What ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ Says about Humanity: The politics behind the sexes

I personally don’t see any difference between the minds of men and women. Women have done great things in history and are quite capable intellectually of anything that needs to be done at any level. I have raised two daughters to believe that they can do anything and that no obstacle is too great and that there is no such thing as social victimization. Yet there is a difference between men and women and that is their roles in sexuality. Sex is a function of human bodies, like eating, breathing, or physical activity of any kind. The mind often drives the body, but the vehicle that hosts the mind is different. So it becomes very confusing to society when politics and philosophy have focused incorrectly on the bodily function of the sexes so to gain leverage in the great games of life—whether it was men trying to keep women from voting, or women using sex to gain advantage in a marriage or other relationships. Such perilous activity is the key topic point to my new installment to the Cliffhanger series Latté Sipping Prostitutes.

Currently the intellectual capacity of our modern society isn’t very astute. We are a consumer based species heavily focused on sign stimuli which drives our commercial activity to the point where intelligence has been frowned upon. The Go Daddy commercials are good examples of this—they offer an easy product that virtually anybody can perform—but they use sex to sell their product placement and convince people to turn off their minds to the fact. Most aspects of commercial society function with this intellectual weakness-Go Daddy is just an example. The important aspect is that sex is used to place product importance into the minds of the consumer class. Well, the very same tactic is used in politics, and it is a serious situation that needs to be explored which again is why I wrote Latte Sipping Prostitutes.

Progressive institutions like public education and media outlets have further distorted the contradiction by speaking out of both sides of their mouths as they have in a recent Hollywood Reporter article regarding the new Fifty Shades of Grey film being released on Valentines Day 2015 weekend to capitalize on the romantic event. The book itself is simply a work of erotic fiction. It is pornography that has been sold as mainstream literature in outlets such as Wal-Mart, Target and was featured on day time talk shows like Ellen as if it were a work of pornography finally aimed at females often referred to as “mommy porn.” Men feeling like they needed to show support of women–after all they have the annual Sports Illustrated Swim Suit edition that comes out in February along with other milder forms of pornography intended specifically for them–just went along to get along. The book itself and the film that is following is seen as empowering women—so the mainstream bought into the effort and made E.L. James a multimillionaire. Yet the story itself is all about the fantasy of women being dominated by a strong “ultimate” man. In this case it is a young billionaire who is drastically handsome and has just enough of a broken psyche that the story’s protagonist can love back to health—which leads to the bondage subplot and the 1/5 of the upcoming film dealing strictly with nudity and sadomasochistic sex. This has left men very confused because for three decades now they were told that women didn’t want those kinds of men. They wanted big softies who cried and shared their feelings. That is not the kind of man who is the object of love in Fifty Shades of Grey and the subsequent novels. So to sum up the problem progressive society wishes literally to have their cake and eat it too—they instructed men to be less manly and controlling—to be more open and expressive—then promoted a movie that is supposed to empower women which is all about the lust of women for controlling—dominating men. Then to top it off, the articles leading up to the film’s release–the pre-sales articles bragged about the parts of the country showing the strongest sales numbers and guess what states they were—they were strong southern states still leaning politically and culturally toward traditional values. The not so subtle message from progressive organizations like The Hollywood Reporter shown below is that women in the south are repressed and desire liberation. Read for yourself.

The highly anticipated big-screen version of EL James’ best-selling erotic novel is selling more advance tickets than average in many Southern and Midwestern states, according to Fandango. In particular, presales for Fifty Shades are nearly four times better than average pre sales in Mississippi, the online ticket retailer added. Sales are, similarly, at least two times better than expected in Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama and Louisiana.

Fifty Shades, which hits theaters on Feb. 13, is already the fastest-selling R-rated title in Fandango history. The company analyzed the state-by-state advance sales patterns, comparing Fifty Shades presales against the average and finding surprisingly high numbers for the Universal/Focus Features title.

Fandango is also reporting that hundreds of opening-weekend screenings of Fifty Shades are already sold out in cities like Tupelo, Mississippi; Florence, Kentucky; Chattanooga, Tenn.; San Diego; Houston; Las Vegas; L.A. and New York.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/fifty-shades-grey-ticket-sales-770101

The sales pattern for Fifty Shades of Grey will be that the film will do between $80 million to $60 million on opening weekend but will drop quickly once the build-up audience sees the movie. It will be lucky to make $160 million domestically which will make money on a budget that is reasonably low—and will be considered a success. But it will not be on par culturally with something like American Sniper which speaks to the typical “Red State” voter. Progressive institutions are trying to build a case for their viewpoints of expanded feminism by attacking typical red states and purple states such as Kentucky.

Of a particular interest Florence, Kentucky was mentioned which is a southern suburb of Cincinnati. I know from personal experience a lot about that demographic which is typically very affluent. There are a lot of professional couples living in that region where the husband travels a lot in their job and the women are independently building their own lives under a shared roof under very progressive conditions. When you get a few miles away from this specific region of Kentucky the demographics move back toward Bible Belt traditional roles where women still are encouraged to wear skirts on Sundays and to stay home to raise their babies if it’s even a remote option with a marriage partner. Yet the Hollywood Reporter took the pre-sales numbers from the Rave in Florence as an indication of the Bible Belt south as having women crawling all over themselves to see Fifty Shades of Grey.

Obviously the motive of the reports were political and agenda driven. When the reality comes to pass and the film isn’t a blockbuster on par with films like American Sniper—everyone will forget about the build-up. But they will remember that women in the south felt repressed and that they desire fulfillment they aren’t getting from their traditional lifestyles meaning they need to support more Barack Obama wealth redistribution programs, Hillary Clinton for upcoming president, and Elizabeth Warren as a viable progressive voice in Washington. Men through their guilt will just throw up their arms and say nothing as their wives vote for Hillary and they vote for whoever the Republican is leaving the minority voting population as the pivot vote. See how it works? But all along the scam is clear—Fifty Shades of Grey doesn’t empower women at all—it just exploits secretly the stereotype that was always there—that women in a sexual sense desire to be in possession of a man who conducts their life with sheer confidence and strength. It has nothing to do with a woman’s mind or ability to conduct a hard task like becoming a scientist traveling to Mars or a technical wizard in a laboratory—but with their desires for sexual roles that they are biologically inclined to. To fill those roles they want strong men—not weak crybabies. So it is in this way that feminism has confused the hell out of everyone with the strategic objective to advance progressivism.

It’s a complicated story and my narrative Latté Sipping Prostitutes means to specifically break down this issue in a way that provides context. An example is often helpful because society speaks out of both sides of its mouth on the issue. And it takes a great understanding of human nature to see through the haze. That understanding will not come from the Hollywood Reporter. They are simply trying to make a point that will recruit more progressive voters in the future from states that typically vote the way their husbands do—because men tend to pay more attention to political aspects of society as women tend to focus more on social aspects. In most honest marriages men leave the social engagements to their wives while the men read about local and state politics in the paper and the two typically trust in each other the result. There is much more at work behind the Hollywood Reporter article that goes back to the training of progressives from their institutions of learning which taught them to think in such ways. But it’s hard to see, which is why it is good to have tools which enable the curious to see those tricks played so openly upon the political and social landscape using the sexes to hide the truth.

Rich Hoffman

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New X-Wing Strategies for Scum and Villainy: Lean Han and the Outrider

It has been a busy end of the 2014 year and there really hasn’t been time for all my hobbies. Really, I have too many interests, so my enjoyment of the Star Wars Miniatures game X-Wing has been on hold for a while. I did manage to watch the matches of Paul Heaver at the Worlds X-Wing tournament at Fantasy Flight Games and enjoyed watching his “Fat Han” build dominate the competition. Those matches can be seen below and are well worth viewing for their strategy. X-Wing has become even larger over the last year and there are no signs of it stopping. It’s a fabulous game as I’ve said before—and it keeps getting better. Even with all the innovation that has went into X-Wing from FFG it was great to see the Han Solo build win Worlds. I have used a similar build from the start of X-Wing but it was the addition of the Headhunters and the Artoo card that put the Fat Han build over the top—and Heaver exploited it brilliantly over the course of the 2014 season.

For anyone who has been wondering about the content of the new Star Wars films, hard-core fans know that the rumored abandonment of the Expanded Universe is purely a false flag attempt to throw people off the trail of the actual plot. In the gaming universe, FFG has shown that more than ever the Expanded Universe is shaping the future of Star Wars for the better and for me personally, there has been nothing more exciting than the Wave V addition of the Rebel faction YT-2400 Outrider which fits perfectly into a strategy I had been wanting to work on for the 2015 evolution of the meta game. The news coming out of X-Wing is so exciting that sometimes I wish I could afford to just play that game all the time. I would love to spend the rest of my life playing it all day every day and I’d never tire of it. For guys like Paul Heaver they are able to delve into every aspect of the game strategically which would be a lot of fun. I can maybe get a game of X-Wing in about two times per month. But some people who I know are able to play several times per day and 12 to 20 per week which is the best way to really get good at the game. Now with all the expansions coming into play, there is a lot to keep up with—but its fun trying. For 2015 the biggest news is a Star Destroyer huge ship coming to the Empire faction and the advent of the new Scum and Villainy faction. It is that new faction that had my interest in devising a new strategy in how to deal with them once they hit the market. For me, that will involve the new Outrider.

It took me until February of 2015 to finally get to play a game with the YT-2400 but I’m happy to report that it is the perfect complement to the traditional Fat Han build replacing the old Twin Falcon builds as a viable strategy. The Outrider fits in as a perfect complement to the Falcon with its 360 turret ability, and barrel roll. On the Falcon I typically use Expert Handling ability to get a barrel roll out of the Falcon so having two large ships that can barrel roll in and out of firing arcs is the key to making this a build that I think will work best in dealing with the new faction of Bounty Hunters.

What will set the Scum and Villainy faction apart from the previous Rebel and Empire factions is that the bounty hunters will utilize illegal armaments and dirty tricks. So it will turn the game meta on its head and make the game so much more dramatic—as if it needed it. The addition of the new Boba Fett Firespray under the Scum faction is going to be a really difficult ship to deal with along with IG-88 and other pirates. So firepower will be needed that can fire behind those dirty tricks. That’s where the YT-2400 comes in. The feature build is the use of a Heavy Laser Cannon from range 2-3 to pick off foes from a safe distance using the barrel roll to stay out of the line of fire.

The version of Fat Han that I’m using is a very fast Falcon that I’d call a “Lean Han” and the YT-2400 decked out with a HLC and the Outrider card which allows for that secondary weapon to become the primary. With the two speedy YT family ships on the board at the same time using Han’s re-roll ability to make sure he hits each round, it will be the most effective counter to the meta-game that is coming if you are a Rebel player—which of course I wouldn’t consider playing as anything else. The games I played with the pairing were very successful even against a TIE Swarm so the YT for me is a dream come true.

The guys who are playing double-digit games of X-Wing per week are really lucky. I would consider retiring from all my many tasks and becoming a professional player just because it’s so much fun to play. I think it far surpasses Chess as a game of strategy and is showing signs of maintaining great depth for the future. The game is huge now, but after the next Star Wars film comes out in less than a year it will really explode because of all the new ships and characters who will be made into ships in the game. The Scum and Villainy factions along with the Outrider are great examples of how FFG has used the Expanded Universe to build a great mythological gaming experience and for Star Wars to really work; the new films will need to tap into all this background going into games like X-Wing. Many of the cards offered with the ships come from characters only referenced in the novels and comics, so the direction of X-Wing indicates the direction of the Star Wars franchise from Disney over the next six years. A decade from now X-Wing may be a massive game full of loyal fans that will greatly eclipse what Magic the Gathering is today. It is really fun to watch this phenomenon mature into something special.

I played a game over the weekend at 4 AM and found myself so consumed with the strategy of X-Wing that I felt like I was on vacation from the mundane world of normalcy. It’s no wonder the game is gaining so much in popularity. What’s better is that every month more and more players come to the game as newcomers and with them will come a host of bizarre strategies and attempts at innovation. Right now, Paul Heaver is the top player in the world—for two years in a row. The trick in becoming so good is in figuring out what the new meta game will be, and developing a strategy in how to deal with it. “Fat Han” was last year’s strategy. This year it will have to be something else. For me, it will be a twin Falcon/Outrider build with a Lean Han advancing with great maneuverability through and around obstacles. From my perspective speed and firepower are the only ways to really deal with the Scum and Villainy faction. But we’ll see. Part of the fun with the game is in figuring out those kinds of things—and seeing how they play out in real life against a real player. As usual, FFG is at it again, and stronger than ever. They really are an amazing company. Their products bring me great joy, and I know by the game’s popularity that I’m not alone. It is certainly one of the bright spots in the modern world. Myth made into a community of neat people who give me hope on humanity. I love X-Wing Miniatures.

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Rich Hoffman

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Latté Sipping Prostitutes: Tackling tough subjects in the latest Cliffhanger installment

As much as women think they have made great gains in the world of voting and the workplace, women are still used and abused terribly under the flag of collectivism. They are expected to act in unison—as a collective group and often behave in such a fashion making them a serious barrier to logic when hard decisions have to be made. It is probably one of the hardest things to write about in regard to correcting aspects of politics and philosophy plunging our society into the current quandaries that we find ourselves in—but if proper correction of modern problems are to have any hope—this problem must be identified and dealt with so that civilization can fix them. That is why the next chapter of my Cliffhanger story The Curse of Fort Seven Mile deals exclusively with this problem. Here is the description of the chapter from the book as it appears on Amazon.com.

A school board president, a chamber of commerce CEO, a teacher’s union president and a wealthy socialite plan the demise of Fort Seven Mile’s new mayor after a brutal attack by Cliffhanger upon the police force. A sinister plan is hatched during their weekly latté gatherings where the four women routinely plan the manner of politics around their community along with their fantasies of sadomasochism, gossip, and social treachery.

Their grabs for power escalate as they organize a union protest at the Mayor’s home in a hope to diminish public approval of the beautiful Misty Finnegan and draw out the bandit Cliffhanger with a trap only the crafty mind of Patty Latrine could fathom. What they discover is a secret nobody could even comprehend leading to events that will change life as they know it forever.

Long time readers here will recognize the title as a joke that has evolved over several years. Specifically, I have used such a term often to describe the type of people who illogically vote for continuous tax increases not from individual thought processes, but from the pressure of their peers. Once it became obvious to me that women were being used by other women to promote obvious trends in politics that were disastrous to our society it was clear that the tendency needed to be called out so that it could be recognized and corrected. Men have been slow to join me in pointing out such a tragedy because they have been pinned into a corner with a check-mate in regards to social conduct. If they support such viewpoints as I have proposed, then they are cast about as Neanderthals and sex is cut from their lives with surgical precision.

This has always been by design, progressive groups knew that this would be the biological component to their movement and they sought to exploit it behind the flag of feminism. Like in the story described above, every community has some variation of the characters mentioned. Sometimes there are men included, but the basis of most society presently conducts their schemes against the voting population in much the way that the ladies in Latté Sipping Prostitutes do. And usually the groupings are broke down along similar political lines. The evidence can be seen at various Chamber of Commerce events and charity fund-raising efforts. Always the intentions from a distance are good—but the subtle underbelly of the strategy is often sinister—and deeply complicated. To hide that complicated web of motivations men have been urged to go along to get along and turn off their brains. It is likely one of the biggest modern problems that is facing our culture which nobody talks about. But they should.

Even though I have written about this problem extensively and provided vast amounts of scientific data to support the conclusions and discussed it over hours of talk radio—the best format to explore the problem is within fiction. It is within the context of a story that the various psychological layers of the forces at work can be properly explored in all their connecting fashions. The primary antagonist in this particular story Latté Sipping Prostitutes is Patty Latrine—the wealthy socialite. Every community has some version of her and she is found among all the various groups herding women along like sheep toward a destiny not always to their liking.

The main protagonist in Latté Sipping Prostitutes even though she doesn’t have a line of dialogue but is only seen and talked about is the new Mayor of Fort Seven Mile, Misty Finnegan. As a woman she is truly a liberated free-thinker who is independent to such an extent that she lives beyond the control of Patty Latrine which makes the socialite feel very insecure—an emotion that she’s not used to experiencing. What has the women of her group so up in arms over the new mayor is that Misty is home schooling her children which means she doesn’t blindly support the public education system that Patty uses to advance her social strategies. To make matters worse Misty is a beautiful woman and the socialites under Patty’s leadership find the mayor to be a threat to their own power of seduction—that ability to perk out a lip or flirt with men in a way to get what they want when they want it. (Most human communication is non-verbal and women are great at it). Misty Finnegan’s presence as a powerful political figure of a truly strong and independent woman creates major problems for Patty Latrine and her minions of latte sipping despots who will do almost anything to stay in Patty’s good graces.

So what do the Patty Latrines of the world have that other women want—and why would women as a collective group even be prone to her strategies? Well, that is part of the problem and I’ve seen it firsthand—which I write about extensively in this latest Cliffhanger installment. Women like to have places to wear the jewelry and cloths they pick up here and there either from men, or from a shopping spree and people like Patty give them someplace to wear them. It’s just another form of control. If men committed sins in the past by not allowing their wives to drive a car, or getting them continuously pregnant to keep them from running off with another man, women like Patty Latrine use social status to do the same, by controlling the flow of politics at a communal level. If you don’t do and say as Patty does, an invite to her next charity dinner won’t come and nobody wants to be cast out of such events when everyone will be there!

It used to be the good ol’ boys network that was the vile centerpiece of corruption and discontent in every community, but that is no longer the case. Now it is women and they are every bit as bad as the men were. But they have the social mask of goodness to hide that evil behind built by progressive strategy over time to suppress judgment against their actions. What both groups did was wrong acting as a collective unit. Individually, if spoken to, they would say one thing, but within the peer groups of their Central Committees and social networks is a “team” approach which often requires them to act against their best judgment. That is where the trouble starts and the evil driven by a lack of personal authenticity creeps into the picture to bring with it corruption—because once a human being makes such a decision, they are willing to compromise on everything and they lose their integrity.

My work of course in The Curse of Fort Seven Mile is intended to be thought-provoking. For that reason I am particularly proud of Latté Sipping Prostitutes because it is such difficult subject matter to properly articulate. I don’t see many creative types in literature or film attempting to grapple with this problem—so it is advancing unhindered throughout our social structure without analysis, but, not in this new installment of Cliffhanger. After completing the story I knew that I had pulled together some difficult elements and readers would benefit from the result. That result might be controversial but it’s honest and leads to an exciting and unique chapter to the Cliffhanger story arc. A chapter that’s a lot of fun, but is brutally honest in a way that I’m known for; Latté Sipping Prostitutes is one of those stories that has a lot going on but is all too revealing. It might ruffle some feathers but to my intention, that is the difference between good literature and slack-jawed news articles.

The new installment can be found at:

http://www.amazon.com/Latte-Sipping-Prostitutes-Curse-Seven-ebook/dp/B00TBW2D12/

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development

Fighting Off Vico: The answers are at Cliffhanger Research and Development

It is obvious that the world is losing it’s understanding of the root cause behind innovation as isolated factions are continuing to perform such miracles, but society at large is lost as to what to do about them. As the current of world civilization desires to move toward the Vico model of four stages where presently anarchy is giving way toward theocracy it is clearly a mistake to my eyes. So I have decided to do something about it which begins with philosophy and ends with the preservation and continuation of innovation. (CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THE VICO METHOD)

One of the greatest restrictions to modern innovation is the diabolical menace of failed philosophies. Without a correct way of thinking, new ideas created by human minds cannot ignite into their true potential. So I am resurrecting an idea from my past—something I started a long time ago which can be seen at the new website of Cliffhanger Research and Development below. At Cliffhanger Research and Development the products produced must then not be technology itself, but in correcting the failed philosophies that are currently restricting the proper development of innovation. So contained within the written works produced by Cliffhanger Research and Development are examples of real technology and historical records that are true – but are suppressed behind a veil of static social systems intent to carry civilization through democratic anxieties backwards instead of toward innovation. The plot lines of these works are never-the-less exciting, and action oriented, but the underlining expectation is to make readers aware of these emerging technologies and put them into a context that can be understood as a whole instead of fragmented efforts by well-intentioned inventors. Some of the topics explored are:

Regenerative Medicine Cures for Cancer

Self Navigating Flying Personal Vehicles

Unexplored Aspects of Mankind’s Origins as a Species

Anti Gravity Technology

Benefits of Civilian Space Exploration

Alternative Fuel Sources – Thorium Energy

The conflict in such stories is always the struggle to introduce a new dynamic force of such emerging technologies against the static patterns of conformist orthodox. To put it more conventionally, the desire to carry society toward the merry-go-round of the Vico method which is a case of continuously rising and falling civilizations that are only measured in history books—is a cycle that needs to be broken with thought so that action can take place. To fight such battles, new heroes are needed which are featured in the collected works by Cliffhanger Research and Development seen at the link below.

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

For instance, in my novel Tail of the Dragon, the content of the story is one of emotional conflict, car chases, legal entanglements and non stop action. But it is clear that the star of the show is technology—in this case a 700 HP engine that runs on vegetable oil. During the car chase the police confiscate all the fuel stations along the chase route leaving the fleeing bandits with no place to refuel so that eventually they will run out of gas since the police and military were unable to stop the armored car being used in the chase. So the unusual feature of this particular car which the protagonists drive allows the car to be refueled at fast food restaurants with used fryer oil making for some interesting chapters. As the author my point in such stories is not to just introduce a plot device that had never been used before, but to make readers aware that such a technology exists so that action can be taken to embrace it when they are told by the governments of the world that there are limited options to their rising gas prices at the fuel pump. Or those politicians who wish to attack “big oil” with the new religion of environmental concerns with the subtly hidden desire to carry society back to a theocratic culture driven by earth worship can be challenged with options not before considered. The United States produces a lot of that vegetable oil as waste from its fast food industry and if the waste were captured, it would certainly have an impact on fuel costs and the dependence on foreign markets. The Tail of the Dragon story is meant to bring these unique technologies to the minds of readers in ways they wouldn’t have otherwise considered.

In the Cliffhanger series The Curse of Fort Seven Mile, I am presenting a large contingent of very controversial proposals within the context of a classic action adventure story. My first love in life has always been philosophy, but my actions have always been mechanical. I’ve always been good at identifying things that are broken mechanically, or intellectually—and fixing those items quickly. So I started off in life as an inventor. That’s how Cliffhanger Research and Development began in the first place. So the plot behind The Curse of Fort Seven Mile is more fact than fiction as Cliffhanger Research and Development is featured prominently as a company involved in all the above technology. What is preventing that technology from emerging into the human realm is the static patterns of modern political systems which need to be broken so that marvelous inventions like the ones featured can emerge and bring with them fulfillment. Ultimately to perform that task it requires a divorce of the Vico method which is something the human race has never achieved. It has pushed against it a time or two—the latest being the creation of the United States—but politics driven by insufficient aristocratic human desire for social titles always pulls mankind back to the precipice of Vico.

The protagonist in The Curse of Fort Seven Mile is a vigilante by the name of Cliffhanger who has found that the world was not ready for the inventions of genius, so he sets out to bring justice to the unfortunate in the classic way that a good guy punishes bad guys, but there is a deep analysis as to what makes bad guys really bad. It’s not enough for me to just say that so and so is an antagonist and that they deserve to be punished so that good people can flourish—I feel I need to show the depths and causes of such villainy, so that readers can recognize it in their own lives and take action against it. But Cliffhanger isn’t just about saving damsels in distress and unfortunate victims of ruthlessness. Cliffhanger is a hero dedicated to breaking the cycle of Vico and unleashing the hidden potential behind human innovation on a mass scale that will bring to the world a renaissance of thought followed by action.

I was inspired to this effort ironically because of my admiration for H.P. Lovecraft while playing the very involved game, Arkham Horror. It took a century for readers to begin embracing Lovecraft’s ideas—which have just now taken root. He has a similar style and approach to his subject matter as I do, so it is clear by the Lovecraft roadmap that it sometimes takes a long time for a set of ideas to take hold, but once they do, they have a major impact on the thinking of society—which is what I’m most concerned with. Unlike Lovecraft who was haunted by terrible nightmares and a sickly body all his life until his early death living week to week in poverty—I am individually quite successful and resistant to various forms of offense conducted toward those opposing Vico’s cycle. So I can write and commit myself to this Cliffhanger Research and Development project without concern of hiding myself as a ghost writer the way Lovecraft had to—or bending my work around the criteria of a New York small press publisher. Knowing that it will take a while to sink in—I am free to tell the stories that need to be told without caring for their immediate reception. My target audience is not the masses at this time—but those who are capable of innovation. I’m looking for the unique individuals out there who understand the foundations of leadership. I want to provide them with a virtue that they can get no place else. For now it starts in these stories, but as time rolls on and away from Vico—it will find its way into education processes, laboratories, and the precipice of space as mankind for the first time breaks the shackles to anarchy and the chains trying to drag it back to theocracy.

Of course this is no small attempt—but then again, I understand that with all the good things I do on a daily basis—it will be Cliffhanger Research and Development that will be remembered. As a beginning endeavor it is just a seed now, but with the nurturing that will be provided, it will grow into a rather large force with deep roots able to withstand the tests of time. And it all starts with the click of a mouse.

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development

The Obama and John Kasich French-Kissing Budgets: It will cost Lakota $5.9 million and worse–yet another levy

John Kasich has shown that he is fully capable of surpassing Pete Carroll’s Super Bowl losing decision as the dumbest idea to date. Failing to address the runaway costs of Ohio public schools by giving more money to poor districts while taking money away from the wealthy ones—he proposed early in February 2015 to solve the gulf with a tax increase. His comment to the wealthy districts was, “If you live in a district that can afford it, you can help yourself.” Essentially what he means is that he’s redistributing the wealth of Ohio tax payers from well-off regions to poorer ones with an established result to raise taxes on communities hosting gigantic schools with treacherously inflated employee wages like Lakota. Taking the largest schools hit in Butler County will be the Lakota Local School District—where I live, which will lose a total of $5.9 million over the next two fiscal years. A neighboring distinct to the west, Ross will lose $438,765. Talawanda to the north, $594,482. As residents we already pay state taxes intended for the unconstitutional distribution of public education—yet Kasich is taking that money and passing it out disproportionately to districts deemed more needy than others, then telling wealthy districts like mine to raise taxes and take care of themselves—all while taking our state tax money and dispersing it like Santa Clause everywhere but in Lakota and other Butler County schools. Then to make matters worse Kasich said this to a Cleveland newspaper—which is appalling. It looks like Kasich and Obama put their budgets together on the same napkin at the same bar, French-kissing each other when they thought nobody was looking—because they are both just as ridiculously stupid.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Gov. John Kasich said he doesn’t consider his new school funding plan to be a redistribution of income, even as it sends more money to poor districts and less to richer ones.

“It is a conservative point of view in that every kid should be in a position to thrive,” Kasich said.

“I don’t see it as redistribution,” he added. “I see it as a formula for driving resources to kids.”

In an appearance at the E Prep and Village Prep Woodland Hills charter school campus in Cleveland his morning, Kasich said he expects “a lot of squawking” when he releases the changes in state aid to individual districts this afternoon.

About half of Ohio’s districts will see reductions, he said, despite him adding $700 million in aid to schools overall.

Kasich said he wants to send more money to district with less “capacity” to pay for schools and less money to those that have the income and property values to cover the costs.

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/02/gov_kasich_says_his_school_fun.html

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/kasichs-education-speech-under-way/nWCBT/

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/budget-increases-funding-for-poorer-school-distric/nj4tr/

The ultimate failure in this debacle is in believing that more money will actually help kids in a poor community—as if money alone will make schools better. Government schools suck because government is incompetent. You could throw $1 million dollars per pupil into a poor community and the money will be completely wasted on teacher salaries, new paint for the schools but not a single elevated child—because schools do not make children great. Teachers don’t make good people. Parents do. Schools and teachers can assist, but they can’t take broken Humpty Dumpty families and put all their broken shells together again if their home environment is full of drug addicts, gamblers, whores, or people who enjoy watching the Bill Cunningham show. It doesn’t work now, it hasn’t worked in the past, and it certainly won’t work in the future. Money does not make quality. People make quality and there is a reason that kids in richer districts do better scholastically than poor kids. It’s because their parents generally care more about the outcome of their kids and there is likely peer knowledge of similar families who also care about the fate of their children. In poor communities very few people care about kids. Teachers generally pretend to, but in the end, if their union calls for a strike—they’ll march in the streets and leave the kids in need of a mentor. Most teachers are unfortunately in the profession to make money. I believe they start out well-intentioned, but a few years into their mandatory union membership—they become socialist radicals just like the rest of the employees in public education. And those employees aren’t worth the money they demand to be paid.

That is the real issue—the money the employees cost a district. A properly run school district would wisely cut all their most expensive employees and let some other school have them—hiring cheaper teachers who will do the same work for half the cost. Experience doesn’t mean much in public schools because kids aren’t learning anything anyway. Government schools are simply an expensive state funded baby-sitting service and nothing more—for parents too busy to care for their own. So they pawn their kids off on society to raise and hope the school will cover their faults. At least in a wealthy district the parents ask how the child’s day went and try to bring some semblance of family structure to children. In poor districts—an intact family is as rare as an eclipse. Money can’t fix that problem.

As for pre-school education and subsequent grade school skills—teaching itself has entered a new age, and the government schools are way behind the curve. For anybody who hasn’t yet learned, there is a thing kids have these days called, LeapFrog—which is a computer tablet intended for kids 3 to 9 which teaches them math, grammar, and other logic skills. If I had one of those when I was a kid I would have been done with all the skills of grade school before 5 years of age because the programs are so good, and intuitive. The government school profession is no longer effective in this fast paced age of massive data consumption. Kids are bored with public school by the time they are in the 2^nd and 3^rd grades and learning for them becomes a chore instead of a pleasure because of the way its sold to them in public schools driven by radical—expensive labor union personnel—is destroying our youth—not helping them.

So Kasich has made an epic error. To mask his lack of courage in dealing with the public labor unions, he has instead punted to the local districts to allow them to fight it out due to his progressivism. He might as well be Obama in the Ohio capital at this point. Sure he moved some money around to create a surplus, but he largely did it with wealth redistribution like this situation with the schools, and by taking federal money. He’s not a conservative—he is the definition of a RINO. If he were a governor in New York or California—he’d call himself a Democrat because that’s where his values and leadership point to as far as values.

As for the development of the I-75 corridor in Southern Ohio surely he knows what this means. He remembers the Lakota fights of a few years ago, and now because of his decision, he’ll see them again. If he thought they were bloody before, he and they haven’t seen anything yet. And those fights will be in the newspapers, and they will influence investment into the area at a critical time—and he’ll be to blame. I can say that I’m not alone in anger on this high tax proposal by Kasich of the Lakota and Mason area. Paying for overpriced government babysitters isn’t going to go over well and it will take a while for those districts to pass a tax increase because of the fights coming—so public relations of the area will take a hit. And the blame will fall squarely on John Kasich. Once something is done—you can’t undo it. And now he’s simply blown it. He has fallen from a political star to a simple grain of sand on a vast beach being washed out to sea by larger and larger waves. Any hopes he had at greatness are now washing away with the high tide as he panders to the power of the unions with a feeble attempt to appease them—which of course won’t work. His decision and budget proposal regarding education will have a catastrophic effect and the blame will be solely in his possession.

Rich Hoffman

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Facing Down Evil: A brief history of Iraq and why America went to war

It’s OK to hate evil, in spite of any Christian sensibilities toward turning the other cheek. Sometimes its far worse to turn away from evil than in not loving thy neighbor as thy self. Evil is evil and it must be recognized and dealt with. For far, far too long Americans have been reluctant to pass judgment on evil for fear of appearing as “judgmental imperialists” to the rest of the world—and that has been a mistake. To see evil in all its gruesome antagonism and to understand what the Iraq War and Afghanistan War have always been about watch the video below. I can’t guarantee that the video will still be up when you have the chance to see it dear reader—but for those who catch it before it’s taken down, it is horrible to look at. What is in the video is a row of prisoners under the control of ISIS. The terrorist group is behind the row with firearms waiting for the approval to fire. Once they get it, they unleash their violence into the heads of each prisoner one by one before unloading their magazines into the helpless bodies. While watching, ask yourself what any of those people could have done to possibly justify this horrendous action. Nothing comes to my mind and I can think of a lot of things. The only proper designation is that the act is pure evil by an evil group of people and it deserves answers from a just people in a just nation. Warning, the video is very violent.

I was happy to find that Glenn Beck the day after a Jordanian pilot was burned to death inside a cage by ISIS terrorists had a similar reaction as I did. Even Beck is tired of pussy-footing around with terrorists as he showed the pictures on his Blaze website. The video was even worse than the still photographs. I think it was in many ways worse than the above assassination of the prisoners because it was just so cruel. The video was cut together with very cartoonish music and was done with the type of theatrics that might have been seen in the worst James Bond villain. Glenn Beck put up the pictures below.

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/glenn-beck-the-world-needs-to-see-the-depravity-of-the-islamic-state-graphic/

In the movie American Sniper many opponents to the Iraq War have come out against the United States premise of occupation and have said that Chris Kyle and others were not heroes in that war-torn land. As much as I sympathize with the debacle that was the Sykes-Pikot agreement which ultimately broke up the Middle East into French and English territories after World War I what has been the result of that entire region with the exception of Israel, has become like a giant inner city in America. The good intentions of bringing civilization to the Arabs have resulted in a theocratic society rolling in poverty, aggressive religions, and communism in their core economic beliefs. They are now a very dangerous people in the Middle East because of their belief systems and that has left them vulnerable to the most aggressive, and repressive of their kind to emerge as global bullies.

George W. Bush knew of the complexity in the Middle East and took it upon himself to find a way to remove Saddam Hussein from power—to complete what his father had started. The so-called WMD’s in Iraq were moved across the border and hidden in Syria to be used later by Hussein knowing that U.N. inspectors would be looking for them. Of course the United Nations never found the weapons, but America went to war anyway—basically to punish evil. However, Bush didn’t do a very good job of explaining the reasons behind the Iraq War and once Americans discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They thought that Bush had lied just to provoke a conflict. The intelligence from the region indicated to Bush the kind of violence being conducted similar to what we are seeing today from ISIS. So off flimsy intelligence, and a moving target scuttling the WMD’s across the border, George Bush went on a Christian crusade into the heart of the Middle East to punish evil as he saw it. Likely he felt the way we do now in seeing prisoners burnt in cages and shot in the head one too many times to turn away. When you have the United States military as a weapon to use, he did—and I can’t blame him.

President Obama did similar acts for different reasons. He seems to enjoy the caliphate of Islamic extremism going on around the Mediterranean. Just like Bush before him Obama has used his power to assist those he identified with. Who does anybody think the rebels were in Libya who toppled Gaddafi? Obama made the decision to act alone without Congressional approval to basically assassinate Gaddafi, arm the rebels and topple that dictator so to make way for the caliphate to strengthen in the power vacuum. He supported similar actions in Egypt, and if anybody has forgotten the Benghazi situation—clearly some of the same work was at play there as well. Remember when Bahar al-Assad was accused of using chemical weapons against his own people in Syria and Obama empowered him with inaction choosing instead to arm the rebels. Well, where does anybody think ISIS came from? Where did they get their weapons—who gave them all the weapons of terror to use for a push back into Iraq after Obama announced that he was pulling out all American ground troops? ISIS didn’t get the weapons out of a Cracker Jack box, and they certainly didn’t make them. The weapons used by ISIS are a combination of Soviet tanks, and large advanced U.S. made systems acquired through direct raids, rebels who have joined ISIS, and black market purchases stocked by weapons floating around the Middle East from the Libya deal, and Syrian debacle. So the Middle East is now a mess. On one hand George Bush punished the radicals in Iraq with war. Then Obama sought to undo all the gains made by that advancement—right or wrong—by pulling back the troops and funding those rebels who wanted to form an Islamic caliphate. So look what happened, ISIS wanting to take back Iraq from the American occupation used American weapons to retake the region and now they are on a killing spree—and it is grotesque.

ISIS not even grateful to Obama for giving them all those weapons threatened just a few weeks ago to cut off the president’s head in the White House so to inspire further fear. Yet the president did nothing to step up aggression against such a rival, baffling critics. The whole modern trouble with ISIS is just another Fast and Furious scam gone terribly wrong on a massive scale and now torturous thugs are armed with American weapons giving them superiority over the innocent—and America isn’t there to help this time—and have no plans to do so—because the same president who empowered them, refuses to raise a hand against them—even when they threaten his life as well.

There is no way to step back and not have an opinion on the matter. America like it or not is all over the issue which was originally started by the English and French. Yet even when France was attacked recently by ISIS terrorists—Obama didn’t go with all the other world leaders to march with them in solidarity against ISIS in Paris. If the event had been a global warming conference, or a sick turtle caught in some mud pit in Florida Obama would have attended—but in a show of solidarity against ISIS—Obama didn’t show up against the radicals even though he loves his European allies. Why?

Evil is all around us and it is acting against our sensibilities at every level. The Middle East is now beyond hope. Good people are being killed there every day violently by terribly bad people, and those bad people are going unpunished. Leftists in America have empowered that evil with their passive actions—and literal actions—and the responsibility is now on the United States to correct the situation. That responsibility won’t just go away because it’s inconvenient. That Jordanian pilot was helping with Obama’s bombing campaign against ISIS, so we have an obligation to set things straight. The killings of these innocent people in the Middle East has to stop and before that can happen people need to understand what evil is and make a judgment to act against it. The intelligentsia class from American and European society are wrong about leaving the Middle East alone. George Bush, with all his faults had it right. Evil cannot go unpunished and under Obama, it is. Inaction in the Middle East is helping evil spread like a wildfire upon dry grass under a heavy wind. Unfortunately the wind in this case has come from the White House—and that is a question that needs to be answered only through the prism of proper identification of evil itself. The situation is very, very serious.

Iraq had evil in it before America “invaded.” The war was about stopping that evil. It wasn’t about oil. It was about beating evil. An evil that provoked a do-gooding president to do something about it—and another president to feed it like a pet.

Rich Hoffman

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An Insulting Budget Proposal: What happens when you let a drug abuser become president

What happens when you take a former drug abuser and put them in the White House and ask them to come up with a budget? Well, you get the 2015 budget proposal by president Obama who brought out his budget this week with great fanfare only to essentially reveal it as a word for word utterance of the preposterousness shown in the recent Greek election. In Greece the communists are now in control of the economy which swore to reject the austerity measures there. In the United States, Obama declared the same with an insane budget against austerity as reported by USA Today:

WASHINGTON — President Obama submitted his $4 trillion budget wish-list to a Republican Congress Monday, calling for a return to increased domestic and military spending to be paid for in part by higher taxes on the wealthy.

The plan includes a $478 billion public works infrastructure program for roads, bridges, and transit systems, to be financed by taxes on overseas earnings. The budget calls for new tax credits and other initiatives devoted to education, child care, paid leave, and infrastructure, with tax hikes resulting from the closure of tax loopholes. The president also wants to put an end to the automatic across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration, calling for a 7% increase in spending over the budget levels he agreed to in a 2011 compromise with Republicans.

“I want to work with Congress to replace mindless austerity with smart investments that strengthen America,” Obama said in a speech at the Department of Homeland Security. “I’m not going to accept a budget that locks in sequestration going forward. It would be bad for our security, and bad for our growth.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/02/02/obama-budget-399-trillion-republicans/22695611/

For those who don’t know, austerity by definition is a severity of discipline, regime, expression, or design—a saving, economy, or act of self-denial, especially in respect of something regarded as a luxury. Obama instead of austerity applied to an out-of-control government suggested even more debt, spending, and taxation. It really is amazing that he even could conceive of such a proposal as to actually put it in printed form, because in reality, it amounts to the blithering of an intoxicated drug addict. It is amazing that this kind of nonsense even gets print in USA Today without a complete castigation for the mere proposal. Who is going to pay for all this stuff—the “rich?” That’s the plan, just increase taxes on people who create wealth? He’s kidding right?

Well, apparently taxing the rich and bitching about austerity is the essence of Obama’s entire budget proposal which is as ignorant as giving the keys of a nice new car to a slithering drunk barely conscious. It’s not even in the realm of viable possibilities, let alone considered seriousness. Yet Obama put out the proposal and the media covered it as if it were a legitimate attempt which was only laughable to those who can actually read.

Obama is an embarrassment to the United States and is a functioning communist based on the type of values he expresses. “Laughable austerity” means he doesn’t think there should be financial restrictions that are confined to a budget at all—his world view is simply beyond consideration of any legitimacy. It is as loony as the slap stick Greeks believing that their debts can be forgiven without payment and that the social spending they are all addicted to can continue forever. One might expect such stupidity in a country like Greece, or some Middle Eastern armpit of a world where economic activity is traded in goats—but in America—such budgets as Obama’s 2015 anti-austerity proposal doesn’t even count. Congress should have stopped the delivery of the proposal right at the door without even wasting further time—and sent them back to the White House unopened. Unless the President’s budget included budget cuts—and a reduced deficit plan—there isn’t any worth to it. It was disrespectful to the American people to even print such foolishness on actual paper.

Corporate taxes are already too high, yet Obama proposed a 14% one-time tax on overseas profits. He proposed $478 billion over six years for roads and bridges and he suggested a $38 billion dollar increase in defense spending over sequestration levels due to his mismanagement of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. Obama’s numbers don’t even come close to balancing out; he expects to increase the national debt to 26.2 trillion dollars by 2025. That is insane!

Look, if someone put such an insult on my desk I would have likely blasted them out of a canon in less than a second. So I have no personal tolerance for that kind of thing. Congress should deal with this recklessness appropriately and set an example that future losers in the White House will never forget. Because if they don’t, more attempts like this one will be tried—and its about time that Americans learn the hard truth about our economy rather than through politicians who are obviously mentally deficient and seek to hide it by giving away other people’s stuff. Obama is a spending addict—just as he needs to chew gum to keep from smoking cigarettes, covering up his drug abusing past, and his Marxist teachers who made him the person he is today. He has an addictive personality. He needs an encounter group to help him with his various addictions. He doesn’t need more enablers in his life. He needs to hear the word “NO” much more often and to be treated like the louse that he truly is. Obama is a reckless loser who happened to talk himself into winning elections by giving things away to those too lazy to work. It doesn’t make him capable of putting together a budget—obviously. So his proposal deserves the ridicule measurable to the insult of even trying.

Rich Hoffman

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Worship of Mumbadevi and the Almighty Dollar: What traffic patterns in India say about their culture

One of the great miracles of our day is that communication is now easy for the world, and global commerce is now an assumption. That is good for people who have lived far away from capitalism for far too long stuck to the old village mentality of communism which has plagued most land masses around the world into poverty. For as much as modern politicians hope to relieve the poor of their misery, by standards compared to the rest of the world, even the dead broke in America are far better off than they are most anywhere else. So it is hard to explain to people generations taught into the follies of collective endeavor why American concepts of good living should be adopted elsewhere in the world.

I am certainly not one to impose my culture on others. I have a generally live and let die attitude toward the rest planet earth except in my writing where it is obvious that I care a great deal for the success of every living human being. So for that success to work certain conditions have to be in place to allow the human race to flourish. The general rule is that the more authoritarian the government whether it be a business or a country—the less creative input that citizens have toward the fulfillment of national GDP. For instance, in America, creative companies like Apple, Pixar, Lego, Microsoft, and the Hollywood studios produce more personal wealth and opportunity than most GDP economic purchasing power in most countries, such as Iraq, Iran, India and everywhere else where theocratic religion and communist philosophy are holding back the intellectual power of the people inhabiting those economies.

There is a reason that creativity and personal freedom are utilized in those flourishing American companies because the intention of that strategy is to allow minds to think without the pretense of authoritarian concerns. The end result is a much more robust workforce that directly contributes to the wealth creation of any given enterprise. The more restrictive that minds find their society—the less innovation and wealth that will be created there. It is a very simple formula really. Even in the United States where freedom of thought is taken for granted, not all companies understand this concept, and many still attempt an old approach to job creation that embodied the top down approach so common when America was much more theocratic.

But with the communication barrier down due to the Internet, people from those far corners of the world are able to read the things I say, and they have been up in arms in anger at me in India recently—because of my articles against Obama’s fundamental third world country upbringing and obvious view of humanity that was shaped in that region. The primary reason that President Obama is so messed up intellectually is that he wants to turn America into the type of people he was raised around in Malaysia which means a theocratic society mixed with Hindu and Muslim influence along with small “C” communism so common in most third world economies.

To measure success, which has only recently been readily available to the world because of social media—web sites like this one for instance—much can be learned by looking at how other cultures live. Their lifestyles are directly applicable to their fundamental beliefs. For instance, take Dallas, Texas as an example. When landing at an airport there vast spans of wealthy homes can be seen from a West to East approach complete with swimming pools and large yards. Oil fields are also seen as well as sprawling industry and much economic activity. The highways below are orderly, and speedy—because people have places to get to quickly and without bringing harm to their vehicles. The airport itself is a sprawling complex with four basic terminals spread over a great distance. The only way to get around from one to another is with a tram system because the terminals are not connected all together to allow room for all the planes coming and going to maneuver. In Dallas to deal with all the economic activity, the airport is spread out to handle all the business there.

Now do the same in Mumbai, India, the wealthiest city in that theocratic country. For centuries the Indians blamed the English for their imperial grip on the people there and thought their freedom gained in 1947 would cast them onto the world stage, but like China and the city of Hong Kong—also a British territory—the best things economically related to Mumbai were put there by the “invading” country. These days landing in that city involves miles and miles of slum neighborhoods that look like children building forts out of cardboard boxes and the economic activity looks like the blood stream of a patient dying on an operating table—its chaos and dysfunction. The traffic patterns are random and impulsive assuming that nobody is more important than anyone else in the mass collectivism of that ancient civilization still struggling to climb out of the Stone Age intellectually without the capitalism attempted by the British.

The highways have lines on them separating traffic, but nobody follows the rules. Some drivers drive right down the middle of a lane that might be four wide, yet there are six lanes of traffic crammed into it—with everyone going their own way. In the city it is even worse as seen in these accompanied videos. There is no order in their approach to traffic, just like their rudderless economies. Without help from the capitalist West, India would slide back into the pre-deluge days of Biblical apocalypse. However, the Indians reading my statements about their country have become angry and have taken insult blaming Americans for having a third world view of their country by looking down our noses at them. Well, it is a third world country that is currently restricted by collectivist oriented religions and political philosophy. Sure I like Indian food, and I like their history—but as for having a dominating economic force—they are sadly behind the times and are a world liability to growth throughout the planet.

It is not enough to surrender modern life to the gods of theocracy then complain when other cultures out-perform them with sheer economic power. In Mumbai they can pray to Mumbadevi all they want, but it won’t fix their nation. Only by accepting the success of the West and putting their own spin on it can they hope to do that, because to date America is the most successful country on the planet taken as a whole, as to culture, racial dissemination, and raw GDP. And the lesson for Americans is to stop apologizing to the world for being so good. It would be excellent to help India become more American, but it would be bad to ask people in the United States to become more like those in India. That would be morally reprehensible.

The traffic patterns in India tell the whole story. Yes, they ride tricycles, motorcycles, small little cars and even animals that can keep up on the highways of India and they don’t crash into each other as much as you would think. But they don’t get where they need to go in a hurry either. This system works just well enough for the Indians because they are a society functioning from collectivism in their religions and political systems. Thus, they carry the same limits to their businesses. This is the primary flaw in their thinking. They can be angry that somebody points it out to them, but it doesn’t make them better by default if they eliminate a superior culture to their eyes and ears. The fact remains that compared to the West, India does not produce enough GDP on their own to care for their people and that is a major tragedy—which then feeds the theocratic nature of their entire national consciousness.

The key to any endeavor whether it is a small business, or a massive national economy with one of the world’s largest populations—is that freedom of individual thought provokes positive economic growth. This basic psychological emphasis can be seen in the traffic patterns of any society. In India, its chaos and slow, In America it’s orderly, and quick. It’s quick in America not because we’re all godless heathens, but because we have things to do and buy. Theocratic cultures might state that such consumerism is false material worship, but then again, look at the living conditions between the freedom driven culture and the theocratic one–then declare such a thing to be a sin. American standards are only demonized because the rest of the world can’t compete based on their false ideologies which limit economic activity. And now that the world is so small, and those in India can now see how people think in the West—they of course will feel bad. The question is, what do they plan to do about it? Will they just bow down and pray to the Koli goddess Mumadevi, or to the almighty dollar. They all have value in the eye of the beholder—but which one makes lives better, and which one worse? The answer is easy—but the admission is not for the culture that is failing.

Rich Hoffman

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Dana Loesch and the New Counter-Culture: Superbowl and American football

I was never a fan of the first major counter-culture movement in the United States. You might say I hated it with every cell in my body. Even as a little kid I despised the dirty, smelly, tattooed hippies with their long air, and smoke smelly cloths. I’ve never liked what they stood for, and I have never thought for one half of a second that there was something that might come out of their brains that might have value. Ever. So it should be assumed that I am a big fan of the new counter-culture movement that has risen up to undo all the terrible impositions induced by the old scum bag hippies. It brings great pleasure to my mind to watch exchanges like the one below with Glenn Beck and his very articulate news personality on The Blaze TV, Dana Loesch who quite successfully punches all kinds of holes into the Washington Redskins debate below. I was thinking of this interview during the recent Superbowl as the game of capitalism played out on such a vast national stage. The game was complete with all the wonderful commercials displaying American products arriving to a marketplace thriving with freedom and unapologetic profit. So I thought it was time to revisit this clip and share it in mind for the wave of counter-culture behavior that I know is coming.

My friend Doc Thompson and his producer Skip LeCombe are part of this counter-culture of goodness that is spreading rapidly. If you haven’t listened to their radio show in the morning from 6 AM to 9 AM on The Blaze Radio network you are missing a rare treat. You can get them on satellite radio and is one of the best morning shows in America presently, and is a force behind this new counter-culture movement hell-bent on destroying the one created by the vile old hippies. Their show is extremely funny, and informative in a way that talk radio has not been able to produce since its inception. It’s a little Rush Limbaugh, a little bit of The Daily Show, and a good ol’ fashioned variety show that might have been heard at the start of radio. But better yet, Doc produces the kind of material that makes the faces of progressives melt clean off—which I find delightful.

Yet Dana Loesch is unique as shown in her above video with Beck. She is uniquely qualified to make arguments against progressives; she is very pro-gun, very pro constitution, and extremely liberty minded and knowledgeable about history. She is the exact opposite of the kind of losers who found themselves attracted to Charlie Manson’s family of communists and dope smoking losers. Dana is a counter-culture to the counter culture-movement. She’s young, attractive, and smart and she can argue with anybody leaving all the duds from the hippie generation in intellectual dust with obvious superiority. To say the least, I’m a fan of Dana.

Progressives have intended from the beginning to “progress” beyond American pride. They have attacked American football because they know it’s a game unique to the United States and the most powerful economy in the world. They have attacked it to bring down the capitalism that drives that massive economy and to a large extent, for over thirty years, the erosion from the old hippie has moved unchecked against tradition. So to counter that erosion a new counter-culture movement is needed to push back against that social destruction. It has been emerging for a number of years, but Glenn Beck has managed to put a point on it that is directed in very positive ways. Doc Thompson found a home with The Blaze because of Beck, and so has Dana, along with a whole host of similar counter-culture stars in the stable of the creative studios now built in Dallas.

Progressives wanted to destroy the Star Spangled Banner sung at the Super Bowl just like they wanted to change the name of the Washington Redskins out of guilt for some perceived sins long ago committed. But they didn’t know all the history involved, just like they ignored that the Redskin name came from one of the first Native American coaches for the Washington-based NFL team. Progressives just wanted change and they attempted to use guilt to provoke that change, just as they have tried to use guilt about the economy to redistribute wealth to the far corners of the world to indirectly feed communism and its massive failure.

Every time I watch a Superbowl in America I am reminded of what a great country it is. I love the pageantry before the game of all the pre-event ceremonies during media week. I love the half time shows. I love the commercials. I love the violence and strategy of the game itself. I love the Superbowl parties, the chicken wings, the beer, I love all the gatherings of family and friends that often come with viewings. I love watching the game on big televisions and I love the commentary by the various media personalities before and during the game. I love everything about it—and much of that is what the first counter-culture movement sought to undo.

The NFL rose to prominence during the hippie movement of the 1960s, so it deserves credit for staving off the impact. Even hippies enjoy football in America, so the game itself has cast doubt upon the thoughts of even the most ambitious hippie. The Superbowl in 2015 cost over $4 million dollars to run a 30 second commercial during the broadcast. And it cost a minimum of $9,000 per ticket to attend the game in person. That value is a created exception to the tide of the rest of the world hoping to spread the message of the dirty hippie to the soccer stadiums and sports forums everywhere. In America they have failed.

As much was said about Marshawn Lynch’s bizarre interviews during media week, he really livened up when he did a commercial/interview for Skittles. It was another fine example of capitalism by a popular player who really increased his brand with controversy leading up to the Superbowl. Many throughout the world would find the behavior disgraceful in that it was an open example of American product placement. But I love it.

It’s good to see a counter-culture movement coming out in defense of capitalism for a change instead of standing against it. And of that counter-culture Dana Loesch is the new Oprah and Connie Chung. Those old names helped feed the previous counter-culture movement—the progressives and excessively liberal Democrats slowly eroded the value of American society with guilt and sappy old hippy dialogue against capitalism. But their time is waning to a new movement which is emerging preserved by American football and maturing under fine people like Dana Loesch. Because of people like her, the Superbowl this year was just a little bit sweeter—pointing to a future that should be much better than the present as the hippies whither away into dust and are replaced by people like Doc Thompson and Dana Loesch.

Rich Hoffman

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‘Tail of the Dragon’: ‘Mr. Smith goes to Washington’ meets ‘Smokey and the Bandit’

My 2012 novel Tail of the Dragon stayed sold out at Amazon.com most of that first year of release and well into 2013. However, by the fall of 2013 the cash strapped publisher had too many books on their roster not making money that they had to fold up their tent and close. Traditional publishing is difficult for small to medium markets, which is understandable. Even giant book sellers are having a hard time these days keeping books on shelves with the advent of the book uploads that are so fashionable now. My publisher was slow to embrace this technology which was a major problem. As my novel stayed sold out I had to constantly lean on them to keep books stocked, but they couldn’t keep up with the printing demand so it seriously stifled sales. This is what the cover looked like during this period, shown above.

The novel features what is clearly the most exciting car chase in history—without there even being a close second place contestant, so I thought my publisher was losing a major opportunity with the book. Another issue was that the publicist I was working with was a major left-winged softy who personally despised me,–my blurbs and the content of my novel–so that didn’t help matters. Up until meeting him, I had a wonderful experience with my publisher. But the moment I met that guy I knew trouble was ahead and that my publisher would be at the front of it. Not only did it affect my project, but several other authors as well. All it takes is one weak link in a chain on something like that, and everything falls apart.

After the proper amount of time passed my son-in-law and I decided to take it upon ourselves to release the title as a special edition for online readers—which required a version of the book that I personally preferred early in the editing process, to satisfy a market that I had heard all too much about during the release. Fans of the novel wanted Tail of the Dragon as a digital download and my publisher didn’t offer the option, and the contract I had with them prevented me from doing it on my own. But now that I am free of that contract, I am making the popular novel available for digital download as we are on the recent Cliffhanger series, The Curse of Fort Seven Mile.

For those who need a review, my novel Tail of the Dragon features the character of Rick Stevens—a rebellious loner whose NASCAR dreams have fallen short. He finds himself victim to the governor’s plans to run for President of the United States. Governor Wellington Royce of Tennessee relies on support from the Fraternal Order of Police to catapult him into The White House. Royce beefs up the police presence on The Great Smoky Mountains’ highways, and offers incentives to those generating citations from tourists. Thrown in jail, abused, and setup, Rick Stevens accepts an offer from the governor’s political enemies to declare war on the highway patrol. With twenty million dollars, Rick builds the car of his dreams and wreaks havoc in what will become the greatest car chase in history. The car chase becomes a journey of self-discovery and new-found romance as a gauntlet of guns, missiles, and the might of the military wait for him at the finish line. The treachery of politics proves more sinister than even death.

The novel is loaded with very controversial political elements and riveting action. I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie, so I wrote it to impress my sensibilities, which are often way over-the-top for average audiences. When I say that the car chase is unlike anything ever done before, I am quite serious. It is on a scale very close to a second Civil War in America and makes some points that I think are quite important, and timely to contemporary standards. It is an exciting piece of work and was a lot of fun to write. The book was listed as action adventure/philosophy which raised a few eyebrows, but there really is no other way to describe the work. For those who just want to read an exciting love story full of patriotism, history, and lots of car crashes through shopping malls, down the city streets of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and destroying entire towns as the might of the United States military comes down on the fleeing bandits—they’ll be more than satisfied. Is it possible for such a story to have a happy ending? Well—you’ll have to read for yourself. Even seasoned readers had no idea how this story would end and did not see the climax coming. The point of the story is not so much in all the lives lost, the laws broken, or the politics between two old rivals connected directly to the White House—or even the sex—it’s in the final pages which take place in the Oval Office with the President of the United States. It’s a story that came directly from personal experience and is why this is more a work of philosophy than just pure action in homage to the Dukes of Hazzard or Smokey and the Bandit. Like the popular radio talk host Doc Thompson for Glenn Beck’s The Blaze said of the book, it’s like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington combined with Smokey and the Bandit—only with a lot of carnage and fast cars. It’s a slam dunk for readers who want an exciting experience.

It is a pleasure to release the novel under my old company of Cliffhanger Research and Development, as The Curse of Fort Seven Mile will be. As part of this new age of publishing, companies like my old publisher just can’t compete with fast on their feet competitors who can by-pass their gates, their edits, and their softened exposition to water down the content. When I started Cliffhanger Research and Development years ago, it was exclusively to shake up established thinking and get people asking questions, so it comes with great pride to release Tail of the Dragon under this company. It is safe there and is best positioned to deliver the type of material that is lacking in modern works of literary endeavor which is saying a lot, because there’s a lot out there.

Even two years ago when I was doing media for Tail of the Dragon digital downloads were just coming into the main. Many people were telling me that I needed to provide an online edition—which I agreed so I approached the publisher about that as well, and they weren’t interested. They were set up to make their money off traditional publishing and didn’t know what to do with online publishing. The reason was that a much smaller outfit was now able to perform the task that publishers traditionally did, and they weren’t interested in giving in to that strategy. I guess they thought that if they dug in their feet, they’d wait out the storm. But, the storm never stopped, it just intensified sweeping them out to sea. At the time, all I could do was watch and wait out my contract.

I waited a year for legal issues to settle after they sent me the official separation agreement. It felt a little like a divorce and the last thing you want to do after such a relationship is run out and start sleeping around. So instead, I formulated a plan with my entrepreneurial minded son-in-law and a year later in the fall of 2014 we decided to launch our own publishing projects under Cliffhanger Research and Development to start a slow burn in literature that clearly was going to have an impact on future generations. We are aware that the stories we are working on will meet with some resistance, but they wouldn’t be possible through traditional publishing, because the philosophy that drives these stories would not be acceptable. Like the publicity guy from my former publisher, they don’t like traditional stories where heroes are white hat good guys against unmistakable black hat bad guys. Even though this Tail of the Dragon story could be considered a bit of a modern Bonnie and Clyde, the heroes are unmistakable wearing a white hat metaphorically speaking which is how I like my characters. That certainly goes against the grain of modern storytelling—which is OK, because I’m not happy with those methods. I fight against them with every thread of my essence. And that fight comes out in my written work. Of that written work, I am very proud of Tail of the Dragon. It will be always one of my favorites, and I hope that it inspires people the way I intended it to. There is hope in the darkest of hours—and yes, the good guys do win sometimes.

http://www.amazon.com/Tail-Dragon-Rich-Hoffman-ebook/dp/B00T2ST8O0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1422875896&sr=1-1

So to read the book again, or for the first time, you will find it at the link above seen with the new cover. Cliffhanger Research and Development proudly presents Tail of the Dragon for your reading pleasure. Forget the seat belt, because you are about to go on a car chase with hundreds of police cars hot on your tail in a car that travels over 200 MPH. Seat belts won’t save you under those conditions, so don’t even bother. You can take that journey now with the simple click of a button. So enjoy the ride!

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development

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