Tag: Bullwhips

Rise of Skywalker hits the Billion Dollar Club: Star Wars in the age of Trump

The final verdict for me on the new Star Wars movie the Rise of Skywalker is that I’m happy it crossed over the billion-dollar mark for the weekend. Disney needed that number to justify everything they had put into the effort, and that means more for the future, which is a good thing. I could rip the movie apart technically, and continue to be upset that Lucasfilm under Disney’s guidance veered away from the source material that was there for them for the plunder. We will never get the Jaina Solo that the series deserved and who lived dear to many people’s hearts before The Force Awakens ever appeared. But with all the mistakes made, I felt Disney turned the corner with Solo: A Star Wars Story and reached out to the fans who didn’t reach back. So Disney redoubled their efforts to win back fans with this latest movie with obvious hat in hand. That was enough for me. The most important thing to come out of this latest film is that it is one of the most positive movies I’ve seen in a very long time, everything is above the line and positive, which ultimately is what Star Wars is always about. And why people love to see the movies. We all understand reality and the nature of it. What we want to see in movies is hope, and optimism, and that is what Rise of Skywalker is all about.

The critical reception of the film I have said, and continue to, is solidified in the politics of our times and can be seen in the election of Donald Trump. For all the reasons that some people hate Trump they hate Star Wars. Some people don’t like optimism, they want artistic interpretations for the problems of their lives, not a “can do” spirit to take on anything and to win with perseverance. I think demographically, many fans of Star Wars are also Trump supporters even though Vanity Fair wants to believe that these movies are all about the resistance to Trump. The comparisons to modern politics and the way people vote with their money at the box office is synonymous. Where the rubber hits the road people pay to see hope and to walk away from a movie theater feeling good. And that is what Disney gave audiences finally after messing with the formula with experimental film makers several times in previous attempts. If Disney had just listened to George Lucas at the start of this journey, they’d be a lot better off, but at least they were able to make a recovery with these latest two films, Solo and Rise of Skywalker. Thankfully for them and the rest of us, they weren’t pig headed about it.

Even more importantly, the new ride at Disney World, The Rise of the Resistance continues to show enthusiastic support from a hungry audience. After going to Disney World the week after the ride opened at Hollywood Studios to ride it, my concern was that the movie would come out and people wouldn’t like it making the billion dollar investment that Disney made in the new Star Wars land not worth the effort. I was concerned that it was too little too late and that the brand damage to the property was too far gone. But still, well past the holidays people are showing up in the mornings to ride the most technical ride in the world and its selling out within an hour of the park opening still, meaning that the enthusiasm for Star Wars is still very high.

The most important part of the movie, Rise of Skywalker I think is at the end when Rey goes to the old farm of Luke to bury the lightsabers there for future generations. When Rey rides down the little sand dune as she did in the first movie it showed that J.J. Abrams and other writers for this latest movie understand that Star Wars isn’t about change, its about surviving and living to have a better day tomorrow. With all the events of the films in this recent trilogy Rey had shown that she was still that hopeful girl from the first movie unchanged by the tragedies she had endured. Even though Rey should have been Jaina Solo, and The Force Awakens shouldn’t have ruined the main characters from the original by dumbing them down into stumbling fathers or failed Jedi masters, or women who put their careers before their families only to breed the next generation of galaxy killers, acts like the one with Rey at the end are what Star Wars has always been about, and its great to see it get back on course.

My interest in all this is of course cultural. I don’t get much from a movie like Star Wars that inspires new thoughts in my mind. The movies are meant for children. I want the movies to do well for kids to have something to grab on to for a future where expansion into space and taking values with them for goodness late into their lives is key to establishing a wonderful future. Star Wars is key to that future, so I am very interested in how Disney uses the brand to shape goodness, and optimism in our society. But after The Last Jedi, which I liked because it had some interesting things in it, I wasn’t sure Disney would ever figure out what to do with the George Lucas creation.

But after visiting Galaxy’s Edge in Disney World and seeing The Rise of Skywalker several times at the movie theater, I can say that I am happy with the results and the mythic imprint it has on our society. There are a lot of very positive messages that are spawning off these efforts that will shape the intent of this next century so its all very exciting. It would have been a very sad story to see the brand disintegrate due to all the progressive political experimentation that has been going on, all the #METOO gestures in an attempt to win over the girls away from the boys in the audience. Star Wars is still a movie for boys ages 8 to 13. Girls can come, but its made for boy problems and no matter how much Disney wanted to change that, it was never meant to be. So at least The Rise of Skywalker returned to those roots as best they could, and the box office rewarded them with another billion-dollar money maker which they needed desperately.

Corporate filmmaking is a very different thing from a young George Lucas going to the bank to get the money to make Empire Strikes Back with all his hopes and dreams on the line, which showed in the final cut of the film. We may never see ambitions like that again in Star Wars due to the need of the films to make so much money to cover the corporate expenses. But there was a lot at stake with Rise of Skywalker even though Disney certainly has plenty of money to work with on a budget and advertising. It was good to see that a big company like Disney can gamble in a big way and come up winners when so many people need the win. Disney continues to show they don’t always understand what a winner looks like, as most big companies don’t, but they are always on the lookout for them, and they win more than they lose. And this time, its good that they won, because Star Wars will have new life, which I think is great for our future in many ways that are still undefined mythologically.

Rich Hoffman

The Obscurities of Exsistance: Understanding differences between results people and process driven bureaucrats

I am pretty happy these days, we are having what I think is a very healthy growth period for the human race. That was quite evident while listening to Rush Limbaugh’s January 9, 2020 show which can be watched below in its entirety. I would suggest to all to take a little time to watch it this weekend for the content which in a lot of ways is revolutionary. Rush Limbaugh always does good shows whether or not the listener happens to be a conservative. There are few places anywhere on planet earth where these kinds of topics are discussed and analyzed that have such far reaching consequences. I am of course talking about the aftermath of the Iran situation and the killing of their top general, and how Trump did everything so decisively leaving lots of sloppy minds in his wake. Congress reacted by attempting to limit his powers, but what they are really saying is that they just want to slow him down because he’s such a fast and decisive thinker that it makes them look bad. While Trump was saying as much he had guests in the White House behind him in a speech and they were laughing to themselves at the situation as many do these days all across the country, and that is because of this issue that Rush spoke about, the big difference between people of action, and people of process.

I have always been a fast driver; I enjoy best a road with nobody in front of me. I hate most traffic. I am not a patient driver when on a highway only going 15 mph. I prefer to go 100 mph or more with no cars in front of me and I don’t look back at whoever is behind. There is nothing more arrogant than some loser who pulls out in front of you if you are cruising down a street at 50 or so and they get in front of you and only go 35 or worse. They may stick ride to the speed limit and stay there in front of you almost smiling to themselves that they are slowing you down and that its for your own good, because they think speed kills or something ridiculous. This is the mentality of our regulatory class of people who are process driven and are the direct products of our current education system which is obviously deficient.

I heard recently that Boeing employees were mocking the FAA on approval of the 737 Max with little new training for pilots. It was the New York Times reporting it as process driven social malcontents because in their world, regulations and process is what protects them from a world that demands results. They of course sympathize with the government workers at the FAA because they are those slow minded losers who pull out in front of us on the highways and hold up traffic to the speed limit or less. Speed limits as I say all the time, I hate them so passionately that I wrote an entire book on the subject called Tail of the Dragon, are for the weakest links of our society, not the best. Not the fastest. Certainly not the most competent.

I’m not saying we live in a lawless world, or a world that doesn’t need FAA regulators, or even people who drive the speed limit. We do need those people for things. But we should not like them. There is nothing wrong with mocking them just as the people behind Trump snickered at how stupid the rest of the world was while Trump was talking. People get it, they know the process drivers of life are slow, dim-wits who should not be in charge. We can use them to test our skills and advance our civilization. But we should not let them limit us creatively in the realm of business. Trump has shown why it was always important to have a business guy in elected office instead of process drivers who are overly educated in process, but not in results.

Businesspeople are used to results where as Rush pointed out, government types are used to processes. They hide their lack of courage and personal timidity behind processes and so long as the world stays under the speed limits that they set; they can feel like they are important to the growth of the world. But they aren’t, usually what happens is that they are those slow losers who pull out in front of us and ruin our drive by slowing us down ridiculously and they are smug about it because it forces us to live within their limits instead of them reaching up to ours.

Trump by the nature of his existence is forcing this discussion in ways that just weren’t possible a decade ago. Rush was right, if you really take the reason that people don’t like Trump in Washington its because he’s a results driver as most good executives are in business. He’s exposing the compliance and process class of people who have been running things for many decades for what they are, slow people who never expect to accomplish anything and to get paid well for no results. They go home at the end of everyday whether or not the work was done, they meet friends for drinks even if the world is on fire, and they could care less. They are safe in the processes that we have created for ourselves, and so long as they stay under those speed limits, they feel safe. But for the rest of us, we feel fury at the lack of results that are produced, and at the cost of such bad results.

My happiness comes from having this discussion finally after many years of observing this trend and my own personal feelings about this matter. I’ve always had a thing for speed limits and compared them to our processes in a social context. These processes greatly limit the human imagination and it makes me sick to see. I enjoy most to see free minds thinking and striving at whatever pace they can handle. I don’t want to see them running over others and killing them, but I want to see what people can do if they push themselves and processes prevent that kind of thinking and place everyone into the same box of performance based on some arbitrary speed limit that a bureaucrat conceives is “safe.”

As I tell people all the time, processes and speed limits can be used to make you better, so they aren’t all bad. We do need FAA regulators to check our quality and to maintain standards. But they should never be allowed to be the pace setters for society. If they pull in front of you on the road, you should pass them. And in the Trump presidency, he does just that and the workers behind Trump gave their knowing smiles because they understand that. So did all the people later that night in Toledo, Ohio who lined up to watch him speak in a stuffed venue in the middle of the work week. None of the Democrat candidates could draw a crowd like that even if they paid people. The process people just don’t understand because things are happening faster than they think and are willing to function. Leaving them in the dust, permanently. And for the rest of us who have felt unnecessarily restricted by these process driven lunatics for many years, finally we can see changes happening much to our relief.

Rich Hoffman

Leave Kings Island Alone: Let them build more roller coasters, stay open later, longer and give them lots of money!

For most of the recent December I spent it on vacation in one form or another, primarily going to Disney World and visiting all four of the parks that they have enjoying them immensely. During that span also I spent at least two visits to Kings Island to enjoy their Winterfest which I had said compared very well to the Disney Park experiences. I continue to be impressed with the way Cedar Fair Amusements has managed Kings Island since buying it over a decade ago now. For all the well-deserved hype that the Disney Parks get for their high quality experiences, the amusement parks in Ohio are some of the best in the world, between Cedar Point and Kings Island and those of us who live in the area of those places should consider ourselves very lucky. I do, I spend much of the spring, summer and fall—especially on Friday evenings at Kings Island meeting my wife after a hard day of work to relieve stress, which I do by riding roller coasters. Part of the reason I went to Disney World in December was due to the cold temperatures shutting down most of the rides at Kings Island, and riding roller coasters is part of the way I manage stress throughout the year.

Of course, I am ecstatic for the opportunity to ride the new giga coaster Orion at Kings Island in just a few short months. I watch the progress of its construction eagerly, once a day if possible, just for the prospect of seeing some new bit of news. I can’t wait to ride it and once it opens, it likely will join Diamondback and Mystic Timbers as my wife and my new Friday night ritual through the summer months to meet at Kings Island, have food under the Eiffel Tower and enjoy the fountain mist after a long hard day then ride those rides before going home and going to bed. Roller coasters and their extremes for me are like a shower that washes away the stress and anxiety that rolls off human interaction under intense conditions, and they are very therapeutic. Roller coasters are for the human imagination a huge middle finger to the impositions of existence which otherwise try to carve you into a blocky loser of anxiety due to the nature of reality. And utilizing the creativity of human thought to rebel against that tendency in the form of a roller coaster is really a tremendous psychological statement for the human race and I simply could never get enough of them, especially when they are built with the fabulous engineering that is going into Orion.

Yet recently neighbors in and around the Kings Island Amusement Park complex have been complaining about the noise of these coasters. During Winterfest the park has been running Mystic Timbers which was great fun. And during October the park stayed open until 1 AM during the Haunt weekends running all the roller coasters. It was great to ride the Diamondback at 12:30 AM on a Friday night in October with my kids and to enjoy doing those kinds of things at the small hours of the morning, yet neighbors who built their homes near the park have been complaining about the noise and are seeking to crack down on the Mason ordinance against those types of creative exploits, which I find reprehensible. I really don’t care how long someone has lived in the Kings Mills area. For what Kings Island does for Mason, Kings Mills and Cincinnati in general, I would expect the people of the area to appreciate it and to get on board with what Kings Island needs to do to be one of the best parks in the world.

I noticed it this time more than others, the Disney Parks are so wonderful because they are built on property that is so far removed from the outside world. You don’t see massive housing complexes near any of them for miles around and that is how they are able to produce such a wonderful customer experience. People need amusement parks. Maybe not to the degree that I use them to manage stress, but people in general absorb the pressures of reality to a point where they are toxic and generally complain about everything. That is part of the reason that such places were invented, to fill a market need. When a customer parks their car at an amusement park, they are husks of what they started out in the day as usually and they are looking for happiness. The people complaining about the noise of Kings Island late at night are people who will complain about their food at a fast food restaurant, or about the traffic on a highway, or even the color of a car they bought. They complain about their families, they complain about movies that are out at the multiplex, and they complain when a quarterback doesn’t do what they want in the NFL playoffs. They complain about everything all the time. That is why they need amusement parks, to throw off their worries and to enjoy a little bit of life. And staying open until 1 AM in October is part of the fun. People will complain, but its up to wiser heads to understand the nature of their antics. They need more fun in their lives, not less, and their precious sleep isn’t more valuable than the screams and cheers of a captive audience fresh off a roller coaster eating a funnel cake at 1 AM on a crisp autumn night under a well-lit moon. The experience that Kings Island offers to the community is far more valuable than some mundane sleep schedule or routine life within the four walls of a house. For most of its life, Kings Island was alone at that Kings Mills exit. Now there are lots of homes, they don’t have a right to complain now, because they moved there to be near Kings Island, and to reap the benefits. Now is not the time to turn against it.

For all the reasons mention, and a whole lot more, I want Kings Island to have the ability to make so much money that they can continue to give us great roller coasters like Orion well into the future. I would love again to have at Kings Island record breakers that last for decades with the unused land they have at the park, and they shouldn’t have to worry about a bunch of complaining neighbors. And to afford that, Kings Island needs more of the kinds of advantages that Disney has, where they can operate through as much of the year as possible instead of just during the summer, and for as much of the clock as possible, such as to 1 AM. People complain about Disney too, they are too crowded, they are too hot, they are too expensive, they are too much like a corporate empire, the complaints go on and on and on. But those complaints are not valuable customer feedback, they are really just people who need to shut up and go ride a roller coaster and to enjoy a funnel cake. People need to do a lot less complaining and let themselves enjoy the great things that Kings Island is offering consumers. Because those things are a lot more valuable than some sleep at 1 AM for some routine, drab life. Roller coasters are good for happiness, and the world needs a lot more of it, far longer in the day, more times a year and Kings Island needs to give us a lot more happiness. Not less.

Rich Hoffman

Not Giving Domestic Enemies in the American Press a Free Pass: Making a hard decision that is required of our times

It’s time that we have a conversation about domestic enemies and their use of the First Amendment to attempt to bring tyrannical revolution to America through the guise of freedom. It’s an old trick that has now worn away into obviousness especially in light of the recent killing of Iran’s top general. The domestic enemies of America have shown themselves under the banner of free speech by proposing that America and President Trump in general was wrong in the act of defending itself from a leftist aggressor. So much was made of the stampede that occurred at the funeral of that general which left 30 dead because there were over a million people attending. But that’s not so impressive, what else were those people going to do? It’s not like Iran has a thriving economy that is keeping everyone entertained with plenty to do. In most cases the people in Iran are left with only pictures of the supreme commander to look at as they count dust blowing across their roads. So a funeral is a welcomed distraction for them, yet to many in America’s media, they sought to make more of it than was true, for all the reasons that a domestic enemy might endeavor.

When we talk about the Second Amendment many people think that all sorts of restrictions can be placed on that one. They seek to limit where we can carry guns, how many we can buy, they try to tax ammunition to discourage buying more and they look for all sorts of ways to take that right away from us. But when it comes to the First Amendment, if you are on the wrong side of the political spectrum, they seek to ban you from Google searches, YouTube and even Twitter. But for them, they can say anything about everyone anytime they wish. They call it free speech to criticize Trump’s actions against Iran, or China or even want to impeach him over a Ukrainian conversation, yet they see no problem in siding with known tyrannical regimes to weaken the United States domestically so that power players all over the globe can be emboldened. That is a real problem and they have really shown themselves in the wake of the latest Iran incident picking sides with anybody standing opposed to President Trump.

Well, we all take an oath to the American Constitution to protect it from foreign and domestic enemies and these abusers of the First Amendment are clearly acting as agents of destruction toward American ideals and we should take action against them. There is nothing wrong with it, we aren’t violating any of their Constitutional rights. They do not have a right to be a voice against American policy if their intent is not to make a vantage point stronger, but to weaken it into collapse. And if they are cheerleading an enemy against America, then we need to deal with that in the fashion it deserves.

I wouldn’t say I’m suggesting that we round these people up in the middle of the night and throw them in jail for speaking out against American ideas by supporting Iranian positions. They certainly want to do that to Second Amendment supporters, and just ask Roger Stone about illegal searches and violations against his Constitutional rights when he was arrested and thrown in jail just for knowing the President. But I am saying that we need to slap these people down and knock them off their platforms without our endorsement of subscriptions and ratings. We simply can’t let domestic enemies’ function in the open within our society and get away with it with a smug smile on their faces. We need to knock that smugness off right now.

Iran isn’t dangerous, all they have as a weapon is fear of some terrorist act. When our own media is the sheath that carries that weapon, we have a problem. Take that away, and Iran has nothing. They have no money to fight a war. They have no complicated political position, just a few tyrants who run everything as is common in any authoritarian regime. They are all paper tigers only propped up by the worlds media who desire to bring down the governments of capitalism from the preponderance of fear that any terrorist soaked in ideology might dream of. And we should not allow it to continue unchecked. Its one thing to be critical of a management style of a governing body. Its quite another to encourage enemies to appear stronger than they are so that our government makes bad decisions. This has been going on for a long time and until President Trump came along, we had entire presidential administrations who listened to these unelected domestic enemies and set policy to their opinions, and that has only made the world more dangerous, not less so. It has allowed Iran and North Korea, and many other places to believe that America is an easy target, and that has propped them up to bring harm where it otherwise wouldn’t have. That is worthy of prosecution all by itself.

Free speech isn’t free, there are consequences. Just as we have the right to bear arms, yet we can’t just carry around guns anywhere we want, we have decided as a society that there are limits. Now if we want to say there are no limits to these things, then let me know and I’ll carry a gun everywhere I want to, churches, government buildings, sporting events—everywhere. But don’t tell me that there are restrictions to one amendment, but unrestricted interpretation to all the other so long as it serves the needs of domestic enemies. We must admit to ourselves that America does have domestic enemies, and they teach our schools, they work in our government, and they run many of our networks. We are not all equal and we don’t all like being American. We are crazy if we allow domestic enemies hide behind American law while they work every opportunity to chop down our system in favor of tyrants around the world, which is precisely what has happened in the wake of the killing of Iran’s top general.

I would say that Iran is not a threat, but our domestic enemies are, they are cheering for some terrorist act to embarrass our president for purely political purposes and they are doing it to the point where they are opening the door hoping to let the insurgents in undetected. The most dangerous occurrence to come from this latest Iranian crisis is that our media reports might embolden some terrorist loser to act so that they might at least get positive press coverage upon their sacrifice. Its not that the government of Iran would organize it, because they can’t, they are incompetent. But some rogue cell of bandits and outlaws might by the encouragement of our own American press. And it wouldn’t be by accident, but on purpose. And they think they can get by with it because they are protected by the First Amendment and think they are untouchable as domestic enemies. Which is a disgrace to us all, knowing that they feel the way they do about our country and the ideas of freedom that it has always represented. This crisis demands that we take a position of making a decision between domestic enemies and Americans as a unified whole. Because they are not the same thing.

 

Rich Hoffman

A Review on the Fantastic HBO Miniseries Chernobyl: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was never better illustrated

As I watched the fantastic HBO miniseries on Chernobyl I couldn’t help but think of someone I admire quite a lot, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of the great pinnacle work on human psychology called ‘Flow.’ I finally was able to watch the five part series after many people kept recommending it to me and I have to say at every level of that experience, from the writer by Craig Mazin to the direction of Johan Renck—and everyone in between from the great acting to the executives who put the deal together ‘Chernobyl’ was a bold undertaking on an epic scale. These are not the filmmakers of the 80s and 90s where The Hollywood Reporter measured success by the size of their pay checks, and overall box office, but this trend we have now of streaming projects on the scale of Chernobyl are bringing forth creative filmmakers who are functioning from Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘Flow’ on several projects that are giving the world so many new entertainment options, from projects like Stranger Things to The Mandalorian. But this Chernobyl effort was on a scale of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, which is one of my all time favorite films. But there won’t be big Academy Awards for this labor of love, or big Hollywood contracts. I don’t know what the makers of Chernobyl made as far as a paycheck, but its obvious they made this series out of pure love of the content, and the hard truths that come from it.

I don’t think Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi meant to reveal why communism doesn’t work in his own studies, but he did and that footprint of human effort was stamped all over Chernobyl. The film series brilliantly walked the line between the heroics of every day “working” people as Karl Marx fantasized to represent and cast a very bright light into every aspect and social level of Soviet society. The apartments were small and dingy, even the offices of the chief coordinators were skanky and shrill. No wonder everyone was so willing to lie about the status of things because nobody wanted to jeopardize a promotion into something improved. Conditions were so terrible for everyday people in Russia during this period of Chernobyl, which for those who don’t know was the site of the worst nuclear accident in the history of the world and continues to be a blight on Ukrainian politics. Even to this day, Ukraine is in the news and is at the center of an impeachment attempt by modern Democrats in America. For everyday people around the world who don’t know history or geography, the kind of corruption that these old Soviet regions bred is unfathomable.

Comparing lifestyles from the same period such as in the film Wall Street it becomes quite clear that the Soviet Union was so terrified of their people learning about the great gifts that the West might inspire into their society that they put all their efforts into publicity of the state for the purposes of the state robbing people of their natural free will so what the entire country ended up with was a massive economy filled with the Parkinson’s Law. Not the disease but the trend in human beings to fill schedule targets with procrastination when loose parameters to fulfillment are allowed and lazy ambitions fill the void. Where Chernobyl told the stories of many brave people it was only when the tragedy of the moment was able to tap into people’s natural Flow as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi often discussed. When left to their own devices into service to the “state” people took their sweet time, did only what they had to in order not to be shot by the KGB, and the result was a society of peeling paint, small apartments, boxy cars that all looked a like and very little retail options to speak of. Because the entire society was only doing what it had to because their Flow and love of life itself was so micromanaged.

The Chernobyl story could be told in any communist or socialist country and it is ironic that the American left is so enchanted with these efforts and want that for our own society. It is an unfathomably stupid idea unless people just don’t understand the concepts behind the work of very serious modern phycologists such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Modern China is suffering through exactly the same trials and tribulations as the Soviet Union was during this period of Chernobyl. It is the perception of power that they have and only that. That is the reason the state must control information flow so vigorously. The same in modern day Iran. Any society where people live in sloppy conditions and there are economic struggles we will find the elements of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s observations, once you take away the flow of ambition from people and force them to serve institutionalism, you get from them a natural Parkinson’s Law. I use that term to abbreviate Csikszentmihalyi’s teachings, which of course does the trick. This was precisely why the test at the Chernobyl plant was done in spite of the need to shut down for 12 hours to meet the output quotas for the end of the month needs. That Soviet society needed to push quotas on people in such a way says everything about their society, people weren’t naturally inclined to produce, or even motivated to “over produce” as we might see in Western cultures, but they had to be coaxed a gunpoint to do so and there is all the problem with Chernobyl or any communist society.

What was remarkable about the HBO miniseries on Chernobyl is it was done by very creative people functioning from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow ideas reporting on why communism was a massive failure because it robbed Russian society of their Flow. Whether or not this was intentional we may never know. It could just be a happy accident as events provided these filmmakers with the opportunity of a lifetime. But one thing is for sure, they seized on it and created one of the most magnificent narratives about a global tragedy that anybody has ever seen. And the work left in their wake is worth serious scientific study. Terms like Parkinson’s Law have not been around until fairly recently, certainly not as long as the peasant ambitions of Karl Marx over a hundred and fifty years ago. There are still a lot of discoveries that we need to make as a society as to what works and what doesn’t. For now we know that Western ideas do better economically, where these notions of collectivism tend to create Parkinson’s Law when Flow is robbed from individual people. We see it in manufacturing all the time no matter where in the world we are conducting it. Tight, micromanaged establishments tend to get a lot of Parkinson’s Law whereas free flowing creative efforts like at Pixar or Apple generate massive intellectual output. The results are unmistakable.

Chernobyl is the kind of program that every human being should watch once. That something like that is available to HBO subscribers or those with Amazon Prime accounts to me is a modern miracle. Such a great history lesson is available from the comfort of our living rooms any time of day in any length of time that you may wish to view it. We live in a modern world that has always craved Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow. He didn’t invent the desire, he simply observed it and noted conditions when Flow was restricted in people. But seldom is there ever a film series that shows not only what caused a tragedy on an epic scale because of Flow problems created by a government that is more relevant today than even when the event occurred. That’s what we have with Chernobyl. A massive undertaking created by wonderful Flow by the filmmakers about a society that had terrible Flow and ultimately why it’s important without being preachy. Chernobyl is ultimately about the gifts that come from a free society, the ability to look at ourselves and improve to get the desired results, something we all take for granted way too often. And we do so because of Parkinson’s Law, because we always fill the work to fill the comforts of a schedule, we see no horizon on, and think we have all the time in the world to fix it. But we don’t.

Rich Hoffman

Keith Kinnunen and Liberals: There are a lot more mentally depraved people in the world which requires us all to be armed to defend ourselves from

Not that it’s a surprise, but we now know that the shooter of the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas was Keith Kinnunen—a loser who had managed his life poorly who targeted that church because they had given him food instead of money. This instance reminds me of many of my personal run-ins with homeless people. Once at the Kenwood Mall a homeless person was on the side of the highway exit looking for food, but what he really wanted was money. My wife and I went to the food court and bought him a bag of Arby’s for which he immediately threw to the ground. I’ve tried to help people like that since, but often with the same result. It doesn’t surprise me when people who find they can’t live in the world due to their lack of mental development (which is almost 100% of the time their own fault) or because they have drug addictions, that this loser Keith Kinnunen was upset that the church only gave him food instead of money, and sought to take his rage out on them due to his own radical ideas of self-indulgence.
When Kinnunen pulled out a 12-gauge shotgun to kill parishioners at that church, he managed to kill a few people before Jack Wilson pulled out his own gun and shot the assailant dead in seconds, as concealed carry holders are supposed to do. Its always sad to see anybody lose their life, but this case had a happy ending, a lot more people were able to return home to their families due to a good guy with a gun shooting a bad guy with a gun. The problem with the case is that liberals put their own two cents into this case by suggesting that instead of focusing on the success of Wilson’s actions that we should be looking at eliminating the need for gun violence in the first place, which is an astonishing statement considering that it is the liberal view of the world that caused the conditions.

Kinnunen was a troubled person his entire 44-year life, as a guy who had been married two times with ex-wives available to tell plenty of stories of his crazed anger and drug abuse, the guy was so irresponsible that he was just another homeless person. Many have pointed out that he wasn’t mentally healthy which is obvious. The burning question in this case and all of them for that matter is what the cause of mental illness is, which I often say the entire Democrat party could be guilty of. Trying to decide what is mental illness and what isn’t is where liberals have a hard time because their entire lives could be said to function out of some mental depravity not that unlike the killer in this Texas church case. They support drug abuse, do not believe in family structure and have a sense of entitlement which suggests that the world owes them something. They are not much different at face value than Kinnunen getting angry with the church because they gave him food instead of money.

This is entirely why most all liberals are opposed to open carrying of firearms because they see themselves in killers like Kinnunen. They want to believe that they are mentally healthy people, but when the facts come out on the kind of people who perform these mass killings in nearly every case, its not just a case of mental illness, but are the products of liberalism in our society—drug abuse, lack of personal responsibility for actions, and a sense of entitlement. Whether that entitlement comes in the form of federal workers demanding higher taxes to cover their inflated pensions, or whether its some loser like this Kinnunen guy who expects people to feel sorry for his bad decisions in life and to give him money for drugs so he can forget about his problems—that he himself created. Liberals sympathize with these killers because they see themselves in the mirrors of their existence—and they certainly wouldn’t want to have an armed society that could protect themselves from liberal incursions, which are frequent if left unchecked.

There are tens of thousands of liberals who are not much healthier than Keith Kinnunen functioning right now in our schools, our BMVs, even at the post office. The only reason they have not become homeless people running around food kitchens looking for free money is because we overpay them to be government leeches. Most of them are about one paycheck away from becoming assassins like Keith Kinnunen. Not that they would go out and shoot someone tomorrow, but they think about it. Believe me they do. It took Keith Kinnunen 44 years to get to that point, so its not like people become killers that fast, but the thought is in their heads and they want desperately to hide it from the rest of us. That is why they are against an armed society. Its not what they fear in people like Jack Wilson, its in a loss of a safety net to catch them if they should fail in life like Kinnunen did. Because they have more in common with the killer than they do a church going do-gooder.

Without question we could have put a suit and tie on Keith Kinnunen and stuck him on MSNBC and called him a political pundit and if he talked about global warming instead of cash from church food giveaways, we’d accept his positions as rational. But its all extremism and rooted in beliefs that need others to fill them for sustenance. Kinnunen was self-righteously religious and likely took Bible verses rooted in socialist sentiment too far and believed that people owed him a living, whereas the global warming crowd requires others to believe in a complete fiction to validate their point of view. Both ideas are rooted in collectivism requiring many sane minds to drop away their logic to accept the premise of lunacy.

We accept logically that liberals can use the IRS to steal our money for their own government theft, and that the power of government can be used to overthrow elections such as the impeachment case against Trump, but that there is some invisible line that separates the actions of Keith Kinnunen from demanding money at a church instead of food, and when a shootout breaks out over the issue liberals want to prosecute the gun owners. When in truth it was a failure of liberalized society that allowed a guy like Keith Kinnunen to live outside of jail, on and off the streets as a drug addict and a violent person to more than one spouse. We all knew Kinnunen was dangerous, but our society failed to recognize that threat because honestly, he was too close in behavior to most Democrats. So, he continued in paralysis until he eventually pulled out a gun to kill people of his own sense of entitlement. His insanity is really the responsibility of a society that did not set him right at an early age and allowed him to become a menace as a grown adult. That is why our future will require more people to carry guns in more places, because this guy isn’t the end by far. There are many just like him ready to snap and they are listening to the liberal dog whistles to fetch them on society as a menace. And it is then that we must defend ourselves.

Rich Hoffman

Dealing with the Leftist Frankenstein Monsters of Evil: The Texas Church shooting and why more guns are needed

If it was the sexual antics toward a government takeover of our 2016 election from Lisa Page that ended our thoughts of 2019 it should be the armed parishioners who took out a domestic terrorist at a Texas church that should launch our ambitions in 2020. Because there were trained participants of a security team armed at the church led by the guy who killed the suspect in the conflict, Jack Wilson—the attacker was subdued in about 6 seconds. Without voluntary armed protectors at the church ready for such action many more people would have been killed. This was a perfect case of what we have been talking about for many years. And this was another high-profile example of how such a system could work thanks to a recently passed state law that permitted concealed firearms inside places of worship. If not for that this tragic case of two people being shot would have been much more egregious, and unnecessary as we must all admit that evil is alive and well in the world, and when it shows bad intentions, it must be dealt with. Of course, the challenge to that assumption is that one person’s evil can be another person’s heaven, so there are additional complications into defining evil. But everyone can agree that when aggression is taken toward others in a life and death matter, that evil is amiss, and it must be eliminated quickly, not a 911 call later.

I always think about these things, but fortunately I live in an area where our local sheriff gets it, he understands the purpose of the Second Amendment. Yet even for me, I was a lot troubled while watching the film Richard Jewell, the day before this shooting, where in a scene where the FBI came to Jewell’s house they confiscated all his guns that had been laid out on his bed. It troubled me to see that just because the FBI accused Jewell of a crime that those agents could come into his house and just confiscate all his property, and given the reaction of the people in my movie theater, they seemed to be OK with it, accustomed to such a tyranny disguised as “safety” for the public at large. That is a very dangerous notion, and one that troubled me tremendously. It was the direct result of a culture that has been sold to us to think of guns as dangerous, or even as part of some counterculture. In that same film Jewell’s lawyer asked if the bombing suspect was a member of any fringe organizations, like the NRA and Jewell had to ask, “is the NRA a ‘fringe’ organization?”

It is that attitude actually that makes our world all that much more dangerous. Guns have always been a part of my life, since I was a very little kid to the present. And I’ve never really had a reason to use a gun on anybody, even though lots of times I could have been more than justified in doing so. It just wasn’t my go-to option when danger was amiss. But its always good to know that the option was there. I think guns should be carried everywhere, to restaurants, shopping complexes, to and from work, everywhere—because you never know when evil will show itself. This is especially true in public schools where everyone knows that they are typically gun free zones—making them obvious soft targets for bad guys looking to invoke terrorism on the innocent. Guns should be in reach of every human being on planet earth. If they were, a lot less evil would be taking place. That is for sure.

When bad guys show themselves, as this one at the Texas church in White Settlement did, the threat should always be eradicated in seconds, not minutes. It is always sad to see anybody die in these kinds of conflicts, especially if they are innocent, but the need to end that threat quickly cannot be understated. And when evil is unleashed, it needs to be quelled as fast as possible. If not faster. This is why also every shooter in America should practice speed and accuracy with their firearms so that when a threat is presented, ending it happens almost second nature with instinct. Taking a kill shot such as Jack Wilson performed is critical, there is no time for talking and pleading. This is why every state should also have a stand your ground law instead of a duty to retreat. When aggression appears, the shooting defender should not think for a second about some silly legal obligation created to retreat when showing a villain a passive attitude could end up getting a lot more people killed. A shooting defender should put a bullet in the head of evil before a countdown of 1 enters the mind. The threat should be over before anybody even realizes it started. That is why having an armed society is the best way to deal with the realities of evil.

There is no reason to contemplate the nature of a villain when they show they are willing to harm innocent people just minding their business. Laws should be clear on the side of gun owners willing to be that stop against threats at a moment’s notice. We want more Jack Wilson’s carrying guns. Whatever we might say about experiments in modern life where we have taught too many people to be parasitic in nature, that stealing, and bad behavior are forms of valor, such as what was suggested in the recent film “Joker’ we shouldn’t be surprised when hopeless losers in life are attracted to the antics of evil and consider using fear as leverage in the games of life. When we make it so that a clear definition of good and evil is blurred with addictions to pornography, drug abuse, and a social state where government takes the place of good parents, we should expect some to go too far and to fall off the edge and become dangerous. And to that warning, we should know that this one shooter at the Texas church is only the tip of the iceberg. That there are many tens of thousands just like him thinking of doing the same, only the next time it may be a school, a shopping mall, or a place of business. And when they make that mistake, someone needs to be there to stop them with a gun and a quick bullet to the head to end the thought and intention of evil that always follows.

It’s time to stop playing patty cake with anti-gun activists who sympathize with evil then want to disarm us to defend ourselves from their Frankenstein monsters. Those on the left who experiment with these false political philosophies build these monsters which we must defend ourselves from and it’s time to stop giving them a seat at the table as equal partners and to call things as they always have been. Guns are part of the solution especially when they are in the hands of skilled users. A person comfortable with a gun is one of the safest people in the world to be around, not the other way. Guns aren’t the danger; it’s trusting a system that is intent to build social monsters that is. And protesting gun use on their creations isn’t “fringe,” it’s actually the most patriotic thing you can do. And we should be doing a lot more of it in 2020.

Rich Hoffman

The Real Lisa Page: What the world looks like outside the bubble

It was sort of lost to the events of the moment, but I think it was the biggest story of 2019 and should be the last thing we think about before we usher in the new year. Impeachment after all is a very tactical decision for a Democrat party that has no other choice really. They are a loser political group looking for supporters as each day they fall further behind the trends of the times. But for all honesty the noise of the year especially from Democrats was to cover the terrible FBI scandal that sought to put an end to the Trump presidency by manipulating the law to their advantage at the expense of the rest of us. So, it isn’t surprising that on December 17th when Lisa Page went on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC to give her first live interview, the story was washed out before it even hit the airwaves. Impeachment was all anybody was talking about, and the new Star Wars movie was hitting theaters giving people a much-needed distraction from the perils of reality. And of course, there was Christmas and the need to get last minute presents. All the big names in the media were going on vacation, so Rachel put on a fellow Democrat to try to clear her name and repair her own brand by “fighting back” as she calls it. The results were fascinating, and worth a last look before we enter 2020.

What Lisa Page showed of herself by opening up a public exchange on Twitter and by doing this interview was a woman lost in a bubble that collapsed right on her face as she got caught not only messing around on her husband, Joe Burrow, the aspiring opera singer and current educator with a power hungry Georgetown University FBI agent married to a woman who has seen better days in the mirror—but they were both caught attempting to stage a coup against a sitting president and overthrowing an election. Now to be fair, they were not alone, but they were certainly attempting to shape history and abuse their access to power, for which Lisa Page obviously regrets. We’ve heard her lover’s response in public in front of Congress when Peter Strzok showed what an out of touch loser he really was as a registered Democrat that thought the rest of the world was the way he and his circle of friends were, institutionalists who could name all the current popular wines, and books that they are talking about at Martha’s Vineyard on a Sunday afternoon, but not a single reason of understanding why anybody would have even wanted to vote for President Trump.

Even on her best behavior on the Maddow show, Lisa Page showed outside the academic halls of a law school, or in a opera hall where her husband might sing away the day, as she and her friends sip wine in the foyer and contemplate the universe from the perspective of Georgetown society she reflected precisely the sentiments of their director of the FBI at the time, James Comey who thought of the presidency as an extension of some “higher order” for which the FBI was protecting. Some relationship with a pagan god and the heathens of a desired monarchy, for which America had rejected long ago, yet the memos never made it to the academia of Washington which lived joyously in that bubble of social construct for which they were the architects. These FBI agents are defending an American way of life that doesn’t exist, but is rather an extension of Europe and all the dirty cobblestone streets that still haven’t been repaired from the Middle Ages.

Yet Lisa Page is tired of being a caricature of the “right” as she stated it, and she is going to start fighting back because she thinks the rest of the world is with her. Apparently her husband understands the affair with Peter Strzok, perhaps he even sang a song about it as she sipped on a vintage wine of immaculate dating and sent text messages to the Strzoks inviting them over for dinner and a book review of a mutual friend recently found on the New York Times Bestseller list, pinky out. Perhaps James Comey was available too as they could all discuss what a disgusting reprobate the American people were for voting for Trump into the White House. Affairs, what are those? What’s wrong with sharing good times with friends, until that friend falls in love with you as Peter Strzok did with Page. But to their minds it was all just a little fun, it didn’t show any bad judgement regarding their character.

And so it went during the Maddow interview that Lisa Page continued to be bewildered as to why people have made a caricature out of her, and she tried to explain her text message statements with a context that presented her case in a more beleaguered way. Watching her speak to what Lisa Page thought of as a friendly audience was a window into how all these people think when they are alone with their own kind. They are wanna’ be royalty trying to impose a standard of living that America rejected long ago, only they never got the memo. And they missed the memo because they hang around the wrong places and learn from those equally tarnished. Affairs in France are normal, and the people in Georgetown and around the greater Washington D.C. area strive to be more like dirty Europe and its topless beaches and free-thinking lack of physical possession marital commitments. What was missing from Page’s interview was any kind of understanding that the whole purpose of throwing off English rule was to get away from the very kind of people she was and desires to be. And to answer the question, Trump was elected to undo their influence over the rest of us, not to strengthen it.

Unfortunately, I know a lot of people like Lisa Page, James Comey and Peter Strzok. I live in Liberty Township, Ohio where it was founded as a direct spawn of the American Revolution but these days these leftists spawn like Gremlins that have eaten after midnight and had water spilled on them breeding like popcorn. They are everywhere, but that doesn’t make them right. It makes them simply as a form of insanity born in a bubble where natural predators have been staved off to allow them to grow. And to see Lisa Page’s face in that interview, it is the face of a young lady who has used her sex to attempt to shape the world in an image she understands instead of trying to live in the world that is. Instead she sought to use her sexuality to control the mind of the investigating FBI agent on the case of Hillary Clinton to free her candidate to control the course of the nation to her whims. Opera is all about just those types of powerplays and from her point of view, it was all very normal, and exciting. But she got caught and now she is on the front page of everything and it bothers her to know that she is not the mainstream. Her version of fighting back is to try to rebrand herself as a victim of abuse, but people see through her to the truth, she is just another slut using sex to control events in the world. And there is no way to spin that rugged truth, even on the very liberal Rachel Maddow Show.

Rich Hoffman

Candice Keller Should Know Better: George Lang is the most honest and toughest opportunity for the 4th District Senate seat

I must admit to being extremely disappointed in Candice Keller as she has been stoking her supporters against George Lang by bringing up the Dynus scandal that moved through Butler County politics a decade ago or so. That event which involved the company Dynus trying to win a business alignment to bring in high speed networks into the I-75 corridor, which involved many politicians from John Boehner, Bill Coley and Butler County auditor Kay Rogers, who was sentenced to two years in prison for her role in the effort, was a tough period for area Republicans. A very aggressive prosecutor for the Justice Department wanted to go after people close to John Boehner because he was poised at the time to be the next Speaker of the House, so the prosecution meant to take a stab at Butler County politics which was, and remains a hot seat of Republicans throughout the country. It was crazy lunatic assistant U.S. Prosecutor Jennifer Barry who wanted to go after George Lang for testimony he gave in relation to the prosecution of Orlando Carter from Dynus on eight different accusations. She tried to make the case that he lied in that testimony on those eight accounts and she was pushing 5 years of prison. George was found not guilty on all accounts, even with the FBI and Barry going after him with all the power the government had, and the jury deliberated for a short time and found him not guilty. I would expect that Keller would see how closely this case was just like that modern one against Trump, and that it wasn’t a scandal at all, but a hit job going after one of John Boehner’s good friends, and a hot target for higher office himself, and the government was poised to take George out at all costs.

I have supported Candice Keller, even when Sheriff Jones showed a lack of support for her. There is a lot I agree with her on, she is likely one of the types of people who are readers of my blog site. But she should know better than to take a cheap shot at George Lang as she has on her Facebook page. She knows the Dynus case was completely a hit job which involved a measly little payment of $100,000 that the prosecutors wanted to call a “kickback” which is equable to the many attempts to twist the Ukrainian phone call into an impeachable offense against Trump. Its all the same game and she knows it. To try to rip down Lang to prop herself up is not a good idea, especially if she wants a crack at one of those higher offices in the future. I understand that its politics, but George isn’t the kind of guy to target, let me tell you why.

I met George during this period where he was worried as hell about getting dinged jail time if a jury of his peers would have decided otherwise. It was costing him a personal fortune to defend himself, which was the point. He knew he was innocent, but it was terrible to be in such a position where his life and fate were not in his hands, it was in the hands of the court. He had a couple of kids getting ready to go to college and there was a lot of uncertainty at that time about what would happen in his life. His wife Debbie was so solid that she and he earned my respect for the rest of all of our lives. She was so graceful under pressure, and so was he, really. I admired how well they handled all that tremendous pressure. You can really judge a person’s character by how well they are under pressure, and I saw the guts of the Lang family up close during that trial and will always admire them for it.

At that time I was pulled into the IRS scandal as one of my personal friends became a direct target of the Obama White House due to his Tea Party leadership. I was looked at due to my connection and it was quite insulting, and an obvious hoax against all of us who were supporting the Tea Party movement. For me it was my part in supporting the Liberty Township Tea Party that caused them to dig into my life. Then a year after George’s perjury trial, after the FBI essentially turned him inside and out looking for anything and everything they could think of to bust him on, I went through an experience of my own after all my successful WLW radio broadcasts had been keeping the Lakota levy addicts from passing a tax increase on property owners in both Liberty Townships and West Chester. I went through a smear campaign organized by Joan Powell and many others from Lakota and executed by Michael Clark from the Cincinnati Enquirer. Now, to be honest, I expected them to take a shot and I was ready for it. But to see the bullet come for your head confirming what you think will happen was a different matter.

I was angry, I’m still mad about it. I will never get over it because the attempt by them was so obvious. What they went after was different than what George went through, but instead of jail time, they were targeting my reputation which of course has financial implications and other things. They went after me in a very personal way and they didn’t care what it did to me. It was another example of a political hit job to take out opposition to the plans of government whether it’s a public school looking for unlimited taxes to pay their labor unions, or it’s a shot at John Boehner through his friends to curb his enthusiasm for reform as Speaker of the House of Representatives, the third most powerful public office in the country. It’s all politics, and it is ruthless. Not for the weak, that’s for sure.

For those who remember my name was on the front page of all the newspapers at the time and on all the radio broadcasts trying to paint me as a crazy Republican sexist. My event was a counter punch no different than what Trump does now on Twitter only then it was new. Nobody had seen anything like that before, so they didn’t know what to do with it. I bounced back with no problem but right after the event I held a super-secret meeting with my Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom supporters who work a lot of issues behind the scenes. Our meeting was at a local LaRosa’s and it met a lot to me to see that everyone believed in the effort as much, if not more than ever. Well, one person came and he didn’t need to, because at the time, I was politically toxic—the way that regular people measure such things. That person was George Lang. I had a picture taken at the time to reflect on it in the years to come and guess who took the picture—it was George. I thought it was best that he not be in the picture because he was still building up his reputation after his own perjury case. George didn’t care though, he was happy to be in the picture if I wanted him to be, and that told me a lot about George Lang. Sure, he has always wanted to be in a higher office. But in the trenches, to his very gut, he stands by people through thick and thin and is one of the most honest people I know—which is why I call him a friend to this very day. So I’m not happy about Candice Keller trying to prop herself up at his expense. George may be the guy to beat, but you can’t lie about him. George may be the most honest and vigilant politician I’ve ever known, and I’ve known a lot of them.

I haven’t told these stories before, not to this detail because people didn’t really have context to understand just how dishonest our government is. The hit job against George, an attempt to put him in jail and drain his finances to let John Boehner know that no matter how much power he gained in the House of Representatives, that the government would know where his friends lived, and they would suffer. Look at all the people around President Trump, they are going to jail or being harassed in precisely the same manner. And I got my own taste of that scandal and felt the sting of it up close. I will forever be angry about it, and George was hit much harder than I was, and his attitude is far more forgiving. I would expect Candice to play fair because she should understand how the game is played, and she says she does. But if she did, she wouldn’t have tried to use the Dynus scandal against Lang. Because that’s no different than trying to impeach Trump over the Ukrainian phone call, or the phony Russian case with the FBI actually planting evidence to prosecute him with. What the Department of Justice tried to do to George Lang was no different. And because George and his wonderful wife Debbie held up so well under the pressure is exactly why he should be the next senator of Ohio in the 4th District. I can speak to his character which I would challenge is at the top of any public office, even when politics was ugliest and jail time was hung over his head just as Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos, and Michael Flynn have had to endure, just for knowing the President. George Lang didn’t waver, didn’t let his knees buckle, and he came out of it stronger than ever and when he calls you a friend, he does not play politics. He is just an honest person who can walk through the fires of hell and never even frown when the pressure is greatest. That’s what we should all expect in a senator anywhere, especially in Ohio.

Rich Hoffman

Lee Wong Supports Communist China: As a boot-licker he has proposed danger to our economy

Like I said previously, Lee Wong should not be running for the 4th District Senate seat in Ohio let alone polluting the streets of West Chester with his signs four months before the primary. But since he is, he’s more than open to criticism. I make no attempts to hide my support for George Lang for that same position. It’s not just because I’ve known him for a long time, but its due mainly to George knows how the game is played and he can play it without losing himself. Lee does not, he has no idea what he’s doing and it is reasons like his support of that ridiculous Chinese trade trip that he and Mayor of Cincinnati John Cranley went on under the umbrella of economic expansion with China that make me a George Lang fan in that race for the Senate of Ohio in the upcoming primary.

The game with China is one that all those representatives mentioned, especially the universities have missed the mark on. I doubt that they openly support the communist regime in China, but philosophically they are aligned at the hip and that makes all of them dangerous, domestically. Thank goodness President Trump understood the situation and he has played the leverage game against the Chinese very well, a trade deal with them will be signed very soon and our Dow Jones will shoot up to over 30,000 in the very near future. But to get there we couldn’t do as Lee Wong and his liberal partners wanted to do. I say liberal because Lee has listed himself as a Republican because he must in Butler County. If he were in Hamilton County with John Cranley, he’d be a registered Democrat, just for context. People who don’t understand business and the game of leverage believed even a year ago that because China has over a billion people in it, that they were all ripe for a new customer market. But, unfortunately, most of those billion people don’t have much money and all of them are tightly controlled by the communist government in China. So to get access to that market, American companies had to do a lot of boot-licking led by our inept politicians who were guilty of propping up the communist government with false power and appeasement.

Although the effort to reach out to China’s city of Jiaozhou as a sister city to Cincinnati with a trade agreement looks nice, its purely political and a not so disguised appeasement to the power of communism which with Lee’s often very vocal support of Chinese-American relationships, he is clearly not on the side of capitalist free market decision making. Whenever pressed on this topic the usual thing for Lee to do is cite his military service which he mistakenly believes is a trump card to any questioning of his patriotism. He even goes on the attack to suggest that he’s the only patriotic politician in the region because of his military service. But as we know, there are many circumstances where military people go bad and are less than patriotic, so Lee’s military service does not omit him from discussions about supporting communists. In short, if you support China in its current form, you are supporting communism. Until the Chinese overthrow their communist government and replace it with something better, they are a tyrannical regime that is a threat to the world. They are not our friends and they do not have leverage of our future—as Lee and many liberal economists would like you to believe. A good question for Lee in the upcoming debates would be for him to denounce China as a communist manipulator in the world markets, something that will reveal his true intentions and economic beliefs.

Fortunately, we are now looking at this issue in hindsight. I know George Lang stood with President Trump on the trade standoff that has been going on for a long time. The President is going to come out on top in that exchange. He of course understands the nature of economics and knew that China was a paper tiger looking important in theatrics only. Their population that is over 1 billion people are largely poor and unimaginative due to their communist rule, so they are not effective in marketplace competition, only when the rest of the world fears their population. Once that fear is removed, or any debt holdings they may have on assets to gain leverage in a negotiation, it becomes clear quickly what China is and has always been about, the ultimate spread of communism to the world and world domination by putting everyone in debt to the Chinese. It was always the plan and leftists in America know it, which is why nearly every university in North America have been kissing the ass of the communists for decades. It is what they wanted for America until Donald Trump came along and proved otherwise.

Trump called the Chinese bluff and once he did that, and he was very alone in doing so—China was exposed for what they were, looters who steal ideas and wealth from other countries by fluffing their feathers like peacocks to look bigger and badder than they really were. In the end, without America to loot off of, their economic leverage tanked in a big way and it forced them to the negotiating table with Trump and he knew it all along. He could wait them out, they couldn’t survive long without American imports and jobs to carry them along. That was the secret of the trade deal that’s coming. America had all the cards; China only had a massive population of potential consumers to dangle out there as a potential market expansion lure. But the truth in the end was that to gain market access our companies had to bend to the rules of communism, which Google, Nike, and the NBA were more than willing to do. And politicians like Lee Wong were there to pave the way for the embarrassments.

A basic rule in politics and in business that is true around the world, those who have the gold, rule. When negotiating with China, America had all the gold. China wanted some of it, so they are the ones who must bend in the negotiations. Not America. But if anybody had listened to all the dumb universities, John Cranley and Lee Wong, America would still be licking the boots of China. Lucky for us, Trump put an end to it, and I can say that there isn’t a more pro business Trump supporter in the Midwest than George Lang, the obvious best choice for the upcoming Ohio senate seat. Lee’s blind support of an obvious sentimental favorite of China leads to bad decisions and a very poor political philosophy. This is nothing new for those who know Lee best, the people who work with him. Having screwed up political beliefs doesn’t make a person bad. But it makes them dangerous in leadership positions and is just another reason why nobody should vote for Lee Wong, I would say for anything. Certainly not for Senate, but not for any public position. He uses the mask of being a Republican to stay in office, but his sentiments have and will always be with communist China.

Rich Hoffman