Tag: Illegal Immigration

The Embarrassment of Detroit: Watch Steve Crowder demonstrate what could be next for America

It is a small radio station but it is doing some of the best work in talk radio that’s out there.  I used to do a lot with WLW radio in Cincinnati, but over time I’ve found WAAM radio in Ann Arbor, Michigan to be much more positioned to do the good work of conservative contemplation.  I’d say it is far superior to 55 KRC in Cincinnati largely because WLW and KRC are both Clear Channel stations run by a large corporate board and WAAM is still family owned and managed by good, solid people.  Of course I have been complimentary of The Blaze Radio but I have stopped listening to them because of their anti-Trump stance.  That has left me guest hosting and serving as a guest on WAAM nearly exclusively, because I like the owners.  It’s not so much the initial broadcast that matters these days, it’s the international reach that comes from the podcasts.  People are able to listen online months after the original airing, and more people listen that way these days than they do live. So given that as the factor in a changing marketplace, WAAM is a considerable heavy hitter nationally as they carry Glenn Beck in syndication and Alex Jones—but they have legitimate on air talent like Matt Clark and Steve Crowder who are young guns that show great promise for the future.  I’ve talked a lot about Matt, but if you’ve never listened to WAAM you should check out a contemporary of his, Steve Crowder.  He has a unique comedy conservativism that is very unique and specific to his generation empowering him to do work like he did below in Detroit.  Watch this.

Without people like Crowder, and talk radio in general, nobody would really know the truth about what’s really going on.  Regarding Detroit—which used to be one of the most successful cities on earth—television used to be a big exporter from that city in the Midwest.  Now it looks like the ruins of an ancient Mayan civilization.  It is literally a city of an ancient past.  Crowder exhibited this fact by driving into the center of the downtown area and driving out into the outer parts of the city to show how quickly things degraded.  It truly is a shocking video shown above to see the facts as Steve Crowder presented them.  By turning on the camera and just letting it run until they were in the slums and areas so depleted with population that there was already grass growing where there used to be buildings, Steve Crowder proved his point.   The modern city of Detroit is already looking like a lost city in need of archaeological discovery.   It is truly amazing to see the effects of a bankrupt city and its impact on the world around it.

As vibrant as Chicago looks today—it is headed in the same direction—as is the United States in general.  Two decades ago only the most conspiratorial science fiction writers predicted that Detroit would become a bankrupt city hemorrhaging population and selling homes at a price of $100 dollars.  Just one mile out of downtown the once great city of Detroit looks like the ruins of Troy or Giza—only a few religious monuments and fortunate homes have survived the vandalism and destruction of a declining population.  You can’t operate at a deficit for so many years and expect to hold value for property.  The United States at a nearly $19 trillion deficit as of this writing is where Detroit as a city was two decades ago.  It wouldn’t take much for the United States at this phase to resemble Detroit within a decade of now.  Nobody back in the heyday of Detroit ever believed it would look the way it does today.  They assumed that all the prosperity would go on forever—but it didn’t.

I have a fascination with old western towns.  At the time of their construction the residents could never imagine that those towns would ever become in decline.  Yet most of them did.  Residents of Rome and Egypt during the days of their powerful empires felt the same way; they never could imagine that there would ever be a society where their city or country was not the supreme in the world.  The same could be said of modern England which only one hundred years ago had an empire across the whole of the world.  Now they are a fraction of their former power and teeming with socialism as a changed society with only their roots into history as mere sympathy.  Nothing stays the same if bad management is applied to the maintenance of it.  In a car, if it is not maintained properly, it will decline in condition rapidly.  In a marriage, if care is not given, it will die.  Children require love and attention.  Companies require good management to maintain their status as job creators.  And for cities to survive, they must have good management.

Most of the failing cities around the world are run by liberals, because the demographic circumstances of mass populations make it so through democratic elections.   Needy, dependent people tend to migrate toward each other as rugged individualists like elbow room.  So cities tend to have people conglomerated into small areas who all share a level of human bonding and collective social services—and they elect people into office who think the way they do.  Now that liberalism is a proven intellectual failure regarding proper management of resources and people—there is a track record to identify—whereas a few decades ago, there wasn’t.  Detroit is the evidence of that failure—dramatically.  But it’s not alone.  As Steve Crowder drove the lonely crime ridden streets of Detroit in the above video, where a vast amount of the population was functionally illiterate—in spite of the free education provided to them—liberalism and its effects were on prolific display.  Years ago I wrote a screenplay that made several Wilshire Blvd agents very animated with anger called The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia.  That script featured a modern horror adventure story about discovering the mysterious reason that the ancient city just outside of St. Louis was suddenly abandoned of its culture and resources. The story was fiction but the premise of the characters was based on my observed opinions.  My reason of course was one that certainly went against the Hollywood mentality and just about every academic back then.  My proposal was that it was a form of liberalism that destroyed Cahokia and many other ancient cities from Chichen Itza to Ankor Wat.  Liberalism centered on self-sacrifice for the greater good in whatever variation of it was presented was my proposal for the destruction of most ancient cities.  Detroit is only the modern version of that destruction.  Washington D.C. is headed along that path as is all of the state of California.  They are on unsustainable paths that are closing in on them rapidly.

Many around the United States however don’t know much about places like Detroit.  If they visit, they only see the immediate downtown and not what’s one mile outside the city.  So radio guys like Steve Crowder are doing a great service to all of society and their political spectrums.  Detroit is a disgrace and people really need to see it, because those problems are coming to a neighborhood near you dear reader.  And if you really love something like I think Steve Crowder really loves Detroit—because he was born there—then the best way to save it is to tell the story in a truthful way—not just in tight television shots during a Detroit Lions football game.  People need to see what’s just beyond downtown—artificially propped up by federal money and corporate sponsorship to attempt to not make things appear as bad as they really are.  That’s the story in Chicago right now.  It’s a dead city with only the mask of a living entity on its face. If you want to prevent further casualties from the same fate, it’s time to identify the liberalism that has caused those deaths.  And if you want to hear Steve Crowder live on WAAM radio, check him out from 6 am to 9 am on Friday mornings.

I challenge anyone reading this article at any point in the future to give me one example of a liberal society that is successful.  And that includes Scandinavia.  Give me one example of success.  I bet you can’t.  They are all future Detroits in the making.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

Quick Cal on WAAM Radio: The strongest argument in favor of guns

It had been a week of attacks against the Second Amendment, Obama had enacted executive orders against the right to maintain firearms within American society then he held a CNN town hall to justify his imposition.  It was clear to me that Obama was functioning from extreme ignorance—not all of it his fault.  Growing up in Indonesia as a boy, then in Hawaii by communist sympathizing grandparents he didn’t understand guns and how they applied to American Exceptionalism.  Obama doesn’t even believe in American Exceptionalism so he wasn’t close to understanding the role that guns played in maintaining that high measure of quality.  But, most people around the country—especially those who work with guns away from the largely democratically run cities in the United States—understand, and I felt it necessary to teach anti-gun people why they were wrong in their basic thinking—especially the president and his radical city dwelling progressive insurgents.  Since I was hosting for Matt Clark on 1600 WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan over an early weekend in January 2016 I thought it would be a good time to do a show about how guns benefit society and specifically American Exceptionalism.  So I invited on Quick Cal, who is the director of the Cowboy Fast Draw Association and champion shooter of four professional shooting categories and a multiple world record holder to talk about the benefits of firearms training and how it helps nurture an obscure philosophy that is the key to American Exceptionalism called the Cowboy Way.  Listen to that epic broadcast here:

Cal and I told several stories from both of our perspectives regarding our value of the Cowboy Way, which as Cal said is a philosophical definition that is minimalist in nature but  exemplifies the type of decency typically associated with Christian values—civility toward others, honor, hard work—essentially “do onto others as you’d have others do onto you.”  Cal stated that as a young man in the 1960s it was the Cowboy Way that kept him straight and off drugs and alcohol during that turbulent decade and I told a similar story.  I have worn a cowboy hat since I was in the fifth grade or some variation of it. When I was very young I recognized a need to distinguish myself from the rest of the world with some kind of hat that said my values were different from the mainstream of society—which appeared to my juvenile eyes to be headed in the wrong direction.  People always made fun of it and I learned to have a very thick skin about my hats.  Often I would wear a cowboy hat in public knowing and hoping that it would anger the mainstreamers—and I took inward joy at their anger.  Twenty years ago wearing such a hat during the post Reagan years took a lot of confidence especially for a young guy like me.  I wore it around the U.C. campus when I used to live there and would walk right down Vine Street with it on even though it went against the urban culture so prevalent there.  I knew the anger came because unconsciously people knew it symbolized the Cowboy Way which was viewed by progressive society as a backward “unenlightened” approach to living.  By wearing my cowboy hats, it was my public affirmation of values and traditional belief—and it distinguished me from my peers in a way which certainly preserved me to my current age.

Once I was invited to a campus rave party in an abandoned house at 2 AM in the morning.  I knew nothing good could come of the experience but a friend of mine wanted me to go with him in case he got into some physical confrontation—so I went along to protect him.   I showed up dressed in my poncho and a cowboy hat looking like I just stepped out of a spaghetti western—which I have always  enjoyed, and I certainly looked strange next to all the “emo” types dressed in black with all the piercings they had before such things were as common as they are today.  I figured if they could dress in public with purple Mohawks and studded black clothing that looked more appropriate for the movie set of The Road Warrior, then I could show up looking like I belonged in For A Few Dollars More.  To say it was difficult to walk into a party atmosphere with blaring Marilyn Manson music arousing the passions of naked women and drug induced idiots as a perfectly straight cowboy hat wearing traditionalist would be an understatement.  But I did it proudly.  Being a partier was never a priority for me and I thought at the time that during the most tempting years of my life if I held to my values that it would be very valuable to me later, when I was older.  That turned out to be the case and I can understand how following the Cowboy Way kept Quick Cal clean and free of imposition in his life during a similar turbulent period where everyone was wearing tie dye shirts and preaching peace through marijuana smoke and socialism.

Our experience is compelling enough to make a more than reasonable argument against the current tide of fashion.  If the trends of our age lead to such destructive living—bad personal conduct, addictive behavior, unreliability as a spouse or parent, and a general menace to society—then why would we accept such a thing as a fact to our reality.  There is nothing negative about the Cowboy Way—even if a person isn’t particularly religious.  The Cowboy Way is all about having values toward individualized accomplishment which is why the hat always symbolized to me that sentiment.  It was hard to go against such tides, but it felt good to survive.  Being popular isn’t the most valuable trait in the world if the people who like you are poor quality people.  If people made fun of my hat, they were not very high quality people and it made it easy for me to see who was who and why they did what they did.  Did they not like the hat because it reminded them of a parental figure they were trying to push out of their head, or had they bought into the commercial advancement of fashion to the extent where their collective ambitions denied individualized thought?  I learned a lot during those early years because of the public reactions to my cowboy hats.

Another aspect to the Cowboy Way that Cal and I discussed was the difference between shooting sports which are individualized in nature and the collective based team sports of football, baseball, and soccer.  Of course public schools are all about collective based identification.  They don’t want people thinking as individuals because their job as designated by the government is to herd people into a particular direction as determined by Beltway desires.  So team sports are emphasized to advance children into a more socially appropriate stature.  However, individualized sports, like Cowboy Fast Draw, and golf, are all about individual achievement, which is why the current trends are against them.  It’s why golf is largely viewed as a sport for the affluent—those who have achieved individualized success.  It’s also why progressives—who are collectivists by their nature, hate shooting sports.  Shooting a gun is a very individualized endeavor.  Golf and the culture of country clubs already have the stigma of being affluent based endeavors that are individualized in their foundations.  There is a social component but the associations are largely groups of affluent people talking to other affluent people without the noise of the outside world.  I will admit that I enjoy that country club culture.  My wife and I enjoy eating at the Elk’s Club Silver Tee restaurant near our home.  It’s always nice and they treat the guests in an exclusive way.  It’s about being with people who have similar values as you do.  You know when you eat there that the booth next to you is a family that are not knuckle draggers.  They are typically well employed and somewhat successful as individuals—and that makes the food taste just a bit better.  I consider shooting sports to be even more individualized because they serve the dual purpose of being useful in the defense of private property—which is another aspect that collectivists seek to demonize—because it goes against their foundation philosophies.

I made a decision about the Cowboy Way when I was very little, well before I knew why.  I knew I liked The Cowboys with John Wayne over the rock group Kiss when I was in the fourth grade.  I knew I liked The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly more than Pink Floyd’s The Wall.  In general, westerns reflected my values innately, and I was fortunate enough to be stubborn in pursuing those values even though it was against the social grain.  I’m glad that I did—now more than ever.  Obviously my rejection was against liberalism which I determined as a four-year old, didn’t work.  My parents didn’t necessarily preach it to me, and nobody else felt as strongly about conservativism as I did—it’s just something that I’ve always had.  It was just something I observed and decided to pursue—not always with clarity, but as a hunch that it was the right thing to do according to my moral compass.  It was only over a great many years that I learned why.  Most children are afraid of falling and of loud noises because their brains are wired to protect themselves from the unknown.  For whatever reason, I knew from a young age that liberalism didn’t work under any circumstance.  To this very day nobody can present a strong case in favor of liberalism rationally.  When I first started wearing my cowboy hat while still in grade school I knew that the only hope for the human race was to step back to a philosophic period before the progressive era—right around 1890—to those values in American culture. Not the racism, or the limitations against women, but the basic foundations of human decency.  The Cowboy Way was the greatest casualty of the progressive era and it is the thing we most need in our modern society.  And it was important for the nation to hear from someone who embodies that Cowboy Way in very emphatic ways. That is why I had Quick Cal on WAAM during an important Saturday afternoon in the long history of the human race.  People needed to hear an alternative to the madness of liberalism that is destroying America.  And they need it fast!

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Hillary the Communist: Admitting the truth, even when it hurts

I’ve been saying it for a long time; socialism is the basic philosophy of the Democratic Party.  People used to think I was being an extremist when I stated that teacher unions expected socialism from voters and school boards essentially teaching it to students in public education.  Most labor unions are functioning socialist enterprises which of course leads directly to small “c” communism.  Worse than socialists are “progressives” who have a strong belief in communism as a foundation principle to their style of governing.  Most progressives will deny it, but if you placed their belief system on a social scale next to the Bolsheviks of 1919 they would be indistinguishable from each other.  There is a reason that progressives and other liberals don’t want people to read Ayn Rand, who as an American novelist wrote quite passionately about communism in her very good book, We the Living.  I have known this for a very long time because I am an avid reader, and I understand history so I have been able to function from a position of knowledge and not just the marketing of ideas proposed in what people think is modern times.  That’s why it was so ridiculously stupid of Hillary Clinton when pressed by Chris Mathews—who is a fan of the Democratic candidate for president, to declare that she was a progressive Democrat.   That is equivalent to saying about herself under a proper definition that she’s a communist socialist.

This isn’t the first time this year that Chris Mathews on the very “progressive” MSNBC cable channel has asked someone of great importance within the Democratic Party what the difference between a socialist and a Democrat is.  But this one had more bite because Hillary had no idea how to answer the question even though she knew the question was coming at some point, because he had asked it before.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  She couldn’t answer the question because there isn’t any difference.  Democrats today in 2016 are essentially the communists and socialists of the last century—the only real difference is that they changed the name.  Their essential philosophy is the same.

I don’t have much patience for stupid people—I’ll have to be honest.  When I had this education debate years ago within the media, at school boards, in education reform groups—and with other politicians I thought people close to the situation already knew what I was saying, that the essential product of public schools was socialism.  I had known it for years, so I assumed that we could have a conversation from a reasonable vantage point.  But the mad mothers and fathers angry at me for proposing to take away their tax money for essentially a day time socialist training center—which is what every public school is—provoked a lot of anger which I had no tolerance for.   Those idiots thought they would harass me online, come to my house, and attack me through social networks with all the socialist flair utilized in that novel, We the Living and that for some reason I’d just take it.  No, that’s not how things work.

I have always known that socialists and Democrats were essentially the same because I have always worked hard to have the answers to things—even if those answers were inconvenient.  For instance, everyone knows I have written a lot about Star Wars.  It could be said that I’ve been a mega fan.  I know Star Wars better than most people know their own families.  However, I do not like the new films by Disney and I will not read the books or buy into their product any longer in a post George Lucas era.  I see clearly in Star Wars now massive progressive influences and I will reject it—because I know better.  When something lets me down, I drop it like a rock in less than a second.  I went though a similar thought process with public education, our legal system, environmentalism, even family members who have not behaved properly.  It really didn’t matter what or who they were, I have dropped them at the first sign that they do not comply with my ethics and values.  And when the question comes as to who am I to judge—the reply is simple—an individual who works hard to be that way.  When I said that socialism was embedded deep in our culture I was able to do that because I was able to emotionally divorce myself from attachments that might skew my vision from the reality of knowledge.  So even when many were writing newspapers and television stations protesting my coverage by them because of my “extremist” language I never recanted or backed off because to do so would be to lie.  To lie would be wrong because it would force a new definition for the things I knew to be true—and that wasn’t going to happen.

This charade has went on for a long time largely because members of the media, like Chris Mathews accepted the revisionist definitions of a party he obviously supports—the Democrats whom he probably believes is still the party of JFK or LBJ.  The truth however is that Republicans like Jeb Bush and John Kasich are the new Democrats by proper definitions because the political lens of perception has been moved so far to the political left.  So it appears that Chris Mathews and others like him are having a real debate within themselves about the differences between socialists and Democrats or even communists and progressives.  The answer has always been there no matter how painful it might have been, or inconvenient.

I said it during many public education debates that if people wanted socialism and voted for it, then so be it—but they better know what it was they were voting for.  It’s really not a firm indication of public sentiment if Democrats avoid the proper definition for what they are doing just to win support of the public hoping slowly to cook the American public from capitalism to communism with changed terminology.  Democrats and progressives have arrived at this political climate by deceit, not by actually selling who and what they are.  What provokes the debate even now is that Bernie Sanders as a president is openly calling himself a socialist which then forces Hillary Clinton to name the difference.  Which of course she can, so she did the worst thing she could have done—she called herself worse—essentially a communist.  But she hoped that nobody understood the definitions and would bother to look.  Of course that doesn’t fly with me.

Hundreds of thousands of people read this blog site every year from countries all over the globe.  Most of those people disagree with me about one thing or another.  Sometimes they get so angry they call me names which always starts a small war of words.  Over the course of the last six years that I have been writing at this site—every single day in voluminous amounts—nobody has been able to dispute my claims factually.  Even the worst of the teacher’s union radicals within the state of Ohio could dispute it when I called them all socialists—sometimes quite publicly.  I have talked about it on the radio and written about socialism in public schools and most government offices extensively, and nobody at any academic level has been able to dispute it under any circumstance.  And believe me, the radical loser professors who call me an anti-education radical gun-nut would love to beat me intellectually if they could—but they can’t.  The reason they can’t is for the same reason that Hillary Clinton couldn’t provide a different definition of socialism in comparison to a typical member of the Democratic Party.  When the Party’s top voices cannot give a single instance of how Democrats are different from socialists, the truth is staring you right in the face dear reader.  And I have been telling you that for a very long time.  Once again, people should have listened.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

Corporation of Disney Versus Sole Proprietorship of George Lucas: Why the new Star Wars is so terrible

With all the accolades given to the new Star Wars film The Force Awakens I take a bit of pride in being one of the very few to point out the obvious problems with it, and the gross neglect it represents on not only American culture, but international civilization.  Star Wars has a responsibility provided to it by its half century long quest to play that part with the human race, so when it takes that role for granted, it is the job of people like me to point it out.  Anybody can do such a thing after others have already jumped on the bandwagon.  Presently, The Force Awakens is the fastest movie to hit $1 billion in global sales and it’s still moving along at a respectable rate.  By every box-office measure, The Force Awakens is a glorious success.  Yet I’m saying that it’s not successful, which to some may appear baffling.  Here’s why, Star Wars surrendered what it was to become something that it isn’t and that deduction can be reduced to a very simple social understanding of how things work outside of a mother’s womb.  To get the gist of what’s wrong with The Force Awakens watch the very interesting reviews shown below. Watch them all, they tell the whole story.  I’ll go a step further in my explanation, but it’s a good place to begin.

One of the most difficult things a job creator can do is make decisions to eliminate the jobs of the people who count on you.  It is excessively hard—I think it’s one of the hardest things a human mind does in a capitalist society—because a means to a living is the sustenance used to survive from day-to-day.  George Lucas wanted to retire at 70 years old but he had all these employees that he felt responsible for, so he went looking for a way to keep them all busy so that he could retire in good conscience feeling he did what was right by them.  He sold his company to Disney hoping that it was the closest company to his own methods that would respect his former property and do well for an entirely new generation.   I was a supporter of it, until I saw the results. It would have done more people more good to just leave Star Wars alone and laid-off all the Lucasfilm employees.  Laying off 2000 Lucasfilm employees would have been painful, but the results have been worse.  Because in destroying Star Wars, it has taken away the good meaning it has possessed to literally hundreds of millions of people who now consider it something of a religion.

When the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney took place, many proclaimed that it was a sale to the dark side, but they said so without really understanding why.  Corporations have a tendency to be viewed as evil, while individuals are given great latitude for forgiveness.  This is the heart of the problem.  As a fan of unlimited capitalism, I should be very supportive of corporations—which I am in that they provide jobs and great products to a free marketplace.  But, they are often very socialist in their nature and their employees bring that mentality with them to the voting booth. For instance, a worker at P&G or GE works in an environment that does not promote personal growth and individuality—they work in very team oriented environments where the greater good of the company is often the focus.  This is a standard in most corporations—so when Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton expresses the values of socialism most voters are already receptive to it because they live that life within the corporate world.  Corporations are collective based organizations that are often top-heavy and loaded with too much management at the back of the train defined by the Metaphysics of Quality.  Not enough people at the front providing leadership, and too many in the back which slows down the train from true productivity.  To hide this problem, corporations hire lobbyists to work K-Street in Washington on their behalf to prevent competition, so that the corporation can stay alive longer at the expense of more capitalist invention.

I’m not a fan of corporations, but I am a fan of the people who lead them, individuals like George Lucas, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and the original Walt Disney—among many others.  To me, once those strong leaders leave their corporations, everyone who follows are second handers.  This is why I am a fan of people like Carl Icahn who is the original corporate raider—who defined the term, “hostile takeover” by purchasing the stock of failing corporations and inserting new management with real leadership to make a sizable profit.  The introduction of competition to the corporate world makes everyone better and more honest and is needed in a capitalist society.  Without that behavior, you only get degrees of socialism which is terrible because it forces people to behave as collective entities proving detrimental to individual integrity.

Star Wars was always about the power of the individual, Luke Skywalker being the only hope for the Force to overthrow the emperor, Han Solo to always be functioning just outside the organized systems of the rebellion long enough to save everyone, and Obi-Wan residing in a desert all alone as the last of his kind to preserve goodness for a new generation.  Even the robot Artoo Detoo functions as a rogue individualist often breaking protocol to do what he thinks is right as C3PO representing the corporate world of doing as programmed berates him for comic relief.  In The Empire Strikes Back when Luke senses that Han and Leia are being tortured on Cloud City Yoda tells the young Jedi that he must stay and not be lured into a trap if he honors what they fight for.  The designation is clear, the relief of collective pain is not more important than the value of an individual who alone has the power to save the galaxy.  That is powerful stuff and why I along with millions of others have been a fan of Star Wars for over three decades.

The Force Awakens is a corporate movie made by the second handers of George Lucas and Walt Disney.  They are corporate minds who think in terms of sacrifice and the greater good before individual integrity, just as any corporation resents the individualist–those who do what they want in the corner cubical, and does not socialize during lunch with others and doesn’t follow orders from their superiors.  Rey the strong female who is obviously Jaina Solo from the Expanded Universe miraculously knows how to do everything which is a problem that many people have with the film upon viewing.  Many are willing to suspend their disbelief because the female hero is such a strong and compelling character that viewers are willing to overlook the problem initially.  The dilemma is that the characters in The Force Awakens are just along for the ride.  The Force is the hero of this movie and all the characters are subservient to it.  Rey is the victim of the sword that finds her, not because she finds it—her role is a passive participation in the adventure which is a direct violation of the “Hero’s Journey” that all Star Wars movies embody to some degree.  The Force uses her to get through impossible situations like flying the Falcon and fighting Kylo Ren at the end of the film.  She doesn’t survive them because she is an active participant.   She’s just “going with the flow,” and yielding to a mysterious Force that is guiding her actions.  Those are aspects of Star Wars that have always been weak, easily overshadowed by the efforts of Han Solo.

In the original films The Force was something to be listened to, but according to Obi-Wan, it also obeyed your commands—as an individual.  In The Force Awakens The Force is doing all the heavy lifting which is a corporate view of what Obi-Wan said in the film A New Hope, “there is no such thing as luck.”  This indicates that all the heroics of Han Solo in the past movies were not because of his skill as an individual pilot, or a decision that was made at a key time, but was due to The Force working through him.  This cheapens Star Wars considerably into a religion instead of a myth building tool to encourage people to follow their personal bliss.  It is the difference between a company run by a strong individual, and a corporation ran by a board of directors and a CEO as their representative.  One is an individual enterprise; the other is a collective based entity.

In time, once the fun of a new Star Wars movie fades, the impact that the films had will fade considerably as they will lose their meaning due to this corporate interpretation of The Force as opposed to the one that George Lucas nurtured.  The corporation puts up memos on a bulletin board and expects everyone to be appeased and to serve the needs of the collective entity—no matter who it is.  A company ran by a strong individual personally speaks to everyone and gives them guidance in developing their own individuality for the good of the company. It is a slight distinction that makes all the difference in the world regarding the end result.  Clearly George Lucas understands that distinction, and Disney as an organization collectively based, does not.  That is why The Force Awakens is a failure even though on paper immediately it appears successful.  Its mythology has been tampered with and is now changed forever—for the worse.  The message is one now of collectivism as opposed to individuality and that makes it very dangerous—and vile.

Now you should understand dear reader why you felt that The Force Awakens was a bad movie, but didn’t quite know how or why. It looked like Star Wars, sounded like Star Wars, had the same characters as the original Star Wars—but it wasn’t Star Wars.  It turned the overall message away from the rebellion of freedom fighters fighting for an individualized galactic republic and put the emphasis on collectivism and the reach and authority of corporations and the eventual tenacity to grind away everything that stands in their way.  And there isn’t much anybody can do about it but wait for some unseen Force to tell us what to do.  To those broken by corporate socialism into waiting for permission to use the rest room or get their vacations approved by a superior, they love Rey in the film because it’s all they can hope for in their lives after being beaten by collectivism for many years into no other option but to hope that they’ll win the lottery or gain an inheritance to earn their freedom from the grind.  But for hard-core Star Wars fans, Han Solo was the self-determined individual who functioned heroically not due to special powers or hooky religions—but by his own actions.  And in The Force Awakens, they killed off that character—for the “greater good.”  The message couldn’t have been clearer from the corporation known as Disney.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Disney’s Crusade Against Toy Guns: Hiding behind terrorism to appease their progressive base

Terrorism and the problems coming from it are the fault of a federal government that has failed to do its job.  Most of the terrorist incidents in America over the last twenty years are the direct result of a failed government to do what they were supposed to.  Yet their reaction is always that we should give them more government as a result of their incompetency, which most of us realize was a stupid thing to do.   Then of course comes the next debate as to private companies having to protect themselves due to the ineffectual policies by the government to hedge against terrorism.   People like me think an expansion of the Second Amendment is the needed result, whereas progressive organizations—like Disney believe in gun confiscation and more intrusions of personal liberty.

I am a long time fan of the Disney Company.  So it pained me greatly not only to see that they made such a terribly progressive Star Wars film but that they have announced that they are getting rid of toy guns within their parks.  For as long as I can remember Frontierland was a place where a child could buy a toy rifle and a coon skin cap as a memory of their Disney World visit.  But not anymore.  Regretfully, Disney as a company has let the liberal persuasion of capitalizing off government mismanagement marginalize their impact on the minds of our youth by pandering to gun grabbing politicians covering their own fallacies—purposely perpetrated, or by default—with gun censorship.  I would go so far as to call the following announcement entirely un-American:

Disney announced that metal detectors will be installed at the entrance to Disneyland and its Florida theme parks starting Thursday. The enhanced security measures will also ban adults from wearing masks or costumes, and discontinue toy gun sales inside all parks.

The entertainment giant announced the changes quietly Thursday, saying they were not based on “any single event,” but were intended to help security personnel and to make guests feel secure.

The portable metal detectors will be positioned beyond the “bag check” area at Disneyland and Walt Disney World parks in Florida. Security personnel will randomly select some visitors to pass through the magnetometers as part of a secondary screening.

The company also announced that it will beef up the deployment of police officers contracted to help with security around the parks. At Disneyland, that means beefing up patrols by the Anaheim Police Department. Disney did not give details about the scope of the expansion.

Disneyland will also increase patrols by explosive-sniffing dogs around the parks and related properties, such as Downtown Disney and its resort hotels, the company said.

The ban on masks and costumes will apply to all guests over 14 years old. And the company will no longer sell toy guns inside its parks, or allow guests to carry toy guns with them, regardless of age. Spokeswoman Suzy Brown said the company banned the toy guns “to avoid confusion or distraction for our cast members and security personnel.”

The rules are an apparent response to recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris. Disney’s overseas parks will also enhance security, in accordance with recommendations from its experts at those locations, the company said.

The new rules are included on the company’s Disneyland Resort Park Rules page. “We continually review our comprehensive approach to security and are implementing additional security measures, as appropriate,” Brown said in a statement.

A Universal Studios Hollywood spokesperson said the park is testing metal detection as well, but doesn’t sell toy guns.

“We have begun testing metal detection at our theme park,” the spokesperson said. “We want our guests to feel safe when they come here. We’ve long used metal detection for special events, such as Halloween Horror Nights. This test is a natural progression for us as we study best practices for security in today’s world.”

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/disneyland-other-parks-install-metal-detectors-ban-toy-183956756.html

Here is the hypocrisy of Disney, take away the guns and cannons from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and see how many people line up to ride, or see the movies.  Take the guns out of Star Wars and see how much money the films make.  Even though the gun was taken away from Woody in Toy Story, at least he had the holster.  Guns and their application are a huge part of what has made Disney as a company successful in the past, and is at the heart of their continued success.  Taking a stand against toy guns falls right in line with the rest of progressive leaning insurgents from teachers to politicians who are suspending children in public schools for wearing Star Wars characters holding guns on their clothing—in an attempt to change Americas love for firearms—culturally.  One of the largest entertainment companies in the history of the world is taking a position against guns not for fear of terrorism, but to solidify the progressive plans of their friends and allies on the liberal side of politics.  And it’s disgusting.

Walt Disney would be rolling over in his grave!  Frontierland was intended to keep people from forgetting about their heritage in America—which revolved around the gun.  The Disney Company has shown at many levels within a day of each other how radicalized against American tradition they have become.  The Force Awakens was clearly a liberalized version of Star Wars—the most obvious one yet.  In the film again regarding the space cowboy Han Solo there were occasions where he borrowed Chewbacca’s bow caster and was impressed by the power it exhibited.  All Han Solo fans know that he prefers a powerful pistol which he’s often seen holding in promotional pictures.  It is impossible to believe that as long as he’s known Chewbacca, for over 60 years–that he’s never had a chance to fire that weapon before.  Likely there was a decision by the filmmakers to show that Solo appreciated “native” weapons to advance the progressive platform sympathetic to “native” cultures instead of imposing a particular viewpoint on others—it is a small world after all.  It could also be that J.J. Abrams or somebody else just wanted to see Han Solo shoot Chewbacca’s gun in the film.  But because of Disney’s behavior about guns and progressive acceptance of cultural values conspiracy theories are bound to flash across our minds.

Instead of slowly weaning America off firearms in their entertainment productions, why not go all the way and take guns out of their films and television shows completely?  If you want to know the truth, Disney, the reason that The Lone Ranger flopped at the box office was largely because Tonto was the featured character and The Lone Ranger gunfighter aspect was greatly reduced so to appease the progressive activists.  Americans wanted to see the gunfighter shooting guns, not flopping around in the film until the very end.   So instead of taking guns out of the parks and hiding behind reasons of terrorism prevention to sell it to the public, why not just declare to the American public that as an organization you are against guns?  Disney won’t do such a thing because it would have an impact on their bottom line.

The policy is pathetic and further evidence of how far the company has fallen from its roots of preserving traditional American values.  The rest of the world is welcome to share in those values, but it should go without saying that American culture is the best, and it’s up to companies like Disney to communicate those values in a way that helps other cultures adapt aspects that might help them be more fruitful.  It’s not Disney’s job to try to alter the advancement of American culture back to the ways of the lowly European history—the gun grabbing losers of progressive tendency.  Further imposing restrictions on their park visitors with bans on “toy guns” when much of their revenue is generated from “guns” is disrespectful, and intolerable.  And let me tell you this dear reader.  It is well-known that I love Disney World and the surrounding parks affiliated with their company.  But this will change my plans for many years.  If Disney as a company will take a stand against guns like they have over this latest issue—I won’t plan a trip in the near future.  I many abandon it all together as a future vacation destination.   I will not spend my money on such a company.  And there are many people like me who won’t either.  It’s a pretty bad move on their part.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

 

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

Karl Rove Should Be Fired: Why Republicans cannot afford a brokered convention

It wasn’t a surprise that there were discussions about a brokered convention this upcoming summer when Republicans nominate their presidential candidate for President of the United States.  Too many conventional Republicans have already stuck their foot in their own mouths speaking out against the presidential candidates who are not establishment types, namely Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump.  Candidates like John Kasich cannot fight the battle that is required within our nation because he has the wrong approach.  In an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation, Kasich said while he understands why so many Republican primary voters are “upset” with the federal government’s inability to deal with major issues such as the economy and budgets, he warned if anger carries “the day, we’re not going to get things fixed.”  Well, here’s the story on Kasich, he came out bold in 2010 as a governor and spoke a lot of Tea Party oriented banter, but quickly retreated into a left leaning moderate once he decided shortly after 2012 to run for president.  He’s been a worthless governor since that time, particularly his support of Obamacare through Medicaid expansion.  His desire to trade federal dollars for votes sealed his fate forever.  He could only hope to remain relevant in the Republican Party so long as there is no viable option otherwise.

So it’s no surprise that Republicans like Kasich are upset.  Kasich has been following the same passive playbook that lost the election for John McCain and Mit Romney and winners see clearly the losing strategy, so they are looking for candidates who don’t want to lose.  None of the mainstream candidates are polling well, and it’s for that reason.  The Republican Party has given conservatives nothing to cheer for.  Karl Rove and Grover Norquist have strategically placed the direction of the Republican Party at the mercy of Democrats for reasons that are baffling.  Rove after the 2012 election had all his polling numbers off predicting a victory, but nobody showed up to vote for Romeny, because the candidate had been rammed down the throat of conservatives and few were excited about him.  Rove should have been fired from Fox News, because he completely lost credibility.  Even before there was a Donald Trump it was impossible to listen to Karl Rove and not  think that he was so incompetent during the 2012 election that he needed to be replaced.

The playbook has not been working.  While Rove undoubtedly would proclaim that Republicans have a majority in the House and Senate the type of people who Republicans have put in those positions have been failures designated as such for their inability to get anything done.  It’s not enough to put players on the field who call themselves Republicans.  If the party cannot give victories to voters, then the effort is all for nothing.  Rove is like the head coach for a losing football team who should have been fired a long time ago, but is kept hoping that somehow something will change if everything just stays constant.  That desire to maintain consistently bad results is what is driving the discussion of a brokered convention, which ironically will have none of the GOP establishment with any significant delegates.  Here’s how the media reported the incident:

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson ripped into the Republican National Committee Friday, threatening to leave the party after a report surfaced Thursday detailing a meeting party leaders had earlier in the week to discuss a possible brokered convention.

“If the leaders of the Republican Party want to destroy the party, they should continue to hold meetings like the one described in the Washington Post this morning,” the retired neurosurgeon said.

More than 20 top GOP officials discussed at a dinner on Monday the party’s strategy in the event of a brokered convention amid Donald Trump’s consistent lead in the polls.

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) listened as several longtime party members argued the establishment must lay the groundwork for a floor fight if Trump storms through the presidential primaries, five sources familiar with the meeting told The Washington Post.

The sources said Priebus and McConnell were mostly silent during the deliberation and did not signal support for an explicit anti-Trump effort.

But both men did acknowledge that a stalemated convention is something the party should be ready for.

When asked on Thursday about the dinner, RNC chief strategist Sean Spicer told the Post that the RNC is “neutral in this process and the rules are set until the convention begins next July.”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/12/11/ben-carson-on-the-possibility-of-a-brokered-convention-i-will-not-sit-by-and-watch-theft/

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/262850-gop-prepares-for-brokered-convention-amid-steady-trump

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/national-govt-politics/kasich-polarization-division-bad-for-us/npjDp/?source=ddn_skip_stub#cmComments

Regardless of who ends up as the presidential nominee, establishment Republicans have been terminated in the minds of voters.  The alarm was clearly noticed by the mainstream reflection of our society, Saturday Night Live, where writers of the 12/12/2015 show were clearly miffed at conservative America.  In the past these types of idiots were the people Karl Rove measured party success against—trying to appeal to them.  But New York, the Beltway, and Los Angeles are not accurate reflections of the mood of the country.  When you get out into the flatlands of Ohio and Indiana, or the mountains of Montana and Idaho, the Republican Party does not reflect those people.  The NRA does, but the Republican Party as it is today does not.  Pandering to weak candidates like John Kasich doesn’t get the job done and the strategists like Karl Rove who have set the table for this kind of failure shoulder most of the responsibility.

Clearly by the time we get through the primary season to the Republican Convention in Cleveland, Ohio the rules will either change, or many conservatives will look for a different party that represents them.  If Republicans do not listen to their needs, they will go somewhere else.  There is no patience for a Jeb Bush type of establishment candidate.  John Kasich has been a terrible representative of conservative values.  He telegraphed his position strategically to the world so far in advance of his run for president in 2016 that it was embarrassing.  He delayed his announcement during the summer of 2015 too long for dramatic reasons when it was clear all along that his purpose behind the Medicaid expansion was to position himself to be president.  As far back as 2013 insiders were reporting that Kasich was setting up a Ohio office to begin probing the presidential possibilities.  So it comes with some anger to people like him that all the rules have changed—because they have.  From the time he announced his run for president the type of person it will take to be a Republican nominee has changed.  And in six months from now it will change even more—and not in Kasich’s favor.  Kasich is part of the Karl Rove failure.  Republicans showed up to play the game with the wrong playbook.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/10/23/kasich-only-political-or-ideological-people-oppose-ohios-medicaid-expansion/

My prediction is that the Republican Convention will not be brokered.  There will be a clear winner with a majority of the delegates going into the nomination process.  That picture will become clear by March and the Karl Rove types will either have to shut their mouths or they’ll be replaced, which would be the best option.  Republican strategists need to have their pulse on America, not just the Beltway.   There are very angry conservatives who have been ignored, and they are a majority of the country.  They have been ignored and made fun of by just about all the media, the entertainment industry, and the Beltway, and at some point in time, someone has to pay for that poor judgment in alienating them from the process with name calling and orthodox politics.  The writers at Saturday Night Live are one of the first to see the caution of that sleeping giant and they seem justifiably a little scared.  New York City and Washington D.C. seem like big places when you are within those structures of political supremacy.  But they seem pretty small to the rugged people who live between the cities all across the country.  And those people are cleaning their guns ready for war.  They don’t give a rat’s ass about Obamacare—except that they want the people who shoved it down their throats removed.  The Republican Party better find a way to represent those people, or their failures will continue.  And accepting that role will start with the Republican Convention in July of 2016.  A floor fight will only make it worse for them.  If Establishment Republicans want to keep Karl Rove around because they like him, let him sell popcorn at the Convention, but don’t take his advice.  He will only screw things up more than he has.

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

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