Tag: Lebanon Schools

White Supremacy is not a Conservative Value: Using the 4th of July to measure American evolution for the better

I remember what it was like to not have a representative in the White House. Last year during the 4th of July in 2016 I was able to start seeing a light at the end of the tunnel as it was obvious that Trump was going to be the Republican nominee. The Brexit vote shocked the world and FBI Director James Comey revealed the extent of Hillary Clinton’s crimes during a press conference. So I was feeling pretty good about things politically for the first time in my adult life. Of course now that Trump is president everything is happening just as I expected it to and I’m happy. He’s done more in his first half-year as president than anyone in history and he’s just getting started. Yet it is still stunning to see how narrow-minded the political left is. Their opinions of Trump are rooted in complete hatred which I can understand to some extent. After all, I have hated the people they’ve had in the White House for many decades. I didn’t stop enjoying life because of it though—which is what is going on with them. While watching President Trump and Melania speak at a 4th of July picnic to a normal person there was nothing to be upset about. Like him or not, Trump represented the office of president nicely, and with respect. But the vile hatred that was exhibited was quite astonishing—especially in Melania’s case.

During the long weekend, I was able to watch a few documentaries that I noticed on Netflix about the Ruby Ridge incident, and the Oklahoma City Bombing which umbrellaed Ruby Ridge, Waco, and then climaxing into Oklahoma City with a PBS spin on the whole thing—essentially from the vantage point of the political left. It’s been a while but It surprised me how much the white supremacist groups played a part in those terrorist attacks that were very much a part of the 90s. Essentially, as the Clinton administration tried very hard to strip away individual liberty and firearms rights it was the neo-Nazi groups on the so-called “fringe right” that were most enraged. I couldn’t help but conclude that many of the radical religious views of the white supremacists were a lot like those of ISIS—where they take an extremist view of religion and use it to justify violence.

Clearly the Clinton administration was cramming its values down on those people to incite them to violence—poking their fingers in their eyes hoping to get them fighting so they could justify federal action in destroying them. Obviously, they didn’t succeed because the political left found itself out of power anyway and those neo-Nazi’s are still out there in the countryside of rural counties all over America. Generally, this is how it goes, the further away from big cities that you get in America the less tolerant people are toward diversity—and more literal the interpretation of the Constitution will be displayed in conjunction with religious texts. The closer to a city that people live the more progressive they will be, and it is there that Hillary Clinton found almost her entire voter base in 2017. It is important to remember with these neo-Nazis that the NAZI order was a socialist one, so to a person like me—these white supremacist groups don’t get it. They are acting purely out of fear from the perspective of their race and are missing the fine points of the current Constitutional philosophy. The PBS filmmakers obviously wanted to sum up the issue that anyone who wasn’t like them—urban progressive—were more like these neo-Nazi groups and that gun shows were the breeding ground for violence.

Well, I know a lot of people and I spend a lot of time around guns and I can say that I don’t know anybody like those neo-Nazi groups that were featured in the Waco, Oklahoma City, or Ruby Ridge incidents as background characters. And anyone who knows me knows I’m certainly no racist. I probably associate with more people foreign-born on a friendly basis than any ten people who you know dear reader so the PBS filmmakers and the political left in general obviously do not understand what makes up the conservative right. I would hardly call neo-Nazis the “far right” because by their own definitions they are way too collectivist based to be considered properly conservative. They have more in common with the political left than they do with someone like me—and other Trump voters. Trump certainly isn’t in that neo-Nazi category. The political left just lacks the proper definitions so they have made them up. Trump’s supporter base is a far cry from the kind of people who were involved ultimately in the bombing of Oklahoma City.

But, one thing to note, the further away from cities that people in America are—the less they trust the government and rely on their own individuality to get through life. Only a very small percentage of them are like the white supremacist groups shown on PBS. The white supremacy activism is just a byproduct of ignorance that emerges when the outside world is too far removed to color their thoughts with options—much like ISIS might emerge in the middle of the desert in the Middle East without a local movie theater there to bring culture to their region—and something else to think about besides Mohammed’s rules and virgins in the afterlife once they’ve already mutilated the women here on earth. Extremism happens when ignorance is cultivated. We clearly see this in the inner-city cultures where Democrats run the failing—bankrupt cities—like Chicago and Detroit. Extremism on all sides happen because people have limited understandings of things happening outside of their regions—and lack a basic curiosity to discover them.

Trump is certainly no neo-Nazi white supremacist. His ability to communicate is quite extraordinary and I found his speeches on the Fourth of July to be refreshing. I would have thought that even if I weren’t a supporter. So yes, it was astonishing to see that people disliked Donald Trump so much even though he was clearly not trying to stoke the flames against his political rivals. That tells me something very important—that people like those who made those PBS videos are upset that their attempt to categorize Trump supporters as some ignorant white supremacists had failed completely—because that’s why they were so upset. It had nothing to do with anything the First Family had said—it was that they didn’t fit the narrative that had been created over a long period of time. Trump the billionaire and his supermodel wife had more in common with the rural American than the PBS producer who investigated radicalism on the political right in an effort to advance progressive agendas to a public guilted into compliance without conflict. Watching those documentaries now as opposed to a year ago, it was like they were made in a different America where the standard modes of framing debate would hold to the scrutiny of reality. Fear and loathing is no longer the accepted mode of control that can be used to steer the population into a particular direction. The red state which has traditionally shaken its head at the city dwellers who voted for a bunch of nonsense feel good sentiment had taken back the country. Trump was their representative and the change is very obvious and will last a very long time.

Rich Hoffman

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The Ridiculous World of CNN’s Jim Acosta: Why we are lucky Eric Trump is so fast to defend his dad

A lot of people forget what the Trump family sacrificed to have Donald Trump president of the United Sates. They have great properties all over the world to manage and they have quite a fortune built the old-fashioned way—and they could have been happily neutral New York progressives for the rest of their lives and nobody would have blamed them. But when Trump decided to do something about the way the world was shaping up to be, and understood that he was in a unique position to do something—he had to pick sides and that isn’t generally good for the family business.  It used to be people thought Trump was an arrogant billionaire but he was on another place and so long as he stayed there, people would see the Trump products and think of exceptionally high quality. Now that he’s president essentially half the world hates him, while the other half obviously loves him—and as a businessman that’s not a great place to be.  I think with Trump he has the long view in mind so history will be very forgiving to the Trump name.  But in the meantime, it’s going to be tough on the family.  So it is very unique to have a guy like him in a powerful elected office and it is ever rarer that his kids are so supportive—such as Eric Trump over how the CNN reporter Jim Acosta has treated his father in the White House.

I found the Tweet by Acosta particularly interesting and I loved Eric’s response to it. This is what new media can do, it can create real-time discussions that are much quicker and less filtered than liberal editors at traditional outlets like CNN would typically permit—and its driving them crazy—the MSM.  Because these new media applications have their strength in exchanged ideas it seriously puts poor philosophies at a disadvantage because they can’t hold up against competition driven by reality. When Jim Acosta says something that in the 90s might have been profound and emotionally driven our new world can scrutinize his position and comment on it often to their disadvantage.  That has put CNN in a bad place leaving them to attempt their liberal activism in the White House briefing room for which Sean Spicer had, had enough.  Due to the constant grandstanding by Acosta to look good for television the White House now makes reporters turn off their cameras while asking questions so that they can’t become “YouTube” stars at the expense of the current administration.

Typically, in the private sector where money is made and GDP is measured from—which is really all that matters—government is a burden to that number so the larger the government the less efficient a nation—nonsense like Jim Acosta showed a predilection to participate in was grossly ignorant. A “democracy” as all these leftist losers keep yakking about is not a good thing—a rule by the majority is just stupid because most of the majority is not very smart.  That is why we have a republic which allows for a partial majority rule process but the effort requires participants at least smart enough to vote and even then regionally. For instance, a crack dealer in San Francisco who likes anal sex with other guys should not be able to vote to send a member to congress who is supposed to also represent a book-worm from Ohio who works 90 hours a week, loves his family, has straight sex with his wife and is mostly friends with farmers from the country.  The two value systems just aren’t compatible—so we have a republic of representative government and we let them fight it out instead of us fighting among ourselves.  But the “public” doesn’t have a right to know everything by merit of ownership.  When Obama and Clinton were in the White House people like me were effectively shut out of the democratic process and the “People’s House” was not representing me—and they made that quite clear.  So now I happen to have someone who does represent me in the White House and the shoe is on the other foot—and people like Jim Acosta can be mad about it—but who cares.  Too bad.  Tough F**king luck dude.  I don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not his little feelings are hurt or not.  Speaking for myself I want proper management of our government starting at the White House and I don’t want a bunch of noise like Acosta spews out there trying to screw it up.  In the private sector, we don’t allow that kind of grandstanding.  Typically, such a person would just be fired.  Obviously, Jim Acosta doesn’t understand the rules.  He thinks we’re a democracy—which we are not.  And he thinks that the White House owes him something—which again—it doesn’t.  All the White House owes anybody is that they do what was promised to the people who voted for their administration.  That’s it.

Part of what makes this White House so different, and so much better is that it is filled with people who actually have experience in the world—not a bunch of political hacks and that is why we are lucky the Trump family as a whole was willing to take all this on. Eric Trump doesn’t need to get involved in a scuffle with Jim Acosta. Yes, it might cause a decline in memberships to their various golf resorts—but they are willing to absorb that hit to do what’s right and that is so rare in the world.  People like Jim Acosta don’t understand those motivations.  Eric Trump confronted Acosta because it was the right thing to do and by the moment it is causing leftists to disintegrate.  The clash of philosophies is just too great.  Acosta all his life along with his contemporaries, thought they were safe behind the veil of contemporary progressivism and now all that protection has been stripped away like a scared young child hiding under the covers.  There is Jim Acosta ranting and raving like a spoiled brat kid citing rules that never existed articulating a fairness that only resonated in the wildest imagination of the very destitute.

So yes, we are lucky that we have these people in the White House and that they are changing things for the better just by bringing proper management to the swamp of Washington D.C. smoking out losers like Jim Acosta who always wanted America to be something it wasn’t—a democracy ran by fools, losers and drug addicts. In the Republic for which we are, we have representational government—not a rule by the mob and for a change there is someone qualified to manage our White House with private sector experience. That means no-nonsense management that pushes loud mouths like Jim Acosta to the back of the line so that clear voices can resonate with important information for those critical management decisions.  If the Trump family had not been willing to do this important work, we’d all be worse off right now.  So if there is anything to be thankful for it’s that they are in position to do great things and the cost to them in spite of what people think is very high.

Rich Hoffman

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The Call to Adventure: A 52 Week Project which photographs authenticiy

It was strange recently getting yet another notification from the Ohio courts of Butler County that I’ve been selected for jury duty because my name ends up in the hat so often due to my voting patterns.  I noticed while filling out the form which included my wife and kids that none of them have what you might call—“traditional” jobs.  My wife is a happy housewife, my oldest daughter a professional photographer who is very highly sought after and my youngest is an illustrator.  As I write this she, (my youngest) is doing a commission piece on the Batman villain The Joker shown below.  But none of the ladies in my family have a “traditional” job where they go to work, punch in and sell away their day for cash.  I know that’s the typical way that we measure economic success, but I’ve always been a big supporter of that type of freedom—especially for women because they tend to invest more into children, households and the emotional nurturing of a family as a whole.  When people are free of that primary concern of having to sell away their time for money, it allows them to invest in less tangible aspects of family building, so it makes me proud to see that among the women closest to me, they are all on that type of path.  They don’t have a “boss” out there they must yield to, and that is something I think is very important to family development, because it makes them the authority figures of their own lives which is why that question is asked on a jury selection form.  Attorneys obviously want to know that the people in their pool are “normal” people miserable like everyone else—so the way I answered that question likely will knock me out of the selection process.

My photographer daughter has really impressed me; she is taking her business to a new level as seen in these included videos.  She’s doing something called the 52 Weeks Project where each week she is picking a subject to photograph then she shows how she comes up with the shots and how the editing process goes on arriving at the final product.  She’s a full-time mom, but on both of these efforts she was up at dawn before her little boy woke up wanting breakfast and conducted these pictures for her project squeezing in a lot of creativity into an already packed day.  She’s been busy with booked appearances for several weeks now and coming up shortly after this publication she has a photo shoot in Chicago.  So what you see here is a very developed photographer who is expecting herself to be one of the great ones.  What she does is out of pure passion which I liken back to having the ability to be free of having a “boss” in her life who governs her away from home while on a time clock. That freedom has allowed her to expand her personal life in ways that I think are quite extraordinary—and necessary to achieve the level of art that she is shooting for.

Even her subjects are unique in the scheme of the photographic community.  Her first entry into the 52 weeks project was “A Call to Adventure” which I thought she managed to squeeze a lot out of while working in a very limited area within Cincinnati.   For those who don’t understand why a “Call to Adventure” is important it’s a classic motif most appropriately defined by Joseph Campbell in the telling of mythologies.  Usually after the first act of a movie or the introductory phase of a novel the main character is faced with a jumping off point from the static patterns of their normal life and into the promise of adventure provoked by some dynamic force. For some people the “Call to Adventure” might be as simple as a stranger approaching you from the back of a cab at a stop light while you’re walking to work in New York and asks you to help them get to the airport.  You must then decide to help or not because if you do, the static patterns of your day will be disrupted and that could have unpleasant consequences.  Then for others it might be an opportunity to fly to Cambodia to do sex traffic rescue work in some steamy jungle nightmare, but while there you make a new archaeological discovery that changes the world perspective on our knowledge of history.  The “Call to Adventure” is often how you can dramatically enrich your life for the better with vast experience, but to do so you must step away from your static patterns and allow dynamic forces into your life.

For instance, a friend of mine who worked on the Trump campaign in 2016 called me on a very busy day last week and asked me if I could appear on CNN the next day.  I had scheduled a lot of events and I really didn’t have the time.  After all I had an oversea meeting planned at the very same moment I was supposed to be on with Anderson Cooper.  So did I answer the call and go on CNN which was likely just going to do a hit piece.  As it turned out the CNN people were very gracious and were not the kind of gotcha people who Rush Limbaugh surmised when he talked about the event on his show.  I did the CNN segment along with some other peers and it got people talking and was fun to do.  I still managed to get all my work done—although it was different from my usual day and I could point to many times in my life where answering the “Call to Adventure” directly led to some very unusual experiences which ultimately enhanced my life.

I have learned over time to never get too rigid about things.  The “Call of Adventure” is something I consider so important that I often go out of my way to find it with a very laissez-faire approach to living and personal management.  I may start the day with all kinds of planned activities but by the end of it, I end up doing things I never thought I would at the start and that comes from saying yes to the “Call of Adventure.”  So it made me particularly proud to see my photographer daughter out there capturing not only dramatic photos but articulating that difficult concept artistically.  She, standing at the entrance of a forest goes back to some of the great Arthurian legends of the Middle Ages where the knights would all enter the forest of their various adventures at different points basically to establish that no two paths of adventure were the same for other people.  People must pick their own paths in life to be living truly authentic lives so here was my kid showing this rather difficult concept to explain with a simple photograph.  But as you can see from the editing process, it’s not so simple.IMG_4644

This brings me back to the importance of my girls not being encumbered with a traditional job—especially while raising their children.  If they put their children in daycare, there would be many fewer opportunities for the kids to experience the wonder of a life lived authentically, because the static schedules of daily living prohibit it—and true intellectual learning is often crippled in children as a result.  But for a mother who is there ready to answer that “Call to Adventure” at the slightest provocation a simple trip to the grocery store on a sunny summer in July might lead to a lifetime of discoveries that stay with young people forever because if the schedule of acquiring food is relaxed there may be opportunities for adventure that come up along the way—someone might need help changing a flat tire or a snake may be caught under a car in the grocery store parking lot and need help getting over to the cool grass before somebody runs it over.  You just never know—but there is tremendous value in following the “Call to Adventure” and it makes me feel very good to see that my daughter has matured to a point where she can understand it well enough to photograph.  That takes talent!

Rich Hoffman

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Thank God Greg Gianforte Won: We need more politicians who body slam reporters

Yes, Greg Gianforte still won in the Montana special election for a valued Republican congressional seat after he body slammed a Napoleon Dynamite type Guardian reporter to the ground and broke his glasses.  I’m not going to tell you dear reader that you should never body slam reporters like Rush Limbaugh, Paul Ryan and most of the Fox New television personalities.  Rather, I’ll say that sometimes violence is part of life and when people disrespect your space, you have to take action.  It’s unfortunate that these things sometimes happen, and Gianforte apologized for losing his cool, but when these pin-headed millennial, skinny pants, metro sexual, progressive reporters try to hide their malice behind civility, sometimes the only remedy for them is a good ass kicking.

I would say I’m an excellent communicator and whenever violence happens it’s a complete breakdown in communicative options. But even then about two or three times a year I get into a scuffle with somebody over something and violence does take place occasionally.  Now I haven’t punched someone in the face in a long time—haven’t needed to recently.  But I can certainly see where Gianforte needed to hold his ground from an intrusive reporter trying to get his story at the expense of the congressional candidate’s sanity.  Gianforte was in the final stretch of an election he worked hard on and he didn’t feel like talking and this prick stuck a microphone into his personal zone—so what did that reporter think was going to happen?  You see, these stupid kids think they can be ass holes because they are protected by the law.  But in the good ol’ days when men were men, women were women, and dogs slept on the porch protecting the front door from bad guys—people had respect for each other because if things got out of line, a fight might break out—so civility took front stage in most discussions.

Liberals were aghast that Gianforte won the election and they attributed the victory to the “Age of Trump” where alpha males are making a comeback and are on a rampage—which I would say is the liberals own fault. They are the ones who pushed their luck and if liberals hadn’t abused people for such a long time with this tight-assed political correctness, people like Gianforte wouldn’t be gaining grounds in these elections.  But I can say I couldn’t be happier.  I wouldn’t have cared if Gianforte made a belt out of that Guardian reporter, I would have voted for him in less than a second.  Not that we need “men” in these positions over say “women” but we do need authentic people who will stand their ground when pressed even to the point where they are body slamming people when necessary—because sometimes it is necessary.

A lot of times when I find myself in such a situation it is due to all the methods of civility being exhausted and pricks like that reporter still keep pressing as they hide behind contemporary rules and sensibilities to pry at you when they think you won’t strike back. That is precisely when you have to grab them by the throat and smash them to the ground because they assume you won’t do it—because the rules of society currently favor them at the moment. But it wasn’t always that way—and I’d argue that we should return to such times for the sake of humanity.  It’s OK to press for a story and even to be aggressive.  But people have a right to have their minds and if they don’t feel like talking that doesn’t give a reporter the right to stick a microphone down their throats out of the illusion that the “public” has a right to know everything anytime.  The “Age of Trump” is clearly a trend in the direction of personal sanctity—which is starting to emerge in elections and will make America stronger for sure.

It is perfectly alright to occasionally kick the shit out of someone, especially if they deserve it. You may get into a lot of trouble for it—and I have—but it’s good for everyone to have that out there as an option.  It is not good for a society to assume that violence has been taught out of our society and that the state will sort out all conflicts between human beings as liberals think.  Most conflicts are better resolved in the moment and when I have had fights with people I find that afterwards healthy understandings develop that allow for a respectful relationship instead of the issue lingering in court for months and costing both sides thousands of dollars.  A good punch in the face can save everyone a lot of money and get to a respectful exchange much faster and more effectively and these stupid millennial kids who work as reporters these days as extensions of their liberal college educations need to learn some hard lessons.  If you press someone like Gianforte in disrespectful ways, he might body slam you to the ground.  You don’t get up from something like that and say, “you just body slammed me and broke my glasses.”  What a pussy.  You get back in his face if you think he did you wrong and you fight it out.  That weasel you see hoped to use the law ,or the threat of a law, to allow him to continue to attack Gianforte as a member of the protected press.  He assumed that the congressional candidate wouldn’t be able to fight back and would just stand there and take it.

We see the results in people like Bill O’Reilly who has lost his very good job to losers like this Guardian reporter.  I spent some time in Europe this year and watched for weeks on end little pricks like that body slammed reporter espouse hours of liberal rhetoric without fear of any kind that somebody might punch them in the face for being ass holes—because they live in a “civilized progressive society” in Europe and nobody takes action against anything.   They just sit around eating food and drinking wine as their nations drown in financial ruin.  But not so in America.  Thankfully we are turning away from that European pussyness and are starting to elect people like Trump and now Gianforte who will hold their ground when pressed—because that is more representative of the American people than the Napoleon Dynamite press corp.

Ten years ago Napoleon Dynamite was a favorite movie in my house.  We watched it many times and laughed openly upon those viewings—because there was a lot of truth in it.  But now those kids of that generation are now working in Washington as reporters and they are a bunch of pussies.  For many of them they have a good ass kicking coming—it may be the only way to straighten them out.  So while I understand why Gianforte apologized—rightfully, I am happy that he still won the election, that people stood behind him—because he was the right guy to win.  And if he needs to body slam someone in congress, I hope he won’t refrain from doing so, because sometimes that is the necessary thing to do—when law and order have been exhausted, and debate found useless—sometimes the right thing is just to pick somebody up and throw them to the ground beating the snot out of them, and breaking their God-damn glasses.   Because in doing so you might be doing them a favor that will help them not be ass holes to other people for the rest of their lives.  And without that threat, the human race is a weaker, and more evil species.  There is honesty in conflict which has a value all its own.

Congratulations Greg Gianforte!

Rich Hoffman

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Knowing the Difference Between Good and Evil: Definitions that need to be understood

It occurred to me after some feedback on an article we all explored here together on the topic of designating evil as a proper psychiatric disorder to explain the common behavior of Washington D.C., that after all this time many people may not have a proper definition of the word evil for which to use as a foundational reference.  Of course such things cannot be allowed to happen.  For our cause dear reader the definition of evil is as important to understand as it is to reference the word “hot” in a cooking class.  Without a proper reference there simply isn’t a way to comprehend the material.  So let’s define evil properly so that we can all advance this treacherous topic forward for the betterment of mankind.

Many of my readers have taken note over the years that I love a lot of things—I love McDonald’s on road trips.  I love music, movies, Mello Yello soft drinks.  I love accomplishment, I love video games.  I love family.  I love television documentaries.  I love little children who aren’t yet five but can say three syllable words fluently without struggling to find the proper applications.  I love, I love, and I love.  It is never hard for me to find some reason to live no matter how bad a day may be because there is so much that I love about life that it’s really never a challenge.  For me, it is that love that makes it so easy to spot the villainy of evil as it seeks to spread among us unmolested.  I think for many, especially those with poor reading comprehension who clearly associate evil within a Biblical context that is discussed on Sunday church services, they tend to regulate their understanding to just religious discussions but are shy about making such judgments in everyday life.  We are all taught these days starting in our public schools not to judge others.  Our media then carries that torch and declares that judgment is something that we shouldn’t do so thus, evil doesn’t get a name so many people wonder through life never really loving anything because evil is present and molesting their thoughts without anybody really saying anything about it.  Those authorities will point to someone like me and say, “Rich Hoffman declares himself to be “good” yet he doesn’t turn the other cheek as the Bible insists or that he has a history of violence when things don’t go his way—so how can we trust what he says and does on the subject of goodness?”  And it is in that way that evil camouflages itself against the chaos and confusion of daily life so that without clear understandings of what it is, we throw our hands up in confusion and hope to navigate ourselves into an afterlife where a supreme being will eventually spell all this out for us.

So here is the easy way to understand evil and it’s workings at the most fundamental level.  Good is life and the desire to live.  Evil is bad and the desire to strip away life, love and natural passions.  For instance, I would say that Democrats as a political party represent evil because they are against human life.  While standing for equal rights, women rights and economic level playing fields they are foundationally committed to death in their support of abortion, drug use and attacking excellence because it takes human beings away from the premise of Mother Earth dominance.  The equal rights portion of their political platforms is a mask used to cover up the evil of their primary objectives which is a commitment toward death.  Put simply evil is “LIVE” spelled backwards.  Anything that is against life is evil and Democrats are against human life in favor of collective life.  Their morality might be in their preservation of “mother earth” so they’ll justify the killing of millions of human babies so to take away the pressure put on earth’s ecosystem.  In their minds they value the life on planet earth as if it were so special and unique that the sacrifices made by the human race and their personal comfort are justified.  Yet their entire political party is built on the foundation of death—of loathing, of jealously—of anti-life.

A simple cricket might go through its whole life and never contemplate good and evil.  It just lives, it eats and it dies without ever knowing the difference.  If it happens to be hopping along a driveway and one of our cars run it over not meaning to, nothing but a human mind might consider the entire exchange as a possible evil.  Democrats might say that if not for the invention of the car by humans the natural life of the cricket might have continued and life on Earth would be enhanced if not for those pesky humans.  But the Bible thumping conservative would consider such a thing as unfortunate but that all of God’s creatures are placed here for man’s use as the highest possible life form created in six days before God put up his feet on the seventh and watched a football game with a nice beverage in his hand to reflect a job well done.  Humans, unlike the cricket do contemplate that by losing life that such a thing would be evil because it robs the life form of all potential trajectories of life which comes to a conscious mind.  But only once a mind thinks does it become manifested into the fabric of reality.  If something just lives and responds to life under the umbrella of biology then such a concept of evil cannot be applied.  Only when considering a love for life can a thinking being evolve into separating acts between good and evil.

The mystic sage from the far East attempts to step beyond these pairs of opposites toward an enlightenment which holds the mind firm when disappointments rob people of the joy that life offers.  In Buddhism they call it the “immovable spot” and it is a good technique for not losing one’s mind when disappointment floods our lives with sorrows when joy was expected.  Democrats tend to point to the East and say, “ah, they know where they are doing over there.”  But they really don’t. Women, especially in China, Vietnam, Cambodia and all the way to India use the immovable spot narrative in their lives to endure terrible evil that is cast upon them.  Too many young children are abused by tourists, too many women sell themselves to the sex trade just so they can buy bread—evil is soaking the Eastern cultures of the orient to an extent that many people live every day miserable and praying for the day when it will all end.  They look toward Buddha’s immovable spot, or some other transitory explanation as a way to endure evil—but their culture doesn’t do much to combat evil other than hope that the “gods” might spare them from the intentions.  So they are slow to name evil in much the same way that Democrats refuse the judgment.  That’s not good.

To love life is to be good. To respect living to the point where you can say you love it—then you are espousing  goodness—even if the love is so trivial as to loving a Big Mac from McDonald’s.  The love of life, the creation of a new hamburger by human minds, the marketing of it and the convenience of experiencing it while traveling are all things that make them good—we think, therefore we are.  The cows at the slaughterhouse lost their life so that we could eat them at McDonald’s and hope to get a nice Happy Meal for our kids with the latest toy promoting some new movie.  Life was lost so that we could eat it and live at their expense.  Only the cow has no ability to love life or fear death—it just exists as part of a biological machine.  Human thought brings meaning to that life.

By saying that something is evil it by definition it works against life either by kicking up dust so that we can’t properly see our subjects, or in maintaining their camouflage by preventing judgment from identifying their workings in modern society.  But the motivations are always against living.  If it goes against the human desire to appreciate life, it can be said to be evil.  Getting drunk is evil because it goes against human thinking—the desire is to turn off the mind instead of turning it on.  Abortion is evil because it kills life.  Being a workaholic is evil if it prevents you from enjoying life in service to some faceless institution.  Collective based sex—orgies, multiple partners, and mass consumption of pornography is evil because it cheapens the individual experience that was always supposed to be reflective of procreation with an emphasis on life.  The guy who rapes an inebriated young woman passed out from too much drinking at a college party commits terrible evil because he takes the sex without the emphasis on enjoying it with another human being willingly.  What’s the point unless the exchange was mutually beneficial and a celebration of life?

By understanding the nature of the word, “evil” as being “live” spelled backwards we find that it is much easier to understand it.  If something stands against life, it is said to be evil—not necessarily cosmic life, but human life in that as an intellectual being meanings are created that evoke either love for life or the thought of it being gone the next day.  Just yesterday a bunch of people who work for me occupationally, had a party.  My intention was to celebrate a little bit of living life because things have been tough for the last few weeks—so dozens of people brought food and drinks all with the intention to have a little fun and celebrate just being alive. There was a lot of very nice food, some of it very exotic, but even with all those selections someone thought to bring a bag of Grippos barbecue potato chips which I just love and they obviously had me in mind when they did it.  They did it because they know my passions and love for that specific brand.  Because I “love” so many things it was fairly easy for these guys to think, “Rich Hoffman will love these,” and then to act on that impulse in the name of goodness.  There was nothing evil about the exchange—goodness was the centerpiece of the event. After it was over I was walking back to my car and across the parking lot I spotted a little worm that was squirming around under the hot sun cooking against the black pavement.  As I looked around I saw hundreds of similar worms that had been cooked after the recently heavy rain so one more worm wasn’t going to have much impact cosmically.  I could have easily have gotten in my car to drive away but instead I picked up the little guy and took him over to some high grass.  It might have still died, but at least it was cooler in the grass.  The worm has no consciousness to thank me for such a thing just like the people who brought Grippos to the party didn’t do it to get a raise or some special benefit.  Those types of things are done in recognition of a love of life and to respect it enough to give life a chance is always good.  To be good is to want to live.  To be bad is to want to commit evil by working against life.  And that is how you can tell the difference between good and evil.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

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The Benefits of Julian Assanage: How the dynamic intellectualism of pirates save the world

I was very happy to hear that Sweden had given up on its rape allegations against Julian Assange taking one burden away from the international fugitive. As everyone here knows I am a law and order guy who has a very black and white view of justice.  In the great parody of pairs of earthly opposites, I always side with the good, the pure, and the blind efforts at justice, fairness, and honorable civility.  But I’m also the first to recognize when the other side isn’t playing by the same rules and in such cases I’m willing to do whatever it takes to pummel them into oblivion.  And from what I’ve seen, I do not trust the United States government in its current form and I certainly don’t have any love for the Deep State—the American intelligence community dedicated to the Skull and Bones creed of global governance through constant panic and war.  Further, it is my strong conviction that without Julian Assange’s “WikiLeaks” organization, America would have fallen deeper into despair than it already has been.  WikiLeaks has done us a tremendous favor.  I’m happy that Pamela Anderson is taking care of Julian Assange—but honestly, the guy should be working for our American intelligence department—not being a fugitive from it.  Save Pamela some airfare and constant harassment through the TSA by letting her visit Julian in Washington D.C. or perhaps even at Langley.  Free Assange and put him to work for the good of everyone.

I’m sure it was more than just a fleeting sensation—I do get to travel around and see things, but by far the most exciting place I can remember seeing in this decade was the Ecuadorian Embassy in London just down the street from the great Harrod’s department store. I normally don’t pose for pictures but on that day I did, and it was one of my best days in London to date—because behind those windows just above my shoulders Julian Assange was captive under diplomatic conditions.  And Assange and his WikiLeaks was doing the job of holding off giant international governments without troops, or even the bureaucracy of a country to challenge everyone to stay honest. While we were there my family was a little mystified at my intense desire to see the place and after I explained it after they sort of “got it.”  I am convinced that if not for WikiLeaks our American media would clearly be gone.  There are few if any reporters who are willing to do any hard investigating without a bias, but through WikiLeaks we at least get raw information for that same media to chew on.

People who know me best also understand that I have a natural love for pirates—which confuses them, because I am a law and order guy. Pirates by their very nature break the rules and make new ones up as they go.  I see that process as healthy because under the terms of dynamic intellectualism we need dynamic forces to challenge static forces in order to institute healthy societal growth.  Put another way, the best way to not have too many mice contaminating your food supply is to get a cat that hunts down and kills the mice.  We want to have a certain level of mice as a species, just not enough to destroy our society with disease.  So cats even though they can be uncaring, selfish little bastards that spray smelly piss everywhere are necessary to keep down the varmint population. The Introduction of cats is a dynamic to the static population and behavior of mice.  The same holds true with our media, without competition, or intellectual challenges such as what we see with one party clearly dominating the kind of thinking that the press articulates, we have a very static situation.  So to keep them honest, and controlled we need a dynamic force.  Piracy in this case has a moral element that might be brutal to watch but the results are beneficial.  Julian Assange is a kind of pirate in many ways that Henry Morgan was during the golden age of pirates.  We don’t want the lawless behavior but what poured forth from the Morgan pirates was the freest country on earth—the United States roughly 100 years later after many thoughtful people took note of the kind of society Morgan created in Jamaica spawned the idea for America.  The United States wasn’t formed from law and order, it was created from a lawless leap for freedom—a dynamic force challenging the worldly “static” orthodox.

Under normal conditions in life, law and order is fine, but when you get too many mice—otherwise—too many disease infested varmints that roam through life unchallenged, you get an unhealthy stagnation that is detrimental to our existence. Pirates even though they live as lawless bandits serve as a challenge to static institutions that are about to fail under their own weight for lack of external competition.  The original Pirates of the Caribbean led by Henry Morgan under direct supervision of the King of England at the time invented something new.  It was rough and a lot wild, but ultimately it was healthy and we celebrate it today with romanticized movies and books on the subject.  But when it comes to international intelligence gathering for which the United States is the biggest player and has become over time—“too big to fail” and see themselves as “bigger” than the elected presidents of our republic—then a dynamic challenge is certainly in order.

Being a modern pirate doesn’t mean you have to wear a crazy hat or rape women during pillaging missions. It doesn’t mean you have to kill anyone or even be a villain dressed all in black.  But it does mean you are a dynamic force challenging the static patterns of our society and for that we all owe Julian Assange some thanks. That is precisely why I was excited to see the Ecuadorian Embassy in London out of all the cool things there is to do there—because behind that glass just over my shoulders was one of the greatest dynamic forces of any lifetime functioning for the first time in human history without any major troop network with minimal resources that was openly challenging the static corrosion that has infected all of our institutions around the world.

Many will say that Julian Assange is a criminal, that he’s “unpatriotic,” and that he’s a villain. I say he is a pure human being looking for honesty among a bunch of plague infested rats and he is the cat that has determined himself to catch and kill them for our benefit. It takes guts to challenge the world the way he has.  With his talent, reputation, and resources he would serve everyone better if he were sanctioned and not kept a fugitive.  Who cares what the media thinks about the issue.  They are part of that static problem—and they need to either be challenged and cured through competition, or they need to be utterly destroyed.  I mean if there wasn’t a Juilain Assange just think how terrible newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post would be left unchecked.  We’ve witnessed how Comey’s F.B.I ran as a partisan machine for the Democratic Party.  In many ways things are far worse than anybody imagined, but we only know that because WikiLeaks is there as a threat to expose the truth when these guys get caught.  And if they weren’t there, what cat out there would be around to catch these mice?  The answer of course is that there wouldn’t be.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

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Fire the Teachers at the Dayton Education Association: A LeapFrog tablet is a better learning tool

What are these idiots thinking at the Dayton Education Association, going on strike over wages and benefits in this day and age—when we know that public school teachers collectively make too much money for what they actually do? Here it is the end of the school year where they are going to be off work soon anyway for the whole summer and they are threatening the school board with a strike so they can feed their fat assed mouths more during a summer long vacation?  Obviously the negotiators think marijuana smoking is legal in Ohio—because only somebody on drugs could think that striking against the tax payers is the right move.  Apparently they didn’t get the memo at the DEA in Dayton, because those teaches aren’t needed for education—they are only needed as baby sitters.  If you want to teach your kid the important things, get them a LeapFrog tablet and some programs at the Target department store.  But if you need some slugs to watch your kids while you go to work all day leaving other people to raise your kids, then send them to public school.  With that criteria in mind, just about anybody could be a babysitter, so all these Dayton teachers are easy to replace.  Here’s how the situation was reported by WDTN in Dayton.

DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) – The Dayton Education Association said Thursday its members voted in favor of authorizing a strike if the status of negotiations does not improve.

According to a release by the DEA, contract negotiations with the Dayton Public Schools Board of Education have been ongoing since January.

The DEA says since that time, nearly 20 days have been spent negotiating a collective bargaining agreement and an impasse has now been reached. As a result, according to the DEA, both sides have sought federal mediation.

“Despite over 150 hours at the table, the DEA is greatly troubled by the Board’s refusal to recognize their teachers as professionals and meet their teachers, even halfway, on several key provisions,” said David Romick, DEA president. “Tonight’s vote should sound an alarm: the Dayton Public Schools are in a crisis,” Romick cautioned.

The union says many items remain unresolved including wages and benefits.

http://wdtn.com/2017/05/04/dayton-teachers-vote-in-favor-of-a-strike-if-negotiations-do-not-improve/

I haven’t dealt with an education topic for a while because honestly, the case is closed in my opinion.  I’m looking toward the Trump administration to expand School Choice and to break up the monopolies of union backed public education because that is the real problem.  No competition and high labor costs for poor performance are the cause of their out-of-control costs.  If you want to ruin a kid, send them to public schools without a lot of parental guidance and you’ll destroy them for life.  For some parents, deep down inside, that may be what they want to do—to handicap their children so they never outshine the parents.  Sending a kid to public school unguided by parental mentorship is essentially clipping the intellectual wings of the child for life and they’ll never recover.  They’ll die old people still crippled by their public education experience.  I thought by now everyone understood that.  Nobody should pass a school levy for a union infested education environment because you’re just throwing good money at bad methods of teaching.

I am very impressed by the LeapFrog Learning systems available at Target of all places.  They do a better job of Pre-K through grade 5 education than anything they are doing in public schools if learning is the objective.  Parents might argue that by sending their kids to school they are learning social interaction skills—but I’d claim the aim of the government schools is to break the children into progressive soldiers for tomorrow’s culture war against American tradition. So that makes them an insurgency, not a valued member of the American education system.  Teachers like these losers in Dayton aren’t worth more money—they are worth a lot less.  If the Dayton school board wants I could hire replacements for every one of their lost positions if they could hold strong on the strike and let those idiots starve.  By the looks of them they could afford to lose some weight.  I’d be happy to help them hire replacements too, just let me know Dayton.  We could replace every job lost to the strike in a month.  So don’t worry about it.  If babysitters are what we want so that parents can drop off their kids to watch while tax payers cover the daycare costs, then hiring those types of people is easy.

But we don’t need these people, who want to strike while on a cushy government job where they are off all summer, to teach our kids some “worldly” crap.  Look, I just returned from Europe where I spent time at both the British Museum in London and at The Louvre in Paris.  I was stunned by how willing to learn the kids were in both of those places where school kids were given assignments and worked in groups to solve problems at the museum exhibits under the care of very studious mentors.  I love museums and environments where learning is conducive and I have never seen kids behave in the United States like these kids did in London and Paris—from destinations all around the globe.  There isn’t a single teacher striking in Dayton that is talking about teaching kids to be equivalent to what I saw at the Louvre and British Museum recently.  And knowing that they should be giving the city of Dayton a discount, not demanding more money—give me a break.

I’m all for education but I’ve heard these loser teachers talk for years and they complain about things I’d consider easy as if they are the most difficult things to do in the world.  For instance, they say they do a lot of grading papers at home, and that it’s hard to manage 27 kids over a 6 hour period, and that they have to be personal mentors for all of them.  Well, try doing that for several hundred people, and working 14 to 15 hours a day all year-long and even catching up paperwork on weekends.  That’s my life so I really don’t want to hear how difficult their work day is.  I’m not sympathetic.  For what those Dayton teachers are making per hour for babysitting, they are living a dream job compared to the rest of the world.  So the Dayton management would be wasting money to throw one dime at these ungrateful teachers.  Cut them loose and hire some new people for the Dayton school system and don’t lose a minute’s worth of sleep over it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

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The Network Boycott of Donald Trump: Life is going on without them

It was a little astonishing that the television networks of ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN refused to play the political ad from the Trump campaign highlighting the first 100 days accomplishments by the new president.  After all, they didn’t have a problem highlighting every little thing that Barack Obama did.  But Trump isn’t Obama and the networks are seeing the difference already.  They are being exposed for what they always were; liberal outlets designed to promote progressivism and are now discovering that people are willing to turn away from them really for the first time in their history over political ideology.  As everyone now knows ESPN is a dying network owned by the Disney Company and they are losing their conservative viewers due to their extremely liberal on-air positions.  ESPN President John Skipper, a former employee at left-wing Rolling Stone magazine, insisted that the network had little intention of putting on the brakes of its liberalism even in the wake of their viewership exodus saying:

“It is accurate that the Walt Disney Company and ESPN are committed to diversity and inclusion,” Skipper said. “These are long-standing values that drive fundamental fairness while providing us with the widest possible pool of talent to create the smartest and most creative staff. We do not view this as a political stance but as a human stance. We do not think tolerance is the domain of a particular political philosophy.”

 

http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2017/05/05/survey-of-viewership-in-swing-state-market-shows-republicans-abandoning-espn-in-droves/

Then Ellen DeGeneres said just yesterday that Donald Trump wasn’t welcomed on her show—as if that were going to somehow hurt the feelings of the president—or change what’s happening.  Stephen Cobert—the former Comedy Central liberal who openly has a night show directed at pot smokers unleashed a potty mouthed rant that could only be justified through definitions of insanity—yet CBS allowed it to air anyway which should have provoked attention by the FCC.  If Cobert had been a conservative, he’d be out of a job, but since he’s a liberal like most of the people in entertainment—he gets a free pass.  What we are seeing is unprecedented—the political left is drawing a line in the sand and hoping that we all love them enough to keep watching their programs.  But the evidence is already in that conservatives are finding other alternatives.

What is really scary to the networks is that Trump is actually better at the job of communicating than they even understand in the industry.  George Will the conservative commentator actually quit the Republican Party because he thinks President Trump chews up the English language in an illiterate fashion.  He clearly has taken the side of the liberal networks in thinking that he knows more than Trump does about communicating.   Yet Trump has had great success in entertainment and obviously knows more about communication than even the most seasoned Hollywood actor.  Trump doesn’t just speak, he communicates with his entire body when he gives a speech and people understand him.  He may not articulate the English language in a scholarly fashion, but he communicates better than most anybody in the public eye today and he can do it without an army of advisors and Hollywood producers to help him along.  While Obama used to seek counsel from Steven Spielberg and Jeffery Katzenberg, Trump takes care of things himself and is able to produce a video illustrating his first 100 days without the entertainment industry’s involvement—and it drives them crazy.

It’s in Trump’s independence that has exposed the leftist tendencies of the major networks and now half the country is looking for alternatives.  They are used to making or breaking people and they can’t have an impact on Trump in any way and they don’t know what to do about it except make asses of themselves.  Now they are taking positions they can’t walk back and it will eventually destroy them.  I warned the Disney Company about this years ago, and they didn’t listen.  They insisted on putting little gay characters in their entertainment products and force-fed liberalism into their productions, and their bottom line is going to take a hit.  ABC is owned by Disney so like ESPN they are committed to leftist ideologies which run against the current of modern American politics and they are positioning themselves for extinction.  Trump actually did work on NBC with the hit show The Apprentice and even now after 14 seasons the executives cannot figure out for the life of them why Trump was so much better at that show than some Hollywood actor who gets paid to say what other people think.

What’s even funnier is that the political left thinks that they are going to find their own Hollywood star to run against Trump in 2020.  They are throwing around names like George Clooney, Dwyane Johnson and even Disney’s Bob Iger—but they really don’t understand that it takes more than “celebrity” to win as a president.  Trump didn’t win the presidency because of his celebrity—he won it because he worked harder than anybody else.  Hillary Clinton rolled out the celebrities in her final days and they didn’t help her at all.  The power that the networks and media companies had with their celebrates has evaporated before their eyes and they really don’t know what to do about it which is what I have been saying all along in regard to the value of Donald Trump being president.  There’s not just his skills as a businessman, or the self-reliance of his celebrity—but it’s the presence of a Republican who can simply rob the political left of their stronghold on the media all by himself.  The Democrats don’t have anybody like Trump and with all their resources in Hollywood there isn’t one person who can compete with Trump on the stage in 2020 and they all know it now.  They might have the celebrity, but they don’t have the work ethic or an understanding of all the modes of communication that Trump has naturally.

Trump wasn’t made into a celebrity by others the way that George Clooney was—or any other actor who gets paid to read off a script.  Trump made himself and that is a different kind of political candidate and the failure of the networks to work with this new administration will be their end.  They won’t survive the change in demographic posture combined with the economic burden of the modern cord cutters—the people who have decided that they don’t want or need cable television in their lives.  Ellen and Stephen Cobert can’t afford to cut off half their audience the way they have—yet they have done just that.  And that decision will prove detrimental to them all.  People will still see Trump’s ad about his first 100 days regardless of the participation of the networks in showing it because they don’t have a monopoly any longer on information.  They can’t stop Trump by cutting him off the networks because he can reach many more people through new media.  The only people getting hurt by the network boycott of Trump are the networks.  They can’t survive off only half the country watching their programs.  They can’t appeal only to liberals and hope to lure advertisers to their channels.  Look what happened to Curt Schilling at ESPN.  He represented the kind of man who many of their viewership were themselves, and when they took him down for being a conservative, ESPN lost viewers. I used to love watching ESPN, but since they fired Schilling, I haven’t watched them since—because they didn’t have talent on their programs that spoke and thought the way I do.  So I turned them off and moved on to something else.

There is a lot to feel good about Trump, the stock market is soaring, money is coming back to the American economy and the president is well on his way to becoming simply the best occupant of the White House ever to reside there.  History is already starting to overshadow the cries of the liberal left and that’s where the networks are making a major mistake in not aligning themselves with history.  Rather, they are sticking with their ideology which will be their undoing.  Trump works harder and is good at so many different things that his presidency will be a new defining marker in history.  The old guard is quickly finding themselves on the outside looking in and they know it. Right now they are protesting with defiance, but they are rapidly learning that nobody really cares about them.  Nobody cares about the opinions of The View girls, and nobody cares about Ellen.  Trump is going to be a good president with or without them.  And that is the hard lesson that the world is learning—but I’ve said it all along.  Maybe next time they’ll listen—for those who survive long enough to have a next time.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

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The Disgraceful, Dishonest Press: Liberal losers in Hollywood and the media show how bad it really is

I deal with a lot of people and most of them don’t come as close to being the kind of conservative that I am. So the intolerance to other people’s opinions isn’t something that I understand.  Most of the time I am very disappointed in the people I meet, but I figure if they’ve gotten through 30 to 40 years of life and still have liberal leanings toward things—a five-minute conversation with me isn’t going to change much for them—so I don’t waste the time talking.  I deal with things as close to their level as I can allow myself and move on to the next topic without a thought.  If I didn’t do that I couldn’t speak to anybody—but that’s OK, because that type of thing doesn’t do much for me anyway.  But having an intolerance toward other points of view—if I functioned like that, I simply couldn’t live.  That’s why it is so disgusting to me to see how the White House Correspondents media behaved Saturday night as President Trump stiffed them by doing something else in a different city that night.  I don’t blame Trump at all—the media does cover him differently than say, President Obama.  In spite of all their talk about being a relevant part of “democracy” the press clearly didn’t hold Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Eric Holder to the level of scrutiny that they do anybody in the Trump administration—so it is they who created this mess—and only they can clean it up.

I’ve told you dear reader before, the communist insurgents from the 1950s sought openly to take over Hollywood and the American media hoping to advance those collectivist ideas a half a century later and bring down the capitalist republic envied around the world so that a global order could rise from the ashes. Public schools have assisted in this enterprise and that is why on May first 2017 there were communist demonstrations in cities across America that we wouldn’t have seen ten or twenty years ago.  Those communist sympathizers are now in Hollywood and in our media and they have advanced that communist plot line.  Not that long ago there were a sizable number of conservatives in those fields.  There were always liberals in Hollywood and in the media, but they weren’t this obnoxious and insistent on shutting out conservative voices.  But these days conservatives are under attack which is most evident at Fox News where all the old timers are losing their jobs to more progressive liberals.  I felt sorry for Eric Bolling who had his new show debut at 5 PM on “May Day” and it was a disaster.  Why did he have on Mark Cuban?  He’s an idiot—I don’t want to hear from him.  In fact I didn’t want to hear from anybody but Eric on his show—more opinions don’t equate to better thinking.  But all Fox News could think to do in that time slot was another version of The Five.  I listen to liberals all day long—I don’t want to hear them on my news after working hard all day.  I’m open to other view points, but when it comes to my entertainment time—I’m going to choose people who are like-minded.  If Fox News doesn’t give me what I’m looking for I’ll find other alternatives—and that is the real reason for the misery displayed at the Correspondent’s Dinner Saturday

The country is moving back toward conservatism and the Hollywood types along with their partners in the media don’t like it. They are not open to people with other opinions and it shows in the way the covered Obama.  There were so many things they could have nailed him on, but because he was a black Democrat they literally gave him a free pass—but decided to put down the gauntlet for Trump and we all see it.  Who do they think they’re kidding?  They are the cause of all the divisiveness and when we don’t go along with their media plans—and just openly accept their stupid progressivism they think we are the ones who are intolerant.   Check out the riots just this year at Berkeley.  That will tell you everything you need to know.

For instance, I typically enjoy the Star Trek movies when they come out, so I watched the last one, Star Trek: Beyond.  It was horrendously stupid—overly progressive and ridiculously political.  They were more concerned with showing gay sex and multi-cultural civilization than in telling a good story—so the movie bombed.  It was rejected at the box office just like most projects are that are overly sexualized toward a progressive direction—because the United States as a market is not liberal.  When media companies start thinking their task is to make people into a certain thing by using art to take them there—they will likely fail if that art does not represent the demographic targeted by the art.  Star Trek: Beyond might represent the gay people at a Pride parade with all their rainbows and dudes dressed in drag—but it doesn’t register with some mechanic in Wichita, Kansas who is certainly not thinking of sticking any part of himself in the ass of some hairy assed man.  The media both in the press and in entertainment failed to understand their marketplace and thought they actually had the power to move culture instead of giving culture what it wants.

That is the big distinction, the liberals in the news media think they can shape the minds of their viewers and the hard reality tells them that people will leave and seek out other objectives. I seldom watched The Five on Fox because I didn’t want to hear from Jaun Williams or Bob Beckel.   It’s nothing personal, I just don’t want to hear their liberal voices—it’s a waste of my time.  It’s not that I’m intolerant, it’s that I don’t want to hear it—and that is what the media is missing now that we are in the age of Trump.  They are making themselves less relevant day by day and they still don’t know it.  By the way they behaved at the correspondent’s dinner—they really don’t understand America at all.  They only understand the progressive culture of New York, Washington D.C. and a few cities in California—but no place else who actually watch their programming—or not, depending on choices.

Since Fox New canned O’Reilly and really Roger Ailes over the summer, I only watch Lou Dobbs and Brett Baier at 6 pm on the Fox owned networks. I caught the Tucker Carlson segment shown above while I had breakfast because the headline caught my eye.  But I don’t have time to commit to a complete show if the people in it don’t represent what I want to see.  I don’t need a lecture from a bunch of artists and leftists who will take their clothes off for anybody and smoke dope every now and then—to “open” my mind to other points of view.  I know what works and what doesn’t and that’s pretty much it.  Maybe when I was in my twenties I had things to learn.  These days, nobody knows what I do because they don’t work as hard as I do for information—so there isn’t much for them to “teach” me.  I just want the news—not some 26-year-old kid crying about fairness.  I want to see reports on what’s going on in the world and if the press has to spin it at all, I want a conservative view-point.  I don’t want to listen to liberals cry about every little particle floating around the universe.

It was very disingenuous to listen to the press complain about Trump because honestly, I’m not sure they know where they live. All they really accomplished was that they confirmed they didn’t understand the average Trump voter who has loaded up government positions with conservatives at all levels.  It’s pretty bad that POLITICO released in its recent survey that no members of the press identify themselves as Republican—when the people they are covering most likely are—and the audience who wants their news.  When a majority of the press are openly Democrats it becomes a larger problem and we saw it during the Obama years and the Clinton election where they lost.  They didn’t understand what happened then, or why it was a problem, and they know even less now.  Yet for them the world will go on without them—because that’s how things work.  It’s just too bad their liberal college professors never taught them that so to save them from this present disgrace.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

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‘The Founder’, Movie Review: Why the battles of capitalism are worth all the blood they spill

I didn’t catch it when it was released in the theaters, but that didn’t stop me from buying the Blu-Ray at the first opportunity because I knew it would be a brilliant film—and it was.  The Founder starring Michael Keaton was just that—and it may well be the most important film you’ll see this year—or whenever you read this.  If you haven’t seen the film, do it now.  Don’t even finish reading this.  Just go see it.  I adored the film and personally I could relate to the type of character that Michael Keaton played as likely the most true to life rendition of Ray Kroc ever done—the founder of the McDonald’s franchise concept.  Readers here know I love McDonald’s; I make no secret of it.  I love a lot of things in life but I always have a special place for McDonald’s and the reason for my love was summed up extraordinarily well in the great movie directed by John Lee Hancock.

The Founder is all about innovation and American ingenuity.  It’s not always pretty, not always civil—but the engine that drives American capitalism specifically was captured so wonderfully well in this great movie that its worth watching and should be done in every American household.  Another favorite of my is the great Francis Ford Coppola classic, Tucker: The Man and his Dream—this movie might as well been the sequel to how innovative American enterprise was in the period from 1940 up until the 1960s.  The Founder is about nothing short than the invention of the fast food industry which has left the biggest mark on world culture that we’ve ever witnessed.

When I walk into a McDonald’s no matter where it is in the world I think of this creation story of Ray Kroc and his relationship to the fabulous McDonald brothers.  I simply love all those people even though as the story shows, Ray Kroc unethically outwitted them in the end to take possession of the company that featured their name—and that was likely a good thing for the invention of fast food.  In fact, I think the scene in The Founder where Kroc and two other people (one who would become his future wife) were discussing a new way to produce a milk shake.  It was one of the best scenes in film history because it captured so well the risk and innovation that was going on all the time during that post World War II period in America which we today all take for granted.  Imagine the skepticism that making a synthetic milkshake with powder was to the naiveté of the 1950s generation yet without people with the drive and charisma of Ray Kroc, we’d all still be eating a lot slower and living a lot less productively.  Anti-capitalists of course would love to go back to the days where it took 30 minutes to get a hamburger—instead of 30 seconds—but American society as we know it now was built on the extra productivity per capita that specifically came from the invention of fast food that started with McDonald’s.  To me that makes the company and this movie enormously relevant.

I’ve had McDonald’s in many countries around the world and to me it is always a piece of home.  Most dramatically my wife and I had a McDonald’s across the street from our hotel in Cancun which probably saved our lives.  We were both sick from our experience with a cenote inland on the Yucatan Peninsula where we were swimming on a very hot day.  The Mexicans use such places as their only relief from their terrible living conditions as most of them live in thatched huts.  I saw fish swimming around in the water so I figured it couldn’t be too bad, and it was clear water.   The local people were used to such bacterially infested water, we weren’t and the next day we were both terribly sick and massively dehydrated.  We lost trust in the local water supply even in such a popular resort town.  But we knew the quality control of the McDonald’s across the street was our best chance at a good meal—because many of the materials that made the material came from the United States.  So for the rest of our trip, we only ate at McDonald’s even though we had access to some of the best places to eat that the world offered.  We didn’t feel we could trust the water since our systems had been disrupted at the cenote.  Those Golden Arches were one of the best experiences I ever had eating.  I can say that my wife and I have had some fine dining in many of the best places in exotic cities and that McDonald’s meal for us was our best because we were so parched and in need of food familiar to our diet with tightly controlled filtered water.

Another time for me was in Japan.  I was so tired of eating seaweed and octopus.  I was trying to be respectful to their culture, but I woke up one morning really looking for some American food so I found a McDonald’s in the middle of the very nice city of Kobe.  Now consider I had just had authentic Kobe Beef the night before with some great wine and immaculate other dishes.  But at 7 AM in Japan after a hard week of work I wanted a Sausage and Egg McMuffin from McDonald’s with a nice big Coke.  When I found one I found a nice place to eat it off in the corner of the restaurant and it will always be one of the best meals I’ve ever had.  There is a lot to be said about the consistency of McDonald’s food because it is pretty much the same anywhere you go and someday when I visit the moon I plan to eat at McDonald’s because it will give a stable diet to my body in an unfamiliar environment—and sometimes that is better than the actual flavors of the food.  I find that when I’m doing hard things, whether they are exotic adventures or tough business engagements, or even intense competitions, McDonald’s provides stability in a diet that is consistent and that is often far more valuable.

A lot of those techniques that make McDonald’s food so constantly fast and reliable were developed by the McDonald’s brothers and marketed to the world by Ray Kroc and we are all better for it.  When I’m having a really rough week, it is not unusual for me to stop by and grab some McDonald’s breakfast on my way to do whatever I’m dreading, because it does bring me a lot of joy to have that food. So a story about how that remarkable place was born is a lot of fun to see, especially as honest of a movie as this is.  Essentially, the McDonald’s brothers developed a great idea and a means to make food fast.  But it was Ray Kroc who put them into every city and was able to take the chance to pound out the fast food concept as a chain of real estate transactions.  That was really the hinge point of the entire McDonald’s story, that the business concept of franchising wasn’t in the food itself, but in the real estate transactions involved, where McDonald’s owned the stores and franchise owners would lease the spots—which put the quality control firmly in the hands of the company—instead of the individual owners.  That was the key and it took someone like Ray Kroc to pound out the idea.  The McDonald brothers were simply too nice to make that next step plunge.

In the end the point of the movie was a clear definition of capitalism that was spelled out clearly.  When Kroc tells the McDonald brothers that his business was war and if he saw a competitor drowning—that he’d put a hose down their throat to finish them off.  Mac McDonald wouldn’t have done that and neither would his brother.  That essentially was why they failed to move beyond their initial concepts but no further.  To make projects work you need a Ray Kroc type of person or things just stall, and that is what makes capitalism such an elusive concept elsewhere in the world.  Every business needs their dreamers, and their concept people—but in the end they need someone who can bring persistence to whatever is being attempted.  Ray Kroc with all their faults was undaunted by the prospect of failure.  He had failed over and over through his entire life and in the end; he was speaking with Governor Reagan just before he was elected president as the most successful restaurateur in the world.

McDonald’s makes all of our lives more efficient.  My daughter often before she picks up her kids at our house brings them Happy Meals from McDonald’s to entice them to get into the car and go home.  It helps her to give them quick food while as a busy young parent time is often short.  The ability to get a Happy Meal frees her time up making her much more productive in other ways.  And the same story could be told for all of us, whether its breakfast on the go in the morning or a relief far from home while traveling on the other side of the world.  McDonald’s makes an essential thing we all must do in our lives—which is eat—faster making it so that we can do many other things in our 24 hour day possible.

This movie is just a champ—it captures the American Dream in ways I’m not sure even the filmmakers realized.  For instance, why was Ray Kroc so obsessed with the idea of franchising the McDonald’s concept when he had a nice wife, a nice house, and a membership into an exclusive country club with rich friends?  Isn’t that what people want in America?  And why did the McDonald brothers work so hard to find faster ways to make food more reliably?  The answer goes beyond the wealth that can be achieved by such endeavors.  It is in the hunt of doing them which makes this story different from any other.  Ray Kroc wasn’t about personal jets and boardrooms, even though those things did come to him over time—it was about the thrill of doing something impossible for the benefit of doing something that had never been done before.  That is what drove all the protagonists in this story and what’s wonderful about it is that it was a true story.  It is in that concept that American capitalism works so well and how when those battles are fought the benefits get sprinkled so wonderfully to the rest of the world.  The wars of capitalism are worth fighting because the byproduct of it makes all of society better.  Even though capitalism can be ruthless, the products that come about as a result advance civilization and it is people like Ray Kroc and the McDonald brothers who best exemplify the American Dream.  Not in their successes as much as in their eternal optimism to keep trying until they finally do win—or die trying.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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

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