Tag: Doc Thompson

Millennium Falcon Spotted in England: First impressions of Galactic Starfighters in ‘The Old Republic’

Reliable sources state that the Millennium Falcon has been sighted on the outskirts of Pinewood Studios in England, built at a secret location for the upcoming filming of Star Wars Episode 7.  This is exciting news for people like me who have been following the construction of an actual full-scale Falcon outside of Nashville, Tennessee by Chris Lee and his team of devoted model builders.  The sources are reliable because many of the production team on this latest Star Wars film, unlike those from the past, are Star Wars fans, and their excitement seeing the actual Falcon has been too much to keep quiet about.  As I’ve covered here many times, The Millennium Falcon is one of the greatest symbols of freedom that the modern human race has.  I would say that the time I saw the actual model of it at a Smithsonian exhibit years ago was nearly a religious experience for me.  I took hundreds of pictures of it at a time before there was digital photography.  It is one of the most recognizable images in the entire world, and that status will be solidified over the next decade.  The Millennium Falcon is currently the most photographed fictional item anywhere; it also appears in the most fictional literature being written about in over 200 novels and countless comic books.  It is an icon of the Star Wars franchise and it appears that Lucasfilm in close association with the Disney Company has built a full-scale Falcon to film with a seamless tracking shot where the characters can actually walk onto the ship from the exterior with a steady cam rig and up into the interior in one take—just to show off that they can execute such an ambitious task.  The Falcon can then be taken to a Disney Park to be placed on permanent display with a similar strategy as Disney has used on The Black Pearl from the Pirate of the Caribbean films.  The Millennium Falcon is similar to The Black Pearl in that they are both pirate vessels from their respected franchises.millennium-falcon_00288478

There are a lot of very real things to worry about in the world such as the debt ceiling issues, the funding of the government, Obamacare, the collapsing Social Security situation, declining wages, a wrecked moral compass on the world stage, but it’s time every now and again to enjoy the things that are good.  For me, the release of The Old Republic’s Galactic Starfighter game has been a long time and coming and is something I deeply cherish.  The news about the Falcon hit the news wire about the same time as Galactic Starfighter was uploaded onto The Old Republic servers and has given me over the last 24 hours countless pleasure.  It is a wonderful game, which is rather complicated and takes some getting used to.  But it is the best of the best in my opinion, a nice tribute to my favorite space simulator of all time in X-Wing Fighter from way back in the 90s, and the more modern Xbox version of Star Wars: Battlefront.  Galactic Starfighter plays very slick, has lots of things going on the HUD display, and is fast—which is just how I like things.

In my 2004 novel The Symposium of Justice one of the subplots was a story called “The Return of the Flying Tigers” where a group of air combat simulator enthusiasts took to the skies in converted M400 Skycars to attack a Washington D.C. taken over by the United Nations causing a second Civil War in America.  The video game players went up against Apache helicopters and other military vessels during raids over the beleaguered American capital.  Playing Galactic Starfighter with a host of other live players who are quite good gives the sense that such a thing is very possible.  The skills that must be established to be good at the game are fundamental combat strategies that would be taught in any military academy, and it is fun to see that out of all the entertainment options available to the players of the game, that they prefer to fight it out with other pilots in a free world where rewards are granted for heroics, bravery, and daring.

In the real world the attributes that make people good at Galactic Starfighter are penalized, so it should come as no surprise that so many people are fleeing the real world to live in a fantasy one—so to preserve their concept of valor.  Galactic Starfighter only opened on December 3, 2013 to subscribers.  The game goes live to everyone else in February—so I feel privileged to be able to fly with so many people on a game that has so much early interest, and enthusiasm.   It gives me hope for tomorrow to see so many people at least in their minds yearning for the nobility of aerial combat.

It is nice to take a break from the world’s problems and sign in to a place where things make much more sense—a world where risk still earns rewards and everyone doesn’t live in a padded room for fear of becoming hurt.  The action in Galactic Starfighter is fast and furious—and highly addictive.  I am hooked.  It is the perfect homage to the kind of stories that have spawn off a saga born from The Millennium Falcon.  It is also why when the next Star Wars film is finished, that millions upon millions of fans will flock from the far reaches of the world to see it in person when Disney places the vintage ship into one of its parks.  I’ll be one of those millions, because of what it means to those who find games like Galactic Starfighter to be as essential as food, water and sleep.

In preparation for the start of the new flight simulator on The Old Republic I ran one of the very hard rail missions—the Heroic level 7 runs with my XS-Freighter.  Those runs are nearly impossible requiring a pilot to take out several scout ships, run a mine field, and take out a capital ship while navigating an asteroid field at a very high-speed.  I can’t recall a time when my heart has beat so hard as it did during this mission, and when I cleared it with a perfect score, I was ready to burst with excitement.  That’s how much fun these flight simulators are, and now with Galactic Starfighter how much better a great game like The Old Republic is with the new addition.  The very first thing I did on the morning of December 3, 2013 was upload the new addition.  And the game hasn’t been turned off since……………

Here is the official press release from BioWare:

12.03.2013

Early Access to Galactic Starfighter Digital Expansion Available to Star Wars: The OldRepublic Subscribers Today

AUSTIN, Texas – Dec. 3, 2013 – The journey to become a legendary Starfighter pilot begins now! Today, BioWare™ a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA), and LucasArts granted early access for current subscribers to the new Free-to-Play Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Digital Expansion, Galactic Starfighter. The second Digital Expansion introduces 12v12 intense Player-vs-Player (PvP) free-flight dogfighting and fierce factional battles as the war between the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic explodes into space. Players will compete and advance to earn experience, in the form of “requisition” to unlock awesome new weapons, powers and abilities to customize their ultimate Starfighter.

“We are so excited for players to experience all the incredible new content in Galactic Starfighter, while still gaining additional XP and credits to give their ground game characters a boost,” said Jeff Hickman, Vice President, General Manager of BioWare Austin. “Free-flight space combat is a feature the fans have been asking for, and Galactic Starfighter really delivers on that feeling of heart-pounding fast-paced dogfighting action that you expect in a Star Wars™ game.”

Anyone who becomes a subscriber will be able to jump right into Galactic Starfighter and become part of the factional combat and free flight PvP experience (no minimum character level requirements apply). In addition to gaining early access to Galactic Starfighter, subscribers will receive exclusive rewards, including custom paint jobs, two pilot suits and two titles (“Test Pilot” and “First Galactic Starfighter”). Preferred Status Players* will be granted access to Galactic Starfighter on January 14, before the Digital Expansion becomes available to the public beginning on February 4.

Star Wars: The OldRepublic is a Free-to-Play, award-winning MMO set thousands of years before the classic Star Wars movies. Players team up with friends online to fight in heroic battles between the Republic and Empire, exploring a galaxy of vibrant planets and experiencing visceral Star Wars combat. Now players can experience the complete storylines of the eight iconic Star Wars classes, all the way to Level 50 without having to pay a monthly fee. The Free-to-Play option complements the existing subscription offering, providing greater flexibility in how to experience Star Wars: The Old Republic.

For more information on the Digital Expansion: Galactic Starfighter, please visit www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com/galactic-starfighter. Join the conversation by visiting the official Community Blog, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages. For additional press assets, please visit http://info.ea.com.

What is it?

Galactic Starfighter is a 12v12 PvP free flight space shooter. At its core, it is all about coming as close as we can to recreating the incredible experience of space combat as seen in the Star Wars™ movies. It is fast, furious dogfighting action where you get to choose your style of play by selecting the Starfighter that is right for you, be it Scout, Strike Fighter or Gunship (or all of the above!), blowing up your enemies, and then using Requisition (experience) to upgrade and customize your ships.

From the start, we wanted to make sure that we nailed the feel of “free flight” Star Wars space combat, so we’ve taken great pains to get the controls just right. It is flat-out fun to simply fly your ship through the battle zones we’ve created. The Scout feels zippy and maneuverable, the Strike Fighter nails the all-purpose combat role, and the Gunship is really, really good at picking off targets from long-range then relocating to the next cover point to keep out of harm’s way.

Finally, there are a TON of options for customization. And I’m not just talking about re-painting your ship (though I recommend that you do!). I mean swapping out your weapons and engines and SEEING the actual ship change shape, while altering your stats and abilities. I’m talking about equipping Treek as your co-pilot and hearing her chirp at you when an enemy is locking onto you with missiles. PLUS repainting your ship, recoloring your paint job, customizing the color of your blaster bolts and your engine trails. Beyond the visual and audio customizations, Major and Minor components plus Crew equal a HUGE number of stat and ability changes that allow you to tweak your Starfighter to your heart’s content and the Major and Minor components all have full upgrade paths as well.

This is a HUGE update to the game and we expect you’ll be playing and enjoying Galactic Starfighter for years to come.

But Wait, There’s More!

I want to take a moment to point out that this feature is just getting started. What do I mean by that? Well, for Early Access we will have two very distinct battle zones and one game mode plus fourteen unique Starfighters with all of the customizations mentioned above, but that’s not even our full Launch content! Galactic Starfighter is much more than that. In February for our full Launch, we add a new role (the Bomber) plus 10 more Starfighters for a grand total of 24 ships to customize and take into battle. Add to that an incredible new dynamic Flashpoint that is level and role neutral called Kuat Driveyards which ties our ground game story directly into the space PvP action with a new Starfighter area on the fleet and you begin to see that full scope of what we’re delivering.

Taking it one step beyond, we have already laid out significant plans for Space PvP to support it far into the future, so there will be regular releases of content to keep our Starfighters happy for a good long time to come. As with everything in our game, we will be listening raptly on all available channels for YOUR input to shape what Starfighter becomes as it evolves. Thank you for your ongoing support. It means the world to us.

Blaine Christine
Senior Producer

————————————————————————————

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Zero-Point Energy Eliminating Your Electric Bill: Why J.P. Morgan sided with the IBEW Labor Union

How much money do you believe dear reader the IBEW labor union pores into the purchase of politicians and legislation that keeps its 750,000 members employed through their dues and donations?  To every mind that frets over Agenda 21 Smart Meters where an IBEW worker comes to every home in America and measures the amount of energy that home has consumed they are watching ghosts in the future manning a job in the present that is completely useless—kept alive only by politics and the labor unions attached to government for the purpose of preserving jobs that are essentially extinct.  Because what I’m about to tell you will make you very angry, and it should.  You have been scammed, lied to, and used to keep a system designed by J.P. Morgan a long time ago purely for the purpose of profit into believing that it was your only option for power—but it’s not.  As second-handers like Barack Obama spend billions, and billions of tax payer dollars on solar power, wind and silly battery operated cars, unorthodox scientists like John Hutchinson are perfecting the science of Zero-point energy.  I introduced Hutchinson in a previous article.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  John is developing a battery that never runs out of power and has actual prototypes that the world has no idea how to deal with.  The implication of this development means that every home, every business, every car, airplane,  anything that uses power to operate will have a self-sustaining source of power that never runs out meaning that the 750,000 jobs protected by the IBEW are in serious jeopardy sooner than later.  To understand the details of this exciting science, be sure to watch all the videos presented here today. This may be one of the most important articles you will ever read.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) is a labor union which represents workers in the electrical industry in the United States, Canada, Panama and several Caribbean island nations; particularly electricians, or Inside Wiremen, in the construction industry and linemen and other employees of public utilities. The union also represents some workers in the computer,telecommunications, broadcasting, and other fields related to electrical work. It was founded in 1891 shortly after homes and businesses in the United States began receiving electricity. Its international president is Ed Hill. The IBEW is affiliated with the AFL-CIO.

The beginnings of the IBEW were in the Electrical Wiremen and Linemen’s Union No. 5221, founded in St. Louis, Missouri in 1890. By 1891, after sufficient interest was shown in a national union, a convention was held on November 21, 1891 in St. Louis. At the convention, the IBEW, then known as the National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (NBEW), was officially formed. The American Federation of Labor gave the NBEW a charter as an AFL affiliate on December 7, 1891. The union’s official journal, The Electrical Worker, was first published on January 15, 1893, and has been published ever since. At the 1899 convention in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania, the union’s name was officially changed to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Brotherhood_of_Electrical_Workers

The fear over Smart Meters is that the un-holy alliance that these labor unions have with government will allow federal snoopers to study the patterns of a family’s behavior inside a home predicated off their use of energy on the power grid.  That power grid is regulated by government for the benefit of government.  When a storm comes through an area, thousands of customers getting their energy off that power grid must wait for the IBEW workers to hit the streets and get all the downed power lines operational again.  The power grid system was solidified around 1900, with $150,000 (more than $3 million today; 51% from J. Pierpont Morgan) into a project that had a chance then to change the world for the better.  Tesla began planning a spectacular tower called the Wardenclyffe a facility which was designed to beat Marconi to be the first to broadcast a radio signal across the Atlantic.[116]

To Morgan’s discomfort, the Wardenclyffe Tower was designed to not only beat Marconi, but to carry energy to every corner of the world which was the real aim of Tesla on the project.  When Morgan realized that this was Tesla’s plan, he turned against Tesla as Morgan already had deals with Edison to use power in a grid system that was easy to make money off of.  So long as energy could be brokered for sale, there would be a need to rent that energy from someone who provided it, someone like J.P. Morgan and his investors.  Tesla later approached Morgan to ask for more funds to build a more powerful transmitter. When asked where all the money had gone, Tesla responded by saying that he was affected by the Panic of 1901, which Morgan had caused.  Morgan was shocked by the reminder of his part in the stock market crash and by Tesla’s breach of contract by asking for more funds and the desire of the brilliant scientist to offer “free energy” to the world, so Morgan denied Tesla the request. Tesla wrote another plea to Morgan, but it was also fruitless. Morgan still owed Tesla money on the original agreement, and Tesla had been facing foreclosure even before construction of the tower began.[113]

In December 1901, Marconi successfully transmitted the letter “S” from England to Newfoundland, terminating Tesla’s relationship with Morgan. Over the next 5 years, Tesla wrote over 50 letters to Morgan, pleading for and demanding additional funding to complete the construction of Wardenclyffe. Tesla continued his project for another nine months. The tower was raised to its full 187 feet.[113] In July 1903, Tesla wrote to Morgan that in addition to wireless communication, Wardenclyffe would be capable of wireless transmission of electric power, which of course Morgan was against.[116] On 14 October 1904, Morgan finally replied through his secretary, stating, “It will be impossible for [me/ Morgan] to do anything in the matter.”  The way power would be sold to the public had been established, and Tesla’s business format of free energy was not financially viable in proportion to the investment.  That is how America—the inventor of electricity, formulated a relationship with every citizen in America to buy power in the form of rent as opposed to owning a share of it for their own use.  The labor union of the IBEW formed along with the new technology to ensure that radical changes to the business structure, and their wage levels would never be put into jeopardy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla

The way to think about Zero-point energy is to consider it as a closed system of power within the body of a household, like blood in a human body.  A battery that never ran down would run all the power needs of a home with a closed system that never depleted.  The washer, dryer, dishwasher, televisions, heating system, refrigeration, everything would run off this battery in a circulatory system that would keep the power in a perpetual state of usefulness.  The same basic ideal would be used for cars, trains, and anything else which needed power to operate.  This was the basic ideal that Ayn Rand utilized as her primary plot point in the popular novel Atlas Shrugged—John Galt’s engine was essentially inspired off of Tesla’s inventions.  Instead of the power being consumed by energy it would simply draw from the Zero-point which appears to reside within dimensional space within the quantum level—and simply never runs out because it is always present.  Much the way water is a stable force in the world there is never more or less of it, but it can be used and recycled many times over in various forms, energy is much the same.  The properties which energy is carried upon can change as the vehicle to deliver the power, but the energy itself is a stable force that can always be tapped in to.

Zero-point energy, also called quantum vacuum zero-point energy, is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical physical system may have; it is the energy of its ground state. All quantum mechanical systems undergo fluctuations even in their ground state and have an associated zero-point energy, a consequence of their wave-like nature. The uncertainty principle requires every physical system to have a zero-point energy greater than the minimum of its classical potential well. This results in motion even at absolute zero. For example, liquid helium does not freeze under atmospheric pressure at any temperature because of its zero-point energy.  Now you know why government schools want to keep people in a state of ignorance.

The concept of zero-point energy was developed in Germany by Albert Einstein and Otto Stern in 1913, as a corrective term added to a zero-grounded formula developed by Max Planck in 1900.[1][2] The term zero-point energy originates from the German Nullpunktsenergie.[1][2] An alternative form of the German term is Nullpunktenergie (without the “s”).

Vacuum energy is the zero-point energy of all the fields in space, which in the Standard Model includes the electromagnetic field, other gauge fields, fermionic fields, and the Higgs field. It is the energy of the vacuum, which in quantum field theory is defined not as empty space but as the ground state of the fields. In cosmology, the vacuum energy is one possible explanation for the cosmological constant.[3] A related term is zero-point field, which is the lowest energy state of a particular field.[4]

In quantum theory, zero-point energy is a minimum energy below which a thermodynamic system can never go.[12] Thus, none of this energy can be withdrawn without altering the system to a different form in which the system has a lower zero-point energy. One of the hypotheses that claims that zero-point energy is infinite is stochastic electrodynamics. In it, the zero-point field is viewed as simply a classical background isotropic noise wave field which excites all systems present in the vacuum and thus is responsible for their minimum-energy or “ground” states. The requirement of Lorentz invariance at a statistical level then implies that the energy density spectrum must increase with the third power of frequency, implying infinite energy density when integrated over all frequencies.[29]

According to a NASA contractor report, “the concept of accessing a significant amount of useful energy from the ZPE gained much credibility when a major article on this topic was published in Aviation Week & Space Technology (March 1st, 2004), a leading aerospace industry magazine”.[30]

The calculation that underlies the Casimir experiment, a calculation based on the formula predicting infinite vacuum energy, shows the zero-point energy of a system consisting of a vacuum between two plates will decrease at a finite rate as the two plates are drawn together. The vacuum energies are predicted to be infinite, but the changes are predicted to be finite. Casimir combined the projected rate of change in zero-point energy with the principle of conservation of energy to predict a force on the plates. The predicted force, which is very small and was experimentally measured to be within 5% of its predicted value, is finite.[31] Even though the zero-point energy is theoretically infinite, there is as yet no evidence to suggest that infinite amounts of zero-point energy are available for use, that zero-point energy can be withdrawn for free, or that zero-point energy can be used in violation of conservation of energy.[32]  That is, until one looks at the work of John Hutchinson.

In the contrary of energy generation, a field of study where there is a somewhat realistic potential for the utilization of zero-point energy might be in the design of extremely small-scale devices like MEMS and NEMS or in distant futuristic propulsion technology of extremely long-distance space-travel.[12]

A document released by the NGIC shows there is ongoing worldwide research into zero-point energy, particular in China, Germany, Russia and Brazil. Some analyst of the DIA has indicated that research into successfully harnessing zero-point energy for energy generation purposes is a serious concern inside the intelligence community.[12]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy

The implication of Zero-point energy is that cars never need combustible gas, which would wreck the oil industry, homes would never need to be taped into a power grid, which would wreck the IBEW union and all its affiliates in government, every home in every corner of the world—even the most backwater spot on the planet could have a power supply equivalent to what is offered in big cities, and it would never run out, and would cost nothing to use.  Energy could be broadcast across the globe to every point possible through towers like Wardenclyffe and would be as easy to use as cell phones receiving a signal in remote areas now.  The power lines that litter roadways would go away, and power grid infrastructure would no longer be a concern.  And politicians would no longer have poor people to exploit because the quality of life virtually everywhere would improve and the cost of renting energy from government controlled sources would be eliminated.

This is one of the premier reasons that John Hutchinson is a hated man at the center of conspiracy theories.  Governments cannot control the kind of technology that Hutchinson is perfecting any more than they can control the Internet.  They can monitor the information, but they can’t stop it as it is a free-flowing existence that now works inside of a new dimensional space called Cyberspace.  To kill that space now would be to kill the communication network that it is attached to, and every device which carries that network.  However, Hutchinson’s zero-point energy batteries will do for the power industry what the Internet has done to the telephone industry—who has a land line these days?  Who pays for long distance calls when they can now Skype?  Who needs a telephone line?  The energy breakthroughs will be much more dramatic than these inventions once they take, and the only reason they haven’t yet is that nobody can figure out how they can make money off something that exists in the air and is as common as water—which is technically free to everyone.  Government has learned to sell water to customers by offering a cleaning service, but every home could have its own well to draw from—if they wanted.

Zero-point energy is even more reliable than all these technologies because energy is literally all around us in virtually everything.  Hutchinson built his zero-point batteries out of rocks he found around his home.  But the reason we don’t have these things yet is because it has been accepted that energy delivery must come from the “power company” and that entity is usually publicly traded and tied directly to government—and labor unions, and neither want anything to change, because neither wants to give up any of the power they have currently over people in general.

One of the downsides to yesteryear which helped propel the destructive feminist movement in America was that men sometimes did not let their wives learn to drive a car.  They did this because the men feared that the women would get jobs, get new boyfriends, and abandon their families.  The men were afraid of giving their wives freedom for fear that they would lose them to the temptations of the world.  Modern government is doing the same thing to people like Hutchinson.  They are purposely black-balling Hutchinson through orthodox scientific institutional channels to keep his technology away from a public that they know wants to be free of a power grid and the enormous expense of renting energy from a government controlled entity.

The natural regression that takes place because of this government barrier to innovation which uses crony capitalism—a mild form of socialism—to control technology through the greed of financial donars was exhibited in the wonderfully simple novel called Anthem by Ayn Rand.  Walt Disney built The Epcot Center to protect against—the regression of science in the face of discovery—the insistence by second-handers in government to pretend that the world is flat—because they don’t want to face the reality of it being round.  America could have had free power self-contained for over 100 years by now if Tesla had been funded by J.P. Morgan, and it is likely that poverty in the world would be next to nothing as even poor nations would have access to Tesla’s energy for refrigeration, and climate control.  But we don’t because Morgan knew there was no money in it, and union workers wanted no changes to a system that gave them jobs, and government wanted access to the financial donations given by the labor unions.  The net result is that millions of people have suffered.  There has been 100 years of commitment to dirty energy that has left America largely dependent on the Middle East and their radical religions, and has left millions dependent on government to provide stability in their life when all they need is a self-contained battery in their backyard giving them power month after month for years saving $300 to $500 a month on their energy bills.

Critics will say that John Hutchinson is crazy—that batteries do not have the ability to store such energy for a lifetime.  They will say that everything pointing away from the current controlled system is wrong, dangerous and unstable—and they will do it for the same reason that Edison was terrified of Tesla—because they know they have an inferior product that can only maintain its monopoly on the public so long as people don’t know that there are any options.  Well, now dear reader you know there are options, and it won’t take much to bring them about—and it all starts by reading articles like this one and taking the next step.  For that next step, it begins with John Hutchinson and his experiments into zero-point energy.  The step after that will be for a country to get behind his technology and begin introducing it to the world.  It might be Japan, it might be China, and it might even be Germany.  But because of the IBEW it won’t be The United States of America.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Those Loaded With Guns and Those Who Dig: Naming the second-handers

Since I was about 19 I have kept volumes and volumes of notes about my observations regarding life as it truly is.  I have done that for over 25 years now and the process has migrated from little notebooks that family members would buy my for Christmas and birthdays, to loose-leaf notebook paper in binders written upon front and back and down across the margins haphazardly in some situations to complete a thought without having to turn the paper over.  That process has evolved of course into what I share daily here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom.  Of course to outsiders—people who do not know me, they continue to be baffled as to why I do all this.  After the Lakota election many of the unionized workers happy to have been given a tax increase by the community sent me a barrage of comments letting me know that all my work over the last three years has been fruitless—since they won the money anyway. This is because of their small mindedness that they think this way, and points to a resolution which will be concluded at the climax of this article.  A written body of work such as what I publish here may only have a 1% chance of changing an election.  That falls within the margin of victory for a candidate like Mark Welsh and Cathy Stoker in West Chester, or the Lakota levy which was a few hundred votes short out of thousands going up against an energized group of levy addicts.  The number goes up to perhaps 5% if the media type is popular and well-received such as The National Enquirer, People Magazine, or some other populous enterprise.  On the night of the election, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom saw 2000 hits that evening above the daily normal of 400 to 500.  The spike was because the normally placid intellectual thinkers wanted somebody to tell them how to vote—so they looked to my blog to help them make a decision.  In an election that had about 26,000 votes cast, my blog probably changed the vote of about 300 people, most of the rest of that 2000 were from the other side nervous about their results and wondering what I was saying.

My entire adult life I have yearned to observe, think, and to write these things down in the solitude of my own mind.  Most of the notes I made over the years repeat themselves over and over again—or they lack proper conclusions.  This is because I was working things out.  By the time I started this blog, I had most of the answers to everything in life—because I had spent a quarter century getting those answers.  My personal education could not come from orthodox sources but came from a mind on fire not looking for a way to douse the flames, but to throw more logs on to make it roar.  During my orthodox education, which was as extensive as anyone’s, I noticed and wrote about as a young twenty year old, that education institutions seemed more intent to put out the fire of my mind, than to feed it, so I rebelled against that notion with a fury.  Even back then while most people my age were focused on getting drunk and “partying” I was sitting late at night at Waffle Houses and Perkins restaurants with my notebooks open writing till four and five in the morning.

My Cliffhanger character from my novel The Symposium of Justice was autobiographical, just for the record.  The character I created for Tail of the Dragon was a version of that which had accepted a degree of submission in his life until he reached a breaking point.  Cliffhanger never reached a point like that—which many publishers and book review professionals have told me is “unrelateable” to the general public.  Cliffhanger is intellectually unreachable for most people, and I know that—I know why, how, and for how long and I’m OK with it—because it’s autobiographical.  I wrote Tail of the Dragon to show that I could come off my personal mountain and speak the language of everyone else, but even then, Fletcher Finnegan was beyond the reach of most.  Not because he wasn’t a compelling character full of motivation, but it’s what drives that motivation that begins the difficulty.

If over the last year you invited me for a drink and I went, I must really, really like you—and for the record one person asked me about 6 times and I did go twice—and they know who they are.   I struggle to find time to be with all the people who want some of my attention.  I simply can’t do it—I don’t have the time.  I reflected at my mother’s Thanksgiving Day meal that they only live about 2 miles from my home, yet I only saw them 3 times the entire duration of 2013.  The reason is not that I don’t care about them, but they are on a different set of tracks that don’t intersect with mine very often.  Typically, I read, write, and think for 19-20 hours per day, every day.  Thinking is my hobby, and is as important to me as breathing.  Climates where people are busy trying to forget are not conducive to the thinking I enjoy doing, so I turn down social invitations nearly 95% of the time.  Out of all the invites, I give in one or two times a year just to show people who I respect their friendships—but at home are my stacks and stacks of books, notes and a view of the woods that is the focus of much contemplation—and there’s no place else that I’d rather be.

One of my favorite all time movies is The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and in that film Clint Eastwood says, “In this world there are two kinds of people my friend, those with loaded guns, and those who dig—you dig.”  There is a truth to that statement that extends to a logic bedded deep in our human hearts and minds—it permeates time and space through many cultural manifestations and made that movie not just a good one—but a great one.  But why, and how—it was a question that started me on this quest beginning at age 19.  Instead of learning to shoot like Clint Eastwood did in that film, the quest became an intellectual one leading to hours and hours of solitary confinement—hours of practicing bullwhips in my back yard putting out candles with a crack, and thinking about why some men have guns while others are always carrying shovels.  In that answer was the solution as to why communism will never work, why economies rise and fall, and why some people are smart while others are stupid.

My purpose for writing this blog is not for those who carry shovels and dig—the media types who do what their editors tell them to, or to the public education employees who have had their intellectual curiosity extinguished in exchange for a stolen pay check paid for by tax payers.  I don’t write it for the typical Entertainment Tonight viewer who is only concerned about gossip and nonsense.  I don’t even write it to win elections—although I often have my hopes and endorse candidates and ideals occasionally.  I share my notes with the general public now instead of scattered notes written down everywhere just to capture thoughts as I think them—because I am intellectually reloading the guns of those who have them—metaphorically speaking.  I know who reads here, and most of them are leaders in powerful places who shape policy.  Some of them are Supreme Court members—you know who you are, they are powerful national politicians, they are local politicians they are leaders of political activism, they run business, they run media and all of them are shackled by their social roles to express the things I do, which they also feel.  What they all share in common is that they tend to be leaders—not followers—they carry guns, not shovels.

Clint Eastwood’s line in that famous movie is another way of articulating Pirsig’s train theory—there are some people who are on the cutting edge, and some who are content to remain in the caboose.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  But to say things another way—a more appropriate way is to say that some people are meant to be leaders and are others second-handers leading democracies to always fail as a stable form of government always slipping into an abyss of collectivism if allowed to evolve on their own.  My character of Cliffhanger from The Symposium of Justice is named as such because he is always on the cutting edge, he is at the front of Pirsig’s train.  He pulls society along—they feed off him and his strength.  The conflict occurs when they (society) wish to believe that they guide the train, which they do not.  They are only passengers—or otherwise “second-handers” the way Ayn Rand defined them in her 1943 novel The Fountainhead.  “Whether explicitly or otherwise, the independent man grasps the distinction between the metaphysical and the man-made.  Conformity to the metaphysically given, he understands, is essential to successful action; the man-made may be accepted only if and when it achieves or flows from such conformity.  This kind of individual fulfills the basic requirement of human survival: he knows how–by reference to what absolute—to form his ideas and choose his actions. 

“To the second-hander, by contrast, the man-made—whether rational or irrational, true or false, good or evil—becomes the equivalent of realty.  This kind of individual, having detached himself from the realm of existence, has no standard by which to judge others; he has no way to know whose ideas to follow, whose behavior to copy, whose favor to curry.  Such a person reduces himself to helplessness, the fundamental helplessness of having left his life to the mercy of blind chance.  The result is most people’s desperate need for an authority, religious or secular, who will take over their lives, make their value-judgments, and tell them what to do.  The independent man will refuse any such role, but the worst second-hander of all, the power luster is eager to accept it.  Thereafter, he destroys everyone, including himself.  In other words, people at the back of Pirsig’s train are second-handers and unfit to make leadership decisions because the point of decision-making is at the front of the train where the leaders reside.  And society does not have an abundance of leaders at the front to make decisions.  We do not produce enough of them—and this is a major problem.  The second-hander is the person who spends their lives digging under the threat of those with metaphorical guns.

Barack Obama is a second-hander because he is clearly in the back of the decision-making train and always has been.  His power comes second-hand, through lies, manipulation, coercion and political help.  By the time the train passes a spot of decision-making, it has passed a point where Obama could ever make a correct decision.  Lakota schools and the employees of the last tax increase are second-handers in that they believe that what they instruct in the back of the train can influence the direction of society.  But it is impossible because they are at the back well behind the point of decision-making and can only react to the fate of the train on the track wherever it may go.  Most of the media are second-handers because they build their lives around people like Barack Obama, or public schools like Lakota—so they lack any real authority to report how decisions should be made, they can only report what they observe as the train moves down the tracks unable to lead society in any proper direction.  No amount of study can change this nature—no doctorate degree, no level of government sanctioned authority can change these metaphysical laws, they are what they are.  When society holds elections in a democracy, the ballots are cast at the back of the train, not the front—the perception of the elections are shaped entirely by second-handers.  Leaders are not miraculously produced as a result—which is why people are nearly always disappointed by-election results, even if their candidate wins.

What I write here and share as my personal notes in blog form are intended for the type of people who wish to be at the front of the train, and that is typically who reads most often and diligently.  Decisions are made at this point, not in the democracy at the back where those with shovels “dig.”  Those with guns and not afraid to use them have to know where to shoot, and at what—so they must be at the front of the train where they can see.  Everyone else digs in the back letting others make decisions for their lives because they fear the responsibility to do it on their own.

I have never had any desire to be at the back of the train—never one day in my entire life.  I’ve went back there a few times just to see what all the fuss is about only to return to the front out of sheer disgust.  When people provide invites to socialize—those events are always in the back of the train and while there, I cannot see what’s coming down the tracks—and I don’t enjoy that position.  I like to be not just on the front of the train, but hanging over the edge of the front watching the moving tracks rolling by underneath.  I like to be at the furthest point forward that is humanly possible and it doesn’t come from conversations with second-handers.  I do not write these millions upon millions of words to get rich off of appealing to the masses—the second-handers.  The intent is to share my notes with the leaders-the people inclined to sit at the front and make decisions well before anyone else is aware that a decision needs to be made.  Like Clint Eastwood said about guns and digging—the proper way to explain the same metaphor is to state that there are two kinds of people, those who sit at the front of the train and are leaders, and those who simply ride that train, the second-handers.  In a society it takes both to make things work, but it is important to understand that democracy does not work—a society cannot survive if it is run by second-handers.  It must be run by leaders—and this is the point of my many words, notes and future articles.  Second-handers will call these words rants, they will call them “attention grabbers,” they will call them “politically threatening” but they will all be wrong.  They are simply revealing their motives for doing things second-handed, and cannot understand life at the front of the train.  Their opinions do not matter because by the time they make a decision the ability to change directions has already passed—so all their statements constitute noise and nothing more.  I am not concerned about their noise.  I am concerned with what’s coming down the tracks and conversing with those who crave the front of the train away from the second-handers at the back.

With that in mind, I think it is time to start talking more about what’s coming down the tracks instead of all the stupid decisions that weren’t made at important junctures because second-handers through democratic authority gained the ability to lead—to their own peril and many others.  In the future, this will be the direction taken at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom.  We know now how we arrived at where we are.  We know who made the dumb decisions and why.  Now we have to distinguish ourselves from them and divide the train up properly into who has the guns and who has the shovels—or more philosophically proper—who has leadership and who are the second-handers.  It is time to let the second-handers know what they are and to shove them out-of-the-way so that we can right our train back on the correct track and get moving in the proper direction.  And that job requires an understanding of what’s coming—which is the summation of my twenty-five years of notes which has given me a map of where we need to go.  So it’s time to use it.  I do not care about the squawks of the second-handers, their protests, their opinions, their cries for help, or their desire for comfort.  Nothing they say will help—it’s just noise in the background as the train barrels down the tracks.  I don’t even care to sell them souvenirs on the journey because that requires interaction with them, and I can’t stand these days to do even that.  Leadership is all that matters and seeing what’s coming before we get to a point of being beyond where decisions no longer matter.   That is where all the notes, the reading, and writing are intended to go, and where my focus will reside.  If it makes the second-handers angry, so be it.  Instead of calling them all the names which is the result of their social position, like Marxists, socialists, progressives, communists, school teachers—etc, I think it’s time to let them know their true place on the train—and the proper name of their kind.  As Clint Eastwood said, there are those with guns and those who dig.  Rich Hoffman says, “there are those who are “cliffhanger’s” hanging over the front of the train on its perilous journey, and those who are second-handers who sit in the back and are victims to wherever the train goes.”  My effort goes to those at the front of the train—as those in the back are only capable of observing the world as it goes by.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Chimera of American Courts: Erne Tertelgte’s epic standoff

If anyone were to wonder what the Founding Fathers would think of America today, people might have had a glimpse when Ernie Tertelgte, age 52, represented himself in court against misdemeanor charges of obstructing a peace officer and resisting arrest relating to an Aug. 31 incident where he was cited for fishing without a license, according to KBZK. He argued that “universal law” allows him to hunt for food to feed himself.

Tertelgte then proceeded to continue talking and was asked again to remain silent as a dumb founded judge sat helplessly in her chair bewildered as to how to proceed.  The court room employees who process daily dozens of cases and over the course of a year, thousands—purely for the revenue that is brought to the courts through guilty pleas was uncertain how to proceed against Tertelgte’s statements which were as close to what might have been heard from 1776 to 1791 in America as anyone living today could hope to encounter.

“I cannot ma’am in honor of the Constitution of the United States,” he said. “I can’t allow a man who carries British recognition for the purposes of British ministerial law to continue to persecute me.”

“I cannot ma’am,” Tertelgte continued. “I have to honor the founder’s ma’am. I honor the memory of those who fought and died that we can be free of this type of thing.”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/24/i-am-the-living-man-protected-by-natural-law-you-are-probably-going-to-want-to-watch-this-epic-court-testimony/

There were of course snickers from those who have become used to blind compliance at Tertelgte’s naiveté.  After all the Montana man was failing to recognize over 200 years of progressive legal manipulation, feel good policies, and the minds of many academic scholars who have added their own words to The United States Constitution over the years—the case law from many attorneys, the decisions of Supreme Courts, and the stump speeches and laws created by many Presidents.  Tertelgte simply wanted to be left alone to fish, but even the remote state of Montana had imposed itself into the basic food gathering activity demanding that those who wished to participate pay them a fee.  Most Americans have been broken like a beaten horse to do as they are told, to speak when they are told to speak, and to think what they are told to think—so Tertelgte’s words seem alien to them, spoken from a different time by a different people.

The argument that Tertelgte cited in court is essentially the same type of thing that the plot to my 2012 novel Tail of the Dragon was all about—a rural personality colliding with the statists of a court room and refusing to acknowledge their power over individuals.  That novel was based on my personal experiences in court which were so numerous that they nearly number the stars in the sky on a cold cloudless winter night.  Starting at about the age of 25, I stopped hiring lawyers and just did the job myself which really angered judges—because they expect their victims to pay the proper lawyer fees and to respect the game they are playing.  But when lives and fortunes are at stake, it is foolish to leave freedom to chance letting some snot-nosed lawyer who golf’s with the judge a few times a year to throw you to the wolves with politeness—or some invisible courtroom etiquette that is made up of legal tradition vacant of respect for individual rights. 

To the 30-year-old millennial who spent the night before the recent Thanksgiving thinking about their drunken college days in intoxicated bliss, but proudly displaying their teaching certificate from those days on a wall at their home, or a law degree over their office desk, the words of Ernie Tertelgte might as well have come from E.T. The Extraterrestrial.  Tertelgte is a dinosaur from another time and another place—a Constitutional purist that naively failed to give the modern minds of statism the time of day.  Those same millennial’s drinking heavily on the Thanksgiving’s Holiday watching YouTube clips of Tertelgte on their iPhones with upturned pinkies and giggling tirades lack a mind to even understand that it was Tertelgte who was right and they who were on the path to extinction.  As remote and distant as Ernie Tertelgte might seem to the modern human being, it is Tertelgte’s position which is sustainable, not the modern statist who accepts the fines of the court blindly without question and the authority of a judge to rule over their lives with an ignorance bred in Europe.

Tertelgte was right when he stated that the American court system was British ministerial law.  In the years after the formation of the Constitution—beyond 1791, the American people a little homesick from mother Europe bounced back into the mentality of their former rulers.  They did this by default—because freedom is hard, and requires people to be self-reliant.  Freedom requires gumption, and intelligence—aspects of modern life that are grossly missing.  Governments through their control of the school systems, the national park system, taxes, regulation, and virtually every facet of modern life have taught people not to think—to just turn up their pinkies around a beer glass and chug—then make fun of people like Ernie Tertelgte so to discourage others from following his example.

Europe and its policies of kingdoms, statism, princes, princesses, peasants and all the hierarchies of obedience was rejected in America for a brief time in human history, and The American Constitution captured that philosophy in a bottle to preserve for all time.  It didn’t take long for European loving lawyers, judges, and homesick settlers who knew of nothing else to snap back into the mentality of their homeland, and attempt to reshape the Constitution into a document that reminded them of home through case-law.  That is what the judge sitting helplessly upon her throne facing down Ernie Tertelgte in her court room—paid for by the subjects of her little kingdom–was measuring the bearded man in the tri-cornered hat against.  She wasn’t judging him by the American Constitution, but against 200 years of progressive erosion of that same document.  Tertelgte simply rejected that progressive erosion and insisted on the original interpretation of the American Constitution.

Of course Tertelgte was found guilty and fined $150, which he responded, “you are trying to create a fictitious, fraudulent action, I am the living man, protected by natural law.”  He then yelled, “Do not tell me to shut up! I am the living, natural man, and my voice will be heard!”   The only thing that Tertelgte said in all his utterances that was wrong was that the judge had already played her part in creating that fictitious and fraudulent action—and for many years had done the same to thousands of others.  Thousands of other judges just like her had done the same to millions, and millions of other people over the course of their lifetimes.  Out of all those people only Tertelgte and a handful of others have taken the time to challenge that fictitiousness with solid fact based on the actual Constitution.  The fiction is the judge and all the years of case-law generated through years of many people believing that through consensus belief trumps the original law of the American Constitution.   Then those illusionists insist that the participants of the legal system also take part in that chimera because the laws of democracy demand that majority will rules, and so long as the majority wishes to participate in a fiction, then that fiction becomes their reality.  Under that mentality people like Erne Tertelgte are the ones accused of not having his feet in reality, and are snickered at for not having a realistic understanding of modern law and its protocols.  But in actuality, the only one living by the Constitution is Tertelgte with a bold authenticity that deserves respect—even if it did cost him $150 bucks of stolen money from the court to justify their jobs for the entertainment of an epic American fiction called the court system.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Socialist Kshama Sawant: Who is she, where did she come from and why unions are bad

Most of the socialists and hard-core communists functioning in America today do not call themselves by those names.  They call themselves, Democrats, progressives, or even anarchists.  They do not declare what they are—and in many cases they do not know where their thoughts came from.  If someone believes that corporations must “share” their profits, and that capitalism is bad, which is the theme in virtually every public school in America—those beliefs come from socialism—a European concept imported to America like a bad beer covered in rat piss.

Most school boards, most city councils, all labor unions, most politicians at the state and federal level have accepted elements of socialism into their thought processes.  But occasionally one gets elected into office on a platform without the mask of the Democratic Party—who runs as a socialist and wins.  This is the case of Seattle’s newly elected Socialist councilwoman Kshama Sawant who recently accused aerospace and defense giant Boeing on Monday of “economic terrorism” and told Boeing machinists “The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine.”  Sawant’s comments were made at a rally organized by machinists after they rejected a deal that would reduce pensions for union members in return for guaranteed jobs in Everett, Wash., building 777X Boeing airliners for eight years.

Now Boeing is considering taking those jobs elsewhere.

“That will be nothing short of economic terrorism because it’s going to devastate the state’s economy,” Sawant told the crowd.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/21/the-workers-should-take-over-the-factory-newly-elected-socialist-has-some-radical-ideas-for-seattle/

Really!  Let me come back to this in a minute, but first let’s learn who Kshama Sawant is, because she has higher ambitions.

Kshama Sawant is a Seattle City Council member-elect.[2] A former software engineer from India, Sawant became a socialist activist and part-time economics professor in Seattle after emigrating to the United States. She held part-time teaching positions at Seattle Central Community College and Seattle University[3] and was a visiting assistant professor at Washington and Lee University.[4]Sawant ran unsuccessfully for the Washington State House of Representatives before winning a seat on the Seattle City Council, making her the first socialist to win a city-wide election in Seattle since the radical progressive Anna Louise Strong was elected to the School Board in 1916.(There’s a surprise, a radical progressive socialist on a school board)[2][5][6]

Sawant was born to Vasundhara and H. T. Ramanujam in Pune, India in a middle class family of the Brahmin caste.[5][7][8] Sawant’s mother is a retired principal and her father, a civil engineer, was killed by a drunk driver when she was 13.[9] Sawant’s observations of poverty in her native country and her unhappiness with the Indian caste system helped shape her political views before her adoption of socialism.[8][10] Sawant grew up in Mumbai where she later studied computer science and graduated with a B.Sc from the University of Mumbai in 1994. Sawant married her husband Vivek, an engineer at Microsoft, and moved to the United States.[11] After moving to the United States Sawant decided to abandon the computer engineering field. She began to pursue study in economics due to what she described as her own “questions of economic inequality.”[12] She entered the economics program at North Carolina State University where she earned a PhD. Her dissertation was titled Elderly Labor Supply in a Rural, Less Developed Economy.[5][13] Sawant moved to Seattle in 2006 and, after hearing a speech by a Socialist Alternative organizer, became a socialist. She became a United States citizen in 2010.[14] Sawant and her husband Vivek are separated.[7]

After losing her run for the House Sawant entered the race for Seattle City Council with a campaign organized by Socialist Alternative.[12] She won 35% of the vote in the August primary election, and advanced into the general election for the at-large council position 2[21] against incumbent Richard Conlin, making her the first socialist to advance to a general election in Seattle since 1991.[22] Conlin’s fundraising was double that of Sawant’s,[23] and on election night Sawant was down by 6,193 votes[2] but refused to concede.[24] Late ballots consistently favored Sawant[25] and on Novemeber 15, 2013, Conlin conceded to Sawant after late returns showed him down by 1,640 votes or approximately 1% of the vote.[2][26]

The last socialist on the city council was A. W. Piper, who served 1877-1879,[27][28] notwithstanding Representative Hugh De Lacy, a Democrat whom historian Harvey Klehr said was secretly a communist when elected to the city council in 1937.[29]

After her victory Sawant cautioned supporters that, going forward, her opponents would attempt to marginalize her and create both confusion and division among her supporters.[30]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshama_Sawant

America doesn’t have a caste system like Sawant experienced in India, yet she came to the States and studied under our universities by socialist professors and found herself pulled into socialist circles in Seattle.  She became a citizen so she can run for office and the guy who brought her to America is no longer in the picture and now she’s a loose cannon from some far away land that functioned under socialism, communism, and various forms of collectivism.  Now she is bringing that mentality to American business.  And here is why Sawant  is out of her mind crazy—because Boeing like all the large American aerospace manufacturers have discovered that they have to move their operations to right-to-work states in order to stay relevant—economically viable.  The competition against America is places like Asia where the ideal of personal sacrifice is expected, so long hours, torturous work, and round the clock service is the norm, not the exception.  Boeing cannot hold its own if a labor union can shut down its doors every couple of years with the threat of a strike, or wages that are too high.  Or work hours too short where Boeing must pay $30 to $50 dollars an hour for work performed over 40 hours per week, or even over 8 hours per day.  The Asian markets are not held to those standards and will out-perform American aviation if left under the leadership of the socialist labor unions and council women like Sawant.

Socialists like Kshama Sawant do not understand a basic premise of economics even though she holds a PhD.  Her socialist professors during their studies of Marx, Lenin, and the European Union neglected the basic concept of American gumption—the thrill of achieving a task if profit is on the horizon.  When she stated to the machinists that they should take over the factory because they owned the machines, the plant, and the work force, and the management does nothing to make the whole enterprise tick, she is displaying her vast ignorance of capitalism, and manufacturing in America—and advocating outright theft of capital investment.

What the management does at Boeing is secure the contracts for the workers.  They attend the trade shows which sell the airplanes; they engineer the planes, and the set up the supply chain which delivers all the parts for assembly.  Boeing invests in the capital equipment and takes all the risks in anticipation of a profit.  If there is no profit, there is no reason to fly all over the world making deals to sell airplanes, there is no reason to struggle with FFA regulations, or the threat of law suits if something goes wrong with one of their products.  Without profit, there is no reason to perform any level of activity that promotes the growth of the company.  Without the management, the machinists would show up at Boeing every day to work and would stand at their machines waiting for someone to drop off a part for them to process.  But nothing would come and the machinists would all stand around waiting for something to happen.  After a short time, the business would die, and the plant would be shut down because nobody sold anything, nobody designed anything, and nobody would deliver anything because all those things are done by management.  Kshama Sawant believes that the body of Boeing can exist without the head of management to direct it—and it never works.  Never.  Workers never become the head in labor unions.  Their socialist culture prevents it—so nobody ever picks up the baton and does the work of management on behalf of a labor union. So they always fail without management to guide them.  The only unions that succeed under this arrangement are public sector unions who steal tax money to exist given to them by politicians too weak to question the socialism involved.

Boeing has a right and obligation to protect its shareholders and move its business if shown that they can no longer be productive, and having a lecherous workforce of union staff that won’t negotiate on reduced pensions to become more economically viable is a good indication that it’s time to move away from communities like Settle where the people elected a socialist like Sawant to offices of power.  Such an election is reckless and shows that the left leaning liberals of Washington State haven’t a clue as to where their economic power comes from.  Their ignorance is hurting Boeing as a company of great American significance with imposing anti-capitalist mechanisms that destroy production.

I have yet to see a unionized work force that produces effectively without management.  If left to the workers, part rate drops per hour of production, quality drops dramatically, delivery times are nonexistent, attendance is horrendous, and nothing works.  If the workers of Boeing in Washington took over the machining facilities and the management of Boeing moved to South Carolina or even Texas where right-to-work exists, Boeing could buy new plants, new machines, and pay for new employees.  But the employees in the current machining facility would have their machines but a building empty of product because nobody in management would bring it to their door.

It is astonishing that someone like Kshama Sawant could have a PHD from an American college and be a socialist—believing the things she does.  What she believes creates poverty similar to where she came from in India where the union stewards become the caste system she ran from, and politicians become the kings.  She simply brought India to America and the end result is destroyed jobs, economic misery, and the migration of America into a third world country.  Nobody should leave an American school or a college with the idiotic notion that socialism is anything but destructive, and a failed philosophy that has no place in any company in The United States, especially the aviation industry.

Kshama Sawant is not alone—there are millions just like her, just savvier at hiding their real beliefs from the public.  Anyone who believes that it is greed that drives business, or uses terminology like—the “people should unite” are socialists and they need to be dealt with accordingly.  There are no labor unions in America who do not support that basic premise—and that includes police, fire, and teacher unions.  They are all founded on concepts of socialism which is blatantly exhibited by Kshama Sawant—ignorance into the way the world really works with an assumption that profit is evil.  It is the unionized workers that are all about economic terrorism with strikes, wage demands, and stifled productivity.  The radicals are the advocates of socialism who pretend to be capitalists.  At least Kshama Sawant says what she is.  Most of them don’t.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Chris Lee’s Millennium Falcon: Journey to the Corporate Sector

It is such a pleasure in a world that has seemingly gone mad politically, philosophically, and economically to see the glorious gumption of Chris Lee and his entourage of dedicated Millennium Falcon builders.  I have covered the exploits of Full Scale Falcon.com before—but that was upon the original announcement that Chris and company had dedicated themselves to building a full sized Millennium Falcon on an 80 acre lot outside of Nashville, Tennessee.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  For me and millions of other Star Wars fans the Millennium Falcon represents rebellion, freedom, and hope.  It is impossible to step into my home and not see something relevant to Star Wars—but in my bedroom there are Millennium Falcons everywhere.  For me it represents more than just a nice plot point from a cool movie—the roots of the Falcon represent far more—and those roots are obviously driving Chris and many others to spend their own time, money, and effort on making a real Falcon that people can see and touch—and walk through.  The Millennium Falcon is about more than just escapist fantasy—I would argue it is the direct result of laissez-faire capitalism, and people deep down inside know it—which is why they love the iconic space ship.  It was because of laissez-faire capitalism that The Millennium Falcon was able to nearly single-handedly beat a galactic empire with speedy modifications, powerful weapons and raw guts born out of a Star Wars invention called the Corporate Sector.

When I was in the fifth grade my mother used to put together a gift bag of goodies to play with and read while taking long vacations that required many hours in the car.  That year my family went to Myrtle Beach and inside my gift bag was a novel just published by Del Rey called Han Solo at Star’s End.  It was the first book published after the 1977 release of the first Star Wars film and it featured my favorite character and I couldn’t wait to read it.  My mom purposely kept the book on top of the refrigerator out of my reach but positioned it so that I could see it.  I was salivating for weeks to read it.  I was looking forward to our family vacation not for the opportunity to go to the beach, but to read that book.

Finally on a hot summer morning after a devastating thunderstorm that nearly delayed our trip, we left.  The moment we were on I-75 south, my mother gave me the carefully constructed gift bag with all the goodies in it to keep me occupied for the long drive.  There were lots of neat things in the bag, but only one thing I wanted and the moment I put my fingers on it, I was in love for life.  I devoured Han Solo at Star’s End.  I read the book all the way to Myrtle Beach, at every restaurant we stopped at, on the beach, at the hotel room, everywhere that I could hold a book.  When I finished I read it again, then again, then again.  I lost count of how many times I read that book.  I was in love with the Millennium Falcon not because of the movie—which was great, but for deeper reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.  It was the Corporate Sector and specifically a guy named Doc Vandangante who could have only been employed by such an experiment of laissez-faire capitalism that had sent my mind ablaze for some unknown reason.

On my family’s Myrtle Beach vacation I read in Han Solo at Star’s End that while in the Corporate Sector, the Falcon was damaged after Solo and Chewbacca attempted smuggling weapons to insurgents on Duroon. They did collect payment from the insurgents and went to pay off Ploovo Two-For-One, but in a rather creative manner. Given the prickly relationship and even outright disgust they had for each other, Han bought a foul, irritable, putrid dinko, attached the payment to it, and unleashed it on the unfortunate employer. Although Corporate Sector Security arrived at the establishment where they were, Han and Chewbacca escaped their grasp relatively unscathed. Payment completed, they went off to find the outlaw tech “Doc” Vandangante‘s hideout, only to discover he had been taken to the Corporate Sector Authority prison at Stars’ End. Doc’s daughter Jessa offered upgrades and repairs to Han’s ship, and a Corporate Sector waiver, in exchange for Han helping rescue Doc and the other prisoners. Before Han could take off, the outlaw techs were attacked by IRD-A Fighters. Piloting a Z-95 Headhunter, Han led the other techs and Jessa in defense of the base. Despite heavy losses, they were successful. To complete their rescue mission for Jessa, Solo and Chewbacca were given two droids, Bollux and Blue Max, and went to the agriworld Orron III to meet up with a group led by Rekkon planning the prison rescue. Though Solo was initially only interested in getting the repairs for his ship, his motives became personal when Chewbacca was captured. After dealing with a traitor in the group, Solo and the others arrived at Stars’ End. In order to gain entry, Han, Atuarre, Pakka, Bollux and Blue Max posed as a troupe of entertainers. The rescue proved successful; freeing Chewbacca, Doc, and the other prisoners and destroying the Stars’ End in the process. After the Falcon was repaired, Solo and Chewbacca left the Corporate Sector for a time, taking Bollux and Blue Max with them in future books…….all of which I read with the same enthusiasm.[18]

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Han_Solo

The Corporate Sector was formed in 490 BBY[9] to free the Republic lawmakers and the Corporate moneymakers from their differences, after being exiled from the Inner Rim to the Tingel Arm. The Corporate Sector originally had a few hundred systems all devoid of intelligent life. Its creation came in the aftermath of the disastrous experiment with corporate control in the Outer Expansion Zone. The new experiment was tried under more careful supervision, the Republic sent the equivalent of a full subsector’s worth of ships to protect the rights of the workers in the sector and to ensure the companies preserved the basic integrity of the environment on the planets in the sector. The corporations were allowed to operate in the sector and could purchase entire regions of space, but were supervised by the Galactic Republic. A general tax was paid directly to the Republic government which enabled the companies to avoid the morass of sector, system, planetary and local taxes found on most worlds in the Republic.  The Corporate Sector thrived because of deregulation and low taxes.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corporate_Sector

Doc was born on Coruscant to Carmilla Vandangante, a corporate viceprex and widow who doted on her only son. He rebelled against his life of luxury and privilege at the age of seven, reprogramming his droid nanny to discard such unpalatable foods as kibla greens, flangth, and stewed gwouch into a living room vase. This demonstrated his technical gifts to his tutors, who soon tailored their lessons to these skills.[1]

Upon graduation, Doc accepted a position at Alkherrodyne Propulsions as design systems team leader. He soon became disenchanted with the corporation’s shoddy workmanship covered with flashy marketing, but swallowed his pride and remained with the company. However, when the Azaria 66 began exploding in minor accidents, Alkherrodyne’s slicers framed Doc. The countless lawsuits wiped out the multi-billion credit Vandangante fortune, and left the name slandered.[1]

Doc became a drifter, eventually making his way into the Corporate Sector, where he met an outlaw tech by the name of Shardra. They immediately fell in love, and when introduced to her profession, Doc found his calling, repairing smuggling ships and souping them up to be some of the fastest in the Corporate Sector. Shardra bore the couple a daughter, Jessa Vandangante, but soon died in an unfortunate fuel dump explosion. Doc found raising a daughter to be a difficult task, especially as the free-spirited woman grew older and started catching the eye of younger smugglers like Han Solo.[1]

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Klaus_Vandangante

The Millennium Falcon was a direct result of very creative free enterprise by a number of previous owners but culminating in the exploits of Han Solo who ran into Doc Vandagante.  In a very large galaxy of ideals, some parts of it ruled by peace-loving pacifists, some ruled by ruthless crime lords, some ruled by sinister agents of tyranny, some just trying to preserve their heritage among the intermingling of many races and species—it was the Corporate Sector that made The Millennium Falcon such a special starship.  Much like today’s world in real life, government and business could not get along—so government gave business free rein on the outer edge of the galaxy away from their control in exchange for the benefits.  The equivalent in the real world might be the Caribbean, Las Vegas, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Hong Kong, or even Disney World where politics leaves the areas alone with their overly intrusive rules and regulations.  The direct benefit is the vibrant economic activity of creative minds such as the fictional Doc Vandagante.  My question as a young fifth grader on Myrtle Beach was why wasn’t the rest of the galaxy the way the Corporate Sector was?  Why would the government within the core worlds want the benefits of the Corporate Sector not on the outer rim of the galaxy, but within the core near the capital planets?  Well, the sad answer was power.

Star Wars is of course a fictional story, but it has so many references to our current life that the mythology accurately reflects many competing ideals that are in actual conflict.  The concepts introduced through the story are familiar to us all.  The Imperials love statism, the Rebels love freedom, and then there are those who might otherwise find sanction in the Corporate Sector with all the good and bad that comes with it.  Some of the planets in the Corporate Sector are ravaged with pollution, and corrupt board of directors just out trying to make money at the expense of others.  It’s not all good in the Corporate Sector—it’s not safe—fair, or even remotely nice.  But, the Corporate Sector was responsible for much of the technological innovation that the rest of the galaxy enjoyed and there is a philosophical argument there worth noting.

The Millennium Falcon is a direct product of the laissez-faire capitalism of the Star Wars universe.  When I returned back to the real world after reading Han Solo at Star’s End it was clear that my public school was intent to teach the politics of the core worlds, what we might call in the real world—socialism.  The public schools were intent to preach the merits of statism—rules and regulations, federal control of everything.  Not me. I wanted a Millennium Falcon—I wanted something like it in my lifetime, and it quickly became clear to me that the kind of education that the public schools were offering would not take the world where I wanted to go.  When John F Kennedy dared America to go to the moon, he tossed at NASA a bit of laissez-faire capitalism to make it happen—and beat the Russians to space.  Stanley Kubrick watched this progress and built is movie 2001: A Space Odyssey around that type of progress.  But once the Berlin Wall came crashing down in 1989, America took its foot off the gas and started over regulating everything once again to give politicians something to do—and that space race progress came to a halt.  Now there has been over 20 years of blatant and gradually increasing socialism coming out of WashingtonD.C. because that’s what everyone was taught in their public schools, and there are no real plans for space under the Obama administration going forward.  They are instead focused on solar panels, street cars, public transit, and a communist care health system.

NASA if turned loose with laissez-faire capitalism could likely build a real functional Millennium Falcon within a decade.  The technology is close enough that at least a vessel that could take off and fly into space with artificial gravity, ion propulsion, life support and other forms of sustainability could be achieved quickly if the real life Doc Vandagantes were turned loose of government regulation.  I know a few of them, I know people who have invented flying cars that could take off from one driveway and land in another half a world away, but has no real interest from large aerospace companies facing gigantic liability concerns, and mountains of paperwork in compliance to purchase—and advance.  I know of people who have cured most cancers, but the FDA has tried to throw them in jail to keep the technology off the market so pharmaceutical companies can continue keeping people sick and addicted to their products.  I know of scientists who have started the process of regenerative growth—who can re-grow fingers lost, or legs amputated.  They are solving the problem of aging and whether or not human beings actually have to die.  They are a threat to the companies who make prosthetic limbs, and ADA legislation that wants more ramps for wheel chairs, elevators for the disabled, and generally more handicapped people to use for political advancement in the here and now.  Those types of people will gladly sacrifice the opportunities of tomorrow for power today.

Statists inside the beltway of Washington D.C. are the first to say that if people never got sick, never died, and had unlimited freedom of transportation, then the world would become over polluted, over populated, and a menace to itself.  They are still thinking small, because they obviously never read anything like Han Solo at Star’s End as kids—an act I’m sure Chris Lee shares with me.  People like Chris and I ask ourselves why can’t I have my own Millennium Falcon to take off and go to work in orbit around earth where all the pollution and byproduct of production could be dumped into space preserving planet earth forever.  When work was completed at the end of the day, we would just fly home and land in our back yards with our Millennium Falcons.  Why can’t we have it–because we live on earth with restrictive governments that hate laissez-faire capitalism?

I’ve read many of the European classics and compared to Star Wars, they are boring.  I love Shakespeare, but I would take any Star Wars book over William Shakespeare any day of the week.  Shakespeare was a better writer than Brian Daley who wrote Han Solo at Star’s End without question.  But Daley is much more positive as a thinker than Shakespeare, and that optimism about what’s possible is what Star Wars is all about.  Yet much of the modern statism that is infecting the world is because of European culture, Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, Dante’s Inferno, or the master himself James Joyce of Finnegan’s Wake fame, which I have read and understand. Give me Star Wars over Finnegan’s Wake and give me the Millennium Falcon over a fu**ing street car.  Give me a manufacturing plant floating around earth dumping its garbage into space or on the surface of the moon as opposed to the socialism of Brazil where everyone lives in a card board hut.  Give me a Corporate Sector that can build a Millennium Falcon in America so that I can have one as opposed to the dying towns of Detroit choking on socialism and feel-good progressivism.

What Chris Lee is attempting to do is no different from what Doc Vandagantes did in the book Han Solo at Star’s End for The Millennium Falcon. Chris isn’t working for NASA, or some other group building Falcons for the general population.  Government will not get behind such an effort, so Chris is doing it on his own.  I was a bit skeptical at first even though I wanted to see the results.  But after Chris showed off the latest cockpit construction after many months of meticulous effort, I can see clearly that he will be successful so long as he can continue to fund the project. It is for that reason that I am starting an icon on my side bar here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom encouraging my readers here to help Chris with his project.  I think it’s important.  Is it as important as sex trafficking in the world, or the sad state of current politics———-no, but yes.  Yes because Chris’s Millennium Falcon project is about the most important ingredient to human society—imagination—and the gumption to make things happen.  Chris wants like I do to walk inside a real life Millennium Falcon—and he’s making it happen on his dime, with his time, and his effort.  And now that I’ve seen it, I can’t help but wonder what our world would be like if government simply got behind people like Chris and allowed them to function in a Corporate Sector of America where inventions like the Falcon could flourish, instead of trying to heard people into cities through progressive politics and force them onto government sponsored mass transit.  The Millennium Falcon is a larger symbol than that—it is the result of laissez-faire capitalism and a hope for mankind that resides in the spirit of ideals and innovation—and a lot of perspiration.

That old Han Solo at Star’s End novel still sits near my reading chair.  It’s now torn, and very worn out from years of handling—but it still evokes in me boundless imagination opportunities and optimism.  Many people look at what Chris is doing in Nashville and read what I have said here and think that we are grown up kids who love the escapism of cinema, or fantasy which has a grain of truth to it.  But what do we want to escape from—and to what.  Speaking for myself, I wish to escape from the clutches of those with undeveloped imaginations—people who avoid thinking rather than thriving from it. For me, a personal Millennium Falcon would allow me to leave those sluggish minds behind in a flight for the stars and the endless possibilities available outside of the laws comb-over politicians have constructed just to increase their power base.  My wife has read Han Solo at Star’s End—in fact she’s read every Star Wars book ever written up to this point which is in the hundreds—and she understands why there are Millennium Falcon’s all over our bedroom.  Many don’t because they failed to let novels like Han Solo at Star’s End capture their imaginations at a young age, or failed to enjoy a film like Star Wars for whatever reason.  They lack the mechanism to enjoy those kinds of things and it is they who are weights on minds like mine.  I want to escape from their limitations, their restrictions, and their lives stuck in quicksand of self-construction.  The Millennium Falcon to me is freedom from all that, and a symbol against restriction because The Falcon is a pirate vessel built by illegal components that’s faster than anything regulations in the Republic or Empire would allow.  And that’s why I love it, and why people like Chris are dedicating their lives to see a real life Millennium Falcon—even if they have to build the damn thing themselves.  I sleep better at night knowing that there are people like Chris and his friends out there—beyond the reaches of those who use rules and regulations to mask the lack of imagination that plagues their thoughts like a cancer—and the democracies of tyranny that they create with good intentions imposed from faulty thinking.  The Millennium Falcon is an escape from those who don’t understand and a celebration by those who do.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Hoffman Vs. Dixon: David “Kern” and a Goliath “Commissioner”

There is a good reason that I stand with Roger Reynolds and David Kern over the recent controversy surrounding Butler County Commissioner, Don Dixon.  Before I tell this story remember that I’d rather deal with Republicans who are fighting each other over what’s right than a bunch of collectivist Democrats.  But then again, Don Dixon was a Democrat all through the 80’s and 90’s and only decided to become a Republican in the year 2000, when it was obvious that conservative politics ruled Butler County.  When politicians use their public office in an abusive way—to obtain benefits for their friends, family, and political allies, right is right—and its not always easy to tell who is telling the truth, or even what “right” is.  In the recent case of Don Dixon, he obviously gave his son Brent benefits from his political holdings over the years—to the direct benefit of his family.  Don’s angry because Kern and Reynolds called him out on it—finally.  Here is the story from the newspaper.

Two board of election employees – including the son of a county commissioner – resigned in the wake of allegations that they were receiving full-time benefits for working part-time jobs.

The county made about $200,000 contributions toward their medical and dental insurance and also paid toward their pensions.

Republican Brent Dixon, 44, and Democrat Garry Hicks, 61, resigned this month after Butler County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser became involved and issued a “cease and desist” letter to the board of elections.

Brent Dixon was hired 22 years ago during the tenure of retired elections director Betty McGary, who has had a long-time relationship with Don Dixon. McGary quit in 2011 after 33 years.

“That’s the most lowdown sleazy, nasty comment I’ve ever heard. If you want to talk about me and you want to talk about my political history that’s one thing. Stay out of my life, out of my personal life. Roger Reynolds doesn’t have a millionth of the integrity she’s got,” he said. “I don’t pick on his wife.”

He threatened to sue Reynolds and Kern.

Don Dixon, who has led a crackdown on county spending since the economic downturn, was outraged that Reynolds had dragged McGary into the flap. He referred to McGary as his wife. He said the allegations were politically motivated.

Don Dixon said county commissioners have no control over the board of elections even though county commissioners approve the board’s annual budget.

Reynolds said Butler County contributed more than $156,000 towards Brent Dixon’s medical insurance over the years. Hicks was hired in 2001 and the county contributed about $35,000 toward his medical insurance premiums. Hicks recently was only taking the county’s dental insurance. Reynolds did not have figures for how much the county contributed toward their pensions.

With changes in the state pension effective Jan. 1, 2014, the 14 percent raises put Dixon’s and Hicks’ monthly wages over the $600 benchmark that enabled them to continue to earn a full month of credit for pension benefits. Before the changes, employees had to earn a minimum monthly salary of $250 to receive one full month of pension credit.

“There’s a lot of questions related to how Betty McGary would go along with this and authorized this as a director when it directly impacted Don Dixon’s son,” Reynolds said.

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2013/11/18/commissioners-son-got-pension-benefits-for-part-time-work/

Don Dixon can cry foul all he wants, but the bottom line is that his son was given help by government through his father which is an abuse of power.  It doesn’t mean that Dixon is a bad person, but has simply done what many politicians fall victim to, they abuse their power for personal benefit which ultimately cost tax payers a lot of money.  When there are many tens of thousands of people like Don Dixon doing for his son Brent what he did, the cost to tax payers is catastrophically high.

I have some experience with the Dixons that is a bit of a precursor to this kind of behavior which I have never forgotten.  Way back in 1979, I was in a Soup Box Derby race with Brent in the finales of the Hamilton Jaycees sponsored event held behind Fort Hamilton Hospital.  Back then, the race was a big deal in the Hamilton/Fairfield area and my car The Beast, seen in the picture above dominated the event.  CLICK HERE FOR A REVIEW OF HOW “THE BEAST” CAME TO BE.  Brent and I raced in what was one of the closest races ever done in that event.  We raced three times in the finals which was a climatic centerpiece that had a good part of Hamilton on the edge of their seats.  I won the first race convincingly.  During the second race it was so close that nobody could agree whether or not Brent won or I did.  So we raced a third time.  Many believe that the results were much closer the third time than the second—but by rule, they couldn’t declare a tie, so somebody had to make a decision.  After 15 minutes of grueling review, Brent was declared the winner to the roar of a cheering crowd.  The Dixons were well-known around Hamilton and very politically powerful—so people knew their name.  I was an unknown living on a country road in obscurity.Derby 79

I wasn’t unhappy with the results.  I was proud of my efforts.  Brent had a slick car that many people believe was built by his father’s people.  Brent had a car that was built to win.  My car was one that my dad and I built-in our basement and back yard over many months.  A lot of sweat and love went into my car and it showed.  Brent’s looked professional, mine looked like it was made by an 11-year-old—which it was.  But even so, I had won 9 out of 11 races including the final—which wasn’t bad.  But my dad swore that I had won both photo finishes as he had placed himself on the sight line.  He was outraged.

Naturally, I thought that my dad was just cheering for his son the way all proud parents do who believes that their children are the best at everything.  Brent’s dad Don was near my father with his entourage of ass-kissers and of course Don believed that his son had won.  The two dads were looking at the situation from opposing positions.  I didn’t care.  I was happy to have done well, but my dad was furious on the way home.  The entire time we loaded my car onto the trailer and drove home he talked about Butler County politics and declared that the race was so close that politically the officials gave the win to Brent because of who his dad was.  I wasn’t so sure, but what he was saying made sense.

The BeastAfterwards, the media seemed more interested in my story than Brent’s including the Journal News story seen above—because I was the underdog and as the reporter declared, people like the underdog.  People liked my car, they like the David and Goliath story, they liked reading about Hoffman versus Dixon—where obviously Dixon was Goliath.  As the reporter concluded his interview with me and took his pictures at a spot that is now a sports bar where my home used to be located, he winked at me and said…………”you won kid.  I was there………I saw it with my own eyes.  But politics is more powerful than heart.  You have a lot of heart, just not enough politics.”

I watched that reporter leave and thought hard about what he said, and it likely sent me on a journey that has been over 30 years in the making.  I value my heart and the products of my mind over the connections that I could make kissing ass through politics.  I have avoided politics my entire life, likely because of my experiences against Brent Dixon at the Hamilton Soap Box Derby in 1979.  I’ve watched Brent grow up in the shadows of his father his entire life and I would never trade positions with him.  Brent has to look in the mirror every day and know that much of what he has obtained in life he gained through his father—whether it was the decision of a photo finish victory against me, or a cute little job with the Board of Elections and all the perks that came with it.  If I live a hundred more years I would never wish to trade places with Brent Dixon.

When I was 11 years old and my soap box derby car was parked next to Brent’s slick black and gray professionally constructed Dixon winning machine I wouldn’t have traded him my car for his—even though they were both equally as fast.  The reason is that I built mine with my dad with a lot of hard work and that made my victories that day much more cherished.  Brent won in the end, but like many things in his life, he won with the help of politics, which cheapens such victories to the point where they’re worthless.

Now many years later, on the fallout of a Lakota levy election loss where the politically connected won over the rag-tag efforts of those standing against tax increases, I wouldn’t trade places with those people for the same reason that I wouldn’t trade with Brent.  Dixon the son won at many things in life because politics helped him get over the top.  I have watched this happen to many people, and I have fought against it as I always will.  It didn’t surprise me at all to see that Brent had eventually found himself in trouble over such a thing because it wasn’t the first time.  What did surprise me is that David and Roger stood up to a respected Republican Commissioner who has his roots going back decades into Butler County politics.  The fact that they did speak out against Dixon speaks volumes about a wave of politics that is about to hit Butler County in the years to come—a political system that the levy supporters will not like, and the power brokers like Dixon who have spent a life-time nurturing their name so that they could help their loved ones with looted money and resources gained through government offices.

I have been in many photo finishes, and many of them were lost the same way that my rendezvous with Brent Dixon ended—with politics defeating raw heart.  But………..in the end, even after all these years the results of two lives shaped by a Soup Box Derby race proved drastically different because one found their life shaped by who their dad was and the other shaped by the kind of man their dad allowed them to be.  That subtle difference leads to winning a war by letting the battles go to the politically connected and otherwise manipulative causing a result that always ends with self-destruction over a span of decades.  A war won is more valuable than battles shaped by political influence, not for what the spoils of victory can give to pad a bank account, but for what it brings out truly in a heart and soul.  Battles are won by people like the Dixons.  Wars are won by those with heart…………..and a mind that still feeds it.  In confronting Dixon, Reynolds and Kern showed a lot of heart, and I admire them for it.  David Kern specifically has spent a life-like the biblical David, overlooked and quietly residing in the background for the most part.  Commissioner Dixon represents all the high-profile prestige of the Biblical Goliath, who expects to use his power and prestige collected over many years to crush his enemies.  What happened over the board of elections scandal is that an actual David named Kern cast a single stone against Goliath, and the results were predictably epic.  Because the David of Butler County—Kern and Roger Reynolds are out to win a war—as they have for years endured the battles won by Don Dixon.  And if Goliath was not guilty to begin with, the single stone would have had no effect.

In the end, heart crushes politics.  Sometimes it just takes decades to achieve victory. Most of the time, it takes more than a photo finish, but enough time provided for Goliath to overlook a single stone that could bring him down, and the will to cast it when the rest of the world believes it to be unwise.  That is what I learned in my race with Brent Dixon in 1979 and the lives of two people who moved from there into radically different directions.

Here’s more on Don Dixon and a good indication of the deeper politics involved.  CLICK HERE.  

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Even Losing The Bucs Are The Best: What is really behind team sports

I’m still on the fence about professional football; my interest in it has declined greatly over the last several years because of how it facilitates collectivism, and education institutions supported by left-winged radicals.  Football is a fun game that is cool, yet serves as a cover for the content being taught in these institutions, and the general collectivism exhibited by them.  For instance, a graduate of Ohio State University generally says “we” when referring to the school they attended—and they do this in the same way that people say “we” when referring to their favorite sports team.  “We scored a touchdown in the third quarter,” or “we lost a close game,” are just a few examples, and the behavior is learned in the education institutions.  Because of its “coolness” football serves as cover for all the bad things happening in the class rooms being taught by liberal leaning educators.  Society accepts the bad so that they can have the good, the entertainment of high school football under the Friday night lights, or a Saturday NCAA game between Ohio State and Michigan, or the fabulous Sunday afternoon football of the professionals—who are all the best and brightest of the college and high school players.

To compound matters, my favorite team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have had a bad year—a new coach learning his way around the NFL has struggled to find his niche as he pushes out the last remnants of the Raheem Morris era—targeting specifically Josh Freeman—the starting quarterback.  So there hasn’t been much to cheer for on my end, however, as I’ve stated emphatically on several occasions I would be a fan of the Buccaneers if they never won another game—because I support the ownership—not specific players and coaches.  I support the culture that the Glazer family attempts to create around their Tampa football franchise, and admire the grit of their ownership.

This grit was on full display during Monday Night Football against the embittered Miami Dolphins on the night Warren Sapp’s jersey was retired at half time.  Sapp was drafted by my favorite coach of all time, Sam Wyche who also drafted John Lynch and Derrick Brooks—three guys who could have only found themselves brought to the same place at the same time by someone like Wyche.  Since that period of time, Tampa has tried to duplicate that chemistry again, and have relentlessly tried various options trying to find that same intense spark.  They have had some small fires, but no explosions they way they did in 2002 when they finally won a Superbowl by the team that Wyche built-in 1995.  Wyche was at the front of Pirsig’s train.  Up until that Monday Night game the Bucs had lost all their games, most of them by narrow margins, but a loss is a loss and they were looking for their first.  They played with a passion that was entertaining, and admirable and reminded me why I have always loved that team—they have a never say die attitude which I find enchanting—even when they lose.  That mentality comes from the ownership.

I would rather be a fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who lose every game they play so long as they played like they did on Monday Night Football the night that Warren Sapp’s number was retired.  If they lose, it’s OK with me so long as they take off their rivals head while doing it.  That is why I like the Bucs—and always have.  It will continue as long as the Glazers keep the spirit of that team with a philosophy which embodies that behavior.

Maybe it was something Sapp said to Greg Schiano the head coach of the Bucs prior to the game when the two had dinner, but on the following Sunday Tampa beat the crap out of the Atlanta Falcons with an effort that looked Superbowl worthy.  Football is that kind of game; it’s a game of capitalism that has many socialist tendencies looting off it for their own survival.  I love the capitalist elements of football, but I despise the socialism.  And of all the football teams in the world the only one I actually enjoy with any sense of loyalty is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

But I never say “we” when referencing the Bucs………….it’s always “they.”  They do the work, they do the hitting, they take the chances, and they win or lose the games.  I do not share in that activity with them.  I simply enjoy watching them try.  And that is the biggest difference between how I see football, and most everyone else.  For those others, they have an unhealthy relationship with football that opens their minds to statism coming through their education institutions that cause them to say “we” when dealing with the actions of others.  When the word “we” comes into play, football is a bad thing—because it allows those who do not actually contribute to the victory to believe that they helped win a game—and that is socialism.

When the beer belly father cheers on the kids of a high school football team, generally such onlookers are reliving the days that have passed them by—with their advanced ages they can no longer run, jump and leap through the air—so they cheer on the young little saplings with great enthusiasm and say “we” because that is the only way they can touch such memories—is through others.  When the middle-aged guy makes a bet over a college football game with his cubical all decked out with paraphernalia of his alumnus and declares that “we” will bet “you,” he is living his life through the college students of that college team with a dangerous form of collectivism.  His most glorious days are now behind him and only the college football team can recapture them for him.  Or when there are drunken fights at a professional game over whose team wins or loses, the participants are really fighting over the lack of control the team outcome has reminded them really occurs in their actual lives.  So the reminder is something to fight over—to suppress the knowledge that all their cheering and prayers had no bearing on the outcome.  I don’t watch the Tampa Bay Bucs for any of these reasons.  I watch it for the warfare displayed on the game field; I watch it for the capitalist gains of better players suppressing those at a tactical disadvantage.  I watch it for the hard hits, the strategy, and the passion of winning—or trying to.  I watch it for the spectacle……..purely.  In that regard, Tampa could lose the rest of its games for the next 10 years and I would still be a fan so long as they played the way they did on Monday Night Football on a November evening when Sapp was memorialized and the Bucs won their first game of 2013.  If it were the last, it would be fine with me, because my love of them extends beyond any tentacles of collectivism, but the joy of living, bleeding, fighting and surviving to fight another day and wrestle from an opponent a hard-fought victory that is as elusive as a purple moon in a sun blazed sky.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

‘Killing Kennedy’ The Movie: Why there are conspiracy theories…………..

It took me over a week to watch Killing Kennedy, the film done by the National Geographic Channel and produced by Ridley Scott based on the best-selling novel by Bill O’Reilly.  But I’m glad I finally got around to it on my DVR because I learned a few things.  I am usually turned off by the whole Kennedy assassination issue because I think it took American focus off our self-reliance at a critical point in our history and I don’t like the collective sorrow that came out of the event.  Also after Oliver Stone’s film from the early 90’s, there are a lot of questions surrounding Kennedy.  Kennedy was a good president but he made a lot of mistakes, just like in his real life where he was too fast and loose with women, too connected to organized crime, opened the door for public sector unions to organize in government, but he did well during the Cuban Missile Crises, and setting the stage for the Space Race.  So Kennedy is a mixed bag, and certainly wasn’t the worst President America ever had—but I don’t feel energized by him enough to study too deeply.  When I think of Kennedy, I think of the struggle against communism and the 60s in general, and I hate both of those things, so I typically avoid references to the period except when they scream out for attention.  O’Reilly’s book, and now the movie have successfully done exactly that—brought that attention to my eyes with screaming fury.

After watching Killing Kennedy it became obvious to me that many of the conspiracy theories floating around about the assassination come from the left—from sources like Oliver Stone.  I did not know that Lee Harvey Oswald was such a staunch Marxist, even going to Russia to live and work for a while.  Oswald had a Russian wife that he brought back to Dallas, and the source of his anger at Kennedy was in his hope that Cuba would succeed as a communist country.  I have spoken often about this period in American history and how persistent communism was by many people—particularly the universities, and seeing Oswald behave the way he did toward communism was something I did not know, but fit perfectly into what I already knew about the period.  The political left obviously does not want Oswald to be at fault for the Kennedy killing because they share with him a sympathy for communism, so they are looking for every other excuse they conger up away from the reality that Oswald was a communist nut case.

There were still many unanswered questions that will probably never be properly answered, as to why the FBI was so involved in Oswald’s life, and why Jack Ruby—a strip club owner was so passionate about the Kennedy killing to assassinate Oswald but O’Reilly like he does so often only looked at the evidence the way a journalist does, and those facts put on the shoulders of Lee Harvey Oswald a fanatic for Marxism who wanted the communists to succeed in Cuba and elsewhere in the world.  Oswald saw Kennedy as a threat to that reality because of his stance against Cuba.

Many of these elements are present in our American life today.  The political Left and Right back then had to deal with many Americans like Oswald who wanted to give communism a chance—so they bent a bit and moved to the left in both parties to take away the temptation of marching in the streets the way communists gained ground in places like Russia and China.  I think this is why Kennedy gave public sector unions a chance through executive order to thrive—aside from the appeasement of the organized crime elements in his life.  Kennedy’s vice-president LBJ, started the Great Society programs to take the edge off the communist threat rolling through American politics at the time.  The results of this assault are seen today in the statist position of government against the people of the nation.  Communism is clearly present in the modern education system, in the social programs of the 60s and all elements of progressivism.  But Kennedy and LBJ thought they were fighting communism by yielding a bit to it, but what they really did was bend enough to allow elements of communism into American society to prevent more people like Lee Harvey Oswald from rising to prominence and trying to kill American politicians.  Their appeasement took the edge off the hard-line communists, Marxists, and socialists—which were a much bigger problem in America than people think.

Bill O’Reilly is entirely too moderate for me, but I do watch him almost every night because he is as fair and balanced of a reporter as there is.  He does let the facts speak, and it is his brand of journalism that I find attractive, and why he is one of the most successful best-selling authors in American history.  I trust Bill O’Reilly, but I think he is too mild in his views.  He is however a product of the 60’s, just like I am a product of the 80’s and tend to see things the way Ronald Reagan did—at least the act that came out of The White House.  But the facts are the facts, and so long as facts drive the arguments, political ideology—or conviction is irrelevant—and O’Reilly can always be trusted to present the facts that are known, and reveal what they add up to.

I am glad to have seen Killing Kennedy—it was a good production that told a story of a dark period in American history and should be seen by everyone.  It should be shown in schools, it should be shown by parents to their children, and grandparents to their entire clans during Thanksgiving—because it’s an important film that captures a very volatile period which we all share still.  The effects of the politics of that period still resonate like ghosts haunting the house that the American Republic built—and the specters are ideologues of communism who are just as vicious and manipulative as Lee Harvey Oswald, just not as short-tempered and insecure to act on their hopes of violence.  These ghosts act through legislation to achieve the same spread of Marxism to every corner of the globe—a strategy that was well beyond Oswald—a reality that only conspiracy theory can attempt to out-shine, because the Kennedy assassination was about a lot of things—but in the end it was about defending communism from an America that was the enemy of Marxist ideology—and supporters showed then as they do now, that they will do anything and harm anyone to advance their cause.

Nice job Bill “O.”

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Joe Rehm Pleads Guilty To Stealing No Lakota Signs: Why the 2013 election results should be “recalled”

Just a bit of a recap on the election results at Lakota.  Although it is set for a recount, Butler County officials should scrutinize those ballots heavily, because it is now obvious that there were coordinated efforts to cheat on the election.  That is not the utterances of a sore loser, it is a statement of observed fact.  Just prior to the election I posted the pictures of a person who was caught stealing No Lakota Levy signs.  YOU CAN SEE HIM HERE.  Even though many people especially on the pro tax side believe this is a small issue, Michael Clark in The Cincinnati Enquirer made mention of it saying in his reporting that No Lakota Levy had noticeably less signs out than the pro side.  Subconsciously, this lets readers know that No Lakota Levy is not making a strong political showing, which wasn’t the case.  The direct result, the reason No Lakota Levy spent so much on signs, ads in the newspaper and etc., was to show voters that it was worth their time to vote against the levy.  However, pro tax supporters because they didn’t have an answer to the No Lakota Levy message had to let voters know that it was pointless to resist, so they sought to sabotage the message.  In a close election, such as the situation at Lakota where the public school won a tax increase by less than 1% it was voter turnout that made all the difference, and stealing the Lakota signs was a way of telling No Voters, to stay home.

Well, the guy in that picture was named Joe Rehm and on Wednesday November 13th, 2013 he was in Butler County court as part of the 10 AM cases.  At 12:20 PM Judge McDonough finally called Joe up to find out how he’d plead to the sign theft of No Lakota Levy signs, since he was captured on film and published red-handed here on Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom.    Joe didn’t look as smug as he did in the pictures showing him clearly stealing a No Lakota Levy sign while bragging about it on the phone.  My friend Graeme George spoke to the court against Joe saying to the Judge, “Because of the actions of Joe and others, so many signs of ours (No Lakota Levy) were stolen that we lost the defeat of the levy.

We lost by less than 1% of the votes cast.  Sign thefts made a lot more of a difference than that.

Therefore, people like Joe cost taxpayers 14 million dollars in a tax increases every year.”

Is it an inflated claim to suggest that the sign thefts cost the election of 2013?  Well, we’ll never know because the thefts were just as bad this year as they have been in the past.  No Lakota Levy spent thousands of dollars on signs knowing the importance of having a political presence.  No Lakota Levy didn’t have the benefit of sending home pro levy material directly to parents from the school, or using teachers to twist the mind of the children into stealing signs after football games on cold Friday nights, so No Lakota Levy had to play things straight, and expensive.  In court, Joe Rehm plead guilty but declared that the sign he stole wasn’t worth more than $2, but as we know he’s not the only one.  This upcoming Wednesday, one week later, three juveniles caught stealing signs in a similar way will go through the same process.  They’ll have to explain why they did it, and who put them up to it.  Of course they too will say that the signs were only a couple of dollars each, and they didn’t think it was a big deal.

Judge McDonough because Graeme pointed out the cost to taxpayers of the levy passage, really lambasted Joe for his wrongful actions.  It was a good show, but Joe was only fined $200 plus $40, and $125 court costs, for a total of $365. The judge did not impose the 60 day jail sentence.  Even less will be done to the three kids when they go through the same process.  They’ll be fined, the court will make its money, the election will still be won, the signs will still have been stolen, and the tax payers will still have to pay every year $14 million in new taxes to take care of a teacher’s union contract that wants even more money than they already make.  No Lakota Levy will not be reimbursed for their loses which was thousands of dollars, and they are still on the hook for paying the increases in taxes.

In previous attempts the media covered these sign thefts, which at least put the actions on the news letting people know what was happening.  This time, everyone stayed off the story, the credit to that goes to Randy at Lakota.  The signs simply disappeared keeping the anger from the imposition in the shadows away from unmotivated voters, which helped keep the No Vote turnout, low.  The tax payers were cheated in just about every aspect with the Lakota levy, Lakota used their internal resources of the school to promote the levy sending literature directly home to parents, they funneled money through their PTA groups to outspend No Lakota Levy by nearly 5 times, and they utilized a public relations employee paid for by the tax payers to keep the media focused away from sign theft, sex scandals, school shooting threats, but on the fact that Lakota hadn’t seen a tax increase since 2005………and as Sheriff Jones stated……….”it was time,” time for a tax increase as if there was an invisible watch that says such things without any rationale behind it.

For every Joe Rehm during the election there were likely dozens if not hundreds just like him who stole one sign at a time and called a teacher on the phone hoping to get a piece of ass off them for stealing a No Lakota Levy sign as a badge of honor.  Joe wasn’t even from Lakota but was “otherwise” engaged in the district.  One can only imagine the phone records pulled if Judge McDonough had chosen to pursue that evidence…………what Joe was saying……….”Hey baby, I stole a No Lakota Levy sign………….are you proud of me?  Will you suck my c**k now…………………..please……………..I’m a nice progressive beta man who thinks you work hard 7.5 hours a day.  Hey, I cleaned the passenger seat out of my stupid little hippie car and am ready to take you to Penera Bread for some overpriced soup.  With your low wages of $65K per year you teachers work so hard, and it’s just unfair.  Will you suck my c**k.  Hey, it’s for the kids, those poor little darlings.  This No Lakota Levy sign is stupid; I’m bringing it to your house to prove I did it.  You’ll be so proud of me.”  Looking at Joe talking on the phone and knowing he stole our signs and plead guilty to it, that’s what I think of—and his motives behind it.  It pisses me off because in the end, Lakota got their tax increase, Joe got off with a slap on the hand, just like the kids on Wednesday will, the media didn’t give a damn, and the bad guys won by exploiting children, manipulating the public, and cheating.

With all that said, I would care to guess that the teacher’s union stuffed at least 500 votes that would probably be cast away as illegal ballots if anyone cared to pursue justice in a close election.  But they won’t, because ultimately most people are on the phone with some special someone who works for the Lakota school system and they are asking that someone for the same kind of favor I imagine Joe was asking for when he stole the No Lakota Levy sign.  Everyone wants a favor, but nobody stands for what’s right at any level—which is why children are exploited, and tax payers are on the hook for $14 MILLION dollars a year every year likely forever.

Hope the sucking and whatever was worth it.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com