Month: October 2014

Lakota’s Standards Based Report Cards: Teaching children to carry brown bags of beer and purchase lottery tickets

Lakota like many other Ohio schools is experimenting with a new progressive education standard which seeks to remove the value of a grade and replace it with a new kind of report card. The essence of this new grading system is called standards based reporting, and features a measure of whether or not a student has obtained a level of competency in a learned task. The abandonment of the traditional grading system is the removal of quality from education which is the overall intent. Since modern education cannot properly measure quality through the top down learning structure assessed by a grading system to determine exceptional results from mediocre results, government schools are moving toward this new standard. Here is what it is and how it’s measured as reported by Lakota schools in southern Ohio.

STANDARDS BASED REPORT CARD

Lakota is pilot-testing a new kind of report card in several schools this year. Although the test of the “standards-based report card” is only in third grade at Cherokee; fourth grade at Heritage and sixth grade at Woodland, we want to share information about these report cards with all parents who have children in elementary school. This is part of a continuing weekly series of information about the new reports cards and the pilot test.

What is a “standards-based report card?”

 

A traditional report card (A, B, C, etc.) shows a single grade a student earned for all the combined work done – tests, quizzes, homework, classroom work, etc. — in one subject area, such as math, science or social studies. The purpose of the new report card being tested is to instead communicate student progress toward an end goal – mastering a specific learning standard. A standards-based report card identifies specific skills and content that a student is expected to master while in a certain grade. Then it uses a 1, 2, 3 grading system to show the child’s progress toward that specific standard.  A “1” means a student has not yet mastered the skill or content. A “2” means a student is making good progress towards mastery. A “3” means a student has mastered the particular skill or content.

It’s important to understand what a standard is. One standard for fourth grade, in English/Language Arts, is: “Compare and contrast the point of view from which different stories are narrated, including the difference between first- and third-person narrations.” When a student demonstrates he or she understands different points of view in story narration, and can compare and contrast those points, the student would earn a “3” grade, demonstrating mastery of that particular standard.

 

That all sounds very “educational” until it is realized that the entire education system will have to be dumbed down to allow for such acceptance gates of understanding as opposed to the traditional method of not only measuring knowledge, but the quality of that knowledge. This new standard only shows that a student has an understanding, but it ignores the quality of that knowledge. In the old method, an “A” stated that a person understood information at an exceptional level, a “B” at a moderate level, and a “C” meant one had a passable understanding. Anything less meant that a student was failing to grapple the information.

What has been abandoned is the quality of understanding during learning and therefore the expectation level of education in general. Under the cover of improvement, public education has found a way to protect itself from the increasing pressure of attaching federal money to funding based on performance when their government employees are failing to actually reach children by disguising the charade through removing the quality portion of education. They have done this by eliminating value judgment in a traditional grading system.

 

For those concerned about Common Core methods used in government schools, standards based report cards are attached directly to Common Core. The path to these teaching methods is inevitable failure in every category of human endeavor. This is why the most prudent method of combating these maniacal despots is to remove your children from all government schools and waive the free baby-sitting service. Parents who can afford to should home school their children because it is the only way to remove these progressive influences from a child’s education.

 

Government schools will continue for the next decade to reach for air in their struggle to stay relevant creating feel-good programs like these standards based report cards to repackage their failures into bright shiny boxes. But what’s at the core of Common Core is the embrace of the mediocre, the un-exceptional, and the lackluster to make the “common” the only standard that matters in a government run society infatuated with fairness for their democratic masses—the otherwise lazy, contemptuous, and the valueless.

 

Standards based report cards are the latest attempt to avoid any kind of measurement that actually expects learning to be achieved by the masses of children attending government schools. It is meant to camouflage failure with garments of success to conceal the rotten core that is at the heart of public education. It is meant to make future products of government schools even worse than they are today—thoughtless malcontents who laugh at every Beavis and Butt Head joke, but have no sense of wonder at a shooting star—other than to make a wish and pray for a winning lottery ticket.

 

I normally get gas for my vehicles during off times, when there are fewer people at the gas station during the day while the rest of the world is busy. I don’t like to get gas in the morning when most everyone is up and off to a job of some kind. But recently I had to, so I stood in line at 6:30 AM and watched ten people in front of me purchase gas, coffee, donuts and lottery tickets. If you wrapped all the minds of those ten people into a single person, you might have had enough intellectual power to generate a small pocket flashlight. But nothing else. Those are the products of public education as they stand today under the old grading system. Now, thanks to Common Core, those same types of people will only become dumber. But one thing that will increase will be lottery ticket sales. Out of those ten people seen at Mark Sennett’s UDF store in the affluent Liberty Township corner of 747 and Princeton Road, where people make reasonably high level incomes and have decent educations—relatively speaking, 4 out of 10 people bought lottery tickets hoping for a jack pot to free them of their financial bonds to productivity. Under the new standards based report cards, that future number will likely be 10 out of 10—along with a pack of cigarettes and a brown bag bottle of beer in the morning. That will be the result of these education changes.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Life Under a Blood Moon: Zombies of exsistance and shadows of illusion

What a treat it was to be on a motorcycle in the cool morning air on October 8, 2014 to see a “blood moon” setting through patches of intense flog as the sun was rising. A lunar eclipse occurred on that day which is a rare event. I happen to live in a time zone where the sun was rising as the moon was setting at the highest point of the eclipse leaving the phenomena known as a blood moon. It was a Halloween oriented sensation accentuated by the motorcycle ride. I felt lucky enough to be up at that hour to see such a rare thing, but to also be on a motorcycle exposed to the various elements made it more memorable.

A blood moon is caused by the moon being on the exact opposite end of the earth in relation to the sun. The blood color is caused by the shadow of the earth cast against the surface of the moon. It’s infrequent that the position of the moon is in that particular location at the same time that the earth is positioned around the sun to cast such a shadow through space. It’s a fairly epic event if the science is considered. When that sensation is included to the man-made machinery of a motorcycle and the natural low-hovering dense fog coming from the thick cool air—it is an overwhelming sensation. Just days prior a massive storm came through my area saturating the ground with heavy rain that was still trying to escape back into the sky through the evaporation process. But with the weak rays of the sun during these fall months, there wasn’t enough energy to pull that moisture back into the formation of clouds. That leaves all those escapees of water molecules stuck in limbo in the form of fog until the next sunrise can finish the job on the following day. Because of all these elements together, it was a picturesque morning to ride a motorcycle that even the best Hollywood cinematographer couldn’t have conceived.

Yet in the cars sitting in traffic with me an additional element was present that was even more Halloween-like—the drivers were oblivious to these miracles. They sat stiff armed to their steering wheels zoned into their present condition of selling their day to employment like zombies seeking the blood of their next victim. Not a soul seemed inclined to view the blood moon through their windows as the fog hazed lazily on the horizon. Their minds were otherwise consumed.

Riding motorcycles has a way of heightening all the senses, so noticing such a thing had a more dramatic effect. But it had been a long time since I had been in the presence of so many people who were clearly tuned-out to the miracles of life. I was as alone as though I were on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean without another person close by for hundreds of miles.

That suited me just fine. The blood moon seemed to understand as it hovered above the fog like a ghost that had once lived but was otherwise obscure, maintaining the ability to view the world while being invisible to the daily happenings of existence. But it isn’t we who are the ghosts, and brain-dead zombies. It is those moving about under the light of the blood moon, and the fog in the cool morning air that are unaware of the world around them in the same fashion that insects have no ideal that a human being is sitting nearby aware of their every move.

I thought of all the times I fished insects out of my swimming pool during the summer. From the perspective of the drowning insects, it must seem like a miracle to them to have a strange mass pull their bodies out of the water to the safety of a pool edge. To them, my saving them was a miracle—I gave them another day or two of life and they were probably grateful for about a fraction of a second. The same consciousness was apparent in the morning traffic of the blood moon. Like the insects, the people were unaware of the world above them, only that they had to get to work, to drop off their children at school, at the day care, and what radio station they wanted to tune in to. They were concerned about their coffee, and the temperature inside their rolled up windows and stared like zombies forward toward their work day and the trading of time for money.

Soon the blood moon was gone and the sun was up and the fog ran for the sky. The world of the night, the fog and the blood moon was gone to history, just as most of our lives rise and fall in the blink of an eye casting illusions to the world that appear to be one thing but are caused by something else. To the insects of the world they look up at such blood moons and think that the surface of the strange orb floating in the sky turned red. But what they don’t know is that the cause of the effect is the earth, not the moon and the change in hue is related directly to the sun which is stationed firmly in its place within the solar system floating around the Milky Way like a clock gear heading for destiny. The cause of the light cast upon our own lives is often obscured by shadows and our appearance often appears to be something that it is not. But for a brief morning in October of 2014 under a blood moon, there was honesty to humanity that cast insight beyond the illusions found in the light of day. That even with all the miracles of science and the scope of activity that made the blood moon, mankind was still insect-like in their perception of reality and curiosity about their environment.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Cliffhanger is Coming: A tip of the hat to Johnston McCulley

It is a neat time that we live in, years ago when I first found the old Johnston McCulley novel, The Curse of Capistrano, I considered it a real treasure. Actually, I still do. But these days with the simple click of a mouse you can not only find the book, but you can have someone read it to you, which is the case in the below video. I have always loved that novel for its expressive language and colorful expose of righteousness. I didn’t understand when I was younger why critics ridiculed McCulley so intensely—but have since learned that a progressive push was well underway in the second half of the 20th century to steer society away from tradition and into something else. That something else I simply despise and it has been quite an ordeal for me to find entertainment that I enjoy because of it. So it is a treat to revisit McCulley’s work whenever I can and relish in his pulp fiction.

 

There was obviously a time in our history when that kind of writing was all the rage and considered masterful. These days it’s out of fashion, and ridiculed so nobody makes the attempt. But in McCulley’s day, many westerns were made to emulate his style which defined early cinema. Being the type of person that I am, a person who loves traditional American western arts, there just isn’t much that impresses me in regards to entertainment from music to movies. My love of the Star Wars films and books could be simplified by attributing that they are simply westerns set in space. The old western values started by Johnston McCulley are there, which is the key reason that they are so popular—because people now are the same people as they were in 1919, 1419, or 0019—they essentially have the same hopes and dreams as they always have and from Johnston McCulley, his character of Zorro epitomized those values.

In recent years those values have been under attack, and those assailants know that people have values in line with tradition—so their solution has been to kill tradition. They have entered publishing, movie making, television broadcasting, music, commercial art—virtually every category with the sole intention of destroying American tradition—an aspect of American life that I enjoy. So I have taken this slight quite personal, as is in evidence by my many words upon these pages

I am in a unique position as opposed to Johnston McCulley to add to these traditions of westerns even in a modern context. Most writers are good with the pen but shrivel up in real life at the slightest drizzle of rain upon their skin. So they tend not to be men of action. I am the opposite; I have developed a writing ability as a natural overflow of my life of action. I have been all over and done virtually everything and associated with people at every level of society. So my perspective on things is unusually hands-on which carries over directly into my writing style and content.

The villains in the old McCulley novels were corrupt governors and big government statists aligned through crony capitalists to exploit the efforts of the innocent. However, times these days are more complicated so a similar story dealing with the same type of material would naturally involve government labor unions, diabolical politicians, and grand conspiracies involving sacrifice to supernatural beings. These will be the types of stories that will flow from the upcoming Cliffhanger stories offered under the banner, The Curse of Fort Seven Mile.

For years I have put up with the political messages with a liberal/progressive slant in movies and music, so I expect the same respect from that sector of the population when they see that the type of villains in my stories are the heroes of theirs. Surely they didn’t expect that the flow of artistic enterprise would move in only one progressive direction? But my hunch says that they did, and they will find Cliffhanger repulsive. I’ve been through the meat grinder of progressive influence in entertainment and am in the very unique position to have never compromised with them—which means that the Cliffhanger stories will have a uniquely authentic attribute that is innocently filled with righteousness—in a similar way that McCulley’s work was when it first appeared. America was a more innocent place then, so people like McCulley were a little more common. But today, there is no innocence left; most people fall in either a category of being intellectually damaged, or naively removed from reality. In my life, I have managed to have neither infliction which gives quite a lot more thrust to my prose. Within that thrust there will be familiar themes that will likely incite the political left. I can only say to them that they’ll have to live with it. Their sensitivities are not something that society should be molded around—and they won’t be as far as I’m concerned

It’s taken quite a number of years for me to solve the riddles of these upcoming chapters in The Curse of Fort Seven Mile. I had a pretty good ideal what Cliffhanger was all about when he was first introduced in 2004, but I had some more living to conduct before I felt comfortable with the philosophical assertions that were to be made. I still had young children at the time, money to make, and political navigation to understand. For those who follow me here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom you have seen much of that first-hand. But it was always my desire to take those experiences and place them into a story context involving the character of Cliffhanger.

A lot of people have been patiently waiting for my next Cliffhanger additions, and now is the time. So it will be with great fun and fanfare as soon as we figure out the distribution channels which accommodate all the modern tools that Cliffhanger will return to print quite audaciously. But it should never be forgotten that the tradition of Cliffhanger is a direct tip of the hat to Johnston McCulley and his character of Zorro. Zorro was needed in the 20th century to define values—and he did that. But for the 21st century, a new hero is needed, someone who can deal with all the strange new influences indicative to the modern times. That character is Cliffhanger, and he is coming.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

The Curse of Fort Seven Mile: Cliffhanger returns in an epic new way

A few years ago I made mention that I was working on a new book titled The Trial of Fletcher Finnegan, and that it would be ready for public consumption in around 5 years. That is still a goal I am working toward. However, changes to the publishing industry and the general market place dictate a more entrepreneurial approach. My publisher for Tail of the Dragon went out of business last year leaving me without a means of distribution in a traditional sense and I had so many requests for an uploaded version which my publisher didn’t offer that it caused me to re-evaluate the situation. I have been and will always be a physical book type of person—however, the industry certainly has moved away from that supply model. So while I work on the various means of distribution for my past works and pave the way for the future endeavors I have found a much-needed bridge to test out the market and give fans what they really want. For me right now, and filled in my email box from most of the people who know me as either friends, family, or acquaintances they will be delighted to know that this new endeavor will be essentially book two of the Cliffhanger series titled, The Curse of Fort Seven Mile.

For several years—nearly a decade now I have had frequent requests to return to the events of Fort Seven Mile and the vigilante antics of Cliffhanger—which is what the Trial of Fletcher Finnegan is to be about. However, as I’ve outlined the story there is a very ripe period that can fill volumes of material all on its own. I have said for quite some time that this blog site are my personal notes for these future stories. I share them with the public because there are things today that people can learn from and help navigate their lives. However, putting those ideals into a story context is another matter and is what I am going to do with these new Cliffhanger stories.

The plan is to publish a chapter each week of these further Cliffhanger stories and make them available for digital upload. For readers here they will essentially get the material of this blog site integrated into a narrative that is exciting and fun. For instance the first chapter consists of a labor union president for the Fort Seven Mile police who after the tragic events from my first novel, The Symposium of Justice is seeking to increase the police budget for his members to the city council. Misty Finnegan is now the mayor after former Mayor Goodman was killed during his encounter with the vigilante Cliffhanger. Misty on the other hand had been working to place on city council a more conservative presence so that she can gain legislative control of the governing body away from the progressive liberals who had made enticing deals with the local labor unions. The union president despondent with Misty Finnagan’s resistance to throw money at the police union so that they can go out and capture Cliffhanger decides that the new mayor needs to be removed from office and plans her assassination. The rest of the story evolves from there and will feature the type of material I write about often with the pulpy antics I tend to elaborate on with great enthusiasm. I love to write action, so each of these chapters will of course end with a great climax of an action sequence that is the norm of my style of writing.

This ideal came from two sources. First it was a recent visit to the Apple Store in Kenwood, Ohio. I was quite impressed with the high level of interest people had for Apple Products. I realized what many other people within publishing had been telling me for years, that the traditional way of publishing was moving to digital uploads. But these new Apple type customers don’t necessarily want a huge 1,000,0000 word novel to upload onto their devices—which is what the Trial of Fletcher Finnegan is slated to be. It could possibly dwarf Atlas Shrugged as far as size and scope. Many of the Apple users want things quickly so they can move on to the next thing—essentially because they want to be able to use all the features of their device.   They want to do a little reading of something that inspires them, they want to listen to some music, text friends, update their online accounts and check out current events. To carry Cliffhanger into the 21st century, all these considerations have to be taken seriously. The other source actually came from a favorite writer of mine, Johnston McCulley who wrote the original Zorro story The Curse of Capistrano. The original Zorro stories were published in newspapers as separate chapters nearly 100 years ago to the day. Douglas Fairbanks would take those stories and make them into a motion picture called the Mark of Zorro. Then there were the various Republic serials shown in chapters for the Saturday matinee editions. All this led to the Disney television show which was what I grew up with. I loved that show and still do. Like many people who have not been consumed by progressivism and yearn for these traditional American stories, it quickly becomes evident that nobody else in the industry will do them, so the task falls on the present to find a way to create a new market where there is no other path. This is no different from the type of path Johnston McCulley faced in 1919 when all his individual chapters of Zorro provided to All-Story Weekly a novel.

These types of things usually take time to work through and only in hind-sight does a pattern emerge. McCulley’s first Zorro novel emerged in 1919, his second in 1922, the third in 1931, and the fourth in 1941. We tend to think of all this work happening at the same time, but essentially they took place over a twenty year span. The style of writing I enjoy most is a pulp brand popularized by McCulley and Lovecraft from this time period. However, my subject matter tends to lean in a conservative direction making modern-day publishers weary of my work. It’s not a conspiracy, if they thought they would make a lot of money, they’d jump on board in a minute. But they don’t often have patience to allow a story like Cliffhanger to develop as the story goes against the grain of the progressive types who currently run most of the entertainment industry for many of the reasons described in great detail at this site.

A third influence is actually two-fold which has driven me to attempt something new with the Cliffhanger character. A dinner I had over the summer with Gery Deer, then a few discussions I had with one of my son-in-laws indicated what an extreme hunger a public who generally has traditional values that used to be realized in American westerns, desired material that they could relate to. I would tell them the story about how publishers are going belly up left and right—specifically thinking of my experiences with Tail of the Dragon and they’d just sort of listen patiently hoping that I’d come up with something. Well, now I have and I intend to have some fun with it.

Readers of this new series will instantly recognize the type of themes I write about in this blog. As I have said, I use this forum as a kind of note pad. So it should come as no surprise. Chapter two for the new Cliffhanger series is already in process and features a chapter on homeschooling as a teacher’s union is the villain in that particular story. It is one thing to tell literal news stories like I do every day on this blog site. It is quite another to put that subject into the context of a story, which often has more communicative power than a literal translation. It is that kind of contextual ability that made Zorro so popular, but for the complicated times that we currently live in, a more updated hero needs to help flesh out the anxieties that we all live with each day. For that, Cliffhanger is a character that can take many of these traditional American concepts and let them play out in story form in the kind of doses that a modern audience can enjoy.

There will be more news on this endeavor over the next couple of weeks, but I am already writing the chapters and having fun with the characters. For my readers, it should be a lot of fun. And it will be an inventive way to reach new fans in ways that have not been done before. It’s fun to revisit the Cliffhanger character and I’m sure it will bring a smile to the many faces who for a decade have coaxed me to write book two of a story that touched their lives as a throwback to the kind of character that started all of modern entertainment—Zorro. It is only appropriate in these current times that a new character emerge to convey our modern concerns articulated with great fanfare in the upcoming Curse of Fort Seven Mile.

 

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Nickelback’s Edge of Revolution: Communism hidden behind the Occupy Movement

There is a lot of talk these days about revolution. For those statists who want to pretend that their grip on the old world will remain, they are dreadfully in for some big surprises. There are two revolutions afoot across the world and often they are mixed together in the headlines of news reports. To novice eyes, it all looks the same, but that is not the case. There are moves toward capitalism, like what is going on in modern-day Hong Kong—where the people of that city hope to retain much of the type of government that is taken for granted in the West. Then there is the disguised communist push hidden behind progressivism centering on today’s youth and the Occupy Wall Street types. That is the type of revolution that the rock group Nickelback is presenting with their new 2014 album. The Edge Of A Revolution is the lead single from the rock band’s eighth album due in stores on Republic Records. “Edge of a Revolution” is political protest song sympathetic to radicals against capitalism. Here are the lyrics:

Head high, protest line Freedom scribbled on your spine Headline,New York Times Standing on the edge of a revolution Hey, hey, just obey Your secret’s safe with the NSA In God we trust, or the CIA Standing on the edge of a revolution Yeah, we’re standing on the edge of a revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution No, we won’t give up We won’t go away ‘Cause we’ll never thought to live in this mass delusion No, we don’t wanna hear it, another word that you say ‘Cause we know they’re out depending on mass confusion No, we can’t turn back, we can’t turn away ‘Cause it’s time we all rely on the lost illusion No, we won’t lay down and accept our fate, We’re standing on the edge of a revolution Wall streets, common thief When they get caught, they all go free A brand new yacht, and a finders fee Standing on the edge of a revolution Same shit, different day Can’t keep fed if I can’t get paid We’ll all be dead if this shit don’t change Standing on the edge of a revolution Yeah, we’re standing on the edge of a revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution No, we won’t give up We won’t go away ‘Cause we’ll never thought to live in this mass delusion No, we don’t wanna hear it, another word that you say ‘Cause we know they’re out depending on mass confusion No, we can’t turn back, we can’t turn away ‘Cause it’s time we all rely on the lost illusion No, we won’t lay down and accept our fate, We’re standing on the edge of a revolution

 

Nickelback is proving to follow their rock music diatribes against capitalism appealing to a life of excess while at the same time preaching against it, like they did in their single, “Rockstar.” The rock band is Canadian in origin and have quite a history making songs about excess sound appealing while sending a strong message to their listeners portraying capitalism as a vile evil. This is the same thing they are doing with their new single “Revolution.” Their suggestion is mixed truth, such the libertarian concerns about the NSA, but then features their focus on Wall Street thieves buying yachts and making livings off finder’s fees. Their appeal is directly communicating to the young people sympathetic to Occupy Wall Street. Whereas “Rockstar” was a self satirized attack against the life of excess that groups like Nickleback live while on the road, this new song paints the rich in America as something to revolutionize against and is a call to action.

 

The message from Nickleback is to use common anxieties such as the NSA to sell communism through the same type of revolution that the Bolsheviks used in St Petersburg in Russia during 1917 to bring communism to a newly formed Soviet Union. The Wall Street protestors called upon by Nickleback is demanding the same type of thing painting the bourgeoisie of American culture as something that must be overcome. Many of the same youth chanting with upraised hands to the beat of this new song have no idea that much of the political push behind the uprisings of the Middle East is communism using the religion of Islam as a mask for cultural penetration.

They don’t call it out by name but communism is the revolution Nickleback is calling for. The flags waved in their music video shown above are all modern manifestations of communism. There are no American flags waving toward the tyranny of progressive Europe, or support of the Hong Kong capitalists against communist China—the revolution Nickleback is advocating is one supporting communism.

 

So think about that when you hear the new Nickleback song on the radio and at nightclubs provoking you to dance a bit to the rhythm. Then consider where the voices in favor of capitalism are—they aren’t in the music and movie industry. They are alone and voiceless for the most part. Capitalists do not have advocates at the level of entertainment that Nickleback represents. The music industry certainly doesn’t support such artists, and lyrics that support capitalism against socialism. Pro capitalist messages certainly don’t get played on the radio. But if a group like the Canadian rock stars Nickleback want to sing against capitalism, they’ll get all the weapons of the media on their side to broadcast straight into the ears of America’s youth—so that they will demand change from a capitalist system to a communist one.

Nickleback doesn’t sing about what life will be like after the revolution when all their listeners are sitting around waiting for someone to give them a job. Or nobody is moving money on Wall Street to create new Apple stores in shopping malls to sell those same fans iPhones so that they can listen to Nickleback sing anti-capitalist songs against America. They just preach revolution against the American system of capitalism. They don’t say what comes next. For that, today’s youth only need to look at modern-day Hong Kong and see what happens after a communist revolution. Today’s Nickleback fans will give to their grandchildren a revolution going back the other way—the same as Hong Kong is currently—hoping to take some capitalism from a communist government after the freedoms of today are long gone.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

The Sad Extinction of the American Housewife: Family assult through institutionalized prostitution

I had the fortune of growing up in a time when the women’s liberation movement had not yet taken complete hold. My mother raised me as a traditional housewife and I was able to see firsthand the social destruction that was going on in America as a direct result of progressive social management. Both of my grand parents were farmers and my grandmothers were both traditional women, but outside of that family unit some of my aunts had started experimenting with the whole women’s liberation movement and lectured my mother often of her stupidity in pursuing a life of tradition when the world was on the move. At my school my mother was a room mother and used to make specialized crafts for the kids in my class—which everyone adored. Even thirty years later when I meet someone from back then, they still talk about the nice things my mother did for them when they were in the third grade. Their parents were also experimenting with the whole women’s liberation movement and the kids weren’t getting the nurturing that they needed at home.

 

This went on for many years; each one as we neared the 1980s became increasingly worse. The pressure on my parents to modernize was intense—it came from all directions—family members, neighbors, and especially peers. For my mother one woman was the most audacious feminist that there was, she was a school substitute teacher and had her children in all the extra curricular activities that they could possibly be involved in, and was a socialite on a scale that most adults in our region knew her name. Because she was always at my school as a substitute she knew my mother well, and there became a competition between the two women as to whom the best mother was—of course this was participated in only by the crazy feminist. My mom was so non-confrontational that she allowed herself to be ridiculed by this and many other women only to vent at home later. My mom had made a value judgment to stay traditional and the world was making it very difficult for her. Eventually she gave in a bit and got a job—as everyone had been telling her to do for years. Seeing how much pressure this one particular feminist rival put on my mother I took it out on her son who was on my soccer team. During a scrimmage I pummeled him, and it was he who gave me the nick-name, “Animal.” I left him damaged with a kick to the face not so much to hurt him, but to hurt his mother. I could see what was going on and I didn’t like it.

 

Back then there was an experimental neighborhood in Lakota named Dutchland Woods, which still exists today. It was a very progressive community and featured a White House in the middle of it where social events were conducted. I had several friends who lived there, and most of the families were of the new “dual income” type which meant that when the kids got off school, they didn’t have parents at home until 6 to 7 PM at night. It was the strangest thing during summer break, it was like a land of kids running the whole community—it was literally like a Charlie Brown cartoon where adults didn’t exist. My first girl friend lived there—a cute little girl from the fourth grade who was already letting boys feel her out even before she had breasts to feel. Sex was the predominate activity in Dutchland Woods as there wasn’t anything else for the kids to do. Everybody dated everybody else and the sexual standards of the entire community were notoriously lowered. Not one child raised in that neighborhood, my friends included grew up healthily to live productive lives—and there were a lot of kids. I could see it from the measuring stick of a traditional household where the father went away, made all the money, and mom took care of the house and everything in it—particularly the children. It was easy to see even during the 80s that Dutchland Woods as a social experiment was a disaster. These days it is a community of starter homes for parents looking for entry into the Lakota school district without the high price of the newer neighborhoods—every one of them built-in the same social philosophy as that experimental neighborhood from the 80s was. Thirty years later there are no more housewives, only a massive society of parents who are all dual income households leaving children to raise themselves—and the results are predictably disastrous.   There are a few women who stay home with their kids, but most of them these days are so socially insecure because of the social pressure to embrace progressive feminism that they seek to show their stripes in other ways—by hosting every Tupperware party offered to them, participating in every True Romance gatherings they’re invited to, and supporting school levies to show how much they value “education.” They become like the idiots in the opening video—cannon fodder for social experimentation that has failed.

 

When I met my wife, she was one of those rare people who lived that busy life—only she had the fortune of being raised by a great-grandmother, at least during her formative years. She lived in a big house and came from a family that was very successful, financially and socially. We were married at the Becket Ridge Country Club back when it was the premier social gathering place in the area. My wife hated that life and was looking for a way out of the downward spiral that was consuming all her friends. She lived in Rolling Knolls, which is still considered a respectable neighborhood. During the 80s it was considered wealthy, and I knew many of the kids who lived there as well. It was essentially like Dutchland Woods only on a more epic scale—kids ran the whole community during the day, sex was easy—way too easy—drinking, drugs, and other forms of disgusting behavior was the norm. The parents were too tired to do anything about anything by the time they came home from work—so nothing ever got addressed. My wife did not want that life, so when we found each other with her still in high school, the fireworks of social pressure began early as her life was planned out for her quite extensively—more along the lines of what the rest of society was doing reflected in the neighborhoods of Rolling Knolls and Dutchland Woods. Both of us wanted a different life than the one that was being offered so we married early and started our own family.

For over 25 years virtually every family member we have had no matter where they live in the country has attempted to coax my wife into “getting a job.” Well, this has been a problem because she has a job which I consider extremely valuable. Being a housewife if done properly is the most important job in the world. Of the three children my mother had, not a single one has emotional difficulties of any kind, and are quite successful people. They may not be as traditional as me, but they are successful in their own ways, and are certainly great parents themselves. We have a uniquely good family free of alcoholics, jail birds, and abusive personalities largely because my mother was there to raise her kids the right way—without outside progressive influence. My wife and I always strove to do better than that—and we have. I stood in support of what my wife wanted to do as a traditional housewife for many years and when family members became too pushy, we showed them the door. I simply don’t stand for it, and have supported my wife in her decisions—because in a lot of ways I wanted it as much if not more than she did. I wanted my children to know they had a mother always at home to help launch them into their lives. The net result is that my kids are two of the sanest people in our family and all the families they grew up knowing. This is not an accident. It’s a product of a good family that provides emotional strength instead of corrosive tumult self-induced by social neurosis. It was far from easy—in fact I’d say it was one of the hardest things to do that I’ve ever had to do—but it was certainly worth doing.

I have always viewed having a job as a secondary importance outside of a family. Jobs come and go, but a family is something that stays with you during an entire life-time. The job that really counts is the one that is done at home. Getting a job and obtaining income only fuels the life at home. The identity of ones existence is not the job itself and if it is—that is a bad parent. When all those people called my wife on the phone telling her that she needed to get a job to have social value—they were telling her that the work she was doing at home was meaningless without the positive appraisal of her peers. Even after our children were raised, my wife has still stayed home because we like it that way. When a person has a job, they sell a part of themselves toward the institutional aims of their employer. This is simply prostitution of a different type. People are being paid to trade their time for money and the false premise that is so popular today is that in this exchange success is in having the larger check book because peer judgment is all important. Well, I never forgot the trouble my mother had, so I never put such pressure on my wife’s shoulders. I don’t care the least about peer review, and I care less about what the national unemployment numbers are based on government statistics. If I had it my way every household that has children in it would designate one parent to stay home with their children and operate their homes like a business. The unemployment numbers then would be disastrously high as there would be suddenly many unfilled jobs. But most jobs these days are overfilled, just to fill the needs of a progressive society and their obsession with peer review—as if consensus can erase the sins of their terrible parenting ability and the many screwed up children they produced who grow up to become complete idiots.

 

If I had to do it all over again—in how we raised our kids, I wouldn’t change a thing. I had to work a lot more than usual to make it happen, but I always considered outside employment to be less valuable than inside the home employment. I never thought to tell my wife that “I make all the money and you have to do as I say.” It has never crossed my mind—because the work at home that she did with my children was much more important than making something new that would be sold to consumers in a global economy. Our lives are more important than any “service to society.” Hell with society, the world would be a whole lot better if more housewives took pride in their work in the house caring for their young than pandering to the idiots who think Fifty Shades of Grey is a great book as they lock themselves in the bathroom reading it after a long day at work pretending to be busy. I’ve done just about every kind of job there is to do over the last thirty years, and most jobs are unnecessary. Children are more important.

 

If you really love a person, how could you want them to serve others in exchange for money at the expense of time not spent toward family pursuits? Even now that my wife and I are empty nesters, my wife is free to meet with my daughters for lunch, or to go shopping during the week and on the weekends she is free to spend time with me. Parents who are always busy doing their own thing have a poor quality of life and that hasn’t changed over the years. It was like that when feminism started robbing mothers from the homes of children during the 70s and 80s—and it is worse now than it’s ever been. There aren’t any laws that politicians can come up with to fix the situation, and there isn’t any education that will solve the problem either. The abandonment of the American Housewife has been one of the worst decisions that was ever made. I have thought that for many years now, and feel more strongly about it now than I did as a young person. For all those people who tried to talk my wife into getting a job and selling herself like a Vegas whore to social pressure—I’m so glad she didn’t listen. It would have been a terrible decision. I used to say that “advice is only as good as the person who gives it,” well that is never more true. When people call and ridicule you for doing something you know is right, look at their life and decide if they are really happy and successful. If they aren’t hang up the phone and get away from them. They are more destructive than helpful.

Just because the masses of society believe something, does not mean that it’s good, or helpful. The abandonment of the American Housewife is proving to be detrimental to the continuation of our culture. Every supporter of progressive expansion of women’s liberation has only thrown housewives out of the home and into the meat grinder of social servitude leaving children at home alone to raise themselves based on primal instinct. Once a young girl is felt up and pranced naked in front of a boy well before they even reach the age of sexual awareness, that girl will grow up into a wreck of a young lady, and the kids she has will end up being raised in chaos at a local day care facility. The chain reaction of mental destruction begins in those unsupervised summer days where parents are busy in service to dollars through institutionalized prostitution. The next door neighbor might be impressed with the new car, or the wardrobe bought at Nordstrom’s, but the kids are suffering and will grow up to become idiots. Because the American Housewife is nowhere to be found—except in my home—and a few others scattered about as rare as gold supporting the money the Federal Reserve prints to paper during periods of quantitative easing.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

2014 Values Voter Summit: How Glenn Beck is incredibly wrong

The Glenn Beck speech at the 2014 Values Voter Summit was very good and worth watching—which can be seen below.  There is a lot he said correctly—especially regarding Sykes-Picot agreement.  I was one of the first to cover that origin of trouble in the Middle East and if members of Beck’s staff passed it along to Glenn Beck to report—well, that’s why I write this stuff—to educate and help people understand the world around them.  It doesn’t hurt my feelings if Beck takes his big platform and expands it.  Click here to review my article on the matter.  It is the key to understanding the trouble and politics of the Middle East.  The rest of Glenn Beck’s speech was good as well and worth witnessing.  I agree with most of what he said, but in some parts of it he is vehemently wrong.  In those portions his life as a former addict crosses over into the realm of strategy and his advice is bad.  Specifically, it is in his self-sacrificial calls to surrender thought to God and to embrace Christen passivity in the face of evil.  Like many people who have found God late in life to redeem their self-destructive paths people like Beck fill their lives with scripture to plug the holes that were formed through drug and alcohol abuse.  It’s a survival mechanism that works better than personal and social destruction.  But for confronting evil, strategically, Christ is not the example and the kind of passivity Glenn Beck talks about in his speech will get a lot of people hurt, and or, dead.  So let’s explore the correct position below after watching the speech.

I understand that Glenn Beck is under tremendous media pressure to avoid being called a rebel rouser and is taking the Martin Luther King approach to solving problems when confronting evil.  Well—Martin Luther King ended up dead—killed by his rivals.  Beck also talked about Jesus, for many of the same reasons and suggested that Judas was frustrated with Jesus and his lack of ability to rally the troops against the Romans—which is why Judas betrayed Jesus.  Well, Jesus and his passivity caused him to be killed—assassinated as a religious rival to the power held in Jerusalem.   Beck and his utterances about Christ’s passivity obviously has not listened to the popular church song, “Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War” which invokes a bit of battle balled.  Passivity of religion rolled over into politics will end your movement before it ever begins and sparks for rebellion is necessary if there are hopes of overcoming evil.  God will not come down from Heaven and break down the walls of Jericho to the sounding of trumpets and slay the enemies of King David through simple prayer.  Such things require action to square off against evil and to conquer it as it presents itself.

Without Sam Adams, his cousin John would have never been the second President of the United States.  The American Revolution would have never happened.  Without Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson would have been just another former European styled intellectual pointing out what should be as opposed to what was.  Without a rebel rouser, action against the enemy does not happen.  In his speech Glenn Beck brought up the criminal Barabus who was picked by the mob to save instead of Jesus.  Beck stated that the angry mob in Jerusalem wanted a rebel rouser to spark rebellion and Jesus just wasn’t that type of person to perform the task, so they picked Barabus whom history would have otherwise only remembered as a harmless, petty inciter against the vile institutionalism of the day.  However, it was the pressure from the mob that caused the Romans to even put in place a system of providing a choice to their subjects to take the edge off their tyranny.  Without the aggressive pressure of people like Barabus—the Romans would just slaughter anyone who disagreed with their power.  Because the Romans feared an uprising against them, they put in place mechanisms to appease the mob—just as what happens to this very day especially during elections.

Praying to God in front of an armed thug who wants to destroy you and everything you stand for will only get you dead.  Trusting in God to save your soul from evil might get you into the gates of Heaven, but it will destroy life on earth for you and all that you love.  Passivity is not the answer—aggression is.  The bad guys need to know that the mob is angry and that at any moment some rebel rouser will shout “let’s get them!”  The only messages such villains understand is force—unapologetic force at that.  It is nice if that force is backed by a value system represented by Christians or some other religion of value, but passivity toward aggression cannot be a plan for expanding goodness in the face of evil.  That is just dreadfully empowering for those who favor aggression and blind power over those who are easy targets.

The current role that America has in the world shows this—the foreign policy of those raised as peaceful Muslims—like Barack Obama in the country of his education Indonesia—has a hands off pacifist behavior that is also characteristic of the modern liberals and libertarians who think that they can smoke a joint and offer the peace sign to a radical terrorist and all will be well—that God will just sort it all out.  They are insanely wrong.  Religion is only good for a relationship to the after world and establishing some foundation beliefs that can build a civilization.  But it will not provide good advice on how to deal with an aggressor.

I’ve never been a pacifist.  I learned martial arts at a young age and learned how to make myself invincible from a one on one attack through blocking techniques.  You can’t guarantee that you will always win in such matches with the opposition, but you can force a stalemate by not allowing their force to overcome you.  This has been a very successful position, and I’ve had many people—most of them bigger and stronger try to impose their will over the years—and they have not succeeded even after nearly five decades.  I’ve been in a lot of fights from young to old, the most recent one was actually a few years ago in front of several Butler County police officers which took place in the Hamilton Court House parking garage.  When confronted with vile evil, God won’t swoop in to help you.  You have to help yourself and confront it directly.  They have to know that if they make a move against you, or the things you care about—that you will pummel them.  That is the only way to achieve peace without being the victim of slaughter.  I’ve never been a drug user or a person who uses evasion techniques to avoid thinking—so have never had a need to turn to God to fill holes in my background.  I have always acted upon the moral appraisal that my mind produces based on the conditions of the world around me.  So I can speak from experience, pacifism feeds aggression against goodness, it doesn’t make it go away.

It took several hundred years after the death of Jesus for Christianity to begin taking hold.  In the meantime, many innocent people were murdered and lives were destroyed needlessly because mankind was too willing to surrender their life on earth for a perceived entry into the afterlife.  This allowed evil to manifest on earth and rule the planet for the last several thousand years.  And it was a stupid strategy that was supported by people like Glenn Beck over the years who get their messages mixed up—on one hand they stand aghast at the depravity of the world but then think that the situation will be solved by putting trust into God without any direct action taken by the victims of violence.  God made evil as well as the good, and places them into the battlefield of life for purposes yet defined.  However, in that transaction, goodness cannot yield to villainy and pacifistic behavior will not lead to victory for Christians.   When you see the actions of a bully, you have to be willing to look that bully in the face and destroy it if needed—and you can’t hesitate—you have to be willing to turn evil into a pretzel if need be and to end its life on earth if the situation calls for it.

As a person who has looked directly into the eyes of evil for many years and challenged it with force of my own, I can report that pacifist behavior feeds them leading to violence not avoidance.  I once confronted evil by taking on the entire police department of a local city who was using their power to sell drugs to kids through a local school.  The police gained these drugs through raids and instead of the evidence sitting on the shelves in a FBI lab somewhere, the cops were selling it back on the streets for extra cash—and everyone knew about it, including the mayor at the time.  How do you dear reader think that confrontation went?  Praying to God certainly didn’t help.  Many of those same cops were influential in the local churches, and gave a lot of money to the donation plates.  That evil had to be confronted directly—and it was.  I’m still around—many of them aren’t.  So who does God favor?  Does God favor the meek and weak, or the one who will spit down the throat of evil when pressed?  My experience tells me that God does help, but only when evil is confronted by the good—not yielded to.  Many of those police officers referred ended up destroyed by car accidents or health ailments within a few short years so fate does play out to some extent, but in my experience, meekness leads to the destruction of good, not the furtherance of it.

It is also in my experience that disguised behind the sermons of peace are people generally afraid of confronting evil, and they use the excuse that God is the ultimate mitigation of justice to avoid needed confrontations.  Born again Christians are particularly of this type as they must believe that their sins from the past will be rewarded through meekness toward God, by surrendering their lives to ancient provocation.  It is easy to do such a thing and still appear to be tough in standing against evil—without actually having to perform the task.  But it doesn’t work.  Evil must be confronted.  You have to be willing to look it in the eye and beat it down.  Without such a position, evil grows through embolden observation of pacifism.  Glenn Beck says a lot of things that are right, but on the issues of aggression and the inevitable confrontations with evil, his past taints his strategic thinking for the future. And his opinions about tactics against aggression by mixing religion with observed thinking is wrong.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Star Wars: Commander–How the Apple Company greatly increases the quality of life

I have predicted and discussed much of what is happening today in virtually every category over the last 4 years.  Some listened, most didn’t.  For those who didn’t—hopefully you learned your lesson and will in the future. However, for me, which has been the case all of my life, humanity has let me down.  People do not aspire to be what they should, and the times are often regulated and maintained by the laziest of our species.  This is why I often turn to mythology for inspiration, because the Wall Street Journal doesn’t offer much inspiration—just raw news.  Contemporary real-life characters fall short of my expectations—so I don’t even bother.  Thus, my love of Star Wars and the reason I discuss it so much—especially lately is because it provides such motivation.  It is the creation of minds in need of something bigger than the human race is currently offering.  So I often vacation there to recharge my own batteries.  As such, it should come as no surprise that I had a viewing party at my home for the new Disney television series Rebels, which premiered with an introductory movie on Friday, October 03, 2014.

To celebrate I spent the day in the world of Star Wars in one fashion or another.  My wife and I played the Old Republic’s Galactic Starfighter online—which is always fun.  I then spent the morning playing X-wing Miniatures which is of course my latest passion.  I rounded out the time between those events up until the airing of Rebels playing a new game downloaded for free onto my iPad called Star Wars: Commander.  My brother texted me excitedly about it recently and after a few weeks of prodding, I finally downloaded it.  I didn’t give the free app much though because I didn’t think it would be any good—that it would be a kid’s game.  Let me say that it is far from a kid’s game—it is a wonderful war simulation of resource management and I have been wonderfully consumed by its contents.

Years ago—way back in the 90s I once spent an entire week playing an old game similar called Armada 2000—or something to that effect.  One of my nephews introduced it to me and it required the building of fleets by mining raw materials and going to war to conquer planets.  The graphics were rough, but the game content was wonderful.  Around that same time I started enjoying the various Sim City games which developed into a game called Outpost, which required you to terraform an entire alien planet by using the resources there to build a civilization.  I have also been a fan of the various Civilization games over the years including the most recent introduction.  Those are endlessly fun games of strategy and construction that are designed for those with a keen eye for productivity.  Never before in the history of the human race were such tools of resource management available to so many people.  The new Star Wars: Commander is all of those games wrapped up into one.  It is incredible—especially for a free app. It’s a whole new age that we’re living in where such a thing is offered as a simple download.  I can’t recall a time when I enjoyed blowing stuff up so much.

Star Wars: Commander lets you as a player pick a faction—either Rebel player or the Empire and build a base that must maintain an economy through your credit vaults while continually mining alloy for the construction of everything from factories to starships.   You have to build and maintain troop strength, engage in research and development, and deploy defense strategies as your base will constantly be attacked by other player’s bases looking for credits and alloy, and shield generation.  It is fairly involved for a game designed to be played on the go—anywhere and everywhere.  I’m used to playing those types of things on a PC locked in my room and not dressing for days.  This ability to put such a thing on a computer device that I carry in my jacket pocket is unreal to my previous generation eyes.

On that note as I have been playing Star Wars: Commander all week diligently—everywhere that I can really, in restaurants, in shopping malls, in the fabric stores as my wife shops for supplies for the many blankets and craft items she makes, I have been fascinated by how portable this new age of ours really is.  Commander is really a game that must be played against other players so it requires interaction.  The brilliance of the game is that the designers created the basic template, but most of the way the content is used is created by other players—leaving players to essentially let the game evolve through competition.  But it is the portability that I find so strangely interesting.  While shopping at Kenwood Mall with my wife and daughter at the Eddie Bauer store, I stood outside across from the Apple Store and marveled at how busy it was at 7:30 PM on a weekday evening.  Business was thumping inside and a line requiring service was outside the door.  It was amazing.  People were very active in looking at the various Apple products—everything from iPads, iPhones, to new computers.

I’m a huge fan of the iPad as I use mine everywhere for everything.  I use it primarily for maps, and for processing data on spreadsheets.  It is a remarkable device—there is no question about it.  I’m not so keen on the iPhone as I like to separate those two functions.  But Apple and its innovations are game changing aspects to human civilization.  Most of the people shopping in the store were there to pick up devices to allow them to have more versatility in texting their friends or updating their facebook accounts.  They weren’t looking for performance as much as being fashionable.  But, their interest is driving the market in new directions regardless of the quality of their desires.  It is largely because of that swarm in the Apple Store that Disney put out the new game Commander.  It’s the perfect game for a touch screen device.

The new game only enhanced my Star Wars day experience leading me up to the Disney Channel airing of the new Rebels cartoon—which was fabulous I might add.   I’ve been talking about it for a year now—and it was worth the wait.  Cartoons like that and content on the Apple products like what Commander is certainly elevates the expectations of entertainment.  But what’s more important is the reason people like Star Wars so much—as I’m far from alone on the topic.  Star Wars offers hope and expectations on human potential that is higher than it otherwise would be.  And Apple is there to provide a format to further the mythology into ways that were unfathomable a decade ago.  Star Wars: Commander just seven years ago would have cost $50 dollars for a PC title sold in a store like Gamestop.  Now it’s a free app.  The game makes its money off the impatience and mismanagement of its players.  For those who don’t know how to manage resources, they will pay extra for crystals to build up their defenses or increase their offensive mobility.  Many of the upgrades take several hours to implement, especially shield generators and alloy depots—but they can be sped up through the consumption of crystals and Disney sells them by the bag which I’m sure is generating millions upon millions of dollars.  I typically launch an attack from my base every three and a half minutes—and I have yet to meet the same player twice—that’s how many people are on the game.  I would say that it’s a successful enterprise.

For those who want to play, you can look me up when you arrive by typing in the name of Cliffhanger—the character from my first novel The Symposium of Justice.  Of course you know—I’m playing for the Rebels.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Why Gordon Ramsey is so Good: The difference between Jags and everyone else in West Chester

One thing that Gordon Ramsay has brought to my life is an appreciation for fine food.  I have a background that involves working in several Cincinnati restaurants as a grill cook and waiter and have seen many of the troubles featured on the Gordon Ramsay television show Kitchen Nightmares firsthand.  I learned a lot from those places of secondary employment—most notably how to handle trouble when short of expected staff.  It created in me a lack of professional rigidity that serves me very well now.  So needless to say, my wife and I nearly exclusively these days make it a point to watch the several Gordon Ramsey television shows that are in production, Hotel Hell, Kitchen Nightmares, MasterChef, The F Word, MasterChef Junior and Hell’s Kitchen.  After watching so much of Ramsay it is impossible not to critic my food when I eat out—especially in the upscale places.

In Cincinnati it is Jags in West Chester that represents the best that the culinary arts have to offer.  It used to be the Maisoniette in downtown Cincinnati which finally closed in 2005 after maintaining a five-star culinary rating for several consecutive years, and the Celestial in Mt Adams which continues to a wonderful restaurant.  I used to be a fan of the Celestial after plays at the Taft Theater and days spent at the Art Museum—but Jags has replaced it. The drawback to Jags is that there isn’t much to look at outside the windows as the Celestial has a wonderful view of the city and the river.  But Jags for its exclusivity is better in that you can tune out the outside world and enjoy culinary art with some much needed isolation.

It’s not like I plan for days to embark on fine restaurant adventures, they just sort of happen out of necessity.  However, prior to Chef Ramsay I would usually prefer McDonald’s to the complicated—long winded dining experiences at the Celestial.  For instance, the Celestial Oscar is priced just under $40 and had dainty portions as opposed to the Oscar at Jags which costs $59 currently—and is more than enough to fill you up.  When it’s just me looking for food, I often want the quickest bang for the buck just because I’m so busy, but Ramsay has shown how wonderful food can be, that I find myself more and more enjoying the finer dining options around Cincinnati—as opposed to the quickest.

It’s not a fluke that Fox has so many Ramsey television shows featuring the award-winning chef.  Gordon Ramsey is a very effective manager—and it is a pleasure to watch him cut through problems quickly to get to the core of a problem.  Usually, the trouble with food ends up being psychological as opposed to knowledge based.  A lot of people know how to make great food, but they lack the sanity to put it on a plate.  This is what is fascinating about Ramsey—is his ability to break people down and rebuild them in such a short period of time.  In Kitchen Nightmares, Ramsey usually only spends a week figuring out design changes to a struggling restaurant, confronting owners who are struggling with personal problems which come out directly into their products, and re-launching with aggressive marketing campaigns from the local community.  The same process can be seen more articulately in Hell’s Kitchen where most of the candidates appear to be floundering messes at the beginning of the episodes, but as the season progresses, Ramsey pulls out of one or two of them, a potential culinary master by pounding out their inner psychosis into something that can produce masterpieces on a plate.  Ramsey films Hell’s Kitchen at the same time as the MasterChef shows which are incredible as the participants are forced to become greater through competition until they are master chefs.  It is amazing how quickly Ramsey is able to get to the source of a problem—and helps people overcome it.

Ramsey even though he is from the United Kingdom is one of the finest examples of capitalism that there is currently.  In essence, beyond all the personal problems of the people he helps, he forces them to accept capitalism or to perish—which is really the best thing he could possibly do for them.  Most of Ramsey’s enterprises succeed, although a few fail—his ratio is incredibly successful—which is why my wife and I enjoy watching him so much.  But because of Ramsey I can now spot the quality of people’s minds based on what they cook for me, which is something I never considered prior to watching so much of Chef Ramsey.  I can now spot in a little dive of a restaurant in the middle of Tennessee that the owners are having marital difficulties based on the way they prepare the food, and I can tell when a little over-priced Bistro on Lake Ontario is full of self-inflated egos based on the quality of the food.  Like Gordon Ramsey, Chef Michelle Brown at Jags has a background in sports and that competitive spirit finds its way onto the plate with every serving.  The food is often served meticulously, even in large groups.  Recently while in a large group it was easy to see even during the appetizer that great care comes out of the kitchen as we ordered three raw bar sea food samples.  They were brought out in massive fountain-like containers, and within each were oysters, jumbo shrimp and crab legs not haphazardly thrown in with clots of ice, but meticulously spaced.  I measured them in their spacing and each serving was equally distributed.  This to me was remarkable and is why I prefer Jags over something like the Celestial.

Compared to other area restaurants like Stone Creek and Bravo! Cucina Italiana which are franchise establishments that give nice middle of the road dining experiences disguised as upper crest—I can now eat in places like that and know much that there is to know about the kitchen and personalities involved.  The standard procedure in Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares is to sit down and eat the food—once he’s done that he attacks directly the root of the problem which is usually psychological problems between owners, managers, and staff—or food prep laziness.  In Jags you can feel that the victory of the meal is won during food prep, in those critical hours between 2 PM and 5 PM when dinner rush is planned for vigorously in the kitchen, and those other places where things are frozen because they are purchased in bulk for all the area restaurants by deals cut with food suppliers.  The employees at second-hand restaurants pretending to be exquisite is that they show up for work an hour before dinner service and expect to make great food—and it just doesn’t work that way.

Critics of Gordon Ramsey are often  the same people who think that capitalism is unfair—and they are also the same type of people who would rather eat at Bravo! Cucina Italiana as opposed to Jags where the individual meticulousness of Chef Michelle Brown comes out in virtually every meal leaving her kitchen.  They are the ones Ramsey cusses at as opposed to receiving his praise.  But I continue to be amazed at the playfulness and hard work that Chef Ramsey is able to conger up all while maintaining a family, traveling the world, and hosting four television shows that involve intense management techniques.  He is a remarkable person which is also why his food is so magnificent.  West Chester, Ohio is one of the best areas in the United States to live and its per capita income make it affluent enough to support a Gordon Ramsey restaurant.  Until he does that, Jags will likely be my top pick of dining experience.  And under the benefits of capitalism, it would be a great day indeed to have the difficult choice of Chef Ramsey or Chef Brown.  I like Chef Brown so much that I might have to pick her over Ramsey.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Why the Rich get Richer and Poor, Poorer: Eric Holder’s “Alinsky” Strategy

With all that is and will be said about Eric Holder’s resignation from the Justice Department, it must be noted that as the wave of scandals continuing to rise against his many crimes and fallacies that his move is simply another trick learned from Saul Alinsky’s popular leftist book Rules for Radicals.  Eric Holder, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and virtually every other mainstream radical activist from the political left have used that book as a modern religion to attack the premise of America.  The essence of their position is to steal wealth from the rich, and give it to the poor without considering why the rich are the “haves” and the poor are the “have nots.”  They as leftist radicals, because of their sympathies toward communism, which was quite popular during their marijuana smoke induced youths, failed to understand that wealth in America is not a finite resource like coal or natural gas.  Just because it exists does not mean that it runs out.  In America wealth is created, so if wealth is stolen and given to a lazy slug who would rather sit on a couch all day than work at a job, the wealthy person can still make more money while the poor person will typically blow all their looted treasure on cigarettes, alcohol, and lottery tickets. This is why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  Alinsky taught a small army of functioning communists to attack those with money in American culture and redistribute that money to those who didn’t have it.  It was a scam that has proven a failure, and Eric Holder has been caught many times playing the activist role for President Obama using Saul Alinsky’s book as their personal Bible.  Holder is doing essentially the same thing that Hillary Clinton did after the Benghazi scandal—leaving office following Saul Alinsky’s methods of diffusing a target until people fixate on the next shiny object.  Here is Hillary’s personal letter to her mentor Saul Alinsky in 1971—just to provide a backdrop of how important the old radical was to the future staff of the White House.

Much has been said about Alinsky and his dedication of his book to Lucifer.  Alinsky died at the age of 63 of a sudden, massive heart attack in 1972, on a street corner in Carmel, California. Two months previously, he had discussed life after death in his interview with Playboy:[4]

ALINSKY: … if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell.

PLAYBOY: Why?

ALINSKY: Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I’ve been with the have-nots. Over here, if you’re a have-not, you’re short of dough. If you’re a have-not in hell, you’re short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I’ll start organizing the have-nots over there.

PLAYBOY: Why them?

ALINSKY: They’re my kind of people.

Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals is the late work of community organizer Saul D. Alinsky, and his last book, published in 1971 shortly before his death. His goal for the Rules for Radicals was to create a guide for future community organizers to use in uniting low-income communities, or “Have-Nots”, in order to empower them to gain social, political, and economic equality by challenging the current agencies that promoted their inequality.[1] Within it, Alinsky compiled the lessons he had learned throughout his personal experiences of community organizing spanning from 1939-1971 and targeted these lessons at the current, new generation of radicals.[2]

Divided into ten chapters, each chapter of Rules for Radicals provides a lesson on how a community organizer can accomplish the goal of successfully uniting people into an active organization with the power to effect change on a variety of issues. Though targeted at community organization, these chapters also touch on a myriad of other issues that range from ethics, education, communication, and symbol construction to nonviolence and political philosophy.[3]

The Rules are artfully presented in the seventh chapter, “Tactics,” in thirteen specific headings. Those are: Power is not only what you have but what you make your opponent think you have; stay within the confines of your expertise; take the opportunities presented to go outside the expertise of your opponents; make your opponent live up to their own rules; ridiculing your opponent can be a most potent weapon; make the tactics used by your own people enjoyable to them; do not employ a tactic so long as to drag it on; always keep pressure on your opponent; the threat is usually more terrifying than the actual thing; develop tactics to keep pressure on the opponent; push a negative long enough to turn it into a positive; always have an alternative solution, lest the opponent accuse you of having no solution; and, pick the target, preferably a person, then freeze it, personalize it, and polarize/isolate it from sympathy.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals

  • RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood.

  • RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.

  • RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.

  • RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.

  • RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

  • RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones.

  • RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news.

  • RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off-balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.

  • RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.

  • RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog.

  • RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem.

  • RULE 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions

It wouldn’t take much imagination to see how all those rules from Alinsky’s book have been applied directly to every single human being in America in one way or another.  Labor unions have also used Alinsky to advance their cause greatly expanding the radicalism of the political left’s communist foundations.  By attacking righteousness from the position of Lucifer himself, Alinsky started a process in America which would eventually destroy the good country that it was and make it into the mess that it currently is out of a premise that open theft of created wealth would be considered virtuous.   Anyone who attempted to stand against them would see Rule 12 thrown at them in large doses making their military advancement against goodness an unchallenged path to social destruction.

If you’ve ever dealt with a school board in your local community you have surely been a part of the Delphi Technique which is an offshoot of the Alinsky Method.  It is designed to bring a community into consensus with the facilitators driven in the case of government schools toward the same leftist agenda points.  Alinsky is taught and used virtually everywhere that anyone from the political left operates.  He is their religion and purpose for existence and all this work is in dedication to Alinsky’s mentor—Lucifer.

When people catch themselves shaking their heads in wonder at the vast evil coming from the Obama White House, the actions of Hillary Clinton, and the epic failures and crimes of Eric Holder look no further than what they were taught by Saul Alinsky, and why.  They have a hatred for productivity so intense that they actually believed that the type of people destined for Hell, should be the type of people in charge of everything—Saul Alinsky said it himself.  And while it has been occurring, the virtuous, the productive, and the politically conservative have been exposed of their natural kindness to believe they did something wrong and needed to open themselves—and their check books to these liberal vagrants.

Eric Holder and his resignation is simply a variation of Rule 12—as the scandals and investigations mount, a liberal radical whether it be Hillary or Holder removes themselves from the polarizing result of such investigations to stop the network of anger from brewing further.  This is how the left typically diffuses trouble for themselves and they learned the trick from Alinsky—directly.  With Holder off the radar and a pardon waiting for him by Obama a year and a half from this writing, the conservatives of Washington will back off and lose interest—at least that is the plan.  Why—because it says so in Rules for Radicals.  They are that predictable—so it deserves to be asked—why don’t we stop them?  The answer to that is worse than the question—because we are still playing by social rules that were in place before Alinsky turned the political world on its head serving Lucifer by his own admission.  Those who stood for goodness, and justice did nothing but look for excuses so they could avoid the impact of Rule #3—which has paralyzed them into inaction for nearly a half of century letting evil have its way unchallenged.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com