Taking a break from the usual heavy subjects explored at this site I have to say more about a company I have highlighted often in America who I think is having a major impact on world culture. This is not a movie company, a video game developer or even a traditional television broadcaster—it is Fantasy Flight Games who again appear to be at the absolute top of their field. I was at my favorite game store—Nostalgic Ink, in Mason, Ohio buying my son-in-law some expansion ships for our X-Wing Miniatures game which is a Fantasy Flight creation which I have raved about often. I had my grandson with me so he wanted to walk around the store looking at all the other products, which I of course allowed him to do. While looking elsewhere in the store I ran across the Fantasy Flight Game Arkham Horror which looked fabulous and further impressed me with what Fantasy Flight has been doing in the realm of gaming.
These types of games are a participatory mythology—meaning they allow players to jump into a scenario and live the values of a mythology. These games unlike everything else in society are all about recognizing value instead of evading it—so there isn’t any escape from the process of assessment. I wasn’t a fan of these kinds of things until my nephews and son-in-law brought them back into my life last summer while on vacation. While I don’t enjoy traditional board games like Monopoly and most of the games on the Target gaming shelf dealing with contemporary matters, I do love these mythology based games in that they are like novels lived in the field of time and space which have uncertain outcomes.
The Arkham Horror game attracted my attention because it deals with the Roaring Twenties and involves horror, monsters, and ancient secrets. Of course it is this time period I love which featured near perfect capitalism and a wonderful President in Calvin Coolidge, so the time period itself is interesting as a backdrop for such a story. At Nostalgic Ink we were in a time crunch so I didn’t buy the game as of yet, but I will at the next available moment. It plays up to eight people in a cooperative play which would do well in my family. We had a birthday party for that same son-in-law who is very skilled with these games. It’s impressive to watch him. At the party several groups broke off and played games, some in the house, some outside set up around the pool, some out under a shade tree. One of the games was Magic the Gathering which I’ve seen quite a lot, the other was my son-in-law’s new Game of Thrones card game again by Fantasy Flight Games. I watched a bit of that game and again it was another amazing creation by Fantasy Flight with the usual quality in game pieces and such detailed manuals, card design, and even box artwork.
I had been wondering if Fantasy Flight was just freakishly good at game design with their X-Wing series—because it’s Star Wars and thus sells well. But after seeing what they did with the Game of Thrones card game I’m convinced that it is just the nature of the company. Any doubts I had about buying The Arkham Horror game evaporated in that instant. The gaming that night at our house went well into the night well past the time my wife and I went to bed—so my family would love Arkham Horror.
During a typical day when things sometimes seem overwhelmingly difficult—and impossible—I take a minute and visit the Fantasy Flight Games website to see what’s going on new—which every day appears to be something. I enjoy reading the game forums for X-Wing and it actually relaxes my mind. This is distinctively different from the typical escapism, evasion tactics of something like a baseball game, or Fantasy Football—which does similar things for a more mainstream audience. For me, and my love of mythology, these games are just marvelous.
Walking the aisles at Nostalgic Ink the owner does a great job of displaying all his vast collection of games—most of them are like these Arkham Horror, and Game of Throne games. These are different from traditional board games like Life, Candyland, or card games like Uno. They have the added element of plot and story to accentuate the randomness of a dice role—and are quite intriguing. If I had time, I’d like to play one of each kind of game in Nostalgic Ink. My grandson not yet two years of age already understands that there is something special about the place, he enjoys the colors on the boxes displaying all the bizarre artwork and wanted to look at everything. It’s a very stimulating atmosphere much like how book stores used to feel minus the references to popular culture—which is often distracting when you need a break from it.
It cannot be ignored that people who play these types of Fantasy Flight Games enjoy thinking. My son-in-law certainly embodies that trait—he loves to think and in the realm of those games—is a maestro. But what’s better is the plot and advancement of intrigue that makes the experience like a shared novel. In a high-tech age such as what we live in now, it is just wonderful to see such a low tech—creative—and traditional format of storytelling that has emerged as powerfully as Fantasy Flight Games has done over these last few years. I was already a fan because of their X-Wing Miniatures work, but their efforts don’t end there. It is unlikely that I would have ever stepped into Nostalgic Ink if not to purchase my first B-Wing fighter in the September of 2013. Since then, I have been there often and now find myself going there to primarily buy gifts for other people. But for me X-Wing Miniatures has been a gateway to the rest of the Fantasy Flight Games product line. It is what they are doing now that will still have meaning many years from now when I want to play the same games with my future grandchildren and other family members who will grow up to love those games. I remember the kind of things I loved growing up and to a large extent, I still love those things. Video games and tech related entertainment has a dated feel that cheapens those experiences over time as improvements come out in future years. But these Fantasy Flight Games products will still have the magic of their appeal hundreds of years from now because the root of their effort is in the great presentation of their material– the invocation of thought as their mechanism into story telling. And it is in the stories of our society that the truths we all seek reside—whether realistic, or fantasy based, it is the process of thought which the human race most seeks. And Fantasy Flight Games has their pulse on the importance of thought—and that makes them for my money one of the best companies on earth creating one of the most important needs humans have aside from food and clothing—mythology.
It took me a few days of extreme anger to calm down enough to even write about the congressional testimony given by IRS commissioner John Koskinen. As I watched the man speak to congress, I saw arrogance at its most audacious exhibition, and a disrespect that unionized government employees have toward their employers, the tax payers. I spend a lot of time talking about this issue and am quite certain about the validity of my arguments. Yet when you see such an obvious case of misconduct happening right in front of our faces—the IRS being caught red-handed with the metaphorical blood dripping from their fingers—and they still declare their innocence–it convinced me that no government employee under any unionized representation can be believed about anything under any circumstance—and that is quite a vote of no confidence. We see school teachers lie routinely about their poor conduct and often the sharpness of their rebuke is hidden behind the lives of children taking away the blunt edges of criticism. But in the case of the IRS—here is a long time government employee in John Koskinen who fully expects the world to believe that a hard drive crash destroyed all the evidence of their targeting conservative groups in an IRS scandal that is the biggest crime to come out of government since Watergate. And the John Koskinen found he could sit in front of the world and declare innocence when the evidence of malpractice is painted all over his organization. The only reasonable thing the guy could have done was admit to the mishaps, promise to make it better, and cooperate. Instead, he dug in deeper destroying evidence and smugly declaring the innocence of the IRS without even knowing what is possible in the world or data collection and the destruction of evidence.
As criminals, the IRS should know that the only way to really lose data on a hard drive is to burn the disk and destroy it completely. Data may not be totally recoverable, but partial information is quite possible even on a malfunctioning hard that has crashed. But even worse, the information was backed up elsewhere with a company called Sonasoft as reported by Breitbart.com and The Blaze over the weekend. That creates a very specific problem for the IRS. They are not in control of the backed up data:
As IRS commissioner John Koskinen sat on Capitol Hill belatedly informing a Congressional committee of the “disappearance” of years of email communications from a host of IRS employees under investigation–including Lois Lerner–it was discovered that the IRS had hired an email backup company to prevent just such a loss of data.
After the commissioner’s testimony, a Twitter user went hunting for info on the IRS and discovered that as far back as 2005 a company named Sonasoft had announced that it had been awarded a data backup contract from the IRS. Even as late as 2009, the company had tweeted about its association with the taxing agency.
So, how is it that commissioner Koskinen was so sure during his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee that all the emails of the very IRS operatives under investigation just happened to have disappeared forever?
The answer is as plain as a gold nugget on top of a pile of shit. It is unequivocally evident—the IRS has attempted to cover up their crime by destroying evidence with the arrogance of government employees who are obviously not very tech savvy. They are caught, busted, and guilty as hell and everyone knows it. As I watched the hearing during Paul Ryan’s portion, I nearly threw my television through the front window, across the yard and into the street. My anger was intense not just because the IRS has confirm everything that people like me have said about them and is turning out to be true—but because they actually are so rotten and corrupt that they are willing to dig in even further to deny, deny, and deny destroying as much evidence as possible to avoid a clear assessment of their crimes. As an organization obsessed with legal terminology they know that as long as there is never any direct evidence, that they cannot be prosecuted. People may not trust them—but at least they won’t be directly guilty. They know that the evidence they are trying to hide from the American people is so damning to them they will do anything to keep it out of everybody’s eyes, even if they must lie to continue the charade.
The so-called lost emails are certainly available for public consumption. No matter what sort of hard drive crash occurred on a localized server, the emails of Lois Lerner will be retrieved and read to the world and all these guilty parties will have much more serious problems to contend with. This is no longer even about politics—this is a crime—a gross abuse of power and it has major implications for the future of the IRS. Over time, it will all come out, and there will be a lot of broken pieces. The trust in that agency is gone forever. The real impact just hasn’t sunk in yet. But it will.
The IRS is an arrogant organization which needs to be dismantled. It was bad before this revelation, and now it doesn’t even have righteousness on its side any longer. John Koskinen should know that the NSA has a record of every email created at the IRS, and likely, so do other agencies. There is nothing private about email. It is like speaking in a shopping mall, or city street. It is a form of communication—but nothing that happens in email should be considered private. Yet these government employees are so arrogant that they actually think they can suppress evidence and went in front of congress and lied about their actions. That is absolutely amazing—astonishingly arrogant, and stupid. These are the people we pay so much! They aren’t even smart enough to understand when the eyes of the world are upon them—and a lot of very smart people analyzing their every word—that they can’t delete a bunch of emails hiding evidence and blame it on an IT failure. That just doesn’t cut it.
John Koskinen said, “I don’t think an apology is owed.” He doesn’t think that the errors of the IRS constitute accountability. Then a Democratic Congressman alluded that the whole scandal was a concocted conspiracy theory not concerned at all by the behavior of the IRS. What we are seeing is a major conspiracy that involves many people—and in this case half of the people on Capitol Hill appear to be guilty. They are using every trick in the book to throw all investigations off their trail, but to no avail. The emails are recovered and have been backed up. All it takes is guts to put them out to the public, who will likely be ready to lynch the IRS once the contents are discovered. When that happens, major heads will roll in Washington D.C. and that is what has everybody scared.
It is in that realization that I nearly destroyed my television and had to spend two full days calming down. I don’t like being lied to, and the IRS has lied to my face and expects me to just go away quietly. Worse yet, it wasn’t directed at me—but at all Americans, and for that—they deserve the wrath that is coming their way. If the Republicans screw this up, they have no hope. The Democrats have placed themselves on a tee and are daring the Republicans to hit them out of the park. If the Republicans really wanted to win in 2014 and 2016, they’d hit the IRS issue hard and without remorse. This is not a conspiracy equivalent to Area 51 and Bigfoot—this is evidence of such things that normally might be regulated to conspiracy theory. In this case, the IRS has done everything everyone who fears it has claimed and the proof is on those backed up emails at Sonasoft.
Let’s make something clear since Jay Carney brought it up on his last day as the White House spokesman—the Bush administration was not a good 8 years for America. And certainly, Obama has been bad for American just in even worse incompetence. There isn’t a competition between the Republican loser in office and the Democrat—they both were terrible. At the end of Obama’s second term, America will have seen 16 years of terrible presidents and America has suffered terribly for it. America will be well over $18 trillion dollars in debt and will have virtually everything that has been taken for granted–good jobs, a flourishing economy, food, power, and medical help in question as Obama leaves the White House. However, the folly doesn’t start there—Clinton was a terrible president, and Bush the senior wasn’t a cup of tea either. It is then no wonder that America is a shell of its former self as the political leadership has reflected a society on the decline. The people who have elected these losers are of less quality than previous generations and the result has been horrible leadership in the White House that has had a detrimental effect on America’s quality in every category.
Nobody will argue that Dick Cheney was far from the best vice president—just as Joe Biden appears to be a complete buffoon in the same position. Jay Carney’s reference to the poor Bush presidency as a defense of the Obama presidency is like saying that thunder is better than lightning in a rain storm—as they accompany each other in the grand scheme of things. It is best to not have a storm at all if no damage is desired—and in politics, it is best to avoid terrible presidents—so to avoid damage once they leave.
Yet is it clear now why America went to war in Iraq? It was to prevent the spread of terrorism, not because of “oil.” It was to keep wealth and resources out of the hands of diabolical terrorists. Does everybody now understand why there must be a border between Mexico and The United States that is secure—because all the impoverished countries from the south in Central America are flocking to the border hoping for relief from their circumstances? The cause of those circumstances is the socialist and tyrannical policies of their corrupt governments giving America the obligation to protect itself by imposing freedom on those places. When such strength is not present—there is no reason for tyrants to oppress their people with no option but to flee those lands of terror in pursuit of opportunities for freedom.
America never should have to concern itself with the affairs of other countries, but when it is the only good place in the world beholding freedom—and immigrants flood our boarders looking for freedom from oppression, America has a right to defend itself by helping those countries have freedom on their own. But if those countries do not have a philosophy that allows for freedom, then it won’t last, like what has happened in Iraq. It is not enough to give a country a set of laws and turn them loose in pursuit of democracy. If most people in the country are corrupt by bad, collectivist thinking, they will not be able to maintain freedom under any circumstances.
For over twenty years now bad presidents have led America on a chase mimicking these bad global governments instead of standing for what was right in defense of freedom. At least Ronald Reagan as an actor/president understood that America had an obligation to help oppressed people so that freedom would spread around the world instead of tyranny—his presidency was a strong one that left the entire world a better place. There were presidents before Reagan who were also pretty good at defending that basic premise from both political parties—but as for the last twenty years, representation for freedom from the White House to the world has been terrible.
Many of the problems experienced presently in the American nation are due to weak leadership and foreign policy vision. Bush and Obama have very little understanding of economics and abandoned capitalism under their terms. Clinton was simply a socialist who defended his corruption with his legal skills as a diabolical lawyer. Without question, he is likely enjoying these current problems as they fit his open border philosophy where the value of America is diminished in favor of a new global government.
The premise that every time Obama is criticized for being a complete idiot, which he is, a defense for his stupidity is not to point at George W. Bush and say “he did it too.” They were both idiots, and they have both left America worse as a nation than it was when they took over as president. But for context, the Pentagon moved the Aircraft carrier George W. Bush off the coast of Iraq to show the terrorist insurgents that America is nearby. That brought forth the thought that it is now unimaginable that a future aircraft carrier would be named, the “Barack Obama.” Such a carrier would be a laughing-stock, and certainly would not incite fear into the opposition. It is in that reality that the quality of the presidents can best be determined. For as bad as Bush was for the free market, he at least understood how to project strength in the military—even if it was at times overreaching. It is better to reach too far in foreign policy than to not reach at all—like Obama has. Lack of American projection of strength to the world leads every cockroach to come forth as a potential tyrant and ruthless dictator—which is what is happening from Russia to the Middle East. And in the end, that is why Barack Obama will forever be known as the worst president in the history of America, and make the top ten list of worst leaders of all time the world over. Obama will own that designation on his own and no deflection to George W. Bush will cover his ignorance from the responsibility of that title.
It is not enough to simply defeat a dictator or to send military support—or to throw money at countries who are functioning from poor philosophic beliefs and collectively based cultures. When that sense of collectivism carries over into religion these countries become even more dangerous to themselves and others. What all poor countries have in common is collective based economies based on Karl Marx and Keynesian thought, and religions based on sacrifice and worship through collective yielding to higher powers. Those failures of thought are what cause hopeful immigrants to pour into the U.S. border and terrorists to believe they have a right to impose religious law against non-believers through force and terror. The failure of the American presidents of the last 20 years is that they failed to identify this root cause—and have instead let them fester unchecked until presently the world is in disarray. Money cannot be thrown at the problem of poor philosophy, and neither can lip service. People have to think differently. They have to “think” like Americans instead of just running to America hoping to be put on welfare and cared for by the tax payer in The United States for the rest of their lives. They have to adopt new philosophies that allow them to have flourishing economies and religions that don’t require the eradication of those who don’t believe the same things under the premise of social collectivism. If traceability between these two differences in thought could be made it is the difference between Immanuel Kant, and Adam Smith—or the difference between Aristotle and Plato. The root cause of evil is in philosophy, and it is the philosophy of poor nations which leave people looking to escape into The United States, or to flee tyrants on their way into Bagdad that causes the trouble. The only way to really help the people of the world is to change the way those people think—and Obama, Bush, Clinton as well as many other presidents have put American value into reactive defense instead of assertive projection of philosophies born on American soil—which would do far more good than all the tanks, planes and missiles in world history of stopping tyrants in their tracks. Recent American presidents have failed to show pride in that American philosophy born of Adam Smith, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and Ayn Rand—and that is why they are embarrassments in the context of history—all of them.
I have a long history of dealing with people who believe that they are the smartest people in the room—people who work very hard to be masters of a specific field of endeavor—no matter what it is. I have dealt with some of the worst people imaginable—from actual killers of men hired for the task so to suppress competition—and those who just believe that they are smarter than everyone else hiding their true intentions behind a veil of confident mastery over specific fields of endeavor. However, I have always had since the age of a very small child the unique ability to see through any level of bullshit into the soul of the perpetrator and know exactly what they are up to and why. Some might call it a gift from God—my unique skill which sets me aside from virtually everyone. Some people can run fast, some can calculate complicated mathematics without a calculator, some can read pages and pages of legal documentation and actually retain the knowledge—etc, but almost nobody who I’ve ever met had the ability to see into, and through people the way I do. Some might think it a curse—but I wouldn’t trade that ability for all the gold in the world and a life of ease and immortality on a paradise island with only pleasure in the forecast—I enjoy my ability that much.
So I started this blog as a way to address the crimes that I was seeing and challenge the premise that those same crimes were committed under—specifically by a class of people who sincerely believed they could get away with harming intellectually others while hiding their maliciousness behind a superior intellect. They can’t. To demonstrate my effectiveness, I have now written millions of words in this blog, virtually every article is over 1200 words each, and I’ve done it every day since 2010. It has changed the lives of many people for the better and shattered the once confident hiding places of those most vile in our society—who hope to perpetrate their ill will toward mankind in obscurity. They have tried every trick imaginable—but have failed utterly to shake me off their scent—which to me was never in question.
The good thing about the blog is that with all those words and the public forum of it—where anybody can answer my comments and pick holes in my theories, to date they have not been able to do so. They can certainly insult—but they cannot answer or refute my claims and they’ll never be able to—and they hate it. The proof is in the vast swath of articles I have produced in such a short time—relatively speaking. At this point in this blog’s history I could take all the books of Ayn Rand and Leo Tolstoy and combine them—and I have written more than they have specifically targeting the crimes of our modern age. I will certainly not proclaim that these works are as well edited—most of the articles are raw, and from the heart, the way a writer’s notes would be when formulating an idea for refinement—but that doesn’t take away the results which are enormous, and likely only rivaled over the entire Internet by a few outlets.
I mostly deal with excessively smart people who universally believe they are the smartest people around at any given time. It is my task to show them that they are not—so that their efforts do not become a detriment to an enterprise—but a contributor and this often causes resentment. This has been my task for four decades now, so I knew that by taking on the established thinking especially in regard to politics and education, what I was getting into. That is the history of this blog to this point. It has evolved away from the more specific task of identifying education industry crime—and has evolved more into a philosophic analysis of mythology and how it impacts the static patterns of the human race. Because it is within that phrase that my special gift shines most brightly—when I go into long tirades about Star Wars, or some new game, literary work, or musical effort, it is because I see the impact of those achievements well before the rest of society does. What I say today, will become the standard of thought approximately 15 years from now. I am so confident in my assertions that I write these things audaciously for free on the Internet for future testimony without revisionist deflection. People may not always understand why or what I’m doing, but if they did—they’d be the ones writing about them instead of me—but they aren’t, and they can’t.
Because they can’t, this leaves critics bitterly resentful, and constantly plotting and scheming so that they can return to the safety of their cloaked behavior within society. Most people from the perpetrators of injustice currently sitting in The White House to the local labor union leaders within the education industry spend large amounts of their time trying to stay hidden—and they despise anyone who can see what they are really about—so they plot, scheme, and manipulate any way possible to return to that status. But in regards to this blog, it makes it impossible for them. Readers here have taken my words and used them as tools to change behavior and flush out the pretentious thugs of their localities in much the same way and embolden their efforts at justice—which is all I want. But those motives still elude the most dastardly terrorists of the mind and within their circles of self-imposed exile have begun spreading reference to me in the following fashion:
“Our universe explained by the god Rich Hoffman”
On my blog I can see the site stats hour by hour of the kind of terms people use to find it online—and that phrase has been coming up more often by different origin IP addresses lately. This is an indication of the temperament of the critics out there and how they view this blog. It is unfathomable to them that any individual would attempt to declare that they unshakably know facts, and can see into their hearts unless those individuals were supernatural. So this is their new derogatory term used to confront the light which shines into their lives grudgingly preventing them from hiding in plain sight. We live in a time where information is easier to get than ever before in human history—yet people are expected to be dumber than at virtually any point since the dawn of man. People are expected to remain stupid so to prevent inquiry into the nature of crimes that those who think they are smarter than everyone else, wish to commit upon the innocent—and genuinely good-hearted.
Referring to me as a “god” in their context is not a compliment—but I take it that way—because it shows me more about them than they wish for me to see. At the start of this blog I knew I was challenging people who thought they were the smartest people in existence, and the shattering impact that they were not has often proven too much for them to handle—which serves them right. It is ultimately best for them to learn that they cannot use their intelligence for evil—but should utilize it for good, productive ends—and they’ll only do that if they are not allowed to hide behind an industry that does not question their merit for what it is.
A “God” is universally accepted as one who can see everything at all times—they are omnipotent. Does that accurately describe me? That is for me to know, and nobody else. But my enemies do see me that way—and that is because they have been unable to match my assertions which leaves them metaphorically stripped naked for all to witness—and the sight is not a pleasant one. But it is one that makes society and all endeavor better—which makes me sleep better at night knowing that I did the work that was required—and if some see that as the work of a “god” well—so be it. I may be a lot of things to a lot of people depending on the context—but one thing I am not is humble. Humbleness is a waste of time when the only goal of it is to make others feel better about their life decisions and ultimate fall from grace. And that is not a business I want to be a part of.
In a world of careful calculation where nothing happens by accident, Jay Carney’s decision to resign within hours of Eric Shinseki’s resignation as Veterans Affairs Secretary says more in what it doesn’t say, than what it does. The Press Secretary and close advisor to Obama, suddenly decided to leave his post on a Friday at the end of May hoping that by the first Monday of June, the nation would have forgotten why—and forgiven the administration for not standing in front of the press to take barrages of questions that can never be answered especially now that the mismanagement of the VA scandal is just beginning. Obama and his team at the White House have proven themselves to be everything people like me have said about them—they may be functioning communists, diabolical progressives, even religious radicals—but at the heart of them is serious incompetency that can no longer hide behind slick words carefully constructed by public relations tricks. For Carney to leave at this point in time points to just how bad it is behind the scenes at the White House attempting to put five major scandals climaxed by the VA situation under a rock that no longer exists. Carney’s exit is about leaving an administration that will soon collapse in front of the world under the full weight of sheer stupidity—and the now former press secretary is savvy enough to see it.
Carney said that he wanted to leave his post as far back as April indicating that he wanted to spend more time with his children whom he shares with ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman. Yet such people as Carney and Shipman do not put their children before their careers under any circumstances—ever. They plot and scheme their social-climbing every minute of every day always on the lookout for a rising star for which they can clip on a tow hook to ride. As typical second-handers, they live through other people’s achievements. They don’t raise children—unless they wish to hide behind them—as most progressives do when they desire something whether it is a school levy, or a new law through congress. For Carney who has already lived in Russia for four years as a correspondent for Time Magazine and later served as bureau chief—what would it cost his children to wait two more years for the Obama administration to leave office? The answer is nothing. Carney and his wife have already put career over their kids, and it is unfathomable to think they would have a change of heart now when the most powerful man in the world considers them a friend needing an allay at the hardest point in his life. Carney’s exit is a strategy in second-handed self-preservation ahead of the growing implication of serious scandals that won’t go away and are picking up momentum.
The blood is now in the water and the sharks smell it. Obama is in trouble. The VA debacle for most Americans is the promise of what Obamacare will give them and the world knows it. Everything that is wrong with the VA—the waiting 115 days for treatment dying in line, the systemic misconduct from every level of that government office and the incompetency of 1700 vets not even put on the list being forgotten by a bureaucracy that has no value for their individuality. The correct impression is that Obamacare will be handled in the same way. The VA scandal is the future of America’s health care system—and finally people see it.
How do I know—well, my son-in-law is from England where his family already has this socialized medicine that Obamacare is molded from, and most of his family has moved to The United States chasing the benefits of American life. Listening to their stories about how difficult it is to get medical care in England sounds exactly like the VA Department under president Obama. There is no indication that Obamacare could be managed any better—and Americans know it.
Carney is leaving because as a second-hander he knows when there is nothing left to suck off of from the current White House, and also is savvy enough to think that passing duties off to Josh Earnest will buy time for Obama—as Earnest can claim ignorance for a month or two. About Earnest, isn’t it interesting that such a “progressive” administration as Obama’s didn’t ask an African-American to be his press secretary instead of another “white male,” or even a woman. Why do you think that is dear reader? They certainly could have, yet Obama has picked his third white male as press secretary in six years. Why not give an African-American a chance at the job if the White House is truly progressive. I’ll tell you that answer too—it is because The White House truly fears that America is a racist nation based on their radical beliefs and will not listen to the lies of anybody but one of their own. The White House fears these things because they are guilty—not because they are innocent. The evidence of real behavior and motivations is always in what is not said, not what is. If Obama really wanted to promote African-American advancement, he’d put someone like Morgan Freeman up as press secretary and let the chips fall where they may the way he has with his corrupt Attorney General Eric Holder. But where Holder has failed, Obama cannot risk his personal shield—the press secretary to be of a type that will further anger the American public—so they put up a safe—clean cut white guy for the third time in a row.
The guilt of The White House is spilling over to such an extent that Jay Carney hopes to throw himself on the sword for Obama one last time in behalf of the VA scandal, but as a second-hander knows that Obama has nothing left to offer and does not want to be the guy answering questions that will come in the months that follow. So he left, not to be near his children, or hang out with his wife, but to hide from the storm that is coming where a new star will be sought out—or he will hide in obscurity defeated forever as being so intimately attached to an Executive Branch that is riddled with corruption and incompetence to such an extent it might as well be a third world dictatorship.
For anyone who has read the Allan Eckert novels about the Miami Valley region from the period of 1750 to around 1800 you will understand why the following message brings great sadness to me. Progressives have attempted to claim the position of the Native American viewpoint, where shortsighted, pretentious, European settlers running from one tyranny to another brought with them to the New World a Victorian audaciousness that still persists among those who currently reside along the coast from Virginia to Maine. Those people pushed the Native American from one treaty to another across the settled continent of a wild frontier without a thought as to the long-term implications. Native Americans like Tecumseh fought to keep their land, but were pushed off for the proposed greater good—the European version of it—the same one that now desires socialism over capitalism. In those novels I personally identified with the Simon Kenton character most, Daniel Boone—George Washington and Andrew Jackson as close seconds. I understand those people, and their relationship with Native Americans was not so contentious. If left to Kenton, he would have been able to live alongside the Native Americans—he’d also own most of the Ohio River Valley—but that land was taken from him by snot nosed courts again in the European tradition of shortsighted consumption.
At the end of the road that I live on, thousands of Native American hunters traversed by canoe from their settlements near Xenia, Ohio down to the hunting lands of Kentucky exploring the edge of the world between the river that divided modern-day Ohio and Kentucky from one another. Without question they often camped where my home is currently built as it provides a high vantage point overlooking the valley where Trenton currently resides. It was good hunting ground with topography suitable for feeding a small army, which the Native Americans often had. My ancestors during this period were given land by the King of England right in the heart of Liberty Township and was part of the frontiersmen that settled the area as the French were partnering up with the Native Americans from the Eastern Lake Erie region—specifically Pontiac and his people the Ottawa who went on a bloody crusade against the English settlements which lead to the French and Indian War. The Treaty of Greenville took place right up the road from my house, and the Battle of Fallen Timbers right up the road from there. Few people have any idea what kind of massacre occurred at the current town of Piqua, Ohio. Even fewer these days know why Fairfield, Ohio was called what it was, or that Hamilton, Ohio was named after the Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, or that Monroe, Ohio was named after a sitting president. Fewer know that Liberty Township, Ohio was a direct tribute to the American Revolution and that it was the wild frontier that defined America, which is why Trenton, Ohio was so aptly named after the decisive victory of Washington after crossing the Delaware with his troops to deal a stinging blow to the English forces entrenched in New Jersey.
I grew up knowing long time residents who owned vast swaths of land, much the way the modern Niedermans do. And over the years I have watched them forced off that land because of high taxation. During the last levy campaign from Lakota, the public school that infests the region with government style education that is too expensive, too liberal, and severely inefficient, the most vocal supporters—the real-estate agents who want to sell houses declared that if people didn’t like the way the world was changing, under their guidance—that they should just move. Those same idiots claimed to love Liberty Township and West Chester for the large plots of farmland and green space—yet they brought with them a temperament that wanted to see a home placed on every acre—and those same real-estate agents who most fervently supported the Lakota Tax Increase of 2013 had the attention span of a flee—not considering what the long-term implications of their hostile behavior might lead to.
I know many of the developers who built the houses in Liberty Township and they have in common among them a lack of scope. Their primary concern, much like the levy supporters at Lakota was in protecting their investments without an understanding of the long-term implications of their decisions. They worked with real-estate agents to use Lakota to sell away most of the Liberty Township land to small-minded East Coast progressives transferring to the region because of the solid job growth of the Tri-State area. Most of those people move to the area not because of the deep history but because of the green space. But with each tax passed, the farms have packed up and moved away leaving the land to be divided up and sold away to more progressive minded newcomers who love taxes, government, and someone else being in charge of their life because they are simply too lazy—or unsophisticated to do it themselves. I have seen more letters than I care too like the one below spawned from the latest Lakota levy.
Hi Rich, just wanted to write and let you know we’re leaving West Chester. I fought with you to help defeat the levy each time, but this last time I said if it passed we were leaving. So, we are moving. Don’t get me wrong, I know the levy system will follow us, but we are moving to a place where we can spread out in our own forest land, but our taxes on over 10 acres will be lower than our small lot here in West Chester. The schools have continued to increase teacher salaries as you said and I continue to be disgusted by the indoctrination of our school children and the parents who refuse to believe what is being done to their children. I will continue to follow your blog and will stand with you on the conservative issues we face, but will no longer do it from West Chester. Gods speed.
A frequent Reader,
What is the cause of urban sprawl for those conservation minded idiots of the green movement? Taxes. If one wished to drive north, west, or east of Liberty Township just 30 miles, they will discover many people like that letter writer who is willing to move away from neighborhoods, public schools, and high taxes in favor of more land, more space, and less nosy progressives. It is the same tendency that caused Simon Kenton to settle the area in the first place; he wanted to be away from the nosy politics of the East. The Native Americans already living somewhat of a free existence, certainly didn’t want to deal with the newcomers either. And today, I feel the same way.
If there are lessons to be learned from history it’s that the idiots never stop coming. You can pack up and move away from them, but within a decade or two they will be back on your doorstep looking for money, and trying to find ways to get you to care for them and their children because they are too stupid and lazy to perform the task on their own. They’ll arrive with great pretension and speak often about the “greater good” but what they really want is for you to carry them through life. They want you to care for their kids; they want you to start a tractor so they can see it driving around while they go to Panera Bread, and they’ll cry about green space when you leave because of high taxes, and they’ll call the developers who built homes in the wake of the surrendered property greedy. Local politicians lick their lips with each home sale like insects caught in the web of a spider. For every lot of land divided up from what once was a large field of corn, or a former Native American campground, is now a quarter acre money-maker that pays $2000 to $6000 in taxes per year divided 50 to a 100 ways as opposed to the former plot of land of 10 acres that paid only a fraction of that, until the surrounding neighborhoods changed the taxation structure giving politicians money to spend and ways to name things after themselves.
It is truly a loss when someone of quality leaves a community like Liberty Township and 50 fools move in to replace them—and that is what is happening. Some call it progress—those would be progressives. Some call it the wave of the future. Some call it inevitable. Some call it the legal way of providing a future for the next generation through education funding. But I call it stupid and unsustainable. For every person of quality who leaves Liberty Township and West Chester because the Lakota school taxes are too high, thoughtless migrants replace them as much lower quality people who will inevitably destroy the property values of everyone involved, not just a few. There is no way to run from stupidity. Because stupid has no choice but to suck the life out of everyone they come in contact with and expect others to pay for their deficiencies with high taxes and parasitic indulgence.
Watch this video before reading the rest of the article. The video is from Elliot Rodger the alleged gunman from the latest rampage in California and shows exactly why he went on a shooting spree stabbing and shooting to death six people. I thought of leaving this topic alone and not covering out of respect for the families until a grieving father of one of the victims blamed the NRA for the death of his son—giving progressives fuel for the fire of gun grabbing legislation. He desired to use his grief as a platform for more gun control mandating a proper analysis of this terrible shooting—which starts with this video.
The following contents come from a below linked YouTube video with some basic editing inserting additional information:
The father of one of the six victims gunned down on Friday night by Elliot Rodger blamed the NRA and politicians for the death of his only son, Christopher Martinez. He shouted with grief at a press conference: ‘You don’t think it will happen to your child until it does.’ (NY Daily News) ‘Sexually frustrated’ Santa Barbara killer promised to ‘kill as many people as possible’ The hate-filled son of Hollywood director Peter Elliot was identified Saturday as the gunman who killed six people in a murderous rampage near a California college. Chin Elliot, the mother of the shooter read a 130+ page email by her son that sent her frantically calling her ex-husband who was dining with his new wife and friends. The two parents raced to Isla Vista in an attempt to stop the slaughter they knew was coming—but were too late.
Shooter Elliot Rodger, 22, posted an incendiary YouTube rant promising a slaughter of sorority sisters and strangers on the street hours before the night of murder that ended in his suicide.
The killer stabbed three men to death at his Isla Vista apartment before he embarked on the killing spree that also wounded 13 people on Friday night.
In a 130+-page manifesto, described as a “rambling autobiography” by Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown, detailed Rodger’s life story and his plan to kill his roommates. “I would have to kill my housemates to get them out-of-the-way,” he wrote. “In fact, I’d even enjoy stabbing them both to death while they slept.”
Two of the three bodies pulled from the Rodger apartment have been confirmed as the roommates.
Rodger killed himself behind the wheel of his pricey black BMW after a deadly fire fight with Santa Barbara Sheriff’s deputies. The lone gunman carved a football-field length path of carnage, near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, which included a total of 10 locations with 12 separate crime scenes, Brown said at a press conference Saturday night.
Three of the victims have been identified as Veronika Weiss, 19, Katie Cooper and Christopher Martinez.
Martinez’s father, Richard, shouted with grief and blamed “craven” and “irresponsible” politicians and the NRA for the death of his only son at a press conference on Saturday. You don’t think it will happen to your child until it does,” Martinez said as he held a photo of his son as a child playing baseball. “Chris was a really great kid, ask anyone who knew him. His death has left our family lost and broken. “When will this insanity stop,” the crying dad screamed. He added, “We should say to ourselves, ‘Not one more,” before he dropped the mic and stormed away from the podium.
A lawyer for Rodger’s father confirmed the son’s involvement to ABC News. The deranged gunman announced his plans for mass murder in a deeply disturbing seven-minute video. You denied me a happy life, and in turn I will deny all of your life,” the baby-faced Rodger says at one point before offering a chilling laugh. “It’s only fair. I hate all of you.
“If I had it in my power, I would stop at nothing to reduce every single one of you to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood, and rightfully so.”
The deadly shooting spree lasted for six terrifying minutes, with Rodger involved in two shootouts with sheriff’s deputies before he was discovered inside the BMW with a gunshot wound to his head. The chilling and creepy YouTube clip, titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution,” offered insights into the twisted mind behind the remorseless rampage.
Rodger’s diatribe declares both his hatred of women and his violent intentions to take revenge for years of rejection. He promises to shoot up a sorority house on the UCSB campus as payback.
The disturbed speaker says he’s a virgin who never as much as kissed a girl.
“On the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up blond slut I see inside there,” he announces. “All those girls that I’ve desired so much.”
“I’ll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you,” he says later. “You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one. The true alpha male.
He then pauses for another horrifying laugh.
Rodger’s father is a Hollywood director and assistant director whose credits include work on “The Hunger Games.”According to Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown, investigators were “analyzing both written and videotaped evidence that suggests this atrocity was a premeditated mass murder.”
The gunman, of Calabasas, Calif., arrived in Isla Vista driving a black BMW and opened fire at 9:27 p.m. Friday, Brown said. Bullets were soon flying through the darkness as the shooter blasted away from behind the wheel of his car, with one witness saying as many as 20 shots were fired.
“I heard shots, screams, pain,” student Michael Vitak told KEYT-TV after the shooting.
Vitak said he watched in horror as one woman was killed and a second seriously wounded. “I hope she is going to be fine,” he said.
Eyewitness Nikolaus Becker was sitting outside The Habit Burger Grill when he heard the pop-pop-pop of what he thought were firecrackers.
To even begin to ascertain that the shooting spree in California involving Elliot Rodger could have been eliminated with more stringent gun control is to ignore the real culprit in this case which is far more to blame. Even if guns were removed from every single individual in the world—the root cause of the shooter’s behavior would persist. The evidence of this case points toward the relationship of Elliot and his father Peter as the real problem. Young men need from their fathers guidance on the matters of sexual pursuits and during a time when Elliot needed his father—there was a divorce in his family and a new woman took his father away. Divorce happens to a lot of kids, and it hurts them. But Elliot had the added complications of Asperger’s syndrome and a pampered life where values are often cheapened without reference. Often parents in cases like Chin and Peter Elliot throw money at their children hoping to appease them as they pursue their career paths. In Peter’s life, his only major film credit is The Hunger Games—so he has been busy social-climbing in Hollywood to earn his next work which appears to have interfered with the development of his son.
Are the parents at fault for the deaths caused by their son Elliot Rodger………..yes. Should they rake themselves over the coals over it–no. They are victims themselves of a society that believes families can be wrecked and rebuilt like Lego blocks openly accepting progressive lifestyles which led to the detriment of their son. Other families manage to raise children who do not go on shooting rampages, but their children are never-the-less distraught the same. They just don’t go to the added level of acting on their anxiety as Rodger did.
To stab to death his roommates is a very personal way to kill, and it would have occurred whether or not there were more gun laws. Rodger was going to kill people one way or another because sex was a mystery to him—he wanted it, and he couldn’t find it, and he was angry about it. It was his parent’s job to help him solve that problem, but they didn’t take an active role—and the result is what occurred. In a world driven by sex, a young man needs to at least experience such things and the parents need to advise him how to get there.
I have some knowledge of this problem. I had two friends who were really close to me who had similar difficulties. Both were very intelligent—in some ways too intelligent to play the mating games women often want to play—biologically. So they entered past their 18th birthdays without kissing girls and the pressure was incredibly difficult for them. Both of my friends had difficulties with their parents–one was too Christian and the other was too progressive—both led to extremes in the family environment. If my friends had been less intelligent, they might have not noticed so much, but because they were—they found it impossible to please their parents and attract a mate making sex impossible. For one I took a collection to buy him his first sexual experience—just to get the monkey off his back. Once he had his experience, women naturally detected his lack of virginity and it helped him launch into relationships that allowed for sex with girls. The other friend resisted my offer for another six years being a good Christian and all. Finally he let me buy him a private stripper which put a real naked woman in front of him. There was no sex, but it did help, and a few years later he found a woman who wanted to have sex with him and found his guilt over the stripper incident cutely naive. She married him and they are still that way to this day. I’m not typically a supporter of the silly didactic sexual stuff, but it is a primary biological need. Adults need to see that their children learn to care for their basic needs, and sex is one of them—just like eating is. Every man needs to show their sons how to behave in a confident fashion that wins the hearts of women. If that does not happen, a man does a son a terrible disservice.
Peter Rodger should have helped his son solve this problem three years prior at age 19 when it was obvious that the young man was not able to convince girls to undress for him on his own. Once the momentous occasion of sexual interaction occurs for young men, they find that all subsequent activity becomes much more natural—so a dad can certainly help a son with this problem by at least putting a naked woman near the boy so that all the emotions of such a thing can be dealt with avoiding the awkwardness more experienced girls of the same age will feel when dealing with a male virgin in the height of their sexual years. This should be done to assist the boy in living a productive life, not just in preventing shooting sprees.
This topic is difficult for people to even discuss—and ultimately that is the reason for the shooting rampage in this case. Peter Rodger could have solved the problem by taking his son to a strip joint—which are disgusting places, but far better than having such a social meltdown. It would certainly be a last resort, but it should never be neglected how important sex is to young men—especially in a society addicted to it. My rational with my friends was that we often enjoyed other things besides girls—so if they could get those primal needs out-of-the-way, they would have higher quality lives that would allow them to continue enjoying more intelligent activity without distraction. Peter should have helped his son find a girl instead of starting new relationships with new women and hanging out with the Hollywood crowd trying to find work. The son left without a father in the home alone with his mother—had to endure a female relationship without sex with a female that his father had rejected causing all sorts of mixed up emotions—because most young men seek in their sexual mates, women who are like their mothers. It would not surprise me that it was this problem that ultimately led to Elliot Rodger’s sexual frustration–how to defend the position of his father by rejecting his mother who is the aim of Elliot’s sexual fulfillment in potential mates. That duality combined with Asperger’s syndrome was destructive to Elliot’s mind and was the cause of the shooting spree. It was not caused by a gun; the act of terror was caused by a broken mind. It was preventable not with a new law, but with love and common sense.
For me, movies have always been a measurement about the temperament of a society in general. The kinds of films that make money, and those that don’t speak largely about the values of earthly civilizations. I enjoy most films, small art pictures like Atlas Shrugged sometimes because they don’t make much money and speak to a very focused and intelligent audience. I also like films like the new Godzilla movie which speaks directly to the masses with enthusiastic hope. What is different now as opposed to even a decade ago is that occasionally, huge blockbuster films like Godzilla are released simultaneously around the world and provide a very clear picture of what those worldly economic conditions are relative to the United States which can be directly measured by ticket sales.
Godzilla earned an estimated $103 million from 64 overseas markets this past weekend—during its opening. Warner Bros. reported that 51 percent of those sales were from 3D showings.
The movie’s biggest markets were the U.K. ($10.4 million) and Russia ($9.1 million), and it had the top opening of the year in Australia ($6.1 million). Other major territories included Mexico ($8.9 million), France ($6.5 million), Korea ($4.5 million), Brazil ($4.2 million), Italy ($3.6 million) and Spain ($1.6 million).
Godzilla opens in China in June, and then Japan in July. If it lives up to its potential in those two markets, it should wind up with over $400 million from overseas sales.
Produced by Legendary Pictures and released by Warner Bros., the monster movie reboot earned an impressive $93.2 million at the domestic box office.
Godzilla‘s domestic debut ranks second in 2014: it wound up in between Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($95 million) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($91.6 million). It also opened significantly higher than last summer’s World War Z ($66.4 million), and more-than-doubled Pacific Rim‘s $37.3 million.
To sum all this up properly just in the North American continent Godzilla made $93 million dollars. Over the entire rest of the world the film made $103 million without China and Japan being factored. Those countries will see the film over the next couple of months. With all politics removed from public relations jargon promoting all these other countries as equal to the United States, and the demand for Godzilla being universally equal all over the world—it could be observed that dollar for dollar—The United States—a capitalist country has the buying power of the rest of the world combined.
For instance, Brazil is a large country, but because they lean in the direction of socialism, they have a per capita income that is far below that of The United States. $4.2 million is about how much most states made in America displaying vividly that in Brazil there are not nearly enough movie theaters available to show the film. In America, I have around seven different theaters to choose from to see Godzilla while in Brazil, there may only be a few theater in each major city. The rural areas of Brazil are lucky to have power let alone have a theater down the road from their house making it impossible to even think of seeing Godzilla. So as a country, their demand to see the movie was high, but their people because they are poor did not have much opportunity to attend a theater. Even more pressing to the whole problem is that there is not enough per capita income to dictate that an investor could even open and operate a movie theater in the country. Italy and Spain are both socialist countries and put out a pathetic number in response to the Godzilla box office. Again, it is not that people did not want to see the movie. Those that could did. But in those countries, there just aren’t enough theater owners who want to embark on the entrepreneurial activity of theater ownership.
France put up a respectable number as they have several major cities that have movie theaters. In the future however because of the socialist policies of the current government penalizing the rich, there will likely be far less real-estate investment into movie theaters leading the country back into something like what Spain, Italy and Brazil are putting out as far as economic activity.
Economic activity is of course the access of investment into theater ownership and access to money to attend a movie by the general population through disposable income. If taxation consumes much of that income, then movie attendance will of course decrease. After China loosened up a bit toward western films and actually allowed their citizens to watch movies like Godzilla, they are usually good for around $40 million in opening weekend box office totals out of a population matrix of over a billion people. Much of this market base is around the capitalist region of Hong Kong, but the communist portions of the country are still deeply deprived of business investment and disposable income to even purchase a movie ticket. There are likely millions of children within China who would love to see Godzilla, but they can’t because no movie theater owners want to deal with the communist government to operate such things with all the restrictions involved. After all, China only allows ten films a year from America. The rest of the year there aren’t many opportunities to see movies that are good. China isn’t making many movies, and neither is the rest of the world. Only America makes movies like Godzilla and only a select few are allowed to be seen within a communist country. Godzilla will be one of them—thank goodness.
Here is a sad statistic; the entire country of Australia which is a large landmass, only produced $6.1 million in Godzilla sales—mostly on the east coast of the country. Australia has also functioned under socialism for a number of years which has killed their economic growth and the results can easily be seen in the terribly deficient movie theaters available. Obviously people in Australia would love to see Godzilla, but they do not have enough movie theaters to allow such a thing. They have not been friendly enough toward entrepreneurial activity to allow their people such a positive leisure time activity like seeing Godzilla.
Is it fair to judge the world against such standards—well, yes it is. Godzilla is the kind of movie that boys, girls, young, old, virtually every market demographic in the world would like to at least see, but those opportunities do not exist in countries struggling with socialism, communism, and over restrictive governments. Countries like Russia have at least stepped up to the plate and allowed for western films to be shown in their city multiplexes and they produced a respectable $9.1 million, just shy of England which boosts a much smaller landmass and total population. Such comparisons speak very accurately about the economic strength of the cultures viewing the film Godzilla.
Godzilla is s global phenomena built with Japanese branding for many years, so it is a stable platform to make such comparisons. And the economic status of the world is easy to measure against such a globally unified reference point. If you want to measure the strength of a nation, just look at how many people attend movie blockbusters and determine if they have access to a movie theater, have expendable income, or live in a country that allows the kind of free speech needed to see such a thing. Then ask why they can’t, and you will have the answer as to which political systems work best for the people they are supposed to serve, and which ones simply use people as a platform for their own self-importance.
I bet dear reader—that you had no idea that the new Godzilla movie told so many stories on so many levels—but now you do.
You could smell it in the air on Friday. My wife and I went to an early showing of Godzilla after having a nice lunch at Chick-fil-A and already the Showcase Cinema in Springdale, Ohio was cranked up in anticipation of what turned out to be a fabulous movie. READ MY REVIEW HERE. It was simply a jaw-dropping experience and the buzz was already percolating into what would become a $32 million dollar evening after a $9 million dollar Thursday night of special showings. The theater was buzzing with excitement the likes of which I had not seen in years and the film hadn’t even thought of hitting Saturday yet. Projections had the film only doing $65 million dollars over the weekend, but by Saturday morning, it was obvious that Godzilla would crush the opening of Spiderman 2, from two weeks earlier of $91 million. My wife and I bought our Imax ticket and quickly discovered on a gigantic poster that we would be treated to a free popcorn just for buying the Imax ticket, so we picked up some wonderfully buttered popcorn and stepped into history as the best monster movie ever to be filmed played before our eyes. During the climax my wife was so excited she almost leapt at the screen laughing, pointing, and was ready to punch something.
At the conclusion a few of the employees who came in to clean up asked me how the movie was, and stated that they couldn’t wait to get off work so they could see it. My wife and I were the last to leave the theater and I told them that they needed to clock out right now, and get up in those seats and watch this movie right now. It was that incredible, history making awe inspiring—and the ramifications of it would manifest long after what would turn out to be a monumental opening weekend. I knew as the credits stopped rolling that this movie was going to explode with global business that would topple $1 billion dollars and launch new life into a film genre that will ignite the imaginations of millions of young people and I enjoyed the reverence. Unlike The Amazing Spiderman 2 which saw a major drop in business during its second week of release, Godzilla would likely see even more business over the upcoming Memorial Day weekend as word of mouth will spread like wildfire about how good the movie is.
So what does this mean? Why is the box office of Godzilla so important? Well, I have been writing a lot lately about the importance of mythology in our culture. It shapes everything from philosophy to politics and is likely the most important attribute to any human society. There are a lot of elements in our present world that makes human beings feel powerless, and subjected to abuses, so when their imaginations are stimulated with thought, there is a sense of freedom in the exchange. When a movie is as exciting as Godzilla is, and inspires so many people to go to a theater to experience it, a unifying philosophy is being painted across the canvas of human society and it is a wonderful thing to witness. When a movie does that kind of business, other studios are forced to copy, and that means that films that are losers, like Cloud Atlas, Life of Pi, and other progressive films must adapt and compete against traditional films that a majority of the world population yearns for.
There is no group hugging going on in Godzilla. The hero is Godzilla who stands as a solitary savior of mankind and the main protagonist who is on his own adventure is also the last man standing to save mankind from disaster. The rest of the characters can only watch everything happening with passive helplessness. It is in this attribute that once again traditional films destroy the box office business of collective message stories attempting to sell progressive storylines. When a traditional old-fashioned film like Godzilla does such good business the public is voting, and the votes favor tradition because other studios—due to capitalism are forced to compete or go out of business.
Japan’s Tolo studios have had the rights to Godzilla for years, and they have nurtured it along. But they knew that if they wanted to take Godzilla into the realm of international—mainstream sensation, they needed Legendary Pictures to pull off the task. Legendary Pictures put up 75% of the nearly $200 million dollar budget and hired relative newcomer Gareth Edwards to direct the film. There weren’t any film studios in France able to perform such a task, not in England, not in Germany, certainly not in China and Japan was obviously limited in their abilities. It took an American production company to achieve the objective of spreading the Godzilla message and did they ever pull it off. The risk of Gareth Edwards not only paid off, but the film will evolve into a sensation that will not be forgotten any time soon. It is a benchmark film that will take the world by storm.
This is yet another example of many themes discussed here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom day in and day out over a number of years now and it was quite refreshing to see the early wave of Godzilla before everything became much noisier. I was not surprised to see such a ruckus, human beings are starving from substance, and Godzilla delivers it. If Godzilla were simply about destruction, it wouldn’t do such good box office numbers, and the buildup of the character over the last 60 years has not prepared people for this kind of market desire. The old films were fun films, but not good ones. It is for the unspoken themes for which Godzilla is so popular, the one against the many, the mysteries of our own past unrealized, the protection of man’s creations over the creations of nature, the futility of those same creations against the scale of nature at times, and individual will. It’s also about hopes, dreams, and the importance of family. The scene where the main protagonist helps a little boy find his parents is just another reiteration of that main family theme found throughout the film.
History has been made and it was a fun weekend watching the events come together as the box office numbers of Godzilla came in. It felt like victory for all those who support classic elements in movies which builds the mythology not just of our nation, but now of the world. These days, it’s no longer cars that America exports that are so prized throughout the world, or the aviation industry, or even food—it is mythology which can only come from the imaginations of free people. Only in America could a movie like Godzilla be made, and that was obvious as I left the theater ahead of a box office wave which consumed the world and brought a smile to my face for more reasons than that the movie was a great one. Mythology has the answers to many of our contemporary problems and hidden within the Godzilla film is the skeleton key to healing human civilization. And the key has now been turned.
By the way, Lengendary Pictures is now working with Universal Studios and their next big monster movie after Godzilla is Jurassic World. And they love the script so much, they are already talking sequels. I am very happy! And really looking forward to it!
When advocates of Issue 3 in 2009 walked away from their victory in Ohio they declared that the “people had spoken.” Their looting tendencies were infected with the sudden cash cow known as casino gambling which would now become a constitutional amendment in Ohio that had finally overcome the previous four attempts by the casino industry to operate within the long tradition against such things in Ohio. It might be realized that it was shortly thereafter that election I began this blog, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom as a personal answer to the debaucheries of politics which placed on my doorstep a casino. The manner for which Issue 3 passed broke my trust in elected office when the voice of voters was ignored so many times and the Fraternal Order of Police came out in favor of casino gambling. The method of election approval was the same process that school, fire and police levies all were passed and were rooted back to a basic premise among politicians from Washington, Columbus to Butler County—my own people. They will impose themselves upon anybody, anywhere to get their hands on more tax revenue. Essentially, casinos are just new forms of taxation designed to extract wealth from people and put the money into the pockets of public employee unions and politicians. They are hives of scum and villainy at best and at their worst regress the human race into a primordial cess-pool of vile excrement sympathetic only to the most didactic fragilities of desire.
I am against gambling. I don’t like Vegas, I don’t like the casinos in Lawrenceburg, I don’t like them in Michigan—I don’t like them in the Caribbean or anywhere in the world. I don’t like the cheesy shows, I don’t like the stupid color schemes of the typical décor, and I don’t like the employees. They all have an emptiness to them that is ever-present—as though their minds are turned off. I don’t like the arrangement of the neon lights, the bulletin boards, or the way the announcers sound. The food is often good because the casinos use it as a trap to pull people into their maniacal temple of social regression, no different from a trapper might bait a steel cage with delectable food for an unsuspecting animal. Casinos are parasites to the human condition and they only feed the power and influence of state-run authority by feeding public officials—including police, firefighters and teachers—with more tax money stolen from property owners. The only difference in this tax is that it is voluntary. Casinos lure people into their traps with the promise of gain, and send them away back into the world in most cases poorer. For the few who win, they are taxed on their winnings, and it is there where the taxation is deceptive. The victor of the money doesn’t mind paying the tax because they won it anyway, so they leave with more money than they came with. But for the people who tossed their money into the jackpot, they did so only to serve the state and leave the casino to run on a treadmill of productivity again only to gamble their money away weeks later when they’ve accumulated enough to try again.
Down the road from my home in Liberty Township is the Miami Valley Gaming facility which was placed near the wealth and farmland of my community—to extract wealth like a parasite off my neighbors. The politicians in the area as well as the police support the casino because it is guaranteed revenue to pay for their labor contracts without the constant pressure to get their wages approved by property owners during contentious elections. They are willing to trade away the soul of the good city of Monroe, named after President James Monroe—a Founding Father—for easy cash and a morally depleted population.
The downward spiral of Monroe began years ago when Larry Flint opened up the Hustler of Hollywood store in Monroe next to the strip joint Bristol’s. At that “gentleman’s club” there were frequent games of topless volleyball in the back fenced-in area along I-75. The Christian community around Monroe hated the place, and eventually after several prostitution raids the place went out of business, and remains an empty husk to this day. But the Hustler store has thrived and broken the will of the traditionalists of Monroe in much the same way Ohio broke the back of voters with the fifth attempt within the decade to pass Issue 3. Now Monroe has a prison at its exit, a flea market, a Hustler store an outlet shopping center and now a giant casino called Miami Valley Gaming complete with its own race track. Coming soon, will be more strip joints, because the stage is set, and property value will plummet. Nobody wants to live next to a strip joint and once Liberty Center moves in at the next exit to the south, real estate investment will be of the more unsavory type—not the high-end establishments that might be found in places like Kenwood and Indian Hill.
It’s a path to decline that is assured. Nothing good can come out of the Miami Valley Gaming facility. The restaurant Cin City Sea and Steak along with the supposed dedication to Ohio called the 1803 Bar are designed to pull in levy supporter types ignorant to the ways of the word with their heads so far in the clouds that they stop by for a quick drink with other adults between running their kids to soccer games so they can earn that “coveted” sports scholarship and learn “teamwork.” The trusted name of Jim Labarbara, the “music professor” is there to pull in the minds of Butler and Warren County wealth with a blast from the past so that they will connect him to the trust built-in their minds from his years on the radio. Once that trust is earned, their pockets empty into the mouths of a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing.
Most reading this will assume that I’m a Bible thumping Sunday puritan that believes that the sins at the casino will bring everlasting damnation to my community. They would be wrong. My hatred of casinos is much deeper than that. I hate the way that casinos pander to people’s weaknesses—attributes that I want to see fixed among human beings, and casinos take people the other way. The Miami Valley Gaming facility is designed to do one thing—and that is to empty the pockets of the productive and pour that money into the parasites of public service and make the owners wealthy by pandering to both groups. A casino does not produce wealth, it simply extracts it. There is no product at a casino, only a chance to win something for a small investment. There are no inventions being made there, there is no thought—in fact thought is discouraged. There are games of chance and random winners to keep fools migrating to that hive of scum and villainy.
I’ve been to casinos. I’ve watched old ladies camp out at a slot machine and dump all of their money coin after coin into them while chain-smoking packs of cigarettes. One woman I knew once had been a Christian woman who read the Bible every day and ran her family with an expectation of purity. Her husband took up the hobby of gambling during their middle years and ended up falling for a stripper who was only 21. The couple divorced and the old woman lived alone for 10 years until she could collect Social Security. At the age of 69 she took up slots in Lawrenceburg. At 81 she was a wrinkled up wreck of a woman, her children were busy with their lives and her husband long dead after three failed marriages after their divorce left her broken emotionally as well as financially. When I asked her what she hoped to achieve at the slot machines her answer was to hit it big—so that she could send money to her kids so they’d come and see her—or so she could fly out to see them. She had won small jackpots of $1500 and $5000 a few times, but spent it again looking for the big one, the one that would change her life and pour six figure winnings into her pocket. One time she hit it, she won $150,000 dollars, but by the time she paid the taxes and other associated fees it was just over $50K. That money was consumed in plane tickets quickly and one visit from her children—the kids who could come and see her did, those who couldn’t she went to see them. After three weeks, the money was gone and she was back at the slots trying to win more money so she could do it again. I felt terrible for the lady. She died a year later at 82 and six people came to her funeral—one was the floor waitress at the casino who had developed a small friendship with the old woman. How did I know her…………she worked for me. When I gave her a check every Friday, she took the whole thing to the casino and camped out at the slot machine for the entire weekend hoping coin after coin that she’d get one more chance to see her kids before she died. That is what casinos are all about. The casino ruined her marriage and after being alone for a number of years she turned to them for help, because there was nothing else—she was unable to see how the chain reaction of events migrated to her ultimate fall from grace.
In Ohio and everywhere that there are casinos the product they create is misery. They are traps for human beings designed by crony capitalists and political alliances. There is nothing—nothing good about them—not even the food. Everything is a trap which leads to more scumbag behavior for which once ensnared there is no escape. They were made legal by deceit, they operate under false pretense, and have only a parasitic characteristic as their foundation—and they bring out nothing but the worst in people of all ages and sexes. That is what gambling in Ohio is all about.
