Tag: Down the Rabbit Hole

Corrupt Politics Behind Lakota’s Boys and Girls Club West Chester: The exploitation of children to fulfill fantasies of vanity

The essence of the Boys and Girls Clubs across America is really an excuse for altruistic latté sipping prostitutes to bath themselves in perfume and take selfies at award dinners to celebrate their bailout of failed parenting and offerings of all day babysitting services to families too busy and ignorant to perform the task of mentoring for their own children.   In spite of the hoards of celebrities which participate in commercials for the Boys and Girls Clubs, the basic message of the organization is that parents fail at raising children and that there is a social safety net out there to catch all those lost children who would otherwise fall through the cracks of civilization.  The idiocy of the message is that an alliance with government schools will somehow miraculously overcome bad parenting and make children complete citizens who will then grow up and “serve” their communities.  Needless to say, I think the whole premise is a bad idea.  So it should come as no surprise that I’m against the one that is being built in West Chester, Ohio in partnership with Lakota schools, which can be seen at the two articles below, one from the Journal News, the other from me where I break down the essence and politics of the deal telling the behind the scenes story of how that ridiculous endeavor came to be and who the personalities involved are.

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/lakota-looking-to-lease-land-to-new-boys-girls-clu/nhSHs/

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/the-emperor-of-aldersonville-lakota-becomes-the-new-clothes/

However, the focus of this present article should be on the strategy of the Lakota superintendent Karen Mantia—as I am in a unique position to tell the story—which of course she will deny when pressed—but actions always do speak louder than words.  Karen when she was hired and overpaid by Lynda O’Conner, current Vice President of the Lakota school board, came to Lakota to pass school levies.  Up until that point Lakota residents had a strong resistance against tax increases proposed by the school.  So she set to do as she had in Pickerington, Ohio, to unite the business community and get their buy-in to her school system—as school superintendents like to see themselves as CEO’s who run vast corporations.  Coming to Lakota she sought to convert members of the opposition from No Lakota Levy—my group—into her way of thinking but first she had to know the political lay of the land.  She met with us and she and I had a nice conversation about my motorcycle and recent trip to Key West.  She was smooth and unassuming and made my partners believe that she had a head on her shoulders and that she just might approach school business with a mind to savings.

However, what Karen knew and discovered during that meeting, and through subsequent dinners through Lynda O’Conner with members of my No Lakota Levy group was that the builders and developers who were a part of the tax resistance were scorned by the school and not getting any work.  After all, Lakota schools is one of the largest employers in Butler County so it is hard to be in the business of developing things when you are on the shit list of local government employment group, so some of those members of the No Lakota Levy group wanted to repair their relationship with the school because they needed the work and felt vulnerable being on the wrong side of politics.  Mark Sennett was the first to defect out of pressure applied to him, which was revealed during the summer of 2011 when he misspoke to the media that No Lakota Levy would support a 2012 levy under certain conditions.  Of course I corrected that to the media and Mark was pushed out of the No Lakota Levy group.  Other developer types joined Mark, while others stayed with me.  Mark being a former government employee himself didn’t have strong convictions about things and was a member of No Lakota Levy because his affiliation with me saved him a lot of money in taxes—so we agreed on that much.  But on other matters, his reasons for being a part of the group were not as strong as mine.

During her meeting with No Lakota Levy Karen learned who the leaders of the group where and who the moderates were and quickly went back to the drawing board to figure out how to divide and conquer our group.  I warned our guys that this was her intentions and that she wasn’t such a nice old lady as she seemed.  For that particular election, they listened to me, but after the third levy defeat for which we orchestrated again saving local business owners millions of dollars—they began to feel the heat of being on the political out within the community and wanted desperately to repair their inside relationships for the exclusive purpose of gaining work from Lakota.  As developers, they couldn’t afford a sustained resistance to Lakota’s constant tax requests and Karen knew it.  So she attacked them where they all shared common ground—through the local socialite Patti Alderson.

Karen nurtured a friendship with the West Chester version of Lovey Howell from the Gilligan’s Island television show which cut directly to my No Lakota Levy members, because many were involved in the Community Foundation with her.  After discovering that Karen seemed like a reasonable women—a titan of industry much like herself–Alderson formed an alliance that would continue well into the next two years.  The purpose of this alliance was to pull the business oriented support of No Lakota Levy away from the ideological elements—represented by me.  I warned our members that this was what was going on, and told them that Karen planned to ignore the voters by going for another levy attempt in 2012 during a meeting right before Christmas in 2011.  They held tight for as long as they could, but really could not stand up to Alderson who put a lot of social pressure on them to buckle, because in essence they needed her more than she needed them.

On cue, Karen made her moves and positioned Lakota for an early 2012 levy push for either May or August when everyone was thinking about summer break—a tactic she tried in Pickerington.  Patti put pressure on my No Lakota Levy guys to separate from my radicalism and join the political moderates who were under the thumb of Karen Mantia joined together through the Community Foundation. Sensing the separation, Karen then worked the radical elements of her levy supporters to come after me personally and smear my name leading to the now famous Kroger Survey incident.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.   Reports of the survey came to me from No Lakota Levy supporters who directed me to the website “Yappi Sports,” which naturally infuriated me.  I agreed to a plan by the other No Lakota Levy members who were direct friends with Alderson to help them with a charity type organization called Yes To Lakota Kids.  Originally, we were planning to join Alderson’s group—but since her real objective was not to help kids, but build alliances against No Lakota Levy in favor of Karen Mantia’s efforts—she couldn’t work with me.  So we started our own group which touched off a firestorm of panic.   Immediately school board member Julie Shafer whom I debated on 700 WLW scoured through my articles and pieced together some of the worst things they could find that I had written to smear me publically—because the Yes To Lakota Kids foundation strategically cut too far into Lakota’s turf—which I knew it would all along.  So they had to take action.  I stood by my comments and felt good about it until the No Lakota Levy guys in direct alliance with Alderson left me stranded at the altar.  I knew the temptation was strong from them to end the levy fight, but I didn’t think they would side with her against me—but in the end, the politics of the deal was stronger than friendships and the rest is history.  Because of the damage on both sides—as I was intensely furious about the incident even more so than what caused me to say the things I had said in the first place—a short cease-fire was agreed upon.  Karen took that time to lick her wounds and try a different approach using a strategy of friendliness to counter all the vile things I had said about them.  Lakota spent many thousands of dollars on publicity to re-invent their image, and tried again for a levy in the fall of 2013 which they won by the slightest of margins.  Karen knew she had to try to get the money during a low year of voter turnout, as there weren’t any big state or national races on the ticket—otherwise she might not get another chance until 2015.  At the rate of spending Lakota already needs to try for another levy in 2017—so her time to take her one and only shot was in the fall of 2013.  My old friends and I joined together once again to resist the levy, but without me in the formal role of spokesmen—the effort failed.  I was better working in front of the scenes than behind and among them they couldn’t find anybody else to do the job the way I had.

I did what I had to do shortly after the levy passage to reduce my tax burden to absorb the cost of the levy, because I simply wasn’t going to spend the extra dollars out of my pocket to pay Lakota.  But for the rest of the members, who sided with Patti, they now have a substantially higher rate of tax to pay because of their wishy-washy behavior and failure to stand for their convictions—which leads us to this whole Boys and Girls Club at the old Union Elementary school.  What’s in the deal for Alderson—she gets to attend more dinners that worship her wealth as spotlights will douse her with attention—which she desperately seeks.  Karen gets a partner to support her in the next levy attempt as Patti pulls a lot of the local Republicans off their small government positions and into her fold just because of the wealth and political influence she commands. The local levy supporters get a free babysitting service so that they can feel the lack of guilt from being such sucky disconnected parents and my best friend from the No Lakota Levy days gets to build the whole thing.  He stood up to them for a while, Lynda, Karen, and of course Patti, but in the end he was locked arm and arm with West Chester’s Lovey Howell after the school board meeting finalizing the deal several months ago.  He was finally, conquered by Karen Mantia’s strategy implemented carefully and patiently.

So when people say about the Boys and Girls Club deal that there is corruption involved, now you know dear reader what they are talking about.  The inside deals are voluminous and run to the deepest cores of politics in Butler County.  Karen came to Lakota paid by O’Conner to do just this kind of divide and conquer tactic—but what all these elements have in common is their exploitation of children to commit the deeds.  Lakota routinely does this to gain money and leverage for their collective bargaining contracts, but in essence the Boys and Girls Club is no different.  They use children and the unfortunate victims of bad parenting to bath themselves in vanity for self recognition that has its roots in their personal religious outlooks.  Children and their misfortunes by all these parties are continuously exploited for the gains of adults who deep down inside want to be adored and loved by the masses for reasons that trace back to their own childhoods and the failures associated there.  That is why when the next levy is attempted by Lakota it won’t be the old cast of characters from No Lakota Levy this time—it will be a much more ideologically driven base that stands in defiance.  I knew what Karen was up to all along, because it takes one to know one, and I am well at work on the next campaign against them and will not again be vulnerable to wavering souls driven only by tax savings and not rooted in firm convictions.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

“Fat Han” in X-wing Miniatures: “I’m in it for the money”

When I participated in my first tournament for X-wing Miniatures I was still learning all the rules—but knew enough to build a squad of ships that would be competitive against even the most seasoned players. However, when I revealed my squad to my opponents, they immediately assumed that my use of Han Solo on the Millennium Falcon which encompassed a point build of 55 points out of 100 meant that I was a rookie player who did not trust my piloting ability. The Falcon fires in a 360 degree arc as most of the other ships fire in a 90 degree arc coming off the front of their ship. Most seasoned tournament players at the time if they did use the YT-1300 were using Chewie or Lando and using two B-wings or some other assortment of support ship to save points. Nobody was using Han, which made no sense to me. He was after all one of the highest pilot rating cards in the game and he has a wonderful re-roll ability that makes him very powerful. His card on the Millennium Falcon looked to my eyes to be one of the most powerful combinations in the game, and I thought it would be crazy not to use him in a tournament.

Well, about three months later some of the best X-wing players in the world used almost the same build at the Nationals played at Gen-Con 2014. In reaction to the new TIE Phantoms released at the end of June 2014 a new type of Rebel build called “Fat Han” emerged in the meta game to deal with the incredible maneuverability and fire power of the new Empire faction ships. In fact Paul Heaver who is the current world champion used nearly the same build as I had to climb into the top four at the nationals.

I never published my build anywhere and Paul and I never spoke—yet to his experienced eyes he picked that particular build to deal with the new elements coming into the X-wing game. And he wasn’t alone at the nationals; there were many other top players who were flying “Fat Hans” in competitive play which changed the game for the better. It is doubtful that Paul Heaver received the same sideways glances that I did when I placed my YT-1300 on the board. I was a newbie, Paul was a seasoned champion. But it made me feel good to see that even in a game where I am not comfortable with all the rules and certainly lack the experience of that kind of competitive play, that I’m able to fairly quickly jump in and identify trends that are out on the edge and not yet fashionable.

This was an important observation as I spend a great deal of time pointing out trends that are coming as opposed to the ones that currently exist. If the ability is gained, it can be applied to virtually everything in life even in areas where others are much more proficient. The “Fat Han” builds are now the complaint of the X-wing Miniatures world because of their extreme effectiveness and they will continue for some time until something else knocks them off in the months to come. But for me the experiment was very telling, and useful.

I left my tournament feeling like I could have done better and that I was close to something big as far as a strategy. The other players were so polished and knew their stuff—citing the rules from top to bottom quickly and were certainly at the top of their game. So I thought there might have been something to their complaints about using Han Solo and the Falcon in such a way as I was. But as it turned out, the best X-wing players in the game soon after turned to the very same strategy because the meta game pointed tactics in that direction. What I’m proud of is in seeing the trend before it occurred. Part of it is that I have a personal preference toward the Millennium Falcon, but when all the cards are looked at, it is beyond refute that the YT-1300 is by far one of the best tactical pieces in the game and that it should be included in any Rebel build.

I know much more about X-wing Miniatures now than I did during my first tournament, and I will know a lot more in a year than I do now. But the trend of seeing strategies and cycles beyond the curve of orthodox thinking is something I have been able to maintain even when others knew a great deal more about something than I did. It’s not some magic act, but simply a confirmation that Robert Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality strategies are employable on every level of endeavor, even in gaming. I do pretty well in life staying in front of the curve of social trends in most everything I do—even leisure. So it was fun to feel the scorn of the X-wing community—even though it was friendly jousting at the time—then find just a few months later that the entire meta game is moving in that direction.

I remember what it was like when I was a kid and I was the one who loved Star Wars above all the other social trends that were occurring at the time. It was considered very “uncool” to like the science fiction epic publicly. But I knew at the time—even as a very young kid, that there was something unusual about the stories and that the values conveyed in them had meaning beyond the social trends of the time. Now, 30 plus years later Star Wars fever is everywhere even to the extent that drones have been flying over the filming locations looking for a hint at the storyline. The only people now who think Star Wars is “uncool” are the backwards thinking lost in time souls who can’t identify with the values of the stories. They are people stuck in the past—in the policies of the New Deal, and progressive utterances inspired from the pages of Karl Marx.

I have a shirt that I like to wear when playing X-wing Miniatures with Han Solo on the front of it—not unlike the kind of shirts I used to wear as a 9-year-old kid that says, “I’m in it for the money.” It is a very capitalist message and I first saw it in Hollywood Studios, Florida while coming off the Star Tours ride. I was surprised that Disney did not filter that pro capitalist message as there are many progressive executives who work for the large entertainment company. But, Han Solo is an unequivocal capitalist—an Ayn Rand type of capitalist in the Star Wars saga and he is one of the most popular characters there is. In fact, while downloading the new Star Wars game Commander onto my iPad I noticed that the characters on their load screen featured Han Solo, not Luke Skywalker because Disney knows where the money comes from in the series. It’s not the altruistic Luke Skywalker that people want to emulate; it is the capitalist Han Solo. This is a trend which will increase now that Star Wars is socially cool—altruism is out, capitalism is in.

That capitalist philosophy has spilled over into the X-wing game as the designers were careful not to weaken the message when designing the Han Solo game card. If played right, a “Fat Han” build can take being shot by opponents while dealing consistent damage during an entire match. It’s a very capitalist build and I think that the hatred for the build early in the game meta can be traced back to the fact that so many people are trained from their educations to hate capitalism. But—the meta of the game has moved by need of competition to utilize “Fat Han” builds just as the new Star Wars films and television shows soon will do the same on an epic level under Disney’s care. They know there in the hallowed halls of “Mouse Town” that capitalism is the key to social order and I could see that emergence as far back as the release of that Han Solo shirt featured at Hollywood Studios. We’re all in it to win, we’re all in it for the money—and that is why “Fat Han” builds have risen to popularity and why capitalism will emerge triumphant from 2020 to 2030 in ways that have never been seen before.image

I’m so sure of it that I’d bet everything I have. With the same assurance that I built a “Fat Han” build in X-wing Miniatures during a time when it was considered too novice-like to even think of bringing it to a tournament—I can see that capitalism will crush socialism under the care of the Disney handling of the Star Wars franchise. Some people may bellyache and complain, but the trend is already emerging. I can see it as plain as a sun in the noon day sky on a cloudless day around the equator. It’s so bright that it burns. Meanwhile, I have to change my tactics to stay competitive. “Fat Han” will no longer work because everyone is using it. So my new build is something I’m called “Dashing Han” which is more akin to how the Falcon actually flew with Han Solo at the controls. It is very difficult to fly, but should provide an advantage that will last a while. Because the name of the game is to always stay out in front of the meta.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

A Temple of Mythology: The Rebel Aces Expansion

imageFor the sheer joy of it, I like to take some time out to relish each new release of X-Wing Miniatures particularly when it involves the Rebels.  My new mediation chamber regarding that game is currently located in my basement which is permanently set-up so that I can play Star Wars: Miniatures any time I want.  I often go to my Star Wars room and sit for hours and hours working out various strategies and mission scenarios because it relaxes my mind.  I enjoy just looking at the models and their complicated paint schemes and browsing through all the cards that make the game so interesting.  For a good part of a year I kept the game packed up in various containers which had to be set up on large tables whenever we wanted to play.  But now, it just stays up and I come and go at will which is refreshing.  The game is interesting enough to use a room for such a thing and it is quickly becoming my favorite place in my house.

The new release from Fantasy Flight Games which I am quite excited for is the Rebel Aces expansion pack which features a custom painted B-wing and an A-wing.  There are a couple of new pilots namely Jake Farrell, Keyan Falander who are interesting, but what is best about Rebel Aces is the A-wing Test Pilot card and the Chardaan Refit which allows for eliminating missile tubes to save some point cost in using an A-wing in a combat listing.  I currently don’t use A-wings very much because of their lack of firepower, but with the two mentioned cards, I may well consider it.  Probably the most interesting part of these new expansions are the missions that come with them.  With Aces it is a mission called “Jump to Subspace” which features a rebel operative who has captured a high-ranking Moff.  This operative and his captive also happen to be adrift within an escape pod headed toward an asteroid field.  As imperial forces close in on the escape pod, the Rebel Alliance races to the rescue, relying upon the agility of its A-wing and resilience of its B-wing.

It’s in those X-wing Miniatures missions that I find so much compelling drama that is every bit as interesting as a novel.  The big difference is that the game requires your input whereas the novel is a passive experience.  So spending time at my gaming table has for me become similar to reading books, only I love the tactical strategy involved—and with every new release from Fantasy Flight Games, new variations come into the game which have to be figured out.  Rebel Aces as talked about in the Team Covenant video above is essentially a way to dust off the A-wing into new use now that the game has matured.

It’s a fun time to be a Star Wars fan, not only do I have the daily ability to now play X-wing Miniatures but coming up on Friday is the new Star Wars: Rebels premier movie on the Disney Channel.  I have  been proclaiming this as a game changer in entertainment media because it will be, just as Fantasy Flight Games has taken the Miniatures game and exploded it into this exciting new game which I can spend endless amounts of time contemplating in the privacy of my basement.  The makers of that new series are essentially guys like myself who played with all those old toys as a kid and are now applying that kind of play to the real world of their adult lives.  Kids watching the new Rebels show will then grow up with an even greater hunger for that kind of thing than I did—which is a positive.

Growing up I had a similar space in the basement of my childhood home and I often spent entire weekends down there playing with Star Wars toys and as I become older—building Star Wars models.  When I hit driving age my parents felt I needed my own room in the basement so they finished it off which meant that my Star Wars set-up had to come down.  They figured that I was big enough and it was time to out-grow that kind of thing as if it were a pacifier for a baby.  But that space meant more to me than they realized and once the Star Wars set-up was destroyed and boxed up I pretty much left home.  I immediately started traveling all over the country on wild adventures because the kind of imagination generation that I had been conducting in my basement no longer filled that void and I had to fill it with something.  It had been my favorite place in the entire world and looking back on it, it was just a bunch of plastic, cloth, cardboard and glue.  But it was a realm of endless imagination for me, and I simply relished it.

The popularity of the X-wing Miniatures game today is likely due to the fact that there are other people who feel that way about those types of things as I do.  I am much happier now that I have a permanent set-up for that type of thinking.  I was up at 3:30 AM on Saturday trying to get my CR-90 through an asteroid field dotted with Imperial mines all while being attacked by hoards of Imperial fighters and I had no idea that it was so late.  The world was doing whatever it was doing outside, but I was happy to be enjoying the drama of strategy.  Of course when I do return to the world from that place of fantastic mediation, I feel fresh to solve real problems so it is an enhancement to my life instead of a distraction.  Some people have model trains in their basements; I have Star Wars—thankfully.

There are many things to feel negative about, but it is good to have a sanctuary where your mind can get away from the pressure and be itself.  For me a space in the basement dedicated to my favorite mythology is the ticket, for others it may be the garage or the kitchen—but regardless of where or what it is, it is good to have one.  For me, with all the exciting Star Wars news coming out constantly, this new expansion called Rebel Aces is more than a pleasure; it is an enhancement to my life.  I’m really looking forward to it which I intend to pick up by the weekend.  I will likely celebrate the upcoming Friday by watching Star Wars: Rebels on Disney, then playing X-wing until the sun comes up—and for me—the world will be just perfect in that little corner of my imagination personified by my personal temple of mythology.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops of West Chester: Thank George Lang and Mark Welch

Capitalism is creativity—the ability of entrepreneurs to bring ideas to market for people to enjoy.  So I often find great enjoyment in regions of the country where capitalism is on grand display and these days the corridor along I-75 just north of Cincinnati, Ohio has all the trappings of one of the finest developments in the world.  I personally enjoy the stores of the Cincinnati Outlets in Monroe, the Comic book/gaming store Nostalgic Ink at the very next exit to the south, and the book stores and restaurants at Union Center Blvd—of which Aladdin’s and Jags are my favorites.  There are of course plenty of government workers in this region that loot off the efforts of entrepreneurs, particularly the local government school, but generally, it is the conservative hands-off government of Butler County that has allowed these developments to emerge so robustly.  But there are few developments which excite me as much as the announcements from West Chester that two giant superstores of outdoor apparel, Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s are both opening over the next couple of years.  For most communities these types of giant outdoor stores are destination shopping experiences, meaning they are worthy of vacations just to visit one of the stores.  People do purchase plane tickets to visit these types of retail outlets wherever they might luckily be in the nation.  But in West Chester—because of the demographic population which has excellent per capita income, and the type of very pro capitalist government running the show—both giant retailers are dumping significant investments into the area which I will enjoy immensely.

I’m not crazy about the public funding portion of the Liberty Way project, but I am ecstatic about the development and simply cannot wait to see those buildings erected.  I want to attend the movie theater that they are putting there in the worst way.  I simply am excited to see the results.  I was fortunate enough to see the early prints of that development at the beginning phases and have been a fan ever since.  But even better is the 82,000 square foot Cabela’s store which is being built right across from Liberty Center.  That will be one of the most exciting locations of destination shopping in the country—and that includes the Disney World complex off I-4 in south Orlando.  The Voice of America shopping district is already fantastic, but within a few years of this writing, it will be the most exciting place in America to shop and spend suburban leisure time.  The Cabela’s store will just be icing on the cake—a very glorious cake at that!

But…………….that’s not all.  Just down the road to the south is the Streets of West Chester which is at the Union Central Blvd exit.  I spend a lot of time at the Streets.  If you have to take someone to lunch or dinner visiting for business, you simply cannot go wrong at Mitchell’s, Bravo! Cucina Italiana, P.F. Changs, Red Robin or after a late night movie, Steak & Shake which I find myself at a lot more than you’d think.  Barnes and Noble is like a second home to me—especially since Books A Million left Bridgewater Falls just to the west.  I have felt often that the Streets were too small however—and the plan has been for years to expand it to the south in a Phase 2 development.  Well, this is now happening with Bass Pro Shops serving as the anchor located a football throw away from the giant IKEA store located on Allen Road, directly across from the Mercedes Benz dealership.  Can you say it with me?   …………………………aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. The Plan 2 development will be just the needed ingredient missing from the current Streets location which will make that too a destination shopping experience worthy of an out-of-town visit.  The trustees of West Chester George Lang and Mark Welch along with Bruce Jones have created a climate in West Chester conducive to business investment and the area is just exploding with creativity.  I was not a fan of Judith Boyko when she was working for the former trustee president Catherine Stoker—a vile Democrat who greatly limited the kind of creativity currently going on in West Chester with her big heavy-handed government presence.  Now Boyko under new president George Lang is on board with what makes West Chester special saying, “The development of these two new retail locations represents the largest concentration of boutique-like retail amenities in the West Chester area.  These are the type of retail destinations our diverse and sophisticated residents demand, and we expect both to be very successful footholds in our retail fabric.”  YES…….I agree with Boyko!  Jiminy Christmas—it’s about time that somebody gets it—and in West Chester—they do.  Capitalism is the foundation of America and there just aren’t many places where it’s more alive anywhere than in West Chester and other developments along the I-75 corridor.

But Cabela’s and Bass Pro will be a whole new level of excitement and coolness.  My family used to shop at the Bass Pro Shop at its current location in Forest Park, but the area has been mismanaged by local government and it has killed business investment.  The mall there has died and the retail establishments have fallen into a slumber—the local demographic population just cannot support such capitalist creativity—so business moves to where it can grow.  It cannot be managed the way many trustees attempt—but local government must create a climate of capitalism so to attract investment and thus creativity in diverse product offerings.  This will certainly be on full display at Liberty Center, but the Streets of West Chester will emerge as one of the most fabulous examples of such a thing anywhere in the country. Only Downtown Disney in Orlando may rival it in the years to come as for interesting destination shopping and things to do once you get there.  Bass Pro was already set to move into the area before the Cabela’s announcement, but now that they know a competitor is moving in down the road—they are revamping their original plans from something not just great—but ecstatically stupendous.  They are further revising their plans to include more activity based attractions at their new superstore to have a competitive advantage over Cabela’s.

For capitalism, these are exciting times.  The creativity of entrepreneurs is on full display specifically in West Chester but to a larger extent along a 6 mile span of I-75 stretching from Monroe to I-275.  There are not more exciting things happening anywhere than along that span of highway and capitalism is the reason why.  The key is that local political management has embraced free market capitalism as their guiding light, and this is the result.  Overly managed economies have pushed out these types of investments leaving them to retreat to this capitalist zone which is unique in the country.  When capitalism is allowed to grow it can do wonderful things—and in West Chester—it is.  I can’t wait to shop at Cabela’s and the new Pro Bass Shop at The Streets of West Chester.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

China’s Jack Ma: The Capitalism of Jags Steakhouse

There were a lot of great points made by Rush Limbaugh recently when he noted that China’s Jack Ma spewed nearly identical Reganomics sentiments regarding the future of his country’s economy as what came out of the American 1980s.  Ma’s company Alibaba was ridiculously successful when it was a public offering on the New York Stock Exchange making the young man the richest man in China.   Now that rich man wants to help other people become rich in his country with a similar pro capitalist message.  Meanwhile, the wealthy in America have allowed themselves to be scorned by the lazy, ignorant and needy into stagnation.  It wasn’t the Hong Kong Stock exchange or the Beijing financial district which made Ma so wealthy—it was the capitalism of America that did it—yet Americans have fallen into a disservice of that economic system through guilt provided by an education system that teaches the opposite of what Jack Ma proclaims.   Listen to that broadcast with Rush Limbaugh below.

There is no other blame than the American education system for the obvious embrace of socialism over capitalism which has led to the current crises.  I realized how bad it was when I became involved in local school levy issues serving as a spokesman for some of the very rich in my school district.  They were very happy to let me go on the news every few days and represent them to the media becoming the target of countless controversies until I decided I wasn’t going to take a lot of back-talk from those parasites who wanted desperately to tarnish my public reputation. Even that assumption was presumptuous in assuming that even I after all that I had said publicly that I would even accept the progressive definition of things in America and cave in to the pressure of a bunch of rabid feminists regarding school taxes and deficient parenting.  Those same supporters quickly went underground hiding from those progressive terrorists even though many of them had a lot more at stake financially than I did.  Yet they didn’t defend themselves, instead they used charities and other social events to cater favor from the political class to leave their capitalist endeavors alone.  I pointed out to them that this was essentially communism—that they didn’t have to yield to the pressure of a bunch of saggy assed despots and that they didn’t owe them their time and attention.  But there was a fear in their eyes that defied reason and it was in those movements that I realized to what extent socialism had taken hold in America.

The guilt about possessing wealth starts in public school.  During those same school levy campaigns the general philosophy of the pro tax advocates was one much more at home in Jack Ma’s home country of communist China than in the United States and several generations of people have now been trained to believe that their wealth creation efforts are bad unless they give more money to schools, charities and the needy.  But what never gets mentioned in those same schools is the reason that people become needy in the first place.  Capitalism is routinely attacked in public education institutions which is as stupid as attacking the nature of a human heart for beating in a chest.  Capitalism is the heartbeat of the American economy and it needs to be defended not avoided.

One of my favorite local restaurants in West Chester is the Jags Steakhouse.  It is one of the most expensive dining experiences in the city of Cincinnati and offers some of the best food around.  Michelle Brown in 2013 was voted with the best chef award and she deserves it.  What she puts on a plate is sheer art and worth the $30 to $50 dollars it costs to eat there.  A typical dinner for two will cost anywhere from $200 dollars per couple to around $1000 depending on what kind of wine is used during dining.  And of all my visits during all times of a day—during lunch, during dinner rush, or even late in the evening after a movie the restaurant is thumping with business.  The dining rooms are divided up nicely allowing customers to space themselves out in relative privacy.  The staff from the front podium, to the valet parking to the floor management is always spot-on attentive.  But it’s not just the food that I love—it’s the honesty.  Inside the Jags restaurant capitalism is embraced without fear and I often think that places like that should be a model the rest of the world copies, not resents.

But outside of the parking lot of that fine establishment comes the utterances of the jealous.  When the word Jags is mentioned to the typical gas station attendant they think of the movers and shakers of society and there is a bit of scorn in their dialogue.   That scorn is the hatred of pure capitalism and the sometimes crony capitalism where business owners take a member of government to dinner at Jags to win them over to their side of an argument to get some regulation approved that otherwise wouldn’t occur.  The capitalist often believes they must do such things to stay in business—and they also believe that they must toe some line of progressive belief to avoid a boycott against their businesses which is a real shame.  The outside of Jags to those who are more socialist in their political beliefs than capitalist looks menacing and uninviting.  Because of the cost of entry, many don’t even attempt to dine there.  But once inside, those who are willing to pay such prices for food are typically capitalists in some regard or another and at least while they are at Jags—are not afraid to flaunt it a bit.  It is that standard that I think I like the best—there is an expectation of excellence the moment you step into the parking lot and I find it refreshing.  That experience is often worth a $500 meal when a similar experience could be had for under $100 in a rival restaurant.  Chef Michelle Brown is worth that extra margin and the management at Jags unapologetically embraces capitalism making it in my opinion to be the finest place to eat in the Midwest including many of the offerings in Chicago.  What puts that restaurant over the top is its embrace of capitalism and trickledown economics—which is now becoming fashionable in communist China of all places by Jack Ma.

Without America Jack Ma would have been just another penniless dreamer, just as every government worker in the United States would be destitute if not for the taxes looted off American enterprise for jobs created to further the grips of bureaucracy.  The people who make those American enterprises in the Midwest can often be found dining at Jags on any given night and are a cut above the rest in the way they think.  It is good to sit around such people who at least during dinner service are not afraid to flaunt their wealth and excess.  At Jags they are not afraid of reporters quoting them with a socialist slant to their articles and can relax a bit and be themselves.  But it shouldn’t take a nice restaurant to bring this out in them, they should possess that honesty at the grocery, at public meetings, and at the gas station because capitalism is a standard everyone else in the world should be measured against.  It is a bar that people should rise up to meet, not to chastise because they are too lazy to reach up to the challenge.

Capitalism is mostly an invention of America and it needs its protectors.  Limbaugh is right; Jack Ma should not be the most vocal defender in the world of trickledown economics.  Government parasites don’t create jobs that actually make wealth; they only make jobs that confiscate the wealth that others make.  The people who routinely eat at Jags actually create the jobs that drive an economy and they should not feel that they must hide in a darkened dining room just to be among their own kind.  It is not their fault that most people want to be slugs—and they should not feel guilty to show their excesses.  Expensive dresses, watches, and cars are signs that a person has been more productive than what they personally consume as people—which means their efforts have a trickledown effect to all sectors of the economic spectrum from the poor and needy to the young and hungry.  Without the efforts of the capitalist, nothing happens.  This is a concept refined in America.  It doesn’t need a Chinese guy to explain it to the world—and it doesn’t require the endorsement of the official communist country of China.  It is they who are late to the party and it’s about time that America defend itself once and for all, and stop hiding in the shadows.  Bring Jags to the world, not the world to Jags.  Chef Michelle Brown is already busy enough.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

“Winds of Change”: Some of the best, most relevant television ever produced

As I spoke yesterday about the importance that Joseph Campbell played in my personal education, one of the people who most helped the JCF get off the ground and become that resolute organization was George Lucas.   Of course he is  known for the Star Wars films and was the creator of Indiana Jones—but I think George’s best  work as a filmmaker was a little known television project that was shown on ABC by Bob Igor, today’s CEO of Disney way back in 1992 to 1996.  That project was called The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and was considered “edutainment.”  Just prior to the release of the last Indiana Jones feature film, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Lucasfilm released all of the Young Indy television shows on DVD, which of course I snagged up the moment they were released.  I literally pulled them off the delivery truck at Best Buy.  The DVD set was released in three gigantic collections and feature what I think is some of the best television ever done—not just because I enjoy the Indiana Jones character, but because the production quality, and content of each of the shows was impeccable.  Lucas used the character of Indiana Jones to essentially tell the history of the start of the 20th century and it was a remarkable undertaking.  For instance—one of my favorite episodes is the one shown below in several parts.  It is called “Winds of Change” and is about the Treaty of Versailles and covers nothing less than the modern troubles in the Middle East, the cause of the Vietnam War, and the reason for World War II all in a one hour episode.  It is really quite brilliant and if you want your child to know anything about history—or you want to fill the gaps of your own understanding, this is a great place to start.  Because of the modern pertinence to the trouble in the Middle East, watch the “Winds of Change” now through the clips below.  If you enjoy it, consider picking up the entire DVD set. They are tremendous treasures.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is an American television series that aired on ABC from March 4, 1992, to July 24, 1993. Filming took place in various locations around Wilmington, North Carolina and on the campus of UNCW. The series was an Amblin Entertainment/Lucasfilm production in association with Paramount Network Television.

The series explores the childhood and youth of the fictional character Indiana Jones and primarily stars Sean Patrick Flanery and Corey Carrier as the title character, with George Hall playing an elderly version of Jones for the bookends of most episodes, though Harrison Ford bookended one episode. The show was created and executively produced by George Lucas, who also created, co-wrote and executively produced the Indiana Jones feature films.

Most episodes of the series depicted famous and not-so-famous historical figures, for example T.E. Lawrence, Leo Tolstoy, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Al Capone, Pablo Picasso, Frederick Selous and Mata Hari.

Notable guest stars (playing either fictional or historical characters) include: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Daniel Craig, Christopher Lee, Peter Firth, Vanessa Redgrave,Beata Pozniak, Jennifer Ehle, Elizabeth Hurley, Timothy Spall, Anne Heche, Jeffrey Wright, Jeroen Krabbé, Jason Flemyng, Michael Kitchen, Kevin McNally, Francisco Quinn, Ian McDiarmid, Max von Sydow, Douglas Henshall, Sean Pertwee, Terry Jones, Keith David, Lukas Haas, Jay Underwood, Michael Gough, Maria Charles, and Haluk Bilginer.

Due to its enormous budget, the series was canceled in 1993. However, following the series’ cancellation, four made-for-television films were produced from 1994 to 1996 in an attempt to continue the series. In 1999, the series was re-edited into 22 television films under the title The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones.

Between 1992 and 1997, the series was nominated for 27 Emmy Awards and won 12.[25] In 1993, Corey Carrier was nominated for the Young Artist Award in the category of “Best Young Actor Starring in a Television Series”. In 1994, David Tattersall was nominated for the ASC Award in the category of “Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Regular Series”. At the 1994 Golden Globes, the series was nominated for “Best TV-Series — Drama”.[26]

In 2002, series producer Rick McCallum confirmed in an interview with Variety that DVDs of the series were in development, but would not be released for “about three or four years”.[8] At the October 2005 press conference for the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith DVD, McCallum explained that he expected the release to consist of 22 DVDs, which would include around 100 documentaries which would explore the real-life historical aspects that are fictionalized in the show. For the DVDs, Lucasfilm upgraded the picture quality of the original 16 mm prints and remastered the soundtracks. This, along with efforts to get best quality masters and bonus materials on the sets, delayed the release.[9] It was ultimately decided that the release would tie into the release of the fourth Indiana Jones feature film.

Two variations of Volume 1 were released by CBS DVD, one simply as “Volume One”, and the other as “Volume One — The Early Years” in order to match the subtitle of Volume 2.

The History Channel acquired television rights to all 94 of the DVD historical documentaries.[10][11] The airing of the documentaries was meant to bring in ratings for the History Channel and serve as marketing for the DVD release and the theatrical release ofIndiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.[12] The History Channel and History International began airing the series every Saturday morning at 7AM/6C on The History Channel, and every Sunday morning at 8AM ET/PT on History International. A new division of History.com was created devoted to the show. As Paramount and Lucasfilm had already reserved IndianaJones.com solely for news and updates related to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, StarWars.com temporarily served as the official site for the DVDs—providing regular updates, insider looks and promotions related to them.[13] However, Lucasfilm and Paramount soon set up an official website proper for the series—YoungIndy.com.[14] Paramount released a press kit for the media promoting the DVDs, which consists of a .pdf file[15] and several videos with interviews with Lucas and McCallum, and footage from the DVDs.[16] A trailer for the DVDs was also published on YoungIndy.com, with a shorter version being shown on The History Channel and History International.

Lucas and McCallum hoped that the DVDs would be helpful to schools, as they believed the series was a good way to aid in teaching history. Lucas explained that the series’ DVD release will be shopped as “films for a modern day high school history class.”[17] He believes the series is a good way to teach high school students 20th Century history.[18] The plan was always to tie the DVD release of the series to the theatrical release of the fourth Indiana Jones feature film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which was released on May 22, 2008.[8][19][20][21]

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

After watching the Lawrence of Arabia recently I had to go back and watch the Young Indy episode “Winds of Change.”   It was after all through Young Indy that I was introduced to T.E. Lawrence who was a personal friend to Indiana Jones on the show.  Jones met T.E. Lawrence in Cairo at the pyramids when he was a very young child being homeschooled by a private tutor.  The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is an answer to the education void found today.  The work has been done by producers like Lucas and is available for a relatively cheap price.  The series is television at its absolute best—it was entertaining, fun, but best of all—educational.  After watching all those episodes so many years ago, then again with my family when the DVDs hit the market once again with their 90 one hour long documentaries produced exclusively by Lucasfilm what is found is a phenomenal effort not even surpassed by the National Geographic Society or the Smithsonian.

Often I would read more about the characters in the Young Indy episodes after seeing them for the first time during the broadcasts and would marvel at how accurate the writers for the show were at capturing their historical significance with precision.  In the cynical world that we see today in most entertainment formats, do yourself a favor that will help directly in understanding the modern world—watch the DVDs of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles with your family and learn together about history.  Because I can’t think of a better way to tell about the events that have shaped our lives better than through the character of Indiana Jones as he become the kind of action hero so well known to motion pictures presently.  The character became the kind of person he was due to his vast education with the most significant figures of the past who shaped the world for good and bad—but none-the-less—shaped it all the same.

If you care about the education of your family, click the link below to start an unforgettable journey.

http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Young-Indiana-Jones-Volume/dp/B000VDDDVE

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

How Presidents help “Hammer the Sky”: 2014 WEBN Fireworks make an impact

I am certainly not one of those people who look back into the past and declare that those were the best days of my life.  I enjoy every day as much as possible and can typically dig fun out of a dry rock. However, I felt the enthusiasm clearly at this year’s WEBN 2014 fireworks when for the first time they produced a soundtrack to the show that was exclusively dedicated to the optimistic music of the 1980’s.  Every generation believes that their music was the best—but this is in belief only.  The explosion of fresh music that followed the dog days of communism, socialism—Watergate and Jimmy Carter were an unbelievable period of American optimism established by the former movie actor and GE spokesman for capitalism—Ronald Reagan.  Reagan told America that capitalism was alright, so the guilt of the past that hangs over the heads of typical Democrats was thrown off and this attitude was reflected in the art produced by American society during the period of the so-called 80s.  I should know, because I came to age during the 80’s and they were a unique period of unmitigated optimism and American success.  Those who have come to age since, or before have not had such an opportunity as those who saw America as young uncorrupted teenagers during the 1980’s.  I am very much a product of that time when WEBN put together their soundtrack featuring a range of music from E.T., Ghostbusters, and Rocky III to Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart.”  The Ohio River between Newport, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio was absolutely rocking by hammering the sky with fireworks to an incredible soundtrack.

Even young people who are teenagers now were dancing openly to the songs as the crowd roared with an unmitigated lack of constraint while fireworks filled the air closing out a summer that I won’t soon forget.   There didn’t appear to be a lax soul among the half million viewers as the music poured from virtually everywhere.  The riverside condos and boats filling the river contained people in my age group who had thrown off their constraints and let the music overtake them leaving the question to be answered—what happened to that kind of optimism in our art?

Even for a product of the 80’s which was pretty hard-core American—I was a radicalized example.  I didn’t drink or smoke anything and I was never what anybody would term a “partier” but the soundtrack from WEBN sounded like it came directly off my mix tape from that age stolen from an old car that still sits in my garage.  I was an unmitigated reckless individual and unapologetic capitalist during the 1980’s.  I remember like it was yesterday storming through the streets of Hamilton racing a rival from the West Side across the Great Miami River with a parade of cop cars behind us—my radio blaring Quiet Riot’s “Bang Your Head.”  I passed the courthouse at over 100 MPH and won the race by beating a train the old-fashioned way—barely scooting in front of it while the other guy just a bit behind me threw on the brakes.  Miles to the east all the cops finally caught up to me as every Butler County police officer in the area was radioed to my location.  Pulled over with my Confederate Flag license plates and tires still smelling like burnt rubber and guns trained on me as I tossed my drivers licenses across the hood of my car, I felt no fear.  The cops knowing me from other antics and tired of my court appearances were not sure what to do with me until I called in a favor from one of the police car’s primitive cell phone to a judge who supported me from Sharonville.  That judge talked the cops away from prosecution for maybe the fifth time in a two month period.

I have thought often of writing a series of stories from that period as I lived it gloriously.  The closest I’ve come was my novel Tail of the Dragon—but those weren’t the best days of my life.  They appeared to be for the American nation.  I knew at the time what I was doing and the rest of the nation appeared to be riding along joyously.  Back in the 80’s our military used to play some of those songs to terrify our enemies in Russia, El Salvador and Cuba.  Capitalism was on full display and Americans during that decade from 1980 to 1990 didn’t feel guilty about it. This gave filmmakers and music producers an open template for creation—which is what I think is behind the joy of hearing that music to this day.  It is why many young people love those old songs even though they were not born until two decades later.

George Bush senior started the downward trend which accelerated under Bill Clinton as president by letting America feel less than exceptional on the world stage.  Both men were globalists and the arts in America took shape around their national outlook—unfortunately.  The situation became much worse under George W. Bush and eventually the communist leaning Barack Obama.  American culture has declined proportionally since and young people are aware of it.  Much thought isn’t given to these kinds of things until the music is put on from that period in such a mass gathering like what happened at the 2014 fireworks display—and the restraints come off—intellectually.

Most people thought I would be dead before I hit my 17th birthday.  The grim reaper was often trailing me everywhere I went.  I remember another story from the time when I had to drop off a friend to his West Chester home and we were in downtown Cincinnati during the summer of 1985.  He had strict parents who demanded he be home before his curfew.  I dropped him off with 30 seconds to spare after leaving the St. Bernard area with just 10 minutes to spare.  It was one of the fastest times I had ever driven dodging in and out of traffic at such a pace that I was moving sometimes two times the speed of the highway traffic up I-75.  Some of the songs blaring from my car radio were some of the same ones played at the 2014 Fireworks.  But I survived and really haven’t tempered off.  Over time I was able to apply that recklessness to focused directions instead of just outwardly rebellious behavior—but it is still very much there.  Like the music and movies of the time, I didn’t feel I needed to apologize for anything in America.  Alan Greenspan—a member of Ayn Rand’s elite inner circle was running the Fed, money was being made in America and Ronald Reagan was using that unprecedented productivity to destroy communism throughout the world.  University professors and old hippies didn’t like Reagan or the music which made me want to turn it up even louder

America wants to feel that way about itself again and as the show closed I can see it coming.  I remember how the situation was set up before and it can happen again—the nation is primed for it.  In so many ways America is worse now by far than it was transferring from 1979 to 1980.  Our current president is far worse than Jimmy Carter was and the repressed emotions so voluminous during the 60’s and 70’s are today exacerbated.  I knew what I was rebelling against in the 80’s.  I was a Reagan Republican and very proud of it.   I had no sympathy then as I don’t currently for radical old hippies from the past—from the folk songs of the Charlie Manson sex communes filled with marijuana smoke and communist rhetoric.  For the parents of the kids I called friends who used to be those loser hippies and the school teachers and college professors who thought Ronald Reagan was the devil himself for his unmitigated support of capitalism—I sought to rub it in their faces at every chance and the reason the 80’s were so much fun was that the rest of society was on board with that.  In the 90’s and the period from 2000 to 2010 America went back to feeling guilty for its Excepetionalism and people are sick of it.  They want to feel good about themselves once again which is evident in the superhero movies that are dominating the box-office at the moment.  Guardians of the Galaxy is not only the box office champ of the summer; it is also the top-selling soundtrack directly having an impact on the music industry.  2015 will be a mother load of positive films that may very well look like 1977 all over again when a string of movies starting with Jaws in 1975 to Close Encounters, Smokey and the Bandit, Saturday Night Fever and Star Wars knocked the rust off American consciousness and created the optimism of the 80’s nearly singlehandedly.  Coming up in 2015 is Jurassic World, Mad Max 4, The Avengers 2 and of course Star Wars—among many other titles that will be surprises the way Guardians of the Galaxy is this summer.  People are poised to admit that Obama was a joke, they are tired of not having money, and they are sick of the rest of the world thumbing their noses at America.  They are ready to reflect these emotions in their art and we may be seeing a period like the 80’s coming soon.  Very soon.

Send this video to ISIS, forget the air raids. 

That is fine with me, I still drive fast and am every bit as rebellious as I was then and am ready to do my part.  I expected to be melancholy as I normally am at the WEBN fireworks because I love summer, and typically Labor Day weekend is the close of that glorious time culturally in America.  But not this year—the music and people’s reaction to it was a light of hope where there wasn’t any before for me.  It’s not the reflection down memory lane so much as it’s the hunger for rebellion that was even present on Tricia Macke’s Channel 19 broadcast.  It’s more than buying cloths at the Merry-Go-Round at Kenwood Mall, or Michael Jackson songs—the 1980’s were a decade of not feeling guilty for America’s love of capitalism—and our culture prospered.  It can again if only it had a president who no longer allowed America to feel that guilt letting the arts of the period reflect that sentiment.  By the reaction of the audience at this year’s fireworks—society is primed and ready.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Understanding “Who Is John Galt”: ‘Atlas Shrugged Part III’ hits theaters September 12th

I first met Harmon Kaslow, one of the producers of the Atlas Shrugged films, in 2012 at the Duke Energy Center in Cincinnati, Ohio while we were both promoting the release of the second film, CLICK TO REVIEW.  At the time he was under tremendous pressure—he had just completed the second film with John Aglialoro and was working hard to promote it against a tidal wave of dissent.  Harmon is a Hollywood producer and his work on the Atlas films went against the general message of the entire entertainment industry—so it was a courageous move on his part to bring an independent film version of the novel Atlas Shrugged to the big screen when conventional career climbing wisdom said not to. The book came out in 1957 and was in development hell for over 40 years due to a number of influences.  Ayn Rand’s biggest mistake to support her Objectivist philosophy which was the message behind the popular novel was in not allowing Albert S. Ruddy to make a film adaptions of Atlas Shrugged his way after the success of the Godfather films in 1972.  Ruddy wanted to produce a version of the Atlas  films with Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford playing the lead roles—but Rand wanted to maintain complete creative control the way she had on the movie version of her other novel, The Fountainhead many years earlier.   The deal unfortunately fell through.  Hollywood would have been a much different place if Rand and Ruddy had made Atlas Shrugged in the 1970s.  Instead, it took another 40 years to get a movie version made after many attempts and it was Harmon Kaslow working with John Aglialoro who was able to pull off what nobody previously could.  As recently as 1999 Aglialoro and Ruddy negotiated a deal with Turner Network Television for a four-hour miniseries, but that deal also fell through during an AOL merger with Time Warner.  There were other attempts, but all failed until Kaslow and Aglialoro using the tools of the modern age to bypass the studio system were able actually get the job done.  The third and final film is finally ready to be released to the public on September 12th 2014.

I am grateful for the films.  For as long as I’ve been alive church leaders have sat me down and tried to tell me to assimilate more with the human world—to make more friends.  School guidance councilors have done the same—spent many hours talking to me trying to convince me to drop my resistance to other people and make more friends.  To this very day I can attend a crowded football game with 60,000 screaming fans—I can sit in a luxury box with 25 to 30 friends and power brokers—but I am always alone in the midst of the swarm.   The advice given to me for all the years prior—which I have never listened to—was that I needed to compromise my values to maintain friendships with people who did not hold the same—because making friends and assimilating with the population at large was more important than personal integrity.  But it’s not.  That is some of the worst advice that anybody can receive and it is the primary reason that Atlas Shrugged had difficulty being made into a movie.  How do you make a movie that is critical of how the masses of the population behave—intellectually?

To measure the typical Hollywood industry reaction to Ayn Rand and how threatened they are by her message the Futurama episode called, “I Second that Emotion” contains a library of books flushed down the drain into the sewers to be read by deformed mutants.  Among those books one of the main characters sees Atlas Shrugged and dismisses the book saying “There is nothing but crumpled porn and Ayn Rand.”  The popular video game Bioshock attacked the Objectivist premise of Atlas Shrugged for many of the same reasons showing how such a society could become dangerously suppressive.  Always behind their revulsion of Atlas Shrugged is the fear that the message of Ayn Rand might seep into society and expose them for being second-handers who live exclusively off the efforts of others.  So they attack Atlas Shrugged to protect their scheme against not only society at large—but themselves.  The rock band Rush has had a fascination with Ayn Rand for years and was the back bone of their 2112 album when lyrist Neal Peart wrote the breakthrough song—“Anthem” dedicated to Ayn Rand which brought them unprecedented ridicule from British journalists.  George Lucas essentially being in the know over the intentions of Albert S. Ruddy to make an Atlas Shrugged film molded his character of Han Solo in Star Wars as an answer to the individualism versus collectivism argument so prevalent in the 1970s.  Back then Lucas wrote in his early screenplay draft, “May the force of others, be with you.”  Han Solo was supposed to learn by the end of the film to think of others before he thought of himself.  However by the time Harrison Ford applied his magic to the character, Han Solo became one of the most popular characters in the series and he stayed very Randian in subsequent movies.  Case in point, Han Solo is about to be frozen and shipped off by the bounty hunter Boba Fett when Princess Leia says, “I love you.”  Han Solo using a very profound pronoun replies simply, “I know.”  Solo doesn’t care to reassure Leia that he too loves her, only that he knew all along.  The premise of his declaration is that his knowledge is more important than her acknowledgment.  They later get married have a daughter named Jaina who is the star of the new upcoming films.  By the time Star Wars hit popular culture Lucas changed a bit in his perspective shortening the popular line to just, “May the force be with you.”  These philosophic arguments are quite loud and many don’t even realize they are happening—but the battles rage on to this day and the stakes are quite high.

I have known this about people all of my life—well before I ever read Atlas Shrugged.  The reason I’ve always been alone—even in crowds is due to my avoidance of letting second-handers too close to me.  Most people live their lives as second-handers so Atlas Shrugged for them is dangerous—and insulting.  They will not enjoy the movie Atlas Shrugged and this is why the movie was in development hell for such a long period of time.  Movie producers and studio distributers by the nature of their jobs are second-handers themselves—the film business demands it of them—so they have problems with Atlas Shrugged.  Politicians are also second-handers, most of them hate the book and the movie produced by Aglialoro and Kaslow.  Movie critics are some of the biggest second-handers in existence—they are often film school drop-outs who couldn’t make their own movies so to be close to the industry, they write film reviews for newspapers and television shows.  Atlas Shrugged challenges them in a way that frightens their values—and second-hander nature.  When the third film hits theaters on September 12th 2014, they will pan the film not because the movie is bad—but because the story attacks their tendency to be second-handers and it makes them feel guilty.

The reason I have always been alone in crowds is that I do not allow myself to be looted from them socially, and literally.  Government does steal my money as a second-hander entity through taxes—but as an individual I have a policy against second-handers and do not allow it.  The new movie Atlas Shrugged III: Who is John Galt is a film made for people like me.  There is a scene in the upcoming film where John Galt is offered the top job of Wesley Mouch which holds unlimited government power.  John Galt laughs at the offer as his girlfriend Dagney Taggart is listening and instructs all those present that no such job should exist.  Dagney is allowed to listen because the president Mr. Thompson thinks that she will learn a lesson when he breaks John Galt through temptation.  Most people watching the movie and criticizing it after will not understand why John Galt laughs at the offer.  Most people would take such a deal in less than a second.  I do understand with great clarity.  I have lived my whole life laughing at the same type of offers without always understanding clearly.  I didn’t read any of Ayn Rand’s books until her books began to explode in popularity after the election of President Obama—in 2008.  My enjoyment of those books was not because they changed my life.  It was because reading those books and getting to know a bit about the people who made the recent movies—it was refreshing to see that there were others out there who thought the same way as I did—they resisted the waves of second-handers trying to impose a scheme against the productive hoping to remain concealed.   Now three films later over the last five years, Kaslow and Aglialoro have done what seemed impossible—they made Atlas Shrugged into movies with the last coming out just ahead of the November elections.

So the answer to “Who Is John Galt” will be answered quite well in the new film.  John Galt is a person who refuses to be consumed by second-handers, and when it is asked who talks and thinks like him by critics after they have seen the film and seek to hide their fear of the philosophy behind a bad review—I do.  I have in many ways lived John Galt’s life with a remarkable parallel that made me think when I first read Atlas Shrugged that I was reading something written just for me.  I have made similar decisions as John Galt for similar reasons at nearly the same time as that fictional character and in just the same kind of theatrical conditions.

My employers have always utilized my talents as an inventor of new ideas.  I went so far to even begin processing some of those ideas as patents in my early 20s.  When I learned that the industry was filled with second-handers and that virtually every connection to my endeavors was teeming with similar types, I withdrew.  My wife and I live in our home like our own personal Galt’s Gulch.  I took on several medial jobs—much the way that John Galt does in the new film for much the same reason but withdrew my talents from the second-handers so not to make them better at my expense.  There have been a few times along the way such as the time of the present where I am paid on the front end to solve complicated problems.  It takes more than money to conceive me of the worth—and if those values align, I agree to help, but generally, my wife and I live in a gulch of our own making—which is remarkably similar to the lifestyle shown in the new movie.

Due to a busy schedule I will not be able to attend the premier by invite which is occurring in Las Vegas just prior to the September 12th release date.  But I am excessively happy to see that the film was made and is the best of the three films.  For those who have seen the previous two either in theaters or on DVD later, then that should paint a picture of how good this new film should be for them.  When it comes to the filmmakers and others I have gotten to know a bit from the literal Gulch that we all reside in, I don’t feel those same emotions where a crowd can be present, but that I am standing by myself—around them.  The best part of the new movie is that it was made for people who are already like John Galt.  It’s not a movie for everyone.  Many will be curious enough to watch the film even if they don’t understand it.  But for those who already know who John Galt is by looking in the mirror—they will have a rare treat that deserves thanks toward the producers for making such a wonderful film intended for those who are standing alone in the world on an island of creativity surrounded by the desperate needs of second-handers.  It is rare that anything is ever made for people like that—because they always do the making.  But thanks to John Aglialoro and Harmon Kaslow, Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who Is John Galt was made for them—and that is a real treat.

To find out where the movie is playing near you, click the link below, and learn where you can see the film on September 12th.

http://www.atlasshruggedmovie.com/theaters

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Racism falsehoods: The myth of “white privilege”

Bill O’Reilly and Megan Kelly from Fox News had an interesting debate about the perceived disparity of the black population and the so-called white privilege that is so much talked about regarding minorities.  Kelly rattled off a series of statistics which showed that blacks are clearly falling behind in virtually every category of social measurement and she leaned in favor of the argument supporting “white privilege.”  O’Reilly proposed a number of opposition arguments which provided clarity refuting the designation favoring whites.  That discussion can be seen below and is worth noting.

I have had more personal friends who were black than white over the years and understand the issue very well.  Megan is only talking about the result of statistics, but not the cause—whereas Bill O’Reilly began to touch on the real issues.  There is no white privilege in America.  The suppression of the whites against the blacks is a thing of the past and is only still considered by the very ignorant.  The cause of the disparity between the statistical facts rattled off by Megan Kelly is that blacks tend to support by default the position of collectivism versus the personal responsibility of individualism.  Collectivists associate all the things that happen to them as a group allowing many in that group to hide their bad behavior behind the mask of consensus.  In poor populations where fathers are infrequent, government sustains personal incomes, and the general philosophy is a collectivist oriented belief system statistics like the ones Megan Kelly discussed will take place regardless of the color of anybody’s skin.

If personal responsibility is not present in a culture, it will fail and resemble the kind of conditions seen in Ferguson.  The cries for equality by blacks and accusations of white privilege only come from those who decry personal responsibility and seek more collective mandates to hide their crimes.  The crimes of the typical perpetrator of the Ferguson riots would be loose moral attributes, poor family structure, terrible work ethics and deplorable personal conduct—all traits that center on collectivism.   Those who are successful in society tend to be those who conduct themselves with a code of some valor, personal responsibility, and awareness of their impact on the world around them not as a collective mass—but exclusively as an individual.

Being an avid motorcyclist I can name countless times that I have watched a person in another car throw a smoked cigarette out of a window. A lot of the time the same cars displaying environmental concerns are the worst perpetrators.  Think how hypocritical it is for a lover a nature to liter the streets of earth with cigarettes freshly consumed and still smoking.  But whenever a car is seen with bumper stickers displaying rainbows of support for mother earth, and cigarette smoke dances from a cracked window, 9 times out of 10 that same person will throw their empty cigarettes into the road while sitting at a stop light.  Many times they throw them out the window while driving not even caring that I’m on a motorcycle behind them.

I have studied this behavior for many years and this is the conclusion resulting from those observations.  People who throw their cigarettes out of windows tend to be collectivist oriented people who do not hold personal responsibility in high regard.  They assume that they are hidden behind a mask of anonymity provided by collectivist identification.  Because personal responsibility is not what they are functioning from they can’t imagine why or how their small cigarette thrown from a window could harm the earth.  What they fail to see is that if 30 to 40% of all people in a 300 million person population did the same, the roadways would be littered with pollution caused by the cigarettes.  But if the same person believes that a corporation—which is a collective group is harming the earth with pollution, then they will march with signs of activism and proclaim with fervor—“down with the rich CEO” the individuals at the top of large companies.  Their lack of personal responsibility has a double edge to it, first they hate individuals who control groups of people—so they attack CEOs, second they only understand things in terms of collective reference.  Anything outside of those parameters are invisible to them—like the thought that a simple cigarette might cause pollution in the world.

The same can be said of the welfare recipient, or the louse who blows off a free public education because their fatherless households failed to instruct them of the value, or the drug addict who shrugs away the value of their life in favor of getting high—the removal of personal responsibility during times intoxication.  The collectivist cannot associate responsibility with personal behavior because their lives are constructed around avoiding that diagnosis.  Thus you have race baiters like Al Sharpton declaring to a mass of angry blacks that “police have the money for guns, but not for education,” as if spending money on public education would solve the problem in poor black neighborhoods.  Billions of dollars in additional funding could be thrown into public education in a black neighborhood and nothing would improve—just as nothing has improved in public education in spite of additional spending for decades now—because personal responsibility for education is not being taught as an entry-level criteria.  Until that happens nothing will improve.

No matter what the topic when collectivism is involved, the result is always the same.  Decaying circumstances follow no matter what the skin color or sex involved entails.  If personal responsibility is vacant, corruption follows in every case.  There are no exceptions.

It is a lack of personal responsibility that is killing black America.  It is a lack of individual assessment and family structure that causes most of the trouble in communities like Ferguson.  During the last election, I supported Herman Cain and in the future I hope that Ben Carson runs for president, just as I have supported Alan Keys in the past.  They are all black politicians who I adore, so nobody can call me a racist.  I have more affiliations with more minorities than most people have in their entire lives, so I can speak fluently when I say that personal responsibly is the key to success in life.  The lack of personal responsibly is the cause of failure almost every time—even considering the misfortune of hard luck.

White privilege only comes to those who are taught to conduct their lives responsibly.  White people who adhere to collectivism as their guiding philosophy are just as wrecked as blacks who do the same.  Color has nothing to do with it—personal responsibility is everything.  I have known many blacks who are quite successful. I know whites who are very successful.  And I have known many other types men and women who are very successful—and what they all have in common is a belief in themselves as individuals.  All the failures in life that I have ever known all share in common a belief in collectivism—in the hope that they can live forever concealed from responsibility.  They of course cannot, but the fault of their circumstances are their own.  They can read these words and become angry, but they can offer no argument in favor of collectivism that cannot be refuted easily.  Notice the lack of comments on this article—which is free to the world—yet the lack of a defense of collectivism.  That is because they can’t defend it.  Collectivism is the reason that black communities, white communities and groups of all kinds fail.  It is no mystery, only a carefully concealed secret driven by a desire for waking intoxication of personal irresponsibility.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

COMMUNISM IS BEHIND THE MIDDLE EAST TROUBLE: The strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘The Project’

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened”. – Norman Thomas Socialist Candidate for President of the United States 1944.

I hate to say I’m right, but I am. For those who have wondered if my many articles about communist infiltration of public schools, labor unions and the Democratic Party in general were inflammatory, and over-the-top—now you understand how right I was and how wrong you were. The plot all along in America was for the prophesy proclaimed by Norman Thomas so many years ago to come to pass.   Small “c” communism was always the plan and it wore the mask of socialism to make it seem more appealing. The evidence is overwhelmingly obvious and beyond refute. But what is more disgusting for many is that they will soon learn that it is communism that is also behind the Muslim Brotherhood—which uses religious ideology to mask the economic desire to fully spread communism to every corner of the planet—especially in the tribal nature Middle East. I started to cover this in a recent article which can be seen by CLICKING HERE. Further proof can be seen in the following video.

 Didn’t see that on the American news networks, did you?  Yet there it is.

Even European media deeply troubled by the radical amount of Muslim extremists so prevalent in the many nations of the European Union are seeing the comparisons which should have always been clear from the outset.   While studying the behavior of the Muslim Brotherhood a German media group finally started to connect the dots centering on “The Project” a 20-year-old document established to take over the Western world with a strategy eerily similar to the Communist Manifesto, also covered previously at this site.   Apparently, this is the first time any German media outlet has ever told the truth about the global hegemonic aspirations of the Muslim Brotherhood, and its resemblance to Nazism, Communism, and other totalitarian political movements.

http://www.barenakedislam.com/2012/12/18/german-tv-compares-the-muslim-brotherhood-to-communists-and-nazis/

Again, from Frontline magazine they state, “one might be led to think that if international law enforcement authorities and Western intelligence agencies had discovered a twenty-year old document revealing a top-secret plan developed by the oldest Islamist organization with one of the most extensive terror networks in the world to launch a program of “cultural invasion” and eventual conquest of the West that virtually mirrors the tactics used by Islamists for more than two decades, that such news would scream from headlines published on the front pages and above the fold of the New York Times, Washington Post, London Times, Le Monde, Bild, and La Repubblica.

“If that’s what you might think, you would be wrong.

“In fact, such a document was recovered in a raid by Swiss authorities in November 2001, two months after the horror of 9/11. Since that time information about this document, known in counterterrorism circles as “The Project”, and discussion regarding its content has been limited to the top-secret world of Western intelligence communities. Only through the work of an intrepid Swiss journalist, Sylvain Besson of Le Temps, and his book published in October 2005 in France, La conquête de l’Occident: Le projet secret des Islamistes (The Conquest of the West: The Islamists’ Secret Project), has information regarding The Project finally been made public. One Western official cited by Besson has described The Project as “a totalitarian ideology of infiltration which represents, in the end, the greatest danger for European societies.”

http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=4476

“Rather than focusing on various terrorist groups or organizations, the use of terror falls into a multiplicity of options available to progressively infiltrate, confront, and eventually establish Islamic domination over the West.” Tactics and techniques are among the many recommendations made in The Project, drafted in 1982 when tensions and terrorist activities in the Middle East were still very nascent. The Project is extremely discerning for outlining the bulk of Islamist action, whether by “moderate” Islamist organizations or outright terror groups, over the past two decades. Investigate various Islamic organizations such as CAIR, ISNA, ICNA, Muslim Brotherhood in key agencies our government like DHS, DOJ, DOD. Research Socialist/Communist influence in Muslim countries during WWII and the two will be found to be jointly aligned. Below are the intentions outlined by The Project which can be seen active in the modern age and at the core of the current caliphate movement surrounding the Mediterranean Sea area cultures.

  • Networking and coordinating actions between likeminded Islamist organizations;
  • Avoiding open alliances with known terrorist organizations and individuals to maintain the appearance of “moderation”;
  • Infiltrating and taking over existing Muslim organizations to realign them towards the Muslim Brotherhood’s collective goals;
  • Using deception to mask the intended goals of Islamist actions, as long as it doesn’t conflict with shari’a law;
  • Avoiding social conflicts with Westerners locally, nationally or globally, that might damage the long-term ability to expand the Islamist powerbase in the West or provoke a lash back against Muslims;
  • Establishing financial networks to fund the work of conversion of the West, including the support of full-time administrators and workers;
  • Conducting surveillance, obtaining data, and establishing collection and data storage capabilities;
  • Putting into place a watchdog system for monitoring Western media to warn Muslims of “international plots fomented against them”;
  • Cultivating an Islamist intellectual community, including the establishment of think-tanks and advocacy groups, and publishing “academic” studies, to legitimize Islamist positions and to chronicle the history of Islamist movements;
  • Developing a comprehensive 100-year plan to advance Islamist ideology throughout the world;
  • Balancing international objectives with local flexibility;
  • Building extensive social networks of schools, hospitals and charitable organizations dedicated to Islamist ideals so that contact with the movement for Muslims in the West is constant;
  • Involving ideologically committed Muslims in democratically-elected institutions on all levels in the West, including government, NGOs, private organizations and labor unions;
  • Instrumentally using existing Western institutions until they can be converted and put into service of Islam;
  • Drafting Islamic constitutions, laws and policies for eventual implementation;
  • Avoiding conflict within the Islamist movements on all levels, including the development of processes for conflict resolution;
  • Instituting alliances with Western “progressive” organizations that share similar goals;
  • Creating autonomous “security forces” to protect Muslims in the West;
  • Inflaming violence and keeping Muslims living in the West “in a jihad frame of mind”;
  • Supporting jihad movements across the Muslim world through preaching, propaganda, personnel, funding, and technical and operational support;
  • Making the Palestinian cause a global wedge issue for Muslims;
  • Adopting the total liberation of Palestine from Israel and the creation of an Islamic state as a keystone in the plan for global Islamic domination;
  • Instigating a constant campaign to incite hatred by Muslims against Jews and rejecting any discussions of conciliation or coexistence with them;
  • Actively creating jihad terror cells within Palestine;
  • Linking the terrorist activities in Palestine with the global terror movement;
  • Collecting sufficient funds to indefinitely perpetuate and support jihad around the world;

http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/12/pulling-masks-communists-muslim-brotherhood/

Most of the radical Islamic groups rising to power all over the world who are involved with the Muslim Brotherhood have under their masks of religion the political philosophy communism at its back. They are following the playbook of The Project to implement their strategy.

There will never be peace in the Middle East so long as the masses are following communism and specifically The Project designed by the Muslim Brotherhood to destroy the Western world. At the heart of every matter are beliefs like the ones above, and behind those strategies is the old foe of communism that wears the mask of Islam like a mask to penetrate western societies featuring capitalism as a Trojan horse to get behind enemy lines to destroy those cultures. There is no mistake in the intentions. Any group that does not discuss this Muslim objective is purposely participating.

When it is wondered why the popular media gives a free pass to Islamic terrorism, but chooses to chastise Christian and other religions—it is because they are following the teachings of The Project. Like the communist threat of yesteryear where the hazard was identified by name, it now wears the mask of Islam to hide its vile conquest of capitalism and the freedoms of the West. The situation is further exacerbated by the large number of organizations that have a difficult time discussing the evils of ISIS (ISIL) and the events of turmoil centering around the Middle East with everything but the truth. The problems in the Middle East are not as complicated as everyone pretends. The reason is that behind all the actions of the aggressors is a push for communism. The complication comes from trying to explain the irrationality of the Middle East without talking about communism—which is impossible. It is the reason why nobody is given the real story of what is going on behind the Palestinian HAMAS, the greater efforts of the Muslim Brotherhood, and ISIS—because they are all groups advocating communism with the same bravado as the Bolsheviks did in Russia during 1917.   Marxism and communism were inventions of Germany, and during World War I it was they who lost the Middle East ally of the Turks causing great trouble with resolutions given to them by the Treaty of Versailles. Germans sent communists to Russia to overthrow that land from the previous Tsarist regime. After World War I Germans and Russians under communist command did the same in the Middle East and the result to this day are the Muslim Brotherhood and all their offshoots. Using Islam, they have hid their intentions of communism behind the face of a religion following the Quran. But now dear reader you know otherwise—and it is best that you began to take action to fight it off. Now you know how they have arrived in your life and can take action to remove them—decisively.

But do not make the mistake again that what I am telling you is over-the-top and inflammatory—don’t wait for a magic moment to confirm these results. Because there isn’t any time. Act now, or find them at your doorstep with haste. When they arrive, they will not show mercy.   Communists—unlike Muslims—do not recognize individuals. They only serve the collective whether that collective is dedicated to Allah, or economic theories—it is all the same.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com