The Beauty of a Mernickle Holster: Morality of gunfighters protecting laissez faire-capitalism

IMG_0645This is truly a special day.  Just over two months ago I was having lunch with a friend about firearms related subject matter.  It was at a decent place, and reading this, he’ll remember instantly the occasion.  We were watching the construction of The Streets of West Chester Phase II development from our window and were enjoying the progress of capitalism as it marched toward new destinations.  In my own life, I had just accomplished a major technical achievement, something that many thought was impossible and the two and a half years I spent slugging that triumph out had put a new line of thought into my mind forever.  To celebrate the moment I put a major investment into a new stage of my own personal development and decided that I would put an emphasis on a career change.  Of course nothing is sudden in these kinds of things.  The business world like a good marriage dictates that decisions are fast and solid but that movement often takes time—so you often ease into things instead of crashing through the front door.  So this new career would entail a phase-in period rather than a sudden change and it all started with something that I had been thinking about for several decades but just couldn’t find the time to commit to it—or the money.  However, I had promised myself that if I survived the technical achievement I had been working on that I would treat myself to that long desired intention.  Prior to that lunch I had just ordered a new Mernickle gunfighter rig knowing that it would have to be hand crafted and take months to complete.  But I was excited that I had finally bought it—along with other items that went with it.  All in all it was a sizeable investment for me that signified a definite change of life.  One book had literally closed and an entirely new one was starting, and I was very excited about it which my friend can testify to.

It was on December 15, 2015 that my Mernickle holster arrived and it is a thing of extraordinary beauty.  Bob Mernickle and his family starting with his wife Sherrie and two daughters Stormie and Shandrianna are in my opinion the best holster manufacturers that are out there, particularly when it comes to Cowboy Fast Draw.  To have a Mernickle gun fighting system is to have the Lamborghini of shooting sports.  When I get involved with something very specific, like the Western Arts often are I do a lot of research into who I think is the absolute best and I work with them exclusively until I think they have fallen from the top.  In my bullwhip work, I bought my whips from Terry Jacka in Australia.  With this new phase in my life I am looking to build a new skill set to compliment the old one, and to advance that intention, I needed the best Cowboy Fast Draw rig that I could get, so I ordered one from Bob Mernickle.  The day before it arrived one of his daughters, Stormie wrote me to confirm its delivery and I knew that all was right in the world.

As part of the technical achievement that I had worked through and all the pulling teeth it took to get there, no amount of money can give you back the years you lose whenever you do something that takes so much work and effort.  There are no banquets in your honor that can justify the personal expense—not for me anyway.  Success isn’t measured in the opinions others have of you for bringing them the magic of capitalist enterprise—but it’s in what it does for you personally.  This Mernickle holster and the Ruger Vaquero that goes in it represents something much greater to me which was confirmed over quite a long period of time.  It is probably the opposite reaction that people in my position would justify for the start of a new book in their lives.  The typical reaction might be condos, boats, and more exotic vacations when a plateau of professional achievement is reached, but that’s not enough for me.  I need to push myself and to smell battle in the things I’m doing—so complacency and reflection are not enough.  I need to go from one impossible thing to another in order to feel alive and entering a very competitive sport that is the fastest individual feat that a human being can perform is precisely what makes my heart swell.

Prior to this epic life-changing event I was happy with my melee weapon work for personal exercise and self-defense.   Bullwhips allowed me to practice in my own back yard and compete each year in the Annie Oakley Western Showcase in Darke County, Ohio and be one of the few in the world who could put out flaming candles with those flexible weapons using pin-point accuracy.  But that technical work that I had been doing along with my political endeavors here and elsewhere showed me a strategic undercurrent emerging that needed a gunfighter—quite literally. This led me to re-think some of my favorite childhood influences, such as Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress and gave me an even stronger appreciation for the cowboy arts of America’s foundation.

I have been thinking a lot about the Cowboy Way as defined by America’s evolution and the romance of the Old West mythologies which are much more sanctimonious in hindsight than they ever were in the moment—and it became quite clear to me that the gun represented laissez-faire capitalism in our culture and that was something that needed to be emphasized, and protected.  As I look back on the countless westerns that have been produced in America they all have a common thread that revolves around the use of guns to regulate a frontier society which embodies the morality of pure capitalism—which is essentially at the heart of the gun debate in our modern era to remove them from private possession.  Guns on the hip of a gunfighter represent the type of individual protection of private property that is very specific to a culture that is operating without the parental oversight of a federal government.  America had the unique experience of being able to function in a vacuum of time, when railroads allowed quick travel, guns made the playing field of human domination equal, and the innovation of one’s own endeavors could make them gloriously wealthy, or proportionally poor.   The Old West was a very competitive place, and most people ended up dirt poor, diseased, or crippled for life.  Gambling and prostitution were everyday occurrences in most frontier towns and to this very modern time still has an appeal to people in American culture because those things no matter how destructive they were personally, represents an extraordinary level of personal freedom that was unique on the world stage—and still is.

The Cowboy Way emerged as a way to self-regulate behavior as government was not all that present in Old West towns such as Deadwood, South Dakota.  Each year presently hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists venture to Deadwood for the famous Sturgis Motorcycle Rally essentially to feel the breath of the Old West and laissez-faire capitalism on their faces.  If you look beyond the decadence which is also present in Las Vegas and Times Square, New York, or even Key West, Florida—you can see a society of people too tightly cranked up looking to come unhinged for their own psychological balance.  Towns like the old Deadwood featured lots of prostitution, and gambling which were hopeful attempts by individuals to acquire private property and live well for themselves.  This isn’t at all unlike the world of Henry Morgan—the pirate of Port Royal where indulgence in debauchery was rampant to an extreme.   But the reason for it is more fascinating than the cost.  Many people died and lost their way in such environments, but those who did succeed brought wonderful treasures to the human race under capitalism.  The desire for such recklessness in personal living is that individuals ultimately want to be free of government regulations and they’ll go to extremes to shake them away.  In such an environment guns are needed to protect oneself from predators who want to shortcut the work of capitalism to get something for as little effort as possible.  In Deadwood specifically are the stories of Wild Bill Hickok who was a lawman, a frequenter of prostitutes, and one of the best known gunfighters from the Old West period.  He once killed Davis Tutt in a dual at 75 yards over a dispute of Hickok’s watch.  The dual was likely over a woman—not so much the watch, but either way it was over possession of perceived property and the gunfight was emblematic of protecting that property.  The gun in most western mythology is an affirmation of economic value, not raw brutality.  It was in Deadwood that Wild Bill was shot in the back of the head during a poker game while holding the famous hand, Aces of Eights, which so many references within the motorcycle community refer to presently.

The governing principle of these laissez-faire capitalist societies was the Cowboy Way, or at least the way Hollywood interpreted the brutality of frontier life to find meaning in it all—which there was plenty.  A code of conduct enforced by the gun emerged and it was for a time the best answer to America’s morality of capitalism.  The political left attacks cowboys and gunfighters specifically because they are quite well aware that there is something unique in the history of Old West towns like Deadwood and the historic mythologies of Wild Bill Hickok that might fuel the fires of capitalism and stop the long global march of socialism that is currently migrating unhinged everywhere in the world except for rural pockets around the United States.  For instance, you will NEVER see Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota lecturing those people about morality and equality.  John McCain has attempted to appeal to that demographic class, but has not been very successful—because the Washington Beltway doesn’t understand it.  But I see it quite clearly.  The strategy to move capitalism in the other direction against the current spread of socialism is through the kind of marketing that gave rise to such mythologies and the real life actions of Wild Bill in the first place.  And behind that effort is the magic of the gun and the advantage of a very good fast draw rig.

Yes, it’s very exciting to enter a new book full of stories and adventure that have not yet been experienced.  The old one was great, but sometimes sequels are better than the originals.  Life should be like that, each and every year should be better than the previous one.   While my previous stories were mainly about motorcycles and bullwhips, these new ones will be more akin to Wild Bill Hickok.  Not the gambling or the women, but the gun fighting—there is magic in that—and promotion of an economic system that the gun represents–laissez-faire capitalism.  After my success at the near impossible the obvious next step is to build on that with a means to expand that capitalist reach.  While the intentions may not be obvious at first, it is clear that by wearing that fabulous Mernickle holster the weapons that will be drawn from it have the best chance of re-selling American capitalism to the most people under the best conditions—which of course unlocks prosperity within our national GDP that would have been previously unheard of.  And that is why that holster to me is one of the most beautiful things in the world and why I have been so excited to get it.  This is going to be a lot of fun.

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

President Obama’s Pathetic Speech: Keeping Donald Trump, alive

It was so astonishingly embarrassing how President Obama delivered the “terrorism” address to the nation on Sunday, December 8th 2015. First of all, Obama avoided using the Oval Office desk—a place where so many presidents of the past used that tool to calm the American public after a tragedy. Instead, Obama used a pedestal in the middle of the room. That was a very strange thing to do which points obviously to everything that Dinesh D’Souza has been saying about Obama, that he’s so anti-imperialist that he hates the reputation of the United States around the world and is seeking to change the nation into “something else.” Whatever it is, this guy is just terrible, and way over his head. His presidency was launched by terrorists, namely Bill Ayers, and it has been defined by terrorism. What else would we have expected from a Marxist community organizer? Did anybody really think a University of Chicago intellectual could manage the most powerful country on earth just by waking up in the White House every day? Well, apparently some people did think that. And they were obviously wrong.

Those same Obama supporters point to Donald Trump and declare that he doesn’t have the track record to run the country. Please………..give me a break. Look, I’m a Trump supporter. I love his books and think he’s the best example of an Ayn Rand type of candidate that we are likely to ever see. I’m not crazy about Trump’s positions on eminent domain, or casinos—but he’s as self-made and smart as they have ever been in American business. And I want him for president after this joke Obama has mismanaged our precious country into oblivion. I’ve said it so many times now, the message should be quite clear. But for a change don’t just read my words, but the words of another Trump supporter that put the politics of 2015 in a proper context. Read it for yourself and pass it along to a potential supporter. Politics as usual will not suffice, its time we turn things around into another direction—the opposite of where Obama is currently. And that won’t happen doing things the way we have in the past.

What I See Happening In a Trump Presidency

By Bill Bennett

They will kill him before they let him be president. It could be a Republican or a Democrat that instigates the shutting up of Trump. Don’t be surprised if Trump has an accident. Some people are getting very nervous: Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton and Jon Corzine, to name just a few. It’s about the unholy dynamics between big government, big business, and big media. They all benefit by the billions of dollars from this partnership, and it’s in all of their interests to protect one another. It’s one for all and all for one. It’s a heck of a filthy relationship that makes everyone filthy rich, everyone except the American people. We get ripped off. We’re the patsies. But for once, the powerful socialist cabal and the corrupt crony capitalists are scared. The over-the-top reaction to Trump by politicians of both parties, the media, and the biggest corporations of America has been so swift and insanely angry that it suggests they are all threatened and frightened. Donald Trump can self-fund. No matter how much they say to the contrary, the media, business, and political elite understand that Trump is no joke. He could actually win and upset their nice cozy apple cart.

It’s no coincidence that everyone has gotten together to destroy The Donald. It’s because most of the other politicians are part of the a good old boys club. They talk big, but they won’t change a thing. They are all beholden to big-money donors. They are all owned by lobbyists, unions, lawyers, gigantic environmental organizations, and multinational corporations – like Big Pharmacy or Big Oil. Or they are owned lock, stock, and barrel by foreigners like George Soros owns Obama or foreign governments own Hillary and their Clinton Foundation donations.

These run-of-the-mill establishment politicians are all puppets owned by big money. But there’s one man who isn’t beholden to anyone. There’s one man who doesn’t need foreigners, or foreign governments, or George Soros, or the United Auto Workers, or the teacher’s union, or the Service Employees International Union, or the Bar Association to fund his campaign. Billionaire tycoon and maverick Donald Trump doesn’t need anyone’s help. That means he doesn’t care what the media says. He doesn’t care what the corporate elites think. That makes him very dangerous to the entrenched interests. That makes Trump a huge threat to those people. Trump can ruin everything for the bribed politicians and their spoiled slave masters.

Don’t you ever wonder why the GOP has never tried to impeach Obama? Don’t you wonder why John Boehner and Mitch McConnell talk a big game, but never actually try to stop Obama? Don’t you wonder why Congress holds the purse strings, yet has never tried to de-fund Obamacare or Obama’s clearly illegal executive action on amnesty for illegal aliens? Bizarre, right? It defies logic, right? First, I’d guess many key Republicans are being bribed.

Secondly, I believe many key Republicans are being blackmailed. Whether they are having affairs, or secretly gay, or stealing taxpayer money, the National Security Agency knows everything. Ask former House Speaker Dennis Hastert about that. The government even knew he was withdrawing large sums of his own money from his own bank account. The NSA, the SEC, the IRS, and all the other three-letter government agencies are watching every Republican political leader. They surveil everything.

Thirdly, many Republicans are petrified of being called racists, so they are scared to ever criticize Obama or call out his crimes, let alone demand his impeachment.

Fourth , why rock the boat? After defeat or retirement, if you’re a good old boy, you’ve got a $5 million-per-year lobbying job waiting. The big-money interests have the system gamed. Win or lose, they win. But Trump doesn’t play by any of these rules. Trump breaks up this nice, cozy relationship between big government, big media, and big business. All the rules are out the window if Trump wins the Presidency. The other politicians will protect Obama and his aides but not Trump.

Remember: Trump is the guy who publicly questioned Obama’s birth certificate. He questioned Obama’s college records and how a mediocre student got into an Ivy League university.

Now, he’s doing something no Republican has the chutzpah to do. He’s questioning our relationship with Mexico; he’s questioning why the border is wide open; he’s questioning why no wall has been built across the border; he’s questioning if allowing millions of illegal aliens into America is in our best interests; he’s questioning why so many illegal aliens commit violent crimes, yet are not deported; and he’s questioning why our trade deals with Mexico, Russia and China are so bad.

Trump has the audacity to ask out loud why American workers always get the short end of the stick. Good question! I’m certain Trump will question what happened to the almost billion dollars given in a rigged no-bid contract to college friends of Michelle Obama at foreign companies to build the defective Obamacare website. By the way, that tab is now up to $5 billion.

Trump will ask if Obamacare’s architects can be charged with fraud for selling it by lying.

Trump will investigate Obama’s widespread IRS conspiracy, not to mention Obama’s college records.

Trump will prosecute Clinton and Obama for fraud committed to cover up Benghazi before the election.

How about the fraud committed by employees of the Labor Department when they made up dramatic job numbers in the last jobs report before the 2012 election? Obama, the multinational corporations and the media need to stop Trump. They recognize this could get out of control. If left unchecked, telling the raw truth and asking questions everyone else is afraid to ask, Trump could wake a sleeping giant. Trump’s election would be a nightmare. Obama has committed many crimes. No one else but Trump would dare to prosecute. He will not hesitate. Once Trump gets in and gets a look at the cooked books and Obama’s records, the game is over. The jig is up. The goose is cooked. Holder could wind up in prison. Jarrett could wind up in prison. Obama bundler Corzine could wind up in prison for losing $1.5 billion of customer money. Clinton could wind up in jail for deleting 32,000 emails or for accepting bribes from foreign governments while Secretary of State, or for misplacing $6 billion as the head of the State Department, or for lying about Benghazi. The entire upper level management of the IRS could wind up in prison.

Obamacare will be de-funded and dismantled. Obama himself could wind up ruined, his legacy in tatters. Trump will investigate. Trump will prosecute. Trump will go after everyone involved. That’s why the “Dogs of Hell” have been unleashed on Donald Trump.

Yes, it’s become open season on Donald Trump. The left and the right are determined to attack his policies, harm his businesses, and, if possible, even keep him out of the coming debates. But they can’t silence him. And they sure can’t intimidate him. The more they try, the more the public will realize that he’s the one telling the truth.

 

William John “Bill” Bennett is an American conservative politician, and political theorist, who served as Secretary of Education from 1985 to 1988 under President Ronald Reagan

As this article said at the beginning, don’t be surprised if something happens to Donald Trump. I’m sure there are plans as I write this. But accomplishing a task is quite different from planning it. And I think Donald Trump can handle himself quite well. But I’ll say this, if Trump needs it, all he needs to do is ask, and I’d be happy to help him survive to another day. And I’m sure you dear reader feel the same way too. We’re not playing patty cake here. We are in an ideological war, and Trump is the battle flag of what’s left of American culture. We can’t let the bad guys capture it.

If you find you need some help Donald, just give me a call. I’d be happy to help.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

The Quantitative Effects of the Idiotic Millennials: A complete failure within society to do the right thing

Dear reader, if you go back to my arguments on the radio, in the newspapers, on television, and in public speeches about the state of education in 2010, then look around the colleges and public schools of our day now—you’ll understand what I was saying. It has come to fruition. And there is no going back. The tragedy will have to run its course. The situation was dire when I was talking about it then, but now that train has come and already left the station and the tracks that it’s on will take our country through one of its darkest periods. My children are members of this Millennial age that have had their minds nearly completely destroyed by progressive politics and public education. Only my children had the benefit of being home schooled for a time and had very traditional parents who helped them through the minefield of modern progressivism.  All the things I write about on this site they’ve heard from me before in person. But most children weren’t so lucky, and it shows.

A lot has been said of this Millennial generation. I’m not a fan of them. I didn’t even like my own generation, or my parents generation. My favorite generation was that of my grandparents days, so I won’t rationalize my own generation or those of the idiot sixty’s flower children as being better than the present one. They weren’t, in fact they set the stage for the mess that the Millennials find themselves in. The parents of these poor children allowed themselves to be pulled into the lure of dual income homes leaving kids to raise themselves. The mothers allowed themselves to be emasculated into more of a male role within the home all in search for “equal rights,” which was a mistake. And the net result has been catastrophic. The Millennials are a self-entitled group who had to raise themselves by parents who felt guilty about what they’ve done to those poor children. The parents wanted to believe the government—that if they spent $50,000 to $100,000 on a college education that they could purchase success for their children—but it didn’t work. It only liberalized those kids into believing the platform of the Democratic Party. In just a few short years those kids will be voting and in charge of our nation—and they aren’t intellectually prepared for it.

And I will be there to tell everyone so. As the world walks toward that edge of social, economic, and intellectual destruction—I will not be with it. The current toward that destruction may be swift but I will continue to stand against it and will be there to rub everyone’s face in the dung of their own creation—just as I have for years against those who are openly making serious mistakes in their own families driven by social pressure. For instance, I had an aunt once who tried to emasculate my wife—since she was a stay-at-home mom who poured everything into raising our children—which I fully supported by working two full-time jobs and all the overtime I could get at them to make the money our family needed. Our social rejection of progressive engineering within the family structure made other family members uncomfortable with their own choices so some of the more radicalized feminists sought to undermine my wife behind my back—many times—with pressure lunches encouraging her to go build a life for herself outside of our home. Of course that angered me, but I always let my wife make her own decisions and eventually she always snapped into the right frame of mind without my input. I certainly gave my opinion, but I always let her make up her own mind—even if it personally cost me a great deal. Because if we weren’t both on the same page, it would flow over into our children—so I’d allow those types of manipulations knowing the intent hoping my wife would come to the same conclusion after our discussions. She always did and on that particular occasion that braless feminist angry at my wife for her life decisions threatened at the end of the meeting—uncharacteristically violent—“we women must stick together.” We haven’t spoken to that person in over a decade—only on the most polite of occasions, a death or some other unfortunate gathering. I never forget things like that, and neither does my wife, not for the sake of holding a grudge, but because it is people like that who have made this ridiculous generation of the Millennials.

Millennials are lazy, entitled, essentially neurotic spoiled brats. They take too many drugs, have too low of a pain threshold, and are messes politically. They pick government dependence over self-reliance because it gives them more game time on their Xboxs and social networks. They don’t make the connection between productivity and healthy living because nobody taught them anything about any of that. They are lost, weak, and intellectually soft. Their music is depressing, their world outlook shaped for them by public education is too liberalized, and they are going to make terrible parents because they don’t want to work at it. They want to buy a good child like a fast food hamburger. They make no connection between hard work and success—even though many of them will work hard to become proficient at Call of Duty. They certainly don’t work to keep a car nice, or to maintain a home, or a job. If they have they slightest little fever, the call off work and log onto Facebook. They figure the world will go on whether or not they show up for work and they take that attitude with them to everything in life.

I told the kids who interviewed me during the Lakota debates between 2010 and 2012 what was coming their way and they’d look at me like I was an out-dated old man warning them about it being too cold outside. Now just three years later many of them are in their early or late twenties and they are starting to see the writing on the wall. Rent is too high, jobs pay too little, relationships are too hard, and children soak up all their “me” time. Life is hard and they don’t know how to work on their own cars, they stay on their parent’s insurance plans too long, or they just get on government help having the honor of providing for themselves stolen before they ever get started in life, and their nation will soon be $20 trillion in debt with little to no hope in paying that money off with a declining GDP nationally, because those Millennials won’t fight to start a new business—it’s just too hard and regulations make it impossible for their short attention spans to muscle through. Government has loaded up opposition and they lack the will to fight back. So bad times are coming for their poor generation which has been excessively fortunate up to this point—but that will change rapidly in the years to come.

Unfortunately for everyone else, I am right most of the time. If I care enough about something to declare it in some sort of statement, then I know enough to give a warning. If people listened, they could save themselves a lot of trouble. But most of them don’t. I saw a fabulous looking young Millennial woman the other day. She had all the features of a top Victoria Secret model, and she couldn’t have been much older than 21. However, she had a nose piercing, tongue piercing, and an eye brow piercing–gauges in her ears and she had full body tattoos that were visible through her lace stockings and mid-section which was revealed to everyone as she stood confidently smoking on a lunch break. She was working retail selling perfume for a nice establishment and she looked far from a skank. Most of the men with me gave her that “I’d like to plow that” type of middle-aged stare, but I felt sorry for the girl. In just a few years those tattoos would start to look terrible. By the time she’s forty, they will be embarrassments on saggy skin. The holes she’s put in her body will never really heal, but will leave behind scar tissue. When she’s fifty she’ll look like she was a burn victim in a fire—her skin will stay stretched out in proportion for the rest of her life. And she’ll lose all her moral authority for her eventual children because her past will be on full display for them to see during those important impressionable first years.
The saddest thing of all is that she’s not alone—she’s actually quite common. She was prettier than most, but the results all lead to the same place. If her generation is detrimentally terrible, then her kids will be worse—because she will have proven herself to be a terrible role model and we now know that public schools and colleges are unable to complete the job of raising proper children. They ruin them. So her children will have no hope whatsoever of a happy and good life. I’m as sure of it as she was standing there. All of life is a math problem. You don’t put together a negative and a negative and get a positive. In fact, a positive and a negative lead to a negative. Only a string of positives can provide a net result toward desirable outcomes. If three negatives are introduced to a child’s life, then six positives are needed to overcome the quantitative effects toward a net gain. It’s not hard to figure these things out.

Now, as is evident in the videos above, it has started—and it will be a mess. The evidence is literally everywhere and its all coming unraveled much faster than anybody was prepared for. There will come a day when the kids of the kids of these Millennials will want to go back in time and fix everything. For them, I will write it all down so that they can have a playbook on how to get out of the quandary they inherited. I don’t blame the Millennials for being complete idiots. They were raised by my generation who listened to the generation before as those old hippies failed to maintain a proper national philosophy in favor of the family unit. But that is all water flowing under the bridge now. There is no stopping it, the damage is done. But once those waters recede, there will be a future who will want to rebuild, and for them I will proudly declare that I always stood on the right side of history, and will gladly show them how to live correctly toward the proper objectives that are best for themselves, and their society. Inwardly however, I will say proudly—“I told you so.”

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

President Trump: Not sweating the small stuff

Based on the Saturday Night Live skit, not the Fox Business Debate that took place on November 10, 2015, Donald Trump should be president. Of course I liked a little of what most of the candidates talked about during the debate—which was much, much better than the CNBC debate. (I’m still surprised that there is such a channel as CNBC.) But the real test of a modern president was not shown during the debates, it was on Saturday Night Live which I think was far bigger of an impact on the future of politics than anybody really has put forth in an analysis. If Bill Clinton had his saxophone moment to show he was a unique politician that launched him to victory in 1992, Donald Trump had his just a few days before the big Fox Business debate on SNL. The skit where America was a few years into the Trump presidency was bold, and powerful. Then for Trump to declare that all that was a mild forecast underplayed meant that America has to give the billionaire a chance at the big chair—if for anything else but to call his bluff. Trump is thinking big—really big, and that is exactly what we all need right now after 28 years of really small-mindedness coming from the Executive Branch.

As much as I like to deal straight with things to make objectives happen, most of the time I have to use every tool in an intellectual tool box to accomplish the intended task—whatever it is. Sometimes you have to be forceful, sometimes very diplomatic. Most of the time nobody understands what you are doing because they all have their own time frame of accomplishment built around their perspective—which is often limited. I find I have to do a lot of maneuvering around people to get anything done, and I take into account the weaknesses of the people I’m dealing with to accomplish it. I often view these occurrences like I would talk to someone who does not speak English as a primary language. I talk to them nice and slow almost like a child not to be demeaning, but because they can’t possibly understand what I’m thinking or my passion to accomplish the task. So you find that you have to talk to everyone in their language on their terms so that they can understand what it is you want to accomplish. Other groups of people watch this behavior and assume that you are catering to the wishes of others over what they want to do and conflicts often ensue. However, in the end, everyone eventually sees what I saw in the beginning, and everyone ends up living happily ever after. But not without a lot of back stabbing, squabbling, and social manipulation—and this is true within family structures as well as multi-million dollar business transactions. I never worry about the small stuff because it’s the big stuff that matters and by the time we get there, the small stuff naturally aligns with the overall strategy anyway. So getting stuck on the details will only stop the objective.

We have been taught in our education systems that the “devil is in the details,” and often he is. Small things can kill big things if allowed to manifest in such a way that they sicken the intention with stagnation. But often, that devil can be killed with sheer will and speed. Most of the time an intense approach to a problem will overcome those details quickly unifying everyone under a common cause—even though their viewpoints are radically different—it’s a bit of a trick that time and experience can teach. It’s not a good idea to get stuck on the details when the overall objective is the target. I think of the process comparable to target shooting. You don’t think about the detail of the bullet, or the workings of the gun. You just aim and shoot, and the best way is to do it quickly with muscle memory the way I have learned in bullwhip work—because most of the time there is no luxury of aiming and shooting to hit a target. The marketplace of life demands speed and accuracy. Not just one or the other. Life requires both to be successful.

Out of all the candidates on that stage at the Fox Business debate, only Trump understands the process of thinking big and getting people of many different backgrounds and political approaches to buy into his overall strategic objective. Here’s why, Trump was able to walk onto a very liberal show like Saturday Night Live and get a bunch of very liberal writers to put together a skit like the one shown above, which contextually showed a potential Trump presidency which answered all the questions that people have been asking about him. Trump as a big thinker doesn’t sweat the small stuff, so he can’t answer those questions in a way that people who worry about every little thing will be satisfied with. But in the context of a popular progressive show on NBC which is very mainstream, Trump was able to bend everyone to his will. That’s the kind of president he will be, and he essentially made a promise that put the burden on America to take him up on the challenge. It was an irresistible proposal.

No other person on the debate stage has that kind of power, or confidence. There really isn’t any other competition on the Republican side. You can pick the nice guy in Ben Carson, or the overachiever in Donald Trump. Everyone else is just more of those 28 years of lackluster executive office presence, and the United States likely won’t survive. It won’t hold four more years let alone another decade. The debt clock is ticking up to nearly $20 trillion and there is no way to recover from that. America has to give Donald Trump a chance or else. There is no more time for hopes, dreams and details. The next president will have to be a person of epic personality to pull all the radical elements together to achieve a strategic objective only they can see. Trump revealed what was in his head on Saturday Night Live and he connived the writers and producers to help him sell that vision.

I can only imagine how Trump would behave if he were in the White House and were wheeling and dealing with congressman, senators, foreign dignitaries, and business leaders every hour on the hour. I honestly think he’d be in heaven and the net result of his joy might just carry over into the results joked about in the Saturday Night Live skit. It’s a dare our country must take. All the issues of theory are now out the window. The Democrats only have socialists to offer and the typical conservatives only have more of the same that has allowed under their watch $19 trillion in debt and loss after loss on the global stage. At some point a leader within the Republican ranks has to be willing to call that behavior stupid and Trump is the only one really poised to do that without losing his ability to negotiate.   If Trump can unite the entertainment community which is crazy leftist in their approach to all social problems, then he can do it with the world at large. I see no downside to a Trump as president. I only see positives.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Opinions of a Pothead: What they see in the mirror

In the 24 hours before the Election of 2015 this site had several thousand hits just on political issues ranging from Lakota school board candidates, Fairfield tax issues, and of course Issue 3—the pot legalization in Ohio. It was a little sad because many of those articles have been out there in cyberspace for weeks, but people were too consumed with other thoughts to pay attention—until right before the election. It was like a bunch of stupid college kids partying all week-long then the night before a big test cramming for it like a bunch of idiots taking caffeine pills to stay awake. The moment the test was over they were right back to their original stupidity getting drunk in the local bar and partying it up like it was the end of the world. Of course of those there were late comers who noticed I had very strong opinions against pot legalization in Ohio and left me comments. Some of them sounded like the idiot diatribes of a dog that had just consumed its own feces—incoherent and obviously had their brains destroyed by sustained marijuana use over time. But some were like that of the guy below. I don’t agree with this guy on much of anything, but at least he strung together a few sentences that could generate discussion.   Here is what he said:

JLeno thetonightshow.comx mrmeeseeks420@hotmail.com 83.32.44.167

JLeno thetonightshow.com mrmeeseeks420@hotmail.com 83.32.44.167

Submitted on 2015/11/02 at 10:25 pm

I think it’s great that you have your own opinion and are expressing it and all, but why don’t you present any solid info to back up your hatred? I got the impression that the whole article was just you stating your dislike of pot and the people who smoke it without providing any real evidence. You say that people aren’t really living their lives because they smoke a mind altering substance but have you ever considered that weed actually helps people to approach subjects from a different angle and offer a different take on things. Before I smoked weed, I lacked empathy and was very closed-minded. Since then, I’ve gained a new perspective that has allowed me to admit that I am wrong and take other people’s feelings into account, apparently unlike you who seems to just go around hating on a group of people who never hurt anybody. I don’t know what has to happen in a guy’s life to make him so resentful towards such a small thing that has proven time and time again to be less harmful (and more beneficial) than many legal drugs (such as caffeine and alcohol). I know you’ll probably disregard this because I’m a “filthy pothead” but I really don’t think your hatred of people who decide to ingest a natural substance is fair.

People advocating pot use always attack the amount of evidence presented in making an argument against it. I did present plenty of arguments in my article against Issue 3, but explaining it to a stoner is like trying to tell a person suffering from Alzheimer’s where their car keys is. You can show it to them on the kitchen table and they’ll act like they heard what you said, but two hours later they won’t remember anything you said, because their short-term memory centers in their brain has been destroyed and they can’t remember anything that happened five minutes ago. They can remember things that happened decades ago, but not things that happened that day because long-term memories are stored in a different part of the brain. Short term memory is one of the first things to go and pot heads have that in common with Alzheimer’s patients. I make that statement based on my own comparison, not some doctor who is behind Issue 3 and threw their name behind a study to the contrary so that they can get into the business of prescribing it to their patients.   I see nothing good about marijuana use in any fashion and I’m against it for every reason—pain relief, social bonding, even as a material for making rope.

The next things these stoner types attack is the uptightness of the typical “conservative.” Their assertion is that if only we’d get stoned with them that we might “mellow out” and see the world from a different perspective. No, marijuana is a mind altering substance. If it helps users see the world differently it’s because it changes the way a human brain thinks rationally about something. Losing rationality is not a beneficial attribute to the human condition or the maintenance of a republic. Lacking empathy is not a bad thing when people of value are surrounded by people who lack values. Being empathetic toward other human beings is not an admirable trait if the person receiving the empathy is a scum bag. Empathy is not a value if the sum of the scum exceeds what a viable society can withstand without collapsing. Ten scum bags and one person of value is not a good ratio and pot makes too many scum bags and not enough people of value tipping the scales of value toward the scum bag leading to a declining civilization. Being “mellowed out” while all this is going on makes you a pussy, not a valued citizen.

Pot heads often refer to people like me as being “closed-minded.” I consider that a compliment. Having an open mind is not necessarily a good thing when there are people within collective organizations that want to impose on you their values and expect you to assimilate to their shared beliefs—which may or may not be good. My mind is impervious to hypnotism, scary dreams—I don’t have them, or suggestions under coercion—such as threats of violence, torture, social manipulation or other mechanisms of tyranny against the individual. To those who want to penetrate that mind to inject their values, they will prescribe that my mind is closed—which it is–for the same reason that I lock the doors to my house or car—because I don’t want easy access to the contents within from those without. I don’t want just anybody inside my property and I feel even stronger about the contents of my mind—so it’s not open to others for manipulation. I like my mind and I protect it from those who want to damage it. For that reason I don’t get drunk and I don’t do drugs. And I don’t let doctors give me a lot of mindless prescriptions. Most of the time I completely ignore a doctor’s advice if they are recommending a prescription—because I don’t want a foreign substance influencing my thoughts. Would I be more fun to “party” with if I did drugs—sure—but that is not a valuable trait. So I’ll remain closed minded for the same reason that I lock the doors to my car—because I don’t want hippie scum bags and rotten bastards molesting my property. My mind is my property and I will continue to protect it.

What that commenter is saying about himself, which speaks true of everyone who falls for the pot lure—which is most people reading this article is that he’s a conquered person. Out of every 10,000 people there is typically only one person who feels about it the way I do. Even religious fanatics typically have a background with the drug. They only speak against drugs as born again Christians—but at some point in their past they tried pot, likely as a high school kid, probably in college, or in other social gatherings. They disgust me too. For me there is no wiggle room on the issue. People who have taken the drug have allowed themselves to be conquered by its lure and in most cases that is irredeemable. I know a lot of people who have used pot, and I do grow to like them occasionally. But it always tells me that they were at some point in time weak people and that is something I will never respect. They can say that my mind is closed—that I’m a conservative hater. But what they are really mad at is the reflection in the mirror. They surrendered their mind to a conscious altering substance, and they can never again claim to have the sanctity of an original thought. And that makes them feel guilty even when they are surrounded by several million other idiots who have traveled down the same path.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Issue 3 Fails in Ohio: Now, reload for the next round–because they will try again and again like stoned idiots

Looks like Ohio has defended itself from the pot smoking scum bags for at least another year.  But get ready, the joint craving lunatics of the lazy youth will be back for another round of tradition destroying endeavor by progressive activists.  Interesting reactions by the general public, seen below as the results came in.

 

State Issue 3

Issue 3 permits commercial production and sale of marijuana by what amounts to a monopoly in 10 locations around the state, It allows individuals to grow limited amounts for personal use. (read more)

YES 478,815
NO 908,431

60

60 comments
Post comment as…

 

Mousey

Mousey2 minutes ago

We all know the corruption never ends in Ohio – it’s where it starts. Talk about monopolies..get a grip folks

e2450just now

It’s a shame the amendment wasn’t structured differently. Clearly, at a minimum, medical use should be permitted. Ohio had a chance to be ahead of the curve for once. There goes that.

Chalmette02

Chalmette023 minutes ago

Soooooooo not to point out the obvious but didn’t you guys just outlaw monopolies? Anyone know of any electric companies with no competition in your area?

Did Republicans really just think that was a good idea just to stop weed?

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns

Aggrieved_by_CleClownsjust now

@Chalmette02  I hear what you’re saying, and respect it. I really didn’t want to have to vote Yes on Issue 2. It was promulgated by the GOP in the Ohio legislature, which I don’t trust … however, it was the ONLY way I could see ensuring that Ian James and his Irresponsible “We Feel the Need for Greed with Weed” crowd from bringing back Issue 3 over and over again — until it passed. Sometimes, you have to choose the lesser of two evils — HEY!!!! I do that in every PRESIDENTIAL election! Who knew?!

ClevelandTchotchke

ClevelandTchotchke5 minutes ago

So far, so good!  Ohioans are proving that they are smarter than Ian James, John Pardee, their carpetbagging buddies, and their cronies!  Ohio may legalize, but it will NOT be with monopolization for fat cats to make money off Ohioans, and ship it back to their ivory towers!

THE CLOCK STRUCK TWELVE!   THE MONOPOLY IS LOSING!

What a great day it is to be an Ohioan!  ISSUE 3?  GTFOH!

david

david7 minutes ago

Ohio is the worst f****** place to live I f****** hate this place nothing but f****** idiots

BlingFingers

BlingFingers6 minutes ago

@david

hahahahah

LEAVE NOW Dopey

Chalmette02

Chalmette028 minutes ago

Expect to see a few people leave the state who have kids who need medical marijuana. Ohio is a strange place.

ultra51

ultra517 minutes ago

@Chalmette02 If these kids “really” needed it, you’d figure they’d already be gone.  If they “really” needed it.

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns5 minutes ago

@Chalmette02  I do feel for those who want to use medical marijuana to relieve severe pain including terminal illness … but you have to understand, IrresponsibleOhio’s greed grab of a monopolistic pot plan — leaving my entire Southeast Ohio region out of the pot “mix” when we po’ folk need the jobs down here! — alienated A LOT of voters. You have no one but IrresponsibleOhio to blame. Its celebrity greedy weed grab crowd could not be trusted and it showed in the polls – BIGTIME.

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns9 minutes ago

Today is like going to McDonald’s  — “I’m LOvin’ iT!” on these Issue 1, 2, 3 results!!!! IrresponsibleOhio lost on BOTH Issue 2 and 3 — the voters HAVE SPOKEN, so take your taxpayer-funded lawsuit idea, Ian, and go live in ANOTHER state where Monopolies can”take root.” And take weird hermaphrodie Buddie with you!

david

david10 minutes ago

Ohio is a terrible state

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns8 minutes ago

@david  Then move to Chokelahoma, or wherever you and your favorite cartel can go along to get along! Pal

Saganhawking

Saganhawking7 minutes ago

I’m having trouble understanding what you just posted. It was funny though. Am I supposed to agree or disagree with what you just said?

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns

Aggrieved_by_CleClowns3 minutes ago

@Saganhawking  Agree if you believe in free markets and the right to a responsible free market weed plan — let the best cultivator win — let it be about who GROWS THE BEST WEED — We down here beside Meigs Gold will win — and YOU should have the right to buy it without a cartel interfering!

david

david14 minutes ago

Well i can say Ohio is a terrible place to live

Saganhawking

Saganhawking10 minutes ago

Yuep, horrible place to live. I hear Colorado, Washington and California calling your name. It’s a free country, go for it. The doors are open to you. Now write legislation concerning weed here in Ohio we can all agree to and maybe more would vote for it…

BlingFingers

BlingFingers19 minutes ago

well the Cleveland.com poll sure was off this year wasng it.

marijuana got its leaf kicked.

way to go people, send the pot smokers back to Colorado so they can drive while impaired elsewhere. we don’t need pot smokers here

Syphon

Syphon16 minutes ago

You don’t live in this world apparently. You must have no idea how many people that are driving around are high. Go into a convenience store and count the amount of people that walk in there buying blunt wraps. I don’t smoke. I just know the real world.

avex11

avex1110 minutes ago

@BlingFingers There will be plenty of pot smokers here as there always has been. I guess most people here still favor a nanny state.

http://www.cleveland.com/election-results/index.ssf/2015/11/statewide_results_for_ohio_iss.html

 

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

 

Robert Tracinski, Rich Hoffman and Matt Clark on WAAM: Why ‘Star Wars’ is better than ‘Star Trek’

Matt Clark had me on his show to actually co-host with him as we spoke to Robert Tracinski who writes for The Federalist. He had written an interesting article about how it was unlikely that J.J. Abrams could screw up the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, so long as he stuck with the formula. There were some condescending aspects to Tracisnski’s article which I was willing to overlook, because he was right about a lot of things. But more than anything Tracisnski had been dismissive of the original trilogy as not being very good—which I thought was odd. So I was eager to talk to him. It only took a few moments into the interview however to learn the root of his issues—he was a Star Trek fan and had only come to Star Wars through his children. His position was that Star Trek was philosophically superior to Star Wars and that these new movies were kid stuff that he was enjoying with his children. Listen to that interview here:

I don’t care much for Star Trek, to me it is the United Nations in space. While Robert Tracinski is not a liberal and is a pretty committed Objectivist, which is Ayn Rand’s philosophy—it was clear to me quickly why Robert didn’t like Star Wars much in his article. I disagree with him on a number of topics regarding the formula of Star Wars, or its appeal. I think the Star Wars films are deeply philosophical; especially The Empire Strikes Back—much more so than Star Trek. I mean, people are not lining up across the world to see the latest Star Trek movie, and Star Wars isn’t as popular as it is because it’s just adults living out their childhoods once again through a movie. It’s more complicated than that. As we were talking to Tracinski, because of his background with Ayn Rand I kept wondering if I had met him someplace before, so I wanted to cut him some slack. Everyone comes to things in their own time and if he came to Star Wars late in life through his kids—so be it. One aspect that Tracinski got right in his article was the perception that Han Solo is the key to the franchise—so I stuck to that topic in our conversation.

Matt and I spent the first segment of his Saturday WAAM show talking about Disney and their progressive activism with a gentle warning about messing with the formula of Star Wars and the impact that might have on their massive investment. Matt and I love Disney—the Uncle Walt version. I love that Disney is a family friendly entertainment group—so I am willing to overlook a little of their liberal activism. Something that Robert Tracinski did bring up on his show that was true.  George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were the best conservative filmmakers coming out of the 80s. I personally think they were both seduced by Bill Clinton in the 90s and have lost their minds since. The reason their early films were so successful was because they all had conservative leanings to them. Once both directors had achieved their monstrous success and essentially stepped away from the Objectivist roots of their film careers, their movies started making a lot less money. Without question George Lucas was at least attracted to Ayn Rand in his early days—when she was at the height of her influence—and Han Solo was a character that represented that struggle within George. As he become more liberal with age and success—perhaps feeling a little guilty that all his liberal employees were constantly berating him for his capitalist tendencies, he softened up on his stance for individualism and began to accept collectivism to a much higher degree, which was clearly represented in the prequel  films—which were noticeably absent of the Han Solo type of character.

Where I disagree with Tracinski about the prequel films is that I don’t think George Lucas ever intended those films to be successes. They were dark movies about the failure of a Republic—and have great political merit to them. They are very philosophical from the position of how poorly constructed philosophies can destroy a body of government. Even though Lucas had been moving to the left—politically, his message about the failure of groups to detect evil, and how institutional failure is indicative of all government cycles is powerful stuff that set the stage for some pretty deep storytelling. As much as people dismiss the prequel films as silly, they are important in the larger scope of the intended message. The movies did lack heroics on the scale of a Han Solo, but that was on purpose. A lot of characters including Yoda and Obi-wan Kenobi made mistakes that they spent the rest of their lives correcting. So the films were never supposed to be heroic repeats of the original trilogy. For that story Han Solo was the savior, he kept Luke alive, married his sister Leia and that set up the events of these new films. Solo is an Ayn Rand character and Disney even with all their activism against conservative causes—can’t ignore that the magic of Star Wars isn’t Luke Skywalker, or anything about the Force—it’s about Han Solo’s position against hooky religions and ancient weapons not being as competent as a good blaster at your side.

Just a few days before Matt and I had our radio show together Harrison Ford was on with Jimmy Kimmel dressed up for Halloween as a hot dog. It was a funny segment and of course Ford was asked about the new Star Wars film. I thought his comments were interesting to say the least. He stated that nobody would be disappointed—at all. That was a remarkable statement considering what’s at stake. He knows the potential cost of over-anticipated hype—so his comments had me very curious in relation to Disney’s strategy going forward. Han Solo is going to be playing a larger role in Star Wars than he has in the past largely because the character tests well demographically. His children will without question be the subject of the new stories but Disney will find every opportunity to insert a younger Han Solo into the movies at every juncture. To be successful at that, Disney will have no choice but to adopt the obvious aspects of Han Solo’s Objectivism view points—his natural conservatism and love of capitalist endeavors if they want Star Wars to continue being successful.

After Matt’s show I spent time at my children’s house going trick or treating with my grandkids—and kids. Late into the night my oldest daughter and I spent time talking about Han Solo and how it seems obvious now that Disney will find a way to put him in the stand alone films as much as possible just to use him as a springboard to success. Like Robert Tracinski and I spoke about on Matt’s show, without Han Solo, I think the Star Wars saga crashes and burns. If they try to turn him into a sacrificial collectivist Disney will lose a lot of money because people will reject the premise. The ticket buying public will only accept the Objectivist Han Solo—and nothing less—the hero who acts in his own self-interest. Even though the moment at the end of A New Hope was intended to show that Solo was able to act for others, the need to save Luke at the last moment was out of Solo’s self-interest because he was starting to like the kid. Like I said, Star Wars is a lot more philosophical than people give it credit for, and I’d think that as much as Tracinski likes Ayn Rand, that he’d prefer Star Wars over the United Nations in space—Star Trek and all that “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” crap. Screw Spock and his pointy ears—he’s a damn collectivist. Solo is a rugged, gun slinging individualist who acts out of his own self-interest. That’s why Star Wars is better than Star Trek.

We’ll see what happens, time will tell. It was a good conversation that was worth listening to, especially given what Star Wars will mean when it opens in a few weeks. There will be no escape; the opening of The Force Awakens will impact just about everyone no matter where they live. It will be impossible to not notice something about it as the merchandising around Christmas will be everywhere. Just watch the Duracell commercial shown above. Star Wars will literally be everywhere in just a few weeks of this writing. There will be nothing like it ever—history is being made both commercially and philosophically. The question will be whether or not The Force Awakens will be as anticipated on the 19th of December as it was on the 18th after people start seeing the movie. To be as successful as Disney needs it to be people will need to see the film several times. And to have that kind of power over the mind of fans—Han Solo will have to be a part of it with an Objectivist approach—otherwise the whole thing falls apart. It’s not the lightsaber battles and space antics that make Star Wars so great—it’s the Objectivist leanings of its basic premise:

Han Solo—“marching into the detention area is not what I had in mind.”

Luke Skywalker—“but she’s rich.”

Han Solo—“How rich?”

Luke Skywalker—“More wealth than you can imagine.”

Han Solo—“I don’t know, I can imagine quite a bit.”

Luke Skywalker—“you’ll get it.”

Han Solo—“I better!”

Luke Skywalker—“You will!”

Han Solo—“Alright kid, what’s your plan?”

That’s Star Wars—it’s an Objectivist love fest designed before George Lucas was overly liberalized. It’s also why twice during the broadcast with Matt that I uttered to his millions and millions of listeners—“Han shot first!” When Lucas changed Star Wars in 1997 to have the bounty hunter Greedo shoot at Han first in the Mos Eisley cantina fans were angry. It was a liberalized mistake for Lucas to cave under the pressure from the liberal film community to make Han Solo not appear as such a blood thirsty killer. But Solo acting out of self-interest shot first because that is the nature of his character—he’s an Ayn Rand survivalist and the heart of what makes Star Wars great.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Liberty Township’s Rodizio Grill: The perfect place for a business meeting–be sure to see Captain Hook

imageCaptain Hook isn’t just a pirate from the famous Peter Pan stories; he’s also the head chef at the Rodizio Grill at the new Liberty Center. On a VIP night he came to my table with his curled up mustache and eager attentiveness to inquire about the assessment of his food by my wife and me. It was a packed house and the girders of political and economic support behind West Chester and Liberty Township were there as the restaurant owners smartly wanted the buy-in of the community’s leaders before opening to the public. After two soft openings just ahead of their grand opening—a VIP dinning experience where everyone in the new restaurant was on a full court press to impress put their best foot forward and they were eager for some input.   So what did I tell Captain Hook, I’ll save that for the end? First you’ll want to know what Rodizio is, why it’s unique, and why having it cuddled away inside a very intimate part of Liberty Center is excessively important to the continued economic development of the region.image

Rodízio (pronounced [ʁoˈdʒiziu] in Brazil) is an all-you-can-eat style of restaurant service in Brazilian restaurants. In most areas of the world outside of Brazil, a rodízio restaurant refers to a Brazilian style steakhouse restaurant. Customers pay a fixed price (preço fixo) and the waiters bring samples of food to each customer at several times throughout the meal, until the customers signal that they have had enough. In churrascarias or the traditional Brazilian-style steakhouse restaurants, servers come to the table with knives and a skewer, on which are speared various kinds of quality cuts of meat, most commonly local cuts of beef, pork, chicken and sometimes exotic meats. While not as popular, there are other rodízio style restaurants in Brazil, such as ones serving pasta or pizza, where various pizzas and pastas are brought on trays. Rodízio style sushi restaurants are also common in Brazil.

Most rodízio courses are served right off the cooking spit, and are sliced or plated right at the table. Sometimes they are accompanied with fried potatoes, fried bananas, collard greens, black beans, and rice (served buffet style).

In many restaurants, the diner is provided with a colored card, red on one side and green on the other. Accordingly, the servers will only bring more meat if the card is flipped to the green side.

Rodizio Grill, The Brazilian Steakhouse, offers over a dozen rotisserie grilled meats, perfectly seasoned and carved tableside by Rodizio Gauchos. The grilling process is traditional to the Southern part of Brazil, specifically in Sao Paulo. The Rodizio Gaucho, in dress and our carving method, is what you would find if you were dining in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

As a result of the slow roasting and seasoning process, the rotisserie grilled meats melt in your mouth, satisfying even the most discriminating taste buds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod%C3%ADzio

http://www.rodiziogrill.com/menu/

It was a pouring rain at the end of Gibson which migrates into a roundabout in front of Dillards, Pies and Pints and the entrance to the indoor portion of the Mall called The Foundry. We didn’t care if we were getting wet in a late October rain as leaves fell off the trees and littered the pavement. Liberty Center is an adult playground and my wife and I had been playing hard. She had just found a nice outfit at American Eagle and was very happy about it, so we entered the Rodizio Grill to a welcome best foot forward effort that was admirable. Of course the hostesses were friendly and all the managers were there to greet us. They were working hard to make a great first impression and they were successful. But as they took us to our seat my assessment was that the true test of the place would come many months later after the hype had died down—if they still exhibited the same energy. A VIP night is one thing—having the same passion every other day is quite something else. So I was skeptical as we took our seat and said hello to half a dozen other people also invited to the event that we knew.

For around $33 per person you get the all you can eat deal which is what Rodizio is all about. Our waitress explained it to us so we were excited to begin at the gigantic salad bar located toward the back of the room in the middle of the action, just ahead of the kitchen. At the window behind the bar were a small army of Gauchos getting fresh meat off the grill to hit the dinning room. My wife and I filled our plate and headed back to our table impressed with the massive selection of options that had so far been presented.

At Rodizio they put a block that looks like an hourglass, green on one side and red on the other at the end of your table. When you are ready for the Gauchos you flip it over so that the green side is up. When you want them to stop coming to your table you flip it to red. When you are done for the evening, you put it down on the table on its side. Very simple, yet there is a feeling of excitement in flipping it over to green because it’s like turning on a faucet. You really don’t know what’s going to happen, what meat the Gauchos will present first or who will bring it. We had five Gauchos assigned to our table, so there was a bit of randomness about the dinning experience that was certainly exciting. With a bit of a laugh we turned the block over and the Gauchos launched as if poised like snakes from the corners of the room and rushed to our side.

The Gauchos cut off various cuts of steak, chicken, pork, fish and even glazed pineapple which was amazingly delicious—much more so than I would have expected. It was all very exotic and obviously prepared with a lot of meticulous care. There were even cuts of glazed ham prepared in the same way as the pineapple—it was a carnivores dream. That was the first thought I had about the place, eating all that meat of different types invoked in me my inner T-Rex which is a nick-name that a lot of people who don’t like me often use to describe my temper. Sometimes during business you want to invoke that T-Rex and some red meat is good for bringing that kind of attitude to a deal you’re working on. That was the first thought I had about having power lunches at Rodizio, is that it puts you in that carnivore mood—which is good when that kind of mindset is needed. The endless supply of the meat is another aspect of that carnivorous rapture. If I had that much steak at a place like Jags in West Chester it would have cost $500 dollars. If you like to eat steak, and good steak at that, it’s hard to go wrong at Rodizio. When you are trying to close a deal or accomplish some difficult business endeavor, I can easily see a need to have lunch at Rodizio either with the people you are working with, or by yourself just to put your mind in the right condition. A little trick I use when I’m under pressure is I purposely eat red meat on the rare side, and Rodizio had several skewers of meat cooked just that way. It was delicious and invoked in me that T-Rex spirit that is often very helpful under pressure.

That’s when I had the next thought about Rodizio–it was essentially the perfect place to have a power meeting with clients. Often when dining with potential business partners, adversaries in business, or associates there are awkward pauses that are persistent with people who have little in common with each other but the project they are working on. For instance, I hate those meetings because I hate small talk. I love to go on and on about giant heady subjects with great enthusiasm, but not everyone is like that so I often have to turn off the afterburners to the point where I get really bored with the people I’m eating with. Not good when you’re trying to do some team building. Usually at these types of meetings you conduct small talk before you order drinks, usually it’s about sports. Then you order some appetizers and continue talking about sports. Then you order the entrees and are about done talking about sports because people usually have different teams that they like and you’ve exhausted all the topics that are safe without making them mad by that point. At Rodizio they have a natural solution to that problem. When you turn the block to green, the Gauchos flood your table side forcing the interaction of all your clients. Customers have to help pull the meat away as the Gauchos cut it, not in an awkward way, but one that is engaging and those awkward moments of silence with clients is filled with activity—constantly. If you want to talk about a serious subject to close a deal or make a point, turn the block to red, throw your issue on the table, then turn it to green again to get the action moving again while they simmer on your proposal. Rodizio has the ability to be a very powerful alley in the world of business, and I hope that area sales reps use it fully. Rodizio is your friend, trust me!

I watched Captain Hook, which was the actual nametag he was wearing, carefully tend to all the cooks in the kitchen and inspect the Gauchos as they worked the room. He paced around the salad bar making sure that everything was just perfect, and it was. So when he asked me what I thought about his food I told him that if he put the kind of love and care into the food that he had on this VIP night, he’d have a hit that this area would spectacularly support. Getting food of that quality in those quantities coupled with the ambitious service is an experience people will pay a lot of money for. Hook clearly had by natural inclination an understanding of the Metaphysics of Quality making me very excited about the dining experience at Rodizio not just for the VIP meal, but the future of Liberty Township. Clearly the appeal is a primal one cultivated into refinement. What’s not to like about endless supplies of meat cooked over an open fire? It’s good for romance, its good for business, its good for a mind in need of a primal charge. And Captain Hook was there to make sure everything stayed on the upside of quality. A good chef is the key to a restaurant, and the Rodizio at Liberty Center had one, and his name was Captain Hook. When you go, make sure to tell him what you think, because he cares.

The cost of the meal for two was around $100, which wasn’t bad for a quality experience. It’s about $66 for the meal, another $30 for drinks. Then there is the tip and the deserts which were so good I would think seriously about going there just for a drink at the bar and some desert even with Graters right around the corner. Their deserts were on the upside of good in comparisons to other deserts around the city of Cincinnati.   I’d put them on par with the best so they are worth the expense if you can muster the room in your stomach—which at the point where you put the block on its side to call it quits, there won’t be much room for more food. If you take your time to eat, likely you might manage some desert which is advisable. But don’t try to cram a trip to the Rodizio before a movie. Make sure to make the dinner at Rodizio the feature attraction of your day, because that’s what it deserves. Go after the movie. It takes time to appreciate the food, and to give your body time to enjoy it all. I happen to know that the tickets at the new theater are very reasonably priced for the luxury setting, so a night at the movies and dinner at the Rodizio will stay under a few hundred dollars—which is perfectly reasonable for a destination environment that might only be experienced on an out-of-town vacation. Of course the Cobb Theater at the other end of Liberty Center has their own fine dining options, which is why their ticket prices are so reasonable. But be sure to plan a trip to Rodizio often, not just a few times a year. I saw nothing but positives—a lot of ambition, a great product, a psychologically primal supplement and a bargain even at an above tier restaurant experience—which is what is expected at Liberty Center. I was invited to the VIP event to say nice things about the place, but it’s not hard to find enthusiasm for it. All I had to do is look at Captain Hook and witness how the rest of the staff fed off him—and it was obvious that Liberty Township had yet another fine treasure—not from a pirate, but a hell of a good chef. I will go back many times, but the most effective visit will be those business oriented dinners—because Rodizio has a setup that will make some of the most unpleasant meetings team building exercises constructed around the primal need for meat and the satisfaction of it cooked over an open fire while surrounded by luxury.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

How the DOJ and Lois Lerner Demanded the need for more Guns: Government pleads stupidity as a defense

Let’s see if we can get this straight, the Department of Justice has used a legal criterion of incompetence to justify not prosecuting Lois Lerner as she abused her power at the IRS for political reasons. DOJ officials reported that “substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints. But poor management is not a crime,” thus establishing forever by attorneys everywhere that government can act against private citizens so long as they can prove they were too incompetent to manage a situation. So in essence, the DOJ has given all government employees a future way out of any abuse of power situation—all anyone has to do is plead stupidity to be relieved of whatever crime they may have committed.

Well, isn’t that interesting. That means hypothetically that if the President of the United States is given intelligence data suggesting that someone like me is a threat to national security and they send a squad of people to apprehend me—hypothetically speaking of course—but they go to the wrong house and bump into one of my neighbors who then opens fire and a firefight ensues similar to something like what happened at Waco, Ruby Ridge and other places—and a lot of people are killed–that those guilty of the whole thing would be let off the hook at the DOJ because bad management is not illegal.

Or suppose that a Secretary of State sets up a private server that she runs all her top-secret email through so she can scrub the information later for deniability—but then gets caught—that all she has to do is plead stupidity and all will be forgiven. They will even get the opportunity to run for president—wait, that’s actually happening right now with Hillary Clinton. That is not a hypothetical, but you get the point.

The DOJ has just provided the primary reason that government is too large and needs to be scaled back. They have just established why Washington D.C. should not be one of the highest per capita employment regions in the country—because they are too incompetent as a collective group to occupy so much wealth. Through their labor unions there are no expectations of performance and now with the DOJ decision over the Lois Lerner case regarding the IRS, there is no legal expectation regarding performance either making the federal government fully motivated to hire the dumbest people they can get their hands on so there is always an escape if something goes wrong.

The Department of Justice further stated, “we found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution. We also found no evidence that any official involved in the handling of tax-exempt applications or IRS leadership attempted to obstruct justice. Based on the evidence developed in this investigation and the recommendation of experienced career prosecutors and supervising attorneys at the department, we are closing our investigation and will not seek any criminal charges.” That statement was provided in a letter to selected members of congress by Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik. So let’s strip away the legalese rhetoric there and get to the heart of what Kadzik was saying. In essence the investigation was run by government employees against government employees for the end goal of protecting government employment. Lerner was told to plead the fifth, say nothing, get out of public office and let the government clean up the mess with a defense of stupidity to conceal their tracks. The government declared of itself that they were too stupid to properly conduct themselves with tax payer resources and that there will never be ramifications for incompetence in public office. Without question, we will get a lot more of the behavior as a result.

Now you know dear reader yet again—with evidence provided from the highest law enforcement office in the land—why we have a Bill of Rights established by the anti-Federalists during the formation of our Constitution at the start of the American concept. We have freedom of speech so that we can call such abuses of power by their true implication—because obviously the DOJ has no interest in doing anything but protecting government employment as a direct arm of radicalized union labor. And we have the right to arm ourselves in case our military and police fall under the malice of future incompetent idiots like Lois Lerner at the IRS. If the IRS can abuse its power why not the local National Guard post? We need guns to protect ourselves by the DOJ definition of incompetence, because they have shown that they will take the side of the fool over the righteous expecting the good to surrender their lives to the bad for the “greater good.” Greater in this case is established by all the hoards of knuckle-draggers who are employed by the federal government. Their employer actually permits stupidity so those of a sane mind out of the Beltway need a way to protect themselves from the stupid—because nobody else will take up the job.

Because of this ruling by the DOJ we now have evidence that under no circumstances we should reduce the number of firearms in our society, because in a time when the DOJ is using stupidity as a defense the only way we can enforce respect among the corrupt is by promising to end their life—because they don’t respect the law. So they must respect the guns we possess—because in reality, that’s all that really protects us from the bad management decisions of the federal government. When they think they can abuse their power—as they have many times and been caught—they are very inclined to continue the behavior. The IRS attacked my friend Justin Binik Thomas and my local Tea Party group at Liberty Township because they assumed that everyone were nice people not inclined toward rambunctious violance—so they were easy targets for showing the vast authority of the IRS as a way to build up their brand of enforcement. As nice as Justin was however, they didn’t expect him or the Liberty Township Tea Party to stick up for themselves using the First Amendment. So the situation backfired on the IRS in a spectacular way. The IRS was clearly guilty of abuse of power and the only way out for them was for the Obama controlled DOJ to plead stupidity to avoid prosecution. If the case had been allowed to fester, the original guilt would have put it within the White House through union connections which was the likely origin Lois Lerner’s radicalism.

These same idiots are the people declaring that we need fewer guns in society. It’s like a robber scouting out potential hits complaining that people have bars on their windows to prevent break-ins. The government wants easy targets and a compliant people, because they are too stupid to deal with a challenge or any philosophic position in favor of freedom, so they want to confiscate guns to have their way and be allowed to mismanage our society. Without guns people like Lois Lerner would be in charge of everything and the abuse of their offices completely unfettered. It is for this very reason that gun sales are so high in America right now. It makes us sleep better at night knowing we can at least take care of ourselves if something dreadful happens. It is quite obvious that we can’t count on the DOJ, the IRS, the White House, the Secretary of State, local law enforcement, the National Guard or even the local school, because they have been given the gift of stupidity to protect them from the ramifications of their own devastating decisions. In the end the thin blue line that resides between justice and chaos is not law enforcement led by more government employees—its in the Second Amendment and under the right to bear arms that Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State authenticated, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That militia is not a group of idiots ran by the federal government—its individuals fighting for their right to protect their private property and to take back their government when and if that government fails them in the future. With the decision by the DOJ over the IRS case—it is clear that there was a lot of wisdom in Thomas Jefferson’s assumptions. So the best thing to do is to protect yourself from future stupid people. Join the NRA if you haven’t already. Sign up for Second Call Defense. And buy a gun. If you already have one, or two, or a hundred—buy another gun so that the DOJ can get a taste of what their bad decisions cause regarding social behavior patterns.   And if you live near me, buy that gun from the good guys at Right 2 Arms, which is essentially at the end of my street in Liberty Township. It’s government’s problem for their bad decisions—not yours dear reader. Protect yourself from them by using the rights provided at the outset of the country. The lawyers, politicians and theatrical fools have strayed away—and Lois Lerner is the proof of just how bad it really is. The DOJ just confirmed it.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.