Tag: corruption

The Latest Mass Shooter Seth Ator: Where liberalism has failed, they always call for gun control

It took nearly 24 hours after another gunman identified the 36 years old Texan Seth Ator as the Odessa mass shooter which led to many conspiracy theories right after the tragedy. What was different from this event was that the killer was pulled over by police and shot at as they approached his vehicle. It wasn’t necessarily a preplanned massacre as others have been, while using an AR platformed weapon to invoke mass destruction on innocent people. This time the guy was just doing his thing and when he was engaged by law enforcement that broke up whatever activity he was doing, it set him off into a volatile rage that turned deadly quick.

It was sad that immediately after there were already calls for gun control, and this time it was a bit different also. Anti-gun people revealed more what their intentions were, since it was obvious that Seth Ator had a bit of a criminal record. Just like with health care it was the Obama part of it that was sold with the intention of going to a public option and complete socialist takeover. Well, the red flag laws that have been proposed, as well as the background checks are just the beginning. Gun grabbers and solid political leftists want guns removed from society. They quickly were using this case as one where open carry wouldn’t have worked, and tried immediately to apply the shooters “white guy” status to support their attempts at gun control. Its all been part of their overall story, angry white guys are dangerous, racist and that they created America and all that needs to be erased from history. But to do that, of course they have to take away the guns because that’s what keeps such a rebellion from happening.

However, as I have said, and from what we know is directly applicable to this case, failed parental structures are what is causing these mass shootings, the values these kids are not getting in their families is far more destructive than any other element. Then as has been the case with every shooter lately, we are still learning about this one, but drugs both legal and illegal have played a part in altering the consciousness of the attackers. All those elements are foundations of liberal policy in the failed experiments of replacing the family with government and the results are exploding on our streets now that many of the basic foundations of proper behavior have been eroded away into this anarchy movement that we see everywhere these days.

There were early reports that this guy was on meth and was an Antifa member which I stated wouldn’t have surprised me at all. To be honest, at 36 he’s a little old for Antifa terrorism, but it would be closer to a reality than to say he was a good Christian kid from Odessa that just freaked out one day and killed a bunch of people at a traffic stop. Liberals want to remove guns from our society because they have made kids like this killer with their social policies and they are determined to use every tragedy that occurs to attack America’s gun culture, and they truly expect everyone to just take it, and go along with implied guilt for things they had nothing to do with. But the left did. As is typical of all these recent shooters, Ator came from a divorced home. While divorce has been around for a while, it only became common in our society over the last few decades. There was a stigma against it in the 70s and 80s. If a woman became pregnant prior to that period, you got married and you forced yourself to live happily ever after so that you could grow a family. And when you got older and couldn’t stand each other anymore, you still stayed married because it was the right thing to do for the kids. Because kids psychologically need parental structure, no matter how much they rebel. They need the structure of a father and a mother, and when that is replaced with something else, such as a government welfare check, a student loan program, or any form of handout that replaces a father as head of a family, we see trouble in the products of that family, the children.

Not that every young person who has a dad that lives across town and must watch their parents date other people and spend Thanksgivings with their new boyfriends and girlfriends, they don’t go out and shoot a bunch of people just for the hell of it. But it is a problem among a large portion of our population, just as heavy marijuana use is an indicator of psychotic behavior in a minority of their users. Not everyone who smokes pot becomes a killer just as not everyone growing up without a dad does, but it is certainly an indicator of future violent behavior.

I will be the first to say that the kind of world I want to live in, where we openly carry our guns, everywhere, that such a society would require the best of what our culture could produce. People in such a society would be well educated, would not abuse drugs and alcohol, and would come from solid families with loving backgrounds. The only reason we don’t have such a society is because left leaning activists want all the bad things, broken families, reckless—inconsequential sex, drug abuse, and an ignorant population. And to have those things, they don’t want guns so everyone can kill each other. They want the deviant behavior and they don’t want consequences. That is the real issue and no law proposed could fix that.

The anti-police stance of Antifa likely did have more to do with Seth Ator opening fire on the police as they approached his vehicle after a traffic stop. The solution for the political left is to take away all guns so that Seth Ator wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do such a thing. But of course the ignorance of that proposal is that it does nothing to correct the desire to shoot a cop in the first place. After the initial attack against the police, Ator drove around killing random people, but there clearly wasn’t a plan. It was behavior driven and the elements that created that behavior that was the real cause. If it wasn’t guns, it would have been something else. Killers and lunatics will use anything to invoke a menace on a population if they are unhappy, which is why guns are needed to keep such things from getting out of control. In an open carry environment, he would have been shot by a good guy with a gun sooner, but this was different because he was in a car driving around before people could really get a sense of what was going on.

Without question these shootings are more political than demanding a legal mandate because no law proposed, background checks, red flag laws, or even illegal drug enforcement will change these occurrences. They are the results of liberalism injected into an otherwise conservative society and the conflict that is the natural biproduct. At the very least in this case was the lack of a biological family that was stable and secure. Mom and dad were divorced, and some people just can’t handle that. Their anger may project outward to innocent members of society, but the root cause is the broken family and the disappointments of a child that was robbed of that basic security. We would do better to make divorce illegal than guns. But to admit such a thing, liberals would have to admit that their social experiment of removing dads from homes and attacking the core values of American life has been a failure. And they certainly won’t do that. They’d rather blame guns.

Rich Hoffman

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

There is a Storm Coming: Lakota better have a boat

I think the best thing that could happen is that Julie Shaffer would lose her seat to a new school board candidate in this upcoming fall 2019 election. Jim Hahn is a potential for that, he’s running and is a business guy, and if the Lakota school board could pick him up and keep Todd Parnell, and Lynda O’Conner, there would finally be a three vote conservative presence that could avert the current levy plans that are in place for attempts beginning as early as 2020. If there is another tax attempt, I will say right now that I am all on board to resume the fight against it, and I understand that others are also interested. A gentle message to Lakota and all the real estate agents that spawn off the school system, there is a storm coming, so I hope you have built a boat, because the next levy attempt will be a bloodbath. The liberal activities of Brad Lovell Kelley Casper and of course Julie Shaffer along with the very disappointing sentiments that have evolved from the new superintendent Matt Miller, they have squandered a very good opportunity, a great budget with declining enrollment that has even further inflated the payroll for teachers who clearly aren’t worth the money, and they have been caught in gross mismanagement. The two conservative school board members have shown a bit of hope in properly managing the district, but the school board itself hasn’t gone far enough—the liberal activism is still a problem in the management of the government school.

I have no love for Julie Shaffer, we have a history together. When she couldn’t defeat my arguments back in 2012 she had to turn to identity politics to separate the No Lakota Levy group I represented for their 2013 attempt which they ended up winning by a very narrow margin. But it wasn’t Lakota who did anything to turn the tide, it was Sheriff Jones who wanted to put armed cops in the schools to protect them from mass shooters, or the potential. As it turned out, just as I said it would be, the whole thing was a scam, the money from the levy wasn’t used to cover cops or even security. Lakota did do those things, but ultimately the money was only to give teachers raises for their very high wages. My argument back then was that it didn’t bother me that Lakota had several teachers with six figure salaries, but that through collective bargaining the labor union wanted everyone to have those extraordinary salaries and back then the average wage was over 70K per year. We always hear stories about how low teachers are paid, well that’s not the case at Lakota, the teachers are well paid and the union props them all up and makes it nearly impossible to fire problem employees like the recent drama witnessed by the ex-Lakota employee, the transgender activist Emily Osterling. She sued the district for her proposed termination, and she won a settlement of $175,000 which the tax payers had to cough up ultimately.

Lakota is in my back yard so I want them to do well, but only until they become a pain in the ass in asking for too much money. I am proud of Lakota as long as they aren’t asking for money and by looking at their annual budget of over $220 million per year it is clear that the school board has not managed the money correctly. Now to their defense, the collective bargaining agreements by the union make normal value stream assessments nearly impossible. It takes three solid votes to really manage a district when there are five board members. It has taken a long time to get the two good ones that we have now and a lot of pushing and shoving. I have been asked many, many times to take on the job, but for my part, I have no desire to negotiate with a labor union all the time and I think the education system should be completely dismantled and recreated with a school choice competitive option. So its not a job for me, but we do need smart people who understand value creation to do the job. In that regard, there is an option in Jim Hahn.

However, the union vote will come out for their own preservation and they will vote this November for Julie Shaffer, so it will be a tough climb for Jim Hahn. He’s going to need some help and a good turnout. The union will not want him on the school board because they are against anything that does not stop the upward mismanagement of financial resources that are set to run out by 2023. Most of that $220 million budget is all in teacher salaries and that is just ridiculous. In an age where kids are learning more from hand held devices such as smart phones and personal computers, physical teachers are going the way of the drive-in. The test results just do not show that a teacher in the classroom make or break much in a student’s life. Most of the feel good stories are propaganda by the unions which young people are prone to be sucked in to, but are shallow in credibility at best. Just take a look at the Lakota website and their reported financials. They are short on substance but are flashy with surface points and comparisons to other districts who are every bit as much of a disaster as they are—because they are all driven by unionized employees hungry for inflated wages and as little work to do as possible.

The bloodbath that I am promising will be simple value stream analysis of what Lakota really does for our community, which is very little. The high school football games are only important to the students and their families, the other 100,000 people who live in the Lakota school system could care less and people like me without kids in the school system go through our daily days not even noticing the school buildings or their occupants. Life is busy and there is a lot for people like me to do that has nothing to do with the school system, and people like me are in the majority. All it takes is to get them to show up to vote, and they can easily out vote the union radicals which is why it takes Lakota an average of three levy attempts to get a tax increase passed. And to do that they have to resort to guerrilla warfare, not the goodness of people’s hearts. I would personally rather have the bloodbath rather than harm future business growth in our region with another Lakota tax increase, and argued that way, the way all businesses are measured, the story is quite clear. Lakota is not a value to our community, but a hindrance and the product they produce is failing and will continue to fail until the unions no longer run the government schools. That is, unless a third conservative is elected to the school board, and the budget crises that is coming can be averted. The value of the district won’t change but the bad reputation that will put Lakota through a lot of pain could be averted. And I would think that to be a good thing.

Rich Hoffman

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

Lakota Wants Another Tax Increase to Pay for their Progressive, Radical, anti-American Teachers: The lawsuit of Emily Osterling

A little bird landed on my shoulder recently to tell me that my local school system of Lakota was thinking about attempting another tax increase on property owners after years of declining enrollment, and poor performance, and it sent my blood into a boil. My position on school levies is pretty clear, especially these days. When I’ve been against them before it was largely a cost thing, public schools were just too much of a burden in their communities and they weighed them down needlessly. But now, we have seen that not even the extraordinary costs were even worth the trouble as the kids coming out of these schools are just a mess. Little birds have a way of always coming back and what’s more, its not just one, no matter how much time passes. What they whisper is the kind of things that are truly things to be angry at, because the audacity is something to behold, because if you really do care about kids and their futures, which I do, then this public school scam of sucking so much money out of tax revenue for poor management by the school boards is something that we all must deal with.

For instance, that same school board which is proposing to put another tax increase on the ballot perhaps as early as 2020 also is trying to get transgender policies enacted for the sheer progressive intention of social theatrics. A school like Lakota which is one of the largest in Ohio and has many thousands of students, only has a handful of students who would lay claim to any kind of transgender policy. While a person like me would argue that transgender anything has nothing to do with education and is purely a creation of the progressive political movement, accommodations are made at Lakota for that very specific minority. So there is no need for costly modifications or even the wasted effort by management (the school board) to embark on any kind of transgender diatribe. It’s not even something that a school board should be discussing in relation to budgetary considerations. In any kind of world that type of cause and effect proposal is completely non value added to the end use customer, the children and their families and really is at the heart of all public schools. They simply don’t produce anything of any real value to the world and have worn out their welcome.

In business, it is common no matter what the size for management to ponder how to squeeze cost out of everything so that a company can make money and survive. One of the ways that is done is to determine what elements of a company create value for their end use customer while putting all the other efforts to a category of waste to be eliminated from their processes. When a school system like Lakota is in the mode of thinking that transgender issues are a value to their end use customer, the tax paying public, then there is a big problem and it becomes an even bigger problem when they consider any proposal that increases taxes on a future ballot.

I am clearly aware of the Emily Osterling case who sued Lakota for transgender issues which cost $175,000, $75,000 coming directly out of board funds. Osterling was a long time teacher, one of those employees that I have said for years was overpaid for the kind of work that she was doing. The school board had determined that her activism into transgender rights was cutting into her actual duties, so the activist was put on administrative leave. The school board was trying to do the right thing and get rid of a troubling, and expensive employee that was pushing off progressive causes onto a learning environment that was supposed to be teaching kids. A few years prior in a close vote that Julie Shaffer was pushing on creating a transgender policy at Lakota the issue was narrowly defeated not in a small part due to the two conservatives that sit on the Lakota school board in Lynda O’Connor and Todd Parnell. The progressive activist Osterling wouldn’t let the matter stand and continued to push the agenda which eventually forced the board to settle with her such an extraordinary sum of money over something that most people can agree was not a value to the end use customer, the students and their tax paying parents.

And that is where the real problem is, that the employees of Lakota and every other public school are runaway activists intent to perpetually run up their labor costs and to ultimately turn our children into progressive advocates of liberalism and launch them into a life of confusion and turmoil. On the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati Osterling cited that her administrative leave in September of 2018 to begin termination proceedings based on “flimsy and retaliatory allegations” was somehow out of step with the actual needs of the community, and it is in those kinds of employees that jack up the extraordinary costs of the employees at Lakota which cause the need for ever more tax money to be wasted on them for the basic luxury as acting as glorified babysitters.

Osterling was a prominent Lakota teacher’s union official and a National Education Association board member, and co-chair of the NEA’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender caucus—otherwise as an employee, she was a nightmare—expensive and underperforming toward what the value of an education to children really needed. As part of the settlement Osterling had to submit a letter of resignation on March 26th of 2019. The problem is, she is just one employee at Lakota which has many hundreds just like her, only not quite as vocal. Even when it was obvious that Osterling had to go, it took moving mountains to get her out, and it was expensive.

I didn’t say much on the matter because I felt the school board, at least a few of them, was doing a good job. Julie Shaffer continues to be the entry point for activism allowing people like Osterling to feel they even have a platform to speak from. My history with Julie goes back a long time, our debates can still be found by Googling them which were aired on WLW radio some years back. Of course when she and her board members back then couldn’t win a school levy three times in a row because they couldn’t make a good argument for the money the board was wasting, she turned to identity politics to try and bring great harm to me personally which remains to this day an issue of contention. I offered to put the matter to rest by supporting a tax increase which I knew Lakota wanted to propose soon, but only if they allowed teachers to arm themselves in the classrooms to protect against a mass shooting. Of course, they ignored my proposal which pulled my support of any levy off the table. I’m willing to pay teachers to get gun training and to protect kids from bad people, but I’m not willing to support progressive union activists like Emily Osterling. The school isn’t there for the employees, its there for the kids, pure and simple.

Due to the lack of management, again, not by all the school board members, but there is still a three to two vote against logic in Lakota. If that ratio could be turned around, and activists like Julie Shaffer who obviously has serious problems and is aligned with the radical elements of the employment base, money management might occur. But under the current leadership, Lakota plans to consider another tax increase soon and we’ll be back to all the same old tricks and nonsense again. I don’t think any of us want that. I don’t want expensive employees and lawsuits that are non value added to the end use customer working at Lakota. I thought it was wise for the board to try to get rid of her, which they did eventually. But when members of the board are encouraging the Emily Osterling types along, that expense is on them, not the taxpayer.

Rich Hoffman

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

I Love Being Right: James Comey should go to jail

Not to brag or anything, some people are good at certain things. Some people can throw a football downfield accurately and under pressure, some people can dance on their toes and appear light as a feather, and some people are great at math. We all have our things that we are good at, and some of us work hard throughout our lives to become better at more things. For me, my thing has always been the ability to break down people upon meeting them for a short time, and to structure conditions based on that relationship. I can tell most of what I need to know about people within a few minutes of talking to them, and it is with a great amount of pride that I figured out James Comey very fast. Due to the nature of this recent Inspector General report from the Department of Justice I am enjoying more of the “I told you so’s” because it implicates James Comey, the former director of the FBI as a liar and cheat who was an activist against an incoming president of the United States and grossly abused his power to instigate the overthrow of an election. Then tried to blame it on the Russians. Thinking back just three years ago I was particularly proud of myself for my comments on CNN during Anderson Cooper’s show when I stated on air that Comey had lied during his testimony and should go to jail.

Of course, for television I didn’t want to be that hard on him even though the host wanted me to say so much. At the time even considering such a thing was extremely scandalous and we had only had Donald Trump as president for a few months. We really hadn’t had a chance to see Trump operate under pressure and all we knew about Comey was that he was projected as an honorable man. But I watched his testimony with the CNN crew the entire time and my thoughts about the guy afterwards wasn’t that it implicated Trump, but that it did the entire FBI, and at that moment, nobody was ready to accept that thought.

CNN had brought a bunch of Trump supporters, me included, to Rick’s Tavern in Fairfield, Ohio to watch the entire event as it unfolded on live television then to get our reaction to see if our support would wane for Trump. It was quite shocking to the CNN crew afterwards that none of us had pulled our support for Trump and that some of us, like me, were convinced that Comey was guilty of some bad crimes. The behind the scenes talk that day made me feel a little bad about it because the thought at the time was that such a consideration was so outlandish that it was in the realm of tin foil hatted conspiracy theory. Yet I am pretty good at these things, so I said what I did on television anyway and it was painful at first, because a lot of people saw it. But I had to stand by what I thought, and as it turned out, I was more than correct.

And it goes to say that I was right about all the others too, that the Justice Department was covering for the Clinton family and their many crimes. That like the Epstein scandal the private server had a lot of embarrassing information on it which is why Hillary had it to begin with. The FBI certainly didn’t want all that information out. They did their part to create the illusion of a republic while all the while steering our government toward a Democrat run dictatorship that would eventually melt into the United Nations as a governing body. All that was in place and people like James Comey felt that helping those things along was part of his “higher calling.”

I hate to say it but once you’ve known them in some form or another you’ve known them all. I know the kind of parties that James Comey and his wife went to in the back yards of their expensive government paid for homes with friends and neighbors, all of whom were connoisseurs of wines and fashion, and who planned long couples vacations to Europe for shopping trips in Paris and Venice just for the hell of it. They could tell you the vintage of an exotic wine with their pinky held out, but couldn’t tell anybody much about the names of gunfighters popular during western expansion, because to them that part of American history was to be erased and reset to a new world order. Comey thought that attribute honorable, the destruction of America into a global order, so lying about it was not a problem. It was considered to him collateral damage. Of course, the White House ran by Obama knew about all this, they are the ones who provoked it. And the arrogance in getting caught you can see now that they are no different from typical unionized activist caught by their employers for doing something wrong. For Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok to think about suing the FBI for wrongful termination, and Comey for insisting that he is owed an apology is just another page out of the union playbook for disgruntled, and spoiled workers who have lost touch with reality. That playbook states that when guilty, attack to keep the investigation off the details, just as in football when the other team blitzes, you throw the ball down field because someone will be open. Only in this game we are finally on to it, and these guys are guilty of some very bad things, domestic terrorism at the very least.

I am used to playing poker with these thoughts of mine simply because the audience that hears them isn’t always ready for the truth. The truth is the truth, but there is power in controlling the way that people come to it which is far more powerful than any concealed carry permit. Knowing things about people and understanding how to use that power is very helpful as a skill, so I don’t always blurt out what I am up to. That would be stupid. But it is good to say something so controversial on television so far ahead of the truth and to rub people’s noses in it a bit. It’s very “satisfying.” Of course, there are many ways to speak the truth, you don’t always want to blurt out in raw form what you think. Sometimes you do, it depends on the circumstance. But on a big national issue where at the time nobody felt comfortable in agreeing with me, the report from the IG was very satisfying. Now I would encourage you dear reader to continue reading what I have said with this understanding and to prepare your life accordingly. Because a country where the President ran by Obama thought it could use the levers of power in the way it did to overthrow the Trump election is a country already too far gone to ignore. We can’t just trust elections anymore, we must consider everything is against us, and to be vigilant. It may take more than just electing Trump to set things right. And that is a hard truth we all must face.

 

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

Its all about Branding: Trump Doesn’t Need Fox News

Of course, the rules are the same for every local candidate as it is in presidential elections, a public official like Donald Trump has a right to protect their brand, for it was their brand that we voted for and continue to support. When that brand is attacked, a public official has a right to protect it. Like most businesspeople, President Trump understands his brand and has done a great job over the years of building it, so it is with no small concern that he would seek to lash out at those trying to destroy his brand. Yes, he has a right to allow his supporters in the White House to dig up dirt from The New York Times reporters who have been activists against him and to seek to destroy them. Why not? And in the great relationship between Trump and Fox News, if the cable news station wavers, as it has under new leadership post Roger Ailes, then yes, Trump has a right to go after them. This nonsense about “journalistic integrity” is a lot of garbage. There is no integrity in the news business, especially in corporate media. It’s all entertainment based and designed toward ratings and for that, they should be very grateful toward the Trump brand.

It was embarrassing to listen to Brit Hume sound off about how Fox News does not work for the president, especially after Trump has given unfettered access to Fox News over the last four years or so. He’s been around long enough to know the game and he comes across sounding like an idiot. To consider that Fox News or anybody in journalism is “protecting” the public with a free and open press is foolish, and for people not to be upset about attacking Trump’s brand when that is what they voted for is disingenuous. I’ve never liked the part of Fox News that has Brit Hume in it, or Juan Williams, the disgraced NPR personality who was brought to Fox by people like Bill O’Reilly out of fairness and friendship. With Ailes out and O’Reilly out and the hiring of Donna Brazile there are obvious signs that the network is turning to the left because they think that’s where the future audience is. But it isn’t.

I never enjoyed the commentary of Charles Krauthammer for that matter when he would appear on Bret Baier. I have watched Fox News because they cover more that concerns me than other stations, but they aren’t nearly conservative enough for me. I would sit through the Krauthammer segments cringing at his institutional diatribes and do something else until he was done. Fox would claim itself to be fair and balanced, and I think that is generally true, but what they have been doing lately under the guidance of their new CEO Suzanne Scott is a sharp turn toward progressivism. And that isn’t much different from before, during the O’Reilly days where Fox News started the horse race with Hillary Clinton two years before the election. They wanted to tell the story of the Democrats and they have been soft on them even when crimes were committed. I would never say that Fox was a hard-hitting news organization. They just didn’t do as bad as the rest of them.

Where was the coverage of the Epstein molestations ten years ago when it mattered, when news outlets like Alex Jones were reporting what was going on and who was involved. Today Jones is de-platformed, you can’t watch his shows except on his website while outlets like Fox and CNN continue to be the dominate forces in news. But look at what they’ve gotten wrong, or rather, what they haven’t covered that has contributed to so much evil. If they really wanted to be fair and balanced, and unafraid, they would have not covered the Epstein rapes and connections to Bill Clinton conspiracy theories but would have followed the evidence to the real villains.

The same could be said of the FBI scandal where the attempt to overturn the Trump election was pushed to small segments and very little activism. We’re talking about a story bigger than Watergate, but nobody wants to touch it, essentially because most of the corporate news world is in on the action in some form or another, either from ties to government leakers or the Washington parties that are hard to get invites to. Fox News lets Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson do their rants on television, and they turn loose a few reporters to dig up the stories because it does feed the Trump base which is a huge part of the Fox News audience, but they never drive the story to a conclusion that would otherwise force resignations or public outcry. They do enough reporting to get people to have an emotional response, but not enough to cause change, so Brit Hume isn’t checking the powerful and holding them accountable. Fox News is just pointing things out and letting them drift into history the next day.

So, what right do they have to attack Donald Trump’s brand, but not to have him and his people shoot back? Why would anybody in the media think such a thing was viable, or even acceptable? Then for others to warn Trump not to upset Fox News because they might not cover his rallies and other events giving him a platform to the public. To suggest such a thing is to propose that it was the media that made Trump. But what nobody is talking about is that it was Trump’s brand that made Fox. Does anybody know what happened to Megan Kelly? She locked horns with the Trump brand and where did that get her? Out.

I wouldn’t say that it is just Trump’s brand, it could be anybody who has worked hard to build their name. They may use media to get there, but it isn’t the media that makes them, they are simply the benefactors of good television drama. They don’t make or break people the way that media operators want to believe. They need the brand of the dynamic in order to put content on their stations and that is the secret they don’t want anybody to know. But Trump understands it, and so do his supporters.

These same rules apply to the local press, wherever in the country you may live dear reader. They are all pretty much the same. They need you more than you need them. In this day and age where there are so many more options to get your name out and to build up your brand, you don’t need Fox News, or even NBC News. You don’t need to suck up to the Disney network of ABC and whisper in the ear of the local newspaper reporters, because nobody reads them anymore, because the content is boring. But they do need you, and Fox needs Trump. Trump doesn’t need Fox. That is the way the game goes and its time everyone realizes it. Especially that media. They are not the makers of the world and those who keep it in check. Rather, it is the branding of politicians that do the most good, because they do have to protect their brand, and that keeps them honest. Not the reporter or their networks. Sorry Brit Hume, but you aren’t very relevant to the scheme of things. And more and more, you are just a boring addition to a network that has added more boring people, not gotten better over time.

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

I Think of Sean Hannity as a Long Haired Hippie: Republicans need to stick together and vote in the upcoming election

One thing is for sure. I think of Sean Hannity as kind of a middle of the road guy, he loves his police, he loves his military, and he loves teachers and like President Trump, is willing to continue to give those government workers infinite amounts of money and to call it patriotic. That’s not me. That is where the debate is, its not in the difference between Democrats and Republicans. The discussions in the form of management by elected officials is varying degrees of conservatism where big government types like Sean Hannity and Donald Trump have battles over resource management with people like me who think that every assumption should be challenged and squeezed for all its worth. And now that we are in election season its time that we have that hard discussion and put the best people in place to help manage our government with the least resources that we can find. It’s not that I don’t support people like Trump in the presidency or Hannity on his Fox News show, but there are things they say and do from time to time, largely because they both come out of a very progressive state and city in New York, that make me cringe with exposure to liberalism. If we really want to solve the problems of our age, there are going to be some fights, and to waste time on those fights, the right people need to be fighting, not some liberal losers who shouldn’t even be part of the discussion.

I’m talking about the various school board races that are up this year, and the various township and state races that ultimately shape the government of our states. We’ve had plenty of experiments with social causes and engineering by now to determine that our colleges, public schools and cities in general that are all run by Democrats have spiraled out of control and are placing those institutions on the brink of disaster. And in addressing those issues conservatives won’t go far enough in just taking up positions behind Trump and Sean Hannity, or Bill Cunningham in Cincinnati for that matter. They all talk a good game that is certainly better than any Democrat, but ultimately, they still want big government in the form of schoolteachers and police that inflate their community budgets and drive up taxes, without ever really asking whether or not those employees are worth it.

It’s not the teacher who teaches but it’s the state that decides what and how they teach that is the danger. If a teacher utters conservative values, they tend to be ridiculed by their unions and will find themselves out of step with the state. But if they preach abortion support, gay rights and otherwise calamitous despotism toward American ideas, then they are often rewarded as “teacher of the year” and paid to continue such activism which of course their students copy as one of their first worldly experiences. The system obviously hasn’t worked, the products of our modern times can show that clearly, so it should provoke us to act with each new election. There is no promise that our votes will give us 100% of a clone of our own values, but it is a lot better than nothing. And nothing is what happens when conservatives aren’t elected because liberals get their unchallenged activists into the city councils and school boards and spend our tax money as if there is no tomorrow, because often they don’t intend there to be.

I have lots of disagreements with conservatives, but I have yet to speak to them in person and find a person I don’t like. I have met President Trump and I love the guy. There are a lot of things that he has done in life and still does and thinks that I would never do, but overall, I can find more in common with him than not. I think we both love the American flag and can build a relationship off that as a foundation. The same with Sean Hannity. He comes across to me like some long-haired hippie who loves police way too much. I agree that our society is better off with cops than without them, but I don’t think we should trust them without question the way he advocates. Cops lie like any employee does and they need to be managed by exception not through collective bargaining, because they aren’t all equally valuable, just like schoolteachers. We need to have the discussion of their value and to do that we need the right kind of people to have those discussions. Democrats have proven that they just aren’t capable.

So it is up to us to have these various discussions and to sift out the good from the bad and sometimes that means that people’s feelings will get hurt a little bit when they find out that they aren’t valuable just for showing up for work, but are measured in how effective they do their jobs. Giving a blank check of approval to any sector of our economy is just foolish and some Republicans are foolish. Yet the discussion we have about value needs to happen with them, not the people who have screwed up everything for the last thirty to forty years. In every election we need to pick the best people we can get to help manage our political affairs. We may not like everything about them, we may even have some differences with them, especially regarding school boards. But we need to vote for them and help them get into a position to have a discussion at some point. Talking to a liberal on a school board is just a waste of time. They need to be replaced with every decent conservative that we can find so that we can have a debate. Currently no debate is possible, we get unfunded mandates from the state, nobody challenges them and due to their helplessness, they create liberal cultures within our schools where the next generation gets brainwashed into Democrat thinking. And that has turned out to be terrible for our children.

My advice to you dear reader is to treat this election with some seriousness. There is some sanity that is returning to the political system, largely for Trump to take the credit, but its time to raise the bar to a level that Democrats can’t live up to, and that needs to happen for the benefit of us all. We can no longer afford to keep that lowered bar down where they can participate just so we can call everything equal. We need to focus on actually doing something and electing good people to do good jobs in their elected positions. It is not bad to have disagreements with people, what is bad is that no common ground can be found because the political values are so extreme that basic conversation cannot even take place and the battlefields are yielded to Democrats just to avoid dealing with them because they are such a pain in the neck. Support Republicans and other conservatives even if they are to the left of where you are. Having a debate with them is better than a debate with someone who isn’t even from the same planet. And that is how you must look at these types of elections.

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

People’s Desire for Freedom Overtakes Their Need for Institutionalism: Why the Fox Polls don’t matter and why Star Wars must turn things around

There is certainly a lot to learn from an event like the D23 Expo, especially in regard to a pop culture entertainment like Star Wars is. At that event, it was obvious that Disney and Lucasfilm in general are finally doing what they should have all along, and that is get the franchise back to what it was in the beginning, a story about the dangers of too much institutionalism and the higher spiritual essence of individualism. But why did it take so long, because the answer is of course the same one Donald Trump is asking about why Fox News has turned toward the left, and why so many politicians think that gun control is an option in the future. In the case of Disney and Star Wars, something that should have been full proof, before they came out with their version of a third trilogy, they thought they could put all these progressive themes into the movies and that people would still buy into the concept. Disney thought Star Wars was all about old puppet props and blue milk, not the excitement of a shootout in a cantina and rugged individualists cutting their own way on the frontiers of space, such as what is obvious about the new Star Wars show coming to their streaming network, The Mandalorian.

Over this last decade with literally millions and millions of dollars of payroll to work with nobody within the Disney organization was able to put their finger on why Star Wars was successful and what it would take to bring the fans back to the franchise after they had alienated them with their progressive approach to the material. At the 2019 D23 it was obvious that Disney was trying to fix that problem and who could blame them? They didn’t see all this coming, the planning for all these movies was taking place before Donald Trump was president, before the economy in America spiked off in a positive direction and before Hong Kong decided they loved America more than China. The world as they thought it would be under a Clinton presidency never happened and that has been reflected in the Star Wars movies—and pop culture in general.

Because of D23 there was a triple XP weekend on Star Wars Battlefront II, the video game and my grandson and I were having fun raking up points on the multiplayer mode. I play the game more than most people do in my position in life, but not nearly as much as I’d like and in playing this past weekend I was thinking about gun control. The reports are indicating that the video game generation of these current young people are growing up to be quite aggressive capitalists and you can see that in the video game markets. Video games especially in multiplayer modes whether its Battlefront II or Fortnite is all about rewards for the work done and video game players are coming to expect the same thing in real life. Even the most recent Madden offering is loaded with lots of unlocks and special features that you can only get to after you’ve played the game for many hundreds of hours. The socialism that was taught in schools to kids growing up in the 90s with the grunge rock bands out of Seattle are not the kids of Fortnite. The contrasts are quite obvious and finally the people at Disney are seeing it too. They have no choice if they want to stay relevant in the future of entertainment. I would argue that its too late for them, but I don’t want to see them lose the game because I think they bring a lot to the table culturally. I just wish they had listened initially when people like me were screaming it at them.

The same type of over thinkers and academic idiots who worked at Disney and thought it was smart to alienate most of the Star Wars audience are the same losers who think Donald Trump is bad for America as a president and don’t understand why he continues to survive no matter what the political left has thrown at him. They are also the same people who think that gun control is a topic that people care about. Let me say something about guns, the video game generations love guns, they think about them all the time, just differently than when I might have been a kid. These kids are playing with guns in video games all the time and they are likely to have a greater appetite for guns than even past generation did. That is something that Disney completely missed when they were setting up their new theme park attractions to not have guns, even with Woody from Toy Story. I always thought it was weird that Woody had a holster but never a gun, and Disney went along thinking that was appropriate in this sensitive age of political correctness. But Star Wars fans saw through that phony behavior as just another mechanism of institutionalism gone crazy. Its not the blue milk that people wanted to feel at the new Star Wars Land called Galaxy’s Edge, it’s the feeling of being an outlaw of the system and on the run from the “establishment.” That is the fantasy element that makes Star Wars everything it is, just as Pirates of the Caribbean was all about being a rebel and outcast from the rest of society and finding treasure and living from one raid to another.

Ultimately that’s why President Trump is president and why he will continue to be president, because that’s what real people want and the institutions of our society cannot see it for all the same reasons that all the highly paid experts at Disney couldn’t see what Star Wars was all about even though it was right in front of their faces. Human beings don’t want to hold hands and join together to live in a sanctimonious society of shared rules and regulations. They want to explore the reaches of space under their own guidance and want the freedom to live their own lives on their own terms, and that’s fine for any society that is constantly inventing and exploring. Its bad if that society is stagnant, which we all have been since westward expansion and turning places like Hawaii and Alaska into states. That sentiment does not show up in the Fox News polls or the ABC Morning News with an ex-Clinton aid hosting. But it does show up online while playing Fortnite and Battlefront II.

For a long time, giant media companies like Disney wanted to believe that they shaped culture, and that people would follow their products to the ends of the earth. What they have learned, painfully is that their influence is minimal, while they can shape opinions in the short run, the essence of human beings is rooted in rebellion and they want to feel untethered to rules as much as is safely possible. Rather media produced as movies, books or television shows should reflect the society they are offered to, not to seek to change their opinions about things like gay rights or identity politics. To do so is to gamble with something that people love and that can easily backfire as people not only learned at Disney but also in the political establishment as people continue to support President Trump no matter what happens. Star Wars used to have supporters like that, but not anymore. And its up to the media companies to learn those trends and to ride them. Not to change the waves that drive them though.

Rich Hoffman

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

D23 and Star Wars: Liberal ideas are rejected everywhere, especially in a galaxy far, far away

It’s important because it involves so many parts of our culture, but as I occasionally do write about Star Wars it is interesting to watch as how its meaning has changed for people over time. Personally, when people ask me how I’m able to do so much on such a range of things, it’s because I use mythology to grasp concepts so that there is room for ideas to be conceived and to grow. I would compare it to a bowl to hold something like popcorn in, the bigger the bowl, the more ideas you can hold. Mythology is how the human race holds ideas that it can then grasp and work with, and the bigger the ideas, the better functioning the society. In a lot of ways young people have more than ever lots of vehicles to invest ideas into, not just the movies that we all grew up on, but video games, a lot of literature, and all the streaming services that are available such as Amazon Prime and Netflix. And to make those streaming services flourish there has to be a lot of content and Hollywood, as I have been saying for years, is struggling to produce. We live in one of the most creative times in human history, but we have more than ever also witnessed how liberalism in general in a culture of mass competition for ideas shows the trends of society and nothing more vividly displays that trend like Star Wars, because it is at least a cultural measure that everyone can pretty much agree is a standard mythology of our culture. Not everyone likes it, but it manages to touch most people in some way or another making a great platform for analysis.

So to catch everyone up on where Star Wars is, there is a movie coming out this December, it’s the last film of the nine part series that has been going on for 40 years. It’s an important key to whether or not Star Wars survives into the future because as of now, it only has nostalgic value. Young people don’t necessarily like it on its own, its more something that they can share with their parents and grandparents, so the brand is struggling. Watching all the D23 news from Disney over this past weekend there is a lot to look forward to from arguably the largest media company in the world. But the evidence that as a very progressive company that has lost their way into making new and fresh ideas is obvious. Disney as a company is living off their legacy properties and what they’ve done many years ago, not what they have been able to do lately. With the exception of the Marvel movies, there hasn’t been anything fresh from Disney for years as they have taken for granted that people will buy into their products even though they are spewing with progressive political causes, such as race diversity, sex issues such as feminism, and elements of gay rights that most people just aren’t comfortable with. Disney as a company has tried to hide their massive appetite for capitalism behind progressive causes and it has hurt them tremendously—because they weren’t honest about it. They would have been better off to proclaim that they are happy to make money and not ashamed of it one bit instead of trying to sell themselves off as progressive activists laboring for every liberal cause known to mankind. Not so much at the stock exchange rate yet, but that is coming just as I stated years ago after the first new age Star Wars film came out, that Disney has really screwed up the multi billion dollar franchise leaving them desperate to fix it, which is what they are promising to do on several fronts starting with the new film coming out this December in addition to several live action television shows coming to their new streaming service, such as The Mandalorian, and a new show just about Obi-Wan Kenobi played by Ewen McGregor which fans have wanted for over 20 years.

Star Wars, especially the best parts of it such as the cantina scenes where Obi-Wan cuts off the arm of an assailant in A New Hope, then shortly thereafter Han Solo kills the bounty hunter Greedo in a blaze of gun fire, these modern progressive filmmakers thought that what they had made with Star Wars could be that bowl I was talking about that could hold lots of ideas including copious amounts of progressive sentiment. Even with the billions of dollars that Disney has put into Star Wars the fans have responded flat which was most notable with the most recent Star Wars movie, which I loved, Solo: A Star Wars Story. After The Last Jedi, which I enjoyed, fans had shown they had enough of Disney tampering with something they loved and they were rejecting the Disneyification of Star Wars outright, and not buying the toys, and merchandise at the levels that Disney needed them to in order to justify their investment. This has been obvious now that the big Star Wars lands that have opened in California and now in Disney World in Orlando and people aren’t that interested. I warned everyone way back in 2015 on radio and several articles, that the key to the franchise wasn’t Luke Skywalker, it was Han Solo, the space cowboy that reflected the American values of Ayn Rand and John Wayne, which has always been at the heart of Star Wars. Star Wars for people is best when it has those elements, not actors that were cast because they were Latino, or because they were women—but because the characters were good and the actors fit the part. When Disney essentially killed off the angry white guy characters and failed to replace them with new ones, they lost their audience. The Last Jedi was essentially a movie where all the white men were killed and the crazy progressive women were all in charge and people, real people who are out there voting for Donald Trump don’t want to see movies and stories about that kind of topic, and it has really hurt the Star Wars brand.

But I am encouraged, this year at D23 Disney is showing that they can take their money and do great things with it. I am rooting for them to get it right, I want their Star Wars Land of Galaxy’s Edge to be successful, I want to see Star Wars make a strong comeback for that next generation because it is still one of the best things out there to take our culture from where it was to where it needs to go in science and thought. There is room for big ideas in Star Wars, which is what I use it for as a mythology. It’s a big story with lots of bold concepts, but at its heart it was and continues to be a space western. So long as that formula is stuck to, Star Wars will be successful. If progressive concepts are placed above that formula, then its over for Disney and they seem to understand that now, after a decade of hard lessons.

I was enjoying all the news coming out of D23 and I sort of celebrated by picking up the Lenovo Star Wars Jedi Challenges video game which converts your smart phone into an augmented reality simulator and I have to say it is extremely impressive. But you can see clearly the hit Star Wars has taken to their brand. The unit just a year ago was being sold at Target for $200 and I picked it up this week for less than $50. I figured that for that much money I could take a risk and buy the Disney product and I’m glad I did. But considering what they had done to the legacy fans with the books and previous comics and other merchandise then gave those same fans a mess of a movie in The Force Awakens, which essentially killed all the old white guys and put progressive diversity in charge only to lose over and over again to a very inept First Order, not even I would pay that much money for a new Star Wars game. That’s unfortunate, because the game itself is just amazing, a real technical marvel and exhibition of mythology pushed to its absolute limits. Big ideas, big fun, and a major advancement of the story telling experience.

The lesson here is that progressive, or even liberal ideas cannot fill up that bowl of thought, and people won’t just accept those concepts because they like Star Wars. They like Star Wars because it represents values that most people share, small government, independence, and you gotta have guns. The anti-gun policies and hippie like love your neighbor stuff doesn’t go well with a franchise that is all about war and why wars happen. When you can’t even where a gun on your hip in cosplay to the new Star Wars land in Florida because everyone is crazy over weapons and terrorism, Disney has to understand that you can’t tell a story about peace, love, and trusting the government without weapons, and expect people to spend millions of dollars of their hard earned money on it, just so they can eat colored popcorn and drink blue milk. Star Wars is about fighting for independence, especially personal independence. In all Star Wars stories that are good are examples of institutional failure, even among the Jedi Council, and that is the heart of the entire franchise. Unfortunately, Disney was a part of that institutional thinking and it took them a long time to come close to figuring out the problem. I just hope its not too late. It would be a shame if it is.

Rich Hoffman

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

Soylent Green is People: Overstock.com CEO, Patrick Byrne spills the goods

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

Measuring a Great Economy by the Number of Amusement Parks it Has: Kings Island’s new Orion giga-coaster

As I’ve spoken about on many occasions, the amusement park of Kings Island is near my home and it’s not at all unusual for me to go there during the day, or after a hard day at the office to ride a few roller coasters to relax. I consider the place a considerable asset to my life to have something like it in my neighborhood. So it was, I spent the past Friday night sort of celebrating the recent announcement of their 20/20 roller coaster, Orion—which will be a tremendous asset to the park, and I couldn’t help but arrive at a few conclusions about the nature of amusement parks in general and what role they play in our economy. Kings Island under the management of Cedar Fair Amusements has actually improved over the years, as opposed to a gradual slide into decline which seems to be the case with most other businesses, and it is now very much on par with the amusement parks that are so popular in Orlando, Florida. The roller coasters alone in Ohio between Kings Island and Cedar Point are just fantastic and the perfect complement to a personality like mine that runs off adrenaline and intensity.

My favorite rides at Kings Island is Mystic Timbers and Diamondback so it’s not unusual to find me in that part of the park on a Friday night. My wife and I enjoy eating in the new Brewhouse or in line for one of those rides thinking about things. I was feeling particularly reminiscent on the night of Friday August 16th while in line at Mystic Timbers thinking about the new coaster Orion and the general construction of the entire amusement park. All summer long I was able to go with my family to Kings Island and get away from the stuffy world outside enjoying many long days at the waterpark. Just to think of Orion which will have a 300-foot drop traveling at 91 miles per hour it was certainly something to look forward to, but I couldn’t help but consider the meaning of it all.

Everything at Kings Island, or any amusement park for that matter is there for the creation of intellectual enjoyment. Whether or not it was the thrill of a new ride, or the joy of the many food options, or even the relaxing travel through the woods on the stream driven train that is so popular at that park, everything is geared purely for the enjoyment of the human mind to think and conceive of some form of leisure that is specific to our species. And that so many millions and millions of dollars of investment into that leisure time activity could be gathered in one place. Particularly while in line at Mystic Timbers is so much of that joy on display. The Diamondback is very prominent on the skyline, the Miami Valley Railroad, the log ride, parts of the kid land, the Eiffel Tower, there is a lot on display. After visiting Paris recently and wanting to see the Eiffel Tower there I was quite amazed that there wasn’t more to the real Paris monument. I was used to Kings Island that had the tower there surrounded by so many exciting rides. To have such a collection anywhere in the world is amazing and it is something I appreciate every time I visit the place, no matter how many times in a season I do. It’s not that Kings Island is there to make anything useful in the world other than entertaining its guests and that we have a society that can afford to do such a thing is simply something to behold.

Amusement parks are quite common in America. Ohio and Florida have an above average representation. It’s not like they are on every street corner, but compared to other places around the world, they are common. But you can go for thousands and thousands of miles anywhere else in the world and never see anything so dedicated to the human imagination and entertainment as we find in the United States, an entire park dedicated to the indulgence of human beings specifically—purely for entertainment. There is a little amusement park outside of London and there is a pier in Brighton that is similar to the Santa Monica pier in California, but those places don’t come anywhere close to Kings Island which has become an international destination over the years, and it certainly deserves the recognition.

I think it is worth noting that a place like Kings Island is the byproduct of capitalism, and that is such a wonderful thing. Most people attending probably don’t think about it much, because as human beings they are used to life at the top of the food chain. It is their minds that put them there, not their sheer physical strength or any other factor. The ability to think makes humans the dominate life form on planet earth, and it is to relax and entertain those minds that these amusement parks serve. To be able to take so much acreage and power resources just for the entertainment of people could only happen in a culture where capitalist excesses are generated is amazing. And for the continuance of such an enjoyment to always be expanding, as things are at Kings Island says a lot about the success of our culture. I think about it every time I visit the park and as I am reminded that there are others around the country it goes a long way to making the positive argument for the success of American culture.

To think that the new Orion roller coaster will cost more than the entire Kings Island park cost in 1972 when it opened is to say that the market for human recreation is so high that it can justify such an investment. You won’t see economies in Peru or Brazil making such leaps just for the heck of it, or anywhere in Europe for that matter, unless the Disney company is putting up the money. It’s just not something that is done, because the excess money and need for the product couldn’t be enjoyed any other place. In that context I still enjoy the indulgence of Mystic Timbers which essentially is a wild rollicking bronco ride through the woods and back. The ride itself and its theming are almost showing off. It is such a casual ride that not even the many attractions in Vegas or Gatlinburg, Tennessee can compete with it. Yet in Mason, Ohio which was essentially a community that exploded into its present-day form because of Kings Island, Mystic Timber is just one of over 100 attractions that are there just for the enjoyment of them, and nothing else. And that’s what does it for me, to step out of the real world and to just spend time in the enthusiastic world of Kings Island for a few hours or an entire day is something that is very special to me, and it’s not lost to me how special it is. I’m very happy that Kings Island can still be enjoyed throughout Halloween and into the Christmas season with Winterfest. But every year for me the end of summer happens when Kings Island is no longer open daily, and I await each year when it starts opening on weekends once again in April. Because I love having it open to me when I need it, and all the many evenings I have spent there by myself and with my family just being entertained. For minds with a lot going on, an amusement park is the perfect thing, and I never tire of it.

Rich Hoffman

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