Tag: education funding

Vote No on Issue 3 in Ohio: Why marijuana and the people who use it are the scum of the earth

Two of the most prominent Tea Parties in Butler County, Ohio had a meeting at one of my favorite places, the Elk’s Club which overlooks Trenton to discuss the pros and cons of the upcoming marijuana legalization vote in November. I couldn’t make it as I had another engagement, but I wanted to go. Sheriff Jones was there along with others and I would have liked to been there to express my opinion. So I’ll give it now for posterity–for those who wonder where I stand on the issue. I am dead-set against the legalization of marijuana for any use—even for a rope. I hate the product in every form possible. I hate the shape of the leaves, I will not buy anything with hemp in it, and I hate the smell. More than once I have been in physical confrontations with people just for smoking it near me, which I promise will happen more often if it becomes legal. I hate the stuff in every form that it was created.

I do not support medical marijuana. If I was in pain and needed some chemical from marijuana to have relief from the pain, then it is time to die. I say that as I have had a broken wrist and ankle for the last two months, still competed in my summer bullwhip competitions, rode a bicycle for exercise 24 miles most of those days and I have not once taken an aspirin for the pain. So I sure as hell won’t be smoking or injecting anything from marijuana into my body ever for any reason. Pain I can deal with. A corrupt substance that brings out the worst of the human race I want nothing to do with. I HATE POT. And I hate people who use pot, who think about pot, or justify pot. There are better scientific methods for dealing with illness; medical marijuana is not one of them. It is a pathetic ingredient for weak people.

I have managed to get along ok with people who have used marijuana in the past. People make mistakes. I never used it. I have always had a hard-line against it all through my high school years. I had girl friends that used it, I lost friends to it, but they never, ever, ever consumed marijuana in my presence—ever. It was always a major no, no as a predicate for my friendship, and those who forced me to pick between friendship with them and marijuana learned quickly that I meant it when I said I would never speak to them again if they used it after knowing me. And I did not compromise on that prerequisite at any point in my life. There are a lot of people who are stupid when they are teenagers. They grow up a bit by their late twenties. In their thirties they start to regret being so stupid. And by the time they are in their forties, they are alright; I can begin to forgive them for their past transgressions involving pot. But I always look at them as a bit tainted. I don’t hold it against them in the fashion that they can’t erase their past mistakes, but because they chose to do it at some point in their life, it does have an impact on my assessment of their personal value.

For that reason, most of my best friends are well of 60 years of age. That is because most people my own age have at least tried pot at some point in their life. I get along plenty well with younger people, but I don’t have very many close associates because of my feelings toward pot. I can be friendly with people who are users—especially business friendly—but anyone who uses marijuana even for medical reasons I have little respect for. Some people grow up and mature away from pot and I treat them fairly. But always in the back of my mind look at them as a personality that was susceptible to its use—and that is an alarm flag to me.

I don’t care that the Indians (Native Americans) used pot. To my mind, that’s why they were so easily defeated by a bunch of people who came from Europe and stole their land from them. Smoking pot, peace pipes, and their entire drug induced shaman tricks are some of the reasons their culture has failed. Their foundations of earth worship and tribal nonsense centering on collectivism is disgusting to me. Dances with Wolves was a great movie by Kevin Costner, but the premise of it is rather ridiculous. The Sioux were slaughtered because they were a collectivist culture and pot is the chosen recreation among those types of people, because it turns off the individual mind, lowers the walls of personal sanctity, and introduces collective consciousness.

When I learned that Ayn Rand was willing to smoke pot to prove she was open-minded, it had an impact on how much I was willing to take her work seriously. I think she did great work, which eventually led to the basic foundations of the current libertarian political philosophy, but her comments about pot limit how seriously I regard her. And the same is true of libertarians. I am not one. When I hear the name I think of pot, so I could never be a libertarian. I don’t want my neighbor smoking pot in their back yard because I don’t want to smell the shit blowing around in the air anywhere near me.

Now the typical pot user would tell me, as they have for over four decades, that I need to “mellow” out, that I’m twisted up too tightly about too many topics—that I need to “loosen up.” Well, it’s not going to happen. I like who I am, and part of that is that I have never used pot, I’ve stood against it, and I am completely clean to have such an opinion. I have nieces and nephews who have used it and I don’t compromise on their behalf. It does change the way I see them. It saddens me to know that the bright little kids that they used to be were crushed into oblivion by the peer pressure use of pot. I still care for them, but I don’t respect them. That is the cost of using pot, and me finding out about it.

Many would say that I have an impossibly high standard. That may be. But I’m fine with that. When my wife and I were younger we knew a couple who were newly married who got severely stoned on their honeymoon, and I was a serious stick in the mud over the issue, which put a tremendous amount of pressure on our relationship at home, because I was virtually the only person who felt so strongly about such things that my wife knew. Everyone else, parents included were much more accepting of it. My position was that I’d rather be single and alone for the rest of my life than to ever try marijuana. In other wedding parties while everyone else was relishing in drunkenness and drug induced stupor I have always been the square one that didn’t partake in the mindless orthodox of collective numbness. And I am very proud of that.

With all that known, it should be clear what my position on legalizing pot in Ohio is. I’m not a live and let live type of person like libertarians are advocating. I’m not one who proposes more laws either. But in regard to marijuana, it is illegal now, and I’m fine with keeping it that way. It is a drug that I have observed makes people stupid. It destroys minds before they are fully grown—by the age of 25—and handicaps them for life. I don’t care what a government study group says in support of hemp, pot, marijuana, or even medial use of the THCs in the pot plant. I hate pot, I don’t find anything funny about Cheech and Chong’s movies. Pot is just bad. It’s stupid to smoke it, it’s weak to want it, and it’s a huge negative to a culture of any kind that uses it in any form. People should love to think, to be aware, and to live freely under their own ambitions. They should not want to numb themselves for any reason even under sickness. Life is meant to be lived and drugs alter that life. The Indians were wrong in their use. Every musician, actor, or pop culture idol is wrong in their avocation of it. There is nothing good that comes from pot and I’ve watched the behavior for a long time. Since I’ve been free of its use, I can speak clearly, and with certainty as to its evils. Pot has no place in a culture that anticipates that it should be ambitious, and forwarding thinking. Being comfortably numb, as the Pink Floyd song has advocated for years is not an honorable position. It’s the position of a weak and self-destructive personality that has little to offer existence except for excuses.

VOTE NO against the vile, despicable marijuana use in Ohio, in any and all forms. Vote HELL NO!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Leadership of Jameis Winston: A commodity more important than gold

Leadership is likely the most valuable commodity that an individual can offer any organization. When leadership is natural, it elevates everyone to perform at a higher level and can sustain enthusiasm under difficult circumstances. When my favorite football team drafted Jameis Winston, I was a little disappointed because I was rooting for Marcus Mariota. I thought the Mariota athleticism would be a better fit in Tampa Bay than a pocket passer like Winston. Considering that the Tampa Bay coaches had watched a lot more film on Winston than I had I trusted their judgment to take the Florida State Heisman Trophy winner. After watching Winston in practice and in three of four pre-season games, I am happy with the decision and would like to welcome Winston to the Buccaneer family. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW WHY I LIKE THE BUCS. It is obvious that Tampa Bay wasn’t just looking for an arm at quarterback, they were looking for a leader and between Winston and Mariota, it was certainly Jameis who was the better natural leader. That will be important years from now when both kids are older and less physically agile. Leadership always trumps skill, and after watching this segment of Jon Gruden’s QB Camp it is obvious that Winston is oozing with leadership.

Football for a lot of people is a way of life. There are times during the business week where talk about football becomes quite animated. For me it’s just a game, not much different from a game of X-Wing by Fantasy Flight Games. In my world they are all just as important. Football is just one of my entertainment options. The purpose of the game is to get a football to move across the field of play to score points. It’s a game invented by capitalism for the purpose of referencing American lifestyles in a game format. But what is more interesting to me is the displays of leadership that come out in exceptional athletes under pressure. That pressure would not exist but for the rules of the game, a last-minute touchdown throw as time runs out to win the game. Throwing a 22 yard bomb on a 4th and 14 in the fourth quarter. Or a sack on a 3rd and 2 to stop a drive and protect a lead. Leadership under pressure is what I enjoy most about football.

As many know I have been a fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team for quite a long time. I enjoy watching them even during bad seasons because the organization is always trying to win. The Glazer organization is constantly changing things to find the right ingredients to make a winning team. Last year they only won two games, but I paid attention to every one of them, and enjoyed them for the entertainment they provided to me. I knew the Buccaneers blew the last game of the season last year with the Saints on purpose to get Winston in the draft, so I trusted they knew what they were doing. Their season was already over, but they had a chance to pick their quarterback, and they picked Jameis Winston because of his excellent leadership ability.

I became sold on Winston watching him in the pre-season fight through some tough times. He won me over when he stated to Jon Gruden that he always felt like he could win a game even if the score was 50-0 against him. I understand that thought process as I also am the same way. To my way of thinking there is never a “surrender,” there is never a problem that can’t be overcome, and in the game of football, that is a more valuable attribute than having the ability to scramble out of the pocket to buy four more seconds of play. In the long run, Winston’s leadership will be much more valuable to fans of the Buccaneers organization and that was obvious after the pre-season concluded.

When it is natural for a young person to understand that he needs to look other people in the eye and elevate their personal performance on an individual level, it is a trait that cannot be taught. Charisma under pressure is a value that is more valuable than all the gold in the world, because such leadership ability is rarer. The tenacity to never get down when ominous forces are present is far more important than any physical ability. And that is what Tampa Bay has decided to invest in. Not just a football player, but a charismatic leader who can elevate those around him even when the bright lights are off in the stadium. A real leader is one even when they are alone and think nobody is looking.

I’ve been known to have large doses of that leadership ability. It’s not like it’s a secret. It has come natural all my life. My natural optimism for life is something that most people don’t understand. They believe that its contorted enthusiasm rooted in false bravado. They think that because they don’t possess it themselves. What I have and obviously Jameis Winston has, is the ability to never see defeat even when the world is collapsing around observation. And people respond to that type of tenacity because behind such people, even though their methods may appear reckless, is safety and opportunity.   Tampa Bay will go to another Superbowl behind Jameis Winston not because of his arm or physical abilities—but because of his leadership.

So I’d like Jameis to know that at least I’m happy he’s a Tampa Bay Buc. I will be a fan of his even if he doesn’t win a single game this year. He will eventually. I am a fan of the Bucs because of their character, not necessarily the points on the board, because to me football is just a game. But the type of men that the game makes is more important than what happens between four quarters of play on a Sunday afternoon. For me watching Jameis under pressure and exhibiting great leadership will be more fun than what ends up in the win/loss column. Which is the reason I’m happy that the Buccaneers picked him as their top draft selection—they didn’t just get a great player—they acquired a leader, and that will help the entire city of Tampa be just a bit better as a result.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Air Hog’s Millennium Falcon: Another step closer to Moller’s Skycar

imageLately, I have had enough pressure and stress to kill a man nine times over. But I do enjoy life in the pressure cooker, so my participation was not reluctant. However, I do know how to manage that stress, and part of that is to put my mind some place fun to give it needed vacations from time to time. It was a perfect opportunity for Star Wars to have their Force Friday launch of the new toy lines Disney was unleashing for the Force Awakens film coming up this Christmas of 2015. My brother and kids did what millions of other people did and that was hit the stores at midnight on Thursday to get access to the first stuff. They began sending me pictures of merchandise at around 12:25 am through text messages and I was living the fun with them through their inputs. I chose to enjoy the rituals at home watching the live stream from Disney that took place nearly 20 straight hours from spots all across the world unboxing these new toys and demonstrating them. I wrote about the significance of this Star Wars ritual in yesterday’s article. CLICK HERE to review.

Star Wars toys are something that I have always enjoyed. I still have mine from when I was a kid and my grandson now plays with them when he comes over. I have always been impressed with the artistic detail of Star Wars toys. I still get them from time to time when I see something really cool. Typically my rule is that if the toy is a Millennium Falcon, I typically buy it. There are too many Star Wars toys to collect them all, so I stick to Millennium Falcons the famous pirate vessel from the original movies. I have a special relationship with the Millennium Falcon. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.

So I was relaxing at home on Friday watching the live stream from Toronto, Canada. I thought the toys up to that point were cool, fun, and worth collecting at some point after I validated that the new movie justified it. But there was nothing I had to rush out to get, until the commentators in Toronto showed off the new line of Star Wars related products from Air Hogs—the miniature remote control helicopter company who is always well stocked at Target. I have been impressed with Air Hogs as a company as they have taken really expensive remote control technology and driven the prices down so that non professional RC users could enjoy them indoors. Some of the smartest engineers I know are members locally of The Greater Cincinnati Radio Control Club that actually has their own airfield across the river from my house in Trenton, Ohio. They have some really wonderful model airplanes that were recently on full display at the Butler County Regional Airport “Flying Circus.” Those planes cost several thousand dollars each and are quite sophisticated. Air Hogs has taken similar technology and advanced it to the level of indoor flight, which really requires light weight, but durable materials, powerful engines and unmatched control to keep from running into everything. I have one of the first Air Hog helicopters that pretty much went up and down, but had little control regarding pitch and yaw, and I was impressed with it—for something that only cost about $30. But I hadn’t flown some of the most recent models, which I knew had come a long way. That’s when I saw the new love of my life, the Toronto presenters brought out on the stage the new Air Hog Millennium Falcon, a quad engine drone essentially complete with flood lights and engine indicators. My next thought was to get to the store to buy it.

imageSince I wasn’t at the stores during the midnight rush, I doubted that I’d find such a wonderful device several hours after the great release. My wife was hopeful so we went to Walmart to see if we could find one. As I suspected, the shelves had been plucked through and there certainly wasn’t an Air Hog Millennium Falcon left. I even prodded the employees asking them if they had any hidden anywhere—which they said they hadn’t. The tornado of Star Wars fans had already ransacked everything until their next shipment—a week away—had left their shelves mostly empty. So we started to head for home, but before that we decided to stop by Target—just in case.

Again, what I have been saying about the cultural significance of Star Wars was beginning to be evident at Target. Stormtroopers were on the front doors of the Bridgewater location and a massive Chewbacca loomed to great guests as they came through the door. Space ship battles were on display hanging from the ceiling as even I was a bit surprised at the level of Target’s commitment to the Force Friday event. My hopes went up that they just might just have my Air Hog Millennium Falcon in stock, even though I knew it was unlikely. We made our way back to the Star Wars toy section and there it was. Target had three of them. I grabbed one. Additionally Target had the whole back corner of the store dedicated to Star Wars complete with Halloween costumes and more toys including two very vicious looking Huffy Star Wars bicycles. Customers were happy, people had smiles on their faces as they looked through the various Star Wars products and the enthusiasm was palatable. These weren’t the hard-core fans from the night before. These were just average people, and they were feeling the Force. I shuddered a bit at witnessing all this. The new movie hadn’t even hit theaters yet and already there was this much enthusiasm. I wondered if I had understated the importance of my previous article already indicated. I had written it while watching the day long podcast and as enthusiastic for the future as I was, I may have not captured the true potential of the upcoming Star Wars influence.image

Regardless, my wife and I rushed home, forgot to eat dinner and I played around with the Air Hog Millennium Falcon until the late hours of that night. The first thing I did the next day upon waking was play with it some more. The Air Hog Falcon is truly remarkable to me for several reasons. It’s pretty easy to fly; it has a wonderful gyrostabilization system controlling all four quad engines. The Falcon is a large odd-shaped vehicle not typically suited for aerodynamic flight. I had seen a very cleaver Millennium Falcon drone recently that was very expensive and very technical, as it had been hand-built. But this was a commercial craft and the Air Hog engineers had nailed a pretty difficult task—making a flat non-aerodynamic disk–fly—very well. Extremely well. I couldn’t stop flying it. It took about an hour to charge the vessel for about 7 minutes of flight. The internal Lithium Polymer battery had to be large enough to power the four quad engines, but small enough to keep the weight down. So Air Hogs elected to have a smaller battery to capture the proper performance. That is a bit frustrating because you can’t fly the ship long between charging, but the performance is worth the effort. It’s kind of like a drag racing car, fully fueled, it’s out of gas by the end of a quarter-mile. To get the performance you have to sacrifice storage capacity.

However I couldn’t help but think of how well the gyroscopic system worked on the Air Hogs Falcon. The small little toy was a perfect example of how Paul Moller’s Skycar will operate once people accept the technology as viable. The Air Hog Millennium Falcon was a perfect example of how those future flying cars will work. Each quad engine working independently controlled by computer input to add thrust or decrease it based on the needs of the vehicles gyrostablization sensors. For a toy, it was extremely sophisticated, and was certainly a hint of a mode of transportation that is coming fast. I couldn’t help but think that there were thousands of people just like me playing with some of these new Star Wars toys thinking the same thing. Once the film hits and everything escalates to a fevered pitch intellectually, the desire to have real Star Wars technology functioning in our actual lives will increase dramatically. The toys and films introduce the idea of possibly to us. Science finds ways to deliver those ideas, and Air Hogs simply nailed it with their Millennium Falcon. A remarkable device simply put.

I closed out Force Friday playing with my remote control Falcon hopeful for the world. All this fun of course is the work of unadulterated capitalism. Without capitalism the joy I witnessed across the world from Japan, China, Australia, France, England, Brazil, Canada and of course the United States would not have been possible. I wasn’t the only one excited that day to purchase a new Star Wars item. Capitalism is what put so much joy on people’s faces and introduced new technical inventions to a hungry public. The whole endeavor started with imagination and the capital investment to make them possible. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who stopped by the local convenience store on the way home to buy a twenty pack of AA batteries, and also some more Mello Yello in the process. Life is good and we have capitalism to thank for it. Because at the heart of the Star Wars universe, particularly under Disney’s direction is capitalism—which is the source of joy so many people felt as a result of Force Friday. And it gave me a wonderful, much-needed distraction when I most needed it—and a cool new Millennium Falcon to add to my collection.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Cracker Barrel: Memories of an America yet to be

I was visiting a whip maker friend of mine in Middletown, Ohio who is working on a special project for me. It was Sunday around lunch time and we were early. So my wife and I elected to stop by the local Cracker Barrel for a late breakfast. Many people find it humorous that I often refer to Cracker Barrel as fine dinning, because for me it is. Now I have dined in many great restaurants, but I prefer Cracker Barrel, especially on a long trip because of the country setting and general store. The food and service to my experience has always been great and I love the “old west” feel of them when I step inside.image

My very first exposure to a Cracker Barrel was in Northern Kentucky. My grandfather who was the son of an active moonshiner from the sticks of coal country invited me as a very young boy to go shooting with the men in the family at his childhood home. His father at the time had long been dead, but as a boy he ran the hills from the law smuggling moonshine during prohibition. Their home was about the size of a modern bedroom and it was back in a valley about 30 miles northwest of Buckhorn Lake—a pretty remote location, especially when I was a kid. Back then there wasn’t much development between Lexington and Cincinnati, so if you didn’t gas up in Northern Kentucky, you might run out of fuel before Lexington. It was winter and I rode in the back of a pickup truck with some older cousins, some of whom were already men. I was by far the youngest. It was the day after Christmas and all the men were going shooting. It was my first time firing powerful weapons like a .38 special and a 30-30 rifle.

Cracker Barrel had one of their very first national stores in Northern Kentucky and it looked a lot like they do now. It was 6 AM, the sun wouldn’t be up for at least another hour and it was cold. We were all dressed in gun holsters, long hunting knives and day packs when we stepped inside to have some breakfast next to a roaring fireplace. It set in my mind for life a love for the place. It was the nearest thing I’d ever get to an authentic cowboy experience, wandering in off the open range, armed to the teeth to stop into a saloon/general store for some grub. It was a testosterone driven occurrence that shaped me for life. The waitress and manager could have turned us away at the door because we looked like we were there to rob a bank. I have worn a cowboy hat since I was in the fourth grade, so I had mine on feeling like a western drifter—and I loved the feeling as snow rushed in behind us as we stepped inside. They could have told us to leave the guns and packs in our car, but instead they asked if we wanted coffee next to a roaring fire. Years later when I saw the Clint Eastwood western The Unforgiven, the first saloon scene reminded me explicitly of that moment in my time—and it stayed with me forever. That was America. Cracker Barrel for me would always represent the best that America had to offer.

Most of the people on that shooting trip with me are dead now. Some died of old age, some from not meeting high expectations in life, some by personal destructive behavior. I could see much of it back then on that shooting trip. In the back of that truck where it was so cold ice formed on our noses, the older men passed around a whiskey flask. They offered it to me even though I was way too young to drink it. I turned it down. And if you traced their lives with mine and noticed how far apart they are now, you could trace it back to those types of decisions on a shooting trip on a cold December morning. They looked down at me a bit for not wanting to share the whisky, but my grandfather thought it took guts, which is all I really cared about. Once we started shooting, nobody thought anything about who drank what, or who said a curse word. Guns made all men equal and respect was derived by that realization. When I showed I could fire the 30-30 without being knocked down due to my small stature there was respect, and I would carry that lesson with me for life. The whole experience started with a Cracker Barrel.

My wife had never been to such a place as a Cracker Barrel before meeting me. But we went to one just north of Knoxville on our honeymoon as we traveled back from Gatlinburg. For her it summed up everything we had experienced on our first days together as a married couple and she fell in love with it for life. For years we would take our children there while vacationing and make a big deal about each visit, no matter where we were. One time we were on our way to a Star Wars convention in Indianapolis and my kids were dressed up as Jedi. We stopped at one about 45 minutes outside of Indianapolis. My kids had the experience I had as a young man, stepping in dressed as warriors. They had some unique looks, but everyone was friendly and it was a fun experience. They never forgot it. Then there was a time while traveling by motorcycle to a film festival in northern Ohio. My oldest daughter had never ridden a motorcycle before and this was her first experience—on a long road trip up north. Cracker Barrel just north of Columbus on an early summer morning in the middle of the week was an oasis of pleasure—a cozy place that always said “home” as you step into its doors.

One thing about Cracker Barrels is that they are almost always busy, especially in the noon time hours. People are often willing to wait for 30 minutes to get something they could get at McDonald’s in a fraction of the time. The reason is that most people have a special relationship to Cracker Barrel similar to mine. The restaurant chain has built their brand around American tradition for decades and people respect it enough to wait.   That was the situation my wife and I found ourselves in on a Sunday afternoon in late August, 2015, before we met on business with our whip making friend David Crain for a “special project.”

I have been thinking about guns a lot these days. The Obama administration has caused great unrest and unsettled the most rational by unleashing the insane, corrupt, and perpetually dependent to collect what the president promised during his campaigns, redistributed wealth in trade for a vote. And the results have been menacing. Police are being executed all around the country. Border violence is disturbingly common. And religious fanatics are going on holy wars against infidels with the apparent support of the American media. Long gone are the days of the Saturday morning westerns, and heroes of tradition. Those wonderful attributes are missing during our nightly news, but they are quite alive and flourishing at Cracker Barrel’s across the country, and that is what my wife and I were seeking.

As I waited for my breakfast I looked around the room at all the unique paraphernalia that they customarily have lining the walls. Most of it looked like the kind of items you might find at garage sales, but typically they speak of traditional American items, old Coke signs, early gas station markers, looms, spindles, scrubbing boards. However on this particular visit, I noted how many guns were displayed on the wall. Above my head was a Winchester lever-action and around the dining room where several musket style weapons from what looked like the pre-Civil War period. Then my attention was pulled toward an advertisement from perhaps the 50s from a drink called NEHI. It said, “What’s getting into kids these days.” Around the picture of a girl drinking what looked to be a healthy beverage alternative were kids playing. Of note was one kid dressed as a frontiersman another as a cowboy complete with a six-gun. Then another picture was of an Indian. It reminded me of the days when kids actually played cowboys and Indians and it wasn’t considered an act of insanity requiring counseling at school for wanting to play with weapons. I realized looking at that picture that the magic of Cracker Barrel was essentially represented in that picture. The family restaurant was a timeless portrayal of the type of America that many in the core of the country still love, and desire desperately to behold. That’s why many of the customers on a Sunday afternoon after church were willing to wait up to an hour to have some eggs and bacon—something they could easily get at home. But what they couldn’t get was the essence of Americana that Cracker Barrel truly is—and will always remain.

The meeting with the whip maker David Crain went well. He is very crafty and during our business dealing he showed me a little side project he was working on. He had been using his wood lathe to make some really marvelous wooden ink pens, the kind of items you might find at Kenwood Mall for $55. He sells them for $20 dollars, which I think is too cheap, but it’s his business. So I picked one up, since that kind of thing is sometimes important to me. If anybody else wants some, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with him. It’s a really good deal. Meeting with David reminds me of the kind of Americans we used to be. Behind his house David has a wood shop, and in it he makes lots of really neat crafts—the kind of things that will probably someday be on the wall of a Cracker Barrel. But with David, we are living tradition in the present, and that made that particular Sunday one that I will not long forget. It was a reminder of what we fight for and why. Much of it can be summed up in the advertisement by NEHL from a time long forgotten–except on the wall of a Cracker Barrel in Middletown, Ohio looming over eggs, bacon, and good memories.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Donald Trump from 1988: What he said then and what it means now

For those who think that Donald Trump is a policy swapping former Democrat, the below clip from 1988 is rather telling, and astonishing. Trump was critical of the Reagan administration because of its policy on exports—for not being conservative enough. This is Trump as a young man shortly after writing The Art of the Deal on the newly created Oprah Show extremely confident and riding on top of the world. What is even more astonishing is that Trump has stayed on top of the world really his whole life. Aside from a few marriages, he’s been remarkably successful for a long period of time without any kind of emotional meltdowns along the way and it’s due to his extraordinary confidence. This is the Donald Trump that I grew up with, and he is the reason I think he would be a great president. What’s really interesting is the very political answer he gave while talking about the field of candidates in the 1988 presidential election, from Bush to Jesse Jackson. I think many people hold his non-committal political positions against him because they don’t understand business. For successful people, one very key ingredient is that you have to know how to navigate around people who might get in your way. Trump showed that he was hedging his bets no matter who won the nomination because as a business man, he knew the consequences of a government aligned against him. And he wanted to continue to be successful. Watch for yourself.

Being in business is very dangerous. Politicians are always looking for a contribution and you have to be careful who you say no to. If you give to the wrong guy and the other person wins, that person might come after you legislatively. It happens all the time. Regulations are used to extort vast billions of dollars a year from business people. A lot of the reason that business people use the Chamber of Commerce and other community organizations to keep orthodox politicians in their seats of power is to protect their businesses from activist government regimes. Market fluctuations and political fall-out are two of the most troublesome elements for a business person’s career. Those who have not had to deal with a zoning board, they don’t understand how difficult political tides can work against you. In Donald Trump’s case, New York is notoriously progressive. It has been for years, so there has always been a lot of liberalism associated with those city government positions. If a rich businessman like Trump gives money to both parties, the zoning issues get resolved quickly. If he only gave to Democrats or Republicans then there would be trouble during subsequent administrations. That’s a ridiculous fact of life in the world of commerce.

Government should not have that kind of power over commerce. But it does and will for quite some time to come. It’s a game all business people have to play. If you don’t play it, you will lose your business. What’s remarkable with Trump is that he has survived for so long with so many parasitic politicians always looking to soak up every last dime that they could extract from him. People have to understand the nature of a politician, and for those who are not rich, or even wealthy and in business, they likely believe that politicians do good things on their behalf with each election. They don’t. All they want is to get elected. Their primary function is to raise money for more elections and they owe the people who give them money constant legislative favors. The vote occurs with donations, not the voting booth. Business people do not give money for any other reason but to protect themselves from intrusive government. Sometimes money is given for more government interference so to perhaps destroy a rival. But the money given is always about getting something. It’s not given for fun.

Trump in that 1988 clip understood this concept very well and he was commanding those around him with the leverage he created even back in the Reagan administration, which was comparatively very business friendly compared to what it is today. When Trump’s father warned him that the family business did not have what it took to make it in Manhattan, it wasn’t the business of real estate that he was talking about, it was about being an aggressive enough mover and shaker to survive that political environment. Jesus would not make a very good businessman. He was a good man, but sometimes when playing aggressive games, you have to be an aggressive person.   Trump is often criticized for his use of eminent domain occasionally as a fault—which it is. But it’s a tactic developers often use to get what they need done. I’ve been on both ends of that kind of dispute—and if you think you are right, you have to fight them—the developer. They respect when you fight them, because it either strengthens their position or it shows them the faults of their proposal. Ultimately, they are often grateful even though things do sometimes get violent.   I wouldn’t have done to the guy in Scotland what Trump did when a homeowner refused to move the junk off his property so that an exclusive golf course could be built with all the lush trimmings near it. But I’m not a billionaire like Trump is. One of the elements of the great book on strategy called The Art of War is that you must have the heart to take hearts. And if you are in business, you sometimes have to think like that. There are lots of times where I’ve had to run down nice people because they purposely put themselves in the way of something I need to accomplish. Is that right or wrong—well, the Pope might not like it, but capitalism says it’s morally correct. Jesus might turn the other cheek, but that’s not necessarily the right thing to do. Being successful is about more than money, it’s about having the heart to take hearts when such a thing is needed. The result of conquest often results in victory for all—because everyone gets better due to the competition.

Donald Trump represents a different kind of politician. I would vote for him just because he managed to build the Trump Tower in Manhattan where it overshadows Macy’s. The politics involved in that deal would have been enormously difficult. For Trump to purchase the air rights next to his proposed tower design was extremely creative. Without question Trump made decisions on where to purchase concrete from, what anchor stores would be inside the tower and how it would fit into New York politics based on his strategic intentions. He really is a master strategist, which is showing in the presidential race.

As a president, you really can’t afford to paint out half the country the way Obama has. Republicans have been happy to limit themselves to those limits much to their own detriment. Trump is uniquely positioned to recruit voters who might otherwise vote for Democrats as he has knowledge of the entertainment industry that is very unique for a presidential candidate. He may have shown various sides of himself over the years, but at his core, he is the person who appeared on Oprah in 1988 and knows how to get things done. He telegraphed it way back then, he said he’d run for president if he felt the country was too screwed up for anyone else to solve the problems. Well, that’s where we are, and he’s positioned to do the job—best positioned. The world is a mess and internal politics is a disaster. Nobody else has what it takes to get the job done. So why not? If Jesus Christ were running for president, I wouldn’t vote for him. We don’t need someone who will sacrifice themselves to the cross and turn the other cheek declaring love for all. We need someone who knows how to win, any way possible. And that’s what Trump is an expert at doing. That might sound harsh to people who don’t think about life in competitive terms, but for people who are used to winning, they understand what it takes, and how important victors are—even when others don’t see the value as quickly as they can.  Those people just enjoy the benefits of someone like Trump and his towers along with the wealth they build for the American economy.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

It Will Always Be Mt. McKinley: The hidden reason behind a mountain name change

Consider that I am from Ohio and that President Mckinley was from that state, I will always think of Mt. McKinley in Alaska as the name it was before Obama and his progressive activists sought to change it to Denali. I don’t really care that since 1975 radical tree hugging hippies and pot smoking losers wanted to rename the highest mountain peak in North America after some “Great One” known by “native” language. If Obama wants to get technical, the Indians of the pre-Columbian era were just as guilty of migration as the European settlers—as the original story of the “Native American” are still being pieced together. Likely it was primarily the Chinese who were the real “Native Americans.” That story does not match the premise of the modern progressive who wants to use Indians as a springboard against American colonialism—and indirectly—capitalism. Here’s how the story was reported by USA Today:

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s three-day trip to Alaska this week will literally change the map of the nation’s 49th state.

Mount McKinley — the 20,237-foot mountain and the tallest in North America — has been renamed Denali, as it was originally known by Alaska Natives before it was renamed to honor President William McKinley.

The mountain, which sits in the 6 million-acre Denali national park, has been known as Denali in Alaska since 1975. Under an order signed by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, the Denali name will also take effect for all federal usage and, therefore, on all official maps.

The order was signed Friday, but the White House asked that it be announced Monday as part of Obama’s trip to Alaska to highlight the effects of climate change in the Arctic. The White House said the name change “recognizes the sacred status of Denali to generations of Alaska Natives.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/08/30/obama-rename-nations-tallest-mountain/71426656/

Denali (/dɨˈnɑːli/), officially called Mount McKinley from 1917 until it was formally renamed in 2015, is the highest mountain peak in North America, with a summit elevation of 20,237 feet (6,168 m) above sea level. At some 18,000 feet (5,500 m), the base-to-peak rise is considered the largest of any mountain situated entirely above sea level.[6] Measured by topographic prominence, it is the third most prominent peak after Mount Everest and Aconcagua. Located in the Alaska Range in the interior of the U.S. state of Alaska, Denali is the centerpiece of Denali National Park and Preserve.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_McKinley

I have been to the top of peaks a third of that. I understand the cold and loss of oxygen at those altitudes, but as a statement of natural achievement, I’m not that impressed. I could climb to the top of McKinley right now, in my current health without any conditioning, so I’m not impressed with it. Sure it’s pretty to look at, but I wouldn’t be crying to reach the summit like some climbers do. McKinley has been conquered many times, and it’s no longer a big deal. And from space, it doesn’t look like much. However, to a bunch of primitives wearing animal skins in the hard winter months, climbing to the top of Mount McKinley was an ominous task, not really feasible to them. So from their perspective, it was a “great one.” But to a culture that routinely sends satellites into earth orbit and has settlers on the International Space Station all days of the year looking down from space—and has airplanes that travel at twice that altitude on routine flights across the country, McKinley is no longer a “Great One.”

The reason for the name change now is to incite among the American people a love for nature and a reversion back from the gains made through capitalism back to the primitive focus of indigenous people who function best from tribes always in need of a leader. That is why progressives are trying so hard to make a religion out of the “green movement” and why they think of the Indian as something of our national sacred history.

In 1896, a gold prospector named the mountain McKinley as political support for then-presidential candidate William McKinley, who became president the following year. The United States formally recognized the name Mount McKinley after President Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act of February 26, 1917.[22] The Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain to Denali, which is how it is referred to locally. However, a 1975 request by the Alaska state legislature to the United States Board on Geographic Names to do the same was blocked by Ohio congressman Ralph Regula, whose district included McKinley’s hometown of Canton.[23]

To progressives like Obama, money and the creation of it is a bad thing. Money represents value and progressives hate value, or any identification of it. So of course Obama and his greenie weenies are against gold prospecting and everything that the Old West stood for regarding westward expansion. Alaska and the settling of it by the United States to him are all about oil and gold at the exploitation of Eskimos. But without the development of capitalism, Alaska today would be nearly as useless of a terrain as Siberia is right across the Bering Straight. Without gold prospecting or oil drilling Alaska would just be more earthly land not being applied to any productive task. To conservationists who are against human invention and development, that is a grand crusade worthy of sacrificing many to the gods of Mother Earth. But to capitalists who use free enterprise to improve the conditions of human existence, the gold from Alaska, and the wealth discovered through westward expansion set up the United States as an economic powerhouse throughout the world during the Twentieth Century. Of course Obama wants to erase that history—which he has been trying to undo through his economic policies, his EPA activism, and his desires to openly revert North America back to the times of the primitive.

Denali is the name of a primitive group of people who held the mountain in high regard due to their perspective victimization witnessed from their village huts. There’s nothing miraculous about pointing to a big rock on the horizon and declaring that it’s so large that man cannot climb it. But the wealth extracted from Alaska gold mining and oil drilling have created an economy that took mankind well off planet earth to look down on that small rock from space and point out Mount McKinley—a Republican that didn’t last long in office, but was reminiscent of a time when wealth was built and mankind stepped out of the shadows of their village huts. Mount McKinley isn’t a “great one.” It’s just a rock in the middle of Alaska, a state defined by its economic wealth and individualism. That extracted wealth is what sets Alaska apart from Siberia and makes all the difference between a great one and a mere rock on the horizon. And that’s what Obama and his gang of lost tribes are really desiring, a regression back to the time of the village living under the shadows of “Denali.” What they fail to understand is that mankind has overtaken the mountain and their limited perspective. And there is no going back now.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Trump, Carson, and Cruz: The resurrection of a John Wayne America

Over the weekend Donald Trump gave speeches in South Carolina, Massachusetts and then to Nashville, all to big crowds. Out of all the nearly 20 presidential candidates from both sides of the political spectrum, nobody came close to out working Trump. Additionally the billionaire from New York gave a wonderful interview to Sarah Palin and announced that he was going to team up with two other presidential candidates, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz for a major policy protest regarding the Iranian deal recently signed by the president. Trump indulged many of the topics I would typically cover here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom leaving me for the first time in years time to begin working on a new hobby of mine, Western Fast Draw. The guy in the videos below is Howard Darby, and he has worked really hard to become as proficient as he is. I spent some time during this year’s Annie Oakley events in Greeneville, Ohio watching the guys at the Ohio Fast Draw Association International compete between my own bullwhip events. And I decided this year that I’d start developing that new skill for my own pleasure. It will take a while to get to the level of Darby but it sure will be fun practicing. And I’m thankful to Trump for doing what he’s doing, because for the first time in about 15 years, I actually think there is someone better positioned than me to bring up all these topics—which gives me time to do other things. Here are some video clips of Darby. I love this guy.  

Under a Trump presidency I can actually see a day where John Wayne will be more celebrated as an American icon once again than Lady GaGa. The slow decline that we are seeing from the music industry by artists like Miley Cyrus may very well turn around into something much more positive because Trump as divisive as the media accuses him of being is bringing people out of every known crack to capture their interest in this upcoming election. If Trump sticks with it he may very well eliminate the entire field of Republican candidates and I really don’t think there is a Democrat who can run against him on the horizon—unless a liberal celebrity steps forward. The political hacks that have been in the system for such a long time just don’t have the work ethic, the strategic implementation, the nimbleness, or funding to do what Trump is doing.

Trump’s open embrace of Ben Carson and Ted Cruz is really a brilliant move. Those two guys would never have a chance at breaking through the establishment barriers without Trump plowing the way. For all the Ted Cruz supporters, without Trump there is no where for the Texas senator to go for support. The media will not give him a seat at the table of political discourse because he’s too smart, too holier than thou, and certainly not part of the Beltway culture. Cruz is clearly a Tea Party politician and everyone hates him for it. Trump smartly is setting not only a stage for the 2016 elections, but the 2024 field. These are young men relatively speaking, and in Trump’s wake, they are succeeding where they wouldn’t otherwise. It’s a classic game of good cop bad cop, and Trump clearly knows what he’s doing and what his role in it is.

A lot of people forget that Trump is a Tea Party guy. He has been for a long time. For a celebrity he’s the only one that I remember—besides myself and a handful of others, who refused to concede that there was something really wrong with the president’s birth certificate. Everyone ran away from the media designation of Obama “birthers” except for Trump. Back in 2011 and 2012 Donald Trump attended Tea Party events and flirted with a presidential run back then. If not for Trump, Obama would have never released his birth certificate even though Sheriff Arpaio put together a team which showed the document to be a fake—generated by modern computers because of the layered software that was not available in the 1960s, when the president was actually born. Arpaio is one of those John Wayne traditionalists who made America what it is today, but at over 83, as of this writing, there aren’t many behind him to take the baton. That is something I am always personally concerned about. Each time someone tries to emerge, the media class clearly following the strategies of The Naked Communist shut down proper coverage of such good people leaving us a field of candidates to choose from who are just terrible.

Remarkably in Nashville, Trump went out of his way to promote the Tea Party as a political movement. Of course this stunned the political establishment who has been trying to shut down the movement for years. I have seen this first hand in my own community. Political insiders from the Republican party infiltrated the Tea Party and slowly took the edge off until that silent majority became frustrated and went back to sleep. I still do what I do, but the meeting places slid away into oblivion, and many of the original Tea Party members stop going to meetings and turned back to God on Sunday for some sign of improvement. Meanwhile progressive society marched on unmolested showing itself to be seemingly unstoppable.

Of course I am used to being in the extreme minority through my support of western arts. My decision to start learning fast draw after thirty years of whip work essentially came from the fact that I am now a grandfather and I see the hungry light from behind the eyes of those young children and it reminds me of the old-fashioned America that I love so much—which Donald Trump is dusting off—an America that is good for all races and nationalities. One that black Americans can get excited about and cause Frederick Douglas Republicans to emerge once again. Many blacks do not know these days that the baseball great Jackie Robinson was a Republican as was Martin Luther King. Robinson actually endorsed Richard Nixon for president over John F. Kennedy. Today it is assumed that a person with dark skin will automatically vote for a Democrat leaving Republican politicians looking to join the socialist’s efforts of the Democratic party by throwing benefits to minorities to win their votes. Nothing could be further from the truth. People of all walks of life want to respect themselves in a way that traditional America established. They want self-reliance; they’d rather have a job than to suck off welfare, unless they are essentially lazy people. But most people aren’t. They want government off their back and they want to keep what they work for. Those are essentially Tea Party values which central committee political hacks sought so aggressively to shut down.

When I was in charge of getting signatures for a right-to-work movement in Ohio, which Governor Kasich was against in 2012 it stunned me how many Tea Party leaders locally followed the mantra precisely to Kasich’s political desires. Kasich ran as a Tea Party governor to get the votes and after a major defeat from the public sector unions, he decided that he didn’t want to take on the unions, and had lost his will to fight. It was then that Patti Alderson, the local socialite put me on her radar list and came after me personally—which was a huge mistake. As a Wild West supporter I’m used to being the only one in the room doing what I do, so I didn’t care when Patti’s people stopped sending me emails. I get an average of 150 emails a day now, back then it was nearly 400 and I didn’t have time to read them all. I still don’t, but I did notice the attempt to paint me off the stage. It wasn’t just me, it was everyone associated with Tea Party activity as the Republican Party hell or high water was going to unite the party back to the values of progressives. But Trump is ruining those plans and I’m very happy about it.

For the first time I can actually see a day that America might be proud of itself once again. During this fight even Glenn Beck lost the will to keep swinging leaving much of his audience left to a three-hour daily radio show that sounds more like church than a Tea Party meeting. But some of us love fighting. I do, the more people against me, the more fun I have because it gives me more people to fight. And Trump is certainly that kind of person. Beck obviously isn’t. He wants to be the next Martin Luther King or Gandhi. I just want to be a gun fighter out of a spaghetti western. Beck is happy if people show up and pray with him at some public event. I am happy to see that the modern Star Wars movies are putting a modern spin on the classic Spaghetti Western. But because of Donald Trump, I can actually start thinking of the things I want to do, because what he’s doing every day is what I have been committed to on a smaller scale for a long time, and its nice to see someone more positioned for effectiveness doing the good work of decimating the old political order that never was for representing the old John Wayne America. But for me, that is the only kind of America—a time where westerns were the key inspiration for young kids, black leaders were Republicans, and families stayed together and had money in their bank accounts. Donald Trump looks to be committed to not only bringing that America back to life, but he’s setting the political stage for the next two decades and he really doesn’t have any competition. And that allows people like me to do the kinds of things I really enjoy, which is a very good thing.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Trump, Trump, and More TRUMP: The strategic importance of moral capital

The only person I have met who works as hard if not harder than myself, and is doing precisely what I said over four years ago that Republicans should do to re-capture the hearts of America, is Donald Trump which is why these days I write about him it seems every day. He is a relief to me to see someone take the national stage and say the kinds of things I have written about with millions and millions of words. Trump is taking things to a completely new political level. I have watched really smart people over the last five years get eaten completely by the political machines, and watched really stupid people declare that the status quo would once again rule the day. That is until June of 2015 when Donald Trump announced he was running for president. And over the last couple of months before Labor Day even arrived, Trump had molded himself into a really good political candidate. Watch his South Carolina speech from the last week of August.

We are watching history being made and things are being said that until Trump were only said as boisterously here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom. Trump’s never back down approach is so refreshing. And nearly every day he has found a way to make news. I know how difficult it is because I have been asked often how I found enough topics to write about every day—and how I can write so much. Trump is going to the next level, every day he finds some injustice to challenge and he seamlessly weaves it into his speeches with no Teleprompters, political handlers, or caution of any kind. His platform is undeniably conservative, strong borders, pro second amendment, pro business, pro military, against Common Core, etc,. but unlike other candidates, he actually gives the impression that he can do something about any of those topics. He’s a doer, not just a talker, and that is the reason for his dominance in the political arena.

Until Trump, I was one of the few people who called people like Anthony Weiner names like “sleazebag” and “perv” based on his behavior. A lot of people thought about it, or danced around the subject jokingly, but only a person who does not live in a glass house can afford to throw rocks, so most people don’t. After all, as the Ashley Madison incident recently exposed, there are millions of men looking to cheat on their wives discreetly and only a few women, who were likely professional prostitutes. So a lot of people were shamed into stepping off any high horse that they may have fantasized of having to formulate an opinion, and they let Anthony Weiner off the hook. Trump being a man free of drugs, alcohol, or financial concern can rampage through a jungle of political hacks because he knows that he can throw rocks and nobody can toss them back because as public as he is, he does not live in a glass house. He can afford to be holier than thou, which is exactly what I have always said is the type of person who should be president.

Even I was a little surprised that Trump went after Huma Abedin, who is married to Anthony Weiner in a speech in Massachusetts. Abedin as it turns out is part of the Hillary Clinton email scandal so it was a topic that Trump had a right to expose—and he did it in a grand fashion that sounded just like something I’d write. And there it was on the front page of USA Today stated in a way that sounded like one of my articles. It was very refreshing because Trump continues to show that he isn’t afraid of any demons from his past coming out to expose him as a hypocrite, which is why he can call out so much bad behavior.

What a lot of people don’t understand about moral capital is that there is a good tactical reason not to get drunk or show other people in friendly settings your weaknesses. It came up with me while talking to a friend recently why I know so many people yet don’t maintain very many close personal relationships. The reason is that I don’t want to get too close. You don’t want to hesitate if you have to go after someone aggressively. You don’t want to not do something that’s right because you shared a sin with them at some point in the past. Getting drunk with someone or worse yet, getting stoned, dancing, and extrapolating sexual impositions all might make you hesitate later when you discover that you have to go after someone’s jugular for the sake of doing the right thing. I don’t have that burden, I don’t do bad things, I don’t open myself to weakness and share them with others so to make them not feel so bad about themselves. I often purposely use a ‘holier than thou’ moral position to get what I want from people who do live in glass houses and it gives perpetual leverage for attack if there comes a time where such things are needed. I always liked Donald Trump but I assumed that he lived a life where occasional drunkenness was shared with others and that he had a bit of a playboy lifestyle. As it turns out, he didn’t, and doesn’t. He’s just an overachiever who never has a motor that turns off, which I can relate to. But it also makes him free to go after true evils and to extrapolate from those perpetrators what he needs.

What Trump said about Anthony Weiner’s marriage to Huma Abedin has the Beltway terrified because it’s the first hint they have had at what a Trump in the White House would be like. If Trump wants a bill passed he’ll know who slept with whose wife, who solicited a prostitute on the previous Friday, who in congress is attending swinger parties, and who woke up on a Sunday morning in a park without their pants—and he’ll use that leverage to garner cooperation. He can, because he will make sure he always has the high moral ground over his rivals, and that makes him a very dangerous potential president. At the heart of inaction between Barack Obama and John Boehner is that they both love cigarettes—so they share that little sin together for the detriment of our country. As soon as Boehner won the speaker’s seat, Obama exposed that shared sin to his advantage and it has persisted to this day. Boehner lost his leverage on Capital Hill before he ever got started with the public knowledge of just a few sins that people want to keep buried in a closet.

Jessica Estepa who wrote the USA Today article about Trump and Weiner during the lonely hours of early August 29, 2015 was noticeably distraught by exposing Abedin in the way that the presidential candidate had in Massachusetts. After all, how many women in the world were just like Abedin, who were in bad marriages where their husbands were perpetual horn dogs cheating on them like there is no tomorrow. But they are too insecure with themselves to leave such bad men for better opportunities. So they take progressive political positions to justify their weaknesses. They might even walk on the wild side every now and then like getting drunk at a club and gang molested by strange people captured on hundreds of cell phones for all time to remember. They might cozy up with a lesbian politician who wants to be president herself and find solace as an abused woman with an older woman who has an equally slimy husband. Trump knows that secrets were shared, because that’s what people do, and he is using the situation to create leverage. That’s what you want out of a president. In a world of sin, which the Beltway is full of; put a man in the White House who refuses to commit sin so that he can maintain leverage over them for the good of strategic positioning and wonderful things can happen.

Trump’s candidacy is a dream come true for me for all those reasons and more. I can forgive issues from his past where he politically wavered just because I understand the importance of leverage in a society of evil and how valuable it is to club opponents over the head with their own misconduct to achieve strategic necessities. I don’t go “out with the guys” ever, for any reason. I go home to my wife every day and live my life cleanly on my terms.   I don’t share friendships with people for the benefit of the mutual keeping of secrets. And other than myself, I have never seen anyone similar such as Trump, let alone able to conduct himself on such a large national stage. I simply love it, because I know how powerful of a tool that behavior can be, and he will be able to use it, and appears extremely ready to perform the task in a way that has never been done before by anybody in a high office—in history. So I become more excited about a possible Trump presidency day by day—a run that will expose the buried bodies and illicit acts of corrupt politics for the betterment of our nation. And that is truly something to get excited about.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

A Gay, Black, Progressive Murderer: Where the blame for violence really belongs

So a gay, black man, built intellectually by a progressive society to believe he had been victimized—and oppressed by the dialogue of the day, committed an ultimately heinous crime. This is how MSN reported the incident which occurred during the day on 8/26 2015.

MONETA, Va. — The fatal shooting of a reporter and cameraman unfolded on live TV during the early morning show, as tens of thousands of viewers watched a horrified anchor struggle to comprehend what had happened.

Within hours, the carefully scripted carnage carried out by a disgruntled former colleague spread to millions of viewers gripped by what had transformed into a social media storm. The governor initially described a car chase on his weekly radio show, with police on the shooter’s tail on an interstate highway.

Then, social media posts referencing the slain TV pair surfaced on an account under an on-air pseudonym used by the gunman — culminating with a first-person video of the ambush filmed by the shooter.

The 56-second clip shows Vester Lee Flanagan II quietly approach WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward, gun in hand, as they conduct an interview. But Ward’s camera was aimed at the mini-golf course nearby instead of the reporter. So the shooter waited, cursing Parker under his breath, for 20 seconds until the live television picture was back on the reporter. Then he fired eight shots without saying a word.

The attack seemed carefully planned. Flanagan was captured in a rental car he reserved at some point before the shootings; his own Mustang was found abandoned at the local airport, Franklin County Sheriff Bill Overton said. The interview was done at a shopping center not yet open for the day at a remote lake in Moneta, some 25 miles away from WDBJ’s studios in Roanoke. The station promoted where the reporter would be, including a plug on Twitter just a half hour before the shooting.

http://www.msn.com/?cobrand=lenovo13-comm.msn.com&ocid=LENDHP&pc=MALCJS

The shooting was an act of pure hatred and took viewers on a journey they were not quite ready for. It’s not often such evil is so obvious, and immediate. Flanagan had been told that the world would give him special privileges because of his skin color, and his sexual preference and at mid-life he finally discovered that people didn’t like him because he was just an asshole. It had nothing to do with who his parents were or where he likes to park his phallic intentions. He was a difficult personality who used race and sexuality to justify his vile hatred—and society allowed him to hide that anger behind a mask of progressivism. Society allowed him to not be accountable as an individual giving him a collective focus on social victimization, instead of forcing him to look at himself as a way to be better as a human being.

Immediately after the attack progressives of all shapes and sizes immediately called for more gun control with the same lunacy that they declare that black lives matter while also supporting Planned Parenthood abortions. The same society that would think it was marvelous to discover a single strain of bacteria on Mars as evidence of life, is the same that looks at the selling of aborted fetuses to research companies as hacked up body parts and declares that life begins at birth. Progressives just can’t take responsibility for anything. They created the murderer Vester Lee Flanagan II through policy and the first thing they want to legislate regarding his behavior is guns. What a shameful misdirection of responsibility.

Guns were illegal in France but that didn’t stop a radical Muslim extremist from trying to take over a train in Belgium all in the name of Allah. The only thing that stopped him was four brave passengers who overtook the threat with good ol’ fashioned bravado, something that isn’t being taught anymore to young people. France had already taken the steps of making guns illegal. All of Europe in fact is pretty much gun free where even the mere mention of a firearm is taboo, like saying a curse word in church. It’s just not something they do in progressive riddled Europe, yet a gunman still had a gun and was on a train ready to take lives until the unexpected happened. Four heroes stopped him with personal initiative.

Alison Parker’s father shouldn’t have been on camera talking so soon after his little girl had been shot dead by a cold-blooded killer. He shouldn’t have been talking to the governor, or the press. Yet he did, he was on with Megan Kelly that very night on Fox News speaking about more gun control! Amazing. I felt sorry for him, but then wondered how he was even able to talk about his daughter on such a public stage after such a grotesque murder. It was reckless to put him on the air—anywhere—and even worse for him to speak from a grieving heart. Yet the progressives were happy to use him to advance their gun grabbing agenda—immediately.

But the gun argument is just a diversion from the real problem—and that is the type of utopian society progressives have tried to build. Their values, such as the White House’s hiring of the first transgender employee, or the media obsession with Bruce Jenner’s freakish foray into womanhood—progressives advocate freakish behavior then wonder why the product of their philosophy explodes under the pressure of reality—which flies in the face of their decisions most of the time. One fine example is the progressive support of radical Islam while those same lunatics routinely abuse women and kill gays—just because they believe a book of religion told them they could commit those crimes. Progressives support evil in every form then feel they can preach to the rest of us how we should live and think. Embarrassingly, we are supposed to believe from them that gun control would help in some way when it clearly hasn’t worked in Chicago, or France. Bad guys still kill people. The only difference is that they knew that nobody would shoot back.

Vester Lee Flanagan II cursed Alison Parker’s name under his breath just moments before the shooting, it is a good bet he didn’t think any of the three people standing at the interview scene would have a gun to return fire. So his plan could be hatched without being foiled—much to his liking. In all reality, all three people should have been armed and ready to shoot back the instant there was an indication of violence. People in the vicinity should have also been armed. When they heard shots, they should have been ready to discover the trouble and had the weapons to put an end to it. But Vester was allowed to believe through his homosexual temperament and race baiting past that he’d be able to commit evil without ramification—so violence occurred on live television shocking the world—and the fault rests completely on progressive society.

The reason that progressives blame the gun is because the gun doesn’t look back at them in the mirror each day. It’s much harder to look at the real problem, and for progressives, it’s the society they have built for themselves. When they realize they can’t have the world they imagined they have nowhere to turn. Most of them turn toward drugs and alcohol hoping to numb the reality. But in extreme cases, such as with Vester Lee Flanagan II they intend to hurt those who won’t allow them to be parasitic victims of vile filth and debauchery. That’s when they lash out. And by that measure if insanity is a measurable criteria for Second Amendment participation, then gun control of the type Alison Parker’s father is proposing should be established based on whether or not a person is gay or a Democrat—and if they happen to be both, they should be on a watch list for the safety of us all. That is how you get to the heart of the problem.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Teddy Roosevelt and Donald Trump: Destroying party politics for the better–or worse

Glenn Beck makes some good points in the following video regarding Trump’s position against Ford Motor Company building a plant in Mexico. Beck brings up that Ronald Reagan promoted free trade and that Trump is wrong to suggest beating Ford into submission with tariffs for taking American jobs out of the country. Beck is speaking on behalf of free market capitalism and if Mexico has the best offerings and lowest wages, then they should get the manufacturing plant. It is essentially the same argument that I made in favor of Boeing moving one of their large manufacturing facilities from Washington State to South Carolina—to a right to work region so that they can hedge against work stoppages from labor strikes every couple of years. The Mexican people have a reputation for hard work so I can’t blame Ford for wanting to avoid the dope smoking line workers they have in Detroit for the hard-working Mexicans for half the cost. There are a lot of factors at play, and under the basic premise of Beck’s argument, Ford should have the free ability to move wherever they want—because it is currently too expensive to do business in America.

Trump reminds me a lot of Teddy Roosevelt—which is dangerous, because it was basically a beef with the Republican Party that pushed Teddy to start the Progressive movement, which ended up being detrimental to global politics. Progressivism and the hatred of wealth and capitalism has made it too expensive to do business in the United States so to make it beneficial for international corporations to move their plants to destinations like Mexico and China. The policies that make business in America expensive by progressives are purposeful attacks against capitalism and wealth to redistribute those assets to countries that don’t have them. So for Beck’s premise to be correct, you’d have to remove all progressives from the federal government and start with an even playing field. That’s where Trump comes in.

In spite of the current thinking, Trump is not a big government guy, but he is a top down implementation boss. As a president he will take charge and twist arms to get what he wants, and that will likely make the Teddy Roosevelt presidency look like seven years of mediocrity. Trump will go on a war path, and from my perspective it’s the only way to put out the fires of D.C. politics. Sometimes when a raging fire is ablaze, water is not enough. The best thing to do is to cut off the fuel, but in this case the fire is propelled by stolen tax payer resources, so there is no way to stop the inferno that way. That leaves an explosion so violent that everything gets decimated putting out the fire and destroying the fuel that fans the flames at the same time. That’s what Trump brings to the table not as a Republican or a Democrat, but as a “Trumpian.” Roosevelt was not really a hard-core Republican. His great weakness was that he didn’t really understand money, and he picked on the wealthy with a populist anti-trust crusade which really formed the foundations of progressivism. As much as I liked Roosevelt as a Rough Rider and as a cowboy president, he stepped all over the Constitution with an A type personality that resonated throughout the country for an entire century. He did a lot more bad in the long run than he did good. Trump has the potential to eclipse Roosevelt’s activism. But is that really a bad thing?

If things are left the way they are now, we’ll lose everything in America. Playing nice will not get the job done. And the two-party systems are so far divided that it’s impossible to bring 50% of the country to the table to on anything. It’s just not possible. The party system is so bad that reform of any kind is just not possible. It’s as big as a stalemate as the education system is under union prevention. Nothing can happen in education to make it better because of the labor unions. And nothing can happen in national politics to make it better so long as the party machines run it under collective influence. Case in point, the collectivism that protects John Boehner from challengers in Butler County, Ohio is the central committee—in this case a lady name Judy Shelton. She essentially knocks down challengers to Boehner before there are primaries and protects his seat from any viable challenge. Recently Lindsey Graham challenged Trump to come to South Carolina where he has full control of the committee chairs in his home district and proclaimed that he’d “kick his ass.” Tough talk for a progressive moderate Republican, Lindsey trusts that his political machine can withstand his protective mechanisms from a challenge and that despite what the polls suggest, Graham could fend off any challenge, even if it comes from what he thinks is only 25% of a radical right angry mob. Boehner doesn’t worry about his seat in Butler County because Shelton and her political machine protect him from challenges.

Roosevelt knew what was against him. The party bosses didn’t want him as a prominent Republican. They tried to give him silly little roles and even tried to appease him with a vice presidential role—really just to keep a gag on his mouth. Roosevelt knew it and much of his war against the rich as an anti-trust buster was derived from his hatred for the Republican Party machine. When McKinley died in office, Roosevelt much to the horror of the Republican Party at the time went on a rampage of revenge against the party bosses and nobody ever forgot it. Roosevelt did some really good things like the Panama Canal and some really destructive things—especially along the lines of anti-trust and over the years become more and more liberal until he eventually launched the Progressive Party. That was created out of a war with his former friend, William Howard Taft finally severing his ties to Republicans for the rest of his life. Much of the evil that resulted in all that activity came out of party politics as opposed to the will of the people, or free market opinion. The system was corrupt from the very start. Roosevelt fought against it the way he thought was best. The Constitution was the biggest victim of his presidency which was overlooked because much of what Roosevelt did had lasting, and meaningful impacts on the world in a very good way. That doesn’t make what he did right, but much of what he did do was good. That would have never happened without someone like Roosevelt who would break all the rules which inadvertently propelled society forward.

Trump is of the same type of mind, only he does understand money. He knows that the first thing he needs to do with Ford and other companies thinking of leaving America for some NAFTA refuge saving massive amounts of money from The Department of Labor lawsuits, and ridiculous wage expectations from a society that demands a minimum wage of $15 dollars an hour, is to re-make the American brand into something that has value again. By making citizenship a valued option and making the American flag mean something on products shipped to other countries representing respect, Trump is looking to create a brand similar to what he’s done with his own name, and that would benefit every single human being on earth indirectly.   That danger is that Trump wouldn’t know when to stop once he gets going, and America could end up with another dictator on its hands.

However, I believe Trump is smarter than Teddy Roosevelt. I’ve read his books, grown up with him and feel I know the guy pretty well. He does a lot of things in his life that I wouldn’t do. But he doesn’t believe in drugs or alcohol, sets high standards for his family, and is a generally good person. He’s an authentically strong person whereas Teddy Roosevelt because of illnesses he had when he was younger always felt he had to overcome his personal demons. I don’t think Trump actually has any demons. So could he be trusted as a strong manager of American resources to blow up party politics for the next century, for the good of everyone? I think so. We live in a very screwed up world and it will take someone like a Donald Trump to get things in order again with mass destruction of party politics on both sides.

Glenn Beck has lost his audience to Donald Trump essentially. The same people who went to Beck’s 8/28 rally in Washington during 2010 are those who are now supporting Trump because they wanted to see a fighter. Beck was selling himself as a fighter at the time, and people loved him for it. But then he showed up on stage with a bullet proof vest and starting spouting off about God, he lost those fighters slowly over the next few years. And if you really peel back the layers of what Beck is saying about Trump, you’ll find a Glenn Beck who really still wishes he was like the old Glenn Beck. But now that he’s told the world he’s a better man now than he was back then—he can’t very well backtrack. People see what the problems are and they inheritably know that nothing will happen so long as there are party machines controlling politics. It’s as bad on the right as it is on the left. Trump is offering a way to break that system down. The downside to Trump would be more of the same—an arrogant president who thinks he’s an emperor. We had that with Teddy Roosevelt and we certainly have that in Barack Obama. But if Trump is actually smarter than Roosevelt he may just be successful both as an economically activist president who can pull the country back from the brink and establish once again a republic that is Constitutional in its nature. But that’s a long view plan. On the other hand Trump may become a ruthless dictator who declares himself emperor. That is a risk that if left unchecked, Teddy Roosevelt may have done. But the real trouble is with party politics. If left as it is now, it is destroying America anyway. I see nothing wrong with blowing up the whole system for a fresh start. Just as under the present conditions I see nothing wrong with closing the American borders and giving strong financial incentives to keep American companies within those borders—so that the brand of America can be rebuilt. Without those companies, there isn’t anything to rebuild and the intentions of progressives to destroy the economic engine of free enterprise will be re-distributed to a far away lands. So we will have to fight to keep them here, first with force, then with incentive—but the political mechanisms are already in motion and cannot be stopped—expect with a major explosion that levels everything in the political field. It is of course the last resort for our times.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.