Tag: Illegal Immigration

Eliyahu M. Goldratt’s ‘The Goal’: Kathy Kennedy is doing a great job with ‘Star Wars’, and how we can prove it with proper business measurements

Before anyone says, “Oh no, he’s writing another Star Wars article,” stay with me for a bit here. What I’m about to say has some very important things in it that are very “holistic.”  They span very much into our greater lives as a human species, so put on your thinking caps and follow along.  Specifically Star Wars and in general Lucasfilm under the leadership of Kathleen Kennedy have come under great attack lately for firing four directors and twelve writers as she looks for just the right combination of people to make the new Star Wars movies just right.  The most recent news was that J.J. Abrams was coming back to direct Episode 9 which caused quite a stir and finally unleashed a major backlash from the entertainment community that was surprising, because it has revealed some extremely Marxist elements that we all know are there, but these Star Wars firings are exposing it in a measurable way.   So as a guide post to keep us all from getting lost I’d like to introduce to everyone the very good, and very popular book on business, The Goal, written in 1984.  The Goal is such a powerful book that Amazon makes its executives read it and apply the basic philosophy to their industry, which obviously works.  I also happen to know that Boeing has had their industry flow professionals read the book to improve their business climate as well, so we aren’t talking about some fringe infusion of ideas here.  The Goal is very mainstream in American business—extremely well known.   In short The Goal is to make money and to use that as the identifier of all business measurements.  If you are in business the only thing you should be concerned about is making money, it’s not to provide jobs, it’s not to just make products, and it’s certainly not to fuel a political philosophy that is not aligned with the realities of the world.   Now let’s introduce the great director John Landis whom I am a tremendous fan of but has obviously lost his mind late in life.  Read the linked article for the details, but in essence Landis has forgotten that the reason for a movie studio to exist is to make money.  Disney exists to make money.  The director’s specific job is to make money for the studio, not to sacrifice themselves for some social cause, or to have artistic, and creative freedom to let their “inner voice” speak to a mass audience. The director in the case of a movie or most anything else is there to make a product that the studio can make money off of.  It’s the only thing that matters.

http://movieweb.com/john-landis-criticizes-star-wars-lucasfilm-directors/

Now obviously to do that the product needs to be desired by the public and in the case of Star Wars it brings a lot of joy to people who go to the movies, buy the toys and video games and in general it is those movies that keep the theater experience going so that directors can work on movies that are not Star Wars and may only appeal to 5% of the population.  Movie theater owners need to make money too just to have a place to show Hollywood products.  The industry is there for them to work because enough money was made with something like Star Wars to allow for other viewpoints in other films to be presented to mass audiences around the world.   If I had to value stream map this situation for studio executives I’d of course designate the consumer at the movie theater as the customer that the value of the product design must appeal to in order to successfully implement the strategic objectives.  These people fired from the various Star Wars projects, like Colin Trevorrow and Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, just over the last couple of months were obviously not getting the holistic reason for the Star Wars films getting made.  And what people like John Landis are now criticizing Kathy Kennedy for doing is essentially the labor union point of view from the various entertainment guilds—and that is putting money before art.

I can tell you that growing up all I wanted to be in life was a film maker and an adventurer, something between a Josh Gates and Steven Spielberg.  But when I had the opportunity to work on a few movie sets and talk to people behind the scenes I realized that most of them were Marxists openly pushing for socialism in American society.  So I had to turn away from that industry—sadly.  In the old days these liberals, like John Landis, and Ron Howard had to put up with their stars such as Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis and Clint Eastwood who were all conservative A-listers and Hollywood at least had a nice balance of product to present to the public.  However over the last few decades Hollywood producers looking to appeal to the Clintons and the Obamas in office tried to create a new generation of Marxists to replace the conservative leading men.  They tried to bring progressive ideas to their stories and they figured that if producers gave big explosions and loud music to a movie feature to help the Marxism go down easier, that audiences would stay with them, but that hasn’t happened.   People have just found other things to do.  It should say a lot that Netfllx productions like Stranger Things which is an obvious throwback to the 1980s and the HBO show Game of Thrones which is all about politics set in a kind of Medieval time where all the primal human instincts are explored, lust for power, sex, dominion over others are presented without a lot of subtle global warming messages, and the plight of the poor–the trend toward a customer experience is well-known..  The labor unions in the entertainment industry are looking at their situation and they are blaming Disney for not sticking to their Marxist goals of social reform but instead keeping their focus on “making money.”  Disney currently makes a lot of money off Star Wars and their Marvel projects.  They are giving audiences what they want and in return we give them money.  That’s the name of the game.

Disney to appease the creative labor unions does take up social causes-but it doesn’t help them at all toward The Goal.  They have nearly destroyed the ESPN network with progressive garbage nobody wants to hear tied to sports.  And Kathy Kennedy has messed with Star Wars in ways that could easily destroy it, by putting more of an emphasis on female characters. I don’t have a problem with it, but its a gamble to try to expand the market reach of Star Wars with females at the possible expense of the males. So far so good, but it is a risk worth noting.  Kathy Kennedy is not a Midwestern conservative, she is a social progressive and it shows in her projects.  But at least she understands The Goal which was written by Eliyahu M. Goldratt—and that is to make money.  To make money with Star Wars you must have merchandising—the experience must continue long after customers have left the movie theater.  That means that filmmakers have precisely two hours to create a product that will unleash countless books, comics, toys, t-shirts, bed sheets—you name it.  There isn’t room for some director to “put their own take on things,” they must follow The Goal—and that is to make money for Disney and its shareholders.  That is a very capitalist concept which pisses off the Marxists—but tough luck.  The product does not exist to make a point—it exists to make money because with that money many good things happen.

I went out on Force Friday a few weeks ago to buy a few items.  One of the things I had to get was a Rathtar from The Force Awakens movie, which was released on Force Friday specifically this year ahead of all the new The Last Jedi toys.  Even though I was very hard on The Force Awakens when it came out largely because Kathy Kennedy allowed the franchise to movie away from the line of stories I had been reading for thirty years in the novels and allowed J.J. Abrams to have the creative freedom to write a completely fresh Star Wars story changing the direction of the original novels dramatically, I have respect for the good work done on that movie.  My favorite scene from any movie in recent memory and certainly one of my top ten moments of all time is that scene from The Force Awakens when the Rathtars are introduced.  That was a lot of fun and whenever it’s on television when my grandkids are watching it, I usually stop what I’m doing to see it again.  At Force Friday there were a lot of happy people spending countless thousands of dollars on new merchandise because The Goal of the product which is Star Wars was aligned with their consumer needs.  Disney received a lot of money, which was The Goal, and the consumer got a quality product that spoke to them mythologically in ways they needed—for whatever reason.  The end result was good for all parties in that transaction.  It is not up to some Marxist Hollywood type to question The Goal.  The Goal is market driven, it is up to those in the entertainment business to figure out what the consumer wants—not to change the consumer into something the artists wants—do you get what I’m saying—because this relates to virtually everything in our culture.

I have been extremely excited about the new Han Solo movie now directed by Ron Howard.  I think he’s exactly the right guy to make that movie which he had to take over from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.  Obviously Larry Kasden who has made some of my favorite movies in the past understands The Goal of Star Wars as a screenwriter.  He may not philosophically like The Goal, but he’s hired to do the job of achieving it—and that’s the difference between professionalism and being a Marxist douche bag.  He’s the writer on this new Han Solo movie along with his son so when the young directors known for The Lego Movie were fired because they didn’t get what Larry was trying to put up on the screen, Ron Howard was brought in to fix things.  I was happy about it because it told me that Lucasfilm understood what The Goal was, and they were committed to it.  I have no doubt that the professionalism of Ron Howard will keep The Goal of the new Han Solo movie in focus and deliver a product that Lucasfilm needs and Disney can continue to use to make a lot of money—which is a wonderful thing.  But I did have to send Ron Howard a Tweet the other day reminding him that all his Donald Trump bashing he has been doing may very well draw a line between him and his audience—half of which like the job Donald Trump is doing.  By politicizing Star Wars, you risk deviating from The Goal, and that is dangerous to everyone involved.  Howard is a smart guy and a fabulous director, but it’s not his job to define The Goal. It’s his job to implement it as the director, and that’s what he was hired for.  All the below Tweets shown below are on Ron Howard’s main page.

The new Star Wars movies may be corporate productions that lack the heart of the solitary vision of George Lucas—but they do understand The Goal and that’s why they are special.  The three measurements in The Goal are throughput, inventory, and operational expense—everything for a successful implementation of a flourishing business model is contained within those three measurements.   Throughput in the case of Star Wars is the delivery of a movie on time from conception to the release date.  Inventory is the resources it takes to make the movie, like directors, writers, studio rentals, building props—all that stuff.  And of course operational expenses are the overall costs of keeping the movie franchise alive as a social mythology, the new theme park attractions, the marketing of merchandise and all the other big picture items.  There is a lot more to a movie than just paying honor to the creative instincts of the film’s directors or the writers.  There is much more to The Goal than just the vision of an artist.  Star Wars is successful because traditionally Lucasfilm understood The Goal.  The Marxist friends of George Lucas may have given him grief over it, but if George had listened, we wouldn’t have Star Wars.  And in that respect, what has John Landis done lately except complain.  He made that famous “Thriller” video like a million years ago.  And The Blues Brothers was made in the 70s.  I would say that Landis like his friend Spielberg has forgotten what The Goal was and instead have adopted that radical Marxism that they all share through their director’s guild.  And lucky for us, who are Star Wars fans, Kathy Kennedy has kept her eye on The Goal and not the socialist sentiments of her entertainment industry friends.   Sure she made the lead actors in most of these new movies a “girl” and she made a black stormtrooper, and put a Hispanic guy in as the lead hot-shot new pilot, which I’m sure made her liberal friends give her less grief over heading a giant capitalist movie studio—but at least she hasn’t forgotten The Goal.  And for that I must commend her.  If she has to fire 200 Star Wars directors she should, because it tells me she is committed to my customer satisfaction and not the social ranting of just another Hollywood Marxist, like John Landis.

Rich Hoffman

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Why the Star Wars Movies Keep Losing Directors: The Pizza Hutt delivery driver

It was my oldest grandson’s birthday party and it was a Star Wars themed event so my youngest daughter who is the mother of the young man put heart and soul into giving him the party of a lifetime.  She personally decorated the house for this party with creations she mostly made from scratch and it was quite spectacular.  To match her efforts she wanted all of us to dress up so the first time that I can ever remember I put together a costume of my favorite Star Wars character—Han Solo, and had a lot of fun doing it. In the process I learned some things that are worth sharing.  One thing that became obvious to me as I acquired all the Han Solo costume pieces needed to get everything together for this party was how similar it was to the kind of equipment needed for Cowboy Fast Draw and that while wearing it, I felt more like a western character than a science fiction icon—which Han Solo has always been.IMG_5166.JPG

Naturally through small talk I have been asked why I like Star Wars so much and my reply is usually because it’s the best western that movie makers can produce these days.  As much as George Lucas wanted   tell a story about a hippie idea of eastern religion defeating western greed through the “force of others” his creation of Han Solo really is the key to the entire Star Wars universe.  The character so wonderfully played by Harrison Ford is an Ayn Rand kind of superstar who advances the story wonderfully, and gives everything resonance.  George Lucas always intended Luke Skywalker to be the hero of the movies, but it was Han Solo that really took over the story as the central and most popular character.  I knew all this before I put together as authentic of a costume as I could, but wearing it complete with the gun belt instantly knew where I was.  The gun belt was the key, it felt as good as my rig for Cowboy Fast Draw and remanded me that it’s not lightsabers and talk about The Force, but Star Wars is more about “having a good blaster at your side” than anything.  Lucas may have intended for Han Solo to be redeemed by the end of A New Hope into the kind of unselfish character that hippies were wanting to portray in 1970’s San Francisco—but the love that the director had of fast cars and Saturday Morning Republic serials featuring cowboys won the day and it was those influences that turned Star Wars into a simple science fiction drama and placed it into the realm of something truly special.  Star Wars is the best western movie made in the modern era—and by that I mean the last 40 years.IMG_5259

I don’t think George Lucas meant to make Han Solo such a powerful character but as the story evolved it was the old smuggler and that capitalist sector of characters from bounty hunters down to crime lords who took over as the featured plot lines that most captured the imaginations of fans.  People didn’t want to grow up so much to become Jedi in the temple fighting the Sith—they wanted to be the smuggler and hot-shot pilot flying the Millennium Falcon and solely saving the galaxy.  In his best moments Han Solo is not a team player but is someone always used to being in charge and finds a way to be successful even when the odds were terribly stacked against him.  When they tried to water Han Solo down into a group think character, he loses much of his power and I think this was something that mystified George Lucas a lot over the evolution of that character.  George Lucas the hippie who knew mostly dope smokers and San Francisco radicals found it an unintended consequence.  But the little boy who grew up watching serialized westerns and swashbuckling action adventure movies found in Han Solo a trusted voice from the past—and wisely Lucas went with it out of the needs of his new company Lucasfilm to pay all the bills of his various projects—even though it bothered him that Luke wasn’t the star of the movie as it was always intended.

I bought 21 pizzas from Pizza Hut for this party to be served on a table in front of Jabba the Hutt. It was a cute idea that my daughter had to tie the two things together so when the pizza delivery guy arrived he found himself pulled into the Star Wars universe by default, and he was having a good time.  While I was paying the guy and walking him back to his truck we talked about Star Wars and why the new Han Solo movie and now Episode 9 had lost their directors.  In fact, since Lucasfilm announced their slate of 6 new Star Wars movies four directors for those projects have bitten the dust and either been fired, or have quit.  The trade media for Hollywood really hasn’t understood why but this is where the rebel George Lucas always shinned brightest.   In spite of his liberal tendencies, Lucas at heart was a small business guy whose father owned a stationery store in Modesto, California.  Naturally, Lucas hated the studio system because of their static approach to filmmaking.  And it was that part of him who shinned through Han Solo—the do whatever he wants, guy—which made Star Wars so special and Ayn Randish.  These modern kids raised in the studio system may have loved Star Wars growing up, but that doesn’t mean they “get it” when it comes to putting what they love up on-screen.  Kathy Kennedy who runs Lucasfilm now apprenticed under George Lucas for most of her adult life and she has an understanding of what makes Star Wars work even if it’s difficult to put into words.  She knew instinctively why her new film directors weren’t having success in developing their Star Wars stories—for instance reports from the new Han Solo movie set which is coming out in May of 2018 were that the directors were turning the story more into an Ace Ventura comedy instead of a western set in space.  So Kathy brought in Ron Howard who has been around long enough to know at least how to mimic what George Lucas had stumbled upon so many years before.   The pizza guy agreed with me, Star Wars to work had to pay tribute to its western-like background—without it the storylines flounder and fail—much like many people felt the prequel films did.  I personally liked them because I like politics, but without the swashbuckling element of the matinee idols of the 1950s, Star Wars is pretty boring.  I know that, obviously Kathy Kennedy understands that much—but more importantly, the Pizza Hutt delivery guy understood it.

The exchange of values has always been something I could share with my kids through Star Wars and obviously that is getting passed on down to a new generation.  As the kids dressed up there were a lot of Kylo Ren costumes, and even some of the adults wore Kylo Ren t-shirts.  Little do they know that by the time we get to Episode 9 that Han Solo’s now infamous son will turn back to good and help Rey restore goodness to the imaginative galaxy set a long time ago, far, far away.  Kylo Ren will turn out to be a good guy—which I think is a very good thing.  Again, it goes back to Han Solo again, without him and his redemptive qualities, Star Wars falls apart as something special in our human culture.  For me its fun to be able to share these values on a platform that allows for at least the discussion and Star Wars does that better than anything else out there presently.  That wasn’t always the case, back when George Lucas was growing up, there were a lot of things like Star Wars out there that communicated value effectively and our culture reflected it.  These days, not the case—values have been cast aside by movie directors trying to make movies about socialism, which people don’t like, instead of capitalist westerns which people do, and they are often mystified as to why people like the Pizza Hutt delivery guy don’t like their product.  (Hey, I gave the pizza delivery guy a huge tip for his capitalist appreciations and enthusiasm.  He understood.)  Wearing the authentic Han Solo costume for me told the whole story—it took what I had only thought of before and applied it to reality.  Han Solo was a gunfighter and that is a concept specifically unique to American culture and was the heart of every good western.  That is what makes Star Wars work, and why it is such a good device to teach morality stories about good versus evil.  It is those values which I’m glad I can share with these new generations which was on full display at my grandson’s birthday party. It was a lot of fun to be a part of.

Rich Hoffman

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Of course the FBI doesn’t want people to see the Clinton Files: They are guilty of hiding her crimes

Likely the same polling firm that thinks Donald Trump’s approval numbers are below 40% is the one that advised the FBI that there was no public interest in revealing the files they had on the former presidential candidate and government thug—Hillary Clinton. Because the FBI isn’t p of the Oval Office, and that they were hedging their bets for their own self-interest. We now know that James Comey purposely let Hillary Clinton off the hook during the email investigation to release those files citing a lack of ‘public interest.’ Well, everyone I know wants to see how the FBI colluded with the Clinton campaign to shut down the investigation into her email scandal—and let’s face it, that is the real reason that government investigative agency is hiding the information—because its embarrassing to them. They never conceived that Donald Trump would end up president and figured Hillary would be the next occupant in the White House so they altered their investigation into her handling of classified data—which was very important at the time since she was seeking a job for the American people who required great handling of classified information. In many ways thinking by means of competency—not criminally—the FBI investigation was supposed to show that she had problems and if the Democratic Party had listened, they would have still had time to try out another candidate. Instead, the villains of the system collaborated to unleash a massive conspiracy that was completely unnecessary only to arrive at this slow leak of detrimental information.

This information is detrimental because it shows that the FBI cannot be trusted—which many of us suspected. But all this just confirms the truth, which is disappointing. Regardless of their apprehension to release those files on Hillary Clinton Wikileaks has promised to release them anyway, so the public will likely get a chance to see them for themselves—and that will really be embarrassing for the FBI. What’s even worse is that given what we know now about the Trump presidency it is very obvious that the leaks which have emerged trying to derail his efforts have come from our intelligence agency—because the behavior of the FBI shows a much more systemic problem that umbrellas out over all government agencies supposedly doing work for the American people.

In many ways, this doesn’t surprise me and I wish it did. People often refer to James Comey as a Boy Scout with honesty to match and that reference has always bothered me because I know all too well what that likely means perception wise. I don’t talk about it much but the primary reason I write on this site every day is because I grew up loving westerns and part of me always wanted to be a sheriff when I grew up. I am actually too ambitious to limit myself to law and order because those things are defined usually by the efforts of politicians, which I think are half-baked people to begin with. While I enjoy simple people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio who live modestly and honestly, I always knew I wanted a more complex and dynamic life. But to satisfy my law and order side, I write so I can live the rest of the parts of my life the way I want. What sealed the deal for me was long ago when I was a prominent member in the Explorer’s community—which was an off-shoot of the Boy Scouts for older kids. I was in a high adventure group which was designed to train kids for occupations that involved “high adventure” like mountain climbing, global exploration and park services. But most Explorer Post groups were to train young people for fire fighting and police work.

Each year we had competitions at a camp just outside Loveland along the Little Miami River where all the Cincinnati area explorer posts competed with each other in various events, like obstacle courses, tug of wars, soft ball tournaments and other activities. We all showed up and camped in our respective areas and would compete and socialize for the entire weekend. I found the people in the fire and police Explorer Posts to be repugnant. They were power-hungry people—all of them—from the leadership down to the 13-year-old kids who wanted to grow up to be a police officer. They were not the good people who our society needed to believe them to be. I always understood that law enforcement was a necessary element to our society, but the people attracted to it tended to be insecure by nature and craving the power of the badge or they were using the role of the job to keep from themselves a tendency toward villainy. I learned a lot about people attracted to the law enforcement profession from my days in the Explorer Post and the impression was not a very high one.

Once I learned what type of people I was dealing with I had a lot of fun working their natures against themselves and the competitions during those summer months were pretty fierce. I took that feedback from them with me to the rest of my life. I understand the need for law enforcement but I don’t feel a need to salute them whenever I see them. They get paid to do a job, but they certainly aren’t gods on earth. They are extensions of our politicians and I don’t have a very high impression of them either, so it comes to no surprise to me at all to learn that the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, and the NSA are filled with perverts, losers and power-hungry despots who craved those occupations not because they wanted to become the next Elliot Ness—but because they were fighting in their own natures the tendency to become Frank Nitti. Given the opportunity most people in law enforcement are too tempted to use the privileges to power that they have to act responsibly, and they are prone to bribery and political persuasion if they think doing such a thing will advance their cause.

James Comey broke the law by not prosecuting Hillary Clinton so to preserve her run for president. When she lost Comey and the intelligence community sought actively to undermine the White House of Donald Trump—right out of the gate. They hardly attempted to hide their hostility. And the reason the FBI refuses to let people see the Clinton files isn’t because of some poll. It is because they are guilty of crimes and they fear the retaliation from the public if the truth gets out. It would be foolish to believe that they are not corrupt because they work in service as law enforcement officials. They are more likely to be guilty of such things than most people in general. I/m not saying we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we do need to always be cautious when dealing with them. Always keep your eye on their gun, because they are more than willing to use it—and it doesn’t matter what color you are. They love authority in law enforcement and will abuse it in a New York minute. Especially if they think they can get something out of it. The FBI obviously thought they were getting something out of Hillary—so they lied and hid the truth. And those files tell us so—which is why they don’t want us to see them.

Rich Hoffman

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John Kasich Caves to ANTIFA: Feeding the enemy does not help defeat them

Like the liberal progressive he is, John Kasich had his people removed a valued painting of the Confederate General John Hunt Morgan from a vacation destination in Ohio as reported by PJ Media in the below article. I have always loved history and specifically I have a soft spot for the rebellion that emerged out of the American Civil War. I like the Confederates—there was great passion and bravery in that war. Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee were some of the greatest tactical minds of military endeavor ever. If I had the opportunity to pick sides I would have obviously picked the Union—I do not support slavery in any form. I hate authority so the idea of a person being owned by anybody or any institution is disgusting to me—so I have no sympathy for slavery. But, I do enjoy Civil War battlefields and monuments because it was during that war that the human race started pushing back against the idea of people being owned by other people in any capacity—and there is value in that. And much of that history was forged right in my home state of Ohio with these Civil War tributes. But then this happened:

A painting of Confederate General John Hunt Morgan was removed from the lodge at Salt Fork State Park, a popular vacation and retreat spot, at the behest of the Ohio Department of National Resources, (trigger warning) the Daily Jeffersonian reports:

Recent controversy over Confederate statues and clashes between white nationalists and those who oppose them has resulted in a painting of Confederate General John Hunt Morgan being taken down at Salt Fork Lodge. During the Civil War, General Morgan led a raid into Ohio, which went through Guernsey County before Morgan and his men were captured near East Liverpool. In the painting, General Morgan is depicted leading his men in battle. Morgan’s Raid has been a part of Guernsey County lore ever since the incidents in July of 1863. The decision to take down the painting came through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

“We decided to take the painting down in light of recent events,” Matt Eiselstein of ODNR said. “The painting, done on canvas, was carefully removed from the wall and is currently being safely stored.”

The painting shows Gen. Morgan, who led a raid through Ohio in 1863, on horseback. Another soldier in the painting is waving a Confederate flag. Morgan and his men were captured near East Liverpool, Ohio, but Morgan escaped and fled Ohio. Local historian Rick Booth wrote:

By early September, 1864, he (Morgan) was leading a force of 1,500 men in the vicinity of Greeneville, Tenn. Underestimating the proximity and danger posed by Union troops nearby, Morgan opted to sleep the night in pampered luxury at a local mansion rather than tent uncomfortably with his men outside the town. When Union commanders chose to march on Greeneville through the night, Morgan’s choice of pleasantries over safety turned fatal. As federal troops approached Greeneville, several reports came in that Morgan was resting in the lightly guarded town mansion. Two cavalry companies were quickly dispatched to rush into the town and surround the mansion with orders to bring back Morgan dead or alive.

General Morgan, loathing the thought of ever spending time in Union captivity again, had promised his wife he would do everything in his power to avoid capture. And so, when confronted by an armed cavalryman demanding his surrender, Morgan chose to run. A shot rang out, and the man who barely a year before had led Confederate forces through Guernsey County’s Cumberland, Senecaville, Lore City, Old Washington, Winterset and Antrim fell dead.

Booth characterized the raid as “an unusual affair, conducted against orders in mid-1863.”

In the wake of the Charlottesville protests, at least two Ohio cities have also removed Confederate memorials.
In Franklin, near Cincinnati, a stone marker commemorating Gen. Robert E. Lee was removed Thursday, and in Worthington, near Columbus, a historic marker outside the former home of a Confederate general was removed.

https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2017/08/21/kasich-administration-quietly-removes-painting-confederate-general-state-park/

Kasich isn’t trying to protect the Confederate painting at Salt Fork State Park from ANTIFA communists and other lunatics, he’s appeasing them. He’s trying to make the Republican base believe he has the interests of history in mind when in reality he is seeking to distance himself even further from the Trump administration which at this point is a serious mistake. That’s why he is weak. No culture should seek to appease thugs and book burners. My first experience with any culture that were history erasers were the Nazis. But I have often spoken very harshly about the Roman barbarians that attacked the Library at Alexandria, the many Catholic crusades against pagan monuments and the modern academic re-writing of history to fit the Columbus origin story—which has been false. The Indians were not Native-Americans—but were themselves immigrants from China and all places around the globe well before the New World was discovered. It was only “new” to the Europeans fleeing their homelands due to religious persecution. Everyone has been running from something and everything came to a spill over point during the American Civil War.

History tells us that because of that war people were freed. Slavery ended in North America because of that war—not in spite of it. And there is a lot for us to learn about ourselves from the Confederacy. It is not permissible for these modern communists—which is what ANTIFA is all about—to erase our history and to re-write it in the image of liberalism. That’s just not going to be allowed to happen. But Kasich as governor of Ohio should have known better. And he picked the wrong side to appease.

Rich Hoffman

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Yes, the Stock Market is Breaking Records because of Trump: A lesson on market forces

I continue to be amazed at the lack of knowledge that most people have. I mean most major malls have bookstores where people can buy and read books. The internet has voluminous amounts of information to sift through and we spend fortunes to send people through a public education system—yet still people are generally pretty stupid. It is baffling to me that they cannot make the direct correlation between the increase of the stock market gains and the Trump presidency—and that they don’t understand how 4 trillion dollars of extra investments into the American economy directly benefit every single person in our nation. Let me provide a little context of how much money that is—Russia, that country that supposedly has so much power over our elections has a GDP of 1.2 trillion dollars. Japan—one of the great economies of the world is only at 4.9 trillion. Canada has only 1.5 trillion in GDP and Germany is at 3.4 trillion dollars. When we talk about the gains in the stock market—specifically the Dow Jones average—since Donald Trump was elected we are seeing an infusion of wealth invested into our economy that exceeds most of the countries in the developed world. That is a significant achievement all by itself.

The next thing people wonder is whether or not Trump deserves any credit for it. Well, of course he does. Who else? If you do a little research into the history of stocks and investments you can clearly see a pattern for which the mob of buyers of stocks use to make their decisions. What investors love is optimism and deregulation and Trump has given them both right from the start of his election and that has caused investors to pour their money into opportunities created purely on sanguinity. It’s not very complicated and it certainly isn’t a mystery. Donald Trump gets the credit for the increases in the market based on his promise to get government out of the pockets of the movers and shakers and that has unleashed vast amounts of wealth that had been sitting around doing nothing. That’s how powerful optimism is and how limiting governments are on the happiness, and productivity of their citizens.

Venezuela is in trouble because they adopted socialism and the state runs everything leaving their markets overregulated and underperforming. They have great oil reserves that depended on artificially high prices to survive in a global economy. Once competition was once again opened up driving down the price of barrels of oil the socialist country couldn’t survive because they had provided no reason for any investors to bring money to their country. People with money are productive assets in a global economy because they have done things to earn that money. They aren’t villains as socialists and communists see them. Wealthy people are assets. Even politicians must admit as much because they need the money of wealthy people to run their campaigns. Without wealthy people any society is essentially an armpit of derelict behavior. The more wealthy people a society has—the higher quality that society will be. Venezuela made it so that wealthy people left and prevented more wealth from investing in their country leaving the people there struggling even to find a bar of soap to clean themselves with.

Wealth is created when something has a perceived value. For something to have such a value there must be a market demand for whatever that value represents—such as gold, cars, or old toys and cloths. EBay and Amazon.com can provide the proof of how joining market forces together can create wealth that wasn’t there before. Just by joining the consumer with a supplier those two companies have tremendously increased market value within America’s GDP. If there were some way in Zimbabwe to join together two villages which might otherwise be 30 miles apart so that they could sell rocks and animal bones to each other more easily, they would see an uptick in their economy as well. In places where individuals are freely able to exchange what they have to those who want it, you will see a more productive, and wealthy nation where the standard of living is much higher than places where personal freedoms are more tightly monitored.

This is why the communists of our present time have all put on the mask of the environmental movement because that way they could hide their hatred of production behind a well-intentioned cause—such as saving the planet. They have entirely made up the facts and figures. The government in the United States and around Europe who naturally always want more control use their power to issue grant money to scientific institutions who will make up phony global warming numbers to invoke their communist religion on the masses hoping ultimately to slow down production in develop countries so that undeveloped arm pit countries around the world can be propped up—the way Venezuela was. But all that value Venezuela had off oil money was artificially created by regulation—it wasn’t real—it was built off a lack of supply to meet a heavy demand.

Trump signed immediately legislation which put the Keystone Pipeline directly into use—at least the parts that could be. Trump immediately removed the federal restrictions so that local fights could hash out the details which had been the biggest barrier to implementing that very power delivery method of oil from Canada to the reserves along the Gulf of Mexico. Just that action alone sent the prices of oil down which was great for all market driven economies. While it might not have been great for Venezuela who depended on high prices to sustain their socialist government, oil is just one factor in a free economy. Cheap transportation can do much more to create many more aspects of wealth in any economy so it is far more important to a developing world to have access to cheap fuel and oil so that other markets can use transportation to develop new economic advances.

All Trump had to do to increase the stock market was promise optimism. The numbers are off lately from the record highs we had been seeing because of the obvious stand-off and war with North Korea. That creates market insecurity and makes people hang on to their money. If you really get to the gist of why so many senators have been coming out against Trump’s “optimism” its because they need the chaos of limitation to justify their do-nothing approach to everything productive. They, like Venezuela, need artificial regulations to justify their power. A free market means fewer people need government to redistribute wealth—and even Republicans have gotten used to that game. So long as people have no other options, their do-nothing game of pandering to lobbyists and getting rich off the results could continue. But Trump has not only deregulated the market and inspired great wealth which is reshaping our country as we speak—but he’s exposed those politicians with a value he has brought to politics that has redefined everything. So yes, they don’t like him. Just like Venezuela hates free and open markets. When people are allowed to do what they want and get what they need, all of society advances. But when they are limited and regulated society stagnates. All Trump did to increase the markets was show investors that he was willing to free them—and it is all just as simple as that. Just imagine what might happen if we really did have a free markets and politics were removed from the process altogether. Everyone could be unbelievably wealthy—everywhere in the world. If only……………………..

Rich Hoffman

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Mitch McConnell the Underperformer: How the exceptional make the weak feel terrible

Mitch McConnell made a fool out of himself when he returned to his district in Kentucky to essentially throw Donald Trump under the bus for what the senator was not able to do in the Senate. As he said, Trump had unrealistic ideas about the way legislation works and had set ridiculous expectations of achievement—and that it was Trump’s inexperience that was at fault—not him. As he said that Trump was speaking to North Korea in a way that no American president never has where real threats are being made against our sovereign nation. I still don’t think North Korea has the means to attack America—but they showed the intent and that deserves an ass kicking all by itself—so Trump has some things to do. While congress went on vacation the President is still working and solving complicated problems around the world essentially spelling out the entire problem for all to see. Congress is essentially lazy and have grown accustom to doing very little but talk a lot and here was a new President that actually expected to accomplish things—and that was too much for ol’ Mitch—who has been in the Senate too long.

I understand this pushback because I get it all the time—in fact it was just this week where I had to explain to people who thought what I was asking them to do was impossible that it was they who were the problem. Speed and accuracy are equally important in all endeavors. I don’t just practice these things with my bullwhips and fast draw hobbies for fun—there is a deep philosophical necessity in mastering some aspect of speed and accuracy in people’s lives so that they can apply those techniques to a real problem in some regard. Any idiot can stand in front of a target and hit it with a gun, or a whip when time is not applied to create extra pressure. When we do our bullwhip competitions people who are very good technically have a hard time hitting their targets because time is a factor and the pressure often makes them miss. People who are good at managing their speed and accuracy obviously are the people who win the most while those not so good look terrible and incompetent. They may be very accurate and can put out a candle with a bullwhip if they have all the time in the world but they struggle mightily under the pressure of time.

That is why I love cowboy fast draw. My schedule has been too busy to attend a lot of the shooting events this year because most of them take most of a weekend to do, and I don’t have that kind of time to give in 2017—but I practice most every day and I’m currently shooting consistently in the .500s—which is pretty good. The really fast guys are shooting in the .300s which is just over a quarter second. I’m shooting in the half second range which consists in shooting at a 24” target from 21 feet away with a gun in a holster with a single action firearm. To perform the shot a lot of things have to go extremely right and it is quite an exercise to start thinking in fractions of a second.

Most people think in a way that a second is their idea of fast—so when they speak of things in matters of speed their point of reference is in seconds. But when faster than a second is needed to refer to speed, those people do not have the proper vocabulary, or context to comprehend the need. The same can be said of congress. Their unit of measure to articulate their accomplishments have not been based on performance, but purely on bluster. Donald Trump was elected to change the definitions and the people who are struggling with the new definitions are obviously uncomfortable. But they don’t have a right to refuse to act.

In our bullwhip speed and accuracy contests not only is speed a consideration by accuracy is equally important. For instance, for each cup missed on the target line there is a five second deduction. Also there is a line six feet away from the targets and you can’t put your toe on that line otherwise you could incur another 5 second penalty. Even if you ran through the 10 targets in 11 seconds, but you stepped on the line twice and missed two cups, your real-time would be up over 30 seconds which isn’t going to win shit. You have to be fast, and smooth and make little or no mistakes taking nothing for granted. It is possible if you are competent in that kind of endeavor. If you are not, or have drifted through life without being tested—then you can see why some people are very jealous of those with those who can do things accurately—fast.

Mitch McConnell’s “excessive expectations” comment about Trump is just that—a frustrated old legislator who has been exposed as a phone because he isn’t good at anything—especially his field of endeavor which is as a Senator. The only thing McConnel has been good at is deceiving people and getting himself elected year after year on empty promises. For all the time he has been in the Senate Mitch has never been able to find money for the I-75 bridge from Ohio into Kentucky even when the powerful Speaker of the House position was in his friend’s hands John Boehner in the House. Those two couldn’t have completed a shadow on the sidewalk under a hard summer sun at 5 PM on a cloudless day. They were simply lobbyists in waiting or facilitating the needs of lobbyists who fund their campaigns each term. They never planned to do anything but talk as elected representatives. Trump asking them to do anything is an “excessive expectation.”

People like Mitch McConnell are the type of people who always say, “slow down” so that we don’t make mistakes. They want all day to stand in front of a target so that they can hit it. They are the type of people who support a progressive society void of competition because they can’t compete. I always love it when the best bull whip artists come to our competitions. Some of them are the best in the world and have several world records and you bet it feels good to beat them on some of these competitions. We all win our share of things just being good at that sport, so we never get very serious about it. But I know people who hate it when I come to competitions because they fear they won’t have a chance to win. Instead of rising to the challenge they cuss about how it might rob them of a win just by being there. That is what Mitch McConnell is doing with Donald Trump. He wishes that the new president had never been elected because it makes him look bad in comparison and the game as Senator that he has been playing and making a lot of money off of has been exposed. Now he’s supposed to act, and he isn’t prepared. The drag assing hasn’t been working because Trump doesn’t understand the game—that everyone knows congress isn’t supposed to actually accomplish anything. They are supposed to pretend while the shadow government runs everything. Everyone makes their money and the public has been none the wiser. Only we have been wise to it for a long time—and we’re sick of it. That is why we elected Donald Trump. And we expect things to actually be accomplished.

Rich Hoffman
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You’re Fired in the White House: The good done by the 2% while the 98% watch

Why is it so surprising that Anthony Scaramucci was fired from the White House communications director job? Given the fact that he only did the job for 11 days, he was effective and assisted on bringing in General Kelly at the chief of staff position.  Scaramucci shook things up during his short tenure, he did a good job and now other people get a chance to do work in his wake.  Yet the perception of these government jobs is that they should go on forever and that the measurement of success isn’t in effectiveness of job performance but in how long a person can manage to hang around in the Beltway.  Trump has brought a business ethic to his White House based on performance—for which the media calls “chaos” and there will be many other firings before all is said and done.  Don’t people remember The Apprentice?  This is that same guy—Donald Trump, who made his mark on celebrity by firing people.  What did people think was going to happen?

What’s different in Trump’s case and virtually everyone who came before him is that this new president is part of that elite 2% club of people who essentially support the entire 98% portion of the human population in productive output. That’s not the same as declaring that Trump is “rich.” Not everyone in that 2% club is “rich” yet, but they typically become that way by their very nature. When anarchists used the Occupy Wall Street group to protest the wealthy 1% they were attacking the visible portion of that 2% who essentially do everything in our economy—who have the inner drive to move mountains of opposition for the sheer pleasure of it—for the boon of being productive.  They are not like the sheepish 98% who are happy to just live life and graze like cattle in the fields of dreams waiting for the inevitable end.  People like Trump are driven by their own energy—and it never ends for them.  That energy is now in the White House and has been misdiagnosed as chaos by those lazy 98% types.

That is why I have no concern over the lack so far of a legislative slate of accomplishments because I never thought congress would work with this president until things got rough—and they are about to. I have no doubt that Trump will end the subsidies on the congressional health care plans putting them equal with the rest of us and that the Obamacare money would be block granted back to the states.  Experts would say that if Trump did such a thing that all his other legislative objectives would be in jeopardy, such as his infrastructure plan, and his tax cut—but that is only thinking from the perspective of 98% of the population.  Thinking like the 2% types, you take it to the objectivists and make them feel the pain, and you pour it on until they break or an opportunity to fire them emerges.  That is the way of Trump.  His legislative agenda will happen one way or the other.  Inactivity won’t be acceptable not under a 2% oriented president used to accomplishing things.  Trump will not stop until he gets what he wants like a lot of driven people are—the 2%.

That was what the plot to The Apprentice really was—discovering the 2% out there who would do almost anything to be successful and having them compete for the right to win.  Most people are content to ride through life and watch these 2% people fight it out.  But then that is the major problem with democracy—is that the 98% feel they have legislative control over the natural drive of the 2%–and that will never work.  In America we have found an economy that frees the hands of the 2% and lets them build industry and invention to the limits of their imagination. The 98% benefit completely from these efforts but they do very little to contribute—except maybe work a job.  They aren’t like Elon Musk who is inventing the Hyperloop on a napkin or Jeff Bezos who is now the richest person in the world who continues to push Amazon.com to new levels of productivity.  As I mention these people they are not conservatives—but they are part of that 2% way of thinking—they are driven internally to always reach for success in any form they can find.  Anthony Scaramucci is another one of those 2% types, and no, he doesn’t have time to dance around an issue just to make the flock of sheep that make up the 98% of the population happy. Trump hired him, used Scaramucci’s efforts, to sniff out the leakers, fired the leakers and then ushered in a new chief of staff who then fired Scaramucci—that’s life in the fast lane.  Scaramucci will still be rich because it’s in his nature to be rich.  You could strip that guy of all his belongings and drop him off on a deserted island and five years later he’d be rich again after having built a thriving sea port on that island.  It’s the survival nature of the 2% and the American system to give them a voice above all others that is most responsible for the country’s GDP.  98% work under contracted hours to perform some of the tasks, but the essential elements of achievement occur by the 2% who seldom ever sleep, love their work and are always thinking and pushing for excellence.  To have a discussion about the proper nature of productivity, these factors must be considered.

The Washington Beltway culture that has emerged for over 200 years has proven unrepresentative of what America actually needs.  It follows a roughly European model of aristocratic behavior that just isn’t conducive to our needs as an economy.  The arrogance of John McCain to theatrically put his thumb down on the critical healthcare vote just a few days before Scaramucci was terminated demonstrated beyond doubt that the Senate is not a representation of what Americans want in their government.  Through natural evolution of observation during many trials and errors of voting patterns we finally elected a 2% type into the White House to break loose the elements that have not been working—ever, on Capitol Hill. Things will not go back to where they were just because John McCain is refusing to adopt to those changes.  Waiting out the clock from the power players in congress will not stop the forward trajectory of our economic expansion because most Americans recognize the necessity for a major change, and Trump is just the first step in that change.

The essence of that change is that it is the 2% who make America great and always have.  The 98% just go along for the ride.  They benefit from a great America but they don’t collectively make it so shattering that long-held government belief that democracies are the foundations of freedom.  No, it is the inventor who creates a new type of vehicle that gives individuals freedom of movement over vast spaces.  It is the computer programmer who writes a code that quickens the pace that human beings can think—therefore expanding their leisure time. It is the 2% who give the 98% their freedom through innovation and effort.  Not the other way around.

As I write this the Dow Jones is hovering near 22,000—which is stunning considering that just 6 months ago it was considered high at 18,000. That is nearly 5 trillion dollars of new money flowing into our American economy and that money doesn’t come from everyone.  It comes largely from the 2% who have worked so hard in life and thought out of the box to a large extent that they have the money to invest. They see in Trump a fellow 2% type.  With deregulation and a White House running more like a business, they are confident that the John McCain losers won’t have access to their money and that its safe to take risks.  The 2% don’t mind risks—that’s part of their nature—but they don’t like to have their backs turned toward looters like John McCain who largely represents the 98% people who struggle through life due to their inherit laziness.  Now that the 2% people have their own kind in the White House, they feel they can invest and act without the artificial restriction of looters always trying to steal their efforts for the 98% people to take the credit for.  There is nothing more deflating for a 2% person than to have the 98% people take the credit for all the hard work and risk through institutionalized democracy.  When that barrier is removed then all bets are off.

In that context I like to see all the firings at the White House and so do the other 2% types. It says that things are being managed and when something doesn’t work, this president is willing to keep trying until he gets what he wants.   And that is precisely what Trump will do in regard to healthcare.  It’s going to happen and if congress has to feel the pain and wrath of it, then so be it. It is nice to see all this for a change and now that people in the 98% see the results of a 2% guy in the White House they won’t vote the other way ever again.  The benefits are just too great and even many of the stupid people in that 98% can see that.  Firings are good and healthy and are done often by the people who are in the top 2% of the population.  Because decisive action is a fact of life in the context of Washington politics which has sought for so long to bend the 2% to the needs of the 98%.  Reality demands however that it is the real minority of the 2% which should always be respected for what they give the 98%–a life worth living and a freedom to pursue because decision makers and leaders fight for the purity of capitalism and the merit of competition which makes things wonderful for everyone.

Rich Hoffman

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The Dream of Pratt’s PurePower GTF: What comes next is beyond robots and A.I.

Without getting into the details of it I have been very heavily involved in the jet engine displayed below which was a feature attraction at Made in America week on Capitol Hill where Donald Trump used the occasion to highlight the many great products that are still manufactured in North America.  For so long I had heard that manufacturing was done in America which I never believed.  In the late 80s when I first entered the manufacturing profession all the old timers were trying to tell me that it was a fools quest—that our politicians had sold us out to foreign interests and that it was only a matter of time before all our jobs would be shipped overseas and that everything we did would be service oriented.  Those same kinds of people are now saying that robots and A.I. will take over manufacturing around the world but let me tell them something—there isn’t any robot or A.I. program that could have reasoned through the decade long quest to bring this jet engine to market—the thousands of decision gates, the constant flow of engineering problems and the enormity of a very complicated supply chain complete with human minds to adjust to very fluid situations—and I don’t think there ever will be.   It took the vast imagination and practical application of science to bring this engine to life and the indomitable will to forge it from a jealous nature which seeks to forever hold the human race to the ground with apathy and laziness that ultimately seeps into every computer program which ultimately springs forth.  This engine is a miracle and I am very proud of my part in giving it life.

Manufacturing isn’t just something that happens.  It’s not like building a sex robot to service the biological lusts of the human race.  Building something is only a small part of its birth into a manufacturing existence.  Robots may be able to perform some basic work tasks but to gather up the elements of known physics and continue to refine them into some practical application it is the task of the vast imaginations of human beings that do most of the work.  Imagination is a different kind of intelligence and I don’t think with all the exciting forecasts that we are seeing that A.I. will be able to replace human beings, ever, until we can manufacture a human brain and delve into the regions of thinking which connect the soul to imaginative cognition which then produces reality.  Statically just thinking about something isn’t enough—a thought has to connect to multidimensional relationships which exist outside of terrestrial experience—which is where inspiration comes from.

I was speaking last week with some very smart people about the Pure Power engine from Pratt and how the last twenty years of development which gave birth to it was such a challenge.  But that chapter is now closed except for a few minor details which will be worked out over the coming months.  This engine is ready to fill the marketplace for the next two decades and will be the most sought after engine on planet earth over that period of time.  It will be made all over the world with a big part of it done here in Cincinnati—and it will provide many thousands of jobs and create vast amounts of wealth which brings to life economies in every corner of the world.  That is something that is very specific to human thought and will not be replaced by emerging technologies, the concept of producing wealth out of imagination and using science to drive manufacturing.  But even saying that it is quite something to consider that we are already looking at the next generation beyond the Pure Power engine that will carry us all out into space and across earth’s surface in ways nobody had ever considered before.

The technologies which will emerge from the Hyperloop for instance will be what replace the Pure Power once that next generation emerges in transportation.   Even though commercial air travel is the only way we can presently understand getting to vast places around the world several new developments will do a better job of getting us there.  Hyperloops will become the fastest way to get from city to city while Spaceports will take over as the airports of tomorrow.  Aviation is moving into space and that means new types of engines that will operate out of the atmosphere and into space routinely.  To fly from London to Tokyo we won’t do it at 50,000 ft like we do now over 10 hours, or New York to Beijing  in 14 hours—we’ll take off and fly out of the atmosphere for a reentry an hour or two later at our destination meaning we could travel to such places for a day trip essentially.  As we better utilize space travel this will be the natural byproduct—time and efficiency will be greatly improved.

If the Pure Power’s greatest attributes are its incredible fuel efficiency and noise reduction standards, the engines of tomorrow will only need to operate a fraction of the time and need to operate in very thin atmospheres—if any at all.  So we are looking at entirely new concepts in engine design that will be introduced by the time this Pure Power breakthrough is retired after two decades of service.  By then commercial air travel from airport to airport will be much reduced and will be considered archaic.  The long TSA lines and dirty chaos of a typical day at Heathrow will be replaced by the clean technology of a fast-moving spaceport where flights will leave more frequently and take a lot less time to conduct.   Part of what makes airports such rough places is the long flights stuck next to other frustrated people.  When I fly now I like to do it in first class, but for many years economy was the only way I could afford it, and it was like riding on a bus with people touching your knees and breathing your air over long periods of time—which is disgusting when you think about it—which I do often.  When you finally land after an oversea flight you are tired and it takes time to recover.  That will change in the years to come dramatically.

Spaceports won’t be located near cities so noise won’t be such a factor.  We’ll simply take a Hyperloop to a Spaceport located in a remote location and we’ll blast to our destinations from there.   The Kennedy Space Center will expand its role in the south.  I can see Florida having at least two more spaceports emerging to satisfy the Miami and panhandle regions.  But Kennedy Space Center will likely expand dramatically to incorporate all the tourism to Disney World.   Hyperloops will provide a 10 minute ride from the Cape to Orlando to the doorstep of whatever hotel travelers might be staying in at the resort of their choice.  A lot of the industry that currently provides taxi services to and from airports as well as other support oriented businesses will have to reconfigure their business models.  A traveler from Morocco who wants to visit Disney World will simply pull out their smart phone and order up a transportation pod—forget about Uber.    The pod will come and pick up the travelers at their doorstep.  It will take them in comfort to the local Hyperloop station.  From there they’ll travel to a spaceport.   They’ll catch their flight and they will arrive in comfort at a Disney World resort all in about 4 hours of travel.  They could literally leave at noon their time in Morocco and arrive as the parks are opening that same day.   It’s a totally different way of thinking about travel and looking back from that future time to this Pure Power demonstration in Washington D.C. will seem like a very archaic exercise.

As proud as I am of the Pure Power engine from Pratt, and as discouraging as it might be to already think of it as extinct, we still have to travel well over the next few decades as these emerging technologies move into our culture.  But I can say this for certain, A.I. won’t put us out of work.  Instead, we’ll have more productive opportunities than we’ve ever had before.  President Trump already has our present economy at about 4% unemployment so the robots and A.I. will supplement all this economic expansion while giving us all jobs to do that are specific to the human mind—like thinking.  While we should take the time to celebrate all the hard work it took to make the Pure Power GTF possible, it is important for us all to never look back but always forward to the next great thing and space is where is at.  And honestly, I can’t wait!

Rich Hoffman

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The Subtleties of Astrophotography: Sorting out the noise of light and living

Don’t worry, my daughter is a concealed carry holder who routinely shoots in dangerous areas such as Over-the Rhine and in Chicago—so she knows how to handle dangerous situations.  In these following photographs I didn’t worry about her.  She did take her sister along on some of the shoots which was smart, but even though she knows the risks, she has enough experience to mitigate the impact of those risks with her knowledge of firearms.  The thing I worry about more is the legal mess a young woman would get into after having to shoot someone in self-defense.  She has the personal safety angle covered—the legal angle is the biggest concern for me.  However, I hardly ever get to see my kids anymore because they are always out doing things like this.  Professionally my oldest daughter Brooke has literally been booked for photo shoots every weekend and many week days lately and has a full schedule extending into 2019, and it keeps getting worse with bookings.  She’s become a very good photographer in a very competitive field and now she is turning up her comfort zone into the very difficult field of astrophotography.  As she shared her images obtained during the third week of July I knew she had done something very special and was headed in a direction that was putting a fine point on her professional uniqueness.   To hear from her personally click on the video below or read her article about how she captured these really phenomenal images of the Milky Way in the night sky.

http://www.brooketownsendphotography.com/journal/2017/7/18/gvgxr4wjglf1mj8ejw2sb13rkp1tl3

For people who have become victims of our horrible education system and our generally destructive trend socially to highlight stupidity as some badge of honor so not to make stupid people feel bad about themselves, the Milky Way is the galaxy that we live within through the vastness of space.  We are loaded on a spiral arm of star clusters spinning around a massive black hole which is at the center of it.  So to capture the perspective of that arm in the night sky is quite an intense feat of light, focus and natural environmental conditions.  It is not an easy thing to do so it makes me very proud to see my daughter attempting to do just that.

My kid is not yet 30-years-old and while her peers are out making fools of themselves partying it up like a bunch of idiots—she’s out doing things like this in her spare time which  is increasingly happening after long days of professional endeavor between photo shoots.  If you watched the video you can understand why I couldn’t be prouder of her—listen to her speak.  It’s like listening to a fine symphony of music to hear her utter complete sentences and using a nice vocabulary coming out of the mouth of such a nice young lady. If she weren’t my daughter I’d be extremely impressed.  However, she is my daughter and I know what she has pushed herself through to arrive at this level of professionalism—but it’s still nice to take a moment to consider how magnificent she really is as a person.   She’s a pace setter and she’s emerging as a very unique photographer in a field of professionals who have been doing it for years and are quite good.  What’s giving her the advantage isn’t just the conceptual side—it’s the conceptual application that she naturally has mastered that is doing it.  There are a lot of people in the world who know how to take a nice photograph.  There are people professionally working in Hollywood as cinematographers who would greatly struggle with the light she was working with to capture these images.  But it is how she sniffs out a photo from nowhere that is setting her apart from the crowd.  In the world of tomorrow—which is literally getting nearer with every sunrise, Brooke is the photographer of her age to record the optimism of all that’s coming.  Her playfulness at living comes out in her photographs and that is something you can’t teach.  A person either develops this trait or it’s not there revealing only mechanical applications of a heartless artist.

Just as she said in her video, there is a lot of light noise in the night sky and so it is true as well in most professional fields.  It doesn’t matter if the profession is acting, being a musician, business tycoon, or housewife; you have to work really hard to separate yourself from the noise of our society.  Everyone is living their life and hopefully they all think of themselves as great and try to be the best that they can be every day.  But as nature has it, not everyone can be the best so to put yourself above the fray, you have to work really hard and make it so that you are continuously pushing yourself.   My daughter and I have had these long talks for many years so she understands what she needs to do, but it is always nice to see her doing it.  Just as she had to drive hours out of the way to capture these photographs at just the right time of year and at the correct time of day—so too in life—you have to go further than other people and be willing to always push for that extra bit to get there to arrive at the definitions of success—because there is a lot of noise from people who try to be good at things from the rolled down windows of their cars.

I’ve showed Brooke a lot of movies over the years and she is well read and has been exposed to the finer things in life—so she has context on the details of what makes things—good.  But I was surprised to learn that her favorite movie was Interstellar recently.   That was the Christopher Nolan film that I wrote about several years ago which I drug my family to on an opening night because I thought it would have an impact on their lives.  I’m glad it did, but it still surprised me that it was her favorite movie out of all the movies she’s been exposed to.  She told me that recently in one of those rare moments where she and her husband were able to come home and have some dinner and watch a collection of political speeches about NASA, that it was Interstellar that most touched her and I just think that’s magnificent.  You might have noticed that she inserted a song from the Hans Zimmer masterpiece musical score from that film on her article for context.  When the first space stations open up to the public and hotels start popping up on the moon in a few years, I have no doubts that Brooke will be one of the first to be there.  And that quite simply makes me very proud.

Most parents are proud of their kids—and that is mostly a selfish emotion.  After all, who wants to raise children only to think they are pieces of crap?  To think otherwise would be to concede to failure.  So it’s not unusual for parents to be proud of their children mostly out of the necessity of justifying all the hard work that goes into the job.  But when a child evolves into something that is uniquely defined and hungry for living life in their own endeavors it is something to celebrate. It just so happens that in Brooke’s case she is my kid and she has given me a lot to be proud of, and she’s just getting started.  It makes me very proud that she speaks so articulately, that she is running around at 11:30 PM looking for the right light in a night sky for a perfect picture not for some magazine or other paid endeavor—but because she has a natural passion to do so.  And it makes me proud that she’s not naive enough to do these things without being heavily armed to defend herself.  The results of all those elements are showing up in her artistic endeavors and whether or not she was related to me, it’s a beautiful thing to witness.

Rich Hoffman

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The Doomsday Cult of a new Religion–Climate Change: Using hoakey science to hide sheer laziness

I thought it was astonishing.  In America you just don’t hear these kinds of things, but the view of productivity around the world has changed and their poor economies show it.  However increasingly, especially on college compasses and public schools everywhere the next generation is adopting this mentality.  In dealing with a company overseas recently I learned that they had to shut down their facility for four days due to a need to preserve power—they had an energy crisis and just didn’t have enough energy literally to operate their manufacturing plant.  Obviously their commitment to solar and wind power wasn’t cutting the mustard and they didn’t have enough energy to conduct basic manufacturing.  So their employees went home and conserved power for a majority of this previous week doing nothing to move needed actions on behalf of our business together.  And while explaining it to me they didn’t even have the predilection that there was any possible imposition to the matter.  Buying into all the greenie weenie diatribes that the new communist green movement has put forth, these people were committing economic suicide under the best of intentions—and the entire premise was completely false, artificially created to preserve nature at the cost of human productivity and it’s quite a disgusting phenomenon.   The people I was dealing with were not stupid people, but they have adopted all the nutty European standards on emission reduction that have essentially crippled them as a productive society—and it is astonishing to see.

It was only a few weeks ago where I wrote quite an elaborate, and unique article about the nature of people who silently seek to do as little as possible.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  They are the type of people who are disconnected from productive enterprise and have lives separate from their work.  They are the TGIF people who dread Mondays, put “hump day” on their Facebook postings and on Fridays celebrate by declaring that they thanked God that the weekend was upon them so they could go home, stuff their fat faces and watch other people live lives on television.  Many of those people are the first idiots who are inclined to listen to Al Gore rattle on about the new communism “green” religion of climate change which articulates quite specifically all the sins of productivity as something to avoid.  For lazy pieces of shit, the green movement is quite an attractive prospect.  Not only do they get the excuse to sit on their ass and bitch about everything but they can hide behind the shield of non productive output to do it and feel like they are saving the earth in the process.   It is the latest rage of the lazy and stupid and it is taking over the world rapidly because of the many soft-souled losers that are out there to solidify the thoughts of non productive behavior.

It’s not the earth these losers are protecting—it’s their own laziness—let’s make that clear right now.  As California recently voted to impose massive regulations on themselves all in the name of “climate change” which is a completely made up falsehood designed to limit the productive output of America to match these other countries who have allowed the lazy losers of their societies to stop productivity all in the name of saving the earth from human beings.  Gov. Jerry Brown is just another Jim Jones cult leader speaking in terms that touch the human desire to regress back to the Stone Age—to build monuments honoring the winter and summer solstice, to make animal sacrifices to the gods for food supply and to dance like idiots under the sun hoping to make it rain.  The new “science” of climate change is just another voodoo cult of idiots casting lunacy toward reality and hoping for some kind of positive result.  But behind every one of those people is a lazy streak that looks to get away from work so that they can hide their tendency behind some social effort to conceal their lazy inclinations.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/climate/jerry-brown-california-climate-summit.html

Climate change is in the same category as religious mythology, the new devil is capitalism and the new God–the Earth, and all its family of planets spinning around the sun waiting for the day that the fuel runs out and destroys the entire solar system.  The lazy Al Gore types and the loud mouthed Jerry Brown’s of the world preach with the Jim Jones charisma of a maniac to turn off our productivity as human beings and turn inward toward the gods of compliance—and to pray for rain, to pray for food and to pray for our everlasting life.  All the while, those of us who work hard, smart and are always thinking know that all those things are improved through productivity.  Everything is fixed in human existence through hard work and productive output.

Imagine going to Disney World and learning that they had to shut down for the day due to a need to save power.  Or think of New York City—a place that never sleeps having to turn off some of their lights to accommodate the limits of wind turbans and solar cells struggling to put out enough power to supply their needs because there were a number of days when it was cloudy.  That’s what we’re talking about here.  The greenie weenie push to get away from “dirty” “sinful” energy and to move toward less effective “green energy.”  What you end up with is a production plant with no power and a bunch of people who have to take a mandatory vacation just to save the planet from an unseen menace, unseen because it doesn’t exist.   People like Jerry Brown and Al Gore are just the new death doctors of doom preaching the apocalypse as they pass the offering plates around the congregation to pay for themselves to have a wild nights with strippers in Vegas after everyone goes home.  They don’t care about life; they want to do as little as possible and to indulge in vile conduct with a cover story of some majestic cause.

The earth doesn’t give a rat’s ass if we humans live or die.  The earth will die in due time, its climate will change, its oceans will rise and fall, and it will continue to be pelted every few billion years with catastrophic space debris.  Braless bitches and stringy haired hippies with body piercings and their acoustic guitars can stand in the mud and sing about how wonderful the earth is and they can hide their lazy behavior behind climate change and worship the goddess Mother Earth and it won’t change a damn thing—earthquakes will happen.  Hurricanes will still occur.  But mankind’s salvation is bigger than the earth—and it is there in space for the productive and the ambitious to explore.  The religious cult of climate change has been created to hide the lazy from the judgment of the ambitious and that has left good people standing around waiting for the sun to come out so that they can work an eight-hour day—or be sent home until the situation improves.  Meanwhile, nobody was there to answer my God-damn emails because they were too busy smelling flowers and worshipping the earth while their f**king phones charge.  They foolishly sat by candlelight like a bunch of Neanderthals during the Stone Age around a fire wondering what animal might come along to eat them, or why lightning was so scary flashing across the sky.  Meanwhile in America for those who don’t sleep so much and work 16 hour days—and on weekends—we are planning to return to the moon and to mine materials to advance our civilization toward a Type I utilization.

We are not one world.  There are the lazy pieces of crap that live and seek a new form of communism in this green movement to stop production, seek out technology to make it so they can play video games longer in the day and get paid for sitting on their ass.  They are parasites of the earth feeding off it like a barnacle because they essentially don’t want the responsibility for self initiation.  They want someone to blame for their lack of success in life and climate change gives them an excuse to do very little in life and still have a cover story to feel good about themselves over.  Then there are the productive people who don’t want limits on their imaginations or their effort—and those are the people who will carry mankind into the stars to live for billions of years long after the earth has been consumed by the sun as that gassy celestial centerpiece of our solar system dies.  The lazy will die with it.  The ambitious will move on to procreate in space with thought and enterprise that are specific to the human race.  But the two sides will never  get along on earth.   It is sad to see that the influence of the lazy losers have migrated into politics to shut down entire countries with bad policy and sheer stupidity.   We are fighting that trend in America with a new kind of President.  However, by the way things look around the world—many of those other countries need to be doing the same thing.  If you don’t have enough energy to stay open for business, you are doing something very wrong.

Rich Hoffman

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