Tag: education funding

Cliffhanger Research and Development: Doing the right thing even when it hurts

As I was writing The Curse of Fort Seven Mile there was an unusual opportunity to make mention of Cliffhanger Research and Development which is a name directly from my past. I Googled the name and found nothing, primarily because it was so long ago that the Internet had not yet been offered to the public, so it never had a webpage or online presence. But it did exist in reality once, and now it is still deep within me and will carry on in the story of Cliffhanger. But I thought the company deserved an online presence and an explanation for my readers which will inevitably be desired later.

I had a history all through my youth of telling those in authority how they should conduct their lives. I was bored to death in school and had no interest in it outside of the 2nd grade. Everything after that was simply a gradual withdrawal from a sick and twisted system. Occasionally I would tell a teacher how they should teach better—and I would do so just to try to stay engaged—but it never worked. So I tuned those education elements out of my life completely. I deemed them completely worthless and wasteful. The moment I could escape from them, I did and I never looked back with an ounce of regret.

 

Right out of high school I made more money as a car salesman than any of the adults I knew at the time so their constant uttering’s about college made no sense to me. I did attend the higher institution several times, but it was just as ridiculously stupid as public school was, so I eventually left to start my own company. Back then, even at 22 years of age I had a history of telling the presidents and owners of the companies I worked for how they should conduct their business. Some of these were big companies with very wealthy and arrogant owners and the last thing they wanted to hear was some young kid telling them how they could maximize their profits, and create new product lines for their future. It was a kind of running joke among the work forces that were around me at the time that I would produce these lengthy, extravagant letters telling company owners how to do their job—and I often let them have it heavily when I did such a thing. One company I had worked at for a number of years (19 to 22 years old)—was good honest factory work, but was a hard place filled with hard people. It had a terrible morale problem. I wrote the president a letter telling him that he could solve the problem by coming down out of his office and shaking hands with the people who made him money. I told him such actions were free and that he could wash his hands off when he was done—and it would do wonders for his productivity. I sent the letter through my floor supervisor who thought I was out of my mind. But he couldn’t disagree with a thing I said, just that the letter was harsh.

The president took the letter hard, and became very angry but did the things I told him to do. He thanked me a year later for an increase in profit of nearly 10%. This was a combination of a lot of things—most of which was directly attributed to decreased employee turnover. So that president sought me out often to help make key decisions in the future. This is a relationship that I would take with me at virtually every place I was ever employed in the future.

I was bold with my words because I have never in my life feared losing a job. I have always viewed employment as a kind of consultation job where my real passions resided in my personal endeavors. I never intended to hold a traditional job, so I had no concern about pissing off my bosses, just as I never cared to piss off my teachers. Compliance to authority figures is just never something I had a desire to do at any point in my life. Maybe as a small child I wanted to make my parents happy during the learning stages of reading, identifying colors, and walking, but this quickly went away. I always did intend to be self-employed as my mind was an idea factory that never shut off. And I was tapped into it 24/7.

 

At the age of 19 I filed for my first patent, a new kind of tool called a torque socket extension. I had a very negative experience working with a company that markets new inventions determining it to be a complete scam. So I started my own company called Cliffhanger Research and Development. It was to be an R&D company that would do everything from advanced machining to advanced medical breakthroughs. Instead of telling other companies how to conduct their lives and businesses, I would just let them follow the lead of Cliffhanger Research and Development. It was called Cliffhanger because the ideas were from the cutting edge of reality.

I had a whole list of projects to develop under Cliffhanger Research and Development and the start of them took me on quite an adventure. I ended up in court many times, speaking to the mayors of cities often, and running up against a lot of resistance primarily due to my age. I wasn’t yet 25 years old, so there were always mountains of skepticism that had to be overcome just in the perception of other people’s realities. I was friends with people who took $10,000 lunches daily and had many of them eager to listen to my advice. They didn’t discriminate against me for my age; they just listened as they were always on the look-out for a competitive edge.

 

One of my Cliffhanger projects took me to a trade show at the McCormick Center in Chicago. It was a funding mechanism intended to drive revenue to all the other projects on the table, so it was a big deal to me. I risked everything to show up for this convention as it was one of those pinnacle life moments. I had quit my good job in Ohio and sent my family down to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to purchase property for the move of our company headquarters there. To cover income in the mean time I picked up two jobs until revenue from the McCormick convention started paying off—I was set to be a roller coaster operator at Dollywood, and at night I was going to be a waiter at the Pigeon Forge Shoney’s. That would cover the loss in income from my day job in Cincinnati.

 

While in Chicago I learned several harsh realities that were life-changing. Even though many of the rich friends that I had warned me, I hoped that my ideas would punch through their skepticism. But youth in this case worked against me, because what worked in my mind could not be applied to a society not functioning from the same illumination. What I learned at the McCormick Center in the summer of 1994 was that what mattered more than what you knew and could invent was who you knew and what they could do for you. That was a concept that I simply rejected, and it cost me a lot of money to walk away from. I would not allow Cliffhanger Research and Development to become hen-pecked by lecherous governments, corrupt deal makers, and barnacle like lawyers. So I walked away from a deal in Chicago that could have set me up for life, but destroyed my company with an infusion of influences that were not unlike the many company presidents whom I had insulted for being complete idiots. It became clear to me that what made those company presidents idiots was their allowance of these influences into their life and biting on the temptation to sell-out their origin ideals in trade for financial security. I did not have the money to take Cliffhanger Research and Development to the next level without help, and I couldn’t accept the type of help being offered because the conditions allowed for complete louses to piggy-back off my efforts for no other reason than they brought money to the table—money obtained through political maneuvers that were very disingenuous.

 

I knew a scam when I saw it. As a car salesman right out of high school there was money laundering going on at the highest level of that company meant to disguise drug sales. I learned a lot by watching that place operate from behind the scenes and would listen with interest how the local police were all in on the deal. Most of the money being made was not through cars, it was in the sale of drugs. I saw as a very young man how the top and bottom of society fed off each other. So I quit that job in favor of an honest factory job—there I saw much the same type of thing between the company president and the local political establishment. He’d often take politicians out onto his boat on the Ohio River to schmooze for tax breaks and shelters. He wrecked that boat and got into a lot of trouble with a young woman who wasn’t much older than I was at the time causing me to loose much disrespect for the guy. And even when I wanted to file a patent for new inventions, the leeches were there to suck off the top of other people’s ideas and water them down with their infusion. Now in Chicago the deals were epic—to get the money you’d have to sign away your rights essentially to the creative process—and this was the reason I created Cliffhanger Research and Development in the first place.

My wife and I had a hard discussion in a Gatlinburg restaurant to make. Our entire lives were at risk. We had sold our house; our realtor had screwed up that deal as well leaving us in a world of hurt. To make the deal in Chicago would essentially kill the other purposes I had for Cliffhanger Research and Development. It would be absorbed by a larger conglomerate not yet even arriving to an age of its own maturity. It was like feeding a child of mine to a dirty old sex pervert for their temporary gratification and it hurt.   So we decided to abandon the Chicago deal, abandon the Gatlinburg headquarters, and go back to Cincinnati to fight it out to keep our home. That’s what we did for the next several years.

 

Coming back to Cincinnati I served as my own attorney in challenging our realtor. I served as our own attorney in covering several law suits which tried to prevent our exodus from the type of consumption being set up in Chicago and nobody understood why my wife and I were upset. All we had to do was take the money, and we’d be wealthy—which is why people went to college, built careers, and sold themselves out politically to others—was to get money.   People in the know thought that my desire to preserve my intentions for Cliffhanger Research and Development was youthful naïveté and simply didn’t understand what drove our intellectual decisions. In the realtor case and the Cliffhanger case it was ownership that I was after, the ability to retain my rights so that I could navigate them to success. And in that process were hordes of second handers who simply existed as barnacles—parasites to creative thought.

 

There hasn’t been a good second opportunity to put the name of Cliffhanger Research and Development back into the competitive marketplace. As my wife and I discussed at the Gatlinburg restaurant many years ago, I had other things I could do so I was never desperate for the money—and was never in a strategic position where I had to sell out Cliffhanger Research and Development to lesser minds. So I turned to writing because it allowed an author to make the world not necessarily as it is, but as it should be. Making Cliffhanger the main character of these future stories about a vigilante who used to be a CEO of Cliffhanger Research and Development allows me to paint the world as I think it should have been that day at the McCormick Center. It allows me to correct the mistakes that humanity has made and to put the world as it should be within the context of Cliffhanger.

 

Needless to say, there is an edge to Cliffhanger that is uncompromising. I write things there that few publishers would allow today in our politically correct world. I write Cliffhanger with the same spirit that I operated Cliffhanger Research and Development under. My wife likes that character because he is uncompromisingly good—like herself. And when we talked about what to do about the R&D company while in Gatlinburg it was her idea to put all these stories into a fictional context so people might learn from them. It has taken a while to put the proper emotional distance behind me to deal with the type of plot lines that are involved in the Cliffhanger stories—and this is what has lead to these present decisions.

Now you know a bit about my past dear reader, that I have not previously revealed. It is the reason that I write so much on this blog and elsewhere, and why there is an uncompromising approach to the material. Much stronger forces have tried to quell that self-assuredness when I was much, much, younger, so there isn’t any chance now of reaching through to my sensitivities and con me into a lighter approach.

 

As I made the decision to preserve Cliffhanger Research and Development within my own heart and soul by turning down significant amounts of money to retain my intellectual property, I will do the same with Cliffhanger and all the stories that follow—because I can. I don’t need to bend myself to the shape-shifters of the times. I think it is ironic that H.P. Lovecraft the pulp writer from the 1920s is just now obtaining a marketplace respect. He died extremely poverty stricken because there was no value for his stories in the roaring twenties by an industry concerned about other types of things. Now it is impossible to go to a Barnes and Noble book store and not see some reference to H.P. Lovecraft. I suspect that Cliffhanger will have the same type of transition—the immediacy of the political moment will find him reprehensible. But history will come to love him long after our days have extinguished. And that will be fine with me. The reason to do anything is because it’s the right thing to do, and as often has been proven—the masses do not have a clue as to what that is. I use Cliffhanger to articulate that righteousness through the hazes of confusion that have been purposely placed to consume our thoughts toward irrationality. Some things are more important than social acceptance and it is in that long view that Cliffhanger Research and Development will exist in immortality.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Mermaids at the Newport Aquarium: Thank a capitalist like Steiner for conservation awareness

Many think that because I’m a conservative that I naturally do not support conservation. These are the same types who think that the issue of slavery was only a white on black occurrence occurring in America from the 1600s until the mid 1800s. Of course slavery was a much larger social problem involving all races and sexes of that particular time period and it was America who was the first to take a moral stand against it—to such an extent that a war was fought over it—led by Republicans. The same type of manipulation has occurred to make conservatives into villains regarding conservation—and largely it has gone unchallenged. That is because the answer to the conservation question is again that it is capitalism which is the biggest spokesman for the conservation movement which is much to the frustration of the bleeding heart liberal types. So it is with some surprise that people learn of my love and support of the Newport Aquarium.

The primary reason that I am so excited about the upcoming Liberty Center development being constructed as we speak in my community of Liberty Township is because it is a Steiner project. The Steiner group twenty years ago envisioned a way to save the embattled city of Newport, Kentucky with a brilliant new development on the river built around a new state-of-the art aquarium. That aquarium was a game changer and to this day is worth an out-of-state visit just to see. Situated across from the Cincinnati skyline, it has changed life on the banks of the Ohio River for the culture of the Cincinnati region and it all started with the capitalist Steiner.

 

Years later during a week in mid October 2014 the Newport Aquarium brought in the Weeki Wachee Mermaids from the popular Florida resort to perform in an extravaganza that I thought was incredibly wonderful. To the music of the Little Mermaid from Disney thousands upon thousands of little girls lined up to meet the beautiful mermaids and see them perform in the Coral Reef tank—which was absolutely glorious. Capitalism was on display at its finest. Of all the little girls present many will find they have an appreciation of sea life because of that experience and will likely carry it with them their entire lives. Two Disney films dominate the exhibits in a subtle way at the Newport Aquarium, Finding Nemo and of course The Little Mermaid. Disney created the gateway into such stories by creating the mythology. Steiner and his group brought that mythology to reality. And the wonderful Weeki Wachee swimmers from Florida and their capitalist endeavor their brought mythology to life for profit which further intensifies the experience for countless lives touched by their endeavors.

Leaving the Newport Aquarium after seeing the exhibit of mermaids on a sunny day in October with the great Ohio River rolling by just feet away, with Mitchells, Barnes and Noble and the AMC movie theater looming above, it was the vision of the Steiner group which brought this experience to so many people and God love him for it. It took a lot of headache to bring that vision to reality and I am thankful that he did so twenty years ago. My brother is a diver at the Newport Aquarium and it has been an important place for my family for a number of years. I simply love the place, but without Steiner—the capitalist—it would have never happened. The Newport Aquarium is one of the best exhibits of its kind in the world and has maintained that status into its second decade. And it’s still going strong and is able to bring in talent like the Weeki Wachee Mermaids from such a distance to bring a bit of Disney World to the Midwest.

 

http://www.newportaquarium.com/What-to-do-in-cincinnati/Aquarium-Events/Mermaids.aspx?cid=ppc_000161

 

At the aquarium in Newport, conservation is on full display. It is evident why manufacturers would want to refrain from careless drilling, over deforestation, and a destruction of the earth’s natural resources by seeing the exhibits. Science driven by capitalism is the best conservation method that there is, and the Newport Aquarium is the perfect example of such an endeavor. I could sit in front of their exhibits for hours and just watch the animals—and appreciate the unique circumstances which made them possible as a life form. Without a profit motive however, there would be no Newport Aquarium, or a Newport Levee experience. Profit drives science and conservation. A lack of such formulas gives you the Middle East—sand, poverty, and stupidity. The Newport Aquarium is culture at its finest—it brings out the best in people and is a wonderful, magnificent creation of the Steiner group.

 

With the same epic vision the Steiner group is bringing its latest creation to Liberty Center. I expect that complex to dwarf what has occurred at the Newport on the Levee development. And because of the well-designed shopping complex the very popular outdoor store Cabela’s is moving in across the street on Liberty Way. I can’t think of any aspect of modern culture that most brings conservation to the minds of the masses than such a shopping experience at Cabela’s—an outlet dedicated to the outdoor experience and the preservation of those outdoors for future lives. Without Steiner, there would be no Cabela’s. And without Cabela’s the Bass Pro Shops down the road wouldn’t be expanding the way they are by necessity of competition. Because of those two retail outlets millions of people will become inspired to not only participate in outdoor activities, but to preserve them through the education programs that come as natural off-shoots of those shopping experiences. Because of the Steiner group and their use of capitalism to create profit driven experiences, conservation awareness will be greatly expanded dwarfing the great work done at the Newport Aquarium so many years ago even into the present.

If there are little ones in your family now is the time to see the Weekie Wachee Mermaids at the Newport Aquarium. I’ve seen the show in Florida and it was wonderful, but the Newport Aquarium provides a much more up-close and personal experience because of the tubular design of the display in the Coral Reef section. It was quite majestic. It was a brilliant move by both the Weekie Wachee crew and the Aquarium to pull those two elements together. They are playing only through this upcoming weekend, so make sure to see it. Better yet, take a day off work and visit during the day when the crowds are much less. Take your kids out of school for the experience. They’ll learn a whole lot more at the Newport Aquarium than they will in school, that’s for sure, and the experience you’ll share as a family will be unrivaled. It is that good, and is just one more reminder of how wonderful capitalism can be when it’s used properly in the hands of wonderful people in the Steiner Group. Their creativity and desire for quality has given thousands an experience in their own back yards worthy of a week-long vacation to a distant land. Only it’s right there at Newport on the Levee. So take your kids, eat at their fine restaurant, pet some sharks and thank a capitalist for the enriching experience.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean and why justice comes from a bullwhip

A recent comment about my site here, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom contemplated my use of bullwhips and attempted to associate it with slavery in the typical progressive fashion. Of course I’ve heard all this before and each time I hear it only inspires me more to expose progressivism for the destructive force that it is more intensely. One of the reasons that bullwhip work is degraded as sadomasochism and instruments of slavery is due to this progressive marketing campaign that wants to divide up everything into just a few categories, fairness for women, fairness for people of color, fairness for the poor, and fairness for other countries. Of course that fairness is always defined by a political class of elites hungry for power and inspired by the communist movement of the 20th century. But that is always ignored. Instead this is the kind of intelligence we are to contend with:

‘Justice comes with the crack of the whip,” is the tag line. And he wields bullwhips as a hobby. Naw, he’s no overseer. What connotations could I even imply?

 

The implication there of course is that as an “overman” I want to be a slave owner ruling over a flock of black slaves. The bullwhip is part of the slave master tradition to the thinking of these political marionettes. But they would be wrong, in fact, they are part of a massive cover-up which seeks to highlight the effects of slavery in America—inherited from Europe—and the type of slavery that Thomas Jefferson himself attacked when he could—which was the start of the United States Marines. That slavery started it all in the modern world and involved Muslims in North Africa. The information and statistics are staggering of how many white people were enslaved by Muslims of color and were articulated in the 2004 book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean. Read about the study conducted in that book below:

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.

 

Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University, developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa’s Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.

 

Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary Coast didn’t try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.

 

Davis’s new estimates appear in the book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan).

“Much of what has been written gives the impression that there were not many slaves and minimizes the impact that slavery had on Europe,” Davis said. “Most accounts only look at slavery in one place, or only for a short period of time. But when you take a broader, longer view, the massive scope of this slavery and its powerful impact become clear.”

Davis said it is useful to compare this Mediterranean slavery to the Atlantic slave trade that brought black Africans to the Americas. Over the course of four centuries, the Atlantic slave trade was much larger – about 10 to 12 million black Africans were brought to the Americas. But from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas, according to Davis.

“One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature – that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true,” Davis said. “We cannot think of slavery as something that only white people did to black people.”

During the time period Davis studied, it was religion and ethnicity, as much as race, that determined who became slaves.

“Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland,” he said.

Pirates (called corsairs) from cities along the Barbary Coast in north Africa – cities such as Tunis and Algiers – would raid ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children. The impact of these attacks were devastating – France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. At its peak, the destruction and depopulation of some areas probably exceeded what European slavers would later inflict on the African interior.

Although hundreds of thousands of Christian slaves were taken from Mediterranean countries, Davis noted, the effects of Muslim slave raids was felt much further away: it appears, for example, that through most of the 17th century the English lost at least 400 sailors a year to the slavers.

Even Americans were not immune. For example, one American slave reported that 130 other American seamen had been enslaved by the Algerians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic just between 1785 and 1793.

Davis said the vast scope of slavery in North Africa has been ignored and minimized, in large part because it is on no one’s agenda to discuss what happened.

The enslavement of Europeans doesn’t fit the general theme of European world conquest and colonialism that is central to scholarship on the early modern era, he said. Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves. Maybe because of this history, Western scholars have thought of the Europeans primarily as “evil colonialists” and not as the victims they sometimes were, Davis said.

Davis said another reason that Mediterranean slavery has been ignored or minimized has been that there have not been good estimates of the total number of people enslaved. People of the time – both Europeans and the Barbary Coast slave owners – did not keep detailed, trustworthy records of the number of slaves. In contrast, there are extensive records that document the number of Africans brought to the Americas as slaves.

So Davis developed a new methodology to come up with reasonable estimates of the number of slaves along the Barbary Coast. Davis found the best records available indicating how many slaves were at a particular location at a single time. He then estimated how many new slaves it would take to replace slaves as they died, escaped or were ransomed.

“The only way I could come up with hard numbers is to turn the whole problem upside down – figure out how many slaves they would have to capture to maintain a certain level,” he said. “It is not the best way to make population estimates, but it is the only way with the limited records available.”

Putting together such sources of attrition as deaths, escapes, ransoming, and conversions, Davis calculated that about one-fourth of slaves had to be replaced each year to keep the slave population stable, as it apparently was between 1580 and 1680. That meant about 8,500 new slaves had to be captured each year. Overall, this suggests nearly a million slaves would have been taken captive during this period. Using the same methodology, Davis has estimated as many as 475,000 additional slaves were taken in the previous and following centuries.

The result is that between 1530 AD and 1780 AD there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.

 

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whtslav.htm

Of course nobody ever hears about this because under the re-education so fashionable under progressive interpretation, the slavery of whites doesn’t fit the communist motivated, anti-American imperialism that is the real target of the attack by those who want to destroy America and the capitalism that drives its economic power. So the slavery argument has been captured to only discuss the practice in America. What is ignored is that once America had freed itself during the Revolution it immediately went to work to free all men which started the Civil War. After the Civil War was a period of westward expansion which highlights the era typically rendered by the cinematic western. It is from this time that the bullwhip came into play not as a plantation guardian, but of individuals facing down the vast open spaces of the American West.

 

The tag line I use at this site is a quote from my own 2004 novel The Symposium of Justice where the main character Cliffhanger fights off modern slavery by destroying a mind control device designed to interfere with the thinking of a town’s citizens and guide them in the proper political direction. The use of bullwhips in the story has nothing to do with slavery or standing over other people—it is about freeing people so that they can think. The use of the bullwhip is to use force to punish bad guys for attempting to enslave civilization. My use of the bullwhip in that story context is to free people, not to enslave them.

Those who chose to revise history are far more dangerous than the perceived slave master who uses a bullwhip to control the black slaves at their southern plantation. The minds of these critics shown at the beginning of this article are made by modern progressives who make movies like Dajango Unchained and the ignorant masses believe wholeheartedly that the filmmaker Tarentino is a scholar who knows much about the slavery argument. But he doesn’t. For those who do know, slavery wasn’t a black or white condition, it was a product of the times, and white people were just as vulnerable to enslavement as blacks were—yet this is never discussed even though the evidence is quite extensive.

 

For my own lessons in history it is my proposal that it takes an “overman” to see past the limitations imposed on mankind through thousands of years motivated exclusively by ignorance. It takes such a position to understand why a 2004 book written about white slavery in North Africa by a professor of history at Ohio State was ignored—because it didn’t fit the progressive definitions meant to attack American imperialism. It is also meant to ignore the role that Muslims played in that slavery—as Islam is a religion that progressives are advocating as a volatile assailant against the bourgeoisie of world power, the North American continent. Those progressive definitions come straight out of the books of Karl Marx and have no other grounding in reality. To see such contradictions not only takes a student of history, but someone willing to step outside of the current human limitations of personal sensitivity and political concern to see the truth. And the truth is, America freed their slaves, but the rest of the world didn’t. Of those other places in the world that promoted slavery so intensely, it was the Muslims who then as they do now, seek to rule over mankind with an iron fist. For me, the bullwhip is a symbol of the American West and the only time in world history that a nation freed itself from a tyrannical past. That symbol needs to be propped up for the world to see so that they too can rise up against their slave masters with a projection of strength that can metaphorically come only from a bullwhip.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

The Reach Out Lakota Charity Dinner: Invasion of the “Latte Sipping Prostitutes”

When you want to know what’s wrong with politics all you have to do is pull off the masks of events like the recent Reach Out Lakota charity event to know what it is. Sponsored by the progressive oriented Chamber members it was a dinner pitched in the following manner:

Imagine having a wonderful evening out with friends including cocktails, dinner and entertainment. For dinner, you and your friends will be seated at your table of ten, decorated in the theme or motif of your choice. And, you’ll be waited on by a TV news anchor or a morning drive DJ or the Police Chief or other celebrity! Now imagine having this much fun as you raise money for Reach Out Lakota and your community! No need to imagine…it will happen on Thursday, October 9, 2014 and you can be a part of this fabulous evening at the Savannah Center in West Chester.

I know most of the “celebrities” listed below who were the waiters at the event and can report to them that this is exactly why I don’t do many public appearances any more. Just as in the past when it comes time to rise up to fight against an issue, these types of crossing of the swords events prevent clear articulation of the crises at hand—which I’ll explain in a moment.

  • Justin Jeffre – 98 Degrees

  • Adam Marshall – WCPO 9 reporter

  • Karin Johnson – WLWT 5 reporter

  • Perry Schaible – WKRC Local 12 reporter

  • Kristen Bitonte – Liberty Township Administrator

  • Judi Boyko – West Chester Township Administrator

  • Margie Conditt – State Representative (District 52)

  • Joe Hinson – President/CEO at West Chester • Liberty Chamber Alliance

  • Ben Dibble – Lakota Board of Education Member

  • Lynda O’Connor – Lakota Board of Education Member

  • Julie Shaffer – Lakota Board of Education Member

  • Tom Ferrell – Liberty Township Trustee

  • Joel Herzog – Assistant Chief of West Chester Police Department

  • Rick Prinz – Assistant Chief of West Chester Fire Department

  • TC Rogers – Butler County Commissioner

  • Roger Reynolds – Butler County Auditor

  • Nancy Nix – Butler County Treasurer

  • Mary Swain – Butler County Clerk of Courts

  • Steve Mayhugh – Director of West Chester Library/MidPointe

  • Kevin Joseph – CEO at West Chester Hospital

  • Tony Pike – Former UC Bearcats and NFL quarterback

  • Paul Heintz – MOJO Running

  • David Armbruster – ‘Id Man’ from 700 WLW Reds pregame

  • Becky Wilber – CTI Restaurants

  • Todd Wilber – CTI Restaurants

http://reachoutlakota.org/celebritydinner.html

What the Reach Out Lakota people are doing is a good thing, and many of the names on that list—many whom I personally like—people like Karin Johnston, T.C. Rogers, Roger Reynolds, and Todd Wilber truly mean well. Such events are nice occasions where you put your political differences away from people like Lynda O’Conner, Julie Schafer, and Ben Dibble—all from the Lakota school board, along with Joe Hinson of the Chamber Alliance and break bread with them for a good cause. However, and this is true of many people on that list—when it comes time to stand against those people and fight them on an issue, the resolve is not there later to perform the task because of these events.

Many hearing the news reports from the event would think that the Lakota school system was raising money for itself. It wasn’t well reported that the Lakota Reach Out program has nothing to do with the government school itself, but was started by a group of Lakota moms who wanted to help some of the down and out within the community with charity. But, when such events of a high-profile such as this are performed, Lakota gets the credit which is why the school board members were there—to mooch as second handers off the positive public relations generated.

During the last four tax increase attempts and of course all future attempts–the first coming in the 2016/2017 time frame–events like this take the edge away from those who don’t want tax increases imposed on them. People like Julie Schafer who ride the coat tails of success by attending such events and feel privileged to hang out with people like Todd Wilber sipping wine and eating fine food will be the first to rally her tax fanatical supporters into boycotts against Wilber’s businesses if he doesn’t come out in favor of a levy attempt. I know it, because I’ve seen it first hand. People like Wilber have no choice but to play nicely because at events like the Lakota Reach Out program charity dinners break down the barriers of differences by their very nature, which is why all the usual villains of progressive influence are at the head of the organization. The goal for them is to take the edge off those who would otherwise fight their desires.

I often make reference to these types of people—the progressive manipulators at the front of these social orders as “latte sipping prostitutes” and here’s why—because there is much evil conducted at these types of dinners hidden behind the mask of goodness which translates out into a general degradation of our political, economic, and moral social manifestation. The organizers often prostitute themselves to progressive causes in trade for second handed appeal by way of social recognition. What gets traded away is the ethical position to stand against progressive tax increases and corrosive social policies proposed through organizations like the Chamber Alliance. Just as a prostitute losses the ability to stand for moral causes because they sell their bodies for money, the latte sipping prostitutes of such events lose their moral ground when Lakota schools proposes their future tax increases because the public has seen people like Wilber, Reynolds, and Rogers breaking bread with Schafer, Dibble, and O’Conner. And how did they see it, because Karin Johnston, and Adam Marshall brought it straight to their eyes and it will always be remembered. Just as it is uncomfortable for a prostitute to see one of their customers at a shopping center with their family after the dirty act is done and payment was accepted, the realization comes often too late at how paralyzed the prostitute is in such moments. They can’t go up to the spouse of their customer and report the moral depravity of the marriage, because they have no moral ground to do so—as they were the advocates of such an illicit act from the start. What might have been an enjoyable experience turns out to be a vice later when a moral position is required. At that time the names on the above list will be in paralysis. They might give money to someone like me as a mercenary to fight on their behalf—but they will also seek to keep the whores quiet when they start demanding more money through means of extortion. When the latte sipping prostitutes howl out in anger for more money, more attention, and more respect, those who use those whores are unable to stand against them because they crossed the line and lost the ability to cast moral judgment against such social disgraces.

It is for that reason that I have not been to social functions much in 2014. It is easy to see what is going on and what the strategy of the other side desires to accomplish. What is more important than the immediate gratification of wine banging and laughs shared for the benefit of the misfortunate in our community is the ability to stand on a moral principle when all the other vagrants have been hushed into silence by the latte sipping prostitutes. Lakota the school system is one of those whore houses—and most of the people who support it are the whores. They attach themselves to good groups like Lakota Out Reach just as a whore couples with a successful customer for all the reasons one can think of—but most prominently to gain emotional leverage at a latter date that will prevent action against evil when it matters most

It is important to remember that what makes us are not the friendships we maintain through fake smiles and forced acceptance of values that are compromises at best. It is in our ability to stand for something—otherwise society will fall for anything. The reason that politics in our society is such a disgrace is that it is filled with these kinds of events populated by these types of people. Strong candidates newly elected soon find after a few years of this type of sword crossing that they lose their ability to stand against the whores who come into their life nearly by force and plop themselves into their laps with offerings of delight and friendship. But at the end of the day what is learned always too late is that there is a price for that friendship—and at that point the ability to stand against injustice is long gone—pissed away like the fine wine drank at events like the Lakota Out Reach dinner.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

2014 Values Voter Summit: How Glenn Beck is incredibly wrong

The Glenn Beck speech at the 2014 Values Voter Summit was very good and worth watching—which can be seen below.  There is a lot he said correctly—especially regarding Sykes-Picot agreement.  I was one of the first to cover that origin of trouble in the Middle East and if members of Beck’s staff passed it along to Glenn Beck to report—well, that’s why I write this stuff—to educate and help people understand the world around them.  It doesn’t hurt my feelings if Beck takes his big platform and expands it.  Click here to review my article on the matter.  It is the key to understanding the trouble and politics of the Middle East.  The rest of Glenn Beck’s speech was good as well and worth witnessing.  I agree with most of what he said, but in some parts of it he is vehemently wrong.  In those portions his life as a former addict crosses over into the realm of strategy and his advice is bad.  Specifically, it is in his self-sacrificial calls to surrender thought to God and to embrace Christen passivity in the face of evil.  Like many people who have found God late in life to redeem their self-destructive paths people like Beck fill their lives with scripture to plug the holes that were formed through drug and alcohol abuse.  It’s a survival mechanism that works better than personal and social destruction.  But for confronting evil, strategically, Christ is not the example and the kind of passivity Glenn Beck talks about in his speech will get a lot of people hurt, and or, dead.  So let’s explore the correct position below after watching the speech.

I understand that Glenn Beck is under tremendous media pressure to avoid being called a rebel rouser and is taking the Martin Luther King approach to solving problems when confronting evil.  Well—Martin Luther King ended up dead—killed by his rivals.  Beck also talked about Jesus, for many of the same reasons and suggested that Judas was frustrated with Jesus and his lack of ability to rally the troops against the Romans—which is why Judas betrayed Jesus.  Well, Jesus and his passivity caused him to be killed—assassinated as a religious rival to the power held in Jerusalem.   Beck and his utterances about Christ’s passivity obviously has not listened to the popular church song, “Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War” which invokes a bit of battle balled.  Passivity of religion rolled over into politics will end your movement before it ever begins and sparks for rebellion is necessary if there are hopes of overcoming evil.  God will not come down from Heaven and break down the walls of Jericho to the sounding of trumpets and slay the enemies of King David through simple prayer.  Such things require action to square off against evil and to conquer it as it presents itself.

Without Sam Adams, his cousin John would have never been the second President of the United States.  The American Revolution would have never happened.  Without Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson would have been just another former European styled intellectual pointing out what should be as opposed to what was.  Without a rebel rouser, action against the enemy does not happen.  In his speech Glenn Beck brought up the criminal Barabus who was picked by the mob to save instead of Jesus.  Beck stated that the angry mob in Jerusalem wanted a rebel rouser to spark rebellion and Jesus just wasn’t that type of person to perform the task, so they picked Barabus whom history would have otherwise only remembered as a harmless, petty inciter against the vile institutionalism of the day.  However, it was the pressure from the mob that caused the Romans to even put in place a system of providing a choice to their subjects to take the edge off their tyranny.  Without the aggressive pressure of people like Barabus—the Romans would just slaughter anyone who disagreed with their power.  Because the Romans feared an uprising against them, they put in place mechanisms to appease the mob—just as what happens to this very day especially during elections.

Praying to God in front of an armed thug who wants to destroy you and everything you stand for will only get you dead.  Trusting in God to save your soul from evil might get you into the gates of Heaven, but it will destroy life on earth for you and all that you love.  Passivity is not the answer—aggression is.  The bad guys need to know that the mob is angry and that at any moment some rebel rouser will shout “let’s get them!”  The only messages such villains understand is force—unapologetic force at that.  It is nice if that force is backed by a value system represented by Christians or some other religion of value, but passivity toward aggression cannot be a plan for expanding goodness in the face of evil.  That is just dreadfully empowering for those who favor aggression and blind power over those who are easy targets.

The current role that America has in the world shows this—the foreign policy of those raised as peaceful Muslims—like Barack Obama in the country of his education Indonesia—has a hands off pacifist behavior that is also characteristic of the modern liberals and libertarians who think that they can smoke a joint and offer the peace sign to a radical terrorist and all will be well—that God will just sort it all out.  They are insanely wrong.  Religion is only good for a relationship to the after world and establishing some foundation beliefs that can build a civilization.  But it will not provide good advice on how to deal with an aggressor.

I’ve never been a pacifist.  I learned martial arts at a young age and learned how to make myself invincible from a one on one attack through blocking techniques.  You can’t guarantee that you will always win in such matches with the opposition, but you can force a stalemate by not allowing their force to overcome you.  This has been a very successful position, and I’ve had many people—most of them bigger and stronger try to impose their will over the years—and they have not succeeded even after nearly five decades.  I’ve been in a lot of fights from young to old, the most recent one was actually a few years ago in front of several Butler County police officers which took place in the Hamilton Court House parking garage.  When confronted with vile evil, God won’t swoop in to help you.  You have to help yourself and confront it directly.  They have to know that if they make a move against you, or the things you care about—that you will pummel them.  That is the only way to achieve peace without being the victim of slaughter.  I’ve never been a drug user or a person who uses evasion techniques to avoid thinking—so have never had a need to turn to God to fill holes in my background.  I have always acted upon the moral appraisal that my mind produces based on the conditions of the world around me.  So I can speak from experience, pacifism feeds aggression against goodness, it doesn’t make it go away.

It took several hundred years after the death of Jesus for Christianity to begin taking hold.  In the meantime, many innocent people were murdered and lives were destroyed needlessly because mankind was too willing to surrender their life on earth for a perceived entry into the afterlife.  This allowed evil to manifest on earth and rule the planet for the last several thousand years.  And it was a stupid strategy that was supported by people like Glenn Beck over the years who get their messages mixed up—on one hand they stand aghast at the depravity of the world but then think that the situation will be solved by putting trust into God without any direct action taken by the victims of violence.  God made evil as well as the good, and places them into the battlefield of life for purposes yet defined.  However, in that transaction, goodness cannot yield to villainy and pacifistic behavior will not lead to victory for Christians.   When you see the actions of a bully, you have to be willing to look that bully in the face and destroy it if needed—and you can’t hesitate—you have to be willing to turn evil into a pretzel if need be and to end its life on earth if the situation calls for it.

As a person who has looked directly into the eyes of evil for many years and challenged it with force of my own, I can report that pacifist behavior feeds them leading to violence not avoidance.  I once confronted evil by taking on the entire police department of a local city who was using their power to sell drugs to kids through a local school.  The police gained these drugs through raids and instead of the evidence sitting on the shelves in a FBI lab somewhere, the cops were selling it back on the streets for extra cash—and everyone knew about it, including the mayor at the time.  How do you dear reader think that confrontation went?  Praying to God certainly didn’t help.  Many of those same cops were influential in the local churches, and gave a lot of money to the donation plates.  That evil had to be confronted directly—and it was.  I’m still around—many of them aren’t.  So who does God favor?  Does God favor the meek and weak, or the one who will spit down the throat of evil when pressed?  My experience tells me that God does help, but only when evil is confronted by the good—not yielded to.  Many of those police officers referred ended up destroyed by car accidents or health ailments within a few short years so fate does play out to some extent, but in my experience, meekness leads to the destruction of good, not the furtherance of it.

It is also in my experience that disguised behind the sermons of peace are people generally afraid of confronting evil, and they use the excuse that God is the ultimate mitigation of justice to avoid needed confrontations.  Born again Christians are particularly of this type as they must believe that their sins from the past will be rewarded through meekness toward God, by surrendering their lives to ancient provocation.  It is easy to do such a thing and still appear to be tough in standing against evil—without actually having to perform the task.  But it doesn’t work.  Evil must be confronted.  You have to be willing to look it in the eye and beat it down.  Without such a position, evil grows through embolden observation of pacifism.  Glenn Beck says a lot of things that are right, but on the issues of aggression and the inevitable confrontations with evil, his past taints his strategic thinking for the future. And his opinions about tactics against aggression by mixing religion with observed thinking is wrong.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Why the Rich get Richer and Poor, Poorer: Eric Holder’s “Alinsky” Strategy

With all that is and will be said about Eric Holder’s resignation from the Justice Department, it must be noted that as the wave of scandals continuing to rise against his many crimes and fallacies that his move is simply another trick learned from Saul Alinsky’s popular leftist book Rules for Radicals.  Eric Holder, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and virtually every other mainstream radical activist from the political left have used that book as a modern religion to attack the premise of America.  The essence of their position is to steal wealth from the rich, and give it to the poor without considering why the rich are the “haves” and the poor are the “have nots.”  They as leftist radicals, because of their sympathies toward communism, which was quite popular during their marijuana smoke induced youths, failed to understand that wealth in America is not a finite resource like coal or natural gas.  Just because it exists does not mean that it runs out.  In America wealth is created, so if wealth is stolen and given to a lazy slug who would rather sit on a couch all day than work at a job, the wealthy person can still make more money while the poor person will typically blow all their looted treasure on cigarettes, alcohol, and lottery tickets. This is why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  Alinsky taught a small army of functioning communists to attack those with money in American culture and redistribute that money to those who didn’t have it.  It was a scam that has proven a failure, and Eric Holder has been caught many times playing the activist role for President Obama using Saul Alinsky’s book as their personal Bible.  Holder is doing essentially the same thing that Hillary Clinton did after the Benghazi scandal—leaving office following Saul Alinsky’s methods of diffusing a target until people fixate on the next shiny object.  Here is Hillary’s personal letter to her mentor Saul Alinsky in 1971—just to provide a backdrop of how important the old radical was to the future staff of the White House.

Much has been said about Alinsky and his dedication of his book to Lucifer.  Alinsky died at the age of 63 of a sudden, massive heart attack in 1972, on a street corner in Carmel, California. Two months previously, he had discussed life after death in his interview with Playboy:[4]

ALINSKY: … if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell.

PLAYBOY: Why?

ALINSKY: Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I’ve been with the have-nots. Over here, if you’re a have-not, you’re short of dough. If you’re a have-not in hell, you’re short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I’ll start organizing the have-nots over there.

PLAYBOY: Why them?

ALINSKY: They’re my kind of people.

Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals is the late work of community organizer Saul D. Alinsky, and his last book, published in 1971 shortly before his death. His goal for the Rules for Radicals was to create a guide for future community organizers to use in uniting low-income communities, or “Have-Nots”, in order to empower them to gain social, political, and economic equality by challenging the current agencies that promoted their inequality.[1] Within it, Alinsky compiled the lessons he had learned throughout his personal experiences of community organizing spanning from 1939-1971 and targeted these lessons at the current, new generation of radicals.[2]

Divided into ten chapters, each chapter of Rules for Radicals provides a lesson on how a community organizer can accomplish the goal of successfully uniting people into an active organization with the power to effect change on a variety of issues. Though targeted at community organization, these chapters also touch on a myriad of other issues that range from ethics, education, communication, and symbol construction to nonviolence and political philosophy.[3]

The Rules are artfully presented in the seventh chapter, “Tactics,” in thirteen specific headings. Those are: Power is not only what you have but what you make your opponent think you have; stay within the confines of your expertise; take the opportunities presented to go outside the expertise of your opponents; make your opponent live up to their own rules; ridiculing your opponent can be a most potent weapon; make the tactics used by your own people enjoyable to them; do not employ a tactic so long as to drag it on; always keep pressure on your opponent; the threat is usually more terrifying than the actual thing; develop tactics to keep pressure on the opponent; push a negative long enough to turn it into a positive; always have an alternative solution, lest the opponent accuse you of having no solution; and, pick the target, preferably a person, then freeze it, personalize it, and polarize/isolate it from sympathy.[4]

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

  • RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood.

  • RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.

  • RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.

  • RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.

  • RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

  • RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones.

  • RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news.

  • RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off-balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.

  • RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.

  • RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog.

  • RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem.

  • RULE 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions

It wouldn’t take much imagination to see how all those rules from Alinsky’s book have been applied directly to every single human being in America in one way or another.  Labor unions have also used Alinsky to advance their cause greatly expanding the radicalism of the political left’s communist foundations.  By attacking righteousness from the position of Lucifer himself, Alinsky started a process in America which would eventually destroy the good country that it was and make it into the mess that it currently is out of a premise that open theft of created wealth would be considered virtuous.   Anyone who attempted to stand against them would see Rule 12 thrown at them in large doses making their military advancement against goodness an unchallenged path to social destruction.

If you’ve ever dealt with a school board in your local community you have surely been a part of the Delphi Technique which is an offshoot of the Alinsky Method.  It is designed to bring a community into consensus with the facilitators driven in the case of government schools toward the same leftist agenda points.  Alinsky is taught and used virtually everywhere that anyone from the political left operates.  He is their religion and purpose for existence and all this work is in dedication to Alinsky’s mentor—Lucifer.

When people catch themselves shaking their heads in wonder at the vast evil coming from the Obama White House, the actions of Hillary Clinton, and the epic failures and crimes of Eric Holder look no further than what they were taught by Saul Alinsky, and why.  They have a hatred for productivity so intense that they actually believed that the type of people destined for Hell, should be the type of people in charge of everything—Saul Alinsky said it himself.  And while it has been occurring, the virtuous, the productive, and the politically conservative have been exposed of their natural kindness to believe they did something wrong and needed to open themselves—and their check books to these liberal vagrants.

Eric Holder and his resignation is simply a variation of Rule 12—as the scandals and investigations mount, a liberal radical whether it be Hillary or Holder removes themselves from the polarizing result of such investigations to stop the network of anger from brewing further.  This is how the left typically diffuses trouble for themselves and they learned the trick from Alinsky—directly.  With Holder off the radar and a pardon waiting for him by Obama a year and a half from this writing, the conservatives of Washington will back off and lose interest—at least that is the plan.  Why—because it says so in Rules for Radicals.  They are that predictable—so it deserves to be asked—why don’t we stop them?  The answer to that is worse than the question—because we are still playing by social rules that were in place before Alinsky turned the political world on its head serving Lucifer by his own admission.  Those who stood for goodness, and justice did nothing but look for excuses so they could avoid the impact of Rule #3—which has paralyzed them into inaction for nearly a half of century letting evil have its way unchallenged.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Up for Whatever Happens: Tampa Bay Beats the Steelers in an improbable win

There hasn’t been much to cheer about the last couple of years, and first part of this new season as I’m a diehard fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team.  It has been a transition period for them as they have sought after their correct player/coach combinations.  With the addition of Lovie Smith as the new head coach, I have been optimistic until the thrashing that took place in Atlanta.  I am also a fan of the Bud Light commercials, “Up for Whatever Happens” which I featured during the last Super Bowl.  So even after a terrible start to the new season, it was wonderful to see Warren Sapp grant a Tampa Bay resident with a dream “happening” by converting his living room into a pirate themed amusement park at the beginning of the game against the Pittsburg Steelers.  This is usually how it looks at my house on each Sunday that the Bucs play.

Football is a celebration of capitalism and the type of people who have assembled on the outskirts of society to attack the NFL are the same idiots who believe in global warming, the income disparity between men and women, and that it is better to have a president in the White House because of skin color rather than content of character.  These intrusive big-government, anti-capitalists want to step into the private affairs of Ray Rice, and Adrian Peterson along with coming after the Washington Redskin franchise name—as they do every “citizen” of the world for reasons that have nothing to do with justice.    These characters are not so interested in protecting women from domestic violence or children from abusive punishment—or honoring the name of a conquered people—but rather in moving the progressive bar further to the political left by attacking a mainstay of American capitalism—the NFL.  So I tend to support American football as a leisure activity in spite of their altruistic obsession of appeasing those same radicals with the pink ribbon campaigns and 60 minutes of exercise per day for children.  I believe that the Madden Football on Xbox and Playstation does more for children than an entire year of public school as far as teaching them how to think—so I love and support the NFL.

I also love Lovie Smith who has always been and continues to be a stand up guy who coaches in a unique way as a mentor first, and a leader desiring to win second.  This could be said of the Glazer ownership as well which I have spoken about in great detail over the years.  The Tampa Bay Buccaneer organization from the top to the bottom is a class act and a great enhancement to the Tampa Bay region.  Lovie Smith is the perfect kind of fit for the type of coach the Glazers had been looking for.  But after a terrible, embarrassing loss to the Atlanta Falcons—a division rival, I had no hope that the Bucs could bounce back and beat the Steelers playing in Pittsburg—where the home team almost never loses.  The mountain of improbability was just too high.  I didn’t even put my flags out for the first time in about 8 years.  I watched the game out of loyalty but I didn’t want to put too much emotional investment into a team that was obviously struggling with Lovie’s team philosophy. I didn’t even get excited much when the Bucs came out and sacked Big Ben in the opening moments jumping up to a 10-0 first quarter score.  The Steelers made some adjustments and came back to get the lead and held it until the closing moments of the game—but with 7 seconds left on the clock, the Bucs mounted a valiant comeback—held their poise and won the game.  It was very impressive, and if I had my cannons out, I would have shot them as seen in that Bud Light commercial.

I don’t care if the Bucs win another game this season—that win was one that I’ll never forget.  Hopefully the organization will build on that victory and step will into the future.  For all the talk about the recent Hall-of-Fame inclusions of Warren Sapp, Derrick Brooks, and soon John Lynch, Ronde Barber, and probably Mike Alstott, Tony Dungy, along with many others—the Bucs have been living in the past—happy to have their one Super Bowl win in 2002.  The ownership has tried to recapture that magic, but the results have been average.  There have been some great wins, and some fun Sundays, but the Bucs have not been able to rekindle the magic of their Hall-of-Fame players.  The Steelers on the other hand have a whole hallway of Super Bowl wins and a legacy of success that is unmatched.  Their current head coach is a former Buccaneer coach and has had great accomplishments in Pittsburg.  The reason it is so hard to win in Pittsburg is because the fans expect success from their team—and nothing less.  That is obvious when Pittsburg comes to Cincinnati to play which is four hours away to the south—there are nearly as many Steeler fans in the stands of a home game with the Bengals who follow the team to away games with great enthusiasm.  They do the same in Cleveland, and Baltimore creating a very intimidating fan base that rattles visiting teams during every Steeler home game.

It would have been very hard for Lovie Smith to prepare his team after such a daunting loss to get back on the horse and prepare for the Steelers—where the odds were against them in every category.  The NFL world was shocked to see the Bucs steal a win against the valiant Steelers—yet it happened in a convincing way.  Even when I thought the game was over with only a minute left—Pittsburg had the ball forcing Tampa to use all their timeouts—the defense put the screws to a very good Steeler offense.  The big difference in the game was that Gerald McCoy was back in the middle forcing the Steelers to attempt to run the ball to the outside where speedy linebackers were there to pick up the attempt.  The defense held, and the Bucs got the ball back with 30 seconds left to march down the field and score a touchdown.  Mike Glennon—the back-up quarterback throwing to a guy who was signed only the week before—who was cut after the pre-season, caught the ball on a slot reception and nearly made it into the in-zone.  Two plays later Vincent Jackson caught a touchdown stunning the football world.

After the game the Bud Light commercial featuring Warren Sapp and the Buccaneer themed living room came on again and it was just more revered the second time—because of the win.  There are a lot of metaphors in football that can be applied to life and it is games like the one between the Bucs and Steelers that serve as testimony to all of them.  Even when the odds are terribly stacked against you and you appear to be out-classed in every category—if you believe you can win, it’s the first step in marching down the field to get a victory—against all odds.  And in such times it takes a coach who is willing to spit in the wind of convention and not surrender to the temptation to lose his cool that can convince his team of young saplings that they can achieve the most audacious feat only a week after receiving the most embarrassing loss of their lives.  Lovie Smith is a great coach if for no other reason than the way he handled himself before and after the Pittsburg Steelers game of 2014.  It was a game that belonged featured in the Bud Light commercial “Up for Whatever Happens” because in the closing seconds on a brilliant autumn afternoon in the Midwest—it did.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

White House Activism Against Corporations: A ridiculous argument against inversions

This is what happens when you get activists who think like communists in the White House. I received this email from them recently trying to build a consensus against the American corporation desire to create tax inversions for themselves to avoid the incredibly high corporate tax rates found in North America.  This is also what happens when corporations are demonized by a political class who wishes to believe that everyone underneath them is in the “middle class” and willingly submits to their gross miss management of national resources.  What the idiots who wrote the below letter conveniently forget is that it was they who spent too much money—not corporate desire to hang on to the profits they’ve earned that is the cause of the problem.  Read their ridiculous utterances here:

Here’s What Inversions Are Costing Us

You don’t get to pick your tax rate. Neither should corporations.

That’s why, earlier this week, the Treasury Department took initial steps to prevent U.S. corporations from using a tax maneuver to avoid paying taxes in America. This loophole — known as an “inversion” — lets a company avoid taxes by relocating their tax residence overseas while changing very little else about its operations or business.

And it’s costing Americans nearly $20 billion over the next decade — critical dollars that could grow and expand the middle class.

Take a look at why we are taking action to close the inversion tax loophole — then share it with everyone who needs to know.Inversions

Notice what type of presidents were in the White House during the periods of time shown on the graph.  Big government socialist types as opposed to conservatives.  When the White House says that it will cost $20 billion in lost revenue over the next decade what they really mean is that they have already promised too much money through mismanagement to future endeavors that cannot be paid for but through higher rates of taxation.  This is the same lunacy that comes from public school mismanagement when they sneak through school levies to pay for unfunded desires—like inflated wages, elaborate buildings, and ridiculously wonderful benefits packages.  What they all have in common is that they are government enterprises built by government minds that spend too much money so to remain in power—then expect tax payers to cover their costs out of some patriotic obligation.

No…………..

What this is called ladies and gentlemen is “mismanagement” of tax payer resources—not obligatory sacrifices to strengthen a middle class of subjects worshiping the feet of the political class.  When they say this “is what inversions are costing us” they don’t mean……”us” as in you, me, rich and poor—they mean the political class who desires under a socialist mentality to rule over everyone else.  They also want a blank check to waste as much tax payer money as possible then expect payment by their subjects without complaint.  But to make matters worse, because corporations don’t have the ability to vote except through lobby power—the government targets them to pay a disproportionate amount of corporate tax by demonizing them into compliance.  However, corporations in this new international trading system that the government so proudly sponsored is voting with their feet and leaving America for oversea tax shelters to protect themselves from a grubby government desiring to steal all the profits gained through production.  This is the inversion process that the White House is complaining about and rather than deal with the problem they caused they are using email activism to attempt and build an argument of democracy against corporations to protect the financial burdens they already committed America to through mismanagement to pay.

These same fools in government almost in the very next sentence promise that they want to create jobs—yet their proposal is to create more government positions paid for by tax payers forgetting that the only real jobs that directly contribute to the GDP of a nation come from corporations and small businesses.  They neglect to inform anyone that it is their mismanagement that is not only spending too much money, but also pushing jobs out of America making unemployment un-naturally high.  Government is the cause of both problems.

It is truly arrogant for a political class to assume that nobody sees what they are up to, yet there it is directly from the White House to my email inbox.  They are that audacious to complain about the life blood of the American economy—corporations—then promise jobs to people was if they had them tucked away in their back pocket like a condemn intended for use in a whore house.  They are that ridiculously foolish.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com