We talked about this prior to Trump’s election, that if he took the restrains off capitalism that were artificially placed there by the previous administrations to make labor unions and other progressive groups happy, that the economy would take off. 500 days into Trump’s first term that is exactly what has happened with a remarkable June posting of unemployment nationally at 3.8% and adding 223,000 jobs in the month of May. That is quite remarkable and is an indicator of many good things to come, but also comes with it problems that need resolutions. If we are going to continue to have economic expansion at a rate of 3% to 5% which is the objective of the Trump White House, then we must find creative ways around the unemployment challenges. At 3.8% that basically indicates that anyone who wants a job has one, so further economic expansion requires a more creative use of that traditional work force number, and that opens up lots of exciting opportunities.
Recently as public-school teachers across the country were striking and demanding higher pay because there is a teacher shortage, the management of those states where these strikes were occurring caved to the pressure and gave the public employees what they wanted so that a physical teacher could resume their place at the front of a classroom essentially baby-sitting children. Fast food restaurants are in the same situation with many radical groups demanding $15 an hour to perform entry-level skills positions in the employment sector—and even the film industry is top-heavy on labor due to their union contracts which demands certain parameters for their members which studios must adhere to, which prevent innovation and actual job fulfilment in other sectors of the economy where people could be used more efficiently. And that is the danger—a good one—that a rapidly expanding economy with low unemployment unleashes. Traditional jobs will have to be consolidated and more automation must be introduced to fill the easy jobs while the thoughtful creative minds of humans must adapt the more complex positions.
What that means is that as a society, we can’t afford to waste a good human mind on a babysitting job in public education or throw a bunch of young workers at a fast food position when a machine could easily and more rhythmically do a better job at mediocre tasks. We need to cut staff in many of these unionized positions and reassign the personnel to market sectors that are emerging with the expanding economy to fulfill the needs of growth. And to do that our global workplace needs to make a decision that is currently at an impasse, to reject the basic foundations of progressivism and to fully embrace the wonders of capitalism so that we can all do what needs to be done in the coming years.
Reportedly Kim Jong Un wants to put a McDonald’s in North Korea—which is a sign of what I have always suspected. Trump is a great strategist and many things are happening rapidly that are not being reported on the nightly news because honestly the reporters don’t have a mind to see all these exciting developments for what they are. When the Korean peninsula is united once again ending a 70 year war, and capitalism from South Korea flows into the borders of North Korea, China is going to be in a whole lot of trouble. Yet Trump has agreed to hold the big summit between the United States and North Korea to facilitate this wonderful event so that the Chinese can say that they were a part of that miracle. However, China as a communist country does not want or need a free North Korea. It’s not good for them and their static hold on a huge economic sector of the Asian corridor to see capitalism win over communism. A McDonald’s in North Korea is a big deal. It means rapid economic expansion for a part of the world that has a lot of pent-up energy, a lot of workers very eager to participate in the fruits of capitalism for the benefits of their families—for the first time in many of their memories. And once the world watches North Korea become a region of capitalism from its former dim communist, overly regulated social trends, they’ll all want to join in the game.
Part of Trump’s plan to stop all the immigration into the United States is to make other places in the world better for its people preventing them from wanting to come in the first place, and that starts with economic expansion of those countries so that there are more opportunities in North Korea, Vietnam, Mexico, South America, and Africa—which will make life much better at home and help the United States with their massive immigration problems, because we just can’t afford to keep putting all the immigrants on a tax payer funded social safety net. There is no reason to do that if people have opportunities in their home countries which then have an impact on American domestic policy because it frees up cash to do other things with.
However, that means that the United States also won’t always have fresh bodies coming into America looking for jobs. So while there is low unemployment in America presently, the situation will get even better than that. That means that unemployment numbers will have to go backwards quite a bit more under the zero threshold and that jobs and unemployment measurements will have to be redefined, and repurposed. That doctorial science teacher wasting their days in a classroom needs to be working at Space X, or on the latest nearby Hyperloop while something like Alexia works the classroom with artificial intelligence handing out homework assignments and giving lectures to the students. There doesn’t need to be a hallway full of teachers in a government school, those employees could be doing something else. Let droids and robots do all those average tasks while the humans step up their game to meet the needs of an emerging economy.
We are all about to hit a very explosive renaissance of science and technology met with an infusion of wealth creation because of the fall of communism and the spread of capitalism to places like North Korea and many other places that will follow. It’s not an accident that progressive sectors of our current political system are weary of robots and A.I. technology because they are pushing to keep caps on our economic development to stick with the employment matrix that has currently been established by labor unions in the 20th century. However, no longer will that be acceptable. Who says we have to stay within an economic framework of only working 5 days a week one shift a day. Why not work 7 days a week all shifts of a day—especially if we open up the technology sector to robots and artificial intelligence. Just think how great it is to get money from an ATM all hours of the day no matter what day it is—even on a Sunday morning. Waiting for a live teller to handle bank business just isn’t practical in our fast-moving economy—and that situation is about to explode. Why wait for a hamburger when a machine could make it for you better than a human and they’d work all day every day always serving customer needs. And why have a static education system that takes 12 years to finish when it could be done in half the time and the college level education started much sooner so that workers could help the market earlier than later? And why have a physical teacher when you can have Alexia? The answer is that we don’t need to do things the way we have. We can be very creative and meet these exciting challenges with boldness because that’s what it’s going to take. Timidity has no place in such a rapidly expanding economy. Opportunities are lost to delay and apathy, and under the Trump White House, the stage has been finally set for the bold and the adventurous. And that is good for everyone!
It used to be that when the FBI raided the house of a politician that the assumption of guilt was quite clear, but not anymore. However, since the Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger resigned as the lead Republican in charge of legislative work at the state house last month the place has been frozen at a critical time leading up to the midterm elections. From what we know of the case so far, it looks like Rosenberger is under a political hit and to survive it he is putting all his energy into defending himself from the FBI raid and the aftermath of it because as anybody knows who’s been through something like that, the legal bills can be ominous, and very distracting. And that would be the objective. With the liberal John Kasich leaving the governorship in 2018 and a key senate seat up for grabs between Sharrod Brown and the great Republican Jim Renacci, Democrats are making a power move and they want to take over the majority in Ohio at the House of Representatives. It wouldn’t be surprising to learn ten years from now or twenty that the FBI was playing a role in picking this investigation into Rosenberger to happen now so that the chaos left in the power vacuum might divide Republicans so that Democrats could take over in November by benefiting from the pandemonium. It’s not just the recent evidence of the FBI going after the Trump campaign, this kind of thing has been happening for many years—the agency is now quite well-known for becoming weaponized to attack political opponents, and as government workers, they go after Republicans in favor of Democrats—because that’s how things are in politics in this years of 2018.
With that stage set, it is important for Republicans to nominate a new speaker of the house quickly so that the legislative agenda can get back on track and all the House members can work together to keep their majority this upcoming fall. But right now, the House is more than split on who should take the gavel because it illustrates the philosophic divide between old Kasich Republicans and the new Trump conservatives. But as John Boehner has recently stated, the Republican Party is now Donald Trump’s and Ohio is one of the most powerful states in the union, politically on the federal level—which will increase in importance with each month that draws closer to November. The Democrats aren’t exactly stupid in their political movements, they may be idiots when it comes to personal philosophy, but regarding politics, they know how to play the game especially when the FBI is obviously on their side trying to work the strike zone in favor of their position.
There is a little game going on with Larry Householder who used to be the speaker from 2001 to 2004. He wants the gavel back in 2019 so he’s not interested in a bloody fight for a temporary seat which is what all the fuss is over. He’d rather let everyone else show their cards and get nice and bloodied so that after the House holds its majority after the fall elections he could then swoop in and declare that only he has the experience to be the next speaker. The trouble with Larry is that he has taken a considerable amount of money from the labor unions and that means trouble down the road for him and the leverage that labor unions always put on law makers. In Ohio that topic is tricky, we are not yet a Right to Work state like many of the states are that touch our borders so in making a pro-business foundation to draw in big manufacturing opportunities, Right to Work is a major consideration and Larry Householder will never allow a bill to enter the house so long as he holds the gavel, and that is one less option in the fight to be a more competitive state economically. Since John Kasich turned soft after his defeat of Senate Bill 5 which went after public sector unions in 2012, he has turned Republicans away from Right to Work. And these days because of Trump, labor unions are actually voting Republican for a change which is new. Trump continues to win their support and Jim Renacci is going to continue to garner support as this is a new aspect of party politics that has certainly changed in favor of Republicans. But in making decisions economically, the union lobby can’t have its influence on the House floor, and Larry leans left when it comes to union business. Not a good thing when a major business like Space X or Tesla might locate regionally just 90 miles to the west at the border of Indiana and pretty much get the same things they could in Ohio, access to good labor, highway egress, and political stability for their multibillion dollar investments—but Right to Work is the deciding factor. The Supreme Court is preparing to make a major decision on union monopolization and Boeing is taking aggressive action in South Carolina to fight back against union takeovers there, so the marketplace will be largely determined in the future based on Right to Work legislation—it will be a big national issue in 2021 and 2022.
Andy Thompson is a good guy and has been one of the candidates up for the interim speaker post however he is term-limited and would simply be a placeholder for Householder, which is why Larry is hanging back and letting the other Republicans fight things out. Larry is like a vulture sitting on an electrical line waiting for the dead carcass of an unwitting animal to be hit by a car for sitting in the middle of a busy road. He knows it’s just a matter of time, the FBI has just run over Rosenberger leaving him to be picked apart by those seeking to control the seat in his wake and Larry is waiting for that competition to be devoured as well where he will simply swoop in during the month of December and make his power move for the official vote.
However, that’s not what’s good for the GOP as a state organization. Personal power for some administrative seat isn’t what it used to be back in 2001 because the Trump administration moves fast and the business of a state that he cares about has to be nimble on its feet, so the new speaker for this interim seat needs to be someone who can continue to do the job into 2019 officially. The Ohio Republicans need to pull together ideologically and to keep that momentum going into the next calendar year. That leaves really only one competent name that all the other House members should rally behind, and that is that of Ryan Smith. He’s a good solid Republican who could continue doing the speaker job for the foreseeable future which is what the GOP needs for continuity throughout 2018 into 2019.
The national media has sat on those same electrical wires with Larry Householder using the chaos to attempt to weaken the Republican Party in hopes that the carryover effect would allow the state to go blue and away from Trump during 2020. To do that they need to elect a Democrat as governor and protect the Sharrod Brown senate seat—and divide and conquer the House Republicans. That is why Republicans need to come together during this upcoming week and get behind Ryan Smith so that the GOP can get moving again and not allow the legislative agenda to stay stagnant over the entire summer. Democrats want very much to be able to point at all this speaker chaos and declare that Republicans have not done anything all summer and that its time for a change, so that issue needs to go away quickly so the excuses are removed from the argument. The speaker issue needs to be solved not just for the interim, but for the duration.
It’s a shame that we have to worry about activists FBI agents who are picking party politics over true legal concerns, or that fellow Republicans are more than willing to let their partners get run over by the flow of political traffic for their own advantage in power politics, but that is the nature of our world and to win in that environment we have to make sure the right people get elected into the right positions for all the right reasons, and in that regard, the Ohio House will take care of that business this upcoming week and will get the matter solved so that business can continue on and chaos will be dismissed from the field of battle. The GOP must come together under the flag of Trump and maintain their majority, and advance conservatism into a growing party. The politics of 2001 is not the politics of 2019, and those who don’t get that need to get off the wire and stop trying to eat their own.
There are few pleasures in life like buying a new gun. In America it’s always a special thing to do and is unique to our culture. I don’t do it as much as I’d like, but when I do it’s usually something very special that I purchase, something I had been thinking about for a long time. In this case it’s the Desert Eagle .50 Mark XIX. When I was 19 and newly married I was a FFL holder and I had a shop in the back of the place I lived with my new bride as a baby was on the way. She and I had plans to live a crafty life where we’d basically tell the world to go to hell and live free of the chaos from the outside world. We had very romantic notions of how we wanted to live and I was going to be a gunsmith protecting the Second Amendment with the fine craftsmanship of a field of endeavor that was specific to American culture and I was very proud of it. But of course, money was hard to come by, and the idea that we were going to be able to shut ourselves from the world was a fleeting hope. The world found a way to stick its nose into our business at virtually every turn, even though we didn’t go out looking for such intrusions. They literally came to our door in what I would refer to at best as a conflict between the god Apollo and a bit of a nemesis in Dionysus. Since I was so young, it was hard to get started in the business. I needed time to acquire the skills and reputation of a gunsmith and time wasn’t on my side.
I would spend hours upon hours going over ballistic data and learning about the various guns that were manufactured so that I could talk shop with my clientele. I always viewed guns and the business of them to be a very intellectual exercise. Not only were the inventions of guns there to protect the thoughts and deeds of civilization from the savage impediments of mankind’s barbaric side, but their rise in America were specific to our Constitutional foundations which was always a beautiful thing to me. That was why I wanted to be a gunsmith and a happily married guy raising a new family in America. And out of all the guns I came in contact with and had the most desire to own it was the .50 caliber Desert Eagle. There wasn’t then, nor is there presently a more powerful semi-automatic handgun in the world. There’s nothing quite like it, and it was the gun I most wanted to have. The whole exchange was very Apollonian for me—it was a thing of beauty and technical perfection that had the American flag oozing from it. The gun’s manufacturer was Magnum Research which built them at IWI, Israel Military Industries, but since 2009 they have been manufactured at the MRI Minnesota plant and are an American icon. Desert Eagles are very popular with pop culture and have appeared in many entertainment venues, but only in shooting one can you truly grasp the wonder of owning one of these fantastic guns, so it was at the top of my list for many, many years. But they were too expensive for me at the time and once we started having kids, there were fewer opportunities to get one. As much as I wanted my little gunsmithing idea to work out, necessity required that I make a lot more money so I had to abandon the idea in favor of jobs that would infuse more cash into my starting family.
Finally, when it came time to talk about what to do on my 50th birthday we decided to spend the money to finally get that .50 Desert Eagle that I had been wanting all my adult life but had put it off. Until that point it just wasn’t practical to tie up so much money, several thousand dollars, on a gun that I might only occasionally shoot. It was my wife’s idea ultimately because I so tenaciously had held on to the dream of finally getting one. If it was just me I was concerned about I would have bought one way back in my twenties, but all the money I made even down to the last dollar went to raising my family and I seldom had any cash to work with that didn’t require the needs of my family. If it wasn’t braces, it was a new instrument for school, a broken car, or some other unforeseen expense that always seemed to come along to consume any extra money I made. It’s not that I didn’t work hard to get the money, I was telling a young guy who tends to work a lot of overtime the other day that even now I have never worked a 40-hour week my entire adult life. Most of the time I worked either two full-time jobs or had a full-time job and two-part time jobs, sometimes working seven days a week. But for my 50th my family had been talking about doing some big party but honestly, I would have rather had spent that money on something that meant something to me, and the Desert Eagle was it.
My wife and I went to our local gun dealer which is at the end of my street and finally ordered the Desert Eagle I wanted which was the Mark IXI in the stainless-steel variation with the rails on the top and bottom of the barrel and Magnum Research assured me that I wouldn’t have to wait long to get the gun from the factory, because they certainly didn’t have it on the shelf. There are a lot of Desert Eagles out there, but most are in the .44 magnum variation, and few are stainless steel because it takes the cost up over $2K. But that’s the one I had always wanted so we bought it and it felt good. I felt privileged to be able to pick it up at Right 2 Arms and to then take it down to Premier Shooting in West Chester which is a fantastic target range and unleash it with a friend of mine. I’m at a point in my life where I am going to make this Desert Eagle my CCW gun for a number of reasons, so the entire experience of purchasing it, and shooting it was a very intellectual one for me. As I said, I have always viewed guns as Apollonian while the anti-gun people out there are very Dionysian. The way that mankind advances is with thought, not drunken surrender to the sentiments of existence, so what protects human advancement from the clutches of the parasites who bask in drunkenness and emotional chaos is the gun. I don’t think its ironic that so many top end gun stores and shooting ranges are near my home, it’s a philosophic necessity. I live in an affluent area where people have values. To protect those values guns are a necessity, not so much in shooting some bad guy, but in the practice of participating in elevated thoughts and income making potential. Where there are people who work to advance the efforts of mankind, there needs to always be gun stores. The Dionysian types would argue that other places in the world don’t have guns, and that they are advancing mankind, but that is only from their perspective. Their aim is to turn off their minds to reality through wine, women, and other intoxicants whereas my yearning as well as people who really work to advance human civilization, like the friend I had with me at Premier Shooting in West Chester shown in the video, are to protect the intellectual advancements that are driving culture in a positive direction.
A gun like the Desert Eagle to me is not a menacing killer, it’s a protector of mankind’s mind from the clutches of evil chaos that is always trying to turn back the clock toward the vile impulses of tribal mentality. Even though I had been thinking about the Desert Eagle for many years and had on occasion interacted with them, I never let myself enjoy the experience until I had one of my own, because I didn’t want to think much about something I couldn’t have. But once I finally did and could take some time to shoot it, my many years of waiting came to a fruition that was very satisfying. The powerful gun is a real treasure to shoot. With such a powerful cartridge that is producing a muzzle velocity bullet at 1475 fps the Desert Eagle in the .50 caliber was astonishingly smooth. I had heard reports from other shooters that their experience with the Desert Eagle was not so pleasant. But as my readers here know my other favorite gun is one that I’ve had for a while, my .500 Magnum Smith & Wesson. I’m used to firing that one, but it’s just too big to use as a CCW. I’ve tried and it just doesn’t work. The barrel hangs out constantly from under my jacket since it’s essentially a hand cannon. This Desert Eagle handles those big magnum cartridges with astonishing ease and it amazed me what a wonderful engineering feat Magnum Research had performed. The gun was certainly worth the wait, and the money.
So why so big? Well, my thoughts are that if you are going to have a gun, it should be as big as possible, especially these days. There are so many bad guys running around with body armor, even helmets that can easily deflect a 9mm bullet. I want to be able to disable such a person if the need arises and possibly prevent their armored cars from escaping. As a gun advocate, I am not interested in firearms that are in the smaller calibers. I haven’t been in the past which is why I’ve held on to this notion of getting a Desert Eagle. If I couldn’t get what I wanted, I didn’t look for smaller supplements over the years which is why nobody has ever seen me get very excited over a Berretta 92F or a Ruger EC9. Those are all fine weapons, but to my mind they aren’t much different from a standard BB gun. If you are going to carry a defense gun, it needs to be able to stop just about anything. Even my treasured Vaquero that I use for Cowboy Fast Draw is not something I’d consider these days as a proper defense from the hostilities of Dionysian aggressiveness—that’s the best way I know to put it. The more you are involved in things that are valuable intellectually and productive, the bigger the guns need to be because its only a matter of time before some mudslinging, drug induced loser will think about taking what you’ve worked so hard all your life to build, and upon knowing that you have a Desert Eagle, they just might fight back the impulse to act on their aggressions—hopefully.
The 30-year wait was more than worth it to me. While I would have liked to have had a Desert Eagle when I was 19, I’m happy to have it at 50. It is a work of art in every way possible, the gas piston system that the gun runs on is a marvel to me—the way it absorbs so much of the recoil from such a powerful magnum cartridge. I was expecting a much harder kick than I received from the .50 AE Desert Eagle. My friend and I were a little astonished to feel the shock wave of energy that hit our faces with each shot but the gun itself didn’t seem to be struggling at all with the massive power involved. The loading mechanism from the clip worked well beyond what I would have expected and the overall experience was much smoother than I would have thought for such a large, and powerful firearm. I am happy to have it and intend to put it to good use—in a very Apollo oriented way. In my view, the more intellectual the pursuit of mankind, the bigger the guns need to be to protect those pursuits from the parasites of Dionysus. A lot of people might consider a gun like this .50 AE Desert Eagle to be a novelty gun, a fun thing to shoot with the guys for some testosterone induced levity. But I consider it essential to my personal lifestyle given the types of things I’m involved with because it’s always better to function fairly from a position of perpetual strength than on the whims of hope that people will behave themselves. The Desert Eagle assures that they will, taking speculation out of the equation which is a very valuable thing.
It was interesting to watch the Fox News interviews of Trey Gowdy and Judge Napolitano speaking on Spygate—whether there was a physical person spying on the Trump campaign which would be a big deal. I respect both of those legal minds, but it was obvious that something else was going on after Rudy Giuliani turned up the heat on the premise that the FBI under the Obama White House had put a spy into the Trump campaign in the spring of 2016. Neither Gowdy or Napolitano were willing to go that far and were obviously attempting to back off the flaming claims. The FBI is after all in a lot of trouble all on their own, and the heads of all our intelligence agencies are under serious suspicion as we learn more about what went on from their behalf to keep Trump out of the White House even though the election process favored him. The institutionalists seem to realize the weight of this consideration and they are trying to preserve what’s left, and as much as I hate to say it Gowdy and Napolitano in this case are institutionalists, meaning they will put the institutions of justice ahead of thoughtful rebellion against them. A nefarious reason was clearly present by the Obama administration to spy on Trump leading to this Spygate controversy which is one of the most dangerous things to ever strike our republic within America.
Judge Napolitano wants to see the proof the such a nefarious person infiltrated the Trump campaign, but obviously so much evidence has been destroyed by the FBI to favor Hillary Clinton’s eventual election, that proof may be too elusive at this point to conjure up—which is what happens when we have criminals running our intelligence agencies. At this point I’m sure that both Gowdy and Napolitano are looking to repair the image of the FBI for the sake of the people still working there who weren’t a part of this Spygate mess. But the intent is what we should be more than concerned about, because if it happened in 2015, then it is bound to happen again, and we can’t let that happen.
Let’s go back to the spring of 2016, shall we, it was just becoming obvious that Donald Trump was going to beat Marco Rubio and John Kasich for the Republican nomination which was shocking to the establishment. The Obama/Clinton forces had been preparing for either Kasich, Rubio or Cruz not even considering that the businessman and television reality star Trump would succeed in breaking through the election process and into the official establishment. The moment it was realized that Trump would in fact be the nominee the false story of a contested convention was put to the press to give the establishment hope that Trump would not make it to Republican Convention in Cleveland later that July. It was also around this time that Trump fired Corey Lewandowsky and hired Paul Manafort to be the campaign manager. The reasoning at the time was that Lewandowsky was taking a big hit in the press over shoving a reporter and that the campaign needed someone more polished now that the attention was turning toward the convention and a run for the presidency in the fall. Things were getting serious and it was time to change-up the campaign’s professionalism in the conventional sense of things.
Everyone knew that Manafort had connections to Ukrainian businesses because it was on his resume for years, the media hailed the move as a very positive sign that Trump was taking the whole presidential thing serious in hiring an establishment figure in Manafort. Obviously in hindsight there were figures in the campaign and within the media pushing Trump where they wanted him to go by creating the delegate hunt stories, and Manafort was specifically brought on to be the delegate hunter specialist, to make sure there were enough votes on the floor to give Trump the nomination and keep John Kasich from trying to launch a rebellion from the floor in July.
It should be remembered that John Kasich refused to attend the Republican Convention even though it was being held in his state for which he was the governor. Somewhere somebody gave John Kasich the false hope that if he held the line that he might be able to knock Trump out of the picture even though the primary votes leading up to the convention were not even close to anybody but Trump. The seeds for a Russia story were being planted by many establishment types as a last-minute conspiracy to provide insurance for Hillary Clinton in the fall if the antics of the contested convention failed. Lucky for Trump he played the game of convention in hiring Manafort to get through the convention period, because he acquired his delegates and secured the Republican nomination. But what nobody counted on was that Trump would fire Manafort in August and hire Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon to run the presidential campaign into November, and that proved to screw up all the plans of all the parties trying to sabotage the Trump campaign with a last-minute revelation that Manafort and the Russians were trying to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.
These parties got the idea from Trump himself in the spring of 2016 when it was obvious that he was going to win the nomination and he held a press conference where he famously joked that if the Russians had Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 deleted emails please let him know. With Trump forcing the world to look at the illegal antics of the Hillary Clinton campaign, the institutionalists needed to turn the tables on him somehow. So they wanted to build a story of Russian collusion into the Trump campaign to divert attention from their chosen candidate in Hillary Clinton and Manafort was always supposed to be the straw man because Trump needed an establishment campaign manager to get those much-needed delegates that the media kept talking about, and to go from a crazy campaign of saying anything anyway he wanted to something more conventional. This is where these spies in the Trump campaign were working full-time, they were helping to shape the media narrative and they were whispering in all the right ears to make the moves within the campaign that would feed the media narrative. With Trump being inexperienced with politics at this level, they figured they’d get away with it. They never expected him to fire Manafort in August. The establishment didn’t panic because they figured that sex scandals would torpedo the campaign just before the election, so they didn’t start panicking until literally that night of the election in November.
As far as evidence, it’s there, but its covered up with lots of other things and to see it we have to be willing to look under the carpet of the Obama White House and admit that Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton, a former president himself, had cut a deal to keep Hillary out of trouble with the FBI. Comey had to do right by the law and navigate the minefield to let his field agents know that they had investigated Hillary Clinton, but that she was going to be their new boss when she won the election, so they started pandering to her early. Comey did his press conferences to not hurt Hillary but to keep his field agents satisfied so that he could blackmail Clinton once she came into office with all the dirt he really had on her, which he helped destroy to get her elected. She’d keep him on as the director in exchange for him not leaking what was destroyed and everyone would live happily ever after. Only Trump won which blew everything up.
The evidence that Trey Gowdy and Judge Napolitano are seeking to acknowledge a Spygate controversy will likely never manifest. The spy in this case turned out to be ineffective and the information they were giving to the Obama White House was useless because Trump was his own man not controlled by any establishment types in the form of a campaign manager. Their straw man in Manafort had been fired blowing up their case. They would of course try to resurrect it later, but the story is so flimsy its like wet paper, it nearly falls apart under its own weight. The entire operation was meant to leave almost no footprints except for the obvious intent of all the parties and their bloodlust to destroy Trump before he ever reached the White House and of course it continued thereafter. The very first thing Comey said to Trump was an attempt at blackmail by discussing the Russian dossier hoping to embarrass Trump into becoming a willing accomplice. But that didn’t work either. Four months later Trump fired Comey which is what launched this whole Russian investigation because it was out of revenge for daring to fire a Director of the FBI and that just didn’t happen in Washington D.C. In a rage the FBI pulled out all their stops and tried to get revenge on Trump for firing Comey and in doing so they revealed many of those footprints they had been trying to cover up—and the rest is history.
Yes, Spygate is real, it happened and there was at least one physical person spying directly into the party of the opposition as directed by a reigning White House. Lots of people need to go to jail because they allowed the institutions to fail the American people so spectacularly, and audaciously. They didn’t care about the law because they figured they controlled the law and they went well past Watergate in their weaponizing of our intelligence agencies to preserve their careers. I understand that Gowdy and Napolitano don’t want to destroy the institutions they have learned to love—in the legal manner of things, but the reality says that everything they are protecting is garbage and needs to be created anew with an honesty that has not been present for well over a hundred years. Before we can fix it, we have to admit that there was a problem and Spygate is just such a circumstance. And its time we deal with it.
Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that “ABC does not tolerate comments like those” made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?
So what was wrong with Roseanne Barr saying about the Obama administration activist Valerie Jarrett if “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj?” For that Tweet ABC owned by the Disney Company cancelled the top-rated show. I’m not seeing the problem with the hard-hitting comedian saying such a thing, Valerie Jarrett isn’t a black woman or anything—she’s fair game in the public realm, she was born after all in Shiraz, Iran. Many other comedians, even those employed by Disney in some way or another have said much worse about President Trump and white men in general. So why isn’t there allowed a banter back and forth—because in the context of things, that’s all Roseanne was doing.
I watched The Black Panther the other day not knowing much about the character or the movie other than it did very good business and I was shocked at some of the lines by the characters which were obvious put downs toward the white actors. Was that supposed to be funny? What if the white characters said something like, “you black people are all alike,” or something to that effect, how would that have gone over? Likely there would have been riots in the streets and massive protests at the box office. Even though I am pulling for Disney to do well with the new Solo Star Wars movie I couldn’t help but notice the political activism in the film, the very deliberate white guy kissing a black girl, or Han Solo arguing with an Imperial officer that they were attacking the home world of their enemy and that they were in the wrong. Does every movie these days have to have some kind of social commentary?
So it’s “racist” to make this comparison if a conservative does it, but when the left does it they get a complete pass? I can’t be the only one who sees past this selective outrage and hypocrisy…. #RosanneBarr#Roseanne@therealroseannepic.twitter.com/xMyJydoAz0
Can’t people just tell a story? Largely the film is good fun and avoids some of the political pitfalls that have contaminated the other three Star Wars films from the Disney era, but when you do see it the radicalism is quite jarring. At the end of the Black Panther the heroes go to the United Nations and agree to share their awesome technology with the rest of the world. That’s fine for a fantasy story, but there is nothing politically factual about the story of the Kingdom of Wakanda having all this technical power. And the United Nations is not a governing body of any influence, so much of the premise of The Black Panther is purely political, in that they are trying to create a philosophic reality by tossing out the facts of the matter.
I enjoyed The Black Panther mostly, and I root for Disney to do well most of the time. I like Star Wars, I enjoy their theme parks, I’m even looking forward to the new Incredibles 2 coming up. But they are just entertainment options at best these days, and nothing to take too seriously, until they make themselves political. And Disney is certainly guilty of that. I understand they are a company with globalist aims because that’s where the new markets are, but in doing so they are spitting in the eye of Walt Disney himself who was a very stout American patriot. If Disney were alive today he’d be a Trump supporter and likely a leader in the Tea Party movement. Bob Iger on the other hand thinks serious of being a Democratic nominee for President of the United States—is not the same type of person. Iger is pushing liberal politics into the Disney brand, and that has worked for a while so long as they didn’t cross the line. But over the last four or five years the line is being crossed constantly and the only way they’ve managed to get away with it is because there are no other media platforms out there who can really compete with them.
Obviously, the Disney Company was looking for the first opportunity to get Roseanne’s show off the air. While it was making a lot of money for the company the profits from Infinity War alone nearly erase the losses from cancelling Roseanne’s show, and for Bob Iger, feeding the political platform of the other side was something he couldn’t let happen on his watch. The message couldn’t be clearer, it is alright if liberals make fun of conservatives even crossing the lines of racism calling Trump a monkey and all types of terrible names. But if someone calls a liberal a name—especially if she’s female, then all hell will break loose. That is if people care about the Hell that is breaking loose. Honestly for me, I can take it or leave it. I watched one episode of the new Roseanne Barr show and couldn’t handle it. It was just too slow and stuck for me. It certainly wasn’t a conservative show as it was being sold. I couldn’t relate to any of the characters, so I didn’t watch another episode. They were all too negative to me, so it’s no skin off my back for the show to be cancelled. I’ll cheer for Star Wars to do well, and I like the efforts of the Marvel movies, but more and more Disney is losing people like me to their radicalism—and in the long-term, they are making a mistake because its people like me who will support them in the future. Not Valarie Jarrett, who is a well-known progressive radical who invited some rebuke from someone with enough guts to do it—because that’s the nature of the world we are living in today.
What is really going on with Disney and liberals in general with this whole two-faced duality they have going on is that as liberals they want to believe that there is a Wakanda out there, which is an obvious rip off from Ayn Rand’s classic novel Atlas Shrugged. But also as liberals, they have no way of knowing how to get there. They just say that it exists and expect audiences to accept that reality without understanding the foundation of the philosophy. They associate liberalism with skin color and advanced technology and everyone is just supposed to go along with it until someone like Roseanne comes along and makes them look at the world of Donald Trump that they are so desperate to ignore.
Back to the Han Solo reference from Solo: A Star Wars Story, Donald Trump is probably the least war hungry President America has ever had. By the end of his term many of the wars around the world will be coming to an end and that should make Disney and the liberals behind the company very happy. Donald Trump literally is like Han Solo in the new film asking why America is in all these foreign wars. He wants out. But liberals can’t handle that reality, so they choose to ignore it, and when someone like Roseanne gives them an excuse to turn away from the truth, they are more than willing to do it—even if it cuts off their own noses to spite their face.
I wouldn’t have called Valarie Jarrett an ape from the Muslim brotherhood because I have a lot more descriptive terminology to use because I have an extensive vocabulary to draw from, but many people I know of all shapes sizes, sexes and races think the same way about Valerie Jarrett, they just don’t have the intellectual means to express it beyond frustrated terminology, which is why Roseanne had a number one show. Disney can turn their eyes away from that reality, but they can’t outrun the truth. While they are doing well as a company presently, that won’t last forever. There are only so many Infinity War movies out there that they can make as they are quickly turning off conservatives in America with their radicalism. I’ve been one of their biggest fans over the years and they are turning me off, especially after watching The Black Panther. The political activism couldn’t be more obvious. And not having Roseanne on the air won’t have any impact on how people feel. It just means that they go deeper into hiding making them a phantom menace toward future political endeavors. Democrats can’t win by ignoring the facts—they have to come to terms with reality and that is obviously something they aren’t willing to do.
The situation is so bad that I had to send Ron Howard a Tweet today reminding him to keep his liberal mouth shut so that he didn’t further hurt Solo: A Star Wars Story in a very critical week where the film can make some money. I’m not interested in helping Ron Howard, Kathy Kennedy or Bob Iger and their political ideologies, I’m trying to help Star Wars. The American domestic market is still half of all box office totals and it’s not smart to only try to appeal to half the American nation. Like it or not, half the nation voted for Donald Trump and his approval ratings show it. Wasn’t it Michael Jordon who famously said, “Republicans buy tennis shoes too.” The old Star Wars movies didn’t have roots in current politics, so they were films that spoke to higher concepts. They were obviously anti-Nazi, but that was about it. The big problem with liberals is that they are participating this activism in an attempt to erase their own history with radicalism, because it was liberals who were the racists supporting slavery, and it was liberals who took over the German political machine and invented the Nazi. It wasn’t conservatives. So they hope that by overreacting to every little thing, like Roseanne Barr Tweeting about Valarie Jarrett in the same way that other comedians from the political left do toward Republicans like Trump—that they can erase history. But guess what, they can’t. Most of America knows the truth and pandering to demographic groups like Disney has been doing cannot justify liberalism as it is. Because what it always was have been the source of racism and terror. Just like the secret city of Wakanda in The Black Panther Disney can’t just say something is good without showing how, what, why, when and where, and when they attempt to history is always there with a grim reminder that it’s not on their side. Valerie Jarrett is not one of the good people, she’s at best a villain—she will never be a Disney princess. And cancelling Roseanne won’t erase that factual reality.
I find it baffling that you are going political again while there is still a good box office week to make some money for Solo. Don’t throw in the towel yet. Don’t you guys see that these political divisions are costing Star Wars? https://t.co/t8GqtF8o7O
I’m usually pretty considerate about all life, even little insects. If I see a little spider in the corner of my house or a little beetle caught in my swimming pool I fetch them up and take them outside someplace safe so they can live for about five more minutes, because I consider all life precious. But I had a situation today, I was working at my computer area and it looks like one of my grandkids had dropped a chicken nugget under a table where it was hard to see and ants were crawling all around the area I work. If it were just one ant or two, I would have taken them outside, but when it became hundreds, I had no choice but to kill them and smash them into oblivion so that their little friends got the message, they didn’t want to set up shop in that location because that would end their lives. I found the old nugget and threw it out, but it would take a while for the ants to get the message, and I didn’t have a while to let them crawl all over my stuff. So I killed them all. And as I was doing it I thought of the story where Elon Musk was being attacked in a similar way by the United Auto Workers at his Tesla plants.
One thing I don’t agree with Donald Trump on his was love of union workers. As a New York business guy, he has learned to deal with them—and as a good negotiator he knows how to talk their language. Trump is willing to work with them, I’m not. I think labor unions should be illegal because of their roots into socialism. They have no place in an American economy. They are the idiots who have dramatically limited the amount of productive work each American now thinks they must commit to in order to make a living and those ideas have made the value of American workers to not be competitive in a world that is more than willing to work more than forty hours a week and into the weekends The opportunity cost of the American labor unions has been enormous, and now they are doing to Elon Musk what they have done to so many American companies, they are trying to move in and take over the management of his company, and he’s not happy about it.
Because Musk didn’t just lay down and let the UAW attack his company like all those vile ants I was talking about attacking that chicken nugget, UAW president Dennis Williams led his organization to do what all progressive Democrats do, they used thuggish tactics to attempt to change the behavior of the company. In the case of Tesla the company provides their employees stock options which have the potential of being a lot more valuable than just cash on a weekly pay check. It’s a chance for those workers to become truly wealthy. But that’s not what the union wants, they want membership dues so they can convert that cash to political activism—and when Musk pushed back on their premise, the UAW filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. That is like those ants filing a complaint that they had a right to occupy my work space and that I couldn’t just wipe them out so I could get back to work—because they wanted that stupid chicken nugget that had fallen on the ground by my grandchildren. The thing wasn’t even supposed to be there in the first place.
The assumption was that collective masses of people in a labor union are valuable just because they exist, but to a business owner, they aren’t. Once a business owner loses management of their company to a bunch of loser labor union members who try to run everything on a vote, companies quickly have two things happen to them, they must raise their prices to pay for the collective bargaining of those employees, or they go out of business to companies who don’t have to deal with those restrictions. Musk said as much in a Tweet recently where he warned workers that it was the UAW that destroyed over 200,000 jobs at General Motors and Chrysler. The government had to sweep in and bail out the automakers because they were too big to fail. The mentality of the labor unions is to latch themselves to industry and milk everything dry until there isn’t anything left causing any company that didn’t want to go out of business to pick up their enterprise and move it to some other country with less labor union influence.
Labor unions are a creation of the Karl Marx philosophy of public ownership of everything, which was outlined clearly in the pathetic book The Communist Manifesto. Such people do not take into account the value of what management does for a company, in the risks that are taken that justify larger pay checks for the front of the house. Everyone is not equal in such an arrangement, once a labor union takes over a company like Tesla, then its all over for the innovation such companies provide. Once everything takes a vote from the same people who would rather spend their time smoking joints at lunch and looking at pornography on their phones, nothing good happens again, so Musk is smart to fight back against the UAW.
Not everyone is cut out for management, believe it or not, the ambitious people who typically run companies think about other things than the usual needs of biological flesh pleasures and filling their fat stomachs with food—and that makes them better positioned to decide what work hours will be, who the company does business with, and what the value of pay for employees will be based on market conditions. The UAW destroys the companies they move into—just like the ants wanting to eat that left-over chicken nugget that my grandkids dropped, the UAW sees a new company that is making new things and they want to suck off it until everything is gone. Of course, they think things will go on forever, because they don’t understand market conditions, they don’t read about the industry they are in and are constantly making decisions as the captain of the ship to keep everything pointed in the right direction, workers just want to know when they get paid and to make sure that everything is fair. Lazy workers get paid the same as productive workers, smart people get paid the same as dumb people—dumb being defined by people addicted to substances—food, alcohol, cigarettes, or even drugs who don’t take the time to develop their minds toward the needs of strategy and imaginative growth potential.
Unionized workers don’t make America great, they are parasites looking for opportunity off the backs of those who take chances and start businesses and do all the really hard work of making something from nothing. If Musk hadn’t created the Tesla car company to begin with the UAW workers would have nothing to try to loot from, there would be no chicken nugget to consume as the parasites I described in the ants flooding my computer desk. They only care about money when there isn’t any to loot off any more unlike the entrepreneur who has to go to the bank and put their life on the line to get the startup capital to put the whole show on. But they look at Elon Musk and figure that he’s a rich billionaire and that they are entitled to some of his money just because they exist, and that is the real danger.
Elon Musk has been able to do neat things with the money he has made relatively free of labor union disputes, because much of what he has built arrived faster than the normal business cycles. It takes labor unions a while to realize when a chicken nugget has fallen on the ground because they are busy thinking about everything else in life but work. But once they do hear that someone like Tesla is doing something they might be able to latch on to then they arrive like insects to take everything over and destroy the vision that came from the risk takers—people like Elon Musk. The real damage comes when legal fights start consuming the life of Musk from parasites like the UAW instead of him trying to figure out how to colonize Mars, or how to build Hyperloops under major American cities to alleviate ground traffic—the opportunity cost to our nation is enormous.
The average labor union employee just wants to get paid each week so they can purchase their vanities, deposit their sexual needs into some other person, and buy clothes off the bargain rack at Wal-Mart and that’s fine if that’s all they want out of life. But when they start seeking to have an impact on the opportunity cost of new American businesses, like Tesla, that is already propped up by the government for its seed money, the UAW is taking a shot at all of us, not just Elon Musk. And I personally find each and every one of them offensive, parasitic, and destructive to the American economy. They sure aren’t patriots—just bottom feeders.
Maybe I’ll buy a Tesla today. I love that they are a non-union plant in California!!!! That status should be rewarded by the marketplace.
I continue to be astounded how stupid some people are about the ways of the world. The so-called “experts” actually thought that what President Trump did on Thursday of this past week was reckless and even irrational. While those same people thought that all the ways we got there was just as reckless and irrational, but once there were willing to make their careers around riding the coattails of history and suddenly Trump was ruining it for them. Hey, like I told everyone, the North Korea deal was never in jeopardy. That’s why I felt I could take a few days and enjoy the new Han Solo movie, because the summit on June 12th was never in danger. The events of Donald Trump’s negotiations do not surprise me—I expect these kinds of things to go on, and honestly, I think everyone at every level of government should do the same. When a school board is negotiating with a hostile teacher’s union, this is how it should look. I was at a Sam’s Club the other day looking at their book section, and guess what? They had a copy of The Art of War that anybody could purchase—right next to the macaroni and cheese, and hot dogs. Anybody who reads that book would know exactly what was going on this past week between Kim Jong Un and President Trump. It certainly isn’t rocket science. Yet few people did understand and that is pretty sad.
Sadly, I was forced to cancel the Summit Meeting in Singapore with Kim Jong Un. pic.twitter.com/rLwXxBxFKx
Our experts taught all that institutional nonsense over the years have turned out to be pretty worthless. I mean, I understood from the beginning how dumb they were, but it is still shocking to see how poorly they are performing under the pressure of President Trump. All these top jobs in government from the experts on foreign policy to the bumbling idiots at the highest level of our intelligence agencies are just as comically stupid as any cartoon caricature could imagine. For people who are paid all these six figure salaries it would appear that most of them are completely worthless. I think I have heard more stupidity over the last week than I’ve ever heard in my life in regard to bad analysis. At first pundits were upset that Trump had been so reckless with Kim Jong Un, but after the Trump administration had brought North Korea to the table suddenly everyone thought Trump was an idiot in how he handled every juncture of the situation. They mistakenly thought that Trump was going into the negotiations ready to cave so he could get a Nobel Peace Prize. Everyone’s world seemed to fall apart on Thursday of this past week when Trump said he was withdrawing the United States from the deal with North Korea. I wasn’t surprised, and I had no fears that North Korea wouldn’t be coming to the negotiating table. So why did everyone else?
Here is how you can know the winner and loser in every situation. The book, The Art of War is a strategy guide from the East, but it follows some very basic common sense about human beings and understanding those basics you can usually tell who will win and lose just about every situation. Everything is about emptiness and fullness. Those who are empty are always going to lose to those who are full. Troops not fed well, who are on the low ground will not be able to beat troops not hungry who loom over them on the high ground if all other things are equal—numbers of troops, cultural heritage, and intelligence levels. Winning in the arts of war mean that those skilled in such battles know how to empty others and fill themselves.
Communism and socialism have not worked, the philosophies of Karl Marx are complete failures in every corner of the world. I was not surprised that the Venezuelan government let go of Joshua Holt yesterday. The young kid only 26 years of age went to that impoverished country in the summer of 2016 to marry a woman there and was thrown in jail under false pretenses hoping to use the American as leverage against the Obama administration. Now that the bus driver Maduro has won re-election through serious voter tampering, he’s looking to cut a similar deal as Kim Jong Un is getting ready to make with Trump—financial assistance, American investment into the economy of their regimes—they are desperate for money in Venezuela so they let go of Holt hoping to open negotiations because they are at wit’s end in that country due to the socialism that has ruined their country there. The economies of North Korea and Venezuela are poor because of their commitment to Karl Marx, so when dealing with the real world, they have nothing to barter with except threats. When threats are made against a much stronger adversary, physical violence has no effect, so these tyrants running these countries have no place to go but to the negotiating table to ask forgiveness to those more powerful than them. Power as it is defined in human culture is not in the weapons one has, but in the amount of money. Those without money are always going to lose against those who have it.
The goal of the Obama administration was to loot the wealth of America and give it away to socialist countries so that the world would be equalized. Finally, socialism was going to work in the world once all the super powers had been destroyed. Only what they neglected to consider as “experts” were the philosophic premise of a place like North America which has been and continues to function from the foundation of capitalism. The American people would see all this going on and change it. As we were being robbed by our government we made a change in our elections and started voting for people who would stand up for the kind of economy that was the backbone of our nation. We didn’t look for a “moral character” the way that experts thought the game of elections in America worked, we voted for someone who understood the power of emptiness and fullness so that they’d represent us on the world stage with those basic skills to protect our nation from ruthless overlords around the world who were all empty but trying to appear frighteningly full. It’s been a few years now and the word is out in every country, America is no longer being led by a ruling class of college professors and socialist sympathizers disguising their intentions of spreading Marxism by weakening America, but is instead being run by a business guy who understands how to play the game of emptiness and fullness.
Because America is essentially the only nation left on earth that is a capitalist country beating these other countries is easy—because none of them have anything of any value due to their commitments to socialism and communism—and I include China in that assessment. China is not the powerhouse that they’ve been made out to be, they are largely an economy dependent on American purchases. Without the strength of the American dollar and the markets from that capitalist land, the Chinese are in trouble financially. Don’t let anybody fool you dear reader. While they have been helpful in bringing North Korea to the table, it wasn’t out of the goodness of their hearts. Trump knows how to play the emptiness and fullness game, which is why we hired him in the last election to go out into the world and play to win for America for a change. Everyone should understand at least the basics of the game, and none of what is happening now should come as a surprise. Yet it does, which is astonishing. Either those “experts” are really pretty stupid, or, they are playing dumb because they really always wanted America to fail to these hostile agents—and if that is the case, then there is some ass kicking that is coming deservedly to them for what they’ve tried to do to harm us all. Hopefully for their sakes, they were just stupid.
I sawSolo: A Star Wars Story two times in the first 24 hours of its release–it was a day that I’ve long looked forward to. (SEE MY REVIEW HERE) As I’ve established many times Star Wars for me is an intellectual vacation destination. Some people like to go to the beach and lay out on the sand under a powerful sun to relax, others like to visit other countries and sip mixed drinks from their hotel bar. Personally, I enjoy visiting that galaxy far far away in the movies, music and video games that have sprung from the mythology of Star Wars. There is so much imagination in that vast entertainment option that I find my mind can rest there and enjoy the world they have created. Real life has plenty of challenges and as readers know who read here often, I have a grip on reality that is far more intense than what the average person cares to endure, so I don’t mind sharing some of my little secrets for dealing with excessive amounts of stress, and Star Wars does it for me, especially on the creative side of things. When a new movie comes out on Blu-Ray I enjoy the making of the movies far more than the actual stories because that’s what I most enjoy in Star Wars is the vast creativity those projects generate. And among all the elements that are positive from Star Wars movies is the music, so when a new film hits that I like a lot I usually get the soundtrack at the very first opportunity. It is my favorite part of any good movie I enjoy is listing to the soundtrack of the film, and that is certainly no exception with Solo: A Star Wars Story. John Powell did a great job with it and I have found myself particularly obsessed with one particular part of that musical track, a song called “Chicken in the Pot.” It is the weirdest bit of music that I’ve heard in many years and I just love it.
I loved Solo: A Star Wars Story the first time, but I found the second time even more enjoyable. On that second time I was listening to the soundtrack in the car on the way to the theater and that track 8 song came on and it reminded me of the original cantina song from the original A New Hope soundtrack that has been used so many times over the years for everything that exhibits weirdness in these films. But this was different even for a Star Wars movie, the sound is clearly classic almost Frank Sinatraish only with an eerie female chorus of varying pitches singing in an alien language. Further, in the actual movie when that scene is up our heroes are about to meet the gangster Dryden Vos at his luxury barge and there are lots of exotic people at the bar where these singers are performing. One is a woman of some alien species singing with this strange little guy providing base in a jar of liquid. It was a really unique scene I thought that was spectacularly environmental. It was so weird that it took me a couple of viewings to register it, and I was so happy it ended up on the soundtrack. That is just the kind of music that a place like the new Disney World Galaxy’s Edge is going to need for the fans who participate in their new Star Wars experience next year. John Powell pulled that one out of somewhere to create a new level of creative brilliance.
What makes music like that work is the context, its rooted in our classic Hollywood musicals, but it is certainly distinctly alien. It also nearly sounds like the music is being played backwards which is a hint into the character of the main villain Dryden Vos who appears quite pleasant when he first meets people but if you peel back just a few layers of his behavior he is absolutely brutal—in the calmest fashion possible—a strange mix of contrasts. What’s bold about this new Solo: A Star Wars story is that they are exploring how all these crime syndicates function in the great mythology of the greater Star Wars galaxy, such as the Crimson Dawn and the Pike Syndicate. Its like stepping away from the politics of a film like All the President’s Men and getting to know the details of The Godfather, or even Scarface, which gets into the details of the boots on the ground thugs that are often used for the greater advantages of the top-level politics. The plots are compelling because they are rooted in reality. In the case of Star Wars Dryden Vos is kind of regional player. Everyone is afraid of him, but he’s very quick to suggest that he’s just another small fish in a very big pond. In that scene where we meet Dryden for the first time it’s that music that introduces him. Nothing is as it seems, but yet it’s all right there in front of you.
This is now the second Star Wars film that does not have John Williams scoring it, although he did play a part of the John Powell soundtrack, which is obvious. I was worried about this part of the Solo film experience, but now that I’ve had a chance to listen to the soundtrack a few hundred times over the last 48 hours I am quite happy with it. Music is what sells these stories to our subconscious and we are truly in new territory here with these movies. Very few people really think about what it takes to make a film but it’s always on my mind with regard to projects like this. Hollywood as a whole is a dying culture yet there are people working in it that are brilliant in what they do, like the people who work at Industrial Light and Magic, all the musicians that score all these big movies—people like John Powell out there who are bringing the classics of tomorrow alive today within the context of the film industry. I admire filmmakers in how they employ thousands of people who on something like a Star Wars movie are the best in the business, from the unsung producers who set up everything on these complicated shoots to the people like Powell who get to put their name on a major part of the creative process. I look at each one of these as a small miracle of capitalism that they even happen. If they are financially successful, then more people get to work on a new movie, and I really hope Solo: A Star Wars Story is successful financially so that our culture can get more of these movies. If we get more movies than I get more soundtracks that make daring music like John Powell did in Solo: A Star Wars Story, specifically the track “Chicken in the Pot.” I could listen to that all day long, and if there are many more of these Star Wars movies, there will be quite a collection of unusual music that will emerge from them.
I think we all benefit from these explosions of creativity. As I was watching this latest Star Wars movie on the two occasions within 24 hours of each other on opening day, I saw a lot of happy people buying Star Wars merchandise and enjoying themselves with their families. If that is all that came out of Star Wars, I think that would be enough. But there is more, a lot more and the platform of Star Wars gives some of our most creative people a place to experiment and sometimes those results produce something so unique, like “Chicken in the Pot.” That takes life and elevates its potential by expanding our imaginations in positive ways which advance our species in ways that are so far, immeasurable.
Well, that was a lot of fun—a whole lot of fun. I need to see it again, but I think the new Star Wars movie Solo: A Star Wars Story is my favorite film from the franchise and is in my top ten of all time. It reminded me a lot of Raiders of the Lost Ark. In many ways it also reminded me of a kid’s version of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. And it reminded me a lot of Pirates of the Caribbean and likely that was what Disney was thinking by going with this part of the Star Wars franchise. Solo: A Star Wars Story was just pure fun technically executed to perfection. If this was the most expensive Star Wars film ever made requiring something like nine months of shooting to get right—it showed on the screen. I enjoyed the movie as an adult, but really it’s the kids who see this that are in for the biggest treat. In so many ways I thought the film was brilliant. It started with a car chase on Han Solo’s home planet of Corellia and ended with a card game where Han wins the Millennium Falcon from Lando—but what happened in between was pretty magnificent on the scale of adventurous fun and special effects achievement. Solo: A Star Wars Story is one of those movies that you come out of the theater feeling good about seeing, and it’s certainly one that will be the most fun to watch over and over again once it hits the home theater market. This for me personally is the Star Wars film that I’ve always wanted to see and it actually went a few steps further—which was refreshing.
There are movies over the years that were defined by just a few scenes, such as in Jurassic Park in 1993 where we first saw a T-Rex eat its way through the fence of its holding cell during a thick downpour of rain. Or in 1981 in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones climbs under the truck that is trying to run over him—Solo: A Star Wars Story has several moments like that in it. The two that most come to my mind is when the Millennium Falcon was caught in the gravity well of the Maul during the Kessel Run and a giant monster was trying to eat them in space. The effects and story elements were just jaw dropping beautiful. Then the second is the stand-off between Han Solo and Tobias Beckett near the end where it is recorded for all time, “Han Shot First,” without question. Put that controversy to rest forever, and I thought it was a very powerful moment in these very political times where PC seems to ruin everything. With Han Solo being such a practical, no-nonsense guy, shooting first is a logical thing to do, and it was very satisfying to see him unflinchingly do so. I think it was on par with the time that Indiana Jones shot the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark, also written by this Solo screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan.
When George Lucas decided to re-edit the Han Solo scene shooting Greedo in A New Hope he was giving in to political pressure that was coming from the anti-gun crowd. Lucas wanted to make sure that Han Solo wasn’t considered a blood thirsty murderer which can sometimes be a very fine line between a sparkling hero who just shoots a villain. If everyone can’t agree that a villain is a villain one person’s hero is another person’s murderer, so George Lucas made sure that Greedo shot first in the 1997 Special Editions of his original Star Wars Trilogy. Making the decision to have Han shoot first in this film to end the life of a main character was quite a statement and now an issue that as been bouncing around among Star Wars fans for many years is settled. Han Solo will have forever be known to have shot first—which is consistent with his character. As a person who has seen hundreds of westerns over the years, I thought it was an extremely well-done scene that felt oddly good. I would go see this movie another 20 times at the theater just to watch that one scene. I put it on my scale of fantastic cinematic events in the top ten—perhaps the top five. This movie would have been good if that’s all that happened in it.
But that was only one small scene. For me the best of the Star Wars movies were sections of A New Hope and the first two-thirds of The Empire Strikes Back. I think I would put this Solo: A Star Wars Story just ahead of those two films because it gives audiences all the fun things without the emotional weight that happened at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, or even The Force Awakens. With Han Solo being one of the best characters it’s no fun to have him frozen like what happened in Empire, or to be killed like he was in Force Awakens. I understand those artistic needs in a film but what makes a prequel like Solo: A Star Wars Story fun is that you know Han is going to live and come out on top, so you can just enjoy the ride. In that way I think this is the best Star Wars film made to date because it is lacking the emotional weight of any heavy subject matter—just like the Pirate of the Caribbean movies. Star Wars has certainly contributed to heavy story telling with difficult subject matter, but the roots of the franchise were always well-set in B-movies and Saturday Morning Matinees where viewers knew the hero would live from one cliffhanger to another, but the thing they wanted to really know was how.
In that way this Solo: A Star Wars Story was more like an Indiana Jones film where we knew the hero would find some way out of whatever mess they found themselves in but learning how they’d escape was the real fun. It’s like a fun amusement park ride where it all looks dangerous and you know that when the ride ends, you’ll safely put your feet back on the ground. But during the experience, you are experiencing thrills and chills that you couldn’t get anywhere else. In a lot of ways if we as the audience didn’t know that Han Solo would survive this movie we’d not be able to deal with the suspense of going through so much in such a short period of time. The young life of Han Solo was pretty intense and for lots of emotional reasons, is best viewed in hindsight—as a prequel film. Pretty stunning stuff.
Another movie I kept thinking about during Solo: A Star Wars Story was James Cameron’s Titanic from 1997. Like Solo, it had a troubled production, cost overruns and all types of controversy, but Cameron kept his nose down and plowed through the production to what became one of the biggest box office sensations in the history of cinema. On the day of its release which I took a day off work back then to see with advanced tickets that my wife was bewildered that I wanted to see so bad, the critics were all over the picture slamming it for every little thing they could think of. When the film opened, and the word of mouth got out about it, the business exploded for the next six months which was unheard of for films even back then. People wanted that type of optimistic story set against a tragic backdrop and the big downer of course was that Jack had died. The critical appraisal and industry backlash against Lucasfilm for inserting Ron Howard into a movie that was almost done and reshooting 80% of the film with an additional 4 month schedule has all those naysayers smelling blood in the water and the real sharks out there love to take bites out of careers and torpedo films that find themselves in such a situation. But I was just a little stunned at how good Solo was even down to the musical score by John Powell in using vuvuzelas to provide emphasis and some heightened emotion. Vevuzelas are those insect sounding horns that you hear in European soccer stadiums that are constantly buzzing—those horns were used in this movie to a very stunning effect in the background that I thought was very gutsy. The entire production takes those kinds of unique risks that will go down in film history as some of the boldest by a supposedly big commercial company like Lucasfilm and distributer Disney.
One thing that really benefits Solo is the presence of some big names in the business of acting, such as Donald Glover who is presently nearly like Michael Jackson in his popularity. The kid has the number one song in the country and here he is playing Lando Calrissian in the latest Star Wars movie—and he’s having fun with it. Glover isn’t the star, Alden Ehrenreich is. Without question, this is Alden Ehrenreich’s movie and that’s big shoes to fill considering that Emilia Clark is starring in the last season of Game of Thrones filming presently and she is the star of that series which is also filled with fantastic actors—the best of the best. Talk about a tough job not just to overcome the Hollywood legend of Harrison Ford which Ehrenreich did I think quite spectacularly, but in holding his own against some really big stars sharing the screen with him. As much as people want to make this movie about Lando, as it turned out, Lando as played by Glover was the same Lando from The Empire Strikes Back, a swindler, a con artist, and a person of questionable moral authority who is on the check list of revenge for a raging Han Solo at the end of this film. It says a lot about a movie that for a change doesn’t end with a big action sequence that saves the universe from immaculate destruction, but with a card game that in its own subtle ways does save the galaxy. What if Han had not run down Lando at the end of the film to play one last time that game of sabacc. The first Death Star would have killed all the rebels in A New Hope. Princess Leia would have never have gotten away from her raging father in The Empire Strikes Back. The second Death Star from The Return of the Jedi wouldn’t have been destroyed by Lando Calrissian many years after these events in Solo. Rey would have died on Star Killer Base in The Force Awakens and she never would have found Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi. In so many ways this sabacc game at the end of Solo: A Star Wars Story was a huge climax, but for a film like this in this day and age where bigger and bigger explosions leave audiences gasping just prior to exiting the theater, this movie slowed down long enough to get to the real heart of the movie, the treasure that Han Solo wanted more than anything else in life—his own starship so that he could earn his freedom finally to live life on the terms he always wanted to live it.
The tragedy of the film is that Han Solo doesn’t get to live happily ever after with his childhood love who turns out to be an agent of evil—sort of. But this isn’t the kind of heart wrenching let down that we see in Titanic and it remains to be seen if a film like Solo can drive big billion-dollar numbers without essentially being a tragedy. I think the answer is a big yes, but producers are following formulas of what has worked in the past basically starting with films like Casablanca and Citizen Kane. To end a movie on a high note is what film schools are teaching their students who then work in the industry as “paying fan service.” Well, yeah, duh. Aren’t these movies made for the fans? Who says that Han Solo has to become a mess because he has lost his girlfriend in this movie to the ambitious revenge plans of Darth Maul? Hey, Han won the ship of his dreams—who needs a woman? And that is pretty much the attitude which is very refreshing in these kinds of movies where Anakin Skywalker was drawn to become Darth Vader because of his love for his secret wife. The ability to shrug off trouble is exactly what makes Han Solo a great character and why these types of Star Wars movies are needed for the franchise. The emotions over the last three films have been too heavy-handed, Luke has died, Han Solo as an elderly figure has died, and all the members of Rogue One died. It’s nice to see a film mostly without heartache for a change that is full of fun and adventure—because most of us have enough of all that in our lives, who wants to pay money to see more of it?
As I said the best parts of Solo: A Star Wars Story are the scenes it recreates from the best parts of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back—the scenes in the cantina in the very first film, the heroics on Hoth in Empire and into the asteroid field which has never been recreated in any film since—in forty years of trying. The price of the entire movie would be worth just watching the Kessel Run, a desperate journey into the Maw of Star Wars legend where a black hole makes passage very dangerous—impossible really. To watch a bold young Han Solo cut off from an exit into the Maw by an Imperial Star Destroyer turn the Millennium Falcon around within a gravity well and to fly back into the worst part of it in order to escape is something that no modern movie can duplicate. It’s not just that there has been a 40 year build up into creating an elaborate mythology about what constitutes a “Kessel Run” but the execution of it on a movie screen is something that has just recently become technically possible—its quite something to see. Why would anybody wait to see a big firework display on the Fourth of July? Because its cool. That’s also why everyone should see Solo: A Star Wars Story at least once, because this one scene of the Kessel Run is just that cool. Luckily, that’s not the only thing worth watching but if you had to pick one thing, that would be it.
The character of Han Solo is something that is very unique, and precious to human creation, there really has never been another character in film or literature like him. You won’t find a comparable character in any Shakespeare literature or within the music of Mozart. The Greeks and Romans never came close in any of their work in creating a foundation for the kind of fearless character that Han Solo is—the boldness and self-confidence that made the character something so many people have loved now for half a century. The only literary reference out of all creative efforts by mankind over our entire history has been the work of Wofram Von Eschenbach’s Parzival in the Middle Ages with a little bit of Lancelot sprinkled in for good measure. George Lucas literally created the character of Han Solo during his racing days where souped-up cars and cruise music filled his mind. After nearly dying in a car crash and deciding to get serious with his life he ran into the work of Joseph Campbell and these stories by Eschenbach and Han Solo was born. The spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone were popular during this period so Lucas put all those strong images of maleness into the character of Han Solo from A New Hope and something really new was born which certainly does deserve its own movie—or series of movies. The character of Han Solo is beyond review for most studied people, because there is no reference for which to place context in the traditional way. Han Solo really isn’t afraid of anything. He is like Parzival in Eschenbach’s epic Arthurian legends in that he knows how to get to the Grail Castle with his hands limp against his horse trusting fate and his raw talent to take him anywhere he needs to go. Getting “there” is never the goal for Han Solo, which is why he always finds himself exactly where he needs to be where heroics are needed. Solo always trusts that he can get out of whatever trouble he finds himself in which makes seeing a movie starring a character like that extremely unusual. Usually what drives a dramatic narrative is the hopes and fears of the protagonists—but in the case of Han Solo he’s really not afraid of anything and he believes anything is possible and it is on that boundless optimism that we as viewers are transported to possibilities that are best experienced in a great movie. That puts Han Solo into a category all his own and makes a movie like this so much more special.
Solo: A Star Wars Story is a movie that is special. You don’t have to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy it, but if you are, then we are seeing the start of something really positive emerging creatively from the Lucasfilm group. I would place Solo as one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s up there with Raiders of the Lost Ark and even Scarface. It’s a reflection into the way movies used to be made with themes that simply have not been part of the modern theatrical experience. It’s a movie you will want to watch in the future on a home system just to feel good about something. When you are having a bad day, this is the movie you will want to put in and watch for a few hours—its fun, its optimistic and is full of adventure. Additionally, it takes the mythology of Star Wars and really begins the expansion of it in ways that build the brand under the Disney tent like nothing else could. We go places in this film that unlocks thousands of potential stories for the future. If everything we know about Star Wars came out of the first three films done forty years back in the eighties, then this film takes a step into that world to unlock more potential on a scale of 100 times what we’ve known. Simply put, there is a creative impulse to this movie that is so bold and audacious that it is formulative into everything that comes after it, even if those creative endeavors are not Star Wars related. Solo: A Star Wars Story is in a place of its own and shows theatrical leadership in ways that are not only necessary, but excessively refreshing. It is the movie to see if you are going to see one, not just once, but as many times as possible. It’s that good.
A lot of my readers are millionaires and are people used to having net assets due to long time investment portfolios, so they are rather perplexed why I am making so much over this new Han Solo movie titled Solo: A Star Wars Story. I think it’s one of the most important things going on today in the world, not just because I love Star Wars, and the character of Han Solo—but because culturally it says a lot about our society in general. I think there are many things that are very important about this upcoming movie that are epic not just in the film itself but in the reaction to it that so many sectors of society have invested. With that said, the film is for children. It’s intended to inspire kids from the ages of 5 to 12 and make it so that their families can go see the movie with them. It’s a family film that expands generations, adults who loved these movies as kids can now take their own kids to see a movie that they can all relate to, and that is the miracle of Star Wars in its purest form. As of this writing I haven’t yet seen the picture, but I know what I’m getting in to. I am delighted that Kathy Kennedy and Bob Iger at Disney greenlit this movie and that all those San Francisco progressives that work at Lucasfilm went against their modern political instincts to make a movie about a white guy who is a strong alpha male who shoots guns, has no reverence for the law and likes to fly starships insanely fast. Han Solo is everything that progressive society is trying to eliminate culturally, so I think it says a lot that Lucasfilm and Disney decided to make this particular movie because it’s what the fans have always wanted—its what the story of Star Wars demands and they went with it, and it took a lot of guts. The fact that these filmmakers made this movie about this kind of character goes a long way to fixing problems I had with both Lucasfilm and Disney—and I admire them for extending that branch. I could easily think that based on what I know about the movie that they made it just for me. But that would be a bridge too far—they made it for kids—a new generation of fans that they want to appeal to the Star Wars brand, and they fully intend to make a lot of money while they do it—which is the name of the game. Personally, I am delighted about this movie in every way possible from the money it will make to the product it delivers.
But I warned about this a long time ago on a radio show I did for 1600 WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan when after The Force Awakens came out where I was concerned that Bob Iger and Kathy Kennedy were going to divide the Star Wars fan base by eliminating the extended universe, the many books and comics that had been made to continue the storyline over the last thirty years. Then there was the incident where Kathy Kennedy said she didn’t care about the male fans of the Star Wars fan base to a New York Times reporter, which didn’t go over well. Additionally, she allowed The Last Jedi to be a very progressive film that was bordering on Cloud Atlas in sentiment which was only saved by the score of John Williams and the great visual effects of Industrial Light and Magic. The fans were mad at Kathy Kennedy after The Last Jedi because she had betrayed them and now they are on a mission to destroy her at Lucasfilm, wanting to boycott this new Star Wars film, Solo: A Star Wars Story to force Disney to fire her.
I am rather shocked at the vitriol over this film—the activists are really the same type of people who make up the Antifa protestors in politics, they have hit the Rotten Tomatoes site trying very hard to put up bad scores to hurt the film financially at the box office. Right before the release of the film the “want to see it” score was hovering at around 40% which is really low for any film, especially a Star Wars movie. That says there are enough activists out there mad that their ideas for Star Wars have been destroyed and they are throwing a fit about it. They think if they hurt the Solo film financially that it will force Disney to listen and they will get the kind of movies they want. But of course, most of these people are idiots and they have no idea how business actually works. They forget that these movies are not made to make them happy intellectually or to provide them with the voids for religion that they are seeking. In some cases Star Wars does all those things, but only on an infantile level. Most of the complaints I have been hearing about not just for The Last Jedi but Solo: A Star Wars Story is that its fans want new material to carry them deeper into the mythology. However, that’s not what Disney needs, they require a new fan base to take this whole franchise into the future and if they piss off the long-time fans, they rationalize that they are willing to do that because they need to reach the children. If the adults don’t come along for the ride, then so be it.
You can tell that most of these protestors are of the millennial age because they say all those dumb things they learned in public schools—that money, or making money is some kind of evil enterprise and that Disney should be making these movies out of the kindness of their hearts—sacrificing profit for the greater good. No, that’s not how things work in the real-world people, Star Wars movies are and have always been about making money—lots of money. They sell ideas and images in exchange for profit which they then use to expand the reach of those things. If people want to see an art film, as many critics think they do, then go to Sundance and watch all those art movies. But Star Wars is a huge commercial enterprise designed to drive many other commercial enterprises and that’s part of the fun of it. Let me explain this to everyone, even though Disney leans to the political left these days, they are not evil. They are a company designed to make money and from what I have witnessed with them, they listen to what fans want and they try to give it to them—because they want to make money. They aren’t trying to make a bunch of 30-year-olds who still live with their parents happy because their mothers over coddled them all their lives and the people they talk to at GameStop agree with them. Money and the making of it is not “evil,” as they taught you in public school. Let’s get that straight right now.
As to the industry news, many of the critics out there and newspapers they work for are all into the kind of fake news that has led a campaign against the Donald Trump presidency. In many ways if Solo: A Star Wars Story breaks the $300 million mark globally over this Memorial Day weekend in spite of all the efforts the protestors have attempted to stop it, it will truly be a moment where the Star Wars franchise will be made great again, just as Donald Trump has made it his effort to “Make America Great Again.” On election night in 2016 people elected a person that all the industry analysts projected would lose terribly to Hillary Clinton. The labor unions in the entertainment industry have their hands in everything which is why movies these days have moved in such a progressive direction. If the fans are mad at Kathy Kennedy for screwing around politically with Star Wars, the labor unions are mad at her as an executive at Lucasfilm who fired the original two directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller. There is a very interesting article in Indiewire linked below that goes into more detail, but the gist is this, labor unions don’t like to see people getting fired, and when Ron Howard was brought in to fix Solo, so that it would be a profitable film, and not some comic art piece, the battle lines were drawn and Kennedy couldn’t make anybody happy. But I give her credit for putting the effort into making a profitable film that would be loved for years instead of a film critics enjoy.
With hindsight being 20/20 it would have been smart for Kathy Kennedy to keep the fans to her back. I think the power of her position and her feminist nature got Star Wars off to a rough start through the first three films under her control, The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi. But I’ll give her credit, she put her finger to the wind and made adjustments and this movie Solo: A Star Wars Story is the result, and I think its going to be great. Like I said, I feel like she made the movie just for me. But I know better than that—she made it for lots of kids around the world that want to see and live through this character a very exciting life. And I think it will be so good that it will overcome all the protests and negative press that is highly politically motivated. I remember what it was like to see movies like this back in the late 70s and early 80s. There is a good reason that nobody makes movies like this anymore—because there are parasitic fan bases that want movies to mean more to them then they really do—and they are always disappointed. It’s hard for filmmakers to sit down in a concept meeting and quiet all that noise and to make a movie like Solo: A Star Wars Story—a fun movie that doesn’t deal with changing character arcs and relish in a bunch of progressive themes such as whether or not Lando is pansexual. This movie and all movies are about the joys of capitalism and the fun that can be found in a good character that takes everyone for a nice ride for a couple of hours—and that’s what Solo is. And that excitement sells toys, amusement park experiences, and an expansion into more mythology such as books, comics and even more movies. When people ask why anybody needed a movie about Han Solo the answer is because at the heart of all Star Wars movies is Han Solo. He’s the only character who ever really had his head on straight and if Lucasfilm wanted in their wildest fantasies to make Star Wars great again—they needed to turn to Han Solo—in his pure, overly optimistic form, even if it meant pissing off everyone so that it could win everyone’s hearts all over again much to their eventual benefit.
