Tag: Bullwhips

A Review of ‘Fire and Fury’: The profound sadness that emerges at the end of the controversial book

My first thought about the new Michael Wolff book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is sadness.  My second thought is that it is good for the book publishing business and that I think it’s wonderful that people are reading it.  At least they are reading something.  I went down to my Barnes and Noble store at precisely 9 am when they opened to buy it.  They had two copies for promotion and were able to release them once the publisher moved up the publication date, due to Trump’s cease and desist order, so it was one of the more dramatic books to hit the shelves in a long time—and that is a good thing.  But after going through it my opinion of Trump only solidified.  It was obvious to me that Wolff took a calculated risk that will make him forever wealthy—but will always place him in the category of a tabloid writer.  He threw away his reputation to exploit this one unique chance in history and that is what lead me to feel the sadness—not just for him, but the people who said the things about Trump that they did.  It was a grim reminder to me of how small people most of the time think—and that is a real tragedy that I hope diminishes with each year that Trump is in office.

Of course Melania cried when her husband won the presidency.  She’s a young woman still who could walk the streets of New York with her son and go to a store or restaurant and enjoy some anonymity.  With Trump’s successful election she lost all that in a moment for the rest of her life and there is no question that it was a real punch in the gut for her.  What shocked me about Wolff’s book, as a writer, was his complete disregard for those types of little moments and what they really mean.  He simply took a Never Trump vantage point of all the events of the book and interviewed people who were ankle biters.  Ankle biters are those second-hand people, who usually constitute most of our society, who need a leader to show them how to do something once, then they try to associate themselves with the original idea through group think and try to claim jump in some respect for shared ownership.  You can know them by the type of people who stand around the coffee machine in any given morning talking about nothing until the boss walks through.  The boss might say a thing or two about current events for which the ankle biters will laugh and agree with.  Then the moment the boss leaves those people retreat into small-minded topics talking about the boss and how stupid he or she may be—and how they could do a better job if they were in charge.

Trump dealt with ankle biters all his life from his various businesses.  However, given his later celebrity status and the role his children played at the top of his company, Trump had some insulation from them.  In public life the ankle biters are much worse because there is a feeling of entitlement that often comes with their jobs and when Trump took office those second-hand people where literally everywhere.  It took Trump about five months of working in the White House to start to get his stride and figure out who was doing what.  He learned enough to figure out that Comey was a leaker on the intelligence side, but the people closest to him were harder to detect. Trump sincerely tried to show everyone in Washington D.C. that he had no plans of being a tyrant so he went to dinner with Mitt Romney, and put people on his staff that he hoped would bridge the gap between the Never Trumpers and the rest of the GOP—conventional choices that would make passing a legislative agenda a higher probability.  Those people, and Steve Bannon turned out to be one of them, assumed that Trump’s attempt to do this meant that the new president had no idea how to go about his job.  In their minds they fantasized that they could do a better job, so they were not loyal, and they found the ear of another second-hander in Wolff and their gossipy recollections produced the contents of this book.

Trump being the eternal optimist figured he could bounce though anything, so he didn’t mind taking the gamble, and when it began to be clear by May of 2017 that he’d need to get rid of quite of few people from the White House staff and replace them with new hires—he did it. Trump also obviously hoped to convert the Obama holdovers around the country who had been working on the previous administration.  I found myself sympathizing with Trump quite a lot in Wolff’s book because I’ve been in similar situations—where you take over management of other people’s problems and you try to reform them with your much better personal philosophy—but they don’t get it and you eventually have to let them go.  Trump at his core is a really nice guy.  I’ve met him a few times and he truly is an eternal optimist and he and I have that in common.  There are lots of places where we are different, but on that topic, I feel a real connection to this president.  He is always hopeful and that is a unique trait, one that is making America great again.  On the day that this book was released, the Dow exploded up over 25,000 for the first time ever which is astonishing.  That is purely because of Trump, because the investors out there understand what this Trump presidency means.  They are leaders in their fields and not the ankle biter types—so the economy reflects better than any other indicator how good this president is for the world.  That’s where I felt a real sadness for Michael Wolff in this book, and Steve Bannon ironically.  Their vantage point of reporting their opinions—as was the case of most of the quotes, was from that of a defeated state of mind.  Wolff didn’t surprise me because there are a lot of people like him out there.  But Steve Bannon did.

As Wolff stated the essential theme of his book was that everyone concluded Trump was essentially a man child—that he made everything about him all the time.  I’ve heard this one before also, and that is why as I closed the book I felt a profound sadness for a lot of people in it.  We start out lives as children with endless imagination and optimism.  We learn all we can in a short time—usually before the age of 5 and it is a real miracle of the human mind that we do so much in such a limited time.  But most of us—like more than 99.99999%–don’t make it past our teens and into our twenties with the gift of childhood intact.  Slowly over many years we fall into adult habits of steady bed times, we learn what works and what doesn’t so we regulate ourselves to reality and thus find ourselves shaped by the weakest links of our society and their lack of ambition.  Trump as a president still has that energy of a child who wants to build a tent in the living room—only he has spent most of his adult life building actual skyscrapers.  To do something like that requires endless optimism—like children have. The great motivating pastor from New York City, Norman Vincent Peale in his book The Power of Positive Thinking attributed a genius status to those adults who carry that childlike quality of thinking throughout their lives.  It is why Trump can see and do things that most people can’t and it is his best quality.  However, Wolff presents it as a detriment and that is unfortunately what is wrong with most people psychologically these days.  People see in Trump a quality they have long-lost and they feel resentment toward him reminding them of what it was.  That hatred is not just politically ideological, it is visceral.  It’s a mode of self-preservation that is not related to the performance of Trump—but the state of mind for which the readers and interviews of the book were conducted.

That visceral platform is what shines through in the end.  Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House I thought only strengthened the Trump administration because it clearly places on the table the type of people who have been against him.  Trump can now crack down on all his enemies—which happen to be the primary villains of American ideas—and he can say he tried.  This book is the testimony of that effort.  When it comes to people like Steve Bannon there are always people like him who fly too close to the sun and have their wings melt away.  Most humans don’t handle power very well—the Lord of the Rings books can attest to that—power can corrupt the weak minds—and often does.  But for those who do carry power with the mind of young people who just want to do and learn great things in life—power doesn’t corrupt—and Trump is at a place in his life where a hamburger in bed with three televisions on is his idea of a great life.  He’s accomplished all the things most people associate with success and he is now a president who is in the White House incorruptible.  What I learned from Fire and Fury is that Trump is far better than even I thought he was—but the people around him were not nearly equipped as such.  They were mere mortals who have not yet touched the face of eternity—which most children do possess until they learn to stop listening.  And that realization comes with it a profound sadness.

If you’d like to read the book but can’t get your hands on a copy, here it is in full PDF.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Bt6BSc-kxJeTUpMEoJkkbEgEZaSmPjA3/view

Rich Hoffman

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

Blame Fat Asian Chicks: The terrible numbers for the ‘Star Wars’ future

As I was saying about the movie math of The Last Jedi before the Christmas holiday weekend—they are in trouble. And it doesn’t make me happy to say it, because something like this has massive cultural ramifications for the future—and its clear that people were front loaded on the film. They went to see it when it first came out. But as Luke faded away at the end of the film, so did the fan base. You can’t go kill off all the original characters and expect to keep this thing alive unless the new characters are every bit as charismatic—and they clearly aren’t. Kylo Ren is the most exciting character and he’s the bad guy—everyone else is just wall paste and that’s a real problem. The movie will make its money, but the problem is, will people still love this film in 2040—like they do the originals? No. Even in the year of 2050 people will still love the original films, but will be indifferent of the prequels and the sequels—and that is truly sad.

I made a decision not too long ago that I would support the Star Wars franchise mainly because of my grandchildren and children. After The Force Awakens I didn’t want to talk about Star Wars for an entire year, and my kids missed it. They like to bounce morality themes off me decorated with Star Wars plots and not having the ability to do that wore on their minds. So it is more destructive to say no to it than to accept what good does come from it. When the new Star Wars land opens in Disney World we’ll go to it, and I’m sure we’ll love it. But as far as enthusiasm for what comes next from the Lucasfilm group—the magic is clearly gone and that was an avoidable circumstance. It was a bad idea to assume that Star Wars stories could be created in group think instead of that classical way Lucas used which was just a piece of paper and a pencil—and one human mind.

I recently reread the book by Norman Vincent Peale The Power of Positive Thinking. I was provoked into this endeavor by watching recently The Founder, the story of Ray Kroc who started the McDonald’s franchise. When he was an up and coming traveling salesman, he listened to a book version of the Peale book to motivate him each day. The book was very popular in that late 50s early 60s period and I can imagine George Lucas having access to it, because a lot of what is in that book are some of the best lines of dialogue from the Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back. I do know something about George Lucas as he was on the board of The Joseph Campbell Foundation when I was a member—and I’m sure that Peale played a part of influence on the young George Lucas. He may not admit to it today as all his liberal friends would likely berate him for it, but The Power of Positive Thinking is every bit as strong in the core of American value as it was when it was written. That kind of element is what’s missing from these new Star Wars movies—Luke being the pessimist, the lack of an eternally optimistic Han Solo character who doesn’t get pushed around by the girls in the movies. Star Wars was and always will be a throwback film to the kind of America that was the 1940s through the 1950s—just as Disney World reflects that same optimism from its founder in its amusement parks. People aren’t going to pay good money and buy lots of merchandise for something that makes them depressed and all these new Star Wars films have a premise set in sacrifice, not in proactive action.

I had a reading marathon over the Christmas break, I read three books in three days and I utilized the entire clock to do so—and I loved it. The Power of Positive Thinking was an easy read for me, but it took some time, around 10 hours, and I had it timed to the arrival of my next book, The 15:17 to Paris, which is about the terrorist attack that was stopped by three heroes riding a train from Amsterdam to Paris when an ISIS sympathizer launched an attack with 500 people on board. As I was finishing Peale’s book at 1:57 PM on December 26th, 2017 a notification came up on my computer saying that The 15:17 to Paris had arrived at my house. So I closed the Peale book just as the dogs were barking and noticed a mail truck stuffing the book into my mailbox as the snow was falling. I walked out in my bare feet to retrieve the book as snow blew across our driveway. I grabbed the book and went back to my chair and opened it up—only about five minutes transpired, and I started reading that book and within 6 pages the mother of Spencer Stone was praying for her child to be safe in France ahead of the terrorist attack. I knew as I read that under Clint Eastwood’s direction that this movie was going to be a hit, because America is still that hopeful and faithful nation. Disney has decided to go against that traditional message and it is hurting them—unnecessarily. After all, wasn’t that the whole point of the movie Dumbo—believing in yourself even when your symbols have been striped away?

The original Star Wars movies were very much about hope, and how positive thinking could overcome anything—no matter the odds. These new films are very progressive and clearly about sacrifice. Who wants to go to the movies to hear a fat Asian girl rattle on about animal rights? If Disney wants to show that average people can be heroes too, there are other ways to do that, but Star Wars is not about those kinds of people. The characters of Star Wars are about the exceptional, not the bland. I bet there will be lots of Rose Star Wars figures on clearance this summer at Target. Who will want that one for their collection? At the end of The Last Jedi the new girl power had pretty much destroyed their resistance showing themselves to be completely incompetent. It’s one thing to be outmatched as the Rebellion always was, but this Resistance is an official branch of the governing power. How could the female generals screw it up so bad? Those are the kinds of questions that people left the theater thinking. They certainly weren’t passionate enough about the film to go see it a second time, or a third—which is what it needed.

This is all important because it says much more about our culture overall. Star Wars is a big part of that culture and now we can see that the magic that made the originals good, just isn’t there in the modern sense and that can be traced back to our divided country politically and on matters of religion. Hollywood is a depressed culture full of losers, drug addicts, promiscuous cape riders, cheats, low-life’s and hopeless degenerates. I noticed that my copy of The 15:17 to Paris shipped from a book store in Van Nuys, California since it was out of print awaiting the updated version that is set to come out with the release of the Eastwood movie in early February. But I didn’t want to wait so I found a new copy of the book in that little town which is a suburb of Los Angeles essentially—just a few miles down the road from where Star Wars was originally partially filmed, where Industrial Light and Magic started as a special effects company for the Star Wars movies. As I watched my package move across the country I thought about how different California was from when Star Wars was first made. The hints of progressivism were already there, but there were enough people not yet corrupted that it wasn’t noticeable unless you really picked up the curtain. Now, it’s a very different place and the people who have helped make it so progressive are now the people making Star Wars movies, and they don’t get it. They don’t understand what made Star Wars great in the first place and they don’t understand American audiences—at all. And that is a damn shame. Nothing against fat Asian chicks—there is a place for them in the world—but forcing them into a plot just to do it says that the filmmakers have no idea what they are doing. Which is directly reflected by the box office numbers.

Rich Hoffman

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Why Trump Should Never Stop Using Twitter: If we really want to fix the problems, we have to talk about them

I keep hearing this ridiculous notion that President Trump should stop Tweeting.  Everyone says it, even his supporters—yet they miss that Twitter is the key, and the essence of the American President.  Without it, he would have never been elected to begin with, and because of it, the Deep State is being exposed in ways that no court system would even dare.  Even with the mountains of evidence witnessed about FBI corruption, Jeff Sessions is reluctant to do anything that might draw fire from the establishment and he’s a handpicked Trump guy.  Imagine how bad things really were when Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch were in those activist seats at the head of the Department of Justice. An honest, talkative president is exactly what this country needed, and a platform to speak from because the rest of the institutional elements of our modern society from the press down to the most ardent government employee function in ways that prevent analysis of their purposeless existence.

The President should never stop Tweeting!  The reason so many people are upset about it, and about the times of day that Trump does it is that it shows the establishment that they do not have control of this president—and control is what they were used to.  I remember specifically about George W. Bush, when he was first in office he stated that he hoped to bring the Norman Rockwell paintings that reflected American life back to the forefront of consideration.  Yet within a few months of getting into office he became just another mouthpiece of mundane representation and drifted quickly into the background.  The heads of each department of our government quickly took over and the media filtered the results to us leaving the importance of the presidential role in our country to be largely ceremonial—such as giving pardon to the Turkey during times of Thanksgiving and occasionally signing a bill once congress presented one.  It didn’t matter if the president was a Republican or a Democrat; they were all molded by the establishment into kind of the same neutered presence.  They were to do what they were told and the media would tell the story.  In that way the press was given the impression that they were running things because elected officials accepted that they had to appease the journalists if they wanted to show a track record of success.

Trump as a negotiator is clearly using his skills to push and pull positions which are unique in any elected office.  Trump is a salesman first and the only way he can really discover the position of the opposition is to put out probing ideas and to see how people react to it.  I knew what I was voting for when I cast my ballot for Trump.  I expect him to be malleable on specifics, but resolute on core philosophy and when it comes to him—the thing he cares about most is winning his engagements.  Business people often engage in contentious debate but then settle things over a game of golf or a nice dinner.  That is not how politicians do things—they often present a contentious front to satisfy their donor base, but like big time wrestlers they are all talk and now shows regarding philosophy.  They have no expectation of victory, only to show through the media a track record that keeps them in office with each new election.  They are like assembly line workers who never quite accomplish a task who are leveraging for overtime by saying that if I had just one more hour, they could complete the task.  Yet they never quite get there so they keep asking for more and more and more, then blame the system for why they can never achieve their objective.  Voters are typically too busy to pay close attention to the details and that’s how we end up with the mess we see now—a corrupt government used to doing nothing, running up debt, and ruining the lives of us all with their inside the Beltway priorities.

Most politicians seek to build off a perceived victory but Trump knows that the name of the game is stagnation, so when he does accomplish something big—like enacting deregulation, or rolling back Net Neutrality—or even recommitting America back to the space race—he’ll drop a Tweet picking a fight with someone so that the resources of the “system” fixate on his subject which diverts legislative terrorists from sending in suicide squads to destroy his agenda items—and it works well.  Trump has managed to do a remarkable number of things in his first year and he protects them by keeping antagonists talking about the “small stuff.”  It would be nice if we lived in a world where achievement was respected, and even sought after—but we’re not.  Too many people have a stake in stagnation—it’s actually their livelihood so reform is not in their thoughts.

The sum of all this is of course is that change is happening because for the first time I think in our nation’s history we are talking about things.  Without Trump’s Tweets, the FBI would not be exposed as they are now.  That’s why Chuck Schumer is so upset with Trump’s “Tweets.”  Remember in the beginning of the Trump presidency when Chuck Schumer threatened that the newcomer to politics mind his mouth otherwise the American intelligence agencies would take notice?  That was a threat, and one that has been used on many presidents in the past and other civilians—because don’t forget a president is not a king—they are simply elected civilians who are put in charge of one branch of government—and given the keys to the military so to appease the public with the fantasy that they are the ones in control of that awesome power. In reality the Deep State works for the politicians and the donors and everyone was getting their marching orders from K-Street behind the glitzy prostitutes who show up after the sun goes down.  All the little know-nothing attorneys who become lobbyists and sit in the bars along that stretch of road just outside the reach of the White House have always thought that they were contributing little unelected tid-bits to the realities of our Republic, but not anymore.  Now there is a guy from the civilian sector willing to call them out on Twitter and that scares them literally.

The Deep State assumed that they’d play their game and that Trump would have been destroyed by last summer—because for most people that’s what would have happened.  But when Trump defended himself and fought back—the way anybody should have—the methods which have controlled so many presidents of the past for the entire history of our nation, stopped working. And the house of cards for which they had built their temples of governmental worship fell down quickly as if a child had built the whole thing in a play room before their mother pressed them to dinner.  The entire institution for which our nation was built on the backs of corruption and malice was exposed as just a flimsy plaything for the old aristocrats of Europe who came to America to keep us all tied to the motherland of history.  However, that was never Trump’s mission. His task was to win, not only the seat in the White House, but to win the whole game and give it back to the American people, which is exactly what he’s doing.  And if it wasn’t for Twitter, nothing would be happening.  Trump should never quit using Twitter—and saying the things he says.  We can’t allow the establishment to hide malice behind politeness and rules of engagement that they control.  If we really want to fix the problems of our nation we have to attack them where they truly reside and for Trump—Twitter has been the means of delivery.  The goal of an American president should never be to get along with the media, congress, the FBI, K-Street or even the nations of the world.  The only goal should be to keep America a great nation the best way they can during their time in office.  A lot of them step into the White House with each new election and assume that they are going to change the world for the better—but they soon learn what limited powers they really have.  Within a few months of office they become just placeholders for history and they finish their terms in that role.  Trump is the first president perhaps in the history of the world who is changing that notion on behalf of the people who elected him.  And Twitter is the key to his success in this day and time of 2018.  In the future it will probably be something else but for now, Twitter is the means of restoring America to the greatness that was always there—which likely really pisses off the people who run Twitter because they are hardly a bastion of conservatism.

Rich Hoffman

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Jim Renacci and ‘The Last Jedi’: Liberals and their Resistance are more alike than they know

One thing that I really like about Jim Renacci’s run for the governorship within the state of Ohio is that he is very light on his feet. As he had a press conference early in the week for which the new Star Wars movie The Last Jedi was released I thought it was cleaver that he was active on Twitter tying the needs of his campaign to the pop culture monstrosity. It was a hip move that was reminiscent to the light on his feet nature of Donald Trump. The big news of course was that Renacci was partnering up with Cincinnati councilwoman Amy Murray which was another smart move—and for most politicians that would have been their news highlight of the week. But what is noticeable about Jim Renacci is that he’s very competitive, and determined to win whatever he does which is why I’m supporting him for his run for governor—to replace the docile, and much maligned closet liberal—John Kasich.

https://twitter.com/JimRenacci/status/940374420601876480

The candidacy of Renacci is actually very much in line with the pop culture for which Star Wars represents to our society at large. I’ve seen The Last Jedi, the most recent Star Wars film at an early screening and it was good of course in its own way. I understand now that I’m a traditional Star Wars guy and that these new movies, books and televisions shows will never touch my heart the way they once did—which is fine. They are fun movies that are dealing with a lot of very contemporary mythology, but nobody did it better than George Lucas. Disney should have followed the Lucas stories and stayed away from these much more progressive adoptions created by the San Francisco kids at Lucasfilm. I’ll give a little review of course once the dust settles—because there is a lot to think about. But one take away that is directly connected to the politics of our real world is that the Resistance in the movie is very much reflective of today’s political left.

I’m a Rebellion guy from the first Star Wars led by Han Solo. When Solo was a general the Rebellion won and destroyed the Empire and it was a very Ayn Rand type of embodiment. In these new movies it’s not the Rebellion any more it’s the Resistance and the new Han Solo type of character is Poe Dameron. Led completely by women now, the Resistance is very progressive and as a result they are losing. In fact, they are not only losing, but they are dreadfully inefficient and nobody in the galaxy seems to be rallying to their cause. That is a far different thing from the first movies where hot-shot pilots like Biggs and Wedge were defecting from the Empire to fight for the Rebels. In The Last Jedi, the defectors are from the Resistance. Given how politically charged our current entertainment culture is I thought it was very telling that Carrie Fisher and Laura Dern berated Poe for being too reckless and not following orders—which is ironically how people who win a lot do so—by not following orders. Then when he wasn’t in the room they commented on the fact that they only kept Poe around because he was a good-looking guy. So that’s how these progressive women like Kathy Kennedy who is running all these Star Wars movies these days see the way the world of tomorrow will be? Sexual harassment will now be dished out by the women because they are now empowered? Not that I care really, but it is a very interesting thing to watch—the hypocrisy is hilarious.

Leading up to this Star Wars movie many people who are anti-Trump including many of the production staff and actors in The Last Jedi made it clear that the Resistance was reflective of their political ideology. Without question given the number of scenes where members of the Resistance made really desperate sacrifices we are seeing essentially what the political left believes is their plight in life. They think like that FBI agent Peter Strzok who felt it was their plight in life to do whatever needed to be done to keep Donald Trump out of office—as if they knew better than the rest of us what was right. I’m a person who hates bad guys in movies, but there were a lot of moments whether it was intentional or not, that Kylo Ren was the star of the film. He was the one who had it all together and was able to achieve objectives—and to get things done. Even to the point where nice girl Rey was tempted by his power. I felt that the makers of this Star Wars movie wonderfully directed by Rian Johnson meant to say one thing about the state of politics in our current world, but ended up saying something completely unintentional—like we know we’re losers and understand why.

In the original stories by George Lucas it was the pirate Han Solo who shook off the rules and helped the Rebellion start winning again that served as the guiding light of the entire franchise. He made the Empire look like a bunch of bumbling fools outwitting them time and time again in a classic good guys against bad guy fashion. Yet in these new Star Wars movies it is the First Order now led by Kylo Ren who makes the Resistance look pathetic and weak. I know the metaphor for these modern Hollywood artists is that the First Order is the modern equivalent of Hitler or President Trump—but its not the Resistance they really adore as artists—it’s the power of Kylo Ren. It’s like a woman who says she hates men with long hair who play in rock bands doing drugs day and night then turn around and leave their nice husbands and children for just such reckless characters. There is a unique scene in The Last Jedi where it’s a kind of upside down world from the Stranger Things television show. The schizophrenia that I’m talking about is on full display here and I think they think they’ve concealed their insecurities, but at the end of the movie when there is literally nobody left in the Resistance I couldn’t help but feel that the inner fear that all members of the Progressive caucus are experiencing now can be summed up at the end of the movie. They know that the demands of the story will pull the natural order of things toward Kylo Ren in the end with Rey helping to tame him toward the needs of existence. But the story is not Rey’s, it is clearly about Kylo Ren—Han Solo’s son that was seduced to evil off the superstitions of a Luke Skywalker who thought about killing the young lad in his sleep—and then propelled him to the Dark Side out of self-preservation.

You might ask what any of this has to do with Jim Renacci and his run for governorship. Other than the fact that he used a cleaver Star Wars ad to show how he was different from his competition the candidacy is enough to stir the concerns of the real Resistance that exists in our very tangible political world. The progressives and establishment types who now look at these days of Trump and think of themselves as the Resistance in Star Wars are more correct than they know. They may get little moments of victory—like in the case of the Alabama senate race—but like the events of The Last Jedi, their numbers are dwindling down into nothing while all the resources of a vast galaxy are going to the other side. The insecurity they all face is the same as the one in that movie where Kylo Ren is supposed to be the villain—but is he really in the ways of the Force? Maybe it’s the idiots in the Resistance who are so prone to kill themselves for stupid reasons who are the real villains and that is a thought that I couldn’t help but conclude as the lights came on and the movie was over. Good guys and bad guys are really a matter of perspective definition. But………….only one side is right and one side is wrong and when nobody is left on the other side—the answer becomes obvious. What I learned from The Last Jedi is that the Force hates the Resistance. And that appears to be what’s going on in real life politics too.

Rich Hoffman

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FBI Director Christopher Wray’s Fantasy: Smoking out the bad guys from within the Deep State

I know FBI Director Christopher Wray is new on the job, but really, going into the public arena and making blanket statements about how great the FBI is just because it’s the hometown team was drastically unintelligent.   I think he thinks he is supposed to say those kinds of stupid things as the acting director, but he destroys any credibility he’s trying to assert—because the evidence says otherwise.  From what we know of the FBI agent Peter Strzok and the recently demoted Justice Department official Bruce G. Ohr, these intelligence agencies are spectacularly corrupt.  This event involving the FBI radicalization against the Trump administration will go down in history as one of the biggest stories of corruption in American history so it’s no mild manner.  The FBI has lost its credibility and is in tatters.  I don’t have faith in it anymore and that has nothing to do with President Trump.  I lost faith in it years ago even before they blew the case for Hillary Clinton’s emails by avoiding the prosecution of her.  It was obvious from a distance, so we can only imagine what things were really like up close.  Now we are discovering how politically weaponized the FBI had become by the revelation of the personalities involved.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-07/mueller-is-making-sure-his-investigation-will-live-on-even-if-he-s-fired

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/12/07/louie-gohmert-fbi-trump-russia-probe-could-be-corrupted-beyond-hoover-wiretapping-mlk

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/07/top-doj-official-demoted-amid-probe-contacts-with-trump-dossier-firm.html

Any case of corruption or obstruction of justice that Democrats would ever want to make against Trump for his firing of James Comey will never see the light of day.  Even if he were guilty of it, Trump is in the clear just because of the overwhelming evidence that the FBI and the DOJ had been weaponized against his incoming administration.  Proving that President Trump had malicious intent in firing Comey would be next to impossible under any circumstance, but because all the people on the other side are so unreliable, it makes any testimony or evidence they could present completely irrelevant.  The trust has been broken well before President Trump took office and now that these investigations have lingered on so long with nothing to show for it, it’s obvious that we are just seeing two sides of a civil war in America emerging, and only one side will remain when it’s all done.

I’d like to remind everyone that I predicted an end to the Democratic Party sometime around the time period of 2020 and if you look around everything is shaping up to make that happen.  Democrats have no fundraising to speak of.  They have no platform that normal people can buy in to.  Their control over our education intuitions are failing and people are now on to them.  The complete takeover of the media industries is now falling apart—Hollywood is in shambles, the news media is losing its major stars to sexual harassment claims as power-hungry women are turning everything on its head as a kind of inner party coup using Democratic platform points to push out their male counterparts from powerful positions.  Women can be just as corrupt as men so the result of all that behavior will just amount to lower ratings and less public trust in those failing intuitions.  And now we’ve learned that our FBI and DOJ along with what we already knew about the IRS are corrupt and filled with political activists.  The men and women of the FBI may be nice people, they may be hard-working people, but they are part of a weaponized intelligence gathering population that can peer into our cell phones and computers at will and attack us based on political motivations.  That is clearly what was going on with the incoming Trump administration.  And if they are willing to do it to them, they are doing it to all of us.

When a fake dossier paid for by a political opponent is used by the FBI to obtain a FISA warrant to justify the spying on an incoming presidential administration—and that acquired intelligence is then used to entrap a person like General Flynn into a plea deal using the power of the unlimited arms of justice to exert political pressure and manipulate the circumstances to the advancement of the opposing political party—to fuel a completely made up narrative about Russian collusion to additionally hide the crimes of that sponsored political party—we have serious business going on here that is excessively corrupt.    Remember when on January 10th of 2017 when James Comey stepped up to the incoming President Trump and let him know about this dossier, which British MI6 agent Christopher Steele had written and Senator John McCain had personally helped bring into the United States.  What does anybody think Comey’s reasoning was behind informing Trump of such a salacious document which featured him in compromising situations meant to put him on the defensive?  The intent which would be easier to prove than Trump’s attempts at obstruction of justice—where to gain political leverage over Trump to shut his mouth as an incoming president and get control of him before he took office.  That dossier was known by the media as an organization since the week before the election but was held purposely to be revealed to the public just before the inauguration, to take the steam out of Trump’s train.  Before approaching the future president with the dossier content the FBI had been spying on the Trump team to get to know the players using that same dossier to obtain the FISA warrant which allowed them to do that spying.  But the entire thing was a made up concoction of the opposing political party meant to derail the election of Donald Trump in the first place.  And the FBI was using that salacious document to gain leverage over an elected president.  Do you see the problem dear reader?

Many people think that since Trump now controls the DOJ that he and Jeff Sessions should clean house, shut down these investigations and assign new special prosecutors.  However, Trump is doing a fine job of letting these losers expose themselves.  This is a delicate situation that involves most of the Beltway mechanisms from both political parties and the greatest weapon against them is not more investigations and throwing fuel on the fire even showing that hiding evidence may be in the back of Trump’s mind for firing Bob Mueller.  The best course of action is to let these idiots drown on their own incompetency which is what Trump appears to be doing.  If I had to advise him on the best political strategy, it would be to do just as he is—let them destroy themselves, as they are presently doing.  An incompetent cannot compete with a competent.  Most men in Trump’s situation if they acquired their power the traditional way—through the “power of pull” would have something in their past that they are ashamed of—so even if that dossier were inaccurate, the fear that real material might be uncovered would reside in the back of their mind and push them into inaction—which was why Comey was the one who delivered the information to Trump—as a leverage piece to gain power over the incoming administration.  Trump however is a self-made man, as self-made as they come—and he knows better.  Comey was fired five months later after it became clear what kind of guy he was and the leaks that came out of Trump’s new administration had to be stopped, and they ended literally at Comey’s door—which the disgraced FBI Director had admitted to in front of congress.  Comey was fired after that testimony and that was just the tip of the iceberg—we now know that Comey wasn’t alone in his political motivations within the FBI and the DOJ.  There were many others as well—there was a culture within the FBI that wanted Hillary Clinton to be president and they took action to either help her win by avoiding the evidence of severe crimes, or they tried to undermine an elected president against the American people who employ them.  In this case both statements are true and that means that the FBI is in big trouble—as they should be.

So for FBI Director Christopher Wray to testify how wonderful his agency is, is just more lies and deceit.  We all know better.  He would have had more credibility to say something to the effect, “I understand we have challenges to recover our reputation” or something along those lines. But to say that the FBI are all a bunch of A-political hard-working, trusted employees just isn’t true.  If the bosses at the top were politicized, then the underlings who were boot licking their way into promotions were also part of that weaponized culture.  We are lucky that against all odds Trump was elected because if he hadn’t been, none of this would be exposed now.  We might suspect that something was wrong, but the controls that were in place to protect the FBI from investigations of their own simply would not happen.  Congress would not be forcing documents to be turned over for analysis and the FBI would continue to be just another contributor of the Deep State which always intended to run things their own way by controlling American presidents with fear and loathing—as they have for most of the last 100 years.  Exposing them is tricky business and Trump is doing it the right way.  From within the President is slowly changing the culture at the FBI so not to throw the baby out with the bath water all the while smoking out the despots who have been corrupt all along.  And before it’s all said and done—there will be a lot more names emerging which are guilty of turning the FBI into the real disgrace that it presently is.

Rich Hoffman
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The Great Carl Rullmann and Melania Trump’s Wondrous Christmas Trees: Stumps of life that give meaning to existence

As I was admiring the magnificent Christmas decorations at the White House by the gifted fashion eye of Melania Trump I received the notification from his widow that one of my long-time friend and readers Carl Rullmann had died on Monday November 20th. She went on to say that even in his final days when he could no longer read himself, she would read my articles to him. She elaborated that Carl looked forward to everything I had to say about everything which was a nice way to put it. Because I do literally write about everything, and often deeply, which is my inclination. I first met Carl over eight years ago when I was at a meeting and he rushed over to tell me how much he enjoyed my segments on 700 WLW radio and we have been friends ever since. He often would send me private emails wanting to talk more explicitly about things I had written that he took issue with, as a deeply religious man. I enjoyed the banter and understood what role some of that interaction played in his life as he suffered through several illnesses over the last couple of years culminating in his event on the 20th. I felt sorry for his wife Rita immediately as it had to have taken a lot of personal courage for her to contact me in the way she did just seven days after. But I view death differently than most people and I found the beauty of Carl’s life to be a similar reflection as what Melania Trump was doing at the White House, and instead of feeling sorrow for a lost friend, I found joy.

This year was the first my wife and I bought a real tree for Christmas. You have to understand, my wife and I are people who keep our emotions close in check all the time and we have enjoyed over the decades the knowledge that after New Year’s celebrations are complete and we head into those cold January days with nothing much to look forward to until spring arrives, that our Christmas tree would go into a box in our basement to be resurrected the next year. She came from a wealthy family and that’s how they did things, mainly for the convenience of it. So when we were married way back in 1988 we did much the same thing, getting artificial trees that were easy to put up and take down without a lot of emotional pomp and circumstance. What I didn’t know, that really didn’t emerge until our children were fully grown and we started having lots of grandchildren to deal with, was that deep down inside she always wanted to have a live tree for Christmas.

I grew up with a live tree, each year my family had bought one going through the ritual of picking one out and then putting it up. The whole experience climaxed on Christmas Day when the whole mythology came alive to a nice end. It was always sad to take the tree down, but always extraordinarily exciting to put them up. I never remember a Christmas from my childhood that wasn’t an exciting period of my life—and the live Christmas tree was always the centerpiece. It always seemed odd to me that after Christmas my dad would take the tree out to our burn pile and we’d burn it sometime around late January and February. I’d look at it dormant on its side out in the cold covered in snow with the branches all brown and dry and wonder if it was the same magnificent thing that had been in our living room bringing so much joy.

My wife and I mutually didn’t want the emotional roller coaster of a live tree during our marriage. It gave us counsel to know that the centerpiece of our Holiday joy was always in our basement—yet the experience never seemed quite authentic. So it was much to my surprise when we were out shopping for early Christmas items when she declared, “let’s get a live tree this year.” Well, it didn’t take much for me to agree to it. We are after all empty nesters. Our kids come over for Christmas and it’s always nice, but they have their own lives these days and we are often only in it when they can find the time and will to get together. Our Christmas mornings now are very lonely and for us that is devastating, because we both always loved to have children in the house to bring mornings like Christmas to life in such grand ways. Now there are grandchildren, but we get about a half hour and it’s nowhere near the same. So buying a live tree for Christmas with all the emotion that can be involved for that Holiday I thought was a bold move for her.

I’ve watched the various presidents over the years in how they decorated the White House for Christmas because it says a lot about who they are. Back with the Clintons in the 90s there were utterances that they hung condoms on their Christmas tree because as progressives, they were actively pushing politically to replace Christianity as a guiding light for the masses. The Bush White House was more traditional and a welcome sign after the debacle that was the Clintons but that particular White House was too careful and sensitive to the progressive movement seeking to accommodate them more than traditionalists like me would have liked. Then there was the Happy Holidays of the Obama era—which was not as anti-Christian as the Clintons, but certainly wasn’t what we would call “traditional” in America. They sort of went through the motions and everyone could tell. But it wasn’t until Melania was able to design the decorating in the White House that we could see for the first time how magnificent the Executive Branch could be in leading the charge to restore Christmas to its proper place in American culture. Melania’s use of live trees and lighting was simply phenomenal, and it actually made me proud that my wife and I had decided to do a live tree this year as our personal tree has had the same kind of effect on our personal household. Because it was my wife’s first live tree she has put a lot of extra love in it knowing that the life of the tree deserved the extra attention. As she put it the whole reason the tree was raised and cut down was to serve this one purpose for just one little month of our lifetimes. Melania on the grand scale did much the same and the combined result to me was spectacular and filled me with pride and patriotism.

Of course it will be sad to take down our tree this year. And it will be sad to take down all the great trees in the White House. But the joy they provide for that very short time I think is a proper metaphor for all our lives. We are talking about the four seasons of course, Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, or conception, birth, life and death metaphorically for us all. These Christmas trees represent life in the dead of winter when life ends and renews on the first day of the New Year. It’s a lifecycle and during Christmas in addition to celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, we have constructed our holidays to serve a more appropriate and modern-day relevancy to our own existence, and Christmas trees are at the center of that mythology. They are a symbol and celebration of life in the time of death—winter. And in the case of my friend Carl Rullmann who lived a great life and was eager to learn something new right up until the end, he like our Christmas trees are wonderful to look at and appreciate. For the radiance of life that flowed through them does end and the body of the lifeform does diminish and fall away. In the case of Christmas trees we toss them out after the Holiday season for disposal, just like the dead of our human species. But it’s the celebration of their life in the times of Christmas all lit up and displayed with honor that is the point of living. Carl was one of those people and during life his lights and ornaments representing his experiences will carry on in our memories. Yes the body does die but all our lives are better because of our experiences with each other. And that is what I will always think of for now on when I see a live Christmas tree. They are beautiful things!

Safe travels Carl Rullmann on the next adventures of existence. Because like the Christmas trees we are all cut off at the stem and drinking water out of a little pot that keeps us alive just long enough. It is when we transcend that limit and drink from the waters of eternal life that our real adventure begins. And that is a beautiful thing as wall, in many ways more beautiful than life itself.

Rich Hoffman

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Thoughts about ‘Battlefront II’: Stories told in a very impressive new way

 

On a lighter note we are living in some interesting times.  I have been very encouraged by the glimpses of the future that are emerging, especially the new Tesla tractor-trailer that has the potential to dramatically change the transportation industry.  I am a person who gets very excited when I see things come along that expand the imagination of the human race on a mass scale, like the latest Star Wars products—whether it’s a new toy, video game, or motion picture installment.  With each new addition to that fantasy/science fiction mythology the imagination of the human race is expanding dramatically.  And that has never been truer than in the new Battlefront II video game by DICE and Electronic Arts that expand the efforts of the first version of that game for all the major platform systems over what was released in 2015.  This 2017 edition is just marvelous, jaw dropping cool, and a seriously interesting look into the nature of politics and the human soul.  There are a lot of interesting things going on with Battlefront II that are indicative of some of the greatest art our culture has ever produced.

Nobody buys a game like this to play the single player campaign mode, they buy it to play online with thousands of potential people at all hours of the day and night all over the world.  People in cultures where guns are unfortunately banned can play a game like this and instantly they are playing the most modern version of cops and robbers that we all aspired to as kids, before public schools made it impossible for kids to even make a pretend gun with their hands.  Boys, girls, young and old are all thrown into these battles together and they force you to work toward team objectives to survive by heightening your individuality to the quickest reaction times and personal aptitude.  The desire to play such a game is a very primal one, and this game is certainly one of the best to date at making everything work well and allow players to just enjoy the experience.  I enjoy the ground based combat quite a lot, but it is the flight combat that I love the most.  I thought the first Battlefront was pure heaven for my personal tastes, but in this second installment, it’s so much better, better than I thought it could ever possibly be.  One of my favorite video games that I played as a kid was the Activison Star Wars game The Empire Strikes Back which was a blocky 2D Defender type of thing involving snow speeders and a constant wave of Imperial Walkers, each that required precisely 48 hits to kill unless you managed to hit a little sweet spot that sometimes appeared on the top of the shell.  So the aerial combat in Battlefront II is just beautiful to look at and participate in.  Stunning really.

But the real star to Battlefront II is their new story mode campaign that I was excessively impressed with.  Not only is it a nice story to add to the Star Wars canon fitting in with the movies nicely, but it’s some seriously good science fiction.  For instance, the Empire has a new weapon in this story which are satellites in space that fire into the cloud formations of planets to heat up the atmosphere and cause hurricane like storms on the ground to harass their enemies.  I thought that was a very interesting concept considering that this very year in real life we saw four major hurricanes hit the United States alone, three of which made ground fall as upper category storms.  Many conspiracy theorists believe our current government can do something similar to this now, so I found it interesting that a big platform game by Disney would even allow something like that into a Star Wars storyline.  But it worked and was very interesting.   Does it advance conspiracy theories or address a tyrannical problem indicative of world governments—I think it does a lot to get a conversation going about the temptation to use weather as a weapon against dissidents.   If the Romans could have done something similar, or the Nazis, they would have.  In Star Wars, the Empire does.

The other big surprise for me was a scene where Kylo Ryn was mind walking through the memories of a captor he’s interrogating.  It was a dreamy sequence that you play through as a participant and it reminded me of an old game called Shadowman—where you had to walk through the world of death to solve problems.  I thought it was very intelligent and exhibited great skill in advancing a pretty complicated story.  The game was already one of the best campaign story lines that I’ve ever played, so this last sequence was very interesting.  At that point the makers of the game I thought were just showing off.  They knew they had a great game and at that point were just putting an exclamation point on the end of it.  They could have played it safe, but then it wouldn’t be a Star Wars movie.  In Star Wars fans expect innovation and risk.  When science fiction fans watch something like Star Trek: Into Darkness we know we are seeing touchy, feeling content that is popcorn to the base fans—Star Wars seeks  to blow minds wherever possible with ever-expanding concepts—so it’s good to see that ambition still alive even under Disney control.

Battlefront II is a massive game with huge investments put into it.  Its targeted release was announced months ago for November 17th.  I preordered it which allowed me to start playing it on November 14th, three days early and I have to say, this is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had so far.  Previous winners were of course Uncharted 4 and the latest Zelda game for the Nintendo Switch.  Battlefront II is a massive game with a lot to do and it holds that massive population of a world that wants to play it all at the same time very well.  The scope of the game is so big that I saw it being advertised on the NFL website heavily last weekend, and everywhere else that Disney felt they could penetrate popular culture.  But honestly, no wonder NFL ratings are down.  People may be turned off by the National Anthem issue, or the high salaries and spoiled brat attitudes of the players, the concussion protocols, and the softening of the game to appeal more to women but with competition like Battlefront II to occupy people’s time, a passive NFL experience is pretty boring.

If you are looking for a great video game to invest in, then this is it. It is released to the general public today in time for the Holiday season and is the perfect thing to do when it’s cold outside and the days are short.   With two new Star Wars movies coming out over the next six months, the announcement of a new trilogy and the Disney parks putting the finishing touches on their new Star Wars lands there is a lot to be excited about for even passive Star Wars fans.  Even as Hollywood is struggling massively; Star Wars is still good enough to keep the industry alive for a bit longer all by itself.  It won’t last of course.  The motion picture experience will likely give way completely to the small screen and video games like Battlefront II.   In many ways the video game industry is still able to tell stories in the classic way that great movies like THX-1138 did; only participants can actually be part of the story instead of just viewers.  That’s what makes Battlefront II such a great offering, because it is truly great science fiction and fantasy that we experience typically in great literature and it puts you in the action as a participant to interact with other people, and that makes it extremely unusual.  Not so unique for the kids who have grown up with these games, but for the tapestry of human history where information is exchanged through art–this is a real showpiece worthy of a great deal of respect.

Rich Hoffman

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The Miracle of Arabella Kushner: Donald Trump’s magnificant trip to Asia

I’ve read a lot of books on American history, and world history, everything from American presidents to princes, queens, nobles, emperors, swashbucklers, dictators and freedom fighters and there’s never been anyone quite like Donald Trump. Without any close second place contenders Trump has delivered America its best foreign policy positioning in the history of our young nation. Trump as an expert communicator, and a fabulous wheeler-dealer has had the Middle East enthusiastic about his visits and has brought people together like nobody ever has. In Europe, Trump managed to end the Paris Climate Accord while still putting smiles on the faces of everyone effected and actually left things better than worse. Trump lately has stood up to North Korea in a way that nobody has ever done keeping all-out war just a phone call away while calling the hostile regime derogatory names, then while on their doorstep in South Korea inviting them to the 21st Century with a very potent speech, or face extinction. That was before arriving in China who funds North Korea and receiving a hero’s welcome. Trump was fabulous in Japan, South Korea, then China before traveling to Vietnam to deliver some of the best foreign policy statements I’ve ever heard or thought about hearing from a sitting president. But that wasn’t the best of it. Being a slick salesman who is actually sincere about the product he’s selling, Trump unleashed his little 6-year-old granddaughter in China who speaks fluent Mandarin and he won the hearts of a billion people in just a few minutes. It was quite extraordinary. Here is just a bit from how it was covered in the media which really melted away the hearts of the world in just one day of goodwill.

While media coverage of Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping Thursday focused on trade and North Korea, it was the wide-eyed crooning of the US leader’s granddaughter that stole Chinese netizens’ hearts.

In a video that Trump showed Xi during their stroll through the historic Forbidden City Wednesday, his granddaughter, Arabella Kushner, greets “Grandpa Xi and Grandma Peng (Liyuan)” with several Mandarin ballads and a recitation of ancient Chinese poetry.

China’s Xinhua state news agency, which circulated the clip widely on social media, reported that Xi said the six-year-old girl’s Mandarin skills deserved an “A+”.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/chinese-love-trumps-mandarin-speaking-granddaughter/ar-BBEL9Cw?OCID=ansmsnnews11

This is similar to trips where Melania spoke to Vladimir Putin in Russian, then to the French president Emmanuel Macron in French while visiting those countries—fluently. The women who surround President Trump are just fabulous, from the oldest to the youngest—and that says a lot about him as a person. Trump knows how to surround himself with great people whether it’s his fine running Trump International businesses or his family—anything with Trump on it is of fine quality and high expectation—and that is a standard he set as a person. He is presently doing the same for not only the American nation, but the world at large—anybody willing to listen. Trump has truly elevated the game of politics and he has been willing to show off his family and allow them to shine light into the world in ways that nobody else has—and behind it all, people understand that it is Trump who created the foundation for so much excellence.

Arabella Kushner is a magnificent over-achiever who is well beyond her years, and that comes from being in a family of high expectations. The miracle of her very fluent Mandarin is that her parents and her grandpa set a high bar before the little girl knew that it was impossible to achieve. The kid is poised to be a miracle of her own—and the Chinese people couldn’t help but see that. One thing about Asians in general is that they appreciate excellence and hard work, so the way to their hearts is to show great effort and respect. Trump in all his business dealings over the years understands people and what they need no matter where they are, so he brought his granddaughter along on this China trip to let her use all those skills she so diligently worked on and put her on a big stage to show her stuff. Trump understood what his granddaughter needed at this stage in her life, but what’s great about Trump is that he knows how to match that need with the needs of the world. How else to cut off funding to North Korea and flatten out a severe trade deficit but to melt the hearts of your opposition with a nice little girl and her dedication to their language—as a display of hard work and respect.

Anybody who looks at this Trump administration and can’t see anything good is just functioning from ideological evil. I mean Ivanka Trump isn’t exactly a far-right Republican and Trump isn’t ideological—there should be a lot of issues that Democrats could find that they’d like about him. Their only objective though is to keep him from winning anything so that they can capture some ideological seats in 2018 and 2020. But they are missing something that is truly wonderful, we are seeing a president that will be honored more graciously than Mt. Rushmore in the future living right in front of our faces. The legend is being written now and we are witness to it. In the future people will not remember the hateful New York Times hit pieces, or the withering Hollywood haters who have been trying to transfer their hate onto Trump for many personal failures they are suffering from. Or the Democrats who are so lost presently that they are using Donna Brazile as a way to show that they aren’t all corrupt—as they try to rebrand their failed party. Think about that, they are using a woman accused of giving Hillary Clinton debate questions as a representative of moral virtue?

The Democrats or the Republicans have nobody who could walk into China like a giant from the West and entertain a billion people with sheer charisma and the charm of a 6-year-old, then fly out to a former enemy, Vietnam and deliver one of the best foreign policy speeches in history like it was just one more hole on a golf course. Trump does all these things while working with the House and Senate by phone to get tax reform down by Christmas and he still has time to send condolence calls to victims of the mass shooting in Texas and manage FEMA as the hurricane relief of 2017 is still underway. Trump is AMAZING and everyone but the evil people who hate him see it. They only reason they don’t see the great things he is doing is because they choose not to.

The Arabella Kushner story was a good one when the world needed it. It started with Ivanka and her husband Jared setting a high bar for their child. From that came an optimism toward the future that every human being can respect. And when she was ready President Trump was able to give the little girl a big stage and a purpose for her newly acquired skill that melted the divide between capitalism and communism and put everyone on a stage of mutual respect. Then Trump gave a blistering speech about the benefits of free market capitalism and extended a bridge toward peace and fair trade practices that has never been offered truly in any other prior period before. What a wonderful opportunity that was pulled off flawlessly. If there was any other way to sell capitalism to the only communist country in the world and to dance across the fires that are behind the scenes of American, Chinese relations—Trump found the sweet spot, and he deserves a lot of credit for walking that fine line very well, even better than anyone could have ever expected.

Rich Hoffman
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What We Learned about the West Chester Trustee Candidates for the 2017 Election: Ann Becker and Mark Welch are clearly the best picks

There weren’t really any second-place candidates who touched the levels of competency toward the open trustee seats in West Chester, Ohio than Mark Welch and Ann Becker as displayed during the West Chester Tea Party candidate forum at Indiana Wesleyan University on October 17th 2018. I mean there were other candidates there speaking that night, but Mark is the incumbent and the guy with the very successful track record—so much so that Democrats are rightfully terrified by him and have pulled out all the stops in an attempt to knock him off his seat. Then there is Ann Becker, Ms. Lady Liberty herself as she can be heard often on her 55 KRC radio segments on the very popular Brian Thomas show—who has been involved in just about every kind of politics in Butler County that there is. She is leaps and bounds above everyone else so she and Mark make a great team for two of the three trustee seats that are coming available. Of course, the focus for the purposes of preserving conservativism in West Chester relies on at least two conservatives being elected on November 7th and out of all the candidates running—many of them are good people—only Mark Welch and Ann Becker have the official backing of the Republican Party—and this year, that means a lot.

I think after watching all the other candidates speak if I had to pick a third person for those very important West Chester trustee seats it would be anybody but Lee or Powell. That third seat currently has belonged to the incumbent Lee Wong, but after his support of the Chinese spy scandal involving a Sherry Chen and her termination at the National Weather Service for alleged espionage, Lee has since dropped off the map. He embarrassingly protested on her behalf recently to help her get her job back and his defense of his friend revealed many disturbing traits about Lee Wong that many people hadn’t seen before. He tends to be aloof and disengaged when it comes to complicated issues, and he obviously has sided with organized labor locally—so he has lost his mask of Republican Party affiliation showing himself to be a lopsided liberal on almost every topic.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/03/14/disgraced-chinese-american-scientist-fights-get-her-job-back/99171480/

The other person running who is obviously not a conservative is Joan Powell who came to the West Chester forum knowing that the audience was very constitutionally minded, so she attempted to talk their language, and everything ended up coming out phony. I’ll give her credit for trying, but she clearly wasn’t the right candidate. After all, she had been supportive of West Chester becoming a city some years back which means a lot more government to manage things and always has in her thoughts and actions big government approaches to everything. I thought it was particularly interesting that she tried to distance herself from the terrible labor union negotiations she had been involved in over the years at Lakota by saying that she was supportive of Right to Work. That was odd because most of the reasonable conservatives of West Chester remember her for her tax increases as president of the Lakota Board of Education. By alienating the leftist union members who might otherwise vote for her in memory of her Lakota failures, who did she think was going to support her for trustee? There aren’t enough of the “girls” getting their hair done with Joan to put her over the top. She came across grossly out of touch and adhering to the politics of another century in the past. She certainly didn’t project herself as part of the future.

Everyone else falls below the prospect of viability. In the coming days I’ll put up specific videos from this West Chester event to paint a more articulate picture of the proceedings. But for the high-level viability of the two primary candidates, Ann Becker and Mark Welch they did a good job and the little ad displayed above indicates my feelings on their candidacy. I have a lot of hope for the two of them. For Mark I’d like to see him continue to do the great job he has done. With Cathy Stoker out-of-the-way and Lee Wong put on ice over the last several years West Chester has prospered dramatically. It was kind of like the effect Donald Trump has had on the stock market. There’s a reason the Dow is pushing up over 23,000 for the first time ever. Many investors who had been looking toward West Chester to build a business, or even to start a family felt inclined to move once Mark was elected and from there hotels have exploded on the scene, along with many new restaurants, shopping, shooting ranges and many other options that have improved the lifestyle choices of the West Chester community.

There were some interesting conversations at the trustee forum that represent distinct philosophical differences. For instance, Joan Powell espoused her view that schools are what make a community great—which is clearly not the case. You can spend all the money on education that you want and the quality of a school will not help it at all. Rather, schools tend to be great based on the quality of the people who live in an area. Good people produce good kids and therefore, good students. Mark clearly understands that formula and most everything he does centers on those basic philosophies. That’s why Democrats hate him so much, because revealing that formula is something they are absolutely terrified of. That’s also how you can know that people like Lee Wong and Joan Powell are not Republicans but are in fact liberal Democrats—because they miss the basic concept of foundational government as a representative management device of the public. A government school does not make kids great, their parents do. If you want a great community you need to have an environment conducive to the lifestyle of good people—good in this case being people who have jobs, raise their children with parameters of expectation—and do things as a family unit. For instance, if you go to the VOA Park in West Chester, the people you meet there are generally all good to each other, and conduct themselves well. Respect for themselves and each other is a prevalent theme and that reflects the general demographic of the region which tends to attract good people to it. West Chester has great access to good jobs. Great access to interesting things to do, and it has low taxation—all which attracts good families with values. When those kids go to school they are naturally good kids. If you spend the same money on communities where the parents are terrible, the school system will obviously reflect that. The idea that a school makes a community is a liberal organized labor myth built to inflate wages and benefits for the government employees—not to fulfill the necessities of the community. Mark and Ann understand that delicate balance. Liberals like Joan Powell and Lee Wong don’t.

It was good to see such a large crowd at this event. People care very much about this outcome and that is wonderful, that is what makes our country great—at the local level. That is also the role that the Tea Party has always had, educating the public about the matters that matter most to them. In that regard I’d say the only serious candidates running for those three seats were present in the video above. If candidates aren’t willing to go before the West Chester Tea Party, they really aren’t serious about running for office. Hopefully this article helps you sort out the names from all the confusion—and that really only two names essentially top out the first two seats, Ann Becker and Mark Welch.

Rich Hoffman
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Where Are the Pink Pussy Hats Now: The death of Hollywood over terrible customer service

It was roughly a year ago that the Access Hollywood recordings of Donald Trump were released intending to sink his potential presidency.  When I first heard the comments I couldn’t help but feel the hypocrisy because let’s face it, men and women talk that way to each other all the time.  Women most of the time like the attention of men and men are by their biological design built to pollinate females to procreate our species.  All these silly new rules of conduct of men being chastised for wanting to stick parts of themselves into females are artificial and counterproductive.  But  when the people of Hollywood tried to use these new, stupid rules of male to female conduct to destroy Donald Trump when in fact it was they who perpetrated and actually exacerbated the bad behavior to begin with I thought was astonishing.  After all, Hollywood’s product used to be a good back when they made westerns and big sweeping epics like Ben Hur.  Men treated women with respect in those old productions and all was well with the world until movie producers like Harvey Weinstein made a joke out of the industry abusing his power so he could look at the boobies of the young women who wanted more than anything in the world to become stars on the silver screen.   It was obvious that if the same standard that was applied to Trump a year ago were to be turned around on the entire entertainment culture that a lot of people probably wouldn’t survive, and that’s what’s happening now.  Hollywood just killed itself with its own weapons.  Sean Hannity did a remarkable job of positioning the reasons why Hollywood will never be the same in the following video.

I always liked the Hollywood product and the industry as a whole.  But for a long time they have moved so far to the political left that what used to be an event I enjoyed—the Academy Awards were now just another inward looking celebration by a bunch of liberals congratulating themselves on being anti-American insurgents.  If you weren’t liberal you weren’t going to work on a Weinstein movie and in a lot of ways Harvey Weinstein was bigger than Steven Spielberg in Hollywood—by the volume of his work and the number of Academy Awards he amassed.   As one of the leading spokesmen for progressivism, his platform in the entertainment industry was unparalleled and it seems ironic that all that could be torn down with these outrageous claims toward him that are in some cases over twenty years old.  I say they are outrageous because many of the women who are now accusing Weinstein of rape are now forty-year old women who are no longer sex symbols.  They used sex to get into movies when they were in their twenties and only when men stopped looking at them as possible places to pollinate did they suddenly become “outraged.”  But the fact remains that dealing with people like Harvey Weinstein turned them into the man hating feminists that they are today as their lives are now filled with regret on what they had to do to climb the ladder in Hollywood to become a leading lady A-lister.

Yet the way they all collectively pounced on Donald Trump over the Access Hollywood tape was remarkably hypocritical.  They created the industry and the rules.  What Trump was talking about in his famous lines to Billy Bush was the effect of celebrity which he had just learned about late in life with his success with The Apprentice.  Trump was enjoying the kind of attention by women that movie starts like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon had always enjoyed, and being a smart guy he was pontificating about it to Billy Bush.   Yes, women will do just about anything to be near powerful men—it’s a deeply biological response to the mating game.  But unlike most of those Hollywood hot shots, Trump had a nice wife who kept him grounded and the temptations of flesh that are often thrown at movie stars by the opposite sex just to have access to a memory with their idols was managed and Trump moved on to bigger and better things.  By the time the Access Hollywood tape was released Trump was a different kind of man largely shaped by his decision to marry Melania Trump.   But the desire for entertainment executives and major political pundits to go after Trump, and to try to destroy him over these new age male and female roles which they had perpetrated was always  dangerous because they also made up the rules of power playing the opposite sex into compromising positions just to work in the industry.   You don’t get to the level of being a leading Hollywood actress at the level of Angelina Jolie or Gwyneth Paltrow without showing somebody your tits.  Not when there is a line of young women from Santa Monica to Paris willing to do anything to be the next Hollywood star.  People like Harvey Weinstein made themselves the gate keepers to success essentially so they could see titties—and everyone knew it.   So who were they to criticize Trump?

After Trump was elected president and was sworn in, the Academy Awards ceremony to me was unwatchable.  The way they ridiculed President Trump just because he was the Republican in the White House was disgusting and it made me wonder if they knew who their audience actually was, because there are a lot of Trump supporters who are like me–they love to watch movies.  But if the movies and the people who made them were so anti-Trump, they’d be forced to go somewhere else for their entertainment and that’s what has happened.   Hollywood has had their worst box office performance in 25 years and they are down an incredible 16% just from the previous year of 2016.  That was before the Harvey Weinstein story broke which virtually connects every major star in the industry to all the ugly stuff they complained about in Trump.  Except with Trump it was largely made up and overblown, but in Hollywood they were actually doing the things they accused Trump of—and to a far worse degree.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/09/liberal-hollywood-worst-box-office-numbers-25-years/

Where were the pink pussy hats that the Hollywood stars wore in protest to the Inauguration after Trump spent his first days in the White House?  Former stars of the Hollywood machine ran by people like Weinstein were protesting Trump so they set the gauge by which they are all now choking.  If the same standards they were trying to apply to Trump were turned back on them, then what did they think was going to happen?   The Trump supporting public already voted with their feet, just like they have with the NFL.  The great American game of football is down 30% just because those stars in the NFL thought they were bigger than they were.  They learned a hard lesson; people in the stands don’t care about them if they are going to throw off the shared elements of our culture, like the American flag.  Fans of the NFL turned on those stars of sports in a moment which has been a harsh reality to all professional sports.  They forgot who their audience was and in their hatred of Trump they drew a line between themselves and the fan base that enjoyed their product.  They have a major customer service problem as a result.  And that is precisely what happened to Hollywood in 2017.  They are down at least 16% because of the way Hollywood came out against a popular president.  People who voted for Trump largely knew the Access Hollywood tape was a set-up job and that Hollywood was guilty of much worse.  Now that we have the truth, that movie industry is changed forever.  They’ll never bounce back because they have lost the trust of the public.  Ultimately it’s not people like Harvey Weinstein who make projects succeed or fail, it is the public that buys the tickets—and they have been voting against Hollywood for a while now.  Now that Hollywood has alienated most of the country in their hatred of Trump, the hypocrisy on full display in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual meltdown will sink the entire industry—and that’s a good thing.

America can’t be great again if the art and entertainment community is so vitriolic toward a president that half the country wanted.   When they showed up against Trump during his Inauguration in 2017 and protested him as a sexual predator they set the bar impossibly high for themselves as a result and now they are being crushed under their own standard—because they can’t live up to any of it. As actors and film moguls they live in the make-believe world of their own creations but under Trump’s presidency illusions are being shattered out of necessity, and now these people are exposed, and they are burning in front of our faces.  Hollywood will never recover as an industry.  Sure there will be new forms of entertainment that will emerge, but the Wilshire Blvd culture for which Hollywood has built its own kind of Wall Street is dying right in front of our eyes, and because they made themselves into a political weapon of the left, I’m glad to see it.  They have let us all down and now it’s time to pay.

Rich Hoffman

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