Tag: 10th Amendment

How Ted Cruz Screwed the Pooch: Going the way of Mike Huckabee

Prior to the Iowa caucuses I liked Ted Cruz; I thought he’d be a good running mate to Donald Trump.  But his strategy in winning there certainly raised my eyebrows.  When Donald Trump first started complaining about it, I thought he sounded like a sore loser—a second place runner-up.  But as more facts emerged regarding the Cruz campaign floating a CNN report about Ben Carson dropping out of the race after Iowa, and the look of the Cruz campaign literature, it was clear the supposedly honest Ted Cruz—the Christian conservative from Texas, was running a guerrilla warfare campaign designed to sway voters a few percentage points in his favor.  And it worked.  He needed to win Iowa and he managed to sway enough voters in his direction to pull it off.  But the way his campaign purposely misled voters in the final hours is something to take notice of.

In the end, it was his Mike Huckabee moment; Ted Cruz will be remembered for his win in Iowa then his sharp drop off in the subsequent primaries.  I can’t say I blame him for trying to win, but to even do so with a tinge toward deceit is not the way to do it.  He should have known better and his bad judgment makes me question him as a person.  I do not any longer see him as an honest option.  It has changed my opinion of him as a viable vice president.  The measure of a man—or a women—is how they behave under pressure.   Under pressure, Ted Cruz folded and compromised his ethics—clearly.  Would he have won without the little schemes—probably, but he should have trusted his ground game without the antics—his victory wouldn’t have been this tainted.

Should Trump have pointed all this out looking like a sore loser?  Actually, yes, he did have a point.  Republicans are too often way too conciliatory toward loss.  It is refreshing to see Trump get angry and to lash out at the proposed cheating.  Cruz either has scandalous characters running his campaign, or he personally knew what was happening. Either way, they are Cruz people and the boss is always responsible for the content of the people working for them—whether or not it’s fair.  Cruz because his people have shown a propensity to manipulate the facts, is guilty because of them.

There were several interesting issues that emerged after the Iowa caucus.  First was the overwhelming joy that the mainstream press and politicians had toward Donald Trump in “losing” in Iowa.  This was a pretty baffling sentiment to me; the presidential primaries are a lot like a NASCAR racing season.  You don’t always have to finish first; you just need to average consistently high marks to win the season with points.  Trump got a lot of delegates in Iowa, and he’ll get a lot more in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and Arkansas.  He doesn’t have to win every one of those states outright.  He just needs to finish in the top three, and he could still win the nomination.  You’d think before everyone from the Cruz camp ran their mouth, they would have considered those elements.

But they didn’t, Trump gave a gracious speech congratulating Ted and he moved on to New Hampshire pretty fast.  But the media and other politicians decided it was time to swipe at Trump and he got pissed off.  Look, I understand Trump.  The more he talks the more I think he’s a long-lost brother of mine.  After a few hours of prodding, he blew up and started lashing out, and I would have done the same.  Cruz won under questionable circumstances—by his own doing, and he deserved to have some bombs thrown in his direction.  On the delegate count, Cruz is not poised to do well in the next couple states, so the small lead he gained from Iowa will evaporate quickly so his arrogant speech and actions after the victory were misplaced.  He should have played it much smarter.

I have a general policy, when I have a great victory; I tend to play it like I’ve been there before—because I have.  To get all animated over wins is to show the world that you don’t feel such things very often.  I believe in the adage, act like you’ve been there before.  On occasions when things don’t come out the way you want them to; don’t cry about it like a baby.  Just move on.  If someone gloats in your face, knock them on their ass.  In my assessment, Trump was willing to be gracious.  He congratulated Ted and was moving on.  But Ted and his supporters gloated about their victory and it pissed off Trump.  So he knocked Ted on his ass, and Cruz deserves it.

Then of course came the revelations of impropriety the following day, and many who hoped that Trump had been humanized into compliance for the first time in his life were shattered to learn that he was fighting hard at what had occurred.  They called his behavior a Trumpetantrum.  Cruz went so far as to call Trump more immature than his young girls.  Actually, he used the words, “well-behaved.”  Well, we all know what that means to a politician.  Well behaved is an insult, it’s an assumption that people will do as they are told and act in accordance to the laws of orthodox.  I don’t want a well-behaved president in the White House.  I want an ass kicker and a rugged individualist.  I’m not looking for a king to tell me what to do; I’m looking for someone who is capable of thinking like me in the Oval Office.  Someone who won’t get pushed around and someone who is willing to call out misconduct.  I’m not looking for even temperament in a president.  Ted Cruz attempted to paint Trump as a reckless maniac who should not have his hands near a nuclear option—from what reference is the Texas senator representing?  What experience does he have under duress, to stand in front of the senate and read Doctor Seuss books?  Trump has actually built structures worth many hundreds of millions of dollars and he navigated a delicate minefield of politics to perform the task.   In several decades of being a top dog in the real estate world, Trump never “lost it” over anything.  Sure he has a temper, but he’s always in “control.”  What stress has Ted Cruz experienced that dictates that he has the temperament to handle a nuclear option?  Who between the two, Trump and Cruz has the best ability to out-wit a potential enemy country?  Trump is a LOT more qualified if we are comparing apples to apples.

The established order loves conquered people.   They like people who have faults and are aware of those follies.  They are failed people themselves and it hurts them to write about and consider a person who is not a guilt riddled idiot.  The world was praying for a beaten Trump, a person who had fallen on his sword and was willing to yield.  Well, he was gracious, but he’s not a beaten man.  And because of that, he has the authority to call out Cruz for misconduct—because he plays things straight and aggressive.  Cruz should have seen the terrain and stuck to it, but instead he got power-hungry and showed his cards too early.  Now he has ruined himself.  Yes, he got the win, but he lost the war.  He should have been loyal to a winner by acting like one himself, instead of a school kid who scored his first hockey goal.  In the process of his celebration he cheapened himself in ways that are irreparable.  Now he’s worthless to the freedom movement—and that is something I didn’t want to see.  Yet, for all the embarrassment that is coming his way, he should have known better.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Why You Can Trust Donald Trump: Understanding ‘The Art of War’

I almost hate to say it, but I predicted this too, Donald Trump being at the front of the race just ahead of the primaries and the Republican establishment reeling in confusion as to what to do.  So let me make it easy for everyone.  Trump is certainly the best guy for the job of president of the United States.  I have been ready to hire him for it since August.  CLICK THE LINKS in this article for all the reasons why I think that.  The only thing that is holding back complete support for Trump however is the trustworthiness of him, so for this little article I’ll offer the reasons why voters can trust him, why he won’t be a ruthless dictator, and why making “America Great Again” isn’t just a catch phrase used to get elected, but something I think he genuinely believes.  I can say these things because I think I probably understand the way Trump thinks better than even he knows about himself.  In all actuality, and this comes from my wife who loves him for a lot of the reasons she loves me—Trump is a complex offering who often works on many different levels of thought and presentation at the same time—so you can’t think about him in conventional terms.  As a master strategist, Trump knows that the way to make the best deal possible is to align as many people’s interests into an objective so that an intention can be secured.  Typical politicians and the media in general only understand one thing at time—typically an idea that can be captured in a 400 word article.  Trump cannot be understood in that fashion, it takes a great deal more understanding.  So let’s dive in.

Trump first and foremost is all about his brand.  That brand is what he will leave behind to his children—which is obviously on his mind as a 71-year-old man in the autumn of his years.   Trump has built that brand with excessive quality in the things he does.  In order for people to expect the best in something—Trump has worked hard most of his life to give it to them—with grand audaciousness.  Building a quality brand is not a trick—you cannot cheat the customer and expect to maintain a reputation of quality.  You have to actually deliver.  So when Trump paints his name on his airplanes and buildings, it is to signal to all who see it that what they are experiencing is a high quality endeavor.  Trump wants to make sure that the brand he has created will endure for many decades—to protect his children and grandchildren and all others who come about in the future.  Trump thinks big and he ultimately thinks biggest in regard to his family.  He has been content to do things the way he has for his whole life—so long as he had a full life to live.  But now, he’s a smart guy and he can see the end.  So he wants to secure their future for the sake of his legacy.  The Trump brand needs to mean something long after he’s gone and he knows there is only one way he can get there.

The world is a mess and being an experienced successful person, he knows that there are a limited number of people actually capable to solve all the complex problems of our day.  He is one of them.  Out of all the presidential candidates, he is clearly the only one who could actually solve everything relatively easily.  It is one thing to identify problems, but it is quite another to have the skills to solve them.  Trump is great at both, so being President of the United States is a perfect job for his particular personality type.  I don’t think he cares one bit about the money at this stage in his life, or the enamored position the White House would give him to the public—he already has all that.  I think he would personally give his own press conferences each day and would work from before the sun rises to long after it went down.  I think he would perform all the social engagements everyday with everyone while still putting in 12 to 14 hours of real administrative work from the Oval Office.  I say that from my own experience.  Anyone who reads my articles can see how much work I put into them.  To their point of view, they think that’s all I do each day because the sheer volume is so extensive.  But in reality it’s only like 1% to 5% of my total day.  The writing is actually fun for me—but in a given day, I perform a lot of work—much of it really complicated.  Trump is obviously a similar personality and at the stage of life that he’s in, he can easily do what Barack Obama would consider very hard, and Trump would do it all in a fraction of the time.  I really think more would get done well for America in the first 90 days of a Trump presidency than all the presidents have over the last century during their entire terms.

Trump cannot afford to just say anything to get into office, because he knows that ultimately it will hurt his brand—which is the most important thing to him in this whole effort.  To make his brand last for centuries, he has to do what he is saying on the campaign trail.   He will not be happy unless he is the best president of the United States in the history of the world, and the most loved.  Those are marks he has created for himself, nobody else can make them for him.  Trump knows he’s a selfish person, but that’s not bad because as a good deal maker he has aligned his needs to the needs of America so in the end nobody loses.  America gets to solve its many problems under a Trump presidency, and Trump gets to preserve his “brand” well past his years for all his descendents in the future.

Trump has run a masterful campaign over the last six months, he has attacked the establishment, and eradicated his rivals.  He has positioned himself on the high ground forcing everyone else to come up to meet him on all sides of the political spectrum playing a king of the hill game which anybody who has studied The Art of War understands the criticality regarding that strategy.  And now, just ahead of the primary, the GOP establishment is slowly trying to walk back their apprehension of him.   That is negotiation from a person very skilled in it—you gradually wear people down until they see things from your point of view.  You don’t move off your position, you make them come to yours—but because you don’t beat them over the head and change your tactics a bit, they believe you are compromising with them.  It’s basic strategy 101, but Trump is really good at it—almost seamlessly unconscious about it.

So to answer the question of how voters can know that they can trust Trump, it is easy.  Trump cannot afford to fail in what he’s promised because he doesn’t care about the nobility of the White House or the public adoration.  He doesn’t need money or fame—he already has it.  What he wants is respect for his family name long after he’s gone.  And the best way to do that is to live up to everything he has said in this campaign and provide voters with options they’ve never had before in a president.  Trump expects himself to be better than Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  But he can’t cheat his way there.  He has to actually perform—which he has done all his life.  But this time it’s for all the marbles and what he gets as profit from this deal isn’t money—its reputation.  A reputation that will boost his brand for the next century and care for all the people he loves.  That’s why I support and trust Donald Trump.  The only race he is running against is his own expectations of success.  And if he achieves that, we all benefit.

That is the art of the deal—any deal.  If done correctly, we will all be happy in the end.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Premier Shooting and Training Center in West Chester, Ohio: What happens when good people are free to create

imageAs a fine example of what I have been talking about regarding good management of a town government, no finer example could be found than in West Chester, Ohio with the opening of Premier Shooting & Training Center in just a few weeks of this writing.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW WHY.  Typically projects like Premier are crushed through the zoning process where pin-headed liberal activists too often apply the worthlessness of their lives behind a façade of community interest using the power of regulation to provide meaning to their collectivist world vision. image Entirely too often developers have to donate huge amounts of money to politicians just so they can have the opportunity to build something halfway decent—and usually what they end up with is a long way off from the original vision once zoning chews up a project into pieces and leaves the consumer public with an end product far less imaginative than when it was conceived.  Precisely to the point, since Mark Welch has joined George Lang as a trustee in West Chester things have finally started to move in a positive direction.  At the Streets of West Chester a fabulous entertainment facility is about to open called The Main Event, which is essentially a very high scale bowling facility—among many other things.
imageThe Holiday Inn just built a wonderful hotel across from IKEA—and the steak house featured at that establishment is great for business lunches.  But then there is the Premier Shooting facility which is a game changer for a target range in the Tri-State area.  It’s so nice that people will drive into town just to visit it from other cities.  It is a top class facility.  I was happy to get an invite to a sneak peek that the owners were putting on to tour the facility behind the curtain, and all I can say is that it was extremely impressive—and that three years ago—before Mark Welch was elected as a trustee giving George Lang that critical second vote that he needed for the many previous years of struggle—that the Premier facility could have only have been built within the last year.  West Chester has a lot to look forward to regarding entertainment and leisure activity—and the Premier Shooting and Training Center is just the exclamation point at the end of an extravagant pro-capitalist government culture that has been created under the guidance of George Lang.  I personally like George, but too often people disappoint me because they don’t walk the talk.  George talks a lot—more than most people, but he walks more than he talks—let’s put it that way.image

http://www.mainevent.com/careers

http://www.premiershootingandtraining.com/

A few years ago a gun dealer and very pro Second Amendment guy named Mike Reed tried to set up shop in West Chester.  The zoning people gave the prospective employer a rough way to go so he went north and essentially set up his Right 2 Arms gun shop in my backyard.  He is doing well and has a great shooting simulator in the basement of his shop that can get people a concealed carry permit—among other things.  I recently bought my Vaquero from Mike and was impressed to learn that it was his parents who essentially put up the money for him to manage—so it was a nice little family business that they were conducting because the family believed very strongly in the values of the NRA and specifically the Second Amendment.  In my sport of Cowboy Fast Draw we call that the Cowboy Way.image

I was more than a little surprised to learn at the preview of the Premier Shooting & Training Center that it was a very similar story to Mike’s, a mom and dad, Myron and Tommie Rowland had put up a very large amount of money to create a shooting establishment that their son will essentially manage.  He has a background in the military and law enforcement and is the martial arts instructor.
imageWhen I spoke to him he specified to me that his mission was to provide the people least able to defend themselves against aggression the means to do so—which is a tremendous service to the people of West Chester.  He could have said to me that he hoped to make enough money to break even after their first year of operating—and in the context of our conversation he could have easily have said such a thing without shame—but he was quite sincere.  That’s when it became apparent that the Premier Shooting & Training Center was a dream for this family and that George Lang and Mark Welch had created a business environment that allowed that dream to actually be constructed—along with a determined and well-known developer.image

You can see that the dream was easy to share for this determined family because walking into the foyer of the facility is a very proud tribute to the Second Amendment.  I included pictures on this article to do the place justice because the entire facility is just a testament to very firm American values.  There is nothing like the Premier Shooting & Training Center in the Tri-State area and beyond within several hundred miles.
image The shooting lanes for target work are certainly on the high-end up range, but down range it is just state of the art.  For me the most noticeable luxury was their air evacuation system which was moving a lot of air during my visit.  As all shooters know there is a lot of lead in gun smoke so at a range where several shooters are working with their firearms smoke can fill the room quickly.  That air has to be moved to keep things fresh because you don’t want to breathe too much as a shooter.  It smells nice, but isn’t good for you under sustained conditions.image

The first thing I thought of after touring the facility was that the owners of the Premier Shooting & Training Center had certainly taken care of their target audience.  The gun retail store in the center of the action will be a place that guns of all kinds can be purchased and shot on the premises in the kind of luxury setting that shoppers would expect to find at Victoria’s Secret. image It’s a nice, clean environment that provides access to their stock.  For men who love to shoot, it’s a dream come true.  But better than that—they can bring their wives without having to worry about the environment being too intimidating for them to feel included.  The shooting range is set right off the retail area and is clean and safe.  There is even an office for the range master to supervise two separate ranges by looking out a central window to ensure that no trouble occurs for the sake of safety.  There is even an armourer on site to help with gun customization or troubleshooting that is equipped for minor gunsmithing duties.  Everything about the shooting experience associated with a target range was on the top end.image

But that wasn’t all, the facility offers a gun safe so that if you have a firearm that you want to protect while you’re out of town, or that you have purchased and are awaiting a permit for—like a machine gun—or something of that nature—it can be stored at the Premier Shooting & Training Center.  I can think of a lot of times where a service like that would be valuable.  There is also a combat training area with mats on the ground to protect falling bodies while learning hand to hand combat—with additional physical training equipment typically associated with a gym.  Then there are conference rooms and classrooms that can be used to advance understanding of firearms and other topics.  One of their meetings rooms would be ideal for renting any event where 100 people or so wanted to gather for an instructional class of some kind. It was a very nice facility.image

Of course there was a lounge area designed to get people talking with one another which was a nice touch.  Additionally under various membership packages there was a VIP area that was quite nice.  The first thought I had was that this was an ideal place to bring business clients.  Instead of taking clients out for a round of golf which takes all afternoon, a trip to the Premier Shooting & Training Center was a better option for the kind of bonding that is often required during business meetings and power lunches.  The quality of the place made it fashionable especially with the VIP lounge which has the look of Teddy Roosevelt’s living room in South Dakota.  There is a very nice patio that looks out over a lake and the setting is luxurious for a shooting range.  It was a wonderful place to speak with people and network within the community.  It was a very smart idea to include as a bonus to an otherwise fantastic shooting experience.image

The Premier Shooting & Training Center was just the most recent example of what the American people can produce if you just get government out of their way and actually help them achieve their dreams.  Mark and George, even though they will not take the credit—had a lot to do with making it so that such a wonderful place could actually be built-in West Chester.  The owners had been shopping around and were looking at three possible sites.  Zoning just a few years ago in West Chester would have forced the Rowlands to go out into a more rural location where there were less college trained leftists actively working against the Second Amendment.  For West Chester to now be able to offer such a wonderful gun range within a few miles of Jags, and the Main Event is really an advantage for the entire community.  I can easily see a business afternoon with VIPs dining at Jags then swinging over to the Premier Shooting & Training Center to shoot a few rounds—maybe even let them shoot a machine gun—which Premier is licensed to handle—then conduct further business in the VIP lounge before dropping them off at their hotel for the evening.  Not only will the Premier Shooting & Training facility help train people how to defend themselves, and to more fully utilize the Second Amendment, but it will also facilitate even more business activity which will proportionally improve the productive output of the entire area.  It is the kind of place that makes you feel safely wrapped in the American flag and to realize that we live in the greatest country on earth.  And West Chester has one of the best shooting facilities in that country—right in our own back yards.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Welcome to the End of the World: Will it be laissez faire capitalism or socialism–don’t let the stupid decide

The only real solution to the health care debate is more competition.  Now, because of the oligopoly and mandatory requirements on insurance coverage, prices are now guaranteed to always go up.  The only way to change that guarantee is to introduce competition—sort of like what’s happened with oil prices where a few years ago we were told that they’d always go up.  But once the United States started fracking more heavily and other nations joined into the oil-producing fray, the Gulf States lowered their costs to squeeze down the margins making domestic oil investments less profitable—hoping to maintain their dominance on the market.  Currently in health care—due to hundreds of millions of dollars poured off K-Street into politics—there are only an oligopoly of insurance providers—which drives up all the costs ridiculously.  As I’ve covered here many times, a lot of this health care cost isn’t even necessary any more.  CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT WHY.  There are cures for cancer, there are technologies for regenerative growth—there really isn’t any reason to be sick or to even grow old.  The only reason we still do is to satisfy the market expectations of the pharmaceutical companies.  Things have to change dramatically and quickly.  Obamacare has to go away and the next president will have to tap into as much laissez-faire capitalism as possible—otherwise there’s no chance.

On the Democrats side of the political spectrum, they don’t really have a candidate for president.  Hillary Clinton is a criminal and I have serious doubts as of this writing that she will be able to beat the socialist Bernie Sanders for the nomination.  Then with that said, I really don’t think America is ready to elect an open socialist.  I don’t think in 2016 the nation is ready to accept socialism the way that France has, and many other European countries.  A large portion of America has been raised on socialism—especially victims of public school over the last two decades.  They have been taught in their educations that socialism is the way to go—especially college graduates.  It takes most young people at least a decade to start seeing the reality that they can only get once their parents cut them off from an allowance, and they pop out a couple of kids.  Hopefully by that time they aren’t sick with venereal diseases and can actually live moderately healthy lives for two or three decades without overloading the doctor’s office every time they get a sniffle—which is another large contributor to insurance increases—the preponderance of so many people living their life with risky lifestyles—reckless sexual attitudes, chemical abuse through narcotics and alcohol—and high fat diets.  What is remarkable however is how stupid most people are these days, and to exemplify it read the comments below from a recent CNN article about health care and the Bernie Sanders socialist approach.  We all know they are out there, but it’s another thing to hear them speak so foolishly.  Have a look and read the CNN article linked below.

DemandSider12 hours ago

@davidfour @sunny5280 

We have let capitalism run rampant, to the point that we borrow money from Communist China, to subsidize the human resource budget of our largest private employer, so that they can profitable import from Communist China. Do you think this is wise?

http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/16/news/economy/sanders-health-care-taxes/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom

hardhatharry6 hours ago

I’m a Bernie fan but why even get people worked up about this, we all know Congress would never pass 99% of his ideas.  What it would cost is irrelevant, he is just getting people talking about it longterm. 

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medianone5 hours ago

@hardhatharry You never know….  Conservatives have done a great job of pushing their “anything but Obama” or “anything Obama does it bad, terrible, a failure” to the point that maybe people would consider something different that is not associated with Obama.  Maybe?

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QuestionCNN5 hours ago

@hardhatharry What this article refused to mention is that Hillary will do the same thing – increase taxes under the pre-tense of providing Universal Health care, then divert it to pay for her police-state Marxist Utopia. But CNN is in the Clinton camp and is helping her by providing free negative campaign attacks on the other Marxist – Bernie Sanders 

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DemandSider5 hours ago

@hardhatharry 

This election reminds me a lot of the 1932 election The inequality, the Republican leaning Congress, the economic collapse due to middle class destruction and speculation. With FDR’s election, both Houses switched to heavily Democratic. Sanders’ views are very similar to FDR’s. 

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RustyShackel1 hour ago

@DemandSider @hardhatharry Agreed, Bernie does seem like such a believer in the authority of government that he would take actions to throw Americans in imprisonment camps much like FDR did with innocent japanese-American citizens. I wonder who Bernie would target  – conservatives? The rich?

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DemandSider1 hour ago

@RustyShackel @DemandSider @hardhatharry 

No, you are confusing him with Chewbaca, The Confederate Republican nominee. He’ll probably just put another wing on in Cuba, call it Trumptanomo, and make a killing at tax payer expense, per usual with these “free market” parasites.

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DemandSider7 hours ago

sickforprofit.com/ceos

Stephen Hemsley, CEO, United Health Care, total value of unexercised stock options (Forbes):  $744 million

“Hemseley returns $190 million in stock options acquired as as result of practices found to be fraudulent by The SEC” -American Medical News

Edward Hanway, Cigna CEO, total value of unexercised stock options, $28.8 million,five year compensation, $120 million “The family of a 17 year old girl who died hours after Cigna reversed a decision to deny her liver transplant to sue” -Oakland Tribune

Michael McCallister, CEO, Humana, total value of unexercised stock options, $60.8 million, “Humana abandons seniors in Florida; returns after Republicans pass new Medicare law, upping HMO payments by 25%” – NY Times

Has this Bernie Sanders fella no sense of decency??!?  Who would hire these, ah, people?

  

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pulsecolo7 hours ago

@DemandSider Gosh, those salaries could be used to help pay to retrain and pay

all those insurance company employees mentioned earlier…. 

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JRCHICT6 hours ago

@DemandSider ” Bernie Sanders would LIKELY raise taxes,……”

“SOME experts say,…..”

Great journalism Tami

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medianone5 hours ago

@JRCHICT @DemandSider to be fair, or at least in cutting Tami some slack; we do live in a very litigious society.

Plus the article did say, “Sanders’ plan hasn’t been evaluated by the Congressional Budget Office or major think tanks…” which seems to be the standard for vetting candidate tax proposals.

But I agree with your thinking.

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DemandSider1 hour ago

@medianone @JRCHICT @DemandSider 

Yes, for a person to have their medical bills reimbursed, they often MUST be litigious. SIngle payer would ease the burden on our courts. 

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DemandSider12 hours ago

Insurance stocks rose with the passage of ACA. I don’t think they’ll rise with single payer. Manufacturers should rejoice, however, as their expenses will fall a lot.

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booboospal11 hours ago

Assuming a President Sanders could get his proposal through Congress, how would it affect (adversely?) the 50 million and increasing number of folks now getting Medicare benefits?

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CPR8 hours ago

@booboospal Well it would greatly impact the hundred thousand plus people that work in private insurance or in support of it. 

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booboospal8 hours ago

CPR: Do you know the answer to my question?

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pulsecolo7 hours ago

it would do nothing to adversely affect those folks, the only thing that would happen is that the advantage plans would go away.   But, there would no longer be a need for advantage plans as better coverage would prevail for all seniors as well as the rest of us with everyone in the pool.  Keep in mind, that the Silver  exchange plans under the ACA, that most Americans have with the subsidies,  have much higher deductibles and out of pocket costs than traditional Medicare does without any advantage plan at all.  The insurance industry successfully lobbied and sold America on the “snake oil need” for advantage plans.  Advantage plans have a daily deductible for in hospital stays, and do not cover long term care.   Plus, when seniors sign up for them, they may actually be paying more in the long run than had they banked the money they are spending for those plans.  

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booboospal6 hours ago

pulse:

Would there still be Part B premiums?

Would retiree pension and investment income be taxed more than now to pay insurance costs?

Would there still be a need for supplementary coverage?

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JRCHICT6 hours ago

@booboospal  all good questions.

I’m pretty sure though that we’ll have many who will expect to be perfect right out of the gate. Find any and all reasons to condemn it as we’ve done w/ ACA

Primarily use it as a political football.

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medianone6 hours ago

@booboospal Again, all good questions.  And shouldn’t debate on universal health care also include looking at other countries who’ve successfully implemented such systems?  Their costs, outcomes, sustainability, etc?

Seems like this debate has been ongoing for decades, at least since Hillary Care proposals.  And if other countries have been successfully operating single payer systems and covering 100% of their populations, it is a wonder our “top men” haven’t been able to track these successes and implement them here. 

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JRCHICT6 hours ago

@medianone @booboospal  I’m not sure our “top men” care more about taking the money from the lobbyists of the health and insurance corporations for same old same old, or they’re interested in doing what’s right for us.

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booboospal10 hours ago

My former employer pays a fixed monthly amount (adjusted each year) toward employee AND RETIREE and dependent health insurance. So far it has been enough $$ to cover a Blue Cross supplemental policy AND the basic tier Medicare Part B premium for both my wife and me. Of course both of us paid for Part A (hospitalization) Medicare coverage by payroll tax while we were employed.

How would the Sanders proposal affect us?

Anyone?

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CNN User8 hours ago

@DemandSider

Republicans: you blame non religions christians, atheists,Muslims, blacks,Hindus, Obama,gays etc. for US weak middle class,but the real problem is no healthcare,expensive college, no paid maternity leave etc. 
—- 
-evil socialist countries all rank higher in median wealth(or wealth of the middle class) 
Source: 
http://www.middleclasspoliticaleconomist.com/2013/06/us-median-wealth-only-28th-in-world.html 

(Before you republicans blame colored people, remember that UAE, Kuwait , Qatar, Singapore have a high percentage of colored folks but still have a richer middle class than us ) 

If you don’t believe my source just google “median wealth by country” and you will see similar results. 

We dont have paid maturity leave, free healthcare or free or reduced college. We are the only developed country to not have this. Thats why we rank so low.

Uninsured by state- 
http://www.gallup.com/poll/184514/uninsured-rates-continue-drop-states.aspx 

dem. states have a lower percentage of uninsured than republican states

Those are some really poorly educated theories shown above generated by a society raised on a terrible public school system which taught them all the wrong things.  The basic instruction was that mixed economies such as what Scandinavian socialism proposes is the answer to equal distribution of resources without considering what the source of the value of what’s distributed entailed.  For years the word on the street was that the United States would become more service oriented as other countries would become the producers.  Otherwise, China and the Gulf States would make most of our American stuff and we’d have more time to think about things and have service jobs to sustain those “intellectual” pursuits.  Well, that plan hasn’t worked out.  The “money” jobs are now overseas and socialists think that by raising McDonald’s jobs to $15 an hour that the “middle class” will be sustained.  Only idiot academics who live in a campus bubble could have concocted such a stupid notion.  Only laissez-faire capitalism will solve our problems.  Not crony capitalism which is what the pharmaceuticals and oil conglomerates have—I’m talking about open markets competing with each other to offer the most superior product for the lowest price.

All the countries mentioned above, places like UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Singapore are ultimately servicing the United States demand for products.  The United States creates the global demand with their $17 trillion a year in gross domestic product.  That GDP in order to survive by the way must increase by nearly double just for us to hope to survive as a country—and for the world in general to even have a chance.   Without the United States all those mentioned countries wither away and die.  So they are not examples of success or flowering epitaphs to managed economies.  Socialism is the tombstone that the epitaph needs to be inscribed upon, because it has not worked.  The United States is the only life support the world has.  It is sad that more people don’t understand that.

The next president cannot be a Democrat.  The House and Senate can’t just have Republicans; it has to have “conservative” Republicans the likes of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.  Whoever is in the executive branch will have to be willing to fight the world and idiots like those in the comments above from their instructed commitments to socialism and convince them to embrace not just capitalism, but the most open form of it imaginable– laissez-faire.  We are no longer at a “theory” phase in this global economic struggle.  We are at the rubber hitting the road phase and it’s not the time for games.  If the situation doesn’t get fixed right here and now it will be over in the future.  Because there are just too many socialists who are having kids and are raising them to be just as stupid as they are—the evidence is right above you—they do exist.  Astonishingly they somehow manage to feed themselves, but they aren’t much good for anything else.  But they do vote.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Hillary Clinton is Shit out of Luck: Her connections to Hamas and lesbian love with Yoko Ono exposed in the shadow of Trump

 

During the weekend news dump right after the New Year of 2016 ISIS lunatics finally released a video featuring Donald Trump as one of their reasons for recruiting against America.  In the weeks prior, as the videos below clearly chronicle, Hillary had accused the presidential front-runner Trump of being the best recruiting tool for ISIS.  Of course Trump blasted her for being a liar.  Then within a week ISIS released a video finally featuring Trump in just the manner that Hillary Clinton suggested.  Hmmmmmmmmm, the timing is very interesting.

I was having a piña colada at the Cheesecake Factory bar as the Arizona Razorbacks won the Liberty Bowl.  It was a crowded place and many were watching the game with me.  Many others were on their phones checking news, texts and other reading material.  It was a vibrant, energetic atmosphere reflecting American values emphatically, and all I could think about was ISIS.  Terrorists and radical hopefuls don’t have the same vibrant culture in east Syria and upper Iraq.  They have a lot of sand, a little bit of the Internet, and they have the news from Al Jazeera.  They certainly don’t have a Cheesecake Factory, and if they did, they would just blow it up—because that’s what they do.  They are insecure religious nutcases that are largely a product of their limitations—their lack of culture and imagination.  They hate the West the way a jealous neighbor hates a successful household down the street.  They picked a collective based economy as their means for development, and they obviously made a mistake.  So their war with the West is essentially to attempt to erase the mistakes of their own culture.  That’s when I remembered a couple of things about Hillary Clinton from the past several months.

Do you remember dear reader when Hillary Clinton said “In fact viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.”  That is very interesting, she was obviously at the time using a Saul Alinsky tactic from the book Rules for Radicals to plant a seed in the media she hoped would be more conducive to her many faults and eventual presidential campaign.  She has for many years planted stories that she hoped would change the way that things get covered—such as her Bengahzi screw-up where she insisted that the terrorist attack was a reaction to a anti-Islamic movie, and not her sheer incompetence as she through the Obama administration had been involved in arming rebels against Libyan, Egyptian, and Syrian dictators.  In the wake of that activity ISIS was born and the Arab Spring emerged.  But Hillary hoped the media would blame the whole thing on a video that had no relevance.  It is very interesting that Clinton and her friend Al Gore are very supportive of Al Jazeera as a network—as it is the news of the Islamic Caliphate presently.
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/918240/hillary-clinton-our-news-should-be-more-like-al-jazeera-change-minds-and-attitudes-video/#zT2mHpPlXZfYSqeG.99

Al Jazeera (Arabic: الجزيرة‎ al-ǧazīrah IPA: [æl dʒæˈziːrɐ], literally “The Peninsula”,[3] referring to the Arabian Peninsula), also known as Aljazeera and JSC (Jazeera Satellite Channel), is a Doha-based state-funded broadcaster owned by the Al Jazeera Media Network, which is partly funded by the House of Thani, the ruling family of Qatar.[4] Initially launched as an Arabic news and current affairs satellite TV channel, Al Jazeera has since expanded into a network with several outlets, including the Internet and specialty TV channels in multiple languages.

Al Jazeera is among the largest news organizations with 80 bureaus around the world. Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar.[4][5][6][7][8][9] While Al Jazeera officials have stated that they are editorially independent from the government of Qatar, this assertion has been disputed.[10]

The original Al Jazeera channel’s willingness to broadcast dissenting views, for example on call-in shows, created controversies in the Arab States of the Persian Gulf. The station gained worldwide attention following the outbreak of war in Afghanistan, when it was the only channel to cover the war live, from its office there.[11]

Al Jazeera has been called a propaganda outlet for the Qatari government and its foreign policy, by analysts and by news reporters, including former Al Jazeera reporters.[12][13][14][15][16][17][18] The network is sometimes perceived to have mainly Islamist perspectives, promoting the Muslim Brotherhood, and having a pro-Sunni and an anti-Shia bias in its reporting of regional issues.[19][20] However, Al Jazeera insists it covers all sides of a debate, it says it presents Israel’s view, Iran’s view and even aired videos released by Osama bin Laden.[21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera

Isn’t that a strange thing to say by Hillary Clinton within the American media culture that is obviously overflowing with information and voluminous details of everything from sports scores to nitty-gritty politics?  She thinks Americans could learn something from Al Jazeera.  But that’s not the only strange bit of information that has come out about Hillary Clinton over the last six months—which was lost to the media world because of her scandals with email and her stalled run for POTUS.  Yoko Ono, the widow of John Lennon, when asked about her thoughts about Hillary’s run for the presidency completely took reporters by surprise. “We met many times during the New York Vietnam War protests in the 1970s, and became very intimate. We shared many of the same values about sexual equality, fighting against the authoritarian, patriarchal, male-dominated society we were raised in” she explained. “We had a brief romantic fling when I lived with John in Manhattan and Hillary was studying at Yale, but eventually we lost touch. I am amazed how things are going well for her and wish her the best for her campaign” she told reporters during the press conference.

http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/yoko-ono-i-had-an-affair-with-hillary-clinton-in-the-70s/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=socialnetwork

The Clintons have always sold themselves as a traditional couple to voters, although anybody who pays attention can clearly see that Hillary is likely just as much of a sexual deviant as her husband is.  In a bizarre manner, Hillary seems to enjoy her husband’s exploits with women because it is obvious that she has had many sexual relationships with women herself over the years—and she enjoys the relationships her husband has with other women in a voyeuristic fashion.  This is a minor detail that is necessary for voters to understand.  It’s one thing if Hillary came out and said that she likes sexual relationships with women and that is why she supports LGBT rights and all the rainbow marching parades that feature homosexuals and transvestites around the country so often—but she doesn’t—she avoids the question constantly and pretends it’s not important.  So to keep the media off her heels digging up everything she tries to hide with 24 hour per day coverage into every aspect of a presidential candidate’s life—she floats to the public that she thinks Al Jazeera is the example of a news organization that should be followed.

That is why it’s important to understand who Qatar is.  The wait at the Cheesecake Factory was nearly 45 minutes for a table for two and it was obvious to me that there was so much information out there that most of the people around me couldn’t absorb it all.  As some people were snaked outside waiting for up to an hour and a half for a table they had likely forgotten about Hillary Clinton’s relationship with Al Jazeera and the government that produces the news organization in Qatar.  Most of the people around me could tell me the details of the Razorbacks defense and the reason why they won the game over Kansas, but they probably couldn’t point to Qatar on a map.  The Clinton Foundation and the terror group Hamas share a key donor: The government of Qatar, a leading backer of terror groups that has emerged in recent years as Hamas’ chief financial lifeline. Qatar, which has been designated by the State Department as a “significant terrorist financing risk,” has pledged more than $400 million to Hamas since 2012 and has long harbored one of the terror group’s senior leaders, Khaled Mashaal. At the same time, Qatar has sought to curry favor with elite Westerners, donating between $1 million and $5 million through 2013 to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.  Isn’t that interesting that Clinton supported Al Jazeera, because they are big donors to the Clinton Foundation—but then again George Stephanopoulos at ABC has as well. So has Donald Trump.  A lot of people have been extorted by the Clintons into giving money on their government shakedown conspiracies.  But Qatar is different from New York personalities who donate a lot of money to everyone they think is a good organization.  The Clintons use those American donations to hide their foreign donations with a lot of noise to conceal their true intentions—global government through occasional terrorism, LGBT rights to camouflage their past and present sexual exploits all in a desire to obtain more power and to expand the work of Saul Alinsky to every corner of the world.

http://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-foundation-hamas-share-major-donor/

Coming to the end of 2015 Hillary saw that Trump was the Republican frontrunner and that she wouldn’t be able to beat him in day-to-day combat, so she called in some favors.  The government of Qatar heard her request and they found a way to get ISIS terrorists to put Donald Trump into a recruitment video.  But it didn’t happen until a week after Trump called her a liar.  I know from the crowd at the Cheesecake Factory that they don’t have the retention required to put all these pieces together—but I do.  That’s why I write these stories because honestly, I don’t forget anything.  I enjoy dynamic environments like busy restaurants during a football bowl game, but I always pay attention to the small stuff and when I hear some news, I log it away in the back of my mind until I get another piece of the puzzle. 

What Hillary was doing to Trump was directed at her friends in Qatar, who are clear allies with her intended administration.  She knows Trump will exploit all these malicious relationships over the next several months so she had to attack and try to make it look like the evidence was always there.  But it wasn’t.  All it did show was how close Hillary Clinton is to actual terrorists.   It is clear her political influence reaches into the sands of east Iraq to the kids chanting death to America.  And that she has hidden that relationship from the American public in the same way that she’s hidden her lesbian adventures with pop culture stars which transgressed for many years.  She is as Trump said a liar.  And Hillary counts on the fervor of American culture to hide her true intentions behind college football games and restaurant lines that occupy entire evenings—hoping that nobody will notice.  But in that regard, she’s shit out of luck.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Obama Couldn’t have Competed on ‘The Apprentice’: Understanding how severe the National Debt really is

Let’s assume for a moment that Barack Obama is not an insurgent economic terrorist attempting to destroy the American economy—but is rather—just an idiot.  Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt just for the sake of fairness.   Then it makes it that much more preposterous that during the White House Correspondence Dinner of 2011 that Obama roasted Donald Trump in front of a packed house diminishing greatly the television show The Apprentice which was a top rated program on NBC during its run.   CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  Obama suggested that his role as president was so much more profound and that he didn’t have time for silly television shows that featured basic management techniques.   As a former community organizer now in the role of President of the United States, he was above that kind of silliness, and the crowd had a lot of fun at Trump’s expense.  This was very disingenuous, because the show was far more successful than anything that Barack Obama had personally ever done in his life and was about things that the President clearly didn’t understand like how to make money in a capitalist society.  The comments were a window into the ridiculous proposals economically that the POTUS embraced along with most of the world media and were just preposterous.  So for fun, and practical examples, let’s go back in time a bit to the very first Apprentice episode in 2004—where the contestants were selling lemonade in New York City for a chance to become an employee for the Trump Organization.

I never watched much television back then.  I knew most of what the television show was displaying and I was doing it in real life.  But it was interesting to go back and watch these shows—which aren’t that old and I noticed a few things.  First of all, the debt clock in New York during 2004 was at $6 trillion dollars which at the time seemed like a ridiculous amount of money.   However, just 11 years later, it is just shy of $19 trillion and is projected to exceed $21 trillion before Obama leaves the White House in just over a year’s time of this writing.  That far exceeds the yearly GDP of The United States and is really dangerous.  At that rate of growth, it will become impossible very soon to ever pay it off and nobody is addressing that issue—except for a few Republicans—Trump being one of the loudest voices.   For me, it is the number one issue of the 2016 election.  Whoever the next president will be has a tremendously difficult task in front of them.  The Nation Debt is the biggest issue of our time—our nation will not survive another ten years of neglect without dealing with the massive problem it proposals to each and every one of us.  Our federal government has mismanaged our resources in a terrible way, and now we are going to pay hell for it.

The other thing that is realized upon watching that first Apprentice episode was that Barack Obama wouldn’t even be competitive in that show.  Donald Trump could walk into any government office or company right now and rattle off four or five big things that the organization could do to save a few bucks and become more profitable.   It doesn’t matter what it is—he knows enough about management to perform the task at any level of endeavor, from selling lemonade to closing multibillion dollar deals.  I’ve said it before and it’s truer now than ever, Obama couldn’t walk into a McDonald’s right now and manage a lunch rush.  He doesn’t understand the basics of management—you can see it on his face and in the things he says.  He is completely lost when it comes to management of resources in a capitalist culture.  He is a big government guy who simply spends other people’s money—like a trophy wife who spends on her husband’s credit card without understanding the value of the money or what it takes to get it.

The winner of that first season of Apprentice received a job with the Trump Organization and led the way under careful mentorship to developing the Trump Tower in Chicago.  He did such a good job that the Trump Organization gave him a year extension to his original one year contract.  As the construction of that massive effort commenced the winner directed efforts toward sales and marketing the endeavor which turned out to be a glorious success.   It is one of the great towers of the world and is one of the most spectacular things on the Chicago skyline.  I don’t think Obama could do anything in the Trump Organization.  On his own merits he wouldn’t be able to get a job because he’s not qualified for anything.  Obama can certainly sell, but it doesn’t take long for people to realize that there is nothing to back up the talk and in the private sector he’d lose his credibility quickly.

The President’s berating of Donald Trump in 2011 comes off sounding like the Roman emperor Nero making jokes and enjoying parties as his country burns.  Strictly from a financial view, what Obama and virtually every member of the media are doing is criminal—the theft and mismanagement of public resources.   Getting out of this mess will be one of the largest comebacks in the history of the world—and I don’t know that it’s possible.  I write here everyday because it’s one of the only things that I can do to help such a massive global problem.   I don’t charge money for the primary material because what would be the point—if our economy collapses and the value of the dollar with it—it doesn’t matter if you make millions of dollars if you lose the value of it in the process.   So I have literally written millions and millions of words on this blog site pointing out things that I intend to have an impact on our culture-and it works.  There are a lot of people who come to things late in their life and they seek answers—and I give answers or at least something to think about.  Donald Trump has written a lot of books, most of them 80,000 word publications.    If all the links on just this article are put together there are several books worth of information here that should guide the reader toward some level of prosperity—and it’s all done for free, because I want people to be more successful in their lives and the best way to do that is to understand the value of money.   Click on these links and it will become clear just how bad that National Debt really is.

In many ways I think only Donald Trump is qualified to be the next POTUS.  The situation is so severe that there just isn’t another person available who has the energy, connections, and understanding to perform the ominous task of getting our American economy back under control.  Both of my daughters were born during George Bush’s presidency (#41).  They like a lot of Millennials their age have never experienced a successful president in the United States.  Everyone during their entire lives for a quarter of a century has been losers in the White House.  They don’t have any memory of a Ronald Reagan, a John Kennedy, a Dwight Eisenhower, or a Calvin Cooledge.   They only know losers who would be personal failures if not for the White House glamour and glitz given to them by voters out of hope because they could at least talk a good game.   In real life, performance matters and Obama clearly doesn’t understand why.  If he watched and understood The Apprentice he might have been a better manager in the White House, but instead he insisted on socialism and government control of everything—and that just hasn’t worked.  He had no right to laugh or make fun of Donald Trump and the rest of the media were idiots for churning on the President for doing something they dared not do themselves.   Now we are in serious trouble and it will take a real fighter—and winner to get the United States out of it.  The Apprentice is old enough that most of the episodes are on YouTube so I’d suggest watching that show again knowing now things that many didn’t know then and think about the kind of problems that are facing our nation in 2016.  We won’t get another chance to fix it.  By clicking on the links within this article, a picture will become quite obvious and it all comes to a head in 2016’s election.  At the end of we can only hope that Donald Trump gets to say his famous line to many thousands of overpaid government workers and looters off the tax payer by telling them “they’re fired,” so that the job can be done correctly from the White House for maybe the first time in history.  It is the only way I see out of this mess and honestly the success of The Apprentice more than qualifies Trump to perform the task.  But by that same measure, Obama isn’t qualified to scalp tickets to a Bears game in Chicago from a street corner.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Bullies of the Beltway: Standing with Trump and Arpaio to do the right thing

 

To further illustrate the level of the fight we are facing in 2016 have a look at this 2011 video of the White House Correspondence dinner.  The first video is of Barack Obama roasting Donald Trump and the second is of Seth Myers from Saturday Night Live doing the same.  The issue of tension was that Trump had been the one to push for Obama to release his birth certificate—which forced the White House to finally do it after stonewalling for over three years.  It was quite a mystery and gave rise to the “birther movement.”  Trump after a lot of persistence pushed, and pushed, and pushed until a document was produced leading to the victory lap in front of the media at the special 2011 engagement roasting Trump who was forced to sit stone faced in the middle of the action and take it.

But that wasn’t the end of the story.  Sheriff Arpaio from Arizona put together an independent group of people to analyze the released birth certificate and what they discovered was that the document Obama’s people released was a fake created recently, and not in the year of the president’s birth.   All of this was reported of course reported by me, CLICK HERE to review.  The rest of the media relegated the material as “conspiracy theory.”  For some reason, they didn’t want to know, as a collective entity—they wanted to believe that Obama was something that he wasn’t.  And when he was caught lying, only a few really held his feet to the fire making them easy targets like Trump was at that White House Correspondence dinner in 2011.  The purpose of that roasting was to show others what happens to people who dare to take on the Bullies of the Beltway.

All that seems like ancient history now—Obama won his election in 2012, and Trump decided not to run for president that year against him.  It seemed for a long time that only Trump and Arpaio were the only legitimate voices willing to yell against the tide that something was really wrong with President Obama.   Shortly after the 2012 election, we had the IRS scandal with Lois Lerner involving the White House, and then we had Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi hearings featuring her poor decisions leading to that disaster.  Then we had the destruction of Hillary’s emails on her private server so the scandals and stories mounted up to such a degree that everyone forgot about the birth certificate issue being a forgery.  The White House had produced a forged document and passed it off in a way that was more concerning than all the mysterious reasons that Obama refused to release it in the first place—which was always troubling.   I mean if you and I signed up for a new job, they will demand that you produce a driver’s license and/or a birth certificate to satisfy their screening criteria.  Becoming president of the United States is a pretty important job, so at least a birth certificate should have always been a high priority.  Yet it wasn’t and the president avoided it, and when pressed by Trump—day after day after day for several years, the White House finally managed to produce a document that could only have been created in the modern age—certainly not in the early 1960s when such technology wasn’t even invented yet to produce a computer generated layered document instead of a scanned replicate of an original.  If you and I were to scan our birth certificate into a computer program such as Adobe, you’d get a single flat layer of imagery.  There would be no way to separate the fields of what we scanned because the computer would have recognized only the image scanned from the source.  In short, if the document had been scanned into a computer like it was claimed, there would be no way to manipulate the various fields within the document presented by the White House.  The Obama birth certificate was a fake produced under great pressure by Trump.  In spite of all that evidence, Trump was laughed at by just about everyone.  Trump being a guy who saw a fight and the depth of that conflict knew what he had to do to clear his name—and that was to run for President in 2016 so that he could work from the top position to solve some of these diabolical problems.  And that brings us to the present where Trump is way ahead in the polls and poised to be the Republican nominee in 2016 to run directly against Hillary Clinton.  The people who presented that forged document among other scandalous cover-ups are terrified of Trump in the White House, because it’s obvious that he’ll expose everyone for everything to prove his point.

I took a lot of flak for supporting Trump for president so quickly in July of 2015—I do occasionally cover conspiracies and strange phenomena, but I’m not a conspiracy theorist.  When I say something it holds up—and a review of the many things I’ve covered will show that to be the case.  I know that something is very wrong with our political class—which extends over directly into our entertainment culture.  We have real criminals in very powerful positions and they need to be removed.  Yet congress showed no desire to take on the Obama birth certificate and most in the media completely ignored the issue.  Even people like Glenn Beck stayed away from the “birther” issue no matter how justified it was.  This left Trump and  Arpaio to hang out on a limb with all their hard-fought evidence as the media proclaimed, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody was there to hear it—it didn’t happen.  The media collectively refused to hear the tree fall on the Obama birth certificate leaving Obama to rake Trump over the coals at that 2011 correspondence dinner.  Trump fuming to do the right thing at his first opportunity.  I believe that Trump made his decision hell or high water to capture the White House after that roast.

Arpaio was sued by the Holder Justice Department soon after the birth certificate report and Trump stopped short of running for president so that he could solidify his position.  If he was going to do it he’d do so from a position of strength.  Trump spent the following three years doing just that.  Knowing all this, that’s why I was so quick to join Trump for his White House run.  He’s doing what I’d do myself if I were in such a position, and that is to treat the whole thing as a war that had to be won.  When Trump said he viewed running against Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton as a war for the White House, this is what he’s talking about—an establishment that seeks completely to control everything political with the banter of school yard bullies who determine the trends of the day with raw force and mass persuasion.  These people who have been occupying the White House for a number of years, people like the Bush family and the Clintons have the whole system rigged in their favor and the press eats out of their hands.  Obama is associated with that culture by default.  The same system that ignored his birth certificate problems allowed Lois Lerner to get by with IRS abuse and a massive cover-up of the top-secret emails destroyed and utilized on Hillary Clinton’s private server.  I know how Trump feels to be the only one speaking out for what’s right.

But here’s the secret dear reader, these are bullies who are running our country right now—it’s not Trump who is the bad guy—as much as they’d like to make him appear that way.  Just like in grade school when you stand up to them, they have nothing to throw back at you.  They can threaten to beat you up with IRS audits, they can harass you at work, through the media, and they can follow around your loved ones and harass them if it doesn’t work on you.  They can intimidate and harass you until you do as they are doing—comply with the orders of the collective.   Well, I’ve had everything mentioned above done to me and my family and I have done just what I did when I was in grade school, which is the basic mentality of most people working in government—they are still 15-year-old kids looking for a date to the homecoming dance.   The entire Beltway culture is made up of those types of intellects and they have only one game plan—harass individuals who flock away from the herd.   Well, when I was in grade school, there are plenty of stories of what I did to bullies and I never yielded to them.  As an adult, I dealt with bullies in the same fashion.  When they came after me—which they did for over 15 years—during my entire 20s up until I was about 35 and had essentially outlasted them—I fought them the way Arpaio and Trump did over the birther issue.  What’s right is right—not what the masses accept as right.  Right has to be the priority in every circumstance, especially when it’s obvious that there is a massive cover-up going on.  Somebody has to be willing to stand up to fight for what’s right, even at great personal risk—because the real bullies have to be stood up against.

I’ve been called a bully myself.  In fact I hear it more now than I ever did.  I have more expression in the English language and natural verbal ability to sidestep the bully accusation than many people who are similar in personality to me, but are functioning without as many tools in the intellectual tool box.  But what I want, I get, and Trump is made of the same stuff.  When he is called a bully, it’s because the real bullies have been denied the ability to beat people up without mercy, to impose on them the imposition of collective sentiment.  But that’s where serious crimes are hidden—behind the “Bullies of the Beltway.”  They only make fun of Trump because they have no other means to exact their will.  The secret to beating them is to be tougher, and rougher than they are.  Because they are liars, they are scum bags, and they are maniacal fools fit for defeat and only that.  They deserve to have their asses kicked.  They deserve to be pushed and to have the tables turned on them, because it’s the only way that we get our country back in the hands of the competent.  We have to start by getting the liars and Bullies of the Beltway out of our White House and into the gutters where they truly belong.

You can’t appease a bully.  You can only kick the shit out of them when they challenge you.  They might cry about it, but they put themselves in that position to begin with.  When they do come, that’s the only way.   That is why I support Trump.  He has a long history of doing the right thing even when it costs him to do it.  Because he’s learned how to deal with bullies-you do it directly and with great fanfare.  And you outlast them because in the end, they have to hide from the public and that is their true weakness.  When it comes to beating Hillary Clinton, the only way to capture the White House for Republicans is to expose Democrats one great weakness—their necessity to manipulate the public from their true intentions.  And in the fight for what’s right, that is what I look forward most in 2016.  For that reason, it is a Happy New Year.  The best thing we can do is support those who are willing to fight the Bullies of the Beltway because in that way, you are making a decision to not be pushed around any longer.  When Bush says that Trump is not a serious candidate, he is talking about playing the Beltway game of surrendering to extortion by those bullies in power.  But its time for a new game.   For the evidence, just watch the above videos completely, and you’ll understand the enormity of the problem before us and the very nature of the elections of 2016.  We won’t get a second chance any time soon.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Beauty of a Mernickle Holster: Morality of gunfighters protecting laissez faire-capitalism

IMG_0645This is truly a special day.  Just over two months ago I was having lunch with a friend about firearms related subject matter.  It was at a decent place, and reading this, he’ll remember instantly the occasion.  We were watching the construction of The Streets of West Chester Phase II development from our window and were enjoying the progress of capitalism as it marched toward new destinations.  In my own life, I had just accomplished a major technical achievement, something that many thought was impossible and the two and a half years I spent slugging that triumph out had put a new line of thought into my mind forever.  To celebrate the moment I put a major investment into a new stage of my own personal development and decided that I would put an emphasis on a career change.  Of course nothing is sudden in these kinds of things.  The business world like a good marriage dictates that decisions are fast and solid but that movement often takes time—so you often ease into things instead of crashing through the front door.  So this new career would entail a phase-in period rather than a sudden change and it all started with something that I had been thinking about for several decades but just couldn’t find the time to commit to it—or the money.  However, I had promised myself that if I survived the technical achievement I had been working on that I would treat myself to that long desired intention.  Prior to that lunch I had just ordered a new Mernickle gunfighter rig knowing that it would have to be hand crafted and take months to complete.  But I was excited that I had finally bought it—along with other items that went with it.  All in all it was a sizeable investment for me that signified a definite change of life.  One book had literally closed and an entirely new one was starting, and I was very excited about it which my friend can testify to.

It was on December 15, 2015 that my Mernickle holster arrived and it is a thing of extraordinary beauty.  Bob Mernickle and his family starting with his wife Sherrie and two daughters Stormie and Shandrianna are in my opinion the best holster manufacturers that are out there, particularly when it comes to Cowboy Fast Draw.  To have a Mernickle gun fighting system is to have the Lamborghini of shooting sports.  When I get involved with something very specific, like the Western Arts often are I do a lot of research into who I think is the absolute best and I work with them exclusively until I think they have fallen from the top.  In my bullwhip work, I bought my whips from Terry Jacka in Australia.  With this new phase in my life I am looking to build a new skill set to compliment the old one, and to advance that intention, I needed the best Cowboy Fast Draw rig that I could get, so I ordered one from Bob Mernickle.  The day before it arrived one of his daughters, Stormie wrote me to confirm its delivery and I knew that all was right in the world.

As part of the technical achievement that I had worked through and all the pulling teeth it took to get there, no amount of money can give you back the years you lose whenever you do something that takes so much work and effort.  There are no banquets in your honor that can justify the personal expense—not for me anyway.  Success isn’t measured in the opinions others have of you for bringing them the magic of capitalist enterprise—but it’s in what it does for you personally.  This Mernickle holster and the Ruger Vaquero that goes in it represents something much greater to me which was confirmed over quite a long period of time.  It is probably the opposite reaction that people in my position would justify for the start of a new book in their lives.  The typical reaction might be condos, boats, and more exotic vacations when a plateau of professional achievement is reached, but that’s not enough for me.  I need to push myself and to smell battle in the things I’m doing—so complacency and reflection are not enough.  I need to go from one impossible thing to another in order to feel alive and entering a very competitive sport that is the fastest individual feat that a human being can perform is precisely what makes my heart swell.

Prior to this epic life-changing event I was happy with my melee weapon work for personal exercise and self-defense.   Bullwhips allowed me to practice in my own back yard and compete each year in the Annie Oakley Western Showcase in Darke County, Ohio and be one of the few in the world who could put out flaming candles with those flexible weapons using pin-point accuracy.  But that technical work that I had been doing along with my political endeavors here and elsewhere showed me a strategic undercurrent emerging that needed a gunfighter—quite literally. This led me to re-think some of my favorite childhood influences, such as Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress and gave me an even stronger appreciation for the cowboy arts of America’s foundation.

I have been thinking a lot about the Cowboy Way as defined by America’s evolution and the romance of the Old West mythologies which are much more sanctimonious in hindsight than they ever were in the moment—and it became quite clear to me that the gun represented laissez-faire capitalism in our culture and that was something that needed to be emphasized, and protected.  As I look back on the countless westerns that have been produced in America they all have a common thread that revolves around the use of guns to regulate a frontier society which embodies the morality of pure capitalism—which is essentially at the heart of the gun debate in our modern era to remove them from private possession.  Guns on the hip of a gunfighter represent the type of individual protection of private property that is very specific to a culture that is operating without the parental oversight of a federal government.  America had the unique experience of being able to function in a vacuum of time, when railroads allowed quick travel, guns made the playing field of human domination equal, and the innovation of one’s own endeavors could make them gloriously wealthy, or proportionally poor.   The Old West was a very competitive place, and most people ended up dirt poor, diseased, or crippled for life.  Gambling and prostitution were everyday occurrences in most frontier towns and to this very modern time still has an appeal to people in American culture because those things no matter how destructive they were personally, represents an extraordinary level of personal freedom that was unique on the world stage—and still is.

The Cowboy Way emerged as a way to self-regulate behavior as government was not all that present in Old West towns such as Deadwood, South Dakota.  Each year presently hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists venture to Deadwood for the famous Sturgis Motorcycle Rally essentially to feel the breath of the Old West and laissez-faire capitalism on their faces.  If you look beyond the decadence which is also present in Las Vegas and Times Square, New York, or even Key West, Florida—you can see a society of people too tightly cranked up looking to come unhinged for their own psychological balance.  Towns like the old Deadwood featured lots of prostitution, and gambling which were hopeful attempts by individuals to acquire private property and live well for themselves.  This isn’t at all unlike the world of Henry Morgan—the pirate of Port Royal where indulgence in debauchery was rampant to an extreme.   But the reason for it is more fascinating than the cost.  Many people died and lost their way in such environments, but those who did succeed brought wonderful treasures to the human race under capitalism.  The desire for such recklessness in personal living is that individuals ultimately want to be free of government regulations and they’ll go to extremes to shake them away.  In such an environment guns are needed to protect oneself from predators who want to shortcut the work of capitalism to get something for as little effort as possible.  In Deadwood specifically are the stories of Wild Bill Hickok who was a lawman, a frequenter of prostitutes, and one of the best known gunfighters from the Old West period.  He once killed Davis Tutt in a dual at 75 yards over a dispute of Hickok’s watch.  The dual was likely over a woman—not so much the watch, but either way it was over possession of perceived property and the gunfight was emblematic of protecting that property.  The gun in most western mythology is an affirmation of economic value, not raw brutality.  It was in Deadwood that Wild Bill was shot in the back of the head during a poker game while holding the famous hand, Aces of Eights, which so many references within the motorcycle community refer to presently.

The governing principle of these laissez-faire capitalist societies was the Cowboy Way, or at least the way Hollywood interpreted the brutality of frontier life to find meaning in it all—which there was plenty.  A code of conduct enforced by the gun emerged and it was for a time the best answer to America’s morality of capitalism.  The political left attacks cowboys and gunfighters specifically because they are quite well aware that there is something unique in the history of Old West towns like Deadwood and the historic mythologies of Wild Bill Hickok that might fuel the fires of capitalism and stop the long global march of socialism that is currently migrating unhinged everywhere in the world except for rural pockets around the United States.  For instance, you will NEVER see Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota lecturing those people about morality and equality.  John McCain has attempted to appeal to that demographic class, but has not been very successful—because the Washington Beltway doesn’t understand it.  But I see it quite clearly.  The strategy to move capitalism in the other direction against the current spread of socialism is through the kind of marketing that gave rise to such mythologies and the real life actions of Wild Bill in the first place.  And behind that effort is the magic of the gun and the advantage of a very good fast draw rig.

Yes, it’s very exciting to enter a new book full of stories and adventure that have not yet been experienced.  The old one was great, but sometimes sequels are better than the originals.  Life should be like that, each and every year should be better than the previous one.   While my previous stories were mainly about motorcycles and bullwhips, these new ones will be more akin to Wild Bill Hickok.  Not the gambling or the women, but the gun fighting—there is magic in that—and promotion of an economic system that the gun represents–laissez-faire capitalism.  After my success at the near impossible the obvious next step is to build on that with a means to expand that capitalist reach.  While the intentions may not be obvious at first, it is clear that by wearing that fabulous Mernickle holster the weapons that will be drawn from it have the best chance of re-selling American capitalism to the most people under the best conditions—which of course unlocks prosperity within our national GDP that would have been previously unheard of.  And that is why that holster to me is one of the most beautiful things in the world and why I have been so excited to get it.  This is going to be a lot of fun.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Brilliance of Donald Trump: Why being a little wild is a good thing

Amazingly, Donald Trump’s recent position of monitoring and restricting the movement of Muslim’s in and out of American borders is creating quite a stir—politically.  While most in the Beltway believe Trump is a madman, I would say that Trump is behaving like the brilliant tactician that he is.  No wonder the United States is losing around the world, because the people in mainstream politics are clueless about negotiation and strategy.  Trump’s comments are brilliant for several reasons.  First he’s playing the typical high low game needed in any negotiation.  He knows by taking an extreme position, he’ll force elected officials to at least consider some measures of security in relation to the Muslim religion.  The terrorist element is obviously hiding within that religion behind peaceful people, but there is no way to root the bad guys out if you don’t force the Islamic community to separate themselves from the radicals.  In the short run, radicals are forced into hiding until things calm down which obviously makes the world safer through the Christmas Holiday.  Additionally, all the idiots who are coming out against Trump, which is everyone pretty much in the Beltway—are demonstrating why they are unqualified to be president as Americans want somebody to make decisive decisions even if they are standing alone.  To understand the extent of the issue, watch this ABC Report on Trump with clips from a recent Barbra Walters interview.

Trump knows exactly what he’s doing.  Six months from now he’ll be able to say that he was the first Republican to identify the problem, which will prove to be quite extensive in its sleeper cell network, and he will show Republican delegates that he is willing to do anything and everything to beat Hillary Clinton ahead of the convention.  That is after all what they all share in common as a concern, beating Hillary Clinton in a head to head election.  No other Republican candidate has a chance because it will take extreme positions to outscore her in a media field that is clearly in her corner.  You can’t play nice with her and win.  You have to hit her lower than she is willing to go, which is lower than most anybody can fathom.

Trump has many business interests around the world, particularly in the UAE, so he’s showing Republican voters that he is willing to go against his own interests to do what he thinks is right—which dispels one of the concerns Republicans have with Trump.  The New York billionaire has had a friendly relationship with the Clintons in the past, so Trump has to prove that he will hit Hillary hard and not go soft as a candidate.  So this Muslim debate does several things that are needed for Trump and the nation and he has orchestrated it all very brilliantly.  It puts the issues of Muslim terrorist cells hiding behind the religion on the front burner for discussion which is needed.  Complacency will only lead to many more domestic attacks—particularly through the Christmas Season.  Trump has also thrown cold water on the millions of dollars of attack ads that Jeb Bush and John Kasich have taken out against him ahead of the primaries.  The money of those other Republican presidential candidates and their donors has been completely wasted, so of course they are mad at Trump.  Then of course there is the Obama administration that is quietly terrified of a Trump nominee, as there will be unfettered criticism and bombastic dissemination of Obama and his former employee Hillary Clinton in his last year as president, establishing his legacy forever as a complete failure. Of course they think Trump is unqualified to be president, because they have set the bar so low that Trump would be unable to live under that bar.  Trump is promising to make fools of all of them and that’s the real fear of the comments about Muslims.   They don’t care about those people of religion; they care about being exposed as political losers.

The way that ABC presented that report was interesting, it was essentially no different from school kids debating who the best band is, or what is fashionable or not fashionable.  If a kid in school distinguishes themselves as a stand-out from the crowd, they get picked on endlessly until they comply with the recommendations of mass association.  Peer pressure is what public schools are all about—fitting into a crowd and merging with the collective opinion on a matter.  But real leaders are those who stand against the tide, who are the first to see a problem and offer a solution—even if nobody else understands it.  I was always one of those kids; I never fit neatly into place and constantly pushed back against the masses.  I never did what was expected of me, and now many years later, I have been proven correct time and time again.  Eventually people in the masses follow a good leader—they do come around to the correct way of thinking by necessity of their own survival.

Trump more than anything has shown himself to be a leader.  As the world turns against him he has managed to put himself on the front page of every newspaper in the world with hundreds of millions of dollars of free advertising showing himself to be willing to be a decisive leader—which is the most sought after trait that voters are looking for in the 2016 election.  There is no issue more important than that one to normal people outside of the Beltway.  The Trump comments were controversial, but there is no downside.  What he has done is made an investment that will pay off greatly by the time summer comes around in the northern hemisphere, and there will be no stopping him.

To prove themselves competent, authorities will have to bust terrorist cells during the Holiday season to prove they are doing their jobs—and they’ll do it to prove to Trump that all Muslims are not terrorists.  Because of their anger at Trump they will be forced to actually do their jobs for a change—something they wouldn’t have been motivated to do before Trump’s comments.  Likely we will all be a lot safer for the short run as Muslims themselves seek to push their radicals out of the darkness into the light of day to avoid association which will only help our Homeland Security investigations. And the Obama administration for helping these terrorists gain strength will be forced to pick sides—which they obviously don’t want to do.

All this will play in favor of Trump going into the fall of 2016 where he’ll be poised to take credit for it all—because it was his actions that provoked all the behavior change which left unchecked would have led to many more San Bernardino shootings.  Of course the political establishment doesn’t understand all these techniques of strategy, which is why they are the ones not qualified to be president.  All this that Trump is doing is outlined in his very good book on business, The Art of the Deal.  There is no secret—he spells it out for all to see.  Anybody with half a brain would know what he’s doing—and fortunately, many Americans do have a brain when they are given the right things to think about.

This is the only way to break loose the issues that are destroying our nation—the bad guys have to be rooted out and exposed in this fashion.  I know a thing or two about these strategies and have used them myself many times.  They work in both small and large situations.  But in Trump’s case, they will strike fear into his enemies when he takes the desk of the Oval Office.  He will be in a wonderful negotiation position by then, because it does pay to be a little wild.  Often it pays very well.  But to sell that wildness you have to be willing to carry out an act when called upon.  And if you have to pick something to display it, you do it with the most strategic subject possible so that if you do have to pull the trigger you accomplish another objective with the wildness.  That’s why Trump is the best.  And that’s why he SHOULD certainly be president.  You don’t win by playing patty cake.  You win with being a little crazy when it counts most.  Christmas of 2015 after a terrorist attack that the current president is avoiding to name is a good place to start.  New York will be safer because of Trump’s wildness, and so will everyone else.

 

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

 

The Movie ‘Selma’ Was Terrible: Mark Zuckerberg’s wasted $45 billion dollars

I read in USA Today that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife who just gave birth to their first child, planned to give away approximately 45 billion dollars during their lifetimes toward the next generation in achieving equality and other lofty goals. While that sounded very “stylish” I couldn’t help but think that the actuality of their intentions would only lead to more degradation and progressive political erosion of core traditional values—such as strong families, hard work, and personal ethics. It is a proven fact that you can’t throw good money at bad people, so a valueless society even propped up with billions or trillions of dollars cannot flourish. There are many examples of this but let me give a more contemporary comparison that everyone can relate to, like a review of the recent movie Selma about Martin Luther King’s march across the famous bridge toward Montgomery, Alabama for a civil rights demonstration that made history. I personally think a lot of Martin Luther King, or at least I did until I saw Selma because the movie wasn’t very good. It had the feel of a made for television movie, not an Academy Award type of film. It clearly received high praise because of its message about progressive concerns—not for the actual quality of the film itself. Under the direction of Ava DuVernay, I think she went a long way to destroying what was best about Martin Luther King. But the purpose of this article is to show how good money spent poorly can give terrible results, and that is what Selma most represents. With all the great talent involved, and money—they couldn’t buy a successful outcome.

Selma is a 2014 American historical drama film directed by Ava DuVernay and written by Paul Webb. It is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches led by James Bevel,[3][4] Hosea Williams, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Lewis. The film stars actors David Oyelowo as King, Tom Wilkinson as President Lyndon B. Johnson, Tim Roth as George Wallace, Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, and rapper and actor Common as Bevel.

Selma premiered at the American Film Institute Festival on November 11, 2014, began a limited US release on December 25, and expanded into wide theatrical release on January 9, 2015, two months before the 50th anniversary of the march. The film got a re-release on March 20, 2015 in the honor of the 50th anniversary of the historical march.

Selma had four Golden Globe Award nominations, including Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, and Best Actor, and won for Best Original Song.[5] It was also nominated for Best Picture and won Best Original Song at the 87th Academy Awards.

The story goes like this, in 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) accepted his Nobel Peace Prize. Four African-American girls walking down stairs in the Birmingham, Alabama 16th Street Baptist Church were killed by a bomb set by the Ku Klux Klan. Annie Lee Cooper attempted to register to vote in Selma, Alabama but was prevented by the white registrar. King met with President Lyndon B. Johnson and asked for federal legislation to allow black citizens to register to vote unencumbered. Johnson said he had more important projects at the time, like his War on Poverty initiative.

King traveled to Selma with Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, James Orange, and Diane Nash. James Bevel greeted them, and other SCLC activists showed up to help. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover told Johnson that King was a problem, and suggested they disrupt his marriage. Coretta Scott King has concerns about her husband’s upcoming work in Selma. King calls singer Mahalia Jackson to inspire him with a song. King, other SCLC leaders, and black Selma residents march to the registration office to register. After a confrontation in front of the courthouse a shoving match occurs as the police go into the crowd. Cooper fights back, knocking Sheriff Jim Clark to the ground, leading to the arrest of Cooper, King, and others.

Alabama Governor George Wallace speaks out against the movement. Coretta meets with Malcolm X, who says he will drive whites to ally with King by advocating a more extreme position. Wallace and Al Lingo decide to use force at an upcoming night march in Marion, Alabama, using state troopers to assault the marchers. A group of protesters runs into a restaurant to hide, but troopers rush in, beat and shoot Jimmie Lee Jackson. King and Bevel meet with Cager Lee, Jackson’s grandfather, at the morgue. King speaks to ask people to continue to fight for their rights. King receives harassing phone calls with a recording of sexual activity implied to be him and another woman leading to an argument with Coretta. King is criticized by members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

As the Selma to Montgomery march is about to begin, King talks to Young about cancelling it, but Young convinces King to persevere. The marchers, including John Lewis of SNCC, Hosea Williams of SCLC, and Selma activist Amelia Boynton, cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge and approach a line of state troopers who put on gas masks. The troopers order the marchers to turn back, and when they hold their ground the troopers attack with clubs, horses, tear gas, and other weapons. Lewis and Boynton are among those badly injured. The attack was shown on national television as the wounded are treated at Brown Chapel, the movement’s headquarter church.

Movement attorney Fred Gray asks federal Judge Frank Minis Johnson to let the march go forward. President Johnson demands that King and Wallace stop their actions, and sends John Doar to convince King to postpone the next march. White Americans, including Viola Liuzzo and James Reeb, arrived to join the second march. Marchers cross the bridge again and see the state troopers lined up, but the troopers turn aside to let them pass. King, after praying, turns around and leads the group away, and again comes under sharp criticism from SNCC activists. That evening, Reeb was beaten to death by white racists on a street in Selma.

Judge Johnson allows the march. President Johnson speaks before a Joint Session of Congress to ask for quick passage of a bill to eliminate restrictions on voting, praising the courage of the activists; he states “We shall overcome.” The march on the highway to Montgomery takes place, and when the marchers reach Montgomery King delivers a speech on the steps of the State Capitol. As King speaks of coming victory, footage of him and his supporters were displayed on screen, and that was the end of the movie. That should save you from having to watch it.

DuVernay directed Selma, with a $20 million budget produced by Plan B Entertainment. The movie was released on December 25, 2014.[27] There was significant controversy about Selma and its depiction of Lyndon Johnson‘s actions as portrayed in the film.[28][29] Former Johnson domestic policy aide Joseph A. Califano, Jr. criticized DuVernay for ignoring and falsifying history, and particularly for suggesting that Johnson reluctantly supported King’s efforts and that he set the FBI to investigate King.[30] For the film she did uncredited re-writes of most of the original screenwriter Paul Webb’s script with an increased emphasis on King and the people of Selma as central figures.[31][32] In response to the criticisms of historians and media sources that accused her of irresponsibly rewriting history to portray her own agenda, DuVernay pointed out that the film is “not a documentary. I’m not a historian. I’m a storyteller”.[33] However, most people watching the film without question will accept the film as historical record.

The film was nominated for Best Picture and Best Song, but not Best Director, by the Academy Awards. While the lack of diversity of the Oscar nominations for 2014 was the subject of much press,[34] especially on Twitter,[35] the film of the only person of color that was nominated for the 87th Academy Awards, Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, ended up taking top honors in three categories at the February 2015 87th Academy Awards – Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. The award for Best Original Song went to “Glory” from Selma.[36][37] DuVernay stated that she had not expected to be nominated so the omission didn’t really bother her; rather she was hurt by actor David Oyelowo not being nominated. As to the question of racial diversity of awards, she stated that the obstacles to people of color being represented in the Academy Awards were systemic.[35] She failed to mention that in order to be considered for such a nomination that she should have shown herself to be a director of the highest order. For instance, I disagree tremendously with the politics of the movie Argo and its director Ben Afleck. But, Ben did a great job with that picture and deserved his rewards as a fabulous director. It had nothing to do with him being white, or a male—he just made a great movie—even though I disagreed with most of the premise—favoring the communists of Iran with a haze of respect instead of a more conservative position.

Ava Marie DuVernay (born August 24, 1972) is an American director, screenwriter, film marketer, and film distributor. At the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, DuVernay won the Best Director Prize for her second feature film Middle of Nowhere,[1][2][3][4] becoming the first African-American woman to win the award.[5][6] For her work in Selma, DuVernay is the first black woman director to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award.[7][8] With Selma, she is also the first black woman director to have their film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_(film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ava_DuVernay

Ava DuVernay obviously needed more time behind the camera directing because there were a lot of sloppy mistakes, most notably involving Malcolm X. It was obvious that the producers, specifically Oprah and Brad Pitt wanted an African-American woman to direct the film instead of the best possible candidate, so their hiring desires directed the foundation of the film which came across as a music video painted with a PBS documentary. I don’t think it was DuVernay’s fault the movie wasn’t good; it was that the lack of understanding and emphasis by the producers that made the film bad from the start. They made a movie about a popular black man and the civil rights movement then expected to show up at the Academy Awards to pick up their nomination for advancing a progressive cause. The movie suffered because of it. The story of Selma is actually a good one, but it deserved a much better effort instead of the politically charged tripe that was provided.

The film cost $20 million to make and brought in just over $68 million so financially it wasn’t a failure, but culturally it did little to advance the story of Martin Luther King. Instead, it took him down several pegs in the eyes of history I suppose to show that he was a more “human” man. Obviously the real hero of Selma to my eyes appeared to be King’s wife—the battered wife who stood by her man even after his death—which contradicted the UN flying flag that the protestors were carrying into Montgomery at the end of the film. What did the United Nations have to do with American civil rights? If the intention of the filmmakers was to tell a powerful story about Martin Luther King and how Malcolm X made peace with him before his own assassination, the film failed. Instead they gave us an insider’s gaze into the political activism that still goes on behind the scenes of a civil rights movement that isn’t so much rooted in fairness for all people, but a global government led by the United Nations—which had Brad Pitt’s fingerprints all over it, even the cowboy riding a horse running down innocent blacks with a bullwhip in slow motion. The progressive imagery was obvious. I certainly didn’t miss it, which made me wonder who they thought they were making the movie for. I don’t think the producers knew.

Given the history and success of people like Oprah and Brad Pitt, you’d think they’d know better. They are rich people, but all their wealth hasn’t done much to make them better people. You could give them all the money in the world and they would just waste it. They couldn’t even make a good movie when given a free hand at producing anything they wanted with money not even being an option. With all their resources, Selma is all they could come up with. It is for that reason that with all the intelligence Mark Zuckerberg showed in developing Facebook, it’s clear he was a one shot wonder who stumbled across something that people wanted to pay him a lot of money for. But he doesn’t understand the value of what he obtained and neither will the recipients of his 45 billion dollars. It’s a nice gesture but will share with the movie Selma—made by his good friends—a lackluster outcome that falls well short of its good intentions. The path to hell of course is paved with good intentions. But you’d think that smart people would have learned that by now and not funded the concrete trucks that helped pave the way. Without personal value, no amount of money can’t fix anything; money can only delay the inevitable just a while longer. Money doesn’t give value—it only represents it. If you throw $20 million dollars at a slam dunk movie set for the academy awards, but the people involved are not up to the task and aren’t making the movie with real value at the heart of it—but just eyeing a sure-fire Academy Award for exploiting blacks and the civil rights history—then the attempt will likely be a failure. And if $45 billion dollars are poured into a global society without putting value into the people receiving it, then all that money will just be wasted, because the value of money cannot stick to anything. The effort may be noble, but the result will be less than fulfilling, because the essence of value was ignored, and confused with fiscal measurements.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT