Tag: Ayn Rand

‘Once Upon a Time in the West’: Hidden truths in a declining culture as time does fly

Little things matter to me quite a lot.  I notice everything and of my many careers over a lifetime, one of them will be a cultural expert where psychology, art, religion, economics and all other forms of unnamed human ambition find their way into every created thing on earth.  I grew up for as long as I can remember wanting to be a film director—but not being a very collaborative person—relegated that desire for more inward pursuits.  Because of all that I can say with great provocation that the world is in a severe cultural decline.  America obviously leads the world in culture—even though many academics might dispute it.  The evidence is in our movie houses and our music with great audacious display.  So rather than slide my predilections into the direction of the current pendulum swinging culture of global unification I am focusing much more these days on American westerns as a foundation philosophy that stands in contrast to the world currently presented to us.

I was born in 1968 and a few months after my birth one of the greatest films ever made was released—it was a Sergio Leone western called Once Upon a Time in the West.  Leone was an Italian director interpreting American westerns for a country trying to fight its way back from cultural decay after World War II.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. Leone at the time was best known for his “Dollars” trilogy which made Clint Eastwood into a star.  Those films are and have always been fantastic.  But for the director Leone they gained him the opportunity to make the western of his dreams off the success of the previous Eastwood films.  Paramount Pictures tossed the world to him along with a host of first class stars and Sergio Leone along with his musical collaborator Ennio Morricone spun a masterpiece called Once Upon a Time in the West.

Some of my very first television memories were these spaghetti westerns by Sergio Leone replaying on Channel 19 in Cincinnati.  My grandfather loved westerns and whenever I was at his farm-house he had them on, so my mother also watched them all the time as well because it reminded her of her dad.  Of them the Sergio Leone westerns reflected my own observations about people even when I was very young—and I soaked them up.  Before I was ever in the kindergarten I was a fan of Once Upon a Time in the West.  I often confused all Leone’s westerns together until I was just shy of ten and it was then when I began to appreciate Once Upon a Time in the West as something of its own.  The Leone films had hard-wired themselves into my consciousness.  My very first time in front of a television camera was when I was sixteen during “tough guy” week on Channel 19.  “Tough guy week” was a ratings grab at Channel 19 so they ran Steve McQueen movies along with a lot of Clint Eastwood to bump up their winter numbers.  At a young age I had evolved into having a “reputation” and I was sitting at the dinner table of a prominent Sharonville judge, his wife and the biggest criminal of Northern Cincinnati at the time.  The event was a Chinese New Year advertisement for a restaurant that I worked at.  One of the owner’s sons was a guy who liked to dip his feet into that type of world where justice sits at dinner tables with known criminals and he used me even at that young age as one of his “heavies.”  I enjoyed the experience because I was essentially living the life of the protagonists in Sergio Leone’s westerns and I discovered by living those characters in real life that one of my favorite film directors was in fact a genius.  As I sat at that table during that day long commercial recording talking to the judge and the crime lord obviously working together with me in the middle and being told by that same judge that when I got into trouble—he’d take care of it–I knew for me there was no going back.  At too young of an age I knew way too much about the way the world worked.  I was then and still am about 60 years ahead of myself and it does really go back to Leone’s westerns and my young introduction to them.  When the commercial aired on television my family was one of the first people back then to have a VCR so I was able to tape it.  My television appearance aired with the judge and the criminal seated on either side of me during a showing of For a Few Dollars More.  During that same Channel 19 “tough guy” week Once Upon a Time in the West was shown again and I was able to see it as a 16-year-old actually doing in real life much of what the Charles Bronson character was doing in that film and I watched it with new understanding for the first time.  It was as real and honest of any motion picture I had ever seen—it was to my eyes much better than The Godfather which was still making cultural waves in that year of 1985.  A month later I was involved in a fight with a bunch of people which led to a tragic situation and if I had not been sitting at that table with that judge on that particular day for that commercial, I’d probably have a much different life than I do now and my freedoms would likely be greatly restricted.

I felt it was important for my wife to be to watch Once Upon a Time in the West to understand more about me, so I tried to show it to her early in our relationship.  At the time she was a country club girl so she wasn’t ready for movies like that—where the opening was so strange and dramatic.  She made fun of it heavily after the first seven minutes and I never tried again to show it to her until January of 2016.  I had meant to show the movie to my children at some point so given all my history with it I felt that they should see the movie.  I bought the cut of the film that had been restored to 165 minutes as opposed to the version I had seen as a kid, the 145 minute version which was a bit more confusing, and relished being able to finally show it to my wife and at least some of my kids.  It was a great experience.  The music from Ennio Morricone was so good in that movie that I have used it often to raise my mind above times of incredible stress.  Even though my wife didn’t like Once Upon a Time in the West at first I still loved it and thought of it often to carry me through tough times.  I was 25-years old and in deep trouble.  I had more legal problems and had law suits directed at me from several directions and I had to tap into that raw, primal civility that I had refined when I was 16, where I could walk into any situation and just take care of things no matter how bad the guys on the other side of the table were—or who hid in the shadows where you parked your car.  I had for the first time a CD collection of Ennio Morricone’s music which featured a scene on the front from Once Upon a Time in the West.  By the 1990s the film was considered an obscure classic and nobody remembered it much except for filmmakers and people who were particularly fascinated with cultural phenomenon.  In the hardest days of my life I listened to the music from Once Upon a Time in the West to serve as my moral compass—and it has always worked for me. I sat in my office back then with the world coming down around me and would listen to those Morricone soundtracks and think of “The Man with the Harmonica”—that haunting melody which spoke of revenge, perseverance, and the growth of a human into an Übermensch (German for “Overman, Overhuman, Above-Human, Superman, Superhuman, Ultraman, Ultrahuman, Beyond-Man”; German pronunciation: [ˈˀyːbɐmɛnʃ]) As readers here know I think a lot of the concept which is from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also Sprach Zarathustra), Nietzsche has his character Zarathustra posit the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself. It is a work of philosophical allegory, with a structural similarity to the Gathas of Zoroaster/Zarathustra.  I learned later that my love of Sergio Leone had more to do with the concept of the Übermensch than of the westerns themselves—but I can say that there is an honesty in Once Upon a Time in the West that is not present in any other form of art and it should be experienced—especially these days.

Once Upon a Time in the West (Italian: C’era una volta il West) is a 1968 epic Spaghetti Western Technicolor film in Techniscope directed by Sergio Leone. It stars Henry Fonda cast against type as the villain, Charles Bronson as his nemesis, Claudia Cardinale as a newly widowed homesteader, and Jason Robards as a bandit. The screenplay was written by Sergio Donati and Leone, from a story by Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci and Leone. The widescreen cinematography was by Tonino Delli Colli, and the acclaimed film score was by Ennio Morricone.

After directing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone decided to retire from Westerns and desired to produce his film based on The Hoods, which eventually becameOnce Upon a Time in America. However, Leone accepted an offer from Paramount Pictures to provide access to Henry Fonda and to use a budget to produce another Western film. He recruited Bertolucci and Argento to devise the plot of the film in 1966, researching other Western films in the process. After Clint Eastwood turned down an offer to play the movie’s protagonist, Bronson was offered the role. During production, Leone recruited Donati to rewrite the script due to concerns over time limitations.

The original version by the director was 166 minutes (2 hours and 46 minutes) when it was first released on December 21, 1968. This was the version that was to be shown in European cinemas and was a box office success. For the US release on May 28, 1969, Once Upon a Time in the West was edited down to 145 minutes (2 hours and 25 minutes) by Paramount and was a financial flop. The film is considered by some to be the first installment in Leone’s Once Upon a Time Trilogy, followed by Duck, You Sucker!, called Once Upon a Time… the Revolution in parts of Europe, and Once Upon a Time in America, though the films do not share any characters in common.

The film is now generally acknowledged as a masterpiece and one of the greatest films ever made.[3][4] In 2009, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”.[5]

The film portrays two conflicts that take place around Flagstone, a fictional town in the American Old West: a land battle related to construction of a railroad, and a mission of vengeance against a cold-blooded killer. A struggle exists for Sweetwater, a piece of land near Flagstone containing the region’s only water source. The land was bought by Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), who foresaw that the railroad would have to pass through that area to provide water for the steam locomotives. When crippled railroad tycoon Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) learns of this, he sends his hired gun Frank (Henry Fonda) to intimidate McBain to move off the land, but Frank instead kills McBain and his three children, planting evidence to frame the bandit Cheyenne (Jason Robards). It appears the land has no owner; however, a former prostitute (Claudia Cardinale) arrives from New Orleans, revealing she is Jill McBain, Brett’s new wife and the owner of the land.

Meanwhile, a mysterious harmonica-playing gunman (Charles Bronson), whom Cheyenne later dubs “Harmonica”, pursues Frank. In the film’s opening scene, Harmonica kills three men sent by Frank to kill him. In a roadhouse on the way to Sweetwater, he informs Cheyenne that the three gunfighters appeared to be posing as Cheyenne’s men.

Back at Sweetwater, construction materials are delivered to build a railroad station and a small town. Harmonica explains that Jill will lose Sweetwater unless the station is built by the time the track’s construction crews reach that point, so Cheyenne puts his men to work building it.

Frank turns against Morton, who wanted to make a deal with Jill; Morton’s disability makes him unable to fight back. After having sex with Jill, Frank forces her to sell the property in an auction. He tries to buy the farm cheaply by intimidating the other bidders, but Harmonica arrives, holding Cheyenne at gunpoint, and makes a much higher bid based on his reward money for delivering Cheyenne to the authorities. Harmonica rebuffs an offer by Frank to buy the farm from him for one dollar more than he paid at the auction. As Cheyenne is placed on a train bound for the Yuma prison, two members of his gang purchase one-way tickets for the train, intending to help him escape.

Frank’s men betray and ambush him, having been paid by Morton to turn against him, but—much to Jill’s outrage—Harmonica helps Frank kill them, intending to kill Frank himself. Frank returns to Morton, only to find that he and the rest of Frank’s men have been killed in a battle with Cheyenne’s gang. Frank then goes to Sweetwater to confront Harmonica. On two occasions, Frank has asked Harmonica who he is, but both times Harmonica refused to answer him. Instead, he mysteriously quoted names of men Frank has murdered. This time, Harmonica says he will reveal who he is “only at the point of dying”. The two men position themselves for a duel, at which point Harmonica’s motive for revenge is revealed in a flashback:

A younger Frank, already a cruel bandit, is forcing a boy to support on his shoulders his older brother, whose neck is in a noose strung from an arch. As the boy struggles to hold his brother’s weight, Frank stuffs a harmonica into the boy’s mouth and tells him to play. The brother curses Frank and kicks his brother away, and dies.

Harmonica draws first and shoots Frank. As he lies dying, Frank again asks who he is, whereupon the harmonica is placed in Frank’s mouth. Frank nods weakly in recognition and dies. Harmonica and Cheyenne say goodbye to Jill, who is supervising construction of the railway station as the track-laying crews reach Sweetwater. Cheyenne collapses, revealing that he had been fatally shot by Morton during the fight with Frank’s gang. The work train arrives, Jill carrying water to the rail workers, while Harmonica rides away with Cheyenne’s body.

Leone’s intent was to take the stock conventions of the American Westerns of John Ford, Howard Hawks and others, and rework them in an ironic fashion, essentially reversing their intended meaning in their original sources to create a darker connotation.[22] The most obvious example of this is the casting of veteran film good guy Henry Fonda as the villainous Frank, but there are also many other, more subtle reversals throughout the film. According to film critic and historian Christopher Frayling, the film quotes from as many as 30 classic American Westerns.

The major films referenced include:

  • High Noon(1952): The opening sequence is similar to the opening of High Noon, in which three bad guys (Lee Van Cleef, Sheb Wooley and Robert J. Wilke) are shown waiting for the arrival of their leader (named Frank, played by Ian MacDonald) on the noon train. In the opening of Once Upon a Time in the West, three bad guys (Jack Elam, who appeared in a small part in High Noon, Woody Strode, and Al Mulock) take over and wait at a train station. However, the period of waiting is depicted in a lengthy ten-minute sequence, the train arrives several hours after noon, and its passenger is one of the film’s heroes (Charles Bronson) rather than its villain. The scene is famous for its use of natural sounds: a squeaky windmill, knuckles cracking, and Jack Elam’s character trying to shoo off a fly. According to rumor, Leone offered the parts of the three gunmen to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly stars Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach.[23]
  • 3:10 to Yuma(1957): This cult Western by Delmer Daves may have had considerable influence on the film. The most obvious reference is a brief exchange between Keenan Wynn‘s Sheriff and Cheyenne, in which they discuss sending the latter to Yuma  In addition, as in West the main villain is played by an actor (Glenn Ford) who normally played good guys. The film also features diegetic music (Ford at one point whistles the film’s theme song just as Harmonica provides music in West). And the scene in which Van Heflin‘s character escorts Ford to the railroad station while avoiding an ambush by his gang may have inspired the ambush of Frank by his own men in Leone’s film.
  • The Comancheros(1961): The names “McBain” and “Sweetwater” may come from this film. (Contrary to popular belief, the name of the town “Sweetwater” was not taken from Victor Sjöström‘s silent epic dramaThe Wind. Bernardo Bertolucci has stated that he looked at a map of the southwestern United States, found the name of the town in Arizona, and decided to incorporate it into the film. However, both “Sweetwater” and a character named “McBain” appeared in The Comancheros, which Leone admired.[24])
  • Johnny Guitar(1954): Jill and Vienna have similar backstories (both are former prostitutes who become saloonkeepers), and Harmonica, like Sterling Hayden‘s title character, is a mysterious, gunslinging outsider known by his musical nickname. Some of West’s central plot (Western settlers vs. the railroad company) may be recycled from Nicholas Ray’s film.[24]

  • The Iron Horse(1924): West may contain several subtle references to this film, including a low angle shot of a shrieking train rushing towards the screen in the opening scene, and the shot of the train pulling into the Sweetwater station at the end.[24]
  • Shane(1953): The massacre scene in West features young Timmy McBain out hunting with his father, just as Joey does in this movie. The funeral of the McBains is borrowed almost shot-for-shot from Shane.[24]
  • Vera Cruz(1954): In both films, Charles Bronson’s character plays a harmonica and is known only by a nickname.
  • The Searchers(1956): Leone admitted that the rustling bushes, the silencing of cicada chirps, and the fluttering pheasants that suggest a menace approaching the farmhouse when the McBain family is massacred were all taken from The Searchers. The ending of the film—where Western nomads Harmonica and Cheyenne move on rather than join modern society—also echoes the famous ending of Ford’s film.[24]
  • Warlock(1959): At the end of this film, Henry Fonda’s character wears clothing very similar to his costume throughout West. In addition, Warlock features a discussion about mothers between Fonda and Dorothy Malone that is similar to those between Cheyenne and Jill in West. Finally, Warlock contains a sequence in which Fonda’s character kicks a crippled man off his crutches, as he does to Mr. Morton in West.
  • The Magnificent Seven(1960): In this film, Charles Bronson’s character whittles a piece of wood. In West, he does the same, although in a different context. The Magnificent Seven was based on Seven Samuraiby Akira Kurosawa, whose film Yojimbo (“The Bodyguard”) was the inspiration (and later, litigation) behind Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars.
  • Winchester ’73(1950): It has been claimed that the scenes in West at the trading post are based on those in Winchester ’73, but the resemblance is slight.[24]
  • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance(1962): The dusters (long coats) worn by Cheyenne and his gang (and by Frank and his men while impersonating them) resemble those worn by Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) and his henchmen when they are introduced in this film. In addition, the auction scene in West was intended to recall the election scene in Liberty Valance.[24]
  • The Last Sunset(1961): The final duel between Frank and Harmonica is shot almost identically to the duel between Kirk Douglas and Rock Hudson in this film.[24]
  • Duel in the Sun(1946): The character of Morton, the crippled railroad baron in West, was based on the character played by Lionel Barrymore in this film.[24]
  • Sergeant Rutledge(1960): This John Ford Western, featuring Woody Strode as the title character, has a scene in which Constance Towers falls asleep in a chair with a rifle in her lap, just as Jill McBain does in Leone’s film.
  • My Darling Clementine(1946): In the trading post scene, Cheyenne slides Harmonica’s gun down the bar to him, challenging him to shoot – much like Morgan Earp (Ward Bond) sliding his weapon to brother Wyatt (Henry Fonda) in the Ford film when the Earps meet Doc Holliday (Victor Mature) for the first time. Also, a deleted scene in West featured Frank getting a shave with perfume in a barber’s shop, much like Fonda’s Wyatt.

Once Upon a Time in the West was itself explicitly referenced in The Quick and the Dead, when John Herod (Gene Hackman), faces Ellen (Sharon Stone), better known as “The Lady,” in a climactic gunfight. Ellen’s identity is a mystery until the end, when the audience sees Ellen’s flashback to Herod lynching her father, a sheriff. The sadistic Herod gives Ellen (then only a little girl) a chance to save her father by shooting through and breaking the rope wrapped around his neck, but Ellen accidentally kills her father by shooting him in the forehead. As with Frank, Herod yells “Who are you?”, and the only response he receives is an artifact from the earlier lynching—in this case, the sheriff’s badge that Ellen has kept all these years. The Quick and the Dead has another connection to Once Upon a Time in the West: It was the final film for Woody Strode, who died before it could be released.

Many other films have paid tribute to Once Upon a Time in the West over the years: Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglourious Basterds opens with a lengthy sequence entitled Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France (a phrase also used as a tagline for the 2009 film) which introduces the film’s primary villain and features the mass shooting of a family at a farmhouse; Tarantino’s Kill Bill films utilize snatches of Morricone’s harmonica and guitar soundtrack; Back to the Future Part III recreates the station rooftop scene from Once Upon a Time in the West; Baz Luhrmann‘s Australia features several nods to Leone’s film, including a homestead with a squeaky windmill, an almost-identical funeral scene, and an antagonistic relationship between the film’s villains; and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End features a parody of the “Man With a Harmonica” theme on the soundtrack, as the film’s protagonists parley on a sandbar before the final battle.

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

A lot of people I think have the same reaction my wife had to Once Upon a Time in the West the first time they see it.  Let me tell you that 25 years after she laughed at it the first time, she wasn’t laughing any more.  Nobody is laughing any more, I can say that.  She had grown to appreciate what the film had been saying for decades.  She had learned by middle life what I had known as a 16-year-old, and once you know those types of things there is only one place for your mind to go.  You either become an Übermensch of some kind or you go insane.  There are a lot of characters in the world like Henry Fonda’s “Frank.”  And there is only one way to deal with them and Sergio Leone knew how to capture that conflict on-screen like no other person I’ve ever seen in film.  A lot of film makers have tried to capture the magic of Once Upon a Time in the West, but they never get it all.  Now, nearly five decades later the extremely bright international culture that produced that great film is nearly vanished.  It’s not a great film just because it’s a western—but because of the metaphors presented in the seemingly simplistic tapestry of the western—as it was invented in America.

It doesn’t matter that Sergio Leone took an American hero like Henry Fonda and made him into the villain—it’s that Leone knew how to take the strength of his characters whether it be Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood and turn them into Übermenschs to deal with overwhelming evil captured quite accurately.  I always think of that dinner table during that filming of the Chinese New Year commercial and how it reminded me so much of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  But even more than that it reminded me of Frank from Once Upon a Time in the West.  When Jill gets mad at Harmonica for helping keep Frank alive—it is for the reasons provided that many of the mysteries of our lives go unfulfilled.  And yes I’m talking in a bit of a riddle here, but to get the answer watch the movie and remember the line, “time flies.”  Knowing what to do with an enemy after you’ve identified them as such is what I have always found valuable about westerns.  To understand that you have an enemy is to have a set of values that an enemy fights against and in Once Upon a Time in the West that conflict is poetically displayed in ways that no film has ever mastered as well.  Many have tried but nobody has been able to hit it as well as Sergio Leone.  Time does fly, whether it’s a 16 year old discovering the truth of how a childhood movie favorite applies to the real world of politics and intrigue and how rivers are often polluted with the remains of politics washed off the parking lot after a strong rain—with the personal stamp of approval from a kindly old judge—or a wife who had grown over the years to see something totally different from her young 20-year-old eyes were ready to appreciate.  Some movies reflect culture—others like Sergio Leone’s films make it.  And that is why I think so much of him and his films—particularly, Once Upon a Time in the West.  If you haven’t seen it, you should.  Because “time flies” and so do good ideas—you have to hit them when you get the chance for the motivations only you know about—even if the morality for it only exists outside of time and space in a mythical realm where justice truly does rule—not with blinders—but a six-gun and a lot of tenacity.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Ann Becker’s Stand Against Ohio’s Central Committee: How John Kasich became an idiot–understanding Kantian philosophy

I remember doing a radio show several years ago with Matt Clark about how communists planned to take over both political parties in America and how they were going to infiltrate the media as far back as the late 1950s.  Obviously we have seen that happen in regard to the Democrats and the major media sources.  They call them progressives, but essentially they are communist leaning sympathizers by the nature of their philosophy.  But Matt and I also talked about the same thing happening to the Republican Party.  To many of us, the behavior of the GOP since as far back as 9-11 caused questioning minds to scratch their heads in bewilderment.  When John McCain lashed out at Bill Cunningham for being “divisive” during a campaign stop in Cincinnati during 2008 for which the WLW host was the emcee further preponderance of the evidence was presented.  These Republicans were not conservatives—but rather were something else and their strategic aims were much more centrist in their nature.  That by itself would not be alarming, but they seemed to be working with Democrats to pull that central position over time radically to the left.  Today’s “centrist” used to be yesterday’s socialist and yesterdays neutral supporter along the political spectrum is now openly communist—(progressive).  I dare one person to describe to me how progressivism differs from the communists of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1919.  (I’m waiting.)

Obviously I have known about this for a long time to even be able to talk about it in hindsight on Matt Clark’s show.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  But the rest of the country really hasn’t noticed because of all the noise of modern society.  The evidence gets drowned out by the furious pace of our lives.  A lot of times the participants themselves don’t even realize the role they play—because they don’t know enough about history to understand.  One such example is the governor of my state John Kasich, who started off wonderfully six years ago, but is now an openly progressive loser who has evoked “god” as an excuse for expanding government reach and balancing the Ohio budget with more federal money through Obamacare exchanges.  If you want to know how deep this corruption has spread then look at the radicalism of the Ohio State Central Committee in supporting Kasich for the upcoming primaries when it is clearly evident that he doesn’t stand a chance at winning the popular vote.  Like trained drones the Ohio State Central Committee is sticking by the plan hashed out long ago—that Kasich the “moderate” would be elected president making it easy for the radical leftists to run over our nation without resistance.  Even though polling of prospective primary voters favor Trump and Cruz, the State Central Committee is doing what they planned all along.  They don’t listen to voters, they listen to the party bosses as to how and who to elect—and that plan was never in the favor of the American population.

This little trick is never talked about literally.  Every State Central Committee person is not part of some vast conspiracy—not knowingly.  It wasn’t that long ago that people like my friend Ann Becker from the Cincinnati Tea Party encouraged me to run for a Central Committee spot in my district.  Ann and her people are doing the good work of knocking moderate leftists out of the Central Committee to put more reasonable traditionalists on in their place.  To my eyes the functioning philosophy of the whole enterprise was noticeably Kantian and I knew that the basic philosophy for which they were functioning had to be changed before truly effective management of the Central Committee system could fully be implemented.  However, that doesn’t stop the good work of people inclined to suffer the daily abuse it takes to make micro changes along the way from doing so.  My role in all this has to be “different” so we all do what we are best at.  Ann is one of those people who likes to fight it out on the inside and she issued the following statement in regard to John Kasich.

I heard you! You do not support Governor Kasich for President – even if the Ohio GOP State Central Committee does. 


You reenergized my faith in the Constitutional people of Ohio! Yesterday I sent out an email about the Ohio Republican State Central Committee’s endorsement of Governor Kasich. An endorsement by a party means the members of that party are expected to support the candidate.


I received over 200 emails in two hours yesterday telling me ‘Hell No.’ The stories about Governor Kasich and the disdain for the Ohio Republican Party State Central Committee’s endorsement of Kasich was incredible. I could feel the anger coming out of my computer. 


Governor Kasich says he balanced Ohio’s budget – all Governors have to balance Ohio’s budget, it’s in the Ohio Constitution. He says he created jobs in Ohio – his term started after the crash in 2008. Yes, there were more jobs created in Ohio after 2008 but was it Kasich that created the jobs or the free market starting to improve? He takes credit for the jobs that our small business owners work hard and create – you didn’t build that Governor Kasich. 


Governor Kasich’s support of Common Core, his expanding Medicaid using Obamacare, his increase of spending in Ohio by 30%, his standing in the way of Right to Work, his raising taxes – all of these things and more are reasons that he is not the best choice for President.


I think we all agree that we want a President that will stand by the Constitution and give America a plan to move this country forward, not backward, toward freedom. Whoever that candidate is for you, vote for him or her. No one has the right to expect you to vote a certain way, party or not.


We want political parties that stand on principle, not on who they can get elected. Shame on the State Central Committee. They are up for reelection this March; we must watch those races. 


Your mission over the next eight weeks is to make sure everyone you know is ready to vote on March 15, or early vote at your county Board of Elections, starting February 17th. This is the most important primary in the history of the United States of America. Everyone who cares about the future of this country needs to get out and vote!


One of the biggest issues I heard about regarding Governor Kasich was his support of Common Core. I really thought he would flip-flop on this by now, but he is standing strong with Common Core. 


A horrible choice for our kids and Ohio Governor Kasich!


I had the privilege of hearing Heidi Huber give an update on Common Core last night. The video is below. We must stand together to make the change we want to see. 

Heidi Huber Common Core Update

 

Yours in Liberty,

Ann Becker

Kasich has been a disaster.  New York pundits like Bill O’Reilly on Fox News think that Kasich has done a fantastic job as governor.  But that’s because Kasich used to host his show and that Bill doesn’t live in Ohio.  Also, compared to New York, Ohio seems like a bastion of conservatism.  To Bill’s eyes, I’m sure Kasich looks like a conservative, but that’s only because the noise of modern politics drowns out the truth.    Kasich is broken at the level of his foundation philosophies.  He and the establishment types in the GOP have been taught to think incorrectly and now they are leading the party toward aims that were always intended to be noticeably communist.  Here is the evidence, first a definition of Kantian ethics followed by a nice little quote from the blogspot “Marxist Update.”

Kantian ethics refers to a deontological ethical theory ascribed to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. The theory, developed as a result of Enlightenment rationalism, is based on the view that the only intrinsically good thing is a good will; an action can only be good if its maxim – the principle behind it – is duty to the moral law. Central to Kant’s construction of the moral law is the categorical imperative, which acts on all people, regardless of their interests or desires. Kant formulated the categorical imperative in various ways. His principle of universalisability requires that, for an action to be permissible, it must be possible to apply it to all people without a contradiction occurring. His formulation of humanity as an end in itself requires that humans are never treated merely as a means to an end, but always also as ends in themselves. The formulation of autonomy concludes that rational agents are bound to the moral law by their own will, while Kant’s concept of the Kingdom of Ends requires that people act as if the principles of their actions establish a law for a hypothetical kingdom. Kant also distinguished between perfect and imperfect duties. A perfect duty, such as the duty not to lie, always holds true; an imperfect duty, such as the duty to give to charity, can be made flexible and applied in particular time and place.  (Sound like Kasich?)

In political philosophy, Kant has had wide and increasing influence with the major political philosopher of the late twentieth century, John Rawls, drawing heavily on his inspiration in setting out the basis for a liberal view of political institutions. The nature of Rawls’ use of Kant has engendered serious controversy but has demonstrated the vitality of Kantian considerations across a wider range of questions than was once thought plausible.

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

The poet Heine, who was a friend of Marx and upon whom the latter at one time had a great influence, depicted very vividly Kant’s motives for treading the two paths. Kant had an old and faithful servant, Lampe, who had lived with, and attended to, his master for forty years. For Kant this Lampe was the personification of the average man who could not live without religion. After a brilliant exposition of the revolutionary import of the Critique of Pure Reason in the struggle with theology and with the belief in a Divine Principle, Heine explained why Kant found it necessary to write the Critique of Practical Reason in which the philosopher re-established everything he had torn down before. Here is what Heine wrote:

“After the tragedy comes the farce. Immanuel Kant has hitherto appeared as the grim, inexorable philosopher; he has stormed heaven, put all the garrison to the sword; the ruler of the world swims senseless in his blood; there is no more any mercy, or fatherly goodness, or future reward for present privations; the immortality of the soul is in its last agonies — death rattles and groans. And old Lampe stands by with his umbrella under his arm as a sorrowing spectator, and the sweat of anguish and tears run down his cheeks. Then Immanuel Kant is moved to pity, and shows himself not only a great philosopher, but a good man. He reconsiders, and half good-naturedly and half ironically says, ‘Old Lampe must have a God, or else the poor man cannot be happy, and people really ought to be happy in this world. Practical common sense declares that. Well, meinet wegen, for all I care, let practical reason guarantee the existence of a God.'” [Heinrich Heine, Collected Works. W. Heineman, London, 1906. Vol. 5, pp. 150-151.]

http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com/2012/01/immanuel-kant-marxist-view.html

That’s how the political left has been able to implement and enact a communist strategy while at the same time convincing people who think they are hard-core conservative Central Committee members that they are doing the work established by Immanuel Kant.  What they don’t know is that Kant put down the foundations of Marxism which would evolve into open communism to essentially destroy the economy of Russia allowing Europe to rise to power after World War I.  It’s all German philosophy people.  But eventually Kant would influence John Rawls who nearly singlehandedly brought detrimental liberalism to most political institutions academic and social.  His magnum opus, A Theory of Justice (1971), was said at the time of its publication to be “the most important work in moral philosophy since the end of World War II“[4]and is now regarded as “one of the primary texts in political philosophy”.[5] His work in political philosophy, dubbed Rawlsianism,[6] takes as its starting point the argument that “the most reasonable principles of justice are those everyone would accept and agree to from a fair position”.[5] Rawls attempts to determine the principles of social justice by employing a number of thought experiments such as the famous original position in which everyone is impartially situated as equals behind a veil of ignorance.[5] He is one of the major thinkers in the tradition of liberal political philosophy. According to English philosopher Jonathan Wolff, while there could be a “dispute about the second most important political philosopher of the 20th century, there could be no dispute about the most important: John Rawls”.[4]

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

It is because of Kant then Rawls that Governor Kasich and the Ohio State Central Committee is a bunch of idiots.  It is their foundation philosophy that Ann Becker and her purists are fighting against.  Of course Kasich and his gang don’t understand what Ann is talking about just as they can’t understand why Trump and Cruz are doing so well nationally in the 2016 presidential race—they continue to function based on the beliefs they have been taught by education institutions following the philosophy of John Rawls.  CLICK TO REVIEW.  They don’t understand because their thinking is wrong and out of touch with the rest of the world.  So I suggest dear reader that you do as Ann has asked, over the next eight weeks you need to register to vote in the primary and you need to defy the Ohio State Central Committee leadership and vote for anybody but John Kasich.  He is a failed person not because he’s bad—but because he was taught to be an idiot who follows Kant instead of some American philosopher with proper foundation thoughts, such as Thomas Jefferson or Ayn Rand.  Send the German philosophy back to Europe the way they sent it to Russia to destroy that nation.  Keep that stuff out of America and especially the state of Ohio.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Frisky Nikki Haley: Not exactly the best strategy for the GOP

Apparently the GOP doesn’t get it. Why in the world they put Nikki Haley on as the response to Idiot Obama’s State of the Union speech from the standpoint of the Republicans is a mystery greater than the Bermuda Triangle.  As I watched her I couldn’t help but think that it was Haley who had caved into progressives regarding the Confederate Flag issue at the South Carolina State House.   Progressives applied pressure and she yielded giving them the victory.  Listen Republicans—compromise is a dirty word–when something is wrong and something is right.  The world is full of black and white—metaphorically—not literally, and compromising with wrong does not make it partially right. You’d think that the GOP would have looked at the current presidential frontrunners, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and they’d put up someone to respond to the president that more accurately reflected the values of current GOP voters.  Instead they put forward a RINO at best who said this:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans should resist “the siren call of the angriest voices” in how the nation treats immigrants, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Tuesday as the GOP used its response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address to try softening the tough stance embraced by some of its leading presidential candidates.

The U.S.-born daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley said the country is facing its most dangerous security threat since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That was a reference to the Islamic State group, which has taken credit for attacks in Paris and elsewhere and may have inspired last month’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.

“During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices,” Haley, mentioned by some as a potential vice presidential candidate this year, said in her party’s formal response to Obama. “We must resist that temptation.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/sc-governor-urges-tolerance-for-immigrants-in-gop-response/ar-CCsfBb?ocid=ansmsnnews11

No, the temptation against judgment where smart behavior must prevail over stupid behavior must not be compromised.  Having an open border in the United States is a foreign desire to destroy American capitalism with social diffusion, and anybody intelligent would understand that.  Instead, the GOP thought it was more important, and stylish to put a woman RINO who failed a contentious issue in South Carolina up as an answer to the GOP party platform going into the 2016 election season.  We are well beyond this kind of nonsense and trickery folks.

I’m sure Nikki Haley is a nice woman.  She’s somebody’s daughter, wife and mother.  She has a little bit of history with sleeping around with political bloggers and lobbyists which she denies, but I’m sure there’s some truth to it.  Funny things happen when people are in powerful positions and they share common values after hard-fought battles.  When you mix males and females together they tend to want to stick things into one another for pleasurable outcomes unless they can control their emotions—and politics is an emotional endeavor—extreme emotional highs and lows.  I actually knew a very driven political woman like Nikki Haley once and from 35 to 40 years of age, she was a bit of a sex addict—it went right along with the politics she was addicted to.  Her husband wasn’t a part of that world, so he didn’t understand why she was always so charged up all the time.   So there is likely some truth to the allegations against her—she fits the profile.   I personally don’t care.  She can do what she wants but with all things considered—she is what the Republican Party thought most represented their party?  Seriously?  Couldn’t they find anybody better—less controversial with a track record of success?  Is she the best that they have?

Apparently so, which says a lot.  I don’t think she’s done a bad job in South Carolina but I wouldn’t call her an example of excellence either.  I think with Republicans they picked her because she’s young, not horrible to look at, and she is “inclusive” to the open border policies foreign insurgents like George Soros are conducting against American sovereignty—which keeps campaign donations flowing into their political machine.  Maintaining borders in America is important to sustaining the value of American citizenship.  There is a reason that some of the highest per capita incomes in the world are within the United States.  It’s part of our “brand.”  If you let anybody into a movie how can its worth be measured but in ticket prices?  If everyone were just allowed to watch a movie how would anybody know if that movie is any good?  The price of a ticket and how many people buy one determine a movie’s value.  Even communist leaning liberals should be able to understand that.  The public has limited access to the celebrities in movies which drives up the desire for the market brand of those actors.  All that restriction causes increased value.  Limited access causes a desire to pay for a ticket price to see a movie with a particular actor involved so the viewer can at least be close to that person.

When a woman like Nikki Haley has rumors of one night stands with political lobbyists it lowers her brand.  The better thing to do is to be highly desired as a sex object without providing the sex—that way many people might yearn to be with her, they may even do what she wants them to do hoping to get access—but if people think she’s easy—sexually, her brand goes down because other people have already had her.  Whether or not it’s fair, it’s the rules of the game.  If a woman gives up sex too easily she is viewed as a slut.  If she is faithful to a husband or her family in general her brand goes up enormously because that person is inaccessible.  But if anybody can have sex with her any time they want, the value of sex with her is reduced to something much less spectacular.  The same holds true with an entire country, the more restrictive the access; the more people value it when they get access.  The less, the more they will want to abuse the situation to satisfy their personal whims.

http://www.politico.com/story/2010/06/haley-denies-second-rumored-affair-038077

Because of the rumors and the evidence by text messages and other aspects I have witnessed in real life, I think Nikki Haley probably has some trouble with maintaining her sexual poise in politically active climates.  That might impress members of the GOP who want to sleep with her sometime knowing that she’s easy game to tag, but it doesn’t do much to deliver the confidence that the GOP knows what they are doing. Then to compound the problem it was only this previous summer where progressives had beat her to a pulp over the Confederate Flag leaving her to compromise under the pressure. The racist insurgents didn’t give anything up to have the flag removed, it simply forced Nikki Haley to come off her position more to the center strategically—which was a loss for her.  Granted, it was a tough position for her to be in, and the GOP probably should have let a few years pass before they used her as the Republican answer to the President’s State of the Union address.  But they used her anyway because they thought it was a good idea.

But knowing politics the way I do I’d say somebody had other ideas given Haley’s reputation.  And that is just sad.  The GOP should be able to put up better, more reliable people other than Nikki Haley.  They didn’t—because they were unable to think of anybody—which shows why they are so far out of touch.  Some of those same idiots were seeking Obama’s autograph after the State of the Union speech even though it was a terrible speech speaking about a terrible presidency leaving the nation horribly in debt and a laughing-stock across the world.  It’s no wonder the GOP is failing just slightly less than the Democrats—they just don’t understand.  But in 2016, they’re going to learn just how much they don’t know and why they are going extinct.  And their extinction will make me very happy.  Right now, I’m just embarrassed for them.  They are so unimaginative and driven by primal urges—it’s just pathetic.

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.

Quick Cal on WAAM Radio: The strongest argument in favor of guns

It had been a week of attacks against the Second Amendment, Obama had enacted executive orders against the right to maintain firearms within American society then he held a CNN town hall to justify his imposition.  It was clear to me that Obama was functioning from extreme ignorance—not all of it his fault.  Growing up in Indonesia as a boy, then in Hawaii by communist sympathizing grandparents he didn’t understand guns and how they applied to American Exceptionalism.  Obama doesn’t even believe in American Exceptionalism so he wasn’t close to understanding the role that guns played in maintaining that high measure of quality.  But, most people around the country—especially those who work with guns away from the largely democratically run cities in the United States—understand, and I felt it necessary to teach anti-gun people why they were wrong in their basic thinking—especially the president and his radical city dwelling progressive insurgents.  Since I was hosting for Matt Clark on 1600 WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan over an early weekend in January 2016 I thought it would be a good time to do a show about how guns benefit society and specifically American Exceptionalism.  So I invited on Quick Cal, who is the director of the Cowboy Fast Draw Association and champion shooter of four professional shooting categories and a multiple world record holder to talk about the benefits of firearms training and how it helps nurture an obscure philosophy that is the key to American Exceptionalism called the Cowboy Way.  Listen to that epic broadcast here:

Cal and I told several stories from both of our perspectives regarding our value of the Cowboy Way, which as Cal said is a philosophical definition that is minimalist in nature but  exemplifies the type of decency typically associated with Christian values—civility toward others, honor, hard work—essentially “do onto others as you’d have others do onto you.”  Cal stated that as a young man in the 1960s it was the Cowboy Way that kept him straight and off drugs and alcohol during that turbulent decade and I told a similar story.  I have worn a cowboy hat since I was in the fifth grade or some variation of it. When I was very young I recognized a need to distinguish myself from the rest of the world with some kind of hat that said my values were different from the mainstream of society—which appeared to my juvenile eyes to be headed in the wrong direction.  People always made fun of it and I learned to have a very thick skin about my hats.  Often I would wear a cowboy hat in public knowing and hoping that it would anger the mainstreamers—and I took inward joy at their anger.  Twenty years ago wearing such a hat during the post Reagan years took a lot of confidence especially for a young guy like me.  I wore it around the U.C. campus when I used to live there and would walk right down Vine Street with it on even though it went against the urban culture so prevalent there.  I knew the anger came because unconsciously people knew it symbolized the Cowboy Way which was viewed by progressive society as a backward “unenlightened” approach to living.  By wearing my cowboy hats, it was my public affirmation of values and traditional belief—and it distinguished me from my peers in a way which certainly preserved me to my current age.

Once I was invited to a campus rave party in an abandoned house at 2 AM in the morning.  I knew nothing good could come of the experience but a friend of mine wanted me to go with him in case he got into some physical confrontation—so I went along to protect him.   I showed up dressed in my poncho and a cowboy hat looking like I just stepped out of a spaghetti western—which I have always  enjoyed, and I certainly looked strange next to all the “emo” types dressed in black with all the piercings they had before such things were as common as they are today.  I figured if they could dress in public with purple Mohawks and studded black clothing that looked more appropriate for the movie set of The Road Warrior, then I could show up looking like I belonged in For A Few Dollars More.  To say it was difficult to walk into a party atmosphere with blaring Marilyn Manson music arousing the passions of naked women and drug induced idiots as a perfectly straight cowboy hat wearing traditionalist would be an understatement.  But I did it proudly.  Being a partier was never a priority for me and I thought at the time that during the most tempting years of my life if I held to my values that it would be very valuable to me later, when I was older.  That turned out to be the case and I can understand how following the Cowboy Way kept Quick Cal clean and free of imposition in his life during a similar turbulent period where everyone was wearing tie dye shirts and preaching peace through marijuana smoke and socialism.

Our experience is compelling enough to make a more than reasonable argument against the current tide of fashion.  If the trends of our age lead to such destructive living—bad personal conduct, addictive behavior, unreliability as a spouse or parent, and a general menace to society—then why would we accept such a thing as a fact to our reality.  There is nothing negative about the Cowboy Way—even if a person isn’t particularly religious.  The Cowboy Way is all about having values toward individualized accomplishment which is why the hat always symbolized to me that sentiment.  It was hard to go against such tides, but it felt good to survive.  Being popular isn’t the most valuable trait in the world if the people who like you are poor quality people.  If people made fun of my hat, they were not very high quality people and it made it easy for me to see who was who and why they did what they did.  Did they not like the hat because it reminded them of a parental figure they were trying to push out of their head, or had they bought into the commercial advancement of fashion to the extent where their collective ambitions denied individualized thought?  I learned a lot during those early years because of the public reactions to my cowboy hats.

Another aspect to the Cowboy Way that Cal and I discussed was the difference between shooting sports which are individualized in nature and the collective based team sports of football, baseball, and soccer.  Of course public schools are all about collective based identification.  They don’t want people thinking as individuals because their job as designated by the government is to herd people into a particular direction as determined by Beltway desires.  So team sports are emphasized to advance children into a more socially appropriate stature.  However, individualized sports, like Cowboy Fast Draw, and golf, are all about individual achievement, which is why the current trends are against them.  It’s why golf is largely viewed as a sport for the affluent—those who have achieved individualized success.  It’s also why progressives—who are collectivists by their nature, hate shooting sports.  Shooting a gun is a very individualized endeavor.  Golf and the culture of country clubs already have the stigma of being affluent based endeavors that are individualized in their foundations.  There is a social component but the associations are largely groups of affluent people talking to other affluent people without the noise of the outside world.  I will admit that I enjoy that country club culture.  My wife and I enjoy eating at the Elk’s Club Silver Tee restaurant near our home.  It’s always nice and they treat the guests in an exclusive way.  It’s about being with people who have similar values as you do.  You know when you eat there that the booth next to you is a family that are not knuckle draggers.  They are typically well employed and somewhat successful as individuals—and that makes the food taste just a bit better.  I consider shooting sports to be even more individualized because they serve the dual purpose of being useful in the defense of private property—which is another aspect that collectivists seek to demonize—because it goes against their foundation philosophies.

I made a decision about the Cowboy Way when I was very little, well before I knew why.  I knew I liked The Cowboys with John Wayne over the rock group Kiss when I was in the fourth grade.  I knew I liked The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly more than Pink Floyd’s The Wall.  In general, westerns reflected my values innately, and I was fortunate enough to be stubborn in pursuing those values even though it was against the social grain.  I’m glad that I did—now more than ever.  Obviously my rejection was against liberalism which I determined as a four-year old, didn’t work.  My parents didn’t necessarily preach it to me, and nobody else felt as strongly about conservativism as I did—it’s just something that I’ve always had.  It was just something I observed and decided to pursue—not always with clarity, but as a hunch that it was the right thing to do according to my moral compass.  It was only over a great many years that I learned why.  Most children are afraid of falling and of loud noises because their brains are wired to protect themselves from the unknown.  For whatever reason, I knew from a young age that liberalism didn’t work under any circumstance.  To this very day nobody can present a strong case in favor of liberalism rationally.  When I first started wearing my cowboy hat while still in grade school I knew that the only hope for the human race was to step back to a philosophic period before the progressive era—right around 1890—to those values in American culture. Not the racism, or the limitations against women, but the basic foundations of human decency.  The Cowboy Way was the greatest casualty of the progressive era and it is the thing we most need in our modern society.  And it was important for the nation to hear from someone who embodies that Cowboy Way in very emphatic ways. That is why I had Quick Cal on WAAM during an important Saturday afternoon in the long history of the human race.  People needed to hear an alternative to the madness of liberalism that is destroying America.  And they need it fast!

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

 

The Cinebistro at Liberty Center: Better than a Broadway play, and more comfortable

I have to say something very positive about Cinebistro at Liberty Center, which is a luxury movie theater near my home.  I was at the soft opening for the James Bond film described below in the Channel 12 clip talking about the food selections available, and I have written about my experience with a positive review.  I have been to movie theaters all over the country over many years and I certainly know good from bad.  I also have been in several home theaters and know the benefits to them as well.  So it should carry some weight to know how much I think of the Cinebistro experience at Liberty Center which is the best way I think there is to see a movie.  I have been to that theater several times now and can report that after several months of operating, the theater is actually better now than when it first opened.  It is a grand palace of mythmaking endeavor and it is worthy of the best praise.

My wife and I went to see The Revenant there.  I had just jumped off the air at WAAM radio as I was guest hosting for my friend Matt Clark while he was on vacation.  We hadn’t had anything to eat yet and we had reservations to see the long-awaited movie at 3 PM.  I fully expected that in the middle of the afternoon between lunch and dinner that the Cinebistro wouldn’t be crowded, but was surprised that the theater was nearly sold out when I made my reservations online at 10 AM, before going on the air at 1600 WAAM.  The moment I signed off at the station we literally got into the car and went to Liberty Center because at Cinebistro if you have a movie start time of 3 PM you need to arrive at 2:30 to get seated and have your food order in.

Entry into the theater is just epic; I never get tired of it.  I was in the mood to be pampered; I had worked very hard all week.  I had done a lot of reading and writing that morning before doing an hour of live radio on a Saturday, so I was tired and ready to see a movie I hoped would be great—which it was.  That is what they do best at Cinebistro as opposed to a home theater or anywhere else, they understand people like me—hard working people who come to the movies for an intellectual experience as opposed to just entertainment.  Nothing for me is ever just fun.  Some people argue that’s not a good way to live, I’d argue the opposite.  Everything I do in my life I do well and I put a lot of effort into it.  I never just waste time.  No time in a 24 hour period is spent wasting time.  If I can’t squeeze multiple meanings out of every instance it’s just not worth doing.  So when I go to the movie theater, Cinebistro gets what I expect out of my investment.

Cinebistro does not skimp on their employees, they do not understaff.  There were a small army of people running the theater.  If you counted all the kitchen staff, which makes everything by scratch, and include the runners, servers and ushers, there are at least five times the amount of people who are typically employed by a theater system like Showcase, Rave, or Regal.  As I looked at all the employees through the lobby, at the bars, concessions, etc, it was quite an impressive operation and not every movie is promised to pack the theater house like The Revenant.  Most movies are typically 30% full, so it baffles me how Cinebistro does it.

The proximity to parking in the back lot and entering the Liberty Center complex through the access tunnel by The Funny Bone Comedy Club essentially meant that we parked, our car on a packed Saturday afternoon and were at the ticket counter within about five minutes where I picked up my reserved tickets and we were upstairs and in our seats at precisely 2:31 PM. My wife and I ordered a couple of hamburgers and some popcorn which lasted the entire two and a half hour movie, along with drink refills just like in a good restaurant.  There were a lot of “yes sirs” from the staff and everyone was very respectful—which is something I expect from other people.  I was able to step into the movie world on a pedestal and view the mythic essence of a good movie without distractions.  For the first time I was able to see what a full house at the Cinebistro looked like.  Even on the soft opening for Spectre it was my group and a few other key groups present, so I didn’t get to see how Cinebistro handled a crowd.  The answer was a very pleasant one.  Every seat was full yet I didn’t notice that anybody was around me. The seats are so big that the people nearest to me were a good distance, more than enough for me to stretch out and relax.

It’s not that I’m claustrophobic or can’t handle crowds; it’s just that I don’t enjoy myself in a crowd.  I don’t like the idea of breathing air that people around me immediately exhumed.  The carbon dioxide that comes out of the bodies of other people need time to mix with fresh oxygen molecules and nitrogen along with other elements to produce good quality air to breathe and that just can’t happen if during an entire two-hour movie someone is right next to you.  So space is important to me.  I typically go to movies when other people don’t for that reason.  At Cinebistro I don’t have to worry about them.  Their air circulation system in the ceiling is very good giving the air quality a feeling of constant replenishing.  With the food, service, spacing and air quality all in tip-top shape, I was able to enjoy my movie without any distractions, which I greatly appreciated-especially with something as mind-boggling epic as The Revenant.

Typically at the end of any film I watch if it was any good, I always stay until the end of the credits.  I read who did what, and where the filming locations were—and any other information that strikes my interest—like how many stuntmen did the film take, who were the visual effect companies, essentially how many jobs were created by the production of the film—because those types of things are also important to me.  I also just like to listen to the music and let the movie slowly roll through my mind.  So it really irritates me when other people sitting next to me want to get up as soon as the picture is done and head for their cars.  You always have to stand up a bit and let them pass in front of you and once they do you can just imagine that they are passing gas and that they likely have full bladders from sitting for so long and that they need to use the restroom.  I don’t enjoy knowing that those kinds of things are so close in proximity to my face, so until the theater empties, it stresses me out and is hard to enjoy the credits.  It’s even worse in regular theaters because teenagers are often present and they almost always stink—they smell like adolescents and cigarette smoke.  They just feel slimy when they bump into your leg.  Typically, you expect it when you go into a public place and I just endure it.  But at Cinebristo I never have to worry about it.  When the movie let out my wife and I could remain in our seats with our chairs reclined and our entire aisle was able to empty without a single person bumping into my feet. I didn’t have to move a muscle to let anybody get up and leave.

When the last of the credits finally ended I was a little surprised to see that the place looked like an entire restaurant had just got up at the same time and left.  It didn’t look bad, but it would take a lot of table clearing to remove all the plates and glasses that were on every table in the theater.  That’s another thing specific to Cinebisto.  Everything they do is restaurant quality including the utensils.  All the soft drinks are actual glasses and there are lots of wine glasses.  There are no paper cups and popcorn bags.  Everything is something that has to be washed in the kitchen.  They do not go cheap on anything, which they could easily justify at only $12 dollars per seat on films before 4 PM.  Night seats are only $14 dollars, not much more than a typical local theater chain.  I couldn’t help but think that nobody was doing any cleaning yet and that it was going to take a while to get the place ready for another showing.  Most of the people had long left and the last people had left several minutes before we did.  We were clearly the last ones out of our seats.  As we walked back out of the theater a manager was there with a little tray of mints which he offered to us with a smile and some polite banter.  I thought that was a nice touch and I told him I appreciated it.  Then we stepped out into the hall and saw about 15 employees ready to enter the theater to clean it.   The manager had made them stand in the hall and wait for us to leave.  I knew they had to be angry at us for staying so long, but the manager refused to let the employees enter to disrupt our movie experience.  That is the kind of place the Cinebistro is.  It’s not going out of its way to be snobby.  They just make a point to elevate the human experience of going to the movies.

So thank you Cinebistro for doing such a great job for one entire business quarter—I hope that everything continues as it has.  It was wonderful to leave that theater and have so many people tell me to have a good day as I passed them back into the large vaulted lobby of the Cobb Theater system. It was also nice to see that the sun had went down and the streets of Liberty Center were lit up nicely completing a nice day for my wife and me.  I was able to see a movie I really wanted to without having to compromise my comfort and standards, and for that I really appreciated it.  The whole experience was what you expect from a luxury theater system and it has lived up to those standards now over several visits which is a great compliment to the hard work obviously on display and in full commitment of the management of Cinebistro.  Going to the movies at Cinebistro has the feel of attending a play at the Aronoff Center or on Broadway—only without the tight seating and the crowded streets of a big city.  It is a unique experience and I’m proud to have one at Liberty Center.

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.

El Chapo Exposes Communist Ties to Hollywood: Sean Penn’s interview for left-leaning Rolling Stone and the failure of all governments

It is absolutely disgusting that Joaquín Guzmán felt so comfortable with producers and actors of American cinema that the communist Sean Penn was invited to meet with the most wanted fugitive in the world for a Rolling Stone interview in September 2015. I seem to be calling a lot of people communists these days but it’s only because they are coming out of their shells and calling themselves that—in this case Penn who seems to represent the Hollywood leftist politics as one of their most vocal advocates says it about himself.  Penn is a talented actor and sometimes director but he might as well be a filmmaker from Venezuela, China or Russia—because there isn’t much about him that is American—and that holds true of his friends, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, and James Cameron over the last 15 years. Hollywood is a cesspool of socialism and communism hidden behind Democratic fundraisers and environmental concerns.  The motion picture industry has been taken over by extreme leftist view points to such an extent that most of what they produce is ridiculously detrimental to our society.  While I was quite impressed with The Revenant, upcoming films like Dirty Grandpa with Robert De Niro show how far American cinema has embedded itself with drug avocation and liberal view points toward most social circumstances.  The situation is so bad that the most wanted fugitive in the world was able to contact members of Hollywood to give him a private interview at his home in the jungles of Sinaloa.

Of course Mexico and most of the media are trying to paint the communist Penn as a hero for leading authorities to El Chapo after a Friday night shootout led to his recapture.  But everyone is missing the point.  The CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and all of Mexico was looking for the drug dealer yet Penn and Rolling Stone magazine were able to have an interview with him over four months ago and nothing was done.  Guzmán supposedly had a $100 million dollar hit on an American presidential candidate in Donald Trump—who is the Republican frontrunner—yet Hollywood was able to find and correspond with the drug dealer as literally every government on planet earth failed.  Give me a break!  This is a disgusting story that shows just how corrupt everything is from the President of the United States to all our government officials supposedly supplying security.  It’s not like El Chapo was hiding in some other country.  He was in his home state of Mexico all this time surrounded by thousands of people every day-and he was talking to Hollywood producers about making a movie about his life.  Sean Penn should be thrown in jail for conspiring with an enemy of the United States.  He’s no hero for getting Guzmán captured.  He’s a communist insurgent who associates with the worst the world has to offer in an attempt to overthrow American sovereignty.  Drugs in American culture are a Trojan horse weapon meant to topple our capitalists society with an overload of excess, and Hollywood is helping losers like El Chapo do it—and they should be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law—everyone involved.  Here’s how our pathetic media outlets reported the story with links provided—article edited for priority briefing.

Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo, started out in business not long after turning 6, selling oranges and soft drinks. By 15, he said in an interview conducted in a jungle clearing by the actor and director Sean Penn for Rolling Stone magazine, he had begun to grow marijuana and poppies because there was no other way for his impoverished family to survive.

Now, unapologetically, he said: “I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats.”

Though his fortune, estimated at $1 billion, has come with a trail of blood, he does not consider himself a violent man. “Look, all I do is defend myself, nothing more,” he told Mr. Penn. “But do I start trouble? Never.”

The seven hours Mr. Guzmán spent with Mr. Penn, and the follow-up interviews by phone and video, which began in October while he was on the run from the Mexican and American authorities, marked another surreal turn in his long-running battle to evade Mexican and American authorities. Mr. Guzmán, one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, who had twice escaped jail, was captured in his home state of Sinaloa in northwest Mexico on Friday after a gun battle with the authorities.

The interview with Rolling Stone, believed to be the first Mr. Guzmán has given in decades, was conducted over several sessions. It was scheduled to be published online Saturday night.

The interviews were held in a jungle clearing atop a mountain at an undisclosed location in Mexico. Surrounded by more than 100 cartel troops, and wearing a silk shirt and pressed black jeans, Mr. Guzmán sat down to dinner with Mr. Penn and Kate del Castillo, an actress who once played a drug kingpin in a soap opera.

Even though Mexican troops attacked his hide-out in the days after the meeting, necessitating a narrow escape, Mr. Guzmán continued the interview by BlackBerry Messenger and in a video delivered by courier to the pair later.

Mr. Penn’s account is likely to deepen the concern among the Mexican authorities already embarrassed by Mr. Guzmán’s multiple escapes, the months required to find him again and his status for some as something of a folk hero. Mr. Penn describes being waved through a military road checkpoint on his way to meet Mr. Guzmán, which Mr. Penn suggested was because the soldiers recognized Mr. Guzmán’s son. Mr. Penn said he was also told, during a leg of the journey taken in a small plane equipped with a scrambling device for ground radar only, that the cartel was informed by an insider when the military deployed a high-altitude surveillance plane that might have spotted their movements.

Mr. Penn and Mr. Guzmán spoke for seven hours, the story reports, at a compound amid dense jungle. The topics of conversation turned in unexpected directions. At one stage, Mr. Penn brought up Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential candidate; there were some reports that Mr. Guzmán had put a $100 million bounty on Mr. Trump after he made comments offensive to Mexicans. “Ah! Mi amigo!” Mr. Guzmán responded.

He asked Mr. Penn whether people in America were interested in him and laughed when Mr. Penn told him that the Fusion channel was repeating a documentary on him, “Chasing El Chapo.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/world/americas/el-chapo-mexican-drug-lord-interview-with-sean-penn.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

It is widely considered to be against the basic principles of journalism to grant a subject such authority over a piece.

Rolling  Stone’s journalistic practices have been criticized since its publication of a now discredited gang-rape story at the University of Virginia.

A representative for Rolling Stone did not immediately reply to The Blaze’s request for comment Saturday night.

Guzman was captured by Mexican marines early Friday in a coastal city, and the attorney general says the drug boss was tracked down partly because he was making a biographical movie.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/01/09/rolling-stone-granted-el-chapo-approval-power-over-entire-exclusive-profile-on-him/

I don’t know who the hell Kate Del Castillos is, nor do I care. I want to see Mexico get Sean Penn and throw him in one of those crappy Mexican prisons. Give him a taste of what Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, Sean Penn is scum, and is the face of the progressive liberal Democrat party. Throw the book at him Mexico! Force the US to extradite him. Use the Affluenza kid as bait.

http://www.fireandreamitchell.com/2016/01/09/sean-penn-under-investigation-for-meeting-el-chapo/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FireAndreaMitchell+%28Fire+Andrea+Mitchell%21+Exposing+Liberal+bias+cause+the+MSM+doesn%27t+have+to.%29

Conchita Alonso — known for her role in “The Running Man” and “Predator 2,” and who once acted in a 1988 film with Penn — had previously written an open letter criticizing him for his support for the Venezuelan dictator. Spotting the actor, who was also waiting for lost luggage, she approached him. When the “Milk” star recognized her, his smile disappeared: He told her he didn’t want to talk to her and accused her brother of trying to assassinate Chavez.

In an interview with WMAL, the actress said she told Penn, “You are in favor of Hugo Chavez and [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad.”

When Penn denied he supports Ahmadinejad and called Conchita Alonso “a pig,” she replied, “And you are a communist, Sean Penn! … You’re a communist asshole!”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/20/finally-actress-tells-sean-penn-hes-a-communist-asshole-video/#ixzz3woNTTedL

This whole story is just so terribly disgusting, it shows how embedded criminal elements are within Hollywood.   It also shows the network of priority that some of the worst that exist around the world gravitate to and why.  Then of course there is the sheer incompetence of all the governments involved in not picking up the loser Guzmán who was operating a multibillion dollar business right out in the open.  The whole thing is just pathetic.  And during the drama, Donald Trump turned out to be right about everything, including how cozy Guzmán’s relationship was with the United States.  Trump also deserves credit for staying tough even with the $100 million dollar bounty on his head.  Apparently nobody else has any toughness anymore, so it’s good to see somebody out there still does.  This whole case just exhibits why we need a wholesale change in American culture from the very top to the deepest bottom and scumbags like El Chapo and his criminal children deeply connected to Hollywood and Vegas need to be rooted out and punished for their work against American strategic objectives.

Personally for me, I don’t like drugs—in ANY form.  I don’t like drinking.  I don’t like collectivist based governments—such as communism and socialism—and I don’t like the worst scum bags of our planet using an American industry as a means of social destabilization right under the watch of all our tax payer funded governments.  Want to know why socialism and communism will never work and why in America we need guns—lots of guns?  This El Chapo story contains the very reasons with great illustration into the worst that human beings bring to the table of thought and action and exemplifies why the only sane people left in America are supporting Donald Trump for president.

This is the guy who was contacted and captured El Chapo.  What a bunch of dumb asses.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Why the NRA Didn’t Attend the CNN Town Hall: The tricks progressives play to advance their strategic objectives

When President Barack Obama agreed to the CNN Town Hall debate on Gun Control in America on January 7th 2016 immediately after he signed executive orders against them, I couldn’t help but think of the typical consensus building exercises that public schools use when they want to bend communities over their knees for tax increases.  When my home district of Lakota conducted those types of meetings even though I was against the tax increases, I didn’t attend because I didn’t want to break bread with the enemy.  So I can understand why the NRA refused the CNN Town Hall.   There was little for them to accomplish having a public meeting with Barack Obama in a consensus building exercise unless you are willing to go to battle in front of everyone and embarrass the President.  That is the reason I didn’t attend the Lakota meetings—because I didn’t want to make friends and find common ground due to the foundation philosophies being too far off between us.  CLICK THE MANY LINKS TO REVIEW.  With that said, I think the NRA should have attended and engaged the president the way Taya Kyle did and several others—but I understand why they didn’t.

The problem with progressives, which the president certainly embodies that definition–is that they use compromise to advance their plans.  When you negotiate with them and give a little they always come back later to take a little more.  Compromising with them only opens the door for more impositions.  For instance, back on the public school debate, they always suggest that a little bit of tax today will save a generation of children tomorrow, so why not give a few dollars of your property value to the children who need it.  However, because of the progressive management of public school systems and the escalating costs associated with their style of management, every five years those schools continuously return to voters with the same argument because they never change their essential behavior.  The progressive oriented aggressors in this case always favor consensus building exercises because they know that no matter what concessions are achieved during a public meeting, that they will always come back to take a little more—and they continue forever until there is nothing left because the basic philosophy of a typical progressive is rooted in communism.  So in the case of a school system, every five years school board management typically changes a bit as well as the top-level teachers who take up the most payroll in a budget so the same people aren’t always asking for the new tax increase.  But, because the foundation philosophy of progressives is communism each new generation of progressives coming to consensus building meetings can trust that new concessions will be demanded and that the slow advancement toward a centrally controlled society will eventually be achieved once property taxes are too high to mandate private property ownership.

For instance, in my community, Liberty Township, Ohio, it is nearly impossible for a private owner to hold more than 10 acres of land because the taxes are so incredibly high.  Those taxes are high because of community mismanagement—local government making too many concessions over the years to the school system of Lakota and other public employees.  The only real decisions that large land holders have is to sell their old farms to developers who will turn plots of land to neighborhoods that put more kids in schools requiring more public employees to deal with the increase in children.  Essentially two decades of tax increases created the problem so now there is suburban overcrowding and the golf courses near my home are struggling to justify holding so much land at such a high rate of tax to benefit so few people.  This forces the land use to migrate from exclusivity among say country club affluence into more of a “community” centered use, which progressives have always been in support of.  For the people who loved the open farm land and large plots of land under private ownership progressives within the school system and local government have managed to convert the land use to large plots of that same land being managed by socialist oriented neighborhood homeowner associations that collectively decide whether or not you can have up a garage door or park an RV in your driveway.  As that same land used to be managed by a private family that might have had a target range in their backyard and a few cars being always worked on next to a barn, the land was converted into something entirely different and much more conducive toward the aims of progressives—which are aligned with the original communist goals of eradicating private property.

Nobody ever says it directly but if you get them to dinner away from a crowd’s ear people like Jeffery Stec who ran the Lakota “community conversations” have every intention of advancing progressive agenda concerns against all individual rights.  Even though Anderson Cooper at CNN did a great job with the debate at the Town Hall featuring Barack Obama just days after the president’s executive orders angered gun owners immensely, both Cooper and Obama as progressives were working to whittle away the resistance to their eventual aims of collective assimilation.  If you watch the debate carefully dear reader, you will see the tactics.  For instance, when Obama had to deal with the widow of Chris Kyle followed up by the rape victim—both who were strong supporters of the Second Amendment, Obama took the edge off their resistance with compliments to ease into his eventual position.  For either of the two women to attack Obama after he had provided such compliments would make them appear as the villains.  So Obama took away their aggression with compliments in a public setting.  The president yielded no ground, yet Taya and others had to, so to appear civil in the discourse.  CNN gave president Obama the high ground strategically, and once he had that, there was no way to create leverage against him in debate.  The public watching all this then assumed that Obama seemed reasonable.  CNN appeared to side at times with Taya Kyle and other Second Amendment supporters.  But in the long run, resistance to the gun control measures loosened allowing them to stand against scrutiny.  Then when the next tragedy occurs, more laws will be proposed.  Just like the land grabs of local public schools converting over time the use and philosophic position of the community toward such use progressives will gain and everyone else loses.

There is a way to attack such town hall effectiveness against the other side.  It is difficult, but possible.  In such a conflict, the NRA doesn’t stand to gain much—only to hold their ground.  The real test of Obama’s consensus building exercise would be to speak at an NRA event, on ground controlled by gun rights supporters.  CNN is certainly sympathetic toward Obama and all past and future progressives—so it was a safe zone for the president.  But a NASCAR event or a gun show would be a different story.  Obama wouldn’t give the same town hall in front of such an audience if he were invited because he would not be able to maintain the high ground in the debate.  Under such conditions, Obama would be equal at best, and that would not give him the strategic platform to execute the progressive objectives.  So it goes both ways.  The NRA did not attend the CNN Town Hall because by the nature of it, the president controlled the high ground in the debate, just as Jeffery Stec in my community controlled the community conversations.  All this is a variation of the Delphi Technique that I talked so much about over five years ago.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  The intent of such games is not to find mutual understanding—it is to advance the cause of progressives—which always lead to further impositions against freedom—so the only way not to lose such an engagement is to not participate.  However, that only works so long.  Eventually, a conflict is mandated and for that reason, the NRA needs to think of ways to go on the offensive.  My suggestion would be to invite the president to the next NRA event and strip him of the security of dealing with the friendly studios of CNN.  In the battle over public opinion a new strategy is needed.  Yielding to progressives will not get the job done—as many homeowners who used to hold large plots of land now clearly understand.  You have to know what kind of game we are all playing before you can win it.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Hillary the Communist: Admitting the truth, even when it hurts

I’ve been saying it for a long time; socialism is the basic philosophy of the Democratic Party.  People used to think I was being an extremist when I stated that teacher unions expected socialism from voters and school boards essentially teaching it to students in public education.  Most labor unions are functioning socialist enterprises which of course leads directly to small “c” communism.  Worse than socialists are “progressives” who have a strong belief in communism as a foundation principle to their style of governing.  Most progressives will deny it, but if you placed their belief system on a social scale next to the Bolsheviks of 1919 they would be indistinguishable from each other.  There is a reason that progressives and other liberals don’t want people to read Ayn Rand, who as an American novelist wrote quite passionately about communism in her very good book, We the Living.  I have known this for a very long time because I am an avid reader, and I understand history so I have been able to function from a position of knowledge and not just the marketing of ideas proposed in what people think is modern times.  That’s why it was so ridiculously stupid of Hillary Clinton when pressed by Chris Mathews—who is a fan of the Democratic candidate for president, to declare that she was a progressive Democrat.   That is equivalent to saying about herself under a proper definition that she’s a communist socialist.

This isn’t the first time this year that Chris Mathews on the very “progressive” MSNBC cable channel has asked someone of great importance within the Democratic Party what the difference between a socialist and a Democrat is.  But this one had more bite because Hillary had no idea how to answer the question even though she knew the question was coming at some point, because he had asked it before.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  She couldn’t answer the question because there isn’t any difference.  Democrats today in 2016 are essentially the communists and socialists of the last century—the only real difference is that they changed the name.  Their essential philosophy is the same.

I don’t have much patience for stupid people—I’ll have to be honest.  When I had this education debate years ago within the media, at school boards, in education reform groups—and with other politicians I thought people close to the situation already knew what I was saying, that the essential product of public schools was socialism.  I had known it for years, so I assumed that we could have a conversation from a reasonable vantage point.  But the mad mothers and fathers angry at me for proposing to take away their tax money for essentially a day time socialist training center—which is what every public school is—provoked a lot of anger which I had no tolerance for.   Those idiots thought they would harass me online, come to my house, and attack me through social networks with all the socialist flair utilized in that novel, We the Living and that for some reason I’d just take it.  No, that’s not how things work.

I have always known that socialists and Democrats were essentially the same because I have always worked hard to have the answers to things—even if those answers were inconvenient.  For instance, everyone knows I have written a lot about Star Wars.  It could be said that I’ve been a mega fan.  I know Star Wars better than most people know their own families.  However, I do not like the new films by Disney and I will not read the books or buy into their product any longer in a post George Lucas era.  I see clearly in Star Wars now massive progressive influences and I will reject it—because I know better.  When something lets me down, I drop it like a rock in less than a second.  I went though a similar thought process with public education, our legal system, environmentalism, even family members who have not behaved properly.  It really didn’t matter what or who they were, I have dropped them at the first sign that they do not comply with my ethics and values.  And when the question comes as to who am I to judge—the reply is simple—an individual who works hard to be that way.  When I said that socialism was embedded deep in our culture I was able to do that because I was able to emotionally divorce myself from attachments that might skew my vision from the reality of knowledge.  So even when many were writing newspapers and television stations protesting my coverage by them because of my “extremist” language I never recanted or backed off because to do so would be to lie.  To lie would be wrong because it would force a new definition for the things I knew to be true—and that wasn’t going to happen.

This charade has went on for a long time largely because members of the media, like Chris Mathews accepted the revisionist definitions of a party he obviously supports—the Democrats whom he probably believes is still the party of JFK or LBJ.  The truth however is that Republicans like Jeb Bush and John Kasich are the new Democrats by proper definitions because the political lens of perception has been moved so far to the political left.  So it appears that Chris Mathews and others like him are having a real debate within themselves about the differences between socialists and Democrats or even communists and progressives.  The answer has always been there no matter how painful it might have been, or inconvenient.

I said it during many public education debates that if people wanted socialism and voted for it, then so be it—but they better know what it was they were voting for.  It’s really not a firm indication of public sentiment if Democrats avoid the proper definition for what they are doing just to win support of the public hoping slowly to cook the American public from capitalism to communism with changed terminology.  Democrats and progressives have arrived at this political climate by deceit, not by actually selling who and what they are.  What provokes the debate even now is that Bernie Sanders as a president is openly calling himself a socialist which then forces Hillary Clinton to name the difference.  Which of course she can, so she did the worst thing she could have done—she called herself worse—essentially a communist.  But she hoped that nobody understood the definitions and would bother to look.  Of course that doesn’t fly with me.

Hundreds of thousands of people read this blog site every year from countries all over the globe.  Most of those people disagree with me about one thing or another.  Sometimes they get so angry they call me names which always starts a small war of words.  Over the course of the last six years that I have been writing at this site—every single day in voluminous amounts—nobody has been able to dispute my claims factually.  Even the worst of the teacher’s union radicals within the state of Ohio could dispute it when I called them all socialists—sometimes quite publicly.  I have talked about it on the radio and written about socialism in public schools and most government offices extensively, and nobody at any academic level has been able to dispute it under any circumstance.  And believe me, the radical loser professors who call me an anti-education radical gun-nut would love to beat me intellectually if they could—but they can’t.  The reason they can’t is for the same reason that Hillary Clinton couldn’t provide a different definition of socialism in comparison to a typical member of the Democratic Party.  When the Party’s top voices cannot give a single instance of how Democrats are different from socialists, the truth is staring you right in the face dear reader.  And I have been telling you that for a very long time.  Once again, people should have listened.

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.

Guns are the Key to American Exceptionalism: Why a crying President Obama hates them and western capitalist culture

 

I have to thank Brownells for their service over the Holidays of 2015.  I was able to perform a “trigger job” on my Ruger Vaquero largely by the fine offerings that Brownells provided and I can say that I had one of the best holiday off-periods I can ever remember having.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW WHO BROWNELLS IS.  It was quite nice to stand at my workbench and perform the job which ran into complications until the very small hours of the morning.  Once completed I was able to test fire the gun from the same location and it was very nice to be able to do so as the clock on my garage wall indicated it was 2:30 in the morning.  As Obama unleashed his pathetic gun control executive orders shortly after the New Year crying like a an epic wimp of magnanimous proportions in front of millions of people, I couldn’t help but think what an alien concept guns were to the little kid from Indonesia’s foreign raised mind.  The idea of guns in a private residence is just something he can’t fathom because he has been taught incorrectly to his very core.  To say he’s an idiot is to curse him from the benefit of not being raised to be an American.  To be fair, he just doesn’t understand American culture and what an imposition he proposes as an inner city Chicago activist and lawyer to the freedom loving people lucky enough to be born and raised in the United States.  However, with that said and disclaimer given—he’s still an idiot.

To me Obama is an idiot because he refuses to see the superiority of American culture in relation to the rest of the world and how guns are at the center of that proper mentality which advances American Excpetionalism.  If he were smart, he’d see the writing on the wall and acknowledge cultural values appropriately.  Instead, he has bought into the progressive notion of “fairness” and “equality” without considering the root cause of either.  The gun makes the world fairer and more equal and Obama’s desire for executive orders puts too much responsibility on government management than individual effort.  If a person was smart, in spite of where they were born or raised, they should acknowledge a superior approach philosophically to politics and ethics and adjust their foundation beliefs accordingly.  Instead, Obama signed executive orders against the Second Amendment that even the AP news service thought was alarming.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s do-it-himself plan for keeping guns away from those who shouldn’t have them falls far short of what he’d hoped to accomplish through legislation after a massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School shook the country in 2012.

Yet even the more modest steps Obama will announce Tuesday rely on murky interpretations of existing law that could be easily reversed by his successor.

Obama’s package of executive actions aims to curb what he’s described as a scourge of gun violence in the U.S., punctuated by appalling mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut; Charleston, South Carolina; and Tucson, Arizona, among many others. After Newtown, Obama sought far-reaching, bipartisan legislation that went beyond background checks.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/obama-initiative-on-gun-control-shows-limits-of-acting-alone/ar-AAgnxGd?ocid=spartandhp

I understand the situation clearly, and it is always made more tangible when I get to do gun jobs like the modification to my Vaquero, guns are about more than shooting other people.  In my case, I am working on Cowboy Fast Draw which is a relatively new sport born out of necessity that makes reducing the trigger pull and hammer strength a need just to be competitive.  It was very soothing to me to work on that gun, reload my ammunition, and troubleshoot my issues late at night when other people were sleeping.  I had on talk radio and was able to hear stimulating conversation and work with specialized tools to perform the task.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  The last thing in the world I was thinking about was shooting somebody with my gun.  I was thinking of making it work faster and being more accurate so that I could hit a target under pressure faster than a competitor in friendly all American competition.  There was no malice or ill intention in working on my gun that night and I felt more joy out of doing it than most anything I’ve done for many years.  It was craftsmanship that was specific to our American culture.

One of my son-in-laws is from Europe as I’ve stated before.  My daughter and he just returned recently from Iceland where they vacationed, and I get from them lots of fine stories of family and friends who are shocked by their American love of guns.  In England, where he’s from, it is unfathomable that any family would own one gun, let alone many.  They have been conditioned as a culture to put their trust completely in others for their own survival, and we’re talking about a culture that was nearly taken over by the Nazis during World War II.  Many grandparents there still remember airplanes being shot down in their towns and farmlands.  In spite of those near dangers and long history of war with rival European countries, the monarchy of England seldom showed their people that they trusted them with their own firearms.  So there is always a sense that Europeans are still the subjects of an aristocratic elite, which is still very common in all European countries.  My son-in-law came to America to essentially get away from that restriction.  He shoots somewhere several weekends a month and has quite a nice collection of firearms.  Most of the people in our family do as well, and nobody we know personally are hillbilly tobacco chewing drunks—which is the stereotype that Hollywood likes to place on our Midwest culture within the United States.  Everyone is affluent and well-educated.  And everyone is armed—well armed.

There is a measure of security of having so many firearms that puts in the American mind the knowledge that nobody will barge in on our homes in the middle of the night unfettered.  It is nice to know that we can defend ourselves. But owning guns is a lot more than that.  It’s about the craftsmanship of owning them, cleaning them, shooting them into small little targets that have a majority of the appeal.  Sports like Cowboy Fast Draw are emerging with roots in war and carnage—but so is football, and soccer.  The trigger job that I performed was all about specialization and achievement.  I ran into trouble when reassembling the Vaquero which drove me nuts for quite a long time.  After replacing all my springs with the lighter ones from Brownells I found that the gun would not cock while pointed down into my holster.  When I withdrew it and pointed it up it would then work properly.  That made no reasonable sense to me whatsoever.  After taking the gun apart several times and putting it back together trying to pin point the problem, I eventually figured it out.  I thought I had lost some kind of gravity activated spring that would cause such a condition but eventually figured out that the base pin spring was not pushing up against the transfer bar properly causing it to get caught under the firing pin.  Once that situation was rectified, everything worked wonderfully, and the new springs had really sped up the cocking mechanism.

It was New Years’ Eve by the time I got the gun working right and was enjoying shooting it over and over again to make sure there were no lingering problems.  It felt great to work through a problem that seemed really hard at first, but to overcome it with logic and craftsmanship.  In a lot of ways it defined the essence of the gun debate.  People who have similar stories to tell such as mine understand the magic of gun ownership.  People who have not found a way to leave Europe to the Dark Ages, or other places in the world who have not yet discovered such a hobby do not understand.  They are the ones who seek gun control because they have not yet fully embraced being an American.  Obama is not an American because he has trouble with his birth certificate, or because he was raised in Indonesia by a second father trying to tame a restless wife.   He’s un-America because he has not embraced the art and values of the culture within the United States.  Instead, he’s always trying to change it through radicalism and executive orders.  That is why I say that he’s an idiot.  Rather than learn about the value and success of our culture, he wants to change it into something the Europeans understand which is really stupid.  CLICK HERE FOR WHY.  The type of people who most want to change America are those who still look at Europe as the dominate culture and they are in our military, our politics, and just about every high level office in corporate and entertainment America.  They typically reject American Exceptionalism because they can’t bring themselves to the truth, that other countries essentially suck, and that is largely because they don’t allow their people to own firearms—which entrusts in them the ability to act freely and with responsibility.  In Europe, even to this day—most people are considered “subjects” to an aristocracy and that is just a foreign concept in America.

At that late hour with my gun fixed, talk radio broadcasting interesting debate, I felt wonderful not just for repair job successfully performed, but because the gun as a hobby was a reminder that in America I don’t have to worship at the feet of any aristocrat or noble character of any kind.  If the President walked up to my home at that moment there wouldn’t be any bowing or pandering going on.  I’d simply look at him like some little girl selling Girl Scout cookies—since he likes to cry so much.  I’d listen to what he wanted then decide to help him or not.  But I wouldn’t be compelled to do anything—and it is the gun that gives me that freedom and keeps us sanctimonious even as radical politicians create executive orders to make America into something they are more comfortable with—because they were essentially too lazy to embrace our culture and do the work themselves of adopting its values into their lives.  That is why Obama’s executive orders are such an insult and why Brownells continues to be one of my favorite companies on planet earth.  I just love those guys!

http://www.brownells.com/

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.