Tag: Bullwhips

Kathy Wyenandt the Democrat Lakota Tax Supporter: Apparently they want a rematch

I think its very interesting that Kathy Wyenandt is still celebrating the passage of the Lakota levy of 2013 as her calling card to get into the Ohio Senate. At a recent debate some of the things I heard her say about her role in passing that levy stirred me the wrong way. In ways that I’ve written plenty on, that levy was personal and had evolved well beyond just a healthy debate between opposing sides. When she talks about No Lakota Levy as the organized resistance to the tax increases that were proposed three other times prior and went down to defeat, it was my face that was in the front of it, and it was my reputation that they attacked when they couldn’t win any other way, so I disagree with Kathy Wyenandt who became the fourth campaign attempt at passing that ridiculous tax increase at Lakota schools. After listening to her I think we need to set the record straight because there was some really bad action going on with that effort for which Kathy was in the middle of and we need to talk about it.

Kathy Wyenandt is taking credit for her role in passing that tax increase so let’s review what happened. After three levy attempts for which I was the spokesman of the No Lakota Levy group the school board targeted me personally to get me out of the way of their opposition for another attempt which they were talking about doing in the following spring. I had two problems with that, the voters had spoken on three previous attempts, a resounding no, and Lakota wasn’t listening. Instead they made it personal and went after my character directly, siding with the Cincinnati Enquirer in bringing great harm to my reputation in an effort to smoke out all the No Lakota Levy supporters whom I represented often on WLW radio. The organized labor efforts of the teacher’s union and the levy supporting moms of Lakota went on quite a campaign against me, because they couldn’t beat the arguments I poised at them in live debates on the radio, on stage at various forums, and anywhere else they wanted to fight. Because their premise on the whole thing was wrong. So they lobbied WLW to stop supporting the No Lakota Levy campaign, which led to the firing of my radio friend Doc Thompson while on his honeymoon, which was a very low blow to him.  He and I talked about the situation and he spilled the beans to me as to what went on behind the scenes at WLW in conjunction with Lakota lobbyists, all which occurred at the same time in a coordinated fashion.  No school system should have that kind of power against the tax payers who pay their bills and hire them to manage their district. There were other elements, but the Lakota position was certainly a corporate decision on behalf of Clear Channel that wasn’t there in the 2013 election.

I had my much publicized fight with the core levy supporters when I called them all “latte sipping prostitutes” essentially as I was outraged that those people did not respect the previous 3 elections and kept scheming and plotting until they got their property tax increase, and it caused a separation of No Lakota Levy from my representation. I wanted out in a lot of ways because I was sick of talking about education issues. I wanted to publish a book I had been working on that wasn’t related at all to public education, yet my actions with the Lakota levy was setting me up on all kinds of television, radio, and other public formats that wanted me to be their education spokesman, so the longer the Lakota levy issue went on, the more trapped in it I became. I was hoping that after that third attempt they would stop and listen. But they didn’t, instead they spent more tax money on more consensus building efforts and showed they intended to try for a fourth wasting more of my time, so I blew up and the rest is history. We agreed to a cease fire, I moved on to other things and Lakota started plotting for that fourth attempt a year and a half later for which Kathy Wyenandt was brought in to help. And even with all that, they only won by 1% of the vote, not at all a stout and convincing victory. No Lakota Levy was there to organize a resistance but in looking back, I think we all agree we should have stuck together and if we had, there is no way that Lakota would have won. If Lakota tries again, we are talking about getting the band back together again.

The big turn in the vote was Sheriff Jones, the popular Republican who thought it was time to support Lakota because they had promised to use some of the money for increased security. Many of the No Lakota Levy people were willing to join with Jones to give Lakota a chance and some voters followed, enough to give Lakota a very small victory. After the win, Lakota did with the money exactly what I said they would do, they gave raises to the teachers even though they should have been laying off due to declining enrollment. They had been operating as a surplus for several years due to that declining enrollment but now they find themselves in the same trajectory of surplus spending and are talking about yet another levy. I just had a talk with several No Lakota Levy people the other day and we are seriously considering to meet that levy attempt in the same way we did on the previous three attempts that defeated the tax increase. Playing nice like many of them wanted to in that 2013 attempt stung in the end and the taste has been bad for everyone because many feel like they were lied to by Lakota. We have all been focused in getting a third conservative vote on the school board, but that has been not nearly as effective as just voting no on school levies. But the status quo of just passing more property tax increases every so many years is just not an acceptable option. If Kathy Wyenandt wants to take credit for that tax increase, which she clearly does, then have at it. But the truth of the matter was that Sheriff Jones changed the numbers, and we had split our efforts within No Lakota Levy. Only by dividing and conquering did the levy pass. It wasn’t that Kathy reached across the aisle to Republicans and Democrats to build a coalition. It was simply that Jones and his followers wanted to give Lakota a chance, which they have squandered.

I have spoken to Kathy on several occasions now and everyone seems surprised that I am not some raving lunatic on that matter. In fact during the three previous levy attempts I was very friendly with everyone, including the pro levy people. I was always happy to argue the facts. But I have a very bad temper, I can handle it just fine, but when someone punches at me or even thinks to, it doesn’t go well for the perpetrator.  I have never taken an attack on me lightly and when Joan Powell and Julie Shaffer on the school board decided to attack me personally, that was the end of the cordial activity. It was they who weren’t listening to what the voters said, and insisted on continuing to make levy attempts until they wore voters out into just saying yes. It was one of the most crooked schemes I have ever seen and it ruined my thoughts on public education forever. I don’t think those people should be anywhere near educating the next generation and I could tell stories all day for the record, and if this extortion scheme wasn’t so wide spread in virtually every government school, there would be serious legal issues.  I have not told all the stories I know about these people because honestly, I have wanted Lakota to improve its image, for or community’s sake.  But since its government, it gets overlooked and we are all supposed to take it smiling.  It was with each levy attempt that Lakota made that caused me to think that the John Dewey system of education was a ridiculous failure that needed to be completely reinvented, which is where I am on all education topics these days. Most of the No Lakota Levy supporters do not feel as strongly as I do on the matter, they just don’t want to get ripped off by the school that harms their projects. I however think public education as a concept needs a complete re-invention, so I don’t want to spend a further dime on any of it until we have that discussion. If not for my experiences with the Lakota levy attempts, I might not feel that way, but the more I learned, the more I despised the process.

It certainly helped that when Kathy Wyenandt came along, she didn’t look like the bottom of someone’s shoe the way previous pro school advocates presented themselves. That certainly helped take the edge off all the hatred that had been brewing between the various groups in the process. But that hatred was created by Lakota not listening to the voters and insisting that they just keep going to the voters until an election went their way. They cut busing as an extortion tactic, they took away sports programs, they played lots of games when the real meat of their problem was their excessive payroll. Kathy made it easy for Sheriff Jones and some other local leaders to give Lakota a chance, which they have blown, of course. And if Kathy wants a rematch, let’s have it. I bet Lakota wouldn’t get 1% of the vote today. And I think she knows that which is why she wants this senate job, because everyone knows Lakota is going to try for another tax increase because they do not have control of their budget. And when that happens, Kathy wants to be in Columbus so she doesn’t have to face the fact that the levy win in 2013 was a falsehood of smoke and mirrors, and once people realize that, she won’t be able to use it for an opportunity for higher office.

I am always happy to have a professional debate and discussion about everything. I am used to dealing with people who do not agree 100% with my view of the world and I can talk to a person like Kathy and many of these other pro tax advocates without getting mad at them. But when they take a shot at me and make it personal, then my policy is worse than Donald Trump’s policy of hitting back twice as hard. I tend to hit back until there is nothing left of the other side and I do that in everything in my life. So any past that we have had where Lakota used people like Kathy Wyenandt to advance a tax position they shouldn’t even have been asking for is on them, and all the anger that came from that attempt which is still as strong today, if not stronger, than it was prior to 2013. The problem was and always has been that after the first levy attempt that was defeated way back in 2010, Lakota should have managed their labor contracts differently. But instead they chose to pass their mismanagement off onto the community to cover the insane expenses of their collective bargaining agreements to the taxpayer, most of which do not have children in the school system. And today there are more of those people voting than there were in 2010, so a rematch to set the record straight would be a welcomed occasion. Whether or not its No Lakota Levy or some update of that concept, I’ll be there to meet it with those also interested, and the truth will be obvious.

Rich Hoffman

Bill Kristol was Always a Democrat: Understanding the political spectrum that doesn’t change, only the relativity of a person within it

It came up a bunch this past week, and why recently I have been talking about the political spectrum more than the label of Republican or Democrat. For review, it has been my offering that the more intelligent and worldly a person is, the further along that political spectrum to the right that they are. For instance, I have known a lot of Democrats and went to many, many social events where there were lots of Democrats, and “arty” people and they think of themselves as smart academics. They can tell you all about the names of wines and what they should be paired with, they will talk about sail boats in Nantucket and tell you all about their second homes in Florida, but they aren’t very wise in matters of life. The more they learn however, the further to the right they might be said to be. And that is why there is all this business of some people swapping back and forth between Republican and Democrats, such as Bill Kristol going from the bastion of conservatives with his now bankrupt magazine to looking like a clone of Karl Marx as an anti-Trumper, anti-capitalist. Kristol never moved ideologically, but the party of Republicans under Trump’s White House leadership has moved further to the right leaving Kristol behind.

I haven’t listened much to WLW for many years as I lost respect for the audience they are trying to attract. I’m much, much more of a 55 KRC guy than someone who likes to hear hours and hours of sports broadcasting and middle of the road political commentary. But in my office, professionally, which is surrounded by lots of very intense machinery only WLW comes in on my radio. I don’t live stream it on the internet, I still use a broadcast radio that I’ve had for thirty years more for sentiment than practicality, but I like having it since its not dependent on a computer system, it only needs electric to receive a signal, so I let it play all hours of the day 7 days a week and is always there to give me news at the top and bottom of every hour. So I put up with WLW’s soft side because I want the news. It’s the same arrangement at my home, in my workshop/shooting range I have WLW on for the same time slot depending on where I am, I still get the news at the top and bottom of every hour and can track stories as they develop. So it didn’t go without my notice that they have a new slogan, “explained not shouted” which is meant to aim their programming at those further down the political spectrum where the not so smart people are, the Democrats. Because they think that is their future.

I’d say it’s a miscalculation on their part. The future is further to the right not the left of our political spectrum. Even though our public schools and colleges are clearly teaching socialism and have been for quite a long time, life experiences push people to the right. I was thinking of this very issue as I was speaking to Kathy Wyenandt at a recent event. She is listed as a Democrat currently because she lives near me in Liberty Township, Ohio and all the Republican seats are taken pretty much. She can easily dominate on the Democrat side because she is very smart and talented. As she was talking to me I kept thinking, its too bad the Republicans didn’t have her running against Sherrod Brown during the last election for the Senator from Ohio. Or why she wasn’t on the Cincinnati City Council running for Mayor of the City, because she could beat those people like a killer whale having a snack on a beach of baby seals, as a Republican. If she lived Hamilton County she could have her way with anybody because as a person she is pretty far down the political spectrum and would fit a nice spot somewhere prominent in the Trump administration’s Republican Party which is the trend of the country now that the news is fun and people are learning more about how things work. They aren’t moving to the left, they are going to the right and the center of the political spectrum is not where Bill Kristol always was, or Mitt Romney for that matter, or the current Bill Cunningham of WLW radio, its much further to the right.

If you’ve ever wondered how people who are Democrats and Republicans can hug and go out to dinner together its because in all honesty, they are most of the time at the same place on the political spectrum. They may call themselves by the “D” if they are in Hamilton County or an “R” if they are in Butler County depending on where that area’s political spectrum of educated voters are, but by personal belief, they are pretty close to agreeing on most things until someone like a Trump comes along and moves the bar in a particular direction that makes everyone feel uncomfortable. When I’m in those kinds of meetings I never meet anybody to the right of myself, everyone is always to the left, so I get used to being alone in that discussion. But that doesn’t make me a radical right winger, rather something that is often misplaced, I would say that the more that someone knows about the ways of the world, the further to the right that they will be on that spectrum. Some people are born into that by regional influence, but in general, the more educated you are as a person, the more life experience we can draw wisdom from, the more conservative you become.

A couple of people I admire a lot is Thomas Edison and his friend Teddy Roosevelt. Both men were conservatives who found themselves experimenting with progressivism around the 1912 period and its easy to see why they allowed themselves to get caught up in all the robber baron syndrome that appealed to the public at that time as Marxism was rushing into our country from Europe to influence all of civilized society. It was the equivalent to WLW announcing that they are “explaining, not shouting” the news, early American progressivism was rocking the Republican Party to its very core, and both Edison and Roosevelt were brilliant people who were not very good with money, so their value systems put them on the edge of the political spectrum at the time that leaned to the left on issues, but left them to the right on many others. However, if in their lifetimes they had mastered elements of personal wealth, they would likely not found themselves consumed with the temptations of progressivism, and would always had been committed to the Republican Party as it was defined by Abraham Lincoln.

The point of the matter is that while I say that Democrats are garbage and should be defeated everywhere that they reside, that is the old talk radio side of me who understands that points need to be made quickly so that people don’t change the dial over to some other program. And while I do believe that, the real answer is much deeper than just making that statement. I don’t like Democrats because I like intelligence and the beauty of wisdom that people further down the political spectrum exhibit, and I want that for the world honestly. But I am not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I understand many people have their own journey to make and that not all of them are as far along the political spectrum as I am. I have worked hard over the years reading one to two books every week for all of my adult life and learning everything I can along the way in a multitude of professional opportunities. I don’t have the problems of Roosevelt and Edison in having weak points in my own thoughts that keep me bound to a centrist position on that political spectrum. But most people I know are nowhere near as ambitious toward true wisdom as I might be. They enjoy primetime television shows, they like sports, and they are still learning about the ways of the universe, and they might still call themselves Democrats even though I can clearly see the budding flower of a grand Republican. Things are never quite what they appear, but what is clear if you know what to look for, is what they might become.

Rich Hoffman

Candice Keller, Locked in a Vault, Yet Nobody can Find Her: A campaign doomed from beginning to end

I had hoped that the rumors were not true and that Candice Keller would in fact be at the Butler County Chamber Coalition debate for the 4th Ohio Senate District at the Benison Event Center in downtown Hamilton. But like the giant bank vault of that old building that has stories to tell going back to the gangsters of prohibition, not even Candice was inside. All of her that made it was her name tag at a table where she should have been if ever she hoped to be a real candidate for the upcoming primary election on March 17th. I had hoped to talk to her, to salvage her political career somewhat by getting behind George Lang and living for another day, but she didn’t even show up to have that conversation. Instead, it appears that her phobia of public speaking was true and that her weak speeches at the State House were more than just a rookie learning her way in a new office, Candice has a real problem getting her thoughts across to the public in events like this one, which is crucial to any viable candidate.

A lot of people have such phobias of public speaking and being judged by so many people, but anybody running for a big office must understand that these expectations come with the territory. In her case she managed to offer something fresh to her district and people gave her a chance largely through church networks and Facebook. But people expect their political representatives to learn as they go and events like the one at the Benison Event Center are part of the job, and winning those debates are expected. The job for the 4th District Senate Seat is bigger than a Facebook campaign, these types of things are how politicians communicate to their constituents, not just through quips to the media, but in presenting herself to a crowd that isn’t always happy to see her and to win them over. That’s part of the game. Instead, Candice had an empty chair with her name on it, and her son showed up to video the other candidates to see how the professionals did it. But her empty seat was quite a statement, it said a lot more than if she had come and made a fool of herself. At least if she had, people might sympathize, but instead all she gave the audience was the impression that she didn’t even care enough to arrive.

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The Vault in Hamilton Ohio. #travel #life #family

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What her son was able to record was a very polished George Lang who is the obvious front runner deliver very well on all the questions that were asked of him. George is the real deal at every level, he is good with people, honest, understands the needs of donors, and he can reach across the aisle to work with anybody on anything. Candice’s son also saw a very sharp Kathy Wyenandt who will be the Democrat nominee after the primary. All evening she and George spoke well together in a polite way without surrendering their integrity, but in the manner that both of them could go to Columbus and get bills passed by members of the various influencers. Even if Candice did luck out and Moses came to separate the Red Sea for a freakish win at the Republican primary, for which the entire GOP is asking her to resign due to her reckless commentary about Nazis and gay people, Candice doesn’t have the horsepower to beat Kathy Wyenandt in a head to head race. Currently, the way things are, Kathy has a numbers problem, she’s running as a Democrat so no matter how good she is, she’s on the wrong side. But with the GOP not behind Candice, and Keller looking to be terrified of public debates, she would have no hope of winning a major election against Wyenandt.

That is why I wanted to talk to Candice, to help her see the light before it was too late. Instead, she is off on a fantasy that she can avoid these kinds of things and still win with a Tea Party like activism. Only I was there when the Tea Party was young, and so was George Lang. Many of the best conservatives today in the GOP are from that movement. What Candice and what’s left of the Tea Party are those who have not found an identity in the new focus of leadership that has emerged under President Trump. They haven’t made the transition from rock chucker to leader. George Lang certainly has; he is very much the Trump Republican in the race. When Trump comes to town, its George that he would seek, certainly never Candice, especially in the wake of her media troubles. She’s toxic poison right now with no future in sight once she steps out of her House seat and that would be a real tragedy to the election that she did win.

Keller’s son was also able to record the bumbling lunacy of Ding Dong Lee Wong who had a terrible debate. An absolute disaster. I would say about it, at least he had the guts to come. However, afterwards when everyone was talking during a social hour Lee disappeared rather quickly. The group I was talking to figured that it was because East Avenue was nearby, and he was likely going on shopping visits for his old friend Robin McDaniel—the “working girl.” Of course, before going Ding Dong Lee Wong said that the solution to the employment challenges were to just let in more Chinese people, or something to that effect, which left the audience baffled and looking for more to come. But at least Lee was there to make a statement, which was more than Candice. All jokes aside about the brevity of Lee’s post-debate networking, the obvious front runner of the debate was George Lang as expected, and Lee looked to understand that after this season of debates, this one in Hamilton being likely one of the last before the primary. Any hopes Lee had of landing a blow against Lang that could damage his frontrunner status was gone and so was Lee’s spirit. I almost felt sorry for Ding Dong Lee, but because I know the history of how much he hates George Lang, I won’t go so far to reach out an olive branch. He can wallow in it for plenty as far as I’m concerned.

Once the room had cleared and everyone went home, I did ask the caretakers of the place if I could look in the vault to see if Candice was back there somewhere. To humor me, they actually looked with me holding that name tag to identify Candice.  Nobody was in the vault, but it was impressive to look at such an antiquated structure from the years long gone. It reminded me a lot of the campaign of Candice Keller, confined, locked up, and even looted beyond comprehension. Her perceived path to victory was to lock herself in such a vault to the outside world and hope that some miracle might happen to get her elected into a high office by just throwing rocks outside those confines at a genuinely good person in George Lang. She should know with all her supposed Christian values that lying about people as she has been disparaging the character of Lang to such a degree won’t get her any keys to heaven. I’d love to help her with her problem, but all she gave me to work with was a nametag and an empty seat and the perception of an audience that already thought of her as a loser.

Rich Hoffman

To Judge Amy Berman Jackson, Roger Stone is the Most Dangerous Man in the World: It all comes down to sex

I am surprised that with all the talk about the Roger Stone sentencing case and the mysterious reason people seem so alarmed that President Trump has weighed in on the issue, that the true cause of the ruckus has not been discussed. It’s not that Stone lied to congress, a congress that tried to impeach President Trump on nothing charges only to overthrow the 2016 election, its not that Harvard Law graduate and Obama appointee Amy Berman Jackson judge in the case is a political activist using her bench to dispense political ideology against voters sentiments. It’s not even in how the FBI has evolved into a political police force arresting Stone on charges in the early morning with CNN cameras tipped off and rolling as the former Director of the FBI and many under his command sip wine into the many sunsets of the Beltway and laugh at the rest of us who are clearly at a disadvantage to their government paid rule. It’s not about any of that, although those are all by-products of the situation. What its really about, and usually traces back to this central, primal point, its about sex.

For most of our human evolution contriteness has been the means to interact in social conditions. As everyone instinctively knows the first need of all males is to find their way within some pecking order where the top males are known and understood while most everyone finds some happy place of contriteness somewhere under the top male. Most males learn their place by the time that they get into their 20s and it is purely the aim of academia to make the most out of those who fall in that realm of being in the middle of the male dominated pecking order that is at the core of our species. And as all males learn who are not the top males, that the way to move up in that pecking order is with contriteness, so not to threaten the top males with a challenge, but to appeal to their egos in hopes for some table scraps that might come their way. That is the point of most institutional systems. Of course, the purpose of understanding who the top males are is to have the right to mate with the top females, the best looking, the best specimens of supernormal sign stimuli that is on the market. In nature this is how the best-looking kids find the right DNA to procreate the species.

Women of course flower and bloom into specimens for pollination and it is up to these men along the pecking order of society to find a good female and to mate with them and have babies. The great crises for most women is during that period in their lives where as beautiful flowers of puberty they wilt into carriers for the next generation only to be discarded as wrinkled up flowers later in their lives once the children had been raised and there was no longer a social need for them. This is why progressivism was such an attractive aspect for women, because they grew tired of becoming wilted in life and being left behind by husbands looking to clime the pecking order ladder just a bit higher and to trade them in for another young flower that might be at a less declining stage of wilt. Careers then became the new family and specifically government became a new refuge where some level of protection from the more dominate aspects of the species could not make everyone under them feel so inferior.

Less exciting people in life found a home in government where they were somewhat protected by the alphas and so long as everyone followed the rules of English society contriteness, everyone could get along to some degree or another. And those rules were to seek a certification to show that you knew something because someone said you did, and that the way up the ladders of society were to be contrite, to follow the rules, and to be happy with what you ended up with to the degree that you were allowed to have it. For people not at the top of their species, which was most people, this was a good arrangement, until we entered the period of western expansion and the gunfighter on the open plains ignited in American society the idea that anybody could be the top male, or female of their species if they could shoot a gun, or show fearlessness on the open horizons where the sun disappeared away each night. This whole American experiment redefined what being a top male, or top female was, it was no longer the best looking person, the tallest person, or the strongest, but it was the one who was most fearless, or who learned to be fastest, or more cunning which opened the door to a whole lot of new entrepreneurs who suddenly filled American society with a new breed of “top” people.

Of course President Trump with his flashy suits and gold buildings, and long list of beautiful women embodied this divorce from contriteness that the government bound career seekers were looking to hide from so the established pecking order subsidiaries would be angry at for changing the rules on them. And then there are people like Roger Stone, and Alex Jones who are obvious alpha males who are comfortable with the Trump America who wear gaudy suits and show no willingness to bow down to the established order of things, and it enrages people like judge Amy Berman Jackson who spent her whole life preparing for her wilted flower phase in order to still find a life of happiness in the contriteness of academia, as they had promised her would always be the case. When a Roger Stone stands before her, her ruling powers want to throw him in jail for life because they want to slap down this trend, which is now well beyond their control. Yet they still wish to act out against them. If they can’t get to Trump, they can get to Stone, to Manafort, and to Flynn, and those people are not permitted to be “top” anything if people like Jackson has anything to say about it, and that is why this case is so unfair. The legal system was never meant to be fair, it was meant to protect people from the judgement of their pecking order placement in life, where most people aren’t the best looking, or even the smartest. And with the newfound power of the personal gun, they were too lazy to become proficient with such an empowering device. So they have retreated to the rules of European contriteness in hopes that they might find some happiness as the inevitability of old age burdens them more each day with the realities of wilting flowers.

So the case isn’t about justice, the Stone case is a rebellion against the new found freedoms of our modern age where the concerns of pecking order madness can no longer be stuffed into a civilized box of rules and parameters meant to keep the contrite protected from the realities of mediocrity. Under the Trump administration America has been free to sore if only the people of the country dare to go there, and if they are not the best looking, or most skilled, they can still step out of their pecking order station and seek a life of unlimited potential. And that is why Amy Berman Jackson and her Obama era supporters want to throw Roger Stone in jail for as long as possible even as real criminals walk the streets raping, pillaging, and robbing everyone blind minute by minute. To the world of Amy Berman Jackson, Roger Stone is much more of a threat because he refuses the rules of contriteness and instead insists that he is free of such pecking order demands on his life, which is why he is one of the greatest threats to civilization that has yet arrived to human eyes.

Rich Hoffman

Voters have a lot to be angry about with Kathy Wyenandt: Remembering Todd Portune and his “people over politics” theatrics

Of course George Lang still needs to win the Republican primary in March before looking ahead to the Democrat challenger for the 4th District Seat for Senate in Ohio Kathy Wyenandt, but there are a few things about her campaign already that is disturbing, and they’ve come up before. One of the reasons Lang had to raise so much money for that 4th District Seat is because he needs to beat two Republican primary challengers then a very likeable Democrat in Kathy in a county that liberals would love to turn more purple than the hard red that it has been. Liberals hope to do that with women candidates who can cross over invisible political boundaries for voters earned and unearned and Kathy will be there with some money left from her previous attempt at the 52nd District House seat which she lost to Lang and a check from the now deceased Todd Portune that was sizable for the task of purple rain in Southern Ohio. Since he just died and its not fashionable to disparage the dead, I’ll save many harsh comments I have for Commissioner Portune for some other day but I do find it interesting that he thought enough of Kathy to give her a $2,500 check. Portune and I go back a long way and it was not pleasant. He was better late in life, but vicious political theater in the days of Dwight Tillery as the Mayor and Foxy Roxy as the Vice Mayor are stories I could tell that could dwarf the Bible many times over, but to put it mildly, I do not share with Rob Portman and many other conservatives any kind words. Yet it was the passing of Portune and of learning of his contribution connection to Kathy Wyenandt that reminded me of her campaign and the message she has for politics in general that I am very much opposed to.

Wyenandt and I have talked about this several times, her belief that politics has become so toxic that her campaign slogan is “people over politics,” as if to say, she is not a partisan and will listen to people over any other influence. Well, ironically Todd Portune told me something almost exactly to the same effect almost 30 years ago while I was in his office and we were discussing a solution to a nighclub incident where a bunch of drunk kids had died in a car crash coming home from the Cooters night club after the place had closed. I was proposing to him to solicit help from the city to get approval through the CBC a non-alcoholic nightclub that would operate in Coryville right next to the freshman dorms on the University of Cincinnati’s campus and give kids somewhere else to go once all the bars closed for the night and poured a bunch of drunk kids into the world as dangerous toxins. I was weary of the Democrat Portune who had pictures of prominent politicians in his office and I wasn’t sure if I could trust him with the intentions of the group I was representing. But he said to me much of what Kathy has said recently about the common good and people over politics, so I trusted Todd Portune with my idea.

Well, and there is much political theater that fills the book ends as mentioned but the gist of it was that I found myself in a lot of political trouble every which way you can imagine and as it turned out Todd Portune, as a member of Cincinnati City Council at the time was also the attorney for the nightclub Cooters and he had ratted out all my plans to all the wrong people which killed the financial aspects of the deal and left me hanging in a very bad way. I was young, so it was a good learning experience and it only took me 10 years to dig out from that mess, but to say the least, I learned what it means when politicians tell you that they put people over politics. What they really mean is quite the opposite. When it comes to Todd Portune, I figure fate sort of played out for him. While Rob Portman, whom I knew pretty well in those days of my dealings with Portune has lots of nice things to say about Todd, I’ll just state that I’ll leave the dead to rest and let whatever version of God the readers hear have sort out the details. The lessons of those experiences are more valuable than any other element and it reminds me a lot of Kathy Wyenandt’s campaign.

Each time I’ve spoke to Kathy she is always quick to tell me that she doesn’t read this blog site, yet she knows an awful lot about it, and she always pulls the conversation around to how divisive politics is and how she thinks we can all agree to taking some of the toxic relationship out of it. She is a nice approachable person so it would take a while to dig into the details so usually those types of conversations never get into the weeds too far, but as I’ve thought about it over time, and have learned that she has even enough of a relationship with an old political rival of mine, Todd Portune, I have much more severe opinions about Kathy’s “people over politics” platform. As a school levy supporter for Lakota on the last attempt, a political point she has choosen to capitalize on, it is clear what she represents and that makes the premise revolting of what she is asking people to accept. The toxic relationship people now have in politics is because they have learned too much about the bad dealings of people like Todd Portune and the double dealing that often goes on especially among Democrats when they say to your face, “people over politics.” What that usually means is “see you in court while you spend a fortune defending yourself from some political incursion.” Democrats for years have tried to put us to sleep while they’ve literally tried to screw our eyeballs out and the toxicity of modern politics is that enough people have woken up to the fact and people like Kathy want to ease people back to sleep to that reality.

It is OK to be angry that Lakota has wasted all the money Kathy helped spend through that last levy passage and is now looking to tax homeowners even more. Of course she doesn’t want people to fight or be angry, she wants to put them back to sleep—to the good ol’ days where Democrats could talk out of both sides of their mouth and get away with it. Of course the Democrats which Wyenandt is a member want everyone to suddenly get along now that the many evils that we have discovered from politics gone wrong in the past are clear to us now. If people are thinking of those things, no Democrat will get elected for anything ever. So Kathy’s only real strategy is to try to kill everyone with kindness and put everyone back to sleep so she can have a chance at a higher office. But to answer the question that she asked me, which I know she’ll read about here on my blog, and we’ll talk about the next time we see each other out and about, is that its good to be pissed off and angry at politics and that it is people who elect representatives that can recover their interests who are waking up and that they should be angry at how they have been treated. And because of the Lakota levy of 2013 voters have a lot of reason to be angry with Kathy—and then some.

Rich Hoffman

Why Rush Limbaugh is so Beloved: Republicans are postitive people

The world’s reaction to Rush Limbaugh’s stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis was bewildering to me. I suppose I understood why many on the left were almost cheering that his death might arrive by the end of last week yet they still seethed when he was presented with honors at the State of the Union address and was seated well next to the First Lady. You got the feeling that if his pending death wasn’t as good as sealed that many of the people in that room wouldn’t have stood for such an incursion and that they put up with it only because they felt just a little sorry for the popular conservative talk radio host. Then I wondered why we have even put up with such hatred. But I was reminded of the major difference between Trump and Limbaugh by Friday when Rush was back on the air between treatments that he fully expects to survive and listening to the story of how President Trump thought of the illness, and it all made perfect sense. Its why I have always been a Republican and why my particular brand of conservatism has been very conducive to the mentality of the current White House. Everything is very above the line with Trump, and also with Rush Limbaugh. Tragedies are expected to be overcome, not yielded to, and even a death sentence is something to solve, not to be a victim of.

As Rush told the story of his big day in Washington D.C. and the after party of a sorts in the White House Residential area upstairs with the First Family, I was hearing a story that was all too familiar to me. That is how I solve problems in my life. I don’t get emotional about anything and everything has a solution. There is no impossible, everything is on the table and its only a matter of time before a problem is resolved. I’m like that with everything and it was nice to hear that President Trump truly is at that level of optimism when he wondered why Rush couldn’t just get all the cancer cut out before the State of the Union Address then enjoy the evening unfettered. It was a reminder to me why I enjoy the people of this particular brand of politics so much, they are positive problem solvers who don’t yield to the emotions of the moment but are always looking for solutions. Democrats are the party of victims, people on their heels and surrendering to the whims of chaos, Republicans under Trump are problem solvers who look at everything as an opportunity for improvement. And in essence, that is the state of our modern political life, half the nation is looking at the glass half empty, the other half, that its half full. The glass is the glass, but the interpretation is radically different.

Rush may not survive the cancer, but then again, he might. He certainly didn’t take the time to wallow in the sorrow of the moment, he was invited to a big event with the President and he enjoyed it for all it was worth. The hatred expressed toward him was personal because there was a subconscious understanding that not only did they want the radio broadcaster dead and off the air for what they think will give them a chance at future elections, but they hate how positive Rush is and ironically that is also one of the things they hate so much about President Trump. They want to have an excuse to fail, to not achieve, or even not to try at all. They want to blame society, they want to blame their parents, they want to blame their schools, their government, their economic conditions on why they have settled in some rut in their life which they lack the courage to get out of. And Rush and Trump remind them of it.

I’ve seen that hatred up close and personal; I never yield to problems at all. Everything has a solution just waiting to be discovered. Its just a matter of time to grind things out so that we can uncover it. That’s how I run my own life, so it was very refreshing to hear to what degree President Trump exhibited the same traits. It didn’t surprise me, but it was refreshing, just as it was good to hear Rush back on the radio on Friday and the early parts of this recent week sounding like he always does for his three-hour time slot. I can’t say how many times I have turned on the Rush Limbaugh Show while overseas on trips, just to listen to him talk on the radio. While in Japan I would turn him on at 1 AM there and listen while I lay in bed because it was noon in the states, and it was very nice due to his positive outlook on everything. Even while surrounded by the necessities of whatever culture I was visiting, listening to Rush Limbaugh was unique because he’s unquestionably American, in that problems aren’t meant to be yielded to, they are meant to be overcome. While visiting those cultures overseas, it is always nice to hear a bit from home, and from the best that our American culture has to offer. I had the same experience in London and in Paris, rather than go to dinner at 6 PM somewhere and listen to the pub talk, I would put in my ear buds and listen to Rush on my iPhone while the rest of the world wallowed in sorrow of their victimized status. It wasn’t that I so much wanted the news of the moment, it was just nice to hear that Rush always had a solution to whatever problem was being discussed, and that was and is what makes Rush Limbaugh something unique and so beloved.

What the left doesn’t understand is that at whatever future time that Rush Limbaugh doesn’t do his radio show every day, that people like me will not turn to them looking for leadership. Simply, someone else will fill the role that Rush Limbaugh currently does. The interesting thing that has happened is that even with all the attempts at communism and socialism that various factions both foreign and domestic have attempted against the American people, positive people always find each other. I supported Trump because he’s always been such a positive person. I listen to Rush because he’s a positive person. In my own life, and I’m thinking of positive politicians whom I like a lot, like George Lang, Mark Welch, Ann Becker, Nancy Nix, T.C. Rogers, Roger Reynolds and even Sheriff Jones. I like them all because they are all very positive people to the core of their personalities. Even though they all have lots of reasons to look at the glass half empty, they haven’t, they always think of it as half full and are scanning the horizon for solutions. That is the biggest difference in the political gulf that exists in our modern day, and its not the task of the positive to yield to the negative. Rather, the other way around. The desire to see Rush off the air is deeper than just hoping that conservatives will lose a voice and that Democrats might win some future elections, its in hoping that the excuses for failure will remain for them to hide behind. Because in truth, that is what is really behind the political tension of the American two-party system in its current form. But that was never America, we are free to solve problems, and that is what makes us different from the rest of the world and is why Rush Limbaugh is so beloved and always will be.

Rich Hoffman

Why Nancy Nix of Butler County is one of the Best: EdChoice and how Ohio needs a better funding model

I just want to say after seeing her at a number of political events recently, especially at places where George Lang and Mark Welch are present that Butler County is very lucky to have such a great treasurer in Nancy Nix on her third term. She is so good at what she does that I’d like to see her on her 100th term in the future. It is always wonderful to meet competent people who understand the details and Nancy Nix does. She is part of the puzzle that has come together so nicely in Butler County Ohio politics where a really good management team has risen to the occasion of our times to bring residents the best services possible that government could hope ever to provide. She has been on my mind a lot lately not just because she is a supporter of George Lang and Mark Welch, but because of something she said a few years ago about public school levies that are very relevant to the current challenge of EdChoice forcing local school systems to change the way they look at their funding.

Let’s face it, the whole progressive concept of attaching state money to a school located in a physical real estate concept was dumb from the beginning. It was just another brick in the road that has led to a pathway to hell. A lot of older people, like Bill Cunningham on WLW radio are struggling with this whole EdChoice concept because they only know of school systems being attached as the center of a community complete with sports programs and sentiments of school days long ago ended. These are the types of people where class reunions mean something, so it is painful for them to even consider that a child might want to pick up and move to another school across town and to take their state funding with them if that school isn’t very good. So far the focus of the argument is that the state report cards are unfair, but the bottom line is really in consumer confidence, do parents want to send their children to that particular school and how can the school market themselves in a way to make whatever the state report card says be the destination of hope for a parent and their child. In the future of education, it will take more than winning football programs, kids will actually have to learn things and be places that are good. A good school should not be determined by good real estate, it should be because the school managed itself well, spent their money wisely, and produced a superior product in a free market fashion.

Nancy has experience both at US Bank and as a Plant Controller so she gets money and how it’s a measure of value. I have worked with a lot of controllers and they are normally very boring personally, but beautiful people because their minds are very mathematical. Nancy has all the traits of the best of controllers, but she isn’t boring. She has a real passion for accounting and it radiates from her in such positive ways, so it surprised me when she came out publicly taking a position against several local government schools on their attempts to pass another school levy for what they were saying were, “safety needs.” Nancy stated, “Our homeowners are already heavily taxed, and its very difficult for many residents to make ends meet. My office receives handwritten letters daily from taxpayers needing help keeping up with their real estate taxes. Those who get too far behind can lose their home. Our county has passed 40 or so levies in the last 10 years and I’d argue some were for far more than they needed.” I found that very refreshing coming from a county treasurer who was looking at the big picture for a change and I’ve loved her ever since.

Her statements on that levy issue have come back to me now that all these lazy superintendents of some of the major government schools in the area, like Mason and Lakota have been complaining about losing their state funding due to EdChoice. What do they think is going to happen, that they are going to ask for more levies to cover their ridiculously bad management? Every controller I’ve ever dealt with would look at the way ANY public school is ran and demand an instant layoff to balance the books because the income is not conducive to proper balancing of the books. In fact, if Lakota had a proper accounting “controller” they’d have a shit fit on their hands due to the insane perception of what value is for the scope of the product, the education of the students based on state and local tax revenue chained to them like some masochist in a bondage chamber. The relationship with the community is about as dysfunctional financially as is conceivably possible and whenever it gets questioned the school hides behind the children imprisoned there due to their lack of choice in the matter—because the system gives money to the school, not the student. Government schools as Nancy pointed out, ask for too much too often. And I would add that they do it not because they need the money but because they know they are so inefficient that they take more money from people to manage their inefficiencies. Nancy has seen the backend of that problem when people write her to say their taxes are too high, and in too many cases, they lose their homes because the taxes are so terrible.

At the center of the problem is the perception of what the state should be giving to students, which is why Bill Cunningham’s troubles over the EdChoice issue is so comedic. The value of the education is just assumed as it has been set by the chaos of the government schools joined together by their collective bargaining agreements and the state is supposed to come up with a model that just rubber stamps that sum—whether its $6000 per student or $12,000. The numbers are inflated by these school districts to cover the high cost of their government employees and not the needs of the child. This is because of Parkinsen’s Law which states that the sum of needed money fills to the supply of funds. If a school levy passes and there is a cash infusion, then the union contracts will fill to consume the entire amount. Yet the kids are still coming out as bad as if they went to a third rate school, they can’t read, they can’t think, and they take on too many social beliefs rooted in liberalism. That’s not what we should be paying for. I would argue that if the state supplied only $2000 and schools had to compete for business that is in the marketplace, that the price to educate children would go down dramatically. That is when the state could provide a proper, constitutional, funding model.

Its just good to know that there are people like Nancy out there supporting other good Republicans like George Lang and Mark Welch, and many, many others. Good people tend to gravitate toward each other and she is one of the great ones. I appreciate that she is the treasurer of my county, and that our finances are in as good of hands as they could be. Most accounting types are alike in that they see beauty in numbers and can utilize that talent where needed. But Nancy has a different gear where she doesn’t just get lost behind some wire rimmed glasses and a big desk separating her from the world. She is connected and approachable, but more than anything, she does her work for all the right reasons and I’m glad she’s around.

Rich Hoffman

George Lang has raised more than 11 Times the Amount of his Rivals: Why fundraising is important in our republic

In the end, it’s the voters who show up to vote on election day and decide who wins an election or loses. Perception can reflect reality so anything can and does happen, but in the three-way race between candidates for the 4th Ohio Senate seat in the upcoming March primary there is only one clear frontrunner and that is George Lang. Campaign donations are an important indicator as to whether or not a politician has the ability to generate money from the donor groups which is important leverage in Columbus politics when weight behind a bill or proposal is needed. The way politicians measure each other is in just such a manner because they all know how hard it is to do. Its one thing to appeal to those all important voters on election day, but even more than that, how to appeal to the type of people who write thousand dollar checks when elections are still 6 months or even a year away, and not lose their souls in the process. Of the three people running for that senate seat in the 4th District, only George Lang was able to do anything substantial raising over $200,000, 11 times more than the other two, which says a lot about the value and true potential he has to offer to that seat.

The way the news outlets like to report things, they like the idea of “democracy” where everything is a horserace of popularity and everyone has a chance to win, even the unprepared nurse who decides on a whim to run for some office. It feeds the Cinderella complex that if anybody would like to, they can just decide to run and win an office and do some good work in the name of a democratic process, and they like that belief until it doesn’t work out the way they’d like, such as in the case of President Trump. In truth, we have a republic and the representatives we put into office need to be skilled, knowledgeable, and tenacious. Candidates shouldn’t be able to buy their way into an office, but they do need to show that they can generate political interest in their platforms even when most people in the world are thinking about everything else but an election. It is one of the hardest things in the world to do is to get on the phone and ask business leaders in your community for a few thousand dollars, then go out into the community and do good work that is honest, and George Lang has shown time and time again that he can do that. People not so skilled will look at that process and say its corrupt, because essentially, they can’t do it. That’s what Ding Dong Lee Wong will say as his old West Chester trustee rival George Lang outraises him at every turn. Ding Dong Wong was only able to raise $6,300 for instance, with the largest donation being a measly $500. For the person who wrote that check that might have seemed like a lot of money, but in the way that other politicians measure the viability of a peer in Columbus, its weak and shows that the office holder does not have support of people in their community all through the year, when there aren’t elections.

Campaign donations are a kind of vote all their own, not so much for the general election, but for the reach a candidate has across their entire base, particularly business leaders who are often overlooked by the general media as part of an undemocratic process. For instance, they might poise the question of why Ginni Ragan gave George Lang a check for $13,300 in January, what does she want with the money—as if the presentation of the check was a favor of some kind that George would owe her, which supersedes the general voter. What nobody talks about is that people who are in such a financial position contribute those types of funds without a lot of expectations attached, it is their way of betting on the right representation who they think will protect their values in politics and they see it as just another form of a vote. It’s a lot of money to small minded reporters who want to keep the dialog of democracy defined in their limited vision, but it ignores the aspects of politics that are way beyond their comprehension. A politician who can raise a lot of money gives them more weight on the floor of a republic form of government because it represents a kind of mastery that many of them have not yet overcome, the hard task of asking for a campaign donation for an election nobody is thinking about when the person on the other end of the phone could think of a million other things to do with that few thousand dollars.

Yet the news outlets depend on that money, they need candidates to take out adds on their airwaves, in their newspapers—consultants, lawyers, and every kind of parasite known to mankind that lives off the crumbs that falls from politicians in the unsaid bid to show how much money they were able to raise and therefore, how strong they would be as a representative on the congressional floor. While its true that Trump nearly funded most of his campaign during the presidential run, it was the amount of money he was able to raise over the last three years for the GOP that brought the party in behind him. And in order to get that money, he had to generate a lot of excitement that filled the coffers and gave him the political leverage to use that money to continue to sell his message which people who contributed wanted to be a part of. Big donors or smaller ones see campaign donations as an investment more often than the media would report.

For instance, the media would like to poise Candice Keller as a real threat to George Lang, because she’s a woman, and that if elected her many scandals would follow her and the press could then have a field day. But in reality, she only managed to raise $12,135. Most of the other money she has been working with were donations that she gave to her own campaign. That might buy adds and billboards, along with yard signs, but the people in Columbus know the truth, that Candice doesn’t have support from her own community when she can’t get on the phone and ask for the big checks. Therefore, what pull could she hope to garner for a big new bill she wants to get passed, or use her vote for leverage to change something she doesn’t like. The power on the legislative floor comes more from just a voice and a vote, it comes from the stout presence of the ability to raise money, because that is a measure that defines worth in a republic.

Campaign donations are our way of protecting our republic from the mob rule of a democracy, which for many decades now has been the mantra of the media. They even have Republicans saying that we must protect our “democracy” which means that a majority rules by simple vote and that rules can be changed if only enough emotion is spent to sway public opinion. That is what is happening currently in Virginia over the gun rights issue there now that Democrats control all branches of government. The true measure of worth in a strong republic is how well a candidate can generate value for their platform between election cycles and that is the strength of George Lang and why its important that it’s the third highest amount of all people running for senate in Ohio. To other politicians that is real power and mastery, and the much important leverage that a real player can bring to that seat. That might run against the sentiments of some Journal News reporter or television broadcaster cheering for some socialist slide into a democracy, but it’s the true value of a political position where all aspects can be united and the politician can properly represent their platform authentically. A cheater or a low life is not going to be able to raise that kind of money with all the transparency of our modern age. George Lang is top class in every category, and that’s why he was able to outraise his rivals more than 11 times over. And why he’s the only viable candidate for the 4th Senate Seat in Ohio in 2020.

Rich Hoffman

The Day After: Getting along in politics was never the goal–only winning any way possible

I think for me the battle began during the 2008 election season where John McCain ripped into the WLW radio personality Bill Cunningham for disparaging his presidential rival’s name, Barack Hussain Obama. It was in fact the guy’s name, yet McCain seemed to be playing a game none of us were aware of, including Cunningham who covered politics nearly to the extent that Rush Limbaugh had for many years. It was a kind of WTF moment for me in wondering why Republicans were so weak when it came to defending themselves against potential domestic enemies, defined by those who cannot agree at least that the American flag is a symbol of freedom and prosperity to the world. Anybody who says otherwise in my view is a domestic enemy that needs defending against as we all promise to uphold by the United States Constitution. Then there was the campaign of John Kasich which again involved Bill Cunningham from WLW. They campaigned together at Voice of America Park in West Chester, Kasich sounding like a Tea Party patriot. Only two years later, both men would turn wildly to the left and become something much more progressive. Then around that same time Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama just as McCain did because he shared with the former some “nice guy” view of politics that the other side wasn’t playing equally. So that gave us four more years of the socialist Barack Obama and I personally had enough. When Donald Trump threw his hat in the ring, I was one of the first that signed up and the two speeches Trump gave on Thursday of February 6, 2020 was precisely the reason.

I have had enough of niceties in politics, I want people who represent me and my interests. I don’t think its healthy for everyone to play nice in the sandbox, I want to see friction and debate, because that is how we determine the strength of a thought, through competition and testing in a democratic fashion. The goal was never to get along. It was to win, as a nation, things that were good for the nation. And the Democrats showed clearly in these last three years or so since a true representative had been elected what they were always about. They have from the beginning been domestic enemies, going back to Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Kennedy if you look at the evidence of his murder was killed for many of the same reasons that politicians have been trying to get rid of Trump, to control the public narrative and keep the bar within reach of the most lazy Washington bureaucrat. For anybody who would care to challenge that assertion, the Trump administration a few years ago declassified the Kennedy assassination role that our own government played in it and to nobody’s surprise, it reads like the texts between Lisa Page and her loverboy Peter Strzok. It was quite appropriate for Trump to take a victory lap by reading those texts again for everyone to remember, just for the record.

Yes, we have been dealing with bad, evil people and the responsibility to do something about it falls on all of us. I am just thankful that the Trump family has been willing to do the job, because what has happened to President Trump since his election has been nothing short of an actual assassination. If we were living in less public times, like it was when television was new in 1962, an actual killing would have been the preferred method of eradicating a political rival. In fact Kennedy was a Democrat believe it or not, but he was the kind I might even support. The way he stood up to communism in Cuba and Russia was important, even if it did get communist supporters working in our own government to the blueprint table to plan his assassination as a byproduct. Then of course there was that ridiculous notion of going to space when the government of America wanted young people wallowing in the mud at Woodstock naked and afraid—and drugged into voting for a more socialist kind of Democrat—ones like Bernie Sanders who would continue to function in the House and Senate for decades before finally pulling their masks off in 2016. They did kill Kennedy by setting up the circumstances that would produce his brutal murder in front of a crowd and terrify onlookers into cleaving for government into the known future. A hostile act that would otherwise be viewed as a declaration of war, only who would we fight? The enemy was unseen in the publishing houses of New York, in the chambers of congress itself, and in the many academic institutions across our country committed to brainwashing young people into the spread of communism as it was viewed globally during the 30s, 40s, 50s then climaxing in the 60s.

The obvious anger Trump expressed on the day after his acquittal was more than justified. I had been thinking much the same thing and it was very nice to hear him articulate those emotions properly. I keep hearing from people that the nation is divided, and that politics has become so divisive as if there were some rule against aggression. That good ideas should be shelved if they hurt the feelings of other people, and that just isn’t the way things work or should ever work. Conflict leads to honesty and understanding. It is good to be respectful, but when we hear that someone wants to play nice, watch out, they are up to no good. There is always a trick to the method, an attempt to lower our defenses so that some enemy of ideas can sneak in and destroy their target unmolested, just as Obama did with John McCain in 2008. McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin, a woman that the left should have embraced was attacked in every way conceivable, viciously just because she was attached to a Republican ticket. That should have told everyone what kind of game was going on in a day when people weren’t so divisive because the expectation back then was that the political right would just take it while the political left had their way with everything.

So, the speeches yesterday by Trump were a long time and coming. I’ve waited a long time to hear them and was actually relieved that our system of government, as a republic, had lasted a serious attack by domestic enemies who obviously dislike what America was and intends to be. It is better to fight them legally than in the streets and door to door, but make no mistake about it, that continues to be on the table. Getting rid of Trump will not allow them to roll across America and take it over with some socialist view of the world. The niceties are over, the gullible John McCain types with John Kasich and Mitt Romney, those days are over and have been for around a decade now. Trump is the future and fighting back whether its them, or some of us who might have to step up but playing nice is not in the card deck. Winning is. The goal in politics is not to get along, its to represent the people who voted for you. And if that means punching people in the face metaphorically, or otherwise, then so be it.

Rich Hoffman

Why Democrats Hate Trump and Republicans in General: The choice between being a winner or a loser

It took a few days for it all to settle in, the debacle for the Democrats in Iowa, the terrible reaction to the State of the Union address President Trump gave this week, and the acquittal in the senate of the failed impeachment attempt of that same president, but the essence of the failures of the Democrat Party are deep and reflect an America most people despise, that of the loser. Its one thing to have compassion for people who are born losers, its quite another to allow ourselves to be controlled by them. We don’t want losers telling us what to do, and we certainly don’t want our lives limited by them. And what we saw this week by Democrats under great pressure, because the Republican Party under President Trump’s leadership is working very well, are members of the other party that just can’t compete, and they are fully aware of it. All their attempts to “equalize” the situation failed leaving them essentially to be a heaving mess of below the line thinking that nobody finds attractive. It reminded me why I simply don’t like Democrats, its not due to their race, their sex, or even their essential philosophy they say is steeped in compassion for other people, the planet, or even the less talented, its because their view of the world is rooted in negative victimization and nothing else, and that was never what becoming an American or staying an American was ever supposed to be about.

Plenty has been said by lots of smart people regarding the events of this past week, but nothing says incompetency like the Iowa caucuses. When people asked me about it, and these other events my reply was to compare it to a football game. Any quarterback from even a high school team can hit a running receiver in stride 30 yards down the field if they know where they will be at precisely the correct time that the ball is released from their hand, so long as they have 5 seconds or more to make the decision to throw. However, when a quarterback must play against a good defense and the line of the opposition is pressing down on that quarterback in 2.5 seconds or less, then even good quarterbacks will look like bumbling fools on the field of play. The Democrats are used to having all the time in the world to throw the ball, Republicans in the past have not pressed them out of some gentlemanly agreement to be equally deficient in performance. That is until President Trump came along from the private sector and started applying expectations to government—which is the source of their hatred of him. Suddenly there were expectations on Democrats that they just were not ready to deal with, and instead of trying to get better over the last three years, they have bet everything on getting rid of the expectation, symbolized in President Trump.

The media has gone along with the game allowing the Democrats to feel empowered as a political class to some level of competency so long as there was never any real measure. But Trump brought measures with him to Washington D.C., the same kind of measures that all private industry is judged by and the essence of it is that Democrats just weren’t ready. And when it was showtime in Iowa, it was an embarrassing mess. And when the State of the Union speech was given by President Trump, the Democrats could only sit there and listen as they spent all their time and energy being the opposition to Trump’s measures that they couldn’t share any joy in the long list of accomplishments that the President spoke about for over an hour straight. All they could do is sit there like the victims they have chosen to be, or to protest all together by not showing up, wearing white outfits to reflect the women’s suffrage movement from the turn of the last century, or do as Nancy Pelosi did at the end of the speech, rip it up because they had found themselves behind on all of it.

Then of course the next day, Republicans in the senate, except for the chameleon Mitt Romney, voted to acquit the President of the attempted coup by Democrats by quelling impeachment dashing any hopes of removing Trump from office before the election in November. That is what having a winning attitude will do for a person or a party, people tend to unite behind it and bask in its joy. But when your entire platform is about being a victim, that’s not at all an attractive prospect. People may see themselves as losers, but few people are happy staying that way and that’s all the Democrats are offering, which is why as a party, they are failing so epically. I hate to say it again, but I predicted all this many years ago and sure enough, its happing right on schedule. It’s not that Trump himself did it all, he was but the vehicle. It really comes down to personal beliefs, if they are above or below the line. You can’t build a great anything if the participants have a loser attitude. Trump was elected by an excited base because they recognize in Trump someone who wants to win. They do too, and so the Trump base was born. Its not hard to figure out, its something that evolved out of a natural trajectory of thought.

What you will find dear reader when talking to the “other side” whether its in an elevator at an apartment complex in Hyde Park which is full of anti-Trump socialites who know more about wine than they do politics, or the angry mother at Kroger shopping for weekend snacks for her family while running all three of her kids from one sporting event to another and doesn’t have time to know what’s going on in the outside world aside from what she sees on Yahoo’s front page of news, is that people who dislike Trump or Republicans in general are angry at their own lack of understanding about the world and their laziness to do the work in learning more so they could be more informed. They want to remain below the line people, people obsessed with what they can’t do, or what they can’t be. They want to relish in their victimhood because they just don’t have the ambition to take a positive position in their own lives on anything, and the Republicans of Trump make them feel the pressure to be more, and they hate it.

When people say they hate Trump what they are really saying is that they are too lazy to keep up and that they want to go back to the days where they didn’t feel so much pressure. Where they could give a little statement to the press about something and the media would run with it, but nobody really expected anybody to do anything about it. Democrats had likely the worst week they have had in years not because anything changed for them, but now there are measures to compare to, and that pressure is something they are not used to dealing with. It should be expected that people wanting to remain victims in life would be unhappy with the sudden growth of the country under the Trump presidency which expects good results about everything. Ripping up the SOTU speech the way Nancy Pelosi did was no different than all the attempts to impeach Trump, or to convict him just because he had expectations, they were too lazy to live with. Instead they kept their eyes on victimization when the Trump administration was bringing empowerment and before they could blink, the Democrats had lost their base almost completely. And now its too late for them to do anything about it.

Rich Hoffman