Tag: Hollywood insight

Blame Fat Asian Chicks: The terrible numbers for the ‘Star Wars’ future

As I was saying about the movie math of The Last Jedi before the Christmas holiday weekend—they are in trouble. And it doesn’t make me happy to say it, because something like this has massive cultural ramifications for the future—and its clear that people were front loaded on the film. They went to see it when it first came out. But as Luke faded away at the end of the film, so did the fan base. You can’t go kill off all the original characters and expect to keep this thing alive unless the new characters are every bit as charismatic—and they clearly aren’t. Kylo Ren is the most exciting character and he’s the bad guy—everyone else is just wall paste and that’s a real problem. The movie will make its money, but the problem is, will people still love this film in 2040—like they do the originals? No. Even in the year of 2050 people will still love the original films, but will be indifferent of the prequels and the sequels—and that is truly sad.

I made a decision not too long ago that I would support the Star Wars franchise mainly because of my grandchildren and children. After The Force Awakens I didn’t want to talk about Star Wars for an entire year, and my kids missed it. They like to bounce morality themes off me decorated with Star Wars plots and not having the ability to do that wore on their minds. So it is more destructive to say no to it than to accept what good does come from it. When the new Star Wars land opens in Disney World we’ll go to it, and I’m sure we’ll love it. But as far as enthusiasm for what comes next from the Lucasfilm group—the magic is clearly gone and that was an avoidable circumstance. It was a bad idea to assume that Star Wars stories could be created in group think instead of that classical way Lucas used which was just a piece of paper and a pencil—and one human mind.

I recently reread the book by Norman Vincent Peale The Power of Positive Thinking. I was provoked into this endeavor by watching recently The Founder, the story of Ray Kroc who started the McDonald’s franchise. When he was an up and coming traveling salesman, he listened to a book version of the Peale book to motivate him each day. The book was very popular in that late 50s early 60s period and I can imagine George Lucas having access to it, because a lot of what is in that book are some of the best lines of dialogue from the Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back. I do know something about George Lucas as he was on the board of The Joseph Campbell Foundation when I was a member—and I’m sure that Peale played a part of influence on the young George Lucas. He may not admit to it today as all his liberal friends would likely berate him for it, but The Power of Positive Thinking is every bit as strong in the core of American value as it was when it was written. That kind of element is what’s missing from these new Star Wars movies—Luke being the pessimist, the lack of an eternally optimistic Han Solo character who doesn’t get pushed around by the girls in the movies. Star Wars was and always will be a throwback film to the kind of America that was the 1940s through the 1950s—just as Disney World reflects that same optimism from its founder in its amusement parks. People aren’t going to pay good money and buy lots of merchandise for something that makes them depressed and all these new Star Wars films have a premise set in sacrifice, not in proactive action.

I had a reading marathon over the Christmas break, I read three books in three days and I utilized the entire clock to do so—and I loved it. The Power of Positive Thinking was an easy read for me, but it took some time, around 10 hours, and I had it timed to the arrival of my next book, The 15:17 to Paris, which is about the terrorist attack that was stopped by three heroes riding a train from Amsterdam to Paris when an ISIS sympathizer launched an attack with 500 people on board. As I was finishing Peale’s book at 1:57 PM on December 26th, 2017 a notification came up on my computer saying that The 15:17 to Paris had arrived at my house. So I closed the Peale book just as the dogs were barking and noticed a mail truck stuffing the book into my mailbox as the snow was falling. I walked out in my bare feet to retrieve the book as snow blew across our driveway. I grabbed the book and went back to my chair and opened it up—only about five minutes transpired, and I started reading that book and within 6 pages the mother of Spencer Stone was praying for her child to be safe in France ahead of the terrorist attack. I knew as I read that under Clint Eastwood’s direction that this movie was going to be a hit, because America is still that hopeful and faithful nation. Disney has decided to go against that traditional message and it is hurting them—unnecessarily. After all, wasn’t that the whole point of the movie Dumbo—believing in yourself even when your symbols have been striped away?

The original Star Wars movies were very much about hope, and how positive thinking could overcome anything—no matter the odds. These new films are very progressive and clearly about sacrifice. Who wants to go to the movies to hear a fat Asian girl rattle on about animal rights? If Disney wants to show that average people can be heroes too, there are other ways to do that, but Star Wars is not about those kinds of people. The characters of Star Wars are about the exceptional, not the bland. I bet there will be lots of Rose Star Wars figures on clearance this summer at Target. Who will want that one for their collection? At the end of The Last Jedi the new girl power had pretty much destroyed their resistance showing themselves to be completely incompetent. It’s one thing to be outmatched as the Rebellion always was, but this Resistance is an official branch of the governing power. How could the female generals screw it up so bad? Those are the kinds of questions that people left the theater thinking. They certainly weren’t passionate enough about the film to go see it a second time, or a third—which is what it needed.

This is all important because it says much more about our culture overall. Star Wars is a big part of that culture and now we can see that the magic that made the originals good, just isn’t there in the modern sense and that can be traced back to our divided country politically and on matters of religion. Hollywood is a depressed culture full of losers, drug addicts, promiscuous cape riders, cheats, low-life’s and hopeless degenerates. I noticed that my copy of The 15:17 to Paris shipped from a book store in Van Nuys, California since it was out of print awaiting the updated version that is set to come out with the release of the Eastwood movie in early February. But I didn’t want to wait so I found a new copy of the book in that little town which is a suburb of Los Angeles essentially—just a few miles down the road from where Star Wars was originally partially filmed, where Industrial Light and Magic started as a special effects company for the Star Wars movies. As I watched my package move across the country I thought about how different California was from when Star Wars was first made. The hints of progressivism were already there, but there were enough people not yet corrupted that it wasn’t noticeable unless you really picked up the curtain. Now, it’s a very different place and the people who have helped make it so progressive are now the people making Star Wars movies, and they don’t get it. They don’t understand what made Star Wars great in the first place and they don’t understand American audiences—at all. And that is a damn shame. Nothing against fat Asian chicks—there is a place for them in the world—but forcing them into a plot just to do it says that the filmmakers have no idea what they are doing. Which is directly reflected by the box office numbers.

Rich Hoffman

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Realities of Sex Trafficking: Somalia, Ukraine and Thailand–American feminists are part of the problem

I really don’t want to hear from some American feminist how abused they think they are being treated every time a man looks at them in an elevator, or accidentally brushes up against their ass in a hallway until they get behind the effort of saving truly abused women around the world involved in sex trafficking. I would start by telling them this truly sad story about a young Christian girl who survived her experience with the terror group Al Shabaab in Kenya along the trade route from Somalia described below.  The region being discussed is a remote and impoverished area with very few options for women or men. Many of the men who are in Al Shabaab are there to be militant Muslims due to their limited economic options—so the root of the evil is poor economic conditions—for which adherence to open capitalism would solve.  For instance, if a lot of these militants could work at a local Dollar Store—or Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, they would gladly.  But if all there is to do is to be a militant to make money—then that’s what they do.  And sex trafficking isn’t limited to this type of remote African region. When people wonder why Donald Trump’s administration is now selling weapons to Ukraine, to free that country from its heavily Russian past, again there sex trafficking is the core issue.  Ukraine is now considered the Thailand of Europe where the unethical predators seeking illicit sex with young boys and girls occur openly.  No matter where the region limited employment conditions attract people to sell themselves to others for sex and that is a tremendous problem that requires diligence.  When American feminists attempt to villainize normal sexual behavior between men and women as a political power grab within the industrialized world, all they are really doing is exacerbating the global trend toward sex trafficking—and until they do address the illicit trade—what they say and do means nothing.

“Sex Slave Survivor of Christian-Killing Group Al-Shabaab Describes Gang Rapes, Forced Abortions,” by Stoyan Zaimov, Christian Post, December 12, 2017 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

A woman who was held captive and repeatedly raped by members of Al Shabaab is sharing the horrific details of daily sexual abuse and forced abortions endured by those who are kidnapped by the the radical Islamic terror group.

Kenya’s The Standard reported on Sunday the story of one of the women who survived the ordeal at Boni Forest camp, identified as Fatuma, who said that she and others were raped by as many as six men at a time for five years.

“The women in the camp had to cook, wash clothes for the militants and undertake other household duties. The fighters frequently physically and sexually abused us. Some militants would beat us if they did not like something we cooked, which was often for me as I was not familiar with cooking Somali injera (bread) that was preferred by the militants,” Fatuma, who managed to escape the jihadists a year ago, explained.

She said the militants forced the women to use contraceptives and undergo abortions when they got pregnant.

The abuse reportedly worsened when Al-Shabaab fighters battled the African Union Mission in Somalia or Somalia National Army troops.

“They would drink and take drugs all day and night, whether celebrating the killing of Somalia National Army or AMISOM soldiers or mourning their own, and that’s when the gang rapes would happen,” she recalled.

Fatuma said that only the female captives who were married off to commanders were allowed to have children, and said that there were about 15 children at the camp.

The woman, who admitted that she was looking for work with Al-Shabaab before finding out what the group is really about, said that captives were also often forced to use drugs and were treated as prisoners.

“If you were lucky, a commander would take you as a wife and that would stop other militants from raping you. But those who were made wives were only native Somalis,” she said….

https://pamelageller.com/2017/12/sex-slave-shabaab.html/

It’s one thing when men and women decide to enter the sex trade as free people—the way they do in Las Vegas, or at Times Square in New York.  They could choose to work in the sex trade or become a cashier at Macy’s—they have a choice.  There are many options in America that the rest of the world doesn’t have.  But consider the kid in Thailand who is trying to support all his brothers and sisters in that impoverished country who works the sex trade in red light districts serving up sex to dirty old men who come there from around the world just to have under aged sex.  There are no options but to engage in the sex—and that is a vast evil all its own.  The correct thing to do is to bring options to those people so they could have a choice in the matter.

Showing the impoverished countries how to function as capitalist zones is the first step in correcting the behavior.   Bringing economic choices to such young people addresses the problem on the supply side.  And it also attacks the demand—which is vastly a larger problem than the poor kids getting lured into these shameful existences.  Much like the drug industry in America where demand is high so supply always finds a way to meet the market need, we must use the morality of capitalism to use financial options to alter the behavior.  For instance, there’s a reason American women don’t feel that they have to sell themselves on the street to pay for a bus ticket to see their mothers—that’s because they can work at a local McDonald’s, or the shopping mall to make the money they need.  Dirty old men are forced to go elsewhere looking for illicit sex.  It does happen in every town across America, but it tends to be a problem hidden largely from our first looks.  But in places like Ukraine, or in Thailand, the sex trade is as common on the street as someone selling refrigerator magnates to tourists are.

Frustrated men from around the world who don’t know what the rules are for sex any more in their “civilized” societies back home, flood these sex trafficking markets on business travel and sex vacations which has only increased the demand.  That behavioral problem is the next thing to tackle once economic mobility is introduced to even the smallest village in Africa or southeast Asia.  It is stunning how many women on any street in Europe will take off her clothes and have sex with anybody with a little cash—because cash is not easy to get.  Even in cities like London and Paris, economic options are very limited leaving women to be all too tempted to use their bodies to pay their high rent each week.  Rent in London is extraordinarily expensive making it very tempting for women to sell their young bodies in any way possible to cover the high costs of living in that town.  They may not do such things every day, but once or twice a year is too much.  They may pass off such encounters as casual sex with strangers in exchange for a little financial security.  They don’t work the streets directly but go to just about any dance club and the sex trafficking issue is fully at play.  The next morning they can blame it on the drink to save their reputations to some extent, but they shouldn’t have to make such a choice.  In America, finding women to sell sex is much harder, because they have so many other economic options.  The key to fighting this evil is economic mobility—not handouts from the government, but an adhesion to capitalist concepts.

Thus the cause of this very evil business is limited economic options, so that is where we must focus.  Feminists who complain that Harvey Weinstein grabbed their boobies so they could have a role in a Hollywood movie are just describing the high-end of this very world-wide problem.  Those girls have options, they could let a sleaze bag like Weinstein grope them, or they could work an office job for some respectable position—for less money mind you, but they have that option.  A poor girl in Kenya has no choice when she is captured by Al Shabaab and forced to be gang raped daily by 5 to 6 men for many years. She is in that situation because of limited economic mobility.  Even though Ukraine is part of the civilized world, Russia wants it back as a territory and has been trying to choke it off militarily to fall back under the mother country with impoverished conditions as the rest of Europe has been happy to have chaos rule.  Why you might ask, because the powerful men and women who could solve the problems in Ukraine go there for the sex, to satisfy those deep dark demons that lurk in their repressed imaginations.  That leaves Ukraine with very few options economically except to yield to the sex addicted tourists who have full pockets and are seeking the bodies of the young to spend it on.  That is a topic that liberal feminists in America won’t touch with a pole of any length—because they are as guilty as anybody for the perpetuation of such an evil—which makes them all pathetic hypocrites—and part of the problem as well.

Rich Hoffman

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The ‘Star Wars’ Backlash: Disney’s choice to make progressive films has hurt their product sustainability for the future

Disney could have avoided the whole issue.  They will make their money regardless, but all the controversy surrounding their new Star Wars film The Last Jedi was completely unnecessary.  The movie will do good business in spite of a sharp drop off in the weeks after its release—but like The Force Awakens that came before it; it could have done much better.   Many will argue that these movies didn’t need to do anything—they are making more money than any other film in the history of planet earth.  But there are problems with sustainability here that are clear—especially in The Last Jedi.  These filmmakers decided to make a noticeably progressive film complete with an emphasis on girl power, the fair treatment of animals, interracial romance, and even trying to throw a bone toward the gay community by hiring Laura Dern—the girl who helped Ellen come out of the closet.  The white guys are the bad guys and everyone else is trying to climb out from under their wrath—which is the essential part of the story—so of course the critics loved it.  But the audience score is noticeably hovering at only 50% which was a stunner for many analysts in the week leading up to Christmas.  It really shouldn’t be—my thoughts about the film nearly reflect the review by Ben Shapiro below—which is sometimes very funny—because it’s true.

The original movies were conservative movies whether or not George Lucas intended them that way or not.  They were warnings of big government imposing its will on people. They were also warnings about how a group of leftists such as the Nazis could emerge in a society with “thunderous applause.”  So conservatives like myself and young Ben Shapiro tend to be drawn to Star Wars and the core message.  And yes, the Nazis were socialist radicals of a left leaning philosophy which they borrowed from the Democrats in America. That is all historically accurate, yet the modern progressive left is trying to suppress that history and attribute them all to the political right.  That mess of thought is what ends up in a movie like The Last Jedi—where all the major plot points only work because of nostalgia but all the actions of the characters seem goofy and foreign—which is forgivable in a kids film.  But these are not the kinds of stories that will be beloved for decades like the originals were.  The modern political left doesn’t know what it is or what it believes because everything they love is built on lies.  That trait is quite clear in most Hollywood productions now because the entire industry is functioning from the same neurosis.

As I said with The Force Awakens, Disney could have avoided all this by just sticking to the stories of George Lucas and the canon established by the Extended Universe.  It was all there for them—hard core fans would have embraced a new trilogy set 40 years after Return of the Jedi with Jaina Solo leading the way as the new protagonist—but Disney and Lucasfilm wanted to tell a more progressive story.  In the EU Luke had built a wonderful Jedi school that was defending the galaxy against threats even from outside the galaxy.  Han Solo was the every reliable dad who always knew best—and was a respectable grandfather.  And Princess Leia was learning to be a Jedi master.  Hard core fans would have been satisfied, and casual fans would have still enjoyed the stories for the reasons they like these new ones.  Instead Lucasfilm led by Kathy Kennedy and Bob Iger decided that gender was more important, that showing common people from anywhere could do anything was more important and that progressive concerns were the driving force of these new movies where traditionalists were the villains.  In the Kathy Kennedy movies Han Solo was a deadbeat dad who failed his son and ran away from his wife. Luke is a loser who tried to kill his student and when he failed he retreated to an island to hide from the responsibilities of the galaxy making everything that happened in the original trilogy pointless—in every regard.  So of course only half the audience coming out of the theaters like the new movie.  Critics only like the progressive elements, but the people who have been fans and kept the film franchise at the top for so long were certainly ignored—and they aren’t happy about it.

I gave up on loving these movies.  I enjoy them because my grandkids like them, and they aren’t so bad that they don’t do what good mythology is supposed to do, and that is inform young people about right and wrong.  For me just getting a new John Williams soundtrack is enough.  The music from The Last Jedi is absolutely stunning.  But I can’t help but think that The Last Jedi was the last real Star Wars movie because the modern filmmakers just don’t have it in the tank to know what made Star Wars great to begin with.  They are too liberal and really don’t understand history the way that George Lucas did and it shows in the writing.  The entire plot of Rose and Finn in The Last Jedi was a liberal diatribe on the evils of capitalism and the correct treatment of animals.  The climax of the whole exchange was to show that a chubby Asian girl could kiss a black guy after saving him from a pointless suicide mission.  All that might be fine for some show on Netflix but in Star Wars—don’t expect everyone to love the movie when that kind of obvious political garbage is being shoved down the audiences’ throat.  Sure it did what Disney wanted, and pulled great reviews out of the critics—but that only front loaded the anticipation.  When audiences got into the theater and saw all that crap, they were obviously let down—and that isn’t good for the future of Star Wars.

I won’t lose any sleep over any of it.  I’m an EU guy.  I’m trying to give these new movies a chance mainly because they are the movies of my grandchildren’s generation and I want to share these stories with them.  But they are really screwing it up for the future at Lucasfilm—and it was all so unnecessary.  I still think that Rey in the movie is the daughter of Han and Leia Solo—and at this point it’s the only thing that can really save the franchise.  I think that will be the big reveal in Episode 9.  If not that, Han and Leia Solo were the worst parents in the galaxy and all the events of the original trilogy were meaningless.  Disney could have had all the good stuff right out of the gate and gone much further if they had just stayed away from doing their own thing and ignoring the EU.  They chose to make some upfront money while sacrificing the whole thing down the road—they destroyed the sustainability of it.  And that is why there is a very real Star Wars backlash showing up in the audience scoring.  Those scores mean many millions of lost dollars and that is trouble down the road for everyone connected to these movies. They should have listened up front and not been so audacious to think they could change things and still get away with a beloved series.

Rich Hoffman

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Finally, I’m Proud of my Government: And Trump University was never a fraud

For the first time in my life when I look at the White House, I’m proud. That actually goes back to the days of Ronald Reagan—everything in Washington D.C. seemed dirty and corrupt to me, but now—now everything is different. The Trump White House has given me faith in an American government not as some ominous thing to be feared, but a partner in the great American experiment yearning for a better tomorrow. After passing the tax cuts through the House and Senate by midweek 2017 in a December looking toward Christmas, I witnessed something I thought would never be possible. I hoped it would honestly, but I had doubts it could—and that is to see business objectives applied to politics for the sake of changing the way the whole game will be played forever more. Donald Trump has brought an honesty to the White House and therefore all of Washington D.C. culture that has altered the course of the human race I think forever. This little evolutionary step we’ve seen in the year of 2017 will always be viewed as a special time that the world will reflect on and be thankful for.

I have to think back to the very dishonorable thing Mit Romney did when he came out against Trump in the primaries as the establishment GOP threw everything including the kitchen sink at Trump to stop his nomination process. Probably the hardest hitting criticism Romney leveled at Trump was about Trump University being a fraud. As I’ve said before, I’ve read all of Trump’s books over the years—as everyone should. If you really want to know who Donald Trump is, read the books he’s written—he is a very open person. Well before he was president of the United States he had a deep concern to help motivate people to greatness. Basically, he’s a high energy guy who loves to work, so he gets involved in lots of things in his life, and he loves to talk about them. He sets high standards for himself and always seeks to meet those standards. For instance, when he plays golf with other professional golfers, he doesn’t see himself as inferior to them. Instead he plays with them to get better himself, but he doesn’t consider himself an inferior talent, the way most people would. Whatever Trump has ever done he justifies that if he puts the time and effort into being good at it, that he can be as good if not better than everyone else.

Trump’s pursuit of greatness has given him a good life, and he’s been very open to sharing that good life always. Like a lot of us he looked around once his Celebrity Apprentice show took off at NBC and figured that lots of people wanted to learn from him—so he started Trump University. There are a lot of schools out there that are actual frauds, such as Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Princeton and many others—because what they sell is not what you are getting. In the established schools their intent isn’t to teach you about the world and how to live in it—they are there to program children into becoming liberals and adjusting student’s lives to socialism. They sell their services as helping people get good jobs, but what they are really after is programing children into liberalism. There are other schools like Liberty University that try to teach conservative studies, but they are typically looked at by the political left as institutions of fraudulent activity—because they aren’t part of the orthodox. That’s when Trump entered the fray with a university of his own located in one of his developments along the Hudson—and his intention was basically to share his experience with hungry minds wherever they came from.

As Mit Romney did his public comments against Trump criticizing Trump University specifically I was holding in my hand my copy of a book called Trump 101: The Way to Success—which was published by Trump University. How could Mit Romney say that Trump University was a fraud as I was holding one of the books produced by that endeavor that was clearly written to improve the lives of people in business—and in life? The answer was that he couldn’t. Trump University may not have taken off the way Trump wanted—but he certainly tried. Once Obama was elected in office and it was obvious to the rest of us that we had a real criminal enterprise moving into Washington D.C. Trump moved his efforts more to the Tea Party movement—like many of us right thinking people did—in 2009. After Obama personally called out Trump at the correspondent’s dinner in 2012 Trump had decided that he’d try for a presidential run and give the Tea Party movement the thrust it had been lacking. I think for him based on the books he had written, it was the ultimate challenge to some of his lifelong philosophies—and if he pulled it off, he would have a chance to actually save the nation.

I knew Trump was never a fraud and I was a supporter of his essentially from the time he announced he was running. I based my support on his books because I knew that if a guy who thought the way he did were ever to become president, then he’d be the greatest that we had ever had—that includes Lincoln, and George Washington himself. Trump has never been a bad guy who functioned from his flaws—he’s always sought to be better each day that he woke up. He was a little crazy with women for a while as he lived a genuine playboy life—which in his day was the way success was defined. But he obviously outgrew that over time and has arrived into his modern age better prepared than anybody to do the hard job of being President of the United States.

His first-year successes are straight off the pages of his books and I’m happy to say he hasn’t disappointed me in any way this entire time. Most people don’t think of him as an author, but he’s quite expressive and very inspiring—naturally, and I think his written works are some of his best attributes. I really look forward to reading the books about his presidency in the future—because there are some really wonderful things happening every day in his administration. For people who clearly wanted America to fail—of course they hate him. They hate all of us and have decided that they don’t want to live in a country with our values—they made that decision, not us. But until Trump came along to flip the tables, they had control of the narrative within the media. They don’t have it any longer, and it only took a year. Because of Trump and his successes, they are forced to reveal themselves—really for the first time, and people can see the maliciousness of their actions in the light of day. Trump has brought honor to the White House that will have a lasting effect—and I’m very proud of what his administration has been able to do in such a short time. Based on his books, I know this is all just the tip of the iceberg, there will be many more great things to come and soon people will forget about all the ugly stuff. And that will be the greatest thing of all—something that we will all carry deep into the future for all time.

Rich Hoffman
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The GOP Passes Tax Cuts: How this causes the Democratic Party to end

I’m not going to say who I said it to, but I can say that it was quite a few very influential people. I’m not a big tea and cookie socialite who works the circles of power to advance thoughts on a matter, but I do deal with people who do—and they do good work of advancing conservative philosophy. So I’ll say here what I’ve been saying to them—get this tax bill done and we have a real possibility of 6% growth by this upcoming summer of 2018. Go ahead and mark it on your calendars and we’ll talk about it when the time comes. Unfortunately, most people—especially politicians with backgrounds in the legal profession do not understand economics. Unless a person does enormous amounts of personal research and self-education our school systems both public and private do not teach proper understanding of basic economic concepts. The political establishment has adopted socialism for well over 100 years with only periods of market fluctuation due to tax reductions—and that has hindered the American economy enormously. With that in mind these tax cuts passed under the Trump administration have enormous implications for our future in a positive way—so what happened today is not just a victory for Republicans—it’s a cultural revolution at the most fundamental level of conservative philosophy.

What all the doomsayers don’t want the American public to know is that yes, trickle down economics works—it really is the only method. The fantasy of a wealth redistribution utopia that liberals have fantasized about since Sir Thomas Moore’s publication of Utopia is purely science fiction with no basis in reality. It is a made-up sentiment that is built on hope, not facts and liberals have distorted that hope into some very ugly moments in world history—the rise of the Nazi, the rise of Mussolini, the rise of the Castros in Cuba, the communization of China, Vietnam and North Korea. The destruction of Central America and South America—particularly Venezuela and the cannibalization of all Europe. Africa is a continent of warring tribes fueled by communist sentiments as is Iran in the Middle East. It was Marxists who took over Iran back in the 70s which make that country such a danger today. What they all have in common is a destructive sentiment toward liberalism—because people were all trained at the same liberal colleges and were raised by the same basic liberal elementary education. And for nearly 32 years, since Ronald Reagan left office essentially, America has tried to be a team player to go along with all these leftist ideas regarding economics and technological development—which has nearly destroyed us. That changes today.

The passage of the GOP Tax Cut and Reform Bill is a bold step away from the global trend toward tax and spend communism, which was always the intention of the wealth redistribution strategies which has hand cuffed our economy for years. Once the dust clears and people don’t die, and bank accounts fill up, while America starts filling some of those empty store fronts in strip malls again with viable businesses the truth will be there for all to see. The pent-up wealth that has been hiding in the world has now been given a safe harbor to dock in, and America will explode with renewed enthusiasm. Isn’t it nice to have a business guy as president, who understands money? I love it for a change. Ohio would be smart to hire Jim Renaicci as the next governor to bring that same kind of understanding to a state that needs it. This GOP would not have passed the bill if Trump had not framed the argument and set a time table—like all good managers do. Everyone knows that presidents are not supposed to create legislation, congress does, but from the Executive Branch and as the head of the Republican Party they do set the table—and Trump did. Without this, nothing would have happened.

It pained me to watch Savannah Guthrie on NBC interview Paul Ryan about economic matters because all her assumptions were incorrect. She cited Michael Bloomberg as an authority on business without mentioning that he is a major tax and spend liberal. He lists himself as independent because he’s actually a socialist like Bernie Sanders—a major contributor to the progressive caucus. It doesn’t matter that he’s a billionaire—look at George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg—Warren Buffett, there are a lot of wealthy people who either don’t want more competition among their peers or they fell into their wealth by good luck—because they really aren’t very smart. That doesn’t make them business tycoons just because they are rich—yet people like Guthrie use them as ways to bridge their socialist theories to reality. What they all have in common on the political left is an inherent mistrust of human beings to do the right things—so they assume that the heavy hand of government should always be ready to enforce the laws of our nation and the basic assumption of fairness for which most of us all agree on. Liberals go wrong because they assume that people can’t be trusted—they as a political party have trust problems and that is a sickness of their own making. What Bloomberg really reveals in his tax answer is just what Soros would—they know that inside themselves to their very core they tend to lean toward evil intentions, so they assume that is the way everyone is. But that is not the case of reality. Hating corporations is not a viable strategy for economic growth. I am a job provider, and it is my experience that every car in the parking lot of my endeavor depends on me to fuel their economic lives. Their car payments, their mortgage, their entertainment—the children they raise—everything they do depends on good decisions made by their employer—in this case me. They need to be able to trust me and I need to be able to trust them. Since I am a person who does not have trust issues, I find the exchange is a very healthy one most of the time. And as I look around my community at all the businesses large and small that have to have that same relationship with their employees for the same reasons it is there that you can see “our economy.” Its not some magical thing that government controls, it exists on a microcosm of individual relationships successfully exchanged. Government is like introducing a third wife to a marriage—it doesn’t work—it introduces mistrust and more emotional liabilities rooted in the sum of their intellectual neurosis—the tendency to mistrust people. That mistrust contaminates everything involved in an employer/employee relationship. Guthrie and the people like her obviously don’t understand that basic premise—and why would they think otherwise since they’ve been taught socialist ideas from their infancy by the world at large.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/savannah-guthrie-to-paul-ryan-%E2%80%98are-you-living-in-a-fantasy-world%E2%80%99/ar-BBH3D4q?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

The boldness of the GOP plan goes against that insecurity that has been implicit during the entire progressive era—since Teddy Roosevelt switched from the Republican party to become the first presidential progressive candidate. Two decades later his nephew FDR, would become the second fascist to sit in the White House. The first was Woodrow Wilson. These people had emotional problems yet from the political left they shaped our education institutions with a false premise of basic mistrust in the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith’s ground-breaking examinations on capitalism. What we can always trust in humanity is that people generally act on behalf of their own self-interest. So when dealing with them, so long as self-interest is part of a calculation, you can trust the result—which is what is the key behind this tax cut plan of the GOP. Self-interest means employees leave companies if there is somewhere to go. Self-interest means corporations will pay more to retain their talent from a competitor. Self-interest means a company will locate to America so they can be near their families if the tax rates are equitable. Self interest keeps a person from jumping off a bridge where the railings are only hip level. If someone wanted to, they could jump over—and most people live within those guidelines except for the occasional idiot who has painted their lives into a corner with lots of bad decisions, then seek to committee suicide. This GOP tax cut puts trust back into people and that is truly terrifying for liberals, but what they will discover like the child who is terrified of the monster they think lives under their bed, is that there isn’t anything to be afraid of. And learning that scares them even more—because that is the foundation of their liberalism.

Rich Hoffman

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Equal Justice Under the Law: Why we should kick down the doors to the FBI and arrest Peter Strzok

If you didn’t catch Judge Jeanine’s segment on the FBI investigation led by Robert Mueller then you can see it below—or if you did you can see it again.  She does a really nice job of laying out the case of just how bad the FBI treated the incoming Trump presidency from the outset.  The reluctance that people who depend on these federal institutions is understandable do to their belief that FBI integrity keeps us safe from the bad guys out there in the world.  But once it is understood how serious all this is, and the depth of the crimes that were committed by the FBI, consciously—it becomes clear that the only recourse is to destroy that institution so that we can rebuild it better.  Trump said what we are all thinking, the FBI has lost its fine reputation and the ground agents allowed it to happen.  The people at the top were dreadfully corrupt, and the bootlickers below them did nothing about it because nobody wanted to jeopardize their opportunity for a promotion.  So we have a mess that needs to be fixed and we won’t do that playing patty cake with these guys.

As I write this I have full faith in the Trump White House to continue exposing this issue and shaming Capitol Hill into correcting the action.  But I have not forgotten how bad Eric Holder was during his years with the Obama administration.  I have not forgotten Loretta Lynch, or Lois Lehrer at the IRS.  I haven’t forgotten any of those things—and much more.  The only difference between now and then is that my kind of guy is in the White House and I’m hoping the situation can be corrected non violently and under the blind eyes of justice.  But for the record should I ever be deposed for some future actions—lets this little declarative statement cast light on my thoughts.  I’m not OK with Peter Strzok interviewing General Flynn and using that information to prosecute the guy ruining his life just because he was associated with the Trump campaign.  That same guy did not apply equal justice under the law to Hillary Clinton and her various associates.  It was he who gave them all a pass when serious crimes were committed.  And his activism was chronicled in text exchanges with his girlfriend who was working at the FBI as well.  When he stated to her that he intended to provide an insurance policy against the Trump election that was all any of us needed to hear.  He should not be working in human resources within the FBI until the smoke clears.  He needs to be at a minimum fired and likely put in jail—and everyone associated with him should be terminated as well.  Anything less would be criminal.

I’m not going to forget.  There won’t be some magical day ten years from now when all this will blow over and life at the FBI will return to normal.  No, it only gets worse from here.  The FBI, an unelected group of law enforcement officers, doesn’t get to decide who our president is or isn’t.  They are there to enforce the laws that congress creates-and that’s it.  They don’t get to go off and do their own thing and use the massive power we’ve given them to undercut the process.  People like me put up with Obama, Clinton, and many years of a government that certainly didn’t represent me.  We didn’t assassinate anyone or go into the streets with our guns to demand a better government.  We let the process run its course and we sought to fix the problems the correct and legal way—and it took a lot of time and who knows how many countless trillions of dollars of potential.  I could have easily have looked at the situation and said as Strzok did, that it was up to me to solve these problems for the good of the nation, because I knew better.  Only I don’t have a FBI at my disposal to manipulate things to my liking.  I have other things, but not control of a tax payer funded institution.  So under Strzok’s reasoning, it would be perfectly OK if I used violence and physical domination to turn the country back to the ideas that I think are appropriate—right?  That is the problem of Strzok, he opened up this mess and now we have to fix it.  Because if action is not taken against him, then there is no justice or trust in those institutions to correct themselves sending a clear message to the rest of us that if we really want to solve the problem, then we will have to do it with violence.

If that’s how the FBI wants it, I have no problem with that—violence.  Don’t think for a moment that anybody is going to come into my home kicking in doors and harassing my family in the middle of the night the way they treated Paul Manafort and that they’ll walk away alive that day.  It’s not going to happen, let me just say that.  I have no respect for a law enforcement agency that is guilty of crime themselves but don’t have that same treatment applied to them.  In my way of viewing the world Strzok should be arrested immediately, all his assets confiscated and he should be drug into the street naked and beaten into a bloody lump of flesh, until his jaw bone was dangling from his face with just a few pieces of skin—still alive, but a beating he would never forget.  That’s the only kind of justice I would respect after what he did.

Imagine you’re Paul Manafort—forget about any potential crime for a moment.  Paul is an insider who knew how the game was played and he was playing it.  The Clintons were playing the same game and so were the Podestas—so I don’t want to hear about any potential crimes that Manafort might have been engaged in.  If it was good for everyone else in the Beltway, it was good for Paul.  If it’s not good for Manafort, then I expect to see the same treatment for everyone else.  So let’s use that as a clarifying statement.  So there he was in bed with his wife and the FBI barges in with great urgency damaging property and wielding guns into their faces—in their private residence—as if the needs of the FBI were greater than the needs of Paul Manafort.  They call this a “no-knock” raid and in this case FBI agents picked the lock at 4:30 AM and barged into the residence to obtain documents that special investigator Mueller thought he needed for his case against a sitting president. I’m just saying, if I hear a sound at the door at 4:30 AM, there will be trouble.  And If I wake up to guns in my face, there will be even more trouble.  These types of raids are not permissible in the spirit of the United States idea.  The legal whizzes out there may have found a way to establish case-law precedent, but that doesn’t make them right.  The just thing would have been to gun down all the intruders on the spot because they were invading the sacred space of an American and his private property, which is the cornerstone to everything America represents.

https://michaelsavage.com/2017/10/30/manafort-charges-grew-out-of-records-seized-in-no-knock-raid/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2017/08/10/no-knock-raids-like-the-one-against-paul-manafort-are-more-common-than-you-think/?utm_term=.f79fc24a85a5

That’s where things get murky.  Manafort cooperated as the FBI thugs molested his wife and he turned over the documents—and Mueller spent another five months going over things before indicting Manafort costing him millions of dollars in losses.  If I were Manafort I would view the whole incident as something that ruined my life—I couldn’t live with that kind of imposition.  I’d have to get revenge on somebody and I’d require the skin off somebody’s back before I let the issue drift away.  If anybody points a gun in my wife’s face while she’s in bed, I’d have to do something—I don’t give a rat’s ass what the law says.  Just because guns are pointed at you that doesn’t mean you die.  Just because you get shot it doesn’t mean you die.  Pointed guns are not enough to stop violence.  Nothing out there in the world is more important than my castle, no social cause, not government, no “inclusive” concept about the “greater good.”  Nothing is better or more sacred than what goes on within the walls of my private kingdom–my personal residence.  To my way of thinking if you don’t have that there isn’t anything to live for to fight on another day—so why not give it everything you have right then and there?  What’s Manafort supposed to do now; he knows that the arrest was purely a political hit job.  His family has been abused in the process by the might of our government and he has had personal wealth stolen from him to feed an inefficient court system.  I feel a lot of passion about this, I actually wrote a book called The Tail of the Dragon which is about this very type of morality situation and with me it’s quite clear—we don’t protect ourselves enough from enemies within the state—and we damn well should.

Now though this case is well beyond the crimes against Manafort and Flynn, they are assaults to all of us who voted for Donald Trump.  I view the election of Donald Trump as the most important thing that’s happened politically in my lifetime.  True, it’s my point of view, but my point of view was in the majority this time—as the rules of the Electoral College mandate.  We played by the rules, we did the right things, and the FBI crossed the line—they broke the law and someone has to pay.  So is it appropriate under equal justice under the law to kick in the doors to the FBI guns wielding in the faces of these insurgents so that we can rip Peter Strzok out of his human resources job and ruin his life the way he has attempted to ruin the lives of others?  I say yes.  I’m willing to let the law do its thing, and I have hope that the process will work—I’d say it’s working right now.  But we won’t be going back to some good ol’ days within the bureau where these types of things got pushed under the rug.  We know too much, and we also know that because there isn’t equal justice that if we see FBI agents coming into our homes—then we have to defend ourselves.  After all if their agents are like Peter Strzok—what separates them from criminals breaking into our homes and stealing the fruits of our hard labor?  Nothing.

Rich Hoffman

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Trump the Destroyer and Beyond Pairs of Opposites: ‘The Last Jedi’s’ message to the 21st Century

There is nothing I enjoy more than a good discussion about very heady topics.  It really is the only thing that interests me so my mind is often open to these elements when I see them.  And before everyone complains that I’m writing another Star Wars article, it would be worth the time to follow through on this one, because we’re going to talk about some important stuff.  After the dust settled on The Last Jedi—once I had seen it and considered what Disney’s role in the whole thing was, and compared all that to these really massive investigations into the FBI and Donald Trump’s institution cleansing presidency—I have a few thoughts to share to those with a mind to listen.  So here it goes.

Taken up close, there is a lot to be angry about.  There’s a lot to fix, and most of us do not understand our role in the grand scheme of things.  We can call that grand scheme God if you’d like, but I’d prefer the term Grand Fortissimo—A term I acquired after reading the Joseph Campbell masterpieces The Masks of God many years ago for which that term was applied to the steady march and consideration  of the human race—from its inception to the present.  Art after all is the yearnings and toils of the mind and the imagination which fosters it—and Star Wars was always a work of modern art presented as myth to a hungry public needing more than what other forms of entertainment typically give us.  I’m not particularly happy with the direction Disney has taken the Star Wars stories—because taken at the ground level—these new films are very progressive in their values which makes them political in a negative way.  But………what separates Star Wars from the pack is that they are rooted in very ancient mythologies which have been always trying to answer the big meaning of life questions we all seek and to get there it is the orchestral music of John Williams which takes what might otherwise be average television plot lines and elevates them into the realm of modern myth.

As I was thinking about all this I listened to the new Last Jedi soundtrack by 85-year-old John Williams and if there was ever a person on earth that has the powers of God working through him, it is that guy.  Listening to the music with no images attached, just a good symphonic score pulled from the movie is just amazing.  What he put down on paper is something that would rival Mozart or Bach or Tchaikovsky any day.  That Ahch-To them from The Last Jedi which was introduced at the end of The Force Awakens I think represents the direction of the human race in the 21st century and John Williams is quite well aware of it.  It’s fully majestic and deeply philosophical and touches on all the classic myths of our imaginations and shines a light to where we are going.  For Williams to capture all that in just a few notes is nothing short of genius.  As I was listening to that little piece in my car with the windows up and the sound turned up as loud as I could get it to go I received a notification from my oldest daughter that NASA was sending up a copy of The Last Jedi for everyone to watch up on the International Space Station.  On another notification I received the Friday box office results which was tracking The Last Jedi to break over 200 million domestically by Sunday night—which is extraordinary.  Even though I thought the surface plot of The Last Jedi was pretty mediocre—almost descending into the plot of the latest stupid Star Trek movie, Into Darkness—the deeper elements of it are actually quite sophisticated, which is a serious nod of the hat to Rian Johnson, the director.  He chose to essentially make this Episode 8 movie a modern rendition of the classic Twin War Gods Navaho legend and it is quite effective.

Meanwhile Donald Trump is shaking up the entire world of the establishment.  Liberals might see Trump as Snoke from The Last Jedi and they are guarding themselves from the First Order of his creation.  Conservatives see Trump as the Rebellion fighting against an evil faceless Empire where the Deep State has all the power and might we see in the Star Wars movies as being something worth fighting.  The main them of The Last Jedi is the motif of most mythologies that we know of, and that is to move beyond the pairs of opposites—the yen and yang life.  The cultures of our past which built pyramids understood this all too well, you pick your side and work your way intellectually up to the point where you will have to meld with all the other sides of the pyramid.  Life forces you to pick sides, but once the roles we play in the conflict of living are concluded, all sides blend at the point.  At the end of The Last Jedi what Rian Johnson has done was essentially kill all the villains to merge the characters into this concept which was pretty bold stuff.  I am pretty sure that Donald Trump is a Star Wars fan, and I’d dare say he understands what I’m talking about and he knows his role in all this is a Shiva role—a destroyer of evil and a transformer upon our culture.  I remember when the Rogue One Blue-ray came out in April of this year Trump was playing it on Air Force One while reporters where talking to him.  Trump gets it—I’m quite sure of it.  His job is to clear away all the institutional hesitation for which Star Wars is conceptually introducing to the human race a tomorrow for which we presently aren’t prepared for.  That is clearly the intention of The Last Jedi—to bring mankind to the top of the pyramids and to now move beyond—which no culture in the history of the world has done so far—that we know of.  If they have in the past, they left earth long ago.

It was just this week that Trump announced the next steps for NASA which are going to once again use the space race to spur our economy along into uncharted waters.  Within a few decades we will all have to make a conscious decision as to whether or not we want to die—because we’ll be able to download ourselves into some form of A.I.  We’ll also be able to biologically heal ourselves—so there’s that as well. We are moving toward a time where dying for the honor of our flags, or our loved ones is really going to be robbed of its merit—and what are we going to do then?  How do we live beyond the pairs of opposites—once we’ve had reconciliation with the “father” whether it’s the God of the Christian Bible or the Sun from the Navaho legend?  We must have Shiva destroy the old world and to clear away all the smoke so that we can see the top of the pyramid, then we will complete that climb and move into that next age.  Star Wars is providing a road map of thought to help us through art and subconsciously we seem to understand. Donald Trump for the world right now is Shiva—and I say that in the most positive manner.  He is working beyond the villains of Star Wars for that moment on Ahch-To when Luke vanished at the end of The Last Jedi to join Yoda in the realm of the dead—which aren’t so dead—but willing participants in the theater of life.  Very interesting.

Donald Trump and Disney without really planning it in any way are serving as the two greatest influences that are shaping our culture of tomorrow in ways that many of us today still can’t fathom.  I saw a lot of people at my screening of The Last Jedi who are full-grown adults dressed up for the movie.  This stuff is a religion to them now, and that is taking us all to places that are uncharted in the human experience.  While our political assumptions are being destroyed—rightfully so, our art is providing us with a road map to renewed self-discovery.  Star Wars is not just a movie experience; it is amid all the sex scandals and the obvious destruction of Hollywood the best and only safe place that we can still trust.  It’s all around us at Target, Wal-Mart and even in our cars.  It’s fueling the imagination of NASA which has been given wings again under Trump and where we are all heading for is that grand fortissimo I was talking about.  It may take thirty or forty more years, but we’re going to be going somewhere we’ve never been before and I think that is absolutely wonderful.

Rich Hoffman

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Lakota Schools did the Right Thing: A 3-2 vote that shut down gender identity from progressive intrusion into a conservative community

Thank God that the gender identity policy did not pass in my home district of Lakota. As much lobbying as progressive groups applied to our school board, the Board itself was supposed to be representative of the community, and the 3-2 decision against the policy reflected those current values. Actually, I was impressed with the courage it took those board members who voted against it to do so. The rationality the opposition applied to the vote was that board members were afraid of community backlash which is something that should seem obvious. Of course they were. Gender identity is not something that should even be a part of the school experience—and to put such an emphasis on a sexually driven issue is destructive and well beyond the experience of education. Lakota being the eighth largest school district in Ohio was a big player in this national dialogue, so I am proud of my neighbors who voted no. It took guts, and Lakota provided leadership on this issue that most districts would not—up to this point.

http://www.wlwt.com/article/lakota-school-board-expected-to-pass-gender-identity-policy/14409933

To those who have moved to Lakota and brought all these crazy liberal ideas with them from wherever they came from, I have to say to them that they really have no right to impose those progressive values on the rest of us. I’ve been in the Lakota district most of my life and lived in Liberty Township when there were cows across the street from my home. The region is one of the most conservative in the state of Ohio and it’s that way because of its history that extends back to the Revolutionary War. If you moved to the Lakota district and bought a nice $500,000 home, we welcome you. Have a good time in Liberty Township or West Chester to the south. But keep your progressive values wherever you moved from. The assumption is that if you moved here, you valued what you saw. Don’t come here trying to change us into you—because we weren’t the ones moving. You were. And when it comes to the kind of values our conservative families want in their school—having boys going to the girl’s bathroom isn’t one of them. It is unrealistic to bring such nonsense to an education environment in the first place.

Now for the progressive groups out there who want to back door the conservative nature of Butler County with this gender identity garbage—this was a big defeat. They want nothing less than to conquer our conservative natures and make us all more “progressive” using our children to get at our sentiments within our homes. We cannot allow our government schools to become weapons of the political left. Kids should be able to go to school and not worry about some confused kid who is a boy but wants to be a girl running into the girl’s bathroom because they feel they more identify with that gender. Or the kid who pretends he’s a girl because he really has a pervert nature and uses the signs of mental illness to have access to the nudity of his classmates. Yes, there are kids who would fake a gender identity to get access to girls in the bathroom or locker rooms in gym class. The Lakota school board was wise to avoid that hot topic and establish a precedent that other schools can now follow.

Gender identity is not some random event, if a child is suffering from it, the cause is due to terrible parenting. Any parent who has a child who doesn’t know what sex it is, has failed that child with reckless leadership within the home. Reckless because they have not taught their children the basics of navigating through a life of facts. If I spoke to every kid who has this gender identity problem I am sure I would find a parent who screwed up that child’s life in their early years in some way—so it’s a parental problem. Sexual identification after all is only a role we play in the procreation of children. Women give birth. Men plant the seeds for it to happen. In that game the male tends to be the initiator, the woman the recipient. She has to be discriminate in the process to decide if she wants the DNA of her future child to entail the traits of the aggressor. Beyond that process, males and females should otherwise be considered equal. This notion however that a boy can be a girl if they want to or vice versa is a freakish state that actually messes with the destiny of the human race and it has been concocted by what I would consider insanity—by the type of people who think Fantasy Fest in Key West is cool, and who think the Rocky Horror Picture Show is art.

I understand that people who are functionally insane—who enjoy The Rocky Horror Picture Show for instance want the company of others to authorize their diluted minds with mass appeal—but they are not entitled to ruin the minds of our children just to justify their mental impediments. There is room for them in society and we should treat them with compassion and tolerance—to an extent. But they should not be allowed to shape our society with their brand of insanity. Insanity in this case is defined by defying the role of our biological natures against reality and insisting on something else which by nature is completely nonfunctional.

For those who said that the school board members who voted against this measure are afraid of community backlash we should actually redefine that statement. We elect school board members who are supposed to represent our community, so they can protect our interests in just these kinds of instances—where outside influences attempt to change the nature of our community using our children as a platform. The attempt taken at face value is actually quite hideous, so those that voted as representatives of our community when activists were in the room putting immense pressure on their decision is a commendable act, and they deserve praise—not retribution and guilt. That’s the way the process is supposed to work and I personally won’t forget it. But the slant of the media covering this story was that the policy would pass because traditionally the activist pressure applied would force them to vote for the squeakiest wheel in the room—the transsexual activists and their immoral plight to corrupt nature itself with progressive agenda issues.

Yes, small reverberations of shock moved through the political world on a national level over this seemingly little decision within the Lakota school district. But the suggestion should have never occurred in the first place. To those on the losing side of this issue, you should have kept the issue in the closet where it belongs as an anomaly of human nature. A sickness cannot be allowed to define the human race and if we are trying to teach our children anything in public school it shouldn’t be that unisex bathrooms will be part of their future. I have been in many of those unisex progressive bathrooms at this point in my life, especially in London—and they are dumb ideas. Men and women should be given a little distance from each other so they can dispose of their waste without the embarrassment of interaction. The sexes should be allowed to have their mating games for the procreation of life—because that’s the only purpose of it. Those who are for these gender identity polices are also the same people who see abortion not as mass extermination, but as a moral right of the mother. So it can be argued that these progressive policies are anti-life in every way imaginable. They are not about acceptance of individual sanctity as they pretend. They are immoral impediments to existence—and they tried to impose themselves on a tax payer funded school. In that regard I hope this defeat stings enough to push them off the front pages and back into the insane asylum where they belong. They should have expected nothing less in the conservative region of Butler County, Ohio—where at least we still value the traditions that made America great in the first place.

Rich Hoffman

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Naming Jerusalem the Capital: The path to peace in the Middle East

As I’ve said before, there was this thing called the Sykes-Picot agreement signed after World War I that pushed most of the tribal Arabs out of the Middle East giving control of the region to England and France. The famous British crusader Lawrence of Arabia had unified the tribes of the Islamic Middle East to fight for the crown essentially, and once the war was won they were screwed out of the spoils of victory. The Arabs—such as the modern Palestinians have been resentful ever since. If T.E. Lawrence had not unified the Arab world, the tribes would have eventually been conquered by European forces one way or another just as the Indians were overtaken in North America. It was the nature of human development and a lot of people screwed each other over and there’s no way to take any of it back now. What’s done is done and that’s the end of the story. Only the Jews have always been a part of Jerusalem’s history and over many millennia they have been pushed and shoved around by newer religions and empires that essentially wanted to destroy them. That is in essence what is going on with Palestine to this very day. They want to return to the pre-treaty days before World War I and do not want anything to do with Israel. Their entire existence has been to claim the Holy Land in favor of Islam—which given how things evolved over the Crusade period, they have a point against Europe. But the issue with the Jews goes back much further than any of that anxiety, and that is why its right and noble for Donald Trump to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

What Islam and Christians have in common is the work of Aristotle. If not for Islam the works of Aristotle—for which much of American civilization is built—would never be known to us. So we do have them to thank for preserving that bit of Greek philosophy—which they adopted and had great success as a culture until the period of the Crusades. However, Islam is a fairly new religion upon the world scene and they have never evolved as a culture beyond the Middle Age mindset. That’s why it was a minor miracle that T.E. Lawrence was able to unit them all for a common cause, because at that point in time they were essentially living as they did 500 years earlier as tribes of nomads. Just like the nomads of North America were no match for human evolution of thought—the tribes of Arabs divided as they were became very easy to conquer once T.E. Lawrence died in a minor motorcycle crash in his homeland of England. (I’m just saying—not getting into any conspiracies—just the facts)

In 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The nation of Israel was officially born that thus started a long history of territory wars and terrorism that persists to this day. Arab leaders all over the Middle East refuse to acknowledge the existence of Israel in any form and they’ve used terrorism to keep the area unstable in their favor. It doesn’t matter to them that the entire Middle East except for Israel looks like a war-torn region of destroyed huts and roads broken beyond repair—because they still desire to live in the times of the Middle Ages. They don’t care about human evolution of thought and industriousness. Their values are not conducive to the modern world and so far in all negotiations on the matter, the only side that has given anything has been the Jews.

Aside from the United Nations setting up the Jewish state their boldness ended there. Fearing terrorism from sponsors like Palestine and Iran, Jerusalem has been made into a kind of neutral zone where the Jews have been forced to worship their former temple from the vantage point of just one wall while Islam claimed the Dome of the Rock as their own. Not wanting to provoke further hostilities the nations of the world backed off and essentially told the Jews to be happy with what they had. That is until President Trump declared today, December 6, 2017 the day that America recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that the American embassy would move there from Tel Aviv. Of course the Jewish people have always thought of Jerusalem as their capital but regarding the rest of the world, they wouldn’t. The reasons were many, mostly in the guilt they all played in antagonizing the situation in the first place with do-gooder intentions that really came out bad because they were trying to mix human societies at two different levels into a unified whole. That was never going to work. With the United States taking this step, it gives Israel a backing it’s never had by the world’s most valiant superpower and it changes entirely the dynamics of the Middle East.

The reason nobody has taken a stand before was because the people involved just didn’t understand how to gain a good negotiating position. Conventional wisdom thinks that by appeasing the Palestinians that the path to peace in the Middle East could only come from keeping them from wanting to destroy everyone in the world who isn’t of the Muslim faith. Trump—Mr. Art of the Deal, knows better—the way to negotiate properly against a hostile force is to destroy their premise—or what they have been trying to prevent—which was to keep the world always afraid of them so not to allow Israel to ever hold Jerusalem as the official capital. Because once that happened the idea that Israel would be pushed off the map into the Mediterranean Sea would be destroyed forever. Israel would be there to stay. Of course the Arabs will be upset and the nations of the world will want to march against Israel—like it states in the Bible in the times of Armageddon. But self-preservation is a very motivating factor and when it is realized that the United States is willing to put its foot on the necks of a culture from the Middle Ages and protect the crown jewel of the Middle East—Israel, then negotiations will become much easier. When the choice is between the capital of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, terrorism and fear are viable strategies to keep that from happening. When the choice is life or death, then the prospect of peace is much more inviting so long as they are free to live in their huts, marry their many wives and talk about the good old days when they were a new culture that persevered the work of Aristotle.

Trump knows, and many will soon learn it, that the path to peace in the Middle East is not through appeasement, it is through conquest. We can either pick modern culture or an ancient one. And if you are going to pick the ancient one, then who has claim to Jerusalem more than the Jews? Under every consideration of fairness, the Jews deserve the city of their ancestry. The many sins that have occurred from then to now are irrelevant, because the Jews were essentially there first and they have shown more than anybody in the Middle East a tendency to want to step into the 21st Century, and that’s what matters most. This move by Trump is the first step toward peace and it comes by picking a side. The next step is in the other side realizing that they are facing complete annihilation, or an opportunity to keep on living. And I think we all know what they will pick.

Rich Hoffman

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The Biggest Tax Cut in History: It looks like we’ll have a nice, “green” Christmas–and we deserve it!

I am excessively proud of everyone who stayed late on Friday night and passed the largest tax cuts in American history sending the bill into reconciliation next week.  That keeps the tax cuts on course for President Trump to sign the legislation into law likely on Christmas Eve in quite dramatic fashion.  In this day and age something like this is excessively rare, and not to take anything away from those in the Senate who did and would always support this president, but for those who have been actively working against him, this was a significant thing for them to do at a critical time. The forces against this tax cut were monumental—as all day long during the debate period news against Trump was released attempting to derail the entire process—including the plea deal with General Flynn.  But the Flynn case is going nowhere; of course he was directed to talk to Russians—and many other countries AFTER winning the election—not before.  That would have been his job—so that is the end of that story.  Yet the way the Senate stayed on the road and avoided distractions to do something that essentially is one of the biggest days in American history is to be commended.

One thing that was exposed during this whole ordeal was just how ignorant many people these days are about the basic nature of economics.  I often point around the world to show how poorly places we typically think of as great countries struggle in comparison to the United States.  How much time have I spent on the radio, television, and writing literally hundreds of articles on the topic of economics trying to teach people why they should support something like what happened on December 2, 2017 at 2 am in the morning?  If I added it all up it would come out to years of my life dedicated to the cause of just educating people on basic economic principles.  Yet so many people are taught incorrectly about how money works and what the value of capitalism is, that they just don’t understand why this tax cut was so significant.

It was stunning leading up to the big vote that the Dow Jones stayed over 24,000.  That is trillions more added to the United States economy in just the few weeks that we thought it was a miracle to see the record high of 23,000.  How high can this thing go?  30,000, is that even possible?  I think it is. Once you add deregulation with reduced corporate rates we are talking about a recipe for success unlike anything that has been seen in America—or anywhere—in human history.  If Trump retired today from the White House he would go down in history as the greatest of all our presidents—essentially because of his work at putting our economy back on track.  With these tax cuts and the tremendous amount of money pouring into the stock market coming essentially from investors who have been sitting on their money for years, I predict we will see economic growth in the United States of over 6%.  I actually think it will be much higher than that, but declaring such a thing at this point is pretty astronomical—so for credibility reasons, I’ll have to stick to the parameters of history. How do you pay down the horrendous national debt that we’ve had that is up to over $20 trillion dollars—you have 6-10% growth for a few years and the flow of money back into the United States takes care of all that and touches literally the lives of every single person.

I remember what it was like the last time America experienced that type of economic growth.  I was a young guy just entering the world of adulthood and I was making a lot of money.  I was making more than my dad was after years at the top of management at the company he worked at for decades, and I was doing it right out of high school.  For a person like me willing to work, there were boundless opportunities.  I was doing so well I was looking for a condo separate from my primary residence just as a bachelor pad so I didn’t have a bunch of girls fighting each other at my front door.  That all changed of course when I found the perfect girl for me and we married on the backs of that very strong Reagan economy.  The world seemed like it had endless possibilities to us and I always felt I could support my family by working whatever jobs I needed to so everyone had what they needed.  Then the 90s came with the global tampering of George Bush, then with Bill Clinton—and America entered a dark period of decline due to high taxes and over regulation.

By the time Obama was in the White House the global plot for America was obvious.  The capitalism of our great nation was fully under attack and a major wealth redistribution scheme was well underway, just as Ross Perot had warned during the 1992 election.  Yet it was even worse than Perot had said.  As a last-ditch reaction, the Tea Party movement emerged and over the next five to six years a major shift in philosophy toward economic and moral matters exploded on the scene which resulted eventually in the election of Donald J. Trump—the mastermind behind the popular television show, The Apprentice, and now the rest is literally history.

Trump is the whole package; he made himself into a celebrity combining entertainment with excessive fiscal knowledge making his billions the hard way.  That has poised him for just these kinds of battles and now in a spectacular fashion he was able to pull people together with masterful negotiating skills and open up our economy on the eve of Christmas 2017.  It was the Christmas of 2010 that the Obamanites in congress unleashed their Obamacare bill which took over a fifth of our economy.  But late last night, and likely to survive the reconciliation process is the heart of Obamacare, the individual mandate.  Without that individual mandate the socialization of our health care industry has no teeth, and this puts competitive dollars back at work to bring all costs down for the first time over that nearly decade long process.  It was one of the saddest Christmases that I can remember reading the newspapers on Christmas morning 2010 as congress took advantage of everyone’s Holiday distractions to essentially inject socialism into our American economy in a purposely crippling way.  At Christmas dinner that year my family contemplated the unthinkable—violence to take back our government—or a miracle of a politician in the White House.

With this kind of positive news 2018 will be a noticeably different year.  When it comes to economies, it’s your industry that makes GDP.  You have to have jobs in order for wages to increase.  And you can’t create jobs that pay well off the backs of tax payers, the way it has been for some time now.  Corporations, as much as socialists like to yak about Wall Street and faceless boards of directors and the profits generated—are what give individuals wealth.  Giving individuals a few hundred bucks in tax cuts won’t do much for your economy, but giving job creators tax cuts unleashes a tremendous amount of potential, and for Trump and the Republicans to stay focused on that says a lot about their fiscal understandings.  It is too early to know if we will all have a white Christmas—but one thing we can all be sure about assuming that congress continues on their path of approval, is that this year we’ll certainly have a “green” Christmas—and it will go down in history as one of the most significant we’ve ever had, or ever will.  This tax decrease is a historic game changer!

Rich Hoffman
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