Meet Matt Kibbe Speaking at the Cincinnati Tea Party: Six years of success projecting many more

It says a lot that after six years the Cincinnati Tea Party still draws such huge crowds such as they did during the 2015 Tax Day rally at the Sharonville Convention Center. Ann Becker and her band of righteous rebels have done a very good job of keeping everything together even when the established political party of Republicans has openly sought to destroy the fledgling movement. The Cincinnati Tea Party has so much influence throughout the country that it attracts national personalities like Matt Kibbe to speak at its events such as what can be seen in the following clip from that event.

Matthew B. “Matt” Kibbe is the President and CEO of FreedomWorks, a position he has held since 2004. He originally joined the organization (previously known as Citizens for a Sound Economy) as a policy analyst in 1986. He previously worked as Chief of Staff to U.S. Representative Dan Miller (R-FL), Senior Economist at the Republican National Committee (where he resigned in protest when George H. W. Bush violated his no new taxes pledge),^[3] Director of Federal Budget Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Managing Editor of Market Process, an academic economics journal published by the Center for the Study of Market Processes at George Mason University.^[4][5]

Kibbe has been published in publications including The Wall Street Journal,^[6] The Washington Times,^[7] USA Today, RedState.com, America Spectator and Reason Magazine.^[8] On television, Kibbe has appeared on MSNBC’s The Dylan Ratigan Show, MSNBC’s Hardball, FOX News’ Fox & Friends, FOX News’ Glenn Beck, NBC’s The Today Show, FOX News’ America’s Newsroom, CSPAN, FOX News’ Neil Cavuto, FOX Business Network’s Happy Hour, and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher^[9]

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

I enjoyed meeting Kibbe as he’s someone who has done some great national work on behalf of the Tea Party. If not for him, and a few like him, it would have been hard to continue this act of rebellion against big government for such a long period of time. As Kibbe said in his speech, there has been a shift in the power of new media to allow discussions of freedom to rise to the top in spite of attempts from the old world to confine them. Kibbe pointed out that John Boehner should have been in attendance since he lives up the road, but was scared because he knows what the Tea Party means to established Republicans.

Of the upcoming presidential nominees from the Republican Party so far, all are Tea Party candidates. There wasn’t anybody like these guys in 2008 when McCain ran against Obama—so this election of 2016 will naturally have some debate that the rest of America has not heard before. People within the Tea Party of course have been hearing these arguments for quite a long time, but now there will be a national audience that will be cast in competition against the ideas of the past—traditionally regulated to the progressive elements of the two-party systems. The Tea Party has not died, as many hoped, but has remained a force for change from a corrupt system into a more philosophic endeavor poised to provide definitions to economic and social boundaries that have long been ignored.

Kibbe with all his great experience was very at ease on stage and provided a wonderful talk. I came in behind him as he was registering at the VIP entrance once the crowds had settled inside the auditorium at the beginning. He was extremely unassuming and confident using logic to make his points as opposed to emotion. Even when nobody was looking Matt Kibbe was a solid representative of sound economic policy. I knew who he was but didn’t bother him as he gets hammered by fans everywhere he goes. He was very polite to everyone who tried to engage him and gave him their books hoping to get coverage on his FreedomWorks network. But Kibbe stayed on point and focused until it was time for him to speak.

In contrast was Benn Swan who I have also had some interaction with in the past who gave a speech with a pretension that projected he thought he was the next Glenn Beck. Kibbe has had a lot higher profile than Swan who made a name for himself at Channel 19 in Cincinnati. Swan ducked out as soon as his speech was over shaking hands and behaving like a star wanting to sign all his autographs. Kibbe stood next to me in the back of the room looking like the kind of guy you’d want to have a beer with. We spoke a bit but otherwise he kept his profile low and his attention on the task at hand. He was as much of a class act as I hoped he would be.

Kibbe’s speech left me thankful that he does all that he does. His contributions are direct, and having a dramatic effect. He is certainly one of the people in my opinion who have helped populate the field of current presidential candidates. His national work has after all these years began showing results–and for those in the Tea Party movement, they are favorable. It is certainly because of people like Ann Becker that the Cincinnati Tea Party is still so respected, but it is because of those like Matt Kibbe that advances in political, and economic philosophy have brought to fruition an option in thought that just wasn’t present in American politics six years ago. It has been a great six years, and the next six will produce advancements unfathomable to the John Boehner types of yesteryear. And the responsibility for many of those advancements will fall directly to the antics of Matt Kibbe and his FreedomWorks network. It is for that reason I enjoyed meeting him so much.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

‘Batman Versus Superman: The Dawn of Justice’ from the lens of Ayn Rand

Essentially the argument in question revolving around the new Batman Versus Superman: The Dawn of Justice movie is a philosophic argument between Plato/Aristotle and Nietzsche/Ayn Rand. Batman represents the old human concept of law and order whereas Superman represents the overman. It is a compelling argument and one that I didn’t entirely expect to be conveyed so openly in a comic book movie—but here it is.

Of course it should be expected where my sentiments fall. And I’m sure Ayn Rand would be aghast that I compared her to Frederick Nietzsche. She would break things down by stating that she is more like Aristotle whereas Nietzsche is aligned more properly with the sentimental mysticism of Plato—but for this line of thought I’m breaking down philosophic development into the boundaries of western civilization itself. The minds of man have brought us into the modern age on the philosophy established in Greece. Ayn Rand and the concept of the overman is the future—it is the graduation of mankind from the boundaries of intellectual confinement driven by thousands of years of madness.

I have stated my love for both film franchises, of course the Batman films of Christopher Nolan and the Man of Steel film by the same producer. Both Christopher Nolan renditions of the comic legends have heavy doses of Ayn Rand in them—collectivism versus the individual. Yet Hollywood is directly opposed to Ayn Rand currently favoring heavily the Kantian philosophy of collectivism, altruism, and human depravity. The director of the Man of Steel films and the upcoming Dawn of Justice is Zach Snyder who obviously like Christopher Nolan, prefers Ayn Rand and even though Hollywood may not like it—the hot handed director is at the helm and is poised to deliver a powerful money-making franchise to Warner Bros that will compete directly with the wonderful Marvel Avengers films from Disney.

I’m actually going deeper into this line of thought with my Cliffhanger project, but for the masses right now at the start of the 21^st century this Batman versus Superman battle needs to happen, and the trailer captured the essence of it very well. All through human history mankind has fallen in love with power and it has corrupted their minds. An overman on the other hand has no such love for power, because they understand the nature of it. Power is not given to other people through democratic measures. Just because one person can command hundreds, perhaps thousands from the lofty perches of a social title of some kind—there is no real power there—just an acknowledgment of collective will. Real power comes from an individual and will remain no matter what circumstances emerge.

In many ways in a modern since the director Ridley Scott surprisingly grasped this concept in his 2000 release of Gladiator, which won best picture that year along with a best actor award for Russel Crowe. Scott isn’t typically an Ayn Rand fan, but he did grasp the power of the individual in that film where Maximus—the protagonist had been the favored general of Marcus Aurelius due to his skill on the battlefield, but once the Emperor died, his son Commodus, deeply jealous of Maximus sought to put the general to death and kill his family. Maximus escaped, but not in time to save his family. The great man lost everything and is captured and toured around as a gladiator—one step always from death. Yet Maximus is so skilled at fighting that he quickly rose back to the top and eventually challenged again the Emperor of Rome as a masterful tactician. It is clearly one of the best films of its kind and is oozing with Ayn Rand strength centering on the individual over the collective. There is a truth in that particular film that Ridley Scott unintentionally released. I have put that truth to test many times and have discovered that it’s immensely accurate. You can take a great man and cast him onto a remote island in the middle of nowhere and he or she—will succeed in spite of the collective efforts to hold them down. Great people are not driven by collective salvation or sacrifice—they are creators of their own fates and can make success out of any situation—because success is an act of creation—not something granted by luck or the “gods.” A great person will always rise back to the top by default and there is a science to it that is predictable.

Zach Snyder seems compelled by this same resiliency and all the characters in his films embody some aspect of this. So it’s no accident that Christopher Nolan put Snyder in charge of the Superman franchise. There really is no better director today who knows how to handle the Man of Steel mythology. Superman is a superior being from another planet who simply wanted to help mankind become greater. He has absolute power, and came from a planet that collapsed under that power—not by his hand, but those of his people. Superman’s job is to ensure that the same thing doesn’t happen to earth. Batman on the other hand is a broken man who lost his parents at a young age and has spent his life righting wrongs essentially out of a vigilante need to rectify justice. But that justice is very terrestrial as it has been formulated around human perception. Batman is a second generation man of wealth meaning he inherited much of what his father made for him, but he is competent enough to sustain that wealth and apply it to fighting crime. Batman is always one step away from falling off the cliff whereas there is never any real danger that Superman would or could fall. Because no matter what happens Superman will always rise back to the top just like Maximus did from the Gladiator. So Snyder in the second film of his Man of Steel series is pitting these two heroes of entirely different philosophies against each other which is essentially the debate of our day.

The essential suspicion is that no man can resist the temptation toward corruption if given the opportunity. So Superman is a threat to the world even though all his efforts have been in trying to save it. But Superman is not a man of this world; he is essentially an alien functioning from an inner self-assurance that is a graduation of mankind’s limits. Yes, he has absolute power, but he also is immune to the desire to abuse it for the sake of social adornment. An overman knows where their power comes from so the appeasement of the masses does nothing for them. The only measure they have is themselves for success. Whereas the traditional western perspective is that if the masses support the power and authority of an individual that power is thus provided to control those people. This ultimately leads to a collapse of the individual ego upon itself because power is not generated from within, but from without.

It was the Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw who termed the name “overman” or otherwise “superman” in his 1902 play Man and the Superman which would later inspire the comic. In the play established in Act 1 is the concept that the more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. This of course leads to a disastrous life making men miserable for most of their existence. As Shaw states in his play, “A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.” This is the world of Batman—he’s never really happy and feels he is a Dark Night that stands in the shade between right and wrong. However Shaw was a socialist who did not believe in the abilities of mankind to overcome such faults so he regulated his sentiments toward collectivism being lead by the elite in charge—which of course took Nietzsche’s work and perverted it into the Nazi regime. A couple of high school kids from Cleveland, Ohio inspired by many science fiction writers from the early 20s—inspired by Shaw’s play—invented the comic Superman to fight for the rights of left-leaning causes during the Red Decade coming out in 1933. The big difference between Nietzsche’s overman and Siegel and Shuster’s “superman” was that one transcended the limitations of society, religion, and conventional morality while still being fundamentally human. The other was alien and gifted with incredible powers choosing honorable human moral codes, holding himself to a higher standard of adherence to them, purposely. Over time Superman has evolved ending up in the middle of those two viewpoints under Zach Snyder’s care. And that is a good and healthy thing.

So Batman versus Superman is more than another popcorn movie about superheroes. It’s a philosophy for our age that needs articulation. A lot of history has passed since Shaw wrote his play but what has come out in the end is a fully fleshed out philosophy that works. That philosophy is what the theme of this upcoming movie is between two of the most well-known and loved superheroes of our modern mythology. Under Zach Snyder’s care I think he’s going to produce something revolutionary and I’m very excited about it. But in that battle I know already who will win. The overman always comes out on top—because it’s in their nature to always do so.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Mason High School’s Covered Girl Challenge: Public education purposely turning children against you

As public education advocates were marching on Columbus to protest Governor Kasich’s budget cuts to affluent school districts, the Mason school system showed what the government schools are really about. For those who think that my criticisms of public schools are exaggerated check out the activity that was being organized at Mason. Keep in mind that Christianity is heavily ridiculed in government schools yet in Mason, Ohio—one of the wealthiest regions in the country students are being encouraged to wear a Muslim hijab to school as a gateway to Islam. What is interesting in this is that radical ISIS beheadings are the news topic of our day and thousands of years of archaeology is being destroyed in the Middle East by radical Muslim terrorists—yet here is a publicly funded institution encouraging the spread of Islam. Here is the memo that went out to students and their parents announcing the upcoming event.

Mason High School is blessed to have a unique and diverse student body. In order celebrate this diversity and promote open-mindedness, the Muslim Student Association is inviting all female students to participate in “A Covered Girl Challenge” which will allow students to wear a headscarf for the whole school day. Afterwards, there will be a discussion (open for all students, male & female) held in Z223 to share experiences and reflections.

In order to participate, students and/or parents should attend the informational meeting offered and turn in the attached permission slip to Student Activities or Mrs. Jenkin’s room in Z223.

On the morning of April 23rd, there will be booths set up in A2, C1, and Z1 to help participators adjust their scarves and answer any questions.

To learn more about what the Covered Girl Challenge is all about and what a headscarf is watch this video: https://youtu.be/_WosD_GTz_E

Please note the important dates below: Informational meeting: April 20th after school in Z223 Covered Girl Challenge Thursday April 23rd during school day

Covered Girl Challenge Discussion after school on Thursday April 23rd in Z223 Flyer and permission slip are at the link below:

http://www.edline.net/pages/Mason_High_School/2684432697290919314/Student_Activities/FORMS/EMA

If anyone has any questions please email masonhsmsa@gmail.com

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/04/ohio-public-high-school-hosting-a-covered-girl-challenge-asking-students-to-wear-hijab-for-a-day

Now, what conclusion would any rational person make by that event? It’s not like Mason is some backwater school in the middle of nowhere—its right in the heart of America.

Here’s the deal, public schools are all about using confiscated wealth and breeding into the minds of youth nice little socialist followers who will support an aggressive agenda once they are of voting age. They are unhealthy places that no parent who truly loves their child should send an innocent mind. Public schools are bad places that intend bad things for newly formed minds. What other conclusion is there about the Covered Girl Challenge at Mason High School? Think about that and let me know…………………………………………………………

Why are we paying for these palaces of doom to destroy our children?

Send this to a friend and ask them the same question………………….why?

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Black-clad Lakota Teachers Against Merit: A system only designed by Lucifer himself

It would be a comedy if it wasn’t reality, but sadly it is. The Lakota teacher union is at it again—thinking incorrectly that everyone in opposition to their radical community expectations have gone back to sleep. Foolishly they exposed their true agenda with the same old tired tactics that belong in a lampoon film. They are a satire of themselves. At a recent school board meeting they protested the school board over the issue of merit pay, which I immensely support. The mere mention of merit pay gives me hope that the Lakota school board may actually do something correctly in relation to management of their employees. Merit pay means that good employees get paid better than bad ones—it’s pretty much that simple. For example, a teacher my kids had at Lakota East, Mr. Duff I would have considered an exceptionally great teacher. I wouldn’t care if the school paid him $200,000 per year, because he was worth it. However, the many teachers from Lakota reported by this site that were caught in various scandals and poor choice behavior recently clearly aren’t worth so much money. They may have value in some education capacity, but certainly are not equal to Mr. Duff. The Lakota teachers are a progressive organization under their LEA union leadership and they believe in strict collective bargaining or nothing—meaning all boats rise to the top regardless of the quality of their employees. Because of their insistence on this collectivize bargaining/no merit pay formula the budget tax payers are forced to fund is outrageously high. Lakota like every organization should be functioning under the 10-80-10 rule, which generally cites that roughly 10% of a work force are exceptionally good—like Mr. Duff and should be compensated accordingly. 80% are average and should make wages in accordance with their meagerness. Then the bottom 10% are the child molesters, the sexting addicts, and general bottom feeders who should be on the chopping block of termination upon their first mistake. The union helps those bottom feeders while penalizing the top by minimizing their worth as equal to the lowest 10%. Here is how my old buddy Michael Clark reported the issue in the Cincinnati Enquirer. The complete article is at the end of the segment. Read it while you can—because the Enquirer starving for revenue takes these articles down not long after they are published. Typically articles like this one are forgotten in a few weeks, and during the next levy attempt, we’ll want to remember it.

LIBERTY TWP. – In the middle of key Lakota Schools’ contract talks, dozens of teachers made a symbolic but silent appearance Monday night in the union’s first public demonstration since negotiations began.

About four dozen teachers – many of them clad in black – joined a full audience at Lakota’s school board meeting as labor talks continue this week for Southwest Ohio’s second largest school system.

Some of the teachers say they are concerned about the possibility of merit pay being contractually installed for the first time in Lakota’s 59-year history.

“I’d like to see more positive changes for teachers here in the future, but I don’t think merit pay is the way to go,” said Brandon Bright, a science teacher at Lakota East High School.

Sharon Mays, president of the 923-member Lakota Education Association (LEA), declined to comment about union members’ appearance at the board meeting or on the status of the contract talks, which began last month.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/04/13/talks-continue-lakota-teachers-demonstrate/25743561/

I read the comments at that link from some of the teachers and they were even funnier than those idiots standing outside of the administration building dressed in black for emphasis fighting merit pay. They have an opinion of themselves that is much higher than their real value. They are spoiled brat public employees who work, think, and have expectations on par with the most grotesquely out-of-touch IRS employee. They have no sense of service, but somehow believe that the community works for them instead of the other way around. No wonder so many children raised in public education environments over the last two or three decades enter life feeling entitled to everything—because they learned the behavior from these idiots!

Public teachers like those at Lakota own the problems of our modern age–the sex driven antics of youth, the low morality, the poor ethics, and the terrible work habits. Union employed teachers have successfully offered free baby sitting to lazy self-absorbed parents making the public school the primary driver of youthful upbringing and it has been a disaster. Public schools do not get a free pass when everything goes wrong—they don’t get to point at the parents and call them names to justify the poor home lives of children. The public schools offered themselves as a substitute and they failed—at best.

But why did they fail–the public schools like Lakota? Well it’s because the teachers have collective bargaining agreements and step increase schedules that give them money no matter how good of a teacher they are. So bad teachers are kept around and considered equal to the top ten percent, and the really good have no incentive to continue being great, because they get paid the same as the slugs working next to them. The public school system is the epitome of Karl Marx communism. It’s just not called that by name, but the assumption that all employees are equal is taken straight out of the text of The Communist Manefestro. Public education is a joke. Exceptional employees are looted of their value in favor of the weakest and most demonstrative. Values in such a system are re-distributed to those without it, just like wealth in the community which funds the whole mess. The public education system might as well have been designed by Lucifer.

Lakota to their credit as an administrative measure have thankfully listened to the complaints over the years—and are considering merit pay—which would go a long way to solving a great many of the problems at that district. But it’s a drop in the bucket and the unions instantly jumped all over the issue with protest. All they really managed to do was to show just how grossly out-of-touch they really are by protesting in this day and age—after all that’s happened at Lakota—in such a dramatic fashion. Really? They know I’m not going to let it die and will bring it up from now until infinity—yet they did it anyway.

I suppose they figure they have the votes for a new levy, and they think nobody reads Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom just because they don’t and don’t hear me on WLW radio any more. But they’d be wrong. The stat numbers on my site for the topic of politics is quite high, and daily provides information to those not quite up to date on things. Most people miss Enquirer articles like the one above the first time around and only care during elections. Since the Enquirer charges for their information people turn to sites like this one. Because of Overmanwarror’s Wisdom, during the next election when people Google “Lakota teacher salary” or “Lakota election” articles like this one will come up. Then they may know about the Enquirer article, they’ll have access to the quote I provided, but they’ll click on the link and discover that the link no longer works. So they’ll read my site instead of the Enquirer and form their opinion based on the data given.

It used to be that teachers union scum bags and merit pay protestors only had to bend the ear of reporters like Michael Clark from the Enquirer or the Pulse. But media has changed over the last five years. If it’s not on Twitter, nobody will see it. People don’t read traditional news any more, and they care even less about some story about black clad Lakota teachers written by a reporter eating out of the hand of Sharon Mays. But come election time, they’ll find me, and will ignore the flowery newspaper articles that always come out prior to an election—just so that papers can sell advertising back to the school through direct and indirect sales. When they do read this article in the upcoming years voters will remember what a bunch of idiots the Lakota teachers were over merit pay. Once they do, they’ll become an informed voter and will cast their ballots as such.

Meanwhile, the Lakota teachers participating in that protest are satirical limericks of personal destruction—they are caricatures of sanity pasted against the theater of time apparently solely for our amusement. Because no truly sane person would argue against merit, unless they are a thief wanting to steal while nobody is looking. But guess what? Everyone is looking—and they are wide awake.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Jurassic World: A new step in science and philosophy

I’m not kidding, I am ecstatic about the opening of the new Jurassic Park franchise film Jurassic World. I may actually be more excited than that—but needless to say, I can’t wait. I love those movies deeply because they embody questions very relevant to our times regarding philosophy, science, morality, and economy that are not explored more effectively than in any other venue. It was Jurassic Park that really introduced over twenty years ago the concept of DNA replication to bring to life extinct species. A lot of science has been unraveled since then really demanding this latest edition—where scientists needing a ratings boost in park attendance make a hybrid dinosaur that gets loose and destroys the fully realized Jurassic World—the dreamy creation of the former John Hammond whose dream of a fully realized dinosaur park is finally made into a reality.

I loved the Michael Crichton books when they first came out, Jurassic Park and then The Lost World. When the movie hit in 1993 I made a big deal about it and took my little girls at the time to see it on opening night. They still remember that movie as their first theater experience. For this last Christmas my youngest daughter gave me a Jurassic Park t-shirt as a present because it is something that is specifically our thing. To this day she loves biology, botany, and paleontology because of her childhood spawned from the first Jurassic Park movie. A few years later when The Lost World came out I drug my wife’s side of the family, something like 25 people who had been gathering at a lake house on Nolan Lake to Elizabethtown, Kentucky to see the opening night in the only theater within fifty miles of the remote residence. The family often gathered at that lake for Memorial Day. In that group of people are a lot of science lovers, particularly my father-in-law who held multiple degrees in geology and was a school teacher—so they all wanted to see it. We packed up in several cars and made a pilgrimage into town to watch The Lost World. My kids were older at the time and had an absolute blast with their cousins. I don’t think they ever forgot the experience.

When Dr. Grant returned to Jurassic Park III my kids were in high school and I let them take a day off to go see the movie on opening day. Dr. Grant was always my favorite character so I was excited and my kids were excited because I was. It was a marvelous experience. The movies declined in quality a bit from the first one, especially as Steven Spielberg moved away from direct involvement with the franchise as the director, but they are still good regardless. Each movie is like the approach to a theme park at the beginning of the day when the sun is out, the air is cool, and eagerness fills the mind. There is nothing quite like the morning approach to a Orlando park whether it be Universal Studios, Disney, Sea World, a day at the local zoo, a thrill park, there is magic in the air that is unique to the human experience emerging from such a creation. Each Jurassic Park film embodies that same type of optimism where act one is filled with that type of energy. Act two in the movies becomes something of a Hitchcock type mystery where problems of clashing philosophies set up act three. In that third act all the optimism from act one gets tossed out the window and the films become a haunted house experience where a new thrill is around every turn that is wrapped up nicely at the end with heroics and fanfare. They are fun in the least, but at their best they ask deep questions very relevant to modern science—and they drive advancements in technology.

In my family we all loved playing Jurassic Park Builder on XBox and later on our cell phones. My kids play those types of simulators often and that love started with seeing the movies and dreaming of what it would really be like to see a fully realized Jurassic Park. So it will be wonderful to see what a Jurassic World will look like in the movie, where the whole island originally conceived in the very first film has finally been built into a fully functioning amusement park. I overlook the obvious attacks on capitalism which always spawn in the second act as a simple plot device to ask “what if.” If not for capitalism there wouldn’t be anything relevant about Jurassic Park so without it, there wouldn’t be any dinosaurs or topic to contemplate. Rather the theme of the movies is what happens when undisciplined use of capitalism leads people astray, which is what happens in Jurassic World.

As cool as all the dinosaurs are, the cost of running such a large theme park is excessive so they need increased attendance just to cover their costs. So they invent a new dinosaur which is wrong in so many different ways. But what is to stop human kind from doing such a thing. Very soon genetic research which was in its infancy in the first Jurassic Park movie, will allow people to alter themselves into whatever they want to be. All you have to do is manipulate your DNA code and we can all be taller, faster, and prettier—whatever we wish. The same topic of conversation is emerging in the discussions of giving birth once again to extinct species of animals. What is to stop zoos from making a wholly mammoth when they can change it into something that has never before existed. What are the limits in playing God? Religions will say that nobody should play God, but science dictates that we should—so where is the happy medium? Those types of questions are what the Jurassic Park movies explore and leave movie goers talking about those very topics on the way home after the movie. That is why these movies are important, because they put hard science into the spotlight of what we should and should not do as a species with very advanced tools in our possession.

Needless to say, I am excited and will continue to be the closer the movie gets to a release date. There are a lot of great movies lined up for the summer, but none of them are as exciting to me as Jurassic World. Will it be as good as the first one? Probably not. Likely it will be somewhere between the second and third film—it probably won’t make as much money at the box office as Universal hopes it will, but it will still be enjoyable, and relevant. I hope it does well enough to justify another movie in the franchise, because I could watch them forever. It is always fun no matter how many times we go, to pull up to Disney World for a fresh adventure. There is always optimism in the morning before attending an amusement park. And those are the same type of emotions experienced before seeing a Jurassic Park movie. It is one of the few films of its kind that really captures that optimism fully. That is the reason I simply can’t wait for the movie to open. When it does, I will be one of the first in line!

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Secrets of the Moon: We are not alone, and never have been

The great danger of having the government in control of so much, particularly education, is that it makes it easy for them to conceal information that they do not wish to emerge. And this has never been more evident than in the issue over mankind’s actual origins or its relationship to the heavens. For instance, NASA recently had a press conference announcing that it would be likely that mankind would discover alien life within the next decade as seen in the video below. This was a remarkable statement by a government organization that has traditionally tried to debunk some of the wild UFO theories that have emerged throughout the years. Yet innately we all seem to understand that there is something not quite right about the stories we were given as children, and we look to the heavens as if yearning for home. We hide those yearnings behind religion and trust in government because the implications are just too terrifying to us in discovering, (or rather re-discovering) the truth. But the truth is headed in our direction quicker than mankind can deal with it and is on a collision course with destiny that none of us are ready for. Government has some idea, although it’s unlikely any one person in government has the whole story. For instance, NASA is planning on getting a manned mission to Mars by 2035 and they already have a pretty good idea what we’ll find once we get there. Just recently it was discovered that there was a vast ocean that covered the Northern Hemisphere of Mars and at a time, the red planet was very earth like. If there was water, it is likely that some form of life was in it. It is even possible that a whole life cycle of intelligent life rose and fell well before humans were even mating with (angels) in the time before the Deluge.

The most suspicious giveaway of this massive cover-up is the fact that mankind has not returned to the moon since the 1970s. Our journeys to the moon came to a sudden stop never to return or even send a probe. When the Apollo missions were over, everything just came to an end. NASA moved into a phase of launching shuttles and building an “International Space Station” content to float above the earth, but never to venture out too far from our home planet. The moon was strangely off limits suddenly.

The moon is pretty easy to see and amateur astronomers have been looking at it for many years. No matter where we are on earth, we all see the same side of it, never seeing anything on the back side as the same face always gazes at us—yet human beings have been more curious than their governments have been comfortable with. They have seen strange events happening on the moon and speculate as to why or how. But the real evidence that gives away the mystery is that nobody has returned, and if they have, it was a secret not disclosed to the public. When mankind does return to these other planets we’ll confirm the long-held suspicion that we are not alone. We were never alone, in fact, our galaxy is teeming with life—most of it very primitive, some of it advanced, but we will share with that advanced life an origin story that will be difficult for all of us. It will shatter our religious convictions and a perceptual understanding of reality—so for now our governments protect our fragile emotions with the thin veil of concealment like children still wanting to believe in Santa Clause. We want to believe in the Leaky theories of evolution, in the hand of God shaping us into our present form. But what we’ll discover very soon is that God was not some deity in the heavens but only part of the story of a race of people who came to earth from someplace else and made the world into the image of their homeland. Likely some of these relics will be found on Mars which will finally put all the speculation to rest. And before Mars was settled, there are other home worlds some of which still host life and have with them the origin stories what will shatter our current perceptual knowledge and leave mankind reeling with panic. The government isn’t all sinister, just filled with human frailty and an understanding that such revelations will shake the very foundations of society to its very core—and they have an innate desire to stay in charge and protect their “flock” from such trauma. But, it’s too late. It’s coming whether or not we want it to.

It is common in government schools for children to ridicule other children for believing in UFOs even though the evidence in support of alien life far surpasses the official press releases provided by government. The government has shown that it will lie collectively about small things, like Benghazi, or the true nature of a deal with Cuba and lifting sanctions with Iran—so it is quite a mystery why anybody would be so willing to believe the government in regard to alien life. But in public schools the government helps shape the consensus of learning. Children are encouraged to keep up with all the latest trends in pop culture and social concerns filling their brains with irrelevant material doomed to revision once government gets caught concealing the truth. That time is coming quick especially with independent private sector companies moving into the space race. Government will have to come clean or put a stop to free will because they can’t prevent the curious from uncovering the origins of mankind any longer. There are just too many tools available to the modern adventurer. Kids still make fun of other kids in school who dare to ask questions that have their answers outside of the latest happenings of a boy band singing the latest greatest hits. Many young minds are happy for a time to turn off their thoughts so they can feel the boobies of some girl during their adolescent years, but eventually their curiosity will catch up to them. And the evidence won’t be concealed any longer.

It wasn’t that long ago scientists—(individuals functioning under government grants) doubted that there was life anywhere but earth and that water was unusual to our planet. Now we know that Mars had an ocean—a big one and given the nature of our personal mythologies and early “pagan” religions, that in our background on earth there is evidence of life that was quite vast and intricate. Before there were governments in the form that we have them today, there were kingdoms and religion was used to control the minds of those within those kingdoms to serving their kings as a link to the heavens. Government has expanded this role, it is no longer just one or two monarchs sitting on a throne, but a whole class of people we are supposed to trust to manage our affairs as we work to pay our taxes to them and pick one of the few religions provided to us to focus our eye toward some version of immortality after the death of our bodies on earth. We are taught in our public schools to cattle prod our classmates into staying in the lines and not believing the strange reports of UFOs that flood in from the curious. But later, when the school days are done and government doesn’t provide answers to the strange things we see around us but to tell us to look somewhere else and keep our minds focused on some religion to answer our questions, all we have to do is look up and see ancient relics looking back at us. The moon is right there—yet human kind does not see it for what it really is..

The moon itself is an ancient artifact and this will be confirmed once we finally return and stay on its surface. There won’t be concealment of the truth any longer and NASA can see the day within the next few decades when this reality will occur. So they are slowly floating out to the public what is expected to be discovered, so that mankind has a chance to grapple with the implications. And those implications will shatter the religions of the world too stringent to accept the reality that we have never been alone but were only a colony on earth from a vast species that still roams the universe. And from there is the real origin story that will bring with it many new religions and a destiny not rooted in such sure footing. The strongest evidence to the fact is in what NASA or the government in general has avoided doing. The moon is so close, yet so far away. It is right there in the sky and on it is the truth—a truth we ran away from after the Apollo program. But a truth that is catching up to us faster than government can conceal the information.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Solar Panels at the Cincinnati Zoo: Great innovations that should be more heavily utilized

Many think that because I’m to the political right of Ted Cruz, that I don’t enjoy green technology. Contrary to the belief, I enjoy innovative technology regardless of the political sensibilities. I’m certainly not against green technology when it makes sense and is not uttered with religious-like fervor through belief in speculative science which indirectly attempts to undercut capitalist endeavors. With that said I was in for several surprises at the Cincinnati Zoo which greatly impressed me when I went there for the first time in several years in early April 2015 just as the flowers were blooming after a day of heavy rain.

I was loosely keeping track of events at my hometown zoo which I have always been proud of. My wife and I had been there so many times and never really saw any improvements so we took a break for a bit. I haven’t even driven down that particular stretch of Vine Street in at least six years, so I had no idea about the wonderful solar panels built in the new Vine Street parking lot. My wife and I have often given out season passes to the zoo during Christmas because we like to support the zoo, but we personally hadn’t gone in a while. My kids are all in their twenties now and our grandchildren have been too young. We have one grandson who is at the prime age, so we went with him for the first time and I was astonished by what we had discovered at the Cincinnati Zoo.

When I was a kid I loved going to the zoo. The Cincinnati Zoo is the second oldest zoo in America and has always been considered one of the top destinations in the country. At 16 years old I went to the San Diego Zoo, which was considered the best in America in the mid 1980s but I always thought it wasn’t by much. The zoo in Cincinnati has always been something I was proud of in my home town so I was eager to share it with my grandson and now grown daughter.

So I was in for a surprise when I tried to enter the parking lot that I always did when I was a child—the old one. I found I had to drive all the way around the block and park at the Vine Street entrance. I remembered that they were building a new Vine Street entrance when we came down for the Festival of Lights a half a decade ago, so I knew about the parking lot, but I had never seen the bridge that went over Vine Street or the new buildings consisting of the new heavily renovated entrance which turned out to be spectacular. That’s when we pulled in and I was astonished to see all the solar panels covering the parking lot.

I’m not a very big fan of solar panels because they take up so much space for what you get in energy feed back. However, the way that the Cincinnati Zoo utilized them was absolutely perfect; they essentially spent something around $11 million dollars to cover the parking lot for their guests dramatically cooling down the surrounding air during their intense summer season. The whole parking lot was basically a large car port which would really help visitors keep their cars cool while they enjoyed the zoo avoiding that terrible heat that often happens when a car has sat in the sun all day when visiting amusement parks as the sun beats on those cars for hours. The Cincinnati Zoo led by Mark Fisher had done something that I thought was incredibly smart with solar panel technology and found the perfect dual use. They gave their millions of yearly visitors a car port to park under while generating approximately 20% of their power needs at the zoo. Solar panels are expensive and spending $11 million to save a bit on the electric bill by itself doesn’t make much immediate sense. But improving the customer experience while doing so does, and I was extremely impressed by what the zoo had done with just the parking lot. Then we went inside.

The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden is as I said the second oldest zoo in America, just 14 months younger than the Philadelphia Zoo. On Vine Street in Avondale when the neighborhood was the premier suburb of Cincinnati in 1874 visitors entered off that classic street which extends from there to the south through the University of Cincinnati to downtown. The first thing visitors would see off that original entrance was the Reptile House which is the oldest zoo building in the United States built in 1875. So we are talking about some legitimate history here. The architect building the new entrance did a noticeably fabulous job of constructing a skyline from the vantage point of the parking lot that was consistent with the homes built around Vine Street. If I didn’t know where the zoo was, I would have thought that the new entrance was simply part of the community, and not the entrance to a major amusement park, which the Cincinnati Zoo is. It was an ascetic decision that greatly impressed me. But not as much as what the zoo had done to the original old parking lot which I noticed instantly after we had visited the new giraffe area.

Starting in 2010 through 2014 were four phases of a long-planned exhibit called Africa, which sat on 8-acres of former parking lot. A fifth phase was still under construction which would feature Nile hippos opening in 2016, but the four opened phases simply stunned me with their innovation. New to the zoo were these magnificent glass barriers which put little kids right up to the lions and gave the feeling of an open African savannah teeming with Africa’s most spectacular animals, like zebras, gazelles, impalas, ostriches, storks, cranes, and of course lions. It was very Jurassic Park inspired and was a massive improvement over my previous visits.

Yet even more impressive was the new Base Camp Café which is rumored to be the “greenest” restaurant in America, which was so effective I didn’t even think about it. It sat on a bit of a hill overlooking the four phases of the African exhibit with the kind of charm and utilization found in Disney theme parks. The dining area outside of the Base Camp was vast and well suited to allow diners to watch the animals while they ate. As we ordered our food gone were the employees at the zoo from old where they were sometimes a little grumpy and acted as if they were doing you a favor by talking to you. Here were very energetic employees who knew they were in competition with other tourism dollars and they wanted our money. They were polite, helpful, and fast with an eye on quality. They had an expediter at the counter to keep food moving from a very well-staffed kitchen working hard. That was good to see. Upon getting our food and sitting down to eat it outside I kept thinking that vacationers to Disney World or the actual African Serengeti were not so lucky to have such a view. The food was of a high enough quality to be considered good, but the view was simply spectacular. There really wasn’t a bad seat in the house and the whole Base Camp restaurant was stationed at such an angle that all the exhibits blended together into one giant plain. The animals were of course separated by different elevations of pooled water, which kept the lions from eating the gazelles, but from the point of view of the restaurant you really couldn’t tell. That was another brilliant move by the architect—who clearly knew what they were doing.

Throughout the rest of the park were small little improvements that showed a major investment of energy in updating the historic zoo to the level of competition influenced by the Disney Parks and offerings of Kings Island just up the road. Everything was just top-notch and improving. To make matters even better were all the flowers that had been planted and were blooming in the early April sun. The colors were just stunning. I love spring anyway, but the zoo took everything I love about spring and accentuated it dramatically with a visual display that rivals their winter time Festival of Lights.

Needless to say, I had a nice visit to the zoo with my family. It made me happy my daughter had kids just because it gave me an opportunity to return to a zoo I had gone to all my life, but had grown used to. If not for my little grandson, I might not have gone to the zoo so soon, because I thought I had seen and done everything that they could offer at such a city zoo location. But the Cincinnati Zoo showed that they were not happy just being one of the oldest zoos in the country with a respectable reputation for innovation over the years. They were still growing and wanting to get better. Their work with the parking lot and the African exhibit showed me that they were willing to compete directly with Disney World and Sea World for tourism dollars because they are offering a comparable experience. I had no problem spending a good deal of money at the zoo as if we were traveling to some exotic location to see the animals. I would go to the zoo again just to have lunch at the Base Camp.

I was surprised to learn that only the Cincinnati Zoo had utilized the solar panel parking lot concept. Conceived in 2011 it is still the only one of its kind anywhere—which again surprised me. I mean the sun shines regardless of whether someone captures some of it’s energy—so why not grab some of it for lights and to run a few of the water pumps that filter the water at theme parks like Disney World and Kings Island? I can only imagine what the impact would be at those two destinations if they did with their parking lot what the zoo had done. I have been to Disney World in the heat of mid summer and have returned to a car so hot that it took the whole ride back to the hotel to cool off with the windows down and air blowing. If they did what the Cincinnati Zoo had done, the cars would have all been shielded by the sun and the parks would have received some power to help with their energy costs. For a park like Disney World it would likely cost $200 million dollars which is a third of the cost of a whole new park. But it would enhance the customer experience while cutting down energy costs with their electric bill. The Cincinnati Zoo should be the showcase of how and why we should use solar panels, and if more businesses did the same type of thing, the cost might actually come down.

The solar panels at the zoo set up on just 6,400 solar arrays take about six acres and could power 200 homes of average size for a year. It really exhibits how roofing material made of solar arrays could capture energy to soften the blow of escalating electric bills. It’s a smart idea that should be gaining traction, but nobody but the zoo has yet to take that step. Granted, it’s a radical departure from tradition, and it is science that steps beyond politics. I’m sure Duke Energy would lobby the Ohio senate such as what is behind Ohio Senate Bill 310 to freeze state renewable energy standards for 2015 and 2016. The zoo was able to pay for the solar array with a multitude of options like tax credits, accelerated depreciation, and some debt financing, but it all paid off in what they were able to create. In my opinion, there should be a lot more of these solar panels anywhere that the sun beats down on a car in the hot summer sun, from shopping malls, to Cedar Point, and sports stadiums. It was a remarkably innovative idea that should be copied by everyone. And it made me proud to see that my favorite zoo, The Cincinnati Zoo, was the first to use them in a way that made sense and paved the way for what our future should hold. The Cincinnati Zoo is an organization that has always pushed the limit with innovation, and that is a tradition that looks to continue into the future. And what a treat it is to see that innovation at work. It made my trip to the zoo a wonder which I hadn’t expected. It reminded me of what a special place the Cincinnati Zoo is, and made me proud of all those season passes we passed out over the years even though we hadn’t gone ourselves. It was a pleasant surprise to say the least.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Art of Playing: Celebrating life and happiness

It was my 47^th birthday today and I spent it in an unusual fashion compared to some, but quite the standard within my family. During it I was reminded of a conversation I had recently with some pretty important and powerful people about the nature of living and how I manage to do so many things at several layers of severity and risk, but still manage to lay my head down on my pillow each night for sleep without wanting to jump off a roof. It’s a secret that I feel compelled to teach the world, just so that I might remove just a bit of their suffering and change the direction of their life’s focus. It’s a method that everyone would benefit from if they embraced it more and would drop the broken stereotypes of the past—because they don’t work. As a brief intro to the concept please understand that my wife could have given me just about anything for my birthday—a new Apple Watch, an expensive vacation, a dinner at Cincinnati’s exclusive restaurants, even a new car—but what she did give me was infinitely more interesting and fun. She gave me a Zoomer Dinosaur. She has been watching my grandson and he knew what she had bought me, and at just over 2 years old, he couldn’t wait to tell me. So he guided me to where she was hiding it and we opened it up. She didn’t care because he was so excited to see it move. After opening it, we put the little dinosaur on the ground and began playing with it—which set the tone for the entire birthday celebration.

My mother taught her kids how to play, even late in life. Growing up we played a lot and had very diverse interests. My grandmother also played at life a lot and made growing up very fun. Every trip to the grocery store was fun because they made it that way, and as a result I carry that into my own life-even in tragic situations. I try to have fun every day of my life—no matter what is going on. That is a pattern started in my childhood by my mom. My brother and sister have a similar love of playing and as a result as grown adults, they don’t have any mental problems or issues with social interaction. They are not drug abusers of even a slight nature and have no real insecurities of any mention. Now with kids of their own, they are bringing that element of play to their own offspring with very positive results. But out of all the members of my family, I learned to play more than the others and I am more obvious in my dedication to it.

One of my best memories as a kid was when I had to go to soccer practice one evening when I really didn’t want to. I always loved sports, but only the games themselves. I didn’t like all the team work crap—ever, or the social infusion with the community. When my team would win the parents were always excited for some mysterious reason and used the word “we” a lot. Yet they never did anything to help win the game except yell like a bunch of idiots on the sideline. It never made sense to me, and as the years moved on, I stepped away from sports because of the heavy emphasis on team building and derision on individual achievement. If I had different teachers and social influences as a young kid I might have moved into professional sports of my choosing, but because the wrong influences were around me focused on the wrong things, I abandon sports at my first opportunity—as a freshman in high school. But of that wonderful memory, I was at soccer practice, miserable because honestly I had a huge set-up in the basement of my home dedicated to Star Wars and I wanted to be there playing with all my toys rather than running around at soccer practice. It was spring time, my dad was out-of-town on business, and I was hoping to be home so I could have some play time before bed. It was the middle of the week and I had school the next day, so my time to play at the things was short. My mom picked me up from practice and we headed home. Only this was different, my brother and sister were in the car dressed like we were going somewhere, and there was the smell of popcorn from the trunk. I didn’t think much about it until we took a different route home and ended up on roads I wasn’t familiar with. Those roads eventually took us to a drive-in theater in Hamilton that was playing the very first Star Wars movie as a re-release. My mom took us all to see it for what I think was the 7^th time at that point. It was wonderful and I cherished deeply every frame of film. During the scene where Han Solo and Luke were rescuing the princess, which is the high point of the film for me, I was sitting in a lawn chair with my soccer cloths still on listening to the echo of all the portable speakers around the drive-in playing the sound of the movie with a slight delay during that specific scene—the clouds were high in the sky and slightly blotting out a big bright moon on a spring night—and I thought about how wonderful life was. It really didn’t get any better than that.

But every day I try to make the day better than that day at the drive-in, and most days I come close. I am always looking for a way to have fun with a situation, and most of the time I do. I avoid people who don’t know how to have fun. If they are depressed people trapped in emotions constructed around neurosis, I usually paint them out of my life for my own preservation. If they can’t keep up, I leave them behind without looking back. I like to have fun, I love to play, and I hate people who don’t know how. I’m happy to teach “happiness” to them, but if they don’t show much of an effort, I drop them quickly. I understand and sympathize that they didn’t have a mom like mine who showed them how to play, even as adults, so I take the time to teach them. But I won’t sacrifice myself to their misery. If they want to be miserable, I leave them to it. I might write an article like this to help show them the way, but I won’t take their burden on myself if they wish to be stubborn about it.

I have known many adults who give Rolexes to their spouses and new cars for birthdays—but most of the time those gifts are laced with a desire for social approval more than developing happiness in the recipient. Behind such gifts is the desire to brag to someone else about the value of the gift, and thus, the amount of social pull that person has in the world of mixed economies. So it means quite a lot that my wife out of all the things she could have given me picked the cute little dinosaur which I think is quite a leap in scientific development. The little sensors in it for a kids play toy are very advanced, and the gyroscope system which balances it on two wheels is quite extraordinary. I could play with it all day and night if left to my own devices. It is intriguing, and intellectually stimulating. I love it!

But of course there was a gathering with my family like we usually do later in the day during my birthday. This year we went to Dave and Busters so that we could……………play…………….as a family. Specifically there is a new video game called Star Wars Battle Pod which is a kind of flight simulator for Star Wars. It is the newest, and greatest of what technology has to offer, complete with a breeze simulator to replicate actual environmental conditions. It has a wrap around screen that totally engulfs your vision allowing you to invest your intellect into the experience without distraction. The food was great, as it usually is at Dave and Busters, but playing Battle Pod was for me the best thing I’ve done for a birthday in years. In my family, most of us are intense Star Wars fans so we loved taking time to play it together. It was a stunning game to play, and fly. I had to reflect back to that drive-in surprise where my mom played like she was just picking me up from soccer practice on a school night, but instead took us all to see Star Wars one more time on a big screen, before it was gone forever—or so we thought at the time. Now, because of Battle Pod, people can play in the Star Wars universe in a way that was only a remote fantasy for someone like me years ago.

At Hollywood Studios my favorite restaurant is the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater. It tries to simulate the drive-in movie experience I had in my youth, with my best memory being that Star Wars outing. There are still drive-ins, but they don’t carry the same impact as they did when I was a kid. Now they are viewed as a cheap alternative to the cinema experience as opposed to a first-rate experience. But when I go to Hollywood Studios, I have to stop by the Dine-In Theater and have a hamburger. It reminds me of that Star Wars presentation after the soccer game, and reminds me of the importance of playing at life instead of taking things too serious.

In reference to the important people I was talking about the best of us realize hopefully before they arrive at 60 years of age that career climbing and ass-kissing doesn’t get anybody anywhere. People are most effective and ultimately better when they retrain, or relearn the art of playing—as they did when they were kids. Typically, I don’t get along very well with people in my own age group, because most of them suffer from socially created illnesses. The people I most get along with are kids and old people because generally they aren’t worried about the ridiculous social rules which construct our network of associations. They would do far better for themselves to spend their time playing with other members of their families than in chasing the tail of someone higher in the peaking order hoping to schmooze their way to the top instead of letting their actions speak for themselves. One of the people I was talking to is a guy I enjoy quite a lot. He has a PHD in an advanced field of endeavor, but has not lost his love of playing. He’s is the grandpa of some lucky grandkids and the father to some fortunate children. Yet he solves problems like they don’t even exist, the kind of problems that might hang up regular people in the related field of endeavor. The difference is that this smart guy never forgot how to play at life, and therefore solves problems the way a child does, with resiliency and creativity. We teach our children to stop doing these things, and that is our first mistake. Instead, we should be teaching them to develop it further and to do so through their infantile 20s and 30s. But until everyone else gets on that page and recognizes that this is the way to conduct their lives—with playing at life for their entire lives—then I will continue to recharge myself the way I have. And for that, the little dinosaur my wife gave me along with Star Wars at Dave and Busters was a wonderful experience that gives me more than anything money can buy–a chance to play.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Duke Wins NCAA Championship: College athletes rising to greatness in spite of institutional failure

United States Senator Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, illustrated without really thinking too much about it a great crisis for many when she tweeted after the 2015 NCAA Championship between Duke and Wisconsin:

“Congrats to Duke, but I was rooting for team who had stars that are actually going to college & not just doing semester tryout for NBA.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ncaabk/missouri-sen-claire-mccaskill-takes-shot-at-duke-after-title-win/ar-AAawu1y?ocid=LENDHP

Saturday Night Live just prior to the big game made similar jokes in the same spirit, assuming that college athletes had an unspoken duty to their institutional education as opposed to the financial opportunity of leaving college after one or two years to join the NBA as young millionaires. These points of view are lost to ideology rooted in a hatred for capitalism where the old-fashioned belief was that citizens were supposed to learn a vocation which served society and that was the purpose of the college experience. Instead the perception and accusation is that student athletes were selfishly serving the all mighty dollar and colleges were letting them do it for the big money generated by the popular basketball tournament. The common villain in the whole exchange was money.

This is where the old progressives have failed to understand where they are, and what young people are supposed to learn in college. The NCAA Tournament is all about production, sixty-eight college teams fighting it out for the number one spot. The heroes get drafted into the NBA, thousands of sports bars cash in on a spike in business—beer is sold, chicken wings etc. Advertisers get exposure for their products and schools get an increase in their profile with national exposure—meaning likely increased enrollment in their colleges which then pay the salaries of their staff. There is very little wrong with the NCAA basketball tournament known as March Madness. I’m not even a big basketball fan, yet I find myself enchanted by the festivities every spring.

College as it was conceived is a failure. The thought of shaping young minds into soft-minded government employees is currently failing. Going to college is not the path to a vibrant economy. Fresh, unimpeded ideas are. Too much government restricts the economy so the college experiment failed right out of the gate. Instead of giving their children a better life than they had, lifestyles regressed just two generations after the implementation of a global acceptance of widespread college education. Kids today have been spoiled rotten by parents guilty over their own life decisions and those students are entering the workforce with house payments thrown at colleges’ indebting them for their entire working years. They are arriving at jobs that pay half of what they expected and not having expendable income to help float the economy leaving epic stagnation. Since most of what the colleges taught was progressive values, nobody learned how to do anything but show social sensitivity, because nobody knows anything anymore about anything. That is the fault of modern colleges instituting misplaced values.

One of the only things kids can look forward to is that their college sports team might do well and give them some sense of pride in their alma mater—for all the money they’ve spent on their educations. Lucky kids can use their college years to get a job interview, but it doesn’t do much to prepare those former students for the marketplace of ideas. College was sold as a way to buy success for children—but all it really bought were kids flat lined economically and socially neurotic. They have been molded into dismal human beings.

That is the system that Senator Claire McCaskill and Saturday Night Live defended through their various parodies. It reminded me of my fourth grade teacher who took my class on a field trip to the Cincinnati Music Hall to listen to the symphony play a concert dedicated to Star Wars which had just come out and was grotesquely popular. During the concert slides from the movie were shown on a big screen and kids cheered with the display of their favorite characters. It was a very energetic and positive experience—until we arrived back to our class. Our fourth grade teacher who was just shy of 30 years old at the time chastised our entire class for enjoying the concert. I sat there completely dumbfounded as her reaction was completely opposite to what I was feeling. I had a great time, and so did the rest of my class. I didn’t understand. My teacher went on to say that cheering for the characters on the slides would hurt the feelings of the members in the symphony and that Star Wars was all about making money and success—so it should be shoved aside in favor of “high art.” The same arguments are constantly thrown at the Disney Company, and even Nickelodeon for exploiting children for the all mighty dollar, as if making money was somehow evil. Yet if not for Star Wars would any of those kids have sat through a musical concert featuring a symphony? No.

Colleges would be more successful in capitalist America if they stopped copy-catting off the socialist Europeans and started teaching kids that making money is the most important thing they could learn from college. And under that criteria what is wrong with a freshman basketball player from Duke University leaving school for the NBA the very next year because they are so good that team owners want to make 20-year-old kids millionaires? Even better, college sports often highlight minority children…….there is nothing wrong with the situation. Notice how none of the sports bars around America had angry white men protesting black basketball players covered in tattoos. Nobody cared, everyone picked a team and rooted for somebody giving kids the opportunity to be a star no matter what their background or appearance—and receiving a chance to make more money before they are thirty than the lifetime incomes of everyone watching the games in a BW3s. Colleges, as institutions and the products coming from them have missed the point of the NCAA Tournament completely because they refuse to acknowledge the real truth of what the offering of higher education was supposed to be. People want upward mobility—not just a chance to receive a government check and a pension after age 55, but real, substantive wealth—the kind of wealth that could purchase their own island in the Caribbean. Until colleges face that music, they will continue to lose in the marketplace of ideas, and will struggle to keep their public image as high as it currently is. If not for college sports, how many Americans would still support college as an option? That is an answer that United States Senator Claire McCaskill doesn’t want to know.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Ayn Rand and Social Security: Confiscated money that is owed eventually

As far as Ayn Rand and her modern footprint into politics and philosophy many on the left have attempted to discredit her based on the notion that she drew from Social Security late in her life. As a small government advocate deeply suspicious of America’s steps toward socialism—which she had fled from, and lost her family to, many progressives have identified her as a danger to their Kant driven philosophy doing whatever they could to discredit her writings using the Social Security issue to lead the charge against the logic she presented. Recently my friend Mark Etterling ran across just such a person on his email musings with the far left and radical nut cases hoping to shut off the world to wisdom, so to disguise their treacherous attempts against righteousness—specifically a strong economy driven by capitalism. Mark presented a strong case in favor of Ayn Rand which I thought was effective enough to repeat below. Many assume that Social Security is a government entitlement when in fact as Mark presents; it’s supposed to be an investment. The distinction is important as Etterling explains in greater detail:

From: Mark Etterling Date: April 5, 2015 at 1:31:22 PM EDT Subject: Moron, expose theyself Reply-To: Mark Etterling

Recently I read a Facebook post from a liberal that was meant to be a “gotcha” moment against conservatives and in this case the now deceased author Ayn Rand in particular. Upon reading the post I actually found myself laughing out loud. Not only was this a hilariously bad attempt at painting the right as hypocrites, but was so moronic that the poster had no idea who he was actually insulting.

The post was a story about how the vaunted die-hard capitalist Ayn Rand had actually dared to collect on Social Security in her old age in defiance of her own writings demonizing big government. This is the same tired assault that liberals have tried for years by claiming conservatives are hypocrites for railing against intrusive government up until such time as it’s their own turn to stand in line for some government goodies.

So for the umpteenth time allow me to explain what the half-wits on left just simply can’t seem to grasp. SOCIAL SECURITY ISN’T A GOVERNMENT HANDOUT! Let me put this in simple terms. If you loan someone $100 today and then later return to collect on your loan that doesn’t make you greedy, a thief, a handout recipient, a hypocrite, or any other such non-sense. It simply means that you are collecting a return of what was rightfully yours all along. The fact that the government forcibly confiscates that money from you (and the matching funds from your employer) throughout your working life on the promise of returning it to you later (if you’re fortunate enough to live that long) doesn’t constitute even the remotest concept to anyone above the IQ of a horsefly that it somehow magically becomes a handout.

To prove my point all you need to do is look at your pay stub. You have separate line item deductions for Social Security and Medicare because those moneys are SUPPOSED to be placed in a separate government trust fund so that people won’t foolishly waste all their money before they reach retirement age. The reason I capitalized the word supposedly above is because under this scenario the ugly truth is that it’s been the government all along who has foolishly wasted your money instead as they have basically borrowed and spent against all that money until the actual trust fund is pretty much an empty vault of IOU’s. Personally, as an intelligent adult I would have preferred it if big brother government would have simply butted out of my life so that I could have invested that total of 15% annual matching funds on my own instead of through a glorified government sanctioned Ponzi scheme. However, now that they have it, you can bet your @ss I want it back!

It blows my mind every time I hear some idiot from the left proclaiming that the elderly are better off because of Social Security. In saying that they are not only stating by proxy that all Americans are too stupid to be trusted with something like their own retirement (same thing for healthcare), but completely forget that had the government not interfered the money that was confiscated would have been the people’s money all along (plus interest) anyway. It’s like a thief robbing you and then expecting a big old “thank you” for returning the things they should have never stolen at government gun point in the first place. Here’s another way to think of it for when they ignorantly try to insult conservatives for trying to collect what is rightfully theirs. Is it right that someone should be forced to pay for a meal in advance and then demonized simply because they would now like a chance to eat it before it’s all gone? Honestly, I wish I could think of a stronger word than “moron” in situations like this.

Morons are morons and nothing will ever change that. However, in posting what he posted this particular moron doesn’t even realize that who he has basically insulted isn’t just conservatives, but every American who has worked all their life and is now old enough that they are simply trying to retrieve what was rightfully theirs all along. The checks they are now receiving aren’t government handouts. They’re long overdue reimbursements. Personally, I hope he reposts his article over and over. In doing so he’ll be accomplishing far more to expose his own true self-insulting ignorance than any rebuttal I could ever hope to write.

P.S. As a side note please remember that it was DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz who recently proposed the idiotic idea of having the government confiscate everyone’s IRA’s and 401K’s and using that money to shore up the missing funds from Social Security. As you can see, these people aren’t just simple morons. They’re morons that are hell-bent on ruining all our lives.

Social Security was a stupid idea, and it never should have been enacted. It is an insult to stick the government in between Americans and their so-called retirements. I resent every deduction taken from my paycheck as a theft stolen from me, because the government will never be in a position to pay me back all the money I have “invested” under coercion. I have personal friends who hate Social Security so badly they have essentially given up their citizenship over the issue. One of those friends had began plotting his deferral from the Social Security system in the 5^th grade—no kidding. He was a very smart kid and while the other kids were talking about the rock band KISS and the new show on television called The Dukes of Hazzard, he was planning on how to legally refuse his obligations toward Social Security. As an adult, he gave up his citizenship after years of legal entanglement—but—he doesn’t pay into the system, because as he was always right, Social Security is stolen money not granted by an infant when they are issued a card after being registered by their parents. His argument was that his parents didn’t have a right to commit him to a life obligation into such a contract with the government.

The rest of the world isn’t willing to take such extremes, so we just pay into it knowing that its wrong—because we don’t want the hassle of fighting the government—and they know that. My friend had a lifelong crusade against Social Security which continues to this very day—but I have always found it easier to just outwork the money grabbing hands of the government. I have infinite energy which they don’t posses. With me it’s a delicate balance; government knows they need me to be productive to pay their salaries, so they generally leave me alone. But, I have to accept that they will steal a portion of my money every week because they made laws enabling them to do so. I have the same deal with insects in my house. I know they are there in the cracks, but if they come out in the open, they are disposed of. I don’t want to see them even though they are likely hidden in every crevice available. The government takes my money before I even get to see it each week. They get first dibs on my earnings—which is why more Americans aren’t angered by the stolen money because they figure they never had it in the first place. But when it comes time to get that money back—everyone expects it—just like we expect tax returns at the end of each year for the overpayments interest free we make to the government through the same withdrawal system. The idiots who came before us who voted in favor of this kind of thing made a major mistake, and it should be rectified. But until then, like Mark Etterling said in his article—I want my money back at the first opportunity I can get it. And I won’t apologize for wanting it either. It was stolen from me without my permission, and I want every dime back before it’s all said and done. When Ayn Rand needed the money she put into the system, I don’t fault her for getting it. She paid into it, so she deserved to get it back. But, she would have been the first to argue, if the government had stayed out of the exchange in the first place that same money may have made her rich, instead of needing Social Security in the first place. She was more qualified to handle her own money than the government was, and that is the tragedy we all face—at some point in time.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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