Month: August 2017

Yes, the Stock Market is Breaking Records because of Trump: A lesson on market forces

I continue to be amazed at the lack of knowledge that most people have. I mean most major malls have bookstores where people can buy and read books. The internet has voluminous amounts of information to sift through and we spend fortunes to send people through a public education system—yet still people are generally pretty stupid. It is baffling to me that they cannot make the direct correlation between the increase of the stock market gains and the Trump presidency—and that they don’t understand how 4 trillion dollars of extra investments into the American economy directly benefit every single person in our nation. Let me provide a little context of how much money that is—Russia, that country that supposedly has so much power over our elections has a GDP of 1.2 trillion dollars. Japan—one of the great economies of the world is only at 4.9 trillion. Canada has only 1.5 trillion in GDP and Germany is at 3.4 trillion dollars. When we talk about the gains in the stock market—specifically the Dow Jones average—since Donald Trump was elected we are seeing an infusion of wealth invested into our economy that exceeds most of the countries in the developed world. That is a significant achievement all by itself.

The next thing people wonder is whether or not Trump deserves any credit for it. Well, of course he does. Who else? If you do a little research into the history of stocks and investments you can clearly see a pattern for which the mob of buyers of stocks use to make their decisions. What investors love is optimism and deregulation and Trump has given them both right from the start of his election and that has caused investors to pour their money into opportunities created purely on sanguinity. It’s not very complicated and it certainly isn’t a mystery. Donald Trump gets the credit for the increases in the market based on his promise to get government out of the pockets of the movers and shakers and that has unleashed vast amounts of wealth that had been sitting around doing nothing. That’s how powerful optimism is and how limiting governments are on the happiness, and productivity of their citizens.

Venezuela is in trouble because they adopted socialism and the state runs everything leaving their markets overregulated and underperforming. They have great oil reserves that depended on artificially high prices to survive in a global economy. Once competition was once again opened up driving down the price of barrels of oil the socialist country couldn’t survive because they had provided no reason for any investors to bring money to their country. People with money are productive assets in a global economy because they have done things to earn that money. They aren’t villains as socialists and communists see them. Wealthy people are assets. Even politicians must admit as much because they need the money of wealthy people to run their campaigns. Without wealthy people any society is essentially an armpit of derelict behavior. The more wealthy people a society has—the higher quality that society will be. Venezuela made it so that wealthy people left and prevented more wealth from investing in their country leaving the people there struggling even to find a bar of soap to clean themselves with.

Wealth is created when something has a perceived value. For something to have such a value there must be a market demand for whatever that value represents—such as gold, cars, or old toys and cloths. EBay and Amazon.com can provide the proof of how joining market forces together can create wealth that wasn’t there before. Just by joining the consumer with a supplier those two companies have tremendously increased market value within America’s GDP. If there were some way in Zimbabwe to join together two villages which might otherwise be 30 miles apart so that they could sell rocks and animal bones to each other more easily, they would see an uptick in their economy as well. In places where individuals are freely able to exchange what they have to those who want it, you will see a more productive, and wealthy nation where the standard of living is much higher than places where personal freedoms are more tightly monitored.

This is why the communists of our present time have all put on the mask of the environmental movement because that way they could hide their hatred of production behind a well-intentioned cause—such as saving the planet. They have entirely made up the facts and figures. The government in the United States and around Europe who naturally always want more control use their power to issue grant money to scientific institutions who will make up phony global warming numbers to invoke their communist religion on the masses hoping ultimately to slow down production in develop countries so that undeveloped arm pit countries around the world can be propped up—the way Venezuela was. But all that value Venezuela had off oil money was artificially created by regulation—it wasn’t real—it was built off a lack of supply to meet a heavy demand.

Trump signed immediately legislation which put the Keystone Pipeline directly into use—at least the parts that could be. Trump immediately removed the federal restrictions so that local fights could hash out the details which had been the biggest barrier to implementing that very power delivery method of oil from Canada to the reserves along the Gulf of Mexico. Just that action alone sent the prices of oil down which was great for all market driven economies. While it might not have been great for Venezuela who depended on high prices to sustain their socialist government, oil is just one factor in a free economy. Cheap transportation can do much more to create many more aspects of wealth in any economy so it is far more important to a developing world to have access to cheap fuel and oil so that other markets can use transportation to develop new economic advances.

All Trump had to do to increase the stock market was promise optimism. The numbers are off lately from the record highs we had been seeing because of the obvious stand-off and war with North Korea. That creates market insecurity and makes people hang on to their money. If you really get to the gist of why so many senators have been coming out against Trump’s “optimism” its because they need the chaos of limitation to justify their do-nothing approach to everything productive. They, like Venezuela, need artificial regulations to justify their power. A free market means fewer people need government to redistribute wealth—and even Republicans have gotten used to that game. So long as people have no other options, their do-nothing game of pandering to lobbyists and getting rich off the results could continue. But Trump has not only deregulated the market and inspired great wealth which is reshaping our country as we speak—but he’s exposed those politicians with a value he has brought to politics that has redefined everything. So yes, they don’t like him. Just like Venezuela hates free and open markets. When people are allowed to do what they want and get what they need, all of society advances. But when they are limited and regulated society stagnates. All Trump did to increase the markets was show investors that he was willing to free them—and it is all just as simple as that. Just imagine what might happen if we really did have a free markets and politics were removed from the process altogether. Everyone could be unbelievably wealthy—everywhere in the world. If only……………………..

Rich Hoffman

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Mitch McConnell the Underperformer: How the exceptional make the weak feel terrible

Mitch McConnell made a fool out of himself when he returned to his district in Kentucky to essentially throw Donald Trump under the bus for what the senator was not able to do in the Senate. As he said, Trump had unrealistic ideas about the way legislation works and had set ridiculous expectations of achievement—and that it was Trump’s inexperience that was at fault—not him. As he said that Trump was speaking to North Korea in a way that no American president never has where real threats are being made against our sovereign nation. I still don’t think North Korea has the means to attack America—but they showed the intent and that deserves an ass kicking all by itself—so Trump has some things to do. While congress went on vacation the President is still working and solving complicated problems around the world essentially spelling out the entire problem for all to see. Congress is essentially lazy and have grown accustom to doing very little but talk a lot and here was a new President that actually expected to accomplish things—and that was too much for ol’ Mitch—who has been in the Senate too long.

I understand this pushback because I get it all the time—in fact it was just this week where I had to explain to people who thought what I was asking them to do was impossible that it was they who were the problem. Speed and accuracy are equally important in all endeavors. I don’t just practice these things with my bullwhips and fast draw hobbies for fun—there is a deep philosophical necessity in mastering some aspect of speed and accuracy in people’s lives so that they can apply those techniques to a real problem in some regard. Any idiot can stand in front of a target and hit it with a gun, or a whip when time is not applied to create extra pressure. When we do our bullwhip competitions people who are very good technically have a hard time hitting their targets because time is a factor and the pressure often makes them miss. People who are good at managing their speed and accuracy obviously are the people who win the most while those not so good look terrible and incompetent. They may be very accurate and can put out a candle with a bullwhip if they have all the time in the world but they struggle mightily under the pressure of time.

That is why I love cowboy fast draw. My schedule has been too busy to attend a lot of the shooting events this year because most of them take most of a weekend to do, and I don’t have that kind of time to give in 2017—but I practice most every day and I’m currently shooting consistently in the .500s—which is pretty good. The really fast guys are shooting in the .300s which is just over a quarter second. I’m shooting in the half second range which consists in shooting at a 24” target from 21 feet away with a gun in a holster with a single action firearm. To perform the shot a lot of things have to go extremely right and it is quite an exercise to start thinking in fractions of a second.

Most people think in a way that a second is their idea of fast—so when they speak of things in matters of speed their point of reference is in seconds. But when faster than a second is needed to refer to speed, those people do not have the proper vocabulary, or context to comprehend the need. The same can be said of congress. Their unit of measure to articulate their accomplishments have not been based on performance, but purely on bluster. Donald Trump was elected to change the definitions and the people who are struggling with the new definitions are obviously uncomfortable. But they don’t have a right to refuse to act.

In our bullwhip speed and accuracy contests not only is speed a consideration by accuracy is equally important. For instance, for each cup missed on the target line there is a five second deduction. Also there is a line six feet away from the targets and you can’t put your toe on that line otherwise you could incur another 5 second penalty. Even if you ran through the 10 targets in 11 seconds, but you stepped on the line twice and missed two cups, your real-time would be up over 30 seconds which isn’t going to win shit. You have to be fast, and smooth and make little or no mistakes taking nothing for granted. It is possible if you are competent in that kind of endeavor. If you are not, or have drifted through life without being tested—then you can see why some people are very jealous of those with those who can do things accurately—fast.

Mitch McConnell’s “excessive expectations” comment about Trump is just that—a frustrated old legislator who has been exposed as a phone because he isn’t good at anything—especially his field of endeavor which is as a Senator. The only thing McConnel has been good at is deceiving people and getting himself elected year after year on empty promises. For all the time he has been in the Senate Mitch has never been able to find money for the I-75 bridge from Ohio into Kentucky even when the powerful Speaker of the House position was in his friend’s hands John Boehner in the House. Those two couldn’t have completed a shadow on the sidewalk under a hard summer sun at 5 PM on a cloudless day. They were simply lobbyists in waiting or facilitating the needs of lobbyists who fund their campaigns each term. They never planned to do anything but talk as elected representatives. Trump asking them to do anything is an “excessive expectation.”

People like Mitch McConnell are the type of people who always say, “slow down” so that we don’t make mistakes. They want all day to stand in front of a target so that they can hit it. They are the type of people who support a progressive society void of competition because they can’t compete. I always love it when the best bull whip artists come to our competitions. Some of them are the best in the world and have several world records and you bet it feels good to beat them on some of these competitions. We all win our share of things just being good at that sport, so we never get very serious about it. But I know people who hate it when I come to competitions because they fear they won’t have a chance to win. Instead of rising to the challenge they cuss about how it might rob them of a win just by being there. That is what Mitch McConnell is doing with Donald Trump. He wishes that the new president had never been elected because it makes him look bad in comparison and the game as Senator that he has been playing and making a lot of money off of has been exposed. Now he’s supposed to act, and he isn’t prepared. The drag assing hasn’t been working because Trump doesn’t understand the game—that everyone knows congress isn’t supposed to actually accomplish anything. They are supposed to pretend while the shadow government runs everything. Everyone makes their money and the public has been none the wiser. Only we have been wise to it for a long time—and we’re sick of it. That is why we elected Donald Trump. And we expect things to actually be accomplished.

Rich Hoffman
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The City of Losers: Chicago’s demise into oblivion

Chicago is a disaster; by 2025 it will have fewer residents than it does now making any tax hike to pay for its staggering debt even less of an option.  They cannot tax their way out of the trouble they are in and even worse is the state that Chicago is in—Illinois, which is 15 billion dollars in the hole.  15 BILLION—that’s like the GDP of an entire country in some places in the world.  And now that bankrupt city is about to lose 3.2 million dollars in federal Byrne Justice Assistance Grants because Chicago has declared itself a sanctuary city providing protection for illegal immigration.  What a bunch of lunatics.

http://www.mychinews.com/news/chicago-financial-crisis

http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/29/investing/illinois-budget-crisis-downgrade/index.html

http://rightwingnews.com/illegal-immigration-2/sanctuary-city-chicago-sue-doj-threat-losing-federal-money-sanctuary-city/

Granted, the budget in Chicago is a staggering  $9.8 billion—so losing a silly little 3.2 million dollars shouldn’t be a big deal, but the money has been slated to pay for new police cars for their beleaguered law enforcement officers—and when you are that far in debt, everything matters.  Chicago is the poster child for how a bunch of Democrats mismanage everything they do.  Chicago is so bad they couldn’t even make a deal with George Lucas to open the Star Wars museum on the lakefront even as Lucas tried to lay it in Chicago’s lap.  But the loser hippies and distrustful progressives fought the museum—which would have brought some much-needed new money to the city—and Lucas set the project up in Los Angeles instead.  There is no hope for them now and they honestly can’t afford to lose that grant money over being a sanctuary city.

But think about what Chicago is doing.  They are demanding money for breaking the law as their people virtually shoot themselves to death on a daily basis.  As of this writing there are 428 homicides in Chicago just in 2017, which can be seen below for an update.  You can’t tax people to pay for your debt if they kill themselves and scare away people from moving into their neighborhoods.  Aside for the immediate downtown area by the lake—more specifically the Trump Hotel area by the river—Chicago is extremely dangerous.  If you’ve ever flown into O’Hara flying over the downtown area once you get a mile or two west the place looks like a socialist capital from Europe with row houses and beat-up square street blocks  extending for as far as the eye can see.   And the people who live in those homes are largely welfare babies raised in single parent homes, drugs, and depravity.  The sun does not rise and set there as it does other places in the country.  The place is a dump and the crime in the area is indicative of any place maintained by low quality people—low quality because they have no appreciation for intellectual aptitude or human achievement–it has nothing to do with skin color–but attitudes.

http://heyjackass.com/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-man-61-found-shot-dead-in-garage-in-south-lawndale-20170222-story.html

So along comes Trump and the Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions who seek to clean up Chicago of their gangs and drugs imported through smuggling channels that lead straight to Mexico and are hidden behind illegal immigration.  If you were in the leadership of Chicago such an effort by the feds would really help, because it just might make Chicago more attractive to new investments and residents. After all, what right-minded tax payer wants to live in such high crime areas but slugs, deadbeats and whores?  Bizarrely Rahm Emanuel is resistant insisting to protect those same gang members under the guise that they represent a group of well-intentioned immigrants.  Now why would little man Rahm do something like that?

Obviously the Mayor of Chicago has no intention to fix his budget problem and is following the entire state on a death spiral of economic viability that will not last into the future.  Literally for Rahm Emanuel is the sobering reality that Trump is president and the world isn’t going to come to the rescue of Chicago the way that progressives always planned.  The money just isn’t there, nor is the will.  Chicago has lost its place as a special place in the heart of America because people are sick of hearing about the excessive murder rate and hypocritical nature of its politicians.  Chicago used to be one of America’s great cities, but now it’s just a dying shell of old buildings and lost people.  Take a walk through the airport sometime and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

Chicago filed a lawsuit against the DOJ to extract the money they think they are owed and people are watching.  Through the process of this public relations stunt by Emanuel even more people will become turned off by Chicago—as if the murder rate wasn’t embarrassing enough.  By taking on a big national campaign against the DOJ Chicago is insistent to scare away any potential new money that might flow into their economy—which is the worst thing they could do at this point.  It’s not about the 3.2 million in grants, it’s the big dollar new business that might be out there and want to set up shop in Chicago.  After all, that’s the only way they could ever hope to solve their fiscal crises.  Instead of nurturing more wealth to return to Chicago they are instead hedging their entire future on illegal aliens who flock to that sanctuary city from socialist and communist countries around the world in search of running water.  Those people do not, nor will they ever have money to pay for the massive debts Chicago has—so Chicago by their own actions is as good as over.  Only they don’t yet realize it.

Years ago the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was filmed in Chicago and that was only in 1986.  Back then Chicago was pretty nice, the South Side was pretty rough but when people thought of murder in that city they thought of Al Capone.  In just thirty years Chicago has destroyed itself with massive debt, terrible public policy shaped by progressive politics and has attached their star to the a sinking ship pension system.  Chicago abused their beautiful city and its placement on the great lakes of the Midwest and they loaded it with a progressive philosophy which has not only destroyed the city, but have destroyed the lives of the people they proclaim to protect.  Wherever you go in the world you can see the depleted results of what progressive philosophy does—whether it’s in Venezuela, Africa, China, or Paris and everywhere you see slugs living off the state and barely living lives of any worth.  Chicago is certainly on that trajectory.  Today they are nothing like that nice city seen in that popular 1986 film.  The only place you can still have a good experience is downtown—and that is shrinking at a remarkable rate—essentially because they are broke.  Chicago killed itself way back in 1995 when they failed to get their legacy costs under control and kicked the can down the road until they ran out of road. Now they have no other recourse but to kill themselves.

Rahm Emanuel is building his case to save Chicago by actually breaking the law and turning away people who might save it in favor of the people who will guarantee its destruction.  As hard as it might be to take a hard stance against illegal immigration if you are looking to preserve something you can’t overload it with destructive elements and Chicago needs value not more depleted people.  It’s nice to have a city like Chicago have so much surpluses that poor people might have a good standard of living but you can’t have a majority of the people be poor and expect the budget to work out to support such a large population.  You can’t pay your teachers $85K per year, or your cops over six figures with unlimited overtime, and you can’t get upside down with pensions as your population decreases.  And by raising taxes more people will leave making the budget even worse. And thus we have a city run by Democrats under a progressive philosophy not rooted in reality—and the only thing they now have in their favor is that they can call themselves a sanctuary city—a place to hide from the law.  And that makes them all terribly pathetic.

Rich Hoffman

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Why College Educations are a Liability: Those with a formal education are the last to see the obvious

I keep hearing the frustration coming from the political left that the typical Trump supporters are white people who do not have college degrees—as if they are stupid or something.  Let me say this, as an employer who does a lot of hiring—I look at a lot of resumes and job applications and I find that college educated people have a handicap these days, because many of them have been trained by extremist liberals.  I did go to college and I lived on the University of Cincinnati campus when I was younger and even back then I thought it was a waste of time—because the university system was more interested in shaping young minds into a static relationship with the world around them.  They were not interested in inspiring young minds into excellence and lifelong learning—which is why I have always thought college was a waste of time.  I never liked school basically because I hated waiting for people who weren’t so smart to catch up to what I wanted to do, so most of my years of schooling were wasted waiting on other people who weren’t so ambitious or personally gifted.  So my attitude has never been favorable toward college.  But over the last decade everything I thought was only confirmed to a much worse degree.  People are not coming out of the college experience in ways that have prepared them for life.  Those that do plow through it come out on the other side needing about 15 years of deprogramming before they can think correctly about things again.  They are liabilities to a productive society, not conducive to it.  The America Donald Trump is talking about in the below weekly address is one that most college graduates are not seeing because they are viewing the world through liberal lenses and are so filled with hate they can’t understand how to live in the world that is changing under the new administration.  So having a college education in 2017 is not a beneficial thing, it’s a serious limit—because the participants in that education system think incorrectly about most things.

What critics of the president are really saying when they declare that his supporters are not “college educated,” they are really expressing frustration that they have not managed to ruin the minds of those people with their liberal instruction.  Colleges are cesspools of liberalism which is fine if you are a liberal, but if you are a conservative who thinks from a philosophy based on tradition there isn’t much for those people in colleges.  If you aren’t learning to live in the business world of a capitalist marketplace, colleges are a waste of time which is why I have been so critical of them for such a long time.  Back in the 80s and 90s colleges still tried to hide some of their radicalism and parents still believed that you had to have a college degree to get a good job.  But honestly, all the college degree got you was your first interview.  Once you worked somewhere and showed that you were competent your work will always be in demand and most of the stuff you learn in college becomes useless.  So for the cost and the critical wasted time spent at college during the formularize years—college is a bad deal.  People who don’t go to college save time, money and the pain of having to endure a decade long process of deprogramming their minds back to reality.

The big scam from the beginning by the radical leftists was to create a false sense of urgency to get the masses to believe that they needed to send their children to college to get a good job—so they spent fortunes on these college educations feeding the old hippie college professors to live good lives as socialist instructors.  The parents then wonder why their kids graduated unambitious and stuck in their basements uninterested in getting out into the world and fighting for their livelihoods.  They college students had their ambition robbed from them in those schools and in many ways that is a crime.  Its one thing for liberals to freely destroy their minds knowingly, but it’s quite another to recruit innocent minds into a system that is intent on their destruction—intellectually.   By luring in the good kids of good families who were willing to pay those ponytailed liberals fortunes to ruin their kids and make them Democrat voters, liberals extended their voting base to influence the political system with propped up short-term socialism.

Trump was never supposed to happen.  By getting elected and deregulating so many industries, and bringing investment dollars back to America the new president has made college educations pretty much useless because employers are going to have to compete for workers at a rate that has never been experienced in this country.  As I said, I am an employer, so I know directly what is going on with this issue—in just a few years there will be three jobs for every employee—unemployment won’t just be low—as it is now at just over 4%, it will be at a negative number because the economic growth of our country will exceed the employees available.  Not only that but by cutting down on the illegal immigration and the amount of people flowing into America who offer cheap entry-level labor Trump will raise the per capita income of all Americans through natural competition.  By the time he has to run for re-election in 2020, Americans will be seeing more personal wealth than they’ve ever experienced before and college educated people will be at a disadvantage because they will be stuck to a very static way of doing things. Not only will they stay with a job too long because they are stuck to the rhythm of that static existence even though they could make more money elsewhere, but they’ll be the last to compete for new start-up jobs because the training they get in college is usually a decade old or more—and useless to a new economy.  These behavior patterns were quite obvious during the 2017 election where college educated people voted not only for the Democrat they were trained to like, but the static order of the old world while Trump represented real change and opportunity invisible to conditioned artificial intellectual limitations based on institutional parameters.

I think it’s nice that people hang with something to complete a degree in college because it shows that they can at least finish something—but what they learn is often a disadvantage to real life activity.  I think college is extremely helpful in fields like the medical industry and for legal work, but in most cases college holds people back.  Currently the best engineer I know is a guy who apprenticed at Boeing for many years but does not have a college degree.  Now he’s a senior level engineer who is great at solving problems and I think is a remarkable human being.  The worst engineer I know is a person who has over six years of formal education and is very static Theory X type who has a hard time understanding anything new.   It is terrible to try to communicate with a person like that because the mode of thinking is so static. And by the way, that person doesn’t like Trump—which tells you everything.   A college degree can be nice to have if it gets you a job opportunity, but other than that—I think it’s useless. There is no substitute for real world work and ambition.  College for the most part is a scam that delays a person’s development, it certainly doesn’t enhance it.  When it comes to Donald Trump, the people lacking a liberal formal education were the first to see how great Trump would be as president.  The last to see it are the college educated types—because they have been trained to accept static systems and inefficiency—aspects of liberalism that have nearly destroyed us all.  Luckily, those people are no longer in charge and will have less power a few years from now and for that we all have a lot to look forward to.  The last ones to see it and benefit will be those with the most formal education.  College isn’t a benefit, it’s a liability.

Rich Hoffman

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An Authentic Han Solo Costume: The miracle of Amazon.com amid changing industries–and people

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Everyone knows I’m a huge Star Wars fan—which I view differently from the geeky other types of entertainment exhibitions of public support.  When I see the name Star Wars and participate in its products in whatever form, it evokes in me an optimism that is very specific to it that I am very fond of.  That’s why my favorite character within Star Wars is Han Solo, because he is the most optimistic character perhaps ever created for film.  Nothing is impossible for Han Solo—he’ll try anything under any circumstances because his personality is such that he figures his confidence and sheer will can get him through anything.  He is the Donald Trump of science fiction and I’ve felt that way about that character for more than forty years now.  On more than a few occasions I’ve dressed up as Han Solo for Halloween events, or other science fiction endeavors, conventions, watch parties, literary events at book stores—just various festive gatherings that celebrate costuming and character reverence—but I’ve never had any kind of official Han Solo clothing. I would just piece together whatever I could find that sort of looked like the popular smuggler from the Star Wars series and go from there. But my five-year old grandson is about to have a big birthday party marking that invisible line of being a toddler to a genuine little boy fully aware of the world around him with the memories that now matter—and my daughters are fashioning it to Star Wars.  As I’ve reported before also, these parties my kids do for their kids are not just little events—they go all out in creating a very mythic experience that is almost a theme park occurrence and due to their passion for Star Wars they are going all out.  That meant that of course I had to dress up as Han Solo—but this time I wanted to do it for real—as real as possible because of the effort my kids were putting into this party and the eventual impact it would have on the youth in my family attending this thing.  So I turned to Amazon.com to see what was out there and was stunned by a world I discovered.

My mom made me a little vest like Han Solo’s when I was in the fifth grade and I sort of kept it all these years even though it was way too small for me.  But even a few years ago if you wanted something that looked like a Star Wars character and bought a costume from a place like Party City it always came out looking far from authentic.  If you wanted something that looked like the clothing in the movie you had to make it.  Back when my kids were little we went to a Star Wars Celebration in Indianapolis and my wife made Jedi robes for my girls and their friends so they could dress up at that convention which occurred right before the movie Revenge of the SIth.  The internet at that time had some support—you could get directions from people who built their own costumes but there weren’t suppliers carrying things like that on the shelf.  Even though Star Wars was popular there just wasn’t any money in it for costumers to make costumes of all those characters in the movies  for a public of all shapes and sizes.  The scope of that work was unrealistic. For Han Solo specifically his outfit looks pretty simple yet is really quite complex.  For instance, his vest from A New Hope has a series of very complicated pockets positioned just right—and there is nothing like that off the rack at Wal-Mart or Kholes.  Han Solo’s pants don’t have pockets and have a very specific pin stripe down the side of them which disappears into knee-high boots that are meant to put the swash in the buckle for the very dashing character. The shirt under the vest isn’t just a white button-up but has a very unique collar and v-nick style that has to fit just right through the shoulders to give the correct effect.  Then there is the gun belt which is a thing all its own.  So I went looking for these things and I started with the Star Wars Costume exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center—which has been running all summer and will end around the beginning of October before moving on to the next city.  It’s a good exhibit, most of which I’ve seen before at the Smithsonian, but for my quest it served its purpose.  I was able to get right up to the Han Solo costume and look at things up close so that I could duplicate it authentically.  If I couldn’t find the items online, my wife was willing to build them from scratch so we went and took lots of pictures.

To my shook as I started looking now, in 2017 for these very specific Han Solo costume pieces for this epic party my kids were having I discovered that I was able to buy everything at Amazon.com relatively inexpensively.  For instance the great Han Solo vest that I figured was the most important part of the costume was just under forty dollars from an outfit in China.  I skeptically ordered it expecting it to arrive in a very flawed condition.  I expected something that looked like a typical Party City costume that smelled like plastic and rubber.  But what came to my front door was an exact replica of the Han Solo vest from A New Hope made out of material that was like that of tactical gear for a SWAT team.   It was a very good garment that was legitimate and it fit well the moment I put it on.  I was stunned by the quality of it.  I then proceeded to order the official shirt, the pants, the boots and the gun belt which as of this writing hasn’t yet arrived, but everything else has and again I was stunned by the authenticity of each item.

At different points in my life I had looked for these things and nobody carried them—as I said, everything had to be made by hand.  What’s unique about now from then—and by then I mean like six months ago—is that due to all the COSPLAY that goes on at these Comic Con conventions and now that Disney World is building these amusement parks with Star Wars lands within them there is this big COSPLAY movement that has emerged—where people dress up as characters from their favorite movies to delve into the mythology of these various sci-fi events—and out of nowhere there are all these suppliers who are making these costumes to meet the growing demand.  It’s a whole industry of itself that has virtually arrived out of nowhere.  I am aware of some of it because I find Comic Cons interesting as well as Gen Cons and other conventions.  I also noticed that the plans for the new Star Wars resort coming to Disney World is seeking to tap into this emerging market with a Fantasy Island style of Star Wars experience where they encourage people to show up dressed for the part.   Obviously Disney knew all about this culture and were building their business plans around it.  I only discovered it because of my grandson’s birthday party—but this was big business!

As I had ordered everything from my home computer and each item arrived one by one to my doorstep without having to go anywhere to search for it I became more and more impressed.  Even more shocking was that everything fit nicely, I didn’t have to send anything back.  Just by reading some of the reviews I was able to size myself accordingly with no trouble at all.  I figured that the risk was low because if the stuff showed up and was junky I figured my five-year old grandson would forgive me.  He’d appreciate the effort and wouldn’t get hung up on the details—even though he is a very smart little kid.  He surprises me what he notices.  He’s already playing the video game Battlefront very well which is about two years before I thought he would.  He plays online against other people who are very good—and he’s effective.  He knows all the different types of weapons that can be used, how to outfit each character and how to manage the Star Cards which give unique abilities to tactical engagements.  So if something wasn’t right, he’d notice. But after getting the parts of my Han Solo costume together it was obvious that I had nothing to worry about.  As far as this party was concerned, except for my hairline, the outfit looks just like it would if it was on the actual movie set.  That’s pretty stunning for something that was so easily ordered on Amazon.com.

This is all just another example of how imagination is fueling an entirely new industry and due to the excessive and efficient reach of Amazon.com they were able to connect me to suppliers around the world where I could get a very specific items from a forty-year old movie to my doorstep within two weeks.  And the quality wasn’t junky but meant to impress even under the scrutiny of the most ardent film geek.   In some cases my outfit is better than the movie original on display at the Cincinnati Museum Center.  Those costumes were meant for just a few months of filming, these for purchase were meant to last much longer and under the judgment of live audiences.  Needless to say, which I have before, we are seeing something new and hopeful from these modern movie enthusiasts which starts with a mythology in the movie theater and extends into real life—what Disney is doing down at their theme parks is tapping into the public need to play out their fantasies and is an expansion of imagination that is very specific to our species as human beings.  The need to personify a fantasy experience has deep psychological roots that go far beyond primal necessity.   I think the end result is a very positive one that is headed toward an unknown climax.  I know I love to see the imaginations of so many people at work to make something like all this possible—but it surprised even me at the extent of it all. And the entity most responsible for the success of this new industry was Amazon.com.  They were the middle ground players that connected need with supply and allowed both to get what they wanted at the best price and quality.  If they can do that with a simple costume from Star Wars, just think what they can do with real necessities.  We are living in a whole new world.

Rich Hoffman

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A Warning to the Deep State: Through peace or war–the swamp is getting drained

In regard to the Bob Mueller investigation of the Trump family all in the name of trying to find some kind of dirt that might end the presidency, a few things need to be made aware.  I’m not speaking for everyone, but I’m sure everyone of any sane mind is pretty much thinking the same thing.  This is kind of a note to the swamp so that they can know the law of the land—because I really don’t think they understand.  My support of Donald Trump was a last-ditch effort at saving our American republic without having to resort to violence and bloodshed.  Prior to the election I was actually planning to put together a militia group to impose an actual rebellion—a civil war.  Lucky for the world, Donald Trump is doing a fantastic job and if everyone would just shut their mouths and enjoy life a little bit, we could all have a prosperous life.  But, there isn’t any going back to the way things were.  A prosecution of Donald Trump on some made-up charges just to sag down his presidency with distractions won’t preserve the looting that has been going on for 200 years in the swamp.  That reality is something that people on the other side need to realize.

Saying that people might wonder, “oh no, you can’t say such things—they’ll come after you too.”  Look, I know the NSA, the CIA, the FBI and many other organizations have their share of idiots in them who watch everything I do and have plugged everything I have ever said and written into a computer to get a tactical readout looking for some weaknesses to expose.  I have dealt with threats of every kind before, so I have a good idea of what to expect—and I’m not worried.  I’m a pretty smart guy who has some well-defined skills.  Let me rephrase that, I’m a very smart guy—not trying to sound pompous, but at this point in my life nobody or organization is going to out think me unless I purposely let them think so for some strategic objective—so there isn’t anything for me to worry about from the knuckle draggers in these government swamp positions.  They could come with force and I can deal with it.  They can come with passive-aggressive legal mumble jumbo—and I can deal with that too.  I know that, they know that through their analysis of data collection—so we are all waiting to see how things turn out here—and they are a lot more worried than I am about that potential prospect.

Violence is only necessary if we can prove that we are not a nation of laws. For instance, I was supportive of the idea of moving on from prosecuting Hillary Clinton and even Barack Obama until the ridiculous criteria was established in attacking Donald Trump.  Given that reality if the same rules were then applied to Democrats and the swamp of the Beltway, then there should be many prosecutions of the characters surrounding Clinton—but we know that’s not going to happen because we are dealing with a very archaic aristocracy of political culture that is using the power of government to break the law and preserve a dangerous power grab.  If the people of this nation are not protected by laws from such things then they must restore that justice with force.

I actually prepared for this possibility many years ago with written work, and with the voluminous work on this blog site to further reiterate my testimony.  If I were to be required to use my leadership skills and physical abilities to preserve the American republic from domestic enemies—and in the aftermath the courts would seek a prosecution of me—I have written two novels outlining my testimony for context.  My first novel, The Symposium of Justice was my way of displaying the need for action against tyranny—which our Beltway swamp in Washington D.C. is clearly obsessed with.  To fight back against them is one thing, but my novel the Symposium would be part of my testimony as a character witness to explain the needed actions to a potential jury.  Secondly, my novel The Tail of the Dragon further refines that point in defining justice between the needs of the individual and the needs of a collective mass.  With me there won’t be some nutty case like there was in Ruby Ridge, or in Waco—where government propaganda would be successful in making me out to be some lunatic.  Quite the contrary—I’ve laid out my case quite clearly and am convinced that a jury of my peers would be extremely sympathetic.  Those works are out there and would be a part of any case involving me in any way.  As I’ve said before, I’ve been to court so many times—I know how things work—and I’m prepared.

Since Trump has been elected the villains of the world have been beaten back and are on their heels.  Violence in inner cities is going down dramatically and the violent gangs associated with the drug culture are on their way in retreat.  That’s all very encouraging as I would hope that peace and prosperity could find everyone’s home in America so people could live and thrive under the laws of the land.  But clearly under people like Obama and Clinton the law was used to protect them as they committed crimes to preserve their political philosophy and a lot of people did get hurt, and killed.  Donald Trump was elected to put a stop to that kind of thing and so far it has been working.  I couldn’t be more proud to have a president like Trump in the White House.   He hasn’t been in office long enough to justify a grand jury investigation into anything in his life—and the fact that there is says everything about the hypocritical nature of this endeavor.

In the context of the grand jury investigation into Trump led by Robert Mueller and the Deep State swamp desperate to hold onto power with their constant information leaks which Jeff Sessions addressed as currently under investigation —I am as prepared today to lead a civil war against that Deep State as I was the day of the Election in 2016—which was historic.  I was relieved after that election that such a task might be avoided and many lives saved in the process, and I still am.  I don’t think this Deep State attack will amount to anything.  But I do want those idiots to know that if they would be successful, that things only get worse for them.  I will personally guarantee it.

I know I’m not alone in this, there are obviously millions of people who think the same way—as Trump’s West Virginia rally displayed quite clearly.  But I can only speak for myself.  The swamp is going to be beaten any way possible.  We are going to drain it and the insurgents that make it up are domestic enemies within America that must be defeated so to preserve our Constitution.   I have watched the flow of the law for years and witnessed how it has been used as a weapon of the Deep State to further their agenda—most specifically the way the IRS targets enemies of the State behind legal definitions while those same standards cannot be applied to the wrongdoers in the government—such as Lois Lerner and many other IRS employees.  We are not going back to that—and if I don’t have a president who can do such things legally through the election process, then there is no choice but to use force to take back our country from these malicious fools.  It’s as simple as that.   The arrogance that is driving the Mueller investigation is clearly corrupt and it’s not going to be accepted—certainly not by me—and I’m not the kind of person who makes threats loosely.

Rich Hoffman

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A Front Row Seat to History: Trump’s West Virginia speech and the implications

I know I write about Donald Trump nearly every day and there are so many topics in the world, but can you name one other thing dear reader, which is as exciting and game changing?  That’s why Donald Trump is the topic of the century.  Watching the President’s speech in West Virginia on August 3rd 2017 the same day that Robert Mueller announced a grand jury investigation into Russian tampering in the 2016 election—and two leaked transcripts of phone calls with foreign leaders emerged in an embarrassing way—that the event was a testament of fortitude.  It’s something nobody has ever seen in human history before, the most powerful person on earth because of the power of the American presidency stepping out of the Washington drama and into small town USA to be with the real people who are really behind the country—to bypass the soothsayers, the lawyers and the phony lobbyists—the self congratulatory world leaders, the socialist media and the institutional swamp of the Beltway culture to speak to the nation while everyone else was literally going on summer recess.

That’s not all, so far in his presidency Trump has very quietly surpassed the amount of money Barack Obama raised for the Democrats during his first term and poured it into the Republican Party.  The Trump team is very good about sending out emails for donations to their supporters.  I get about two or three a day, which is what I’ve always been saying that Republicans should be doing, because the Democrats sure have done it.  And what’s the rule basically in business and in life—he who has the gold rules.  As rival Republicans and Beltway insiders plot and scheme the destruction of Donald Trump, the new president has amassed quite a lot of wealth for the Party which comes from his charisma and determination.  When the vacationing Republicans come back to Washington after Labor Day, Trump will even further embed himself as the leader of the Republican money and controller of the purse strings and that will certainly help his legislative agenda—especially as many of those House and Senate members start thinking about running for office again in 2018.  Trump is an amazingly positive force in American politics, no matter which side you may be on dear reader.  What’s happening now is the stuff of historic legends.

I realize that most people have no idea what’s going on.  They see his West Virginia speech and they make fun of the participants—but think about the theme of that speech.  Trump specifically said, “We didn’t win because of the Russians, we won because of you.” The crowd went nuts.  The silent Trump supporters aren’t so silent and have been unlocked and activated in ways that no demographic population ever has—in the history of the world.  We’re not talking about the desperate fanaticism of Hitler in 1935 Germany where depravity ushered in an era of evil, or a Roman emperor who conquered the northern realms of Europe to expand civilization into the distant corners of pagan monstrosities—we’re talking about a free people who have gathered behind an indomitable force—by choice.

I remember well when Trump came to the US Bank Arena just a few weeks before the big election and the event was a lot like that August 2017 crowd in West Virginia. Trump filled that place up and the crowd was extremely engaged.  It was for me an obvious turning point especially after all the controversies that had been released trying to derail his presidency.  I remember thinking at the time, “boy, if this guy actually becomes president, this will be a game changer just because of his positive attitude that is so contagious.” While Trump was in West Virginia at that exact moment my oldest daughter was at the Hans Zimmer concert at that same US Bank Arena.  Hans Zimmer is a major Hollywood star and one of the greatest musicians of our time.  What was strange to me was that as my daughter was sending me pictures of the concert on my phone, I couldn’t help but notice that the crowd was far less than when Trump had been there.  Zimmer was far from sold out which reminded me how amazing it was that people would actually show up for these Trump events to just listen to a guy talk.  What Trump does and how he goes about it is an amazing exchange of human emotion aimed at positive resolutions—and it’s simply remarkable.

Most people would have folded under the amount of pressure that Trump is currently under.  Heck, most people wouldn’t have made it out of 2015 during the campaign with the amount of trouble that was thrown at Trump.  As I’ve said often, I feel I understand Trump in a personal way.  Before he ever ran for president he was a very accomplished author and I’ve read many of his books several times.  I can’t say that I learned much because my personality type is very similar to the kind of people Trump is trying to teach people to be in those bestselling books.   For me they were positive reassurance that someone out there thought the same way as me.  One of my favorite Trump books is Think Big and Kick Ass which was published in 2007 after several seasons of The Apprentice had made him into a major celebrity.   In that book Trump covers an entire chapter dedicated to handling pressure.  All great people must learn to handle enormous amounts of crushing pressure—and that is something that essentially separates achievers from the rest of society.  Lots of people are smart.  Lots of people have good educations.  But not a lot of people can handle pressure.  Trump is someone who actually performs better under pressure and that is what makes him so much different from any other person to ever enter the political class.  And that’s why every day he is in office is a game changer for the direction of the country.  People know it too—and they are willing to defend Trump because they understand how unique this opportunity is.

The Beltway culture is essentially like a big high school where peer pressure has been used for centuries now to control the most ambitious and individualistic presidents to house themselves in the White House.  If anybody got too far out of line, peer pressure from their rivals would hold them to the mold of institutionalism and keep them prisoner so that they couldn’t do much damage to the mechanisms of aristocratic deception.   That has left the rest of us scratching our heads as to why we always had such weak presidents who seemed more concerned with being one of the cool kids than in being a figure that might one day be put up on Mt. Rushmore.  I mean if you are going to be president of the United States, why not shoot for a big memorable role?  The sad answer is that most people care only about fitting in with their peers, and that relationship holds them back in life so terribly much.  But Trump doesn’t care about his peers.  He expects to be the top dog—the trend setter who follows nobody and that is what is changing that Beltway culture day by day.  The media is aware of this and they are actually terrified that Trump might be successful.  Nothing they have been able to do has put a dent in Trump’s ambitions because the new president actually thrives under pressure—he doesn’t run from it.  That is a first in American history in a political position.  Most of those types of people have always stayed in the private sector only to die quietly on some mountaintop after the conclusion of their lives.   So this is completely uncharted territory and it’s very exciting to see where it takes us each day.  All I can say is that I’m enjoying each day of this president and am very glad that I voted for, and supported with more than effort, Donald Trump.  History is being made and I love having a front row seat.

Rich Hoffman

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Dow Jones Hits 22,000: Donald Trump, ‘Atlas Shrugged’ and video games

I continue to be amazed at how stupid people are. Of course dear reader you are not stupid because you are reading here, but most people have the intellectual depth of a gold-fish and are clueless about the ways of the world around them.  It was the great American novel Atlas Shrugged which clearly predicted what would happen if a hero from the pages of that wonderful classic were to be in the White House.  Donald Trump has only been president for six months and the stock market pushed up over 22,000—an unheard of amount of money flowing into the American economy—and why, well, it’s purely from the promise of deregulation and tax cuts.  Human beings were never intended to be held under the financial constraints and philosophic parameters of an aristocratic leadership—they were always meant to free themselves of that intellectual bondage and we are seeing it happen under the Trump administration in really spectacular ways.

I will take credit for getting this right from the very beginning. Donald Trump will be the best president we’ve ever had and our economy will bloom in ways it’s never before experienced because of all the reasons established in Atlas Shrugged many years ago by Ayn Rand.  Free people of the burden of an aristocratic government that wants to micromanage every little thing in their lives and you will see explosive growth economically and culturally.  That was essentially what Atlas Shrugged was all about and it’s an idea that could have only been invented within the United States of America and the capitalism that drives the most financially prolific nation on earth. Money isn’t just something that happens in nature where aristocrats can then distribute it to the people—it’s made by human beings out of productive output and is built out of thin air.  The economy of the Stone Age people who built Stonehenge in England is not the economy of our global culture today.  The wealth that some people experience is created out of ambition and hard work and that is how the Dow Jones ended up at over 22,000 on August 2, 2017—at the close.

Stupid people who have criticized Donald Trump’s presidency over irrelevant issues, and ironically are the same idiots who have criticized Ayn Rand’s novels can at least see that everything they have put their “faith” into is coming apart, just like at the end of Atlas Shrugged—the story.  People are getting a taste of what it feels like to have a Fountainhead in the White House and they like it.  They are opening up their wallets and investing big into a future that suddenly looks like it has unlimited potential.  All Trump had to do was show up and remove a few regulations and everything has taken off explosively.  As I watched the Dow close I knew the human race had just punched through an invisible barrier of economic development that was significantly larger than breaking the sound barrier.  Humans have been trying to do something like achieve 22,000 at the Dow Jones since the dawn of time—economic independence not controlled by a hierarchy, but rather a free and open market.  Trump is just getting started—there is much more opportunity to come—because our markets are hardly free—but they are getting better.

Those stupid people are that way because they aren’t intellectually curious about things—they tend to believe what people tell them—and when those people are Marxists in the media and within their schools, they are starting with a bad foundation to begin with. But many of those people do find pleasure in video games and within that framework they understand capitalism very intently.  The same anarchists who protest the Trump presidency and break out windows over Sea World’s Orca shows are the same people screaming at EA Games message boards that they are at level 100 on Battlefront and are looking for more in-game goodies to inspire them to maintain their subscriptions to the PS Network.  The video game industry is all about capitalism from their stories to the wealth they created from both actual currency and virtual currency. Money in any form it takes is about representing value, so when something has value, money can be said to represent it’s ethereal worth.  The best video games keep their players engaged for months at a time—or even years by continuously creating incentives to be productive in the game which then benefits the culture that emerges through the programming.  I mentioned Battlefront which is an EA game for the Star Wars saga being made under the guidance of Disney.  Like a lot of people who are still playing that two-year old game, I’m at level 100, which is as high as you can go.  I have more credits than I can spend on the game in a lifetime so what keeps me coming back for more?  Well—for me it is the competition and intense fighting that you can do there against people all over the world.  But already Battlefront II is about to come out and replace the old Battlefront and they are already trying to get me to pre-order it with all kinds of incentives to entice me to do so.  Of course I will because I’ll want a competitive jump on everyone else in the world and so will millions of other players—most of them are under the age of 30 and probably hate Donald Trump.  But they understand capitalism within the framework of the videogame industry.  Once Battlefront II comes out, I will likely play it solid for a full solid six months because there will be so many objectives to perform that it will be fun for me—even though in the real world none of it means anything.  I mean I can’t take all my Battlefront credits and buy a new car, or a house.  But I play because it is a free environment that awards competency and persistence—and that’s why video games are often better than reality.

Just think what would happen if our government just got out-of-the-way and let us all play at life-like we do in video games? That is essentially what Donald Trump is proposing and why those who like to play the stock market are blowing the top off the previous record-breaking ceilings.  It’s no question that since Election Day 2016 that just the promise that people could play at the game of economic development opened up the hopes and dreams of a lot of people and that has directly impacted our economy already.  For many years I have driven to work in the morning passed many businesses either going out of business or barely hanging on.  This morning on my way to work I counted 32 help wanted signs that were not there last month.  That is a lot of opportunity that has so far come out of a stock market that jumped from 18,000 to 20,000.  Wait until the results of this latest jump yields.  It is very optimistic to consider.

Just imagine what would happen if government got out of healthcare and the people in the medical industry were allowed and encouraged to make as much money as they could? Think how much wealth they could create.  Jeff Bezos is now the richest person in the world—he alone invented an industry that changed everything in Amazon.com.  How do we find the Amazon.com of healthcare if the government is in the way of discovering it?  We won’t.  Government only makes it so that people don’t want to play at the games of life—and building wealth is a kind of game to the people who have the mind and resources to do so.  If they are overly restricted, they’ll sit on their money and spend their money trying to get away from government—or buying it off to keep them out of their pockets.

Atlas Shrugged answered all these questions many years ago yet people are still surprised that Trump has had this kind of effect on the economy so quickly.  And that shock will continue for quite a number of years until history solidifies the results so that the stupid people will finally accept it all as a reality.  Right now the stupid people want what they know, the selfish aristocracy that claimed to have mystical powers over religion and matters of money.  However, smart people know better, and they know that once people see how much fun life can be and how much money they can make in it—they’ll want to play too—and this global push for socialism will lose its audience—and Donald Trump will still be president and the Dow will be up over 30,000.

How much do you wanna’ bet?

Rich Hoffman

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The Not So “Magnificent Seven”: Hollywood can’t make westerns anymore because everything is a Clinton campaign ad

If you ever wanted evidence of a declining culture and the severe impact that liberalism has had on Hollywood specifically, then just watch the newest remake of The Magnificent Seven.  The 2016 version was just God-awful, pathetically put together.  It was a disaster of a movie that shamefully called itself a western.  Clearly the writers, director and production staff had no idea what a western was when they cast Chris Pratt and Denzel Washington in the remake of the 1960s classic, because the film wasn’t even watchable.  I struggled through it because as a western I felt I needed to see it for cultural reasons but I will have to say that I was glad to see the end credits indicating that the movie was over because it was a disaster of a film.  The original film stared Yul Brenner and Steve McQueen along with several other popular actors from the period.  But that movie was a remake of the 1954 film The  Seven Samurai directed by the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.  Those classic films were good—not my favorite by any means because everyone pretty much dies during their big standoff with the villains at the end, but at least you could appreciate the valor. In this modern version all that valor is gone and all you end up with is an anti-capitalists message and a bunch of characters that are so unlikable that you are happy when they finally do die.  If you plot a line of Hollywood quality from The Magnificent Seven in 1960 to this modern update in 2016 counting the 1985 film Silverado by Lawrence Kasdan (another remake) you can clearly see a declining culture over time.  There’s no question about it.

One of the reasons Star Wars has held up over time is because of the influence of Akira Kurosawa in it.  The original Star Wars film was based on the Kurosawa film The Hidden Fortress. (1958)  In those old Kurosawa films character was a defining trait and the valor of combat was a feature of the underlining plot.  Several American filmmakers found influence with Kurosawa and essentially turned those plots from samurai sword culture to six guns.  In the case of Star Wars it was both, samurai swords became light sabers represented by Luke Skywalker and Han Solo represented the American western’s love of guns as the weapon of choice and so long as that style of filmmaking complete with human valor stayed as the centerpiece of the stories, they continue to endure.   All that is very well known, particularly among film makers and film school students—so I would have expected when the production for The Magnificent Seven started in 2014 and 2015 that the entire crew would have known how to make a movie—after all, they had access to all the best stuff from film hardware, budgets, to stunts.  They had much more to work with than old Akira Kurosawa did back in Japan when those old samurai films were first being filmed.

I knew the film was in trouble almost from the very beginning when the villain of the modern story went on an anti-capitalist—anti-God rant that was completely out of context with the kind of story westerns are known for.  It was a modern political speech that made it impossible to accept Denzel Washington as a suitable replacement for the old Yul Brenner character. There was a way to put a black actor in that role and still have a good movie—but these idiots missed the point completely focusing way too much on the racism and not nearly enough on the character itself.  Who cares if the guy was black because the character was so unlikable?  The filmmakers were entirely too focused on the progressive trends of our modern society and selling those trends to the public than in making a classic western filled with American values.  It simply went through the motions, put cowboy hats on people and called it a western with the type of story that might as well have been a campaign ad for Hillary Clinton.  And obviously, she lost the election that took place just a few months after the September release of the 2016 version of The Magnificent Seven. So the studio found itself on the losing side of philosophy—and the movie just fell flat.

I personally love westerns and it is a real tragedy that Hollywood no longer knows how to make them.  When Disney tried to make a remake of The Lone Ranger—which I thought was good, they even missed the main point—that westerns are about values—not the action.  Western gun fights mean nothing unless the characters in them exhibit a notable valor that justifies the conflict.  But modern filmmakers just don’t get it—and that is astonishing considering all the study of great films that go on to this day.  With the resources that film schools have to study this situation you’d think they’d get it, but they don’t.  That is essentially why Hollywood is failing.  You can’t attack the essential premise of American values and expect a western to work.  Westerns are not about the hats and the guns—but rather the values for which those things represent.

Needless to say I expected a lot more.  While The Magnificent Seven was filming Chris Pratt was in talks to be the next Indiana Jones so I figured that these filmmakers would utilize the star power of the young actor to make a really special western for modern audiences.  No.  All they could manage to do was create some progressive piece of crap that only people who supported Hillary Clinton for president could understand—those weird liberal types with that strange skin, downturned mouths and empty eyes who made up her supporters.   They are not like most people, the liberals who supported Hillary Clinton are physical manifestations of their rotten philosophy and it actually shows up in their molecular make-up.  There just aren’t enough of those people to support a modern western.  People who like westerns are not the kind of people who voted for Hillary Clinton so these film studios are missing the point.  I have no doubt that westerns have a place in modern cinema.  I’m sure Clint Eastwood could still make a good western because it takes a filmmaker who understands the genre.  But these skinny pants directors of this modern age have no idea what a western is.  They can watch them, and try to duplicate them, but they just don’t get it.

And that brings us to the new Han Solo film that just brought Ron Howard in with just three weeks of production left on the schedule.  From the very beginning Kathy Kennedy made it clear that this Star Wars film was to be inspired by Fredric Remington and the Phil Lord and Christopher Miller directors just weren’t getting it—due to their impulsive jokes for which they are known.  She had to go to Ron Howard who has roots on Happy Days and the Andy Griffin Show to get a director who could get their mind around this modern western set in space.  I hope it works out because honestly we are a culture desperately in need of westerns once again produced for modern audiences.  It doesn’t matter if its horses or space ships the values of westerns are about people and valor, not just stunts and guns.  Akira Kurosawa would have never done so well with his samurai films if he had just had sword fights.  It was his characters that carried his films and inspired many of the great westerns that came out during the 1950s and 1960s.  Hopefully Hollywood will learn from these mistakes—but obviously when it came to The Magnificent Seven, their efforts were not so magnificent—but rather pathetic.

Rich Hoffman

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You’re Fired in the White House: The good done by the 2% while the 98% watch

Why is it so surprising that Anthony Scaramucci was fired from the White House communications director job? Given the fact that he only did the job for 11 days, he was effective and assisted on bringing in General Kelly at the chief of staff position.  Scaramucci shook things up during his short tenure, he did a good job and now other people get a chance to do work in his wake.  Yet the perception of these government jobs is that they should go on forever and that the measurement of success isn’t in effectiveness of job performance but in how long a person can manage to hang around in the Beltway.  Trump has brought a business ethic to his White House based on performance—for which the media calls “chaos” and there will be many other firings before all is said and done.  Don’t people remember The Apprentice?  This is that same guy—Donald Trump, who made his mark on celebrity by firing people.  What did people think was going to happen?

What’s different in Trump’s case and virtually everyone who came before him is that this new president is part of that elite 2% club of people who essentially support the entire 98% portion of the human population in productive output. That’s not the same as declaring that Trump is “rich.” Not everyone in that 2% club is “rich” yet, but they typically become that way by their very nature. When anarchists used the Occupy Wall Street group to protest the wealthy 1% they were attacking the visible portion of that 2% who essentially do everything in our economy—who have the inner drive to move mountains of opposition for the sheer pleasure of it—for the boon of being productive.  They are not like the sheepish 98% who are happy to just live life and graze like cattle in the fields of dreams waiting for the inevitable end.  People like Trump are driven by their own energy—and it never ends for them.  That energy is now in the White House and has been misdiagnosed as chaos by those lazy 98% types.

That is why I have no concern over the lack so far of a legislative slate of accomplishments because I never thought congress would work with this president until things got rough—and they are about to. I have no doubt that Trump will end the subsidies on the congressional health care plans putting them equal with the rest of us and that the Obamacare money would be block granted back to the states.  Experts would say that if Trump did such a thing that all his other legislative objectives would be in jeopardy, such as his infrastructure plan, and his tax cut—but that is only thinking from the perspective of 98% of the population.  Thinking like the 2% types, you take it to the objectivists and make them feel the pain, and you pour it on until they break or an opportunity to fire them emerges.  That is the way of Trump.  His legislative agenda will happen one way or the other.  Inactivity won’t be acceptable not under a 2% oriented president used to accomplishing things.  Trump will not stop until he gets what he wants like a lot of driven people are—the 2%.

That was what the plot to The Apprentice really was—discovering the 2% out there who would do almost anything to be successful and having them compete for the right to win.  Most people are content to ride through life and watch these 2% people fight it out.  But then that is the major problem with democracy—is that the 98% feel they have legislative control over the natural drive of the 2%–and that will never work.  In America we have found an economy that frees the hands of the 2% and lets them build industry and invention to the limits of their imagination. The 98% benefit completely from these efforts but they do very little to contribute—except maybe work a job.  They aren’t like Elon Musk who is inventing the Hyperloop on a napkin or Jeff Bezos who is now the richest person in the world who continues to push Amazon.com to new levels of productivity.  As I mention these people they are not conservatives—but they are part of that 2% way of thinking—they are driven internally to always reach for success in any form they can find.  Anthony Scaramucci is another one of those 2% types, and no, he doesn’t have time to dance around an issue just to make the flock of sheep that make up the 98% of the population happy. Trump hired him, used Scaramucci’s efforts, to sniff out the leakers, fired the leakers and then ushered in a new chief of staff who then fired Scaramucci—that’s life in the fast lane.  Scaramucci will still be rich because it’s in his nature to be rich.  You could strip that guy of all his belongings and drop him off on a deserted island and five years later he’d be rich again after having built a thriving sea port on that island.  It’s the survival nature of the 2% and the American system to give them a voice above all others that is most responsible for the country’s GDP.  98% work under contracted hours to perform some of the tasks, but the essential elements of achievement occur by the 2% who seldom ever sleep, love their work and are always thinking and pushing for excellence.  To have a discussion about the proper nature of productivity, these factors must be considered.

The Washington Beltway culture that has emerged for over 200 years has proven unrepresentative of what America actually needs.  It follows a roughly European model of aristocratic behavior that just isn’t conducive to our needs as an economy.  The arrogance of John McCain to theatrically put his thumb down on the critical healthcare vote just a few days before Scaramucci was terminated demonstrated beyond doubt that the Senate is not a representation of what Americans want in their government.  Through natural evolution of observation during many trials and errors of voting patterns we finally elected a 2% type into the White House to break loose the elements that have not been working—ever, on Capitol Hill. Things will not go back to where they were just because John McCain is refusing to adopt to those changes.  Waiting out the clock from the power players in congress will not stop the forward trajectory of our economic expansion because most Americans recognize the necessity for a major change, and Trump is just the first step in that change.

The essence of that change is that it is the 2% who make America great and always have.  The 98% just go along for the ride.  They benefit from a great America but they don’t collectively make it so shattering that long-held government belief that democracies are the foundations of freedom.  No, it is the inventor who creates a new type of vehicle that gives individuals freedom of movement over vast spaces.  It is the computer programmer who writes a code that quickens the pace that human beings can think—therefore expanding their leisure time. It is the 2% who give the 98% their freedom through innovation and effort.  Not the other way around.

As I write this the Dow Jones is hovering near 22,000—which is stunning considering that just 6 months ago it was considered high at 18,000. That is nearly 5 trillion dollars of new money flowing into our American economy and that money doesn’t come from everyone.  It comes largely from the 2% who have worked so hard in life and thought out of the box to a large extent that they have the money to invest. They see in Trump a fellow 2% type.  With deregulation and a White House running more like a business, they are confident that the John McCain losers won’t have access to their money and that its safe to take risks.  The 2% don’t mind risks—that’s part of their nature—but they don’t like to have their backs turned toward looters like John McCain who largely represents the 98% people who struggle through life due to their inherit laziness.  Now that the 2% people have their own kind in the White House, they feel they can invest and act without the artificial restriction of looters always trying to steal their efforts for the 98% people to take the credit for.  There is nothing more deflating for a 2% person than to have the 98% people take the credit for all the hard work and risk through institutionalized democracy.  When that barrier is removed then all bets are off.

In that context I like to see all the firings at the White House and so do the other 2% types. It says that things are being managed and when something doesn’t work, this president is willing to keep trying until he gets what he wants.   And that is precisely what Trump will do in regard to healthcare.  It’s going to happen and if congress has to feel the pain and wrath of it, then so be it. It is nice to see all this for a change and now that people in the 98% see the results of a 2% guy in the White House they won’t vote the other way ever again.  The benefits are just too great and even many of the stupid people in that 98% can see that.  Firings are good and healthy and are done often by the people who are in the top 2% of the population.  Because decisive action is a fact of life in the context of Washington politics which has sought for so long to bend the 2% to the needs of the 98%.  Reality demands however that it is the real minority of the 2% which should always be respected for what they give the 98%–a life worth living and a freedom to pursue because decision makers and leaders fight for the purity of capitalism and the merit of competition which makes things wonderful for everyone.

Rich Hoffman

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