Category: Creative Writing

Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Heroes from Islands of Adventure

The video you have just seen is the most recent trailer for the upcoming film Atlas Shrugged Part II coming this October, about a month after the release of my new novel, Tail of the Dragon. This is delightful, because objectivist leaning stories will fill the fall just ahead of the next presidential election giving the voting public insight into thoughts they may not previously have considered regarding political theater.

I think Atlas Shrugged is one of the most important novels of all time. I would put it up against anything ever written. But specifically, it is the novel of America. It is a result of American culture, and it is the story that defines the success of the American economy. Atlas Shrugged contains within it the skeleton key to solving most of America’s current problems. That is why part two of a three part series is coming out just before the 2012 election.

There is some concern that Part II will not be consistent with Part I which was well received, but blasted by the progressive left for not being motion picture type quality. The first Atlas Shrugged film was true to the novel and came out feeling like a made for television film as opposed to a box office masterpiece, but that was OK, because the story is powerful enough to carry those slight imperfections. But the makers of the Atlas Shrugged series were not happy with that assessment, so they retooled, bringing in new talent both in front of the camera and behind it to make Part II more epic as a motion picture experience. By the look of their marketing campaign it appears that they clearly understand what their objective is.

That very simple preview shown above articulates how I personally feel, and many thousands like me undergo as well. In my life, the world does feel like it is crumbling around me, and I do feel I have a responsibility to hold up everything. I know that if I decided to set the world down thousands of lives that are directly connected to mine will perish. So constantly in my mind is the notion of whether or not to continue holding up the world, or setting it down and saying to hell with it. I fight with that notion every single day.

Progressive minded people hate Atlas Shrugged, and they will say that my feelings about that advertisement are presumptuous, narcissistic, and flat out arrogant. They would say to me as they have all my life, you should share the burdens of living with your wife, you should take assistance from those who offer it, and that holding up the world is a “shared” collective endeavor. Well they’re wrong, it’s not. Every funeral I’ve been too, every furniture move, every game of tug of war, there is always one or two people who do most of the heavy lifting. Other people may grab hold of a corner and pretend they are helping, but most of the time they could be completely removed and the heavy object would still be lifted by the key personnel.

This is how it is in life. In virtually every business, every sports activity, every group activity, only a few people do the heavy lifting of holding everything up. That’s not an attack on all the people who don’t have the fortitude, the intelligence, or the strength to do the heavy lifting it takes to carry society on their shoulders. It’s just human nature. It is in this principle that communism ultimately fails one hundred percent of the time, because it takes away the incentive of someone to do the heavy lifting of making decisions. Without that incentive, nobody picks up anything to carry. That is the disease of our modern society. The strong that do all the lifting are beginning to shrug that tendency because of the parasites who want to take equal credit for all the hard work, when it is the heavy lifter who makes the lifting possible.

Communism, socialism, progressivism and all those weakness centered political philosophies allow the masses to believe they are equally important to the heavy lifters. Obama is the perfect example of a modern political looter, who wishes to maintain the illusion he grew up believing, that he was an important heavy lifter, when in fact he’s simply a leech. He was paid by the political left to spread communism into American culture. They bought his books, and propped him up politically for the purpose of stealing from those who carry the world and allowing those who don’t the belief that they are equally significant in the social tapestry.

On the eve of this posting a dear friend of mine is preparing to take their family to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure, which is one of my favorite places on earth. The reason people feel a certain magic upon entering that fantastic amusement park is because it celebrates the superheroes in our modern mythologies who exhibit the tendencies defined in the book Atlas Shrugged. One of the greatest rides in that theme park is the Spiderman 3D Adventure. There is simply nothing like it anywhere. It’s brilliant. But what makes Spiderman great is the character himself. Spiderman in his fights against crime sometimes gets help, but ultimately, it is Spiderman who is required to save the day when the bad guys show up. Even though everyone who rides this ride does not have the abilities of Spiderman, they can appreciate the heroic traits needed to make such a superhero possible. Another great ride that my friend is particularly excited to visit with their children when at Islands of Adventure is the new Harry Potter ride. In the stories of Harry Potter he sometimes relies on his friends to help carry him when he needs it, but at Hogwarts it is Harry Potter that holds everyone up in the entire story. Without Harry Potter, Hogwarts would lose to Lord Voldemort. When visitors ride the new Harry Potter ride, they are celebrating the mythic premise of Harry Potter holding up the world.

As my friend travels to Florida the new Batman film is being released to a hungry crowd. The movie is successful because Batman is needed. In the new film, Bruce Wayne has retired from fighting crime and tries to live a normal life. This is essentially what Atlas Shrugged is all about. The world of Gotham City falls apart because Bruce Wayne is retired from fighting crime as Batman. If communists had things their way, the movie would be called Gotham City fights crime, not Dark Knight Rises. In my new novel it is Rick Stevens who takes on the entire legal system, and in Atlas Shrugged it is John Galt who is holding up the entire world on his back. A collective sum cannot be relied upon to save the day. Collectivism is a fantasy of the human mind created by the sensitive and feeble types. It is not realistic, or natural.

The special feeling visitors get when they enter amusement parks like Islands of Adventure is the celebration of individual heroics. They do not celebrate collectivism in ANY fashion. There is a truth in the affirmation of heroics even if it is presented in a fantasy setting. There is more human truth in Spiderman than the Devil Rays game being played across town at Tropicana Field. Sports are a collective team activity and most adults identify with that form of entertainment over the magic of Spiderman in the outside world. But once inside the amusement park of Islands of Adventure, they are children again, and for a little while, they remember how the world works. This is why Atlas Shrugged is such a successful and important book. It uncovers the understanding and appreciation of those who hold up the world upon their shoulders. Progressives wish to continue believing they are heroes who hold up the world through shared strength. Progressives are terrified of the message behind Atlas Shrugged, because even in stories like Spiderman, Batman, and Harry Potter, the authors made mild concessions toward collectivism to appease the critics who lean toward communism in their political philosophies. In Harry Potter, Harry sacrifices himself to save his friends which is altruism in a mild degree and rallies the efforts of Hogwarts to fight to the death against Lord Voldemort. It is in endings like this that Harry Potter wins critical praise from a progressive media, even if it is not intellectually completely honest. Yet in the end, the Potter series must stick to the rules of nature and human understanding. Harry is the ultimate victor that all of Hogwarts relies upon. That is why Harry Potter is so successful because it follows the basic rules of all human knowledge, that it is the few who hold up the many. This is why superhero movies are dominating the box-office. In the film industry, directors are making frequent concessions to collectivists to appease film critics, even when they shouldn’t. The intellectual honesty is to show the hero for being strong and as flawless as possible, because that is what is expected in a hero. Atlas Shrugged as a book and a film does not make ANY concessions, and that is why it is so trusted, and considered intellectually honest. It is concerned with determining who holds up the world, the economy and entire nations. Deep down inside everyone understands this, but hate the message because they are in denial. They wish to maintain the illusion of their “help” in a social context. In Atlas Shrugged, the answer to “Who is John Galt” are those who pick up the world in either the microcosm or the macrocosm and carry it on their backs without complaint, without praise, and without fear. They do it because it’s in their nature to be the real heroes of existence from which all else flows. And it is in these ideas that American society either thrives or fails.

The kind of America that could be is what is celebrated at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure, and for my friend, the must see exhibits are The Incredible Hulk, The Adventures of Spiderman, The Jurassic Park River Adventure, The Dragon Challenge, and of course the new Harry Potter ride. As for the shows, The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad is well worth it. It’s a GREAT stunt show! And the best place to eat is—–the Mythos Restaurant. This place is a must, but make sure to eat there in the afternoon between dinner rushes. And the close second, that your kids will love is The Three Broomsticks, which is a Harry Potter themed tavern. What makes all this possible is the ideas of which John Galt represents. Without the John Galt principle nothing at Universal Studios happens as there isn’t enough magic in any Harry Potter spell to turn collectivism into a successful enterprise. The new Atlas Shrugged Part II preview is intellectually honest and hints at a film that will be fantastic, and politically important. Ultimately, John Galt is the most powerful superhero and he doesn’t have to sling from a web or fly from a broomstick. All he has to do is refuse to help those who refuse to help themselves surrendering their pride to legalized theft in the form of excessive taxation. At Universal Studio’s Islands of Adventure the symbol is a planet that rotates at the entrance. Deep inside the subconscious of every human being upon seeing that symbol understand what it means. The symbol itself is a bit of a concession, since the only thing missing is a statue of John Galt holding it up.

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This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Why Obama Destroyed 40% of American Wealth: Undoing the nation to make daddy proud

It’s not that people like me are picking on President Obama in the same malicious ways that Democrats picked on George Bush Jr. George Bush Sr., or Reagan, Nixon, Ford on down the line. All those Republican presidents had to endure very radical criticism just because they were conservatives from extreme elements of the left. For those old enough to remember, Bill Clinton really took the top off presidential morality in the 90’s, and the radicals who came to his defense became very obvious as to their intentions to undermine traditional America in favor of a progressive America. But under President Obama political economic terrorism has went several steps further than just bickering between Republicans and Democrats. President Obama has been deliberately stealing the wealth of America using the disguise of a recession started during the Bush years, to knock America out of the world superpower bracket.

Under Obama the typical American family has lost 40% of their total wealth. That means the total net worth of the typical American fell from $126,400 to $77,300 from 2007 to 2010. Obama took office in 2009, and once the numbers from 2010 to 2012 come in, it is HIGHLY likely that the loss will be much greater. This should be the top story in every news publication across the country. Much of that 40% loss is in the real estate bubble collapse, the expendable income of Americans paying more for gasoline, therefore charging up their credit card debt, and wage decreases as America has noticeably shifted over a long period of time from a manufacturer nation to a service oriented nation. For those who can see how the dots connect, Obama is the icing on the cake enemies of American imperialism utilized in order to destroy the power of The United States the world over.

That is not a conspiracy, it’s a fact. Obama was a created candidate who was able to hide behind his race to openly dismantle the American economy in a plan hatched many years ago culminating during the current presidential term. If you have ever had the misfortune of having to put a dog to “sleep” you’ll understand what I’m about to say next. Obama is that gentle hand that pets America while it dies trying to reassure the dying nation that it will all be OK.

But it won’t be OK. America is being killed by radical fundamentalists. When a president promotes oil drilling in Brazil and other places while denying the same permits in The United States advocating that the oil companies are greedy and evil the intent is clear. The stonewalling of the Keystone Pipeline inciting environmental concerns while committing $35 billion tax payer dollars in loans to clean energy companies that have all lost money–about 35 percent to solar companies like Solyndra which alone lost over $500 million dollars. Not only has America lost the money, but it doesn’t have the technology it was supposed to generate do to the commitment to failure. The opportunity cost to the nation has been much greater than $35 billion dollars. The president’s commitment to “clean energy” is a big loser financially, but is part of the plan to distract Americans too busy to pay attention to world geography. Once Americans realize what has happened to them, it will be too late, just like the poor dog that has had the poison injected into its body. As of now the body is still alive, it can blink, lick its lips and look up at the kind hand that pats its head and tells it everything will be OK. But death will come once the needle is injected, and that is what has happened during Barack Obama’s term.

Obama will justify his actions as being good for the “global” community. He justifies in his mind that Americans have too much and they deserve to feel a little pain. Since Obama does not understand money, he believes that money is finite. He believes that in order to defeat American colonialism and fulfill the “Dreams of his Father,” that he must take the money America stole from the rest of the world and give it back to the world. His ignorance is that money is not finite, but is created. He can take all the wealth of America and give it to Kenya, and without the proper political philosophy he will create the situation that his mentor Karl Marx fought against—a class system where very few control all the money giving out only what they please. Within a couple of generations Kenya would waste all the money, because they do not understand how to make it. Taking money from one place and giving it to another is theft done through financial management under coercion. Money cannot give a nation value. Only a valuable philosophy can do that.

Anti colonialism is a very prevalent trait in the world outside of American borders. It is easy for such people who do not understand the basics of economics to be angry at America for all the wealth they have, because they don’t understand that it was capitalism that made the wealth. Wealth alone does not come from gold dug out of the ground or silver traded in coins, but from innovation and manufacture.

Anti colonialists like Obama adopted socialism and communism because that was the political philosophy of America’s enemies. They did not adopt it out of practicality. Their dedication to political philosophy has as much logic as one typically picks their favorite NFL football team. Most NFL fans pick the team that is from their hometown regardless of performance. They do not pick the best team in the NFL to root for, but the team that is close to their homes. For those who are jealous of America’s success they adopted communism, the opposite of capitalism. This is why Obama is a communist, publically showing elements of hard Marxism and socialism because his heroes–like his father, Frank Marshall Davis, and Bill Ayers are all anti colonialists adhering to similar beliefs.

Americans do not see Obama’s intentions because they fail to understand that Obama is so sinister to actually plot the end of their existence in the same fashion as we might put a dog to sleep. The dog does not know what we plan for it while we put it in the car to take it to the vet clinic for one last ride. The dog assumes we are going to fix it, and that life will go on. But we know the dog is beyond help, and that the only real option is to put the dog to sleep.

Obama may actually like America to some extent. I think he likes Chicago, and American sports. I think he enjoys the plush life the American presidency has given him. But he knows that the world has plotted the end of America for a long time, and the most “humane” thing he can do to end it, is to usher America to sleep with his soothing voice and a destroyed economy which stops the blood from flowing quietly without violence.

Under Obama’s economic terrorism, America as a superpower may be in jeopardy as early as 2014. America as the country we are now will not survive until 2016. The economic destruction is intentional and designed to end the reach of American imperialism the world over. Obama, the global citizen, will be known as the president who ended America, but he does not care. He was born in Hawaii and mentored by radical socialists, mentored by a card-carrying communist, raised in Malaysia where he attended public school encountering the ideas of anti-American colonialism. And his real father the Kenyan who fought against English colonialism who Obama has only met a few times in his life, is a primary influence in the President’s world view. The sum of all these elements mean President Obama is an extreme radical who currently occupies The White House and he wants the death of imperial America, which for the rest of us means an end to our way of life.

The reason the media does not focus on the 40% decline in American wealth is because many in of those media personalities received their education in colleges taught by communist professors who sympathize with anti-colonialism beliefs, so they are behind Obama for the most part—he is their guy. They do not know as of now what America will look like dismantled, because they take many of the elements of American civilization for granted. They do not know what it means to destroy America, they just believe that there should be changes, because they have heard the battle cry all their lives. But the cry comes from people who want America gone, and they will do anything to make it happen. This is what Barack Obama’s mission as President of the United States is, to end America as a world power. It is not a secret and in just four short years he has managed to rob from every tax paying American much of their net worth through economic terrorism. 4 more years of the same behavior will destroy what 200 years built. Obama will be remembered as a terrorist, but that won’t matter to him, because he’ll be a hero in Malaysia, China, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, and Kenya, where the dreams of his father started, and he carried out. As a world citizen he’ll be a hero for destroying American imperialism which is much more valuable to him, than the seat of the Oval Office.

These are the differences between this president and presidents of the past. Most of the failures of past presidents are due to failed political philosophy. Those presidents wanted what’s best for America in their view of obtaining it. But Obama is different. He doesn’t want America to succeed at all, he wants failure, and he is doing everything he can to make it happen. That is why Obama is a special case, and why the fight with him over the economy is not one of personal politics. It’s a fight for survival, because he has the needle for our end in his hand and he intends to use it.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Banality of Evil: Why Joe Paterno is just as terrible as Barack Obama and Adolph Eichmann

Hannah Arndt upon witnessing the trial of Adolph Eichmann, one of the Holocaust organizers against the Jewish people, was shocked that Eichmann did not appear in public to be a vile monster oozing desire for death and mayhem. Instead, he maintained an apparent, “everydayness” that shocked her, leaving her to conclude that evil does not come from malevolence or a delight in doing wrong. Instead she suggested the reasons people act in such a way is that they fall victim to failures in thinking and judgments. In Eichmann’s situation he allowed himself to believe that by killing Jews, he was doing good-by the Nazi Party. Killing a millions of Jews made tens of millions of Germans happy, so he rationalized his sinister actions as party loyalty. As ridiculous as that sounds such evil is not regulated to an event long ago, in a far away land. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh, recently released a report that shows Penn State coaching legend Joe Paterno and the rest of university leadership knew that former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was anally raping young boys and they conspired to cover it up from the public to protect the university.

The crimes against children advocated by a major college university is a very serious crime. Yet, Penn State is not alone. At this very moment, many such crimes are being committed right now, and many people know about it, and like Joe Paterno, they will put the good of the institutions they serve ahead of their individual sense of right and wrong. This essentially is no different from what Adolph Eichmann was doing as a founder of the Holocaust death camps. When Joe Paterno spoke, people listened, and to this very day hundreds of thousands of people are shattered to learn that a person they looked up to let them down, and they are seeking to rationalize Paterno’s evil with the same observations that Hannah Arndt observed.

The evil at Penn State began with a sick lust for pedophilia by the defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. The Freeh report shows that the entire university knew about the crimes, yet their approach was to cover it up and quietly remove Sandusky from the public eye allowing him to retire hoping the scandal would disappear. The leadership at Penn State was afraid of the loss of enrollment into their school if such a public relations nightmare escaped their control. It is well-known that colleges depend on college sports to justify their extraordinary social costs in tax money consumed and actual services offered to society. Through sports, colleges unify their students, the parents and the communities who pay the taxes into a sense of collectivism that rationalizes evil in favor of the institutional success.

Unforgivable evils are committed when institutions and their sanctity surpass the value of an individual. Paterno no matter what he felt about the anal rapes of young boys in the showers just outside of his office placed the value of Penn State above the value of the boys being raped. Every member of Penn State leadership contributed to the evil by seeking ways to cover up Sandusky’s acts instead of helping the young boys, because to them, they were following the concept of Marxism, the needs of the many out-weigh the needs of the few. It was Spock who said that in the Star Trek film The Wrath of Khan, which is the contemporary example of Jeremy Bentham’s 1789 book The Principles of Morals and Legislation where he states all social and political decisions should be made with the aim of achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Bentham’s premise is collectivism, Spock’s premise is collectivism, and Paterno’s premise is collectivism. All believe that the evils committed against individuals do not outweigh the survival of the collective institution.

In the Penn State case officials had been taught all their lives to regard such examples of collectivism as an honorable thing and are dumbfounded as to how to respond Sandusky’s antics. Do they suspend Penn State from the juggernaut Big Ten football participation? If they do that what will happen to all the revenue attached to Penn State Football, or even the Big Ten? Even officials in the NCAA are willing to look the other way to save their institutional commitment to Big Ten Football. They will do something now that the FBI forced their hand, but prior to all this, they looked the other way. Everyone knew about Jerry Sandusky’s obsession with little boys, that’s why nobody offered him a football job after he retired. ESPN is in the same boat. They make their livings talking about the great distraction of sports, and such scandals might turn people away from sports, which could seriously harm revenue.

Right now It’s well known that President Obama is undoing America. Since he took office American wealth has declined by 40%! Obama because of a commitment to his biological father’s beliefs in anti colonialism is committed to the big idea of leveling America from a wealth standpoint so that Brazil, Venezuela and other small countries can thrive. Being a globalist, Obama trusts the institution of government as the means to equalize the world. He does not consider the impact on individual American lives, or even the life of America as a country. He is a global citizen, who is concerned about the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Coming back around to why Obama is evil for destroying America, or Paterno is evil for hiding crimes to preserve the university, or Eichmann was evil for killing Jews, they all share in common a commitment to collectivism where their evil is justified by their dedication to making the greatest number of people happy. For Paterno, what made people the most happy, a football win on a cool Saturday afternoon against a Big Ten rival or seeing one of their beloved icons going to jail for raping little boys. The answer is in his actions, and because he tried to make people happy, they loved him for it—even to the extent of being in denial that one of their personal heroes committed evil.

Evil is seldom ever as pronounced as the villains we see in our movies and read in our books. It would be nice if they wore scary masks and spoke with sinister tongues so we could know that they are evil people. Hannah Arndt believed that she would see in Eichmann a monster during his trial, but instead she saw another human being eerily similar to herself, which was a frightening prospect. It’s frightening because we all want to know we’d be able to identify evil if it confronts us, and when people we think are good turn out to do evil, vile things, it leaves an unsettling feeling that disrupts our happiness greatly.

The unlikely indicator of evil is not to look for it in menacing social features, but in the actions of the people being observed. The chances are very great that if a person tends to serve institutions before their own interests, they have a tendency toward evil. If a person rationalizes the sins of singular acts by placing focus on a collective whole, then evil is the motivator. Evil lives and breathes in collectivism. Jerry Sandusky had a charity not for the sake of helping young men, but as a way to bring young men to his pedophilic desires. And Joe Paterno knew about Sandusky’s exploits and chose the happiness of the greatest number instead of rights of individuals. That’s why Joe Paterno is just as evil as Adolph Eichmann, or Barack Obama—because all these evil people seek personal redemption through collective salvation—which is the pathway to hell, paved with good intentions.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Visit the New “Tail of the Dragon” Store: A new map of the epic car chase is coming soon

Ron Johnson at Tail of the Dragon.com is one of the best marketing people I know. For over a decade after he retired as a firefighter in Florida, he and his wife Nancy have taken an obscure road 1 hour from everywhere on the western frontier of the Great Smoky Mountains and breathed life into what is one of the most exciting places on earth. US 129 known to thousands as Tail of the Dragon is a wonderful road with a deep history all by itself. But it is quickly becoming the next best thing in the United States to the famous Route 66. Within a few years, it may surpass that iconic roadway as America’s top thoroughfare.

I recently brought Ron some galley copies of my new novel Tail of the Dragon which he was involved in from even before I had secured a publisher, to his new store located at the corner of US 129 and US 28. When I first wrote the story all that existed at that corner was the Deals Gap Motorcycle Resort which is now across the street where the Tree of Shame resides. Ron, the tireless visionary that he is, was well aware of the potential onslaught of interest that is coming his way in the wake of my novel’s release, and he is prepared.

For many years Ron and his wife have operated the Tail of the Dragon T-shirt shack from a property they rented where their store now resides. As I handed him a stack of books which was the first tangible result in over three years of our collaboration of a real product, we both had the sense that a new chapter had just began on that mythical stretch of road known throughout the world as Tail of the Dragon.

One of the reasons Ron and his wife are so successful is because they have created really cool T-shirt designs and they have for years been the primary suppliers of Dragon merchandise—everything from T-shirts to key chains. Ron and I discussed that if what happened to the actual bridges of Madison County in the wake of that successful book by Robert James Waller, happened to the Tail of the Dragon, he was going to be a very busy man, and he was ready for it. Before The Bridges of Madison County sold 10 million copies worldwide, nobody knew about the bridges that had been there for years in a small county in Iowa. But after that book, flocks of tourists migrated to the area to see and touch the images they read about in that fictional novel.

In preparation for the onslaught of tourism that is already prolific to the region, Ron has turned his T-shirt shack into a first-rate facility. Inside it is dedicated to everything you could possibly want in Tail of the Dragon merchandise, t-shirts, blankets, cup holders, movies, statues, books; just about anything you can think of. But Ron has gone several steps further than he needed to. Since Ron and Nancy have now purchased their formally rented lot, and now have a permanent structure, Ron has hired a metal worker to create multiple dragon themed sculptures shown all around his property, most notably the entrance to his new Dragon viewing platform that extends up the mountainside above his store. It was from up there that Ron told me of his plans to make maps and t-shirts featuring the massive car chase that takes place in my novel.

On this platform, spectators can rise up above the action and dine in style as they gaze down on cars ranging in price all the way up to two million dollars apiece, as a couple of Bugatti Veyron’s have been known to roam US 129 below. It’s not uncommon to see Ferrari’s, Lamborghinis, Porches, and virtually every exotic car known to mankind prowling one of the most intense roads in the world according to The Discovery Channel’s episodes of Hell Roads. Ron has made it so visitors to his store can look down on the action in the most unusual way possible.

Ron distinguished himself as a map maker and artist combining those two elements into wonderful t-shirts and maps giving names to all the important sights in the area. As he told me his intentions to map out the route taken in my action packed novel I thought it was a concept that was genius. From the very beginning my publisher and I worked hard to make it so people who enjoyed the novel, could follow the route which started literally on the Dragon right in front of Ron’s store. The car chase extends through the Dragon, through multiple roadblocks by the Tennessee Highway Patrol and dashes across the Foothills Parkway over to Townsend, Tennessee, then cutting across to Pigeon Forge where helicopters and massive roadblocks attempt to stop the nearly 200 MPH chase that storms through that popular resort town migrating into Sevierville causing millions of dollars in carnage. The chase finds its way out onto I-40 through several more roadblocks as the National Guard gets involved at the famous tunnels on the North Carolina border resulting in a giant rock slide which racks up millions of dollars more in damage. The chase then ends up in Ashville, North Carolina inside a shopping mall near the Biltmore Estate in what many who have already read the book are calling the most exciting action sequences ever written or seen in a movie. There are more roadblocks, before a death-defying run across the south side of the Smoky Mountains along US 19 at speeds exceeding 200 MPH ending at a gauntlet back in front of Ron’s store. As I stood on Ron’s new platform it was easy to see the action that happened in the book happening below me from my mind’s eye. That’s when I realized just how good Ron’s idea was in making a map of all those events as he did specific courses along The Dragon, The Cherohala Skyway, and the Moonshiner 28. I realized that in the book the car chase actually began all the way over on I-75 then to Tellico Plains, and across the entire Cherohala Skyway which is the only way drivers coming in from the west can get to The Dragon.

When I wrote the book, I wanted to encourage people to trace in real life the steps of Rick and Renee Stevens on their remarkable life changing journey which virtually takes in most of the major sites so beloved in the Smoky Mountain region. And for the first time since I went through the editorial steps of writing the book did I take the time to realize what a good job everyone who worked on the novel did in taking the potential reader on a journey through all those important landmarks in an action packed unfolding story. I should have known that Ron would have come up with the fantastic idea of creating a map of the entire chase zone.

After my wife and I parted Ron’s company for the day we went over to Gatlinburg to visit our favorite haunts in that mountain town we call our second home. During dinner, I kept thinking of Ron’s idea for a chase map and as I returned to the site that inspired me to write the novel to begin with on a trip to the Tail of the Dragon years ago, the Hollywood Star Cars Museum in downtown Gatlinburg. It was at this museum that I imagined the 700 HP veggie running, armored Firebird from my novel taking an honored place among the Batmobile and the General Lee motivating me to create a story that would help make that happen. Ron’s idea for a map had my mind on overdrive and virtually everywhere we went for the rest of the evening set my mind ablaze.

So according to Ron, a map of the chase zone in my Tail of the Dragon book is forthcoming, and until then, you can get your Tail of the Dragon merchandise at www.TAILOFTHEDRAGON.com from Ron’s new store and if you happen to be in the region, make sure to stop by for a visit. There are few places as unique, and the new viewing platform he has created is the kind of thing that could entertain for hours watching the action below. The sum of all this is to the benefit of many road worthy adventurers who have managed to shake off the shackles of confinement and chase after weekend fantasies by riding the Tail of the Dragon then enjoying the view from atop Ron’s platform as others down below try their hand at slaying one of the world’s last great challenges. It is the weekend warrior who gains the most from the creative impulses of people like Ron Johnson, and the gifts he brings to society through constant innovation.

For video on the Hell Roads episode as well as a Good Morning America segment on the Tail of the Dragon, CLICK HERE:

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This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Highway Robbery in Arlington Heights: Thank goodness for Brendan Keefe

Not all cops are bad.  But a fair percentage are, and for over 10 years in front of everyone’s eyes the small community of Arlington Heights, Ohio—the land between the north and southbound lanes of I-75 just south of the GE Evendale plant–have been handing out 20 times the number of traffic citations for a Ohio community and employees of the police and court system have been pocketing the money to take elaborate vacations and buy expensive cars.  In some cases the money went to buying girl friends large rings and other extravagances all on the backs of traffic citations.  Brendan Keefe of Channel 9 News did an I-Team investigation on this issue which can be seen at the video and link below.  The information I just stated are leaks of the kind of items that the money stolen from traffic citation money was spent on.  Some of that information will soon come out from a special audit conducted by David Yost which is now in the hands of Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters who will bring the case before a grand jury at the end of July.  Based on early indications a mother and her daughter who worked as the clerk of courts will be charged for the theft. 

http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/local_news/investigations/i-team-arlington-heights-knew-its-employees-were-pocketing-speeding-fines

It is because of a few courageous individuals that this case is even being talked about.  Most of the time, a crime of such open theft of public money is not as egregiously abused as it has been in this case in Arlington Heights. Every community has its share of bad apples and crooked cops.  But the important thing to understand is that society must always be on the lookout for these scoundrels and understand that they are a constant menace to society.  It is because of these “bad apples” that government can never be trusted completely to do anything, because there will always be a number of employees who work within any system who will lie, cheat, and steal to feather their own nests at the expense of others.

Because of the threat of such people, good people must always keep a watchful eye out for these scum bags so that they don’t abuse their power.  Often however, even the good are powerless to do anything about such crimes as is the case in Arlington Heights where the theft was participated in by many public employees, so there was no desire to stop the thieving behavior.   Way back in 2002 police Chief Mark Groteke began questioning where all the money being taken in from traffic citations was going—because it wasn’t making it to the Mayors Court bank account.  He attempted to blow the whistle in a letter to the mayor at the time, but there was no desire to investigate the crimes.  The obvious reason was because the traffic court in Arlington Heights was using fines collected from traffic citations as their personal ATM machines, and simply pocketed the money as supplemental income. 

The irony for me upon hearing this story is that the Arlington Heights case virtually mirrors the plotline of my newest book Tail of the Dragon which deals with this very issue of police abusing motorists in order to raise money for their personal interests.  In my story they pick on the wrong guy, and all hell breaks loose.  But in real life, it appears that the people who live in Arlington Heights were too afraid of the local police to call them out on the scam, because it seems the entire neighborhood knew about the situation and did nothing about it. 

Thousands upon thousands of motorists were pulled over by Arlington Heights police, showed up to pay their fines with cash, check or credit card.  Most people suspect that the citation scam on most any roadway in the nation is simply designed to generate revenue for the local courts, but the proof is often hard to validate because it is law enforcement that would have to carry out the investigation.  In Ohio a portion of all fines generated go to the state and according to records state auditors noticed that $40,654 was missing.  Based on the knowledge of the state share in the potential fines, this is how it was discovered that $262,000 was completely missing from the Arlington Heights Mayors Court accounting.

According to former police chief Groteke Arlington Heights officers would take the deposits collected from the mayor’s court to the bank.  Most of the time the money was in the form of checks and money orders, but sometimes it was in cash.  He discovered when he would issue arrest warrants for suspects he had on record who had not paid their fines, that when arrested, they would declare that they were innocent and had paid their tickets in cash.  That’s when he realized that the cash had been stolen by public employees with access to the funds from the mayor’s court. 

The situation in Arlington Heights is one of the most grotesque in the entire nation.  The abuse is obvious, and everyone has known about it.  It’s a story breaking now because Brendan Keefe went to the trouble to do a very good investigation.  But even in this very obvious situation, public employees from the mayor all the way down to traffic cop covered it up for over a decade.  In most small towns, and big cities, crimes every bit as audacious as what has been happening in Arlington Heights are going on right now, and the crimes happened because there is nowhere to turn, no law to trust—as cops are for most people the highest authority they deal with.  So when a cop pulls over a driver for a traffic violation under the guise of safety, the driver has no choice but to pay the money if they are told.  If the driver refuses they will be forced to pay the money one way or the other because the legal system will turn its might against them until they get their money from the driver. 

The Arlington Heights situation is proof that traffic court is not about safety, and it is not about law enforcement.  Traffic court is about generating revenue for the court system, the attorneys, the insurance companies and the politicians who write the laws that are meant to be enforced.  The law enforcement officers can then pull over anyone they wish since no one person can possibly know if they are in violation of a law or not, so virtually all people everywhere are potential targets of this massive extortion scheme.  In Arlington Heights the law enforcement officers took the whole process one step too far too many times for too many years.  They actually took money out of the bank deposits so that the parasites upstream didn’t get their take of the loot.  It appears that when police officers needed more money for a new car, or a vacation, they simply pulled over more people so they could collect fines on the record or off the record in the form of pay-offs. 

The worst aspect of this story is that the evidence of power abuse is obvious, yet it is these very same people who would go door to door under issues of martial law and are supposed to be trusted with our lives and property who have committed these acts.  It is obvious that law enforcement cannot be trusted with such responsibility and should never be given authority under any circumstance.  This is what the NDAA Act does which President Obama signed into law on New Year’s Eve this past year, he gave law enforcement complete authority over every American life upon his command—and it is these types of people who will abuse such a power without fear.  In this case the primary thieves appear to be a mother—daughter team employed as clerks in the court.  But the police officers are the ones who did the pulling over, and the courts processed the citations even when alarms were being raised by the police chief. 

In the end it isn’t just a mother and daughter clerk of courts who robbed thousands of dollars from the citizens in and around Arlington Heights.  This case is about the crimes that come wherever the money tree of taxes grow.  Everyone wants to shake that tree of everything it has and they expect new fruit to always appear no matter how hard they shake it.  Without question this story goes well beyond the clerk of courts employees who will be charged.  They are simply the parts of the story that can be proven in the paper trail.  No prosecutor in their right mind would dig too deeply, since similar scandals are most likely happening right in their very offices right now.  So in this Arlington Heights case it will be the employees in the clerk of courts office who pay most dearly, perhaps even the mayor.  Everyone else will cover their ass and lay low for a while before attempting to take to the streets yet again to churn up the money machine that is the traffic writing citation industry. 

This story would have went nowhere if not for Brendan Keefe at Channel 9 news and the very good I-Team reporting that they do there.  It would be wonderful if every reporter was like Brendan.  (SEE HIS GREAT STORY ON SUPERINTENDENTS HERE) If there were more reporters doing the kind of investigative reporting shown in that I-Team report, corruption in government would be a rarity, rather than a common activity.  Instead, corruption is rampant as a majority of society—reporters included—hide in the shadows and allow sinister behavior to perpetuate unchecked.  That is how Arlington Heights has managed to use traffic citations for over a decade as their personal ATM machines using unjust taxation to supplement their very lucrative public employee incomes.

http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/local_news/investigations/arlington-heights-suspends-radar-operations-after-9-news-investigation

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Hidden Meaning behind a Government Employee: Making Parents Proud

You know that there is a serious problem when you sit down with people to speak, and they proclaim their child is doing “big” things with their life–they are going to become a “teacher.” These people speak with glee that their child is following their “calling.” Other conversations about such a “calling” come from those who decide to become police officers. And of course firefighters are another, where the idea of “sacrifice” to society is held in extremely high esteem. I have heard for the last time that a person is “good with kids,” or has a “love for humanity,” and that is why they should become a teacher or other public employee, without explaining the nature of the hypocrisy.

There is nothing wrong with those jobs, other than the fact that they are “government jobs.” I would have no problem with teachers, police or firefighters if they were private employees. But they are government employees, and that means there is no competition in those fields which is why I have a big problem with all those positions.

The teacher in a government school is generally a spokesman for liberalism. Politicians in their vast ignorance promote education as though education had value just in the occupational title. The quality of education is what our current society lacks. Government teachers tend to lean toward liberalism, since it is that progressive oriented philosophy that secures their livelihoods. But politicians from all sides of the political spectrum give a free pass to the general title of education yielding to the tendency of socialism being taught without thought to the future impact of those devastating curriculums.

The undertone of these conversations with public employees and their children is that by giving a sacrifice of themselves toward a great cause of social significance, that they should be compensated extremely well. The parents of these future public workers speak with pride about these occupations for their children because they view those jobs as lottery tickets for success. The parents know that their children will be taken care of by mother government once they’ve left the biological mother so it eases their minds and they actively promote them.

But this is not the role of government. Government is not an employer. It has no business being in the employment business, because the only revenue they have to offer is the money they’ve taken in the form of taxes. Yet the government hires many employees, and they typically vote for politicians that will promise to give them more money. It’s a corrupt collusion that is devoid of competition which makes the efforts of the public employee economically unsound.

Public school allows middle-class families to believe they have more money than they really do. It allows them to buy a larger house since they do not have to spend the money on private education. Public education offers “free” education provided by the collective society, and is actually built upon theft. Because of the government monopoly of the education system they can drive up the cost of the product infinitely while at the same time creating guaranteed voters for their future proposals. The parents who move to a school district know they couldn’t otherwise afford to live in their homes without the school offering free education, so the government school commits two evils, one it artificially props up the real estate markets of those districts, and two it creates government employee positions giving statisticians false numbers of labor productivity.

The real jobs are in the private sector where the risk is great, and the rewards are greater. If teachers taught in private schools that competed with other schools, and teachers showed they had great ability it would mean something. But without competition the teaching profession is just incestuous praise—as real quality does not come into play. In public education quality is not measured, it’s just a token utterance among the educrats. It’s like a parent thinking that their child is the greatest child in the world and the child believing it without competing with other kids in the neighborhood to verify the fact. In the teaching profession of government schools the compliments among each other are all inbred. This has given outside tax payers the illusion that the teaching profession is great because all the employees within the system are patting themselves on the back and the news media covers that back patting as fact.

Cops and firefighters are in the same boat. They are “created” jobs and are incestuous in their nature. They create all the statistics that they use to demonstrate their social usefulness. They have complete control of how much money they make because they have a monopoly and how their skills are marketed to the public. What all government employees have in common is none of them have to deal with competition. Cops and firefighters will say they are worth infinite amounts of money because they make society “safe.” The question is never asked how that safety is obtained. How many emergencies do firefighters typically go on in a week, and how much does each occurrence cost the tax payer? How many times a year is a cop shot at? What is the risk assessment? These questions are never asked, and values are never given. These cops will of course say that I don’t know what it’s like to be shot at, or to go up to a door where people want to kill you on the other side, and I will say, yes I do. I have done repo work which is more dangerous than cop work because I wasn’t allowed to carry a gun. So they could shoot at me, but I wasn’t allowed to shoot back. And to be honest, I would do that work again just for the fun of it—to put the situation in perspective. To me money has nothing to do with the job. You either like it or you don’t.

Imagine a world where all we had was McDonalds. Forget that there was a Burger King, a Wendy’s, or a Taco Bell. McDonalds currently offers drinks for $1 dollar no matter what size you buy. In fact, much of the McDonalds menu is driven by a desire to offer more food cheaper than their competition. McDonalds if they had a monopoly–meaning there was not a Burger King, Wendy’s or Taco Bell, would have no reason to drive down the cost of their food. The cost of their food would always increase, because without competition, they could create the demand and the supply for their product just as government employees do now.

Because there is a Burger King and a Wendy’s, McDonalds is always pushing themselves to become faster, and cheaper while still presenting the product that the public expects. This is what’s missing from all government jobs, and the reason that parents view a government job as a lottery ticket to success. Because once a government job is created it generally does not go away. It is because of this principle that police are retiring as millionaires, and teachers spend their summers in socialist countries running from bulls like the superintendent of Mason schools is doing on her vacation which was promoted by the Cincinnati Enquirer. You can see the future levy advertisement article that Michael Clark wrote on behalf of the Mason School System here:

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120707/NEWS01/307070033/Mason-superintendent-runs-bulls

By the way, in Mason, Ohio city council decided to put a new tax on the ballot for the upcoming fall elections to pay for fire services. Within a year residents of Mason will also be asked to pass another school levy, which is the prelude to the Enquirer article. These stories are simply public relations and the large papers are in bed with the public employees the way an adulteress is with a lover. They don’t have a marriage where they share household responsibilities, but when they need something from one another, they show up in each others beds. Here is the article on the proposed tax hike in Mason to pay for the fire department—which is another bottomless pit of finance requirements driven higher due to lack of competitive rivals.

http://masonbuzz.com/2012/07/09/city-council-to-vote-on-tax-increase-today/

When a parent proudly proclaims their child is going to be a teacher, a firefighter, or a cop, they say it with pride and relief hidden behind the mask of public sacrifice. The parent is proud because their child will become part of the safe arms of mother government, and will be cared for their entire lives, which is the dream of most parents—to know that their children are “safe.” And in the scheme of things, there is not a safer or better compensated job than those of the public employee, because they are paid by looted tax money driven by phantom statistics and dangers. Most of the time the firefighters between emergencies are playing Xbox in the firehouse for entire work shifts on end, cops are sitting on the side of the road pretending to clock speeders but are actually browsing the internet on their personal phones and looking for women to pull over so they can flirt with them behind their wives backs, and teachers are planning their global vacations in their three months off after they’ve worked a grueling—thankless work day of 7.5 hours. It is for those reasons that the parent of the public employee proudly tells others that their child is going to be a teacher, a fire fighter, or a cop—because all parents want their children to have better lives than they had, and there is no better life than that of the public employee. The public employee is cared for by mother government and does not have to worry about the same kinds of things that the private employee does. But the public employee is artificially safe, with the security coming at the expense of the rest of society. The public employee is simply socialist manifestations of a society marching toward communism. Nobody wants to call it that, because they want to believe that the situation is truly too good to be true—because it is. The cost is a gradual erosion of freedoms for all in a social contradiction that spits in the face of everything it means to be an American. For that reason the public employee is a disgrace to everything that has value in The United States and are the jobs for looters and thieves to legally confiscate from the hard-working private sector the fruits of their labor behind the tyranny of safety. This is why the parental advocate who proudly professes the success of their children entering a public profession are advocating an evil without knowing it. What they are announcing to the world is that they raised a child who decided to be a parasite on society, which should bring disgrace. But in the case of the parasitic public employee, it instead brings praise from the adulteress newspapers, and praise from those who proudly wear the American flag on their arms believing they are American patriots when in fact they support through their actions the hammer and sickle.

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Drumbeat of an Addict: Running with the bulls in Spain.

The picture shown here is from a Lakota school levy attempt 8 years ago and was taken in Keener Park during a pumpkin festival. Back then, when there was no organized tax increase opposition, the pro levy advocates roamed the neighborhoods of West Chester and Liberty Twp., with immunity. In this case Joan Powell, and Jamie Green were in the back of the van and poured out upon arrival to the park. Ushering in these school board members seeking election was a small army of pro levy advocates who immediately set up a make-shift booth to pass out pro-levy material for the school. These volunteers worked directly with these pro levy school board members and are evidence from the past of how school board members of today are stacked by pro tax factions to always seek tax increases instead of proper management of financial resources.

This is an important distinction because Joan Powell until Christmas of 2011 was the school board president who helped usher in the 5th levy attempt during her tenure with the Lakota school system within a decade. And Jamie Green had run again to be on the Lakota School Board during the November 2011 elections, but luckily did not get voted in since she was and still is a pro tax increase advocate. For many who have lived in the Lakota district for a long time, like myself, I remember vividly the tricks of the past, and have watched how these people have attempted to use time and distance to suppress their true intentions, which is to serve the local teacher union interest with blind obedience. In Joan’s case, who works as a real estate agent, passing school levies mean easy home sales since most agents use “good schools” and “levy passage” as selling points to new home buyers with young children moving into a district. But the real villains in these cases are not the school board members looking for an edge to their livelihoods, it’s the well-intentioned pro levy advocate who believes with every cell in their bodies that they are truly doing what is right for the children of their community—which is to throw money at public education without end to fill the voids they lack as parents.

I have watched these people behave for a long time, and it is time to properly identify the type of pro levy supporter that these radical tax increase advocates are so we can guard against them. In Lakota we do not have to worry about a levy for a while, but other districts around Ohio will, and they need to know what they are dealing with so they can combat the efforts of the pro levy advocate.

Typically, the parents who volunteer with such extreme vigor as those who pass out pro levy literature are selfish individuals lacking self-esteem. They seek redemption for their ineffective lives by extracting from the collective their resources so the levy advocate can then pass those resources on to education professionals. The levy advocate believes inaccurately that they are helping children with these actions, so they pursue the action with vigor. But their effort is the same as those who claim to be on a diet yet order high calorie meals rationalized with a diet soda. They are lying to themselves.

As I say this the new Superintendent at Mason Schools Kist-Kline, wife of the recently departed Principal of Lakota East Keith Kline, was running with the bulls in Spain recently. Life is tough for professional educators who have all summer off, and have the six figure salaries to participate in such activities while only working 9 months out of the year. Also, Monroe Schools Superintendent Elizabeth Lolli has warned that if their levy fails in August the district will sink down a black hole to oblivion. Of course the August levy attempt is an old trick that hopes only the radical levy volunteers through their door to door antics can get out more voters than those who oppose the higher taxes, because they are too busy with their lives to even know there’s an August election. The levy addicts hope that there is a low voter turnout in August while the public employees and their minions of fearful propaganda get out the vote from their side.

The pro levy addict ignores the fact that these schools have dug themselves into a financial hole with outrageous salary demands, and benefit packages. The reality of these public employees is grossly distorted. The levy addict does not question why Kist-Kline is vacationing in Spain with her six figure salary while her husband now in West-Clermont is also making a six figure salary as an assistant superintend, so as a family they are raking in the tax payer dollars for positions that are next to useless. But this is the education culture we are talking about, where the employees through their labor unions have given themselves raises by propping up school board members who eat out of their hand like what has happened at Lakota with Joan Powell and Jamie Green for most of the last decade. Those school board members worked with the levy addicts to push for tax increases, and they caused the financial problems they currently are experiencing by not managing their finances along the way. Monroe is pretending to be concerned about their finances by suing their previous treasurer for leaving the district in terrible debt, but the reality is Monroe allowed the situation to get out of control by not managing their labor salaries along the way.

The education employees gleefully position themselves behind the neurotic levy advocate who believes they are saving the world by advocating blind financial contributions to children. The levy addict is most often a failed person in their own regard and seeks redemption through their children, which the child of course resents. The arrogance of the levy advocate is seen by all yet they take the message of “voting for tax increases for the children” to the ballot box because it is the levy addict whose message is heard loudest and most often even if inside the person behind the message is a laughing-stock measured by credibility.

Often from these levy advocates the mantra is “save the children” but what they really men is “save me.” They are in need of saving because of their worthless existences, and like the politician they seek immortality and life meaning by seeing their name on some worthless legislation to prove that they once roamed the planet and fought on behalf of children. But the levee addict knows nothing of children other than how to pour orange juice or provide basic commands. The children of these addicts laugh inwardly at the behavior and will grow up to resent their personal embarrassments known as parents. The kids know what the parents do not—and that is a scholarship to play sports in college is simply another entertainer in the gladiator pit of American sports. The mob will watch the games with mild amusement while they eat nachos and drink soda. The meaning of the work is worthless, yet the levee addict holds these options in the highest esteem because their own lives are so void of meaning that they require public acceptance in the form of institutional merit to measure their soiled lives since inner guidance has left their minds for as long as they can remember.

If the path to hell was paved with good intentions, it is the levee addict who drives the steam roller. All other parties get behind the steam roller and follow on their way to those fiery lands of Satan’s folly, all the while singing church songs such as “Onward Christian Soldiers.” It starts by passing out the levy support buttons. Then it continues with pamphlets, flyers, and bumper stickers. “Save the children, vote for your local school levee.” Behind that message of panic driven mucus the looters of government rely, and plan their vacations to socialist countries like Spain, and France, just like the out-of-touch actor who has the disposable income to travel the world, then brings back to America envious questions as to why our nation cannot be as “enlightened” as their vacation destinations. They don’t see the underside of those socialist countries because they have not been forced to see it, since they have built their wealthy lives on the backs of the levee addicts need for a “social high,” for another “hit” of public acceptance, for the false belief that one more hour of public school, or one more elective can save their children from a life of doom that they are already sentenced to just from being born of the levy addicts body. The poor children are condemned for all time to mimic their parents and will surely become addicts themselves when they grow up and put the rebellions of youth behind them.

Many drunken orgies and the honor of many young women were taken or given away by the desire for children to distance themselves from their levy addict parents—in a hope that they will live their own lives their way. What the children discover too late is that little piece of their soul they give up in those epic failures of social embarrassment so cheerfully surrendered with a desire for public acceptance that was the gateway drug and took them on a similar path as their levy addict parents. They too will become levy addicts when they have children of their own, and thousands of social parasites will move in behind their efforts to collect the gold that falls from their overflowing pockets.

It’s not wrong to visit Spain, or France or any other country and participate in some dangerous activity there in hopes the Enquirer reporter will improve the public image of a particular school with a good story because its superintendent ran with the bulls—so to erase from the public’s mind the scandal the previous superintendent hid from the public. The thing such readers should decipher from the publicity stunt of “running with the bulls” in Spain is the extent that the looting public employees will go to hide their crimes. And one of those shields from reality is the levy addict, the tax junkie who is just as corrosive to positive development as a drug dealer because the motivations behind the tax addict helps create the demand for actual drug use.

So beware of those smiling, levy addicts who have crammed their bodies into those pants that are two sizes too small, and hand out buttons, bumper stickers, and flyers promoting tax increases. It’s not the children they are trying to save, it’s themselves. The levy addict’s lives are so blank and meaningless they need a social act of fulfillment to redeem all the miserable failures they have committed in their pre-child bearing lives. The newspapers barely hanging on financially will write emotional stories as the propaganda arm of these levy addicts hoping to sell newspapers to other levy addicts in other districts since the newspaper reporters have made the failure of writing leftist articles for a society that is generally conservative in their beliefs. This is why newspapers have lost their credibility and their revenue, because society has found other sources beyond the liberal advancement of the levy addicts and sports scores. The levy addict and all the parasites who feed from their antics are one of the highest forms of modern evil but they can be stopped. They can be put in their place once and for all.

By taking away the money they seek, it forces the levy addict to look at reality. The way to beat the levy addict and actually save your community and the children who attend those schools is to take the drug away from the addicts, so the truth of their behavior can be seen by all. It is in that act of denial that the most is given to children, who desperately need to hear the word, “NO.” By throwing money at the levy addict, you only give them a “high” for a year or two, and they will be back looking for another “hit.” I have watched this process in my home district for many years now, and all it achieves are easy real estate sales for real estate agents. The neurotic levy addict seeks out clients who are also levy addicts and they sell their properties the easy way, by pretending there is wide community support for “free school” for the home buyer’s children. The message to the home buyer is they need not save their money for private education, they can purchase at age 28 a home that is a quarter to a half million dollars—because the “community” will pick up the tab for the education bill. And beating the drum at the front of the front of the movement is the levy addict and their sinister aims of personal meaning at the expense of the collective whole, while actually riding the backs of children to their own personal redemptions.

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Mankind: Live Snakes at COMIC CON!

It was reported to me that the Indiana Jones booth at COMIC CON in San Diago July 11th through July 15th will have a recreation of the famous Well of Souls scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark complete with live snakes to celebrate the release of all four Indiana Jones films to Blu-Ray. For those who need a map and want to know where to go, the Indiana Jones booth is 2913 at the Lucasfilm pavilion on the show floor. In the spirit of this exciting push to keep the name of Indiana Jones alive I am going to spend a moment to defend the last film, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from the scrutiny it has received, which I have been thinking about for 4 years now.

To me all the Indiana Jones films are innovative fun escapades into the deepest questions of our times. Few people know it but George Lucas originally wanted to be an anthropologist but since he settled into a job as a “filmmaker,” the character of Indiana Jones allowed him to explore aspects of archeology that he could have only dreamed of as a field scientist. However, I will say this; George Lucas should go down in history as one of the greatest archeologists who ever have lived for the simple fact that many of today’s current world explorers, scientists, physics geeks, treasure hunters, mercenaries, and authors have been profoundly inspired by George Lucas’ creation of the character Indiana Jones. Because of Indiana Jones hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars have been invested in archeological research that would have never happened in the field of that scientific endeavor if not for the first Indiana Jones movie, the greatest movie in the history of the world in my opinion, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I would have come to use a bullwhip anyway, since my grandfather passed on to me the love of it which predated Raiders. He and his father were deeply inspired by old Zorro films like Don Q Son of Zorro from the silent era, so he was going to teach me whether I liked it or not. But when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, which was a tribute to those old Saturday Matinees it allowed my generation to understand what my grandfather’s generation had loved so much. From the early film era of the 1940’s it was Zorro’s Fighting Legion that I love the most, and Indiana Jones was the modern mythic tale of those old adventures. So I took to the study of the bullwhip which has personally led me on many unique adventures and has given me a view of the world few get to see through that martial art weapon.

Some die hard film critics will say that Temple of Doom was the worst Indiana Jones film. Even Steven Spielberg has said he isn’t proud of that movie. Yet, the film is one of the most beloved movies in the history of film. It invented the PG13 rating because the film was too violent to be simply rated PG and was too family oriented to be rated R. Temple of Doom is the ultimate adventure film and studios have been trying unsuccessfully to tap into the magic of that particular movie for many, many years. I’ve seen it at the movie theater over 15 times that I can remember, the most exciting time was when I was on a high adventure camp excursion deep in the hills of Kentucky within one week of Temple of Doom’s release. I was only 15 at the time so I was under the care of adult supervisors. After a day of intense backwoods hiking and spelunking the members of our camp went to bed around 9 PM. Two of my friends in the same tent waited patiently with me for everyone to go to sleep since everyone was exhausted and covered in dirt and sweat. When we no longer heard voices speaking from the many tents, we quietly escaped and ran 5 miles into a nearby college town to catch the last showing of Temple of Doom for the day at 11:15 PM. With sweat pouring down our faces and backs we bought our tickets and sat down in the wonderfully air-conditioned theater just as Indiana Jones came into the Club Obi Wan with his white tuxedo. I have raised my children to the movie Temple of Doom. It played on our television every day for about 8 years. I raised my niece and nephews on the movie since my wife and I helped raise them as children. To this day, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom brings them found memories that they cherish from their childhoods. It is the story of good and evil and even though Indiana Jones gets stabbed, burnt, tortured, poisoned, possessed, and beat up in countless ways he somehow comes out heroically in the end facing all the dangers by stating, “It’s a long way to Deli,” meaning anything can happen, and we’ll deal with it as it comes. To this day my wife and I say that to each other whenever a series of bad things happen, and it brings comic relief.

(This is a personal friend of mine, Gery Deer in Jamestown, Ohio performing at the Murphey Theater in Wilmington.)

When Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came out, I took my oldest nephew who was 5 at the time out of school to the premier. We saw the movie on opening day for the very first screening. I figured he would learn a lot more at that movie than he would in school, which I was of course right. In Last Crusade the archeology follows along the lines of the typically Christian pursuit of archeological relics. Made just 8 years after the first film in Raiders, Last Crusade had not yet experienced the changes in archeology that would come as a result of the massive amount of money that was flowing into the science because of Indiana Jones. Last Crusade was about the legend of the Holy Grail which is an item that runs deep into Christian religions. This film took Indiana Jones back to his childhood so audiences could see what kind of events helped shape the kind of person that Indiana Jones would become as a man. The concept was so successful that George Lucas started a television show called The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles that would be geared to teaching people about the events of world history taking place from 1900 to around 1919. (Yes, I have every one of them on DVD and my kids have watched them all with me many, many, many times.)

For many fans, The Last Crusade would be their last impression of Indiana Jones. Archeology to them would be biblical in scope, and the adventures of Indiana Jones would end. Life would move on. To the rest of society, people get old, and they put away the items of childhood, which Indiana Jones was. The television show was enjoyed by people like me who naturally loved history, but was not geared to the swashbuckling action of the movies. Instead it centered on the character development of Indiana Jones as a young man.

Over the years many things happened in popular culture. Thousands of archeologists who went to college and pursued their dream of working in that business because of Indiana Jones were doing investigations of their own. Private investors who loved the Indiana Jones movies poured millions of dollars into college research projects giving archeology a lot of money that it didn’t have prior to 1981 when Raiders of the Lost Ark hit theaters. In the 1990’s archeology were doing some big things—but the revelations being discovered with all this new money was not more of the Christian based study that many would have thought it to be. The evidence being discovered was that human existence on planet earth was much more complex than we previously thought and it appears that mankind had help getting started. So when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out, audiences who did not know of these developments were a bit mystified to see what had happened.

My oldest daughter asked me how I managed years ahead of the film’s release to make many of the statements about human society that Crystal Skull was making. I explained to her that George Lucas was following the Robert Pirsig “quality rule” as he was in front of the train yet again while the rest of society was well in the back. Crystal Skull offered an explanation to the advanced societies all over the planet that were obviously connected in some way. This science was revealed in part by Indiana Jones films, so it was up to Indiana Jones to offer the difficult reality that other beings played a part in human evolution, and not just beings from outer space, but “interdimensional” creatures. I had come to this same conclusion years ago after my own studies, which is why my daughter was amazed that Crystal Skull was right on target with what I had been saying for nearly 10 years, that earth was seeded from another civilization that did not originate on earth and that the idea of God had suddenly become much larger.

After 20 years of not seeing Indiana Jones on the big screen audiences were suddenly confronted with an Indiana Jones who was 70 years old who was still in fist fights, romancing women, and performing unbelievable stunts. This is a difficult reality to a society of people who cast senior citizens into disregard past age 65. Seeing a film icon like Harrison Ford looking quite good as a 70 year old man shattered perceptions of what the elderly could do, and opened up the possibility that aging didn’t have to be a degrading process. The second thing that audiences had trouble with was that Indiana Jones survived a nuclear explosion by climbing into a lead lined refrigerator. Many fans did not know that the only objects to survive nuclear explosions in the many tests done were lead lined refrigerators, so Indiana Jones true to his past exploits of always finding a way to survive climbed into the only thing that would have saved him from a nuclear blast, a lead lined refrigerator.

Fans were mixed on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It wasn’t what they thought it should have been. Indiana Jones as a character had evolved over the years through the television show, which was incorporated into the new film and it served as a kind of bridge to merge the films and the television show together. The abandonment of typically Christian relics also caused some anxiety as the plot of Crystal Skull centered on the ancient alien oriented plot complete with flying saucers and little green men. And of course people had a hard time accepting Indiana Jones as an older person with a society that thinks age 30 is the end of life as they know it. But, society will catch up to the vision of George Lucas. They are doing it already. The current show on the History Channel Ancient Aliens would have never become possible if not for the mass audience exposure to the kind of information that has been coming in from archeological research. The mainstream audience was confronting for the first time in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull the possibility that mankind’s Gods were in fact beings from another world, and possibility from another dimensional reality which really messed with the stereotypes many had formed over the years through their religious studies.

Before seeing Crystal Skull I had already read several books by Zecharia Sitchin and of course the great Forbidden Archeology by Cremo and Thompson so I could almost see George Lucas smiling from behind the movie screen as I watched the events of the latest Indiana Jones movie play out. I knew exactly what he was doing, and slowly, four years after the release of that very innovative movie, people are beginning to catch up to Lucas’ vision. In the years to come, it will be Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that will be known for changing the way human beings see themselves as science is only now starting to admit that the discoveries of Indiana Jones in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull film are turning out to be more of a reality than they ever dared to admit.

I personally loved Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and I place it somewhere in quality to being between Last Crusade and Temple of Doom. To this very day it is Raiders of the Lost Ark that is my favorite movie of all time. So much so that the CD soundtrack has been played in my home and to my family well over a thousand times—my oldest daughter actually used to sleep to it. When she was married, it took her about 6 months to finally learn to sleep without listening to the Raiders of the Lost Ark soundtrack. My favorite song on that soundtrack is called “Desert Chase” which I listen to almost every day at least once. In fact yesterday as I cleaned my motorcycle, I listened to that part of the soundtrack on my iPOD.

For my birthday several years back, my family bought me a leather flight jacket from U.S.Wings that was made from the same roll of leather that created the leather jacket for Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I have put that jacket through absolute hell. It’s been drug in the dirt, pelted with rain, snow, ice, and had just about every kind of living creature crawling on it. It has been to the top of mountains and touched the breath of foreign countries. It has seen 30,000 miles of torture from a motorcycle. I said to my family just the other day that the jacket was just now starting to get the look of “character” that I like. In another 15 years, it should look just about right. Indiana Jones is known for his period style hat, his beat up leather jacket and his whip. Many of those things are part of my personal attire as they are of many science lovers coming out of the 1980’s who found magic and hope in Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones for millions has set the bar high for not only what we expect in our movies, but also in what we expect out of ourselves.

People often wonder how I have done and survived many of the things I have, and why I am not content to just drift off into the sunset on a sail boat. Well, I spent a lot of time watching Indiana Jones and raising my family on those films, and it just wouldn’t be right if I didn’t give them the closest thing in reality to that dynamic character. The magic of Indiana Jones is in saying “yes” to life, to not allowing convention to rule the day. If Indiana Jones is anything, he is probably the most tenacious character ever to appear in film, and he is a survivor to such an extent that not even a nuclear blast can stop him. He’s not a superhero from some other planet, or a multi millionaire who can afford to build the machines of his dreams to combat crime. Indiana Jones is just an ordinary man with an extraordinary sense of wonder and hope, which has never learned the word can’t, and that is why fans will flock to the Indiana Jones booth at COMIC CON and take pictures of themselves next to the live snake exhibit. They’ll do it because there’s a little bit of Indiana Jones in each of them, thanks to George Lucas who decided to make his kind of movie from the front of the social train while the rest of society watched from the back.

Yes, I will buy the new Blu-Ray set of the Indiana Jones films. I have a grandchild coming and I can promise that his first images, his first sounds, his very first impressions will be of Indiana Jones punching a bunch of maniacal Thuggee in the face from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. My grandchild has a lot to learn from me, and to prepare his mind for what his life will be like, he had better start thinking the way Indiana Jones does—that nothing is impossible, that life is a never-ending adventure, and even when the worst that can possibly happen happens—there is always a way out so long as your mind can dream and adapt.

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This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Called to Greatness: The wonderful work of Josh Charles–Project Freedom Phoenix–coming soon

Continue reading “Called to Greatness: The wonderful work of Josh Charles–Project Freedom Phoenix–coming soon” →

Why the Novel “Tail of the Dragon” takes place on The Fourth of July: Fighting for our freedoms

I purposely set the big car chase in my new novel Tail of the Dragon on the Fourth of July for a very specific reason. As millions of Americans flock to their nearest firework displays whether it is from their back yard, or at one of the massive public displays, it has become apparent that they have lost the meaning of what the fireworks represent. So in my new novel, I wanted to take the reader on a journey to explore that meaning not only as a work of intense action with a political thriller, but as a work of philosophy.

My publisher at American Book Publishing wanted me to shorten my very large manuscript to fit their Bedside Books imprint once it was realized what I was up to. So we shortened the book considerably to fit a particular market located in the philosophy section of book stores. We did this without sacrificing the integrity of the book as a work of literature but as my editor stated, it is the car chase that everyone reading the book will want to get to, and that is where the philosophy of freedom is explored most effectively, so we wanted to get there quickly without delay, which happens to take place on the Fourth of July as the main character is declaring his independence in many ways from a world gone mad. Below is text to the words I spoke in the video above so to explain in more detail the who, what, why, when and where of how Tail of the Dragon came about and why it will appear on the book shelves next to Karl Marx as opposed to Stephen King.

I’m Rich Hoffman, an American writer who is very concerned about the future of our country and I’m speaking from the Great Smoky Mountains. Europe has just made a commitment to socialism in spite of their terrible financial situation. Here in the United States labor unions are attempting to maintain their stranglehold on American business and government employment. Governments everywhere are operating at tremendous deficits. And the American youth seem apathetic turning to mind numbing devices to soften the impact of their dismal futures. I realized that what all these problems had in common was an admiration for one very small book typically sold in the philosophy section of many book stores, Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

Many of the problems we see around us today are simply the direct result of a commitment to failed philosophy. So the best way to correct the situation is with competing ideas. This is why I wrote the new thriller Tail of the Dragon, which goes beyond the usual format of a fictional novel, but is rather a work of philosophy which intentionally explores the idea of freedom and what it means to individuals and societies.

To achieve this I drew from extensive personal research into a mythical place called Tail of the Dragon located on the western frontier of the Great Smoky Mountains and decided to explore the concept of freedom by breaking every law society has created so that the characters and therefore the reader can take a journey beyond the restrictions that are holding American society, and the nations of the world into a conformity that is ultimately destructive to individual lives.

In America it is claimed to be the land of the free, and home of the brave. But these tendencies seem to be disappearing at an alarming rate, so I find it important to identify what the traits are that make up an individual who embodies these traditional American values. I wanted to ask the question what does it mean to be fearless–what does it mean to be a patriot—what does it mean to be a good spouse—a good parent—a great American. In Tail of the Dragon under the most adverse conditions, these questions are explored along with much, much more.

For as long as most of us have lived we have heard that if you fight city hall, you will always lose. We have heard that you cannot fight the law, because the law will always win. But what if those who make the laws are bad, or functioning from a false philosophy, are we not supposed to challenge those bad laws? In Tail of the Dragon the main character of Rick Stevens challenges the law and decides that he would rather die than live under unjust law, and this leads to the greatest car chase in the history of the world and massive amounts of destruction. But the premise is a serious one, what should an individual be willing to do to keep and maintain their freedoms? What are the invisible lines that dictate when action against the law becomes necessary? And what is the difference between an outlaw and a freedom fighter?

These are the questions of our day. These are the concerns of the Occupy Movement–these are the concerns of the Tea Party—these are the concerns of civil rights activists—these are the concerns of every tax payer in the entire world and they are explored in the new novel Tail of the Dragon.

It is for these reasons that you will find the book under the philosophy section of a book store as opposed to general fiction because it is not intended to only entertain, but to bring about thought and to directly compete with Karl Marx and Sir Thomas More who have contributed much to modern philosophy which is at the root of so many modern problems globally. America has a unique philosophy that developed as a result of its independent nature and it deserves more spokesmen for liberty than it currently has. Tail of the Dragon is dedicated to this objective. So I invite you to take the journey down the Tail of the Dragon for yourself and discover a world you didn’t know was possible, and restricted yourself from even thinking about, because when you come to the end of this book, you will see the world in a new way—a way that should make your life and those around you a better one. Sometimes the right thing to do is to break all the rules, and in this book, you will get the chance, because the answers to life are not in the legislative halls of our governments, but in our own hearts and minds—and to listen to those voices we must break free.

Tail of the Dragon ends with the President of the United States trying to piece together an America embroiled in civil war, a war between individuality and the theories of collectivism. It is in the Oval Office that Tail of the Dragon comes to grips with the definitions of American spirit and the rights of individuality in a never-ending quest for freedom that extends beyond the borders of The United States to societies the world over.

For more information on the book begin your journey at Tail of the Dragon Book.com. The book is ultimately dedicated to every person who has received a speeding ticket or fears getting a traffic citation and suspects that the fines are just another form of unjust taxation. This book is a chance to strike back at a justice system that is taking our nation in the wrong direction with a political philosophy that erodes human freedom.

Help start the fires of the next revolution by fanning the flames with this new and unusual book.  Become a fan of  Tail of the Dragon on Facebook below, and send this to a friend to help those flames spread, and take back what has been lost through many years of neglect, personal apathy, and open manipulation. 

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!  And be sure to watch one of my first radio interviews about the book below. 

For speaking and media requests email: bookpr@american-book.com  To contact me directly feel free to use: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rich-hoffman/30/92b/832

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com