Tag: Free Will

Boehner Crying over the Pope: Why there is supposed to be a separation between church and state

As many conservatives like Glenn Beck strive to bring God back into the political realm grounding the roots of patriotism, the Pope Francis visit to the United States should serve as a warning shot as to why in America we should keep a clear distinction between the separation of church and state. Obama and others like him who would love to empower the United Nations into being a ruling centralized authority throughout the world, is using the Pope to advance their progressive agenda—particularly the religion of global warming and immigration. I’m not Catholic; I don’t recognize the pope in any position of authority. If he were standing on the other side of a fence, I wouldn’t even take the time to gaze over at him. To me, he’s just another old man. I’m sure he’s a nice guy. I like that the church tries to help people with kindness—that’s a sweet thing to do as a human being. But I don’t need the pope addressing my congressional body of government from the vantage point of a religious figure from Italy who was born in Argentina and thinks socialism is more favorable than capitalism. Standing in front of my country’s government and lecturing us about the depravity of capitalism is like stepping into a hamburger restaurant and demanding that it become a Chinese buffet and should serve more items for vegans. It’s just disrespectful.

Even more disturbing is that John Boehner, my congressman in my district who happens to be Speaker of the House cried about meeting the pope. That is not very wise for a leader of Congress. Such behavior establishes that the Roman Catholic Church holds sway over the leadership of our republic, and that’s no crying matter. It’s embarrassing. No man should be crying over meeting another man—especially one like Francis. The celebrity of the pope is a completely made up thing, no different from Lady Gaga. There is nothing Holy about the guy other than an institutional organization decided to make him the leader of their church. The reaction that many have had toward the pope’s visit to the United States—summarized best by John Boehner is that philosophically, entirely too many people are wrong in their foundation beliefs and rely on the church to provide their spiritual essence—which is dangerous. It’s dangerous for individuals, it is dreadfully treacherous for an entire nation.

My article yesterday about the mysterious Serpent Mound was actually written to set up this point, CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. Religion is a poor philosophic foundation for anything intended to get to the facts. A proper philosophy is one established on proven observation, not one based on faith. If the pope can sell the idea of sacrifice in the here and now for the benefit of an afterlife, he can also convince people that global warming is real, and that poor productive lifestyles are not the cause of poverty. Otherwise rational men and women who conduct their lives in the world of the real put all that on hold on Sunday when they attend a Catholic service and give idolatry to this dude from Argentina that the Vatican in Italy calls a pope. A proper understanding of history reveals that religion is much older than the Roman Catholic Church and that because of the modern doctrines established only in the last 1800 years, a proper understanding of our real history is not possible. There is nothing to cheer about for a pope. If people will believe what he says there is no reason to not believe in some of the ancient alien contemplations about the start of the civilization—that earth was seeded by extraterrestrials, the planet was terraformed by an artificial moon, and interdimensial rulers from the far reaches of the universe are the true kings of our lives as ultraterrestrials. After all, if you’re going to believe in a burning bush, resurrection after death on the third day, and making the blind see—why not.

That is why it’s so upsetting to see grown men cry and pander to some guy walking around in an archaic costume from the Middle-Ages called a pope. I’ll be the first to say that I’d rather deal with people who have religious values than no values at all, but those most committed to faith have an extremely difficult time deciphering things through logic.  Once Pandor’s Box is opened and some blind faith is accepted to the human mind, there is no turning it off. If a person is willing to look at the pope and accept that he’s the embodiment of god on earth, then that person is no different from the countless societies from the past that have failed, from the ancient Egyptians to the Aztecs. The ability to worship a deity does not make a society great. The values often associated with religion sometimes do, such as the Judeo-Christian background that established America. But the Founding Fathers were wise enough to understand that there should be a separation of church and state so that an emphasis on logic could be established. Blind faith is no way to run a government, or make any decisions, so it is reprehensible that the symbol of blind faith would even fathom to lecture Congress about what types of things America should or should not value. Some of the Founding Fathers did attempt to put God in the government, such as the symbols that appear on American money—“In God We Trust.” It doesn’t say what god, it just references a deity. With hindsight being 20/20 it would have been best to never have muddied the water of confusing religion with the state and to stick with the original thought of separation. Because you can’t go down that road of belief and faith and still expect to make decisions based on rational evidence. The two things just aren’t compatible, as much as we’d like them to be.

That’s why if feels wrong to see John Boehner crying over the pope. He’s supposed to be the third most powerful person in the world—and he’s crying over the uttering of an old man because the figure represents the embodiment of godliness upon the earth. For a grown man in a leadership position to believe such a thing is a tragic display of faith instead of leadership. The human race has done a poor job of establishing a criterion for leadership largely because the values of its historic religions have idolized pacifists and sacrificial souls toward the fate of the universe, instead of relying on the miracle of thought.

For those who think human beings are insignificant in the universe consider that animals don’t think—not in the way that we associate thought to. Their activity is to maintain their life, they eat, drink, and reproduce maintaining a cycle of life that is specific to their species. Human children begin thinking very young when they begin playing with toys. With cats, dogs and other animals, they play with toys also, but the activity is largely connected to learning hunting techniques that will be valuable to them with muscle memory latter in their adult lives. Human children however play and daydream and play out fantasy events in their heads with an alternate reality that is very specific to human thought. Single cell organisms that might be found on some distant planet or at the bottom of the ocean don’t do that. They just live—they don’t do much thinking. Humans are remarkable because of their ability to think. Congress, the building that the pope spoke in, the President of the United States, and all the aspects of American culture that the pope saw on his trip are aspects of human thought—whereas in Cuba where the pope had visited the day before, the cost of not thinking was grotesquely obvious. God doesn’t help the people in Cuba with some miracle. America does with capitalism and the thoughts generated by the measurement of money have made society much better. The pope falsely associates the worship of money and a growing gulf between the rich and the poor based on Biblical text nurtured along by a crumbling Roman empire—so his premise and the assumption arrived at are wrong. Money is a measurement of productivity—of action. It’s not something given to people—it’s something that is created by value. When the political left tries to establish a life without values—and they fail, then seek to rob those values from a church that does have them—using the pope to justify every transsexual-homosexual act, abortion, and every chemical addiction known to man—they are trying to disguise their bankrupt philosophy. That’s why Obama made such a big deal about the pope’s visit as opposed to the Israeli prime minister who visited recently—that he gave the cold shoulder to completely during Netanyahu’s stay.

But to see John Boehner crying–it’s just sick. Even if the moment was an emotional one, he should be stoic enough as a world leader to hold it together. The pope has no authority in America and we certainly don’t want to go back to the inquisition of the Dark Ages. We don’t need the Crusades either. We don’t need global conquest under the flag of an old church that promotes Argentinean socialists into the white robes of piety. The pope should be asking America questions about how to live, not lecturing it. Because when it comes to moral positioning, America and its capitalism does more for more people than the church in the Vatican could ever hope to achieve. It all comes from human thought that is specific to the human race. The logic of nature and all the global warming that the pope advocated for before Congress is simply a demolition derby of primal chaos where millions of species of animals, plants and airborne bacteria are in a fight to survive from day-to-day. Of all them are human beings—the only species who can think. And when it comes to worshiping a pope, it’s a thoughtless enterprise more adapt to a primal animal, not a human being. The Speaker of the House should understand that America is a place for thought, and not a platform for lecture by a man and his church that just doesn’t understand its place in the universe—but by the definitions of a fallen empire and a Europe that still hopes to use the church to rule the world.

Before the pope could leave the United States after his trip Boehner so emotional over his visit quit Congress singing a famous melody from the Disney classic Song of the South.  The heat of the day proved to be too much for him, so he got out of the kitchen.   Many of us knew all along that he didn’t have what it took, that the position of Speaker required more than just pageantry.  And from his perspective realizing that when the pope left the podium as tears streamed down his face it was time to throw in the towel.  Because the fight coming to Congress is just getting started, and he obviously didn’t  have the heart for it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Great Mystery of Adams County: Terror, death, and government conspiracy from beyond the fourth dimension

In a lot of ways the deeply mysterious is the key to understanding the profoundly obvious. To the lazy mind, such things are often regulated to the realm of conspiracy. But experience and a truly inquisitive mind points steadily to a deeply flowing current of activity that our mainstream thought refuses to acknowledge. In Ohio, near my home relatively speaking this was never truer than the effigy Serpent Mound in Adams County, Ohio where I go often just for the enjoyment of the experience. GE has a major engine testing facility in the rolling hills of Peebles which is just a few miles from the mound. My wife and I on several occasions visit the McDonald’s in Peebles for a Big Mac and an ice cream. The area fascinates me not only for the strange mound left by a forgotten people. Archaeologists claim the mound was built by the Adena, but more likely those hunters and gathering tribes of Indians were a secondary culture to the primary which had vacated the area. They built the Serpent Mound, along with the countless other effigies around Ohio by a mysterious culture obsessed with the events in the sky.

Most people don’t see the great mysteries of the earth and the hidden history of mankind because the religious lenses they view life with prevents such insight. Before they can admit the vast evidence of discrepancy to their minds, they must look beyond the text of their religious doctrine.   Since politics and science are often connected by grant money, those two fields often function as a religion, where belief takes prescience over fact. Among those facts is that the Vikings were a much more advanced culture than previously thought. Their knowledge of global sea lanes provoked them to expand well beyond their northern borders to conquer lands far away. They settled in America much earlier than Columbus which is generally accepted today and brought with them a mound building culture that was quite prolific in all the north regions of Ireland, England and of course Norway among many others. There were also giants in North America, probably along the lines of the biblical Goliath. When we say giants, we mean people who were comparable to today’s NBA players. They were in some cases eight feet or more in height, but they weren’t Jack and the Beanstalk large. But they were giants compared to the relatively small Adena Indian. There were also Chinese in the Americas well before Columbus, and should be given credit for discovering America—officially. The Native American Indians were a second-hand culture that played out the Vico Cycle as predicted and were part of a declining civilization—where their mythologies were all that was left of that previously advanced culture. Ohio was clearly settled by a combination of all these elements. The people of the mound building cultures were obviously trading and had influence with early Mesopotamian societies and applied that knowledge directly to the Ohio effigy mounds through mathematics seen in many of those pre-historic monuments.

Without question many effigy mounds in Ohio were destroyed during frontier expansion and farming. Many were destroyed to preserve religious belief. Others were destroyed to keep grant money flowing to dig sites as the government had a vested interest in preserving its view of history for the sake of its own justification. But Serpent Mound in Adams County is ground central to the strange and weird still. It is within regional proximity of the mysterious Mothman Prophecies as chronicled by the reporter John Keel and is close to the very strange things that always seem to happen in the eastern portion of the state. Many don’t know it, but Bigfoot sightings are quite common in Ohio, as well as crop circles. To avoid appearing kooky, the media doesn’t report them all, but they are quite common in Ohio. And its been known that crop circles appear across the street from Serpent Mound from time to time in a similar way that they appear at Stonehenge in England. What is most mysterious to me about the site is not necessarily who built it, or why. Even by today’s standards of transportation, it is a remote site. So why would anybody decide to build such a thing in that Adams County location? It’s not near a major waterway, or known animal hunting ground. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s a lot of effort for a randomly picked site.

Indians are upset that the dialogue is changing about their heritage in America. They are losing, quite by good reason, their “native” designation. Politicians are still stuck on the term, but the evidence is pointing toward them as a secondary culture built by a long gone primary in much the way that today’s poor inhabit the regions and homes of areas that once prospered. Enterprising people build things; secondary people live off the efforts of others—and clearly this was the case with the Indians who encountered Columbus and the European migrants. So they resent that UFO theories and Ancient Alien researchers are thinking of Serpent Mound as evidence of some extraterrestrial influence. They wish it to remain an archaeological site as part of their native heritage. But Serpent Mound is just too precise to be the work of a nomadic culture. It had a purpose in much the way that the Nework Mounds outside of Columbus did—very purposeful in astronomical significance and built by a culture with much more in common with ancient Sumerian than some African hunter tribe. Much of the evidence there has been destroyed by construction. But at Serpent Mound, there is purity to the place still evident by the lack of social noise. And the place is clearly the result of a high intelligence that does not show up in our history books. The primary culprit is not what is evident on the ground, but what’s underneath. The Serpent Mound location is located on a plateau with a unique cryptoexplosion structure that contains faulted and folded bedrock, usually produced either by a meteorite or a volcanic explosion. In 2003 geologists from Ohio State government and the University of Glasgow (Scotland) concluded that a meteorite strike was responsible for the formation. They had studied core samples collected at the site in the 1970s. Further analyses of the rock core samples indicated the meteorite impact occurred during the Permian Period, about 248 to 286 million years ago.[17]

This site is one of the few places in North America where such an occurrence can be seen. While some scholars speculate that prehistoric Native Americans may have placed the mound in relation to this geological anomaly, others think there was nothing visible at ground level that would have captured their attention. Yet, Serpent Mound was built right in the midst of this strange geological formation. Crop circles, strange cyrptoexplosions, and advanced knowledge of astronomy are what is typical at Serpent mound but why? Then this strange story a few years ago came about:

Ohioans were dazzled by a bright flash of blue light in the night sky on September 27, 2013, in southern Ohio around 11:30 p.m., Eastern Standard Time. Could it have been a meteorite or a satellite predicted to crash to earth on Friday?

A fireball reportedly hit near a home in northern Adams County, Ohio, a few miles outside the city of Peebles causing a house fire. Those reports are unconfirmed. The six alarm fire left fireman battling the blaze into the early hours of the morning. It is unknown at this time if the residents made it out safely.

A neighbor said the meteor crossed over the city and hit near the Locust Grove Cemetery just four miles from the Great Serpent Effigy Mound. In recent years, a crop circle appeared overnight in an adjacent field from the Serpent Mound grounds and thousands of years ago it was the sight of a major meteorite that caused a huge impact crater.

Update 1: As of the morning of September 28, 2013, a home outside of Peebles, Ohio, in the Locust Grove area of Adams County burned to the ground last night, the two residents of the home, an elderly couple, Jane and Lyle Lambert, as a result of smoke inhalation. The fire is believed to be caused from the meteor or pieces of the heated meteor that hit the home. The state fire marshal is investigating the fire.

Update 2: As of October 14, 2013, the cause of the fire that burnt down the home of Lyle and Jane Lambert is yet to be determined. Speaking to a neighbor of the couple who wishes to remain anonymous on October 10, 2013, says that NASA employees were to visit and inspect the location, however; due to the recent government shutdown that is not going to happen. There is no impact crater and impact of any fragments on the house cannot be confirmed or denied due to the house being a total loss.

http://www.examiner.com/article/was-it-a-meteor-that-lit-up-the-sky-last-night

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

The problem with human beings is that they assume that their four-dimensional world is all there is—length, width, height, and time. But there are more dimensional existences than those which our civilization is just beginning to grasp. Crop circles, ancient effigies, and astronomical alignments calibrated to equinoxes and other events in the sky appear more and more to be markers in time for reference. For instance, when you read a book, it is customary to place a marker between the pages for reference later when reading can resume—as it often takes time to read a book. While reading a book life is experienced in a very liner fashion, but if one wanted to they could scan ahead and read the end, or go back to the beginning for further reference. The strange things that happen around some places around the globe, like Serpent Mound appear to have a quality that serves a function close to a book mark in the context of time. Some locations have more relevance than others indicating that for inter-dimensional travel, quadrants about the earth have importance over others. Whatever it was that hit the house in 2013 lit up the sky even as far away as my location in Hamilton, Ohio yet nobody discussed it much the next day. I didn’t know until I did some looking around that a couple of people died as a result of the strike. But what was more mysterious was that out of all the places on earth that the event took place, it was at the Serpent Mound, where so much other activity has taken place.

Something is important about Serpent Mound, Ohio. It may not be obvious to our four-dimensional eyes, but the evidence sometimes left behind is quite obvious. A couple was killed in their home by a mysterious object hitting them in the middle of the night. 250 million years ago a strange object of some massive density punctured the earth’s crust from either within or without—or perhaps both at the same time. But it wasn’t a simple meteor strike. In linear time, 250 million years to the present is a long time, but to inter-dimensional time, it could be an instant. A crop circle may be just a thumb print in a book to hold one’s place—we really don’t know. But isn’t it convenient that NASA wasn’t available to investigate the impact site in 2013 where two people lost their lives to an object that apparently fell out of the sky near one of the greatest effigy monuments in the world? What was the excuse—a government shut-down—so the investigation was called off. There is never an official investigation of these types of things for many of the same reasons.

Government puts itself in charge of all things extraterrestrial, or even ultra-dimensional, yet they are proven time and again to be incompetent to perform the task. The rest of us are left to wonder based on the evidence what’s going on—because something is. So we’re all left grabbing at straws in the dark. But we do it because we know that the straw is there—somewhere. It’s just being hidden from us by our education systems and a government trying to maintain control of the real truth, which is getting harder and harder for them to maintain.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

A Muslim in the White House: The history and reason why not

If there was any doubt ever about the depth of the corruption of our federal government by forces not committed to traditional America, the Muslim issue smoking off of Donald Trump’s recent town hall meeting is all the evidence anybody needs. A person at that town hall asked a question about Obama’s Islamic faith, which was a conclusion that Obama himself has fostered with his actions—particularly with NASA and his position regarding the Middle East where he favors Palestinian and Iranian positions over those of Israel and even Egypt. Trump listened politely. He had questions about Obama’s birth certificate in the past, which still are unanswered, as the document Obama eventually provided under pressure from Trump turned out to be computer generated—as proven by Sheriff Arpaio of Arizona.

So the issue never was settled, but the national and international media was quick to accept it so that they could move on to another issue—mysteriously. They called Trump a birther and the Department of Justice sued Arpaio for his border enforcement techniques which was obvious harassment as a direct result of the birth certificate investigation. The rest of the world moved on leaving lots of questions unanswered, propelling conspiracy theories which a significant portion of the American public are now asking, the guy at Trump’s town hall being one of them.   Trump didn’t fan the flames, but he didn’t quell them either, because anybody with any reasonable mind knows something is wrong on the issue—but at this point it’s no longer relevant. The condemnation from the political right and left was truly baffling. It was the lead story for four consecutive days propelled mostly by Republicans. It was evidence of just how far off the rocker we have all fallen as a nation.

Then over the weekend, Ben Carson got into all kinds of trouble by saying that a Muslim should not be elected president, which started a firestorm of its own. Carson’s position is a logical one, the Islamic faith is producing much of the violence seen throughout the world, and America doesn’t need to accelerate that violence by putting a Muslim in the White House. Maybe someday when terrorists aren’t using the Koran to justify beheading infidels—but until there is a good century of violent free behavior, a Muslim in an American White House empowering the radicals fueling terrorism in the Middle East even more is not a good idea. This is something any rational, well-educated mind should understand—easily.

Then on every channel, more than usual was a real hatred of Donald Trump. The endearing nurturing of his candidacy was gone. No longer was he a thorn in the side of Jeb Bush and other establishment Republicans—Trump had suddenly become a threat to everything every progressive had built a public dialogue around. Without Trump’s town hall, nobody would have thought to press Ben Carson, about what he said about Muslims in the White House. Now the cat of distrust about the Islamic faith is out of the bag on a national forum, and establishment types from all walks of life in unison are flustered and acting well out of accordance of what should be American interests.

I’ve known a fair share of Muslims. They are generally peaceful. Their need to pray to Mecca each day gets irritating, but as long as it doesn’t interfere with what I want to do, I’m fine with it. It’s weird to me, but so are a lot of things. Religion should be a private thing and people are free to practice whatever they want.   But like all religions, including the Catholic one, they have elements of collectivism that is dangerous to our republic style of government. The current Pope is using global warming and other aspects of the church he heads to spread a socialist agenda he learned from his home country of Argentina. If the current Pope who is touring America right now is the representation of God on planet earth, then that God is an idiot—because the Pope is not a friend of capitalism or the American way of life. If an American president were excessively Catholic and wanted to turn over the White House to the Pope for guidance, I would have a big problem with that as well. So it’s not just the Muslim faith. It’s any radical religious type who thinks through the collectivism of the church instead of their own free—individual will. We don’t elect religious nut cases in the White House—at least we shouldn’t. We need in America self guided, philosophically sound, individuals who are capable of leadership. We don’t always get that, but we at least have attempted to strive for that objective.

Occasionally I deal with some of the mysteries of Pre-Columbian archaeology and the discrepancies that investigative science casts against a historical record as defined by religion. There has been a lot of violent history regarding religious faith from just about every denomination. While we want an American president who respects the premise of religious value which established the United States, we don’t want a leader of the free world who blindly accepts a dialogue that can be controlled by an unholy relationship between the church and politics. We need a president who asks questions and we need a media who distrusts what a president might say—to question everything even if religion offers an opinion and attempts to use the hand of God as a justification for some evil performed. When barbarians destroyed the Library of Alexandria a terrible crime was committed and there is no way to recover what was lost during that tragedy. The great novel Finnegans Wake may be all that’s left of that period of history before the Roman Empire, and Halloween all that’s left of the strange rituals of that pre-history period.   The world is covered with mysterious artifacts that don’t fit with current scientific or religious understanding. There is a lot of pre-history that existed, but there is no accounting for it. So it’s dangerous and illogical to accept anything blindly—especially Islamic faith. As I’ve pointed out before without Aristotle, there would be no Islamic faith and without Zoroastrian religion there wouldn’t be any Christian or Muslim belief as those are the foundations of both. The mystery is what came before Aristotilian philosophy and Zoroastrian faith. Given that many in the media are highly educated, they should know all this, but they don’t. Instead, they are too quick to accept blind faith and false documents. They are OK to accept whatever President Obama says—even though the evidence is quite mysterious, and the fervor over just a question speaks to the same reckless agenda type of diatribe which burned down the library I referred to in Alexandria. CLICK TO REVIEW. Now you know dear reader why I support Trump so much. As a free man he is unshackled to ask the right questions without fearing upsetting the orthodox thinking, which these days is far too concerned with putting a woman in the White House, or people of different faiths, people of different sexual orientation, and anybody but the right person for the job. That is a strange value for a collective species to have. I can understand that view-point from a fanatical group, but not the entire establishment. That should send alarms to every sane mind who hears it.

Trump said all the right things in the wake and is fully aware of the challenge he posses. But I don’t think even he understood the depths of the sinister persuasion of what he terms a “dishonest media.” The media is dishonest because they are too concerned with bending logic to fit the story of their establishment. In this case their story is that Muslims are a peaceful people not prone to radicalized behavior. Yet the truth is that it is from that specific group of religious lunatics that most terrorism stems. Even radical Christians and the worst Bible thumpers are docile compared to the terrorist groups spawned from Islamic faith and their assumption that their religion is the only one of value. For instance, on the Cartoon Network late at night on Fridays is a show called Black Jesus. Such a show would never be produced called “Black Muhammad.” There would be death threats and probably someone would lose their life in response. It is because of that reality that Ben Carson said he was uneasy with a Muslim in the White House. And that is also why a question about such radicalism was asked at a Trump event. Denouncing the question as all the pundits suggested Trump should have done does not solve the problem. Ignoring the question is not what good journalism should be doing. It should be the media asking those questions, not some dude at a Trump rally. The reason why the media isn’t is why Trump says the media is dishonest, and why Republicans are supporting outsiders for the White House. Because people know something is wrong, and often the truth is hidden behind religion and the media that doesn’t cover the real facts. Among those facts are that the religions of our day are softened versions of a long forgotten pagan past. What they share in common with those distant relatives is a desire to sacrifice life essence to undefined spiritual entities. In the Catholic Church, that sacrifice is most notable during Lent and the ritual of communion. In Islamic faith, it is too often interpreted these days with the actual taking of human life, much the way the Maya, Aztec and countless head hunter cultures have for centuries. An American president needs to be free of this desire to sacrifice our country to the wishes of the uncharted, and unseen. And that is the million dollar desire of our day and the type of provocation that only Donald Trump is free to bring forth. That’s also why his poll numbers are so high because too many people are asking questions these days that nobody else will dare answer.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

George Lang For Governor of Ohio: Why you can trust him first in West Chester

There really isn’t any reason to say anything against Chuck Cramer after watching his performance in the following video debate with George Lang, the sitting president of the West Chester Trustees. Chuck sounded like a good man. But he was certainly out of his league as the clear winner of the debate was my friend George. George Lang graciously helped Chuck through the ordeal without embarrassing the challenger, which was respectful even if it was unnecessary. In politics you can’t take anything for granted, but after watching this video–George will easily win re-election as Chuck–as well-intentioned as he was–doesn’t pose a challenge at the level it would take to remove Lang from his current position. Lang did reveal during the debate that he plans to run for Governor of Ohio sometime soon, and has higher political ambitions so West Chester better enjoy him while it can. He won’t remain as accessible as he is now for long. He’s just too politically talented.

I don’t like politicians, but I do like George. Because of politics I don’t have many close acquaintances. I know a lot of people, but I avoid close attachments because you have to reserve the right to act on your own accord when needed. In politics there are often hundreds if not thousands of people who expect something from whoever is in a public office, and it becomes clear really quick that you can’t please them all. So you have to stay very true to your own inner compass and navigate the mine field accordingly. I don’t trust career politicians who have been in the business very long because after a period of time, it becomes nearly impossible to listen to that inner compass while at the same time satisfying all the social requirements of the people who donate money to your campaign. I know George to the point that I know his core function isn’t very far from mine and that he wants ultimately a small government that does not want additional tax money, because as he says, government will spend it. As a trustee he has done extremely well in West Chester and I have no doubt he will have success wherever he ends up. Independently, he’s quite successful, so politics is not his primary endeavor. But he enjoys “the game” and believes he can do well there and I see him as the best option to penetrate those depths in a search for treasure that has thus far been hidden.

Daily I live a rather complicated life myself, which I share with George to some extent. The reason I trust him more than the average politician is due to parts of George that I have seen under duress. I’m a pretty controversial person and if George really wanted to “play the game” in the typical way that politicians do, without merit—then he would not have come to some of my private Overmanwarrior meetings (located in the back room of the Liberty Township LaRosa’s) that we’ve had for people who have most supported this site over the years. I have never asked for any special favors from George, but he has supported what I’m doing under his own free will even through it may not have been politically expedient to do so for him. Not everyone gets to see that side of him, and it may have been a huge political gamble for him at the time, but when gambles pay off, they usually do big. And working with me is always a safe bet, which many people have come to learn over the years. So I benefit from knowing George under pressure and under duress and therefore knowing more about his true character than many people have the opportunity to see.

Politics however, especially for people in leadership is a tricky field. When you are in charge of something, there are thousands of nipping parasites called second-handers who loom in your wake waiting for a mistake by you to exploit for their own advantage. They are second-handers because they often do not have the courage to live out in front, so they exclusively make their livings in the wake of people in a leadership role. The trick in politics, whether it’s in a public setting like what George is doing, or whether its being the head of a company, is to not get caught up in what the second-handers want or need from you. When politicians get corrupt it is at this point, when second-handers begin to take over the decision-making of the leadership of those out in front. A leader has to accept that they will be hated often by somebody in their wake at some point, if not constantly. That hatred is not necessarily against a leader, it’s really against themselves for lacking the courage to live their own life authentically, depending on someone else to give them something. Politicians go bad when they start giving in to this relationship which then degrades them into a second-hander themselves. Often, donors are these second-handers because they want something from government, so politicians who may start off as valiant leaders who need money to run campaigns have to step out of that leadership role to solicit funds. The business is tricky on a philosophical level, and without good philosophy a leader loses their authenticity, and potency.

It is lonely at the top, not because there are always people who want your attention. When people pass you in the parking lot there is never a stranger, because most people are second-handers who are nice to your face hoping for a favor down the road, whether it’s in a job, or a political mechanism in their favor. It’s important to know that they aren’t being nice to you out of a human need for kindness. To best articulate this phenomena the Clint Eastwood western High Plains Drifter best illustrates this issue in the most defined way possible. For the person in the leadership position, the best way to maintain their sanity is in accepting that deep down inside, most people do resent you and would cut off your head to suck out all your blood in a second if it were legal and they could get away with it. As cynical as that may sound, it’s correct, and resembles best what is in most people’s hearts—truly. It’s a bad reflection for most to gaze at in the mirror, so they avoid the characterization, but if a politician or leader of any kind is to remain uncorrupted, then they must accept this reality. And to a large extent, I see that George has.

I see in George potential, but I like him not for what he does or what he may do, but because of who he is. I see in him a little boy who wanted to grow up and do something really good, and that same enthusiasm is present even in polished campaign speeches. There are of course those who want something from him that they may not get, and they will be upset with him. If I had a dime for every person who is upset with me on a daily basis, I’d have more money than Donald Trump, so you can’t get caught measuring the worth of somebody based on their popularity within second-hander social groups. That is not an accurate way to measure worth—only merit can determine the value of a leader. The masses will always want what falls off the wagon of true productivity and will like or hate a leader based on what they can get from them. So it does no good to pay them any mind, but to stay on target with the objectives often only the leader can see. If people lose faith in that direction, they can vote the politician out of office. If they sense that they’ll gain an advantage by keeping a politician in office, then they’ll continue to vote for them hoping for success through someone else’s leadership.

Regarding West Chester, there is little not to like. Sure, George has enemies, he gets sued constantly and there are hoards of people in his wake who would love to knock him off his pedestal in a fraction of a second because they fantasize that they might do better. But George knows how good he is and when the chips are on the table through all the smoke of wheeling and dealing, I know what’s in his heart. And what is there is gold, which is the reason why West Chester is currently flourishing. One person does make a difference, and West Chester is the direct recipient of the gold that flows out of George Lang in ways that some resent, others overlook, and many others want to consume for their own advantage. But without George, nobody would have it, and deep down inside, I know that he knows it. That’s why I trust him.

By no fault of his own, Chuck Cramer didn’t have a chance.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

2015 Lakota School Board Candidates: Options for management of tax payer resources

The people who run for school board, such as those at Lakota in Butler County, Ohio, should be people who truly want to save the system and make the best management decisions possible. So for this article, I’ll cover the election of 2015 for two potential school board seats in the fashion of neutrality. In my district there are four candidates, two who currently sit on the board, Julie Shaffer, whom I’ve had my share of spats with, Lynda O’Connor that I’ve supported, along with Ernest D.Gause and Tom Tran. They had a Meet the Candidates night down at my old high school building on Taylorsville Rd on the night of the big CNN debate—which was hosted by the valuable West Chester Tea Party. Refreshingly, quite a few people showed up to watch the event. However, not enough did, so a video of the candidates at that forum can be seen here:

There was some pressure on me to run for one of those spots, but as I explained to everyone who asked—I’m not a public servant type of person. I don’t really care to shake hands, when people call me who I don’t want to talk to, I like to ignore them and when I get mad at something, or someone, I like to be free to unleash my inner T-Rex on them. I don’t like being beholden to a community established set of values. Plus, I feel I’m too young to do anything like run for an office. But most of all, in regard to Lakota, I’m not a public education supporter. I think public schools should be profit based, the unions should be crushed and made illegal, and the government should be completely out of education starting with the DOE in Washington. I don’t want more money from the state to pay for higher collective bargaining agreements for the teacher’s union just so busy parents can have a free baby sitter for their children. If I ran for school board it would be to destroy the system, which isn’t necessarily the best thing for those who do support public education. I have enough respect for the republic system of government that we have to have a vigorous debate instead of imposing my personal views on the masses. So my belief is that people who want to work together to manage a good school system should run for office, and by my appraisal those are the kinds of people who are running in 2015 within the Lakota district.

This time around there aren’t a bunch of crazy lunatics, as there have been in the past running for office, so there really isn’t a downside to any of them. Julie and Lynda have I think done a good job of adapting to the tax opposition and try to avoid reckless tax increases. Listening to Julie, she has come a long way over the last four years. I don’t forget things, but I will put things aside to make a fair comment, and she is better now than the person who debated me on 700 WLW four years ago. That largely comes from experience. I personally liked the spunk of Tom Tran although I don’t think he can apply that gumption to reality on the board. He’d likely assimilate to the current culture uneventfully and be a standard vote. I did talk to Ernest Gause after the debate and was very impressed with his bright-eyed professionalism. He is a professional educator deeply committed to learning. He said some things that were obviously progressive to me and likely weren’t very conservative. But I could tell that he really cared about education. He probably deserves to be some new blood on the school board who could at least elevate some debate regarding the allocation of resources. My friend Ann Becker used to be a very pro levy, pro education type, and he reminded me of her which isn’t at all a bad thing. So there are some good choices for school board that voters have to pick from.

Due to the declining enrollment at Lakota even with the cuts in state funding, the increased tax revenue from commercial endeavors and diligent fiscal policy should prevent Lakota from seeking a tax increase from property owners for the rest of the decade. But, as I’ve said before, the current trajectory of spending and over priced government employees at well over 60K per year will put stress on logic and create the temptation to put another tax increase on the ballot by 2017. Out of all the candidates all of them sound like they’d be supportive of voting for that tax increase. The only way to avoid that is for three conservatives to make it on the board during the next election to out vote the current members. Otherwise, that fight is inevitable. For the sake of this Lakota forum, everyone was peaceful, because tax increases have not yet been put on the table. When the school board does move in that direction, then its time to take away the handshakes and glad tidings and go to war—which we will.

But it’s best to avoid war, and even better to provide good management so that unfortunate incidents in the future can be avoided in the present. And that’s what elections are all about. Of the choices, there are some promising ones, so take advantage of them, communicate with them, and let’s see where it takes us.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Seattle Education Association: Caving to communism in a progressive utopia

When politicians use the word progressive, be clear that what they are talking about is essentially Bernie Sanders socialism. They intend to “progress” society toward collective salvation to nearly a religious fervor. That’s why they don’t have any hard opinions about North Korea, China, Iran, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, Greece, France or even Russia for that matter, because socialism and communism are the modes those countries are functioning under, and they want the same for the United States. That is what politicians mean by “progressive” when they indicated that society needs to “lean forward” toward it.

Clearly one of the most progressive areas of the United States is Seattle, Washington. The massive union culture of the Boeing employees contribute largely to that, and the music culture that has evolved through their garage bands were undeniably socialist in orientation. They have an actual city council person who is a socialist. It is a highly liberalized part of the country and was one of the first places to attempt a $15 per hour minimum wage for fast food workers. So they have serious issues against capitalism and are certainly as a city leaning well toward pot smoking liberalism of the most severe version of progressive. With that said, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the teacher’s union in Seattle went on strike at the start of the school year holding the tax payers to the fire until city management—which is already on the same side as the progressive labor union—buckled just to get the teachers to go back to work again. Here’s what the school employees received in the deal followed by a short report from the Seattle Times.

 Highlights of tentative 3-year contract:

Raises: 3 percent in first year; 2 percent in second; 4.5 percent in third (state cost-of-living raise is additional). More in 2017-18 for some teachers for collaboration, and eight hours of “tech pay” for all school employees.

Discipline: Half day of training on reducing disproportionate discipline for all school employees. Equity committees launched in 30 schools.

Testing: New joint union-district committee to review and recommend testing and testing schedule.

Teacher evaluations: Test scores will no longer play any role.

School day: Will be longer, but not much for students, and teachers will be paid for the additional time.

Specialist caseloads: Sets limits, which union says is a first, for physical therapists, occupational therapists, psychologists and audiologists.

Source: Seattle Education Association

After four months of negotiations, a five-day strike and one final all-night talk, the Seattle teachers union and Seattle Public Schools reached a tentative contract agreement early Tuesday, and school is scheduled to start Thursday for the city’s 53,000 students.

The Seattle Education Association’s board of directors and its elected building representatives both voted Tuesday afternoon to suspend the strike, recommending the union’s membership approve the deal. The agreement will go to a full vote of the union’s 5,000 members at a Sunday meeting.

The building-representative vote came after hours of deliberation, where cheers and fervent discussion could be heard outside a packed room at the Machinists Hall in South Seattle.

Union bargaining chair Phyllis Campano, exhausted after one hour of sleep after the marathon negotiation session, declared victory.

“Let’s be clear,” she said. “We won the fight on this contract agreement.”

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/seattle-teachers-and-district-reach-tentative-agreement/

What a bunch of communist idiots. That is exactly why education costs so much in America, and why our children are being liberalized during that institutional training. There are no rational conservatives in the process, and even if they did manage to get elected to a board seat, progressive politicians have skewed the table to always favor the labor unions. To properly negotiate a deal against labor unions you really have to be an ass, and enjoy it, because it’s tough. But with a 5 to 7 member school board, one will always be out-voted by the rest, as those who typically run for such offices are liberalized types themselves. I would argue that the best education the kids of Seattle could have had was a few more days at home as these progressive teachers went on strike for more money and power.

This strike was not about any kids. Kids were clearly used as extortion pieces to secure higher wages, lower testing expectations, and more secure livelihoods. To hell with the kids, which is what the Seattle Education Association declared when they went on strike—there’s no other way to frame the debate. It was about money at the expense of the kids for the progressive aims of further substantiation of a communist agenda spreading across the world.

However, this story is an old one. We’ve covered it many times before. We’ve covered it on radio broadcasts, many articles, public debates and anywhere that the issue has been raised. Yet in Seattle, the situation is clear, the politics are grossly progressive and the aims of the insurrection directly applicable to the region. The apparatus for political theater has a well-known cast and everyone benefited except for the kids, because a liberal education is not necessarily better than not having one at all. I would argue that children could learn far more from the popular Leap Frog devices so popular now at the local Target store than a K-12 education in a public school. Such educations are as dirty and disrespected as public libraries where everything is shared and stagnate. The value of such education is clearly deficient. As pollsters like to announce often during the presidential race of 2016, college graduates support Hillary Clinton whereas blue-collar non-college graduates generally support Donald Trump. The accusation is that highly educated types are more able to understand “higher concepts” of progressivism. But such a term is purely marketing and has no basis in reality. It could be just as argued that 16 years of liberalized education is detrimental to a conservative mind and they will leave college prepared to support progressive platform points such as gay rights, open borders, and socialist wealth redistribution. Whereas those who make their own way in life work hard from the ground up and go to bed tired each night, they don’t like to have their money stolen from them by progressives—so they vote with their wallets. The Seattle Education Association is clearly attacking the hard-working as opposed to the unionized slugs and the wealth redistribution that they most support in Seattle, so it’s no surprise that the government school union got what they wanted so quickly. There really wasn’t any opposition, just political theater that showed clearly that the children were not the priority to the teachers.

It’s a hard reality for many to realize, but the educations we all go through within the public education system is nearly worthless. It exists for these unionized teachers to mooch off of, as they provide very little of any worth for a young, inquiring mind, except a radicalized progressive education. Kids don’t learn about the value of cowboys and Indians in public school, but they sure learn how to stand in line, organize in a collective unit, and get voluminous exposure to the progressive religion of global warming. It’s hard work to unlearn all the crap we learn and for those who reject the experience, it’s easier for them. But for all, the reality couldn’t be clearer. If you support the teachers in Seattle you essentially support Bernie Sanders socialism. The people who won in that case were the socialists represented here by the Seattle Education Association. And they pulled it off because there is no free market competition for their services and it’s nearly illegal to avoid the reach of public schools. So they have a government backed monopoly on building future progressives with tax payer money and every year the price tag goes up. And nobody does anything to stop it because they are afraid of being called names for identifying the behavior what it really is—which is a diabolical socialist scheme that would make the communists of the world bulge with pride. And today in Seattle, they are.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

What Donald Trump has in common with Marcus Mariota: Lessons for the Republican Party to learn

I had just been complimentary of the 2015 Tampa Bay Buccaneers in spite of my concerns that they had picked the right quarterback in the draft, but trusted that Lovie Smith knew what he was doing. As the Tennessee Titans won a game epically 42 to 14 with the quarterback I wanted, Marcus Mariota being pulled in the third quarter so not to rub the nose of my favorite team in an opening day disaster—it was obvious Lovie Smith had not prepared his team. Smith was stuck in the past when the Bucs were successful, when the Tampa 2 defense was created, and an era that built several Hall of Fame players reigned supreme. Tennessee drafted Mariota and let him play virtually the same spread offense that he won with at Oregon. Mariota, who had been picked two in the draft, was clearly the better quarterback. The negatives on him were that he wasn’t NFL ready as a rookie, was not a pocket passer, and that his stunts would not work in the NFL. Well, Tennessee ignored all that, let the kid play his game, his way, and the Bucs weren’t even competitive. Mariota had a perfect QB rating for his first NFL start. Lovie got caught looking toward the past and adhering to the unspoken rules of NFL coaching—where Cover 2 defenses are still respected and pocket passers at quarterback are tickets to playoffs.

It was discussed all preseason that Mariota was not NFL ready, yet while playing a pretty good Tampa Bay defense, he was baiting defensive ends and line backers to jump off coverage and defend him leaving often three receivers in single coverage down field as the safeties pulled up to cover the linebackers. He looked pretty NFL ready, and the stats proved it to be. But as good as Mariota was that day, Lovie Smith made him look far better by preparing the Bucs incorrectly for the game. Obviously the Tampa Bay coaching staff assumed from the tape provided by Tennessee’s preseason games that Mariota was going to be forced to adhere to the unspoken NFL rules. But in reality, within 2 minutes of playing, it was obvious that the Tennessee Titans pulled the reigns off Mariota and let him play the way he won in college with the Ducks. Innovation gave way to tradition and the Titans won in a big way.

As I was thinking about that game and writing off another Buccaneers season before it ever got started, two Republican insiders contacted me for the first time in a long time. These were people who had been critical of my aggressive political approach on things and people I had relegated to ineffective wimps in the past. They assumed that my fight first strategy against political opponents was wrong, because the majority in the Republican Party wanted to play nice and expand the base through appeasement—to slowly win over Democrats and other moderates to the Party of Lincoln. I have always been against that strategy and have written much about how to win women voters, minorities, and the youth, and I have been at odds with the general strategies of orthodox political behavior. This has been going on for a number of years with pretty public spats involving Chairman of the Republican Party Carlos Todd, Commissioner Michael Fox, Trustee Bob Shelly, the Lakota School boards of 2004-2005, 2010 through 2015 and of course Judy Shelton and Patti Alderson. Generally the assumption was that my approach was reckless and unprofessional. Then Donald Trump became a political sensation in 2015 and the orthodox was beginning to understand what I’ve been talking about for two decades. If they had only listened instead of fighting me on every little thing they would have won more often and maintained a much more conservative Republican Party as a result, instead of curbing their party to the weakest links of political philosophy.

This article was published during the mighty CNN debate which was poised to change history as Donald Trump—who has always been an original, was essentially doing what I have said to do for years—and he’s winning—big. The presidential debate brought huge numbers to CNN, well beyond even their fantasy of beating Fox News for a change, and it’s essentially because Donald Trump has been a fighter and is offering that to the political landscape for the first time in most people’s lifetimes. And people are responding. As the debate started it was obvious all the other Republican candidates were gunning to put an end to Trump, but the New York billionaire staved off the threat in much the way that Marcus Mariota had avoided the Bucs defense and Lovie Smith’s game plan to dominate easily over a political establishment who had been following the wrong strategy for the past four sitting presidents. I couldn’t help but see a correlation between Donald Trump’s run for president in 2016 and the terrible defeat of my favorite team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on their opening day by a creative and outside the box quarterback in Marcus Mariota. Lovie had picked the wrong guy in the draft and now the Republicans were trying their hardest to pick the wrong guy to run for president in 2016 by destroying their best option.

Currently the biggest issue on the table of the world is the lifestyle of America versus the rest of the world which is leaning heavily toward socialism and the sense of collectivism that fuels it. There isn’t a single policy or law which could be created under the next American president which could save the world from its ridiculous commitment to social collectivism. Nothing said on the debate stage for CNN will manifest into action by any of the candidates other than Trump, and here’s why, because he represents the pronoun I, and every other candidate represents the “we.” America needs to feel good about itself again starting with individual achievement, not through collective “team work.”

The Tennessee Titans without Marcus Mariota would have probably lost to Tampa Bay and Lovie Smith’s “team concept.” Tampa drafted a team leader who could elevate the other players through motivation. Mariota on the other hand easily beat that same quarterback in the college playoffs earlier in the year when Florida State had been undefeated at the time. Mariota beat that player with all different team members on the field in precisely the same basic way, with an unconventional spread offense that favored the intelligence and physical attributes of Mariota. The offense had been built to accommodate the individual who Mariota was.

On the other hand, Jamies Winston of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was molded to an NFL style of play that is quickly becoming extinct but features “team play.” Obviously that approach was wrong and lost to the innovations of the Titans who catered their entire team toward the individual of Mariota. While Smith insisted all preseason stated that the young Winston would need time to acclimate to the NFL, the Titans turned their player loose, and expected immediate results. Time will tell if this approach will last, but for one game anyway, it worked marvelously well and the results were grossly obvious. Winston was picked to be a typical pocket passing quarterback in the style of Payton Manning and Tom Brady. But the game is changing, and Mariota is part of that innovation, and Smith just didn’t see the truck that hit him on opening day.

The Republicans are making the same mistake with Trump. The way to fix America is not through a leader, it is in making people leaders of their own lives, and to do that we need someone who won’t apologize for being proud of their efforts. The self-boasting and pride obvious by Trump in himself is exactly what America needs to feel about itself. That is the innovation of the future in politics, advocating the proper political philosophy, not just going after votes at the booth by appeasing pop culture into participating enough to get Party support for their candidates. It doesn’t matter if Trump was a Democrat, or was a typical New York progressive, or if he is the scum of the universe. What matters in Trump is that he loves himself and America needs to have that guilt removed from them so that they too can feel good about themselves once again. That is the only way to fix anything. I have said so for a long time, and now Trump is really the first to show how powerful such an approach can be. The key is in not allowing the other side to use guilt to paralyze us into inaction. That is the strategy of Democrats and it has worked. The way for Republicans to win is to stop feeling guilty and just let the truth do its job. If Republicans would do that, they’d win a lot more in the game of political theater. And like Trump, and Mariota, they make it look pretty easy because it is. Trust in the pronoun I, and let that “team” crap die with Lovie Smith’s approach to the game of football.

The game plan is now out and there is no going back. Now that Trump has done it, every liberal celebrity who thinks they can run for president will. Mark Cuban might very well be next, so if Republicans don’t seize a celebrity who is currently a conservative, they may very well lose the opportunity to take the White House for the next five decades. There is no going back to a Mitt Romney, or a George Bush. Politicians have abused the system so long that the public is done with them.   So Republican Party people who should have listened to me years ago better listen now. You better embrace Trump. If you do you can have the White House for probably the next 16 years and in 2024, you might just get someone like Ted Cruz. Learn from Lovie Smith of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and don’t get caught looking at what worked in the past. Embrace what will work in the future, and seize the opportunity when you get it. For Republicans, that opportunity is now.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Unconquered Donald Trump: CNN’s debate of the century–and beyond

I have watched a lot of very smart people over the last several years throw up their hands in frustration because the political class will not listen, or let them in, to help solve the problems of our states and our country. The desire is there from those smart people to give it everything they have to fix very complicated problems, but they are purposely kept on the fringes to allow the entitlements that come with public service to continue like whores in a Port Royal brothel. Those same people are angry and frustrated that Donald Trump is poised to bring CNN more than 30 million viewers hoping to watch the billionaire presidential candidate bring a smack down to his rival Republican contenders on the debate stage on Wednesday September 16th.

Their frustration is very similar to those who refuse to believe that big time wrestling is fake—because they want to buy the story line that political theater can somehow be solved with logic. But it can’t. The system is too far gone for anything like that, and as well intended as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz may be, the political establishment is against them to the death. So for a president in 2016 to be successful they have to be good at two things, they have to understand “big time” wrestling, and they have to know how money works. It is well-known that Donald Trump understands money. He is a mostly self-made man built the old-fashioned way. But he’s also an entertainer who knows the value of a brand—and his brand is so strong that it has even survived the testosterone filled banter of wrestling fanaticism. Out of all his accomplishments, the sentiment that Trump is an inductee of the WWE in the celebrity wing of the Hall of Fame likely makes him most equipped to be President of the United States in the years following the embarrassments of Obama, Clinton and Bush than anything else.

Trump has always been a fan of the WWE and is good friends with Vince McMahon in real life. Trump hosted both WrestleMania IV and V from Trump Plaza. This marked the first and only time a WrestleMania has been held at the same venue in consecutive years.

Younger fans will probably remember him best being involved in WrestleMania 23. It was billed as the “Battle of the Billionaires”, with Trump’s representative Bobby Lashley beating McMahon’s representative Umaga. Trump got to shave McMahon’s hair off at the event.

There was even a storyline when Trump bought Monday Night Raw off of McMahon in 2009. He staged a historic commercial-free version of the show, which was one of the highest rated Raw shows in many years at the time.

http://www.rantsports.com/pro-wrestling/2013/02/26/donald-trump-enters-the-wwe-hall-of-fame/

Most notably with that “Battle of the Billionaires” was when Trump body slammed McMahon and punched him in the face several times. It was obvious choreography, but think about a 60-year-old Trump actually body slamming McMahon, even playing around. What is important about that event is that the Trump brand was so well-known and respected, that millions of fans supported Trump as the winner of that engagement where McMahon had his head shaved on stage. It was all entertainment theater agreed upon ahead of time, but the fact that McMahon agreed to allow a relatively old man billionaire to beat him in front of millions of people shows to what extent Trump protects his brand.

Trump with all the gusto of the entertainment value he learned through his support of the WWE is promising to release prisoners from Iran, make Mexico build a wall to seal off the American border, and has shown open support of Israel against Iran. He’s promised to cut taxes, save Social Security, and to make America great again—and rich. And a lot of what he has said is done in the same fashion as a WWE wrestler. Now when I showed some of the clips included here to my wife she was immediately turned off by Trump’s participation in the activity. But I found it fascinating. Not only did he fill the seats of his Trump Plaze, protect his investment in WWE, help his friend Vince promote great ratings for his Wrestle Mania events—Trump also increased his own personal brand which is known throughout the world as a quality—larger than life—persona. Trump worked a relatively simple deal at multiple levels to have world-wide impact, and he even participated as a wrestler. He didn’t just sit up in a glass box and watch; he was ring side with McMahon playing along. It was quite a business transaction—fascinating to watch.

The pressure on Trump for the CNN debate must be overwhelming. Everyone on that stage will be gunning for him. Everyone in the audience is carefully waiting for him to body slam someone. And the moderators want to be the ones to go down in history as the one who stumped Trump’s 2016 campaign. And he knows that’s what’s going to happen in front of nearly as many people who watch the Superbowl ever year. Talk about pressure—it doesn’t get any heavier. But Trump has set this whole thing up for several decades, and I wouldn’t doubt it if it didn’t play out in his mind when he and Vince McMahon were setting up “The Battle of the Billionaires.” The Beltway types will look at these clips of Donald Trump at Wrestle Mania and consider it low brow Entertainment Theater appealing to the trailer trash of America—as they sip their white wine during the appetizer portion of a tax payer funded dinner. But Trump knows that cultures around the world don’t care about debates or fancy talk. They will know when he comes to the table to negotiate that the 6’ 3” man from America in the blue suit and red tie that body slams celebrities in front of millions of people Trump is not going to play nicely. When people like Hulk Hogan and many other WWE greats will likely be part of Trump’s body guard entourage from the White House, Trump will have built up a mysticism that no body else could have dreamed to match.

Who would little 5’ 7” Vladimir Putin respect more, the chain-smoking John Boehner with the fake tan and fake courage—who gets pushed around by the skinny communist bastard Obama, or the larger than life Donald Trump who is seen on video, recently, body slamming Vince McMahon? What about negotiations with Iran? Iran doesn’t understand American culture, they don’t watch the debates. But they will watch the tape of Trump at Wrestle Mania—it will likely scare them because they respect that type of bravado. How about Mexico, a country filled with drug lords and corrupt politicians. Do they respect false words from the Beltway or someone who openly scolds El Chapo and fights giant men in front of thousands of people?

I think what Trump has done is brilliant and it all culminates at this CNN debate. It will be the fight of the century, and this one isn’t as planned out as the one between Trump and McMahon—this is a real fight. But the theatrics are what Trump knows and understands and he’s already working at many different levels well ahead of everyone else. To me its clear Trump has been building up his brand to perform this task for a long time. The brilliance of that strategy is to use an unlikely source, such as the WWE to catapult that brand to a voter base that has not been participating in elections—and to also use that footage to gain footage for future capital. There are all kinds of capital. Most of the time we think of capital as money, but there are other kinds. And Trump is planning to use that capital to break through some things that have been in a stalemate for a long time. And it is fascinating to watch. That is for sure.

All this gives me hope for those smart minds who have been trying to fix things. In the wake of this political destruction, which is going on presently, there will be room from those bright minds to flourish in the wake. When Trump avoids specifics it’s because he won’t be the one to solve all the problems of the nation. His role is to clear out the opposition. But the fixes have to come from the best and brightest that America has to offer. And we need a president who understands how to unleash that talent. Ironically, the best way to learn how to do that is by watching Wrestle Mania. There is more truth in a typical WWE fight than all the political speeches on CSPAN collected over a decade. And that’s the sad truth.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

‘Star Wars’ is not a “Slam Dunk” for Disney: Chuck Wendig’s sticky seats with ‘Aftermath’

On Force Friday as my family was in acquisition mode for new Star Wars merchandise, my brother sent me a picture of the new book, Aftermath by Chuck Wendig to show that he had put his hands on the long-awaited book. I politely dismissed the innuendo that the novel was a “hot item” to purchase even though in our house we have EVERY single Star Wars novel ever produced up to this point. My family loves the Expanded Universe and is on the fence as to how much of ourselves we’ll invest in this new day under Disney. I’m personally hopeful. I think millions of young people will love it. I think it’s mostly a slam dunk of positive infusion culturally. But I’ll have to see how the movie turns out and how much they wreck the continuity of the story which at this point takes place over thousands of years. So I have not yet read Aftermath. I certainly will at some point, but not until I have some basic questions answered—such as, why is Chewbacca alive in the new film—those kinds of things.

However, apparently there is a gay character in Chuck Wendig’s new book, and while a galaxy filled with crazy aliens, species that convert to female when it comes time to mate, and literally thousands of primary and secondary characters—some of which are bound to have some unique sexual habits, Star Wars is NOT about sex. Not in the least. Yet Wendig chose to respond to criticism over his character the Imperial turncoat Sinjir Rath Velus with the following diatribe on his blog, Terrible Minds. Wendig hit back at readers who accused the author on Amazon of “blatantly pushing a gay agenda” and suggested that the franchise was no longer “children friendly”.

“If you’re upset because I put gay characters and a gay protagonist in the book, I got nothing for you,” Wendig wrote. “Sorry, you squawking saurian — meteor’s coming. And it’s a fabulously gay Nyan Cat meteor with a rainbow trailing behind it and your mode of thought will be extinct.”

“You’re not the Rebel Alliance. You’re not the good guys. You’re the fucking Empire, man. You’re the shitty, oppressive, totalitarian Empire. If you can imagine a world where Luke Skywalker would be irritated that there were gay people around him, you completely missed the point of Star Wars. It’s like trying to picture Jesus kicking lepers in the throat instead of curing them. Stop being the Empire. Join the Rebel Alliance. We have love and inclusion and great music and cute droids.”

He later told a reader who attacked his confrontational approach to his critics that he would not engage in a conversation on the issue. “Because on this, I am not interested in conversation. If your problem with the book is only the inclusion of gay characters, then no conversation is possible. Because that’s homophobia, that’s bigotry, and there’s nothing to be done or said. Someone wants to talk to me about the writing style or whatever, sure, I can have that discussion. On this, no.”

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/11/star-wars-aftermath-novelist-chuck-wendig-strikes-back-at-gay-character-slurs

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/09/04/star-wars-aftermath-gay-character

If I were Disney execs and Kathleen Kennedy at Lucasfilm, I’d be very concerned. You really can’t have an author for a kids series dropping “F” bombs and proposing that gay meteors are coming with trails of rainbows to follow. Because the use of a gay character in Star Wars clearly was political, and agenda based, otherwise he wouldn’t be so quick to come unglued. Also, it is disturbing that as a Star Wars author, Wendig assumes that the definition of Star Wars resides along the lines of inclusion of gay people within the Jedi Order of Luke Skywalker. While Star Wars can mean lots of things to a lot of different people, the space opera is about good, old-fashioned story telling based on the Saturday morning serials of George Lucas’s youth. They are westerns set in space and if they become anything less than that, then the profit-making machine Disney hopes the property to be will quickly fade away.   I’ve loved Star Wars all my life, but I will be the first one off the train if that’s the direction Disney decides to go. Star Wars is not about where one parks their male sex organs at night. Any romance that does emerge from the stories has direct connections to furthering family lineage. Star Wars is not Game of Thrones. If there is sex and romance, there has always been a point to it. Star Wars is not the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and if Disney thinks they can expand their market share by 2% then they’ll lose 40% who just will drop interest. Times have not changed as much as Wendig thinks based on his comment that conservative modes of thinking will soon be extinct. Miley Cyrus recently said something similar, and I’m sure around San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and places where progressivism is rampant, it’s easy for them to think so. But in Kansas, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Dallas—people aren’t going to rush out to buy the next Star Wars product if they feel a gay agenda is being forced down their throat. They’ll drop interest before Episode 8 hits in May of 2017 and Disney will be in trouble.

Here’s how it works, Disney considers the Avengers: Age of Ultron to be a box office failure even though it made $1.4 billion dollars world-wide. While I enjoyed the movie, I walked out disappointed—I knew how Disney would view the profits from the movie. It wasn’t as good as the first film and it had noticeable progressive influences in the movie that just don’t play well with traditional audiences. Feminism and gay pride may be topics now because of the progressive influence of studio projects, but those are not enduring traits that will still be beloved many years from now. Star Wars is a mythology that should have the same resonance 100 years from now as it does in this decade. And I’ll bet money that 500 years from now, we will be laughed at as a culture for even entertaining all this gay pride stuff. For instance, the two best Star Wars movies are A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Without those two movies, there wouldn’t be a franchise. Obviously the romance in those two stories was the one between Han Solo and Princess Leia. Leia in A New Hope was a raging feminist who was slowly conquered by a strong male archetype typical in most westerns, Han Solo. Over two films he melted her into submission and made a real woman out of her. That is a story point that will endure with human development for hundreds of years and will sustain the growth of billions of dollars in action figures. But if Princess Leia were to stave off Han Solo and start a sexual relationship with Mon Mothma, the whole mythology would have been rejected by the movie going public in seconds. If Disney turns Star Wars into Broke Back Mountain, then there will be hell to pay. They may gain 2% approval from the gay community and the rainbow weirdos who cheered when Obama colored the White House in pretty colors after a Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. But straight people—who will always be in the majority based on biological function, will reject things that they are uncomfortable with. Disney will not be happy when they learn that Star Wars movies won’t make them $2 billion each and the book market dies from a lack of demand for the product. People go to Star Wars to get away from progressive politics, not to relish in it. For me it’s a traditional storyline that is similar to a western—so I love it. Take that traditional element away and I’m not interested. And there are millions who think just like I do.

http://www.therealstanlee.com/disney-considered-avengers-age-of-ultron-a-box-office-failure/

Just a word of warning to Disney—I love the company and its products. Part of that love comes from the traditional family values that it represents. If traditional value is removed from the product, I’m not inclined to spend money on it. There have been many times where obvious gay people perform at Disney World, and I put up with it to be inclusive, but when they are flamboyant about being males pretending to be women with high-pitched tones to their sentence structures, it just gives me a headache. If some hot chick dressed up as Sleeping Beauty wants to stand next to me for a picture, I’m fine with it. But if a dude dressed up as Sleeping Beauty wants to cuddle up next to me to satisfy their own sexuality—that’s not OK. I don’t want to explain that kind of thing to the young people around me, and I don’t want to be put in that position if I’m spending a $1000 dollars a day at an amusement park. And I’m not going to rush out at midnight to buy a book about gay protagonists. Star Wars is not a sure thing. It can be screwed up, and based on the comments from Chuck Wendig, that apprehension is well justified.

I’m completely alright with expanding the role of women in Star Wars. Jaina Solo is bigger than God in our household. I’m also alright with heroes of different skin colors. But when it comes to sex, I don’t want to know about it. Heterosexual activity can be gross at times, but gay sex is just unappealing and I don’t want to be reminded of it when I look at an action figure. If Disney wants to kill Star Wars, then let these “artistic” types have their way with the traditions of Star Wars by turning it into the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Fans of the series will be turned off, but the real terror will come to Disney execs who measure box office receipts—when they find out that their cash cow just laid an egg—and that’s not something that’s supposed to happen in a galaxy far, far away.  Star Wars is not about gay pride, or inclusion. Sex is a “collective experience” something that is shared. Star Wars is about following the bliss of the individual and in saving yourself you save the galaxy. When many people follow their “bliss” evil is conquered and good resumes its work in the world. That has nothing to do with sex. But it has everything to do with what goes on in the human soul. Based on Wendig’s comments, he needs to go back to Star Wars school and Disney needs to re-think who they let drive the car of the franchise—because artists like Chuck are bringing that car back with lots of new dents, scratches, and sticky seats. And that’s just gross.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Need for American Exceptionalism: How the political left has killed thousands and made life miserable for millions

Now you know dear reader why American Exceptionalism is so important. For all you peace lovers, only now do you understand that the wars in the Middle East that took place in recent years were not about oil. They were about stabilized government and the opportunity to live life for the indigenous people of those lands. The so-called American Imperialism that the political left is always talking about is very good for the world. American capitalism is also very good for the world. Wherever America has a military base or business influence, the cultures in those regions prosper. Where America does not have influence, there is war, death, and corruption. What should that tell the United Nations? And what would the United Nations be without the United States?   Nothing. So where does that leave us?

Worldwide presently there are 59.5 million people on the move as refugees within their home countries, victims of tyrannical regimes, poverty-stricken economies, abusive thugs, and environmental disaster. There have never been more people looking to leave where they were hoping to get refuge somewhere else. That is the cause of the problem on the American border with Mexico. Mexico is an impoverished nation collapsing economically under its 100 year commitment toward socialist oriented policies and now they are impoverished. The only real money they have is from American businesses fleeing the high taxation and union demands within the United States, and tourism. The political left is at fault for all those issues, the high taxes, the open border push, the drives toward socialism—yet they take no responsibility for any of it leaving the world a mismanaged mess that is killing many hundreds of thousands of people and leaving millions without hope and opportunity.

The latest crises in Syria has 4.1 million refugees registered fleeing the war-torn area of the Middle East destroyed by ISIS for destinations in Europe hoping for sanctuary somewhere that radicals won’t cut off their heads, rape their women, and corrupt their children. They leave for countries that will allow them to live on welfare—which is why so many are primarily fleeing to Germany. Greece doesn’t have any money to deal with even more people seeking social benefits from a socialist economic system. Obama blew the deal in Syria with Bashar al-Assad when he failed to enforce his “line in the sand” then refused to help that same dictator when indirectly America gave arms to his enemies which rose up to become ISIS—an even greater threat. The cause of that increase of aggression was the power vacuum left behind when America left Iraq, as telegraphed by Barack Obama—who ran for president on the platform of leaving the unpopular war.

As politicians like Rand Paul and his father Ron were technically and Constitutionally correct that America needs to take care of our own borders and not be the police of the entire world, the world actually needs the cowboy heroism of America to save them from mismanagement, religious zealots, and the ugly claws of communism that still seek to spread across the world with a vengeful effort at mass collectivism. So long as the world is rife with communism, socialism and religious fanatics, America is the only country responsible enough to provide peace and shelter to a world literally on fire. The global migrations happening right now are because America has pulled up its global influence and went home to drown in its 19 trillion-dollar deficit.

To any sane mind all these problems, again caused by the political left and their armies of progressives in virtually every field of endeavor. You could further trace much of this trouble back to billionaires like George Soros. His money goes into programs like open border societies, marijuana legalization, and extreme political left progressive candidates. What do all those things have in common? Well, drugs soften the minds of indigenous people while open borders destroy nationalism, creating new voting blocks with socialist foundations to elect progressives to manage the countries while people like hedge fund investors make money on the chaos. There’s no conspiracy there, it’s happening right in front of our faces and nobody is really denying it. Meanwhile, Republicans are more concerned with “playing nice” as millions of young people are killed in China and elsewhere under socialist, communist, and religious administrations. Planned Parenthood is a perfect example of this crises—abortion isn’t just about political and theological debate anymore. Practitioners under tax payer funding are deliberately killing children to sell their body parts. That is a crisis of epic proportions—and again the avocation of the evil is a strategy of the political left. So isn’t it explicitly clear what’s happening and why people are being made to suffer?

One of the terms used to disgrace American occupation of foreign lands is to refer to the act as “cowboy diplomacy” and the concept of the Wild, Wild, West where the naive concept of good guys shooting bad guys is considered reprehensible. America feeling guilt about that accusation stopped making westerns, stopped shipping its values abroad, and avoided the finger-pointing of American Imperialism that has so long loomed like a cloud over the freest capitalist nation on earth. Well, now we see the results of that avoidance. The world was so much better when it made westerns, and kids played cowboys and Indians as opposed to Miley Cyrus grinding on some teddy bears and passing around joints at a press conference. Miley was shaped by progressive politics whereas conservativism was shaped by American westerns and their values.   Turn a cowboy loose in the Middle East and there will be lot fewer refugees fleeing to Germany. I promise. Punish the bad guys so good people can live free. To a liberal that’s an overly simplified statement, because to their minds, evil has a seat at the table of debate. Liberals created all the problems, and the world is suffering under their mismanagement.

The question we have to solve now is what to do about all this. Just blindly taking in refugees and putting them on government assistance won’t solve the problem. They need real help in places like Syria, and Mexico. Those regions do need a return to cowboy diplomacy and a sense of honor typically associated with American westerns. They need capitalism and the opportunities that come with that economic system. The Greek isles depend nearly exclusively on tourism to sustain livelihoods for their inhabitants. They don’t make cars, or even brew beer there, not in any quantities to provide economical means toward social sustainability. They need tourists to visit to provide income to the families who live there. But tourists won’t come if dead bodies continue to wash up on the beach from failed attempts to cross the Mediterranean from Africa and the Middle East by families fleeing the terrorism of ISIS and the caliphate of Islamic extremism. Nobody wants to go on vacation only to see dead bodies on the beach. Yet the United Nations is in complete paralysis as to what to do about it all. They are totally clueless trying to deal with the problem, not the cause of the problem.

The cause of most of the world’s problems is a lack of capitalism and the American bravado to promote it. The reluctance to spread “cowboy diplomacy” throughout the world has been catastrophic. The world needs our help, and we have instead run like chickens—which progressives have told two generations now is a noble cause. Progressives would rather support abortion deaths; rainbow-colored transvestites, and legalized marijuana, than to allow America to feel good about its traditions and responsibility. Saving the world is the responsibility of those most able to do it. If a victim is in distress and a strong personality is nearby to do something about it, the responsibility for action is on those capable of solving the problem. America is the only nation capable of such a thing. And because we are not performing that job now, the world is suffering. The blame for that suffering is not only on the liberals who have caused the mess, but in those of us who have failed to act correctly in the face of danger and opposition. The world needs a little “cowboy justice” and it’s about time we stop apologizing and start giving it to them. Once the world learns to be more like Americans, then maybe the United States can be the way Rand Paul wishes. But not until then.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.