Pot Users and Insects: How they are one and the same

One of the biggest problems with the way the marijuana push to legalize it within the state of Ohio was displayed clearly in the ballot language itself, shown below. The emphasis of protection from “weed” use and sales was placed on “public” places, such as public schools, churches, parks and libraries. But what were completely ignored are residences and especially home schoolers. What if a neighbor is smoking pot in their backyard in full view of a family who happens to be home schooling their children? Issue 3 and the recreational push for marijuana across the country completely ignore this issue which is probably the most devastating imposition of the proposal. Here is how the ballot languages was presented—notice that the emphasis of the entire legislation is on public protection, not private individuals.

The official ballot text was as follows:^[1]

“

Issue 3

Grants a monopoly for the commercial production and sale of marijuana for recreational and medicinal purposes

Proposed Constitutional Amendment

Proposed by Initiative Petition

To add Section 12 of Article XV of the Constitution of the State of Ohio.

A majority yes vote is necessary for the amendment to pass.

The proposed amendment would:

Endow exclusive rights for commercial marijuana growth, cultivation, and extraction to self-designated landowners who own ten predetermined parcels of land in Butler, Clermont, Franklin, Hamilton, Licking, Lorain, Lucas, Delaware, Stark, and Summit Counties. One additional location may be allowed for in four years only if existing facilities cannot meet consumer demand.

Permit retail sale of recreational marijuana at approximately 1,100 locations statewide. Such retail establishments must have a state license that may be obtained only if the electors of the precinct where the store will be located approve the use of the location for such purpose at a local option election.

Legalize the production of marijuana-infused products, including edible products, concentrates, sprays, ointments and tinctures by marijuana product manufacturing facilities.

Allow each person, 21 years of age or older, to, grow, cultivate, use, possess, and share up to eight ounces of usable homegrown marijuana plus four flowering marijuana plants if the person holds a valid state license. Allow each person, 21 years of age or older, to purchase, possess, transport, use, and share up to 1 ounce of marijuana for recreational use. Authorize the use of medical marijuana by any person, regardless of age, who has a certification for a debilitating medical condition.

Prohibit marijuana establishments within 1,000 feet of a house of worship, public library, public or chartered elementary or secondary school, state-licensed day-care center, or public playground, however: after a certain date, a new day-care, library, etc., cannot force a preexisting marijuana establishment to relocate by opening a new location within 1,000 feet of the business.

Prohibit any local or state law, including zoning laws, from being applied to prohibit the development or operation of marijuana growth, cultivation, and extraction facilities, retail marijuana stores, and medical marijuana dispensaries unless the area is zoned exclusively residential as of January 1, 2015 or as of the date that an application for a license is first filed for a marijuana establishment.

Create a special tax rate limited to 15% on gross revenue of each marijuana growth, cultivation, and extraction facility and marijuana product manufacturing facility and a special tax rate limited to 5% on gross revenue of each retail marijuana store. Revenues from the tax go to a municipal and township government fund, a strong county fund, and the marijuana control commission fund.

Create a marijuana incubator in Cuyahoga County to promote growth and development of the marijuana industry and locate marijuana testing facilities near colleges and universities in Athens, Cuyahoga, Lorain, Mahoning, Scioto and Wood Counties, at a minimum.

Limit the ability of the legislature and local governments from regulating the manufacture, sales, distribution, and use of marijuana and marijuana products. Create a new state government agency called the marijuana control commission (with limited authority) to regulate the industry, comprised of seven Ohio residents appointed by the Governor, including a physician, a law enforcement officer, an administrative law attorney, a patient advocate, a resident experienced in owning, developing, managing and operating businesses, a resident with experience in the legal marijuana industry, and a member of the public.^[5]

http://ballotpedia.org/Ohio_Marijuana_Legalization_Initiative,_Issue_3_(2015)

After the measure was defeated on Election night 2015 a pot supporter wrote me on Twitter to advocate that pot was so similar to alcohol that it was an unfair prohibition. Well, I’m rather sick of that argument. It is not the same, and for the record, I don’t like to look over the fence into a neighbor’s backyard and see a bunch of drunks drinking beer and carrying on. If they stay to themselves, it’s a personal freedom issue, but if that carries over into my life, it’s something else that intrudes on me. Intoxication in all forms is disgusting and is something I don’t want children I care about to see as their young minds are building hope for their futures.

I saw two young people smoking dope in the car next to me at a traffic light just the other day, a West Chester cop sitting behind both of us watching smoke pour out of the windows. The kids probably anticipating the mood of the nation and potential of Issue 3 to pass had an arrogance about them that I’ve only seen recently. Just five years ago with a cop car behind them, those same types of kids would be stuffing that pot under their seats afraid of being caught. Now dope smoking millennials have been led to believe that marijuana is acceptable in public due to the massive amounts of money that has been spent promoting it by progressive groups. When I was a kid it was actors like Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood who were the stars of cinema and they didn’t smoke pot on-screen. There are reports that Ford smoked it with the cast and crew of the Star Wars films, but that was kept tightly under wraps until the present time, because it used to be shameful. Now young people have Seth Rogen, Seth MacFarlane, and several others who openly advocate pot use. Kids today don’t have a chance as their role models are dead head pot scum. They don’t care about the current laws because they’ve been convinced that its equivalent to the prohibition movement of a century ago.

But pot is different; it’s a mind altering drug that stays in the fat cells of your body way too long. With alcohol, there is a natural regulator, it takes a toll on your body to consume too much—so there is a natural risk and reward element to it. If you drink too much, the next day there will be a price to pay. Marijuana steps around that issue and gives all the fun about “losing your mind” without the negative effects which provides too much of an incentive for a country to be weak-willed and lack luster. Progressives are obviously behind the pot push to change the country from a conservative one into a liberal one in the same fashion that Indians were easily conquered by getting them addicted to alcohol. The same is happening to our youth.

I’ve been to rock concerts and parties where there was a lot of pot smoked, and I have always felt the way I do about it. I never took it and I never will and I always looked down on people who did it. It’s a weak and pathetic substance that isn’t good for the human mind in any fashion. And I shouldn’t have to smell it in my back yard. Kids shouldn’t have to see it in a car at a traffic light. And I shouldn’t have to walk down the road and see a pot store next to anything. As it stands right now, I don’t see pot. It may be easy to get, but so are insects. If I want to find them, I can. But I typically don’t notice them out in the open. Drugs and insects have that in common. What pot users want is to function out in the open, and that is an insult to me and people like me.

The next step for the pot people is to try again with medical marijuana as a gateway to public acceptance. They won’t go away. They will be back just like insects are when you leave food out too long. Their parasitic nature will mandate it. What they want is for their vile behavior to be accepted—legally, and if we allow that to happen, it won’t just be arrogant kids in cars smoking weed—they’ll be in out in the open everywhere, because the stigma will have been removed. And once that happens, it’s over. You can’t get back to a time when pot heads, losers, and scum bags hid themselves form the sight of the righteous. Once pot is legal in any way, the insects of our existence will have a foothold into the world of goodness, and will seek with every effort they have to ruin our lives with their presence.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Opinions of a Pothead: What they see in the mirror

In the 24 hours before the Election of 2015 this site had several thousand hits just on political issues ranging from Lakota school board candidates, Fairfield tax issues, and of course Issue 3—the pot legalization in Ohio. It was a little sad because many of those articles have been out there in cyberspace for weeks, but people were too consumed with other thoughts to pay attention—until right before the election. It was like a bunch of stupid college kids partying all week-long then the night before a big test cramming for it like a bunch of idiots taking caffeine pills to stay awake. The moment the test was over they were right back to their original stupidity getting drunk in the local bar and partying it up like it was the end of the world. Of course of those there were late comers who noticed I had very strong opinions against pot legalization in Ohio and left me comments. Some of them sounded like the idiot diatribes of a dog that had just consumed its own feces—incoherent and obviously had their brains destroyed by sustained marijuana use over time. But some were like that of the guy below. I don’t agree with this guy on much of anything, but at least he strung together a few sentences that could generate discussion. Here is what he said:

JLeno thetonightshow.com x mrmeeseeks420@hotmail.com 83.32.44.167

JLeno thetonightshow.com mrmeeseeks420@hotmail.com 83.32.44.167

Submitted on 2015/11/02 at 10:25 pm

I think it’s great that you have your own opinion and are expressing it and all, but why don’t you present any solid info to back up your hatred? I got the impression that the whole article was just you stating your dislike of pot and the people who smoke it without providing any real evidence. You say that people aren’t really living their lives because they smoke a mind altering substance but have you ever considered that weed actually helps people to approach subjects from a different angle and offer a different take on things. Before I smoked weed, I lacked empathy and was very closed-minded. Since then, I’ve gained a new perspective that has allowed me to admit that I am wrong and take other people’s feelings into account, apparently unlike you who seems to just go around hating on a group of people who never hurt anybody. I don’t know what has to happen in a guy’s life to make him so resentful towards such a small thing that has proven time and time again to be less harmful (and more beneficial) than many legal drugs (such as caffeine and alcohol). I know you’ll probably disregard this because I’m a “filthy pothead” but I really don’t think your hatred of people who decide to ingest a natural substance is fair.

People advocating pot use always attack the amount of evidence presented in making an argument against it. I did present plenty of arguments in my article against Issue 3, but explaining it to a stoner is like trying to tell a person suffering from Alzheimer’s where their car keys is. You can show it to them on the kitchen table and they’ll act like they heard what you said, but two hours later they won’t remember anything you said, because their short-term memory centers in their brain has been destroyed and they can’t remember anything that happened five minutes ago. They can remember things that happened decades ago, but not things that happened that day because long-term memories are stored in a different part of the brain. Short term memory is one of the first things to go and pot heads have that in common with Alzheimer’s patients. I make that statement based on my own comparison, not some doctor who is behind Issue 3 and threw their name behind a study to the contrary so that they can get into the business of prescribing it to their patients. I see nothing good about marijuana use in any fashion and I’m against it for every reason—pain relief, social bonding, even as a material for making rope.

The next things these stoner types attack is the uptightness of the typical “conservative.” Their assertion is that if only we’d get stoned with them that we might “mellow out” and see the world from a different perspective. No, marijuana is a mind altering substance. If it helps users see the world differently it’s because it changes the way a human brain thinks rationally about something. Losing rationality is not a beneficial attribute to the human condition or the maintenance of a republic. Lacking empathy is not a bad thing when people of value are surrounded by people who lack values. Being empathetic toward other human beings is not an admirable trait if the person receiving the empathy is a scum bag. Empathy is not a value if the sum of the scum exceeds what a viable society can withstand without collapsing. Ten scum bags and one person of value is not a good ratio and pot makes too many scum bags and not enough people of value tipping the scales of value toward the scum bag leading to a declining civilization. Being “mellowed out” while all this is going on makes you a pussy, not a valued citizen.

Pot heads often refer to people like me as being “closed-minded.” I consider that a compliment. Having an open mind is not necessarily a good thing when there are people within collective organizations that want to impose on you their values and expect you to assimilate to their shared beliefs—which may or may not be good. My mind is impervious to hypnotism, scary dreams—I don’t have them, or suggestions under coercion—such as threats of violence, torture, social manipulation or other mechanisms of tyranny against the individual. To those who want to penetrate that mind to inject their values, they will prescribe that my mind is closed—which it is–for the same reason that I lock the doors to my house or car—because I don’t want easy access to the contents within from those without. I don’t want just anybody inside my property and I feel even stronger about the contents of my mind—so it’s not open to others for manipulation. I like my mind and I protect it from those who want to damage it. For that reason I don’t get drunk and I don’t do drugs. And I don’t let doctors give me a lot of mindless prescriptions. Most of the time I completely ignore a doctor’s advice if they are recommending a prescription—because I don’t want a foreign substance influencing my thoughts. Would I be more fun to “party” with if I did drugs—sure—but that is not a valuable trait. So I’ll remain closed minded for the same reason that I lock the doors to my car—because I don’t want hippie scum bags and rotten bastards molesting my property. My mind is my property and I will continue to protect it.

What that commenter is saying about himself, which speaks true of everyone who falls for the pot lure—which is most people reading this article is that he’s a conquered person. Out of every 10,000 people there is typically only one person who feels about it the way I do. Even religious fanatics typically have a background with the drug. They only speak against drugs as born again Christians—but at some point in their past they tried pot, likely as a high school kid, probably in college, or in other social gatherings. They disgust me too. For me there is no wiggle room on the issue. People who have taken the drug have allowed themselves to be conquered by its lure and in most cases that is irredeemable. I know a lot of people who have used pot, and I do grow to like them occasionally. But it always tells me that they were at some point in time weak people and that is something I will never respect. They can say that my mind is closed—that I’m a conservative hater. But what they are really mad at is the reflection in the mirror. They surrendered their mind to a conscious altering substance, and they can never again claim to have the sanctity of an original thought. And that makes them feel guilty even when they are surrounded by several million other idiots who have traveled down the same path.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Issue 3 Fails in Ohio: Now, reload for the next round–because they will try again and again like stoned idiots

Looks like Ohio has defended itself from the pot smoking scum bags for at least another year. But get ready, the joint craving lunatics of the lazy youth will be back for another round of tradition destroying endeavor by progressive activists. Interesting reactions by the general public, seen below as the results came in.

State Issue 3

Issue 3 permits commercial production and sale of marijuana by what amounts to a monopoly in 10 locations around the state, It allows individuals to grow limited amounts for personal use. (read more)

YES	478,815
NO	908,431

60 comments

Newest | Oldest

spazzmaticjust now

Better luck next time hippies! Find another hobby to define your life by.

CleveBobjust now

Where are those pesky paid trolls of RO? I wonder if RO at least gave them a parting gift basket.

b4icrokejust now

@CleveBob I’m here!! You lose with this win. Enjoy your chemo BEE-OTCH!

AmericanSenator1 minute ago

Issue two doesn’t do anything but take away power from the people and puts it in the hands of legislators.

factsdohurtjust now

@AmericanSenator BS It takes away special interests and lobbyists from trying to tie up the Constitution by using monopolies and special taxes

Mousey2 minutes ago

We all know the corruption never ends in Ohio – it’s where it starts. Talk about monopolies..get a grip folks

e2450just now

It’s a shame the amendment wasn’t structured differently. Clearly, at a minimum, medical use should be permitted. Ohio had a chance to be ahead of the curve for once. There goes that.

LLCxx1 minute ago

Did issue 3 go up in smoke?

Chalmette023 minutes ago

Soooooooo not to point out the obvious but didn’t you guys just outlaw monopolies? Anyone know of any electric companies with no competition in your area?

Did Republicans really just think that was a good idea just to stop weed?

Aggrieved_by_CleClownsjust now

@Chalmette02 I hear what you’re saying, and respect it. I really didn’t want to have to vote Yes on Issue 2. It was promulgated by the GOP in the Ohio legislature, which I don’t trust … however, it was the ONLY way I could see ensuring that Ian James and his Irresponsible “We Feel the Need for Greed with Weed” crowd from bringing back Issue 3 over and over again — until it passed. Sometimes, you have to choose the lesser of two evils — HEY!!!! I do that in every PRESIDENTIAL election! Who knew?!

BlingFingersjust now

@Chalmette02

repubs like me hate monopolies. we are business starters you fool

david4 minutes ago

this is not America

LS20252 minutes ago

@david

you forgot f******

Aggrieved_by_CleClownsjust now

@david Then move to China! And work for 7 cents an hour, and love it. You’ll go far!

Mousey5 minutes ago

They’d rather let the dope boys on the street monopolize…

ClevelandTchotchke3 minutes ago

@Mousey Or? We’d rather do it the right way! NO TO MONOPOLIES!

Ian James? Dafuq outta here!

ClevelandTchotchke5 minutes ago

So far, so good! Ohioans are proving that they are smarter than Ian James, John Pardee, their carpetbagging buddies, and their cronies! Ohio may legalize, but it will NOT be with monopolization for fat cats to make money off Ohioans, and ship it back to their ivory towers!

THE CLOCK STRUCK TWELVE! THE MONOPOLY IS LOSING!

What a great day it is to be an Ohioan! ISSUE 3? GTFOH!

Saganhawking3 minutes ago

This was more a vote against monopolies than it was against marijuana. They just don’t get it.

BlingFingers1 minute ago

@Saganhawking

responsible ohio strategized this issue to legalize it. was their best chance.

your a little naïve and that’s ok sagan

david7 minutes ago

Ohio is the worst f****** place to live I f****** hate this place nothing but f****** idiots

BlingFingers6 minutes ago

@david

hahahahah

LEAVE NOW Dopey

david5 minutes ago

go die in hell you f****** prick

aspen124 minutes ago

Sour…..how much money did you guys lose !,,,,,…..?…?

Bahaaaaaaa

BlingFingers3 minutes ago

@david

why don’t you try to send me there cockgobbler

david5 minutes ago

you better watch your f****** self

ClevelandTchotchke4 minutes ago

@david Oooh… we’re so scared! Internet Rambo we have here, ya’ll!

david3 minutes ago

sorry buddy you are a big piece of s***

BlingFingers1 minute ago

@david

go smoke a Winston menthol loser

david4 minutes ago

you f****** communist piece of s***

ClevelandTchotchke4 minutes ago

@david Go listen to your 98 degree songs, you scab!

david2 minutes ago

go and f*** yourself alcoholic

aspen125 minutes ago

What’s wrong. Ohio will have weed next year

Leagalizeohio2016.com

ClevelandTchotchke5 minutes ago

@david Dafuq outta here!

LS20255 minutes ago

@david is the poster child for for the Issue 3 investors, Ohio needs more davids.

ClevelandTchotchke4 minutes ago

@LS2025 @david LMAO!

david1 minute ago

No what we need is a non communist society

baron104 minutes ago

@david relax….your dealer loves you and giant eagle has doritos bogo

Chalmette028 minutes ago

Expect to see a few people leave the state who have kids who need medical marijuana. Ohio is a strange place.

BlingFingers7 minutes ago

@Chalmette02 why don’t you petition for a medicinal ballot instead of a recreational one genius???

ultra517 minutes ago

@Chalmette02 If these kids “really” needed it, you’d figure they’d already be gone. If they “really” needed it.

Chalmette026 minutes ago

@ultra51 @Chalmette02

Not if you were expecting the voters to do the right thing.

ultra516 minutes ago

@Chalmette02 @ultra51 Apparently they did. Call your state legislator and do it the right way.

Saganhawking5 minutes ago

Could not agree more ultra.

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns5 minutes ago

@Chalmette02 I do feel for those who want to use medical marijuana to relieve severe pain including terminal illness … but you have to understand, IrresponsibleOhio’s greed grab of a monopolistic pot plan — leaving my entire Southeast Ohio region out of the pot “mix” when we po’ folk need the jobs down here! — alienated A LOT of voters. You have no one but IrresponsibleOhio to blame. Its celebrity greedy weed grab crowd could not be trusted and it showed in the polls – BIGTIME.

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns9 minutes ago

Today is like going to McDonald’s — “I’m LOvin’ iT!” on these Issue 1, 2, 3 results!!!! IrresponsibleOhio lost on BOTH Issue 2 and 3 — the voters HAVE SPOKEN, so take your taxpayer-funded lawsuit idea, Ian, and go live in ANOTHER state where Monopolies can”take root.” And take weird hermaphrodie Buddie with you!

david10 minutes ago

Ohio is a terrible state

Saganhawking9 minutes ago

Put the bong down, you are repeating yourself.

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns8 minutes ago

@david Then move to Chokelahoma, or wherever you and your favorite cartel can go along to get along! Pal

Saganhawking7 minutes ago

I’m having trouble understanding what you just posted. It was funny though. Am I supposed to agree or disagree with what you just said?

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns3 minutes ago

@Saganhawking Agree if you believe in free markets and the right to a responsible free market weed plan — let the best cultivator win — let it be about who GROWS THE BEST WEED — We down here beside Meigs Gold will win — and YOU should have the right to buy it without a cartel interfering!

baron1012 minutes ago

why is america coming too when you can’t set up a weed monopoly?

sucks

david13 minutes ago

nothing but retards

david14 minutes ago

Well i can say Ohio is a terrible place to live

Saganhawking10 minutes ago

Yuep, horrible place to live. I hear Colorado, Washington and California calling your name. It’s a free country, go for it. The doors are open to you. Now write legislation concerning weed here in Ohio we can all agree to and maybe more would vote for it…

BlingFingers8 minutes ago

@Saganhawking

go enjoy the skyrocketing fatal accidents due to marijuana OVI.

Saganhawking15 minutes ago

Wow! Was not expecting those numbers.

baron1014 minutes ago

@Saganhawking 65/35 like I said

Saganhawking13 minutes ago

Right you were. Well played, well played.

baron1011 minutes ago

@Saganhawking I was wrong on 1 however….

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns15 minutes ago

YOUR MARIJUANA CARTEL FAILED, IAN JAMES!!!! LONG LIVE FREE MARKETS!!!! WaHHHOOooOO!!!!!

BlingFingers19 minutes ago

well the Cleveland.com poll sure was off this year wasng it.

marijuana got its leaf kicked.

way to go people, send the pot smokers back to Colorado so they can drive while impaired elsewhere. we don’t need pot smokers here

ultra5117 minutes ago

@BlingFingers We especially don’t need greedy constitutional monopolies.

Syphon16 minutes ago

You don’t live in this world apparently. You must have no idea how many people that are driving around are high. Go into a convenience store and count the amount of people that walk in there buying blunt wraps. I don’t smoke. I just know the real world.

avex1110 minutes ago

@BlingFingers There will be plenty of pot smokers here as there always has been. I guess most people here still favor a nanny state.

http://www.cleveland.com/election-results/index.ssf/2015/11/statewide_results_for_ohio_iss.html

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Robert Tracinski, Rich Hoffman and Matt Clark on WAAM: Why ‘Star Wars’ is better than ‘Star Trek’

Matt Clark had me on his show to actually co-host with him as we spoke to Robert Tracinski who writes for The Federalist. He had written an interesting article about how it was unlikely that J.J. Abrams could screw up the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, so long as he stuck with the formula. There were some condescending aspects to Tracisnski’s article which I was willing to overlook, because he was right about a lot of things. But more than anything Tracisnski had been dismissive of the original trilogy as not being very good—which I thought was odd. So I was eager to talk to him. It only took a few moments into the interview however to learn the root of his issues—he was a Star Trek fan and had only come to Star Wars through his children. His position was that Star Trek was philosophically superior to Star Wars and that these new movies were kid stuff that he was enjoying with his children. Listen to that interview here:

I don’t care much for Star Trek, to me it is the United Nations in space. While Robert Tracinski is not a liberal and is a pretty committed Objectivist, which is Ayn Rand’s philosophy—it was clear to me quickly why Robert didn’t like Star Wars much in his article. I disagree with him on a number of topics regarding the formula of Star Wars, or its appeal. I think the Star Wars films are deeply philosophical; especially The Empire Strikes Back—much more so than Star Trek. I mean, people are not lining up across the world to see the latest Star Trek movie, and Star Wars isn’t as popular as it is because it’s just adults living out their childhoods once again through a movie. It’s more complicated than that. As we were talking to Tracinski, because of his background with Ayn Rand I kept wondering if I had met him someplace before, so I wanted to cut him some slack. Everyone comes to things in their own time and if he came to Star Wars late in life through his kids—so be it. One aspect that Tracinski got right in his article was the perception that Han Solo is the key to the franchise—so I stuck to that topic in our conversation.

Matt and I spent the first segment of his Saturday WAAM show talking about Disney and their progressive activism with a gentle warning about messing with the formula of Star Wars and the impact that might have on their massive investment. Matt and I love Disney—the Uncle Walt version. I love that Disney is a family friendly entertainment group—so I am willing to overlook a little of their liberal activism. Something that Robert Tracinski did bring up on his show that was true. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were the best conservative filmmakers coming out of the 80s. I personally think they were both seduced by Bill Clinton in the 90s and have lost their minds since. The reason their early films were so successful was because they all had conservative leanings to them. Once both directors had achieved their monstrous success and essentially stepped away from the Objectivist roots of their film careers, their movies started making a lot less money. Without question George Lucas was at least attracted to Ayn Rand in his early days—when she was at the height of her influence—and Han Solo was a character that represented that struggle within George. As he become more liberal with age and success—perhaps feeling a little guilty that all his liberal employees were constantly berating him for his capitalist tendencies, he softened up on his stance for individualism and began to accept collectivism to a much higher degree, which was clearly represented in the prequel films—which were noticeably absent of the Han Solo type of character.

Where I disagree with Tracinski about the prequel films is that I don’t think George Lucas ever intended those films to be successes. They were dark movies about the failure of a Republic—and have great political merit to them. They are very philosophical from the position of how poorly constructed philosophies can destroy a body of government. Even though Lucas had been moving to the left—politically, his message about the failure of groups to detect evil, and how institutional failure is indicative of all government cycles is powerful stuff that set the stage for some pretty deep storytelling. As much as people dismiss the prequel films as silly, they are important in the larger scope of the intended message. The movies did lack heroics on the scale of a Han Solo, but that was on purpose. A lot of characters including Yoda and Obi-wan Kenobi made mistakes that they spent the rest of their lives correcting. So the films were never supposed to be heroic repeats of the original trilogy. For that story Han Solo was the savior, he kept Luke alive, married his sister Leia and that set up the events of these new films. Solo is an Ayn Rand character and Disney even with all their activism against conservative causes—can’t ignore that the magic of Star Wars isn’t Luke Skywalker, or anything about the Force—it’s about Han Solo’s position against hooky religions and ancient weapons not being as competent as a good blaster at your side.

Just a few days before Matt and I had our radio show together Harrison Ford was on with Jimmy Kimmel dressed up for Halloween as a hot dog. It was a funny segment and of course Ford was asked about the new Star Wars film. I thought his comments were interesting to say the least. He stated that nobody would be disappointed—at all. That was a remarkable statement considering what’s at stake. He knows the potential cost of over-anticipated hype—so his comments had me very curious in relation to Disney’s strategy going forward. Han Solo is going to be playing a larger role in Star Wars than he has in the past largely because the character tests well demographically. His children will without question be the subject of the new stories but Disney will find every opportunity to insert a younger Han Solo into the movies at every juncture. To be successful at that, Disney will have no choice but to adopt the obvious aspects of Han Solo’s Objectivism view points—his natural conservatism and love of capitalist endeavors if they want Star Wars to continue being successful.

After Matt’s show I spent time at my children’s house going trick or treating with my grandkids—and kids. Late into the night my oldest daughter and I spent time talking about Han Solo and how it seems obvious now that Disney will find a way to put him in the stand alone films as much as possible just to use him as a springboard to success. Like Robert Tracinski and I spoke about on Matt’s show, without Han Solo, I think the Star Wars saga crashes and burns. If they try to turn him into a sacrificial collectivist Disney will lose a lot of money because people will reject the premise. The ticket buying public will only accept the Objectivist Han Solo—and nothing less—the hero who acts in his own self-interest. Even though the moment at the end of A New Hope was intended to show that Solo was able to act for others, the need to save Luke at the last moment was out of Solo’s self-interest because he was starting to like the kid. Like I said, Star Wars is a lot more philosophical than people give it credit for, and I’d think that as much as Tracinski likes Ayn Rand, that he’d prefer Star Wars over the United Nations in space—Star Trek and all that “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” crap. Screw Spock and his pointy ears—he’s a damn collectivist. Solo is a rugged, gun slinging individualist who acts out of his own self-interest. That’s why Star Wars is better than Star Trek.

We’ll see what happens, time will tell. It was a good conversation that was worth listening to, especially given what Star Wars will mean when it opens in a few weeks. There will be no escape; the opening of The Force Awakens will impact just about everyone no matter where they live. It will be impossible to not notice something about it as the merchandising around Christmas will be everywhere. Just watch the Duracell commercial shown above. Star Wars will literally be everywhere in just a few weeks of this writing. There will be nothing like it ever—history is being made both commercially and philosophically. The question will be whether or not The Force Awakens will be as anticipated on the 19^th of December as it was on the 18^th after people start seeing the movie. To be as successful as Disney needs it to be people will need to see the film several times. And to have that kind of power over the mind of fans—Han Solo will have to be a part of it with an Objectivist approach—otherwise the whole thing falls apart. It’s not the lightsaber battles and space antics that make Star Wars so great—it’s the Objectivist leanings of its basic premise:

Han Solo—“marching into the detention area is not what I had in mind.”

Luke Skywalker—“but she’s rich.”

Han Solo—“How rich?”

Luke Skywalker—“More wealth than you can imagine.”

Han Solo—“I don’t know, I can imagine quite a bit.”

Luke Skywalker—“you’ll get it.”

Han Solo—“I better!”

Luke Skywalker—“You will!”

Han Solo—“Alright kid, what’s your plan?”

That’s Star Wars—it’s an Objectivist love fest designed before George Lucas was overly liberalized. It’s also why twice during the broadcast with Matt that I uttered to his millions and millions of listeners—“Han shot first!” When Lucas changed Star Wars in 1997 to have the bounty hunter Greedo shoot at Han first in the Mos Eisley cantina fans were angry. It was a liberalized mistake for Lucas to cave under the pressure from the liberal film community to make Han Solo not appear as such a blood thirsty killer. But Solo acting out of self-interest shot first because that is the nature of his character—he’s an Ayn Rand survivalist and the heart of what makes Star Wars great.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Sergio Leone at Liberty Center: Taking a step back to the lessons of classic spaghetti westerns

The very first movie I can remember seeing was A Fistful of Dollars when I was four years old. I had seen it a year before on Channel 19 but it was something I had watched with my mom while she canned tomatoes. Our house didn’t have air conditioning but I didn’t care. Our television back then was color, but it barely had good enough reception to see what was going on through the static. But when it did Sergio Leone’s westerns were the coolest thing on television and I watched them in pools of my own sweet as my first conscious memories. If it could be said that I had a primary influence on my life it was in those moments of watching Leone westerns with my mother well before I ever turned five. Back then all I remembered of A Fistful of Dollars was the end where Clint Eastwood chained a steel chest-plate to his chest hidden under his poncho and taunted Remon Rojos to aim for his heart. Each time a bullet struck Eastwood he’d fall down but keep getting up again until he closed in on the villain with honor and killed him with a great final standoff. I used to watch the entire film not understanding anything anybody was saying just so I could see that ending over and over again. Back then there were no DVDs so you’d have to wait for it to come back on television at some unforeseen time. So I learned to read by going through the TV guide and looking for old Sergio Leone westerns looking hoping A Fistful of Dollars would come on again. To learn more about Leone as a person and director watch this fantastic documentary on him to understand why I enjoyed his work so much.

Sergio Leone had more influence on me as a result of those continuous viewings than I’d typically give credit. Because I was always looking for A Fistful of Dollars I’d sometimes confuse the films with For A Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and Once Upon a Time in the West because I learned that they were directed by Sergio Leone which was easier to remember than the title of the movies. So I watched them all often disappointed that they weren’t the one where Clint Eastwood kept getting shot, yet continued to get back up. Sergio’s impact on cinema was incalculable. He directly influenced the Star Wars films and literally hundreds of future directors, actors, cinematographers and many others not even in the show business industry. His westerns were stunningly passionate yet dystopian. He did so much with so little money that each frame of film was made as if it were his last. His use of sound effects, music and the visual medium of film is something that very few directors were ever able to achieve. He was simply stunning.

Like me Sergio Leone loved classic American westerns, which were a primary export to his home country of Italy. Unlike me, he didn’t live in the United States, so when he met Americans for the first time coming to Rome as conquerors after World War II they didn’t live up to his expectations and the director sought to reconcile that disappointment with his westerns. After all Leone was living in a Marxist oriented European mindset looking to the West with a bit of hope—but the people from that land were less than valiant which put his unique spin on the American western—famously known as the spaghetti westerns.

That disappointment was never more clear than in Once Upon a Time in the West where the primary villain was the clear-eyed Henry Fonda—the star of many American westerns. He was a classic bad guy cast against a break-out role for the young Charles Bronson. The anger I felt toward Fonda because of the scene where the hired gun for the railroad tycoon known as Morton killed the land owner McBain and his children with a brutal hanging was excessive. That anger lasted most of my life, because I have since seen that type of evil firsthand. Sergio Leone as an Italian who was in love with the image of America was poised to make films that criticized the western while at the same time relishing in them. Leone captured the raw personality of evil in his films in a way that nobody else had or has since—never with such grandiose passion. But for me, the trilogy of films that embodied the “Once Upon” films, which would make eventual stars of many actors were not the best work of Leone. As he became older and had attended several film festivals, he leaned more toward Marxism—which was the home philosophy of Italy. The hope of his youth had left his films by the time he made Once Upon a Time in America. More and more Leone was obsessed with the evils of crony capitalism as if to justify his Marxist leanings which essentially helped fuel the Hollywood insurrection more toward the political left.

Quentin Tarantino who is about to release the modern western The Hateful Eight, which I’m eager to see and shares with me a love for Leone leans more toward the later part of Leone’s career as opposed to the front with the Fistful of Dollars trilogy. Most of Hollywood for that matter saw how Leone turned the American western on its head and thought that prevailing trend was “high art.” So they turned their eyes to Europe and made movies that punched even deeper holes into the American mythology of the Old West. But that approach was misguided and doomed from the start. While I really enjoyed Leone’s later work, especially his Once Upon the Time in the West, it was his Dollars films that I think are the hopeful musings of a would-be capitalist and his yearnings for the kind of America that it should have always been—as represented by the self-reliant individualist Clint Eastwood. Tarantino pays many tributes to Sergio in his films, but he never quite gets it, which I’m sure will be a continued problem in his The Hateful Eight. Tarantino is a broken person because he loved the wrong Leone.

But I didn’t, I saw through that conflict before I was age 7 and was beginning to understand these strange western films from a foreign director who couldn’t even speak English. People like Tarantino and his producers at the Weinstein Company gravitated toward the Marxist Leone, not the hopeful treasure hunter of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—where the good guy played by Clint Eastwood gets the treasure, gets his revenge, and rides off into the sunset alone. He does the same thing in For A Few Dollars More and to a lesser degree in A Fistful of Dollars. In that first film released in 1964 Eastwood has more of a classic showdown with the bad guys as he comes back to town to save a friend of his from hanging. Hanging in these western films which are now 50 years old represented the brutality of unjust application of authority and the abuse of the strong against the weak. In those films Eastwood played a classic avenger, which he would go on to build a career on. Smartly, Eastwood turned down the role of the lead protagonist in Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West—which was a brilliant film wonderfully shot, but did not have the capitalist message that had made Eastwood such a superstar. Good move on Eastwood’s part because even though Sergio Leone had larger budgets to work with and studio backing that he never dreamed of a decade before—like George Lucas his vision began to be tainted as his hope for America moved from tradition to progressivism. When most of their Hollywood friends were jealous European sympathizing Marxists and are all left-leaning at film festivals, the lens of their vision changed from hopeful capitalists to regulated Marxists. As a result the American public generally began to reject Leone films whereas critics began to praise them—because they were moving toward the left as well. American however stayed center-right and just stopped paying attention to Leone.

This was on my mind because I was shopping with my wife at Liberty Center and couldn’t help but notice a fashion trend that was emerging—perhaps 40 years too late, but it’s emerging. The influence of Leone’s spaghetti westerns is rising into the mainstream as many of the high-end clothing designed for affluent types look like they are coming straight off the screen of Leone’s classic westerns. This is a great thing as they are not the type of westerns that Tarantino loved, but the kind that I did. America is slowly beginning to wake up to the sleep it has been under and is turning back to its origins—sharing that bright-eyed hope that Sergio Leone once had that America could be a place for personal gain and intact justice. Clint Eastwood’s character in the Leone westerns never had doubt in himself and was always able to slug through any situation presented to him. He just kept getting up and up which my four-year-old eyes never forgot. That movie is as part of me as anything else is and it all started with my mother watching that film with me knowing that it would somehow be important. That’s why she’s such a good mom. She launched me in the right direction which apparently the rest of the world is just starting to understand—perhaps not deeply, but at least emotionally as it is started to show itself in our fashions.

For a long time I’ve had the hunch that all aspects of American culture needed to go back in time to that precipice of history to when A Fistful of Dollars was released, and start over. Instead of hating the crony capitalists Rojos as a reason to steer society toward Marxism we should focus on the capitalist that played both sides against the other for the personal gain of reward while doing good for those around him as a natural by-product. In those days nobody in the world understood capitalism better than Sergio Leone and his good friend Ennio Morricone. America should have listened then. But it’s not too late. I saw several women standing at the corner of Bales Street and Haskell who looked like they stepped right off the set of For A Few Dollars More. They may not have been aware of it, but it was obvious to me that the fashion designers for their clothing were clearly fans of early Sergio Leone westerns likely for the reasons I just mentioned. European Marxism has taken the world nowhere. So its time to re-evaluate our philosophy and to step back to that very first film, A Fistful of Dollars and see it through the eyes of its maker—and not make the same mistakes going forward. I received the message the first time, and I have never looked back and been with any doubt. Tarantino and the modern films schools have it wrong—they need to go back to Leone and understand what it was in the beginning that made him so great—and its not that he cast Henry Fonda as a villain.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

CNBC is Actually a Cable Television Station: The marathon race of people who already lost

I honestly didn’t know CNBC was still a cable channel until I watched the Republican debates on October 28th, 2015. What a pathetic mess those moderators were. They had a record 14 million viewers which is probably more than watch their network over an entire year and those idiots spent their time in the sun showing the world why they are such a ratings bust. I can’t believe those people are actually employed who work at CNBC. I know there is a liberal bias in the media—we know where it comes from as I’ve covered The Naked Communist for a number of years now, and that was one of the strategic objectives by the communists going into the 1960s was to take over both political parties and to control the media. They do—and have on both accounts—but come on. These idiots were just way too obvious about it. Who do they think their potential audience is—the Bolshevik Revolutionaries of 1917? Or maybe it’s the Cuban nut jobs under Castro. Perhaps even the Mao fanatics from China? I didn’t know that there was such a television network that actually had so many radical leftist on a payroll, because I can’t say I’ve ever watched the network—because they never appeared to have anything on that I’d be interested in. Now I know why—geez!

I’m not a fan of all the Republican presidential candidates, but after listening to some of the questions by the CNBC moderators, each of them—even Governor Kasich sounded like rock solid Republicans. Trump’s lambasting of CNBC at the end of the debate was spot on—and so was Marco Rubio’s comments—as were Ted Cruz’s—even Jeb Bush looked like a conservative next to the crazy lunatics on the CNBC moderations panel. Where do these people come from—Hugo Chavez’s personal bathroom? The presidential nominees had a right to be upset, during the recent Democratic debate the questions were so much easier for them—but for the Republicans everything was a gotcha question. They were deliberately designed to make Republicans look bad.

Although I generally liked all the Republicans on the stage that night for different reasons I am still a firm Trump guy at this point. The whole system needs a Teddy Roosevelt type who may very well yank the nation back away from progressivism—whereas Teddy pulled the bar so far to the left as a Republican. By the end of his 7 years in office, Roosevelt was more like Grover Cleveland than he was Abraham Lincoln. The Republican Party now needs the opposite to happen and it will take a bombastic personality like Trump to do it. No soft talking Ben Carson will work, or soft faced Marco Rubio. Cruz is too hated by insiders while Rand Paul is not worldly enough. Fiorina is too weak—she is a good debater, but her track record as a CEO is not robust enough. Jeb Bush is too establishment and way too nice. John Kasich is too far behind the times, he’s like those marathon runners who cross the finish line three hours behind all the top-tier runners and then puts a picture of himself on his office desk showing that he’s a marathon runner. He confuses participating in a marathon to being a contender. Huckabee is a nice guy—a pastor type but is way too passive to slug it out with the greasy slime of K-Street—which is where the real fights for the next president are really at. Nobody but Trump has the right stuff to be president on behalf of the Republican Party. Nobody likes to fight as much as Trump does, and the next president will have to LOVE fighting.

It would be my hope that either Ben Carson or Ted Cruz would be the Trump running mate so that a president Trump could set the stage for a 2024 election of a real conservative for perhaps the first time since Calvin Coolidge. Ronald Reagan was an actor playing the part of a conservative that he acquired late in life. I want a conservative that is that way in their marrow of their bones, and within Cruz, I think there is one. But he’s not ready yet and the environment is all wrong for him presently. The day after the debate Paul Ryan was elected Speaker of the House which many people think is the same as electing an establishment candidate, and he is. But the bar is at least headed to the right again as opposed to the left. Ryan is at least an Ayn Rand fan and deep down inside will lean in that direction if allowed. Under a president Trump I think he would move more conservative than he is under an Obama president, much more so than John Boehner. Like his friend Kasich, Boehner is another hour behind him in the marathon puffing away on cigarettes. The sun has set on Boehner a long time ago only nobody told him that the flashlights at his feet were from his supporters who didn’t have the heart to tell him that the sun had already set—and the race was over and the finish line was already disassembled. They didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Paul Ryan is not the best choice, but he was a Tea Party darling at one point, and is proof that the needle is moving back to the political right.

So that’s the trend yet CNBC seemed so far behind the times that they hadn’t even started that marathon race that Boehner and Kasich were already proudly running well behind the front-runners. I mean, it was disgusting—that people actually think as liberally as those idiots at CNBC. I can’t imagine how they even pay for the cameras to keep the network on cable—unless those people work for nothing. It’s a good thing they had the debate because I didn’t even realize they were a channel—I had mistaken them for MSNBC which I used to give some credit to just because I liked Microsoft. But that loyalty went away after Bill Gates became the face of Common Core—and Jeb Bush with it. Microsoft’s influence on MSNBC is gone now, whereas in the early days it was on the tech side of news coverage with was good. But now they are all about progressive politics and are just ridiculous. I had no idea there was even a channel to the left of them!

I supposed I’m grateful that now I know, because of the debates, but I am seriously embarrassed for them as a network. There were so many stupid things that they said that even in hindsight it seems unfathomable. Yet they are real, and the questions they asked were to—all of them with a liberal spin. If there was ever any doubt that The Naked Communist had predicted such a thing successfully, that the media would be controlled by communists in the future—then CNBC is the proof as to that reality. But even that terrible reality isn’t anywhere as sinister as it was a year ago. Now liberals are more of a joke than ever—their policies have been proven ineffective and rejected by sane voters everywhere. They just haven’t paid attention to the memo yet. And that was never more evident than at CNBC. Wow, they are out there and are a dying breed. Watch them before the go extinct, because in this climate, they are well on their way.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

How the DOJ and Lois Lerner Demanded the need for more Guns: Government pleads stupidity as a defense

Let’s see if we can get this straight, the Department of Justice has used a legal criterion of incompetence to justify not prosecuting Lois Lerner as she abused her power at the IRS for political reasons. DOJ officials reported that “substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints. But poor management is not a crime,” thus establishing forever by attorneys everywhere that government can act against private citizens so long as they can prove they were too incompetent to manage a situation. So in essence, the DOJ has given all government employees a future way out of any abuse of power situation—all anyone has to do is plead stupidity to be relieved of whatever crime they may have committed.

Well, isn’t that interesting. That means hypothetically that if the President of the United States is given intelligence data suggesting that someone like me is a threat to national security and they send a squad of people to apprehend me—hypothetically speaking of course—but they go to the wrong house and bump into one of my neighbors who then opens fire and a firefight ensues similar to something like what happened at Waco, Ruby Ridge and other places—and a lot of people are killed–that those guilty of the whole thing would be let off the hook at the DOJ because bad management is not illegal.

Or suppose that a Secretary of State sets up a private server that she runs all her top-secret email through so she can scrub the information later for deniability—but then gets caught—that all she has to do is plead stupidity and all will be forgiven. They will even get the opportunity to run for president—wait, that’s actually happening right now with Hillary Clinton. That is not a hypothetical, but you get the point.

The DOJ has just provided the primary reason that government is too large and needs to be scaled back. They have just established why Washington D.C. should not be one of the highest per capita employment regions in the country—because they are too incompetent as a collective group to occupy so much wealth. Through their labor unions there are no expectations of performance and now with the DOJ decision over the Lois Lerner case regarding the IRS, there is no legal expectation regarding performance either making the federal government fully motivated to hire the dumbest people they can get their hands on so there is always an escape if something goes wrong.

The Department of Justice further stated, “we found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution. We also found no evidence that any official involved in the handling of tax-exempt applications or IRS leadership attempted to obstruct justice. Based on the evidence developed in this investigation and the recommendation of experienced career prosecutors and supervising attorneys at the department, we are closing our investigation and will not seek any criminal charges.” That statement was provided in a letter to selected members of congress by Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik. So let’s strip away the legalese rhetoric there and get to the heart of what Kadzik was saying. In essence the investigation was run by government employees against government employees for the end goal of protecting government employment. Lerner was told to plead the fifth, say nothing, get out of public office and let the government clean up the mess with a defense of stupidity to conceal their tracks. The government declared of itself that they were too stupid to properly conduct themselves with tax payer resources and that there will never be ramifications for incompetence in public office. Without question, we will get a lot more of the behavior as a result.

Now you know dear reader yet again—with evidence provided from the highest law enforcement office in the land—why we have a Bill of Rights established by the anti-Federalists during the formation of our Constitution at the start of the American concept. We have freedom of speech so that we can call such abuses of power by their true implication—because obviously the DOJ has no interest in doing anything but protecting government employment as a direct arm of radicalized union labor. And we have the right to arm ourselves in case our military and police fall under the malice of future incompetent idiots like Lois Lerner at the IRS. If the IRS can abuse its power why not the local National Guard post? We need guns to protect ourselves by the DOJ definition of incompetence, because they have shown that they will take the side of the fool over the righteous expecting the good to surrender their lives to the bad for the “greater good.” Greater in this case is established by all the hoards of knuckle-draggers who are employed by the federal government. Their employer actually permits stupidity so those of a sane mind out of the Beltway need a way to protect themselves from the stupid—because nobody else will take up the job.

Because of this ruling by the DOJ we now have evidence that under no circumstances we should reduce the number of firearms in our society, because in a time when the DOJ is using stupidity as a defense the only way we can enforce respect among the corrupt is by promising to end their life—because they don’t respect the law. So they must respect the guns we possess—because in reality, that’s all that really protects us from the bad management decisions of the federal government. When they think they can abuse their power—as they have many times and been caught—they are very inclined to continue the behavior. The IRS attacked my friend Justin Binik Thomas and my local Tea Party group at Liberty Township because they assumed that everyone were nice people not inclined toward rambunctious violance—so they were easy targets for showing the vast authority of the IRS as a way to build up their brand of enforcement. As nice as Justin was however, they didn’t expect him or the Liberty Township Tea Party to stick up for themselves using the First Amendment. So the situation backfired on the IRS in a spectacular way. The IRS was clearly guilty of abuse of power and the only way out for them was for the Obama controlled DOJ to plead stupidity to avoid prosecution. If the case had been allowed to fester, the original guilt would have put it within the White House through union connections which was the likely origin Lois Lerner’s radicalism.

These same idiots are the people declaring that we need fewer guns in society. It’s like a robber scouting out potential hits complaining that people have bars on their windows to prevent break-ins. The government wants easy targets and a compliant people, because they are too stupid to deal with a challenge or any philosophic position in favor of freedom, so they want to confiscate guns to have their way and be allowed to mismanage our society. Without guns people like Lois Lerner would be in charge of everything and the abuse of their offices completely unfettered. It is for this very reason that gun sales are so high in America right now. It makes us sleep better at night knowing we can at least take care of ourselves if something dreadful happens. It is quite obvious that we can’t count on the DOJ, the IRS, the White House, the Secretary of State, local law enforcement, the National Guard or even the local school, because they have been given the gift of stupidity to protect them from the ramifications of their own devastating decisions. In the end the thin blue line that resides between justice and chaos is not law enforcement led by more government employees—its in the Second Amendment and under the right to bear arms that Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State authenticated, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That militia is not a group of idiots ran by the federal government—its individuals fighting for their right to protect their private property and to take back their government when and if that government fails them in the future. With the decision by the DOJ over the IRS case—it is clear that there was a lot of wisdom in Thomas Jefferson’s assumptions. So the best thing to do is to protect yourself from future stupid people. Join the NRA if you haven’t already. Sign up for Second Call Defense. And buy a gun. If you already have one, or two, or a hundred—buy another gun so that the DOJ can get a taste of what their bad decisions cause regarding social behavior patterns. And if you live near me, buy that gun from the good guys at Right 2 Arms, which is essentially at the end of my street in Liberty Township. It’s government’s problem for their bad decisions—not yours dear reader. Protect yourself from them by using the rights provided at the outset of the country. The lawyers, politicians and theatrical fools have strayed away—and Lois Lerner is the proof of just how bad it really is. The DOJ just confirmed it.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Politically Incorrect Review of Liberty Center: How the future allows people of value to enjoy life

I have written about the Liberty Center development for a long time because I had the fortune of knowing quite a lot about it during the early stages, and have been fascinated by the people building it. I have had the opportunity to travel a lot and know what’s out there, and what’s good and bad about the places I’ve been. Of course since it is in my community I have spent a considerable amount of time there over the last week—and I have to say that I really enjoy it. But if people want a politically correct review of Liberty Center, they can go to the Chamber sites, or read about it in the newspaper. Since my concerns are more philosophically based regarding humanity, and I’m not so concerned about my social status within my community—I can say things that other people can’t—so I will in regard to the monstrous success that Liberty Center has seen during its first week of operation, and the subsequent months and years that it will enjoy, articulate the reason and necessity for its construction.

I was a bit surprised that Tom Farrell who is a trustee in my community and a pretty good guy revealed a bit about why he thought Liberty Center would be successful in the mainstream news. He quite flatly stated that from a trustee point of view—the management of the community—that Liberty Center provided a city-like experience without the crime. I thought that was a bit bold for an area Republican, and it gave me hope that he and others just might be learning something from Donald Trump. It’s far better for everyone if you just tell it like it is. It might hurt some feelings but in the end, it will help everyone. After all, if you take your car to the shop to figure out what’s wrong with it, because its ticking in the engine someplace unseen—it doesn’t do any good for the mechanics to tell you your tire pressure is too low—because those things are not connected. If you want to fix the problem, an accurate diagnosis is needed. Tom hit on a very, very important point that I hope the rest of the country will learn from—because within Liberty Center is the solution to much of what’s wrong with America—which is why I’ve been so excited about it for such a long time.

Lately as I puzzled through my thoughts about Liberty Center I spent some time in downtown Cincinnati. After a recent Bengal game my family walked around the Banks development just as we have enjoyed Newport on the Levy a lot over the years. I have also spent considerable time at Fountain Square, Mt. Adams, Kenwood, Eastgate, Florence and many other places that I consider to be quality “living centers” where shopping complexes and living are brought together in unique ways. I also have the fortune to have in-laws who live in one of the most unusual communities I’ve ever seen in Brevard County, Kentucky right near the intersection of I-265 and I-71. Most of the homes are million dollar bits of real-estate that contain their own office park, shopping and restaurant experience providing a very self-contained experience. Residents can go to the doctor, shop, eat and live within a mile of their home and crime is non-existent. If some slug walks around that community, there is security that runs them out post-haste—no fooling around. You don’t see slackers standing around on street corners, you don’t hear cursing, and you don’t get “undesirables.”

What are undesirables? Well let me define it for you with an example of the new Over-the-Rhine renovations that the city of Cincinnati has spent a lot of money trying to resurrect. My daughter is a professional photographer who spends a lot of time there because people want to capture the history of the area with a photographers spin on the topic of downtown. Her customers want the romance of downtown without the garbage. What her camera doesn’t pick up are the thugs standing on street corners with their pants half down cursing every other word making embarrassments of themselves. Yes Cincinnati has a nice streetcar they are building, yes Over-the-Rhine has been cleaned up a bit—they have some nice restaurants, and during the days it’s a pretty nice place-now. But there are still undesirables standing around everywhere—and that’s not race related activity. If people like Ben Carson were standing on the street corner there would be no problem. But when people who look and act like they want to kill you are standing around looking like detrimental thugs it takes away the fun of going out on the town. Undesirables are people who have personal conduct that is equitable to animal behavior—where their primary objectives are sexual pursuits and pecking order mentality. People of a higher level in life don’t want to deal with undesirables—because they have other things on their mind than just primal desires.

Liberty Center understood this problem from day one in their design. They intended to do something similar to the development I mentioned in Kentucky—which is primarily occupied by horse racing families close to the sport—certainly the upper crest of Louisville society—and do something on a much larger scale in Liberty Township. The residential buildings at Liberty Center are all around five stories to give the illusion down below that people walking on the streets are within a city-scape. The buildings are positioned around the shopping complex so that the area within feels removed from the rural landscape on the outside. Also, useable living space is stacked to utilize bridges and staircases to provide the illusion that there is more complexity to the area than there really is, which is actually a video game programming trick that is quite effective to giving the impression that there is a lot more to something. For what Liberty Center is trying to do, it’s enormously effective.

The sum of the experience is to provide a city simulation without the crime and displeasure of an actual urban environment. My mom for instance stopped going to Tri-County over ten years ago when undesirables essentially pushed her out. I know many people who won’t even go the Costco in Tri-County just because they are afraid of the type of people who now reside around that old shopping district. Undesirables come in all shapes, sizes, sexes and colors—but what they all have in common is that they function from the basic animal instincts of a pubescent teenager. Teenagers are supposed to grow out of that phase with careful parental supervision, but in our society of today—where being a forever teenager is desired, there are just too many people out there who are grown-up teenagers functioning from raw animal instincts, and older people with money and success in their life don’t want to be around those low life scum bags.

After working really hard at your life and making smart decisions—it is fun to dress up with your spouse and go have a nice dinner—and a movie. Liberty Center allows me to take my wife to a nice place and be around nice people. I can go to a movie where only adults can attend, who are older than 21 keeping the teenagers out, so you don’t have to worry about bratty kids kicking the back of your seat, or giggling at boobies on the theater screen. You get to have an experience free of undesirables as much as possible. It’s a free country so low life scum bags can come to Liberty Center, but unlike a real city ran by progressive city governments, the shopping complex is privately owned as opposed to publicly owned. Liberty Center management can hire their own security to make sure that nobody causes any trouble as they are more competent than a city council or a mayor to deal with such issues.

The real benefit of Liberty Center is that it’s a private enterprise managed by competent people who are motivated by profit as opposed to elected bureaucrats. It will stay looking nice and will give everyone what they want from a city without the mess of mismanagement. Liberty Township doesn’t even have a police department which is wonderful. Trustees aren’t running Liberty Center; they just enjoy it with everyone else. The Steiner Group runs the place, and that puts it in the hands of competent management who provide their own security—much better than a bunch of unionized, expensive government workers who are politically accountable to a mayor and city manager. The presence of competency is what makes Liberty Center feel different. It’s not a public park or a community owned monstrosity where thugs, derelicts and panhandlers will be allowed to accost the affluent from Wetherington. Those types of people will not be allowed to bring down the level of quality within Liberty Center. In America being a derelict is a choice. There are too many opportunities for people, all it requires is for people to reach out and grab them. For those too lazy to reach for anything, they will become undesirables because they are parasites on those who aren’t lethargic.

I remember well what it was like when Forest Fair Mall opened over two decades ago. It was like Liberty Center in many ways—it had high hopes of appealing to the upper-class while maintaining the lofty goal of elevating the standard of living for Forest Park and Fairfield. Unfortunately, people who work hard to have money do not like conversing with people who are on welfare, or are just plain lazy, and the two demographics just didn’t mix. The money went to Tri-County for another ten years, or to Kenwood. Forest Fair Mall died slowly because the people around the community were not the type of people who financially affluent people wanted to spend their leisure time with. People are not just people—some are better than others and that is usually determined by their ambition. The Mall was directly reliant on city governments to create the demographic who would shop at their establishment, and the politicians screwed it up. The Mall out of desperation turned toward the nightclub crowd to bring life back to the once promising palace. But that brought more undesirables and pushed out the money. Soon all the Mall had to offer were cheap pieces of crap aimed at teenagers or adults who wanted to be teenagers leaving everyone else to shop somewhere else.

Liberty Center is not reliant on city government for its success. They bring their own management to both living and commercial enterprises and take care of both. And like everything else, things run better as a private sector enterprise than they do as public endeavors. The local government gets to collect a little bit more tax money each year, but they don’t have to make any management decisions about the complex itself. That’s up to Steiner’s people and they are a whole lot more motivated to make sure consumers get what they want—as opposed to professional politicians who seek to coddle the masses to get votes to stay in office. In a lot of ways Liberty Center is a creation out of necessity. People don’t want to associate with undesirables. They want to be around people with shared values and Liberty Center promises that type of experience, without the hassle of low-level people. Not everyone in the world is equal. Some people work harder and more valiantly than others and they deserve a place to go where they can enjoy life. For them, Liberty Center is that place. They get all the benefits of a city without the hassle of cat-calls, and panhandling. And for people in Liberty Township who have been losing their children to the exotic nightlife of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, Liberty Center has just given those kids an alternative without being too far away from home and can have all the fun without the downsides of crime. It is the way of the future, and the reason for it is a direct response to the gross mismanagement of public officials as opposed to private ones. That is why Liberty Center is so special and why it will become the standard everyone else in the future will have to live by. Cities will have to clean up their act or they will lose everything to private sector driven developments—which is fine with me.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Attacking Gunslingers: Why “shooting from the hip” makes a great business leader

I have a bit of a reputation professionally and personally for shooting from the hip, metaphorically speaking. People who say that about me speak it as if it were a bad thing that indicates recklessness. They also say the same type of thing when professional quarterbacks are quick to throw the ball down the field under risky circumstances—they call those people “gunslingers,” as if the term concocted abandon of calculation and patience. So I need to set the record straight on a couple of things that I have been thinking about as I have contemplated the root cause of my sudden obsession with Cowboy Fast Draw. Like my bullwhip work, most of the targeting is done more through feeling than in properly lining up the barrel with a target with careful assessment. I happen to be good at quick targeting, as I have shown under many competitions of speed and accuracy with bullwhips and am routinely very good at the Ohio Bullwhip Fast Draw that we perform each year at the Annie Oakley Days in Greenville, Ohio. There is no time to take care and to aim the bullwhip at a target. I have learned through muscle memory where all the points of trajectory are, how wind affects my aim, and to consider all the factors of targeting under stressful, timed conditions. I have it down to seconds with a bullwhip, and my new obsession with Cowboy Fast Draw is to further speed up my thinking to the hundredths of a second instead of just a second or two. That’s why I’m personally attracted to those types of hobbies—but I find society’s labeling of those types of people to be disturbing and indicative of something much more symptomatic of an overall disease that is crippling our country.

There is a new breed of American, and world bureaucrat educated with modern scholastic emphasis on metaphorically taking more aim before one shoots in life who have deliberately, and maliciously sought to smear the name of the bold and the reckless that stand behind just about every profitable enterprise in the history of mankind. This has left our nation and world in a state where the very timid and fragile minded rule the world through paperwork, regulations and an emphasis on calculation as the mode of representing quality instead of how quickly a target is hit. Using guns as a metaphor, the modern bureaucrat believes the quality of an endeavor is in the form of the aim, not in the objective of shooting. The reason of course is that since the masses cannot think and act fast, they have placed upon the world a mandate through democracy that the weakest and most timid can rule the corporate world by handcuffing the strong and decisive with mundane regulation and law that they create to give themselves a shot at equality.

With the Cowboy Fast Draw Association what I love most is that the aim and accuracy of the endeavor is all performed by shooting from the hip. If a shooter takes the time to aim, they will lose. Too much time is taken off the clock unless a shooter literally plucks the gun from their holster and levels the barrel just above the rim with a quick pivot and unleashes a shot within a hundredth of a second from seeing a light indicating that action needs to take place. I have thought about this concept for years with my bullwhip work and the net result for me is that when I need to make a hard decision fast, I can and do with tremendous accuracy. I have a great track record of making good decisions in a split second manner. But that’s not good enough for me. I want to be faster, so I am taking up Cowboy Fast Draw to improve myself. When I say that I intend my official career to be that of a gunfighter, this is part of why I reference it this way.

Just because something is shot from the hip or struck without a proper aim—traditionally defined, it does not mean the act is reckless or without skill. Quite the contrary—in many ways shooting from the hip for those skilled in the act is a way to encompass both speed and accuracy into as seamless of an action possible. Whereas the typical academic is focused on only one of those elements, they have attempted to define the quality of an endeavor based on the time it takes. If speed is desired, then they instantly reference more people to accomplish the task because it plays into their overall collectivist mindset. They don’t like that an individual can provide both speed and accuracy when it comes to complicated tasks, so they have found countless ways to instill laborious monstrosities of inefficiency to give themselves more time to think—which they love to do. But they hate action—actually pulling the trigger at a decision gate.

That is why in many manufacturing fields across the United States, from aerospace to auto manufacturing our ability to produce has been greatly crippled by allowing these timid types who require of themselves to aim very carefully in order to hit a target to strangle our productivity because their primary objective in life has been to diminish the input of the traditional gunslinger—the bright eyed problem solver who shoots from the hip often and hits most of the time. Their jealousy and need for social equality have actually crippled our manufacturing capacity with mundane academics that are so timid to pull the trigger on anything for fear of not landing a mark that they shoot slowly and miss often. When they declare that “so and so” “shoots from the hip” they mean it as an insult, but what they reveal is the source of a vast detriment—the root cause for the declining effectiveness of American manufacturing through improper association toward definitions of quality.

In Cowboy Fast Draw the rules are strict, just as they are in the world of manufacturing. You must have your gun holstered and your hand cannot be in the trigger guard. You must use a single action firearm. The distances you shoot from are 15’, 18’, and 21’, which is quite a distance for a firearm. You cannot shoot before the light comes on. Within that context, you must figure out a way to draw your gun, hit your target and do it within a fraction of a second. If you miss, yet beat your rival to the draw, you don’t get a score. You must have speed and accuracy—just like in our bullwhip competitions. The goal of the skill is to develop both, not just be strong in one facet. You have to be accurate and fast, not just fast, not just accurate. By that unit of measure the timid fuddy-duddy is just as wrong as the hasty fool who is often referenced as a “gunslinger.” So when the bureaucrat says that the person who shoots from their hip is reckless, they are just as dangerous, because their inaction is just as detrimental as a mistake. Just because a shot isn’t taken doesn’t mean it wasn’t needed.

In the field of life, there are many targets and most of them have to be hit at 21’ or less, metaphorically speaking. And they require speed and accuracy to deal with them. Necessity dictates that the quickest to the target gets the prize, and in the competition of life, the first to draw and hit their target wins. Time does not wait for the timid to pull their gun, aim the sights, take a deep breath, let out half of it, then to squeeze the trigger at just the right moment. In life, you have to draw and shoot before an eye can blink. Bureaucrats try diligently to stop time itself with mountains of paperwork to hide the fact that they don’t have the courage to draw and fire. Both actions require decision-making rooted in having a conceptual understanding of the target and hitting it without the aid of eyes and time to guide the bullet to the intended destination. You have to know where the target is in space and time and trust yourself to hit it faster than a mind can think about it.

Those who are successful at shooting from the hip are those like the people in Cowboy Fast Draw. There they dress up in cowboy outfits from the late 1800s period of American history. But they might as well be the deal makers and job creators who have made the economy of America the greatest in the world. Shooting from the hip for them is necessary, and a skill that few have. In their hands, it’s a competent task. But in the hands of the bureaucrat it’s a serious risk that is nearly a guaranteed failure. Bureaucrats are incorrect to assume that all people shooting from the hip are reckless just because the skill in being successful at it is something they lack. Rather, they should work hard to become better and to stop trying to stop the world with paperwork so that they can “feel” successful. In life you have to hit your targets and you have to do it quickly—before someone else does. The world doesn’t stop for anybody—especially those laced with indecision and timidity that lead to massive bureaucracy. Success finds those who shoot from the hip, because they are able to do things in life with the two ingredients necessary for accomplishment—to perform tasks with speed and accuracy. Nothing else is suitable for a definition of success—and that is why the term “gunslinger” has been slandered to hide the real incompetence of the typical bureaucrat.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Welcome to the Future: Liberty Center opens and a city unfolds within a small town community

I really didn’t think it was possible. I always did love the Back to the Future films, especially the second one when they traveled from 1985 to October 21^st 2015, which was just a few days ago as of this writing. So I had those old movies on my mind when Liberty Center opened in my neighborhood on October 22, 2015—one day after Back to the Future Day. I parked in the back parking garage behind the new movie theater a little displaced because for my entire life this area had been an empty field alongside I-75. I never imagined that anything of any importance would ever be where I parked my car on that sunny October day. I was meeting my family at the Rusty Bucket but wasn’t quite sure where lead to where, so I made my way south until I found the main road which ran through the center of the complex. It was ironically just like the scene in Back to the Future II, where I came out of an alley into the hard sun of a fall afternoon and the future hit me right in the face. It looked just like Hill Valley from that famous movie series, square and all.

Short of hover boards and flying cars, it was the future as I never would have imagined it. The stores were modern versions of the type I grew up with, but the way they were presented were very tech heavy and architecturally specific. Living space was stacked in creative ways to make a dynamic world that really has not been possible before in any other shopping experience I’ve ever seen. As I thought of some of the places I’ve been, such as Downtown Disney, La Isla in Cancun, or the Americana in Glendale, California, nothing was like what I saw at Liberty Center in my hometown. It was more astonishing than I thought it would be. The reason we ate at the Rusty Bucket was because it was next door to the Cobb movie theater which is extremely important to me. I wanted to talk to the owners about some upcoming plans, and that was why my family was there on opening day. It was as nice as I would have imagined a luxury theater to be that has made its mark in Tampa, Florida where another shopping destination that I love a lot, The International Mall is rather common.

As a guy, I don’t like shopping very much—my wife does, but I don’t like the task of actually shopping. I do love the exhibition of capitalism, especially when it’s as openly unapologetic as it is at Liberty Center. As I’ve said many times, I have a soft spot for developers because they are often the first cogs in the wheel toward economic development. Because of their creations money moves through an economy and in an age where the shopping experience is competing directly with online sales, something new has to be tried, and they did at Liberty Center—a long time in the making.

Yes they have an Apple Store. Yes, they have a really nice Victoria’s Secret which is good for me and my wife. She likes the quality of that store and it makes me happy to see her happy. Yes they have a number of upper crust restaurant experiences. Looming over the square I was in was a large facade of a Marriot hotel looking down into the action below. It replaced the clock tower in the Back to the Future film regarding iconic skyline. As I hiked and drove the back roads that used to pass through that location way back in 1985 I never would have imagined that in 2015 there would be terraced gardens exotic fountains, and advanced shopping destinations in such a place, unless I could have been placed into a time machine and shown first-hand.

And that’s where my family found me, they were perched above the shops on a patio waving to me to come up and join them in the sun. Step for step I felt just as Marty McFly when he first saw Hill Valley in 2015. It was a strange experience that I couldn’t have anticipated even as I watched them build the place brick by brick. Liberty Township instantly had a downtown district that was every bit as cultured and sophisticated as any of the big cities of America or the world for that matter. As I thought of the countless hours I’ve spent around Fountain Square in Cincinnati on business and pleasure surrounded by skyscrapers and dozens of neatly tucked restaurants situated everywhere, the rural community of Liberty Township had instantly built for itself a downtown that looked big time, but was small enough to still have the feel of a tight-knit community.

If engineers designing living conditions for intergalactic space travelers had to design something that divided function, luxury, and necessity into an all-encompassing package Liberty Center would be it. It was small and enormously large all at the same time and surrounded shoppers with an all-encompassing experience. People walked the streets without worrying about prostitutes and beggars—which is impossible in most big cities these days totally ruining the experience of economic frivolity. A quick trip down Times Square in New York or the strip in Vegas as a couple out for a night together means you are often molested by whores and malcontents. Vegas is terrible for that kind of thing. Times Square is nearly as bad. Liberty Center was free of that mess—but it had all the good things left behind. It was for all matters of thought a conservative utopia. If John Galt had built a shopping center, this is what he would have designed, from the famous novel Atlas Shrugged. It had all the plus elements of an economic development without all the trash created by liberal city governments who mismanage their downtowns into a trash heap of mixed values and nonsense. Liberty Center was built for people who like the good life, and know how to live it.

I heard up to his opening that Liberty Center would essentially be a carbon copy of The Greene in Dayton, or Newport on the Levy in Northern Kentucky—but it was obvious that it was different right from the start. It was the infusion of sophistication mixed with rural charm that really is unequal and reminded me almost of a movie set, something that is common at Universal Studios where complicated streets change the whole feel of a place just one block from a previous position. Clearly the designers had learned something from those entertainment complexes in Florida as far as space utilization where geographically the terrain may seem simple, but architecturally a visitor might feel like they had visited a new world getaway by the time they walked from one end to the other.

It was special more for me because I picked just the right spot to walk in at just the right time of day to nearly simulate a Back to the Future moment. As I stepped onto a sidewalk out into the Center square a car went by, a modern looking Cadillac nearly on queue with the events of when the same thing happened to Marty McFly. All that was missing were the flying cars and the holographs, but that technology isn’t that far off, and Liberty Center looks staged up to take advantage when it does hit the market. On one end was an enclosed mall that led to Dillards and Dick’s Sporting Good, both marvelous stores in their own right. At the other a Marriott hotel and a gorgeous movie theater that really was designed in one of my dreams—and in the middle was everything else.

It was for me, the future.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

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