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The Power of Positive Thinking: Persistance is the most important attribute of success

I have more to say about the recent Michael Keaton movie, The Founder than I did during a recent review (click here to read that).  The Founder was one of those unique movies that truly crosses many boundaries of intellectual thought and within it is a little hidden gem that I thought was remarkably well articulated.   Disguised as a simple movie The Founder captures in a bottle the essence of Norman Vincent Peale’s “Power of Positive Thinking” which is a very real thing.  I don’t know if I have it naturally because I grew up in many of the same places that Peale did and went to many of the same small churches in the Ohio region—specifically Cincinnati.  But it’s always been a part of my life this idea explored in the film—that persistence is the most valuable trait attributed to success that there is anywhere in the world and it is the magic ingredient that is unlocked through the philosophy of capitalism.

If Ray Kroc and Donald Trump turned to Norman Vincent Peale it was for me the 30-minute span of time in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indiana Jones was stuck in a tomb with snakes, to the point where he was about to be run over by a truck in the famous chase scene of that classic movie that did it for me.  I was always a positive person who never understood the word quit, but for me that movie set me on a life path of understanding of how important persistence was to the human condition.  When Indiana Jones a few scenes after the truck chase swam over to the Nazi submarine that for me was my version of Norman Vincent Peale.  But of course over time I have refined that type of thinking to make it my own.  But once you get it, it makes you a unique person for life however it comes to you, and it’s something very specific to American culture.

One thing I that really jumped out at me while staying in England for an extended period of time was the structured limitations they put on themselves as a country.  I love that they read, and that they speak well—but people who have a tenacious persistence toward objectives is lacking.  Their culture does not produce such people naturally.  They get their occasional Richard Branson, or their Gorden Ramsay but on the street level charismatic characters such as what makes people like Ray Kroc are missing.  I thought it was a very powerful moment while at a convention panel discussing the movie The Founder that Michael Keaton hit the nerve absolutely on the keys to American capitalism perfectly.  Keaton stated that people from other countries just didn’t get “it,” what made Ray Kroc more than an American villain—but a hero of capitalism.  People outside of America are often mystified by the tenacious quality of Americans which is born from culture, family and pre-kindergarten education.  Other countries are missing the element of personal freedom so the traits that breed persistence into people from the age of infants is missing. You could see the same comments from socialist oriented publications talking about The Founder—they all wanted to view Kroc as a villain when in fact he wasn’t.  His character was far more complicated than that.  In a socialist society the value of a human being might be interpreted by how much they sacrifice of themselves in service to others—whereas in the capitalist definition it is in how much war is won in the name of success which therefore translates directly to improving the lives of everyone.  In the film The Founder Kroc proposes to the McDonald brothers that if they didn’t want to franchise the McDonald’s brand for their own profit then they should do it for the good of America—which is precisely what ended up happening.  Kroc never took no for an answer and just kept coming at the McDonald brothers until they gave in—which is a trait of most successful enterprises.  Most success in life doesn’t come from lucky shots and instant millions in the bank account—it comes from decades of rejection where a person never gives up and preservers against all odds because they simply wear out the opposition.   That is a specifically American concept and it is so evident in people like the real Norman Vincent Peale and Donald Trump.  It’s also there in American culture in fictional characters like Indiana Jones—which is why those movies have such resonance in our culture many decades later.  Because it speaks to the hopeful child in all of us that if we just work harder and longer we will eventually punch through.   Most of the miserable people who Henry David Thoreau referred to when he said “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them,” are your friends and neighbors who arrive at middle age sad, fat, and bored.  That is because what has died in them is that childlike persistence to attempt to walk, learn the alphabet, and learn to speak.   For people, lucky enough to preserve these traits in themselves into adulthood the world is a lot better off because of them.

Like they said in The Founder, which is what Michael Keaton was trying to frame within a global context during the aforementioned press conference, which many people just don’t understand—is that the most valuable trait to the pursuit of success is persistence.  You can have really smart people on a project, yet it won’t be successful if there is a lack of persistence present to drive things forward.  You can have strong people, beautiful people, or even conniving people, and a project won’t be successful unless there is someone there with vision fueled by persistence to accomplish a task.  (Robert Persig, Metaphysics of Quality)  For instance, Walt Disney is all about the story of persistence.  It’s not about talent, or even having a better idea than the next person.  Walt never quit trying hard for decades to get his ideas off the ground.  The same thing could be said of George Lucas and his Star Wars franchise.  He was “persistent” and if he hadn’t been there never would have been a Star Wars.  Persistence is the key to all endeavors.  If a person has persistence they are more valuable than people with great educations, great skills, and great beauty.   Persistence is the key to any successful enterprise and behind most stories of success, luck is not the driving factor, its persistence.  Luck sometimes happens, but persistence, the kind that Ray Kroc had in The Founder, is what defines success or failure.

People who have given up in life and turn to socialism for a means of feeding themselves without the shame of admitting what they’ve become hate people who are “persistent”  They may go watch an Indiana Jones movie and admire the persistence of the character and within the darkened theater, root for such people, but when they meet them in real life they hate them with a passion not because of the persistent people themselves, but because of what they’ve lost along the way that made them accept average results.  There are a lot of people in life who are like the McDonald brothers—successful people who figure out a better way to do simple things—but the world never hears from them because they stay in their little restaurants and live their little lives contently happy to remain there.  Then you have people like Ray Kroc who struggle most of their life to make it big from one idea to another always ready but never give up.  Because they never quit, and are persistent they are always in the game—much like the New England Patriots were in that great Super Bowl that wrapped up the 2016 season—never quitting, never yielding until they eventually ground out a win.  Or Donald Trump campaigning at 1 AM in the morning at Michigan the night before the massive American election in November of 2016.  Persistence equals wins—not every time, but the averages favor those who are always trying to win whether they are cleaning toilets or making multimillion dollar deals.

Persistance is not taught in our schools, but it is an aspect of American culture and explains why many people who are persistent are some of the greatest treasures to capitalism and our American economy that we have—and no school can lay claim to making them that way.  It’s created from deep inside during their infancy years.  I always had it, and I recognized it in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones just never stopped trying to get the Ark of the Covenant back from the Nazis.  In my life I purposely take on projects that would otherwise be impossible but for my endless persistence just to prove my thoughts true to all the people who have told me all my life that things are impossible.  My greatest thrill is in doing the impossible with sheer persistence.  I’ve done things in life that would have killed many people many times over from either suicide or public shame—and I have done them with an internal persistence that doesn’t come from any worldly reference.  It is beyond space and time even, and I consider it the greatest gift that a person can possess.  It should be the number one trait people list on a resume—but unfortunately most people don’t see it or understand it—otherwise they’d be better off.  But I can say that our American way of life makes more of them—and that alone makes the United States the most moral country on earth.  And that’s no small thing.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Canadian Socialism: WLW’s poor choice in selective advertising and how America isn’t going back

This is one of those snarky media things that really irritates me—because there is a presumption that they know more than the rest of us.  But in my case at least—they don’t.  I’m usually polite toward other people who don’t work as hard at knowing things as I do, but when you run into one of these little smart asses it deserves a review in front of the class.  First WLW radio put out a little story on Twitter seen below, about Canadians disparaging Trump as if that were some kind of story.  Now, everyone here knows my history with WLW—I think they are too liberal since the exit of Darryl Parks and I stopped listening to them or doing little things for their various shows way back then.  AM radio is a dying medium so they are useless to me. When I saw them say something nasty about Trump, I responded accordingly.  I worked hard for the Trump campaign in Ohio, and I continue to do so when necessary.  The nature of my comment was that seldom does any media outlet acknowledge the dirty little secret that Canadians are socialist and the only way their society even begins to have any decent standard of living is that they have a very low population to support with their socialism, and they get all the economic spillover that comes with being the northern neighbor of the United States.  If that Justin Trudeau kid was running a country south of Mexico, Canada would be in just as bad of a situation as Venezuela is currently.  But because Canada shares so much trade with the United States, because we share rivers and lakes with them, they get to enjoy the change that falls out of our pockets as a rich nation.  There is nothing brilliant about the Canadian economy or their commitment to socialism.  Let’s get that clear from the start here.  I’m not a fan of Canada because of their left-winged politics.

But our American media and most of our left-winged entertainment culture love Canada for all those socialist reasons—and they are supposedly educated people.  Enter this Chad Selweski guy who responded to my Tweet to WLW Radio with the following smart assed answer from what he calls a “centrist viewpoint” as a media guy with some experience.  The only reason I point this out is because he represents largely what the mainstream media thinks about things and you quickly get an idea about why our media is so screwed up.

By his own words, Chad Selweski is a freelance writer and blogger with a centrist point of view from suburban Detroit, Macomb County (population 870,000), home of the “Reagan Democrats.” Selweski worked as the political reporter for The Macomb Daily for 30 years.

At The Macomb Daily, Selweski:

  • Earned 50 journalism awards for the newspaper from organizations such as the Associated Press, United Press International, Michigan Press Association, Detroit Chapter of SPJ, Detroit Press Club, Suburban Newspapers of America, and the State Bar of Michigan.
  • Was named by Politico.com in 2014 as one of the “Media Stars” in seven political battleground states.
  • Received in 1998 the highest honor ever granted to a Macomb Daily journalist, the SNA’s National Suburban Journalist of the Year award.
  • Covered the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida, from Tallahassee and Palm Beach County.
  • Interviewed numerous national figures, including President George H.W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, Colin Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Dennis Hastert, Reince Priebus, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Carly Fiorina, Gen. Wesley Clark, Peter Jennings, George Will, Steve Forbes, Mike Dukakis, Richard Gephardt and Gen. Barry McCaffery.

https://www.politicscentral.org/about/

Socialism isn’t funny or cute—yet it’s being taught by a majority of our current education institutions in spite of the terrible track record it has around the world and its people like this Chad Selweski guy who help defend it even in the face of failure.  To more thoroughly answer his question about the beer company making fun of Trump, what they are doing is precisely what Canada always does—they are second-handers to American culture and in this case are using the Trump name to attempt to sell a few extra cans of beer to the largely socialist audience of their visitors and residents.  They aren’t being clever—they are just using the name of a successful person who happens to be picked on in the American media because he’s a capitalist.  That beer company was hoping that they’d get some free publicity from loser media groups like WLW radio to advertise for them subtle messages that go against Trump.  Not particularly clever free market advertising.  Just parasitic—like the overall culture of Canada.

These guys in the media—from WLW radio to this Chad Selweski cape rider want in American politics the type of people who screwed everything up—and Trump is a departure from the world they helped create—and they don’t like it.  I can understand that, but here’s the deal.  We’re not going back to the Peter Jennings world where George Will defined conservatism—or the equal value of Canadian politics on the North American continent.  Their economy only produces 1.7 trillion dollars so they are hardly masters of the universe when it comes to politics or philosophy.  Nobody should be taking any lessons on how to run a country from them.  I worked in the Tea Party movement for nearly a decade now and I have watched the political trajectory culminate into Donald Trump being in the White House and I’m here to tell all these “centrists” who eye socialism with compassion—America has a taste now of what a capitalist loving nation can do for them—and they aren’t turning away and returning to the world of moderation and mixed economies.

The best thing that Trump has done in his first 100 days since the media is so excited to report all the things he hasn’t been able to get done, like healthcare reform, or tax reform—and all the big-ticket items that small-minded people key on who don’t understand the big picture—was deregulation.  Trump has the Keystone Pipeline moving forward. He has cut back on the EPA.  He has an AG who is cutting down on illegal border crossings and he has encouraged trillions of dollars of investment to come back into the United States and that money is going to work in the American economy as I write this.  In just a few months Trump with just his name has put more money into our stock market than Canada produces annually over a three-year period of time.  And we’re just getting started.  By the time there’s another election the political landscape will be much different.  We’re not going backwards.

Trump isn’t the cause of the political shift, he’s the result.  The cause could be seen in the rallies way back in 2009 when people like this Chad Selweski guy were calling Tea Party people “Tea Baggers” hoping to shame people into holding that “centrists” line, where Canada, Mexico and the United States could all sit at a table as equals and contemplate the direction of the human race.  Two socialists and a capitalist do not all get equal consideration under the banner of philosophic contemplation—because results are what matter—not theoretical Marxist commitment when we all know what the end results are.  Trump can come and go, but the movement toward an unapologetic capitalist American society goes all the way back to the last days of George W. Bush when he gave up on the free market to put down the clamps which eventually caused the crash of 2008.  Many of us were ready to try something new back then and because of his skin color, Barack Obama got a chance and what he brought to America was European style socialism and that was like throwing gas on the bon fire.  Trump put his name in the ring and we voted for him—and in the future, it might be him or someone else—but we’re not going back.

The Canadians can make fun of America with their stupid beer cans, and our American media can disparage Trump yearning for those good ol’ days where they understood our political landscape and felt they could control it.  But the reality is what we are dealing with here—socialism doesn’t work, and America is about to pull ahead of the rest of the world economically showing everyone that they should have been more committed to capitalism than they were.  And people like Chad Selweski will find freelancing much more difficult because his “centrist position” just became the extreme radical leftist fringe again—the way it used to be in America.  People are now more open in their opinions and those old George Bush Republicans (pick either Bush president—it doesn’t really matter) are no longer going to be tolerated.

It’s now a numbers game—the old Tea Party types will fight it out for philosophic supremacy as the political left gets lost in the dust as the world changes under their feet.  That will happen because poor countries like Mexico, Canada and all of Europe are no longer equal players in global politics.  Because Trump has taken all the oxygen in the room—and that’s the way we want it in an “America First” world.  The Canadians can make fun of it—but it’s because they are the losers lost in the wake—not the superior economic contributor which WLW tried to pawn off on their audience of half-wits waiting for the next Cincinnati Reds baseball game to come on the air.  Personally, I care about as much about what the Canadians think of America as I do piss in a toilet.  A simple flush takes it all away.

Trains in West Chester: The magic and exuberance of a thriving economy

For the second time in my life I had the strange privilege to gain the viewpoint of foreign visitors and their intense interests in American trains.  In America, we take the length of our trains for granted as most of the rest of the world, particularly Europe and the East do not have they type of freight trains that we do in the United States.  But I remember the magic of when my future son-in-law visited over a decade ago how he thought the length of our trains were simply amazing which surprised me because I took them more as a nuisance that was in my way when I wanted to cross a road.  Then over this past week I had visitors from Japan and we were in a new office space that overlooked a very active railroad line that moved through West Chester, Ohio and they were simply amazed by the length and frequency of the trains.  We were working on some very important things, but I had the seating in such a way that they were able to look out the windows, so they had a prime seat for several hours of the day to see how many trains moved along that track in both a north and south direction.

I noticed that they seemed very interested in what was going on outside the window which made me wonder if I had the seating arrangements correct—and after a few days of this they simply asked me how long those trains were.  My reply was that most of them looked to be a mile long—or 1.6 kilometers as they understand it.  Some of the trains were longer clearly.  This information was simply stunning to these guys who spend a lot of time in places like Tokyo and London—even France. The length of American trains told them a lot about our culture and it was worth taking a moment to consider.

I’ve always loved trains—and like a lot of old men who have train sets in their basements, and like to visit the popular tourist destination in West Chester—Entertrainment Junction which features some of the largest model trains in the world—trains have an essence of optimism about them that largely goes unexplored.  We love them, but often don’t understand why.  After visiting Europe recently with this topic fresh on my mind I have some unique thoughts on the matter which might unlock better our understanding of this condition.  From my vantage point in both Japan and England I admired their train systems which was mostly regulated to passenger transportation.  People needed to get someplace fast so they took the train and it worked pretty well.  I was impressed with the complex way the trains ran in England particularly around London.  However, what was missing was the way that trains are used in the United States—you don’t often see the magic of an American train any place else even in places that are supposed to be the most popular and largest cities in the world.

Over the last year I had some very nice lunches in both Tokyo and London over looking their train systems and neither was as impressive as that display in this new office space where I had these Japanese guests.  After all, it was a fabulous spring day on this occasion where my guests were so enamored with the trains going by my window—so we brought in some good ol’ American pizza from Donatos and you’d think I took these people to a 5 star restaurant.  One of these guys had said that during this business trip they wanted to try some authentic American pizza—so you can image the elation that was experienced with a stack of five different pizzas with all different toppings sitting there being enjoyed while watching three, mile long trains all traveling south by our window while having lunch with a brilliant sun pouring in making us enjoy life that much more.  Just a bit beyond the train tracks was the endless energy of the American highway system which was unique also in the world.  Our big cars and trucks pouring endlessly by all day and night was another thing unique to American culture and we sat for about an hour eating our pizza and talking about trains and trucks in a way that impressed me with its philosophic content.

Japan for a small island economy produces about 4.4.trillion dollars a year which is impressive. To achieve that their people work very hard and intensely 365 days a year—you can feel the energy when you land there.  The people are vigorous, industrious, and extremely well-mannered and it shows in what they make.  And England where London is certainly one of the most important financial centers in the world produces somewhere between 2.2 to 3 trillion dollars if you count all the coins in your pockets on a rainy day—to be generous.  You can feel the energy there too—but in both cases, you can tell something is missing from an American perspective.  I knew what it was as I poured garlic sauce all over my nice juicy pizza watching the traffic under that morning spring sun in Ohio—and my guests were getting the gist of it too.  The American economy produces an astonishing 18.5 trillion dollars over a larger land mass, but the effect was clear by counting the trains and trucks up on I-75 going by then multiplying that over the land mass then dividing it by the hours of the day.  What we were looking at was a vibrant economy which was a product of mankind in all its glorious creativity emerging unencumbered by the powerful locomotives pulling freight from the north to destinations in the south.

The trains were a large part of that 18 trillion-dollar economy as some of the cars were double stacked and loaded with product headed toward distribution centers awaiting shipment.  China has a nominal GDP of 11.3 trillion although they have a PPP projection of over 23 trillion this year which equates out to $11-15,000 per pupil.  All that sounds impressive until you consider that they have over 1 billion people and in the United States our per pupil capita is roughly $53,000—quite a bit higher and that’s with 7 million people still unemployed as of this writing.  What we could see from our vantage point looking at trains and highway traffic was a very efficient and productive country making a lot of money and our big trains were a tremendous part of that.  Even the big tractor trailers cruising by down the highways couldn’t move the sheer volume of product that was chugging along by our train system.  And none of us said it at the time, but the American economy has been stagnant for a long time functioning at only a fraction of its potential due to the weaknesses of several decades of American presidents and destructive politics seeking to duplicate Europe instead of continue on with the polices that built America in the first place.

The trains didn’t just represent massive power by the large diesel engines which propelled them—they were aspects of a very powerful economy and contained within them many hopes and dreams which spill over into the enthusiasm that old men who build train sets in their basements share with their grandchildren. It was the length and frequency of those trains that caught the attention of my guests.  It’s one thing to read about the powerful American economy in a trade publication, or to watch a news story about it on television—it’s quite another to see it up close and personal and to see those trains going by our window was to confirm the majestic nature of American capitalism and the land of abundance that it produces.  That’s exactly why we love our trains and they continue to hold a special place in our hearts.  Trains are vital arteries of American capitalism and they continue to be impressive as the world watches jealously at how we took a relatively small country and made it into such an economy powerhouse.  Many can hope through colleges and other liberal institutions to hide just how powerful the American economy is—but when they see our trains—they can’t escape the reality of it.  Trains in America isn’t so much about taking people from one place to another—but in taking big things to large markets for income producing utilization and that is their specific purpose which is truly unique in the world.  And that is a truly majestic concept worthy of all the imagination ushered forth by our human race.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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The Betrayal of Kirsten Powers: A grim reality surrounding all the women accusing Bill O’Reilly of sexual harassment

I always knew while watching The O’Reilly Factor that Kirsten Powers was bad news.  As a liberal political pundit from USA Today Bill O’Reilly put her on constantly and I often wondered if Bill put up with her because she was having occasional sex with him.  Otherwise, who would put up with that terrible mouth of hers, obviously not her husband whom she was only married to for a short time from 2010 to 2013.  Putting her on Fox News almost every night was dangerous in my opinion and given the way she piled on disrespectfully as Bill O’Reilly was pulled off the air at Fox during an Anderson Cooper interview—my instincts were certainly correct.  She sounded like a train wreck and her motives were clearly exposed.  What I saw speaking to Anderson Cooper was a spiteful woman who was in her middle years and not so cute any more that had pushed away everything good in her life—including Bill O’Reilly and she was resentful.  Ultimately that was the cost of trying to be fair and balanced on Fox—you put on spiteful, aging pundits who want to suddenly make a living without the aid of their youthful beauty—and they are scared.

And the same could be said of the several women who accused Bill O’Reilly and specifically Fox News for sexual harassment. Egged on by Media Matters behind the scenes and many liberal activists—the women took every opportunity to swipe at the older generation men who ran Fox News in an effort to make the place more progressive—and ultimately more like the other loser networks in competition—overly concerned with silly PC culture and modern nonsense that will be out of fashion with the very next generation.  What you find at the bottom of the complaints are a bunch of women who were fine to make good livings off their looks—but now that they are arriving at those middle ages where estrogen doesn’t come so naturally and skin wrinkles don’t look so good on 4K 70” televisions—a new generation of younger women doing just as they did twenty years ago is coming along and pushing them out of a job—and women like Kirsten call that “sexual harassment.”  I call it getting old.

If you peel the onion away that’s all that is really going on with the sexual harassment claims against Fox News. The women used their looks to get into the doors at Fox then they changed the rules of engagement mystifying the older men who came from a time when you could call women “blonds” even when they artificially dyed their hair to increase their supernormal sign stimuli to evoke the image.  The women’s complaints against O’Reilly and Fox News specifically are only defined by Obama era politics as harassment, when at any time prior or likely in the future will be considered normal human interaction.  The real hope of liberal ladies like Kirsten Powers is to stay relevant into her 50s so people will still want to listen to her without the visual quality behind someone who might lure men to sleep with them for attention.  Because lets face it, that was the only reason Bill put her on Fox News.  Whether or not he had occasional sex with any of these women it was important for the audience to wonder about such things because that’s what drove the ratings.  Nobody wanted to hear what Kirsten had to say from a fair and balanced point of view.  They wanted to think about what she looked like naked and in suggestive sexual positions.  Surely Kirsten understood that when she came on The O’Reilly Factor many times.

Women watch The View during the day, and other shows geared toward women—and that’s the only way that garbage heaps like Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar can make it in modern television—by bitching and squawking like a bunch of hungry baby birds that were knocked out of their nest during a heavy storm. People feel sorry for them, the might actually listen—but they aren’t going to change their behavior patterns—they’ll just watch.  Yet to the wider audience which might include men—there is no appeal.  Men and women are still and will always be—men and women.  Men biologically want to have sex with women and women will always look for ways to make their assets work to their advantage.  And that only works for them pre-menopausal.  After that, they become spectators in the games of life.  That may seem vicious, but take it up with God, because it’s the design of the universe.

Even knowing all this however it was shocking to hear Kirsten speak out so blatantly against Bill O’Reilly. I watched her so many times come on his show and eat out of his hand all the while I knew she was a nasty person waiting for a moment to strike like a snake. I used to tell my wife anytime she appeared that she reminded me of spit—because that’s just what she reminded me of.  The way she spoke, the way she made eye contact—her politics—virtually everything about her evoked something you’d want to spit out of your mouth—not put in it.  It actually made me trust O’Reilly less because he had her on so much.  I figured he was either having sex with her, or wanted to.  But so what?  Kirsten got exposure she never would have otherwise obtained—which she’ll never get again and she should be grateful.

In the demise of Fox News, these women accusers had some air time on all the major networks rejoicing that their rival had one of its major stars knocked off a prime time slot. But those same women have labeled themselves for life as a pain in the ass so we won’t see them again.  Kirsten is certainly done.  She might be praised now, but she’s still a woman approaching 50 who won’t be desired to be on television.  She may still write for USA Today for a while, but nobody is going to want to see her face or hear that terrible noise that comes out of her liberal mouth.  Because people tune into Fox not to see O’Reilly, or the hot chicks he had on as pundits—they are just visual icing for the cake.  They want conservative viewpoints on the news of the day.  Anybody else can come along and do the same job and if Fox moves into an even more progressive direction—some upstart will take over what they do now—because ultimately the audience is in charge—not the networks.  And nothing in the world can make people tune into a show they don’t want to watch to see a wrinkled up Kirsten Powers utter liberal nonsense.  They might put up with it to have her flirt with them as a youthful woman—but not as a serious political commentator.  There are plenty of ugly people who already do that work—one more used up old woman won’t change the conditions of the marketplace.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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The Decline of Fox News: Why not standing behind Bill O’Reilly makes them a bunch of pussies on their way out

It’s not Bill O’Reilly or Roger Ailes at Fox News who changed, it was the world run by these modern and very confused feminists. It’s those same people pleasuring themselves with a copy of Fifty Shades of Gray in one hand while gazing at their iPads and reading the headline to the New York Post this morning, “The No Job Zone,” enjoying the fact that Fox News cut ties with Bill O’Reilly over sexual harassment allegations.  The extreme progressives who made this new generation of neurotic feminist activists think that by taking down Fox News that they can stop the direction of the world when in fact they couldn’t be further from the truth.  Even though I’ve watched The O’Reilly Factor for roughly 20 years, I’ve often felt the show was entirely too moderate and that a dramatic shift to the traditional political right was badly in need.  Even though the O’Reilly Factor had great numbers in cable news, it was still only 4 million viewers a night.  And while it’s true that Bill O’Reilly has been a bestselling author at the top of the New York Times list for over a decade—his footprint of influence is limited to a relatively small national audience.  Getting rid of Bill O’Reilly won’t bring back the days of Obama simply because people like Alex Jones and Mark Levine seen below in a marvelous discussion on socialism in America have been rapidly gaining in popularity.  Bill O’Reilly wasn’t willing to go that far to the right and the world was starting to pass him up—and at 68 or 69—whatever he is, retirement or a complete job change was already in order just to stay relevant.  So losing The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News won’t change anything.  It won’t make Donald Trump lose his presidency, and it certainly won’t stop the slide that Democrats are finding in their political party.  It is simply chasing a ghost that when you grab for it suddenly isn’t there anymore.  When it comes to Rupert Murdoch, his kids aren’t as smart as he was, and he is an old man now—turning things over to idiots who are too much a part of New York progressive society—and still give The New York Times relevancy.

If you ever watch daytime television geared toward women, you can see clearly the problem. Several generations of women have been hard-boiled into European socialism, and feminism, yet their biological instincts are telling them something else and they are all over the map.  Not that long ago I was at a television studio with a couple of very attractive twenty something on-air personalities and when they were in the presence of an alpha male—the responded like school girls waiting to be asked to the prom, which was a purely biological response to the mating customs of human beings.  The more refined parts of our nature—the fact that I’m married, and that they were young professionals kept everything on the up and up—but clearly if we didn’t maintain a certain layer of civility our conversations would have quickly spiraled into something that Bill O’Reilly was accused of—such as calling one of his guests “hot chocolate.”  Such things might be appropriate if the subtext of the interaction had some power climbing flirting going on—but later depending on how things went—the definitions could be changed to garner a different approach to the desired outcome—which is usually the acquisition of power by using feminine charms.

Ugly women hate that attractive women have an advantage over them in this category. It drives them crazy that a perky little former model might get someone like Bill O’Reilly to slap her on the ass so she can get a top job somewhere within the organization—because it’s unlikely they will get the same opportunity.  So as feminists they desire to level the playing field so that they can have a top job in entertainment too.  But what they forget is that people don’t like to see ugly people on television, and whatever show they get on will likely tank.  It wouldn’t be Roger Ailes fault—it’s the fault of their ugliness.  Not that anybody can do anything about being ugly—but it is a factor in television.  As it is always in entertainment when you put attractive young people in a room with powerful producers—men or women—mating customs and business practices get crossed—just as it did with the Access Hollywood tape that was meant to bring down Trump.

The proper thing for Bill O’Reilly to have done in the case of Fox News was to just blow it off—maybe even say that he “wanted to tag that ass,” or something to that effect and move on. And Fox News should have stood by him understanding that if they caved on this issue, they’d be expected to cave on every issue henceforth.  The Fox News formula obviously has been to put attractive women into anchor spots, show a little cleavage, flirt with the camera while attractive alpha males in most cases did the hard news.  Of course, progressive stations like MSNBC and CNN were upset by it because they couldn’t compete.  Who wants to look at Racheal Maddow?  The hope they all have is that now Fox News will be forced to live by the same rules as the other progressive networks now that O’Reilly is gone—but that is not what’s going to happen.

This trend of hating everything that “white males” are a part of is getting old and is already swinging back the other way politically. So attacking traditional male roles in society by extreme feminists who really don’t know what they want to be in life won’t deliver our society to some wonderful Utopia.  Biologically, women love to be around powerful, strong men, and strong alpha men know how to read the signs of flirtation when it’s tossed in their face.  And you can bet that it can be very hard to tell the difference if you are one of those “powerful white males.”

Honestly, I take it as a personal assault when I see attacks against people like Bill O’Reilly and Donald Trump because I too am a white male with an inclination toward alpha maleness. I don’t go around rubbing it in, but I am most happy in a room where I’m the leader and everyone else does what I tell them too—as an aspect of my nature.  Women typically do what they’ve done for millions of years—they recognize that and they find a way to navigate.   If they challenge me directly they’ll get the same treatment that other males get—and often women are better at using other skills to avoid direct conflict with me.  And that’s how these things happen to the old timers like Bill O’Reilly, Donald Trump, and Roger Ailes.  A young hot woman might plop herself into their laps and make sexual advances through flirtation but turn off the advances at a strategic time hoping to use modern progressive definitions to keep them from getting dirty—but still using their bodies to advance their careers. (cough………Megan Kelly)  That likely happened on the set of the O’Reilly Factor all the time—young women looking for a break flirting with old man O’Reilly so they could get their book mentioned, or maybe even get a job at Fox News on a permanent biases.  Then to make matters worse, modern progressives—especially the drooling feminists—hope to erase the whole event by pushing “white men” out of “the business” hoping to hide what they did to get themselves into professional positions.  But they can’t hide it—because everyone knows and these modern progressives can’t hide the nature of biology.  There will always be alpha, “white” males, and there will always be “betas” who are willing to do anything to advance their careers—and those betas come in all sexes and colors.  They do not discriminate because flattery works at any level.

My life won’t change because Bill O’Reilly isn’t on the air anymore and likely I’ll watch Fox News a lot less. That is their problem.  But I’m not going to switch to CNN or NBC.  Likely, it will be more Alex Jones and Mark Levine—those types of people because they better represent my personality type.  Progressives had their eye on O’Reilly as a target but little did they know that he kept people from getting their news from harder political right sources—so Bill O’Reilly helped them—he didn’t hurt them.  O’Reilly’s audience won’t change to the left—they’ll drift more to the right and that’s not what these idiots had in mind when they went after Fox News with sexual harassment claims to sink the careers of Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly.  When they tried it with Trump—he was the only one who behaved properly.  “Yeah, I said what I said….so what.”  And as “white males” who are powerful because that’s what we’re inclined to do, we should learn a lesson from this Bill O’Reilly situation.  Next time don’t apologize—or change your behavior to appease the progressive mixed up modern feminists.  Because they don’t know what they are doing and are acting against their biological natures.  That is a truth no law in the land can avoid acknowledging.  Women still like to be told they are pretty and its often right to tell them so out of politeness.  If they come at you with a sexual harassment lawsuit, then in the future don’t hold the elevator open for them when they come asking for your autograph.  But never apologize for being true to your nature.  And if they fire you from your job, then move on and be successful elsewhere and let them choke on their bad decision—which is what will eventually happen to Fox News on the dying platform of cable programming.  It’s just a matter of time, and I won’t lose one moment of sleep over it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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What Causes Factories to Die: The benefit of a good work ethic

Something strange occurred while my wife and I were trying to get to the Kings Island Gold Pass preview night last Friday night. Back in my twenties when we lived in Mason I worked at several of the area manufacturing opportunities, but since moving back to Liberty Township, we really only come back to the area to visit the Fields Ertle shopping district, or to go to Kings Island.   But because the traffic was so terrible at Kings Island that night I had to take a bunch of side roads to escape and return home because there was no way of getting into the amusement park because it was obviously saturated with people trying to get in on a beautiful Friday spring night.  That brought me out on Route 42 by the Huston Restaurant then across the street to a little road that would take me back into Liberty Township along the Mitsubishi Plant. It was there that I saw that a large manufacturing plant that I had spent a lot of time in was up for sale, and that shocked me—even through Worthington Custom Plastics had sold off their automotive division way back in 1999.  It was just at that moment 18 years later that I had driven by that building once again—and that place was something I could have never imagined seeing empty.

We were in our late twenties and in need of a lot of money as we were raising children. My wife was homeschooling our children mostly.  They did attend Mason schools back then, but we didn’t like the job they were doing, so she took care of most of the deprogramming as a house wife.  I fully supported that kind of thing, but on the weekends to make extra money we had two Door Store routes that we delivered—which was a kind of coupon newspaper that we delivered door to door.  We’d pick up the papers on Friday night then spend the weekend rolling them into plastic bags which we delivered on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings.  That job alone took up most of our weekend together and was a lot of hard work.  But it was an independent way to make the money we needed. But that wasn’t our main income—it was my job at Worthington Custom Plastics that was.  I worked there an astonishing 16 hours per day through the weekdays and every single weekend from 4 PM to midnight.  Most of my work there was on overtime and I worked on the big projects, particularly the Corvette facias which were made completely with injected plastic at that Mason facility.  From there they went to the Bowling Green Corvette manufacturing facility for installation and I sometimes had to go there for quality audits.  I was very busy and I was making a lot of money doing something that was very important—and my wife and I were literally working every minute of our lives on something.  When I hear kids complaining about being overworked these days with a 50 hour work week I look at them like they are social rejects because honestly, we worked much harder and still enjoyed our lives.  So they have nothing to complain about.

The only time that Worthington facility shut down and we turned off the lights was for Thanksgiving and Christmas. All other times of the year that big plant ran all around the clock all week long.  Now I knew what was coming even back then.  They were paying me enormous amounts of money to do general manufacturing work which was cutting into their margins big time. Good workers were hard to find, so they let me work all I wanted.  But in business, that is throwing good money into bad practices and it eventually caught up with them.  Within a few years of my employment there they announced that they were selling their automotive division.  But by then I had obtained a job at Cincinnati Milacron working on precision machines and I never looked back at Worthington—or what had become of them.  Even though we go as a family to Kings Island all the time which is very near Worthington’s old plant, I never drove by it—but around it except for that nice spring day in 2017.  It was strange to see that old vibrant place completely dead and for sale.  Something which had provided so many jobs to so many people was just sitting there a dead plant.

Most people go to their jobs and do their work never really thinking of what it takes to make a business work, or how close to the precipice of becoming extinct their jobs really are. They complain around the water cooler about their bosses and everyone thinks they can do a better job.  But they never do, they never get involved in the management side of things and if things go bad, they simply get another job.  I was never like that.  I always wanted to help management be successful—even when I was too young to be taken seriously.  And I really wanted Worthington Custom Plastics to succeed and I felt it could if only I worked harder—which was always in the back of my mind.  Part of the reason I left was that it had the feeling that it was going to run itself into the ground—even though when I did go to Milicron it seemed like that would never happen. The place was just too busy.  But a business cannot operate at negative margins for long, and employees should appreciate the health of whatever company they are working for so to prevent such things from happening to them in the future.

These days it’s my job to make sure that a company doesn’t find themselves in the same fate as Worthington. Even though I say the same things that I’ve always said, now I’m old enough that people actually listen—and they are better off for it.  But seeing a big vibrant company like the one I worked at in my twenties gone the way it was, reminded me of how close almost every company out there really is toward their own extinction.  A good healthy company is something everyone should strive for even if you are an employee that only pushes a broom.  Good jobs should never be taken for granted.  I worked at Worthington doing 96 hours per week for two years.  One the weekends my wife and I delivered Door Stores an additional 20 hours per week.  On a typical Saturday I got off at midnight from Worthington and my wife and I delivered Door Stores until 4 AM.  We rewarded ourselves with White Castles from Fields Ertle Road.  We got up at 8 AM then did our walking route through downtown Mason until 2 PM.  We’d grab lunch then I went to work at 4 PM—and that was my weekend.  During the week, it was 16 straight, go home, take a shower, sleep, then I’d go back.  And I did that for two straight years without complaint.  Later the same year that I moved to Milicron we got dinged by the IRS for not paying enough self-employment tax on our Door Store route.  So to pay off our taxes I took a night job at Wendy’s by Kings Island and I worked there for another three years to pay off our tax burden to the IRS while working 60 hours a week at Cincinnati Milicron.

It is just something to consider when you are working somewhere that you should do everything you can to keep that company alive—and not take it for granted that it will always be there. Places of business are like living beings, they have to be fed and maintained in a healthy fashion, otherwise they die.  And it was sad to see Worthington Custom Plastics in Mason dead.  But it was.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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Beating the Drums of War: Time to take North Korea away from the stupid fat kid

Obviously I’m not a dope smoking libertarian who wants the United States to be a live and let live Constitutional Republic which allows for the legalization of pot and ignores threats around the world hoping everyone just behaves. While I like the Constitutional Republic part I am an expansionist—I think the world would be a lot happier if they’d just become another state in the United States.  They can keep their integrity and culture so long as the pledge allegiance to our flag.  The world is simply too small now to allow lunatics of theocracy like Iran, North Korea, and Syria to host tyrannical dictators.  I knew what I was getting with Donald Trump and he’s doing exactly what I wanted him to do—flexing the muscle of American military around the world fixing the numerous problems that 28 years of weak American presidents let brew out of control.  I understand that the only way to get to the kind of prosperity America enjoyed in the past is to be the top dog on the world stage—and we should be.  We are the best country with the best ideas and we are open to sharing those ideas with places not so fortunate.  But the bad guys need to be taken out-of-the-way.

I’ve written and written, and written about the effects of Socialist International around the world and how dominate it is really everywhere.  Russia has a former KGB agent from their communist days as their president and China is an all out communist nation.  Europe is all diseased with socialism and all the poor countries of Indochina are rotten with communism.  Stop by Cambodia sometime and walk the streets and 12-year-old girls will throw themselves at your feet offering sex because that’s the only way they can make enough money to eat.  The same in Kenya, Vietnam and the east European nations still trying to develop economies after the collapse of Russia—the world is unstable and many people are suffering for it.  So the grim reality is that nobody in the world is a reliable trading partner with the United States until these problems are solved.  The biggest difference with Trump is that he’s not in love with United Nations group hugs approach.  He’s fine to let NATO and the UN ride on America’s back as long as they shut up and do what he says.  The minute they don’t, they lose their United States funding and they’ll drown with the rest of Europe.  That is the Trump message to the world and as my representative, that’s what I sent him to Washington to do, along with about a 1000 other little things.

America can’t have peace so long as North Korea and many other countries empowered by the 20th Century failed experiments of social engineering remain alive—and that means cleaning up on all the unresolved issues started by past American presidents and getting back to polices that put North America the center of the world, not Brussels.  Since the Korean War ended in 1953 North Korea has been a pain in the neck and the excuse of many United States presidents to have reasons to have military spending as a cover story for their other failures.  And now there is this fat kid who runs the country like a spoiled brat teenager who was given a Lamborghini by his dying dad and he has nuclear warheads which can threaten United States partners in South Korea and Japan.  For the uneducated in the ways of geography, South Korea makes Samsung phones and televisions as well as Kia cars. So right now, they are a very important partner in the United States economy, so we do have a major interest in the area.  Then of course there is Japan who we fought in World War II, and beat.  We took away their weapons and now they are completely dependent on United States protection to produce one of the most powerful economies in the world—so we gave ourselves the responsibility to protect them from China and North Korea both of which have been making moves against that tiny little island in Pacific Ocean.  The American general Claire Lee Chennault warned what would happen if America left the region after World War II and our stupid government allowed communism to spread into China, the Korean peninsula and down into Indochina.  That pulled us into two major wars and essentially a half century stalemate which needs to be broken before there will ever be peace in the region.

This mess extends right in front of the Himalaya Mountains across the impoverished continent of India and into the chaos of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran which then borders Iraq and Syria. The average dope smoking American anti-war pacifist couldn’t find any of those countries on a map, so they have no idea what the dangers are in leaving those places free to produce dictators and theocratic nightmares.  There is a tremendous economic cost to the United States in addition to the moral cost of turning away and letting millions of people rot or rush American borders so they can try to escape.  Melania Trump happens to be one of those East Europeans who were lucky to have perfect super model features, like long legs, the proper height and facial features to be a top model in Paris.  If she had been two inches shorter she would have had to be a prostitute of some kind to escape the poverty of her native country in Slovenia.  People who don’t travel much and see the world for what it is who preach legalization of pot and think they can play video games through life leaving everyone alone, have no idea how bad things are out there beyond the borders of the United States.  And open border progressives love all this chaos because they want refugees of the wars they have caused to over burden our American capitalist system and to change it from the inside out.  Just listen to the average American college professor who preaches to our youth to hate those “rich white guys” so that the displaced refugees will flee to America and replace freedom with the only thing they’ve ever known, domination by dictators and failed economic opportunities.

So I say to hell with North Korea.  Let them send their “pre-emptive” strike. Because I’m tired of hearing about them—it’s time to call the bluff of that ruling family.  The solutions have always been there in these hostile countries—we just didn’t have the political will to do anything about it.  But now we do and the world needs to see what will happen to North Korea.  Let them try to fire a missile at the VP in South Korea or at any of the American Navy vessel parked in the waters off North Korea—and the THAAD system that is now in place will shoot them down and that fat kid running things will learn a hard lesson.  Trump can take that victory and negotiate all kinds of good stuff with China and Russia for the first time in over two hundred years of American foreign policy, which is exactly why I supported and voted for Donald Trump for president—to end these problems instead of just letting them simmer from one generation to another.

The best way to put America first is to defend American ideas around the world and to stand up to the bullies who want to end it everywhere.  The human race has to make a decision—will it be freedom or tyranny, because the world is too small to have both.  The world must pick—and they have to do it now.  Smoking another joint and listening to old Led Zepplin songs won’t solve the problem—instead, America must have peace through superior firepower and let bad guys know it when they step out of line.  That’s the way it has to be for a while until all those untied disputes are finally settled.  And based on Trump’s performance as Commander and Chief—it won’t take long.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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‘The Last Jedi’ Movie Preview from Celebration, Orlando: Ending the Vico Cycle philosophically

IMG_4424I cover a lot of Star Wars news because, as I’ve said before, it’s the best mythological tool that the human race has right now—which sets it clearly apart from other movies.  It’s special and even though Star Wars these days is made by people who likely voted for Hillary Clinton 100%–the people who work at Lucasfilm are the best in the business of making movies on a commercial-scale.  The stories of Star Wars clearly extend beyond modern politics.  I think they are extremely important to our status as a culture on planet earth.  So I pay close attention to Star Wars and enjoy very much when they have their Celebration activities.   It just so happens that this year Celebration is in one of my favorite cities in the world—Orlando, and I find it creatively refreshing to hear the latest news from the Star Wars universe.  And this year, there was a lot of news, some of which is shown below.  But the biggest news was the release of the movie trailer for the next film due out this Christmas.

I’ve loved Star Wars most of my life—it actually opened a lot of doors for me.  I completely understand that Star Wars was intended for 12-year-old children, but in a lot of ways that part of me is still very much alive.  Even if I didn’t have grandkids, and my own kids didn’t still love Star Wars, I’d spend a considerable amount of time enjoying the art and ideas that come out of the Star Wars stories.  I understand why George Lucas made the films and what his source material was and I plunged myself into that world quite dramatically, not as the 12-year-old material for which became Star Wars, but the great literature of James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Joseph Campbell and many great literary figures for which Star Wars was based—including the Holy Bible. Star Wars for me was the gateway to much more serious literature and it has enhanced my life greatly.   So I’m quite open for my joy toward all things Star Wars.

Specifically, what I see in this new trailer for the film that is called The Last Jedi, is a philosophic contemplation on ending the Vico Cycle which is something that was heavily featured in the great literary classic Finnegan’s Wake.  I talk about the Vico Cycle a lot, because our present civilization is at one of those points in our history, so it doesn’t at all surprise me that Star Wars is addressing that very challenging philosophic concept.  George Lucas always said that if there were more Star Wars movies beyond Episode 6 that he’d deal with the philosophic challenges of the life battle between pairs of opposites.  It’s a motif that is as old as human civilization—probably longer.  So yes, Star Wars is all about making movies for kids—but there is more to them than that.  Adults could learn a lot too.

Obviously Han Solo is my favorite character and there is a lot of that guy in me. I saw Star Wars 40 years ago with my parents as a third grader and it stuck with me—especially the character of Han Solo.  I knew that was who I wanted to be when I grew up—and that is largely what happened.  As it turned out, I’m a lot smarter than Han Solo, but I can certainly relate to him.  For my recent 49th birthday my youngest daughter made me the picture featured above, which is what she does.  She’s a marvelous illustrator and this picture of Han Solo fighting it out with stormtroopers using dual pistols is an original picture that can’t be found anywhere else and to me it was quite an astonishing work of art.  She knows I’m excited for the new Han Solo movie coming up within a year or so, where the character is much younger—so she made the picture as a tribute to a much younger Han Solo.  As I’ve said many times also, Han Solo is essentially an Ayn Rand character within Star Wars—and that’s why he’s so popular.  George Lucas may have wanted to have Han transform into a compassionate human being by the end of the series, but the best elements of Han Solo are his Ayn Rand hero traits of acting out of self-interest.  And that is the brilliance of Star Wars—lots of competing ideas can fit into the storytelling and still have a role to play because they are grounded in historical motifs specific to the human race.

When Luke Skywalker says that it’s time for the Jedi to end—he’s talking about a very large idea of taking mankind beyond the pairs of opposites battle that has always been a part of our culture from the beginning. I’ve been thinking about that for a very long time because it is essentially the Vico Cycle, theocracy, aristocracy, democracy, anarchy then rebirth.  And that is a bigger concept than just making a movie for kids.  This stuff is important because it has the potential of taking us all to a new level—as a species.  It’s much more than just a movie or a way for Disney to make money.

For me it’s fun to see my grandkids getting into Star Wars because it at least gives me something to share with them.  My oldest grandson without a whole lot of encouragement has already gone to great lengths to learn all he can about it—which is a great way to have discussions about other topics.  During my birthday celebration, he couldn’t pull himself away from TV where I had Rogue One playing.  As a little boy the hand to hand battles with guns had his mind racing and he was running around the house pretending to shoot at invisible villains—which is very healthy and natural.  It’s a primal concern—especially with little boys.  I’ve spoken in the past also about the great little miracles that Nerf makes as far as Star Wars guns.  These are a lot better than what I grew up with and I have to say that my Han Solo Nerf Blaster is one of my favorite things that I play with around the house.  I will have countless hours of fun with my grandchildren shooting those things and if not for Star Wars—they wouldn’t exist.  The guns and action are part of the Star Wars experience.  Once you get into those, the deeper aspects of the stories become accessible, and if you really go down the rabbit hole—like I did—a whole new world of fresh ideas emerge—and that is a wonderful thing. Even though I’ve been hard on The Force Awakens, my favorite part of that movie is the Rathtar scene and when my grandson comes over he wants me to play the Lego game as Han Solo to beat the Rathtar level because the monsters are scary to him and he likes to see me defeat them.  He amazes me at all his observations even though he’s only four.

I’ve watched all the old Zorro movies and Flash Gordon serials that Star Wars was based on.  I’ve seen all the Akira Kurasawa movies that inspired the Star Wars movie, A New Hope.  But what George Lucas created and these new filmmakers at Lucasfilm under Disney’s ownership are doing is quite a lot more sophisticated.  I think most of the credit goes to Joseph Campbell than anybody—or even John Williams who has created so much wonderful symphonic music for our modern generations that Mozart and Beethoven aren’t even relevant any longer.  Our culture is much richer because of Star Wars than it otherwise would have been, and by the premise of the new movie, there is a lot to look forward to.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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Bomb the Towels Right off the ISIS Heads: The joy of getting a bag of chips out of a vending machine

It continues to be a topic of fascination how the world of politics deals with Donald Trump. They are just bewildered by him, one minute he’s for dismantling NATO.  The next he’s for it.  One minute he’s anti-China—the next he’s shaking hands—palm up with the communist leader and talking about trade.  Then there are the accusations of a “bromance” with Vladimir Putin—then the hammers of war being beaten in the direction of Russia. The people in politics and those who cover it are literally about to explode with frustration because they don’t understand what Donald Trump is doing.  But I do.

It’s a long story but today marked something of a personal milestone in achievement. I bought a bag of potato chips out of the new vending machines of a beautiful new manufacturing facility that I along with many other people breathed to life.  Whenever I do something like that I like to do little things like enjoy a bag of potato chips from there because it tastes very sweet due to all the effort it takes to get such a monumental task accomplished.  The road to get to where you actually put vending machines into such a place is a long one, and many pitfalls and challenges have to be navigated, so once you get the vending machines installed, you always achieve something tremendous.  But to get there you are constantly negotiating with other people, you are always employing some kind of strategy, you are always fighting something—because you have to remember that the world of government looks down on achievement—so you are always fighting various aspects of government corruption to do anything productive.  It could be zoning, unfriendly socialist trustees such as in the township where I bought the aforementioned potato chips.  There are three trustees there.  George Lang is a good one.  Mark Welch is another one.  But then they have a socialist who is always trying to build some sidewalk with tax payer funds, or yacking about his military record in the same breath as declaring himself a minority candidate.  He doesn’t understand business at all, so lucky for West Chester, there are two votes against that guy so business can happen.  But not every place is so lucky.  Many places around the world, especially in California, Seattle and other progressive areas, the good guys get outvoted by the bad guys (the anti-business people) most of the time.  So it is always a good feeling to get to a point where you can buy a bag of chips out of a vending machine because it’s nearly a miracle these days to get to that point.

But the administration part is only the beginning, there are deals that are constantly being made with other human beings to move a project along, and for someone like Donald Trump who has operated most of his life as a high-end developer, the chance to buy a bag of chips out of a vending machine is a very tall road to climb—indeed. The kind of person that does these types of things has to be unique because often it’s the thrill of accomplishment that drives such people—not necessarily the payday.  And for a person to master those skills means they can operate at many human levels of communication and are masters of negotiation, manipulation, and strategy.  Donald Trump is certainly all those things and I think he will be viewed by history as the unquestionably best president we’ve ever had in America because what he will produce during his time in office will be something that is rare.

You have to understand dear reader that for most of human history mankind didn’t have much of an economy that was driven off free market ideas. Always there was some king or emperor in the way skimming off the top of any national endeavor—and this effectively put the shackles on human production because people just don’t do much unless they are free.  They may work in the fields all day to pick rice, but they don’t think of better ways to pick that rice unless they can have the opportunity to get rich off it.  So without the free market system—innovation just doesn’t happen.  People don’t invent better ways to do things so some ruler can take their idea and live well off it.  If there isn’t some concept of reward, human beings keep their thoughts to themselves which is why socialist societies just don’t make it very long.

Now for complex economies where many people are pushing and shoving other people for a chance to win big, things get very complicated. In order to navigate any project where many such people are a part of your success you have to learn how to read everything about them to get some leverage that is mutually advantageous.  I say that because if you screw people over you may win once, but they won’t deal with you in the future.  So you must learn to read every non-verbal sign of body language, every variability of sentence structure, every hidden motive to learn how to move people to where you need them to be—where they also come out smelling wonderful.  And that is hard.  Very hard.

This is what we might call a “dynamic personality.” They tend to see things well ahead of other people, and are also personally courageous—perhaps to the point where they are thrill junkies who thrive off great risks.  Without them invention and economic expansion doesn’t happen.  Most people in the world are very static.  They learn the routines of their days starting with their very first experiences as human beings and once they level off in adulthood they are quite comfortable taking orders and falling in behind the leaders of society because it allows them to live within a framework of routine that is comfortable.  They don’t like risky behavior because it might make them late for dinner—that kind of thing.

Politics is built around static people—very predictable and having their roots back to aristocratic days when clear social levels could mandate what kind of home you lived in, what types of sexual encounters you might experience, and what the fate of your children might be. But when you introduce dynamic people suddenly the lives of the static people are always in jeopardy—because they don’t like change and dynamic people are all about change.  For many centuries, political people have prevented dynamic people from holding offices.  They allowed them to somewhat thrive in business so long as they could tax and control them through some legal means—but they didn’t allow them into politics. That makes Donald Trump the first of his kind to break through that invisible barrier for the long-span of the human race—and this dynamic has made the static order very uncomfortable.

That is why Trump’s negotiation skills are so frustrating to the static order of today’s politics—because the sheer dynamism of Trump threatens the future of the entire political system. As a businessman, Trump may want China to put an end to North Korea’s threats while closing the gap between the trading deficit.  So he does what he needs to in order to achieve that objective.  He may need to threaten war, or he may offer a bottle of wine—whatever is needed at that moment.  To the static political culture used to predictability—in fact their entire existence depends on it—this is a nightmare.  But for Americans in need of an American renaissance—its precisely what is required.  Just today Trump dropped a massive bomb on an ISIS hideout in Afghanistan.  Guess he wasn’t joking about ending ISIS—and the capital earned off that bombing will help with Russian deals, Chinese negotiations over territory and trade, and stop the butchering of innocent people in Syria.  In the end, everyone will get what they want because that’s what deal makers do.  And that really is the only way you can get to a bag of chips in a vending machine—you have to navigate very complicated engagements to arrive at such an opportunity. With that in mind, for the first time in the history of the world such a person is running things on the political levels, and the dynamism of that reality is shattering the static world of politics—likely forever.  And that is such a wonderful thing.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here: http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707 Use my name to get added benefits.

The Terrible Customer Service of Airlines in America: United’s horrible public relations nightmare is just the tip of an incberg

We’ve all heard by now about the Poker playing doctor who was dragged off a United Airlines flight in Chicago because the airline company had overbooked the flight. The policy is ridiculous, the mistakes made by everyone numerous, and the degrading condition of airline travel in the United States made embarrassingly clear.  For what we pay for an airline ticket, the airlines should be a lot more appreciative.  Instead, they have come to treat the experience—especially in the economy class—as a miserable endeavor.  And it was on full display for everyone to see.

Here’s the main problem, that doctor should never have even been flying from Chicago to Louisville—it would have been quicker to drive the distance. The only time I’d fly such a short flight would be a connecting flight after a much longer journey—which often occurs when traveling overseas.  When doing such a thing most flights arrive domestically in Charlotte, Chicago, or Detroit then you have to catch a transfer flight to your home destination.  But for just flying from one city to another within the United States such as from Chicago to Louisville—a car is much faster by the time you waste all your time with the TSA and the booking process.  Airlines have lost their way and become entirely too callous to the service of their passengers.  Flying now is like riding on a public bus—and that is just a miserable state of affairs for something that should be a luxury experience.  So if I were that doctor who was singled out to lose his seat on an overbooked flight which the airlines have a right to do unfortunately—I would have taken the money and rented a car—and just drove down to Louisville.  I wouldn’t have allowed myself to be stuck in Chicago one more night waiting for another flight the next day.  That is just a ridiculous waste of time.  It’s only a four to five-hour drive from Chicago to Louisville taking your time—so the people on that flight had options that were much better than the violence that eventually occurred.

And that’s what I would suggest that people do—just don’t fly unless you have to. When I need to travel overseas, there isn’t much choice but recently on a trip back from Europe I noticed that the British Airways flight crew was top-notch while the American Airlines crew just sucked.  They had bad attitudes and were miserable to deal with—and that comes from their labor unions and essentially the lack of competition that the airlines have enjoyed for half a century.  Well, those days are coming to an end, other transportation modes will be competing with the airlines soon and that will change things significantly—such as the upcoming Hyperloop.  But even while in Europe I watched the flight attendants union for British Airways protesting at Heathrow for better wages and benefits which looked terrible.  All the employees in the commercial air professions have a lot to relearn about customer service—because presently it is just terrible and that is the first problem that United had with their policy which failed so spectacularly in Chicago.

The other major issue is the authority that the TSA and the airlines now have over individual sanctity—which is a direct cause of over-reaction to terrorism. The United States response to terrorism after 9/11 was just wrong to become a bunch of scardy cats afraid of their own shadows.  What should have been done then is what Trump is doing now—single out the terrorist activities and throw aggression at them making them think twice about attacking us again.  Airline travel should be as easy as the air shuttle is at Lunken Airport in Cincinnati.  The air shuttle there flies people to New York, Chicago, and Charlotte at just a little bit over what a commercial flight costs—but the hassle is much less.  They are very respectful of your time and person at Lunken and that makes it a much more desirable option.  They still work for people’s business there and don’t take it for granted that you have to do what they say.

On another flight, recently from overseas a flight attendant who thought she had way too much power was harassing a young couple who were trying to keep their baby quiet with videos on their smart phone. It was working and the noise level was next to nothing.  But that didn’t stop the woman from telling the young parents that they needed to put head phones on the baby because open sounds were not allowed on the plane.  Their response was that what they were doing was quieter than a screaming baby.  The stewardess very nearly pressed the issue—which under the airline rules, she had the authority to do.  Luckily, she let the situation slide, but not before tempting the desire to throw her weight around—which was considerable as she was an obviously union protected monstrosity who could barely fit down the aisle of the plane.  Not a good image for the airline to begin with.  Obviously, the tendency toward customer service was missing—customers these days are treated as a nuisance when they fly.  They are practically raped before getting on the plane and once there you are at the mercy of questionable pilots and power-hungry stewardesses who are well into their 40s and miserable because they feel guilty leaving their families behind to fly around the world for a living.  I mean really, if I want my mom to serve me drinks I can go to her house—part of the flying experience should be to be pampered a bit and to get where you want to go with a bit of adventure and zeal to it.  Not misery and some menopausal deformity with hairs coming out of their noses pouring you a Coke on a bumpy plane.  It’s a lot more palatable to have an attractive female in her mid-twenties tell you to fasten your seatbelt than some angry relic from the baby boomer generation.  I’m just being honest.  For what we pay, airlines are not giving us customer service and the issue is not looks—it’s just respect for the whole experience.  Ugly people as employees are just the icing on the cake—airlines don’t even go that far as to care about such things.  They are too busy overbooking flights and ripping people off airplanes to cover their management inefficiencies while the TSA is pulling down the paints of little boys and checking them for bombs they know aren’t there.  But the little pedophile in them hope to find something—likely unrelated.

I hate flying these days unless it’s in first class. Even then, the last time I flew overseas on a United flight in the nice seats they gave me a gay guy as an attendant.  My ticket cost as much as a car and that was all they could give me?  I mean it’s not about sex, it’s about taste—it is much nicer to have an attractive woman passing you drinks on a psychological level and working around you while you are trying to sleep than the hairy arm of some guy who acts like he wants to molest you.  Even for women, a flight to Japan or to a destination in Europe that isn’t encumbered with a PC culture of old people is more pleasant with a 25-year-old women full of wonderful estrogen handing you food—purely from a sanitation point of view because they at least care about their appearance so you can deduce that they at least washed their hands. And if airlines can’t at least give you decent looking people to serve you, then they should just leave you alone.  But flying is extremely intrusive and personally violating so with the uncomfortable burdens of jet lag and time zone adjustments—these added problems are just not worth the experience.  So whenever possible, I find some other way to travel these days—and that’s the best way to correct the behavior.  Take money out of their pockets and they’ll have to adjust.

For passengers of that United flight where the guy was drug off screaming like a trapped raccoon, they all should have been taking a car to Louisville—because the distance just doesn’t justify the extreme hardship of flying. By the time most of those passengers arrived at the airport, checked their baggage, went through security, found their gate terminal in that large airport—they could almost have driven to Louisville from Chicago.  Then there is the time it takes to taxi out and take off and actually fly to Northern Kentucky along the Ohio River, which is very fast—but still part of the process.  But that’s not all, once you land, find your bags, get a car—you could have long been at your hotel if you had just driven the distance.  And if I were you dear reader, that’s what I’d start doing.  Don’t give those slugs at United your money for a terrible experience. Don’t reward terrible behavior.  If they can’t give you something special for your time and money—then don’t give them the money.  It’s that simple, and if everyone did that United Airlines and the rest of them would be forced to become more customer friendly.  And from my vantage point—that is long overdue.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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