Tag: Down the Rabbit Hole

Finally, I’m Proud of my Government: And Trump University was never a fraud

For the first time in my life when I look at the White House, I’m proud. That actually goes back to the days of Ronald Reagan—everything in Washington D.C. seemed dirty and corrupt to me, but now—now everything is different. The Trump White House has given me faith in an American government not as some ominous thing to be feared, but a partner in the great American experiment yearning for a better tomorrow. After passing the tax cuts through the House and Senate by midweek 2017 in a December looking toward Christmas, I witnessed something I thought would never be possible. I hoped it would honestly, but I had doubts it could—and that is to see business objectives applied to politics for the sake of changing the way the whole game will be played forever more. Donald Trump has brought an honesty to the White House and therefore all of Washington D.C. culture that has altered the course of the human race I think forever. This little evolutionary step we’ve seen in the year of 2017 will always be viewed as a special time that the world will reflect on and be thankful for.

I have to think back to the very dishonorable thing Mit Romney did when he came out against Trump in the primaries as the establishment GOP threw everything including the kitchen sink at Trump to stop his nomination process. Probably the hardest hitting criticism Romney leveled at Trump was about Trump University being a fraud. As I’ve said before, I’ve read all of Trump’s books over the years—as everyone should. If you really want to know who Donald Trump is, read the books he’s written—he is a very open person. Well before he was president of the United States he had a deep concern to help motivate people to greatness. Basically, he’s a high energy guy who loves to work, so he gets involved in lots of things in his life, and he loves to talk about them. He sets high standards for himself and always seeks to meet those standards. For instance, when he plays golf with other professional golfers, he doesn’t see himself as inferior to them. Instead he plays with them to get better himself, but he doesn’t consider himself an inferior talent, the way most people would. Whatever Trump has ever done he justifies that if he puts the time and effort into being good at it, that he can be as good if not better than everyone else.

Trump’s pursuit of greatness has given him a good life, and he’s been very open to sharing that good life always. Like a lot of us he looked around once his Celebrity Apprentice show took off at NBC and figured that lots of people wanted to learn from him—so he started Trump University. There are a lot of schools out there that are actual frauds, such as Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Princeton and many others—because what they sell is not what you are getting. In the established schools their intent isn’t to teach you about the world and how to live in it—they are there to program children into becoming liberals and adjusting student’s lives to socialism. They sell their services as helping people get good jobs, but what they are really after is programing children into liberalism. There are other schools like Liberty University that try to teach conservative studies, but they are typically looked at by the political left as institutions of fraudulent activity—because they aren’t part of the orthodox. That’s when Trump entered the fray with a university of his own located in one of his developments along the Hudson—and his intention was basically to share his experience with hungry minds wherever they came from.

As Mit Romney did his public comments against Trump criticizing Trump University specifically I was holding in my hand my copy of a book called Trump 101: The Way to Success—which was published by Trump University. How could Mit Romney say that Trump University was a fraud as I was holding one of the books produced by that endeavor that was clearly written to improve the lives of people in business—and in life? The answer was that he couldn’t. Trump University may not have taken off the way Trump wanted—but he certainly tried. Once Obama was elected in office and it was obvious to the rest of us that we had a real criminal enterprise moving into Washington D.C. Trump moved his efforts more to the Tea Party movement—like many of us right thinking people did—in 2009. After Obama personally called out Trump at the correspondent’s dinner in 2012 Trump had decided that he’d try for a presidential run and give the Tea Party movement the thrust it had been lacking. I think for him based on the books he had written, it was the ultimate challenge to some of his lifelong philosophies—and if he pulled it off, he would have a chance to actually save the nation.

I knew Trump was never a fraud and I was a supporter of his essentially from the time he announced he was running. I based my support on his books because I knew that if a guy who thought the way he did were ever to become president, then he’d be the greatest that we had ever had—that includes Lincoln, and George Washington himself. Trump has never been a bad guy who functioned from his flaws—he’s always sought to be better each day that he woke up. He was a little crazy with women for a while as he lived a genuine playboy life—which in his day was the way success was defined. But he obviously outgrew that over time and has arrived into his modern age better prepared than anybody to do the hard job of being President of the United States.

His first-year successes are straight off the pages of his books and I’m happy to say he hasn’t disappointed me in any way this entire time. Most people don’t think of him as an author, but he’s quite expressive and very inspiring—naturally, and I think his written works are some of his best attributes. I really look forward to reading the books about his presidency in the future—because there are some really wonderful things happening every day in his administration. For people who clearly wanted America to fail—of course they hate him. They hate all of us and have decided that they don’t want to live in a country with our values—they made that decision, not us. But until Trump came along to flip the tables, they had control of the narrative within the media. They don’t have it any longer, and it only took a year. Because of Trump and his successes, they are forced to reveal themselves—really for the first time, and people can see the maliciousness of their actions in the light of day. Trump has brought honor to the White House that will have a lasting effect—and I’m very proud of what his administration has been able to do in such a short time. Based on his books, I know this is all just the tip of the iceberg, there will be many more great things to come and soon people will forget about all the ugly stuff. And that will be the greatest thing of all—something that we will all carry deep into the future for all time.

Rich Hoffman
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The GOP Passes Tax Cuts: How this causes the Democratic Party to end

I’m not going to say who I said it to, but I can say that it was quite a few very influential people. I’m not a big tea and cookie socialite who works the circles of power to advance thoughts on a matter, but I do deal with people who do—and they do good work of advancing conservative philosophy. So I’ll say here what I’ve been saying to them—get this tax bill done and we have a real possibility of 6% growth by this upcoming summer of 2018. Go ahead and mark it on your calendars and we’ll talk about it when the time comes. Unfortunately, most people—especially politicians with backgrounds in the legal profession do not understand economics. Unless a person does enormous amounts of personal research and self-education our school systems both public and private do not teach proper understanding of basic economic concepts. The political establishment has adopted socialism for well over 100 years with only periods of market fluctuation due to tax reductions—and that has hindered the American economy enormously. With that in mind these tax cuts passed under the Trump administration have enormous implications for our future in a positive way—so what happened today is not just a victory for Republicans—it’s a cultural revolution at the most fundamental level of conservative philosophy.

What all the doomsayers don’t want the American public to know is that yes, trickle down economics works—it really is the only method. The fantasy of a wealth redistribution utopia that liberals have fantasized about since Sir Thomas Moore’s publication of Utopia is purely science fiction with no basis in reality. It is a made-up sentiment that is built on hope, not facts and liberals have distorted that hope into some very ugly moments in world history—the rise of the Nazi, the rise of Mussolini, the rise of the Castros in Cuba, the communization of China, Vietnam and North Korea. The destruction of Central America and South America—particularly Venezuela and the cannibalization of all Europe. Africa is a continent of warring tribes fueled by communist sentiments as is Iran in the Middle East. It was Marxists who took over Iran back in the 70s which make that country such a danger today. What they all have in common is a destructive sentiment toward liberalism—because people were all trained at the same liberal colleges and were raised by the same basic liberal elementary education. And for nearly 32 years, since Ronald Reagan left office essentially, America has tried to be a team player to go along with all these leftist ideas regarding economics and technological development—which has nearly destroyed us. That changes today.

The passage of the GOP Tax Cut and Reform Bill is a bold step away from the global trend toward tax and spend communism, which was always the intention of the wealth redistribution strategies which has hand cuffed our economy for years. Once the dust clears and people don’t die, and bank accounts fill up, while America starts filling some of those empty store fronts in strip malls again with viable businesses the truth will be there for all to see. The pent-up wealth that has been hiding in the world has now been given a safe harbor to dock in, and America will explode with renewed enthusiasm. Isn’t it nice to have a business guy as president, who understands money? I love it for a change. Ohio would be smart to hire Jim Renaicci as the next governor to bring that same kind of understanding to a state that needs it. This GOP would not have passed the bill if Trump had not framed the argument and set a time table—like all good managers do. Everyone knows that presidents are not supposed to create legislation, congress does, but from the Executive Branch and as the head of the Republican Party they do set the table—and Trump did. Without this, nothing would have happened.

It pained me to watch Savannah Guthrie on NBC interview Paul Ryan about economic matters because all her assumptions were incorrect. She cited Michael Bloomberg as an authority on business without mentioning that he is a major tax and spend liberal. He lists himself as independent because he’s actually a socialist like Bernie Sanders—a major contributor to the progressive caucus. It doesn’t matter that he’s a billionaire—look at George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg—Warren Buffett, there are a lot of wealthy people who either don’t want more competition among their peers or they fell into their wealth by good luck—because they really aren’t very smart. That doesn’t make them business tycoons just because they are rich—yet people like Guthrie use them as ways to bridge their socialist theories to reality. What they all have in common on the political left is an inherent mistrust of human beings to do the right things—so they assume that the heavy hand of government should always be ready to enforce the laws of our nation and the basic assumption of fairness for which most of us all agree on. Liberals go wrong because they assume that people can’t be trusted—they as a political party have trust problems and that is a sickness of their own making. What Bloomberg really reveals in his tax answer is just what Soros would—they know that inside themselves to their very core they tend to lean toward evil intentions, so they assume that is the way everyone is. But that is not the case of reality. Hating corporations is not a viable strategy for economic growth. I am a job provider, and it is my experience that every car in the parking lot of my endeavor depends on me to fuel their economic lives. Their car payments, their mortgage, their entertainment—the children they raise—everything they do depends on good decisions made by their employer—in this case me. They need to be able to trust me and I need to be able to trust them. Since I am a person who does not have trust issues, I find the exchange is a very healthy one most of the time. And as I look around my community at all the businesses large and small that have to have that same relationship with their employees for the same reasons it is there that you can see “our economy.” Its not some magical thing that government controls, it exists on a microcosm of individual relationships successfully exchanged. Government is like introducing a third wife to a marriage—it doesn’t work—it introduces mistrust and more emotional liabilities rooted in the sum of their intellectual neurosis—the tendency to mistrust people. That mistrust contaminates everything involved in an employer/employee relationship. Guthrie and the people like her obviously don’t understand that basic premise—and why would they think otherwise since they’ve been taught socialist ideas from their infancy by the world at large.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/savannah-guthrie-to-paul-ryan-%E2%80%98are-you-living-in-a-fantasy-world%E2%80%99/ar-BBH3D4q?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

The boldness of the GOP plan goes against that insecurity that has been implicit during the entire progressive era—since Teddy Roosevelt switched from the Republican party to become the first presidential progressive candidate. Two decades later his nephew FDR, would become the second fascist to sit in the White House. The first was Woodrow Wilson. These people had emotional problems yet from the political left they shaped our education institutions with a false premise of basic mistrust in the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith’s ground-breaking examinations on capitalism. What we can always trust in humanity is that people generally act on behalf of their own self-interest. So when dealing with them, so long as self-interest is part of a calculation, you can trust the result—which is what is the key behind this tax cut plan of the GOP. Self-interest means employees leave companies if there is somewhere to go. Self-interest means corporations will pay more to retain their talent from a competitor. Self-interest means a company will locate to America so they can be near their families if the tax rates are equitable. Self interest keeps a person from jumping off a bridge where the railings are only hip level. If someone wanted to, they could jump over—and most people live within those guidelines except for the occasional idiot who has painted their lives into a corner with lots of bad decisions, then seek to committee suicide. This GOP tax cut puts trust back into people and that is truly terrifying for liberals, but what they will discover like the child who is terrified of the monster they think lives under their bed, is that there isn’t anything to be afraid of. And learning that scares them even more—because that is the foundation of their liberalism.

Rich Hoffman

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‘The 15:17 to Paris’: A Clint Eastwood movie coming at just the right time

Since the heroics of Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos on that fateful train to Paris where they stopped a terrorist attack, I have to admit that I have been hoping to have the same encounter whenever I travel.  It must have been a very gratifying experience to be able to beat the shit out of a terrorist.  That’s why I think the movie version of that famous event will do extraordinary business, because in America I think my feelings are quite common when it comes to terrorism, whether it was the neighbor to a church in Texas who stopped the shooter that unleashed a barrage of bullets into the innocent with a gun of his own, or the countless episodes in just the last few months where law enforcement and private citizens have done the same the moment they heard that, crack, pop, crack of .223 bullets splitting the air toward dreadful intentions.  Leave it to Clint Eastwood to capture that American gusto in his newest film The 15:17 to Paris, which is set to release on February 8th 2018.

I’ve ridden on trains through France, just as that trailer set up the story, and I experienced very much the same emotions—especially in regard to the European baby Cokes.  Eastwood is a master of the movie making craft at his mid-80s maturation and nobody does the little things better these days than him.  I said it at the time that when Eastwood decided to make a movie of the book written by the three heroes that he’d do great things with the project—and he did by casting the three guys to play themselves in the movie.  That took extraordinary confidence on his part and I think the result that ends up on-screen will be incredible.  America needs a story like this right now and especially under a Trump White House, the cultural phenomena that it has a chance to become are ripe for the exemplary.

It’s obvious that Eastwood is going to explore the how and why these three ordinary kids become the heroes they did—and I’m quite certain that the answer will reside in the philosophy of Americanism.  I remember when the guys were being praised after the event around the world for their heroism and thinking—why them?  There were over 500 people on that train that day, and why was it three Americans who stopped the terrorist?  Well, I know the answer, but the world has been banging its head against the rails trying to come to grips with it.  The reason of course is that we make Americans from the time they are little kids into their adulthoods with a sense of self-purpose—with an assumption that they can do and be whatever they want in life.  In Europe they are raised quite differently, because they have a history of bloodlines and aristocracy that keeps them from assuming that their destinies are largely in their own hands.

The idea that an individual can make a difference and do anything is an American concept.  Not everyone in America gets it obviously, but the concept is there for anyone to answer and in the case of Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos, they certainly did and Eastwood’s direction for the film will no doubt explore that.  People inclined to fate might otherwise just sit there and let the events of terrorism do what they will do—and people will live or die accordingly.  But changing that fate is something that you can see in the eyes of Spencer Stone in that preview—which is what Eastwood was obviously after when he decided to cast them in a movie about themselves.  He wanted to show audiences what that looks like—to believe to their very core that if they wanted to change the fate of something, then individual action was the key to doing so.  Some wimpy actor can try to mimic that behavior, which is how Eastwood pulled off the great work he did for American Sniper.  But with something like this, in the age of terrorism—how best to combat terrorism but to teach people not to be so damn afraid of every little thing.  So bullets are coming at you.  Maybe some hit you.  So what?  But for a chance to beat the crap out of a terrorist and stop the death of hundreds of people who might otherwise have international consequences—who wouldn’t want the opportunity to do what these three guys did?  I’d love the chance.

Clint Eastwood as I’ve said before is my favorite movie director—he has been for a while and he’s only become better over time.  So I’d go see this movie regardless of what it was about and who was in it.  Every film he does could be his last, so he appears to be putting a lot of love into each one of them while he still can—which is very admirable.  But even for him the timing of this movie and the way it will be presented I don’t think could come under better circumstances.  America has had a year of Trump.  The economy is booming, tax cuts are coming, the Deep State is being exposed and cleansed of its activists—the world is respecting us again and terrorists are on their heels.  All that has largely happened because normal every day Americans have had the courage to do their part in Making America Great Again and Clint Eastwood has captured that in this film.

Warner Bros. will have a massive hit on their hands when they release this, because we are all feeling it, and we want this story.  Once we see this story it will only accelerate the process which explores what makes Americans different in a positive way—what makes them run toward danger when others cower and pray for mercy?  That’s what The 15:17 to Paris is all about.  As I said, I’ve been on a train across the French countryside, so I can relate to those opening shots.  And in Paris which many consider to be one of the greatest cities in the world—I can say that Americans are very easy to spot.  We think different, and not in a bad way.  We like our Cokes bigger, we enjoy more food—we tend to be bigger and stronger as a result—but more than anything we like what we like when we want it, because we come from a culture that feeds that nature in us.  We don’t like long lines—we don’t like public transportation—because we want to be in charge of our own destinies whenever possible—and we don’t like to be pushed around.  When someone points a gun in our face, we have more than a few of us who will charge that attacker for the glory and pride of doing so no matter what might happen afterwards because we were born free and recognize quickly around the world where tyrants look to oppress—and we naturally don’t like it.

I will be one of the first in line to see The 15:17 to Paris.  I can’t wait!

Rich Hoffman

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Trump the Destroyer and Beyond Pairs of Opposites: ‘The Last Jedi’s’ message to the 21st Century

There is nothing I enjoy more than a good discussion about very heady topics.  It really is the only thing that interests me so my mind is often open to these elements when I see them.  And before everyone complains that I’m writing another Star Wars article, it would be worth the time to follow through on this one, because we’re going to talk about some important stuff.  After the dust settled on The Last Jedi—once I had seen it and considered what Disney’s role in the whole thing was, and compared all that to these really massive investigations into the FBI and Donald Trump’s institution cleansing presidency—I have a few thoughts to share to those with a mind to listen.  So here it goes.

Taken up close, there is a lot to be angry about.  There’s a lot to fix, and most of us do not understand our role in the grand scheme of things.  We can call that grand scheme God if you’d like, but I’d prefer the term Grand Fortissimo—A term I acquired after reading the Joseph Campbell masterpieces The Masks of God many years ago for which that term was applied to the steady march and consideration  of the human race—from its inception to the present.  Art after all is the yearnings and toils of the mind and the imagination which fosters it—and Star Wars was always a work of modern art presented as myth to a hungry public needing more than what other forms of entertainment typically give us.  I’m not particularly happy with the direction Disney has taken the Star Wars stories—because taken at the ground level—these new films are very progressive in their values which makes them political in a negative way.  But………what separates Star Wars from the pack is that they are rooted in very ancient mythologies which have been always trying to answer the big meaning of life questions we all seek and to get there it is the orchestral music of John Williams which takes what might otherwise be average television plot lines and elevates them into the realm of modern myth.

As I was thinking about all this I listened to the new Last Jedi soundtrack by 85-year-old John Williams and if there was ever a person on earth that has the powers of God working through him, it is that guy.  Listening to the music with no images attached, just a good symphonic score pulled from the movie is just amazing.  What he put down on paper is something that would rival Mozart or Bach or Tchaikovsky any day.  That Ahch-To them from The Last Jedi which was introduced at the end of The Force Awakens I think represents the direction of the human race in the 21st century and John Williams is quite well aware of it.  It’s fully majestic and deeply philosophical and touches on all the classic myths of our imaginations and shines a light to where we are going.  For Williams to capture all that in just a few notes is nothing short of genius.  As I was listening to that little piece in my car with the windows up and the sound turned up as loud as I could get it to go I received a notification from my oldest daughter that NASA was sending up a copy of The Last Jedi for everyone to watch up on the International Space Station.  On another notification I received the Friday box office results which was tracking The Last Jedi to break over 200 million domestically by Sunday night—which is extraordinary.  Even though I thought the surface plot of The Last Jedi was pretty mediocre—almost descending into the plot of the latest stupid Star Trek movie, Into Darkness—the deeper elements of it are actually quite sophisticated, which is a serious nod of the hat to Rian Johnson, the director.  He chose to essentially make this Episode 8 movie a modern rendition of the classic Twin War Gods Navaho legend and it is quite effective.

Meanwhile Donald Trump is shaking up the entire world of the establishment.  Liberals might see Trump as Snoke from The Last Jedi and they are guarding themselves from the First Order of his creation.  Conservatives see Trump as the Rebellion fighting against an evil faceless Empire where the Deep State has all the power and might we see in the Star Wars movies as being something worth fighting.  The main them of The Last Jedi is the motif of most mythologies that we know of, and that is to move beyond the pairs of opposites—the yen and yang life.  The cultures of our past which built pyramids understood this all too well, you pick your side and work your way intellectually up to the point where you will have to meld with all the other sides of the pyramid.  Life forces you to pick sides, but once the roles we play in the conflict of living are concluded, all sides blend at the point.  At the end of The Last Jedi what Rian Johnson has done was essentially kill all the villains to merge the characters into this concept which was pretty bold stuff.  I am pretty sure that Donald Trump is a Star Wars fan, and I’d dare say he understands what I’m talking about and he knows his role in all this is a Shiva role—a destroyer of evil and a transformer upon our culture.  I remember when the Rogue One Blue-ray came out in April of this year Trump was playing it on Air Force One while reporters where talking to him.  Trump gets it—I’m quite sure of it.  His job is to clear away all the institutional hesitation for which Star Wars is conceptually introducing to the human race a tomorrow for which we presently aren’t prepared for.  That is clearly the intention of The Last Jedi—to bring mankind to the top of the pyramids and to now move beyond—which no culture in the history of the world has done so far—that we know of.  If they have in the past, they left earth long ago.

It was just this week that Trump announced the next steps for NASA which are going to once again use the space race to spur our economy along into uncharted waters.  Within a few decades we will all have to make a conscious decision as to whether or not we want to die—because we’ll be able to download ourselves into some form of A.I.  We’ll also be able to biologically heal ourselves—so there’s that as well. We are moving toward a time where dying for the honor of our flags, or our loved ones is really going to be robbed of its merit—and what are we going to do then?  How do we live beyond the pairs of opposites—once we’ve had reconciliation with the “father” whether it’s the God of the Christian Bible or the Sun from the Navaho legend?  We must have Shiva destroy the old world and to clear away all the smoke so that we can see the top of the pyramid, then we will complete that climb and move into that next age.  Star Wars is providing a road map of thought to help us through art and subconsciously we seem to understand. Donald Trump for the world right now is Shiva—and I say that in the most positive manner.  He is working beyond the villains of Star Wars for that moment on Ahch-To when Luke vanished at the end of The Last Jedi to join Yoda in the realm of the dead—which aren’t so dead—but willing participants in the theater of life.  Very interesting.

Donald Trump and Disney without really planning it in any way are serving as the two greatest influences that are shaping our culture of tomorrow in ways that many of us today still can’t fathom.  I saw a lot of people at my screening of The Last Jedi who are full-grown adults dressed up for the movie.  This stuff is a religion to them now, and that is taking us all to places that are uncharted in the human experience.  While our political assumptions are being destroyed—rightfully so, our art is providing us with a road map to renewed self-discovery.  Star Wars is not just a movie experience; it is amid all the sex scandals and the obvious destruction of Hollywood the best and only safe place that we can still trust.  It’s all around us at Target, Wal-Mart and even in our cars.  It’s fueling the imagination of NASA which has been given wings again under Trump and where we are all heading for is that grand fortissimo I was talking about.  It may take thirty or forty more years, but we’re going to be going somewhere we’ve never been before and I think that is absolutely wonderful.

Rich Hoffman

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Embodiments of Good Culture: ‘The Last Jedi’ review as seen at the Liberty Township Cinebistro

Regarding the new Star Wars film, The Last Jedi0DC280AC-2650-4978-AF7B-AD3BA74C3987—I enjoyed it. It is the best movie of its kind made these days. To me it’s a long way off from George Lucas’ original vision and is much more progressive. When I say that I’m not knocking it for its various species and races working together for a common cause—its just the value system is very collective based—much more than it used to be and that makes the film step on itself often. But for kids 15 and under, Star Wars is magical stuff, and for everyone else—it’s the best pop culture eye candy that you can get anywhere with a stirring new John Williams score to go with it. So there is a lot to love and I did. Disney did a good job as far as movies made by committee go—and I thought Rian Johnson did a good job navigating all the needs of those committees quite well to even pull off something that did sometimes reflect the classic Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back. Honestly, I wish there were more films like The Last Jedi because when it comes to the movie going experience my sentiments go to the theater owners who often get screwed by Hollywood for putting out a bunch of liberal crap that nobody wants to see. At least films like The Last Jedi give theater owners a chance to make some money—which they desperately need these days in the age of changing entertainment options.

Since I’m a Star Wars guy I was going to see it at the soonest opportunity and that came on a Thursday night before the film’s official release. Thursdays are rough for me because I usually have an oversea call with people on the opposite side of the world, so their 8 AM on a Friday is for me 6 PM Thursday. And of course my first responsibility was to the call. So at the conclusion my wife and I had plans to meet at the Cinebistro in Liberty Township to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi at 8 PM. It was on these kinds of evenings that excited me originally when I learned a Cinebistro was coming to my hometown—and since its arrival it’s really been the only movie theater we’ve gone to. I love every visit to that theater. But Star Wars is a special event and everything is elevated during those kinds of movie releases—so I was very grateful to leave my call meeting and arrive at the bar in Cinebistro with a nice overlook down into the square at the Liberty Center shopping complex and have a Ohio brewed Star Wars beer with my wife while we waited for our assigned seats to be called.D29EA4ED-8F8E-4BE7-A989-1C50576967D2

I was hungry, as we hadn’t eaten anything that day so it was quite a delight to be seated with all the politeness you expect at a nice restaurant by the staff at Cinebistro. Our waitress was a veteran who had been working at the Cinebistro since it opened and she was sharp as a tack which to my tired presence was very welcome. My wife and I ordered our food and within a few minutes our order started coming back at us and it was one of the best burgers I’ve had in a while made more so by how hungry I was. The movie hadn’t even started and it was already one of the best nights out to a movie that I could remember having in several years. Then the lights went down and The Last Jedi started and it was just a fun movie to sit there dead tired after 14 straight hours of working and enjoy.

My honest impression of the film was that it painted itself in a corner. There isn’t much reason to have an Episode 9 as most of the big climaxes that you would expect in a Star Wars film happened in The Last Jedi. There was a big standoff with Luke at the end as he faced down the might of the First Order stoically that was particularly powerful and made the worth of the entire movie valid in that one moment. But there were a lot of good moments that made this an above average film about science fiction. There were many times that I felt the filmmakers were secretly trying to make an anti-Trump film where they turned the Rebellion symbol into a calling sign to liberalism—and that bothered me. Hey guys, I was a Rebel before anyone else was who are making these movies now. Just for the record, and I’m certainly not a liberal. I have no sympathy for Kylo Ren or Darth Vader. I have never liked the bad guys in these films so I’m not sure the filmmakers really understand their modern audiences the way that George Lucas did. Instead, Lucasfilm and Disney are happy to just pick every demographic that’s out there and plop them into the plot and make all the white males the villains and hope that nobody gets pissed off and refuses to see their movie. I tried not to notice, but it was very distracting.DA1609EC-8629-457B-93C3-C7172250F5B8

Way back in the first Star Wars movie Han Solo says to Princess Leia—“now if we can avoid any female advice, we might be able to get outta here,” or something to that effect. Well, the members of the Resistance would have been wise to listen to that—because in this new film there is no Han Solo to keep all these crazy overly emotional women in check—and they’ve pretty much ruined the Resistance. The Poe Dameron character tries to fill in the shows of Han Solo’s pragmatism, but the women end up shooting him and incapacitating him into a feeble position several times demoting him and harassing him as if he were an imbecile—when really, he’s the best that they have. Han Solo always was the older guy and had a father knows best quality in regard to Luke and Leia. Now they are the ones in charge and Leia has ruined the Resistance and Luke is hiding on an island ready to die—to quit the world. Without thinking about things too much, the movie is still fun—but with a little analysis it doesn’t take much to sympathize with Ben Solo who essentially rebelled against all this stupidity and became seduced by Snoke to essentially run the First Order.

The First Order seems to have unlimited money and resources when the Resistance is supposed to be fighting for the Republic which is the current governing power. So the question I had for the whole movie is that if the First Order were so bad, how did they get such great wealth? There was an attempt to explain that a casino planet where many of the galaxies rich and famous resided was how the First Order obtained all its power—but honestly the point failed to be made. All I heard was some chubby Asian chick yack on about how evil money and wealth was while she and Finn tried to figure out how to save the Resistance for which her sister had given her life. I wanted to pull her aside and say—“hey little lady—try making a little money so that you can fund your rebellion and stop resting on ideas of hope and sympathy to get your point across. You might have more luck.”

That’s what makes these movies made by liberal San Francisco young people different from George Lucas who came from a small business background and made the Star Wars movies with great personal risk and cost to himself. Even though George was a political liberal he was a fiscal conservative when it came to making movies and the industry was better for it—and so were his characters. That is missing from the prequel films and these made by the next generation. These filmmakers have all the budgets and resources they need whereas Lucas didn’t and that certainly shows up in the final product. The special effects company Industrial Light & Magic got it reputation from the first Star Wars movies. Now everyone expects excellence, so there’s that element as well. It’s a lot harder to WOW an audience now than it used to be so the emphasis is obviously spent on doing that for fans. I see that it hurts the story, but that is an older guy speaking. Kids will love these movies and they should—they are the best morality tales available to young people, so the benefits are obvious.

The Last Jedi ended in a way that I thought probably should end all Star Wars movies, because there will never be a way to top that last scene with Luke. It was pretty magnificent. And I left the theater thinking about big lofty ideas about whether or not the dead and vanished would even care what goes on in the world of the living. In Star Wars they do, and it’s a fascinating concept that more than made up for some of the obvious liberalism. But even better than the movie was the experience of seeing it at the Cinebistro. They certainly did a good job there, and around the theater with all the Christmas decorations. For me that night was probably the climax of the entire Holiday season and I couldn’t have expected more. A good movie to watch in a top-class movie theater at a top-class entertainment district within my home town. It’s the way these kinds of experiences are supposed to be, and thankfully for one night everything was perfect and I’m very thankful for that.

Rich Hoffman

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Jim Renacci and ‘The Last Jedi’: Liberals and their Resistance are more alike than they know

One thing that I really like about Jim Renacci’s run for the governorship within the state of Ohio is that he is very light on his feet. As he had a press conference early in the week for which the new Star Wars movie The Last Jedi was released I thought it was cleaver that he was active on Twitter tying the needs of his campaign to the pop culture monstrosity. It was a hip move that was reminiscent to the light on his feet nature of Donald Trump. The big news of course was that Renacci was partnering up with Cincinnati councilwoman Amy Murray which was another smart move—and for most politicians that would have been their news highlight of the week. But what is noticeable about Jim Renacci is that he’s very competitive, and determined to win whatever he does which is why I’m supporting him for his run for governor—to replace the docile, and much maligned closet liberal—John Kasich.

https://twitter.com/JimRenacci/status/940374420601876480

The candidacy of Renacci is actually very much in line with the pop culture for which Star Wars represents to our society at large. I’ve seen The Last Jedi, the most recent Star Wars film at an early screening and it was good of course in its own way. I understand now that I’m a traditional Star Wars guy and that these new movies, books and televisions shows will never touch my heart the way they once did—which is fine. They are fun movies that are dealing with a lot of very contemporary mythology, but nobody did it better than George Lucas. Disney should have followed the Lucas stories and stayed away from these much more progressive adoptions created by the San Francisco kids at Lucasfilm. I’ll give a little review of course once the dust settles—because there is a lot to think about. But one take away that is directly connected to the politics of our real world is that the Resistance in the movie is very much reflective of today’s political left.

I’m a Rebellion guy from the first Star Wars led by Han Solo. When Solo was a general the Rebellion won and destroyed the Empire and it was a very Ayn Rand type of embodiment. In these new movies it’s not the Rebellion any more it’s the Resistance and the new Han Solo type of character is Poe Dameron. Led completely by women now, the Resistance is very progressive and as a result they are losing. In fact, they are not only losing, but they are dreadfully inefficient and nobody in the galaxy seems to be rallying to their cause. That is a far different thing from the first movies where hot-shot pilots like Biggs and Wedge were defecting from the Empire to fight for the Rebels. In The Last Jedi, the defectors are from the Resistance. Given how politically charged our current entertainment culture is I thought it was very telling that Carrie Fisher and Laura Dern berated Poe for being too reckless and not following orders—which is ironically how people who win a lot do so—by not following orders. Then when he wasn’t in the room they commented on the fact that they only kept Poe around because he was a good-looking guy. So that’s how these progressive women like Kathy Kennedy who is running all these Star Wars movies these days see the way the world of tomorrow will be? Sexual harassment will now be dished out by the women because they are now empowered? Not that I care really, but it is a very interesting thing to watch—the hypocrisy is hilarious.

Leading up to this Star Wars movie many people who are anti-Trump including many of the production staff and actors in The Last Jedi made it clear that the Resistance was reflective of their political ideology. Without question given the number of scenes where members of the Resistance made really desperate sacrifices we are seeing essentially what the political left believes is their plight in life. They think like that FBI agent Peter Strzok who felt it was their plight in life to do whatever needed to be done to keep Donald Trump out of office—as if they knew better than the rest of us what was right. I’m a person who hates bad guys in movies, but there were a lot of moments whether it was intentional or not, that Kylo Ren was the star of the film. He was the one who had it all together and was able to achieve objectives—and to get things done. Even to the point where nice girl Rey was tempted by his power. I felt that the makers of this Star Wars movie wonderfully directed by Rian Johnson meant to say one thing about the state of politics in our current world, but ended up saying something completely unintentional—like we know we’re losers and understand why.

In the original stories by George Lucas it was the pirate Han Solo who shook off the rules and helped the Rebellion start winning again that served as the guiding light of the entire franchise. He made the Empire look like a bunch of bumbling fools outwitting them time and time again in a classic good guys against bad guy fashion. Yet in these new Star Wars movies it is the First Order now led by Kylo Ren who makes the Resistance look pathetic and weak. I know the metaphor for these modern Hollywood artists is that the First Order is the modern equivalent of Hitler or President Trump—but its not the Resistance they really adore as artists—it’s the power of Kylo Ren. It’s like a woman who says she hates men with long hair who play in rock bands doing drugs day and night then turn around and leave their nice husbands and children for just such reckless characters. There is a unique scene in The Last Jedi where it’s a kind of upside down world from the Stranger Things television show. The schizophrenia that I’m talking about is on full display here and I think they think they’ve concealed their insecurities, but at the end of the movie when there is literally nobody left in the Resistance I couldn’t help but feel that the inner fear that all members of the Progressive caucus are experiencing now can be summed up at the end of the movie. They know that the demands of the story will pull the natural order of things toward Kylo Ren in the end with Rey helping to tame him toward the needs of existence. But the story is not Rey’s, it is clearly about Kylo Ren—Han Solo’s son that was seduced to evil off the superstitions of a Luke Skywalker who thought about killing the young lad in his sleep—and then propelled him to the Dark Side out of self-preservation.

You might ask what any of this has to do with Jim Renacci and his run for governorship. Other than the fact that he used a cleaver Star Wars ad to show how he was different from his competition the candidacy is enough to stir the concerns of the real Resistance that exists in our very tangible political world. The progressives and establishment types who now look at these days of Trump and think of themselves as the Resistance in Star Wars are more correct than they know. They may get little moments of victory—like in the case of the Alabama senate race—but like the events of The Last Jedi, their numbers are dwindling down into nothing while all the resources of a vast galaxy are going to the other side. The insecurity they all face is the same as the one in that movie where Kylo Ren is supposed to be the villain—but is he really in the ways of the Force? Maybe it’s the idiots in the Resistance who are so prone to kill themselves for stupid reasons who are the real villains and that is a thought that I couldn’t help but conclude as the lights came on and the movie was over. Good guys and bad guys are really a matter of perspective definition. But………….only one side is right and one side is wrong and when nobody is left on the other side—the answer becomes obvious. What I learned from The Last Jedi is that the Force hates the Resistance. And that appears to be what’s going on in real life politics too.

Rich Hoffman

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The Emails of Peter Strzok and his adulterous lover Lisa Page: When the FBI becomes the enemy

The real issue is not who won the Alabama Senate seat, which should have easily have gone to Roy Moore, but was surrendered to the Democrat—the main issue is how deep the Deep State truly is. After all, in the case of Roy Moore, establishment Republicans were openly hoping for the Democrat to win, because they essentially wanted to give up their majority so that they can passive aggressively stop the Trump agenda. The best way for them to do that is to surrender their majority and take the light of responsibility off themselves. They used some nonsense 40-year-old story to pull their support of Moore so that they could do everything they could as Never Trumpers to halt the reforms taking place under the new administration. In that regard the much bigger story yesterday and going forward was the extent that the FBI played in tampering with the election—forget the Russians—it was our own intelligence agencies who were trying to stop Trump to protect establishment politics. The proof is in the very explicit text messages that are now out between lead investigator Peter Strzok and his adulterous lover Lisa Page. As reported by Fox News below, it was obvious that these two had serious opinions about Trump’s nomination to the head of the Republican Party. That wouldn’t have been an issue except that they sought to use the wheels of government to manipulate the situation against the American voter. Have a look for yourself:

Text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page in 2016 that were obtained by Fox News on Tuesday refer to then-candidate Donald Trump as a “loathsome human” and “an idiot.”

More than 10,000 texts between Strzok and Page were being reviewed by the Justice Department after Strzok was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe after it was revealed that some of them contained anti-Trump content.

The messages were sent during the 2016 campaign and contain discussions about various candidates. On March 2, Strzok texted Page that someone “asked me who I’d vote for, guessed [Ohio Gov. John] Kasich.”

“Seriously?! Would you not [vote] D[emocrat]?” Page responded.

“I don’t know,” Strzok answered. “I suppose Hillary [Clinton].”

“I would [vote] D,” Page affirmed.

Two days later, Page texted Strzok, “God, Trump is a loathsome human.”

“Yet he many[sic] win,” Strzok responded. “Good for Hillary.”

Later the same day, Strzok texted Page, “Omg [Trump’s] an idiot.”
“He’s awful,” Page answered.

“America will get what the voting public deserves,” said Strzok, to which Page responded. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Later that same day, Strzok texted Page, “Ok I may vote for Trump.”

“What?” answered Page. “Poor Kasich. He’s the only sensible man up there.”

“He was pretty much calling for death for [NSA leaker] Edward Snowden,” Strzok said. “I’m a single-issue voter. 😉 Espionage Machine Party.”

Strzok later told Page, “Exacty [sic] re Kasich. And he has ZERO appeal.”

Twelve days later, after Trump took a commanding lead in the Republican delegate race with victories in key “Super Tuesday” primaries, Page texted Strzok, “I can not believe Donald Trump is likely to be an actual, serious candidate for president.”

Four months later, Strzok and Page exchanged messages mocking Trump and his family at the Republican National Convention.

“Oooh, TURN IT ON, TURN IT ON!!! THE DO*CHEBAGS ARE ABOUT TO COME OUT,” Strzok texted Page on July 19. “You can tell by the excitable clapping.”

Later, Strzok reached out to Page again, saying, “Omg. You listening to npr? Apparently Melania’s speech had passages lifted from Michelle Obama’s…Unbelievable.”

“NO WAY!” Page answered, adding “God, it’s just a two-bit organization. I do so hope his disorganization comes to bite him hard in November.”

On Aug. 6, Page texted Strzok a New York Times article about Muslim lawyer Khzir Khan, who became embroiled in a war of words with Trump after Khan spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

“Jesus. You should read this. And Trump should go f himself,” Page wrote in a message attached to the article.

“God that’s a great article,” Strzok answered. “Thanks for sharing. And F TRUMP.”

Strzok, who was an FBI counterintelligence agent, was reassigned to the FBI’s human resources division after the discovery of the exchanges with Page, with whom he was having an affair. Page was briefly on Mueller’s team, but has since returned to the FBI.

House Intelligence Committee investigators have long regarded Strzok as a key figure in the chain of events that began when the bureau, in 2016, received the infamous anti-Trump “dossier” and launched a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the election that ultimately came to encompass FISA surveillance of a Trump campaign associate.

Strzok briefed the committee on Dec. 5, 2016, sources said. But within months of that session House Intelligence Committee investigators were contacted by an informant suggesting that there was “documentary evidence” that Strzok was purportedly obstructing the House probe into the dossier.

Strzok also oversaw the bureau’s interviews with ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn – who pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators in the Russia probe.

He also was present during the FBI’s July 2016 interview with Hillary Clinton at the close of the email investigation, shortly before then-FBI director James Comey called her actions “extremely careless” without recommending criminal charges.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/12/texts-between-ex-mueller-team-members-emerge-calling-trump-loathsome-human-idiot.html

https://twitter.com/overmanwarrior/status/941114109394812934

No wonder the FBI didn’t want to turn over these records to a House committee on the matter. This is very serious, even more serious than our media outlets are giving credence too. If you add this to the totality of the whole Deep State story we are dealing with major corruption of government resources for the entire purpose of picking and choosing the heads of states. No wonder Obama was so arrogantly free of confiding his actions to the rules contained within our Constitution. Seeing all this, nobody could have someone like Strzok gathering evidence against the Trump administration or working with Hillary Clinton during the campaign in any capacity. This only confirms the wildest conspiracy theories that were out there about the motivations of the FBI. Now we have the proof and we are required to act on it—which is a responsibility we can’t turn away from.

Trump’s election exposed all this, as we’ve discussed before. When a solution was presented as to why nothing ever gets done—which is why we elected Trump—known for his ability to achieve things, that is when the excuses were taken away from the establishment types and the Deep State which protected the aristocracy of Belt Way politics took action—which exposed them as insurgents. As it turns out, everyone was in on the game. Those people are so happy that Roy Moore didn’t win in the Alabama election because to their mind that was one less person they must contend with in maintaining a government that is more progressive and to their liking. They still plan to push Trump out of office by any means necessary, so from their point of view, things are easier with Moore not in a senate seat. They don’t consider that the other side—the people who did put Trump in office might have something to say about it if they are robbed of their election choice, and that arrogance is obvious in the actions of FBI agent Peter Strzok and his lover Lisa Page.

Rich Hoffman

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Lakota Schools did the Right Thing: A 3-2 vote that shut down gender identity from progressive intrusion into a conservative community

Thank God that the gender identity policy did not pass in my home district of Lakota. As much lobbying as progressive groups applied to our school board, the Board itself was supposed to be representative of the community, and the 3-2 decision against the policy reflected those current values. Actually, I was impressed with the courage it took those board members who voted against it to do so. The rationality the opposition applied to the vote was that board members were afraid of community backlash which is something that should seem obvious. Of course they were. Gender identity is not something that should even be a part of the school experience—and to put such an emphasis on a sexually driven issue is destructive and well beyond the experience of education. Lakota being the eighth largest school district in Ohio was a big player in this national dialogue, so I am proud of my neighbors who voted no. It took guts, and Lakota provided leadership on this issue that most districts would not—up to this point.

http://www.wlwt.com/article/lakota-school-board-expected-to-pass-gender-identity-policy/14409933

To those who have moved to Lakota and brought all these crazy liberal ideas with them from wherever they came from, I have to say to them that they really have no right to impose those progressive values on the rest of us. I’ve been in the Lakota district most of my life and lived in Liberty Township when there were cows across the street from my home. The region is one of the most conservative in the state of Ohio and it’s that way because of its history that extends back to the Revolutionary War. If you moved to the Lakota district and bought a nice $500,000 home, we welcome you. Have a good time in Liberty Township or West Chester to the south. But keep your progressive values wherever you moved from. The assumption is that if you moved here, you valued what you saw. Don’t come here trying to change us into you—because we weren’t the ones moving. You were. And when it comes to the kind of values our conservative families want in their school—having boys going to the girl’s bathroom isn’t one of them. It is unrealistic to bring such nonsense to an education environment in the first place.

Now for the progressive groups out there who want to back door the conservative nature of Butler County with this gender identity garbage—this was a big defeat. They want nothing less than to conquer our conservative natures and make us all more “progressive” using our children to get at our sentiments within our homes. We cannot allow our government schools to become weapons of the political left. Kids should be able to go to school and not worry about some confused kid who is a boy but wants to be a girl running into the girl’s bathroom because they feel they more identify with that gender. Or the kid who pretends he’s a girl because he really has a pervert nature and uses the signs of mental illness to have access to the nudity of his classmates. Yes, there are kids who would fake a gender identity to get access to girls in the bathroom or locker rooms in gym class. The Lakota school board was wise to avoid that hot topic and establish a precedent that other schools can now follow.

Gender identity is not some random event, if a child is suffering from it, the cause is due to terrible parenting. Any parent who has a child who doesn’t know what sex it is, has failed that child with reckless leadership within the home. Reckless because they have not taught their children the basics of navigating through a life of facts. If I spoke to every kid who has this gender identity problem I am sure I would find a parent who screwed up that child’s life in their early years in some way—so it’s a parental problem. Sexual identification after all is only a role we play in the procreation of children. Women give birth. Men plant the seeds for it to happen. In that game the male tends to be the initiator, the woman the recipient. She has to be discriminate in the process to decide if she wants the DNA of her future child to entail the traits of the aggressor. Beyond that process, males and females should otherwise be considered equal. This notion however that a boy can be a girl if they want to or vice versa is a freakish state that actually messes with the destiny of the human race and it has been concocted by what I would consider insanity—by the type of people who think Fantasy Fest in Key West is cool, and who think the Rocky Horror Picture Show is art.

I understand that people who are functionally insane—who enjoy The Rocky Horror Picture Show for instance want the company of others to authorize their diluted minds with mass appeal—but they are not entitled to ruin the minds of our children just to justify their mental impediments. There is room for them in society and we should treat them with compassion and tolerance—to an extent. But they should not be allowed to shape our society with their brand of insanity. Insanity in this case is defined by defying the role of our biological natures against reality and insisting on something else which by nature is completely nonfunctional.

For those who said that the school board members who voted against this measure are afraid of community backlash we should actually redefine that statement. We elect school board members who are supposed to represent our community, so they can protect our interests in just these kinds of instances—where outside influences attempt to change the nature of our community using our children as a platform. The attempt taken at face value is actually quite hideous, so those that voted as representatives of our community when activists were in the room putting immense pressure on their decision is a commendable act, and they deserve praise—not retribution and guilt. That’s the way the process is supposed to work and I personally won’t forget it. But the slant of the media covering this story was that the policy would pass because traditionally the activist pressure applied would force them to vote for the squeakiest wheel in the room—the transsexual activists and their immoral plight to corrupt nature itself with progressive agenda issues.

Yes, small reverberations of shock moved through the political world on a national level over this seemingly little decision within the Lakota school district. But the suggestion should have never occurred in the first place. To those on the losing side of this issue, you should have kept the issue in the closet where it belongs as an anomaly of human nature. A sickness cannot be allowed to define the human race and if we are trying to teach our children anything in public school it shouldn’t be that unisex bathrooms will be part of their future. I have been in many of those unisex progressive bathrooms at this point in my life, especially in London—and they are dumb ideas. Men and women should be given a little distance from each other so they can dispose of their waste without the embarrassment of interaction. The sexes should be allowed to have their mating games for the procreation of life—because that’s the only purpose of it. Those who are for these gender identity polices are also the same people who see abortion not as mass extermination, but as a moral right of the mother. So it can be argued that these progressive policies are anti-life in every way imaginable. They are not about acceptance of individual sanctity as they pretend. They are immoral impediments to existence—and they tried to impose themselves on a tax payer funded school. In that regard I hope this defeat stings enough to push them off the front pages and back into the insane asylum where they belong. They should have expected nothing less in the conservative region of Butler County, Ohio—where at least we still value the traditions that made America great in the first place.

Rich Hoffman

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Rush Run Farms: How to make taking a shower much more exciting

Obviously it takes a lot to impress me, but once I do get excited about something, I tend to have explosive enthusiasm about the topic.  So when my sister-in-law whom I’ve known since she was a very little girl told me she was starting a signature soap business—I sort of glazed over on the topic.  After all, soap is soap—right?  Well, she and her husband have this really cool farm just south of Dry Ridge, Kentucky where I sometimes go so we can shoot some of our big guns and I noticed a series of boxes where they were growing some unique items.  After a little probing Nikki told me that it was for her business.  I shrugged my shoulders, loaded my guns and shot for the rest of the afternoon not thinking much of it.  After all, I’m a guy—using soap is like a two-minute operation for me.  But then on Christmas she gave my wife and I a nice little present featuring her soaps and that’s when I could see how much craftsmanship and passion she was putting into this business.  Her product to my experience was far superior to what they were selling at Bed Bath and Beyond and I thought she was on to something.  Here is a description of her work from the website of her soap business, Rush Run Farm.

We are Nikki and Brian McAllister, proud owners of Rush Run Farm.  Here at the farm, we believe in nature’s beautiful simplicity.  Our farm is host to an organically grown herb garden including eight different varieties of Lavender (Munstead, Jean Davis, Vera, Miss Katherine, Sachet, Hidcote, Sarah, Grosso, and White Grosso), two varieties of Rosemary (Arp Rosemary and Madeline Hill Rosemary),  and four varieties of mint (Kentucky Colonel Spearmint, Lavender Mint, Peppermint, and Orange Mint),  These organically grown herbs are used to make our Kentucky handcrafted all-natural soaps.  Stay tuned to watch our garden grow!

Our Soap Shop will feature our signature soaps such as:  Mint Julep Soap, Derby Soap, and Horse Feed Soap.  We use only the finest, purest, most natural ingredients we can find.  All of our base oils and butters are certified organic.  Every step of our soap making process has been carefully thought out to minimize any type of toxins being introduced.  We DO NOT use any plastics of any kind as BPA, phthalates, and other toxins could leach into the soap.  Our molds are made out of unstained wood.  We only use glass, stainless steel, silicone, unbleached parchment paper, and painters tape in our process.  We want your soap to be as pure as can be.

In our Craft Corner, we will be offering Kentucky handmade crafts made from recycled materials from the original farmhouse on our property.  We will also use natural elements found on our farm to make our crafts.  Here in Kentucky, we have a unique heritage and defining character.  We hope our store will bring a little bit of Kentucky to you!

https://www.rushrunfarm.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html

As we all know in business there are three basic kinds of manufacture, mass production, lean, and then there’s craft.  Craft production is certainly what Nikki is doing.  After using her product I can testify that it is like driving a Lamborghini as opposed to a Lincoln MKZ, or a Toyota Camry—only its soap instead of a car.  The soaps have a feel to them that feels exotic and makes you feel special for using them.  Of the cars mentioned all of them are nice of course, the Lincoln is a product of mass production, the Camry of Lean, and the Lamborghini of craft where all the components are handmade and put together by a small team heavily specialized mechanics.  What Nikki and her husband are doing are hand making the ingredients of these soaps to bring craft production into the execution of their product which then carries over into the daily routine of personal body maintenance.  In a world where we tend to take things like body maintenance for granted, Nikki was onto something with her Rush Run Farm product line, and I was proud of her for taking things to that next very important step—moving from conception to execution.

So if you are looking for a last-minute gift idea for Christmas, check out the link to her site and pick up some of her offerings.  Her product line is unique enough to break the ice on those sometimes awkward Christmas gift exchanges where you want to give someone something special, but don’t have time to do anything but swing by the mall to get something quick—then feel bad about it because you meant to do something more personal.  A visit to Nikki’s Rush Run Farm website is just the thing for that unique gift item.  And if you are looking for a volume purchase, tell her you know me and see if she won’t cut you a deal.  It’s one of those things you can’t go wrong on, because she actually makes soap exciting.  And that is quite an extraordinary task!

Nikki is originally from the West Chester area graduating from high school at Lakota.  After a short modeling career that had New York agents seeking her out, she attended Ohio State then moved south where she met her husband.  They have been very successful literally as power brokers in energy commodities.   After turning 40 they made a decision to invest in the farm south of Dry Ridge from their original home in Louisville and have been directing their life in that direction finding a passion they both could share.  So it’s nice to see people pursuing their dreams, but it’s even better when those dreams use the method of craft production to make taking a shower much more exciting and the after effect of how you feel once you have been cleaned and pampered to a point that makes you feel unique.  I think she’s onto something special so I hope she does well with it and sticks with it until it’s a household name.  Nikki is a neat person, not just because she’s my sister-in-law.  I admire her tenacity and her endless optimism.  And best of all, she voted for Trump—and she’s not afraid to tell you about it.

Rich Hoffman
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Genius is Far More Important than Sameness: When the problems are outside the box, go there and get them

It seemed perfectly logical; my daughter’s instructions to my pre-school grandson were to help the sailboat find the dock in the maze below.  The little boy looked at the situation and then made the line you see below connecting the sail boat to the dock down at the corner of the page with a straight line.  Most teachers in the world would see what he did and take it as defiance—and they’d likely seek some form of punishment—or ask for a parent teacher conference to correct the behavior—so that the little boy would properly follow instructions in the future.  And I’m already aware that teachers and public schools in the future will want to put the kid on Ritalin to “calm” him down into the speed of his surrounding classmates.  That is how our society treats these types of things—they seek to destroy the condition and to make the young students into a kind of mind numb sameness as the rest of society.C1F2B895-C261-4B4D-B5CF-1A8FF5F9D36B

When I saw that picture it instantly reminded me of something I did in kindergarten under the exact same conditions.  I even remember doing it.  While all the other kids were carefully trying to figure out how to navigate the maze we were told that before we went to recess we had to solve the problem.  I simply drew the straight line and was the first standing by the door ready to go outside and play.  It felt weird to me to stand up and be in front of the class while every one of the other students was still working—but I knew I had completed the task if I wanted to play—and well………..I was done.  The teacher had assumed that everyone understood the rules that the purpose of the exercise was to follow orders, not to solve the problem.  To me the lines on the page were made up rules artificially put there to restrict a solution to the problem, and that the most efficient way to achieve the objective was to simply go through all the barriers keeping the objective from being fulfilled.

I did get into a lot of trouble, especially after the teacher tried to make me feel bad about it.  When my reaction didn’t produce the level of shame the teacher thought was appropriate my mom was called in and instructed how these kinds of things should go in the future.  Of course that wasn’t the first time and it certainly wasn’t the last—and by the time I was in high school I had heard it all before and was numb to the efforts.  Luckily for me Ritalin wasn’t being used yet to treat hyper active minds of young children so I was able to keep my thought processes—and to this very day it helps me enormously.  In fact, the way I think is something that is highly sought after in the professional work, because it’s unique.  The world needs desperately problem solvers, and it really needs people who can see through the rules that mankind puts down on a page and can deliver an objective while virtually everyone else stays within the artificial lines of the rules they’ve made.  We call them “outside the box thinkers” and they are very valuable to advancing mankind.  However the purpose of public education, or any government endorsed education system is not to nurture these kinds of people—it is to destroy them, and to focus on the sameness of its population.

I was recently in a business meeting where all the participants were very rigid thinkers and we had a conflict that was essentially over their lack of understanding of my problem solving methods—which was very outside the box.  From my perspective they were the blind trying to learn to see, and from their perspective there are all these lines on a paper that indicate the rules of society and how we are supposed to navigate through them to reach the objective.  In my mind the objective is what matters, not the artificial restrictions we’ve created for ourselves as a society.  Those lines that keep us in the box of thought are after all only symbols of a contemplation process which forged them.  When new information indicates that the lines don’t hold much meaning, then why restrict yourself to their effects?  So the meeting we had was not about solving problems, it was in adherence to previous beliefs built in the minds of inferior intellects and I wasn’t budging.  I never have and I’m certainly not going to start now. Yet as those kinds of engagements go I always walk away feeling sorry for the people whom I’d refer to as blind.  They are stuck in a box of thought and they either lack the ability or the desire to come out of that box where the real solutions are.  Their lifetime of training solidifies their minds in a kind of concrete for which they can never emerge—their entire lives.  Talking to them is like speaking to someone who has been made deliberately dumb and handicapped to keep them in a line of thought that the governments of the world want—but perilously entrap them as individuals.

For instance my family celebrated with our members in Louisville over the weekend an early Christmas that we do each year and upon returning we got stuck on I-71.  Road conditions had black ice everywhere and there was a major wreck which completely shut down the northbound traffic near La Grange.   It was a terrible spot to get stuck because at that part of the highway there is a large median separating the southbound traffic and there wasn’t another exit for at least 5 miles.  So there we sat in a way I never find myself in—because usually there’s some way to go around the mess.  We sat in that traffic for two hours until enough people up the highway from us got off the next exit and sought some alternative route before we could move up to do the same.  On my right there were tractor trailers stuck in a parked position mostly with their engines off.  On my left was a forested median with no way to drive across to the southbound traffic.  The emergency lanes were littered with people looking to do the same thing—it was just terrible.  Eventually we inched our way up to an exit and were able to get gas—which we were nearly out of—and head down to the Ohio River to take a side road up to Carrolton where we then could get back on the highway—twenty nine miles upstream.  By then the traffic blockage was passed and we were able to resume our drive back home. What astonished me as we got off the highway was how many people at the gas station were filling their tanks and getting right back on the ramp to emerge back into the stopped traffic, which was backed up all the way to Louisville—and after several hours, it still wasn’t moving.  Only a few cars out of the many thousands present thought to drive around the traffic by using side roads.  I think if we hadn’t done that, we’d still be on that highway.  But people just don’t think that way naturally, when they are given a problem, they stay in the lines where thought is comfortable—even if it is extremely painful to them.  And that goes back to their school days where they were taught to stay in the lines and not to deviate—the intention of their homework was not to solve problems, it was to adhere to the rules.

My proposal is that we should spot kids who think outside the box and help them become that much more exceptional instead of destroying them into the kind of sameness that keeps people locked on a crowded highway or stuck trying to solve business solutions from within the confines of inferior thinking.  If the solutions are outside the box, then go out there and get them. But it isn’t the genius level kids who draw lines across the artificial rules of the printed page that are the problem—it is in our desire to make them as dumb as everyone else.  That is a crime against humanity in my opinion, and is one that we could change easily just by having a slight adjustment to our educational priorities.  Genius is far more valuable than sameness.

Rich Hoffman
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