Category: Transportation

Fraternity of Thieves: If the government runs it, you’ll meet the members

The usual reaction to the looter mentality, those people who seek to justify their existence by riding on the backs of the poor, the weak, the young, the minorities, so that they can cry injustice is being done, and they must help those people to create work for themselves.  These people remind me of the classic snake oil salesman that might sell a magic potion to frontier settlers to ease the minds of adventures always one decision away from death.  Looters are parasites that have nothing to offer but a false sense of security. 

Doc Thompson did an excellent report of public housing on 700 WLW.  Public housing is one of those programs provided by tax payers, created by politicians using tax payer money to leave their mark on the world by building something they couldn’t build themselves, and to help people who are down on their luck. 

What the looter mentality truly seeks to accomplish however is to make victims addicted to the service they provide, just as a drug dealer would do with highly addictive drugs.  Public housing is cheap, and provides very little incentive to the people who use it to care for the properties, making them tremendous failures.  Virtually everywhere public housing was created, they have only breed high crime, terrible real estate values, and created a class of people who are weaker than the generation that brought them into the world.  Weaker, because the ambition to create for themselves is vacant, the pride in not accepting help from someone else, especially government is gone.  Once these minds accept themselves as failures, their lives are greatly diminished.  The looter politician likes this, because now he has guaranteed voters in the next election because he has people addicted to his services.  And the tax payer becomes more of a serf because they are forced to fund programs they might morally disagree with. 

The strong and the brave know that to make a person stronger, you have to put opposition in front of that person.  For a body builder to make larger muscles, they must lift heavy weights.  “No pain no gain.”  For a football team to be good, they must have a coach that pushes the player beyond their limits.  They must be strong, lift weights and run all the drills required, and the best coached team in the end will win more games than the team that isn’t so well coached.  Being well coached means the coach has forced the players to reach a place deep inside to have a competitive edge.  A team that has a coach that panders to the players ends up with discipline problems, and victory seldom comes.  Case in point, the Cincinnati Bengals. 

The human being is built in such a way that they need to struggle to appreciate what is before them.  It has something to do with the way the brain creates neurons, how memory is written into the mind.  Memory and thought is created when the brain is forced to act to defend itself.  This is why poor managers and teachers believe that creating fear in their employees and students will make them better, but fear alone doesn’t work.  Fear breads contempt which gets in the way of respect, and without respect, the individual will fail to act on their own, but will wait for direction, which is counterproductive.  But those ill-advised managers and teachers are getting part of the process right, extreme circumstances do shock the mind into learning. 

This is why welfare doesn’t work.  This is why public workers are generally less competitive than private sector workers, and this is why public housing fails terribly.  This is also why public schools fail. 

I went to the Springboro School Board meeting on May 24th, 2011 to help my friend Kelly Kohls while she is struggling with a contentious contract negotiation with their teachers union.  The union there is adopting the same basic contract Lakota just passed.  It is obvious that the Ohio Education Association is working a strategy that is state-wide.  But to help sell the contract at the beginning of the meeting a parade of teachers came before the audience with selected children from their classes and awarded those children with awards of exceptionalism

I watched the various teachers proudly drape their arms about the shoulders of their students in great affection.  Flash bulbs filled the room often as proud parents took pictures to remember the event.  But I frowned in disappointment.  I looked into the eyes of those teachers, those bright-eyed young women in most cases, and I saw a looter.  They are looters because the traits they are celebrating in the young students were given to those students by their parents.  The teacher is just along for the ride, yet in the ceremony, the school system is taking credit for the success of the child exclusively.  This is being done to justify the existence of the education industry.  The teachers don’t know any better but to be looters.  They were taught to be in college, so their entire measuring system has its value in the heart of a looter.  They take from the community and they give back very little, something of limited value.  And they are actually the worst kind of looter, they use children to hide their actions even from themselves. 

I watched as each child received their award, the children can tell that something isn’t quite right.  Most of the kids were still under 10 years old, so their ability to tell the difference between right and wrong hasn’t been taught out of them yet, so they had blank looks on their faces.  But with each kid the superintendent stepped off the stage to shake the hand of the young student, as if the value of the superintendent had meaning.

The superintendent is a looter because his hand shake to the student has no meaning.  None what-so-ever.  But the superintendent wants to believe that his job is important, and he wants the parents to believe it too, because he wants them to be convinced they are getting the value for their education dollars spent by their property taxes.  Yet, the district is projecting a $40 million dollar deficit.  So somewhere in the awards ceremony, and the hand shake with the kids, the superintendent hopes to sell the image of importance to the parents so they can pass a levy.  That is why he is a looter, and why the teachers are looters.  They are using the parents children to sell their value as public employees to the tax payers when the value of the children and the money provided both come from the tax payer. 

Is that to say that the school does nothing for the child?  I suppose it does to some extent.  But in public school, like public housing, or even the BMV, they are all government-run and have very little incentive to succeed, because the culture of all are of the type that pander to the lowest, and weakest that participate.  So the strong children are held back.  The weak children are placed on a pedestal, and the tone of society takes a step back instead of a step forward. 

I have worked with weak, sick and even mentally deficient children.  To me, the worst thing you can do is pander down to them.  When I speak to such people, I always treat them with the same respect I’d give to the most intelligent person in the world.  When I have taken young people into the hard country and they fall, I help them get back on their feet and brush off the dust and keep walking without letting them complain that they are hurt.  When I’ve taken people rappelling and they are scared of heights I make them go with the promise that overcoming the fear will have more value than caving into their reluctance. 

When my daughters, who are very attractive young women, and I knew they would be, were little and a dog bit one of them in the ear almost tearing half the ear off, my wife and I superglue the ear back in place.  I looked at the wound and assessed that the experience of getting 25 stitches at the hospital might not only be traumatic for her and scare her worse than the blood running all over her, but it might even make her hate animals in the future and create an un-natural fear of dogs.  So I downplayed the whole thing, washed off the blood, put the skin back where everything was supposed to go and glued the ear in place. 

The natural reaction for many would be to run to the emergency room, but I was trying to teach her on that day many things.  One, not to fear dogs.  It was an accident.  Two, I didn’t want her brain to register the event as overly traumatic that might cause actual lifelong damage, and three, I wanted her to think in terms of self-reliance. 

The looter would seek to exploit a tragic situation like with my daughter.  They’d seek to comfort her, to make her trust them.  They’d go to elaborate measures to ease her mind.  But what they’d succeed in doing would be to draw her mind in the next tragedy to their comfort.  Instead of taking charge of her own situation, she’d seek them out.  This is how the health care industry has been operating, this is the cause of billions of dollars of insurance, and this is the impact of public education where information is spoon fed in comfort to the little human being.  What gets ignored is the pandering makes the child weaker while the true intention is to justify the employment of the public official. 

This is why public housing fails.  It breeds crime.  It breeds welfare recipients.  It breeds broken families because when real tragedies occur the people are left defenseless, because their brains did not go thought he exercise of struggle to obtain their position in life.  That is why they fail in virtually every way possible metaphorically and literally.

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

Mark Mallery Sues the City of Cincinnati: Looters, thieves and scum bags strike again!

Who are the modern looters of our society? Doc Thompson of 700 WLW explores that concept in this fantastic broadcast.

It is a disturbing trend that we are seeing, which has been occurring for a number of years. There are two kinds of Americans. There are those that desire socialism, where a cradle of collectivism will provide a utopia of love, understanding, fairness, and collective salvation. The other kind of American looks to the traditional values that made the United States successful in the past, and believe that the same traits that made the United States great then can do so in the future. The first type of person believes that for collectivism to work, society must rid themselves of all desire for violence and personal property. The second type understands that conflict is part of the human condition, and that by harnessing that conflict in a positive way, capitalism will bring great inventions and production capacity to society. They honor property as a way to measure themselves and their achievements and as an incentive toward competition. Property is like a scoreboard in a football game. It lets people know the score of the game.

Spirituality, which both versions of living struggle with is knowing that the game you’re playing doesn’t matter in the long run. It only matters on the field of battle. When death comes, the games of life matter very little. The scoreboard only reflects the status of the game.

Now playing all these versions of existence against each other are looters, and thieves. In an uncivilized society, looters put on a mask and rob people in side alleys of their wealth. In a civilized society, the looters put on masks too, but they are the masks of authority, and they rob you without threats of violence, not openly. They rob you with the threat of potential violence inflicted by some random act beyond your control, which they as an authority figure can protect you from. So what they do is basically extort from the unknowing, naive victim, “protection money.” These are looters. They are anybody that makes a living off the public. Anyone that takes, but does not give back. For instance, Barrack Obama is a looter. Not because he’s a black president, or even a democrat, a progressive or a socialist. But he is a looter because he could never have personal success without public work. He’d not sell one book if he wasn’t running for president or if he wasn’t the current president. And none of the money he earns is for the personal worth of what he produces. He earns money for what he won’t do to a company, such as GE. Companies throw money at Obama and his progressive friends in congress and the senate to avoid regulation, and to create regulation against enemies. Obama earns his money by this process. Not by creating a product, or even working a punch press. He simply loots off the public to facilitate a process favorable to thieves. Without public office, his ability to produce in society would be non-existent. That makes him a looter.

This does not include the one or two term politician that just wishes to contribute something to their community. This term of “looter” does apply to the career politician who just takes, and takes and takes. They spend their time making new laws with the money they’ve looted so that the new laws will make it easier to loot you.

A good example of this is Mayor Mallory of Cincinnati. He reveals his true intentions. When the city cut his car allowance, as heard in Doc Thompson’s broadcast, he sues the city to recover those costs. His actions show that he ran for mayor, so he could put on the mask of authority, and therefore openly rob anyone he chooses. It’s no different from a thief.

Other examples are school superintendents. They are retiring from service to the district, then being hired by the school board just two days later, which is legal, and taught to them by the OEA. The OEA lobbied for that legal precedent so they could dangle the greed carrot in front of school superintendents and buy them off. Click here to see the I-Team report. It’s a very common practice. With superintendents, the money flows easily and all that is required of them is to maintain an “excellent” district which requires lobbying the Ohio Board of Education, and to secure funding when it’s needed. So when the teachers unions present “looter” style contracts, the superintendent signs off on it and gets the levy passed to pay for it. That’s the game, and they are looters.

When I have to spend the day in court on occasion, it never ceases to amaze me how many people are employed in positions that are simply “looter” positions. The only contribution they give society is in the handling of a driver’s license, or the processing of a court document. Most of the activity that goes on, including the issuing of tickets, the legal maneuvers of lawyers, the process of issuing permits and every form of “red tape,” the grandparent of apathy, are positions created for the thief and carnival con artist to lift money from you and place it their pocket. The role of the teacher that proclaims that their master’s degree merits 90K per year is no different from the fast talker at the county fair that asks you to step right up and try to throw the ring around the pop bottle. After he’s scammed you from your money you realize that the rings were weighted so it was nearly impossible to get the ring on the bottle. The same with schools and balanced budgets, the levies are weighted against the community, so the money tree can keep on growing, thriving off the money looted from that same community. The looters use fear to keep you from seeing what their hands are doing, or what their hearts truly desire.

When in doubt, remember the school superintendents that say, “money doesn’t matter to me, I am committed to the children,” yet retires from their job one day, and two days later is rehired so they can collect a full retirement pension, and a full salary. Or the mayor that proclaims that they are doing what’s best for the city he runs, while at the same time suing that same city over a car allowance.

These scum bags are thieves, creeps, and losers that only gain power because you empower them to take it from you with your desire for peace, which they use as a weapon against your sovereignty.

Yes, there are two kinds of Americans. The first kind desires socialism, and it is under this system of government that the thieves also desire, because it creates a society of easy victims that will empty out their pockets in a desire for peace. The second kind of American is the enemy to the thieves, because they aren’t so easy to fool. The thieves under that second type of American have to use a literal mask to do their looting, because they are forced to hide from the mainstream.

It’s important to know who you are, the first or the second, because there is no in between. There is no gray area in this matter. To know the answer, you must know your heart, are you a looter that wants something given to you without giving back, or are you a producer that just wants to live your life free of being robbed?

You better know which you are because America will not survive both. We can’t be home of the brave and home of the coward and thief at the same time.

Rich Hoffman

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

Lakota Hopes to Freeze your Memory: The LEA and the school board freeze step increases

BRIAN COMBS OF 700 WLW ANNOUNCES A CONTRACT CONCESSION AT LAKOTA SCHOOLS

I’m convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: a better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. Very simply, they want to be left alone in peace and safety to take care of the family by earning an honest dollar and putting away some savings. This may not sound too exciting, but there is something magnificent about it. On the farm, on the street corner, in the factory and in the kitchen, millions of us ask nothing more, but certainly nothing less, than to live our own lives according to our values—at peace with ourselves, our neighbors and the world.

Ronald Reagan, 1976

Matt Mayer of the Buckeye Institute talks to Doc Thompson about union indoctrination in public school. This is a big problem lead by the OEA and the LEA. Listen to that very informative interview here:

The 1,190 member Lakota teacher’s union is set to vote on approving a contract that will eliminate step increases which will be a true “freeze” on wages, which is considered by many to be an unprecedented move. Many consider such a “sacrifice” by the union as a reasonable concession. As I watch the union’s movements closely, what they are doing is showing that government doesn’t need S.B.5 to create an environment of reasonable negotiation. They are using this negotiating strategy to point to in the fall when they are going to attempt to repeal S.B.5, and proclaim that the unions have been reasonable and worked with the school board.

The only reason they are doing this now is because it has now become evident that the unions have pushed things too far. Teachers are only working 9 months a year, 8 hours a day with some take home work on occasion, and they are being paid about 30% more than everyone else who pays their wages and are working longer hours each day and working 12 months out of a year. People are aware of the scam, and now the teachers union knows that S.B.5 could end their grip on local politics, so they are doing the only thing they can do, and that’s attempt to put on a softer face and appear to be “working” with the communities.

My opinion on the step increase removal from the contract is that it is a nice gesture that is about a year and a half too late in Lakota. It’s probably about 5 years too late in economic reality all across the state. Teachers showed no restraint in negotiating their contracts with lap-dog school board members, leaving the average wage at Lakota to be over 63K per year. About half of that 1,190 member organization makes over 65K per year going as high as six figures for a teacher. (For a review of what step increases are listen to this broadcasts between Darryl Parks and I from way back in September of 2010.)

The trouble is that these teachers believe they are entitled to this amount of money because they have, “seniority,” “specialty certifications,” and various degrees. They have the same mentality as those that have grown to accept Medicare and Social Security as “entitlements” instead of calling them what they really are, and that’s welfare programs for the elderly. Politicians for years have been successful in convincing Americans that they have a “right” to other people’s money regardless of how much they’ve paid into the system. And history shows, especially in regard to Medicare that if the money is on the table, coming from the invisible hands of tax payers, then there is no shortage of people willing to over-charge for services, or to go to the doctor for every ailment, because they can. And doctors are all too willing to prescribe medication to a patient to help out the pharmacist, and to help his patient. After all, all it takes is a doctor’s note to get out of work, so the doctor wins both ways. He helps a colleague make a few bucks, and he gets to get the patient out of some work so everybody wins. That’s what you get out of Medicare. It’s a big pot of money that everyone wants to stick their hand in and fill their pockets. Being human nature, it’s all too tempting to take more than is needed, because it’s there. So the more you put in front of people, the more they’ll want to take. Using Medicare and Social Security as an example, of the $31,406 Washington has spent per household in 2010 $9,949 will go to just Social Security and Medicare. And it was like that from the very beginning. This quote from the Harford Courant, July 2nd 1969. “Social Security officials conceded Tuesday that the cost of Medicare and Medicaid are running way over original estimates.” The more we put in, the more thieves there are to take it out.

This is what teachers have done. Communities have put a lot of money in their community pots by way of property taxes, and teachers using tenure, step up and have taken as much as they could carry. The newer teachers are all too happy to wait in line behind those with seniority because their leaders in the unions have made good on their promise that if the money ever gets too low, they’ll just go back to the community and refill the pot. They do this because they believe they are entitled to the money. They believe that their degrees, or their years of service make them “qualified” for a certain amount of money. Well, their degrees don’t mean anything to me. Why do we need a teacher with a doctorate, or even a masters to teach 1st or 2nd grade. I’ve seen home-school moms do a better job in their kitchens. So why should a school district have to pay wages that are excessively high for a teacher that is over-qualified? The teacher with their hand in the pot will say they “earned” the “right” to that amount of money because they did the work at college. Well, I didn’t ask those teachers to go to college. I didn’t ask them to get a master’s degree. Those types of deals were made by crooked politicians with OEA lobbyists to create laws that allowed those classifications of teachers to take more of the pot away quicker. It’s a little scam they’ve worked out in Columbus. I didn’t agree to be robbed of my property tax to participate in such a foolish system. That kind of deal was done behind my back and I don’t like it!

In the private sector the teacher would be paid based on the value of their service, not some arbitrary figure come up by politicians from 30,000 feet that haven’t a clue what education is supposed to be. They are only in office so they can take from another pot provided by the tax payer. These people with their hands in the pots, teachers unions, politicians and the like are simply moochers. They rely on a producer, such as myself, and most likely a majority of the people reading this article, to put money into that pot. I have no respect for a moocher.

Is moocher too strong of a word? What other word is there? That’s what they are. The OEA is doing what kids do when they play house, they are coming up with a set of rules that they negotiated with themselves, and values that they created for the confined little world that exists only to them in their bedrooms. They are moochers because they don’t contribute anything useful to society. Parents are paying these people to watch their kids while the parents work. And the moochers have invented all kinds of titles and regulations to make their little game seem relevant. They are doing the job that parents are too busy to do themselves.

When my kids were going to school, my rule was that if the teacher cared enough about teaching as I did, I let my kids listen to that teacher. There were a few teachers that my kids had that were very passionate, and I admired those people. Not because they had a degree, a title, or tenure. But because they had passion for life. For the rest, the majority, that just lived an idealized life, just waiting for school to let out for the summer, that took every personal day they could, and was just doing their time waiting by the pot of taxpayer money to come available so they could reach in and take all they could, I told my kids to watch out for people like that. Watch out for sinners dressed as “saints” I’d tell them. Be careful of the con artist with the smile on their face waving you into someplace they want you to go. I warned them about such teachers with the same caution that I’d warn them of a strange old man trying to get a young girl into their car. Whether the danger is physical or mental makes little difference to me. “Watch out what people try to pour into your minds. For every negative that someone tries to give you, you must off-set it with four positives. If someone tries to give you an ignorant thought, cleanse yourself with a book before you go to sleep. The process of reading will help your mind work out corrupt thoughts the same as water assists in the digestion of food.” That’s the kind of talk I had with my own kids. And my advice to parents and children everywhere is the same. “Be careful what you let people tell you, especially moochers like the OEA that are only out to build a financial empire for themselves with money from the pot we created.”

So what are the teachers at Lakota giving up in voting away their “step increases?” They are agreeing to not take away money the community hasn’t even put into the pot yet. They are agreeing to keep all they’ve taken already, but not to take too much of what we put in next time, since the pot is empty again, after the community just filled it.

We all know the answer to this. We’d tell our children who drank too much Kool-Aid and came back to the kitchen crying after the pitcher was emptied, “I want more.” We’d say to them as reassuring as possible, “You should have thought about that before you drank it all up.”

What the Lakota teacher’s union is essentially saying is “we’ll keep drinking just as much Kool-Aid as we always have, but we won’t ask for more, so long as you keep the pitcher full” Now it’s our responsibility to tell the children, “we can’t afford to give you so much Kool-Aid. You need to drink less.”

Rich Hoffman

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

Pirates, Freedom, and Key West: What’s more important, order or happiness?

A week ago I shared a private family secret, our love of pirate ships, the constructible strategy game. Everyone that knows me well knows that I love pirates. It’s not the lawlessness nature of them that I like, but it’s the romantic idea of freedom that they represent.

I’m not normally a fan of liquor commercials, but I think I may have just seen the best one ever produced in this Captain Morgan advertisement. The makers of this commercial got it right. It may as well been ripped straight out of my mind. I LOVE IT!


The only thing I would have done different is the French vessel would have been sunk, the treasure looted, then Morgan’s crew would enjoy the drink. But, close enough.

Needless to say, I immensely enjoy the marketing strategy of Captain Morgan Rum. The key is to be honest with the sign stimuli that moves your heart to beat, and for me, this kind of stuff does it.

Pirates are one of the reasons that I ride motorcycles everywhere I go, its part of the attitude and culture of motorcycle riding that you can’t get when you just drive a car around. Here is that same woman from the Captain Morgan sword fight commercial doing the next natural thing, doing a motorcycle shoot for Harley Davidson.

That’s why I’ve said it more than once, progressives can attempt to ruin America through the schools, through legislation, through television and other social media, but deep within the human heart is a desire to be free. Motorcyclists today have a taste of that freedom, like the original pirates of the Caribbean did or the open range cowboy or frontier fighter. So in the end, progressives, socialists, communists, Marxists, and every group that wishes social control, will fail, and the reason they will fail is for the same reason the Captain Morgan ads work as visual eye candy, for the same reason that a man, or woman will spend all their extra money to buy a motorcycle, and will flock to a large motorcycle rally like Sturgis or Daytona.

The real Henry Morgan is one of my favorite historical characters. Now this might seem like an odd selection to people who read my work and think I’m a moralist. Morality to me is being authentic. Hiding one’s desires behind a drunken splendor does not take courage. To say that I did what I did because I was drunk is weak. To say I did what I did and I don’t care what you think about and I did it with full knowledge that you would not like it is more the proper attitude.

This is why I like modern-day Key West so much, because it is the closest thing on earth to Port Royal in Jamaica during Henry Morgan’s time. Here is a great documentary on Morgan and Port Royal. Again, I don’t enjoy debauchery, drunken acts, or illicit sex, but I do enjoy honesty, and there is a lack of politics in Key West and an honesty that comes with it that I enjoy. And Port Royal is what it was because it was free of politics and represents what people truly want and desire for themselves without government engineering.

We are at the point, as of this writing, just a week away from the release of the 4th Pirates of the Caribbean film, which of course my wife and I will be seeing on the opening day. Pirates of the Caribbean as a concept of course started as a ride at Disney Land and the interesting thing about the ride Pirates of the Caribbean, Walt Disney was making children films, yet he was obsessed with pirates. Why do you think that is? Listen to Walt Disney talk about his concept for the ride, where he talks about the crimes pirates committed in heroic ways. Nobody these days could get by with talking about this kind of stuff. Progressives have made everything so “touchy—feely” that creative types can’t even discuss the violence committed by a group of people like pirates, or frontiersman in any context by in feeling compassion for the victim of the violence. This is why the closest thing we have today to Walt Disney is George Lucas. Our society today would sue Disney for trying to corrupt children with this broadcast.

The key to Walt Disney is he understood that for imagination to work in the human mind, which is what he hoped to inspire in young people, is that they can’t get too hung up on rules. But young people needed to have their own set of values that they’d build with the mythology Disney gave them with foundation stories.

Modern business executives or politicians don’t understand how Disney thought. In fact, nobody does, because people get so hung up on the rules of living instead of the joy of it. Heck, even people in his family, friends and company don’t understand. We all understand the situation on a subconscious level, but people are unable to reach that understanding under conscious thought.

Oh, by the way, Walt Disney didn’t go to college. He didn’t even finish high school, only had one year. Maybe that’s the key to success. Tests do show that kids seem to become less innovative and imaginative with each year of public school. We seem to teach imagination out of kids.

So when Johnny Depp puts on this costume to play Jack Sparrow again, people will flock to see it, even though many of the people who work at Disney don’t really understand why. They are still milking Walt Disney’s ideas that are over 40 years old now without creating anything new, because the key to success is in the essence behind the myth.

If you follow progressive ideas, and a lot of young people do because it’s taught to them in their public schools and colleges, they hide the lie of their movement behind emotional truths, which then disguises the essence of any given thought. They seek to re-engineer what it means to be human by eradicating the desire for freedom. That desire for freedom to my relief is still able to reach young people. In fact, the new Lego Pirates of the Caribbean is something my wife and I are looking forward to playing with our young nieces and nephews where even those under the age of 10 can get that small taste for freedom manifested in the enjoyment of a game.

It is unlikely that any of the people working on the Pirates film including Johnny Depp understands what Walt Disney understood clearly when he came up with the idea for a Pirates ride in his children’s themed amusement park. Here at the premier, all the participants appear able to feel the energy evoked by the film, but aren’t sure how it translates to the art of living life. To them, the movie realm is a separate fantasy to be lived only with the price of a ticket and viewed in a darkened theater. To me, the movie realm is a reflection of human consciousness and represents the true desires of mankind.

That art is all about freedom, and not waking up in the morning worried about a government telling you what to do, what to eat, what to learn, or how you’ll make your money. It’s a genuine love of freedom, the right to succeed or fail to live or die in the pursuit of it. That’s the magic!

And it was nice to see that the director of the Captain Morgan commercial understood that freedom which he captured so wonderfully in that new clip. It’s one thing to copy off something you like and admire. It’s a whole other thing to understand it, and that commercial does.

These are my kind of people!

Rich Hoffman

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

Why Progressives Hate Westerns: Red Dead Redemption against Americans United for Change

I had four choices demanding my time Thursday night; one was a School Choice event at Van Gordon Elementary. That’s an event I wanted to attend more for moral support than anything. I am a believer in it, so there isn’t much I could learn from the meeting. The second was an invite to go see the premier of the new film Priest down at the Rave Movie Theater. I enjoy those kinds of things, but my primary occupation had my mind on overdrive, with many problems to solve over the next 24 hours, so a movie on a Thursday night wasn’t the most responsible thing to do when Excel spreadsheets should be filling my vision. The third thing is homework, for that same occupation. Sometimes you need more than 24 hours in a day, and this is one of them. But a person has to know how to manage their time, so I picked my fourth option, I played Red Dead Redemption.

Why????

Well, I love the game, I love the songs in the game, and I love what it’s about. For those of you that don’t know what Red Dead Redemption is, let me bring you up to speed. It’s a video game for Xbox that is set in the Wild West as the Progressive era is taking over the individuality that settled the country. The game is wonderfully done, and the action is set up wonderfully. Here is the way the game begins. Pay special attention to the characters on the train. They are wonderfully depicted to illustrate progressive era politics. The lone rider of course represents the main character, a loner, one of the last of his kind that is observing all these changes around him as an introduction to the clash of progressivism and American individualism.

Video games like this one have taken over what films used to do, and that is illustrating complicated themes into entertainment. Red Dead Redemption, while intended to be an action packed shooter, is wonderfully insightful, philosophical, and places the player into the context of history. The game is about, a world that is losing its innocence, and freedom.

What brought up my desire to revisit this beloved video game is a website I ran across in my research today. I discovered Americans United For Change, a very progressive group.

http://www.americansunitedforchange.org/

 

And they produce videos like this.


Americans United For Change is everything that’s wrong with our current country. When I read their mission statement, it reminded me of a letter I received last September from a union leader that accused me of wanting to take the country back to the days of the Wild West after I produced this video that was featured on www.TheBlaze.com.

This person reflected many of these progressive types that have worked very hard to pull America into a direction of their design, which I completely disagree with. Listen to the mission statement of AUFC in their words.

AUFC has challenged the far-right conservative voices and ideas that for too long have been mistaken for mainstream American values. In the process, we helped create a groundswell for a return to the traditional progressive values that have defined America—economic fairness, opportunity, national and economic security and democratic leadership.

Today we are building on that success through national campaigns that utilize grassroots organizing, polling and message development, earned and paid media, online organizing, grass-tops outreach and paid and volunteer phones to pass the transformational legislation coming out of the Obama White House.

After reading that, I usually have to take a minute to listen to music like this, which is the standard music on my IPod. The following songs are from Red Dead Redemption, which is heavily inspired by the Spaghetti Westerns of the late 1960’s.
Some sample music.


Progressives love to make things more complex then they need to be, that’s how they pull the con game on people. They are like Las Vegas card dealers that hope the pretty lights, easy alcohol and scantily dressed women will alter your judgment. The reason I like westerns is that they seek to get to the bottom of a situation, not to complicate things needlessly.
If I had a nickel for every time a progressive wrote me or left me a comment that “westerns are a simplistic view of existence,” I’d have vast amounts of wealth. My response to these people is, if something is too complex to understand, it’s because the con is hidden in the confusion. Everything in human existence can be explored into its simplest form. If it is not, then the philosopher, the scientist, the mathematician, the teacher, has not done their job correctly. That’s why the westerns done by Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood and redone by the makers of Red Dead Redemption have a lasting impact in American culture. Those old westerns even to this day are loved by millions, and for good reason. They offer a truth that is hard to get, and progressives are scared to death of the truth. Progressives take great measures to avoid the truth even from themselves. They thrive in chaotic environments. They enjoy drunken splendors where avoiding the responsibility of thinking are honorable activities among their kind. In the western, a drunk is the fool that ends up dead. In the progressive mind, the drunk is the “party animal” that is honored with trophies. Such an example would be the film, The Hangover where four fools have a massive bachelor party in Vegas and end up passed out forgetting what happened. That’s the plot of the movie! That is also the result of progressive ideology. The myth of a culture, the kind of stories it tells, reflects the culture itself. In a progressive culture, such films, like The Black Swan, and The Hangover reflect the values of the culture. It’s quite understandable why people in a progressive culture wouldn’t understand the values displayed in a western. Because the concepts of individuality, and rugged conquest where life and death are only moments apart are far away from the progressive mind, which seeks with every breath in its body, safety. The progressive will trade freedom for safety whenever the two are offered together.

The reason why England has lasted as long as it has is because it has at least held on to its identity. They have their monarchy, and even though I think having a king is an archaic idea, it’s at least something they believe in as a cultural identity. The Japanese are in the same situation, they celebrate their samurai culture. The myths and traditions of the samurai are very sacred to the Japanese. In America, it’s the cowboy. The reality of frontier living isn’t what’s important. But what the cowboy represents to American culture is. Progressives have managed to discredit the myth of the cowboy with the plight of the Native American, just as they have done using the black man against the founding fathers, framing in American minds that the United States began after the Civil War, and not in 1776. Progressives seek to destroy the myths of our culture so they can replace them with new ones created by them.

Mythology is the most important aspect of a culture. Without a societies myths, the culture will fail.

The myths that the progressive propels as honorable is despicable, vile behavior of interdependence. This is why Hollywood is losing money and must resort to all the comic book adoptions to generate fresh revenue. This year it’s Thor, last year it was Iron Man 2. In years past it was Spiderman. Hollywood has tried twice to deal with The Incredible Hulk. The first was a good film by Ang Lee that I enjoyed, but it suffered miserably at the box-office. So Hollywood tired again and did a bit better the second time. But Sylvester Stallone was on to something when he said our action heroes got watered down when Tim Burton’s Batman came out in 1989. Batman fits the progressive model, a hero with some screws loose. So Tim Burton set the pace for future action heroes that didn’t have to have real muscle or strength, but could put on an outfit and become strong through technology. During this mythic journey over the years characters like Superman have become less about the American way, and more of a progressive. Recently Superman renounced his citizenship. I understand that the upcoming Captain America is following a similar path. We’ll see how that turns out.

But where are the fresh, ideas coming out of progressive Hollywood? Is anybody but Pixar, who ironically has the most iconic character in Woody, played by Tom Hanks, who is a cowboy, doing anything memorable? Where are the Davy Crockets, made popular by Walt Disney, or the Daniel Boone’s made popular in novels by Alan Eckert. Who is the modern John Wayne…………….Johnny Depp, who’s most iconic role to date is a drunken fool of a pirate? What about the next Clint Eastwood? Who can do those kinds of myths anymore? Robert Duval? He does a good job with westerns, but he’s also an old timer. Who are the people of the next generation? Gerald Butler?

For that matter, why are all the strongest leading men now in Hollywood these days Australian? Is it because the United States isn’t making men anymore? Why does Hollywood have to look to other countries for “men?” Where are the modern Harrison Fords? Burt Reynolds? Steve MacQueens? Lee Majors?

That’s the heart of the problem, America isn’t making them. Progressives have infected our culture to such an extent that we’ve finally hit a generation of lost children that have forgotten how to be men leaving women hungry in the sheets of their beds for the secret thoughts of a real man to rescue them. Hollywood used to satisfy that market need by putting men up on the silver screen so women would by a ticket. But not any more. Women are going to the movies to watch girly men, as Arnold Swarchenegger calls them. That’s why Arnold dumped his wife recently, to fill that market role as a reemerging action film star as a 60 something year old man. That’s also why Harrison Ford played a 70 year old Indiana Jones for the fourth time, because nobody else can. Spielberg and Lucas tried to put Shia Labeouf in position, practically placing the hero role in his lap with Transformers and Indy 4, but the kid just doesn’t have it in his eyes. He’s a good all American kid, but the problem is; it’s the wrong kind of American kid. He’s a kid from progressive America, and American’s don’t truly like those types of people in their movies.

Young Guns led by all the hot young actors of the day led like Emilio Estevez and music by Bon Jovi tried to resurrect the western with a bit of a progressive spin, but it didn’t hold up in a progressive mythology. People have rejected it after a few years, because westerns must fight the progressive in order for the plot to work. Not the other way around.

People don’t want to honor the weak with the price of their movie ticket. Unless they can justify their own bad behavior with a film like Something About Mary, or The Hangover. As far as the kind of film a family can sit down and watch together, and have the values of the culture ooze into the inquiring minds of the viewers, those kinds of things just aren’t being made anymore.

Except in some video games, where the tradition lives on.

That’s why I played Red Dead Redemption and let everything else fall by the way-side for an evening. It’s nice to roam around in an environment where things make sense, where the progressives are the villains instead of the heroes, and doing good is actually rewarded, and evil is castigated. Red Dead Redemption is just such a place, and I am thankful for it.

Rich Hoffman

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

Innovation in our Ohio Schools: Bill Coley explains, and Lakota looks for new school board members

Welcome to the Ohio Learning Network. Meet the future of Education NOW! Click the link below to visit.

http://oln.org/

 

If you want to meet the guy who brought this innovative program to Ohio, listen to Representative Bill Coley talk to Doc Thompson on 700 WLW.

I came on with Doc Thompson to support Coley, where I’ve been quite aware of what Bill was working on, so I am a big fan. Kids these days are so bored in the classroom, I know firsthand, my kids just graduated, and I know a lot of young people. The way they spend their leisure time, with video games, Facebook, smart phones, hundreds of channels on TV, computer web sites, the world has become incredibly interactive, and the idea of a teacher standing in front of a class and preaching to students that are just staring at the clock waiting for their life to begin at the end of the day is completely barbaric.

Yet school boards are still trying to hold on to the old way of learning. They are completely unable to think outside the box of tradition and embrace aspects of education reform that have been presented by Representative Coley. This is why Lakota, and many schools are floating the idea of another levy for November of 2011.

In the Pulse Journal, I gave a lengthy interview to Lindsey Hilty, about the NoLakotaLevy.com group which is due out on Thursday, where I also provided an editorial. As a benefit to my readers here, I am going to provide you with a preview of my comment before its release in the paper. My frustration with the school board is in their expensive, and blind grip on the old “brick and mortar” cost of education. So my anger is evident. I see aspects of education like the Ohio Learning Network as some of the solutions to the extraordinary costs schools are seeing, and the school boards and teachers unions as expensive old models that have failed. So I don’t attempt to disguise my feelings since they are the enemies to a solution.

________________________________________________________________________

Wanted: New School Board Members

It is gravely unfortunate that the Lakota School Board has made it known that they intend place another school levy on the ballot in November of 2011. While the Teachers Union at Lakota had a much publicized wage freeze in August of 2010 mysteriously the wages for Lakota teachers crept up anyway.

Lakota has assured everyone that they have done their best to cut costs, they’ve cut busing, they made sports a pay for play program, they’ve cut electives, and teaching positions, but out of all those supposed reductions, not once did anyone address the problem of paying teachers too much.

Last year at the NoLakotaLevy.com web site we brought out an article where 434 teachers made over 65K per year, that was in 2010. In 2011, there are over 625 teachers that make over 65K per year. Nobody is looking out for the tax payers in the Lakota School District.

The No Lakota Group met on this issue early last week, in anticipation of the school boards announcement. So here’s what we’re going to do. Any board member that votes in favor of another school levy will be looked at to be replaced with a new board member. If you are interested in becoming a school board member please contact us at NoLakot@roadrunner.com. We have several people who have spoken to us over the last couple of months, but we would like the opportunity to put the best candidates on the school board and would like to begin interviewing now. The best candidates would be over 55, preferably retired, or semi-retired and not looking to use the school board as a political platform for higher office, or to enhance their real estate professions. We want people who will not cave to the union, or pay 50K just to look for a superintendent that they intend to over-pay at 200K to 300K per year. We want people who have been successful at life, and therefore able to run our school system without corruption and abuse of the taxpayer.

Contact us today.

More to come…………

http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/1998/nov98/focus.html

Rich Hoffman

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

The Most Important Broadcast You’ll Ever Hear: The Crises in West Clermont School Distict and every public school in Ohio

If you do anything, listen to this broadcast between Doc Thompson of 700 WLW and Brendan Keefe of Channel 9 discuss the I-Team Report on school superintendents abusing the tax payer. This is a report that I worked with Brendan on along with Jennifer Miller and Sharon Poe and I’m very proud of the outcome. The report is as honest and hard-hitting as any report I’ve ever heard on this issue and it is a gift to tax payers everywhere to understand how the system has been stacked against them. Take this information and use it to understand what is happening. It may be the most important broadcast you’ll ever listen to. And to view that television broadcast again click here:

All over the United States state and local debt is up 138 percent since 1990 levels. What that means is that state governments, which include school boards and county commissioners, have become spend-happy and corrupt by federal money. The more money that they have received, the more they spent, without any increase in services. It is just wasted money. At some point, there must be a conscious decision to cut back dramatically the amount of money we spend on all services, and we must by necessity begin with education.

We have covered a lot of arrogance at this site regarding public education. Usually after the defeat of a levy the school board and superintendent are cautious about how they deal with the public, however, after the defeat of the West Clermont School System Levy Superintendent Gary Brooks was unusually arrogant toward the residents of the community that voted his levy down. Immediately the district is cutting art, and music teachers and there will be no more dedicated specialists to teach gifted specialists, there will be fewer elective courses in both their high schools. This was in reaction to a levy defeat that was 61 percent against, to 39 percent for. Listen Gary Brooks in his own words.

While this meeting was going on, Brendan Keefe was doing his epic report on superintendents that are milking the tax payers for everything they can, while services to parents are being reduced dramatically. Click here to see that report.

The crowd that showed up at the school board meeting in West Clermont was upset, saying “This board has done a pathetic job. You’ve been gilding the lily, and now we’re paying for it.”

Then with great shock, the school board president, Dan Krueger said “If you don’t like what we’re doing, vote us out, but whoever you put up here is going to find the same things we found.” He went on to say the board is not there to serve the tax payer, but to serve the children. (Brace yourself before you watch this video. You may want to act lash out in anger)

This was a shocking statement from a school board president that reveals how these people think. What we’re finding is that school districts all over Ohio are mimicking the same types of behavior. We are learning now under financial stress that there is a certain type of person that is attracted to become a school board member, and those types are particularly vulnerable to the seduction that goes into play every November when all school boards meet in Columbus at the OSBA conference. That is when these people become members of the fraternity, and the rules of that fraternity are set by the Ohio Education Association. This is why these school boards function the same way no matter what the district, because they receive centralized training from Columbus.

The Ohio Education Association also can be blamed for the unified behavior of the school superintendents. It is the teachers union that publishes the book which shows superintendents how to game the system. Again refer to the broadcast above, listen to Brendan Keefe explain the process to Doc Thompson on 700 WLW.

I know many school board members that get elected and are forced to make the choice to play ball, or are they going to try and do the job they “think” they were elected for. This is why the board president’s comments are so shocking because he reveals the true problem. Those board members that elect not to “play ball” are pushed out, which is the story of Jennifer Miller from Mason, shown in the I-Team Report with Brendan Keefe. That’s her story, and she’s not alone in the state. Most board members prove to be lifeless oafs and power hungry types that would trade their soul for a name-plate in brass to sit upon their desk. And those are the types of people that the OEA wants to compete against in contract talks, because it allows their union presidents to preside over those that have already lost. And the superintendents are bought off by the union in the spoils of the system. Superintendents are well-compensated and have their egos inflated to believe they are running a major organization, when the true hands on the strings are the union leaders. And the school boards know that their hands are tied, and that they are only tokens of ceremony to preside over decisions that are already in motion before the announcements are ever public knowledge.

The whole process is a scam sold to us by sports and local patriotism, which causes us to overlook what we all know to be wrong, to view the world with our eyes wide shut, leaving us to just throw money at the corrupt system and lie to ourselves that we are doing everything we can for our children.

These crooked low-lifes know what they are doing; they are robbing us with law, and using our children to perpetrate the scam. And we are letting it happen. The scam is created by radical big-government types and they get average, ordinary people to buy into their scheme by garnering excessively high wages in trade for their silence. And that’s the crime that is being committed with audacious arrogance by thieves without guns, fists, or armies.

The only weapon they use is guilt.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Eye of a Photographer: My Daughter’s Adventure

I have a very talented daughter that does some fantastic photographic work. My wife and I took her to launch on Saturday and I had to take a minute to admire the person she has become. As a photographer her pictures are worth millions of words.

These are the pictures that reflect the young woman who sat across from me on Saturday and ate Teriyaki Chicken. It was impossible when looking at her to not think of jet setting all over the world, camping at Stonehenge, crawling on her belly through the mud to take a picture of a flower in the wet morning mist. To see the young adventurer that will fight through the thugs on a DC subway to get unbelievable pictures around the nation’s capital, or the young woman who went with her husband every weekend by train into London, and rode ferries to the shores of France in the frigid punishment of the English Channel.

She is a remarkable young lady that gets better by the day. And her extraordinary ability comes through in her art, captured through the lens of her camera. This was the young woman who laughed at her joy of living while stuffing the Teriyaki Chicken into her mouth, which seemed so incredibly fitting. I wondered while watching her how her vision would increase in the future. What she has managed so far is quite impressive.

She likes friends, so if you want to meet her, here’s her Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Townsend-Photography/212389878774547

She enjoys that kind of thing much more than I do. But that’s part of what makes her unique, and why I think her photography provides a glorious insight into the human experience.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Magic of Pirates: Spending Mother’s Day at the Hoffman House

In my family naval battleships from the 1600’s through the 1800’s have a special place in our hearts. I’ve always been a fan of pirates, and that love has trickled down to my wife and kids over the years. Why do I like pirates so much? Well, Tenochtitlan which was the capital city of the Aztecs that sat in the middle of a lake which resided where modern-day Mexico City is started my love of pirates. It was a monstrously large city at the time of over 200,000 people divided into nobles and commoner groups. In Aztec culture, much like the modern Progressive, they lacked an inherit understanding of science so they relied on sacrifice to the gods hoping that magically the spirit realm would shine on their society and grant them life. They were such a foolish culture that over a four-day mass sacrifice in 1487 the Aztec king Ahuitzotl butchered 80,400 prisoners by shifts of priests working four at a time at convex killing tables who kicked the lifeless bodies of victims down the sides of their temple pyramids. (to see what this looked like click here) This established a killing rate of 14 victims a minuet over a ninety-six hour bloodbath. The Spanish encountered this group of Aztecs, saw that they were rich with gold, but lacked science, so Cortez took the city using superior technology and wiped out the Aztecs completely. So much for the gods saving Aztec culture, even with all the sacrifice.

Spain having wiped out the Mayan culture and now the Aztecs suddenly was very rich with gold, which scared the crap out of England and France. Those two countries hired “privateers” to intercept the Spanish vessels returning to the home country with the gold, so they could also have a share of the “new wealth.” This is a version of “redistributing the wealth” 1660’s style. Today we call them tax collectors.

Once much of the gold had been looted from Central America the three countries decided to be at peace with each other so they put a stop to their privateering efforts against one another and banned the practice with new laws. The only problem was those privateers were making good livings intercepting Spanish vessels from Central America. These were now sailors committed to living away from the “mother countries” so they had no real psychological commitment to a king or queen, so they decided to thumb their nose at their kings and become pirates. This was the start of the golden age of piracy.
It would be pirates who laid the foundations for America in breaking away from Europe. And it was on a pirate ship that democracy was first implemented, and concepts such as insurance were invented. In fact the very first law suit in the history of the world involved one of my personal mentors; Henry Morgan in a libel suit against Alexander Exquemelin who had written a book called The Buccaneers of America, based on Exquemelin’s adventures with Morgan, which exploited Captain Morgan as a ruthless cutthroat.

But Morgan had the king’s ear, and had made the man very rich in his spoils from Spain, and serving the king as a correspondence of sorts between Morgan, who had a base in Jamaica, and the king in England was none less than the philosopher John Locke, who Thomas Jefferson would base the Declaration of Independence off of Locke’s written work just a century later. There is without a doubt that the founding fathers held the book, The Buccaneers of America in very high esteem as a way to envision what freedom would look like. Many of the revolutionaries in the times of the founding fathers were sons of former pirates since New York had been a pirate haven once piracy was outlawed and those out of work privateers merged into legitimate fields of endeavor.

So anyone that knows me well knows that I love pirates, and the art of the swashbuckler. Here is video of the real pirate ship The Black Pearl firing its cannons.


A few years ago a game came out from Wiz Kids that combined model building, which I like, with military strategy, which I like a lot, with history, which I love almost as much as the air I breath, and touched on the fantasy of high adventure and pirate exploits on the high seas complete with treasure hunting, monsters, and supernatural events, all draped over actual historical context. So I introduced my family to the game and it became a family favorite.

The first release of the game was called The Spanish Main. Here is the original promotion video from that release.

Then Wiz Kids came out with a second series, with approximately a 150 new ships all themed around the period of the Revolutionary War.

The game combines the fun of model building with the historical facts that more mature players enjoy, and allows young players and older players to join together in a battlefield that everyone can enjoy together. It has not been uncommon from my son-in-law, my daughters and father-in-law and my wife to play a game at a big table for hours at a time, during an entire Saturday afternoon. My father-in-law who is a geology teacher for high-school students and lover of history in his own way enjoys telling my kids historic facts while they get the chance to blow up his ships and steal his gold. It doesn’t get any better than that for a young person. Here is what a pack of cards looks like when you buy them from the store and begin the process of building the ships.

The game has some simple rules, but the strategy is rather complex, involving thousands of decisions and possible variables. Here’s how the game is played.


There have been many releases over the years and literally thousands of ships to collect and build. These are just a few of the types of ships available.

So with this little introduction to put things in context my wife and I were out shopping yesterday for Mother’s Day. I wanted her to pick out a gift for herself, to treat herself to anything. My wife is the only person I know that can buy items from Victoria Secret, (She is really picky about this stuff, and Victoria’s Secret is the only quality she really enjoys as far as under garments.) then turn around and go over to another one of our favorite stores, Sci Fi City! It was her option to pick up a new bathing suit for the summer or to buy something from Sci Fi City, and she picked Sci Fi City. This is what she wanted The Pirates Constructible Strategy Game Expansion from Wiz Kids.

This is a role-playing expansion to the game we’ve played for years and opens things up a lot. Seeing how excited she got over this book made me proud to have her for a wife, because her priorities are clear. The pictures above are how we spent Mothers Day, enjoying her new book with the people she cares about most.

My daughter asked me yesterday, “What should we get mom?” I told her to come over, and bring your pirate ships for a day of adventure and probably some LaRosa’s Pizza. Nothing more is needed.

A few years ago Wiz Kids came out with an online version of the game which allowed people to play other players online using the same rules of engagement. This video will give an idea of how the game is played and how it looks in the minds of the players. The thing I don’t like about the online game is that you buy ships like you do in real life, but they only exist online. It is quite fun to build an actual ship and hold it in your hand and do battle. My family has spent many Saturday afternoons in comic book stores, book stories, gaming gatherings, looking for new decks of cards. The fun of these afternoon adventures is you never know what you’re going to get in a pack. I’ve bought hundreds and hundreds of ships, and I haven’t run into the problem of getting very many doubles of the same ship, so that gives some idea just how many ships were built for the game. Among my family, all of whom have hundreds of ships themselves, most of us have ships completely different from each other. The ships are broke down by color code, red (common), silver (uncommon), yellow (rare) and black (super rare. I have managed to get a fair number of rare ships and even a couple of super rare boats. Some of the most fun days we’ve all spent as a family together have been days were we’d find a fresh shipment at a comic store, a whole box, and we’d buy everything they had, and we’d go home and spend the rest of the day building ships, then the rest of the night playing.
Here’s what the action looks like online.


For people who are unfamiliar with the world of strategy gaming it’s very popular in an underground sort of way. When I was at Sci Fi City with my wife yesterday they have a gaming area in the back that was packed with about 30 people of all age brackets and demographic groups playing these games. I saw a mother and her daughter playing Magic the Gathering and the mother was well into her 60’s. Here’s video of Origins from the summer of 2010 in Columbus, Ohio. Origins is a big gaming convention done each year in Ohio. Some will make fun of these people, but let me provide a disclaimer. I’ve sat in front of some of the most powerful people in the country, or people who think they’re powerful anyway. I know the mind of people who wield great political power. And I know the power of people like this. I’ll pick them any day over the people who run the country currently.For all the reasons articulated in the book Atlas Shrugged, the people who play these games are much more intelligent, and able to construct a reasonable strategy than many of the people currently working in the White House and Pentagon. The difference between these people and those political types is that the people at Origins don’t wish to have limits placed upon their minds. So in strategy gaming their minds are free and not confined to “politics.” That’s why I’d pick these people as my friends any day of the week. The quality of their minds is superior to those who chose status quo complacency. I treasure knowing these types of people.

Here’s my family playing the game. This video was done by my son-in-law. We went as far to build actual three-dimensional islands replicas with great detail.

It’s a game that inspires imagination and to me that is the most important attribute to any form of entertainment.

So when we travel and visit a ship yard whether it’s in this country or another one, and one of these old ships fire their cannons there is a special place that I hold for them in my heart. Not only in the context of history, but in the memories of many battles fought with my family, where the mind does not know the difference between real or fiction because in this type of gaming, it is the minds process of thinking that is important. The Wiz Kids Constructible Strategy Game does all that at many levels, and it is a treasure to anyone that plays the game. For lesser minds, such as your typical politician, where they are always out for the end result, the better mind, the one of the strategy gamer, is out for the opportunity to think freely, without limit for the sheer process of doing so. The end result is secondary. That’s why it is not important to those gamers if people laugh at them for walking down the hall of a hotel dressed as a pirate or a dragon slayer, because they have freed their minds to engage in limitless possibilities, where the rest of the world is stuck on the rules and the achievement of victory. So when I see a sight like this:

I swell with pride in knowing that such minds exist out there in the world and it was such minds that conceived of the ships and the warfare they were intended for in the first place, that were given birth in the realm of imagination, where all great things humans truly enjoy emerge into the world either to be shared by many, or the sole gamer on a quest to solve the puzzles of their mind with limitless possibilities.

Rich Hoffman

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

Wanted: New School Board Members at Lakota–Apply at www.NoLakotaLevy.com

Lakota announced that they intend to vote on the placement of a new levy at the August 27th School Board Meeting of 2011. Apparently the school board, who I had been hoping would work with us in the community, has not received the message. They simply cannot see past the end of their nose. They only seem to know how to spend money in spite of the fact that most of their excessive costs bankrupting their budget is in their wages. Nobody on any side of the education issue at Lakota has shown any desire to deal with the issue at hand, so the school board is resorting to the only thing they know to do, and that’s ask for money.

Doc Thompson covers this issue and some of the “cultural diversity” that school systems are spending money on that is not something people like me find necessary to proper education of a child. I simply don’t want to spend good money on teachers that are teaching aspects of social behavior that are the jobs of the children’s family. The Cultural Center at Lakota is not something that is necessary as a funding option. Any employee that works on that program should be dropped for budget reduction reasons, because it is not something that a public school should even be involved in. Listen to Doc’s broadcast here as he breaks down the new levy attempt and a breakdown to the cultural sensitivity issues going on in our public schools, Lakota specifically.

Matt Mayer always has great information at the Buckeye Institute. He has an article that shows the origin of this behavior that we are being asked to pay for in school levies. Click onto this link to see his report and a copy of the magazine that the Ohio Education Associate sends its members. This tells you all you need to know about the social agenda of the OEA.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/s-b-5-would-have-saved-1-3-billion-in-2010-yet-the-oea-says-its-teachers-will-suffer-when-the-average-teacher-makes-55k/

So the real question is do we want to pay for this kind of stuff? I don’t. This is why I don’t want any of my tax money to go to union activity. I would like to vote to not have that kind of behavior taught in my school district because I don’t support all this cultural stuff. When a school does this, they are crossing the line to what is my responsibility as a community member and parent.

The Lakota School Board should first look at cutting these kinds of non-essential social programs well before they come to the tax payer for funding beyond the allocated budget. This is an old game that is not only socially corrosive, if you’re a non-progressive person such as myself, but is extraordinarily expensive and people are forced to pay for the whole deal instead of just the portions they support.

The No Lakota.Com group had a meeting on this issue last week, in anticipation that the school board would attempt to pass another levy in 2011 well before they attempted to fundamentally change the way they do business, which is extraordinarily arrogant on their behalf. So the No Lakota Group decided to change our strategy a bit. Instead of just defending the tax payers from further increases in their taxes, as we’ll still do, we will now start taking applications from members of the community to become the next school board members. There are two seats that are up this year on the school board and in the next couple of years the remaining three seats. The No Lakota Group will be seeking to replace each seat that votes in favor of a levy starting with the vote in August established by the Lakota School Board. If all the school board can do is ask for more money, they are useless, and must be replaced. So the No Lakota Levy.Com group will not only be committed to defeating the next levy, but they will actively elect the next school board members.

So if you’d like to be a school board member and would like to serve your community and have a non-progressive, business oriented background contact us at NoLakota@roadrunner.com so we can add your name to the list of people we are assembling for our strategic replacement of school board members who vote in favor of more taxes instead of the more difficult management aspects of a school boards responsibility. We have two issues that are driving up the cost of education that a school board needs to have the courage to tackle. First is the foolishness of union contracts to not manage their step increases which are bankrupting the district. The second is the failure to filter out social teaching programs that if parents want their kids to be “culturally diverse” they can pay for it separately. The community at large should not be forced to pay for education measures that they don’t agree with. Social Justice is an elective that should be up to the parent. It is not essential education for young people to live their lives. Social Justice Education is something that should be independently funded, and its removal from the classroom could dramatically reduce education costs to the tax payer. Again, if a parent wants that type of teaching for their children they are free to pay for it elsewhere, or as an added fee in the school. But it is up to the school board to separate these costs before ever considering another levy attempt.

I’ve heard from many of you over the last several months. Now is the time to act, so contact us today!

www.NoLakotaLevy.com

Rich Hoffman

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