Tag: Atlas Shrugged

A Trip to Denny’s For Han Solo Merchendise: Why all the fuss?

It wasn’t just this that we did for my 50th birthday this past week, my family did a lot of things for me to show how much they appreciate me. But when they asked me what I wanted to do, I said that I wanted to find a Denny’s near our home so I could get a Millennium Falcon cup from the new movie Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the new Topps collecting cards that you can only get at the promotional event that they are doing at most Denny’s restaurants. And I wasn’t kidding about it. If we were planning to do a dinner for my birthday and go out somewhere anyway, I wanted to do something fun that I’d like, and could share with my kids and grandkids. After all, we all like Star Wars. I always used it in the way it was intended, as a modern mythology that had embedded in those kid’s films an essential epistemology in regard to philosophy that is needed in this fast-moving world, so one of my daughters found a nice one about an hour and a half outside of downtown Cincinnati, just outside the city limits of Indianapolis, Indiana. Han Solo was always my favorite character from the Star Wars movies so it was fun to make the Denny’s promotion a fun birthday event that everyone could enjoy. As an added benefit Disney had released the last trailer before the new movie opens on May 25th, just over a month from this writing so it made for an interesting birthday dinner at Denny’s. We didn’t hold back on the Solo merchandise!

I think Alden Ehrenreich will do a great job playing Han Solo as a younger man, a tough job to take over from one of the most iconic film roles Harrison Ford brought to life. It’s a tough job that everyone has in their head differently, so no matter what Ehrenreich does, someone isn’t going to like it. But, from what I’ve seen, the kid gets it—and that’s all that matters. It works for me and I hope it leads to a lot more Han Solo in movies that take place before the events of episode 4. I like the new pointy nose on the Millennium Falcon, I like the idea of new Star Wars music about to be released. I love the DLCs that will be downloaded on Star Wars: Battlefront 2. I love all the toys being released for the movie, its more generational stuff to share with my grandchildren for which all this is new to them so they are having fun with it for the first time. I see it all as very positive and it generally puts a smile on my face to have a new Han Solo movie because that character represents everything I love about Star Wars.

Of course, part of what makes 50th birthday celebrations what they are is in the reflection that you have about your life up to that moment and what might be ahead. For many it’s a time when they look at their life and consider that their best days are behind them. But not me. I have had a lot of very good days and I am sure there are a lot more ahead of me, and the Denny’s meal day was surprisingly fulfilling, not just from the Han Solo gear, but I enjoyed eating Denny’s food again after not having it for over 25 years. Denny’s was one of those places I used to go because they were open all night where I’d go to read after I’d get off work from my second shift jobs. When I was young and worked two fulltime jobs to make ends meet and our house was too small to leave a light on otherwise it would wake up the whole house at night, I’d read my books at all night restaurants like Waffle House, Perkins and Denny’s to make myself tired enough to wind down for bed. After a good meal and about 10 refills of a Coke at 2 am I’d go home and sleep for three or four hours and do it all again at the crack of dawn. Somewhere over that 25-year span Denny’s left the Cincinnati area so it was fun to have it again on my birthday. It was even more fun to have a Star Wars inspired menu with the new Han Solo on the cover. I had the “Two Moons Skillet” which was Heaven on earth for me.

All this of course led me to consider how much Star Wars had evolved over time and what role it plays in a modern sense. I’ve written many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of words as to what Star Wars means culturally, but I think I’ve been leaving out the epistemological definition in referring to it. After all, I write about some pretty serious subjects most of the time, so when I switch gears and do these Star Wars articles, to some it seems out of character, but to me it all runs together. It’s relevant to the missile attacks of Syria this past weekend, the teacher strikes in Kentucky, Oklahoma and Arizona, the opioid epidemic—just about every topic one might consider can be traced back to the epistemological failures of modern society—and Star Wars was created, and does a good job of maintaining it for children a basic epistemology of values that are designed for modern life. The world is otherwise very confused, their religious values are all over the map, politically we have factions that want to take mankind back to a theology while others are wanting to plant flags into anarchy, democracy and those who presently have power want to keep everything in an aristocracy. We are moving to space as a species while the political powers in office want to cling to mother earth and environmental concerns because that is how their power bases were established—on earth with earthly rules. The truly wonderful thing about Star Wars is that it takes all the value of the world’s mythology and applies it into a modern context, which is why kids, and kids at heart love it so much. It’s a much different thing than other pop culture rituals. This one is actually very healthy for modern human beings. It’s meant for kids, but it works for adults too in very meaningful ways.

When I was in grade school showing a love for Star Wars was extremely taboo. I make no attempt to hide my contempt for the way public school operates—I often say that public school is like using a public restroom or a drinking fountain. Yeah, it does the basics, but not very well. In public school, too many people establish their basic epistemological essence in those public institutions because they don’t have reliable families at home to help them, or other positive influences. The school becomes the basic foundation for that while it was quite clear that George Lucas was intent to provide a competing epistemology for young people, so the pubic school system rejected the competition instead of embracing it, the way they should have. However, I was never one who backed down from a fight—never one day in my life. The more kids made fun of me for wearing my favorite Han Solo t-shirts to school, the more I did it, and my love for Star Wars actually got me into a lot of trouble. It’s not like that today, kids can show their enjoyment of such things without getting into fights over it, and that is actually some real progress. Concerning education, I see that Star Wars has given many people who missing epistemology that they should have been getting from school, or their families and the stories are keeping pace with the concerns of our modern age that is coming at us much faster than ever. It’s really the only thing that is—which to me makes it extremely important culturally.

One of my many hobbies is the study of world cultures and religions. It doesn’t pay much money otherwise I’d do that task fulltime because as I say here often, mythology is my favorite topic. I could talk about world culture all day long and what the pros and cons are. You can often read in hindsight why cultures failed if you know the details and why that’s important is so that you can prevent it in your own culture. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about the American Indian or Roman and Greek societies, you can see through the gifts of historical hindsight why they all failed, and I apply those lessons daily with the millions and millions of words I have provided for free to my readers—because I don’t want to see people fail. Professionally, I don’t have to read in a Denny’s at 2 AM anymore because the lights in the house keep everyone awake. I’m doing well at age 50, as is expected given my role in our family, and my community. So I don’t mind sharing things I love in writing and mythology if it might improve the life of one person—let alone helping many people. The human race in spite of all the faults we could list off for hours on end is actually plotting into positive uncharted territories for the first time in history and it is really only the epistemological values of Star Wars that are successfully preparing the minds of our modern age with the intellectual means to deal with everything in a positive way.

This morning I was at the Target department store near my house shopping for Han Solo toys and I couldn’t help but notice that The Last Jedi just hit the shelves from its Blue-Ray release, and here we are talking about another Star Wars movie being released in a month. The cultural values of the last Star Wars movie are still simmering, Lego hasn’t even put out their video game yet for The Last Jedi. And there are lots of beach towels and clothing out for consumers to enjoy and all this is happening as Space X and Virgin Galactic are taking over the civilian colonization of space and Amazon is delivering packages within hours of ordering from virtually anywhere in the world. Artificial intelligence is taking over as the new rudimentary task supplier in a rapidly expanding economy where there simply aren’t enough workers in the world to do all the jobs coming available. I’m not kidding when I say Alexia could take over the teaching profession. With a second Star Wars moving coming out and all that comes with it culturally, it will be interesting to see what happens. And that’s not all, there are at least eight more Star Wars movies in development right now, along with Star Wars television, video games, books, music and so many other items. What impact that has on the human race I think is a fascinating topic on the epistemological level of consciousness.

As I was paying the check at Denny’s it was a big one, and many of the Indiana farmers looked at me a little side-eyed. My oldest grandson and I were very openly showing our excitement at getting the Han Solo card in the stack I bought. I of course was hoping to get that particular entry. Those are the same kind of people who used to make fun of my Han Solo shirts on the school bus—they didn’t understand what all the fuss was about and thought I should be thinking about something more—real. But little did they know, or little did they know that day in Denny’s that what I was excited about was more real than just about anything they were considering and Han Solo has always best exemplified my excitement for it—the optimism of what is always potentially just around the corner. Han Solo is a very positive character who believes he can get out of anything he gets into under any circumstances and in so many ways, he represents the current position of mankind on planet earth in the early parts of the 21st century. That makes these movies more important than just an entertainment option. Even more than that, it made for me a really fun birthday!

Rich Hoffman

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Don’t Worry About War with Russia, Syria, Iran, or China: Cheaters on a test have no ground to stand on

Let me say regarding the Trump action in Syria that on many levels it is justified. There are people who think the president should not have been pulled into the conflict, and there are those who are terrified of war with Russia. Neither concern is warranted. Essentially, there will never be peace in the Middle East so long as Iran and Russia are propping up dictatorships in Syria. We can’t run from evil. It’s that simple. Like it or not for there to be peace in the world, the world is going to have to become more American. There will never be a world of differing opinions that just mesh together seamlessly. There must be an epistemological starting point for peace and that must come from at least basic shared ideas. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are all hostile communist nations—Russia still is in many ways, and until they truly join the world as free market capitalists their values will never match those of America or even Europe, and conflict will always be a threat. So there is no way for America to turn away from the gassing of the Syrian people and allow the Middle East to fall under the rule of ISIS terrorists and Russian manipulation.

There will be no war with Russia, like I’ve said about China and North Korea, none of these countries have the money for it. They are bullies who must act with force to get what they want—and so long as they are functioning in the world this way, there will be senseless death and destruction attached to random terrorism. Russia certainly doesn’t have the means to go to war with the United States. They are broke now let alone after any kind of military engagement with the United States. For years, especially during the Trump administration Russians have been provoking American troops whenever possible and over the last few weeks a lot of comments have been made. Trump has been standing up to the bullies of the region even though he’d rather think about something else. And when they crossed the line, he had to take action because when you tell a bully you are going to punch them in the nose, you had better do it if they don’t yield. Russia continued to back Syrian aggression so Trump had to send in the targeted military strikes.

But do not worry about provoking Russia. This is all part of draining the swamp. The Deep State has always used the threat of hostile nations to scare the American people into paralysis in believing that we all need those extra security offerings provided by the FBI, CIA, and Homeland security. To sell that threat they need people like Putin to be thriving in the world, so they go to great effort when our eyes are turned away to provoke hostile actors around the world to believe they have a seat at the table. But guess what, they don’t. I’d refer to Plato’s shadow man theory from his great book The Republic. The Deep State creates these shadows on the wall to keep our attentions on the scary practitioners of existence to essentially keep that Deep State in power. The Deep State even controls what we call political ideology, what the ideology of the political left and right are by manipulating over a long period of time the differences between the epistemologies of political theory in the United States. But the truth is to peek behind the curtain and eliminate the real threats, to take down the puppets and drain the swamp water where everyone in the Deep State is hiding.

Only when all the enemies of the world are conquered, which is very near a reality after just over a year of a Donald Trump presidency, will people come to know that the Deep State has been always the real threat. Without the Deep State there is no Putin, there is no China, and there is no trouble in the Middle East. And when I say “Deep State” I’m not talking about a bunch of black masked Bilderbergers of wealthy elite—they are just people like anybody else. I’m talking about the ancient yearning of people to desire to rule others as either kings, religious leaders, or military generals who truly desire to take mankind back to the days of the primitive—intellectually, so that they can rule the way they understand—through fear. They need deficits, they need villains, and they need a big strong police state to keep people from looking at anything too closely. In truth however, and this is what people are learning, all those threatening countries are not very strong unless the Americans prop them up to look meaner than they actually are. By Americans I’m talking about the CIA, and the FBI—the American media, and the other agencies who make their livings off protecting “us” from those same villains.

For over two years now we were led to believe that Russia’s President Putin hacked our election system and deposed the incompetent Hillary Clinton putting instead Trump in place. Well, Putin had nothing to do with me—it was people like me who voted for Trump and I’m no fan of Putin. If Putin wanted anybody to win the American election of 2016 it would have been the pushover loser, Hillary Clinton whom Russian had already smacked around plenty when she was Secretary of State. They certainly didn’t want a businessman in the White House who understands money, because it is money that truly does decide who the winners and losers are in the world. By defeating the remaining tyrants in the world through exposure and turning the formerly hostile countries into capitalist zones to truly compete with the United States in trade, that is the only real path to peace which would then allow America to turn back toward itself and not get stretched across the earth putting out every little fire that every bad actor known to mankind can ignite.

I think its great that American is bombing targets in Syria and is calling the bluff of Russia. I told everyone who reads here that there wouldn’t be a trade war with China, look how fast Xi caved on his tough talk. Do you know why dear reader? Because they need American imports much more than we need them. All communist countries have one fundamental problem, their societies do not produce citizens with imaginations, so they have serious intellectual property problems. That means they have to steal it from those who do, and that is how China has been making their living for a long time. Russia is in much the same boat, without the West to copy off of, they are left to their own devices. They are like that kid in school who didn’t study for a test and have to cheat off the person next to them for the answers. Well the person who did study and has all the answers has the leverage in that situation. Halfway through the test if they decide to put their hand over their paper, the cheater is stuck with no resources to complete the test. That is essentially what Trump is doing in China, what he has done in North Korea, and what he is about to do with Russia and Iran. When you have the power position you use it, especially if it creates an opportunity for peace. Which is precisely what is happening presently in Syria.

Rich Hoffman

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The Criminal FBI Agents Robert Mueller and James Comey: Once you’ve seen a teacher’s bare breasts, respect can’t be returned

I have a school aged grandson who is learning what its like to transform from an unrestricted young person acting on his own volition largely and integrating a portion of his daily habits to the mass hoards of society. He’s learning to stand in lines with other kids and how to go along to get along and its very painful for me knowing that many of the things that kids learn are completely wrong. The habits that young people learn are not conducive to making smart, useful adults—they are taught to make compliant future followers of whatever political order emerges out of a mixed economy driven largely by a Kantian tilted philosophy. The emphasis of human development thus is on social engineering and not individual needs. But you can’t hide kids away from the world either. They have to learn to navigate it without being social rejects, they have to learn to become leaders and they can’t do that unless they understand how people live and function—so they have to stand in lines and participate in mass events drawing out their own conclusions about how their individuality feels about what they witness. But like I said, its painful to watch. The results for many are what we see in our modern FBI now that they’ve been caught in some of the most criminal activity imaginable. If Trump had not been elected president the behavior they had been engaged in would have continued unfettered. Only because he was elected did it expose the FBI criminal network to those of us in society with a mind to see outside the lines at their true intentions. As a result, I lost my faith in the FBI two years ago. Now, I view them as part of an enemy force working against our Constitution in America which obliges me to protect it from them—and that’s a big change in opinion that is growing by the day. It has taken most people a long time to accept that reality, because we were all taught to stand in lines as kids, but with each week more are seeing the obvious. Robert Mueller and his friend James Comey are enemies of the state as it should be, and those who support them are guilty as well which has put us all in a very dangerous place.

I think it is stunning that Robert Mueller allowed under any connection to his out of control multimillion dollar investigation commissioned by never-Trump political opponents to overturn a legitimate election, and to raid the personal office of Michael Cohen—Trump’s personal lawyer to advance his stalled case by any means possible. It’s an obvious abuse of authority given to the FBI to conduct the nation’s business. Yet the FBI isn’t raiding the offices of anybody else, only political opponents to the established order of Washington D.C. That should send shock waves of concern to everyone, no matter what political side they are on. That type of FBI behavior coupled with what we have learned about Facebook this past week and the intrusion on our privacy that is possible with it shows all too clearly that outside the lines of our normal living are some very sinister elements which require a correction. The FBI is out of control and is acting as a villain, certainly not the white hatted law enforcement that we need in a civil society. They have been weaponized by political opponents to violate the lives of most of us, and the only reason they thought they could get away with it was because most of us learned to stand nicely in line while the authority figures kept us from looking too closely at what they were really up to.

I was never a kid who learned to stand in lines in school. I did of course what I had to in order to survive that public school culture, but I never liked it, instinctively. There was a gym teacher who was having an affair with one of the sixth-grade teachers. She was unmarried and young, he was older and married and we’d see them flirting with each other, and everyone knew what was going on. But they thought it was a secret and they often abused their authority to keep it that way. Anyone who snickered at their behavior found themselves overly scrutinized during gym class and even the lady would show aggression at students who let it be known they knew about the affair. Well I snuck out of lines a lot, and I snuck out of class a lot taking extended bathroom breaks so I could explore around the school and on one such trip I found those two in the process of having sex in a janitor’s closet, during school hours. The first reaction of the gym teacher was to tell me I didn’t see what I saw and that if I told anybody I’d be in big trouble. So you know what I did? I went straight from that closet and into the principal’s office and told on the two. I didn’t waist five minutes. But guess what, I was told that what I was saying was a very serious allegation and that they’d look into it—and I got into trouble for being out of class. I received several weeks of detention and was told that I needed to mind my own business—basically to stay in line and keep my eyes looking forward, and not to question those of authority around me. Me and that gym teacher developed a hatred for each other that we never got over. I had him for gym class for the next three years and there was always tension between us. Of course nothing ever happened to either of the teachers and they married by the time I was a freshman in High School. I was treated pretty harshly by the gym teacher from then on which spoiled any love for sports that I might have developed during that period because I couldn’t stand the guy who ran the sports programs. However, what I did learn was to always look outside the lines at the many crimes being committed in full view if only people could turn their heads and look at them—because there are a lot. That is precisely the case with Robert Mueller and the political thugs who support him. The crimes are quite audacious.

I learned early in life to always question authority figures because titles alone didn’t make them good. The FBI isn’t just good because they are part of American law enforcement just like teachers aren’t good just because they are employed by a good school. We put our trust into the institutions that these employees become a part of, but if they abuse that trust, then there are consequences. And with Robert Mueller, if he couldn’t find anything with the amount of money he has spent investigating Trump, he should have said so. But because the investigation was started out of revenge for firing his friend James Comey, the endeavor was never in pursuit of justice, but impeachment of the President. He certainly isn’t conducting this investigation into Trump to make me happy. But after a year to come up short and desperate then abusing his authority to have Trump’s lawyer raided is a major overreach. You don’t see the FBI raiding the offices of Obama’s lawyers, or the Clintons. You don’t see indictments of Loretta Lynch—which means everything that’s happening now is political. That means that you or I dear reader could be singled out for abuse by the FBI not for crimes committed, but because we aren’t on the side of the political establishment that people want us on and that is not an acceptable criteria. I have lost faith in the FBI. Just like that teacher in the sixth grade, once I saw her bare breasts and the gym teacher with his pants down around his ankles I lost respect for both of them and no amount of abuse could restore it. That is the pain of seeing things for how they are, but its important to do so whenever possible, even though we are all taught as little kids to keep our focus on what they tell us to, while the authority figures in our life commit many crimes—and expect to get away with it.

Rich Hoffman

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Mr. Marijuana, John Boehner: While draining the swamp we are learning what was always underneath

When John Boehner said nine years ago that “good people don’t smoke marijuana” he was trying to appeal to the kind of conservatives that live in his community—like me. Since then he has been rooted out of the Speaker of the House position as a RINO that the Tea Party wing of the party hated, and he has since become a gun for hire lobbyist who smokes and drinks too much. I would argue that he hung around Republicans but never really was one. He is more of a Never Trumper type of old style politician that is being put out of business by the new Trump control of the Republican Party as it is now. I would also argue that Paul Ryan doesn’t fit in that new conservative party that views marijuana as an assault on American sovereignty in similar ways that illegal immigration is. These new Republicans are self-made largely, like Trump and Jim Renacci are, they don’t smoke and drink a lot so they don’t have sympathy for those who do, and they are much more market based economic expansionists due to their business backgrounds than the old rule of Party domination of the private sector. While many of the same people who are mystified by Donald Trump’s presidency think that John Boehner’s joining Acreage Holdings as a marijuana legalization advocate is a shock, it’s not to me. Boehner is just what he has always been, a malleable figure that will mold to the powers of money wherever those sources come from.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/boehners-bombshell-weed-reversal-a-big-boost-for-marijuana/ar-AAvLQIu?OCID=ansmsnnews11

John Boehner lives in my neighborhood and he’s interacted with my family for a number of years. I supported him as Speaker of the House initially, but after a year and a half it was obvious that he wasn’t up to the job and that politics was changing under his feet. The definition of RINO was being articulated while he was in charge of the House of Representatives and he helped write it. But as far as RINOs in the Republican Party he certainly wasn’t the only one. I could write a long list of RINOs at the local level in Butler County where John Boehner lives all the way up to the current President. In fact, the battle of the RINOs and the new Republicans is what the Mueller investigation is all about with Trump—the old guard trying to preserve the meal tickets that come out of political life for which John Boehner entered as soon as he left public office. Acreage Holdings is just one of those meal tickets, a company that wants to use a former politician against legalization on their board to try to build public support for their product.

Yet what many of us have known for a while and many are learning day by day, people like Boehner are like characters from WWE wrestling. They are actors. That’s why it was important that Donald Trump get elected because that was the game all along and the conservative movement needed someone who could speak that language on behalf of real Republicans, not the RINOS—and that has disrupted the entire purpose of the political world that John Boehner thought would last for the rest of his life. For people like Boehner and Paul Ryan, they know they better get the goods now because those opportunities won’t be there in a few years.

To understand the difference in the philosophies and how to detect who from whom no matter which political party we are dealing with a definition of producers and moochers will serve best. There are plenty of people in politics today that have achieved and are self-sustaining people all their own, without the network of politics to drive them. Trump is a good example of this, and so is the senatorial candidate Jim Renacci in Ohio—these are guys who were successful in the private sector and politics is kind of a retirement job for them. Then you have people like Paul Ryan and John Boehner who were filled with good intentions but were in politics at a time in their lives when they should have been out in the world doing good business. With Ryan I had high hopes that he was an Ayn Rand fan so that his brand of conservatism would be conducive to trimming back the deficit. But the moment that Mit Romney put him on the presidential ticket in 2012, Ryan put away his love of Ayn Rand because it was a method to attack him by on the left and he became something of a Judas in the world of Objectivism. The same with John Boehner, he talked tough, and he made people read the Constitution on the first day that he took over as Speaker of the House, the third most powerful position in the world regarding politics, but when the pressures came and the temptations that come with such a powerful office spoke, he as a moocher in life couldn’t act out of his ethical desires—and that’s what makes guys like those two RINOs—or otherwise, political moochers.

There are at least 24 Republicans leaving Congress this year and several leaving the Senate which is increasing day by day—and to many who keep score cards on politics this seems devastating. But it’s really not. If you add up the effects of the Trump presidency and the vitriol coming from the political left—and the now revealed power of the Deep State, this isn’t a game many of these people were prepared for. For the people who thought they could talk their way through it and disguise their moocher natures so to enrich themselves in public office, this isn’t what they signed up for and they are getting out of the business—which I think is a great thing. After reading Peter Schweitzer’s Secret Empires there are a lot of crooked elements to both parties, so who cares if they retire? What good is a House and Senate majority if most of the people in those seats are really liberals trying to enrich themselves by moving laws into their favor, so they can get rich. If Boehner was such an anti-marijuana guy how he could have a change of heart in just nine years. The truth is that he thinks what the money tells him to think, and he is like that because he’s a moocher, not a producer.

This is what draining the swamp looks like. There is nowhere for people like John Boehner and Paul Ryan to hide, because there is now an expectation of performance that producers like Donald Trump require and that game is changing. Falling in love with the score card is not really accomplishing anything because the quality of the people in those political seats are still leveraged in favor of the moochers. With that said however I don’t see a Democratic wave hitting congress. I think the Democrats are even worse off so I wouldn’t lose any sleep. It is better to get rid of people who were never really conservative, so they can go lobby liberal issues like marijuana legalization, so we can know who they really are. That is far more important than the number of Rs and Ds in congress—because Boehner didn’t “evolve” as he says he did. He was always a short meeting and a paycheck away from seeing the other side’s point of view. The fact remains that good people don’t smoke marijuana. I don’t care how much pain they are in.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ryan-poised-to-earn-millions-even-if-he-sheds-weekend-dad-role/ar-AAvNx5W?ocid=spartandhp

Legalizing marijuana as a compassionate medicine for people suffering ailments is ridiculous, because we have it in our means right now through regenerative medicine to eliminate the root cause of the ailments. Nobody needs the brain killing drug marijuana to have a better life. Just fix the person, don’t give them more drugs. But to the moochers out there who can’t think like a producer, that kind of talk is scary—because otherwise they don’t have a means to make money for themselves. And that is what drives them, fear of making a good living. Which is why they are so dangerous in politics to begin with. So let them go, let them quit and become lobbyists. Let them get what they can get while they can. Because the swamp is draining and it won’t be long before those options will go away all together.

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

Mueller Didn’t Just Attack Trump with Lawyer’s Raid: The FBI and many others in the Beltway are testing all of us

If the FBI had treated the Hillary Clinton and Loretta Lynch situation with the same vigor, I wouldn’t have any problem with the raiding to President Trump’s personal attorney on what is an obvious Deep State witch hunt to overthrow an American election. After all, if Trump was innocent, like I think he is, there wouldn’t be anything to worry about—except for the obvious violation of his personal sanctity which is a problem all its own for a separate discussion on unreasonable search and seizure. But they didn’t, in fact they did the exact opposite. There is a real problem with the FBI seizing through a secret raid on April 9th 2018 the office of Michael Cohen and his privileged communications with President Trump. What the whole incident evokes is cheating, where the referees of a game essentially penalize one team while allowing the other team to conduct their business unmolested in an attempt to give a win to one side at the expense of the other.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/‘a-bomb-on-trump’s-front-porch’-fbi’s-cohen-raids-hit-home-for-the-president/ar-AAvHeTw?ocid=spartandhp

I get that the other side doesn’t like Trump. I never liked Obama and I certainly felt that there were many issues that should have kept Obama from being in the White House, like his background with known American terrorists, his associations with communists that were on the FBI watch lists, and even his sketchy birth certificate that was never resolved to my eyes because what they produced was an obviously doctored document that had technology on it that did not exist in the 1960s. But Obama stayed president and I went to work to elect my own kind of president, which is how Trump ended up in the White House—because a lot of people like me came to the same conclusion. Trump is our answer to the obvious corruption that took place to keep Obama in the White House—even to the process that put him there to begin with.

But when the other side loses as badly has they have, and the refs try to snag away the advantages of the obviously superior team (the Trump team) and give it to the losers of yesteryear (the Deep State) then I have a problem with it. I’m not going to put up with it, let me just say that. Seeking evidence that the FBI can then leak to The New York Times, and The Washington Post, the way James Comey did which led to his termination as Director of the FBI—is simply not proper conduct. I’d go so far to say its illegal. For instance, for the FBI to cheat and take secret communications between Trump and his lawyer over the Stormy Daniels tabloid story so to alter the elections of 2018 is something that could happen to any of us. For the FBI to just take evidence that they are supposed to acquire through investigation means that they could use anything against us whether or not we exercise our right to remain silent. When the law can use evidence acquired by changing the rules of attainment as they go, the rules of any game are fluid to the point of ridiculousness. It’s like playing a game with a 5-year-old that makes up all the rules so that they can win no matter how poorly they play.

The Robert Mueller investigation was always a sham meant to exonerate the reputation of the poor way James Comey conducted himself during the election year of 2016. But the more that has come out the worse he and the FBI under him look, and so now the entire focus of the investigation is to keep the FBI out of court itself. What are we supposed to do when the top law enforcement in the land fails to investigate itself and when they will break into the office of the President’s private attorney and steal evidence they hope to leak to the press to make their case not look so bad by tearing down other people who do have the power to end their careers? Trump does have the power to end Mueller and everyone else attached to the top of the FBI and Justice Department and he probably should because they are out of control. But he won’t because the entire Republican Party is not behind him as they should be. Many of them hope to see Trump removed from power so they can have a chance at a power seat, so they allow this FBI to conduct an obviously illegal investigation with the same hopes that the political left is praying to, that it will push Trump into a mistake.

Trump figures he can outlast it all because of his innocence, but that doesn’t change that fact that none of this should be happening. The premise that is being established is excessively tyrannical and is a nightmare of Constitutional violation. A political Party should never have this kind of power, to manipulate the levers of government to entrench themselves to tax payer funded resources. The way that Hillary Clinton’s case was handled shows the bias, and anybody who thinks that Trump can be prosecuted for nothing when the Clinton case was about everything they are accusing the President of conducting is smoking crack if they think they’ll get away with it. What’s going to happen is that they’ll start a war with normal American people—which wouldn’t be a good idea.

I happened to read about this raid into Cohen’s office while we were celebrating my 50th birthday in the middle of Indiana at a Cracker Barrel. The short story with that is a lot of people care about me, particularly my daughters and we wanted to do something very unique for my 50th. I can promise that my experience was unique to just our family—nobody else out there could lay claim to sharing that experience with me. Just two days prior however I had the opportunity to spend time with some real Washington D.C. insiders so my particular experiences at life allow me to see things through the eyes of Beltway types and the kind of people who eat dinner at a Cracker Barrel in the middle of Indiana surrounded by farm country. It was a happy place for me to wait for my food and catch up on the day’s events with news clips on my iPhone. It was very apparent to me that Mueller wasn’t just testing how far he could get away with that kind of thing with Trump—but that he was testing all of us. And in that Cracker Barrel if they had to pick between the FBI and President Trump—they’d pick Trump. And as I say that I know the Beltway types have no idea why. That’s also why I was celebrating my 50th at a Cracker Barrel in the middle of nowhere and not at a $10,000 party at the Westin in downtown Cincinnati—or even in New York as had been discussed. We had a table near the fireplace and I could smell the wood smoke from my seat as a gentle snow fell outside and I was around the people I most cared about in the world. What more could you want? But the additional contribution to such an experience was perspective. I have perspective where many people lose it in the chaos of a day and that is a kind of birthday gift I give to myself. Many friends of mine were all twisted around an axle over the Cohen raid and the Ohio HB 478 bill that was being floated for passage. But I was sitting next to a nice fire, eating good food with people I care about and digesting the news surrounded by people who are the buckle of the Bible Belt.

If Trump were to be impeached for some silly thing, the people in Indiana wouldn’t suddenly become boot looking Washington D.C. lapdogs ignoring the politics of things like this FBI case just so they could keep a job, or their lives. People like Robert Mueller and James Comey forget that the reason Trump was in the White House in spite of his past reputation as a billionaire playboy was because of people who filled that Cracker Barrel on I-74 just 30 miles outside of Indianapolis. They are Christian soldiers in the purest sense of the word, but they have given up on honesty in politics. They simply want someone like Trump to drain the swamp of their capital city. They don’t want alligators and snakes like Comey and Mueller kicking down their doors and taking naked pictures of their wives and daughters and declaring the action “protection.” They want justice because they gave up trust in the FBI a long time ago. And if I had turned to them in that restaurant and asked who would be with me to stand against an out of control government—most of the men and a lot of the women would have signed up right then and there.

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

Going Outside In Spite of a Jealous Mother: Virgin Galactic’s milestone with the VSS Unity

It’s taken a few years to get back in the air after the crash of 2014 but Virgin Galactic put up its commercial space vehicle to a successful rocket powered flight on April 5th above Mach 1 to an altitude of 85,000 feet. The VSS Unity went through all its powered tests well creating a milestone for space travel that is considerable. While the rest of the world is thinking small and is locked in the turmoil of yesterday’s political struggles, whether it be the threats of Syria, the attacks of ISIS, the unpredictability of South Korea or even the latest revelations of America’s Deep State out of control federal government hungry for power and global domination, mankind is going to space without the nations of the world slowing the process down for a change. Because of this VSS Unity’s powered flight the schedule of taking civilian guests into space in a few months is proceeding marking a major change in the opportunities offered to our species.

I’ve been a fan of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic enterprise since the start and its been frustrating for me to watch the pain they’ve had to go through to reobtain their FAA licensing for commercial space flight. I understand the rigorous need for scrutiny when it comes to aviation, but not at the cost of innovation and adventure. As usual once federal authorities get involved, the speed of business becomes mired by comb over politicians and their lack luster view of the world. So it was nothing short of a miracle that the VSS Unity was able to get back into the air at all. Here is a bit of the story that Virgin Galactic had to endure to get back to where they were before the crash in 2014.

Initial investigations found that the engine and propellant tanks were intact, showing that there had not been a fuel explosion. Telemetry data and cockpit video showed that instead, the air braking system appeared to have deployed incorrectly and too early, for unknown reasons, and that the craft had violently broken apart in midair seconds later.

U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Christopher Hart said on 2 November 2014 that investigators had determined SpaceShipTwo’s tail system was supposed to have been released for deployment as the craft was traveling about 1.4 times the speed of sound; instead, the tail section began pivoting when the vehicle was flying at Mach 1. “I’m not stating that this is the cause of the mishap. We have months and months of investigation to determine what the cause was.” Asked if pilot error was a possible factor, Hart said: “We are looking at all of these issues to determine what was the root cause of this mishap.” He noted that it was also unclear how the tail mechanism began to rotate once it was unlocked, since that maneuver requires a separate pilot command that was never given, and whether the craft’s position in the air and its speed somehow enabled the tail section to swing free on its own.[32]

In November 2014, Branson and Virgin Galactic came under criticism for their attempts to distance the company from the disaster by referring to the test pilots as Scaled Composites employees.[33] Virgin Galactic’s official statement on 31 October 2014 said: “Virgin Galactic’s partner Scaled Composites conducted a powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo earlier today. […] Local authorities have confirmed that one of the two Scaled Composites pilots died during the accident”.[34] This was in strong contrast to public communications previously released concerning the group’s successful flights, which had routinely presented pilots, craft, and projects within the same organizational structures, as being “Virgin Galactic” flights or activities of “the Galactic team”.[33][35][36] The BBC’s David Shukman commented that: “Even as details emerge of what went wrong, this is clearly a massive setback to a company hoping to pioneer a new industry of space tourism. Confidence is everything and this will not encourage the long list of celebrity and millionaire customers waiting for their first flight”.[28][37]

At a hearing in Washington D.C. on 28 July 2015,[38][39] and a press release on the same day[40] the NTSB cited inadequate design safeguards, poor pilot training, lack of rigorous FAA oversight and a potentially anxious co-pilot without recent flight experience as important factors in the 2014 crash. They determined that the co-pilot, who died in the accident, prematurely unlocked a movable tail section some ten seconds after SpaceShip Two fired its rocket engine and was breaking the sound barrier, resulting in the craft’s breaking apart. But the Board also found that the Scaled Composites unit of Northrop Grumman, which designed and flew the prototype space tourism vehicle, didn’t properly prepare for potential human slip-ups by providing a fail-safe system that could have guarded against such premature deployment. “A single-point human failure has to be anticipated,” board member Robert Sumwalt said. Instead, Scaled Composites “put all their eggs in the basket of the pilots doing it correctly.”

NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart emphasized that consideration of human factors, which was not emphasized in the design, safety assessment, and operation of SpaceShipTwo’s feather system, is critical to safe manned spaceflight to mitigate the potential consequences of human error. “Manned commercial spaceflight is a new frontier, with many unknown risks and hazards. In such an environment, safety margins around known hazards must be rigorously established and, where possible, expanded. For commercial spaceflight to successfully mature, we must meticulously seek out and mitigate known hazards, as a prerequisite to identifying and mitigating new hazards.”[40] In its submission to the NTSB, Virgin Galactic reports that the second SS2, currently nearing completion, has been modified with an automatic mechanical inhibit device to prevent locking or unlocking of the feather during safety-critical phases. An explicit warning about the dangers of premature unlocking has also been added to the checklist and operating handbook, and a formalized crew resource management (CRM) approach, already used by Virgin for its WK2 operations, is being adopted for SS2. However, despite CRM issues being cited as a likely contributing cause, Virgin confirmed that it would not modify the cockpit display system.[41]

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

WASHINGTON — As Virgin Galactic prepares to resume testing of its SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane, the company announced Aug. 1 that it has received a launch license for those tests from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

The license, dated July 29, covers test flights of SpaceShipTwo from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California over a two-year period. On those tests, SpaceShipTwo is carried aloft by its carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, from which it is released and fires its hybrid rocket engine for a suborbital flight, gliding back to a runway landing.

While Virgin Galactic ultimately plans to use SpaceShipTwo to carry space tourists, the license awarded by the FAA restricts the company to transporting only “non-deployed scientific, experimental, or inert payloads” on flights carried out under the license.

The license prohibits Virgin Galactic from flying what are officially classified as “spaceflight participants” on SpaceShipTwo until the company can “successfully verify the integrated performance” of SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo. “Verification must include flight testing, and the results must be provided to the FAA prior to conducting a mission with a space flight participant on board,” the license states.

Virgin Galactic opted to receive the launch license, with those restrictions, over an alternative known as an experimental permit. Such permits allow for testing of suborbital reusable launch vehicles under a more streamlined regulatory environment, but prohibit the company holding the permit from using the vehicle for any commercial application. Blue Origin, for example, has an experimental permit for test flights of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle.

http://spacenews.com/virgin-galactic-receives-faa-license-for-spaceshiptwo-tests/

Civilian space travel is more than a giant step for the human race. Mixed in with all the safety precautions leveled at Virgin Galactic is a jealousy of those who strive for adventure and discover that it persists in everything a federal government is involved with. The sad thing about it is that the United States is faster than most places around the world for endeavors like this. There really isn’t any other place in the world where something like Virgin Galactic could even exist. Rules don’t always exist to protect people from the dangers of a new endeavor, they are often put in place to preserve the static thinking of yesterday from the challenges of tomorrow and they are incentivized to delay that tomorrow as long as they can—and they think of it as a victory to do so.

It was far more than just a technical feat to get the VSS Unity back into the air under powered flight conditions, pushing up against the edges of space so soon after their tragic crash in 2014. I think in the scheme of things that crashes will happen and people will die, but the most dangerous thing that can happen to a space program like the one at Virgin Galactic is when the bureaucrats get involved. They by nature want to keep mankind chained to their papers and their courts so any excuse they can obtain to limit the imagination of any human to bypass the governments of the world and step into space is something they are all too eager to exploit. With that understanding, Virgin Galactic is poised to resume their commercial flights into space by the end of 2018 and that is a tremendous opportunity for everyone. Not only is space the opportunity for entire new economies to develop but for the essential philosophy of mankind to change for the better. It’s time for a major change in the way everyone looks at even basic human endeavors and the potential of space puts that opportunity within reach. First it will be the very privileged who can spend $250,000 to travel out of earth’s grasp and away from the clutches of the jealous aristocrats who have ruled mankind for thousands and thousands of years. It’s not just mother earth that we are all escaping from, that overbearing parent who won’t even let us go outside when its raining. It’s the jealous brothers and sisters who seek to appease that mother with small thinking and way too many rules. But finally, the door is opening and the big new adventure of space is just outside, and now we can go. Which is wonderful news!

Rich Hoffman

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The Answer to an Age Old Question: Expereince or imagination, which one is more important

One of my employees was in a meeting this past week with me and a lot of other very smart people when she told me about one of her graduate school assignments. She’s acquiring her master’s in business administration so the frequency of thought-provoking assignments has been increasing and she was talking to me about it with genuine inquiry—as if such matters were even a struggled presumption. The question for which she had been given 30 minutes to answer was what was more important in business, imagination or experience. I told her that the answer was very easy, it was imagination—clearly and unequivocally. Obviously, that had not been the theme of her classroom discussion so I’ll share my reasons so that others can come to learn the priorities for themselves and thus focus their energy in the proper places.

I’m obviously at a place in life where I have both imagination and experience so my daily performance develops along that trajectory of expectation. But that was not always the case. Without an imagination there really is no other means of developing any kind of project from conception to inception. Nothing happens in business or in anything unless the imagination first unleashes the concept of something—so without imagination nothing happens, making it clearly the most important thing in business. Imagination is the escape velocity that an idea has to have to leave the gravitational holdings of reality, to break through to something in an orbit all its own. The process is often violent and messy just like a rocket trying to escape the gravity of earth—until the weightlessness of space calms everything down and the rocket then becomes its own master.

Without imagination there is nothing for experience to do. Experience is a useless thing by itself because if the human race always keeps everything in a static development where experience rules all decision-making then nothing new develops. We’d just do the same things over and over again. But business is all about changing and developing—nothing is static in a capitalist society so an edge is always needed to perpetuate competitive advantages. Experience can take an idea and bring it to life, but it is the imagination that creates the idea.

Asking if something should be or how it might play against a present reality is a powerful conceptual device. Imagination is not just important in conceiving new concepts but in trouble-shooting, which is an essential part of even mature products. Asking what ifs when problems arise can be difficult and experience may limit the options if the reality of options are limited to what has been known. The problem may be something that has never been experienced leaving a conceptual faculty of thought needed to uncover what needs to be examined.

Socially this question has had devastating results on the development of our civilization. We do a great job with kids in developing their imaginations, but obviously in our education system we have put the emphasis on experience as the primary focus of business development, and that is incorrect. By focusing on experience, it has justified the long necessity for education because the selling point is that is how young students can gain experience. But in reality, most children are quite good at thinking out problems and solving them whereas most adults will linger on topics for too long because they get caught trying to bend situations toward their experience—which most of the time doesn’t have what it needs to solve new challenges.

Playing at life will make a far more effective business person than a straight-laced experienced practitioner of yesterday’s rules. If you have ever pursued a patent for a new invention this problem emerges quite explicitly. Inventors are usually very imaginative whereas the reviewers at the patent office are there to point out every static reality possible to ensure that what has been invented is truly new and not just a retread of an old idea. Both sides are often frustrated with the other because they are at cross purposes from one another. But without the imagination of new inventions there would be no reason for the other to exist. In order for experience to happen someone would have had to create the means of learning something to begin with, and without imagination nothing ever gets initiated. No wheel would have been constructed, no fire started for the first time, no kite flown to jostle loose the mechanisms of electricity. Or any experiments with radio waves to unleash the modern powers of communication. Just learning what was known and applying experience to maintaining it doesn’t advance anything. Only imagination can advance an idea from a thought into the birthplace of reality.

Critics of mine often say that I’m a “big picture guy” because my interests are mostly on conceptual development and outside the box thinking on everything. Even though I understand the need for experience, maintaining what has been known with static analysis isn’t very interesting to me—essentially because anybody can do those things. To those who are blind to such opportunities the big picture is a useless task of an artist that has little regard for the rules established by experience. Those who favor experience over imagination truly desire that things stay within the realm of their expertise so that they can be acknowledged as masters of their specific fields. These are the types of people who will give an opinion on a matter by saying that they aren’t an attorney, or they aren’t cooks, or they aren’t CPAs—shortchanging their comments just as they make them. To those types of people, they lack the imagination to think outside their field of professional endeavor so they refuse the responsibility to advance a thought if it falls outside of their expertise. But often this is just what’s needed. This problem is the equivalent to a person driving a car but having to pull off the side of the road because they have a flat tire and refusing to change that tire because that’s not their job as defined by experience. So they sit on the side of the road and call out for help from someone who only changes tires for a living.

To me it’s a very obvious situation and my experience tells me that imagination is far more important in any task. Imagination is needed to solve problems especially when they fall outside of what has been known previously, which is most things. Attempting to bend the rules of existence to the static confines of what has been known is probably one of the most destructive attributes of any society that yearns to call itself advanced. Any time I will listen to the advice of a free-thinker that is deeply imaginative over that static resistance of an experienced person, because experience can only articulate what has been known, it doesn’t produce what could be. Only imagination does that leaving imagination as the most important tool that not only business has to work with, but that human beings use to advance their cause. While we are teaching children the things they need to learn in life the best thing we could do for them is teach them to have an imagination and thus, to think. The worst thing we could do is to teach them to confine their operational reality to the limits of experience. To do so is to limit all opportunities to the realm of experience, and that isn’t conducive to anything new, only the old static problems that were there when experience was formed leaving advancement of any kind to be elusive, and unfulfilled.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Art of Holly Denham: Seeing hope beyond the facade of a negative reality

I think raising children is the most rewarding thing you can do. Raising my children was likely the happiest time of my life, and what they have become makes me infinitely proud. What they become largely is the complete responsibility of the parent and any little mistake made along the way can translate into massive problems later down the line. So to see my kids arrive into their late twenties being nice productive people unbroken by the realities of existence is something I never get tired of. Both of my children do unusual things creatively which for me was always my hope for them. Most parents just want their children to be successful and moderately happy in life, but I always expected more with some of the unusual experiences I introduced them to as kids. Then like all parents must—although most don’t accomplish it—you have to have the guts to keep your grubby hands out of their lives and let them live it as much as possible—so that they can authenticate their own way through a complicated world, and you have to trust that what you taught them along the way would give them what they need. My oldest daughter is a successful photographer and is doing great things very early in life. And now her sister is applying her own brand to the world of art which can be seen below.

My first impression of my youngest daughter’s Holly Denham Art platform was pride because she had moved her abilities well beyond just sketching basic pictures, which a lot of people can do, but do it at the level of a top illustrator. It was great to see her arrive at that level, and to witness her work on the many products displayed at the website below. But then peeling back the first impression at the depth of the work and noticing her interest levels, it was obvious not just because she was my kid, that she had developed a truly artistic outlook toward the world. Upon seeing these drawings, I reflected the drawings I had seen of Pablo Picasso recently at the British Museum in London that the famous painter had made about every day life, and I had to tell Holly that I thought she was better at this stage of her work. The reason was that she had managed to reach deeply into her subjects and pull out an optimism that is very distinct for her and show it in her work. Even if at first glance the subjects are dreary and in the style of the pessimism typical of most millennials, there is always a glimmer of hope in what she does that makes her stuff different from similar works of art.

http://hollydenham.bigcartel.com/

I remember how it was when I was her age, I used to hang around with all the crazy artists at 4 AM in the morning at the Perkins in Corryville at the University of Cincinnati campus, and then the Perkins in Montgomery where all the affluent rich kids who wanted to be nothing like their stiff parents came to express themselves with grunge art, music and literature over hamburgers and free refills of Coke all night. There were similar scenes played out all across the world, young people who thought they were the first to stumble out of childhood and into the injustice of the world rebelling with non-conformity—until the age of 30 came closer and the demands of children, house payments and a steady job forced them to do what they knew best, what they learned from watching their parents go through the same cycle. Thus, artists, even the really good ones, find themselves limited greatly by this cycle of observation—even Picasso’s sketches were very didactic in their worldview—featured so prominently at the greatest museums of the world. Most young artists while their window of free thinking is open to them, before the pressures of life close that window only get to the point where they ask questions and represent those questions in their art. It is therefore pretty rare to see an artist who can ask and answer some of those observational questions.

If an artist isn’t breaking through into some realization not obtained any other way, then it could be argued that the work is simply reflectional—and other than looking neat, is useless to the viewer. But capturing some hidden reality, obscured by the lenses of daily pressures is the difference between a good artist and an average one and to me it is quite clear that Holly is peaking at that goodness. Many of the pieces she has shown me recently are already there. I can only imagine what she will be like after another 2000 drawings, which she is well on her way to producing. She has always been a very interesting person and has had a need to express that uniqueness—so its very nice to see that wonder hatching early in the 21st Century for the world to enjoy.

For me however the pride is in elements that aren’t so obvious in the various sketches. Artists in order to be good need to have lived some life and been pushed to the breaking points a time or two, and most people inclined to such endeavors often turn to substance abuse to alleviate the pain of such moments where expectations don’t meet reality. In my daughter’s case, she has a vast intellect that is capable of a great deal—and because of that she can endure observations that are quite harsh without being broken emotionally, and thus can then articulate those elements onto a printed page. As a parent it is hard to let kids live and to defend them when the world thinks they should be doing something else. But the payoff is in the results which I am enjoying from her. Referencing all the “artistic” types that I’ve known over the years where they all fell short was that they become bitter and rather stagnant in their work. But the human mind craves more than anything optimism, the yearning to turn one more corner to get to a new reality and if a person can last long enough, they can achieve anything. Its one thing to identify what ails the world, it’s quite another to see it and work beyond those limits and I can see in Holly a path where she does this naturally, which puts her in a category of uniqueness that no school can teach—only the realities of a life well lived.

All life is about conflict, and the best of art shows those situations resolved, or the preparation of that resolution. Even the Da Vinci Mona Lisa is about that mysterious look captured in the midst of tumultuous times—that steady gaze from the mysteries of time peering at the future with a knowing smile. Exploring the Louvre in Paris the art shown there is mostly of this type and I don’t see it much differently from today’s comic book artists expressing themselves based on modern observational tendencies. Only today there are more options, and the artistic noise is much greater than it was in Da Vinci’s time. But the artistic process is very much the same, an individual witnesses’ life and puts to it hopes, fears, anxieties and even dreams that can punch through the imagination of a viewer to varying degrees. And to see any young person do that is a wonderful miracle of existence—especially when they turn out to be a kid that you’ve cared for from their very first moments to the present with lots of detail, yet without interrupting their own boons to self-awareness. Pride is a limited emotion to describe such a feeling, but it’s a start.

Rich Hoffman

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Why I am Thankful for Microsoft Office: Watching the tech company climb to a value of a trillion dollars

I have to say something about the news that Microsoft looks to be headed to becoming the first company to capture the worth of a trillion dollars. I’m not crazy that a lot of the people who run some of these big companies that I like so much, companies like Apple, Space X, Microsoft, Amazon, and Disney are run by liberal-minded people. However, what they have all done, in earnest is expand the power of the human being in magnificent new ways. Recently while I was reviewing the improvements of the Disney hotel complex at the Contemporary I felt Walt Disney would have been very proud of this particular line of steps marching up into our next future phase. What they did at the Disney Contemporary Hotel is to me nothing short of jaw dropping. It is the hint of where all this great technology could take every single person on the face of plant earth. Sitting in the hotel lobby as the monorail comes and goes to the various Disney Parks while working on laptops running Microsoft Office 365 is a powerful combination of the best human beings have the potential to do in wealth creation and pondering the vast resources available to the human imagination. As the Contemporary re-opened displaying all its greatness at Disney World it seemed to me appropriate to take a moment to thank Microsoft for their contribution to this wonderful world. You can appreciate Microsoft from anywhere in the world—but combining the effective use of their Office software while utilizing vacation time in what is arguably Disney World’s best vacation offering really elevates the optimism that is available to the potential that is coming.

While I respect deeply the origins of the United States as a philosophic opportunity to create a free enterprise system to unleash all these great companies, the challenge of tomorrow will be ti convince the rest of plant earth to follow the American lead. Much the way Disney World under the leadership of Walt Disney took a bunch of raw swampy land in central Florida and turned it into all the beautiful wonders that surround the Contemporary Hotel at the Disney World complex, I think the same opportunities are there for the entire earth and the next great frontiers will be frequent visits into space—and not just within our solar system, but well beyond. The opportunity for much of that rapid expansion in human development comes from Microsoft and how much potential they have freed from human beings. I can say quite confidently that I use Microsoft Office more than most people anywhere in this world, at any income level. I use some program from Microsoft Office every single day of a week, month, and year. Most days I use them for many hours, and I use that program on multiple devices. I am currently very happy with the Microsoft use of Cloud technology because it makes my iPhone such a powerful companion in the world of business.

When Microsoft says “we have more power at our fingertips than entire generations that came before us,” they aren’t kidding. It’s a very true statement and that power has led to great wealth creation for which that trillion dollars of value seems so high, I can easily see a day when earth will become a world of trillionaires and many lives will be greatly improved because of it. Being a millionaire won’t be such a rare thing anymore as it will become the new “middle class” and billionaires won’t be such an anomaly. It will take that to move humanity into space, and those first steps essentially start with Microsoft. I deal with people all over the world every day from several time zones and what we all share is communication through Microsoft Office. Every country has their own version of it that easily translates several languages into easily comprehensive data sharing which is the most ominous task of translation. Being able to put so many cultures with equal opportunities at information exchange has done more for wealth creation than any gold rush or oil discovery has previously.

Over the weekend I had several discussions with people about the tendency of so many children these days to have hyperactive disorders, for which I take offense. I don’t think that hyperactivity as defined by today’s public education institutions is correct. I think children are adapting to the world coming at them in a rapid way, so the worse thing that could happen would be to put them on drugs to level them out to the average displayed in classroom analysis. Being hyperactive is a gift, not a detriment. Anybody who looked at my life and my daily rituals would think that I have various hyperactive disorders, but of course that would be wrong. Just because I tend to work 12 to 15 hours of a day, I play a lot of video games, write books, am very active in politics and I still give my family unlimited amounts of my time—I watch a lot of entertainment, read a lot of books and I don’t really ever feel tired–that isn’t a bad thing. I think humans are evolving into such active creatures because for the first time in human history the means of communicating all their active thoughts are available to them at a speed that encourages more of that behavior. The kids on their phones all the time, or who play multiplayer games online while they are doing their homework and talking to other kids on social media platforms are learning to process information at the speed of future business. That world of tomorrow that is on display at the Disney Parks especially from the vantage point of the Contemporary Hotel is what the rest of the world could look like as more people use their natural inclinations to launch thoughts and dreams into our economies. Microsoft Office is the best mechanism for unleashing that vast power into the world.

I was working on a patent recently and was very surprised that while going though the final steps with the Patent Office Examiner in Washington D.C. that they still largely share information there with a fax machine. My comment to the examiner and the several lawyers on the phone was that it was no wonder it took government so long to do anything—because the speed of business was being artificially regulated to the limits of prior technology. The same could be said in dealing with companies who don’t all have the most updated versions of Microsoft Office. I am running Office 16 most of the time and Office 365 all other times across many different computers and it gets frustrating to deal with companies that aren’t yet doing so, because it slows everything down. Yet the tools are there for everyone and people come to them at their own pace. It’s not the task of the fastest to slow down to the slowest, it’s the other way around, and it is due to that opportunity why Microsoft is knocking on the door to becoming a trillion-dollar company.

More speed and more leisure time is the wave of the future. A 40-hour work week isn’t necessarily the most efficient way to make money. It is kind of the rule of the day, of the 20th Century, but certainly not of the 21st Century. I work close to 80 hours a week, but I also have entertainment and personal growth mixed into my work so that everything gets integrated in a healthy way, and nothing helps my life more than Microsoft Office achieve so many wonderful things in a day. To best see that potential a trip to Disney World at the Contemporary Hotel while taking a working vacation, meaning you still talk to all the people you need to while you are in line for Space Mountain in the World of Tomorrow at Disney World is still possible. Or that you can put together a Power Point from the hotel while getting ready for a big meeting at the convention center at the Contemporary to make a pitch to participants who want to hear what you have to say about something—and while you wait for the big moment you get on the monorail and go over to Epcot and experience the best the world has to offer for lunch while thinking of all the great inventions that are coming to the human race on display there. Working and playing become more intertwined unleashing vast potential through imagination which gets captured best on the various Microsoft Office platforms. There really aren’t any excuses these days for not achieving something, because the means to all creativity is literally at our fingertips, and the effect is now obvious to all. There is no going back at this point, and I think that’s wonderful. I enjoy every day of my life and Microsoft Office is a big part of that enjoyment. I love them as a company and I continue to look forward to each new thing that they do. They have certainly made life very exciting by taking away the limits that used to slow things down so much.

Rich Hoffman

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Mexico Doesn’t Have a Good Heritage: The history of why we need a border wall

It is always good to know what we are dealing with and all the factors which helped shape circumstances. As President Trump bit by bit builds his wall which Mexico will pay for in drug confiscation alone, by the time its completed the pressure is really increasing on the forces which are behind the open border movement. A group called M.A.M.O.N. (Monitor Against Mexicans Over Nationwide) made a satirical fantasy sci-fi short film that explores with black humor and consequences of Donald Trump´s plan of banning immigration and building an enormous wall on the Mexico – US border. As a Trump supporter I thought it was pretty funny to see how “they” (Mexicans) see him and how they see themselves—as Mexicans. They obviously don’t know their history, but they also aren’t at fault being born in such a bad place as Mexico. They had no control over that part of their lives, and nobody could blame them from wanting to come into the United States to have some kind of life. But by doing it illegally, and assuming that they could do so, and that they would be operating on Donald Trump as a surgeon is pretty ridiculous, which is the premise for this short 5-minute short film.

Obviously, there are some major problems with the story, for instance, if Donald Trump was on the operating table having open heart surgery performed on him by an illegal alien who was deported during his surgery, then how could the president have been in the giant robot Donald Trump who was attacking all the illegals after they were deported. And how did the chicken Quetzalcoatl blow up the giant robot if we saw feathers from its destruction in the previous scene? It’s still pretty funny and well done even with those obvious little problems. I think the discrepancies tell us more than their complaint about Trump. One thing that the filmmakers did do a good job of was capturing the chaotic nature of what the Mexican people have always been. Once you understand the origin of Mexico and what the open border people are really after, then much more clarity is brought to this subject.

Personally, speaking I think the most moral thing that we could do as Americans for Mexico is to simply make it one of the next states within America. That would solve many problems and give the people of Mexico a chance at a much better life. Essentially when the Spanish took over Mexico from the conquered Mayans and Aztec people and integrated them into their society, but then attempted their own kind of revolution for independence, they were soundly defeated by Sam Houston and many others which caused the borders to be what they are today. If you know the great story of Kit Carson and his friend John Fremont who were sent by President Polk to win the land of California away from the Mexican government, it is obvious that what is happening now is revenge from the forces of Europe who are still upset at the assumption Americans had for Manifest Destiny. Fremont would eventually become the first Republican senator for California as he and Kit Carson united the territory to rise up against the Mexican forces with a series of small skirmishes all across New Mexico, Arizona and California by uniting American farmers to stand up for their work and fight back against the forces of oppression which refused them ownership of their hard work. These were good people in California who fought the Mexicans and made a state out of that former Mexican territory. Kit Carson and John Fremont would eventually fight in the Civil War on the side of the Union as they were both abolitionists who endeavored to keep slavery out of the West.

The way that John Fremont specifically used the farmers of California as members of a future army to repel Mexican forces is obviously what people who want to erase those chapters of successful American history are trying to do in present day illegal immigration politics. They hope to use illegal immigrants to undo American Manifest Destiny and to undo all the gains made in North America through wars legitimately won. When I say legitimately, I mean to say that Mexico was a defeated nation even before it formed—and the results are what present day Mexico is, a miss mash of cultures all still rooted in either the collectivism of Europe or the collectivism of the former Mayan and Aztec cultures. They did not have among them people of the kind of caliber Kit Carson and John Fremont were, or even President Polk for that matter. America was a nation of laws, and of philosophy. For as much as modern American haters take up the plight of the black slaves from Africa, the Indians, or the Mexicans, without people like Polk, Fremont, and Carson the American West would have never happened and slavery would have likely remained in America as it was a practice known throughout the world. The Indians had been living in North America as they were refugees from all over the world at the time—particularly from China and they weren’t able to do anything with the resources of the nation before the Americans arrived. Just as many today point at the wealth of California, which became the 5th largest economy in the world and call it looted wealth. In all truth none of those previous cultures knew what to do with the wealth they were living on. They had no means of taking the natural resources of America and turning them into valuable goods to trade with the rest of the world. If left to their own, North America would look like present day Mexico, a mess of different cultures stumbling calling itself a country when in reality it is just a big gang of organized crime that is less sophisticated than what it was before Santa Anna tried to maintain land north of the Rio Grande for Mexico.

You can’t go back into history and undo the things you don’t like, which is what the open borders advocates are trying to do today. Westward expansion and the Manifest Destiny of American civilization into the Rocky Mountains and into California was a good moral thing to have happened. The Americans didn’t steal anything from the Mexican government. If not for the Spanish there would not have been a Mexico, and if not for the Spanish the Aztecs and Maya might have remained as the rulers of Central America. The blacks brought in for slavery might have stayed in Africa only to become today’s socialists and Marxist revolutionaries which currently have the economy of a kid’s lemonade stand. The freed slaves in America became the pacesetters for the rest of the world where abolition of the slavery practice was born. And no Indian or Mexican would have been able to unlock the great potential of California because they were not a free people able to use their intellect to take something out of the ground and do something big with it. They knew how to survive as tribes of nomads, and that was all.

Even in the modern sense when Mexicans try to assume that they are equal to the efforts of the American people their arguments fall short in the jokes they make about their own confusing existence. They really think that they have rights to the ownership of American labor, to what we’ve done in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas because the real history is just too painful for them to understand. They were always a defeated people, whether they come from the heritage of the Aztec or the Spanish, both sides were up to no good and were blood thirsty cultures intent on domination. Lucky for the world good people like Kit Carson and John Fremont were pathfinding through the American West and putting that vast territory to good use because the morality of Westward Expansion put a light to the world of what freedom could look like, in why slavery should have been abolished, and instead of worshipping foolish gods like Quetzalcoatl mankind in America could actually do something productive and advance as a civilization. You didn’t see Indians building skyscrapers, railroads and using gold to advance society. You certainly didn’t see Mexicans doing anything with their land. They currently sit on some of the greatest resources in the world yet most of their people are struggling with poverty—because they don’t think correctly about the world around them. And that makes all the difference—and is why Trump’s border wall is needed so much. It is important to show the world the definition of values which became America instead of letting the chaos of multiculturalism blur the lines of morality for all to see and witness.

Rich Hoffman
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