Tag: education

Leave Kings Island Alone: Let them build more roller coasters, stay open later, longer and give them lots of money!

For most of the recent December I spent it on vacation in one form or another, primarily going to Disney World and visiting all four of the parks that they have enjoying them immensely. During that span also I spent at least two visits to Kings Island to enjoy their Winterfest which I had said compared very well to the Disney Park experiences. I continue to be impressed with the way Cedar Fair Amusements has managed Kings Island since buying it over a decade ago now. For all the well-deserved hype that the Disney Parks get for their high quality experiences, the amusement parks in Ohio are some of the best in the world, between Cedar Point and Kings Island and those of us who live in the area of those places should consider ourselves very lucky. I do, I spend much of the spring, summer and fall—especially on Friday evenings at Kings Island meeting my wife after a hard day of work to relieve stress, which I do by riding roller coasters. Part of the reason I went to Disney World in December was due to the cold temperatures shutting down most of the rides at Kings Island, and riding roller coasters is part of the way I manage stress throughout the year.

Of course, I am ecstatic for the opportunity to ride the new giga coaster Orion at Kings Island in just a few short months. I watch the progress of its construction eagerly, once a day if possible, just for the prospect of seeing some new bit of news. I can’t wait to ride it and once it opens, it likely will join Diamondback and Mystic Timbers as my wife and my new Friday night ritual through the summer months to meet at Kings Island, have food under the Eiffel Tower and enjoy the fountain mist after a long hard day then ride those rides before going home and going to bed. Roller coasters and their extremes for me are like a shower that washes away the stress and anxiety that rolls off human interaction under intense conditions, and they are very therapeutic. Roller coasters are for the human imagination a huge middle finger to the impositions of existence which otherwise try to carve you into a blocky loser of anxiety due to the nature of reality. And utilizing the creativity of human thought to rebel against that tendency in the form of a roller coaster is really a tremendous psychological statement for the human race and I simply could never get enough of them, especially when they are built with the fabulous engineering that is going into Orion.

Yet recently neighbors in and around the Kings Island Amusement Park complex have been complaining about the noise of these coasters. During Winterfest the park has been running Mystic Timbers which was great fun. And during October the park stayed open until 1 AM during the Haunt weekends running all the roller coasters. It was great to ride the Diamondback at 12:30 AM on a Friday night in October with my kids and to enjoy doing those kinds of things at the small hours of the morning, yet neighbors who built their homes near the park have been complaining about the noise and are seeking to crack down on the Mason ordinance against those types of creative exploits, which I find reprehensible. I really don’t care how long someone has lived in the Kings Mills area. For what Kings Island does for Mason, Kings Mills and Cincinnati in general, I would expect the people of the area to appreciate it and to get on board with what Kings Island needs to do to be one of the best parks in the world.

I noticed it this time more than others, the Disney Parks are so wonderful because they are built on property that is so far removed from the outside world. You don’t see massive housing complexes near any of them for miles around and that is how they are able to produce such a wonderful customer experience. People need amusement parks. Maybe not to the degree that I use them to manage stress, but people in general absorb the pressures of reality to a point where they are toxic and generally complain about everything. That is part of the reason that such places were invented, to fill a market need. When a customer parks their car at an amusement park, they are husks of what they started out in the day as usually and they are looking for happiness. The people complaining about the noise of Kings Island late at night are people who will complain about their food at a fast food restaurant, or about the traffic on a highway, or even the color of a car they bought. They complain about their families, they complain about movies that are out at the multiplex, and they complain when a quarterback doesn’t do what they want in the NFL playoffs. They complain about everything all the time. That is why they need amusement parks, to throw off their worries and to enjoy a little bit of life. And staying open until 1 AM in October is part of the fun. People will complain, but its up to wiser heads to understand the nature of their antics. They need more fun in their lives, not less, and their precious sleep isn’t more valuable than the screams and cheers of a captive audience fresh off a roller coaster eating a funnel cake at 1 AM on a crisp autumn night under a well-lit moon. The experience that Kings Island offers to the community is far more valuable than some mundane sleep schedule or routine life within the four walls of a house. For most of its life, Kings Island was alone at that Kings Mills exit. Now there are lots of homes, they don’t have a right to complain now, because they moved there to be near Kings Island, and to reap the benefits. Now is not the time to turn against it.

For all the reasons mention, and a whole lot more, I want Kings Island to have the ability to make so much money that they can continue to give us great roller coasters like Orion well into the future. I would love again to have at Kings Island record breakers that last for decades with the unused land they have at the park, and they shouldn’t have to worry about a bunch of complaining neighbors. And to afford that, Kings Island needs more of the kinds of advantages that Disney has, where they can operate through as much of the year as possible instead of just during the summer, and for as much of the clock as possible, such as to 1 AM. People complain about Disney too, they are too crowded, they are too hot, they are too expensive, they are too much like a corporate empire, the complaints go on and on and on. But those complaints are not valuable customer feedback, they are really just people who need to shut up and go ride a roller coaster and to enjoy a funnel cake. People need to do a lot less complaining and let themselves enjoy the great things that Kings Island is offering consumers. Because those things are a lot more valuable than some sleep at 1 AM for some routine, drab life. Roller coasters are good for happiness, and the world needs a lot more of it, far longer in the day, more times a year and Kings Island needs to give us a lot more happiness. Not less.

Rich Hoffman

Not Giving Domestic Enemies in the American Press a Free Pass: Making a hard decision that is required of our times

It’s time that we have a conversation about domestic enemies and their use of the First Amendment to attempt to bring tyrannical revolution to America through the guise of freedom. It’s an old trick that has now worn away into obviousness especially in light of the recent killing of Iran’s top general. The domestic enemies of America have shown themselves under the banner of free speech by proposing that America and President Trump in general was wrong in the act of defending itself from a leftist aggressor. So much was made of the stampede that occurred at the funeral of that general which left 30 dead because there were over a million people attending. But that’s not so impressive, what else were those people going to do? It’s not like Iran has a thriving economy that is keeping everyone entertained with plenty to do. In most cases the people in Iran are left with only pictures of the supreme commander to look at as they count dust blowing across their roads. So a funeral is a welcomed distraction for them, yet to many in America’s media, they sought to make more of it than was true, for all the reasons that a domestic enemy might endeavor.

When we talk about the Second Amendment many people think that all sorts of restrictions can be placed on that one. They seek to limit where we can carry guns, how many we can buy, they try to tax ammunition to discourage buying more and they look for all sorts of ways to take that right away from us. But when it comes to the First Amendment, if you are on the wrong side of the political spectrum, they seek to ban you from Google searches, YouTube and even Twitter. But for them, they can say anything about everyone anytime they wish. They call it free speech to criticize Trump’s actions against Iran, or China or even want to impeach him over a Ukrainian conversation, yet they see no problem in siding with known tyrannical regimes to weaken the United States domestically so that power players all over the globe can be emboldened. That is a real problem and they have really shown themselves in the wake of the latest Iran incident picking sides with anybody standing opposed to President Trump.

Well, we all take an oath to the American Constitution to protect it from foreign and domestic enemies and these abusers of the First Amendment are clearly acting as agents of destruction toward American ideals and we should take action against them. There is nothing wrong with it, we aren’t violating any of their Constitutional rights. They do not have a right to be a voice against American policy if their intent is not to make a vantage point stronger, but to weaken it into collapse. And if they are cheerleading an enemy against America, then we need to deal with that in the fashion it deserves.

I wouldn’t say I’m suggesting that we round these people up in the middle of the night and throw them in jail for speaking out against American ideas by supporting Iranian positions. They certainly want to do that to Second Amendment supporters, and just ask Roger Stone about illegal searches and violations against his Constitutional rights when he was arrested and thrown in jail just for knowing the President. But I am saying that we need to slap these people down and knock them off their platforms without our endorsement of subscriptions and ratings. We simply can’t let domestic enemies’ function in the open within our society and get away with it with a smug smile on their faces. We need to knock that smugness off right now.

Iran isn’t dangerous, all they have as a weapon is fear of some terrorist act. When our own media is the sheath that carries that weapon, we have a problem. Take that away, and Iran has nothing. They have no money to fight a war. They have no complicated political position, just a few tyrants who run everything as is common in any authoritarian regime. They are all paper tigers only propped up by the worlds media who desire to bring down the governments of capitalism from the preponderance of fear that any terrorist soaked in ideology might dream of. And we should not allow it to continue unchecked. Its one thing to be critical of a management style of a governing body. Its quite another to encourage enemies to appear stronger than they are so that our government makes bad decisions. This has been going on for a long time and until President Trump came along, we had entire presidential administrations who listened to these unelected domestic enemies and set policy to their opinions, and that has only made the world more dangerous, not less so. It has allowed Iran and North Korea, and many other places to believe that America is an easy target, and that has propped them up to bring harm where it otherwise wouldn’t have. That is worthy of prosecution all by itself.

Free speech isn’t free, there are consequences. Just as we have the right to bear arms, yet we can’t just carry around guns anywhere we want, we have decided as a society that there are limits. Now if we want to say there are no limits to these things, then let me know and I’ll carry a gun everywhere I want to, churches, government buildings, sporting events—everywhere. But don’t tell me that there are restrictions to one amendment, but unrestricted interpretation to all the other so long as it serves the needs of domestic enemies. We must admit to ourselves that America does have domestic enemies, and they teach our schools, they work in our government, and they run many of our networks. We are not all equal and we don’t all like being American. We are crazy if we allow domestic enemies hide behind American law while they work every opportunity to chop down our system in favor of tyrants around the world, which is precisely what has happened in the wake of the killing of Iran’s top general.

I would say that Iran is not a threat, but our domestic enemies are, they are cheering for some terrorist act to embarrass our president for purely political purposes and they are doing it to the point where they are opening the door hoping to let the insurgents in undetected. The most dangerous occurrence to come from this latest Iranian crisis is that our media reports might embolden some terrorist loser to act so that they might at least get positive press coverage upon their sacrifice. Its not that the government of Iran would organize it, because they can’t, they are incompetent. But some rogue cell of bandits and outlaws might by the encouragement of our own American press. And it wouldn’t be by accident, but on purpose. And they think they can get by with it because they are protected by the First Amendment and think they are untouchable as domestic enemies. Which is a disgrace to us all, knowing that they feel the way they do about our country and the ideas of freedom that it has always represented. This crisis demands that we take a position of making a decision between domestic enemies and Americans as a unified whole. Because they are not the same thing.

 

Rich Hoffman

Keith Kinnunen and Liberals: There are a lot more mentally depraved people in the world which requires us all to be armed to defend ourselves from

Not that it’s a surprise, but we now know that the shooter of the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas was Keith Kinnunen—a loser who had managed his life poorly who targeted that church because they had given him food instead of money. This instance reminds me of many of my personal run-ins with homeless people. Once at the Kenwood Mall a homeless person was on the side of the highway exit looking for food, but what he really wanted was money. My wife and I went to the food court and bought him a bag of Arby’s for which he immediately threw to the ground. I’ve tried to help people like that since, but often with the same result. It doesn’t surprise me when people who find they can’t live in the world due to their lack of mental development (which is almost 100% of the time their own fault) or because they have drug addictions, that this loser Keith Kinnunen was upset that the church only gave him food instead of money, and sought to take his rage out on them due to his own radical ideas of self-indulgence.
When Kinnunen pulled out a 12-gauge shotgun to kill parishioners at that church, he managed to kill a few people before Jack Wilson pulled out his own gun and shot the assailant dead in seconds, as concealed carry holders are supposed to do. Its always sad to see anybody lose their life, but this case had a happy ending, a lot more people were able to return home to their families due to a good guy with a gun shooting a bad guy with a gun. The problem with the case is that liberals put their own two cents into this case by suggesting that instead of focusing on the success of Wilson’s actions that we should be looking at eliminating the need for gun violence in the first place, which is an astonishing statement considering that it is the liberal view of the world that caused the conditions.

Kinnunen was a troubled person his entire 44-year life, as a guy who had been married two times with ex-wives available to tell plenty of stories of his crazed anger and drug abuse, the guy was so irresponsible that he was just another homeless person. Many have pointed out that he wasn’t mentally healthy which is obvious. The burning question in this case and all of them for that matter is what the cause of mental illness is, which I often say the entire Democrat party could be guilty of. Trying to decide what is mental illness and what isn’t is where liberals have a hard time because their entire lives could be said to function out of some mental depravity not that unlike the killer in this Texas church case. They support drug abuse, do not believe in family structure and have a sense of entitlement which suggests that the world owes them something. They are not much different at face value than Kinnunen getting angry with the church because they gave him food instead of money.

This is entirely why most all liberals are opposed to open carrying of firearms because they see themselves in killers like Kinnunen. They want to believe that they are mentally healthy people, but when the facts come out on the kind of people who perform these mass killings in nearly every case, its not just a case of mental illness, but are the products of liberalism in our society—drug abuse, lack of personal responsibility for actions, and a sense of entitlement. Whether that entitlement comes in the form of federal workers demanding higher taxes to cover their inflated pensions, or whether its some loser like this Kinnunen guy who expects people to feel sorry for his bad decisions in life and to give him money for drugs so he can forget about his problems—that he himself created. Liberals sympathize with these killers because they see themselves in the mirrors of their existence—and they certainly wouldn’t want to have an armed society that could protect themselves from liberal incursions, which are frequent if left unchecked.

There are tens of thousands of liberals who are not much healthier than Keith Kinnunen functioning right now in our schools, our BMVs, even at the post office. The only reason they have not become homeless people running around food kitchens looking for free money is because we overpay them to be government leeches. Most of them are about one paycheck away from becoming assassins like Keith Kinnunen. Not that they would go out and shoot someone tomorrow, but they think about it. Believe me they do. It took Keith Kinnunen 44 years to get to that point, so its not like people become killers that fast, but the thought is in their heads and they want desperately to hide it from the rest of us. That is why they are against an armed society. Its not what they fear in people like Jack Wilson, its in a loss of a safety net to catch them if they should fail in life like Kinnunen did. Because they have more in common with the killer than they do a church going do-gooder.

Without question we could have put a suit and tie on Keith Kinnunen and stuck him on MSNBC and called him a political pundit and if he talked about global warming instead of cash from church food giveaways, we’d accept his positions as rational. But its all extremism and rooted in beliefs that need others to fill them for sustenance. Kinnunen was self-righteously religious and likely took Bible verses rooted in socialist sentiment too far and believed that people owed him a living, whereas the global warming crowd requires others to believe in a complete fiction to validate their point of view. Both ideas are rooted in collectivism requiring many sane minds to drop away their logic to accept the premise of lunacy.

We accept logically that liberals can use the IRS to steal our money for their own government theft, and that the power of government can be used to overthrow elections such as the impeachment case against Trump, but that there is some invisible line that separates the actions of Keith Kinnunen from demanding money at a church instead of food, and when a shootout breaks out over the issue liberals want to prosecute the gun owners. When in truth it was a failure of liberalized society that allowed a guy like Keith Kinnunen to live outside of jail, on and off the streets as a drug addict and a violent person to more than one spouse. We all knew Kinnunen was dangerous, but our society failed to recognize that threat because honestly, he was too close in behavior to most Democrats. So, he continued in paralysis until he eventually pulled out a gun to kill people of his own sense of entitlement. His insanity is really the responsibility of a society that did not set him right at an early age and allowed him to become a menace as a grown adult. That is why our future will require more people to carry guns in more places, because this guy isn’t the end by far. There are many just like him ready to snap and they are listening to the liberal dog whistles to fetch them on society as a menace. And it is then that we must defend ourselves.

Rich Hoffman

Dealing with the Leftist Frankenstein Monsters of Evil: The Texas Church shooting and why more guns are needed

If it was the sexual antics toward a government takeover of our 2016 election from Lisa Page that ended our thoughts of 2019 it should be the armed parishioners who took out a domestic terrorist at a Texas church that should launch our ambitions in 2020. Because there were trained participants of a security team armed at the church led by the guy who killed the suspect in the conflict, Jack Wilson—the attacker was subdued in about 6 seconds. Without voluntary armed protectors at the church ready for such action many more people would have been killed. This was a perfect case of what we have been talking about for many years. And this was another high-profile example of how such a system could work thanks to a recently passed state law that permitted concealed firearms inside places of worship. If not for that this tragic case of two people being shot would have been much more egregious, and unnecessary as we must all admit that evil is alive and well in the world, and when it shows bad intentions, it must be dealt with. Of course, the challenge to that assumption is that one person’s evil can be another person’s heaven, so there are additional complications into defining evil. But everyone can agree that when aggression is taken toward others in a life and death matter, that evil is amiss, and it must be eliminated quickly, not a 911 call later.

I always think about these things, but fortunately I live in an area where our local sheriff gets it, he understands the purpose of the Second Amendment. Yet even for me, I was a lot troubled while watching the film Richard Jewell, the day before this shooting, where in a scene where the FBI came to Jewell’s house they confiscated all his guns that had been laid out on his bed. It troubled me to see that just because the FBI accused Jewell of a crime that those agents could come into his house and just confiscate all his property, and given the reaction of the people in my movie theater, they seemed to be OK with it, accustomed to such a tyranny disguised as “safety” for the public at large. That is a very dangerous notion, and one that troubled me tremendously. It was the direct result of a culture that has been sold to us to think of guns as dangerous, or even as part of some counterculture. In that same film Jewell’s lawyer asked if the bombing suspect was a member of any fringe organizations, like the NRA and Jewell had to ask, “is the NRA a ‘fringe’ organization?”

It is that attitude actually that makes our world all that much more dangerous. Guns have always been a part of my life, since I was a very little kid to the present. And I’ve never really had a reason to use a gun on anybody, even though lots of times I could have been more than justified in doing so. It just wasn’t my go-to option when danger was amiss. But its always good to know that the option was there. I think guns should be carried everywhere, to restaurants, shopping complexes, to and from work, everywhere—because you never know when evil will show itself. This is especially true in public schools where everyone knows that they are typically gun free zones—making them obvious soft targets for bad guys looking to invoke terrorism on the innocent. Guns should be in reach of every human being on planet earth. If they were, a lot less evil would be taking place. That is for sure.

When bad guys show themselves, as this one at the Texas church in White Settlement did, the threat should always be eradicated in seconds, not minutes. It is always sad to see anybody die in these kinds of conflicts, especially if they are innocent, but the need to end that threat quickly cannot be understated. And when evil is unleashed, it needs to be quelled as fast as possible. If not faster. This is why also every shooter in America should practice speed and accuracy with their firearms so that when a threat is presented, ending it happens almost second nature with instinct. Taking a kill shot such as Jack Wilson performed is critical, there is no time for talking and pleading. This is why every state should also have a stand your ground law instead of a duty to retreat. When aggression appears, the shooting defender should not think for a second about some silly legal obligation created to retreat when showing a villain a passive attitude could end up getting a lot more people killed. A shooting defender should put a bullet in the head of evil before a countdown of 1 enters the mind. The threat should be over before anybody even realizes it started. That is why having an armed society is the best way to deal with the realities of evil.

There is no reason to contemplate the nature of a villain when they show they are willing to harm innocent people just minding their business. Laws should be clear on the side of gun owners willing to be that stop against threats at a moment’s notice. We want more Jack Wilson’s carrying guns. Whatever we might say about experiments in modern life where we have taught too many people to be parasitic in nature, that stealing, and bad behavior are forms of valor, such as what was suggested in the recent film “Joker’ we shouldn’t be surprised when hopeless losers in life are attracted to the antics of evil and consider using fear as leverage in the games of life. When we make it so that a clear definition of good and evil is blurred with addictions to pornography, drug abuse, and a social state where government takes the place of good parents, we should expect some to go too far and to fall off the edge and become dangerous. And to that warning, we should know that this one shooter at the Texas church is only the tip of the iceberg. That there are many tens of thousands just like him thinking of doing the same, only the next time it may be a school, a shopping mall, or a place of business. And when they make that mistake, someone needs to be there to stop them with a gun and a quick bullet to the head to end the thought and intention of evil that always follows.

It’s time to stop playing patty cake with anti-gun activists who sympathize with evil then want to disarm us to defend ourselves from their Frankenstein monsters. Those on the left who experiment with these false political philosophies build these monsters which we must defend ourselves from and it’s time to stop giving them a seat at the table as equal partners and to call things as they always have been. Guns are part of the solution especially when they are in the hands of skilled users. A person comfortable with a gun is one of the safest people in the world to be around, not the other way. Guns aren’t the danger; it’s trusting a system that is intent to build social monsters that is. And protesting gun use on their creations isn’t “fringe,” it’s actually the most patriotic thing you can do. And we should be doing a lot more of it in 2020.

Rich Hoffman

The Real Lisa Page: What the world looks like outside the bubble

It was sort of lost to the events of the moment, but I think it was the biggest story of 2019 and should be the last thing we think about before we usher in the new year. Impeachment after all is a very tactical decision for a Democrat party that has no other choice really. They are a loser political group looking for supporters as each day they fall further behind the trends of the times. But for all honesty the noise of the year especially from Democrats was to cover the terrible FBI scandal that sought to put an end to the Trump presidency by manipulating the law to their advantage at the expense of the rest of us. So, it isn’t surprising that on December 17th when Lisa Page went on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC to give her first live interview, the story was washed out before it even hit the airwaves. Impeachment was all anybody was talking about, and the new Star Wars movie was hitting theaters giving people a much-needed distraction from the perils of reality. And of course, there was Christmas and the need to get last minute presents. All the big names in the media were going on vacation, so Rachel put on a fellow Democrat to try to clear her name and repair her own brand by “fighting back” as she calls it. The results were fascinating, and worth a last look before we enter 2020.

What Lisa Page showed of herself by opening up a public exchange on Twitter and by doing this interview was a woman lost in a bubble that collapsed right on her face as she got caught not only messing around on her husband, Joe Burrow, the aspiring opera singer and current educator with a power hungry Georgetown University FBI agent married to a woman who has seen better days in the mirror—but they were both caught attempting to stage a coup against a sitting president and overthrowing an election. Now to be fair, they were not alone, but they were certainly attempting to shape history and abuse their access to power, for which Lisa Page obviously regrets. We’ve heard her lover’s response in public in front of Congress when Peter Strzok showed what an out of touch loser he really was as a registered Democrat that thought the rest of the world was the way he and his circle of friends were, institutionalists who could name all the current popular wines, and books that they are talking about at Martha’s Vineyard on a Sunday afternoon, but not a single reason of understanding why anybody would have even wanted to vote for President Trump.

Even on her best behavior on the Maddow show, Lisa Page showed outside the academic halls of a law school, or in a opera hall where her husband might sing away the day, as she and her friends sip wine in the foyer and contemplate the universe from the perspective of Georgetown society she reflected precisely the sentiments of their director of the FBI at the time, James Comey who thought of the presidency as an extension of some “higher order” for which the FBI was protecting. Some relationship with a pagan god and the heathens of a desired monarchy, for which America had rejected long ago, yet the memos never made it to the academia of Washington which lived joyously in that bubble of social construct for which they were the architects. These FBI agents are defending an American way of life that doesn’t exist, but is rather an extension of Europe and all the dirty cobblestone streets that still haven’t been repaired from the Middle Ages.

Yet Lisa Page is tired of being a caricature of the “right” as she stated it, and she is going to start fighting back because she thinks the rest of the world is with her. Apparently her husband understands the affair with Peter Strzok, perhaps he even sang a song about it as she sipped on a vintage wine of immaculate dating and sent text messages to the Strzoks inviting them over for dinner and a book review of a mutual friend recently found on the New York Times Bestseller list, pinky out. Perhaps James Comey was available too as they could all discuss what a disgusting reprobate the American people were for voting for Trump into the White House. Affairs, what are those? What’s wrong with sharing good times with friends, until that friend falls in love with you as Peter Strzok did with Page. But to their minds it was all just a little fun, it didn’t show any bad judgement regarding their character.

And so it went during the Maddow interview that Lisa Page continued to be bewildered as to why people have made a caricature out of her, and she tried to explain her text message statements with a context that presented her case in a more beleaguered way. Watching her speak to what Lisa Page thought of as a friendly audience was a window into how all these people think when they are alone with their own kind. They are wanna’ be royalty trying to impose a standard of living that America rejected long ago, only they never got the memo. And they missed the memo because they hang around the wrong places and learn from those equally tarnished. Affairs in France are normal, and the people in Georgetown and around the greater Washington D.C. area strive to be more like dirty Europe and its topless beaches and free-thinking lack of physical possession marital commitments. What was missing from Page’s interview was any kind of understanding that the whole purpose of throwing off English rule was to get away from the very kind of people she was and desires to be. And to answer the question, Trump was elected to undo their influence over the rest of us, not to strengthen it.

Unfortunately, I know a lot of people like Lisa Page, James Comey and Peter Strzok. I live in Liberty Township, Ohio where it was founded as a direct spawn of the American Revolution but these days these leftists spawn like Gremlins that have eaten after midnight and had water spilled on them breeding like popcorn. They are everywhere, but that doesn’t make them right. It makes them simply as a form of insanity born in a bubble where natural predators have been staved off to allow them to grow. And to see Lisa Page’s face in that interview, it is the face of a young lady who has used her sex to attempt to shape the world in an image she understands instead of trying to live in the world that is. Instead she sought to use her sexuality to control the mind of the investigating FBI agent on the case of Hillary Clinton to free her candidate to control the course of the nation to her whims. Opera is all about just those types of powerplays and from her point of view, it was all very normal, and exciting. But she got caught and now she is on the front page of everything and it bothers her to know that she is not the mainstream. Her version of fighting back is to try to rebrand herself as a victim of abuse, but people see through her to the truth, she is just another slut using sex to control events in the world. And there is no way to spin that rugged truth, even on the very liberal Rachel Maddow Show.

Rich Hoffman

Lee Wong Supports Communist China: As a boot-licker he has proposed danger to our economy

Like I said previously, Lee Wong should not be running for the 4th District Senate seat in Ohio let alone polluting the streets of West Chester with his signs four months before the primary. But since he is, he’s more than open to criticism. I make no attempts to hide my support for George Lang for that same position. It’s not just because I’ve known him for a long time, but its due mainly to George knows how the game is played and he can play it without losing himself. Lee does not, he has no idea what he’s doing and it is reasons like his support of that ridiculous Chinese trade trip that he and Mayor of Cincinnati John Cranley went on under the umbrella of economic expansion with China that make me a George Lang fan in that race for the Senate of Ohio in the upcoming primary.

The game with China is one that all those representatives mentioned, especially the universities have missed the mark on. I doubt that they openly support the communist regime in China, but philosophically they are aligned at the hip and that makes all of them dangerous, domestically. Thank goodness President Trump understood the situation and he has played the leverage game against the Chinese very well, a trade deal with them will be signed very soon and our Dow Jones will shoot up to over 30,000 in the very near future. But to get there we couldn’t do as Lee Wong and his liberal partners wanted to do. I say liberal because Lee has listed himself as a Republican because he must in Butler County. If he were in Hamilton County with John Cranley, he’d be a registered Democrat, just for context. People who don’t understand business and the game of leverage believed even a year ago that because China has over a billion people in it, that they were all ripe for a new customer market. But, unfortunately, most of those billion people don’t have much money and all of them are tightly controlled by the communist government in China. So to get access to that market, American companies had to do a lot of boot-licking led by our inept politicians who were guilty of propping up the communist government with false power and appeasement.

Although the effort to reach out to China’s city of Jiaozhou as a sister city to Cincinnati with a trade agreement looks nice, its purely political and a not so disguised appeasement to the power of communism which with Lee’s often very vocal support of Chinese-American relationships, he is clearly not on the side of capitalist free market decision making. Whenever pressed on this topic the usual thing for Lee to do is cite his military service which he mistakenly believes is a trump card to any questioning of his patriotism. He even goes on the attack to suggest that he’s the only patriotic politician in the region because of his military service. But as we know, there are many circumstances where military people go bad and are less than patriotic, so Lee’s military service does not omit him from discussions about supporting communists. In short, if you support China in its current form, you are supporting communism. Until the Chinese overthrow their communist government and replace it with something better, they are a tyrannical regime that is a threat to the world. They are not our friends and they do not have leverage of our future—as Lee and many liberal economists would like you to believe. A good question for Lee in the upcoming debates would be for him to denounce China as a communist manipulator in the world markets, something that will reveal his true intentions and economic beliefs.

Fortunately, we are now looking at this issue in hindsight. I know George Lang stood with President Trump on the trade standoff that has been going on for a long time. The President is going to come out on top in that exchange. He of course understands the nature of economics and knew that China was a paper tiger looking important in theatrics only. Their population that is over 1 billion people are largely poor and unimaginative due to their communist rule, so they are not effective in marketplace competition, only when the rest of the world fears their population. Once that fear is removed, or any debt holdings they may have on assets to gain leverage in a negotiation, it becomes clear quickly what China is and has always been about, the ultimate spread of communism to the world and world domination by putting everyone in debt to the Chinese. It was always the plan and leftists in America know it, which is why nearly every university in North America have been kissing the ass of the communists for decades. It is what they wanted for America until Donald Trump came along and proved otherwise.

Trump called the Chinese bluff and once he did that, and he was very alone in doing so—China was exposed for what they were, looters who steal ideas and wealth from other countries by fluffing their feathers like peacocks to look bigger and badder than they really were. In the end, without America to loot off of, their economic leverage tanked in a big way and it forced them to the negotiating table with Trump and he knew it all along. He could wait them out, they couldn’t survive long without American imports and jobs to carry them along. That was the secret of the trade deal that’s coming. America had all the cards; China only had a massive population of potential consumers to dangle out there as a potential market expansion lure. But the truth in the end was that to gain market access our companies had to bend to the rules of communism, which Google, Nike, and the NBA were more than willing to do. And politicians like Lee Wong were there to pave the way for the embarrassments.

A basic rule in politics and in business that is true around the world, those who have the gold, rule. When negotiating with China, America had all the gold. China wanted some of it, so they are the ones who must bend in the negotiations. Not America. But if anybody had listened to all the dumb universities, John Cranley and Lee Wong, America would still be licking the boots of China. Lucky for us, Trump put an end to it, and I can say that there isn’t a more pro business Trump supporter in the Midwest than George Lang, the obvious best choice for the upcoming Ohio senate seat. Lee’s blind support of an obvious sentimental favorite of China leads to bad decisions and a very poor political philosophy. This is nothing new for those who know Lee best, the people who work with him. Having screwed up political beliefs doesn’t make a person bad. But it makes them dangerous in leadership positions and is just another reason why nobody should vote for Lee Wong, I would say for anything. Certainly not for Senate, but not for any public position. He uses the mask of being a Republican to stay in office, but his sentiments have and will always be with communist China.

Rich Hoffman

Another Way To Know Why Lee Wong is not a Republican: The cars we drive say everything about us

Another way that you can tell that Lee Wong, the West Chester trustee who is a clear Democrat pretending to be a Republican so he can get some votes in the 4th Senate District in Ohio, is by the car he drives. I didn’t know myself until I saw a video from a protestor confronting Lee while walking around his neighborhood. Under pressure from the protestor Lee went to his car as seen below and it was one of those ridiculous Fortwo cars that are considered “smart” cars and healthy for the environment. Those stupid little cars are nonsense and dangerous and should be illegal on our roads at only 70 HP with a 1.0L 3-cyl engine. No real Republican would be caught dead in one of those greenie weenie cars. The only people who have them are those who have allowed themselves to be caught up in the fiction of global warming, which is shorthand for the spread of communism around the world using environmental concerns as the change agent. You can’t be a pro capitalist Republican and drive one of these stupid cars—it’s just an un-American thing to do. Yet, I was not surprised knowing what I do about him to see that he was one of “those guys.”

Of course, whenever Lee gets pinned down with such statements his first thing to say is that he was in the military and that if you didn’t serve, then he is more of a patriot than you are for being in the armed services. So before going on about cars and what they say about the kind of person you are, let’s cover this little issue. I don’t begrudge anybody who serves in the military. I think it’s a great place to train tomorrow’s talent. I like having the best in the world, but I am not a yes sir, no sir kind of person. Its just not in me to follow orders from anybody. My life is far more valuable than the so-called “higher calling” they teach in the military, so I don’t feel a need to thank every veteran. Good for them for whatever duty they have done for God and country, but I view them as people far behind on their personal journeys. Anybody somewhat healthy can join the military and learn to follow orders. Learning to follow orders is not how you get the next great leaders, so in my mind, if that is not the objective, it’s a wasted effort, and the military isn’t about creating leaders, it creates people who learn to follow orders, which creates problems later in life when we have to teach veterans to think for themselves. So, I’m not a fan of veterans who promote themselves as the next political leaders managing our communities. I can see that even President Trump has had to learn this harsh reality, most of the big generals he brought into his administration have turned out to be Democrats, because by their nature, they are just other versions of government employees. My two favorite generals of all time were Claire Lee Chennault and Patton, and both of those guys were in trouble with the military all the time. I am far more rebellious than those guys, so Lee’s military service is just another blight on his record in my opinion. He didn’t lay down his life for me, he did what many do, he hid from responsibility by joining up to become just another government employee, which he never got over after all these years.

But we must talk about this stupid car, this little eco friendly piece of crap that should never be on a public road with much, much larger vehicles that Lee Wong drives. First of all he shows bad judgment in falling for the communist green movement dialogue that we should all do the responsible thing and surrender our desire for big SUVs and reduce our environmental footprint by driving smaller cars. Well, no, we shouldn’t. Rather we should drive the biggest and most powerful cars we can get our hands on because it says about us that we value our individualism in a capitalist culture and that our vehicles are extensions of ourselves in the grand scheme of things, which is why at any stop light in America that is double-laned in all directions, you’d be hard pressed to see any two cars lined up in the multitudes that are the same make and model—or even color. As American’s we like choice, and we like power and our cars reflect that. The greenie weenies who produced that ridiculous piece of crap, the Smart Fortwos were attacking the nature of American life by going as far to the opposite extreme as the SUV market was pushing for to make a political statement against American values. Pure and simple.

The car in an American market, which you don’t see elsewhere in the world, except a bit in Japan who have adopted our love of cars to some extent, is a statement and an extension of our homes. You don’t work hard in life to have a quarter million-dollar home and drive around a piece of crap–the car should be an extension of our life in general. If you are young, we understand you are working your way up in life, but your goal should be something bigger and better—always. You should never sacrifice your pleasures for the benefit of some climate change fiction made up by Democrats to control people through fear. You should get the best car you can get to go with the best house, the best clothes—the best of everything you can manage for yourself because that fuel drives capitalism and our American life that is the envy of the world. With Lee driving one of those stupid cars he’s announcing to the world that he is one of “those” anti-American forces working in the world to change the way we do things. And when he gets pressed on it he quickly retreats to his service in the armed forces as a defense. Yet obvious to me is that Lee is hiding behind his military service, to mask his tendency to follow the orders of whatever mass movement is happening at the time. In this case, its submission to the global warming communists. He is so enchanted with their message that he actually spent money on one of those stupid Smart Fortwo cars that could be toppled over easily with a strong wind.

What you drive says a lot about who you are in American cultures. Many people when they meet me wonder why I’m not driving around in a sports car, which I’d love to. Only I’m a big family person who often finds myself hauling around lots of people, so mini vans and SUVs are necessary for my life. I have a hot rod car in the garage waiting for a clear schedule and that keeps me appeased. But people just reading this blog site think I would have something more ostentatious, but reality has a way of sifting through an image to the heart of a person, and that usually ends up being the case. We drive our cars in my family for a long time, but we always buy them new, and as big as possible for the reasons described. People who make a choice to buy a smaller car, especially when they are older and have the means to do anything they want financially, are making a political statement contrary to the nature of American life, and that isn’t just villainous, its anti-Republican.

Rich Hoffman

REVENGE: Before we talk about violance against Democrats, let’s vote

It took me a while to cool down enough to even talk about the congressional impeachment vote they held on December 18th, a few decades to the exact day that Bill Clinton was impeached. The date and precise timing of the effort was obvious revenge for that vote which was then held by Republicans, only for a much more justified reason. Bill Clinton had actually perjured himself and broke the law. For this one against Trump, and all those of us who voted for him, this impeachment vote was a shit shot in the dark for a losing party on their heels falling out of bounds. Sure, sometimes the ball does go in the basket, only these idiots weren’t even on the right basketball court where the game was being played, so their shot had no chance of scoring any points. It was in all aspects a resolution to a prediction I had made many years ago on WAAM radio in Ann Arbor, Michigan where I predicted the end of the Democrat Party as we knew it. Well, this was the end for them, and for that, perspective took some time to come to.

To be fair I watched the debates prior to the impeachment vote just as I did two decades ago for the Clinton hearing, and for the truth of it, the intellect of the Democrats has dropped considerably. They were always bad, Dick Gephardt was never a vestige of intellect. Back then they did a much better job of hiding their socialism for which is at the heart of all their party philosophy. But at least there was an assumption of law and order, and of fairness. We all had much higher expectations of congresspeople and senators at that time. Well, not anymore. The people talking for the Trump impeachment were lost, mindless, blind ideologues of a failed philosophy who really didn’t know what to do next. Impeaching the president was a political move meant to put a black mark on his resume prior to the next election hoping that it would cost him voters. Their short-sighted virtue meant that they had lowered the bar on impeachment to anything. When another Obama type was president in the future, this case provided a means of swift removal the next time Republicans held the House and Senate as they did in 2012 and could have ripped Barack Obama from the White House rather easily for the scandals that were obvious, not to mention the ones that weren’t.

Then more reality came into a clearer focus for me. I had recently vacationed in Disney World and stepped out of my daily grind to see how normal people live, who don’t pay so much attention to politics like you and I do dear reader. As I watched those idiots talk it was clear that they didn’t know that the latest episode of The Mandalorian was released on Disney+ and that a new Star Wars film was being released this week and that pop culture was entirely focused on these events. Nobody cared about impeachment of the president. All they cared about was whether they had money in their wallets and enough credit to buy a new car. Congress had lost its credibility a long time ago with most people and Trump understood that as he took the stage in Michigan to an overflow crowd in Battlecreek to berate the attempts made against him.

And on cue, the same losers who thought the new Star Wars film didn’t have enough lesbian sex in it, or progressive political stances, because Disney did listen and wanted to fix things with the fans, so they rated the film poorly hoping to hurt its financial success, they had up the impeachment articles hoping to shape the narrative against Trump, as they had planned with the Democrat Party for years. Only Baby Yoda was still trending higher than impeachment perplexing those on the left who for the life of them couldn’t understand why. The Democrats and their supporters were just out of ideas and the world has moved on without them, and for all the reasons that they feel they have to cheat to win elections, such as tampering with the 2020 one to even have a shot with this impeachment attempt, they are completely disconnected as to what people want in a president or their elected representatives. Most people have already moved on from them and don’t pay them any attention, at all. I think that is dangerous for a republic, but it’s a grim reality.

My first thoughts during the impeachment vote was to inflict violence against them and overtake our government back into reasonable hands. It wouldn’t take much for a person like me to organize and I spent much of the 18th thinking in just such a fashion, until it became obvious that these idiots didn’t have the slightest clue as to what they were doing. They were pretentious and disconnected from reality, and in the long game, that was a good thing. Their vote essentially sealed their own fate as a party, because for those who did care, and were watching and not thinking about the latest iTunes download from Tayler Swift, the next election would be hell for them because the Democrats had just pissed off all the people who still do care, and they were failing to bring people over into their cause. There were fewer stars from Hollywood willing to make political stands in 2020 than there were even in 2016 and this impeachment effort wasn’t rallying people toward their side, it was pushing them away.

Most people only have time for so much in their lives, and people these days don’t have time or energy for this impeachment attempt by loser Democrats who they can see can’t compete with Donald Trump in the upcoming election. The writing is quite clear on the wall, and apparently everyone can see it but the Democrats who are still stuck on the impeachment revenge of December 18th, 1998 of Clinton, their knight in shining armor. And if they have been upset about that very justified event, what do they think is going to happen over the next 30 years after this Trump attempt? Do they think we’ll just all go to sleep and forget about it? Hell no, people like me will want to paint our homes in their blood for many years to come, they will never get off the hook and that is something they seem to never have considered. Perhaps they are just too stupid to think about it, but whatever it is, they have stamped themselves to it forever, and to their own detriment.

So I would offer that the best revenge is to activate the votes for all Republicans in the next election and to show up in droves to put them in office and knock out the Democrats from every position up and down the line. It is better to take them out of office than to think about putting bullets in their heads with a bloody rebellion. Why get all dirty when all you have to do is show up and vote? Now if we find out that the Democrats find a way to massively tamper with the elections, which I wouldn’t put it past them to try, then we can talk about violence. But for now, we have all the cards to play with and they have nothing. The best thing is to beat them in elections, which at this point should be easy. Then lets talk about the future.

Rich Hoffman

How to Improve Oga’s Cantina at Galaxy’s Edge: Where creativity and a vastly expanding mythology can improve life dramatically

Obviously, my recent trip to Disney World had a positive impact on me, and I thought it would. It had been decades since I was really able to take a trip like that and just enjoy it without a whole lot of tag along projects. I could write a lot about all the positive experiences I had the week I was in Orlando at Disney World visiting all the parks and Disney Springs in general. But specifically I observed in the context of creativity some jaw dropping elements put forth by the new Star Wars land they call Galaxy’s Edge and I had a kind of moment after it all soaked in where I was in the Oga’s Cantina, a kind of recreation of the popular spaceport bar that was seen in the very first Star Wars movie way back in 1977, and I was awe struck. It was 2019, I was 51 years old and remember seeing that place for the first time in the movie and buying the album of the soundtrack and listening to the music over and over again on a record player. That popular cantina song was the gateway for my generation to science fiction and adventure, and here was the real thing, and they were selling drinks to an adult audience with barely standing room only around the bar. I included a few video clips of my point of view from the cantina that night here for reference, but it was really quite ostentatious that I could leave where I was having a couple of drinks with my wife and go outside to see the Millennium Falcon sitting there in a setting that belonged in a movie of the most fantastic type. It was quite an achievement to build, let alone experience and I couldn’t help but feel that something very important was happening to our human species.

Imagination had stepped over a kind of intellectual barrier and a new reality had been created born from a new kind of thinking driven by myth. Before visiting the cantina that night I had purchased from the marketplace just around the corner a much-desired deck of Sabacc cards which I had been waiting for really all of my life. After hundreds of books that I had read on that popular intergalactic poker game, finally Disney’s Galaxy’s Edge had invented a real game with real cards that could only be bought at that location and I was having quite a time with them. It was all a bit overwhelming and I had a lot of thoughts about what should come next to such an experience. Since a new reality has been born there at Galaxy’s Edge, and from the looks of the crowd, that cantina wasn’t big enough, nor would it be in the future I am offering my thoughts to help the story advance based on my observations. Granted, I never thought such a place would have ever been possible. But since it is, we should talk about improvements.

I’m not much of a drinker, so going to the cantina at Galaxy’s Edge was more out of curiosity than anything else. I’m not into the drinking songs and other things that go on in bars. But I do think the cantina should be more of a social destination, a place to meet people, get away from the heat of the day, and to freshen up. Since that cantina has the reservations booked for the whole day before you can even enter the park, its not a relaxing place to go. It’s certainly cool, but not relaxing. If I were program managing Galaxy’s Edge, I would offer some free advice to them–they need to build several more cantinas around the complex. The one they have isn’t enough. They need at least two more, and both of those need to be larger. They can be in the designs of other locations in the movies, but it is very obvious that Star Wars fans going to Galaxy’s Edge want to hang out and talk to other fans without a time limit, so more cantina space is required.

Also, the cantina management need to give happy hour prices to fans who cosplay, so that there are more people in the cantina who look like people from all over the Star Wars galaxy. Many people would willingly dress up in creature costumes if they could get significant costs knocked off their drinks and that would solve the environment problem of having the place full of non-Star Wars looking tourists. I would be surprised to learn that this wasn’t already happening, but I must suggest it because it’s the most logical thing to consider. That was really the only thing missing is the atmosphere full of strange creatures. Everything else looked great.

Additionally, as I had my drinks watching the crowds feeling like the best thing to do would be to have a good Sabacc game at the bar or in one of the booths. The booths around the outside parameter were full of families so such a game wouldn’t be possible. The cantina staff wanted quick turnover inside to make room for the lines of people outside, so playing Sabacc in the cantina just wasn’t an option and it should be. In fact, Disney I think has done such a good job marketing their new Sabacc game, that I think in a year or so there will be so many people playing it that they should host Sabacc tournaments at Galaxy’s Edge the way that poker tournaments are held in Vegas. I would go, I love the game. In a lot of ways I think it is much better than poker or black jack and it is otherworldly enough to allow participants to embroil themselves into the Star Wars mythology. Fantasy Flight Games has had great success with their X-Wing games and other Star Wars games. This Sabacc game would be the perfect meeting game in Galaxy’s Edge for years to come and would really enhance the cantina feel that you should experience when you enter those types of places. That would make the cantina more of a function than just a novelty act.

Going even further, I would think a cantina like Oga’s, except much, much, larger should be build at Disney Springs and it is there that yearly Sabacc championships should be played from players all over the country. The stakes could be simple, a week vacation package for four to the parks and hotels, that way it wouldn’t be gambling where money is exchanged, but still the prize would be in the tens of thousands and worth practicing all year to have a chance to win. And the tournaments could be broadcast on Disney+ the way poker games are broadcast on cable networks currently. I’ve been playing the game since I picked it up that day and it would be very good for television, and for cantina events.

All things come from imagination, even the games of our past like poker. When film and literature create in the imaginations of people the kind of demand I saw at Oga’s Cantina in Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios, we are on the frontier of some new kind of thinking, and that is very exciting. I can see future engineers for space stations on Mars and beyond playing Sabacc to pass the time on those long space voyages that they started learning to play at Galaxy’s Edge in one of these cantinas. Its more appropriate for the future than the games of the past, and that is something that is astonishing to see, how intellect is inspiring creations not born of rigid societies, but of creativity and vastly expanding mythology.

Rich Hoffman

What Disney Calls Magic is what Chick Fil A Calls Competency: Taking away the excusses to happiness

People have been wondering why as a grown man who could go anywhere in the world why my wife and I went to Disney World for vacation, without any kids. Well, there were a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones is something I don’t hear a lot of people talking about, but its at the core of their theme park business model, and its very similar to Chick Fil A. What Disney sells is happiness, its in their mission statement which is clear the moment you enter the property in Orlando welcoming you to the happiest place on earth. Obviously the first thing that cynical people think of in Disney are the huge expenses and the long lines, but there is a reason everything costs so much yet is so extraordinarily crowded. Its essentially for the same reason that Chick Fil A is crowded every afternoon just for selling chicken, it’s because as a company, they don’t make excuses for failure and have a can do spirit on everything, and that is precisely what people are looking for at the Disney Parks, and why I specifically wanted to vacation there. I’m a very positive person and professionally everywhere I have turned over the last year and a half was some drag asser looking for every little excuse not to do something, and it was driving me crazy. It had been time for a Disney vacation.

That doesn’t mean that what you get at Disney is happiness. I watched carefully during my vacation the other people who were looking for the same thing as me, but obviously were not so inclined to experience such a product as Disney calls “magic.” Magic is the word for it, because in reality, its only the performance of illusions, not some mystical energy created to manipulate the impossible. Magic to create happiness is a series of tricks designed to evoke in the user a feeling they couldn’t get anywhere else, but not all people are prepared to experience it. So they can go to Disney World and spend many tens of thousands of dollars, they can have their magic bands and take the shuttle from the airport to the parks without paying all the tolls on the highways between the two, and all they’ll see are long lines and misery. They’ll complain later that Disney World is all about just making a buck and is for kids as they seek some psychological distance between their present reality and any future attempt at happiness. For many people, they do not want to be happy, because there is responsibility in it, so even going to Disney World can’t do it for them. But on this trip, I wanted particularly to study Disney as a company and how they maintained their brand so I was watching with different eyes than I normally would in times past.

One thing that was obvious, and likely the key to their success at Disney was that all of their employees were taught to buy into the philosophy, like Chick Fil A. You don’t go to Disney to hear excuses about why this or that can’t or won’t happen. With them anything is possible. Any request from a customer is entertained, and it’s done so with a smile on their faces. As I went everywhere and asked lots of questions of what they call “cast members” a personality trait emerged that was part of their employee development. The customer was always right, and the employees of Disney were taught never to complain, or to let it out that they disagreed with those very valuable customers. Everything was on time; no rides or attractions were shut down because they didn’t have enough employees to operate the activities. Nothing stopped at Disney World due to massive call offs of a weak labor pool to draw from. To make the parks work magically each day, it literally took tens of thousands of park employees to make the massive operation run. If 10% of their work force didn’t show up for work on time there would be big problems in selling that happiness, yet Disney didn’t have that problem at all. The reason why is the key to the answer.

To conduct my experiments my wife and I stayed in Kissimmee and spent some time out of the park interacting with the various work cultures there to draw some long-held conclusions that I have had. In years past, whenever we went to central Florida, we would meet at the family condo over in Cape Canaveral, and a fair amount of socializing was always part of the trip. This time, we didn’t talk to anybody, we just conducted my experiment spending a lot of time at all four Disney Parks, eating and interacting with their various resorts, and crawling over every inch of their Disney Springs development. We used all their various transportation systems and even talked to the janitors who walked around the park cleaning up the trash. I purposely looked for the ugly side of Disney, any peeled paint, any decaying wood, any sign of shortcuts toward the magic illusions that Disney was so obsessed with creating. Then once the parks closed, or before they opened, we would eat and shop down in Kissimmee and the differences in culture were obvious.

We were staying only two miles from the entrance to Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios the entire time along RT 192 which had a lot of great Gatlinburg types of tourist traps that I love so much. Only the employees almost everywhere we went sucked, and I mean, they sucked big time. We went to Joe’s Crab Shack which was just a stone’s throw to the south of Animal Kingdom, off the Disney property and it was obviously mismanaged in a terrible way. It took 15 minutes for someone to even ask to seat us, even with most of the place full of empty tables. Then we were told it would take an additional 15 minutes to seat us. When I asked why, they told us that they had a few call-offs and that they were running behind. Disney operates hundreds of restaurants, hotels, rides, and other vendors and I don’t think they would permit any of their employees from making such a ridiculous statement. Why would a business make their mismanagement problems the problems of the paying customer? Its an absurd concept, so we left Joe’s Crab Shack and looked for other options. And we found the same behavior everywhere else, including a Cracker Barrel

Our hotel had half dead slugs running the place, the room cleaners kept forgetting to give us new towels, coffee packs and whatever we asked for because they were not engaged in maintaining our happiness. They were just going through the motions like the rest of the world. Disney by contrast didn’t permit such excuses and that was obviously part of what they called magic. From the airport in Orlando to the surrounding establishments around the Disney World property, the contrasts were obvious, and a key to the success story. It really came down to a management decision to take away the excuses of unhappiness. If people wanted to see the strings and hidden chambers of the magic show, they could. But Disney would not be responsible for it. Their whole thing was to take away the excuses to be miserable. If people chose to be miserable anyway, that was on them.

I am one who likes to be happy, so it didn’t take much for me to enjoy that level of competency. In such a “can do” culture it doesn’t take much for me to respect such a thing. The cast members no matter how important their roles were in the customer experience held to the company motto and it was obviously successful. It shows what can be done when a company has expectations from their employees to behave a certain way and to ensure that the customer experience from their side is positive and excuse free. And in that, there are lots of lessons for the outside world to come to grips with, which is precisely why I chose this vacation over other options, which I’m glad I did.

Rich Hoffman