive Danish culture where sex scandals are not even reported. In nearby France they are common and the topic of gossip. But in Denmark a woman like Helle Thorning-Schmidt could have sex in the streets with a menagerie of baboons and nobody would even snap a picture. Helle is the type of Prime Minster who in 2012 spotted Sex in the City actress Sarah Jessica Parker on the street and rushed up to introduce herself like a Catholic school girl just let out of the seminary attending her first boy band concert. It wasn’t that Helle was more attractive than Barack’s mother, it was that she is as liberated—something that Michelle cannot compete with in the bedroom or anywhere. So when Michelle saw her husband getting too loose with himself she pulled him together like she always does, and switched seats to make sure that the two world leaders didn’t get any ideas. Helle not really meaning any harm in relation to her culture took the hint and pulled herself together as did Barack—who dutifully listened to his wife and swapped seats leaning forward in his chair and spending much of the rest of the time defensively crossing his arms protecting himself from the embarrassment of the world’s eyes which were now upon him. It’s not like he intended anything malicious—it’s just the whole mother/son—husband/wife aspect of being in a relationship with an unnatural psychological mate—one that is foreign to him from his childhood years.
As much as Obama has had issues over where he’s born, how he grew up, who he knew in college, and where he actually attended, the real issues with the guy are the missing pieces from his past that he can never reconcile. Being a dutiful socialist, Obama believes that the greater good of society is more important than his individual happiness, so he will sacrifice that so that he can have the power to redistribute the wealth of the world for the better, a plan hatched years ago under not so much cloak and dagger tactics in Bill Ayers’ living room. But his yearnings are more for the kind of attention that a woman like Helle can provide not due to skin color—which is only reference, but mannerisms—a white woman willing to throw off the prejudice of society and sleep with a black man, and to pose nude for one of his only real father figures in Frank Marshell Davis. The open shirt blowing carelessly in the wind from such a woman holds more lustful euphemisms than a stack of pornography books because it reminds him of his dead mother and the incomplete relationship he had with her as a single parent hopping hopefully all her life from man to man.
Michelle didn’t make her husband switch seats because the eyes of the world was watching and might think something ill of the flirtations. That may have been the reason she presented it to Barack and Helle. She primarily did it to protect her marriage, and all that she had invested into a life which would fulfill the terrorist yearnings of her mentor Bernadine Dohrn who with her husband actually bombed the Pentagon on May 19, 1972. Ayers said of that day, “Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them. Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home; kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.” This was Michelle’s friend who worked at her law firm feeding into her hatred of America which was revealed in her Princeton college thesis illuminating her deep feelings of a race-obsessed worldview and incredible resistance to being “further integrated into a white cultural and social structure that would only allow her to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant.” Dohrn directed her anger and with her husband taught the Obamas how they beat the rap during the Pentagon bombing—how to deny, deny, lie, deny, and lie again for the greater good—for the fight for social justice.
Michelle listened to Bernadine Dohrn and bedded her future husband. She became a first lady in the process and everything and more that was planned in that Bill Ayers living room. The promises by his wife, her co-worker came true. They now can spend millions of dollars of looted money from those oppressors she wrote about in her Princeton thesis and laugh about it as they carve up the nation in a way that their terrorist mentors never dreamed possible. And as far as she has come, and the sacrifices she made along the way, nothing is going to get in the way—especially a pretty Danish Prime Minister and the flirtations of her husband with a mother figure that if she were not in his life would likely be the object of his obsession.
So she sat between them…………………………….
Read more of this terrorist past from a CBS report in 2008—before Obama was elected, and before Glenn Beck exposed many of these things later on. The following report came before CBS became concerned that they’d be blacklisted in the press room if they didn’t play ball with a tyrannical regime lead by the Obamas and their crusade to remake America into the image of some Chicago terrorists and a mother who slept her way around the world.
What happens when you pay people who generally aren’t worth it over $100,000 a year–they operate a union against productivity which is what Boeing narrowly escaped over the weekend with a 51 to 49 vote among approximately 31,000 eligible members. Making that kind of money the machinist union at Boeing is the economy of Puget Sound and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers is basically their own local government. Because of their belief in the evils of capitalism they nearly drove Boeing as a company to move their new 777X design build with its composite wing out of Washington to be manufactured in right-to-work states where the union could not wreck the development of the new state-of-the-art plane. Most of the members of the machinist union do not have the technical aptitude to build a new airplane from scratch let alone sell it to markets all over the world. Yet they are paid six figures because of the union infiltration into a successful American company and they buy their boats, their new trucks, and live their relatively opulent lives blissfully unaware of what makes a company work—or profitable. Their union preaches against the evils of profit—yet they demand more and more money with every contract. For this latest contract the members received a $10,000 signing bonus and money towards a 401K plan. Still, the margin of victory for Boeing was razor-thin. Many of the 49% of the union members who voted against the contract believe the company should continue to fund their pensions. They don’t want the 401K plan. They obviously don’t fathom that Boeing cannot continue to throw money at them in such a rate for indefinite periods of time—because they are disconnected from where the money comes from. For them, the planes arrive on the shop floor, they assemble them, and they leave. They have little to do with the design process, the sales and marketing, or the delivery. They simply show up, do some work, and leave with their six figure incomes.
To get an idea of how much money the machinist make at Boeing understand that there are 11 different pay grades depending on job categories. At Boeing the lowest level machinist are considered Grade 1 which stars at about $25,000 per year and tops out around $66,000 per year. The top-level union workers before the contract made more than $90,000 in base pay annually not counting shift differentials, overtime or incentive payments. After the contract those workers will top out over six figures in base salary. Clearly this was the difference in the vote. Many of the aging workforce at Boeing saw the writing on the wall. In the Puget Sound/Evertt area where the Boeing plants reside the median household income is about $47,000 a year. If Boeing packed up and left—which they clearly intended to do so to avoid more work stoppages in the future from their striking labor force, there is no place else capable of paying employees such large sums of money for performing jobs that are only worth half that value.
Boeing has been throwing money at the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers for decades and like gambling addicts they have spent it as fast as it has come in and continued to reach their hand out for more, and more, and more until the company finally looked to move from the Evertt area. The decisions Boeing were faced with reminded me of my hometown where I once worked at Cincinnati Milicron—which is now a parking lot. A vast complex that resembled a small city is now completely gone down in Oakley just north of Cincinnati along I-71. All the skill that was employed there is gone. Just to the west of that location was the old Norwood General Motors plant which built the old Camero. It’s now gone—destroyed by the parasitic unions. Just to the north up in Hamilton, is the old Fisher Body plant for General Motors where my grandfather worked. Long after his death my grandmother continued to give me comic book money from the retirement benefits he received as well as thousands of other retired GM workers all over the country who were not productively working any longer. General Motors was trying to cover all those legacy costs with newer workers in a pyramid scheme concocted by the unions which did not add up. To this day the old Fisher Body building is still standing, but the company is gone. It’s primarily just warehouse space now. Over to the east in Middletown was a town—once a thriving place flourishing off the old Armco Steel Plant. The wage structure got out of control there and most of the orders for business went away. It is now AK Steel but employs far fewer people than it once did and is only a distant shadow of its former self. The result is that the economy of Middletown crashed and burned. Homes that should be $70,000 in value are $20,000, and the area is riddled with crime. As people lost their jobs they became addicted to welfare and the quality of life for the once prosperous town dried up like a gold mine in the Old West once the precious element ran out. That is the eventual future of Puget Sound. This latest contract only buys a little more time. It will cost Boeing a lot of money to move their operation to another state, so it was cheaper to throw $10,000 bonus checks at workers so they could pay off their new Ford F350s or plan to buy a new boat. Boeing has a hot new plane to build and sell, so they took the lesser of the two evils. But why should they be in such a situation and why would the Department of Labor side with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and not Boeing in forcing the job provider to bleed itself dry to appease a bunch of out-of-touch workers bred under a communist labor union system designed to destroy American business.
In the videos above the guys at PJ Media hosted by Bill Whittle explore this topic, and it is worth watching. The guest Dr. Burt Folsom told the story of the so-called Robber Barrons at the start of the progressive era, (just prior to the Twentieth Century) when many of the American labor unions were just getting started. Because of their hatred of capitalism the government went after the Robber Barrons, such as the rail road industry and went on anti-trust witch hunts and essentially through federal force took away the power of American business and handed it over to the workers of manufacturing. The manipulative power that the Robber Barrons formally had were now in possession of the solidarity effort of the labor unions—which turned out to be just as corrupt, and destructive. The biggest difference is that the labor unions didn’t create jobs, as the Robber Barrons did. With two evils being equal—that of human greed—the companies created by Robber Barrons through capitalism at least provided good jobs whereas the labor unions provided nothing but labor. Labor can be found elsewhere if it becomes too problematic, but Robber Barrons who create jobs—cannot. They are few and rare as gold whereas general labor who can push a button on a CNC controller and read micrometers into the thousands of an inch are quite common.
The vote at Boeing over the weekend which upset many of the labor union members is the grudging realization that without Boeing in Everett, Washington, there is nothing that will replace their loss and politicians, union leaders and all their F350 driving members with their $10,000 bonus checks are at the mercy of those who create the jobs. 100 years of progressivism has come smashing against a cold reality that should have been obvious from the start. Eventually the union demands will outpace Boeing’s ability, or willingness to pay off the workers with bonus checks and excessively high salary—and Boeing will move to a right-to-work state or possibly move their operation to another country where they can obtain stable labor without such outrageous expectations. But for now, with a narrow union vote, some of the members are beginning to see the writing on the wall and is appreciating Boeing not as a Robber Barron company that has been forced to become a heavily subsidized company of political entrepreneurialism, but for its roots as a Market Entrepreneur. It was the labor unions which pushed Boeing into a relationship with politics to protect itself from the thieving hands of an ungrateful workforce—and the rest has been downhill—except that Boeing still makes cool airplanes that sell very well—which is the only bright spot of an otherwise bleak future.
When National Education Association president Dennis van Roekel states that there “is no teacher pension crises” among his members, he is functioning from a level of denial common among left-winged nut-case progressives. The Ohio Education Association, (an affiliate of the NEA) with net assets of negative $11.5 million, and a $1.2 million deficit in 2011-12 paid only $8.2 million in pension costs. The reason that Roekel doesn’t believe this isn’t a crises is because he fully expects state governments to cover the gap—and to do that—taxes will have to be raised on residents. This is expected by the unions because of their government monopoly status over the education system where they can drive up costs to any level they wish then impose on tax payers their reckless burden without fear of losing that business—because under government law they have access to virtually every child in America. So from Roekel’s point of view—it’s not a crises—because he expects someone in government to wrestle the money away from the public for his members with manipulation or force.
Recently Roekel made a bit of a splash with the liberal progressive think tank The Center for American Progress when he proposed getting rid of the “outdated” “step-and-lane” system. This brought about some upturned pinky golf claps among politicians and ass-sniffing, brown-nosing education professionals for its “forward” thinking. Yet Roekel is only performing the traditional dog and pony union show where their monopoly power dictates progressive radicalism of a magnitude equivalent to domestic terrorism. His ultimate solution for everything is higher taxes to provide a product that liberalizes American youth with a not so disguised babysitting service as parents struggle to work two jobs to pay for everything. Read more about the ACP story at the link below:
The Education Intelligence Agency report recently looked at the unfunded liabilities of the NEA union to begin understanding the amount of trouble that is coming straight at Roekel’s government monopoly enterprise and illuminated how ridiculously foolish—and arrogant Roekel’s denial that there is no pension crises facing his members or the states that employee them really are. Roekel has been destructively misleading. The following is text from the Education Intelligence Agency website followed by the origin link.
14 state teachers unions have almost $700 million in unfunded liabilities
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The good folks at Bellwether Education Partners created a web site called TeacherPensions.org in order to focus some much-needed attention on the structure of the retirement system and its financial implications. The site features a range of opinions about teacher pensions, including that of National Education Association president Dennis Van Roekel, who says flatly: “There is no teacher pension crisis.”
Van Roekel defends the defined benefit system, and explains that a key principle of the system is “When actuarial liabilities exceed actuarial assets, the state and/or employer must make the necessary additional contributions to amortize the unfunded liability in no more than 30 years.”
That seems like a pretty simple solution, but if it were, perhaps Van Roekel’s own organization and its affiliates would not be experiencing their own mammoth shortfalls, due mostly to the pensions and retiree health care benefits they granted their own employees.
An Education Intelligence Agency analysis of 2011-12 Internal Revenue Service filings reveals 14 NEA state affiliates do not have the financial assets to match their liabilities and total almost $700 million in combined debt.
The ability of these affiliates to address their long-term debt by increasing pension contributions, as Van Roekel suggests, is compromised by their short-term debt. Nine of the 14 affiliates had deficits in 2011-12. In fact, the combined spending of all of NEA’s state affiliates exceeded their combined income by almost $24 million.
Even at the national level, NEA’s pension plan for its 2,600 employees and retirees was only 87.9 percent funded in 2012, down from 94.2 percent in 2010.
EIA has constructed a table that lists each of NEA’s state affiliates, its budget deficit or surplus for 2011-12 and its net assets, positive or negative, as of the end of the 2011-12 school year. For purposes of comparison, the table also lists the number of days each affiliate could operate solely on reserves based on its 2011-12 expenditures and net assets.
The 14 state affiliates with a negative net worth are:
* New York State United Teachers, with net assets of negative $302.8 million and a $24 million deficit in 2011-12. NYSUT contributed almost $30.8 million to its employee pension plan that year.
* Michigan Education Association, with net assets of negative $160.5 million, and a $4.8 million deficit in 2011-12. MEA contributed $14.1 million to its employee pension plan, and instituted a three-year, $50 annual assessment on its members for the express purpose of funding the staff pension.
* New Jersey Education Association, with net assets of negative $77.5 million. NJEA had a $13.2 million surplus in 2011-12, even after contributing $17.1 million to pension costs.
* Washington Education Association, with net assets of negative $35.1 million, and a $3.7 million deficit in 2011-12. WEA contributed $8.1 million to its employee pension plan.
* Massachusetts Teachers Association, with net assets of negative $26.7 million. MTA had a $7.8 million surplus in 2011-12 after contributing $4.1 million to its employee pension plan.
* Illinois Education Association, with net assets of negative $17.7 million, and a $17.9 million deficit in 2011-12. IEA paid $26.3 million to its employee pension plan. Despite its own mess, IEA is adamantly opposedto the Illinois state government’s efforts to address public employee pension debt.
* Indiana State Teachers Association, with net assets of negative $16.4 million, and a $4.5 million deficit in 2011-12. ISTA paid $4.1 million toward employee pensions.
* Iowa State Education Association, with net assets of negative $12.7 million, and a $4.3 million deficit in 2011-12. ISEA paid $2.2 million into its employee pension plan.
* Ohio Education Association, with net assets of negative $11.5 million, and a $1.2 million deficit in 2011-12. OEA paid $8.2 million in pension costs.
* Texas State Teachers Association, with net assets of negative $11.3 million, and a $243,000 deficit in 2011-12. TSTA contributed $1.4 million to its pension plan, and holds a $1.6 million quasi-endowment “to sustain the association for the long-term.”
* Pennsylvania State Education Association, with net assets of negative $8.3 million, though it did have a $9.2 million surplus in 2011-12, suggesting another similar year would put it in the black. It spent $7.3 million on pensions.
* Virginia Education Association, with net assets of negative $5.1 million, and a budget surplus of $1 million. VEA contributed almost $2.2 million to its employee pension plan.
* West Virginia Education Association, with net assets of negative $2.2 million, and a budget surplus of $132,000. It is unclear how much WVEA contributed to its employee pension plan in 2011-12, but its pension liabilities totaled $3.7 million.
* Georgia Association of Educators, with net assets of negative $1.8 million, and a $476,000 deficit in 2011-12. GAE paid $746,000 to its employee pension plan.
NEA’s largest affiliates are overrepresented on this list. This is problematic because the health of the large affiliates, particularly in collective bargaining states with agency fee provisions, enables NEA national to funnel crucial subsidies to its small affiliates. Many small affiliates could not sustain themselves at current levels without those funds.
As a union, NEA believes state governments should extract more revenues from taxpayers to sustain the defined benefit system of public employees. As an employer, NEA is aware of the pitfalls of extracting more dues money from members to sustain the much more generous defined benefit system of union employees.
It’s a race against time for NEA as it attempts to stave off public pension reform before it is swamped by its own private pension costs.
The good thing about these unfunded liabilities is that currently the NEA is trying to cover those costs with their union dues which means that they will have to increase those dues among their members. That probably won’t be very popular. This is also leaving little money for PAC funding which means less money for donations into progressive candidates. As a former math teacher it would be assumed that Roekel would know this—but he doesn’t. He’s preaching the same tired garbage which has made public education completely irrelevant over the last thirty years—really since the creation of the Department of Education in 1979 when education became centrally planned by the federal government. The only benefactors have been the unions—certainly not the students. Roekel’s concerns are primarily teacher recruitment and licensing of teachers as if this would stop the onslaught of his members who are trying to get into the pants of their students on an epic scale. Roekel is ignoring that psychological and specifically “progressive” problem as vigorously as he’s ignoring the pension system issues. But what would anybody expect from a former teacher who is now president of the largest labor union in America.
The bottom line is that Roekel’s perspective is shaped by the security that he has the power of the IRS at his back—as wind in his sails. He knows that his union can recklessly spend over budget—as they have for years because the mandate for states and their tax payers is to just cover the tab without thought or question because the lives of their children are held as extortion pieces for ransom. The NEA unfunded liabilities are just one aspect of a terrible web of failure coming from public education which is completely controlled by progressive labor unions. And that aspect alone should dictate why such organizations should be eradicated from the earth—forever.
There is nothing wrong with being a tough guy—in spite of the current progressive push to turn everyone into a vagina. Being a tough guy is expected by virtually all families. They want strong males to bring stability to their lives within the family unit—so tough guys have a serious role in American society. Families who don’t have tough guys in them have learned to rationalize that such people are not needed. But they are needed, however these days—they just aren’t very common. That qualifier is necessary before sharing the story below by Doug Hagmann which I received just prior to the New Year Holiday of 2013 and deals with the planned intentions of the Department of Homeland Security—a branch of government created under George Bush in direct reaction to the 911 terrorist attack.
Every morning I ride a motorcycle even when it’s raining or is 2 degrees Fahrenheit outside and the ground is covered with snow. I typically work at least 10 hours per day, sometimes as much as 18 hours and I’ve done that for over 25 years. I have been shot at, and seen a lot of blood spilled during conflict. Not my own—but other people—sometimes resulting in the loss of life. I have been in disputes with cops, judges, lawyers, and politicians from local trustees to city mayors so I know what it means to state that if the events described below come to pass, that I will turn toward piracy rather than maintaining my position as a legitimate capitalist. I have been personal friends with hit men, convicted criminals, and political outcasts—and understand fully the hard life of living in defiance to the established law. Yielding to statism is not in my cards—or my family. If there is government force, loss of life, and terror—it will not be my family which feels it. I will take what I need from the world one way or the other. Under a free market system, the government benefits from my productivity through taxation. If they destroy that, they will not benefit and I will have to turn toward piratical activity to maintain my lifestyle—and they won’t like that. If such a day arrives they will have a memory of Black Beard’s terror of England where the entire nation and the most powerful navy in the world could not stop the antics of Edward Teach on his Queen Ann’s Revenge—until he made the stupid mistake of getting caught on a sand bar off the coast of North Carolina. I won’t make those kinds of mistakes. History is meant to be learned from, and I have studied it—and because of that—the DHS and their employees of incompetence won’t have a chance. I know what it feels like to be wire tapped, spied on, followed, harassed, coerced and imposed upon to the limits of the law, so my statements are provided in that context. Even though the DHS may plan the activities described below—I have my own plans. Peace is kept so long as we share an understanding centered on the American Constitution and their desire to hide their real intentions behind it. But once those basic laws are openly violated and they no longer care about maintaining it’s legal premise—then I have my own strategy already planned.
I don’t believe in sitting around a table, or over the radio air waves crying about impending doom. I don’t honor any silly authority that Europe wishes to impose through financial institutions, or China fantasizes about through devalued currency. Americans should do what Americans do best and that is defy authority—and push every day for freedom. When the government comes to arrest you and show their teeth, they will learn they have walked to their own doom and the beginning of their educations can begin. But I feel I must share these intentions with you dear reader so that you can come to terms with how you will deal with the issue. If I had to put a finger on how the coming crises will manifest, it will likely come from the collapse of the health care markets as Obamacare takes full hold in 2014. Even more likely it won’t be a direct reaction, but a passive secondary one inspired by that legal imposition. When the idiots of government learn that they will have to impose fines upon Americans through taxation, and have to target the productive and hard-working the straw will break and open rebellion will occur. There aren’t enough jails to hold everyone, and the American economy cannot afford to hold such productive people in jail cells. I know this first hand. If there has been one thing that has kept me out of jail and serious trouble over the years, it hasn’t been my mouth, but my work ethic. I work too hard to be in jail.
Years ago before I was 18 I was in a work program for troubled juveniles found guilty of causing general mayhem and chaos throughout Butler County. Under court order I had to attend a community service program that was essentially jail for underage kids. I was there with people who killed other people, stole cars, raped old women and other terrible crimes in the 80s. The guards would load us onto buses to clean up trash around Huston Woods Lake and painting orange barrels in a fenced in prison ground warehouse heated by a single wood burning stove. I got in fights every single day I was in this program because I refused to yield to the other criminals. I also outworked them all by a ratio of about 5 to 1. I painted more barrels than all of them combined most days, and while picking up trash around Huston Woods I had to have the guards tell me to slow down because I walked so fast and picked up so much trash that the other slugs lingered too far behind. The guards admired my effort, just as bailiffs, clerk of courts and sometimes judges did. They didn’t like my rebellious nature, but I certainly wasn’t a drain on society—so they often let me go, knowing that they were better off having me working on their side than against them. One climatic day I got into a big fight with a very troubled guy who had killed his father just two weeks prior with a knife. The guards pulled me off with my knuckles cut up from the kid’s teeth and told us to settle our dispute with a race around the detention grounds. The guards told me that if I beat the kid to a distant telephone pole and back that I could go free and all my charges would be dropped. They told me they’d fix up my case with my probation officer. So we raced and I demolished the guy. I was back to the finish line before the other guy even got to the pole. He smoked cigarettes and started off even with me, but ran out of gas after about 30 yards because his lungs were starving for oxygen. I went free that day and of course there were notes put into my files which still exist to this day. Authority knows what to expect from me. They have tried and failed for a quarter of a century to break me in every way that the DHS below plans, and failed. So do not be terrified of the intentions of these idiots. Just be aware of their motives.
DHS insider gives final warning: By Doug Hagmann
Under the cover and amid the distraction of the Christmas bustle, I had my last “official” contact with a source inside the Department of Homeland Security known as “Rosebud” in my writings. My source is leaving his position, retiring along with numerous others choosing to leave this bureaucratic monstrosity.
For this contact, my source took unprecedented measures to be certain that our contact was far off the radar of prying government eyes and ears. I was stunned at the lengths he employed, and even found myself somewhat annoyed by the inconvenience that his cloak-and-dagger approach caused. It was necessary, according to my source, because all department heads under FEMA and DHS are under orders to identify anyone disclosing any information for termination and potential criminal prosecution.
“DHS is like a prison environment, complete with prison snitches,” he said, referring to the search for leaks and leakers. And the warden is obsessed. Ask anyone in DHS. No one trusts anyone else and whatever sources might be left are shutting up. The threats that have been made far exceed anything I’ve ever seen. Good people are afraid for their lives and the lives of their families. We’ve all been threatened. They see the writing on the wall and are leaving. It’s not a joke and not hype.”
The following is a narrative from my source, prefaced with the instructions to “take it or leave it,” and “disregard it at your own peril.” He added that it’s now up to each American to act on the information themselves or suffer the consequences. “I’ve resigned myself to the fact that most [Americans] will never be convinced of the reality that is taking place right in front of them.”
The plan explained
“According to every internal document I’ve seen and read, and from the few people I’ve spoken with who understand what’s going on, preparations have been finalized to respond to a crisis of unprecedented magnitude within the United States. The response will include the use of lethal force against U.S. citizens under the instructions of Barack Obama.” But why?
“‘It’s the economy, stupid,’” he began, paraphrasing a campaign slogan coined by James Carville for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. “Just as I disclosed in our first meeting, the crisis will be rooted in an economic collapse. I told you last year, at a time when gold and silver were setting record highs, one specific indicator that time is very short. It is the final ‘smack down’ of the metals, gold and silver, that will presage the orchestrated economic collapse that is being planned by the bankers of Wall Street. Everybody needs to understand that this is a deliberate collapse of the U.S. economy with the oversight of the White House and the full knowledge of the Justice Department. Everyone seems to be waiting for some big, history making event that will signal the start of the collapse. The fact is that the collapse has already started. It’s incremental, like a snowball rolling down a hill. It gets bigger and rolls faster. Well, this snowball is well on its way down the hill.”
“I don’t mean to sound repetitive, but I can’t stress this enough. Contrary to what you hear, we’re already in an economic collapse, except that most people haven’t a clue. The ‘big bang’ comes at the end, when people wake up one morning and can’t log in to their bank accounts, can’t use their ATM cards, and find out that their private pension funds and other assets have been confiscated,” he stated.
“I’ve seen documentation of multiple scenarios created outside of DHS. Different plans and back-up plans. Also, please understand that I deliberately used the word ‘created,’ as this is a completely manufactured event. In the end it won’t be presented that way, which is extremely important for everyone to understand. What is coming will be blamed on some unforeseen event out of everyone’s control, that few saw coming or thought would actually happen. Then, another event will take place concurrent with this event, or immediately after it, to confuse and compound an already explosive situation.” I asked for specifics.
“As I said, there are several scenarios and I don’t know them all. I know one calls for a cyber-attack by an external threat, which will then be compounded by something far removed from everyone’s own radar. But it’s all a ruse, or a pretext. The threat is from within,” he stated. “Before people can regain their footing, a second event will be triggered.” Again, I asked for specifics.
“I’ve seen one operational plan that refers to the federal government’s response to a significant terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Information at these levels is compartmentalized. I don’t have specifics, just plans for the response. The response will be controls and restrictions on travel, business, and every aspect of our lives, especially gun ownership and speech that incites people against the government. I guess some people would call it Martial Law, and they would not be incorrect. But understand that this will be a process deployed in stages. How quickly of a process remains to be seen.”
The mechanics explained
As I said, people continue to look for something big to happen first, followed by a militaristic response by the federal government against U.S. citizens. Based on what I’ve seen, I don’t believe it will happen this way, although there is one unthinkable exception. That exception would involve a ‘decapitation’ of our leadership, but I’ve seen nothing even remotely suggestive of that. But I’ve heard and even read articles where that is mentioned. Frankly, though, that’s always been a threat. I suppose that if the leadership is deemed useless, or becomes a liability to the larger agenda in some manner, it could happen. The precedent exists. Let’s pray that it’s not the case now.”
“I don’t think anyone except the initiated few know the precise series of events or the exact timing, just a general overview and an equally general time period. I think we’re in that period now, as DHS has their planned responses finalized. Also, the metals are important because it’s real money, not Ponzi fiat currency. The U.S. has no inventory of gold, so the prices are manipulated down to cause a sell-off of the physical assets. China is on a buying spree of gold, and other countries want their inventory back. The very people causing the prices to drop are the ones who are also buying the metals at fire sale prices. They will emerge extremely wealthy when the prices rise after the U.S. currency becomes wallpaper. A little research will identify who these people and organizations are.”
“I’d like to add a bit of perspective that might help explain the events as I described. Do you remember former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announcing that the Pentagon was unable to account for $2.3 trillion in the defense budget? That was on September 10, 2001, the day before the attacks of 9/11. Some suggest that 9/11 was orchestrated, in part to cover up the missing money, which is ludicrous. The result, however, was that suddenly the accounting issue took a back seat because of the attacks. The result will be the same. That’s a perfect example of the mechanics of what we are about to experience. It’s going to take years to sort out, and when it’s finally sorted out, the damage will have long been done.”
“Please note a few final things. The relationship that exists between DHS today and the executive branch is well beyond alarming. DHS and other organizations have become the private army of the Oval Office. The NSA, and I’ve got contacts there, is taking orders from the Oval Office. The IRS is under the virtual control of the Oval Office in a manner that would make Nixon cower. Even though all roads appear to lead to the Oval Office, they lead through the Oval Office. It’s not just Obama, but the men behind him, the people who put him there. The people who put him there are the ones who created him.” I asked who created him.
“First, ask yourself why there was such an all out effort to marginalize anyone talking about Obama’s eligibility in 2008. Even so-called conservatives pundits fell for the lie that such questions were nothing more than a diversion. They were following a specific drumbeat. That should tell every rational adult that he is a creation of the globalists who have no allegiance to any political party. He is the product of decades of planning, made for this very time in our history. He was selected to oversee the events I just disclosed. Who has that ability? He’s a product of our own intelligence agencies working with the globalists. He should be exhibit ‘A’ to illustrate the need to enforce the Logan Act. Need I say more?”
As often said by another of my sources, the U.S. is a captured operation. The lie is bigger than most people realize or are willing to confront. That is, until there is no other option. By then, it might be too late.
The reason I went free that day from the guards was because they realized that I didn’t belong in that environment—and the longer I was there, the less productive society was. As I write this, the NFL playoff games are going on, and no team would dare sit their star quarterback in favor of a lesser athlete. When you are a star, when you work hard, it is hard for statists to ignore that they live off your effort. If they take you out of the picture, then they suffer. That will be the reality of the DHS issue described above. I went free because I was obviously productive and that effort did not belong behind jail cells. It belonged in sales, manufacturing and management of resources because with every breath I take, I make money for somebody—usually some parasite too lazy to even get up in the morning—let alone to ride a motorcycle in 2 degree weather. So keep things in context and don’t let articles like that scare you.
The government is prone to failure. The DHS without a doubt is making these plans—and they believe they can enforce them. But in all reality they are a worthless organization ran by worthless, lazy, nobodies. They don’t have the brains, the will, or the ability in any capacity to make good on their tactics. But what we must be cautious of is their desire to even try. That is where the problem begins. And for those of you who desire to stick a finger in their eye when they do make their move—there will be room on my pirate ship—and I’m putting together a crew to stand against them. But that move will come from them first—as they will be the one to break the Constitutional limits which protects not only us from them, but them from us. Once they cross that line with an openness not yet seen or acknowledged, then the pirate flag seen at the end of every one of my signatures goes up, and the Stars and Bars goes into a drawer for some future time when all such organizations as the DHS, the IRS, and all other government agencies specifically rooted in tyranny are no longer a threat.
In the mean time if you are a man, be a tough guy or at least work to become one. If you are a woman, help a man become one with your love and support. America needs more tough guys—our future depends on them. It’s not to say that women cannot be tough, but biologically, and psychologically, they have different roles—and men need them as a foundation and goal to strive for—a reason to desire to be “tough.”
Now, watch all these videos. Take note…………………………………………….., and get ready. I am on a lot of “lists” and I’m proud of it. But, I have some lists of my own, and the people on them won’t like being there. For those who want to help with that, I’m picking crew for when it comes time to sail as a pirate-a day I am looking forward to.
And to the Homeland Security people reading this and reporting it to your chain of command—f**k yourself.
Obamacare is one of the worst policies that have ever been concocted by political statists. It should be rejected by everyone but the most destitute social parasites which this law is designed to promote. It is a severe infringement on human liberty and a detriment to successful health care advancement in the future. It is an attack on innovation and a promotion of lack-luster government bureaucracy. It is terrible law made by bad, corrupt politicians who hid their intentions of wealth redistribution through taxation under the cover of a holiday season and a nation filled with year-end compassion who didn’t read the fine print of a massive multi thousand page document. Obamacare was a Trojan Horse designed to wreck the American economy by progressives who hate the capitalism of the West.
To fathom what is in store for all of us in 2014 read the below report by a guy who took the time to write down his thoughts on the Affordable Care Act Facebook page. The guy tried to sign up for Obamacare, and then realized that he couldn’t afford the payments—and attempted to back out. This story has been floating around for a while and describes what will be a common for every American now that we are in 2014.
JIM MEIER OSP PROJECT ENGINEER Fort Myers Fl. 33903
RE: OBAMACARE A comment posted on the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare FB page:
“I actually made it through this morning at 8:00 AM. I have a preexisting condition (Type 1 Diabetes) and my income base was 45K-55K annually. I chose tier 2 “Silver Plan” and my monthly premiums came out to $597.00 with $13,988 yearly deductible!!! There is NO POSSIBLE way that I can afford this so I “opt-out” and chose to continue along with no insurance. I received an email tonight at 5:00 P.M. Informing me that my fine would be $4,037 and could be attached to my yearly income tax return. Then you make it to the “REPERCUSSIONS PORTION” for “non-payment” of yearly fine. First, your driver’s license will be suspended until paid, and if you go 24 consecutive months with “Non-Payment” and you happen to be a home owner, you will have a federal tax lien placed on your home. You can agree to give your bank information so that they can easy “Automatically withdraw” your “penalties” weekly, bi-weekly or monthly! This by no means is “Free” or even “Affordable.”
Obamacare not only infiltrates a major portion of the American economy, but it roots itself deep into the lives of every tax paying citizen and will remain there so long as people permit such an intrusion. Statists like Obama and his gang of government thugs are hoping and praying that they can get millions of people addicted to this new government “service” so that it can never be repealed. They do not care about the 6 to 10 million people who are losing their current plans so long as those people are forced under severe coercion to enroll in one of these government plans. Obama’s people know that all those people who have lost their plans will HAVE to sign up for their plan because they have the authority of law at their back and will take your driver’s license, they will take your house, they will fine you through payroll deduction and steal your money right out of your pockets—because they can—because they voted themselves the power to theft—to steal the money of American citizens and give it to drug addicts, fatherless homes bulging with welfare babies, and common criminals who otherwise would not have insurance. The federal US Government is promoting scum bags and harming the productive and they are doing it on purpose. Their attack on America through the medical insurance industry is on purpose—it is calculated and aggressive.
As it can be seen from the scenario illuminated by Jim Meier the affluent golf club member who has supplied excellent health insurance for his family for decades could suddenly be thrown in jail like a common criminal if he refuses to comply with Obamacare mandates purchasing insurance plans picked by the government designed to pay for abortions, and reckless living by people who intentionally make bad decisions in their lives. While those people thrive under government support stolen from people like the golf club member, the affluent man will rot in jail treated as a criminal because he dared to question the authority of a tyrannical government. If the man does not end up in jail he will be picked clean of his wealth through fines, fees, and insurance premiums because of his ability to pay.
Obamacare is socialism at best—but likely it would be communism if proposed under the U.S.S.R during the middle of the Twentieth Century. It is under tyrannical regimes that Obamacare belongs and is indicative. It has nothing to do with affordable care except for people who lack ambition to begin with and crave the security blanket of government built by stolen wealth. It is the creation of a little boy from Jakarta who grew up hating the West, raised by grandparents who leaned toward communism as a political philosophy, and was nurtured into politics by the American terrorist Bill Ayers. That little boy is now president rubbing the token of Lord Hanuman in his pocket, empowered by a slew of old hippies who now serve as congressman, and senators hiding the fact that Obamacare would be a new tax instead of an attempt to help equalize the medical insurance industry.
Obamacare is terrorism. There is no sugar-coating which can disguise the fact. It is an assault, and it is vile. It has no place in a free society—as it will be everything but a semblance of independence, free markets, or free will. It is thuggish coercion of the utmost imposition, it is dangerous, and it is designed to destroy America as a nation. It is the terrorism of Bill Ayers designed to implode the economy of an “imperialistic” nation as conceived by haters of America—of which Barack Obama seems to have a history of supporting.
That leaves the question………………why is it still a law?
If there is any wonder why this law is so bad, vile, and flat-out corrupt read the article at the following link for more information:
Yes John Kasich will be challenged for the Ohio governor seat, yes Obamacare will face many challenges in 2014, yes the Senate is up for grabs, yes there are major rifts in the Republican Party, and yes public education is guilty of training the mass of society into collectivism. However those are things that were set in motion many years ago—and were covered here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom pointing to this grand fortissimo of cultural events—but these are just the beginning notes of that movement and the next portion of that symphony will not come from politics but art. Politics does not drive culture it reacts to it. Art however does drive culture and when I cover artistic efforts with superior footing to political ones, this is the reason why. Personally it is for this reason that I am so excited about the new Disney program coming up in the fall on their XD channel called Star Wars: Rebels. Listen to the executive producer Simeon Kinsberg discuss his motivations for the show intended for children—but extremely relevant to adults.
As stated previously, mythology in the rock, paper, scissors game of world culture beats politics or popular fashion because it is the foundation of those beliefs. In not just America, but throughout the world are an entire generation of disgruntled young people who have watched previous generations of adults rob them of their future with massive debt, wrecked health care, educational opportunities that have not manifested into profit, and a lifestyle less vigorous than that of their parents. For them, and their children, the new Star Wars dynasty beginning with Rebels will permeate deep into their consciousness and my point of bringing it up is so that the kind of people who read here regularly can take note and act upon it.
There are two better than rumored female characters in the upcoming Rebels which will resound powerfully through the myths of our society which will carry well beyond common cartoon shows. Ahsoka Tano will be back after her departure from the Clone Wars and perform her duties as a Rebel Pilot in the fledgling young Rebellion. And more notable will be Mara Jade who will be a young girl serving as the Emperor’s Hand as the Empire rises to power.
Mara in the future of the Star Wars saga was the wife of Luke Skywalker, was killed by Han and Leia Solo’s son Jacen, and gave birth to a son named Ben who will reportedly be in the new films by Disney in 2015. It was also Mara who trained Jaina Solo to be a Jedi Knight who and will be the star of the new film series as the Sword of the Jedi. Mara plays a significant roll in the overall mythology and will be present in the upcoming Rebels which will cover her origin story.
Lucasfilm is not a political company. Most of their employees probably voted for Obama over Romney—but they are deeply philosophical. They have at their disposal at Skywalker Ranch a treasure trove of books from around the world to expand the Star Wars mythology which centers on the struggle of individuals over statist control from dictators. That premise to a story makes Star Wars important in that the story helps people see how those tyrannical forces come into their lives in various forms. I have no doubt that Rebels will do this for millions of young people and millions of people who are over 30—and will grudgingly admit that they will be watching the new television show. Once human beings learn to identify where troubles begin in their lives through mythology they will desire to take actions against those troubles. For many, my friend Doc Thompson at The Blaze will offer an alternative to the statist offerings they currently have in the media. I often refer to The Blaze as “Rebel” radio. Glenn Beck is preaching in the real world much what Mon Mothma and Bail Organa will preach in the upcoming Disney show, Rebels. The producer has said that one of his primary inspirations is the American Revolution and this will take minds to that real life rebellion as they learn to see the same signs. Rebels as a work of art and fiction will provide a palette of context to the real life struggles we are all dealing with from all political fronts.
As I look through the history of such endeavors I can think of no time in entertainment history where this kind of high-profile television show offered this kind of content. What comes to mind are the old Disney shows like Johnny Tremain and Davy Crockett. But those were shows dealing with the past, Star Wars is both the past and the future and has more power because of it. Star Wars has the power to communicate values to several generations as very high quality family entertainment that will get discussions started. If our present society is lacking value because the art we live by has focused on exposed female breasts, silly adolescent jokes, and other forms of didactic pornography, our culture mirrors those aspects presently. Lucasfilm owned by Disney is about to present a show to the world through a simple cartoon which will be beaming with value—value that people will gobble up like parched desert travelers deprived three days of water.
I speak to people at all levels in the gaming community, and I speak to people at all levels of politics—and I’m declaring that the former is more powerful than the later. There is a pent-up energy looking for release. Companies like Disney can take that pent-up energy and convert it to dollars through merchandise sales—which helps expand the overall mythology. But what is more interesting is why the merchandise sells—why there is an excitement for the new Star Wars: Rebels action figures that will be sold at Target and Wal-Mart. The reason why grown adults are already saving their money to add these little trinkets to their already vast Star Wars collection is because the overall story speaks to them about things that are otherwise beyond their control. These people typically don’t vote, or might otherwise call themselves political independents. But they can be motivated to do so if the message taps in to their already curious minds.
Rand Paul………….are you listening? Ted Stevenot, President of the Ohio Liberty Coalition and challenger to John Kasich, are you seeing the wave that I’m pointing at? There is a wave deep at sea that nobody sees coming ashore yet, but when it arrives a skilled surfer can ride that wave with careful timing. I’m pointing to that timing. Culture drives that timing—entertainment drives culture. Lucasfilm is providing a valuable entertainment that will not only provide values to a new generation—politically neutral values—but resolutely values against statism. With those values voters will be looking for someone in politics who beholds similar values. Take note, and act upon them—and good things will happen. It doesn’t mean that candidates need to start quoting Star Wars lines on the campaign trail, but that they need to take note of why Star Wars is so popular, why people want to spend so much money on it, and to utilize those methods in reality as politicians. They should strive to be politicians like Mon Mothma and Bail Organa and not like Governor Tarkin, and Emperor Palpatine. The reason Star Wars is so popular is because such characters do not exist in real life—and people wish they did.
A failure to be heroic, bold, or project the values of a political rebel will lead to more of the kind of dysfunction that we’ve had—and nobody wants that. Don’t look at what politicians have been doing for centuries—look at what entertainment is doing and tap into the same reasons that people a year in advance are willing to plop down $10 bucks on a new Rebels Star Wars action figure. Once those two things are aligned, our society will benefit greatly in a new direction that will be a lot different from our current system.
Meanwhile, I am very much looking forward to watching the back story of Mara Jade in the new Star Wars: Rebels television program on Disney XD. And I’m even more looking forward to Ted Stevenot challenging Governor Kasich in the upcoming primary for Ohio governor. Both are rebels, one is fictional, one is from the actual world, but both speak to the heart of an ideal that is deep in the human consciousness—bold changes are necessary when tyranny is afoot—and when those times occur, it is time for “rebels” to throw off the old and make way for the new.
A few months ago while planning a 2014 project to work on together, Doc Thompson, Skip LeCombe and I had lunch at a very non pretentious Springboro, Ohio deli—a little hole in the wall that might be considered in future years to be a kind of sacred spot for the fires of independence. It was a brilliant autumn day, rain bursts mixed with intense sunshine as the leaves were rapidly changing color and Doc was telling me what was in store for The Blaze—not just the online news organization, the television show on The Dish, but the massive ground swell of listenership that had rocketed the new radio format into a stratosphere with intensely loyal listeners. I myself had become a fan of The Blaze Radio formally being faithfully supportive of my home town radio station WLW. Prior to that meeting with Doc, The Blaze had taken over as my premier news providing service. This of course was before Politico announced that Glenn Beck—who is the man behind The Blaze was one of the top 10 journalists to watch in 2014. The Blaze Radio had become in a very short span of time a kind of rebel radio for those yearning old-fashioned traditional values in broadcasting that they weren’t getting anywhere else. It was easy for me to see why; as The Blaze is not controlled by the FCC because it’s all internet based broadcasts are beyond the reach of such government control. The limits to such a thing even two years ago have now been overcome and this new format was making a serious push to become not an ornamental gimmick, but a legitimate force in the media.
During our lunch I reminded Doc of the days not that long ago when Voice of America which had a famous set of three towers just down the road in West Chester, Ohio—right next to 700 WLW’s gigantic tower in Mason, began in 1942 as a radio program designed to explain America’s policies during World War II. When I was a kid listening to AM radio I’d hear some of those broadcasts in several languages which sounded deeply mysterious and exotic. For many of the residents of Lakota—the recent come-lately types from the progressive East—the latté sipping Lakota levy supporters—they have no memory of the big towers which have since been taken down and replaced with a gigantic park. Most of them do not even attempt to check out the museum at the park explaining the past history of the place as they are content to see and be seen by the whose its and what’s it’s of Butler County around the large lake. VOA piped in music to the Soviet Union during this early period against the communist movement with the simple words, “Hello! This is New York calling.” Each night suppressed communist residents would hover around their radios waiting eagerly for the latest music coming out of the United States—especially American jazz which they developed a bottomless appetite for. Culture had been destroyed by the communists in the U.S.S.R and the only semblance of art and entertainment that the poor people of communist Russia could get was from the VOA.
After the Cold War the towers came down and West Chester built a park to memorialize the place—a very impressive endeavor which will allow the memory of the VOA’s importance to be remembered as long as the park remains. People have in a very short time forgotten the role the VOA played in spreading freedom throughout the world—and seemingly the book had been closed on the issue. Meanwhile, the Russians under KGB influence had some of their own mechanisms in place to spread their message of communist propaganda. They didn’t have the VOA—but they had a collectivist philosophy to broadcast so they infiltrated through a spy network communist advocacy that took hold in the Democratic Party rooted in colleges and all levels of academia which targeted not the older generation of Americans dead set against communism, but the youth of tomorrow—who are today’s grown-ups. The net result is the bell-bottomed latte sipping prostitutes in favor of high taxes—for the children at Lakota schools–spending the day at VOA Park renting paddle boats and gossiping about their neighbors have more in common with the communists hovering around the radio in 1957 Russia than they do their parents and grandparents who actually built, provided content and advocated freedom to the world with the VOA. The KGB had infiltrated American education with a collectivist mentality that would eventually shape the modern-day European Union while American influence in Russia would bring down the communist front of a repressive government. The repressed people in poverty struck Russia thirsting for American jazz on the VOA threatened to rise up against Russian leaders forcing them to compromise reluctantly with capitalism. The rest is history.
The KGB strategy of turning American youth against their parents and traditional value worked. In the present day millions upon millions of confused people educated by collectivists for the spread of large central government are attempting to put shackles on human thought—which is colliding violently with the easy access people have to means of freedom, video games, underground news organizations, and internet businesses like Amazon.com and eBay. The old broadcast mediums like 700 WLW are losing major ground to upstarts like The Blaze just as ABC, CBS, and NBC television is losing to Fox News, and the new A&E program Duck Dynasty—places where traditional value is re-emerging. On The Dish and cable outlets all across America The Blaze television is emerging as a serious force to be reckoned with as the old stations heavily encumbered by the FCC are stifled by bureaucrats trained by the KGB through public education to think as non-competitive statists. My former school teacher father-in-law who lives in Louisville in a half million dollar home which resides in a neighborhood where the average home costs over $1 million keeps The Blaze Television station on constantly—out of all the channels on The Dish. The Blaze is his primary choice over CNN, Fox News, or even The History Channel. And he’s not alone; many of his neighbors are doing the same. Ten years ago this same group of people were tending to their boats on the Ohio River—hobbies only the very well-off could afford. Now they are cleaning their AR-15s and daring the government to come after their money and flying Tea Party type flags from their garages. And what does anybody think these people listen to in their cars on satellite radio? Of course, Doc and Skip on The Blaze Radio Network. Companies encumbered as such like 700 WLW are slowly dying as companies not held to such restrictions are thriving. The Blaze is one of those examples of a thriving endeavor.
As Doc and I spoke I went on one of my hour-long dissertations about the history of the world, the vile reaches of limited educational perspective and just how important The Blaze was proving to be in all of it. I reminded Doc and Skip that what they were doing with the radio show set up from hotel rooms and small bungalows all across the nation—set up in airport lobbies, marathon broadcasts from Oklahoma, and constant travel to Dallas, New York, and Dayton was more powerful than the original VOE stations. They had more power in their computers, microphones and portable devices than those gigantic towers in West Chester used to have. In this day and age the iPads the iPhones, Twitter, online streaming have far more ability to reach people than at any time in the entire history of the world. On a daily basis I am in constant communication with important people all over the globe. I actually use the clock feature on my iPad so I know what time it is where people I’m talking to are at—so to plan my messages to them around their sleep schedule. I check their local times regularly so not to be disrespectful. Those messages are real-time conversations communicated with the tap of a virtual keyboard which in itself is an amazing achievement.
On my iPad, The Blaze is always on in the background. The iPad has become my new radio. I just leave it on, and because of modern technology I can do that. I can listen to The Blaze unbroken from Florida to my home in Ohio without ever being concerned about losing a signal. If I stop for lunch at a Steak & Shake outside of Knoxville, Tennessee I can take my iPad in and listen to Doc and Skip at 3 AM in the morning—that is the kind of world we are living in. With the app features being as convenient as they are this means pure competition is dominating the new broadcasting market. This is bad news for old stations like 700 WLW in Cincinnati who used to dominate because of their gigantic tower which dwarfed the old VOA towers. However, on a drive from Central Tennessee to Cincinnati the station is reliant on the AM signal and cuts out in the deep valleys of lower Kentucky. Internet streaming radio on an iPhone or other satellite service through iHeart Radio or Pandora does not miss a beat. If I wanted to listen to Doc and Skip on The Blaze in the middle of the Cumberland Gap next to a roaring campfire outside of my tent—I can. I can listen to The Blaze at an airport in Chicago as I wait for a flight or on a transfer flight across the Pacific at LAX. I can pick up Doc and Skip in Tokyo, Hong Kong, or on a long flight from Singapore to Paris. It is no problem in this day and age—no problem at all.
When Tampa Bay—my favorite football team is the Buccaneers—fired their head coach Greg Schiano, I listened intently around the clock to 620 WDAE in Tampa to get the inside of what was going on with one of my favorite cities and the coaching prospects coming in the wake. Without question some people still listen to 700 WLW and their online streaming to keep up with the Cincinnati Bengals and Reds while they travel for business around the globe. But what endures is content that the listener values—not values shaped by the FCC—and going head to head against stations like 700 WLW, The Blaze is dominating. In 2014, it looks like The Blaze Radio will expand even more. Conventional stations like AM broadcasts in Los Angeles are now syndicating Doc and Skip the traditional way in an attempt to stay relevant. That is the power of The Blaze Radio which the engineers of the Voice of America would have marveled at only half a century ago.
So it’s an exciting new time, and good things are happening in 2014. There are a lot of bad things too, but for the first time in human history, those bad things can be discussed clearly, aggressively, and resolutely on The Blaze without distance, government regulation, or international boarders stopping the conversation. I can listen to Doc and Skip on The Blaze as clearly from a private table in the corner of the Restaurant Bar la Madonna at La Isla Shopping Village in Cancun, as I can from along the river at The Anchorage in Milwaukee over fine wine, and seafood flown in daily from all three coasts. That freedom new to the human race—has never occurred before—and Glenn Beck is on the cutting edge of it. As I’ve said before, Glenn Beck has the opportunity to be the new Walt Disney. He will continue to provide political commentary and news content—but it’s what he’s otherwise working on that will take him in the coming years from something of a fallen star at Fox News and CNN—intentionally sidelined as a way to appease the dark forces afoot in statism—and take him to well beyond where Duck Dynasty currently is. This will occur because when competition goes head to head with various ideals, the good ones that have always been supported finally have the ability to fight it out under a free market system for the first time. And that—is why Glenn Beck’s The Blaze is something to watch out for. It is growing by the day and Doc and Skip are at the front of that wave. I’m happy to know them both—because this is an exciting time—a time that nobody has ever experienced before—and it’s happening right now.
To see why Doc Thompson is the new “Cincinnati Liar,” watch the video above about the history of the VOA in Cincinnati. Doc went from an employee of 700 WLW to a star on The Blaze, and the rest is history. Hitler did not like Cincinnati–and neither did Stalin. People who think like Hitler and Stalin in the present and future will not like Doc for the same reasons–but they can’t stop it now.
Generally when I offer myself as a front man my policy is that I don’t do committees, I don’t solicit opinions, and I expect people to do what I say without question. If people, political organizations, or companies want success they can hook a chain to my star and I’ll take them where they want to go—and presently there are a lot of chains hooked to my star from those agreeing to those terms and expecting me to take them to their desired destination. At 46 years of age, naturally now that the word has gotten out about some of my abilities, 2014 is shaping up to be the most pressure oriented year I’ve ever had. I’ve never before dragged along so much hooked to me as I presently am, yet I fully expect such weights to not hinder my star’s trajectory. One way I do that is to give my mind frequent rests to balance out the intense weight it otherwise would be encumbered with. I thought it curious during this latest Holiday Season that two films, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and the Disney film Saving Mr. Banks both feature authors who were very much in love with the characters they created because it provided them with a secondary world which they created to reason things out. I understand Tolkien’s apprehension to allow his work to be commercially shared, and even more drastic was the story of P.L. Travers who authored Mary Poppins. Both authors confessed somewhat to using their stories as personal playgrounds of thought and were very protective over those worlds. I can relate, my characters in my books, Fletcher Finnegan and Rick Stevens are very much creations of the same design for me—which is a work currently unfolding as my life shoots through the sky with the lives of many chained to it. Disney did much the same with his Mickey Mouse, and of course there is George Lucas who guarded his Star Wars franchise more resoundly than anybody mentioned above. Money is not the motive for any of the people mentioned—that comes later—it’s about the preservation of that secondary world—a world where the mind can vacation and relax where things make much more sense. Personally for me, when the pressure is as intense as it is right now the way I deal with the real world most effectively is to spend as much time as possible in a secondary world to give my mind the needed downtime allowing it to be more efficient. Vacations to Disney World, the creation of Uncle Walt is one of the ways I most enjoy a secondary world created by someone else. Another is Star Wars, not just the movies, books, comics and any other little media tidbit—but the games, the new Galactic Starfighter, and the object of much obsession, X-Wing Miniatures. Both of these games are discussed by the guys at Mos Eisley Radio’s Even Lewis and Leo Andrie—and to learn about both, listen to this broadcast. They cover a lot of ground, but I think Leo’s opinions about X-Wing Miniatures most reflect my own—I simply love the game—I love that secondary world because it makes sense to me more than anything else presently can.
Leo and Even did that broadcast prior to the release of Galactic Starfighter, so I can add to the report that as much as I love X-Wing Miniatures, Galactic Starfighter does the same thing for me, only the delight is much more immediate. The computer combat flight simulator like PVP forum on Star Wars: The Old Republic is simply obsessive fun for me. My wife and I have now played hundreds, perhaps even over a thousand matches over the last three weeks, and it is an absolute blast. It takes all the action and strategy of X-Wing Miniatures and plays it out in real-time. My wife oddly enough is topping the leaderboards nearly every match with her gunship. I am less consistent—depending on who is playing. When average players are against us, I typically join her at the top of the leaderboards with 5 to 10 kills per match in my Flashfire scout ship—which is like flying a kite that is very underpowered. It doesn’t hit very hard and can’t take much abuse, but I use it because of the tremendous speed it has. However, when elite players are on the other side, my job is to harass them and keep them uncomfortable—(kind of like real life) and my kill ratio goes down considerably. The reason is to keep them busy while the other members of our team capture the satellite points. I can’t say enough about the game. It is truly an amazing time we live in. My wife flies her ship on a computer right next to me. We speak to each other like two pilots in a fire fight only the information going back and forth from the BioWare servers from her computer to the host and back to mine, and vice versa—then to all the other players 12 on our team, 12 on the opposing side is just an amazing feat. A lot of people who play online games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are used to these forums, which is a few years old, but at my age I remember a time when all this was just a distant fantasy. I remember a day when I worked all summer cutting grass so that I could purchase a $79 film role of Star Wars for a projector that I didn’t have and the reel didn’t even have sound. So modern DVDs and Blue Rays are amazing to me even after a decade of use—but the online gaming experience of Galactic Starfighter is simply stunning. I can’t get enough of it.
However, the computer game is something my wife and I can share with a few other people on our team, but when it comes to a tabletop game that an entire family can experience—or something that can be shared at conventions, comic book stores, and other very creative formats of existing secondary worlds X-Wing Miniatures is infinitely intriguing to me. If you did not listen to the above video broadcast from Even and Leo please do so if any of this is remotely interesting. Leo is a huge gaming nerd in all the wonderful ways that those people are full of imagination and hope—and his thoughts about X-Wing Miniatures reflects my own. He has played many of the big games from the past, The Magic The Gathering and those types of things—and is presently obsessed with X-Wing Miniatures attending tournaments all over America. And I totally get it.
By looking at the pictures here of a match my family had during Boxing Day (the day after Christmas at my kid’s house) it is easy to see how we took a dining room table and made a battlefield out of it. The strategies are very similar to Galactic Starfighter—the video game, but I find the slower pace and deeper strategies of X-Wing Miniatures to be infinitely more rewarding. There is a freedom of movement that is simply amazing—every inch of the 3’X3’ game mat is up for grabs strategically—and that is very attractive to me. But more so is the way the game allows you to visit this secondary world of Star Wars with the shared experience of family and friends on a group level. In the game showed in the pictures it was a very tight match which went on for over an hour and it came down to a final dice roll of two evasion dice—which was highly unlikely—but occurred. It was a literal cliffhanger, and all our hearts were beating furiously at the end—both the winning and losing side—and I can’t think of too many activities that can be done around a kitchen table which provokes that kind of reaction. It is blistering fun!
I have several hundred dollars invested in the game from what is seen in the pictures. That investment will easily excel into the thousands during 2014 and 2015. As Leo mentioned in the Mos Eisley Radio broadcast the big excitement of 2014 will be the expansion packs of the Imperial Aces featuring two specially painted TIE Advanced ships, the massive Tantive IV CR90 corvette which looks spectacularly stunning, and the Rebel GR-75 medium transport. Fantasy Flight Games who publishes X-Wing Miniatures hasalready produced something special even without these 2014 announcements. If all they created were what has been seen through the first three waves of release, the Millennium Falcon from Wave 2 and now a ship I use all the time, the HWK-290, (CLICK HERE TO READ SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THIS SHIP)I’d be content. But Fantasy Flight Games is only getting stronger as time moves on—making the game constantly more complex and dynamic. They are introducing a whole new play formatted called Cinematic Play which will specifically involve these larger ships on a much greater table top. And in tournaments, they are introducing the Epic tournament format which will allow players to field ships of all sizes in massive battles that will echo thought the Star Wars universe. In the game’s Epic format the Rebel transport can support the efforts of a squad with its frequency jammer, and the Tantive IV can fire its powerful lasers against opponent’s TIEs. These mentioned items are not part of Wave 4 which hasn’t even been announced yet. One can only speculate about what those ships will entail and new playing options that will come with them. 2014 will be a very exciting year for X-Wing Miniatures.
I wish sometimes that I didn’t have such a complicated life with so many hooked to my star. There are many days that I would love to be able to travel around and have the kind of free time that Leo does attending tournaments for X-Wing Miniatures. I would be a very happy person with a table full of X-Wing ships and a pizza from LaRosa’s sitting on a nearby counter playing all day every day for the rest of my life. That secondary world of Star Wars as it is specifically translated in that particular game is such an effective living mythology that it exceeds my personal creations. I understand how P.L. Travers felt about Mary Poppins, and how Tolkien felt about Middle-earth, because I feel the same way about my own creations. But when it comes to these Star Wars games, that secondary world smartly has been expanded in a unique way that Walt Disney—the new owners of Star Wars and the former owner, George Lucas have nurtured for decades. P.L. Travers had a nervous breakdown at the premier of Mary Poppins because of the dancing penguins, and the portrayal of Mr. Banks who was essentially her father. Lucas has allowed other independent minds to help shape his secondary world in a way that has held back Tolkien and Travers work in the past. If The Old Republic had to get George Lucas to approve every addition to that world, it would have been stunted. Even more so with X-Wing Miniatures, that game is great because as Leo and Even stated the game makes great use of the Expanded Universe—aspects of the Star Wars mythology that was created by the novels, comics and television shows by people only remotely guided by George Lucas with a thumbs up or thumbs down—and that is what makes this secondary world of gaming such an incredibly rich experience. It takes an individual to drive the visions forward, but it also takes knowing when to let things go so the creations can take off on their own and flourish—kind of like raising children. X-Wing Miniatures is the product of a successful metaphorical child of Star Wars and an offering into a secondary world that can hold a lot of excess pressure. It does for me.
I know my readers here want to see more fire and brimstone from me, and they will get it. I feel the tug of those chains upon my star and I don’t complain. I offer the free ride to see how much I can pull without it destroying me—because I want to know where my limits are—and I have not yet found them in my life. But I do feel the pressure, and the way I cope with it is to become involved in these kinds of secondary world activities as the primary world is full of burden. I play at real life like I’m playing a game—it takes the edge of the bitter realization that life is not a game, decisions are final, but chances must be taken to advance ideals. By playing games for recreation, one can sort of work out what is a successful strategy and what isn’t. Starting off a New Year, I enjoy thinking about these kinds of things, so I do it for myself more than anything—but I share it in case anybody wants to learn a thing or two about stress management. At times like this I often would not mind having a simple nondescript job at some fast-food restaurant where I could live the life of Leo attending X-Wing tournaments all the time free of those chains dragging behind. But I am grateful to have the release of these types of games in a time when I need them for my own sanity. I have found that the more I utilize these things in my life, the more I can carry as my star shoots across the sky, and the many that are dragging behind hooked to it by my invitation will succeed.
The Overmanwarrior 
