Month: March 2017

Comey’s Disturbing Comments about Privacy: Security individually based as opposed to collectively sanctioned

I kept waiting for someone to do it, but only Sean Hannity that I know of even came close to covering the disturbing comments made by FBI Director James Comey at a Boston College speech on cyber security.  The media keyed in on a rather irrelevant issue that was said about the length of Comey’s remaining tenure as director—but missed the most important element he discussed rather bluntly—which was that no American had a “right” to privacy and that they could be compelled under court order to reveal anything at any time in the name of preservation of our national security.  He called this assumption a “bargain” made to live in a secure world.  I took the time to watch the whole thing because Comey’s most dangerous comments come at the 36 minute mark and context is important.  As presented, Comey sounds reasonable whereas if his comments on compelled information for national security sounded very dystopian if taken alone—so viewing the entire speech was important to this discussion which you should do now before going forth with this article.

I never made that bargain with the FBI or the federal government.  I am able to protect myself in most cases better than they can.  I don’t need the level of security they are assuming I need.  What has happened is that they have imposed themselves on us in reaction to the dangerous world we live in which has at its root, religious intolerance, economic depravity and the age old European tendency toward statism when challenged intellectually—so American intelligence gathering has filled the void of danger with the assumption that every single conversation in the world must be listened to and recorded so that any little bit of terrorist aggression can be stopped before it takes place.

Comey in that speech playing the good cop looking for recruitment into the “economically depraved” conditions of sacrifice for country probably believes what he’s saying while deliberately ignoring the facts of the matter. We know that the federal government cannot be trusted with our privacy.  For instance, just examine the situation with the Marines presently where men and women are placed together in the field only to have nude pictures placed online.  We warned that very situation would happen but the politics of the day said that we can’t discriminate between men and women and that women should be allowed to be in the same combat as men in service to their country.  Well, biology takes over when bullets aren’t flying and things happen when human beings are encouraged into primal circumstances.  The very same emotions that compel a person to run into a swarm of bullets and exploding projectiles are the same ones that procreate the human race.  So if a woman is in a muddy trench with a man, the two are going to want to get naked and explore each other—by their nature.  It should come as no surprise when abuses happen, yet politicians are and they really don’t know how to handle the situation leaving us with the present crises.

While traveling recently all over Europe I had to go through a lot of security—supposedly for the safety of everyone.  The rational was the same as what Comey said about private conversations and even thoughts—that nothing is private if the “state” has a need to know it for the security of everyone.  The assumption is that the “collective” is more valuable than the “individual” which is a false premise. If the individual is protected the natural byproduct is that everyone will be protected by default.  But because our intelligence and security organizations are filled with lazy minded louses most often than not—they default to seeing mankind in the plural rather than the singular because it makes their job easier.  Of course another aspect of modern progressive thought is that gay people can mix with straight people, and that bathrooms can be used by anybody exposing our private parts to the opposite sex without restraint.  This becomes a problem in these security lines.  For instance, at least once recently while going through TSA security I was singled out by a male officer for “extra security” just for the pat down.  I was with my family and wasn’t dressed in a way to provoke any suspicion and I was in line with hundreds of other people.  But the guy was obviously gay—stereotypically so—Beauty and the Beast gay as established by the live action character of LeFou and he wanted to feel my crotch to see if what was obvious was really there.  I suppose his justification was to see if I was smuggling something big in there, but the scanner would have shown that.  In fact they had a clear scanned image of my masculinity right there on the screen which women were able to see completely so I might as well have been nude walking through security.  Yet this security guy wanted to touch it and he used the law to exercise his personal sexual flavor and that was an abuse of power.  If I made a big deal about it, I would have missed my transfer flight and I still wouldn’t have been able to take it all back because that gay guy in the TSA had the might of Comey’s intelligence branch behind him protecting the TSA from individual protests—for the right of the collective.  But that TSA officer and the women watching the scanner were able to use that justification for their own personal pleasure while working on the job.  If an attractive person for their particular sexual tastes comes through the TSA line, and they are obviously always in a hurry to get to their flight—the TSA can indulge in that abuse all they want without fear of retaliation.  They try to give you pat downs of the same sex to preserve some semblance of sexual protection but if the person patting you down is gay, and you are a man—you might as well have given me a woman to do the job.  I never agreed to that bargain.  I can promise that I was able to protect the people on my flight better than those fat slobs working at the TSA—that’s for sure.

But the worst example of all is the recent presidential election of 2016 which James Comey’s FBI played such a large part.  We know that Hillary Clinton lied and that the Justice Department under Barack Obama was radicalized to abuse power for political preservation.  They did it before the election which was exposed by Wikileaks.  Hillary Clinton additionally destroyed evidence on her private server which she had to reduce the ability of government agents to see what crimes she was conducting through the Clinton Foundation.  When “compelled” by the FBI to tell the truth, the Clinton Campaign destroyed the evidence and refused to answer questions—so the whole notion that a judge can compel people to recall their memories falls apart under this examination.  Such an assumption bases itself on the Christian notion that a person will swear to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help them God. But if the person doing the swearing doesn’t believe in God, but rather is like John Podesta and invests his mind in “sprit cooking” rooted in old pagan rituals designed to conger up the spirits of the dead to help with living circumstances—lying under oath isn’t something they have a problem with.  So what compels a person to reveal their memories or even a conversation with a spouse?  Nothing.

There are some big problems with what James Comey said—the FBI’s position toward security of America is laced with half-baked assumptions designed to conceal their innate laziness as government employees—who are “underpaid” as Comey put it.  Give me a break—as I’ve reported often, government employees of all kinds make roughly 40% more than they would in the private sector, and that includes FBI agents.  I actually know a few and they aren’t hurting for money considering they structure their day around getting coffee every morning at the same time, then planning their lunches and afternoons in very predictable patterns.  They aren’t Eliot Ness types–that’s for sure.  And if they get tape of a couple having sex in their house—they do enjoy it—and they do share it among their other members.  They behave just as the Marines did in the recent sex scandal—when confronted with exclusive information, they often behave with their biological foundations—and they will abuse their power.

We’d like to believe that we can trust these people in our intelligence divisions, but we can’t.  While it’s true that we are better off having them as a layer of security between normal Americans and the bad guys—it doesn’t take much to make the intelligence officers of the FBI, CIA TSA and every other security division the villains—especially when sexes are mixed, gayness is promoted from within, and agents are encouraged to function from their primal instincts under duress.  So a blank check of authority is not the answer—Hillary Clinton proved it.  Wikileaks additionally has proven so by what they’ve released about the CIA.  These are not people we can trust.  They are currently using the power of government to attempt to destroy the Trump presidency—so what do you think they’d do to anybody else in America who challenges them?  The real answer is more private security individually based, not collectively sanctioned—and that requires a shift in basic national philosophy—which is hard for people like James Comey to do.  But that’s the direction we all need to be headed.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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Journey into the Firelight: The life and death of Robert James Waller

I don’t typically acknowledge memorials because to me, you live, you die—it’s all transitory.  The spirit of someone is what matters and the body is just a vehicle they ride in.  So when a car stops working, I typically don’t attribute that to the end of a person.  However, in regards to what I think is one of America’s great authors, Robert James Waller who died quietly at his home in Texas yesterday at the age of 77, I’ll make an exception because it’s likely we won’t see any more of his very good literature.  Needless to say, I have been a fan of his since his breakthrough novel, The Bridges of Madison County.  I was quite ecstatic when Clint Eastwood took up the movie project at Warner Bros. to make that very interesting novel into a movie just two years after the novel was released as it was to me a modern Arthurian romance mythology about the nature of love—how duty destroys passion between couples and how to live authentically in the modern world.  Here was my favorite actor/director handling one of my favorite novels—so on the opening day of the film, I was the very first one in line—as if it were a Star Wars movie.  I loved the material and subsequently devoured each book that Waller wrote from then on as they were released.

That little collection is a uniquely western view of the world mixed with the type of mysticism associated with oriental cultures.  Waller captured perfectly the modern conflict of the esoteric and exoteric with out-of-the-box characters yearning like Ayn Rand’s characters always for more.  Waller’s characters were trapped against foundations of social convention and always seeking to flee into the firelight—as he put it often.  My favorite of his characters of course was Robert Kincaid who I always associated with—and was obviously autobiographical for Robert Waller himself.

The negative reviews of his work often confounded Waller, he really didn’t understand why the literary critics hated him so much, yet his novels did so well, especially The Bridges of Madison County.  It was a short book that many desperate women were screaming for as a voice beyond the veil of their social conventions cobbled up like a dry rotted sponge being tossed into an old bucket to wash away the dirt on a car that needed to be cleaned after a long winter on the first good spring day.  Pieces of that sponge of course fell off during the act and it showed culturally in the women and some men who read Bridges—and the critics hated it.  Waller’s Robert Kincaid is exactly the type of man who the literary critics were afraid of—he was too perfect, too powerful, too smart—and the idea that someone like him existed in pickup trucks all across the American landscape honestly terrified them.  For the weakened, defeated males of American culture it was also terrifying to them to consider that somebody like a Robert Kincaid could come along and steal their women by just asking for a cold drink on a hot day.  Waller was essentially writing about T.S. Elliot’s Wasteland in the context of small town America.  That wasteland is much more evident in the big cities, and it’s hard to put a finger on it in within the noise of a cityscape—because everyone is a little neurotic in those places—but to segregate the wasteland motif into the Iowa countryside was dangerous, and accurate.  And the literary gatekeepers let Waller know what they thought of him.

Lucky for us all, Warner Bros has some rebels that have worked there for many years in their film and book publishing divisions that have the imprint of the great Clint Eastwood on them to this day.  Eastwood made all his movies for the most part with Warner Bros. so he has had a large hand in shaping them as a company—culturally.  And to this day, especially in regard to the D.C. comic universe of the Batman, Superman, and Justice League movies, there are some rebel filmmakers who are obvious Ayn Rand fans—and that’s wonderful.  I’d attribute that same trait to the how and why The Bridges of Madison County was published and released with the backing of a major player in entertainment and the content took off brilliantly catapulting Robert James Waller into orbit as one of America’s great writers.  Critics don’t like much that comes out of Warner Bros. for many of the same reasons they don’t like Donald Trump.  It’s also why Warner Bros. still owns the rights to Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead and has Zach Snyder working on a treatment for a modern film about that topic, because Warner Bros. is still a studio that gets it—in the closed-door offices away from the entertainment media.  And Robert James Waller was one of their experiments—and a delightful one to emerge.

Waller was an economics professor and he understood business holding a PhD on the topic, but it was his art that he cherished most of all.  He had acute observations about things and had to get them out.  Unlike me, who lives in the days of the blog, Waller was one of the last writers to emerge before the computer generation exploded so getting access to his work required official publications of his written word.  But he wrote things for years fine tuning his thoughts which came to a very fine point in The Bridges of Madison County.  Robert Kincaid in that novel was essentially to an Iowa farmhouse lived in by the desperate love hungry wife of Francesca Johnson, what John Galt was to Dagny Taggart in the American classic Atlas Shrugged.

We are of course talking about “overman” characters here and that’s what critics didn’t like.  They wanted flawed people who were melting with guilt by their middle lives—and certainly not dripping with life passion as they moved beyond the age of 50.  Robert Kincaid was one of those characters and Waller managed to write about different variations of this uninhibited maleness in future novels, never to quite the same effect, but the characteristics were unmistakable.  But while Ayn Rand focused on the exoteric nature of things which eventually led to her creation of the Objectivist philosophy, Waller spent a lot of time with the esoteric, which women tend to reside in.  They love the idea of mystery and a connection to the unknown which is very oriental in its assumptions and the methods of Robert Kincaid were generally attributed to this esoteric nature.

Without question, Robert James Waller was one of the great American writers and I’ll miss the opportunity to read new work from him.  He lived a good life and his novels captured a bit of it in a way that was unique—and lasting.  So when it comes to the vehicle of Robert James Waller, I am sentimental about the many miles it drove and the quality for which it performed and as he dissolves into the esoteric nature of the universe I am glad that for a shining moment in the good ol’ firelight he was made terrestrial and formulated just enough exoteric language to share it with the world and give a voice to the wasteland which resides inside most people—if only for a fleeting moment.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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Life in the Grail Castle: Unexpected treasures from a Canterbury bookstore

I suppose the best vacations are when you have the opportunity to do the things you enjoy most unhindered. If its fishing, hiking, shooting or sculpting—the ideal vacation is when you can do those things without thinking about doing other things as obligations.  And that was my experience recently while living in Canterbury, England for a few weeks in February 2017 shortly after the Trump election.  That’s important to note because I was invested in the election of Donald Trump considerably and if he had not won I was planning to hunker down for a very tough battle, politically, and physically.  But since he did win—I knew that things would be fixed which I recognized needed to be addressed politically before I ever invested in such a big trip—which I had been thinking about for a long time—because let’s face it—you don’t want to travel to the point of  yearning for home but not look forward to returning because the Obama administration constantly reminded you that they were trying to make America into Europe—as opposed to the other way around.  As it stood on this particular trip, Trump was saying exactly what I was saying about Paris as I was standing in the middle of it observing the reality—so it was extra sweet to return back through immigration in Charlotte North Carolina after being overseas for a lengthy period of time.  If Trump had not been in office, I would not have booked such a big trip.  But because he did win, I felt I could relax a bit and enjoy doing something I had been thinking about for a very long time.  It is under this vacation condition that I found myself at the very nice bookstore Waterstones in Canterbury admiring their fantastic selection of books when I saw a real treasure—a 2015 publication I didn’t know about from the Joseph Campbell Foundation called, Romance of the Grail.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been a member of the Joseph Campbell Foundation in the past even to the point of attending some of their events way back in the 90s—and I still get updates from them all the time which I enjoy reading. Somehow I had missed this book on Arthurian legends by Evans Lansing Smith written directly from Joseph Campbell lectures given before his death in 1987.  The reading of Joseph Campbell books is something that I cherish greatly and if I wasn’t a whole lot of other things—all action oriented—I would have been quite happy as a scholarly intellectual living off tenure so that I’d have infinite time and resources to read and think. That’s why the vacation to Canterbury was so important to me—for a few weeks I was able to step out of my normal life, read lots of books, look at maps, explore a lot, and attend some of the greatest museums of the world day after day—and honestly, I loved it.  I wrote and read a lot on this trip and every single day I found myself in some bookstore whether it be in London, Paris, or Canterbury looking at books to buy that were not for sale in the States and that’s when I saw that little treasure from the Joseph Campbell Foundation on Arthurian romance while looking through the comparative religion and mythology section of the great Waterstones bookstore which was three stories set in one of the most historic cities in the world—and most literate.  I can say that the day I bought that book it was one of the best days of my life.  Here was a Joseph Campbell book that I had not yet read—of relatively fresh material.  Sure I had heard much of it in old lectures, but having it in print was very nice.  And I was buying and reading it in a city where people loved to read and were sitting about drinking their tea and coffee looking down into the old Roman streets of Canterbury.  The whole thing felt very intellectual and I enjoyed it immensely.

Around the corner was a Burger King, which was much more my type of food, so my wife and I went there after our trip to Waterstones and I sifted through my treasures and started reading the new Joseph Campbell book. I was fully aware that this is exactly why many liberals are out of touch with the reality of the outside world.  It is quite enjoyable to sit on a pedestal and contemplate the mysteries of the universe with a full bank account and access to the luxuries of life without worrying about solving problems day-to-day that affect people’s lives extensively.  It was very pleasurable to read my new Joseph Campbell book without worrying about the time or the events of the world as I was about as removed from my normal circumstances as I could have been.  The only thing I had that reminded me of home was my new books and all the time to read that I wanted—so my Whopper at Burger King tasted fantastic, my new books were treasures that I wouldn’t have traded for a pile of gold and for the first time in a long time I didn’t worry about what was happening in the world—because Trump was on the job in the White House.  The Dow Jones was creeping up to 21,000 and my wife and I had plenty of money so not to worry about buying train tickets to London or Paris, or eating in any restaurant we fancied—so I had a taste of that intellectual life, and I liked it in the context of a vacation.

One of the things that made that particular book so exciting and refreshing was the nature of the story of Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach written literally in the setting that I was staying in, a city formed by the Middle Ages of 1200 A.D. I had heard the story of Parzival and read the Eschenbach poem years ago, but it had much more potency reading it in Canterbury for me—because I was surrounded by the landscape of that time period.  The Canterbury Cathedral was literally everywhere I looked as it dominated everything that happened in that town even to this very day—so it was very revealing to me to read through the updated Joseph Campbell book on Arthurian legends the story of Parzival once again there. Essentially a lot the way I do things was inspired by that story as I read it early enough to give meaning toward my natural inclination toward absolutely reckless behavior.  I understood why I did such things after I read the story of Parzival.  I knew it instinctively before, but I understood it intellectually after Joseph Campbell explained the metaphors of the Eschenbach version of Parzival.  The Arthur legends are very laissez-faire, for instance you only get to the Grail Castle to meet the Grail King by holding the reins on your horse very loose. You can only do such things in life by living authenticlly—by living of your own accord.  That’s what makes these old stories so important—they are the first of their kind which identifies the individual as an architect of their own destiny.  In the context of history, this was big stuff—so I absolutely treasure these Arthurian stories specifically of Parzival and the Grail Castle.

Given all that, it was a great vacation because of the literature and the ability for me to reach back to some of my roots away from the immediate catastrophe of every little thing that happens every single day. It was a window into how the intellectual class in our society lives, and I can see why they enjoy it.  But, vacations are not reality—the real effort is in productive enterprise, and when the vacation was over, it was over.  Yet gratitude is there in abundance for The Joseph Campbell Foundation for producing such a great book, and for Waterstones in Canterbury for being such a great bookstore set in such a fine, historical city.  And for Canterbury itself—for surviving over 2000 years of evolution to provide my wife and I a nice vacation from the realities of life.  It was a good trip, and I’m happy that books were able to be an important part of it.  In my own way, it was my own little Grail Castle, and I was able to bring it home with me.  And that is a real treasure.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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The Real Problem with Illegal Immigration: Changing what people are running from in the first place

It was an interesting interview between Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Univision News anchor Jorge Ramos because it exhibited quite wonderfully the problem over illegal immigration. When Carlson asked—“do I not have a right to not like that the country does not look like the one I grew up in” he asked a very powerful question.  Of course Ramos exhibited the modern George Soros open border viewpoint that the United States is changing and that these are facts of life that we should all just accept.  But the real essence to the question is not whether or not America should look like a particular color of people—but that the idea of America be preserved no matter who the majority ethnic group might be—because the function of any people in moving to the United States over the last 400 years—likely much longer—was to get away from something to live better in North America.  However, open border advocates assume that when people come to America through illegal and legal immigration that those new people have a right to bring the culture they are running from with them—and that just isn’t the case.

If an immigrant is coming from Venezuela, Nepal, Vietnam, India, Columbia, Mexico—or anywhere that has had their economy destroyed by communism and socialism—they do not have a right to bring that garbage into America to change the nature of our country. The situation is not one of skin color, or even sex—it’s all about the values that make up a society.  America works as a capitalist nation and those coming to the United States for opportunity must respect that opportunity and they can’t bring the garbage they are running from with them.  That is the essence of the immigration argument.  People coming from someplace else have an obligation to assimilate to where they are going.  They don’t have a right to change the nature of the American idea.

I know far more immigrants than I do people from Appalachia America—or in other words I know many more people who are not of white skin color than I do those of my own skin color, and I like those people because often they have good families and strong personal values. But I’m clear with them that I will respect them so long as what they want in life is to work hard and live the American dream.  However, if they start voting for socialists in America and seek to turn our nation into some third world armpit of communism—then I have a problem with them.  It has nothing to do with the color of their skin or their country of origin.

Additionally, I was just able to travel through Europe and I have seen firsthand the trouble I have been reading about and watching on the news for years. Europe is under siege from the former communist block of east European countries and the communist insurgency injected into the Middle East during the 1970s—which is hiding behind the religion of Muslim faith to penetrate the “west” for revenge over Sykes Picot and the centuries long battle of the first Crusades.  Muslims are pouring into Paris and London at an alarming rate not to assimilate—but to change those great European cities from the inside out—and they have been attempting to do the same in America.

Unfortunately for open border advocates like Ramos there isn’t much Mexican history to go on to justify their society as a long-established entity. When there are claims that Texas was taken from Mexico or that there are open disputes along the border into Arizona and elsewhere the truth is that the Spanish conquered the Aztecs in 1519 and sacked the Mayan civilization around the same time—as well as the Incan Empire in South America.  The Spanish looted all the treasure of those cultures and hauled them back to Europe leaving the French and English to fight over what was left—leaving Mexico, Central America and South American depleted and destroyed.  The Spanish mixed with the beaten Aztec and Mayan people creating the people we see today and socialism replaced their former great economy under the Aztec Empire into one of a welfare state centered on Marxist ideas.  So what does Mexico, Central America or any country in South America have to bring to the United States but ideas that would collapse our economy because the people born of those regions were created under the flag of conquest?  We aren’t living in a world where everybody gets a trophy.  In North America, the Indians were beaten in the war over land.  So the rights go to the victor.  In Mexico, the people were beaten.  They don’t get rights to live equally in a world against a culture built on superior ideas.  And that is the problem for people like Ramos.  Admitting that the United States is a superior culture is something that nobody is willing to accept—yet there is a reason that people are willing to put themselves into danger to come to America in the first place—and those reasons need to be respected—and protected.  In order for those people to have opportunity in America the preservation of what makes America special must be preserved.

Mexico never had their act together—they were built from a culture of conquest and pillaging—and they never got their feet set as a country of ideas from the time the Aztecs were beaten to the present—over 500 years later. That’s not something to celebrate.  If anything, Mexico should be taking notes from America—not pouring into North America to bring socialism to our economy to turn it into the backwoods armpit that Mexico is presently.  Mexico could be great, but under the current conditions, it is terrible and I feel sorry for the people imprisoned there.  If they want to become United States citizens—I’m happy to welcoming them—but they aren’t allowed to destroy our culture in the process.

The North American Indian was not native to America—that falsehood was perpetuated by lazy science not willing to accept new discoveries made over the last 150 years that declare pre-Columbian archaeology had a much more advanced culture than what we typically associate with the nomads discovered by Columbus. And the same in Mexico, the Aztecs and whatever culture built the pyramids at Teotihuacan were far more advanced than the Spanish conquistadors who settled in the area and looted that culture into the despots we have now in that region.  If open border advocates wish to acknowledge those historical aspects, then they might get some historical agreement from people like me.  But they are defending conquered countries and insisting that the European translation of history serve as the backdrop of migration justification.  For instance, the slave trade in America was a European inheritance that was eventually eliminated as a result of our American Revolution—but Europe committed far worse atrocities when they looted Central and South America of its former wealth—yet that is never discussed.  But the evidence is still present in the people of today and they flee to America looking for hope and opportunity—but bring with them all the troubles they are trying to flee from.  That is not a sane option.

Understanding all that, Europe is falling apart, Russia doesn’t even have an economy that exceeds the one American company like Apple, China is a communist nation, and Japan is struggling with debt and limited resources—who in the world can save the rest of it from their long histories of bad decisions currently holding down many people from living good lives. Is the answer to let all the world into America as immigrants so to topple the last free and just place on earth—or should the rest of the world take notes from the United States and start forming their cultures around what works in our nation?  If open border supporters like Jorge Ramos really want to save their people in Mexico, Central America and into South America than how about proposing that those counties become more like America and embrace a capitalist form of economy abandoning what they have been doing which is causing so much misery.  We can’t let the world bring communism and socialism into America and expect it to remain a place of hopes and dreams—because those immigrants will just turn our cities into the slums they are running from by nature—because they haven’t changed their patterns of behavior.  Rather, those immigrants should in most cases stay put and adopt American ideas in the Middle East, in Mexico, in all of South America—India—Indonesia—Vietnam—everywhere so that opportunity could be found in their own backyard and not halfway around the world under illegal conditions.  The real issue is that these places that immigrants are fleeing from should change their ways so people aren’t so eager to leave.  That should be the concern of Jorge Ramos—because only when you fix that problem will everything else snap into place.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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The Deep State is in Deep Trouble: How Wikileaks is actually saving lives in America

Yes, the “Deep State” is in deep trouble, and now you know why dear reader that I was so proud to stand beneath the Wikileaks headquarters at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to have my picture taken. I don’t normally pose for pictures like that but for Wikileaks I was happy to make an exception.  As Wikileaks provided a platform for someone within the United Sates intelligence apparatus to leak thousands of pages of very damaging reports as to what the CIA and FBI can do with our smart televisions, gaming consoles, and smart phones.  Many thought that revealing such information was traitorous—and that Wikileaks was acting in a hostile way toward the American government.  Well, let me tell you what’s hostile—a rogue government working behind the scenes of our election process trying to destroy a duly elected representative of the American people and attempting to start World War III with Russia as a scape goat to preserve their own power as a shadow government.  Yeah, that’s much worse of a crime against the constitutional republic that we have in America than the treachery committed by the leakers. I was proud to know that just above my head behind those windows in those small little rooms was Wikileaks doing real good in a very dangerous world by showing those Deep State insurgents that technology can work both ways.  Sure they can spy on us—know everything we do and build a profile on each of us to destroy everything that we hope to become with the push of a button at their discretion—but we can also spy on them and know where they are and what they are up to as well.  If they want to play that game—which they have been willing to do—then the tables can turn on them and Wikileaks has provided a platform to those who dare use them to undo these shadow governments around the world—and in this case one that is actively working against Donald Trump—who is sincerely trying to reform the way business is done in Washington D.C. for the better.  If John McCain is against Wikileaks you know you are on the right side of justice.  Better yet, if Facebook is against it—you really understand the magnitude of this new information which not only pulls away the cloak of deception that has hidden this Deep State in America—but it tears it away to reveal grotesque nudity.

I personally don’t worry about the spying because I know how to throw off their Deep State profile.   I’m still a guy who reads real books, not online downloads, so if I want to go dark on their profile building, or if I want to contaminate their mechanical data collection with rogue information to corrupt their data—I know how to do that—and I actually do put forth a considerable effort to corrupt their information gathering on me.  I came to that crises when I realized over 15 years ago that everything my wife and I did together—and everywhere we went—we were followed.  It took some getting used to in understanding that a closed door and a locked house didn’t save you from that “deep state.”  And that was well before everything we owned became a spy device for this shadow government.

How bad is it—well let me just elaborate that my daughter and I are probably two of the sanest and nicest people among all who claim such things on earth. We would never be terrorists or dangers to any state government that is legitimate by the standards of decency.  Yet while traveling around Europe and back to America guess who got pulled aside for “extra” security every single time when many more potential people were there to pick from—some of them obviously nefarious characters?  To some extinct I might understand security being concerned about me—but her?  Give me a break.  Yet, our names came up on their lists as people to watch and they let us know in subtle ways that they have their eyes on us.  As if I didn’t already know.  So pathetically small-minded.  But that’s who is on the other side of these listening devices, perverts, losers, people afraid of the real world—those are the types of people who find themselves in those “deep state” jobs to spy on people to preserve the shadow government that has been building itself up for many decades behind progressive policies. Donald Trump’s election for me, and it appears many others as well, was the hope that the “deep state” would finally be challenged and eventually eliminated—and that process is underway as we speak, and I am very happy about it.

It’s not a big deal to reveal to the rest of the world what our secrets are—because these were never secrets. Terrorists in the middle of Syria know that the United States has eyes in the sky that can see everything they are doing—yet they still do what they do.  It’s up to the political resolve of The United States to decide if courageous action will take place and under Obama and Bush—that seldom happened.  Under Trump—such as moving THAAD missiles into South Korea to protect it from North Korea proactive measures are back in style—thankfully.  But remember the terrorist case in San Bernardino where the FBI refused to call the act one of terrorism—until the leaks became too great—and when that same FBI let the media into the crime scene to destroy the evidence—and claimed that they needed Apple’s permission to gain access to one of the terrorist’s iPhones—which they already had—American intelligence has a failing grade at protecting us from terrorists.  With all the spying that is going on with all of us—does anybody believe that the intelligence community didn’t know that terrorist attempts were going to happen as the terrorists bought weapons and discussed the attempt in their house around the crib of their baby in San Bernardino?  I’m sure the Deep State knew.  And what about that loser in Orlando who shot up The Pulse nightclub with an obvious terrorist act?  The terrorist movements would have been witnessed from his phone position as he scouted out the location and discussed it with his wife—who tried to talk him out of it.   Yet the terrorist act wasn’t stopped—why?

All this intelligence gathering isn’t to keep us safe from terrorists—it is to keep the “deep state” safe from possible insurgents so that they can harass them before they become a real danger. It’s not to protect America—it’s to protect their shadow government.  So what Wikileaks did with the submission of an intelligence insider—likely a rogue Trump supporter is an act of patriotism.  That day outside of the Wikileaks headquarters, I thought seriously about bringing some food to Julian Assange who was trapped behind those curtains.  Without question, I’m sure they were inside there looking down on my head wondering what I was up to.  It was strange to be so close, yet so far away from a man at the center of modern history—but I wanted to respect his privacy as much as possible.  I just wanted to see the spot that was so important in shaping our modern world and really the only place standing up against these deep state insurgents around the world.  I am sure as hard as Donald Trump worked to become president, that without Wikileaks, the deep state would have won the election and we’d presently have Hillary Clinton as POTUS and likely there would be steps toward an armed civil war in America this early into 2017.  But because of Trump he’s fighting back from the Executive Branch and Wikileaks is providing the evidence that would otherwise be destroyed before it ever reached the public eye—and for that—we should all be extremely grateful.  Wikileaks has prevented open civil war in America—and that is an act of heroism.  Liberals who are now protesting Trump and his supporters have no idea how close they came to real violence—and perhaps might yet still see.  They better hope that Trump is successful.  The Deep State that watches me in the quiet hours of the morning understand why.  And there are millions just like me out in the plains of American sovereignty.  And the Deep State is afraid—as they should be.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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To the Democrats Everyone Looks Tough: But the Russians are not even relevant–Obama bites down on the hook

It really is astonishing how far the Democrats have come in just five years with their view of Russians as being a superpower.  Remember when during the 2012 election Barack Obama made fun of Mitt Romany for suggesting that the Russians might be some lingering maniacal menace?  Then also remember when Barack Obama suggested to the Russians that he’d have move flexibility after the election obviously trying to appease Vladimir Putin despite the American people.  Now, in 2017, they seem to think that Russia is a powerhouse of activity able to manipulate the strings of the American government and that Donald Trump is a pawn to the power of the former communist country. And to prove their case they used the power of government to try to stop the forward advancement of Donald Trump winning the election in spite of all their efforts.  So for them the great tragedy of their loss is that someone else much be at fault—that Russia must be much more powerful than anybody ever thought possible—because otherwise Democrats would still be in power.

I knew it when I saw Trump’s Tweets on that early Saturday morning about his explosively angry reaction to discovering that Obama’s White House had wire tapped Trump Tower in the remaining days of the great November 8th election.  The Democrats, particularly Hillary Clinton was being killed by Wikileaks and the FBI probe into the now famous deleted emails, so the Democrats needed something to stop Donald Trump—so they wire tapped him using the power of the Federal government to spy on a political rival—which was a major violation of the law.  After winning, Trump showed great grace in his victory showing no signs that he wished to prosecute either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama for the obvious transgressions against justice that they displayed during that election cycle.  After all, why rub their nose in it?

But the Democrats couldn’t leave things there—no they had a job to do. And that job was to continue destroying America from the inside out with progressive policies aimed at eliminating American sovereignty.  People like me had always referred to these people as running a “shadow government” and Trump always seemed sympathetic to those thoughts—but the proof was hard to pin down because these criminals also go well out of their way to destroy the evidence.  When caught they always say first, “show us the evidence,” because they know they’ve destroyed it, and thus cannot be caught. But this time was different.  Trump was never supposed to win, but since he had the rules of engagement had changed considerably.  Trump now controlled the Department of Justice and essentially all other branches of investigative government making it much harder for Democrats to operate their “shadow government” except for career bureaucrats that had been in government jobs for decades who could try to bring Trump down from the inside.

Then those same Democrats attempting to make themselves relevant before Jeff Sessions was able to dig into his new AG job and start investigating all the crimes the Democrats have been up to–conjured up a completely false narrative about the Trump campaign’s ties to the suddenly all powerful Russians hoping something might stick. It was for them a hail-marry attempt with no time left on the clock and most of us viewed it that way.  After all, Trump had just delivered a very popular speech and public support was soaring—and the Democrats had to try something.  But what they didn’t expect to happen was what occurred next.

Most people might go on the defensive and attempt to answer a negative being pulled into the typical political trap as Republicans had for decades—but not Trump. He has always been several steps ahead of the rest of the world—that’s why he’s rich.   So when he found out for certain that Obama had attempted to wiretap his sacred residence at Trump Tower—he had enough, and set to go to war with the former presidential administration that had been caught playing dirty. Of course, Trump waited to see who would control the Democratic Party and once Obama’s guy Tom Perez was elected last week, it was clear that Obama wouldn’t be going away and that he intended to maintain control of the party.  So Trump did what any good fisherman does with his bait in the water—he let the Democrats push on the false narrative of the Russian connection nibbling away at the hook, and at the right moment Trump pulled up on the reel and caught Obama hard by the mouth sinking that hook deep into his jaw.  There would be no escaping this time, and the liberal media knew it.  Trump knew it too.  Rather than elaborate he simply held onto the reel and resumed to let the fish tire itself into exhaustion—because the end was inevitable.

Later that night I watched Saturday Night Live—which I had been avoiding, but I had to see how they would handle the situation. Like I predicted, they were lost.  Their show has been accustomed to being the cultural driver of our society and now they looked like a bunch of high school kids who partied all weekend who were supposed to put on a play, but everything went wrong because nobody studied their lines.  Their show was terrible.  Even worse, the strains were showing at the Academy Awards the week before.  The Democrats in entertainment had lost their mojo to the new age of Trump—and they didn’t know how to deal with the strain.  The cracks were showing everywhere.

The Democrats are learning something which for them is too late—but the lesson is obvious and it’s what they fear most about all forms of capitalism. When someone is really good at something and they apply pressure, they can make you look bad just through their existence.  Someone like Trump can make people befuddle themselves with just a look, which is why Arnold Schwarzenegger left The Apprentice earlier this week.  It’s the difference between an actor and the real deal.  Trump is really a successful person, while Schwarzenegger is someone who pretends to be—he does whatever the script says.  Trump writes the script.  Trump is making the Democrats into monkeys by turning their world completely upside down and reaching for moments of desperation like the Russian story.

However, the Russians are not so sinister. They have less of an economy than the entire value of the American company Apple—so who is afraid of whom?  What are the Russians going to do to us, throw bread at Alaska across the Bering Strait?  Please, they are no menace.  If there was ever talk between Russian and Trump it would have been to help spread some wealth there—certainly not to help him get elected because as Trump would say—he’s not going to take advice from people who don’t know how to win.  The Democrats are in real trouble, as I predicted on the Matt Clark radio show right before the election in 2016 where I predicted they’d be extent within a few years.  Well, guess what?  I’m right on target—again.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Mistress Abu Dhabi: Unleashing the wealth of the world when temptations urge change

img_2471My wife was sentimental toward Harrod’s in London because of the long history that luxury department store had with the city that was respectable—so she wanted to do some shopping there which was quite an experience.  It was a very luxurious multilevel department store right on the edge of Hyde Park and was the anchor of all activity in that part of the city.

It was what Tiffany & Co. of New York or Sak’s Fifth Avenue were to the United States but Harrod’s had a little extra flair that I thought was quite glorious in its audacious embrace of capitalism in essentially a country that had embarked too long down the spiral of doom with socialism.  Harrod’s was all about luxury and excess declaring proudly that mankind had stepped beyond the limits of a hunting and gathering culture into the full light of an advanced society that produced more than it needed.  Harrod’s was a celebration of that and offered no apologies which surprised me in a good way.img_2451

As usual however I looked under the covers at the real situation.  I had noticed around London each time that I had been there over a two-week period that Muslim immigrants were in many service jobs at all levels of society and that for them it was a reversal of the Crusades period. Instead of the Christian world this time going into the Middle East to conquer the Muslims into conversion and acceptance of a Christian God—now it was the Muslim’s turn to handicap that originating country of the Crusades with social justice legislation through the EU then slowly convert the Christians which have been convinced to give up on the church into Islamic faithful—and they planned to do it peacefully without firing a shot.

This time there would be no attacking fortresses held by kings only to be slaughtered with superior technology.  There would be no Treaty of Versailles or the Sikes Pikot Treaty—this time the missionaries were coming from the Middle East under a banner of peace to integrate with English society then to convert their children into tolerant-open minded pacifists while the target of the next generation would be full acceptance of Sharia Law.  But that’s still about thirty years away by the attack plan well-known throughout the Muslim insurgents—for now they were peaceful and working in London—and they were shopping and working at Harrod’s.img_2459

You could see the power moves made particularly by Qatar Airlines and Turkish Airways in London to establish themselves as the new superior airline of the world marketing themselves as the next best thing.  And subtly, it was obvious at Harrod’s that they were no longer owned by the Charles Henry Harrod family but by Qatar Holdings.  This was particularly obvious when one of the many floors of that shopping complex was dedicating to promoting travel to Abu Dhabi as the next great metropolis city on earth.  And by the plans presented and so far implemented in that city which is as of now about the size of Cincinnati, Ohio by population density—it has all the benefits of a new city completely built on new wealth by the oil industry as  recently as 1971.  The Sharia Law country of Qatar is only 200 miles to the west of Abu Dhabi as Iran is right across the Persian Gulf 100 miles to 40 miles depending on where you measure from—the number one sponsor of terrorism.  Abu Dhabi is being set up as a fountainhead of capitalism thriving off the oil industry and convincing the West to turn its aggressions away out of a love for what they see there and using that wealth to bolster the terrorist countries which surround the region for their aims as a global caliphate.img_2453

Abu Dhabi is like a mistress to the civilized world—she doesn’t have the baggage of knowing her for 30 years and all the mistakes it takes to make a relationship—and showing that on her face as scars, sagging skin and menopausal hot flashes the way that Paris, London and New York are experiencing now.  Abu Dhabi is the fresh 18-year-old who loves the flash of gold and Rolex watches who would gladly trade sex with one gross looking middle-aged man to save herself from sex with many middle-aged men as an official prostitute in an economically deprived communist country such as China, Vietnam, Cambodia or even India.  She is clean and eager to please so long as she has access to the great wealth that the oil industry showers her with and this is what was on display at Harrod’s in London under the new ownership of Qatar Holdings.

Abu Dhabi was planning big things by the full-scale models of the city revealed at Harrod’s and they planned to be a big part of the international economy—which was a cover story for Islamic expansion to the far reaches of the world.  For instance, it’s not New York or Los Angeles who are looking to be the first to implement the new Hyperloop technology, it’s Abu Dhabi and India because that’s where the money is, and the freedom to build such a thing with loose regulation to allow for proper development of an emerging technology.  Within four years of this writing there will be a Hyperloop between Dubai and Abu Dhabi and an economic center of serious influence will challenge all the greatest cities of the world with new money influence.img_2460

While San Francisco, New York, London, Paris and Tokyo struggle under their welfare states built by old economic rules, the new money of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Qatar won’t have those burdens and it will force the world literally to eat out their hand.  However, things don’t have to be this way.  Sometimes all a woman needs is love and the new mistress isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  I think it’s too late for Paris and London, but America is sitting on vast amounts of wealth—particularly oil of its own and could easily rival the wealth of Abu Dhabi  by unleashing it.  Commercial space travel is being developed in the United States as well as great work by the Apple Company—and of course the Hyperloop is American in its origin as well as countless medical breakthroughs which are seeing the light of day under the new Trump administration.  Between those things and a resurgence of old means of economics capped off by an activist EPA—America could produce extraordinary wealth that would stop this global incursion, which was on full display at Harrod’s in London.  And that’s exactly what is causing all the trouble between the Trump administration and the world powers that have set up this whole chess board.

Trump understands what I’ve said here and his election was a decision by the American people not to surrender tomorrow to the insurgents of today.  We could still have all that Abu Dhabi is offering in the United States if we could climb out from under our debts and embrace being the only country in the world that is truly free, and fiscally independent.  Because the 18-year-old mistress that likes gold and Rolex watches gets old too and within a few years will just be another has-been.  The best investment is to keep what you have nice, and fresh by treating her nice all along and loving her even when middle age provides a second wind.  For London to be saved from these mistakes America has to be there as an ally and for that to happen, we need our own versions of Abu Dhabi.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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Whispers from the Catacombs of Canterbury: The great work of the Time Team and B.C. trade between America and England

img_4188One of the wonderful discoveries I made while in the United Kingdom recently was the great archaeology that had been done over a fifteen year period by the Time Team.  They had managed to host  television shows featuring very aggressive digs over three-day periods at various sites around England, and elsewhere and putting them on television in an entertaining way.  Working fast as they did, the Time Team has managed to do an enormous amount of research that has culminated in tremendous work in England in understanding their pre-history cultures, the Vikings, Anglo Saxons, Romans, Normand’s, and the relatively recent Victorian Age settlements to better assemble a history of England that nobody really understood prior.  Personally the most explosive example of the Time Team’s value to the United Kingdom was the work they did in Canterbury as seen below.

My son-in-law is from that region so it had been a goal of ours to visit his homeland and get to know the elements of that place which helped shape him into the fine young man that he is now.  When I first met him I was happy to learn that he was from Canterbury because Canterbury Tales was one of my favorite classic pieces of literature.  Along with James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, Canterbury Tales was one of those really hard books I pushed myself to read while living on campus at the University of Cincinnati in what I would call my days of breaking free of society’s intellectual shackles.  Nobody was doing things like that when I was 25 freely reading those great works of literature while eating my breakfast, lunch and dinner almost every day in the Perkins at Coryville just to the east of the main campus of the University of Cincinnati.  Now people did read them because their literature professors gave them homework assignments to do so, but nobody did it for fun, like I did.  Even though I had a car in those days, most of my time was spent walking between the apartment I was staying at and that Perkins reading my books, such as Canterbury Tales.  So it was quite odd for me that my daughter had out of all places in the world meet a young man from Canterbury and was intent to marry him.

Fast forward 25 years into the future from the time that I was readying Canterbury Tales at that Perkin’s restaurant in a college campus environment to doing nearly the same thing in Canterbury itself this time not just reading classic literature in a studious setting, but seeing the places where Thomas Beckett was actually slaughtered and visiting the pubs and inns that were put on the map because of the pilgrimages to Canterbury Cathedral to visit the tomb of the slain archbishop who had fallen out of political favor with Henry II.  Because the intent of the visit to Canterbury was to visit my son-in-law’s family and see how he grew up, we were staying in a flat in the 4th most expensive city in all of England just one street over from the Canterbury West train station.  It was the closest thing I had come in over two decades to living the “college kid” lifestyle that I had when I first read Canterbury Tales—and it was strange.  We actually lived in Canterbury as opposed to staying at a hotel.  At our flat we lived like we would at home doing laundry, preparing meals, and conducting life in general outside the mode of being on vacation.  There is quite a difference.  Over the course of February my wife and I discovered our favorite shopping spots for getting food and we developed a nice relationship with the pizza place directly across from the Westgate Towers—because we ate a lot of pizza.  Canterbury became a second home for us.

However, for the part of me who would have loved to have been an archaeologist if I could put my other interests and career paths in some other order—Canterbury was like living in a dig site.  With their long history of prehistoric people who were conquered by the Romans, the Anglo Saxons, then the Normans—before being dominated by Catholicism, the history of this particular city was extraordinary and something that I soaked up like a sponge.  Not to mention that it was just a short walk from our flat where the pilgrims began their journey to America—so there was plenty of history to investigate and that’s what my wife and I spent most of our time doing around Canterbury.  After reading so much about the place for such a long period of time I was finally able to put my eyes on the real things and touch history as it was—which for me was very satisfying.

Canterbury is a microcosm of what I think has happened to the rest of the world.  In the macrocosm of modern history wars have defined our understanding of things and caused a very shallow recollection of our roots toward civilization.  But the world is just too big and our sciences are too slow to truly get to the roots of things.  For instance, the Time Team tried to do a similar show in America on PBS but they just couldn’t get it off the ground.  America is a different audience and things are spread out differently.  And in regard to our mound culture in the States everything is protected by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).  So archaeology has become nearly impossible in America for that very reason making it so that there isn’t any quick study over three days of the most ancient mysteries so obvious to American audiences, like Cahokia, the Newark Mound complex and Serpent Mound.  But the Time Team wasn’t so constrained in the United Kingdom and what they were able to unlock in a relatively short period of time was short of extraordinary.  That left a lot to explore for a guy like me in Canterbury and I relished it immensely.

There were in Canterbury several mounds that I could see on an ancient map of the city dating back to the Romans,  burial mounds all over the place just the same as were found in Stonehenge and in the United States at Fort Ancient and they all date back to the same periods.  I saw physical evidence of two large ones, one at the St. Augustine’s Abby and another right next to the old Roman walls that was as tall as the Miamisburg Mound.  Archaeologists in the area attributed that mound to the Romans who moved into the area, but because of my history with the mounds of Ohio, I would associate it as being before the Romans and for the same reasons.  I think the Romans put their imprint on the mounds they found in Canterbury, but I don’t think they initiated them.  But what was astonishing was that they were there—part of the history of Canterbury and its many microcosm layers of history were there for all to see focused on that one point in the world.  There are very few places anywhere that so much history could be observed in such a preserved way in a relatively confined space.  What made Canterbury unique was that it was the target for many civilizations to make their mark as opposed to building cities here and there within twenty miles of each other.  At Canterbury each big revolutionary period of human consciousness along the present Vico cycle was layered on top of each other for future archaeologists such as the Time Team to reveal to the world in a glorious television production which contributed immensely to our understanding of these periods.

The Time Team would go on to write several very important books on archaeology namely Fancis Pryor’s Britain BC and Tim Taylor’s Guide to the Archaeological Sites of Britain and Ireland.  I picked up Tim’s book at the St. Augustine’s Abby site and I found Pryor’s book at Stonehenge which both made my entire trip worth it alone.  These are books that you can find online, but not as easy as you might think in the States because the two cultures just don’t work well together intellectually.  What Pryor has been doing is similar to the very independent work of Fritz Zimmerman in America but schools of thought haven’t yet put two and two together.  But that’s part of the fun of discovery.  Zimmerman is dealing with a political culture in the States that is using laws the way the Catholic Church imposed its will on private citizens to control thought and history in Canterbury for at least five centuries strongly and another five modestly—but now the Time Team finds itself in a unique place where the politics in England is conducive to archaeology because of the various progressive elements that are trying to rot away the foundations of the Church to overthrow their current society.  So for the members of the Time Team, they went to work in a short period of time and are continuing to do fantastic work which has expanded the historic knowledge of Canterbury and the surrounding English countryside.

One thing I did notice at Stonehenge was that there were many archaeologists working on the site presently as they had their cars, campers and tents set up away from the tourist areas.  In America it is rare to see this kind of aggressive investigation simply because universities have not made it a priority and the politics of the times have not been friendly toward investigation.  We really need to fix that in America because we could use our own version of the Time Team.  But after visiting Canterbury and seeing many things up close that I have long been curious about, I am more convinced than ever that the cultures of prehistory Canterbury and southern, central and western England were actively working with cultures in North America through sea trade that was much more advanced than anyone has previously committed true scientific thought to as of yet.

I am grateful for the chance to have gone to Canterbury having all the great work that the Time Team and many others have contributed so that my time as a born again college kid living on the campus of that ancient city could wander around the streets with my notebooks, books, and camera validating in the microcosm something that interests me greatly on the macro.  The evidence was there for everyone to see and it was fixated on that spot because for the western world, it was the cradle of civilization.  Literature by Geoffrey Chaucer first drew my eye to Canterbury and my daughter’s marriage to one of its sons was the second, but before these events Canterbury was already ancient and laced with a deep history that was covered by time and only unearthed by human ambition through war and profit.  And that made eating pizza across from the Westgate Towers much more meaningful and mysterious as the echoes of the past came to me uniquely through the circumstances of authentic living for just a short time in an ancient place dying to tell its story on a global scale through whispers in the wind and ghosts from its catacombs.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Virtue of Material Acquisition and Spending Money: Defying thousands of years of wrongly framed thinking

I am not suggesting that any person spend money like a bottomless pit buying anything everywhere to cover up some deep psychological problem.  That is a different issue from what I’m proposing.  Money is simply a representation of value so when someone spends money without considering the implication of cost they are essentially unable to grasp the concept of value because psychologically, they are lacking the basic foundations to do so.  However, and this is a uniquely American way to think which was drawn incredibly clear for me while traveling recently through London, Paris, Brighton and many other places in between and observing the people there and comparing them to those I have known back home in the United States.  Additionally, as one of my many occupations, I am an employer and am an expert in the breakdown of labor=productivity and the psychological implications of personality=quality+implied effort toward targeted outcomes, so what I’m about to say requires some advanced context—because it eludes most people living on the earth today—and my assertion of these concepts comes from very advanced knowledge earned the hard way, and in my view, the only way.

I had the fortune to grow up and know both of my grandparents very well.  Both were farmers and had obviously had their world outlook shaped by the Great Depression.  One was particularly keen about every penny spent and watched them like a hawk always afraid that some big wave would come and overtake them wiping them out forever into poverty. They were extremely hard-working people and were socially very honorable, but did reflect a constant fear that their money would be taken away by some unknown force be it a disaster or the aggressions of mankind through some form of robbery—so every penny was watched for their entire lives. The other set of grandparents were rather loose with their money.  If they wanted something they bought it and never gave much of a concern if something cost thousands of dollars even back in the 60s, 70s and 80s.  If they wanted it they’d do what they had to in order to obtain it—whether it be a farm, a particular car, or just a lifestyle.

While traveling around Europe there was this constant phantom in the back of every conversation I had with people I interacted with, from family, friends and mild acquaintances which were shocked that we did so much in such a short period of time while people who were regionally located had spent their whole lives 60 miles to 100 miles from the things we were doing as a family in Europe yet had never tried to do them themselves.  And it came up more than once at dinner tables that my youngest grandson who was at this point only 10 months of age had already been to Disney World once, and was now traveling around Europe with my daughter and her husband.  Additionally while he was still a fetus he traveled around Iceland the year before so before he was even a year old had experienced vast cultural influences which are the foundations of a very interesting coming life that he will have—but people hearing all this just didn’t understand.  “You spent how much at that Ramsay restaurant in Chelsea?”  “You took the Eurostar to Paris just to go to the Louvre?” “Why go all the way out to Stonehenge just to look at some old rocks?”  Those were the kind of questions we received just over the last few weeks by people mystified by the amount activities we reported through small talk which of course opened up a deeper sore which rests on the surface of most things human beings do in their lives.  What is the value of a human day and what does one wish to do with those days toward a value that is internally comprehended at the subconscious level?

That same daughter who traveled with me just recently purchased an iPhone 7 Plus after working with mine on that trip and I was proud of her because it’s the best on the market at this particular time and I like to see she does not compromise quality for the comfort of saving a few dollars.  Just like my view that if we are in London and my wife wants to go to the best restaurant that they have—why not do it?  Essentially if I really want something, I typically get it. I don’t feel that way about everything and I do go through a screening process.  Such as Stonehenge is something that I’ve mulled around for years, but the expense wasn’t worth the trip just for that endeavor.  But If I’m in London on business, or leisure, then I’ll find a way to get there—you better believe it.  I am not the kind of person content to just watch from my front porch others doing things and not doing them myself.  To me nothing on earth is off limits—if I want it, I’ll get it.  With that in mind, when I hear someone say that this is too expensive, or that is too far out of reach, I lose respect for those people because what they are really saying is that they are not willing to do the extra work to acquire the things their heart’s desire and are more than willing to yield to complacency.

Such people who do the minimum in life favoring the lazy position of being victims of circumstance are miserable human beings.  One thing that makes Donald Trump a uniquely American product is that he has the kind of mind that never felt limited by circumstances.  He dreamed big, lived big, and was more than happy to show off how much harder he was willing to work than his contemporaries.  Because after all what is a man really showing off when he arrives at an exclusive club in a Lamborghini with a hot woman on his arm looking very debonair?  He’s not saying he just inherited millions of dollars from his dad, or that he’s willing to waste large volumes of money on nothing—he’s saying that he is willing to outwork his peers and has obtained success and by fluffing his feathers declares himself above those around him so that he can have top access to the best that mankind has to offer—whether it be women, productivity, or leisure opportunity.  Those who point jealously at the man are those simply not willing to do what it takes to acquire such things.  They resort to socialism hoping to be equal to the man without having to do the work so that they essentially don’t have to feel the guilt of underperforming in a world which rewards people like the Lamborghini driver over those who watch every penny fearful that the penny might be taken from them at some point forcing them to work one hour longer to make it up in the future.  People who deliberately set low bars for themselves are constantly unhappy when they have to live in a world where people are free to work and gain all they can and this is the cause of much anxiety in the world. By having a guy like that Lamborghini driver in the White House the expectations for our national economy will naturally expand which I see no negative to at all.  People who are afraid of hard work won’t like it because the social bars of expectation will be raised out of their range of desired applied effort—but that’s good for America as a whole for obvious reasons of economic expansion.

What I observed in Europe was something completely foreign to me.  I knew about it, but actually spending significant time there the situation was glaringly obvious.  They think small in Europe.  They have too much vacation time-they sit and talk too much about nothing and are content to live with the limitations they inherited from their ancient ancestors and they have grown as a region to accept many restrictions which keep them from really living life.  I personally don’t have any of those limits in my life because honestly no matter how much I spend, I’m willing to work harder than anybody else to have what I desire.  I may not care to have a Lamborghini because I’m not interested in the social things that come with it.  I’m married and not looking for women, and I usually do things with my family so there isn’t a back seat for them to sit in when we go out to dinner so the value isn’t worth the cost to me.  But if I wanted one, I’d buy one and nothing would stop me from getting it.  There really aren’t many “things” I want in life because material objects don’t bring much value to me—intellectual things do like books—but “things” themselves don’t do it for me.  But when I want a particular gun, or a motorcycle, or an iPhone—or a television—I get the best of whatever it is and I don’t think about the cost because I am literally willing to work 24 hours a day 7 days a week to obtain whatever it is.

That leaves me with absolutely no sympathy for the person who holds onto their money because they either fear someone taking it from them through aggression, or that they just are afraid of hard work. The person who is afraid to take their wife out to a nice dinner isn’t being fiscally prudent as much as they are just being a wimp afraid of giving up their leisure time to make their spouse a little more happy and comfortable. To select the cheaper version of a car to save money is setting the bar lower for other things and such people are artificially restricting the quality of their life to preserve their internal laziness—in most cases.  And that’s a generally accurate way to identify much of what is currently sickening the world in regard to human beings. They want things that they see other people have, but they are not willing to do what it takes to have those things.  In many cases their religions have given them a free pass to be lazy by constantly castigating the wealthy by highlighting poverty as some kind of virtue.  And that has been a cleverly shrouded element in our society which has garnered little to no attention from our everyday life.

I fortunately was able to live in Canterbury for a good part of February 2017 and in that ancient city there are still monks who make the conscious decision to live in poverty—to essentially quit yearning for material objects so that they can earn their way into heaven.  Its one thing to read about such things, it’s quite another to meet them and see them in the streets of Canterbury which I did.  My wife and I even went to their little island in the Stour River to get a sense of how and why they live the way they do.  Additionally, there are quite a few homeless people in Canterbury who have obviously quit life yielding to the escape of alcoholism.  The two groups of purposely poor demographic groups had decided to set the bar so low for themselves that they were victims of circumstance and simply yielded their life to other controlling elements.  Compassion is not the word I would use to explain their circumstance upon meeting them and speaking directly to them about their manner of living.  They have quit life and have tossed it back to what they think “God” is—and by my definition for things are wasting themselves.  It’s not honorable to be poor or to sacrifice their life for some greater good when what they are really hiding is their sheer laziness to get up each day and battle toward personal goals set for the benefit of being alive.  Such as, you can’t take that car, that house and that nice watch with you into the next world.  But what you do take is the experience gained in obtaining those things because the effort expands your intellect which has resonance into the many dimensional planes of reality that your soul resides on.  So in essence, the work utilized in reaching for material goods and services has a natural byproduct that resonates across the universe into your eternal elements—and those monks in Canterbury are missing the point by deciding to live in poverty so to obtain the grace of God.  And regarding the homeless people, I’ve been at points in my life where compared to them, they were much wealthier than I was—but I never quite working.  A person like me would never be on the street without a house or the means to get one and to me there is no excuse in living on the street begging for food or enough scraps to get a bottle of alcohol to indulge in drunkenness.  They are people who lack the internal drive to fight through each day and make the best of it—let’s be honest.

So those are some things to think about in regard to money, value, virtue, and immortal spirit.  When my daughter told me she had bought a new iPhone 7 after working with mine I would say she did more for her eternal spirit than those Canterbury monks have done in 30 years of living deliberately impoverished in dedication to God—because the value isn’t in the material item—it’s in the productive output to acquire it.  The morality of a good economy does more for assisting the soul of its recipients than deliberate quitting of the world does by yielding to the old forces of intellectual control over those willing to submit themselves to every authority.  Doing what the heart desires for the right reasons is a more moral decision than sacrificing it to circumstance.  It is not honorable to say “I can’t do this because of that, or that I don’t have enough of that to do this.”  It is honorable to say I want that so I’m going to do this to have it because the virtue comes in the act of acquiring the means to perform the task.  For instance the virtue of spending over $1000 on a meal isn’t the food itself or the obvious consumable nature of it—it’s in acquiring the $1000 to spend and in sharing that experience with the people you care about for the memory of it—and the message to them that they are more valuable to you than just setting the bar too low for everyone and holding them prisoner to your low expectations for yourself.  Monks hide that low bar behind dedication to God. The homeless behind their lack of internal resolve to fight through personal challenges–and the lazy hide behind circumstances—whether they are too short, not smart enough, too weak, too something to be that guy who shows up to dinner in the Lamborghini with the hot chick on their arm—so reserve themselves to sitting on their front porch watching the world pass them by and claim that they are being “fiscally prudent.”  They are just being wimps.  And that is the harsh reality that so many people need to face—because they aren’t fooling anyone.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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Swamp Monsters Attack Trump Before the Election: Obama caught tapping the phones at Trump Tower

As if we didn’t know it already early in the morning of March 4th 2017 Donald Trump found out that President Obama just before the November 2016 election had Trump’s phones tapped in Trump Tower using the government to spy on a political rival—obviously breaking many laws in the process.  As Democrats have attempted to do anything to put the new Trump administration on their heels to prevent proper management from the White House—the web of deceit gets more and more complicated making even the most far-reaching conspiracies light up with complete clarity.  And Donald Trump did the correct thing; he went to Twitter before any of the news outlets were even up and broke the story as he found out about it.

Imagine a sitting president using the resources of government to spy on private citizens to preserve their own dynasty of control?  If you read what I say everyday here, of course you can imagine it.  But now you have the confirmation dear reader of just how far these people were willing to go, and thank goodness we now have a president who is willing to set things right—starting with being very vocal in his criticism as he discovers these types of things.

The reason for attacking Jeff Sessions is to keep the new DOJ from prosecuting all these crimes that did occur—and to consider that Trump was willing to extend the branch of friendship to his former political rivals and be a graceful winner.  Well, not anymore.  Time to go for the jugular, and I’m sure Jeff Sessions under Trump’s direction will have a field day with this very revealing information about just what kind of monsters live in the swamp of Washington D.C.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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