Tag: Down the Rabbit Hole

Mos Eisley Radio: Mary Poppins, X-Wing Miniatures, Galactic Starfighter and the burdens of life

 

imageGenerally when I offer myself as a front man my policy is that I don’t do committees, I don’t solicit opinions, and I expect people to do what I say without question.  If people, political organizations, or companies want success they can hook a chain to my star and I’ll take them where they want to go—and presently there are a lot of chains hooked to my star from those agreeing to those terms and expecting me to take them to their desired destination.  At 46 years of age, naturally now that the word has gotten out about some of my abilities, 2014 is shaping up to be the most pressure oriented year I’ve ever had.  I’ve never before dragged along so much hooked to me as I presently am, yet I fully expect such weights to not hinder my star’s trajectory.  One way I do that is to give my mind frequent rests to balance out the intense weight it otherwise would be encumbered with.  I thought it curious during this latest Holiday Season that two films, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and the Disney film Saving Mr. Banks both feature authors who were very much in love with the characters they created because it provided them with a secondary world which they created to reason things out.  I understand Tolkien’s apprehension to allow his work to be commercially shared, and even more drastic was the story of P.L. Travers who authored Mary Poppins.  Both authors confessed somewhat to using their stories as personal playgrounds of thought and were very protective over those worlds.  I can relate, my characters in my books, Fletcher Finnegan and Rick Stevens are very much creations of the same design for me—which is a work currently unfolding as my life shoots through the sky with the lives of many chained to it.  Disney did much the same with his Mickey Mouse, and of course there is George Lucas who guarded his Star Wars franchise more resoundly than anybody mentioned above.  Money is not the motive for any of the people mentioned—that comes later—it’s about the preservation of that secondary world—a world where the mind can vacation and relax where things make much more sense.  Personally for me, when the pressure is as intense as it is right now the way I deal with the real world most effectively is to spend as much time as possible in a secondary world to give my mind the needed downtime allowing it to be more efficient.  Vacations to Disney World, the creation of Uncle Walt is one of the ways I most enjoy a secondary world created by someone else.  Another is Star Wars, not just the movies, books, comics and any other little media tidbit—but the games, the new Galactic Starfighter, and the object of much obsession, X-Wing Miniatures.  Both of these games are discussed by the guys at Mos Eisley Radio’s Even Lewis and Leo Andrie—and to learn about both, listen to this broadcast.  They cover a lot of ground, but I think Leo’s opinions about X-Wing Miniatures most reflect my own—I simply love the game—I love that secondary world because it makes sense to me more than anything else presently can. 

Leo and Even did that broadcast prior to the release of Galactic Starfighter, so I can add to the report that as much as I love X-Wing Miniatures, Galactic Starfighter does the same thing for me, only the delight is much more immediate.  The computer combat flight simulator like PVP forum on Star Wars: The Old Republic is simply obsessive fun for me.  My wife and I have now played hundreds, perhaps even over a thousand matches over the last three weeks, and it is an absolute blast.  It takes all the action and strategy of X-Wing Miniatures and plays it out in real-time.  My wife oddly enough is topping the leaderboards nearly every match with her gunship.  I am less consistent—depending on who is playing.  When average players are against us, I typically join her at the top of the leaderboards with 5 to 10 kills per match in my Flashfire scout ship—which is like flying a kite that is very underpowered.  It doesn’t hit very hard and can’t take much abuse, but I use it because of the tremendous speed it has.   However, when elite players are on the other side, my job is to harass them and keep them uncomfortable—(kind of like real life) and my kill ratio goes down considerably.  The reason is to keep them busy while the other members of our team capture the satellite points.  I can’t say enough about the game.  It is truly an amazing time we live in.  My wife flies her ship on a computer right next to me.  We speak to each other like two pilots in a fire fight only the information going back and forth from the BioWare servers from her computer to the host and back to mine, and vice versa—then to all the other players 12 on our team, 12 on the opposing side is just an amazing feat.  A lot of people who play online games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are used to these forums, which is a few years old, but at my age I remember a time when all this was just a distant fantasy.  I remember a day when I worked all summer cutting grass so that I could purchase a $79 film role of Star Wars for a projector that I didn’t have and the reel didn’t even have sound. So modern DVDs and Blue Rays are amazing to me even after a decade of use—but the online gaming experience of Galactic Starfighter is simply stunning.  I can’t get enough of it.image

However, the computer game is something my wife and I can share with a few other people on our team, but when it comes to a tabletop game that an entire family can experience—or something that can be shared at conventions, comic book stores, and other very creative formats of existing secondary worlds X-Wing Miniatures is infinitely intriguing to me.  If you did not listen to the above video broadcast from Even and Leo please do so if any of this is remotely interesting.  Leo is a huge gaming nerd in all the wonderful ways that those people are full of imagination and hope—and his thoughts about X-Wing Miniatures reflects my own.  He has played many of the big games from the past, The Magic The Gathering and those types of things—and is presently obsessed with X-Wing Miniatures attending tournaments all over America.  And I totally get it.image

By looking at the pictures here of a match my family had during Boxing Day (the day after Christmas at my kid’s house) it is easy to see how we took a dining room table and made a battlefield out of it.  The strategies are very similar to Galactic Starfighter—the video game, but I find the slower pace and deeper strategies of X-Wing Miniatures to be infinitely more rewarding.   There is a freedom of movement that is simply amazing—every inch of the 3’X3’ game mat is up for grabs strategically—and that is very attractive to me.  But more so is the way the game allows you to visit this secondary world of Star Wars with the shared experience of family and friends on a group level.  In the game showed in the pictures it was a very tight match which went on for over an hour and it came down to a final dice roll of two evasion dice—which was highly unlikely—but occurred. It was a literal cliffhanger, and all our hearts were beating furiously at the end—both the winning and losing side—and I can’t think of too many activities that can be done around a kitchen table which provokes that kind of reaction.  It is blistering fun!image

I have several hundred dollars invested in the game from what is seen in the pictures.  That investment will easily excel into the thousands during 2014 and 2015.  As Leo mentioned in the Mos Eisley Radio broadcast the big excitement of 2014 will be the expansion packs of the Imperial Aces featuring two specially painted TIE Advanced ships, the massive Tantive IV CR90 corvette which looks spectacularly stunning, and the Rebel GR-75 medium transport.  Fantasy Flight Games who publishes X-Wing Miniatures has already produced something special even without these 2014 announcements.  If all they created were what has been seen through the first three waves of release, the Millennium Falcon from Wave 2 and now a ship I use all the time, the HWK-290,  (CLICK HERE TO READ SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THIS SHIP) I’d be content.  But Fantasy Flight Games is only getting stronger as time moves on—making the game constantly more complex and dynamic.  They are introducing a whole new play formatted called Cinematic Play which will specifically involve these larger ships on a much greater table top.  And in tournaments, they are introducing the Epic tournament format which will allow players to field ships of all sizes in massive battles that will echo thought the Star Wars universe.  In the game’s Epic format the Rebel transport can support the efforts of a squad with its frequency jammer, and the Tantive IV can fire its powerful lasers against opponent’s TIEs.  These mentioned items are not part of Wave 4 which hasn’t even been announced yet.  One can only speculate about what those ships will entail and new playing options that will come with them.  2014 will be a very exciting year for X-Wing Miniatures.image

I wish sometimes that I didn’t have such a complicated life with so many hooked to my star.  There are many days that I would love to be able to travel around and have the kind of free time that Leo does attending tournaments for X-Wing Miniatures.  I would be a very happy person with a table full of X-Wing ships and a pizza from LaRosa’s sitting on a nearby counter playing all day every day for the rest of my life.  That secondary world of Star Wars as it is specifically translated in that particular game is such an effective living mythology that it exceeds my personal creations.  I understand how P.L. Travers felt about Mary Poppins, and how Tolkien felt about Middle-earth, because I feel the same way about my own creations.  But when it comes to these Star Wars games, that secondary world smartly has been expanded in a unique way that Walt Disney—the new owners of Star Wars and the former owner, George Lucas have nurtured for decades.  P.L. Travers had a nervous breakdown at the premier of Mary Poppins because of the dancing penguins, and the portrayal of Mr. Banks who was essentially her father.  Lucas has allowed other independent minds to help shape his secondary world in a way that has held back Tolkien and Travers work in the past.  If The Old Republic had to get George Lucas to approve every addition to that world, it would have been stunted.  Even more so with X-Wing Miniatures, that game is great because as Leo and Even stated the game makes great use of the Expanded Universe—aspects of the Star Wars mythology that was created by the novels, comics and television shows by people only remotely guided by George Lucas with a thumbs up or thumbs down—and that is what makes this secondary world of gaming such an incredibly rich experience.  It takes an individual to drive the visions forward, but it also takes knowing when to let things go so the creations can take off on their own and flourish—kind of like raising children.  X-Wing Miniatures is the product of a successful metaphorical child of Star Wars and an offering into a secondary world that can hold a lot of excess pressure.  It does for me.image

I know my readers here want to see more fire and brimstone from me, and they will get it.  I feel the tug of those chains upon my star and I don’t complain.  I offer the free ride to see how much I can pull without it destroying me—because I want to know where my limits are—and I have not yet found them in my life.  But I do feel the pressure, and the way I cope with it is to become involved in these kinds of secondary world activities as the primary world is full of burden.  I play at real life like I’m playing a game—it takes the edge of the bitter realization that life is not a game, decisions are final, but chances must be taken to advance ideals.  By playing games for recreation, one can sort of work out what is a successful strategy and what isn’t.  Starting off a New Year, I enjoy thinking about these kinds of things, so I do it for myself more than anything—but I share it in case anybody wants to learn a thing or two about stress management.  At times like this I often would not mind having a simple nondescript job at some fast-food restaurant where I could live the life of Leo attending X-Wing tournaments all the time free of those chains dragging behind.  But I am grateful to have the release of these types of games in a time when I need them for my own sanity.  I have found that the more I utilize these things in my life, the more I can carry as my star shoots across the sky, and the many that are dragging behind hooked to it by my invitation will succeed.

Rich Hoffman  www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com  



‘The Desolation of Smaug’: A gift that only mythology could give–a film of GREAT importance

Until I saw the new Hobbit film The Desolation of Smaug my favorite dragon film was the old 1981 flick, Dragonslayer.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  I have been waiting for this Part II of The Hobbit series for a long time—so much so that I have avoided talking about it to keep my excitement level in check.  The reason is that the attribute of human society that I most value is mythology, and there is no better exhibition of modern mythology than the Star Wars films and the Tolkien films by the great unpretentious filmmaker Peter Jackson.  Mythology in films and novels can communicate complicated aspects of human culture that cannot be communicated any other way and are the hinge pins of modern philosophy—which is directly created by a society’s mythology.  I don’t see The Desolation of Smaug as just another fantasy movie—I see it as a functioning mythology that says a lot about the state of our modern existence.  A great storyteller like Jackson can pour so much value into a film like this that years of a similar education under an orthodox system of instruction will fail after many years of trying.

There are two basic kinds of dragons in classic mythology, the oriental dragon which is largely a symbol of rebirth, and the European dragon.  I spoke about the oriental one the other day when discussing the upcoming film Godzilla.  Godzilla is very much an oriental dragon in a modern context.  Then there is the European version of dragon, the classic villain of so many movies from Sleeping Beauty to Fantasia, dragons in a European context represent human greed, arrogance, and corruption.  If one wanted to understand the major differences between Eastern and Western cultures, their basic interpretations of dragons in mythology would be the place to begin.  In the classic 1937 novel, The Hobbit, the dragon villain Smaug is a classic European dragon, and in this updated movie version, he is the king of all dragons ever filmed and put on a screen.

I would say that seeing The Desolation of Smaug is the most important commentary on modern politics that is available to anybody on planet earth presently.  A student of politics, philosophy, and social organization could watch MSNBC, Fox News, Politically Incorrect on HBO and achieve a doctorate in psychology, history, and political science—read all the books by Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Charles Krauthammer—listen to talk radio for the next 10 years, and there would not be a more accurate summation of the state of our world than in this Hobbit film.  The simple line of dialogue between two of the elf characters in the film upon deciding if they should fight on behalf of light or let the world fall to darkness was uttered by, “when did we let evil become stronger than us.”  That is what almost every human being is facing on the very day that you are reading this—what are the consequences of living our lives away from the light?  How does evil spread?  And what do we do about it when we are confronted with it?

The Desolation of Smaug is not just a simple morality tale speaking in generalizations about an ideal existence wrapped in fantasy.  It is a commentary—a mythology of the problems experienced in our modern times.  The setting has been changed to provide context in a similar way that Star Wars removed time and history with the opening, A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away.  The Hobbit is dealing with the very nature of evil, greed, and faulty living that is at the heart of every human being.  It is literature on film, and is marvelous to behold. 

Smaug as the centerpiece of this latest story is the embodiment of the kind of individual who has taken the world’s wealth by force and sits upon it guarding it religiously.  He is the kind of bourgeois that added fuel to the fire of the communist movement where the common man wished to wrestle power back away from such dragons so that they could have their riches away from such greedy bastards.  That is why Smaug is a European dragon that sits in this movie upon a pile of gold taken from the Dwarves and their mines.  He loves it so much that he has buried himself within it so that he can worship it like a rodent burrows itself into the ground.  Many real life wealthy people like Bill Gates, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, and Warren Buffet give so much money to philanthropy advancing progressive causes because they feel guilt over their wealth.  They wish to prove to the world that they are not dragons like Smaug even though in their wealth building years they behaved just like Smaug—rolling their bodies into their confiscated wealth.  In the case of Gates, he made his money the correct way with a superior product—but discovered that the world saw him as a Smaug, just as the Dwarves in The Hobbit saw Smaug as a villain who took their wealth.  Gates wished to prove that he was not such a Smaug so he began to give mast amounts of money to the public education system in America feeding the teacher unions.  In many ways Gates became like the treacherous politicians in Laketown—living in constant fear of Smaug—scheming around the beast to carve their own way to power and wealth.  For Gates and his idealism, he became a major supporter of Common Core which seeks to centralize the education process for society.  A good intention with a sinister reality which allows corrupt teacher unions to control the kind of curriculum being taught to children—which opens the door for despots to shape the minds of society for the worst.  In the film, once the dragon was no longer a threat, the kingdoms of the world now without the fear of Smaug immediately launched themselves into a power play for control of Middle-earth.  Smaug as cruel as he was made out to be when confronted by Bilbo in The Lonely Mountain was caught between his own genius and ability to inflict cruelty, and his ability to keep the vast evil that the occupants of Middle-earth possess in check.  Only a proper and effective mythology could communicate such a complicated concept. 

Peter Jackson is such a great filmmaker.  He knows instinctively much of what I write about here because his understanding of mythology allows him to think of things in the large view.  He can make a film like the Hobbit movies with an ease that is unfathomable to most Hollywood directors—especially on the scale that this Desolation of Smaug is.  Jackson gets it—and people sense that something important is going on in the movie which is why it has made over $500 million world-wide dollars in just two weeks at this point.  When he completes the trilogy, of The Hobbit, along with the Lord of the Rings films, Jackson will have completed one of the greatest explorations into the nature of evil ever done by anybody anywhere.  Of course Tolkien started the process with his great books, but Jackson has taken the baton and ran with it in a way that few people could ever hope to do, and he does it with a lack of pretension that is simply wonderful.

People who love fantasy stories like this generally are aware that the real world does not have much to offer them.  Most of the time, they see too much, and can’t lie to themselves about the nature of reality.  So they bury themselves in fantasy where they can relate to the characters that stand for justice, righteousness, and a fight against evil.  Doing such things in the real world is considered unrealistic, naive, and foolhardy.  So they turn to fantasy and lose themselves to the efforts of gaming, movies, books, and any other attribute a story can bring to a mind hungry for understanding.  We all know a Smaug in our life—whether it is a rich uncle, an employer, or even a political power.  Most of us think that such dragons must be killed and slayed so that the wealth of the world can return to us.  But often—which is an ideal that the writer Ayn Rand was exploring around the same time that Tolkien was exploring Middle-earth—there is a need for such dragons as they prove to be more capable than the greed of the Dwarves, or residents of Laketown.  The masses may not like the dragon, but often the dragon is more capable than the masses in dealing with the overwhelming pressure of greed—thus the line at the end of this film by Bilbo—“What have we done?”  Bilbo means, we killed the dragon, but we seem to have slayed ourselves in the process.

The Desolation of Smaug is such an important film as it deals with a massive social commentary that is pertinent to our present time in such critical ways.  Smaug is one of Ayn Rand’s characters who have failed at life.  He is not an overman able to support the world without corruption who creates wealth with creative effort.  Smaug took the created wealth of the dwarves with force, not creative effort—and spent the rest of his life guarding that gold because he was unable to create more of it.  To Smaug, the wealth was finite, created by others and if he wanted to keep it, he had to hold it greedily with terror which of course everyone in Middle-earth resented.  But without Smaug, the people of Middle-earth would be at war with one another constantly.  Smaug focused their hate into a direction that only a fire-breathing massive dragon could carry.  Bilbo because of his ability as a thief was able to spot a weakness in Smaug and let the people of Laketown know about it.    Once that weakness was exploited, and Smaug was removed as a threat, the real work of Sauron, originally known as Malron the Admirable, could begin.  Mariron was turned to evil by the Dark Lord Morgoth in the early days of the world, and ever after remained a foe of the Valar and the Free peoples of Middle Earth.   We all know people like Sauron too.  In fantasy fun is made of combating such figures with magic and battles with fantastic monsters, but the content of such people can be found on a local school board, or machine politics at any level and on both sides.  The reason people flock to see these films is not an escape from reality, but to actually see reality as it is masked to us in the light of day. 

The second Hobbit film, The Desolation of Smaug is a movie that everyone should see; its great cinema, wonderful story telling, and a visual art of the highest order.  Nobody makes films better than these films, except for possibly the upcoming Star Wars films which deal with the same basic content, only in a future/past kind of way.  On a scale of 1-5 I give this Hobbit film a 100.  It is that good—but only if viewers enjoy exploring the hidden aspects of a society that is not so far away in Middle-earth, but right in front of us all—only not seen because of our educations, and prejudices–a world that can only be revealed to us through mythology.

To understand more fully how powerful mythologies are to all societies, CLICK HERE.  

To read more about what I’ve said about The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, CLICK HERE. 

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Michigan Education Association: Why teacher unions should be outlawed

I didn’t forget about the West Branch-Rose City school district case where the Michigan Education Association is going to arbitration to provide severance for convicted child rapist Neal Erickson with $10,000 of tax payer money.  As the former head of that union at the school, Erickson repeatedly raped the young son of the Janczewski family from 2006 to 2009.  The boy is now a man who turned 21 as of 2013.  During the hard years of the rapes by his teacher the young boy had a very confrontational relationship with his father, which makes sense—as without question the child was upset that his parents couldn’t protect him from such savagery.  This case infuriated me to such a degree that I had to put it on hold for a couple of weeks just to calm down.  I didn’t want to deal with it in this format during the Holiday Season.  When I first heard it, my lingering thought was to travel up to Michigan and clean house.  The law failed, the schools failed, government failed and the villain was the teacher’s union—clearly.  So I had to hit pause in my mind and calm down—but even so—I am thoroughly pissed off at this case—emphatically pissed off is more like it.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/danieldoherty/2013/12/12/michigan-teachers-union-seeks-10000-severance-package-for-convicted-child-molester-n1761847

This case represents everything I have warned about on this site with hundreds and hundreds of articles.  Teacher unions are vile collectivist organizations that should have NOTHING to do with educating the future of America.  They shouldn’t be allowed to conduct business of such a degree as what is happening with the Janczewski case, and should be outlawed in all public institutions.  There is nothing good that comes out of a teacher union for a child’s educational growth.  The union is only good for the employees of a school, and if any public school states that it wishes for what is best for the children which attend it—then they should support the removal of teacher unions from all public schools—because of this Janczewski case.

To a lesser degree within the Mason school system in Cincinnati and my current district of Lakota—I have seen first-hand the kind of collectivism that seemingly logical teachers utilize when they circle the wagons for a cover-up.  When something goes bad at Lakota, the teachers generally cover for their fallen “soldiers” in the struggle for “solidarity,” and even if the crimes are vile—they still stick together against all outside judgment.  Such team uniformity is destructive and has no place where children are present. The number of cases where teachers are having sex with their students—sending sexually explicit text messages to students and other vile acts are horrendously common.  During all these vile circumstances, the teachers stick together through their union and support one another against the judgments of the “outside” world.  Some people believe that I fan the flames of discontent to keep property taxes low—and have my own political motivations for revealing the information.  But the truth of it has always been that I’ve seen the kind of solidarity that the Janczewski case has revealed under the worst possible circumstances.

Lori Janczewski was a teacher and volunteer at the school who worked closely with Neal Haviland Erikson, 5’ 10”, born in 1974 on the 8th of September, a brown-haired, blue-eyed teacher union president who was in charge of virtually everything.  With that power Erikson decided that he’d seduce and rape Janczewski’s child who attended his middle school math class.  Years later in 2012 an anonymous tipster alerted authorities to video and pictures on child porn websites of the Janczewski son engaged in sex with Erikson performing oral sex and various renditions of anal sex.  Janczewski was so arrogant about his rape that he recorded it to share with the world–an act that made his guilt vacant of any dispute.  But that’s not the worst thing that happened.

Once the Janczewskis found out about what happened to their son bringing an end to the mysteries of why the child had become so unruly at home, the teacher’s union threatened harm if the family went forward with prosecution suffering retaliation.  Apparently the threats were made good when the Janczewskis pursued justice—their garage was burned down and their home barely escaped the fire.  On the wall of their house was the message beginning with a declarative pronoun, “I told you—You will Pay.”  It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out who burnt down the garage and left behind the message.  The most ardent supporters of the child rape wrote letters in support of Erickson which you can see below—as well as their email addresses—in case any law enforcement wants to pursue the case.   (I already know the answer to that, keep eating your f**king donuts) 

At the trial it was some of these people who marched into the courtroom and seated themselves on Erickson’s side of the room and came to his defense even after the video testimony was shown and he plead guilty.  If you take the time to read their letters, it is absolutely stunning that these small intellects are actually teaching children—anywhere, let alone at a school.  I find them astonishing.  ASTONISHING!

I didn’t hear about this story when Glenn Beck first covered it in August.  I actually saw it on Bill O’Reilly.  Beck is always well out in front of these kinds of stories before they make it to the mainstream.  I was dealing with at the time the many local issues regarding the teaching profession, so I missed this story coming out of Michigan.  The local stories were sexting cases where Lakota teachers were attempting to seduce student in the same way that Erickson had done, but the cover-ups were the same.  The biggest difference is that Erickson got caught red-handed with video tape showing him doing the act—and it was beyond dispute.  Without that video, there would have not been a case against the teacher, and he’d still be teaching and doing the same thing to other kids—backed by the teacher’s union.

The anger over this issue is in knowing that these kinds of things are happening all the time and when they do there is no shortage of apologists from the teacher’s union who use the same arguments they utilize to pass school levies to defend such atrocities against children—such as “it was only one child, and “it happened so long ago.”  Given what I know about these kinds of stories I would say that they are common place—not exceptions and that teacher unions have shown a tendency to hide even the worst crimes to protect their collective hive.

How many other children are there out there like the Janczewski child?  I would bet dozens in every public school in The United States, tens of thousands if taken with a collective summation.  Teachers are well aware of the crimes, but they won’t do anything about it for the same reason that they threatened Lori Janczewski with her job and well-being if she told anybody what happened regarding her son.  The Janczewski family was supposed to contain the information and sit on it, sacrificing their child to the lust of Neal Erickson, and his wife who was the teacher of the Janczewski’s youngest daughter.  Even knowing the terrible things that had happened to her brother, the sister was forced to sit and witness the intended cover-up by the wife of the guy who did the deed and put it on video for the world to see.   The wife knew, the other teachers knew, and they did not have outrage and condemnation toward Neal Erickson—their former union president—but support, even to the sentencing phase.

The union was not angry with the Janczewski family because of the crime.  They were angry that they pursued justice for their son.  They expected to use force and intimidation to silence the family into a sacrifice of their child to the yearnings of Neal Erickson–acts that the teachers who supported him endorsed.

I have told similar stories of issues that have happened like this at my home district of Lakota.  I have gone to attorneys, media personalities, and the local paper with the scoop on the story—and the result is resounding silence.  Nobody has the will to engage these horrors directly—they wish to continue believing that schools are safe for children and should be paid limitless property tax money forever to cover the cost of employing these idiots.  The courts will do nothing about these crimes unless the perpetrator is caught blatantly like Erickson was.  If there is any doubt in the case, the police union will help the teachers union cover up the story the same way they do for police beatings and abuse—and the courts will play along because they don’t want their garages burnt down, or their daughters raped and pulled over by officers looking for revenge.  And if anybody thinks that is an inflammatory statement, I have swampland in Florida complete with a plug and play diamond mine to sell you.  The crimes committed by members of teachers unions is epidemic, they may not all be as openly bad as the Erickson case, but they are vile nevertheless. And we continue to fund them with our property taxes to slowly destroy the lives of the next generation with progressive tripe and sexual abuse—all in the name of job security and good pay in the public education system.  With these people it is all about solidarity—not a value system of behavior and that makes every member of a teacher union a danger, and menace to society.

http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/08/14/justice-for-the-janczewskis-their-son-repeatedly-raped-for-years-by-middle-school-teacher-neal-erickson-who-was-president-of-the-michigan-teachers-union-and-even-now-supported-by-the-teachers/

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Ever-so-Unpopular Obamacare: Clueless politicians and lost government workers trained all wrong

Obamacare will never, ever, in a million years be a successful enterprise.  Unlike when Progressives ran through Social Security, and Medicare against the American public, The United States does not have the financial resources to support such a terrible—socialist oriented concept without wrecking the entire economy.  It would seem that since most government jobs require college degrees, that the architects of Obamacare—otherwise known as the Affordable Care Act—would understand why their revision of American health care would be a miserable failure. Unfortunately the issue points to a deeper problem.  American colleges are teaching the incorrect fundamentals about virtually everything—and this has led entire regiments of government workers to incorrectly handle problems their educations should have prepared them for.  Obamacare will be a failure because of the modern trend of mismanagement indicative of not properly understanding what quality is, or how it’s created and now that it has sunk in Americans are turning against Obama and his health care reforms.

In a telephone poll, taken between December 13-19, it asked 1035 adults — 950 of whom were registered voters — the following question: “As you may know, a bill that makes major changes to the country’s health care system became law in 2010. Based on what you have read or heard about that legislation, do you generally favor or generally oppose it?”

62% of those polled said they oppose the Affordable Care Act (ACA), while support for the law hit an all-time low of just 35%.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/25/cnn-poll-opposition-to-obamacare-hits-record-highs-support-crashes-to-new-lows/

The common belief among all government bureaucracies, even those with major contracts with such agencies—mismanagement is rampant.   Perhaps it is the heavy instruction of Keynesian economics—socialist indoctrination, left leaning politics, and irresponsible social behavior driving those failures.  Virtually nobody is coming out of modern colleges with a basic understanding of management.  The belief so common these days is that if jobs are created and a human body is carrying a nameplate on their desk indicating that they are in charge of something—that the job of management is getting done.  However, this is not what’s been happening.

Management is more than just showing up for a job—it requires somebody to actually provide leadership and carry productivity toward benchmarks.  In modern government nobody carries anything.  A roomful of people show up at a meeting and brainstorm on an idea—but nobody ever takes any of the ideas to the next step—because they have been taught that individual achievement is bad, and that collective enterprise is a virtue of the highest order.  The net result is that nobody makes decisions, nobody drives productivity, nobody leads anybody anywhere which is why all government projects are perpetually over budget, late, and ultimate failures.

Obamacare was certainly created under these precise circumstances. The intention conceived during brainstorming sessions during 2008 to 2009 sounded good—give poor people health care coverage using socialism to deliver the product to them.  However, departments because they lacked basic management skills and did not have skilled people driving their efforts simply threw money at the problems hoping that everything would mysteriously be solved.  Even top management officials in the government with Doctorates and Master’s degrees lacked the fundamental skills to manage even basic leadership skills.  They were functioning with the belief that all they had to do was show up—and this was the beginning of the end for them.  The result is massive overspending on a health care product that hasn’t been able to deliver even a computer interface that is user friendly—even when the best minds in the world are working on the project.  The reason is because leadership at the very top is an utter failure—and no matter what happens below those “leaders” the efforts will be negated by the collective hive of incompetence.  This is the direct cause of the severe cost overruns of Obamacare.

Americans have now seen all this happening in real-time, and now that its 2014 when the law begins to take effect the urgency of the situation is now on people’s minds.  They see failures and the mismanagement, and they aren’t happy—and the poll numbers reflect it.  Like a typical clueless bureaucrat Obama and his fellow government workers threw together budget deals in the last-minute, and tied up what they considered loose ends and went on their vacations for the Holiday without a care in the world.  Obama is so out-of-touch he appears to not even realize the implications of his failure even as every news station is broadcasting his folly with wall-to-wall coverage all over the world.  He’s busy doing “selfies” with celebrities and going to college basketball games like a normal every day guy—because that’s what he is.  There is nothing special about Barack Obama other than the ability to con people with lies spoken before large crowds.  He can do such things because he is disconnected from reality by his training—like every other government worker who survives that type of work for more than five years.

No amount of money can fix Obamacare because it was conceived in a leadership vacuum—by nobodies without thought.  The merit of Obamacare is no different from the five-year old girl who wishes upon a star and expects a wish to come true.  Even the child who tells their parents that they wish for the moon, and then they cry when nobody can take it out of the sky and give it to them—Obama is just as unrealistic about his health care reform—and his personal insanity is now costing people money, health, and happiness.

The Tea Party said all this would happen and nobody wanted to listen.  Instead they were called names by government workers and hunted down by the IRS, but the reality did not change.  Obamacare still failed even when the critics were stuffed away to the fringes of society.  It failed because the people who conceived it were failures and lacked management skill—something that money cannot overcome.  Great managers can be purchased with money, but money cannot replace good managers—which is a premise that colleges have been teaching for more than 6 decades.  Education institutions have been functioning from a belief that all human beings are like Lego blocks, and can be interchanged with one another depending on a desired outcome.  They have been selling that colleges make those Lego blocks and once a degree in management, or administration is achieved, then those employees are equipped to show up at a desk and take on that role immediately.  But it doesn’t work that way.  Quality is more important than knowledge, and colleges do not teach quality—only mimicked behavior of successful people—not what made them successful to begin with.

So welcome mainstream thinkers to the world view that the real leaders of the world have had from the very beginning—those who called Obamacare three years ago a dismal failure that would be a detriment to American society.  Welcome to reality—where Obamacare will harm people needlessly, and wreck the best health care system in the world with a socialism that has already crippled Europe. Welcome to the world of failure by government where employees run everything with a rudderless commitment to nothing but ideas concocted by the mind of intellectual infants and overly trained fools.  One of those fools is on a beach in Hawaii playing with his kids completely oblivious to the folly of his ways because he doesn’t even have a mind to assess failure from success—other than the wishes of a child who wants the moon—and screams when they can’t have it.

To begin to understand how much extra Obamacare will cost average Americans click the link below:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/26/a-look-at-some-of-the-new-obamacare-fees-expected-to-hit-americans-in-2014/

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Joan Powell Legacy: Big spending, high taxes, manipulation, and cover-ups.

I always thought it was strange when I gave an interview once to Michael Clark at the Cincinnati Enquirer how the reporter asked me so many questions about Joan Powell—and what I thought she should do differently to help repair the image at Lakota schools.  He came across as having a “man crush” on her, which didn’t seem possible—but to each their own.  Later it became obvious that Clark and Powell where intellectual adulterers—cut from the same cloth philosophically.  So it should come as no surprise that Clark was salivating over Powell upon her exit from Lakota schools at the end of fiscal year 2013. CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO SEE CLARK’S PARTING TRIBUTE TO POWELL.

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2013/12/17/powell-leaves-lakota-board-leaves-legacy-of-leadership/

For everyone else, Powell was a menace—a power hungry despot that played a lot of political games and used her position at the school to assist her real estate career.   I summed up Powell’s career more appropriately than Clark on 700 WLW where Doc Thompson and I poked fun at the kind of things that the Lakota school board wanted to cover up—like the infighting that was going on.  Watch the video below to reminisce over those events.

For the collective good of Lakota Linda and Powell put their differences aside and pulled everyone together for another levy attempt at the end of 2011 going into 2012.  Powell being an old veteran on school boards run by radical left wingers like Jamie Green and Sandra Wheatley clearly sided with the labor union advocate groups against tax payers, and instead of listing to the voters in the previous three elections decided to go on a public relations campaign against me specifically working very hard behind the scenes to eliminate opposition to her will and unite the community in the same way that she pulled the board together.  The situation backfired leaving Lakota to not attempt another levy for 2 more years in spite of having the media, politics, and many latté sipping prostitutes in her back pocket for support.  Instead Powell would sanction the spending of many, many thousands of dollars carrying over into the deep six figures hiring specialists that would improve Lakota’s public relations and hopefully win a levy not based on merit, but on pity.

Lakota simply threw looted money at their problems, and then asked for a tax increase to cover the costs.  It was a situation of pro public education radicalism at its worst.  Powell never portrayed herself as a radical, but her behavior certainly represented such views.  This is the legacy of Joan Powell at Lakota—a big spender who used the school to sell homes to panicky young parents who needed a day time babysitter for their children—and Lakota schools through taxation was cheaper than their other options.

Reporters at all the major television stations and of course the papers never felt comfortable covering these follies because of the perception of public education as being the centerpiece of a community. To admit such things as being faulty would be to admit that there are serious social issues afoot that are contextually destructive.  So rather than analyze the pro tax radicalism of Joan Powell and past Lakota school boards—they only measured the success rate of levy passage as an indicator of a successful school district.  For instance, this is how Clark from the Cincinnati Enquirer framed one of the successful hurdles overcome by Joan Powell during her reign, “The longest operating tax levy losing streak in Lakota history. From 2004 to this fall, voters rejected six of seven school tax hikes. But in November voters narrowly approved a new school operating tax.”  The assumption in that comment is that it is taxes that make a successful school, and if every few years taxes are passed—then the school will be considered productive.  There is never the question asked as to how long such taxes could be extorted from the public before the whole house of cards comes crashing down—or how many homeowners were forced to leave their homes because of the high taxes.  Or, how many businesses folded because of taxes, or how many didn’t sign a lease because the tax rates were too high.  The opportunity cost assessment of tax increases were never analyzed by the mainstream media.  The only measure of success was whether or not taxes were obtained so that school boards like the one that Powell was president over could throw money at labor union collective bargaining contracts and buy a few more years of peace from that radical progressive element.

For all those reasons the best Christmas present the Lakota school district could have received is the retirement of Joan Powell from the school board.  The remaining board members have issues—and lean way too far to the political left—but are not relics from the old corrupt days at Lakota the way Powell was.  The challenges to the board from No Lakota Levy have made them function better as a leadership body.  People like Powell and the current superintendent Karen Mantia resist that improvement—but the tide is slowly sweeping their type out to sea.  That is not to say that all is well at Lakota—but the old guard progressive types like Powell are fading off into nightmarish memory.  She is the last of the heavy radicals who occupied the board at Lakota and paved the way for the ridiculously high teacher salaries, the misspending, and the many cover-ups.

The way Powell did it was reporters like Clark ate from her hand like a tamed dog sitting by her side waiting for table scraps of information carefully arranged by Lakota’s public relations people.  Without that cooperation Lakota might have actually lived within its means, not dumbed down so many children, and ruined the lives of so many people caught in cover-ups.  The path to hell is always paved with good intentions—and I believe that Powell was full of good intentions.  The remaining question is—good for who?  The answer will come in time.  With Powell gone from the board one of the most divisive and manipulative public figures in Butler County is no longer able to do such corrosive damage directly.  For me, the best Christmas present I received in 2013 came from the ending of her time as school board member and president. A Lakota without Joan Powell is one that has hope—unless your perspective is a giant state-run school teaching progressive instruction taking society into a Brave New World.  In that case, Joan was a Madonna and symbol of radical advancement of left-leaning policies designed to shape the entire world.  In that regard, Joan was successful—for those kinds of people.

I will always enjoy knowing that Joan spent several hundred thousand tax payer dollars and two years worth of effort to move voters 4% points only to extort more money from the local residents.  Now that is a legacy!

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The Importance of Women: My gift to you–ZZ Top and the Lady of Tubber Tintye

As I was doing research for the Duck Dynasty story, (CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW) I ran across an extremely well done video remake of the “Legs” video, by ZZ Top.  I thought the video remarkable not for the pornographic nature of it but the content.  In it a young man enters a lair of beautiful women situated in various provocative poses.  Scattered throughout are other young men who appear to have coupled with some of the women, but the young man does not stop and linger on any of the girls.  Instead, he proceeds on until he finds the ultimate beauty which is the apparent object of his quest.  For me the video represents the best I have seen on YouTube during the year of 2013.  Upon watching it I was immediately reminded of the story the King of Erin and the Lady of Tubber Tintye.

I have told the story of the Lady of Tubber Tintye to my entire family, particularly the women.  It is the classic goddess motif summed up within a story of a typical hero adventure.  Yet it is so precisely told as to the psychological problem that young men all share and how all societies fundamentally function that I think it has tremendous merit.  I ran into the story through my studies of Joseph Campbell, and over the years have argued with several feminists—who went on to write their doctorial thesis on this story as evidence that feminism rules the universe.  Only most of them missed the point of the story.  Feminists tend to cherry pick the academic observations of people like Campbell who translated generations of mythological tales into the lens of progressive interpretation—which destroys the nature of the story—which was the point of the doctorial thesis interpretations.   So what I’d like to do is present to you Dear Reader the story of Tubber Tintye and the King of Erin, then at the end I’ll explain what’s going on and how it applies to that ZZ Top video.  The sum of that explanation has the power to restore our society and is not to be taken lightly, or brushed off carelessly as didactic pornography.  I will highlight in bold below the passage of the story as it most applies to the aforementioned video.  Then I will break down how this metaphor has a direct impact on our current society.  Please take the time to read this carefully.  It’s very important.

The King of Erin and the Queen of the Lonesome Island

THERE was a king in Erin long ago, and this king went out hunting one day, but saw nothing till near sunset, when what should come across him but a black pig.

“Since I’ve seen nothing all day but this black pig, I’II be at her now,” said the king; so he put spurs to his horse and raced after the pig.

When the pig was on a hill he was in the valley behind her; when he was on a hill, the pig was in the valley before him. At last they came to the sea-side, and the pig rushed out into the deep water straight from the shore. The king spurred on his horse and followed the black pig through the sea till his horse failed under him and was drowned.

Then the king swam on himself till he was growing weak, and said: “It was for the death of me that the black pig came in my way.”

But he swam on some distance yet, till at last he saw land. The pig went up on an island; the king too went on shore, and said to himself: “Oh! it is for no good that I came here; there is neither house nor shelter to be seen.” But he cheered up after a while, walked around, and said: “I’m a useless man if I can’t find shelter in some place.”

After going on a short space he saw a great castle in a valley before him. When he came to the front of the castle he saw that it had a low door with a broad threshold all covered with sharp-edged razors, and a low lintel of long-pointed needles. The path to the castle was covered with gravel of gold. The king came up, and went in with a jump over the razors and under the needles. When inside he saw a great fire on a broad hearth, and said to himself, ” I’ll sit down here, dry my clothes, and warm my body at this fire.”

As he sat and warmed himself, a table came out before him with every sort of food and drink, without his seeing any one bring it.

“Upon my honor and power,” said the king of Erin, “there is nothing bad in this! I’ll eat and drink my fill.”

Then he fell to, and ate and drank his fill. When he had grown tired, he looked behind him, and if he did he saw a fine room, and in it a bed covered with gold. ” Well,” said he, ” I’ll go back and sleep in that bed a while, I ‘m so tired.”

He stretched himself on the bed and fell asleep. In the night he woke up, and felt the presence of a woman in the room. He reached out his hand towards her and spoke, but got no answer; she was silent.

When morning came, and he made his way out of the castle, she spread a beautiful garden with her Druidic spells over the island, – so great that though he travelled through it all day he could not escape from it. At sunset he was back at the door of the castle; and in he went over the razors and under the needles, sat at the fire, and the table came out before him as on the previous evening. He ate, drank, and slept on the bed; and when he woke in the night, there was the woman in the room but she was silent and unseen as before.

When he went out on the second morning the king of Erin saw a garden three times more beautiful than the one of the day before. He travelled all day, but could not escape, – could not get out of the garden. At sunset he was back at the door of the castle; in he went over the razors and under the needles, ate, drank, and slept, as before.

In the middle of the night he woke tip, and felt the presence of the woman in the room. “Well,” said he, “it is a wonderful thing for me to pass three nights in a room with a woman, and not see her nor know who she is!”

“You won’t have that to say again, king of Erin,” answered a voice. And that moment the room was filled with a bright light, and the king looked upon the finest woman he had ever seen.

Well, king of Erin, you are on LonesomeIsland. I am the black pig that enticed you over the land and through the sea to this place, and I am queen of LonesomeIsland. My two sisters and I are under a Druidic spell, and we cannot escape from this spell till your son and mine shall free us. Now, king of Erin, I will give you a boat to-morrow morning, and do you sail away to your own kingdom.”

In the morning she went with him to the sea-shore to the boat. The king gave the prow of the boat to the sea, and its stern to the land; then he raised the sails, and went his way. The music he had was the roaring of the wind with the whistling of eels, and he broke neither oar nor mast till he landed under his own castle in Erin.

Three quarters of a year after, the queen of Lonesome Island gave birth to a son. She reared him with care from day-to-day and year to year till he was a splendid youth. She taught him the learning of wise men one half of the day, and warlike exercises with Druidic spells the other half.

One time the young man, the prince of Lonesome Island, came in from hunting, and found his mother sobbing and crying.

“Oh! what has happened to you, mother? ” he asked.

“My son, great grief has come on me. A friend of mine is going to be killed to-morrow.”

“Who is he?

“The king of Erin. The king of Spain has come against him with a great army. He wishes to sweep him and his men from the face of the earth, and take the kingdom himself.”

“Well, what can we do? If I were there, I’d help the king of Erin.”

Since you say that, my son, I’ll send you this very evening. With the power of my Druidic spells, you’ll be in Erin in the morning.”

The prince of Lonesome Island went away that night, and next morning at the rising of the sun he drew up his boat under the king’s castle in Erin. He went ashore, and saw the whole land black with the forces of the king of Spain, who was getting ready to attack the king of Erin and sweep him and his men from the face of the earth.

The prince went straight to the king of Spain, and said, ” I ask one day’s truce.”

“You shall have it, my champion,” answered the king of Spain.

The prince then went to the castle of the king of Erin, and stayed there that day as a guest. Next morning early he dressed himself in his champion’s array, and, taking his nine-edged sword, he went down alone to the king of Spain, and, standing before him, bade him guard himself.

They closed in conflict, the king of Spain with all his forces on one side, and the prince of Lonesome Island on the other, They fought an awful battle that day from sunrise till sunset. They made soft places hard, and hard places soft; they made high places low, and low places high; they brought water out of the centre of hard gray rocks, and made dry rushes soft in the most distant parts of Erin till sunset; and when the sun went down, the king of Spain and his last man were dead on the field.

Neither the king of Erin nor his forces took part in the battle. They had no need, and they had no chance.

Now the king of Erin had two sons, who were such cowards that they hid themselves from fright during the battle; but their mother told the king of Erin that her elder son was the man who had destroyed the king of Spain and all his men.

There was great rejoicing and a feast at the castle of the king of Erin. At the end of the feast the queen said: ” I wish to give the last cup to this stranger who is here as a guest; ” and taking him to an adjoining chamber which had a window right over the sea, she seated him in the open window and gave him a cup of drowsiness to drink. When he had emptied the cup and closed his eyes, she pushed him out into the darkness.

The prince of Lonesome Island swam on the water for four days and nights, till he came to a rock in the ocean, and there he lived for three months, eating the seaweeds of the rock, till one foggy day a vessel came near and the captain cried out: ” We shall be wrecked on this rock! ” Then he said, “There is some one on the rock; go and see who it is.”

They landed, and found the prince, his clothes all gone, his body black from the seaweed, which was growing all over it.

“Who are you? ” asked the captain.

“Give me first to eat and drink, and then I’ll talk,” said he.

They brought him food and drink; and when he had eaten and drunk, the prince said to the captain: “What part of the world have you come from?

“I have just sailed from Lonesome Island,” said the captain. “I was obliged to sail away, for fire was coming from every side to burn my ship.”

“Would you like to go back?”

“I should indeed.”

“Well, turn around; you’ll have no trouble if I am with you.”

The captain returned. The queen of Lone-some Island was standing on the shore as the ship came in.

“Oh, my child!” cried she, ” why have you been away so long?”

The queen of Erin threw me into the sea after I had kept the head of the king of Erin on him, and saved her life too.

“Well, my son, that will come up against the queen of Erin on another day.”

Now, the prince lived on Lonesome Island three years longer, till one time he came home from hunting, and found his mother wringing her hands and shedding bitter tears.

“Oh! what has happened?” asked he.

“I am weeping because the king of Spain has gone to take vengeance on the king of Erin for the death of his father, whom you killed.”

“Well, mother, I’ll go to help the king of Erin, if you give me leave.”

“Since you have said it, you shall go this very night.”

He went to the shore. Putting the prow of his bark to the sea and her stern to land, he raised high the sails, and heard no sound as he went but the pleasant wind and the whistling of eels, till he pulled up his boat next morning under the castle of the king of Erin and went on shore.

The whole country was black with the troops of the king of Spain, who was just ready to attack, when the prince stood before him, and asked a truce till next morning.

“That you shall have, my champion,” answered the king. So there was peace for that day.

Next morning at sunrise, the prince faced the king of Spain and his army, and there followed a struggle more terrible than that with his father; but at sunset neither the king of Spain nor one of his men was left alive.

The two sons of the king of Erin were frightened almost to death, and hid during the battle, so that no one saw them or knew where they were. But when the king of Spain and his army were destroyed, the queen said to the king: ” My elder son has saved us.” Then she went to bed, and taking the blood of a chicken in her mouth, spat it out, saying: “This is my heart’s blood; and nothing can cure me now but three bottles of water from Tubber Tintye, the flaming well.”

When the prince was told of the sickness of the queen of Erin, he came to her and said: ” I’ll go for the water if your two sons will go with me.”

“They shall go,” said the queen; and away went the three young men towards the East, in search of the flaming well.

In the morning they came to a house on the roadside; and going in, they saw a woman who had washed herself in a golden basin which stood before her. She was then wetting her head with the water in the basin, and combing her hair with a golden comb. She threw back her hair, and looking at the prince, said: ” You are welcome, sister’s son. What is on you? Is it the misfortune of the world that has brought you here?”

“It is not; I am going to Tubber Tintye for three bottles of water.”

“That is what you’ll never do; no man can cross the fiery river or go through the enchantments around Tubber Tintye. Stay here with me, and I’ll give you all I have.”

“No, I cannot stay, I must go on.”

“Well, you’ll be in your other aunt’s house tomorrow night, and she will tell you all.”

Next morning, when they were getting ready to take the road, the elder son of the queen of Erin was frightened at what he had heard, and said:

“I am sick; I cannot go farther.”

“Stop here where you are till I come back,” said the prince. Then he went on with the younger brother, till at sunset they came to a house where they saw a woman wetting her head from a golden basin, and combing her hair with a golden comb. She threw back her hair, looked at the prince, and said: “You are welcome, sister’s son! What brought you to this place? Was it the misfortune of the world that brought you to live under Druidic spells like me and my sisters?” This was the elder sister of the queen of the Lonesome Island.

“No,” said the prince; “I am going to Tubber Tintye for three bottles of water from the flaming well.”

“Oh, sister’s son, it’s a hard journey you ‘re on! But stay here to-night; to-morrow morning I’ll tell you all.”

In the morning the prince’s aunt said: “The queen of the Island of Tubber Tintye has an enormous castle, in which she lives. She has a countless army of giants, beasts, and monsters to guard the castle and the flaming well. There are thousands upon thousands of them, of every form and size. When they get drowsy, and sleep comes on them, they sleep for seven years without waking. The queen has twelve attendant maidens, who live in twelve chambers. She is in the thirteenth and innermost chamber herself. The queen and the maidens sleep during the same seven years as the giants and beasts. When the seven years are over, they all wake up, and none of them sleep again for seven other years. If any man could enter the castle during the seven years of sleep, he could do what he liked. But the island on which the castle stands is girt by a river of fire and surrounded by a belt of poison-trees.”

The aunt now blew on a horn, and all the birds of the air gathered around her from every place under the heavens, and she asked each in turn where it dwelt, and each told her; but none knew of the flaming well, till an old eagle said: ” I left Tubber Tintye to-day.”

“How are all the people there? ” asked the aunt.

“They are all asleep since yesterday morning,” answered the old eagle.

The aunt dismissed the birds; and turning to the prince, said, ” Here is a bridle for you. Go to the stables, shake the bridle, and put it on whatever horse runs out to meet you.”

Now the second son of the queen of Erin said:

“I am too sick to go farther.”

“Well, stay here till I come back,” said the prince, who took the bridle and went out.

The prince of the Lonesome Island stood in front of his aunt’s stables, shook the bridle, and out came a dirty, lean little shaggy horse.

“Sit on my back, son of the king of Erin and the queen of Lonesome Island,” said the little shaggy horse.

This was the first the prince had heard of his father. He had often wondered who he might be, but had never heard who he was before.

He mounted the horse, which said: ” Keep a firm grip now, for I shall clear the river of fire at a single bound, and pass the poison-trees; but if you touch any part of the trees, even with a thread of the clothing that’s on you, you’ll never eat another bite; and as I rush by the end of the castle of Tubber Tintye with the speed of the wind, you must spring from my back through an open window that is there; and if you don’t get in at the window, you ‘re done for. I’ll wait for you outside till you are ready to go back to Erin.”

The prince did as the little horse told him. They crossed the river of fire, escaped the touch of the poison-trees, and as the horse shot past the castle, the prince sprang through the open window, and came down safe and sound inside.

The whole place, enormous in extent, was filled with sleeping giants and monsters of sea and land, – great whales, long slippery eels, bears, and beasts of every form and kind. The prince passed through them and over them till he came to a great stairway. At the head of the stairway he went into a chamber, where he found the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, stretched on a couch asleep. ” I’II have nothing to say to you,” thought he, and went on to the next; and so he looked into twelve chambers. In each was a woman more beautiful than the one before. But when he reached the thirteenth chamber and opened the door, the flash of gold took the sight from his eyes. He stood a while till the sight came back, and then entered. In the great bright chamber was a golden couch, resting on wheels of gold. The wheels turned continually; the couch went round and round, never stopping night or day. On the couch lay the queen of Tubber Tintye; and if her twelve maidens were beautiful, they would not be beautiful if seen near her. At the foot of the couch was Tubber Tintye itself, – the well of fire. There was a golden cover upon the well, and it went around continually with the couch of the queen.

“Upon my word,” said the prince, “I’ll rest here a while.” And he went up on the couch, and never left it for six days and nights.

On the seventh morning he said, ” It is time for me now to leave this place.” So he came down and filled the three bottles with water from the flaming well. In the golden chamber was a table of gold, and on the table a leg of mutton with a loaf of bread; and if all the men in Erin were to eat for a twelvemonth from the table, the mutton and the bread would be in the same form after the eating as before.

The prince sat down, ate his fill of the loaf and the leg of mutton, and left them as he had found them. Then he rose up, took his three bottles, put them in his wallet, and was leaving the chamber, when he said to himself: “It would be a shame to go away without leaving something by which the queen may know who was here while she slept.” So he wrote a letter, saying that the son of the king of Erin and the queen of the Lonesome Island had spent six days and nights in the golden chamber of Tubber Tintye, had taken away three bottles of water from the flaming well, and had eaten from the table of gold. Putting this letter under the pillow of the queen, he went out, stood in the open window, sprang on the back of the lean and shaggy little horse, and passed the trees and the river unharmed.

When they were near his aunt’s house, the horse stopped, and said: ” Put your hand into my ear, and draw out of it a Druidic rod; then cut me into four quarters, and strike each quarter with the rod. Each one of them will become the son of a king, for four princes were enchanted and turned into the lean little shaggy horse that carried you to Tubber Tintye. When you have freed the four princes from this form you can free your two aunts from the spell that is on them, and take them with you to Lonesome Island.”

The prince did as the horse desired; and straightway four princes stood before him, and thanking him for what he had done, they departed at once, each to his own kingdom.

The prince removed the spell from his aunts, and, travelling with them and the two sons of the queen of Erin, all soon appeared at the castle of the king.

When they were near the door of their mother’s chamber, the elder of the two sons of the queen of Erin stepped up to the prince of Lonesome Island, snatched the three bottles from the wallet that he had at his side, and running up to his mother’s bed, said:

“Here, mother, are the three bottles of water which I brought you from Tubber Tintye.”

“Thank you, my son; you have saved my life,” said she.

The prince went on his bark and sailed away with his aunts to Lonesome Island, where he lived with his mother seven years.

When seven years were over, the queen of Tubber Tintye awoke from her sleep in the golden chamber; and with her the twelve maidens and all the giants, beasts, and monsters that slept in the great castle.

When the queen opened her eyes, she saw a boy about six years old playing by himself on the floor. He was very beautiful and bright, and he had gold on his forehead and silver on his poll. When she saw the child, she began to cry and wring her hands, and said: ” Some man has been here while I slept.”

Straightway she sent for her Seandallglic (old blind sage), told him about the child, and asked:

“What am I to do now?”

The old blind sage thought a while, and then said: “Whoever was here must be a hero; for the child has gold on his forehead and silver on his poll, and he never went from this place without leaving his name behind him. Let search be made, and we shall know who he was.”

Search was made, and at last they found the letter of the prince under the pillow of the couch. The queen was now glad, and proud of the child.

Next day she assembled all her forces, her giants and guards; and when she had them drawn up in line, the army was seven miles long from van to rear. The queen opened through the river of fire a safe way for the host, and led it on till she came to the castle of the king of Erin. She held all the land near the castle, so the king had the sea on one side, and the army of the queen of Tubber Tintye on the other, ready to destroy him and all that he had. The queen sent a herald for the king to come down.

“What are you going to do?” asked the king when he came to her tent. “I have had trouble enough in my life already, without having more of it now.”

“Find for me,” said the queen, “the man who came to my castle and entered the golden chamber of Tubber Tintye while I slept, or I’ll sweep you and all you have from the face of the earth.

The king of Erin called down his elder son, and asked: ” Did you enter the chamber of the queen of Tubber Tintye?”

“I did.”

“Go, then, and tell her so, and save us.”

He went; and when he told the queen, she said:

“If you entered my chamber, then mount my gray steed.”

He mounted the steed; and if he did, the steed rose in the air with a bound, hurled him off his back, in a moment, threw him on a rock, and dashed the brains out of his head.

The king called down his second son, who said that he had been in the golden chamber. Then he mounted the gray steed, which killed him as it had his brother.

Now the queen called the king again, and said:

“Unless you bring the man who entered my golden chamber while I slept, I ‘II not leave a sign of you or anything you have upon the face of the earth.”

Straightway the king sent a message to the queen of Lonesome Island, saying: ” Come to me with your son and your two sisters!”

The queen set out next morning, and at sunset she drew up her boat under the castle of the king of Erin. Glad were they to see her at the castle, for great dread was on all.

Next morning the king went down to the queen of Tubber Tintye, who said: “Bring me the man who entered my castle, or I’ll destroy you and all you have in Erin this day.”

The king went up to the castle; immediately the prince of Lonesome Island went to the queen.

“Are you the man who entered my castle?” asked she.

“I don’t know,” said the prince.

“Go up now on my gray steed! ” said the queen.

He sat on the gray steed, which rose under him into the sky. The prince stood on the back of the horse, and cut three times with his sword as he went up under the sun. When he came to the earth again, the queen of Tubber Tintye ran over to him, put his head on her bosom, and said:

“You are the man.”

Now she called the queen of Erin to her tent, and drawing from her own pocket a belt of silk, slender as a cord, she said: ” Put this on.”

The queen of Erin put it on, and then the queen of Tubber Tintye said: ” Tighten, belt! ” The belt tightened till the queen of Erin screamed with pain. “Now tell me,” said the queen of Tubber Tintye, “who was the father of your elder son.”

“The gardener,” said the queen of Erin.

Again the queen of Tubber Tintye said:

“Tighten, belt! ” The queen of Erin screamed worse than before; and she had good reason, for she was cut nearly in two. ” Now tell me who was the father of your second son.”

“The big brewer,” said the queen of Erin.

Said the queen of Tubber Tintye to the king of Erin: ” Get this woman dead.”

The king put down a big fire then, and when it was blazing high, he threw the wife in, and she was destroyed at once.

Now do you marry the queen of Lonesome Island, and my child will be grandchild to you and to her,” said the queen of Tubber Tintye.

This was done, and the queen of Lonesome Island became queen of Erin and lived in the castle by the sea. And the queen of Tubber Tintye married the prince of Lonesome Island, the champion who entered the golden chamber while she slept.

Now the king of Erin sent ten ships with messages to all the kings of the world, inviting them to come to the wedding of the queen of Tubber Tintye and his son, and to his own wedding with the queen of Lonesome Island.

The queen removed the Druidic spells from her giants, beasts, and monsters; then went home, and made the prince of Lonesome Island king of Tubber

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/mfli/mfli05.htm

What is missing from our modern age is that the Lady of Tubber Tintye types, the goddesses of our society have been destroyed by feminism.  The goal of such goddesses in tales such as this is to provoke in young men the ultimate prize.  To apply this story to the ZZ Top video above, the hero protagonist could have stopped and engaged in sexual delight with any of the previous women of the Lady’s chamber, but he held out until he discovered the ultimate prize.  However, along the way he witnessed many men had fallen for the women in the first few rooms—and those men were of lower quality.  They had failed in their quest—and settled.

The modern progressive approach to this problem because not all women can be of a quality like the Lady of Tubber Tintye is to make them equal to the guys in the first few rooms—the failed ones who settled too easily and quickly for sexual gratification.  If one were to break down the fundamental mentality of all progressive philosophy and how it directly applies to Common Core education, feminism, gay rights, and government statism—at the core of their approach is the destruction of such goddess symbols in our society.

The reason is that such women become matriarchs of their families and the destruction of family units are what progressives are after—so that the collective state will replace the matriarch and patriarch of the modern family.  By removing the Tubber Tintye type women from culture, statists take away the incentive for strong-willed men to proceed along looking for the perfect sexual experience.  By destroying the image of the goddess which most men yearn for—like the guy in the ZZ Top video—they force all men to settle with common women in the first few rooms with a kind of intellectual orgy arranged by progressives for their benefit.

I married a Lady of Tubber Tintye.  She made me work hard for the bliss of her spinning couch.  And because she did, I valued our relationship.  And because I valued that relationship, the products of that union, the children, the nieces, the nephews, the in-laws, all the aspects of it have increased value because of my raised awareness of their importance—again brought forth by the struggle to resist the temptation to pick women from the first couple of rooms—the common girls who were only booby traps to hold intellectual pursuits suppressed with a sexual ecstasy that is conciliatory—not ecstatic.  The tragedy is that not all women are qualified to be Lady’s of Tubber Tintye, just as all men are not qualified to be The Prince of Lonesome Island.  But all men and all women should strive to be—even if they fall short.  Because such struggles are what bring forth quality, higher quality people, higher quality relationships, and higher quality intellects.  Through the struggle of existence—in this case of the Prince of Lonesome Island to seeking three bottles of water from a sacred well at Tubber Tintye, we solve the problems of living life.

Stories like this Tubber Tintye story have a level of sophistication that is not present in our current society.  With all the tools available to the 21st Century human being—we are more asleep than ever, primarily because of the imposition that global politics has played through the progressive movement to redefine the roles that rest at the heart of social psychology.  The political and social progressive is attempting to recreate the human mind and they are failing.  The intention is to destroy the motive of individual achievement in favor of statism.  Young men are discouraged from attempting to win their Lady of Tubber Tintyes by removing through feminism women who are capable of raising the level of society through their goddess power.

A woman does not have to be beautiful in the classic sense to be a Lady of Tubber Tintye.  They may not have physical beauty.  However, what is in their heart must compensate, and many women fall into this category.  They may lack sexual prowess, but harness motherly care that husbands and children both yearn for.  They may not be as beautiful as the women in the ZZ Top video, but are beautiful in other ways that cannot be photographed.  For the sake of story, physical beauty is the proper metaphor for the kind of beauty that comes from such women.

I have yet to see an academic from any of the mainstream colleges, the Yale types, the Harvards, the Oxfords who can pass through a college professor gatekeeper an interpretation of that Tubber Tintye story without slanting it toward the modern interpretation of feminism as advanced through progressive theory.  Just as progressives have done with the gay rights dialogue, they have attempted to capture the message by redefining the words.  In the case of the Tubber Tintye story the definition of “goddess” has been changed by modern academia not to hold sexual superiority to men, and a boon to the world through phallic power achieved because of the desire to win a woman, but to make the woman the equalizer of all society—by making them equal to men.  The men as they enter the various chambers of the Lady of Tubber Tintye mostly fall victim to the women of the first twelve rooms.  They did not have the power in themselves to hold out until the last room where the golden lady resided.  Most of the time they are like the Queen of Erin’s sons—cowards conceived out of adulterous lust and shameless value.  This initiation process brought forth the trial and tribulations which allowed the young prince to solve the problems of his kingdom.  Under modern progressive interpretation, the message to all women is to be one of the girls in the first rooms so there is no ultimate goal at the end on a golden couch.  Make it easy for the men so they are all equal, and make it easy for all the other girls, since they are not goddesses, but only gate keepers to the ultimate prize.

Out of my hundreds of daily readers I am aware that only two or three will read this entire story—and understand what the purpose is.  But for those two or three, I do the work because it is extremely important to understand.  Without a firm understanding of these basic concepts, society will be destroyed and redefined by inferior minds built by the lazy good for nothings in the first few rooms of that ZZ Top video.  The video itself was clearly done by filmmakers aware of this Tubber Tintye story.  For commercial reasons it was done in a sexy way to entice viewers.  However, the reason the visuals work on a primal level for males, and females is that they understand the story of Tubber Tintye from an innate appreciation of such stories.  Most every young boy dreams of growing up and slaying dragons, and winning a woman like the one in the Tubber Tintye story.  From the ages of 1 to 12 they all have a chance of hitting it big time with such a woman.  However, once they begin to use sex as proof of their manhood they tend to make concessions and end up often with the kind of women in the first few rooms—airheads that look nice, but have little really going on behind the eyes. The men who jump at such women might find them in real society in brothels, escort services, strip joints, or ladder climbers at their places of business.  If they take on those kinds of girls they’ll never reach their own version of the Lady of Tubber Tintye at the end of the long hall in the 13th room.

The job of all women is to attempt to become a Lady of Tubber Tintye, and not to settle in their lives into being one of the try-out girls on the way snagging up all the weak-minded men.  The progressive movement is entirely about destroying the Lady of Tubber Tintye types so that no man has the option of one.  In such an absence, personal kingdoms collapse to the will of statism and government can rule every individual mind as the sex obsessed must cohabitate with all the would be Prince of Lonesome Island.  This story is my Christmas present to my readers—even though I know most people will not understand it.  I have to try.  Understanding this story is the key to the freedom movement and the proper restoration of the American family.  Understanding this story will destroy progressivism and restore health to all world cultures—if only people would accept the root definitions of the role women have to a man’s mind, and how important that role is to the preservation of mankind.  I’m not talking about a throwback to the times of the cowboy, or the 1950s, but the primal underpinnings of mythology that reside as far back as the first flicker of fire from an emerging Neanderthal.

If you are a woman, be the Lady of Tubber Tintye to your family.  If you are a man, be the Prince of Lonesome Island.  In the ZZ Top video, the protagonist is a modern Prince.  Be that guy—and you will not only save yourself, your future family, but all of humanity by avoiding the easy girls in the first rooms of temptation.    Save your energy for the Lady on the Golden Couch in the 13th room, because only she is worth the effort and that effort will save the world and everyone in it.  The Lady of Tubber Tintye is Ariel from the film The Litter Mermaid, she is Princess Leia from Star Wars, she is Christine from Phantom of the Opera—she is every major character in every major story in the history of all stories.  The Lady of Tubber Tintye is even Mia Wallace from the film Pulp Fiction—it doesn’t matter that she was a drug addict—she as the goddess who had the power to pull Vincent Vega into a place he had never considered going before.  She is the Virgin Mary who brought Jesus into the world, or depending on religious conviction, she is Mary Magdallen who served as inspiration to stand up to the Pharisees in the darkest of times prior to his conviction and execution.  Every major successful story has a Lady of Tubber Tintye—even in The Lord of the Rings where the female goddess image has been replaced metaphorically as The Shire, which is an actual place. Galadriel, Arwen, and Éowyn, serve as the typical goddess figures, Galadriel pulls the Hobbits together for the bravery needed for their quest, Arwen does the same for Aragorn and Eowyn performs this task for her entire kingdom ultimately saving her father from the treachery of Worm Tongue and the forces behind him.  But the female goddess of Tubber Tintye is the actual Shire for the purposes of plot.  All good stories have a Tubber Tintye character just as all good families do, and marriages.  Without some goddess figures in the lives of the men, everything perishes—plot, motivation—even the willpower to get out of bed in the morning.  Is it any wonder that so many young men cannot find the ambition to get up in the morning………..when sex is placed so easily before them in the first few rooms of their life—what is their to work for?  The answer is nothing.

Men and women are not equal.  They are different.  Men need women to provide intended focus.  Those who do not have women in their lives tend to drift through life unfocused and full of folly.  On the other hand, women will look for many years and wait patiently for their own version of the Prince of the Lonely Island.  Some go their entire lives continuing to look for him—even after they have long married and had children.  Social pressure often pushes them into the arms of men they marry to please their parents, but their hearts are seldom in it.  That was the story of Francesca Johnson from the novel The Bridges of Madison County which mysteriously sold over 50 million copies.  The story featured a four-day affair with the noble character Robert Kincaid after years of marriage to a good man—but a common farmer not worthy of her healing power on the golden couch—not willing to take water out of a flaming well for anybody so long as the crops were ready for the state fair.  More contemporarily, she is Anastasia “Ana” Steele the 21-year-old college senior attending Washington State University in Vancouver, Washington taming through sexual bondage the billionaire 27-year-old Christian Grey.  All those stories feature a goddess figure that heals the world through her love and power.  If that element is removed, the story falls flat nearly 100% of the time.  And the results are absolutely no different in real life—when a strong female is not driving quality in her relationships, the world falls apart.  She is different from men who do not have this power.  Men have the power to slay dragons and wage war with each other—but women provide the context for the value in it.  If the woman is corrupt, then the endeavor becomes corrupt.  If the woman is righteous, such as in the Lady of Tubber Tintye—there is goodness for all as a direct byproduct of her effort.

These things cannot be escaped from—they are the rules of life.  They cannot be willed from existence such as progressives hope to do with homosexual endorsements.  Men and women cannot be made equal with hope and prayers.  Such equality cannot be given through legislation.  The desire for the Ladies of Tubber Tintye is deep in the heart of all people everywhere.  It comes out in our oldest and newest stories and are legends for a reason.  Stories that do a good job at capturing the latest Tubber Tintye version make millions of dollars not because of some trick, but because these are the stories that people crave to see—as there is a truth in those stories that cannot be reached any other way.  The lesson, which is captured so eloquently in the ZZ Top “Legs” video, is that the message that still has the most power in our culture whether it be a movie, a song, or an ad for sunglasses—is the woman is the vehicle to reach some higher place.  Get a better job get a better woman.  Drive a better car, get a better woman.  Dress nicely, get approval from better women.  Put on cologne, and gain the attraction of better women.  Goddess figure women are the dominate drivers of culture from selling jeans to automobiles.  Advertisers who have experimented with more gender neutral images find that their sales plummet, because the world is driven by the image and promise of the Lady of Tubber Tintye.  Women do not function from the same mentality.  They know innately that they are trying to appeal to be that woman from the golden couch.  They get their nails done hoping their men will work to appeal to them, their hair, their ear rings, their perfume, their diets—all in a hope of finding a Prince of the Lonesome Island who will seek their well of flaming water.  If they are lucky women, they marry such Princes, but most don’t.  They instead become bitter hags, school levy supporters, progressive bitches and detriments to all humanity.  They spend billions of dollars a year to try to pretend they are Ladies of Tubber Tintye, but because of their poor decisions, are simply women of that first room—taken by the most impatient and weak men lacking the willpower to hold out for the best of the best—the woman on the Golden Couch spinning at the center of the world and the power that drives everything.

I could write a book about this topic and make a lot of money from it.  If I wanted to, I could probably take this act on the road and do speaking engagements on the topic.  But I offer it to those here with the gumption to read it for free.  It is my hope that you Dear Reader will take the time to read and study all this and learn from it.  If you do, the world can begin to solve some of its problems, and in the end—that’s all I want.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Carlos Todd Wants His Republican Party Back: The strings that move John Boehner’s mouth

When I was a kid a lot of adults told me that I needed to grow up and get realistic about things—that my view of the world would either get me killed, or I’d kill myself in frustration over my unrealistic expectations.  Young people with the world in front of them, but little experience to discourage their results think they can conquer the world—singlehandedly if needed.  Adults then and now have the all-knowing vantage point of having been there and done it—and their advice is almost always that the idealism about life requires young people to “grow up,” to get, “realistic.”  What they really mean when they say such things is that being a grown up requires the compromising of beliefs.  Being a “grown up” requires yielding to the forces of existence instead of challenging them.  Well, I never listened.  I have been challenging things for almost half a century, and I’m not going to stop now—and many of those people who used to tell me to grow up, are now wondering how I have made it so far without bending to the will of the world of compromise that those adults always spoke of.  The anger is no longer a muffled breath—“someday he’ll grow up,” it is now serious concern—because it reflects back on them that they have cheapened their lives unnecessarily  to rules that they can now see delivered them to an abyss.

Needless to say I do not get invited to the Alderson Christmas party in my town—a place where all the movers and shakers gather to be seen—and is the crux of local politics.   Mostly Republicans go to such things, some Democrats, freedom fighting libertarians and even some non-political spirits—but what most of them all have in common is that they are “grown ups,” under the definitions established by the mysticism of establishment culture—formulated by compromises over many years.  What makes this year different is that the adults of that world are now telling those of us heavy in the freedom movement that it’s time to grow up and get serious about the future and to validate their point—they often look to the invite list of events like the mentioned Christmas Parties.  If you want to become invited, then you must grow up and accept certain things.  The payoff for growing up is that you can associate with the wealthy and powerful, and establish networking connections that will benefit your life.  If you are not at these kinds of parties then you are on your own—but otherwise cast out of the social circle that controls everything—thus meaning that you will suffer.  The people who control these party invite lists are the actual people who shape the tone of a culture for better or worse—because they gain control of the adults and their goals, and can thus steer them into the proper direction.

Some of the people on said invite lists are my old No Lakota Levy friends.  When I served as a spokesman for that group which I started, former rivals such as the all-powerful developer Carlos Todd and less so Mark Sennett showed an interest in joining forces with me—so we put our differences aside to fight against a common enemy—the Lakota school system.   However, along the way, the threat of not being invited to such high-profile social engagements constantly threatened them—so they chose to stay in the shadows letting me do all the talking.  I didn’t care to be on the invite list to any parties, or charity events, so they got in behind me nicely and kept their mouths shut.  Yet when the heat got to be too much, people like Mark decided to break away from my ranks and do their own thing, claiming No Lakota Levy as their own.  CLICK TO REVIEW.  But it didn’t work out very well, and Mark ended up castigating himself from our group by the next election.  Again a year later when I called some of the levy rivals “latte sipping prostitutes with asses the size of car tires,” some of the big names in politics in No Lakota Levy wanted to distance themselves from me as I had proven to be too reckless for their “adult” sensibilities.  Everyone knew who I was really talking about, and it wasn’t the general mothers of West Chester—but the kind of people who make out the yearly Christmas Party list of such notable concern.  By associating with me, many people were afraid they wouldn’t be on such lists in the future—so they allowed themselves to be steered by establishment orthodoxy.  That establishment was made up of the classic “adult” types—people who have compromised themselves and their beliefs of youth to secure good livings for themselves and social connections that would take them there.  Since I didn’t function by those rules, nobody really knew what to do with me.   People of some level of prominence are supposed to care about things like that—but I never have—and I never will.  So this has left those people to whisper behind my back—“he needs to grow up.”  What they really mean……….under their breath is…………”I can’t compete.”

Well, one of those old No Lakota Levy guys came out this past week on the heels of John Boehner’s rant against the Tea Party and revealed where the Speaker of the House suddenly found courage against those who had been calling him a RINO.  Butler County, Ohio for as long as I’ve been alive is a staunch Republican area—but of late people like me have supported the Tea Party and people like the former head of the Republican Party in Southern Ohio Carlos Todd supported traditional machine politics.  For many years if a Republican wanted to get elected to office in Butler County, they had to go though Carlos Todd—including John Boehner.  But in 2010, to capitalize off the rise of the Tea Party movement, people like Todd helped put Tea Party supporter David Kern into his former seat to curry favor of this new demographic of Constitutional purists.  The move was equivalent to an adult pretending to be a cool, hip teenager by coming down to their level to ease social awkwardness.  The memo had gone out to all party Republicans instructing them to treat the Tea Party with respect and ride their wave.  Boehner did as he was told and once Nancy Pelosi was knocked out of the speaker seat, and Boehner took over—they actually pretended to read from The Constitution, so to make the Tea Party believe that Boehner was on their side.

But after the talk of making Ohio a right-to-work state which would harm governor Kasich’s chances for re-election in Ohio, and the Republican Party’s desire to cozy up with the sitting President in Obama—they have sought to distance themselves from the Tea Party.  In Butler County this has led to an influx of infighting among Republicans in virtually every seat held by an elected official.  Behind the scenes people like Carlos Todd, who have had their hands in just about everything political so to pave the way for profitable business relationships cut off the money to the Republican machine which brought harm to the party under Kern’s leadership causing the infighting to be much greater than it otherwise would.  This past week as Boehner denounced the Tea Party after a budget compromise and a tongue lashing during the press conference announcement—David Kern stepped down from his job as head of the Republican Party in Butler County.  On the heels of that announcement Carlos Todd circulated a memo through the Republican network to the effect, “it’s time to grow up.”

What Todd means by his statements is that the grownups in politics need to be able to generate revenue for the party and that all responsible participants need to drop these immature notions about The American Constitution for the good of all Republicans.  Yet the source of the infighting all along are those who only pretended to support the Tea Party when it benefited them, and now that the national conservative talking points are “immigration reform,” “compromise,” and improving their image with women, the puritan views of American foundation principles are supposed to be rejected.    John Boehner did not come out suddenly against the Tea Party out of genuine concern about their opinion of his budget compromise.  Boehner’s people were at the straw poll where it was revealed that no reasonable challenger could be agreed to pushing Boehner out of office during the upcoming primary.  But the fact that four people were considering challenging Boehner was enough to scare the Republican establishment and convince movers and shakers like Carlos Todd that it was time to retake control of the party again in Butler County.

Carlos and I have had words in the distant past.  During the No Lakota Levy days, we were polite to each other, and when his kind of people wanted to take control of the movement away from me he didn’t change my behavior to their frustration—as I didn’t care about invites to Christmas Parties and charity events.  Like the Tea Party they wanted to use me for as long as it was convenient, and when they were ready for a change, they’d make it.  Our parting was not some issue over an Enquirer article as much as the people behind the scenes stoking the fires to provoke the situation—people from both political sides—mine and the enemy.  Our relationship worked so long as we were working for the same goals–lower taxes in the Lakota district.  But at a point, the endeavor began to cost money, so they wished to change direction and distance themselves from the radical Rich Hoffman.  People like Karen Mantia know this about the Carlos Todd types, and they exploit them routinely.  So long as the motivation is purely money, people can be easily controlled, which is why the Republican Party has been demolished over a long-span of time under the leadership of the Carlos Todd types.  They stand for very little philosophically allowing them to be controlled by a minority of the population in progressives.  Some of those people I genuinely like, some of them I considered my enemies even as they sat one foot from my face.  But if I could use their money to accomplish a tactical objective that we mutually benefited from– I did.  But I would not yield to the ideal driving their strategy.  I had my own objectives.  In the case of Carlos, those types of convictions are not present.  With him, it’s all about the money, money for the party’s war chest, and money regarding personal finance.

I had a union supporter send me an email a few weeks back calling me Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life, which is one of my favorite all time films.  The guy was speaking with a level of naïveté that is innocently limited in its scope and world view.  I replied to him that I identified with the Baileys in that film, not Mr. Potter.  As a union trained mind, he thinks all people who support business, wealth, and productivity makes them greedy—like Mr. Potter.  But the breakdown is more complicated than that.  Because of Carlos Todd, my childhood home is now a sports bar.  Where I grew up and slept every day, is now a pissing post for drunks who park on the side lot of what used to be my vast front yard.  My mother has never been the same since that property was sold under an extensive zoning battle in Liberty Township that involved trustee Bob Shelly, Mark Sennett, Carlos Todd and a few others.  That was the home where my mom raised her family and the money didn’t take away the pain of surrendering those memories to the business interests aligned with politics to crush individual will.  I know who the Mr. Potter is in Butler County, and he wants his Republican Party back, and is making the move to secure that intention.

I’m not anti-business by any stretch of the imagination.  I respect people who create and make things from nothing—and being a developer does that—more so than the union loser who is just a parasite off existence.  So Carlos and his type were able to work with me on No Lakota Levy because we agreed on at least that much.  But when people make the assumption that I was fired from a group that I started in No Lakota Levy, the truth is far from their beliefs.  There were attempts to reel me in the same as what is going on now with the Republican Party and the Tea Party.  For most, the party invites are enough to keep alliances directed toward the party objectives—in spite of what personal beliefs may entail.  But, as I’ve pointed out many times, I’d rather play video games with my wife and kids all weekend than attend a formal at the Alderson’s house celebrating Christmas and being a member of the “elite.”  To me that kind of thing is worthless, and has no philosophical merit.  It also puts you at a tactical disadvantage because today’s friend may be tomorrow’s enemy—and it is best not to break too much bread with those types—because you may have to crush them at some point.  And it is not good to have friendships that may cause a hesitation when a good crushing is required.

However, the memo is out by those who want control of the Republican Party once again that it is time to grow up—do the adult thing—and serve the collective needs of the party.  It is coming out of John Boehner, it is coming out of John Kasich, it is coming out of Mitch McConnell, but the origin of all those opinions do not come from the politicians themselves, but the network of people attending the Alderson Christmas Party and people like Carlos Todd who work the strings of politics behind the scenes.  The memo these days say “How about initiating a ‘draft a grown up’ campaign,” to get the party together for the 2014 elections, and a push for president in 2016.  For those types of people, their eyes are always on politics and how they can make it profit them with crony capitalism—instead of the type I support in laissez-faire capitalism, which requires the best idea—instead of the connections one has built.  But when the guilt of living a life under such premises becomes too great, and the crony capitalist is forced to compete with the laissez-faire capitalist the crony is at a loss and cannot stand on the same ethical ground—so they do what the guilty adult says to the vibrant teenager—you need to grow up.  What they really mean is that you need to surrender your principles for the greater good of party politics and stop thinking so idealistically, and start thinking how you’re going to make a living for yourself.  For Carlos Todd, he has made a good living in aligning politics to his business needs.  And he wants to take the party away from the Tea Party which is largely philosophical, and ideological, and return it to back-room deals at Christmas Parties where people like John Boehner eat out of his hand like a begging dog.

When it is said that the Republicans are infighting—this is what is essentially happening.  There are those who think like Carlos Todd, and then there are those who think the way I do.  David Kern is one of those types—who thinks the way I do.  They have attempted to do to him what they wanted to do to No Lakota Levy when they felt they were losing control of the message—and they always use the “grown up” argument to make their point.  But for me, there is too much Peter Pan in my character.  Living life a compromised adult has never been appealing.  What you end up with is a former home that is now a pissing palace, or a pathetic politician lacking firm convictions, or a person who will sell their own mother for ten years of financial security.  Compromise is not good—and so long as people attempt to impose compromise over philosophic merit—there will be infighting.  It might not get you invited to the big Christmas Parties, but it sure does help a person sleep at night without a pantry full of drugs to make the adult demons of compromise shut up long enough to carry a mind away into blissful slumber.

David Kern, as always did a good job.  But most of the time when the issue is over crony capitalism, the job has nothing to do with being good, but in who you know, and how you can use them to achieve fiscal goals.  I am proud to say that David Kern is far too sincere of a person to be good at that game—and that is something to be proud of.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The “One Amigo”, John Kasich: Ohio’s actor expanding Medicaid and learning how real the game is

If there was a film that reminded me of the character of Governor Kasich of Ohio it would be the Three Amigos, the classic comedy done by Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short.  In that film three film actors were hired to be real life gunman by a desperate village hoping the Three Amigos would stand up to a group of tyrants.  Only the Three Amigos believe that the whole ordeal is only another film—they have no idea that the situation they’ve been hired for is actually real.  So they engage the bandits with bravado—the kind of valor displayed in their movie characters.  Of course, the bandits are real, and when the Three Amigos engage them, bad things happen.  When Steve Martin gets shot by a real bullet, the three movie friends have a nervous breakdown and cry before their enemies and beg for their lives.  In a lot of ways that is what happened to John Kasich in Ohio.  He was elected as a Tea Party governor by a village desperate for protection—and when he engaged the real life thugs—the labor unions—the special interest groups—the Obamanites—and poll numbers—he revealed himself to be only an actor who used to host on Fox News.  Kasich begged for his life, hat in hand. This was the metaphor I used on a recent Michigan radio broadcast on WAAM with Matt Clark.

John Kasich unlike the Three Amigos is all by himself—he is all those comedy characters rolled up into one person.  He has the statesmanship of the Steve Martin character, the naïveté of Martin Short, and the clumsy stupidity of Chevy Chase.  But the sum of his entire personality—and role as Ohio’s governor is that his is the One Amigo—friend to himself—and nobody else.  For a tough talking governor who declared that he would be willing to run one term and leave back to the private sector—that he only wanted to be governor to do good for Ohio—he has turned out to be a phony.  He is currently seeking a second term, and beyond that—is a presidential hopeful.  Just like everyone else before him—Kasich proved to be only an actor talking a good game, but in the end, he fell in love with the opulence, the respect, and glamour of being in charge of a state.

The final straw with Kasich is his intentional exploitation of the poor through Medicaid expansion to win votes and popularity.  He lost the unions through Senate Bill 5 and stood with the Tea Party.  He abandoned the Tea Party after that union loss.  He lost the cops, the teachers, and the firefighters—which he never really had, he lost the women, he lost the blacks, he lost the immigrants—so he is looking to repair those demographic numbers with Medicaid expansion even by-passing the state legislature in the process.  In his pursuit of a second term, he has become a tyrant—an actor looking for another gig.

Without question the Republican Party is behind some of Kasich’s plans.  They do not want to lose a Republican governor in an election—because in the game of politics, the winner is the side with the most “Rs” in office over “Ds.”  They don’t care how the “Rs” get into office—so long as they call themselves Republicans.  They don’t care if Kasich maintains conservative ideals, or stands for anything at all—because their goal is to win the political game with more people calling themselves Republican—even if deep in their hearts they are Democrats.

What politicians like Kasich learn too late is that the game he was playing is all too real.  The village really needed a gunman to defend them, and the bandits are actually sinister.  So like the Three Amigos who realized they were way over their head—sought the comfort of their mansions, and opulent lifestyles to shield their sensibilities from the aggression of the real world threats.  Kasich retreated from his values rather quickly, and has become a major disappointment.  He talks tough, but in the end he is like what I said to Matt during our interview—more reminiscent of a female sex organ—and what’s happening to the Republican Party—and the freedom movement reflects that submissive role.  Like a common whore happy to give out such submissive positions to more aggressive alpha Democrats, Kasich thinks he can play the game of politics in his favor by making deals—just like a slut makes deals with a pimp and hopes to hustle a few favors in the process.

If Kasich were a real hero, and not a fake like in the Three Amigos, he would stand for something—but this is where he is weak.  Now that he’s been discovered as a fraud, as only an actor and not a metaphorical “gunman” his political enemies know how to destroy him—which of course won’t be any benefit to the Republican Party anyway.  As it stands, Kasich is no different from Ted Strickland—his previous rival for office.  The only real difference is that Kasich knows how to act like he cut the state budget by simply shuffling money around and calling it a balanced budget.  It’s similar to the slut who pretends to perform sex acts on a drunken customer who has passed out.  They’ll never know if the prostitute actually did the things they were charged for—because they were passed out.  Kasich plans to do the same in the 2014 election.  He has the “R” next to his name, but he’s every bit a progressive as Ted Strickland was, or Senator Sherrod Brown is currently.  They are all big government people who play political games with stolen money and hide the behavior behind an acting job.  Kasich is simply the “One Amigo,” instead of three.

Because of Kasich the roots of Obamacare will spread deep into Ohio for years to come—and he will incentivize more poor people to stay poor, and become more dependent on the government.  It will always be Kasich’s mistakes as governor that will determine the future encroachment of Obama’s tyrannical wealth redistribution scheme.  Kasich took the bait from Obama, the way a whore takes the bait of a $100 dollar bill.  He thinks the garbage he gets in to will wash off after the act with a nice shower, but that is because he hasn’t considered that he might receive a sexually transmitted disease that will stay with him the rest of his life.  Obamacare to Ohio is like a sexually transmitted disease spread to everyone through Medicaid expansion—a deal that literally screws Ohio for decades in the future only for the purpose of John Kasich to exploit the poor and win re-election.

The Kasich governorship is a comedy act in the same way that the movie the Three Amigos was intended; only the implications are not just laughs, but long-term peril.  When the movie Three Amigos ends, the DVD can be removed and life continues on, but with Kasich, his blunders will stay with Ohio forever—because like an STD, the disease of liberalism will reside within the laws of the state perpetually.  The metaphors as bombastic as they may sound are appropriate, and good radio for Matt Clark’s show, but therapy for a state deeply frustrated by Kasich and his foolish antics.  His comedy act is appreciated by people like Obama, Sherrod Brown and other progressives—but for everyone else, it’s not funny.  For everyone else, we are like Steve Martin wounded from a bullet realizing too late that the danger is very real—and we’re not just play acting.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Liberalism is a Mental Illness: Why the media is so quiet about Karl Pierson–the “Socialist School Shooter”

If liberalism were classified as a mental disorder, we might have stopped many mass shootings; at least that was the reasoning Ann Coulter espoused during a recent episode with Sean Hannity.  That comment may sound inflammatory—but in all reality—there is more truth to it than rhetoric.  The proof is in the recent school shooting at Araphoe High School outside of Denver, Colorado which occurred on Friday December the 13th 2013 and was a dead story more or less by Monday, December 16th. On Friday the news coverage on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and everywhere else was wall to wall—as usual.  But by Saturday morning, less than 12 hours after the shooting the coverage dried up.  By Monday on the Special Report by Brett Baier there wasn’t a single mention of the shooting during the entire program—a news station thought highly to be a conservative leaning network.  Oddly missing from the many news stations were the Hollywood elite with constant calls for gun control, the prayer vigils, the sorrow of the poor kids shot by the made gunman Karl Pierson foolishly, maliciously, and for no reason at all struck down.  It seemed as if the media in general wanted to move on to another story and forget about this school shooting even as the anniversary of the Sandy Hook Massacre had just occurred prompting schools all over the country to begin staffing armed patrol officers to stop such things from happening—Araphoe being one of them.  The reason…………..well, Pierson unlike the other mass shooters of recent memory who were rumored to be politically left, but not clearly—the Araphoe shooter was clearly, unequivocally—and boldly was a socialist.  Socialism is the political philosophy that most of the media had accepted in small doses, a concept that is taught in public schools—not by name of course, but by practice, and is the current philosophy of the current President of The United States—again, not by name, but in practice.

Karl Pierson’s attack at Arapahoe High School lasted just 80 seconds.  He rushed into the school Friday with a bandolier of ammunition strapped to his chest carrying a machete, three Molotov cocktails and the pump-action shotgun that authorities said he bought days before to avenge a grudge he had against his debate coach for kicking him off the team.  Pierson was such a radical socialist—such a maniacal collectivist, that when even his teacher tried to reel him in, he thought like most left-winged tyrants do—that he had a right and obligation to force others into his way of thinking—by force if necessary.

The teen apparently harbored a grudge against his debate couch Murphy after being disciplined by him in September. The discipline came after Pierson made a verbal threat against Murphy to a group of students. Law enforcement was made aware of that threat, and the response to it remained under investigation.

Pierson’s Facebook page, before it was taken down, was a window into the mind of the accused shooter. He wrote a lot about economics and politics, calling himself a “Keynesian” and jesting that neoclassic economic theory would not fix the economy.

He also used his Facebook to routinely mock Republicans as seen below:

The Republican Party: Health Care: Let ’em Die, Climate Change: Let ’em Die, Gun Violence: Let ’em Die, Women’s Rights: Let ’em Die, More War: Let ’em Die. Is this really the side you want to be on?

One classmate described him as harmless but said he could get verbally aggressive and very heated when debating and discussing politics with teachers and students.  It is obvious that the left-winged radical was not harmless.  Pierson cared enough about socialism and Keynesian economics to go home, buy a gun, and kill his teacher for not being allowed to continue debating on the team—to have a platform to spread his message of collective endeavor through socialism.

Here are several articles covering the story as it unfolded:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/15/dad-says-daughter-critically-wounded-during-arapahoe-high-school-shooting-is-not-doing-well/

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/13/sheriff-at-least-two-people-injured-in-colorado-shooting/

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_24724553/arapahoe-high-school-shooting-sheriffs-office-interview-hundreds

http://www.heavy.com/news/2013/12/karl-pierson-arapahoe-high-school-shooter-colorado/

When progressive types run into any issue such as gun violence, their very first reaction is more regulation, more government intervention, less personal freedom, and stronger public school presence, yet these things keep happening in schools where many perceive such places to be safe—even though it is far more likely that their children would be involved in a school shooting than to be involved in an airplane accident.  There is still a fear of flying where there is not a fear of public schools.  Liberals often proclaim that these school shooters are mentally ill, and must be detected by the government schools and treated before they ever bring harm to anyone.  Yet it is never considered what made the shooters ill to begin with—it is never considered that the illness came from institutional failure and no other contributing factor—and that more government intervention will indirectly lead to more mass shootings, and more people who think the way Karl Pierson did.

Does anybody think that Pierson learned to be a socialist from his home environment?  Likely, he learned it from school.  Most children learn about liberalism in public schools by their teachers and college professors.  They vote for Democrats for the first 15 years of their adult lives, then once they maintain jobs for a while have kids of their own, purchase property and live responsibly—they grow out of liberalism and slowly become conservative.  By the time they reach their 50s and 60s they become those stuffy Republicans they used to rant about.  It’s a bit of a cycle of life that we needlessly endure because we allow the government to teach our kids with left-leaning methods that are destructive to their minds.  For people like Pierson—who was probably a bit different from most children from the start—after his debate teachers told him to watch shows like MSNBC and CNN’s Pierce Morgan—and other “recommended” viewing, so that the kid could become a better debater—his young mind became tainted as he observed the socialism of his school, the socialism of his President, the socialism of the news—and he put his finger to the wind and decided that he would become a liberal because he saw that the masses endorsed those views—from his perspective at the public school.  The teachers ripped on Republicans—so if he wanted good grades—he could do the same and get better grades—and maybe even become the next Michael Moore.  After playing at this game for a while, he began to believe that Keynesian economics was the salvation of the world—instead of its destroyer, and that socialism was a benefit to equality—instead of the great slayer of it.

The silence from the news came in the wake of the shooting because most of the people covering the story realized that they had contributed just a small bit to the violence because of their endorsements of soft socialism hidden behind mixed economies so prevalent in The United States.  Karl Pierson was a product of public education—and like most Frankenstein experiments—he became a monster that nobody wanted to acknowledge.  The political theory, the economic theory, and social justice that Karl Pierson learned in his public school became a monster that went on to bring great harm to the other collective occupants of Araphoe High School.  Pierson took what he learned further than the school intended and they tried to pull him out of it too late—they had let his mind go too far to the left—so much so that Pierson become dangerous.  Instead of growing up to become the next Al Gore, or Nancy Pelosi, or even Barack Obama, they had created a Frankenstein monster that got loose and wanted to destroy its maker—his teacher.

Liberalism by default of the frequent actions by many mass killers should be designated a mental illness—so that future people like Karl Pierson can be avoided.  But to admit that would require most people in the mainstream media, and political structure to admit that they are also suffering from the mental illness of liberalism—just not to the same degree Pierson was.  The great fear is that it might not take much for them to become as crazy as Karl Pierson—because they too support concepts of Keynesian economics, they too support socialism, and believe that liberalism is a benefit to society—instead of a detriment.  If anybody were really serious about stopping school shootings, they would not look to laws, guns, or more pansy teachings in public school, but would eliminate liberalism from the American consciousness.  By eliminating liberal instruction, education would not feed the mental illness that tends to occur in mass collectivists who believe that socialism should be the spine of all national economies.  In Karl Pierson’s case, he believed in liberalism so intently that he was willing to kill for it.  There really isn’t any other way to stop such a person once they get loose from a teacher’s control, and that is what scares so many media outlets.  Because they have helped put in motion large doses of the liberalism mental illness—and there will be more Karl Pierson types created by them for the destruction of mankind.  When they show themselves, the responsibility for their actions will fall on the shoulders of those most silent—the national media.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Galactic Starfighter Strategies: New ways of dealing with old problems on the liberty front

A lot of the things I am usually concerned with politically and professionally are current disappointments.  Just this past week I learned that conservative groups could not agree on a candidate to challenge John Boehner’s seat confirming that many people talk tough until it really counts—but in the end they wimp out—and will get the government they deserve as a result.  There appears to be a challenger to John Kasich’s seat, but that will be an uphill battle with major opposition rolling large stones down to stop the progress, so that is hardly a success story at this point.  President Obama is proving to be a crook more and more as the follies of Obamacare are setting up 2014 to be a disastrous year for many financially.  And my public school of Lakota got their tax money with a levy approval.  I am personally making arrangements in financing to ensure that I don’t pay the extra $36 dollars in taxes per month—but the monopoly hold the institution has on the press, the political structure and the  young minds of America’s youth remains strong—at least on the surface.  Professionally, I am busier than I have ever been in my life.  There is no shortage of need for problem solvers in spite of my attempt to be ostentatious to lower the line down to only those most serious–so free time is short—and at a severe premium.  It is in times like these that one must have good constructive hobbies—and I do.  I have shared with my readers here my long history and love of strategy games—particularly combat oriented war games where I can apply methods learned in The Art of War and The Book of Five Rings to theoretical situations—which I then apply to my real life needs by washing out strategic theories against real life opponents. Currently my two favorite games of this type are X Wing Miniatures, CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW, and the squeaky new online computer game Galactic Starfighter—which is my topic of discussion today.

Galactic Starfighter has been a very pleasant surprise.  As a space flight simulator featuring aerial combat that I have been looking forward to for a long time—it has delivered spectacularly.  I have a favorite video game called X-Wing from way back in the early 90s that I used to love—the graphics were not what they are today, but the game play was infinitely interesting.  The enemies were NPCs (Non Playable Characters) and would require tight combat engagements with a variety of craft to fly and fight against.  Huge capital ships would come into the scenario and would often hyper jump into a hot zone and start dispatching enemy fighters leaving a player frantic to shoot down as many as they could in a short time and attempt to take out the large vessels by knocking out their shields then destroying their bridge where the command structure was usually housed.  I played that game with a nephew of mine for many hours—and he still talks about it 20 years later as if it were one of the most fun times of his life.  Galactic Starfighter came out only as recently as December 3, 2013 and it didn’t take me long to discover what the design team at LucasArts, BioWare, and Electronic Arts were up to.  They essentially made a game with the basic concept of the old X-Wing game and dusted it off with a slick new paint job which modern programming allows.  The flight mechanics, the ability to shove power to shields, or engines depending on need is there, directional shields, targeting reticules, telemetry data streams—it’s all there.  Only Galactic Starfighter is better.

The old X-Wing game had NPCs programmed to go after a target along fixed parameters.  Once a pilot learned the basics of these standards, the NPCs could be dominated—so the learning curve was not terribly steep once the basics of concept and flight control were mastered.  With Galactic Starfighter the entire game is PVP (player versus player) meaning the people you fly against are all live pilots.  It reminds me of a very slick version of the old X-Box game Crimson Skies and how that game played on X-Box Live.  I have now played hundreds of matches, earned over a million credits, countless ACE awards, medals, and ship requisition allowing me to purchase upgrades for my small fleet of ships—and I’m nowhere near finished with it. If anything I am more eager to play it with each match queued up.  It is that good.

But what’s even better is that my wife—who is not a typical dog fighting advocate has found she can play it with me at the same time as we have very large specially built computers designed to exclusively play Star Wars: The Old Republic which Galactic Starfighter is a part.  That is a new development for me to have a combat simulator this powerful and dynamic which can link up to another player in real-time to fly coordinated maneuvers toward separate targets.  My wife does not love speed the way I do.  It is not something she enjoys.  I love to zip in and around obstacles forcing my opponents into a mistake running themselves into a fix object with close quarter fighting.  My wife is more of a defender type who takes her time and is good at holding down the fort after I’ve taken it—which is ironically the object of the game in Galactic Starfighter—which is essentially a fancy capture the flag game.

My wife uses a gunship—which is slow, but heavily armored to hold areas that I capture with my strike fighter, and she has gotten so good at using her 15,000mm rail gun to strike down approaching enemies from a comfortable distance while I engage them up close and personal—that it has led to a devastating series of losses for the other players on the opposite team.  And she is having a blast with it.  I don’t have to coax her into playing; she is the one wanting to continue playing new rounds.  Last night it was a quarter till one in the morning and we were both trying to find a good reason to play one more match—because it is so fun—and addicting.  It has all the mechanics from X-Wing which were best I’ve ever seen even after playing Crimson Skies, all the Microsoft Flight Simulators, and even Star Wars: Battlefront—yet Galactic Starfighter goes to a new level that is unprecedented. It has a Wing Commander feel to it and is simply a combination of all the great war games beloved for years wrapped up into one very cool package.

Using that rail gun, my wife may actually have more kills than I do which should say a lot to new players not confident with their piloting skills.  In Galactic Starfighter the gunships are slow—but powerful and very deadly.  The strike fighters and scout ships are the ones that have to fly all over the battlezone engaging in dogfights with other players.  The gunships sit back like snipers and zap their enemies from a comfortable distance—and using my wife and my strategy, I engage the enemy to keep them busy while she zaps away from a distance.  So long as they are engaged with me, they don’t notice her, which then makes all the kills.  Good stuff.

I get most of my creative strategic ideas for things in the real world by playing games like the ones mentioned.  On the liberty front, there are some valiant efforts, but not enough horsepower to pull things across the finish line—and it basically comes down to a lack of will power.  People talk a good game, but when they find themselves in the cross-hairs—just as they do in Galactic Starfighter, they panic and run into something killing themselves.  If I had a quarter for each time I applied a missile lock onto an enemy and when they hear their sensor alarms go off in their ship warning them of my approaching missile, they panic and run into the side of a mountain, or a floating asteroid, I’d be able to solve world hunger by making millionaires out of each of them.  The same thing has been happening in real life—people behave as they do when they play games like this—even worse because in real life they take even less chances because it matters there.  There is no reset button in the real world.  In a game like Galactic Starfighter at least if a mistake is made, the player can start over—and hopefully learn from their error.  Because of the value of such games it is a privilege to live in a time where they can be played relatively effortlessly.  My wife and I have a very expensive set-up basically just to play this game.  We have thousands of dollars invested.  But for a casual player, they could probably get by with only a laptop.  However, when she and I are both playing vigorously, our computers with their big processors put out enough heat to warm up a good-sized room on a very cold night.  We have six cool down fans on each of our computers to keep them cool during intense graphic interfaces enduring millions of calculations per second which makes playing Galactic Starfigher even possible.  Our set-up is unusual, and it is unlikely that many of the thousands of players on the game with us at any given time have such system capability—yet they can still play and enjoy it.  Since these kinds of things are so important to us, and we do so much of it, we take the extra measures to ensure a positive experience.

New strategies are needed when the old ones are not producing the results desired.  The first step in such a process is to recognize the issue, and correct it.  The way I do that is by playing these kinds of games.  Not falling in love with a set of engagement rules is the key to discovering the best way to take out an opponent, and in the real life world of politics, business, and human relationships—there are many enemies that must be taken down—simply because their intentions dictate such a position.  For me, the best way to do that is through strategy games—and currently the X-Wing Miniatures game is at the very top of my list—but this Galactic Starfighter is right there with it.  I’m telling you all this dear reader because during the Holiday Season, there are often moments of downtime—and abilities to play these kinds of games present themselves often.  Take advantage of the opportunity, because in 2014, a lot of tough topics are on the table—and fresh minds will be required to tackle them.  One way to obtain that freshness is in the new game Galactic Starfighter.  For you people out there who have a problem with me but the law won’t let us settle things properly in a parking lot somewhere, or in a duel of some kind—look me up on Galactic Starfighter.  I’m on the Jedi Covenant server flying by the name of Cliff-hanger.  You can’t miss me, I’m the one sending craft out of the sky in exploding heaps—and I’ll be happy to add your name to the list.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com