Tag: Hollywood insight

‘The Art of the Deal’ versus ‘Rules for Radicals’: Trumping Democrats and their lock on the media

 

The answer is an easy one, as much of a killer as Russia’s Putin is accused to be, is he really guilty of crimes if nobody is around to bring forth the evidence.  It’s the old tree in the forest analogy, if it falls down in a forest and nobody is around to hear it—did it really happen?  When politicians destroy evidence revealing their guilt, did they really commit a crime?  That is precisely the accusation that George Stephanopoulos leveled at Donald Trump after the New York billionaire received unsolicited praise from the current leader and former KGB operative.  In the following interview, Trump did a fabulous job of turning the tables on Stephanopoulos who is the premier news man at ABC—owned by the Disney Corporation—who is a long time Democratic insider very close to Hillary Clinton.  It could be argued, successfully, that the Clintons are every bit the killers that Russia’s Putin is—yet they have been very successful in harassing witnesses, destroying evidence, and outright denying all accusations against them no matter how guilty they were—yet Stephanopoulos felt that the vague evidence against Putin was more than sufficient.  But when that same rational was leveled at his friend Hillary Clinton—by Trump, the same criteria was not honored.  Watch closely.

And that ladies and gentlemen is what we are up against.  In the past, Republican presidential candidates allowed themselves to be regulated into a media corner that the Democrats controlled.  No matter how strong their message was, it would never be heard correctly because Republicans simply didn’t market themselves in the hostile environment that is considered today’s media—largely controlled by people like George Stephanopoulos—flaming liberals who are activists against traditional America.  Republicans didn’t go on the late night comedy shows, they didn’t do media interviews on MSNBC, or CNN—they didn’t do Good Morning America—and they stayed away from George Stephanopoulos knowing that the table was tilted out of their favor.  That allowed scum bags like Hillary Clinton to cruise through political mine fields without harm knowing that the people conducting the interviews where her type of people.  It’s been a nice little game that Democrats have controlled completely for over twenty years now.

Trump completely changes that game in a way that nobody knows how to control.  Trump will go on any show at any time and argue with anybody. While he avoids fellow conservatives like Glenn Beck because the popular radio personality has been against Trump from the start and Trump knows there is nothing he can gain by granting Beck an interview because of the hit pieces that would follow—when it comes to Democrats in the media, Trump shows a willingness to engage them all in debate—and he’s successful.  For any Republican to hope to win the White House they must be able to enter the arena of the Democrats and be willing to do shows like The View, and Ellen and meet liberal arguments head on without surrender if they ever want to win a national election.  The Karl Rove methods are old, and have not been successful.  The Bush Family reign on politics is over—they did not do a good job, and now it’s time to push them off the stage for a new kind of Republican—one who is actually successful—personally.

After watching that interview between Stephanopoulos and Trump, it is clear that Hillary Clinton is in big trouble.  She cannot win this upcoming election crying about unfairness, or sexism.  Trump is far too smart to fall for that sentimentally.  I have been telling Republicans this for years, sometimes you have to call a latté sipping prostitute what they are and expose them.  It’s not hard, but a candidate has to be willing to face the ridicule which has protected the opposition for far too long.  In such a case the recipient has no choice but to call Trump a bully because they have no defense against what is being dished out against them.  Hillary Clinton has too many skeletons in her closet to win the White House and Trump is the only Republican in the current field who has the ability, and will to expose them.

No other Republican presidential candidate has the ability to meet Democrats on their controlled turf—they can’t go on George Stephanopoulos’s show and duel him in the manner that’s required-because they simply don’t have the self-confidence, or media persuasion to perform the task.  Ted Cruz does, but his voice just doesn’t command the presence required by television and radio to project strength, which isn’t his fault—but it just won’t do in the 2016 political climate.  Perhaps in the future when the rules have been changed, but presently, the media world is stacked against him in a way that prevents mainstream media platforms from working in his favor.  Trump takes away Hillary’s strength, and that is her ability to commit crimes and have the media hide those acts from the public.  In 2016, Trump has more media command than Hillary, and that is the most important aspect of the upcoming presidential race.  But what’s more important than that, Trump is more than willing to duel with people like Stephanopoulos over ANY issue.  Trump always believes he’s the smartest guy in the room and is never intimidated by degreed journalists or Rhoades scholars—so he never gives away the high ground in any kind of debate—and that is big trouble for people who have a lot to hide like Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton cannot win an election against Trump without ruining her career.  Everything that she’s worked for during her entire adult life is in jeopardy with Trump—and you can see it in her face already—it is her worst nightmare to come to the end of 2015 with Donald Trump as the Republican front-runner.  She cannot survive the daily attacks on her character and her insider politics.  She is much more vulnerable than Jeb Bush was and once this presidential race moves from just Republican primaries to a general election, the numbers will dramatically favor Trump.  The only reason polling does not favor Trump versus Hillary in a head to head election presently is because Hillary has not been in the cross-hairs.  Trump has left her alone letting the email investigation percolate in the minds of the electorate for the opportune time to exploit.  Once he locks down the Republican nomination and there is only Hillary Clinton to worry about—Trump will expose everything making a complete fool of the Democratic presidential hopeful.  The usual stories about rich white men maintaining the office over the first woman president will not be enough to win in 2016.  Trump knows how to overcome things like that—because he can work the media in a way that nobody else can.

Looking back over Trump’s career he just loves to fight, and he has shown a tendency to take on giants.  Back in the 80s he was one of the most influential owners of the USFL professional football league.  They used to play in the spring while the NFL played in the fall.  Trump wasn’t happy taking a back stage to the NFL, so he convinced all the other USFL owners to take the NFL to court over anti-trust charges.  And they won their case against the NFL.  Eventually the USFL fell apart leaving the NFL to return to its monopoly status, but Trump led the charge and showed no fear during the entire endeavor.  Trump was at the time in command of players like Herschel Walker, Jim Kelly, and Doug Flutie—players that would later dominate in the NFL.  Even after the lawsuit victory which denied USFL owners financial awards as part of the settlement leaving a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, Trump was able to unload his contract with Walker to the Dallas Cowboys.  Jim Kelly went on to take the Buffalo Bills to three playoff appearances, and Doug Flutie became a superstar.  Trump has a long track record of dealing with very tough people—the smartest the world has to offer.  He also is personal friends with dominate athletes and hard nose franchise owners.  Taking on Hillary Clinton for Trump is like sneezing out a bacterial virus.  It’s no effort at all, but it will make a lot of noise and leave quite a mess.

Comparatively, Hillary has no track record of personal achievement.  She has been a manipulative second-hander her entire life.   She and her husband Bill have only had success because they’ve managed to cheat their way through trouble.  CLICK HERE FOR EVIDENCE.  Hillary cannot win a presidential run playing things straight, and Trump will force her to try.  That’s when he’ll have her and she knows it—and George Stephanopoulos knows it.  Trump is a different kind of person.  His book, The Art of the Deal is an innovation over the favorite book of Democratic strategy, Rules for Radicals.  It literally “trumps” the Saul Alinsky tactics that Hillary Clinton has used since she was in college.  Trump is her worst nightmare and there is nothing a single Democrat can do about it in the media.  They cannot strop Trump because it really comes down to the rock, paper, scissor relationship of strategy.  For Hillary, her Rules for Radicals are ineffective against Trump’s Art of the Deal.  And she cannot win.  By the time 2016 comes to a close, she’ll be lucky if she can ever show her face again.  That for Republicans is the best news we’ve had in several decades—and is truly something to look forward to going into a new year.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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France is a Socialist Country: Understanding the intent of Four Horsmen and climate change arguments

I recommend that you watch this documentary called the Four Horsemen by Ross Aschcroft, who is an English director whose provocative film shown below evokes how the modern-day Four Horsemen continue to ride roughshod over the people who least can afford it.  It provokes a new kind of socialism that is supported by young Millennials like the group Anonymous and the Occupy Walls Street protestors.  It essentially is a repackaged hatred of capitalism that represents European socialism attempting to spread to every corner of the world, particularly in America.  It’s important to understand how the attacks on American enterprise come, how it’s being sold, and what the history of it is.  When Obama and French president François Hollande celebrated their climate change agreements in Paris recently the communist strategy behind their emphasis was not reported by the press and to those who don’t know any better.  Films like the Four Horsmen sound like reasonable suggestions—just like climate change might seem reasonable on the surface.  But it’s not reasonable, and many Americans don’t understand how deep the roots of socialism run in Europe—and how politicians in the United States have sought to mimic much of what they’ve seen there in American policy.

France is not a capitalist country that represents the values of the “west.”  It has a very long history with socialism and they are quite open about it.  Here is a bit of the history of France and its political system which was quite evident in the Four Horsmen film.  Of course the point in exhibiting this information is to show how France has influenced all of Europe, particularly Great Britain and liberal filmmakers like Ross Ashcroff.   The Socialist Party (French: Parti socialiste [paʁti sɔsjaˈlist], PS) is a social-democratic,[4] centrist political party in France, and the largest party of the French centre-left or center-right. The PS is one of the two major contemporary political parties in France, along with the Republicans. The Socialist Party replaced the earlier French Section of the Workers’ International (SFIO) in 1969, and is currently led by First Secretary Jean-Christophe Cambadélis. The PS is a member of the Party of European Socialists (PES), the Socialist International (SI) and the Progressive Alliance.

The PS first won power in 1981, when its candidate François Mitterrand was elected President of France in the 1981 presidential election. Under Mitterrand, the party achieved a governing majority in the National Assembly from 1981 to 1986 and again from 1988 to 1993. PS leader Lionel Jospin lost his bid to succeed Mitterrand as president in the 1995 presidential election against Rally for the Republic leader Jacques Chirac, but became prime minister in a cohabitation government after the 1997 parliamentary elections, a position Jospin held until 2002, when he was again defeated in the presidential election.

In 2007, the party’s candidate for the presidential election, Ségolène Royal, was defeated by conservative UMP candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. Then, the Socialist party won most of regional and local elections and it won control of the Senate in 2011 for the first time in more than fifty years.[5] On 6 May 2012, François Hollande, the First Secretary of the Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008, was elected President of France, and the next month, the party won the majority in the National Assembly.

The PS also formed several figures who acted at the international level: Jacques Delors, who was the eighth President of the European Commission from 1985 to 1994 and the first person to serve three terms in that office, was from the Socialist Party,[6] as well as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund from 2007 to 2011,[7] and Pascal Lamy, who was Director-General of the World Trade Organization from 2005 to 2013.[8]

In 2014, the party had 60,000 members.[1] In 2012 the party had claimed 173,486 members.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Party_(France)

 

François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand (French: [fʁɑ̃swa mɔʁis mitɛʁɑ̃] ( listen); 26 October 1916 – 8 January 1996) was a French statesman, who served as the President of France from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the first figure from the left elected President under the Fifth Republic.

Reflecting family influences, Mitterrand started political life on the Catholic nationalist right. He served under the Vichy Regime in its earlier years. Subsequently, however, he joined the Resistance, moved to the left, and held ministerial office repeatedly under the Fourth Republic. He opposed de Gaulle‘s establishment of the Fifth Republic. Although at times a politically isolated figure, Mitterrand outmaneuvered rivals to become the left’s standard-bearer in every presidential election from 1965 to 1988, except 1969. Elected President in the May 1981 presidential election, he was re-elected in 1988 and held office until 1995.

Mitterrand invited the Communist Party into his first government, a controversial move at the time. In the event, the Communists were boxed in as junior partners and, rather than taking advantage, saw their support erode. They left the cabinet in 1984. Early in his first term, Mitterrand followed a radical economic program, including nationalization of key firms, but after two years, with the economy in crisis, he reversed course. His foreign and defense policies built on those of his Gaullist predecessors. His partnership with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl advanced European integration via the Maastricht Treaty, but he accepted German reunification only reluctantly. During his time in office he was a strong promoter of culture and implemented a range of costly “Grands Projets“. He was twice forced by the loss of a parliamentary majority into “cohabitation governments” with conservative cabinets led, respectively, by Jacques Chirac (1986–88), and Édouard Balladur (1993–95). Less than eight months after leaving office, Mitterrand died from the prostate cancer he had successfully concealed for most of his presidency.

Beyond making the French left electable, Mitterrand presided over the rise of the Socialist Party to dominance of the left, and the decline of the once-mighty Communist Party (as a share of the popular vote in the first presidential round, the Communists shrank from a peak of 21.27% in 1969 to 8.66% in 1995, at the end of Mitterrand’s second term, and to 1.93% in the 2007 election).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Mitterrand

To many left leaning political people capitalism is what America is, where corporations are the targets of crony deals between politics and free enterprise.   The bar of understanding has been set so low that capitalism has been defined as the mess that currently makes up the Washington beltway.   This is largely because we have allowed Europe—specifically the socialism of places like France to define capitalism as a definition allowing film and television producers in love with Paris and London to create the standard understanding of money’s measurement in our culture with films like Four Horsmen.  But socialism and communism did not go away during the McCarthy Hearings, or the fall of the Berlin Wall.  It is quite alive and well, and being taught in our local schools, in our media, and in our admiration for the Europeans by a class of people in America who really don’t understand capitalism—particularly pure capitalism without the crony aspect.

It is important to understand history and to know that as far back as most people alive today can remember, France has been a socialist county.  It must be understood that when there are climate change discussions in Paris that it’s not protecting the environment that they are after, it’s more of building sympathy for proposals like the ones expressed in Ross Ashcroff’s film Four Horsmen.  These are not people who want a free market economy, they quote Plato in the film, but ignore that it was Aristotle who built the philosophy of American politics and economy. And that for America to work correctly, Plato’s prehistoric socialism must be eradicated and replaced with competitive environments full of inventiveness and productive enterprise rooted in profit.  It is to understand that before a true indulgence of the market forces at work can be comprehended proper definitions for things must be clear.  And clearly the kid Ross Ashcroft missed the mark as do many.  That is because they were bred to believe that Europe is still relevant and that their long history with socialism is the standard of the day.  But for us in America, we need to sever that relationship until places like France get the clear message—that they are entirely on the wrong path and are destined for continued failure.  The only way they can hide that failure is by sabotaging through any means possible the economic power of the west, and the productivity of free enterprise.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Why You Should Dump Disney Stock Now: The mistakes made on ‘Force Awakens’ will compound the failure of ESPN

On a day where every media outlet in the world is declaring the new Star Wars film an earth shattering success, I’ll take a little pride in being the only one to point at the doom on the horizon.  In a lot of ways I’ll admit hope, as often does happen—more than you’d think—that some executive at Disney will read what I write here and make the market corrections needed—and save the only company in the world truly dedicated to family entertainment.  But they won’t.  Disney is not run by a strong CEO like it was when Walt Disney ran the company years ago.  It’s now run by committees of people—and within those committees are people who seek such a management method because they lack personal courage.  Without personal courage and risk, the market potency of a company and its products surrenders box office appeal, and ultimately profits.  That is essentially what is wrong with the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens.  As much as I wanted to like the film—and still do in fact—the business side of my brain sees more alarms going off in the cockpit of this starship than it can withstand.  Destruction is imminent.  So I’m headed for an escape pod before the entire thing falls apart.  If you have Disney stock, you should sell it right now because the value will tank very shortly and it will never recover.

Out of all the possibilities and horsepower of Lucasfilm—with all the talent at their disposal—they as a company elected to treat their long line of New York Times bestselling novels like a story treatment for a Hollywood movie.  The writing was on the wall when they released the comic series The Star Wars two years ago by Dark Horse comics justifying their decisions to mine the expanded universe and re-write it putting their committee stamp on the material proclaiming that what they did was better.  Rather than sit down with a good writer like Lawrence Kasdan is and have him write completely new material, like he did for the Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lucasfilm under Kathy Kennedy decided to make a reboot of A New Hope and populate it with what the “Star Wars Story Group” thought was the greatest hits of the long series of novels which had been produced carefully with George Lucas over two decades.  When they released the comic series showing how the original Star Wars script had evolved over time and necessity they were trying to justify what they were about to do hoping to sell their work as authentic.  What they did was infinitely disappointing.  At that point in time I had been buying all the comics and books I could get and was reading them all.  But when I realized what was happening, I just stopped waiting to see if Disney would do as I feared and just mine the stories that meant something very wonderful to many of the hard-core fans, or if they’d actually continue the story into new territory—which for me was the only justifiable option.   They picked the most lazy path possible at a great insult to the fans who kept the market value of Star Wars alive for so long.

The Force Awakens of course made a lot of money—it shattered records that Hollywood may never see again.  There was tremendous pent-up multi generational desire to see a new Star Wars film. So everyone who could went to see the movie over its opening weekend.  If I didn’t know better I would have thought it was a good movie–it had all the elements present, but it was clearly missing something.  That something was the conviction that a risk taking proprietor brings to a project—a leader who has put their reputation and soul on the line to make a product which clearly marked the first two Star Wars films—was missing.  The makers of The Force Awakens were happy young people writing stories from the comfort of Lucasfilm employment and the politics of the very progressive city of San Francisco.  Like spoiled brats driving their dad’s Mercedes out for a night at the country club to socialize at a charity function thinking they were saving the world—they made Star Wars: The Force Awakens without taking any real risks and mining the material of risk takers who came before them hoping that nobody would notice.  I did, and so did many other hard-core Star Wars fans upon leaving the theater for the first time.  When the fun dies down and these fans will think about what they’ve seen, Disney will find that they now have a dreadfully divided audience because of their choices which will dramatically affect the market share potential of all the future Star Wars films.  It will hurt their book sales, their merchandise, and their box office take for all subsequent films.  What they essentially did was brought Star Wars down to the level of the latest Star Trek movies—or the Avengers films.  They might make decent money, but Disney executives are planning on insane money—and they’ll need it to survive—because other aspects of Disney’s business portfolio has been wavering in these changing economic times.

Here’s how the Hollywood Reporter announced the pending doom on Friday December 18th as The Force Awakens opened to hungry fans across the world:

Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens made $57 million domestically Thursday, enough to set a record but not to satiate Wall Street’s fears over Walt Disney’s television business.

In midday trading on Friday, Disney shares were off 4 percent, twice that of the broader markets, as the conglomerate was the topic of at least two negative research notes in the past two days.

On Friday, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield downgraded Disney to “sell” and put a $90 price target on the stock, suggesting it will fall about 17 percent in the next 52 weeks or so.

“Even The Force cannot protect ESPN,” Greenfield wrote, accusing management of “overpaying for sports rights based on overly aggressive multichannel video subscriber projections.”

Greenfield says Disney’s cable network operating income will shrink in fiscal-year 2017, causing total Disney operating income to be flat.

He also says Disney damaged its long-term prospects for cable in general “by aggressively licensing content to SVOD platforms such as Netflix to prop up near-term earnings.”

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/walt-disney-stock-tumbles-as-850171

While the numbers look impressive at first glance, because of the changing market of the other business interests, such as ESPN and how cable subscribers are dumping their subscriptions in favor of Internet service for their smart phones the media empire of Disney is too reliant on Star Wars to save it from the downsides it’s facing.  The Marvel movies are beginning to fade as the newness of them is wearing away.  By the time Captain America: Civil War hits in 2016, the franchise will be in clear decline as a box office force.  The savor was always going to be Star Wars—and now they’ve screwed that up dividing the fan’s loyalties between a re-tread and the authentic novels.

It is always dangerous to base a movie off a book, because the reader often sees things differently than a film’s director.  As long as a movie producer stays close to the source material, often things are forgiven.  But regarding Star Wars, where the franchise was kept alive with cooperation between Del Rey publishing and Lucasfilm in close contact with George Lucas approving story details the novels were like the Bible and took on a meaning that Disney obviously didn’t understand.  After all, they had been re-writing great literary classics for years, so they had no problem changing things around to suit their market appraisal for the films they wanted to produce.

By insisting that the movies were cannon and not the books which were designed to connect the original movies with fresh material ultimately created by individual authors under the guidance of Lucasfilm—the creative team behind The Force Awakens assumed incorrectly that fans would forgive them.  Some will, but not everyone, and for Disney to succeed in this venture they needed everyone.  And when the smoke clears around The Force Awakens, they won’t have everyone.  And that means financial doom on the horizon within the next five years for Disney as a company.   Bob Iger will leave the next CEO at Disney with a terrible burden and there will be no recovery from it. With other aspects of the company losing money, such as ESPN based on inflated sports contracts, it needs a new explosion in growth which Star Wars was supposed to bring.

The Force Awakens felt like a small movie after reading about gigantic events in the novels over the years.  The sheer scale of the Star Wars novels would have had enormous production costs to duplicate on film.  I’m sure Lucasfilm made the decision to do what they did on The Force Awakens based on the vast number of characters that were in the Star Wars novels—which ultimately brings up the question should a novel be cannon or is the movie a superior product?  I clearly think what is written in a novel is the cannon in every case.  Movies are dumbed-down versions of books.  I can’t think of too many books that were made into movies that were overshadowed by the film version.   Star Wars started as a fresh movie experience, but it evolved into a literary journey which became much more powerful than the original films.  Lucasfilm made the mistake by trying to reverse that trend, and make a movie by committee instead of individuals and throwing out parts of the series which were too big to project on the silver screen.  Rather than trying to do that, they watered down a product that millions had fallen in love with and banked Disney’s future on the result.

Taken by itself Star Wars within Disney will hold its own financially.  The films will do fine, the merchandise will be respectable, and the other intellectual work will likely still sell for years to come.  But because of where the company as a whole is, with ESPN failing, the Avengers movies in decline, and the lack of new musicals coming from their children films every three years-Disney has serious problems.  It would have taken all the Star Wars fans to save them—and they clearly don’t have them all.  The Force Awakens proves it.  That problem won’t show itself immediately, but will begin to show up in their repeat business numbers within a month of the release.

Kathy Kennedy should have known better. On Twitter the Star Wars people put out a tag line when The Force Awakens opened showing Han Solo and Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon declaring “we’re home.”   They were clearly marketing Harrison Ford’s return to the role of Han Solo to push the box office numbers over the top.  I replied to Kennedy’s tweet the reality of what I felt.  I said,” Yeah, we’re only home for the funeral.”  It was stunning to me with all their build-up that they killed off Han Solo, so to me, The Force Awakens became like going home to a funeral to visit family you hadn’t seen in a while—and likely may never see after.   We all knew that Han Solo would die in the movies at some point in time, but in the books he was still performing heroic acts 45 years after A New Hope, so if they had not gone back in time and killed off Han Solo and could have kept the heroics of his novel adventures intact in the canon, it would have been much more digestible.  Instead they not only killed Han Solo, but the best that hard-core Star Wars fans had fallen in love with–an epic story on a truly galactic scale.  What they gave us in The Force Awakens was the death of a favorite character and a highlight reel of the novels—stories we already knew—all chopped up and spit out with new names and a much smaller frame of reference.   Then to insist that an inferior product was the new canon spelled huge problems for the future of Star Wars which will compound into a much worse situation than what Disney is seeing currently with ESPN.   And I wish it wasn’t the case, because I love Disney and really wanted it to succeed.  But they made all the mistakes that they shouldn’t have—and arrogantly stood by those mistakes to the bitter end.

I don’t know if there is a way that Disney could fix the situation now.  I’m afraid it’s too late.  But maybe there is a way they can appeal to the hard-core fans before things get out of control.  They should try for the sake of everyone—mostly themselves.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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‘The Force Awakens’ Killed off Han Solo: Why the prequels were a lot better and how Disney blew it

Piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissssssed off, that is the feeling I have walking out of The Force Awakens.  

Sadly, the news I was so excited about three years ago regarding the new Star Wars film is tragic—the worst of what I feared might happen, did.  Taken by itself, The Force Awakens is a very good movie, the acting is good, the special effects everything that you’d expect, the directing, the writing all very good—then there’s the music by John Williams—upper level wonder.  Unfortunately for Disney, Star Wars is much more than one movie now and Disney did exactly the wrong thing.  Like rumored, they abandoned the Expanded Universe and they killed off Han Solo in the first movie of a three-part trilogy which was my favorite character.  While on the business side I can understand why they did—Harrison Ford was 73 at the start of The Force Awakens, so it’s not a bad idea to start planting the seeds for future characters.  However, killing off Solo without having the context of the greater story developed over the last two decades is extremely problematic for the Star Wars franchise.  Here’s why.

About 15 years ago a super Star Wars fan was talking to me about the novels that came out every few months and wondered why I wasn’t reading them.  I explained that if the books didn’t come straight from the mind of George Lucas that I didn’t consider them part of the Star Wars canon.  However, the novels leaned very much on the character of Han Solo and his marriage to Princess Leia and their three children Jaina Jacen and Anakin.  So figured I’d give the books a try.  I had tried the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn and couldn’t accept it, but decided to try again with Vector Prime.  It was a great book—although Chewbacca died—and I was hooked.  I have since read most of the Expanded Universe novels which have greatly over-shadowed the original movies in sheer content and emotional story arcs.

I thought there was a whale of a story developing at the end of Apocalypse involving The Abeloth and that The Force Awakens would be about that massive galactic conflict—which would have been great.  Disney could have given the hard-core Star Wars fans what they wanted while giving a new generation of fans what they wanted.  The old characters could have faded out leaving the new very strong character of Jaina Solo to have filled the boots of her father nicely—and that would have been appropriate.  Everyone could have had what they wanted out of Star Wars.  But that’s not what Disney did with the help of J.J. Abrams, and Kathleen Kennedy.  They thought they knew better than all the minds who had been guiding the Star Wars stories through three decades of New York Times best sellers so they screwed with the story with a progressive agenda which was the worst of my fears.

If they had stayed with the Expanded Universe storyline, they could have still had a Latino lead character, a black character and a strong female lead to reach all their target demographics.  But they did more than that—they weakened Han Solo considerably and made him a self-sacrificial parent who threw himself on the sword of Kylo Ren at the end.  He and his marriage to Leia obviously went bad and the kids were damaged leading to his son (Ben) turning to evil.  Suddenly the very strong characters of the Expanded Universe were modernized into dysfunctional parents who had screwed up their children and felt guilty about it.  At the end of The Force Awakens, “General Leia” is alone with no signs of family—except the daughter Rey to find out who she truly is.  This is probably the most disappointing aspect of The Force Awakens—in the novels the son of Han, Jacen falls to the dark side over many books and his intentions were always good.  Han stayed with his wife for many years and they had a pretty good family life.  Han was always a rock solid person in those stories giving Star Wars geeks the father figure they didn’t have in real life—and it worked well in a mythological way.  The daughter Jaina was the new light of the next generation—The Sword of the Jedi.

J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan essentially took the big themes of the novels and retold the story of Jacen’s fall to the dark side moving around the names of the characters and having him confront his sister—in an epic lightsaber battle.  Knowing all that felt cheap to me.  It took Star Wars from an epic pinnacle of the highest mythological order and dumbed it down to be simply another Avengers movie.  It was fun to look at, but the content was certainly watered down from the types of bold stories that were told in the novels.  I will probably see future Star Wars movies just to see what they do and how they look—like I would a superhero type of film—the many times the Batman story has been told, or Spiderman—even Superman.  But with Star Wars, Disney had a unique opportunity to build on a massive story arc, and they screwed it up—rehashing the old by putting their own stamp on it in a way that did a disservice to the fans who helped carry the franchise for so long with their loyal support.  Clearly the emphasis by Disney and Kathleen Kennedy was to weaken the original characters from the bold embodiments of their youth into guilt driven losers in the future—which might make them relatable to a larger audience who feels the same anxieties.  Of course they had to plant the seeds of an interracial romance—which felt forced—and was distracting.  Han returned to his days as a smuggler instead of the reliable family man that he was in the books.  Luke was in hiding feeling guilt for creating Kylo Ren though his failure in teaching future Jedi—which in the books Luke had built an entirely new Jedi Order.  In the books all the lead characters were strong and determined personalities who had suffered through unimaginable sorrows, but were still people a reader could lean on and trust to do the right thing in the end.  In The Force Awakens it is obvious that the all the old characters were flawed, especially Han Solo.  This was obviously a conscious choice to make him more relatable to the modern viewing audience instead of just trusting the story the way it had evolved over the years with great success.

There has been an effort from The Alliance to Save the Star Wars Legends Expanded Universe shown at the link below to save the storyline of these movie from just this kind of misery.  But, Disney didn’t listen and they’ll pay for that.  The Force Awakens will make a lot of money, but it won’t be as much as they could have made.  They just handed the next generation a bunch of loser characters not quite sure of themselves putting an emphasis on progressive values instead of American traditional ones.  The Force Awakens is about sacrifice and the greater good whereas a theme which always ran through the original trilogy was individualism and following a personal bliss.  Han Solo as the individual always had the answers to save the Luke and Leias of the galaxy from their altruistic tendencies.  In The Force Awakens it is Han Solo that needs saving from his guilt over failing their son in ways that aren’t yet shown.  Essentially the decision to turn Han Solo from an Ayn Rand type of character into a Shakespearian tragedy was meant to erase his lineage of strength into something modern audiences could identify with.

https://www.facebook.com/AlliancetoSavetheStarWarsLegendsExpandedUniverse

http://twibbon.com/support/star-wars-legends-never-die

The result for me, and I’m sure many others, is that I completely reject these new stories by Disney.   I just came out of seeing a premier showing before it opened officially on December 18th 2015 and my sorted emotions tell me that this story in The Force Awakens is not real.  I can’t accept it as cannon.  It’s actually pretty stupid.  It represents another case of activist filmmakers trying to plant progressive Huffington Post values into a very traditional American story for the sake of unifying the world around common values.  To do that they dumbed down the American influences of individuality, and created a much more “inclusive” universe that was the obvious intent they had in making the film.  People like Arianna Huffington will love this new Star Wars.  John Wayne would have hated it.

I can deal with the death of my favorite character.  What I have a problem with is weakening their presence out of a desire to appeal to a weakened society—where movies are made by committee rather than by strong individuals.  The Force Awakens obviously understands that few people have intact families these days and that people can’t relate to the type of strength that Han Solo projected which has carried the franchise quite frankly for forty years.  They made a conscious decision to weaken Solo—hand over the Millennium Falcon to a “girl” (his daughter) and reflect the values of the present global community instead of the values of the story itself.  They cheapened Star Wars in ways that will be very costly in the years to come.  So while the movie was beautiful to look at and had many elements that are respectable on the surface, the underlining message was feeble and a tremendous disservice to the fans who have stuck with the story religiously all these years.  Star Wars had a chance to be above modern politics, but the filmmakers failed to carry it to those lofty heights.  Instead, they surrendered to the currents of modernism—and the movie shows it desperately.  The movie felt to me like a fake and something to reject—which is not what Disney wanted, I’m sure.  Forever for me, and many like me, there will always be the Expanded Universe where Han didn’t leave his wife and fail his children with some “force bending” scheme of time to save his daughter from the wrath of her brother, Han’s failed son—and the Jedi master Luke who lost his pupil to the dark side.  I’m sure there is a story of redemption in the next episodes, but by then—who cares.  Disney already screwed up the story with renamed characters and repeated themes which were already told in the novels years ago.  And in that respect, The Force Awakens fails in every way that it never intended.

The prequels were a LOT better.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Donald Trump, the CNN Debate Winner: Beating Hillary until she can’t show her face in public

It was the last Republican debate of the year and all the candidates did pretty much what they needed to by their own playbook.  There were no real surprises for anyone, except for Trump.  The New York billionaire presented himself really for the first time as the leader of the Republican Party, which was completely by design.  I saw it coming, yet apparently many didn’t.  It continues to astound me how little people know about negotiations, whether they are buying a car or selling themselves as president—Trump has been working the wires of the entire political process for several months now—and has changed the landscape of perception entirely.   On the stage in Las Vegas at CNN’s last big live event of the year before the Holidays, Trump clearly dominated—and the rest of the members of the stage looked like clear inferiors.   Some of the other candidates might win a few states in the primaries but it is clear right now as of December 16th, 2015—unless Trump does something really crazy—that Donald will be the next President of the United States.

Now, beating Hillary, everyone seems to be so concerned about that—I’m not.  I don’t even think it will be close.  In a leverage game, Donald Trump holds all the cards—all the good ones anyway—while Hillary has only a hand of Jokers.   If Trump could focus his attention on one candidate, Hillary would never hold up.  If the Republicans want to win in 2016 and for many years to come, they’ll get behind Donald Trump while he tears Hillary, and her connections to Obama to shreds starting in the summer of 2016.  I believe the lashing will be so bad of her by Trump that she may struggle to win a single state in a head to head election—including California.

A Trump presidency will be even more dynamic.  He’ll use the same methods to get bills through congress, to balance budgets, and to bring nations to their knees without having to fire a shot.  His staff will be some of the most competent people to ever hold public office and things will happen daily that nobody has ever seen before—the rate that things get done will be astonishing.  Trump will use the same methods he used to destroy Hillary Clinton, won the Republicans over to his side and work the media like his own puppet show to bring nations to their knees.  He’ll work Russia against Syria—mark my words, he’ll put Putin in his back pocket and he’ll choke off the cash going to Assad and defeat Syria without a single boot on the ground.  Iran will be forced to open up all their secrets after daily media poundings by Trump, China will be forced to level the table in their currency evaluations and denounce North Korea leaving that ruthless dictator to rot alone and isolated.  Trump will promote capitalism to Europe to save it from itself and he’ll pull most of the global billionaires into pouring their efforts of charity into the poor regions of the planet, like Africa and Brazil to pull them into the 21st century instead of the Obama strategy of bringing everyone else down.  Trump will attack the premise of global warming putting the EPA on the defensive and opening up the oil fields of the United States into becoming the world’s greatest producer which leverages against the oligopoly of OPEC.  ISIS will be a thing of the past within months because they’ll run out of money and the shadow governments behind them will be forced into hiding by Trump’s mouth.

Trump will expand the Second Amendment promotion of concealed carry around America, and will dramatically cut down on gun free zones.  He’ll probably give his own press conferences each day and will work the job around the clock like nobody has since Calvin Coolidge.  Trump will solve many of the world’s problems with his very aggressive mouth—he’ll play the high, low game of negotiation until he gets what he wants—and his abilities are clearly unmatched.  It was quite evident in the CNN debate of December 15, 2015 that he was a master of communication and negotiation.   Trump is addicted to deal making like some might be addicted to eating or sex—Trump has a mind that is alive, successful, and untouched by drugs or alcohol—his whole life.  He essentially has the mind of a child before puberty—one that just wants to play and enjoy life, and for Trump that joy comes in making things through deals.  The best job in the world for him would be President of the United States where every single day of office would be an opportunity to make big deals like he did with Trump Tower, or the West Side rail yards in New York City.   I don’t believe there is a single downside to a Donald Trump presidency for anybody—Republicans or Democrats.  I believe Trump is at his prime and can do things that nobody has ever thought possible.  He’ll set the bar for the presidency incredibly high for at least the next century and that will make us all better.

Much of what Trump has been doing is clearly described in his book The Art of the Deal.  Every trick shown in the nomination process, and all the ways that he will destroy Hillary Clinton—Trump has a track record of being so ruthless in his desire to win that she may never be able to show her face in public again.  Trump may personally like the Clintons, but if they try to put themselves in front of something he wants—he will destroy them forever.  Mark it on your calendar.  I predicted much of everything that is happening now over six months ago, and six months in the future from this writing, I can see it as clearly as the words you are reading.

Republicans have to understand—you can’t just beat Hillary Clinton and pray for the day that Obama is out of the White House.  Obama is a young man and he will be more damaging as an ex-president than he was as president.  Obama will return to community organizing and will have charitable foundations that will rival the Clintons—and he will have an international stage to continue marketing socialism to everyone who will listen.  He could do much more damage than Al Gore did after he left office.   Republicans will have to fend off internal struggles within the party, natural international challenges to the White House that comes with the job, but additionally the periphery hen pecking that Obama will have the opportunity to exert as an ex-president.  The next President of the United States will have to soak up so much media that there won’t be time for anybody else, and Trump is the only one who could do that.  Trump would beat on those former activists—Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama so hard that they’d have to retreat into the sunset to avoid his combative presence.  I am 100% sure of it.

It didn’t take long for Trump to win me over.  Once I saw that he was serious, I put my chips on his card.  He is the person I’d hire for the job and I have a way of knowing things about people.  There isn’t a second choice.  He doesn’t do everything that I’d like socially, but he does share with me a personal policy of not being intoxicated, never abusing tobacco products, and he doesn’t gamble in spite of owning several casinos.   Trump is a predator who wants to win at any cost and what he leaves in his wake is truly beneficial to everyone—just walk around New York City.  Without Trump, I think New York might have gone bankrupt in the 1970s.  Instead, he amassed enough wealth to build Trump Tower and many other structures before he was in his mid-forties.  Dealing to him is the best game he likes to play, and you really can’t hinge too much on the things he says—because he’s all about leverage.  What you can bet on are the things he does.  Behind him, including his children—are many grand successes.  And for America, particularly the Republican Party—they’d be extremely wise to put that type of person to work on their behalf.  Trump owned the stage with a change of strategy that was very calculated during the CNN debate—which put several assailants on their heels with indecision.   But that’s just the beginning.  Trump has a lot more in the tank, and you can see it in his eyes that he’s ready to unleash it.  For the sake of our country—we need to turn him loose and let him do it.

It will be a lot of fun to watch what he does to Hillary Clinton over the next 6 months.  She won’t stand a chance.  She has too many secrets and entirely too much vulnerability—and Trump will expose them all with torturous detail—because he will do anything—and say anything to win, win—win.  And I—as a long time Republican—don’t just want to see Hillary lose.  I want to see her and her network completely destroyed.  And Trump is just the man to do it.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Elusive Nature of Leadership: Understanding the need for an entirely different approach

I know I write a lot about the failure of our education system, and need for Donald Trump as president.  While those subjects may become laborious to the everyday reader, there are so many angles to discuss that only voluminous examination from every trajectory of consideration is appropriate to the difficulties of our day.  Sometimes I run across a video clip that really exhibits the reason, and such an example came to me while I was watching a Donald Trump interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN.  I was so astonished by some of the things Chris said that it took me several days to get my thoughts right about it.  Watch the video below.  The specific part of the interview that I found so astonishing was the part that Cuomo uttered in question form, “how do you know you’re right if so many people disagree with you. “  Boy did he say a mouthful right there.

Leadership is the most elusive element of modern culture.  Even with all our science and physiological understanding of thought processes—academics do not understand it.  Very few people understand real leadership.  I actually deal with this kind of stupidity all the time.  I understand leadership extremely well; it’s always been a very natural thing for me.  When I read books like Trump’s Art of the Deal, and Sun Tzu’s Art of War, I understand the author’s point of view instinctively as opposed to the novice student hearing some of the elements of those books for the first time.  A lot of that comes from my education background and life experiences which looked to people on the outside to be extremely reckless.  I have always known the right thing to do even when nobody else could see it, in every aspect of my life—so it’s easy for me to look at Chris Cuomo and wonder if he’s from some other planet.  I’ve heard that baffling contemplation so many times that it doesn’t surprise me.  But for the sake of dramatic writing, I’ll fester along the line of thought to make the point more interesting.  Leadership does not come from focus groups or consensus of any kind.  It comes from raw individualized leadership only—meaning other voices are pointless.  It is good to utilize other people’s opinions for the sake of “team building.”  But a “team” approach is not the same as “leadership.”  It’s just a means of getting large numbers of people to do what you want them to do.  A team approach is fine so long as that team listens to their head coach.  Without a strong leader, a “team” will be ineffective.

When I talk about things like that to people who think they are the smartest people in the room, I get hokey references to all my mysterious books as if somewhere in them was a famous recipe for leadership that they can figure out if they just put together the right mix of a “team” working toward consensus.   As I write this the new Star Wars films are getting ready to release and there is a lot of excitement about them.  There really may never be such an event on planet earth again, where the entire world is so ripe with anticipation.  While I think the movies might be pretty good, I have serious doubts that they will be as good as the movies George Lucas made when he ran Lucasfilm from a leadership position as a sole proprietor.   The new films are certainly made by “committee” and I think that will show up in what comes across in the movie theater.  The message of the old movies was individualism versus the state because that was something that George Lucas believed in during that part of his life.  The new movies are about decentralized authority and consensus building.  For kids going to the movies today, the films will be the best thing they’ll have seen, but in the long lens of history, these new movies will lack the punch of the originals because of the method for which they were made—just like any company that tries to make a product after a strong leader has either left them, or they’ve tried a more inclusive approach—a rule by committee.   That is exactly the problem the Apple Company is suffering through right now.  They still make a good product, but they lack the innovation and spirit they had when Steve Jobs was in charge.   They can hold their own for a while, but are slipping a bit each year under weak leadership.

Trump would be a good president because of what Cuomo asked him.  Trump instinctively knows what’s right to do.  A good leader can make a decision even if nobody else understands the nature of the problem yet. The reason why is because of Robert Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  Leaders are simply at the front of the metaphorical train instead of the back.  It doesn’t matter if you are talking about Jim Harbaugh leaving the San Francisco 49ers  to become coach of the Michigan Wolverines in college or George Patton, strong leadership is immediately noticed the moment its gone.   Good leadership is noticed on a restaurant drive through—good leadership keeps the food moving, bad leadership drives down the food quality and window times.  The moment that Jim Harbaugh left San Francisco for Michigan, that professional football team went into decline but the college team was on the uptake.  Good leaders never listen to the world around them except for intelligence gathering.  Good leaders always act from the inner voice that only they understand at the front of the train of thought—on the cutting edge of decision-making.  It’s not a mystery to those who naturally possess the trait.

However, our education system teaches kids like Chris Cuomo that answers to life come from collective consensus, and is a very unfortunate misunderstanding.  I won’t say that it’s a deliberate lie, just an improper understanding of where to put specific emphasis on personal value.  The schools have lied to these poor kids and taught them all the wrong things for all the wrong social reasons.  Everyone can’t be a leader, because most of the time they lack the courage to be.  It takes a lot of strength and courage to be a leader, and some people just don’t have it in them.  It can be taught to some extent, but only in small degrees.  It actually makes me sad to visit a hospital and see people having babies because most children have indications of the leadership trait available to them as infants–after all they had just survived nine months inside a womb and overcame the immense psychological trauma of child-birth.  If treated correctly, many of those children could be nurtured into the kind of mind that producers good leaders, and if America really wanted to solve some problems, it would focus on strengthening its children right out of the womb, not through some government confiscation program but by empowering the parents to promote self-reliance in infants as soon as possible, learning to walk, learning to play by themselves—not with other children—and developing a strong imagination with stimulation of many aspects of thought as soon as the neurons in their brains have connected to allow such thinking.  But what happens to most of those children is they are coddled too long next to their mothers, and their fathers take orders from society at large falling in behind some authority figure that is probably incompetent by default.  Children directly mimic everything they see from their parents so if the parents are social messes, the children will struggle with those aspects for the rest of their lives.  For many children their limits in life are pressed into them before they are even six months old, and it just saddens me every time I see it.

What’s unique about Trump is that he’s always been way in front of the cutting edge—his whole life.  He’d be a great president because he wouldn’t listen to the opinions of other people—that’s the point!  He doesn’t need consultants, he doesn’t need focus groups.  He needs information, but he doesn’t need anybody to tell him what to do with it.  It would be my hope that under a Trump presidency that he’d cause a renaissance in American leadership just because his methods would be on full display around the world and people would want to copy him.  That might bring out a few more babies per year who have the potential to be strong leaders in the future.  Trump often compares himself to George Patton, and it’s not because of the militaristic nature of both of them, it’s because they both possess similar beliefs in themselves—even when the rest of the world thinks they are crazy—they can see clearly what to do and when to do it.  To those without that skill, they are baffled as to how Trump and Patton could possible know what to do without some support from their peers.  But leadership is a lonely enterprise.  Leaders are alone in the troubles of their minds and they are alone in the successes—they are alone most of the time, even when they are with people who love them.  Being a strong leader is much about being alone—even in a crowd, because nobody understands.   American culture needs to at least embrace its leaders and if such a thing became fashionable through major changes in our education system and a populist president who would make bold front page news every day of his time in office, then maybe some of those children born under freedom might develop in them the natural inclination of leadership.  But before that can happen someone like Trump would need to be able to sell it to the masses.  Only then would the qualities of leadership become more widely acceptable—and understood.  But it will take a generation to get there.  There is nothing easy about leadership.  It is the most important element of a free republic.  Consensus building is absolutely the wrong approach.  It doesn’t work, and it never will.  It can produce moderate results, but spectacular ambitions will always reside among the few who embrace the cutting edge and by their very nature—who always see most clearly and act most decisively.  Trump is one of those rare few who do it so fluidly so this is a rare opportunity for the United States, and I’m excited about it.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Wisdom of Sheriff Wayne Ivey: Good guys with guns and Hillary Clinton’s friends–robbed at gunpoint

 “Enough is enough” when it comes to terrorism — that’s the video message Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey posted recently telling residents that they should start carrying firearms with them to protect his community and our nation against terrorism.  Now that is my idea of a good local sheriff, and cop.  In a lot of ways, Brevard County is a place I consider a second home, so its gives me a lot of pride to see the sheriff of that region speaking with the sense that should be obvious to everyone.  Get a gun, carry a gun, and protect yourself from the aggressive possibilities of terrorism in whatever form.

“I think the message is: people are thirsty for a solution to the terrorist activities, they’re thirsty for a solution to the active-shooter scenarios that have taken place, and I think they’re thirsty for leadership,” Ivey said in response to the national attention his video has gotten. “I think it was time for someone to stand up and say that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

http://mynews13.com/content/news/cfnews13/news/article.html/content/news/articles/cfn/2015/12/7/brevard_sheriff_video_arm_selves_against_terror.html

People against Ivey’s proposal are of course organizations like the NAACP and virtually every other liberal conglomeration.  But nobody should listen to them because they are the cause of what’s made the situation dangerous in American to begin with.  They have been pro open borders, they have been pro Islamic immigration without consideration for the potential for radicalization, and they have been notoriously anti-gun—insisting that America copy its domestic philosophy policies from socialist nations like France and other European disasters—old, crusty regions drowning with Marxism.  As I write this President Obama is considering an executive order against firearms which is incredibly arrogant, and intrusive.  One of the worst suggestions by him is that people on a no fly list not be able to buy a gun.  Well, that won’t work; a person like me could easily be put on a no fly list because the regime in power might consider me a threat just because of the things I say.  You can’t legislate evil out of existence; you have to face it down, and you can’t let an evil government prevent good people from facing that evil.   The situation is very simple, good guys need to carry a gun so that when bad guys try to act in a terrorist fashion, the right side will have the advantage to end the threat.  Then of course the gun owner should call Second Call Defense and let them handle the legal issues.

I actually worry about trying to buy a ticket on an airplane for fear of finding my name on a no fly list because to Obama, a person like me is more of a threat to his intentions than an Islamic terrorists trying to breed more like them within the borders of the United States.   So Obama’s executive order proposal  is not intended to protect America from terrorists—it’s to protect government officials from criticism over their own mismanagement—which is an abuse of power.   There’s a reason that congress, represented by the people of our nation, have refused gun restriction action.  It’s not just because of the NRA.  The NRA has so much money and power because people like me put money into it.  They didn’t get all their lobbying wealth from some oversea billionaire like what’s behind the open border issues, and marijuana legalization legislation—or Saudi Arabian activists trying to gain legislative power within the United States by pouring money into the Clinton Foundation and letting a former president and a possible future president keep the hands of justice out of their medieval society.   The NRA and its power over congress are because of millions of people like me who want to see the Second Amendment protected from people like Obama.  He has no right to sign an executive order against firearms in any way.  If he does so he’s acting in a criminal fashion, which only justifies more gun buying to protect us from an activist government hell-bent on disarming us.

In this hostile environment where terrorists want to harm us, and our government who created the situation in every fashion wants to further restrict our ability to protect ourselves, it’s wonderful to see Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey speaking reasonably as a government official.  Good guys need to be the ones carrying guns.  We don’t need to wait for some government study sponsored by grant money for the desired results against guns to be produced as the NAACP desires to tell us what’s logical.  Good guys need to be able to stop bad guys when the intention is to bring harm against innocent people.

For instance, just the other night not that far from my own home a young teenager tried to rob a couple of contractors at gunpoint.  Big mistake for that 16-year-old kid—he apparently listened to too many rap songs about violence and played too much Grand Theft Auto.  Because one of these contractors had a concealed carry permit and pulled out his gun.  The kid shot first but the contractor then discharged his firearm ending the life of the young punk which was well within the right of the contractor.  He waited for the kid to fire first apparently, which is good to do, but dangerous—then ended the threat immediately.  Police showed up, did their investigation and found that the contractor acted within the legal parameters of our society.  The contractors lived another day, the robber didn’t.  The robber’s threat against citizens of planet earth is done forever—by his own choice. If more people carried guns and used them in these kinds of situations—not just in terrorist threats, but street robberies also—we’d have a much safer country.

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/evanston/contractor-claims-self-defense-in-deadly-evanston-shooting

Nearly at the same time as the contractor shooting in Evanston, Cincinnati attorney Stan Chesley and his wife, Judge Susan Dlott – both personal friends of the Clintons – were driving back to their Indian Hill home from a dinner in Montgomery.  Three punks followed them from the parking lot.  Once the powerful attorney and his federal judge wife were inside their home the punks kicked in the basement door of the victims’ residence, committed theft, roughed up the couple with abuse and pointed guns at (Chesley and Dlott)’s heads.  The thugs Terry Jackson, 21, Darrell Kinney, 20, and Demetrius Williams, 20 — were apprehended by Madeira police following a traffic stop the same evening—luckily.  If Chesley had been carrying a gun, he could have stopped the situation immediately.  The threat is very real; we are in a dangerous world even in nice neighborhoods.  The youth in America have been radicalized by liberal educations and entertainment.  It’s not just Muslims that are the potential threats for violence; it can be anybody—particularly if they are under thirty years of age.  Radicalized educations have destroyed the mind of young people making all of them potentially dangerous.  You can’t go around shooting them all at will, you have to wait for them to make a move against you, but you can’t assume that it won’t happen because President Obama is on the case with his executive order pin.  It is government mismanagement that has caused all these problems, and the responsibility to fix them all starts with good guys with guns.

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/indian-hill/police-embattled-attorney-stan-chesley-robbed-at-gunpoint-in-indian-hill-home

All three stories discussed above happened in just one week.  There is not a single source of threatening behavior.  Watching out for radical Jihad fanatics is just a small piece of the puzzle.  We have an entire generation of young people raised to think they are victims and that society owes them something and that if they want that something—they’ll take it by force if necessary.   If three thugs can drive into Indian Hill and rough up a powerful couple on the speed dial of Hillary Clinton at gun point—in their home—it can happen anywhere. 

The only way to stop those possibilities from occurring is by putting a gun in the hands of good guys and giving them the ability to use that gun to stop bad guys.  We do live in a world full of good guys and bad guys.  We are expected to know the difference—and most people do.  Politicians are tone-deaf to evil, because in many cases they embrace evil by the nature of their jobs—so they are unqualified to legislate on our behalf.  Obama is certainly unqualified.   To protect us from them, we have the NRA.  And to protect us from legal recourse, we have Second Call Defense.  But to protect us from terrorist threats, whether it may be a common robber, or a Saudi terrorist attempt—the best defense is a good guy with a gun.  So let’s get guns in the hands of the best people we can find and let them do their work—and let’s turn our country back from the brink from which liberals have created for it—and put it back under our safe keeping as the barrels of our guns point outward to the threats which intend it harm.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

What I Love About Christmas: Guns, Guns, and more Guns–Smith and Wesson stock is rising!

It’s a wonderful time that we live in, regardless of the challenges posed by poorly constructed philosophies and destructive politics—it is truly a wonderful life.  In spite of the terrorists that want to kill us in America because of our use of capitalism, or the domestic insurgents who want to blast the United States back into the Stone Age regarding religious and hierarchical structure—life is beautiful.  It is Christmas time, time with family is wonderful, and we have guns—lots of guns—so all is well.  I love guns, and so do many Americans.  I also love my iPhone, so it gave me great pleasure to get a stock notification while I was having a nice lunch that Smith & Wesson stock was up, way up.  Given the recent attempts by the left-leaning political class to propose stricter gun laws, the American public responded by purchasing large numbers of personal firearms.  That of course drove up the stock offering from Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger—two of my favorite firearm manufacturers, both examples of great American companies—that can emphatically declare—Made in America.  Here is the news that came over my stock app which made my lunch taste so much better.

Smith & Wesson Hits 8-Year High On Gun Control Push

BY JAMES DETAR, INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

12/07/2015 05:04 PM ET
Shares of Smith & Wesson (NASDAQ:SWHC) and Sturm Ruger (NYSE:RGR) gapped up sharply Monday amid new gun control calls by President Obama and the New York Times as well as a Supreme Court ruling.

Obama’s Oval Office address Sunday night and an unusual New York Times editorial came in the wake of the mass shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2 in which 14 died and 21 were wounded. Shares of firearms makers often rise after mass shootings and other violent incidents, and fall during lull periods.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider an appeal of a Chicago area law banning semiautomatic guns such as the AK-47 and Uzi, and high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Two justices, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, said in a statement that they would have allowed consideration of the case “because noncompliance with our Second Amendment precedents warrants this court’s attention as much as any of our precedents.”

Smith & Wesson shares gapped up 7.6% to 20.44 to an eight-year high in Monday afternoon trading on the stock market today.

Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/business/120715-784076-smith-wesson-sturm-ruger-rise-on-gun-control-talk.htm#ixzz3tjtPLTmp

I remember when stock prices used to be checked by reading the Wall Street Journal and the closing value from the previous day.  The information was at best 24 hours old by the time you could effectively use it to make a trading decision.  Now with the mobile devices that are so easily available, stock pricing changes are instant.  I’ve come to enjoy my iPhone because the apps are so interactive and run well on the Apple operating system.  I have my preset favorites and one of them is (NASDAQ:SWHC) but that’s really just for fun.  You aren’t going to get rich on that kind of stock; you’d have to buy it in large quantities when it’s very low and sell it off on a bounce-back.  But watching it climb to such lofty heights as it has after Obama’s speech has more value to me than just money.

Smith & Wesson are and Ruger are companies that I cheer for, because everyone knows the political pressure against them to shut down, the threats of lawsuits that they’ve had to endure from every pandering politician to ever hit the scene—the gun companies have been easy targets for many years.  So I watch the stock of gun companies to monitor their health—because that is important to me.  I want to see them succeed, because if they do, I succeed also.  It’s good to see Smith & Wesson stock climbing because that means that mainstreamers are buying guns and are wanting to own a piece of the company.

I would suggest Smith & Wesson stock for a Christmas present to a person in your life who values such things.  At the current prices, they won’t be retiring any time soon, but it is ownership into something that is distinctly, and unapologetically American.  I know I feel every time I buy one of their firearms pride in owning a piece of American craftsmanship.  I have a long history with fine machining products—and even today it’s a part of my life.  I have great respect for products made on lathes and milling machines.  So I never tire of rubbing my fingers over a fine firearm that was built to contain controlled explosions and deliver a projectile to a target radius many yards away.  It is a similar appreciation as I feel when holding a fine set of golf clubs, or shooting a basketball into a well constructed hoop.  Its science melded with human invention out of necessity—and they are things to behold with appreciation.  Machining measurements on firearms are understandably very tight, so it takes a lot of responsibility, and craftsmanship to be a firearms manufacturer.  The liability alone makes it nearly prohibitive, which has been politically motivated to sink those companies with compliance costs.  There are much more profitable ventures to be involved in, so I greatly respect companies like Smith & Wesson, who have their headquarters in a liberal part of the country and are holding their own against a tide of progressive sentimentality.  They could do other things to make a buck, but they work each day to stay in business for the few of us out there who greatly appreciate their efforts.  Those are the things I think of when I rub my fingers over the contours of a finely built gun.  They are objects of great love and care—and they go perfectly with a bold American flag flying on the Fourth of July.

Watching the stock price rise on my iPhone indicated to me that the attempts of the gun grabbers were failing.  If they were trying to use fear instigated by terrorism to drive society into their warm embrace—they have failed in their task.  Instead, what they are getting is a society that is rejecting their extended arms knowing that the cost of that embrace is a loss of freedom and personal sanctity.  What the government is doing is essentially perverted, like a teenage boy trying to sneak a kiss from an innocent girl by taking her to a scary movie so that she wants to tuck herself into his arms as an invitation to a first base advancement of sexual exploration.  Government wants America disarmed for the same reasons—and the public isn’t falling for it. Instead, they were going in the other direction and that is good for firearms manufacturers like Smith & Wesson who have been making guns for a long time—yet have done so without the glamour and glitz of the great success story that they are, because guns have been given an undeserved stigma.   Yet Smith & Wesson made them anyway.  So it’s nice to see good things happening to good people and the owners of Smith & Wesson are.  Those who aren’t owners yet desired to be, so they bought some stock, which is the best way to tell such a company—Thank You.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

New York Times Shares Guilt in Promoting Terrorism Activity: Syed Farook was a very liberal government employee Muslim

Actually, The New York Times is correct when they said on their front page editorial against gun ownership—“no right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.” That is why I propose in the wake of the gross mismanagement of the events that led up to the San Bernardino shootings that we possibly reword the American Constitution to clarify the meaning of the Second Amendment for all. The New York Times showed why they are losing readership and nearing bankruptcy, because they don’t understand the world outside of their little building in New York City. They certainly don’t understand the necessity of guns in American culture. Read part of their much talked about and misguided editorial for further gun control below.   My terminology for the rewording would be to clarify that guns are needed in American culture because government often does fail, and that gun owners must possess at least equal armaments for their own protection in the event of such administrative failures as those on full display in the terrorist acts leading up to the San Bernardino massacre—which was clearly the fault of the Obama administration and the Homeland Security under his management from the executive office. Americans can’t be limited by clip counts and weapons types by legislation that puts more powerful weapons in the hands of government than what the citizen employers of those organizations possess themselves. What the New York Times proposes below is just stupid. They have the situation backwards. We need more guns with fewer restrictions, not fewer guns with more restrictions. Here is what they said:

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

 It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.

 http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/05/us/new-york-times-gun-control-san-bernardino/index.html

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/opinion/end-the-gun-epidemic-in-america.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-top-region&region=opinion-c-col-top-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-top-region&_r=0

Let me clarify a “moral outrage” for The New York Times—a president who failed to acknowledge that ISIS (Not ISIL) is a major threat in spreading a global caliphate, which he had a hand in creating through his actions—then not communicating that failure properly to the American people. What is outrageous is the decision to allow the media to completely contaminate the crime scene of the San Bernardino terrorists just two days after they were shot and killed. Astonishingly the media was allowed to enter the apartment the two lived in and put their fingerprints all over the possessions contained therein. The apartment had not even been dusted for prints so this was an obvious move by the FBI and the Obama administration in coordination with local law enforcement to allow for the destruction of evidence so that connections to other terrorist suspects could be eliminated. The White House needed to maintain the story that the two acted alone, instead of being part of a more extensive group. This was highly corrupt, and if the highest law enforcement in America is prone to making these kinds of terrible judgment calls, they are not capable to make decisions on civilian’s behalf in regards to armament. Forget restrictions of full automatic weapons or ammunition types, like the .223. Those restrictions need to be removed because you never know when some government employee, like one of the terrorists in this California case was—might lose their mind, destroy evidence, abuse their authority, or allow themselves to be pawns from a corrupt executive branch in the future—and assault the innocent with the most aggressive weapons invented. American civilians need to be able to protect themselves from anything, enemies foreign and domestic.

But let me declare to The New York Times the greatest outrage—the cover-up—or the attempted cover-up of the nature of the terrorist couple themselves, the family lawyer who immediately tried to pacify the situation and media outlets like The New York Times from jumping all over guns instead of the actions of one of their own. In his online dating “Arab Lounge” profile where he met Tashfeen Malik, Syed Farook described himself as a devoted Muslim who was “very liberal,” politically. Farook was a creation of government. It took two full days before a picture of Tashfeen was produced essentially because she was always seen in a hijab marking her clearly as a Muslim and the government didn’t want the American people to start blaming all Muslims for being potential terrorists. When the FBI and White House realized they couldn’t contain the story they did the opposite, they allowed the media to contaminate the crime scene. They took away all references that they could find to other terrorist groups within the United States then let the media destroy all the rest of the evidence with over saturation of exposure instead of trying to limit access.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/12/04/online-dating-profile-provides-closer-look-at-calif-killer-and-lists-his-political-identification/

These are the types of people who want to demand that Americans give up their guns and trust government exclusively. Every level of this San Bernardino terrorist act was provoked by a government employee—from the shooter himself down to the investigators on the ground. The New York Times has the same radicalized liberal beliefs as Syed Farook and they are seeking to deflect the argument of potential terrorism away from liberal issues onto guns at the expense of freedom. There is nothing reasonable about gun control proposals when all the guilty in this case were the type of government employees we all need to protect ourselves from. The situation is just appalling. Our government cannot be trusted, and America needs guns to protect themselves from their employees as well as common thugs and miscreants in general. What would be best is just to lift all restrictions on ammo and explosive devices and let the free market take care of this encroaching problem. Liberals built this mess—these terrorist networks and the people who make them up. They don’t get to disarm us from the ramifications of their failure as well. That’s not how it works. The New York Times even for a very liberal publication should at least have known that much. They certainly shouldn’t have put that editorial on their front page because gun ownership was not the cause of the problem. It was the lack of a defense from the victims and the nurturing of domestic terrorism that all liberals helped create through their actions that is most to blame—and the clear attempt to cover up the evidence from the highest office of the White House to the cops on the scene. They knew the names, they saw their appearance once the terrorist couple had been gunned down in the street—appropriately—but they attempted to contain the story from the outset and when they realized how deep it went, they looked to isolate them from the connections to others which undoubtedly extended to more terrorist cells around the United States. And these same idiots think it appropriate to lecture America about gun rights? It is because of these types of people that we have a Second Amendment to begin with. So perhaps its time to take any vagueness out of the Constitution to clarify the real intention of civilian gun ownership—it is for protection from the employees of those civilians in attempting an insurrection—as they have been caught red-handed in hiding terrorism in America and their part in fostering it. The New York Times is as guilty as anybody on the liberal side of the political spectrum, and its time they apologize for their part in creating terrorism in America instead of camouflaging their error behind calls for more gun control.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

The Movie ‘Selma’ Was Terrible: Mark Zuckerberg’s wasted $45 billion dollars

I read in USA Today that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife who just gave birth to their first child, planned to give away approximately 45 billion dollars during their lifetimes toward the next generation in achieving equality and other lofty goals. While that sounded very “stylish” I couldn’t help but think that the actuality of their intentions would only lead to more degradation and progressive political erosion of core traditional values—such as strong families, hard work, and personal ethics. It is a proven fact that you can’t throw good money at bad people, so a valueless society even propped up with billions or trillions of dollars cannot flourish. There are many examples of this but let me give a more contemporary comparison that everyone can relate to, like a review of the recent movie Selma about Martin Luther King’s march across the famous bridge toward Montgomery, Alabama for a civil rights demonstration that made history. I personally think a lot of Martin Luther King, or at least I did until I saw Selma because the movie wasn’t very good. It had the feel of a made for television movie, not an Academy Award type of film. It clearly received high praise because of its message about progressive concerns—not for the actual quality of the film itself. Under the direction of Ava DuVernay, I think she went a long way to destroying what was best about Martin Luther King. But the purpose of this article is to show how good money spent poorly can give terrible results, and that is what Selma most represents. With all the great talent involved, and money—they couldn’t buy a successful outcome.

Selma is a 2014 American historical drama film directed by Ava DuVernay and written by Paul Webb. It is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches led by James Bevel,[3][4] Hosea Williams, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Lewis. The film stars actors David Oyelowo as King, Tom Wilkinson as President Lyndon B. Johnson, Tim Roth as George Wallace, Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, and rapper and actor Common as Bevel.

Selma premiered at the American Film Institute Festival on November 11, 2014, began a limited US release on December 25, and expanded into wide theatrical release on January 9, 2015, two months before the 50th anniversary of the march. The film got a re-release on March 20, 2015 in the honor of the 50th anniversary of the historical march.

Selma had four Golden Globe Award nominations, including Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, and Best Actor, and won for Best Original Song.[5] It was also nominated for Best Picture and won Best Original Song at the 87th Academy Awards.

The story goes like this, in 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) accepted his Nobel Peace Prize. Four African-American girls walking down stairs in the Birmingham, Alabama 16th Street Baptist Church were killed by a bomb set by the Ku Klux Klan. Annie Lee Cooper attempted to register to vote in Selma, Alabama but was prevented by the white registrar. King met with President Lyndon B. Johnson and asked for federal legislation to allow black citizens to register to vote unencumbered. Johnson said he had more important projects at the time, like his War on Poverty initiative.

King traveled to Selma with Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, James Orange, and Diane Nash. James Bevel greeted them, and other SCLC activists showed up to help. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover told Johnson that King was a problem, and suggested they disrupt his marriage. Coretta Scott King has concerns about her husband’s upcoming work in Selma. King calls singer Mahalia Jackson to inspire him with a song. King, other SCLC leaders, and black Selma residents march to the registration office to register. After a confrontation in front of the courthouse a shoving match occurs as the police go into the crowd. Cooper fights back, knocking Sheriff Jim Clark to the ground, leading to the arrest of Cooper, King, and others.

Alabama Governor George Wallace speaks out against the movement. Coretta meets with Malcolm X, who says he will drive whites to ally with King by advocating a more extreme position. Wallace and Al Lingo decide to use force at an upcoming night march in Marion, Alabama, using state troopers to assault the marchers. A group of protesters runs into a restaurant to hide, but troopers rush in, beat and shoot Jimmie Lee Jackson. King and Bevel meet with Cager Lee, Jackson’s grandfather, at the morgue. King speaks to ask people to continue to fight for their rights. King receives harassing phone calls with a recording of sexual activity implied to be him and another woman leading to an argument with Coretta. King is criticized by members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

As the Selma to Montgomery march is about to begin, King talks to Young about cancelling it, but Young convinces King to persevere. The marchers, including John Lewis of SNCC, Hosea Williams of SCLC, and Selma activist Amelia Boynton, cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge and approach a line of state troopers who put on gas masks. The troopers order the marchers to turn back, and when they hold their ground the troopers attack with clubs, horses, tear gas, and other weapons. Lewis and Boynton are among those badly injured. The attack was shown on national television as the wounded are treated at Brown Chapel, the movement’s headquarter church.

Movement attorney Fred Gray asks federal Judge Frank Minis Johnson to let the march go forward. President Johnson demands that King and Wallace stop their actions, and sends John Doar to convince King to postpone the next march. White Americans, including Viola Liuzzo and James Reeb, arrived to join the second march. Marchers cross the bridge again and see the state troopers lined up, but the troopers turn aside to let them pass. King, after praying, turns around and leads the group away, and again comes under sharp criticism from SNCC activists. That evening, Reeb was beaten to death by white racists on a street in Selma.

Judge Johnson allows the march. President Johnson speaks before a Joint Session of Congress to ask for quick passage of a bill to eliminate restrictions on voting, praising the courage of the activists; he states “We shall overcome.” The march on the highway to Montgomery takes place, and when the marchers reach Montgomery King delivers a speech on the steps of the State Capitol. As King speaks of coming victory, footage of him and his supporters were displayed on screen, and that was the end of the movie. That should save you from having to watch it.

DuVernay directed Selma, with a $20 million budget produced by Plan B Entertainment. The movie was released on December 25, 2014.[27] There was significant controversy about Selma and its depiction of Lyndon Johnson‘s actions as portrayed in the film.[28][29] Former Johnson domestic policy aide Joseph A. Califano, Jr. criticized DuVernay for ignoring and falsifying history, and particularly for suggesting that Johnson reluctantly supported King’s efforts and that he set the FBI to investigate King.[30] For the film she did uncredited re-writes of most of the original screenwriter Paul Webb’s script with an increased emphasis on King and the people of Selma as central figures.[31][32] In response to the criticisms of historians and media sources that accused her of irresponsibly rewriting history to portray her own agenda, DuVernay pointed out that the film is “not a documentary. I’m not a historian. I’m a storyteller”.[33] However, most people watching the film without question will accept the film as historical record.

The film was nominated for Best Picture and Best Song, but not Best Director, by the Academy Awards. While the lack of diversity of the Oscar nominations for 2014 was the subject of much press,[34] especially on Twitter,[35] the film of the only person of color that was nominated for the 87th Academy Awards, Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, ended up taking top honors in three categories at the February 2015 87th Academy Awards – Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. The award for Best Original Song went to “Glory” from Selma.[36][37] DuVernay stated that she had not expected to be nominated so the omission didn’t really bother her; rather she was hurt by actor David Oyelowo not being nominated. As to the question of racial diversity of awards, she stated that the obstacles to people of color being represented in the Academy Awards were systemic.[35] She failed to mention that in order to be considered for such a nomination that she should have shown herself to be a director of the highest order. For instance, I disagree tremendously with the politics of the movie Argo and its director Ben Afleck. But, Ben did a great job with that picture and deserved his rewards as a fabulous director. It had nothing to do with him being white, or a male—he just made a great movie—even though I disagreed with most of the premise—favoring the communists of Iran with a haze of respect instead of a more conservative position.

Ava Marie DuVernay (born August 24, 1972) is an American director, screenwriter, film marketer, and film distributor. At the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, DuVernay won the Best Director Prize for her second feature film Middle of Nowhere,[1][2][3][4] becoming the first African-American woman to win the award.[5][6] For her work in Selma, DuVernay is the first black woman director to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award.[7][8] With Selma, she is also the first black woman director to have their film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_(film)

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

Ava DuVernay obviously needed more time behind the camera directing because there were a lot of sloppy mistakes, most notably involving Malcolm X. It was obvious that the producers, specifically Oprah and Brad Pitt wanted an African-American woman to direct the film instead of the best possible candidate, so their hiring desires directed the foundation of the film which came across as a music video painted with a PBS documentary. I don’t think it was DuVernay’s fault the movie wasn’t good; it was that the lack of understanding and emphasis by the producers that made the film bad from the start. They made a movie about a popular black man and the civil rights movement then expected to show up at the Academy Awards to pick up their nomination for advancing a progressive cause. The movie suffered because of it. The story of Selma is actually a good one, but it deserved a much better effort instead of the politically charged tripe that was provided.

The film cost $20 million to make and brought in just over $68 million so financially it wasn’t a failure, but culturally it did little to advance the story of Martin Luther King. Instead, it took him down several pegs in the eyes of history I suppose to show that he was a more “human” man. Obviously the real hero of Selma to my eyes appeared to be King’s wife—the battered wife who stood by her man even after his death—which contradicted the UN flying flag that the protestors were carrying into Montgomery at the end of the film. What did the United Nations have to do with American civil rights? If the intention of the filmmakers was to tell a powerful story about Martin Luther King and how Malcolm X made peace with him before his own assassination, the film failed. Instead they gave us an insider’s gaze into the political activism that still goes on behind the scenes of a civil rights movement that isn’t so much rooted in fairness for all people, but a global government led by the United Nations—which had Brad Pitt’s fingerprints all over it, even the cowboy riding a horse running down innocent blacks with a bullwhip in slow motion. The progressive imagery was obvious. I certainly didn’t miss it, which made me wonder who they thought they were making the movie for. I don’t think the producers knew.

Given the history and success of people like Oprah and Brad Pitt, you’d think they’d know better. They are rich people, but all their wealth hasn’t done much to make them better people. You could give them all the money in the world and they would just waste it. They couldn’t even make a good movie when given a free hand at producing anything they wanted with money not even being an option. With all their resources, Selma is all they could come up with. It is for that reason that with all the intelligence Mark Zuckerberg showed in developing Facebook, it’s clear he was a one shot wonder who stumbled across something that people wanted to pay him a lot of money for. But he doesn’t understand the value of what he obtained and neither will the recipients of his 45 billion dollars. It’s a nice gesture but will share with the movie Selma—made by his good friends—a lackluster outcome that falls well short of its good intentions. The path to hell of course is paved with good intentions. But you’d think that smart people would have learned that by now and not funded the concrete trucks that helped pave the way. Without personal value, no amount of money can’t fix anything; money can only delay the inevitable just a while longer. Money doesn’t give value—it only represents it. If you throw $20 million dollars at a slam dunk movie set for the academy awards, but the people involved are not up to the task and aren’t making the movie with real value at the heart of it—but just eyeing a sure-fire Academy Award for exploiting blacks and the civil rights history—then the attempt will likely be a failure. And if $45 billion dollars are poured into a global society without putting value into the people receiving it, then all that money will just be wasted, because the value of money cannot stick to anything. The effort may be noble, but the result will be less than fulfilling, because the essence of value was ignored, and confused with fiscal measurements.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT