Tag: 700 WLW

The Embarrassment of Detroit: Watch Steve Crowder demonstrate what could be next for America

It is a small radio station but it is doing some of the best work in talk radio that’s out there.  I used to do a lot with WLW radio in Cincinnati, but over time I’ve found WAAM radio in Ann Arbor, Michigan to be much more positioned to do the good work of conservative contemplation.  I’d say it is far superior to 55 KRC in Cincinnati largely because WLW and KRC are both Clear Channel stations run by a large corporate board and WAAM is still family owned and managed by good, solid people.  Of course I have been complimentary of The Blaze Radio but I have stopped listening to them because of their anti-Trump stance.  That has left me guest hosting and serving as a guest on WAAM nearly exclusively, because I like the owners.  It’s not so much the initial broadcast that matters these days, it’s the international reach that comes from the podcasts.  People are able to listen online months after the original airing, and more people listen that way these days than they do live. So given that as the factor in a changing marketplace, WAAM is a considerable heavy hitter nationally as they carry Glenn Beck in syndication and Alex Jones—but they have legitimate on air talent like Matt Clark and Steve Crowder who are young guns that show great promise for the future.  I’ve talked a lot about Matt, but if you’ve never listened to WAAM you should check out a contemporary of his, Steve Crowder.  He has a unique comedy conservativism that is very unique and specific to his generation empowering him to do work like he did below in Detroit.  Watch this.

Without people like Crowder, and talk radio in general, nobody would really know the truth about what’s really going on.  Regarding Detroit—which used to be one of the most successful cities on earth—television used to be a big exporter from that city in the Midwest.  Now it looks like the ruins of an ancient Mayan civilization.  It is literally a city of an ancient past.  Crowder exhibited this fact by driving into the center of the downtown area and driving out into the outer parts of the city to show how quickly things degraded.  It truly is a shocking video shown above to see the facts as Steve Crowder presented them.  By turning on the camera and just letting it run until they were in the slums and areas so depleted with population that there was already grass growing where there used to be buildings, Steve Crowder proved his point.   The modern city of Detroit is already looking like a lost city in need of archaeological discovery.   It is truly amazing to see the effects of a bankrupt city and its impact on the world around it.

As vibrant as Chicago looks today—it is headed in the same direction—as is the United States in general.  Two decades ago only the most conspiratorial science fiction writers predicted that Detroit would become a bankrupt city hemorrhaging population and selling homes at a price of $100 dollars.  Just one mile out of downtown the once great city of Detroit looks like the ruins of Troy or Giza—only a few religious monuments and fortunate homes have survived the vandalism and destruction of a declining population.  You can’t operate at a deficit for so many years and expect to hold value for property.  The United States at a nearly $19 trillion deficit as of this writing is where Detroit as a city was two decades ago.  It wouldn’t take much for the United States at this phase to resemble Detroit within a decade of now.  Nobody back in the heyday of Detroit ever believed it would look the way it does today.  They assumed that all the prosperity would go on forever—but it didn’t.

I have a fascination with old western towns.  At the time of their construction the residents could never imagine that those towns would ever become in decline.  Yet most of them did.  Residents of Rome and Egypt during the days of their powerful empires felt the same way; they never could imagine that there would ever be a society where their city or country was not the supreme in the world.  The same could be said of modern England which only one hundred years ago had an empire across the whole of the world.  Now they are a fraction of their former power and teeming with socialism as a changed society with only their roots into history as mere sympathy.  Nothing stays the same if bad management is applied to the maintenance of it.  In a car, if it is not maintained properly, it will decline in condition rapidly.  In a marriage, if care is not given, it will die.  Children require love and attention.  Companies require good management to maintain their status as job creators.  And for cities to survive, they must have good management.

Most of the failing cities around the world are run by liberals, because the demographic circumstances of mass populations make it so through democratic elections.   Needy, dependent people tend to migrate toward each other as rugged individualists like elbow room.  So cities tend to have people conglomerated into small areas who all share a level of human bonding and collective social services—and they elect people into office who think the way they do.  Now that liberalism is a proven intellectual failure regarding proper management of resources and people—there is a track record to identify—whereas a few decades ago, there wasn’t.  Detroit is the evidence of that failure—dramatically.  But it’s not alone.  As Steve Crowder drove the lonely crime ridden streets of Detroit in the above video, where a vast amount of the population was functionally illiterate—in spite of the free education provided to them—liberalism and its effects were on prolific display.  Years ago I wrote a screenplay that made several Wilshire Blvd agents very animated with anger called The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia.  That script featured a modern horror adventure story about discovering the mysterious reason that the ancient city just outside of St. Louis was suddenly abandoned of its culture and resources. The story was fiction but the premise of the characters was based on my observed opinions.  My reason of course was one that certainly went against the Hollywood mentality and just about every academic back then.  My proposal was that it was a form of liberalism that destroyed Cahokia and many other ancient cities from Chichen Itza to Ankor Wat.  Liberalism centered on self-sacrifice for the greater good in whatever variation of it was presented was my proposal for the destruction of most ancient cities.  Detroit is only the modern version of that destruction.  Washington D.C. is headed along that path as is all of the state of California.  They are on unsustainable paths that are closing in on them rapidly.

Many around the United States however don’t know much about places like Detroit.  If they visit, they only see the immediate downtown and not what’s one mile outside the city.  So radio guys like Steve Crowder are doing a great service to all of society and their political spectrums.  Detroit is a disgrace and people really need to see it, because those problems are coming to a neighborhood near you dear reader.  And if you really love something like I think Steve Crowder really loves Detroit—because he was born there—then the best way to save it is to tell the story in a truthful way—not just in tight television shots during a Detroit Lions football game.  People need to see what’s just beyond downtown—artificially propped up by federal money and corporate sponsorship to attempt to not make things appear as bad as they really are.  That’s the story in Chicago right now.  It’s a dead city with only the mask of a living entity on its face. If you want to prevent further casualties from the same fate, it’s time to identify the liberalism that has caused those deaths.  And if you want to hear Steve Crowder live on WAAM radio, check him out from 6 am to 9 am on Friday mornings.

I challenge anyone reading this article at any point in the future to give me one example of a liberal society that is successful.  And that includes Scandinavia.  Give me one example of success.  I bet you can’t.  They are all future Detroits in the making.

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.

The Open Society of George Soros: Understanding forces at war with American sovereignty

I know long time readers here understand, but many of the gaining masses have not been thinking about the inner workings of mass global conspiracy and the desires of people like George Soros to create an “open society” meaning essentially a global population governed by a solitary socialist government—likely a spawn of the current United Nations.  But they should have.  After all, it’s the Holidays, and when it’s not this particular festive time of year, its Halloween, Thanksgiving, it’s the Superbowl, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July—it’s always something fun to distract our attention from the insurrection of jealous socialists and their designs of international tyranny.

 These global insurgents have a lot of money and there are many in the United States press and entertainment groups who want some of what they have to fall in their lap—so they do what Soros wants to get it.  Much of the politics Donald Trump is fighting against—in both parties—is a system greatly influenced by internationalists like Soros and their open society networks.  The reason that outsiders like Trump are so popular is that a large portion of the American population is learning, as people like me have said all along, that the system is broken at all levels in government, from the education system, to the Executive Branch and we need to fix it starting by getting people like Soros out of American politics for our own good.  Here is a letter from Soros to his supporters warning against supporting politicians like Trump and Cruz sent between the Christmas and New Year Holiday of 2015.CXW-ZNtUoAARsdR

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

George published the essay below in the Guardian today. He argues that we must not give into the fear created by terrorism. All best, Michael Vachon

The terrorists and demagogues want us to be scared. We mustn’t give in. The Guardian By George Soros December 28, 2015  Open societies are always endangered. This is especially true of America and Europe today, as a result of the terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere, and the way that America and Europe, particularly France, have reacted to them.   Jihadi terrorist groups such as Islamic State and al-Qaida have discovered the achilles heel of our western societies: the fear of death.

Through horrific attacks and macabre videos, the publicists of Isis magnify this fear, leading otherwise sensible people in hitherto open societies to abandon their reason.   Scientists have discovered that emotion is an essential component of human reasoning. That discovery explains why jihadi terrorism poses such a potent threat to our societies: the fear of death leads us and our leaders to think – and then behave – irrationally.   Science merely confirms what experience has long shown: when we are afraid for our lives, emotions take hold of our thoughts and actions, and we find it difficult to make rational judgments. Fear activates an older, more primitive part of the brain than that which formulates and sustains the abstract values and principles of open society.   The open society is thus always at risk from the threat posed by our response to fear. A generation that has inherited an open society from its parents will not understand what is required to maintain it until it has been tested and learns to keep fear from corrupting reason. Jihadi terrorism is only the latest example. The fear of nuclear war tested the last generation, and the fear of communism and fascism tested my generation.   The jihadi terrorists’ ultimate goal is to convince Muslim youth worldwide that there is no alternative to terrorism. And terrorist attacks are the way to achieve that goal, because the fear of death will awaken and magnify the latent anti-Muslim sentiments in Europe and America, inducing the non-Muslim population to treat all Muslims as potential attackers.

And that is exactly what is happening. The hysterical anti-Muslim reaction to terrorism is generating fear and resentment among Muslims living in Europe and America. The older generation reacts with fear, the younger one with resentment; the result is a breeding ground for potential terrorists. This is a mutually reinforcing, reflexive process.  

How can it be stopped and reversed? Abandoning the values and principles underlying open societies and giving in to an anti-Muslim impulse dictated by fear certainly is not the answer, though it may be difficult to resist the temptation. I experienced this personally when I watched the last Republican presidential debate; I could stop myself only by remembering that it must be irrational to follow the wishes of your enemies.   To remove the danger posed by jihadi terrorism, abstract arguments are not enough; we need a strategy for defeating it. The challenge is underscored by the fact that the jihadi phenomenon has been with us for more than a generation. Indeed, gaining a proper understanding of it may be impossible. But the attempt must be made.  

Consider the Syrian conflict, which is the root cause of the migration problem that is posing an existential threat to the European Union as we know it. If it was resolved, the world would be in better shape. It is important to recognise that Isis is operating from a position of weakness. While it is spreading fear in the world, its hold on its home ground is weakening. The United Nations security council has unanimously adopted a resolution against it, and the leaders of Isis are aware that their days in Iraq and Syria are numbered.   Of course, the outlook for Syria remains highly uncertain, and the conflict there cannot be understood or tackled in isolation. But one idea shines through crystal clear: it is an egregious mistake to do what the terrorists want us to do. That is why, as 2016 gets underway, we must reaffirm our commitment to the principles of open society and resist the siren song of the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, however hard that may be.

The intelligent person who stands for capitalism and American sovereignty should do exactly the opposite of what George Soros wants. That is the reason there is panic within the established parties, because the trend of our day is to move away from any influence these international activists might have had over American politics, which is quite an extensive network. From the push for marijuana legalization to open borders and deviant sexual practices, the strategy of Soros has always been the destruction of individual Americans and the rise of a global government. The ISIS threat was largely created by the Obama administration to help with this open border policy. You don’t see Syrian refugees fleeing to the UAE or Saudi Arabia. They are being moved into Europe and America to facilitate multiculturalism—essentially a break-down of individual sovereignty between nations to usher in a global population without distinction.  The influence of Soros can be seen in everything from the latest Star Wars film A Force Awakens, to every pot legalization initiative on each state ballot. And he’s not alone. It’s a massive movement that despises the United States and its capitalism and it is presently at every level of American culture.

Trump and Cruz are the candidates that can either intellectually withstand this corruption, or financially. I have talked about this being a true war of the billionaires in the United States, Trump and Carl Icahn against Bloomberg, Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, and Buffett—among others. To understand the scope of this battle, you have to think unconventionally. Everything in the middle, the media, entertainment, publishing, corporate American, international trade—virtually everything are pawns in the chess game between these interests, because they have the money to play the game—whereas the rest of us don’t. As older Americans with a history of interest in patriotism, I believe Carl Icahn and Donald Trump are sincerely interested in preserving America’s place as the dominate force in global markets. Everyone else—literally, has placed their bets on global unified government at the expense of American sovereignty. Those are the words of ill ease behind George Soros and his subtle letter above. If you want to hit Soros in the pocket-book and take down these global insurrections by several pegs, you must vote for Donald Trump. Nobody else stands a chance—and hopefully in his wake Ted Cruz will find a place eventually in the Executive Office. But not until Trump has cleaned house and put in place a proper management system that puts American interests above the global billionaires like George Soros and their open society push. There is nothing wrong with multiculturalism, so long as those other cultures are aspiring to be like Americans. We must not surrender our values to the insurrections paid for by George Soros.

George Soros and his alliances have created the terrorism we are all dealing with. But the American reaction in supporting Trump is not something Soros or anybody else counted on as a result. Their plan is backfiring, and it is up to us to make sure it blows up in his face—as he deserves.

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.

What Ann Becker and Donald Trump Have in Common: Why Republicans lose to inferior Democrats

Even though this is a local issue, it has significance on the larger GOP philosophy, so it’s worth a vigorous discussion.  My friend Ann Becker was harassed at a recent GOP meeting in Butler County for really the same reasons that Donald Trump has been on the national stage.  Not because she declared that Muslims should be rejected from American borders out of safety from terrorism, but because she, like him, is a political outsider—and they truly run the GOP like a mason’s lodge instead of a political representation of the conservative electorate.  I’m very sympathetic to her because I know it feels.  I’m probably the most conservative person in Butler County.  I would hardly say that I’m a radical right-winger by any means.  My type of thinking would be very much at home in John Wayne’s America.  But certainly not the type of GOP supporter the Bush family has helped create—center right leaning people who are in politics to protect their business interests only.  They are not for the philosophy of conservatism as a primary concern.  I personally like Todd Hall, who currently runs the Butler County GOP—which is arguably one of the most conservative areas in the nation.  But I learned much more than I cared to about the party and the politics of it in 2011 when area Republicans were pandering to the Tea Party types hoping to choke them off at the pass after the 2012 election.  Before getting into details of this behavior, read what happened to Ann Becker by Todd Hall at a recent meeting, which was extremely childish on behalf of the GOP.

http://www.annbecker.com/trouble-at-butler-county-gop-endorsement-vote/

I was at an event not that long ago with all the powerful local politicians and Governor John Kasich.  After a big speech we gathered outside where drinks were flowing freely and everyone was trying to convince the other about how worldly they were—essentially impressing nobody.  The words were empty and rooted in sand.  One small gust of political wind always uproots them into tumbleweeds of indecision—even at John Kasich’s level.  I was very unimpressed with these titans of Ohio politics.  Meeting him in person changed my impression of him forever.  He was weak; you could see it in his eyes and body language.  I don’t brag about it too much but I can usually tell everything I need to know about someone in about three minutes—I can completely disseminate their personality, their hopes, their fears and their strategic aims just by listing to their emphasis on words, the way they shake hands, and the way they communicate through body language.  There is nothing that anybody can hide from my analysis.  I take note of everything possible and arrive at conclusions based on those observations which are always correct, even when someone tries to throw me off the scent.  I was always good at these kinds of things, but over the last ten years, it has become so second nature to me that it’s like breathing.  Meeting Kasich in person and his immediate supporters and the donor base only caused me to lose complete confidence in their competency.  I try not to let people know what my conclusions are, because after all, those people have to live in the skin of their bodies—and most of the time it’s too late for them—so why make them feel worse.  It doesn’t accomplish anything.  But trusting them with something is off the table.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt until I was on WLW radio doing a live bit to hundreds of thousands of people and I was in a gotcha press moment. (CLICK TO REVIEW)  I was in one of those media sensation moments and was playing my part of it.  I worried that my Republican friends would bail on me under the heat of controversy—after all I was fighting on their behalf.  And they did exactly what I feared of them—while I was on the air they sent a press release to the station distancing themselves from me like a bunch of cowards.  I was of course prepared for their actions, but it still was something I hoped to be wrong about.  I wasn’t wrong.  I have not communicated with many of those people except on business since.  I’m not a let bygones be bygones type of person—I hold grudges for decades—maybe even lifetimes.  I have learned to get along with people for the sake of business, but I don’t get cozy with them—ever after they betray me in some fashion.  So it is for that reason that I don’t offer my leadership to the area GOP, even though they need it.

I don’t play in my life by bi-laws, like Todd Hall brought up to Ann Becker keeping her from videoing the event, and confiscating her personal cell phone from recording what was going on.  That’s not acceptable behavior.  The GOP is not a secret society, and there shouldn’t be any strategic secrets.   The Democrats are an open book when it comes to community organizing and they destroy Republicans at the effort because of the childish intentions of area GOP leaders.  It’s not just Todd Hall, it’s a nationwide problem.  You can hear the frustration in establishment leaders like Jeb Bush and John Kasich when they talk about Trump.  They really believe they can lean on the many thousands of Todd Halls across the country to prevent delegates from casting votes for Trump at the GOP convention at the end of the 2016 summer making him the official nominee.  They do so with the same stupid arrogance and need for power that Todd Hall confiscated Ann’s phone.  How stupid is that?

There is a lot that I could offer the GOP and Todd knows me, and what I could do for them.  The moment they tried to fight a tax increase without my help out front, they lost—for obvious reasons.  But I’m not submitting to anybody’s authority.  I am always respectful of other people’s rights, and when someone comes after me, man, woman, or whatever—I fight them hard—really hard.  I share with Trump a desire to completely destroy whoever attacks me—so those kinds of games only let “yes men” near GOP leaders instead of truly the best and brightest that each community has to offer.  The smart thing for Todd to do even if he doesn’t like Ann is to use her natural enthusiasm to carry the party forward with marketing efforts.  Ann is on 55 KRC every Monday morning with Brian Thomas and she’s great with the newspapers.  She’s a wonderful asset.  Ann and I have many differences, she was a Lakota levy supporter in 2005, she doesn’t like guns, and she’s much more libertarian than I am in regard to drug use.  But I still consider her a very good friend.  Whenever she’s convinced me to have a night out with her, I always enjoy it, and we get a lot done.  She’s good at what she does and I respect her.  That doesn’t mean she has to line up 100% with everything I believe.  Todd could have that kind of relationship with her, if he was willing, but he’s not.  Instead, he sees her as part of an opposition that is trying to take the GOP toward a more libertarian type of party—and for him; he likes the GOP to be the party of the builders and developers.  Ironically, he has a lot in common with Donald Trump, but if the party bosses say not to endorse the New York billionaire, Todd will strong-arm the party away from supporting the current front-runner.  They’ll abandon him like they did with me on WLW radio in front of hundreds of thousands of people because they essentially lack the courage to stand by a belief in anything.  That’s why they are so easy to beat.  Yes they have a Republican majority in the House and Senate and several state governors across the nation, but what are they doing with all that power?  They allow themselves to be pulled further and further left—because they won’t stand for anything.  So they lose in the big picture time and time again to left-winged radicals and name calling dissidents.

Even though I’m sure Ann was probably a little defensive while trying to set up her camera knowing that Todd would come over and condemn her for it, ultimately she is trying to make the party better.  And everyone should know that.  Every day I get emails from Democrats telling me to take action on some presidential proposal, or liberal talking point—both large and small.  They have a blogging network that the left gets behind along with a wide range of pundits that work the press actively every day.  I get emails from them because I’m politically active and my name is everywhere and on everything.  I get only a fraction of those emails from Republicans.  They are not nearly as good as Democrats at marketing their position, largely because when they do get someone who is good at that kind of stuff, they don’t stand behind them.  Liberals always stand behind their people, right, or wrong.  Republicans never do, they seek to distance themselves from controversy at every turn and collect cell phones from their most ambitious supporters only to put a cap of secrecy on everything they do, hoping the “enemy” Democrats don’t find out about it.  The cause of this behavior is that most establishment Republicans who have something to lose whereas the Democrats are largely government employees or recipients of government hand-outs in some fashion—so both sides vote with their wallets.  But people like Ann, and I—we are all about the philosophy of conservatism.  And there is no room in the Republican Party for us.  But there should be.

There are many good people out there not working with their area Republicans who are far more talented than the usual party stiffs to work the media. There’s nothing wrong with being a stiff—there’s value in it. But to market Republican values, dynamic personalities are needed.  I’m not particularly keen on dropping names to show who I know and to what extent but I recently spoke to David Kern, who just stepped down as Liberty Township trustee and was essentially removed from office as he used to run the GOP before Todd Hall took over.  I’ve known the Kern family for many, many years and have always liked them.  David Kern was a Tea Party type before there was ever such an organization, but he often walked the very fine line between establishment and maverick seamlessly.  He was very good and he will be missed because it wasn’t easy.  He’s an old man now, but he was like that for several decades and Butler County politics was better off because of it.  The party needed resistance just like a good football team needs to practice against a tough defense—to make them better.  Ideas are good.  But the establishment types made a move against Kern after they were done using him to win Tea Party support during the 2010 and 2012 elections—which ultimately helped take over the House and Senate by 2014.  The stage is always set for these things a half a decade before we ever see the results.  Anyway, Dave and his wife Katy told me the whole story as we ate at a dinner together—and it was incredibly disrespectful to him as a long time Republican.  I thanked him for his work on the Liberty Center project and he essentially rode off into the sunset.  I felt sorry for him—he gave so much to the Republican Party and was kicked aside like an old shoe—because he was one of those “free thinking undesirables” who thought the bi-laws were stupid and the party was too heavily in favor of one type of Republican—instead of the entire conservative base.

Ann Becker, David Kern, and Donald Trump all share some things in common, the GOP establishment like the one on full display at a GOP event in Butler County, want to push them out of the party.  They are all too free thinking to care about Todd Hall’s ban on cell phones and the childish games of a political party that wants to be an exclusive country club instead of a dynamic representation of southern Ohio conservatives.  If you want to be in a country club, join Four Bridges, Wetherington, or even my favorite, The Elks.  But don’t bring that crap to a political party that should be at war with liberals.  Democrats are winning because of it.  Instead of harassing Ann Becker, Todd would have been wise to listen to her, and bring her into his tent for what she could do for him.

But he didn’t and they won’t.  Donald Trump is right in front of their faces and they don’t like him because they can’t control him, which is why they continue to fail.  Ann Becker is also right in front of their faces and instead of befriending her; they harass her over her video camera and cell phone.  They are more about control than winning and that is the reason so many people are flocking to Trump.  Everybody on the outside of that GOP club has had enough.

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

A Review of ‘Crippled America’: The bargain of Donald Trump, my dream presidential candidate

I started on Donald Trump’s new book, Crippled America during Thanksgiving morning 2015 about two hours before the Macy’s parade and ended about an hour and a half after, just before our lunchtime feast. It wasn’t a very big book and was an easy read. It was written so people with very basic reading skills would have no trouble with it. For the first 25 pages I couldn’t help but think that Trump probably dictated the whole book to somebody because it sounded an awful lot like his campaign speeches, of which I’ve listened to quite a lot of. I didn’t anticipate that I’d learn very much new about Trump that I didn’t already know. However, by the time I closed the book just before the turkey was placed on our table, I felt refreshed and happy that such a guy was running for presidential office. I have been a Trump supporter since his campaign speech in June at Trump Tower so I was already in his camp. Leading up to his announcement it has been my strong feeling for years, going all the way back to Ross Perot, that successful business people needed to be in government, not the unproven lawyers that we have now—so Trump as president makes sense to me. After reading Crippled America it was clear to me that Trump should be handing these books out at campaign events, because it turned out to be a pretty good book, especially the second half after he warmed up a bit. The first half was pretty typical to his campaign platform, but the second half delved more into the man himself, the character behind the drama, the hype, and the brand—to the person who just wants to restore the American nation from the dilapidated mess that it currently is.

As I closed the book I understood Donald Trump. He was still that 28-year-old developer taking on impossible projects that nobody else could touch and turning them into marvels the world would gawk at. Trump isn’t nearly the egoist that his persona projects, he’s a very passionate developer who just likes to make things. His run for president is not about power or prestige, he already has those things. What he wants to do is restore America like he has so many failed properties around the world. It’s a massive restoration project that has his natural inclinations salivating to see if he can pull it off in his final years of life—the perfect period to an American story that he has been gloriously successful at writing. Trump is not the kind of man who is happy just dining his way into the sunset with a beautiful family and wealth beyond measure. He wants to be in the trenches fighting, and at the stage of life that he’s in currently only the restoration project of President of the United States suits his polished tastes. He has everything a man could want—literally, except one thing—completion of the greatest challenge perhaps the world has ever seen. America is a crippled superpower heavily in debt, defeated in spirit because of over 20 years of gross government mismanagement, and a country that has lost its global respect. Trump intends quite sincerely to turn all that around within a few terms as president. He even says in the book that he plans to actually accomplish more in the first 90 days than Obama has in 7 years. And I believe him, especially after reading his book, because he does get into details on how to do it—complete with examples.

Politically it was the usual stuff, discussions about the economy, taxes, the state of the nation, infrastructure, foreign policy and what he thinks he can do that’s better than everyone else. In that way Trump’s book sounds like Ben Carson’s, and Hillary Clinton’s. But there’s more to it—another layer that was not so obviously camouflaged. There is a swagger to Trump that indicates he could actually pull it off. With every other political candidate and commenter alike who have written such books—from Glenn Beck to Rand Paul—and I’ve read them all—nobody but Trump stands a chance of accomplishing even a small portion of the promises—because the political system itself is set up to prevent any action—and to feed the shadow government of lobbyists and political donations which essentially fuel all the politics of the Beltway.

Trump has a plan for just about everything and he has the confidence based on his reputation to pull off 100% of what’s in his book. I was actually impressed by his swagger, which is saying something. I have personally hired hundreds of people so I’ve interviewed perhaps thousands over the last decade and I’ve developed quite a bullshit detector. I know when someone presents an inflated résumé to me, and I know when raw passion is displayed for the hiring. Trump is raw passion with an understated résumé of which Crippled America is essentially. Getting to know Trump becomes much more evident toward the last third of the book where he talks about all his building projects over the years and when you realize just how much he’s accomplished in just three decades, its pretty earth shattering. Just considering what he did from 1974 with the Commodore Hotel in New York City to the opening of Trump Tower in 1983 is mind-blowing as an individual measurement, with just a loan from his father to take on the world of real estate in New York City which is arguably on of the most complicated and expensive in the world. He is an impressive figure radiating with confidence which is obvious in every word of his book. Based on his résumé and how he communicated it, I’d have to hire him just to see if he could do it. Our last president was a community organizer and he ran the country with that strength in his wheel house. Obama gets excited about Ferguson riots, but could care less about $19 trillion in debt. Bush the younger ran the country as a rich daddy’s boy—which he was. His dad wished he had completed the mission in Iraq, but didn’t so the boy finished the job—to his own detriment. Following the orders of his daddy was in Bush’s wheel house so he did so in that fashion. Clinton during the 90s was a free partying womanizer associated with criminals, drug smuggling and murder as governor of Arkansas. So he ran the country as if it were the mob. And that’s pretty much what we got. There hasn’t been anybody like Trump—ever. He’s successful, accomplished, and at the top of his game—and he’s even more confident than I think most people can even register. Out of all the candidates in this century or the last, Trump is the most poised candidate ever to put his name on a ticket. We have to give him a chance or we are just stupid as a nation, because he is certainly the most qualified presidential candidate.

And that’s where Crippled America gets interesting. Trump knows why the media is against him, and why the political parties are terrified of him. He’s more aware of it than even he’ll let on in his speeches—it comes out in his writing. When he is given time and a free stump without opposition he can really string together a number of complicated thoughts about matters. He’s much smarter than he lets on—that much is very clear. If Trump becomes president the entire political system falls apart. He has been a powerful political contributor and they loved him then. But now he’s crossing over into their world and he knows where the bodies are buried—and they don’t like it. The political class has been “apathetic” to say the least in the United States. They have made good livings for themselves doing nothing. They know if Trump is elected than there will be other business types who follow and a chain reaction will start that will end their way of life. Business people will begin to enter public office from the local school board president to the governors of states. The term “politician” will take on an entirely new meaning. Trump plans to run the White House like he does his businesses and that scares K-Street immensely. They will be exposed and Trump will use that leverage to get the arm twisting he needs done accomplished.

As I closed the book and thought about all the things I’m grateful for—which is a lot—I think for the first time ever I had hope for our political future. I’ve voted for people before who I thought might shake things up a bit and accomplish a nice thing or two. But Trump is offering to revamp America as a restoration project from Social Security, private sector driven health care, to making concealed carry a statewide option—like getting a driver’s license. I think I’d vote for Donald Trump just because he wants to make concealed carry good in all 50 states. I’m surprised he doesn’t talk more about that issue—because it’s a big one. He wants to simplify the tax code and demand respect from our trade imbalances. He planes to renew our infrastructure and dramatically increase our economic growth. His presidency would be a trend setting endeavor that would change all elections in the future. So for me the turkey tasted just a bitter knowing that Trump is running for president. And given his polling numbers in spite of everything that’s been thrown at him he has a great chance of winning. The political establishment however is fighting for its very life and will do anything it can to keep Trump out of the White House. The difference between my hopes for change in the past and this one is that I think Trump is just getting started and he knows how to work through that minefield and still come out of the other side dancing through the fire. Any apprehension I had about Trump was erased with Crippled America. Using his book as a résumé there really is no other option. He is the most accomplished candidate in the field to do what he says, and he’s most poised to put a stop to the current political process of fundraising and K-Street shadow governments.   If he did just 1% of what he promised in Crippled America he’d go down as the greatest president in the history of the world. But as I cut the turkey on my plate I realized that he had the potential to accomplish all 100%. And that is really something to smile about.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

People like Euric Cain Cause Racial Tension: The strategic objective of pitting “blacks” against “whites”

If the people considered “black” were all like Ben Carson, or John Boyega from the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, we wouldn’t be having the conversation that we are about to have. The racism that the black community protested over the last week in Chicago doesn’t exist, it’s a made up fantasy promoted by George Soros progressive type activists. It’s a fiction. For instance, most of America spent Thanksgiving watching NFL football games and journalists would be hard pressed to find a single case of racism where fans boycotted viewing one of those events because most of the players were black. The color of skin does not matter to white Americans. I know I could care less about skin color or even nationality. Most of the people I like best come from other places in the world—and I welcome them as American citizens. Most conservative white people who I know feel the same way. They are not prejudice in any way. They wear their AJ Green jerseys to their luxury boxes and cheer on that player at Bengal football games without thinking for a second about that player being black. And if AJ Green asked those same wealthy white Americans to lick his feet, they would, just to be near him. Racism in America is a created story designed to undo our freedom. That is the end of the story.

But you didn’t see that crooked bastard Barack Obama come out on national television to protect the reputation of Euric Cain seen shooting a white Tulane University medical student in New Orleans did you? I say bastard as the correct term for the little boy from Indonesia born to a mother who had loose relationships with men. I don’t know who the father of the current President of the United States was. I don’t know if it was some Kenyan dude, the communist Frank Marshall Davis—which was quite possible, or some dude that she had sex with in some other escapade—because she was that kind of girl. So there is no way of knowing the truth about Barack Obama’s actions because his parental heritage is very “sketchy.” Not his fault, he is likely as clueless about his parental heritage as the rest of us, but it is an element to his behavioral mystery. This is important because Barack Obama is well-known to have come out in defense of black criminals like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Both of those “black men” exhibited similar behavior as Euric Cain, a 21-year-old hoodie wearing punk who was robbing an innocent woman then shot a man who stopped to help her. As seen in the video above, Euric tried to shoot Peter Gold in the head just for showing up to help—this after severely wounding the helpless man. The nation was shocked to see the callused nature that Cain indicated as he pulled the gun on Gold shooting him then trying to shoot the victim in the head before the gun jammed. Cain then left the scene in an SUV only to be tracked down later.

The president didn’t have a press conference asking for more gun control to keep guns out of the hands of people like Euric Cain—who obviously is not an NRA supporter and would have guns regardless of any legality. However, if Gold had been armed—which he should have been—and shot Euric Cain dead in self defense—then blacks all over New Orleans would be protesting, just as they are now in Chicago, and many other places. Because blacks under this current president have been “community organized” into radicalism to artificially create another civil rights movement in America with the underlying intention of promoting economic communism as the end goal. If you look carefully at the motivations behind Black Lives Matter and other George Soros funded endeavors regarding gun grabbing politics and artificially induced racism debates—you will see that they openly profess socialism and communism as the answer to their quandaries. But you don’t hear about that on the news either—do you dear reader? Instead, the press quickly tried to kill that story about Euric Cain. The media carried it as an obligation, but the talking heads on the cable news stations and prime outlets like the Today Show got off the story like a teenage kid being caught with a pornographic magazine as a deeply religious mother stepped into his room unannounced.

So I’ll say it, Euric Cain was a maniacal thug, a supreme loser and is the reason that “white America” is skeptical of places where lots of people of color reside. It’s not the skin color that whites fear, it’s the collective behavior of “blacks.” When you watch the ease for which Euric Cain pulled the trigger of a gun on another human being and left him for dead, it is clear why anybody would be fearful of a group of people. It’s not because of the color of Euric’s skin, it’s because he demonstrated behavior that indicated he could be a ruthless thug. Euric Cain was dressed like a number of other young black people do these days, so when others see this kind of thing they’ll associate it with all future interactions. If black America actually wanted to integrate equally into “white” neighborhoods and be treated fairly, people like Obama would have come out in a press conference to denounce the actions of Euric Cain. Instead, he, along with rest of the progressive oriented media sought to look the other way and put their effort into every white cop who shoots a black youth—like exhibiting the same kind of behavior as Cain only as police they shoot too soon. In our current society, you have to be wounded first otherwise lawyers will prosecute you until the ends of the earth robbing from you everything that the criminal assaulting couldn’t get in an actual crime. Instead the money is still taken, only it’s gathered in a courtroom instead of on a city street. The blacks in those types of legal cases are used as a means of wealth redistribution—as a military objective. If the black criminals on the streets don’t get the money, then the government legal system does. Either way, the attack is against “white America.” Defend yourself with a gun, and you lose everything you ever had. Show up to a gunfight without a gun, like Peter Gold did, and you end up either giving the criminal whatever you have, or you end up dead. It’s just another form of terrorism being induced against “white” America for the purpose of wealth redistribution. That has always been the goal.

There is a reason white people cringe when they see a group of rough-looking black kids dressed like Euric Cain on a street corner. Well behaved moral white people don’t want to see people who they identify as criminals in their shopping malls, in the parking lot of their grocery stores—and they don’t want to see them at the Post Office. They don’t want to deal with them, period. It’s not their color; it’s their behavior that scares white America. Of course it’s not just whites, but all colors of skin tend to duck away from situations that they perceive to be dangerous. That perception is formed by people like Euric Cain. We’ve all seen them and dealt with them and that forms our impressions of future dealings.

Additionally in New Orleans about the same time as this shooting involving Cain and Gold was a gang related shooting that took place at a playground during a music video shoot. 16 people were shot in the exchange. I can promise this much—none of the shooters were NRA members. They were thugs, losers, and punks—probably all of them people of color. There may have been some Mexicans with some white people who want to be seen as black so they can live out the “thug” life that is so popular in video games like Grand Theft Auto and other urban myth making machines selling thuggish behavior to kids with an otherwise good future in front of them. But nobody talked about that shooting either. The story died within a few hours of breaking once it was discovered that the perpetrators were progressive creations, not NRA members or Tea Party supporters. If they had been, the news would have spread like a wild-fire across the world instantly, and white America would have been further prosecuted for their racism and love of guns.

Do you see dear reader what’s going on? We are at war—only nobody has formally declared it. Keep your guns close and sign up for Second Call Defense. Things are going to get much, much worse because this thuggish behavior isn’t localized. It comes from the top and is flowing down through society with strategic objectives in mind. So when the time comes, you don’t want to be a victim like Gold was. You’ll want to stop people like Euric Cain in their tracks. Then let the defense network at Second Call help you through the minefield that has become our legal system which in its current form is there to protect the criminal from the truly good, regardless of skin color.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Robert Tracinski, Rich Hoffman and Matt Clark on WAAM: Why ‘Star Wars’ is better than ‘Star Trek’

Matt Clark had me on his show to actually co-host with him as we spoke to Robert Tracinski who writes for The Federalist. He had written an interesting article about how it was unlikely that J.J. Abrams could screw up the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, so long as he stuck with the formula. There were some condescending aspects to Tracisnski’s article which I was willing to overlook, because he was right about a lot of things. But more than anything Tracisnski had been dismissive of the original trilogy as not being very good—which I thought was odd. So I was eager to talk to him. It only took a few moments into the interview however to learn the root of his issues—he was a Star Trek fan and had only come to Star Wars through his children. His position was that Star Trek was philosophically superior to Star Wars and that these new movies were kid stuff that he was enjoying with his children. Listen to that interview here:

I don’t care much for Star Trek, to me it is the United Nations in space. While Robert Tracinski is not a liberal and is a pretty committed Objectivist, which is Ayn Rand’s philosophy—it was clear to me quickly why Robert didn’t like Star Wars much in his article. I disagree with him on a number of topics regarding the formula of Star Wars, or its appeal. I think the Star Wars films are deeply philosophical; especially The Empire Strikes Back—much more so than Star Trek. I mean, people are not lining up across the world to see the latest Star Trek movie, and Star Wars isn’t as popular as it is because it’s just adults living out their childhoods once again through a movie. It’s more complicated than that. As we were talking to Tracinski, because of his background with Ayn Rand I kept wondering if I had met him someplace before, so I wanted to cut him some slack. Everyone comes to things in their own time and if he came to Star Wars late in life through his kids—so be it. One aspect that Tracinski got right in his article was the perception that Han Solo is the key to the franchise—so I stuck to that topic in our conversation.

Matt and I spent the first segment of his Saturday WAAM show talking about Disney and their progressive activism with a gentle warning about messing with the formula of Star Wars and the impact that might have on their massive investment. Matt and I love Disney—the Uncle Walt version. I love that Disney is a family friendly entertainment group—so I am willing to overlook a little of their liberal activism. Something that Robert Tracinski did bring up on his show that was true.  George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were the best conservative filmmakers coming out of the 80s. I personally think they were both seduced by Bill Clinton in the 90s and have lost their minds since. The reason their early films were so successful was because they all had conservative leanings to them. Once both directors had achieved their monstrous success and essentially stepped away from the Objectivist roots of their film careers, their movies started making a lot less money. Without question George Lucas was at least attracted to Ayn Rand in his early days—when she was at the height of her influence—and Han Solo was a character that represented that struggle within George. As he become more liberal with age and success—perhaps feeling a little guilty that all his liberal employees were constantly berating him for his capitalist tendencies, he softened up on his stance for individualism and began to accept collectivism to a much higher degree, which was clearly represented in the prequel  films—which were noticeably absent of the Han Solo type of character.

Where I disagree with Tracinski about the prequel films is that I don’t think George Lucas ever intended those films to be successes. They were dark movies about the failure of a Republic—and have great political merit to them. They are very philosophical from the position of how poorly constructed philosophies can destroy a body of government. Even though Lucas had been moving to the left—politically, his message about the failure of groups to detect evil, and how institutional failure is indicative of all government cycles is powerful stuff that set the stage for some pretty deep storytelling. As much as people dismiss the prequel films as silly, they are important in the larger scope of the intended message. The movies did lack heroics on the scale of a Han Solo, but that was on purpose. A lot of characters including Yoda and Obi-wan Kenobi made mistakes that they spent the rest of their lives correcting. So the films were never supposed to be heroic repeats of the original trilogy. For that story Han Solo was the savior, he kept Luke alive, married his sister Leia and that set up the events of these new films. Solo is an Ayn Rand character and Disney even with all their activism against conservative causes—can’t ignore that the magic of Star Wars isn’t Luke Skywalker, or anything about the Force—it’s about Han Solo’s position against hooky religions and ancient weapons not being as competent as a good blaster at your side.

Just a few days before Matt and I had our radio show together Harrison Ford was on with Jimmy Kimmel dressed up for Halloween as a hot dog. It was a funny segment and of course Ford was asked about the new Star Wars film. I thought his comments were interesting to say the least. He stated that nobody would be disappointed—at all. That was a remarkable statement considering what’s at stake. He knows the potential cost of over-anticipated hype—so his comments had me very curious in relation to Disney’s strategy going forward. Han Solo is going to be playing a larger role in Star Wars than he has in the past largely because the character tests well demographically. His children will without question be the subject of the new stories but Disney will find every opportunity to insert a younger Han Solo into the movies at every juncture. To be successful at that, Disney will have no choice but to adopt the obvious aspects of Han Solo’s Objectivism view points—his natural conservatism and love of capitalist endeavors if they want Star Wars to continue being successful.

After Matt’s show I spent time at my children’s house going trick or treating with my grandkids—and kids. Late into the night my oldest daughter and I spent time talking about Han Solo and how it seems obvious now that Disney will find a way to put him in the stand alone films as much as possible just to use him as a springboard to success. Like Robert Tracinski and I spoke about on Matt’s show, without Han Solo, I think the Star Wars saga crashes and burns. If they try to turn him into a sacrificial collectivist Disney will lose a lot of money because people will reject the premise. The ticket buying public will only accept the Objectivist Han Solo—and nothing less—the hero who acts in his own self-interest. Even though the moment at the end of A New Hope was intended to show that Solo was able to act for others, the need to save Luke at the last moment was out of Solo’s self-interest because he was starting to like the kid. Like I said, Star Wars is a lot more philosophical than people give it credit for, and I’d think that as much as Tracinski likes Ayn Rand, that he’d prefer Star Wars over the United Nations in space—Star Trek and all that “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” crap. Screw Spock and his pointy ears—he’s a damn collectivist. Solo is a rugged, gun slinging individualist who acts out of his own self-interest. That’s why Star Wars is better than Star Trek.

We’ll see what happens, time will tell. It was a good conversation that was worth listening to, especially given what Star Wars will mean when it opens in a few weeks. There will be no escape; the opening of The Force Awakens will impact just about everyone no matter where they live. It will be impossible to not notice something about it as the merchandising around Christmas will be everywhere. Just watch the Duracell commercial shown above. Star Wars will literally be everywhere in just a few weeks of this writing. There will be nothing like it ever—history is being made both commercially and philosophically. The question will be whether or not The Force Awakens will be as anticipated on the 19th of December as it was on the 18th after people start seeing the movie. To be as successful as Disney needs it to be people will need to see the film several times. And to have that kind of power over the mind of fans—Han Solo will have to be a part of it with an Objectivist approach—otherwise the whole thing falls apart. It’s not the lightsaber battles and space antics that make Star Wars so great—it’s the Objectivist leanings of its basic premise:

Han Solo—“marching into the detention area is not what I had in mind.”

Luke Skywalker—“but she’s rich.”

Han Solo—“How rich?”

Luke Skywalker—“More wealth than you can imagine.”

Han Solo—“I don’t know, I can imagine quite a bit.”

Luke Skywalker—“you’ll get it.”

Han Solo—“I better!”

Luke Skywalker—“You will!”

Han Solo—“Alright kid, what’s your plan?”

That’s Star Wars—it’s an Objectivist love fest designed before George Lucas was overly liberalized. It’s also why twice during the broadcast with Matt that I uttered to his millions and millions of listeners—“Han shot first!” When Lucas changed Star Wars in 1997 to have the bounty hunter Greedo shoot at Han first in the Mos Eisley cantina fans were angry. It was a liberalized mistake for Lucas to cave under the pressure from the liberal film community to make Han Solo not appear as such a blood thirsty killer. But Solo acting out of self-interest shot first because that is the nature of his character—he’s an Ayn Rand survivalist and the heart of what makes Star Wars great.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.