Tag: John Kasich

A $10,000 Bonus for Lakota Teachers: How guns in schools are conducive to team building

A lot of people don’t know it but when I put together the No Lakota Levy group by joining forces with some of the business guys who were also against the school levy over eight years ago now, we had prior to that experience been mostly rivals. Several of them about five years prior were at me over a contentious real estate transaction—actually several of them and we were not on good terms. But we were united under a common objective—a real concern that high taxation would destroy our community, so we united against the Lakota school system to get things under control. In the course of that action we became pretty good friends and a lot of those heated rivalries fell by the way side. I was reminded of that experience as I stood before the Lakota school board on Monday February 26th many years after our contentious levy fights to speak on behalf of arming teachers with firearms. Many of the school board members were new, some had been there back during those No Lakota Levy days and suddenly we found ourselves on the same side of an issue—a desire to secure the schools before some copy-cat shooter sought to put their name in lights for eternity by becoming the next assassin of the innocent. It was a little weird but was a very positive experience.

It was a productive evening and I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people on this issue and I couldn’t help but see a pattern emerging, conflict resolution often is all about bringing people together on a common goal. We may argue about the means of teaching children, or what the purpose of a public school is, but one thing we all are unified on is that we don’t want bad people to come into our community where our kids are and exploit a weakness at their expense. As I spoke a lot of those heated rivalries melted away and I only saw eager and sincerely concerned faces looking back at me—everyone wanted to get this issue right and that was truly a special moment.

As we were having a good exchange where two sides of a political divide were joining together to solve a hard problem a reminder of how vulnerable we all are to charismatic radicals presented themselves right there at the school board meeting. CNN star and 1st Congressional District candidate Samuel Ronan from Springboro, Ohio crashed our meeting unannounced and took over for an uncomfortably long period of time taking advantage of our mutually good graces to speak out against the Lakota consideration to follow Sheriff Jones’ advice to arm teachers in one of Ohio’s largest school district. Ronan is a very progressive young man who is trying to lead a youth charge against guns in schools. Only he forgot one main thing, he willfully violated the terms of speaking that night as specifically cited in board policy 0160 which states: ” Participants must be residents of the District, or be the resident’s designee and be introduced as such, and have a legitimate interest in the action of the Board. The Board may also recognize representatives of firms eligible to bid on materials or services solicited by the Board. The Board may also recognize any employee or student of the District except when the issue addressed by the participant is subject to remediation under Board policies or negotiated agreements.” Ronan wasn’t the only speaker that night against the CCW recommendation for teachers, but he was the one who showed a complete disregard for the rules of our community to make his point—which is precisely what a potential school shooter would do should they decide to attack. It showed everyone in the room how vulnerable we all were to bold practitioners of radicalism from their own sometimes distorted perspective.

To my experience, and it was consistent with that evening’s activities, firearms bring people together, not apart, and that was what was happening between me and the school board at Lakota. Compared to some of our past issues this new problem transcended those transgressions. We needed to create a culture at Lakota that would protect kids from the types of people who put ideology over logic and will take those next dangerous steps toward the destruction of lives. As I said to several people that evening, I would support in this case a bonus for teachers who sign up for a CCW. I am thinking of something in the $10,000 per year range to encourage teachers to spend time with guns, to create a group of peers who might shoot together on the weekends down at Premier Shooting in West Chester then get together for dinner afterwards. We’re not talking about teachers wearing guns on their hips and advertising that they are CCW holders. We are just talking about concerned teachers who want to become first responders in case some crazy person comes into one of Lakota’s 22 school buildings and seeks to ruin the lives of the people inside. As Samuel Ronan showed us, someone who doesn’t belong can easily walk into a school and manipulate their way past security with the type of sincerity that he displayed and have their way with our most vulnerable because as good people we tend to trust that everyone else is also a good person. We are never quite ready for some villain who looks like a normal person, and acts like a normal person, until it’s too late. At that point, it would be good to have a teacher in every hall in those 22 school buildings who could at least keep their classrooms from becoming an unprotected zone of malice.

The bonus of $10,000 would be specifically to help create a culture among a group of people who up to this point have not been concerned about guns. By asking them to open their minds to the idea, the bonus would allow them to participate in the sport of shooting so that when and if something dire were to occur, they’d at least be familiar enough to use those firearms proficiently. Just as I came together with the Lakota school board that night in what was a good feeling exchange, people who shoot together tend to form bonds of friendship that extend into all parts of their lives. I am very certain that if Lakota were to adopt this policy there would be peer groups of shooters that would develop, and they’d enjoy the exchange with one another. As a gun owner and frequent user myself I can report that this is an experience I have in my life that I know would transfer over into the lives of the teachers who became CCW holders and it would be a very positive experience for them. Instead of dividing our community, it would unite in ways that nobody thought possible, just as nobody would have imagined years ago that I’d have a friendly exchange with the Lakota school board. Firearms have a way of uniting people who otherwise wouldn’t speak to each other any other way.

Shooting can be expensive, so I envision that $10,000 bonus helping the teachers pay for their lane fees at Premier Shooting and the ammunition to shoot there once or twice a month with other teachers. And after shooting they’d have a little money in their pocket to do what the rest of us shooters do with our time, you grab a bite to eat and enjoy each other’s company in a similar way that golfing buddies do. Only with guns there is always a higher purpose to what you are doing, and it makes saying hello to that other teacher in the hall a bit more special, because they would be in a unique club of potential first responders in case a radicalized terrorist would try to unleash pain and suffering on our nice and successful community.

My urgency on the matter is that Lakota is more vulnerable than other places in Ohio—because it is wealthy, its large, and its conservative. There was a reason that the progressive radical Samuel Ronan who is a pretty big-time star on cable news decided to target Lakota for his anti-gun protest. He had no other business in the Lakota community, he didn’t do it in Mason or Springboro, he came to Lakota. And if people like him who are just a bit too angry at the direction of the world are looking at the leadership of Lakota as a place to discharge their aggression, then someone just a few IQ points south of Ronan might just do the unthinkable, because it is a giant soft target for such people. Personally, I don’t want to see that happen. I’m willing to put away my past grievances for the purpose of a unifying objective—and this issue of giving teachers CCWs is the best idea that I’ve heard in public education for years. And I will promise this, it will be a very positive thing that will bring together the whole community—and will make the teaching staff much better. Firearms are the ultimate team building tool. I understand that many people don’t yet have a reference point to build off of, because firearms aren’t a normal part of their lives, but once they come to understand what a unifying factor firearms are—socially—the magic of that team building will become obvious—and as a side result, our children will be much, much safer as a net result.

Rich Hoffman

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

How Do You Like Your Raise America: From the Beltway to Blue Ash–Trump knows where the heart of our country really is

It was only January 2nd 2018 that Rob Portman visited the fabulous Sheffer Corporation in Blue Ash, Ohio once it was announced that the company would be giving all 126 of its employees $1000 bonuses due to the recent tax cuts that were passed just days before Christmas. Well that caught the attention of Donald Trump who came to that very same facility on February 5th just a month later to have a look at one of the first companies in the country to reinvest in their employees based on the tax cuts and to endorse congressman Jim Renacci for his run against Sherrod Brown for the Ohio senate race.

The visit yet again by President Trump to the Cincinnati area says everything about the strategic importance that the Tri-State area has in the national scheme of things. Trump understands the value of Ohio not just in winning elections and building a cohesive Republican Party ahead of the 2018 midterms. He understands where few do that what is happening in America is a huge step forward with regard to the human race—a new age of enlightenment for which Adam Smith could have only dreamed, and it’s happening in a very enthusiastic way, and it all starts with the little companies like the Sheffer Corporation—not the big industrial giants with lobbyists who camp out in Washington to get the ears and support of policy makers over wine at the Four Seasons.

http://www.sheffercorp.com/
https://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=0C2BBB64-3BF6-4CBC-BFCA-1CBDFF7F7DF4.

How did you like that America, the raise you just received in your latest payroll check? Most everyone who has a job received on, and it was a significant increase. Most of the time we see less of our money because there is always some drooling politician voting for another tax increase for every little appeasing project that are so tempting to the negotiator afraid of federal trade unions. We have seldom in recent generations ever seen government give back money. So yes, most people employed with a real job in America got a pay increase starting at the end of January and the beginning of February. It took a lot of senators and congressional representatives to pull it off. Rob Portman certainly did his job which is why he came to the forward thinking Sheffer group in the first place. But if not for Trump’s negotiations and sheer persistence the tax cut would have never have happened. It was due to his sheer tenacity and salesmanship that a tax bill actually ended up on his desk and signed so that once the holidays were over, companies could start handing out checks to their employees and employees could start seeing more money on their checks. The whole process only took about 5 weeks which was lightning fast government.

There’s a lot to feel good about. Democrats at this point only have one hopeless shit shot from mid court to make against Trump and that is to hope that somewhere in his dealings the New York business mogul made a big enough mistake in dealing with the Russians that Democrats can create doubt about Trump’s presidency. What else have they got, they have boring candidates who are out of touch, many of them old and unappealing in every way? They are getting killed in fund-raising, so even if they did have challengers for the 2018 midterms, where will they get the money to run against Republicans? It is astonishing that after that congressional memo about the FISA abuse so many media outlets instantly went to the former model and Trump assistant Hope Hicks as someone who was up to something involving Don Jr’s interview of a Russian lawyer—as if anything there amounted to anything. For instance, watch the ABC News report shown below about the excessive detail they will go to uncovering every rock involving Hope Hicks when the most explosive evidence of collusion, obstruction of justice, and scandalous activity come from those who just hate Trump. For as much as the media celebrates their efforts at bringing down corruption from powerful people, like in the film All the President’s Men and the recent Spielberg film, The Post, the biggest conspiracy to commit crime in the history of our nation just occurred with the FBI yet only Fox News is covering. That’s not because Fox News is a partisan outlet, it’s because everyone else is in on the game for their own preservation. Hating Trump is to hate the change and refocus on priorities that come with him—a refocus from the Beltway to Blue Ash.

The hatred of Trump and his administration as I’ve explained before come from the professional bureaucrats who make a living off the chaos of Washington D.C. politics. As a self-made billionaire Trump is above Beltway politics. The only thing he may have in common with them is that he loves attention and adoration. But Trump gets that adoration at events like this Blue Ash visit while the professional bureaucrats get it from power lunches at the Four Seasons. If you’ve ever been to Georgetown dear reader and went to the mall there, and places like the Four Seasons you get the distinct impression that all of Washington politics exists for the simple reason of coming to places like that for lunch and talking with like-minded people over fancy meals and pampered circumstances. They never want to solve any real problems because it is chaos that keeps them all overly paid employees of the government and allow them to have lunch in such places and kiss people they don’t like on the cheek when they arrive for brunch to talk about essentially nothing so they can do the same thing tomorrow.

Meanwhile workers at Sheffer are happy to pick up a few Coney dogs at Skyline Chili in Blue Ash for lunch and to talk about football, baseball, or basketball, whatever is going on at the time. They just want to live their lives and bring home some money to their families. Those people at the Four Seasons didn’t think to put any money in their pockets with decreased tax burdens, or taking off the regulations that crush companies like Sheffer from doing business. Politicians like Nancy Pelosi who goes to the Four Seasons for lunch a lot might drop a $1000 each time, and not think anything of it. But a $1000 in the pockets of the workers at Sheffer is an enormous amount of money. In some ways its life changing because if you add that to the weekly increases, it gives employees a chance to get out ahead of their monthly bills just before they see substantial increases in their weekly checks—ahead of tax returns—where its likely they’ll have additional deductions. By summer those employees at Sheffer will be much better off financially than they were the year before, and they have Donald Trump to thank.

Yes, the stock market dropped substantially on the Friday that the now famous FISA memo was released. The same type of people who thrive off the chaos of government retaliated with the very positive jobs report that was coming out showing great economic growth and that wages were up already in the 2018 year. To conventional investors that means inflation and interest rate hikes at the Fed so there was a big sell off that probably isn’t over. But we are not living in conventional times. Donald Trump certainly isn’t a conventional president. It won’t take long for employees of Sheffer and the many thousands of other companies like it out there in America to start spending some of their extra money on this economy and giving new companies the needed boost in sales a chance to chase their dreams and further expand our GDP. Conventional arguments against the optimistic appraisal Trump has about GDP growth trajectory will say that everything is working against him, child-birth is down, work place participation is down, efficiencies are questionable as global markets shift priorities, and that the top growth anyone can expect is only 2%. But what they don’t know is that technology is changing giving standard economic models an irrelevancy that they haven’t quite figured out yet and productivity will be expanding per capita making all the formulas have to recalibrate themselves to the Trump economy that is several parts optimism, a tad bit of nationalism, sprinkled with opportunities created by deregulation and what we end up with is a formula for greatness that only people in Ohio and flyover states like it see first. That’s why the president was in Blue Ash and not having lunch at the Four Seasons in Georgetown.

Rich Hoffman

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

Big Minds and Small Minds: How Michael Wolff missed the mark with an embarrassingly edited book no publisher should stand behind

I read the Michael Wolff book Fire and Fury for many reasons—not because I agree with him in any way, or that I think his book is something of any quality. It’s actually a pretty junky piece of writing. I have noticed more mistakes grammatically in that book than in any 100 books that I’ve last read put together. It’s a very sloppy book thrown together by an activist publisher trying to torpedo the Trump presidency before the tax cuts kick in during 2018—essentially. I read the book once to get a general impression, then I’ve been going back through it to pick on some of the more spectacular problems that it has which I’ll reveal over the coming weeks now that the sales have slipped off and everyone has had a chance to digest the thing properly. My impression of Wolff and his writing of President Trump is that the writer is just one more silly ankle biting little man out there in the world who hates big grand thinkers—and I think there is something worth noting about people in general regarding this type of tabloid nonsense.

The revelation in the book that Trump was having an affair with Nikki Haley is just outlandish and reveals that even sitting there on that couch in the White House interviewing a bunch of people around President Trump that even from that vantage point Wolff, as a writer, couldn’t put his finger on what was going on. Throughout the book especially in the opening chapter in a conversation between Steve Bannon and Rupert Murdoch Wolff has taken a “he said, she said that some guy over there thinks the lady at the water cooler believes that a person close to the President overheard him saying that while talking on the phone that this or that happened.” The book is full of those types of things and it surprises me that it was even considered for publication given its flimsiness. But to assume that because Trump has a good relationship with a woman who is doing very well in the United Nations, that he’s having an affair with her is rather “sexist.”

But that is how small minds think about things—the “little people” out there always think in terms of flesh and satisfaction first because they have not developed their intellects to encompass anything greater than such lustrous fantasies. I think for most of his life Trump was held back by some of that same small thinking—while he could apply big thinking to buildings and business concepts making himself very wealthy in the process, he still considered success through the lens of little people—so he was a womanizer. His wife Melania obviously understands what her husband is about, and she embarked on a marital journey with him like a lot of women hope to reform the men in their lives away from self-destructive behavior. It doesn’t always work, but in her case, along with his natural age—it appears to have had a great effect. History will no doubt view Donald J. Trump as one of the greatest American presidents and that fact is something that a small-minded person like Michael Wolff and his publisher can’t get their thoughts around. I think this goes beyond hate for Trump—it’s just that they don’t have minds to understand him.

The biggest giveaway to Wolff’s ignorance in his book Fire and Fury is that he constantly seeks to make Trump look like an ignorant blowhard who isn’t nearly as wealthy as he claims to be. Wolff constantly uses liberal billionaires as the foundation for revealing what an idiot Trump is—but the facts are far from supporting the claims of the hateful writer. Just looking at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, it is Trump’s winter White House. It’s the second largest mansion in Florida and is one of the premier real estate investments in North America. It rivals Europe in its audacious elegance, and Trump acquired and developed that property long before he ever became president. You don’t see other billionaires like Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Warren Buffett developing properties like Mar-a-Lago even though they have the financial resources to conduct the task. Only Trump has done something on that scale, and in many ways, it’s the keys to his presidency. I would go so far to say that Trump has eclipsed Steve Wynn on elegance and rapture of highly visible commercial real estate in entertainment zones—and Mar-a-Lago is one of the biggest examples. What the Trump Organization did with the Old Post Office in Washington D.C. is another example. It takes a unique vision to perform those types of tasks and those skills are obviously very elusive to people even with the financial resources—and Wolff doesn’t at any time put his finer on what makes Trump tick in the entire book. Instead, he views everything through the eyes of the small people who cling to Trump by natural inclination licking his boots hoping to pick up whatever he leaves behind as natural second handers. Picasso can have painted strange images of cubical people and the art world calls it a work of genius. (I’ve seen Picasso’s stuff at the Louvre and I wasn’t impressed). But what Trump does with buildings and big concepts is the work of an idiot? Only when small minds are doing the analysis. Their inability to understand something does not lower the quality of what has been done. It just means they lack the means to define it.

http://www.maralagoclub.com/

It was just ahead of the State of the Union address that a spokesperson for Melania Trump had to quell rumors that there is trouble with the Trump marriage—which is another constant drum beat that was cited in the Wolff book—as if he were trying to create a narrative for a presidential downfall. Disney owned ABC is putting on the porn actress Stormy Daniels with Jimmy Kimmel Live after the State of the Union speech in an obvious attempt to take air out of the impact of Trump’s national address. They are putting her on to talk about the supposed affair she had with Trump years ago and the hush money the campaign is alleged to have given her to keep quiet. Where were these people when we said these things about Bill Clinton for several decades and nobody listened? Whether true or not, nobody is going to care about Stormy Daniels but that the small minds behind this enterprise would consider doing it, knowing the outcome will go nowhere says everything about the true nature of our modern times.

Small minded people were taught incorrectly for most of the last century that they were equal to the big thinkers—and now they are in shock that reality is telling them something different. Even billionaires who happen to have acquired wealth in their specific fields of knowledge are not able to get to the level in life that Donald Trump has achieved, which is well beyond the words of some little man writer in Michael Wolff. I’m sure people could go through all my blog postings and find little mistakes here and there, but the scope of the work is something few writers can touch—anywhere. I do this essentially for free—we could clean up a lot if a professional editor went through my articles. However, a second-rate writer like Wolff was able to write his book because even publishers these days are too small-minded to think beyond the hatred they have of a world that is not what they thought it was. They have pulled up the curtains of sight around themselves and look at everything through a circular firing squad of liberal thought derived from failed philosophies that they are too stubborn to admit are destructive to the human race and to shield them from that reality all they can think about is sex and whose sleeping with whom. Quality and talent is not necessarily what drives whether a book gets published or not, it’s whether or not the small people out there will buy it. Yes, Wolff wrote a best seller with a book that is an editing disaster and the publisher is making money. But it’s not reflective of what’s really happening in a Trump economy in 2018.

Sure its sexist to assume that if a man gets along with a woman where sex is not involved. It’s also sexist to assume that there is trouble in the Trump marriage if every little rumor that comes along might push Melania Trump into a jealous rage of divorce breaking the heart of the 71-year-old president. Look at Mar-a-Lago, that is Melania’s reality. Class, elegance, and big thinking. She’s smart enough to deal with the ex-wives of the past and all the disasters that get left in the wake of a big thinker like Trump. What does she care about Stormy Daniels—half of the west coast has slept with her? What matters in the end, and what makes people rich is often more than the money in their wallets—it’s the content of their minds. Trump reveals what’s on his mind by what he builds and by the nature of the people around him, Melania and his kids. Wolff and the losers from his circle of influence don’t and never will get what makes Trump tick. Instead they are like so many other little people out there in the world who are the way they are because they think so small about everything in their lives. And thus everything they say about reality turns out to be a lie—even though from their vantage point that’s all they are able to see due to their intellectual limitations.

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

The Jurassic Quest Disaster: Cincinnati needs to get its act together downtown

It pains me to say it, but the Jurassic Quest event at the Duke Energy Center in Cincinnati, Ohio on the weekend of January 28, 2018 was horrible. My kids and grandkids wanted to go, so at $20 dollars a ticket I thought it would be something special. The good news is that the dinosaurs themselves were great animatronic creatures—but they were no better than the good exhibit at Kings Island just up the road. This Jurassic Quest thing is a traveling show that goes from city to city every weekend, so it takes money to get around the country and pay everyone—I understand the need to make a nice profit and in Cincinnati we are spoiled in regard to having Kings Island—not every city has something like that. It certainly didn’t hurt attendance, there were a lot of people coming to Jurassic Quest—and at the cost of a basic ticket, there is no question that the people putting the whole show on were making money. But here’s the problem, they charged for every little thing—there were very few things that you could do with your $20 price of admission. Our kids were bored in a half an hour and were ready to go home and for something like that—that is a shame.

The larger problem however is the city of Cincinnati itself. I hadn’t been down to the Duke Energy Center in a few years, the last time was a Freedom Fest type of thing that Glenn Beck and a lot of reform minded people were at. I had parked at Carew Tower and walked down so my experience was a decent one. Things are pretty nice in the Fountain Square area relative to where I live in Liberty Township, Ohio—so nothing jumped out at me as being of low quality—for a city. But because we had a bunch of kids and strollers I wanted to park close to the entrance of the Duke Energy Center which was charging for “event” parking so it was $15 dollars per car. We had two cars, so add up the price of the parking and the tickets and do the math—we made a significant investment in this thing and expected something of a decent quality.

What we were greeted with was a mess, the elevator in the garage was slow and clunky. It smelled like death. The windows to the stairs were mostly broken and the entry to the Skywalk was in disrepair. Everything on that second level that would take visitors into the convention center from the garage looked torn up and broken which was a shame, because the whole area was the premier part of the downtown experience, and this appeared to be the best they could do. City management should be ashamed of itself along with whoever is managing that garage. What a waste of money that was. If they are charging that much money for parking—and Paul Brown Stadium is right around the corner within walking distance—then why couldn’t everything at least work and look cared for?

When we arrived at the ground floor we came to a very uneventful door that led into a courtyard that looked like it came out of the video game Fallout—as if a nuclear holocaust had rid the city of its occupants for a century or more. The door into the garage for which I was holding to let the kids come out, looked like a broom closet once I closed it. There was nothing to say that this was the entrance to the garage or anything connected to capitalist activity in the downtown region. It was just a beat up rusty door that needed to be painted badly and was pathetic. Of course we had a big stroller for the kids and there was no ramp or anyway to get to the up the steps that took us to the ground level so we carried the thing up and onto the sidewalk. That surprised me because I’ve done work within the city of Cincinnati just two or three blocks down from that location at City Hall and I can tell you that I’ve wasted many hours of my life arguing with the idiots at the CBC (Cincinnati Building Code) office about easement ramps for new projects so handicapped people and people with strollers like us could get around. I of course am against imposing unrealistic restrictions on businesses with a bunch of stupid ramps, yet as strict as the bureaucrats at city hall are about such progressive concepts, they had nothing in one of their sidewalk easements to one of their best garages in an area where guests coming into the city will interact most. I’d be surprised if they didn’t know about the issue.

Then there are the rug rats and the homeless that were hovering around the area. Forget about all the compassion nonsense, and why there are homeless people, and people who will whore themselves out for a shot of heroin—people coming downtown to spend $300 on an experience with their kids don’t want to look at a bunch of losers panhandling. If the city wants to let them hang around begging for money and sleeping on the streets, they should corral them somewhere that doesn’t impose such a swanky demeanor to visitors of the city. It is one of the biggest problems of visiting any city. I can say that in traveling to London and Paris within the year I could say the same about those places—no city is dealing properly with the homeless situation. Canterbury which is a town in England that I like quite a lot has a lot of homeless people and you have to step over them literally at times because they sleep right on the sidewalk and interact with the people around them. When you are shopping and spending time with the people you care about in life, these people are an interruption. Feeling sorry for their condition in life is one thing, but having to deal with them when you are tying to enjoy something is quite another. Allowing them to hang out at the entrance of the Duke Energy Center is a mistake. In London even, they understand not to allow the unsightly to gather in front of their big tourist areas—they shove them off into the corners wherever possible. You won’t see them outside Buckingham Palace—that’s for sure, and we shouldn’t see them outside of the Duke Energy Center or in the path to Fountain Square, or the Banks a few blocks to the south.

I know Cincinnati is mostly ran by liberals. My oldest daughter loves going down to the Over the Rhine district on Vine Street that has really come a long way since I was her age. But just a few streets over it’s still the crime infested place it always was—it has taken a lot to push the criminal element to the east and west to create an enterprise zone that people like my daughter will actually visit. But the people running the city wondering why nobody wants to ride their stupid street car must understand that people of value don’t like to have losers shoved in their faces when they are spending their entertainment dollars. So the city has to manage their losers and keep them away from the people who have money in their pockets otherwise that money won’t come downtown. After what I saw I would be very reluctant to do such a thing again. I have so many more options to the north and south where I don’t have to see losers hanging around on the street where I can spend my money. I only say something because I like Cincinnati and want it to be successful. But it won’t be so long as these basic little things are left unresolved.

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

Superman Doesn’t Do Drugs: Theory of a Deadman’s song, “Rx” (Medicate)

The best thing about art is that it should make you think about things and music certainly falls into that category.  That is clearly the case of the new song by Theory of a Deadman called “Rx” (Medicate).  I like the mood of the song, it’s sort of spaghetti westernish—however the lyrics absolutely disgust me.  I find almost every line of the song repulsive—yet fascinating.  If I had to apply a song to the age of Millennials which defines their era I think this song would be it.  As I looked into this song a bit I wasn’t surprised to learn that there was a message behind it as lead singer Tyler Connelly stated to Billboard.

“I really wanted to discuss how messed up America is with this prescription drug thing. When I got divorced, I went and saw a therapist and the first thing she said was, ‘I want to put you on some Beta blockers or some sort of anti-depressant stuff’ and I’m like, ‘No! No Way! What? How is that the first thing you want to do?’ I just feel like something’s wrong and I felt like the song needed to be written and people needed to hear it. It seems like every week something terrible is happening. I mean, Chris Cornell…and when we shot the video for it all these directors we talked to were like, ‘Oh yeah, I had a huge prescription drug problem, so this hits home’ and all that stuff. So it’s a really important song and I’m so happy we get to release it first.”

[Verse 1]
Wake up to a cloudy day
Dark rolls in, and it starts to rain
Staring out to the cage-like walls
Time goes by and the shadows crawl
Crushing candy, crushing pills
Got no job, mom pays my bills
Texting exes, get my fill
Sweating bullets, Netflix chills
World’s out there singing the blues
Twenty more dead on the evening news
Think to myself: “Really, what’s the use?”
I’m just like you, I was born to lose

[Pre-Chorus 1]
Why, oh, why can’t you just fix me?
When all I want’s to feel numb
But the medication’s all gone
Why, oh, why does God hate me?
When all I want’s to get high
And forget this so-called life

[Chorus]
I am so frickin’ bored
Nothing to do today
I guess I’ll sit around and medicate (medicate)
I am so frickin’ bored
Nothing to do today
I guess I’ll sit around and medicate (medicate)

[Verse 2]
Can’t wait to feel better than I ever will
Attack that shit like a kid on Benadryl
Chase it down with a hopeful smile
Hate myself, I can go for miles
They say family’s all you need
Someone to trust who can help you breathe
Inhale that drug, but you start to choke
You fall on the outs of an inside joke

[Pre-Chorus 2]
Why, oh, why can’t you just fix me?
When all I want’s to feel numb
But the medication’s all gone
Why, oh, why does God hate me?
Cause I’ve seen enough of it, heard enough of it, felt enough of it
Had enough of it!

[Chorus]
I am so frickin’ bored
Nothing to do today
I guess I’ll sit around and medicate (medicate)
I am so frickin’ bored
Nothing to do today
I guess I’ll sit around and medicate (medicate)

[Bridge]
Superman is a hero
But only when his mind is clear, though
He needs that fix like the rest of us
So he’s got no fear when he saves that bus
All the stars in the Hollywood Hills
Snapchat live while they pop them pills
All those flavors of the rainbow
Too bad that shit don’t work though

[Post-Bridge]
Your friends are high right now
Your parents are high right now
That hot chick’s high right now
That cop is high right now
The president’s high right now
Your priest is high right now
Everyone’s high as fuck right now
And no one’s ever coming down!

[Chorus]
I am so frickin’ bored
Nothing to do today
I guess I’ll sit around and medicate (medicate)
I am so frickin’ bored
Nothing to do today
I guess I’ll sit around and medicate (medicate)

[Outro]
I medicate

https://genius.com/Theory-of-a-deadman-rx-medicate-lyrics

The part that really bothered me in the lyrics was the section about Superman and in that the protagonist thinks that God hates him—that they were born to lose like everyone else.  What a terrible way to wake up and see the world.  That is about as far from my reality as there ever was, but then again I don’t do drugs of any kind.  I don’t do the doctor thing these days exclusively because all any of them ever want to do is put you on medication for every ailment.  Modern medicine has clearly become just a legalized industry of drug pushers—and I don’t do it.  I don’t even take aspirin if I can help it.  But I am also in the extreme minority.  Most people do take some form of a drug and it comes from their doctors as if that makes it all OK.  Superman would never take drugs, his mind is always clear—he doesn’t need false courage to save a bus.  But, from the perspective of a Millennial that has been raised in a society of three progressive presidents, Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama—where broken families are the norm, drug addiction is justified by prescriptions, economic mobility has been tightly regulated by an overzealous government—this song really is their experience. And that is terribly sad.

Just because I don’t want something to be true doesn’t mean it isn’t and unfortunately this song is the reality of way too many people.  I’d love to tell people to live more the way I do, but then that’s not their experience.  I’d say to them that the sum of your total life is precisely what you put into it by way of thoughts, and if when you wake up in the morning, you are depressed about something—you are headed toward loserville by natural inclination.  For anybody to be “so frickin’ bored” that they “need” to medicate is just a modern tragedy considering all the options an intellect has these days.  When I get up each day my biggest stress is accommodating all my interests.  I am never board, about anything.  There are just too many interesting things to do and think about—I like my mind sharp so I can do everything.  I can’t afford to have a period of “high” just to take away the pain of living.  Pain is part of living, and you have to be tough and willing to fight through that pain to get to the good stuff.  However, that isn’t the mode of living for most people in this modern age.

I would add that my support of Donald Trump from the beginning to now is largely due to this terrible swing of temperament we have moved to as a country.  For years everything has become so negative I think largely because so many people are on drugs—legal and illegal.  Just going to get a drink after work is a bad trend in my mind.  Trump doesn’t drink or do drugs.  If he has an addiction it has been to be productive—he has many interests like I do so I understand the guy.  He has brought great energy and awareness back to the public through sentiment—and I think that’s the only way out of this mess—is to have someone say from the top that drug use and addiction is a bad thing to do.  People really do need to hear it, and they need examples to live by.  That is also why I write these articles every day.  I want to help people and if something I write can do that—it is my hope that it does.

So good job to Theory of a Deadman for writing such a provocative song—I wish that reality which they are presenting in it wasn’t the case, but unfortunately it is.  We have several generations of this stuff to get through before we see a new generation that has some hope of living normal productive lives under a new day in America where unemployment is at or under 4%.  Where families might return to staying together and bank accounts will be filled with opportunities for dreams.  I really do think that the age of the Trump administrations may reverse some of these trends because the conditions of this song just isn’t acceptable.  I wouldn’t want this to be the reality for a single person anywhere in the world.  But it is however the trend—and the household standard for which everyone lives.  I can say this as an answer to the song.  I’m not “high” right now, and I never will be.  And Superman never takes drugs and that’s what I wake up expecting out of myself every single day—is to be superman.  Everyone should.

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

Al Franken Resigns from the Senate: Using The Cowboy Way to treat women correctly

With Al Franken leaving the Senate, as he should, it would be a good time to discuss how men should conduct themselves around women in every circumstance. Granted, some women are just as aggressive and manipulative as men are and sometimes they should be engaged with equally when they present themselves as a threat. After all, women can’t punch you in the face then hide behind their sex to avoid retaliation—that’s not an equal application of justice. If they want to be treated equally, then give them that respect especially when challenged. However, when it comes to general conduct I’d advise everyone to turn back the hands of time and utilize the behavior of The Cowboy Way to bring chivalry and respect back to male and female interactions. More on that in a bit.

So Al Franken stepped down from his Senate seat. It was pathetic to watch him try to bring Donald Trump and Roy Moore into his issues. The biggest difference between Trump and Franken aside from the fact that one person was an idiot, and the other is a great president, is that Franken admitted to the wrong doing. Trump and Moore have denied their allegations and therefore are not guilty. As I stated early on in these discussions about sexual harassment, just because someone says you said or did something doesn’t mean you actually did it. Women are not immune to deceitful action just because of their sex. Just like men, they will use whatever advantages they think they have to acquire power and position especially if the courts are inclined to vote in their favor by default. In the case of Al Franken, there was photographic evidence of his crime, so that seals the deal for him. Trump simply commented on it—and even that was more of a philosophical observation on the nature of celebrity. There is no case to state that if Al Franken had to resign that Trump also must resign just because there are “allegations.” That card for which Franken was just a pawn won’t work. You can’t be guilty of what people say about you. Only in what you do. Lots of people say lots of things about me. But no matter how much they dig there is nothing to find—because I live my life cleanly. So does Trump apparently.

I treat all women respectfully using the basic code of The Cowboy Way. I always treat them well, speak to them professionally, and go out of my way to make sure they feel elevated in my interactions with them. I grew up with television shows like Gunsmoke and Bonanza so if you want to know what The Cowboy Way is, just watch a few hundred hours of old westerns and you’ll start to get it. Even though women say they want to be equal and that they don’t want you to pick up the check at dinners, they really actually do enjoy being treated in a special way. Women are biologically inclined toward their sex after all and the role they play in the mating games of life, so compliments are always welcome. But you should never tell them that you like their tits or that they have a nice ass—even if they ask you too. It’s best to avoid any such conversation, because using The Cowboy Way, no gentleman of honor would ever do such a thing to anybody but his wife or a mate that has given permission for that kind of undercover talk. Even then a smart guy would be cautious.

What is consensual really is up to what a woman defines it to be. So long as men understand that, they’ll be alright. What I mean by that is that if a woman flirts with you, you can only advance the discussion based on the criteria she sets. If she takes one step and you—as a man—take two in return, then you have trouble. She has leverage over you and can then accuse you of sexual harassment if she later determines that the only use she has for you is leverage in her life—then you are up shit creek and didn’t even know you were doing all the paddling. The best method of course is to be polite, be respectful, and be sincere—and avoid flirting and other seductive advances with a tip of the hat.

No question many women flirted with Al Franken, not because he was a good-looking guy, he looks like somebody took a shit and sat in it in all actuality. But he was a celebrity with Saturday Night Live and that made him kind of cool with girls who were looking for opportunities. They may have let him grab their boobies at parties or banter playfully about sexual exploits. Al thought he was the Fonz, but to the girls, they were just fishing waiting to see what bit on their hooks and how they could use it to their advantage. Sometimes what they catch they put in the freezer and use it years from now, like the women who brought him down are doing now. His problem was that he was guilty of it, and he showed a behavioral predilection toward that type of behavior. So he admitted to the accusations and now he had to resign—the behavior matched the premise.

Its best not to leave any doubt however. By treating women correctly in all aspects of your life day in and day out, you will be able to swipe away the false attacks by women who are up to no good and want to latch themselves to whatever power you’ve obtained in your life. We call those types gold diggers when they are young and attractive, we call them leeches when they get old and ugly. But their motivations are always the same and if they can, they’ll use any means necessary to ruin your life so they can profit just a little bit. By Al Franken’s own admission some of his accusers are doing this, just as Matt Lauer has stated—they are making baseless claims against the celebrity status of these men. But as with Franken and Lauer they conducted their lives recklessly making jokes about women and grabbing their asses in public like pubescent teenagers so when an acquisition does surface, people will assume its true.

If a woman unbuttons her shirt and moves in close to talk to you, don’t look at her tits. Kindly move away and position yourself so that you couldn’t possibly see anything. Make sure to maintain eye contact not only to be respectful, but to let her know you are not taking the bait. Do some fishing of your own by tying a bomb onto their hook and let it blow up in their faces. The more powerful you personally are, the more you must do this for your own sanity. You can do this by being overly nice and gentlemanly all the time, even when you think nobody is looking. Just a few nights ago I was getting gas at 2:30 in the morning and a girl who was dressed clearly as a prostitute was at the pump next to me. She looked like a call-in dancer who was either going to a client or coming from one. She obviously expected me to pay special attention to her, but I didn’t treat her any differently than if she were a five-year-old kid—nothing that could suggest otherwise. I mean these days there are cameras everywhere and for all I know she was sent there to trap me in some way. So I just did my thing and when I went into the store to pay she followed me in. I held the door for her in a polite way but letting nothing more be said. And that was the end of the meeting. However, being a man, she was flashing all the signs and part of The Cowboy Way is to fight off that instinct to take an intellectual position of valor over raw animal magnetism. Yes the girl was extremely hot, and she was flirting. But in all actuality, she was likely younger than my daughters and that just wouldn’t be right. It’s always best to say no to those kinds of things and to not even let yourself want to go any further. That is why Donald Trump is much different from Al Franken. Franken couldn’t control himself—and that’s why he had to resign.

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

The Communists of ‘Black Lives Matter’: What we can learn from LaVar Ball

Now we are seeing what they are all about, but never forget that from day one, yours truly told you that Black Lives Matter was a communist group advocating for anti-American sentiments.  They have never been about justice regarding police violence, and their controversy within the NFL has never been about fairness.  Those were always just cover stories.  What they don’t like about America and the people who founded it is that it was built on Adam Smith’s brand of capitalism—and they want to put a stop to it. What they want for America is essentially what we see today in modern-day Africa.  Think about it for a moment, let’s go visit the great cities of Africa on that vast continent and study what it is they want for us all in America. Oh, wait a minute—there isn’t a single city in any nation that is of a comparison.  Every country in Africa is an impoverished mess with not a single powerhouse of economic activity among them.  Most American households have a stronger GDP than any African country—so why would Black Lives Matter be so against American capitalism?  Yes that was a facetious statement, but you get the point.

http://www.newsweek.com/black-lives-matter-black-christmas-capitalism-724309

Hey, Black Lives Matter people, yes I’m a white man—but I’m not guilty of shit.  I didn’t bring any black people to America on slave ships.  European losers who were defeated in the American Civil War did.  I live in Ohio which is about as pro-Lincoln in the movement to end slavery as anybody was in the 1860s and I’m very proud of that.  If I had been alive during the years leading up to the Civil War I would have been on the side of John Quincy Adams and advocated my hatred of any culture that owns another human being in any way.  So I don’t want to hear any bitching from a bunch of uneducated, lazy slobs who happen to be black on what kind of country we should all live in.  In America anybody is welcome to make good with their life if they so choose, but you have to want it. I know a lot of people of color who do quite well for themselves under American capitalism and they are a whole lot better off here than in their countries of origin, especially anywhere in Africa.

Going back to the villainous Black Panthers what these communist advocate groups have sought to do was use the guilt of racism to advance their arguments for collectivist oriented governments—essentially big villages like what they have in Africa.  In America we have been way more tolerant than we should have been as black communists have infected our youth with their thuggish culture of hatred, which you can hear in any song from Snoop Dog, or Jay-Z.  Behind the lyrics of their rap songs is a hatred of American capitalism which seeks to corrupt the youth against it.  Many of our white youth in America looking for their own way in life have found that siren song of hate attractive—as their own generational thing.  But when it comes to really choosing communism over capitalism, that’s quite another thing—most people, black included prefer running water over their counterparts in Africa who still shit in the corner and try to put up a curtain to keep the flies off them. In America we like our microwaves, our cars, and our Playstations.  Capitalism is quite nice to all those who live under it—even if they don’t appreciate it.

These idiots in Black Lives Matter are communists and they should be treated as enemies of our nation—they are domestic terrorists.  It has nothing to do with their skin color which they hide behind as a shield to unfold their plots of villainy.  Everything about their movement is to bring America down as a nation of values and to convert it into a mess of economic instability and war—just like every country in their home world of Africa. What they are trying to sell to the world is that same dank communism that has been bouncing around since the early part of the 20th century.  But because many of the leaders of BLM can’t read very well, they don’t know their history enough to understand that communism was and will always be a sinking ship. That’s why nobody who utilizes it is a profitable country.  No country in Africa has done well under communist revolutionaries and many, many innocent people have died under the economic depravity of those failed economic policies. Far, far more people have been beaten, raped, and died poor because of communism in Africa than ever suffered under slavery in America.  Far more—by the millions even up to this very day.  America provided a way out of impoverished conditions—and it was capitalism that freed those people where it could—within American borders.  Even as villainous as slavery was in America it at least provided a path to freedom which those left behind in Africa never had.  Their family lines have suffered much more since.

There is nothing for Black Lives Matter to complain about—nothing, not even police violence.  They don’t have a point to make for which sympathy has a role.  If police beat black people, it’s because too many black people are involved in crime.  Police beat white people too—the difference is that culturally black people have been taught from children up to adulthood not to respect anything about American lifestyles which the police are sworn to protect.  The stupid parents of many black youth who are addicted to welfare benefits and the ghettos set up by Democrats to garner bloc votes in elections to keep them in power on the backs of modern slaves, have raised their kids to hate capitalism—and thus the police who are there to protect private property.  Black kids specifically have been taught by their baby mommas to hate white people and to hate the police—and like militant soldiers of ISIS, to attack those symbols of capitalism anywhere they could.

Look at the situation with LaVar Ball whose kid was one of those busted in China for shoplifting while on tour with the UCLA basketball team.  Ball’s kid was in serious trouble before Donald Trump convinced the authorities in China to give the kids a break.  Rather than show gratitude for giving his kid a second chance Ball went after Donald Trump.  Ball showed no shame that he raised a kid that would conduct himself poorly—especially in a foreign country.  LaVar Ball’s argument against Trump was essentially that tired old communist banter that Black Live Matter is advocating—and the result is that he raised a kid oozing with natural talent, but can’t behave in a civil society.  The fault for the shoplifting in China was the fault of LaVar Ball’s terrible parenting—which was on defense nationally once the father attacked President Trump for even trying to help the kids.  When you get an opportunity to sit down with people like LaVar Ball and understand the values they have instilled into their children it becomes clear that they are guilty of a form of espionage that likely could be prosecutable in a court of law if we were that kind of country.  In some places around the world—especially communist nations—what Ball did to his kid intellectually could justify the death penalty.  In America we simply live and let live and we let economical means be the judge and jury.  But people like LaVar Ball should be careful what they wish for—because they just might get it.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/brennan/2017/11/08/lavar-ball-gets-reality-check-sons-arrest-liangelo-china/844650001/

There isn’t anywhere in the world where people, no matter what their name is, can have a chance to make it big in life because under American capitalism, that is the mode of operation.  Anybody who hates that system are just lazy fools trying to justify their failures or lack of ambition behind their skin color as cover for their bad decisions in life.  There is no system more just than the one all people have under the flag of America and I’m personally sick of enduring the communist messages of Black Lives Matter. They don’t have a point worth listening to.  If black lives matter so much, then the parents of black children need to raise them to be good kids instead of little ghetto thugs who hate everything, because that’s what they are being raised to believe.  If you step into many black households right now it will be discovered that many of the parents secretly are using their children to be young militants to fight battles they lack the courage or intellect to do themselves, and that’s why the kids get pulled into gangs and other criminal behavior.  That’s also why young people like LaVar Ball’s kid are out stealing when they actually come from a wealthy family themselves—because the values taught to them are wrong.  If black lives really matter then it starts in the home in what a parent teaches their children—and where they go wrong is in teaching those kids that capitalism is bad.

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

The Great Carl Rullmann and Melania Trump’s Wondrous Christmas Trees: Stumps of life that give meaning to existence

As I was admiring the magnificent Christmas decorations at the White House by the gifted fashion eye of Melania Trump I received the notification from his widow that one of my long-time friend and readers Carl Rullmann had died on Monday November 20th. She went on to say that even in his final days when he could no longer read himself, she would read my articles to him. She elaborated that Carl looked forward to everything I had to say about everything which was a nice way to put it. Because I do literally write about everything, and often deeply, which is my inclination. I first met Carl over eight years ago when I was at a meeting and he rushed over to tell me how much he enjoyed my segments on 700 WLW radio and we have been friends ever since. He often would send me private emails wanting to talk more explicitly about things I had written that he took issue with, as a deeply religious man. I enjoyed the banter and understood what role some of that interaction played in his life as he suffered through several illnesses over the last couple of years culminating in his event on the 20th. I felt sorry for his wife Rita immediately as it had to have taken a lot of personal courage for her to contact me in the way she did just seven days after. But I view death differently than most people and I found the beauty of Carl’s life to be a similar reflection as what Melania Trump was doing at the White House, and instead of feeling sorrow for a lost friend, I found joy.

This year was the first my wife and I bought a real tree for Christmas. You have to understand, my wife and I are people who keep our emotions close in check all the time and we have enjoyed over the decades the knowledge that after New Year’s celebrations are complete and we head into those cold January days with nothing much to look forward to until spring arrives, that our Christmas tree would go into a box in our basement to be resurrected the next year. She came from a wealthy family and that’s how they did things, mainly for the convenience of it. So when we were married way back in 1988 we did much the same thing, getting artificial trees that were easy to put up and take down without a lot of emotional pomp and circumstance. What I didn’t know, that really didn’t emerge until our children were fully grown and we started having lots of grandchildren to deal with, was that deep down inside she always wanted to have a live tree for Christmas.

I grew up with a live tree, each year my family had bought one going through the ritual of picking one out and then putting it up. The whole experience climaxed on Christmas Day when the whole mythology came alive to a nice end. It was always sad to take the tree down, but always extraordinarily exciting to put them up. I never remember a Christmas from my childhood that wasn’t an exciting period of my life—and the live Christmas tree was always the centerpiece. It always seemed odd to me that after Christmas my dad would take the tree out to our burn pile and we’d burn it sometime around late January and February. I’d look at it dormant on its side out in the cold covered in snow with the branches all brown and dry and wonder if it was the same magnificent thing that had been in our living room bringing so much joy.

My wife and I mutually didn’t want the emotional roller coaster of a live tree during our marriage. It gave us counsel to know that the centerpiece of our Holiday joy was always in our basement—yet the experience never seemed quite authentic. So it was much to my surprise when we were out shopping for early Christmas items when she declared, “let’s get a live tree this year.” Well, it didn’t take much for me to agree to it. We are after all empty nesters. Our kids come over for Christmas and it’s always nice, but they have their own lives these days and we are often only in it when they can find the time and will to get together. Our Christmas mornings now are very lonely and for us that is devastating, because we both always loved to have children in the house to bring mornings like Christmas to life in such grand ways. Now there are grandchildren, but we get about a half hour and it’s nowhere near the same. So buying a live tree for Christmas with all the emotion that can be involved for that Holiday I thought was a bold move for her.

I’ve watched the various presidents over the years in how they decorated the White House for Christmas because it says a lot about who they are. Back with the Clintons in the 90s there were utterances that they hung condoms on their Christmas tree because as progressives, they were actively pushing politically to replace Christianity as a guiding light for the masses. The Bush White House was more traditional and a welcome sign after the debacle that was the Clintons but that particular White House was too careful and sensitive to the progressive movement seeking to accommodate them more than traditionalists like me would have liked. Then there was the Happy Holidays of the Obama era—which was not as anti-Christian as the Clintons, but certainly wasn’t what we would call “traditional” in America. They sort of went through the motions and everyone could tell. But it wasn’t until Melania was able to design the decorating in the White House that we could see for the first time how magnificent the Executive Branch could be in leading the charge to restore Christmas to its proper place in American culture. Melania’s use of live trees and lighting was simply phenomenal, and it actually made me proud that my wife and I had decided to do a live tree this year as our personal tree has had the same kind of effect on our personal household. Because it was my wife’s first live tree she has put a lot of extra love in it knowing that the life of the tree deserved the extra attention. As she put it the whole reason the tree was raised and cut down was to serve this one purpose for just one little month of our lifetimes. Melania on the grand scale did much the same and the combined result to me was spectacular and filled me with pride and patriotism.

Of course it will be sad to take down our tree this year. And it will be sad to take down all the great trees in the White House. But the joy they provide for that very short time I think is a proper metaphor for all our lives. We are talking about the four seasons of course, Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, or conception, birth, life and death metaphorically for us all. These Christmas trees represent life in the dead of winter when life ends and renews on the first day of the New Year. It’s a lifecycle and during Christmas in addition to celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, we have constructed our holidays to serve a more appropriate and modern-day relevancy to our own existence, and Christmas trees are at the center of that mythology. They are a symbol and celebration of life in the time of death—winter. And in the case of my friend Carl Rullmann who lived a great life and was eager to learn something new right up until the end, he like our Christmas trees are wonderful to look at and appreciate. For the radiance of life that flowed through them does end and the body of the lifeform does diminish and fall away. In the case of Christmas trees we toss them out after the Holiday season for disposal, just like the dead of our human species. But it’s the celebration of their life in the times of Christmas all lit up and displayed with honor that is the point of living. Carl was one of those people and during life his lights and ornaments representing his experiences will carry on in our memories. Yes the body does die but all our lives are better because of our experiences with each other. And that is what I will always think of for now on when I see a live Christmas tree. They are beautiful things!

Safe travels Carl Rullmann on the next adventures of existence. Because like the Christmas trees we are all cut off at the stem and drinking water out of a little pot that keeps us alive just long enough. It is when we transcend that limit and drink from the waters of eternal life that our real adventure begins. And that is a beautiful thing as wall, in many ways more beautiful than life itself.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Grand State of Injustice Among American Institutions: Violance is probably the only way to fix it–I hope not

Like I usually do when I reload ammunition in my little workshop on Saturdays, I catch up on the radio segments of the Glenn Beck show where he has Bill O’Reilly on as a guest and they talk about the news of the week. That’s the only time I listen to Beck anymore. My interest is only in how those types of people see the world—which is a defeatist approach laced with Biblical fire and brimstone. Hearing them talk lets me know what we are up against out there as there are millions of conservatives just like those guys, which in times of peace wouldn’t be a problem. But these are not times of peace, goodwill and merriment. Not even the NFL is a safe zone for discussion these days so when pressed people often expose their vulnerabilities through discussion. Viewed in that way, Bill O’Reilly, the defeated former television star and Glenn Beck, another defeated television star from Fox News speak to each other with the assumption that they know how to win this war, which obviously, if they did, they wouldn’t be in such a state. But hearing them talk about the inaction of the Uranium One deal caught my attention, because they essentially let it be known that they expected no criminal proceedings and had lost faith in government to such a degree that it was their expectation that everyone would go free.

A few days after that broadcast Lois Lerner sought to permanently seal her records at the IRS where she was obviously guilty of using the tax collecting government agency to harass conservative groups which was a gross abuse of her power. Her actions at the IRS is evidence that government cannot be trusted with the management of our lives. They are supposed to be, but when given too much power without the ability to deal with it intellectually, they typically abuse it and make a mess of things. At that point, we all need a way to remove them from that power and to set things right. Typically, we have elections to fix the problem, but these days not even that works. So if all else fails, that is the primary reason we have the Second Amendment because once people like Lois Lerner get a hold of policing powers we are all vulnerable to the power of the state over our individual lives.

Look at the situation in the Senate, Roy Moore has a few women from 40 years ago claim he sexually abused them. Mitch McConnell who needs Roy to take that seat to keep the majority is rooting for the Democrat. While on his Senate right now Al Franken, a political enemy has done much worse, he admitted to sexual abuse and there are pictures to prove it. Yet the Senate has rallied behind Franken for some mysterious reason. What could that be? The truth is that to them, Republicans in the Senate see the whole thing as a game and they are only actors on the stage play of life. They do what their campaign contributors want them to do, and that’s the reality. They don’t represent us. They don’t care about us, and they are actually doing the work against us every day. If Mitch were sincere about his sexual harassment positions he’d be calling for Al Franken to step down, but he’s not consistent. In actuality, he wants Franken because it gives him a plot line of resistance. Republicans don’t want to lead, they want to follow—not Democrats, but their donors. And those donors do not love American sovereignty.

If we have learned anything from the Bob Mueller investigation of Russian influence of the Trump campaign, it’s that the system he represents has no definition and they think they have power over presidents elected by the people in a hard-fought election to alter the course of history. After six months of looking Mueller has found nothing and his investigation has gone nowhere, yet he looks and looks. All he really has is that an underling from the Trump campaign lied to the FBI about some time frame. If that is the standard of prosecution, then what about Hillary Clinton? She destroyed evidence. What standard of prosecution is there for her because she did much, much worse?

I literally could go on and on, and on about these types of conspiracies which have eroded away the faith that people have in their government. Even Chris Wallace (Democrat) fresh of a media award of high prestige said recently that Trump’s attack of the media is dangerous for us all. Well, how so Chris? Even over little things like the new movie release of Justice League, the establishment media attacked the film to no end hoping to scare Warner Bros. from making any more installments of the DC comic book characters. Why, because Zach Snyder is an Ayn Rand lover and his personal philosophy is something that the political left thinks is dangerous. The premise of the entire Superman trilogy which Zach directed is essentially the power of the individual, “Superman” the OVERMAN and how it helps the masses. Not that the masses are needed to make Superman. After Zach departed from the film the marketing executives at Warner Bros. tried to avoid the coming controversy by creating advertisements featuring the “we are all better together” motif, which was supposed to be red meat to the progressive Hollywood press. But it didn’t work. Justice League was all about the need for a Superman to fix the world—”Who is John Galt.” So the media won’t even let a movie alone, they attacked the film viciously hoping to sink its box office numbers to keep the message out of popular culture. When it comes to acquiring power the political progressives in both parties are on a crash course with reality and they are in every part of our lives.

Back to Beck and O’Reilly and their mild despair over the inaction of our institutions to instill justice to criminal elements. What are we to do if those institutions fail us, as they have? Well, we have elections and vote in outsiders like Donald Trump and new governors in Ohio like Jim Renacci. We replace the old and corrupt with the new and the bright and let them be free to do their work. I am proud of Donald Trump, very proud. He has done a great job in his first year and for Thanksgiving this year I am most thankful that he has been willing to do this very thankless job of being President of the United States. Nobody but him could have done the job he did and our economy shows the effort. Everyone knows I’m a big advocate of reversing the national debt. I’d love to cut away all entitlements including Social Security. But if Trump can get there through growth, I’m good. So far he has injected trillions of dollars into the American economy and that will start to reverse that debt clock very soon. If he can manage to get his tax cuts, then we will be on our way to 5% to 7% growth in our GDP and that will pay down a lot of debt. But the forces of institutionalism do not want the situation fixed. They want collapse and a global unification under the umbrella of a New World Order. And they aren’t going to let us have our desires for nationalism just because we want it. They are ready for war using our resources to deliver their promise to their multinational donors. It really comes down to that.

If elections don’t work and law and order isn’t respected—then war with the establishment is the logical next step. And for that we need guns, which is the reason for the Second Amendment. What other recourse do we have if we can’t trust the laws of mankind to instill justice to those who have violated the principles of valor, honor, and civility among mankind? If the law protects Hillary Clinton but not some low-level Trump staffer, or Al Franken and not Roy Moore, and not James Comey but goes after Donald Trump for firing the corrupt FBI Director—what is the next step when the law has let us down? I’m willing to let Trump continue to do his work and I hope for a peaceful end. But you can bet that I’m not counting on it. And in my world view surrender is not an option. What comes next is something that Mitch and the gang won’t like. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. But how things are now is not acceptable. Not with me, and with many other people.

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

Trump Republicans are Growing: The smoke and mirrors of the Virginia election show the real truth

I keep hearing that the Democrats won major victories in the 2017 election with governor pick-ups in Virginia and New Jersey.  They are also saying that the election was a referendum on President Trump.   I think the people who are saying those types of things are smoking crack.  For instance, at the link below you can see the county-by-county breakdown of the Gillespie battle with Northam and the results are quite clear.  The entire state of Virginia is not being represented by this shift in politics.  It is as it usually is, the dense population centers around Richmond and up in Fairfax that essentially determined the race.  Also the Virginia Beach area which is typically filled with beach bums, pot smokers and other liberal losers obviously moved in a Democratic direction as they always will.  All those blue areas contain either large numbers of government workers who are voting to preserve their wallets, or they have huge amounts of people on government assistance who want to see the money keep coming in.  But the rest of the state, especially down in the Wise County region are as red as red gets regarding conservatism, and they are most of the state by county persuasion.

https://www.politico.com/interactives/elections/2017/virginia/governor/

The election of Northam doesn’t provide a referendum on Donald Trump.  It means that we have too many members of the swamp living in Fairfax who need to be drained.   Those are the people who have grown tremendously in size over the last sixteen years as more and more high paying government jobs were added to Washington under an ever-expanding government.  They aren’t going to vote for a Republican who wants to eliminate their jobs—ever.  So if there is anything that has changed Virginia from purple to blue, it’s the government workers in Fairfax.  There’s nothing mysterious about the election.  Democrats have filled the state with regions of people who want hand outs, and jobs that only government can provide—where pay is approximately 30% higher than other regions of the country.  Fairfax is after all one of the richest counties in the country, but it doesn’t come from private industry, it comes from government workers who live there and commute to their Washington jobs feeding the swamp.

You could say the same thing really about the rest of the country; if you look at the entire United States county-by-county you will not see a lot of support for Democrats.  Where you do see large blue voting blocks are in the tightly packed cities where heroin addicts, government workers, prostitutes, welfare recipients and generally dumb people reside in large group think territories.  Those are the voters who pick Democrats, regular people who live in the vast red areas are underrepresented in politics because they tend to be spread out in rural territories—and that is a problem of “democracy.”  Lucky for us we have a republic so that those vast red areas between the two coasts do not get out-voted by the group think liberals who chose to live on top of each other in urban centers.  Why people would choose to do such a thing reflects their personal preference to hide within the safety of numbers rather than the individuality normally witnessed in rural cultures.

That is why it’s a serious folly to look at any election where government workers and social losers are disproportionately congregated and to assume a social trend against President Trump.  It’s actually the opposite, people in the red counties are tired of getting pushed around by the losers in the blue areas, and that is the cause of the current civil war—not with guns, but with words and ideological conflict.  I’ve heard a lot about how many liberals thought the country would come together after a year of Trump, and that he has made an environment that has driven the country apart.  Give me a break, President Trump has done a fantastic job, and he’s tried to play nice.  Democrats never wanted to play nice, they only wanted to impose themselves on the world around them and they always look to make red areas blue like insects infecting a house with termites.  They start in cells of collective activity, like Fairfax, Richmond, and Virginia Beach, and they seek to destroy the countryside county-by-county until the house collapses.  That is all they know to do as parasites to the human race.  And they call it a tendency toward violence if we think to resist them.  Well, of course we’re going to resist them.  They don’t think like us, they don’t act like us, and they don’t have the same values which are hard work, love of country, God, guns and family.

No, the trend is still in favor of Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party.  While it’s true that there is an even more diligent civil war within the Republican Party going on presently, that war will be won by the Trump forces.  The Bush presidents have written a little book called The Last Republicans acknowledging as much essentially.  Their obvious hatred of Trump and his supporters is very telling about what’s going on in America right now.  Conservatives have rejected the Skull and Bones promises of the Bush family toward global unification and are seeking to preserve their lives out in the red counties of rural America.  It’s pretty much that simple.  If the Bush presidents thought that the Republican Party was their view of the world, they were obviously mistaken, and haven’t been to an NRA even recently.  For twelve years I was frustrated with how weak both Bush presidents were.  I voted for them because I had no other choice and I certainly wasn’t going to vote for a bunch of hippie liberals.  But the Bush presidents were not bastions of conservatism.   When I had a choice I took it happily, and so did many other people.

http://ktla.com/2017/11/04/the-last-republicans-george-h-w-bush-labels-trump-a-blowhard-in-new-book/

Ohio’s governor John Kasich is of that Bush-era Republican demeanor.  The Party has left him behind and moved back to where the people who live in those flyover states and in counties between cities want them.  That’s not going to change.  Hollywood hasn’t changed those people.  The newspapers haven’t.  Nothing has after many years of liberal advances with that objective in mind.  Republicans who put their finger to the liberal winds of change and decided to concede, like the Bush presidents, Kasich, Boehner, and many others assumed that their concessions would be followed.  Instead, people rejected them and they are upset about it—naturally.  The trend isn’t toward Kasich and the Bush family—it’s toward Trump or perhaps even further to the political right.  The people analyzing the 2017 election obviously aren’t looking at the right things, because they are still holding out hope that the inevitable changes won’t come to sweep them away in their part of this modern civil war.  The residents of Fairfax should take their loot and go because the trend is not in their favor.

The Democrats aren’t going to have a miracle surge in support.  The whole Donna Brazile episode of the present is more about the Democratic Party trying to distance themselves from Hillary Clinton and recasting their brand with some moderate Republican support.   Brazile has thrown some red meat to Republicans trying to position themselves for the midterms, to take the edge off.  But the Democrats themselves are making a push to the political left, so we are all moving further away from each other, not more to the center the way it was when Bush was president, or his dad.  Republicans like Kasich want to move to the left with them to keep the peace.  But that’s not going to happen—and it never was.  Only people who don’t understand the situation even entertained such a notion.  The red counties of the red states are rejecting liberalism and if you look at the map of Virginia that is obvious.  The only difference is that the smoke and mirrors of the Democratic Party have been able to use a few counties in Virginia to fluff their feathers like a peacock to look better than the situation really is, and they are desperate to sell it.  But in that desperation is the truth, and that is not good for the Democrats—but it is great for the Trump Republicans.

Rich Hoffman

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