Tag: Free Will

“Can You Spare a Dollar”: President Obama begs for money

The Obama campaign has been very active—and desperate to find cash for his presidential race. On Monday July 30th and Tuesday July 31st I received many emails from their campaign, two of which are shown below. They need money. That’s all there is to it. I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of a campaign that is this desperate so far out from the actual election. This information is indicative of the type of people who simply spend massive amounts of money without an appreciation of what that money’s value is. Here is the first email.

Rich —

I’m not interested in the money race, so I’m just going to tell you how it is.

Our strength heading into November is going to be determined in large part by how much money we raise now. That’s why the fundraising deadline tomorrow at midnight is so important.

We can’t afford to lose — the stakes are just too high.

Can you stand the thought of a president who would take away guaranteed health coverage from people with pre-existing conditions, would be “delighted” to sign a bill banning all abortions, and would raise taxes on the middle class while lowering taxes for millionaires and billionaires?

Me neither.

Donate $3 or whatever you can right now to make sure we can keep Mitt Romney and other Republicans out of office:

https://my.democrats.org/July-Deadline

Thanks,

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Lerner
Political Director
Democratic National Committee

Here is the second email:

Rich —

Tonight’s deadline will be the most critical so far. It’s all going to come down to these last few months, and the budget decisions we make in August could make or break campaigns across the map.

Can you chip in $5 or more before midnight?

I’m gnawing through my pen caps over here. Watching the numbers come in is not exactly a stress-free task, and that’s because of what’s on the line.

It’s not just who will be in the White House for the next four years or whether we’ll keep a Democratic majority in the Senate. It’s what our country will look like for years to come: if our kids will have access to quality health care, education, and the careers they dream of, or if they’ll grow up in a country whose leaders shrug and say “you’re on your own.”

It’s in your hands. And I want to give those Democrats and the President the resources they need to get this done. Please give before the crucial midnight deadline:

https://my.democrats.org/July-Deadline

And tomorrow: new pens.

Hildy

Hildy Kuryk
National Finance Director
Democratic National Committee

What this amounts to is panhandling. Obama and his campaign employees–which are incredibly overstaffed–are essentially saying to the mass population, “brother, can you spare a dime?” They are behaving like panhandlers on a city sidewalk looking for money to buy more booze and cigarettes. Asking for a dollar or three dollars to keep the Obama campaign afloat is a ridiculous proposition. I never get those kinds of emails from the Romney camp and I am in their system. They just don’t operate in the same fashion.

Where Obama is and why he is struggling to find money is that he has already spent the money from his big donors on tactics that haven’t worked, because the misleading activity the money was designed to cover cannot overcome the foolish behavior of the Obama Administration. Since Obama is a socialist, he has alienated most business owners with his preposterous Keynesian economic theory of expanding the financial system from the middle out. Obama is a complete failure as president because he believes in the wrong financial theories. The economy does not grow under the umbrella of communism, and Obama’s theories flow from that assumption. The middle-class does not create jobs. They work for people who do.

The people I know who have money for boats, long vacations, and huge retirement packages all work for government. It used to be the people I knew who possessed those kinds of benefits all worked for the car companies under the UAW labor unions—which is a communist concept. Those companies went out of business. The Firebird/Camero plant in Norwood was leveled in the late 80’s because the unions put them out of business. The Fisher Body plant in Hamilton went out of business around the same time, because the unions destroyed the business. Public unions that were implemented in Ohio around the same time as those automotive jobs were going away, were legalized, so today it is teachers, police and firefighters who have the kind of perky jobs that used to go to the automotive employees. Only the government employees can’t go out of business because government can simply raise taxes to pay for the extraordinary benefits they consume. When the auto manufactures went out of business it was because there cars were too expensive and didn’t last long enough. Nissan, Toyota, and Honda destroyed Ford, Chrysler, and Government Motors over market share because the Japanese cars were better and cheaper.

Obama and his gang of looters views union employees as the middle-class. But everyone can’t be a teacher, a cop, or a firefighter. We can’t have an entire society making up those jobs, because there has to be tax payers who have the money to fund it. Currently, we are at a time as is the evidence of all the school levies in Ohio, the layed off firefighters, cops are a direct result of public employees taking more money than their market value can support. Communists like Obama do not understand how to determine that value. They have an arbitrary value in their minds and they use the enforcement of government to make fiction a reality with higher taxes.

Obama is approaching his presidential campaign the way he has his last term as president. He spends money on theories that are economically unsound to force the middle-class to drive the economy. But it is not the middle-class that makes the economy work. They may spend the money they earn as laborers, but they do not begin those jobs from an idea in their heads. If they do, they are typically wealthy and are taxed at the highest tax bracket anyway. Obama’s plan is to tax those people more so the middle-class can believe they are equal economically to the job creators. And they aren’t.

The job creators have decided not to start new jobs because they don’t want to pay for Obamacare. They don’t want to pay higher taxes to all the community looters like teachers, firefighters, and cops who are simply overstaffed to “create” jobs. Job creators have stayed on the fence to avoid aggressive EPA regulations, a corrupt DOJ, and an overpowering IRS. If the money they work hard to make is simply going to be looted, they will not go to the trouble of creating those jobs. That is what Obama does not understand with his street bum attitude.

Obama has spent the country’s money into bankruptcy, and he has spent his campaign money into bankruptcy. His yield on that money has been a total failure by any investment analysis. He fails because he doesn’t understand the basics. The economists he listened to, the so-called experts were fools also. Just because they have a degree from some Ivy League school does not dictate their level of intelligence. It simply says they were members of an orthodox club of academics. It does not prove the merit of their theories. Only history can do that, and it has. Obama has spit in the face of the job creators and believes that the middle-class will fund the millions of dollars he will need to run a fall campaign. But they can’t, because they don’t have the money.

The real middle-class needs the job creators to provide them with jobs driven by market valued wages to provide them the money to spend on the economy. The money does not fall in the lap of the middle-class just because they show up at work, or while they are fishing on Cumberland Lake. Money has to be made, and if nobody is making the money, then of course the money will be hard to come by.

Romney is getting money for his campaign because job creators want Obama off their backs. It’s that simple. Nobody but the type of employees who want handouts wants a pan handler like Obama to be in charge of the Executive Office. All the money Obama has spent accomplished was putting a suit on a turd, to appear nice. But the money can’t make a turd into gold, and that’s what Obama thinks will happen. That is why he has failed and why all he can do is beg for money from people who don’t have it, and never will until somebody else gives it to them. Those people will not be giving Obama money this time. They already learned their lesson. Obama without all the fancy cloths and the White House as his residence is simply a bum. His mind is the same as a pan handler. Nice cloths and a staff of advisors could make a bum appear sophisticated if they shaved the bum and clothed him well. But such a person does not miraculously become intelligent because they dress nice. A bum is still a bum when all they know to do to make money is hold out their hand, which is precisely what the Obama Campaign is doing.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

The Looters of Monroe: Magic tricks in public education

Administrators aren’t in the OEA. Do your homework before making such claims. There’s absolutely no affiliation.

The above quote came to me over the last weekend July 2012 from a person who works in the education industry. I can tell because their email address came from a local education institution. With the Monroe School Levy one week out, an examination of that comment is deserved. Because if it wasn’t noticed by the general electorate, the whole reason a school attempts a summertime election for education tax increases is to catch people flat-footed and on vacation. The education employees who live in the district along with the radical parents who want free education on the backs of the entire community will show up for the vote, while most everyone else isn’t thinking about schools or politics as they vacation over the summer. The intention of an August election is not to seek the honest opinion of the community. It is to hope that only one side shows up for the vote. Do not allow yourself to become confused by the looters of your community.

Monroe as a school district needs money to pay for their high teacher salaries, just like every school district in Ohio. Those salaries are high because public education has no competition, so they don’t have to perform at a true efficiency in testing results or financial management because the entire system is built on government interference. Sure, politicians have set testing standards, but as Lockland Schools have shown, educators will simply fudge the numbers to get the testing results they need to get their state money. Public schools will lie, cheat and steal to preserve their tax scam against the public. Their intentions are evident for all to see. It’s difficult to admit that our trusted schools are that deceitful, but they are. That is why Monroe is placing a tax increase on the ballot in August. That is also why Lakota’s superintendent Mantia put a levy on the ballot in her previous district of Pickerington last August, which barely passed. And Lakota is not putting a levy on the ballot in 2012, because they are concerned that in Butler County, too many conservative voters will show up at the polls to vote Obama out of office, and that means they are also likely to vote down the fourth Lakota attempt to raise taxes on the community to pay for high employee salaries. It’s not because school administrators are kind, or have seen the light. It’s because they wish to attack the community again when the numbers are more favorable to levy passage. They are not interested in the real concerns of the community. That’s why the Lakota School Board is spending $40,000 dollars on “Community Conversations” to a progressive Cincinnati group to turn neutral voters into “Yes” votes so the district can legally steal money from the 18,000 who have voted “NO” in the previous elections. The intent of spending tax payer money on such a program is to manipulate the vote. Not to find the truth of how the community actually feels. It’s about manipulation, not truth.

The person who sent me that comment above is testing the water to see how much we know about their education scam. So I’ll explain here what I said to them. When it’s said that administrators are not a part of the teachers union, and that I should get my facts straight before speaking, they say it hoping that I don’t know how their trick works. But unfortunately for them, I do. Most administrators are hired from within the ranks of the teaching profession, meaning they were teachers at some point in their past. There may be a few exceptions but for the most part, all education administrators are inbred within the union structure. When they become administrators they do not have the stomach to manage their costs the way all other companies do, because they are broken horses that the union rides to easy contract victories over management. There is a reason that there are legal constraints on who can be a superintendent of a public school. For instance, if Lakota wanted to pay a person like me, or any member of No Lakota Levy to be superintendent of Lakota, it would be illegal, because there are rules on who can hold that position and those rules were created by the OEA lobby in Columbus to protect them from such radical changes. By law, Lakota must hire a broken ex-teacher like Superintendent Mantia who will deep down to her core be loyal to the teachers who work under her, instead of the community that pays the bills with their taxes.

The dirty little secret is that administrative management in public education wants the teachers to make $50,000 to $60,000 per year for a 7.5 work day 9 months out of the year because it’s assumed that administrators will make more money, otherwise teachers would never strive to become members of management. This inadvertently drives up the wage cost of administrators. Most administrators in public education are making between $75,000 per year to $100,000 so of course they support the high union contracts because it drives up their wages when they leave the union to join management.

Superintendents are even more notorious. Many of them make more money than the governors of entire states. They make more just to watch a handful of school buildings. In fact Superintendent Mantia did her doctorial thesis on the very subject of how the Superintendent pool was so bad in the country because the pay was not very good–that the gap between the teaching profession and the teachers were not wide enough. Her observation was that teachers were not showing a desire to move into management and ultimately into superintendent positions because there wasn’t enough money as an incentive to lure them into management. As a superintendent, she drives up her own costs by supporting teacher contracts that are high, because as a manager she is expected to make more money—a lot more money. Between Lakota’s superintendent and the amount of money the school board has spent just on public relations in a one year period, the cost to the community is a half million dollars.

The public education scam costs a lot of money and that is what Monroe is dealing with. They are in financial trouble because they did not manage their labor costs. The administrators had no desire to manage their labor costs because they were all bred into the system from within, they have no direct competition, they have political support who will create laws that support their unions, and everyone working in education is taking a lot of money out of the community pot, and when they run out, they demand more. Monroe as a school district has an empty pot and the school is demanding that it be filled. They hope that not enough people who watch the money are paying attention and the levy will pass without a complete vote from the community. That’s why the newspapers aren’t talking about the levy, because the only people who are intended to know about the tax attempt are the people the school wants to show up and cast a vote.

A lot of people who work in the education industry are appalled by my comments because they come from the “outside.” They try to belittle my opinion because according to them, I do bullwhip acts and wear a cowboy hat, so I’m not qualified to speak about these matters. In reality, my experience with that side of my life have put me in contact with many people who are magicians for a living, and over the years I’ve learned how a lot of magic tricks are performed. A magician is all about deception, and getting people to look in one direction as opposed to where the actual problem is. So it’s very easy for me to see that the person who sent me that note is attempting to deceive me with directional persuasion. The attempt is to convince me that administrators are not in the union, which is true, so there is no direct correlation between administrators and union partnership. Magic tricks work because people tend to look for direct relationship between the rabbit in the hat and its disappearance. It’s what they don’t see that makes the trick happen.

The levy in Monroe is about the lack of management of their labor costs. If voters don’t show up and vote the tax increase down, then no management of the community resources will occur. Like piranhas in an Amazonian river the education employees at Monroe will proceed to give themselves raises and dump money onto their lavish lifestyles in a magic trick performed against the community. And the magic trick begins in an August election when most everyone else is looking someplace else. A wave of the magic wand and—poof—more money will appear from the community for the looters of public education to plunder. Monroe will then wonder why the only business they have in their community is the Hustler store and Traders World as high taxes will push away current and future investment by those who pay the most taxes—the business owner—who is almost always the victim of the magic tricks and finds the rabbit in their laps hidden from the public who believe that the magicians of public education actually performed magic, when all it ever was—was a trick.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

We Should Have Called Guinness: Tales from 2012’s Annie Oakley Western Showcase

I haven’t made a secret of it, every year when we have dinner at the Fairlawn Steak House with my friends at the annual Annie Oakley Festival it’s a kind of calibration for me to get my roots firmly back in the ground. To see last year’s article (CLICK HERE). It was refreshing to see some of the old faces again, and it was wonderful to see new ones. There were some who had paying jobs who couldn’t come this year which happen to fall on this particular weekend which was unfortunate, but does happen. For the most part, the Wild West is alive and well with the group I feel privileged to know and call friends.

I’ve known Gery Deer for around a decade now as he has put on the Western Showcase at Annie Oakley for about that long. It’s a thankless job that encompasses a lot of love for the Western Arts which ranges from music to period weapons. I was asked by many people who know me in other places besides my outback hat and bullwhips if I was going to the Restoring Love event down in Dallas, Texas over the same weekend. Even though there were many reasons for not going, most of them due to time constraints, my primary restraint was not to miss this wonderful event on the last weekend of July at the Darke County Fairgrounds.

It was nice to see Lash Luke back from Birmingham, Alabama. Luke came to his first Annie Oakley event last year as a 16 year old. His mom had brought him and he attended his first dinner with us at the Fairlawn. This year he was back, this time his dad brought him. He was much faster and sharper as a 17 year old, and had improved a lot in just one year of very hard work. He was so good that he won the heart of the young lady who was Miss Annie Oakley this year at the event that completely takes over Greenville, Ohio. She was so impressed with him that every free moment she had where she didn’t have to do “official” Annie Oakley business she was in the Coliseum at our Wild West exhibit to see him as we were cracking whips and throwing knives to a captive audience.

An impressive new whip maker named David Crain brought his act up from Middletown and set up a booth that had a lot of interest as he displayed his hand made nylon whips which were very, very good. I worked with them all day and they had wonderful balance and a lot of snap. His whips are also extremely creative as he custom turns all the handles on his own lathe. By trade he is an instrument maker—specifically drums and his whips look very much like instruments and for an extremely reasonable cost. I could easily have done two handed routines with my normal 6’ Terry Jacka 12 plait whip that costs nearly $600 in one hand and one of David Crain’s nylon whips in the other of the same length and not known much of a difference for around $130. His whips are perfect for people just trying to get into the sport as his whips are wonderful for beginners and professionals alike. In fact Richard Best who travels the country every year with his wife Donna Daring performing traditional western acts commissioned David to make a special nylon whip just for him. Richard has several nylon whips none of them he likes a whole lot, until he saw David’s.

During the whip competitions this year David Crain on behalf of his company Heartbeat Artistry donated the prizes for the Speed and Accuracy competition, the Speed Switch, and the Bull Whip Fastdraw. The prizes were 3’, 4’ and a 5’ custom made Crain whips. I was very happy with my performance this year even without as much time to practice as I normally do; I came away with my fastest time ever on the Speed and Accuracy competition of 11 seconds flat. The world record is 9 seconds hitting 10 targets. I hit 12 in 11 seconds which comes out to around .9 per crack. That was pretty good. If we had called Guinness for that attempt I might have had a world record, but I didn’t expect to come that close. Usually the winning time is 12.5 seconds to 14 seconds. I’ve won before with 12.6. I also did well on the speed switch this year with a time of 18.6 seconds which is more difficult because you have to use both hands going down the target stands one way with your right hand then back the other with your left. Times on that one are normally in the high 20’s because it’s hard to be accurate with both hands and time deductions for misses are very common. I also did well in the bull whip quick drawl, which I’ve had a problem with in the past. If you go too fast, you tend to pull the whip off to the right depending on how it’s coiled. So I backed off my speed a bit this year and hit the target squarely each time, something my son-in-law Paul is very, very good at. He has won the bullwhip quick draw more than any of us because he has the perfect combination of aggression, patience, precision and of course speed. That’s the trick of the fast draw which was invented by Gery Deer and Kirk Bass of Bass Blades.

Because of my good day with the whip competitions my grandson will be the recipient of the whips won from these competitions when he’s born. He doesn’t know it yet because he’s still kicking around inside my daughter, but the moment he’s born, he gets the 3’ whip. When he gets older, like age three and then four, I’ll give him the longer ones on his birthdays. The whip maker David had his daughter with him and she was 5 years old and cracking a leaf out of his hands. So my unborn grandson will be expected to do at least that much. Those whips will be the perfect size to learn on for a small child and they will all match and will take him well into his teenage years.

Kirk and Melodie Bass routinely energize the crowds with their knife throwing shows that are very unique. Kirk has been throwing knives for about 8 years now, and he is one of the best there is. The Bass family concentrates on knife throwing, but they do a little bit of everything, including whips. Melodie has always participated in the bullwhip competitions having fun as she goes. While we were eating at the Fairlawn her 5 year old curly haired son gazed at me over chicken sticks. I remember vividly 5 years ago when Melodie put up a respectable time on the speed and accuracy competition while pregnant with that child. They are an amazing family.

Gery Deer and his wife were as busy as ever. They are regularly booked for whip shows, and musical acts with Gery’s band titled The Brothers and Company who are most recently known for their controversial appearance at the Murphy Theater in Wilmington, Ohio. There they performed a song called “Big Butter Jesus Burned to the Ground” in homage to the famous statue in Monroe, Ohio that caught fire during a lightning storm. Gery currently does regular news segments for Channel 2 WTDN in Dayton as well as other television work in and around Dayton. Gery occasionally does convention and costume work for Indiana Jones because of his whip studio. Gery has most of the official costume items of Indiana Jones except for an authentic hat as it was designed for Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is a very unusual Fedora design. At Annie Oakley this year a custom hat maker from Cleveland drove down and met Gery to give him the most authentic Indiana Jones hat I’ve ever seen worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $500. It looks exactly like the Raiders hat that is in the Smithsonian, to every detail. It even has the varied brim widths around the hat to hang down over the face more than a typical Fedora. Gery was excessively happy about receiving this new hat as he wore it to dinner after their music performance.

Like all good things, they don’t last forever. The night had to come to a conclusion at some point in time. Most of us reluctantly sat around the dining table at the Fairlawn drawing out the evening even longer, but once we started paying checks, the indication that the marathon race to the next Annie Oakley event was about to begin for 2013 became clear.

A lot happens in a year and annually at the Annie Oakley Western Showcase I calibrate myself to the true values that hold everything up, the values that support family, friendships, and nations, and all those elements are present at the dinner table at the Fairlawn Steak House. The truth is easy to see for those who venture outside of their comfort zone just a little bit. For those who don’t, one can only feel pity as their lives are like compass needless spinning in perpetual search for true north. For me, north is in Greenville, Ohio and the friends I meet there every year. It’s in the whip cracks, the gun fire, and the sound of the knives sticking hard into a wooden backdrop. It’s the smell of fried streak fries and wood smoke from an open campfire. It’s the bright eyes of little children clapping at the magic tricks of Professor Karns, or the whip routines of Lash Luke, the roping of Richard Best and the bravery of Melodie Bass. But more than anybody it is Gery Deer who keeps it all together one year at a time performing western acts that are nearly extinct. In him it lives with perpetual hope, that tomorrow it will be alive for a new generation. And when my grandson is born, it will begin with a 3 foot whip from David Crain. Because if I need to do anything different in this upcoming year as opposed to years past, it’s more of what has worked and less of what didn’t. For me what works best are lots of bull whips and cut targets, with memories, friends and 8 X 10’s.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

Review of ‘Dark Knight Rises’: A movie of great entertainment–and importance.

I wanted to calm myself down before giving a review of Dark Knight Rises, the latest in the highly acclaimed Batman trilogy by Christopher Nolan, because as a movie it does nearly everything correctly as a motion picture experience, and I found it absolutely stunning. Dark Knight Rises would be a great film even if you watched it on an iPod, because it’s about as close to a perfect movie that can be made. However, knowing that this film was going to be a spectacle that deserved the biggest screen with the best sound system I could find, I watched the film from my favorite movie theater in the Cincinnati area—the Regal Theaters in Deerfield Township near Mason.

There are very good movie regional movie theaters, the Showcase Cinemas in Springdale come to mind followed closely by the AMC Theaters at Newport on the Levee. For a theater to be great it needs to place its movies on a pedestal to be watched in a temple of honor. The hallways taking the viewer to their movie need to help pave the way to a mythic experience, because that’s really what people expect from the price of an expensive movie ticket. I’m not a fan of the Rave Theaters simply because they are typically dirty from large amounts of teenage traffic, particularly at the one in West Chester. The floors are sticky, the seats feel used, and the events leading up to the movie are cheesy and low-class. I’d compare the experience to a drive-in movie only it’s inside instead of outside. They were built to be majestic, but they are just not cared for, they take the moviegoer for granted, which is a big mistake. The Regal in Deerfield Township is everything that a movie theater should be. They are clean; they have nice big theaters with very good screens. They have wonderful seats, large isles, wonderful pre-movie entertainment and large hallways leading up to the individual theaters. The theater itself sits on a large hill and has colossal columns outside the ticket windows to provide a majestic appearance. I’d liken it to a great temple designed for storytelling.

When Dark Knight Rises finished I sat till the final credits scrolled across the screen feeling that I had maybe witnessed the best movie I had seen in twenty years. It was a true masterpiece. The last time I enjoyed a movie as much as Dark Knight Rises was Jurassic Park in 1993 where I came away from that movie pleasantly surprised and deeply satisfied. There have been a lot of movies since then, many of them good to very good. But none of them have had the visual impact, and story line punch that Dark Knight Rises had. Being a fan of Christopher Nolan’s last film, Inception I expected this latest Batman film to be good. I also expected it to be good because of the previous two Batman films, The Dark Knight, and Batman Begins were very good, but Dark Knight Rises goes to the extra trouble of being simply fantastic.

It was more of a visual novel paying homage to such classics as Tail of Two Cities. But during the entire film I kept thinking that it was more of an action packed rendition of Atlas Shrugged.  If it can be forgotten that Dark Knight Rises is based on a comic book character, the theatrics are very heady stuff. It’s a deeply intelligent film. It’s filmed with a philosophy that does not wish upon a star of blind hope, but is grounded in a gritty reality that hits the core of virtually every human being alive—the desire to be more than we are to serve a purpose that matches our imaginations.

I have read comic books all my life. But I didn’t follow the story of Batman very closely. I personally leaned more toward the character of Zorro over the years being more of a western oriented story which I prefer over the technical expertise of Batman—Don Diego and Bruce Wayne are essentially the same type of character. Zorro made the sign of the ‘Z’ whereas Batman had the Bat Signal. Both are wealthy men who work their bodies and minds into improvement to perform superhuman feats. Bruce Wayne and Don Diego are Nietzsche’s overman, they are Ayn Rand’s “men of the mind.” They are human like anyone else, but achieve a level of mental and physical prowess that exceeds what most human beings attempt, and they use their personal wealth to mask their social intentions of mankind’s preservation. But under Christopher Nolan’s direction, Bruce Wayne takes the next evolutionary step into a deeply compelling character.

The mentor of Bruce Wayne from Batman Begins is Ra’s al Ghul who is an international criminal mastermind intent on restoring perfect environmental balance to the world by destroying most of humanity. Ra’s al Ghul is at the head of an international terrorist organization called the League of Shadows which was the intended destination of Bruce Wayne in the first film. This is a very contemporary theme as there are many real life characters that have Ra’s al Ghul’s world view that the environment must be preserved at the expense of mankind. Actually this is the debate of our age and has led entire nations into communism, socialism, dictatorships and is in direct conflict with capitalism, which Bruce Wayne represents as a billionaire.

In Dark Knight Rises Batman’s ultimate nemesis is Bane, who comes out of the League of Shadows as an ‘evolved’ man himself, not afraid of anything, and presenting compelling problems. He presents to Gotham City an option of communism, while using it as a distraction to actually purge the world of human overpopulation. Bane immediately reminded me of Stalin in the former Soviet Union except with a theatrical overtone. Bane is the most effective villain since Darth Vader from the Star Wars films. Banes synthesized voice was striking and as a character. He won me over in his very first scene where he confidently put himself on death’s door in a plot as maniacal as the ultimate villains from any ten James Bond films. Bane was a wonderfully evil character. There is absolutely no mistake about it. He is the opposite of Bruce Wayne in every category except that both men were trained by the League of Shadows.

In the Star Wars films it is the conflict between the Sith and the Jedi that drives the constant yearning to always know more about those movies that has made them so enduring. There is a truth in Star Wars as movies and books that hold the essential arguments of our age about spirituality, heroics, sacrifice, and political structure. The Sith are evil as it might be typically portrayed and the Jedi are the good. But at times the Jedi are too sacrificial, and they allow evil to emerge because they are not aggressive enough to stop it. And the Sith have appeal because they are all about aggression to achieve their intentions at any cost. In these Batman films it is the League of Shadows which actually hits much more closely to reality than any work of fiction being produced today. Listening to the merits of the League of Shadows it is easy to draw modern comparisons to al Qaeda and the current Occupy Movement being driven by political anarchists, socialists, Marxists, communists and the environmental movement.

Bane’s character was fleshed out well before there was a current ‘Occupy Movement” on Wall Street. The call for these modern parallels comes from literature that has been pouring out of Europe for a long time, most recently The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee. So Dark Knight Rises cannot be said to reflect those modern movements that has started to emerge in Greece and Spain with violence. Many countries in Europe are currently collapsing under the weight of socialism financially, which is driven by underground political groups reading The Coming Insurrection. Christopher Nolan definitely has his finger on the world’s pulse as he and his brother came up with a plot that is hauntingly timely considering much of the script to this latest Batman installment was written way back in 2004 and 2005. The creators of Dark Knight Rises observed the conditions of our modern world and saw that comic books had predicted much of our current trouble back in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s so they brushed them off into the incredibly relevant motion picture adaption that take the next theatrical step.

Cat Woman played by Anne Hathaway was excessively gripping. Anne was caught herself last year as a ‘Wall Street Occupier’ disguised in the crowd before being caught on film. Cat Woman was openly a socialist at the beginning of Dark Knight Rises. She is built up as a character that the audience will most likely identify with. She like many young people have been taught that society owes them something and if they don’t get it legitimately, then they’ll take it. Cat Woman has some really terrific scenes with Batman, the ultimate capitalist about the nature of money and the social role of the rich. Bruce Wayne as Batman finds her compelling and doesn’t lecture her on her social errors which was a wise choice. Instead, Cat Woman learns like the rest of the audience what the horrors of her idealism can, and will lead to. Playing a kind of biblical Judas, she trades Batman over to Bane only to witness through Batman’s demise how Gotham City is destroyed by removing the only man who can protect it.

The question of why only one man can stop Bane is the general premise of the novel Atlas Shrugged, and it is explored in Dark Knight Rises epically. The personal quest of Bruce Wayne realizing that nobody but him can save Gotham from the mobs that have been collected under idealism is potent stuff in this film. There are some deep and meaningful insights that Bruce Wayne had to endure and overcome that are the themes to most of the articles I write here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom, and I was eating it up like popcorn. Specifically, the point in the film where Bruce Wayne is crippled, and barely kept alive—tortured into watching the violent demise of Gotham City from a hellish pit. It is in this pit that the classic mythic motif of death and resurrection takes place. Wayne faces down the ghost of his former mentor Ra’s al Ghul and discovers that Bane learned to be such a monstrous provoker of evil from this very same place, and the only way to beat Bane is to survive the way he did, to become even stronger than he was before. Batman discovers that his weakness was his success, and that he has been failing because he does not fear death. There is a part of Bruce Wayne who wants it all to end, who wants the pain to go away, and it is in that trait that is holding him back from defeating Bane.

It is in a love of life that we ultimately live and fight for each moment. Without that love, life takes on a darker meaning, and this is what poisons much of the world. Batman didn’t know it, but Bane was fighting from a position of love and therefore had more passion. It was in that passion that Bane had so much strength, and it is what Bruce lacked. At the beginning of the film, this is why Bruce Wayne is a broken man hiding as a recluse in exile. He has a broken heart, and his body and mind reflected it. To heel, he had to want to live. This is the heart of Dark Knight Rises.

As usual, Hans Zimmer conducted a masterpiece of film music. He is the next best thing to hit Hollywood films since John Williams. I enjoy all his soundtracks, and Dark Knight Rises was simply fantastic. The use of percussion was so pulsating throughout the film that my adrenaline often wanted to ram my head through a wall in excitement. Some of the combat scenes were simply epic in large part due to Hans Zimmer’s music. There were many moments that reminded me of Braveheart, and it was Hans Zimmer’s music that sold the scenes wonderfully.

Dark Knight Rises is filmmaking at its very, very best. Such a movie only comes along every so often, and will resonate in our culture for many years, and for good reason. I personally read many comparative religion books, political commentaries, economic theories, legal jargon, and world history. But I have always found a truth in comic book stores and national conventions that evades most social insiders.

There is a very good reason that young people flock to video games, movies, and comic books in greater numbers than they ever have before. They often don’t know the reason, but they are simply searching for a truth that they require to advance their lives. Many of them will not discover it. They will listen when someone tells them to ‘grow up’ get a job, and serve society. But the truth they are looking for is the one that Bruce Wayne was forced to discover in Dark Knight Rises. It’s a love of life that everyone must find. And before anyone can save anybody, they must first save themselves.

I was the last one out of the crowded theater at the Regal. My family had left me sitting right in the center of the large theater. I was happier at the conclusion of the film than I had been in a long time because when I am asked why I write all this work online for free, it is to cover many of the themes that were shown in Dark Knight Rises. I felt I had just watched a book that I had wanted to read for many years, and had been trying to get people to see by putting the information out for free just so people could discover their own love of life and not find themselves crushed by the Banes of the world.

I had so much positive energy flowing through me that I was reluctant to stand up because I might leap over the rail and bounce around the empty theater like an electron in a particle separator. I had to sit still to calm myself down. The projectionist looked down from his booth wondering if I was OK and seeing that I was left me alone. I sat in the theater for five full minutes in complete silence. No usher came in to clean since we had seen the last show of the evening. It was 11 PM. I have been hungry for Dark Knight Rises for such a very long time. I am glad that a director like Christopher Nolan had been given a chance, and the substantial budget to put on the big screen a spectacle that had all the heart of an independent film, with the epic scale that only a well-funded studio picture could provide. I know all too well how incredibly difficult it is to assemble anything close to what Nolan made for Warner Brothers and ultimately the world. But he did it, and I thank God that he did.

Dark Knight Rises is simply the best movie currently out. It is the best film I’ve seen in 20 years and that says a lot. There are many films that are very good, but Dark Knight Rises is on a level of its own. If you have not seen it do not waste another minute. While it’s true that we are all busy in life with projects of our own, work that must be done, families to raise, and social events to engage in, everyone should see this movie. Believe me—there isn’t a film that more accurately frames the problems of our day better than Dark Knight Rises. It is not a simple comic book adaptation. It is an epic myth that takes on virtually every major contemporary problem with a boldness that is unprecedented. It is the very best that Hollywood has produced and is a wonderful export of American ideas that can be shared with a world in deep need of the message. It is more than a movie; it is a life-sustaining essence that is deeply meaningful if the layers of entertainment are peeled away so that we can swim in a much-needed truth. If I had a ranking system of one star through five—one being the worst, five being the best—I’d give Dark Knight Rises TEN STARS (**********)

See Dark Knight Rises once—then see it again, and again, and again, and again, and again until they finally pull the film from theaters. I can say this; I will go out and buy an entirely new television and sound system so that when Dark Knight Rises is released to video, I can watch it on Blue Ray at least once a week using the latest technology and I will turn that sucker up all the way! I like the movie that much! But it will never be as good as the first experience in the Regal. That is why when the lights came up and everyone left the theater I was still sitting, because I did not want to leave that seat, or the theater. I wanted the magic to continue on forever, because I’m not sure I’ll ever in my lifetime see another movie as good as Dark Knight Rises.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

Bandit Run 2012: The future of ‘Tail of the Dragon’

One of the reasons I wrote the Tail of the Dragon was because I wanted to read it. When I was a kid, I loved the movies Smokey and the Bandit and Hooper and have been waiting for three decades for film makers and authors to write an updated version of those classic stories—but I’m still waiting. I’m not alone in this. To this day millions of movie fans still adore those films and some even go to the measure of doing the Bandit Run in their restored Trans Am’s from Texarkana, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia duplicating the car chase from that 1977 Burt Reynolds film. This year a group of car restoration enthusiasts just completed their annual 2012 Bandit Run which began in 2007 to touch the magic of those classic films and relive the enduring memory they have in American film culture.

I happen to have one of those old Firebirds from 1977 in my garage and it’s a family treasure. It is that car and the memory of those great films that provoked me to stop waiting for someone else to write a modern, Smokey and the Bandit story. I think its wonderful that there are still enough fans of the old films, and there are still a few of those old Firebird Trans Am’s around that allow events like the Bandit Run’s to take place, but I couldn’t help but think that young people today need an updated story—a new story that speaks to their age and the concerns of their times. For sentimental reasons, I wanted the star of the story to be one of those old Firebirds so that in the future there would be old car restorers years down the road who would want to organize a Tail of the Dragon run because the story I wrote inspired them to do such a thing.

I picked the Tail of the Dragon road on US 129 in Tennessee because I think it has the makings of being the kind of nostalgic road to the American psyche that Route 66 was. The Tail of the Dragon is a very unique road that features 318 switch back curves in an 11 mile stretch that forms the western border of the Great Smoky Mountains. Exotic cars and motorcycles from all over the world come to this section of road to exercise the suspensions of their beloved automobiles. Below is a video of a Ferrari that came to the motorcycle resort at the corner of the Moonshiner 28 and The Tail of the Dragon to make a nice run on the switch back curves. The camera work will show how curvy this road is. The video only shows a fraction of the road, but it supplies a wonderful perspective of the dramatic scenery surrounding the Tail of the Dragon.

The shack shown across from the motorcycle resort is now a full-sized store with a wonderful outlook built into the hillside. You can see more about that new store here, where Tail of the Dragon merchandise can be purchased. (CLICK TO VISIT) The scenery changed a little since that video was shot, but for the most part, nothing else has. It’s one of the most unusual sections of road in the world.

Police have made a habit of patrolling that thoroughfare to pick up speeders knowing that people are going to that section to push the limits of their vehicles. For instance, in our family minivan when I went recently to visit Darryl Cannon (AKA Killboy) I spent much of the time while on the Dragon at 37 MPH with the tires screeching constantly. That gives an idea how many curves there are, when 37 MPH is considered fast. In really nice exotic cars like Lamborghini, and the Ferrari shown above, speeds of 40 to 50 MPH could be achieved without too much trouble. But the nature of the road is a challenge for both car and driver alike. Brake timing is crucial because moving your foot from the accelerator to the brake is an ongoing battle. When I found Killboy parked on the side of the Dragon photographing riders as they passed by, I could smell my brakes from such aggressive driving. Our minivan wasn’t designed for that kind of run, but it was still fun.

I arrived to see Killboy right after he shot the video below. Every weekend he sits on the side of the road and photographs everything that goes by. He offers his photos on his site www.KILLBOY.com .  Riders can purchase professional grade photos of themselves driving by, and yes–business is good. Thousands of riders pass by him every weekend and he photographs them all. He is the original photographer of the Tail of the Dragon, so when I decided to write a book about the area, I had to make sure that he was one of the characters. His photography is highly sought after by automotive and motorcycle magazines across the country as he has samples on his site of some of his work. His brand of photography is kind of like fishing. He sits on the corners of the Dragon and shoots his camera at everything that goes by, and every now and then he captures something really spectacular—just like fishing. A story about the Tail of the Dragon just wouldn’t be the same without Killboy being a part of it.

Killboy is his video gamer tag name and over the years it just stuck. Now, it’s what he’s known by. In my novel Tail of the Dragon Killboy finds himself in a lot of trouble with the law in Blount County. He is the spark that starts a whole lot of chaos with just the simple bet of a hot dog. The officers of the law take serious offense to the activities Killboy was participating in with Rick Stevens—the novel’s hero–which ignites the greatest car chase ever.

When writing the novel it made sense that a car chase that would be bigger than Smokey and the Bandit, bigger than the ending of Hooper, bigger than anything ever done in books or films with much more speed than the popular NASCAR film Days of Thunder, or the insane car chase in the Blues Brothers where part of the chase ended up in a shopping mall–which is taken to much higher heights in Tail of the Dragon–the chase needed to start at this historic road of US 129. And it’s in the spirit of those great classics that the future of the Dragon will host similar runs that will bring great joy to thousands of people as they make the Dragon Run Car Chase part of an annual tradition. Such a run will take them from Deals Gap at the resort, down the Dragon, across the Foothills Parkway, into Townsend, Tennessee over to Pigeon Forge, Sevierville, then down I-40 into Ashville, North Carolina where the novel comes to an electrifying conclusion. At every stretch of that chase along those roads and towns are events that are as big as the climaxes in most movies. The chase is exhausting, but Dragon Run Car Chase Runners will make their journeys through those landmarks in much the way that the Bandit Runners have, and it will allow them to take in some of the most spectacular sites available in and around the Great Smoky Mountains.

For me it’s fun to take a break from politics, and finance to just enjoy the finer things in life. Most often, I enjoy works of fiction that on the surface are tension relieving and just plain fun. That is why Smokey and the Bandit is still a beloved movie that provokes so much emotion. And if I did my job correctly in writing Tail of the Dragon it will bring to a new generation that same kind of passion, which I hope it does. Because I want to be there when the first Tail of the Dragon Car Chase Run is made, which will be quite a sight. It’s the celebration of the fun things in life that often count most and give meaning to all the stuff in between.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

More Guns Not Less: The reason we have the Second Amendment

After reading the George Costanza comments about the ‘Dark Knight’ shootings in Colorado chastising gun ownership, it is time to speak the truth about the reason we have the Second Amendment in the first place—the cold hearted truth which cannot be spoken about since progressives have turned the entire argument into an emotional one. Costanza isn’t the only one to say after the tragic shooting that there is no reason common citizens should have access to assault weapons and ammunition clips that allow over 100 rounds to be shot before reloading. Many sensitive types—other actors and politicians in the wake of the shooting were quick to express outrage that the American public should not have access to guns at all, let alone military grade firearms. They reason that we already have a military, and a police force, so the term “well regulated militia” as it’s described in the Second Amendment is already covered. We hire those defensive entities to do “protective” work for us, so the common population does not need to own firearms—in their view.

Pro gun people in reaction to the ignorance of the sensitive progressive types suffering from extreme levels of naiveté have tried not to hurt the feelings of their counterparts in direct argument by saying weapons are needed for hunting and self defense—but that’s not why we need the Second Amendment.

While people like George Costanza wish to believe that the security of our property can be hired out, just as they believe the education of children can as well, they fail to acknowledge a fundamental fact about human nature–the desire to control others. When one human being has more power than another human being, abuses will take place. It happens all the time with sexual abuse cases, and it happens all the time in regards to police officers abusing their right to assert dominance over civilians just because they have a gun. There are thousands and thousands of examples of police abuse over common citizens every year that are covered up because when law enforcement goes bad, there isn’t anyone to police the police.

Most of the actors who speak out against gun control live in social bubbles in the valley of land that rests between the mountains of California dividing Las Vegas with Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean. Talking with some of these people as I have in the past, I doubt they know much about the world beyond those mountains to the east except when they travel to Vegas. They are not self reliant individuals, but they don’t have to be. They get paid good sums of money which helps isolate them from the outside world. If they are big actors they probably employ private body guards, so they can’t imagine a world where guns are needed. They use their money as a weapon in a different way, so they don’t need guns.

Politicians in Washington already steal for a living, so it’s to their advantage to have a society that does not carry guns. It makes it much easier for them to steal from the tax payers. Politicians use the civilian police force to enforce the money schemes they enact, so they have no need of guns to carry out their devastating desires. And residents of New York made a concession to their freedom to live on that island of concrete so they could see pretty lights and take their shot at success in the Big Apple. Politicians like Bloomberg who have vast amounts of wealth hire out all their protect duties, and when they need something from politics, they simply grease the wheels with their money, so they have no need of guns.

But for everyone else, the ability to own a gun is the only thing that stands between freedom and total control by an unruly government. The Second Amendment is there to protect the American population from an out-of-control government who can turn our police and military against us with a simple signature. For people like Costanza who was most likely having an enjoyable New Years Eve party in Hollywood with his acting friends, they weren’t aware, or didn’t want to be aware of the NDAA Act President Obama signed in Hawaii while nobody was watching on New Years Eve giving himself the power to call martial law and arrest American citizens for the suspicion of terrorism. In the case of the communist Obama, he could view people who advocate capitalism as a terrorist to his political agenda, so the NDAA Act gives him the power to use police and the military to carry out arrest and detainment of American citizens perpetually. This is a very dangerous situation, and most of our current Congress and Senate signed in favor of the law under the disguise of protecting America from terrorism.

Government cannot be trusted under any circumstances. When given power, they will take more than they are given 100% of the time. Only high quality minded people can handle such temptations without abuse. I believe there are a few such people in our current government, but not many. Our society just does not produce such people, not just in America, but anywhere in the world. When given the opportunity to abuse power, most people will. The only protective measure anyone can have is the ability to be just as armed as the military. That is the spirit of the Second Amendment.

When the people of America lose respect for the law, because the law has abused their rights, the American people are obligated to remove the corrupt from office and re-establish government. When politicians show they do not respect the vote and will lie, cheat and steal to obtain office so they can gain access to all the perks given by the tax payers, then more aggressive measure may be needed to restore the Republic. And that won’t happen with broom sticks and wooden swords. Currently the politicians can use our military against us, and the police now fall under direct Presidential authority because of the NDAA Act. If a United States President goes bad during their term they can use the police and military to keep them in office using martial law to stay in power.

Nobody wants to believe any President would be so bad, that such a thing could happen, but the precedent has been set in the latest trends of Presidents both Republican and Democrat to use Executive Order to by-pass congress. More and more, members of the Executive Branch seem inclined to believe that they are kings of America, rather than people’s representatives.

If America is unarmed, law enforcement would never have to worry about ramifications of abuse. The thought in their minds that a gun may be present when they knock on a door, or pull over a motorist gives them respect to uphold their side of law. If that threat is removed, abuse is a temptation that all too often will show itself, as it currently does on occasion. There are already eminent domain issues that arise where politicians use legal manipulation to obtain property they have no right to in order to build a shopping center or a new highway declaring “the greater good” as their reasons. But the real reason is to take care of a financial contributor who simply wants the property and uses the government and therefore the police to obtain that property so money can be made in the looting of it.

The Second Amendment is in our founding document to ultimately protect our property from foreign and domestic enemies. Domestic enemies are not always the kinds of people who hijack airplanes to run into buildings. They can be in our own government, put there by greedy interests to subtly steal American property and terrorize individual lives. Having a well armed population keeps everyone honest. Without that threat, evil will show itself.

I don’t want to believe it, but the Aurora shooting looks to be a “false flag” situation. We’ve seen it before where the CIA, ATF, and other government agencies get caught trying to manipulate circumstances in order to gain a public outcome designed to manipulate large numbers of people. That is what happened to Randy Weaver in the Ruby Ridge Massacre, and it happened under the direction of Eric Holder with Fast and Furious recently. That’s why Eric Holder has been found in “contempt of Congress.” Holder ignored the charge because he is head of the Justice Department working directly for President Obama. The only people who could prosecute Holder all work under him, so the contempt charge will go nowhere as long as Holder, and Obama are in office. Government has been caught several times attempting to manipulate people through coerced friendships into committing diabolical acts without being directly involved. It would not surprise me that this Aurora shooting is one of those times. The process is very similar to how sex trafficking works, where pimps use women to collect vast sums of money selling their bodies and out of fear; they turn that money over to their pimps. Such coercive measures have been utilized by government officials before and they will be done again. The reason that government must behave in a manipulative political manner is because they fear being caught by an armed public. If the guns are taken away, the actions of coercion will no longer be hidden; they will be out in the open.

The best defense against violence from all domestic enemies, which include the ‘Dark Night Shooter’, is a well armed population. It would have been much better if there were armed citizens in the theater to gun down James Holmes as he unloaded his ammunition into an unprotected audience. Progressives will say that this is not the Wild West, that we are a civilized society that should not be trying to kill each other with guns. But they are wrong, and in denial over the nature of the human being.

The old hippie notion of peace on earth is a utopian wish that is reckless, and stupid. It is that notion of peace that is behind the desire for gun control. Its social engineering which assumes that government can be trusted with complete power and control over the population, and it can’t. The people, who support guns, do not yield their lives and property to the blind trust of government. They want guns so they know that if the absolute worst case scenario comes about, that they can defend their property from an intrusive government. It hasn’t any thing to do with hunting, although that is a consideration. The gun is one of the reasons people are free. Fewer guns mean less freedom, and ironically, less economic activity because government without the threat of violence being present will inject itself everywhere with impunity, and that costs money by way of opportunity cost.

The people who want to ban guns in favor of a safe society are fools who are in denial of basic human instincts. The gun equalizes everyone, and is a necessary check on the many balances that are required in a thriving society. The quality of a country is not measured on how few people die; it is on the quality of life for those who live. The rest of the world does have it wrong, Canada, England and every gun banning nation have created docile civilizations that are easily conquered and do not have worldwide respect. America will not have world enemies if it continues to lose its economic power, but if it hopes to remain a superpower, it will have enemies both foreign and domestic because that is the nature of being the best. And the gun is extremely important to maintaining that superpower status. The gun is the symbol of everything being an America is. Those who wish to remove them from our society are the same who wish to change America into something else—which is not acceptable.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

OBAMA WILL LOSE ELECTION OF 2012: Movie Review of ‘DARK KNIGHT RISES’

Glenn Beck said two things that I agree with 100%. First, he thinks the new Batman film Dark Knight Rises is a fantastic movie that should be seen. So if you haven’t seen it and want to see a good movie—GO SEE IT! The other thing he said is that he is calling the presidential election already—Barack Obama will lose. Beck warns that everyone still has to do the work, they still have to get out and vote, but as it stands, Barack Obama has spent himself into bankruptcy before the campaign has really even started, his economy is a disaster, his justice department is corrupt, his health care is reckless socialism, and the Obama White House is guilty of security leaks. Obama has been a disastrous president, and as things stand now, the election shouldn’t even be close.  Just keep the hammer down and hit hard, and we can get rid of the worst president in American history.

So keep your noses to the grind stone. Do the work, vote, vote and vote. Don’t stay home because all the derelicts looking for free Obama money will show up and vote. So don’t let them rob you by not showing up at the election. And in the mean time, go see Dark Knight Rises. Don’t let the actions of a loon keep a very good American made movie be tarnished by the actions of a Joker.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

1-40 Tunnels: Explaining the next phase

I have to address a couple matters, one is fun, and the other is a clarification. First off, the picture shown here is the twin tunnels on I-40 in North Carolina just 4 miles south of the Tennessee border. For those in the media who are reading the advance copies of my new novel and have read the very exciting scene involving the roadblock at the twin tunnels, that scene takes place on the other side of that mountain at the mouth of those two tunnels. It is easy to see why the gunfire and explosions caused so much trouble when you observe how rugged the landscape is in that region.

I put that picture up because currently road crews are closing that tunnel at night diverting traffic through a service road so that the tunnel can undergo much-needed maintenance. For those who have read the novel, the kind of thing that happens in the story is a serious threat in that area, and requires constant maintenance. For those who have not read that scene, you will soon find out. Loud noises and violent behavior are not good for such areas. But it’s a fun fact of the novel to know that such an extreme occurrence is quite possible, and care must be constantly taken to avoid such catastrophes.

The other thing is attached to my new book as well. Some of my readers here–people I respect a great deal–are concerned that I may lose my credibility with the school levy issues by appearing self-serving because of all my promotional efforts over my new book. This deserves a bit of explanation that is needed at this point for my readers who visit Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom every day. To begin, a reminder of what my life was like before I got personally involved in the Lakota Levy in 2010 needs to be seen. The video below is a sample of the kind of life I lived before joining forces with the people who would eventually make up No Lakota Levy to defeat those tax increases. The efforts of my previous book, and several film festivals along with my other exertion in a professional sense had me constantly on the road, going to award shows, trade shows, and many other adventures that come as part of that life, which I put on hold to help solve community issues.

In 2010 I put aside some of these fun occupational endeavors and took a few years to contribute something to the battle that is raging in our nation. I started helping local liberty groups where I could, as I still do. I started this blog site as a way to offset the information that the newspapers wouldn’t cover, and I took on the Lakota School Levy because it was a lie being told on the backs of children, and looked to be devastating to a community I grew up in, and is currently in my hands to protect. I was between books anyway completing The Symposium of Justice in 2004, and was writing Tail of the Dragon and doing my research to make that manuscript into a saleable story that American Book Publishing would eventually pick up.

Working around progressive entertainment types I knew what kinds of things pro tax advocates would attack in my character, so when the Enquirer did the article about me featuring my whip work, I knew how the politics would play out. Believe me; it was very much by design. The pro tax people ridiculed my use of whips which helped me figure out who was who. I used that information to my advantage. I didn’t fight those levies to be mean, or destructive. I did it because it was the right thing to do. My ultimate message was the importance of traditional values versus progressive values being taught in school, and I didn’t then nor in the future wish to pay higher taxes for a “progressive” education. I could have went around the country doing dozens of whip shows trying to promote traditional values, or I could do the unthinkable and apply those skills to explaining Keynesian economics which is how public schools function much to their own detriment. Of course I chose the latter.

Before the start of the last levy campaign I told my friends in No Lakota Levy that I had a book coming out in 2012, and they needed to find another spokesman for the levy fighting effort. I told them I’d still fight the levy, but I didn’t think it would be right to do media stuff for my book, and do media stuff against the levy, because the mixture would appear self-serving. For that very reason I avoided any elected offices, even though many wanted me to volunteer, because when Tail of the Dragon was ready to come out, I would have to put my effort behind that promotional endeavor, and being formerly involved in Tea Parties and other official positions while promoting a book is tacky. I don’t like it when others do it, so I sure wasn’t about to do it myself. I hoped that after two solid years of fighting levies that other people had learned how to do it, and could become the face of those efforts in the future.

In February of 2012 it was time to make a change which had been talked about ahead of time, so I picked the fight that would bring all the rats to the surface so everyone could see who was hiding where. The pro tax supporters conducted a negative survey against me outside a local Kroger store, so the time to act was then. I let my anger go, because it was well justified and it created the opportunity I needed to take this next step. This allowed new people at No Lakota Levy to pick up the baton and carry on. I of course would continue to cover things as I had, but I needed the freedom to move on to book promotion mode.

I know people who successfully have their hands in everything, but I’m not like that. I enjoy my time to myself, so I don’t like being too busy. If I’m going to promote a book, I’ll put my effort into it, since it’s something I already believe in. When the time comes to fight for another community issue, I’ll be there. If the group we have in place is not ready, then I’ll assemble another one to meet the challenge. It’s that simple. But life is always in motion, and especially at my age, it is very busy.

A lot of people on the inside believe that Tail of the Dragon will do well. They believe it’s a very good book, and I am inclined to agree. But you just never know. The public may reject it, the timing may not be right, there could be problems. Any number of things can happen, and they often do. I hope the book does well, because if it does I will get the chance to write a book I’ve been thinking about for over ten years, called The Trial of Fletcher Finnegan. That book looks to be well over 1 million words. It will be considerably larger than Atlas Shrugged and will be quite an effort. I will need a good showing out of Tail of the Dragon to free my time up enough to be able to write the new book because it will be an exclusive task of mine for a number of years.

So I am putting out a lot of promotional material. These days, that’s how it’s done. For my daily readers, some of which have already read and loved the book, they are getting tired of seeing all my promotional stuff, because they’ve already been there and done it. It’s a good memory for them, but it isn’t new any longer. But for many people every day who come here for the first time, I put those ads up for them. Today alone I have multiple readers from 13 different countries ranging from Sweden, Romania, and Saudi Arabia to New Zealand and Australia. This is pretty normal, and as it would be thought that these readers are tuning in to see what happened in the Colorado shooting, ironically most of the views come from my articles about school levies. All those countries mentioned each had more than 10 hits each, so the Tail of the Dragon ads are important to gaining international exposure. Even though my daily readers are used to the Tail of the Dragon cover and blurbs, many of these international readers are just seeing them for the first time.

If I were in an elected office, or was an official spokesman paid by someone else to represent a product, I wouldn’t cross promote my personal projects with Lakota stories, or political material concerning the presidential election. But the fact of the matter is that I have deliberately made myself free of those obligations so I can do what I have been planning for quite some time. At this time there isn’t a levy at Lakota to fight, and there are plenty of ground troops in the liberty groups to handle the administrative stuff. I do my part in giving a local voice to many contemporary issues that get missed in the mainstream media outlets, stuff the liberty groups need to advance their positions, being someone who can untangle the complicated web of modern politics so it’s easy for others to see.

I offer the work at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom for free, because there is a need for it. If I make money it is not from memberships, or any donation. It will be because someone bought a book of mine. I work through many of the problems that will be in future stories by putting my thoughts and notes up for all to see, so I can refine those thoughts into more articulate works in actual books in the future. A good portion of these articles are my personal notes that I share for the development of ideas. I figure that if I need to resolve my thoughts on a matter than others do as well, so by putting the articles on this forum, I hope they help others.

But I don’t formally belong to any groups so I can have the freedom to pursue my own path, so that I cannot be accused of indulging in self-serving messages. Once the novel comes out, I may change that, but for the time being, that’s the way it has to be due to the nature of public relations. I support many groups, and I may attend their meetings. However to avoid the accusations of being self-serving, I keep my involvement limited to a supportive role. For me the most supportive role I can think of is to help frame the argument so others can see it clearly, and act on it. I had an open window between projects to offer myself publicly to controversial subjects, and I will have an open window again. But as of now that window is closed. That does not mean I will not write and contribute articles for analysis as I have, but my official spokesman roles for those endeavors will have to be on hold till my window opens once again.

I hope that clears things up for those who were wondering. It is much easier to answer the question this way as opposed to separate emails. When it comes to these kinds of things, constant reinvention of roles is very important so that stagnation does not set in. When you get a chance to work on a project that has national exposure, you take it, because the results will be useful later.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

Advice is Only as Good as the Person Who Gives It: Insights from a babyshower

CLICK HERE to review the referenced tone of the young City Beat writer attempting to frame his article about me as being “out-of-step” with the rest of society because of my loud declaration that progressives do not belong in America. I have heard and read on more than one occasion that my “intolerance” of those who are different from me displays that I am an extremist. To these critics they consider it “intolerance” if I show that I disagree with their life choices. What they don’t realize is that in asking me to accept their life choices they are often asking me to support them financially—through public school education that teaches sexual diversity to young people at too early of an age—they want me to invest in their public transportation systems—they want me to work while they draw mandated government unemployment—they want me to pay for their healthcare while they sit around all day playing Xbox. In short, they expect to leech off me, and they expect me to be happy about it.

I have always had the gift of clarity in knowing exactly where I am and where I want to go. I do not need GPS devices to get anywhere in the world, and I certainly have never utilized the advice of professional councilors for personal direction. My long known mantra has been, “Advice is only as good as the person who gives it.” What that means is you can’t expect to get good advice from a bad person. But to understand what a bad person is, you must have the guts to call bad behavior—bad. For instance, do not ask marriage advice from someone who’s divorced. Don’t ask career advice from a person who’s middle-aged and obviously unhappy. And don’t ask financial advice from an habitual gambler. You can’t make potato chips out of ice cream. Bad people are bad people. Good people are good people. People who claim life is all about shades of gray are trying to sell swampland in New York City—it doesn’t exist. It’s a rationalization to disguise personal bad behavior with traces of good looted from others.

When I was in public school and had to speak to guidance councilors as part of the “education experience,” I had three of them declare that I had too many interests and that I would have to narrow those down to skills that would provide the best occupation for my future. My response to those people then and to all people since has been—why? I explained to them when no answer was produced other than “that’s just how things are done” that society would falter if people built their lives around their career. My reasoning was that the indication from the guidance councilors was that the individual serves society by picking a career that benefited the collective sum and that is the primary fault of the progressive. My position is that I did not serve society, but society benefited by the various talents I developed out of my own self interest. This position has put me at odds with many progressive types who find such a statement abominable. I would point much of the misery of today toward this diabolical notion that individuals serve society instead of society benefiting from individual diversity. Among progressives, women have suffered most in this belief. Traditional American women used to forgo formal careers in favor of raising their children and while they did this they exercised skills from budget management to culinary excellence along with everything in between to the direct benefit of their families which became the sum of their talents.

These days many women actually brag about how bad they cook, or that they have no idea what to do with a needle and thread. This is their way of declaring to the world that they are “modern” women who have important careers that exceed the importance of those “traditional” skills. They will declare that they make so much money that they can “purchase” what they need, so have no reason to learn or master any skill that does not contribute to their careers. These same people are the primary types who vote in favor of school levies. They require public education to provide for their children the skills they are not teaching because they are too busy with their own lives. So in the typical progressive fashion they require people like me to provide a means for them through tax money to live out their false progressive fantasy—that they can dedicate their lives to a career without destroying their families in the process.

What progressives never have learned is that children learn from individuals within their families, and the better the individuals—the more diverse they are, the more there is for a child to be exposed to, making that child a well-rounded adult. This learning cannot be duplicated in the classroom. Certain things can be taught in a classroom, but a school cannot substitute the effect of successful parents and grandparents in a child’s life. With all the efforts progressives have attempted in order to destroy the American family they have never solved the basic problem that their way will 100% of the time create empty shells of people when they reach adulthood who are easily bored and easy to steer due to their lack of personal convictions.

All this is on my mind because in my family we have always gone against that progressive grain. When I was younger it was hard, because nobody understood what my wife and I were trying to do. But now that my children are grown up and my oldest daughter was giving a baby shower to my youngest daughter the results of the way we raised our family are easy to see as we prepared to welcome my first grandson to the world.

The pictures shown here are from the decorations my wife primarily, and my daughter along with her friends made for the baby shower. Most everything was handmade including the table cloths. My wife made those because she could not purchase the exact size and color she wanted for the party. My wife wanted everything to be just right, so she made what she needed because the desire was intended to welcome our grandson to the world with as much individuality as possible and that starts with our daughter. Her baby shower needed to be tailored just to her as much as possible to begin that process.

The cake seen in these pictures was made completely by my wife. She even made the monkey and the palm trees. Everything on the cake was edible. The photographs were done by my oldest daughter. The motorcycle made out of diapers and baby rags was made by my oldest daughter also. The pyramid of diapers was made by my daughters’ best friend from childhood who we helped raise. But the primary gift was the baby blanket made by my wife for her new grandson.

As I have said before, when my wife made me the American Flag blanket for my birthday a few years back, she makes blankets for every child born into our family. That extends to cousins and the children of our nieces and nephews. She has made many dozens and dozens of blankets over the years, but for her first grandchild she really outdid herself. The blanket is immaculately hand-made in every detail by her for her first grandchild.

People are shocked to learn that my wife does so many different things. It makes me proud to see her shine as brightly as she did at that baby shower. I know she personally put 6 weeks of preparation in for that party. She takes her role as a grandmother extremely serious and all the grandchildren that are born into our family will benefit greatly. Over the years when people have tried to make me and her feel bad that she didn’t have a career I would try to explain to them that I wanted my wife to wake up in the morning on her terms and go to bed on her terms. I didn’t want the corruption of a boss to influence her life, to alter the direction of our meals, our clothing, or the quality of our existence. I like that she has all day to shop at the grocery store and has time to pick the best prices for our items between Costco, Walmart, Meyer and Kroger. I have often joked that she has saved us more money over the years then she could have ever made in a career. Because she has time to do things right, the quality for our whole family is much higher because of her.

We were in Gatlinburg last weekend which is known for its crafts. Outside one of their many craft stores an old woman was quilting a blanket on the sidewalk so people could watch as they went by. I noticed that it always seems to be older women who do these kinds of things. The young girls aimlessly stand around proud of their lack of skill; because they have been taught that it’s cool to be unskilled and dim-witted—unless they have a specific skill that serves society. Even if the girls are quite intelligent, they still pretend to be thoughtless because they’ve been taught to hide their intelligence in favor of social norms. I remember how badly people spoke about my wife who gave up a potential career as a fashion model so that she could be married and have children that she could make blankets for. People would say to her that she could have anything in the world that she wanted, and when she’d say that she did have it—they just couldn’t figure out what she meant.

“Don’t you want to lay naked on the deck of a yacht covered in gold and diamond jewelry given to you by a rich man?” This is what people close to my wife would say to her when she was younger. She’d reply, “No.” What those people never understood, and are just now beginning to see is that she would have rather made those things herself. That the value she received in her life was not the envy of other women when she’d show her social status by exhibiting elaborate jewelry in public gained by her looks. She would rather have the man she wants, and live by her own terms so that her children could become great by their own definitions—which is the only definition that matters.

People don’t want to believe it, but there is no quick way out of raising children. You cannot purchase respect from young people. Young people grow up to become the sum of their experiences, and if the family is not a strong one, the child is greatly handicapped. Government in no way, especially in public education, fills the void of complacency. Barack Obama may be president, but he was nurtured along by progressive politics as the poster child for government programs, largely due to him coming from a broken home. The advocates of progressive politics were more interested in Obama being a minority candidate that studied public education abroad and was a global citizen. They didn’t care that Obama’s father was a revolutionary, his mentor a communist and his mother a broken woman raised by broken people. Obama is the sum of his family, which is why he thinks there must always be someone in government to help you along. Well, in my family, we don’t need government. We pay for our roads in the gas taxes, and we pay for our military with income taxes. But everything else my family can do better than any government agency and that includes self-defense and education.

When I show my anger at progressives, and suggest that they don’t belong in America, it’s in this context. They clearly don’t understand the self-reliance that has always been a part of the American experience. Often that self-reliance is taught to us not by the men of our families but by the women, who are our first impressions of the world around us as babies. A mother who makes blankets, gourmet meals, clothing, table cloths, wonderful flower beds, and is the pinnacle influence in the entire family provide stability that has far more value than the person who does one or two things only and hires out everything else to specialists to do for them. This is the big difference in an America at war between progressive philosophy that leaves people empty emotional husks, and traditional value that has been made to appear “uncool” but ironically contains the key to all the lasting influences society needs to hold itself together. The progressive way is a path to destruction, both socially and personally, and that is why I say, they should not be in America. I don’t say it to be mean, but out of personal experience. It’s time to stop kidding ourselves and face the music that there is only one path to success within a family, and it starts with a good mother who works hard to be that way, and is good at virtually everything. Young people want and need someone to look up to, and that begins with mothers and grandmothers who do for themselves what society cannot do for them, and that means building their life to individual tastes and not bending their lives around what society provides.

____________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

Shooting in Colorado: Defending The Dark Knight and Rush Limbaugh from the Jokers

It looks as though James Holmes—the gunman in the tragic shooting that killed 12 people during the new Batman movie showing at midnight in Colorado, was apparently a member of the ultra violent Black Bloc Occupy Movement. But to understand the scope of the violence it is important to examine the film Dark Knight Rises as a cultural activity of great importance, so important that Rush Limbaugh made some wild speculations just days before the tragedy of which he was heavily criticized.

In the film The Dark Night Rises the villain’s name is Bane leaving Rush Limbaugh to speculate that the producers of the newest Batman movie are subliminally attempting to steer millions of young pop culture movie fans against Mitt Romney in the upcoming presidential election. Limbaugh’s theory is rooted in the recent Obama attacks on Bain Capital where Romney was formerly employed. Obama using Bain Capital in a derogatory way to his communist leaning base sees wealthy people as vile, so the connection is intended to be derogatory. Limbaugh in the clip below theorizes that the film makers in Hollywood who are traditionally very progressive and overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates like Obama planned all along. Check out the clip for yourself.

The young lady in that clip exhibits wonderfully some of the modern problems that young people have with conservatives. Listening to her sarcastic statements, she is right, Bane was a comic book character that was invented a long time ago, and Christopher Nolan simply used the character with his own variation. Rush’s comments regarding a huge movie that will turn out millions upon millions of young people aged 18 to 30 all think the conservative talk show host is an out-of-touch wealthy snob who doesn’t understand comic books, are damaging.

What the young lady doesn’t know is that in the sinister world of politics, Rush is usually right. Such promotional exploits are common in politics, and in a presidential race where the stakes are very high, 9 times out of 10 Limbaugh is completely right, where the young people do not have the life experience or wisdom to see how the dots of life connect. Without question Obama will play on this situation by stating in a public speech that he knows something about comic book characters showing how hip he is, winning him thousands of young voters who are unsophisticated enough to vote for a president because he knows something about Batman and not what kind of political philosophy he lives by.

This is the trouble with politics—is that it’s disconnected from average everyday life. For Rush to stay on top of the political world, he has to read about a lot of very boring happenings going on around Washington D.C. There isn’t much time for movies, music, and television. With a lot of my Tea Party friends, they tend to read a lot of law books, statistical data, and history. They tend to lose touch with the fun aspects of modern culture, like epic movies and television.

I make a point to pay attention to the things that are happening at the local movie theater, and what is popular on television, because to me, these things are thermometers of society’s temperature. I can see why Rush would belittle popular culture because he gets frustrated that more people don’t pay close attention to politics. But many people are just turned off by it, because they don’t understand how it directly affects them. Yet when they are older they will become Rush Limbaugh listeners once they learn a thing or two and become wiser human beings.

Currently I enjoy watching MasterChef with my wife on Fox. I do not see MasterChef as a waste of time. I find it as an exercise of capitalism at it’s finest. The best chefs compete against each other to make food—something every human being is interested in. Gordon Ramsey brings a sense of excellence to the show that is pure capitalism. I look at Gordon Ramsey and Richard Branson of the various Virgin companies as being two of the reasons England has moved away from socialism and more toward capitalism. Currently, England is more of a capitalism country than America is—which is sadly pathetic. If MasterChef was set up as a work of communism or socialism, it would be extremely boring. For that matter so would the game of football. Without capitalism, a process of determining who the best is and putting the best team on the field to compete against other teams who have done the same, football would be boring. It would be more like soccer, where the forwards cannot get behind the full backs if a halfback lobs the ball deep down field. The offense is crippled by being regulated to staying behind the defense—which is stupid. That is socialism and that’s why soccer games are boring compared to American football.

In Nolan’s Batman films which Rush Limbaugh probably doesn’t know because he’s decided to place himself above popular culture and study political science–would notice that the villains in Batman are socialists, thugs, and anarchists. In this new Batman film Bane is the terrorist thug that could easily be compared to many of the coercive threats we see in the world around us who use fear to implement their distorted vision of reality. Also in this film is Catwoman who is a noticeable socialist, as she steals from the rich so she can have. In the previous Batman film the Joker was an unequivocal anarchist. But all along Batman is a mega capitalist, wealthy beyond belief and uses his vast wealth to fight crime.

The shooting that took place during one of the midnight showings ironically resembles very much the kind of character that Bane is in the new Batman film. Without question progressives will scream for more security to protect society from troubled people like the 24-year-old who dressed up in a mask and bullet proof vest to gun down innocent movie goers. They will want metal detectors, gun laws—less violence in films. Some may even blame the content of the Batman films themselves for putting into the mind of the young shooter the fantasy of killing over a dozen people for no particular reason while injuring over 50. The emotional pleas of the looters will like the comments of Rush Limbaugh speak with limited knowledge in an emotional argument.

One of the plot points of Dark Knight Rises is that stricter criminal laws do not protect society, and a life without the individual crime fighting efforts of Batman creates a culture that gives rise to villains like Bane. The youngster who decided he could enter a crowded movie theater with a gas canister and open fire into the audience is like Bane in that he knew he could prey on society who would not fire back at him. The shooter in the Dark Knight movie knew that he was superior to every other member of the audience by way of firepower, so he temporarily was the most dominant superior male which is a MAJOR concern for most men young and old alike. Men are measured in their minds by their pecking order behavior, so when other males are unarmed and one man is armed, the man with the gun is superior—artificially so, but superior none-the-less.

In movies, the story of Batman, The Dark Knight Rises is the egg, where society is the chicken. Desire for the murder of innocent people comes from a human fantasy, and stories like this latest Batman film reflect the dangers of those fantasies. The story is an artistic appraisal of our social circumstances. Art reflects the culture that produces it. This is why there was such a demand for The Dark Knight Rises to begin with and why there were millions of eager film goers ready to watch the film at midnight.

My answer to many things has labeled me among the most sensitive peers of our society as something to be feared. My most ardent critics have tried to designate me as a “loose cannon.” They have attempted to place me personally in the same category as the typical “lone wolf” candidate, which the shooter in this case will certainly fall under. His mother was aware of it as soon as the shooting happened, so the family was aware that this kid was a danger to society. I would say that people who consider themselves sheep are naturally afraid of wolves–those who are able to function alone. What they don’t understand is that there are different degrees of “lone wolf” types and I am certainly not the type who would terrorize others to achieve some unrealized fantasy.

The question is what the social reaction to violence should be–immediately after the shooting the looters of government were already lining up to play on people’s fears, to act as though they could save society with a new law, or by removing guns from society or attacking Tea Party types who want less intrusive government. Progressives fantasize that they could identify dangerous people like this Dark Knight shooter ahead of time, but they can’t and they never will. Ironically, the story of this particular Batman movie has the answer.

Nobody expects Batman to come into the theater to save the audience from the evil Banes of the world–the thugs, the terrorists, the radical anarchists who want to kill others to prop up their meaningless lives. But the sufferers were victims because they were unarmed and instead of fighting back when the danger happened they turned and ran away, which is the worst thing to do when facing an aggressive enemy. The answer is not to have a version of TSA in the movie theater as an overreaction to the emotional distress that is felt upon evidence of such violence. The 911 disaster happened with box cutters, and I know people who can do far more damage with their bare hands than with any knife, yet entire commercial aircraft were hijacked and deliberately rammed into the World Trade Center killing thousands with just a sharp edge. The TSA was a big government reaction to that disaster, which didn’t solve the problem; it simply advanced socialism in America. The solution with 911 would have been eliminate the threats on the planes, and if the people flying on those planes would have thought of it, they could have easily of overtaken the hijackers. Not without some death, but at a much less cost. And in the theater at the Batman film, the answer would have been 20 to 30 gun carrying movie goers standing up and killing the lone gunman.

We have the Second Amendment to protect us from terrorists like this gunman, and because government has inserted itself into the situation is why the entire audience got up and ran for the exit away from the gun fire which caused much more death as the gunman had no challenger in a theater of hundreds of people. The culture that has taught these film goers that there is safety in surrender is at fault. Many more died because people turned and ran instead of standing and fighting, and that is how people like this shooter James Holmes, presumably a member of the Black Bloc Occupy radicals made victims of so many innocent people. More on this line of thought can be seen here:

http://occupywallst.org/forum/occupy-black-bloc-member-james-holmes-shoots-up-au/

 

Because of this shooting there will need to be more investigation into the Black Bloc group, as they have shown themselves to be very dangerous. But in the case of Batman’s Dark Knight Rises, millions of fans confused about what the role of justice is in our modern life look to Batman to help them understand what they need to do to prevent the villains of these films from harming their lives. They look to Batman as their protector, as their spokesman for clarity. Or in the case of James Holmes, he identified with the Joker from the last film, as he was dressed as that character when the police arrested him. When it comes to movies, if the audience member likes the bad guys more than the good guys, which is the first indication that there is something deeply wrong with the individual viewing the story.

Government because it wants to be the center of attention wishes to be the protector of society. But because they have helped make a society of dependents, they leave those people open to random acts of violence by people like Holmes and groups like Black Bloc. The world of politics does not make much sense to young people who are sold mixed messages in popular culture. The images in the Batman films seem to make sense—that the individual must fight for their rights and defeat evil with courage. But outside of the movie theater they are told to run and to seek help from government. In this case the shooter Holmes was captured, his apartment booby-trapped and his mother knowing her son was a part of the killings was quick to say so.

Rush Limbaugh is a great talk show host because he can see things that are not so obvious to the average person. Unfortunately, he missed the point of Dark Knight Rises as he looked at the film from the lopsided scope of politics. The real message is one of hope, and the need for heroics against the terrorists of the world—from villains like Bane. In our current society the tempers are so volatile that fringe groups like Black Bloc wish to suppress any likeness to their assaults on capitalism by attacking popular culture messages like Dark Knight Rises so to snuff out the hope that such a film gives to the masses. Limbaugh knew there was more to the story and detected there was something amiss. He just assumed that it was literal politics, and not the more obscure battles found in the realm of art and entertainment.

James Holmes in his radical hatred and perverse desire for control took a gun into a crowded movie theater to show his dominance over an unarmed populace. The fans of the film were in that darkened theater to enjoy the fantasy of seeing clearly the acts of good versus evil in a society that is too many shades of gray. But reality visited them in the form of James Holmes masked as a terrorist right off the screen in the villain Bain, yet dressed as the dreaded Joker. The lesson is not to run and hide, or hope that the villain will have compassion and show mercy. Government was only there to pick up the criminal after the deaths, they could not stop it. Gun control laws, metal detectors, extra employees at the theater could not have stopped Holmes. Only a well armed population who knew how to use their weapons had the power to stop evil from spreading and ruining the lives of the innocent. Batman cannot save us in the darkened theaters of life, or in the light of day-to-day reality. Only we can save ourselves with a little help from Smith and Weston, and hollow tip bullets that could have ended the life of James Holmes in seconds, so the lives of over a dozen innocent lives could have went on. It is ultimately the point of a gun that the Jokers of terrorism fear most. The lack of a gun makes all of society a victim to the distortions of crazed lunatics and the fantasies of delusion.

If I were a conspiracy theorist—which I’m not, I’d suggest that this Colorado shooting was awfully convenient for the progressive fruit cakes that are trying to undo our nation.  During this shooting story Rush Limbaugh was cast into a bad light, the influence of a very beloved film franchise came into question, and the question of gun laws is suddenly on everyone’s mind.  Because of this shooting, Rush will have to mind carefully what he says, which progressives are desperate to see happen.  Film studios will be forced to produce less violent action films and more stupid comedies.  And politicians who support the Second Amendment will be tempted to keep their mouths shut while the new UN anti-gun bill comes to the United States for acceptance.  The answer to the question if politicians are scum enough to stage such an event through direct or indirect means it is yes.  But we don’t need to theorize on the backs of such a terrible tragedy.  All Americans need to do to honor the slain is to continue listening to Rush Limbaugh, make sure to see Dark Knight Rises not just once, but multiple times, and be sure to tell your politicians that they better not even think of signing the United Nations Small Arms Treaty.  Such an act is un-American.  We need more guns, not less of them, because that is the only path to real safety.  The enemy we must guard against is not the guy dressed up as the Joker.   It’s the jokers who call themselves politicians looking out for our safety. 

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Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
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