Tag: education funding

The Cincinnati Bengals, School Levies, and Health Care: Why they all suck!

As I was watching football, my favorite team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was on one channel, and the Cincinnati Bengals were on the other, I received several emails from some of my valuable contacts who supply me with a stream of information daily. One was about the Health Care Freedom Amendment. Another was about Sycamore Schools and their thoughts about going to the tax payers for more money, both of those I’ll include here to share with this audience, and retain their value for future reference.
The Tampa Bucs led by Raheem Morris looked fantastic. The Cincinnati Bengals looked absolutely pathetic. Actually, terrible was more like it. Considering how much the tax payers of Cincinnati are paying for the stadium that the Bengals play in, it was a slap in the face to see such a pathetic display of complacency taking place on the field in what the Bengals showed. As I watched the Bengals stumble around during the game I could not help but think that they are the perfect example of why throwing money at a political problem does not work.
Also, yesterday morning it was revealed that even with all the court challenges by Progress Ohio, the Health Care Freedom Amendment, which will allow the State of Ohio to challenge Obama Care under the rights of state sovereignty. Getting the issue on the ballot in November is the huge first step to knocking back the intrusive hands of government bureaucrats who are aggressively advocating the rapid expansion of government with even more far-reaching impositions. Read all about it below:

——————————————————————————

August 12, 2011 9:51 AM Ohio high court: Healthcare signatures valid COLUMBUS, Ohio — Opponents of a federal health care overhaul scored a key legal victory on Friday that should clear a proposed ballot measure for a fall vote.

The chance for voters to reject portions of insurance changes championed by President Barack Obama will appear Nov. 8, alongside a ballot issue seeking to repeal a contentious re-write of Ohio’s collective bargaining law. One is expected to bring out Republican-leaning voters and the other is expected to bring out Democrats in a state closely divided along political lines.

In a unanimous decision Friday, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a liberal policy group’s lawsuit challenging certification of the so-called Health Care Freedom Amendment on the grounds petitions carrying 69,000 signatures were flawed.

ProgressOhio executive director Brian Rothenberg argued that Secretary of State Jon Husted counted signatures on petitions that contained technical errors, including the way paid circulators listed their employment.

Husted, a Republican, argued the challenge revolved around petitions carrying extra information, a practice government should not discourage.

Justices said the secretary of state is “entitled to deference.”

They found that Rothenberg’s charges lacked legal merit, noting “even if his challenge had substantive validity, Rothenberg’s evidence is insufficient to establish that the part-petitions do not have enough signatures.”

Husted announced July 27 that the coalition of tea party organizations and other groups behind the measure that submitted 427,000 valid signatures, well over the roughly 385,000 needed to get the amendment on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The proposed amendment to Ohio’s Constitution would keep people from being required to buy health insurance or face penalties. The federal mandate would go into effect in 2014, when new competitive insurance exchanges are scheduled to open.

Opponents say the federal government is overreaching by requiring individuals to purchase a product. The Obama administration counters that Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce squares the constitutionality of the mandate.

——————————————————————————-

The Bengals are such a terrible as a team for all the reasons the government screws up everything it touches, whether it’s education, or health care. The ownership of the Bengals believes as government does, that money spent equals value on the field, and that clearly is not the case. Carson Palmer gave up over 40 million dollars to leave the organization because he was so embarrassed to be a part of the Bengal organization, because at least he wants to retain his soul moving forward. But many in government have given up their souls long ago in trade for financial security.
These soulless creatures of bureaucracy are why government believes that “they” have the right to force us to buy their health care plan, and of course why public education simply doesn’t understand that they will have to learn to decline their revenue streams to match the declining wages, declining property values, and less money coming from outside community sources because the education bubble has burst. They believe they have a service so valuable to society that they should be exempt from any decreases in value.
This next article displays the extreme arrogance of the Sycamore School District, which is similar to what has been going on at Lakota where almost the same terminology was used to justify a 4.75 mill levy they voted on early this past week. It is not by accident that all the districts seem to be saying the same kind of thing. It is the Ohio School Board Association, a centralized organization in Ohio who helps provide the guidance to these school boards in times of crises, and it is this OSBA that is seeking to fulfill the type of education agenda that Progress Ohio, (the same group against the Health Care Freedom Amendment) wish to implement, at the tax payer cost. Check it out:

—————————————————————————–

Update five-year forecast

Regarding the July 13, 2011 article “Sycamore schools: Some light at the end of fiscal tunnel.” In order for the taxpayers and board members to understand the significance of the lost state revenue, the district’s May, 2011 Five Year Forecast must be updated now.

The lost state revenue needs to be looked at in the context of the five-year plan. The five-year plan would show the new revenue, planned expenditures and new cash balance for each year.

The development of a revised plan should not wait until the next state mandated October forecast. This revised forecast will provide the school and community four more months to consider the consequences of these changes.

Twice in the article, Diane Adamec, board president referred to a planned tax levy in 2012. The school has promised not to approach the community for more money until at least 2012.

She said, “What the regular citizen will not see is a request for an additional tax levy sooner than planned.”Later she adds, “By holding expense growth to an average of 1.5 percent annually, this district will maintain its promise not to go back to the community until at least 2012 for new taxes for operations – an eight-year span.”

Based on what I read and hear about the worldwide fiscal crisis, the possible U.S. financial default and constant deficit spending, there is no “light at the end of the fiscal tunnel.”

All government entities at the Federal, state, local levels including public schools, and citizens are facing a huge challenge ahead. Thinking that we might see some light ahead may be a comforting thought, but it is more akin to burying one’s head-in-the-sand.

————————————————————————————

I like that article because that is precisely what these schools are doing; they are burying their heads in the sand. They are pretending to “sacrifice” and maintain a lower rate of growth, in this case only 1.5%. They pretend that they are doing it “for the community” and at a great sacrifice to themselves. Preposterous!

I heard multiple times last week in regard to Lakota Schools that it’s been since 2005 that Lakota has had a revenue increase! It was only two years after that increase that the teachers union mounted a strike against the school which drove up costs 10.1% over the next two years, so some of us have learned that putting more money in the basket doesn’t get better results, or even maintain the old ones, because the union once they see the money, will threaten to walk off the job anyway in order to get at the extra money the community has supplied. It is in these modern times, where all the inflated costs are contracting, and education falls under that category, that plans must be made along that contraction. It is only natural that revenue should be less than the 2005 numbers because the financial supply, (which was inflated) is contracting, so it is not growth that should be expected, but decline, and their budgets should reflect that.
Yet with all the discussion Sycamore Schools articulates the dilemma wonderfully. They think it appropriate to present to the public that they only expect a 1.5% increase in revenue per year, like they are doing everyone a favor, by not going to voters for more money more often!
The value of something cannot be measured in some transitory monetary figure. Teachers have overpriced themselves and with the absence of elusive state and federal money, it is obvious now. Arrogant academics like these superintendents who think the voting public to be fools, just like the academic oriented president who has tried to force the nation to buy into his Health Care Policy, in order to fulfill the political whims of progressive groups like Progress Ohio, are simply out-of-touch and living their lives buried in the sand while their bodies are visible, but their heads are not. And if anyone doubts that there are people in the world who are just so heartless and outrageous by their actions yet friendly and conciliatory in their public presentation, (just like school systems are) just have a look at the ownership of the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Bengal organization threatened to move to a different city, just like teachers threaten to strike to get their money. The city voted to give The Bengals a new stadium, which is now bankrupting the city for a game that is played 8 times a year in a stadium that is average at best compared to other NFL homes. And the product the Brown family puts on the field is terrible…….absolutely terrible with no sign of getting better…….ever! I look at that team as proof that money spent does not acquire the desired results, it just fills the pockets of those who care for nothing else but money.
The city is under contract, and obligated to fulfill that contract. And the schools are under contract too, with their unions who have extorted enormous sums of tax payer money into their pockets out of sheer greed…….and they talk down to the public like they are children! This election of November 2011 will have a lot to deal with, but more than anything it will say what kind of society we are to become. Because in voting for these school levies, allowing President Obama to mandate that citizens must “purchase” something from the womb to the tomb, and that unions should continue to have the right to drive up costs even when market factors show their expectations should be declining, are all at play, and depending on the outcome of that vote, our society will be shaped accordingly. This is not one where people can sit back and let somebody else make the decisions. Ultimately, that is why the Bengals are such a bad team, because the contract was forged from the blood of the community and it lacks accountably, or even reality and that has infected the leadership, which infects the players, and ultimately infects the fans. The same happens in a school, and it always will until the public puts a stop to it. Until then, everyone is guilty just a little.

Rich Hoffman https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/ http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior www.overmanwarrior.com

The Symposium of Justice: The gamble of Rich Hoffman

If it is once again one against forty-eight, then I am very sorry for the forty-eight.
Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925), British Conservative politician, prime minister. Quoted in: Daily Telegraph (London, 25 Oct. 1989), referring to the 1989 Commonwealth Conference.

That quote from Margaret Thatcher accurately sums up my reasons for putting out the book, The Symposium of Justice back in 2004. Recently at the Annie Oakley Wild West Showcase in Greenville, Ohio many of my friends from there had been talking about my 2004 book and how prophetic it now seemed in 2011, and it took me on a journey down memory lane about the content of that artistic work. As I ate Chinese food from a fairground vender my wife and I had a discussion about just how crazy many of the things I wrote about in The Symposium were at the time of its publication, and ironically how true many of those things had become in a world that is clearly headed in the direction of events written about in The Symposium of Justice.

My publisher back then was against the entire book. There were many arguments about content, which resulted in a rushed publication date. The editor who was working from an office in Paris quit altogether leaving the entire editing process to my wife, who can read and edit basically, but she wasn’t a professional editor but she stepped in to meet our deadlines. The conflict basically went like this, “Mr. Hoffman, what are you thinking? You open the book with the attempted rape of a young girl by a disgusting pedophile. You have old women who are terribly rude dissected by some future race of aliens thousands of years in the future. You go off on some tangent where there is a dragon slayer hunting dragons! Then you have a group of rebels launching an attack on Washington D.C. with flying cars! ARE YOU CRAZY! You’ll get no positive reviews within the United States. No paper will provide an endorsement. No TV station will touch this material. I mean you’re main plot point is that you have this vigilante running around in the night like some kind of Batman character using bullwhips to punish criminals, and trying to free society from a mind control device that is emitted in radio waves which affect the brain and make people do things they wouldn’t otherwise do! Mr. Hoffman, we advise you to rewrite this material, to stick with the primary storyline of the vigilante and expand on that character arch. You need to make this novel much more contemporary (progressive). As it is now, it belongs in a dime store saloon in Nevada, 1890. This type of pulp literature won’t even resonate with young people in the comic book market! The main character, this CLIFFHANGER/Fletcher Finnegan has absolutely no weaknesses. He seems to be a superman able to fight off thousands of enemies all by himself! Where is the conflict in that? What is he afraid of? Even Superman had Kryptonite which gave him human appeal. Your character is the perfect man, and there are no perfect men, so how can the audience relate?”

I remember that conversation so well because I was standing on the phone in the middle of Comp USA at the time buying a new computer and the French editor, exasperated with me put her boss on the line, another French guy who spoke good English, but definitely had a French accent as he spoke, every word had a kind of accentuated thrust at the beginning of each sentence. My publisher at the time was a Canadian company. Being my first book, I couldn’t get the big New York publishers interested, so I turned to Victoria, Canada, capital of British Columbia to a publisher who would carry the title if I put up the upfront cost of publishing, which I did. My editor and company contact however was in the Paris, France office which is why they even took the time to speak to me, because I was paying them upfront. That company was purchased by an American firm a few years ago and they are now located outside of Indianapolis, Indiana, and they still carry the title only under different ownership. But even under those conditions, the publisher of my book had serious concerns. They hadn’t seen anything like it and weren’t sure what to do about bringing it to the market place.

In duress prior to a rewrite my wife and I took a trip to Niagara Falls and stayed at the Marriott Fallsview Hotel and Spa to get away from our normal environment for the weekend and talk about what to do about the book. We went to Canada because the publisher was in Canada and I wanted to put my mind in a unique setting so I could think clearly on the issue, and Clifton Hill like Gatlinburg and International Street in Orlando, Florida is a hotbed of commercialism, audaciousness, and imagination. Walking around the commercial districts targeting an international audience which seemed appropriate since The Symposium of Justice was an international publishing effort my wife told me, “It’s your book, your vision. I think it’s great. It’s our story, it’s about our struggles. It’s your autobiography, your heart, your soul. If you want to change it to match the publisher recommendations it’s your call. It’s also your writing career.”

I remember looking at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not exhibit as she said this and thinking what a monstrosity of commercialism it was. “If I stick with it, my writing career may be a short one.”

She looked at me, the blinking neon lights of Clifton Hill glittering in the slight chill of an October, Canadian evening and said, “it was you who ran around in the night with your whips trying to catch that rapist and protect your family, it was your family the police targeted because you wanted to expose that drug trade they were covering up, it was you who worked that second job as a cook to make up the financial difference of what we needed as a family, so you could spy on the local teenagers and find out who the dealers were, it was you who have spent nearly two decades reading mythology and philosophy in your “spare” time. If you want to listen to some French chick that’s about five years older than your own kids, just so you can sell more copies of the book, then do it. It’s your writing career. But think about what you admire, the artists you’ve enjoyed who society sometimes takes a century or even more to appreciate because the writer is so far out ahead of the rest of the world. The ideas you stick by in this book will follow you all your life and then some.”

We returned from that trip and I had decided to throw all the dice out there and keep the book pretty much the way I had written it.
________________________________________________________

Chapter 1: Scarface the Rapist: A convict is released from jail and encouraged by law enforcement to harass the pubic with fear by raping a young girl, so the public would support more law enforcement. The rape is interrupted by a vigilante named Cliffhanger who beats the rapist to near death with two bullwhips leaving the community split on how they feel about it. Cliffhanger gives the young girl a manifesto called “The Symposium of Justice” to be published in the local newspaper which includes Cliffhanger’s Ten Rules for living, and numerous stories written by Cliffhanger to make the argument publicly on the merits of the vigilante versus the rule of law.

Chapter 2: Stereotypical Reality: is the story published in the town paper of two vain women who are contemplating why they should live forever. One of the women is extremely wealthy and is considering a new technology called cryogenics, to freeze her body upon death to be awaked at some future time when technology can revive her. This woman realizing that she is virtually immortal becomes audaciously arrogant and rude to other people as the natural wisdom of age is interfered with the illusion that death is not on her horizon, so she reverts to a teenage mindset. When the public has had too much of her rudeness she is killed and revived in the distant future to find an alien race has found her body and is using it to perform genetic engineering to build slaves for themselves.

Chapter 3: The Veil Master: The mayor of the town hires an assassin to kill Cliffhanger for interfering with his plans with the rapist. The assassin is an arm of “The System” a progressive global group of which the mayor is attempting to climb in political power. The mayor reveals that the entire town is under a scientific experiment he is developing for “The System” which emits a radio wave that directly affects the pituitary gland in the human brain and makes citizens behave impulsively in ways they can control. The mayor explains to the assassin that if the results of his town are positive, then “The System” will be able to employee the same “mind controlling” methods all over the world.

Chapter 4: The Perilous Bed: Another story published in the town paper which Cliffhanger introduces his Ten Rules for Living to the community, hoping to fight off the mind control methods of “The System.” It’s about a young knight who wants to marry the daughter of a much respected noble. He thinks that by cutting off the head of a dragon, it will earn him the right to ask the noble for permission. The noble turns the dragon head offering down, but invites the kid to attempt to stay on a magical bed, in a magical room that will hurl three perilous tests at the young man. If the kid survives, he earns the right to ask the nobles daughter to marry him. (This was a story intended for my son-in-law which he understood)

Chapter 5: The Overman: A grill cook, the fastest man around who is mysteriously wealthy and married to the much respected town council woman Misty Finnegan, works with the local teenagers at a popular restaurant in town. Fletcher Finnegan has frequent duels with the local teenagers who respect the older man very much, but consider his thoughts “out dated” for the times. Fletcher seems to be particularly interested in a young girl who works at the restaurant as a cashier, who is the older sister to the little girl who suffered the rape attempt. The cashier is currently dating a kid who also works at the popular restaurant called, Republics. That kid is a known drug dealer and argues often with Fletcher Finnegan about morality.

Chapter 6: Return of the Flying Tigers: Another story published in the local paper to justify the vigilantism of Cliffhanger. America is in a civil war. The coastal regions have turned against the interior of the nation. A group of video game freedom fighters are recruited by an old man to lead a rag-tag offensive against the nations forces stationed over Washington D.C. Using M400 Skycars, the old man hopes to have a tactical advantage over the best defense the military has in scoring a psychological battle for the resistance by bombing the air craft carriers stationed at Annapolis Military Academy.

Chapter 7: Fran Calls: A follow-up story in the newspaper is about Hurricane Fran when it hit Chapel Hill, North Carolina and a group of tree trimmers head to the region to help with the clean-up and get rich over the insurance claims. As the work dries up, fights break out among the workers that could lead to death as everyone fights for the remaining money left as civilization returns to the region in the wake of the disaster.

Chapter 8: The Veil of Knowledge: The town mayor takes the assassin and the assassin’s personal army of specialized killers to the location of the mind control device, which is hidden in a water tower just outside of town. They are all given medallions which absorb the invisible radio waves leaving them immune to the effects of the powerful impulses. A plan is set to capture and kill Cliffhanger brutally by setting a trap.

Chapter 9: Tabernacles of Joyless Lust: A newspaper story about a real-estate agent trying to repair a deal gone bad. The agent is in an affair with her boss who is using the relationship against the woman plunging her into a law suit against her clients whom she is particularly fond of.

Chapter 10: River Dual: The mayor and his assassins raid the riverside home of a local gunsmith for two reasons. They want to make an example of the man for his support of firearms, and they hope to lure Cliffhanger out into the light of day for an epic battle which is exactly what happens. The mayor and all his assassins, except for the primary one, are killed in the battle. The primary barely escapes with his life.

Chapter 11: The Other Side of the Fence: The last newspaper story to be seen by the public, a young divorcee has found herself in the arms of a very abusive man. The man appeared to be everything a young woman dreams of until she leaves her husband and lets the new man move in. Once the man is in her home she finds he’s not what he advertised, and is now in fear of the man not only for herself but her young child.

Chapter 12: Salad Bar Goddess: The assassin is sent to an upscale restaurant near the town where his career took a nose dive. This “hit” given to him by “The System” is a chance at redemption for his failure at the river. His target is the outspoken Fletcher Finnegan who has been all over the newspapers and television recently speaking out against the policies of “The System.” The assassin’s job is to locate the man, kill him in a highly public place in front of his family, and send the subtle message to the town that resistance is futile. At the restaurant where Finnegan is reported to be at, the assassin sees the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen at the salad bar. He recognizes the woman as Misty Finnegan, whom he remembered the slain mayor had been trying to get into his bed, and was denied much to his frustration. The assassin is then shocked to find that the woman is strangely unconcerned about his presence as she returns to her table where her small children are eating with her husband, making eye contact with the assassin several times with pity on her face. Then the assassin makes eye contact with her husband and discovers it is he who is the target of his assassination. It is Fletcher Finnegan himself, and he is aware of the assassin’s presence also, as he stares him down from across the room. The assassin looking into the eyes of Finnegan is startled to see absolutely no fear there, which is an emotion he is not prepared for. He had never met a man without any fear behind his eyes of any kind. It was at that moment that the assassin had seen that same look in the eyes of Cliffhanger, and that the two men were one in the same.

The assassin is filled with envy, at the direction of his sad and pathetic life. He suddenly realizes that his entire life has been nothing more than slavery to “The System.” He is jealous of Finnegan for being enough of a man to be able to have a woman like Misty Finnegan, because such a woman could have her pick of any man. And she didn’t pick Finnegan because of money, prestige, or any level of power. She picked him because he was good. And no woman of any worth would ever want the assassin for anything other than being a thug, a brute, a mere puppet to his masters.

The assassin realizes that if he wanted to do one good thing in his life, he’d let Fletcher and his family live, because he was on the wrong side, clearly. He nods to Fletcher and proceeds to leave the restaurant where he throws himself in front of a truck on a highway to commit suicide. The assassin knows that “The System” will hunt him for not completing the contract so he’ll be killed eventually anyway. At least this way, he can do it on his terms.

———————————————-

I remember when the Pulse Journal came to my house to do an interview about my book when it came out in the spring of 2004. He wanted to talk about my whips but wasn’t sure how to make such depressing topics appealing in a newspaper article to the general population. I had the same trouble at book stores and other media events, where the focus of the story was on my use of bullwhips, but nobody wanted to touch the content of the story, rape, murder, civil war, mind control, drug trafficking, spies, global conspiracies, it was just too much for the general public to accept, and the media was lost in how to cover it.

The book was obviously extremely anti-progressive, which was well before anybody was talking about what a progressive was. It sold to my friends in the Western Arts community who bought it because the hero had a whip and it reminded them of Zorro, but they were uneasy with the heavy political overtones and scientific basis behind the mind control plot, as were many people who weren’t prepared to deal with such things.

I reminded them that the old Republic serial called Zorro’s Fighting Legion had a similar story line. It was over the top stuff and fun, but it also taught kids valuable lessons about fighting for what they believed in. But as many of them told me then, society has “outgrown that kind of entertainment.”

It took me a while to get over some of the self-criticism I had about the book because every aspect of it was uphill. But as my wife had told me, “why are you writing this? Is it to become wealthy, is it to have a career as a writer, or is it to create a work of art that will stand the test of time?” I picked the later.

It has been only recently where people who have bought it have made excited comparisons to Atlas Shrugged and other kinds of art work that has direct appeal to those in the Tea Party movement. Well, I didn’t even know about Atlas Shrugged when I wrote Symposium. I wrote Symposium based on observations I had been making about the direction of the world, and I wanted to put those observations into a format of “pulp fiction” that people understood and could relate with to articulate that message.

A cowboy friend of mine approached me at The Annie Oakley Festival last weekend and told me, “I thought you were a little off the deep end when I read that book 7 years ago, but you know what, it don’t seem so crazy now.”

I smiled at the guy. “Who would have ever thought?” He was there when I did book signings of that book all those years ago and the public bought it because they saw me performing and wanted something of mine to take home to their friends with my signature in it. Most people didn’t understand the book at all, and told me as much the following year. But the people who did were people many would consider “conspiracy theorists.” I had people travel the length of the country to meet me the following year just to shake my hand because my book, “spoke to them.” But in talking with these people, it was obvious they were the social extremists out there and while I appreciated their support, I was frustrated that the general population just didn’t get it.

At a film festival a few years ago Gery Deer laughed at the small line of people who seemed to follow me everywhere I went, he’d call them “Hoffman’s radical groupies.” He knew the obsessive type; they were similar to those who frequent Star Trek Conventions, and Star Wars events. Only these were “conspiracy theory nerds” and they would line up to have their picture taken with me.

“I feel like an idiot posing for pictures with these guys,” I’d say to Gery.

“Hey, they’re fans. Be happy you have them. Some artists work their whole life to get one fan that will drive across the country to have their picture taken with them.” He’d pat me on the back. “You have a nice little handful.”

My wife would sit back and smile, knowing that those types of activities were something I didn’t enjoy doing. “I didn’t want to appeal to just the radical fringe,” I’d say to her.

At the hotel in Cleveland, at a film festival where I won a screenwriting award for a different project, but had been receiving a lot of comments about The Symposium she said to me at the pool while I was swimming, “Do you remember the homeless guy in the movie Always, who Richard Dreyfuss as a ghost was talking through. The homeless guy was one of those guys who just saw too much, and was close to the edge of death, so close that he could see beyond his surroundings. You’re like that only you have learned to function in the world like a normal human being. Many of these people haven’t learned to do that. They see TOO much, so they seem crazy to the rest of the world that is really just half asleep. That is the pain of being too awake, is that you run the risk of having your brain fried.”

She was right, and this comment went back to the one that started it all back in Niagara Falls, that time and perception would catch up if I let it. The important thing was to put it down on paper and let the art speak for itself.

This is fresh on my mind now, because more and more people are thanking me for writing The Symposium of Justice and even though I have put that book on the shelf and am moving on to new projects, it gives me great pleasure to know that it is touching people’s lives. So to those of you who wanted to know the story of how that book came to be, and why I don’t talk about it much, it’s because for one, I think it’s cheesy when involved in high-profile cases like I am, to always be pimping a book. That book for me is something that has meaning beyond these current years, so it’s not important to me to have my ego massaged with a boost in sales. It’s more important to deal with the issues of the day, which currently is protecting S.B.5 and fighting school levies which are obvious crimes against the tax payers. But the creative side of me does enjoy knowing that people are touched by something that was extremely difficult, and controversial to create, that fell short of my quality standards because of the circumstances under which it was produced, but the heart of the project remained uniquely in place because I had angered everyone involved in publishing and marketing to bring to being something that was WAY out in front of the political curb.

And for that I’m very proud. When you take on an endeavor where you are outnumbered by a lot, and you stick to your guns because you know in your heart that you are right, it feels wonderful to have that weight lifted off your shoulders as the times prove that the numbers against you were wrong, as usual.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE SYMPOSIUM OF JUSTICE AT AMAZON.COM:

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

S&P Downgrade America: Crack Whores, Politicians, and Scumbags wreck a Superpower

ALERT! ………………………BIG SURPRISE……..CHINA LECTURES AMERICA ABOUT DEBT!!!!!!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/China-flays-US-over-credit-rb-3974888722.html?x=0

Thanks Timothy Geithner, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Al Frankin, Barney Frank, George Bush senior and junior, Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt and many, many, many others, your dream of ruining America is nearly complete. With the official downgrade of Standard & Poor’s credit rating from a AAA to a AA+ America woke up Saturday morning with the dumbfounded look of a mere teenager whom had just been dropped off at college with his parents credit card and racked up an enormous amount of debt on that card only to find out he now had too many commitments to too many debtors and he has now lost his ability to borrow. Or more accurately, that his ability to borrow has been downgraded, not only is this news unfortunate in that it presents new financial restrictions, but it shows that the foolish teenager can’t be trusted.  Again for the second week Darryl Parks of 700 WLW had a fantastic broadcast about this whole issue.  Toward the end, I come on Darryl’s program to discuss the difference between “crack whores” and politicians, and we can’t think of any!  Click below to have a listen:

Anyone with even a partially functioning brain could have seen it coming. I mean, look at the charts! Yet politicians have developed the habit of purchasing power for themselves by giving stuff away without having an eye toward the day when they’d have to pay for it, just like the foolish teenager spending his parents money. The teenager has no understanding of money because they didn’t earn it. They do know that they can impress people by buying them dinner, or that they can get dates by buying presents for the opposite sex, but they don’t understand why doing these acts has so much power. That’s because the people receiving these gifts know that money is hard to get, because you must do something to earn it. Something somewhere must be produced to get something. Nothing is produced from thin air, so when someone partakes in a pleasure, and the person enjoying that pleasure didn’t do anything to earn that pleasure, then somebody somewhere is getting ripped off, because they did the work which generated the money of which someone else is enjoying the benefits. With the teenager, his parents did the work, while the kid had the fun. In government, it is the tax payer who does the work, while the government spends the money on impressing their friends.

What Standard and Poor just did was let the child know that the government has misused the money. The trouble is the government is a reflection of the taxpayer just like the teenager is a reflection of the parent. And now that the United States has been downgraded, we all look foolish.

Look at these charts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What are those idiots thinking!!!!!!!!!

We all know politics in Washington has been a joke for a long time. But it’s only been very recently that our debt has been out of control. The debt in 1990 was hovering around 2 trillion after a long Cold War with Communist Soviet Union. Yet the moment that George Bush Senior took office, the spending skyrocketed for the next 20 years, with the exception of a period at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president, while he was in trouble with the Monica Lewinsky situation, where the President actually worked with John Kasich, Ohio’s current governor to balance the budget. Other than that, it’s been a spending binge with no eye on reality. Obama is only the latest, and most obvious big spender, and America is now a nation of spoiled brats, educated to believe all the wrong things matter. It is actually the education system itself that I blame, because the emphasis for three decades now has been on social issues, not economics. The result is that we have a society of people who will update their Facebook account religiously, but won’t pay any attention to how money is spent, how it’s generated, or what makes something better than another thing. Therefore, these people function with the assumption that America is great, it will always be great, and they have to do nothing to maintain it.

This is no different than the spoiled teenager saying, “Do you know who my dad is,” as a way to leverage some power over someone else. What the teenager should say is “Do you know who I am?” The teenager should have worked hard to build a name for himself, so being “somebody” has value.

The same thing is going on right now in our country. “We are America.” Well, so what! That doesn’t mean anything if teachers are more concerned over their “union rights” promised to them by LBJ, than actually working hard to leave their own mark in the world from their own efforts. It means nothing if the caretakers of America will spend more time updating their Facebook status while out to dinner with friends or family rather than paying attention to what is going on in the world around them. America means nothing if the people elect a politician to represent their beliefs in their state or in Washington, then don’t pay any attention to what that representative is doing. The value of America is lost in the complacency.

The debt crises is about one primary thing, aside from the obvious immaturity of the action involved in spending beyond our means, it is about a failed philosophy.

Being an American means something, but it loses its meaning if the aspects behind the definition are lost, poorly maintained, or simply squandered away carelessly. It is the philosophy of self-reliance that built America, and it is the children of prosperity, these fool politicians and academics who like immature teenagers have questioned their parental guidance in search of their own identity. But in the process, they have destroyed the family name of America.

That is what the downgrade means to America. It is embarrassing, and signals that the teenagers we’ve turned loose to run our country are simply not equipped to do so. They have learned the wrong philosophy for being a caretaker of the greatest country in recorded history, and they need to be removed quickly.

 
When I listen to the politicians complaining about the Tea Party being “terrorists” and other derogatory terms, again I think of the immature teenager, who complains about how “mean” their parents are, because that’s what’s happening. The teenager, who does not understand the value of things, who does not understand why the family name is so important because it’s just always been good, ridicules their parents for all the same reasons the politician ridicules the Tea Party. The Tea Party has evolved in American society as the responsible parent who has come back to the college to pick up their kid, take away their credit cards and teach them a hard lesson for their own good.

The teenager may cry about it, they may call the parent names, but it is for their own good in the end.
It is our responsibility to reel in the neglect these politicians are inclined to indulge in, because we have seen what they will do on their own accord. This most recent president is simply a spoiled child who is displaying the roots of many psychological problems. Donald Trump stopped short of calling the guy stupid, but I’ll say about him the same as I’ve said of many young people I’ve seen drunk and choking on their own puke after drinking way too much, or the young girl passed out on a sofa, completely nude who has urinated all over herself from her irresponsibility and personal neglect, that this current president and the congress, and the senate, especially the house led under Nancy Pelosi are a bunch of stupid teenagers who should all be gathered up and dropped into the middle of a desert so they can learn what real hardship is, and learn to overcome adversity, and grow up to have some sense.

Because the philosophy for which they are functioning under is reprehensible, destructive, and embarrassing, and I personally will not provide excuses for the behavior of those children.

The answers to these problems are along the lines of this John Stossel segment. I agree with everything except his view on drugs. What John does is similar to the parent who sits their child down to explain the rules they are expected to live under. If America was smart, it would use Stossel’s guide to hold all government to a level of expectation which will then improve the family name to the value we all expect it t be.

Source for picture:
http://www.federalbudget.com/
Other picture references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The American Ruling Class: Turning down a seat at the table

I received from Phil, a frequent visitor to this forum an article from The American Spectator by Angelo M. Codevilla written July 2010.  I had not read that article but ironically it summed up nicely many of the issues that Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom is dedicated to, the identification of, dissemination of, and understanding of what is rotting the foundation of America.  Whenever I receive evidence that independent minds have arrived at virtually the same conclusion I have in a fashion 100% separate from my personal experiences, validation of those similar conclusions is refreshing.  You can read that article here.  It is well worth the time of anyone who wants to understand what the problem is behind the picture below.  The picture of the newspaper article is an editorial from a Michigan publication and articulates the growing frustration between the two classes of people who exists in American, the ruling class, and the country class, as identified by Codevilla in The American Spectator article. 
 
American Spectator article:  CLICK BELOW

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the

Matt Clark, also from Michigan, like the articles above contemplates the bizarre behavior of Harry Reid, and Barack Obama from his radio program on WAAM.  Two weeks ago I was on the air with Matt and he asked me to predict what would happen in the debt crises.  I told him that Boehner would cave, even though I believed that Boehner had all the best intentions, he is now part of the ruling class, and he thinks in that fashion.  Any other thinking is foreign to him.  Listen to that broadcast here:  Listen to Matt’s most recent broadcast by hitting play below: 

I haven’t thought of naming these different class types by what Codevilla has.  To my mind America doesn’t need social class structures.  Such things get in the way of creativity, and have no place in society.  The desire for human class qualifications is to me, an archaic desire of an infantile mind.  Such desires are something that the human being is destined to outgrow, and America is the first step of that growth.  The idea of self-government, even though it never quite got off the ground where even the founding fathers struggled with their own European roots.  They knew how freedom should look on paper, but failed to implement it into their culture, and infantile minds craving power have occupied positions of power for two hundred years and created the classes illustrated above. 

I have dedicated thousands and thousands of words completely free of charge, with no intention at profit for myself to exposing this class structure in America. I do write books, I have written a book called The Symposium of Justice which was dedicated to exposing how the system worked at a psychological level.  You can see that book by clicking here:

I am currently working on another book that my editor is currently scrutinizing through called Tail of the Dragon.  The early comments about that book is, WOW, there is a lot of political chaos in this story, hard-hitting stuff!  My response is that the point of all the death, the billions of dollars of destruction, the violence, the love, and the adventure is to arrive at the scene inside the White House at the end of the book where the president gives a mighty speech.  Early readers have stated that it reminds them of a shorter version of the John Galt speech from Atlas Shrugged, which I consider a high compliment, because that’s the point.  Because my intention behind all this free content that I put out each day, and the intention behind my books, is to put a light on this ruling class, and once understood, for common American’s to take that power away from the ruling class by cutting the money which funds the whole enterprise. 

The path which took me to this place is a long one.  But what confirmed in me the final straw was an experience I had out in Hollywood, while working on a project with a production company.  Up until that point I had assumed that politics was a separate thing from entertainment, but when I worked on the set of a development project for a rather high-profile actor, I learned that the same politics were at play in the film industry as in politics, and this is why Hollywood and politics are often holding hands, because both believe they are part of the ruling class.  So to illustrate that story I’ll talk about my experience on the set of this project. 

This actor is a good guy.  I personally like him quite a bit, as I do the director.  So I won’t mention them here by name.  I’ve worked with entertainment types before so past reference isn’t necessary.  What is important is that even in a simple thing like entertainment, politics is very important. 

I was flown in to a job to be a stunt stand-in, so I had to be made-up to look just like the lead actor.  The lead actor was producing this production so it was his money that paid for my expenses.  He really wanted me specifically and he went out of his way to acquire my services.  When I arrived on set, I was given my trailer and the producer had accidentally not ordered the correct amount of trailers for this production.  So I was asked to share a trailer with the lead actress who wasn’t scheduled to arrive on set till after my make-up was complete.  This producer was relieved when I shrugged my shoulders and stated, I’ll dress in the parking lot, it doesn’t make any difference to me.  The director and the producer looked oddly at each other like I spoke from another planet.  They assumed I’d be very upset. 

The actor really wanted to meet me when he arrived on set and came to shake my hand.  He assumed that I would take great privilege in shaking his hand.  Now to those who know me, I make a point to treat everyone the same.  I show no special honor to anybody.  I would treat the President of the United States with the same attention as a street beggar.  To me they are all Americans.  And I like to be treated the same.  It’s a sign of respect to me.  So I shook his hand without a lot of worship.  I simply said, “Hey, what’s going on?”  He looked at me oddly, with a bit of obvious disappointment.  About two hours later he brought his family to me between takes and asked me, “Hey, Rich, do you have your whips, can you show my kids some of your stuff?” 

“Sure,” I grabbed my whips and demonstrated some single and double-handed routines and the kids loved it.  One of them had a little hat and he held it out to me.  I took it from him and put it on his head.  His mother, who was a popular television actress, said with a smile, “I think he wants your autograph.” 

I smiled at the kid and grabbed his hand.  “How about a handshake.”  I thought it was the right thing to do, since autographs seemed so presumptuous.  I don’t feel comfortable giving them.  I never enjoyed doing book signings with my book The Symposium of Justice, and I certainly didn’t think a child of two famous parents should want autographs.  If anything, I would think his parents would appreciate downplaying such a thing, since they get bombed with requests every time they go out someplace.  So by downplaying the incident I thought I was doing them a favor.  The actress looked uncomfortable at me with a smile intended for television and gathered her kids up and left the set. 

For the rest of the shoot I caught the actor looking at me oddly anytime he had a free moment.  It made me feel like an animal in a zoo the way he was examining me.  I blew it off, but the look reminded me of the many similar looks I had received over the years by politicians and company presidents who felt betrayed that they had invited me to the table and were hurt that I refused their invite by not participating in their hazing rituals.  It was at the lunch break on the set where all the technical people sat at one table, the support actors sat at another, the stunt men sat at another, the agents at another, and the director, producer and the lead actor sat at the same table closest to the catering truck.  Since it was those people who I knew the most out of everyone present I sat at their table.  The director and producer were warm to me, but the actor who had been very talkative until I arrived suddenly claimed up.  The director following his lead after a few moments stopped talking so openly.  All the people at that table finished up their food quickly and left saying they needed to get ready for the next set-ups. 

I was left at the table by myself, but the stunt coordinator who was sitting at a near-by table and had struck up several productive conversations with me came over and sat down.  “Do I stink of something” I asked him mockingly smelling my armpits. 

He laughed.  “No man, you have to understand something out here, everything is politics.  You are either in, or you’re out.” 

“So I’m out?” 

“No, you’re in, or they wouldn’t have called you.  I think they aren’t sure what to do with your Midwest like behavior.  Don’t worry about it, you’re cool.  They’ll come around.  Give them some time.” 

That conversation confirmed what I had been thinking, and it was disappointing.  I completed my tasks for that project and when it came time to break and wrap, the actor insisted on driving me back to my hotel to personally thank me for helping with the project. 

As he drove me through several neighborhoods back to my hotel there was awkwardness between us.  I realized that he did not want to drive me back, but was simply doing it because he had told the crew he planned to.  He was simply fulfilling his role in Hollywood politics.  He personally driving me back was supposed to be considered part of my payment, and to me it was expected by a friend, or potential friend.  When I stepped out of his car I wished him luck on his next project.  He said to me, “hey man, you have my email address.  Feel free to contact me anytime.”  As he drove away I felt relief of being out of that uncomfortable situation.  I was happy to be a part of the project, but glad to be away from the politics that was very evident. 

About 3 weeks later I wrote him curious to see if he’d respond. His email, which I had used dozens of times before bounced back.  He had canceled his account. 

It didn’t bother me; I was as uncomfortable as he was once we realized that we were functioning from completely different ideologies.  For me, I can deal with people who think different from me, even if I don’t like it.  But for people like him and his wife, they had looked for the signs, just like Codevilla spoke about, and I showed that I was not part of the ruling class and had no desire to learn how to be.  They were disappointed in losing a potential friend because unless I was willing to join their class, they could not associate with me.  When they realized that I wanted to stay on the outside, they stopped investing in our relationship.  It’s that simple.

This process is what school board members encounter when they get voted in by the public.  Congressional freshman also go through this process.  It is very tempting to say yes, because in saying yes, financial security is almost guaranteed.  Because it is the ruling class who has the power, and resources to give you, so when they invite you to the table, you accept it as an honor.  But for me I see shackles at that table, and I’ve always turned away from it, much to the horror of those who invited me.  To them it is a terrible insult to have their helping hand slapped away.  They become angry at themselves for ever thinking that they were willing to put their reputations behind someone who doesn’t want to play the game, which is a mere commoner, a peasant destined to be ruled by the ruling class. 

I could tell several dozen stories just like that one, and they all have in common the same pattern, an invite to the table of power, only for me to downplay the invite as worthless.  Not to slap down the value of the invite, but to display my reluctance to accept power and the game that follows.  For me the real value in life I can say I’ve felt on many occasions, and I feel sorry for those in the ruling class who grab so diligently that such concepts for which they are committed are a path of decline and they do not know it.  It is why so many politicians are corrupt and so many in Hollywood develop destructive addictions, it is the power of politics that corrupts the mind, because the pursuit of a class of any kind is like trying to fit mankind into the cloths of their youth.  The pants just don’t fit, mankind has outgrown such small-minded notions, they just don’t know how to articulate their beliefs.  So the questions come out as they do in the newspaper article from Michigan, as a frustrated rant about the way the world should be and the way it really is. 

This is the battle of our age, the reluctance of those who know better to join those who have bitten from the forbidden tree, the knowledge of good and evil, the pairs of opposites where politics ruins society from a lifetime of enchantment and understanding where the citizens do not need a ruling class, because they govern themselves. The politician uses duality to split the otherwise bright mind desiring freedom into bondage of opposites where the ruling class can conduct a psychological war to launch themselves as the peacemakers, and power holders.  It’s a game as old as time itself, and it is now outdated and worthless, for the philosophy of our time is not of Aristotle, Plato, or Socrates, but of Ayn Rand.  Time does not lie, even if the politics of power and the ruling class that resides in that power do lie.  America is at a point where we must go back to the beginning again, and start fresh with the knowledge we have now, and allow the European influence of peaking order and power grabs to leave our society under the guidance of modern philosophy which is specifically American. 

We must do this without pause, without the guidance of history, because we are writing that history right now.  The home of the brave and land of the free is alive in the hearts of those who do not seek the security of the ruling class.  That class, is the path to decline and rot and everything that is opposite of true freedom.

 

 

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Wisdom of Darryl Parks: What congress and the senate don’t want you to know

It was nice to see that Gabbie Gifford was able to make a vote on the house floor for the epic vote on raising the debt ceiling, but in the back of my mind there was something wrong with the timing and ceremony of the whole affair.  I didn’t want to admit it to myself, because I don’t want to believe that Congressman Gifford would participate in such a thing, but it seemed to me that Gifford’s return to the house was designed to take the edge off all the fighting that had been going on in congress about whether or not to raise the debt ceiling, and whether or not there would be “revenue” involved. 

Such a thought actually makes me feel bad, to question the honesty of congress.  I’m sure in her case she has probably wanted to come back for a while.  But it was her friends in the house who probably “encouraged” her to return for this big vote in order to show “unity” to the American people.  The games of politics are nasty and costly, but I think the treachery and manipulation that these people are capable of has been dramatically underestimated, and based on what I know now about their activities, I would not put it passed congress to attempt to use Gabby Gifford to help make the American people forget about how ugly business in government truly is.  When I think such things I wonder if I’m the only one who sees it, that is until I hear Darryl Parks talk on 700 WLW every Saturday morning from 9 AM to 11.  While all this government ugliness was unfolding over the weekend I was on my way to The Annie Oakley Festival and had the opportunity to listen to Darryl on my hour and a half trip to Darke County,Ohio. Darryl Parks thinks much the way I do about most things, so it was refreshing to hear him speak with incredible clarity about our nation’s problems as the summer sun began to heat up the day of that momentous broadcast.  I think this particular broadcast was so good, and so historic that it deserved over an hour of transition over to podcast for the convenience of those who haven’t heard it, or to be listened to again for those who did hear it and want to listen again.  So do yourself a favor and hit PLAY on the link below.  Grab a snack and sit back and listen with the clarity of hindsight, now that the crisis has been averted for the moment, and marvel at the wisdom of Darryl Parks. 

Politicians have been a joke for a number of years and culturally we have dismissed them as irrelevant aspects of our lives.  Seldom if ever whether it be a Looney Toons cartoon from the 30’s and 40’s, or a film, television show, or novel, is a politician portrayed in a trustworthy manner.  It is universally accepted that as a group, politicians are deceitful, life-sucking aspects of our society who have virtually no benefit to our culture.  They make rules that we all have to live by, and they make decisions that cost us money.  Yet we listen to the same speeches every election cycle and hope that somehow things will be different with the next politician.  Then we act surprised when we find out that politicians have enriched themselves greatly while working in public office.  This is the gist of what Darryl was talking about, how can a politician like Mitch McConnell get rich as a politician?  Or how does Barack Obama becomes a millionaire between the years of 2004 to 2008 while he was just another senator?  The answer is they are making deals, and benefiting from insider trading, many of the conditions they create legislation to help along, a practice that should be illegal, but isn’t because it is the law makers committing the crime who would have to create the law. 

Many politicians I believe start their public careers with good intentions, where they really want to help.  But the money and power available to them is just too lucrative and they quickly turn to corruption for that age-old pursuit of financial security.  There are always exceptions of course, but as a general rule in a governmental body that depends on majority rule, if a majority is corrupt, then the body itself is also corrupt, and that is the case with our general government.

I listened carefully to the complaints of politicians on both sides of the political spectrum as the debt ceiling issue came to a close.  They are grossly out of touch insisting on even more money to support a political system that is obviously full of thieves.  Those thieves don’t consider themselves looters of course, because they are the law.  They see themselves as citizens who deserve the highest respect for their service to their country, but by their actions they are simple thieves, seeking for themselves plunder at the expense of the people they represent no different from a pirate.

You can learn a lot by watching people under duress, and America learned a lot about its politicians as the debt crises unfolded.  The demand for more “revenue,” a term used to disguise the real meaning which is “taxes,” from the voting population as a way to manipulate the situation to their advantage from a public guilty of trusting them, rang out from many politicians like drug addicts crying for another hit of “speed.” 

The level of corruption and financial addiction has shocked even me, a long time big government skeptic. I did not know it was this bad, I simply suspected as much.  But the proof is there for all of us to see.  We have a big problem in America.  We have to rethink the whole political process and the kind of people we want to fill those seats. 

We know the enormity of the problem because the vote that just occurred over the debt ceiling increase amounts to nothing.  It solves no problems, it still allows government to spend more than it takes in, and the solution of these parasites is just to send more money to them to cover the gaps.  Yet there is praise among the thieves and much back slapping going on for all those law makers are proud of themselves and they cheered in unison when Gabby Gifford came to the chamber and changed the story in the media from a “combative congress finally passes a vote,” to “Congressman Gifford cast her first vote since her tragic accident.”  And the nation looked at the image of Mrs. Gifford waving her hand to the crowd, collectively all the fights of the last week dropped away from the memory of voters in favor of the more pleasant story of Gabby Gifford’s amazing recovery. 

While all this was going on the thieves took a deep breath of relief as the media attention focused on the recovering congressman and allowed them to scurry away to the cracks they all hide in to figure out some way to spin the situation to their advantage, and attack those darn “tea baggers,” “talk radio hosts,” and “TV personalities” who are telling the public all about the scam they have been employing for decades. 

Yet the whole structure is supported by the “revenue” that Americans give those thieves, so we are guilty of subsidizing criminal activity knowingly.  After this episode and the information available to the American public if they allow it to continue, they are guilty of a real crime, not one created by corrupt law making politicians, but one of the moral code of the human race, where we are supposed to treat each other fairly, and with honesty and not with the heart of a predator in favor of a life of respect and valor.  Because if that’s the case, then all those corrupt politicians are accurate representatives of the demons which reside inside each and every voter, which makes us all guilty in the eyes of the universe. 

Thank goodness people like Darryl Parks gets it…………what’s wrong with everyone else?

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Memories, Friends, and 8 X 10’s: The Annie Oakley Western Showcase!

The yearly meetings at the Fairlawn Steak House in Greenville, Ohio are becoming something of an American tradition, where a nearly extinct breed of human being, who do things because it puts a smile on the faces of children without ever considering money as a primary concern, gather.  The Fairlawn looms directly across from the Darke County Fairgrounds and every year during the last weekend of July the City of Greenville celebrates the life of Annie Oakley with a tribute to the western arts that made her an American treasure, and most of the western performers in the nation make the pilgrimage to Greenville each year to run their act, compete against each other, and gather at the Fairlawn at the end of the day for beer, steak, and tales of the years adventures.  See a montage of the weekend’s events here: 

The air conditioning in the Fairlawn works nicely in the little side room where this group of western arts performers gathers late into the steamy night.  Outside the setting sun fills the big sky in this part of the country in a spectacular way.  The orange neon lights that advertise the steak house to passers-by on Sweitzer St was a welcome sight to all of us who spent the day cracking whips, throwing knives, spinning guns, throwing ropes, singing, performing magic and answering questions to a curious crowd.  As we stagger up the path to the restaurant and the cool air inside greets us, nostalgia is the overwhelming emotion.  This year the bar’s television had on a Reds game, just like last year only this time as my wife and I ordered a beer, there was a news flash that came up over the bartender’s head to announce that congress and the senate is close to a debt ceiling deal. 

“Thieves,” an old man uttered over his beer looking from the TV to my wife then to the sweat soaked Australian outback hat on my head that has seen the world and looks like it.  “They’re all a bunch of crooks and thieves, every damn one of them.” 

“You’re right,” I said to him.  I noticed that old man was looking at my whip holster on my belt and he was curious.  Then behind me came the rest of our clan, all western performers openly wearing knives, whips, and guns as they wearily went to their seats in the party room where our reservations placed us away from the rest of the crowd in the main dining room. 

The old man watched them approvingly.  Then looked back at me, “You all from across the street?” 

“Yeah,” I replied as my wife smiled a bit at the man.  My wife likes older people because they no longer feel the need to engage in personal politics, and they have a life-time of wisdom to pass on to a generation who throws them away like trash.  She likes older people for all the same reasons that I like my western art friends.  There is truth in their eyes and wisdom in their hands.  And I could see the wisdom in the hands of the old man as he nursed his beer and looked over the rim at an image of President Obama talking about how people need to work together to solve this national crises.  “Damn thief,” he uttered again his eyes on the screen.   

And he’s right.  Many people have asked me how I can speak out on the tax topics the way I have, and go on TV speaking out so openly about how broken our political system is, my roots in those statements come from the type of friends I have, the people with me at the Fairlawn Steak House, who live life with honesty and perform an art form rooted in valor and goodness.

As the night wore on, there were stories from the old days, back when old Hollywood stunt men and Las Vegas performers were the guiding lights for all of us young guys, a torch that has been handed to us to preserve.  But that was a different age.  Divorces, financial hardships, and entertainment politics have put western arts on the downside of American priorities and what used to be many thousands of western art performers is down to a mere handful, many of them at Annie Oakley and eating steak at the Fairlawn.  We talked about the many personalities who have come and gone over the years, some still working in western arts, some giving it up because of financial necessity, but many of us sitting there at the end of a day of performing have the feeling that we are the end of a breed.  A kid whose mom drove him up from Alabama named Luke and was just 16 was a bright spot to the rest of us who are all 40 and older.  Having young people wanting to get involved was refreshing. 

The reason these western artists gather at The Annie Oakley Festival, and not Las Vegas or some other place like it has in the past is because of my good friend, Gery Deer who runs a bullwhip training facility in Jamestown,Ohio.  It is because of Gery, who is a western arts supplier and occasionally provides material for the film industry, has worked with me for over a decade on independent features, he has a band who performs folk music all over the Midwest by tour bus, and he has the only indoor studio in America dedicated to the training of bullwhip artists.  So as the western has declined in Hollywood, and the need for Vegas shows with a western theme declined as well, it is Gery’s studio in Jamestown that has kept that tradition alive in America, because he is the only guy around who has a studio designed to preserving that tradition, and that includes Hollywood. 

Most of the top Western Performers in the country have passed through the Annie Oakley Western Showcase at some point in the last 9 years since the event was first implemented as a supplement to the big event out in Las Vegas.  But over time, the Vegas event finally folded when the great stuntman Alex Green, who was a big part of organizing that event, passed away.  That left only The Annie Oakley Western Showcase and Gery Deer to keep the torch lit. 

Many of the most dependable participants travel the country in their motor homes and live like gypsies much of the time.  Robert Dante, a long time bull whip performer and World Record holder fits this lifestyle.  His van was parked outside of the performance area and in between acts he simply goes back to his van to catch up on sleep.  Leading up to Annie Oakley he traveled from Minnesota to South Carolina performing shows then “stopping by” Ohio to spend time with us, as he usually does.   When I asked him about his lifestyle, if he got tired of always being unsettled waking up in different cites all the time and living out of a van he said, “Variety is the spice of life.”  He said it like a seasoned Shakespearian actor knowing full well that he was part of a dying breed and he wasn’t about to apologize for if.

Kirk and Malodee Bass are also long time friends of my wife and I.  Kirk started throwing knives the same weekend I did at an Annie Oakley event about 7 years ago.  He stuck with it where I didn’t and he’s now one of the best in the country and has his own show called Bass Blades.  They are old theater veterans from the great outdoor production called Blue Jacket which went out of business almost a decade ago after its critically acclaimed performances that featured live gunfire during the show couldn’t support itself financially.  They are very dedicated parents who are home schooling their kids which impresses me greatly.  They assembled the curriculum for their children’s education based on a friend of theirs who has a master’s degree in education.  Their kids are lucky to have such interesting, and dedicated parents who happen to spend their spare time throwing knives at each other. 

Richard and Donna Best were there as usual.  Richard was hired by the Annie Oakley Committee to be the official Buffalo Bill for the week since he looks so much like Buffalo Bill.  Richard and Donna are old timers in the Western Arts and have performed everywhere, particularly in Vegas.  Their act is an archeologists dream for it is an authentic recreation to the type of entertainment that thrilled audiences in the 40’s and 50’s.  They are wonderful people and occasionally their grandchildren have come to Annie Oakley with them and participate in rope tricks and whip work.  You can’t help but look at those young children and think how lucky they are to have grandparents who travel the county, where grandpa makes a living cutting targets out of the mouth of grandma.  Such figures in a child’s life are paramount to positive adult development.

In the outside world, away from the smiling faces, the cotton candy, the hot dogs, popcorn, corn dogs, snow cones and other carnival food, the world looks down its nose at this group of aging cowboys.  For the world has become more progressive.  The art of American tradition is something the political establishment has frowned down on. 

After my trip to the Fairlawn last year it was Chris Camp who put the idea in my head about performing The Whip Trick to Save America (see that video by clicking here).  Chris is such a fantastic whip artist that he travels the country full-time and stays booked, which is why he couldn’t make it this year, because he was simply too busy.  The trick I did in that video is one that he performs in his live show, and he told me how to do it, and I put my own spin on it.  It was conceived in the dining room of the Fairlawn using cups and salad plates.  After I did that video and released it to the public it got the attention of The Cincinnati Enquirer and I used the metaphor from that video to explain why I was against higher taxes, because like the old man said to me at the bar, “they are all thieves.”  Why would we give a thief more money?  It’s easy for us to see who the thieves are at the Fairlawn in the late hours of the night as the sweat from a whole day are caked to our bodies in need of a shower, where the beer tastes good because we earned it, and even a simple salad before a steak dinner tastes like exquisite cuisine, because freedom is openly celebrated at Greenville, Ohio and everyone can feel it.  And freedom is best celebrated in the art of freedom, and that is the western arts of my friends. 

As society has moved away from freedom and those celebrations, progressives have looked down their noses at the western arts in an attempt to rewrite history with a focus on the civil rights movement of the 60’s where progressive policies really began gain acceptance.  Celebrating the arts of westward expansion was not what progressive politics desired; they simply want to move beyond those memories to more recent times. 

But I don’t.  One of those life altering decisions happened for me shortly after The Enquirer did a feature on my Whip Trick to Save America where the organized elements of the unions and other progressive groups came after me calling me a “hick,” “hillbilly,” “kook” and other derogatory terms simply because I wore a cowboy hat and used bullwhips to help explain the need to cut taxes on an over-taxed society.  (CLICK HERE TO READ ALL ABOUT IT)  The personal attacks infuriated me to the level that convinced me to create this website, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom.  The personal attacks persuaded me that traditional arts and lifestyles needed a voice that I was in a unique position to provide, because of my background in western arts, so I started this site as a result. 

The art of a culture reflects the culture itself.  This is how anthropologist and archeologist come to understand ancient cultures.  But using the same measurement with our present culture we can see easily the state of our country in our art.  That is why the old men sit at a bar and utter “thieves” to the TV over their beer glass because their values were built by the type of arts my friends perform on a regular basis.  But the young people who were watching the Reds game, noticeably turned away from the TV when the President came on, and were indifferent to what was being said.  They were also the type who looked oddly when my friends arrived at the restaurant and eyed mysteriously at how they were dressed, because those young people have been taught to reject tradition, so traditional art is something to ridicule. 

But in the grandstands all through the day, the crowd that gathered young and old enjoyed themselves thoroughly as the politics of the age dropped away at the gates, and visitors were able to forget themselves on a stroll back through a more innocent time, where cowboys weren’t afraid to be men, women were proud to be women and a young lady named Annie Oakley set the imaginations of American’s everywhere with the values of the greatest nation on Earth by her trick shooting in the Buffalo Bill Wild West show.  A century later the same type of performers touched that same spirit in all who witnessed this unique event through smiles and bright eyes regardless of age, for the jaded judgment of the age was suspended as the crack of whips and the fire from guns ran out often across the Darke County Fairgrounds to a public hungry for substance in their art. 

For my wife and I that substance came with our dinner and the friends we shared it with as the night encroached the evening and reality returned to those western artists who faced the loneliness of an art form which transcends the greed of money, or the power of politics but is simply about memories, friends, and 8X10’s.

 

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Sleeping with a Sleazy Salesman: The Path of the Obama Presidency

On July 29th 2011 President Obama said “I don’t know why the Republicans in the House are voting for their own bill, it doesn’t have a shot at becoming law.  We need to reach a consensus as a nation.”  That statement is the reason for this post.  What Obama is really saying is “play our way, or not at all.”  The Democrats have been very resistant to doing the right thing also, but are misleading the nation with this game, that America can no longer afford.  Be sure to watch every video of this one as well as read the text and take your time.  This is a history lesson from our recent past that must be remembered right now.    Now, let’s study the pattern of behavior which indicates what the true intention of this game really is about for the current President of the United States. 

 

Like many of us, Jim Garvin is trying to understand the most recent comments of President Obama about the debt ceiling. As I watched the video below I felt for Mr. Gavin, because he represents most of America right now. The bewildered look on their faces is one of betrayal, of being lied to. Most of America knows they are being lied to by politicians from one side or the other. What they don’t know is who to blame, how to determine who is lying, and what to do about it.

What Obama and the political class have done with the federal budget is evident in this video. This spending behavior has been going on for a very long time, and represents a sickness in American politics. It is not appropriate to justify this behavior as “it’s just politics.” The American people have this dangerous tendency to deduct from their overall income what they pay in taxes. If they don’t see the money come out of their wallet, if that money is already gone before they even get their pay check, then they have a tendency to not even care what happens to that money. It’s as if their frustration in not having control of how their money is spent; they remove the thought from their minds completely, which politicians are well aware of.

I once knew a black salesman who reminds me a lot of President Obama. In fact, I’d dare say we have all known someone who considers themselves a “slick” talker who can sell anything to anybody and talk a woman out of her panties without them even being aware of it. I once watched this happen when I went for a drink with this guy and watched him work the bar, “Hey baby, what’s happening you sweet thing.”

I watched and listened and rolled my eyes. What woman would ever fall for a line like that? Anyone could tell that this dude was a creepy guy, right?

The salesman slept with that girl about 15 minutes after he met her, and when I spoke to the salesman about it I asked him how he could do it, how he could have sex with that girl, leave her with a fake phone number after he did the deed, then go back home to his wife and have sex with her in the same night, then come back to brag about it at work the next day?

He was a tall, lanky guy who moved almost identical to Barrack Obama. “Do what my brother,” he said to me using his pinky equipped with a gold ring to scratch his forehead. “I did that little girl a favor. Women love what I got’s to give em’ and if I’d given her my real number she’d be callin’ for more. And I can’t have that. She was lucky she got it once.” He noticed the distress on my face so he added, “Dude, listen. Fu**ing chicks is like selling to customers. You have to convince them that what you are giving them is what they need. And by the time they realize they don’t need what you want to give them, it’s too late, because they’ve either given you the money already, or they’ve given you a piece of ass.”

“But don’t you feel guilty taking advantage of them?” I asked.
“My man,” He said. “That’s cute, that you think people should feel guilty about making money, or fu**ing women. If you want a clean conscience, then take it from me, you will die a poor man looking for your next piece of ass.”

I didn’t dislike that salesman, I learned a lot from him. I learned everything I didn’t want to be. So it isn’t some psychological impairment that makes me think of this salesman every time I hear President Obama talk. It’s just that Obama uses the same kind of manipulation that the salesman uses. It may not be for the purpose of having sex with women, but rather to get people to buy what he’s selling. For this kind of salesman, outright lies are normal. In fact, they are so normal that they can even lie to themselves. When Obama sat down with Google to give a town hall type of speech during his campaign in 2008 it reveals a lot about Obama.

In the clip below with Google, Obama talks about patriotism in a way to cover his true intentions and disarm the client, which is the audience. Just like the con artist who wishes to conceal his dishonesty he cleverly uses gifts to keep people focused on the topics he chooses. For this particular crowd, it is discussions of technology. Obama guarantees every home in America will get broadband access under his future administration, and that his administration will stand up to the light of day by putting ear marks and bills online for all to see. He also talks about saving the planet with green jobs which is appealing to progressives naturally, even if it’s impractical and warped with idealism. When I watched this speech I thought of my old salesman friend who might say, “baby, I’ll by you a diamond necklace if you’ll suck my big **** out in my Cadillac outside.” The girl hears, “Cadillac” so maybe this guy has money. She hears “diamond necklace,” so maybe she can steal this guy away from his present woman. And sucking on something appeals to a natural biological urge many women have and gives them an illusion of control over a man because such an act is an act of trust, since the genitals of a man is the most delicate part of his body. The same types of buzz words are used in this interview, except it’s not sex that is for trade.

Unfortunately for such con artists sometimes they get caught in the lies they tell and this is the case where Harry Reid and President Obama had spoken against the increase of the dept ceiling in 2006. Reid explained that it was only because he was playing politics and it was wrong, so now in 2011, he’s right and everyone should buy into a debt ceiling increase. Obama had perhaps the worst statement. He said that his perspective as a senator was basically not as enlightened as that of the President, where more aspects of the economy must be considered. Without question in some future speech Obama will say that the President of the United Nations must consider the entire world, and not just the affairs of the United States, which is a job he is openly campaigning for.

On occasion there have been people like Mr. Gavin who recognize that something is wrong and they’ve questioned Obama. Such was the case with Joe the Plumber during the 2008 campaign. All the guy did was ask a question and Obama talked the situation into a 5 minute speech trying to justify the scam. Obama would have done better to give a short answer and move to the next topic, because it made Joe the Plumber a celebrity, which the left then proceeded to destroy Joe’s character any way they could. But it was Obama who made the mistake in this exchange. He knew that Joe was seeing through his campaign rhetoric and Obama, the salesman wanted to see if he could overcome Joe’s opposition. When words failed, Obama became very touchy openly putting his hand on the shoulder and arm of Joe the Plumber. This is very similar to a man who has been confronted by a scorned woman and uses touching to take the edge off the woman’s anger, knowing that touching helps psychologically break down the barriers of mental resistance to an idea.

With many of the positions Obama has taken, Muslim radicals seem to have gotten a free pass under his administration. He behaves very strange for a guy who claims that he’s a Christian. The trouble with a man who claims he’s a Christian and not a Muslim is that in politics it is calculated that a Muslim could not be elected, because people are tense over the aggression of many fundamentalists.

Christianity has been attacked by the Obama administration mysteriously. So if Obama is pretending to be a Christian when he is in fact a Muslim then he is deliberately misleading the pubic for political gain. And if he is willing to do that, what else is he willing to mislead the public on? That is the trouble. A man should be willing and able to stand on what they believe, not what they think people want them to believe. Such people are no different from people like that salesman who lie about how much money they have to sleep with a woman. They will say anything to get into the woman’s pants. But even the best of them get caught in their own lies. Here Obama lets it slip that he’s a Muslim then corrects himself to being Christian. Was it an accident? (More on this later)

In this next clip Obama continues to ridicule Christian faith. For a guy who again claims he’s a Christian, he seems pretty angry about it. I mean I personally don’t care if he’s a Muslim, or an Alien from some other planet. My concern is why does he feel he must hide it? Why be misleading?

Glenn Beck shows the Michelle Obama clip where she stated this was the first time she was proud of America. I personally can’t ever recall any upper level politician saying something like this. To me, this clip reveals much of what type of conversations go on at the Obama dinner table, when the cameras aren’t running. Michelle, at the time being inexperienced at deceit in politics spoke her mind, and has since learned to put a softer edge on what she say’s publicly.

To know who Obama is you have to watch all his speeches, not just the ones where he attempts to appeal to all of America, the people like Mr. Gavin. Here is Obama among his people at the Campus Progress meet talking about alternative fuels. Campus Progress is a progressive organization designed to build a progressive political base which is in direct competition against people like me, who are American traditionalists. Progressives hope to erode the effectiveness of traditionalists by appealing to the naivety of young people hungry to rebel from their parents. The trouble with progressives is they attempt to undermine American Politics with a Trojan Horse mentality, by breaking through the barriers of American’s defenses and destroying that opposition from behind those defenses. That’s alarming because Progressives know that their ideas cannot compete directly with traditionalists so they seek the subversive route. Here Obama congratulates the creation of Progressive Leadership and the role of young people in the future.

Knowing that traditionalists will reject much of what Obama is trying to implement, he seeks to appeal to young people by admitting that he smoked marijuana, a lot. When Obama says that he is angry that Washington plays politics, and nothing gets done because of the grid lock, remember that the only reason Obama made this statement is that he was tapping into the same political demographic exploited by Bill Clinton when he played a saxophone on MTV. It’s all about politics.

I hate to bring it up because the relationship that President Obama has or had with Bill Ayers cannot be ignored even though a discussion about that relationship is as contentious as talking about the birth certificate issue. For those who don’t know who Bill Ayers is listen to him talk about his life in The Weather Underground. Obama launched his political career with Bill Ayers as a supporter in the living room of The Weather Underground leaders.

Here is a video with radio interviews of Bill Ayers where his life parallels Barack Obama’s rise to fame. Bill Ayers is a very manipulative and radical hater of the American way of life. He has demonstrated the extent of just what he is willing to do against the American Government. He is an open enemy to all things American, and the government knows it and has known for years exactly where he is at all times yet he’s been free to continue his radical movements with other methods instead of the radical violence of his early years. He’s a retired professor at the University of Chicago. In a new edition of the Bill Ayers memoirs called, Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War-Activist, he added a new afterword about Barack Obama describing the blogospheric characterization of their relationship as “neighbors and family friends” (“In 2008 there was a lot of chatter on the blogosphere about my relationship with Barack Obama: we had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fundraiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign.”).

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers

Obama tried to back off the Ayers connection, but the evidence was just too overwhelming. Now this video isn’t from Fox News, it’s by CNN. Ayers is a man who is willing to do anything to accomplish his objective. When he and his wife bragged about the rise of Barack Obama as a political power in Chicago politics there is no question that Ayers at some point told Obama, “They’ll harass you for knowing me. That’s OK. It’s worth it to have one of our kind in The White House. When they ask don’t feel bad in denying you know me. I’ll understand.”

One last warning about Barack Obama, a look into his past, this video was done in 2008, well before Glenn Beck. Tony Rezko was a major fund-raiser for Barack Obama. Rezko and several others were indicted on federal charges in October 2006, for using their connections to the state boards to demand kickbacks from businesses that wanted to do business with the state. While the others pleaded guilty to the charges, Rezko pleaded not guilty and was found guilty of 16 of the 24 charges filed against him. Rezko also worked with Rod Blagojevich who was just convicted this year in late June of 17 counts of wire fraud, attempted extortion, bribery, conspiracy to commit extortion, and conspiracy to commit bribery, as well as trying to sell President Obama’s former Senate seat in exchange for political favors. This is the circle of associates around President Obama. All these people have displayed the ability to look straight into a camera and lie about their innocence or provide misleading information.

Source article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Rezko

I’ve said a lot on these pages about looters, people who primarily look at public service positions as a way to enrich themselves off tax money. Look at how Michelle Obama and her husband behaved before he became President of the United States. This is how Obama got some of his money that he is so proud of when he state, “people like me are willing to give back some.” Obama has been bragging about his wealth even as far back as the Joe the Plumber question, which I didn’t realize until I just recently looked at it again.

Obama has shown that he will lie, especially in politics. There is no question that he will and has been caught many times as shown above. Listen to him in this CNN investigation.

When you listen to Obama speak about the budget below look at his record. Here he lies 7 times in a 2 minute speech.

Being Muslim is not a problem, as discussed. But lying about it so that a person can get elected is a big problem. Here is convincing evidence that Obama is a Muslim which is proof that the man will lie about a seemingly insignificant issue. So what does anybody think he’d do over a really big issue?

The reason this whole Muslim issue is relevant can be shown from this statement about the condition of the flag and the Muslim faith as told to Dale Lindsborg ‘s Meet the Press from Sunday’s 07 Sept. 2008, 11:48:04 EST, Televised broadcast. The then Senator Obama was asked about his stance on the American Flag.

I had forgotten about this whole issue until a friend of mine reminded me of it after reading other stories I have stated about President Obama and his position over this recent budget battle. The text below is quite startling.

General Bill Ginn, USAF (ret.), asked Obama to explain why he doesn’t follow protocol when the National Anthem is played.

The General stated to Obama that according to the United States Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Sec. 171…

During rendition of the national anthem, when the flag is displayed, all present (except those in uniform) are expected to stand at attention, facing the flag, with the right hand over the heart. Or, at the very least, “Stand and Face It”.

‘Senator’ Obama replied:

“As I’ve said about the flag pin, I don’t want to be perceived as taking sides….” “There are a lot of people in the world to whom the American flag is a symbol of oppression….” “The anthem itself conveys a war-like message. You know, the bombs bursting in air, and all that sort of thing.”

Obama continued:, “The National Anthem should be ‘swapped’ for something less parochial and less bellicose. I like the song ‘I’d Like To Teach the World To Sing.’ If that were our anthem, then I might salute it. In my opinion, we should consider reinventing our National Anthem as well as ‘redesign’ our Flag to better offer our enemies hope and love. It’s my intention, if elected, to disarm America to the level of acceptance to our Middle East Brethren. If we, as a Nation of waring people, conduct ourselves like the nations of Islam, where peace prevails – – – perhaps a state or period of mutual accord could exist between our governments ……”

“When I become President, I will seek a pact of agreement to end hostilities between those who have been at war or in a state of enmity, and a freedom from disquieting oppressive thoughts . We as a Nation, have placed upon the nations of Islam, an unfair injustice, which is WHY my wife disrespects the Flag, and she and I have attended several flag burning ceremonies in the past.”

“Of course now, I have found myself about to become the President of the United States and I have put my hatred aside. I will use my power to bring CHANGE to this Nation, and offer the people a new path. My wife and I look forward to becoming our Country’s First black Family. Indeed, CHANGE is about to overwhelm the United States of America.”

Dale Lindsborg, Washington Post

This compelling story brings us to one central question, addressed by Mr.Garvin in the start of this article outlining the behavior pattern of one of the most subversive American Presidents in our history. This President was launched into politics by radicals and crooks. He is a public sector looter as defined by the work of philosophy Atlas Shrugged and gained his wealth in that fashion. He has shown that he will lie about his religion. He will lie about his associations. And he will be misleading about his true political intentions.

Just like the salesman who had slept with the girl, without question the girl felt used when she attempted to call the number and found out the smooth talking salesman had lied to her and even given a false number. She had believed everything the man had said because she wanted to. She wanted to believe that there were people who actually told the truth, especially when they spoke so wonderfully, and were pleasant to look at. Normal average everyday people like the woman in the bar, and millions of Americans of all different political affiliations want to believe that there is good in people, especially attractive people.

Sailors have told stories for generations about sirens that used their songs of seduction and elliptical attractiveness to lure those men to their deaths with enchantment upon the hidden rocks disguised below the surface. But it’s not just beautiful women who perform this seduction. Sometimes it’s fast talking salesman with gold rings. Its governors, mobsters, and senators, who use public office to enrich themselves, its radical reformers who hate America and launch a fellow board member into a path to the presidency from his living room, or it’s the President himself, who has his eye on a prize most American’s can’t even conceive, because the audacity of the deception defies credibility. That deception is the end of America as we all know it and a prized position with the United Nations heading that organization toward global concerns.

Lies are not hard for those types, and in this budget battle the fight isn’t over fixing the budget, or even the debt limit. The fight is over our ability to fix it, because the intent is to collapse America as a world power. And the fear from thousands of radicals like Bill Ayers is that their 40 year strategy to end America under the smile of a good-looking, smooth talking President is in jeopardy, because it’s no longer just the radical right, the conspiracy theorists, the Fox News junkies who see the problem. It’s the average, every day people like Jim Garvin who have the look of who just fu**ed me! And why did I let them do it!

Many women have woke up to an empty pillow on the morning after a drunken binge. Now America is about to roll over and see that there is no head in that pillow, and that while we slept the man we brought home not only took advantage of our condition, but also stole all our money, and material goods and headed home to the object of their true desire, a marriage we did not know about until it was too late and we’ll only have ourselves to blame.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The United States Post Office: The beginning of the end

Years ago, I was at odds with the union of the manufacturing company I was working for, so severely that things were getting violent.  At my home, I was at war with the police department for turning in hours of video tape showing irrefutable proof of drug sales by area teenagers only to find out that many of the cops were working with the kids to assist and had turned against me and my family to cover up the activity.  It got so bad at one point that I had to provide body-guard assistance to my children so they could ride their bikes down the sidewalk.  In every sector of my life at that time, things were tough, really, really tough.  The culmination of these events was the primary theme of my 2004 book, The Symposium of Justice.  It looked like I was going to lose my job to a layoff because the union was pushing to eliminate me before the company made me salary, which the company was playing both political sides against each other leaving me out to dry.  It was a very difficult time. 

A family member suggested that I apply for a job at the Post Office, because the Post Office had fantastic benefits, great pay, and job security.  If I worked for the government, I would be “taken” care of and my family would be safe.  I scratched my head, even under all that stress, and contemplated how long the Post Office was going to last paying people the kind of wages they were paying.  The internet was a new thing back then and email was the emerging new rage, I saw trouble for the Post Office. 

In recent years it has been Doc Thompson who has also seen trouble for the Post Office and he has been one of the most vocal advocates of reform.  Doc’s been doing this well before the recent news that the United States Postal Service was considering cutting back it’s service to less days per week, and that they were closing down several Post Offices around Cincinnati.  Listen to Doc talk about the whole Post Office situation on 700 WLW at the link below:

I took another job where they actually made things, because I couldn’t see how the Post Office was going to sustain itself.  The family member tried to get into the Post Office employee pull but was not accepted because they could not claim minority status, and was told as much. 

The Postal Service is a direct victim of the changing times, email, UPS, Fed Ex, and other services have emerged in recent years which have cut into the revenue of the Post Office, and this has been a great aspect of the American business culture.  It’s been great for everyone but the people who have taken jobs with the Post Office.  When you talk to some of them, they would love to see the world stop advancing so they could keep their jobs, because many of them took jobs with the Post Office for the same reason that the family member told me to apply, for the job security and great benefits. 

Virtually every government sector job these days are in a similar boat as the Post Office.  Teachers and the entire Department of Education are finding that technology can do many of the tasks of teaching just as effective as a brick and mortar school, improved medicine is making retirement at 55 and 65 laughable, extending the life spans of the human being closer and closer to 100, and this same improved medicine will also dramatically lower the need for Medicare and health insurance in the future.  As aviation and other aspects of transportation evolve in an improved direction, government employee advocates want to invest in the archaic technology of High Speed Rail, which is on its way out.  The pattern of resistance to the obvious becomes clear to the intelligent viewer. 

Government is simply an entity that wants to live, just like any creature.  The bigger it gets, the more it eats by way of tax money.  But it will also attempt to hold back the kind of technology which made America great to begin with, in an attempt to preserve itself.  This is a natural reaction and can be displayed vividly in the various school levies that are on the November ballot this year.  They are led by government employees who entered that field of endeavor under the pretense of security, and they are slow to learn that the path they’ve chosen is unsustainable, and evolving into something else.  The successful person who works for a government job will evolve and adapt with these changes, because it is the changes themselves which will advance our culture for the better, and those changes will occur regardless of government worker protests. 

The lesson is that sometimes its better to take a job that may not be so attractive at first as the government, tax subsidized job, because at the non-government job, the individual can control their own destiny to a large extent.  It is not good to trade freedom for comfort, and government jobs like the Post Office are perfect examples of this tendency.  There are jobs for people in the other fields, as government stops doing services, entrepreneurs will come up with job replacements because if there is a market need for those services, there will be a creative mind who will provide that service.  What the government worker fears however, is that the public will discover how unimportant those government jobs have always been, and that will be a painful transition, when the American tax payer comes to realize how much they’ve been scammed.  But in the end, the process will make America better and stronger so long as the light at the end of the tunnel is the focus and not the darkness of the immediate surroundings.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Road to Dystopia: The Canton Cops

My editor is in the process of cutting the massive manuscript of my Tail of the Dragon down to under 100,000 words, which will be a difficult rewrite process, but the topic of that novel was on my mind as Doc Thompson spoke with State Rep. Danny Bubp about gun control.  The case of the Canton Police officer who openly abused a man because he had a concealed carry permit was the primary topic.  Tail of the Dragon is all about how politicians use police to impose policy that is not good for the general society, but purely for the good of the politicians who write the law.  Even though abusive cases such as theCantoncop are not the usual situation, it does happen more often than it should, and points to the danger of giving police officers too much control over the general population.  You can hear that discussion here:

To see the officer in question and exactly what was said you can see the entire video below.  This occurrence happened in June of 2011 and is deeply disconcerting for a number of reasons.   

I believe many of the police officers across the country are very much like the other guy in this video, the partner of the primary officer.  That officer seems to be pretty level headed, and is certainly the recessive officer in this search and arrest.  I can understand the initial suspicion of the officers pulling over a questionable vehicle with a known prostitute, her pimp and a guy carrying a gun.  Everything about that situation spelled out trouble. 

However, such a situation requires a coolness that comes from a battle tested individual that can handle the stress of any situation.  Not a panic prone officer who has obvious problems psychologically.  And before I launch into what those problems are I must report that I’ve been shot at, threatened, and I’ve walked into dangerous situations willingly time and time again.  Danger is not something that bothers me, and when I hire someone to work a dangerous job, I expect that person to handle it with cool collectiveness.  I do not expect over-reaction of any kind.  The officer in that video is a dangerous man for many reasons, but the primary reason is that he’s a “pussy.”  Sorry ladies, but that’s the only term for a man like that. 

There are two reasons for the officer’s behavior; first he may be psychologically damaged and ready for the rubber gun squad.  If that’s the case, he should not be on the streets.  If he is such a shell shocked person, if he’s been shot at, or threatened one too many times that he can no longer function in that position, he should not be carrying a gun, driving around in a car, and have the ability to pull people over.  The second and most probable explanation is that the officer is simply a bully, the type I write about in Tail of the Dragon. 

The officer obviously works out a lot, so he has an obsession with his looks.  There isn’t any problem with this, but such people often have a tendency toward narcissism and to satisfy that narcissism they pursue positions of authority to satisfy their hunger for self-admiration.  These types of people are naturally insecure, because real life cannot fill the image of themselves that they’ve built, so they seek a collective consensus of like minded “brothers,” which he referenced twice in this recording to the other officer.  This is a tendency toward insecurity that is unmistakable, which he seeks to cover up visually with body building.  This officer uses the law to beat people into his own self-gratification.  Any level headed individual would approach the driver who did reveal that he had a gun with caution but not be so easily threatened.  The officer obviously used the situation and timing of the gun revelation to satisfy his hunger to abuse someone. 

I propose that the officer had full intention as he pulled up to the car to abuse somebody.  He had set his target on the prostitute, knowing that she was a repeat offender.  This was his clear intention.  But when he came to the driver, who was not the original target, and the driver revealed that he had a gun permit and was carrying, the officer realized that he had a better target to satisfy his narcissism, so he let the girl and her pimp go.  

At this point the narcissistic officer proceeded to harass the driver profusely threatening to “execute him.”  Obviously the officer had crossed the line several times in this exchange.  The driver showed no inclination toward violence and any officer with any experience with violence would know that.  Instead, it is obvious that under the guise of a proposed danger, the officer used this entire situation to satisfy his need for a power trip. 

Every police department in the country has a percentage of their officers who exhibit similar narcissistic behavior.  In fact every class in school, every office, every business, has a few of these abusive types.  Narcissists are a natural by-product of the human race, so we must contend with them.  But we must also use caution on how much power we allow them to have, because such personality types are prone to seek authority positions.  They will fill jobs with police departments, TSA agents, and mall security guards and like positions because those are the most obvious places where they can live out their distorted self-images.  This is why it is a very dangerous tendency of Homeland Security to give more and more police powers to these departments under the guise of protection.  A society who changes itself ideologically out of panic is no different than this foolish police officer who used his cleverly disguised fear of being shot, as a self-fulfillment of his desire to harass another human being with fear.

When terrorists attacked the United States, they sought to create a situation where the narcissists of our culture could be used against the population in general.  By creating a situation that justified panic, we handed more power to the least trustworthy of our citizens in a flimsy trade for national security.  And that situation isn’t getting better, it’s getting worse.  The Fourth Amendment, like the Second Amendment has been distorted and revised for years to gradually wear away the effectiveness through case law of these Constitutional provisions.  The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. It was adopted as a response to the abuse of the writ of assistance, which is a type of general search warrant, in the American Revolution. Search and arrest should be limited in scope according to specific information supplied to the issuing court, usually by a law enforcement officer, who has sworn by it.

Source:

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

The real tragedy of this entire event is that our society has forgotten the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to such an extent that it has actually fed the kind of tyranny present in this video.  All three of the occupants in the car completely submitted to the officers without even questioning their rights, and this only accelerated the narcissistic officer in his search for a weakness to exploit.  The person being harassed should have been upset, not where he put the officer in any danger, but he actually fed the fire by saying, “yes sir.”  That officer didn’t deserve any such recognition for he did not earn it.  A uniform is not enough to give up everything a person is in their life, or to have the threat of that life extinguished to fulfill the fantasy of a mini tyrant under the guise of security.  When a society accepts this behavior as normal, and acceptable, the steps toward a complete loss of personal freedom are not far behind. 

If I had been in the same situation, which I have been on several occasions, there wouldn’t be anything close to the submission shown in that video.  But unfortunately, people who question these policies are fewer than they ever had been and those willing to put their whole life on the line by saying “yes sir,” hoping to appease a tyrant are a growing segment of our population. 

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

John Boehner and Economics: The future of America is at stake

Obama told Americans in a late night plea to a primetime audience that we needed to let our congressional representatives know what we wanted congress to do about this debt crisis.  Well, in John Boehner’s district, we did.  Hundreds of tea party members showed up to support John in his budget battle with a big labor, Chicago type “organizer” and his fuzzy math. (Enjoy the pictures) To understand just how bad the situation is, and what Boehner is fighting, listen to this fantastic clip from Matt Clark and his radio show on WAAM in Ann Arbor,Michigan.  Notice the graph on the clip where Obama has spent 4.6 billion dollars per day, much, much more than Bill Clinton who is listed at the top at just a meager $500 million per day in the 90’s. 

Obama lied to the American people and there is no way to disguise the facts for those who know what they are looking at.  There is no question that this president is simply a big labor mouth-piece who is one of two things; Obama is either the most ignorant person to ever be President of the United States, or he is a blind follower of Agenda 21, a United Nations project which unites the world under a common government.  (Click here to read all about Agenda 21.)  There isn’t any shades of gray with this president, he is left of the left and committed to all the bullet points of radical left union leaders, and politicians invested in a new world government headed by the UN. 

Every sentence the President uttered confirmed in me more and more that it is this Agenda 21 that he is really after, attacking the rich with tax increases, opening the borders, government health care, virtually everything he is committed to points to Agenda 21. 

CBS had an interesting poll of which the President was no doubt aware of as he gave his speech at 9 pm July 25, 2011 which stated specifically on the budget standoff, 49 percent blame Republicans for inaction, while 29 percent think the president is responsible.

Any final deal, Americans think, will have to involve compromise. In the poll, 69 percent said they think Mr. Obama needs to compromise, while 85 percent say Republicans should make concessions. Only 11 percent say Republicans should stick to their positions.

Source article here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/18/eveningnews/main20080495.shtml

Well, I’m one of those 11 percent.  The trouble with the masses of “American people” is many of them have been dumbed down so much by people like Obama over the years that they don’t understand what creates jobs.  They are being educated through this debate.  What needs to happen is that congress needs to hold its ground.  The progressive Democrats like Obama and Reid need to scream bloody murder prior to the Tuesday deadline and on Wednesday the American people need to see that life has went on as usual for the most part, the interest rates will hold because the important things will not default, congress will not allow it.  What we are dealing with are the same kind of people who predict the end of the world, like the fanatics who killed themselves prior to a comet coming near the Earth a few years back, the Jim Jones Massacre, (click here to read all about that) or people who believe that the Mayan calendar has predicted the end of the world in 2012.  Virtually everything President Obama said in his speech is of the quality of those listed fanatics and fear mongers.  It is the exact same speech that labor leaders and mobsters have used for years to extort tax money and “protection” from those organized elements and it’s all a lie. 

Unfortunately only 11% of the American population knows enough about economics and business management to understand this.  The rest of the country needs to learn by watching the process unfold.  Poll numbers cannot be followed when leadership is needed. 

Chris Evans, the star of the weekend movie blockbuster Captain America said in a recent interview that President Obama is awesome!  “I like the way he sits down with people and works with them.  He doesn’t play partisan politics, but favors a balanced approach.”  I don’t fault Mr. Evans for being young and inexperienced.  He made a calculated statement that is part of the Hollywood, MTV culture, which is to ignore the facts, vote on emotion, and skin color or gender.  And build a consensus with your fellow citizens even if everyone is a little bit wrong.  It’s better in the progressive view for everyone to get along rather than to find the correct answer.  Evans, the movie star represents many of the people in that CBS poll, which is why he is a movie star.  Studios know what they’re doing, and they understand the current American demographic. 

But what those Hollywood studios, media, and progressive leaning young people don’t understand is how the world works, how jobs are created, or even have an understanding of history.  The spending President Obama has indulged in is expected by those groups because many of them don’t even read a menu at a restaurant let alone understand history through their own personal educations.  Many of those 11% who want the Republicans to hold their ground do understand, and they know that leadership is a lonely road where a leader can often see what others only learn about later.  That’s why they are leaders. 

 Boehner and the congress need to hold tight letting the warnings of fear pass so all of America can learn the game that has been going on for far too long.  This is an event that will define our age and it is in need of leaders who will do the right thing for the entire country, even if most of the citizens won’t understand until years down the road. 

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com