Tag: Lakota Schools

Congratulations Mark Welch: Lee Wong thinks West Chester government is “perverted”

Many who read here think that I am anti-government.  I am in fact anti-stupid and often when politicians are attracted to government positions for the healthy benefits provided, what you get are the dumbest people in our society signing up for the job because high quality people have better things to do in their life.  Government to me is all about management and I expect the best managers available to do the job of government who don’t need to personally enrich themselves in the process.  With that said I can say that in my hometown of West Chester, Ohio I personally like four of the five people in the below video—which is a trustee meeting for the local government.  One guy, Lee Wong is not one of those four.  I remember very well how he behaved for over six years, especially over a sidewalk he was working hard to extort from public funds near his home across the street from Jags—relatively speaking.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  He and Cathy Stoker blocked George Lang from being a part of the voting process until George worked hard to get a partner on the board to serve with him resulting in the election of Mark Welch.  When Mark was elected it knocked off Cathy leaving Lee to fend for himself.  Now he’s a disgruntled West Chester trustee.  His partner was eliminated in an election, beaten by Welch who is now the new President.  So congratulations Mark.   Watch the first two minutes of this meeting to see what I’m talking about.

Lee Wong said some very interesting things in that exchange; one was that he thought the process was “perverted.”  Below is the technical definition of perverted and it obviously doesn’t apply. 

Medical Definition of perverted

  • :  marked by abnormality or perversion <perverted pancreatic function> <relieve concepts or fears of perverted sexual interest—W. H. Masters & V. E. Johnson>

Where Lee is wrong about the process is that voters saw how he and Cathy had been running things so they elected somebody different in George Lang.  George then went to work looking for a managing partner on the board to help him with the district—because the previous team of Wong and Stoker were functioning from a much more socialist origin position.   You can hear some of that socialism coming out of Lee during the exchange at the meeting with Bruce Jones, the current fiscal officer.  Lee cited that he believed the board was unfair and that he should be elected president by proper rotation.  For George to agree to something like that it would assume that all the trustees were equal in value, and they obviously are not. 

George obviously trusts Mark to be the president, but Lee has shown that his personal values are not aligned with either of the two other trustees.  So to allow a seat of power to fall into Lee’s hands just so he could feel “equal” or “fair” is just ridiculous considering the voters just re-elected Lang doing things they way that he has now for a while.  Then they voted for Welch who was operating as a companion to George.  Between the two West Chester has really sprung into action bringing many exciting opportunities to an already lucrative area.  A lot of the very good things currently happening in West Chester right now could be directly attributed to the four people sitting in that video—excluding Lee of course. 

The world changed under Lee’s feet and he didn’t adapt to those changing circumstances. All through the last decade progressive viewpoints even among conservatives were fashionable.  Now they are not—instead Lang has brought a free market flare to West Chester politics which is allowing economic growth to escalate proportionally.   Lee is now a relic of the past and he doesn’t understand why.  That is why there was the really awkward silence during the meeting where everyone except Lee understood what was going on.  Lee Wong came out sounding like an out-of-touch grandparent demanding that people ride horses instead of cars as a mode of transportation. 

Lee also invoked that he was the top vote getter over both Lang and Welch.  Well, Bernie Sanders is also very popular—socialism is very popular among lazy people and there are some of those people in West Chester.  Government workers and companies that suck up to government workers love socialism.  That much was evident on Martin Luther King Day in January of 2016.  One of the busiest roads through West Chester is 747 at the foot of Beckett Ridge.  On that national holiday the roads were 2/3rds empty as too many people were off work.  I couldn’t help but wonder what all those people were doing on that day off if not something productive.  How could a vibrant society trying to achieve excellent GDP nationally afford to take off a day for the memory of a civil rights leader?  It’s nice to recognize such people with a national day of remembrance, but to take a day off from productive enterprise seems pretty silly. The kind of people who were off on Martin Luther King’s Day are the type of people who voted for Lee Wong—they tend to be lazy, and too addicted to government services—so Lee represents their type of thinking.  That does not mean that Lee should be in charge of the board.  Competition and the marketplace of politics should do that and George Lang has easily outsmarted Lee to achieve what he thinks needs to happen in West Chester.  The voters re-elected Lang’s vision and the businesses who are attracted to West Chester because of the vibrant economic environment that Lang has helped create along with the other four people at that trustee meeting, are a testament to his success. 

Putting Lee in as president just so his feelings weren’t hurt isn’t “fair,” it’s stupid.  For anyone who questions such a proposal just go back to the Beckett Ridge sidewalk story and watch Lee lecture Lang about being unethical and a whole series of slanderous comments that were certainly unfair.  It’s all on tape—CLICK HERE to review.  It is because of Lee’s actions that he’s now on the outside looking in.  Sure, a bunch of socialist lovers voted for him but if they were in the majority, Lang and Welch would not hold the dominate seats and be able to outvote Lee 2 to 1.  That happened because of what Lee himself did, not because the system is “unfair.”

I’m talking about this because I think every school board and trustee meeting in America should learn something from this form of government that George has envisioned to nurture along—with a lot of help from his friends.  If all branches of our government worked as well as George and Welch have helped make West Chester function—we’d all be a lot better off.  I don’t do as many local articles as I used to because honestly, I have readers in over a 170 different countries and the daily stats are quite good.  The power of the written word is like water—people see it sitting there and in small amounts it looks soothing and docile.  But over time it carves many of the rivers, oceans and continental barriers that we see and gives life to the entire planet.  So I put an emphasis on fixing the mind of people who are broken by their educations and cultural references and it takes time for them to see the light of day.  I write to eat away at what’s wrong, to propose that intelligence can imply on collective stupidity.  What good is a large collective mass of rock if water can erode it away into a pebble with a constant presence and pressure to reshape it into something else over time?  The written word has that kind of power.  But in this case the West Chester trustees and the people behind the scenes that make it work—except for Lee Won–are examples of how all governments need to strive to be.  They could take a lesson from George Lang’s playbook. 

Lee Wong is lucky that everyone is so nice to him.  As a functioning socialist George and Mark put up with Lee because they are respecting the voters—those same slack-jawed, lazy, losers who were off work on Martin Luther King’s Day when there were productive enterprises to embark on.  And I think that’s pretty nice of them.  They may not agree with Lee, but at least they let him sit at the table and aren’t ganging up on him the way Stoker and Wong used to do against George when he was still new to the board.  George is a lot nicer to Lee than he needs to be.  Lee’s definition of things needs to change from the kind of East Avenue activity that might actually be considered truly perverted.  The government of West Chester is not an example of absolute power that corrupts.  Absolute power is in working with another trustee to destroy another person while at the same time hunting for real perversions on the streets of Hamilton late at night.  George and Mark aren’t doing that.  Lee on the other hand can’t say the same.  Yet they treat him fairly—so long as he stays out-of-the-way.  West Chester is the example that other governments across the world should be copying.  And before it’s too late for them they need to figure out who their functioning socialists are and brush them out-of-the-way so real people can do the real work that government should have always been doing.  But they can’t allow people like Lee to be in charge just because it’s “fair.”  That’s just not how things work in a capitalist society.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Welcome to the End of the World: Will it be laissez faire capitalism or socialism–don’t let the stupid decide

The only real solution to the health care debate is more competition.  Now, because of the oligopoly and mandatory requirements on insurance coverage, prices are now guaranteed to always go up.  The only way to change that guarantee is to introduce competition—sort of like what’s happened with oil prices where a few years ago we were told that they’d always go up.  But once the United States started fracking more heavily and other nations joined into the oil-producing fray, the Gulf States lowered their costs to squeeze down the margins making domestic oil investments less profitable—hoping to maintain their dominance on the market.  Currently in health care—due to hundreds of millions of dollars poured off K-Street into politics—there are only an oligopoly of insurance providers—which drives up all the costs ridiculously.  As I’ve covered here many times, a lot of this health care cost isn’t even necessary any more.  CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT WHY.  There are cures for cancer, there are technologies for regenerative growth—there really isn’t any reason to be sick or to even grow old.  The only reason we still do is to satisfy the market expectations of the pharmaceutical companies.  Things have to change dramatically and quickly.  Obamacare has to go away and the next president will have to tap into as much laissez-faire capitalism as possible—otherwise there’s no chance.

On the Democrats side of the political spectrum, they don’t really have a candidate for president.  Hillary Clinton is a criminal and I have serious doubts as of this writing that she will be able to beat the socialist Bernie Sanders for the nomination.  Then with that said, I really don’t think America is ready to elect an open socialist.  I don’t think in 2016 the nation is ready to accept socialism the way that France has, and many other European countries.  A large portion of America has been raised on socialism—especially victims of public school over the last two decades.  They have been taught in their educations that socialism is the way to go—especially college graduates.  It takes most young people at least a decade to start seeing the reality that they can only get once their parents cut them off from an allowance, and they pop out a couple of kids.  Hopefully by that time they aren’t sick with venereal diseases and can actually live moderately healthy lives for two or three decades without overloading the doctor’s office every time they get a sniffle—which is another large contributor to insurance increases—the preponderance of so many people living their life with risky lifestyles—reckless sexual attitudes, chemical abuse through narcotics and alcohol—and high fat diets.  What is remarkable however is how stupid most people are these days, and to exemplify it read the comments below from a recent CNN article about health care and the Bernie Sanders socialist approach.  We all know they are out there, but it’s another thing to hear them speak so foolishly.  Have a look and read the CNN article linked below.

DemandSider12 hours ago

@davidfour @sunny5280 

We have let capitalism run rampant, to the point that we borrow money from Communist China, to subsidize the human resource budget of our largest private employer, so that they can profitable import from Communist China. Do you think this is wise?

http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/16/news/economy/sanders-health-care-taxes/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom

hardhatharry6 hours ago

I’m a Bernie fan but why even get people worked up about this, we all know Congress would never pass 99% of his ideas.  What it would cost is irrelevant, he is just getting people talking about it longterm. 

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medianone5 hours ago

@hardhatharry You never know….  Conservatives have done a great job of pushing their “anything but Obama” or “anything Obama does it bad, terrible, a failure” to the point that maybe people would consider something different that is not associated with Obama.  Maybe?

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QuestionCNN5 hours ago

@hardhatharry What this article refused to mention is that Hillary will do the same thing – increase taxes under the pre-tense of providing Universal Health care, then divert it to pay for her police-state Marxist Utopia. But CNN is in the Clinton camp and is helping her by providing free negative campaign attacks on the other Marxist – Bernie Sanders 

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DemandSider5 hours ago

@hardhatharry 

This election reminds me a lot of the 1932 election The inequality, the Republican leaning Congress, the economic collapse due to middle class destruction and speculation. With FDR’s election, both Houses switched to heavily Democratic. Sanders’ views are very similar to FDR’s. 

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RustyShackel1 hour ago

@DemandSider @hardhatharry Agreed, Bernie does seem like such a believer in the authority of government that he would take actions to throw Americans in imprisonment camps much like FDR did with innocent japanese-American citizens. I wonder who Bernie would target  – conservatives? The rich?

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DemandSider1 hour ago

@RustyShackel @DemandSider @hardhatharry 

No, you are confusing him with Chewbaca, The Confederate Republican nominee. He’ll probably just put another wing on in Cuba, call it Trumptanomo, and make a killing at tax payer expense, per usual with these “free market” parasites.

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DemandSider7 hours ago

sickforprofit.com/ceos

Stephen Hemsley, CEO, United Health Care, total value of unexercised stock options (Forbes):  $744 million

“Hemseley returns $190 million in stock options acquired as as result of practices found to be fraudulent by The SEC” -American Medical News

Edward Hanway, Cigna CEO, total value of unexercised stock options, $28.8 million,five year compensation, $120 million “The family of a 17 year old girl who died hours after Cigna reversed a decision to deny her liver transplant to sue” -Oakland Tribune

Michael McCallister, CEO, Humana, total value of unexercised stock options, $60.8 million, “Humana abandons seniors in Florida; returns after Republicans pass new Medicare law, upping HMO payments by 25%” – NY Times

Has this Bernie Sanders fella no sense of decency??!?  Who would hire these, ah, people?

  

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pulsecolo7 hours ago

@DemandSider Gosh, those salaries could be used to help pay to retrain and pay

all those insurance company employees mentioned earlier…. 

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JRCHICT6 hours ago

@DemandSider ” Bernie Sanders would LIKELY raise taxes,……”

“SOME experts say,…..”

Great journalism Tami

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medianone5 hours ago

@JRCHICT @DemandSider to be fair, or at least in cutting Tami some slack; we do live in a very litigious society.

Plus the article did say, “Sanders’ plan hasn’t been evaluated by the Congressional Budget Office or major think tanks…” which seems to be the standard for vetting candidate tax proposals.

But I agree with your thinking.

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DemandSider1 hour ago

@medianone @JRCHICT @DemandSider 

Yes, for a person to have their medical bills reimbursed, they often MUST be litigious. SIngle payer would ease the burden on our courts. 

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DemandSider12 hours ago

Insurance stocks rose with the passage of ACA. I don’t think they’ll rise with single payer. Manufacturers should rejoice, however, as their expenses will fall a lot.

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booboospal11 hours ago

Assuming a President Sanders could get his proposal through Congress, how would it affect (adversely?) the 50 million and increasing number of folks now getting Medicare benefits?

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CPR8 hours ago

@booboospal Well it would greatly impact the hundred thousand plus people that work in private insurance or in support of it. 

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booboospal8 hours ago

CPR: Do you know the answer to my question?

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pulsecolo7 hours ago

it would do nothing to adversely affect those folks, the only thing that would happen is that the advantage plans would go away.   But, there would no longer be a need for advantage plans as better coverage would prevail for all seniors as well as the rest of us with everyone in the pool.  Keep in mind, that the Silver  exchange plans under the ACA, that most Americans have with the subsidies,  have much higher deductibles and out of pocket costs than traditional Medicare does without any advantage plan at all.  The insurance industry successfully lobbied and sold America on the “snake oil need” for advantage plans.  Advantage plans have a daily deductible for in hospital stays, and do not cover long term care.   Plus, when seniors sign up for them, they may actually be paying more in the long run than had they banked the money they are spending for those plans.  

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booboospal6 hours ago

pulse:

Would there still be Part B premiums?

Would retiree pension and investment income be taxed more than now to pay insurance costs?

Would there still be a need for supplementary coverage?

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JRCHICT6 hours ago

@booboospal  all good questions.

I’m pretty sure though that we’ll have many who will expect to be perfect right out of the gate. Find any and all reasons to condemn it as we’ve done w/ ACA

Primarily use it as a political football.

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medianone6 hours ago

@booboospal Again, all good questions.  And shouldn’t debate on universal health care also include looking at other countries who’ve successfully implemented such systems?  Their costs, outcomes, sustainability, etc?

Seems like this debate has been ongoing for decades, at least since Hillary Care proposals.  And if other countries have been successfully operating single payer systems and covering 100% of their populations, it is a wonder our “top men” haven’t been able to track these successes and implement them here. 

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JRCHICT6 hours ago

@medianone @booboospal  I’m not sure our “top men” care more about taking the money from the lobbyists of the health and insurance corporations for same old same old, or they’re interested in doing what’s right for us.

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booboospal10 hours ago

My former employer pays a fixed monthly amount (adjusted each year) toward employee AND RETIREE and dependent health insurance. So far it has been enough $$ to cover a Blue Cross supplemental policy AND the basic tier Medicare Part B premium for both my wife and me. Of course both of us paid for Part A (hospitalization) Medicare coverage by payroll tax while we were employed.

How would the Sanders proposal affect us?

Anyone?

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CNN User8 hours ago

@DemandSider

Republicans: you blame non religions christians, atheists,Muslims, blacks,Hindus, Obama,gays etc. for US weak middle class,but the real problem is no healthcare,expensive college, no paid maternity leave etc. 
—- 
-evil socialist countries all rank higher in median wealth(or wealth of the middle class) 
Source: 
http://www.middleclasspoliticaleconomist.com/2013/06/us-median-wealth-only-28th-in-world.html 

(Before you republicans blame colored people, remember that UAE, Kuwait , Qatar, Singapore have a high percentage of colored folks but still have a richer middle class than us ) 

If you don’t believe my source just google “median wealth by country” and you will see similar results. 

We dont have paid maturity leave, free healthcare or free or reduced college. We are the only developed country to not have this. Thats why we rank so low.

Uninsured by state- 
http://www.gallup.com/poll/184514/uninsured-rates-continue-drop-states.aspx 

dem. states have a lower percentage of uninsured than republican states

Those are some really poorly educated theories shown above generated by a society raised on a terrible public school system which taught them all the wrong things.  The basic instruction was that mixed economies such as what Scandinavian socialism proposes is the answer to equal distribution of resources without considering what the source of the value of what’s distributed entailed.  For years the word on the street was that the United States would become more service oriented as other countries would become the producers.  Otherwise, China and the Gulf States would make most of our American stuff and we’d have more time to think about things and have service jobs to sustain those “intellectual” pursuits.  Well, that plan hasn’t worked out.  The “money” jobs are now overseas and socialists think that by raising McDonald’s jobs to $15 an hour that the “middle class” will be sustained.  Only idiot academics who live in a campus bubble could have concocted such a stupid notion.  Only laissez-faire capitalism will solve our problems.  Not crony capitalism which is what the pharmaceuticals and oil conglomerates have—I’m talking about open markets competing with each other to offer the most superior product for the lowest price.

All the countries mentioned above, places like UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Singapore are ultimately servicing the United States demand for products.  The United States creates the global demand with their $17 trillion a year in gross domestic product.  That GDP in order to survive by the way must increase by nearly double just for us to hope to survive as a country—and for the world in general to even have a chance.   Without the United States all those mentioned countries wither away and die.  So they are not examples of success or flowering epitaphs to managed economies.  Socialism is the tombstone that the epitaph needs to be inscribed upon, because it has not worked.  The United States is the only life support the world has.  It is sad that more people don’t understand that.

The next president cannot be a Democrat.  The House and Senate can’t just have Republicans; it has to have “conservative” Republicans the likes of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.  Whoever is in the executive branch will have to be willing to fight the world and idiots like those in the comments above from their instructed commitments to socialism and convince them to embrace not just capitalism, but the most open form of it imaginable– laissez-faire.  We are no longer at a “theory” phase in this global economic struggle.  We are at the rubber hitting the road phase and it’s not the time for games.  If the situation doesn’t get fixed right here and now it will be over in the future.  Because there are just too many socialists who are having kids and are raising them to be just as stupid as they are—the evidence is right above you—they do exist.  Astonishingly they somehow manage to feed themselves, but they aren’t much good for anything else.  But they do vote.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

Hillary Clinton for Prison in 2016: Life can be a bitch, so don’t vote for one

Hey, this very nice young lady understands, Linda Lleshaj has found herself in the middle of some vigorous media attention after she was photographed at a Trump rally wearing one of the Alex Jones t-shirts promoting Hillary Clinton for Prison in 2016.  As 2015 closes and 2016 opens a new fashion trend is emerging against Hillary Clinton as millions of Americans have watched her on live television snake her way out of the email scandals, and a movie about government incompetency that she is responsible for is at the movie theaters still trying to deal with the Benghazi killings of innocent Americans in Libya.  We’ve watched the debt clock continue to tick upward, then we’ve watched the FBI and the White House fight over the definition of terrorism in San Bernardino as two ISIS sympathizers murdered innocent people just as Obama was trying to cover the tracks of his folly in Syria by letting refuges implant themselves in America to avoid violence there that he caused-making lives for all of us far more dangerous.   Obama was far more concerned about gun control than the possibility of more ISIS terrorists coming to America on converted UPS shipping planes under his authorization—and we are all just supposed to go back to sleep?   Some are asleep, but many more aren’t and that number is growing every day.  Some, like this very fine young lady know that we are at war and she’s doing something about it—and that’s good to see.  You can get a shirt like the one she’s wearing at the following links and join the fun.

http://www.infowars.com/video-women-defy-media-narrative-love-trump-at-packed-michigan-rally/

http://hillaryforprison.net/

https://www.facebook.com/HillaryForPrison16

http://store.infowars.com/Hillary-For-Prison-T-Shirt_p_1692.html

A radio guy got into a bit of a Twitter scuffle with me on Christmas Eve of 2015.  When he wanted out of the clash he said to me, “It’s Christmas Eve!  Go hug somebody who loves you.”  My reply was, that I had those bases covered and to remind him that he was the one who brought up the following subject, which apparently angered him:

Rich Hoffman ‏@overmanwarrior  10h10 hours ago

Rich Hoffman Retweeted Michael Graham

It will be impossible for Hillary to be POTUS against Trump. She’s a criminal and he won’t let anybody forget it.

Rich Hoffman added,

Michael Graham @IAMMGraham

Serious Q for Trump fans: If you knew with metaphysical certitude that voting for Trump would make Hillary POTUS, you’d still do it, right?

0 retweets0 likes

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Upon reading that I thought of George Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas Eve to gain a surprise attack against British forces for a victory that was badly needed for the revolution.   You don’t win wars sitting around eating turkey and ham and praying at church—you take the fight to the enemy and you stay sharp at all hours of the day and night.  For perhaps the 80th time in the short week leading up to Christmas Day I actually had to remind people that we were at war in America.  That war is raging and that it was because our incompetent government has refused to acknowledge it that few know that we are in it.  I have been saying things like that for longer than Trump has been running for President, as proof of these articles will testify to.  I’ve been saying the same things that he’s saying now while he was still giving money to Democrats to help with zoning issues in New York and was focused on his hit show The Apprentice.  But, because of what he brings to the fight, I welcome him with open arms—because he’s a tremendous asset to the cause of winning this “civil” war.

A few years ago the kind of people I explained this war to would have thought that I was a tin-hatted conspiracy theorist looking for a fight that wasn’t there.  But this year at the Christmas parties and dinners celebrating the close of the fourth quarter of our economy rational people are now listening and I explained to them that they better be ready. The only way that there can be a peaceful conclusion to this war is that Trump gets elected president and takes this fight to the legislative process from the people’s house in the Executive Branch.  Otherwise, the streets in America will become active as a civil war of chaos and anxiety.  It’s not an organized fight the way the Civil War was in the 1860s over a few definitive issues.  This civil war is over fundamental ideologies, the sovereignty of the United States as a nation, and the types of people who have tried to internally weaken it to allow the global community to merge with it.

On Christmas Eve my mail lady, who is a government employee, but is individually a very nice person gave me very strange looks as she brought several packages to my garage.   It was a beautiful day so I had the door open to enjoy the weather.  She was a little shocked to find me at my work bench wearing one of my guns holstered from my practice and working on several others.  I had some time to clean and oil them, so I took advantage of the opportunity.  She normally drops packages on the front porch and we never talk, but it was Christmas Eve, and she felt a need to make direct contact because my garage was closer than my porch for her.  I thanked her, even though I could tell that she was anxious about the guns—which she shouldn’t have been.  The packages were not Christmas presents, but were orders from Brownells for the maintenance of my guns.  Specifically, I’m performing a trigger job on my Ruger Vaquero and the new springs were among the parts that were in the boxes she brought to me.  I have been dusting off my old gunsmithing skills lately.  I’m not doing it for money as of now because I don’t want to go through the trouble of obtaining a FFL, as I’ve had before.  When you get one of those you have to get fingerprinted and an ATF agent suddenly has access to your premises to check your records.  That’s one of the reasons I gave it up years ago.  As she walked back to her delivery van I could see by the way she walked that she was still uneasy about me.  If this were communist China—as the Obama administration clearly shows an inclination—she would report me to the enforcement police for reconditioning, one government employee reporting the activities of civilian activity to other government employees.  They are nice people when you get to know them, but in their role as employees to the kind of system that is allowing Hillary Clinton to flourish as a Democratic candidate, they are the type of people who could be dire enemies tomorrow.   I imagine there were some colorful conversations about me when she arrived back at the Post Office.

A few weeks ago I had an arrival from UPS that required hazmat approval, as the material was explosive in nature.  The delivery guy expressed concern about the contents.  As a fairly young man he had been trained through social conditioning that deliveries like that were “suspicious.”  The government considers people like me more dangerous than their Syrian Trojan horses.   I told the kid not to worry about it—“It’s not for a bomb,” I told him answering the question that I knew he wanted to ask.  “It’s primers for my reloads, nothing bad.”  But to young people trained to be nice government employees from their liberalized public schools and social conditioning, guns are bad—in anybody’s hands.  So I added, “don’t worry, my mouth is far more dangerous than anything I have around here.”  And that’s the truth.

I am aware that everything I do is being watched by the NSA, the FBI, and the CIA.  So they know I’m no danger to the United States—because I am the embodiment of what an American truly is, or should be.  But I’m not taking any crap from anybody, because I don’t have to.  I know what it feels like to be watched, followed, and even have contracts against you, and it’s not a big deal to me.  I’ve dealt with all that before, and apparently Trump has as well.  What I like about him is that he’s not afraid of anything—which makes him my kind of person-regardless of politics.  I like and respect fearless people. My mouth is the thing they fear the most—and when you understand that, you don’t have to use a gun for offense.  The guns are for defense—in case some idiot wants to cross that line.  Otherwise, my mouth does more work than an army of gun wielding patriots would—and I’m fine to keep it that way.  But if someone loses their mind and wants to impose themselves on me or my rights as a free-born human being—they will have big trouble.

But as for offense, my mouth works just fine, because it is that kind of war.  And in this kind of war, Donald Trump is as good as boots on the ground.  He fights the kind of war the government is imposing well which gives a platform for young people like Linda Lleshaj to function within.  That poor radio guy who wants a certain kind of Republican candidate is falsely assuming that we are not a nation at war, and that the 2016 election is just another cycle of idiots and fools who make promises that they never keep once they get into office.   We don’t have time for another Paul Ryan type in an important government office.  We have to literally capture the flag, because domestic enemies currently posses it under rules of war and only then can we talk about some sanity in politics.  Because I’m not changing my life for anybody-I don’t have to.  I play by the rules, I pay my taxes, and I work hard every single day.  I take care of my family without government help and I give a lot more to the world around me than I take.  I am not the problem and I see clearly the mismanagement of the people who have been responsible, so I wear my guns around the house just in case some desperate fool decides to short-cut sanity and take something that belongs to me.  Otherwise, I will be happy to fight the war on the terms of modern battle, and that is mostly with my mouth and through potential elected candidates like Trump.

The essence, and cause of that war is Hillary Clinton and her support organizations—the people who keep her as a viable candidate in spite of severe criminal misconduct.  I lived through the Clinton White House during the 90s and I’m not about to put up with that garbage again.  She belongs in jail, not in the White House, and it’s about time that more people start realizing it.  To her credit, Linda Lleshaj is part of a new generation who has to grapple with that reality.   And it is great to see that she is awake and is actively trying to get other young people to wake up as well.  Welcome to the battlefield Linda.  It’s a Christmas present to me to know you’re out there.  That is my idea of a good Christmas.   So let’s all cross the metaphorical Delaware together and surprise everyone.

Don’t believe we are at war, watch all the videos above, completely.  The evidence is quite clear.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

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

Proof That American Muslims Celebrated During 9/11: The selective amnesia of mainstream media

It is truly astonishing the level of collective hypnosis that is occurring on the topic of radicalized Muslims within the United States. Exchanges like the one below on the Morning Joe with Donald Trump continue, where they berate him for his assertion that there were cheering Muslims in New Jersey who were having block parties in celebration as the World Trade Center buildings came down on 9/11 2001. I saw it, my family saw it, and obviously Donald Trump saw it. I know it was a long time ago and YouTube had not been invented yet. I also understand that many of today’s reporters were probably just learning to read in grade school so they probably don’t remember. They think the world and its history started once YouTube came to life in 2005 where video was suddenly readily available anytime to anyone. However, I’m sure there is video of the occurrences, we know what some of those Islamic groups were called—so it shouldn’t be too hard to dig up the video proving correct what Donald Trump is now saying—because we all saw it that were alive and cognoscente back then. I think many people are just choosing to forget about it because the implication is so scary that people would rather not know of it. One of the groups cheering was an organization that became Revolution Islam. Before we get into that, have a look and listen to the extreme denial displayed on that Morning Joe program. It really is astonishing. There is evidence to the contrary of what they are saying in the very next video.

Revolution Islam was known as recently as 2009 to protest outside of mosques in New York City trying to recruit peaceful Muslims into their radical agenda. They openly celebrated 9/11, the Fort Hood shootings, and every act of terror catalogued by Islamic radicals anywhere in the world. As they say, the Quran commands them to terrorize non believers. They would gather in the streets of New York and shout down all passers-by right in the light of day. They made no attempt to hide their behavior and the media reported on it. CNN did as well as others. There may have been an attempt to re-edit history to favor a pro-Palestinian vantage point, or perhaps the oil barons threw money at news organizations to erase their past financing of terrorist activity, but something happened to hide the videos from 2001 showing groups like Revolution Islam cheering in the streets after 9/11. But you can bet on it, those videos are out there, the news organizations just need to dig them out. Revolution Islam is part of a fringe group within the United States of radical Islamic fundamentalists who want a global caliphate and they will stop at nothing to get it. They openly worshipped Osama Bin Laden with great love—even saying that they cared more about him than themselves. Don’t believe me; well watch the video below from Anderson Cooper’s show 360 on CNN. He’s a credible source and did a story on this group with a sit down interview in 2009. I have no question CNN could dig up in their files the video of the cheering Muslims as the 9/11 towers were falling down. I know what I saw. If they need help searching their data bases just look under this group’s name, Revolution Islam. Likely the FBI, CIA, and every other news organization have the same video. Even if they don’t, or have destroyed them, this video at least shows the remnants of their behavior before they went into hiding after the terrorist attacks. These radicals were still operating out in the open.

If you haven’t already, make sure to copy this video on a private file so that you’ll have it later. If you are reading this story a week or so after I have written it and the video is gone, it’s because it was pulled from YouTube. As of this writing over a million people have seen the video, but if it gets out in the open it will likely be removed. It’s hard to say where Google’s loyalties are in regard to this global desire to help radical Muslims establish a global caliphate rooted in Dark Ages mentality. I wouldn’t think that Google or other forward leaning organizations would support this kind of censorship, but you never know. I am surprised that the collective media is so adamant about creating a separation between Muslim behavior and radical Islamists because the proof has been quite evident for a number of years. CNN’s report shown above is all the proof you need to comprehend the scope of the problem.

There really are only two explanations—we are talking about an Alex Jones massive conspiracy theory involving globalists who are using Islamic fundamentalists to perpetuate war and anxiety so that Americans will give up their Constitutional rights in favor of a global government which they control—or Americans endured such a trauma on 9/11 that they have eliminated the facts from their minds to deal with the terrible tragedy. After all, we all know Muslim people and want to think of them as nice and peaceful. Nobody wants to think that the person they know could be one of these nut-case terrorists so perhaps we have blocked out the unpleasant thought in favor of a national dialogue that preserves our sanity. Such bad news isn’t good for television ratings, and maybe that is the reason for the mass elimination of video from that period. But one thing is very clear—there were American Muslims very happy about 9/11 and they were celebrating.

Living in New York Donald Trump surely saw the CNN story and reflected back to the 9/11 period eight years prior. As much as Donald Trump had been interviewed and pays attention to the news—I have no doubt that he saw such reports in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I remember such things too. I certainly remember the celebrations overseas, and I remember having discussions with people about homegrown Muslims sympathizing with the World Trade Center attackers—that were generated by what we saw on TV. After 9/11 a lot of Muslims felt they had to go underground so they hid their religion for a time. There were lots of reports from the media who felt sorry for these people as the established order of things took on the Muslim cause almost as a civil rights issue. Much of the bad behavior that we feared about radical Islam was being ignored so that innocent people wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire. Without question that is why so many young reporters today are reluctant to criticism of Islam in any way—even if the evidence points right into the doors of a mosque.

Over time it became so unfashionable to criticize radical Islamic behavior that the media had decided to ignore it. They put them in the same class as other minorities in America propping them up as a civil rights issue and threw their support behind massive America collection programs like the NSA hoping that Homeland Security would protect them from further attacks. When those attacks did come the blame was placed everywhere but the obvious. Fort Hood became a situation of “workplace violence” while the Boston Marathon Bombing became a couple of misunderstood children—not focusing on their radical Islamic exposure as the cause of the violence. For the same reasons that many people can’t remember much of the events during a violent automobile accident—because the brain shuts down as a survival mechanism—Islamic terror is undergoing the same type of process across American society, and the media certainly has a huge case of that selective amnesia. Whatever the cause of it, whether conspiracy, or psychological—it is a factor that shows up glaringly in these Donald Trump interviews with the media. They chose not to remember, yet the presidential candidate does—just as many do and the evidence is there for everyone to see.

Even if there is never any evidence of video from 2001, it cannot be denied that there weren’t American Muslims who were just as crazy as the typical ISIS terrorist now. CNN interviewed them with a credible journalist who was mainstream—and gay. Anderson Cooper is as harmless toward advocating false conspiracies as it gets. He interviewed members of Revolution Islam to get the facts and they weren’t hard to get. Those people were standing in front of a mosque advertising to fellow Muslims why they should become radicalized. What Donald Trump is saying isn’t conspiracy, or even politically incorrect. It’s a fact, as clear as the daytime sun on a cloudless day. The only difference is Trump hasn’t decided to ignore the facts he’s observed through history—while the general public and the media have. Yet that doesn’t change the threat level, and that is something we all need to take very seriously. Not every Muslim is a radical. But it only takes one or two, and given the recent history of treacherous acts, terrorists aren’t coming out of Christianity, Buddhism, or Hinduism—they are coming out of the Islamic religion. All that anybody needs to do is pay attention to the obvious.

Sorry to say it to the people who don’t support Trump, but he’s right again. He has a good reason to double down on the issue. Because he’s not wrong.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Attacking Gunslingers: Why “shooting from the hip” makes a great business leader

I have a bit of a reputation professionally and personally for shooting from the hip, metaphorically speaking. People who say that about me speak it as if it were a bad thing that indicates recklessness. They also say the same type of thing when professional quarterbacks are quick to throw the ball down the field under risky circumstances—they call those people “gunslingers,” as if the term concocted abandon of calculation and patience. So I need to set the record straight on a couple of things that I have been thinking about as I have contemplated the root cause of my sudden obsession with Cowboy Fast Draw. Like my bullwhip work, most of the targeting is done more through feeling than in properly lining up the barrel with a target with careful assessment. I happen to be good at quick targeting, as I have shown under many competitions of speed and accuracy with bullwhips and am routinely very good at the Ohio Bullwhip Fast Draw that we perform each year at the Annie Oakley Days in Greenville, Ohio. There is no time to take care and to aim the bullwhip at a target. I have learned through muscle memory where all the points of trajectory are, how wind affects my aim, and to consider all the factors of targeting under stressful, timed conditions. I have it down to seconds with a bullwhip, and my new obsession with Cowboy Fast Draw is to further speed up my thinking to the hundredths of a second instead of just a second or two. That’s why I’m personally attracted to those types of hobbies—but I find society’s labeling of those types of people to be disturbing and indicative of something much more symptomatic of an overall disease that is crippling our country.

There is a new breed of American, and world bureaucrat educated with modern scholastic emphasis on metaphorically taking more aim before one shoots in life who have deliberately, and maliciously sought to smear the name of the bold and the reckless that stand behind just about every profitable enterprise in the history of mankind.   This has left our nation and world in a state where the very timid and fragile minded rule the world through paperwork, regulations and an emphasis on calculation as the mode of representing quality instead of how quickly a target is hit. Using guns as a metaphor, the modern bureaucrat believes the quality of an endeavor is in the form of the aim, not in the objective of shooting. The reason of course is that since the masses cannot think and act fast, they have placed upon the world a mandate through democracy that the weakest and most timid can rule the corporate world by handcuffing the strong and decisive with mundane regulation and law that they create to give themselves a shot at equality.

With the Cowboy Fast Draw Association what I love most is that the aim and accuracy of the endeavor is all performed by shooting from the hip. If a shooter takes the time to aim, they will lose. Too much time is taken off the clock unless a shooter literally plucks the gun from their holster and levels the barrel just above the rim with a quick pivot and unleashes a shot within a hundredth of a second from seeing a light indicating that action needs to take place. I have thought about this concept for years with my bullwhip work and the net result for me is that when I need to make a hard decision fast, I can and do with tremendous accuracy. I have a great track record of making good decisions in a split second manner. But that’s not good enough for me. I want to be faster, so I am taking up Cowboy Fast Draw to improve myself. When I say that I intend my official career to be that of a gunfighter, this is part of why I reference it this way.

Just because something is shot from the hip or struck without a proper aim—traditionally defined, it does not mean the act is reckless or without skill. Quite the contrary—in many ways shooting from the hip for those skilled in the act is a way to encompass both speed and accuracy into as seamless of an action possible.   Whereas the typical academic is focused on only one of those elements, they have attempted to define the quality of an endeavor based on the time it takes. If speed is desired, then they instantly reference more people to accomplish the task because it plays into their overall collectivist mindset. They don’t like that an individual can provide both speed and accuracy when it comes to complicated tasks, so they have found countless ways to instill laborious monstrosities of inefficiency to give themselves more time to think—which they love to do. But they hate action—actually pulling the trigger at a decision gate.

That is why in many manufacturing fields across the United States, from aerospace to auto manufacturing our ability to produce has been greatly crippled by allowing these timid types who require of themselves to aim very carefully in order to hit a target to strangle our productivity because their primary objective in life has been to diminish the input of the traditional gunslinger—the bright eyed problem solver who shoots from the hip often and hits most of the time. Their jealousy and need for social equality have actually crippled our manufacturing capacity with mundane academics that are so timid to pull the trigger on anything for fear of not landing a mark that they shoot slowly and miss often. When they declare that “so and so” “shoots from the hip” they mean it as an insult, but what they reveal is the source of a vast detriment—the root cause for the declining effectiveness of American manufacturing through improper association toward definitions of quality.

In Cowboy Fast Draw the rules are strict, just as they are in the world of manufacturing. You must have your gun holstered and your hand cannot be in the trigger guard. You must use a single action firearm. The distances you shoot from are 15’, 18’, and 21’, which is quite a distance for a firearm. You cannot shoot before the light comes on. Within that context, you must figure out a way to draw your gun, hit your target and do it within a fraction of a second. If you miss, yet beat your rival to the draw, you don’t get a score. You must have speed and accuracy—just like in our bullwhip competitions. The goal of the skill is to develop both, not just be strong in one facet. You have to be accurate and fast, not just fast, not just accurate. By that unit of measure the timid fuddy-duddy is just as wrong as the hasty fool who is often referenced as a “gunslinger.” So when the bureaucrat says that the person who shoots from their hip is reckless, they are just as dangerous, because their inaction is just as detrimental as a mistake. Just because a shot isn’t taken doesn’t mean it wasn’t needed.

In the field of life, there are many targets and most of them have to be hit at 21’ or less, metaphorically speaking. And they require speed and accuracy to deal with them. Necessity dictates that the quickest to the target gets the prize, and in the competition of life, the first to draw and hit their target wins. Time does not wait for the timid to pull their gun, aim the sights, take a deep breath, let out half of it, then to squeeze the trigger at just the right moment. In life, you have to draw and shoot before an eye can blink. Bureaucrats try diligently to stop time itself with mountains of paperwork to hide the fact that they don’t have the courage to draw and fire. Both actions require decision-making rooted in having a conceptual understanding of the target and hitting it without the aid of eyes and time to guide the bullet to the intended destination. You have to know where the target is in space and time and trust yourself to hit it faster than a mind can think about it.

Those who are successful at shooting from the hip are those like the people in Cowboy Fast Draw. There they dress up in cowboy outfits from the late 1800s period of American history. But they might as well be the deal makers and job creators who have made the economy of America the greatest in the world. Shooting from the hip for them is necessary, and a skill that few have. In their hands, it’s a competent task. But in the hands of the bureaucrat it’s a serious risk that is nearly a guaranteed failure.   Bureaucrats are incorrect to assume that all people shooting from the hip are reckless just because the skill in being successful at it is something they lack. Rather, they should work hard to become better and to stop trying to stop the world with paperwork so that they can “feel” successful. In life you have to hit your targets and you have to do it quickly—before someone else does. The world doesn’t stop for anybody—especially those laced with indecision and timidity that lead to massive bureaucracy. Success finds those who shoot from the hip, because they are able to do things in life with the two ingredients necessary for accomplishment—to perform tasks with speed and accuracy. Nothing else is suitable for a definition of success—and that is why the term “gunslinger” has been slandered to hide the real incompetence of the typical bureaucrat.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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What Carlos Todd and Donald Trump Had in Common: Eminent domain and the opening of Liberty Center

The Donald Trump speech from Norcross, Georgia at the North Atlanta Trade Center on Saturday October 10, 2015 was particularly telling of American politics. It was a great speech and it should be watched—seen below. Just a day later after the Sunday morning talk shows Trump continued to beat on the same kind of drum. Trump’s accusations were confirmed when Obama appeared on 60 Minutes later that same day after the football games and was grilled by Steve Kroft over the destabilization of the Middle East, also shown below. In that 60 Minutes segment was discussion over the upheavals in the Republican Party after a week of nobody wanting to be Speaker of the House—because of the Freedom Caucus. There is a lot going on, and it’s very clear that only someone like Donald Trump is equipped to handle the very volatile situation. Obama clearly is not privy to the current trends—he’s in extreme denial—as is most of the Beltway.

On issues regarding the Second Amendment, trade, immigration and economic growth, Trump is a far right conservative—so much so that Republicans should be drooling within the party at his intentions. He has the ability to market the Party in a new way they haven’t enjoyed since Ronald Reagan and they’d do well to embrace him. On the other hand, he is rather liberal regarding taxes, healthcare, and eminent domain. I could argue all day long with Trump on those issues—but they are his thoughts and he couldn’t do any worse than what we’ve had so far. I am willing to take what’s right with Trump metaphorically, and literally and offset the negatives because he is the kind of person who can get things done—and things need to get done. The Party bosses may not like Trump, but they’d be stupid to pass up on the chance of a lifetime. Trump would build a wall on the southern border, he’d expand the military, and he’d restructure the tax system all while stimulating the economy which are all things he’s capable as president to have a direct influence on, and at 70 years old, Trump has enough gas in the tank for one last spectacular decade of his life and America should give him a shot to go out with a bang. Obama has already embarrassed America—stepped all over the Constitution, and caused irreparable damage on Capital Hill. Only extreme success can fix the situation now.

As the Liberty Center shopping complex begins to open in my hometown it is ironic that one of the biggest Republican Party bosses in Butler County’s history was laid to rest. Essentially the Liberty Center shopping complex was made possible because of eminent domain. I was always against the Butler County Regional Highway construction which ran right through all the areas I used to play as a kid. Carlos Todd was a developer who built the Republican Party base in Butler County to essentially use crony capitalism to complete his building projects. Our political system is so dysfunctional that the only way to get projects done on a massive scale is to purchase politicians with money and loyalty—and Carlos Todd was one of the masters. He died at 77 eventually to his battle with cancer leaving quite a power vacuum in his wake.

I was in firm opposition to Todd and his Butler County associates Michael Fox and Bob Shelly as the Butler County Regional Highway used largely eminent domain to destroy my childhood home, a cemetery that had Revolutionary War soldiers in it, and several Indian Mounds that populated the area destroying a lot of potential archaeology. I thought of Todd as evil incarnate on the face of the earth because the Republican Party led by him was buying up property to develop for their projects stepping all over the rights of private citizens in the process. It was incredibly wrong and I was made even more furious when they took my father to a baseball game where the developers had a nice private box and convinced him to sell to Todd all in the name of progress. Their basic sales pitch was, sell and profit, or fight and be destroyed. They had the power of government to destroy, so he should take the money. I had been willing to fight them to the ends of the earth with any means necessary, but it was my father’s property—and his right to do with it whatever he wanted. So the developers got their way.

Well, Michael Fox eventually went to jail, Bob Shelley got into sexual harassment troubles and was pushed out of his trustee seat, and Todd drifted off into the shadows as his grandson took over the family business. There has been a lot of change and upheaval since then as the Regional Highway was built and slowly development began to appear around it. Bridgewater Falls is just such a development, which I have slowly come to enjoy over the years. Liberty Center is the latest, and most spectacular, but was it worth all the pain it caused people to run all over their property rights to build it?

When I started No Lakota Levy all the characters from those eminent domain fights joined together with me to fight the Lakota levy because the local public school was blocking out some of those developers from further work and the district had reached a saturation point. Developers had built all the buildings they could hope to ever construct leaving the taxes enormously high on all future development tipping the balance away from everything that had been built by them. I had always been against the explosive growth because of the sustainability of it, so now I was on the same side as people like Carlos Todd and the developers he largely controlled. It was strange to get to know all of them from a perspective on the other side of the fence. Most of the emails I sent or received had Carlos Todd copied on them so he was well aware of what we were doing and it threw me back to when I was in opposition with him and I was able to map out how he controlled things from a distance. My hatred subsided toward him because I saw what he was doing—he used government—which had stuck itself in every crevice it could over a long period of time—to hedge the bets for his projects in his favor. I couldn’t argue his method or reasoning. The developers were productive people making things that didn’t exist previously—and that was a good thing. Some of them I liked quite a lot, some I didn’t. I worked with them and just did my thing eventually doing as I always do—just sort of taking over. When the heat got too hot for them they checked out and we parted ways. Every time we’d meet toward the end they’d try to poke me into running for office, so I deliberately sabotaged the relationship with them to get out of that circle not because I disliked them, but because I needed to maintain my own course.

I’m sure Todd would have liked to see the Liberty Center open, but he didn’t quite make it. I am proud that its there, and of all the hard work many people endeavored to construct it. I think it’s a miracle of economic activity and the best minds of architecture. But was it worth it? Was it worth the building of the Butler County Regional Highway? The destroyed lives, the destroyed history and the integrity of Butler County politics? The answer is yes—even though it cost me personally. True, the world would have been better if everything had been left alone, but there’s a lot to be said about creating something from nothing and I appreciate that more than stagnation for the benefit of sentimentality.

The reason I told that story is that establishment Republicans, many of which were put in place because of people like Carlos Todd have mostly committed vast amounts of evil using eminent domain to destroy the lives of many. Donald Trump is not alone in that effort and he shares a lot in common with Carlos Todd, a developer who used politics to get what he needed to accomplish done. Getting to know Todd and his troops well from the other side of the fence I was able to see what was really in their heart. Sure, some people were bad, and they went to jail, lost their seats or ended up wiped from the face of the earth one way or another. But the good ones endured because through competition there really is no other way to sustain your essence, but through authenticity, and Carlos Todd was authentic—just as Donald Trump is. No question when you do things that relate to other people, they will have an opinion one way or the other. The judgment of a person’s character is determined by how they act under pressure. What people do under pressure validates their worth—and Todd showed that he had a lot. I might not always like what he planned to do, but his effort had purity to it. But within that purity there were many people who were trampled on and were smacked around quite a lot.

The real answer is to get politics out of development and remove many of the regulations that cause all this evil. Until that happens people like Carlos Todd and Donald Trump will work the system to their advantage. That is why I feel that Trump—after a lifetime of making deals and running over people can actually straighten out the mess of politics and its terrible relationship to business. Ideological people who have not built things themselves but were relegated to just giving their opinions about things do not have the benefit of my life where I’ve been very active on both sides and know clearly where the line is drawn. I can only treasure that opportunity because it gave me the philosophic foundations to understand all these complexities without losing sight of the real objective—economic growth, the sanctity of private property, and the evil of a system that the most clever among us learn to use to get things done—in spite of the desire of that system to destroy all thought and action. Donald Trump is an insider, and I would love to see what someone like him—who likely hates the system as much as I do, would commit himself to if given a chance to right the ship in ways that Carlos Todd never came close to achieving. But for Republicans to turn on Trump as a radical maniac who would wreck the party—they are in denial at what put them in office in the first place. They’d be wise to get behind Trump for the strength he provides and for giving them an opportunity to have their office seats. Because without people like Carlos Todd, Donald Trump and eminent domain—most of them would still be small time hacks looking for an opportunity that would never come otherwise.

The only way to change the system is from the inside by someone who knows it better than anybody. That’s why I’m voting for Trump. His use of eminent domain and the guilt I’m sure he feels about it I think would make a person determined to correct that situation for the benefit of economic wonder which everyone would eventually enjoy. Trump is in a position to morally build a philosophy of growth by utilizing the lessons learned from crony capitalism into a more laissez-faire system perhaps for the first time since the first few decades of America’s creation. And that would be wonderful.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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My New Ruger Vaquero: A best friend that brings out the best in humanity

There is nothing about my new Ruger Vaquero .45 that speaks of violence to me. Looking at it all I think about is cowboy trick shooting and stunts that can be performed with it. It is to me equivalent to a nicely made basketball intended to be thrown into a net by a good athlete, or a wonderful pair of golf clubs meant to drive a ball across a vast green into a hole 400 yards away in increments.   Shooting with the Vaquero shown in the picture is essentially a sport where science and skill combine into hitting a target under timed circumstances. There is nothing violent about the act whatsoever. Guns might have been invented out of war like necessity and the sport of shooting to practice for that eventuality—but the sport of shooting is just another human endeavor intended to test skill against adversity with the drama of competition to drive image

What struck me on this particular gun—as they all do these days is the nice messaging that often comes with them. Ruger in this case was grateful for my purchase and the supplied literature made it clear. It showed to me a serious interest by the Ruger Company to build a solid base of customer support for a product unquestionably made in America by good, hard working people. The gun feels like a well-crafted work of art, its machining is immaculate, the tolerances on its critical junctures well inspected, and it feels incredibly competent. This is not a company that should be targeted by liberal hate groups. Ruger is not a company making death—it makes life, and tradition. There is nothing about my Ruger Vaquero that speaks of violence if a person really understands what shooting is all about in the world of sport. It’s a fine tool to me for exhibiting traditional American art forms, and it’s a miracle of modern science—more sophisticated than driving a golf ball into a hole, or throwing a football 50 yards down field into the arms of a waiting receiver. To me the Vaquero by Ruger is the ultimate individual sport where great power is incorporated into the mechanisms of great engineering and it deserves to be respected as such.

But it’s not lost to me how grateful the Ruger Company is with each purchase made of their firearms. It is because of their attitude toward their customers that I get a special feeling whenever I see the emblem blazed across a t-shirt of hat, or on a banner at a competition. I know they care about their customers in spite of a world led by liberals that wants to eradicate them from the face of the planet because those political minds want to make the company into a representation of hate and violence. Football is a violent sport, golf clubs are sometimes used as weapons of hate when they are slammed over the head of a victim, but political advocates don’t seek to ban golf courses or the sport of golf. The gun has a special hatred aimed at it because liberals have no idea or desire to understand that guns like the Vaquero are designed for much more than hunting or self defense—they are built for the sport of the Cowboy Fast Draw.

In such groups as those in the preservation of the Wild West arts are some of the best people I have ever met. The world would be a whole lot better off if more people interacted with these great Americans. And on the hips of most of them are often Vaqueros by Ruger. They wear them openly in public often and nobody ever gets shot, and there are seldom ever hard words spoken to others. There is almost always respect for their fellow shooters. Within that alliance of sportsman they revere each other with camaraderie that is exceptionally healthy and overwhelmingly positive.

When I picked up my Vaquero at Right 2 Arms it was the owner’s parents who were working the store and were armed behind the counter. There was no reason to feel apprehension at that visible support of what looked like a Glock holstered on the father. We proceeded to have a very nice conversation about Gatlinburg, Tennessee while the background check came through for me. They were good people and I looked over my Vaquero as they spoke about their upcoming vacation plans. It was good, healthy conversation among highly armed people who invoked no danger whatsoever. Instead, the presence of guns elevated our interaction to something of respectful banter united under support for the 2nd Amendment.

Just two days prior I had a wonderful lunch with some VIP’s within the shooting world. We talked about gun ranges, plans for helping the youth through learning marksmanship, and the bad rap that guns were getting in the wake of the Oregon shooting.   I enjoyed the company more than I would if the conversation were a usual business lunch where all the things that people really like are talked around because of political correctness. With these guys, we could all just be ourselves which was refreshing. It was much better to talk about things that really interested us instead of sports scores and the season trajectory of our favorite football teams. There always is a solid foundation of realness that comes from those types of lunches as opposed to others that feel like a clip on tie at a wedding. It confirmed much of what I have been feeling lately about firearms and their role behind the American experience. We need to be more proud of that heritage, not less so.

I mentioned to the guys at the power lunch that we needed to market firearms differently as a public perception—that as shooters we needed to stop riding the ropes of the obvious political fights we are without question in. We need to get into the center of the ring and control the fight from that position instead of just taking the shots to the face and hoping to outlast our opponents—the gun grabbers, the liberal radicals teaching in our public schools, and the political class that wants to turn America back into an aristocracy similar to Europe—instead of one founded on independence from gun possession.

The reason my Vaquero as opposed to other guns I have bought is so special is that its purpose is exclusively for use as a cowboy shooter for the sport of Western Arts. It is the type of single action that won the West in America and that means a lot to me symbolically, and the sports that have risen up in the wake of that historical memory is not much different from the battlefield strategies of football. The games might have been invented by inclinations of war, but they evolve into camaraderie and tradition that brings out the best that a society has to offer. The gun in America exhibits the best of this example.

The summation of my contacts the week that I picked up my Vaquero at Right 2 Arms is guns make people better—not worse as progressive politics suggests. The political left had misdiagnosed the root cause of human evil and sold it back to society in a package of deceit. When that deceit is removed and Americans are allowed to wear their firearms on their hips, and discuss them as extensions of themselves, a higher quality in people emerges built out of respect. The knowledge that domination of the another person is not possible—so a respectful exchange emerges between human beings when both have guns. The trouble emerges when that relationship is lopsided, where a maniac is armed and a peaceful person is not—that’s where abuse happens. But Ruger is not about feeding that fear—they are about making America a better place and that sentiment begins with the simple thank you note that they package with their guns. I felt honored to open up my new Vaquero. It’s an honor to have such a fine gun from such a quality company. As is typical of most gun manufacturers, they are examples of what’s best about American manufacturing and that is certainly the case with Ruger. They are one of the very best, and every time I look at my Ruger Vaquero, I will think of what’s best about America and the culture that should otherwise thrive in a society open to gun use for the skills that emerge from them in sports.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Real Reason John Boehner Left Congress: How evil hides behind institutionalism

I don’t plan to bash John Boehner into the ground forever. As much of a nice guy as I think he is, nice doesn’t mean a person is immune to criticism, especially when they hold very public government positions—yet John said something that was very insightful within his announcement speech of leaving congress ahead of some serious controversy. The cause of his effect—his desire to step down as Speaker of the House and to leave congress all together by his words is to protect the institution of his office intending to offer that the individual sacrifice themselves to the higher concept so to preserve it. In Boehner’s case, he is specifically indicating the minority of his political party who are rebel rousing constitutional purists, and are going to fight him at every step in future key issues, such as the funding of Planned Parenthood, the debt limit and the inevitable fiscal cliff that we are all facing as a nation. Boehner proposed that the institution was greater than the individual which explains immensely what is wrong with American government in 2015.

Even though Boehner and his wife just bought last year an $835,000 condo in Marco Island, Florida that in itself is not a case of alarm other than it’s a bit expensive for a guy who only makes $223,500 per year as speaker. For one, $835,000 doesn’t get you much of a condo in Florida, that’s nothing too crazy over-the-top even though socialist leaning despots have tried to make an issue of the purchase. That’s not a lot of money for the private sector—but it is for a government official who is supposed to be doing the business of the people who elected him. For Boehner to spend that kind of money on a second home in Florida indicates that he intends to become a lobbyist sooner than later where he will easily be able to make a seven-figure salary twisting the arms of his former friends for favors. Boehner is 65 years hold presently. The rules dictate that all members of congress take one year off to cool their former connections—but at precisely November 1st of 2016 at the age of 66 look for John Boehner to have an office on K-Street as a means to pay for that expensive condo in Florida and to rake in the money for about a 10 year career at that lofty sum. Boehner will become rich off the “institution” he holds in such high regard and he will have done it without really bringing any real value to the table of philosophy and republic preservation. He will have done it just to enrich himself behind a mask of “sacrifice” like every other loser who has left office and found employment as a lobbyist.

It seems like a long time ago but remember Trent Lott, the former Senate Majority Leader in 2008? Well, he and ex-Louisiana Senator John Breaux opened up a lobbying firm and took in $30.8 million dollars over a three-year period after they left office. They now work for Squire Patton Boggs who does lobbying work for Amazon. Their job was to twist the arms of people like John Boehner into doing what they needed for their clients. Boehner was often the monkey in the middle who had Trent Lott beating on his door over some issue or another—a guy who obviously helped pave the way for Boehner to emerge as an obscure Ohio congressman to the eventual leadership role of Speaker of the House by working things behind the scenes. Well when those favors are called in what’s John supposed to do, keep the door closed on Trent? Or is Boehner supposed to listen to the twenty raucous Constitutional purists who demanded that Boehner act out of integrity instead of lobbying dollars. Boehner decided that if he wanted to cash in on the “institutional” scheme of government employment then he’d better do it while he was relatively young. So he sang, zippity do da, and announced his resignation—while he still could cash in on his “sacrifice” within congress for 25 years. For him it makes sense, play golf at his new Florida condo for a year while the House drowns in squabbles that have no easy answer, and then return for Christmas of 2016 as a millionaire to close out his years and family fortune by providing access to corporate America the halls of congressional power. So much for the value of the “institution.”

But what was most sickening about Boehner’s announcement was his social proclamation about institutionalism—as if he truly believed that the House of Congress was so sacred that he needed to remove himself from the situation so to preserve it. That is just ridiculous—manically so. Boehner’s presentation of the assumption was meant to throw people off the trail of his true intentions with a long nurtured social illness that poses that institutions—collections of people brought together under the umbrella of common belief are more powerful than the individuals who formulate the beliefs that the masses collect under. The assumption is that sacrifice erases the need for individual logic so long as that individual is willing to surrender their mind to the collective whole of an institution. The media and virtually everyone watching instantly forgave Boehner for his vagina-like approach to exiting Congress at a critical time because he evoked to the public that his individual needs to avoid the coming conflict was not about himself, it was to preserve the “institution.”

When I am critical of the church and religion in general it is because it trains the masses to think in this fashion, which is one of the greatest evils offered to our modern modes of thinking. I would never propose that being an atheist was the correct approach either. I am of the thinking that the correct approach to these complicated problems has not yet been invented. There is no philosopher from the past who has provided a map to navigate by—that map still needs to be created. But putting the individual in a subservient position to institutional value is false. On the other hand, you cannot have mass anarchy either, where individuals live hedonistic lives indulging at every impulse—evil and otherwise. A code of behavior is needed to hold individuals together so that proper conduct at life can be achieved. Yet allowing an institution to define those guidelines surrenders the individual to the impulses of mass collectivism.   Not a smart idea because what it does is allow for an institution to wear a mask of holiness, whether that institution is Congress or something like the Catholic Church and allows the value of behavior to be applied to the collective efforts of the institution instead of the individual behavior of its members.

For instance, you might remember dear reader the situation of Jerry Sandusky of the Penn State football program.   Jerry was part of a group of well-known and powerful campus personalities who routinely raped children. The behavior was hidden behind the institution of Penn State—the institution was greater than the sum of the individual, so Penn State would live on while Jerry went to jail for his behavior. Yet Jerry was allowed to molest children under the cover of the institution—by using its mass and authority to give him leverage, and access to many young boys. The Catholic Church is known to have conducted themselves in the very same fashion—yet the church itself continues on as a symbol of piety even though it provides a shield to hide the individual behavior of the criminally insane. Congress does the same thing; it hides the individual behavior of its members under the greater good of institutionalism. So if Boehner decides to work the system to his benefit, then its forgiven because he has surrendered individual thought to the yearnings of institutional preservation. But in reality it has nothing to do with the institution so long as Boehner can pay for his Florida condo with the lobby power of K-Street.

Institutionalism is not superior to individual will. Society still has to figure out how to merge good behavior with a code of conduct that is rightly generated by the inner needs of every individual—but surrendering thought to institutional control is not the best option. And neither is the notion of sacrifice. You would think that after many thousands of years of sacrificial emphasis within our institutions—whether it’s sacrificing your life for a job, a family, or a god, that we would have learned to recognize the farce. When a public official like John Boehner says such a thing in a very public statement, you are listening to a ruse—likely in his case—one that he believes himself, especially as a devoted Catholic. Don’t pay attention to the individual misbehaviors of the people who make up the institution, so long as the value of the collective entity is preserved with immunity. Do you see what’s going on dear reader and why we have such a poor philosophy? It allows evil to work its desires behind collective enterprise without the worry of individual value—and this is how poor conduct spreads itself through institutions. With that known, Boehner isn’t just leaving to save himself the future embarrassments that have been headed his way as the leader of the Congressional “institution.” He’s leaving to get rich—while he still can. And that’s the real story.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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