A Controversial Chuck Yeager Endorsement of Donald Trump: Whether or not he did or didn’t is irrelevant

There is some debate about whether or not Chuck Yeager actually put the following endorsement of Donald Trump up on his Facebook account.  Yeager is someone I personally admire, and I’ve been a fan of him for most of my life.  He’s certainly one of the greatest American heroes we have, not only as a World War II ace fighter pilot, but as a test pilot, most spectacularly being the first person to break the speed of sound. Reading this endorsement it sounded like him.  But, he is a military man, and I can see a scenario where he might have posted it but was told to take it down for all the same reasons that Mitt Romney came out against Donald Trump.  Regardless of its authenticity, it does make a very compelling case in favor of Donald Trump and is worth consideration ahead of the upcoming statewide primaries across the nation.  I’m inclined to believe that Chuck Yeager believes what is aforementioned written, but the words are worth their weight free of official endorsement because they capture the essence quite well of what the Donald Trump phenomena is really about.  God bless the World War II generation for their logic and resolve.

Chuck Yeager’s endorsement is printed below, in full.

Donald Trump……..who he REALLY is….The criticisms of Trump are amazingly missing something. They are lacking in negative stories from those who work for him or have had business dealings with him. After all the employees he’s had and all the business deals he’s made there is a void of criticism. In fact, long term employees call him a strong and merciful leader and say he is far more righteous and of high integrity than people may think.

And while it may surprise many, he’s actually humble when it comes to his generosity and kindness. A good example is a story that tells of his limo breaking down on a deserted highway outside of New York City. A middle-aged couple stopped to help him and as a thank you he paid off their mortgage, but he didn’t brag about that. Generous and good people rarely talk of charity they bestow on others. But as much as all this is interesting, the real thing that people want to know is what Donald Trump’s plan is for America. It’s funny how so many people say they don’t know what it is, or they act like Trump is hiding it. The information is readily available if people would just do a little homework. But, since most Americans won’t do their own research, here, in no particular order, is an overview of many of Trump’s positions and plans:

1.) Trump believes that America should not intervene militarily in other country’s problems without being compensated for doing so. If America is going to risk the lives of our soldiers and incur the expense of going to war, then the nations we help must be willing to pay for our help. Using the Iraq War as an example, he cites the huge monetary expense to American taxpayers (over $1.5 trillion, and possibly much more depending on what sources are used to determine the cost) in addition to the cost in human life. He suggests that Iraq should have been required to give us enough of their oil to pay for the expenses we incurred. He includes in those expenses the medical costs for our military and $5 million for each family that lost a loved one in the war and $2 million for each family of soldiers who received severe injuries.

2.) Speaking of the military, Trump wants America to have a strong military again. He believes the single most important function of the federal government is national defense. He has said he wants to find the General Patton or General MacArthur that could lead our military buildup back to the strength it needs to be. While he hasn’t said it directly that I know of, Trump’s attitude about America and about winning tells me he’d most likely be quick to eliminate rules of engagement that handicap our military in battle. Clearly Trump is a “win at all costs” kind of guy, and I’m sure that would apply to our national defense and security, too.

3.) Trump wants a strong foreign policy and believes that it must include 8 core principles (which seem to support my comment in the last point):
American interests come first. Always. No apologies.
Maximum firepower and military preparedness.
Only go to war to win.
Stay loyal to your friends and suspicious of your enemies.
Keep the technological sword razor sharp.
See the unseen.
Prepare for threats before they materialize.
Respect and support our present and past warriors.

4.) Trump believes that terrorists who are captured should be treated as military combatants, not as criminals like the Obama administration treats them.

5.) Trump makes the point that China’s manipulation of their currency has given them unfair advantage in our trade dealings with them. He says we must tax their imports to offset their currency manipulation, which will cause American companies to be competitive again and drive manufacturing back to America and create jobs here. Although he sees China as the biggest offender, he believes that America should protect itself from all foreign efforts to take our jobs and manufacturing. For example, Ford is building a plant in Mexico and Trump suggests that every part or vehicle Ford makes in Mexico be taxed 35% if they want to bring it into the U. S., which would cause companies like Ford to no longer be competitive using their Mexican operations and move manufacturing back to the U. S., once again creating jobs here.

6.) Trump wants passage of NOPEC legislation (No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act – NOPEC – S.394), which would allow the government to sue OPEC for violating antitrust laws. According to Trump, that would break up the cartel. He also wants to unleash our energy companies to drill domestically (sound like Sarah Palin’s drill baby, drill?) thereby increasing domestic production creating jobs and driving domestic costs of oil and gas down while reducing dependence on foreign oil.

7.) Trump believes a secure border is critical for both security and prosperity in America. He wants to build a wall to stop illegals from entering put controls on immigration. (And he says he’ll get Mexico to pay for the wall, which many have scoffed at, but given his business successes I wouldn’t put it past him.) He also wants to enforce our immigration laws and provide no path to citizenship for illegals.

8.) Trump wants a radical change to the tax system to not only make it better for average Americans, but also to encourage businesses to stay here and foreign businesses to move here. The resulting influx of money to our nation would do wonders for our economy. He wants to make America the place to do business. He also wants to lower the death tax and the taxes on capital gains and dividends. This would put more than $1.6 trillion back into the economy and help rebuild the 1.5 million jobs we’ve lost to the current tax system. He also wants to charge companies who outsource jobs overseas a 20% tax, but for those willing to move jobs back to America they would not be taxed. And for citizens he has a tax plan that would allow Americans to keep more of what they earn and spark economic growth. He wants to change the personal income tax to:

Up to $30,000 taxed at 1% From $30,000 to $100,000 taxed at 5%From $100,000 to $1,000,000 taxed at 10%$1,000,000 and above taxed at 15%

9.) Trump wants Obamacare repealed. He says it’s a “job-killing, health care-destroying monstrosity” that “can’t be reformed, salvaged, or fixed.” He believes in allowing real competition in the health insurance marketplace to allow competition to drive prices down. He also believes in tort reform to get rid of defensive medicine and lower costs.

10.) Trump wants spending reforms in Washington, acknowledging that America spends far more than it receives in revenue. He has said he believes that if we don’t stop increasing the national debt once it hits $24 trillion it will be impossible to save this country. Even though he says we need to cut spending, he does not want to harm those on Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. He believes that the citizens have faithfully paid in to the system to have these services available and that the American government has an obligation to fulfill its end of the bargain and provide those benefits. Therefore, he wants to build the economy

http://www.catholic.org/news/politics/story.php?id=62911

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

The Blue Collar Billionaire: Why Donald Trump is far better than Ted Cruz in 2016

It is very interesting that one of the biggest faults being leveled at Donald Trump for president is that he is willing to compromise and make deals from the Executive Office and that makes him in the eyes of establishment Republicans–untrustworthy.   Given the nature of our Republic, that is the means of managing our government–negotiations.  Ted Cruz on the other hand represents an uncompromising approach to upholding the Constitution—which sounds great on the surface, but as he says, the Washington “Cartel” has no interest in the Constitution, and will simply outmaneuver him at every juncture would he be in the White House instead of Trump.  That is why I say that Cruz would be perfect for a 2024 run, but Trump is perfect now—because Trump has the skills to come out on top in the current deal making culture that embodies modern Washington.  Cruz needs to have some things fixed before he could be effective.  Essentially, the party rule that is currently in place on both sides needs to end—before someone like Cruz could be effective in the White House.  In its present form, Cruz would be paralyzed by the bureaucracy.

The most epic condition of compromise and coming out on the bad side of a deal was Ohio’s very own Governor Kasich and Speaker of the House John Boehner who went golfing with President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.  The Republican Party was essentially neutered in that exchange leaving neither Boehner nor Kasich able to do anything against Obama after it.  I expect deals to be made in Washington.  Our own Constitution was written by making deals between the Anti-Federalists and the Federalists—with Alexander Hamilton coming out mostly on top giving us the Constitution that Ted Cruz reveres so fervently to this day.  Later the Bill of Rights was added to appease the Jeffersonian Anti-Federalists because the Constitution didn’t go far enough and they screamed and pushed until somebody listened.

I’m a pretty rigid person—I stick to my guns on things.  But I also negotiate a lot.  I work with professionals intensely at times, I negotiate around my community, within our family—dealing with children is a constant negotiation—(you can have this if you do that….etc.)  But I most of the time get exactly what I want out of the situation.  I know where my inner bar is set and what parameters I can live with—which is the benchmark of sales ability.  Ted Cruz apparently is missing that.  Honesty is a wonderful trait so long as the people you are dealing with don’t want to play any games—but the human race is currently addicted to games and that is unlikely to change anytime within the next thousand years—so the skills needed to lead a capitalist country like America swarming with socialist sympathizers, aggressive global banks, and clandestine terrorists are elements that must be well represented in the White House. And Trump is the only guy in centuries able to even come close to performing such a tricky job.  The other one that I can think of was Andrew Jackson, whom even though he was a Democrat, I think a lot of.  He did many things wrong, but he had a swagger that was uniquely American and he paid down the debt.  Trump reminds me of that type of potential president—which after all the cross-fire and debate, helped make America one of the greatest countries on earth.  We wouldn’t have Florida if not for Jackson, and likely would have lost the War of 1812.  American needs charismatic characters in the White House once again to rebuild the Republican brand, because right now, that brand is terrible.  And before everyone says that Jackson was a racist and was vile, understand that Woodrow Wilson, the progressive hero was far worse.  Understand history before placing characters from the past into present context.

I am not disturbed at all by The Washington Times secret tapes.  Trump cannot be literal in anything he does because in his mind he knows where his margins are.  Do the American people deserve to know where those margins are—traditionally yes?  But under the circumstances of our present condition, where you can’t trust politicians or understand what their real motivations are—or trust the media and the hit groups behind them which fund everything—information in this day and age has to be somewhat obscure.  It’s a game that has to be played—and the only people you can trust are people who have actually done things.  With Trump, I can see the things he’s built.  I see his nice family, and that is résumé enough for me.  I have a pretty good idea where his margins are based on what he produces.  As it stands for instance our immigration policy is an open sore that is guided by George Soros policies.  That effort has to be undermined by a really good negotiator who can convince a majority of congress, the senate, and the media of its relevance.  A good salesman knows that there is no chance of that happening unless the other party thinks it can get something out of it.  Trump knows that the best way to negotiate is to start off with a strong position that scares that crap out of everyone, then working back from that position to make the other side think it got something out of the deal.  In reality, Trump gets what he wants, which is an enforceable immigration policy and people will eventually be happy with it—as opposed to the Ted Cruz method which is to draw a line in the sand and force a floor battle over budgets and policy that just angers everyone—and gets nothing done at all.   Good management often requires this constant back and force in negotiations, and a good manager knows where to set their high points and how to achieve at their margin without breaking the other side.  Optimally, the other side will feel like they got something out of the deal and everyone walks away happy.

I know this game—but I am surprised that more people in politics don’t understand it.  It could be said that they don’t know it out of convenience.  But after watching the barrage of establishment Republicans berate Donald Trump over the last couple weeks—after the Super Tuesday wins made it very evident that he was really in a position to win the nomination—I was convinced that they really are just stupid.  For that reason, they shouldn’t even be in public office.  Ted Cruz is a legal mind, and we certainly don’t need people like that negotiating anything.  They’ve been doing it for years and they lack the imagination to set a bar at a high mark that they can work to a margin to show compromise.  It sounds good on a campaign trail to tell people you won’t compromise, but the Cruz rigidity has given him no ground as a senator to work from.  He has no allies, and as a President members of his own party will defy him just to spite him.  I think Cruz would have the best of intentions but we all know the path to hell is always paved with good intentions.  Personally, I don’t want any more paths to hell.  I want a president who knows how to win negotiations domestically, and internationally.

What I want out of a president is a guy who can golf with a couple of politicians and win for a change at the real game being played—the negotiations on position.  I was so embarrassed by Kasich and Boehner because they were out-witted by a guy so inept, and has no background in achievement, that they came out looking like fools.  Kasich and Boehner came away from that famous golf game licking the feet of Barack Obama.  I want a guy on the Republican side who can turn those tables for a change, and leave Democrats thanking Trump for all his hospitality afterwards—for expanding the economy, enforcing immigration, opening up the Second Amendment, getting rid of Common Core, and many other things—then stripping down naked to sell their cloths to a charity that Melania Trump is hosting—then thanking the couple and asking for another chance to give their very shirts off their backs again.  That is how Trump will win where Cruz will just create more government gridlock.

You know the situation is dire when the Republican Establishment is dying for Ted Cruz over Donald Trump—even after Cruz had called them essentially an organized crime syndicate.  They figure that they can at least stand up to Cruz and make him appear ineffective—and punish voters for going in his direction.  But with Trump—they can’t deal with a private sector guy in the White House.  Trump would change their culture and that is something that terrifies them.  And what we’d end up getting as a result would be so much more than we have right now paving the way for a true Constitutional Republic in the aftermath.

When playing this kind of chess, you sometimes have to think not just four or five moves ahead, but four of five games ahead.  That is what is needed to beat these establishment types.  This election with Trump is only game one—and we need a lot more victories than one.  We need to start winning for the next 100 years.  People need to start thinking bigger and working toward those goals with an understanding of how the game is played.  This isn’t checkers.  It’s certainly chess.  Ted Cruz and the rest of the GOP are playing checkers.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

The Facts About Trump University: Ambulance chasers and political hacks trying to stop history at the expense of truth

Many people from the Republican establishment hope and pray that the legal issues surrounding Trump University will sink Donald Trump as a presidential candidate.  However, unlike them, Trump has put himself into contact with thousands and thousands of people who want to sue him at the slightest provocation—because he is so incredibly wealthy.  Public sector politicians really don’t understand that kind of risk—yet Trump has thrived in spite of that treacherous trend.  Even so, it is hard to find people out of literally the many tens of thousands who have been in direct contact with him as either employees, or customers who can say anything bad about him.  I’m a really good person and it would be easy for people to find two or three hundred people who hate me and would love to bury me anyway they could.  Trump runs an even greater risk of that kind of attitude, yet even on such a large stage, very few can actually step forward and say anything against him.  Those that do are obvious ambulance chasers and that is the situation surrounding Trump University.  Here is Trump explaining the situation with evidence to provide clarification to the controversy. 

When it comes time to vote for Trump in your state—do it!  It’s not just a vote for a really good guy who doesn’t say enough about all the people he’s helped.  It’s a shot in the hull of a really corrupt band of pirate outlaws holding the GOP hostage—and they need to be driven out.  Trump is our best shot at doing it—so don’t waste the opportunity.  Send this to someone you know who wants to learn more about Trump University and Donald Trump in general.  If they are on the fence—get them off it and into a voting booth to vote in for Donald Trump.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Black Ops III: Life in 2065 and the future of human evolution

It’s been a while since I have played console games.  For several years now my wife and I played Star Wars: The Old Republic on our PC and loved it, until the new Star Wars movie pretty much ruined my love of that George Lucas creation.  So I was looking for options and finally picked up a PS4 for all the obvious reasons, and the unit I bought happened to be a Black Ops III bundle specific for the popular Call of Duty video game series.  I know Call of Duty is a very popular title, but I haven’t played it before primarily because I thought it would be too “military” based, which I hate.  I can’t stand the mission dialogue about sacrifice and duty trumping personal honor and all that crap—so the title to the popular console game turned me off.  However, since Star Wars is now off-limits I’m willing to try a few other things, so I thought I’d give it a try to could quickly see why it’s so popular.

These video games continue to impress me with their immersive science fiction stories that are quite sophisticated.  Going all the way back to the first person shooter Half Life, things have come a long way to this latest Call of Duty offering.  But what continues to impress me is the exploration of science within these games and the possibilities of what life will offer us over the next one hundred years.  I was surprised to find that the story was set in 2065 and it involved several elements of advanced robotics and nano technology.  It also weaved a fairly sophisticated political plot within a story suitable for a House of Cards episode.

My life is unique in that I do things in the real world that are considered, “important.”  I have hobbies that are very, “physical.”  Yet I enjoy quite a lot to step behind a technological veil and explore worlds bridging the best of modern science fiction, science and art and mixing them all with contemporary politics and a Millennial skepticism of authority—and viewing the world from that vantage point.  Not many people my age successfully go back and forth like that.  They evolved in their thirties to playing golf by their forties.  It is difficult play a round with important people on a Friday afternoon, then go home and play some Black Ops on PlayStation for the evening.  I can do it, but not many can.  I find that the ability to enjoy all aspects of modern life to be more valuable than just specializing in one particular thing during sectional moments of a lifetime.  I value the childlike playfulness of harboring many interests and not regulating those passions due to a social context.  Given that, I find the stories of modern video games to be very important mythologically into preparing our society for the massive changes that are about to occur over the next two decades.

For many years I have played video games and we’ve had just about every system since the Atari 7800 back in the 80s.  I raised my kids on video games and I have played them a lot.  Over the last few years, I’ve been very busy and I haven’t kept up with the big technological breakthroughs largely because I wanted to see where everything was going.  4k televisions and these incredible sound developments from Bose were poised to change the home entertainment industry a few years back, so I sat on the fence to sort of watch things before making big investments.  A few of our family members have personal home theaters with projection televisions, which I thought were fantastic, but I was skeptical that they’d hold out to the strong resolution that gaming systems, and streaming services like Netflix were offering, so we held on and didn’t get a PS3 or an Xbox One.  My big problem with the Xbox One was the emphasis on online content and downloadable offerings.  I like to own things and if you lose your hard drive—which happens, then you lose your downloads.  And I’m not a big fan of cloud storage systems, because they don’t exist within my control.  So it was a bit of a treat to play a PlayStation 4 for the first time.  It’s probably been three or four years since I last touched a PlayStation controller—so it was nice to turn it on again and see the throbbing lights which are new on the PS4 as it came to life.

In that regard, the story of Call of Duty Black Ops III pulled me in instantly and I found it to be a great adventure.  The robotics and the ability to simulate reality I found most compelling.  I really don’t think we are that far away from a day when we can download ourselves into new bodies or machines—whichever we see fit and that we as a human species will exist not as biological entities, but as an essence.  In that way I found the story of Black Ops III to be extremely compelling.  As I played it I couldn’t help but think of how these video game stories are changing the way that Millennials see the world.  As of this writing, we are on the cusp of commercial space travel and nano technology as things are changing very quickly.  It’s easy for me to see just in watching the evolution of PlayStation from the PS2 which I played like crazy during the first decade of the new century to the PS4.  The creative use of lights on the console and controller along with the evolution of storage leads the mind to easily see a day where the stories in these video games will actually manifest into a reality—whether its alien life as seen in Half Life, or the future tech of warfare in Call of Duty Black Ops III, the options to us are going to be quite extraordinary.

The best science fiction of our age isn’t coming from books, or movies—it is coming from video games.  I know a lot of young people buy Call of Duty for the online multiplayer content, but seriously, the campaigns on those games is very interesting.  The science is “compelling.”  It’s one thing to read these kinds of things in science fiction novels, but it’s quite another to interact with high science concepts in a 3D environment.  In the case of Call of Duty, I’m glad that I have been mad at Star Wars, because I gave Black Ops III a chance I might have otherwise not had given it.  While it would be fun to take a few weeks of my life and just sit around playing video games–it’s not very practical for me.  I have to manage my time very carefully to fit everything in, and that kind of luxury is hard to find.  So I appreciate a good gaming experience when I can get it and Black Ops III was certainly that.  The science alone does it—the empowerment of interacting with objects within a virtual environment ahead of actual scientific invention is a marvelous attribute—and a necessary step toward the fulfillment of the next leap in mankind’s long evolution.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

In Ohio Democrats are Switching to Republican to Vote Trump: Defining real conservativism during an important primary

This is a pretty important story.  Republicans have a severe “branding” problem.  People like me who are very conservative find people like George Will, Karl Rove, Mitt Romney, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, John Boehner and even locally, Patti Alderson, Don Dixon, Cindy Carpenter and many others terribly flat and unable to win contested issues against Democrats.  They are what make up the Republican “establishment,” these days and it is their fault that the Republican “brand” has declined, and even failed in most cases.   As I’ve discussed before conservatives won’t get everything we need in just one election.  There has to be a multiyear plan enacted to repair the massive damage done to the party by Republicans moving left of center to attract new voters.  And just for the record, Ronald Reagan was not conservative enough for me.  He is not the benchmark of conservativism as far as I’m concerned.  When Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz say they want to be the new party of Reagan, I cringe.  Reagan actually toyed with joining the Communist Party and was a union leader for a time.  Only late in life did he learn to speak like a conservative and very late—become one.  I liked him-but when it comes to conservatives I am often very let down—because few people are as conservative as I am.

However, in this election I am emphatically supporting Donald Trump.  He by far has the most conservative views on the stage currently, and he has a track record of accomplishing things.   The fact that many people are making it fashionable to point out things that he has not done so well is laughable.   I’d ask to see their track record—which they have nothing to compare to.  Trump’s airplane is worth more than most of the critics of him put together.  As Trump stated recently, just one of his stores in New York is worth more than Mitt Romney.  I’d rather deal with a person who has a thousand failures and two or three blistering successes than a loser who sits on the sidelines and is afraid to do anything because they are the overly timid types.  That describes most of the people I know in the Republican Party.  Trump brings a lot to the Republican Party—particularly when it comes to “branding.”  He also is attracting fence-sitting Democrats—which is exactly what the Republicans need if they really want to “expand” the party.  When people say that Trump is not a conservative then where is the anger at actual Democrats like Butler County Commissioner Don Dixon who switched parties to win in a conservative Ohio county—and the many thousands across the nation just like him.  Trump is much more conservative than Don Dixon, or the Ohio Central Committee representative Patti Alderson who makes the fundraising efforts of Claire Underwood from the Netflix series House of Cards look like an amateur.  (Ann Becker is running against Patti—VOTE FOR ANN on March 15th.)  Don’t tell me establishment Republicans are more “Republican” than Donald Trump.  Trump is calling himself a Republican in a very liberal part of the country, and that takes guts.  And don’t tell me he’s doing damage to the “party.”  Read this article out of Youngstown, Ohio.  This is where Trump is a lethal weapon for the GOP—if they were smart enough to use it—which they aren’t.

By David Skolnick

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

About 1,000 Democrats in Mahoning County so far have switched their party affiliation to Republican with election officials saying several did it to vote for Donald Trump, the GOP presidential front-runner.

“We are seeing something this election cycle I’ve never seen before to this degree,” said board Chairman Mark Munroe, who’s also the county Republican chairman. “Every day I take phone calls or get voice messages from people saying they’ve been Democrats all their life and they’ve had it. They want to vote for Donald Trump. I’m surprised at the volume of inquiries we’re getting. It’s remarkable.”

A number of Democrats taking a Republican ballot when voting early at the board “say they want to vote for Trump,” said Joyce Kale-Pesta, Mahoning County Board of Elections director.

About 7,000 Mahoning County voters have cast early votes. Early voting started Feb. 17 and ends March 14, the day before the primary.

Of those 7,000, about 14 percent were Democrats who voted Republican, Kale-Pesta said. That’s about 1,000 so far.

The percentage of Democrats switching parties will grow even more, said board Vice Chairman David Betras, who also is the county Democratic chairman.

And it doesn’t concern Betras.

“I knew Donald Trump’s message would resonate with blue-collar Democrats,” he said. “But once they learn about his record – besides him being anti-trade – they will change their minds in the general election. I assure you that come the general election, voters will vote our way once we tell the story of Donald Trump. The more chaos created in the Republican primary, the better Democrats will do in the general election.”

Betras, who backs Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, said it “would make me happy for Donald Trump to beat John Kasich,” the Ohio governor running for president as a Republican.

About 5 percent of Republicans – 350 voters – cast Democrat ballots of those who’ve voted so far, said Chris Rakocy, the board’s information technology manager.

Munroe, who supports Kasich, said that if the governor isn’t the Republican presidential nominee, “I’ll be glad to support whoever is our nominee.”

When asked about Trump’s various controversial statements, Munroe said, “Should Trump be the nominee, he’ll have plenty of time to rehabilitate himself.”

Trump is the reason turnout will be higher than normal for this primary, Munroe said.

“We’re seeing this all over the country; the Republican vote is way up and it’s because of Trump,” he said. “Now, it’s happening in the Valley. Whatever you think of Trump, you can’t take away his ability to energize the electorate.”

There are 161,009 registered voters in the county, including 40,958 Democrats and 14,663 Republicans. The rest are independents, who don’t vote in primaries, with a tiny number affiliated with third parties such as Green and Libertarian.

In Ohio, party affiliation is basely solely on voting in a primary, Munroe said.

“All you have to do is tell a poll worker that you want to vote for a certain party in the primary and that becomes your affiliation,” he said.

Election officials in Trumbull and Columbiana counties say they aren’t keeping track of how many voters are changing party affiliations.

“But we’ve had some people say, ‘I want to switch to the Trump party,” said Stephanie Penrose, Trumbull County’s elections board director.

“There are a lot of Democrats switching over,” said Kim Meeks, Columbiana County’s elections board deputy director. “We see a trend, but we won’t know details until after the primary.”

– See more at: http://www.vindy.com/news/2016/mar/03/mahoning-co-sees-k-voters-defect-to-gop/#sthash.fKGSZKbz.dpuf

Let that simmer for a bit and think of what that could do for the GOP.  Think about California come November 2016, or New York.  Tell me there is another Republican in the party today who could win in these places.  The answer of course is that there isn’t.  Ted Cruz won’t.  And nobody else will either.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

The ‘House of Cards’ are Falling Down: People voting for Trump and Cruz likely because of the popular Netflix series

I have been asked so much over the last two years which role I played with my blog site here, that was comparable to the popular Netflix series House of Cards.  Well, I couldn’t give an answer because I don’t watch much entertainment television.  Movies haven’t been very good for the last half of a decade and television series have not been a priority.  I can’t relate to most of the plotlines.  I’ve lived too much life to feel sympathy for most plot devices—so the stories are often boring to me.  I do enjoy that type of entertainment from time to time, but it’s not very often.  I watch CSPAN a lot along the various news channels—and typically don’t get very much out of dramatic television.  But the question persisted, what role did I play in the real life House of Cards?  Well, my wife and I recently made an audio/visual upgrade and we were looking for something to watch that could stretch the legs of the new system.  House of Cards was on my mind—it was broadcast in the highest current video format which was very colorful, so we watched the first couple episodes and enjoyed it.  I found it to be pretty realistic, but too simplified to what really goes on in politics.  But still, the writers of the show did something that was very difficult to do; they captured roughly how life in the Beltway really is through the Kevin Spacey character.  And my role with this site was shown in several characters—primarily the conspiracy theorist web writer who was living in a trailer park, and the reporter for The Washington Herald  who broke stories on her blog site that her bosses wouldn’t touch otherwise.  It was an enjoyable experience to watch because it let viewers into a world that I have learned to understand all too well.  And its effect on the popular electorate is quite obvious as the election results from Saturday March, 5th 2016 poured in late at night and the establishment candidates had bombed badly.  Marco Rubio and John Kasich had barely hit the registered vote while Trump and Cruz ran away with the night.

The “Washington Establishment” is defined in the Netflix show.  It’s not just one person leading the nation from a back room, or a conglomeration of bankers running the world from the basement of some ancient pyramid dedicated to gods long-lost to our written record.  It is the Kevin Spacey character—a congressman who is the majority WHIP of his party who is manipulating Washington at every level, from the guy who owns the ribs restaurant in the hard streets of a black neighborhood to the President of the United States.   House of Cards captures the culture of the Washington establishment quite well, and accurately.  Obviously when Mitt Romney was sent out to do several hit pieces on Donald Trump, the scheme didn’t work.  Trump withheld the barrage, although Ted Cruz certainly benefited.  During the unique Saturday election, nobody ran toward an establishment candidate and that clearly baffled the Frank Underwood types.  Fox News was mystified and several guests on the other shows literally looked as if they had been shot out of a cannon.  The establishment and all their tricks were dead, and it may very well be the television show House of Cards that finally killed it.

Netflix has around 34 million paid domestic subscribers and roughly 6% to 10% have watched at least one episode of House of Cards which is the flagship show offered by the streaming company that essentially destroyed Blockbuster Video.  That means that at least 3 million people have at least watched some of the House of Cards episodes at some point in their subscription.  However, that is likely a very conservative number.  The numbers are likely higher if the IMDb ratings scores are considered as a statistical sampling.  House of Cards has over 275,000 votes which are much higher than other popular shows on more traditional networks.  Since Nielson Ratings don’t have a good way to account for ratings on streaming services over the Internet all this is so new and game changing that nobody but Netflix really knows how many people are watching their most popular show.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/importance-house-cards-netflix-202608552.html;_ylt=A0LEV7lEE9xWAmsAMX0PxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw–

The Tea Party has been around now for about seven years and it has certainly made its imprint on politics.  As I’ve said before, even in the video game industry, anti establishment plot lines which deal with the nuances of corruption at the highest levels are typical.  Assassin’s Creed comes to my mind regarding this topic. The story is a fairly complex one that takes game players to pinnacle moments in history that is being simulated against a dystopian future which makes classic stories like Brave New World and Animal Farm look overly simplified as a result. The world is moving very fast now technologically, and people from my age and older are missing it, because it’s all coming in so fast that classic media is resisting the implication—so they are under reporting it.  If you add all this up you essentially get what voters have decided for themselves–they want to destroy the Washington establishment one way or the other.  The only real difference is whether they want to do it with someone like Donald Trump who represents someone who could out-fox anyone in the Beltway for several years, or a constitutional anchor in Ted Cruz who would say no to everything.  That is what came out of the really pivotal vote on March 5th.

When Mitt Romney came out against Trump just days before the big vote, on a day when Trump was facing down his rivals on the Fox News debate where Megan Kelly for the first time since a major feud with Donald Trump had erupted, would ask the New York billionaire hard questions in front of tens of millions of people—few thought the results would be as they turned out.  The bets were on Marco Rubio to get a spike, followed by John Kasich and that hasn’t happened at all.  In fact, Rubio was literally trounced on Saturday.  With all that was said, Trump not only survived, he won his two targeted states and split with Cruz the other two.  In the delegate count, Trump is just shy of 400 going into the winner take all states which he’s poised to do well with while the other candidates are well behind.  The establishment really doesn’t know what to do because Ted Cruz is the closest to Donald Trump at only less than 100 back.  This was not part of the plan.  If this was the House of Cards, Kevin Spacey would be having a meltdown because these rules of power and politics were not from the world he understands.  Everything has suddenly turned on its head and nobody in the know understands where it came from. 

That is precisely why I have written so much on this topic for years.  People watch these shows, they play these video games and the do research on the Internet to find out for themselves what’s really going on.  The traditional media is not a part of that revolution so all this is happening outside of their control.  But it is clear to me that shows like House of Cards is waking people up to a truth they may not have otherwise considered.  They might come to a site like mine for additional information to validate their suspicions, but House of Cards is bringing the average person a level of insider sophistication that they didn’t know existed before by just watching CNN or reading The Washington Times.  And America has made a decision to pull out the foundation of that house and to let the whole thing just topple down.  They don’t want a House of Cards running their nation-and they have voted to move in that direction.  Even the popularity for Bernie Sanders explains the same on the side of Democrats and other left-winged people.  People are tired of the tricks and the manipulation, and they want to bust up the system at its very core.

This all brings us back to my role in all this.  Well, my job isn’t really covered in the Netflix series.  There are some characters that are similar, but nobody is doing what I’m doing for the reasons that I do within that story.  To get to that, it would require several layers of sophistication more, but that is not the fault of the writers of House of Cards.  They have done a wonderful job putting all these pieces together within Washington culture.  They certainly deserve their Emmy Award victories.  They have brought to life in the Frank and Clair Underwood characters, who unfortunately really do exist in all the viciousness that House of Cards shows, a representation of a truth—and American voters are ready to turn away.  So they watch House of Cards on Netflix, or they play Assassin’s Creed and want to know more.  That’s when they find me and all this voluminous material.  Then they check the sources I list and watch the videos, and they start changing their minds about things because they have source material from several different places starting with art, and then seeking out validation with journalism, then in opinion by measuring their reaction to others.  My job is to be that middle offering.    That element is missing from House of Cards because in that world—not many people are watching television except for the news.  But it’s close enough to make the needed changes that we are witnessing—and that is a very good thing.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Standing up for Housewives: Melania Trump’s conservative crusade captured by Greta Van Susteren

As excited as it may be for me to get a private sector president in the White House with Donald Trump, I’m probably equally enthusiastic to see his wife in the role of First Lady.  For so many years the First Ladies of the White House have been social apologists for an increasingly altruistic culture underlining an emphasis on sacrifice for the “greater good.”  If you know anything about the philosophy and the writing of Karl Marx—American First Ladies seemed to have represented the claws of communism rather than the American flag draped beauties of American culture.  I include Laura Bush in that discussion because part of her appeal was that she had been a librarian and that was used as a means to push agendas like “No Child Left Behind” in public education—which wasn’t very far from what the Bolsheviks supported in Russia during the 1920s.  (Read We The Living.)  What I find most appealing about Melania Trump representing America as a First Lady isn’t her supermodel Sports Illustrated swim suit edition good looks, or her soothing accent—but rather her firm dedication to being a housewife.  Listen to Melania Trump talk about her commitment to her son Barron with Greta Van Susteren—which was a very good and revealing interview.

Melania is more than just a pretty face.  Many would say that she’s a trophy wife and that it’s easy for her to say the type of things she is with the comfort of billions of dollars in assets always garnishing her.  They might say that it’s easy for her to speak from such an elevated position atop her Trump Tower apartment laced with pure gold—about the merits of raising a child.  But there is quite a lot that is important in what Melania is saying and it’s not easy for her.  For instance, with the wealth that she and her husband have, they could afford to have a nanny raising their child.  They could have an army of nannies and essentially be the family from any popular play or motion picture classic—like The Sound of Music or Mary Poppins.  But with all their wealth and her personal time at stake, Melania has fully dedicated herself to raising their son Barron as a very happy housewife—which is a very “conservative” thing to do and a hard position to take in this modern media culture.

I think housewives have the most important job in the world—I believe that with every fiber of my being.  Housewives are more important than any CEO position and have more value than even President of the United States.  I was probably too aware at a young age largely because my mom was a stay-at-home mom and she put a lot of work into raising her kids.  She certainly didn’t take it loosely.  I can remember most everything from age three and four largely because I had a mother who didn’t handicap me with dumping me in a day care and letting the collective masses raise me while she worked at a career.  In the late 60s and 70s staying at home with children as a woman was becoming increasingly taboo and I watched my mom go through a lot of pain because of it.  She was socially ostracized for her decisions and I was aware of it enough to notice once I got to public school and started dealing with other kids who weren’t lucky enough to have moms home with them every day.  I caught on to what was happening very fast and by the time I hit the fifth grade I had made my decision about what was wrong with the world and the women who were raising children to care for it.  They were wrong and I would commit a significant portion of my life to solving that problem—even if it meant standing alone against such a swift tide of feminism that currently is washing our society into a treacherous cliff of anxiety and failure.  As a reward to my mom, for all her hard work, none of her kids have problems.  We all are self-adjusted adults who don’t have addictive personality traits or insecurities largely because in those formation years, from 1 to 4 years of age especially, we all had a mom home with us building the foundations that would last a lifetime.  The kids I knew back then who had messy moms chasing the illusions of feminism all grew up with some sort of problem.  They either melted down in college or hit a wall when they started raising their own families in their late 20s.  There isn’t a single example of a successful person I can think of out of many thousands of examples where a child raised in a day care exceeded the general security and personal presence of a child raised by a housewife.  Many reading this right now are failures and they know it.  Just making money doesn’t make you a successful person.  You have to be successful in every category—otherwise none of it means anything if your kids are all screwed up messes as a result of your decisions.

However, prior to the 60s, it was common for women to stay home with their children.  Both of my grandparents did it—and every old person I knew back then was of the same mind.  They all thought it was quite a destructive trend to see this spoiled generation of college trained idiots sacrificing their time with their children at home while they built careers for themselves as “liberated women.”  That turned out to be a line of crap and it was obvious to me as a kid.  Every child I knew wanted my mom to be their mom because their mothers were too busy to care for them correctly.  And the World War II generation knew America was going down a dark road.

Here’s the big problem with how feminism has shaped this issue—and just about everyone has bit into it fully only to find that there was hot sauce inside that leaves them in quite a lot of pain.  It was always one of the Planks of Communism, (CLICK TO REVIEW) to get children away from their parents and have them be raised by the state.  This was a strategy formulated during the Cold War to spread communism to the entire world.  So by marketing self achievement outside of the home, women became the instruments of American destruction by accepting that their lives were meaningless unless they put a career over their families.  Men were forced to accept this notion otherwise they’d be called a “sexist,” (a Saul Alinsky tactic—CLICK TO REVIEW) and children were put in daycares, pre-school, then of course a public education system that has advocated socialism for well over four decades now.  Feminism and the destruction of the American housewife was a military strategy against our culture.  I was lucky enough to have a mom raising me as a traditional housewife who had the support of grandparents, who didn’t know otherwise at a time.  I was also in public school before the creation of the Department of Education in 1979.  I was able to watch with a clear head all these changes.  It also helped that my favorite subjects for as long as I can remember was history.  Even as a young kid I read a lot, watched lots of PBS documentaries and by the time I was a senior in High School I read USA Today each morning during homeroom.

I was living a very wild life—free of drugs of course and the usual teenage issues of insecurity.  Rather, I was a very confident kid and that made me public enemy number one—because somewhere every adult I interacted with thought that being humbled and conquered was a prerequisite to adulthood.  So the more they tried, the harder I went to war with them—and I left a mess in my wake, but I never wavered.  Obviously that confidence made it easy for me to date girls and I met a lot of them.  Probably too early I met my wife, but she was one of our literally hundreds at the time who really wanted to be a housewife as an adult.  So we started a family right out of the gate and have stayed together in a traditional way ever since—over three decades now.  Of course it wasn’t easy, but it was worth the fight.  I admired that she wanted to be a housewife, so I paved the way for her.  Presently we don’t know anybody who is doing the same type of thing.  It used to be as common in America as grass on a spring day on a vast golf course—but these days we don’t know anybody doing it.  I know they are out there.  I meet women who are housewives in the Liberty Movement around town—who are staying home with their children in a traditional way.  But I don’t know any families that are secure with it to the level that they don’t feel like Amish people dedicated to an archaic religion as modern society surrounds them to eventually crush them with sheer masses.  My wife had a far more difficult time at raising our children than my mom did.  It was often unbearable and incredibly grueling because of the social acceptance of other choices that were obviously wrong for growing children were so well rooted.  Women had been told just as anti-gun advocates have convinced people to fear guns, that women were worthless unless they had their own paycheck and their own life outside of the home.  The strategy of that kind of thinking should be obvious.  To understand the intentions that gave rise to that strategy—from the KGB—watch the film Bridge of Spies.  For younger people who don’t remember the Cold War with Russia, it’s a good film that shows the level of anxiety that was prevalent then.  Feminism was slid under the American door in the same way that communism was sent to Russia by Germany to soften it up economically, as a rival power to Europe.  These aren’t conspiracy theories—they are historical fact—just do a little research.  Feminism was always intended to destroy American culture and the youth that might continue to advance capitalism into the 21st Century leaving Europe drowning in its commitment to Marxism.

The world needs more housewives.  It doesn’t surprise me that Melania Trump as a foreign raised immigrant wants to have that role with her son.  Most women around the world if given a choice would choose to stay home with their children if they had a husband who could take care of all the family income outside.  Women are that way in Japan, through all of Asia, India, Africa—virtually everywhere—except when we get to Europe where the work of philosophers like Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx have deteriorated their culture exporting that failure to America through many means.  Melania Trump is from Slovenia and watched the transition from a communist country to a return to European socialism.  Off the eastern edge of Italy she comes from a family that has seen Italian fascism, the rise of the Nazi to the north and Russian communism to the east.  The great unrest of Bosnia was to the south so she comes from a background that has been hard pressed into compliance.  I don’t blame her one bit for taking off her clothes to use her natural beauty to get out of the limitation of her homeland and live the American dream in the United States.  She caught the eye of the billionaire playboy Donald Trump and obviously grounded him.  If not for her–I really doubt he’d be running for president.  The moment she had a chance to do something good with her life, she has—and with all the concerns of money taken away from her mind—she has chosen to do one of the most conservative American things she could—and that is to become an American housewife.

From the White House, Melania could do a lot of good.  She may look beautiful—but inside her is an intellect hardened by circumstance and a rebelliousness I have only seen in my own wife—who is precisely the same age as Melania and could tell similar stories.  A young women with all the opportunity in the world to sun bath on the deck of a yacht all day in the Caribbean or hang on the arm of a very rich man in a Vegas casino—she has chosen to raise her child in a traditional way and doesn’t waver from the question when pressed.  And it would be my hope that once inside the White House—that she would be the most magnificent First Lady in the history of America not only in beauty, but in her dedication to children—resistance to drugs crossing the border—and her resolute dedication to being a great American housewife serving as an example to millions of young, impressionable girls who really could use a person like her for a role model.  I think it is because of her that Donald Trump is running.  She has a mission to fulfill—and that is something I understand.  America has lost its way and it needs to find its way back—and the key to that is through our children and the moms that make them.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Shooting the Varmints in our Garden: The most peaceful way to end a civil war

I think in the context of history March 3rd 2016 will go down in history as a great battle within the American system of government.  No lives were directly lost because of this battle, because at least in the United States elections still matter and people have them as an option.  For instance there was a debate with Fox News that was on a very large stage nationally, and at each podium was a figure representing various fractured elements of American society.  Marco Rubio represents the old guard establishment even though he came to be as a Tea Party insurgent.  Donald Trump was there as a private sector success story who is ready to run the country as a CEO—which can be good or bad depending on the CEO.  If the CEO is Jack Welch, then it probably won’t be good for everyone—likely just for the company.  If that CEO is like Steve Jobs—which is what I think will happen, then it will be wonderful for every American.  But it’s certainly not a traditional CEO position but it is a private sector presence in a high office that has not been there before.  Ted Cruz represents the type of people who attend C-PAC each year and run the various Tea Parties.  They have helped shape this whole election cycle.  Really everyone on the debate stage got there pandering to the Tea Party—even John Kasich who now represents the type of compromise candidate we’ve had in the past with Mitt Romney and John McCain.  My friend Ann Becker summed up the experience like this on Channel 12 News as she was pushing for some last-minute votes for her own run on the Ohio Central Committee which is on a scale as important as this presidential election—only in a different way.  CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK FOR MORE.

http://local12.com/news/local/gop-infighting-carries-over-to-butler-county

I have personally tried to work with establishment types for decades, but my summation culminated about this time four years ago into a rather large melt-down that still resonates in my community.  Trump of course is experiencing what I’m talking about on a much larger scale, so I was curious how he’d deal with the severe abandonment of Mitt Romney the day of the Fox Debate.  It was a rather historic occasion, a former presidential candidate whom Trump had supported openly during the 2012 campaign held a press conference type of speech just hours before the debate to discredit Trump in every way he possibly could as a last-ditch effort to destroy the GOP frontrunner to preserve the last remnants of the type of Republican Party that he helped shape.  Trump had even held a very expensive fundraiser for Romney in his Manhattan apartment and had become fairly close to the man.  In 2012 Trump even pushed right to the wire a very important flight to Scotland while Romney was debating Barack Obama because he didn’t want to miss a moment—even in the car on the way to the airport.  So Donald Trump was fairly invested in Romney’s success, which of course history remembers was a failure.  As Romney announced all of Donald Trump’s failures over the years—investments that didn’t emerge victorious—although plenty did—I’m sure Trump would have included Romney on that list.

But you break bread with those people; get to know their wives and you start to like politicians because you think that they are regular people.  You think they are like you are because they sound like you, think like you, and share similar values.  Only, they aren’t like you.  Once they get into public office they turn into something else—because by the nature of a constitutional republic, success in that type of governmental position favors second-handers.  Trump had just come off a week of great successes—Super Tuesday gave him a huge lead over everyone else in the GOP presidential filed and he was showing what a Trump White House would look like as he picked up endorsements of establishment Republicans at an alarming rate-provoking the GOP bosses to attack Trump to his very core in an attempt to knock him out of the race.  That stress showed on Donald Trump at the Fox News debate.  His rivalry with Megan Kelly was in front of him, and two hostile candidates who wanted to unseat him were on each side.  Millions of people were watching to see if Trump would stumble—even world leaders watched terrified of having to deal with the unpredictable businessman from New York.  Trump was pounded and pressed from every direction.  Fox News used televisions to replay old Trump interviews in an attempt to catch him in a gotcha moment—which was hard obviously.  But through it all Trump managed to stand in front of everyone and declare that he had a large penis—literally.  It was the boldest things he could have done at that particular moment and it became the thing that everyone would remember out if this debate, and it was probably the only way out of a day where the establishment had thrown everything including the kitchen sink at Donald Trump ahead of the next round of states voting the following Saturday.

I know how that betrayal feels all too well.  I’ve felt it many times so I felt for Donald Trump being on such a large stage and feeling those emotions.  It won’t be the last time, but it does hurt each time it happens.  The best thing that can be done in those situations is to fight through the disappointment and do whatever it is that has to be done.  The stakes for so much were at full play and Trump did well to stand up there and shoulder it all—which is why I think he’ll be great as president.  The more that moderators and candidates tried to press him from the vantage point of a traditional president, the more wore out Trump looked.  Trump doesn’t plan to be a traditional president.  He intends to run the country like a CEO—as a boss.  America doesn’t elect kings and queens—and doesn’t like to be bossed around.  However, Americans have devolved over the years and presently they do need strong leadership—because they don’t manage their own lives very robustly.  At this particular moment, Trump is the only guy who can do the job.  But it won’t be anything close to traditional.  Trump will hire and delegate many of the presidential tasks because that is the strength of his skill set.  Second-hander politicians do not understand that way of thinking.  And because Trump represents an end to everything they know, they attacked him in the way that a cornered animal might fight for its very life.

 I watched my father and grandparents shoot many varmints that tried to eat food out of our garden, or in their fields.  I always felt sorry for the animals that were shot and killed.  But over time, I learned that the animals were second-handers to the efforts of the person who planted the crops in the first place.  The animals had to be destroyed to keep them from eating everything we worked so hard for.  If those animals had not been shot and killed, they would have destroyed all our efforts.  From the perspective of the animals, they just wanted to survive—and to feed their families.  But, to the vantage point of productive output, they were enemies to that effort.  So they had to be destroyed.  The same can be said about the GOP.  Donald Trump is our rifle that is picking off the varmints eating all the efforts of our careful labor.  Out of desperation, the varmints like Mitt Romney know the end is near for them.  Ann Becker can see it too as she presses on in her desire to unseat Patti Alderson—who represents those old GOP types like John Boehner, John Kasich, and Mitt Romney with financial backing and has helped shape the party into the disaster it currently is.  Ann and I might disagree on how that gun should be fired, but we agree that the crops in our garden must be protected from the second-handed efforts of politicians who just can’t stop themselves from trying to eat and destroy everything.  Donald Trump for me is the twelve gage shotgun; Ted Cruz is a .22 rifle.

If Trump was not running, there may well be an armed insurrection—the situation is that bad in America.  I’ve been covering it for years on these pages.  Trump is my hope of turning everything upside-down and re-organizing the mess into something profitable, and constructive.  It’s my last hope before something more serious happens.  It’s the last chance at an election to resolve a civil war within America—first between conservatives, then across the country in a general election where we are split 50/50 between socialists and traditionalists.  Someone has to do that hard work of converting those socialists to capitalism and laws and executive power just aren’t enough.  The varmints of Washington D.C. have to be eliminated—and Donald Trump is the weapon being presented to do the hard work, and the bloody evacuation of those Mitt Romney types which is required.   But I could see the strain on Trump.  It was hard for him-just as it is for all of us.  And out of all the days of his presidential run when he looks back on it, March 3rd will go down as the worst.  The good news is—it only gets better from here.  Once you shoot the first animal to save the precious crops in your garden, it becomes much easier.  And for Trump, he will learn to do that job very well.  That’s because he’s not a second-hander—and that’s why he needs to be president—because of the chain reaction that will follow.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

A Brilliance in Strategy: Donald Trump’s dominance of the GOP

It continues to be astonishing how limited most people view the world.  They look at a guy like Donald Trump and think that he’s only about rhetoric and bombastic WWF type speech—but fail to comprehend that in private he’s extremely articulate and serious.  As seen during the Super Tuesday speech from Florida he can switch from a big time wrestler in the arena of life to a stoic presidential candidate really in the blink of an eye.  Even as you are probably reading this, the presidential debate for the Republican party from Michigan is proceeding and again Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are lashing out with everything they have to try to knock Trump down—but the billionaire business mogul and entertainer has now seen the lay of their strategy and he’s prepared.  Like any great strategist you must always get your enemies to reveal their plans and Rubio certainly did that in the days leading up to the debate.  He put his whole game plan out in public for Trump to analyze and develop a strategy against.  And now all that hard work is showing not to Rubio’s advantage.

Smartly, Trump has left Cruz relatively untouched pulling away all the establishment vote heading into the more mainstream states which Cruz isn’t playing out so well in forcing Rubio and Cruz to fight each other just for the possibility of getting delegates.  Meanwhile Trump does his thing and continues to rack up respectable endorsements at key times leaving everyone else in the field to fight like dogs over his scraps.  The Trump campaign has been brilliant providing a gift to establishment Republicans.  They should consider themselves lucky that he’s on their team. They could learn a lot from him.

This all points to a showdown in Florida on March 15th which will likely put a stake through the heart of Rubio—I’m sure the fight will be hard, but it won’t be enough.  There will be fights elsewhere and only Trump can cover them all with his private 757 and boundless energy.  All the Superpacs in the world can’t outspend him and these days people flip through DVR recordings of their favorite television shows not hearing all the smear campaigns against Trump. Trump is the content that people scan through commercials to get to—and traditional politicians have not yet figured that out.  But people do see his 757 flyovers and the big crowds on news reports and that is something the other candidates just can’t do—because they are not as personally successful as Trump has been.  The Trump campaign is re-writing all the old rules and nobody is prepared for them.  Rubio and Kasich are still using the old ones, and they are failing gradually.

The David Duke situation with Trump was clearly carefully calculated by him to lure his opponents into an easy kill.  Trump denounced the KKK leader on a Friday night then stumbled through a question about Duke on Saturday provoking Cruz and Rubio to sense blood in the water—but it was blood Trump poured in—and they ended up looking petty and foolish for making much about nothing causing them to cry wolf one too many times.  And that realization is present on the Detroit debate stage—a desperation in chasing after the wrong bait—this is the difference between a hardened professional—which Trump is—and a career politician who has learned to be skilled in raising money for the party—but not much else.  Someone like Rubio can say all the right things but he’s powerless to implement anything.  Cruz knows how to draw a line in the sand and not cross it, but often he’ll be the only one standing there.  Trump is right, someone has to have the skill to draw a line and convince everyone to come over to where he drew it and cross it on his terms.  Trump has a long history of that and he’s showing the Republican Party that presently.

The establishment showed from the outset a grim resistance to Trump but by March 15th most of them will be moving over into the Trump camp because everyone loves a winner.  Trump will be doing the same type of thing to the rest of the world, with China, with Russia, the Middle East, South America, Mexico—everywhere.  The trick of a good salesman is to achieve all your goals by making the customer feel privileged into accepting your parameters of success.  Everyone in the beginning of a negotiation has their own vantage point—but by the end—the more successful salesman has to get everyone into their version of that success.  That is what Trump is doing to the Republican Party—which has needed to happen for a long time.  Once Trump wins the presidency, he’ll do it to the rest of the world convincing them to eat out of the hand of America—and they’ll thank us for it.  That is the big difference between years past and years yet to come.

It should have been clear to all Republicans on Super Tuesday.  But Rubio represents the old school politicians who think all this ability Trump has is a con game.  They are like the European idiots who thought the world was flat in 1492—even though many had figured out that it was in fact round.  There is a method of politics that has not yet been discovered that will greatly favor Republicans—but they do not yet understand it.  Trump has been exhibiting it—but they don’t yet comprehend how it works.  However, they will in time begin to see it.  Trump will do what he does, he’ll create a whirlwind in Ohio and Florida that will culminate by March 15th and the spill over into other states will likely secure his nomination.  All the old schoolers will be left looking at each other dumbfounded.  When people ask how Trump will build a wall between Mexico and the United States making them pay for it—this is precisely how it will be done.  Mexico will by the time all is said and done be thanking Donald Trump for letting them help build a wall. To lesser minds they may think this is the work of a con artist—because they don’t understand the skill.  But, to those who know better, that is the work of an extremely skilled professional negotiator.  And that is why Donald Trump will be a fantastic president.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Panic and Statism in Butler County: Shooting at Madison High School

Not that it’s a massive government conspiracy, but such tragedies do play a role in the desire of all government workers to expand their influence with inflated drama in times of crises.  The shooting at Madison Junior/Senior High School in Ohio—virtually in my backyard, is just such an example—which was a very minor incident that garnered national press.  Here is how USA Today reported the issue.

Four students were injured and a 14-year-old boy was in custody Monday following a shooting at a high school in Butler County, Ohio, authorities said.

Madison Junior/Senior High School remained in lockdown for a short while, but all students were safe, the school said in a statement on its Facebook page. None of the injuries was life-threatening, the statement said.

Two students were struck by gunshots and two were injured by either shrapnel or while trying to get out-of-the-way, Butler County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Anthony Dwyer said. The shooting took place in the school’s cafeteria.

All schools in the district in Butler County’s Madison Township were placed on lockdown, which was lifted shortly after 12:45 p.m. Roads to the school quickly backed up with parents and relatives trying to get to the school to pick up students.

Bob Hollister, of Trenton, whose grandson attends the school, said he had been sitting in his daughter’s van for about 45 minutes when the lockdown was lifted. He has another grandchild in grade school. He described the morning as “chaotic.”

When he first arrived, Hollister said he saw police with shotguns and assault rifles.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/4-wounded-suspect-in-custody-at-ohio-high-school/ar-BBq9NoE?ocid=ansmsnnews11

Seriously, assault weapons—school lockdowns, and general crises and mayhem—over essentially a couple of kids having a fight?  Sure a gun was involved, but it was a relatively harmless conflict that could have been resolved quickly and without so much fanfare.  The kids weren’t killed and the shooter had much more systemic problems to deal with which provoked him to resort to a firearm to inflict harm that all the adults around him obviously missed and didn’t take the time to diffuse leaving all the public officials running around patting themselves on the back for being nearby and making much more of the incident to garner more national attention.  Honestly, the case should have been diffused in the media as it was within moments with the on-site cop.  The threat neutralized—which it was.  And that should have been the end of it.  Everyone should have stayed in class.  All the schools should have remained open.  Sheriff Jones shouldn’t have even been on the radio talking about the issue with Bill Cunningham on 700 WLW dramatizing the issue like it was the end of the world.  Everyone wanted to be a hero as the situation was clearly blown up to make it part of a national effort by progressives to demonize guns and install fear into the weak.

Just a few days earlier I was doing some shooting with some people who don’t spend much time around guns.  I was displaying my Cowboy Fast Draw set-up and how the wax bullets work in target shooting and everyone wanted to know if the gun was real.  When I explained that the .45 Vaquero that I was using was in fact a real gun that would feed real bullets in its current form a slight fear washed over the observers.  That fear was totally unfounded, but was put there by a media culture that has taken issues like this Madison Junior/Senior High School shooting and blown them out of proportion to inflict negative opinion against firearms for the progressive aims of banning them.  Every little issue where shootings come up is highlighted to drive the point home and feed that fear into people not privy to their frequent use.  This shooting at Madison was so small it shouldn’t have been reported outside of the immediate media market—because it was essentially a non story—a dispute among teenagers. But because it happened in a public school and the public police force needed to justify themselves—much more was made of the issue for the benefit of marketing government services to the public at the expense of Second Amendment freedom.

The fault of the issue is in the parents who obviously did not have control of their child and allowed the kid to think it was OK to take a gun to school and shoot some other kids.  Somewhere the parenting broke down to allow the incident to occur, and that is the root cause of the tragedy. But since government has for many years designed their public school system to triumph over parenting leaving neither party to do the job very well—as parents now defer the responsibility to the schools and schools when something like this goes wrong on their watch defer to the parents—kids are raised by media to copy off movies, music, video games, and every panic driven estrogen laced diatribe on the nightly news.  There is no mystery why this 14-year-old shot some kids at a school—it’s because he had terrible parents—and the school fostering peer pressure incessantly missed the opportunity to let some steam off the situation before something like this happened.

Parents of the Middletown School system were even more embarrassing.  Many showed up to rescue their children from the clutches of danger imprinting on the minds of the youth forever the anxiety of that tragic day on a leap year February.  What they should have done was explained to their children that there was nothing to fear, the situation was solved within minutes of the shooting.  But the parents were guilty themselves of making too much of the situation because they wanted to go back to their offices and bloviate how their children were involved in a mass school shooting so that they could garner some sympathy and secret need for attention.  The parents behaved abysmally.

Everyone abused the situation without diagnosing the cause of the quandary.  Instead the situation was perpetuated for the furtherance of statism in all its grotesque forms seeking to profit off the misery of a diabolical tragedy.  At the conclusion of the news cycle on the story guns were made to be feared even more, acceptance of more police presence in our lives made more fashionable, and schools had a chance to show themselves as the umbrellas of safety and decision herding around a bunch of panicky ill-equipped parents under the authority of the “state.”  And the forces of government expansion had a field day exposing the misery of a small town school and a fight between a few teenagers for the furtherance of statism through a gradual decline of the American love of firearms.  The whole scene showed why most people just aren’t intellectually equipped to manage a constitutional republic—and that is the fault of our public education system.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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