Month: May 2015

‘Fury Road’: Rebelling against Giambattista Vico

I have a general assumption about mankind that is quite opposite of typical academia. Civilizations rise on the backs of innovative individuals and flourishing capitalism. They decline with more centralized control and absorption of individual achievement into the fabric of a collective society. When an unworthy king or bureaucratic democracy takes over the direction of economic enterprise and invention, a society is in decline. It is due to the hard wiring of human beings trained from their infancy to follow the Giambattista Vico cycle always witnessing societies fall only to be born again in a much regimented pattern. This holds true no matter what the society, whether it be the Mayan people, the Inca, the Mongol, the Roman Empire—all societies so far have followed the Giambattista cycle. This is why anybody with any honesty looks at George Miller’s Mad Max films and declares him a genius. It’s also why it was more than symbolic that Mel Gibson showed up at the premier of Fury Road, the latest Mad Max film now staring Tom Hardy. Studios didn’t want Gibson in the film as the Vico cycle declares that what’s old must be recycled to make way for the young and new. But Gibson showed up to give the young Hardy a bit of support because any Mad Max fan knows that Mel Gibson will always be the iconic Road Warrior. It all started with this movie.

Our current world is not very far from the world of the first Mad Max movie. Police are now being openly murdered and Vico’s final phase of anarchy is fully at hand. What happens next is the rise of a theocratic society followed again by aristocratic, then democratic rule, followed by chaos once again. In the film Fury Road we find that in the period between the first Mad Max film society has devolved into the rise of theocratic civilization. No longer is society concerned with missions to Mars or inventing a new iWatch—now the primary concern as it has been in the past is to establish a new deity figure for the society at large.

I have always loved the Mad Max character because he maintains himself throughout the entire cycle as a constant reminder into the phase of the Gambattista cycle from which everything was taken from him, his wife, child, friend, career—everything he cherished from that time. Unlike the rest of the world he finds himself standing up against the tide of regression. He is a representation in these Mad Max films as Nietzsche’s ubermensch-otherwise translated as the overman. Nietzsche’s ubermensch is one who has graduated from mankind and stepped away from the Gambattista cycle all together—and has decided to advance their life based on individual creativity.   But this is a dangerous road, Hitler tried to take Nietzsche’s ubermensch and advance Germany, but failed in his interpretation and instead moved his country into a Karl Marx inspired socialist democracy—followed by war defined anarchy, then back to a theocratic/democratic existence where it currently finds itself in a European Union—otherwise a democracy that is once again plunging into anarchy now inspired by the failing economies of Greece.   Mad Max is the figure who refuses to submit to these tides of the world.

I have no doubt that George Miller would agree with this assessment. He knows all too well what he’s doing. He’s not just making a popcorn action thriller with great car stunts and bizarre characters. He’s making a rejection statement against Gambattista’s famed cycle. He may not have set out to be conscious about that statement but rather let his intellect drive those elements of the story along as evolution of the various aspects of the story evolved, but based on the presentation of Fury Road, it is clear he understands what he’s doing all too well. It’s also clear why so many people are excited to see such an apocalyptic story and why after all these years it’s so close to the hearts of so many people. This is not a typical summer blockbuster film.

So, how excited am I for the upcoming Fury Road? Well, let me tell you, I have dedicated this upcoming Friday to seeing it. I will certainly be one of the first, and I will likely see it several times. I love the action, I love Mad Max and all that he stands for, but more than anything I love seeing the Gambattista cycle challenged. The world may have went crazy in relation to the advanced days of invention when oil was being produced to propel cars from city to city, to instigate the growth of economies of various trade. All that can and will fall apart within just a few decades of human development—just like the Maya abandoned their cities apparently very fast—as if they just evaporated. It’s not that such people abandoned their cities because they left earth for alien destinations, the people of Ur did not suddenly become equivalent to the Neanderthal after building hanging gardens and massive temples—they regressed because they emerged into war then reinvented theocracy starting the Vico cycle fresh again losing all that they had gained before. Mad Max is that personality in these George Miller movies who in spite of everything that he has lost and continues to lose, refuses to give up on his heroic past and be the last representation of a time when mankind was truly great.

How many people do you know who would at the drop of a hat become one of the mindless followers of some future attempt at theocratic rule? The current Muslim obsession is but the latest. How many maniacs would kill the masses for a chance at everlasting life in the hereafter because some slug of a wanna’ be king dictated that such a thing would bring redemption to the soul? The answer is probably everyone that you know. Most of the people shopping at the grocery and working in a corner cubical would gladly trade in their suits and ties for a thong and Mohawk if some skull inspired death cult instructed them that through worship of his heavenly presence that someday they too might rise up to greatness if only they adhere to the tenets of collectivism.   Miller’s brilliance is that he was able to see such a clear vision from our present age. It’s not easy to see that overweight school levy supporter buying meat at the grocery as a future sex slave to a blood thirsty cult fighting over the worship of water—but Miller does, and with a grand design. It’s not easy to see that corrupt politician kissing babies and whatever else as the skull wearing Immortan Joe hunting down the wives who are desperate to leave him. But in Miller’s films, it is quickly recognizable that most people we know under similar conditions would find themselves as some character in that wasteland. It doesn’t take much to forgo everything we have ever been and throw it away in exchange for basic human necessities, like food, water, and sex.

I am excited for Fury Road, but for reasons that go well beyond the visual spectacle. I love it for the rebellion against Vico. On one hand the Vico cycle is shown in all its brutal honesty, but through the character of Max—using almost no dialogue—Miller beholds the ubermensch—a character that launched the career of Mel Gibson who in almost every movie refused to buckle under the pressure of Vico to decline—but always to advance. Whether it was Riggs from Lethal Weapon or William Wallace from Braveheart, Mel Gibson started as Mad Max, that hero from the past who punched through the Vico cycle with the throttle down and the skill of a Road Warrior as the rest of the world attempted to drag him back into the Stone Age. That’s why Fury Road is more important than a four-year degree in college studying history and the Vico cycle. Because Fury Road shows through art the results of that path—and how treacherously close we always are to falling off the edge of reality into an abyss controlled by maniacs like Immortan Joe—or the Toe Cutter.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Keep Pam Geller Alive: Get wealthy while fighting terrorists–find out how

Not so oddly enough I know something of the two primary figures at the center of the AFDI Mahammad Art exhibit and contest in Garland, Texas which took place on May 3rd 2015. The winner of the art contest I have covered here before, Bosch Fawstin—who is the man behind the Pigman graphic novel whom I was made aware of as a potential partner for my own Cliffhanger stories. CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  Then of course I know a bit about Pam Geller, who organized the event. Pam is a long-standing Ayn Rand fan and is 100% all in when it comes to pushing back against radical Islam. When my novel Tail of the Dragon was being released I approached Pam about providing a blurb. She was willing until she realized that the novel didn’t deal directly with the problem of Islamic radicalism. She declined as she didn’t want to stray her attention away from the task at hand, bringing the public an awareness of radical Islam with the laser guided diligence that she has been providing for years. So it didn’t surprise me to see that these two characters were at the center of all this controversy. Fawstin won essentially by drawing a simple cartoon of Muhammad yelling to the viewer, “YOU CAN’T DRAW ME!” as the cartoonists states back with his pencil “THAT’S WHY I DRAW YOU.” For that simple drawing Fawstin has gone into hiding as Pam Geller had a Fatwa declared against her. To understand the lunacy behind the “fatwa” which is an issuance of death aimed at a target, this video will tell the story very well. This is what we are dealing with represented by Islamic Imam Anjem Choudary.

Watching that exchange pissed me off more than just a little. I personally thought Pam pushed it a bit by hosting the art show just as South Park a few years ago did something similar by putting Muhammad into their television show on Comedy Central. I’m pretty tolerant of people’s religious beliefs as I view them all as a kind of baby step toward universal understanding of the forces truly at work. To me Islam and this prophet Muhammad are just rip offs of Zoroastriansim. That particular religion dates back to around the early 2nd millennium BCE. The offshoots of Zoroastrianism were of course Christianity, Gnosticism,, and Islam as many different groups of people took their version of it and added a new religious mythology to suit their needs. I’m fine with whatever people need to do to understand their place in the universe—religion is fine, it’s a nice first step to bringing values to a person’s life—and I tend to like religious people more than people without it—because generally people who have religion in their lives have some sense of value that they try to live by. But to insist as these radical Muslims do, that all other religions and their references be eliminated in favor of a limited interpretation of reality is simply ridiculous. When Muslims have a general rule that their “prophet” cannot even be shown they are advocating in America something that just isn’t possible. Islam wasn’t even a religion until well over a thousand years after Zoroastrianism so much of the Islamic attempt to edit out what came before them, including Christianity are deliberate attempts at ignorance by shutting off their subjects to history deliberately insisting on turning off their minds to logic. Muslims deserve to be insulted when they collide with a culture in America where everything is up for debate and scrutiny.

The attempt of radical Islam is to force ignorance upon the world, and that in American culture is a much more serious crime than in drawing some prophet who ripped off aspects of Zoroastrianism to lash out against the wealthy clans of Mecca who feared the ancestral paganism that made them rich at that time. The creation of Islam is ironically a religious version of communism where the proletariat was given a psychological path toward anger against the bourgeoisie. Those too lazy to work very hard in life found in the religion an excuse to not be all that productive, so they jumped all in surrendering their lives to “Allah” then pointed to the Quran as the declaration of proof. Of course to keep their ruse alive they had to make Muhammad into a figure of respect as he was the author of their revered book, and to maintain the illusion of his prophet hood, they refused to even allow their subjects to depict the guy in any visual way. Well, that might work in some sand bitten, god forsaken region like the Middle East, but in America, that kind of behavior is just out of the question—as it should be. In a free society everything is fair game for debate and the illusion of Islam insisting that religious participants close off their minds to reality just isn’t going to happen, even under a penalty of death. Think about how stupid of a requirement it is in radical Islam to insist to not even show an image of Muhammad. Then to threaten death to anybody who questions it. See the problem?

Yet even as many have come out and criticized Pam Geller for poking a stick into the very intellectually limited cage of Islam, those same minds advocated tolerance for the defacement of Christian symbols, namely art exhibits where urine, defecation, and other vile acts were committed against Jesus Christ. It becomes quite clear quickly what is behind all this radical Islam nonsense and it’s just not going to be tolerated in the United States.   We are dealing with a religious war between two primary religions where the Islamic faction is hell-bent on the destruction of any rival under any condition. And that kind of intolerance just isn’t going to have legs in American society. It’s an information based culture that is going to do anything they are told not to—just because they can.

The two knuckle draggers who drove a 1000 miles to shoot up the art exhibit, Elton Simpson and his roommate Nadir Soofi from Phoenix, Arizona were way out of line. They showed up after such a long drive in body armor and military weapons to kill anybody they could. Expectedly, there were plenty of firearms on hand to put the two thugs down. Buy the 60-year-old police officer a beer for neutralizing the threats, and advancing on their location after he put them down to finish the job. That’s what every American should be able to do, and to perform the task, everyone should do their part by getting their concealed carry permit and arming themselves as heavily as possible. If one of these archaic idiots tries to do such a thing in public in the future, they need to be dealt with in the same way.

However the best way to eliminate the threat of these Islamic radicals is to use capitalism to destroy their culture—first starting in America, and then migrating it unapologetically to the Middle East. Currently the U.S. State Department is paying $20 million dollars to anyone who mails, emails or calls in information on four Islamic State commanders leading operations in Iraq and Syria. The State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program has paid out more than $125 million to more than 80 people since 1984 for actionable information that has put terrorists behind bars and prevented acts of terror. A person could become quite wealthy by coughing up information on Islamic radicals planning further hits on American targets—especially those against Pam or Bosch. The best way to strike back against these terrorists who insist on ignorance to advance their agenda is to rat them out of the holes they hide in and enrich yourself in the process. Here is the link, if you know of some radical Islamic loon that you think is planning something against any American activity on domestic soil—or anywhere in the world, click the link below and submit the tip. Buy yourself a new house, car, and cover your retirement for the rest of your life in the process. Enjoy the benefits of capitalism to the fullest extent and use it to crush this threat.

https://www.rewardsforjustice.net/

It is intolerable to even allow people like Pam and Bosch to be threatened for drawing a picture or hosting an art exhibit. Liberal advocates desiring to crush Christianity opened the door long ago to analysis of decency when they allowed the defacement of Jesus in art, and advocated on behalf of free speech to justify it. Pam simply did the same thing turning the hypocrisy against those advocates. Was it aggressive, sure, but we are at war with these ideological nutcases whether or not we want to be. So what has happened is set in stone and from here on out we have to deal with it. The first and best thing every American should do is—purchase a gun and carry it. Learn to use it and don’t get all panicky under stress.   Have it so you can use it the way the police officer in Garland did. When a target threatening the safety and security of any American is presented, neutralize that target as quickly as possible. The second and probably most enriching thing that you can do is rat out any jihadist thug hiding in the cracks of life wherever they might attempt to show themselves in the light of day. Don’t be afraid of those idiots—turn them in and let the guys at the Rewards for Justice sort out the good tips from the bad. You have a much better chance of winning some money with the Rewards for Justice Program than in winning the lottery or getting rich at a casino.

And while you’re at it thank Pam Geller for flushing out a couple of these scum bags. She did a good thing and she deserves the credit for having the brass to stick herself out there to fight these maniacs. You can thank her by keeping her alive, so get her potential assassins off the street by using the Rewards for Justice Program to scoop them up and drop them into a hole where they won’t be able to hurt anybody. And while you’re at it, get rich in the process. It’s the American way and unapologetically wonderful.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Progressives Against Good Families: Not reading to kids, Miley Cyrus Happy Hippies, and Genie in a Bikini

For the rest of the world who have allowed themselves to be deliberately naïve to the actions of those who want to control it, the ABC report out of Australia and carried by United Kingdom media might be surprising. Essentially progressive philosophers using Plato as an example are unveiling their desire to destroy families in favor of centralized control by the state—all in the name of equality. For instance, some kids are fortunate enough to be born into good families giving them an unfair advantage in life over those not born into good families. It is well documented that children who have loving parents who read to them and care for them in a mentoring way produce decent minded children and those relationships usually last a lifetime. Kids who are born into chaos and unloving, selfish parents take those static patterns into their adulthoods to become emotional wrecks. Well, for my wife and me we know all too well that there is great truth to the ABC article out of the UK seen below. We have always strived to work very hard at being good parents to our children and we have seen firsthand the wrath of progressive society that wanted desperately to move in this parentless direction—starting in public schools. Still, it is shocking when you hear progressives talk about this insurrection against logic so openly. Rush Limbaugh covered the issue on his May 5th radio show which can be heard below as well.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/new-family-values/6437058

You really can’t make this stuff up. If you want to have a traditional family in this country of America or anywhere else, you are under assault and withering under the strain will not save your children. As I write this Miley Cyrus is launching a foundation for homeless, and LGBT youth called the Happy Hippie Foundation. Millions of young people who like Cyrus are prone to listening to the openly political musings of that particular musical artist where the obvious objective is the destruction of family structure. The obvious strategic goal is to directly transfer the raising of children to control by the state. It is an obvious attempt, and fulfillment of the old Plato notion outlined in his Republic to centralize the youth behind common bonds, and before that can occur, individual family influence has to be destroyed. For the youth culture, that is being achieved through entertainment influences. If there wasn’t politics behind artists like Cyrus and Ariana Grande they would not make the kind of money they do within the music industry. The message behind their “art” is overtly a progressive message designed to destroy family bonds. Their “art” is a tactical objective in favor of progressivism.

Coming on Memorial Day 2015 on the Nickelodeon network is a show called Genie in a Bikini. It features a cross dressing guy who is a magical genie granting kids wishes. Clearly this is an attempt to normalize LGBT behavior on a network intended for children. So this is a very widespread assault on family oriented behavior. The executives at Nickelodeon and the producers of the various shows on that network are simply putting their finger to the wind and measuring what they think the public wants, and that is largely shaped by pop culture—artists like Cyrus, or before her, Madonna, Cher and many others who routinely pushed the limits of acceptability selling sex as a way to deface family structure as a foundation for individual development. But once a show like Genie in a Bikini hits the airwaves, the path to normalization is upon us.

I’m not one to declare that there needs to be censorship. I hate drugs, but I’m not crazy about the police either, so more laws are not the way I prefer to go. And in the case of censoring shows like Genie in a Bikini, I wouldn’t advocate that. But those types of people are imposing their beliefs on the rest of us—they are a minority and expect the rest of the world that enjoys family life to bend to their desires. This march toward equality for all essentially means that those of high quality need to reduce themselves to meet the inability of a majority to live up to a high example and that is not acceptable. I don’t accept these progressive ideas and I am more than willing to vocalize my dislike of their intentions to cram their beliefs down my throat. Anger is a nice way to put the emotions I feel toward the enemies of family—because family is very important to me. Those who are against it, I consider to be against me, so there are ramifications to that strategy.

The family haters who migrate to government like herding animals stuck on the Serengeti during a drought suddenly finding water are implementing a strategy that is several decades old. The American family funded by capitalist endeavors is their ultimate target and is the reason for much of this anti-family behavior. The target has always been capitalism—from the very beginning. The best way to advance socialism is to take away the ideal of a parent/child relationship—so I view this strategy as an open attack on my way of life. Its one thing to be tolerant of a couple of girls kissing in front of me in line at Kings Island, it’s quite another for them to expect me to put up with it in every aspect of my life and to bend my values to theirs. That’s simply not going to happen no matter how much Miley Cyrus sings about it.

I don’t like Miley Cyrus—I didn’t like her before this Happy Hippie Foundation thing she’s doing now. She looks like she smells like spit and I’m not found of saliva in the form of a human being. She’s the latest tool of progressive advocates in the record industry to advance their family killing strategy by using the tender minds of youth as a weapon against traditional culture. But worse than my dislike of Cyrus personally, is the name of her group—I dispise hippies. Hippies are anti-family, anti-capitalist, and anti-good. They are against everything that I’m for so that leads immovable forces toward a collision course. The mistake that is made by the other side, the side of the anti-family types, is that they believe in democracy to the point that they assume that majority rules minorities—if they have a greater number of opinion who are against the family position. They believe their sheer numbers will out vote people in the minority like me. What they forget is that they are susceptible to the same tactics they have used to destroy the family. When they came onto the scene as young hippies driven by the communist movement, they were in the minority against traditional value. Their rebellion was against tradition who at the time held the majority opinion. People like me understand that, and will turn that strategy around against them. We will not yield to the pressure, the world will not wake up tomorrow and just accept the disgusting behavior of the typical progressive—the lifestyle of sickness that people like Miley Cyrus represents. To think otherwise is insane.

For many years, as strange as it sounds, I have considered it an act of rebellion to be in a classic traditional family. Having a traditional family is my rebel with a cause position. I am proud of it, and will continue to have pride in it. For my part in everything I do, I will represent traditional values, because they work, and I appreciate them. A free pass will never be given to slugs like the Miley Cyrus followers who are worshiping the latest progressive spokesman—which is all she is. There may be millions of them, but to me they are like the walking dead zombies of modern fiction—brain dead and half rotten—and worth as much as a penny mashed into hot pavement after it has been trampled underfoot from many careless patrons. Pennies like that are not even worth digging out to spend, because they aren’t even worth that much effort. It may not be their fault that they have grown into worthless human beings, but it is the result of having bad parents who in many cases didn’t read to them as innocent children. I may feel sorry for them, but I’m not about to change what I do for one half of a second—just to make family destroyers like Miley Cyrus feel better about the bad decisions they have made in life as justification for being vile human beings.

However, now you know dear reader what the progressive left has always been up to. The only difference is now they believe they have the numbers to drive the rest of us to the edge of insanity in silent outrage. They enjoy attacking our sensibilities with their outrageous behavior as agents of evil against the American family. And for that, they deserve all that they will get. One thing that I will promise if I am the only person in the world doing it—I will never give these idiots the relief on a measuring stick showing good against evil, or a good family against a bad one. I know the difference and will continue to advocate in favor of the good—in everything that I do. And that’s bad news for the Happy Hippies, because so long as just one person refuses to join their ranks, they will always look like the dirty, smelly, skanks that they are—who from day one sought to destroy the family structure of the human race in a vile revenge against crappy parents who simply didn’t read to them when they were kids. The concept of family is openly under attack and I will promise this much even if the rest of the world falls into the darkness of following after those attackers—I will always stand with the concept of family and will view anything that threatens that unity as a vile, and despicable endeavor. Even if I am completely alone, it will be my goal in life to make those happy hippies gradually—extremely miserable.

Looks like Miley Cyrus gave up, she dropped her belief in her purity ring and from there fell hard. She’ll never get back what she lost. She ruined her chances at having a good family because no child born of her could possibly look up to her because of the many mistakes she has made in just the last couple of years. And now that Cyrus has fallen she wants validation that others are just as bad as she is. So she started the Happy Hippie Foundation to bring like minds together in the misery of their insolence. Misery loves company and they hate good families.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Failure of the Nordic Model: What the world needs to learn from America

The best argument against the Nordic Model type of socialism so advocated today by progressives, Democrats and socialists—like Bernie Sanders is not necessarily the quality of living which can be argued as whether or not it is good—it’s the type of people the cultures produce under those heavily taxed, and controlled societies. Advocates for the Nordic Model declare, which is appealing to an American society currently drowning in college debt–which is likely the perpetual strategy of the progressive political class—just as it is behind every public school levy—is that the education is free, average median income is high, and lifestyles are good—there’s parks, lots of government services, and the trappings of an otherwise utopian society that seems wonderful to those who find the challenges of capitalism to be ominous. Nordic societies have given up on the gifts provided by brilliant and ambitious citizens in favor of collective comfort and the cost to their society is a mundane culture of generally happy people just content to live and die like in the movie Soylent Green.

I once had a friend who was a Penthouse model from Sweden who was so in love with American life that she oozed it in every aspect of her life. Her reason was that Sweden was so encumbered with socialism that she found that society stifling. As a beautiful woman she had an advantage over the average Swedish female, yet that society didn’t give her many options to take advantage of her exceptional good looks. So she came to America, posed for a men’s magazine, found herself a very rich husband and lived a generally good life shrouded by the trappings of capitalism, and she loved it. I learned a lot about Swedish society through her, and the conclusion was that I would feel choked by it—it was far too limiting for me.

Now becoming a nude model for a soft porn magazine is hardly a noble profession, nor is marrying a sugar daddy husband the result of enormous skill. But in America that was an option for her which was not an option in Sweden. There weren’t that many rich guys looking for a beautiful woman to pamper—because everybody pretty much had the same level of income. For a girl like the model, there was certainly a glass ceiling limiting her ability to the collective opinion of the masses—so she came to America. Her story is just a microcosm of the type of people who come from other places to take advantage of the gifts of capitalism to make their lives better, and overall enrich the level of life for everyone in the overall culture. Arnold Schwarzenegger could have told a similar story as my model friend. In their home cultures they would have just been average every day people, but in American society, the limits to their lives went as far as they were willing to take it.

These are examples of entertainment personalities who found success in America and it should be considered as a representation of American culture the kind of entertainment that is exported—such as the motion picture industry. What great Nordic films are breaking box office records around the world these days……………………………..(crickets). What great companies besides IKEA are spreading across the world as a result of Nordic Model economies……………………..(still crickets)…………………anybody? What great sports stars, musical influence, new computer technology have emerged from Nordic Model society? How about novelists? Who are the great writers who are shaping philosophy coming out of Sweden, Finland or Norway? (still crickets) That is the problem with Nordic Model societies. They may have a nice standard of living for the average person, but their culture ends up being happy to just be happy leaving their exceptional people with no place to go but to regulate themselves into mediocrity. And the mediocre do not advance human civilization. They never have, and they never will.

In America mediocrity is acceptable. People are free to ride on the coat tails of the exceptional all the time. Last week during the NFL draft many exceptional young men received the opportunity toward fortune and glory by being drafted into an NFL team. For me the excitement centered around Jameis Winston who was drafted by my favorite team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Given all the headaches centering on the young man from the rape allegations, and the theft of crab legs, the organization took a chance on the 21-year-old quarterback out of Florida State because they were looking for an exceptional leader for their football team. They deemed his talent as so exceptional that they bent over backwards to get him, and had a signed contract within 24 hours of drafting him. When Jameis arrived in Tampa the day after the draft the hungry city treated him like a king reborn pampering him like he was a god. It was quite extraordinary, and was evidence of the recognition that they saw in the young man a chance to win once again. Winston would not have had an opportunity like that as a 6’-4” man of color in Sweden. He might get a chance to play soccer, but that’s about it. In America Winston had the opportunity to play football, baseball, maybe even basketball and to become a multi-millionaire well before the age of 30. Life is good for Jameis Winston and for fans in Tampa Bay; they are free to ride on his coat tails to future victory—or at least the chance of it. The reason that ownership, the coaches, the fans, players and much of Tampa Bay showed up at the training facility to welcome Winston to Tampa as a savor of the franchise was not because of some ridiculous notion of team, or a collective recognition of the common enhanced by a quality player—it was because Jameis Winston as an individual is a great football player and there are parades of people willing to fall into his wake to benefit from his individual heroics.

Who are the Steve Jobs types in Nordic society, or the Elon Musk types? What about Bill Gates–who is the equivalent of those billionaire inventors in Sweden?   I’m sure they have a few, but per capita how many creative types are inventing a new means of wealth in the Nordic Model? The answer is that there are far more people per capita under a capitalist society that have great success than those in a socialist country who manages to leverage their interests with the government in charge to become one of the rare elite. There is no reason for anybody to work to do anything great in the Nordic Model because everyone is comfortable just being average. It pays in a Nordic Model society to be average, so nobody does anything exceptional. That is the terrible cost of socialism under any guise.

A classroom of well-behaved children is not necessarily a good thing if what’s snuffed out is their individuality and the imaginations of their specific gifts. In America if a person has developed something that they can do better than anybody else, they can have a shot at the American dream—at riches and a lifestyle typically reserved for kings and nobility in European cultures—and it galls the world to no end that Americans have little respect for the ways of the past, where a select few ruled the many. Even if a person is physically ugly, they may do something so much better than someone else that they can have a shot at wealth. Socialism simply takes the monarchy of thought into government rule as opposed to a heredity rule. It is still the rule of a minority of the majority in trade for safety and security.

Ohio Senator Shannon Jones, who I used to like when she showed a willingness to take on labor unions—has now lost my support forever. Why, because she proposed a bill that says children should have to ride a bicycle with a helmet. Give me a break! What an utterly stupid rule! Government telling little kids that they have to wear a helmet to ride a bicycle—those helmets are hot, and stifling to the impulse of jumping on a bike and riding over to a friend’s house as needed. Helmets are a ridiculous imposition created by that panic driven mom class who think their children are so precious that every bump on the head is a life or death situation. Then when those overly coddled children do have a major crises in their life, like they end up in a car wreck where they bleed a lot, or end up in some other catastrophe, they end up dying because they have not been trained to withstand physical punishment, and then the mothers really lose their children just because they allowed their lives to be governed by panic and a drive for safety at any cost. The product of such children are a kind of limited life stuck in a bottle living their entire lives slightly detached from reality—which is ironically the kind of people produced by the Nordic Model. Shannon Jones belongs in the Nordic Model socialism that wants government imposed bicycle helmets at the cost of individual liberty and the potential evolution exceptional people. I never rode with a helmet and I had lots of wrecks. I learned exceptionally well how to roll out of trouble and protect my head from trauma. To this day I ride motorcycles every day often without a helmet and I’ve been in crashes at well over 100 mph. Because of my childhood I developed an ability to survive that is exceptional—something I wouldn’t have developed if I would have been forced to wear a helmet as a kid. If that was how it was when I was a kid, I likely would have just stayed inside and done something else—and said heck with riding a bicycle.

America is great because it creates the path for the exceptional to move away from the control of overly coddling government types like Shannon Jones. Sure people like the Penthouse model, Jameis Winston, or Elon Musk are the exception, but in a Nordic Model society, they would be stuffed into a jar for the common good. Their entire society would miss the gifts of their exceptionalism even if the benefits are as small as a nude woman in a magazine, or the wonderful technology coming out of Space X. The cost of the socialist society even if everything seems comfortable on the surface is that people live half dead lives in a kind of haze because there is no purpose to their life, no dreams to reach for, no fantasies to pursue. They just live and die guided quietly by the state toward an inevitable end comfortably put down to rest in service to the great collective.  Only the collective isn’t so great when compared to individuals produced by a capitalist society. Of course the masses will always have the bottom feeders. Those types will happily cheer on Jameis Winston with godlike reverence and dream of sleeping with women like the Penthouse model. And they’ll love the products of Apple and Tesla. And they may even dream of being one of those people one day. The opportunity of having that dream is worth more than the comfort of the Nordic Model. Sure kids with helmets on a bicycle may live if they fall down and bump their head. But the cost in using the helmet often slowly kills their minds in other ways. And those ways are the difference between the Nordic Model and a capitalist society. The evidence of which is the best method can be measured directly by which one produces better people for the society at large. And the winner of that race is obvious. Just go to the movies and see which culture tells their story best on the silver screen.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Socialist Bernie Sanders: Why public schools want the Nordic Model

Many snickered when I stated emphatically that it was versions of communism and socialism that was being taught in public schools. They really didn’t want to deal with that reality. Others snickered when I said that Democrats like Obama and Clinton were functional socialists—that their political ideology was driven by Karl Marx and that liberalism in general had the goal of socialism. Well, the times are what they are—drug abusers want legalized pot, the lazy want great pay for little work, and two decades of children have been raised on liberal causes like global warming, Keynesian economics, and philosophies of collectivism. And now they are ready for socialism in America—openly. That is why Bernie Sanders feels that he now has a platform for a presidential run. Old Democrats like George Stephanopulous are used to hiding their love of socialism behind cocktail parties and racist issues so to deflect attention away from their intentions. But Sanders is one of the only open socialists in the U.S. government. To his credit, at least he’s honest about his intentions. His open embrace of socialism made Stephanopulous cringe a bit in the following interview. While watching, remember I have been saying this kind of stuff for a long time—longer than Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or any other modern pundit. What follows is a bit of an article from a millennial website obviously proud of Sanders. This is what we are up against. These are not the Democrats of the 1990s. These are no longer ashamed of their socialism. These Democrats are openly advocating it—and because the youth has already been trained in socialism from their public schools, they are likely to vote in favor of it.

After raising more in 24 hours than each of the declared GOP candidates individually, Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders went on ABC’s This Week to let America—and the D.C. pundit class that has already written him off—know he’s a real player in 2016.

 

“For 30 years I’ve been standing up for workers of this country and I think I’m the only candidate who is prepared to take on the billionaire class which now controls our economy and increasingly controls the political life in this country. We need a political revolution in this country.”

After a bit of half-snark from Stephanopulous over his embrace of the “S” word, Sanders went on to defend democratic socialism and explain, in detail, why America should be trying to emulate Northern European countries rather than belittle them. The ABC host and former Bill Clinton advisor tried to pin the Vermont senator down, musing aloud, “I can hear the Republican attack ad now: [Sanders] wants America to look like Scandinavia,” to which Sanders deadpanned in response, “That’s right. And what’s wrong with that?”

http://www.alternet.org/dont-underestimate-me-after-shocking-fundraising-totals-bernie-sanders-defends-european-style

The Nordic Model that Sanders likes so much is a joke; the GDP of those Nordic countries is like comparing a fly to an elephant. They may both be creatures of biological design, but that is the end of their similarities. The United States has a GDP of over $17 trillion per year, Sweden only has $570 billion, Denmark $340 billion, Finland $271 billion, and Norway $500,000. Most of that GDP is exports from companies Ikea, but other than that, there’s not much going on economically. Yet this is what socialists like Sanders are advocating for.

The Nordic Model – Embracing globalization and sharing risks” characterizes the system as follows:[15]

  • An elaborate social safety net in addition to public services such as free education and universal healthcare.[15]
  • Strong property rights, contract enforcement, and overall ease of doing business.[16]
  • Public pension plans.[15]
  • Low barriers to free trade.[17] This is combined with collective risk sharing (social programs, labour market institutions) which has provided a form of protection against the risks associated with economic openness.[15]
  • Little product market regulation. Nordic countries rank very high in product market freedom according to OECD rankings.[15]
  • Low levels of corruption.[15] In Transparency International’s 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index all five Nordic countries were ranked among the 12 least corrupt of 176 evaluated countries, and Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway all ranked within top 5.[18]
  • High percentage of workers belonging to a labour union. In 2010, labour union density was 69.9% in Finland, 68.3% in Sweden, and 54.8% in Norway. In comparison, labour union density was 12.9% in Mexico and 11.3% in the United States.[19] The lower union density in Norway is mainly explained by the absence of a Ghent system since 1938. In contrast, Denmark, Finland and Sweden all have union-run unemployment funds.[20]
  • A partnership between employers, trade unions and the government, whereby these social partners negotiate the terms to regulating the workplace among themselves, rather than the terms being imposed by law.[21] Sweden has decentralised wage co-ordination, while Finland is ranked the least flexible.[15] The changing economic conditions have given rise to fear among workers as well as resistance by trade unions in regards to reforms.[15] At the same time, reforms and favorable economic development seem to have reduced unemployment, which has traditionally been higher. Denmark’s Social Democrats managed to push through reforms in 1994 and 1996 (see flexicurity).
  • Sweden at 56.6% of GDP, Denmark at 51.7%, and Finland at 48.6% reflects very high public spending.[17] One key reason for public spending is the large number of public employees. These employees work in various fields including education, healthcare, and for the government itself. They often have lifelong job security and make up around a third of the workforce (more than 38% in Denmark). Public spending in social transfers such as unemployment benefits and early-retirement programs is high. In 2001, the wage-based unemployment benefits were around 90% of wage in Denmark and 80% in Sweden, compared to 75% in the Netherlands and 60% in Germany. The unemployed were also able to receive benefits several years before reductions, compared to quick benefit reduction in other countries.
  • Public expenditure for health and education is significantly higher in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway in comparison to the OECD average.[22]
  • Overall tax burdens (as a percentage of GDP) are among the world’s highest; Sweden (51.1%), Denmark (46% in 2011),[23] and Finland (43.3%), compared to non-Nordic countries like Germany (34.7%), Canada (33.5%), and Ireland (30.5%).
  • The United Nations World Happiness Report 2013 shows that the happiest nations are concentrated in Northern Europe, with Denmark topping the list. The Nordics ranked highest on the metrics of real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, perceived freedom to make life choices, generosity and freedom from corruption.[24]
  • The Nordic countries received the highest ranking for protecting workers rights on the International Trade Union Confederation’s 2014 Global Rights Index, with Denmark being the only nation to receive a perfect score.[25]

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

Even though per capita income is high in these Nordic Model countries their average tax rates are hovering around 50%. So a $50,000 a year income is only $25,000 a year in useable income. Socialists like Sanders will tell supporters about the nice quiet life in Scandinavia, how happy people are, how long their vacations are—how all their educations were paid for—but what they don’t talk about is how they are not a people creating much of anything new, and that their economic power is largely dependent on their exports from markets that are rich because of capitalism. The Nordic Model is like socialism itself, a bunch of smoke and mirrors—and in the end all its really good for is some cheap meatballs at Ikea along with a table that breaks the first time a child falls into it.

Yet the point of this particular article isn’t to show what an embarrassment the Nordic Model is compared to the United States, or even a country of comparable landmass, such as Japan—it is to show that all along socialists were advocating these Democratic values intending always to advance socialism as a socially acceptable means of political and economic approach. Bernie Sanders in all his ignorance and naiveté is at war with billionaires because he assumes that they have an obligation to share their wealth—as if wealth is a finite resource that all people are born into. He does not know or understand that wealth is created, and that rich people make wealth because of the prospect of profit. When you take away the motivation to elevate oneself by giving them free education, free housing, long vacations and free health care, that you get a population of cattle that is happy to just graze in the field living off the efforts of others. Of course they’ll be happy to eat when someone puts food in their trough, and sleep in the provided shelter. But don’t ask them to invent anything new, or to advance the state of life in the world—because their minds are turned off—fat, dumb and happy. And that is what Democrats like Bernie Sanders always intended with their love of socialism.

It is that brand of socialism that our kids are learning in public schools at this very moment, and is also why Bernie Sanders thinks he can actually be president in this 2015 America. I’ve only been talking about it for around 30 years. They used to say it was crazy, but now Bernie has come clean with it, which for me is a justified poke in declaring that “I told you so.”

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Truth Behind Pseudoscience: How the Forest Hills superintendent played a part in the destruction of scientific method

Pseudoscience is a growing trend which I cover quite a lot, mainly because it is evolving out of a lack of trust in the current intellectual institutions. As it turns out the imagination of mankind is more reliable than its ordained collectivism—the level of reality that the masses are willing to accept. For those masses, their level of intellectual aptitude is not very high, and they are happy to relegate their trust to those they consider authority figures. But that trust quickly evaporates when it is discovered that those authority figures are extremely corrupt individuals lacking basic leadership skills, which is certainly the case when the Forest Hills superintendent was caught trying to manipulate his child’s individual test scores—because obviously those types of things are important to his family. This is not an uncommon occurrence. In my dealings with public schools I was amazed at how simple their thinking was, and how easy to corrupt they were. My net result of observation was that they cannot be trusted with much of anything—especially the framework that science and education in general are bound by. Here is the story of the superintendent as reported by Channel 5.

ANDERSON TOWNSHIP, Ohio —Forest Hill School Board members have released the results of their investigation into allegations that Superintendent Dallas Jackson is accused of invalidating a first semester exam score, because his son did poorly on the test.

It could be a packed house at the Forest Hills School Board meeting Monday night after the district’s superintendent was accused of tossing out a test because of his son’s grade.

The board met in executive session for more than three hours Monday night.

According to an unnamed investigator, Superintendent Dr. Dallas Jackson attempted to interfere with grades on a pre-calculus honors mid-term exam, but the Turpin High School principal addressed the exam grades without influence from the superintendent.

Teachers first sent a letter to the school board questioning the ethics of the superintendent’s inquiries into the test his son took.

WLWT has been pushing the Forest Hills district for the documents for days. The station obtained a copy late Tuesday afternoon.

Jackson tried to step in after 44 percent of the honors students, including his son, failed an exam in December.

An independent investigation found Jackson sent a text to the principal saying he was not happy with the way she was handling the issue.

The district reported Jackson met twice with the principal at Turpin about the exam. Jackson told the principal the failure rate was due to either “a bad test or bad teaching.”

The principal approached the teachers in charge of the exam about averaging out the test grade, but they refused. Ultimately, the teachers, the Turpin principal and assistant principal agreed on a plan to give students a chance to raise their grades.

Jackson disagreed with the plan, but it was implemented anyway.

http://www.wlwt.com/news/forest-hills-school-board-ends-investigation-into-superintendents-conduct/32623884

In my experience at witnessing, writing, and researching many stories like the one above from Forest Hills, it is safe to say that I don’t trust much of anything that comes from institutions backed by government—especially if they have connections to international trade unions. There is just too much temptation to cover up bad human behavior, or interpretations of a strongly held static pattern—such as a religious preference—to alter and manipulate data intended to be involved in critical thought. As I say that I can’t help but think of a book a person I greatly admire wrote called The Demon Haunted World, by Carl Sagan. Sagan is not the type to jump into conspiracy theories and wanted very much to fight back the trend to take imaginations into pseudoscience. But the scientific data he often relies on to make proper decisions are known to be deliberately revised. Evidence cannot be considered if it is destroyed and proper assessment of data cannot be deduced if it is avoided to protect intellects from the challenges of new data that may be contrary to a static pattern of thinking.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by astrophysicist Carl Sagan.

In the book, Sagan aims to explain the scientific method to laypeople, and to encourage people to learn critical or skeptical thinking. He explains methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science, and ideas that can be considered pseudoscience. Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking, and should stand up to rigorous questioning.

Science to Sagan is not just a body of knowledge, but a way of thinking. The scientific way of thinking is both imaginative and disciplined, bringing humans to an understanding of how the universe is, rather than how they wish to perceive it. Science works much better than any other system because it has a “built-in error-correcting machine”. Superstition and pseudoscience get in the way of many laypersons’ ability to appreciate the beauty and benefits of science. Skeptical thinking allows people to construct, understand, reason, and recognize valid and invalid arguments. Wherever possible, there must be independent validation of the concepts whose truth should be proved. He states that reason and logic would succeed once the truth is known. Conclusions emerge from premises, and the acceptability of the premises should not be discounted or accepted because of bias.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World

Yet we live in a world where public schools have deliberately avoided critical thinking and reason—so that emotional decisions centering on collective endorsement can be utilized instead. The result of this action is an entire society that has lost the ability to think critically or to use reason to make determinations. When those types of people are in charge of an institution what you get is the kind of results seen in Forest Hills Superintendent Dallas Jackson. His son had a bad grade, he was a superintendent of an important public school, and he didn’t want the embarrassment of having his kid not performing at the top of his academic expectations………….what would the neighbors think? Worse yet, what about the rest of the family? So he used his power to abuse the system to his needs. This has happened within the IRS involving Lois Lerner. It happened in Benghazi. It happens every time a teacher decides they want to have sex with one of their students. It happens all the time and at all levels.

Its not unrealistic to imagine that some curators at The Smithsonian Institute, or The National Geographic Society who have poured their faith behind the Charles Darwin theories of evolution and built their careers around those assumptions would not stuff the bones of some giant discovered in a Ohio mound into some vault, or even destroy the evidence to preserve their scientific outlook. For instance, everyone knows that whatever wreckage was found in the Roswell incident was sent to Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Not long thereafter there were many UFO sightings around Southern Ohio probably related to new military technology either being developed at WPAB or the testing of alien technology found in the wreckage. Or perhaps somebody or something connected to the wreckage went looking for their stuff back. Supposedly the complex of this mysterious Air Force base was connected by tunnels to the Mound Nuclear complex nearby in Miamisburg. And in the middle of all this activity was the Masonic temple that looks down into downtown Dayton and the Great Miami River upstream from the nuclear site. Old buildings around Dayton all up and down the river in that area have lots of references to gargoyles and strange winged creatures that really don’t have a direct connection to the frontier development of those communities, so something really odd is going on behind the veil of the presented reality there. I probably wouldn’t think anything strange about any of this except that somebody decided to build the entire nuclear research facility right in the middle of a magnificent mound builder complex right in the middle of the site. At the Miamisburg Mound at least two skeletons of people over 8 feet tall were found, so any credible university it would be thought would seek to do some major excavations in Miamisburg to discover who and what they were. Instead, science and industry backed by politics built a nuclear research facility supposedly connected to the alien conspiracy theories of WPAB. If you take Carl Sagan’s scientific method at face value one has to ask—what proof is there of any paranormal, or pseudoscience behavior? Well, the mound itself there in Miamisburg is large, and the entire nuclear faculty was built around it for some reason—perhaps to give the illusion of having respect for Native American culture. Yet nobody has dared to do a proper excavation of the site in over 100 years. Why? The University of Dayton is literally just a few miles away—they have some anthropology courses that they offer. Nearby University of Cincinnati and Miami University both have respectable archaeology programs, yet nobody has pulled together the ability to do a suitable dig at the site—which would unquestionably produce many more skeletons—probably some of which were giants—relatively speaking. Science creates the pseudoscience speculation because of the various cover-ups which likely stem from a religious desire, or a European pride issue of maintaining that Christopher Columbus discovered America and that the cultures that were already in the New World were truly primitive hunters and gathers. The culture that built those mounds was more advanced than previously thought, and those in charge wanted to manipulate the facts to force reality to be shaped to their desire.

That’s why it’s a big deal when someone like Dallas Jackson abuses his authority to make his son look smarter to his peers. Jackson manipulated the science of critical thinking to create a desired outcome. When this happens in a local school system, you get mistrust and some chicken gawking toward righteousness. The teachers had a chance to push back against management and show what ethical people they are ahead of their next levy attempt, and the news outlets get a story to cover. But when the same thing happens on a national level with all the coordinating institutions protecting their version of realty—whether it is in preserving the illusion of European history and cultural superiority, religious orthodox, or even political alignments the only way to scratch at the truth is through the pseudoscience.

Public education institutions have lost their relevancy because they have shown themselves all too willing to behave as a filter to reality by programming the masses into illusions of understanding—so to preserve versions of reality they see as valuable. For Dallas Jackson it was more important to him to have his son look like a smart kid than in the actual fact of his son’s intelligence. So he sought ways to fudge the numbers in favor of his boy. This is how Carl Segan’s trust in the scientific method goes wrong because institutions and those in charge of any collective oriented enterprise are prone to doing just as Jackson did meaning that very little of what is produced and offered as truth can be taken as such without more evidence being sought out through speculation. Little things do add up to big things rather quickly and because of that pseudoscience is gaining ground where orthodox science is failing. And sometimes it all starts with a superintendent just trying to change the grade of his son to look better in a social setting. That is the damage that is done, and why it is so perilous a path to take.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

What’s Hidden Behind the Veil: Monsters of H.P. Lovecraft’s nightmares brought to reality

I grew up with a Christian background, which I still find useful.  Religion is for the most part good if it helps nurture along values that are positive.  But as a tool for historical reverence, religion is all about revising history to match whatever provided text is important to the cult in question—and over time, I have come to realize that much about history has been erased or distorted due to the rise and fall of Christianity.  Of particular complaint for me is the North American origins and actual history of the human race.  One of the most important books I have ever read was Forbidden Archaeology which chronicled the many relics of excavations that have been repressed from the historical record due to academic revision driven largely by government necessity and religious preservation.  To my mind the actions in the Bible are only lily pads of history with many more extending into the distant past, and there is archaeology to confirm it—so needless to say once you read Forbidden Archaeology it forces you to look at everything with a new lens toward reality.

And I’m far from alone.  A few years ago I was being criticized for my lack of involvement in a church of which I answered that I considered religion to be like a pair of shoes I wore when I was a child.  I’m happy to have had those shoes on my child-like feet.  But as an adult, my feet outgrew the shoes and I needed something that fits better—and currently no religion offers a shoe big enough to fit my very large feet.  I might keep my old shoes tucked away in a box thankful for the memories, but they would be of no use to me now as a fully grown adult.  To say that I’m an atheist would be completely inaccurate—it’s not even a category that applies.  Rather, I am part of a movement that is redefining religion and making new shoes for people to wear—intellectually and this is a movement that is picking up a lot of steam.

So it was much to my amazement that I ran across H.P. Lovecraft after falling in love with the board game Arkham Horror.  I never planned to like the game that much, but once I discovered that it was about monsters from other dimensional realities trying to come into the world of our own recollections and that it dealt with many different parallel worlds I started thinking more seriously of the writer H.P. Lovecraft who wrote pulp horror stories during the Roaring Twenties and was then considered a crack pot lunatic—a child of two parents who ended their lives in insane asylums.  Lovecraft was a young man haunted by terrible monsters in his dreams for his entire life, and he dealt with the beasts through literature.

Coming out of a heavily Christianized turn of the century with do-gooder progressives making their mark against the world of capitalism Lovecraft was way ahead of himself in his writing. He was essentially writing about the types of things that the modern David Icke is saying—that the monsters that haunt us are not of the type seen in Casper the Friendly Ghost.  They are ancient beings once considered gods that still haunt us through the mysteries of quantum mechanics.  They are like those in Poltergeist who bend dimensional reality to suit their needs, or like the Sumerian terrors in Ghostbusters who were able to come and pillage our planet in whatever form we feared the most.  Those films had fun with a subject matter that ultimately points back to the work of H.P. Lovecraft as he was clearly the start of a new way of looking at the things that terrify us from mysterious realms.  Most human beings seek to throw those gods into a religion hoping to appease to their sensibilities and give us luck at navigating their perilous objectives—but to those whose feet no longer fit in the confines of religion, something much deeper is needed.  For them, Lovecraft is becoming a literary giant a 100 years after his death.

Even before Forbidden Archaeology about a decade before that book was published I learned about the ancient city of Cahokia just outside of St. Louis.   I was stunned to learn about it being so large and having pyramids nearly the size of those in Mexico and Egypt and that they had such an advanced culture prior to the settling of America by Europeans. I wrote a screenplay about the place which won some awards, and no matter who ran across that story as I was shopping it around, nobody had ever heard of such a thing, yet the remains are right off the major highway that passes east to west straight into St Louis.  If science and politics were able to contain such information that was right out in the open, what were they really hiding, because experience said that they were hiding quite a lot?  When I was a kid, 10 to 15 years old I was a subscriber to Biblical Archaeology Review—so I knew quite a lot about various dig going on around the Holy Land.  But there was always a layer of haze over the reports that always bothered me.  Much of that cleared up as Forbidden Archaeology blew the doors off all the suppressed discoveries of the last century.  One of the great gods of worship at Cahokia was a thing called Bird Man.  I couldn’t help but wonder if Bird Man was the same thing that people in the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia—several hundred miles up the Ohio River from Cahokia called the Mothman.  After the popular film drove me to read one of the scariest books I’ve ever read in The Mothman Prophesies I realized that something very dark and sinister was going on behind the thin veil of historical documentation. My family actually went on Mothman hunts as I was determined to catch one and discover what it was all about.  What I learned was that the Mothman likely was not a creature of four dimensional realities, but something else.  That something else is the kind of monster that David Icke has been talking about—and in fictional literature, H.P. Lovecraft.  CLICK TO REVIEW.

My wife and I this past week celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary and we enjoyed it by buying two new expansions of the Arkham Horror game and a giant New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft book by Leslie S. Klinger.  Yes we had dinner, but the best parts of our evening was in hunting new H.P. Lovecraft material.  As crazy as H.P. Lovecraft seemed during his time in the 20s, in hindsight he obviously understood what was going on as the popular show Ancient Aliens and other fresh explorations into our hidden human history are paving the way to validate work that Lovecraft did that seemed like fantastical fiction at the time—but today is perhaps a bit too real.  For a family like mine that has spent time chasing UFOs, hunting Mothmen and climbing around in some of the most haunted corridors of our reality—mostly finding nothing literally, but a lot peripherally—Lovecraft is our idea of a great date night.  But I can’t help but wonder if his musings were not more historical than fiction.  My current leanings say the latter more than the former—and it takes removing the confining shoes of religion to actually wade into those depths.

It isn’t surprising that Lovecraft is making a comeback.  I have been shocked by how many people now read his stuff when at the time of his death he was mocked by critics and was penniless at the age of 46.  Today, it’s a different story.  More and more people are realizing that they have been lied to by their government schools, their political structure, and their religions—and they are dusting off those old books to see what people were saying before the progressive purge of the Twentieth Century wiped everything out and revised history to the sentiments of the radicals vying for power. But that time has come and went now, and H.P. Lovecraft is emerging from the hidden depths of our own thought into history.  His musings reflect my own, that somewhere hidden in our mythologies are historical truths long suppressed by the orthodox shaped by modern religion.  And in those stories is a key to the gates of knowledge and it is there that humanity must go to discover our next step.  But For that next step, we will need new shoes—and that is my current obsession. For those new shoes I will need some of the leather processed by H.P. Lovecraft—and working that leather is proving to be an interesting endeavor to say the least.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Don Quixote and the LEA Union: Laughably out-of-touch in Lakota

The Lakota Education Association (LEA) continue their strikingly ridiculous revolt against the suggested merit pay portion of a new contract with the blind stupidity of Don Quixote from the rhetorical knighthood epic attempting to revive chivalry against a skyline of windmills. The world had moved on against Don Quixote, just as it has from the LEA, yet both are stuck in the past painting themselves as comic caricatures against reality. In Don Quixote’s neurosis, at least his reverence was filled with a clamoring for honor, and justice. The LEA nutcases with their black t-shirts and school protests come across as just greedy and out-of-touch. Like Don Quixote they are poised in a fight against technology represented by an unyielding and unemotional windmill which they attack as the rest of the world goes about their business unconcerned.

I’ve already been quite public about my opinion. All the participating teachers in these demonstrations against merit pay should be terminated from the Lakota school district. What the school board is trying to do is apply some management to the outrageous wages and benefits that the current employees enjoy—which puts way too much imposition on tax payers as one of Butler County’s largest employers. If Lakota were a private business, a corporation, or any other creation of the world the rest of us live in, the school would be out of business. But, since they are government employees and part of a government employment union which is a terribly out-dated model of doing business fed entirely by tax payer extracted funds they sustain themselves with the furtherance of levies faking effectiveness. The collective bargaining that they are fighting so mindlessly for is also a concept that will soon be extinct—which has started in the United States in Wisconsin where Scott Walker has successfully implemented many of these new concepts in the heart of the most progressive state in the union. All other states will have to follow, including Ohio leaving these black clad LEA teachers looking foolishly irrelevant.

Perhaps more stunning was the comment president Sharon Mays made to her members and the flyer which emerged from one of the recent protests. Mays stated to the school newspaper, Today’s Pulse that “In no way are we at a standstill here. We are continuing to meet and collaborate to reach an agreement.” Then there was the flyer which stated, “It has become clear that Lakota needs a different perspective on our board of education. Please see Constant Contact for a notice about searching for supportive, positive community members who may be running as a candidate this November.” True to the flyer, there are two seats coming open on the school board this upcoming fall of 2015, but those seats are not currently held by bastions of conservatism. Julie Shafer has worked on behalf of the labor union about as aggressively as these LEA types could dream of.  What the union is talking about is a return to the good ol’ days in Lakota where union lapdogs were sitting on the school board behaving against the community to stuff the pockets of the union members with confiscated wealth from the district. Those days are over—forever. Lakota is too conservative of an area to put up with that kind of behavior leaving the type of current board members to adequately represent the most liberal aspects of the Lakota district. What the LEA has now is about as good as its going to get for them. And if that’s not good enough, they need to stop charging those windmills and hang it up.

Soon it will be summer and people will care even less about Lakota schools. And as the union pushes this whole thing into the fall, people will care even less as the new Liberty Center shopping complex will bring lots of nice stories to the district. Nobody is going to want to see a bunch of spoiled brat teachers dressed in black projecting unfairness when most people in the district are individually successful and know what it takes to make a dollar. Areas like Mt. Healthy or Over-the Rhine might have a more sympathetic public opinion for the LEA members, but they aren’t the ones who will vote for new school board members or future levies to pay for all these collective bargaining agreements. Those who do want to throw money at Lakota really just want to throw money at the school to take the burden of baby sitting their kids off their minds. These protests are reminders to them that their baby sitters aren’t so stable and might threaten to walk off the job at any time—which will only piss them off. Nobody with a sane mind thinks these Lakota teachers are “under compensated” or that they have a critical effect on their children’s future. Only idiots think that today. Everyone else understands that Lakota is just a baby sitting service.

To say it’s an insult to consider the highly degreed government employees at Lakota as mere baby sitters is to not be in touch with reality.  Only in public work these days are those degrees of any real use, because only there can any value be provided that is equitable to the perception of importance.  Schools like Lakota can only maintain that perception with looted wealth from property owners who do have value.  Just like the bad teachers will cry out for the best teachers to share with them the net value of their hard work through collective bargaining and a lack of merit pay to hide their lackluster effort—government schools do the same allowing organizations like this LEA to charge those windmills with the illusion that they are fighting monsters of great importance.  But they aren’t.  They are only fighting rotten wood in a vacant field as the rest of the world does their own work oblivious to the lunatics on horseback fighting illusions of a threat that doesn’t exist.

Public schools if they were effective would be producing lots of little Einsteins, but all they make are over sexed children bored with life and lacking the basic work ethics to conduct their lives in a successful fashion.  It is taking most public education graduates these days until age 35 to actually mature away from the nonsense they learned in government schools if they ever do.  That is not a success story worthy of black t-shirts and protests against merit pay.  My vote would be to shut down every public school and give every child in America a Leap Frog tablet replacing all these ungrateful teachers sending them to the unemployment line.  The kids would be much better off and get a far superior education.  So it’s quite humorous to watch them gallop about as if their work was somehow more important than it really is.  The LEA should feel lucky that they have a current school board who will actually talk to them. I’d simply let their contracts run out and begin hiring replacements.  Ohio will be a right-to-work state soon.  Lakota will then be able to hire teachers for a fraction of the current cost. So fire all the protesting teachers at Lakota and let reality finally catch up to them.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Hero Toya Graham: Villains of progressive failure collide on the streets of Baltimore

Toya Graham is being branded “mom of the year” by the same media who spent much of last year trying to ruin the career of Adrian Peterson for essentially the same thing. The NFL football player nearly had his life ruined for hitting his child with a switch—a practice common in the south, and among the older generation. Yet an intrusive society guiding an intrusive government that has stepped in and taken over as the parents of children has directly created the kind of situation that can be seen so eloquently in Baltimore—a per capita population without two parents in the home, hoards of children raised on the government tit dependent forever on tax payer resources for basic sustenance, and a severe lack of understanding of basic economic principles. The government with all its intrusiveness created the inner city problems seen in Baltimore so it was a bit odd to see that so many were so quick to praise Toya Graham. If there were not riots in the streets threatening to destroy the city, she’d likely be arrested and thrown in jail. Kids know that about their parents these days, so they have lost respect—because government has superseded—and eroded the authority of parents.

In our family there was a guy who was not the sharpest tack in the box, who married into the family through a divorce situation to raise children who weren’t his own. He had anger issues and lots of little psychological problems, but he at least tried to instill in the kids a sense of right and wrong—some structure to live their lives by. One of his step daughters started wanting to cat around with boys and pushed the limits of the rules for a few years, like many kids do—and he got physical and smacked her around too much so to show her where the limits where. She was sneaking out at night putting her in much more danger. The kid told teachers in the school who then called human services and soon the police came and arrested the guy—and put him in jail. He was at the time a six figure earner who was socially, a successful person. After his stint in jail over his daughter, he quickly declined as a person over the next several years and eventually lost his job, and his family. He never really got over that embarrassment. The state had intruded on his family and ruined his authority and the cost was enormous—basically another family destroyed because the male figure from within it was neutralized.

Government has positioned itself to be the end all in all debates domestic or economic. In the workplace they’ve made it so that employees can run the asylum just through threats of discrimination, abuse or a lack of fairness. In some cases employers like the clueless father do sometimes abuse their authority, but when such mistakes are made, the family often sorts out the issue better than the government does. The end result of government intrusion is inaction—so nothing happens to correct bad behavior. That’s far worse.

I never really had to punish my kids. I viewed discipline as being at wit’s end with children, and I have plenty of wits. Sometimes anger is needed, when children push things too far. But most of the time the respect they have for you is enough to leverage them into doing the right things. Generally, at their basic foundations, people want to do what’s right by people they respect. If government interrupts that respect process, they are ruining the relationship of the parties involved which ultimately creates massive neighborhoods of poor people like what was witnessed in Baltimore.

Adrian Peterson, the NFL running back, one of the best in the game, a star on the field and a pretty good person off the field came under fire beating his four-year old son with a switch and breaking the skin. For that action Peterson was rung through the media wringer for a year as commentators suggested that he should lose rights to his son, lose his career and go to jail with all the other miscreants. Likely, Peterson was trying to establish in his son the type of discipline that was enacted upon him when he was a boy. Its learned behavior in how the parent establishes themselves in the dominate position within the family. Kids need that framework so they can identify who they need to listen to. When government sweeps in and puts the parent in jail all they are doing is replacing in the child the dominate authority figure. The government uses force as well as the parent. When the guy in our family was arrested they weren’t nice about it—they stripped him down, did cavity searches and if he resisted in any way at all they threw him about like a rag doll—in front of his kids. That guy essentially lost his authority with those children that day under the force of government. The government could pretend they were helping the kids, but in all reality, they were hurting them by destroying in their lives the symbol of authority they were supposed to look up to. The violence still happened, it was just transferred from the child to the parent showing the family that dad didn’t know best–that government did.

So it was quite shocking to have so much praise thrown at Toya Graham for beating the living snot out of her son during the riots on national television. For government, they were out of answers; they created the slums of Baltimore, they made the people overly dependent and they were out of answers as those thugs, miscreants, and diabolical loons burnt down their city. When a parent actually went out into the street with violence on her mind to apply some discipline to her out of control son they suddenly praised her, because they were out of answers. Arrests and abuse of prisoners is all the authority of the state can muster, and in this case they killed the kid, Freddie Gray while he was in custody. Police often beat their prisoners just like out of control parents beat their kids—because they can. They lack the wits to apply any other method. When Gray died, a bunch of people lacking wits acted out angrily and the monster that the state of Maryland had created had no other recourse but to destroy the world around them. Toya Graham to her credit was trying to being some sanity to the situation because at least she had enough personal value to know that what was happening was wrong.

Yet Adrian Peterson was trying to instill in his son those values before that kid ever ends up on the streets, and that’s what the switch was all about. I wouldn’t have done it, because I have developed other tools to deal with kids besides hitting them, but for those who don’t have those tools, it is better to have something, than nothing. Because the nothing is worse than the violence of the state in destroying families and the values built within them. Toya Graham is a product of the state, a single mom of six kids who has trouble stinging together complete sentences—more a product of her environment than of her intellect. Yet in spite of those handicaps she at least tried to do the right thing by her son when the rest of society was trying to give him a license to destroy the world around him. But if she had been Adrian Peterson, a celebrity NFL player, instead of being placed on national television as a star she would have found herself submissive to the dominatrix tendencies of the state and the perpetual desire of it to exert control. This whole event is a progressive nightmare brought to reality by a lot of really stupid people. But, at least in Toya Graham’s case, her child might actually have a chance at life, because kids need their parents. The state is not an adequate replacement—and in their desperate hour, the police of Baltimore were crying out for more parents like Toya Graham when on any other day they’d likely be the ones arresting her for abuse.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Another Step Into Space: This time from Jeff Bezos

Surprise, yet another commercial space flight company has punched through the relentless imposition of earth’s jealous grasp and touched the face of space. This time it’s the Amazon.com innovator Jeff Bezos whose company Blue Origin has built a commercial, reusable rocket to blast into space carrying passengers in a way that is similar to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. Here is a report from The Daily Mail about the historic flight:

The dawn of a new era of space travel may be upon us after Amazon’s Jeff Bezos successfully tested a vehicle that will take tourists into space.

Mr Bezos’ firm, called the Blue Origin company, has long spoken of its desire to take paying astronauts into the cosmos.

And now it has performed the first successful test of the vehicle they hope will make that dream a reality.

Called New Shepard, the vehicle consists of a main booster rocket and a six-seater capsule on top, standing 60ft (18 metres) tall.

HOW NEW SHEPARD WORKS 

The New Shepard system will take astronauts to space on suborbital journeys.

It includes a Crew Capsule carrying six astronauts atop a separate rocket-powered Propulsion Module, launched from the firm’s West Texas Launch Site.

Following liftoff, the combined vehicles accelerate for approximately two and a half minutes.

The Propulsion Module then shuts off its rocket engines and separates from the Crew Capsule. The Propulsion Module will finish its flight, descend to Earth, and autonomously perform a rocket-powered vertical landing.

The Crew Capsule will go on to coast to the edge of space, providing astronauts with a view to the curvature of the Earth and the beauty of our planet.

After descent and re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, the Crew Capsule will land under parachutes no more than a few miles from the launch site.

In addition, the New Shepard vehicle will provide opportunities for researchers to fly experiments into space and a microgravity environment. 

For this, the first test flight of the entire architecture, it was unmanned – but the company hopes to soon start taking customers into space.

The cost of a ticket has not yet been announced, but estimates suggest it will be around £130,000 $200,000 – similar to a flight on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

The difference, however, is that while Galactic relies on using a plane to slowly rise into the atmosphere, New Shepard takes off straight up and lands back on the ground. 

This is known as vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL).

And Blue Origin is also much more secretive – with this successful test flight taking many by surprise. 

In video released by Blue Origin, the booster – using liquid hydrogen and oxygen – lifts the New Shepard vehicle to an altitude of 58 miles (94km). 

This is four miles (six kilometres) short of the official boundary of space – the Karman Line – although there does not seem to be any problems with reaching this boundary in future. 

Once it reached its peak altitude, accelerating at 3Gs, the booster separated from the capsule.

‘The in-space separation of the crew capsule from the propulsion module was perfect,’ Mr Bezso said in a blog post.

‘Any astronauts on board would have had a very nice journey into space and a smooth return.’

The booster is designed to be able to land on the ground and be reusable, much like rival SpaceX’s own reusable rocket system.

On this occasion, however, the booster lost pressure in its hydraulic system and was not recovered.

Mr Bezos said the firm was already working on an improved system to make sure the error doesn’t happen again.

‘Assembly of propulsion module serial numbers 2 and 3 is already underway – we’ll be ready to fly again soon,’ he said.

The flight of the capsule, however, passed without a hitch and it successfully landed on the ground with the help of three parachutes.

The company is keen on VTVL because it is ‘scalable to a very large size,’ according to Mr Bezos.

And he noted that the company was already working on a larger vehicle, New Shepard’s ‘Very Big Brother. Following this successful flight, many will be expecting the company to go from strength to strength.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3062333/The-dawn-space-tourism-Amazon-s-Jeff-Bezos-successfully-tests-vehicle-turn-paying-customers-astronauts.html#ixzz3YoJbNSKI Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

It won’t be long now, there is a lot of competition for space and the world’s governments are well behind the curve. They cannot compete with minds like Bezos. For all the assumptions made about the construct of the Moon and all the hoopla about getting astronauts into space to a space station, the cost of such travel is coming down dramatically—significantly in just the next few years. This is a huge step forward.

I am very happy to see Bezos new test flight, and I wish him many successful returns. I want to see a fire lit under Virgin Galactic’s butt. Because we will all benefit from the competition.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.