Category: Political Theroy

A Rotten Rope up an Ominous Precipice: Treasure guarded by the Grim Reaper

Naturally there are a lot of creative people in my family.  I of course have a lot of very creative skills, and my wife does as well.  Yet we protect those skills of their virtual with the guarded care of a church going virgin from previous centuries.  We don’t whore ourselves out to the modern world.  We offer our services on our terms.  My wife is even stricter about that practice than I am.  Her crafts would make a fortune in an open market, but she’s very introverted and doesn’t like to see her creations tended to recklessly in exchange for money.  She usually only makes things for members of our family and not the outside world.  Naturally my children are very creative as well, and are happiest when they can express themselves in some form of art.  That means that when it comes time for gift giving the members of my family usually make things for each other rather than just buying an impersonal gift.  That made this last Father’s Day interesting because I had just come off a week of extreme stress, and my oldest daughter was very concerned about me. She captured her feelings in a nice card with some art expressed with the following picture.image

My previous week was enough to flatten all but the excessively resolute.  It involved first and foremost a legal issue that I can’t talk about at this time because of the entanglements involved.  The Grim Reaper came calling.  But I take this overman stuff seriously, so I denied its wishes.   Just because death wants something, doesn’t mean it gets it.  Human beings are a lot more powerful in their self-determination than they are often willing to admit.  Additionally, professionally it was one of the most difficult weeks I’ve had in my life—just with all the elements of things coming together at the same time from so many factions of people.  When people want to argue the great novel Atlas Shrugged and wonder why there are always only a few people who are competent, they need to walk in my shoes for a week and they’ll understand.  Especially this last week.  Then at the end of the week there was the Matt Clark radio show which I enjoyed and wasn’t a serious time burden, but did require some focus that was desperately in need of rest.  That same morning leading up to the broadcast when I was trying to do some show prep, I had guests from the other side of the world trying to get on a plane to get home and a major meltdown in my professional endeavors that would not allow a retreat from productive enterprise.  My kids knew about all this, so my daughter captured my week with that drawing.

When I first saw the picture I thought of Indiana Jones from the movie Temple of Doom.  I raised my kids on that movie, so the metaphor was appropriate.  Yet it was customized to fit my circumstances appropriately.  The hat is more like the one I wear rather than the one Indiana Jones does, and the physical body is more akin to me rather than the linky Harrison Ford.  In the picture the hero is trying to climb out of danger on a frail little rope ladder up a treacherous precipice.  Parts of the ladder are breaking away leaving nowhere to go but to fail or succeed in climbing hanging on to whatever one can.  Even though the picture is a dramatization of reality, it was exactly how the previous week had felt.

There were times during this week of tribulations when I wondered, “why.”  Why should I even try to climb up such a rope ladder?  Why not just stay on the ground instead of going up such an ominous precipice with a rickety device.   The answer is of course for the treasure that resides at the top.  Yet I’m not all that interested in treasure, but people I’m loyal to are—so I climb it to retrieve it for them.  I climb because they can’t.   They want the treasure from the top; I want the adventure of getting it.  I actually enjoy the danger of the climb, and that’s what I get out of it.  But my kids want my company, they’d rather me stay next to the fire in camp.  They don’t want the treasure I retrieve, just my company.  So it gets to be quite a challenge to give everyone in your life what they want—including yourself.  My daughter understands that and was able to capture her feelings within that seemingly simple picture.

There is no such thing as too much.  The circumstances presented require us to succeed or fail, and experience says that the more you push yourself, the more that you can get done in spite of any precipice intent on our destruction.  Because in life there are two kinds of treasure, there are those that drop alongside the trails we travel through life.  Occasionally someone drops a $20 dollar bill and we might find it because they have traveled that path before us, and lost something we have later found.  Perhaps in other times it’s a gold nugget that can bring us riches.  But treasures are best found off the paved road, because let’s face it, if you stick to the roads that are paved for our travel, you will only be able to go in life where others have intended to direct you.  That’s where the real treasures in life are—the kind that are still unclaimed by any who have come before us.  So I spend a lot of time on my own path off of any paved roads looking for treasure that nobody else dares to retrieve.  That is where I get a lot of my personal philosophy—off that paved road.  But there is danger off that paved path and bad things do happen. The dangers are often hidden until it’s too late.  This means you must trust yourself to contend with those dangers in whatever form they present.  After a lot of practice, I have an understanding that I can handle anything.  But from those watching, it is a dramatic romp through uncharted territory—and can be a little scary.

Father’s Day came and went, but what remained was the nice card given to me that means more than just a picture reflective of a favorite movie.  It was an appropriate metaphor.  Truth be told I was happy to get back to the camp to enjoy some time with my family because there were times this past week where all the rungs in the ladder did break leaving me hanging by only a rickety rotten rope.  That’s when you dig your bloody fingertips into the sides of the cliff and keep climbing regardless of the pain even if only bare bone is left grinding away at the rocky surface.  What makes such moments truly worth the effort is the campfire stories that came after—and on Father’s Day 2015 we had more than a few to tell.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Rich Hoffman is Running for President: The bad is no longer protected from the good

I made the announcement during my show on the Clarkcast over the weekend that I am running for president of the United States, along with a little single cell creature newly discovered on the Jupiter moon of Europa. Of course I was using a little metaphorical humor to convey how ridiculous it is that there are so many people running for president in 2016, and the number is still growing. I’d say the cause of that effect is that president Obama has been so terrible, and lowered the bar so low, that now everyone believes that they too could be president and gain the ability to rule the world.  That’s what happens when a standard is lowered to a level where common people with an average background gain an ability that should only encompass the best and brightest minds produced within the United States. Also during the June 20th show I covered Matt Clark’s secret mission which he called in to surmise. I then spoke about my history with bullwhips a bit, gave some statistical analysis about the perceived gun violence in the wake of the South Carolina church shooting, and introduced my friend Gery Deer to talk about the upcoming Annie Oakley Western Showcase in Darke County, Ohio. It was an entertaining radio show that can be heard in its entirety below. Following the clip is the rough script of the show to make navigation easier for sections you may want to hear again.

Radio Show WAAM Saturday June , 2015 1 PM WAAM Talk 1600  734-822-1600

5 min — Matt Clark’s secret mission update

8 min – Nice to hear from Roy Hill at Brownells as the extreme left seeks to exploit the Charleston, South Carolina church.  After nine people were killed by Dylann Roof, Obama immediately sought gun control.   The progressive elements of our society were quick to point out statistics from the United Nations indicating that 81,300 nonfatal injuries and 31,672 deaths a year involve guns, which are 308 shootings every day. That sounds truly terrible—yet context is conveniently left vacant. There are approximately 32,000 deaths a year by automobiles and yet nobody has a press conference that declares that we should get rid of cars.  What’s worse is that a whopping 44,000 people die every year from some form of drug overdose and the president supports more of that type of behavior even getting behind efforts to decriminalize it. Isn’t that hypocritical? Of course it is. The drama around the latest shooting rampage has nothing to do with the loss of innocent life—it’s all about building a case against guns so that Americans might be convinced to give them up in favor of some measure of safety. “The Fanned Flames of Racisim: Barack Obama’s role in the South Carolina shooting” at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom.com

10 min – My history with bullwhips

17 min — Soft break

20 min – 30 years of history with bullwhips including movies, business instruction, and self-defense.  Lead in to my relationship with Gery Deer and the Annie Oakley Western Arts Showcase—home of the bullwhip fastdraw—invented in Ohio.  2015 event on Saturday July 25th.

30 min — Hard break

35 min – Introduction to Gery Deer – Gery Deer is the closest person I’ve ever met to a real life Bronco Billy. He has a background that is white-collar; he’s a writer, a television producer, a computer technician, a college graduate well versed and quite comfortable in professional settings. He’s been on America’s Got Talent and done films as a material supplier for projects like The Rundown. He also runs the only bullwhip studio in America from his home where he teaches the art form to students. He’s also a bit of a geek, and attends sci-fi conventions with boyish enthusiasm. But at his core he’s a western performer and vaudeville musician.   His band the Brothers and Company performs most weekends of the year and is a throwback to yesteryear with their compositions. He’s a very unique person who fits best in a motion picture screen rather than real life.

38 min – Gery conversation on the phone.

47 min — Soft break

50 min – Stories of the Annie Oakley Western Showcase and roots back to the stuntman great Alex Green.  Talk about the 2015 event, who, what, why, when, and where.

58 min — Exit to the top of the hour

imageAfter the show Matt sent me a picture of his view as he listened to the show from his hotel balcony in Hawaii at 7 AM in the morning. He had a nice little beverage there along with his laptop listening to the live broadcast from WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan over the Internet which I think is far superior to the old days of raw tower power. You get a much better signal over the Internet that goes much, much further. In this case the reach of WAAM was easily heard halfway around the world in real-time. As a host for Matt’s show I did it from my personal radio studio at my home while Derek at the home studio several hundred miles to the north worked the dials. All three of us worked together to put on the show you just heard from different places separated greatly by distance which I thought was a powerful breakthrough in radio. I know that The Blaze Radio is also doing something similar—and this is opening up a new frontier along the lines of talk radio. No longer are regional limitations necessary in talk radio. That means that those with the best message can now get it out no matter where they live and can reach audiences in every corner of the world without any restriction so long as they have Internet access. That is exactly why the FCC is trying to stick its nose into the Internet. It’s a very powerful tool for the crafty—and government hates it for that reason. Government intended to use the Internet for the opposite reason—as a population control mechanism—and yes porn is a form of population control. But people like Matt and the good people at WAAM are using the Internet to save the republic one broadcast at a time, which is why they put me on for a few weeks to advance the cause. It won’t be the last time I host a show—I’ll just say that.

A few years ago Darryl Parks at WLW radio told me that this was where radio was going, which meant that big stations owned by Clear Channel were in trouble. Back then there was some talk about me doing some weekend work at the Cincinnati juggernaut WLW—but there were some management changes, and reluctance on my part to get involved in that kind of thing. I am a very busy guy, and taking time out of my weekend to go down to the station to broadcast from a studio is just too great of an imposition. When they fired my friend Doc Thompson I had no choice but to pick sides against management and the rest is history. The station has been reducing its employees since then, and Lisa Wells filled the spot that I might have covered on Saturday mornings—hoping that a female might expand the station’s reputation from less of a sausage fest. But it really doesn’t.

Matt Clark asked me to guest host for him months ago and took measures to set me up at home with a complete studio so I could do the show from my home in Liberty Township, Ohio. That meant that I could do all my normal tasks and only block off an hour and a half to do Matt’s show—which was fine with me. I didn’t even have to live in Ann Arbor to be in the studio. Matt helped me set up a room in my house with a remote studio that worked just fine to produce what you just heard. Back in the day, such as at WLW, you’d have to drive to the station which is in a big building in Kenwood, park the car, go up one of the two elevators to the top floor, go through the sales office, walk down a hallway that is at least a 100 yards long, then camp out in the studio to do the show as the producer gave cues from behind the glass. It took me about a half hour to drive to the station, and an additional 15 minutes to park the car just to get to the studio. Then after the show it was the same amount of time to get back home. That in itself is an hour and a half of dead—unproductive time that I don’t have. Then you have the actual radio show which can be anywhere from 1 hour to 3 hours. A good part of the day would be completely consumed.

With the Clarkcast I was able to do my normal activities right up until the moment of the show. I went to my personal home studio, contacted the station producer, and he piped me in and off I went. After the show, I was back to what I was doing immediately. The total time was nothing more than a long telephone conversation and of a very little time impact. And Matt was able to monitor in real-time from the other side of the world. That is the power and reach of modern radio. It was fun, informative, and successful. We’ll definitely do it again. Because the world needs saving—and due to the power of the Internet, we can reach further more often than we’ve ever been able to before—and you can bet dear reader that we will continue to use those tools to preserve our republic well into the future. These tools allow the best and brightest to be heard so in a lot of ways, the bar has been removed so that many vindictive producers who control radio broadcast towers can no longer monopolize the airwaves protecting the bad from the good. In a lot of ways modern radio is seeing the opposite effect of the presidential race. Obama is so bad that he now has many challengers to his legacy because he has made the job look all too easy. Radio too is now decentralized—but now the very good can step around the big stations and get their message to the public without small-minded programmers getting in the way. And thanks to WAAM, we have all taken our first steps into a larger world.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Tragedy behind ‘Jurassic World’s’ Success: Hollywood in crises driven by a brain-dead culture

I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll do it again. I may not have said it in quite this strong of a fashion, but given the recent performance of Jurassic World at the box office, it is making several points that need some understanding. The greatest crises facing our American civilization is not global warming, inner city gun shootings, or even a tanking economy, it’s our inability to make new and original art.

I am extremely pleased with the box office performance of Jurassic World. I am a huge fan and I have written about the positive implications that such a film brings to the world of science. It’s almost immeasurable. So in that respect, there is wonderful news for the film industry this year, and for the next six or so—until this well of old material runs dry. Specifically, the contents of that well are all the retreads from the 1980s and 90s, the Star Wars films, Terminator franchise, the Avenger comic films along with other Marvel properties, Mad Max—etc—the strong box office showings declare quite strongly what American movie goers really want. For instance, Jurassic World is breaking records as of this writing making $400 million domestically in just 10 days. That record will last until of course the new Star Wars film hits in December. People are desperately hungry for these types of stories—and that is generally a very good—healthy thing for our culture. Films like the new drama Dope made under $6 million for its opening weekend which is well under the $7 million distributors paid for the film at Sundance. Once again, progressive films fail at the box office, traditional films succeed. The formula should be an easy one for studios—yet like idiots they continue to use the film industry as a way to evoke social change which most Americans are weary of. And it is that which has brought us to our present dilemma.

In Jurassic World the director is clearly similar to me. I’d probably get along wonderfully with Colin Trevorrow over a beer and nachos just because it’s obvious he loves the original film at least as much as I do. There were a lot of scenes in Jurassic World paying homage to Jurassic Park the way a person who truly loves something would do. I saw the same type of thing during last year’s Godzilla—specifically the scene where the classic movie monster was tearing its way through the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. It was nearly a scene for scene duplication in sound to the original Jurassic Park when the T-Rex first appeared. These directors today were obviously fans of the original Jurassic Park, and they want to make movies representing that love. There’s nothing wrong with that, but what is troubling is that there was once a day when Jurassic Park, and all these other movies from the past were original—and our culture is not presently making original films any longer. Now that Jurassic World is having so much success, studios will be very hesitant to attempt funding new projects because given the cost of movies these days to make, the box office expectations are just too high to justify the expense on anything less than a movie property that is not deeply imbedded in the consciousness of movie fans percolating for twenty or more years. Jurassic World is good on its own and might even do similar numbers as the original did 22 years ago by itself. Yet the massive drive to see the film, and huge oversea numbers are attributed to the recognition the film has historically in the hearts and minds of millions for two decades now. So there is a lot of pent-up desire to see this new film. Studios now will be so focused on resurrecting old properties that they will be extremely hesitant to do anything new—which is taking our culture to the edge of disaster.

When a culture is no longer making new art, it is losing its ability to think—and that is where American culture is headed. The public education system has failed to ignite in several generations a sense of wonder, televisions have made thinking a lazy exercise, literature is laughed at by younger people, and the music of our day seems only concerned with political motivations than anything of the human experience. Our society is making more Colin Trevorrow types who copy those from the past and less Steven Spielbergs who made the original and that is dangerous.

It’s not just in film that we are seeing this—but in the movie industry there are behavioral indexes that are easy to track. Likely we will see this same behavior in patent filings and new job creation in the coming years. It probably shows up already if there were proper ways to collect that data—but there really isn’t. The effects will be seen none-the-less in a less creative culture. Creativity is not just about making dinosaurs in a motion picture but in solving little problems that create new kinds of cars, new concepts in philosophy, politics, law and order—in just about every field where thought turns to action to advance civilization.

From experience, on the business side of things I can safely say that from one end of this country in the United States to the other are brain-dead slugs, which is unique to our time. When you pick up the phone to call someone in Seattle, New York, Chicago, or Atlanta—and everywhere in between, a person just going through the motions of life answers. Their primary objectives are to eat, reproduce, and pursue further reiterations of endorphin utilization—pursing pleasure over thought in nearly every circumstance. It wasn’t like that even when the first Jurassic Park came out two decades ago. This brain-dead society is a fairly new phenomenon, and the entertainment industry is the first to reveal its ugly realization. I would also dare to say that the reason there is so much hunger for Jurassic World is due to this obvious vacancy of thought. Suddenly there is a movie about things that has heroics, hope, horror, and possibility in it that people can see and touch—and they like it. Those are traits in our art that is becoming less obvious by the day, which of course leads to artistic and intellectual disaster for a society falling from its precipice.

A further perpetuation of that thoughtless manifest is in the so-called intellectual culture who thinks that Jurassic World is low brow and that films like Dope are proper representatives of a culture—and teach such nonsense to film students and college literature courses. They consider a Broadway play of Kinky Boots to have more artistic appeal than say Terminator Genesis—yet the masses of American culture do not find such progressive art appealing—they can’t relate to it. So they tune out and turn off—and remain that way sometimes for their entire lives. It’s quite a crisis.

After 2020 – 2021 I see a major drop off within the film industry. The movies we make as a culture will fall in on itself—and even the retreads will wear away in their appeal. New concepts will have to take their place and I don’t have faith that we have a culture any longer that can produce anything new. We should be in a period of incredible creativity with the modern tools available. But they are being wasted on pornography and gossip—not on innovation. That is when you know you are in trouble, and as much as I love the box office numbers of Jurassic World—they speak most obviously of the desperate hunger people have for that kind of entertainment that they aren’t getting from any other source—which is sad. A lot of what we take for granted today will be treasured greatly tomorrow—and that is obvious most distinctly in American art. As hopeful as movie studios are today in staying relevant—hard times are ahead for them—and the culture in general who consumes the product of Hollywood. That is the disaster I think is behind the massive success of Jurassic World.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Fanned Flames of Racisim: Barack Obama’s role in the South Carolina shooting

What an absolute idiot! What a diabolical fool. What a pandering, blundering loser. Barack Obama did it again, he attempted to take a tragedy that happened in a Charleston, South Carolina church and make it all about racism and gun control. Without question the shooter who killed nine needlessly within the church, was a bad person choking with hate. But it could easily be argued that he was a flame stoked by Barack Obama himself for the racial division the current president has brought to America under his terms of progressive lunacy.   Obama said in a speech shortly after the shooting, “frequent incidents of gun violence do not occur in other advanced countries.” What advanced countries? Who does Obama consider advanced? France??????

The insult of the Obama statements about the shooting reside in his behavior. He has went well out of his way to resurrect racism in all its ugly glory, then complains about the tendency of the behavior he instigates in people. He is both the guilty party contributing to violence and the victim all in the same sentences—and as he cries about nine deaths he does nothing about the hundreds and thousands loosing their lives in Iraq and along the Mexican border—and in Chicago, his home town.

The statements from Obama are those of an actor who has been hoping that through his provocation someone like this stupid kid who was the shooter would do something along these lines so that he could advance his progressive agenda in the wake of tragedy. The facts where hardly clear before Obama decidedly made statements against guns within a breath of the incident while other issues—such as the national debt—linger on unanswered for years. It’s not hard to figure out what he’s up to by his actions. Sure he’d deny such an allegation in a court of law, but when people no longer care what the Bible means anymore, the swearing-in court is worthless, and forked tongued words will flow out of their mouths like water over the Niagara.

The progressive elements of our society were quick to point out statistics from the United Nations indicating that 81,300 nonfatal injuries and 31,672 deaths a year involve guns, which are 308 shootings every day. That sounds truly terrible—yet context is conveniently left vacant. There are approximately 32,000 deaths a year by automobiles and yet nobody has a press conference and declares that we should get rid of cars—so what’s at work here? What’s worse is that a whopping 44,000 people die every year from some form of drug overdose and the president supports more of that type of behavior even getting behind efforts to decriminalize it. Isn’t that hypocritical? Of course it is. The drama around the latest shooting rampage has nothing to do with the loss of innocent life—it’s all about building a case against guns so that Americans might be convinced to give them up in favor of some measure of safety.

I don’t care about what the United Nations thinks about anything. And as I look around the world I don’t see a close rival to the United States in regard to culture, economy, diversity, innovation, and intellectual advancements in all fields. Show me any country in the world and they are lacking behind the United States in some fashion or another in their totality. A lie is being spread from the lips of Barack Obama and it should anger people more than it does. Guns are at the heart of American culture and they are there to keep the progressives within organizations like the United Nations out of our productive efforts—which often culminates in private property ownership. The rest of the world has not yet realized that governments cannot be trusted. They have not yet learned that the only way to keep corruption from seeping into their homes from the seething carcasses of their federal buildings is the threat of a gun which keeps even the bad as honest as possible. Without guns, violence escalates, it does not retreat.

When a robber proclaims to put up your hands, and drop your guns, they intend to disarm you so they can have easy access to molest you. Barack Obama is advocating the same, with the United Nations at his back. They don’t care about nine innocent people; they are collectivists, actors, and diabolical activist lawyers hell-bent on social change toward communism from capitalism. They want the gun removed American culture, and they will stoop to no low to achieve it. They will exploit any tragedy—even the ones that they created indirectly by blowing on flames they nurtured along.

The shooter was 21 year-old Dylann Roof who was given a .45 caliber handgun for a birthday present by his father. Fathers often do such things for their sons in America. There is nothing unusual about that. It is a bit strange that young Roof was so incensed by racial hatred that he drove from North Carolina to the 200-year-old historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church to shoot four pastors, six total women and three men dead on a site which was burned to the ground in the late 1820s during a slave revolt. It takes some unique motivation to drive such a distance to a very specific site like that to perform a terrible deed. There will likely be additional facts, but the killings were foolish and senselessly painful. Yet there were more shootings in Chicago where guns are “illegal” in just 24 hours from this writing—2 killed and 6 wounded coupled with homicides 11 out of the 12 last days—than in this South Carolina shooting. Obama didn’t have a press conference about those. Can you smell that?

In my book all lives matter. All men, women, and children of all colors and creeds—everyone deserves a chance at life. I apply the same to insects, if a little bug gets stuck in my pool and I get a chance to fish it out to extend its life—I do 100% of the time. I avoid stepping on bugs and worms if I can, and I certainly care about all human life. But guns protect that life from parasites like these big government types who want to disarm us so they can rule us. That’s their end game and believe me, we are far safer with our guns than without them. Bad things do happen from time to time. People like this kid Dylann Roof do get caught up in the drama of the moment and act foolishly due to their own ignorance. But in cases like this, just like on a sports field the original violation often goes unpunished. It’s the reaction that most of the time gets blamed and it can never be disputed that under Obama’s watch racism has escalated by his own design. And it is really stupid to be provoked by him into doing something brainless, and even dumber to give him your gun in the process. Obama doesn’t care about more safety—he wants to integrate America into the rest of the world defenseless and victims to the ignorance within the United Nations. That is the endgame to the tragic shooting in Charleston, South Carolina in June of 2015.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Businessmen Should Be President: Why to vote for people like Donald Trump

If one of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results—then why do we continue the insane practice of electing lawyers, community activists, and attention seeking actors to lead the United States? Government is supposed to be a management system that controls costs and divides properly tax payer resources. Yet they continue to fail, over and over again—because most of the idiots in those positions are incompetent for the job. So why does a majority of the establishment bulk at Donald Trump’s declaration for presidency? He is one of the most successful people in the world and would likely be able to do everything he said in the below Bill O’Reilly interview. Why not try him out, what would the United States have to lose—its respect? That’s gone already. The question is who would be most able as a future president to manage the despicable situation we are in currently in the United States with a successful turn-around, a person with a proven track record of success, or just another parasitic government employee?

A few years ago I was involved in a resistance against tax increases at my local school district, and my solution was to put more business oriented people on the school board to solve the problem—people who really knew how to rub two sticks together and make fire in the world of business. My group proposed a few candidates that were heavily criticized because it was thought that only touchy feely big spenders who would cave into the teacher’s union for the benefit of the “kids” were the only ones qualified for the management of millions of dollars of acquired property tax revenue. I was told that business people were not qualified to run a school district. It is the same crap that is now being said about Donald Trump, that a rich billionaire does not have what it takes to be president. The conventional wisdom seems to point that incompetent, emotional, and populists make better leaders, yet they fail at everything they do. Whereas someone like Donald Trump, who has a track record of success is unqualified? That simply makes no sense—at all.

Given the constant school funding problems where management of resources is completely vacant, and the utter failures at every other level of public service, why would there be any suggestion of any other type of person sitting in the chair of an American president—other than a businessman? The answer is of course what every public labor union knows across the entire country, and that is that chaos is easy to exploit. So long as there is no management of a situation, then those employees can acquire all the money stolen from tax payers then use safety concerns and children to extract more. It’s a scam that virtually everyone in the Beltway is guilty of—especially the media. They are all pigs at the trough and they can never get enough, and they know that if someone like Donald Trump is watching the books that the slop in that trough will dry up forever. And that scares them to death.

Given that understanding, Donald Trump is belittled for his competency, and relevance—as those ill prepared to be leaders are placed on pedestals. It is a sure blueprint on how to destroy a country. Put bad leaders in charge of good leaders and the effectiveness of any organization is destroyed leaving exploitation by the wicked to be the mode of the day. I’m not a huge Donald Trump fan. He doesn’t treat women the way I would like to see, he’s more arrogant than I think is appropriate, but he’s successful, and anybody who is successful understands what it takes to be that way. Our political system needs much successful types if our republic has any hope of surviving. I’d vote for Donald Trump not because he’s a good person, but because he’s competent. In business, I’d probably get along well with Donald Trump. During a dinner conversation, probably not—but at least I know he has a desire for success as president.

The American presidents over the last two hundred years have had a variety of backgrounds; most were attorneys, or military minds of some kind. Few have a real background in business—and isn’t it time that someone have a clear understanding of what capitalism is all about? What better way for America to help the world with foreign policy than in teaching them the merits of capitalism—how to become rich themselves. Who better to advocate that than Donald Trump presently?

That is another aspect to this whole issue–governments love socialism—they love to be in charge through group consensus. They do not like capitalism at all, and they hate people like Trump because they know first that they need the money of the rich to get elected, and second they hate being reminded that it is the rich who are really in charge of everything—because that’s the way it is in a capitalist society. Trump has no respect for politicians, because they are not productive people. They don’t build wealth, they rob from it. They are anti-capitalists.  So why on earth would we ever consider voting for such a person—yet half of the Republican candidates and all of the Democratic candidates are just such people—progressives at best—socialists at worst—all advocates of looted wealth redistributed in the spirit of fairness as determined by corrupt people.

Specifically, the American businessman—the good ones, tend to make good leaders just by surviving the vetting process. Those who are successful are far more qualified than some human resources slug from P&G to run a school board, or a community giveaway artist like Obama for President. A business person like Carly Fiorina—whom I would also vote for in less than a second—has proven success as leaders—and are therefore infinitely more qualified to be responsible for trillions of dollars and billions of human lives. A community activist or school teachers are not qualifications enough for such a task such as what Woodrow Wilson used to be. Presidents and other representatives in our republic should be proven business people who have a working knowledge of capitalism and the actual cause of job creation. It isn’t politicians—its people like Trump.

So why not Trump? Why not a billionaire who has made money in global markets and knows how to read and assess a situation from different cultures? Could he possibly do worse than Hillary Clinton—who has a proven track record of failure and only has her lack of genitalia as a reason to vote for her?   I think not. Things won’t change in America until we get back to making bold decisions and acting in a dynamic fashion. Doing the same old failures of the past and copying after Europe won’t get us there. But Trump could—so why not?

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Gery Deer on the Clarkcast: America’s real Bronco Billy

For the second weekend in a row I will be hosting Matt Clark’s radio show on Saturday, June 20th, 2015 at 1 PM. The topic this week will be a discussion of traditional Western Arts and a sneak peek at this year’s Annie Oakley event put on by Gery Deer. At the bottom of the hour I will have Gery on to talk about the classic event in Greenville, Ohio and tell stories from years past. It is a topic that is dear to me. It will also be a different kind of show from the typical AM radio discussion that often circulates around politics. Western Arts to me transcend politics and are part of our American heritage which should be preserved at all cost. Click the video below to see a summation of the 2014 Annie Oakley event.

July often resets my American patriotism each year starting with the Fourth of July and ending with the Annie Oakley event which takes place in Darke County, Ohio on the last weekend of every July—celebrating the old western performer’s birthday in Greenville. I get more out of the event than I put into it—whereas people like Gery make it all happen. I show up and participate in the bullwhip contests, but most of the time I watch the performances of the other participants with genuine glee, because most of them make their livings as actual western art performers.

One of my favorite films from the past is Clint Eastwood’s Bronco Billy where he plays a nearly always broke western performer. I used to watch that movie and admire that character as a pure American creation. A part of me always wanted to live that life—and if I didn’t have children and a wife that I was responsible to, I might have done just such a thing—roaming from town to town performing western arts for a sleepy America in hopes of igniting in just a few youth here and there the wonders of freedom and western expansion from a historical perspective.

Gery Deer is the closest person I’ve ever met to a real life Bronco Billy. He has a background that is white-collar; he’s a writer, a television producer, a computer technician, a college graduate well versed and quite comfortable in professional settings. He’s been on America’s Got Talent and done films as a material supplier for projects like The Rundown. He also runs the only bullwhip studio in America from his home where he teaches the art form to students. He’s also a bit of a geek, and attends sci-fi conventions with boyish enthusiasm. But at his core he’s a western performer and vaudeville musician.   His band the Brothers and Company performs most weekends of the year and is a throwback to yesteryear with their compositions. He’s a very unique person who fits best in a motion picture screen rather than real life.

Gery could be a grotesquely rich man if he wanted to be, but he’s too authentic to be. He will steer his material a bit to fit the regulations of the industry as he does for television. He stays away from controversy so that he always has options, but to his core, he’s a very solid family man and an advocate of old-fashioned entertainment. He’s as old school as there is in entertainment. He will bend, but he never breaks and has been that way for the entire decade that I’ve known him.

It is a pleasure to bring people like this to the surface who work in the cracks of life to a broadcast audience like those at WAAM. Even though Gery is clearly a successful person, he is slightly out-of-step with mainstream entertainment, which is decidedly how Clint Eastwood was in Bronco Billy. Both characters possess the tools to be as successful as they want to be, but are stubborn in their adherence to classic American art. This makes Gery always a bit of a “where’s Waldo” type in a busy society. When he is hired for a show, it’s for his skill, his depreciating humor, but more than anything, the classic vaudeville style he still brings to Americana. His best friends are bullwhip artists, sadomasochists who live in the back of their vans 12 months out of the year and eat based on their latest job in every back hole-venue they can come up with. He is close friends with Hollywood stuntmen, sword swallowers, magicians, and knife throwers—and at the same time every television media personality in the Dayton region.

So it will be an interesting hour of radio to an audience who hasn’t had an opportunity to meet people like this in their day-to-day lives. Radio is a perfect venue to place such a unique personality into the public. I have the fortune to know a great number of very unique personalities. It comes from my lifestyle, and I truly wish I had time to nurture them all along. As it stands, I don’t have a lot of time for people in general. I make time when I can, but most people I enjoy most only get time with me a few times a year. And they understand because they are all equally diversified. Matt Clark of course is one of those people and I am glad he is fulfilling the parameters of his secret mission/honeymoon—and that I have the opportunity to cover for his show and bring some color to the AM landscape. For the radio listener there needs to be something unique they are getting from the experience—something they couldn’t get otherwise, and Gery is certainly one of those people.

Be sure to tune this weekend to the live show. Of course I’ll have the actual pod cast up at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom, but there is nothing like live radio—not knowing what is coming next. I’m going to preface Gery by talking about my history with bullwhips and what the value of that relationship is regarding classic American value. That by itself will be interesting enough. The show will then migrate into my relationship with Gery Deer and the upcoming Annie Oakley event which is unique in America. For the casual listener it will be an entertaining hour. For the seasoned veteran, it will be confirmation and reassurance that you are not the only one out there. There are others.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Real Jurassic Park Discovery Center: Universal Studios, bring on the Samsung Innovation Center

80% of my articles are about something negative and overcoming that negativity with critical thinking and assessment. It is always my hope that somebody will listen and improve a situation after my diagnosis. Most of the time that diagnosis is ignored leaving me to shake my head at how stupid people are for not listening—but I get over it and return to the task at hand in figuring out how to solve problems and live productively at life. The remaining 20% of my articles are usually about something I am passionate about—which is actually quite a lot. I feel a lot of very raw—boyish enthusiasm for a great many things. I have an extremely busy life as a result and a lot of people to maintain within it. But I am exactly the kind of man who I always wanted to grow up to be as a kid—which is essentially just a developed version of myself from 7 to 10 years old. That said I am oozing with enthusiasm over the new Jurassic World movie from Universal Studios because it shares with me a similar approach at living—a little terror, optimism, adventure, technical proficiency, and a lot of warning as our human species moves into the needed direction of playing in God’s laboratory.

I saw Jurassic World twice over the weekend within twenty-four hours of each other, and I could go see it another nine times back to back without getting tired of it. It’s my kind of movie to say the least. I literally finished my radio show on Saturday with the Clarkcast in Ann Arbor, Michigan and headed back to the theater to see Jurassic World yet again. It is one of the most satisfying movie experiences that I’ve had going back to The Dark Night Rises a few years ago. It is simply a marriage between filmmaking and science brought together in an orgy of delightful possibility. I couldn’t help but think of the real world Jurassic Park Discovery Center in Orlando, Florida while watching Jurassic World and thinking about how great it will be when Universal Studios builds an updated version of the Samsung Temple of Science from the latest film.DSC01151

I love amusement parks which often make up those 20% articles here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom. The king to me is the Epcot Center within the Disney World complex. It is by far the best theme park in the world in my opinion. But that’s not to say that the rest are bad, just that Epcot does for me what I think Disney always envisioned. It’s loaded with science and culture and it changes with the times so it’s always relevant. It’s quite an astonishing place. But, I love the Universal Parks nearly equally but for different reasons. The only knock on them from my perspective is that they are a little too hip for me—too contemporary. But within the Universal Park, Islands of Adventure they have an entire section dedicated to Jurassic Park which is to me like the Holy of Holies within King Soloman’s temple in Jerusalem as far as science. When people ask me what it would take to get me to support school levies and public schools I say to them—make all of them like the Discovery Center at Jurassic Park within the Island’s of Adventure theme park, and I would be the biggest education guy in the world. But because they fall dreadfully short, they deserve to have the wrath of critical opinion cast at them for being too lazy to pluck off the vine of knowledge the low hanging fruit that is there for us all—only we refuse to do so. And that is what the Discovery Center at Jurassic Park is all about.DSC01158

The pictures shown here are from a trip my wife and I took to it together not that long ago. We had a three-day pass to the two parks and spent nearly a day just at the Discovery Center out of all the attractions. It was an amazing building and I found myself writing several novels in my head just while sitting on the lakeside entrance staring at the Marvel Universe across the waterway from the Discovery Center contemplating many things all at the same time. It was a profoundly relaxing experience to my excessively active mind. I can only describe it as heaven on earth for a person with the kind of mind that I have. My wife was just as enthused which is why we have been married for so long together. We ate at the Discovery Center, participated in every exhibit that we could, spent a lot of time looking through everything in their gift shop, and just looking at the decorations. It is an amazing place and I just love it.DSC01165

I get a similar kind of joy out of the Dinosaur Alive exhibit at my hometown park of Kings Island operated by Cedar Fair Amusements. I love going to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee because of all the miniature golf courses featuring dinosaurs and monsters of all types. But I love that Island’s of Adventure Discovery Center most of all. So I couldn’t help but contemplate that with Universal Studios taking in $200 million domestically, nearly a half a billion globally just in one weekend with Jurassic World, that they might finally expand their Islands of Adventure park to include the Temple of Science complete with holographic projections just like in the movie. The technology is there now for that kind of thing and is quite possible. I want to take my grandchildren there! It may even be worth the investment to do what they have done with Harry Potter and make two worlds connected by a monorail of some kind, something that goes from the old Jurassic Park area to an actual recreation of the Jurassic World main street shown in the movie. I really want to physically go to that place shown in the movie and spend hours upon hours in the Samsung Innovation Center located in the temple at the end of main street.DSC01155

People often ask me how I juggle so many different things at the same time, which shocks me a little bit, because we all do it as kids. But when we grow up we just stop playing with life and lose that ability—at least most people do. I never did. I have so many hobbies it would take me fourteen lifetimes to get everything I want out of all of them. But places like the Jurassic Park area of Universal’s Islands of Adventure help a lot, because they are playful places full of wonder and discovery. A young lady once who grew up with a bad social outlook yet was quite attractive said to me that she wasn’t going to ever see that stupid Jurassic Park movie with all those stupid dinosaurs running around. She thought when she said it that I would play along and feed off her pessimism; because she was used to men treating her like that. They’d say anything to get her cloths off—even if it meant ridiculing Jurassic Park as a work of art. My response to her was that I never spoke to her again—which shocked her. That was well over twenty years ago and she has bumped into me around town here and there. She became exactly what I thought she would, a used up mess who has lost her attractiveness and is now a lonely bitter person and it all started with her refusal to enjoy something playful and fun when she was younger. Little things lead to big things—believe me. The same holds true to what you allow into your brain.DSC01166

Dinosaurs are part of our prehistoric past. They lived a long time on earth and died rather suddenly. We should study them to figure out what we might do differently. And it is there that the gates of science open into the world of philosophy which is my favorite place to be. And to most adequately utilize those gates, I find places like the Discovery Center in Orlando, Florida to be one of my favorite places—anywhere—outside of the Epcot Center of course. Now with the success of a new Jurassic Park movie, it is my sincere hope that Universal will build for me a recreation of their Samsung Innovation Center. Because I want to visit it badly! Such places make living life such a delightful experience. And I hope that they will use the power of capitalism to share that joy with the world on a much more epic scale than a darkened theater!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

What Every Man Must Have: Brownells’ “Big Book”

This is just for the guys today. I’m sure there are ladies, especially those who read here who are just as interested in what I’m about to say, but demographically, this information is most potent to guys—exclusively! The information I am about to give the men in my audience here may rattle their very foundations to the bare DNA with delight. But let me first preface my statement by reporting that the little bit of construction occurring in West Chester just north of the railroad tracks on 747 is in fact a new target range built for indoor shooting and it will be able to handle my Smith & Wesson.500 Magnum. That by itself is something to get excited about.

As I stated previously I have decided to dust off my old gunsmithing roots and get back into things a bit—which for me the very first stop was where I left off—at Brownells and their famous “Big Book.” Well, two wonderful things happened over the weekend while I was on the air at WAAM radio. My family wanted to go see Jurassic World again—which we did as soon as I got off the air and my new Brownells “Big Book” arrived in the mail. I had been doing some work on a few old guns I have and have them all tore apart in my shop and needed a needle oiler to finish so I turned to Brownells for some Kellube synthetic gun lubricant for the magic stuff that makes guns work so well. They rewarded me not only with prompt service, but with a new “Big Book” catalog that features the most extensive gun parts supply in the world.image

What surprises me is that Brownells is not on every single man in America’s nightstand. Too many people who consider themselves shooters do not know about Brownells, which is a crime, because they have more cool gadgets and gizmos in their “Big Book” catalog than any Mac Tool or Snap On catalog ever hoped to have. It is in my opinion the best catalog for a man that there is in the world—and every guy should have one. Every man—even Bruce Jenner. It is in a man’s DNA to want tools to make life better and there is nothing better than tools and guns to a man—NOTHING! Nothing, nothing, N-O-T-H-I-N-G!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The pictures here show just some examples.

imageOh, you need a cleaning kit for a military issue M203 (40mm) grenade launcher or perhaps a (37 mm) variant—guess what—Brownells sells one. Order it today and it will be on your doorstep in a few short days. Oh—you need a tool kit for your AR-15—Brownells has all the special tools you will need to break down that firearm to the last pin that holds it together and allow you to put it back together again. Brownells is the best resource for the modern shooter in the world. End of story. So when you find you need something—feel free to support the local gun dealers and outlets like Cabelas and Bass Pro Shops for the basics. But when you need specifics—schematics, special screw drivers, wrenches, punches, etc, Brownells is the place to shop. What about a hammer spring for your Marlin? Brownells has that spring in stock. You can buy it there as well as all the tools it takes to take the gun apart and put it in. That makes Brownells a treasure beyond value for any man who loves his guns and the tools it takes to maintain them.image

I remembered Brownells from my old gunsmithing days when I maintained a FFI and had to report at the tender age of 19 and 20 my work back to the federal government which I never liked. I got busy in subsequent years raising a family and working with friends within the Western Arts community specifically with bullwhips for the next two decades so I got away from gunsmithing. After I purchased my .500 Magnum I was looking for cleaning supplies for it and dusted off my memory of my old supplier. So I contacted them to see if they were still in business, and guess what—they are better than ever. But you don’t hear about them too much outside of close shooting circles so mainstream guys don’t know much about Brownells. If you are a guy and you like tools and guns, then you need to have a Brownells “Big Book.” There is no “ifs” about it. You just have to do it.image

Brownells carries over 30,000 custom accessories for firearms and is still a tight nit family company that conducts themselves with an old school emphasis on customer service and quality. They are among the best that America has to offer as far as a company. They are small enough to still be family owned, but big enough to carry so many unique items in their vast inventory. It is stunning what they have in their catalog. Much of it can be found online, but there are so many items that it still takes a classic catalog to browse through to see everything because often there are things you didn’t know you needed that you would only see by flipping through the hundreds and hundreds of pages of their “Big Book.”image

I’m sharing this valuable information because Brownells is important to maintaining the Second Amendment. There is a real push from progressive billionaires like George Soros to put pressure on firearm manufacturers and legislators to regulate the firearm industry with a mad mother neurosis on safety. Safety is overrated, what matters more is the experience of being alive, and when dealing with firearms it’s important to handle them with caution so that we can all be alive long enough to enjoy them and the freedoms they provide. Because there are a lot of bad guys out there, and they want our guns so they can thrive in the power vacuum left behind, there is legislation to attempting to destroy the industry on the supply side. Guns are needed to counter the attempts of the Soros types. George Soros would likely not be one of the men who would like Brownells—rather he would prefer Karl Marx for reading material, and that makes him a dangerous man. For the raw hearted American man Brownells has what you are looking for—especially the Gunsmith Kinks series of books sold through Brownells only.   The best way to take away the strategy of the progressive left against guns in America is to keep our guns working longer and better with the tricks of the gunsmithing trade so that all the attempts by Soros and his gun grabbing European progressives will be for nothing. Brownells actually allows you to build a gun from scratch, you don’t necessarily need a firearms manufacturer if you know what you are doing and you can learn through Brownells. That’s their mission in life.image

We want to keep Brownells around. They are based in Iowa and are in good hands in gun country far away from the grabbers of New York and Los Angeles, but they need business to hedge against the legislative attacks that they have endured for decades. There will be more of those attacks, so to keep the “Big Books” flowing Brownells needs our respect and support.image

As I get back into this field of endeavor I am so happy to see Brownells still out there doing the good work they have done for over 75 years. Every man should have a Brownells book next to their bed and should buy at least one tool from them. Because everything about Brownells points to quality and respect—they are the best in the business where threats to gun rights are coming from every direction and they are there to help expand firearm ability and add a new layer to their enjoyment. So if you believe in Second Amendment rights, of course the NRA is important—George Lang’s Second Call Defense is as well, but for my money Brownells is as important. They will enhance that trip to the new West Chester shooting range by having cool gadgets to work on the guns to get them ready at home and at the facility for a day of shooting. The “Big Book” is a work of literature that every man should have and enjoy for the sheer testosterone that emerges from the sight of quality tools and their utilization on fine and treasured firearms. There is nothing better than that! Click the link below to get your own “Big Book” today.

http://www.brownells.com/aspx/ppc/default.aspx?mc_id=1400&srch=1&ch=ppc&cm_mmc=ppc-_-Itwine-_-Bing-_-Gunsmithing%20Tools

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Just Type in “Overmanwarrior”: A great offer from Second Call Defense

 

George Lang from Second Call Defense presented a very nice offer during the WAAM radio show I was hosting for my friend Matt Clark.  I’ve done quite a lot of radio but this was the first time I was the host, which took a bit of getting used to.  Its one thing to be a guest as George was, it’s another to be the pace setter watching all the commercial stops and working with the producer on the other side of the glass.  But it was fun, as I expected it to be and as always quite revelatory.  The entire broadcast can be heard at the following link, which I’d suggest listening to again and again because of all the information presented.   I dedicated the show to the use of personal firearms for self-defense spending the first half talking about my personal experience in the matter, then put George on to discuss Second Call Defense, which is to my mind as important as the bullets you put into a gun used during a self-defense situation.  George covered a remarkable number of legal ins and outs during his segment which was worth listening to all by itself.  I have included the script I was working with to provide some guide to the broadcast.  The times include commercials which have been removed from the following recording.  George offered a free month of Second Call Defense subscription to anyone who types OVERMANWARRIOR into the redeem code on their website—which was a pretty good deal.

 

Here are the plans and pricing.  The box requiring the redeem code is on the next page while filling out the payment information form.

http://www.secondcalldefense.org/plans-and-pricing

 

Radio Show WAAM Saturday June 13, 2015 1 PM
WAAM Talk 1600  734-822-1600

5 min — Matt Clark’s secret mission

8 min — Previous show and buying a .500 Magnum after realizing that society is already over the precipice.  Clinton emails, Lois Lerner corruption, Benghazi cover-up, drug violence, open borders, ISIS terrorism, power grab by the Justice Department law enforcement over localized police, Common Core and two generations of poorly educated children, the weakest foreign policy of United States global presence in over a century, bomb scares at the White House, Justice Department cover ups, and men who want to be women and vice versa—the world has fallen over the edge.

10 min — What I wanted to be when I grew up—a gunsmith.

17 min — Soft break

20 min — Treat at the bottom of the hour, old song from T.G. Sheppard and Clint Eastwood from a more civilized time – the 1980s.

  • The reason 80s music and movies still resonate so powerfully in our culture.

o Reaganomics and individual empowerment.

  • Dirty Harry represented by Clint Eastwood embodied traditional America with the encroaching progressivism culminating in the movie Sudden Impact.

30 min — Hard break

35 min — Song “Go ahead and Make my Day.”

38 min — Introduction of George Lang and his company Second Call Defense.

47 min — Soft break

50 min — Continuation about Second Call Defense.  Possibly take a phone call or two.

58 min — Exit to the top of the hour

As George pointed out during the broadcast George Zimmerman could have saved himself a lot of headache if he had used Second Call Defense during the Trayvon Martain shooting in Florida.  Using a gun in home defense or in a stand-your ground situation is only part of the story.  Because of the way laws and modern politics work, the burden of proof falls unfortunately on the shooter to validate their innocence.  When talking to the police after such an unfortunate incident, it is best to give the police as little as possible to turn around and use against you in court during a criminal or civil trial.  Some of those court hearings can be so painful that you might almost wish you hadn’t used a gun—which is the reason for all the progressive legislation—to nudge Americans away from the Second Amendment.  There are entirely too many people involved in self-defense shootings every year that lose everything because of the legal entanglements that occur after.  The very best thing to do in such a case is to turn all the legal work over to Second Call Defense and keep your mouth shut—even if you’re innocent of all guilt.  The system works against gun owners, so you’ll need some help, which is why George Lang is involved in Second Call Defense to begin with.  It’s a much-needed service for firearm use; just as the NRA is needed as a lobby against a gun grabbing government.  They are both very important and go hand in hand in this modern age of a lawyer driven society primarily against gun rights.

As I reported in my broadcast my decision to purchase the .500 Magnum was for all the reasons that the SWAT guys used a .50 caliber sniper rifle to stop the crazed gunman who opened up on a Dallas police station just hours before my show.  They used the big, powerful round to disable the getaway van by putting two shots into the engine block.  The .500 Magnum has the same type of stopping power, which in the world we are living in, is needed.  There is no reason to take risks with personal safety, so I am choosing the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum as my choice for family defense.  But, those big bullets aren’t enough to protect a firearm user from the diabolical reaches of the classic political class and their need for a straw man to prosecute in the wake of a shooting.  Their need for a straw man should never be underestimated.  As a firearm owner, you need protection from them as much as you do the goons, the punks, and the creeps George and I were talking about.  It’s a vicious world out there, and I have to thank George for making it easier for listeners of the Clarkcast to get protected with a free month by using the redeem word, “OVERMANWARRIOR.”  Take advantage of that offer, it is some of the best insurance that you can have for yourself

I’ll be hosting for Matt again on Saturday, June 20th at 1pm.  On that show Gery Deer will be with me to talk more about guns, knife throwing, and bull whips.  Be sure to tune in for more voluminous entertainment and interconnecting knowledge.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Not Everyone Wants to be Bruce Jenner: A review and defense of ‘Jurassic World’

Well, that was a treat that was quite unexpected. Jurassic World was absolutely marvelous and a stunning fourth addition to the Jurassic Park movies. I anticipated that it would be good, even that I would enjoy it—but I did not expect it to be such a respectable tribute to the original movie while at the same time standing on its own. There are so many things great about Jurassic World that I could literally write about it for days on end and not touch everything I’d like to say. So for brevity I’ll focus on an aspect of the film that is quite clearly a source of some of the negative reviews from progressive sectors of the media—and that is the clear definition of the alpha male—and how that calculated approach is aimed at appeasing a hungry audience craving such definitions in a generation of watered down bravado. Chris Pratt was actually wonderful in the movie as a very strong alpha male character while Bryce Dallas Howard’s character was extremely comfortable in her femininity by the end of the film. It was an unusual approach that offered no apologies.

When Joss Whedon Tweeted, “I’m too busy wishing this clip wasn’t 70’s era sexist. She’s a stiff, he’s a life force – really? Still?” The Avengers director was referring to a clip showing Howard and Pratt speaking where it was obvious that the male character had the alpha position over the female. Whedon suggests that if a film does not diminish a male character in modern cinema into some sort of beta male—that the presentation of the material presented isn’t relevant in the modern age. The Tweet was designed to put pressure on director Colin Trevorrow, Steven Spielberg and the executives at Universal Studios which thankfully they didn’t listen to. This explains a lot about why I didn’t care much for the second Avengers film, Age of Ultron. Whedon I thought tried too hard to make Scarlet Johansson an alpha type when her character on-screen obviously wanted to submit to the Incredible Hulk. Maybe if she had loosened up a bit the Hulk would have stuck with her. Just a little advice, Joss—it’s free. Joss is riding a franchise built by Stan Lee, so it’s hard to screw it up—but his progressive approach is costing the Avengers money. Sure it’s doing good business, but it could be better. There is much more to be made if the filmmakers would listen to their audience instead of trying to cram progressive diatribes down their throats. Some people want their males to be alpha and their female’s beta. It makes for good sex and happy couples. Not everyone wants to be Bruce Jenner. Thankfully the filmmakers of Jurassic World ignored a lot of the progressive product placement in their film favoring audience satisfaction instead.

One particular scene which I thought was actually quite remarkable was when a tattered Claire was laying on the ground behind the protective foot of the classic T-Rex while it was protecting her from the movie’s villain, the Indominus Rex. It reminded me of a classic King Kong movie with Fey Wray off to the side being protected from a threat. Claire was a very competent career woman who was running the whole park. It wasn’t her fault that the Indominus Rex got loose and ate all her visitors. But over the course of the film she loosed up and embraced her femininely attributes a bit more through her character arch to arrive at the end a willing beta to Chris Pratt’s alpha. That might be out of fashion in Hollywood, but it’s quite what people in the theater audience wanted to see—because it’s what they want in real life.

Chris Pratt’s Owen character several times throughout the film firmly established himself as the alpha character even explaining to Claire’s nephews his relationship to the raptors. They obeyed him because he was the dominate male even to the point where he could ride a motorcycle through a rain forest with the raptors hunting with him. The nephews seeing this tell Claire, “you’re boyfriend is a badass.” There was a very obvious embrace of Pratt being the alpha during the entire film and it was Claire’s task to realize that she was a beta in an alpha disguise and to realize that through the movie’s tribulations. And there is nothing wrong with that. If audiences didn’t like that type of thing, they wouldn’t go see the movie and have such wonderful memories of the previous films.

What makes the Jurassic Park movies work is the primal understanding of animal behavior. Humans are in fact animals and have raw needs similar to any dog, cat or gold-fish. The Daily Beast recognized this trait in its review of Jurassic World calling the movie a “sexist mess” because the theme of the story is “about a woman’s ‘evolution’ from an icy-cold, selfish corporate shill into a considerate wife and mother.” That assessment is true, Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady as a swashbuckling, macho, ex-military velociraptor trainer helps her find that realization, but it is her character arch to find it—which she does. At the end of the movie there was applause from a packed theater—some even stood and clapped. Obliviously mainstream America stands apart from Joss Whedon and reviews like The Daily Beast—Whedon even deleted his Twitter account and backtracked a bit on his comments. If he wants his Avengers films to hold up into the future—he better take some notes because 50 to 60 years from now Jurassic World will still be a beloved movie whereas the Avengers risk being viewed as dated and out of touch with the human experience. Feminism in the way that progressives present it is not appealing to the masses—only the levy supporters and Santa Monica neurotics sipping lattés over cold cuts sending text messages to the person sitting next to them.

For me the best part of the movie was the ending. I loved the first movie and thought that there was no way to ever recapture that raw, primal—yet heroic ending—but Colin Trevorrow absolutely nailed it. Tears were streaming down the faces of the people sitting around me and it was quite spectacular and deeply satisfying—especially for fans of the original movie. I’m not going to spoil it for those who have not yet seen it. But I will say this—read my article about the T-Rex Café in Orlando and you’ll understand why it’s such a wonderful ending. CLICK HERE to review. I hope because of Jurassic World that there is a T-Rex Café in every North American city. I would eat in it once a week if there was one in Cincinnati.   That name had great meaning to me before Jurassic World. After the film it has even more.

I love dinosaurs, I love paleontology. I love The Dinosaur Store in Cocoa Beach, Florida, the T-Rex Café in Orlando and Jack Horner in Montana—along with the great work that he does every day in the world of DNA sequencing. There is optimism in science that is unlike anything the human race has ever endeavored to venture in to. Jurassic World is in love with science, human potential, and the dangers of raw primal urges that get out of control. My great fear in going into Jurassic World was that Colin Trevorrow would miss the mark and taint the great franchise that Jurassic Park is. I was afraid that he’d put a dagger into it to the extent that Universal Studios in Florida might actually shut down my favorite part of their great park due to age and irrelevancy. But what I found was a film that breathed new life into the classic dinosaur movie and invented characters that were actually likeable—and mainstream. In a time where the media is telling us that Bruce Jenner is normal and that even the Hulk will walk away from an overly masculine woman in the Black Widow—Jurassic World doesn’t try to cram feminism down our throats behind the thrills of an action film. Instead it aims to give the audience what they paid for and ignite in millions of little kids a love of science and the ancient past in the form of heroic dinosaurs.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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