Philanthropy in Public Schools: More Tax Money Needed to save the WORLD!

 

These days as our kids run about for decades as lost souls trying to achieve escape velocity from their upbringing, to establish themselves as individuals, all too often they end up doing all the same things in an attempt to be “unique.” 

Each and every one of them believes “they” are on a path nobody else has ever been on as they get tattoos, color their hair, spike their hair in the latest European fashions and spend their weekends pursuing binge drinking……………why? 

Because they all learn from the same place, public education, television, and music. 

Public education is the maestro of the three primary influences and has embedded itself between the modern parent and the child in such a way that they have exacerbated the difficulties of raising a child by infusing a lot of needless “social” commentary into the process of education.  Taken from the pages of Saul Alinsky’s writing, many teachers have sought to advance social agenda’s they received in college, and attached them to the natural rebelliousness of youth to propagate a vast social movement funded entirely by tax dollars. 

Most every youthful person says the same things when asked about social causes, in spite what their parents might believe, because public education has created that wedge using the parent’s tax dollars as the platform.  See my article about Chick-Fil-A here for more on this topic:

To those who wish to argue with me and proclaim that I’m being too far-reaching with this topic examine the case below, where Roger Grein under the guise of goodness has overstepped the fine line of what public education is supposed to teach, and what is the parent’s responsibility.  Roger thinks he should use high schools to launch young people on a quest for philanthropy, which is a desire to improve the material, social, and spiritual welfare of humanity, especially through charitable activities.  In other words, the proposal is that schools should teach altruism.    

Altruism is an attitude or way of behaving that is marked by unselfish concern for the welfare of others.  This is a concept that has been tried through religion and politics for over 4000 years and is built upon the ruined foundations of western philosophy.  All cultures who embrace altruism end up extinct or hiding in some mountain passage someplace avoiding a more aggressive culture, so the merits of altruism are debatable.  Altruism is explored explicitly in the book Atlas Shrugged, which I’m beginning to think should be required reading in 8th grade English class along with Alan Eckert’s The Frontiersman and until Ayn Rand put those thoughts down on paper for the world to study along with Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, and the works of writers like Sir Thomas More, the evils of altruism had not been properly explored, only recklessly promoted.

This brings us to this ridiculous notion that philanthropy should be taught in a local high school by teachers over-stepping their boundary, on a quest to save the world by some hippie definition established by kooks and drug addicts who only studied the versions of philosophy that they agreed with.  According to the article below, Roger Grein believes it to be a wonderful thing to teach compassion, and high moral principles to the ripe young minds of public education.  Check it out: 

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Source article:

http://www.pulsejournal.com/news/local-news/program-teaches-philanthropy-to-high-school-college-students-1218255.html

Program teaches philanthropy to high school, college students

Youth decide how to make charitable donations to groups.

By James Sprague, Staff Writer Updated 9:56 AM Friday, July 29, 2011

CINCINNATI — An area non-profit organization is assisting high school students throughout the Tri-State in not only giving to charity, but learning more about the spirit of philanthropy and social causes.

Magnified Giving, a non-profit organization based in the Cincinnati suburb of Reading, enters its fourth year of teaching students to become philanthropists through placing the decision of what charities to donate funds to upon the shoulders of students.

The program, originally conceived 10 years ago at the college level by Roger Grein, a Reading accountant, allows students and teachers in 15 area high schools to form Youth Grantmaking Councils charged with dispersing a grant of at least $1,000 to area charities.

Seeing success with the program at area universities — including Miami University — is what instigated Grein to take it to area high schools.

“I thought ‘My God, what a wonderful idea to educate and get young people involved,’ ” Grein said. “Look at the lives it could touch.”

The charity the council decides to donate the funds to is determined by students researching area non-profits, examining proposals, visiting organizations and meeting with boards of directors, said Jen Senett, director of marketing and communications for Mount Notre Dame.

“Students break up into teams and take on a different social cause, such as children, the elderly or teen issues,” Senett said. “Each team pitches it to the group why the nonprofit organization deserves the grant money and chooses the one that will make the biggest impact.”

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Reading the comments of Mr. Grein, I would propose that he is functioning from a level of immaturity as a human being, and has no right to teach any child anything about life.  He may be qualified to teach a child about arithmetic, or English, but not on the philosophy of social welfare.

Any military drill sergeant knows that the best way to create a good soldier is to break down the individual identity of the candidate right off the bus.  Cut their hair, give them a uniform, and make them just like everyone else in their group.  Insult them aggressively, driving their individual ego’s from their youthful bodies so they will function as a collective unit on the battlefield, without a sense of self preservation.     But in society a sense of self is needed. 

Is it any accident that millions of our young people are missing a sense of self confidence which would prevent them from drug abuse, binge drinking, sexual mis-adventures, financial misconduct, altering their bodies with piercings and tattoos, or even suicidal behavior if they were taught that they must love themselves before they can love another? 

Often behind these teachers of altruism you find a person who has trouble with relationships in their own lives, where they’ve been divorced one or more times, or they don’t get along with family members, or neighbors because they believe only they are right and are on some ideological crusade to “teach” the world to love under the hippie sign of “peace.”  I know many of these people, I’ve met them at all levels, especially in education and I personally would not trust these idiots to watch my dog while I go on a weekend trip, let alone pour a bunch of half-baked nonsense into a child I’m raising. 

But worse yet, school systems are openly embracing these ideas such as what Mr. Grein has proposed.  The article above was written in our community paper after all as if it were a great benefit to all tax payers that their children would be taught to give to others before they gave to themselves.  And these are the type of programs that schools believe are “preparing” our youth for their college years, that place of social engineering who charges parents 50K to 100K to teach their children to not trust their parents.  Schools teach these social programs as justification for the enormous sums of money they are asking for in public education from property owners.

When a young man sits across from a young woman over dinner and says “I love you,” what does the word “I” mean?  If the young man has no concept of self, then what merit does the word “I” have in that statement?  What is a young woman supposed to build her life around if she agrees to marry the boy who thinks he’s going to tackle the world and start a family with her under the profession of the word “LOVE” defined by the qualifier “I.”  For the love has no meaning if there is no value in the word “I.”  This is why marriages are failing more and more often, and this is why more people than ever are making a mess of their lives, because they have lost a sense of self worth.  And they try to fill that lack of self-worth with social causes, which never really do the trick, but leave the participants on a lifelong quest for world peace to give their meaningless lives justification.   And the people they provided philanthropy to become addicts, dependent on the services of philanthropy instead of building in themselves a sense of value to propel them into their own lives of freedom, valor, and personal conviction.

And all the while, our human race paid for our own demise yet again by pouring money into the pockets of people like Mr. Grien, who because they lack personal worth seek to live through others as our tax money fuels the enterprise of our social undoing, all because society did not understand the philosophy of their age and listened to all the wrong people who advocated all the wrong approaches to human relationships.  Because there are other works of philosophy that should be looked at also, and one of those is the second most looked at book in the Library of Congress behind the Holy Bible, and that is Atlas Shrugged

It’s all in the book Atlas Shrugged, the rise and fall of civilization built upon altruism.  It is far easier to read it than to waste your life in the pursuit of philosophic failure advocated by a radical few, yet funded by all of us, because the value of the proclamation wasn’t fully understood by the tax payer. 

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/

http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior

www.overmanwarrior.com

Sleeping with a Sleazy Salesman: The Path of the Obama Presidency

On July 29th 2011 President Obama said “I don’t know why the Republicans in the House are voting for their own bill, it doesn’t have a shot at becoming law.  We need to reach a consensus as a nation.”  That statement is the reason for this post.  What Obama is really saying is “play our way, or not at all.”  The Democrats have been very resistant to doing the right thing also, but are misleading the nation with this game, that America can no longer afford.  Be sure to watch every video of this one as well as read the text and take your time.  This is a history lesson from our recent past that must be remembered right now.    Now, let’s study the pattern of behavior which indicates what the true intention of this game really is about for the current President of the United States. 

 

Like many of us, Jim Garvin is trying to understand the most recent comments of President Obama about the debt ceiling. As I watched the video below I felt for Mr. Gavin, because he represents most of America right now. The bewildered look on their faces is one of betrayal, of being lied to. Most of America knows they are being lied to by politicians from one side or the other. What they don’t know is who to blame, how to determine who is lying, and what to do about it.

What Obama and the political class have done with the federal budget is evident in this video. This spending behavior has been going on for a very long time, and represents a sickness in American politics. It is not appropriate to justify this behavior as “it’s just politics.” The American people have this dangerous tendency to deduct from their overall income what they pay in taxes. If they don’t see the money come out of their wallet, if that money is already gone before they even get their pay check, then they have a tendency to not even care what happens to that money. It’s as if their frustration in not having control of how their money is spent; they remove the thought from their minds completely, which politicians are well aware of.

I once knew a black salesman who reminds me a lot of President Obama. In fact, I’d dare say we have all known someone who considers themselves a “slick” talker who can sell anything to anybody and talk a woman out of her panties without them even being aware of it. I once watched this happen when I went for a drink with this guy and watched him work the bar, “Hey baby, what’s happening you sweet thing.”

I watched and listened and rolled my eyes. What woman would ever fall for a line like that? Anyone could tell that this dude was a creepy guy, right?

The salesman slept with that girl about 15 minutes after he met her, and when I spoke to the salesman about it I asked him how he could do it, how he could have sex with that girl, leave her with a fake phone number after he did the deed, then go back home to his wife and have sex with her in the same night, then come back to brag about it at work the next day?

He was a tall, lanky guy who moved almost identical to Barrack Obama. “Do what my brother,” he said to me using his pinky equipped with a gold ring to scratch his forehead. “I did that little girl a favor. Women love what I got’s to give em’ and if I’d given her my real number she’d be callin’ for more. And I can’t have that. She was lucky she got it once.” He noticed the distress on my face so he added, “Dude, listen. Fu**ing chicks is like selling to customers. You have to convince them that what you are giving them is what they need. And by the time they realize they don’t need what you want to give them, it’s too late, because they’ve either given you the money already, or they’ve given you a piece of ass.”

“But don’t you feel guilty taking advantage of them?” I asked.
“My man,” He said. “That’s cute, that you think people should feel guilty about making money, or fu**ing women. If you want a clean conscience, then take it from me, you will die a poor man looking for your next piece of ass.”

I didn’t dislike that salesman, I learned a lot from him. I learned everything I didn’t want to be. So it isn’t some psychological impairment that makes me think of this salesman every time I hear President Obama talk. It’s just that Obama uses the same kind of manipulation that the salesman uses. It may not be for the purpose of having sex with women, but rather to get people to buy what he’s selling. For this kind of salesman, outright lies are normal. In fact, they are so normal that they can even lie to themselves. When Obama sat down with Google to give a town hall type of speech during his campaign in 2008 it reveals a lot about Obama.

In the clip below with Google, Obama talks about patriotism in a way to cover his true intentions and disarm the client, which is the audience. Just like the con artist who wishes to conceal his dishonesty he cleverly uses gifts to keep people focused on the topics he chooses. For this particular crowd, it is discussions of technology. Obama guarantees every home in America will get broadband access under his future administration, and that his administration will stand up to the light of day by putting ear marks and bills online for all to see. He also talks about saving the planet with green jobs which is appealing to progressives naturally, even if it’s impractical and warped with idealism. When I watched this speech I thought of my old salesman friend who might say, “baby, I’ll by you a diamond necklace if you’ll suck my big **** out in my Cadillac outside.” The girl hears, “Cadillac” so maybe this guy has money. She hears “diamond necklace,” so maybe she can steal this guy away from his present woman. And sucking on something appeals to a natural biological urge many women have and gives them an illusion of control over a man because such an act is an act of trust, since the genitals of a man is the most delicate part of his body. The same types of buzz words are used in this interview, except it’s not sex that is for trade.

Unfortunately for such con artists sometimes they get caught in the lies they tell and this is the case where Harry Reid and President Obama had spoken against the increase of the dept ceiling in 2006. Reid explained that it was only because he was playing politics and it was wrong, so now in 2011, he’s right and everyone should buy into a debt ceiling increase. Obama had perhaps the worst statement. He said that his perspective as a senator was basically not as enlightened as that of the President, where more aspects of the economy must be considered. Without question in some future speech Obama will say that the President of the United Nations must consider the entire world, and not just the affairs of the United States, which is a job he is openly campaigning for.

On occasion there have been people like Mr. Gavin who recognize that something is wrong and they’ve questioned Obama. Such was the case with Joe the Plumber during the 2008 campaign. All the guy did was ask a question and Obama talked the situation into a 5 minute speech trying to justify the scam. Obama would have done better to give a short answer and move to the next topic, because it made Joe the Plumber a celebrity, which the left then proceeded to destroy Joe’s character any way they could. But it was Obama who made the mistake in this exchange. He knew that Joe was seeing through his campaign rhetoric and Obama, the salesman wanted to see if he could overcome Joe’s opposition. When words failed, Obama became very touchy openly putting his hand on the shoulder and arm of Joe the Plumber. This is very similar to a man who has been confronted by a scorned woman and uses touching to take the edge off the woman’s anger, knowing that touching helps psychologically break down the barriers of mental resistance to an idea.

With many of the positions Obama has taken, Muslim radicals seem to have gotten a free pass under his administration. He behaves very strange for a guy who claims that he’s a Christian. The trouble with a man who claims he’s a Christian and not a Muslim is that in politics it is calculated that a Muslim could not be elected, because people are tense over the aggression of many fundamentalists.

Christianity has been attacked by the Obama administration mysteriously. So if Obama is pretending to be a Christian when he is in fact a Muslim then he is deliberately misleading the pubic for political gain. And if he is willing to do that, what else is he willing to mislead the public on? That is the trouble. A man should be willing and able to stand on what they believe, not what they think people want them to believe. Such people are no different from people like that salesman who lie about how much money they have to sleep with a woman. They will say anything to get into the woman’s pants. But even the best of them get caught in their own lies. Here Obama lets it slip that he’s a Muslim then corrects himself to being Christian. Was it an accident? (More on this later)

In this next clip Obama continues to ridicule Christian faith. For a guy who again claims he’s a Christian, he seems pretty angry about it. I mean I personally don’t care if he’s a Muslim, or an Alien from some other planet. My concern is why does he feel he must hide it? Why be misleading?

Glenn Beck shows the Michelle Obama clip where she stated this was the first time she was proud of America. I personally can’t ever recall any upper level politician saying something like this. To me, this clip reveals much of what type of conversations go on at the Obama dinner table, when the cameras aren’t running. Michelle, at the time being inexperienced at deceit in politics spoke her mind, and has since learned to put a softer edge on what she say’s publicly.

To know who Obama is you have to watch all his speeches, not just the ones where he attempts to appeal to all of America, the people like Mr. Gavin. Here is Obama among his people at the Campus Progress meet talking about alternative fuels. Campus Progress is a progressive organization designed to build a progressive political base which is in direct competition against people like me, who are American traditionalists. Progressives hope to erode the effectiveness of traditionalists by appealing to the naivety of young people hungry to rebel from their parents. The trouble with progressives is they attempt to undermine American Politics with a Trojan Horse mentality, by breaking through the barriers of American’s defenses and destroying that opposition from behind those defenses. That’s alarming because Progressives know that their ideas cannot compete directly with traditionalists so they seek the subversive route. Here Obama congratulates the creation of Progressive Leadership and the role of young people in the future.

Knowing that traditionalists will reject much of what Obama is trying to implement, he seeks to appeal to young people by admitting that he smoked marijuana, a lot. When Obama says that he is angry that Washington plays politics, and nothing gets done because of the grid lock, remember that the only reason Obama made this statement is that he was tapping into the same political demographic exploited by Bill Clinton when he played a saxophone on MTV. It’s all about politics.

I hate to bring it up because the relationship that President Obama has or had with Bill Ayers cannot be ignored even though a discussion about that relationship is as contentious as talking about the birth certificate issue. For those who don’t know who Bill Ayers is listen to him talk about his life in The Weather Underground. Obama launched his political career with Bill Ayers as a supporter in the living room of The Weather Underground leaders.

Here is a video with radio interviews of Bill Ayers where his life parallels Barack Obama’s rise to fame. Bill Ayers is a very manipulative and radical hater of the American way of life. He has demonstrated the extent of just what he is willing to do against the American Government. He is an open enemy to all things American, and the government knows it and has known for years exactly where he is at all times yet he’s been free to continue his radical movements with other methods instead of the radical violence of his early years. He’s a retired professor at the University of Chicago. In a new edition of the Bill Ayers memoirs called, Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War-Activist, he added a new afterword about Barack Obama describing the blogospheric characterization of their relationship as “neighbors and family friends” (“In 2008 there was a lot of chatter on the blogosphere about my relationship with Barack Obama: we had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fundraiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign.”).

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers

Obama tried to back off the Ayers connection, but the evidence was just too overwhelming. Now this video isn’t from Fox News, it’s by CNN. Ayers is a man who is willing to do anything to accomplish his objective. When he and his wife bragged about the rise of Barack Obama as a political power in Chicago politics there is no question that Ayers at some point told Obama, “They’ll harass you for knowing me. That’s OK. It’s worth it to have one of our kind in The White House. When they ask don’t feel bad in denying you know me. I’ll understand.”

One last warning about Barack Obama, a look into his past, this video was done in 2008, well before Glenn Beck. Tony Rezko was a major fund-raiser for Barack Obama. Rezko and several others were indicted on federal charges in October 2006, for using their connections to the state boards to demand kickbacks from businesses that wanted to do business with the state. While the others pleaded guilty to the charges, Rezko pleaded not guilty and was found guilty of 16 of the 24 charges filed against him. Rezko also worked with Rod Blagojevich who was just convicted this year in late June of 17 counts of wire fraud, attempted extortion, bribery, conspiracy to commit extortion, and conspiracy to commit bribery, as well as trying to sell President Obama’s former Senate seat in exchange for political favors. This is the circle of associates around President Obama. All these people have displayed the ability to look straight into a camera and lie about their innocence or provide misleading information.

Source article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Rezko

I’ve said a lot on these pages about looters, people who primarily look at public service positions as a way to enrich themselves off tax money. Look at how Michelle Obama and her husband behaved before he became President of the United States. This is how Obama got some of his money that he is so proud of when he state, “people like me are willing to give back some.” Obama has been bragging about his wealth even as far back as the Joe the Plumber question, which I didn’t realize until I just recently looked at it again.

Obama has shown that he will lie, especially in politics. There is no question that he will and has been caught many times as shown above. Listen to him in this CNN investigation.

When you listen to Obama speak about the budget below look at his record. Here he lies 7 times in a 2 minute speech.

Being Muslim is not a problem, as discussed. But lying about it so that a person can get elected is a big problem. Here is convincing evidence that Obama is a Muslim which is proof that the man will lie about a seemingly insignificant issue. So what does anybody think he’d do over a really big issue?

The reason this whole Muslim issue is relevant can be shown from this statement about the condition of the flag and the Muslim faith as told to Dale Lindsborg ‘s Meet the Press from Sunday’s 07 Sept. 2008, 11:48:04 EST, Televised broadcast. The then Senator Obama was asked about his stance on the American Flag.

I had forgotten about this whole issue until a friend of mine reminded me of it after reading other stories I have stated about President Obama and his position over this recent budget battle. The text below is quite startling.

General Bill Ginn, USAF (ret.), asked Obama to explain why he doesn’t follow protocol when the National Anthem is played.

The General stated to Obama that according to the United States Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Sec. 171…

During rendition of the national anthem, when the flag is displayed, all present (except those in uniform) are expected to stand at attention, facing the flag, with the right hand over the heart. Or, at the very least, “Stand and Face It”.

‘Senator’ Obama replied:

“As I’ve said about the flag pin, I don’t want to be perceived as taking sides….” “There are a lot of people in the world to whom the American flag is a symbol of oppression….” “The anthem itself conveys a war-like message. You know, the bombs bursting in air, and all that sort of thing.”

Obama continued:, “The National Anthem should be ‘swapped’ for something less parochial and less bellicose. I like the song ‘I’d Like To Teach the World To Sing.’ If that were our anthem, then I might salute it. In my opinion, we should consider reinventing our National Anthem as well as ‘redesign’ our Flag to better offer our enemies hope and love. It’s my intention, if elected, to disarm America to the level of acceptance to our Middle East Brethren. If we, as a Nation of waring people, conduct ourselves like the nations of Islam, where peace prevails – – – perhaps a state or period of mutual accord could exist between our governments ……”

“When I become President, I will seek a pact of agreement to end hostilities between those who have been at war or in a state of enmity, and a freedom from disquieting oppressive thoughts . We as a Nation, have placed upon the nations of Islam, an unfair injustice, which is WHY my wife disrespects the Flag, and she and I have attended several flag burning ceremonies in the past.”

“Of course now, I have found myself about to become the President of the United States and I have put my hatred aside. I will use my power to bring CHANGE to this Nation, and offer the people a new path. My wife and I look forward to becoming our Country’s First black Family. Indeed, CHANGE is about to overwhelm the United States of America.”

Dale Lindsborg, Washington Post

This compelling story brings us to one central question, addressed by Mr.Garvin in the start of this article outlining the behavior pattern of one of the most subversive American Presidents in our history. This President was launched into politics by radicals and crooks. He is a public sector looter as defined by the work of philosophy Atlas Shrugged and gained his wealth in that fashion. He has shown that he will lie about his religion. He will lie about his associations. And he will be misleading about his true political intentions.

Just like the salesman who had slept with the girl, without question the girl felt used when she attempted to call the number and found out the smooth talking salesman had lied to her and even given a false number. She had believed everything the man had said because she wanted to. She wanted to believe that there were people who actually told the truth, especially when they spoke so wonderfully, and were pleasant to look at. Normal average everyday people like the woman in the bar, and millions of Americans of all different political affiliations want to believe that there is good in people, especially attractive people.

Sailors have told stories for generations about sirens that used their songs of seduction and elliptical attractiveness to lure those men to their deaths with enchantment upon the hidden rocks disguised below the surface. But it’s not just beautiful women who perform this seduction. Sometimes it’s fast talking salesman with gold rings. Its governors, mobsters, and senators, who use public office to enrich themselves, its radical reformers who hate America and launch a fellow board member into a path to the presidency from his living room, or it’s the President himself, who has his eye on a prize most American’s can’t even conceive, because the audacity of the deception defies credibility. That deception is the end of America as we all know it and a prized position with the United Nations heading that organization toward global concerns.

Lies are not hard for those types, and in this budget battle the fight isn’t over fixing the budget, or even the debt limit. The fight is over our ability to fix it, because the intent is to collapse America as a world power. And the fear from thousands of radicals like Bill Ayers is that their 40 year strategy to end America under the smile of a good-looking, smooth talking President is in jeopardy, because it’s no longer just the radical right, the conspiracy theorists, the Fox News junkies who see the problem. It’s the average, every day people like Jim Garvin who have the look of who just fu**ed me! And why did I let them do it!

Many women have woke up to an empty pillow on the morning after a drunken binge. Now America is about to roll over and see that there is no head in that pillow, and that while we slept the man we brought home not only took advantage of our condition, but also stole all our money, and material goods and headed home to the object of their true desire, a marriage we did not know about until it was too late and we’ll only have ourselves to blame.

Rich Hoffman

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

Learning what a Republic is: The Continued Lessons of Star Wars

I could not help but notice at my favorite book store that many of the works that I used to only find online, are now in stock, on the shelf. Work by Thomas Paine, John Locke, and all the works of Ayn Rand are easy to find, and this is fantastic news because people are hungry for knowledge. The Federalist Papers are even now stocked on the shelf in abundance. Ten years ago it was only law students who bought copies of it, now it’s an older man in his upper 60’s as I watched him thumb through it’s pages prior to purchase.

Political discussion is often not just about the topics on the nightly news. Recently, a friend of mine gave me a copy of The Original Argument, which was endorsed by Glenn Beck as a way to explain in today’s language the meaning of The Federalist Papers. I enjoyed The Original Argument so much that I read it twice while on vacation recently, and it occurred to me that The Original Argument was not a rule book so to speak intended for lawyers, but it is a political philosophy that speaks a truth established by 4000 years of human history. It does not belong in the political science section in a book store, but in the philosophy section.

But as a friend of mine uttered in frustration the other day, “what are we to do about all this!” The frustration of thinking all their lives that everything was OK in the world, and that politicians were sleazy, but not considered downright evil, and finding out that in fact there are many things that have been going on that people are just learning about because they are reading again, can be very overwhelming. Catching up on 200 years of American history in the span of a year or two like many Tea Party enthusiast are doing can send a person to burn out quick. So it’s important that people remember to have fun along the way. It’s even better if people can learn while they are having fun. Fans of Glenn Beck will notice that Beck is an obvious Star Wars fan. It will also be noticed that there are a lot of Tea Party patriots who are increasingly creating Twitter accounts along the lines of “Jedi Patriot” and “Empire Fighter” in an obvious homage to Star Wars. In our modern age, Star Wars has become a form of modern philosophy, not just simply entertainment. Star Wars is a great way to think about all the things that are going on in the world around us, while also taking a vacation from the intensity of those revelations. After all, the film The Phantom Menace was not about a young boy who grew up and became Darth Vader. That is just one of the sub plots. The Phantom Menace was all about a senator who wants to be emperor, and he uses many people in obscure ways to create the circumstances that will allow him to grab power for himself. It’s all in good old-fashioned fun, but the sincerity behind The Phantom Menace is actually incredibly sophisticated, which is the genius of Star Wars.

The films of Star Wars consist of only 6 two-hour movies and that is what a majority of the fans think of when they hear the name of Star Wars. But for fans who wish to dig deeper, Star Wars tackles many of the problems of our modern times using the language of mythology and the latest entry to that mythology is the MMO computer game called The Old Republic due out later this year and it’s something my wife and I are looking very much forward to.

Glenn Beck uses Star Wars metaphors to explain many of the complicated topics of our day because Star Wars is the only work of art in modern times which attempts to tackle the complicated nature of human failure and evolution as a species. Star Wars is a basic tale of good and evil, but it goes much deeper. With over 100 books, the 6 movies, cartoons, video games, comic books, amusement park rides, Star Wars is a formidable aspect of modern culture which I’ve written about in detail at this article: CLICK HERE

What is even bolder within this Star Wars mythology is this whole new path the franchise is taking in exploring The Old Republic. There are now two novels and two videos games with the addition of the computer game being previewed here, which explores what life was like in The Old Republic which takes place over a thousand years before the events shown in the films most people are familiar with. The idea of the Sith, the villains in Star Wars is to explore the influence of evil and this is done not just in a spiritual way in these stories, but also in a political way. It is the first work of art that I can think of which has mass appeal that attempts to do anything like this. It does not limit itself as an examination of religious influence, or political study, but as an all-encompassing investigation through the story lines of what causes the rise and fall of civilizations.

I am a fan of the works of writers like Thomas Mann and his Magic Mountain, and Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, and I will state in that context the collected works of Star Wars are every bit as sophisticated and meaningful. In Star Wars the entire galaxy is part of a republic. Not a democracy, but a republic. This is similar to what planet Earth is facing in whose political philosophy will emerge as the world shrinks, will it be a republic like what the United States has had so much success with, or will it be various degrees of socialism similar to what Europe and many eastern countries have experimented with.

The most important contribution is that in the galactic government of Star Wars, it’s a republic that is pursued, and provides an interesting model for how Earth should proceed. It is the Republic of the United States of America that should teach the rest of the world how to be a free people, produce their goods under the umbrella of capitalism, and interact with one another with respect under that accepted philosophy.

What gives me hope is that Star Wars is the best education device that young people have to counter what they are learning in public education, and politicians who crave socialism where the philosophy of a republic is not taught to them. It is entertainment that is providing the best education to society, and because of the popularity of Star Wars it is evidence that many people are learning about it.

Glenn Beck understands that Star Wars is a modern work of political philosophy and science. When people who love freedom want to know how America is supposed to function, books like The Original Argument are fantastic. But it cannot be disputed that free life will always stay within the confines of the United States borders. As the evidence of illegal immigration have shown, millions of people all over the world want to become a part of the Republic of the United States and we owe it to those people in America to help not just open our borders to them, but to expand the freedom we experience to those far reaches of the globe so that there can be a grand Republic of Earth. And to get an idea of how to do that, Star Wars is the best work of art available to help show how that process should look, and what type of hurdles will stand in the way, so that freedom can be experienced by anything that breathes world-wide.

So before going crazy, choking on all this information that has always been there, but is being re-discovered, it is good to have a device that can give your mind a vacation. For me, it’s a love of pirates, and Star Wars. Star Wars allows the mind to swell without limits without becoming lost in the fantasy. And I look very much forward to the age when the kids who are growing up with this expanded universe of Star Wars start to run the country, because that is a time when things will dramatically change for the better, because they will understand that America is a republic and not a democracy and the only hope the entire world has for freedom.

Rich Hoffman

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

Liberty Twp Tea Party Turns Two Years Old: The Rise of a New Guard

The evening July 11,2011 sun beat hard upon the converted barn at the Niederman Farm where the Liberty Twp Tea Party met to celebrate their 2nd year.  There have been a lot of battles over the last couple of years, and as we gathered for the pot luck dinner it was evident that there would be a lot more. 

As this meeting was taking place Obama and the local Speaker of the House John Boehner were battling over the budget and the debt ceiling.  Obama is approaching the negotiations as though various sides, Tea Party Republicans, moderate Republicans, Rhino Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, Progressive Democrats, and far left radical Democrats all are committed to 100% of their particular positions, and must be prepared to give a little so everyone can agree.  As I scooped up some potato salad that my wife had made I wondered how a person like Obama could ever become president and even say such a thing.  There’s only one right answer, and the president is missing it.  There isn’t money for the programs his party have given away to buy votes.  That’s the bottom line folks.  All those various politicians have for years purchased votes using our tax money, and now those fools are stuck trying to explain why they’ve bankrupted the system. 

The people around me at this gathering are all there for the same reason, we recognize that the government has let us down and taken the nation on a path it doesn’t want to go.  Not everyone has come to that realization yet, because they still hope that somewhere, there is a magical golden egg that will be laid by some golden goose.  Increasingly, these elected representatives are being seen not as leaders, but as con artists and thieves who have stolen from each of us and sold us back bath water claiming it to be an elixir of life. 

While the various ceremonies of this event were going on the Lakota School System was voting for yet another school levy attempt literally right down the road, not more than 3 miles from our location.  In this meeting, everything that is wrong with the government can be seen in the microcosm of public education funding.  Public sector unions, politicians using their education support for votes, and school administrators hoping to use school boards as a political launch pad to become noticed by leaders of one of the two parties have bought into Keynesian economics, like the rest of the government, and they were wrong. 

When John Keynes introduced his Keynesian economics model from the ever-increasing socialist tendencies of the rest of the world, politicians saw an opportunity to exploit that model for their own accents to public supported power.  Keynes was wrong, and every system using it is failing, including schools.  The correct answer is not more of the same theory, but something else completely.  In schools, the task is to convert over to that system without destroying the opportunities of the kids and parents who support the school.  But in education, just like all things in government, the prices of labor, of the services created by labor, and the revenue which supports the entire foundation are artificially inflated, because competition is not allowed to kill off the waste, because government protects those enterprises.  This drives up the costs everywhere for everybody.  And presidents like Obama and school boards like what we have at Lakota, only know to close that inflated value with increased taxes.  They can’t understand any other option because their brains are not wired to accept anything else. 

At Lakota they are going for a tax rate that is less than what they’ve asked for in the past. This is consistent with President Obama’s comments to Speaker Boehner, “You can’t get everything you’ve asked for.”  In the minds of these people bending a little on their political position is what the process is all about. 

But it’s not.  There is only one right answer, not a mixed drink of many tastes.  With something like a budget deficit whether you’re talking about a local school district, or a Federal government, there is a way you got there, and to get out, you must do the opposite of what put you in that position.  That’s the only way.  If you spent a lot of money-making political promises that you didn’t have the authority to commit the tax payers to, or you are a school district that allowed a public sector teachers union to drive up your labor costs recklessly, then you have to admit that you were wrong, that you spent money that wasn’t yours just as a person addicted to gambling must admit that they have a problem before they can get help. You can’t throw more money at the addict, because they’ll never get better.  You have to take away their money so they can’t go to the casino anymore to throw away our money on some jackpot they hope will fix all their problems. 

As I sat among friends and family I thought about the worst issue in the news of them all, and that’s the case of the murdered little girl in Florida, the Casey Anthony trial where the mother appears to have accidentally killed her little girl with an overdose of chloroform and drove around Florida with the body in the trunk for everyone to smell the decomposing body.  The girl was a reckless young woman, and the prosecution went for the death penalty for the severity of the crime.  Last week, Casey was found not guilty; the jurors didn’t have the inner compass of morality to be able to pass judgment on a peer.  Society has lost their ability to judge. 

Most have anyway, except for the people having diner in a country barn with me on that hot July evening. Of American society, these people who the radicals advocating Keynesian economics, progressive global government without borders, and idealists who have never found their way out of the soviet fueled radicalism of the 60’s, those people call my friends here “teabaggers.”  “Teabaggers, meant to be a term of peer pressure, of insult, an attempt by those who are advocating evil openly, to keep society functioning with their eyes closed and hope that somehow their failed theories will somehow come true in the final hour, and if they don’t, they’ll be remembered for their compassion, and not as the thieves they truly are. 

I feel privileged that after two years, the Liberty Twp Tea Party is still here, and it’s growing.  And it refreshes the soul to partake in these events, as the aroma of barn yard animals and community prepared food mixes in a unique waltz of perpetuity.  Because this is how it was in the beginning, and this is the way of the American, to always be ready for a fight, to roll up the sleeves and eat well before a hard day’s work, or the battle that looms on the horizon.  Because only by the path of those in this barn, is the path to liberty and freedom.  And the only right answer in the entire nation is present on the tongues of those in attendance, because they are the last of their kind and Americais waiting for them to fix the nation that has been hijacked by tyrants of good intention.

Rich Hoffman

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

College is the Root of an Evil: Call it what it is, an excuse to expand government.

Ok, school administrators, you did this to yourself. Up to now I have played this game lightly; I’ve allowed the rhetoric that your types have openly spouted without really digging into the real source of the public education mess. I have heard one too many times from a superintendent of a school system the funding crises so eloquently exhibited in the below chart by Henry Payne of The Detroit News.

I received a note in the mail of that cartoon from a friend of mine who sent me a copy of The Mackinac Center’s Impact newsletter which had that cartoon, so I had to take a picture of it to use here, because it shows exactly what school districts and public unions have been doing to the tax payer. The charts seen on this page can be found at:

http://www.educationreport.org/pubs/mer/article.aspx?id=12096

Much of the cost that is being twisted around to justify school funding is in teacher and administration wages, which has been covered in great detail at this site. But the reason for these highly paid employees have their roots in the necessity for college education. We are told that because of state law, which the public sector unions have lobbied for, that teachers with masters degrees and doctorates will be compensated for those degrees by contract, regardless of the real market value of those degrees. And the need for these types of educators is to prepare children for college, which is turning out to be an epic scam within the society of America. Colleges in our culture are proving to be destructive, financially, and culturally, and that bubble is about to burst. John Stossel did a fantastic documentary on just how that bubble is collapsing.

College is one of those topics that most Americans have bought into, and they have done so looking for that promise that their children wouldn’t have to suffer when they grew up, that their children would have a better standard of living than the parents had, and in this process one of the greatest scams in world history has been perpetrated.

This scam is shown in great detail in the very good documentary called Indoctrinate U.

For your convenience, you can now see the complete film Indoctrinate U right here. I have it listed below in 9 parts. Take the time to watch the whole film.









So if college is such a destructive force in our society, why are we spending so much money to support it? Why are we preparing our children in the 7th and 8th grade for it and spending money in public education for something that is a rather passive choice for unmotivated children to find their way in the world? Why should we pay for the ignorance of parents who believe that they can purchase success for their children and make up for all their bad parenting?

I have a list on this site that has tens of thousands of hits which proves the most successful people in the history of the planet never went to college, or dropped out of college. There is a tremendous amount of evidence which proves that college actually hold kids back from achieving success.

Colleges have tried to claim they are the creators of original ideas. Most of the time, innovators have to leave college to let their ideas grow. Most often, colleges succeed in allowing people to delay their lives while they find themselves pursuing a degree they pay way too much for, in order to get their foot in the door to a job interview. Colleges are not making American society better. Yet we are spending an enormous amount of money to prepare our kids for these places. Why?

Much of the rhetoric about why we must fund public schools at the level we currently do is for college preparation, and the facts are beginning to come in that college will change in the years to come. College is not for everyone. College is needed for the sciences, and advanced mathematics and perhaps literature. College is needed for perhaps only 10% of the entire American population. In the years to come, many schools will fail. The college bubble will collapse very, very soon. The advancement of it now is purely for the prop up of the big business aspects of education, and that is the source of the upside down presentation of funding needs by trickster education advocates. College, like much of public education is a scam used to obtain an enormous amount of money for the employees of that business offering services that are ghostly thin in their relevance. College is a hindrance to innovation and is simply an adult child care service for parents and their children to delay the hard decisions in their lives just a few years longer. College is simply allowing our youth to be immature longer, and we are paying fortunes to allow them to do so. And the cost of that immaturity is devastating to the American economy in lost GDP and innovation.

So school administrators, people are beginning to see through your presentation for what it is. Your demands for more funds from an already over-taxed society is arrogant, and functions on the presumption that people are truly stupid, and you are about to get a dramatic wakeup call that will be very painful. Because the bubble is bursting and you are riding on the surface, and will soon find your support completely evaporating under your feet.

Modern education is all about creating government jobs and advancing the policies of FDR. And it’s a scam. Call it what it is.

Rich Hoffman

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

Thank a Rich Person: How Wealthy People Make American Society Better

One of the things that is wrong with America, it’s this marketed notion that one should aspire to be poor, meek, or average. No. Nobody, anywhere at anytime in world history are happy with being average, unless of course they are perpetually lazy. For such people, they are the mouths behind the communist movement in America.

It is the rich man who moves the world. Doc Thompson of 700 WLW covers the topic of how to think like a rich person on his morning show which is a broadcast everyone should listen to.

A man does not become rich by just making money. They become rich by having an idea that nobody else has uncovered yet. The lure of treasure and financial reward is the engine that drives such a quest, and society benefits from that quest with new invention. The wealth and jobs created from those ideas are what makes American society great.

And the sum of those elements give American youth something to aspire to.

Take for instance Orlando, Florida. Back in the 1950’s there was nothing in Orlando but a few buildings. I’ve revealed my admiration of Walt Disney more than once at this site. I’ve talked about how successful he’s been, and what a self-made man he was. He did not even graduate high school, yet he created one of the most dynamic companies in the world. Orlando is the city it is today because Disney had the vision to build Walt Disney World there, and over the years, the entire economy of Orlando has thrived because of Walt’s idea. Disney wanted to build a park dedicated to the films he produced, where imagination had no limit. That was his premise. The result was explosive.

On November 12, 2009, The Walt Disney Company reported $10.667 billion in theme park and resort earnings for fiscal year 2009, ending October 3, 2009. This figure includes earnings from the Walt Disney World Resort, Disneyland, Disneyland Resort Paris, Tokyo Disney Resort, Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, Disney Vacation Club and Disney Cruise Lines. A majority of that income is centered around the Orlando operations. 36% of the entire GDP of the state of Florida which is the state Orlando resides in, and most of that is tourism that started with an idea from Walt Disney.

Sea World did not set up its park in Orlando on its own. It went there because of the success of Disney World. Universal Studios did not set up in Orlando with their two parks, Universals Studios and Islands of Adventure on their own. They went there because of Disney World. All the interesting restaurants, hotels and shopping establishments on International in Orlando and Kissimmee all are there because of Disney World.

Not a single building was put up in Orlando because of a creative union, a teacher, a cop, firefighter, an SEIU worker, a president, a congressman, a senator. All those types of people are employees to the originator of the idea, and that is Walt Disney.

For the mind to wrap itself around just how important Walt Disney World in Orlando is to not just the state of Florida, but the entire United States have a look at these numbers from source article at the link, a majority of the text is below however:

http://disneybythenumbers.com/wdw/wdw.html

When you read this, think for just a second of all the companies that exist just to supply Walt Disney World with material, whether it be food, wrappers, steel for construction, concrete, you name it.

30,500 acres or 43 square miles of property is what is considered the original area centrally located in Florida and is considered the largest of its kind in the world.

1965 is when the public was told about the Walt Disney World Resort Plans

52 months of construction were needed to build Walt Disney World back in 1971.

8 million cubic yards of earth were moved to build Walt Disney World.

2,000 acres remain open for development by the Walt Disney World Company.

$180 an acres was a great price for the Florida land, until Disney was named the person buying the land then the price went to $1000 an acre.

27,258 acres of land were purchased for WDW

$5,018, 770 was the cost of the 27,258 acres

18 months of moving dirt were used to just prepare the Magic Kingdom site to be built.

8 million cubic yards of earth were moved to build the Magic Kingdom.

2,600,000 chocolate covered Mickey Mouse ice cream bars are sold every year at Walt Disney World (WDW)

4 colors make up the official colors of WDW, lagoon blue, mint green, pumpkin orange, lavender.

450 acre area is Bay Lake and located near the Magic Kingdom.

4.5 miles of beach line the Seven Seas lagoon and Bay Lake

2.385 billion gallons make up the volume of water that is Bay Lake and the adjoining Seven Seas Lagoon.

3.8 million pens are purchased by WDW each year.

600 tons of steel helps make up Cinderella’s Castle, and not a single stone.

4 inches is the distance the driver of the armored car has between the door and the wall of the Utilidors, which is the only gas-powered vehicle allowed in the Tunnel.

9 acres of tunnel are under the Magic Kingdom.

14 feet below ground are the 9 acres of tunnels servicing the Magic Kingdom.

2 times a month the horse shaped hitching posts on Main Street, USA are scraped and painted.

20 minutes is all it takes to fill Splash Mountain and 5 Minutes to drain it.

47 square miles is the original property size that was purchased for Walt Disney World.

7,500 acres were set aside as Conversation area in 1970 and developed a system of more than 43 miles of canals and 22 miles of levees to control the water level.

70,000 fingerling bass were originally stocked in Bay lake when WDW first opened.

4 trains are part of the WDW railroad; each train has 5 cars and can hold approximately 360 Guests and 2 wheelchairs. The train names are: Walter E. Disney (red), Lilly Belle (green),Roger E. Broggie (yellow),Roy O. Disney (blue).

10 miles per hour is the touring speed of the WDW railroad trains travel at while taking you on your scenic journey around the park.

3,000,000 are how many passengers the WDW railroad carries each year.

100,000 guests is the max capacity for the Magic Kingdom. The parking lot closes at 75,000 to allow room for Hotel resort guests arriving on buses, boats and monorail.

11,000 firework shows per year makes WDW the largest consumer of fireworks in North America.

2,300 wedding are estimated to take place at WDW in a year.

15,000 weddings have taken place at WDW since September 1991.

7 million hamburgers are sold in the park each year

5 million hotdogs are consumed each year in the park

1.4 million barbecued turkey legs are consumed each year at Walt Disney World

58,000 employees are employed by Walt Disney world as of 2006, spending more than $1.1 billion on payroll and $478 million in benefits each year

5,000 employees are dedicated to the maintenance and engineering at WDW including 750 horticulturists and 600 painters.

$100 million is spent each year to maintain the Magic Kingdom.

10 of the 12 trains can be stored in the maintenance shop on its upper level (the bottom level houses the four steam locomotives that circle the Magic Kingdom). On any given night, two Mark VI trains are parked outside the gate of the Magic Kingdom. No train will ever be left outside two nights in a row.

150 truckloads of holiday decorations adorn the Walt Disney World Resort and 300,000 yards of ribbon and bows drape over 1,500 Christmas trees during the yuletide season.

72,000 ticket holders at the FedEx Orange Bowl National Championship game in Miami each receive a surprise free ticket to any Disney theme park in the world. The largest Disney theme park ticket give-away ever was part of the launch of the Happiest Celebration on Earth, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Disneyland and Disney theme parks.

50,000th child to have a Disney theme park wish granted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Disney. This event took place on October 6, 2005.

2,500 different Cast Member costume designs make up a working wardrobe of about 1.8 million pieces. Approximately 13,000 costume pieces are manufactured each year at Walt Disney World.

15 million miles are driven by the Walt Disney World bus fleet each year.

3,421,399 (approximately)famous “Mouse Ear” hats sold each year at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando to cover the head of every man, woman and child in Portland, Oregon.

30th year anniversary for Walt Disney World was celebrated October 1, 2001. Happy Anniversary !

392,040 square feet of space under the Magic Kingdom creates the Utilidors and are bustling with action. Beside navigation information the walls are covered with motivational information, such as the 7 rules of a Cast Member.

750 watercraft makes Walt Disney World the 5th largest fleet of watercraft in the world.

14 feet deep is the Seven Sea lagoon, but Bay lake is only 12 feet deep.

2.5 million garments(pieces) exist in Walt Disney World costuming department.

150,000 gallons of paint were purchased in 2004 enough to cover 7,500 average size homes.

263 buses are in service at Walt Disney World.

50 million soft drinks are sold annually at WDW.

9 million pounds of French Fries are sold annually at WDW.

194,871 miles of toilet tissue are used annually at WDW.

24,409 miles of paper towels are used annually at WDW.

319,353 lbs. of chocolate are used annually at WDW.

1.2 million pounds of watermelon are used annually at WDW.

741,150 pounds of sugar are used annually at WDW.

1.8 million pounds of flour are used annually at WDW.

245,000 pounds of fruit filling are used annually at WDW.

38,000 pounds of white icing glaze are used annually at WDW.

2.9 million pounds of eggs are used annually at WDW.

606,000 pounds of bananas are used annually at WDW.

510,000 of grapes are used annually at WDW.

1.5 million soft pretzels are served annually at WDW.

639,000 pounds of macaroni and cheese are served at WDW.

337,000 pencils are purchased annually to use at WDW.

148 million sheets of recycled copier paper are used annually at WDW.

730,102 gallons of bleach are used annually at WDW.

214,000 bandages were provided to guests during the year 2004 at WDW.

20,000 different colors of paint used in Walt Disney World.

14.25 pound largemouth bass is the largest ever caught on Bay Lake, but we’ll never know since it is catch and release fishing.

3 circle vision films play at WDW. n the Magic Kingdom, take a trip through time in Tomorrowland’s “The Timekeeper.” The other two films using the Circle-Vision technology are both found in Epcot’s World Showcase. They are O Canada!, and the Wonders of China.

175 different outfits are in Mickey’s wardrobe closet, including a scuba suit and a tuxedo.

200 different outfits are in Minnie’s wardrobe closet, including a cheerleader costume and various evening gowns.

15 million gallons of water are used each day at WDW.

5,000 plus performers, (not counting the 500 doves that were released), joined in the Grand Opening Celebration of Walt Disney World at the Magic Kingdom on October 25, 1971.

1,076-piece band (including 76 trombones) was led by “Music man” Meredith Wilson as part of the Grand opening parade up Main Street, USA.

51,000 employees work at WDW, this number changes with the seasons and peak park seasons.

11 miles of garland, 3,000 wreaths and 1,500 Christmas trees are spread around during the holiday season. The tallest is a 70-foot tree in Disney’s Contemporary Resort. In addition, trees, which range in height from 45 to 70 feet, are placed in prominent positions in the theme parks.

500,000 character watches are sold annually mainly Mickey watches, are slipped onto wrists from Walt Disney World gift shops each year. At any given time, there are more than 200 different varieties of character watches. The most popular timepiece: a gold-tone relief of Mickey Mouse.

100 pairs of sunglasses are turned in at the Magic Kingdom lost and found alone. There have been enough “shades” submitted each year in the Magic Kingdom to outfit every resident of Sun City, Arizona; Sun City, California; and Sun City, Florida. Since 1971, an estimated 1.5 million pairs of glasses have found their way into the “lost” bin.

6,000 different types of food are served at WDW.

350 or more chefs are employed at WDW

150 semi trucks of decorations are used to decorate WDW during the Christmas season.

15 miles of garland are to decorate at WDW during Christmas season.

300,000 yards of ribbon are used for decorating at Christmas.

1,500 Christmas trees are used all around the WDW property for decorating.

8 million lights are used to decorate the 4 parks for Christmas.

18 towers are on Cinderella’s Castle.

2 times the size of Manhattan Island is the property of Walt Disney World.

200 feet is the maximum building height in Florida, so the building does not have a red light installed for aircraft.

1st guest entered Walt Disney World on October 1, 1971

50,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on March 2,1976

100,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on October 22, 1979

150,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on April 7, 1983

200,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on July 20, 1985

300,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on June 21, 1989

400,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on August 5,1992

500,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on October 13, 1995

600,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on June 24, 1998

4 million guests of Walt Disney World Resort hotels have used Disney’s Magical Express since the airport shuttle, luggage delivery and airline check-in service launched May 5, 2005

250,000 Guests at the Walt Disney World Resort ride the Various forms of “mass transit” every day, which include monorails, ferryboats, bus services and water taxis.

100,000 to 200,000 photos of guests are taken each day by Disney’s PhotoPass photographers

4 % percent of all amateur photography is estimated to be taken at Walt Disney World and Disneyland

3 times the park has been closed, once resort wide in September 1999 for Hurricane Floyd; resort wide on September 11th, 2001 due to the terror attacks on America; and Epcot only on July 17th, 2002 due to a power outage.

72,000 individual AudioAnimatronic functions per second are controlled by the Digital Animation Control System (DACS)

800 different variety of trees had been acquired, moved and acclimated and transplanted at WDW as it was reported in 1970

2.2 million travelers were bused from Orlando International Airport to either a WDW resort hotels or cruise ships in 2008, That works out to about $1.6 million a year in payments to the airport

80,000 high school seniors will celebrate graduation during the annual Grad Nite party at Walt Disney World Resort. Disney has hosted the event for 36 years with a variety of acts from KC and the Sunshine Band to Jessica Simpson.

Now, even at such a creative place such as Disney World, or the company of Disney overall, Walt Disney’s ideas are still paying dividends.

In the resent adventure film The Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, it was Jerry Bruckheimer and a team of creative writers and other artists that brought that great film to life, and produced a marketing machine that has been very successful. But even that started with an idea from Disney, a rather radical idea if you think about it, of putting a pirate ride in a kid’s park where the heroes are thieves and hoods that rape and pillage entire towns and kill all the authority figures of England and France. The idea started with Disney and was proven with his theme parks over time, and now a new generation is taking it to a new level. To date the film has produced $810,904,120 worldwide. Think of all the theaters that employee people who are being paid out of that money, advertising firms, media personalities, popcorn manufactures, and beverage companies. All that money generated from an idea. The consumer exchanges some of their hard-earned money in trade for the message of the film, which if you get down to it, is a love of freedom. People bought a ticket to feel freedom through the characters of the pirates. Walt Disney knew it over 50 years ago, and still, to this very day, that primary idea is still being exploited

Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $196,004,120 24.2%
+ Foreign:
$614,900,000 75.8%
________________________________________
= Worldwide: $810,904,120
Domestic Summary
Opening Weekend:
$90,151,958
(#1 rank, 4,155 theaters, $21,697 average)
% of Total Gross: 46.0%
> View All 3 Weekends

Widest Release: 4,164 theaters
In Release: 20 days / 2.9 weeks

If you take the time to think about it, Walt Disney alone is responsible for all the numbers spoke about above. It was his mind that created the platform from which all else was launched.

Using Disney as an example is easy because everyone knows who he is. Most people have seen a Disney film and many people have or desire to go to Disney World. So it has universal appeal.

But taken on a smaller scale I could say the same for some of my developer friends that work with me on the No Lakota Levy campaign. I heard during the last levy campaign constant uttering’s that because they are rich, that it was somehow their social obligation to pay higher taxes on the properties they’ve either built or plan to build to a school system that obviously has no concept of expense. Schools are reflective of all government because they think in a socialist fashion. In their mind they believe that the wealthy owe them something. That’s preposterous!

Where would a community be if the developer did not build homes, if they did not have a vision for the community that lured a certain type of demographic buyer to an area? They are what make a community, through the architect that knows what certain types of home owners desire to buy, and the developer that invests their money into a property to start the process of building. The politicians that loot off those developments with fees, building permits, and other regulations under the guise of “quality control” do nothing to bring an idea into being. They only scoop money off the top of an idea.

And that’s how it usually goes, someone like Bill Gates comes up with a great idea in their garage, build a successful company that changes the life of everyone for the better, then the looters in government come after them. It was the government that decided that Microsoft had become “too big” and sought to break up its monopoly. Good thing the government didn’t break up Walt Disney, because Walt wasn’t making an actual product. He was in the business of creating ideas, so the government wasn’t sure how to destroy that type of business, otherwise they would have.

One of my child hood heroes was Howard Hughes. I saw the Spruce Goose in Los Angeles at the dome when I was a kid and I loved it. I was the only kid in school that wore a Howard Hughes shirt to school while other kids wore their favorite rock bands. When I think of Howard Hughes I think of an innovator who pushed aviation to the absolute limits. He successfully used his wealth to advance aviation to the levels we are accustomed to today.

Source article about Howard Hughes:

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

In 1939, at the urging of Jack Frye, president of TWA, Hughes quietly purchased a majority share of TWA stock for nearly US$7 million and took control of the airline. Upon assuming ownership, Hughes was prohibited by federal law from building his own aircraft. Seeking an aircraft that would perform better than TWA’s fleet of Boeing 307 Stratoliners, Hughes approached Boeing’s competitor, Lockheed. Hughes had a good relationship with Lockheed since they had built the aircraft he used in his record flight around the world in 1938. Lockheed agreed to Hughes’s request that the new aircraft be built-in secrecy. The result was the revolutionary Constellation and TWA purchased the first 40 of the new airliners off the production line. It was Hughes control of TWA that intercontinental airline travel began, the world became suddenly smaller and it was because Hughes pushed to have better planes built.

As the major airlines continued to compete over various routes through the 1940s, TWA gained a reputation for banking its future on the most advanced aircraft available. For example, as United and American began using the DC-6 aircraft, TWA responded by introducing the Lockheed L.1049 Super Constellation on September 10, 1952. The new aircraft had a 35 percent greater passenger carrying capacity than its predecessor. TWA was the first airline to inaugurate regularly scheduled nonstop transcontinental service between Los Angeles and New York on October 19, 1953.

TWA also entered the international market. At the end of World War II, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the organization that distributed routes for U.S. airlines, decided to allow other airlines to share in Pan American’s monopoly of international routes. TWA was one of the airlines granted this right, with permission to fly to Europe and India. TWA began regular New York-to-Paris service in February 1946. This route was later extended to Cairo, Egypt. TWA battled hard with Pan American for various international routes, but it initially failed to exploit its key advantage of being able to connect international flights with domestic ones, a handicap for Pan Am, which did not fly any domestic routes. TWA was also late in introducing jet service internationally, preferring instead to focus on domestic jet services. TWA’s first regularly scheduled jet flight took place on November 23, 1959—a New York-London-Frankfurt flight – a year after its main rivals. It took several years for the airline to regain its competitive advantage lost because of this delay.

Source article:

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/TWA/Tran14.htm

For fun facts about Howard Hughes check out this site.

http://www.funtrivia.com/en/Movies/Aviator-The-13606.html

Howard Hughes drove the industry forward, but as he went along, there was no shortage of parasites that threw themselves in his path to rob from him his wealth in order for their meager lives to profit. Hughes was brought before a congressional committee as a war profiteer because he refused to submit to Senator Brewster’s blackmailing, where Brewster tried to force Hughes to sell TWA to Juan Trippe of Pan Am. The criticism of Hughes was over the Spruce Goose, a plane Howard was developing for the military. Brewster declared that the plane would never fly, and used the hearings as a way to leverage Hughes to sell his shares off. Hughes flew the plane himself and proved them wrong, thereby defeating the take-over by Trippe, and the predatory senator.


The very rich are the heroes of modern American society, and the government looters are no different than the thieves from Europe that sought to tax the colonists in the 1770’s. The common goal is to suppress ideas and keep people under control by using taxes to control behavior. When the very wealthy still strive to achieve success and freedom, there are labor unions, government agencies and other trolls of impropriety that seek to make a name for themselves off the labor of the rich.

America would be far better off if it just stopped feeling guilty for the wealth it has achieved in such a short time. It would also be better off to admit that most politicians do nothing productive. All they make are rules, and rules are not productive. Rules do not make wealth. Therefore, government cannot make anything productive. When the lure of being rich and therefore free of some sort of entity which seeks to control individuals is not present, imagination dies, and imagination is the fuel to innovation which creates productivity.

It is time that Americans stop feeling guilty about whom they are. Work hard, make your money, and buy nice things with it. And guard yourselves from the unproductive government looter. Live your life as well as you can, and look at each day as yet another possibility of limitless opportunity. And when you hear a looter demanding they deserve the wealth of a rich person, defend that rich person as a fellow American, and as an example of the best that America has to offer. Don’t be a jealous fool. Be happy for those that have made it, and as for yourself, keep trying, because as long as America is what it is, there’s always a chance for you. Don’t allow yourself to be the worst that human kind produces and that is a looter that just scrapes through life on the products of others and expects as a divine right, “equal justice.”

My favorite modern company in the entire world is Industrial Light and Magic. To me, they are what every company in America should aspire to be. EVERY COMPANY! And Industrial Light and Magic was born because of Star Wars.






It took a very wealthy George Lucas to bring this gift to the human race.   And George didn’t become wealthy with a hand out.  He took risks, worked on ideas and never settled into a comfort level.  He pushed and pushed and pushed, and still continues to push the limit in everything he does.  This is perhaps the greatest example of how the wealthy should be thanked in every way possible. It is the wealthy, the very rich that shapes our world. It is through less regulation, less government that more companies like Disney, Industrial Light and Magic and many others can emerge. It is a shame that because of government it is our American entertainment companies that succeed the best. That is because entertainment is mostly in the mind and government looters have difficulty regulating the mind, as they have every other industry, agriculture, science, aviation, energy production, transportation…………………imagine what kind of world we could have if government would just GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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

STAR WARS NEW RIDE: Star Tours and the discovery of a building on planet Mars!

Google Mars is a fascinating program. David Martines ran across a structure on the surface of Mars that makes no sense, yet it’s there. Did NASA build it? Did China build it? What about the Soviet Union? If not them, then perhaps another civilization all together, one that does not call Earth its home.

There are a number of unexplained phenomena that defy conventional explanation. Because some college professor with government grant money hasn’t yet discovered them, does not mean they don’t exist. In my opinion, I have seen human culture actually revert backward in this last century because of the stigmas of progressivism, so human invention is most often found best in science fiction and adventure films and books. Those are the realms the mind can comfortably explore possibilities beyond current human understanding.

I personally believe there are a number of archeological features on Mars that must be studied and when we go there, we’ll find out. I also believe that because of religious prejudice there are many eyes that have seen the same images that Mr. Martines has seen, but their belief system will not allow them to see truly what is there. It happens here on earth. We can’t even figure out if human’s have an impact on our own planet, or if the whole green movement is actually a socialist conspiracy, and this is happening on our home planet, let alone some plant next to us in the solar system, or even in another solar system, galaxy, or god forbid, a whole other universe.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in all the drama of all the important issues imposed upon us in these perilous times we are living in. But………………………………….all work and no play does not make an efficient human being. It is very, very good to take a minute and play from time to time.

For me, I have made my love of pirates well-known and I have wrote extensively about them here. But I’ve also wrote about Star Wars a lot also for virtually the same reasons. In such fiction there is a passionate love for freedom and an extreme dislike for tyranny. Tyranny to quote my teacher Joseph Campbell is all the “thou shalt not’s” in our life. It is in the realm of myth to become a dragon slayer to the “thou shalt not’s” and kill them boldly so that ideas may live and thrive without fear. Tyranny is anything that imposes itself on the free mind with intent to control, manipulate or engineer movement that is not authentic to an individual.

Star Wars is a wonderful invention of George Lucas that is a vacation for the mind. It doesn’t even take place in this in this Galaxy. So it is appropriate on the heels of this discovery by Mr. Martines, that George Lucas was in Florida to open the new ride, Star Tours 2, which closed last fall much to my displeasure. But I have been very eager to see the reopening which has just occurred over the last couple of weeks at Disney Hollywood Studios while news broke about the Mars discovery.

Among all the people on this planet, the hope I have for the human race comes from people like this. I go to events like this from time to time, and I adore the passion that is present. Every time Star Wars does something new, whether it’s a new book, video game, film, TV show, Fan Event, or a new ride like Star Tours, politics, prejudices, age stereotypes and gender affiliations are no longer a concern.

It is not an accident that people of all ages from all places love Star Wars. Star Wars is about all the purest notions present in the minds of humanity.

I’ve also talked a lot about this guy, George Lucas. Lucas is the creator of Star Wars, and has been on the forefront of most of the great innovations over the last 30 years. Our world is far better because of him. When Lucas says that his company, Lucasfilm started by a rebel from Modesto California and Disney, created by a guy that dropped out of high school are two of the most innovative companies of their kind in the world, he’s right, when those two companies get together, magic happens.

Whenever there is a big Star Wars event, such as this latest one at Hollywood Studios fans from all over the country show up in costume to celebrate unbridled creativity and the spirit of adventure.

As for the ride itself, here is a sneak peek at the actual ride itself.

During the opening ceremony officially commissioning the ride, George Lucas and Bob Iger join onstage to launch the ride. It was a grand spectacle worthy of the very best that the human imagination can produce.

Without question there are those out there that look at such events with bewilderment. I know such people and I feel sorry for them, because the magic of youth has left them. When I was young, I collected Star Wars toys, and I played with them even into my teens. Many of the young people growing up with me started to make fun of that kind of activity as they became interested in members of the opposite sex.

As a boy I was without question the fastest kid in my entire school. Nobody could run faster than me, in dodge ball I was always the last kid standing and I was one of the strongest. I won the pull-up contest in the winter Olympics event in the fifth grade; in fact I won the school equivalent of a gold medal. I was always really good at sports, all sports especially basketball and hockey, so of course a very pretty, very popular girl wanted to “go steady” with me, in the fifth grade. Now to the adults in my life, it looked as though I was headed in the right direction, cute girlfriend, the gym teacher was telling my parents that scholarships were in my future from any school of my choice because my physical abilities were unusually proficient, and aside from being very combative with my teachers, my future looked bright, except for that one small problem, I spent hours and hours and hours in the basement of my home playing Star Wars with my brother. My family couldn’t afford all the toys that Kenner was producing, so my brother and I built our own, all inspired from the Star Wars galaxy.

A very pretty girl who rode my bus was persistently letting me know she was interested in me. Under pressure from all the other “popular” girls that rode my school bus, and the boys that would soon become the “jocks” in later years, I told the little girl I’d go steady with her. Such a girl promised to be very adventurous. It was well-known that she would probably take off her clothes for me and let me do pretty much whatever I wanted, because she had said so to her girl friends intending me to find out. So I said yes.

At home that night I was doing the usual thing, eating my dinner as fast as possible so I could go downstairs and play Star Wars. During dinner that girl called me.

“Hello,” I said to her as my mom handed me the phone. My parents looked proudly at one another.

“Hey sweetie, what are you doing? I heard you said you’d go steady with me?” the little girl said.

I was looking at the clock. It was about 6:15 PM and I wanted to build a spaceship with some shoe boxes my mom had left in my room. I didn’t want to hang on the phone with some stupid girl. “Auh, yes.”

“So, can you get your mom to bring you over?”

“Tonight? To your house?” I said looking at my mom. I was thinking of the possibilities. This girl was one of those girls back then that had both parents with full occuapations so she was home by herself most of the time. In fact, during the summer, in her neighborhood most of the kids were home by themselves all summer because their parents were always working or too tired to pay attention to what the kids were doing.

“Yes silly, to my house. My mom is going to be gone till 9 and my dad is on a business trip. I’m here by myself and I want you to come over.”

I looked at my mom, my dad, and my brother who was ready to go downstairs and play Star Wars. “What are we going to do?”

The girl giggled on the other end of the phone. “We’ll think of something.”

I knew what that meant. This little girl had let quite a few of the boys she had “gone steady” with, see her naked, so that was what the girl had in mind. She figured that would seal the deal with me.

My life flashed before me. I realized that if I went to that girl’s house once, she’d want to do it again, and again. She’d also want to talk on the phone all the time like a lot of the girls from that time were doing. I did not want to spend my time talking to some stupid girl on the phone. I just wanted to see her naked, but not to get wrapped up in wasting my time. My heart’s desire was to go into the basement and play Star Wars.

“I don’t think I want to go out with you,” I said to the girl.

“What?”

“It’s a school night, and I’m busy.”

The girl started crying. My dad’s face dropped and my brother went downstairs knowing I was going to be off the phone soon. He was younger than me, in kindergarten at the time, so wanting to see a girl naked wasn’t even a relevant thought.

“Nobody has ever broke-up with me before. We’ve only been going out for a couple of hours. Is it because I’m ugly? I’ll do anything you want.”

“It’s not because you’re ugly. It’s just that I……..I’m busy.”

The girl hung up, I went downstairs and played Star Wars. The next day at school, all the girls’ friends were angry at me for breaking up with their friend. One girl who knew me very well because her brother played with my brother and I said, “You broke up with her so you could play that stupid, gay, little Star Wars thing you guys do. Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said honestly.

“I thought so. Well, I’m going to tell her why.”

She did, and from that day on, that girl and all her popular friends shut the door to me out of that rejection. She never really got over it, until we were seniors in high school and my friend and I had a ghastly reputation for excessive speeding, violent fights and other aggressive behavior, and were getting ready to leave school for the day when she came running across the parking lot to stop me. She asked me for a ride home from school.

I looked at the girl; she looked old at only 17. She had been having sex for many years, and virtually every popular boy in school had either seen her naked, or had sex with her in some form or another. She figured because of my reputation I’d want to spend time with her. I think she really needed a ride home, but she was looking for a chance I think. I instantly felt bad for her. She had been very attractive just a couple of years before, but now her skin was blotchy from where she went to the tanning bed too much. She actually had wrinkles around her eyes. Looking at her I couldn’t help but think she reminded me of a sperm suppository that had semen oozing out of the pores of her body.

“No, I can’t.”

I was surprised that her eyes actually welled up with tears. “Why, are you going to go and play Star Wars again?”

I looked at her to assess her pain. It was obvious she was trying to go back in time to fix something in her life, and I felt compelled to help her. But not compelled to stop doing what my friend and I were about to do.

“Sorry, but we’re getting ready to catch Rambo II. The movie starts in 45 minutes.”

I started up my car and skidded out of the school parking lot as was usual. That was the last time I ever saw or spoke to that girl.

The people who grew up successful and happy had little things like Star Wars in their life to help them through tough times. People like that girl, that filled the empty moments in her life with the penis of a young boy, in an attempt to steer that boy where she wanted ended up sick, diseased and terribly broken before they even hit 20 years old.

Mythology like Star Wars touches the mind beyond the animal hungers for sex, food, or the desire for acceptance, which is the first step toward tyranny. This is why I would rather shake hands with a Star Wars fan than any politician, or power player. The people who love Star Wars are creating, if only in their minds. They are creating costumes, they are collecting items, they are reading books and this makes them valuable people.


It is the child in all of us that must be kept alive, and not destroyed in some mindless pursuit of some perceived economic, or social value. The truth of mankind can be found in events like Star Tours.

Because there are many, many more discoveries that must be made for the human race to advance forward, we are a long way from completing the human adventure. So complacency of thought in the mundane realm of food and sex is not enough. When the entire world has the tools of academia at their disposal, it still takes the wondering adventurer, the outcast, the geek, to see what was always there.

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

The College Scam: The cost of bad sex, bad education, and the hook hidden in the bait

TAKE YOUR TIME WITH THIS POST. WATCH THE VIDEOS AND LEARN FOR YOURSELF. WHAT YOU WILL SEE WILL CHALLENGE JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING YOU THINK. SO IT WILL TAKE TIME TO ACCEPT. TAKE YOUR TIME AND ENJOY YOURSELF. THINK ABOUT THIS INFORMATION OVER A PERIOD OF DAYS, NOT HOURS.

By far, out of the three hundred or more articles I’ve written here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom this article about the most successful people who never went to college is the most popular. You can view that article here. I just received the results that the article has reached over 60,000 views up to this point.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/successful-people-that-didnt-go-to-college/

To me, creative geniuses such as Walt Disney, who didn’t even make it out of high school, and Steven Spielberg who didn’t finish college till after he made all the top movies in film history or Bill Gates who dropped out of college to start Microsoft all tell a similar story; creative genius is what drives our society. It is what makes the United States better than other countries. It is exclusively an American trait, the ability to think “outside the box.”

There’s a distinct reason films like Star Wars, and Pixar’s animated films are so distinctly good in the world marketplace.

I mean think about it, what is the last great film you saw from Russia, Germany, China? I can think of a lot of independent films I personally enjoy, but what about the blockbusters that make billions of dollars worldwide, like Avatar, Titanic, Star Wars, or the Pirate of the Caribbean films. Take Pirates of the Caribbean just as an example, as of this writing, On Stranger Tides, the fourth Pirate film, has been out just over a week and currently sits at:

Total Lifetime Grosses

Domestic: $124,447,000 26.1%
+ Foreign:
$352,700,000 73.9%
________________________________________
= Worldwide: $477,147,000

So the foreign market spent $352,700,000 on the new Pirate’s film in just one week? Yes! So where is the great blockbuster coming from China? (crickets) Why? Because American’s think outside the box and are able to make such films as a form of art and entertainment. I use films as an example because we all see them, America is overwhelmingly better at making them, where the rest of the world lags noticeably behind. But the same could be said about virtually any industry, aviation, computer science, (Microsoft wasn’t invented in some foreign land) industry, America is the place where good ol’ horse sense has been the father to the mother of necessity, which gives birth to invention.

But why? Why is America different? Well, I would offer two books to explain the problem to the curious observer. One is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. And Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Both works of literature explain why something things are better than other things and how the process works.

What doesn’t work is college. How is college a scam? College is a European concept and since America has adopted it as a way of educating our population, we’ve lost much of what makes America great. If you do nothing else today watch this documentary by the National Inflation Association called The College Conspiracy. It’s just over one hour-long but it is well done and loaded with important facts which supports what I reported in my article about why some the most successful people in human history didn’t go to college, or dropped out while there.

The bad news for all you education minded people out there, that have spent your entire adult lives either paying for your own college debts, or saving money for your children’s college like a “good” parent is encouraged to do, you are wasting your money. You are being scammed in one of the greatest scams in human history. History will remember this scam in future text books and future human beings will laugh at the blind obedience American’s placed at the feet of this phantom foe.

Of the people I mentioned above, George Lucas did go to USC, and from there he was able to network with other filmmakers, so the college did produce a networking opportunity. But USC did not give George Lucas his genius. USC did not make George Lucas. George Lucas made USC. Lucas also used the model that Walt Disney started, and Uncle Walt has never even graduated High School let alone going to college. Jim Cameron was a drop out from a two-year community college; saw Star Wars from George Lucas while he was a truck driver and decided he wanted to be a filmmaker. Jim got a job at Roger Corman’s studio as a special effects hand and learned by doing. Steven Spielberg snuck onto the lot of Universal Studios and pretended to work there so he could network and learn from working professionals. College had little to do with the success of these people. The success came from their inner creativity and could not be given to them or bought with money in the form of tuition.

I talk about film because I understand that business and people can relate. These are names we all know, so the stories are relevant. Colleges using the names of people like George Lucas, or sports programs like Ohio State, use entertainment to market their product and sell the relevancy of their service which is further education. Film schools were put on the map because everyone wanted to be George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, but to date, with thousands of students enrolled over a twenty year period; nobody is able to mimic their success. College is actually making people less intelligent, not more. I could tell story after story after story about people I’ve either hired that have a college degree, or people I’ve worked with that I had to retrain just so I could deal with them in a productive manner.

I’ve worked in Aerospace and other manufacturing facilities for a number of years. I walked out of college after trying to go three times. I went for a lot of the reasons described in the film above; I wanted to qualify for a higher income bracket. But I realize while going that the professors were actually stretching everything out and trying to waste my time. I wanted to learn 3 times faster, but the professors were working by the class and had the same mentality as someone who works in a union that gets paid by the hour. They weren’t in any particular hurry to launch me on my course. And I realized that the value of the degree had less meaning because everyone was getting one. So I chose the traditional path, and worked my way up through hard work. I learned by doing and I’m glad I did, because I notice that I have an advantage over others my age that seem to lack common sense, because it has been trained out of them. I literally walked out of a philosophy class where the professor was teaching from a book I had read years before on my own. I wrote the whole thing off as a tremendous waste of time and energy so I cut my losses before I put too much money into a worthless enterprise.

College is in the process of coming completely undone. Its funding expectations are too high. It’s not able to give students the level of service they are trying to sell. It is in every sense of the word a complete scam.

Teachers unions use college in two ways; they have created state legislation that pays their union members according to their education level. This ensures that new teachers will continue to further their education and support the system to some extent. Then the wage rates are predicated based on the degrees obtained which costs the taxpayer more to fund. Teachers also use college as a justification for why they are needed in high school, and why they should be paid so highly. “Don’t you want your child to get a good education so they can do well in college, and therefore get a good job? You’re a bad parent if you don’t do these things.” Well, I’d say you’re a bad parent if you do send your kids to college.

I have argued for many years with virtually every member of my family that college is a stupid idea. Of course people told me that I just hate education, that I always have and my opinion was skewed against it. They’d say that I hate authority which is true, but not for the reasons they think. (Authority kills imagination which I consider the most important human trait.)

People assume that if you dislike education it’s because you can’t do the work. Well, there’s also another reason, a better reason to dislike education; that’s because it’s a massive lie that has been perpetuated on our society which has made us a worse nation, not a better one. And, it robs individuals of the opportunity, the supreme achievement, of becoming “self made.” There is no higher quality of human endeavor but to produce from an individual’s own inclinations and education. The way education functions now prevent it. Education has within it a whole social class of looters that live off the public dime and provide virtually nothing that a good parent, aunt, uncle, or grandparent can’t provide for a child. I despise college education so much that when my kids want to make me mad they don’t threaten to sneak out of the house on some drunken binge with a bunch of low-life’s, or to get a tattoo in some embarrassing region of their bodies, they threaten to go to college in a place like Oxford, out of the country and in the hot bed of socialist teaching.

My wife went to college for a number of years even though she didn’t need to. I always made sure she didn’t have to work, and could stay home with our kids, and now that our kids are raised, she has the whole day to herself, which I consider valuable. For instance, it gives me great pleasure when she takes a day to go shopping, buys new items at Victoria Secret; perfume from Nordstrom’s and is ready for action when I step into the house at the end of a long day. Yes, I expect it. With her not having to work, dinner is made, the laundry is done, she is happy without the headache of some foolish boss or co-worker that is irritating her, so her mind is clear for a good romp in the bed when I get home, or maybe in the kitchen. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with throwing everything off the kitchen table and doing your business there either. Everybody thinks this way, but socially they don’t admit it unless they are intoxicated. Men can drop their worries quickly and sex actually relaxes them. Women worry about more things, so the more you give them to worry about, the longer it will take them to arrive at a point where they are ready for sex. So it only makes sense, if you’re a guy that wants lots of sex from your wife, wouldn’t it makes sense to keep her mind as relaxed and free of worry as possible? If people drop the crappy social progressive feminism agenda, they’d be a lot happier, take fewer drugs for mental problems and their sex life would be a whole lot better. (Just some advice for those with the courage to take it.) But anyway, I’d ask her, “Why do you want to go to college.” Her reasons were those that her mother gave her, “Once you have that degree, it always goes with you. She wants me to have that degree in case something happens to you, so I will be ok.”

“Where am I going,” I’d ask.

“Well, in case we get divorced, or you die or something.” ??????????????????????????????

Her mother is one of those people who bought into the lie of what college will do for you. She grew up in the time of Lyndon Johnston and all the Great Society talk that has all-but ruined our country now. These ideas of college, feminism, security and even divorce are all born in that age, so that’s why she thinks the way she does. People like her believed that by simply obtaining the document of a diploma there was some sort of infinite security that extended to the horizon of human existence until death which is a preposterous notion.

I could tell personal stories all day long about why colleges fail, and their professors fail worse in most cases. I know a few truly brilliant minds that are professors, they write books I enjoy, and I like their lectures. The problem with them is that mostly, everything is cerebral. They can say something without understanding how it can be practically applied. There was much discussion in the Western Arts Community of making my book The Symposium of Justice into a movie. A college professor from Ohio University that was the instructor of the media program there approached me at a bullwhip competition and said he loved my book and wanted to produce a short from it to distribute at film festivals. I agreed thinking it would be a good publicity spot for my book which would involve intense action scenes and it sounded fun.

I arranged to have an actress flown in to play the female lead; we brought in a stunt coordinator, cast a big guy to play the villain and assembled a crew. The professor was set to direct. He showed up on the set and I turned the action over to him.

He was completely lost. He had been teaching people for years how to direct television and film productions, he had stood in front of countless creative minds and proclaimed authority, and here was his chance to actually do it for a real production when it mattered.

We managed to get some good whip stunt shots, and as I pressed him on assembling a final cut that we were set to present to a film festival, he kept delaying. Eventually, after I pressed him to great lengths, he confessed that he didn’t have any good shots from our two-day shoot and hadn’t even compiled any usable footage after two months of editing a 5 minute fight sequence. I was furious on the phone with him and after I hung up told my wife who tried to be a voice of reason for the poor fool, that I could have cut together that footage in a weekend. It took him two months and he produced not one useable shot! What happened to him was he was embodying the long said notion of those who can’t do, teach. He was turning out to be a guy that couldn’t practice in reality what he was teaching students to achieve. Even with placing in his hands great quality whip work, he couldn’t even assemble footage that he had the confidence to send to a film festival. I was as furious with him as I’ve ever been with anybody I’ve ever worked with on a project. He sold me his talent based on his academic credentials, I invested time and money into him, and he failed to deliver anything of any use. I ended up finishing the clip myself in what became The Overman, which won best experimental micro film at the India Gathering Film Festival. It took me several months to get a new crew together and to recover from the previous folly, but it worked out well.

The short of it is that I have personally witnessed that much of the money poured into college, and public school is being completely wasted. Education is fine if people want the traditional education options, but it is not worth the amounts of money we are spending. College certainly cannot, hedge the inflation wave that is about to hit it. What it is selling cannot match the value of the end result that is increasingly becoming much less valuable. The students are learning the wrong things and paying too much for it, the value isn’t translating to real economic value. It’s just currently a system that everyone that works in education benefits from, so of course they don’t want it to change.

Traditional education is needed for the sciences. It’s needed for some art and computer oriented technology. But that’s about it. Everything else could be learned on the job someplace, including economics. One of the examples of this supersaturation of degrees is in lawyers. We have way too many that expect to earn good livings off divorces, law suits, DUI’s, and politics. None of those items are positive for our culture, yet we encourage young people to become them! Why would you tell your kid to become a leech on society, so they can make a good living? Yes, many parents would admit to as much. They would push their children into a law degree hoping their children could become a leech in a service industry, because that’s all legal work is. Legal work doesn’t produce anything. It doesn’t make something you can sell to another country. It only allows one person to take wealth from another; it’s simply an exchange of existing wealth. If we wanted society to be better, we’d produce fewer lawyers, because it’s the lawyers that have trouble making a living in the private sector that are drawn to politics so they can live off the public dime and make the kind of money they were promised in college. It’s a vicious cycle of non-productive thinking that is rooted in a looter mentality.

Economics is another service oriented field. What is it? What does it produce? It tells people how to move funds from one account to another or one investment to another, but it doesn’t actually make anything. So why so much emphasis? Parents will say, because I want my child to become rich. They say those things because the busy parent believes the college literature that their child will be successful at life if the parent spends 30K a year on higher education regardless of the usefulness of the field of study.

That same parent will be mystified why their child listens with so much interest to what Uncle Larry has to say, because Uncle Larry even though he’s all grown up still plays with the children on the floor, still talks the kid’s language. Years later when the child grows up and is sitting in court watching his assets being divided up because he’s going through his first divorce due to his wife’s affair with her boss and  left him for the price of simple cruise in the Bahamas, it isn’t the professors in college the man will think of, or even his parents who cast him like trash into the garbage can of college where all that’s in that dump are the inflated minds of highly paid fools that if they had any real value they’d be out producing in the world somewhere. The man will think of Uncle Larry and all the times they played together in the floor, and how wise Uncle Larry seemed. He’ll think of the time that Uncle Larry was having sex with Aunt Rose and the whole neighborhood could hear the noise through an open bedroom window. The man will think, yeah, Uncle Larry was cool then, and he’s cool now………….and he’s still married to Aunt Rose. Uncle Larry kept Aunt Rose feed so there was no boss to run off with. Uncle Larry thought like other kids, only he was in a grown-up body and seemed to be an equal back then. Now Uncle Larry seemed like a genius because the man was less of a person in the courtroom than he was when he was a boy. Somehow over the years he had regressed instead of growing and it was public education and college that killed his spirit making him less of a man than the boy he had been while playing in the floor with Uncle Larry.

As the judges gavel comes down and the ex-wife takes half of their combined wealth and the kids wonder what it’s going to be like to live in a house with a new daddy, the man watches his wife leave the courtroom and wishes he had listened to Uncle Larry, saved his money, not went to college, had more sex with his wife, worried less about silly things, and not allowed so many people who only wanted to make money off him to scam his existence to this monumental moment in court. The man will wish he was back in his childhood playing with Uncle Larry while all the other adults sneered at the immature Uncle and his antisocial antics. The man will wish that he never poured a dime into college that in an indirect way destroyed everything he ever hoped to be by taking the bait cast by an elusive fisherman, that life will be prosperous if he’ll only bite down on the hook.

Once you bite down, you’re caught. The following video is no different from a typical fundraising campaign for education institutions. Whether its fish or tax payers, the lure is all the same.

All too late many realize as the man does in his failed life, that college was but a simple lure no different from fishing. The fisherman is the education institutions that dangle the lure of a good comfortable life. The fisherman promises food for hungry fish. And we are all fish just swimming around trying to mind our own business. We want to eat, and colleges offer us food that only turn out to leave us stuck on the hook.

It is time to take a hard look at not just public education, but also the value of college education, because as it stands, it’s an over-inflated scam filled with looters that are actually weakening our society and a budget break is heading our way as the bubble is soon to burst. Our society will need to be psychologically ready for the fall-out of such an implication.

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

Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides: A Movie Review and Commentary

It doesn’t happen often, where I walk out of a movie theater at 2:30 am and feel as awake as midday. It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve seen a movie I enjoyed as much as the new Pirates of the Caribbean film, On Stranger Tides.

People who read my work frequently know that I cover school levies, political corruption, and legal maneuvering to great extent on these pages. However, I do an occasional story about football, motorcycles, and films also. My very first love in life is mythology, the stories of cultures. Stories tell you the true nature of the culture you are studying. This is why I know so much about the inner workings of politics, is because I understand the myths of the culture. So I can see through the stories politicians attempt to tell to sell the idea they are portraying. I know mythology from books. I know mythology from my life. And I know mythology from actually doing work in the entertainment business on occasion. So I understand all too well the difficulties of bringing a vast mythology to life that reflects more than what visuals can speak of, that speaks to the human heart. I learned when I was very young that some of the most accurate votes cast occurring in human culture is happening at movie theaters with the price of a ticket. What people chose to see at a movie theater is an accurate gage of the psychology of the over-all culture.

When it is all-encompassing, especially for people like me and the friends I associate with, to be politically active, to have concerns of George Soros and his “Open Society” of communist thought, or Barrack Obama’s latest faux pas, it is good, and revealing to step into a darkened theater and witness truth in the form of fiction. Even though many in Hollywood are leftists, the good stories they tell are not. Not the ones that sell tickets anyway. There are ideas in stories that contain truth because the mythology of that story has innate value, which transcended the political view points of the actors and directors because it’s the story that matters. It is the story that communicates. The actors are but vehicles that take you to the story.

The success of The Pirate of the Caribbean films reflects a deeper yearning in human society that moves beyond the political direction of power players such as what you might find in politics. The desire for individuality cannot be overlooked when the characters in films ooze such traits, and the recent surge in this last decade in the amount of young people who are getting tattoos is testimony to a social desire to “be unique,” to have something they choose themselves to place upon their bodies that they did not inherit from their parents. Something they decide to give themselves as a way to mark their bodies in an individual way. This is the inner pirate in all people, the desire to be unique, free, and left alone. The human need for this is very strong, and even though I, or anyone in my immediate family do not have tattoos of any kind, I understand the need. Tattoos are something I’d discourage someone from getting, because there are better ways to communicate individuality. But the human spirit craves authenticity. I have seen this same behavior in Key West where women completely undress at the Adam and Eve, the nude bar that sits above the Bull and Whistle and have body paint artists paint their bodies in such a way that they can walk down Duval Street completely nude, yet appear from a distance to be wearing cloths. The women get the sensation of being publicly nude and fearless, without openly breaking the law. This is an act of rebellion brought on by the necessity of an over-regulated society, a perversion of nature where an inner fantasy must be aligned with the living person because in daily life the two aspects function too far from each other.

I have acquaintances that work in show biz that are very liberal and often times they see me as their political enemy in matters of social value, but on a set or at the lunch table over a pizza, we have more in common then they’d wish to admit. I often shake my finger at them and remind them that they are living Doctor Jeckle and Mr. Hyde existences, and they won’t be happy as people until they unify their thoughts with their reality. But they don’t listen. Instead, they get tattoos and paint their bodies in drunken rages on occasion, because the social engineering doesn’t work, and their true natures only come out in drinking binges or in darkened theaters.

And that brings us to the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. I know why I love pirates. I’ve talked about it on these pages at great length. I like them so much that when Branden Keefe of Channel 9 News came to my house recently to do a story he asked me, “Are those cannons?”

Yes,” I replied. He was looking at the cannons I have on my porch that I use to fire off during football games in the fall, or to announce the start of a new meeting at my house. I fired these cannons off at the start of a Tea Party meeting of the State Sovereignty Committee much to the amusement of my guests because they had never seen anything like that before. But my neighbors are used to it. Such things are part of the “pirate’s life for me.” It’s part of living the mythology of existence instead of just being a passive observer.

So am I alone in this love? No. People love The Pirate of the Caribbean movies. They love them for the high adventure. They love them for the spectacle. And they love them for the character Johnny Depp created in Captain Jack Sparrow. I was concerned when I learned that On Stranger Tides was going to have a more toned down budget then the previous film At Worlds End. Well…..in each of the previous three Pirate films, there were moments that I didn’t like. I enjoyed the overall story line, the high adventure, the sets, the visual effects, but I always felt there wasn’t quite enough swashbuckler in the series that should be oozing out of it. I always attributed this problem with too many characters and Disney-like sappy sub-plots that belonged in a different kind of movie. Critics like those sub-plots, but I don’t. A pirate film should be all about the swashbuckler and much less about emotion.

On Stranger Tides I expected to be not so good. I thought that if Disney pulled in the budget, that the franchise would suffer. But then I saw the budget, and noticed that even this scaled down version of the Pirates of the Caribbean series was north of $200 million, I was curious.

My wife and I planned to see the movie on Friday night. But, this is a film we wanted to share with our kids, because my kids grew up with a love of adventure films. I showed them every action film ever made when they were growing up, and they understand my passion for Pirates. Plus, in my family, our favorite past-time that we do together is playing the Pirates Constructible Strategy Game by WizKids, so my wife refused to go without the kids, and they were all working. So finding an open window where we could all get together and see the movie was very problematic, and I was getting irritated at all the various schedules.

During Saturday, May 21, 2011 I started checking the numbers from Box Office Mojo and saw that On Stranger Tides on Friday had pulled in $35 million which was good. Plus it had pulled in $92 million worldwide, so that was even better. The total take up to Saturday morning was $127 million, which is very good. If the film cost just over $200 million and Disney poured another $200 million in promotion, which means by the time everything is said and done, On Stranger Tides will be close to $500 million in total upfront investment, then Friday’s take puts it on target to recover its money, which is important, because for people like me, if a film like this doesn’t make its money back, more films like it won’t be made in the future. Plus, like I said, the amount of ticket sales is to me a kind of worldwide vote on the type of values our culture embraces, so I found such numbers much to my liking.

My wife and I entertained guests from across the pond on Saturday for a good part of the day. I kept looking at the clock all day for an opening that wouldn’t present itself. I told my wife, “We have to see the new Pirates movie this weekend! And we’re running out of time!”

She got on the phone and arranged to get my kids all together after everyone finished work and all their own social engagements were completed and we met at Showcase Cinema Springdale at 11:30 PM Saturday night, the last showing of Pirates for the day.

Again, I expected a fun film. I expected to be a little let down, but to enjoy the over-all tone of the film. What I saw surprised me.

The film was fantastic! It was a lot better than the other three. All the sappy sub-plots, the love story, the social commentary and all the confusing characters, were gone. What On Stranger Tides did was accomplish the perfect swashbuckler that would have made Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks proud. It was the best movie of its kind that I had seen since The Mask of Zorro in 1998. On Stranger Tides had great stunt coordination with the sword fights, and action sequences, it had compelling characters that you either loved or hated, the visual effects were fantastic and not over-the-top and the plot was a simple treasure hunt that had old-fashioned appeal. It was obvious the Pirates franchise had either discovered itself again, or had just re-invented itself into a mature adult. From the kind of film On Stranger Tides is, it is the perfect movie. I can’t think of a frame of film that I did not like. Maybe the sequence with the palm tree, I understand what they were trying to do, but the physics didn’t work for me. But other than that, everything was fantastic.

It was such a good movie, I actually have to place it somewhere between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as far as a film that captured the spirit of high adventure. It was that good of a film.

Those things aside, the move would have been awesome all by itself. But for me personally something else held my heart dearer than anything I’ve seen for years on a movie screen, or even in real life. When it first hit the screen around 12:20 in the morning I thought I had died and gone to heaven, for I had seen something that had only existed in my mind up to that point.

My wife and I have lots of secret places we like to run off to. I’ve talked about Key West, Newport on the Levy, our favorite book store among many things. One of our favorite places is Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play football. We love to stay in the Hilton on the Bay, eat at the International Mall, and catch a game at Ray Jay when we can get away for the weekend in the fall. Now, I love my wife. But one of my other great loves in this world is the Pirate Ship inside that stadium. I am utterly in love with the big skull that hangs off the bow of that ship, and has red glowing eyes and breathes smoke during the football game. I’ve told the Glazer family myself how much I admire them for building such a thing and I fly the Buccaneer flags they gave me personally every Sunday afternoon during football season in tribute to their pirate ship, because I think it is so innovative, creative, and such a good tool that engages the fans in the game. It certainly raised the bar in the NFL as to the fan experience. So what happened at 12:20 took my breath away, because it was obvious to me that Rob Marshall, director of On Stranger Tides feels the way I do about pirate ships with skulls on the bows.

The Queen Ann’s Revenge is a ship I know from our Pirates Constructible Game. I know the ship from history too, as the ship that Blackbeard died on when getting stuck on a sand bar off the coast of the Carolinas. Well, in this film, Blackbeard is alive and well, which he is fantastic to look at, and The Queen Ann’s Revenge is a haunted ghost ship that is absolutely spectacular. And I don’t mean spectacular with a little “s.” I mean SPECTACULAR! Nothing short of jaw dropping spectacular!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Disney crew actually built a life-sized ship that they filmed on. There was no cheap visual effects shortcut here. They built an actual life-sized ghost ship that oozed pure sinister evil over every frame of film. It is worth the price of a ticket just to see this ship on the screen. It’s that good!

The story worked at every level. It was fun, romantic, thrilling, mysterious, and historically authentic. The costume design was first-rate, and I mean Academy Award winning material. If On Stranger Tides doesn’t get Oscars for best Visual Effects, Sound, and Costume Design, I would hate to see the film that beats it, because those categories were all top-notch, and I mean top.

When the film ended, I felt refreshed, completely rejuvenated even in the small hours of the morning. The film took my family on an unforgettable adventure that is of a quality I have not seen in well over a decade. There have been good movies since the films I mentioned, like the Mask of Zorro, and the first two Indiana Jones films, but On Stranger Tides is the first that comes to my mind probably in the lifetimes of many young people going to see this film to have such an experience.

This was not a tired old recycle of a franchise. This was a stand-alone first film that would be forever remembered if it was part one and not a fourth film. Any fears of not having the characters of Elizabeth and Will in the film are dismissed. The film is about Captain Jack, but the supporting characters such as Penelope Cruz as the old flame of Sparrow and Blackbeard’s daughter was perfect. She fit the role as though she were born to play the part. Barbarossa was still perfectly played as he was in the other three films, but Blackbeard in this film could go down as a classic villain as popular as Darth Vader. He was that good in this film.

Will people go see this movie three, four, ten times like they did in previous films? I don’t know. We live in a pretty cynical age. Film goers are pretty jaded these days, so whether or not they appreciate what at good film On Stranger Tides truly is will remain to be seen. I was just complaining the other day that nobody was making films like this anymore, and Disney actually pulled it off and they did it by trimming down their budget and expectations. They put restrictions on themselves to make their funding model more viable and not attempt to be everything to everybody. They focused on just doing a good job and letting the chips fall where they may. And it worked.

This film should be a lesson to everyone. Sometimes, less is more. Put the money where it counts and decide what you don’t need than make everything count. On Stranger Tides does that very well and will go down in film history as one of the very best films that Hollywood has to offer in a long tradition of evoking modern mythology to reflect the consciousness of the human spirit.

This is Hollywood at it’s best!


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