Tag: Ayn Rand

Understanding James Taggart: Eating breakfast and being the “engine of the world”

I never mind helping people who are not as fortunate as me.  I was born with certain gifts and over many years I developed them in a very unique way through a lot of hard work and unusually tenacious endurance.  As I had the little breakfast shown in the following picture I understood why the great American novel Atlas Shrugged was one of the best stories ever told.  It told the story of a philosophy which had emerged under Adam Smith’s relatively new economic considerations and properly identified the essence of culture in the United States.  Sometimes you only know things innately, which I always have—well before a writer like Ayn Rand was able to put definitions to some of those thoughts.  But at times such as the moment I took that picture, literally on top of the world, literature—especially good literature—provides a refuge for people of thought to associate with the greatness they are primarily inclined to.  It’s one thing to say that Atlas Shrugged is the great American novel—probably the best that has ever been produced primarily as a product from the United States—but it’s another to consider it within a foreign culture on the other side of the world.  I can only appreciate the benefits of having a hobby like the one I do where books are my most valuable possessions as I cut into an egg with such a magnificent view.IMG_0984

It is easy for me to love Atlas Shrugged, because I identify with most of the main protagonists.  If I couldn’t, Atlas Shrugged would be an insult.  I would say that the novel was not written for the masses, or even what the Occupy communists consider to be the 1%.  Atlas Shrugged was written for the 1% of the 1% who completely understand the concept of Atlantis as proposed in the novel—and I am clearly one of them.  I’ve always known it, but on that particular day in that very different place, it was clearer to me than it ever has been.  Not everyone gets it and I spend a considerable amount of my time trying to help those who don’t—not out of some altruistic motivation, but simply because I feel sorry for those not born with the gifts and the mind that I have.  Even though I have worked hard to have that mind, and I’ve taken action over a lifetime to preserve it with an emphasis on authenticity, I do feel sorry for the people in this world who by no real fault of their own read Atlas Shrugged and can only identify with the villain—James Taggart.

Most public education institutions and advanced degrees around the world produce the villains of Atlas Shrugged. Most families nurture their children into the values which most embody James Taggart—yet he is certainly the vilest villain of the classic American story.  Yet if a scholar or philosopher really wanted to get into the nitty-gritty of what Thomas Paine and Adam Smith were considering with the American experiment it was to construct a world where the top 1% of the very top 1% of intellectual aptitude could bring to the world through their natural inclinations advancements in human civilization—which is essentially what Atlas Shrugged is all about.  It’s about what the world could be like if people like James Taggart were removed from holding society to the vile Vico cycle of European thought—which has likely plunged thinking minds into primitive contemplation for millions of years.  So I sipped on my orange juice, let the waitresses properly pamper me as royalty—because in that culture-they instinctively understand what drives the motor of the world, and I watched the world below with a glad reservation that I won’t soon forget as I thought about all the James Taggart’s who were out there holding the world back from its true potential.

James “Jim” Taggart (1977-2020?), in Ayn Rand‘s novel Atlas Shrugged, was President of the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad. But instead of being a productive businessman, James Taggart sought to profit by obtaining and trading various government favors. But his actual motive was not so much the effective mulching of the public, or even of businessmen more productive than he. His motive was the destruction of the productive, a motive that stemmed entirely from jealousy. He carefully hid that motive even from himself, until the day came when he caught himself attempting to inflict pain on another man when that act had no profit in it. On that day, he suffered a complete neuropsychiatric collapse. Whether he lived or died immediately after that, is unclear.

Taggart is an example of a corporatist businessman of the sort who nearly destroyed British industry under the system that operated from 1945 until the election of Margaret Thatcher.

James Taggart was born in 1977, the son of the President of the TTRR and the descendant of Nathaniel Taggart, the original founder. But even as a child he showed that he was not made of the same stuff of which Nathaniel Taggart was made.

His sister Dagny definitely was, and he knew it and resented it. He once told her that, though she was named after their (great) grandmother Dagny, wife of Nathaniel, in temperament she better resembled Nathaniel than Old Dagny. Young Dagny took that as a compliment, a thing that James Taggart perhaps never understood.

One particular episode from their adolescence both illustrated his attitude and served as a prelude to things to come. His father made him a present of a motorboat, and the dockmaster at the Taggart family compound started to teach him how to drive it. The lesson did not go well. Then, in frustration, James turned to Francisco d’Anconia, a boy nearly three years younger than he who was visiting at the time, and challenged him to drive the motorboat. Francisco not only drove it; he demonstrated almost as much proficiency as an adult might be expected to have. James Taggart resented that encounter, and Francisco, ever since.

James Taggart attended college at the age of sixteen. When he graduated (1998), he took his first job with the railroad—in its Public Relations department. In sharp contrast, his sister Dagny, five years his junior, started working as a night telephone operator at a local railroad station. From there she would work her way through the Operating Department.

The John Galt Line, with its rails and even an entire bridge made of Rearden Metal, opened on July 22, 2017, with a highly successful first run. Again Jim was able to take credit for it in the public mind, so much so that a young woman, Cherryl Brooks, actually fell in love with him because she thought that he was the productive genius behind the line.

Jim saw in Cherryl a woman trying to better herself, a thing with which he had no patience. And he saw a way to make her pay for that error: he would marry her and make abundantly clear that she could never be good enough to be a railroad president’s wife. And so he courted her and eventually proposed to her.

In the meantime, he saw the economic boom that Colorado was enjoying, due entirely to the excellent transportation afforded by the John Galt Line, now once again part of the TTRR system. And he determined, with the help of a number of unions and other like-minded organizations, to destroy it—by proposing a series of burdensome and often contradictory regulations.

The regulations went through in November of 2017. They produced the result that Jim Taggart had hoped for. But not all the results were as he predicted. The most spectacular result was one that worried him, at least to some degree: Ellis Wyatt, who had developed a method for extracting oil from shale, set fire to his oil fields and vanished without a trace. Those fields, referred to as “Wyatt’s Torch,” continued to burn for the rest of the period in the narrative.

James Taggart is the chief villain in the novel. More to the point, he is a type of every small-minded individual who, jealous of the talents or productive capacities of those who can do things better than they, seeks to demean or even destroy such persons. They pretend to be serving the greatest good for the greatest number, but in fact their motives are far more dire. They pretend to be altruists; in fact they are spiteful.

Ayn Rand considered altruism and spite to be two sides of the same evil coin, and almost considered them a distinction without a difference. Almost, but not quite—the man known as “Non-Absolute” is an altruist who comes to realize that the policies he is supporting do not support the public good, and rebels against them, at the cost of his own life.

Jim is definitely worse than all the other villains, with the possible exception of Floyd Ferris. All the other “looters” do what they do in the pursuit of short-term gain. Ivy Starnes, daughter of Jed Starnes of theTwentieth Century Motor Company, did what she did in the pursuit of control. But Jim Taggart does what he does in order to destroy. He carefully hides this motive even from himself, until he can no longer hide it, and at that moment, his mind collapses completely.

http://www.conservapedia.com/James_Taggart

There is of course much more to the story of James Taggart, and for most people who read the book, they will only understand him. Other characters that they might understand would be the government lobbyists, the various second-handers within the story and the general people in the street wondering when something might happen for some miraculous reason.   Because they don’t understand the motor of the world—the primary driver of all things—they are left praying to deities the way primitives idolized the sun for making crops grow.  America—as told by Atlas Shrugged—was designed from the outset to find the best and brightest that was produced within the philosophy of freedom the United States offered and let them emerge unhindered to advance civilization.  Such people are rarer than gold and to find them; we must as a culture mine for them deep and with great patience only occasionally discovering a cherished gold nugget justifying all our hard work.  Most people digging for such gold will fail-they’ll die trying.  But that’s worth it because when such treasures are found—they lift everyone up.

That is easy for me to say, because I am certainly one of them.  I love Atlas Shrugged because Ayn Rand was essentially writing the story for the few people like me—and I appreciate it.  Even though the novel is quite popular and people try to relate—most of them end up being like Jim’s wife in the novel, Cherryl Taggart.  I meet a lot of “Cherryl Taggart’s at places like the symphony, the downtown theaters, and at high-end shopping centers and they are often miserable.  They always strived for greatness but were taught that it came from people like Jim Taggart-the well-connected, the popular ones who were liked by the most people.  Only once it’s too late do they realize they were scammed and they often end their lives extremely resentful.  When Cherryl realized in Atlas Shrugged that Jim wasn’t what she thought he was, she killed herself.  A lot of women are slowly killing themselves through dietary abuse, intellectual torture, and acting as social parasites toward others for the sheer spite of it.

My feelings about the many Jim Taggarts that I know are that I treat them like insects stuck in my pool during the summer months.  If I see them kicking around and alive, I usually take the time to scoop them out to let them live one more day.  I consider them lucky to be near me at that particular point in their lives, so I help them.  I live my life as a motor of the world.  I carry everyone around me with a boundless energy that comes with the type of person that I am.  So I don’t mind if the Jim Taggarts come along for a boost in their life.  They never appreciate it, and they always take credit for being the masters of industry—but I know that without me they can go nowhere and if I can bring them a moment of happiness—just a little gold nugget to make the Cherryl’s in their life not want to jump off a bridge—or their kids desiring to grow up and be idiots—then I try and try again.  I know they don’t appreciate it, but I never lose hope that they might.  That is the difference between being an engine of the world and a parasite—which most people relegate themselves to.

When I watch the questions asked of Donald Trump—how will you do this or that, Mr. Trump—I think of Jim Taggart. They don’t have a mind to understand what it means to be a motor of the world.  I was glad for that particular breakfast because it was a culture that did understand—and they also understood that they were always on the lookout for such an engine.  They innately knew that American culture had a tendency to produce such people so the odds of discovering the 1% of the 1% were greater with every American who sat down at their tables with a finely pressed suit and a little swagger to their walk.  They worked to impress such people with the same effort I’ve seen people drive across a state border for a billion dollar lottery ticket, or play the odds at a gambling table—hoping to hit it big even though the odds were desperately against them.  Other places in the world outside of America hope with all hope to run into an American who is one of Ayn Rand’s heroes—a product of Adam Smith’s capitalism.  Nobody can understand Donald Trump but other Atlas Shrugged protagonists.  Trump can’t begin to explain his positions than Dagny could explain to her brother Jim why she was so much better than he was.

Yet, it was the people like Jim Taggart who made up the modern institutions, such as the brand of crony capitalism now known in American, or the socialism of Europe, and the communism of the East.  The feared organizations such as the “vile bankers,” the Masons, the Illuminati, the whoever—are made up entirely of people like Jim Taggart.  All of Washington D.C. is made up of Jim Taggarts and his wife Cherryl.  Yet capitalism was never intended to make those people feel good about themselves.  It was meant to sift through them to find the rarest of the rare—the gold nuggets that are so often buried deep within the organized elements of society.

I know it’s hard for all those Jim Taggarts out there to accept that they are not equal to the engines of the world.  The people of the world are not equal.  Some people are better and more important than others, just as gold has more value than the dirt that often surrounds it.  And it’s for that reason that I help the Jim Taggarts that I know. I let them ride my coattails because I know without me; they will likely die miserable deaths prerequisite with a parade of personal failures.  And I hate to see that in anybody if it’s avoidable.  All I ask is that they respect what I offer. If they don’t, then like insects in my pool, they can drown if they are stupid enough to fly back into the deep water after I have fished them to safety.  It’s not my obligation to waste my time-saving them from themselves.  But if I happen to be in the right place at the right time, they should consider themselves lucky.  The best thing they can do is to shut their mouths, and enjoy the ride because the engine does all the work anyway.  And when it comes to Donald Trump, putting such an engine in the White House has no downside.  It’s never been done before and that is something that the Jim Taggarts of the world do not understand.

Atlas Shrugged is a work of genius, and that becomes more evident outside of the United States.  All nations of the world should study it intently and consider its message when constructing their societies.  This Karl Marx obsession with equality needs to be abandoned in favor of Ayn Rand’s quest to discover the exceptional.  Mankind needs to step off the Vico cycle for the first time in history—and to advance.  For that to happen the Jim Taggarts of the world need to get out-of-the-way and let the engines do their work.  They can go along for the ride, but they can’t take the credit with assumptions.  They may be able to provide fuel for those engines which they should do out of respect. But otherwise they bring nothing to the table.  And they should consider themselves lucky to be in the right place at the right time.  Atlas Shrugged is all about potential, and the world could use a lot more of it.

Watch the videos within this article for additional context:

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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A Review of the 8th District Congressional Representatives: Learning from Boehner before deciding who will hold his old seat next

Gosh, it’s been around 6 to 7 years of effort, but you can clearly see how the Tea Party has shaped local and national elections.   I remember how it was back then, and I can clearly see it now.  On the national stage Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul were all heavy Tea Party candidates and three of those four are current front runners as the primary season is starting.  Old traditional politicians like John Boehner under great pressure vacated his 8th District Congressional seat in Ohio—to a large extent because of the Tea Party, especially in his home town.  A silent insurrection has been taking place on the Republican Central Committee behind the scenes and the politics under the feet of Boehner changed into something unrecognizable to him and his donor base.  It was never anything against Boehner, but he made himself a public person, and that meant he had to make a choice.  The West Chester Tea Party expected him to be authentic, even if the Washington lobbyist culture was fine with people who were Republican in Name Only.  So John resigned and now in early 2016 there will be an election starting on March 15th to fill his seat.  And out of all the forums to flush out the new candidates, the West Chester Tea Party was at the heart of vetting those future politicians.  Not everyone running showed up, but the most relevant did and they can be seen in the following video.  It is interesting to watch how the political dialogue has changed over that relatively short period of time.  A lot of the things discussed in this video would have been avoided before 2010 by all politicians.  Things have certainly changed.

So who’s my pick after watching that video, well for me it’s quite clear—it’s Warren Davidson.  I would have liked to have had J.D. Winteregg and Jim Spurlino speak at the event, but they were no shows.  In the past I have supported J.D., but if you can’t make it to the West Chester Tea Party events in the south of the 8th District, then those candidates don’t really want to win.  You have to get those people on your side, or you won’t win the 8th District.  Just some friendly advice—guys.  Warren Davidson out of all the candidates on stage at Butler Tech was the clear front-runner.  There were things about some of the other candidates that I liked, but they weren’t the type of people who could hope to survive in the emerging Washington landscape.  I watched Warren even when he wasn’t speaking.  He didn’t make any disrespectful faces when the other candidates were talking—even when what was sometimes said came out bizarrely.  With Warren, it’s what he didn’t say that told me he was ready to stand up against the lobbyists of K-Street and represent the 8th District correctly.  I spoke to him after the debate and measured that he was the type of guy who would still be a good representative even after a few years in Washington.

I liked Terri King, but she came across to me as an amateur.  She dressed professionally, except for her shoes yet had a down-to-earth approach.  That might be fine for a public relations person working at the county fair, but representing the 8th District in a far away land wraith with evil takes a thick skin and a steady hand—and Terri didn’t show me that she could do anything but complain like a born again Christian at the treachery before her.  You can tell a lot about a person by their shoes.  With her, high heel shoes would have been better, or work boots if she wanted to come across as approachable.  But the slippers with the suit just didn’t work.  I liked what she said, but she projected to me that all she could do was complain.  When it came time for action, she reminded me of someone who would hesitate in a moment of indecision—for instance, it’s a late night vote before a government shutdown.  She has campaigned on the issue and knows she’s expected to stand by her platform.  But she’s in Washington making over six figures a year.  The media are camped outside her office door hounding her every time she heads to the elevator. And she doesn’t want to reveal that she’s ready to cave on the vote-because she likes the money that is showing up on her doorstep every day—for really the first time in her life.  The suit she wore shows me she knows how to impress at a first glance.  But the slippers said she wasn’t ready for a real fight.  I don’t care if she has issues with her feet, if she can’t wear proper shoes; she’s not ready for the hostile environment in Washington.  You have to be ready for war on every level, from the street fights to the most subtle psychological warfare and not betray the 8th District.  She’s not ready or able.  She might do better with some local seat in the safety net of Butler County, but in Washington, she’d be eaten alive the first week.

I met Kevin White before the West Chester event and thought he was a nice guy.  He was very polite and conscientious.  But he is entirely too systematic to be a congressman.  His military life has made him unable to think very nimbly.  He struck me as someone who would happily fall in line with House leadership and do as instructed—which might not always be bad depending on whom the leadership is at the time—but as an individual, he didn’t have the mind to represent the 8th District.  Through his handshake I could tell he was much better at taking orders than thinking on his own.  I’d hire him to be a pilot in less than a second—he comes across as very competent and procedural—but not someone who can smell a rat in a conversation with a lobbyist from a powerful pharmaceutical company.  To represent the 8th District of Ohio after the way that John Boehner caved to so much pressure embarrassing us thoroughly on a national stage, White is too much of that old type of politician, a guy trying to get elected because of his service in the military and little else—because of his willingness to “sacrifice for the “greater good.”  That is a bad recipe for a congressional representative because once a lobbyist can make a case for the greater good whether the topic is war or health care—people like White will lose.   I may support Donald Trump for president who sometimes says that things are for the “greater good,” because I expect congress to stand in the way if things get too rough to keep our constitutional republic in check.  We don’t need a bunch of softies in tomorrow’s congress.  We need tough people who are smarter than whoever is in the White House.

The questions presented by the Tea Party audience did a good job of shaking the candidates off their talking points and forcing them to think on their feet.  That style of debate likely kept some of the other candidates from participating.  The ones who did stumbled a lot—which wasn’t bad.  They may have felt they came across weak, but we had to see how they handled some curve balls.  Some of them didn’t come across strongly at all and they were clear amateurs not ready for such a high office.  I’m not going to embarrass them—they know who they are.  Even though I could say the same about Warren Davidson’s military record as I did about White—there was clearly another gear to Davidson.  He showed an ability to think quickly and improvise that was missing from the other candidates.  Honestly, that will be the most valuable trait for the next 8th District congressional representative.  Whoever it is will have to be able to walk literally into Hell and still maintain themselves as a frosty white honest conservative who can dish out the hits as well as take them without having ruffled feathers.  Davidson clearly showed that he had that ability.

Probably the most interesting candidate was James Condit Jr., who showed up late looking like he had just fallen out of a bus that he was sleeping in.  He positioned himself on the side of the stage sitting behind the curtain half the night.  I’m sure I had heard his name before, but my impression of him was that he was barely hanging on to reality.  However, he was very articulate and intelligent when he spoke.  He was the most at ease in front of a crowd and had great command of his tonal inflections.  He was either a very slick salesman, an Alex Jones loon, or a highly intelligent eccentric.  I can’t say that I disagreed with him even though he dropped some bombs during his speaking moments.  I’ve written about some of the things he brought up, as I sometimes agree with Alex Jones.  Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction and Condit was clearly functioning from that zone of thought.  But for the purpose of this article, it was clear to me that he wasn’t serious about representing the 8th District.  He’s only running for office to get some media coverage to play his part of Paul Revere announcing the conspiracies that are not only coming, but have already long been here.  Condit wants to be on stage, so he’s running for office to get a platform.  He’s not serious about the office—otherwise he would have been on time and would have presented himself differently.

I personally know J.D. and thought he should have come to this Tea Party event regardless of whatever was on his schedule.  It was important.  For what he went through to challenge John Boehner just a few years ago, I would have expected him to be there.  But he wasn’t, and Warren Davidson showed himself as a more than viable candidate.  As for Jim Spurlino—I like some of the things he has been saying, particularly in relation to Donald Trump, but he should have been there too—but wasn’t.  If he really wanted to shake off the controversy of the mystery envelope that showed up under his door—which I’ll cover in a later article, he should have showed up to defend himself.  To my mind, if he made mistakes that put him in a compromising position, he shouldn’t be running for congress.  If he can’t handle little temptations between marriages—he won’t stand a chance in Washington.  The girls like powerful men, compromises will be presented to him every day and you can tell in his campaign ads that his wife wants him to congressman too much.  This 8th District job isn’t for softies or guys who like tits and ass at gentlemen clubs.  I know lots of construction guys and I like working with them—and I understand the culture—they are the real men who build America.  There is a place in the world for New York New York in Franklin and burger places like Hooters.  Hard core helmet busting construction guys who work for people like Spurlino sometimes need that kind of environment.   It’s not good for family life at home, but it helps to bust knuckles over steel and concrete in the company of men.  I don’t do things like that, but I understand the personality type.  But in Washington, T&A comes with lobbyists hooks connected to them and if Spurlino made that mistake even once in his life, he’s disqualified in my mind—because K-Street is a thousand times worse.   A candidate in the 8th District has to be able to walk through the fires of Hell unscathed with their integrity intact every day, and looking into the eyes of all the people on stage that night, only Warren Davidson has that ability.

In 2016 with all that’s going on and will happen over the next four years, the representative of the 8th District in Ohio needs to be a tough guy who can shoulder temptation without yielding to it.  And he’ll need to have the same tenacity after four years in office.  Whoever it ends up being better be ready to wear the proper shoes, because the fight will not be easy—in fact, it will likely be the hardest thing they have ever done in their lives—and that includes life and death situations.  This is not a light election cycle. It may be the most important any of us will face for another century.  So you better make it count.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Ted Cruz and Kermit the Frog: Republicans have had enough trouble–they don’t need a president that sounds like a puppet and a frog

I know what it is.  I like Ted Cruz and his policies but his public speaking has been bothering me. Listen to these two clips. 

 

I just don’t think anybody will take him serious.  He sounds too much like Kermit the Frog.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Meet the Candidates of the 8th District in Ohio: Watch and vote on March 15th 2016

I’ll be unusually brief on this article to encourage regular people into reading and watching it.  The following video was shot at the West Chester Tea Party forum at Butler Tech hosting the candidates running for John Boehner’s old seat.  I know a few of the guys, but not much detail, except what we learned in the video.  So prior to the March 15th primary vote—which will this year be extremely important—more so than most years—you should watch this video and determine who you want to vote for based on this candidate forum.

For those who are not particularly up-to-date on what the 8th District is, it’s the congressional district John Boehner formally represented.  It’s a large district that encompasses the wealthy southeastern portion, and extends all the way up through the farms of middle Ohio into Darke County.  The next congressman needs to be someone who can deal with a president that will be extremely unconventional—as mainstream politics is on the way out.  So keep that in mind when voting.  Hopefully, there is something in this video that leads you to the correct answer.

http://westchesterteaparty.org/

Remember to vote on March 15th, 2016 and pass this along to a friend so they can become educated on who the candidates are, and how they might represent the 8th District in Ohio.

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.

Donald Trump Nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize: Winning New Hampshire and on to South Carolina

 

I was not surprised that Donald Trump won in New Hampshire.  I’m happy to see that the polls were correct, and with that measure, Trump shouldn’t have any trouble in South Carolina or Nevada either.  I have stated many times why I support Donald Trump for President, so I am glad that he is beginning to pull out ahead from the pack, and that the reality of that is beginning to set in.  I know there are many of my liberty fighting friends who don’t understand why a guy like me would support Trump, but they will in time.  Some were beginning to understand after Trump’s acceptance speech in New Hampshire, seen below.  The world is beginning to see what a Trump White House would look like, and they are starting to see the big picture.

The first sign of this new era, which is great for those who truly love America, could be seen in the melt-down that the left-winged web sites spewed upon realizing how strongly Trump finished.  I truly enjoyed the Huffington Post diatribes given how they behaved at the start of his campaign.  It is for all the reasons that “they” hate Trump that I support him.  He is a conqueror, and that’s what we need right now.  We don’t need a Constitutional attorney or a sweet talker; we need a tough guy who can beat up on the insurgents.  Trump is that kind of guy.

It seems many missed the story prior to the New Hampshire primary, that Trump had received a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize:

Kristian Berg Harpviken, a Nobel watcher and head of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, Norway, told Agence France-Presse that he received a copy of the nomination letter sent to the Norwegian Nobel Committee that selects the recipient. 

According to the letter, the author of which was not disclosed, Trump deserves the prize for “his vigorous peace through strength ideology, used as a threat weapon of deterrence against radical Islam, ISIS, nuclear Iran and Communist China.”

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-02-03/donald-trump-has-been-nominated-for-a-nobel-peace-prize

This is just one example of how Trump is changing the very definition of things, and the longer he continues, the better things get for traditional America.  With each state that he wins, the radical leftist utterances we’ve all had to endure for years swings back in the proper Constitutional direction.  When people wonder if they can trust Trump or to know if he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, just study his children and his personal wealth.  You can tell a lot of things about a man by the type of lifestyle that he lives. Trump doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, and he has never done drugs.  He’s rich and beyond financial influence, he’s smart and leans more toward Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones than Glenn Beck.  And his kids are better than him in morals and ethics.  He can outsmart the political left with a wit none of them embody and is the best man for the job of president at this particular point in history.

So it’s on to South Carolina.  I am looking forward to watching him uncover more of America state by state.  If he can redefine the trend of the Nobel Peace Prize, he can do just about anything—and for them, those who love the American flag; they have a lot to look forward to.  To those who hate that flag, they hate Trump and everything that is coming.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Beyond the Shadows on the Cave Wall: The answer to everything–come with me

 

I have mixed feelings about Oliver Stone.  I don’t think he’s a typical Hollywood leftist.  I think he’s too obsessed with conspiracy theories—but he is a fantastic writer.  He wrote Conan the Barbarian and Scarface which were fabulous movies, so he’s obviously very intelligent.  His use of drugs bothers me a lot, but I actually thought his movie, The Doors, was highly insightful and very good.  I’m not a fan of Jim Morrison, but I understood him after that film which walks a fine line between madness and extreme sanity.  I thought Natural Born Killers was extremely good and I loved JFK.  I think Oliver Stone functions from an unusual place as an artist and I enjoy his work even if I disagree with him on some politics and social policies.  So that makes me very interested in his son Sean who seems like a remarkably intelligent young man who has been given the lofty assumption of knowing all the most powerful people in Hollywood and the media—through his dad—but hasn’t had to carve his way through life-like a normal kid.  He’s taken that elevated platform and went down the rabbit hole—and I can’t say I disagree with much of what he says below.  I don’t base the things I write here on people like Sean Stone.  I walk my own path and come to conclusions based on an existence remarkably free of social contamination—because my thinking is very introverted.  When Sean Stone who has taken his father’s fame and used that platform to uncover some things, and his conclusions are remarkably similar to my own viewpoints—arrived at independently, there is something important to consider.  So listen to these clips where Sean Stone is being interviewed by Alex Jones—and do so with an open mind.  I believe he is far more correct than not—and I am certainly not providing that endorsement loosely.

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/sean-stone-doubles-down-on-conspiracy-theories-911-not-only-inside-job-london-subway-bombings-were-too/

I have said for a long time that science is being held back deliberately.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  Just a little investigation will prove that a powerful elite form of shadow government is operating through lobbyists in the United States to adhere our nation to some global scheme.  Is it as sinister as Sean Stone proposes—it’s hard to tell, because everything is so shrouded in secrecy, nobody answers questions directly and most of our politicians are puppets?  But innately we know something is wrong and our mythologies are constructed around our suspicions.  Unfortunately, those mythologies for our human minds become religions and we then limit our perspective to the confines of that branch of interpretation.  We stop asking questions because we fear the answer of stepping beyond the boundaries of our religious parameters.

I have talked extensively about Thorium power and other means of free and unlimited energy that does not involve “dirty energy.”  I am convinced that much of the global push for socialism is to prevent society from reaching these next levels of scientific thought.  We are being held back deliberately from emerging into a Type I civilization because of an old European desire to maintain control of the original ruling families and their bloodlines—which is a ridiculously immature concept at this stage of human development.  Cancer could be cured tomorrow and we could have had flying cars for about a decade now.  The science has always been there, but politics has prevented those natural gifts of thought to emerge properly—as socialism and religion have been used to keep a lid on their emergence.  I am 100% sure of it.  Take way the limits of religion and government philosophy using socialism as a means to control the masses, and the United States would lead the world into a Type I society.

The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization‘s level of technological advancement, based on the amount of energy a civilization is able to utilize directed towards communication.[1] The scale has three designated categories called Type I, II, and III. A Type I civilization is able to utilize and store energy available from its neighboring star which reaches their planet, Type II is able to harness the energy of the entire star (the most popular hypothetic concept being the Dyson sphere—a device which would encompass the entire star and transfer its energy to the planet), and Type III civilization are in control of energy on the scale of their entire host galaxy.[2] The scale is hypothetical, and regards energy consumption on a cosmic scale. It was first proposed in 1964 by the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev. Various extensions of the scale have been proposed since, from a wider range of power levels (types 0, IV and V) to the use of metrics other than pure power.

In 1964, Kardashev defined three levels of civilizations, based on the order of magnitude of power available to them:

Type I

“Technological level close to the level presently attained on earth, with energy consumption at ≈4×1019 erg/sec (4 × 1012 watts).”[1] Guillermo A. Lemarchand stated this as “A level near contemporary terrestrial civilization with an energy capability equivalent to the solar insolation on Earth, between 1016 and 1017 watts.”[3]

Type II

“A civilization capable of harnessing the energy radiated by its own star”–for example, the stage of successful construction of a Dyson sphere–“with energy consumption at ≈4×1033 erg/sec.”[1] Lemarchand stated this as “A civilization capable of utilizing and channeling the entire radiation output of its star. The energy utilization would then be comparable to the luminosity of our Sun, about 4×1033 erg/sec (4×1026 watts).”[3]

Type III

“A civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy, with energy consumption at ≈4×1044 erg/sec.”[1] Lemarchand stated this as “A civilization with access to the power comparable to the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy, about 4×1044 erg/sec (4×1037 watts).”[3]

Michio Kaku suggested that humans may attain Type I status in 100–200* years, Type II status in a few thousand years, and Type III status in 100,000 to a million years.[4]

Carl Sagan suggested defining intermediate values (not considered in Kardashev’s original scale) by interpolating and extrapolating the values given above for types I (1016 W), II (1026 W) and III (1036 W), which would produce the formulawhere value K is a civilization’s Kardashev rating and P is the power it uses, in watts. Using this extrapolation, a “Type 0” civilization, not defined by Kardashev, would control about 1 MW of power, and humanity’s civilization type as of 1973 was about 0.7 (apparently using 10 terawatt (TW) as the value for 1970s humanity).[5]

In 2012, total world energy consumption was 553 exajoules (7020553000000000000♠553×1018 J=153,611 TWh),[6] equivalent to an average power consumption of 17.54 TW (or 0.724 on Sagan’s Kardashev scale).

In 2015, a study of galactic mid-infrared emissions came to the conclusion that “Kardashev Type-III civilizations are either very rare or do not exist in the local Universe”.[7] On October 14, 2015, the realization of a strange pattern of light surrounding star KIC 8462852 has raised speculation that a Dyson Sphere (Type II civilization) may have been discovered.[8][9][10][11][12]

Type I civilization methods

  • Large-scale application of fusion power. According to mass-energy equivalence, Type I implies the conversion of about 2 kg of matter to energy per second. An equivalent energy release could theoretically be achieved by fusing approximately 280 kg of hydrogen into helium per second,[13] a rate roughly equivalent to 8.9×109 kg/year. A cubic km of water contains about 1011 kg of hydrogen, and the Earth’s oceans contain about 1.3×109 cubic km of water, meaning that humans on Earth could sustain this rate of consumption over geological time-scales, in terms of available hydrogen.
  • Antimatter in large quantities would have a mechanism to produce power on a scale several magnitudes above our current level of technology. In antimatter-matter collisions, the entire rest mass of the particles is converted to radiant energy. Their energy density (energy released per mass) is about four orders of magnitude greater than that from using nuclear fission, and about two orders of magnitude greater than the best possible yield from fusion.[14] The reaction of 1 kg of anti-matter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8×1017 J (180 petajoules) of energy.[15] Although antimatter is sometimes proposed as a source of energy, this does not appear feasible. Artificially producing antimatter – according to current understanding of the laws of physics – involves first converting energy into mass, so no net gain results. Artificially created antimatter is only usable as a medium of energy storage, not as an energy source, unless future technological developments (contrary to the conservation of the baryon number, such as a CP violation in favour of antimatter) allow the conversion of ordinary matter into anti-matter. Theoretically, humans may in the future have the capability to cultivate and harvest a number of naturally occurring sources of antimatter.[16][17][18]
  • Renewable energy through converting sunlight into electricity — either by using solar cells and concentrating solar power or indirectly through wind and hydroelectric power. There is no known way for human civilization to use the equivalent of the Earth’s total absorbed solar energy without completely coating the surface with human-made structures, which is not feasible with current technology. However, if a civilization constructed very large space-based solar power satellites, Type I power levels might become achievable–these could convert sunlight to microwave power and beam that to collectors on Earth.

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

Now, a lot of people don’t think currently in the proper way to comprehend a Type I civilization.  They figure that they get 70 to 80 trips around the sun on planet earth, and then they die to reside in some heaven of their chosen religion.  But that is a choice relative only to the experience of life on earth and the mythologies of our evolution.  There is no rational reason as a human being to die or to be limited to the kinds of scientific limits we currently experience.  If the miracles of capitalism were to be unleashed with people like Donald Trump who would not allow special interests and old national desires for ancient bloodlines to guide their decision-making, which is what is happening right now, our global society could move toward a Type I civilization as opposed to following the Vico cycle back toward a collective swarm of nomads running from anarchy.

We are truly on a unique precipice in history.  A lot of what Sean Stone is talking about is potential that is available right now. The reason those things are not available to us are for the same reasons that established politicians are still reluctant to accept that Donald Trump or Ted Cruz are leading the Republican field for President of the United States—because the established order wants to keep things the way that they are now—which benefits them.  Most of them are like Plato’s cave, also shown above and told by Alex Jones—they believe in certain things, whether it’s their version of an afterlife, or that some superior species of aliens runs the universe and that they must surrender to their whims, or perhaps they believe that their bloodline is their version of eternity and that the way to stay in power is to preserve the organized world around the same power structures that existed when their grandparents were kings.  But in reality all those limits are stupid.  They are archaic.  I wrote about the Plato metaphor a long time before Alex Jones used that allegory described above—but that’s OK, people come to things in their own way.  Most of our society has been trained to look at the shadows on the wall.  They have no idea what’s really behind them, or even more so, what’s outside the cave.

I’ll tell you dear reader what’s outside the cave—I’ve been there for a long time.  It is obvious that there was advanced civilization trading around the world between 15,000 to 8,000 years ago.  There was a giant species of intelligent beings that had an entire kingdom in North America, and during this reign, Chinese and many others settled and mixed with them.  During their Vico cycle, they ended up with what we know as the “Native Americans” of today.  The climax of this culture was the Mesopotamian era—which shared an even older culmination with the Indus Valley.  Likely however is that every ten to twenty thousand years prior for as far back as perhaps the dinosaurs, humans drove forward and fell back following the Vico cycle rising and falling completely  as a society every 7000 years or so.  (CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THE VICO CYCLE.  It’s important.)  Societies as complex as the one we have today may have easily have come to the exact same spot we find ourselves at right now only to fall back into nomadic tribes of sacrificial idiots barely scraping together enough resources to build a fire.

Likely many hundreds of thousands of years before Mesopotamia there was advanced civilization on Mars and other planets.  Just recently it was discovered that there is another planet in our solar system that has such a large elliptical orbit that it rotates around the sun every 15,000 years. There is a lot that we are just discovering about our solar system that obviously ancient cultures knew already.  So the evidence is quite compelling and legitimate science has been wrestling with these issues for years.  Institutions hungry for government grant money reports only what they can to get that money, and the people who control that money are the same who control the politics, and the lobbyists, and the religions.   They control all these things to protect their own version of reality which suits their family lineage and their importance in the grand scheme of things because like all who have come before them, they are following the Vico cycle toward human destruction—yielding to anarchy before rising again as a theocracy—then an aristocracy, then a democracy—only to fall time and time again.  Plato knew it so many years ago, the wisdom was ancient in his day, mankind continues to look at the shadows on the cave wall—willingly, because thinking is too hard, and too scary.

Now here we are.  What Sean Stone is saying is actually quite true regarding the restricted science and the reasons for it.  Everywhere I look I see people ready to go back to what they know—back to the beginning of civilization because they don’t have the courage to step into a Type I.  They are like alcoholics who cannot stay off the bottle or fat people who know they have to lose weight but cannot stop eating comfort food whenever they are sad about something.  Mankind is addicted to the Vico cycle and that is exactly what socialists are advocating.  The good Illuminati that Stone was referring to was a point in the history of the world where thinkers like Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin questioned the reality of the day and tossed it out for the world to consider—which it has struggled with for a few hundred years.  Now there are a few people, like Sean Stone, myself, and a few others who have seen what’s outside the cave and are holding flashlights for those staring at the shadows to turn their heads and follow the light out of the cave—so they can finally see reality.  But that takes courage, and for most of them—that is too great of a task to master.  Will it be a Type I society, or will it be the Vico cycle.  Socialists have already picked anarchy and we all know what follows that.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Sheriff Jones and the Metrosexuals of Butler County: Dancing the night away during the Superbowl

This is really embarrassing.  The next thing we will likely learn about Sheriff Jones, my neighbor and local sheriff, who sells himself like a modern John Wayne, is that he’s getting pedicures and facials at a local Wal-Mart nail salon.  I really didn’t want to believe this when I first saw it.  I was hoping that it was some kind of Hollywood special effect.  But no, it’s true—it’s really him and a reasonable number of public employees who are wearing the uniform of the Butler County police.  Using the Super Bowl as an excuse to send what they thought was a “hip” public message, Sheriff Jones and his rag-tag team of highly paid ass kissers put out a video dancing to show how metrosexual they were which I thought was astoundingly childish.  It’s the kind of thing you’d see from a bunch of stupid kids, not a sophisticated sheriff’s department that is supposed to command the respect of the world because of his national platform.  Of course here’s how the local media covered the story.  Women naturally think it’s cute, men aren’t sure—it is awkward.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/local/butlercounty/2016/02/06/watch-sheriff-jones-whip-nae-nae-video-warning-super-bowl-drunk-driving/79921068/

Let me give a little context, tough guys don’t dance.  They don’t sit around crying over things, they don’t wallow in emotion, and they don’t dance.  Young men do sometimes when they are looking for a female to mate with, but men—real men secure in their testosterone driven utterances—don’t dance.  It’s not cute.  It’s not hip.  It doesn’t earn “cool” points with the younger generation.  All it does is compromise authority.  It makes no sense.

Of course modern women who embrace feminism love it when men dance, because it shows them that their male counterparts are willing to be more open-minded and expressive with their bodies.  People who dance show that they are willing to compromise their individual integrity for collective rituals of expression—and women tend to be naturally included toward more social acceptance than men.  Women seem quite at home dancing in a club or at a wedding touching each other in expressive ways as men tend to stand along the wall with their hands in their pockets.  Men would rather be shooting guns or playing cards—doing something mildly competitive that they can beat another man at—just for fun.  They don’t typically enjoy shaking their bodies in suggestive ways to evoke the approval of collective consciousness.

When Donald Trump danced on Saturday Night Live he did it with a strategy to appeal more to women who currently find him “too scary.”  But Donald Trump isn’t a sheriff—he’s a businessman.  He did lose points with me on that SNL skit—because I would never do something like that under any kind of pressure.    Dancing for men is off-limits.  It’s not something any man should ever do.  It’s stupid.  Now slow dancing with a woman may be acceptable so long as the man doesn’t have to rock their hips in some sexually provocative fashion.  Even then, it’s not something I would do.  I’ve danced with my wife at our wedding, 25 years ago, one slow dance.  I danced with a family member at my brother’s wedding a few decades ago-the same-because I was a member of the wedding party.  And that’s it.  At both of my daughter’s weddings, we skipped the daddy/daughter dance.  I’m sure they’d like it sometimes if I was more physically expressive–but that’s just not appropriate for a man to exhibit.  Prior to meeting my wife, I went to a few dance clubs to meet girls, and I was good at it.  I was even a fashion model for a period of time and was hired to dance around a swarm of really attractive women on stage to David Lee Roth’s “Just a Gigolo.”  Yet the moment I met my wife, I dropped that life in less than a second, because I didn’t like it.  To me, the only reason a man would dance would be to land a female into his bed.  That is absolutely the only reason.  Once you are married, or even have a steady mate, men should never dance in public or private.

Dancing is a form of collectivism and it’s a disgusting enterprise.  Surrendering the mind to the beat of the music is not a smart thing to do.  Letting the music take control of your mind and body is to surrender your individual sovereignty.  Dancing is not a thinking endeavor.  When a room full of people surrender thought to the beat of the music it is not a beautiful thing.  It’s a thing of disgust.  It’s tribal—and in an American capitalist society where thought should be king, dancing is a treacherous social value that leads its participants toward collectivism instead of individual merit.

I’ve heard the saying, real men are not afraid to express themselves.  Those are the same idiots who say that men should not be afraid to wear pink, and that it’s OK to cry in public—or private.  Let me tell you something dear reader.  Real men don’t wear pink, they don’t cry—ever, and they certainly don’t dance.  Never.  Metrosexuals dance, gay guys dance, and men who have had their testosterone evaporate from their bodies dance to show that they aren’t too old to be like the cool young people at weddings.  But real men don’t dance.  Dancing is not an activity of thinking.  It is an act of collectivism, of yielding to whoever the artist is.  A dance floor is a socialist enterprise where sweaty bodies mingle in collective effort toward the goal of assimilation.  It’s not cute or funny.

Sometimes people think I’m too hard on public employees such as the local police. Sheriff Jones and his staff obviously didn’t have anything else to do with their time but to coordinate that video—which obviously took some time.  I’m sure he’ll say that the whole thing was done on a volunteer basis and everyone was off-duty, at least I’d hope he’d lie to me about that.  Because if any of those people were on duty at the time, we have some big problems and the staffing levels need to be adjusted—because we are paying too much for our police department.

There is another element to dancing that involves race.  People of color, particularly from the African continent do have a natural inclination to dance.  This is not good.  I am not impressed with Cam Newton’s “dance moves” on the football field.  A quick look economically at Africa indicates that what I have said about dancing is one hundred percent correct.  Every country in Africa is suffering under some form of socialism—or collective based social interaction.   On their own, the people of Africa are not inventing things, building businesses, or advancing their lives forward away from the dances they use to invoke spiritual aid and mystical persuasion.  People from those cultures may dance well—but that is not a skill that advances mankind toward individualism and invention—because invention does not come from collective effort, only individual aptitude.  So pandering toward people of race as a “stiff” whitey only makes people like Sheriff Jones look like an idiot—not a man of compromise in showing that he’s not too good to “bust some moves” so to appeal toward members of our community who still think men dancing is cool.

Men, it’s not OK to dance.  Women may want you to, and race groups might put peer pressure on you to do so—but it’s not acceptable.  Sheriff Jones made a serious mistake toward the institution of manhood in doing what he did.  He may be socially confused, or his testosterone levels may be dropping to the point where he’s more estrogen these days than testosterone, but either way, it was very embarrassing.  If I were a goon, a punk or a creep looking to sell drugs in Butler County, or to traffic stolen young girls—or even to loot the wealth of homes in the area—Sheriff Jones and his Super Bowl antics would invite me toward indiscretion instead of providing a deterrent.  Having a bounty on your head from Mexican drug lords is a manly thing to have.  But dancing like a metrosexual from the Butler County Jail—that is just not acceptable.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Failure is Not an Option: The power of positive thinking

 If you have ever traveled around the world some things become very evident.  America is clearly a superior nation, because our individual freedoms have taken the shackles off our product output, and driven a yearning to expand our marketplace.  However, there is a downside, without a proper philosophy normally sanctioned by some functioning religion; those same benefits can become a terrible vice.  For instance a wealthy and successful man can have a complete meltdown if his neighbor has the latest Mercedes and he doesn’t, or his wife may become bitter as she ages because our tendency toward shiny and new often causes us to reject old and traditional.  This neurosis presents itself in American society with a voracity leaving the general mental health of our nation at a detrimental level of dysfunction.  I’m sad to say that most people I know are like this in American society.

I am not however.  I am an eternal optimist that doesn’t believe in surrender or allowing the mind to become depressed—about anything.  I typically carry everyone on my back toward a goal, and for many years I have been fine with that type of approach. The net result is that second-handers ride in my wake and I’m fine with that until they get the funny idea that they are equal to me, and then try to step out in front and take charge.  That is where I have to draw the line.  Largely, my support of Donald Trump is due to this trait, he like me is a bottomless pit of optimism, and I think it’s more important to have that type of character in the White House than any other aspect of an election.  The world unfortunately is controlled by depressed characters—these second-handers, and it really does need to stop.  They need to learn their place, and stay in the wake of their clear superiors.  Second-handers are not equal to out-front personalities especially those with great optimism.  Optimism is one of the greatest traits a nation, a company or a household can possess.

I recently traveled to and from Japan and many of my intellectual thoughts about optimism was confirmed.  They have a national approach that very much embodies a can do optimism that is a direct off-shoot of their Shinto Buddhism as a religion.  It shows up in their work, their businesses, and their entertainment— in every aspect of their culture.  It is amazing how much the Japanese people do given so little resources on the island that they reside on.  A lot of that comes from their remarkably positive attitudes.  They are very productive and happy to be.  They don’t throw away their elderly and most levels of their society have a playfulness about them that joyfully participates in the sorrows of the world—which is clearly a Buddhist attribute.  I had read stacks of books on Japanese culture and by default over many years have adopted my own brand of Shinto Buddhism that does not export the responsibility to some third-party spirit residing outside of our four-dimensional space.  There is a science to positive thinking that works so long as that is the objective, and that type of optimism is the missing ingredient that America needs most in a capitalist society.

Most people think I’m insane when I insist on certain strategies in business, but as many have witnessed who have hung around to gather up the results, I always know what I’m doing.  People who have been second-handers to me long enough know that I always end up coming out on top, and that in my long history, failure has never taken root.  That doesn’t mean I haven’t felt the tinge of detrimental failure.  It has certainly knocked on my door many times, but I have never yielded to it in any fashion.  I have always been able to find the silver lining and turn it to gold eventually—and that is largely due to my overwhelming approach to a positive attitude.  Over time I have become used to having nobody around me share this trait, so I am accustomed to functioning completely alone without any input from others.  For me personally, it was nice to deal with the Japanese people in general because when it comes to living an honorable existence with a positive flare, they get it.  For instance, it was late at night in Kobe, Japan—actually, last week.  I didn’t bring any tooth paste with me because honestly, I didn’t want any trouble with the TSA in America—because they are such a bunch of scardy cats about everything—typical unionized slobs who panic over every little raindrop.  I was at my hotel and needed some toothpaste to brush my teeth with.  So I ran down to Chinatown where nobody spoke much English to get some supplies.  I found a little store open that late and I found some tooth paste even though I couldn’t read a word on the box as to what it was.  I could decipher enough to figure out that it was toothpaste.  Taking it to the counter there was just one other person in the entire store and it looked like he was a Chinese-Japanese guy in his middle sixties.  All I was buying was that little tube of toothpaste.  I intended to use the whole tube before traveling back to the United States, so it wasn’t much.  The man was very pleasant and treated the purchase like it was a block of gold that I had placed on the countertop.  When our transaction was completed he gave me a deep bow in thanks and we parted ways.

The cashier in that Chinatown store didn’t have to bow to me; there was nobody else around to judge his behavior.  And he didn’t have to be so thankful of a small tube of toothpaste purchased at 11:30 PM on a weeknight when it looked like there wasn’t going to be much else sold to justify him being open that late.  Yet he had a marvelous attitude because to him that toothpaste was equal to a bottle of liquor or a pack of meat sold for a celebration.  When you live that way day in and day out for your entire life, you tend to outlast whatever troubles your mind, and a productive outcome can eventually be expected.

Donald Trump has that same type of optimism and I think America needs that a lot more than any other aspect of our society—especially after that trip to Japan.  I would say that I think having a positive attitude is more important than legal technicalities, or any other learned behavior passed down from mentor to apprentice within the American framework.  I value that positive attitude above all other traits.  Too often America have limited themselves into reporting what they can’t do which I find disgusting.  I want to hear what someone “can do.”  I don’t want to hear come out of anybody’s mouth what they “cannot do” especially if they haven’t tried before reporting.  Finding excuses not to do something is not appropriate in a free market capitalist society.  The sky should be the limit.

I learned to be the way I am by Clare Chennault, the famous Flying Tiger general during World War II against the Japanese ironically.  CLICK TO REVIEW.  Given old, outdated airplanes, very little in spare parts, and pilots more interested in profit than duty, Chennault with a small band of freedom fighters protected China from the very aggressive and agile Japanese desperate for natural resources to fuel their war. That Flying Tiger story is a great example of American ingenuity and optimism in the face of daunting odds and we have lost that spirit.  It makes me sick. I personally do not accept our current status around the world of adopting European neurosis and rejecting traditional American optimism.  That is not acceptable.

I hope that in Trump’s wake America wakes up to its potential again.  In my personal life, those who know me understand that excuses are not welcome.  You either accomplish a task, or you keep trying until you do—there is no can’t.  That is a word that I reject from the English dictionary—and I don’t use it.  And let me just say this, our nation better get their minds wrapped around the concept of achievement once again.  And for those who have been riding in my wake, you better get a grip.  If you want to play ball, you better know what you are swinging at.  When I’m in charge of things, there is only one way to swing that bat, and you better be aiming for the fences. Because failure is not an option—under any circumstances.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Ted Cruz is like Light Beer: Donald Trump is the real thing

While I think Iowa blew it by not putting Donald Trump out in front during the recent caucus, the first of the primary season, the game is far from over. Cruz may be able to ride some momentum but in actuality he likely blew his wad.  I don’t dislike Cruz.  I think he would make a good president someday, but he does not have what it takes to run the dysfunctional Oval Office in 2016.  Constitutional purists and other Glenn Beck conservatives are smoking crack if they think he does.  A better framework of a more functional government is needed before Cruz could run the White House. 

However, from the Cruz camp a lot of arrogance was exhibited after the senator came out on top of Trump in Iowa.  Cruz had obviously spent a lot of time and resources in Iowa, and it paid off for him, but there are a lot of states left, and he’s a long way from first place in a lot of them.  So arrogance is not the proper response—in fact it’s disingenuous.  If not for Trump, Cruz would be nowhere.  He would have been crushed by the very large foot of the GOP establishment right out of the gate.  It is only because Cruz has been drafting in the wake of Trump that Cruz is now positioned to be a legitimate candidate.  Don’t ever forget that Cruz fans.  You should be licking the testicular fortitude of Donald Trump and thanking him for Cruz’s first victory in Iowa.  While the GOP fought with Trump, Cruz ducked fire and lived long enough to have Trump destroy everyone else.  Trump likes Cruz and purposely sissy slapped him up to this point.  Consider Iowa a gift from Trump. 

A failure to understand these kinds of things is the reason why Glenn Beck has stalled and Freedom Works in general has not been able to advance their position over the last five years.  They did their jobs and have delivered Tea Party presidential candidates to the top three of the primary season, but really only Donald Trump is able to take the freedom movement to the next level.  Trump is an Alex Jones conservative whereas Cruz is a Glenn Beck purist.  One is better at combat, the other is better at crying.  Cruz as president might be able to give nice speeches and appeal to America’s sentimental tradition, but he will be powerless to reform K-Street, and that’s where the real fight is.  It’s nothing against Cruz, but he’s way too nice and ideological to advance that fight to a conclusion in favor of liberty.

I don’t think a lot of people really understand what is at stake and who the real enemy is.  I think they are blinded by ideology and sentiment.  The most important issue of this election season is the $19 trillion dollars in debt that literally just occurred as the Iowa caucus went to a vote.  There are only two legitimate candidates based on the voting results, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.  Of those two only one is able to tackle the complicated and contentious issue of dialing back the national debt—Donald Trump. There is no other option.  That issue is certainly outside of the Ted Cruz wheel house.  If we were talking about issues of Constitutional law or Supreme Court nominees, Ted Cruz would be the guy.  But the first priority is to organize our finances.  Constitutional law will mean nothing if our economy collapses under the weight of overwhelming national debt.  It’s very, very simple. 

Trump would be wise to change-up his message and to focus on issues that Cruz cannot compete with, such as The Donald’s abilities with financing and international trade.   In those areas Trump flourishes and no other candidate can compete.  With a healthy lead in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Trump can only lose ground by getting angry at the media for not respecting his platform and his Iowa results.  He comes out of Iowa with one less delegate—big deal.  If he can maintain his lead after the next two primaries, it won’t even be a competition any longer.  But Trump has to make sure his poll numbers translate into voters—and to do that, he needs to refine his message to the centerpiece of economic Armageddon, which is very real, the national debt.

But as for Cruz, the supporters of him should be bowing at the feet of Trump.   If not for the New York billionaire, there would be no Cruz—and that includes Glenn Beck.  How ungrateful have he and Stu been on their radio show on The Blaze—something that I once very much supported but can now no longer listen to.  Trump paved the way for Cruz and delivered the Washington newcomer with a legitimate win in Iowa, and Beck should be grateful.  When Cruz announced his presidency at Liberty University Beck was very happy, but the senator had no chance then of becoming a front-runner until Trump entered the race and forced people to look at Cruz as a “moderate,” it’s the overton window trick in the favor of Republicans for a change.  Cruz supporters are simply people too chicken to vote for Trump.  He is the soft version of a true outsider candidacy. 

They try to hide their cowardly behavior by declaring that Trump is not a true conservative, or that he had the Clintons at his wedding.  Heck, Glenn Beck worked at CNN, do people want to hold that against him in the same fashion?  What they don’t tell you is that they are just too chicken to support Trump so they lean toward Cruz as an “outside” candidate that still feels to them like a traditional politician.  Cruz is the safe second choice hiding in Trump’s wake as he mows down opposition toward the liberty movement.  Like a NASCAR racer drafting behind a faster stronger car during a race, Cruz has hidden in the aerodynamics of the frontrunner, and now his supporters cheer as if he were always a champion.  No, he was just hiding like a snake in the weeds waiting for opportunity rather than shaping it himself.

Ted  Cruz is like light beer, and a lot of people like light beer.  Trump though is the good stuff.  The issue really comes down to what people want, but with $19 trillion in debt and rising quickly, there isn’t much time to play around.  Ted Cruz just doesn’t cut it for the problems of our times.  He might make people feel good, but he is a light weight.  He could have never survived the primary process without Trump, but Trump could easily survive without Cruz.  And that tells every voter everything they need to know. 

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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