While I think Iowa blew it by not putting Donald Trump out in front during the recent caucus, the first of the primary season, the game is far from over. Cruz may be able to ride some momentum but in actuality he likely blew his wad. I don’t dislike Cruz. I think he would make a good president someday, but he does not have what it takes to run the dysfunctional Oval Office in 2016. Constitutional purists and other Glenn Beck conservatives are smoking crack if they think he does. A better framework of a more functional government is needed before Cruz could run the White House.
However, from the Cruz camp a lot of arrogance was exhibited after the senator came out on top of Trump in Iowa. Cruz had obviously spent a lot of time and resources in Iowa, and it paid off for him, but there are a lot of states left, and he’s a long way from first place in a lot of them. So arrogance is not the proper response—in fact it’s disingenuous. If not for Trump, Cruz would be nowhere. He would have been crushed by the very large foot of the GOP establishment right out of the gate. It is only because Cruz has been drafting in the wake of Trump that Cruz is now positioned to be a legitimate candidate. Don’t ever forget that Cruz fans. You should be licking the testicular fortitude of Donald Trump and thanking him for Cruz’s first victory in Iowa. While the GOP fought with Trump, Cruz ducked fire and lived long enough to have Trump destroy everyone else. Trump likes Cruz and purposely sissy slapped him up to this point. Consider Iowa a gift from Trump.
A failure to understand these kinds of things is the reason why Glenn Beck has stalled and Freedom Works in general has not been able to advance their position over the last five years. They did their jobs and have delivered Tea Party presidential candidates to the top three of the primary season, but really only Donald Trump is able to take the freedom movement to the next level. Trump is an Alex Jones conservative whereas Cruz is a Glenn Beck purist. One is better at combat, the other is better at crying. Cruz as president might be able to give nice speeches and appeal to America’s sentimental tradition, but he will be powerless to reform K-Street, and that’s where the real fight is. It’s nothing against Cruz, but he’s way too nice and ideological to advance that fight to a conclusion in favor of liberty.
I don’t think a lot of people really understand what is at stake and who the real enemy is. I think they are blinded by ideology and sentiment. The most important issue of this election season is the $19 trillion dollars in debt that literally just occurred as the Iowa caucus went to a vote. There are only two legitimate candidates based on the voting results, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Of those two only one is able to tackle the complicated and contentious issue of dialing back the national debt—Donald Trump. There is no other option. That issue is certainly outside of the Ted Cruz wheel house. If we were talking about issues of Constitutional law or Supreme Court nominees, Ted Cruz would be the guy. But the first priority is to organize our finances. Constitutional law will mean nothing if our economy collapses under the weight of overwhelming national debt. It’s very, very simple.
Trump would be wise to change-up his message and to focus on issues that Cruz cannot compete with, such as The Donald’s abilities with financing and international trade. In those areas Trump flourishes and no other candidate can compete. With a healthy lead in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Trump can only lose ground by getting angry at the media for not respecting his platform and his Iowa results. He comes out of Iowa with one less delegate—big deal. If he can maintain his lead after the next two primaries, it won’t even be a competition any longer. But Trump has to make sure his poll numbers translate into voters—and to do that, he needs to refine his message to the centerpiece of economic Armageddon, which is very real, the national debt.
But as for Cruz, the supporters of him should be bowing at the feet of Trump. If not for the New York billionaire, there would be no Cruz—and that includes Glenn Beck. How ungrateful have he and Stu been on their radio show on The Blaze—something that I once very much supported but can now no longer listen to. Trump paved the way for Cruz and delivered the Washington newcomer with a legitimate win in Iowa, and Beck should be grateful. When Cruz announced his presidency at Liberty University Beck was very happy, but the senator had no chance then of becoming a front-runner until Trump entered the race and forced people to look at Cruz as a “moderate,” it’s the overton window trick in the favor of Republicans for a change. Cruz supporters are simply people too chicken to vote for Trump. He is the soft version of a true outsider candidacy.
They try to hide their cowardly behavior by declaring that Trump is not a true conservative, or that he had the Clintons at his wedding. Heck, Glenn Beck worked at CNN, do people want to hold that against him in the same fashion? What they don’t tell you is that they are just too chicken to support Trump so they lean toward Cruz as an “outside” candidate that still feels to them like a traditional politician. Cruz is the safe second choice hiding in Trump’s wake as he mows down opposition toward the liberty movement. Like a NASCAR racer drafting behind a faster stronger car during a race, Cruz has hidden in the aerodynamics of the frontrunner, and now his supporters cheer as if he were always a champion. No, he was just hiding like a snake in the weeds waiting for opportunity rather than shaping it himself.
Ted Cruz is like light beer, and a lot of people like light beer. Trump though is the good stuff. The issue really comes down to what people want, but with $19 trillion in debt and rising quickly, there isn’t much time to play around. Ted Cruz just doesn’t cut it for the problems of our times. He might make people feel good, but he is a light weight. He could have never survived the primary process without Trump, but Trump could easily survive without Cruz. And that tells every voter everything they need to know.
There were times when Glenn Beck was on Fox News from 5 to 6 PM where I thought he was doing his shows directly off my blog material or that he and I were intellectually tied to some cosmic root. But he was a fighter back then obviously ahead of the curve. He’s not held up well over the last five years. The constant beatings it takes to be at the front have harmed his health and eroded his intellect. I have heard him say some really dumb things over the last few weeks as it has become obvious that Donald Trump is going to remain the front-runner of the GOP. Beck has lost a lot of ground over the last year, starting with his declarations of being done with the GOP, and the NRA over endorsements, then lately turning around and saying at a Ted Cruz event that he’d rather support the socialist Bernie Sanders over Trump. I used to listen to The Blaze everyday so that I could hear my buddy Doc Thompson each morning. I’d stick around and listen to Beck afterwards sometimes, but with all the Trump hatred as the months have went on it has just turned me off to Beck. I think the hatred Beck has toward Trump runs far deeper than anybody knows and for reasons nobody would suspect. But Beck has done this to himself. It makes me sad to see, but he clearly has put himself on the wrong side of history. Here’s a little what Beck said earlier this past week in regard to Trump and Bernie Sanders while endorsing Ted Cruz for president.
BECK SAID HE HAD NEVER ENDORSED A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IN HIS 40 YEARS OF BROADCASTING, BUT HE MADE AN EXCEPTION BECAUSE OF THE URGENCY OF THE MOMENT…
…HE SAID HE EVEN PREFERS SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT.), A SELF-PROCLAIMED “DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST” RUNNING IN THE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY, TO TRUMP.
“HONESTY, FAITH AND TRUTH ARE BASIC REQUIREMENTS. AND QUITE HONESTLY, I HAVE TO TELL YOU, THIS PROBABLY ISN’T GOING TO GO OVER VERY WELL, THAT’S WHY I LIKE BERNIE SANDERS,” HE SAID. “BERNIE SANDERS IS LIKE, ‘YEP, I’M A SOCIALIST.’
“I CAN ACTUALLY SIT AT A TABLE WITH A MAN WHO SAYS, ‘YES, I’M A SOCIALIST, AND YES, I DON’T LIKE WHAT WE ARE DOING, WE SHOULD BE MORE LIKE DENMARK,’ ” HE ADDED
Going back to Beck and I, there have been many times over the last five years where our paths have crossed a bit but either my reluctance or his prevented the next step. My friend Doc Thompson works for Glenn Beck. I have promoted Doc for several years now and The Blaze when it first announced its radio programming—which I think is good, especially in the beginning because I wanted Beck to find success. There were even a few phone calls about going to Dallas and working some projects at Beck’s studio there. This is all before Trump announced his presidency of course. There was something about Beck that was making me weary—almost like he was comparable to the Jim Jones cult with him as the central figure. I’d listen to Doc talk about working at The Blaze, which he loves, but something just seemed wrong about it, so I never took the next steps of discussion.
I think it’s fair to say that I have extraordinary judgment. I can read body language extremely well. I can detect tonal inflections and get to a truth behind words, and I can see way out in front of the train if you know what I mean. So I tend to trust my instincts on all things. There is a reason that I peeled back my support of The Blaze over the last six months. I listened to their Trump bashing for several months every morning and gradually I realized they were off the mark. All this Christian stuff has gone to Beck’s head and ruined his mind—likely a byproduct of his serious illnesses that he has been dealing with until last year. It has changed him and taken the fight out of him. He’s not the same person he was when he had a dominant Fox News audience that was ruffling the feathers of Bill O’Reilly. Beck was pumping out New York Times bestsellers every few months and everything was great.
I thought it was good that when he was fired from Fox, essentially for going after George Soros, that he got back on the horse and started his own network and movie studio in Dallas. But there was something missing in him that was noticeable. He had lost his will to fight, which was obvious. He had been beat down and was living off his earnings. But he wasn’t the same guy. He evolved from an Ayn Rand type of advocate to just another religious type leading a congregation. He didn’t impose his beliefs on other employees of his at The Blaze, but he certainly set a standard. What is certain is that he stopped fighting and become much more reconcilable toward the enemy.
I think the reason he and I never hit it off in spite of our mutual connections is that he’s a pacifist and I’m not. I’m all about conquering the enemy and using The Art of War to do it. I love to fight, I love aggression, and I get bored with peace. I don’t want his Christian nation. I like the values, but I love conflict and I would be bored to death in Glenn Beck’s America. I don’t want Abraham Lincoln as president, and I think George Washington was too middle of the road. I personally love people like George Patton as opposed to George Washington. I could have worked with Beck, but I don’t think he could have worked with me. He has become used to being the center of attention and that’s impossible to do around me, so I and he went in very different directions. Doc Thompson tried more than once to reconcile that, but knowing Beck was involved just robbed my ambition for an opportunity. I determined through observation that Beck was on a sinking ship. I hoped to be wrong, but of course I’m usually not because I do read situations with great clarity—no matter how controversial.
Along comes Trump and he’s all about fighting so naturally I support people like him over pacifists and obviously this has effected Beck. His audience has been split in two, some were happy to follow him and others moved in my direction for similar reasons. Beck used to do the work Trump is doing now-but the New York billionaire swept in and took that audience quickly, and maintained it since. The same type of people who showed up to Beck’s rally in 2010 in Washington has gravitated to Trump. People who loved the religious aspects of Beck’s work have stayed with him, but a lot of former Beck people have moved to Trump because they want a fighter, not a crier.
What I hear in Glenn Beck is a man jealous of Donald Trump. Beck lost a large portion of his audience to Trump and now he’s throwing a fit. When Beck was in his prime, 2010 to 2011 a lot of people were willing to overlook his past with drugs to hear the message he was speaking at that moment—and those same people are willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. But Beck was showing the signs of wear even in Wilmington, Ohio where I was in the cold of winter just shy of Christmas. I went there to meet Beck and to post video of the event up on The Blaze website with Scott Baker. What I saw was a man running out of gas. I didn’t want him to of course, but he did a few years later. He couldn’t handle having his family harassed in New York City, he let Soros run him out-of-town and he hid among Texans hoping to recapture his former glory. I am grateful that Beck hired my friend Doc Thompson and that he started The Blaze Radio. But it is obvious that Beck lost his will to fight in the middle of a major battle, and that just isn’t forgivable. As nice as it is to think that Beck is doing the work of God—the Devil has just as soothing of a voice in the middle of a nightly dream of divine inspiration. You can’t know who to trust especially when it comes to spiritual matters, and I don’t trust a pacifist who puts down their arms in the middle of a fight–I don’t care if God gives specific instructions through revelation in a dream. I would question God 100% of the time—and Beck is instead on his knees asking for guidance. That is not my kind of guy. A warrior must be decisive and ruthless when it comes to the enemy—and be willing to use all tools available to destroy the opposition. Screw all this brotherhood crap, and understanding. The enemy must be identified and destroyed. End of story.
Trump knows what he’s doing and where he’s going. A lot of what Beck is criticizing Trump over; there were plenty of people accusing Glenn of the same kind of stuff when he was at the front of the fight. Now that Beck is doing that against Trump it comes out sounding like a jealous has-been instead of someone who is capable of winning the fight at hand. In the end, I trust my own judgment and before Trump came along I could see that Beck was in trouble over something in his head. I still like the guy, but he’s just not the kind of fighter I can support—so I felt sorry for him putting himself on the line like he did with his Cruz support. He’s just not seeing the real fight—and I really thought he was smarter than that. A lot of people think that Trump is going to turn out to be a gigantic Trojan horse of progressivism and that he’s like Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars movies. People, I’m smarter than that. I don’t fall for false prophets and spiritual utterances that come from who knows where. I can see things way out in front and I’m right most of the time, and I’m sure I understand Trump. Abraham Lincoln and George Washington are not enough for me—I want better and I don’t see many people with their hand up. Especially not Glenn Beck. Ted Cruz is a good guy, but he’s not right for this job at this point in time. As I’ve said before, I think Ted would be great in 2024 but not in 2016. For this election, we need a fighter—a vicious one. We need a George Patton not a pacifist who nearly lost the fight of the Revolution in Valley Forge during a hard winter looking for luck to come as divine providence. That makes a nice child’s story and it may happen from time to time by default. But my money goes on the guy who is willing to take on anybody at anytime and never wears down. I don’t wear down and I expect people I elect to office to reflect my work ethic. Beck is functioning from the wrong values. And it has cost him dearly. He is hiding his jealousy of Trump behind divine conviction—which is a ruse that his immediate supporters may not see—but to me it’s as plain as day at noon against a cloudless sky.
I had to think about this information for a few days before commenting on it, because it’s a fairly massive revelation—literally. It is a true game changer regarding science. You might have heard that Caltech researchers have discovered the gravity signature of a 10th planet (I still consider Pluto a planet). This fairly rocked my foundations as it harkened back to a writer I like quite a lot, a man who researched legitimately some wonderful archaeology in the Middle East, Zecharia Sitchin. He was one of the few scholars in the world able to read ancient Sumerian and Akkadian clay tablets. So I enjoyed several of his books namely The 12th Planet. I read that book years ago and all of the ones that followed. They were compelling reads that I often considered with an eye toward science fiction. He asked enough unanswered questions to convince me that there was more to just about everything regarding the origins of life on planet earth. My biggest problem with Sitchin was his theory that Sumerians declared that there was a giant planet that was in our solar system which occasionally came into the path of other planets with a long elliptical orbit that took many millennia to rotate around the sun. I figured that if such an object existed modern astronomers would have discovered it by now. Well……………………………………………………..the Caltech discovery just made Zecharia Sitchin into a man way, way ahead of his time. Before delving further watch this short video about Sitchin and his 12th Planet, (the sun and moon were considered by Sumerians to be planets). This is not a conspiracy any longer, this is now apparently science fact—or at least it will be once somebody puts a telescope on the planet as they know where it should now be in an elliptical orbit.
The predictions early on, as this discovery is extremely recent news as of this writing, are that this new planet rotates one time around the sun anywhere from 15,000 years to 20,000 years. The Sumerians knew about this planet eight thousand years ago so this certainly falls in line with many mysteries that are heavily speculated about in the time frame of 12,000 to 10,000 B.C. There are thoughts that the Egyptian Sphinx dated back to that period and many other visible archaeological evidence left behind, and this would likely put this new planet within the celestial bodies visible in the night sky to those ancient cultures. It would also likely be responsible for strange gravitational anomalies and other effects felt on earth by whatever species lived at the time.
This resurrects many of the mythologies of that long ago Sumerian period where there was talk about planets colliding and many other tragic events which occurred that didn’t make any sense unless there was some undiscovered planet floating around in space somewhere within the sun’s gravitational pull. This also brings forth a lot of new thought on the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which likely now is the remains of a destroyed planet that collided with this celestial object. If there was life on Mars at the time—as I believe that evidence will eventually show, this may have provoked them to move toward earth for their own survival giving rise to a whole new species that suddenly evolved. A whole lot of new theories built from mythology needs to be reanalysed.
Of course the green movement is in trouble. When this planet enters the elliptical orbit of the inner planets, with earth being one of them, there will be major tidal forces pulling at our planet and really causing damage to our environment. There are thoughts that there will be tidal waves thousands of feet high striking all the major coastlines and the plate tectonics around the globe will be shoved around like puzzle pieces on an empty tabletop. That suddenly provides a lot of motivation for the various mountain ranges seen from the air where they look like coils of land masses pushed up against each other—like a rug that needs straightened out in a hallway foyer. The forces that made those mountains would require tremendous gravitational force. They are not something that would happen under normal orbits around the sun. When this new planet swings in for its long multi millennial journey back out around the sun it will likely have a violent reaction to every planet in our solar system. Maybe not catastrophic, but certainly it will affect the climatic balance of our terrestrial existence.
You have to consider dear reader that all of human life has essentially evolved since this planet was last seen among the orbits of the inner planets. All of our religions and all of our recorded history. The emergence of this planet points more toward the reality of Zecharia Sitchin’s theories which really forces us to look hard at all the archaeology currently being destroyed—I would say on purpose—by ISIS in the Middle East. There have been numerous conspiracy theories about the planet Nibiru (otherwise known as Planet X) emerging for a long time—many of them fans of Sitchin. The theory indicates that the Illuminati and many government entities have known about this for years—and that the Caltech report was the slow way to reveal to the global population that something of great concern is emerging outside their parameters of understanding. What matters to me is that Caltech revealed the information and that NASA is going to back it up with evidence soon. That is the good news. The bad news is that earth may go through some serious stress. Conspiracy theorists think that this planet will flying into the inner planet orbits in 2016. In all likelihood, it is probably several thousand years away, otherwise amateur astronomers would have been talking about it in a more mainstream fashion—but who knows at this point.
The shock for me is that yet again evidence points toward how little we really know about anything—yet our education institutions have closed the book of understanding on way too many things. It actually angers me to learn what I have about the mound cultures of the Ohio Valley—the complete lie politically motivated regarding American Indians, the source of human life, and the celestial bodies. So be sure to watch the videos included with this article with the openness of a child. You do literally have to unlearn what you’ve learned, because that is the only way to deal with things like this. In a lot of ways this is like learning that you’ve had a spouse cheating on you when Zecharia Sitchin was showing you the pictures all along. As a society we have not wanted to know the truth, but eventually it catches up to you. Sitchin turned out to be right—at least a whole lot more than I would have thought when reading his books. I think I told my wife years ago that Sitchin was a neat person, and smart, but that his thoughts were outdated and not supported by hard science.
He traveled the globe for many decades gathering a lot more evidence than most universities applied to the task. But based on the Caltech report, the biggest problem there was in Sitchin’s report of what the ancient Sumerians believed—has turned out to be a valid theory. No wonder so many ancient societies were concerned about the stars and their positions. A planet like the one recently discovered would really cause complications to any life living nearby as such a planet passes through our orbit radius would cause. Likely there were times in the distant past that the planet was really close to earth while other years it was relatively far away. What’s stunning is that there is actually merit to the conspiracy theories shown on this article. So watch them all and stay tuned. Things are really going to get interesting on this story. This is bigger news than a lot of people yet realize.
Star Wars box office speculation has been something of a pastime around the internet sinceEpisode VII: The Force Awakensopened in theaters on Dec. 17.
Most analysts predicted big things from the first official “canon” entry sinceRevenge of the Sith(and some prequels-haters would sayReturn of the Jedi).
Still, none expectedThe Force Awakensto smash through domestic box office records as quickly as it did. Naturally, when it eclipsedAvatar, many wondered if the global box office record held by James Cameron’s sci-fi epic would be next.
But asThe Force Awakenscontinues to fizzle out, it looks like it will be lucky to take the No. 2 slot ahead of Cameron’sTitanic.
Of course, that isn’t to say that TFA has any reason for shame. It only cost around $200 million to make it, and it blew past that total in its extended opening weekend.
But there is cause for concern when it comes to the long-term prospect of Star Wars box office gold.
Now, the precursor to this conclusion should note that Star Wars box office numbers will never be in the red. For as long as they continue to make movies and budget semi-wisely, Disney should be able to turn a profit.
But prior to the release of the new film, the George Lucas-created franchise had an untouchable mystique about it that now is in question since Avatar will likely hold onto its all-time box office title (and Cameron has plans for more to come).
Here are a few indications that it could be all downhill from here for subsequent Star Wars box office performance.
Firstly, it’s a fast burn.
The daily averages per Box Office Mojo are falling by about $10 million per week. That means the likelihood of Star Wars: The Force Awakens getting a 238-day run (as Avatar did) are slim. Cameron’s beast ate the elephant one bite at a time, while Disney tried to shovel it all in during the first few weeks, so to speak. This is unlikely to change with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars Episode VIII.
As a fine example of what I have been talking about regarding good management of a town government, no finer example could be found than in West Chester, Ohio with the opening of Premier Shooting & Training Center in just a few weeks of this writing. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW WHY. Typically projects like Premier are crushed through the zoning process where pin-headed liberal activists too often apply the worthlessness of their lives behind a façade of community interest using the power of regulation to provide meaning to their collectivist world vision. Entirely too often developers have to donate huge amounts of money to politicians just so they can have the opportunity to build something halfway decent—and usually what they end up with is a long way off from the original vision once zoning chews up a project into pieces and leaves the consumer public with an end product far less imaginative than when it was conceived. Precisely to the point, since Mark Welch has joined George Lang as a trustee in West Chester things have finally started to move in a positive direction. At the Streets of West Chester a fabulous entertainment facility is about to open called The Main Event, which is essentially a very high scale bowling facility—among many other things. The Holiday Inn just built a wonderful hotel across from IKEA—and the steak house featured at that establishment is great for business lunches. But then there is the Premier Shooting facility which is a game changer for a target range in the Tri-State area. It’s so nice that people will drive into town just to visit it from other cities. It is a top class facility. I was happy to get an invite to a sneak peek that the owners were putting on to tour the facility behind the curtain, and all I can say is that it was extremely impressive—and that three years ago—before Mark Welch was elected as a trustee giving George Lang that critical second vote that he needed for the many previous years of struggle—that the Premier facility could have only have been built within the last year. West Chester has a lot to look forward to regarding entertainment and leisure activity—and the Premier Shooting and Training Center is just the exclamation point at the end of an extravagant pro-capitalist government culture that has been created under the guidance of George Lang. I personally like George, but too often people disappoint me because they don’t walk the talk. George talks a lot—more than most people, but he walks more than he talks—let’s put it that way.
A few years ago a gun dealer and very pro Second Amendment guy named Mike Reed tried to set up shop in West Chester. The zoning people gave the prospective employer a rough way to go so he went north and essentially set up his Right 2 Arms gun shop in my backyard. He is doing well and has a great shooting simulator in the basement of his shop that can get people a concealed carry permit—among other things. I recently bought my Vaquero from Mike and was impressed to learn that it was his parents who essentially put up the money for him to manage—so it was a nice little family business that they were conducting because the family believed very strongly in the values of the NRA and specifically the Second Amendment. In my sport of Cowboy Fast Draw we call that the Cowboy Way.
I was more than a little surprised to learn at the preview of the Premier Shooting & Training Center that it was a very similar story to Mike’s, a mom and dad, Myron and Tommie Rowland had put up a very large amount of money to create a shooting establishment that their son will essentially manage. He has a background in the military and law enforcement and is the martial arts instructor. When I spoke to him he specified to me that his mission was to provide the people least able to defend themselves against aggression the means to do so—which is a tremendous service to the people of West Chester. He could have said to me that he hoped to make enough money to break even after their first year of operating—and in the context of our conversation he could have easily have said such a thing without shame—but he was quite sincere. That’s when it became apparent that the Premier Shooting & Training Center was a dream for this family and that George Lang and Mark Welch had created a business environment that allowed that dream to actually be constructed—along with a determined and well-known developer.
You can see that the dream was easy to share for this determined family because walking into the foyer of the facility is a very proud tribute to the Second Amendment. I included pictures on this article to do the place justice because the entire facility is just a testament to very firm American values. There is nothing like the Premier Shooting & Training Center in the Tri-State area and beyond within several hundred miles. The shooting lanes for target work are certainly on the high-end up range, but down range it is just state of the art. For me the most noticeable luxury was their air evacuation system which was moving a lot of air during my visit. As all shooters know there is a lot of lead in gun smoke so at a range where several shooters are working with their firearms smoke can fill the room quickly. That air has to be moved to keep things fresh because you don’t want to breathe too much as a shooter. It smells nice, but isn’t good for you under sustained conditions.
The first thing I thought of after touring the facility was that the owners of the Premier Shooting & Training Center had certainly taken care of their target audience. The gun retail store in the center of the action will be a place that guns of all kinds can be purchased and shot on the premises in the kind of luxury setting that shoppers would expect to find at Victoria’s Secret. It’s a nice, clean environment that provides access to their stock. For men who love to shoot, it’s a dream come true. But better than that—they can bring their wives without having to worry about the environment being too intimidating for them to feel included. The shooting range is set right off the retail area and is clean and safe. There is even an office for the range master to supervise two separate ranges by looking out a central window to ensure that no trouble occurs for the sake of safety. There is even an armourer on site to help with gun customization or troubleshooting that is equipped for minor gunsmithing duties. Everything about the shooting experience associated with a target range was on the top end.
But that wasn’t all, the facility offers a gun safe so that if you have a firearm that you want to protect while you’re out of town, or that you have purchased and are awaiting a permit for—like a machine gun—or something of that nature—it can be stored at the Premier Shooting & Training Center. I can think of a lot of times where a service like that would be valuable. There is also a combat training area with mats on the ground to protect falling bodies while learning hand to hand combat—with additional physical training equipment typically associated with a gym. Then there are conference rooms and classrooms that can be used to advance understanding of firearms and other topics. One of their meetings rooms would be ideal for renting any event where 100 people or so wanted to gather for an instructional class of some kind. It was a very nice facility.
Of course there was a lounge area designed to get people talking with one another which was a nice touch. Additionally under various membership packages there was a VIP area that was quite nice. The first thought I had was that this was an ideal place to bring business clients. Instead of taking clients out for a round of golf which takes all afternoon, a trip to the Premier Shooting & Training Center was a better option for the kind of bonding that is often required during business meetings and power lunches. The quality of the place made it fashionable especially with the VIP lounge which has the look of Teddy Roosevelt’s living room in South Dakota. There is a very nice patio that looks out over a lake and the setting is luxurious for a shooting range. It was a wonderful place to speak with people and network within the community. It was a very smart idea to include as a bonus to an otherwise fantastic shooting experience.
The Premier Shooting & Training Center was just the most recent example of what the American people can produce if you just get government out of their way and actually help them achieve their dreams. Mark and George, even though they will not take the credit—had a lot to do with making it so that such a wonderful place could actually be built-in West Chester. The owners had been shopping around and were looking at three possible sites. Zoning just a few years ago in West Chester would have forced the Rowlands to go out into a more rural location where there were less college trained leftists actively working against the Second Amendment. For West Chester to now be able to offer such a wonderful gun range within a few miles of Jags, and the Main Event is really an advantage for the entire community. I can easily see a business afternoon with VIPs dining at Jags then swinging over to the Premier Shooting & Training Center to shoot a few rounds—maybe even let them shoot a machine gun—which Premier is licensed to handle—then conduct further business in the VIP lounge before dropping them off at their hotel for the evening. Not only will the Premier Shooting & Training facility help train people how to defend themselves, and to more fully utilize the Second Amendment, but it will also facilitate even more business activity which will proportionally improve the productive output of the entire area. It is the kind of place that makes you feel safely wrapped in the American flag and to realize that we live in the greatest country on earth. And West Chester has one of the best shooting facilities in that country—right in our own back yards.
On the Democrats side of the political spectrum, they don’t really have a candidate for president. Hillary Clinton is a criminal and I have serious doubts as of this writing that she will be able to beat the socialist Bernie Sanders for the nomination. Then with that said, I really don’t think America is ready to elect an open socialist. I don’t think in 2016 the nation is ready to accept socialism the way that France has, and many other European countries. A large portion of America has been raised on socialism—especially victims of public school over the last two decades. They have been taught in their educations that socialism is the way to go—especially college graduates. It takes most young people at least a decade to start seeing the reality that they can only get once their parents cut them off from an allowance, and they pop out a couple of kids. Hopefully by that time they aren’t sick with venereal diseases and can actually live moderately healthy lives for two or three decades without overloading the doctor’s office every time they get a sniffle—which is another large contributor to insurance increases—the preponderance of so many people living their life with risky lifestyles—reckless sexual attitudes, chemical abuse through narcotics and alcohol—and high fat diets. What is remarkable however is how stupid most people are these days, and to exemplify it read the comments below from a recent CNN article about health care and the Bernie Sanders socialist approach. We all know they are out there, but it’s another thing to hear them speak so foolishly. Have a look and read the CNN article linked below.
DemandSider12 hours ago
@davidfour @sunny5280
We have let capitalism run rampant, to the point that we borrow money from Communist China, to subsidize the human resource budget of our largest private employer, so that they can profitable import from Communist China. Do you think this is wise?
I’m a Bernie fan but why even get people worked up about this, we all know Congress would never pass 99% of his ideas. What it would cost is irrelevant, he is just getting people talking about it longterm.
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medianone5 hours ago
@hardhatharry You never know…. Conservatives have done a great job of pushing their “anything but Obama” or “anything Obama does it bad, terrible, a failure” to the point that maybe people would consider something different that is not associated with Obama. Maybe?
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QuestionCNN5 hours ago
@hardhatharry What this article refused to mention is that Hillary will do the same thing – increase taxes under the pre-tense of providing Universal Health care, then divert it to pay for her police-state Marxist Utopia. But CNN is in the Clinton camp and is helping her by providing free negative campaign attacks on the other Marxist – Bernie Sanders
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DemandSider5 hours ago
@hardhatharry
This election reminds me a lot of the 1932 election The inequality, the Republican leaning Congress, the economic collapse due to middle class destruction and speculation. With FDR’s election, both Houses switched to heavily Democratic. Sanders’ views are very similar to FDR’s.
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RustyShackel1 hour ago
@DemandSider @hardhatharry Agreed, Bernie does seem like such a believer in the authority of government that he would take actions to throw Americans in imprisonment camps much like FDR did with innocent japanese-American citizens. I wonder who Bernie would target – conservatives? The rich?
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DemandSider1 hour ago
@RustyShackel @DemandSider @hardhatharry
No, you are confusing him with Chewbaca, The Confederate Republican nominee. He’ll probably just put another wing on in Cuba, call it Trumptanomo, and make a killing at tax payer expense, per usual with these “free market” parasites.
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DemandSider7 hours ago
sickforprofit.com/ceos
Stephen Hemsley, CEO, United Health Care, total value of unexercised stock options (Forbes): $744 million
“Hemseley returns $190 million in stock options acquired as as result of practices found to be fraudulent by The SEC” -American Medical News
Edward Hanway, Cigna CEO, total value of unexercised stock options, $28.8 million,five year compensation, $120 million “The family of a 17 year old girl who died hours after Cigna reversed a decision to deny her liver transplant to sue” -Oakland Tribune
Michael McCallister, CEO, Humana, total value of unexercised stock options, $60.8 million, “Humana abandons seniors in Florida; returns after Republicans pass new Medicare law, upping HMO payments by 25%” – NY Times
Has this Bernie Sanders fella no sense of decency??!? Who would hire these, ah, people?
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pulsecolo7 hours ago
@DemandSider Gosh, those salaries could be used to help pay to retrain and pay
all those insurance company employees mentioned earlier….
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JRCHICT6 hours ago
@DemandSider ” Bernie Sanders would LIKELY raise taxes,……”
“SOME experts say,…..”
Great journalism Tami
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medianone5 hours ago
@JRCHICT @DemandSider to be fair, or at least in cutting Tami some slack; we do live in a very litigious society.
Plus the article did say, “Sanders’ plan hasn’t been evaluated by the Congressional Budget Office or major think tanks…” which seems to be the standard for vetting candidate tax proposals.
But I agree with your thinking.
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DemandSider1 hour ago
@medianone @JRCHICT @DemandSider
Yes, for a person to have their medical bills reimbursed, they often MUST be litigious. SIngle payer would ease the burden on our courts.
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DemandSider12 hours ago
Insurance stocks rose with the passage of ACA. I don’t think they’ll rise with single payer. Manufacturers should rejoice, however, as their expenses will fall a lot.
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booboospal11 hours ago
Assuming a President Sanders could get his proposal through Congress, how would it affect (adversely?) the 50 million and increasing number of folks now getting Medicare benefits?
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CPR8 hours ago
@booboospal Well it would greatly impact the hundred thousand plus people that work in private insurance or in support of it.
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booboospal8 hours ago
CPR: Do you know the answer to my question?
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pulsecolo7 hours ago
it would do nothing to adversely affect those folks, the only thing that would happen is that the advantage plans would go away. But, there would no longer be a need for advantage plans as better coverage would prevail for all seniors as well as the rest of us with everyone in the pool. Keep in mind, that the Silver exchange plans under the ACA, that most Americans have with the subsidies, have much higher deductibles and out of pocket costs than traditional Medicare does without any advantage plan at all. The insurance industry successfully lobbied and sold America on the “snake oil need” for advantage plans. Advantage plans have a daily deductible for in hospital stays, and do not cover long term care. Plus, when seniors sign up for them, they may actually be paying more in the long run than had they banked the money they are spending for those plans.
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booboospal6 hours ago
pulse:
Would there still be Part B premiums?
Would retiree pension and investment income be taxed more than now to pay insurance costs?
Would there still be a need for supplementary coverage?
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JRCHICT6 hours ago
@booboospal all good questions.
I’m pretty sure though that we’ll have many who will expect to be perfect right out of the gate. Find any and all reasons to condemn it as we’ve done w/ ACA
Primarily use it as a political football.
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medianone6 hours ago
@booboospal Again, all good questions. And shouldn’t debate on universal health care also include looking at other countries who’ve successfully implemented such systems? Their costs, outcomes, sustainability, etc?
Seems like this debate has been ongoing for decades, at least since Hillary Care proposals. And if other countries have been successfully operating single payer systems and covering 100% of their populations, it is a wonder our “top men” haven’t been able to track these successes and implement them here.
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JRCHICT6 hours ago
@medianone @booboospal I’m not sure our “top men” care more about taking the money from the lobbyists of the health and insurance corporations for same old same old, or they’re interested in doing what’s right for us.
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booboospal10 hours ago
My former employer pays a fixed monthly amount (adjusted each year) toward employee AND RETIREE and dependent health insurance. So far it has been enough $$ to cover a Blue Cross supplemental policy AND the basic tier Medicare Part B premium for both my wife and me. Of course both of us paid for Part A (hospitalization) Medicare coverage by payroll tax while we were employed.
How would the Sanders proposal affect us?
Anyone?
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CNN User8 hours ago
@DemandSider
Republicans: you blame non religions christians, atheists,Muslims, blacks,Hindus, Obama,gays etc. for US weak middle class,but the real problem is no healthcare,expensive college, no paid maternity leave etc. —- -evil socialist countries all rank higher in median wealth(or wealth of the middle class) Source: http://www.middleclasspoliticaleconomist.com/2013/06/us-median-wealth-only-28th-in-world.html
(Before you republicans blame colored people, remember that UAE, Kuwait , Qatar, Singapore have a high percentage of colored folks but still have a richer middle class than us )
If you don’t believe my source just google “median wealth by country” and you will see similar results.
We dont have paid maturity leave, free healthcare or free or reduced college. We are the only developed country to not have this. Thats why we rank so low.
dem. states have a lower percentage of uninsured than republican states
Those are some really poorly educated theories shown above generated by a society raised on a terrible public school system which taught them all the wrong things. The basic instruction was that mixed economies such as what Scandinavian socialism proposes is the answer to equal distribution of resources without considering what the source of the value of what’s distributed entailed. For years the word on the street was that the United States would become more service oriented as other countries would become the producers. Otherwise, China and the Gulf States would make most of our American stuff and we’d have more time to think about things and have service jobs to sustain those “intellectual” pursuits. Well, that plan hasn’t worked out. The “money” jobs are now overseas and socialists think that by raising McDonald’s jobs to $15 an hour that the “middle class” will be sustained. Only idiot academics who live in a campus bubble could have concocted such a stupid notion. Only laissez-faire capitalism will solve our problems. Not crony capitalism which is what the pharmaceuticals and oil conglomerates have—I’m talking about open markets competing with each other to offer the most superior product for the lowest price.
All the countries mentioned above, places like UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Singapore are ultimately servicing the United States demand for products. The United States creates the global demand with their $17 trillion a year in gross domestic product. That GDP in order to survive by the way must increase by nearly double just for us to hope to survive as a country—and for the world in general to even have a chance. Without the United States all those mentioned countries wither away and die. So they are not examples of success or flowering epitaphs to managed economies. Socialism is the tombstone that the epitaph needs to be inscribed upon, because it has not worked. The United States is the only life support the world has. It is sad that more people don’t understand that.
The next president cannot be a Democrat. The House and Senate can’t just have Republicans; it has to have “conservative” Republicans the likes of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. Whoever is in the executive branch will have to be willing to fight the world and idiots like those in the comments above from their instructed commitments to socialism and convince them to embrace not just capitalism, but the most open form of it imaginable– laissez-faire. We are no longer at a “theory” phase in this global economic struggle. We are at the rubber hitting the road phase and it’s not the time for games. If the situation doesn’t get fixed right here and now it will be over in the future. Because there are just too many socialists who are having kids and are raising them to be just as stupid as they are—the evidence is right above you—they do exist. Astonishingly they somehow manage to feed themselves, but they aren’t much good for anything else. But they do vote.
Little things matter to me quite a lot. I notice everything and of my many careers over a lifetime, one of them will be a cultural expert where psychology, art, religion, economics and all other forms of unnamed human ambition find their way into every created thing on earth. I grew up for as long as I can remember wanting to be a film director—but not being a very collaborative person—relegated that desire for more inward pursuits. Because of all that I can say with great provocation that the world is in a severe cultural decline. America obviously leads the world in culture—even though many academics might dispute it. The evidence is in our movie houses and our music with great audacious display. So rather than slide my predilections into the direction of the current pendulum swinging culture of global unification I am focusing much more these days on American westerns as a foundation philosophy that stands in contrast to the world currently presented to us.
I was born in 1968 and a few months after my birth one of the greatest films ever made was released—it was a Sergio Leone western called Once Upon a Time in the West. Leone was an Italian director interpreting American westerns for a country trying to fight its way back from cultural decay after World War II. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. Leone at the time was best known for his “Dollars” trilogy which made Clint Eastwood into a star. Those films are and have always been fantastic. But for the director Leone they gained him the opportunity to make the western of his dreams off the success of the previous Eastwood films. Paramount Pictures tossed the world to him along with a host of first class stars and Sergio Leone along with his musical collaborator Ennio Morricone spun a masterpiece called Once Upon a Time in the West.
Some of my very first television memories were these spaghetti westerns by Sergio Leone replaying on Channel 19 in Cincinnati. My grandfather loved westerns and whenever I was at his farm-house he had them on, so my mother also watched them all the time as well because it reminded her of her dad. Of them the Sergio Leone westerns reflected my own observations about people even when I was very young—and I soaked them up. Before I was ever in the kindergarten I was a fan of Once Upon a Time in the West. I often confused all Leone’s westerns together until I was just shy of ten and it was then when I began to appreciate Once Upon a Time in the West as something of its own. The Leone films had hard-wired themselves into my consciousness. My very first time in front of a television camera was when I was sixteen during “tough guy” week on Channel 19. “Tough guy week” was a ratings grab at Channel 19 so they ran Steve McQueen movies along with a lot of Clint Eastwood to bump up their winter numbers. At a young age I had evolved into having a “reputation” and I was sitting at the dinner table of a prominent Sharonville judge, his wife and the biggest criminal of Northern Cincinnati at the time. The event was a Chinese New Year advertisement for a restaurant that I worked at. One of the owner’s sons was a guy who liked to dip his feet into that type of world where justice sits at dinner tables with known criminals and he used me even at that young age as one of his “heavies.” I enjoyed the experience because I was essentially living the life of the protagonists in Sergio Leone’s westerns and I discovered by living those characters in real life that one of my favorite film directors was in fact a genius. As I sat at that table during that day long commercial recording talking to the judge and the crime lord obviously working together with me in the middle and being told by that same judge that when I got into trouble—he’d take care of it–I knew for me there was no going back. At too young of an age I knew way too much about the way the world worked. I was then and still am about 60 years ahead of myself and it does really go back to Leone’s westerns and my young introduction to them. When the commercial aired on television my family was one of the first people back then to have a VCR so I was able to tape it. My television appearance aired with the judge and the criminal seated on either side of me during a showing of For a Few Dollars More. During that same Channel 19 “tough guy” week Once Upon a Time in the West was shown again and I was able to see it as a 16-year-old actually doing in real life much of what the Charles Bronson character was doing in that film and I watched it with new understanding for the first time. It was as real and honest of any motion picture I had ever seen—it was to my eyes much better than The Godfather which was still making cultural waves in that year of 1985. A month later I was involved in a fight with a bunch of people which led to a tragic situation and if I had not been sitting at that table with that judge on that particular day for that commercial, I’d probably have a much different life than I do now and my freedoms would likely be greatly restricted.
I felt it was important for my wife to be to watch Once Upon a Time in the West to understand more about me, so I tried to show it to her early in our relationship. At the time she was a country club girl so she wasn’t ready for movies like that—where the opening was so strange and dramatic. She made fun of it heavily after the first seven minutes and I never tried again to show it to her until January of 2016. I had meant to show the movie to my children at some point so given all my history with it I felt that they should see the movie. I bought the cut of the film that had been restored to 165 minutes as opposed to the version I had seen as a kid, the 145 minute version which was a bit more confusing, and relished being able to finally show it to my wife and at least some of my kids. It was a great experience. The music from Ennio Morricone was so good in that movie that I have used it often to raise my mind above times of incredible stress. Even though my wife didn’t like Once Upon a Time in the West at first I still loved it and thought of it often to carry me through tough times. I was 25-years old and in deep trouble. I had more legal problems and had law suits directed at me from several directions and I had to tap into that raw, primal civility that I had refined when I was 16, where I could walk into any situation and just take care of things no matter how bad the guys on the other side of the table were—or who hid in the shadows where you parked your car. I had for the first time a CD collection of Ennio Morricone’s music which featured a scene on the front from Once Upon a Time in the West. By the 1990s the film was considered an obscure classic and nobody remembered it much except for filmmakers and people who were particularly fascinated with cultural phenomenon. In the hardest days of my life I listened to the music from Once Upon a Time in the West to serve as my moral compass—and it has always worked for me. I sat in my office back then with the world coming down around me and would listen to those Morricone soundtracks and think of “The Man with the Harmonica”—that haunting melody which spoke of revenge, perseverance, and the growth of a human into an Übermensch (German for “Overman, Overhuman, Above-Human, Superman, Superhuman, Ultraman, Ultrahuman, Beyond-Man”; German pronunciation: [ˈˀyːbɐmɛnʃ]) As readers here know I think a lot of the concept which is from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also Sprach Zarathustra), Nietzsche has his character Zarathustra posit the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself. It is a work of philosophical allegory, with a structural similarity to the Gathas of Zoroaster/Zarathustra. I learned later that my love of Sergio Leone had more to do with the concept of the Übermensch than of the westerns themselves—but I can say that there is an honesty in Once Upon a Time in the West that is not present in any other form of art and it should be experienced—especially these days.
After directing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone decided to retire from Westerns and desired to produce his film based on The Hoods, which eventually becameOnce Upon a Time in America. However, Leone accepted an offer from Paramount Pictures to provide access to Henry Fonda and to use a budget to produce another Western film. He recruited Bertolucci and Argento to devise the plot of the film in 1966, researching other Western films in the process. After Clint Eastwood turned down an offer to play the movie’s protagonist, Bronson was offered the role. During production, Leone recruited Donati to rewrite the script due to concerns over time limitations.
The original version by the director was 166 minutes (2 hours and 46 minutes) when it was first released on December 21, 1968. This was the version that was to be shown in European cinemas and was a box office success. For the US release on May 28, 1969, Once Upon a Time in the West was edited down to 145 minutes (2 hours and 25 minutes) by Paramount and was a financial flop. The film is considered by some to be the first installment in Leone’s Once Upon a Time Trilogy, followed by Duck, You Sucker!, called Once Upon a Time… the Revolution in parts of Europe, and Once Upon a Time in America, though the films do not share any characters in common.
The film portrays two conflicts that take place around Flagstone, a fictional town in the American Old West: a land battle related to construction of a railroad, and a mission of vengeance against a cold-blooded killer. A struggle exists for Sweetwater, a piece of land near Flagstone containing the region’s only water source. The land was bought by Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), who foresaw that the railroad would have to pass through that area to provide water for the steam locomotives. When crippled railroad tycoon Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) learns of this, he sends his hired gun Frank (Henry Fonda) to intimidate McBain to move off the land, but Frank instead kills McBain and his three children, planting evidence to frame the bandit Cheyenne (Jason Robards). It appears the land has no owner; however, a former prostitute (Claudia Cardinale) arrives from New Orleans, revealing she is Jill McBain, Brett’s new wife and the owner of the land.
Meanwhile, a mysterious harmonica-playing gunman (Charles Bronson), whom Cheyenne later dubs “Harmonica”, pursues Frank. In the film’s opening scene, Harmonica kills three men sent by Frank to kill him. In a roadhouse on the way to Sweetwater, he informs Cheyenne that the three gunfighters appeared to be posing as Cheyenne’s men.
Back at Sweetwater, construction materials are delivered to build a railroad station and a small town. Harmonica explains that Jill will lose Sweetwater unless the station is built by the time the track’s construction crews reach that point, so Cheyenne puts his men to work building it.
Frank turns against Morton, who wanted to make a deal with Jill; Morton’s disability makes him unable to fight back. After having sex with Jill, Frank forces her to sell the property in an auction. He tries to buy the farm cheaply by intimidating the other bidders, but Harmonica arrives, holding Cheyenne at gunpoint, and makes a much higher bid based on his reward money for delivering Cheyenne to the authorities. Harmonica rebuffs an offer by Frank to buy the farm from him for one dollar more than he paid at the auction. As Cheyenne is placed on a train bound for the Yuma prison, two members of his gang purchase one-way tickets for the train, intending to help him escape.
Frank’s men betray and ambush him, having been paid by Morton to turn against him, but—much to Jill’s outrage—Harmonica helps Frank kill them, intending to kill Frank himself. Frank returns to Morton, only to find that he and the rest of Frank’s men have been killed in a battle with Cheyenne’s gang. Frank then goes to Sweetwater to confront Harmonica. On two occasions, Frank has asked Harmonica who he is, but both times Harmonica refused to answer him. Instead, he mysteriously quoted names of men Frank has murdered. This time, Harmonica says he will reveal who he is “only at the point of dying”. The two men position themselves for a duel, at which point Harmonica’s motive for revenge is revealed in a flashback:
A younger Frank, already a cruel bandit, is forcing a boy to support on his shoulders his older brother, whose neck is in a noose strung from an arch. As the boy struggles to hold his brother’s weight, Frank stuffs a harmonica into the boy’s mouth and tells him to play. The brother curses Frank and kicks his brother away, and dies.
Harmonica draws first and shoots Frank. As he lies dying, Frank again asks who he is, whereupon the harmonica is placed in Frank’s mouth. Frank nods weakly in recognition and dies. Harmonica and Cheyenne say goodbye to Jill, who is supervising construction of the railway station as the track-laying crews reach Sweetwater. Cheyenne collapses, revealing that he had been fatally shot by Morton during the fight with Frank’s gang. The work train arrives, Jill carrying water to the rail workers, while Harmonica rides away with Cheyenne’s body.
Leone’s intent was to take the stock conventions of the American Westerns of John Ford, Howard Hawks and others, and rework them in an ironic fashion, essentially reversing their intended meaning in their original sources to create a darker connotation.[22] The most obvious example of this is the casting of veteran film good guy Henry Fonda as the villainous Frank, but there are also many other, more subtle reversals throughout the film. According to film critic and historian Christopher Frayling, the film quotes from as many as 30 classic American Westerns.
The major films referenced include:
High Noon(1952): The opening sequence is similar to the opening of High Noon, in which three bad guys (Lee Van Cleef, Sheb Wooley and Robert J. Wilke) are shown waiting for the arrival of their leader (named Frank, played by Ian MacDonald) on the noon train. In the opening of Once Upon a Time in the West, three bad guys (Jack Elam, who appeared in a small part in High Noon, Woody Strode, and Al Mulock) take over and wait at a train station. However, the period of waiting is depicted in a lengthy ten-minute sequence, the train arrives several hours after noon, and its passenger is one of the film’s heroes (Charles Bronson) rather than its villain. The scene is famous for its use of natural sounds: a squeaky windmill, knuckles cracking, and Jack Elam’s character trying to shoo off a fly. According to rumor, Leone offered the parts of the three gunmen to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly stars Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach.[23]
3:10 to Yuma(1957): This cult Western by Delmer Daves may have had considerable influence on the film. The most obvious reference is a brief exchange between Keenan Wynn‘s Sheriff and Cheyenne, in which they discuss sending the latter to Yuma In addition, as in West the main villain is played by an actor (Glenn Ford) who normally played good guys. The film also features diegetic music (Ford at one point whistles the film’s theme song just as Harmonica provides music in West). And the scene in which Van Heflin‘s character escorts Ford to the railroad station while avoiding an ambush by his gang may have inspired the ambush of Frank by his own men in Leone’s film.
The Comancheros(1961): The names “McBain” and “Sweetwater” may come from this film. (Contrary to popular belief, the name of the town “Sweetwater” was not taken from Victor Sjöström‘s silent epic dramaThe Wind. Bernardo Bertolucci has stated that he looked at a map of the southwestern United States, found the name of the town in Arizona, and decided to incorporate it into the film. However, both “Sweetwater” and a character named “McBain” appeared in The Comancheros, which Leone admired.[24])
Johnny Guitar(1954): Jill and Vienna have similar backstories (both are former prostitutes who become saloonkeepers), and Harmonica, like Sterling Hayden‘s title character, is a mysterious, gunslinging outsider known by his musical nickname. Some of West’s central plot (Western settlers vs. the railroad company) may be recycled from Nicholas Ray’s film.[24]
The Iron Horse(1924): West may contain several subtle references to this film, including a low angle shot of a shrieking train rushing towards the screen in the opening scene, and the shot of the train pulling into the Sweetwater station at the end.[24]
Shane(1953): The massacre scene in West features young Timmy McBain out hunting with his father, just as Joey does in this movie. The funeral of the McBains is borrowed almost shot-for-shot from Shane.[24]
Vera Cruz(1954): In both films, Charles Bronson’s character plays a harmonica and is known only by a nickname.
The Searchers(1956): Leone admitted that the rustling bushes, the silencing of cicada chirps, and the fluttering pheasants that suggest a menace approaching the farmhouse when the McBain family is massacred were all taken from The Searchers. The ending of the film—where Western nomads Harmonica and Cheyenne move on rather than join modern society—also echoes the famous ending of Ford’s film.[24]
Warlock(1959): At the end of this film, Henry Fonda’s character wears clothing very similar to his costume throughout West. In addition, Warlock features a discussion about mothers between Fonda and Dorothy Malone that is similar to those between Cheyenne and Jill in West. Finally, Warlock contains a sequence in which Fonda’s character kicks a crippled man off his crutches, as he does to Mr. Morton in West.
The Magnificent Seven(1960): In this film, Charles Bronson’s character whittles a piece of wood. In West, he does the same, although in a different context. The Magnificent Seven was based on Seven Samuraiby Akira Kurosawa, whose film Yojimbo (“The Bodyguard”) was the inspiration (and later, litigation) behind Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars.
Winchester ’73(1950): It has been claimed that the scenes in West at the trading post are based on those in Winchester ’73, but the resemblance is slight.[24]
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance(1962): The dusters (long coats) worn by Cheyenne and his gang (and by Frank and his men while impersonating them) resemble those worn by Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) and his henchmen when they are introduced in this film. In addition, the auction scene in West was intended to recall the election scene in Liberty Valance.[24]
Duel in the Sun(1946): The character of Morton, the crippled railroad baron in West, was based on the character played by Lionel Barrymore in this film.[24]
Sergeant Rutledge(1960): This John Ford Western, featuring Woody Strode as the title character, has a scene in which Constance Towers falls asleep in a chair with a rifle in her lap, just as Jill McBain does in Leone’s film.
My Darling Clementine(1946): In the trading post scene, Cheyenne slides Harmonica’s gun down the bar to him, challenging him to shoot – much like Morgan Earp (Ward Bond) sliding his weapon to brother Wyatt (Henry Fonda) in the Ford film when the Earps meet Doc Holliday (Victor Mature) for the first time. Also, a deleted scene in West featured Frank getting a shave with perfume in a barber’s shop, much like Fonda’s Wyatt.
Once Upon a Time in the West was itself explicitly referenced in The Quick and the Dead, when John Herod (Gene Hackman), faces Ellen (Sharon Stone), better known as “The Lady,” in a climactic gunfight. Ellen’s identity is a mystery until the end, when the audience sees Ellen’s flashback to Herod lynching her father, a sheriff. The sadistic Herod gives Ellen (then only a little girl) a chance to save her father by shooting through and breaking the rope wrapped around his neck, but Ellen accidentally kills her father by shooting him in the forehead. As with Frank, Herod yells “Who are you?”, and the only response he receives is an artifact from the earlier lynching—in this case, the sheriff’s badge that Ellen has kept all these years. The Quick and the Dead has another connection to Once Upon a Time in the West: It was the final film for Woody Strode, who died before it could be released.
Many other films have paid tribute to Once Upon a Time in the West over the years: Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglourious Basterds opens with a lengthy sequence entitled Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France (a phrase also used as a tagline for the 2009 film) which introduces the film’s primary villain and features the mass shooting of a family at a farmhouse; Tarantino’s Kill Bill films utilize snatches of Morricone’s harmonica and guitar soundtrack; Back to the Future Part III recreates the station rooftop scene from Once Upon a Time in the West; Baz Luhrmann‘s Australia features several nods to Leone’s film, including a homestead with a squeaky windmill, an almost-identical funeral scene, and an antagonistic relationship between the film’s villains; and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End features a parody of the “Man With a Harmonica” theme on the soundtrack, as the film’s protagonists parley on a sandbar before the final battle.
A lot of people I think have the same reaction my wife had to Once Upon a Time in the West the first time they see it. Let me tell you that 25 years after she laughed at it the first time, she wasn’t laughing any more. Nobody is laughing any more, I can say that. She had grown to appreciate what the film had been saying for decades. She had learned by middle life what I had known as a 16-year-old, and once you know those types of things there is only one place for your mind to go. You either become an Übermensch of some kind or you go insane. There are a lot of characters in the world like Henry Fonda’s “Frank.” And there is only one way to deal with them and Sergio Leone knew how to capture that conflict on-screen like no other person I’ve ever seen in film. A lot of film makers have tried to capture the magic of Once Upon a Time in the West, but they never get it all. Now, nearly five decades later the extremely bright international culture that produced that great film is nearly vanished. It’s not a great film just because it’s a western—but because of the metaphors presented in the seemingly simplistic tapestry of the western—as it was invented in America.
It doesn’t matter that Sergio Leone took an American hero like Henry Fonda and made him into the villain—it’s that Leone knew how to take the strength of his characters whether it be Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood and turn them into Übermenschs to deal with overwhelming evil captured quite accurately. I always think of that dinner table during that filming of the Chinese New Year commercial and how it reminded me so much of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. But even more than that it reminded me of Frank from Once Upon a Time in the West. When Jill gets mad at Harmonica for helping keep Frank alive—it is for the reasons provided that many of the mysteries of our lives go unfulfilled. And yes I’m talking in a bit of a riddle here, but to get the answer watch the movie and remember the line, “time flies.” Knowing what to do with an enemy after you’ve identified them as such is what I have always found valuable about westerns. To understand that you have an enemy is to have a set of values that an enemy fights against and in Once Upon a Time in the West that conflict is poetically displayed in ways that no film has ever mastered as well. Many have tried but nobody has been able to hit it as well as Sergio Leone. Time does fly, whether it’s a 16 year old discovering the truth of how a childhood movie favorite applies to the real world of politics and intrigue and how rivers are often polluted with the remains of politics washed off the parking lot after a strong rain—with the personal stamp of approval from a kindly old judge—or a wife who had grown over the years to see something totally different from her young 20-year-old eyes were ready to appreciate. Some movies reflect culture—others like Sergio Leone’s films make it. And that is why I think so much of him and his films—particularly, Once Upon a Time in the West. If you haven’t seen it, you should. Because “time flies” and so do good ideas—you have to hit them when you get the chance for the motivations only you know about—even if the morality for it only exists outside of time and space in a mythical realm where justice truly does rule—not with blinders—but a six-gun and a lot of tenacity.
I really want to like Quentin Tarantino. I am actually thankful that he has resurrected some fresh music out of the great Italian musical genius of Ennio Morricone in his films Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight. I really enjoyed Django Unchained, parts of it, but found the politics distracting. His obvious hatred of the South was too much to fully enjoy his attempt at a western—and I have skipped The Hateful Eight at the box office because I know that Tarantino and his producers at the Weinstein Company are hopeless leftists. Obviously, there are a lot of people who feel the same way as I do. While watching The O’Reilly Factor recently I noticed that The Hateful Eight was under performing at the box office which surprised me. I have been tempted to see it basically to witness that magnificent 70 mm lens Tarantino shot the film with along with an original score by Ennio Morricone. But the politics of Tarantino is just too much to really enjoy his movies completely. With everything that’s good, there are equally bad points politically motivated. But, one thing I do have in common with him is a love of Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns. I don’t take pleasure in watching The Hateful Eight fail at the box office. I’d like to see it do well because Hollywood producers will blame the loses on the western genre and not on Tarantino himself, but it is clear that one of the most studied film directors in the world presently is just a second-hander from Knoxville, Tennessee named after the Burt Reynolds character in Gunsmoke. He is not capable of creating from scratch the wildly imaginative stories that Ennio Morricone produced music for as seen below by the Spaghetti Western Orchestra. I must warn you dear reader that some of this is very strange, but as a human achievement applied to the western genre, it was wildly innovative and distinct—and is the reason that a video store clerk like Tarantino wanted to get into film to begin with. Unfortunately the young man missed most of the message and lost sight of the Cowboy Way as a key element to the story. If The Good the Bad and the Ugly is Tarantino’s favorite film, he has grown as a filmmaker into making movies like it, but he obviously forgot to include the good in this plots. And that is ultimately why The Hateful Eight is failing.
I have offered to help modern Hollywood with their problems several times. But I have not been willing to compromise my essential conservatism to do so. To me the Cowboy Way is a very real thing and I live it not just in writing and being in front of the camera—but off-camera as well. I am quite certain that John Wayne would not be able to make films in modern Hollywood—and because of that—I stopped worrying about contributing to the industry to make it better. Many fans of westerns think the many hundreds of Italian westerns called the “spaghetti western” were not a proper reflection of the American western because they often featured “anti-heroes.” It is that aspect that Quentin Tarantino seems particularly obsessed with. Spaghetti westerns often featured complex characters that didn’t always seem so bad or so good, but were sometimes blended together as a kind of gritty combo that made the viewer question the nature of morality. However, I disagree. I think Sergio Leone and his musical collaborator Ennio Morricone were reflections of Nietzsche’s “Übermensch” and that is the key to understanding the morality of the best spaghetti westerns. They aren’t just revenge pictures, they are about the characters overcoming their human limitations to rise above their competition—such as Clint Eastwood surviving gun shots to the heart to beat his rival in the climax of A Fistful of Dollars, or Charles Bronson facing down death and all its possibilities to kill the man who tortured and hung his brother in Once Upon a Time in the West—a wonderful movie. Tarantino understood the revenge, but he missed the “Übermensch” aspect of the characters.
At least at the end of Django Unchained the hero rode off into the sunset with his girl—and I thought that was good. Unfortunately the character succeeded not because he was an Übermensch” but because his rivals were stupid Southern slave holders which of course cheapened the essence of the story. That made Django Unchained a lot of fun and it was truly enjoyable to hear Ennio Morricone again in a western (or what looked like a western) but it lacked the punch of the classic Sergio Leone westerns which is sadly unfortunate, because obviously Tarantino was shooting for that. If I thought he had made an inspired picture uniquely produced by Quentin Tarantino motivated by Sergio Leone I’d go see The Hateful Eight in a second.
I love the spaghetti westerns because of what they represented as an export of American value. Italy was suffering a huge cultural emptiness after the failures of World War II, just as the Japanese had, and they turned to American cinema as a way to lift themselves out of the dust. The Japanese made samurai films based on American westerns and the Italians made westerns for the same reason—so it makes me feel good that America was able to help those two fascist cultures re-invent themselves after their failed insurrections during a colossal world war. Their interpretation of the American western involved a little bit of Nietzsche along with some very innovative music and to me that’s inspiring. America and its values were able to help the world heal after a terrible tragedy and allow them to contribute aspects of their society applied to an American invention and I think that was a very healthy thing for their nations. I love “spaghetti westerns” for that reason. That is my idea of culture—where America exports an idea based on freedom and other societies use that art to lift themselves up to a higher level of thought. The Good the Bad and the Ugly is one of those types of films, it yearns to define a confusing world where good guys and bad guys weren’t so obvious but in the end there was no question. Clint Eastwood could have taken all the gold at the end, but he didn’t. He left his partner with a fair share even though that partner had tried to betray him many times throughout the movie. The “ugly” represented in that classic film could have easily been Italy itself after the war with the old guard of fascism being the “bad.” The “good” was obviously the United States who won World War II and could have taken all the gold, but they didn’t. They took their share of the spoils, but left plenty for everyone else, which is the metaphorical reason that the Sergio Leone movies have so much meaning even now. The Ennio Morricone music simply captured that ambition with extremely creative endeavor that was very unique at the time induced from risk.
Quentin Tarantino missed a lot of these points and all the filmmakers studying him are also going to make the same failure. Tarantino would argue against it, but a movie audience requires a moral tapestry to hang their belief system against—and if that audience has lost that system, they require the filmmaker to give it to them. If neither the audience nor the filmmaker is offering that tapestry, then the project will fail. American westerns helped pull Italy out of the fascism of Mussolini—which was wonderful for their culture. The cinematic western was big enough to even allow other cultures to add their imprint, which Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone was able to apply through art. Tarantino as a filmmaker is missing the essence of his favorite films. He makes movies that look and sound like his favorites, but they lack the punch of those classics because Quentin himself is still trying to figure out what they meant to him. His foundation philosophy is in conflict. He was raised by a guy who loved Burt Reynolds so much that the film director was named after the Gunsmoke character. Now, as a big time Hollywood director surrounded by leftist filmmakers and knuckle dragging slobs— Quentin thinks he’s the standard of filmmaking regarding modern art. Unfortunately, he’s not acquired the mentality of Sergio Leone or Akira Kurasawa yet—and based on his present trajectory, he won’t get there by age 60—and likely never will. So I’ll wait for The Hateful Eight to come out on video and I’ll watch it on my nice television. I may even buy it if Wal-Mart offers it in their $5 bargain bin. But that’s all it means to me, and that fault is Tarantino’s. I get the feeling it wouldn’t take much for Quentin Tarantino and I to be good friends—there is a lot that we both like in common. But he is stuck creatively by the Hollywood priority to have him remain a second-hander to the past instead of doing as a human being what Ennio Morricone did so many years ago—and that’s take a wild chance on a uniquely individual artistic endeavor built by a lifetime of experience.
